Tag: torture

Once again we are asking for your help with a phone and fax campaign to demand that California Attorney General Jerry Brown drop the charges against Francisco Torres, the last of the San Francisco 8 still facing prosecution. Brown knows there is no case against him. He needs to get the message from people all over the country that we will not give up this just demand.

Ishmael Reed is one of the most read writers of his generation, along with Toni Morrison and Amiri Baraka, living in America. In 1962, Reed co-founded “East Village Other,” a well known underground publication at the time, and was a member of the Umbra Writers Workshop, which helped to give rise to the Black Arts Movement. He has published nine novels, four collections of poetry, six plays, four collections of essays and a libretto. He currently lives in Oakland, and I approached him one day while he was visiting KPFA’s studios to ask him what he thought about the state of affairs between the police and Oakland’s Black community, with the backdrop of the police murder of Oscar Grant and, in a separate incident, the police murder of Lovelle Mixon, after Mixon allegedly killed four Oakland police officers.

The SF Bay View newspaper is in dire financial straits, and former presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney is bailing us out with her stimulus plan that comes by way of the Triumph Tour through Northern California that is being organized as a series of fundraisers for a very essential media outlet that amplifies the people’s voices in times of need and in times of triumph.

San Francisco Supervisor Eric Mar announced June 8 to 300 people rallying at 850 Bryant that he would introduce a resolution to the Board of Supervisors calling on California Attorney General Jerry Brown to drop the charges against the San Francisco 8. "San Francisco does not tolerate torture," he said, braving the wrath of the Police Officers Association, who evidently tolerate torture in defense of one of their own.

There are those who fear this warrior for justice. They are afraid of the accountability that must be applied to the transgressors, no matter who they are.

Will the Obama-Nation become an abomination if it fails to stop the bombing of nations? From Gaza to Afghanistan, the American people must take a stand and tell Obama to forge a better plan to free the land.

The torture of prisoners in U.S. custody is not only found in military prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo. If President Obama is serious about ending U.S. support for torture, he can start here in Louisiana.

This week, I released "Reining in the Imperial Presidency," a 486-page report detailing the abuses and excesses of the Bush administration and recommending steps to address them.

The research arm of the U.S. Department of Justice is working on two portable non-lethal weapons that inflict pain from a distance using beams of laser light or microwaves, with the intention of putting them into the hands of police to subdue suspects.

When imprisoned and placed in an isolation unit, you begin to live inside yourself, measuring how you are doing against the challenges that you are confronted by to gauge how well you are getting on.

I know no honest, informed Congo watchers who doubt that Gen. Laurent Nkunda and his ruthless militia are tools of the U.S. and its African proxy, Rwanda, in the imperial resource war now raging in Eastern Congo.