Andrewwhyte

Thanks for that. Do you have the total jumps made in Germany for 2006? Things I noticed were the age and experience of the casualties. There was only one person under 40 and only one person had more than 600 jumps, indicating these people started skydiving later in life.

Overall I like Tom's points. Since the pilot is embarking on a professional career (or particular branch of his professional career) there should be no problem with a detailed theoretical requirement. This should not cost anything more than his time. My only objection is with this: As far as I know the responsibility of the pilot for the condition of the skydivers' skills and equipment is a peculiarity limited to the Americans. In my view it is bad law and should not be copied. If Namibian law does not currently indicate the pilot as responsible then nothing should be done to encourage the authorities or courts to hold them so in the future.

She saved your country.

So if the US joins the Kyoto carbon credit trading scheme, do they get credit for all the people they kill in their various wars? I know here in Alberta we get blamed for all the CO2 created digging up the oil they use killing those people so it is only fair that we consider the net effect of the war and not just the gross effect.

He sounds like he could be France's Margaret Thatcher; the good lord knows they need one.

Hey! He wants to keep the trains on time.

You're drinking Mescal? You stupid bastard, the Don Julio is CHEAP!

Ever heard of the Tamil Tigers? Do you think the Sinalise are blameless? What about the Kashmir conflict, do you think the atrocities are one sided there? How 'bout the holocaust? No religion involved there huh?

Nope. All the sophistry in the world doesn't change the fact that I know way more people who ride in cars than I know skydiving, and I know way more people who died skydiving than who died in car accidents.

You're being sarcastic right? Driving IS more dangerous than skydiving. I am glad I don't have as many friends dead from driving as I do from skydiving.

Up here in Canada we don't really like hunting that much. The only reason we do it is 'cause seal clubbing season is over by the 24th of May.

My thoughts exactly.

Remember when the reporters used to crowd around Shaq every day so he could give them his new name? "I'm the Big Aristotle," or when he got his degree, "I'm the Big Graduate." Maybe W could do that; "I'm the Veto Guy," or "I'm the Lame Duck Guy," or "I'm the Village Idiot Guy."

Why is that? Are dzs only concerned with making money and don't want fun jumpers? Remember they have less people than Washington state and are doing 75,000 tandems a year. The tandem business really has nothing to do with sport jumping there. When I was there twenty years ago there were a bunch of Cessna DZs with about two or three hundred jumpers in the whole country.

http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2007/05/02/hillier-afghanistan.html Cool

I like to launch into a tandem jump hard sell. If they hang up without me ever finding out what their product is I win.

I have to agree with John on this one. When a VFR flight is out of sight of the tower they serve to advise of things like traffic, wind shear, weather etc. What would they do, warn him about the building?

I decided to begin this last winter in Eloy. I entered the US at the Vancouver International Airport Port of Entry. The Border guard was a bit skeptical of my one way ticket but when I told him my plans he shrugged his shoulders and said OK. I was just another snowbird, albeit a bit younger than usual. I bought a two way ticket Phoenix-Montreal-Phoenix over Christmas. On the return trip my flight was routed through Denver. This flight was canceled due to weather. So I got a flight to Toronto and then a Non-stop to Phoenix. The problem was that now I had a one way flight. When I tried to clear US customs at Port of Entry Toronto it was, "Do you have a paper copy of your itinerary?" Well I do but because my flight was canceled it doesn't include this flight. "WHY DO YOU NOT HAVE A RETURN TICKET!!!?" Well I do, This is the return ticket of my flight. "GO TO THE WHITE ROOM OF UNREASONABLE PEOPLE" After that it got more unreasonable. I did eventually get in, but with a card to prove when I left. Since I know (as we all do) that some Canadians do enter the US for the purpose of working illegally i do not disagree with them questioning me, but the level of rudeness was quite unsettling. Those who saw me will attest that I arrived at the DZ very upset. Later we found out that another of us (non working Eloy snowbirds) had been refused entry after visiting family over Christmas. A couple of weeks late an instructor of mine and his girlfriend reported a similar experience. As a Canadian the border has definitely become a more onerous barrier. Whether to go to Lost Prairie or Kamloops in May or the big Lost Prairie boogie or Abbotsford in August has definitely taken on a new dimension.

