For over twenty years, I’ve spent my life training, studying, and preparing to fight for my country. Even when my country turned its back on our Afghan allies, I, along with thousands of others, tried our very best to “relocate” (IYKYK) thousands of Afghan families to safety. Out of twenty years of futility, it was the only piece of honor that kept many Afghan combat veterans afloat with hope. Now, however, it seems that some of our Afghan allies might be detained and eventually deported – https://www.gcvfriends.com/p/its-not-your-fault.
Dear colleagues, health care, education, social support, social security must become issues of true public good, true public value. They need to serve our entire society.
We cannot imitate education.
We cannot imitate health care or social security.
We cannot imitate caring for people.
We need to learn to respect ourselves.
We need to look at this important notion such as reputation and that reputation of a specific hospital, school, institution, or social office is a building stone in the overall reputation of our country . . . .”
Education, healthcare, and the social welfare system should become a true public benefit and serve all citizens of the country. Attention to the people cannot be faked. You cannot simulate teaching, medical assistance or social care. We have to learn to feel respect for ourselves and honour reputation. It’s the reputation of individual hospitals, schools, universities and social institutions that form the country’s overall reputation.
Mama NATO may withstand some kvetching as and if President Putin makes good on this pivotal gambit to now transform around his “vertical of power” a breathtaking neo-feudal oligarchy into a rule-of-law abiding and meritocratic capitalist social democratic society.
That’s pretty good advertising for $4.8 million, but there’s a long way to go on establishing a right way, and that way might include revisiting the politics attending 1) more than nine million Syrian refugees in a “show” (not really) designed to transform a modest revolution into a viciously polarized civil war, 2) the creation of a deeply anti-Semitic and nearly nuclear armed Iran, 3) a spiteful incursion into Crimea, Ukraine presenting itself as Russian nationalist fascism, and 4) perhaps some still post-Soviet meddling in the middle east (no one watching has missed Mikhail Bogdanov’s chat with the PFLP – nor missed the related murderous assault in a Jerusalem synagogue) as well as in Hungary where Viktor Orban has pursued an increasingly despotic course aligned with Putin’s outlook.
Still, whether “imitate” or “simulate” was the verb invoked, the want of integrity, of observable-measurable progress, and the want of a good reputation (on top of the bad assed one) seems to have found a place at the top on Russia’s public agenda.
The Russian government strives to paint the current Ukrainian government as fascist, to justify their aggression in Ukraine. In fact, when synagogues in Odessa were covered with Nazi graffiti, it was the leader of the Right Sector who joined the Rabbi in painting over the offensive marks.
Also during his lecture, English showed a photo of a man with a swastika on a sign and a flag, to show how many Nazis are in Ukraine. But the flag was not a Ukrainian flag, it was the flag of the pro-Russian separatists of Donetsk.
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