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Yet however dear Honest John’s services are, they pale in comparison with the cost of bringing the boys to the island itself. The Coachman has to transport the boys to the island, and that means chartering a ship. This means hiring on a crew: a rather unscrupulous crew capable of turning a blind eye to kidnapping littl... |
Shipping expenses notwithstanding, the Coachman’s purse strings are about to be stretched to the breaking point. Approaching the island via a man-made tunnel that must have taken an untold amount of time and money to construct, the ship finally reaches its destination, Pleasure Island. |
The island delivers on Honest John’s promise – it is a dazzling array of some of the most sophisticated and ambitious attractions ever to grace the Earth. Among some of the amenities is a Ferris wheel that rivals the London Eye and a roller coaster made from some space-age material that can support the entire track wit... |
From what can be observed on the screen, approximately eleven boys can fit into the Coachman’s carriage. The larger carriage of the day ran a length of fifteen feet. A brief screenshot allows for a size comparison between the carriage and the steamer prior to the journey to Pleasure Island; the carriage spans the width... |
Thus, one can speculate that sixty-six boys are on Pleasure Island at any given time. Unfortunately for the Coachman, this also means that the entire enterprise hinges on the sale of sixty-six donkeys! At the turn of the 19th century, the going rate for a well bred horse was in the neighborhood of $40; a donkey went fo... |
It is obvious the Coachman is not motivated by greed. Pleasure Island’s chief architect is intelligent enough to know that the game isn’t worth the candle. Notions of financial gain put aside, what would motivate someone to take on such a drastic undertaking? |
A detailed glimpse into Pleasure Island Inc. could reveal a noble cause. Though the film’s setting is unknown, the original story places the characters within the Tuscany region of Italy: the same region that produced the likes of Andrea Pisano, Filippo Lippi and of course, Michelangelo. Obviously things have taken a t... |
How the Coachman originally figured into this remains unknown. We can assume, however, that his methods of disciplining children have the full support of the populace. What else could possibly explain the fact that Pleasure Island exists? A system such as Pleasure Island can only function as a legal, publicly funded en... |
The end of their journey finds the Pleasure Island boys transformed into beasts of burden. They come to understand the consequences of their poor decisions. Whipped, beaten, starved of affection, these boys spend a significant amount of time in their new forms. How long remains a point of conjecture, but we can assume ... |
The Coachman’s incentive is clearly evident. A passionate man, he truly has the best interests of both a desperate society and its lost children at heart. His contribution to the science of behavioral modification cannot be emphasized enough. The ground breaking research of both Joseph Wolpe and Hans Eysenck nearly fif... |
Miss Englert is an aspiring comedienne (just not a politically correct one) and writer who spends too much time thinking about this stuff. You can reach her at [email protected]. |
[Is the Coachman a noble educator? A greedy criminal? Some creepy white dude who kidnaps children? Sound off in the comments!] |
One Comment on “To Coachman With Love: Pinocchio and Behavioral Therapy” |
1. George # |
Wikipedia has just informed me that Italy was undergoing unification in the 19th century. A group called the Carbonari was integral in this process…wait, this just in: Carbonari means “coal miners” or “charcoal burners” in Italian. I believe donkeys are commonly used in coal mines to haul wagons to and fro, aren’t ... |
I have no specific information on what kind of funding the Carbonari actually had, but Wikipedia tells me that some of its members were rather well-off. They could be the wealthy investors that the Coachman would need to create Pleasure Island. |
Perhaps the Coachman’s donkeys are a clever ruse to facilitate the clandestine shipping of new Carbonari recruits. The society receives a cargo of “donkeys for the mines,” then transforms them immediately back to human form. The wayward boys serve their indenture as Carbonari messengers, spies, etc. |
Gritty Pinocchio reboot with extra conspiracy? (Perhaps featuring the vocal talents of Nicolas Cage someplace?) |
Five Men Charged In India Gang-Rape And Murder Case |
And I'm Audie Cornish. |
In New Delhi, five men have been formally charged with rape and murder in the assault of a young student last month. The case unleashed public anger across India, along with demands to overhaul the system that handles crimes against women. The suspects were also charged with the attempted murder of the young woman's co... |
