Assassination Attempt Quotes

It takes at least three assassination attempts to scare me off. And even then, if there are baked goods involved, I might come back.

Tempting as the prospect is," Nathaniel said, "we are not attempting world domination. It sounds fun in theory, but in reality it's a logistical nightmare. All those assassinations and so forth." At her blank look, he explained, "Silas used to tell me bedtime stories.

When the farthest corner of the globe has been conquered technologically and can be exploited economically; when any incident you like, in any place you like, at any time you like, becomes accessible as fast as you like; when you can simultaneously "experience" an assassination attempt against a king in France and a symphony concert in Tokyo; when time is nothing but speed, instantaneity, and simultaneity, and time as history has vanished from all Being of all peoples; when a boxer counts as the great man of a people; when the tallies of millions at mass meetings are a triumph; then, yes then, there still looms like a specter over all this uproar the question: what for? — where to? — and what then?

You do realise, don't you, that I was present during the assassination attempt?

I did not consent to your presence,” she said peevishly. “Please depart, and attempt your political assassination on someone else’s property.

Most people would be dismayed by an attempted assassination, but Kiaran seems to regard it as either flirtation or flattery – possibly both.

Footnote, tail high, led the way in that manner of cats which is one part banner-waving herald and one part attempted murder by tripping. Cats in hallways – escort meets assassination attempt.

The very concept of "revolutionary violence" is somewhat falsely cast, since most of the violence comes from those who attempt to prevent reform, not from those struggling for reform. By focusing on the violent rebellions of the downtrodden, we overlook the much greater repressive force and violence utilized by the ruling oligarchs to maintain the status quo, including armed attacks against peaceful demonstrations, mass arrests, torture, destruction of opposition organizations, suppression of dissident publications, death squad assassinations, the extermination of whole villages, and the like.

In 1970, a superior Court judge issues an order forcing the desegregation of Los Angeles schools. The judge survives an assassination attempt and loses his job in the next election.

Jonah McAllister regarded me with cold eyes. "Oh, yes. That's her. The lovely Ms.Gin Blanco. The bitch who was giving my boy a hard time. A hard time? I supposed so, if you thought turning him in to the cops for attempted robbery, breaking a plate full of food in his face, and ultimately stabbing Jake McAllister to death was a hard time.

Our own ambitions and tasks that we set for ourselves, the framework we attempt to impose upon the world, is no more than a shadow of a tree cast across the snow. It will change as the sun moves, be swallowed in the night, sway with the wind, and when the smooth snow vanishes, it will lie distorted upon the uneven earth. But the tree continues to be. Do you understand that?

The important thing to know about an assassination or an attempted assassination is not who fired the shot, but who paid for the bullet.

Hopefully next time I won't be recovering from an assassination attempt, and then I'll do better.

Dude is that was a Shakespeare quote duel, he just kicked your ass." Oberon I know, but I slipped in some T.S.Eliot and he didn't even catch it. Hopefully next time I wont be recovering from an assassination attempt, and then I'll do better. - Atticus

Garfield's assassination attempt made "the whole nation care".

General Maza, the survivor of two grotesque assassination attempts, put it bluntly: 'This country won't be put right as long as Escobar is alive.

The censors of our age do not yet burn books, they attempt to restrict speech in the name of "offense". The tactics may be different but the desire for control is the same.

Me: Leland, how did you get Jackson to fall in love with you? Leland: I flirted with him. Jackson: He shot at me. Leland: Yeah, that’s called flirting. Jackson: That’s called attempted murder.

Crocodiles?” Murray gasped, then turned his eyes to the heavens. “What did I ever do to deserve this?” “Attempted murder, for one,” Zoe answered, then ticked more things off on her fingers. “Plus terrorism, assassination, destruction of public property, and being an all-around jerk. The question is really, what haven’t you done to deserve this?

If you really have to get shot, Belfast is one of the best places to do it. After twenty years of the Troubles, and after thousands of assassination attempts and punishment shootings, Belfast has trained many of the best gunshot-trauma surgeons in the world.

The Three of them were beautiful, in the way all girls of that age are beautiful. It can't be helped, that sort of beauty, nor can it be conserved; it's a freshness, a plumpness of the cells, that's unearned and temporary, and that nothing can replicate. None of them was satisfied with it, however; already they were making attempts to alter themselves into some impossible, imaginary mould, plucking and pencilling away at their faces. I didn't blame them, having done the same once myself.

Please confine all assassination attempts to the school week, as I would rather not die on a Saturday.

The assassin pivoted around the table and took aim again. She missed. Gritting her teeth, she considered snapping the cue in half across her knee. But she’d been attempting to play for only an hour. She’d be incredible by midnight! She’d master this ridiculous game or she’d turn the table into firewood. And use it to burn Cain alive.

Attempts at character assassination occur when it is too conspicuous to pierce your target with a bullet.

A real assassin would hire a sensible tailor. And a barber. And would not attempt to murder someone five minutes before luncheon.

Congrats, you’ve just had your first assassination attempt.

But you’re looking at this all wrong, Julius. Assassination attempts aren’t a threat. They’re a compliment. They’re the final strike, the last desperate move when every other plot has failed.” Ian winked at him. “When they try to kill you, that’s when you know you’re winning.” Julius

And not only that, Mr Stalin. I have been in China for the purpose of making war against Mao Tse-tung, before I went to Iran and prevented an attempt to assassinate Churchill.’ ‘Churchill? That fat pig!’ Stalin shouted. Stalin recovered for a moment before downing a whole glass of vodka. Allan watched enviously. He too would like to have his glass filled, but didn’t think it was the right moment for such a request.

They weren't penitent over what they'd attempted; their sorrow reached to the limits of their bodies and no further, all their anguish was in their skin.

You know that when ex-military personnel start assassinating their own government's agents that something funky is going on.

His polytheistic hankerings were dramatically demonstrated in 1981 when he suffered an assassination attempt in Rome, and attributed his survival to intervention by Our Lady of Fatima: ‘A maternal hand guided the bullet.’ One cannot help wondering why she didn’t guide it to miss him altogether.

Aldrik," she said stubbornly, "I survived the Night of Fire and Wind, an assassination attempt, a fall from the Pass, a run alone through the North." Vhalla took a step away and pulled his hands from her shoulders. "I've killed more people than I have fingers. I'm not the girl you found in the library, and I can protect myself.

When you have bewitched or assassinated the unwelcome, whoever remains, however useless & boring, must be the only audience you still have left!" -- Warlock Holmes, the Cumber-Batching Speech Not only my advisers considered the quote above the best I got done at all on the Sherlock Crossover now lying in my failed projects folder...

Dinner? You want to eat with me?’ ‘That’s right, a Jew and queer, eh? The SS would love that, wouldn’t they? Perhaps we can plot an assassination attempt.

Jaron: Lady Orlaine, can I assume this meeting was to debate the mating rituals of the spotted owl? Lady Orlaine: There was an assassination attempt tonight, sire. Jaron: Yes, I know. I was there.

His polytheistic hankerings were dramatically demonstrated in 1981 when he suffered an assassination attempt in Rome, and attributed his survival to intervention by Our Lady of Fatima: 'A maternal hand guided the bullet.' One cannot help wondering why she didn't guide it to miss him altogether. Others might think the team of surgeons who operated on him for six hours deserved at least a share of the

I try to shape a tight laugh, and it dies in my throat. "This is new to me, Wes. Sharing. Having someone I can share with. And I really appreciate your help -- That sounds lame. I've never had someone like... This is a mess. There's finally something good in my life and I'm already making a mess of it." My cheeks go hot, and I have to clench my teeth to stop the rambling. "Hey," he says, knocking his shoe playfully against mine. "It's the same for me, you know?" This is all new to me. And I'm not going anywhere. It takes at least three assassination attempts to scare me off. And even then, if there are baked goods involved, I might come back." He hoists himself up from the bench. "But on that note, I retreat to tend my wounded pride." He says it with a smile, and somehow I'm smiling, too. How does he do that, untangle things so easily?

