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The US has attacked a foreign state every 18 months since 1945. Can you give examples of which of them the US has brought democracy to? Life is ez On the dz Every jumper's dream 3 rigs and an airstream

I opened up a cut when i was front risering one time, didn't notice till i saw the blood all over my jumpsuit and the lines. The FJC's really like that kinda stuff. Life is ez On the dz Every jumper's dream 3 rigs and an airstream

Hmm, I think you guys have some kind of free speech amendment that allows people to say things like this. I suggest if you want to start stringing up black rappers you do some work on that old constitution and bill of rights thing. Life is ez On the dz Every jumper's dream 3 rigs and an airstream

Assualt weapons still aren't legal up here in Canada. Life is ez On the dz Every jumper's dream 3 rigs and an airstream

I'm not completely sure about this but I don't think there was any marking on the maps which specified our airport as a dropzone, there was only the normal boundary to designate the airport. The dropzone operations were specified in the Nav Canada NOTAMS, but there was no parachute symbol on the mao that I recall. Life is ez On the dz Every jumper's dream 3 rigs and an airstream

These are some seriously f*cked up responses to a seriously f*cked up question. Life is ez On the dz Every jumper's dream 3 rigs and an airstream

Of course America has the ability to prevail, they're the world's only superpower fighting what is essentially a desperate bunch of 3rd world guerrilla insurgents intermingled with elements of Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations drawn to the country. I'm more interested by the fact that before the invasion, Iraq was not as Harvard's Jessica Stern says, the "Terrorist Haven" it is today. http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/news/opeds/2003/stern_terrorism_nyt_082003.htm Now that we know Iraq had no WMD's in the first place and in reality posed very little threat to the US, objectively it would seem that the invasion has actually mobilized the ME in hatred of the US and has seriously increased the threat of repeat terrorist attacks on Americans. Life is ez On the dz Every jumper's dream 3 rigs and an airstream

Actually the US fully supported Saddam through the period he massacred these Kurds, you see he was a good friend of the US before he invaded Kuwait. If Saddam stands trial for these crimes, which would only be just, the American policians who endorsed his actions should be held accountable as well. http://www.state.gov/s/wci/rm/36198.htm What the State Department forgets to mention is that they fully supported Saddam in his war against Iran because Iran had successfully ousted its American puppet regime in its revolution. It also now neglects the fact that it supplied these horrible weapons in the first place. The following is an except from an excellen Washington Post article on this subject. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A52241-2002Dec29?language=printer Life is ez On the dz Every jumper's dream 3 rigs and an airstream

