I have installed it, and everything seems to work, however:
Motif-isms in buttons and lists are gone, and correct fonts and charsets are used, as opposed to what Netscape 4.x does.
To disable gtk themes I had to change $HOME to the directory without.gtkrc, as nothing else worked.
SSL didn't work correctly until I made netscape installation directory writable by user running it.
There were no problems with Java or Flash plugin -- Java is actually the reason why I am using it instead of Mozilla, as later Mozilla snapshots changed the API and don't work with latest Java plugin anymore.
I have read the specifications. Unicode requirement is a "rider", something added to the standard to serve purpose completely unrelated to the standard's purpose. I hope, it will go away just like requirement for ASCII-only text went away when software that implemented RFC-822, SMTP, NNTP and FTP refused to put that restriction into most of implementations after it was found that it causes nothing but harm.
I agree that it's nice to have Unicode supported, but only as one of charsets -- by default everything that can be charset-blind and data-transparent should be done that way, so if implementation of multiple charsets is necessary for user interface or some other purpose, it should be easy to add on top of that. XML, of course, is not designed that way, as it standardizes the use of multiple languages per document but defines only one charset per document -- a feature that, I believe, was added to serve partisan interest of promoting the use of Unicode over all other charsets. In fact, XML can be easily extended to support multiple charsets per document, and implementation of charset attribute would be a no-brainer if not the "political" decision of W3C to support Unicode consortium and not provide a better umbrella for national standards (ISO 2022 is the last, and very poor example of providing an umbrella -- among other problems it's not extensible), and actually XML and HTML are currently the best starting points for thing like that. Too bad, right now there is no alternative to do that but by forking standards, as W3C and IETF, led by "unicoders", are unwilling to do it within their framework.
Can you give an example of what you mean by creating processing routines without using some external information?
Any kind of data that reflects something in real life. For example, description of financial transactions, where only certain combinations of values are valid, and the effect of transaction should be calculated using known algorithms based on the document content itself and the database that describes entities involved that can be known only partially to each party (say, I don't know, how much money a brokerage and the government have, but I do know how to calculate brokerage fee and taxes when I sell stock, and I know how it affects my account -- but I can't just ask INS and brokerage to give me a bunch of machine-readable definitions that when compiled will allow me to process those things automatically).
XML 1.0 is the W3C's first Recommendation for the Extensible Markup Language, a system for defining, validating, and sharing document formats on the Web
I don't see the word "displaying" or any synonym for it anywhere in this definition. Documents may be shared for any kind of purpose, and displaying is just one of them.
The primary use of the web has displaying information since it was invented. As far as I can tell, XML does exactly it was designed to.
Not true. HTTP was created as the protocol to transfer HTML files and images, however since HTTP 1.0 full MIME types support was added, and protocol was transformed into "better FTP". I don't think, rpm file that I have downloaded to update Red Hat distribution yesterday was ever meant to be displayed -- it serves its purpose only by being processed by rpm utility, and most of data that it contains is not human readable at all. XML is supposed to be used in the same way -- in my example of financial transaction (for what OFX format may be used -- it has first SGML-based and later XML-based version) the functionality is completely unrelated to the display of data, and even if such information is displayed, financial transactions usually are not displayed in the way as they are performed, but converted and combined together to be human-readable using external algorithms.
I would show you an example of a huge loss that was mostly wasted effort of reimplementing things multiple times and extending the format/protocol in ways that it was not able to accomodate because no one else designed their systems to be compatible with it, but the problem is... format is still closed, so how can I publish anything about it?
As I recall, an XML DTD can optionally include CSS information. This would enable a
user agent (browser) to display an xml document correctly.
Who said anything about displaying information? Most of information isn't meant to be displayed as often as it should be processed, and my complaint is about inability to create any processing routines without using some external information, even if the standard can be easily formalized in the form of constraints and processing algorithms that correspond to the nature of data. I understand that in this obsessed with GUI consumer software industry people are more likely to first think about pretty forms of displaying the data, but for any kind of real work this would be tail wagging the dog.
You miss the point. If the encapsulation of encoding information will be standardizes, all encoding-specific finctions will have to be written only once (by people who understand them), and then just reused with a simple library that can just dynamically load procedures for whatever encoding it encounters, as it will be able to get encoding names from the text. That can be easily extensible without any trouble -- as opposed to Unicode, where any kind of extension causes new incompatible version of the standard to be adopted.
Better yet, it will be safe to consider all unlabeled data to be "binary", and cause all software to preserve it in the unchanged form until someone will label it -- this will be of great help in situations where pieces of data have unknown language or can't be assigned any encoding and shouldn't be treated like a text in some language except by few programs that understand the meaning of that data. With mandatory Unicode someone has to assign nonexistent language to them to convert to Unicode at some point, thus risking that things will be distorted, as, say, data may look like valid (or invalid) UTF-8 yet be something else. With labeling it can be just labeled as data with no charset/encoding/language assigned, and all language-processing and protocol-related routines will just keep it unchanged.
No one ever made money on selling DTDs -- formats exist to be used, and keeping a "secret" DTD makes no sense as it can be easily reverse-engineered if someone really needed it. The only people who benefit from closed formats are ones that make their whole business model around selling software that implements them -- a model that is counterproductive for actual use of information.
Are you a moron? The whole question is about definition -- contrary to the popular belief XML is not a unified standard for representation of a structured data, it's an umbrella standard for different kinds of data representation formats. And to use any of those XML-based formats one needs:
DTD or Schema
Description (in human-readable form) of what data actually means and what restrictions are placed on it
XML was and is criticized for the lack of means to convert the second into a code that can be automatically included in the first and used to create programs that operate with the data according to its semantics -- all DTD is good for is to automatically determine if certain input is indeed compliant with it (what is called "validation", even though it never guarantees that data is valid or consistent from the application or data model point of view), and for human to read the description and write a code to process the data.
While XML still sucks because no such connection between formats amd semantics can be established, the original question was about publishing first (and hopefully the second), so others will be able to write applications that use the same format. DTD can apply to either XML or SGML, but in this case there isn't much difference between them in the results for the programmer, as he will end up doing all the job after some simple parser deserialized the data.
The
cornerstone of text in HTML and XML is Unicode.
It isn't. People who use non-iso8859-1 characters always demanded equality of charsets and usable ways of encapsulation of the charset information (MIME has it in the headers, but no standard for document body was developed, even though it's easy if someone actually tried to establish it as a standard). Unicode is one of "standards" that everyone who is supposed to benefit from, is fighting against, yet committee of "unicoders" don't listen. A lot of Internet standards were infested with "mandatory use of Unicode" only because of the efforts of a single, but extremely persistent and annoying person -- Martin Duerst.
Maybe he is, but I am a programmer, and I completely agree with him. If you can't make a living by producing standards-compliant HTML, your aren't qualified for your work, and garbage that you produce doesn't deserve whatever your clients pay you -- in other words, you are a scammer, and everyone has all reasons to criticize you. Get the **ck out of this "business" and learn to make a living by honest means.
Also, you again assume that I am ignoring Russia's role in World War Two. That's not true, just for the sake of time and space I lump Russia together with the rest of the Allied powers, and atrocities committed in Russia with those in Germany. I won't even go into the rest of the distortions you make to my position's, because I am tired of debating you.
Huh? You "lump together" Russia and other Allies when it's convenient, and when it allows you to ignore the fact that Russia's role in WWII is quite different from one of US (or from anyone else if it matters).
It doesn't surprise me that you live in America yet have not one good thing to say about the country that allows you freedom from the discrimination you faced in your home land.
I owe NOTHING to this country, and I suffer from more discrimination and humiliation here than I did in Russia. I came here because I couldn't find a job in Russia after its economy was foolishly dismantled along with its political system, and being a programmer I came to a country where my chances to get a job are the best. I don't assign any political/ideological value to my choice whatsoever, and find it the most honest way of making this kind of choice.
Actions speak louder than words, so why don't you use that American passport of your's and move to a country where the people and the politics match your views and principals?
I don't have an American passport, and at best I will have to wait six more years before government will consider me to be "good enough" to become a citizen. I lived here for six years already on H-1B visa (plus a year before that on B-2 visa), and was unable even to change employers without long and humiliating procedure (that seems to be changed few months ago, right after my H-1B expired, thanks for nothing), so I had less "freedom" than what I had under Communists. I paid taxes to the government that I couldn't even vote for, my work supported US economy, so I definitely owe nothing to you, your government and your corporations.
The act of staying here alone is to support the corporations, individuals and the government's present and future foriegn policy mistakes.
