Mer Jul i Gävle
Once again, Why Now? is pleased to present the link to the webcam of Gävlebocken, The biggest Christmas Goat in the world [now with a blog].
From Steve Bates of Yellow Doggerel Democratic Views in the comments from 2006:
Why build a giant goat of straw,
Which most of us would scarcely note?
Some, though, defy the very law,
To vandalize the Gävle Goat.In some years, they used wayward cars;
In others, flaming arrows smote.
This year’s survives, although with scars…
A fact that gets some people’s goat.A webcam and some watchful eyes,
A flame-retardant second coat,
Should save it… unless Dubya spies
The thing, and claims it’s his pet goat!– SB the YSS
6 comments
So far, so good… [crosses fingers]
It takes a while to get drunk enough for the attempt. 😉
On a Scandinavian related note, Iceland mourns after police kill a man for the first time in its modern history as a nation. Interesting. A nation where not only are the police *not* judge, jury, and executioner, but the very fact of a police officer killing someone has sent the entire nation into shock…
The Icelandic military is under the ‘Sheriff’ of the Reykjavik Airport, and it is so voluntary that there really isn’t anyone permanent assigned to anything. Iceland supplied some ‘troops’ for the Iraq mess, but they weren’t in combat roles, and had all volunteered to put on uniforms and act as the military for a while.
I can understand the reaction, because I saw some of it when the IRA started attacks in Britain. But even then the police weren’t armed. Lots of coppers and night sticks were considered sufficient to handle things. Then someone decided it was ‘more efficient’ to have fewer police, arm them, and put them in cars. Administrators don’t understand that they have reduced the ability to prevent crime by having cops on walking beats.
Bryan, when they started training and arming police officers as paramilitary units, they had to reduce the number of police officers on a force because it costs so much money to train and arm police officers as paramilitary soldiers that it became too expensive to maintain large police forces. I have a picture of the LAPD putting LAX on lockdown. It looks like a frickin’ occupation army marching through the airport, wearing more body armor than my Vietnam War vet buddies did when they were taking on Charlie and carrying almost as much firepower as those vets did in Vietnam too (biggest difference — their grenades produce tear gas rather than shrapnel). It costs hella money to buy all that crap and sorta train the cops to use it all. Doesn’t take much money to hire some guy off the streets, hand him a billy club, give him some rudimentary training in things like directing traffic and how to frisk someone for weapons, and tell him to maintain public order…
It’s scary watching police officers responding these days. No one is even pretending to use the lower level of ‘force’, like voice, or the stepped response that was taught in my academy. They act like the military with military rules of engagement, which is really dangerous for everyone, including the police.
The crime rate is dropping because the Boomers are aging out, but the police response is getting more violent. It is insane and will cause a blow up eventually.