Paris.

[Nick Beale]

Forgive me if anyone found my summary of some (in my eyes) combative posts unduly succinct or neglectful of the subtleties of their rhetorical style or points of argument. If I might better have said rather that this wasn't the place to rewrite European nations' foreign policies, fair enough. This isn't where I come to exercise my politics degree and I don't think it was ever Ruy's intention that the forum should go down that road.

[Larry deZeng]

So, Nick, fair enough but you didn't address my central question. How are we, the members, to know from the title of a thread what is allowable and what is not? I thought my post was right in line with the general sentiments immediately following the attack including those expressed in public by Hollande, Cameron, and many other European leaders, but you did not. Since only your opinion matters when it comes to thread content, how about providing us with a little guidance here. Please?

L.

[Richard T. Eger]

Dear All,

In Nick's defense, I think he saw that the subject matter in the thread had the potential of blowing up and, since maintaining TOCH! as a flame-free website takes precedence, he acted accordingly.

The flip side of this is that open differences of opinion have been neutered from the site.

I rather strongly disagreed with the politics Jukka presented and acted as tactfully as I could to present a different view, to explore the current situation with more questioning than answers. Since our membership is quite large, some of us may be Muslims and those that are would be deeply offended by Jukka's comments.

Regards,
Richard

[Nick Beale]

Originally Posted by Larry deZeng

So, Nick, fair enough but you didn't address my central question. How are we, the members, to know from the title of a thread what is allowable and what is not? I thought my post was right in line with the general sentiments immediately following the attack including those expressed in public by Hollande, Cameron, and many other European leaders, but you did not. Since only your opinion matters when it comes to thread content, how about providing us with a little guidance here. Please?

L.

Larry, my stance all along has been to try and stop fights breaking out here; I have a pretty consistent record, I hope, of appealing for calm. You have been a valued TOCH member long enough to understand that it has never functioned as a foreign policy forum, despite occasional lapses (some of them mine) and it seems somewhat disingenuous of you now to ask "how are we to know ...?" It is appears equally so to say of me that "only your opinion matters" when you know perfectly well (a) that I attempted simply to moderate, not terminate, the thread and (b) other moderators are available.

I have my own views that may or may not accord with your own or those of François Hollande or David Cameron. I do however have a great affection for Paris and its people and will be visiting the city very soon. There are other forums on which I express my political opinions, I come here to talk about aviation history.

[Jukka Juutinen]

Nick, I find it a bit odd that people are supposed to express collective sympathies. This is one example of sugary sentimentality that has pervaded Western societies as of late, along with infantility (=e.g. politicians are expected to behave like infantiles). I believe a certain Englishman Theodore Dalrymple has written on a book on it.

Richard, you wrote:"We also need to look at ourselves here in the U.S. and the fractious society we have become. Gun violence is rampant."

The fact is that U.S. homicide rate has been on the decline for some 30 years, the homicide rate in 2014 (4.5 per 100,000 people) being the lowest between 1960 - 2014. And it cannot be set aside that some 50 % of U.S. crime is committed by a 13 % minority of a darkish colour. And please, no excuse of "constructional racism" or similar quasi-liberal agitprop.

As for the fractiousness of the society, a friend of mine from Arizona, a former Vietnam U.S.N. veteran, told me recently that the racial tension today is higher than for a long time as far as he can remember, thanks to the unashamed bias of your wonderful mulatto Obama. He voted for Obama for the first term, but the grave disappointment turned him over to Romney for the second.

As for not "slamming Islam", please ask yourselves that how come every single one of these terrorists attacking Western civilians all over the world are Muslims for many, many years. Where are Hindu, Buddhist, Shinto etc. terrorists? The answer: Islam, a religion based on bottomless envy and hatred for all others. Just ponder how many science Nobel awards have been given to Muslims?

One more thing: All this hell broke loose when a certain hare-brained man whose name is close in meaning to scrub decided to topple a certain Hussein. Aiding and abetting in this idiocy was a certain raving madman and pathological liar Anthony Blair.

[Nick Beale]

Nick, I find it a bit odd that people are supposed to express collective sympathies.

