Bukti Negara on Youtube

Discussion in 'Silat' started by TalkwithThunder, May 1, 2007.

  1. doc_jude

    doc_jude Banned Banned

    Thanks for the invite. If the op falls in my lap, I'll take it, but for now, I'm cool. Too much on my plate these days to just drop it all and chase MAs. Having kids will do that... ;)
     
    Last edited: May 4, 2007
  2. doc_jude

    doc_jude Banned Banned

    This reminds me of the story about Rudy's "broken ankle" not being refuted. There are some heated folks on this side of that argument, especially with it being perpetuated by such MA noobies as are on this BB lately. I've seen so many things like this since I started MAs in my teens (almost 20years ago). Funny how I have about as much tolerance for it now as I had then.
    The Internet is not the place to have a thin skin. I've learned that over the years. But out&out lies should never be tolerated.
     
  3. tellner

    tellner Valued Member

    Well TWT, it's a natural question all things considered. A number of people - mostly anonymous cowards - have been showing up in other fori with the same line. "Have you seen the Bukti Negara clips on YouTube?" It pretty quickly turns into another slanderfest.

    First there's the mild stuff. "You can see what Bukti Negara is all about."

    Then there's "Why don't you come and see the Real Thing for yourself."

    All good so far.

    But it quickly takes a turn for the worse when the attacks start on any and all former students of Paul de Thouars. Specifically, it usually includes Dan Inosanto, Cass Magda, Steve Plinck and Cliff Stewart. Decades of time in grade are magically transformed into "just four or five years", and of course "His skills are just mediocre because he didn't learn the Secrets. We have the Real Thing."

    Then there's the whole mystical Lineage flame war.

    Then there's "These self-promoted nobodies are just in it for the money and are diluting the Art. If they weren't such SHPOS's they and their students would come down here begging to bask in the reflected glory of the Real Gurus."

    At that point it starts getting nasty. There's usually references to "irreverence" and "disrespect" and similar.

    We've seen this several times before. The only difference is that this time there are video clips to start the ball rolling.

    So that's why I ask. A guy gets kind of tired of playing whack-a-troll, and I'm really hoping you aren't another one. Seeing that this happened in the last couple days with almost exactly the same intro it's only natural that the question comes up.

    If it happens, never fear. There's a FRAPPE (Frequent Rant, Attractively Packaged and Possibly Eloquent) warming up in the bullpen :rolleyes:
     
  4. TalkwithThunder

    TalkwithThunder New Member

    tellner,
    Most of "our camp" has no experience on this or any other forum. We've watched the forums but haven't participated. When I first started posting I got whacked, and should have, as a troll. I don't know it all. At that time I didn't have any experience posting. I know what I have been taught, told, and I have seen. People in my camp will get rolled over in these forums because they are walking into traps and have little experience, but they are still only saying what they have seen or been told. We have no reason to disbelieve our teacher, you have no reason to disbelieve yours. As you know, noobies tend to resort to "I can beat you up or My teacher can beat your teacher". Have you done it? I have seen and heard a lot, as have you. I was at the camp when you tested for Guru Muda in BN, so I have been around for a long time. I was either testing for guru or one of my students was testing for guru muda, I don't remember which. A lot has happened in "our camp" since then. About 5 years ago, PDT told me that BN had enough information placed into it to make it a stand-alone and complete art (not that we couldn't fight with it before). You guys departed 10 years ago? I am here, predominantly, to inform people about Bukti Negara. I will also tell "my side" of the story, as I know it and have seen it. I will try not to profess to know "the truth." PDT is a good and honorable man.
     
  5. TalkwithThunder

    TalkwithThunder New Member

    doc jude,
    I have four kids myself, so I understand your joy/plight. I don't think that any of the guys that are posting are martial arts noobs, they are just forum noobs. A couple are "converts" from other camps and all of them are zealots. We/they do have thin skins. What are you purporting to be a lie (maybe best if you PM me with this answer, whatever you think)? I've only heard bits and pieces of the Rudy ankle story.
    Bart
     
  6. tellner

    tellner Valued Member

    I really hope this doesn't devolve any further into camps. That's been the problem from the beginning. Family issues get turned into public ones, and the sins of the teachers get visited on the students yea unto the seventh generation. And there's a tendency for martial artists in general to act like fourth graders - "I don't like him, and you play with him, so I won't play with you" - which makes it even better.

