[Bob Kuczewski]

I am no longer trying to get back to being a poster in Jack's forum because of his published and practicing polices and ways and means. Thank you for your actions toward an unban result--appreciated. Even if unbanned, I'd not publish in Jack's forum until severe changes are made in his policies and practices.

I don't remember how old I was when my peers began having this kind of conversation:

      We don't want you here!
      Fine. I don't want to be here!!

I'm pretty sure it was sometime before 4th grade. It's a natural reaction: "You don't want me, well I don't want you". The "we don't want you" tactic has been used again and again by the thugs at Torrey. I have videos of the "we don't want you" part. And even though there was a screaming 4th grade voice inside me, I never gave them the satisfaction of hearing me say "fine, I don't want to be here." That's the reaction they wanted and they haven't gotten it to this day.

It's interesting to look back at how that tactic was also used in the HGAA. I think two of our good members left that way ... by essentially self-banning. The same has happened at USHPA. This is a place where Frank and I agree. People can be more effective working from the inside than from the outside (assuming that they're actually working). That's why USHPA expelled me. They surely wanted to make me less effective at achieving reform.

It's also important to remember that by giving up, you not only reward the bullies, but you also abandon the others who haven't given up and are still working for change. It's like dropping the police report just when the bad guys are caught. The police (who may have risked their lives to make the arrest) can't help but be disappointed. Also, imagine how ineffective Rosa Parks would have been if she'd said "Fine. I don't fit on this racist bus anyway" and stomped off rather than be arrested and bring the matter to court.

Just a few things to think about.   

[JoeF]

Bob, the "things to think about" may be expanded:

1. I am on the "inside" of hang gliding working for reform and new form. I am free to contact any hang glider pilot that cares to be contacted; and my flow is to achieve just that.

2. Being on the inside of sg's space slows me down, as there is ever energy to face sg's rightful ownership of his private property; and he is firmly set to form ends that are not something I support. He has been extremely consistent managing his private property forum space the way that he does. He has robbed Torrey Hawks and maintains a robbery; he could be taken to court and end up paying Torrey Hawks hardcore damages; for years I have repeated to you of my estimate on that culpability.

3. Being on the inside of sg's private-property forum space is giving away good time and asset that may be applied to RHG.

4. I am on the outside of all all my neighbors' private bedrooms doing works that benefit the neighborhood. I am in the neighborhood solidly renewing the neighborhood.

5. I have shared with you that I've always winced at myself whenever I posted in sg's forum space; the wincing was guilt for compromising my integrity; my integrity would not have posted ever following insight of how sg runs his private property. I must again thank the US Hawks process for helping me move to be more united in myself about such nicking away at my integrity.

6. A comparison with Rosa Parks in bus does not align with sg's protected private property rights; Rosa won a seat appropriately; law well protects rightly sg's right to his private property.

7. Sg fumbled in the manner that he banned; he could have used another tactic less onerous; but he had a clear right to ban.

8. Just because I have grown more clear does not automatically mean the sour-grapes syndrome is operating. Care to avoid a non-sequitor.

9. I want to be in well-formed forums. I am in one that is pretty well well-formed.

10. You have done great and good HG works via focus on the US Hawks. May such continue ever more fruitfully. sg is welcome to join the conversation about RHG here in US Hawks forum where great things are underway.

[Bob Kuczewski]

Joe,

I am glad you are finding a peace for yourself in this injustice.

But it is an injustice. It is a choice taken from you that was not deserved. This remains true regardless of whether you want to use it or not. You may not want to post there today, but what about tomorrow and the next day and the next?

Rightful ownership of a gun does not confer a right to shoot people. I have heard the "it's a business" excuse granted to Jack too many times. Having a business does not confer a right to do things that are harmful to the public or to members of the public. According to Wikipedia, the Montgomery City Lines bus company was the National City Lines subsidiary that operated the municipal transit system for Montgomery, Alabama where Rosa Parks was arrested. Could they have used the "private business" excuse to continue segregation? Could another purely private bus company have sprung up to service white people only? Would such a "business" be allowed to operate today?

I can imagine that posting to Jack's forum was a burden to you due to the constant attacks by Jack's minions and USHPA's minions. Again, their goal was to shut you up and make you go away. They wanted that for a reason. They know that Jack's platform reaches a large segment of pilots and they wanted to deny you that reach - for both you and USHGRS. That's an injustice regardless of legal status. Indeed, laws can be wrong as also reflected in the civil rights movement. People had to break existing laws for the higher cause of justice. The courts are the watchful arbiters over what is just ... not the legislators.