I feel no obligation toward this country -- it exploits me, I have all rights to exploit it, but having rather strict moral rules, I believe, everything that I did here only helped others in the end. "Staying here" is not an approval or disapproval of what this country did or does, blind "patriotism" may be a part of American culture, but it has no place in my head.
Especially if ALL Americans are ignorant and complacent about our
government's activities as you claim so often. You know that you can't make a
difference and you are fooling yourself if you claim to be here for any other reason
than your own personal gain. You are entitled to your opinions under America's
political system, you are even entitled to hate America while reaping the benefits of
living here.
That's ok, I am entitled to think that you are an ingrate who needs to show the country
you choose to live in some respect or else pack up your bags and leave.
Again -- I didn't come here to improve America, I probably do that just by being there, but this is an unintended side effect, not in any way my goal. If my expression of this will help -- fine, if not -- sucks, but I didn't choose this place because I love its government. I don't see why "personal gain" is less respected reason for choosing a country than ideology -- I am not a politician but engineer, so I live like an engineer and where I can apply my knowledge, skills and abilities better without doing something that is radically contrary to my beliefs. My work improves the technology in the direction that not only makes people's life better, but even makes them less dependent on overblown corporations -- if there is something political about my work here, it's this.
I also completely disagree that the fact that I was born abroad makes me "ingrate" for living here. Again, this country takes from me more than from others and gives less, so if someone should be ashamed, it's government and INS that discriminate against me just because I was born somewhere else. In this country discriminating against someone of different race is not "politically correct" (since recently) but discriminating against foreigner who moved here and leads productive, beneficial for others, life for many years is ok, and not only government feels no shame about it, people like you dare to tell me that I am "ingrate" and that I should not express any protest against it. This is the ultimate expression of hypocrisy and selective thinking -- the same one that supported rampant racism in this country in the first place.
Then I challenged your assertion that you were in any position to speak on the subject of racism and backed it up with my personal stake in the issue. The fact that you are Jewish and have been persecuted for it doesn?t prove to me that you are not a racist.
Am I supposed to "prove" that? I thought, declaring my position and following it consistently is more than enough for it to be true -- and my behavior in all my life is very consistent with the idea that I don't support any form of racism.
It?s not that I believe that you wouldn?t discriminate against someone due to any racial or ethnic factors. But how closely would you associate with someone who was different than you, would you be friends, marry, engage yourself in their culture? As close as I do, I doubt it, but I won?t assume that you would or would not, note that I do ask the question of you rather than assume anything about you.
So now it means that I should not just respect, consider people of all nations equal and accept their differences, but accept just everyone who can be "different than me" equally to be my personal friend or family member, and sincerely accept just any kind of culture that exists in the world? Of course, I won't differentiate people by nationality -- but no one has a "right" to be my friend, I can choose friends depending by my preferences, and nationality doesn't happen to be one of them, but compatibility with my cultural background does, and I expect the same from others. I wouldn't want, say, a wife that will be religious no matter what nationality she is, because that will be incompatible with my philisophy. Incompatible is incompatible, and I am not going to allow anyone whom I don't like to force his/her constant presence on me in my personal life, I am not going to force myself to like anything and anyone. Most of my friends are Russian not because I "discriminate" toward others but because we share the same pieces of memory, culture, philosophy -- things that I will be happy to accept in everyone else, but rarely find in people who haven't studied Russian culture and lived in Russia. I don't see Russians as being "better", and a lot of my friends are Americans, but I don't think that the fact that I have mostly Russian friends means that I "discriminate" others -- also most of my friends are Unix programmers, and sets of Russians and Unixoids among my friends only partially overlap.
Saying the same thing in more general way, only a person who has no culture can "closely associate" with everyone despite of differences, and I don't have to make excuse for not liking someone whose set of values is radically different from my own. Nationality has nothing to do with it.
Your last line about disgust at discrimination of any kind is kind of ironic, since it?s that same feeling about your prejudice against America that keeps me wasting my time replying to your posts. (Coincidentally, your assumptions about me without basis of fact would be a good example of prejudice as the word applies to an attitude, not just racism.)
Don't mix nation and culture. I can get American passport, but that won't automatically change my culture. What I oppose is American values and traditions -- values that include worshipping US as the best country in everything everywhere, without allowing any acknowledgement of seriouslu negative actions toward others, and traditions of teaching children whitewashed history and pride in things that are nothing to be proud of. There are other pieces of American culture that I dislike, but this one is relevant to this discussion. I have seen americans who were able to overcome those things, and I respect them more than if they lived in an environment more favorable to critical thought, but this doesn't change the fact that their achievement is not a part of American culture -- mass media, education, etc. still are heavy on propaganda, heavier than what I have seen in Russia in 70's-80's, and probably the same as in Russia in 30's-50's. Russians always had large piece of intellectual elite that opposed it, and the survival of this elite was THE reason for accepting thoughts that were contrary to government's propaganda in 80's and subsequent dismantling of Communist Party rule and USSR. The same elite now accepts the blame for doing a lot to destroy and little to build a better country, and this is a different story, but what is important, there always were people who understood misdeeds of the government, both in and outside the country, they protested not just to shock someone but to express this, and in the end people understood. American culture has no such thing. No one is keeping track of horrible actions and lies of the government, no one is thinking about it, and certainly no one makes an effort to give this knowledge to the masses in a form that will allow them to understand, get scared and disgusted, accept, grow morally and think about that every time when something similar can happen again. This is american culture, elite has the money to play with, others have shiny things and are too busy to care, kids are too lazy to read, so if they do it should be something simple to understand -- "we are great". Exceptions are not in a kind of movement, they are just that, exception, outsiders, no one cares for their ideas, no one publishes them, no one votes for them, and they don't see any point in communicating their ideas to the others -- even though Internet is the best place for "samizdat", no one uses it that way here.
You can accuse America of clumsiness in it?s handling of foreign affairs, but not of outright malice. Ask a citizen of Kuwait what they think of America and our intervention in Iraq?s invasion of
their country. Then ask a citizen of Iraq the same question. I have had the luxury of
speaking to both, one a doctor, the other a student at the local school I mentioned earlier. It doesn?t take a genius to figure out who supported American involvement and who
opposed it. Right and wrong are relative concepts, historical facts are historical facts, you
can use the same facts or statistics to prove or disprove anything you want.
I happen to have the benefit of being born in the country that never was invaded by Americans, and right now I live in US. This makes it easier for me to make comparisons. The fact is, no country (at all!) in the Middle East is satisfied with what Americans did there -- some believe that Americans should get the hell out now, no matter what, as they screwed up a lot and can only screw up more, others believe that since Americans entered the region and destroyed the balance of power there, Americans should keep things from blowing up, but absolutely no one supports the idea that Americans' presence actually improved anything, or that anyone owes anything to US. Even Israeli -- and Israel became completely dependent on US in everything political by now.
American people have strange idea that when bad things happen in other country, US "couldn't take it anymore" and goes there to set things straight. No country ever does that -- internationsl politics simply can't work that way even if someone tried to. US threatens, economically enslaves, or even attacks other countries when it sees it being beneficial for US government or corporations -- excuses often sound noble and great, but they are just excuses, after all the result of Americans' interference never has anything to do with the "cause" that was announced. This is not clumsiness, this is plain undiluted selfishness at the expense of everyone else, this is what people call "blood for oil". Clumsiness is what Clinton did on Israel-Palestina peace talks, pushing both sides to the agreement that neither side was ready for -- and it still can be argued that if he thought more about Palestinians and Israeli interests than about his place in history books he would not try to reach an agreement before his term ends -- if talks are handled well, he personally can get out, and sides will still be able to decide the details, and if his presence is still necessary, damned will be a person who will start discussing anything that involve Jerusalem. But yes, I think, it's still can be called clumsiness. Kosovo and Iraq can't.
The rest of the world learned that the best way for powerful country to keep other from fighting is to STAY OUT. To make a policy, that no matter how many children are killed in a localized conflict, if countries involved are small, larger player shouldn't enter simply because everyone will start playing him and his interests, and damage will be huge. If country is powerful enough to threaten most of the world, it should stay out of everything that doesn't touch it directly -- even Russia managed to learn it pretty quickly. "Keeping the peace" by throwing around enormous force never works, and no one ever succeeded in doing that, this is something that US should never do and never pretend to do -- and if it ever tried to keep its hands out of everyone's pies, it would gain a respect of the people abroad, and I would not feel ashamed that I live in this country. Of course, I can dream about honest used car salesmen (anywhere in the world), too.
