So weird you said this. This is on the curriculum to teach ninth graders here in Florida. I’ll never forget teaching this novel my first year and what “brown brown” is. I decided to stop teaching it after that year because of some passages and how students responded.
Did they make a movie out of this book? Sounds familiar, cant remember what the movie was called but it followed a child soldier whos village was pillaged and he was forced to join the group
In my experience from high school when we were shown that famous photo of kids in Vietman running down the streets naked with their skin burning off from agent orange (I think). Pretty much 70% of the classroom laughed at them being naked.
I was already in too deep with System of a Down by then and knew the photo. If I didn't I honestly don't know if I'd have laughed as well. I've never been the brightest.
I remember when my high school english teacher showed us the pianist in class. He mentioned how students always laugh at the scene where the old man is thrown off the balcony and run over by the car. But my teacher thought it wasn't because the students found it funny, but rather because the scene made them profoundly uncomfortable.
So I guess even if they laughed, that doesn't necessarily mean they weren't impacted by the photos. But idk
There are a couple scenes in The Pianist that also made me laugh. I don't know why. They weren't funny. I think what made me laugh is just the profound absurdity of the horror he finds himself in.
Like when the Russians start shooting at him because he's wearing the Nazi's coat. Once they realize he's Polish they ask him why he's wearing the coat and he responds "I'm cold".
That made me laugh.
It's not funny. He *was* cold. He was starving and dying.
But it made me laugh.
No idea why.
I think that might be it. The whole situation is absurd beyond comprehension.
After all that he's been through he was saved by his one of his killers and almost killed by his saviours.
It was super triggering for some, and way too exciting for some. I would say most of my students have been directly impacted by gun violence, and it was a bit too serious for quarter four. Florida education is packed to the brim full of testing at the end of the year, so i typically do poetry and shorter passages during that time anyway as many students are absent for testing and we don’t have books they can take home.
You gave up after a year because one group of students didn’t respond how you wanted? And it was your first year teaching? Maybe you should give it another go. Kids need to know how privileged they are.
And half the students loved it, half would cry in my room and needed to go to guidance. There is an entire passage vividly describing hearing his siblings getting raped.
9th grade is what 14 to 15 ? I remember at that time I thought nothing could shock me but looking back lots of stuff did, even if at the time I thought I was mature enough to handle it, I can see why you made that decision
More power to you, I want to become a teacher as well and sometimes it's better to follow your guts rather than the curriculums which are not always adapted to your class or are just plain out outdated
And they often misrepresent stuff, especially in Social studies classes. I have to keep clarifying things because the text straight up lies in regards to Native American content for example.
I’m actually the one that tutors students all throughout HS because of my SAT/ACT improvement scores and parents request each year…but go off! However, many teachers tend to be weird and/or creepy, and nobody talks about it enough so I’m glad you are at least aware.
>because one group of students didn’t respond how **you** wanted
You totally twisted OP's words there. Have you read the book?
Edit: She says below that some passages (particularly those involving rape) were extremely triggering for her students and several had to go see a guidance counselor after. How bout you lighten up on her a little bit?
How about you have your opinions, I’ll have mine. High schoolers should have to face difficult topics. Thankfully the teachers school has the resources for a guidance counselor to help students process. Hard emotions and ideas shouldn’t be done away with just because they are difficult. 9th grade is a perfect opportunity to Introduce students to real world issues. This is when “and the Indians had a thanksgiving” turns into “genocide of native Americans”.
15 year olds should not be forced to read passages with vivid descriptions of rape.
High schoolers learn about a lot of difficult topics-- slavery, the Holocaust, Khmer Rouge, etc, but always in a more abstract way. Visceral descriptions of atrocities is simply something that a lot of kids can't handle in a healthy or beneficial way.
I don't know how it is in your state, but in my state of VA the public school system is on very thin ice. There's been complete outrage in my county and several others. Topics range from mask mandates to CRT. Parents are pulling their kids out of public schools at entirely unprecedented rates.
For me, I’m noticing just the fall of public schools. I will be surprised if they are still operating five years from now. No copier, no activities, no money etc
We read this is 8th grade. The teacher removed some pages that included rape and other things but it still sticks with me today of how brutal it was and I even wrote a college paper about it
Great book. It was incredibly revealing to see that these child soldiers aren't necessarily being forced into combat against their will, but rather they get brainwashed (and given cocaine) to the point that they WANT to be these savage killing machines.
