How Pathetic

[HONDO74]

If you think the children in detention on our southern border have it rough. Watch this video from the BBC.

The children in prison for stealing vanilla
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-afric ... ng-vanilla

Children accused of stealing vanilla beans in Madagascar can spend nearly three years in prison without trial.

The island is the world's largest producer of vanilla beans, where a booming industry has led to rising theft.

But the conditions for child prisoners can be worrying, with some being given just one meal a day.

The BBC’s Southern Africa reporter Pumza Fihlani went to visit Antalaha Prison in Sava, one of Madagascar's biggest vanilla-producing regions.

[MurphOnMillerAve]

A society which treats children like that, besides being brutish, is long-run foolish because undernourished and underfed young brains do not develop as well as they might with sufficient, proper food. The society is the lesser for such shortsightedness and callousness .
IMO

[Mitch]

Instead of stealin' vanilla beans, those kids should stow away on a ship and make their way to Mexico, where they could cross our border illegally, get caught and incarcerated in a detention center, where they would be given free medical attention, 3 square meals a day, hygiene supplies, clean clothing, and a place to clean up and sleep. It would really be "the worst case concentration camp" (that's what AOC calls them), that could happen to them. That'd teach them!

[E7]

Can't be concerned with this, I'm too worried about the Malls!

[rogruth]

A society which treats children like that, besides being brutish, is long-run foolish because undernourished and underfed young brains do not develop as well as they might with sufficient, proper food. The society is the lesser for such shortsightedness and callousness .
IMO

Murph,
Fewer rivals for those in power this way. They die.

[MurphOnMillerAve]

For me, pathetic is that all the mills making steel products died, in the metropolitan Pittsburgh area, which essentially annihilated their attendant neighborhoods and communities. I have no idea what the people do for income now.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

For me, pathetic is that all the mills making steel products died, in the metropolitan Pittsburgh area, which essentially annihilated their attendant neighborhoods and communities. I have no idea what the people do for income now.

That is what comes from a lack of planning and a denial of an obvious change.

[MurphOnMillerAve]

For me, pathetic is that all the mills making steel products died, in the metropolitan Pittsburgh area, which essentially annihilated their attendant neighborhoods and communities. I have no idea what the people do for income now.

That is what comes from a lack of planning and a denial of an obvious change.

My theory is that the unions got too big-for-their-britches, too.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

For me, pathetic is that all the mills making steel products died, in the metropolitan Pittsburgh area, which essentially annihilated their attendant neighborhoods and communities. I have no idea what the people do for income now.

That is what comes from a lack of planning and a denial of an obvious change.

My theory is that the unions got too big-for-their-britches, too.

Mine is that no one wanted to admit or accept that things change and end. The lack of planning for one's future is.........wait........yes, jst as the thread is titled, "pathetic".

[HONDO74]

At a School for Suicide Bombers' Children, Dancing, Drawing and Deradicalization
https://news.yahoo.com/school-suicide-b ... 06526.html

MEDAN, Indonesia — Ais likes to dance. She knows the words to “I’m a Little Teapot.” Her dimples are disarming.

Her parents didn’t want their daughter to dance. They didn’t want her to sing. They wanted her to die with them for their cause.

Last year, when she was 7, Ais squeezed onto a motorcycle with her mother and brother. They carried a packet that Ais refers to as coconut rice wrapped in banana leaves. Her father and other brother climbed onto a different bike with another parcel. They sped toward a police station in the Indonesian city of Surabaya, a place of mixed faith.

The parcels were bombs, and they were set off at the gate to the police station. Catapulted off the motorcycle by the force of the explosion, Ais rose from the pavement like a ghost, her pale head-to-toe garment fluttering in the chaos. Every other member of her family died. No bystanders were killed. The Islamic State militant group, halfway across the world, claimed responsibility for the attack.

[MurphOnMillerAve]

At a School for Suicide Bombers' Children, Dancing, Drawing and Deradicalization
https://news.yahoo.com/school-suicide-b ... 06526.html

MEDAN, Indonesia — Ais likes to dance. ..., Ais rose from the pavement like a ghost, her pale head-to-toe garment fluttering in the chaos. Every other member of her family died. No bystanders were killed. The Islamic State militant group, halfway across the world, claimed responsibility for the attack.

