All those people participated in breaking the laws they saw as unjust. From Underground Railroad in the 19th century to sitting in white-only sections in the 20th. People hiding Jews from Nazis were actively breaking the law. The founders of the United States broke the British law. Edward Snowden broke the law. Nelson Mandela broke the law. Mahatma Ghandi broke the law. The list goes on and on.
> We are by no means perfect, but I think nations which are able to acknowledge and learn from the mistakes of their past have a leg up on those that try to pretend everything was great.
The United States government has never acknowledged Native American genocide either.
They clearly have to some extent. That's why I mentioned the National Park Service trail. More would be better, for sure, but we don't deny it, nor prosecute people who say it happened.
That's an argument that the US could handle it better. My argument is simply that some countries handle it qualitatively better than others, and in particular that the US acknowledges and learns from the Trail of Tears in ways that Turkey does not with the Armenian Genocide. These two arguments are compatible.
> No, they hate us for our overly zealous anti-communism that drove us to forcefully prop up dictatorships/extremist groups (Panama, Cuba, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, al Qaeda, etc.), and then vacate when things went sour.
Because former are inhuman and latter a human?
The most jarring part, of course, is that most of "illegal aliens" are rural Mexicans of Native American heritage, being detained in states like Arizona, Texas, and New Mexico, on land belonging to their country not too long ago, and to their ancestors for centuries.
Mexicans in those annexed areas had the choice of relocating to within Mexico's new boundaries or receiving American citizenship with full civil rights. Over 90% chose to become U.S. citizens.
Ukrainians who lived in Crimea got full Russian citizenship too, but I'm not sure if that makes it fair and a done deal for the rest of the Ukrainians.
But I thought my other point was more important. Most Americans are newcomers to the Americas, a few generations tops. Most Mexicans are not, and nobody really asked them before erecting new borders on their lands.
I believe it's only if you had a US citizenship or if you were a legal permanent resident (i.e you had a greencard) for 8 or more years. You can search online for 'IRS expatriation tax' or form 8854, or better talk to a lawyer...
That's not true. There are many scenarios how one can live legally in the US for more than 6 years as a non-immigrant. E.g F-1 student visa for 4+2+4 years (Bachelors through PhD), followed by 3 years on OPT, followed by 6 years on H-1B. That's 19 years.
Ya. You can only be in a H1B for 6 years, but combined with an F1 and OPT, could be longer. I was just thinking about working visas.
You have to get a green card after your second work visa or go back home, that's the choice. Unlike other countries where you can work on a working visa indefinitely and never even qualify for permanent residency.
Yes, there are some fascinating pictures of Allied troops marching through Vladivostok in 1918. [1] The Red Scare followed that immediately, and wasn't caused by any Russian aggression towards the US. [2]
>The Red Scare followed that immediately, and wasn't caused by any Russian aggression towards the US.
One of the pillars of the Bolsheviks world view (based on the Marx's economical and political class theory) was "worlwide revolution", and it was really happening in many parts of the world at the time (almost whole Europe was basically on fire and China too - one can see why US had reasons to worry especially given the active communist movement in US back then) And for Bolsheviks it wasn't just passive view though, they did for example tried to militarily help German revolutionary comrades and if not for the new Poland state and army which happened to be on the way to Germany, the 20th century in Europe may have looked somewhat differently.
"The Bolsheviks were also implementing a new strategy, "Revolution from abroad" (Revolutsiya izvne—literally, "revolution from the outside"), based on an assumption that revolutionary masses desire revolution but are unable to carry it out without help from more organized and advanced Bolsheviks. Hence, as Leon Trotsky remarked, the revolution should be "brought on bayonets" (of the Red Army), as "through Kiev leads the straight route for uniting with Austro-Hungarian revolution, just as through Pskov and Vilnius goes the way for uniting with German revolution. Offensive on all fronts! Offensive on the west front, offensive on the south front, offensive on the all revolutionary fronts!"."
" Lenin, meanwhile, saw Poland as the bridge the Red Army had to cross to assist other communist movements and bring about other European revolutions."
Yes communnism represented a real threat to the American ruling class, the threat of workers taking matters in their own hands. We must also look at the US labor history which is among the most violent in the world, (except Tsarist Russia) After many bloody labor wars, US labour was basically crushed in the 20's only to rise again in the 30's and then be mostly deestroyed after WW2 again.
> Yes communnism represented a real threat to the American ruling class, the threat of workers taking matters in their own hands
No offence but we know exactly what Trotsky and Lenin represented ... and it very much wasn't "workers taking matters in their own hands". This may have been unknown at the time, maybe even to those men themselves, but it is not unknown to me, or to you.
Of course, the same is true of capitalists; we don't notice anymore because their program for world domination has mostly succeeded. It wasn't peaceful either.
>capitalists; ... their program for world domination has mostly succeeded
Unfortunately human race hasn't been able to come up with a better thing yet. Most of the 20th century was spent on implementation (and dealing with consequences) of the 2 most progressive (as they looked back then and as the theories like the Marx's state) approaches - communism and fascism (the both actually almost the same in the core - total government economical and political control). We all know the results of those approaches.
There is libertarian socialism, or anarchism - which seems very promising. Essentially the extension of democracy into the workplace. In Spain in 1936 by all accounts it was very successful and popular. Productivity improved dramatically and petty crime became non existent. However it was crushed by the combined force of western democracies, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. They hate democracy. Not surprising - democracy is a threat to any power system.
Libya until recently had a very interesting political system where all decisions had to be ratified by the population. Unfortunately that was also overthrown by an invasion, unfortunately a rather common pattern with this kind of thing (Chile under Allende, Guetemala 1953, etc.)
> But there are also a number of us that have resisted the amazon way and try to actually be human.
This last sentence was such a stark contrast with the rest of your comments above, that it almost feels like a slip or a that meme with a guy blinking an S-O-S signal with his eyes.
The amazon way is not always friendly to normal humans. That's just the truth of it. My team has taken pains to not be that way.
The company is trying to change the culture and frankly, have done some mind blowing things. No one would have ever though paternity leave would be a thing 5 years ago. Or that part time work would ever be discussed. But there is a long, long way to go and a lot of senior peoples attitudes need to be changed before I'd call the culture here awesome.
But that's the thing though. Your team is not being discussed, but the entire company is. And if it feels to you that it's your team that's swimming against the current, then maybe there's a lot of truth to the general perception of the whole company.
> Perhaps it's the limited number of media outlets in Europe, or just the nature of our media, but there's a high level of healthy dissent below-the-line that I don't see on The NYT, WP etc.
Don't know about WP, but NYT has a "Readers' Picks" tab in its comments section, which was consistently very critical of NYT throughout the election cycle, especially their one-sided coverage of Clinton and Sanders campaigns. At times, it was quite surreal -- the tone and substance of most upvoted comments were in stark difference with the actual article.
> On one hand their parents and student loans are paying more money to fund the foreign exchange students and every foreign exchange student present is quite literally one local taxpayer who isn't getting an education yet is somehow supposed to pay for the system without an educated-level job.
A vast majority of foreign college students are not "exchange". They are just foreign students who pay full out-of-state tuition and don't qualify for any financial aid. That's why colleges are actively courting them as they bring in way more revenue.
