Obama’s Failed State

by Stephen Lendman

Obama’s State of the Union address didn’t surprise. It reflected rogue leadership. It was beginning-to-end demagogic boilerplate. Defending the indefensible took center stage. Rhetoric substituted for progressive policies. Bombast assured business as usual.

Priorities include waging war on humanity, force-fed austerity, ignoring public needs, institutionalizing a repressive police state apparatus, and cracking down hard on non-believers. Doing so assures growing despotism, lawlessness, poverty, unemployment, homelessness, hunger, and deprivation.

Obama’s address targeted Medicare. He called “medical care for the aged….the biggest cause of the nation’s longterm debt.”

He lied. Military spending, imperial wars, Wall Street bailouts, other corporate handouts, and tax cuts for the rich and business bear full responsibility.

Falsely blaming Medicare for Washington’s malfeasance reveals bipartisan rogue leadership. It’s indicative of what’s to come.

In 2009, Obama prioritized cutting healthcare costs and “restoring fiscal discipline.” He made doing so the top “pillars” of his agenda, saying:

We’ve “kicked this can down the road. We are now at the end of the road and are not in a position to kick it any further.”

“We have to signal seriousness in this by making sure some of the hard decisions are made under my watch, not someone else’s.”

“Let’s not kid ourselves and suggest that we can solve this problem by trimming a few earmarks.”

The “biggest cost drivers in our budget are entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, all of which get more and more expensive every year.”

“If we want to get serious about fiscal discipline – and I do – we will have to get serious about entitlement reform.”

Obama did what he does best. He lied. He’s a serial liar. He supports wealth and power. He’s beholden to powerful monied interests. They own him. He spurns popular needs. He prioritizes letting them go begging on his watch.

He proposed massive Medicare cuts. In 2010, 2011, and last November he urged more. He’s waging class war on Americans.

He wants fundamental social benefits destroyed. He wants ordinary people hung out to dry. He wants them on their own to sink or swim.

In 2010, his Simpson-Bowles National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (NCFRF) recommended deep Medicare cuts, higher Medicaid co-pays, and restrictions on filing malpractice suits.

It urged other ways to end Washington’s responsibility for healthcare. Obama’s address reiterated support. Implementation assures disaster for millions.

Healthcare for millions already is unaffordable. Implementing Simpson-Bowles makes it more so when most needed. Illnesses will go untreated. Pain, suffering, and early deaths will follow. Rogue leadership assures it. Obama reflects the worst of irresponsible lawless leaders.

His jobs proposals reveal more. His address rehashed old schemes. His September 2011 “American Jobs Act” promised “putting more people back to work” with no plan to do it.

It showed contempt for ordinary households. It was same old, same old. It concealed another thinly veiled wealth transfer scheme.

It included a laundry list of corporate handouts. Excluded were ways to create jobs, stimulate growth, reinvigorate Main Street, strengthen America’s middle (really working) class, and help growing millions of impoverished, disadvantaged households most in need.

Obama’s address claimed trade deals offshoring jobs to low wage countries create them. He urged support for current ones being negotiated.

He wants the nearly completed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) adopted. It’s a trade deal from hell. It’s a secretive, multi-nation agreement.

Adoption assures unrestricted trade in goods, services, rules of origin, trade remedies, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, technical barriers, government procurement and competition policies, and intellectual property (IP).

Obama wants secretive provisions established with no public oversight or knowledge of their destructive harm. TPP aims to rewrite global IP enforcement rules. It includes numerous other anti-populist mandates.

National sovereignty is at stake. Signatory countries must change domestic laws, regulations, and other policies to comply. What’s known subverts US laws. Congress is left powerless. Supranational TPP authority overrides national sovereignty. Investor rights are prioritized over public ones.

Obama called for replicating TPP with EU countries. He urged establishing a Trans-Atlantic Partnership. He prioritizes corporate empowerment over human rights and needs. He’s got much more in mind.

He supports extrajudicial killing. He’s got kill list authority. It’s official US policy. Drones are his weapon of choice. He appointed himself judge, jury and executioner.

He wants anyone he targets assassinated. US citizens are included. Rule of law protections don’t apply. Summary judgment has final say. No one’s safe anywhere. There’s no place to hide.

His address made clear where he stands, saying:

“Where necessary, through a range of capabilities, we will continue to take direct action against those terrorists who pose the gravest threat to Americans.”

