#Vasily was expecting him to be paying for his crimes

[yurivanovich]

#tfw your former Prime Minister is in “jail” for corruption.

[geekywritings]

Rise of a Queen - Nikolai Lantsov x OC - PART 2

"We will need support at court.", Zoya stated, as they were all sitting around the fire, barely a two day journey away from the capital. "There is no saying whether the Grisha will support Alina."

"There is also no saying how the rest of the court will react to me.", Nikolai threw in. "I doubt my brother will want to roll out the carpet for my return."

"Is there anyone we can count on within the palace?", Mal asked and Aline's eyes moved to Nikolai.

"What about that friend of yours? You did mention that she comes from a powerful family." Now Nikolai cursed himself for having talked about Taya more than once with the sun summoner. Maybe she could help, but still. If this was to be his first letter to her after all these years...

"Well, we should use any chance we have.", Mal said with a shrug and so Nikolai almost felt peer pressured into writing those damned lines and sending them ahead to Os Alta.

________

Whether it had been with Taya's help or not, their arrival at the capital was quite the sight. People littered the streets to catch a glimpse of the returning prince and his glorious sun summoner. All the shows they had put on before now culminated in this grand finale, even though Alina had made it abundantly clear that she wanted no part in the story he had fabricated. And as they rode through the streets of his childhood towards the palace, Nikolai wondered himself if the story had been a mistake.

The court had gathered in the gardens to welcome him, his parents at the front, but Vasily nowhere in sight. He had probably left to gamble somewhere or appear busier than he actually was. Surrounding his parents he spotted more familiar faces, but his eyes stopped on one. He had almost missed her for a split second, but it had to be Taya. Taller, more womanly and dressed in the latest fashion, she looked like everything she never wanted to be. And her expression carried both surprise and anger. It could only mean that his letter had reached her after all.

Before he could even think about speaking with Taya, he was swept up in the commotion. His parents were glad to have him back but furious with Alina. There were many questions to be answered and before he realized it, two days had passed without him seeing more than his parents, the little palace, and his bedroom.

That evening however, there was a ball to be held in his honor and while he disliked the idea, it was the perfect opportunity to finally speak with Taya and explain himself. What he would say? He honestly had no idea.

________

Fine silks, colorful brocade, happy music, and fine food... just another annoying ball full of empty flattery and court intrigues. Even if the occasions changed, the balls themselves never did. But this ball Taya was not annoyed. Not like usual. This event was held in Nikolai's honor to celebrate his return after his long absence. Five years to be exact. Four of which he hadn't sent even a single letter to her. He had practically vanished off the face of the earth and the next time Taya had heard of him, he was rumored to marry the sun summoner. She wasn't angry at him for that. No, she was angry for having been worried about him without a letter. She was angry for him to only write a few lines to her two days ago, asking about the mood at court. She was angry at him for not taking the time to find her after his return.

But she couldn't show that anger, as she walked around the ballroom with the glass of champagne in her hand that she would love to empty in one go. And then she spotted him, practically glowing amongst all the other guests in his uniform. For a moment she glanced left and right until she realized that he was walking towards her. Instantly she straightened her back, ready to greet him, but instead, he just mouthed a familiar line to her. "Meet me in the garden." Even after all these years, she still understood perfectly.

Making sure nobody noticed, she sneaked out of the ballroom and headed into the garden, still careful to remain unseen. She slipped through a wall of ivy and found herself in their secret spot. There he stood, looking unbelievably handsome and nervous and so very very real. Not one to hold back, Taya rushed to him, throwing her arms around him and holding him tight. From the way he tensed, it was obvious that he had not seen that coming. "I was so worried.", she said. She felt his arms sneak around her, returning the embrace, but after only a second she pushed him away, hitting him repeatedly with her fan. "Why did you never write?! Why did you just disappear from the army?! Why is the first letter I get from you after all these years only three sentences long?!"

"I would explain if you would stop hitting me.", he said, putting up a feeble attempt to defend himself. "You do know that hitting a prince is a crime, right?"

"Not when he absolutely deserves it!", she snapped back. She looked glorious, Nikolai realized, even as she stood there, mad at him. She had been a very pretty girl, but now she had grown into a beautiful woman. Her dark curly hair was already escaping from her tight updo, some strands falling out and her blue eyes were only enhanced by the light makeup around them. The dress she wore underlined her womanly figure and he caught his eyes wandering from head to toe twice. It only earned him another hit with her fan.

