Tag Archive for: Killing

Iran indicts 14 for scientist’s killing


None of the suspects names or nationalities were revealed, although the Islamic Republic continues to blame Israel for the assassination of Dr. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. 

By Erin Viner

Tehran’s Attorney-General Ali Salehi has announced that indictments have been issued “14 persons” involved in the that the Islamic Republic has attributed to Israel.

The individuals have been charged with “corruption on the earth,” “involvement in intelligence and espionage cooperation with the Zionist regime,” “collusion with the purpose of undermining the security of the country,” and “action against national security,” the Tehran Times cited the top prosecutor as saying.

Fakhrizadeh, who was considered the father of Iran’s nuclear program, served as Iran’s Deputy Defense Minister after having been a General in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and earned a Ph.D. in nuclear physics. He was killed in a multi-pronged terrorist attack on 27 November 2020  while driving with his wife to their country home just outside Tehran.

Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Ali Shamkhani has publicly blamed on “terrorists from the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO/MEK), Jerusalem and the Israeli Mossad intelligence agency. Other Ayatollah Regime officials have at various times accused Western intelligence operatives or Saudi Arabia with involvement in the attack.

The Islamic Republic has long threatened to avenge Fakhrizadeh’s killing.

In September 2021, the New York Times has published a report alleging that Israel assassinated the senior nuclear scientist with a state-of-the-art remotely controlled “killer robot.”

According to the article, Israel had held Fakhrizadeh in its sights for at least 14 years as part of its ongoing campaign to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. The following year, the paper said that then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert played a recording in Jerusalem for visiting-President George W. Bush of what 3 people who heard the tape said was Fakhrizadeh speaking “explicitly about his ongoing effort to develop a nuclear warhead.” While exposing a secret Iranian nuclear…

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Who died in killing spree? Spoilers


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Is China’s Communist Party killing initiative with top-down command chain? – South China Morning Post



Is China’s Communist Party killing initiative with top-down command chain?  South China Morning Post

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In Response To George Floyd Killing, Minnesota Schools Dump Contracts With Minneapolis PD

We can disagree (vehemently and at length) about the most effective means of societal change. But we’ve seen a blend of tactics that no one unanimously agrees are helpful or harmful, but are still pushing legislators and other government officials towards meaningful change.

Maybe we’ll never fully understand what motivates society as a whole. (And yet we live in one.) Let’s celebrate the steps forward — especially one that have occurred despite certain government officials (including our President) declaring almost any anti-government action to be stupid, criminal, and useless.

No one asked for cops in schools. At least, very few students did. Maybe some parents did. To be sure, a whole lot of school administrators did because it meant they could offload every disciplinary problem — no matter how small — to cops trained to handle serious criminal acts rather than underage acts of defiance. It made things easier for administrators who used this void they’d created in their own responsibility to enact a number of “zero tolerance” policies that relieved them of the pressure of using common sense and restraint when dealing with troublesome students. The end result was objectively awful.

Now, with law enforcement agencies having proven themselves objectively awful by badly reacting to a cop-created problem, Minnesota schools are deciding to kick cops to the curb.

The city’s public school board unanimously approved a resolution on Tuesday night that will end the district’s contract with the Minneapolis police department to use officers to provide school security. The Minneapolis superintendent said he would begin work on an alternative plan to keep the district’s more than 35,000 students safe in the coming school year.  

“We cannot continue to be in partnership with an organization that has the culture of violence and racism that the Minneapolis police department has historically demonstrated,” Nelson Inz, one of the school board members, said. “We have to stand in solidarity with our black students.

Hopefully this will spring a sizable leak in the school-to-prison pipeline, allowing the tax dollars no longer required for the receiving end to be routed to the future of America and those tasked with teaching them.

But it’s not just minors being protected from cops. It’s also a number of adults.

In a statement Wednesday evening, University of Minnesota President Joan Gabel announced changes in the school’s relationship with the Minneapolis Police Department.

U of M will no longer contract with MPD for additional law enforcement support needed for large events. This includes football games.

The school will also no longer use MPD for specialized services such as K-9 Explosive detection units.

As extraneous cop opportunities dry up, so should their funding. This will make it easier for legislators to remove police from situations where their dubious expertise has done more to harm than to help. What used to be just a libertarian fever dream is now a few steps closer to reality. Members of the Minneapolis City Council are actually considering at least a partial dismantling of the city’s police force.

Several members of the Minneapolis City Council this week have expressed support for drastic overhauls to the way the city handles law enforcement, ranging from calls to defund the department, to suggestions that social workers, medics or mental health professionals should be sent to some calls currently handled by police.

Council member Jeremiah Ellison, son of Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison — who is leading the case against the officers involved in Floyd’s death — took a more radical approach.

“We are going to dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department. And when we’re done, we’re not simply gonna glue it back together. We are going to dramatically rethink how we approach public safety and emergency response. It’s really past due,” Ellison wrote on Twitter Thursday.

Council President Lisa Bender joined Ellison’s call to dismantle the department.

“We are going to dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department and replace it with a transformative new model of public safety,” Bender wrote on Twitter Thursday.

The police likely won’t be disbanded, no matter who’s vowing to do what. And the Council — at this point – isn’t threatening to deprive the PD of its funding until it gets its problems sorted out. But the state’s Department of Human Rights has sued the PD, demanding a host of changes and a partial blockade on certain enforcement activities until the PD agrees to its demands for increased accountability. This is nothing new for the Minneapolis PD, which was hit with similar demands by the DOJ back in 2003. It appears the federal effort didn’t actually result in better officers so more drastic reforms are in the works.

While legislators may not be able to dismantle the PD and rebuild it from the ground up, they are taking steps to steer cops away from situations they’ve proven they can’t handle, like welfare checks and calls relating to mental health issues. Too often when cops are faced with situations they don’t completely comprehend, they respond with force, mostly of the “deadly” variety. If these reforms are pushed through, calls like these will turn EMS units and mental health professionals into first responders, giving these at-risk residents a better chance of surviving their encounter with the government.

Things are changing. This is good news. But let’s not be dismissive of all the bad news that led us to this point — including demonstrations (violent and otherwise) that demonstrated law enforcement’s inability to properly serve the public they owe their jobs to.

Techdirt.