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Relevant part of his background [0] >They formally applied for their exit visa in September 1978, and as a result his father was "promptly fired". For related
by akhilcacharya 10y ago
Relevant part of his background [0]
>They formally applied for their exit visa in September 1978, and as a result his father was "promptly fired". For related reasons, his mother also had to leave her job. For the next eight months, without any steady income, they were forced to take on temporary jobs as they waited, afraid their request would be denied as it was for many refuseniks. During this time his parents shared responsibility for looking after him and his father taught himself computer programming. In May 1979, they were granted their official exit visas and were allowed to leave the country.[12] At an interview in October 2000, Brin said, "I know the hard times that my parents went through there and am very thankful that I was brought to the States."[17]
>In the summer of 1990, a few weeks before his 17th birthday, his father led a group of high school math students, including Sergey, on a two-week exchange program to the Soviet Union. His roommate on the trip was future Carnegie Mellon University computer science professor John Stamper. As Brin recalls, the trip awakened his childhood fear of authority and he remembered that "his first impulse on confronting Soviet oppression had been to throw pebbles at a police car." Malseed adds, "On the second day of the trip, while the group toured a sanatorium in the countryside near Moscow, Brin took his father aside, looked him in the eye and said, 'Thank you for taking us all out of Russia.'"
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Brin#Early_life_and_education https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Brin#Early_life_and_edu...
- rat87 10y agoI'm guessing that Brin like me came to the US as a refugee under the lautenberg amendment (which applied to religious minorities in the USSR, mostly jews, also protestants, ect.) Before the USSR collapsed people had to first go to neutral Austria to apply. Afterwards you didn't. In 2004 Iranian Religious Minorities(Christians, Bahai'i, Jews, Zoroastrians) were added, in the last few days the Austrian office shut down (for how long?) seemingly leaving these Iranians high and dry. http://www.sfgate.com/news/world/article/Trump-s-refugee-clampdown-stops-Iranian-path-10889096.php http://www.sfgate.com/news/world/article/Trump-s-refugee-cla...
- s_kilk 10y agoIt's interesting that these snivelling alt-right shitheels have never lived under an authoritarian regime, yet they're all for it. But those who had actually lived under such conditions reject it like they would a flesh-eating virus.
- pmoriarty 10y agoGeorge W Bush once said, "If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator." I think the neo-nazi Trump supporters ("alt-right" is far too kind a term for them) would agree with Bush. They'd love to be in charge of a dictatorship, but at the same time fear a dictatorship of their opponents, like the "Obama is Hitler" meme that is prevalent among their kind, and the "FEMA concentration camps" and "UN world government" conspiracy theories that have long had currency among the far right. They really do fear those chimeras, but they'd love to see a Christian theocratic dictatorship, or one that would allow them to oppress their own enemies: minorities, immigrants, leftists, and liberals.
- grzm 10y agosnivelling alt-right shitheels No matter how passionately you feel and how wrong you think they are, please do the utmost to keep things civil. It's hard enough discussing political issues on HN. Using inflammatory language like this makes it impossible. If you're not interested in civil discussion, there are other places where you can do so. HN is not one of them.