Your answer is as large as it's unreadable, so I have to answer in multiple messages
At what point do I say ?both sides are somehow right?? Putting words in my mouth is as
dirty a conversational tactic as any you accuse me of, but I?ll get to that later.
You said that you will rather discuss that with friendly people at local college. I have explained, what kind of "balanced point of view" you will find there, as this is what is supposed to be "politically correct" at the moment -- it was "we are right, and everyone else is a servant of Satan!", now it is "we are still right, but other side has some minor point that we can acknowledge but can't mention because it's so nonessential to the fact that we are still right". Guess what -- in this case Americans are plain wrong, and could admit it if not ignorance and arrogance that they are so famous for in the rest of the world.
Educate
me then, tell me, what part of American history even remotely compares to the genocide
and atrocities committed by the Nazi?s or by the Russians under Stalin?s rule?
I would, but first, it's way far from the original topic of WWII, second, the amount of time and space don't allow me to explain why absolutely every occasion when US used its military (or semi-military) abroad was either a major screwup for everyone involved (ex: Vietnam, Iran, Chile, Kosovo), or ended up with negative results for everyone but american corporations, whose interests brought American military there in the first place (Kuwait). List and explanations are long, and most of sources are not in English, but if you care to look, it's easy to find information about them even here in US.
All of
America?s ugly truths wouldn?t fit on the small toenail of Germany or Russia?s past
misdeeds this century.
This is precisely what is wrong with Americans. They for some reason think that THEIR country is different from everyone else. That THEIR country has no bloody past, that THEIR government's atrocities don't compare with others. Guess what, ALL COUNTRIES that actively participated in world politics in last few centuries have approximately the same share order of magnitude in mass murder made over that time -- of course, applied compared to their size. US, Germany, Russia, France, Japan, China, Serbia, Turkey, Spain, UK,... -- all did it, some more, some less, no one significantly deviated from average, not even Hitler. The only countries that have cleaner record are ones that intentionally or because of their "lucky" locations removed themselves from the wars and conflicts, and even they occasionally shared part of that. In other countries at some point despite all the ties between governments and media, people become aware of what dark and dirty deeds their particular country has on its records, people acknowledge it and make conscious effort to prevent those things from happening again. Some succeed, some don't, but people understand the shame of their government's behavior.
Americans don't do that. So far they managed to admit only things that were done by their government toward them, inside of this country -- racism is the most prominent example. Nothing about anything that was done abroad. Inside the country there are some problems, but everything that was done TOWARD OTHERS was right, Americans are the leaders of "Free World", Americans rescued the rest of the world in WWII, Americans defeated Communism in Russia (despite the fact that "Communism" never was implemented anywhere, especially in Russia, and events in Russia in the end of 80's have little to do with Americans), Americans defeated Iraq's dictator (despite the fact that he is still im power, and embargo only strenghten his power while weakening the mostly innocent people), etc. Americans are still far from admitting that yes, their deeds are comparable with Russia and most of other countries -- and yes, some apology will be very appropriate, in the same way as Russians, Germans, and even Pope did for his church.
Do a mental exercise, say: "Nazi regime". Then "Communists' regime". Them "Hussain's regime". Then "Chinese regime". Now try to pronounce "American regime". See the difference? Can you pronounce it without a feeling of anger and protest toward anyone who could think of this expression? Don't you feel toward that phrase the same thing as black person feels when someone calls him "nigger", a feeling of undeserved, unfair and plain evil kind of insult?
This is what differs a person who was fed on propaganda and not denounced it from person who understands that he lives in a country that has a lot of horrible things, that he, supporting that country keeps some, possibly small, piece of responsibility for, and that this responsibility is not to take punishment (as it won't help anyone) but just to make sure that it's not forgotten and never will be repeated. This is what must disappear in Americans before they will become able to jugde their own history rationally, something that other nations either managed at large extent or trying to, and Americans never did and show no desire for.
What the heck is that? And where is any kind of separators between quotes and your answers?
More important, where did I mention US "material support and sheer numbers that overwhelmed the German war machine"? US "supported" (traded) with countries at war, so what? So could everyone else, and Russia actually managed to keep its industry running even though it required relocating factories over thousands of miles to the east. US politicians _delayed_ invasion in Europe until it became absolutely clear than no matter what will follow, Germany will be defeated. This is the most cowardly action that US taken in WWII (maybe second most cowardly after using nuclear bombs in Japan), and Russians' huge losses in large part could be decreased if US did that earlier. US didn't, and millions of Russians died.
When Americans finally came to Europe, it was anything but liberation of Europe from Nazi -- it had no effect on the Nazi's destiny, as Nazi were already incapable of keeping Russians from advancing on the Eastern Front. Americans helped, but it was too little, too late -- by then war already went for five years, three of them on Russian territory. What Americans seen was severely beaten Nazi, who couldn't move anything from Eastern Front to fight them. What Americans encountered wasn't even comparable with force Nazi had at any moment against Russians.
US had more than enough opportunities to attack Nazi in Europe, yet they waited -- some Russians believe that it was done intentionally to weaken them, some think that it was an act of extreme selfishness, I believe that it was some degree of first and a lot of the second, but it really doesn't matter, as consequences are more important than details of the intent -- consequences happen to be that war in Europe lasted for more than five years, each day claiming thousands of lives, while Americans had an opportunity to help to end it much sooner while losing small fraction of that. When it would matter most -- in 1941-43 -- US was in a better position than Russia to fight with Germany (you are right about that -- sheer numbers, industry, etc...), the problem is, Russia had no other choice, and did, but US had a choice, and didn't. When US finally came they could just as well send those people to Antarctica, attack South Pole, and report losses due to cold -- Germans wouldn't notice the difference. Difference started later, when US became concerned first about the need of counteracting possible Russian influence in Europe, then about the need of Russian help in a war with Japan (where Russians came at the first possible opportunity despite their military and industry being seriously weakened by the war with Germany), then about Cold War, when Russians were painted as the enemy of everything, so it was really convenient to remove all references to Russians' role in the defeat of the Nazi, and claim to be the deciding force in WWII in Europe -- what US was anything but.
British documentaries weren't that much friendly to Russians because -- surprise -- there were no Russians (or Germans, unless you count stupid and inefficient attempts of bombing) in Britain. Eastern Front was far in the East, no one but Russians and Germans were there, no one was writing about it, and neither Russians nor Germans were trusted in the rest of the world.
I?ll not support military
intervention that doesn?t involve defending our own borders or interests, because, it is
either unappreciated or not necessary if I am to believe you. Tell me Alex, why should
one American life, or one American dollar be spent helping people who have only
hatred and bitterness with which to thank us?
Americans were allies of Russians, alliance in war means much more than marching together on some parade, making long speeches and visiting each other's wargames. It's an obligation to defend each other as much as their own people. Russians did that a year later for Americans in Pacific (of course, you haven't heard about that either, but my grandfather was there, so, please, don't try to prove me that he didn't exist).
I don't care how "balanced" your views on WWII are -- they are wrong, and historical facts, not spin demonstrate it. I have no idea how you can teach me about things that happened where I lived, with my relatives and neighbors, and call what you have picked at your school after decades of anti-soviet and anti-russian histeria in this country something other than propaganda. Saying "both sides were somehow right" is not the right way of discussing history, no matter how they teach you "tolerance" in this screwed up education system -- looking at facts, actions and their consequences is the only way to find out the truth. I would respect Americans much more if they will openly admit how wrong they are and teach their children it as an example that never should be repeated -- after all, Russians openly admitted how wrong/evil Stalin's rule was as early as in 50's (yes, I know, you Americans missed it), Germans denounced Nazi even earlier, and regarding US and WWII we are looking at a bit lesser kind of shame than either. Accept it -- at least stop hiding the facts from students that take your history classes -- and you will be respected more.
And I don't think, you should use counter-accusations of racism (or whatever else) toward me to change the subject -- again, you should leave your cheap discussion tricks for something else. First, racism was merely an example of dirty page in US history that was defended and distorted by "patriots" for centuries. Second, being of jewish/ukrainian origin (yes, "jewish" can be a nationality, and it's unrelated to judaism or any other religion) in Russia I was a target of enough hate and discrimination to feel nothing but disgust toward all kinds of racial/national discrimination, no matter who is the target.
I live 6 miles down the road from a state college where I can find
people willing to engage in a rational, friendly, and openminded discourse regarding
America and it's history of interaction with the world.