"You owe me an explanation."

"I have none...", he said. He had thought about what to tell her, but he honestly didn't have any kind of excuse or story to tell her. The only thing he could offer was the truth, which he tried to shorten as much as possible.

"You became a pirate?"

"Privateer."

"You had your own ship? And a crew? And real adventures?"

Funny how those were the things she seemed to be stuck on. There was admiration in her eyes, but also disappointment. Because those had been her dreams, as well, he realized.

"I should have written to you.", he said, really meaning it. "But I got lost in that new life."

"You were free.", she stopped him. "You let go of everything."

The words cut him like a knife.

"Why come back now?"

"Because Alina can stop the Darkling and destroy the fold."

"And what about you becoming Tsar?"

So she had heard about that. Of course, the rumors had flared up the moment he had reentered the picture. From what Nikolai had gathered, Vasiliy wasn't exactly regarded as a good candidate for the crown. With his achievements and popularity among the army and the people, the younger brother suddenly had good chances to be named as the Tsar's successor after all.

"That is my plan, yes.", he admitted to her and Taya just accepted with a nod. Silence fell between them. The kind of silence they had never experienced before. It was uncomfortable, cold even, as if they were strangers.

"How have you been, Taya?", Nikolai asked into that atmosphere, if only to fill it with talking.

"I have been well. I've even grown used to the embroidery and dancing."

A ghost of a smile passed over Nikolai. "I don't believe it. You?"

He expected her to joke back, but she didn't. "I had to.", she just said. "It was a small price to pay to stay unmarriagable." A problematic wild woman was far more likely to be married off to the next best man, while a proper lady was a prize to be won.

The news of her being free still was surprising to Nikolai, based on her family and appearance, but he was also strangely relieved to hear it. "Vasily has not started chasing you?"

"I didn't say that." Ah, so his brother had made his move. "He just isn't fast enough to catch me."

The first genuine smile crossed their lips and the awkwardness melted away. "I'm still mad at you though.", she reminded him, giving him another hit with her fan for good measure. "And now tell me, how can I help you?"

____

You can also follow the series on my Wattpad! 

https://www.wattpad.com/myworks/275585861-rise-of-a-queen

[courtneytincher]

Street Protests Might Bring Down Putin—Or Make Him Even More Dangerous to U.S.

