Tag: BBC News

We lost Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin on Aug. 16 (March 25, 1942-Aug. 16, 2018). We also lost Kofi Annan (April 8, 1938, to Aug. 18, 2018), the seventh United Nations Secretary General and the first from Sub-Saharan African to lead the International organization. When we think about Black women and their navigation of public spaces, we remember the recent deaths of Nia Wilson, 18, and Jessica St. Louis, 26, who were not safe when they should have been #safehername.

There is a well-documented history of the U.S. government supplying weapons and arms to both friends and foe for political purposes and for profit. In addition to publicly known global arms deals to U.S. political allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia, revelations about the rise of ISIS indicate that U.S. arms and military trainees have been a critical factor in the rise of the terror group. With the recent rise of violence in Chicago involving over 3,000 shooting victims in 2016 so far, it appears that another case of U.S. sponsored gun-smuggling and intentional destruction of inner-city communities may be at play.

“The purpose of the ... control unit is to control revolutionary attitudes in the prison system and in the society at large,” said former Marion Supermax Prison Warden Ralph Aron. What is shocking to many is how can some not only resist such systematic psychological torture, but actually improve themselves under such conditions of extreme duress.