A top Russian military commander was killed by a car bomb near Moscow. The attack happened just hours before US envoy Steve Witkoff met with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
On Friday, Lt. Gen. Yaroslav Moskalik was killed by a car bomb in Balashikha, a city near Moscow. He served as deputy chief of the Main Operations Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces.
According to TASS, Russian officials say Moskalik was the only person killed by the blast. Authorities believe the bomb was an IED containing submunitions and had the power of more than 300 grams of TNT.
On 27 November 2024, militants from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the former Al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, launched a lighting assault on Aleppo, Syria’s second largest city.
Amid the chaos, Armenian born professor Yervant Arslanian was assassinated by a suspected HTS sniper while attempting to flee the assault.
Arslanian had previously worked in Italy on weapons systems and was chief of the Syrian advanced weapons research design team at the Arab School of Science and Technology in Aleppo at the time of his death.
Following the assassination, Syrian-Armenian journalist Kevork Almassian speculated that HTS was not acting alone.
The U.S. government this week released thousands more records on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963, long a source of fascination and intrigue. This is the final batch of JFK files after the federal government began declassifying documents in the early 1990s. While these latest files contain no major revelations about the assassination, they do include many previously redacted details about “the CIA global effort to influence elections, sabotage economies, overthrow governments,” says Peter Kornbluh, senior analyst with the National Security Archive, a government transparency organization and research institution. “Now at least we know what was being done in our name but without our knowledge.”
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
Former Prime Minister Hun Sen said Tuesday a plan to assassinate him with a drone at his residence near Phnom Penh was uncovered several weeks ago by authorities who arrested a man suspected of involvement in the plot.
However, a top opposition party lawmaker said the claim was suspicious and would likely be used to designate opposition activism in Cambodia and abroad as terrorism.
“When they are called terrorists, the punishment is very serious, they could be imprisoned for many years, and they could persecute Cambodia’s opposition officials,” said Um Sam An, a senior official from the banned Cambodia National Rescue Party, or CNRP, who now lives in the United States.
Speaking at a school building inauguration, Hun Sen said an audio clip was recently sent to him that revealed the assassination scheme, which would have targeted him at his home in Takhmao town, about 11 km (7 miles) south of the capital, Phnom Penh.
Cambodia’s Senate President Hun Sen, left, and Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Manet release doves during a ceremony marking the 46th anniversary of the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime in Phnom Penh, Jan. 7, 2025.(Tang Chhin Sothy/AFP)
“Be warned – the plan to attack my Takhmao residence with a drone is real,” he said in central Kandal province. “Supporting such an attack threatens national security. Do not dare to harm or kill me.”
Cambodian police haven’t made any statements about an arrest related to the alleged assassination attempt.
Just ‘an excuse’
Hun Sen, 72, stepped down as prime minister in 2023 but retains influence as the Senate president and as the leader of the ruling Cambodian People’s Party. His son, Hun Manet, now serves as prime minister.
A recent draft law would label “extremist opposition” members as terrorists -– possibly a way of targeting overseas opposition groups.
Um Sam An told Radio Free Asia that Hun Sen’s assassination plot claim was just “an excuse to protect the family’s power.”
“He will use it to tell the international community that democrats in Cambodia are not real democrats – that they are a terrorist group that must be suppressed,” he said.
Um Sam An recalled an alleged bomb plot in 1997 that led to a fighting in the streets of Phnom Penh that saw Hun Sen overthrow Prince Norodom Ranariddh, who at the time held the title of first prime minister under a power-sharing agreement
There was another incident in 1998, when hundreds demonstrated in front of Hun Sen’s home in Phnom Penh. One person threw a grenade at the home, and Hun Sen responded by ordering the military and police to crack down on the protesters, Um Sam An said.
Assassinating Hun Sen with a drone at his heavily guarded Takhmao home would be almost impossible, political scientist Em Sovannara told RFA.
