GwynO

Now thats what I call Progressive Islam

Emperor, I fully agree with the right to defensive actions (even with any weapons to hand including chainsaws and flamethrowers) within your own home, what I disagree is that because we know there are criminals with weapons and that we know the state, government, judges etc are ineffective in enforcing the law, that this means the final solution is to carry these with us everytime we leave the house and enter what is not our personal space but a shared social space. If the criminal in the street thinks you may have a knife or a gun also and he desperately hungers after your ipod, believe me he will play by the rules of the jungle too! He wont stick with his current weapon, rather he will use the black market and get a bigger better weapon than you could as a legal individual, unless you think we should all be allowed to drive around in Humvees with assault rifles and body armour? Where would it all end? Surely the better kind of fear to put the criminal under is the fear that the police will almost certainly detect them, detain them and that the courts will punish them to the maximum stated in law, this is a kind of fear that I would dearly love to see facing the criminals. Of course, there is the argument that the state(s) can go bad i.e. Former Yugoslavia then we would need to defend ourselves against them, well this is the only time when it would be permissible in my opinion to bring my weapons out of storage and into the conflict, but you will find that this is the mentality in Switzerland and Sweden and many places with a high rate of weapon ownership verses usage. People in these countries generally don't wish to use their weapons unless their is a crisis of invasion, civil war etc or of course an invasion of your home. The difference is that these examples of Western European liberal states is that the populace generally do not have an obsession with carrying weapons on the street, indeed street crime is lower in the Switzerland and the Nordic countries and I will look for the statistic source tomorrow, we studied this during a sociology module at uni. What we need to do in our countries is to ask ourselves why are we so different, why is it we have a street crime problem? I think it is more to do with enforcing the law than arming ourselves, to that end we need a better police force, a better political and judicial state of affairs... not a better blade/gun/grenade/nuke in our pocket.

Congratulations indeed!!! I bet you wont be able to sleep though, must be an exhilarating feeling for you both. Excellent choice of name, I would say that though as I am an Owen too! (well a Lloyd Owen actually lol)

Sanity at last!! Thats what im saying, there will always be the thought of "is my weapon enough", "am I outnumbered"... I don't want to live in a country that has that paranoia! Its bad enough living in parts of cities here that feel like that! Been there and got the t shirt and it's not worth the paranoid delusions, itchy trigger fingers and fast guns/knives are fine for John Wayne movies or Tarantino films but aint that a large part of the problem with Afghanistan, Iraq and so many other places though, the constant fear of the other guys weapons leading to more and more intimidation and aggression. The U.S.A. has a lot of good things to show the world, you can't walk around tooled up everywhere in the States you know, it's actually quite illegal to have a weapon on your person in public without good cause in most of the States. Also, if they don't trust the government, who will protect them against W.M.D.?? hmmmm quick Grey lets go W$$$mart for our ICBMs before the cranks get them first!!

Well yes, thats going from one extreme to another isn't it, from a stuation where everyone has weapons and the state fails to to protect us but we individualy protect ourselves, to a state of having no means of self protection at all but again no state to protect us. So what is the problem with having a state where bearing arms is just not possible for the vast majority of people, criminals and law abiding citisens alike because the state actualey does function to detect and prosecute (in most places with already existing laws) what I am suggesting is that we actively try to achieve what our (most of Western Europe) laws aim to do, this means empowering police not tying their hands behind their backs like for instance in the U.K. we had a particular community of muslims complain against police dogs infringing their rights as muslims and guess what the police suggested?? That dogs wear booties so as not to directly contaminate the purity of their muslim floor surfaces :rapage: I'm just fed up with people undermining the attempts to make society safer by making the police smarter, more accountable, equipped, trained and crucially free to act. Whats the point of having a police force at all if its all up to the individual to sort out their problems, then they are nothing more than a waste of tax money.