What Jack did to you was wrong. It was just as wrong as any private club excluding people by race. Both may be legal, but "legal" does not equal "right". Membership in Jack's forum needs to be branded with the same public disgust as membership in the KKK. You give up important high ground on that argument by saying you didn't want to be there anyway. The truth is that you would have continued to post there willingly if you hadn't been driven out by bullying and banning. The same is true of Rick Masters on paraglidingforum.com.

I'll say again, Rosa Parks did not win her fight for justice in either the court of law or the court of public opinion by walking away and saying "I didn't want to ride those racist busses anyway".

Some action against segregation had been in the works for some time before Parks' arrest, under the leadership of E. D. Nixon, president of the local NAACP chapter and a member of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. Nixon intended that her arrest be a test case to allow Montgomery's black citizens to challenge segregation on the city's public buses. With this goal, community leaders had been waiting for the right person to be arrested, a person who would anger the black community into action, who would agree to test the segregation laws in court, and who, most importantly, was "above reproach".

            wikipedia.org/wiki/Montgomery_bus_boycott

[JoeF]

The bad deeds of sg are evident. He is not yet changing or making amends. He still has time. May most of the good text be found in this forum and so attract more good RHG text!!!

[Free]

9. I want to be in well-formed forums. I am in one that is pretty well well-formed.

10. You have done great and good HG works via focus on the US Hawks. May such continue ever more fruitfully. sg is welcome to join the conversation about RHG here in US Hawks forum where great things are underway.

I'm going to skip a lot of things I want to comment about in the interest of launching this idea and getting back outside in 55* sunshine, 16 Dec.
The last few posts by Bob and Joe were very powerful to me in pointing to a possible solution.

RHG could upgrade it's web links and add a message board. I want to contribute whatever it takes to hand the keys of a true hang gliding community to the best person in the universe to run it.
The fence sitters and those sick of injustice can also quietly pitch in and not even get banned by the little dictator known as bunny boy/speed glider.

Web design is not my forte but I'm thinking there's off the shelf web services that take care of whatever you want to pay for. I'm not wanting anything to be added to Joe's work load but provide the format/structure that Joe can populate with all the history and RHG he possibly can.
I know Discus? and others run comment boards. Plug and play on that?
A premium web look and a no bs operation by a web host would be attractive for many pilots and pilot wannabees tired of the doppelgangers run by petty children.
How much do I need to donate?
Who wants to help make this happen?
Maybe open up an anonymous poll where pilots can make their intentions known without evoking the ire of the child dictators.

[Bob Kuczewski]

RHG could upgrade it's web links and add a message board. I want to contribute whatever it takes to hand the keys of a true hang gliding community to the best person in the universe to run it.
The fence sitters and those sick of injustice can also quietly pitch in and not even get banned by the little dictator known as bunny boy/speed glider.

Frank has hinted about starting something like that on Dec 4th, 2018, but I haven't seen anything come of it. Here's his post from the 5th page in the Wall of Shame topic:

Fantastic!!!!! Right on to both rick and MBS.

If Hawks becomes the bitch, bitch, bitch, forum only those who love to bitch will be here.

I got a phone call from a well known hang glider / paraglider pilot a couple of evenings ago and he said there a lot of PG pilots who are also completely dissatisfied with the strangle hold USHPA has on both sports. I think the momentum is building toward the formation of a new national org or perhaps two if we seperate HG and PG. With that momentum we can begin!

This org needs to start like the original USHGA started with a complete BOD and a phone / email contact and probably a Facebook account (I personally don;t do Facebook). The person who called me said he didn't think we could use forums anymore, to start a new organization. Also in order to even get a start Bob needs to be completely unassociated with it other than being a regular member, if he chooses. Bob, I love you, but you have poisoned the water and anything associated with you gets slammed before it can get born. Joe and I and others get shut out because we are your friends. Any new national org has to be independent of Bob and not have Bob's "fingerprints" on it so that its life can begin.

Believe me, from the bottom of my heart, it hurts to say that but it has become completely apparent to me.

Sorry Bob,
Frank

First off, I will join and support any organization that enables me to fly my local sites that are now controlled by USHPA. Let me know as soon as such an organization exists.

My concern over starting more organizations is that it further fractures us. We've had the U.S. Hawks as an organization for 8 years now. We issue U.S. Hawks ratings, and we have an Advisory Board of Directors. We also endorse pilots using USHGRS for their ratings. The only thing we don't have is insurance, and insurance is purely a numbers game. I don't see how a new organization is going to solve that problem unless someone has either the numbers or the money to solve the insurance problem.

