Who Killed Jesus Christ?

By Michael Hoffman 

Maundy Thursday, 2013

www.revisionisthistory.org

Christ our passover has been sacrificed, alleluia: therefore let us keep festival with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth” (I Cor. 5: 7-8).

Modern people think they know the answer to the question, "Who killed Jesus Christ?" They answer as they have been indoctrinated: all of our sins killed Jesus generally, and the Romans in particular were responsible. No other malefactors are specifically cited, except perhaps for a fleeting mention of a generic class of leaders, the “Chief Priests,” and a vague tribe referred to as “the people."

Our sins did indeed contribute to the anguish, torment and death which Jesus suffered, and Pontius Pilate is a stand-in for every weak, compromising Lunchpail Joe and Retirement Harry throughout time who will only try to do the right thing if it doesn't cost them personally. Pilate's wife put a harbinger of spiritual doom in Pilate's ear, but the Jewish mob took the starch out of Pilate's spine when it served up a more immediate threat for him to contemplate: the wrath of Caesar.

Pilate chose the friendship of his boss in Rome over friendship with the King of the Universe. How many times have we made an equally foolish choice -- of expedience over principle? Yes, we are all guilty of the death of Our Lord.

Yet, when the account of the trial, torture and execution of the Son of God is reduced to only a universal poster for human depravity in general, a truth at the heart of this sacred narrative is denied.

At this time of year sincere Christians endeavor to walk again in the footsteps of our Savior as he emerged from his 40 day fast to beg His Father in the Garden at Gethsemane to let the cup of an excruciatingly painful and shameful immolation, pass by.

In endeavoring to penetrate as deeply as we can the mystery of the death of Jesus, it is necessary that all the factors in his murder are considered and encountered. It is a denial of the Cross to slink away from the truth as did all but two of the followers of Jesus on the Day of His Crucifixion.

We cannot content ourselves, out of fear and political correctness, with referring to those who conspired to kill Him, in bland generic terms as "the Chief Priests and the People.”

In the case of Judas, New Age gnostics paint him as a a misunderstood anti-hero who made possible the divine atonement by bringing about the inevitable Sacrifice that opened the gates of heaven. Without Judas, they say, Christ could not have fulfilled His mission. This assertion is presented to Gnostic initiates as a specially insightful esoteric revelation.

But it ignores the plain meaning of Jesus words: "Woe unto the world because of offenses! For it must needs be that offenses come; but woe to that man by whom the offense come! (Matthew 18:7).

Judas was not freed from the consequences of his betrayal by some occult notion of him serving as a righteous instrument of the inevitable. Some sinner was going to offend God and betray His Son. It tuned out that that someone was Judas Iscariot. Woe unto him, and to all who do as he did.

The religion of Judaism, when it became enamored of the oral traditions and superstitions of men, became the idol that blinded the Jewish leadership and then the people, to the fact that their Messiah had arrived and was in their midst. Initially, He had come only for them.

The Pharisees

In the 1965 papal teaching "Nostra Aetate," it was declared, "...the Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead pressed for the death of Christ (John 19:6); still, what happened in His passion cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today. Although the Church is the new people of God, the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures."

True, "it cannot be charged against all Jews." But as for the statement, "His passion cannot be charged against the Jews of today" this is without Biblical or patristic foundation. It is a heretical fabrication.

The Pharisees had the major instigating role in the murder of God's Divine Son. Those who derive their spiritual patrimony from the Pharisees are today known as Orthodox Jews. Because of their belief, and not because of their alleged racial descent, these modern-day Pharisees are indeed guilty of deicide. They would crucify Jesus again, if they could. How do we know this? The most revered of all rabbis in the history of the West is Moses Maimonides. He is admired by liberals and conservatives, the Left and the Right, and most significantly, by the Orthodox wing of Judaism, for whom he is the paradigm of a great sage and legal authority.

Rabbi Moses Maimonides

 In his tract, Avodat Kochavim, Rabbi Maimonides issued a divine mandate to kill the "wicked" Jesus Christ, as well as all Jews who follow Him, and all those who do not follow the Talmud.

Maimonides wrote: "It is a mitzvah (religious duty highly pleasing to God), to destroy Jewish traitors, minim (Christians), and apikorsim, and to cause them to descend to the pit of destruction, since they cause difficulty to the Jews and sway the people away from God, as did Jesus of Nazareth and his students, and Tzadok, Baithos, and their students. May the name of the wicked rot.”

