I'm adding that excellent quote to my quotes collection. We have quite a few tyrants leading the world, and I do think it is our duty to rebel. Albert Camus said: "What is a rebel? a man who says no." I say an emphatic "NO!" to the whole bush madness.
I've updated my links and so I have both your sites in my blogroll. Hopefully you will be able to transfer those posts here.
The site is looking better day by day. Glad you all moved over.
"The battle has to begin here. In America. The only institution more powerful than the U.S. government is American civil society. The rest of us are subjects of slave nations. We are by no means powerless, but you have the power of proximity. You have access to the Imperial Palace and the Emperor's chambers. Empire's conquests are being carried out in your name." - Arundhati Roy
"Today the world is run by three of the most secretive institutions in the world: The International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization, all three of which, in turn, are dominated by the U.S. Their decisions are made in secret. The people who head them are appointed behind closed doors. Nobody really knows anything about them, their politics, their beliefs, their intentions. Nobody elected them. Nobody said they could make decisions on our behalf." - Arundhati Roy
"Israel's staunchest political and military ally is and always has been the U.S. Government. The U.S. Government has blocked, along with Israel, almost every U.N. resolution that sought a peaceful, equitable solution to the conflict. It has supported almost every war that Israel has fought. When Israel attacks Palestine, it is American missiles that smash through Palestinian homes. And every year Israel receives several billion dollars from the U.S." - Arundhati Roy
Their is no good in silence over matters involving wisdom just as there is no good in speaking with ignorance. by imam ali,najaf iraq (PBUH),HERES ONE MORE. With wealth a strange land is a homeland,while with destitution even a homeland is a strange land.
“It is natural for man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts... For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth, to know the worst, and to provide for it.” Patrick Henry
"If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest for freedom, go home and leave us in peace. We seek not your council nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen." --Samuel Adams
If this site wasn't so Delusional it would almost be funny. No, don't wake up go back to sleep and stay on your medication.
Blaming Muslims
They(people)did not take light from the lights of his wisdom nor did they produce flame from the flint of sparkling knowledge. so in this matter they are like grazing cattle and hard stones. Nevertheless hidden things have appeared for those who perceive,the face of right has become clear for the wanderer,the approaching moment has raised the veil from its face and signs have appeared for those who search for them.
What is the matter with me! I see you just bodies without spirits and spirits without bodies,devotees without good,traders without profits,wakeful but sleeping,present but unseen,seeing but blind,hearing but deaf and speaking but dumb.
I notice that misguidance has stood on its centre and spread(all round)though its off-shoots. It weighs you with its weights and confuses you with its measures. Its leader is an out-cast from the community. He persists on misguidance.So on that day none from among you would remain except as the sediment in a cooking pot or the dust left after dusting a bundle.It would scrape you as leather is scraped,and trample you as harvest is trampled,and pick out the beliver as a bird picks out a big grain from the thin grain.
Where are these ways taking you,glooms misleading you,and falsehoods deceiving you? Whence are you brought and where are you drivin? for every period there is a written document and everyone who is absent has to return .So listen to your godly leader and keep your hearts present.If he speaks to you be wakeful.The forerunner must speak truth to his people,should keep his wits together and maintain presence of mind.He has clarified to you the matter as the stitch-hole is cleared,and scraped it as the gum is scraped(from the twigs).
Nevertheless,now the wrong has set it self on its places and ignorance has ridden on its riding beasts.Unruliness has increased while the call for virtue is suppressed.Time has pounced upon like devouring carnivore,and wrong is shouting like a camel after remaining silent.People have become brothers over ill-doings,have forsaken religion,are united in speaking lie but bear mutual hatred in the matter of truth.
When such is the case ,the son would be a source of anger(instead of coolness of the eye to parents) and rain the cause of heat,the wicked would abound and the virtuous would diminsh.The people of this time would be wolves,its rulers beasts,the middle class men gluttons and the poor (almost) dead. Truth would go down,falsehood would overflow, affection would be claimed with tongues but people would be quarrelsome at heart.
Adultery would be the key to lineage while chastity would be rare and Islam would be worn overturned like the skin.