Police states operate that way. Murder, Inc. is official policy. He claimed he “forge(d) a durable legal and policy (enforceable) framework.” He usurped diktat authority.

Doing so subverts fundamental international, constitutional, and US statute laws. They’re null and void. His say overrides them. Unchecked power is policy. Full-blown tyranny’s a hair’s breath away. Congressional leaders are supportive.

Obama’s entire address reflected rogue leadership. He wants public schools modernized by privatizing them. His immigration proposal mocks notions of welcoming tired, poor, wretched masses yearning to breathe free.

His energy program prioritizes drill, drill, drill. His cybersecurity scheme involves no-holds-barred cyberwar. His notion of economic prosperity is greater corporate empowerment and enriching America’s privileged.

His housing program lets bankers scam ordinary people. His minimum wage proposal falls way below the poverty line. His Afghanistan plan is permanent occupation. His budget-cutting program targets vitally needed domestic programs. His entire agenda reflects rogue leadership.

He’s got much more in mind. He’s [got] four more years to wage war on humanity. Expect him to take full advantage.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached atlendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. His new book is titled “Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour

http://www.dailycensored.com/obamas-failed-state/

How Law Enforcement and Media Covered Up the Plan to Burn Christopher Dorner Alive

AlterNet / By Max Blumenthal

HIghly disturbing behavior by newspaper and Live TV sources in complying with the San Bernardino Sheriffs.

February 13, 2013

At approximately 7 PM ET, I listened through a police scanner as San Bernardino Sheriffs gave the order to burn down the cabin where suspected murderer Christopher Dorner was allegedly hiding. Deputies were maneuvering a remote controlled demolition vehicle to the base of the cabin, using it to tear down the walls of the cabin where Dorner was hiding, and peering inside.

In an initial dispatch, a deputy reported seeing “blood spatter” inside the cabins. Dorner, who had just engaged in a firefight with deputies that killed one officer and wounded another, may have been wounded in the exchange. There was no sign of his presence, let alone his resistance, according to police dispatches.

It was then that the deputies decided to burn the cabin down.

“We’re gonna go ahead with the plan with the burner,” one sheriff’s deputy told another. “Like we talked about.” Minutes later, another deputy’s voice crackled across the radio: “The burner’s deployed and we have a fire.”

Next, a sheriff reported a “single shot” heard from inside the house. This was before the fire had penetrated deeply into the cabin’s interior, and may have signaled Dorner’s suicide. At that point, an experienced ex-cop like him would have known he was finished.

Over the course of the next hour, I listened as the sheriffs carefully managed the fire, ensuring that it burned the cabin thoroughly. Dorner, a former member of the LAPD who had accused his ex-colleagues of abuse and racism in a lengthy, detailed manifesto, was inside. The cops seemed to have little interest in taking him alive.

“Burn that fucking house down!” shouted a deputy through a scanner transmission inadvertently broadcast on the Los Angeles local news channel, KCAL 9. “Fucking burn this motherfucker!” another cop could be heard exclaiming.

While live ammo exploded inside the cabin, the deputies pondered whether the basement would burn as well – they wanted to know if its ceiling was made of wood or concrete. They assumed Dorner was hiding there, and apparently wanted to ensure that he would be burned to a crisp. “Because the fire is contained, I’m gonna let that heat burn through the basement,” a deputy declared.

SWAT teams airlifted to the location were told to be ready in case Dorner did manage to escape. “Guys be ready on the number four side [the front of the cabin],” a deputy declared. “He might come out the back.”

Just after 7 PM (4 PM PT), right when the orders were given to deploy the “burners,” the San Bernardino Country Sheriff’s Department Public Information Officer Cindy Bachman hastily gathered reporters for an impromptu press conference. Claiming to know nothing new, she told reporters that she had no idea why the cabin was on fire, or who started the fire. Reporters badgered Bachman for information, but she had none, raising the question of why the presser was convened when it was.

Around the same time, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department requested that all reporters and media organizations stop tweeting about the ongoing standoff with Dorner, claiming their journalism was “hindering officer safety.” As the cabin sheltering Dorner burned, the local CBS affiliate was reportedly told by law enforcement to zoom its helicopter camera out to avoid showing the actions of sheriff’s deputies. By all accounts, the media acceded to police pressure for self-censorship.

On Twitter, the Riverside Press Enterprise, a leading local newspaper,announced on Twitter, “Law enforcement asked media to stop tweeting about the#Dorner case, fearing officer safety. We are complying.” The paper’s editorsadded, “We are going to tweet broad, non-tactical details, as per the San Bernardino DA’s request.”