    I won't say it sucks. If it sucked it would be good for something :rolleyes:

    The forums are new and add possibilities both for communication and conflict. USENET was one thing. Private mailing lists were another. This is still another.

    Many of the people involved have changed. I'm kind of strange, a computer geek who stuck with Silat the whole time and got wired early. So I've had a chance to see the patterns emerge over time. Perhaps too much time. Something that's new to most people will trigger an "Oh crap, not again." Ten years ago it was a different set of people.

    It's not like Paul's students were completely absent at the time. When he and Steve parted ways I got a fair share of abuse and the odd personal threat. Unfortunately it was all anonymous from people who knew things that would have required them to be close to the principals. Things like that kept popping up over the years. And it's happening again now.

    It's not so much because of who your teacher is. Lord knows I've been singing the praises of Mr. de Thoaurs as a martial artist and a teacher for a long long time. If you look at Steve's other student who haunts the electronic coffee houses - Steve Perry - you'll find the same.

    After some soul-searching and serious thought here's what seems to be happening. This is my best guess, and I'll try to speak honestly from the heart.

    Back in the fifties, sixties and seventies there was almost no Silat in North America. There was never a big wave of Indonesian and Malaysian immigrants. It was a long way away and not a popular destination. Mostly it was Dutch Indos, and not too many of them, the de Thouars family, the Ter Lindens, Wetzel, Ingram, Reeders and that was pretty much it for people you could find.

    Now the world is smaller. Lots of Malays (I hate having to write "Malaysians, Southern Filipinos, Indonesians, Some of the people from New Guinea, Bruneians, and a scattering of people from Southern Thailand and Singapore" every time :) ) travel to the West. A growing number of Westerners study martial arts in Southeast Asia and find that things are different than what they're used to. Different people, different time, different context, somewhat different traditions.

    This leads to even more difficulties. Bobbe, a sometimes poster here, studied with the de Thouars family for quite a while. He also goes to Bandung every year to train with his teachers there. Indonesians open schools in New York. The increased contact is good for everyone for the most part. But it's exposed what was once the unquestioned Way Silat Is Done(tm) to critical scrutiny that can sometimes be uncomfortable.

    Then along comes the Internet. All of a sudden it's not just a guy a few hundred miles away who's teaching during his lunch hour at the Malaysian Consulate. University students in London, doctors in Kuala Lumpur, wing nuts from East Armpit, Lower Slobbovia and even large Amphibians from Oregon (*Ribbit!*) all hang out in the same coffee house. There are more perspectives and more information but more misinformation and more room for people to have cross words or ones that are perceived that way.

    I'm trying to be succinct, but this takes a little explaining. You're in an awkward position. You walked into a room, thought you were doing everything right, and *WHAM* someone throws his beer in your face and hits you with the glass. And a bunch of other people shake his hand and say "Good job, that. He deserved it." It's nice to know why :rolleyes:

    So to the best of my knowledge, here's what's going on...

    The Dutch-Indo martial arts have a not completely deserved poor reputation. It's not that we can't fight or don't know our stuff. When I say "I study Serak" I hold my head up high and say it loudly and clearly.

    Some of it is prejudice. A lot of Indonesians have little love for the former colonizers and have a strong sense of national pride. It can come out in discussions about martial arts. "Ah, well, you see the Dutch never had to develop any skill. They were big and strong, so their Silat was kind of crude," or my favorite "You can't possibly understand. You see, REAL Silat is only practiced by the right sort of Muslim." It can be hard not to give the traditional response of "OK, mother****er. I'm going to give you your first free lesson in inferior martial arts." Really, really hard sometimes :yeleyes:

    Some of it, quite frankly, is that the things we were told may have been true then or in context but aren't or don't apply. I used to think that there was one line of Sera from the Badui Bapak Sera to Judt to Johan de Vries, to John de Vries, to Paul de Thoaurs. Each in turn had control and some sort of ownership of the system. Nobody else did.