NPR's Julie McCarthy was at the courthouse today and sent this report. |
JULIE MCCARTHY, BYLINE: The charges were filed after normal court hours were over. The police say the reason for the delay was a glitch in the electronic filing of what is a 1,000-page long charge sheet. It purports to lay out a grisly set of facts against five of the accused and is to remain sealed. |
But local journalists who shared knowledge of its contents say that the prime accused in the attack on a moving bus was the driver, Ram Singh, reputed to be quick-tempered and a heavy drinker. He had regularly transported schoolchildren in the same bus. Ram Singh is alleged to have encouraged his brother, another defen... |
The couple were said to have been lured onto the bus, believing that three of the accused were simply passengers. Another issued them tickets to make the ride appear legitimate. Two of the charges are criminal conspiracy and a common intention to commit a crime. |
The sixth accused is alleged to have been the most brutal of the group and the first to taunt the couple about being out together at night, but he is not being tried with the five other men. Police today said he was 17 years old and therefore a minor and cannot be tried for murder. |
At the brief hearing, the police pressed for an in-camera trial, ostensibly to shield the victim's family from further anguish. But Ranjana Kumari, director of the Center for Social Research, says it is ill-advised in a case of such huge public interest. |
RANJANA KUMARI: From our point of view, there is absolutely no reason why the trial should be held in secrecy. We are absolutely of the opinion that it should be open. People want to see. People want to know, hear. And everybody wants to know every detail of it. What is there to hide? |
MCCARTHY: Had it not been for an aggressive Indian media that banged at the door of the sealed courtroom today and demanded entry, the charges would have been registered with no member of the public or press to witness it. |
MCCARTHY: None of the accused was inside the court, but the passions they invoked were obvious outside where demonstrators cried: Guarantee punishment for the accused. Mass demonstrations moved India's Supreme Court to establish a special court to hear this and other cases of sexual violence. |
Attorney Poonam Kaushik of the Progressive Women's Association says a fast-track court is imperative. |
POONAM KAUSHIK: The fair and speedy trial in all sexual assault cases should be ensured. The long court procedures, the insensitive medical administration, the insensitive attitude of the police should be done away with. |
MCCARTHY: Two women, Vinni and Tulsi, who offered their first names only, hoped for a glimpse at the case that could set precedents and a sense of accountability. They could not contain their fury. First Vinni, then Tulsi. |
VINNI: (Foreign language spoken) |
MCCARTHY: If it were in my power, says Vinni, I'd chop off the hands of those men and happily go to jail. No women will want to give birth to girls in this country, adds Tulsi. And then men, she says, will be left by themselves. |
The case resumes Saturday. |
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April 07, 2006 |
Chabad Votes For Racist |
Baruch Marzel, the right wing extremist with ties to the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, won 30% of the Kfar Chabad votes in last week's Knesset election. And it almost was more. A lot more. The Forward reports: |
Bucking the advice of their rabbis, about 30% of voters in Israel's main Chabad-Lubavitch stronghold cast their ballots for a candidate who advocated the mass expulsion of Arabs, branded Israeli leaders traitors and called for the execution of some liberals. |
Baruch Marzel, running under the banner of the National Jewish Front, failed to reach the 2% threshold needed to qualify for a Knesset seat and, perhaps more strikingly, failed to win a single vote in dozens of municipalities throughout Israel. Even in the West Bank, where opposition to Israeli territorial concessions ... |
But in Kfar Chabad — the Lubavitch town located inside Israel proper, just east of Tel Aviv — Marzel won almost a third of the 1,714 votes cast, even though the local rabbis had urged residents to back parties with a realistic chance of winning Knesset seats. His next-best showings inside Israel's pre-1967 borders were... |
Marzel's support from Chabad voters poses a potentially embarrassing development for the global network of emissaries loyal to the vision of the late Lubavitcher rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson. The late rabbi strongly opposed Israeli territorial concessions, as do many of Chabad's emissaries. But the emissarie... |
Chabad officials in America seemed reluctant to comment for the record on Marzel's results, even as they tried to dismiss his success among their followers as a protest vote against the other religious parties. Rabbi Levi Shemtov, Chabad's representative in Washington, stressed that the rabbinical court in Kfar Chabad ... |