The holy name of Jesus Christ, by which every knee shall bow, is cursed by Judaism’s most esteemed, media-glorified rabbi, who dares to say of Him, "May the name of the wicked rot."

(Maimonides’ allusion to "Tzadok and Baithos”  and to apikorsim, refers to opponents of the Talmudic oral law).

The Talmud

In the Babylonian Talmud (BT) Sanhedrin 43a we read:

"On Passover Eve they hanged Jesus of Nazareth. And the herald went out before him for 40 days and proclaimed, Jesus of Nazareth...practiced sorcery, incited and led Israel astray. Whoever knows of an argument that may be proposed in his favor should come and present that argument on his behalf. But the judges did not find an argument in his favor, so they hanged him on Passover Eve...Did Jesus of Nazareth deserve that a search be made for an argument in his favor? Surely he incited others to idol worship..."

BT Sanhedrin 107b:

Jesus "went and set up a brick to symbolize an idol and bowed down to it...Anyone who sins and also causes the community to sin is not permitted to do repentance. A Sage said: Jesus performed magic and incited the people of Israel and led them astray."

The famous passage from the Gospel of Matthew about the Jews agreeing that Christ's blood would be on them and their children has been used to justify racial hatred for anyone labeled a "Jew." This view is contrary to the New Testament, where race is only a determining issue for the proud rabbinic enemies of Jesus, not for His followers.

The Blood Libel that is not a Libel

The Gospel of Matthew has been indicted as the grounds by which countless "Jews" were murdered in pogroms due to the "Blood Libel" (Judaic persons supposedly falsely accused of torturing and murdering Christian children).  Tremendous advantage has been gained for Zionism and Talmudism by the circulation of tales of bloodthirsty priests and Christian peasants attacking and killing Judaic persons on trumped charges of "ritually" murdering gentile infants and children.

These archetypal tales of blamelessness and victimhood have an endless shelf life and are recycled year after year in spite of the fact that the truth of the ritual murder accusation has been confirmed by no less a figure than Ariel Toaff, the son of the Chief Rabbi of Rome. Toaff is Professor of Medieval History at Bar-Ilan University, outside Tel Aviv. He revealed the reality of Judaic ritual murder of Christians in his formidably researched masterwork, Pasque di Sangue ("Blood Passover”). He gives strong evidence that in some cases Ashkenazi "Jews" were indeed guilty of the ritual murder of Christian children in Europe.

If his book had remained in print for more than a few days it might have completely overtuned one of the pillars of Zionist agit-prop. In the ensuing hysteria however, Pasque di Sangue was almost completely suppressed after the author recanted under immense pressure and threats of imprisonment and bodily harm. 

Pasque di Sangue has been accurately translated and published online in English as Blood Passover. The entire text is freely available at: http://www.bloodpassover.com/index1.htm
It makes for sobering Good Friday reading.

Concerning who killed Jesus Christ, the Apostle Paul declared:

"For ye, brethren, became followers of the churches of God which in Judaea are in Christ Jesus: for ye also have suffered like things of your own countrymen, even as they have of the Jews: Who both killed the Lord Jesus, and their own prophets, and have persecuted us; and they please not God, and are contrary to all men: Forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved, to fill up their sins alway: for the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost." (I Thessalonians 2: 14-16).

Paul's statement is unambiguous. It is not open to interpretation. It destroys the whole basis of the current, play-it-safe party line of Church and State.

For most of its existence the Church proclaimed that beyond the evil that our own individual sins had wrought, and that of the Roman empire and its soldiers and procurators, it was the Jewish leaders and their followers who were responsible for the death of the Son of God. "Deicide" it was termed in my youth, in the years before Auschwitz became a synonym for cosmic suffering that surpassed Calvary.

In the pre-Vatican II prayer book or “missal” for the Latin Tridentine Mass it is stated, “Christ offered himself in complete holocaust on the Cross” (-St. Joseph Daily Missal [New York, 1950] p. 350).
Few in the 21st century dare to refer to Jesus Christ's immolation as a “holocaust.” In our time the word “holocaust” is solely reserved for what is said to be the suffering of the Judaic people during World War II. Jesus Christ’s sufferings on Calvary have been derogated to a distant second that no longer merits the adjective “holocaust."

Now, "post-Holocaust,” that is to say, post-Auschwitz, we are made to believe that God is not in heaven, he is on earth, in the person of the Jewish people themselves. The Cross has been replaced by the alleged homicidal gas chambers. The "wrath come upon them to the uttermost," has come upon us, as we cooperate in the imposture.

