Veteran's Day Reminder: As Bad As You Think it Is, They Still Want What You Have, People...
November 11, 2010
Veteran's Day. A day to stop all the drama related to what's wrong with America and thank those who have served to protect our country.
While it's easy to forget what a great country America is amidst recessions, partisan elections, etc, the reality is that countless others want what we have, and what our veterans have served to protect.
Need proof? I'm going to give you a slightly offbeat example today. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, one of the original Russian oligarchs, is the former CEO of giant Russian oil company Yukos. He was once the richest man in Russia, worth more than $15 billion. In 2003, after opposing Vladimir Putin, Khodorkovsky was prosecuted and convicted on tax-related charges and sent to prison in Siberia. The charges are widely thought to be a power play to put an influential (too much so) business person in jail and separate him from his assets. In Russia, they can just do that. Boom. It's done.
Recently, as he was getting ready to come off that jail sentence, new charges were levied against him that he stole all the oil produced by Yukos from 1998 to 2003. The following are a couple of excerpts from the full closing statement he made on his own behalf at that trial. See if you see any longing for America in this:
"I can recall October 2003. My last day as a free man. Several weeks after my arrest, I was informed that president Putin had decided: I was going to have to “slurp gruel” for 8 years. It was hard to believe that back then.
The first time around, they at least went through the effort of first repealing the judicial acts that stood in their way. Now – they’ll just leave them be; especially since they would need to repeal not two, but more than 60 decisions.
Notwithstanding, I want to talk to you about hope. Hope – the main thing in life.
I remember the end of the ’80s of the last century. I was 25 then. Our country was living on hope of freedom, hope that we would be able to achieve happiness for ourselves and for our children.
We lived on this hope. In some ways, it did materialise, in others – it did not. The responsibility for why this hope was not realized all the way, and not for everybody, probably lies on our entire generation, myself included."
I can't do it justice, so go read the whole thing.
As bad as you think it is right now in America, they want what you have.
And the veterans are the ones who have always protected it. Thank a veteran for their service today. Mikhail Khodorkovsky would love the opportunity to be in your shoes.
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