Americans are pretty good at telling each other how great their country is. They were equally good at doing that about slavery, racial discrimination, status of economy right before Great Depression, witch hunts and other darkest pages of their history -- I am sure, you can find a lot of very friendly supporters of propaganda about this one. But until you will talk to your opponents, research what really happened in WWII by something other than US propaganda, and try to make real arguments instead of slogans and insults, you will remain ignorant. Ignorance is, of course, bliss, and collective ignorance is even better, but hangover can be a bitch.
Your viewpoint is obviously greatly slanted against the United States. I won't argue that you raise
legitimate issues, but you make it out as if America was an evil empire that has never made a wise
foriegn policy decision or a positive contribution to the world.
Nope. US' "positive" impact on world politics is dwarfed by its negative, harmful actions that couldn't be explained by anything but extreme selfishness at the expense of everyone else. The closest analogy is to compare USSR with a dangerous predator that still doesn't attack unless he is hungry, his life is threatened, or at least he is seriously scared -- no one likes to deal with such a thing, yet it's more or less understandable what and why he is doing, and he has its own role in the ecology. US however behaves like a poacher that has no restraint on his killing whatsoever -- whatever he wants or finds profitable to kill, he kills, and if he fails to kill, he still makes life miserable for everyone around. He understands how harmful his actions are, but without someone with a bigger gun in sight he doesn't care.
Also, it is a gross generalization to
assume that I or every American doesn't recognize the sacrifices made by the Europeans in World
War Two.
Not in a slightest degree. Americans may "recognize" European nations as victims of war, but they don't acknowledge the role of Russians at all. They don't teach it in their history courses, and you are a good evidence of that.
I'll stick by my guns and say that although late and not the whole war effort by any means,
Americas intervention in World War Two was pivotal. I won't argue with you because we can both
put whatever spin we like on the issues we have discussed.
Nothing "pivotal" happened in Europe in 1944 because the course of war was turned around in 1942-43 already, when the only forces fighting were Germans and Russians. Americans' "help" in Europe by then was limited to trade, what hardly qualifies for part of the "glory", or whatever you call it. And Africa, despite an impressive amount of sand, was at most non-essential sideshow compared to what was going on in Europe. Americans helped, and indeed their involvement saved some number of lives, but it was too little, too late, and with too much fanfare compared to actions.
Can you at least agree with my original
post that although evil, the Nazi regime had stylish uniforms?
I don't know and really don't care. Nazi killed 25% of population in the area where I lived, and that makes their fashion sense quite irrelevant for me.
Oh please Alex, you make it sound like I said America singlehandedly won World war Two. Granted,
America entered the war late, but you can't dismis out of hand the many lives American soldiers lost
because they are less in number than the 20 million Europeans who died.
20 millions _Russians_ only. Other european nations had more losses. Guess what, Americans die all the time, just like anyone else, but the point is, they did near to nothing to help Europeans when they needed help most.
Especially if it is as you say
and we were "beating a dead horse". If that was the case, why should we have wasted a single
American life or materiel resource to help Europe beat the Axis powers?
To keep Russians out, and to establish military and political presence (what became NATO) and economical ties in Europe, of course.
What did or does America
owe any country in Europe?
Americans insist that everyone owes them their lives.
Not that there would be a Europe free of Soviet influence if not for our
substantial and expensive military presence in Europe after the war.
Soviet and American influence would be worth each other -- no matter what propaganda of each country's government was telling for decades about the other. And if US got into Europe earlier Soviets wouldn't have much opportunity for expansion there either -- as they would be more busy repairing their own country anyway. However it worth to be noticed that after WWII Soviets quickly learned to limit military involvement abroad to situations that were seriously threatening them or their direct allies (for right or wrong reason). OTOH, US started (and continues) to throw its military weight around while being completely unprovoked.
Oh, and a belated
congratulations to France for getting America mired in Vietnam and then pulling out.
France got beaten in Vietnam with heavy losses and got out. Americans went there, got basically the same with less losses but while pissing off more people, and pulled out. Result: a lot of people killed.
While I'm at it,
thanks for helping out in the Persian Gulf war too, we appreciate the token show of support on
Europes part in stopping Iraqs naked territorial aggression against Kuwait.
US behavior in Kuwait was a great example of doing everything to piss off Iraq people, destroying economy of Iraq, thus leaving no chance for recovery with or without Saddam, then extorting oil for worthless food while maintaining embargo (as sending food to starving person can help that person, but sending food to starving country can only harm its economy further). Yeah, a lot of reasons to help.
Europe having no
strategic or economic interest and all of that, in what goes on in the Middle East or Northern Africa. I
won't even go into Serbia, and Europe's lack of interest in doing anything about Milosovichs
Hitler-esque atrocities without American backing. Go ahead and shed your tears, they aren't
America's fault or problem.
American aggression in Kosovo is one of the most blatant examples of US sticking its nose where it doesn't belong. The only result of this was strenghtening Milosevich's position in Serbia and weakening of opposition precisely at the time when he needed it most. "Atrocities" mostly started after US attacked Serbia/Kosovo, basically fighting at the side of Kosovo rebels that even now are neither a legitimate organization, nor a positive force in Kosovo politics. Don't believe all the propaganda, especially when it comes from CNN.
Basically he hijacked the party's name by asking his supporters (much farther to the right than even right-wing Republicans) to join Reform party with him. I don't know the numbers, but the fact that he won the primary means that those people outnumbered original members that supported Perot (because sure as hell, Perot supporters wouldn't vote for Buchanan). OTOH, since Reform party was split enough to have two conventions it's possible that Buchanan's supporter just were not more numerous but more vocal, and they driven "original" members out. In any case Reform Party is now useless because it takes a Nazi to vote for anything more right-wing than modern Republicans.
The world is not going to end in four years, and US is guaranteed to have shitty president for next term anyway -- while Bush is worse, Gore still pretty much conservative and rather dumb.
But the real problem is, voting for lesser evil makes president less accountable to the people (yes, I mean, EVEN LESS than he is), and more inclined to move into direction of other party to keep relationships with congress more smooth. Why president would bother supporting anything left from the center if he will be still re-elected again if he will just pretend to stand few inches to the left from Republicans? Why the whole party shouldn't become more conservative, so they will have less problem talking to republicans in congress? Why will democrats have any problems with donations/bribes from corporations if voters shown them that it doesn't matter? If this will happen, four years later we will see monolithic republicans-democrats coalition as the only option, something that is not any different from communists-only elections in former USSR.
OTOH, if Bush will win because of Nader votes, Democrats will realize that their position is threatened, and not by their enemies but by potential allies. They will try to convince Nader voters to support Democrats on the next elections, as certainly they don't have much to gain from Republicans. If Green party will become a more noticeable political force (as it happened with Green parties in some other countries, and what would be certainly helped if enough liberal/left/... voters voted for Nader), Democrats will even try to form a coalition, to prepare to oppose now-powerful Republicans, as in that case next elections they will get Nader voters back simply because Greens' position will be advanced with Democrats help better. So, in fact if Bush really won, Green party made an enormous progress in establishing itself as a political force. Ironically, vote for Bush this election can become a vote for Nader next election -- not likely for Nader himself but certainly for the set of issues that he supports.
So, Gore, not Nader was a "lost cause" and "wasted vote" this elections -- if he will get elected, he will still have more than enough reasons to become indistinguishable from a Republican, and the only his benefit is that he is a bit lesser idiot. Of course, average American voter (or average American politician, or even average american slashdot reader) is too dumb to understand that.
All Americans did in Europe was kicking a dead horse while pretending that it's still alive. At the time when Americans apppeared in Europe Germany was pretty much doomed, as Russians already got all their territory back, and were successfully pushing Germans back all by themselves. Americans found absolutely no reasistance from Germans to speak of simply because everything usable for a battle was on Eastern Front fighting with Russians.
The rise of US "industrial might" was the result of war because all countries actually involved had all available resources either destroyed or thrown at war, and US was both undamaged (no, resources spent on war in Africa and Pacific were nothing compared to the economy as a whole), and trade with countries at war, despite all losses involved, still helped US in the end. Now, half century later, this effect seems to start wearing off.
Thanks for nothing, and accept our belated congratulations with nice shooting/bombing vacation in France and Germany in 1944. Sorry for some fatal accidents, but we can't weep with you because we have lost more than 20 millions of our people while your government was delaying involvement in Europe for three years.
No society is immune to a social/political disease that turned Germany into Third Reich. Anyone that believes that his particular society for some reason became uncorruptable most likely is making the first step to proving himself wrong in the most horrible way. Indeed, there is no premature anti-fascism.
