Ritchie,

A couple of points.

Firstly you wrote that I have "tried something" on you before. NO I HAVEN'T. I am not trying to goad you into anything whatsoever. Simply put, why would I? In all the time I have been on this forum, and the old GT one, we have never interacted in any real way. So no points for you there.

Second, I stand by my question. I understand that you work in the RBSD industry, and need to be delicate about who you offend, but if someone is fraudulent I see no reason why they should be protected.

Next, your implication that I am here so "stir poo" is, quite frankly, bollox. And if you are really that angry about my previous post, there are better ways of putting it then telling me to "suck your plums."

This ties in nicely to your dig about me being anonymous. Well, most of the people who post on here are anonymous. The fact that I don't have a f**king Myspace style profile doesn't make me some sinister weasal who's on here to sow anarchy.

I will go back and delete the question, as I am not trying to "stir" anything. But I found your reaction disproportionately rude in regard to what I asked. To be honest I had always respected you up 'til now. By the way, that's not some "oh do let's be mates reaching out to you" crap. Just being honest.

If you really do want to know my real identity pm me, and we can sort out a exchange of info. I have nothing to hide.

Have downloaded a Wagner knife defense tutorial. And yes, it sucked. And yes, he used his supposed credentials to give legitimacy to his suckiness. Beginning with a montage of clips of FBI and other camo guys entering buildings and planes etc. Then, a speech about his years of experience and all the high levels of various law enforcement agencies he has worked with. Then, his attacker's credentials, supposedly of the FBI. Then, to a brief instructional, the official Wagner TM knife disarm. Which consisted of FBI attacker, standing with the blade STATIC out before him, and Wags the dog grabbing onto the wrist. I kid you not. Not ONCE was a dynamic attack shown. Then a little footage of students doing the same, to the accompaniment of strobe lighting and fake blood (he came up with the idea don't you know). Followed by a section equal in length to the instructional, where talks about his own knife, now sold by Boker from recollection. People paid for this. Paid, for an ad, as long as the instructional! Glad he has been exposed as fraud. Not that that will stop him though.

This was taken from the Original Seal Verification Project:

One of the more curious aspects of exposing impostors is not the reactions of the fakes themselves, but those of their "believers". Some fakes succeed in developing cult followers who, it often seems, would rather die than accept the fact that their "SEAL" hero is nothing more than a cheap imitation of the real thing. Even when confronted with irrefutable facts that blow big, ugly holes in the flimsy facade of their favored faker, they refuse to face the truth. They grasp at straws, convinced that we are in some way mistaken. They just KNOW that their "SEAL" buddy is the genuine article.
Reinforcing the lie is the impostor himself, usually cowering just behind the skirts of his flock, telling them that we are impostors conducting some sort of "smear" campaign or retribution at the behest of the many wicked enemies Mr. Phony SEAL amassed during the course of his distinguished and highly-classified career vanquishing dangerous No-goodniks the world over.
The more accomplished impostors are sometimes very good at planting an otherwise laughable forest of mirrors around their naive minions. Up is down, wrong is right, black is white ...

Interesting

Out

Joe

When you are sourcing any kind of service surely the most critical assessments, in no particular order, are:

1/ Can they perform the task?
2/ Can I afford them?
3/ Can I trust them?

Would you engage a builder to build you a house if, after asking around, you found the biggest thing he’d ever erected was a kids cubby house? (even though they’d spun you a whole volume of b.s. in the hope of winning the job).

TRUST SHOULD NEVER BE UNDERATED!!

Exactly!

Out

Joe

Richard

You are my new guru :-)

I will hear no words of descent from the other sheep. You are the one true ninja/SF/ass kicker extraordinaire. Your exploits will be legend and all shall fall before your mightly weapons.

Dik

The argument as to military experience being important in the teaching of self-protection often crops up, and obviously it depends heavily on both the type of military service and on the individual.

On of the issues that is raised on a regular basis is that the context of military use of force is vastly different to the needs of most individuals seeking self-protection training - and therefore it might be better looking toward a civilian-orientated instructor with experience of 'streetfights' not 'firefights' and this point certainly has merit.

Something that I feel is constantly overlooked however, is that the military-types are not kept locked in boxes marked 'war only' and are allowed to venture back into the civilian world that they inhabited before, and after, enlisting! This means plenty of opportunity to get involved in fights, and not just as reactive 'security staff' either.