Vasily Maximov/GettyThe well-known Russian political scientist Valery Solovey has talked a lot recently about possible political change in his country, but he was particularly emphatic in a tweet on Sunday, the day after 60,000 Russians protested on the streets of Moscow:  "I have a growing feeling that this fall mass protests will enter a self-sustaining trajectory.  This is even faster than I expected and what I have publicly talked about.  The underbrush of mass discontent has become parched. And the government is stubbornly bringing a match to it."But does Solovey's scenario—based on the premise that the Putin regime has gone too far in suppressing peaceful protestors—take into account the huge punitive machine that the Kremlin has to douse the flames it is igniting?  A Missile Explosion, a Radiation Spike, and Kremlin Secrecy Bring Back Memories of ChernobylNot only are Putin's loyal siloviki (those who run the “institutions of force”) showing no hesitation in unleashing their might against the democratic opposition;  the rank and file forces under them are zealously following orders and unlikely to rebel.  As one responder to Solovey tweeted:"No one has explained to ordinary police officers what would happen to them when the power changes, so they will continue to come down furiously with their clubs.  After all, they, like Putin, are very afraid of revolution."This video of police on Saturday beating up a young woman illustrates the point and has caused a huge stir in the Russian independent media. She later was hospitalized with a concussion:Russia's mass street protests over election fraud in 2011-12 shook the Kremlin to its core and were a nightmare for Putin, who blamed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the unrest. She publicly expressed “serious concern” about irregularities in the 2011 Duma election, and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper among others has suggested Putin's enduring grudge against Clinton may partly explain his aggressive support for Trump in 2016.Mindful of those protests eight years ago, Putin has long been preparing for another such outbreak, which this time began in July and was fueled by the decision of Russia's Central Election Commission to ban numerous independent candidates from running in Moscow's municipal election on September 8.  In 2016, Putin created a National Guard (Rosgvardia), which reports directly to him and numbers an estimated 350,000 men, including special forces and internal troops that used to be under the MVD (the Ministry of Internal Affairs).  A Battered Professor Leads Moscow’s Growing Grassroots Protests Against PutinDesigned to quell mass unrest, Rosgvardia is headed by Viktor Zolotov, a KGB veteran who became a close Putin ally when the two worked for the St. Petersburg mayor, Anatoly Sobchak, in the early 1990s. (Zolotov was Sobchak's bodyguard.)  The FSB (Federal Security Service) not only arrests and investigates Russian citizens for such crimes as "extremism," and corruption; it also has its own special forces, which are designated mainly for anti-terrorism, but could be called upon to suppress public disorders.  FSB chief Aleksandr Bortnikov, who joined the KGB in Leningrad in 1975, is a direct protégé of Putin.  The MVD, which operates the regular police, is also loyal to Putin. MVD chief Vladimir Kolokoltsev is not a "piterskii" (part of Putin's St. Petersburg clan), but he is a dedicated career cop, (he formerly headed the Moscow police) known for coming down hard against real or perceived lawbreakers. And finally, the powerful Russian Investigative Committee, which recently opened a criminal case against Aleksei Navalny's Foundation Against Corruption (FBK) on charges of money laundering, is also under Putin's thumb. Its chief is  Aleksandr Bastrykin, a fellow law student with Putin at Leningrad State University in the 1970s and a long-time Putin crony.  (The Kremlin has reportedly awarded staffers from the Investigative Committee a 20 percent pay raise.)  Navalny, a leading opposition figure, and several of his colleagues are languishing in jail for organizing unauthorized protests; if the Investigative Committee's criminal case against them proceeds, they could end up in labor camps, like Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the exiled former head of the oil company Yukos, who was arrested in 2003 on Putin’s orders and spent 10 years behind bars.The Putin regime may have overreacted in its response to the protests, with the bungled jail poisoning of Navalny recently, the thousands of arrests, and the excessive, indiscriminate use of force against protestors.  The whole crisis might have been avoided if the authorities had allowed at least a few candidates to appear on the Moscow ballot, which would have hardly threatened the Kremlin's grip on the city's government.  But the siloviki have good reason to maintain their resolve.  They are all incredibly corrupt, as demonstrated in the numerous exposes by Navalny's FBK, and would suffer bad consequences if Putin's regime fell.  (Recall the fate of the corrupt Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovich, who was forced to flee to Russia by the seat of his pants in 2014.) As for ordinary policemen and guard troops, rather than getting their news from the internet, where Navalny and others make their case against the Kremlin, they apparently watch state-controlled television, which portrays the protestors as pawns of the West.  