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Freedomways
First Quarter 1972

a magazine called Topic. Prohibited from publication and distribution inside the United States, Topic is designed specifically for distribution in underdeveloped countries where the literacy rate is low and knowledge of the outside world is limited. Its approach is aggressively biased, combining flashy pictorial reviews of black bourgeois life in America with fake commentaries and debates. The cover of one typical issue, for example, had a large black and white blow-up of blacks in their formal attire being served by white waiters at an exclusive luncheon in Washington, D.C. Another dilly carried commentary by Norman Thomas whom it billed as a symbol of "perpetual dissent" in America! This, of course, was before Topic's favorite rebel confessed publicly of having for years accepted funding from the CIA through one of its Foundations.

Still another classic specimen USIS's journalistic integrity is an eighteen page tricolored handout shrewdly titled Perspective and Library News. The title, however, is misleading to say the least. While it does carry a small list of newly arrived films and books as well as news of coming lectures at "America House" only a dogmatist would ever accuse the magazine of having "perspective." The cover stories of three issues I took from my mail box at Akuafu Hall during the time I was a student at the University of Ghana carried the following suggestive titles: "Dr. Busia In U.S.A." (K. A. Busia is the recently-deposed ultra-reactionary Prime Minister of Ghana), "Secretary Rogers Visits Ghana" and "Special Space Issue." It is interesting to note that Perspective always found its way into our mail boxes whereas the university campus was strictly off limits to propaganda from other countries.

The American government's policy of brainwashing Africans is also reflected in the make-up of USIS libraries and "cultural centers." I tried in vain, for example, to find a single copy of a single work by W.E.B. Du Bois in the USIS library in Monrovia, Liberia. Not only was the librarian unable to find Du Bois' name in the index, but she herself had never heard of the man. My efforts to secure copies of Ebony and Black World at the American Culture Center in Duala, Cameroon also came to naught. In fact, there were no black magazines at all available in this center. After making inquiries, I was told by the French woman who runs the center that the only black magazine the Center had subscribed to was Ebony and that its subscription had been cancelled sometime ago. When I asked why, she said she didn't know and that there was no explanation given. There is little doubt but that Afro-American journals in general and left wing journals in 

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