COINTELPRO, Assata Shakur, and Obama’s FBI

“History is important. If you don’t know history it is as if you were born yesterday. And if you were born yesterday, anybody up there in a position of power can tell you anything, and you have no way of checking up on it.”—Howard Zinn

The infamous U.S. government’s Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) was established to “discredit, frame, neutralize, imprison, and kill” Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow political activists in this nation who dared to question and oppose the unjust policies, official narrative, lies, and hypocrisy of the U.S. power elite.

COINTELPRO was initially put into operation by the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) and its many police and ‘news’ media operatives in the 1950s. It was expanded and intensified in the 1960s and 1970s. In this year of 2013, COINTELPRO has still never ended, but rather has been insidiously codified into law through multiple means and devices, including the so-called ‘PATRIOT Act,’ provision 1021 of the NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act), and Barack Obama’s ‘Kill List,’ etc.

Assata Shakur, who is a veteran of the Black Panther Party, was shot, framed, brutalized, and imprisoned in 1973 by police and U.S. government authorities. Assata had long been a target of FBI actions to “defame, infiltrate, and criminalize” the Black Panther Party as well as other Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow individual political activists and organizations throughout the United States.

In 1977, on incredibly flimsy and fabricated evidence, Assata Shakur was unjustly convicted of being a supposed accomplice to murder. Subsequently, in 1979, Assata escaped from the brutal confines of wrongful imprisonment in the U.S. and was subsequently granted political asylum by Cuba, where she continues to reside.

In early May of 2013, drone man Barack Obama’s FBI outrageously designated the 65-year-old Assata Shakur as a so-called ‘most wanted terrorist’ and increased the bounty for her capture to 2 million dollars. Ironically, Barack Obama’s government, to this very day, operates the prison torture chamber gulag at Guantanamo at the ill gotten and unwanted U.S. military base in Guantanamo, Cuba. The irony and hypocrisy of this is inescapable; for even as detainees at the U.S. prison gulag at Guantanamo are tortured, terrorized, and denied basic legal and human rights, Barack Obama’s FBI had the unmitigated audacity to designate Assata Shakur as a so-called ‘terrorist.’ It does not take a rocket scientist to see and understand that the actual ‘terrorist’ is the NDAA signing, drone man Barack Obama, and his hypocritical corporate-owned minions of the Democrat and Republican parties. This hypocrisy is not lost in the minds of everyday ordinary, conscious people nationally and globally.

It is absolutely incumbent upon all conscious people of good will, irrespective of color or gender, to denounce this latest unjust and hypocritical act of systemic terror and subterfuge against Assata Shakur, remembering that this action by (the U.S. chief executive and commander-in-chief) Barack Obama’s government is designed and intended to distort, distract, repudiate and stifle the past and ongoing just and necessary struggles of everyday ordinary people for economic, political, and social justice and human rights in this nation and throughout Mother Earth. This is an egregious attack on justice-loving people everywhere.

Our denunciations must be genuine, consistent, and in keeping with principled political struggle.

Angela Davis & the persecution of Assata Shakur

As recently as 2012, Angela Davis, made the stunning declaration that Barack Obama “identifies with the Black radical tradition.” (Reference the Black Agenda Report, March 27, 2012, article by Glen Ford, titled Angela Davis Has Lost Her Mind Over Obama.

Subsequently, in an April 13, 2012, Intrepid Report article, titled The election ‘con’ and Angela Davis: Ignoring history and losing their minds, I wrote in relevant part, “If anything, the wily Barack Obama stands in very real opposition not only to the “Black radical tradition,” but also to the radical (i.e., root) traditions of people of all colors in this nation and throughout the world who hunger and thirst for self determination, transparency in government, actualized justice, and an end to corporate/military hegemony.”