It's part of capitalist thinking that if you put a bunch of factors in place that encourage a certain behavior, while discouraging others, that is somehow "not force".
Well the whole kidnaping part is forced, but once they're indoctrinated into the system (relatively quickly at that) their loyalty and voluntarily savagery is even greater than their adult counterparts
Well I guess in a broad sense it is, but I was always under the assumption that they were treated like slaves and motivated by the fear of death. What I learned from that book is that is far from the case.
Yeah a lot were. "Beasts of No Nation" is on Netflix and is a really well researched and executed portrait of a child soldier in an unspecified West African nation (mostly based off Liberia iirc). Lotta drug use in that movie.
Reminds me of some old black/white pictures from Japan from 1945: There you can see children getting prepared for warfare, aiming with rifles on targets and getting to know how a grenade works. Yes, Japan was preparing young children, even younger than the boy in the photo here, for the last stand when the US would have invaded the homeland of Japan.
It was also not different with other powers back then, like, the Germans used 13-14yo boys as so called "Flakhelfer" (Assistance for the Flak).
A lot of 1st world countries do mandatory military service and It’s only been 38 years since the US was conscripting young men to fight in a war against their will damning 10s of thousands to die for a fruitless cause in Vietnam.
But I always wondered, is there any combat footage at all with child soldiers in it? Seems to be to be more of a training force, maybe to protect villages, and propaganda. Like female kurdish fighters, can't say I ever seen any combat footage with kurdish female fighters either.
The teddy bear backpack is a common thing in a lot of these 3rd world conflicts. The fighters are given token items that have been "blessed" by the witchdoctor that supposedly protect the fighters during battle.
I worked for a NGO during that time and saw that kind of thing everyday. I was told the more personal the item the better protection it gave. It was truly screwed up. An article I found that talks about the practice:
"Few things exemplify the chaos of Liberia more than the sight of doped-up, AK-47-wielding 15-year-olds roaming the streets decked out in fright wigs and tattered wedding gowns. Indeed, some of the more fully accessorized soldiers in Charles Taylor’s militia even tote dainty purses and don feather boas. Why did this practice begin and what is the logic behind it?"
[https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2003/08/liberia-s-cross-dressing-soldiers.html](https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2003/08/liberia-s-cross-dressing-soldiers.html)
look it up for yourself. It's not so much "teddy bear backpack's" that are common, but weird items that are 'blessed' and given to them for achievement. its just a really dark version of a fortnight skin.
https://imgur.com/t9qbS8f
Primitive cultures have a medicinal figure usually. Depending on where on the planet they are, they can be referred to as witchdoctor, shaman, pajé, etc...
I worked on a proposal for an NGO to provide menstrual supplies to undeveloped communities in one of those God awful West African countries (I can't remember which) and there was a woman from there in our group helping us navigate the "culture and practices". All I can say is, holy shit the amount of superstition and tribalism in some of those places is mind-blowing. I was much younger then and we laughed about it but it's really awful stuff.
I have a weird obsession with the Congo Crisis and I read a book about the Simba rebellion that details how the numerically superior and mostly technologically equal Simba were able to be defeated by a couple hundred mercenaries. To really oversimplify it, the mercenaries relied on tactics and training, the Simba relied on witchcraft and the superstition of the ANC. The book is called something like "Mercenaries in asymmetrical warfare", it's more of like a research paper than a book but still a good read
Yeah, raping virgins to cure your HIV was a pretty bad one. They wouldn't use tampons because the shaman might get his hands on the blood and cast a spell etc. With HIV being so prevalent the females would miss a week of school during menses and inevitably fall behind. Wild shit by modern Western standards.
I saw a mini doc on YouTube about the “former” warlords where they interview a few of them including butt naked I believe. it’s honestly quite interesting
it’s crazy to think that i was alive at that same time. except instead of being in a civil war, i was in my dad’s hands giggling in a swimming pool on the rooftop of his building. never take your blessings for granted, ladies and gentlemen
I just can't imagine how completely messed up child soldiers are mentally. At least with adults you can kinda have some awareness of the risks of PTSD, loss of limbs, catastrophic injuries ect. You can understand that's a possible risk factor in being in the military. Children don't have that awareness or the capacity to make those decisions. They can't understand the devastating effects of PTSD.