Radio Liberty's Mike Eckel wrote last week:  "Conspiracies of foreign intelligence agency meddling have also trickled down to the precinct level for Moscow police. One man who was detained during the protests, even though he said he was merely a bystander, was berated by an officer during his two days in police custody: 'Guys, you understand nothing. You’re being controlled. It’s the CIA that is manipulating you…The protests are just the beginning. This is part of a protracted campaign to oust the regime and seize Russia’s resources.'”As in 2011-2012,  the authorities prefer to see the current ferment as Western inspired, rather than to question their own policies.  After the August 3 street demonstrations, the Russian Foreign Ministry accused the U.S. Embassy in Moscow of encouraging turnout and "interfering in the internal affairs of our country" because the embassy published a map of the planned route:  In fact, the Americans intended the map as a warning to its citizens to stay away from the protests.  And on Sunday, Roskomnadzor, the government agency that oversees the internet, demanded in a formal complaint, that Google prohibit users of YouTube, its subsidiary, from posting notifications about  the protests. Roskomnadzor threatened Google with an “adequate response” in case of refusal to comply with its requirements: “The Russian Federation will regard this as interference in the sovereign affairs of the state, and also as hostile and hindering the conduction of democratic elections in Russia.”Russian journalist Iulia Latynina (forced to flee Russia in 2017 because her life was threatened) observed after Saturday's protests:  "It is very interesting to watch [on YouTube] the riot police, because they have the special tactics and strategy of a war against their own people. These police went through combat coordination, that is, they know how to act…They beat people as if they were going after Germans at the entrance to the Kremlin."  Latynina claims that members of the riot police and the security organs think of themselves as a righteous sect, surrounded by enemies who are supported by the U.S. State Department.  Their violence is arbitrary because it doesn't matter to them whether the person who is arrested or beaten is just an innocent bystander or an oppositionist.  Drawing parallels with Stalin's terror, Latynina concludes: "We have a lot of commentators who say: 'This violence is ineffective. It only makes people angry.'  Well guys, sorry, please. Of course, violence is effective… and the history of our country, unfortunately, is direct evidence of this. Look what Stalin did. Stalin destroyed the Russian people and not only the Russian people but  the Soviet people, all the people that were there. How many rebellions were there against Stalin?" Former FSB lieutenant-colonel Gennady Gudkov, who used to serve in the Russian Duma, seems to share Latynina's pessimism.  In a blog for radio Echo of Moscow on Sunday, Gudkov wrote:  "If we discard the version that the Kremlin and its inhabitants are completely crazy, then we are left with one single impression: that the regime ordered its police to act extremely cruel with only one purpose - to anger society, sow indignation, hatred and a desire to take revenge."  Gudkov goes on to explain that the Kremlin's end game may be to provoke enough public unrest to justify the declaration of a state of emergency, which would result in a cancellation of all future elections, complete censorship of the press and the internet, a shutdown of the independent media and even curfews.   "One gets the impression," Gudkov continued, "that today the regime deliberately acts on the principle of  'the worse, the better.' If so, then you and I have entered the last stage of Putin's rule: the masks are dropped, the image in the world is gone, there is only one way - a la North Korea and the complete 'freezing' of public life for decades. And holding on until there are no longer enough forces, money and ammunition for the fighters of the 'Rosgvardiya.'  A bloody road to nowhere."Whatever the likelihood of these grim prognoses, which probably give the Kremlin too much credit for having a strategy, the authorities are keeping up some appearance of biding by the rules. On Saturday, when police with black masks arrested Lyubov Sobol, a lawyer and producer of videos for Navalny's FBK, as well as a would-be candidate for the Moscow elections, they came with policewomen. Thirty-one-year-old Sobol, who has been on a hunger strike for over three weeks in protest against the election committee's decision, tweeted later: "The female police were hauled along just 'for show.' They were under the command of other officers…The police car that took me away stopped literally around the corner and let the policewomen out."  Sobol, the mother of a toddler, was released only after several hours of questioning, so she missed the demonstration.  On the way home she thanked all the protestors for their solidarity with the opposition and urged them not to give up.  On Monday, the FBK posted a stunning expose, revealing the extensive corruption of a key member of the Central Election Committee, Boris Ebzeyev.  Noting that Navalny and several colleagues are sitting behind bars and that its offices were raided last week, the FBK voiced defiance: "They are obviously trying to destroy us and make it so that we cannot go about our business - the fight against corruption. But this, of course, will not work. And to be honest, it only infuriates and energizes us." The democratic opposition is calling for another street demonstration on August 17, despite the fact that the Moscow mayor's office has refused to authorize it.  Political scientist Solovey observed in May that revolutions aren’t made by majorities, but by ambitious minorities “who suddenly understand that they have a chance to do now what they could not do earlier."  Maybe he is right, after all.  Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines

Vasily Maximov/GettyThe well-known Russian political scientist Valery Solovey has talked a lot recently about possible political change in his country, but he was particularly emphatic in a tweet on Sunday, the day after 60,000 Russians protested on the streets of Moscow:  "I have a growing feeling that this fall mass protests will enter a self-sustaining trajectory.  This is even faster than I expected and what I have publicly talked about.  The underbrush of mass discontent has become parched. And the government is stubbornly bringing a match to it."But does Solovey's scenario—based on the premise that the Putin regime has gone too far in suppressing peaceful protestors—take into account the huge punitive machine that the Kremlin has to douse the flames it is igniting?  A Missile Explosion, a Radiation Spike, and Kremlin Secrecy Bring Back Memories of ChernobylNot only are Putin's loyal siloviki (those who run the “institutions of force”) showing no hesitation in unleashing their might against the democratic opposition;  the rank and file forces under them are zealously following orders and unlikely to rebel.  As one responder to Solovey tweeted:"No one has explained to ordinary police officers what would happen to them when the power changes, so they will continue to come down furiously with their clubs.  After all, they, like Putin, are very afraid of revolution."This video of police on Saturday beating up a young woman illustrates the point and has caused a huge stir in the Russian independent media. She later was hospitalized with a concussion:Russia's mass street protests over election fraud in 2011-12 shook the Kremlin to its core and were a nightmare for Putin, who blamed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the unrest. She publicly expressed “serious concern” about irregularities in the 2011 Duma election, and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper among others has suggested Putin's enduring grudge against Clinton may partly explain his aggressive support for Trump in 2016.Mindful of those protests eight years ago, Putin has long been preparing for another such outbreak, which this time began in July and was fueled by the decision of Russia's Central Election Commission to ban numerous independent candidates from running in Moscow's municipal election on September 8.  In 2016, Putin created a National Guard (Rosgvardia), which reports directly to him and numbers an estimated 350,000 men, including special forces and internal troops that used to be under the MVD (the Ministry of Internal Affairs).  A Battered Professor Leads Moscow’s Growing Grassroots Protests Against PutinDesigned to quell mass unrest, Rosgvardia is headed by Viktor Zolotov, a KGB veteran who became a close Putin ally when the two worked for the St. Petersburg mayor, Anatoly Sobchak, in the early 1990s. (Zolotov was Sobchak's bodyguard.)  The FSB (Federal Security Service) not only arrests and investigates Russian citizens for such crimes as "extremism," and corruption; it also has its own special forces, which are designated mainly for anti-terrorism, but could be called upon to suppress public disorders.  FSB chief Aleksandr Bortnikov, who joined the KGB in Leningrad in 1975, is a direct protégé of Putin.  The MVD, which operates the regular police, is also loyal to Putin. MVD chief Vladimir Kolokoltsev is not a "piterskii" (part of Putin's St. Petersburg clan), but he is a dedicated career cop, (he formerly headed the Moscow police) known for coming down hard against real or perceived lawbreakers. And finally, the powerful Russian Investigative Committee, which recently opened a criminal case against Aleksei Navalny's Foundation Against Corruption (FBK) on charges of money laundering, is also under Putin's thumb. Its chief is  Aleksandr Bastrykin, a fellow law student with Putin at Leningrad State University in the 1970s and a long-time Putin crony.  (The Kremlin has reportedly awarded staffers from the Investigative Committee a 20 percent pay raise.)  Navalny, a leading opposition figure, and several of his colleagues are languishing in jail for organizing unauthorized protests; if the Investigative Committee's criminal case against them proceeds, they could end up in labor camps, like Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the exiled former head of the oil company Yukos, who was arrested in 2003 on Putin’s orders and spent 10 years behind bars.The Putin regime may have overreacted in its response to the protests, with the bungled jail poisoning of Navalny recently, the thousands of arrests, and the excessive, indiscriminate use of force against protestors.  The whole crisis might have been avoided if the authorities had allowed at least a few candidates to appear on the Moscow ballot, which would have hardly threatened the Kremlin's grip on the city's government.  But the siloviki have good reason to maintain their resolve.  They are all incredibly corrupt, as demonstrated in the numerous exposes by Navalny's FBK, and would suffer bad consequences if Putin's regime fell.  (Recall the fate of the corrupt Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovich, who was forced to flee to Russia by the seat of his pants in 2014.) As for ordinary policemen and guard troops, rather than getting their news from the internet, where Navalny and others make their case against the Kremlin, they apparently watch state-controlled television, which portrays the protestors as pawns of the West.  