The power of the weak: hunger strikes and forced feeding
Some illegal immigrants in detention are on a hunger strike, and ICE is force-feeding them.
It takes a special person to stick with a hunger strike, but it’s a tried-and-true method by which those in power can be pressured. The pressure of a hunger strike depends, of course, on those in power having a sense of morality, because truly tyrannical regimes couldn’t care less if those in its prisons or detention centers starve themselves to death. Fewer mouths to feed.
But despite the efforts of the left to paint the US as such an amoral power, it is not. So hunger strikes remain a potent weapon.
Here’s the current story:
ICE authorities confirmed on Thursday that at least six immigrant detainees have been force-fed through nasal tubes and nine others have been refusing food. The detainees are located in centers in El Paso, Texas; Miami, Florida; Phoenix, Arizona; and San Diego and San Francisco, California.
Detainee rights activists working with the hunger strikers in Texas say the majority of the hunger strikers are ethnic Indians who entered the United States over the southern border and were detained more than six months ago. The strikers are demanding release on bond, after spending months behind bars.
A lawyer for two of the Texas detainees, Ruby Kaur, told National Public Radio that the detainees began hunger strikes at the beginning of this year to call attention to what they say are inhumane conditions, verbal threats, and lack of information about their cases.
One interesting sidelight of this story is why “ethnic Indians” (that is, from Asia; we’re not talking about Native Americans) would enter over the Mexico border. We know why, of course; because that border is permeable. But it’s another indication that people from all over the world come to the US that way.
Once people decide to go on a hunger strike and publicize it (the two go hand in hand, because publicity is a big big part of the pressure), the government’s options are limited to force-feeding, letting them starve, or giving in to their demands.
If the demands are reasonable they should be granted—but of course, if they’re reasonable, they should have been granted in the first place without the hunger strike. Once the hunger strike begins, both of the two remaining options—force-feeding or letting them starve—are bad, as well as being bad publicity. But of the two, force-feeding is the better option, although the left will make the most of it as an example of the depravity and cruelty of US authorities and ICE.
I have absolutely no compasion for people who enter illegally. That doesn’t mean I want them to starve, I just want them tossed out of the country.
From the VOA article:
It is not clear whether the statement “most are Indian” in the last sentence was made by Ms. Fialho or by the story’s writer.
. . .
parker: “I have absolutely no compasion for people who enter illegally.”
I know, but…
People who’ve entered illegally include the Cuban escapees who risked their lives to get away, crossing to Florida in whatever they could find that might hold them up out of the ocean during the crossing. I do have compassion for those folks.
And the same is true of the Viet Nam boat people in respect of their entering illegally whatever country they landed in.
It may be (and in my view, is ) necessary to keep out those who try to enter illegally, but that doesn’t mean that one has no compassion for those (if any, but I daresay there are some) who really are in dire straits due to threats of, or actual, violence against them.
Yet that doesn’t mean we have a moral duty to save them. And in the current context in our own country, I don’t see how we can do anything but refuse them entry, especially since we do have provisions according to which asylum-seekers may be allowed to remain.
Julie,
The Cubans were a special case that arose from our confrontation with communist intrusion 90 odd miles of shore. The Vietnamese were also a special case. They were anti communists who were our allies during the war. They were granted legal entry. The ongoing invasion over the southern border is intolerable and a security threat. Most of them are fleeing failed states and/or poverty. Those people are not our problem. We know that many of them are criminals (beyond their crime of illegal entry) and some unknowable number are bound to be jihadists.
Does anyone doubt the left’s opposition to border security is simply about harvesting votes?
Sure, parker, but you made a blanket statement. I only pointed out why I can’t agree with it. Remember, very few blanket statements really are.
.
This isn’t mere nitpicking, by the way. We all need to be careful about over-generalization. In this case, for example, those who are bloody-minded might drag you over the coals, accusing you of being hard-hearted, a typical atomistic individualist, a typical *gasp* libertarian … or worse.
Here we mostly share your disapproval of the horde of would-be illegal immigrants; certain others, dems, the MSM, even the run of generally well-meaning folks, not so much.
.
You might want to re-read my final paragraph. :>)
https://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=the+power+of+the+powerless+havel&tag=mh0b-20&index=aps&hvadid=77721780502429&hvqmt=e&hvbmt=be&hvdev=c&ref=pd_sl_6jiutzme93_e
Who am I to second guess the former president of the Czech Republic.
“…We all need to be careful about over-generalization.”
We certainly do. I am a great believer in precision, Especially after we nearly went war in Iran after my squadron invaded Chah Bahar.
Navigation error. But who is it believe it?
It really was a mistake. But we took the picture anyways.
Lanfdfall navigation.
https://www.landfallnavigation.com/
Send ’em to Virginia and let them die in comfort.
Feed them hamburger – through their nose.
That will spite their faces.
Does anyone doubt the left’s opposition to border security is simply about harvesting votes?
I have wondered if the Democrats are getting funding from the drug cartels.
Obama solicited donations from the Palestinians without any idea who they were.
Does anyone doubt the left’s opposition to border security is simply about harvesting votes?
parker: My thought, as an ex-leftist, is that it’s not that simple.
To be sure, the strategic thinkers in the Democratic Party and on the left, have their eyes on that prize.
But to many on the left it’s more a matter of feel-good compassion, feel-good moral superiority and feel-good virtual signaling plus some amount of John Lennon’s “Imagine there are no countries.”
