Noticed there's a guy called Jeffrey Balmer teaching katori shinto ryu round my hometown I seem to remember from years back that this was a guy who claimed he had been a bodyguard for idi amin among other things :woo: Anyone know what the deal is here?
No matter how good their martial arts were, I wouldn't want to train with someone who was happy to work for a dictator famous for human rights abuses.
http://www.colerainetimes.co.uk/sport/jeffrey-s-malaysian-honour-government-1-1966901 I'm presuming that if it is true, he did it voluntarily. If he made up the story, I still wouldn't want anything to do with him. If other people made up the story, that's unfortunate and I feel sorry for the guy. The fact that his mobile number is at the bottom of that article for people to train with him leads me to believe that he supplied that story to the paper.
Entering a job voluntarily isn't the same as leaving with job satisfaction. I get what you're saying, I just think we should give the guy the benefit of the doubt until we have a fuller picture. It's very easy to ruin an innocent person's reputation on the Internet these days. Besides, there's also the following paragraph (from your source) which tells me more about his character than just "he worked for Amin at some point."
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/martin.bown/ Either Mr Lancashire or Mr Relnick should be able to confirm if this person is authorised to teach. I'm not sure how up to date the page is.
Sure, and I wouldn't begrudge other people training with him even if it was true. I was just giving my personal opinion. Egypt in the 80's wasn't exactly a shining beacon of human rights, either. I don't think anyone could work for Idi Amin without knowing anything about his reputation, and if he took the job out of ignorance that doesn't say much about him either. I do take your point about internet reputation. I'm not saying it is true, just saying what my opinion would be if it were true.
I think we're on the same page David. If it was true, and it turned out to be a case of "Human rights abuses? YOLO!" I'd certainly be advising people to rethink spending time with him in any capacity.
Hey guys, There are several branches in Japan and a mainline. Here are some links that may help sorting out the instructors qualifications: http://katori-shinto-ryu.org/annai http://www.sugawarabudo.com/sbudo_links.html There are others but this may be a start. Best, Todd Schweinhart