As to the fragments of morality that are irregularly and thinly scattered in those books [the Bible], they make no part of this pretended thing, revealed religion. They are the natural dictates of conscience, and the bonds by which society is held together, and without which it cannot exist; and are nearly the same in all religions, and in all societies. The Testament teaches nothing new upon this subject, and where it attempts to exceed, it becomes mean and ridiculous. When it is said, as in the Testament, 'If a man smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also,' it is assassinating the dignity of forbearance, and sinking man into a spaniel.

Bob slid his chair back and moved the coal-oil lamp from the kitchen to the sitting room. He said, "Oftentimes things seem impossible up until they're attempted." Then he lidded the chimney glass with his palm and suffocated the light.

Remaining for a moment with the question of legality and illegality: United Nations Security Council Resolution 1368, unanimously passed, explicitly recognized the right of the United States to self-defense and further called upon all member states 'to bring to justice the perpetrators, organizers and sponsors of the terrorist attacks. It added that 'those responsible for aiding, supporting or harboring the perpetrators, organizers and sponsors of those acts will be held accountable.' In a speech the following month, the United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan publicly acknowledged the right of self-defense as a legitimate basis for military action. The SEAL unit dispatched by President Obama to Abbottabad was large enough to allow for the contingency of bin-Laden's capture and detention. The naïve statement that he was 'unarmed' when shot is only loosely compatible with the fact that he was housed in a military garrison town, had a loaded automatic weapon in the room with him, could well have been wearing a suicide vest, had stated repeatedly that he would never be taken alive, was the commander of one of the most violent organizations in history, and had declared himself at war with the United States. It perhaps says something that not even the most casuistic apologist for al-Qaeda has ever even attempted to justify any of its 'operations' in terms that could be covered by any known law, with the possible exception of some sanguinary verses of the Koran.

Havens turned again. Someone else passed between the trucks. That someone walked with less purpose than the other workers near the stalls. To Havens this meant a surveillance asset was on him and it probably was not an assassination attempt. It eased him back into relative comfort for just a moment or two more.

But the whole modern world, or at any rate the whole modern Press, has a perpetual and consuming terror of plain morals. Men always attempt to avoid condemning a thing upon merely moral grounds...Why on earth do the newspapers, in describing a dynamite outrage or any other political assassination, call it a "dastardly outrage" or a cowardly outrage? It is perfectly evident that it is not dastardly in the least. It is perfectly evident that it is about as cowardly as the Christians going to the lions. The man who does it exposes himself to the chance of being torn in pieces by two thousand people. What the thing is, is not cowardly, but profoundly and detestably wicked. The man who does it is very infamous and very brave. But, again, the explanation is that our modern Press would rather appeal to physical arrogance, or to anything, rather than appeal to right and wrong.

was working “penetration” on behalf of U.S. intelligence and was not only infiltrating, but attempting to preclude, a plot against the life of President Kennedy.

Up to now, I have never served nor become a messenger for any foreign power or interest. I am an enemy to any kind of slavery, in all its shapes and colors. No man, be he European or African, can force me into the yoke of any kind of bondage. If there be some one who dares to attempt my assassination in order to force me to submit to doing things contrary to my feeling and will, then I also have in me the courage to die for my political beliefs, for the cause of liberty of my country, and for the genuine interest of my brothers and sisters.

-An altogether frivolous and silly name.- -The child chose it herself. Perhaps an attempt to grasp the very things that others feared her for and remake them as something lovely and mysterious.-

The LBJ team also attempted to change the passenger configuration of the Dallas motorcade in order to get Governor Connally, a longtime LBJ ally, out of the limousine in which Kennedy was riding.

Over time, and sentence uttered long and loud enough becomes fixed. Becomes a truth. Provided, of course, you can outlast the dissent and silence your opponents. But should you succeed - and remove all challengers - then what remains is, by default, now true. Is it truth in some objective sense? No. But how does one ever achieve an objective point of view? The answer is you don't. It is literally, physically impossible. There are too many variables. Too many fields and formulae to consider. We can try, of course. We can inch closer and closer to a revelation. But we'll never reach it. Not ever . . . And so I have realized, that so long as The Templar exist, they will attempt to bend reality to their will. They recognize there is no such thing as an absolutely truth - or if there is - we are hopelessly underequipped to recognize it. And so in its place, they seek to create their own explanation. It is the guiding principle of their so-named "New World Order"; To reshape existence in their own image. It is not about artifacts. Not about men. These are merely tools. It's about concepts. Clever of them. For how does one wage war against a concept? It is the perfect weapon. It lacks a physical form yet can alter the world around us in numerous, often violent ways. You cannot kill a creed. Even if you kill all of its adherents, destroy all of its writings - these are a reprieve at best. Some one, some day, will rediscover it. Reinvent it. I believe that even we, the Assassins, have simple re-discovered an Order that predates the Old Man himself . . .

The secret to understanding US foreign policy is that there is no secret. Principally, one must come to the realization that the United States strives to dominate the world, for which end it is prepared to use any means necessary. Once one understands that, much of the apparent confusion, contradiction, and ambiguity surrounding Washington’s policies fades away. To express this striving for dominance numerically, one can consider that since the end of World War II the United States has: 1) Endeavored to overthrow more than 50 foreign governments, most of which were democratically elected; 2) Grossly interfered in democratic elections in at least 30 countries; 3) Attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders; 4) Dropped bombs on the people of more than 30 countries; 5) Attempted to suppress a populist or nationalist movement in 20 countries.

What she could not accept, however, was that her brand new Seelie husband was attempting to assassinate her. Not even thirty minutes into their marriage and Seelie Prince Maguis was trying to make himself a widower.

Hurtful words send the message—both to ourselves and to those with whom we share them—that we can’t be trusted. If someone is willing to tear down one “friend,” why wouldn’t she be willing to disparage another? Gossip means we haven’t emboldened ourselves to talk directly to the people we take issue with, so we belittle them. Playwright Jules Feiffer calls it committing little murders: Gossip is an assassination attempt by a coward.

There was some violence a year ago. An important kid got shot during an attempted kidnapping while on spring break in Mexico. The Fortune 500 went security crazy. Now rich kids like Jack need a commando team to take a dump.

I use “anticapitalist” because conservative defenders of capitalism regularly say their liberal and socialist opponents are against capitalism. They say efforts to provide a safety net for all people are “anticapitalist.” They say attempts to prevent monopolies are “anticapitalist.” They say efforts that strengthen weak unions and weaken exploitative owners are “anticapitalist.” They say plans to normalize worker ownership and regulations protecting consumers, workers, and environments from big business are “anticapitalist.” They say laws taxing the richest more than the middle class, redistributing pilfered wealth, and guaranteeing basic incomes are “anticapitalist.” They say wars to end poverty are “anticapitalist.” They say campaigns to remove the profit motive from essential life sectors like education, healthcare, utilities, mass media, and incarceration are “anticapitalist.” In doing so, these conservative defenders are defining capitalism. They define capitalism as the freedom to exploit people into economic ruin; the freedom to assassinate unions; the freedom to prey on unprotected consumers, workers, and environments; the freedom to value quarterly profits over climate change; the freedom to undermine small businesses and cushion corporations; the freedom from competition; the freedom not to pay taxes; the freedom to heave the tax burden onto the middle and lower classes; the freedom to commodify everything and everyone; the freedom to keep poor people poor and middle-income people struggling to stay middle income, and make rich people richer. The history of capitalism—of world warring, classing, slave trading, enslaving, colonizing, depressing wages, and dispossessing land and labor and resources and rights—bears out the conservative definition of capitalism.

A legal system conceived of as sovereign and universal, not as a means in the struggle of power-complexes, but as a means against all struggles in general, something along the lines of Dühring's communist cliché in which each will must be considered as equal to every will, that would be a principle hostile to life, a destroyer and dissolver of human beings, an assassination attempt on the future of human beings, a sign of exhaustion, a secret path to nothingness.

But except for committed anarchists, the assassination attempt was widely condemned. In fact, it turned the tide of public opinion that, up until this moment, had been sympathetic to the strikers. Americans feared anarchists more than robber barons. Labor leaders, sensing the mood, went on the attack. “This man Berkman is an anarchist and, of course, is not identified with us,” said Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor. “I cannot use language strong enough to express my condemnation of such an act as Berkman’s.

