Dne Sat, 4 Mar 2000 23:48:11 +0100, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (arachne-digest)
napsal:
>> think that everyone should willingly serve. Although I served four years on
>> active duty, enlisting during the Korean War, and another 26 years in the
>> reserve forces, I would willingly serve again if it should come to that.
> I have refused to go to the Ukrainian Army. AND I AM PROUD
> OF IT !
> All you US, GB, NZ, EU citizens even can not impress what is
> military service
> in postcommunistic countries. In Russia young 18-years boys
> going to kill
> peoples in Chechnia. I do not know how it's in Chech rep.,
> but in my country
> army it's complete horror. My friend die 3 month ago from
> famine. It was in
> ARMY...
> 2 years in Ukrainian army i can compare only with 10 years
> in Ukrainian jail....
> ....here the call in my door... ... hope thats not mil
It is not even nearly as bad in Czech Republic. Army is very
unpleasant, but I don't think I would die - I just hate to be
commanded by anyone (but I also hate to give commands), that would
be my main problem. Additionaly, the alternative civil service is
bad mainly from economical point of view (I wouldn't be allowed
to have any financial income for year and half... of course, I would
ask my brother or so to sign the Arachne related contracts... but it's
horror anyway)
> This is something you most certainly may do. See the famous essay by
> Henry David Thoreau, "Civil Disobedience".
Yes, I think that ideas like that are very valuable, but it is not
something *any* state would encourage children to learn about at school
;-)))
. . .
> Please can anyone enlighten me? This is NOT the first time
> that I've seen reference to pressing Q to do this. Heeding
> Glenn's advice of some time ago to study the HOTKEYS.HTM page
> frequently, I did just that and I couldn't find any reference
> to Q.
Q is hotkey for requesting all links. It is mention in hokeys.htm (at
least I believe! I should fix it if not)
. . .
> I don't know the URLs of all of the above, but a good search engine should
> help you.
> Thank God for programmers who don't support war!
The sad thing is that I *like* to play military strategy games - on my
PC. Well, just time to time. But I still believe that I can recognize
what is virtual reality and what is real life.
This discussion is not so much about supporting or not supporting war,
because no one sane can "support war" in any way. The problem is rather
in allowing or not allowing people to decide independently whether they
want to join possible defensive action against possible agression or
not. We had otherwise very pacifist writer Karel Capek, who had died just
before WW II started, and in one of his last works, he admited that
defense against agressor (like eg. nazi Germany was in these days) is
moral decision: but in his drama "Mother", it was voluntery decision
of people who were eye witnesses and victims of atack against their
peaceful country (again, it was still quite naive, because propaganda
is able to persuade people that any war is ok...).
But in my case it is really not so dramatic: it is about struggling with
stupid laws and stupid bureaucracy of country in which I was
coincidentaly born and in which I (not so coincidentaly) decided to stay
and live. It is not about fighting, just about discrimination of people
who refuse to train fighting.
....
> Why is HTML programmed in such a way so as to not perform a one-for-one
> rendering of high ascii characters? IMHO, it would seem a good idea if
> all HTML viewers and text-to-HTML converters were to adhere to the
> international ascii standard. This would eliminate many problems in
> attempting to correspond with someone in a language that is other than one's
> own.
Bad luck for many languages: "internatal ASCII standard" is standard
only in low 128 characters. Higher ASCII is not standartized even for
western languages (there is PC ASCII and ISO-8859-1 used on Internet, in
Unix and Windows, etc.), but certain accented letters for central
European languages are completely misssing.
You can use 8-bit, but you have to mark HTML document, eg.
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
. . .
> The United States did away with compulsory military service sometime
> in the late 1970's. It was thought that an all volunteer force would
> be more effective than reluctant draftees, especially when asked to
> fight an unpopular war like in Vietnam.
Right. But our politicians are very smart: they always announce that
army will be reorganized to be "professional army" on a date, which
is *after* next elections. Currently they say 2003 (year of of
elections is 2002). They would promising anything before elections -
nothing surprusing.
But situation in .cz really can't be compared to situation of Americans
drafted to Vietnam, Serbs drafted to Bosna and Kosovo or Russians
drafted to Afghanistan or Chechnya. There is no war I havev to fight
except war with bureaucracy, army machinery and 19th century-like laws.
We just want to becaume normal European country - and most of EU already
converted to small professional armies instead of forcing citizens to
serve in army.
--
Michael Polak: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Arachne Labs: http://arachne.cz/
My mobile phone - up to 160 characters: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