IMAM ALI(PBUH)NAJAF,IRAQ. BORN MARCH 16 599.The father of the twelve holy imams(as).or as known in the old testament gen.18:20 the TWELVE PRINCES shall he beget and i will make him a great nation.(REGARDING ISHMAEL)
"Be not intimidated...
nor suffer yourselves to be wheedled out of your liberties by any pretense of politeness, delicacy, or decency.
These, as they are often used, are but three different names for hypocrisy, chicanery and cowardice."
- John Adams
"It doesn't require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires to people's minds."
-Samuel Adams
( I'll drink to that ; )
"Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. When you give up that force, you are ruined."
- Patrick Henry
"There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty."
- John Adams
"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it."
- Abraham Lincoln
"I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical."
— Thomas Jefferson, Letter to James Madison, January 30, 1787
"The people are the masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert it"
- Abraham Lincoln
"It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties. We hold this prudent jealousy to be the first duty of citizens and one of the noblest characteristics of the late Revolution. The freemen of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise and entangled the question in precedents. They saw all the consequences in the principle, and they avoided the consequences by denying the principle. We revere this lesson too much ... to forget it."
— James Madison.
"And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time that his people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms...The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
— Thomas Jefferson, letter to Col. William S. Smith, 1787
"But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty once lost. . . is lost forever."
- John Adams, letter to Abigail Adams, 1775
"The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil Constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors: they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood, and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men."
- Samuel Adams
No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffused and Virtue is preserved. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauched in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders.
-Samuel Adams, letter to James Warren, 1775
"There, I guess King George will be able to read that."
- John Hancock's Remarks signing the Declaration, of Independence.
"Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable; and let it come! I repeat, Sir, let it come!"
- Patrick Henry
"What a glorious morning for America!"
-Samuel Adams, When the first shots were fired at Concord and Lexington, 1776
"The Strongest Reason for the People to Retain Their Right to Keep and Bear Arms is as a Last Resort to Protect Themselves Against Tyranny in Government" - Thomas Jefferson
"Unless the people, through united action, arise and take charge of their government, they will find that their government has taken charge of them. Independence and liberty will be gone, and the general public will find itself in a condition of servitude to an aggregation of organized and selfish ambitions."
-Calvin Coolidge October 1932
"When the government fears the people, there is liberty; when the people fear the government, there is tyranny." -Thomas Jefferson
"Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable - a most sacred right - a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world."
- Abraham Lincoln
"There are two ways to conquer and enslave a nation. One is by the sword, the other is by debt."
- John Adams
"All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise, not from
defects in their Constitution or Confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as from the downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation."
-John Adams
"No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffused and Virtue is preserved. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauched in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders."
-Samuel Adams, letter to James Warren, 1775
"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our
inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence."
-John Adams
"All might be free if they valued freedom, and defended it as they should."
-Samuel Adams
"We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately."
- Benjamin Franklin, (Attributed) at the signing of the Declaration of Independence
"The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol at his head. Put it in his hand and it's good-by to the Bill of Rights."
- H.L. Mencken
“Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves … politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves… The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country. … Behind the terrorism [by the Arabs] is a movement, which though primitive is not devoid of idealism and self sacrifice.”
~ David Ben Gurion, Prime Minister of Israel 1948-1963, Quoted on pp 91-2 of Chomsky’s Fateful Triangle, which appears in Simha Flapan’s Zionism and the Palestinians pp 141-2 citing a 1938 speech.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! - I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"
Patrick Henry
"Anti-semitism is nothing but the antagonistic attitude produced in the non-Jew by the Jewish group. The Jewish group has thrived on oppression and on the antagonism it has forever met in the world." Albert Einstein (Colliers Magazine, Nov 26, 1938)
"For while the Zionists try to make the rest of the world believe that the national consciousness of the Jew finds its satisfaction in the creation of a Palestinian state, the Jews again slyly dupe the dumb Goyim. It doesn't even enter their heads to build up a Jewish state in Palestine for the purpose of living there; all they want is a central organization for their international [Rothschild] world swindle, endowed with its own sovereign rights and removed from the intervention of other states: a haven for convicted scoundrels and a university for budding crooks." -- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf
"The oligarchs. Russia is amply supplied with so-called “gangster capitalists.” But a few stand head and shoulders above the rest, with fortunes straddling natural resources, industry, banking and the media. A World Bank study – unraveling complex cross-shareholdings and shell companies – uncovered 23 of these “oligarchs,” who between them control an astonishing one-third of Russian industry (by sales) as well as seventeen percent of all banking assets in the country. The oligarchs’ wealth and control of media makes them politically influential. Indeed dominant, in Yeltsin’s day.