“Ordinary citizens do not have the ability to do this,” he said. “And I think that within the opposition party, it is difficult and they are not capable of doing such a thing.”
Translated by Yun Samean. Edited by Matt Reed and Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Khmer.
Twenty years ago this month, on December 10, 2004, former San Jose Mercury News investigative reporter Gary Webb died by apparent suicide, following a stretch of depression. The subject of the 2014 film Kill the Messenger, Webb had left the newspaper in 1997 after his career was systematically destroyed because he had done what journalists are supposed to do: speak truth to power.
In August 1996, Webb penned a three-part series for the Mercury News (8/18–20/96) that documented how profits from the sale of crack cocaine in Los Angeles in the 1980s had been funneled to the Contras, the right-wing, CIA-backed mercenary army responsible for helping to perpetrate, to borrow Noam Chomsky’s words, “large-scale terrorist war” against Nicaragua.
In the early hours of the night on Thursday December 25, the Israeli army targeted a press van in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza that was carrying a crew from Al-Quds TV, killing the five journalists inside. The targeted killing of the journalists has raised the total number of journalists killed by Israeli forces since the outbreak of the war on Gaza to 201.
The journalists had completed their evening assignments and were using the broadcast van as a makeshift sleeping area. Notably, the vehicle was not located in a combat zone but rather near a hospital.
Igor Kirillov, a senior general in charge of Russia’s nuclear defence forces, was killed on Tuesday in a bomb blast in Moscow.
A source in the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), talking to Al Jazeera, has claimed responsibility for the bombing.
During the early hours of Tuesday, Kirillov was killed by a bomb hidden in an electric scooter outside an apartment building on Ryazansky Prospekt, Russia’s investigative committee said in a statement. The attack site was 7km (4 miles) southeast of the Kremlin.
The explosive device “had a capacity of some 300 grams in TNT equivalent”, Russia’s TASS news agency reported, quoting a law enforcement official.
Russian media reported that the bomb was remotely operated.
The assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on December 4 has sparked a reaction that few may have suspected. The perpetrator has received an outpouring of popular support, and a profound debate on the brutality of the US for-profit healthcare system has been sparked, with many accusing healthcare corporations of reaping their profits directly from human misery.
Thompson was shot and killed while heading to an investors meeting in Midtown Manhattan on December 4. Police have arrested 26-year-old Luigi Mangione in connection with the crime, who quickly has become a working class hero in the eyes of many in the US public, especially after his alleged manifesto revealed that he was motivated by outrage towards healthcare corporations.
A day after Luigi Mangione was arrested and charged as the alleged killer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, independent journalist Ken Klippenstein on Tuesday published what he said was the 26-year-old’s highly reported on manifesto.
The existence of the handwritten document found on Mangione when he was taken into custody in Pennsylvania on Monday was confirmed by the New York Police Department, and major media outlets have quoted from it, but none had released it in full.
“My queries to The New York Times, CNN, and ABC to explain their rationale for withholding the manifesto, while gladly quoting from it selectively, have not been answered,” Klippenstein said on his Substack.
Amid growing concerns about what U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s return to the White House will mean for Washington’s rocky relationship with Tehran, the Department of Justice on Friday announced charges against an Afghan national accused of plotting to assassinate the Republican at the direction of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Though Trump survived two shooting attempts…
“This is one of the most perilous moments in the [Middle East] region in years,” says Ali Vaez, director of the International Crisis Group Iran Project, after Israel’s assassination of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh on Wednesday in Tehran. Iranian retaliation against Israel appears imminent. “All bets are off,” warns Vaez, adding that Israel’s latest maneuver will put Americans “in harm’s way,” as Iran will no longer hold back fellow Axis of Resistance members, especially Islamic militias in Iraq and Syria, from launching attacks on U.S. military bases in the region. “It is disastrous for a superpower who cannot control, basically, a client state that is destabilizing the region,” Vaez explains. We also hear from Palestinian human rights attorney Diana Buttu, who responds to Israel’s announcement that its July strike on al-Mawasi, an alleged safe zone in Gaza, killed Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif along with nearly a hundred civilians. Buttu argues it is Israel’s international impunity over the course of its campaign against Palestine that has led to this dangerous moment of escalation. “This is a monster that’s been unleashed,” she says. “This is going to spread, and this is exactly what Netanyahu wants.”
