Hi! American here. I'm actually onboard with this (whenever providing legal background I already try to say I'm in the US for this reason). Here's just some of the important stuff I've learned from people issuing addenda to my posts:
1) most of the world does not have the right to not self-incriminate. In the US, let's say I happen to pull out of a parking lot entirely unknowing that a murder is happening at the other end. I can plead the fifth and say I'm invoking my right to not self-incriminate. If I'm basically anywhere else, I have to admit I was in the parking lot and hope the other evidence saves me.
2) most of the world doesn't have the "you don't have to testify against your spouse" law. You can't rob a bank together and then refuse to speak badly of each other.
3) not all countries operate on "innocent until proven guilty." I don't know for sure a full list of who doesn't, but I know "guilty until proven innocent" is true in Japan and Thailand, and basically any country with a dictator. "But it's not a dictatorship" is not an indicator.
4) you do not have the right to remain silent in most of the world. Silence will be taken as an admission of guilt even if your silence is only "I'm not fluent in this language, and don't want to speak until I have an interpreter."
5) most places have absolutely terrible disability protections laws, if they have them at all. I know the "hate America" website is going to hate hearing this, but the US still has some of the strongest laws in the world for protecting our disabled citizens in terms of both accessibility and discrimination. "You can sue for that" is not necessarily true--often it isn't.
6) whether or not your country has freedom of speech laws is a crapshoot, and countries you might expect to have them often don't. I was stunned to learn the UK doesn't have freedom of speech laws. "This country is not a dictatorship" is not an indicator.
7) I already knew this one before Tumblr, but it bears repeating for the people who don't, alcohol laws vary wildly throughout the world and the US has the highest age of legality and second-strictest laws about alcohol in the world. (The strictest are in Islamic theocratic countries where consumption is forbidden and punishable by death.) Most of the developed world has ages of legality between 14-18 years old, often with "split" ages (e.g. you can drink beer and wine at 14 but you can't drink hard liquor until you're 16). Some places may not have minimum ages at all.
8) the "parliamentary government" is a lie. All parliaments are different, sometimes wildly so. Maybe you, like me, had a civics teacher who actually explained the differences between monarchy/democracy/republic/parliamentary and so on. That teacher, unlike mine, might even have been very good. But their class time was limited and they absolutely did not give you the whole picture. Unless you're talking to someone in the UK, "contact your MP or local council" is not necessarily how their government works, even if it's parliamentary. "It's like Congress except with more than two parties" is how a very, very limited number of parliamentary governments actually work.
9) "military service" doesn't necessarily mean the same thing everywhere, and militaries are not inherently repressive. Very few people would argue the Ukrainian military is a bad thing when it's fighting against a genocide, for example. And I learned from a German military friend that the primary purpose of the German military is actually public service--they cover a lot of the functions that would be handled in the US by stuff like FEMA.
10) not quite a legal thing, but most of the world doesn't use 911 for their emergency services and those who do are doing it in response to widespread ignorance of the real number. 112 is a common emergency number, and I think I've also seen 111 and 999. If you're in a non-US country and dial 911, at best you'll be rerouted to the actual emergency services number. At worst, nothing will happen and you'll still need help but not know how to get it.
And that's only stuff I've personally picked up. That's absolutely not a full rundown of all the common misinformation pieces.
Tag the country of origin, save lives.
amandla
jacobvanloon
kianamaiart
gummygunk
andulkaphoto
titsay