Much later, Groves seriously pursued the notion of kidnapping or assassinating Heisenberg; in 1944 he dispatched OSS agent Moe Berg to Switzerland, where the former baseball player stalked the German physicist in December 1944—but ultimately decided not to attempt an assassination.

Others have seen the assassination as a useful reminder of the futility of such attempts at direct action. For what did it achieve? If the assassins had really wanted to quash the rise of one-man rule in Rome, if they wanted to kill the tyranny as well as the tyrant, they were strikingly unsuccessful.

What's the number of times that someone tried to assassinate you?' He gives a one-shouldered shrug, his attention on the tableau below. 'Hard to know, but I'd guess there were a few dozen attempts since my sister came to power.' That would be more than twice a year for every year since I met him. And that scar on his neck suggests that someone got very, very close. I think of him as he was in the woods at thirteen, wanting to run away. Angry and afraid. I think of him lying on the sled this morning. I poison everything I touch. Every time I feel as though I know him, it seems there is another Oak underneath.

Finn stood by the counter, having just finished making his thirteenth cup of coffee of the day. As always, the chicory fumes warmed me from the inside out and made me think of his father. I wished that the old man were here tonight. Fletcher would have known exactly what to do about the mess we were in—the mess I’d dragged us all into by declaring war on Mab in the first place. Finn stared at me with his green eyes. “Any chance of getting something sweet to go with my coffee?” he asked in a hopeful voice. I arched an eyebrow at him. “You mean all those pieces of strawberry pie that you ate for lunch weren’t enough?” “I’m a growing boy,” Finn said in a sincere tone. “I need my vitamins.” Bria snorted. “The only thing that’s growing on you, Lane, is your ego.” Finn sidled up to my sister and gave her a dazzling smile. “Well, other things of mine also tend to swell up in your presence, detective.” I rolled my eyes at Finn’s attempt at witty banter. Jo-Jo just chuckled, amused by his antics. Bria returned Finn’s smile with a syrupy sweet one of her own. “Oh, really? So it’s gone from what, pencil eraser to cocktail sausage by now?” Finn sputtered and almost spit out a mouthful of coffee. His face flushed, and he glared at Bria.

Pope John Paul II created more saints than all his predecessors of the past several centuries put together, and he had a special affinity with the Virgin Mary. His polytheistic hankerings were dramatically demonstrated in 1981 when he suffered an assassination attempt in Rome, and attributed his survival to intervention by Our Lady of Fatima: ‘A maternal hand guided the bullet.’ One cannot help wondering why she didn’t guide it to miss him altogether. Others might think the team of surgeons who operated on him for six hours deserved at least a share of the credit; but perhaps their hands, too, were maternally guided.

Our own ambitions and tasks that we set for ourselves, the framework we attempt to impose upon the world, is no more than a shadow of a tree cast across the snow. It will change as the sun moves, be swallowed in the night, sway with the wind, and when the smooth snow vanishes, it will lie distorted upon the uneven earth. But the tree continues to be.

Mermaid queens didn't often have a reason to move quickly. There were no wars to direct, no assassination attempts to evade, no crowds of clamoring admirers to avoid among the merfolk. In fact, slowness and calm were expected of royalty. So Ariel found herself thoroughly enjoying the exercise as she beat her tail against the water- even as it winded her a little. She missed dashing through shipwrecks with Flounder, fleeing sharks, trying to scoot back home before curfew. She loved the feel of her powerful muscles, the way the current cut around her when she twisted her shoulders to go faster. She hadn't been this far up in years and gulped as the pressure of the deep faded. She clicked her ears, readying them for the change of environment. Colors faded and transformed around her from the dark, heady slate of the ocean bottom to the soothing azure of the middle depths and finally lightening to the electric, magical periwinkle that heralded the burst into daylight. She hadn't planned to break through the surface triumphantly. She wouldn't give it that power. Her plan was to take it slow and rise like a whale. Casually, unperturbed, like Ooh, here I am. But somehow her tail kicked in twice as hard the last few feet, and she exploded into the warm sunlit air like she had been drowning. She gulped again and tasted the breeze- dry in her mouth; salt and pine and far-distant fires and a thousand alien scents.

The hit-woman opened the door. No dead body on the floor. Thank God. I heard an unearthly roar and then Jordan charged Liz from where she’d been hiding beside the door. She tackled her to the floor and stabbed her through the wrist with a small switchblade. The hit-woman shrieked and let go of the gun, allowing Jordan precious seconds to bat it across the room. She landed a couple hard punches to the assassin’s nose, bloodying it, before the other woman got the upper hand. She grabbed a handful of Jordan’s ponytail and slammed her head into the edge of the coffee table. Jordan cried out, but didn’t let go of the knife. She withdrew it and held it against the assassin’s throat, shouting, “Move again and I’ll kill you, puta!” Liz panted madly, but stayed put. Jordan glanced up at me. “You okay?” “Alive,” I said through a grimace. “Not okay.” “Good enough.” She returned her gaze to the woman pinned beneath her and glared. “The police are on their way. And not the nice, human police. Angels. Get any ideas about trying to kill me again and you won’t even get to deal with them.” “I’ve been in jail before,” Liz said, attempting to recapture her former arrogance. “I’ll get over it.” Jordan leaned down a few inches, lowering her voice. “Really? How’d you like to return without your tongue?” Liz’s eyes went wide, as did mine. “You wouldn’t dare.” “You shot my best friend. Multiple times. Lex talionis.” “You can’t kill me. You’re not a policewoman. You’re just a girl.” “No. I’m a Seer. You and the rest of your friends had better learn the difference between a sheep and a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Until then…” She lifted her fist and punched Liz hard in the temple. The assassin went out like a light. “Vaya con dios, bitch.

Let us look forward a century and assume that I have succeeded in my attempt to assassinate two thousand years of antinature and desecration of humanity. The new party of life that takes on the greatest task of all, that of breeding humanity to higher levels (which includes the ruthless extermination of everything degenerate and parasitic), will make possible a surplus of life on earth that will necessarily regenerate the Dionysian state.

The decision by the ruling elites in ancient Rome—dominated by a bloated military and a corrupt oligarchy, much like the United States—to strangle the vain and idiotic Emperor Commodus in his bath in the year 192 did not halt the growing chaos and precipitous decline of the Roman Empire. Commodus, like a number of late-Roman emperors, and like Trump, was incompetent and consumed by his own vanity. He commissioned innumerable statues of himself as Hercules and had little interest in governance. He used his position as head of state to make himself the star of his own ongoing public show. He fought victoriously as a gladiator in the arena in fixed bouts. Power for Commodus, as it is for Trump, was primarily about catering to his bottomless narcissism. He sold public offices to the ancient equivalents of Betsy DeVos and Steven Mnuchin. Commodus was replaced by the reformer Pertinax, the Bernie Sanders of his day, who attempted in vain to curb the power of the Praetorian Guards, the ancient version of the military-industrial complex. The Praetorian Guards assassinated Pertinax three months after he became emperor. The Guards then auctioned off his position to the highest bidder. The next emperor, Didius Julianus, lasted sixty-six days. There would be five emperors in AD 193, the year after the assassination of Commodus. Trump and our decaying empire have ominous historical precedents.

At least a dozen different so-called good institutions have been identified. Without attempting to rank them in order of importance, but just listing them alphabetically, they include: control of inflation, educational opportunities, effectiveness of government, enforcement of contracts, freedom from trade barriers, incentives and opportunities for investment of capital, lack of corruption, low risk of assassination, open currency exchange, protection of private property rights, rule of law,

Is it possible that our world still knows better how to deal with a bandit, a murderer, and insurrectionist than it knows what to do with the Prince of Peace? There is a sense in which an assassin's attempt on the pope's life is less shocking to our world than the pope's forgiveness of him. Is it possible that we would rather deal with raw power that rides on a stallion than with this one who comes on a donkey, with the weapons of love, patience, suffering, and peace? Given the choice, isn't it possible that we would take Barabbas, too?