You're not *supposed* to if you don't want to. However, expressing sympathy to those who have suffered injury — and we have a lot of French forum members — is widely considered to be basic human decency, hence this thread

Meanwhile, your use of a crude racial epithet when speaking of Barack Obama's parentage offers a remarkable insight into your thinking. I am sure that there are forums out there where you can find like-minded people who speak in those terms, TOCH however is not one of them.

[Richard T. Eger]

Dear Jukka,

You seem to be an equal opportunity offender. You verbally attack the black population here in the U.S., our Presidents, a former UK Prime Minister, the leading political figure in Europe, and the honorable attempt to form and maintain a unified Europe, none of which is appreciated. Perhaps you'd like to go back to the age of war within Europe.

In Myanmar, the Buddhist majority has forced the the Muslin minority into displaced persons camps.

As for gun violence in the U.S., there has been a continued round of mass shootings on roughly a weekly basis. A nut job or pair will decide that, if he/she/they want to end their lives, which is frequently the case, they will take as many others with them as possible. Efforts to tighten the ability of owning a gun have been repeatedly thwarted in Congress, always citing the second amendment to the Constitution. However, a close reading of this amendment reveals that its reason for existence has long since passed. When there was a mass shooting in Australia, the country quickly enacted very tight gun ownership regulations.

So, whether it is terrorists in Lebanon, Paris, or blowing up a Russian plane in Sinai, the U.S. has its own version of generally solo nut cases that perform similar acts. With ISIS, as with Al qaeda, the standard operation is a coordinated attack.

Even if ISIS is defeated, there are others that will create mass killings within their own or neighboring countries. One wonders whether we have all gone collectively insane.

Regards,
Richard

[Jukka Juutinen]

Nick, the term mulatto is used by e.g. CIA.

Richard, when have Buddhist terrorists attacked Western civilians?

You obviously read the Constitution like Sarah Brady does. The very purpose of the 2nd amendment is to protect the people's right to defend themselves against any enemies, criminal or political. In other words, the very idea is to allow the people enough potential force to oust the government, by force if necessary.

As for mass shootings, these were basically unheard of before the Vietnam War. At that time, there was far less gun control. In other words, you really need to seek other reasons to explain/prevent mass shootings than grabbing the guns of law-abiding citizens. What is more, these shooting occur always in so called "gun-free zones" while on campuses that allow CCW, no such incidents occur.

As for offending blacks, well, the facts are clear that their crime rate ranking is far above that of any other race in the U.S. Have you ever read Thomas Sowell? A black man whose observations are very spot on. Or how about Charles Barkley:"We as black people, we have a lot of crooks. We can't just wait until something like (the Brown shooting) happens. We have to look at ourselves in the mirror," he said of people in black communities. "There is a reason that they racially profile us in the way they do. Sometimes it is wrong, and sometimes it is right."

As for Merkel, she is a disaster and should hang. Her fanatical attempt to protect German banks from normal capitalist losses has condemned Greece into terrible poverty while other European taxpayers are forced to pay the price of Merkel's fanatical faith in the already utterly failed Euro.

The age of war in Europe was the the time of supreme Europe as far as arts, science and power was concerned. Now, Europe is playing the third fiddle after Asia and the U.S. and will plummet even further if this stupid self-hatred of European nationalism is not excised.

[CJE]

Gents,
I was born in Paris and have been living there for over 40 years. and though I now live in south-western France, I am still a Parisian at heart. When I was young I used to roam all the places where the shootings took place.
Please, let us mourn in peace. If we go on tearing ourselves apart, ISIS will have won and that's certainly not what we want.

Chris

[Larry deZeng]

Nick wrote in part:

.........it has never functioned as a foreign policy forum, despite occasional lapses (some of them mine) and it seems somewhat disingenuous of you now to ask "how are we to know ...?"

Exactly. And that is why I thought it safe to do so in a thread appearing in Community > General. Separate from the historical aviation main section and down in a special or sub-section labeled "General." On Axis History Forum, it's called "The Lounge." On Feldgrau is called "Soldatenheim." This is where it is safe to discuss non-aviation subjects and offer opinions. So, no, Nick, I do not think I was being disingenuous. In the absence of a clear written rule or statement barring political discussion of any sort on TOCH, I and others thought the one place where it was safe to do so was in "General." We were wrong. So back to aircraft factory numbers and who shot down who.

L.