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
Two members of an anti-junta group accused of trying to kill Myanmar’s junta leader died after being tortured during interrogation, a spokesperson for the group told Radio Free Asia.
Seven people were arrested on June 8, allegedly in possession of two 107 mm rockets and launchers, near the site of a bridge opening ceremony attended by the junta leader, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing. Two more suspects were rounded up the following day, and another rocket was seized. Another four people were detained several days later in connection with the plot, junta-controlled media reported.
The Yangon-based Dark Shadow urban guerrilla group said four of the people arrested were its members and two of them died after being tortured.
‘Comrade Shein Myint Mo Aung and Comrade Zaw Gyi died during the interrogation. Although we don’t know exactly what date they died, they died at Ba Yint Naung Military Interrogation Center,” said the spokesperson, who declined to be identified for fear of reprisals. “The other two Dark Shadow members, Myo Thein Tun and Ye Zaw Tun, have been out of touch with their families and we don’t know whether they are dead or are still alive.”
Members of urban guerrilla groups were arrested by junta forces for allegedly plotting to kill junta leader Min Aung Hlaing, according to the junta-controlled newspaper, Myanma Alin on June 17, 2024. (Myanmar Military)
The other nine people arrested, who are members of other guerrilla groups, are believed to be still in custody.
RFA called the Yangon region’s junta spokesperson, Htay Aung, to ask about the suspects but he did not respond by the time of publication.
According to information released by junta-controlled newspaper Myanma Alin on June 17, the plot was foiled when informers told police the group was aiming to fire three 107 mm rockets at Yangon region’s Thanlyin Bridge No. 3 during its opening ceremony.
Myanmar had been in turmoil since the military ousted an elected government led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi in early 2021 with many young democracy supporters taking up arms in a bid to end military rule after troops crushed protests.
As of Thursday, more than 5,400 civilians have died due to extrajudicial killings, public crackdowns on protests and attacks by land and air across the country, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, .
Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Kiana Duncan and Mike Firn.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Burmese.
This week, responding to the assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump, President Joe Biden entreated the nation not to “descend into violence.” In his Sunday night speech, Biden repeated an eerie set of talking points echoed by politicians around the country: “There is no place in America for this kind of violence — for any violence,” he said. “Ever. Period. No exception. We can’…
The attempted assassination of Donald Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania was captured by several photographers who were standing at the stage before the shooting commenced.
The most widely circulated photograph of this event was taken by Evan Vucci, a Pulitzer Prize winning war photographer known for his coverage of protests following George Floyd’s murder.
A number of World Press Photograph awards have been given to photographers who have covered an assassination.
In this vein, Vucci’s image can also be regarded as already iconic, a photograph that perhaps too will win awards for its content, use of colour and framing — and will become an important piece of how we remember this moment in history.
Social media analysis of the image Viewers of Vucci’s photograph have taken to social media to break down the composition of the image, including how iconic motifs such as the American flag and Trump’s raised fist are brought together in the frame according to laws of photographic composition, such as the rule of thirds.
Such elements are believed to contribute to the photograph’s potency.
To understand exactly what it is that makes this such a powerful image, there are several elements we can parse.
Compositional acuity In this photograph, Vucci is looking up with his camera. He makes Trump appear elevated as the central figure surrounded by suited Secret Service agents who shield his body. The agents form a triangular composition that places Trump at the vertex, slightly to the left of a raised American flag in the sky.
On the immediate right of Trump, an agent looks directly at Vucci’s lens with eyes concealed by dark glasses. The agent draws us into the image, he looks back at us, he sees the photographer and therefore, he seems to see us: he mirrors our gaze at the photograph.
