Knife Camp Packed In Germany
Jim Wagner
I received a phone call from my Reality-Based Personal Protection Director of German Speaking Countries, Tobias Leckebusch, with him saying, "Jim, Knife Survival is full, and we have a lot of police and military in it this time."
All of last year my Knife Camps had been packed, and the trend continues. People see the growing crime trend globally, and increased attacks with knives and other edged weapons, and they want to be able to defend themselves and their loved ones.
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After my trip to the Czech Republic to teach my Family Survival course, and one day to prepare afterwards in my European Headquarters in Solingen, I taught my Knife Camp (Knife Survival and Knife Expert) courses to 20 students on September 24 and 25. Students included personnel from the Germany army, the Dusseldorf Police, German Customs (Zoll), and three investigators from a local police department, not to mention several martial arts instructors, self-defense enthusiasts, and a few beginners hearing about my system that can be learned quickly.
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Within the first few minutes of class students knew that they would be getting "the real thing," because we started off with realistic criminal-style knife attacks. There was no, "Come at me this way," as one would see in a traditional-based school, no cooperative partner training, and no pattern training. The scenarios were fast, furious, and over within four or five seconds. No students survived the simulated attacks, and only the biggest and most skilled ones were chosen to send the point home; no pun intended. In contrast, by the end of the day students were able to effectively survive knife attacks, or at least last longer than when they first started in the morning. All of them learn the hard way that "Distance is your friend,' and if you don't have distance you do the Jim Wagner Knife Disarm Rule: 1. Grab 2. Close 3. Takedown 4. Escape. If there is no escape, such as in an elevator, then use all of your skills to get the knife away from the bad guy.
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Day Two was the Knife Expert course. It continued where the Knife Survival course left off: learning to fight in tight areas, world knife attacks, double blades, sword and machete attacks, throwing knives, and lots of scenarios training. At the end of the day Tobias Leckebusch took everyone into the Boker Messer Shop (the Boker Knife Shop) and showed them the various knife systems and carrying methods. Tobias is not just an authority on Boker brand knives, but on what everyone else is producing around the world.
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Multinational Level One Week in Germany
Jim Wagner
From September 26 to 30 I had the pleasure of teaching my Level 1 courses to a class of Austrians, Germans, Luxembourgian, and Swiss students; four nations represented in all, and the United States if you count me.
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The group I had all week were highly motivated and their enthusiasm made the five days go by fast. My only female in the seminar, an Austrian, knew about me from when she was taking Russian Systema back at the Fighthouse in New York City a few years ago. I taught several seminars there and she saw my advertisements that owner Peggy Chow had posted in the school. When she saw that I was teaching in Solingen, Germany she wanted to take my courses because she believed it would best prepare her should she ever be attacked again. This woman had been brutally attacked in the past, and she dove into the martial arts to get rid of the "victim mentality," and to have the skills that would make better prepared if she should ever come face-to-face with violence again. She was so impressed with the new material that she had learned in Level 1 that she volunteered to give her testimonial on video to encourage other women to join future courses. After she had graduated with her male counterparts she came up to me and said, "Jim, I am going to also take Level Two. I must take Level Two." I, and all of the mighty men of the week, were impressed with her "can do" spirit. She never complained, never whimpered, and never gave up; even when she had no partner during on of the drills in Knife Survival and was forced to fight me. She "lost" the fight, but not without a strong determination to win, and that’s what I wanted to get out of her.
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Assisting me for a few hours in the Knife Survival course was Level 3 instructor Joachim Roux. Whenever I am teaching in Solingen Joachim makes it a point to come and help me. He owns a very successful Aikido school in Cologne, only 30 minutes away, but he has been growing his Reality-Based Personal Protection program for the past three years. He told me, "Jim, I now have thirty-four students studying Reality-Based. People really like it."
Even though I had a good core of students throughout the week a few students signed up for a course here and there to complete their Level 1 training, because it is a modular system, and a couple other students took a course or two just for a particular interest. One doctor was just interested in taking Terrorism Survival.