"The responsibility for matters in Israel, which lies with the Chabad rabbinate in Israel, cannot be compromised because individuals, even many of them, decide to undo their instructions. If they said that Chabad will not back any particular party, then that's what they meant," Shemtov said. "They didn't back anybody i... |
Rabbi Menachem Gluckowsky, deputy chief justice of the Chabad Rabbinical Council in Israel, told the Forward that "we decided to come out very strongly to encourage people to vote for parties that would get into the Knesset." |
"Marzel has extremist views, and they are not in line with the views of our community," Gluckowsky said. "Most people don't even know what his positions are." |
Political observers say that members of Israel's Chabad community have veered further right than most other religious groups in Israel in recent years, with many gravitating toward Marzel's views. |
"The Chabad community has increasingly leaned toward the right in the past three or more elections," said Menachem Friedman, one of Israel's leading experts on ultra-Orthodoxy and a professor of sociology and anthropology at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan. Friedman described Marzel's party as a continuation of Kach, ... |
When he first met Kahane, Marzel was in eighth grade and working on a project about the rabbi's militant organization, the Jewish Defense League. Police first detained Marzel when he was 14, after he joined Kahane in a road demonstration during then-secretary of state Henry Kissinger's visit to Israel. He worked closel... |
During last week's elections, the party won wide support especially in the more extremist West Bank areas such as Hebron, where Marzel lives with his wife and nine children. |
According to Friedman, what differentiates Marzel from most other religious political figures is his demand for the government to enforce rabbinical law in day-to-day life in Israel before the coming of the messiah. |
Marzel had his own explanation for his success with Chabad followers: "What attracts them to me," he told the Forward, "are my positions on keeping the wholeness of the Torah the wholeness of the Jewish nation and the wholeness of the Land of Israel." |
Sitting in his small Jerusalem office, where about a half-dozen volunteers share two computers in rooms with walls of chipped white paint, Marzel said that he could have won as much as 80% of the vote had the Kfar Chabad rabbinical court not issued a decision before the elections discouraging followers from voting for ... |
Marzel said that the recent rabbinical ruling was driven by the Chabad leadership's decision to advance its economic interests by backing a party that would win parliamentary seats and try to increase the money budgeted to the community. Menachem Brod, Chabad's spokesman in Israel, dismissed the allegation as "baseless... |
According to Marzel, more than 100 members of the Chabad community volunteered to help his election campaigning. However, Chabad supporters did not contribute a "serious amount" of money to his campaign, which raised only about $100,000 in total. Marzel said that in a quiet show of support for him, more than a fifth of... |
A 40-year-old teacher living in Kfar Chabad, who asked to be identified only as Moti, said that he ignored the rabbinical edict and followed through with his decision to vote for Marzel. |
"All the other large religious parties have cooperated in the past with governments that have given up Jewish lands," said the teacher, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was concerned his opposition to the court's decision might stir up antagonism towards him in his community. "Marzel would never enter int... |
Yes! Chabad is the recist of recists! I hope there is an end to this Chabad Idiyotary... |
Kol oreiv lemino areyv . |
No wonder , all Marzev's racist "ruchniyus" is from them. |
Calling for the execution of liberals, is their idea of Ahavat Yisrael. |
I am sure the Rebbe never advocated such, but his foul students-the R Hechts of the world- , the results of his teachings, will see steps of Geula in such executions. |
Hey maybe some consider him -Marzev- as Mashiach be Yosef. |
I like your site, but why do you call Marzel a "racist"? Is it racist to want to expel the murderers who chant "Slaughter the Jews!"??? |
The reason many Lubavitchers voted for Baruch Marzel is that he was the only candidate to sign a document promising not to give away any land to the Arab terrorists.This was the Rebbes position that it is forbidden to give any land to the Arabs as it encourages more acts of terrorism and endangers Jewish lives both in ... |
most jews are smarter than that, Steven , we should be able ti distinguish between plain arabs and those of them that are terrorists. just as some of ours aren't any nicer than arab terrorists. we couldn't be so stupid and blind. by repeating those empty platitudes, we are never assured that the rest of the world is ei... |