JFK asked his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, to break up organized crime. Nobody high-up in government has tangled the Mafia. J. E. Hoover, the hired hands of FBI and CIA, ran the assassination teams. They have been used since World War II. JFK was attempting to end the oil-tax depletion rip-offs, to get tax money from oil companies. JFK instituted the nuclear test ban treaty, often called “the kiss of death,” to oppose the Pentagon. JFK called off the Invasion of Cuba. He allowed Castro to live, antagonized narcotics and gambling, oil and sugar interests, formerly in Cuba. JFK asked his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, to break up the CIA, the “hidden government behind my back.” Allen Dulles was fired. Dulles, the attorney for international multinationals, was angry. JFK planned to withdraw troops from Vietnam after the 1964 elections. Nov. 24, 1963, two days after JFK’s burial, the Pentagon escalated the Vietnam war … with no known provocations, after JFK was gone. There was no chance Kennedy could survive antagonizing the CIA, oil companies, Pentagon, organized crime. He was not their man. The assassination of JFK employed people from the Texas-Southwest. It was not a Southern plot. Upstarts could not have controlled the northern CIA, FBI, Kennedy family connections. This was a more detailed, sophisticated conspiracy that was to set the pattern for future murders to take place. The murder was funded by Permindex, with headquarters in Montreal and Switzerland. Their stated purpose was to encourage trade between nations in the Western world. Their actual purpose was fourfold: 1) To fund and direct assassinations of European, Mid-East and world leaders considered threats to the western world, and to Petroleum Interests of their backers. 2) Provide couriers, agents for transporting and depositing funds through Swiss Banks for Vegas, Miami and the international gambling syndicate. 3) Coordinate the espionage activities of White Russian Solidarists and Division V of the FBI, headed by William Sullivan. 4) Build, acquire and operate hotels and gambling casinos. See: Nomenclature of an Assassination Cabal, by William Torbitt.

The three of them were beautiful, in the way all girls of that age are beautiful. It can't be helped, that sort of beauty, nor can it be conserved; it's a freshness, a plumpness of the cells, that;s unearned and temporary, and that nothing can replicate. None of them was satisfied with it, however; already they were making attempts to alter themselves, to improve and distort and diminish, to cram themselves into some impossible, imaginary mould, plucking and pencilling away at their faces. I didn't blame them, having done the same once myself.

What a strange fate for Muslim memory, to be called upon in order to censure and punish! What a strange memory, where even dead men and women do not escape attempts at assassination, if by chance they threaten to raise the hijab that covers the mediocrity and servility that is presented to us as tradition. How did the tradition succeed in transforming the Muslim woman into that submissive, marginal creature who buries herself and only goes out into the world timidly and huddled in her veils? Why does the Muslim man need such a mutilated companion?

As the last factor I must in all modesty describe my own person: Irreplaceable. Neither a military man nor a civilian could replace me. Attempts at assassination may be repeated. I am convinced of my powers of intellect and of decision. Wars are always ended only by the annihilation of the opponent. Anyone who believes differently is irresponsible. Time is working for our adversaries. Now there is a relationship of forces which can never be more propitious for us. No compromises. Hardness toward ourselves. I shall strike and not capitulate. The fate of the Reich depends only on me. No one has ever achieved what I have achieved. My life is of no importance in all this. I have led the German people to a great height, even if the world does hate us now. I am setting this work on a gamble. I have to choose between victory or annihilation. I choose victory. Greatest historical choice, to be compared with the decision of Frederick the Great before the first Silesian war. Prussia owes its rise to the heroism of one man. Even there the closest advisers were disposed to capitulation. Everything depended on Frederick the Great. Also the decisions of Bismarck in 1866 and 1870 were no less great. Speech to the OKW Flensburg, November 23, 1939

A Conspiracy Theory that took hold was introduced by Anthony “Tony” Summers, the respected author of The Kennedy Conspiracy, published in 1980 and again in 1998 as “Not in Your Lifetime.” He believes that anti-Castro activists, funded by Mafia mobsters who had been ousted from Cuba, killed Kennedy. Summers believes that members of the CIA took part in this conspiracy and named the people he suspected. Summers also stated in an article published in the National Enquirer magazine, on October 25, 2013, that Lee Harvey Oswald didn’t act alone. The National Enquirer stated that Herminio Diaz, born in Cuba in 1923, had, in 1948, shot Pipi Hernandez, who was a Dominican exile employed at the naval base at Guantanamo. This killing took place at the Cuban Consulate in Mexico. In 1957, he was involved with an assassination attempt against President José Figueres of Costa Rica, who incidentally was a trained Army Ranger and a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point. According to JFKFacts published on May 27, 2014, General Fabián Escalante, the historian of Cuban State Security and Castro’s former bodyguard, said that the assassin Herminio Diaz, along with Eladio del Valle and three American mobsters: Richard Gaines, Lenny Patrick, and Dave Yara, were the shooters at Dealey Plaza.

known psychotic who nevertheless was allowed to move freely, an assassinated leading Negro national politician, endless other assassination attempts, unsuccessful, partly successful, and successful; d) So many casual killings in public streets and public parks and public transports that most lawful citizens avoided going out after dark, especially the elderly; e) Public school teachers and state university professors who taught that patriotism was an obsolete concept, that marriage was an obsolete concept, that sin was an obsolete concept, that politeness was an obsolete concept—that the United States itself was an obsolete concept; f) School teachers who could not speak or write grammatically, could not spell, could not cipher; g) The nation’s leading farm state had as its biggest cash crop: an outlawed plant that was the source of the major outlaw drug; h) Cocaine and heroin called “recreational drugs,” felony theft called “joyriding,” vandalism by gangs called “trashing,” burglary called “ripping off,” felonious assault by gangs called “muggings,” and the reaction to all of these crimes was “boys will be boys,” so scold them and put them on probation but don’t ruin their lives by treating them as criminals; i) Millions of women who found it more rewarding to have babies out of wedlock than it would be to get married or to go to work.

in one way or another, they all go back to the M’Naghten Rule, formulated by the British courts in the wake of one Daniel M’Naghten’s attempt to assassinate British prime minister Sir Robert Peel in 1843. Shooting at point-blank range outside Peel’s London house, M’Naghten instead killed the prime minister’s private secretary Edward Drummond. M’Naghten, who suffered from delusions of persecution, was found not guilty by reason of insanity, and ever since, through multiple interpretations and permutations, the basic legal test of insanity in British and American courts has been whether the defendant could distinguish between right and wrong or was acting under a delusion or compulsion so strong that it negated that distinction.

Story time. In September of 1869, there was a terrible fire at the Avondale coal mine near Plymouth, Pennsylvania. Over 100 coal miners lost their lives. Horrific conditions and safety standards were blamed for the disaster. It wasn’t the first accident. Hundreds of miners died in these mines every year. And those that didn’t, lived in squalor. Children as young as eight worked day in and out. They broke their bodies and gave their lives for nothing but scraps. That day of the fire, as thousands of workers and family members gathered outside the mine to watch the bodies of their friends and loved ones brought to the surface, a man named John Siney stood atop one of the carts and shouted to the crowd: Men, if you must die with your boots on, die for your families, your homes, your country, but do not longer consent to die, like rats in a trap, for those who have no more interest in you than in the pick you dig with. That day, thousands of coal miners came together to unionize. That organization, the Workingmen’s Benevolent Association, managed to fight, for a few years at least, to raise safety standards for the mines by calling strikes and attempting to force safety legislation. ... Until 1875, when the union was obliterated by the mine owners. Why was the union broken so easily? Because they were out in the open. They were playing by the rules. How can you win a deliberately unfair game when the rules are written by your opponent? The answer is you can’t. You will never win. Not as long as you follow their arbitrary guidelines. This is a new lesson to me. She’s been teaching me so many things, about who I am. About what I am. What I really am. About what must be done. Anyway, during this same time, it is alleged a separate, more militant group of individuals had formed in secret. The Molly Maguires. Named after a widow in Ireland who fought against predatory landlords, the coal workers of Pennsylvania became something a little more proactive, supposedly assassinating over two dozen coal mine supervisors and managers. ... Until Pinkerton agents, hired by the same mine owners, infiltrated the group and discovered their identities. Several of the alleged Mollies ended up publicly hanged. Others disappeared. You get the picture. So, that’s another type of secret society. The yeah-we’re-terrorists-but-we-strongly-feel-we’re-justified-and-fuck-you-if-you-don’t-agree society. So, what’s the moral of this little history lesson? This sort of thing happens all day, every day across the universe. It happens in Big Ways, and it happens in little ways, too. The strong stomp on the weak. The weak fight back, usually within the boundaries of the rat trap they find themselves confined. They almost always remain firmly stomped. But sometimes, the weak gather in secret. They make plans. They work outside the system to effect change. Like the Mollies, they usually end up just as stomped as everyone else. But that’s just life. At least they fucking tried. They died with their boots on, as much as I hate that expression. They died with their boots on for their people, their family, not for some rich, nameless organization that gives no shits whether they live or die. Or go extinct. Or are trapped for a millennia after they’re done being used. In my opinion, that’s the only type of society that’s worth joining, worth fighting for. Sure, you’re probably gonna die. But if you find yourself in such a position where such an organization is necessary, what do you have to lose? How can you look at yourself if you don’t do everything you can? And that brings us to the door you’re standing in front of right now. What does all this have to do with what you’re going to find on the other side? Nothing!