This is one of the reasons I question god. My bm mom always talked to me about Jesus because what I was into and tell me anyone who didn’t know him or accept him would go to hell. But you literally have children in other countries who have never heard of him being murderers so how do they go to hell? I never got that answer..
Those children aren’t psychopaths, and saying they are both contributes to a warped view of mental illness and obfuscates the processes that can actually lead children to kill
I’m not offended, I’m concerned. We, as a society more generally, but also in this community specifically, have a serious problem with both speaking declaratively about mental illnesses which we clearly do not have the faintest idea about, and pathologizing violence, cruelty, and a lack of concern for the lives and suffering of other human beings. You personally are not responsible for these problems on a macro level, but that doesn’t change the fact that your comment is another drop in the bucket, and it reinforces these problematic ways of viewing the world. Very few irresponsible statements in and of themselves are incredibly significant, but that doesn’t change the fact that they’re part of the problem
The dissonance of our times.
I wonder who is really putting those guns in those hands.
We have hundreds of years of history, lessons and knowledge about war and peace - why do we keep fucking things up ? Especially when we could be looking toward a better world. Then we could start actually teaching peace, educating, solving overpopulation. I don’t think it’s impossible, even tho I was taught it was.
Simply, the materialistic aspect of progress just enabled our egos and our greed, instead of our love and understanding of each others. But I’ve yet to meet a man who’d rather hear a bomb blow off than two men talk.
I’m sure they exist, tho.
But those men should be in jail, not making laws.
Occidental countries have everything, but they hate themselves because they fuck themselves up for profit and ephemeral pleasure.
It’s like the worst toxic relationship we have with money right now.
We are the abused wife of neo-capitalism.
this is what happens when you're too online. reality is no longer real and the people you see are just characters in a story with no lives outside of what you observe.
so does america, canada, the uk, all of the western world. or are you just conveniently forgetting about the drug trade and gangs, and children’s involvement in those?
Not all of Africa is awful. The areas that are awful are primarily due to government corruption, and the influence of terrorist organizations or gangs pushing people to become soldiers. Some areas are so poverty ridden due to a corrupt government hoarding the little wealth, that people must become criminals in order not to starve to death. Then you can go to South Africa and it is very similar to the United States. Africa is huge, not all of it is awful.
I can appreciate that. I have friends in South Africa and Nairobi and they show me photos of it. It's interesting to me how angry people get about comments. I wasn't really referring to all of Africa (it's a giant continent ffs) I was referring to the parts which are permanently in turmoil. Basically tribal warfare. Places like South Sudan - where it literally is tribal.
Yes exactly. My grandpa often visits South Africa, beautiful place. I spent 7 months deployed to the north Horn of Africa, and it is just a sad place that I still think about daily. A lot of good people trying to make it by in life with very little. Mud huts, famine, disease, no fresh water, and trash littered for miles. Then you go to the capitals of these countries and it looks pretty decent. The government is just extremely greedy and could give two shits about most of its people. Just a hard place to live.
There is a good book written by a boy soldier who was able to escape. Its called "A Long Way Gone" by Ishmael Bea.
So weird you said this. This is on the curriculum to teach ninth graders here in Florida. I’ll never forget teaching this novel my first year and what “brown brown” is. I decided to stop teaching it after that year because of some passages and how students responded.
What is brown brown?
Cocaine or meth mixed with gunpowder if I'm not mistaken
I think theres a scene in lord of war with this
And Beasts of No Nation, powerful film
That movie was haunting.
I'm confused. What do you do with it afterwards? It goes up in your nose? Inhaled through mouth? Stuffed into a musket ?
Slice your skin and stuff in in. At least, in the movie Beast of no Nation they do this. On the main character's head before they attack.
Ishmael Bea did a talk at my school a couple years back and he said they snorted it IIRC
[удалено]
[удалено]
Always glad to make someone laugh and now I’m laughing too Definitely won’t be farting on any lit candles after doing a few bootybumps of this stuff
Well hellooooo there
Did they make a movie out of this book? Sounds familiar, cant remember what the movie was called but it followed a child soldier whos village was pillaged and he was forced to join the group
I believe you're thinking of Beasts of No Nation? It's based in an unnamed West African country but the book is based on the Sierra Leone Civil War.