@Tailspin - We obviously disagree on a number of points, mostly concerning the rights of one individual being more important than the the rights of the many individuals, that is something that as interesting as it is, neither of us will likely yield on that one and no need either in a democratic forum. About the abuse of power and the need to stop it well, I don't think i do contradict myself, as I pointed out previously, i am not sitting on the outer fringe of either left or right, I am a free individual, free to choose what I think when i think, and this I do based on new information and new ways of processing that information this is why I am extremely cautious against dogmatism or ideology in my thinking - The circumstances of the 1990's policing of the U.K. where different and there is nothing wrong in my thinking for having different solutions to problems, you don't treat illness with the same old drugs because they illnesses adapt just as fast as the solution, this is true of social diseases too. Well it is shocking that police would confiscate the property of poor little old drug dealers! How dare they! I wonder if its a crime to steal stolen property from a junky? If its a end user, who otherwise is law abiding person then that is an abuse but for dealers and thieves, I don't pity their loss of property at all. Carrying large amounts of money should in my opinion be perfectly legal and fine unless it is not yours of course! I can understand why a police officer would ask questions of a person with a huge amount of cash though! As would a bank if you tried to cash in an enormous sum of money pretty likely they would have procedures to source it, again here I can understand the argument of presumption of innocence but I insist that this is only really valid in an ideological state, not a pragmatic one... e.g. Certain international banking centers are a haven for drug barons and other criminals just because of their stance on non disclosure and obtrusion of investigations into the sources of huge deposits, I understand why you would admire their ideological stance but I don't, in fact I think it despicable that some banks even would even attempt to obfuscate enquiries into nazi gold deposits on just such ideological grounds that deposits should be assumed legitimate unless proven otherwise despite the fact that proof likely would only be forthcoming through those particular enquiries.

I'm not suggesting that police should act as your describing, but the institution of the police does reassure me, much more than the prospect of their absence in society. Crocodile Dundee?? Oh please do be serious, I thought about that for a while in my adolescence, and you know what I found in practice, that there will always be doubt "do I have the biggest, the best and am I the best?" questions that make you paranoid and in need of a ever bigger, better weapon. But what if there are more of them??? Ohhh then I need friends who will back me up, this is how teenagers get sucked into this problem of knife crime in the first place, because of this Crocodile Dundee mentality you promote. Given the choice of living in a Crocodile Dundee New York or a country where knives simply are not tolerated on ANYONE then I would choose the knife less state! The rights issue, again i'm seeing ideology as the primary focus of that argument not pragmatism, so people behaved well during the events of 9/11, hmmmm was that because they had other things on their minds maybe???? In every day normal circumstances, would you entrust the safety of the state to peoples good will in not abusing their rights or committing crimes? The truth is we do need the police, we need them to play an active part in ensuring our collective and individual safety, and if that involves passive detection of weapons, what exactly is the problem with that? Immediacy of a crisis, to this do I understand that it is right to stop criminals but only after they have done something wrong or do you think the measure of searching for weapons even through passive means should only be used in the context of global terrorism?

Using that rational that to be searched without prior evidence of guilt is wrong, I should refuse to have my luggage scanned boarding a plane? What is the difference between being searched at an airport for a domestic flight for example, e.g. citizen flying from one place in their own country to another and being searched on a train? Do we need more security just because they are planes? Surely the principle is the same in that to take steps forward in detecting illegal items before they are a problem is justified because the rights of the many individuals to freedom and peace outweigh the ideological slight to individuals who feel their innocence should be apparent to all. I say ideological slight because thats all that I can see could be raised by anyone for being passively scanned for explosives, drugs, weapons etc. For example, if I walk through a busy public space and encounter a police handler with a sniffer dog on exercises, do I really have the right to complain that this is an infringement on my liberty? If the dog is ONLY used for me and the police follow me relentlessly with the damn thing then fair enough that sounds like a violation! ((seriously though, get real) If my person is free of anything worth detecting it is not a problem to me is it? neither are all manner of passive electronic scanning equipment that not just can be used but are being used routinely at airports across the world and I for one wont complain on the basis that "I AM innocent and MY word for it is good enough for anyone else" I think you misunderstand the war on terror, at least I hope you do, because I would never support a war where the casus belli is not merely to chase those responsible for terrorism but also to defend the lapses in security that allowed them to happen in the first place, that im afraid is pathetic, by that rational we shouldn't have adapted to 9/11 by banning all bladed articles from flights for example? We shouldn't be thinking of sealed cockpits, or air marshals? And all because it threatens an ideological value that while fair in a hypothetical fairy society is entirely inconsistent with the lived in reality of human behaviour.