The initial shooting that led to the conflict was itself a farce. The assassin in question was a Yugoslav nationalist named Gavrilo Princip. He had given up in his attempt to kill Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria following a failed grenade attack by Princip’s colleague, and gone to a café. It is often said that he got himself a sandwich, which would surely have been the most significant sandwich in history, but it seems more likely that he was standing outside the café without any lunch. By sheer coincidence the Archduke’s driver made a wrong turn into the same street and stalled the car in front of him. This gave a surprised Princip the opportunity to shoot Ferdinand and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg. Over 37 million people died in the fallout from that assassination.

But there is another class of assassinations, which has prevailed from an early period of the seventeenth century, that really does surprise me; I mean the assassination of philosophers. For, gentlemen, it is a fact, that every philosopher of eminence for the two last centuries has either been murdered, or, at the least, been very near it; insomuch, that if a man calls himself a philosopher, and never had his life attempted, rest assured there is nothing in him; and against Locke’s philosophy in particular, I think it an unanswerable objection (if we needed any), that, although he carried his throat about with him in this world for seventy-two years, no man ever condescended to cut it. As these cases of philosophers are not much known, and are generally good and well composed in their circumstances, I shall here read an excursus on that subject, chiefly by way of showing my own learning.

You cannot imagine, to give you another example, that you may have, one day, a prime minister (it would go against my modesty to breathe his name) who, one day, after announcing in Parliament, in a cool, impassive voice, that, as the result of a number of carefully thought out diplomatic manoeuvres he has refrained from discussing before (for he is not a man of many words), he has succeeded in annexing Britain as an ordinary colony of Hungary, and that he is taking this opportunity to apprise the House of the fact; - Well, as I say, after explaining this in a cool and impassive tone, ignoring the shouting, jubilant Members who want to carry him round on their shoulders, suddenly he takes up a fencing posture and, right there, on the premier's rostrum, employing a formidable, hitherto unknown jujitsu hold, floors the Australian world wrestling champion whom the British opposition treacherously hid under the rostrum in order to assassinate the greatest European.

In the months following the assassination, any criticism of Oslo was henceforth deemed “incitement” and an attempt to kill “Rabin’s legacy.” Never mind that this “legacy” morphed into fantasy. For all my disagreement with Rabin, he was not what the left made him out to be. In his last speech to the Knesset, delivered a month before his assassination, Rabin spoke against a full-fledged Palestinian state. He specifically said that in a final peace settlement, the “Palestinian entity,” as he called it, would be “less than a state.” He insisted that Israel would maintain large settlement blocs in Judea and Samaria and in Gush Katif, in the Gaza district. He declared that Israel would maintain control of the Jordan Valley “in the broadest meaning of that term” as Israel’s security border in the east. All this meant that under Rabin’s plan, Israel would keep full control over sizable parts of Judea and Samaria. Rabin also made clear that all of Jerusalem and its settled environs would remain under Israeli sovereignty.

What he’s been working on is an idea, or the idea of an idea. It’s about a race of extraterrestrials who send a spaceship to explore Earth. They’re composed of crystals in a high state of organization, and they attempt to establish communications with those Earth beings they’ve assumed are like themselves: eyeglasses, windowpanes, Venetian paperweights, wine goblets, diamond rings. In this they fail. They send back a report to their homeland: This planet contains many interesting relics of a once-flourishing but now-defunct civilization, which must have been of a superior order. We cannot tell what catastrophe has caused all intelligent life to become extinct. The planet currently harbours only a variety of viscous green filigree and a large number of eccentrically shaped globules of semi-liquid mud, which are tumbled hither and thither by the erratic currents of the light, transparent fluid that covers the planet’s surface. The shrill squeaks and resonant groans produced by these must be ascribed to frictional vibration, and should not be mistaken for speech.

I wonder how they will like Maria in Missoula, Montana? That is if I can get a job back in Missoula. I suppose that I am ticketed as a Red there now for good and will be on the general blacklist. Though you never know. You never can tell. They've no proof of what you do, and as a matter of fact they would never believe it if you told them, and my passport was valid for Spain before they issued the restrictions. The time for getting back will not be until the fall of thirty-seven. I left in the summer of thirty-six and though the leave is for a year you do not need to be back until the fall term opens in the following year. There is a lot of time between now and the fall term. There is a lot of time between now and the day after tomorrow if you want to put it that way. No. I think there is no need to worry about the university. Just you turn up there in the fall and it will be all right. Just try and turn up there. But it has been a strange life for a long time now. Damned if it hasn't. Spain was your work and your job, so being in Spain was natural and sound. You had worked summers on engineering projects and in the forest service building roads and in the park and learned to handle powder, so the demolition was a sound and normal job too. Always a little hasty, but sound. Once you accept the idea of demolition as a problem it is only a problem. But there was plenty that was not so good that went with it although God knows you took it easily enough. There was the constant attempt to approximate the conditions of successful assassination that accompanied the demolition. Did big words make it more defensible? Did they make killing any more palatable? You took to it a little too readily if you ask me, he told himself. And what you will be like or just exactly what you will be suited for when you leave the service of the Republic is, to me, he thought, extremely doubtful. But my guess is you will get rid of all that by writing about it, he said. Once you write it down it is all gone. It will be a good book if you can write it. Much better than the other. But in the meantime all the life you have or ever will have is today, tonight, tomorrow, today, tonight, tomorrow, over and over again (I hope), he thought and so you had better take what time there is and be very thankful for it. If the bridge goes bad. It does not look too good just now.

N.E.W.T. Level Questions 281-300: What house at Hogwarts did Moaning Myrtle belong to? Which dragon did Viktor Krum face in the first task of the Tri-Wizard tournament? Luna Lovegood believes in the existence of which invisible creatures that fly in through someone’s ears and cause temporary confusion? What are the names of the three Peverell brothers from the tale of the Deathly Hallows? Name the Hogwarts school motto and its meaning in English? Who is Arnold? What’s the address of Weasley’s Wizarding Wheezes? During Quidditch try-outs, who did Ron beat to become Gryffindor’s keeper? Who was the owner of the flying motorbike that Hagrid borrows to bring baby Harry to his aunt and uncle’s house? During the intense encounter with the troll in the female bathroom, what spell did Ron use to save Hermione? Which wizard, who is the head of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures at the Ministry of Magic lost his son in 1995? When Harry, Ron and Hermione apparate away from Bill and Fleur’s wedding, where do they end up? Name the spell that freezes or petrifies the body of the victim? What piece did Hermione replace in the game of Giant Chess? What bridge did Fenrir Greyback and a small group of Death Eaters destroy in London? Who replaced Minerva McGonagall as the new Deputy Headmistress, and became the new Muggle Studies teacher at Hogwarts? Where do Bill and Fleur Weasley live? What epitaph did Harry carve onto Dobby’s grave using Malfoy’s old wand? The opal neckless is a cursed Dark Object, supposedly it has taken the lives of nineteen different muggles. But who did it curse instead after a failed attempt by Malfoy to assassinate Dumbledore? Who sends Harry his letter of expulsion from Hogwarts for violating the law by performing magic in front of a muggle? FIND THE ANSWERS ON THE NEXT PAGE! N.E.W.T. Level Answers 281-300 Ravenclaw. Myrtle attended Hogwarts from 1940-1943. Chinese Firebolt. Wrackspurts. Antioch, Cadmus and Ignotus. “Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus” and “Never tickle a sleeping dragon.” Arnold was Ginny’s purple Pygmy Puff, or tiny Puffskein, bred by Fred and George. Number 93, Diagon Alley. Cormac McLaggen. Sirius Black. “Wingardium Leviosa”. Amos Diggory. Tottenham Court Road in London. “Petrificus Totalus”. Rook on R8. The Millenium Bridge. Alecto Carrow. Shell Cottage, Tinworth, Cornwall. “HERE LIES DOBBY, A FREE ELF.” Katie Bell. Malfalda Hopkirk, the witch responsible for the Improper use of Magic Office.

