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April 27
GUEST: Ona Zene Yeshitela,
President of African People's Education and Defense Fund, and
Deputy Chair of the African People's Socialist Party, talks
about FBI terrorism and repression directed at the Uhuru
movement.
Hands Off Uhuru,
Hands Off Africa
There is no doubt that the US is back into Africa. There is too much money to be made by stripping African countries of their natural resources for the benefit of huge multinational corporations. And since this is now a multi-polar world, major corporations from other countries are doing similar things. The Chinese and Russian interests seem to be less imperialist than our very aggressive militarization of the continent, but it remains to be seen how less damaging such interventions will be. The Chinese are building infrastructure that benefits African countries, while the US is doing what it knows best: overthrowing elected governments, training paramilitaries, and acting like it still rules the world.
It doesn't take much investigative journalism to predict which approach to Africa is most welcome. It is just possible that in a new world of competing superpowers, Africa might be able to actually choose the approach that best meets the needs of its people.
That is where the African People's Socialist Party and Omali Yeshitela come in. Chairman Yeshitela spends his time exposing the US role in exploiting Africa, and comparing it to the treatment of Blacks in the United States. There have been other Black leaders with similar messages, like Dr. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and Fred Hampton. All these leaders were surveilled, harassed and in all likelihood murdered by the empire's thought police, the FBI.
COINTELPRO, the secret terrorist organization run by the FBI, is long gone, exposed by the Church Committee in 1975. But the "Bureau" is still around snooping, arresting, and planting false evidence. Last summer, the FBI raided the African Peoples Socialist Party at gunpoint in the middle of the night, taking all their computers and party records. Just this month, Yeshitela and three others were arrested and charged with conspiracy to spread false information and anti US propaganda. We know why these arrests have been made. The empire will stop at nothing to control the discourse in the "Land of the Free."