Who killed Christ? He was killed at Golgotha at the behest of the majority of the Jews of Palestine. The heirs of those killers are among us today in the ranks of Orthodox Judaism.

The memory of who killed Him - and why - that too has been killed.

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Michael Hoffman is the author Usury in Christendom: The Mortal Sin that Was and Now is Not

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Canada's Greatest Defender of Freedom of Speech Has Died

A Life of Sacrifice and Idealism

By Michael Hoffman

www.revisionisthistory.org

Douglas Christie

Though it could have been from an assassin's bullet or a terrorist's bomb so virulent and persistent were the threats against him, Catholic attorney Douglas "Doug" Christie, Canada's premier defender of the damned, the marginalized and the downtrodden, has died at the age of 66 from cancer, which he had been batling for approximately two years. He worked virtually up to the time of his death. He is survived by his magnificent wife, Keltie, who shared in his battle for freedom, and two lovely children who are pursuing law and engineering careers, respectively.

Christie stood up for mostly indigent Canadian "thought criminals" who were victims of censorship and prosecution directed by a government-backed, misnamed "Human Rights" cabal which seeks to protect Talmudist and Zionism from the same kind of scrutiny and skepticism which every other religion and ideology faces in the marketplace of ideas.

If the criminal and civil prosecution of heretical speech and press had been suffered by Zionists and rabbis  in Canada, the New York Times and Fox News would have been stuffed to the gills with regular reports and alarms. Instead, the whole sorry Orwellian ordeal of Canada's independent thinkers has been largely flushed down the memory hole by the U.S. corporate media, which are content to stigmatize and dismiss the dissidents Doug defended, as "anti-semites" and "Holocaust deniers," the better to deny their humanity in the name of human rights.

For truth seekers and lovers of liberty, the loss of Doug Christie is an incalculable one. His life of sacrifice and idealism is a shining paradigm. May he rest in peace. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family. Their address is: Christie Family, Box 101, 255 Menzies Street,Victoria, BC V8V 2G6 Canada

Here is a tribute we published in 2011, when we first learned of his illness.

Battling Barrister: Canada’s Doug Christie

By Michael Hoffman | July 21, 2011

According to his wife, Keltie writing in her June, 2011 Friends of Freedom newsletter, 65-year-old Canadian Attorney Douglas Christie, the fearless barrister who so ably defended Ernst Zundel in two historic thought crime trials in Toronto in 1985 and 1988, has “prostate cancer of an aggressive grade that has already spread locally outside the prostate.”

Doug is one of the finest men and purest souls it has been my privilege to know. He went far beyond being Ernst’s attorney. He became his friend and a defender of the German people as a whole. In the course of the two trials he had to absorb thousands of facts, hundreds of books and dozens of maps, models and diagrams in order to defend Ernst to the best of his ability. He spent hours in court and then hours at night and on weekends studying with the Zundel defense team, led by Dr. Robert Faurisson of France. A lesser man would have been broken by the stress and the media libel. Doug relished the challenge and stepped into history’s spotlight chasing destiny.

With the brilliant and thorough organization so typical of Mr. Zündel, Doug’s daily after-court briefings in the basement of Zündelhaus were preserved on video. I have included highlights of those briefings in my documentary film, “The Great Holocaust Trial,” (not to be confused with the book of the same name).

After the Zündel trials, Doug continued his career as “the Clarence Darrow of Canada,” although he stands head-and-shoulders above Darrow, who in some respects was an opportunist (Darrow’s finest hour was his defense of Bill Heywood and the IWW in Idaho in 1907; his nadir was the 1924 Leopold-Loeb case).

Mr. Christie went on to represent dissidents, the marginal and the nearly defenseless. Among his most spectacular victories was the 1990 acquittal of Hungarian-Canadian restauranteur Imre Finta, who had been arrested on trumped-up war crimes’ charges. Doug was ably assisted in the Finta case by the equally courageous attorney Barbara Kulaszka.

Christie defended newspaperman Doug Collins, a heroic British-Canadian soldier who escaped ten times from German POW camps in World War II. Mr. Collins testified for and wrote columns on behalf of Mr. Zundel. Those columns led to his prosecution. Christie has also defended high school history teacher Paul Fromm, English anti-Talmud campaigner Lady Jane Birdwood, Internet activist Bernard Klatt, Marc Lemire, and dozens of other indigent and media-libeled victims of the new inquisition.