This figure is central, he leads our gaze to Trump’s raised fist.
Another point of note is that there are strong colour elements in this image that deceptively serve to pull it together as a photograph.
Set against a blue sky, everything else in the image is red, white and navy blue. The trickles of blood falling down Trump’s face are echoed in the red stripes of the American flag which aligns with the republican red of the podium in the lower left quadrant of the image.
We might not see these elements initially, but they demonstrate how certain photographic conventions contribute to Vucci’s own ways of seeing and composing that align with photojournalism as a discipline.
A photographic way of seeing In interviews, Vucci has referred to the importance of retaining a sense of photographic composure in being able to attain “the shot”, of being sure to cover the situation from numerous angles, including capturing the scene with the right composition and light.
For Vucci, all of this was about “doing the job” of the photographer.
Vucci’s statements are consistent with what most photographers would regard as a photographic way of seeing. This means being attuned to the way composition, light, timing and subject matter come together in the frame in perfect unity when photographing: it means getting the “right” shot.
For Susan Sontag, this photographic way of seeing also corresponded to the relationship between shooting and photographing, a relationship she saw as analogous.
Photography and guns are arguably weapons, with photography and photographic ways of seeing and representing the world able to be weaponised to change public perception.
Writing history with photographs As a photographic way of seeing, there are familiar resonances in Vucci’s photograph to other iconic images of American history.
Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima
Taken by Joe Rosenthal, it won the 1945 Pulitzer Prize for Photography and has come to be regarded in the United States as one of the most recognizable images of World War II. https://t.co/Nv5HjF6XMqpic.twitter.com/AGxmQqonM6
Take for instance, the photograph taken by Joe Rosenthal, The Raising of the Flag on Iwo Jima (1945) during the Pacific War. In the photograph, four marines are clustered together to raise and plant the American flag, their bodies form a pyramid structure in the lower central half of the frame.
This photograph is also represented as a war monument in Virginia for marines who have served America.
The visual echoes between the Rosenthal and Vucci images are strong. They also demonstrate how photographic ways of seeing stretch beyond the compositional. It leads to another photographic way of seeing, which means viewing the world and the events that take place in it as photographs, or constructing history as though it were a photograph.
Fictions and post-truth The inherent paradox within “photographic seeing” is that no single person can be in all places at once, nor predict what is going to happen before reality can be transcribed as a photograph.
In Vucci’s photograph, we are given the illusion that this photograph captures “the moment” or “a shot”. Yet it doesn’t capture the moment of the shooting, but its immediate aftermath. The photograph captures Trump’s media acuity and swift, responsive performance to the attempted assassination, standing to rise with his fist in the air.
Beirut, February 26, 2024—An unknown number of armed and masked individuals in two trucks fired at least 17 times on the car of prominent Iraqi publisher and politician Fakhri Karim on Thursday before fleeing, according to multiplemediareports and Facebook statements by his outlet.
The Committee to Protect Journalists on Monday urged Iraqi authorities to swiftly identify the attackers who attempted to kill Karim and hold them to account. Karim and his wife, Ghada Al-Amily, were uninjured in the attack.
Karim, publisher and editor-in-chief of Al-Mada newspaper, was on his way home after attending a book fair organized by the Al-Mada Foundation for Media, Culture, and Arts in the capital, Baghdad. Al-Amily is the director of the foundation.
The February 22 attack took place around 9 p.m. in the Al-Qadisiyah area of Baghdad, a highly secure area containing offices for Iraqi government security agencies and officers near the Green Zone, which hosts foreign embassies in Iraq.
Karim, 81, is a prominent politician and journalist who served as an advisor to the former Iraqi president Jalal Talbani and was a vocal opponent of the former Iraqi dictator and president Saddam Hussein, according to those sources. His outlet, Al-Mada, is seen as one of the only remaining critical newspapers in Iraq.