***Published on Thursday, September 30, 2004 by CommonDreams.org From Baghdad A Wall Street Journal Reporter's E-Mail to Friends by Farnaz Fassihi Being a foreign correspondent in Baghdad these days is like being under virtual house arrest. Forget about the reasons that lured me to this job: a chance to see the world, explore the exotic, meet new people in far away lands, discover their ways and tell stories that could make a difference. Little by little, day-by-day, being based in Iraq has defied all those reasons. I am house bound. I leave when I have a very good reason to and a scheduled interview. I avoid going to people's homes and never walk in the streets. I can't go grocery shopping any more, can't eat in restaurants, can't strike a conversation with strangers, can't look for stories, can't drive in any thing but a full armored car, can't go to scenes of breaking news stories, can't be stuck in traffic, can't speak English outside, can't take a road trip, can't say I'm an American, can't linger at checkpoints, can't be curious about what people are saying, doing, feeling. And can't and can't. There has been one too many close calls, including a car bomb so near our house that it blew out all the windows. So now my most pressing concern every day is not to write a kick-ass story but to stay alive and make sure our Iraqi employees stay alive. In Baghdad I am a security personnel first, a reporter second. It's hard to pinpoint when the 'turning point' exactly began. Was it April when the Fallujah fell out of the grasp of the Americans? Was it when Moqtada and Jish Mahdi declared war on the U.S. military? Was it when Sadr City, home to ten percent of Iraq's population, became a nightly battlefield for the Americans? Or was it when the insurgency began spreading from isolated pockets in the Sunni triangle to include most of Iraq? Despite President Bush's rosy assessments, Iraq remains a disaster. If under Saddam it was a 'potential' threat, under the Americans it has been transformed to 'imminent and active threat,' a foreign policy failure bound to haunt the United States for decades to come. Iraqis like to call this mess 'the situation.' When asked 'how are thing?' they reply: 'the situation is very bad." What they mean by situation is this: the Iraqi government doesn't control most Iraqi cities, there are several car bombs going off each day around the country killing and injuring scores of innocent people, the country's roads are becoming impassable and littered by hundreds of landmines and explosive devices aimed to kill American soldiers, there are assassinations, kidnappings and beheadings. The situation, basically, means a raging barbaric guerilla war. In four days, 110 people died and over 300 got injured in Baghdad alone. The numbers are so shocking that the ministry of health -- which was attempting an exercise of public transparency by releasing the numbers -- has now stopped disclosing them. Insurgents now attack Americans 87 times a day. A friend drove thru the Shiite slum of Sadr City yesterday. He said young men were openly placing improvised explosive devices into the ground. They melt a shallow hole into the asphalt, dig the explosive, cover it with dirt and put an old tire or plastic can over it to signal to the locals this is booby-trapped. He said on the main roads of Sadr City, there were a dozen landmines per every ten yards. His car snaked and swirled to avoid driving over them. Behind the walls sits an angry Iraqi ready to detonate them as soon as an American convoy gets near. This is in Shiite land, the population that was supposed to love America for liberating Iraq. For journalists the significant turning point came with the wave of abduction and kidnappings. Only two weeks ago we felt safe around Baghdad because foreigners were being abducted on the roads and highways between towns. Then came a frantic phone call from a journalist female friend at 11 p.m. telling me two Italian women had been abducted from their homes in broad daylight. Then the two Americans, who got beheaded this week and the Brit, were abducted from their homes in a residential neighborhood. They were supplying the entire block with round the clock electricity from their generator to win friends. The abductors grabbed one of them at 6 a.m. when he came out to switch on the generator; his beheaded body was thrown back near the neighborhoods. The insurgency, we are told, is rampant with no signs of calming down. If any thing, it is growing stronger, organized and more sophisticated every day. The various elements within it-baathists, criminals, nationalists and Al Qaeda-are cooperating and coordinating. I went to an emergency meeting for foreign correspondents with the military and embassy to discuss the kidnappings. We were somberly told our fate would largely depend on where we were in the kidnapping chain once it was determined we were missing. Here is how it goes: criminal gangs grab you and sell you up to Baathists in Fallujah, who will in turn sell you to Al Qaeda. In turn, cash and weapons flow the other way from Al Qaeda to the Baathisst to the criminals. My friend Georges, the French journalist snatched on the road to Najaf, has been missing for a month with no word on release or whether he is still alive. America's last hope for a quick exit? The Iraqi police and National Guard units we are spending billions of dollars to train. The cops are being murdered by the dozens every day-over 700 to date -- and the insurgents are infiltrating their ranks. The problem is so serious that the U.S. military has allocated $6 million dollars to buy out 30,000 cops they just trained to get rid of them quietly. As for reconstruction: firstly it's so unsafe for foreigners to operate that almost all projects have come to a halt. After two years, of the $18 billion Congress appropriated for Iraq reconstruction only about $1 billion or so has been spent and a chuck has now been reallocated for improving security, a sign of just how bad things are going here. Oil dreams? Insurgents disrupt oil flow routinely as a result of sabotage and oil prices have hit record high of $49 a barrel. Who did this war exactly benefit? Was it worth it? Are we safer because Saddam is holed up and Al Qaeda is running around in Iraq? Iraqis say that thanks to America they got freedom in exchange for insecurity. Guess what? They say they'd take security over freedom any day, even if it means having a dictator ruler. I heard an educated Iraqi say today that if Saddam Hussein were allowed to run for elections he would get the majority of the vote. This is truly sad. Then I went to see an Iraqi scholar this week to talk to him about elections here. He has been trying to educate the public on the importance of voting. He said, "President Bush wanted to turn Iraq into a democracy that would be an example for the Middle East. Forget about democracy, forget about being a model for the region, we have to salvage Iraq before all is lost." One could argue that Iraq is already lost beyond salvation. For those of us on the ground it's hard to imagine what if any thing could salvage it from its violent downward spiral. The genie of terrorism, chaos and mayhem has been unleashed onto this country as a result of American mistakes and it can't be put back into a bottle. The Iraqi government is talking about having elections in three months while half of the country remains a 'no go zone'-out of the hands of the government and the Americans and out of reach of journalists. In the other half, the disenchanted population is too terrified to show up at polling stations. The Sunnis have already said they'd boycott elections, leaving the stage open for polarized government of Kurds and Shiites that will not be deemed as legitimate and will most certainly lead to civil war. I asked a 28-year-old engineer if he and his family would participate in the Iraqi elections since it was the first time Iraqis could to some degree elect a leadership. His response summed it all: "Go and vote and risk being blown into pieces or followed by the insurgents and murdered for cooperating with the Americans? For what? To practice democracy? Are you joking?" *** http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0930-15.htm Funny how this stuff doesn't show up on Fox News. Life is ez On the dz Every jumper's dream 3 rigs and an airstream

