Westie Way Revolving Arms

Our planet is crowded.  Too crowded.  There are too many people and too few jobs. The only entities still hiring are armies.  Many are poor and desperate.  Desperation leads to despair and despair leads to violence, both against one's own self and against others. Violence is often both psychological and physical. Since so many are in such great despair today, best to prepare for the violence that's to come.  It's coming and that's why we study martial arts.  Remember, no martial art that closes the hip and shoulder joints has any value whatsoever. Watch what the masters of the martial art you propose to study actually do with their shoulder and hip joint when performing.  Study only those arts that require the hip and shoulder joints to be open and that emphasize elbow and knee strikes, as that's the real way fights are actually done. To throw and lock any person, movement of the waist is essential; so the art that is studied must always employ waist movement.  Your elbows and knees are used like windmills in fighting.  In order for this windmill motion to take place, the waist has to move to give power to the revolutions of your limbs.  Always note that whatever system one chooses to continue studying, the study must be active.  You actually have to do it. Videos and books are certainly very useful as pedagogical devices for correcting whatever you are doing wrong; but to do it right, you actually must do it. Arm revolution in the boxing style I learned as a child is very different from that of other boxing styles.  My boxing style comes from the use of the Celtic sword, which has an unusual shape. The Celtic sword is a saber. It's about the same length as is the cutlass, but its blade arc curves opposite to the curve of a scimitar, the Near Eastern sword.  The curve of the Celtic sword is shaped more like the Gurkha knife, in that its cutting arc is shaped inwards, like a sickle. The shape originally came from the knife used by fishermen to gut their catch. Unlike other sabers, both sides of the curving portion of the blade are kept at a razor sharp edge---giving swordsmen opportunity to cut with either side.  This is the reason all the strikes in Celtic boxing are delivered with shins and forearms.  The shins and forearms are used like sabers. The non-curving straight portion of a Celtic Sword isn't sharp...it's kept purposely dull...thereby allowing swordsmen to assume double-handed grips whenever it's necessary.  In the Celtic boxing style, the inside hand (called the "shield")  revolves in the opposite direction from the outside hand (called the "sword"). Think of raising up with a shield to block an opponent's lunge while striking simultaneously down with a sword.  Note blocks are delivered vertically (and not horizontally), usually against an opponent's tricep or bicept, to temporarily paralyze the opponent's arm. Since the Celtic stepping footwork requires assuming a forty-five degree oblique angle on the diagonal, towards the opponent (the diamond-stepping), the inside hand's function is slashing the opponent's attacking arm or leg.  This slash-block causes the opponent's limb to pass by the defender's body, opening up the inside line for attack.  Celtic boxing allows for attacks with the legs very similar to savate---Irish Step-Dancing evolved from sword usage.  To give an example, say the opponent throws a punch straight at a defender's heart wih his right fist:  the defender's inside arm slashes the opponent's arm slightly above his elbow joint, either upward in a clockwise direction or downward in a counter-clockwise direction; so that the defender's front foot can step to the outside of the opponent's front foot, thereby allowing the outside arm ability to attack the opponent's flank from a position that doesn't readily allow the opponent to counter with his other arm (because the defender's torso is now beyond an opponent's reach with his other arm).  Strategy here is to close in on the opponent from an oblique angle to prevents him from easily replying to any attack. Again, it all comes from sword-work.  Of course, the opponent could then spin, but the spin would expose his back and spine as he revolves. Celtic boxing allows attacking the back of an opponent (the entire body is a target). When I was growing up on tenth avenue in Upper Manhattan, this particular boxing style was called the "Westie Way" because it was practiced along the far West Side of Manhattan in the bars that mainly serviced the Irish stevedores who were working the docks.  It originated in the counties of Cork and Kerry around the South-West coast of Ireland, and was carried to America by Gaelic speaking immigrants fleeing the Great Famine shortly before the American Civil War, and then was carried back to Ireland by Irish veterans of that same US civil war, founders of The Brotherhood, Clan of Gael ( which was originally started in Five Points), predecessor to the IRA. They were deported because of an aborted attempted invasion of Canada, then British crown owned.  