    It turns out that that isn't even close to true. There's plenty of Sera in Indonesia. The Suwandas included it in their martial arts. According to Bobbe, the last time he was over there it was just considered "another Silat". The curriculum is somewhat different. The weapons are different. The history people tell is different. And there isn't just one straight tree from root to crown. It's more like a thicket that has its roots somewhere in Cimande and sets down suckers here and there. The idea that there is only one way to do it and that the style is the family property of someone living in America is quite literally laughable to Indonesian practitioners.

    This kind of thing played better with North Americans in days past. Consumers today are better educated and (I hope) less easily mystified.

    The way that family issues within the de Thouars clan end up in being aired in public has not helped matters. They deserve tremendous respect as martial artists and teachers, but the brothers do quarrel among themselves. Sometimes it spills over onto their students and gets shouted in the public square. And the esteem in which they are held and in which Silat in general is regarded suffers a little each time.

    There has also been a tendency for history to get rewritten as convenient. No matter how bitter the falling out facts can't really be erased. Again, when it was just one guy and the small number of people who showed up at his house it was one thing. Now that information is stored and passed around it's another.

    This is where some of the really serious trouble starts.

    One of the first things that happens in these episodes is that whoever is showing up will say "So-and-so might be able to fight, but he never really trained for very long and doesn't know the Real Secrets. If you want the straight dope, come and see us, because our people really do have it all, and nobody else does." The problem is that this happens even when it's simple to show that that just isn't so.

    We could list the people who were the fair-haired boys of one or another of the family at a given time. It would not be a short list. Many of them have now been disowned, left to do whatever they do, or have been cast into Outer Darkness. All of a sudden they never trained. Or they were only there for a couple of years. Or they never did the real secret family style. Or only the Lineage Holder got the good stuff. The problem is that in many many cases it's not only not true, it's childishly simple to disprove. It, quite understandably, ticks off the target of the slander and his friends and students. It also makes onlookers very skeptical about Silat in general and the de Thouars family in particular.

    For the record, Steve Plinck really had been training at Serak long before most of the current crop of senior students had ever done Silat. It wasn't just, as they say now, "three or four years". Cliff Stewart had the big fancy title in Bukti Negara and was called a "traditional disciple of Serak" at least twelve years ago. You were there when he was the head of the board which tested my wife and I to be Guru Muda.

    I understand that you are just repeating what you've been told by people you respect. It's not your fault. But someone told you things that aren't true. And when some of us hear the same ones every couple of years from a new crop of people, well, it gets annoying after a while. I don't know who's ultimately responsible, and frankly I don't really care all that much. I just wish it would stop.


    Heck, no! I will say that Steve has excellent skills. He's a hell of a fighter, a real perfectionist as a technician and one of the best teachers of any sort whom I've met. But I will absolutely not say "Paul de Thouars? He's nothing compared to my guy!" That would be just plain wrong. It wouldn't do anything good for anyone. And it wouldnt' be true. When Steve says "My only hope would be to run around him in circles try to get in one lucky punch when he got tired" I take him at his word.

    As far as me saying "I can beat up you", same sort of thing. It's immature. It proves nothing. And there's always the chance that someone will call you on it.

    Paul de Thouars deserves pride of place in pretty much any martial arts circle. From a student's selfish perspective I'm very happy about that. Steve is a superb pracititioner, but I recognize that he wouldn't have gotten where he was today if it hadn't been for his teacher, and I wouldn't have the benefits of the excellent training he received. ;)


    That is very cool. I really enjoyed the camp and had a great time with the people I met there. I've always regretted that things went South soon afterwards. But at the time my choice was simple though painful.

    Very cool. The snapshots I've seen of it since then showed some real evolution.

    It's great that people from Paul's cabang are getting out more, and I really do wish you guys well. I just want to make sure that the traditional swiftboating of everyone who isn't currently in favor doesn't happen again. People like Cliff Stewart and Steve Plinck really are what they say they are. The past is past and can't be changed or undone. And Guro Inosanto should require no defense whatsoever.