I just went to a Noam Chomsky lecture stoned... oh wait this isn't the drug thread... or the soap box... lol Life is ez On the dz Every jumper's dream 3 rigs and an airstream

You think owing beer for the first freefall, 4 way etc is bad? If you even said "first time" on my dz in relation to anything you automatically owed a case. Not everyone would pay up as much as they owed by those rules, but it at least pretty much guaranteed the minimums. Life is ez On the dz Every jumper's dream 3 rigs and an airstream

Even the Nazis gave the Red Cross access to their prison camps. As soon as you say someone is inhuman and therefore has no rights you forfeit your own humanity. Life is ez On the dz Every jumper's dream 3 rigs and an airstream

Free Falling is the sport invented by free soloist mountain climber Dan Osman. Dan used systems of ropes to make himself into a human pendulum, doing jumps up to 1,000 feet and stopping just feet above the ground. There is very little said about him on the web, and I could not find any video of his jumps. Unfortunately he died as a result of equipment failure. If anyone knows where to find video of his jumps I'd really like to see it. Life is ez On the dz Every jumper's dream 3 rigs and an airstream

My DZ had (closed this weekend ) a fairly tight experienced jumper landing area due to a treeline / buildings. If you have to make a low turn to avoid a canopy you didn't see till the last second it would be pretty easy to hit a tree. Target fixation is one thing, but it's really easy to focus on your approach and ignore what's happening around you. Life is ez On the dz Every jumper's dream 3 rigs and an airstream

Ya, the terrorists would really like it if we stopped killing the people of their countries and supporting those who do. Does the fact that they want it make it unreasonable, I would say not entirely. This I actually agree with, except the part about immigration which is simply retarded. Immigration is not the problem, don't you know anyone from the middle east? Go out and meet some, they're just like us. This statement is based on a gross misconception of America's involvement in the middle east. We have in fact been destabilizing the region for quite some time. America has used its influence to promote harsh governments which will control the people of the region while doing its bidding and keeping the oil flowing. We supported the government of Iran till the revolution, we supported Saddam through his atrocities until he turned on us, there are many other examples. There has never really been any effort on the part of the US to support democratic gov't anywhere in the middle east to my knowledge. In fact it is the exact opposite. Who the f*ck gave America the right to spread democracy by force. If you came to my country after I told you to stay the hell out I'd be up in arms as well. Of course they are ready to accept it, we just won't let them have it. And like I said before, it is absolutely not the right of the US to force democracy on anyone. By it's very definition democracy is the free choice of the people! Can't you see the hypocrisy in this statement? It's their oil, not ours. Just because we need it doesn't mean we have the right to kill them for it, unless you reject everything that America claims to stand for. I honestly think that you would benefit from looking a little deeper into the actual history of US foreign policy in the middle east. Believe it or not there has been a consistent effort on the part of the US to subvert their freedom and right to self determination in the interest of controlling the region's oil supply. The result is the catastrophy we see there today. Life is ez On the dz Every jumper's dream 3 rigs and an airstream