I don’t believe the average leftist thinks about border security as a means of harvesting votes so much as celebrating diversity and putting a thumb into the conservative eye.
I’m having a difficult time believing they are unable to find interpreters who speak Punjabi. Most Punjabis I know are Sikhs who speak excellent English.
A hunger strike is basically blackmail–i.e. “do what I want or the kid gets it”–moral judo, trying to use the enemy’s morality and kindness against them, to force them to do what you want them to do–and I don’t think that you should give in to blackmail.
Aliens have absolutely no legal or moral “right” to enter the U.S., to become citizens, or to acquire the benefits of that citizenship.
On the other hand, the U.S. government has every right to set conditions aliens must meet in order to gain entry into this country, and any other conditions once they enter, including whether and how they can work their way towards citizenship.
If whoever wants to can just stroll across our borders, unhindered, plunk themselves down, and demand to be a U.S. citizen, then, we have no country; we’re just a publicly paid for and maintained smorgasbord, that anyone in the world can sit themselves down and chow down at, forever.
If they refuse to eat the food provided to them, they’ve just reduced the cost of keeping them.
I say let them… If they want to eat they can either accept the food provided on the conditions provided or get the hell back to where they came from, probably Honduras or Nicaragua.
They must think we are all stupid. “A lawyer for two of the Texas detainees, Ruby Kaur, … said her clients face a language barrier, as they do not speak English and have not been provided a translator who can speak their language, which is Punjabi.”
The lawyer’s last name is Kaur, which is the most common last name for female Sikhs. The native language of Sikhs is Punjabi, so it is very likely that Ruby Kaur speaks Punjabi or, if she is an upstanding member of that community, she knows somebody who does.
A historical anecdote on a hunger strike. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1981_Irish_hunger_strike
On 5 May, Sands died in the prison hospital on the sixty-sixth day of his hunger strike, prompting rioting in nationalist areas of Northern Ireland.
“A sense of “morality”.
Mouths to feed aside: Someone, if they feel capable, remind me why non-tyrants, libertarians for example, should care if an antagonist or criminal starves itself to death. And remember, as good secularists and presumptive atheists, no religious answers are allowed; and furthermore “affect” is a stupid answer as it cannot suffice as grounds for a public law in a pluralistic society, nor extend beyond its own reach as an emotional impulse.
Reciprocal and distributive moral imperatives, without God, demonstrable syllogistically, is what we are after.
Are we going to find anyone sensitive-right or left who can give such an answer?
No. I think the evidence of 40 or 50 years of failure on that score [John Rawls’ complex exercise in circular argument, standing as the acme of such futility] pretty much establishes the case in practical terms.
But if any progressives or sensitive conservatives think they have an answer that solves the problem while accounting for man as a rational and self-interested animal, they are welcome to try an give an answer.
Progressives of course don’t even try anymore. That’s why they have descended beneath reason, and now dwell in the swamps of political emotion: expressive of a “will” they cannot truly explain or even coherently own.
Other alternative – deport their sorry selves.
parker on February 4, 2019 at 3:56 pm at 3:56 pm said:
One naturally asks: why don’t they fight back in their own country to get what they consider as rightfully theirs, if they are suffering an injustice?
The answers of course, are relatively obvious: first among them is that they, the “victims” are too weak, or too incompetent, or too fearful, or too inhibited to do so.
Which then leads to the question as to: Why Americans should suffer the injustice second hand, rather than rectifying the problem “over there”?
Using Maduro, or the Mexican political class as examples of those who don’t seem to have any qualms about doing unto their own citizens: why then should we who are subject to the fallout generated by these punk regimes, have qualms about what means we use to get to the root of the problem?
It’s not as if we would actually have to risk any American lives, given the technologies at our disposal.
And that answer is pretty obvious too: That most folks – or enough of a fainting and hand flapping kind to make a difference – would rather let their tyrannical neighbors beat their children and shovel shit over the fence, than allow the men of the family to go next door and handle the tyrant by whatever means are necessary.
You can see this anytime the crowd starts shrieking when someone who has previously been aggressively obnoxious is seen getting his ass handed to him. They start shouting “stop, stop!!” without knowing or caring about the facts. Their primary concern is mercy for the provocateur who caused it all. They don’t care about causes and the right or the wrong of it. Every man here who has been in a physical confrontation in mixed company in public, has experienced it or witnessed it and knows exactly what I am talking about.
Again for the umpteenth time: what obligation do Americans have to be put upon, by people who cannot, or will not defend themselves, much less be put on, even at second hand by the effects of their persecutors?
The Dems have gone from a tribe believing in the superiority of their own, American white tribe, to now believing that it is better to be a victim. Which is not quite the same, but also not far, from believing that being inferior is better, or superior.
Pretty clearly anti-logical, but this is excused by the PC-Klan as being because logic is a province of the white male tribe. The superior, thus inferior, tribe. Obviously, this means other tribes, who are measurably inferior on some metric or other, and thus superior, don’t need to be logically consistent, or even logical at all.
The Dems are busy trying to make tribes so as to divide America, hoping more American tribes will support the Dems.
Only repeated and massive failure, in gaining reported votes, will stop the Dems.
It will also be necessary that colleges stop discriminating against pro-lifers and Reps. That might be an earlier step, after colleges which do discriminate lose their tax-exemptions due to their semi-illegal discrimination. (It ain’t illegal if they ain’t gettin’ caught).