KH Jungle Training Kukri Review...

I'm so stoked about my new bushknife that I'm breaking my personal gear-review rules...namely, the rules which state I must have owned and used the product for at least a week before commencing writing. However, having handled and familiarized myself with this tool and its edge(s), capabilities and properties I feel qualified to answer a few of the questions I know some of my fellow gearhounds must have about the knives produced by Khukuri House, a company owned by retired Ghurkas who wished to preserve and share the fading legacy of the genuine Khukuri knife. Renowned though it be, many people choose the cheaper, inferior copies produced by American companies who outsource their labor to people who don't take pride in their work. I'm going to tell you right now, Khukuri House and their Bishwakharma (Kukri craftsmen) DO care about the quality of the product they produce on a daily basis, and it DOES make a difference. Here is what I did to test my new tool.

• First, I took my new knife up into the woods, into the hemlocks on a walk with me. I picked a spot near a lean-to where there was a prominent fire circle with logs for people to sit on.
  
• Unsheathing my tool, I chopped away at the end of the log, finding it very easy going. I ended up making a flat spot on the log for people to rest a hot pot on.
• Then, I turned my attention toward a downed sapling. I bucked it (chopped through it) at two points, in order to make a nice quarterstaff.
• Standing the six-foot length of sapling on its end, I began to shave the bark from its surface. When this was accomplished, I sat down on the fireside log and used my kukri as a drawknife, slowly shaping the staff.
• Soon I realized the hour had passed and I was going to miss supper, so I hid my staff (to prevent it from being burned as firewood) and went to dinner.
• After dinner I returned to my Flat and examined the kukri. Except for a previously-noted ding near the hilt, the edge was pristine, virtually untouched. It had handled all that chopping with complete indifference.
• Determined to figure out what it would take to dull this thing, I began to stab the giant cardboard box that my buddy's Total Gym had come packed in, each time from the point to the hilt. When I had positively porcupined one side of the box, I checked the edge again--it was STILL SHARP!
• After these failures, I gave up trying to dull the thing in one night. Other than being smudged and sapstained from its trials, it was utterly unchanged.
  

Some pics:



THIS, my friend, is a GOOD TOOL.

OVERVIEW:

Steel: Hand-Forged from Truck Suspension Springs, Differentially heat-treated/Selectively Hardened.
Scabbard: Water-Buffalo-Hide with Brass fittings over wooden frame. Comes with Karda (utility knife) and Chakmak (trad. sharpener/fire scraper).
Place of Purchase: Khukuri House Online. http://www.gurkhas-kukris.com/
Price: $33.99 without shipping. All told, around $55-$60.00. Well worth it IMO.
Berserker's Overall Rating: 5.0! This is one helluva knife.

Get one. You won't be disappointed.
PMZ

Procrastination...

If procrastination is on your menu for tonight, here are a few sites that are useful AND help you while away time frivolously...

MM is a good resource for the gear connoisseur:
www.militarymorons.com

Order of the Stick Webcomic...hilarious, even if (like myself) you don't know a whole lot about D+D and associated RPG games...at the time of this posting, you have 603 comics to read to catch up to the plotline...get at it! LOL:
www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0001.html

BalisongXtreme Website Tutorials--Learn to flip a bali like a pro!:
www.balisongxtreme.com/techniques.htm

Barney Fun Page--Apparently it's been online for 14 years...click away friend!:
http://impressive.net/games/barney/fun.cgi

Toilet Paper Wedding Dress Contests--Fun to look at, anyway. I surely wouldn't want to wear one...I don't think I would if I were female either...OK, that's just awkward:
www.cheap-chic-weddings.com/wedding-contest-2006.html

If you're into Norse culture, and are interested in Vikings:
http://www.cs.vassar.edu/~capriest/vikresource.html

South Park Character Avatar Generator...lots of fun:
http://www.sp-studio.de/

Sweet site to learn about Bushcraft, survival skills, etc :
http://www.bushcraft.se/

How to make a sweet blowgun:
http://www.geocities.com/maddd_doggg/blowgun/main.htm

Grip training tips for MA and general better strength:
http://www.grapplearts.com/Grip-Strength-Training.htm

Those are just a few...have fun!
PMZ

Letter Circulating in Emails Warns of Up and Coming Terrorist Attack on US

I don't know if this is a legit letter or not but it's definitely food for thought....


