This is my one thousand and first post :)
This blog started as a way for me to share photographs and boring daily-type events with family members in other geographic areas, long before I got into jiu jitsu. It's grown a fair bit, and now averages about 500 hits a day from all over the world. I love it! And I hope you do too... whether you come for the jits, the political rants, the recipes, or whatever.
Training's been going well, since I'm focused mainly on drilling and less full on sparring. I don't have time to attend many classes, due to work commitments, but I have been getting in some open mat time almost every day.
On a political note: those Occupy people. Sheesh. I'm all for protesting things you want to change, don't get me wrong. But have a concise goal-- a statement of what you want to do about it-- don't just pitch a tent and bitch. Yes, you get people talking, which I suppose is a first step. But have a policy change in mind. It's all very well to complain that the wealthiest get wealthier and the poor get poorer. WHAT SHOULD WE DO ABOUT IT?
A friend in the NYPD sent me this, made by someone he knows. I watched it carefully with a prosecutor/government employee/legal eye... and I was very impressed by the control and caution exercised by the police in what could have been a very dangerous situation. I know some people wonder why the protesters needed to be moved even temporarily. Well, I'll tell you a few reasons...
1. Health hazards-- pooping, peeing, food and water contamination, sexual abuses all documented (not necessarily at the same time, or even in the same place.)
2. Hazards to public workers-- when someone gets ill, shoots themselves, gets caught stealing, etc, the police and/or EMS get called in. Usually police are first on the scene. The crowds were often hostile towards the cops (needlessly! do they think the cops are among the 1% wealthiest? I laugh.) and would make it far more difficult for the cops to do their jobs in helping EMS/medical personnel get to the situation, or to take reports of thefts, assaults, etc.
3. In many circumstances, body heat scans done at night revealed that large proportions of the tents were empty at night.
4. Zuccotti Park in particular is owned by a private company which still has the right to control access to the property.
Check it out.
And, back to jiu jitsu... Jason Scully's vid on the Berimbolo sweep... kinda cool..
12 comments:
Yeah Occupy San Diego hit new levels of bizarre the other night. There was a gal walking around holding a sign that asked "How much does a police state cost?" She proceeded to berate us (the whopping 10 of us who were assigned to OSD that night) accusing us of being part of a "police state."
What made the scene especially hilarious was that we were all literally standing there in the cold, half listening to her, all the while a guy was standing a few feet away holding a "Google Israel did 911 sign." I thought, holy cow, are you THAT stupid to think this is a police state? All this fuss going on around us and we are STANDING here.
We finally engaged her in conversation. One of my colleagues said, "You know, this is not even close to a police state, North Korea is a police state." I told her, "If this was a police state, that 'israel did 911' guy would be have been shot in the street." I told her to visit the various storefronts in City Heights where refugees from Liberia, Eritrea, Somalia, etc will be more than happy to talk about a police state. Speak with first generation Cambodian refugees about the horrors of a police state.
Of course our words were shunned and she insisted we were all evildoers etc....Sigh. Even more bizarre were the accusations of being Nazis. Um yeah, once again, the whole ten of us that are standing out here in the freezing damn cold are a far cry from being in the act of committing genocide in secret camps. The Jewish officers must have been cracking up.
Sorry for the long rant! Good grief, I rambled.
Dag
Congrats G. Mike D here. I can honestly say becoming friends with you has enriched my life. You go sister!!
Hey Dag you really hit the nail on the head. I am a bjj blue belt and detective with the NYPD. Watching this OWS mess unfold I had to look outside my window and make sure I was still in the USA.
A question I have is "Where"? Where is the call by the media to "tone down the rhetoric" as they bemoaned of the Tea Party, "where" is Nancy Pelosi and does she stand by her statement of "god bless them', and where is the President? He can say the Cambridge Police "acted stupidly" but uses no such language against a group that in their attempt to shut down transit, the NY stock exchange, and our metro bridges mirrors the mission of Al Qaeda on 9/11.
Like it or not those of you on the left here in the USA, these folks have taken it upon themselves to be the foot soldiers and voice of the modern american leftist movement and will try to set your agenda.