I've taken a lot of blame for making "enemies" for the U.S. Hawks. But as soon as another organization gets going, don't you think USHPA and Jack and Davis will come gunning after the new organization? They'll quickly find that their posts are in the basement and their web site links are mangled. They'll be banned quickly enough, and then they'll know what we all learned 8 years ago.

But maybe that's what they need to do (as quickly as possible) in order to figure out that they shouldn't be throwing the U.S. Hawks under the bus trying to kiss Jack's butt.

[Bob Kuczewski]

I recently posed this question:

Should Joe Faust have been banned from hanggliding.org?

Joe answered:

My answer:
Yes and No.

Yes: Reason: I just didn't fit well into that space.
I should not have been there in the first place.
I've gotten clearer about such matter, thanks to this recent processing;
thanks to all those who have been part of this process. And thanks to
US Hawks for a place to process such flows. There might come a time
when that space is modified so that I'd fit. I hope others are benefiting
from the process.

No: Reason: It was not my choice then to leave. I was following polices and being polite.

Perhaps Joe was the one person I should have excluded from answering that question. I believe Joe's humble nature often predisposes him to subordinate his own rights to the rights of others. So maybe I should have posed a different question for Joe.

Maybe I should have asked Joe if Frank should have been banned if Frank had posted Joe's exact same posts. Maybe I should have asked Joe if Scott or Sam or Rick or Red or Michael should have been banned if they had posted Joe's exact same posts. I suspect Joe's answer would have been a much simpler "NO!".

Joe did go on to add a few more words to the topic:

The bad deeds of sg are evident. He is not yet changing or making amends. He still has time. May most of the good text be found in this forum and so attract more good RHG text!!!

The bad deeds of Jack Axaopoulos are indeed evident. The bad deeds of Jack Axaopoulos have been evident for over 8 years. But the bad deeds of Jack Axaopoulos have never been more evident than they have been with his mistreatment and eventual banning of Joe Faust.

Jack Axaopoulos knows that his bad deeds are highly evident right now. That's why Jack just recently pulled his "basement" from public view. Jack's long history of misdeeds - already buried in his basement - weren't buried deep enough. So Jack buried them even deeper. Jack is sending a message. He's sending the message that he knows he's gone too far. He knows he's on thin ice. But rather than reverse his bad deeds, Jack Axaopoulos is doubling down on them.

Sadly, the silence from Jack's loyalists has been deafening. The idle chit chat goes on as if nothing happened. No one will mention the atrocity that they all shared. It's the morning after the lynching, and the town goes about its business as usual without the sound of Joe Faust. Everyone pretends not to notice because their fear is greater than their self respect.

[Free]

Was in too much hurry yesterday when I last posted and wasn't clear enough in what was proposed.
I wasn't suggesting a new organization but just an enhanced web site for USHGRS that included a message board, a direct response to the blatant censorship of Jack's money making message board. A message board is all he has and no one is married to it other than convenience.

Joe has so much information and history to draw the crowd away from that if a message board was included in an enhanced USHGRS web site.
The only fracturing, imo, would be to Jack's no-service coffee shop.
I'm thinking an honestly run message board would be symbiotic in relation to USHAWKS.

The bad deeds of sg are evident. He is not yet changing or making amends. He still has time. May most of the good text be found in this forum and so attract more good RHG text!!!

I think Jack's time has run out.

[Free]

Sadly, the silence from Jack's loyalists has been deafening. The idle chit chat goes on as if nothing happened. No one will mention the atrocity that they all shared. It's the morning after the lynching, and the town goes about its business as usual without the sound of Joe Faust. Everyone pretends not to notice because their fear is greater than their self respect.

Fear and self interest are greater than their self respect.
I used to think everyone with enough inspiration or motivation to fly hg were a step above the hub-bub.
Not so much anymore.
Hey, I see the lying thief, Blindrodie, member in good standing at Jack's living room/coffee shop has put up a poll on the consolidation of power grab at u$hPa.
Considering that I didn't get to vote on the consolidation power grab by the Gaar crime syndicate that stole my Dragonfly, it would naturally follow that I can not vote on the ongoing u$hPa power grab poll in Jack's money maker coffee shop.

I think I actually hope they get away with it. Maybe they will change the name again with something more reflective of the true nature of the enterprise.
Maybe something with Mark Forbes in the name.. MF Dirty Deeds INC for instance..

[JoeF]

Free, thanks for your studies, concerns, insights, and suggestions.
By your

that if a message board was included in an enhanced USHGRS web site.

synergy, a major addition has been added to the USHGRS front page: USHGRS