    It's like I said in that other forum. For the most part we're like my pet snake L33t. Most of the time she sits on her branch. Every couple weeks she has a few plump rats for dinner. She's a really laid-back reptile as long as you don't do something to annoy her. Rattle her cage and she'll hiss. Poke at her enough or disturb her while she's busy eating a rat and she'll bite. A lot of what we've gotten over the years has been banging on the cage, poking with a sharp stick and putting itching powder on the branch. I'd much rather curl up and bask under the heat lamp
     
  7. gungfujoe

    gungfujoe Please, call me Erik. :)

    Given that neither of you have any substantive information in your profiles, and neither of you back up your posts with a name, you certainly appear to be the proverbial pot calling the kettle black in your post. Who are you, and how long have you been studying Bukti Negara?

    Personally, I don't care about any feud between Bukti Negara and any other systems. I have my own opinions on the matter, but they're not especially informed opinions, so I'll keep them to myself. :)
     
  8. TalkwithThunder

    TalkwithThunder New Member

    gungfujoe,
    My name is Bart. I have been practicing martial arts for 20 years, 15 of which have been Bukti Negara. I have taught BN for about 10 years. For about 2 years, I haven't taught as much since a senior teacher has moved within 30 minutes of me and my previous students and I train with him. I live in Ohio. You are welcome to come train. Actually, I think I have signed my name. Maybe just not to that post. Guess I need to beef up my personal profile. Should I give my last name or is that proper etiquette? Bart
     
  9. gungfujoe

    gungfujoe Please, call me Erik. :)

    Thanks, Bart. That definitely helps put your posts into some context. All too often, you see people with very little experience brashly speaking in an authoritative manner, or someone with decades of experience masquerading as a newbie.
    I only offer my own opinions on such matters. It's not for me to say what one should do on this forum. This forum seems more "alias-obsessed" than almost any other I've been active on. Virtually no one posts their real name here, and even when someone does, everyone else still addresses them by their login ID. I have found that, on forums in general, there's a pretty good correlation between the number of silly flame wars and the number of people who don't stand behind what they say with a name that means anything outside of cyberspace. USENET and email lists seem to be at two ends of the Internet Civility spectrum, with web forums somewhere in between. :)
     
  10. Monyet Nakal

    Monyet Nakal Valued Member

    Todd,

    What a well thought out and illuminative post. I might not agree with *all* of your points (and some I do admittedly a little begrudgingly :) ) but the crux of it I whole heartedly concur with and I hope it is read, received and absorbed in the spirit intended by as many people as possible on this forum.

    Terima kasih
     
  11. Silatyogi

    Silatyogi Valued Member

    yes it's interesting to get challenges on the phone from people who want to see me "Activate my Serak"...(whatever that means). It is also interesting to all of a sudden get messages on other boards from people who I met once for a brief moment say they are Friends and I should ditch my teacher because he is mediocre and that Guru Stevan Plinck is a "mess" and I should join the PDT camp instead. I know of others in my teachers group that recieved a phone call before the last Pendekar Camp saying to them could come train with the Pendekar if they stopped training with my teacher.

    Aint that the truth...AMEN to that.

    Guru Cliff has spent the last few years researching further the roots of the art he was taught.

    Like in music you want to know how to solo you have to understand the components, scales, arpeggios, phrases, stylized expression, vibrato, timing, etc so you have to investigate the fundamentals that are behind what ever music or style or solo you are trying to learn to master..

    There is no reason why there can't be "expressions" of Silat styles, and expresions of SERAK. Bukti is in fact an expresion of Serak. Anyone with the right tools, the right awarness, the right fundamentals , can infact express themselves effectively.


    Yes if Guru Cliff Stewart was mediocre I can't see why the Pendekar would make him "Technical Advisor" to the art of Bukti Negara at one time many moons ago. Or why he would repeadedly get hired to work as an executive bodyguard. I have had people hire me multiple times based on my teacher's reputation and history alone in the field.