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In my Friday course, Terrorism Survival, one of my students with the Bundespolitzei (German Federal Police) came up to me first thing in the morning and showed me a newspaper article. He said, "Jim, did you see this news about a terrorist who was arrested in the United States?"
I had not. It was about a terrorist, Rezwan Ferdaus, 26, who was planning to flight a remote controlled aircraft with a payload of C4 plastic explosives into the Pentagon (the military headquarters for the United States). This American citizen has a university degree in physics, and told FBI agents that "This is what we have to do. This is the righteous way … to terrorize enemies of Allah,’" calling for the deaths of any kafir, the Arabic term for nonbeliever. Earlier in the year Ferdaus had done surveillance of the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. I relayed the story to my Terrorism Survival students and reminded them that radical Islamic terrorism was still very much active in the world, and that was exactly why they were in the class – surviving terrorism.
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Not only was Rezwan Ferdaus arrested by the FBI for plotting the September airborne attack, but the C.I.A. in Yemen successfully killed American citizen turned terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki, 40, with a drone Hellfire missile strike. He and his bodyguards were driving from one location to another when the lethal eye-in-the-sky launched on the moving vehicle. This notorious traitor, born in 1971 in New Mexico, sent out fiery sermons designed to incite English speaking Muslims to wage Jihad (Holy War) against their fellow countrymen. President Barak Obama accused him of directing the plot to blow up a jetliner over Detroit in December 2009 along with a second plot of shipping bombs in toner cartridges in cargo planes in 2010. Awlaki also exchanged emails with Major Nidal Malik Hassan, a United States Army psychiatrist, who went on a shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas in 2009 yelling, "Allah, oo akbar!" (Arabic for Allah is greater!) killing 13 fellow soldiers. Also last year a 21-year-old female British student stabbed a member of Parliament and told police she did it after watching 100 hours of Awlaki videos.
Of course, I tell my students that they should not only be aware of radical Islamic terrorists, but of anyone bent on terrorism: the office massacre, school shootings, mall shooters, men who ram their vehicles into preschools, disgruntled employees who send bombs through the mail, snipers who shoot at cars on the freeway or autobahn, and any number of people who do terrorists to hurt, main, and kill others.
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In all of my courses, especially Crime Survival and Terrorism Survival, I make it a point for all my students to play the role of "bad guy." In the Terrorism Survival course of September 30 everyone had a chance to run into an "airport terminal" and shoot "passengers." They did it with our very expensive and realistic Airsoft rifles and gas operated pistols that we supplied them along with some basic instructions on their use. Sometimes the attacks were small arms fire, and other times initiated with hand grenades (replica hand grenades with sound effects that we have). Even plastic severed arms, legs, and a head are strewn into the room to mimic the after effects of a terrorist explosion. By doing these realistic scenarios students have a chance to not only see the dynamics of a terrorist attack, but experience it from the perspective of both the victim and terrorist. Of course, my training as a counterterrorist at the Federal Law Enforcement Center (FLETC) in Artesia, New Mexico and years of working with a variety of counterterrorist teams worldwide has helped me to set up true-to-life scenarios and administer the proper advice to help people survive. There are very few self-defense schools teaching realistic crime survival, let alone surviving common terrorist attacks, and I get a huge satisfaction in knowing that Reality-Based Personal Protection has been on the leading edge with this type of training since 2003.
My Reality-Based Personal Protection Director of Belgium, Nicolas Marucci, assisted me with the Terrorism Survival course. He did an excellent job of playing the role of terrorist, planting bombs for the building bomb search portion of the course, and helping with logistics: in this course we use a lot of different equipment and props. More important, Nicolas was there this time to take me back with him for a Knife Survival course that was held the following day in Charleroi, Belgium.
After everyone received their Level 1 certificates there were a lot of photographs taken. Now with Facebook as a major way people are communicating I had a lot of students come up to me and say, “Jim, can I get a photo with you so I can post it on my Facebook?” Of course, I am always honored when students look to me as one of their instructors, and mentors, and consider themselves a part of the Reality-Based family.
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