No, they teach us that most of Americans have strange idea that they rule the world, and that all other countries are "backwards", "insignificant", and are called either "Mexico", "Canada" or "Europe". We didn't believe until we seen Americans.
Because it can be used as a small, cheap X terminal or other thing that can't be found easily otherwise, and what will be too expensive to replace by a full-blown computer.
Slashdot Mirror
I have read the specifications. Unicode requirement is a "rider", something added to the standard to serve purpose completely unrelated to the standard's purpose. I hope, it will go away just like requirement for ASCII-only text went away when software that implemented RFC-822, SMTP, NNTP and FTP refused to put that restriction into most of implementations after it was found that it causes nothing but harm.
I agree that it's nice to have Unicode supported, but only as one of charsets -- by default everything that can be charset-blind and data-transparent should be done that way, so if implementation of multiple charsets is necessary for user interface or some other purpose, it should be easy to add on top of that. XML, of course, is not designed that way, as it standardizes the use of multiple languages per document but defines only one charset per document -- a feature that, I believe, was added to serve partisan interest of promoting the use of Unicode over all other charsets. In fact, XML can be easily extended to support multiple charsets per document, and implementation of charset attribute would be a no-brainer if not the "political" decision of W3C to support Unicode consortium and not provide a better umbrella for national standards (ISO 2022 is the last, and very poor example of providing an umbrella -- among other problems it's not extensible), and actually XML and HTML are currently the best starting points for thing like that. Too bad, right now there is no alternative to do that but by forking standards, as W3C and IETF, led by "unicoders", are unwilling to do it within their framework.
Can you give an example of what you mean by creating processing routines without using some external information?
Any kind of data that reflects something in real life. For example, description of financial transactions, where only certain combinations of values are valid, and the effect of transaction should be calculated using known algorithms based on the document content itself and the database that describes entities involved that can be known only partially to each party (say, I don't know, how much money a brokerage and the government have, but I do know how to calculate brokerage fee and taxes when I sell stock, and I know how it affects my account -- but I can't just ask INS and brokerage to give me a bunch of machine-readable definitions that when compiled will allow me to process those things automatically).
XML 1.0 is the W3C's first Recommendation for the Extensible Markup Language, a system for defining, validating, and sharing document formats on the Web
I don't see the word "displaying" or any synonym for it anywhere in this definition. Documents may be shared for any kind of purpose, and displaying is just one of them.
The primary use of the web has displaying information since it was invented. As far as I can tell, XML does exactly it was designed to.
Not true. HTTP was created as the protocol to transfer HTML files and images, however since HTTP 1.0 full MIME types support was added, and protocol was transformed into "better FTP". I don't think, rpm file that I have downloaded to update Red Hat distribution yesterday was ever meant to be displayed -- it serves its purpose only by being processed by rpm utility, and most of data that it contains is not human readable at all. XML is supposed to be used in the same way -- in my example of financial transaction (for what OFX format may be used -- it has first SGML-based and later XML-based version) the functionality is completely unrelated to the display of data, and even if such information is displayed, financial transactions usually are not displayed in the way as they are performed, but converted and combined together to be human-readable using external algorithms.
I would show you an example of a huge loss that was mostly wasted effort of reimplementing things multiple times and extending the format/protocol in ways that it was not able to accomodate because no one else designed their systems to be compatible with it, but the problem is... format is still closed, so how can I publish anything about it?
As I recall, an XML DTD can optionally include CSS information. This would enable a user agent (browser) to display an xml document correctly.
Who said anything about displaying information? Most of information isn't meant to be displayed as often as it should be processed, and my complaint is about inability to create any processing routines without using some external information, even if the standard can be easily formalized in the form of constraints and processing algorithms that correspond to the nature of data. I understand that in this obsessed with GUI consumer software industry people are more likely to first think about pretty forms of displaying the data, but for any kind of real work this would be tail wagging the dog.
You miss the point. If the encapsulation of encoding information will be standardizes, all encoding-specific finctions will have to be written only once (by people who understand them), and then just reused with a simple library that can just dynamically load procedures for whatever encoding it encounters, as it will be able to get encoding names from the text. That can be easily extensible without any trouble -- as opposed to Unicode, where any kind of extension causes new incompatible version of the standard to be adopted.
Better yet, it will be safe to consider all unlabeled data to be "binary", and cause all software to preserve it in the unchanged form until someone will label it -- this will be of great help in situations where pieces of data have unknown language or can't be assigned any encoding and shouldn't be treated like a text in some language except by few programs that understand the meaning of that data. With mandatory Unicode someone has to assign nonexistent language to them to convert to Unicode at some point, thus risking that things will be distorted, as, say, data may look like valid (or invalid) UTF-8 yet be something else. With labeling it can be just labeled as data with no charset/encoding/language assigned, and all language-processing and protocol-related routines will just keep it unchanged.
No one ever made money on selling DTDs -- formats exist to be used, and keeping a "secret" DTD makes no sense as it can be easily reverse-engineered if someone really needed it. The only people who benefit from closed formats are ones that make their whole business model around selling software that implements them -- a model that is counterproductive for actual use of information.
Are you a moron? The whole question is about definition -- contrary to the popular belief XML is not a unified standard for representation of a structured data, it's an umbrella standard for different kinds of data representation formats. And to use any of those XML-based formats one needs:
XML was and is criticized for the lack of means to convert the second into a code that can be automatically included in the first and used to create programs that operate with the data according to its semantics -- all DTD is good for is to automatically determine if certain input is indeed compliant with it (what is called "validation", even though it never guarantees that data is valid or consistent from the application or data model point of view), and for human to read the description and write a code to process the data.
While XML still sucks because no such connection between formats amd semantics can be established, the original question was about publishing first (and hopefully the second), so others will be able to write applications that use the same format. DTD can apply to either XML or SGML, but in this case there isn't much difference between them in the results for the programmer, as he will end up doing all the job after some simple parser deserialized the data.
The cornerstone of text in HTML and XML is Unicode.
It isn't. People who use non-iso8859-1 characters always demanded equality of charsets and usable ways of encapsulation of the charset information (MIME has it in the headers, but no standard for document body was developed, even though it's easy if someone actually tried to establish it as a standard). Unicode is one of "standards" that everyone who is supposed to benefit from, is fighting against, yet committee of "unicoders" don't listen. A lot of Internet standards were infested with "mandatory use of Unicode" only because of the efforts of a single, but extremely persistent and annoying person -- Martin Duerst.
Maybe he is, but I am a programmer, and I completely agree with him. If you can't make a living by producing standards-compliant HTML, your aren't qualified for your work, and garbage that you produce doesn't deserve whatever your clients pay you -- in other words, you are a scammer, and everyone has all reasons to criticize you. Get the **ck out of this "business" and learn to make a living by honest means.
Also, you again assume that I am ignoring Russia's role in World War Two. That's not true, just for the sake of time and space I lump Russia together with the rest of the Allied powers, and atrocities committed in Russia with those in Germany. I won't even go into the rest of the distortions you make to my position's, because I am tired of debating you.
Huh? You "lump together" Russia and other Allies when it's convenient, and when it allows you to ignore the fact that Russia's role in WWII is quite different from one of US (or from anyone else if it matters).
It doesn't surprise me that you live in America yet have not one good thing to say about the country that allows you freedom from the discrimination you faced in your home land.
I owe NOTHING to this country, and I suffer from more discrimination and humiliation here than I did in Russia. I came here because I couldn't find a job in Russia after its economy was foolishly dismantled along with its political system, and being a programmer I came to a country where my chances to get a job are the best. I don't assign any political/ideological value to my choice whatsoever, and find it the most honest way of making this kind of choice.
Actions speak louder than words, so why don't you use that American passport of your's and move to a country where the people and the politics match your views and principals?
I don't have an American passport, and at best I will have to wait six more years before government will consider me to be "good enough" to become a citizen. I lived here for six years already on H-1B visa (plus a year before that on B-2 visa), and was unable even to change employers without long and humiliating procedure (that seems to be changed few months ago, right after my H-1B expired, thanks for nothing), so I had less "freedom" than what I had under Communists. I paid taxes to the government that I couldn't even vote for, my work supported US economy, so I definitely owe nothing to you, your government and your corporations.
The act of staying here alone is to support the corporations, individuals and the government's present and future foriegn policy mistakes.
I feel no obligation toward this country -- it exploits me, I have all rights to exploit it, but having rather strict moral rules, I believe, everything that I did here only helped others in the end. "Staying here" is not an approval or disapproval of what this country did or does, blind "patriotism" may be a part of American culture, but it has no place in my head.
