Aikido Tactics

Offense needs room, defense can be in a tight place.

When someone is attacking you, they need room to move and position themselves for the very risky prospect of doing you harm.  This is why in defending yourself, you best friend is to quickly close in and not give the opponent time or space to optimize an attack.   One rarely considered and counterintuitive move when in danger is to wheel around on your pursuers and close the distance.  Whatever they hoped to do is now compromised.  You bring your defense into a tight place upon the attackers.

Sometimes it is best not to counter attack, because attacks take space, but stay on the defensive.

Think of a home invasion scenario where you might be inclined to push attackers back outside where you'll defend yourself.  May be better to let them in, in to a tight hallway where their options are limited.

When in a scrape, how much space do you have?  So, attack or defend?

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Erasmus of Rotterdam

If you abominate robbery, this is what war teaches; if you abhor murder, this is the lesson of war. For who will shrink from killing one man in hot blood when he has been hired for a pittance to slaughter so many? If neglect of the law is the most imminent threat to civil authority, why, ‘the law says nothing when arms hold sway.’ If you believe that fornication, incest, and worse are loathsome evils, war is the school where these are taught. If irreverence for and neglect of religion is the source of every evil, religion is entirely swept away by the storm of war. If you judge the state of your country to be worst when the worst people in it have the most power, in time of war the lowest kinds of criminal are the rulers; was has most need of those whom in time of peace you would nail to the cross.

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Sir, I Only Loaded the Jews on the Train

And as a good German, it is not up to me to ever question anyone else, or have curiosity about why we are a loading all of the Jews on trains.



The questions is not whether Obama is another Hitler, but whether any given American is any different than any given German.  The answer of course is no different.

The problem is allowing Governments to have power, because they will ALWAYS abuse it.

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Standing Military

The president nominates and congress confirms our generals and flag officers.  This was meant to prevent a standing military.  Now it just confirms the worst careerists into office.

Francis sought inside information on ship deployments and pressed at least one commander to steer aircraft carriers and other vessels to ports where his firm could easily overcharge the Navy for services, court documents allege.

So, if a pimp can direct where aircraft carriers dock, then no doubt that pimp might be induced by terrorists to put an aircraft carrier where the terrorists want it, when they want it there.

That this could go on a decade without the NSA, etc, figuring out, a decade where I was searched by my government at least 200 times, shows just how ridiculous the USA has become.

Time to disband the standing military.

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Uh - O! Now What?

The Pope is coming out against slavery.

AFP - Pope Francis wants action against modern forms of slavery including forced labour and prostitution, the Vatican said Monday after a meeting of experts called by the pontiff to debate the problem.

Will the USA have to change its constitution?

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There Is No Competition In Aikido

I wince when I hear this.  People who make that claim do not understand the plain meaning of the word.  Competition come from the Greek, "to strive with."  The reason they run seven people at a time in a race is each does best when running (striving with) other runners.)

What I think they mean is in aikido there is no conflict.  This too is absurd.  In Japan as aikido was quickening plenty of practitioners were breaking off to do their own thing, like Shioda Sensei and his Yoshinkan style, there are plenty of authentic aikido styles, both associated and not associated with Hombu.

Aikido seems to be pretty good at accommodating splits, but it had a spectacular one when Tohei Sensei split with many top instructors to form Shin Shin Toitsu aikido, which in turn has at least three different groups now.

In the USA alone there are at least three major schools (and countless independent ones) directly affiliated with Hombu dojo:  Birankai, Aikido Schools of Ueshiba and US Aikido Federation.  Everyone one of these fine outfits manifested in conflict.

It is distressing to read a dojo teaches an aikido with no competition.  Either they do not understand the word, or far worse, they do.  In any event, fair warning.

Just as distressing is a dojo that offers no conflict.  Isn't the point of aikido an ethical response to conflict?  Isn't the result of conflict "divide and multiple?"

It seems to me a dojo ought to celebrate conflict, promote competition.

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The Passivism of Force

Pacifists facilitate peace where conflict is manifest.

I was listening to a liberal go on about guns and force and glorification of violence and how this all leads to war, and it occurred to me how right she was, although she may not have realized it.

Think of the people who join the military or law enforcement, and now increasingly, both.    Without thinking it through, they pledge their lives to an abstract, a state, and accept the narrative that they are taking risks to benefit others.

Now there is no doubt that the deaths and wounds and disabilities to our soldiers and cops are real, but 19 year olds also believe they are bulletproof.

19 year olds are not really in a position to weight the pros and cons of joining up.  The simply accept, unthinkingly, the narrative about the abstract.  This is the essential nature of passivism, to be passive in the face of evil, as opposed to pacifism, which is to be active in the face of evil.

Passivism is violent and leads to a downward spiral.  Pacifism is nonviolent and leads to an upward spiral, although participants get every bit as deaded as passivists.  But then, pacifists are answering to a higher calling, not an abstract.

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