Monthly Archives: March 2009
Bullets from the Drug War
| 31-Mar-2009 | Posted by Sonia Hamilton under Spanish |
I was in Mexico and Guatemala 15 months ago, and I was travelling on and off the ‘tourist track’. On the track because I sometimes did things like stay in hostels, catch a train up the Copper Canyon (wow), etc. Off the track because I was doing volunteer work, speak Spanish, and I like fisgoneando.
What really surprised me was the depth of the drug war. Of course I was aware of it from previous visits to Central and South America, but it’s really entered other dimensions now. In Mexico the cartels are better armed and informed than the police, and regularly use heavy machine guns and RPGs (Rocket Propelled Grenades) when fighting the police. The army has been brought in several times because the various police forces (there are a lot of them in Mexico) aren’t just corrupt, they’re owned by the cartels. Unfortunately the cartels have so much money that they sometimes hire whole units of the Army, and some specialist/commando style units have even switched sides. For example los Zetas (the Zeds), a counter-terrorist unit trained by the Americans at the notorious School of the Americas, who later switched sides and have now formed their own cartel. Or even more feared – if that’s possible – Los Kaibiles, ex-special forces soldiers from Guatemala.
Further south in Colombia, the 50-year-long three sided civil war “keeps on continuing”. Ideological differences were long ago cast aside for the lucrative profits to be derived from narcotics, hence the term narcoguerilla used to describe the guerrillas on the left (the FARC-EP and the ELN) and the “self defence units” on the right (the AUC). To the east Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez continues meddling in Colombia’s affairs and sheltering the guerrillas, as does Ecuador to the south (resulting in Colombian forces supported by the US bombing FARC camps in Ecuador last year).
So, where is this all leading? Post peak-oil author Dmitry Orlov has blogged an interesting summary of where he thinks the “Drug War” will head. In a nutshell, as US policing efforts reduce due to budgetary cutbacks stemming from the melt-down of the US economy (for example California is releasing large numbers of prisoners due to their budgetary problems), the drug war will head north out of the Mexican border areas into the US proper. War as in the war seen nightly on the streets of Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez, not the political war as in “the war on drugs”.
A Mexican saying:
¡Pobre Mexico! Tan lejos de Dios; y tan cerca de los Estados Unidos. (“Poor Mexico, so far from God, and so close to the United States”).
BJJ on Weekend
| 30-Mar-2009 | Posted by Sonia Hamilton under BJJ |
This weekend I had a BJJ competition – the “6th Annual Australian Submission Grappling Championships” (what a mouthful) – here are some videos from the weekend. The competition went all day and I didn’t get as many videos as usual as I was one of the officials too (table scorer).
(For those of you who don’t know what BJJ is (Brazilian Jiu Jitsu) – here’s a short history: at the start of 1900′s in Japan Judo split off as a sport from the more traditional Japanese warrior arts or Jiu-Jitsu. At about the same time there was a large wave of Japanese migration to Brazil. A family called ‘Gracie’ adapted and changed Jiu-Jitsu until it was fairly different from the Japanese version. Due to the success of the Brazilian form of Jiu-Jitsu in the UFC competitions in the 1990s, it was realised that grappling skills (eg Judo, BJJ, Sambo, Pankration) are just as important as striking skills (eg boxing, kick boxing, Muay Thai) (pretty obvious to anyone who’s seen a headlock in a bar/street fight) – hence the increase in popularity of BJJ. As to which martial art is “the best”, I’ll leave that to the arm-chair fighters in the forums – any martial art is good, as long as you train consistently over a long period – “3 months of xyz 5 years ago” doesn’t really cut it. And of course the best self defence is to not get into a dangerous situation or fight in the first place – by being aware of your surroundings, not getting drunk and obnoxious, keeping your ego in check when things get tense, and runninggggggg when push comes to shove…).
My injuries have been playing up and I’ve had the flu on and off for a month (arghh), so whilst I won both my grapples on points I wasn’t really on top of my game and I didn’t get any submissions 
In both the grapples I was against smaller, more junior competitors so it wasn’t really fair on them, but none of the senior women entered – get off your as** and compete!!
My first grapple – versus a Moari woman from Boxing Works/Nova Uniao – she’s stocky and strong and being so short it was hard for me to get under her and take her down; but once we were down I just played my game – thanks Dan.
My second grapple – versus Karla from my own team. She’s only been training for about 9 months but she did really well and I think she’ll be a good grappler in the future. She’s also a capoeirista, and it shows it her footwork.
Some other grapples:
Genevieve from my team (green top and leggings) – she’s new but it’s really great that she’s entering competitions – they’re pretty daunting for a beginner. She was in the lighter weight division.
Just us (nervously) mucking around before going onto the mat. Like always, the waiting is the worst – butterflies, you feel ill, suddenly need to “visit the bathroom”…
Jason, a beginner from my team – he ripped his ear again and bled everywhere. Dude, wear headgear…
Andre may have to go…
| 28-Mar-2009 | Posted by Sonia Hamilton under humour |
This financial crisis is forcing companies to make tough decisions, there is a risk that we might need to lay off Andre…
Andre may have to go...
(Tip-of-the-hat to J).
In a similar vein, an article in today’s SMH on NSW’s health system begins:
“A decision had been made, he wrote, to set up a new unit within the emergency department… The unit will be … four beds, conceptually down the right hand wall of ED but using the concept of ‘virtual beds’,” he told colleagues. Patients who arrived at emergency and needed admission would be assigned a virtual bed if no official in-patient bed was available, remaining physically in emergency.“
Firefox fonts on Gutsy
| 26-Mar-2009 | Posted by Sonia Hamilton under Firefox, Fonts, Ubuntu |
No Air, No Attitude
| 15-Mar-2009 | Posted by Sonia Hamilton under BJJ |
I’ve just had a week off work – bliss. I spent the first few days relaxing and recovering from a cold that’s been dogging me for about 3 weeks. Then I’ve been training BJJ everyday, or sometimes twice a day, and eating, sleeping and stretching the rest of each day. What more could one want in life?
A few minor injuries, mostly from $%^&#@! male newbies – they fight using power not technique, and especially hate being submitted by women. One of them sat on top of me for about 30 seconds just squeezing the heck out of my wrists – ouch. Oh well, he soon learned the meaning of “no air, no attitude” 
It’s Sunday morning – time for training…
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