"...Juval Aviv was the Israeli Agent upon whom the movie ' Munich ' was based. He was Golda Meir's bodyguard--she appointed him to track down and bring to justice the Palestinian terrorists who took the Israeli athletes hostage and killed them during the Munich Olympic Games. (Aviv's bio is noted at end.)

He predicted the London subway bombing on the Bill O'Reilly show on Fox News stating publicly that it would happen within a week. At the time, O'Reilly laughed and mocked him saying that in a week he wanted him back on the show. But, unfortunately, within a week the terrorist attack had occurred.

Now for his future predictions.. He predicts the next terrorist attack on the U.S. will occ ur within the next few months. Forget hijacking airplanes, because he says terrorists will NEVER try and hijack a plane again as they know the people onboard will never go down quietly again. Aviv believes our airport security is a joke--that we have been reactionary rather than proactive in developing strategies that are truly effective. For example:

1) Our airport technology is outdated. We look for metal, and the new explosives are made of plastic.
2) He talked about how some idiot tried to light his shoe on fire. Because of that, now everyone has to take off their shoes. A group of idiots tried to bring aboard liquid explosives. Now we can't bring liquids on board. He says he's waiting for some suicidal maniac to pour liquid explosive on his underwear; at which point, security will have us all traveling naked! Every strategy we have is 'reactionary.'
3) We only focus on security when people are heading to the gates. Aviv says that if a terrorist attack targets airports in the future, they will target busy times on the front end of the airport when/where people are checking in. It would be easy for someone to take two suitcases of explosives, walk up to a busy check-in line, ask a person next to them to watch their bags
for a minute while they go to the restroom, and then detonate the bags BEFORE security even gets involved. In Israel, security checks bags BEFORE people can even ENTER the airport.

Aviv says the next terrorist attack here in America is imminent and will involve suicide bombers and non-suicide bombers in places where large groups of people congregate. (I. E., Disneyland, Las Vegas casinos, big cities (New York, San Francis- co, Chicago, etc.) and that it will also include shopping malls, subways in rush hour, train stations, etc., as well as rural
America this time (Wyoming, Montana, etc.).

The attack will be characterized by simultaneous detonations around the country (terrorists like big impact), involving at least 5-8 cities, including rural areas. Aviv says terrorists won't need to use suicide
bombers in many of the larger cities, because at places like the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, they can simply valet park a car loaded with explosives and walk away.

Aviv says all of the above is well known in intelligence circles, but that our U. S.. government does not want to 'alarm American citizens' with the facts.

The world is quickly going to become 'a different place,' and issue like 'global warming' and political correctness will become totally irrelevant.

On an encouraging note, he says the terrorists who want to destroy America will not use sophisticated weapons. They like to use suicide as a front-line approach. It's cheap, it's easy, it's effective; and they have an infinite abundance of young militants more than willing to 'meet their destiny.'

He also says the next level of terrorists, over which America should be most concerned, will not20be coming from abroad. But will be, instead, 'homegrown' - having attended and been educated in our own schools and universities right here in the U. S. He says to look for 'students' who frequently travel back and forth to the Middle East. These young terrorists will be most dangerous because they will know our language and will fully understand the habits of Americans; but that we Americans won't know/understand a thing about them.

Aviv says that, as a people, Americans are unaware and uneducated about the terroristic threats we will, inevitably, face. America still has only a handful of Arabic and Farsi speaking people in our intelligence networks, and Aviv says it is critical that we change that fact - SOON.

So, what can America do to protect itself? From an intelligence perspective, Aviv says the U.S. needs to stop relying on satellites and technology for intelligence. We need to, instead, follow Israel's,
Ireland's and England's hands-on examples of human intelligence, both from an infiltration perspective as well as to trust 'aware' citizens to help.