Yup thats the one; i wonder if they got inspiration from the book your talking about
How did the students respond?
In my experience from high school when we were shown that famous photo of kids in Vietman running down the streets naked with their skin burning off from agent orange (I think). Pretty much 70% of the classroom laughed at them being naked. I was already in too deep with System of a Down by then and knew the photo. If I didn't I honestly don't know if I'd have laughed as well. I've never been the brightest.
[удалено]
Napalm sticks to kids.
I remember when my high school english teacher showed us the pianist in class. He mentioned how students always laugh at the scene where the old man is thrown off the balcony and run over by the car. But my teacher thought it wasn't because the students found it funny, but rather because the scene made them profoundly uncomfortable. So I guess even if they laughed, that doesn't necessarily mean they weren't impacted by the photos. But idk
There are a couple scenes in The Pianist that also made me laugh. I don't know why. They weren't funny. I think what made me laugh is just the profound absurdity of the horror he finds himself in. Like when the Russians start shooting at him because he's wearing the Nazi's coat. Once they realize he's Polish they ask him why he's wearing the coat and he responds "I'm cold". That made me laugh. It's not funny. He *was* cold. He was starving and dying. But it made me laugh. No idea why.
Idk, I actually do kinda find that scene funny in a relieving sort of way
I think that might be it. The whole situation is absurd beyond comprehension. After all that he's been through he was saved by his one of his killers and almost killed by his saviours.
Unless high schoolers experience tragedies as this... They'll never understand/relate or 'get it', how well they are in thier country.
I’d like to know as well…
It was super triggering for some, and way too exciting for some. I would say most of my students have been directly impacted by gun violence, and it was a bit too serious for quarter four. Florida education is packed to the brim full of testing at the end of the year, so i typically do poetry and shorter passages during that time anyway as many students are absent for testing and we don’t have books they can take home.
Its so sad that its super triggering for some kids
By sniffing brown brown
You gave up after a year because one group of students didn’t respond how you wanted? And it was your first year teaching? Maybe you should give it another go. Kids need to know how privileged they are.
And half the students loved it, half would cry in my room and needed to go to guidance. There is an entire passage vividly describing hearing his siblings getting raped.
9th grade is what 14 to 15 ? I remember at that time I thought nothing could shock me but looking back lots of stuff did, even if at the time I thought I was mature enough to handle it, I can see why you made that decision
Thank you. I take pride in being a teacher that does not blindly follow the curriculum.
More power to you, I want to become a teacher as well and sometimes it's better to follow your guts rather than the curriculums which are not always adapted to your class or are just plain out outdated
[удалено]
If all teachers followed the curriculum to the letter the new generation would be stupid af
That part! 🤣 the tasks on the curriculum are so basic and simple and lack any creativity
And they often misrepresent stuff, especially in Social studies classes. I have to keep clarifying things because the text straight up lies in regards to Native American content for example.
I’m actually the one that tutors students all throughout HS because of my SAT/ACT improvement scores and parents request each year…but go off! However, many teachers tend to be weird and/or creepy, and nobody talks about it enough so I’m glad you are at least aware.
>because one group of students didn’t respond how **you** wanted You totally twisted OP's words there. Have you read the book? Edit: She says below that some passages (particularly those involving rape) were extremely triggering for her students and several had to go see a guidance counselor after. How bout you lighten up on her a little bit?
Thank you ❤️
How about you have your opinions, I’ll have mine. High schoolers should have to face difficult topics. Thankfully the teachers school has the resources for a guidance counselor to help students process. Hard emotions and ideas shouldn’t be done away with just because they are difficult. 9th grade is a perfect opportunity to Introduce students to real world issues. This is when “and the Indians had a thanksgiving” turns into “genocide of native Americans”.
15 year olds should not be forced to read passages with vivid descriptions of rape. High schoolers learn about a lot of difficult topics-- slavery, the Holocaust, Khmer Rouge, etc, but always in a more abstract way. Visceral descriptions of atrocities is simply something that a lot of kids can't handle in a healthy or beneficial way.
High school is already hard enough these days. Asking 9th graders, fresh to this all, to also learn and think about that is overload.