I knew we had shorter life expectancy, but I thought it was due to the higher likelihood of a nasty pencil sharpener incident.

1000 H/p following an IAD 2000 AFF 3000 Tandem 4000 4-way When they happen, they happen.

I have taken female muslims on tandems. Their head scarf fits under a frap hat just fine. As for that bit about not being touched by a man outside the family, sorry not in the Quran.

It rubs the lotion on its skin

How does putting my teammates first destroy my legitimacy, it seems that you would just rather celebrate over the dead bodies of myself and my fellow teammates. There is nothing that takes away from my credibility in my priorities, the men I serve with come first, these men are my family, I don't have a wife and kids to go home to, at the moment I don't even have a home to go back to. When I get home I'll be living in the team room at work or on one of my teammates couches until I find another home. Everyone else on my team besides me has a wife and kids, or fiance waiting for them to come home and I intend to make sure every one of them get to see them again even if it means me not making it back. And even though I'm using MY TEAMMATES as the example that priority extends to all Coalition soldiers, we're all on the same team. Just behind my teammates safety comes ANY innocent person, it makes no difference if they are US or Iraqi, an innocent person is an innocent person no matter their nationality and their safety comes before mine. However, I have not yet been put in the situation where I had to make the decision of one of my men or the life of an innocent, it's never come up at the same time, and until that time comes(which I hope it never does) then who knows exactly who I'm going to drag to safety first. Not an easy choice to say the least. However, I ask you to consider this; if you are in the US in a Katrina like situation, or perhaps a Waco like one, during a firefight would you sacrifice American civilians to protect your teammates? I know what the response would be from civilian uniformed services would be. The firefighter will pull the child out first, the cop will not shoot the woman the bad guy is hiding behind. According to your betters the war is long over in Iraq. Your job is to establish the peace; to help create a civil society similar to that of the US. I seriously doubt whether your betters would want you to place your teammates welfare ahead of that of American civillians'. If my country were occupied by a foreign force that I considered to be liberators, and those soldiers proceeded to sacrifice Canadian civilians in favour of their own fellows, The occupation would lose all legitimacy in my mind. I would immediately move to remove them from my country (join an insurgency/ resistance movement). Fine. The only thing I will say to this is that not everyone who questions you is your enemy. Be righteous Stay safe Come home

How would I be guilty of violating the rules of the Geneva convention by turning a captured enemy combatant in a detention facility? there is no justification for that, that's like saying that a man who owns a gunshop and sells a pistol to someone who later uses it to kill someone is guilty of murder. What would my other options be, let the man I just risked my life to take alive go free, or execute him, one would put me in jail and the other would put me at risk of being killed by the man I just captured then freed. Nice try. The practices at Guantanamo Bay are a gross violation of the Geneva convention. There is no such legitimate designation as 'enemy combatant.' Someone is either an enemy soldier, eligible for the protections under Geneva or they are a civilian criminal who has no business at a military detention centre. 'Enemy combatant' was a designation invented by the US administration and/or brass specifically to circumvent the Geneva convention. Other than in a 'prisoner of war' context imprisoning people for years without trial or representation is a war crime. I don't know your rank, but I suspect you are not a senior officer (or you would not be posting here). The chance of you ever being called to task for being complicit in violating the Geneva convention for such an act is virtually zero. That does not mean you do not have to personally examine your actions within a wider context; 'following orders' is not an excuse for doing something you know to be wrong. The Nuremburg trials made this very clear. Be righteous Stay safe Come home

If you deliver an enemy combatant to your superiors with the reasonable expectation that they will go to Gitmo, are you guilty of violating the Geneva convention? I suspect your opinion on that is different from most of the world's. ***Me personally, I do whatever is necessary to 1)bring my teammates home alive, 2)protect innocent civilians, 3)accomplish the mission, and 4)bring myself home safe, in that order of precedence. I wouldn't consider my actions to be a "crime of aggression" as it was put earlier. Interesting priority list. Tell me, if the innocent civilians are US citizens do they move ahead of your teammates on the list? What if they are citizens of coalition partners? I would say that your putting the lives of your fellow soldiers ahead of those of the citizens of Iraq is that which destroys your legitimacy.