    As for Guru Plinck, my teacher holds him in the HIGHEST Regard. And i can't see why if Guru Stevan is a "mess" why he was once publicy choosen to be the head of the lineage. I remember watching the pendekar say that on a video in Guru Cliff's house when I first started training with my Guru. And my Guru basically said to me....."Guru Stevan is truly THE BEST out of anyone who trained with the pendekar." after showing me video of him moving and also video of PDT publicly praising him as the next head honcho of SERAK.

    For the record my teacher has always praised pendekar PDT's ability as a martial artist and as a teacher.



    very true...



    If it wasn't for Guru Dan Inosanto I would have never heard about Bukti Negara, Serak, and Silat.


    Hopefully there will be a chance for actual sharing at somepoint.

    Peace

    Santiago Dobles
     
    Last edited: May 5, 2007
  12. Pekir

    Pekir Valued Member

    Good point Tod

    I do agree that they deserve respect, on the other hand some of the previous generation of dutch-indo teachers haven't made it easy on themselves. Expressing and acting the way they have done. It's the same on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

    I also agree with the fact that there are a number of (younger?) Indonesians on the forums that claim a general negative attitude towards dutch-indo's (present day and in the colonial days) that in real life aren't that general at all. It does bring them to conclusions that the dutch-indo's could never have learned the true art because they hated each other and more of this stuff. What they seem to forget is that the colonial society was never (as with almost everything) that outspoken 'black and white'. You might even say that the dutch-indo's were the 'grey' part in society. Not Dutch, not Indonesian but with relatives on both sides. Since most of the 'dutch' pesilat in the colonial days were dutch-indo's you can take one thing for granted (I see most of them who are still alive a few times a year), they are in general not big :)

    In my experience, as in my teachers our dutch-indo background never interferred with relations to Indonesians, we never met anything but respect and the same goes to everyone I know that went back. I contrary, just an example. My teacher onces demonstrated our style to a main pendekar of one of the bigger sundanese aliran. He was pleasently suprised to see an asli style which was hard to find in the old days. He didn't like our school name though (sounded Chinese) so offered to use his own aliran patch in the future. The latter sounds a little odd but his patch offer and appreciation for the style was well meant and with respect.

    I guess respect is in the end all it comes down to, this doesn't mean one has to agree. Neither on history nor on the future.......

    Hormat, Pekir
     
  13. tellner

    tellner Valued Member

    Word.
     
  14. Steve Perry

    Steve Perry Valued Member

    Bukti

    Todd has nailed it down pretty good, and more kindly than I would have. We have nothing but respect for Pendekar Paul's martial abilities, nobody in Stevan Plinck's classes ever said otherwise, to my knowledge, not in the dozen or so years I've been training

    Bukti was a stand-alone art ten years ago when Todd and I and a handful of others were studying it, and Guru Plinck was one of the few highest-ranked teachers. At the time, Bukti was still somewhat sketchy. What it has done since I cannot speak to, save for noticing that weapon work has become part of it.

    Sera(k) was the mother, Bukti the daughter, and the child must have grown some in a decade.

    The social skills of the de Thouars brothers are another matter, and the fervor with which some of their past and current players have attacked the earliest senior players of Sera(k) and Bukti isn't up for question -- pick a brother and listen to their students, and everybody not currently in the fold gets a lot of crap tossed in their direction. I stopped talking to the other branches because I really got tired of hearing about how we do silat-lite up in the Pacific Northwest, and yet every time one of their students would drop by to play, they didn't seem to have anything we didn't have ...

    Ah, well. Nothing new under the sun ...

    Steve
     
  15. Silatyogi

    Silatyogi Valued Member

    Very well put!

    I have been one of those like you and Todd that have recieved messages such as my teacher doesn't know, Guru so and so doesn't know....but they can't rewrite history and expect actual history to be forgotten....my teacher went to see them and tells me they are still doing the same stuff they where doing when he was there says a lot to me......

    I trust my teacher he has no reason to lie to me. If he felt I could benefit from going elsewhere he would say go for it. For example he has always told me to See Guru Plinck when they possibility is available.