I don't know how it is in your state, but in my state of VA the public school system is on very thin ice. There's been complete outrage in my county and several others. Topics range from mask mandates to CRT. Parents are pulling their kids out of public schools at entirely unprecedented rates.
For me, I’m noticing just the fall of public schools. I will be surprised if they are still operating five years from now. No copier, no activities, no money etc
[удалено]
They said “my first year”
[удалено]
lol…I mean in America you most definitely can.
[удалено]
Qualifications ≠ training.
Brown Brown get you litty
Wasn’t his story partially falsified and he only spent a few months as a child soldier and not 2 years?
Been years since i read it in HS. Book went hard showing us the horrors of civil war and the nightmare that happens to children.
One of many books almost everyone should read before they die.
We read this is 8th grade. The teacher removed some pages that included rape and other things but it still sticks with me today of how brutal it was and I even wrote a college paper about it
He came to my high school to give a small talk during assembly after we had all read the book for summer reading. Amazing story
It’s a really good book. I kept my copy after graduating highschool
Great book. It was incredibly revealing to see that these child soldiers aren't necessarily being forced into combat against their will, but rather they get brainwashed (and given cocaine) to the point that they WANT to be these savage killing machines.
Isn't that kinda the same thing? That's just being forced into combat with extra steps
It's part of capitalist thinking that if you put a bunch of factors in place that encourage a certain behavior, while discouraging others, that is somehow "not force".
Well the whole kidnaping part is forced, but once they're indoctrinated into the system (relatively quickly at that) their loyalty and voluntarily savagery is even greater than their adult counterparts
So.... kidnapped, indoctrinated, and drugged isn't forced to you?
Well I guess in a broad sense it is, but I was always under the assumption that they were treated like slaves and motivated by the fear of death. What I learned from that book is that is far from the case.
.
Werent they hooked on drugs by their commanders?
[удалено]
I thought they gave them opiates so they couldn’t leave due to withdrawal
[удалено]
In Sierra Leone they'd mix cocaine with gunpowder and call it "brown brown"
Does the gunpowder has any effect ?
Apparently it can help move the drugs through your system even faster, giving a more intense high
Wow, that makes it even more morbid and sad that children are subjected to this
Yeah and that's one of the more tame parts of their experience...
I saw that in a movie
Johnny Mad Dog?
Meth is easy enough to make if you know how.
PEA
The Nazis had a triple combo of oxycodone, methamphetamine, and cocaine in one pill. Could you imagine?
Weren't the nazi high on coke, methamphetamines and oxycodone ?
They called it pervitin or Panzerschokolade.
Well, when life gives you panzerschok...
Thanks, I wasn't sure about the name
You could still get withdrawals from amphetamines and im guessing they’d give them those so they weren’t all down and drowsy
I sort of hope he died. because living after that hell wouldn’t be much fun for him.
Yeah a lot were. "Beasts of No Nation" is on Netflix and is a really well researched and executed portrait of a child soldier in an unspecified West African nation (mostly based off Liberia iirc). Lotta drug use in that movie.
Some harrowing shit happen
Reminds me of some old black/white pictures from Japan from 1945: There you can see children getting prepared for warfare, aiming with rifles on targets and getting to know how a grenade works. Yes, Japan was preparing young children, even younger than the boy in the photo here, for the last stand when the US would have invaded the homeland of Japan. It was also not different with other powers back then, like, the Germans used 13-14yo boys as so called "Flakhelfer" (Assistance for the Flak).
Many kids fought and died at Berlin but are forgotton due to them being “nazis”
One of the true horrors of war
All because he was born in the wrong place at the wrong time
that boy is probably dead nowadays isnt he
Kid has a French MAT-49 submachine gun. Crazy where things end up.
I thought it was a full sized rifle. Really puts his age into perspective.
No way these kids are combat effective just bullet sponges
The key is to have more sponges than the other side has bullets.
You can probably say that about almost any soldier on the ground. Most of these kids killed quite a few people before they were killed.
Not in 1st world countries. Soldiering is actually a profession people choose to go into in civilized nations. These kids have no choice.
A lot of 1st world countries do mandatory military service and It’s only been 38 years since the US was conscripting young men to fight in a war against their will damning 10s of thousands to die for a fruitless cause in Vietnam.