Triggers include: Abortion (backstory) Anal sex Autassassinophilia Attempted sexual assault Bullying Cannabis growing (and dealing) Car accident Castration Child assassins (backstory) Child porn (secondary character backstory) Child sexual abuse (backstory) Choking Collaring Coprophilia (brief mention) Cults Date rape drugs (by minor antagonist) Desecration of a corpse Desecration of a grave Dismemberment Doxxing Erotophonophilia Execution Fear play Financial abuse (by minor antagonist) Forced abortion (backstory) Gang rape (to side character) Gaslighting Grooming (backstory) Hallucinations Human centipede (on minor villains) Humiliation Imprisonment Improper use of a thigh bone Improper use of extension cables Improper use of holy water Knife play Mask play Medical misconduct Medication tampering Memory loss Mental illness Miscarriage (backstory) Murder Online harassment Osteophilia Phrogging Pornography Primal kink Rape (of rapists) Sadism Sexual harassment Snuff movies Somnophilia Spanking Stalking Suicide Suspension bondage Teacher-student relationship (backstory) Torture Trauma Victim blaming (by minor antagonist) Vigilante justice Reader discretion is advised. If you find any of these topics distressing, please choose a different book. Your mental health matters.

Eichmann remembered this because it was unusual for him to receive social invitations from members of governments; it was an honor. Mach, as Eichmann recalled, was a nice, easygoing fellow who invited him to bowl with him. Did he really have no other business in Bratislava in the middle of the war than to go bowling with the Minister of the Interior? No, absolutely no other business; he remembered it all very well, how they bowled, and how drinks were served just before the news of the attempt on Heydrich’s life arrived. Four months and fifty-five tapes later, Captain Less, the Israeli examiner, came back to this point, and Eichmann told the same story in nearly identical words, adding that this day had been “unforgettable,” because his “superior had been assassinated.” This time, however, he was confronted with a document that said he had been sent to Bratislava to talk over “the current evacuation action against Jews from Slovakia.” He admitted his error at once: “Clear, clear, that was an order from Berlin, they did not send me there to go bowling.” Had he lied twice, with great consistency? Hardly. To evacuate and deport Jews had become routine business; what stuck in his mind was bowling, being the guest of a Minister, and hearing of the attack on Heydrich. And it was characteristic of his kind of memory that he could absolutely not recall the year in which this memorable day fell, on which “the hangman” was shot by Czech patriots.

No one has better attempted to explain the seeming paradox of a Christian involved in a plot to assassinate a head of state than Eberhard Bethge. He helps show that Bonhoeffer’s steps toward political resistance were not some unwarranted detour from his previous thinking, but were a natural and inevitable outworking of that thinking. Bonhoeffer always sought to be brave and to speak the truth—to “confess”—come what may; but at some point merely speaking the truth smacked of cheap grace. Bethge explained: Bonhoeffer introduced us in 1935 to the problem of what we today call political resistance. The levels of confession and of resistance could no longer be kept neatly apart. The escalating persecution of the Jews generated an increasingly intolerable situation, especially for Bonhoeffer himself. We now realized that mere confession, no matter how courageous, inescapably meant complicity with the murderers, even though there would always be new acts of refusing to be co-opted and even though we would preach “Christ alone” Sunday after Sunday. During the whole time the Nazi state never considered it necessary to prohibit such preaching. Why should it? 361 Thus we were approaching the borderline between confession and resistance; and if we did not cross this border, our confession was going to be no better than cooperation with the criminals. And so it became clear where the problem lay for the Confessing Church: we were resisting by way of confession, but we were not confessing by way of resistance.

There was enough intimidation, witness tampering and foul play to go around. Many books have been published about this subject, witnesses have died, some violently, under very suspicious conditions. Over the years, evidence has been tampered with, and fearing for their lives, most other people have decided to clam up and withdraw into the shadows. Personally I still retain a list of convenient deaths after the Kennedy Assassination that happened rounding the Dealey Plaza in Dallas on November 22, 1963! In February 1996, Robert Kennedy, Jr. and his brother, Michael, flew to Havana for a meeting with Fidel Castro. As a gesture of goodwill, they brought with them a file of formerly top-secret U.S. documents. These documents were specifically about the Kennedy administration’s attempt to find a peaceful settlement with Cuba. Castro thanked them for the file and shared the impression that it was President Kennedy’s desire to normalize relations between the United States and Cuba. “It’s unfortunate,” Castro said, “that things happened as they did.” Castro also indicated that normalization might have been possible, had it not been for President Kennedy’s assassination in 1963. Although numerous attempts at normalization between the two countries have been attempted since this meeting, powerful anti-Castro factions continued to thwart all of these efforts. Perhaps we are now witnessing the time when ways will be found to improve the relations between the United States and Cuba and then again perhaps not!

Obviously, the violence suppression of social movements is hardly new. One need only think of the Red Scare, the reaction to radical labor movements like the IWW, let alone the campaigns of outright assassination directed against the American Indian Movement or black radicals in the 1960s and early 1970s. But in almost every case, the victims were either working-class or nonwhite. On the few occasions where even much milder systematic repression is directed at any significant number of middle-class white people--as during the McCarthy era, or against student protesters during the Vietnam War--it quickly becomes a national scandal. And, while it would be wrong to call Occupy Wall Street a middle-class white people’s movement--it was much more divers than that--there is no doubt that very large numbers of middle-class white people were involved in it. Yet the government did not hesitate to attack it, often using highly militarized tactics, often deploying what can only be called terroristic violence--that is, if "terrorism" is defined as attacks on civilians consciously calculated to create terror for political ends. (I know this statement might seem controversial. But when Los Angeles police, for example, open fire with rubber bullets on a group of chalk-wielding protesters engaged in a perfectly legal, permitted "art walk," in an obvious attempt to teach citizens that participating in any Occupy-related activity could lead to physical injury, it’s hard to see how that word should not apply.) (p. 141-142)

Let’s come back to the question of the gospel of grace causing division. Is it possible to preach the gospel of grace and cause division to the extent that people would even want to kick you out of their cities? Yes! This happened in the early church. Paul was “speaking boldly in the Lord” and preaching “the word of His grace” when in the very next verse, you find that “the multitude of the city was divided: part sided with the Jews, and part with the apostles”8. There was even a “violent attempt… made by both the Gentiles and Jews, with their rulers, to abuse and stone them”9. Thus, it is clear that when you preach the same good news that Paul preached, it doesn’t mean that everybody will be united and say, “Hallelujah!” There will be those who would want to kick you out of their cities and say all kinds of things about you to assassinate your character. But just because there was division, it certainly did not mean that what Paul preached was not true. That is precisely why Paul warned that even when God declares something so good, there are those who will refuse to believe — “you will by no means believe, though one were to declare it to you”. If you are believing the Lord for a miraculous breakthrough, then be sure that you are hearing “the word of His grace” and not the word of His law. That is why the gospel that Paul preached is not a man-pleasing gospel. Paul did not preach to be welcomed everywhere he went. He preached the truth of the gospel even if it meant being stoned by his opponents and being expelled from cities. He did it because the gospel is THE POWER OF GOD to salvation!