“The attempt to kill Al-Mada publisher Fakhri Karim in a highly secure area of Baghdad sheds a bright light on the darkness Iraq and its journalists are increasingly facing,” said Sherif Mansour, CPJ Middle East and North Africa program coordinator, in Washington, D.C. “Iraqi authorities should publicly announce the perpetrators and those who stand behind them and bring them swiftly to justice.”
In a Facebook statement released Friday, February 23, Al-Mada described the event as a “cowardly assassination attempt” and called for a criminal investigation.
Iraq’s Interior Minister Abdul Amir al-Shammari said in a statement covered by mediaoutlets on Friday that he directed the formation of a specialized security team to “intensify the security and intelligence efforts to reach the perpetrators and bring them to justice to receive their punishment.”
CPJ’s app messages to Karim and email to the Al-Mada Foundation for comment about the reasons behind the attack did not immediately receive any response.
CPJ emailed the Iraqi Interior Ministry for updates about their investigation but did not immediately receive a reply.
Capitol Police have opened an investigation into Roger Stone, a longtime far right ally and former adviser to Donald Trump, because of what appear to be audio clips of him demanding members of his security detail to assassinate key Democratic members of Congress. The inquiry, which is being aided by the FBI, was prompted after Mediaite shared on its website last week a 2020 conversation between…
Brandon Lee and his daughter Jesse Jane at the People’s Counter Summit of the No To APEC Coalition, Nov. 11, 2023. Photo by Jia H. Jung
Jia Jung wrote on 20 November, 2023 about Chinese American Bay Area native Brandon Lee who gave the keynote speech at the No to APEC People’s Counter Summit, “People Over Profit and Plunder,” at San Francisco State University on Saturday, Nov. 11, 2023.
Lee was living with his wife and daughter in the Philippines and working as a human rights advocate, land defender, and journalist for the Northern Dispatch when he was shot by Philippine armed forces on Aug. 6, 2019. He survived – as a quadriplegic who remains steadfast in his international activism. Lee said, inter alia:
In high school, I was voted most shyest. I always preferred to work behind the scenes behind the camera, never in front. I was working security during rallies or painting posters the day before.
…In 2003, I transferred to this campus and joined the League of Filipino students at San Francisco State University. That’s where I learned that our country, the United States, continues to dominate and stagnate the Philippine economy, politics, and culture.
Around this time, I also started volunteering for the Chinese Progressive Association. That’s where I learned about the conditions and struggles of immigrant Chinese workers, and tenants. It was at that time I met Pam Tau Lee, the founder of the Chinese Progressive Association.
She was one of my mentors. And that’s where I learned that in the late nineties, San Francisco had 20,000 garment workers. But in less than 10 years, many of the immigrant monolinguistic women workers lost their jobs, with 88% of the workers being offshored to countries with weaker labor protection. It was during these years that I learned how interconnected our struggles are, and I became an internationalist and an anti-imperialist.
In 2007, I went on a life changing exposure trip to the Philippines. I met Youth and Students who are now movement leaders. I joined with workers boycotting Nestlé on their picket line. Ka Fort [Diasdado Fortuna], the chair of their union, was killed in cold blood by state agents. Ka Fort was dearly, dearly loved by the Nestlé workers for his leadership in building the union and his ultimate sacrifice.
So workers also launched a public campaign – “there’s blood in your coffee” – to draw international attention against Nestlé. Nestlé believes that water is a corporate right and not a human right. In this same trip, we visited many sectors, including the most oppressed majority and largest class – the peasants – as well as the Igorot Indigenous people in the northern part of the Philippines.
The Igorots, who live on resource-rich lands, are considered squatters on their own land because the Philippine government considers any land with a slope of 18 degrees Philippine land. The Igorots have been fighting against foreign occupation and colonization for hundreds of years.
And until now, they have continued their fight against government neglect and development aggression, militarization, and for the recognition for the right to ancestral land and self-determination.