But they are also vulnerable. Most have broken laws of one kind or another – hard not to, given the chaotic environment of the 1990s. So they are vulnerable to legal attacks. And they are also politically vulnerable. The distribution of wealth in Russia is profoundly inequitable: according to Forbes, Moscow now has more billionaire residents than New York (33 against New York’s 31), yet the average Russian salary is $200 per month – a fact that inspires intense public anger. Not to mention that of the top seven oligarchs, six are Jewish, in a country that remains profoundly anti-Semitic. Two have been hounded into exile, and one, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, is in jail, and this is extremely popular. Some 54 percent of Russians say they are in favor of Khodorkovsky’s arrest, with only four percent strongly opposed. In the two weeks after he went to prison, poll ratings for the pro-government United Russia party rose by four points."
There are seasons, in human affairs, when new depths seem to be broken up in the soul, when new wants are unfolded in multitudes, and a new and undefined good is thirsted for.
There are periods when to dare, is the highest wisdom.
I'm adding that excellent quote to my quotes collection. We have quite a few tyrants leading the world, and I do think it is our duty to rebel. Albert Camus said: "What is a rebel? a man who says no." I say an emphatic "NO!" to the whole bush madness.
I've updated my links and so I have both your sites in my blogroll. Hopefully you will be able to transfer those posts here.
The site is looking better day by day. Glad you all moved over.
"If a path to the better there be, it begins with a full look at the very worst"
- Thomas Hardy
"The battle has to begin here. In America. The only institution more powerful than the U.S. government is American civil society. The rest of us are subjects of slave nations. We are by no means powerless, but you have the power of proximity. You have access to the Imperial Palace and the Emperor's chambers. Empire's conquests are being carried out in your name." - Arundhati Roy
"Today the world is run by three of the most secretive institutions in the world: The International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization, all three of which, in turn, are dominated by the U.S. Their decisions are made in secret. The people who head them are appointed behind closed doors. Nobody really knows anything about them, their politics, their beliefs, their intentions. Nobody elected them. Nobody said they could make decisions on our behalf." - Arundhati Roy
"Israel's staunchest political and military ally is and always has been the U.S. Government. The U.S. Government has blocked, along with Israel, almost every U.N. resolution that sought a peaceful, equitable solution to the conflict. It has supported almost every war that Israel has fought. When Israel attacks Palestine, it is American missiles that smash through Palestinian homes. And every year Israel receives several billion dollars from the U.S." - Arundhati Roy
"If you are not outraged, you are not paying attention."
anon graffitti Clerkenwell London
"When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty"- Unknown...at least to me.
Their is no good in silence over matters involving wisdom just as there is no good in speaking with ignorance. by imam ali,najaf iraq (PBUH),HERES ONE MORE. With wealth a strange land is a homeland,while with destitution even a homeland is a strange land.
Thomas Jefferson is my hero.
“It is natural for man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts... For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth, to know the worst, and to provide for it.” Patrick Henry
"If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest for freedom, go home and leave us in peace. We seek not your council nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen." --Samuel Adams
If this site wasn't so Delusional it would almost be funny. No, don't wake up go back to sleep and stay on your medication.
why bother contributing?
and some excellent quotes, at that - Thanks!
Maybe you should take the priceless advice found in those quotes.
Blaming Muslims
They(people)did not take light from the lights of his wisdom nor did they produce flame from the flint of sparkling knowledge. so in this matter they are like grazing cattle and hard stones. Nevertheless hidden things have appeared for those who perceive,the face of right has become clear for the wanderer,the approaching moment has raised the veil from its face and signs have appeared for those who search for them.
What is the matter with me! I see you just bodies without spirits and spirits without bodies,devotees without good,traders without profits,wakeful but sleeping,present but unseen,seeing but blind,hearing but deaf and speaking but dumb.