Especially if ALL Americans are ignorant and complacent about our government's activities as you claim so often. You know that you can't make a difference and you are fooling yourself if you claim to be here for any other reason than your own personal gain. You are entitled to your opinions under America's political system, you are even entitled to hate America while reaping the benefits of living here. That's ok, I am entitled to think that you are an ingrate who needs to show the country you choose to live in some respect or else pack up your bags and leave.
Again -- I didn't come here to improve America, I probably do that just by being there, but this is an unintended side effect, not in any way my goal. If my expression of this will help -- fine, if not -- sucks, but I didn't choose this place because I love its government. I don't see why "personal gain" is less respected reason for choosing a country than ideology -- I am not a politician but engineer, so I live like an engineer and where I can apply my knowledge, skills and abilities better without doing something that is radically contrary to my beliefs. My work improves the technology in the direction that not only makes people's life better, but even makes them less dependent on overblown corporations -- if there is something political about my work here, it's this.
I also completely disagree that the fact that I was born abroad makes me "ingrate" for living here. Again, this country takes from me more than from others and gives less, so if someone should be ashamed, it's government and INS that discriminate against me just because I was born somewhere else. In this country discriminating against someone of different race is not "politically correct" (since recently) but discriminating against foreigner who moved here and leads productive, beneficial for others, life for many years is ok, and not only government feels no shame about it, people like you dare to tell me that I am "ingrate" and that I should not express any protest against it. This is the ultimate expression of hypocrisy and selective thinking -- the same one that supported rampant racism in this country in the first place.
Then I challenged your assertion that you were in any position to speak on the subject of racism and backed it up with my personal stake in the issue. The fact that you are Jewish and have been persecuted for it doesn?t prove to me that you are not a racist.
Am I supposed to "prove" that? I thought, declaring my position and following it consistently is more than enough for it to be true -- and my behavior in all my life is very consistent with the idea that I don't support any form of racism.
It?s not that I believe that you wouldn?t discriminate against someone due to any racial or ethnic factors. But how closely would you associate with someone who was different than you, would you be friends, marry, engage yourself in their culture? As close as I do, I doubt it, but I won?t assume that you would or would not, note that I do ask the question of you rather than assume anything about you.
So now it means that I should not just respect, consider people of all nations equal and accept their differences, but accept just everyone who can be "different than me" equally to be my personal friend or family member, and sincerely accept just any kind of culture that exists in the world? Of course, I won't differentiate people by nationality -- but no one has a "right" to be my friend, I can choose friends depending by my preferences, and nationality doesn't happen to be one of them, but compatibility with my cultural background does, and I expect the same from others. I wouldn't want, say, a wife that will be religious no matter what nationality she is, because that will be incompatible with my philisophy. Incompatible is incompatible, and I am not going to allow anyone whom I don't like to force his/her constant presence on me in my personal life, I am not going to force myself to like anything and anyone. Most of my friends are Russian not because I "discriminate" toward others but because we share the same pieces of memory, culture, philosophy -- things that I will be happy to accept in everyone else, but rarely find in people who haven't studied Russian culture and lived in Russia. I don't see Russians as being "better", and a lot of my friends are Americans, but I don't think that the fact that I have mostly Russian friends means that I "discriminate" others -- also most of my friends are Unix programmers, and sets of Russians and Unixoids among my friends only partially overlap.
Saying the same thing in more general way, only a person who has no culture can "closely associate" with everyone despite of differences, and I don't have to make excuse for not liking someone whose set of values is radically different from my own. Nationality has nothing to do with it.
Your last line about disgust at discrimination of any kind is kind of ironic, since it?s that same feeling about your prejudice against America that keeps me wasting my time replying to your posts. (Coincidentally, your assumptions about me without basis of fact would be a good example of prejudice as the word applies to an attitude, not just racism.)
Don't mix nation and culture. I can get American passport, but that won't automatically change my culture. What I oppose is American values and traditions -- values that include worshipping US as the best country in everything everywhere, without allowing any acknowledgement of seriouslu negative actions toward others, and traditions of teaching children whitewashed history and pride in things that are nothing to be proud of. There are other pieces of American culture that I dislike, but this one is relevant to this discussion. I have seen americans who were able to overcome those things, and I respect them more than if they lived in an environment more favorable to critical thought, but this doesn't change the fact that their achievement is not a part of American culture -- mass media, education, etc. still are heavy on propaganda, heavier than what I have seen in Russia in 70's-80's, and probably the same as in Russia in 30's-50's. Russians always had large piece of intellectual elite that opposed it, and the survival of this elite was THE reason for accepting thoughts that were contrary to government's propaganda in 80's and subsequent dismantling of Communist Party rule and USSR. The same elite now accepts the blame for doing a lot to destroy and little to build a better country, and this is a different story, but what is important, there always were people who understood misdeeds of the government, both in and outside the country, they protested not just to shock someone but to express this, and in the end people understood. American culture has no such thing. No one is keeping track of horrible actions and lies of the government, no one is thinking about it, and certainly no one makes an effort to give this knowledge to the masses in a form that will allow them to understand, get scared and disgusted, accept, grow morally and think about that every time when something similar can happen again. This is american culture, elite has the money to play with, others have shiny things and are too busy to care, kids are too lazy to read, so if they do it should be something simple to understand -- "we are great". Exceptions are not in a kind of movement, they are just that, exception, outsiders, no one cares for their ideas, no one publishes them, no one votes for them, and they don't see any point in communicating their ideas to the others -- even though Internet is the best place for "samizdat", no one uses it that way here.
You can accuse America of clumsiness in it?s handling of foreign affairs, but not of outright malice. Ask a citizen of Kuwait what they think of America and our intervention in Iraq?s invasion of their country. Then ask a citizen of Iraq the same question. I have had the luxury of speaking to both, one a doctor, the other a student at the local school I mentioned earlier. It doesn?t take a genius to figure out who supported American involvement and who opposed it. Right and wrong are relative concepts, historical facts are historical facts, you can use the same facts or statistics to prove or disprove anything you want.
I happen to have the benefit of being born in the country that never was invaded by Americans, and right now I live in US. This makes it easier for me to make comparisons. The fact is, no country (at all!) in the Middle East is satisfied with what Americans did there -- some believe that Americans should get the hell out now, no matter what, as they screwed up a lot and can only screw up more, others believe that since Americans entered the region and destroyed the balance of power there, Americans should keep things from blowing up, but absolutely no one supports the idea that Americans' presence actually improved anything, or that anyone owes anything to US. Even Israeli -- and Israel became completely dependent on US in everything political by now.
American people have strange idea that when bad things happen in other country, US "couldn't take it anymore" and goes there to set things straight. No country ever does that -- internationsl politics simply can't work that way even if someone tried to. US threatens, economically enslaves, or even attacks other countries when it sees it being beneficial for US government or corporations -- excuses often sound noble and great, but they are just excuses, after all the result of Americans' interference never has anything to do with the "cause" that was announced. This is not clumsiness, this is plain undiluted selfishness at the expense of everyone else, this is what people call "blood for oil". Clumsiness is what Clinton did on Israel-Palestina peace talks, pushing both sides to the agreement that neither side was ready for -- and it still can be argued that if he thought more about Palestinians and Israeli interests than about his place in history books he would not try to reach an agreement before his term ends -- if talks are handled well, he personally can get out, and sides will still be able to decide the details, and if his presence is still necessary, damned will be a person who will start discussing anything that involve Jerusalem. But yes, I think, it's still can be called clumsiness. Kosovo and Iraq can't.
The rest of the world learned that the best way for powerful country to keep other from fighting is to STAY OUT. To make a policy, that no matter how many children are killed in a localized conflict, if countries involved are small, larger player shouldn't enter simply because everyone will start playing him and his interests, and damage will be huge. If country is powerful enough to threaten most of the world, it should stay out of everything that doesn't touch it directly -- even Russia managed to learn it pretty quickly. "Keeping the peace" by throwing around enormous force never works, and no one ever succeeded in doing that, this is something that US should never do and never pretend to do -- and if it ever tried to keep its hands out of everyone's pies, it would gain a respect of the people abroad, and I would not feel ashamed that I live in this country. Of course, I can dream about honest used car salesmen (anywhere in the world), too.
Your answer is as large as it's unreadable, so I have to answer in multiple messages
At what point do I say ?both sides are somehow right?? Putting words in my mouth is as dirty a conversational tactic as any you accuse me of, but I?ll get to that later.
