Scenes From The Wudang Saber Seminar

Well, we just returned from a three-day intensive seminar on the Wudang Saber with our instructor Michael Gilman, and my head is spinning.
This form was passed down from Master Wang Bao Ren. Michael met Master Wang through mutual friends at a Tai Chi Chuan club at the Boeing Aircraft Company. Wang traveled regularly from China to Seattle to teach, and that is where the form was passed down.
This is the most beautiful yet complicated weapons form I have ever tried to learn. While Japanese sword tends to be very direct, the Wudang Saber uses intricate Bagua-type footwork, circle walking, wild slashing, hand strikes and kicks.

Unlike the harder style fighting systems of the Bhuddists of Shaolin, the Taoists of Wudang Mountain developed the Internal systems including Tai Chi Chuan and Bagua, and this Wudang Sabre form clearly reflects that lineage.
While the form is only classified as 40 movements, each movement consists of multiple complex techniques. Just take a look at some of the names of these movements:
- "Stepping into the gate with an indomitable spirit"
- "The hidden dragon turns the waves inside out"
- "Gallop through the mountain and split the wood column"
Thankfully, I was able to get a short video of Master Wang doing the form in China many years ago. My brain is wired for the written word. The first thing I did when I got home was to run the video, pause it and write notes on the movements in my own words. Not only is this a portable reference, it just allows the complicated information to be run through the brain in a different way.

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Music Report
Port Townsend is a screamin' hot music town. We saw a great "Jug Band" up at our favorite Bar, "Sirens", which incidentally was built by a friend of mine. We started out with what may be the best Beer in the Pacific Northwest, Port Townsend IPA.
Our hotel rooms were about two blocks up from Sirens, over what used to be called "The Town Tavern" in the eighties, now I think it's the "Water Street Ale House" or something. There, we saw another band, this one a very hard-driving contemporary rock trio. These kids were fantastic, transitioning from fast hard-rock to ethereal vibes, great dance music. By that time we had moved on from the heavy IPA to Grapefruit and Vodka or $2.00 Oly and Pabst in a can.
Potential Hazards
Like all best laid plans, something is bound to go wrong.
Young Zackey Chan gave his hotel room key to another Dojo Rat who was sharing the room. Zac stayed up and shmoozed with the band as they closed the bar down. The rest of us had already crashed out.
Without his hotel key, Zac had to climb the fire escape until he found a door open on the third floor, but he made it in safely.
*******
All-in-all, a very successful road trip for the Dojo Rats and a great opportunity to learn a powerful Saber form that is hundreds of years old. It really reminded me of how weapon training can make your empty-hand training even better, with the weapon being an extension of your body and your energy.
It's going to take some time and practice to get this form right, but once we got into it, it really grabs onto you!

On The Road Again!

Well, three of the Dojo Rats are going by pick-up truck and ferry boats (2 each way) to a three-day training session with our Tai Chi Chuan instructor Michael Gilman.
This time we will be learning a Wudang Sword form, it's fairly complex.
Expect a full report on sword forms, Port Townsend Beer, Music and Hippie Chicks sometime around Monday!

Military Use Of Pressure-Point Techniques

I'm not going to try to make a moral judgement case out of this, I think most of us agree various forms of "torture" are abhorrent.
Everyone is aware that "Waterboarding" and other forms of "enhanced interrogation" have been used in the Iraq and Afghan wars. But seldom mentioned are the use of pressure-points to control detainees. Two cases stand out:

"A CIA inspector general’s report written in 2004 was released in a less-redacted version Monday, revealing new details of the agency’s torture techniques applied to terror war prisoners.
Page 77 of the report discusses “unauthorized or undocumented techniques” used by CIA agents but not approved by the Bush administration’s Department of Justice. One such “improvised action” was a pressure point tactic: the compression of a detainee’s carotid artery by an agent with both hands around the prisoner’s neck.
Prolonged compression of the carotid artery is lethal, as it cuts off blood flow to the brain".
(Link)

The above picture is the Stomach Meridian, with the white arrow pointing to st-9. From the discription of the incident, it sounds to me like the interrogator was pulsing the point off and on, causing repeated blackouts. This was not simply a guy choking his hand around the neck, it was clinical in application.
Most martial artists are aware of "The Blood Choke", commonly applied with a forearm barred across the side of the neck. St-9 can also be activated with a chop or finger-jab to the exact point, cutting off blood flow, causing the person to "pass out".
This is far more dangerous than it might sound, it could conceivably cause a stroke or death.