    As for Bukti...well PDT is GREAT at what he does and Bukti is a great art but still its a small piece of a much bigger pie (Serak).

    I still don't see why Bukti needs to be trained if you are doing Serak. Sort of like learning to speak spanglish in a south American country when I should probably learn to just speak spanish if i really want to communicate in that environment. Maybe I missed something.

    Santiago Dobles
     
  16. Steve Perry

    Steve Perry Valued Member

    Bukti was originally designed as a filter, as I understand it. Pendekar Paul did not feel that he should teach Americans Sera(k). His first students were all either Dutch-Indo or Indonesians.

    In my teacher's case, he learned Sera(k) before he learned Bukti. And while he doesn't claim it, from what I have heard elsewhere, he was at least partially responsible for some of what went into Bukti.

    Paul thus came up with a stripped-down version of Sera(k) in Bukti that he felt was okay to give to American students, and if they demonstrated the willingnesss and ability to learn this, they thus proved they were worthy to be given a chance to learn the mother art.

    (Women were not allowed to learn Sera(k), and Bukti was the only way they could get into it -- and even then, some of the senior teachers wouldn't teach women.)

    This was how it was when I began training. You started in Bukti, and once you learned the system, you were allowed to advance to Sera(k).

    When Guru Plinck and Pendekar Paul went their separate ways, Guru Plinck stopped teaching Bukti, for a couple of reasons, not the least of which was that he thought Sera was a superior art. And since his certification was no longer considered valid, any students he might train in Bukti Negara wouldn't qualify for rank in the organization anyhow.

    That's a sad story, and it was Paul's and the organization's loss. They behaved badly, and it cost them one of their top players.

    Steve

     
  17. pukulan student

    pukulan student Valued Member

    Gentlemen . is there no civil solution to hot headed finger tapping debates ,like this ? a tri -continetal serak- tagon showdown seems un likly any time soon .We have seen the bukti demos and everyone elses on the YOU TUBE ,.we heard all the siskelebrits .Tellner, Perry dont leave the public hanging anxiously in anticipation any longer .Show yer cards .let us all be the decider put something up . put up or shut up .YOU GOT SEARVED
     
  18. tellner

    tellner Valued Member

    Eh? What the hell are you talking about? There's no need for us to "show our cards" because they've been face-up on the table for over a decade. I suppose we could take vids showing us throwing compliant partners around or cherry pick the best ones of us doing juru juru.

    What would be the point? It wouldn't prove anything about who did what when to whom for how many cookies.
     
  19. pukulan student

    pukulan student Valued Member

    .still the arts are older than our words and are we not talking about a visual formula of motion and the measure of efficiency of that motion .that s all what I am talking about .
     
  20. tellner

    tellner Valued Member

    Well, the trolls are certainly hungry today. Let's toss them a scrap or two. I'd usually be a little more polite, but serious illness always makes me irritable. So there won't be much diplomacy or sugar coating.

    We're talking about simple matters of public record and simple fact. What do videos on YouTube have to do with them? The thin end of nothing whittled down to a point. This isn't the sort of discussion where saying "Your Kung Fu is really very poor" in badly dubbed Engrish is at all relevant. And that's precisely what you're talking about. No matter what anyone says or does the True Believers will say "It is nothing compared to our superior skills in the Secret Mysteries. See? Their Plummetting Butterfly really looks like the Sideways Crab." Been there. Done that. Used the t-shirt to wipe grease off something years ago.

    Perry, Santiago and I aren't cutting anyone down or hissing poison into anyone's ears. We just get ticked off when anonymous cowards and things which live under bridges and are frightened of billy goats do precisely that to people whom we value. I note that you personally are doing the same thing as a number of others. You show up out of nowhere solely to spread confusion and stir up things usually found in the middle levels of septic tanks. And, as usual, it's done behind a thin cloak of deniable anonymity. Nicknames are fine during friendly conversation. When people are getting slanderous it's only good form to grow a pair and take responsibility for what one says and one's real agenda. Duelling videos just doesn't signify.
     

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