Sunday Summary. New Year, New Opportunities! Saudi Arabian – Iranian Tensions. A Solid Video Recommendation!

A new year is upon us and as I have already stated I have high hopes for the coming year. To give my prediction in a single sentence: Less degeneracy and more gloriousness. What I count as degeneracy are (among others): drugs, alcohol, weakness, political correctness. And what I count as gloriousness (what I mean more exactly is easier to understand for those who have been with me for a while): training hard with a purpose, abstinence from above mentioned indulgences (in excess), love for family, nation, heritage, nature. The list can be made very long indeed. However, what is most important is that we continue to work hard to combat degeneracy and promote proper values!
For myself I will start the new year easy and ramp up the intensity later on when spring revitalises the earth. As much as I would love to train insane all the time, I need to pace myself. With this said the main focus will be on the martial arts for now (BJJ and boxing to be more precise). Below is a picture of the team’s new ring, which is an absolutely glorious addition! Screenshot from this video: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hZvR99_rHo).

In regards to global politics there has arisen tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran over an Saudi execution of a Shiite cleric (https://www.rt.com/news/327755-saudi-embassy-iran-protest/). This is just a single event but when viewing it in the larger context of the mosaic of Middle Eastern relations (or global relations for that matter) it becomes interesting. If you have read my previous Sunday Summaries I have touched upon this topic before, alas it is worth mentioning the dynamics of the region once again. Islam has two main branches; Sunni and Shia, the majority of the world’s Muslims are Sunni and Saudi Arabia is Sunni whereas Iran is Shia. So there is already that distinction between the two. Furthermore Saudi Arabia is an ally of USA/NATO and Israel. Saudi Arabia is an important partner for the United States due to its large oil production and is thus immune to many demands that would otherwise be placed upon them: an interesting comparison is how Putin’s Russia is treated in Western media in relation to the infamous “anti gay propaganda”-laws, versus the fact that homosexuality is punishable by death in Saudi Arabia.

Iran, on the other hand, has closer ties to Russia and also to Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. So to conclude the situation: Saudi Arabia and Iran are on the opposite sides of the ongoing chess-game in the Middle East, which makes this “incident” interesting to follow!

Lastly, in an attempt at furthering your training motivation (kicking the new year off in a glorious manner), I highly recommend watching the following video. It is very well produced and contains a great message, you can activate subtitles for the video (it is in Russian). It also grants me plenty of motivation to make epic videos myself.