The Zionist lobby has had Mr. Christie in its sights for more than a quarter-century, but his record for probity was so impeccable they could find no pretext by which they could disbar or financially cripple him until 2007, when they were able to exploit a minor procedural technicality related to a law pertaining to “subpoena for documents.” The Law Society of masonic Canada ruled that this most honorable of all Canadian lawyers, in “improperly” processing the documents had been “dishonorable.” He was fined $20,000. He could not be disbarred on that basis alone however, and he continued his law practice.

Doug has given his life to the nearly thankless task of fighting for the free speech rights of everyone from Native Canadian David Ahenakew to a coterie of Christians, Germans, East Europeans, revisionists, skeptics and individualists who refused to be commissared. He has continued to press for justice in the case of Jeff Hughes, a confused and possibly mentally ill unarmed skinhead who was shot to death in 2009 by Canada’s “Mounties” for no discernible reason other than his politics. A case like this does nothing to burnish Christie’s career or fill his wallet. At the risk of sounding maudlin, Doug did it out of love for the memory of this young man who he met once and only briefly at the George Orwell Awards Dinner, which he and his wife host annually in British Columbia. Doug Christie is a traditional Catholic who cares more about living the Gospel than talking about it. The cause of justice for Jeff Hughes is but one example of his Christ-like conduct.

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"Hate Group Watchdog" Attacks Catholic Church

"Hate Group Watchdog" Attacks Catholic Church

"A Badge of Honor"

By Michael Hoffman
www.revisionisthistory.org

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has labeled a Catholic organization a "hate group" because the Catholics hosted "speakers who have given lectures on Jewish and Masonic plots for world domination" or who have "members who share that view."

This is thought-policing, and it is intended to intimidate freedom of thought and scholarly inquiry, and harm the fund-raising and community ties of Mount St. Michael Catholic Church, in Spokane, Washington, which operates a school and whose nationally famous "Singing Nuns" host concerts throughout the region.

Journalist Jim Camden's report is more balanced that what has been previously published by Spokane's Spokesman-Review newspaper when it employed, for several years, the biased thought cop Bill Morlin, who showed his true colors when he went directly to work for the Southern Poverty Law Center.

This "Center" has not had a negative word to say about the presence in north Idaho of the Chabad Lubavitch hate group, whose founder, Rabbi Shneur Zalman, taught that all gentiles are "supernal trash.” 

The Lubavitchers harbor racist hatred for the Palestinians and advocate their murder and dispossession, yet they come and go on summer "mission" trips in the Idaho panhandle, hailed by the media and shielded from exposure by a curtain of silence from the supposed “hate watchdogs” of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The Spokesman-Review article, excerpted below, is balanced by the refreshingly contrasting views of a law professor:

 "Carol Swain, a professor of law and political science at Vanderbilt University and critic of the Southern Poverty Law Center, said Mount St. Michael appears to be tarred by a liberal organization for holding conservative religious beliefs…

"She contends the law center is so narrow-minded that it is a hate group. “I’ve never heard of anyone getting off their list,” Swain said. She thinks a conservative group should take being listed by the law center as “a badge of honor.” (End quote)

As long as the SPLC persist in their nonsensical stigmatization of harmless Catholics — and other dissidents and independent thinkers — their credibility and that of their well-funded, multi-million dollar 'poverty palace,' will continue to erode.

Hate groups watchdog has Mount St. Michael on list

Jim Camden

The Spokesman-Review, March 9, 2013, pp. 1 and 8

What do the Aryan Nations, the Ku Klux Klan and the home of Spokane’s Singing Nuns have in common? They’re all on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s map of “hate groups” in the Northwest.

Mount St. Michael, home to a Latin Rite or Tridentine Catholic church, school and convent north of Spokane, has been listed since 2006 by the law center as a radical traditional Catholic group and accused of anti-Semitic activities.

Last week, the law center released the annual update of its “hate map” of groups around the country, which includes an interactive, easy-to-use online graphic. Mount St. Michael is one of 16 organizations mapped for Washington, sharing the state listing with a potpourri of neo-Nazi, Klan, Christian Identity, black separatist, white nationalist and racist skinhead groups.

...The Rev. Casimir Puskorius, pastor of Mount St. Michael, calls the listing “very unfair” and contends it’s a result of a liberal organization taking issue with the teachings of a conservative Christian group. “We considered suing them, some years ago, but they have more resources than us,” Puskorius said.