I notice that misguidance has stood on its centre and spread(all round)though its off-shoots. It weighs you with its weights and confuses you with its measures. Its leader is an out-cast from the community. He persists on misguidance.So on that day none from among you would remain except as the sediment in a cooking pot or the dust left after dusting a bundle.It would scrape you as leather is scraped,and trample you as harvest is trampled,and pick out the beliver as a bird picks out a big grain from the thin grain.
Where are these ways taking you,glooms misleading you,and falsehoods deceiving you? Whence are you brought and where are you drivin? for every period there is a written document and everyone who is absent has to return .So listen to your godly leader and keep your hearts present.If he speaks to you be wakeful.The forerunner must speak truth to his people,should keep his wits together and maintain presence of mind.He has clarified to you the matter as the stitch-hole is cleared,and scraped it as the gum is scraped(from the twigs).
Nevertheless,now the wrong has set it self on its places and ignorance has ridden on its riding beasts.Unruliness has increased while the call for virtue is suppressed.Time has pounced upon like devouring carnivore,and wrong is shouting like a camel after remaining silent.People have become brothers over ill-doings,have forsaken religion,are united in speaking lie but bear mutual hatred in the matter of truth.
When such is the case ,the son would be a source of anger(instead of coolness of the eye to parents) and rain the cause of heat,the wicked would abound and the virtuous would diminsh.The people of this time would be wolves,its rulers beasts,the middle class men gluttons and the poor (almost) dead. Truth would go down,falsehood would overflow, affection would be claimed with tongues but people would be quarrelsome at heart.
Adultery would be the key to lineage while chastity would be rare and Islam would be worn overturned like the skin.
IMAM ALI(PBUH)NAJAF,IRAQ. BORN MARCH 16 599.The father of the twelve holy imams(as).or as known in the old testament gen.18:20 the TWELVE PRINCES shall he beget and i will make him a great nation.(REGARDING ISHMAEL)
"Death is in living vanquished and life is in dying triumphant" imam ALI (pbuh)
"Be not intimidated...
nor suffer yourselves to be wheedled out of your liberties by any pretense of politeness, delicacy, or decency.
These, as they are often used, are but three different names for hypocrisy, chicanery and cowardice."
- John Adams
"It doesn't require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires to people's minds."
-Samuel Adams
( I'll drink to that ; )
"Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. When you give up that force, you are ruined."
- Patrick Henry
"There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty."
- John Adams
"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it."
- Abraham Lincoln
"I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical."
— Thomas Jefferson, Letter to James Madison, January 30, 1787
"The people are the masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert it"
- Abraham Lincoln
"It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties. We hold this prudent jealousy to be the first duty of citizens and one of the noblest characteristics of the late Revolution. The freemen of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise and entangled the question in precedents. They saw all the consequences in the principle, and they avoided the consequences by denying the principle. We revere this lesson too much ... to forget it."
— James Madison.
"And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time that his people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms...The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
— Thomas Jefferson, letter to Col. William S. Smith, 1787
"But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty once lost. . . is lost forever."
- John Adams, letter to Abigail Adams, 1775
"The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil Constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors: they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood, and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men."
- Samuel Adams
No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffused and Virtue is preserved. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauched in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders.
-Samuel Adams, letter to James Warren, 1775
"There, I guess King George will be able to read that."
- John Hancock's Remarks signing the Declaration, of Independence.
"Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable; and let it come! I repeat, Sir, let it come!"
- Patrick Henry
"What a glorious morning for America!"
-Samuel Adams, When the first shots were fired at Concord and Lexington, 1776
"The Strongest Reason for the People to Retain Their Right to Keep and Bear Arms is as a Last Resort to Protect Themselves Against Tyranny in Government" - Thomas Jefferson
"Unless the people, through united action, arise and take charge of their government, they will find that their government has taken charge of them. Independence and liberty will be gone, and the general public will find itself in a condition of servitude to an aggregation of organized and selfish ambitions."
-Calvin Coolidge October 1932
"When the government fears the people, there is liberty; when the people fear the government, there is tyranny." -Thomas Jefferson
"Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable - a most sacred right - a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world."
