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The FBI Used An Undercover Cop With Pink Hair To Spy On Activists

The young woman with long pink hair claimed to be from Washington state. One day during the summer of 2020, she walked into the Chinook Center, a community space for left-wing activists in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and offered to volunteer. “She dressed in a way that was sort of noticeable,” said Samantha Christiansen, a co-founder of the Chinook Center. But no one among the activists found that unusual or alarming; everyone has their own style. They accepted her into the community. The pink-haired woman said her name was Chelsie. She also dropped regular hints about her chosen profession.

US Imposes Economic Sanctions On Black Community Projects

In March 2023, Regions Bank notified the black nonprofit African People’s Education and Defense Fund (APEDF) that the bank was “exiting” their 20-year relationship, closing accounts, withdrawing lines of credit and canceling mortgage loans. This assault on the ability of African people to build economic self-reliance was the latest in a series of actions revealing government and corporate cooperation targeting the black community programs of the Uhuru (Freedom) Movement including its popular Women’s Health Center, Black Power Vanguard Basketball Court, “One Africa! One Nation!” Marketplaces, Gary Brooks Community Garden, Uhuru Jiko Commercial Kitchens and Bakery Cafe, Akwaaba Hall events venues, Black Power 96 radio station, Uhuru Furniture & Collectibles stores, Uhuru Foods & Pies and Uhuru House black community centers.

How Comrades Revealed The Existence Of Cointelpro

On March 8, 1971 a group of 8 activists broke into an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania and removed every document they could find. Calling themselves the Citizens Commission to Investigate the FBI, they knew there was FBI infiltration and disruption of the antiwar movement and they were looking for proof to present to the public. They discovered far more than they anticipated. The burglars had all been politically active and some participated in the theft of records from draft board offices. After planning for months they successfully removed documents, copied them and began sending them to newspapers and to politicians who had liberal reputations.

Take Action To Demand Justice For Our Political Prisoners

This week, Clearing the FOG speaks with two advocates for the freedom of political prisoners Mumia Abu-Jamal and Leonard Peltier. Mumia Abu-Jamal is waiting to hear if Judge Lucretia Clemons will grant a new hearing on his case that includes new evidence of corruption in the legal process that led to his false conviction. On February 16, port workers will strike on the West Coast in support of an international day of action in for Mumia. Noelle Hanrahan of Prison Radio talks about his case and the carceral state. Leonard Peltier has now served almost 50 years in prison on a murder charge involving FBI agents. Coleen Rowley, a whistleblower formerly with the FBI, recently wrote to President Biden asking for clemency for Peltier. Rowley discusses the COINTEL Program, which is very much alive, and the culture inside the FBI. Both call on the public to take action to free Abu-Jamal and Peltier.

Raided By The FBI For Being Socialist, With Omali Yeshitela

Today, “Behind The Headlines” host Lee Camp speaks to Omali Yeshitela, a man raided by the FBI for the crime of being a black socialist. Together, the two discuss the revolutionary black liberation movement, U.S. imperialism, racism, and the corruption of the two-party system. In August of last year, the FBI raided the offices of the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP), with agents using flash-bang grenades at 5 am on a Friday to startle and arrest individuals inside its headquarters. Yeshitela helped found the APSP in 1972, at a time when the Black Liberation movement was being similarly quashed by government forces. The group’s mission is to advocate for the rights and self-determination of African people globally. The organization has been a sharp critic of the U.S. and NATO-backed war in Ukraine and a defender of poor nations threatened by American sanctions, coups, embargoes, and blockades.

Ex-FBI Agent Coleen Rowley Breaks Silence On Leonard Peltier, COINTELPRO

The first FBI agent close to the Leonard Peltier case is calling for his freedom. Coleen Rowley recounts, in this wide-ranging and exclusive interview, her time as an agent in the Minneapolis field office. For nearly 50 years, the FBI has indoctrinated its agents on a specific version of events that led to Leonard Peltier’s arrest, conviction, and imprisonment. The mentality then, Rowley argues, is little different than the mentality today. That’s why she decided to break the silence and is calling on President Joe Biden to grant Leonard Peltier executive clemency. Rowley gives us an insider’s view of the FBI and how the dark and violent history of COINTELPRO, which targeted civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and social movements like the Black Panthers and AIM, didn’t end in 1971. It morphed and evolved over the years and continued well into the U.S. war on terror.

GOP Has Not Created A New Church Committee

House Republicans last week announced that they would quickly create a special committee that they referred to as the Church Committee II.  Formally, they named it the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.  The subcommittee was created on a straight party-line vote:  All 221 Republicans voted in favor while all 211 Democrats were opposed. It will be chaired by far-right Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan, the former wrestling coach at Ohio State University whom six former wrestlers accused of doing nothing to help them, despite the fact that he knew they were being molested by the team doctor.  Jordan is also the incoming chairman of the House Judiciary Committee; in one of life’s ironies, despite graduating from an obscure law school in central Ohio, he never bothered to take the bar exam.