On that exposure trip, our group also attended the one-year death anniversary of Alyce Claver, the wife of Chandu [Constancio]Claver, who was the provincial chair of the progressive party, Bayan Muna, and the president of the Red Cross. Chandu and Alyce were driving their kids to school when a motorcycle pulled up and shot at their car. Alyce shielded her husband and was riddled with two dozen bullets. Chandu made it out alive and is now in Canada with his kids after filing for political asylum, but the family today continues to be traumatized.
During this trip, we joined a medical and fact-finding mission to a remotevillage, and thankfully, the military had pulled out. The Indigenous peasants taught us about how the soldiers had blindfoldedthem and pointed a gun to their nape. The soldiers accused the farmers of supporting the land defenders and the resistance fighters known as the New People’s Army. The Philippine militarypretended to have a fake medical mission, giving out expired medicine to the local Indigenous people.
This trip, 16 years ago, changed the direction of my life.
I believe that we are shaped by our experiences, and this exposure program gave me new direction. It fortified my commitment to serving the fight for the Philippine liberation from U.S. imperialism. And to this day, the stories and sacrifices of Alyce Claver, Ka Fort, and so many others continue to fuel my commitment.
Two years later in 2009, I decided to deepen my commitment and decided to do a three-month integration in a remote area deep in the mountains. When I returned, I learned about Melissa Roxas, who was also from the U.S. and was abducted by the Armed Forces of the Philippines. She was conducting a medical mission. After a week, her captors released her as long as she promised to shut up.
She didn’t, though – she didn’t shut up. As she was she was released, she told the world what happened. As a health worker, Melissa diagnosed the Philippines’ societal problems and saw the illness of neoliberal policies from living among the poor. Melissa was brave. Her journey back from the trauma perpetuated by the Philippine military would soon follow for me.
The year following, 2010, I went all in and decided to live and serve the Igorot Indigenous people. I married my girlfriend, who is an Indigenous Ifugao, and we had a daughter, Jesse Jane, who is here with us today. I lived nine years with Indigenous people in the northern part of the Philippines, and I learned how they defended their land rights and lives in the resource-rich area known as the Cordillera region.
I saw firsthand how neoliberal policies promoted by APEC, such as the Philippine Mining Act of 1995, liberalize the mining industry, allowing foreign mining companies to reap 100% profit from the plundering of Indigenous people’s lands, unbridled large-scale destructive mining, dams, energy and other foreign projects, masquerading as development projects, and destroy the environment and forcibly displace Indigenous people who have been living there for generations.
Now, 13 years later, I’m speaking in front of you, a survivor of state violence and war that is spread by APEC and neoliberalism. They say APEC will promote sustainability. The Indigenous community say no. They are robbed of their life, land, culture, and worse, their future. Despite decades of people’s resistance, the plunder the natural resources, of indigenous – of ancestral – domains, continues. The region is blanketed with 176 large-scale mining and more than 100 energy projects, such as hydropower and geothermal projects awarded to private corporations.
One such energy project is the Chevron geothermal power project, which covers a large area in Kalinga. If left unchallenged and unopposed, all these could mean the ethnocide of the Igorots and the massive destruction of the ecosystem in the Cordillera region…
Indigenous communities were militarized, bombed, and strafed with artillery shelling, but they did not cower and they did not back down. They remained steadfast. They took care of each other. And they continued to hold the line.
They say APEC is innovative and will solve our problems. Hell, no.
Because I protested alongside the Indigenous communities, and, as a journalist, wrote about the daily attacks they face, I was also threatened and harassed. I was placed under surveillance. Tailed. Followed. They watched our office. They took pictures of us at our office and homes, as well as the tricycle, jeep, and bus terminal. I was red-tagged and politically vilified as a terrorist. I experienced death threats in the form of the burial blanket for the dead. I was detained and had my bag illegally searched at a military checkpoint the week before members of the 54th Infantry Battalion of the Philippine Army shot me in front of my daughter in front of my home on August 6th, 2018.