"So your solution is to once again give police powers you know they're going to abuse?" Do I? More importantly how do you know that? Convinced that the police cannot fail but to abuse power and if so why? "How do the police know who to stop?" .."OK if you are within a certain age range, wear your hair or dress a certain way, go to certain clubs or taverns, or live in a certain part of town?" Yup, as unpopular as it may seem, if your looking for potential knife carriers, you don't waste police efforts searching little gray haired women or little kids as much as you would search for "youths" aged 11 to 35, profiling works. It may be unpopular to admit to the situation, that disproportionate numbers of some age, economic, sub-cultural or even... racial groups, suffer from and commit violent crime with weapons but thats the sad situation. Targeting people getting onto buses or trains is one example used recently in Birmingham, it worked too as it discouraged idiots from taking weapons on public transport which is one small success if it made life a bit more difficult for those wanting to carry weapons. Plus having metal detectors on public transport means everybody goes through it regardless of what makes us different, therefore if groups in society have something to fear from such systems it is down to what they carry with them, not about what they are. Human rights.. Rights have obligations, the right to freedom of movement in the U.K. is tempered by the obligation that in doing so you obey the law not to carry a knife without good reason (no, self protection is not a good reason). Is it a basic right to object to being searched? Personally I have nothing to fear as I do not ever carry anything illegal and feel reassured when I see a police officer, although I can imagine how I would feel seeing one if I had something illegal on me... I guess I would feel threatened and persecuted.. solution - Empty pockets, abide by the law of the land, problem solved. Don't people have a right to be protected from violence over and above the right of an individual to the privacy of their personal possessions? Would you object to your suitcase being scanned in the airport? Would you object to a weapon detection system being used by police to monitor public spaces? I agree that too much power can be abused by Government, however this is not too much power, in my opinion it is reasonable that a Government agency such as the police have the right to search for weapons especially with the newer technology now being trialled in the Midlands, actually stopping someone need only occur after the weapon has been detected passively rather than the old fashioned trial and error stop and turn out your pockets routine. Or do you believe that police should not even be looking for weapons at all, is it an invasion of some basic "right" and if so which one?

Exactamundo, the extremes of both left and right are characterised by a blinkered conviction in either the evil of the collective or the evil of the individual, they are largely a paranoid and fearful people who share only the worst traits of Humanity, chiefly the conviction that their own beliefs are the only legitimate truth which is under threat from anyone who disagrees with them. The Extreme Capitalists and Commies alike gain their sense of purpose from a siege like mentality that to even allow a compromise on policy between them is to suffer some terrible shame. I am happy to adapt my views when faced with new information and would rather a form of government, economic and civic, that does the same; it was right to stop the police from abusing stop and search powers in the 1990's but with the growing problem of youths unafraid to carry knives, or to use them, we need to bring these powers back. Given that society has moved on somewhat in the previous decade there is no reason to keep viewing stop and search now, as we did in the 1990's, it has less to do with putting blacks in prison and more to do with stopping young people from killing each other whatever their skin colour.

Exactly, there is no excuse that makes it right but also there is no excuse for the media reporting a war totally from one sides point of view, if there where atrocities on either side, then any and all responsible should be brought to justice not only the ones from the loosing side. Numerically and technologically the atrocities may have been greater from the Serb side but that does not justify a whitewash of the Bosnian involvement in that war in my opinion.

I hope he will be exposed for his part in the massacres, however this is being carried by the media in a typical (for this conflict) one sided pro Muslim anti, Christian way. The Balkan war is consistently portrayed by the western media as an issue of "poor innocent muslim victims" and evil Serbian ethnic cleansing. I am not justifying the torture, rape or the massacres but I am going to point out that this kind of thing happens to all sides in war, British remember the illegal summary execution of Mao Mao in Kenya ? Americans remember Mylai? or Spanish remember Najaf? War crimes unfortunately happen and there are no excuses but we must not portray the entire conflict in terms of the crimes of one side, did the Argentines not also terrorise the local population, didn't the Vietnamese maim and kill and didn't Iraqis commit their own attrocities? Im sure people will be disgusted that I should in any way question the poor oppressed muslim population of Bosnia but people should not forget what exactly it was that the Serbians where fighting Link: Al Qaeda/Mujahedeen in the Balkan war