“Per [San Bernardino Country Sheriff’s Department] request,” tweeted the local CBS affiliate, KCBS, “we are complying and will not tweet updates on #Dorner search.”

At the time that I am writing this, some online media outlets are beginning to entertain the possibility that San Bernardino County Sheriff’s deliberately set the fire that killed Dorner – a fact that I reported on Twitter as soon the sheriff’s department order came down. If there is any doubt about the authenticity of theYouTube clip containing audio of the sheriff deputies’ orders to burn the cabin down, I can verify that it is the real thing. I was listening to the same transmissions when they first blared across the police scanners.

In the hours after the standoff, however, the police cover-up remained unchallenged thanks largely to local media complicity. An initialLos Angeles Times report recounted the incident in a passive voice, claiming “flames began to spread through the structure, and gunshots, probably set off by the fire, were heard.” Similarly, LA’s ABC affiliate, KABC, quoted Bachman’s vague comment about “that cabin that caught fire,” failing to explore why it was aflame or who torched it.

Today, the Los Angeles Times reported claims by anonymous “law enforcement sources” that the sheriffs used “incendiary tear gas” to flush Dorner out of the cabin. The sources claimed the deputies who had besieged the cabin were under a “constant barrage of gunfire” and that, “There weren’t a lot of options.”

This is almost certainly a lie. The only mention by a deputy at the scene of a gunshot from inside the cabin was the “single shot” that occurred as soon as the “burners,” or incendiary teargas munitions, were deployed. After that point, deputies made constant mention of ammunition exploding inside the cabin as a result of the intense heat of the fire they set, but said nothing about any shots fired at them.

If there were a “constant barrage of gunfire,” it would have been the main source of concern among the police at the scene. Instead, they were preoccupied with ensuring that the fire burned the cabin completely without spreading into the surrounding woods.

There is a grand tradition of law enforcement using incendiary devices to assault besieged suspects, and of covering up their use. One of the most famous examples of this tactic, and its horrible consequences, was the Philadelphia Police Department’s bombing of the compound of the radical black nationalist cult, M.O.V.E., dropping C-4 explosives by helicopter on the house, killing 11 members of the group, including 5 children, and destroying 65 homes in the West Philadelphia neighborhood.

It was not until the 51-day FBI siege of the Waco, Texas compound of the messianic Branch Davidian cult that “burners,” or incendiary 40mm military grade cartridges, were used to burn a structure down. Six years after claiming that the Branch Davidians deliberately burned their own compound down, the FBI finallyadmitted that it used incendiary rounds, but insisted that none of them contributed to the fire that consumed the compound.

The “burners,” or pyrotechnic rounds the San Bernardino County Sheriffs used to torch Dorner’s cabin, are likely similar, and perhaps more powerful, than those employed by the FBI in Waco. Through the five-year-old “Department of Defense Excess Property Program,” the US military has provided police departments across the country with billions of dollars worth of military equipment, from amphibious tanks to AR-15 assault rifles, allowing the military to circumvent Posse Comitatus regulations by outsourcing their firepower to local cops.

“Burners,” or military grade incendiary grenades, are very likely among the items passed down from the US army to local police outfits like the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department.The “burner” of choice for the modern American soldier is the AN-M14 TH3. It is a hand held grenade comprised of a thermite mixture that rapidly converts to molten iron when it is thrown, burning at a temperature of 4000 degrees Fahrenheit, hot enough to burn through a half inch steel plate or bring an engine block to a boil. It can also produce enough heat to set off unloaded ammunition, which would explain why the ammo inside Dorner’s hideout was popping.

If the San Bernardino Sheriffs employed the AN-M14 TH3 or something like it against Dorner – and it appears they did – they have good reason to attempt to cover their actions up. Without even a token attempt to establish communication with the suspect, who was, to be sure, a wanted killer hell-bent on murdering cops, they attacked him with what was likely a military grade weapon designed to destroy fortified structures. By burning Dorner alive, then misleading and deceiving the public about the operation, the sheriffs may have validated the rogue ex-cop’s sharpest indictments of the culture of American law enforcement.

Yet no element in the Dorner drama was more disturbing than the performance of mainstream media. At every point, major news outlets complied with law enforcement calls for self-censorship, and still demonstrate little interest in determining how and why a lethal fire started on a snow-covered mountain in the dead of winter. As a quintessentially American tragedy reaches its denouement, the truth remains buried beneath a smoldering pile of ashes.