You said that you will rather discuss that with friendly people at local college. I have explained, what kind of "balanced point of view" you will find there, as this is what is supposed to be "politically correct" at the moment -- it was "we are right, and everyone else is a servant of Satan!", now it is "we are still right, but other side has some minor point that we can acknowledge but can't mention because it's so nonessential to the fact that we are still right". Guess what -- in this case Americans are plain wrong, and could admit it if not ignorance and arrogance that they are so famous for in the rest of the world.
Educate me then, tell me, what part of American history even remotely compares to the genocide and atrocities committed by the Nazi?s or by the Russians under Stalin?s rule?
I would, but first, it's way far from the original topic of WWII, second, the amount of time and space don't allow me to explain why absolutely every occasion when US used its military (or semi-military) abroad was either a major screwup for everyone involved (ex: Vietnam, Iran, Chile, Kosovo), or ended up with negative results for everyone but american corporations, whose interests brought American military there in the first place (Kuwait). List and explanations are long, and most of sources are not in English, but if you care to look, it's easy to find information about them even here in US.
All of America?s ugly truths wouldn?t fit on the small toenail of Germany or Russia?s past misdeeds this century.
This is precisely what is wrong with Americans. They for some reason think that THEIR country is different from everyone else. That THEIR country has no bloody past, that THEIR government's atrocities don't compare with others. Guess what, ALL COUNTRIES that actively participated in world politics in last few centuries have approximately the same share order of magnitude in mass murder made over that time -- of course, applied compared to their size. US, Germany, Russia, France, Japan, China, Serbia, Turkey, Spain, UK,... -- all did it, some more, some less, no one significantly deviated from average, not even Hitler. The only countries that have cleaner record are ones that intentionally or because of their "lucky" locations removed themselves from the wars and conflicts, and even they occasionally shared part of that. In other countries at some point despite all the ties between governments and media, people become aware of what dark and dirty deeds their particular country has on its records, people acknowledge it and make conscious effort to prevent those things from happening again. Some succeed, some don't, but people understand the shame of their government's behavior.
Americans don't do that. So far they managed to admit only things that were done by their government toward them, inside of this country -- racism is the most prominent example. Nothing about anything that was done abroad. Inside the country there are some problems, but everything that was done TOWARD OTHERS was right, Americans are the leaders of "Free World", Americans rescued the rest of the world in WWII, Americans defeated Communism in Russia (despite the fact that "Communism" never was implemented anywhere, especially in Russia, and events in Russia in the end of 80's have little to do with Americans), Americans defeated Iraq's dictator (despite the fact that he is still im power, and embargo only strenghten his power while weakening the mostly innocent people), etc. Americans are still far from admitting that yes, their deeds are comparable with Russia and most of other countries -- and yes, some apology will be very appropriate, in the same way as Russians, Germans, and even Pope did for his church.
Do a mental exercise, say: "Nazi regime". Then "Communists' regime". Them "Hussain's regime". Then "Chinese regime". Now try to pronounce "American regime". See the difference? Can you pronounce it without a feeling of anger and protest toward anyone who could think of this expression? Don't you feel toward that phrase the same thing as black person feels when someone calls him "nigger", a feeling of undeserved, unfair and plain evil kind of insult? This is what differs a person who was fed on propaganda and not denounced it from person who understands that he lives in a country that has a lot of horrible things, that he, supporting that country keeps some, possibly small, piece of responsibility for, and that this responsibility is not to take punishment (as it won't help anyone) but just to make sure that it's not forgotten and never will be repeated. This is what must disappear in Americans before they will become able to jugde their own history rationally, something that other nations either managed at large extent or trying to, and Americans never did and show no desire for.
What the heck is that? And where is any kind of separators between quotes and your answers?
More important, where did I mention US "material support and sheer numbers that overwhelmed the German war machine"? US "supported" (traded) with countries at war, so what? So could everyone else, and Russia actually managed to keep its industry running even though it required relocating factories over thousands of miles to the east. US politicians _delayed_ invasion in Europe until it became absolutely clear than no matter what will follow, Germany will be defeated. This is the most cowardly action that US taken in WWII (maybe second most cowardly after using nuclear bombs in Japan), and Russians' huge losses in large part could be decreased if US did that earlier. US didn't, and millions of Russians died.
When Americans finally came to Europe, it was anything but liberation of Europe from Nazi -- it had no effect on the Nazi's destiny, as Nazi were already incapable of keeping Russians from advancing on the Eastern Front. Americans helped, but it was too little, too late -- by then war already went for five years, three of them on Russian territory. What Americans seen was severely beaten Nazi, who couldn't move anything from Eastern Front to fight them. What Americans encountered wasn't even comparable with force Nazi had at any moment against Russians.
US had more than enough opportunities to attack Nazi in Europe, yet they waited -- some Russians believe that it was done intentionally to weaken them, some think that it was an act of extreme selfishness, I believe that it was some degree of first and a lot of the second, but it really doesn't matter, as consequences are more important than details of the intent -- consequences happen to be that war in Europe lasted for more than five years, each day claiming thousands of lives, while Americans had an opportunity to help to end it much sooner while losing small fraction of that. When it would matter most -- in 1941-43 -- US was in a better position than Russia to fight with Germany (you are right about that -- sheer numbers, industry, etc...), the problem is, Russia had no other choice, and did, but US had a choice, and didn't. When US finally came they could just as well send those people to Antarctica, attack South Pole, and report losses due to cold -- Germans wouldn't notice the difference. Difference started later, when US became concerned first about the need of counteracting possible Russian influence in Europe, then about the need of Russian help in a war with Japan (where Russians came at the first possible opportunity despite their military and industry being seriously weakened by the war with Germany), then about Cold War, when Russians were painted as the enemy of everything, so it was really convenient to remove all references to Russians' role in the defeat of the Nazi, and claim to be the deciding force in WWII in Europe -- what US was anything but.
British documentaries weren't that much friendly to Russians because -- surprise -- there were no Russians (or Germans, unless you count stupid and inefficient attempts of bombing) in Britain. Eastern Front was far in the East, no one but Russians and Germans were there, no one was writing about it, and neither Russians nor Germans were trusted in the rest of the world.
I?ll not support military intervention that doesn?t involve defending our own borders or interests, because, it is either unappreciated or not necessary if I am to believe you. Tell me Alex, why should one American life, or one American dollar be spent helping people who have only hatred and bitterness with which to thank us?
Americans were allies of Russians, alliance in war means much more than marching together on some parade, making long speeches and visiting each other's wargames. It's an obligation to defend each other as much as their own people. Russians did that a year later for Americans in Pacific (of course, you haven't heard about that either, but my grandfather was there, so, please, don't try to prove me that he didn't exist).
I don't care how "balanced" your views on WWII are -- they are wrong, and historical facts, not spin demonstrate it. I have no idea how you can teach me about things that happened where I lived, with my relatives and neighbors, and call what you have picked at your school after decades of anti-soviet and anti-russian histeria in this country something other than propaganda. Saying "both sides were somehow right" is not the right way of discussing history, no matter how they teach you "tolerance" in this screwed up education system -- looking at facts, actions and their consequences is the only way to find out the truth. I would respect Americans much more if they will openly admit how wrong they are and teach their children it as an example that never should be repeated -- after all, Russians openly admitted how wrong/evil Stalin's rule was as early as in 50's (yes, I know, you Americans missed it), Germans denounced Nazi even earlier, and regarding US and WWII we are looking at a bit lesser kind of shame than either. Accept it -- at least stop hiding the facts from students that take your history classes -- and you will be respected more.
And I don't think, you should use counter-accusations of racism (or whatever else) toward me to change the subject -- again, you should leave your cheap discussion tricks for something else. First, racism was merely an example of dirty page in US history that was defended and distorted by "patriots" for centuries. Second, being of jewish/ukrainian origin (yes, "jewish" can be a nationality, and it's unrelated to judaism or any other religion) in Russia I was a target of enough hate and discrimination to feel nothing but disgust toward all kinds of racial/national discrimination, no matter who is the target.
I live 6 miles down the road from a state college where I can find people willing to engage in a rational, friendly, and openminded discourse regarding America and it's history of interaction with the world.
Americans are pretty good at telling each other how great their country is. They were equally good at doing that about slavery, racial discrimination, status of economy right before Great Depression, witch hunts and other darkest pages of their history -- I am sure, you can find a lot of very friendly supporters of propaganda about this one. But until you will talk to your opponents, research what really happened in WWII by something other than US propaganda, and try to make real arguments instead of slogans and insults, you will remain ignorant. Ignorance is, of course, bliss, and collective ignorance is even better, but hangover can be a bitch.
