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Assassination

20 Years After His Death, Gary Webb’s Truth Is Still Dangerous

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.

Israel Kills Five Journalists, Five Hospital Staff In 24 Hours In Gaza

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.

Russian General Igor Kirillov Killed In Moscow; What We Know So Far

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.

US Healthcare Corporations Reap Profit From Human Misery

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.

‘It Had To Be Done’: Luigi Mangione Manifesto Revealed

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.

No Tears For Slain CEO: Compassion ‘Out Of Network’

Normally when someone is shot dead, human beings feel sad for the victim. But in the case of Brian Thompson, CEO of UnitedHealthcare, killed before dawn on the streets of Manhattan on Dec. 4, a large majority of public comments are that empathy is “out of network.” For example, Anthony Zenkus, a lecturer at the Columbia School of Social Work, posted on X: “Today, we mourn the death of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, gunned down … wait, I’m sorry — today we mourn the deaths of the 68,000 Americans who needlessly die each year so that insurance company execs like Brian Thompson can become multimillionaires.”

Chris Hedges: The Killing Of Brian Thompson

We do not yet know the motive for the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. But it would not surprise me if the killer stalked Thompson because UnitedHealthcare had denied medical coverage, or forced a family or an individual into bankruptcy, after the company failed to cover a serious illness. Insurers reject about 1 in 7 claims for treatment, often by deciding the treatment is not “medically necessary.” Among 10 high-income nations, the United States spends the most on health care but has the worst health outcomes. Americans die four years earlier than their counterparts in other industrialized nations.

United Nations Releases New Report On Death Of Dag Hammarskjold In 1961

September 18, 1961, was a significant day in the struggle surrounding the African liberation movements aimed at ending colonialism on the continent. United Nations Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold and the entire crew and passengers aboard his plane went down in Ndola located in the then British colony of Northern Rhodesia, now known as Zambia. Although the colonial authorities claimed that the crash and subsequent deaths were the result of “pilot error”, ever since this time questions have been raised over whether the crash was a deliberate act of sabotage designed to prevent a political solution to the crisis in the former Belgian Congo.

Israel’s Genocide Day 377: Israel Says It Killed Yahya Sinwar

On Thursday, October 17, the Israeli army radio said that Israel had killed Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar in combat in Rafah. The military stated that it was investigating whether the body that it found following a battle with Palestinian fighters was Sinwar, which had been sent for DNA testing. Later in the day, the Israeli army said that the collected samples matched the DNA record that Israel had on Sinwar from his years of imprisonment in Israeli custody.

The Middle East After Nasrallah

There is no doubt that leaders do matter in the life of nations and movements, no matter how much one must acknowledge the role played by the masses of ordinary, working people. The death of Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser in 1970 changed the political landscape in the region forever and helped launch what is commonly dubbed the “Saudi era” (i.e., the domination of Saudi Arabia over the affairs of the Arab world). Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s impact on the Arab-Israeli question has been, perhaps, bigger than Nasser’s because he has been more effective — from the standpoint of the Arab struggle against Israeli aggression and occupation — in his understanding and containment of the Israeli threat towards Lebanon and Palestine.

Israel And The US Know The Soldier Who Assassinated Aysengur Eygi

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. was working to “gather the facts” about U.S. citizen Aysenur Eygi’s killing by Israel military forces. Blinken doesn’t need time to “gather the facts.”  The facts are already known to the Israeli military, the U.S. military and the U.S. government.  They know exactly who assassinated International Solidarity Movement (ISM) member and U.S. citizen Aysenur Eygi on September 6, 2024. They know which unit was in Beita village for the peaceful prayer demonstration against the illegal Israeli settlement of Evyatar.  They know the names of the snipers who fired the shots.

Inside The Turbulent, Secret World Of An American Militia

Last February, some 20 men and their wives gathered for dinner at an upscale restaurant in Spokane, Washington, for their annual Valentine’s Day celebration. The men weren’t just friends; they did community service work together. They had been featured on local television, in khakis and baseball caps, delivering 1,200 pounds of food to an area veterans’ center; they were gearing up for their next food drive, which they called Operation Hunger Smash. A few days after the holiday, the men went camping in the snow-speckled mountains outside Spokane, where they grilled rib-eyes and bacon-wrapped asparagus over a bonfire.

Even In Palestine, The Birds Shall Return

On 26 July, senior United Nations (UN) officials briefed the UN Security Council about the terrible situation in Gaza. ‘More than two million people in Gaza remain trapped in an endless nightmare of death and destruction on a staggering scale’, said Deputy Commissioner-General Antonia De Meo of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). Within Gaza, the UN officials wrote, 625,000 children are trapped, ‘their futures at risk’. The World Health Organisation has recorded ‘outbreaks of hepatitis A and myriad other preventable diseases’ and warns that it is ‘just a matter of time’ before a polio outbreak spreads amongst children.

Hezbollah Chief Says Israel Pushed Resistance To Battle ‘On All Fronts’

The Secretary-General of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, announced on 1 August that the Lebanese resistance is no longer just “a support front” in the fight against Israel and that the response to the assassination of top war commander Fuad Shukr “is a foregone conclusion.” “We are beyond the stage of being a ‘support front’; we are now in an open battle against the Israeli enemy, on all frontiers – we have entered a new stage,” Nasrallah said, stressing that operations during the next several days “are not a response to the martyrdom of Mr Fuad Shukr.” “The enemy and those behind the enemy must await our inevitable response [to Shukr’s killing], no discussion or debate, and between us are the days, nights, and the battlefield,” the resistance leader added.

Israel’s New Assassination Campaign Could Set Middle East Further Aflame

A new assassination campaign aimed at Israel’s opponents has erupted across the Middle East, imperiling already shaky Gaza ceasefire talks and threatening an even greater regional expansion of war. While Israel continues its genocidal attack on desperate Gazans, killing scores, perhaps hundreds just in the last several days, the latest moves were clearly designed to escalate Israel’s war in Gaza and expand the military tensions already simmering on its border with Lebanon, in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and elsewhere into a full-scale war, potentially drawing in both Iran and the United States even more directly.

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Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

Online donations are back! 

Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

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