Read a Storify collection of Max Blumenthal’s livetweeting of the Dorner standoff.

Christopher Dorner: The Defector Who Went Out With A Bang

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by executive editor Glen Ford

Once upon a time: Proudly a member of the Imperial Navy

The ghost of Nat Turner did not descend on LA over the past week, although lots of Black folks imagined as much. Christopher Dorner’s fans “embraced his death-throe defection from the LAPD, and imbued him with qualities they wish were reliably available to the struggle: a Nat Turner, or a Spook Who Sat By the Door.”
“Dorner is best described as a disaffected soldier in the ranks of the U.S. global and local Los Angeles occupation armies.”

Although his fans will argue otherwise, Christopher Jordan Dorner was neither a Nat Turner nor a Spook Who Sat by the Door.

Nat Turner was a leader of men, who inspired approximately 70 enslaved and free Black men in a glorious attempt to overthrow the slave system in Virginia, in 1831. The rebellion that goes by his name was a collective struggle that shook the slavocracy to its core, and one of the few U.S. slave revolts that was not betrayed by informers. Christopher Donner enlisted no one in his fatal and solitary vendetta against those he felt had done him personal harm. He died alone trying to hide his huge Black self in a mostly white mountain recreation area, leaving behind a “manifesto [11]” that was mainly about himself and his service to the national and local armed forces.

Chris Dorner was no Dan Freeman, the protagonist “Spook” of the 1973 movie about an urban Black rebellion in the United States. Freeman is a Black nationalist who joins – infiltrates – the CIA, learns all he can about their evil arts, then returns to the Black community to train a cadre of urban guerilla fighters. The war of liberation catches fire. Christopher Dorner’s manifesto reveals a man who – until the unraveling – had been wholly captured by the myth and mystic of superpower America, a proud reserve lieutenant in the imperial Navy and officer in the LAPD who wanted only to serve with personal honor as a man-at-arms.

Dorner is best described as a disaffected soldier in the ranks of the U.S. global and local Los Angeles occupation armies, who made his psychologically break with the forces of racial oppression – or, was broken by them – only after having first been ejected. He transformed his ejection into a bloody defection, and flamed out – effectively, a suicide-by-cop (and, almost certainly, a victim of execution by white phosphorous-like incendiary).

“He transformed his ejection into a bloody defection, and flamed out.”

His self-definition could not survive separation from the institution that became his personal nemesis. In the end, he was as lonely as Rambo in First Blood [12], and just as politically lost.

A public death belongs to the public. Dorner’s fans, his African American public, whom he did not serve but who would inevitably embrace his weeklong death-throe defection from the LAPD, imbue him with qualities they wish were reliably available to the struggle: a Nat Turner, a Spook Who Sat by the Door. The Bronx, New York dope dealer, Larry Davis, who in 1986 succeeded in shooting six of seven [13] cops who came to his sister’s apartment to arrest or assassinate him, achieved similar fame.

Davis eluded capture for 17 days, negotiated a live surrender at his public housing hideout as residents chanted “Lar-ry! Lar-ry!” – and beat the charges of attempted murder of cops. (William Kunstler and Lynne Steward were his lawyers.) His fans forgave Davis’s dope dealing ways, just as Dorner’s fans forgave his previous service to the Los Angeles Occupation Army.

The enduring lesson of Dorner’s saga is that the transformation of the LAPD into a majority-minority police force does not change its nature as an army of occupation, whose mission is racist to the core, regardless of its ethnic composition. That fact finally dawned on Christopher Dorner – and it killed him.

For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Glen Ford. On the web, go to BlackAgendaReport.com.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com [14].

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[3] http://www.blackagendareport.com/category/african-america/police-occupation-army
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[11] http://laist.com/2013/02/07/christopher_dorners_manifesto_in_fu.php
[12] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Blood
[13] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Davis_%28criminal%29
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The State of the Union Amidst the Ashes of Extrajudicial Death

The Execution of Christopher Dorner
by GEORGE CICCARIELLO-MAHER and MIKE KING

Dorner: No self-defined revolutionary, just a man with a huge complaint against the system. The minute he killed a cop he was as good as dead.

