[jome]

They have precisely as much power as people give them. I applaud Carlos' choice! That's the spirit.

Luckily it's not a problem for me...All I ever got from CMAS was a scuba license and I would not be heart broken even if they somehow could revoke it...I guess it could be a problem for finswimmers and uw rugby players in our country (is UW rugby a CMAS discipline?), who would also like to compete in freediving...

An organization should realize, that when they have to bully people into sticking with them, they have seriously derailed. The only way you can compete in a free society is by making your offerings appealing enough that people will WANT to stick with you. Otherwise someone else is just going to move into that business. Just look at all the record labels...At least some of them are coming around and noticing that someone invented a little thing called "the Internet" and it's not an evil invention from Satan, but a great tool and a lot of money can be made from it.