I have a hard time swallowing this crap. America may be a beacon of hope to those who are blind to its shortcomings, ie Americans, but when you step outside her borders the rest of the world has some fundamental problems with its foreign policy. America has attacked another country every 18 months since 1945. These wars have resulted in countless civilian casualties. There were more women and children killed due to the bombing of Afghanistan than the total number of people who died in 9-11. I am in no way condoning or sympathizing with terrorists of any kind, but to ignore their motivation and simply swallow the official story of "they hate us for our freedom" and to condone this continuing cycle of hatred and violence is completely insane. The best way to win the war on terror is to stop engaging in it. Stop manufacturing reasons to invade countries that cannot fight back. Stop interfering with foreign governments by installing brutal puppet dictatorships. Stop bombing innocent civilians. These are not unreasonable requests. Life is ez On the dz Every jumper's dream 3 rigs and an airstream

Hmm, sounds to me like the incident was a direct result of being a Pillock! (there is nowhere to hide buddy) Life is ez On the dz Every jumper's dream 3 rigs and an airstream

I did a 3 way hybrid with an rw guy and me in the star and our freefly buddy in stand holding onto and doing some gorilla shit from our chest straps, it was his 500th. Cool jump, 101 was my first all sit jump, kicked so much ass I went back up with the guy for 102 and we were in stable sit like 20 ft apart from exit to breakoff, probably my favorite 3 consecutive jumps so far. Life is ez On the dz Every jumper's dream 3 rigs and an airstream

Hmm, some of my faster propacks have had some fun openings, I voted some times because I regularly jump borrowed gear. You can either trust or just accept that shit will happen no matter what sometimes, as long as I know my reserve is good to go... Life is ez On the dz Every jumper's dream 3 rigs and an airstream

I'd go for my reserve at anywhere below 1500... They tend to work, and if it doesn't at least St Peter will pat you on the back for making the right choice. My thinking is that if my main didn't work at that alt I'd be dead pretty soon anyway, so take the faster opening option. Life is ez On the dz Every jumper's dream 3 rigs and an airstream

Is it easier to learn to skydive in the tunnel? Yes, obviously. Should you be learning the mantis position right away? I don't really see the point. Get stable and then get chucked out of the plane, learn that boring rw stuff later dude! Life is ez On the dz Every jumper's dream 3 rigs and an airstream

I'm pretty sure you'd need something that most people would never consider flying, like a really small velocity, vx or whatever. If you could front riser down the steep parts and just swoop the flat sections it would a hoot. Wipeouts would still suck though, and the harness inputs would be a nightmare. Life is ez On the dz Every jumper's dream 3 rigs and an airstream

My DZO started me thinking the other day about the physics of skiing under canopy. He thinks he could do it with his Sabre 170, we (the staff) think it's too big. The whole arguement got me thinking about what a blast it would be to fool around with something like that. Personally I think the canopy would have to be pretty small and fairly high performance to work properly. Have any of you guys tried this, or know of someone I could talk to about it? I know my dad talked about doing it once but I don't even know what the sport would be called or where to find out about it. Life is ez On the dz Every jumper's dream 3 rigs and an airstream

Man, why even bother with whuffos. They don't get it and they never will. I wouldn't even bother letting him know what an idiot I think he is. Life is ez On the dz Every jumper's dream 3 rigs and an airstream

I don't think anybody has the right to decide what is an acceptable way to kill yourself. I could care less if someone involves the sport in their suicide. A loss of a friend from the dz is always going to be a tragedy no matter how it happens. Life is ez On the dz Every jumper's dream 3 rigs and an airstream