Silat, sometimes also called Pencak silat, panchak, or montjak, generally refers to Martial Arts styles that originate from the Malay. These people can be found spread throughout Southeastern Asia, more specifically around Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei, and the Philippines. Silat isn't just one style but is used to describe anywhere on up to a hundred different styles, or what they call alirans, and schools. As with many Martial Arts styles, learning silat is not just about fighting. While learning Silat, one learns the mental or spiritual aspects of life, self-defense, the fighting techniques, and the culture of the people the art originated from. For more traditional schools, this includes having a uniform that is based off the Malaysia culture, rather than the Japanese or Chinese one that most people see in Martial Arts. In addition, the schools will have their own "dance," which is composed of movements from their particular style. It is a way to distinguish one style of silat from another.
Silat has a strong influence of learning from the environment. Many of the movements will reflect animals that you will find in nature moreso than some of the other Martial Arts. One of the most important animals to them was the tiger, being seen by the culture as a symbol of importance. Thus, one will find the movements in Silat to be explosive and aggressive bursts of attacks. In ancient times, Silat was as much a part of their lives as any other form of education and prepared young men for adulthood. Because of this, there is a strong emphasis in this art on self-defense. This emphasis is what has made Silat spread through Europe and now the United States. When watching a Silat practioner, one will notice that the artist starts at a much lower stance than most other Martial Arts. In many forms, the practioner will actually go down on one or both knees to gain the advantage. Each step will not only move the fighter but also turn the angle of their body, thus constantly changing and protecting different zones from their attacker. Silat's growing popularity has brought forward several forms within the Western world based on this system. The more known and unique examples of these emphasis the use of small knives, which is one of many weapons seen in a silat arsenal.
by Dancing with Fire May 14, 2011
Kung Fu is Chinese term for "martial art," it can also be called "Wu Shu." The holy Shaolin temple of the Buddhism was established about 1600 years ago on the mountain of Sung. It was the symbol of Buddhism power in China, and it also represented the ultimate domination of Buddhism over other religions in the next 1000 years in China. Shaolin temple was built during the feudal age when warlords divided and ruled each region of China separately. It was the time when murderers, bandits, and thieves were commonplace. In order to repel threats from outside world, the high priests of Shaolin temple research and devised many unique and powerful martial arts; monks were trained with martial arts as protector of holiness (at that time, all those that opposed buddhism principles were said to be "unholy"). Legend has that Shaolin temple devised powerful techniques such that allow people to punch through concrete wall, to regenerate and heal at faster rate, and to walk on the surface of water like dragonfly.
All these martial arts have come together as what we called "Shaolin Kung Fu." However, after centuries of warfare and disasters, much of Shaolin Kung Fu were swept away and forgotten. What we are learning now, the modern Shaolin Kung Fu, is the remnant of this ancient martial arts that once shaken the foundation of the world of martial art in the far east. Although Shaolin Kung Fu had lost it former glory long time ago, it still remains as one of the most prominent and most powerful martial arts exist in the world today. Martial arts like Karate, Judo, and Tai Kwan Do are actually variants of the techniques that originated from Shaolin Kung Fu. Suffice to say, no other martial arts in the world is as rich in techniques and as effective as the Shaolin Kung Fu.
by Dancing with Fire December 30, 2010
Hasta luego compadre.
by Dancing with Fire June 26, 2013
Hamas, the main Islamist movement in the Palestinian territories, was born soon after the previous intifada erupted in 1987. The organization opposes the Oslo peace process and its short-term aim is a complete Israeli withdrawal from the Palestinian territories. Hamas does not recognize the right of Israel to exist. Its long-term aim is to establish an Islamic state on land originally mandated as Palestine - most of which has been contained within Israel's borders since its creation in 1948. The grass-roots organization - with a political and a military wing - has an unknown number of hard-core members but tens of thousands of supporters and sympathizers.
It has two main functions: 1) it is involved in building schools and hospitals in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and in helping the community in social and religious ways. 2) The military wing of Hamas - known as the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades - has carried out a series of bloody attacks against Israeli targets. In February and March 1996, Hamas carried out several bus bombings, killing nearly 60 Israelis. It was also blamed for attacks in 1997 in Jerusalem which killed 15 people, and brought the peace process grinding to a halt. Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority (PA) - the government-in-waiting if a Palestinian state is established - views Hamas as a serious rival, yet the Palestinian leader has tried to co-opt the movement into mainstream politics. But his insistence that Hamas recognize the PA as the only national authority in the Palestinian territories and cease military operations against Israel has been resisted. Hamas argues that to accept the PA would be to recognize the Oslo accords - which Islamist groups saw as nothing more than a security deal between the PA, Israel and the US, with the ultimate aim of wiping them out. Despite a fierce offensive against the group in 1996, when the PA arrested some 1,000 Palestinians and took over mosques in Gaza, the PA has been careful not to drive Hamas underground.
by Dancing with Fire January 21, 2011
In early 2006 Hamas won legislative elections in the Palestinian territories, ending the secular Fatah party’s hold on the Palestinian Authority and challenging Fatah’s leadership of the Palestinian national movement. Hamas continues its refusal to recognize Israel or renounce violence against Israelis and, since early 2008, has conducted one suicide bombing, which killed one civilian, and numerous mortar and rocket attacks that injured civilians. The United States has designated Hamas as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.
by Dancing with Fire April 09, 2013
It would be fair to say that there are few twentieth century thinkers who have had such a far-reaching influence on subsequent intellectual life in the humanities as Jacques Lacan. Lacan’s “return to the meaning of Freud” profoundly changed the institutional face of the psychoanalytic movement internationally. His seminars in the 1950s were one of the formative environments of the currency of philosophical ideas that dominated French letters in the 1960s and’70s, and which has come to be known in the Anglophone world as “post-structuralism.”
Both inside and outside of France, Jacques Lacan’s work has also been profoundly important in the fields of aesthetics, literary criticism and film theory. Through the work of Louis Pierre Althusser (and more lately Ernesto Laclau, Jannis Stavrokakis and Slavoj Zizek), Lacanian theory has also left its mark on political theory, and particularly the analysis of ideology and institutional reproduction.
by Dancing with Fire October 04, 2011
The left-wing majority group of the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party that adopted Lenin's theses on party organization in 1903.
The word Bolshevik, an emotionally charged term in English, is derived from an ordinary word in Russian, bol'she, "bigger, more," the comparative form of bol'sho, "big." The plural form Bol'sheviki was the name given to the majority faction at the Second Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party in 1903 (the term is first recorded in English in 1907). The smaller faction was known as Men'sheviki, from men'she, "less, smaller," the comparative of maly, "little, few." The Bol'sheviki, who sided with Lenin in the split that followed the Congress, subsequently became the Russian Communist Party. In 1952 the word Bol'shevik was dropped as an official term in the Soviet Union, but it had long since passed into other languages, including English.
by Dancing with Fire September 08, 2012