...Mark Potok, a researcher for the law center, insisted the church was not on the map because of its religious doctrines. The center’s intelligence report on the church from 2006 mentions an early leader’s penchant for conspiracies, reports about speakers who have given lectures on Jewish and Masonic plots for world domination or members who share that view.

...Puskorius said the bookstore might have stocked some books like the law center describes at various times, or had some speakers who talk about those conspiracies at Mount St. Michael at some point. “Those are opinions that people have. People have made the case for them,” he said, but the church doesn’t push conspiracies.

The congregation is not anti-Semitic, Puskorius said. It invited a Jewish photographer to its annual conference to discuss the Shroud of Turin, the cloth that some believe wrapped the body of Jesus after the crucifixion, he said. “We do pray for the conversion of the Jews,” Puskorius said, because they believe that’s what the Bible teaches. “We pray for the conversion of all non-Catholics.”

...Like most Traditional Catholic groups, they reject Nostra Aetate, a letter from Pope Paul VI which denounces anti-Semitism, Mother Kathryn said. But that’s because they reject everything any pope has done for the last 50 years, she added, not because of the message. “To suggest that they are anti-Semitic is just not fair,” said Mother Kathryn, now the head of the Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Church, a Roman Catholic order in the Spokane Diocese.

Read more at Spokesman-Review.com:

http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2013/mar/09/hate-groups-watchdog-has-mount-st-michael-on-list/

On Vanderbilt Law Prof. Carol Swain:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704335904574496250622719022.html

The continuation of the On the Contrary information service is dependent on your donations, and purchases from our bookstore. Thank you.

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68th anniversary of an unsung holocaust

On March 9, 1945 the U.S. Air Force fire-bombed the city of Tokyo; an estimated 100,000 Japanese civilians were incinerated. 

This holocaust in Tokyo is:

•Not studied in special curricula in American schools

• Not memorialized by American museums or exhibits

•No reparations have been paid and no apologies issued by the perpetrators.

• Based on the rationale of "victor's justice," the perpetrators were not prosecuted for war crimes and mass murder.

Why is one holocaust worth more than another?

--Michael Hoffman

www.revisionisthistory.org

Hoffman is the author of The Great Holocaust Trial

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Wall Street mocks Senator Rand Paul's constitutional concerns

The Wall Street Journal Mocks Senator Rand Paul's Constitutional Concerns

By Michael Hoffman

www.revisionisthistory.org | March 7, 2013

When President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder channel the policies of George W. Bush they win plaudits from the Money Power and neocon Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham. 

On March 6 Republican Rand Paul filibustered on the floor of the U.S. Senate against the confirmation of John O. Brennan as CIA director, and the prospect of US government assassination of American citizens on American soil. In news reports of the Orwellian corporate media, the word assassination is seldom employed. The preferred cosmetic euphemisms spoon-fed to the infantilized public are "drone strikes, targeted killings" and "lethal military force." God forbid any reporter or official would utter the word “government assassination.” The phrase carrries with it a potential wake-up call which the managers of opinion avoid like the plague.

During his filibuster, Senator Paul eloquently stated, “I will speak as long as it takes, until the alarm is sounded from coast to coast that our Constitution is important, that your rights to trial by jury are precious, that no American should be killed by a drone on American soil without first being charged with a crime, without first being found to be guilty by a court.”

How could anyone object to Paul’s protest? What is there in the words of this senator that could possibly be objectionable to any supporter of the rule of law and the Constitution? Yet, neocon Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham disparaged Paul's protest.

Graham played the 9/11 card, saying, “The drone program he [Obama] has utilized overseas, I think has made us safer. This idea that we’re going to use a drone to attack an American citizen in a cafe in America is ridiculous...I don’t worry about [drones killing Americans]. Here’s what I worry about: that al-Qaeda has killed 2,958 of us (on Sept. 11, 2001), and is going to add to the total if we let our guard down. And I will do everything in my power to protect this president — who I disagree with a lot — and future presidents in having an ill-informed Congress take over the legitimate authority under the Constitution and the laws of this land to be the commander in chief on behalf of all of us.”

The Wall Street Journal blasted Sen. Paul in an editorial titled, "Rand Paul's Drone Rant” (March 7,  p. A16). Here are excerpts:

"...Senator Paul said an 'alarm' had to be sounded about the threat to Americans from their own government...Senator Paul had written the White House about the possibility of a drone strike against a U.S. citizen on American soil. Attorney General Eric Holder replied that...as a hypothetical Constitutional matter, Mr. Holder acknowledged the President can authorize the use of lethal military force within U.S. territory...