William Blum, the former State Department employee who became one of its most severe and encyclopedic critics, drew up a disturbing balance sheet of American interventions since the end of the Second World War, and there are numerous cases of overturning democratically elected governments. He also emphasized Washington’s meddling in elections, as it has not hesitated to invest considerable sums and to use very dubious tactics—from misinformation campaigns and economic destabilization efforts to clandestine cia operations—to swing so-called democratic elections in a direction favorable to its own interests. In one of his most recent books, entitled quite simply America’s Deadliest Export: Democracy, he reaches the conclusion that the American administration, for which the question of democracy remains utterly secondary, aims above all at world domination. For the United States has shown itself to be hostile to any popular movement likely to contest its hegemony. It is in this vein that it has • endeavored to overthrow more than 50 foreign governments, most of which were democratically elected; • grossly interfered in democratic elections in at least 30 countries; • attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders; • dropped bombs on the people of more than 30 countries; • attempted to suppress a populist or nationalist movement in 20 countries. Needless to say, such a performance inevitably calls into question the history of the spectacular blossoming of democracy. Numerous other specialists have corroborated Blum’s conclusions, often with detailed investigations bearing on individual cases of what Chomsky judiciously named “deterring democracy.

I saw Clinton again during the signing of the peace treaty with Jordan in Israel’s Arava Valley in 1995. That year, I also sent him my third book on terrorism, Fighting Terrorism, and he sent me back a cordial letter. Notwithstanding his civility, I knew his administration would do anything to defeat me. In fact they did. Totally committed to the idea of a fully independent Palestine, they were not aware that Rabin himself had been opposed to such a state. Clinton sent his number one campaign strategist, James Carville, his pollster Stan Greenberg and his top team of experts to Israel to help tip the scales in Peres’s favor. Special envoy Dennis Ross would later say, “We did everything we could to help Peres,” and Clinton’s national security advisor, Sandy Berger, would also later admit, “If there was ever a time that we tried to influence an Israeli election, it was Peres vs. Netanyahu.”23 Normally such an outrageous and systemic interference in another democracy’s elections would elicit outcries of protest from the press in America and Israel alike. No such protests were heard. Totally supportive of Peres, the press in both Israel and the United States was silent. Though the odds were stacked against us, we weren’t fazed. “About Carville,” Arthur said, “we can beat him.” Clinton and Peres organized an international peace conference in Sharm el-Sheikh a few weeks before the elections. Peres, Clinton, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, King Hussein of Jordan, and Arafat all showed up and danced the dance. Yet a few months earlier, soon after Peres was installed without an election as replacement prime minister following Rabin’s assassination, King Hussein had sent me a message through his brother Crown Prince Hassan, asking: Would I meet Hassan secretly in London? In a London flat the crown prince and I hit it off immediately. I liked Hassan. Straightforward, with a humorous streak, he didn’t even attempt to hide his concern about a Peres victory. Though they wouldn’t admit it publicly, he and many Jordanian officials I met over the years were concerned that an armed Palestinian state could destroy the Hashemite regime and take over Jordan.

The Buddha was concerned with how to escape from just this kind of self-created suffering, with how to avoid the pitfalls of self-inflation or -debasement. It is here that the latter parts of the Second Noble Truth, the thirsts for existence and nonexistence, become relevant. Buddha, we must remember, did not teach a speculative psychology; he taught a practical one designed to liberate practitioners from dissatisfaction. “I do not teach theory,” he said, “I analyse.”2 He refused to answer questions that would feed either the tendency to cling to some kind of absolute romanticized ideal or that would enable nihilistic distancing, the two trends that are subsumed under the headings of existence and nonexistence and that become the basis for many powerful religious, psychological, and philosophical dogmas. There were, in fact, fourteen subjects that the Buddha repeatedly refused to discuss, all of them searching for absolute certainty:        1)  Whether the world is eternal, or not, or both, or neither.        2)  Whether the world is finite (in space), or infinite, or both, or neither.        3)  Whether an enlightened being exists after death, or does not, or both, or neither.        4)  Whether the soul is identical with the body or different from it. The Buddha taught that to attempt a definitive answer to these questions would give the wrong idea, that to do so would only feed the tendency to cling to an absolute or to nihilistically reject, neither of which he found useful. He never taught the existence of a true self, nor did he ever support the idea of a chaotic universe in which “nothing matters” and individual actions are of no importance. Rather, he encouraged a consistent doubting of all fixed assumptions about the nature of things. In a teaching that he gave to a skeptical follower named Malunkyaputta, he likened the asking of questions about the ultimate nature of things to a man wounded by an arrow refusing to have the arrow taken out until all of his questions about who the assassin was, where he came from, what he looked like, what kind of bow he was using, and what make of arrow had been shot had been addressed. “That man would die, Malunkyaputta,” emphasized the Buddha, “without ever having learnt this.”3

Before the twentieth century, ideology - as opposed to religion - did not kill people by the millions and tens of millions. The stakes were not thought to be worth it. Such enthusiasm for mass murder awaited the combination of aristocratic militarism, really-existing socialism, and fascism. Thus it was only in the twentieth century that utopian aspirations about how the economy should be organized led nations and global movements to build dystopias to try to bring the utopian future closer. And then they turned around and justified the dystopia: compromises must be made, and this is as good as it is going to get. My view is that too much mental and historical energy has been spent parsing differences between movements that are justly classified as dystopian, and even totalitarian, in aspiration. Time spent on such a task is time wasted, given their commonalities - if not in formal doctrine, then at least in modes of operation. The guards of Auschwitz, Majdanek, Treblinka, Dachau, and the rest were very like the guards of the Gulag Archipelago. Rather, mental and historical energy should be focused on where these movements got their energy. Why was the world unable to offer people a society in which they could live good lives? Why was a total reconfiguration necessary? Karl Polanyi saw fascism and socialism as reactions against the market society's inability or unwillingness to satisfy people's Polanyian rights. It could not guarantee them a comfortable community in which to live because the use to which land was put had to pass a profitability test. It could not offer them an income commensurate with what they deserved because the wage paid to their occupation had to pass a profitability test. And it could not offer them stable employment because the financing to support whatever value chain they were embedded in also had to pass a profitability test. These failures all gave energy to the thought that there needed to be a fundamental reconfiguration of economy and society that would respect people's Polanyian rights. And the hope of millions was that fascism and really-existing socialism would do so. Instead, both turned out to erase, in brutal and absolute ways, people's rights, and people's lives, by the millions. So why were people so gullible? The German socialist Rosa Luxemburg in 1919 could see the path Lenin was embarked upon and called it 'a brutalization of public life: attempted assassinations, shooting of hostages, etc.' The German liberal Max Weber, writing in 1918, could also foresee what would become of Lenin's sociological experiment, saying it would end 'in a laboratory with heaps of human corpses.' Similarly, the British diplomat Eric Phipps wrote in 1935 that if Britain were to take Hitler's Mein Kampf seriously and literally, 'we should logically be bound to adopt the policy of a "preventive" war.' The dangers of a fascist turn were clear. The unlikelihood of success at even slouching toward a good society of those who took that turn ought to have been obvious. Utopian faith is a helluva drug.

You are claiming that the Soviet authorities began and influenced the existence of the Democratic Party [in Iran]. That is the basis of all your statements. The simplest way to discredit your absurd claim si to tell you about Iran, of which you are apparently ignorant. The people of Iran are oppressed, poverty-stricken, and miserable with hunger and disease. Their death rate is among the highest in the world, and their infant mortality rate threatens Iran with complete extinction. They are ruled without choice by feudalistic landowners, ruthless Khans, and venal industrialists. The peasants are slaves and the workers are paid a few pennies for a twelve hour day--not enough to keep their families in food. I can quote you all the figures you like to support these statements, quote them if necessary from British sources. I can also quote you the figures of wealth which is taken out of Iran yearly by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, of which the British Governemtn is the largest shareholder. 200 million pounds sterling have been taken out of Iran by your Oil company: a hundred times the total amount of Iran's national income and ten thousand times the total national income of the working people of Iran. By such natural resources as oil, Iran is by nature one of the wealthiest countries on earth. That wealth goes to Britain, while Iran remains poverty-ridden and without economic stability at all. It has no wage policies, no real trade unions, few hospitals, no sanitation and drainage, no irrigation, no proper housing, and no adequate road system. Its people have no rights before the law; their franchise in non-existent, and their parliamentary rights are destroyed by the corrupt method of election and political choice. The Iranian people suffer the terrors of a police regime, and they are prey to the manipulations of the grain speculators and the money operators. The racial minorities suffer discrimination and intolerance, and religious minorities are persecuted for political ends. Banditry threatens the mountain districts, and British arms have been used to support one tribe against another. I could go on indefinitely, painting you a picture of misery and starvation and imprisonment and subjection which must shame any human being capable of hearing it. Yet you say that the existence of a Democratic Party in Iran has been created by the Soviet authorities. You underestimate the Iranian people, Lord Essex! The Democratic Party has arisen out of all this misery and subjection as a force against corruption and oppression. Until now the Iranian people have been unable to create a political party because the police system prevented by terror and assassination. Any attempt to organize the workers and peasants was quickly halted by the execution of party leaders and the vast imprisonment of its followers. The Iranian people, however, have a long record of struggle and persistence, and they do not have to be told by the Soviet Union where their interests lie. They are not stupid and they are not utterly destroyed. They still posses the will to organize a democratic body and follow it into paths of Government. The Soviet Union has simply made sure that the police assassins did not interfere.... To talk of our part in 'creating' the democratic movement is an insult to the people and a sign of ignorance. We do not underestimate the Iranian people, and as far as we are concerned the Democratic Party...belongs to the people. It is their creation and their right, and it cannot be broken by wild charges which accuse the Soviet Union of its birth. We did not create it, and we have not interfered in the affairs of Iran. On the contrary, it is the British Government which has interfered continuously and viciously in Iran's affairs.