The other pressure-point story that stands out is the use of repeated knee-strikes to the outside of the thigh. This pressure-point is Gallbladder meridian-31.
Gb-31 is at the charley-horse point on the thigh, you can feel it on your own leg. I would rather take a full-on kick to the ribs than take a piercing knee-strike to this vulnerable point. Here's an example of the horrible way it was used:

Example 1.
"By Dec. 3, Habibullah's reputation for defiance seemed to make him an open target. One guard said he had given him five peroneal strikes for being "noncompliant and combative." Another gave him three or four more for being "combative and noncompliant." Some guards later asserted that he had been hurt trying to escape.
When Sergeant James Boland saw Habibullah on Dec. 3, the prisoner was in one of the isolation cells, tethered to the ceiling by two sets of handcuffs and a chain around his waist. His body was slumped forward, held up by the chains.
When Boland returned to the cell about 20 minutes later, he said, Habibullah was not moving and had no pulse.
Finally, the prisoner was unchained and laid out on the floor of his cell.
Habibullah died on Dec. 3. His autopsy showed bruises or scrapes on his chest, arms, head and neck. There were deep bruises on his calves, knees and thighs. His left calf had been marked by what appeared to have been the sole of a boot.
His death was attributed to a blood clot, probably caused by the severe injuries to his legs, which traveled to his heart and blocked the blood flow to his lungs.

Note: "Peroneal", Of, relating to, or located near the fibula.

Example 2.
"Dilawar was sent to Bagram and soon labeled "noncompliant." One of the guards, Specialist Corey Jones, said the prisoner spat in his face and started kicking him. Jones responded, he said, with a couple of knee strikes to the leg of the shackled man.
"He screamed out, 'Allah! Allah! Allah!' and my first reaction was that he was crying out to his god," Jones said to investigators. "Everybody heard him cry out and thought it was funny."
"It became a kind of running joke, and people kept showing up to give this detainee a common peroneal strike just to hear him scream out 'Allah,"' he said. "It went on over a 24-hour period, and I would think that it was over 100 strikes."
By the time Dilawar was brought in for his final interrogation in the first hours of Dec. 10, he appeared exhausted and was babbling that his wife had died. He also told the interrogators that he had been beaten by the guards.
When Dilawar was unable to kneel, said the interpreter, Ali Baryalai, the interrogators pulled him to his feet and pushed him against the wall.
"It looked to me like Dilawar was trying to cooperate, but he couldn't physically perform the tasks," Baryalai said.
Soon afterward he was dead".

(D.R.) -For the record, Dilawar was a taxi driver, the subject of the movie "Taxi To The Dark Side". Here's what happened:

"In February, a U.S. military official disclosed that the Afghan guerrilla commander whose men had arrested Dilawar and his passengers had been detained. The commander was suspected of attacking Camp Salerno and then turning over innocent "suspects" to the Americans in a ploy to win their trust, the military official said.
The three passengers in Dilawar's taxi were sent home from Guantánamo in March 2004, 15 months after their capture, with letters saying they posed "no threat" to American forces".
(Link)

Lockerbie Bombing Update

For those who followed my previous post on the Lockerbie Pan-Am 103 bombing, there has been a shocking update.
Much as in the narrative I described, Lawyers and British authorities sympathetic to the accused bomber are prepared to name the actual bomber;
They claim he is a Syrian-American living in the U.S. who was working as an American Double Agent.

Read the story here

And this:
Diplomats pulled off plane due to U.S. knowledge of bomb, students took their place.

Uncle Dojo Rat

Well, I haven't been able to post since last Thursday because I've been playing "Uncle Dojo Rat".
That means, my brother's kids have been sparring with me, attacking me with my swords, and teaching me archery!
Yes, My eight-year-old nephew can certainly out-shoot me with bow and arrow. My brother gave me a traditional longbow, and we shot arrows and guns all weekend. I haven't used a bow and arrow since I was about twelve-years-old in the Boy Scouts. It's been a blast, and the longbow is a great basic learner bow for me.
More to follow, if other Dojo Rats out there are playing around with longbows, let me know!

--By the way, it's great to be able to play "The Bad Uncle"...

