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Category: History (Page 11 of 15)

History.

Iran Shows its True Colors

There has not been much news coverage of the plight of the Baha’is in Iran but it did get some coverage in a recent New York Times blog.

The leaders of Iran like to portray themselves as the right people to lead Iran into the future. A future of what? Gestapo-like oppression? Wars? Kangaroo courts convicting people of phony crimes against the state and sentencing them to death? Is that the future that the leaders of Iran want for their country? Is that what the Iranian people want from their leaders?

The leaders of Iran like to badmouth the U.S., and while the behavior of the U.S. has been less than exemplary for quite a few years, the Iranian government is really showing us what they are about and what sort of people they really are by their oppression of a peaceful religious group called the Baha’i.

What’s next? Concentration camps?

Why is the West putting up with this? Is it because the West desperately needs Iran’s oil? Well now with the worldwide economic crisis, the demand for oil has dropped steeply. Oil reserves and storage facilities in the United States are completely full and brimming over, and this condition is predicted to last for at least a couple of years and more likely longer. It’s my opinion that now would be a good time for the West to put its foot down because, for the time being, Iran has lost its only bargaining chip: oil. We don’t need it so we don’t have to put up with the Iranian regime’s behavior. Do we?

Read the NY Times blog entry here.

Future U.S. Growth in Danger?

As the debate over immigrants goes on, we are losing sight of one important fact: The U.S. is no longer the only land of opportunity. If we don’t want the immigrants who fueled our innovation and economic growth, they now have options elsewhere. Immigrants are returning home in greater numbers. And new research shows they are returning to enjoy a better quality of life, better career prospects, and the comfort of being close to family and friends.

Research indicates that a crisis was brewing because of the ever-growing immigration backlog. At the end of 2006, more than 1 million skilled professionals (engineers, scientists, doctors, researchers) and their families were in line for a yearly allotment of only 120,000 permanent resident visas. The wait time for some people ran longer than 10 years. In the meantime, these workers are trapped in “immigration limbo.” If they change jobs or even take a promotion, they risk being pushed to the back of the waiting line. It was predicted that skilled foreign workers would increasingly get fed up and return to countries like India and China where the economies are booming, and it’s now happening.

Contrary to the anti-immigration noises that came from the previous president’s administration, immigrants are critical to the United States’ long-term economic health. Despite the fact that they constitute only 12% of the U.S. population, immigrants have started 52% of Silicon Valley’s technology companies and contributed more than 25% of our global patents. They make up 24% of the U.S. science and engineering workforce holding bachelor degrees and 47% of science and engineering workers who have PhDs. Imagine that — 47% of the PhDs in science and engineering in the U.S. are immigrants. Immigrants founded or co-founded firms that you’ve heard of such as Google, Intel, eBay, and Yahoo!.

No government agency tracks the numbers on immigrants who gave up or returned but human resources directors in India and China say that what was a trickle of returnees a decade ago had become a flood. Job applications from the U.S. have increased tenfold over the last few years. And it’s not just new immigrants who are returning. 30% are immigrants who have permanent residency or are U.S. citizens.

Besides the visa problems and now the economic crisis, returnees are saying that their reasons for returning include better opportunities back home, better conditions for entrepreneurs and for launching businesses, and better family values in places like India and China.

The Coolest Website Ever

Check out Academic Earth. http://www.academicearth.org/

I’ve been wishing for this for years. Not everyone with a “Walkman” is listening to music. Some of us listen to lectures. Now it’s even better. Complete course lectures from some of the best schools, Yale, Stanford, MIT, in high quality video. Biology, physics, engineering, law, history, economics, medicine, you name it. And the collection is constantly growing.

Quiet Over Here

Canoe on the Rio Dulce River.

Canoe on the Rio Dulce River, Guatemala. Click to view larger.

This blog has been kind of quiet recently because I’ve been working on the Maya Paradise web site. The whole site is getting modernized and improved. There’s lots of interesting information there.

If you are curious about it, you can find it here:

mayaparaiso.com

There is also an associated blog that’s connected to the site here:

http://maya-paradise.blogspot.com

Canoes on the Rio Dulce River, Guatemala.

Canoes on the Rio Dulce River, Guatemala. Click to view larger.

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