FBI’s Opposition To Releasing Leonard Peltier Driven By Vendetta

The FBI’s repeated opposition to the release of Leonard Peltier is driven by vindictiveness and misplaced loyalties, according to a former senior agent close to the case who is the first agency insider to call for clemency for the Indigenous rights activist who has been held in US maximum security prisons for almost five decades. Coleen Rowley, a retired FBI special agent whose career included 14 years as legal counsel in the Minneapolis division where she worked with prosecutors and agents directly involved in the Peltier case, has written to Joe Biden making a case for Peltier’s release. “Retribution seems to have emerged as the primary if not sole reason for continuing what looks from the outside to have become an emotion-driven ‘FBI Family’ vendetta,” said Rowley in the letter sent to the US president in December and shared exclusively with the Guardian.

The FBI’s Crusade Against MLK Was Darker Than You Think

“You are done. There is only one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy, abnormal fraudulent self is bared to the nation.” That’s the shocking ending to the infamous letter Civil Rights hero Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. received in 1964 essentially urging him to commit suicide.  The letter and accompanying package containing blackmail were sent by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as King quickly caught on. While the full, unredacted letter was finally published by the New York Times in 2014, the audio recordings of an extensive FBI wiretapping operation targeting King have been sealed until 2027. With just a few years left before they come to light, director Sam Pollard did a deep dive into the FBI’s surveillance of MLK under the leadership of J. Edgar Hoover in his documentary “MLK / FBI,” released by IFC Films earlier this month.

The FBI Wants To Put Me On Trial For Fighting For Black Freedom

There are strong indications that in early 2023, I, Omali Yeshitela, Chairman of the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP), founder of the Uhuru (“Freedom”) Movement, will be indicted, along with other Uhuru leaders and members, by the federal government of the United States. Using the bogus and slanderous charge that we are “Russian agents,” the U.S. government and its “Department of Justice” will attempt to put us on trial and imprison us for fighting for the liberation of African people in the U.S. and around the world. But they will fail. We will win. I am 81 years old. My political work for the last 60 years or so is influenced by the fact that in my entire life, nearing 100 years, I have not known a single day when my people were not experiencing oppression, exploitation and humiliation. 

The FBI Wants To Put Me On Trial For Fighting For Black Freedom

There are strong indications that in early 2023, I, Omali Yeshitela, Chairman of the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP), founder of the Uhuru (“Freedom”) Movement, will be indicted, along with other Uhuru leaders and members, by the federal government of the United States. Using the bogus and slanderous charge that we are “Russian agents,” the U.S. government and its “Department of Justice” will attempt to put us on trial and imprison us for fighting for the liberation of African people in the U.S. and around the world. But they will fail. We will win. I am 81 years old. My political work for the last 60 years or so is influenced by the fact that in my entire life, nearing 100 years, I have not known a single day when my people were not experiencing oppression, exploitation and humiliation. 

FBI Cointelpro Is Back And Worse Than Ever

Elon Musk has opened the floodgates to expose the FBI’s latest war on Americans’ freedom of speech.  The FBI massively intervened to pressure Twitter to suppress accounts and tweets from individuals the FBI disapproved, including parody accounts.  The FBI and other federal agencies also browbeat Facebook, Instagram, and many other tech companies. Thus far, most of the American media has ignored or downplayed the story, known as the Twitter Files. Since many of the individuals who the FBI got squelched were pro-Trump, the violation of their rights is a non-issue – or a cause for quiet celebration.  At this point, it is difficult to know whether the scant reaction to the Twitter Files is the result of political bias, collective amnesia, or simply a total ignorance of American history.

Two Barrels Aim At African People’s Socialist Party

With new FBI and Department of “Justice” (DOJ) attacks expected in early January, a defense, mobilization and information session attracted hundreds of allies of the African People's Socialist Party (APSP).  On Friday, December 23 they zoomed into the “Emergency Mass Meeting: Hands Off Uhuru! Hands Off Africa!”  The APSP told its supporters that it expects indictments in early January 2023 and possibly sooner.  Indictments could include many more than the four names listed as “unindicted co-conspirators” during raids of July 29, 2022: Chairman Omali Yeshitela, Party Director of Agitation and Propaganda Akilé Anai, African People’s Solidarity Committee Chair Penny Hess and Uhuru Solidarity Movement Chair Jesse Nevel. 

Israel Won’t Cooperate With US Probe Into Shireen Abu Akleh’s Killing

The U.S. Justice Department has informed the Israeli government that the FBI will investigate the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh, the Palestinian American journalist who was shot during an Israeli raid in May. The announcement comes shortly after elections were held in the United States and Israel. “Such an investigation is highly unusual and could lead to a U.S. request to investigate the soldiers who were involved in the operation — a request Israel would almost certainly reject,” wrote Barak Ravid, who first reported the story for Axios. “The investigation could also lead to tensions between the Biden administration and the Israeli government.” On Twitter Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz has already declared that Israel will not cooperate with any outside probe.

The TSA Has Assaulted Us For 20 Years With Nothing To Show For It

In the U.S. where we are fighting invasions of privacy and the destruction of our First Amendment rights in about 900 different ways every day, most of us have stopped talking about how insane and offensive airport security still is. To begin with, allow me to disabuse you of the notion that airport security stops terror attacks. As Darryl Campbell reports in The Verge, “the reality is that TSA has played next to no role in the biggest counterterrorism stories of the past two decades. According to the think tank RAND, intelligence and security services manage to foil nearly two-thirds of terrorist plots in the planning stages.” Of course, U.S. law enforcement also helps create almost all of the “terror attacks” they thwart.
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