The Lockerbie Bombing: What Really Happened

Today's news is overflowing with outrage due to the release of the Libyan agent that allegedly was responsible for the bombing of Pan-Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. Interviews with family members still grieving for those who were killed are sincere and heartfelt.
But their anger towards Libya and British authorities are misplaced.
******
In 1994 I was writing for "The Portland Free Press", a small alternative newspaper Edited by researcher Ace Hayes. At the time, I was running a series on military C-130 aircraft destined for duty as Forest Service airtankers that were diverted to use by a group of shady CIA contractors. A source had described to me how money connected to the operation was being run through a bank called "Congress Financial", which was a CIA front company.
I recieved an unsolicited phone call from the secretary of a man named Dr. Richard Fuisz, and I returned the call. Fuisz confirmed the information about Congress Financial, and told me he had called to see if I would run a story about his knowledge of the sale of huge Terex trucks that had been converted to missile launchers and sold to Iraq shortly before the first Gulf War. He had personally toured the assembly plant in Motherwell, Scotland and officials described that it was a joint operation by the CIA and British Intelligence. Fuisz ran afoul of U.S. authorities when he tried to take the story to "60 Minutes". He had been hounded by private security firms, and had even had a personal meeting with President Bill Clinton to remedy the situation. His hope was to try to get the story in print, and I ran the article.
At the time, I realized that Dr. Fuisz was well-connected, but I had no idea that he was an agent for the CIA himself.
The Lockerbie Connection
At the same time Fuisz was feeding me information on the Terex Iraqi missile launchers, he was in contact with another Portland resident, Susan Lindauer. Lindauer was a press aide for then-Congressman (now Senator) Ron Wyden, and it's my guess that Lindauer may have given Fuisz my article referencing Congress Financial.
It was Lindauer's connection to Fuisz that got her in hot water when she was arrested for being an agent of the Iraqi government, which she denied. She had met with Iraqi diplomats before Bush invaded Iraq, but claimed it was on official bussiness. Lindauer was also the cousin of former White House Chief-of-Staff Andrew Card. A deposition by Lindauer described how she was working with Fuisz, and that Fuisz knew from his Intelligence work in the Middle East that the Lockerbie bombing was actually the work of Syrians. From "The Sunday Herald" of Scotland, May 28 2000:

"Congressional aide Lindauer, who was involved in early negotiations over the Lockerbie trial, claims Fuisz made "unequivocal statements to me that he has first-hand knowledge about the Lockerbie case". In her affidavit, she goes on: "Dr Fuisz has told me that he can identify who orchestrated and executed the bombing. Dr Fuisz has said that he can confirm absolutely that no Libyan national was involved in planning or executing the bombing of Pan Am 103, either in any technical or advisory capacity whatsoever."
Fuisz's statements to Lindauer support the claims of the two Libyan accused who are to incriminate a number of terrorist organizations, including the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, which had strong links to Syria and Iran.
Lindauer said Fuisz told her he could provide information on Middle Eastern terrorists, and referred to Lockerbie as an "example of an unsolved bombing case that he said he has the immediate capability to resolve".
The Assassination of The Mckee Team
In a forgotten but incredibly revealing 1992 article, Time Magazine pieces together the story that contains clues to what actually happened.
Onboard the flight of Pan-Am 103 was an elite counter-terrorism team led by Major Charles Mckee. They were operating out of Germany and had been tasked to locating hostages in Lebanon. What they stumbled across was a parallel operation that was connected to none other than Col. Oliver North. North it appears, was in league with Syrian Drug runners (no suprise), presumably in an effort to secure information on the hostages also. North was allegedly allowing the Syrians to use a protected DEA drug pipeline run through the airlines in Europe. In the wreckage of the crash, investigators recovered Heroin and $500,000 in cash. The cash may have been in the hands of Mckee, to pay off informants. Mckee was upset and had contacted his superiors when he found the iceberg-tip of Norths operation, believing it may have compromised his own team. Mckee was on the verge of exposing the underbelly of North's shady dealings and the root of the entire Iran-Contra affair. According to the investigators hired by Pan-Am (Interfor, led by an ex-Mossad agent) the Mossad had warned of a possible airline bombing. The warning was ignored. The Mckee team, which was about to blow the whistle on the Iran-Contra scandal and North's complicity in drug running, was assassinated in the bombing.
Dr. Fuisz, who was placed under a gag-order never spoke to me after the Terex missile-launcher story. He places the blame on the Syrians, who got a pass if they would support Iraq War efforts. The blame shifted to Libya.
Susan Lindauer, the former Congressional Aide who was workling with Fuisz, was placed in a mental institution on a U.S. Military Base and force-fed medication to shut her up. She recently appeared on "The Thom Hartmann Radio Show", once again explaining her story.

And today we watch as the accused Libyan agent, dying of cancer, is released from prison for humanitarian reasons.

Read This 1992 Time Magazine Story, before it dissapears...

The Sunday Herald "CIA Witness Gagged by U.S. Government"

***UPDATE***
Lawyers for the accused bomber and British authorities are prepared to name the identity of the true bomber. They say he is an American/Syrian who was working as an American Double Agent.
Read the story here

And this:
Diplomats pulled off plane due to U.S. knowledge of bomb, students took their place.

Don't Try This At Home, Kids!

We must never, never, never try to mix it up with somebody that can handle a blade like this.
Here our old pal Bobbe Edmonds demonstrates just how dangerous a knife is in the hands of an expert. I'm sure he'll wish I used a different video of his because he is trying techniques from a different system, which is "Piper" out of South Africa. None-the-less, you can see that in Bobbe's hands, the blade takes on a life of it's own and is very, very lethal.
To close this series of knife posts, I thought we should see an image of the kind of damage the business end of a blade can cause. Believe me, there were some other images that were so graphic I could hardly look at them: