I agree with this 100%, by the way.
Also, less I was misunderstood, his response to AOB was indeed inappropriate to GD ( a shame too, since in the last week or two he has been relatively more restrained overall ). But, no, I don’t think AOB had a good point.
Fruitbat, I don’t know wher you got that idea, *Alan Owes Bess is a poorly informed bigot there can be little doubt of this, just goto any of the previous threads on Arabs/Muslims that he has contributed to.
Because anyone who agrees with him is a sycophant, of course.
Shame he got kicked. Coll, if you’re reading, I raise a glass to you sir and your fight against a certain breed of idiot.
Actually, I really do raise a glass to you - they’ve extended the wifi network in schiphol to cover the whole airport so I can now drink and browse in the comfort of the business lounge.
Oh well, I never understood what the fuck he was talking about anyway.
See ya, Coll. Thanks for the education.
I find myself once again (gasp ;)) agreeing with Weirddave. I don’t believe it’s ever been ok for anyone to tell someone to fuck off in GD. If you feel the need to tell someone to fuck off, you should take it to the pit. He couldn’t follow the rules, so he got banned. Big surprise. And since he’d been banned once already, and been warned a couple of times since his reinstatement, it really was only a matter of time wasn’t it?
I’m quite sure he won’t be back.
I didn’t read much of his stuff in GD - I’m more of a pitizen - but I did enjoy much of it. Too bad he had to fuck up and get himself banned.
For being such an obviously intelligent guy, he sure had a hard time following the rules here. Apparently he didn’t really care that much. So why, I wonder, do we? This thread will probably go for 5 pages.
Collounsbury is a smart guy who has little patience for idiots. Reminds me a lot of the early days of Cecil Adams, actually.
As for me, I’d rather have a sharp cookie who isn’t afraid to call an asshat an asshat over a dozen mealy-minded morons any day of the week, no matter how polite they might be.
In the end, he didn’t care enough to fight ignorance. He was capable of it, he had a forum where he was listened to and an audience that appreciated his contribution. But he preferred to brawl with ignorants.
It’s not a shame he’s banned, but it’s a shame he didn’t give a fuck.
Dang, I will miss Colls again and most likely this time it is for good.
Mods make their decision but that the transgression didn’t seem much over the line IMHO. But, that is the way the board is run where polite persistent trolling-like behavior is acceptable but poke in the eye with a scapel isn’t.
Anyhoo, Colls, keep on keeping on. A true contrarian has the strength of his own views and will capitalize on a situation where others only see risk. Good luck with the fund.
Actually, Collounsbury was a smart guy who has little patience for anyone who disagrees with him. You know, not everyone with an opinion outside of the Collounsbury fountain of wisdom is an idiot deserving of abuse.
And BTW, since when was Great Debates supposed to be, “Pull up a chair and listen to experts sound off”? It’s a place for debate. That implies two sides. There is no requirement that every debater be an expert - if that was the case, all you’d hear in there is fucking crickets chirping. Rather, people who want to learn about a subject come in there, throw their opinion out into the marketplace of ideas, and then attempt to defend them using civil discourse.
If the standard is, “Hey, as long as you know what you’re talking about, you should abuse those who dare to question”, then I’m sure all of us could find plenty of opportunity to tell people who dare to venture an opinion to go fuck themselves. Do you think that’s a good idea?
And it amazes me that no one seems to question Collounsbury’s opinions given the obvious fact that he’s a hothead who can’t control himself. Do you not think this might color his perceptions of the Middle East just a tad? Sure, he knows his facts. But what color are the glasses those facts are being filtered through?
He looks at the reconstruction of Iraq, sees some decisions he doesn’t agree with with, and suddenly the place is full of fucking idiots who are heading for disaster. He sees a poster in Great Debates who disagrees with him slightly, and he’s a fucking ignorant moron who should keep his mouth shut.
Doesn’t it occur to any of you that someone who is so extreme in his opinions of others just might not be the best objective source for facts? Certainly he was -A- source for facts, but there are plenty of other people out there just as knowledgeable as he is who see things differently.
It is quite possible I am wrong about AOB. I was judging him by that one post. If there are prior bad acts to consider (Aldebaran I am looking your way) I am quite willing to revise my opinion. It still don’t follow the assumption that if Coll disagrees with you, you are probably an idiot.
I have seen perfectly reasonable people disagree with Coll and get insulted for it. Living in the region which is under discussion is not a carte blanche for Godhood. His odd Colonial British circa 1900 posting style doesn’t grant him a monopoly on the truth either.
I want to be clear that I am not at all sure I wanted to see him go. At his worst he was never less than entertaining. At his best he was informative and insightful. I just don’t like to see all of his opponents tarred with the brush of ignorance just because they dared disagree with him.
As someone who cannot be thought to be a “sycophant” (notice my location), I still think it is a shame Collounsbury had to be/get himself banned.
And no, I don’t think he was always right, or even always informative - but he was a different voice, stating a PoV that is probably under-represented on the Board (as on the Internet in general), that of the genuine ME native. I feel in the same boat sometimes (well, more like a different boat on the same ocean).
In the end, it all boils back down to Voltaire: I think we should all be willing, perhaps not to give our lives to allow him to say what he has to say, but at least to suffer his occasional abrasiveness in order to hear him out. A debate in which the leading proponent of one side cannot participate because of [even if it is multiple] technical fouls becomes B O R I N G ! (and less likely to be informative).
And on a different point: I think “I live there so I know” is, at times, a very reasonable point to make. I find myself doing the very same often enough… from my side of the fence, of course.
I’m quite disappointed to see this banning and I don’t think it’s appropriate. In my brief exposure to SDMB I’ve seen numerous posters who were bigger asses with less to say. Perhaps it’s easier to tolerate an abrasive personality when the topic is insubstantial.
Is there a petition we can sign to get Coll back?
After an initial torrent of abuse, he was always quite nice to me though we disagreed on a great many things. YMMV.
Eh, it’s too bad that he’s been banned again, but it’s even, er, more too bad that he couldn’t seem to follow one simple, clearly stated rule: no direct attacks in GD. I’m totally baffled how someone who seems so relatively intelligent could constantly fly off the handle like that, especially when he’s been warned about it time and time again.
Frankly ya gotta think that it was a bit obsessive, even for this crowd, for someone who supposedly has a full-time job (and, presumably an off-hours life) to pour out the near-daily torrent of prose that he did. And anyone that obsessive, I guess, is gonna have a few quirks.
Anyway, I’ll opt out of any petition for re-instatement. The guy knew what the had to do and didn’t do it.
Just what I wanted to say, and so much more eloquent than I could ever say it!
Thanks ** Sam Stone**
I think it is perfectly legit to pay more attention to people who might have better insight on the subject due to the fact that they live in the area, speak local language and interact with locals. Their words don’t have to be taken as an absolute truth; one can probe for inconsistencies or do own research to disprove them. To turn things upside down and say that one’s greater exposure to the issue means nothing is intellectually dishonest, IMHO.
Nope, not at all. My feeling is that many posters who try to argue that he should be exempted from the rules the rest of us have to follow, simply because he has a biting wit and says that he is the end all be all of ME knowledge are exhibiting sychophantic behavior. The issue has never been Coll’s posting content, it is his posting style and open contempt for the rules of this board.
Oh, and BTW, Tam, I would never have even considered you in that catagory. You post with a frightiningly complete grasp of a subject that I have enjoyed most of my life, one that I actually chose to major in in college, military history, with a depth of knowlegde that dwarfs my own. To the best of my recolection, however, you have never posted about, say, the War of the Roses justifying your opinion with “Well, I was there, so I know what I’m talking about”.
[Sympathy for the Devil]
Ooo, who, Ooo, who
[/SFTD]
It would be kind of scary if you did. 
To bad Col had to get himself banned. If I were running the board I wouldn’t have banned him, myself. Sometimes a fucking asshole deserves to be called a fucking asshole. But he clearly couldn’t abide by the rules here, regardless of whether the rules were right or wrong.
I don’t think he was always right, but he always contributed. I agree with Sam that I doubt his judgemental attitude was confined solely to the SDMB, he seems like the kind of guy who makes up his mind and then God help anyone who stands in his way. Maybe that’s the way you have to be to get things done in the business world he was in.
Oh, and I wouldn’t expect Col to be reinstated. He had his second chance, and he couldn’t abide by the rules that governed him. Yes, I imagine that there are many trolls and jerks here that violate the rules and get away with it now and then. But he was a high profile poster, he was on double secret probation after his first banning, and he knew that if he let himself speak in his natural idiom he’d be banned again. And so he got banned again. Not really surprising. Col was essentially constitutionally unable to abide by the board’s policy. Even if he agreed to tone it down one more time, he’d eventually slip up and have to be banned for a third time.
So let’s just skip over the whole third act. It’s a given that he’d insult some idiot again, he wouldn’t be able to help himself. Too bad, but there it is.