who view the CIA as complicit in Kennedy’s assassination point to the CIA’s role in covert operations in Vietnam as the reason why the CIA wanted Kennedy’s removal from office. Col. Fletcher Prouty, in his highly documented book, JFK: The CIA, Vietnam and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy, reveals that Kennedy was attempting to end the CIA’s influence over covert operations.[301] Chief among these was the escalating U.S. involvement in Vietnam that Kennedy wanted to end. This he posits is why Kennedy was assassinated. There is, however, a more compelling reason why the CIA wanted Kennedy’s removal from office - the CIA’s role in controlling classified UFO information, and denying access to other government agencies including the office of the President. The assassination of President Kennedy was the direct result of his efforts to gain access to the CIA’s control of classified UFO files. Unknown to Kennedy, a set of secret MJ-12 directives issued by his former CIA Director, Allen Dulles, ruled out any cooperation with Kennedy and his National Security staff on the UFO issue. It was Dulles and another six MJ-12 Group members who sanctioned the directives found in the burned document, including a political assassination directive against non-cooperative officials in the Kennedy administration. This could be applied to Kennedy himself if the official entrusted to carry out the MJ-12 Assassination Directive concluded the President threatened MJ-12 operations.

The John Kennedy assassination, and Jack Ruby’s killing Oswald, were one espionage plan. The Warren Commission, and Ruby’s trial, attempted to have the public believe these were separate, isolated events. In the same manner, the Senate Committee and witnesses involved want to separate the “caper” from the “horror stories.” Both involved identical plans, funds and a team that worked together for many years doing the same kinds of sabotage.

The Lance deHaven-Smith book Conspiracy Theory in America (published by the University of Texas) reveals that the phrase “conspiracy theory” was invented by the CIA to discredit doubters of the Warren Commission, which claims that John F. Kennedy’s assassination was carried out alone by a single “lone gunman.” Distraught by the murder of President Kennedy, a Beverly Hills housewife named Mae Brussell took it upon herself to buy all 26 printed volumes issued by the Warren Commission report, and attempt to make sense of the thing by cross-indexing the entire work. Mae was disturbed by the contradictory information and unreported realities she discovered in those volumes. As a result, she started subscribing to many major newspapers and magazines, whose stories she filed and organized, uncovering disquieting connections and patterns behind government and corporate malfeasance.

Getting its target audience to conclude that facts and truth are “unknowable” is the true objective of any disinformation campaign. Climate change deniers aren’t trying to convince people that surveys they commissioned are better than those agreed upon by the vast majority of scientists. Antigovernment conspiracy theorists aren’t really trying to convince people that some towns in the Midwest are governed under Sharia law, or that Jade Helm was an attempt by Obama to come for their guns. If someone actually believes the falsehood, that’s a bonus, but the primary objective is to get readers or viewers to throw their hands up and give up on “facts.” Do vaccines cause autism? Maybe. Was Senator Ted Cruz’s father involved with President Kennedy’s assassination? Anything’s possible. Is Hillary Clinton running a child-sex ring out of the basement of a DC pizza parlor? Who knows?

AUTHOR’S NOTE The First Assassin is a work of fiction, and specifically a work of historical fiction—meaning that much of it is based on real people, places, and events. My goal never has been to tell a tale about what really happened but to tell what might have happened by blending known facts with my imagination. Characters such as Abraham Lincoln, Winfield Scott, and John Hay were, of course, actual people. When they speak on these pages, their words are occasionally drawn from things they are reported to have said. At other times, I literally put words in their mouths. Historical events and circumstances such as Lincoln’s inauguration, the fall of Fort Sumter, and the military crisis in Washington, D.C., provide both a factual backdrop and a narrative skeleton. Throughout, I have tried to maximize the authenticity and also to tell a good story. Thomas Mallon, an experienced historical novelist, has described writing about the past: “The attempt to reconstruct the surface texture of that world was a homely pleasure, like quilting, done with items close to hand.” For me, the items close to hand were books and articles. Naming all of my sources is impossible. I’ve drawn from a lifetime of reading about the Civil War, starting as a boy who gazed for hours at the battlefield pictures in The Golden Book of the Civil War, which is an adaptation for young readers of The American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War by Bruce Catton. Yet several works stand out as especially important references. The first chapter owes much to an account that appeared in the New York Tribune on February 26, 1861 (and is cited in A House Dividing, by William E. Baringer). It is also informed by Lincoln and the Baltimore Plot, 1861, edited by Norma B. Cuthbert. For details about Washington in 1861: Reveille in Washington, by Margaret Leech; The Civil War Day by Day, by E. B. Long with Barbara Long; Freedom Rising, by Ernest B. Ferguson; The Regiment That Saved the Capitol, by William J. Roehrenbeck; The Story the Soldiers Wouldn’t Tell, by Thomas P. Lowry; and “Washington City,” in The Atlantic Monthly, January 1861. For information about certain characters: With Malice Toward None, by Stephen B. Oates; Lincoln, by David Herbert Donald; Abe Lincoln Laughing, edited by P. M. Zall; Lincoln and the Civil War in the Diaries of John Hay, edited by Tyler Dennett; Lincoln Day by Day, Vol. III: 1861–1865, by C. Percy Powell; Agent of Destiny, by John S. D. Eisenhower; Rebel Rose, by Isabel Ross; Wild Rose, by Ann Blackman; and several magazine articles by Charles Pomeroy Stone. For life in the South: Roll, Jordan, Roll, by Eugene D. Genovese; Runaway Slaves, by John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger; Bound for Canaan, by Fergus M. Bordewich; Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown, written by himself; The Fire-Eaters, by Eric H. Walther; and The Southern Dream of a Caribbean Empire, by Robert E. May. For background on Mazorca: Argentine Dictator, by John Lynch. This is the second edition of The First Assassin. Except for a few minor edits, it is no different from the first edition.

While hunting in the New Forest, William II Rufus (r. 1087–1100) was killed by a crossbow bolt; an assassin’s blow conferring an association of perfidy to the weapon. His son Henry I (r. 1100–35) narrowly escaped a bolt shot by his illegitimate daughter Juliana in her failed attempt at both patricide and regicide.

For the first time in their memory, certainly since the earliest beginnings of the Civil War, Americans facing the shared tragedy of Garfield’s ordeal felt a deep and surprising connection to one another. Divided by vast stretches of dangerous wilderness and stark differences in race, religion, and culture, there had been little beyond severely strained notions of common citizenship to unite them. The assassination of Abraham Lincoln sixteen years earlier had only deepened that divide. But the attempt on Garfield’s life aroused feelings of patriotism that many Americans had long since forgotten, or never knew they had.

Although each of these disparate groups trusted Garfield, it was not until they were plunged into a common grief and fear that they began to trust one another. Suddenly, a contemporary of Garfield’s wrote, the nation was “united, as if by magic.” Even Jefferson Davis, the former president of the Confederacy and a man whom Garfield had voted to indict as a war criminal, admitted that the assassination attempt had made “the whole Nation kin.