Your viewpoint is obviously greatly slanted against the United States. I won't argue that you raise legitimate issues, but you make it out as if America was an evil empire that has never made a wise foriegn policy decision or a positive contribution to the world.
Nope. US' "positive" impact on world politics is dwarfed by its negative, harmful actions that couldn't be explained by anything but extreme selfishness at the expense of everyone else. The closest analogy is to compare USSR with a dangerous predator that still doesn't attack unless he is hungry, his life is threatened, or at least he is seriously scared -- no one likes to deal with such a thing, yet it's more or less understandable what and why he is doing, and he has its own role in the ecology. US however behaves like a poacher that has no restraint on his killing whatsoever -- whatever he wants or finds profitable to kill, he kills, and if he fails to kill, he still makes life miserable for everyone around. He understands how harmful his actions are, but without someone with a bigger gun in sight he doesn't care.
Also, it is a gross generalization to assume that I or every American doesn't recognize the sacrifices made by the Europeans in World War Two.
Not in a slightest degree. Americans may "recognize" European nations as victims of war, but they don't acknowledge the role of Russians at all. They don't teach it in their history courses, and you are a good evidence of that.
I'll stick by my guns and say that although late and not the whole war effort by any means, Americas intervention in World War Two was pivotal. I won't argue with you because we can both put whatever spin we like on the issues we have discussed.
Nothing "pivotal" happened in Europe in 1944 because the course of war was turned around in 1942-43 already, when the only forces fighting were Germans and Russians. Americans' "help" in Europe by then was limited to trade, what hardly qualifies for part of the "glory", or whatever you call it. And Africa, despite an impressive amount of sand, was at most non-essential sideshow compared to what was going on in Europe. Americans helped, and indeed their involvement saved some number of lives, but it was too little, too late, and with too much fanfare compared to actions.
Can you at least agree with my original post that although evil, the Nazi regime had stylish uniforms?
I don't know and really don't care. Nazi killed 25% of population in the area where I lived, and that makes their fashion sense quite irrelevant for me.
Oh please Alex, you make it sound like I said America singlehandedly won World war Two. Granted, America entered the war late, but you can't dismis out of hand the many lives American soldiers lost because they are less in number than the 20 million Europeans who died.
20 millions _Russians_ only. Other european nations had more losses. Guess what, Americans die all the time, just like anyone else, but the point is, they did near to nothing to help Europeans when they needed help most.Especially if it is as you say and we were "beating a dead horse". If that was the case, why should we have wasted a single American life or materiel resource to help Europe beat the Axis powers?
To keep Russians out, and to establish military and political presence (what became NATO) and economical ties in Europe, of course.
What did or does America owe any country in Europe?
Americans insist that everyone owes them their lives.
Not that there would be a Europe free of Soviet influence if not for our substantial and expensive military presence in Europe after the war.
Soviet and American influence would be worth each other -- no matter what propaganda of each country's government was telling for decades about the other. And if US got into Europe earlier Soviets wouldn't have much opportunity for expansion there either -- as they would be more busy repairing their own country anyway. However it worth to be noticed that after WWII Soviets quickly learned to limit military involvement abroad to situations that were seriously threatening them or their direct allies (for right or wrong reason). OTOH, US started (and continues) to throw its military weight around while being completely unprovoked.
Oh, and a belated congratulations to France for getting America mired in Vietnam and then pulling out.
France got beaten in Vietnam with heavy losses and got out. Americans went there, got basically the same with less losses but while pissing off more people, and pulled out. Result: a lot of people killed.
While I'm at it, thanks for helping out in the Persian Gulf war too, we appreciate the token show of support on Europes part in stopping Iraqs naked territorial aggression against Kuwait.
US behavior in Kuwait was a great example of doing everything to piss off Iraq people, destroying economy of Iraq, thus leaving no chance for recovery with or without Saddam, then extorting oil for worthless food while maintaining embargo (as sending food to starving person can help that person, but sending food to starving country can only harm its economy further). Yeah, a lot of reasons to help.
Europe having no strategic or economic interest and all of that, in what goes on in the Middle East or Northern Africa. I won't even go into Serbia, and Europe's lack of interest in doing anything about Milosovichs Hitler-esque atrocities without American backing. Go ahead and shed your tears, they aren't America's fault or problem.
American aggression in Kosovo is one of the most blatant examples of US sticking its nose where it doesn't belong. The only result of this was strenghtening Milosevich's position in Serbia and weakening of opposition precisely at the time when he needed it most. "Atrocities" mostly started after US attacked Serbia/Kosovo, basically fighting at the side of Kosovo rebels that even now are neither a legitimate organization, nor a positive force in Kosovo politics. Don't believe all the propaganda, especially when it comes from CNN.
Basically he hijacked the party's name by asking his supporters (much farther to the right than even right-wing Republicans) to join Reform party with him. I don't know the numbers, but the fact that he won the primary means that those people outnumbered original members that supported Perot (because sure as hell, Perot supporters wouldn't vote for Buchanan). OTOH, since Reform party was split enough to have two conventions it's possible that Buchanan's supporter just were not more numerous but more vocal, and they driven "original" members out. In any case Reform Party is now useless because it takes a Nazi to vote for anything more right-wing than modern Republicans.
The world is not going to end in four years, and US is guaranteed to have shitty president for next term anyway -- while Bush is worse, Gore still pretty much conservative and rather dumb.
But the real problem is, voting for lesser evil makes president less accountable to the people (yes, I mean, EVEN LESS than he is), and more inclined to move into direction of other party to keep relationships with congress more smooth. Why president would bother supporting anything left from the center if he will be still re-elected again if he will just pretend to stand few inches to the left from Republicans? Why the whole party shouldn't become more conservative, so they will have less problem talking to republicans in congress? Why will democrats have any problems with donations/bribes from corporations if voters shown them that it doesn't matter? If this will happen, four years later we will see monolithic republicans-democrats coalition as the only option, something that is not any different from communists-only elections in former USSR.
OTOH, if Bush will win because of Nader votes, Democrats will realize that their position is threatened, and not by their enemies but by potential allies. They will try to convince Nader voters to support Democrats on the next elections, as certainly they don't have much to gain from Republicans. If Green party will become a more noticeable political force (as it happened with Green parties in some other countries, and what would be certainly helped if enough liberal/left/... voters voted for Nader), Democrats will even try to form a coalition, to prepare to oppose now-powerful Republicans, as in that case next elections they will get Nader voters back simply because Greens' position will be advanced with Democrats help better. So, in fact if Bush really won, Green party made an enormous progress in establishing itself as a political force. Ironically, vote for Bush this election can become a vote for Nader next election -- not likely for Nader himself but certainly for the set of issues that he supports.
So, Gore, not Nader was a "lost cause" and "wasted vote" this elections -- if he will get elected, he will still have more than enough reasons to become indistinguishable from a Republican, and the only his benefit is that he is a bit lesser idiot. Of course, average American voter (or average American politician, or even average american slashdot reader) is too dumb to understand that.
All Americans did in Europe was kicking a dead horse while pretending that it's still alive. At the time when Americans apppeared in Europe Germany was pretty much doomed, as Russians already got all their territory back, and were successfully pushing Germans back all by themselves. Americans found absolutely no reasistance from Germans to speak of simply because everything usable for a battle was on Eastern Front fighting with Russians.
The rise of US "industrial might" was the result of war because all countries actually involved had all available resources either destroyed or thrown at war, and US was both undamaged (no, resources spent on war in Africa and Pacific were nothing compared to the economy as a whole), and trade with countries at war, despite all losses involved, still helped US in the end. Now, half century later, this effect seems to start wearing off.
Thanks for nothing, and accept our belated congratulations with nice shooting/bombing vacation in France and Germany in 1944. Sorry for some fatal accidents, but we can't weep with you because we have lost more than 20 millions of our people while your government was delaying involvement in Europe for three years.
No society is immune to a social/political disease that turned Germany into Third Reich. Anyone that believes that his particular society for some reason became uncorruptable most likely is making the first step to proving himself wrong in the most horrible way. Indeed, there is no premature anti-fascism.
No, they teach us that most of Americans have strange idea that they rule the world, and that all other countries are "backwards", "insignificant", and are called either "Mexico", "Canada" or "Europe". We didn't believe until we seen Americans.
Because it can be used as a small, cheap X terminal or other thing that can't be found easily otherwise, and what will be too expensive to replace by a full-blown computer.