Tuesday Travel With Vice Magazine: Balls Deep

So since the advent and explosion of right wing talk radio shows, many Americans are convinced that there should be no social safety net for the poor and weaker members of our society. Not all conservatives believe this to the extreme despite what liberal commentators would have you believe. Sure there are some, but most people are pretty moderate when it come to using taxpayer funds to help the needy.

But what if we did all suddenly transform our society into Rush Limbaugh or Michelle Malkin's vision of extreme right-wing utopia? A place where "the market" is the supreme ruler, and almost every facet of the social branch of government is either privatized or done away with altogether. What would that be like to have only the very rich calling ALL the shots? Is there a place on the planet that is like that? Well, actually there is. The country is called Colombia, they are actually pretty close to me. I've had the opportunity to go there on two different occasions, and I got to see this right wing Wonderland at its best in the form of policemen beating down homeless people in the park across from my hotel. There were no ambulances called, only prisoner vans despite obvious serious injury.

In this Tuesday installment from my favorites at VBS.tv, I'd like to share with you a documentary done by a member of the Vice staff who has been given the less than flattering nickname of "Baby Balls". He goes down to Colombia and explores a world that the tourists and rich folk walking in the streets above rarely see or even hear about. There is an entire population of people that live underground in the sewers of Bogotá and other large Colombian cities. They live in constant fear of extermination like vermin at the hands of roving death squads and right-wing paramilitaries who have been given complete license to kill them like animals.

I believe after watching this you will agree that despite political ravings from either side; the US, UK, EU, and Australia don't really have it so bad....

Tuesday Travel With Vice Magazine: Liberia

In 1902 when Joseph Conrad published his book Heart of Darkness, the literary world was introduced to a new concept of real world savagery. It was about the degeneration of the civilized to brutal primitivism of man's psyche and soul. Unfortunately, even today over 100 years later when we think of the continent of Africa we think of a brutal and unforgiving place. Even though it's full of resources, the exploitation of colonialism and thousands of years old blood feuds between ethnic interests have kept almost the entire continent in a perpetual state of conflict and almost unimaginable poverty.

This week I like to share with you a documentary on just one of the smaller countries on this continent called Liberia. The Vice crew travel there with cameras and document everything they experience as it happens. this is one of the most brilliant pieces of journalism I have ever seen, and how everybody walked away without at least a Pulitzer and with their lives really confuses me. There will be parts of this documentary that may be very disturbing to some readers/viewers of this blog, but I feel that it is absolutely necessary for every human being to watch the entire hour of this documentary to be grateful for what they have in life...

I hope you at least learned that maybe your day isn't so bad.... 

How NOT to Act During a 3rd World Mugging

I want to thank everyone again for their messages of support and healing over these last three days. And to be honest, I wasn't gonna write about this so soon after the event because I had other things lined up, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that there is a lesson learned from my misadventure Saturday night. And I want to stress as vehemently as possible to anyone who reads this, do not react the way I did in the same situation. The consequences could cost you your life....

The village I currently live in.

It was Saturday evening, and the incredible full moon that comes around once every few years was taking up the night sky. It was absolutely gorgeous. The pueblo where I live is very small one and is just on the outskirts of a huge network of mountainous rain forest that stretches from here to the border of Panama. Needless to say this background combined with a clear starry night and that full moon inspired some reflective thought in yours truly.

So as is customary on my Saturday evenings after the workweek is finished, I decided to partake in some locally distilled rum. This in and of itself was not where I made the mistake. I made the mistake of thinking it would be a good idea to take a walk under this full moon while as drunk as a poet on payday. So I left the safety of Hacienda de Gipson and decided to wander and wax philosophic underneath this celestial gorgeousness the earth had been blessed with.

Now I don't want to give anyone the wrong impression here, Costa Rica is a lot safer than about 99% of the world. Violent crime is actually pretty rare here, especially in my location. But wherever there are impressionable young men, stupidity is bound to follow. And wherever a visibly drunk and stumbling (possibly singing) gringo is meandering through the barrio at night, that stupidity shifts gears and becomes opportunistic. Which is what happened to me.

I saw the three of them walking towards me in the distance and they were constantly turning and chattering amongst themselves as they got closer. One was much taller than me, but incredibly skinny and he was wearing a dark blue hoodie with the hood up, partially obscuring his face. Another was a little bit smaller and he was wearing a winter hat pulled down over his face with eye holes cut out. And the last one was wearing a baseball cap and bandanna combo that instantly screamed "genius". I was unsure of their intentions until the taller skinny one smashed a bottle on the pavement and kept the jagged broken neck in his hand like a knife.

Who my attackers THOUGHT they were like...

This is where a smarter man than myself would have turned and run. And this is what you should always do if there is at least 100 yards distance, as was the case here. But I, being the drunken former Marine and current black belt that I was, saw this as somehow comical. I stopped walking, and waved at them as they approached. I don't think a single one of them was over the age of 18 or 19, and the one with a broken bottle was shaking like a leaf. I saw this as an opportunity, in my inebriated state, to add some positivity to their lives and maybe diffuse the situation with friendliness and compassion..

"Hey kid, I think you broke your bottle, you might want to drop the rest of it or somebody is liable to get hurt*"  I said jokingly with a big smile. As I was talking to him, one of his friends circled around me and behind my back while the other was uncomfortably close to my right. The kid with the bottleneck then said "give us everything in your pockets, or I'm going to use it to stab you in the neck and you will die*". In that split second, the one behind me tried to wrap his arms around mine in some strange restraining bearhug. And that's when instinct and training kicked in...

Who my attackers were ACTUALLY like...complete with hoodie.

I stepped back, and stomped on the foot of the one trying to restrain me while simultaneously headbutting him with the back of my head onto the bridge of his nose. He screamed, "hijo de puta!" and ran off quite quickly. I then gave the tall one in front of me with the bottleneck a "This is Sparta!"style heel kick to the chest which resulted in him stumbling backwards, dropping the bottleneck, and hitting the back of his head on the phone pole behind him. Lastly, I yanked the one with the black mask by the arm and threw him over my shoulder headfirst onto the pavement. The resulting "clunk" was both sickening and audible from quite a distance, and he was quite obviously seriously hurt. But unfortunately, I grabbed his arm and pulled him in a submission hold while he was face down on the ground. That's when the rock hit me....

His friend, the tall one in the hoodie, had picked up a large rock from the side of the road and chucked it as hard as he could and bull's-eyed me right in the forehead. The blood from the resulting wound came quickly and swiftly with a lot of volume, and I was instantly stunned. Luckily for me, the kid just wanted to help his friend who he helped to his feet and ran off with in the distance. I should have just given them my wallet... It's not like I wouldn't have been able to track it down afterwards with police help because this is such a small town. But my ego and my blood alcohol content rewarded me with a deep head wound that I had to stumble back home with. Even now, three days later it hurts like hell and is in constant danger of infection because of the tropical environment I live in.

If my attackers were better armed and / or had a better killer instinct, I would be another violent crime statistic. I would be dead. And this is the lesson I really want to hammer home to all of you. Martial arts training, while incredibly useful in one-on-one nonlethal situations, is useless against numbers. Don't be fooled by movies and TV, real combat is fast and dangerous and subject to the laws of physics and mathematics just like anything else in the physical world. So if you ever find yourself in the same situation as me, try to get out of that situation as best as you can. Run. If you can't run, comply. If your compliance results in more violence, defend yourself as best you can while simultaneously trying to escape and make as much noise as you can to attract attention. This is a lesson I learned the hard way this Saturday night, and I hope this story inspires you need my warnings....