Interesting how this one evolved. I think we see the difference between the right and left here with regard not only to knife control, but all kinds of government control, is that the right believe (wishfully and naively) that human nature will resolve all, we will sort ourselves out in a free market economy because were mostly such good honest people that we don't need control. In the case of gun and knife control wouldn't it be just great if everyone was so happy and nice that we could trust everybody to carry a knife or gun with them, well get real! I have been the victim of knife crime on more than one occasion as well as being on the receiving end of a hammer, my reaction is, I think fairly typical of those on the left in Britain, which is that we need to have a police force answerable to the government that enforces the existing law. It is perfectly legal to own a hammer, knife, sword, crossbow, screw driver or baseball bat in the right place, i.e. your home, workplace, camping site, what it is not legal to do under any circumstances is walk down the street with a knife in your pocket, having a baseball bat in your hand walking into a corner shop is illegal too and the issue of knife control in this country is about enforcing these laws. Why should anyone object to the government control over that part of our lives unless we actually want to carry a knife on the street?? The typical right wing response to knife or indeed gun control is that bad sorts carry them therefore "I" should have one to be the equalizer then everyone is in a M.A.D. Free market model safety condition... great, of course this situation is better than having some sissy nanny evil commy state control telling me what I can and can't carry right? If the right are guilty of living in cloud cuckoo land by thinking our social environment can be entrusted to individual human nature let alone should be, so is the extreme left view that the state alone can or should dictate our personal environment. I disagree with the calls to ban all military knives or swords from sale just because there is evil as this is excessive, all that needs to be done is to ensure that people don't overstep the mark from owning and using something in their private space into other peoples space and this is something that cannot be entrusted to everyone being cooperative, neither can it be tendered out to private security firms. These issues are exactly why we need a police force in the first place.

Summer Holiday - Cliff Richard, especially on Armed Recce although since installing Operation Rubicon with its thousands upon thousands of ground objects my meager little laptop makes it possible to enjoy entire Pink Floyd end of siders for my loading wav. I think I'll have pigs on the wing next time

I completely agree with your points Sparkomatic. What you say about roads need paving and garbage collected is exactly how I feel about the UK right now, I have been in more or less constant employment of some kind since leaving school, all through college and University I held down a variety of jobs including some real horrible ones, salting rawhide for one (even though am a veggie), cleaning toilets for another, throwing people out of pubs and trodding on sick after serving goths too drunk to stand beer because "thats what pays our wages" and stuck in security for 4 years. I have had enough up to my eyes of seeing the countless thousands or even millions of people in the UK who go cap in hand to the government and get given money for filling in paper. If they can complete the form then they have enough sense to realise that we have huge amounts of work in this country hence why foreign labour moves here. All too often we get the right wing moaning that "they take our jobs" or "they undercut us", well its illegal to pay under the minimum wage to UK nationals so "we" simply wont get less than that period no matter how many foreigners offer to work for less, besides the first and far more important issue is why are there jobs going spare in the first place, is it because we are just too lazy to work? I think it has to do with a lack of pride and the corresponding lack of shame, we in the UK have lost any sort of moral virtue as our grandparents had from things like family, community and or religion. Pride in traditional British things is widely equated with racisim or other such nonsense even amongst those educated enough to know that issue is not about white, black or blue but about values, ethics and actions, it is about how much pride you have for yourself as part of the community not just an community. "Respekt" is bandied about as justification for thuggish violence when what this street slang reduces down to is fear and smite. I personally have a great deal of respect for British service men and women even if the politicians get it wrong, a lot of them are pure of intent and honourable soldiers unlike the cowards who struck us in London 3 years yesterday. Both the US and the UK have their problems on many levels, corruption, bone idleness (in some communities in particular) and general confusion over how and even why should citizenship be expressed but on the whole I think the USA have their heads screwed on the right way when it comes to national pride, it is not about which asses you have kicked but about why you even exist as a country, you are a relatively new country born of Enlightenment values and you remember them, our trouble here is that we have been too busy adjusting and responding to the years that we have become lost in conflicting senses, we have four nations ruled diverging on all axis and torn, county to county within country, village and town, town and city in every direction or even street against street with nothing at the top to bring us all back together, who do we look to for when we need a sense of direction, the old couple next door or the crazy guy on tv. We need something on the official level like America, we need a new anthem about "us" not the Royal "we" and some kind of national service would be a great start, if only we could even have a celebration of our living service men and women when they come back. I find it utterly shameful that while every other funeral for British KIA makes headline news we hardly ever see a celebration for the comrades that they died for and who could just as easily died themselves, no flags waving or pressed uniforms when they go to the pub, they have to sneak in civvies instead. If loss and suffering should be the subject of mass media introspect then why cant they justify it, why they wont explain how it is that it means anything to us, are we as a nation, as I suspect, incapable of understanding what values drives them to such sacrifice? If so then we need to ask those questions of ourselves, nevermind why Ahmed plans bombs, we shouldn't need to rationalise that above our own citizens ken and we shouldn't need to be asking ourselves what it is that makes a British soldier lay their life on the line it should be taught to us at school, in the anthem, at football matches or the park, and celebration day parades. As a kid I had a dream to run away and join the USAF. Didn't work out obviously but it's nice to know that people still can enjoy the possibility to serve while working toward citizenship and at the same time it leaves a feeling of incompletion in my own lifetime, however values extend beyond frontiers as do friendships and the world keeps turning. I will hope one day to at least visit the Republic across the pond and marvel at your accomplishments in enshrining those Enlightened values that are dear to so many Europeans, Africans, Australasians and Asians alike.