"Calm down, Senator. Mr. Holder is right, even if he doesn't explain the law very well...What it (the U.S. government) can do under the laws of war is target an 'enemy combatant' anywhere at anytime, including on U.S. soil. This includes a U.S. citizen who is also an enemy combatant.

"...Mr. Holder is right that the U.S. could have targeted (say) U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki had he continued to live in Virginia. The U.S. killed him in Yemen before he could kill more Americans...if Mr. Paul wants to be taken seriously he needs to do more than pull political stunts that fire up impressionable libertarian kids in their college dorms.” (End quote from the Wall Street Journal).

The aforementioned Anwar al-Awlaki was a reckless and foolhardy orator and writer who advocated violence. Contrary to the Wall Street Journal however, there is no conclusive evidence that al-Awlaki ever killed anyone, or ordered anyone to be killed. The U.S. government evidently assassinated him because of the words he spoke and wrote. The same lethal criterion for defining an “enemy combatant" can be applied to radical U.S. writers and speakers who offend His Presidential Majesty.

The George W. Bush administration asserted that the President of the United States could, entirely on his own authority and judgment, designate any American citizen an enemy combatant. Once this absolutist designation was applied, the American citizen could be assassinated by his own government, using an aerial drone, or an FBI, CIA or military intelligence agent, or mercenary contractor.

Bush achieved for himself the same pharaonic power which the crowned heads of Europe exercised over their peons in the eighteenth century. It is one significant reason people fled Europe for America, where a revolution was fought against the tyranny of kings. The twenty-first century "war on terror” has given us King George Bush and now Pharaoh Barack Obama. If Rand Paul is wrong to contest this state of affairs, then the American Revolution was wrong. 

(Even Sen. Paul needs to be reminded that focusing primarily on whether or not Obama's assassins will be allowed to perpetrate the killing of American citizens in the U.S. with flying drones, provides a loophole for government assassination of citizens by other, more conventional killing methods). 

The root of this harbinger of Federal government tyranny is not limited solely to the European monarchies of old. The assassination praxis which “our" government has embraced is an Israeli doctrine which has been used with impunity for decades against Palestinian citizens of the Israeli state, as well as Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, and the Lebanese. In the Israeli state the security apparatus decides who needs to die and that person is assassinated by poison, gun fire, tank or artillery shells, or air force missiles and bombs. In several cases which this writer has studied, the victim's wife and children die with him -- not because he was using them as a "human shield” -- but because he had sat down to dinner with his family, or been riding in a car with them when Israeli assassins struck.

Israeli assassination doctrine is considered a legitimate part of “the laws of war" according to that august organ of the money bags, the Wall Street Journal. What the plutocrats have papered over is that one reaps what one sows. When the U.S. abandons the rule of law rooted in western Christian civilization, for the misrule that constitutes state terror, it invites a similar response from its adversaries. If it is right to murder anyone who the president labels an "enemy combatant," even a writer or speaker who has never picked up a gun or a bomb, then what prevents Islamic forces from deciding that U.S. invasion troops and U.S. bombs dropped on their wedding parties, homes and villages, are the actions of terrorist enemy combatants who should be, along with their commanders and political leaders, in retribution, targeted and killed?

Bush and Obama, and their handlers, were and are certainly aware of the invitation to retribution which their assassination policy establishes. It should come as no surprise that this is what they deliberately invite, at great cost to our troops and the American taxpayer. Those who control the U.S. government desire a savage war to the hilt against all who stand in the way of the Israeli holocaust against Palestine and Lebanon, and the spread of the international Money Power and its enslaving usury (a fact about which the libertarian Sen. Paul is tragically unaware).

George W. Bush's vice-president, Dick Cheney, predicted that the war on terror would last for generations. The Cryptocracy that controlled Bush and now Obama seeks a titanic global struggle,  another "Good War” on the World War II model of total mobilization and unconditional surrender, that will firmly galvanize the American people in favor of huge expenditures of blood and treasure; one that will be so brutal it will last for Mr. Cheney’s “generations." Is this not a curse?

According to the Wall Street Journal, those who are receptive to learning about the hidden threat to freedom represented by the executive branch's doctrine of assassination of American citizens, are "impressionable...kids," while Rand Paul is a “ranting...fired-up" hysteric.

But who really is impressionable? The peons who dutifully swallow the official story put forth by the media’s gatekeepers of orthodoxy, or the citizens who ask questions and probe beneath surface appearances and rhetoric?