Now, that drone man Barack Obama’s FBI has blatantly attacked Assata Shakur, Ms. Davis, on May 3, 2013, Democracy Now show stated, in relevant part, that “ . . . it was a major shock to hear that Assata Shakur has become the first woman to be added to the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list and then to learn that they’re adding another million dollars to the reward, the bounty . . . in the 21^st century, at the beginning of the 21^st century, we’re still fighting around the very same issues—police violence, healthcare, education, people in prison and so forth . . .” It is amazing how Ms. Davis studiously side-stepped and avoided making pointed and specific reference to the deep complicity of chief executive and commander-in-chief Barack Obama in the attack upon Assata Shakur and against all justice-loving people! How could she possibly be genuinely “shock[ed]” at the actions of drone man Barack Obama’s FBI against Assata? Does she still insist that Barack Obama “identifies with the Black radical tradition?” Is she still in a state of delusion? She cannot have it both ways simultaneously and neither can we everyday ordinary people!

I reiterate: The attack on our sister, Assata Shakur, is an attack on all of us.

The scum floats to the top

Until we, the everyday ordinary people, systemically and collectively change this nation from the bottom up, the adage that says, “America is like a melting pot—the people at the bottom get burned and the scum floats to the top;” will continue to be accurate.

U.S. government subterfuge and entrapment have been increased tenfold at home and abroad under the Obama/Biden regime. Africa and the so-called ‘Middle East’ have been bombed mercilessly and incessantly by the U.S. and its proxies, including the U.S-backed Israeli Zionist military machine. Adherence to the U.S. Constitution and international law is essentially null and void in this national security de facto police-state. COINTELPRO continues unabated at home, while perpetual U.S. wars, corporate blood sucking and hegemony are the yoke under which the everyday people of this nation and world are suffering. U.S. political prisoners are brutalized and languish in prison gulags throughout this nation even as other prisoners are tortured and denied their legal and human rights at the U.S. run torture chambers at Guantanamo and elsewhere.

The U.S. corporate-stream media continues as the propaganda arm for a government that is running totally amuck. Yet, none of these conditions have to remain this way—but it will take uncompromising hard work to change this systemically manipulated insanity. It does NOT have to be this way once we understand that enough is enough!

Keep the words of Howard Zinn in your minds, when he said, “If you don’t know your history it is as if you were born yesterday. And if you were born yesterday, anybody up there in a position of power can tell you anything, and you have no way of checking up on it.” KNOW your history and tell YOUR collective narratives!

We everyday people are at the bottom of the systemic pyramid. We are its very foundation. Thus, we must collectively shake and reshape this pyramid until the blood sucking elite at the top of it come tumbling down and are relegated to the dustbin of history. Despite our perceived differences, we MUST do this thing TOGETHER. We must tell our collective narratives and reject the top-down narrative of the power elite, and its lackeys, including the corporate-stream media. Stop being duped!

Let us free ourselves from this systemic political, economic, and social enslavement. Let us rejoin the human family and once more become the stewards and guardians of our precious Mother Earth for ourselves and each other!

Remember: Each one, reach one. Each one, teach one. Onward, then, my sisters and brothers. Onward!

Intrepid Report Associate Editor Larry Pinkney is a veteran of the Black Panther Party, the former Minister of Interior of the Republic of New Africa, a former political prisoner and the only American to have successfully self-authored his civil / political rights case to the United Nations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In connection with his political organizing activities, Pinkney was interviewed in 1988 on the nationally televised PBS News Hour, formerly known as The MacNeil / Lehrer News Hour. Pinkney is a former university instructor of political science and international relations, and his writings have been published in various places, including The Boston Globe, the San Francisco BayView newspaper, the Black Commentator, Global Research (Canada), LINKE ZEITUNG (Germany), and Mayihlome News (Azania/South Africa). For more about Larry Pinkney see the book, Saying No to Power: Autobiography of a 20th Century Activist and Thinker, by William Mandel [Introduction by Howard Zinn]. (Click here to read excerpts from the book.)