Hacking away at the truth

One would like to think of martial artists as noble warriors, upholders of honesty and truthfulness. Unfortunately there are as many scoundrels as white knights in the arts, people who are attracted to power to feed their egos. Now it may be a matter of perspective, that a person can do something unethical because they think it’s justified, but the credo of “the end justifies the means” has long been discredited as merely giving oneself permission to do evil.

Now what I’m writing about is pretty petty stuff, but still, annoying at best, and disturbing on a deeper level when suspicion falls on those whom one knows personally and would hope to respect. So what is it that happened?

For starters, one of my favorite personally made training knives came up missing this week. It’s something that was in my bag and now it’s not. I’ve been showing my sticks and blades at classes and seminars lately. To the person who took it, may it give you no pleasure, remaining a hidden symbol of your greed.

While I might have just written it off as an “accident” (and funny how most such “accidents” always seem to happen amongst "friends"), it just happens to coincide with the calendar attached to this blog being hacked sometime this same past week. A July 12 posting for a USFMAF clinic in Hayward for tournament officials and competitors “disappeared”. When I logged in to the administration area, I found an unknown user ID and password. Either the person who hacked in didn’t care to erase their tracks, or left these behind so they could do more mischief in the future.

There are folks I’ve seen lately who have their issues with USFMAF president Darren Tibon. Could one of them be behind this? The missing post seems too specific, too targetted, to be some random transient glitch. I’ve always tried to be neutral by having open lines of communication. That doesn’t mean always being in agreement with anyone, but being respectful when disagreements do arise, giving respect for what is respectful, and moving on when it isn’t reciprocated. Life is too precious to waste tilting at windmills. Sometimes this makes me a messenger, and messages are not always well-received. If that makes one partisan, it only reflects bias elsewhere.

So to you, “Sinbad”, whomever you are (and I do recall someone who has used that ID), yes, you know what you did was indeed a sin, and bad in that it merely demonstrates the cowardice of hiding behind the anonymity of the internet. And since you opted to use a “magical” password, whether consciously or not, that tells me you believe in things that cannot be seen, in which case you know the door has been left open for the law of karma to pay you back accordingly. Arbadacarba to you too!