So don't be tempted to write them off as being 'not relevant' to civilian self-protection - often off-duty personnel are targets, due to various factors regarding employment, attitude, behaviour etc and those that target them can be local scumbags or dedicated terrorists. Not wanting to paint the wrong picture, I fully accept that off-duty soldiers are hardly innocent bystanders at times - I certainly wasn't, and blew many chances of promotion and career enhancement due to be overly pre-disposed to being a violent bastard on a too-regular basis. I should try to excuse my behaviour with a glib soundbyte I suppose, something like 'I joined up for a good time, not a long time' or cite my upbringing as the root - but it would be lies, truth is I just liked to fight, as did many of my colleagues and we did so out of uniform and against our civilian 'tough guy' counterparts.

I reckon what I teach is pretty relevant for civilians.

As for Wagner, not seen his material so won't comment - but I dislike his marketing immensely. Any photos of me carrying guns and wearing tactical gear are taken on operations - I only have a handful from my time in the military, because a. it wasn't something I was interested in, b. we were heavily discouraged from doing so, and c. digital cameras had not been invented so it wasn't as easy to do as it is now. Working as a contractor in the early days was the same. Only my recent spell in Iraq changed the above, but it still wasn't my priority - unlike some - because it doesn't make a lot of tactical sense wasting a pair of eyes and hands on a camera that serves no operational purpose, and off-duty I had more interesting things to occupy my time than playing 'dress-up' so I can look cool and deadly.

Mick

If i told you how many Kickboxing Spanish Champions i've met...

Hi Mick.

Just as a wee aside, all this talk of people's backgrounds etc got me thinking. Have you ever thought about writing your autobiography sharing your experiences and stories with the wider public?

Monty,

I've got a working title for it - something along the lines of 'None of Your Business' fits my attitude to this sort of project perfectly.

Hope that answers your question!

Mick

Succinct as ever!!

Good thread.

Personally I think someone making phony claims is very relevant. It's like going to a doctor, only to find that he is not a qualified doctor after all. Not good. Does it matter if he "knows his stuff?" Yes it does! As the only way you are going to find out is when the sheeeit hits the fan. Then it is too late!

And it is just so ridiculously sad to claim acheivements and feats that you have not actually attained. Who'd want to be associated with a tool like that?

A certain well known ex member here used to drop heavy hints about his experience as a "close quarter protection operative." Only after someone came on trying to pin him down on his actual experience in that field did he back pedal at 300mph and then omit mentioning his super secret dastardly deadly experience again.

Well lying is relevant to integrity. That's beyond a doubt and I find that if people are less than honest in one area they tend to be less than honest in any area.

In short, they are usually tossers. Not the type of people I'd happily give money to.

That said, a skill is a skill and talent is talent. You either have it or you don't. You can either do a job or you can't. Whether you SAY you can and whether you LIE about your experience doesn't really or neccessarily impact on your skillset or your ability. What it does is pull in the gullible types who assign a certain skillset and ability to an individual based on a certain type of role.

i.e. the wannabe ninjas. (Oh he's a ninja.. that means he's cool) Doesn't matter if he lies about being a ninja.. .they still think ninja's are COOL.

or... He's SF, SBS. SAS, FAM, DF, SEAL, SCS, SAS ToysrUS, SPEC OPS. so he MUST know what he's talking about. Special Forces are COOL. Well WHY. He either has a skillset or he doesn't. He has ability or he doesn't and you only know for sure if you see/experience the material for yourself without the marketing hoopla.

or... He's a SUPER-HARD doorman with 90000 street-fights and a book out about his experiences. He MUST know how to teach people how to protect themselves. Doormen are COOL.

or... He's got a nice logo, catchy buzz-words and a willing bunch of acolytes as well as a nice line in making people feel all warm and fuzzy. Look, he's got pictures of mangled faces on his dvd's, pseudo-science and montages of him looking great in the gym banging his students about. HE is COOL

Vicariously everyone who buys into that type of marketing is saying, "I want to be as cool as HIM the ninja/soldier/doorman/personality" Quite sad really.

In short, feck 'em all. The muppets for buying into the cult of personality and the titular heads who manipulate marketing strategy. Caveat emptor and take responsiblity for what you believe and accept into your brain as truth. People WILL lie, doesn't mean that you jettison the responsiblity to keep your brain working and throw critical thinking overboard. No matter how fancy the liars CV. (Hell even if someone is telling the truth about their experience it doesn't mean you should just stop questioning!)