Seconded!, I was foolhardy and followed exactly those steps after reinstalling xp and am still trying to fiddle about with things to try and make it fit with everything, I have merged Bunyaps and the MF's packs together as well as a myriad other specific installs and mix matched a lot of ground objects etc, having everything in one install works for me as I enjoy playing the campaigns for what they are and the single missions just as pure entertainment so I don't particularly mind seeing WW2 tanks over So cal while flying a Brit Tomcat, but what does get annoying is constantly being fired upon while out on the range, it happened 3 times today and in my favourite plane too!

Wishing: That one of these might be appearing over Europe - TSR 2, SR 71, Mig 31, F117, B1, B2. Lots and lots of carriers WoI patch ready i.e. modern radar and hud, ccip is good It comes with a steak and a slice of grilled haloumi Hype: There WILL be space weapons including a dark side of the moon terrain, a deathstar and instead of the "wall" you meet the inner edge of a dyson sphere, there are new pilot models based on the space aliens under Dave's pile of UFO spares, it is even rumoured that Chuck Norris approves this mod But the hottest news of all.. Twwwwwwo weeeeeeeks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Happy Birthday Little Bigger Half Bros!! Enjoy your big day and many happy returns from a Welshman in England

Very huge thank you to MK2, MadJeff, and all the administrators, modders and great people working hard to keep this site up, functional, open and of clearly high standards! I admire and respect all of you and wish to in some small way help the wheels go round at some point, you know the donations link is one that I have meant to click for a long while, not that I think for one minute that anyone contributes so much as you guys do to this site for personal gain because that is manifestly not the case, it is however unfair that the financial cost of maintaining a such a fantastic cache of resources for the entire community should fall so heavily on the few most dedicated men. Gentlemen I salute you :fan_1: mab

Aiit it scary though, how we look back to that old stuff and think how we could have ever thought that it was on the edge of the envelope of what was publically available for simulation of military jets! I thought those bricks and blobs would one day teach me what I needed to know to jump into a rl fighter bomber but am sooo lucky to have been a kid that grew up to see Ace Combat one before I grew a goatee, much respect to all you guys who stuck with it in the era of blips and blocks cos without you we would most likely not be around here discussing flight simulation in any way as we are today

No but i can say ****&* lool Currently single core Turion 64 2.0 GHz, 1 Gig RAM, Radeon Express 120 bit I wonder, is it feasible to replace a single core with a double core without replacing the motherboard?

Oh My Gosh!!!!! Things are getting very interesting now

My Dad (Not the pilot unfortunately lol) has some good pictures of aircraft up in his zen folio albums as already informed to anyone interested in adding them to their mods etc, however some of his friends belong to a society based around R.A.F. Valley but with pictures from all over the world, as they are not directly his work I can't say regarding permissions to use these following ones but they make some interesting viewing! This site is like aviation porn, click an interesting thumbnail and you will be greeted with not only one but a folder of pics by the same guy, as there are 8604 pics and counting it may take some time to find the particular one I was looking for but by any chance does anyone here know of a current or retired Eagle driver named "Dirty" Mc Clean?