Radio Liberty's Mike Eckel wrote last week:  "Conspiracies of foreign intelligence agency meddling have also trickled down to the precinct level for Moscow police. One man who was detained during the protests, even though he said he was merely a bystander, was berated by an officer during his two days in police custody: 'Guys, you understand nothing. You’re being controlled. It’s the CIA that is manipulating you…The protests are just the beginning. This is part of a protracted campaign to oust the regime and seize Russia’s resources.'”As in 2011-2012,  the authorities prefer to see the current ferment as Western inspired, rather than to question their own policies.  After the August 3 street demonstrations, the Russian Foreign Ministry accused the U.S. Embassy in Moscow of encouraging turnout and "interfering in the internal affairs of our country" because the embassy published a map of the planned route:  In fact, the Americans intended the map as a warning to its citizens to stay away from the protests.  And on Sunday, Roskomnadzor, the government agency that oversees the internet, demanded in a formal complaint, that Google prohibit users of YouTube, its subsidiary, from posting notifications about  the protests. Roskomnadzor threatened Google with an “adequate response” in case of refusal to comply with its requirements: “The Russian Federation will regard this as interference in the sovereign affairs of the state, and also as hostile and hindering the conduction of democratic elections in Russia.”Russian journalist Iulia Latynina (forced to flee Russia in 2017 because her life was threatened) observed after Saturday's protests:  "It is very interesting to watch [on YouTube] the riot police, because they have the special tactics and strategy of a war against their own people. These police went through combat coordination, that is, they know how to act…They beat people as if they were going after Germans at the entrance to the Kremlin."  Latynina claims that members of the riot police and the security organs think of themselves as a righteous sect, surrounded by enemies who are supported by the U.S. State Department.  Their violence is arbitrary because it doesn't matter to them whether the person who is arrested or beaten is just an innocent bystander or an oppositionist.  Drawing parallels with Stalin's terror, Latynina concludes: "We have a lot of commentators who say: 'This violence is ineffective. It only makes people angry.'  Well guys, sorry, please. Of course, violence is effective… and the history of our country, unfortunately, is direct evidence of this. Look what Stalin did. Stalin destroyed the Russian people and not only the Russian people but  the Soviet people, all the people that were there. How many rebellions were there against Stalin?" Former FSB lieutenant-colonel Gennady Gudkov, who used to serve in the Russian Duma, seems to share Latynina's pessimism.  In a blog for radio Echo of Moscow on Sunday, Gudkov wrote:  "If we discard the version that the Kremlin and its inhabitants are completely crazy, then we are left with one single impression: that the regime ordered its police to act extremely cruel with only one purpose - to anger society, sow indignation, hatred and a desire to take revenge."  Gudkov goes on to explain that the Kremlin's end game may be to provoke enough public unrest to justify the declaration of a state of emergency, which would result in a cancellation of all future elections, complete censorship of the press and the internet, a shutdown of the independent media and even curfews.   "One gets the impression," Gudkov continued, "that today the regime deliberately acts on the principle of  'the worse, the better.' If so, then you and I have entered the last stage of Putin's rule: the masks are dropped, the image in the world is gone, there is only one way - a la North Korea and the complete 'freezing' of public life for decades. And holding on until there are no longer enough forces, money and ammunition for the fighters of the 'Rosgvardiya.'  A bloody road to nowhere."Whatever the likelihood of these grim prognoses, which probably give the Kremlin too much credit for having a strategy, the authorities are keeping up some appearance of biding by the rules. On Saturday, when police with black masks arrested Lyubov Sobol, a lawyer and producer of videos for Navalny's FBK, as well as a would-be candidate for the Moscow elections, they came with policewomen. Thirty-one-year-old Sobol, who has been on a hunger strike for over three weeks in protest against the election committee's decision, tweeted later: "The female police were hauled along just 'for show.' They were under the command of other officers…The police car that took me away stopped literally around the corner and let the policewomen out."  Sobol, the mother of a toddler, was released only after several hours of questioning, so she missed the demonstration.  On the way home she thanked all the protestors for their solidarity with the opposition and urged them not to give up.  On Monday, the FBK posted a stunning expose, revealing the extensive corruption of a key member of the Central Election Committee, Boris Ebzeyev.  Noting that Navalny and several colleagues are sitting behind bars and that its offices were raided last week, the FBK voiced defiance: "They are obviously trying to destroy us and make it so that we cannot go about our business - the fight against corruption. But this, of course, will not work. And to be honest, it only infuriates and energizes us." The democratic opposition is calling for another street demonstration on August 17, despite the fact that the Moscow mayor's office has refused to authorize it.  Political scientist Solovey observed in May that revolutions aren’t made by majorities, but by ambitious minorities “who suddenly understand that they have a chance to do now what they could not do earlier."  Maybe he is right, after all.  Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

August 13, 2019 at 05:36PM via IFTTT