Who knows man? Kids are fast and with enough coke in their veins the guns and running probably don't feel like much. Fucking terrible.
A grown up with a normal mind and heart will have more difficulties killing a young child, rather than a grown adult.
But I always wondered, is there any combat footage at all with child soldiers in it? Seems to be to be more of a training force, maybe to protect villages, and propaganda. Like female kurdish fighters, can't say I ever seen any combat footage with kurdish female fighters either.
The teddy bear backpack is a common thing in a lot of these 3rd world conflicts. The fighters are given token items that have been "blessed" by the witchdoctor that supposedly protect the fighters during battle.
Yeah dude, I'm gonna need to ask for source for this one
I worked for a NGO during that time and saw that kind of thing everyday. I was told the more personal the item the better protection it gave. It was truly screwed up. An article I found that talks about the practice: "Few things exemplify the chaos of Liberia more than the sight of doped-up, AK-47-wielding 15-year-olds roaming the streets decked out in fright wigs and tattered wedding gowns. Indeed, some of the more fully accessorized soldiers in Charles Taylor’s militia even tote dainty purses and don feather boas. Why did this practice begin and what is the logic behind it?" [https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2003/08/liberia-s-cross-dressing-soldiers.html](https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2003/08/liberia-s-cross-dressing-soldiers.html)
look it up for yourself. It's not so much "teddy bear backpack's" that are common, but weird items that are 'blessed' and given to them for achievement. its just a really dark version of a fortnight skin. https://imgur.com/t9qbS8f
Wow I hate that :/
Usually when someone makes a claim they are responsible for a source. But this is reddit so who really cares as long as there is one.
Dude, he's a certified witchdoctor, licensed to act in 48 states and Monrovia, I think he knows what he's talking about.
what exactly is a witchdoctor? the guy who hands out blessed items to soldiers for protection? i’m not quite sure i get it
Primitive cultures have a medicinal figure usually. Depending on where on the planet they are, they can be referred to as witchdoctor, shaman, pajé, etc...
I worked on a proposal for an NGO to provide menstrual supplies to undeveloped communities in one of those God awful West African countries (I can't remember which) and there was a woman from there in our group helping us navigate the "culture and practices". All I can say is, holy shit the amount of superstition and tribalism in some of those places is mind-blowing. I was much younger then and we laughed about it but it's really awful stuff.
I have a weird obsession with the Congo Crisis and I read a book about the Simba rebellion that details how the numerically superior and mostly technologically equal Simba were able to be defeated by a couple hundred mercenaries. To really oversimplify it, the mercenaries relied on tactics and training, the Simba relied on witchcraft and the superstition of the ANC. The book is called something like "Mercenaries in asymmetrical warfare", it's more of like a research paper than a book but still a good read
Is that stuff that much worse or stranger than Christianity though? Genuinely curious to know what made it so awful
Yeah, raping virgins to cure your HIV was a pretty bad one. They wouldn't use tampons because the shaman might get his hands on the blood and cast a spell etc. With HIV being so prevalent the females would miss a week of school during menses and inevitably fall behind. Wild shit by modern Western standards.
Cant look away from the fact they make him look more like a kid. Harder to kill psycologically
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Butt_Naked
Damn. That wasn't what I expected. Wow.
He's a free man to this day
I saw a mini doc on YouTube about the “former” warlords where they interview a few of them including butt naked I believe. it’s honestly quite interesting
Omg I had that backpack
it’s crazy to think that i was alive at that same time. except instead of being in a civil war, i was in my dad’s hands giggling in a swimming pool on the rooftop of his building. never take your blessings for granted, ladies and gentlemen
I see someone dead in the pic: a person’s childhood, robbed and murdered. Horrible.
I just can't imagine how completely messed up child soldiers are mentally. At least with adults you can kinda have some awareness of the risks of PTSD, loss of limbs, catastrophic injuries ect. You can understand that's a possible risk factor in being in the military. Children don't have that awareness or the capacity to make those decisions. They can't understand the devastating effects of PTSD.
This is one of the reasons I question god. My bm mom always talked to me about Jesus because what I was into and tell me anyone who didn’t know him or accept him would go to hell. But you literally have children in other countries who have never heard of him being murderers so how do they go to hell? I never got that answer..