They had visited me at my house and office looking for me. They said they wanted to partner with my organization, the Ifugao Peasant Movement, but we refused. I told them two names – William Bugatti and Ricardo Mayumi – on why we do not want to partner with them.
While their assassination attempt against me was unsuccessful, I am permanently scarred and paralyzed. I am now quadriplegic, unable to use my hands and legs. I am considered one of the lucky ones. But I live with trauma every day. [see also: SF human rights activist fights for his life after being shot in the Philippines]
I know firsthand that the backdoor trade deals handled by APEC will not benefit the people; they only benefit the corporations and imperialist countries like the United States. That is why the United States sends its military around the world, finance schools, support fascist governments – to open up industries.
In fact, I have no doubt that the bullets lodged in my body today are paid by our taxpayer dollars.
Although I am paralyzed physically, they have failed to shut me up.
Today, I am proud to be standing with you, metaphorically speaking, in fighting back against APEC. Against state and political repression. Against corporate greed and power. Against the wealthy elite. Against the plunder of our planet. Against foreign domination of our peoples.
The Indigenous communities are resilient also. Like millions of people in the Global South, they are fighting back. They continue to protest despite being attacked. They have successfully barricaded several mines, rejecting countless mining and dam projects.
They have been on the frontlines of fighting the WTO [World Trade Organization], dismantling the Chico Dam equipment during the late dictator Marcos, which launched a coordinated people’s response that brought the Indigenous people to the national liberation struggle.
They are also on the frontlines of fighting APEC; a fight has led thousands to take up armed struggle as an appropriate response to defending their land, which is their life.
One of their martyr freedom fighter, Arnold “Ka Mando” Jaramillo, favorite expression ispayt latta! It means fight to the end, or continue to fight, and it’s today emulated by the Cordillera mass movement. Payt latta.
I will continue to fight as long as I breathe. Take a look around – my story is just one of many. There are a thousand people here today, diverse and multigenerational, coming from across the world, each with their own journey, own experiences, and reason for being here. But what unites us all is our opposition to APEC and neoliberal policies. We have so much in common – so much we can unite and rage against. A common enemy – APEC – and the neoliberal policies that prioritize profit and plunder over people and planet.
We will not go gently into that night. Rage. Rage! We will fight!
We will fight for a better future for all. Let us continue to talk, to build and work together, now and after APEC. For now, are you ready? Are you ready to shut down APEC?
President Joe Biden’s assassination of al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in Afghanistan was illegal under both U.S. and international law. After the CIA drone strike killed Zawahiri on August 2, Biden declared, “People around the world no longer need to fear the vicious and determined killer.” What we should fear instead is the dangerous precedent set by Biden’s unlawful extrajudicial execution.
In addition to being illegal, the killing of Zawahiri also occurred in a moment when the United Nations had already determined that people in the U.S. had little to fear from him. As a United Nations report released in July concluded, “Al Qaeda is not viewed as posing an immediate international threat from its safe haven in Afghanistan because it lacks an external operational capability and does not currently wish to cause the Taliban international difficulty or embarrassment.”
Just as former president Barack Obama stated that “Justice has been done” after he assassinated Osama bin Laden, Biden said, “Now justice has been delivered” when he announced the assassination of Zawahiri.
Retaliation, however, does not constitute justice.
Targeted, or political, assassinations are extrajudicial executions. They are deliberate and unlawful killings meted out by order of, or with acquiescence of, a government. Extrajudicial executions are implemented outside a judicial framework.
The fact that Zawahiri did not pose an imminent threat is precisely why his assassination was illegal.
Zawahiri’s Assassination Violated International Law
Extrajudicial executions are prohibited by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which the United States has ratified, making it part of U.S. law under the Constitution’s supremacy clause. Article 6 of the ICCPR states, “Every human being has the inherent right to life. This right shall be protected by law. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life.” In its interpretation of Article 6, The UN Human Rights Committee opined that all human beings are entitled to the protection of the right to life “without distinction of any kind, including for persons suspected or convicted of even the most serious crimes.”