- Abraham Lincoln
"There are two ways to conquer and enslave a nation. One is by the sword, the other is by debt."
- John Adams
"All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise, not from
defects in their Constitution or Confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as from the downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation."
-John Adams
"No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffused and Virtue is preserved. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauched in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders."
-Samuel Adams, letter to James Warren, 1775
"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our
inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence."
-John Adams
"All might be free if they valued freedom, and defended it as they should."
-Samuel Adams
"We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately."
- Benjamin Franklin, (Attributed) at the signing of the Declaration of Independence
"The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol at his head. Put it in his hand and it's good-by to the Bill of Rights."
- H.L. Mencken
Truth is a radical idea to an indoctrinated mind.
"It is error which needs the support of government, truth can stand on it's own."
-Thomas Jefferson
"STAND YOUR GROUND!
Don't Fire Unless Fired Upon,
But if they mean to have a WAR
Let it begin here."
April 19, 1775 Captain Parker
Thomas Jefferson also said the EFFECT of government coercion is:
"to make one half the people fools and the other half hypocrites, and to support roguery and error all over the earth"
Truth is a radical idea to an indoctrinated mind.
"INSERT YOUR SOUL HERE ---->"
- Daubed on a wall next to a Cashpoint Machine in Moseley Village, Birmingha UK
“Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves … politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves… The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country. … Behind the terrorism [by the Arabs] is a movement, which though primitive is not devoid of idealism and self sacrifice.”
~ David Ben Gurion, Prime Minister of Israel 1948-1963, Quoted on pp 91-2 of Chomsky’s Fateful Triangle, which appears in Simha Flapan’s Zionism and the Palestinians pp 141-2 citing a 1938 speech.
“When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross”.
Sinclair Lewis. “It Cant happen Here”. 1935.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! - I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"
Patrick Henry
For so many quotes that illustrates mind-blowing political truths, check the following link out:
http://ahmedismailibrahim.wordpress.com/2007/03/19/quotes/
"Anti-semitism is nothing but the antagonistic attitude produced in the non-Jew by the Jewish group. The Jewish group has thrived on oppression and on the antagonism it has forever met in the world." Albert Einstein (Colliers Magazine, Nov 26, 1938)
"For while the Zionists try to make the rest of the world believe that the national consciousness of the Jew finds its satisfaction in the creation of a Palestinian state, the Jews again slyly dupe the dumb Goyim. It doesn't even enter their heads to build up a Jewish state in Palestine for the purpose of living there; all they want is a central organization for their international [Rothschild] world swindle, endowed with its own sovereign rights and removed from the intervention of other states: a haven for convicted scoundrels and a university for budding crooks." -- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf
"The oligarchs. Russia is amply supplied with so-called “gangster capitalists.” But a few stand head and shoulders above the rest, with fortunes straddling natural resources, industry, banking and the media. A World Bank study – unraveling complex cross-shareholdings and shell companies – uncovered 23 of these “oligarchs,” who between them control an astonishing one-third of Russian industry (by sales) as well as seventeen percent of all banking assets in the country. The oligarchs’ wealth and control of media makes them politically influential. Indeed dominant, in Yeltsin’s day.
But they are also vulnerable. Most have broken laws of one kind or another – hard not to, given the chaotic environment of the 1990s. So they are vulnerable to legal attacks. And they are also politically vulnerable. The distribution of wealth in Russia is profoundly inequitable: according to Forbes, Moscow now has more billionaire residents than New York (33 against New York’s 31), yet the average Russian salary is $200 per month – a fact that inspires intense public anger. Not to mention that of the top seven oligarchs, six are Jewish, in a country that remains profoundly anti-Semitic. Two have been hounded into exile, and one, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, is in jail, and this is extremely popular. Some 54 percent of Russians say they are in favor of Khodorkovsky’s arrest, with only four percent strongly opposed. In the two weeks after he went to prison, poll ratings for the pro-government United Russia party rose by four points."
"Revolutions are only fought by those whose ribs are easily counted"
Claymoremind
There are seasons, in human affairs, when new depths seem to be broken up in the soul, when new wants are unfolded in multitudes, and a new and undefined good is thirsted for.
There are periods when to dare, is the highest wisdom.
--William Ellery Channing