Word: mazes
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...known as the H-Blocks, Long Kesh, the Cages, Thatcher's Breakers Yard. Northern Ireland's notorious Maze prison drew more grim nicknames - and housed more paramilitary prisoners - than any other jail in Western Europe. Its last inmates were released under the terms of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which laid the foundation for an end to sectarian violence in the British province. And after bulldozers razed most of the former prison buildings last year, the site where Bobby Sands and nine other Republican militants died in a hunger strike in 1981 became little more than an abandoned relic...
...this year's most talked-about films has put the Maze back at center stage of Northern Ireland's politics. Hunger, which charts Bobby Sands' final weeks inside the Maze, opened in Britain last week and is set for a limited U.S. release next month. This is no jaunty jailhouse flick, but rather the most uncomfortable 96 minutes anyone is likely to spend in a cinema this year. Graphic violence, emaciated bodies and stomach-churning filth provide most of the avert-your-eyes moments...
...film's timing that is making local politicians squirm. Hunger's release comes as Northern Ireland's power-sharing government is under pressure to agree on the final design for a much-contested, large-scale redevelopment program at the Maze site...
...Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) view the hunger strikers as little more than convicted terrorists set on suicide, Catholic republicans allied to the DUP's power-sharing partners, Sinn Fein, regard Sands as an iconic political hero. Given the politically loaded history of the prison, agreeing on what the new Maze should symbolize has proved as tricky as an escape from Alcatraz...
Thus, intervention must only come as a result of wise deliberations and careful considerations. As of Tuesday’s election, we remain optimistic that an Obama administration will be capable of maneuvering through and perhaps reforming the diplomatic maze that so often impedes humanitarian aid in similar situations. Obama’s multilateral and diplomatic policies will be much more effective at providing the aid sooner and more effectively than the Bush administration’s contentious deliberation style. Furthermore, an Obama administration will be more likely to view such massive and terrible displacements out of the context...