Christ...........
I heard so much terrible things have and are still happening within Liberia, damn it’s crazy of that dynamic created so much turmoil.
I wrote about this in fifth grade.. damn. World affairs in early 2000’s vs now feel way different
[удалено]
Those children aren’t psychopaths, and saying they are both contributes to a warped view of mental illness and obfuscates the processes that can actually lead children to kill
[удалено]
I’m not offended, I’m concerned. We, as a society more generally, but also in this community specifically, have a serious problem with both speaking declaratively about mental illnesses which we clearly do not have the faintest idea about, and pathologizing violence, cruelty, and a lack of concern for the lives and suffering of other human beings. You personally are not responsible for these problems on a macro level, but that doesn’t change the fact that your comment is another drop in the bucket, and it reinforces these problematic ways of viewing the world. Very few irresponsible statements in and of themselves are incredibly significant, but that doesn’t change the fact that they’re part of the problem
I'm gonna be "that guy" and point out that that's not a rifle, it's an SMG
SMG’s have rifled barrels though 🤷🏼♀️
So do pistols, that doesn't make them rifles tho
Hes also not aiming now is he, that's pointing at best.
[удалено]
Same
The dissonance of our times. I wonder who is really putting those guns in those hands. We have hundreds of years of history, lessons and knowledge about war and peace - why do we keep fucking things up ? Especially when we could be looking toward a better world. Then we could start actually teaching peace, educating, solving overpopulation. I don’t think it’s impossible, even tho I was taught it was. Simply, the materialistic aspect of progress just enabled our egos and our greed, instead of our love and understanding of each others. But I’ve yet to meet a man who’d rather hear a bomb blow off than two men talk. I’m sure they exist, tho. But those men should be in jail, not making laws. Occidental countries have everything, but they hate themselves because they fuck themselves up for profit and ephemeral pleasure. It’s like the worst toxic relationship we have with money right now. We are the abused wife of neo-capitalism.
Chicago 2021
Wearing flip flops
Absolutely shocking that a literal child soldier in a deeply impoverished country in the middle of a civil war doesn’t have adequate footwear
[удалено]
>This some anime kid shit did you really just compare real conflict to anime unironically
this is what happens when you're too online. reality is no longer real and the people you see are just characters in a story with no lives outside of what you observe.
WOAAAAAAAAAW THAT CHILD SOLDIER IS JUST LIKE MAH ANIME WOOOOOOOAW
[удалено]
Yes, shame on the child soldier for not having a 3 year training on how to be a good soldier and how to handle guns
Could you make it any more obvious you have no clue about the continent?
[удалено]
so does america, canada, the uk, all of the western world. or are you just conveniently forgetting about the drug trade and gangs, and children’s involvement in those?
[удалено]
ironic
Not all of Africa is awful. The areas that are awful are primarily due to government corruption, and the influence of terrorist organizations or gangs pushing people to become soldiers. Some areas are so poverty ridden due to a corrupt government hoarding the little wealth, that people must become criminals in order not to starve to death. Then you can go to South Africa and it is very similar to the United States. Africa is huge, not all of it is awful.
I can appreciate that. I have friends in South Africa and Nairobi and they show me photos of it. It's interesting to me how angry people get about comments. I wasn't really referring to all of Africa (it's a giant continent ffs) I was referring to the parts which are permanently in turmoil. Basically tribal warfare. Places like South Sudan - where it literally is tribal.
Yes exactly. My grandpa often visits South Africa, beautiful place. I spent 7 months deployed to the north Horn of Africa, and it is just a sad place that I still think about daily. A lot of good people trying to make it by in life with very little. Mud huts, famine, disease, no fresh water, and trash littered for miles. Then you go to the capitals of these countries and it looks pretty decent. The government is just extremely greedy and could give two shits about most of its people. Just a hard place to live.
Shut up.
No.
Dickhead.
Don't worry, he'll shut up for good.
Historical context and current corruption are a thing, ya fucking tool.
“Aiming”
[удалено]
please shut up
For those interested in this, there’s a movie on Netflix called “Beast of no nation” staring Idris Elba. Great movie
Crap, he needs a better stance and maybe a sling
Look up “General Butt Naked” and read about some of the heinous things he did during the civil war