“Outside the context of active hostilities, the use of drones or other means for targeted killing is almost never likely to be legal,” tweeted Agnès Callamard, UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions. “Intentionally lethal or potentially lethal force can only be used where strictly necessary to protect against an imminent threat to life.” In order to be lawful, the United States would need to demonstrate that the target “constituted an imminent threat to others,” Callamard said.
Moreover, willful killing is a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions, punishable as a war crime under the U.S. War Crimes Act. A targeted killing is lawful only when deemed necessary to protect life, and no other means (including apprehension or nonlethal incapacitation) is available to protect life.
Zawahiri’s Assassination Violated U.S. Law
The drone strike that killed Zawahiri also violated the War Powers Resolution, which lists three situations in which the president can introduce U.S. Armed Forces into hostilities:
First, pursuant to a congressional declaration of war, which has not occurred since World War II. Second, in “a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.” (Zawahiri’s presence in Afghanistan more than 20 years after the September 11, 2001, attacks did not constitute a “national emergency.”) Third, when there is “specific statutory authorization,” such as an Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF).
In 2001, Congress adopted an AUMF that authorized the president to use military force against individuals, groups and countries that had contributed to the 9/11 attacks “in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.”
Zawahiri was one of a small circle of people widely believed to have planned the 2001 hijacking of four airplanes, three of which were flown into the Pentagon and World Trade Center buildings. But since he did not pose “an immediate international threat” before the U.S. targeted him for assassination, he should have been arrested and brought to justice in accordance with the law.
In spite of the Biden administration’s claim that no civilians were killed during the strike on Zawahiri, there has been no independent evidence to support that assertion.
The assassination of Zawahiri came nearly a year after Biden launched an illegal strike as he withdrew U.S. troops from Afghanistan. Ten civilians were killed in that attack. The U.S. Central Command admitted the strike was “a tragic mistake” after an extensive New York Times investigation put a lie to the prior U.S. declaration that it was a “righteous strike.”
Biden declared that although he was withdrawing U.S. forces from Afghanistan, he would mount “over-the-horizon” attacks from outside the country even without troops on the ground. We can expect the Biden administration to conduct future illegal drone strikes that kill civilians.
The 2001 AUMF has been used to justify U.S. military actions in 85 countries. Congress must repeal it and replace it with a new AUMF specifically requiring that any use of force comply with U.S. obligations under international law.
In addition, Congress should revisit the War Powers Resolution and explicitly limit the president’s authority to use force to that which is necessary to repel a sudden or imminent attack.
Finally, the United States must end its “global war on terror” once and for all. Drone strikes terrorize and kill countless civilians and make us more vulnerable to terrorism.
Much of the world was horrified in early May when Shireen Abu Akleh, a renowned Al Jazeera reporter, was shot in the head by Israeli troops while on assignment in Jenin in the Occupied West Bank.
Not long before, the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) President Liz Shuler had been photographed with Labor Party Chair Merav Michaeli, a strong supporter of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, along with Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). None of the three raised any outcry subsequently after Akleh was killed.
Shuler moreover sent a letter to the San Francisco Labor Council stating that its delegates could not discuss a boycott of Israel.
The AFL-CIO’s current support for Israel fits a long historical pattern.
Monday’s report by the New York Times that Iranian government officials suspect Israeli involvement in the recent deaths of two Iranian scientists – Ayoub Entezari and Kamran Aghamolaei – should come as no surprise to onlookers.
In the long-running shadow war between Tehran and Tel Aviv, the assassination of Iranian officials by Israeli agents has become a mainstay of the Zionist state.
Indeed, the deaths of both Entezari and Aghamolaei came less than two weeks after an assassin on a motorcycle gunned down Hassan Sayyad Khodaei, a Colonel in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp, in Tehran, the most senior member of the elite force to be killed since Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani was assassinated in a US Drone strike in January 2020, a move that brought Washington and Tehran to the brink of war.
