Ok, sorry. You are right of course. I will refrain from further posting.
Peter wrote:
Are some people really not doing any flying these days?
I don’t know – I flew yesterday from Bosnia to Croatia, everything was normal except of increased military activity.
It’s not “further posting”. It is the overall mix.
What happens is this: many thousands of people come to EuroGA every day. They are ok with a mix of GA topics, and some (not many) dip into the off topic / politics thread because occassionally it has some “juicy” bits.
But if all they see, on a visit after visit, is the OT/politics posts, they lose interest and leave. And many will never come back. One can tell people to simply not read it, but they still do, and sometimes what they find does not reflect well on the forum as a whole. I know for a fact that over the years many have left due to some of the stuff posted in this thread. But even if they don’t read this thread, the near-total lack of GA material makes people leave and mostly not come back, too.
To put it more bluntly: to get an entitlement to post here, you need to contribute generally on the forum.
It’s a bit like the rule we have on commercial postings:
We want to encourage businesses to participate – because a lot of the time they are the only ones who might have answers. The only conditions are that it is done under the company’s full name and that the poster does genuinely participate in the forum generally. Unfortunately most business posters just want free advertising and don’t want to contribute anything 
Malibuflyer wrote:
Science can impossibly tell us if that is a good or bad thing and even more impossibly tell us what to do! If a scientist try to do that, he is stepping out of his role as scientist and has no better authorization to do so than any ordinary JoeEven if 100% of world population would fully except the predictions from “the climate scientists”, it would still be a meaningful discussion if we react to that by trying to stop all carbon emission or if we should not rather invest in hundreds of nuclear power plants, research of air-conditioning technology and improvement of dams at the major coasts.
I do agree with this.
For the record: I don’t agree with the people who e.g. think that we should stop developing CO2-capturing technology because that only addresses “the symptom.” To me that is very close to luddite thinking.
As to Ukraine. I still think it’s crucial that Putin is given a way out in a form that he can justify as a victory. Would it not make sense to give him the Eastern part of UKR, including the whole coast line of the Black Sea? Yes, an amputation of UKR for sure, but the fighting needs to stop for humanitarian reasons and for our own security, as we cannot be sure that he will not blow his fuses if he has not already done so. Those close to him can not be trusted to contain the guy.
Once the situation is stabilized, then the process starts to get rid of him in whatever form. Because he needs to go.
aart wrote:
Because he needs to go.
Exactly. However, appeasing (mad) dictators never works. Just think back to the Munich Agreement when Hitler was given the Sudetenland. Did he stop there? You know the answer.
aart wrote:
As to Ukraine. I still think it’s crucial that Putin is given a way out in a form that he can justify as a victory.
The question is if the train has not left the station for this. Putin demands the resignation of the President of Ukraine and his government. He won’t agree just to get Donbas or whatever else he has conquered so far with Selensky in power. After what they have achieved, would Selensky do that? I fear he will fight until either he is killed or arrested. By which time Kiew will look like Grosny.
aart wrote:
Yes, an amputation of UKR for sure, but the fighting needs to stop for humanitarian reasons and for our own security, as we cannot be sure that he will not blow his fuses if he has not already done so.
very true.
aart wrote:
Once the situation is stabilized, then the process starts to get rid of him in whatever form. Because he needs to go.
Absolutely. And the Russians themselves must see this and do it.
172driver wrote:
Just think back to the Munich Agreement when Hitler was given the Sudetenland. Did he stop there? You know the answer.
It was a slightly different situation, with the war not having started. Also there was no European let alone transatlantic alliance to tell him, you violate that agreement and we will come for you. The question in history is still, was the Munich agreement in itself a mistake? It did defuse a situation but only for a short time. Had Europe used the time between the agreement and the start of the war to make sure the moment he starts a war he’d be facing a totally united force, that agreement would have looked different today.
I am 100% with Aart and also with Esteban that the war as well as the threat now existing quite real by a dictator in a corner needs to be dealt with first and foremost. Everything else comes afterwards. But come it must.
I value the opinions here.
Can I get some predictions (in each of your own opinions) of how this thing will pan out?
This war will last as long as Putin is able to conduct it. It won’t stop because of peace negotiations persuade him he’s wrong or the war is not solution for the problem. It will stop at the very moment when he’s not able to proceed economically, military or physically – in other words when Russia is economically devastated, their military is defeated or non-supplied or when Putin is physically eliminated.
I agree.
I am from Czechoslovakia, BTW. Prague, Pribram, England in 1969. Remember the tanks in 1968 well.