They will get more organized and they will get more violent.
I am a bit torn about OWS.
Because it's (intentionally) leaderless, and inclusive of people from all walks of life, ages, opinions, you are going to get the "google Israel" idiots and hostile individuals who don't reflect the majority of protesters. There's also an array of "reasons"-- some absurd, but mostly legitimate-- as to why people have joined the protest.
That said I support the underlying themes, and in my opinion things are screwed up enough that protests are warranted. And the people protesting aren't required to be policy experts to know that things aren't right and want to make their "voices" heard.
Will it ultimately make a difference? I hope so, but I fear not; however, I think it is significant that it's spread as much as it has, and has sustained this long.
One big challenge seems to be to make their presence felt without alienating and/or put off people who agree with their message(s). It seems to be at that crossroads.
Wow, 1,001st post! Congratulations! I wish I have your persistence and discipline to post on a regular basis :)
Congrats, Georgette! Keep up the good work. Count on some more hits from Romania!
Many congrats on the 1001 post!
At first the Occupy Wall Streeters annoyed me. Now I see a group of naked occupy protesters all over youtube and I fully support the movement :)
Congrats on 1001 posts! Wow that's heaps.
And I can sort of sympathise with frustrated feelings of some of the Occupy people, but yeah they need a goal of some sorts to make a point. They're sh*t's just all over the place haha.
"3. In many circumstances, body heat scans done at night revealed that large proportions of the tents were empty at night."
There is, to my knowledge, only one single instance of a claim about tents being empty in the evening, which was levied against Occupy London. The Guardian ran (at least) two articles, both published three weeks ago, which has effectively disproved this 'empty tent' claim (complete with video of contra-evidence).
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/oct/26/occupy-london-tents-rubbish-science
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/oct/28/occupy-london-complaint-pcc-tents-empty
At the very least, one should be incredibly skeptical about said claim until further positive evidence is submitted. But as it is founded on such provably fatuous assumptions, I would be surprised if the matter gets pursued any further by the claimants.
After all, just take a moment to consider that the purpose of a tent is to provide shelter. An insulated tent will keep heat inside while keeping the cold outside (or the opposite). The fact that 9 out of 10 tents had no heat signature could mean that a large proportion of the protestors had a tent sufficiently insulated to do what a tent is supposed to do. Or it could mean the logical converse. Or it could mean that many people were sleeping in insulated sleeping bags. There are simply too many variables to draw any sufficiently large conclusion. To do otherwise is to misinform the general public. And as much was painfully obvious to the scientist interviewed who was quoted, at the end of the story, saying "I'm not that interested in the story. I wanted to set the record straight because that's just rubbish science."
Your claim, I'm sorry to say, fails on two points. As you presented this as a matter of fact, and not an opinion, a retraction might be in order.
A Faithful Reader,
Justin
Hey Justin. Congrats on that double victory in the purple belt division, btw :)
#1, I'm basing my tent statement on claims posted in some law-enforcement-only forums and newsletters that I access as a prosecutor. I'm sorry that I can't seem to lay my hands on the links right now. They were not based on the Occupy London protests, but instead on domestic situations, and apparently were somewhat controversial because the police were concerned (afterwards) that the scans could be interpreted as infringing on the First Amendment rights of peaceable assembly. So the scans weren't really made public.
#2, tents are not THAT good at keeping heat in that they would foil thermal imaging cameras. Nor are sleeping bags. Check this out:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2055044/Snowstorm-hits-Occupy-Wall-Street-New-York-City-Protesters-tough-out.html
http://www.mammut.ch/images/Mammut_Sleep_well_pt1_E.pdf
Nonetheless, I agree, there are two sides or more to any argument. I'm not retracting anything I wrote-- people can take my blog post as reporting "facts" or "opinions" or a mix of both. Ultimately, even if all the tents are full every night, I still don't think the Occupy movement is accomplishing much, nor are the protesters using their time as wisely as they could. That was my real point.
Thank you for the counter evidence though, and the thoughtful response. :)
Congratulations on 1,001, Georgette.
I don't know what to say about OWS, so I won't say anything!
WOW! A great achievement! Congratulations!
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