Moreover, is this writer an enemy combatant for having written this column? Which star chamber, under a cloak of "national security," decides whether I live or die? Are we living in the constitutional republic of America, or the Israeli States of America?

Michael Hoffman is the author of Usury in Christendom: The Mortal Sin that Was and Now is Not.

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On the Contrary is dependent on donations from readers for its continuation.

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Rand Paul’s filibuster against assassination

Rand Paul conducts filibuster in opposition to John Brennan, Obama’s drone policy

By Ed O’Keefe and Aaron Blake | Washington Post | March 6, 2013 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/rand-paul-conducts-filibuster-in-opposition-to-john-brennan-obamas-drone-policy/2013/03/06/1367b1b4-868c-11e2-9d71-f0feafdd1394_story.html?hpid=z3

One of the oldest and most storied traditions of the Senate made a sudden return to Capitol Hill on Wednesday when a junior senator seized control of the chamber with an hours-long ?filibuster involving rambling speeches aimed at blocking a vote on President Obama’s choice to lead the CIA.

Led by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) with help from other junior senators, the filibuster was aimed at drawing attention to deep concern on both sides of the aisle about the administration’s use of unmanned aerial drones in its fight against terrorists and whether the government would ever use them in the United States.

Shortly before noon, Paul — the scion of a political family at the heart of the libertarian movement — came to the Senate floor and declared his opposition to the nomination of John O. Brennan, Obama’s choice to lead the spy agency, who has overseen the drone program.

“I will speak until I can no longer speak,” Paul said as he began. “I will speak as long as it takes, until the alarm is sounded from coast to coast that our Constitution is important, that your rights to trial by jury are precious, that no American should be killed by a drone on American soil without first being charged with a crime, without first being found to be guilty by a court.”

...Adding bipartisan credibility to the effort, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) — the most outspoken liberal antagonist of the CIA — praised Paul for pushing Brennan to clarify whether the CIA could ever target Americans on U.S. soil.

“When I asked the president, ‘Can you kill an American on American soil?’ it should have been an easy answer. It’s an easy question. It should have been a resounding, an unequivocal, ‘No,’ ” Paul said. “The president’s response? He hasn’t killed anyone yet. We’re supposed to be comforted by that.”

“I would be here if it were a Republican president doing this,” Paul added. “Really, the great irony of this is that President Obama’s opinion on this is an extension of George Bush’s opinion.” (End quote; emphasis supplied)

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Rand Paul Does Not Go Quietly Into the Night

By Ashley Parker | New York Times | March 6, 2013

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/06/rand-paul-does-not-go-quietly-into-the-night/?hp

10:28 p.m. | Updated WASHINGTON — A small group of Republicans, led by Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, stalled the Senate on Wednesday by waging a nine-hours-and-counting, old-school, speak-until-you-can-speak-no-more filibuster over the government’s use of lethal drone strikes — forcing the Senate to delay the expected confirmation of John O. Brennan to lead the Central Intelligence Agency.

Mr. Paul, who opposes Mr. Brennan’s nomination, followed through on his plan to filibuster the confirmation of President Obama’s nominee after receiving a letter this month from Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. that refused to rule out the use of drone strikes within the United States in “extraordinary circumstances” like the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

On Wednesday, Mr. Paul did exactly as promised, taking to the Senate floor shortly before noon and holding forth. Now moving toward its 10th hour, Mr. Paul and his comrades on the Senate floor show no signs of wear.

Ostensibly, Mr. Paul is objecting to the Mr. Brennan’s nomination. But in fact, Mr. Paul’s main concerns are those of civil liberties and Constitutional rights he says are under attack by the administration’s potential use of unmanned drone strikes on American citizens on United States soil. (Mr. Brennan, who as the White House counterterrorism adviser was the chief architect of the largely clandestine drone program, served as a good proxy.)

“What will be the standard for how we kill Americans in America?” Mr. Paul asked at one point. “Could political dissent be part of the standard for drone strikes?”

Referring to Jane Fonda, who went to North Vietnam during the war there to publicly denounce the United States’ presence in the country, Mr. Paul added: “I’m not a great fan of Jane Fonda. But I’m not so interested in putting her on a drone kill list.”

As Mr. Paul’s filibuster dragged on, it began to resemble a Shakespearean drama, complete with cameos from other A-list actors (a group of more than half a dozen senators who periodically joined him on the floor); a title all its own (the “filiblizzard,” a nickname courtesy of Twitter users); and some willing extras (eager Senate pages, purposefully striding across the stage to deliver Mr. Paul fresh glasses of water).