And that, folks, is why none of us is ever completely safe anywhere within civilization, any further.

We had a practical illustration of that right here in our little suburban community in NJ.
Seated up at the Altar, as a Lector, during Mass, each Sunday, at Noon services, I find myself often watching the front doors to the church, which are at the opposite end of the edifice from the Sanctuary. Upon one occasion, a couple years ago, an intruder did enter the building via one of those front doors, and while the Celebrant was speaking his homily, the man, wearing very short shorts, a midriff-exposing T-shirt, and loaded with tats, actually had the nerve to walk the total distance from the entrance up the center-aisle, right up to the foot of the steps that lead to the ambo and Altar. While he was approx. halfway within that journey, I stood up from my seat behind our priest, and with as menacing a look as I could put on my face, still remaining behind but a bit to the left of the ambo, I gradually approached him, intending to insert myself between him and the priest, ready to take the assault and/or ready to vigorously push away the intruder. He read me appropriately and held up his hands, palms toward me, in front of his chest, as he was crouching near the step, in a phony semi-genuflection, and gestured in a defensive way that he had gotten the point from me. There was no way he was getting past me to the priest, tabernacle, or chalice upon the altar. He next scurried out a sidedoor, with a congregant who is a local police officer in hot-pursuit, following him outside within the campus, using his cellphone along the way. The intruder was followed to his home in the nearby neighborhood and arrested.

I learned later that everybody but Father was well aware of what I was doing and what my intentions were.

It was a test of myself, of things I had stated in the past I was prepared to do to protect any priest and certainly the Eucharist, with my person.

Since then, the ushers are on constant alert for any intruders. .

Times have changed greatly, yes, but I learned that vows and convictions and commitments I had discovered within myself long ago were valid to this day, when put to the test.

I think anybody who underestimates the vows Islamic militants make would be unwise and ill-prepared.
Murph

[rogruth]

Murph,
I wonder what I would have done.
You are probably much more courageous than I.
Once, in the 1970s, I was involved in a similar experience
that included a large group of high school kids. But that is
not a story for this page.

[robert.]

During sukkot i drove by a hasidic chabad. These guys had armed guards at the doors. In their parking lot they had cement barriers to stop attacks against their sukkots (huts) It's not something you expect to see in a small town of Doyelsburg. Today's world play it safe.

[MurphOnMillerAve]

Murph,
I wonder what I would have done.
You are probably much more courageous than I.
Once, in the 1970s, I was involved in a similar experience
that included a large group of high school kids. But that is
not a story for this page.

May I suggest, make a page/thread for it, then. I'd love to hear about your experience.
Murph

[MurphOnMillerAve]

During sukkot i drove by a hasidic chabad. These guys had armed guards at the doors. In their parking lot they had cement barriers to stop attacks against their sukkots (huts) It's not something you expect to see in a small town of Doyelsburg. Today's world play it safe.

That kind of thing distresses me because it never occurred to me, having never had any negative experience involving Jewish people being disrespected, let alone harmed, during my entire childhood, living in the Pittsburgh metropolitan area. If anything, they were respected and admired and included and valued as friends and neighbors, not just by us kids but by our parents.

As examples, a playmate of my childhood, David, lived right next door to me and took part in our across-backyards tackle football games. A good third of my friends were Jewish, in fact. Mr. and Mrs. Mandell, a couple who lived a half-block down my street, used to hire me to wash his '56 two-toned-blue Cadillac Deville, and never complained that I used to finish each weekend job ($2) of it by driving the car around two blocks, just to "dry it off more thoroughly". An elderly Jewish lady, Mrs. Benowitz, who lived a bock over from us, I used to visit often, as a boy, to make sure was alright, and just to hear her voice and see her smile, she was so marvelous...

(I'd post a picture of some of those friends but this site keeps showing me a yellow triangle at each attempt, thwarting any photo(s) being included in any posting by me. )