.......This was the Rebbes position that it is forbidden to give any land to the Arabs ..... |
Well the Rebbe was wrong on many counts, in addition to not being the Messiah , he was wrong on that one too, in addition, it wasn't even his business to demand from Israel of which despite his delusions to the contrary, he was never the sovereign! |
reply to Jath, |
You can agree or disagree, but remember this , you dont have to worry about Kassam rockets landing in your backyard. |
MR, this is true, but then again, most of us never did anything to deserve rockets in our yards, either. |
משלי פרק ל |
this is very sad MaRabbi, but: |
פסוק לג: ...... וּמִיץ-אַף, יוֹצִיא דָם;וּמִיץ אַפַּיִם, יוֹצִיא רִיב. |
How nice. In one post Shmary brags that he knew Meir Kahane o'h and that MK o'h would never have approved of my badmouthing even a Jew like Shmaryas hero Former Prime Minister and now Prime Vegetable Ari Porky Sharon, yet now he presents an article condeming Marzel for emulating Kahanes plan for a safer Israel. |
Makes me wonder how such a loving liberal twerp like Shmarya would ever put himself in a situation so as to make the aquaintence of a racist like MK o'h, and then use his name to chastise me about my respect for another Jew. |
With all this time spent spewing bile on others Jews, where does Der Strumer find the time to help his niggers out. |
a-the midrash on ruth, never liked ploni. |
b-it's either marzel or the strumer ? quite the contrary marzel and mk-not to soil my pc, i will not write the full name- are no different than strumer. sheneemar, ki messaneikha hashem essna. |
c- bile on some of our fellow jews, is a mitzva. especially those u seem to be fond off. |
First off Lubavitch Rabonim in Israel said NOT to vote for Marzel. |
they said not to vote, because they know it hurts their image and is not within any national concensus. |
but lubavitch teachings all point to marzel ! |
Yekhonyahu, dont be a sock puppet. Kahane o'h |
did more for Jews during his lifetime, both in the USA and Israel then you or Rosenberg could ever hope to do together if you lived a million years. |
I know its hard for the both of you to realize how pathetic your lives have been compared to a real Ohev Israel like Meier but try to get over it. |
What's wrong with observant voters rejecting their rabbis' advice and choose a different candidate? Or would you prefer that they act like sheep and vote as a bloc? |
You can't have it both ways, Shmarya. Personally, I see nothing wrong with Marzel. If the global community approves expelling Jews from Gaza, why would expelling Arabs from Israel be racist? |
Kahane was a completely different character than Merzel. Why is transfer racist? Because the idea of an ethnically pure state is in itself racist. The original idea of population transferwas reciprocal, and not done with force. Kahane understood that and also understood that force would not work in today's world. So Ka... |
"Kahane tried to scare Arabs so they would flee, but he didn't hate them?" I actually respect Mazel more than the socalled centrists. At least they are honest. |
If Kahane were elected, 3/4 of Israelis would be subject ot the same kind of "voluntary tranfer you have described here." Yes they will be scared away too. Here is an interview Kahane did from the pro kahane website kahane.org. |
Q: How do you see Western democracy? |
A: First I’m going to give you a bit of background, to help you understand. Among all the controversy surrounding Kahane you’ll not find anybody prepared to take up the challenge that I have thrown down. Since people are not capable of debating, they attack me by putting labels on me. The first thing I want to say is t... |
Q: Would you accept a situation in which there was democracy only for the Jews and not for the Arabs? |
A: I’ll answer that question later. First let me explain why everybody is mad at me. It’s because I have confronted people with the following contradiction: you can’t have Zionism and democracy at the same time. And for those who criticize me, it’s very difficult to get out of this contradiction. |
Now let me answer your question. First of all, Western democracy has to be ruled out. For me that’s cut and dried: there’s no question of setting up democracy in Israel, because democracy means equal rights for all, irrespective of racial or religious origins. Therefore democracy and Zionism cannot go together. And Isr... |
Let’s get back to your question and let me talk about democracy as far as Jews are concerned. Do I accept democracy for Judaism? My answer is: Judaism does not accept democracy unless it is within a structure that adheres to the law of the Torah. I challenge any rabbi to contradict me on this. My hope as a religious Je... |
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