Although Mr. Paul did not yield the floor — a move that would effectively end his talkathon — he did, with some apparent relief, yield to take questions from his Republican colleagues. (Mr. Paul could not leave the floor to use the bathroom, making his filibuster at a certain point seem less a standoff between Mr. Paul and the administration than a battle between Mr. Paul and his own bladder.)

Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, began his question by making the obvious allusion, referring to Mr. Paul as a “modern-day ‘Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,’ ” joking that his effort would “surely be making Jimmy Stewart smile.”

And, perhaps befitting of another public — but hopeless — stand, Mr. Cruz took the opportunity to remind the chamber that Wednesday was the anniversary of the fall of the Alamo, noting with some pride that Mr. Paul “is originally from the great state of Texas.”

Mr. Cruz then proceeded to read from a letter by William Barrett Travis, a lieutenant colonel in the Texas Army who died at the Alamo, concluding, “Does that glorious letter give you any encouragement and sustenance on this 177th anniversary of the Alamo?”

Apparently it did. Mr. Paul soldiered ahead, before again receiving some help, from an unlikely source — Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon.

Mr. Wyden said that while he had voted in favor of Mr. Brennan’s nomination on Tuesday at a Senate Intelligence Committee meeting and planned to vote for him again on the Senate floor, he believed that Mr. Paul “has made a number of important points” about the administration’s lethal drone program.

“I think Senator Paul and I agree that this nomination also provides a very important opportunity for the United States Senate to consider the government’s rules and policies on the targeted killings of Americans and that, of course, has been a central pillar of our nation’s counterterror strategy,” Mr. Wyden said.

He added, “The executive branch should not be allowed to conduct such a serious and far-reaching program by themselves without any scrutiny, because that’s not how American democracy works.”

Up next was Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, entering stage right, complete with a water joke — a reference to his State of the Union response, in which a video of a parched Mr. Rubio chugging water quickly went viral.

“You’ve been here for a while, so let me give you some advice,” Mr. Rubio said. “Keep some water nearby. Trust me.”

Other members who made cameos throughout the day — and night — included the Republican Senators John Barrasso of Wyoming; Saxby Chambliss of Georgia; John Cornyn of Texas; Mark Steven Kirk of Illinois; Mike Lee of Utah; and Jerry Moran of Kansas.

As the filibuster continued into the evening, Mr. Paul moved from speaking extemporaneously to relying more on two thick black binders of notes, heavily referencing and reading from articles in publications ranging from The Washington Post to The Wall Street Journal to Wired magazine.

At one point, Mr. Paul began eating “dinner” — a mystery candy bar — and continued his filibuster between mouthfuls of chocolate.

A bit later, Mr. Kirk, who walks with considerable effort after a stroke in 2012, slowly made his way onto the floor with the help of a walker. He placed a green thermos of tea and an apple on the desk of Mr. Paul, gestured to it, and saluted his colleague before talking a seat to watch some of the proceeding.

In the filibuster’s seventh hour, it looked as if a compromise might be reached. Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois and the No. 2 leader in the Senate, and some of his aides came to the floor, seeming ready to help wrap things up. Mr. Paul said he would agree to stop his nonstop talking if his colleagues would unanimously consent to a nonbinding vote on a resolution saying it is unconstitutional to kill an American on United States soil — a move to which Mr. Durbin objected. Mr. Durbin offered instead to hold a hearing on drone strikes, which Mr. Paul brushed aside.

And so, on it went.

Mr. Cruz then made a brief return for a second act of sorts, to read from a list of Twitter messages about Mr. Paul’s stand that he had culled. Though electronic devices are not allowed on the Senate floor, Mr. Cruz informed his friend that Twitter was “blowing up” over the day’s events.

“I was getting kind of tired,” Mr. Paul said, thanking Mr. Cruz for “cheering me up.”Mr. Paul again said his true goal was simply to get a response from the administration saying it would not use drone strikes to take out American citizens on United States soil — and, perhaps with Twitter still in the forefront of his mind, offered Mr. Holder a variety of ways to respond.

“We’ll take a telegram,” Mr. Paul said. “We’ll take a Tweet.”

MICHAEL HOFFMAN'S AFTERWORD:

Note that New York Times blogger Ashley Parker dare not use the word “assassination.” This truthful description is policed out of the discourse, in favor of euphemisms such as “drone strikes.” The fact that “our” government assassinates its own citizens cannot be forthrightly reported in the Orwellian corporate media.

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