We need to engage and educate ourselves as citizens; however, our U. S. government continues to treat us, its citizens, 'like babies.' Our government thinks we 'can't handle the truth' and are concerned that we'll panic if we understand the realities of terrorism. Aviv says this is a deadly mistake.

Aviv recently created/executed a security test for our Congress, by placing an empty bri efcase in five well-traveled spots in five major cities. The results? Not one person called 911 or sought a policeman to check it out. In fact, in Chicago , someone tried to steal the briefcase!

In comparison, Aviv says that citizens of Israel are so well 'trained that an unattended bag or package would be reported in seconds by citizen(s) who know to publicly shout, 'Unattended Bag.' The area would be quickly & calmly cleared by the citizens themselves.. But, unfortunately, America hasn't been yet 'hurt enough' by terrorism for their government to fully understand the need to educate its citizens or for the government to understand that it's their citizens who are, inevitably, the best first-line of defense against terrorism.

Aviv also was concerned about the high number of children here in America who were in preschool and kindergarten after 9/11, who were 'lost' without parents being able to pick them up, and about ours schools that had no plan in place to best care for the students until parents could get there. (In New York City , this was days, in some cases!)

He stresses the importance of having a plan, that's agreed upon within your family, to respond to in the event of a terroristic emergency. He urges parents to contact their children's schools and demand that the schools, too, develop plans of actions, as they do in Israel.

Does your family know what to do if you can't contact one another by phone? Where would you ga ther in an emergency? He says we should all have a plan that is easy enough for even our youngest children to remember and follow.

Aviv says that the U. S. government has in force a plan that, in the event of another terrorist attack, will immediately cut-off EVERYONE's ability to use cell phones, blackberries, etc., as this is the preferred communication source used by terrorists and is often the way that their bombs are detonated. How will you communicate with your loved ones in the event you cannot speak? You need to have a plan.

Aviv's Bio as follows:

He holds an M.A. in Business from Tel Aviv University and is President and CEO of Interfor, Inc., an international corporate intelligence and investigations firm. Interfor, Inc. is now based in New York, with offices around the world. It was founded in 1979 and provides foreign and domestic intelligence services to legal, corporate and financial communities around the world. Interfor, Inc. also conducts investigations into terrorism and Mr. Aviv now serves as a special consultant to the U. S. Congress, and other policy makers, here within the U. S. on issues of terrorism, fraud and money laundering. Interfor's services encompass white-collar crime investigations, asset search and recovery, corporate due diligence, litigation support, fraud investigations, internal compliance investigations and security and vulnerability assessments. Since its inception, Interfor's asset investigation services have recovered over $2 billion worldwi de for its clients.

A leading authority on terrorist networks, Mr. Aviv served as lead investigator for Pan Am Airways into the Pan Am 103-Lockerbie terrorist bombing. He was featured in the recent film, Munich, as the leader of the Israeli team that tracked down the terrorists who kidnapped the Israeli Olympic team. Before founding Interfor, Mr. Aviv served as an officer in the Israel Defense Force (Major, retired) leading an elite Commando/Intelligence Unit, and was later selected by the Israeli Secret Service (Mossad) to participate in a number of intelligence special operations, serving in many countries in the late 1960s and 1970s.

While working as a consultant with El Al, Mr. Aviv surveyed the existing security measures in place and updated El Al's security program, making El Al the safest airline in business today. Most recently, Mr. Aviv wrote a book entitled, 'Staying Safe: The Complete Guide to Protecting Yourself, Your Family, and Your Business.'(2004, Harper Resource)

He has been a featured guest on ABC Nightline, FOX News, CNN, BBC Newsnight, ZDF (German National Television) and RAI (Italian National Television)--and has been featured in numerous articles in major magazines and newspapers worldwide...."

Stay safe out there folks! Be aware of what's going on around you at all times. When the SHTF we will all be splattered, some less than others...
PMZ