On most Friday nights in Manhattan when I was a boy, in the West Side Irish Bars, there would be "sawdust bouts" where fierce betting was done on the bare-knuckle fights, all strictly illegal of course; but the cops were all Irish and "on the Pad," their protection from any inquiry being paid for by the pub owners.  Police were poorly paid then and needed the extra pay from bar owners. This post concludes the answers to all the queries received from the few readers of my two Kindle books.  Hopefully, both books and this blog have been of help to some.  I've tried to explain how things are the way they are and why things are the way they are, as well as give a glimpse of the future.  I have visions and most don't.  As for physical training, the Celtic Martial Arts classes are given once each week at 440 Lafayette Street in New York City, downtown Manhattan at Astor Place, from one to 3:30 on Sunday afternoons in Studio# 4C on the fourth floor. Charge is $20 per class session.  Related videos are under HEARTHEALING on YouTube.  Just to let subscribers to this Blog know, I'll only be posting poetry on the blog from now on...life is a quest to find one's true destiny; then, once found, to fulfill it...this I've done--I can write now as well as anybody ever coud; so now I'm busy working on my paranormal fiction future fantasy series, entitled:  "In Dreams They Are Remembered." Anybody who has read both my books and this Blog will already be familiar with the mythology background for the series. They contain the answers and solutions to everything, and I do mean every-thing!  It shall be available on the Kindle for a price of less than nine dollars per novel. Amazon Kindle receives instant wireless access around the world, so anyone anywhere interested in the fantasy series can download all the series' books at any time. The fiction fantasy series is a paranormal romance and an action-adventure set in the future, dealing with the impact from a revelation of ancient mysteries from the Upper Palaeolithic Age of Old Europe.  But to return to the crowded planet statement (projected to be over nine billion), ever since the nineteen-forties warnings have been issued concerning uncontrolled population growth which very few nations have heeded, with the most prominent exception being mainland China. Today there are too few jobs to support the burgeoning population in some countries, the United States being an obvious example: In the US, twelve percent of teen girls become pregnant and give birth before being eligible to graduate from high school; and this is now occurring while the US national unemployment rate exceeds ten percent. The result is: eleven percent of the US population depends solely on governmental social services to pay for its shelter and upon receipt of food stamps to pay for its sustenance. Another four percent of the American populace is either incarcerated and confined within a prison or is out on parole or on probation, or was previously incarcerated and now unable to find work because of a long history of incarceration; making a total of a full fifteen percent of all Americans who are presently supported by government, whether that be at the state or federal level (usually both).  The result of all this support is a national debt that exceeds thirteen trillion.  Any state whose govenment doesn't pro-actively fund the promotion of sterilization, abortion and birth control can't survive. This is because, inevitably, its employed tax base drastically decreases, while appropriations of monies for more and more social services in support of its indigents and its unemployed greatly increases. This scenario is what's happening in America now; it's the reason behind America's problems, so look for the future of humanity elsewhere. America has terminal dementia! Why?  Aside from this failure to control and curb its population growth, America's continuing fruitless engagement in stupid, foolish, unnecessary, pointless foreign wars means it's losing the better, bolder, more courageous portion of its populace. Bankruptcy in states isn't just monetary, it's moral too.  America is dead.  It's moribund, a zombie nation. It's lost its best. And when any state loses the best part of itself, it's done. It's gone. It's time has past. Where then should we go...recommendation: Nova Scotia. Move to Canada. There you could employ the very best strategy there is for fighting, which is: to avoid it!  Well, that's one location I would recommend---Nova Scotia means New Ireland. If you believe you've got just one life only, you're mistaken; as you've got so many...life isn't an "or" thing; it's an "and" thing...so live them all. NOW!