If the murder of Oscar Grant on an Oakland transit platform marked the dawn of the Obama era, the cold-blooded murder of former Naval reservist and Los Angeles Police officer Christopher Dorner might just mark the end of whatever optimistic hope people can muster in his administration. Whether an innocent young man just trying to get home, shot in the back after being racially profiled and slurred, or a man driven to his breaking point after being fired from a similar police force that operates according to its own warped morality and overarching objectives, the state of the union is a powder keg whose wick has gotten shorter due to decades of looking the other way.

Just minutes before Barack Obama began his state of the union address, San Bernardino County Sheriffs, knowing full well what they were doing, burned Christopher Dorner to death. From police brutality and racism to political unaccountability, from lack of economic opportunities to the extrajudicial murder of anyone deemed an enemy of the state, Dorner’s life and death offers us a much clearer picture of the state of this union than last night’s speech or media commentary.

In the years between the murder of Oscar Grant and Dorner’s last stand, March of 2009 to be specific, we were among those observing the case of Lovelle Mixon in Oakland, a parolee who decided he was not going to return to prison, opening fire on police at a traffic stop, killing two. Police went in to execute Mixon, not expecting that he would be holding an SKS. Two more cops died as a result. The logic of Dorner’s desperation, and the chain of events that led to his ultimate death, parallels Mixon’s; proud men without hope, cornered, deciding to go out fighting.

Neither man was a self-understood revolutionary and it would be inaccurate (or perhaps too accurate a reflection of the dearth of revolutionary activity in contemporary society) to try and declare otherwise. However, the material conditions that produced Dorner, as with Mixon, are not uncommon. The meaning and the effects of their actions speak volumes about the depth of racialization, criminalization and hopelessness in Obama’s supposed “post-racial” America.

LAPD Endgame: Street Justice on a Snow-Capped Mountain

The scene could not be more surreal: the remains of a cabin south of Big Bear still smoldering, the President delivered his State of the Union Address. To be fair, they had yet to confirm that the person they were incinerating in a cabin near Big Bear actually was Dorner. Earlier in the day, San Bernardino County Sheriffs received a call reporting a stolen vehicle driven by someone matching a description of Dorner. If the experience of the past five days is any indication, this narrowed it down to Black men, Asian women, and skinny white men. The $1 million dollar reward offered for information leading to Dorner’s capture or death, also offered a measurable rubric for the value of the lives of police officers, as traditionally rewards in homicide cases are closer to $20,000.

In the gathering of hurried interviews some interesting truths from the public made it into the TV news. An MSNBC reporter asked a witness: “Where you worried when you learned that Christopher Dorner was so close to your house?” But the witness responded “Actually, I was just afraid of the cops.” Given the unrestrained violence unleashed in recent days by the LAPD, this sentiment is perhaps unsurprising, but demonstrating a degree of hubris matched only by an utter absence of ironic intent, LAPD chief Charlie Beck said, evidently with a straight face, “To be targeted because of what you are… that is absolutely terrifying.” To which many nationwide responded with an audible guffaw: welcome to the club.

An interview with the man who was allegedly carjacked by Dorner said that, while police had told the man not to tell the whole story, he reported that Dorner had simply said “I don’t want to hurt, take your dog and go.” When sheriff’s deputies found the vehicle yesterday, the driver allegedly retreated into a cabin, at one point re-emerging amid the smoke of a diversionary device to exchange more than 100 rounds of fire with deputies. Two police were injured, with one later dying. Police quickly established a large perimeter, closing highways around Seven Oaks, south of Big Bear up to twenty miles away.

Establishing the perimeter also seemed to mean keeping the media at an arm’s length. While press helicopters had been providing live shots of the cabin in which Dorner was allegedly holed-up, the SBSD quickly requested that media withdraw to roadblocks miles away and that news choppers cease to transmit live video for fear of providing strategic information to Dorner himself. The San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department requested that media outlets and individuals cease and desist from even tweeting about the manhunt and shootout.

Even more astonishing than the request was the immediate compliance: press outlets abruptly ceased to tweet about the developing story, and duly retreating to the roadblocks, abandoned their task of reporting the news and waited for it to be fed to them. To paraphrase but one of many incredulous observers, we speak of press blackouts in China, but all the police had to do here was ask nicely and the press complied without batting an eyelash.

With a voluntary media blackout in effect, the Twittersphere, punctuated with a plethora of indignant and sharply worded refusals to comply with the police, became one of the only sources of developing news. What we know about what happened thereafter owes almost entirely to those who scoured the web for scanner feeds from the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department and intently followed the story these feeds told.

“The Burn Plan”

Shortly after 4pm Pacific Standard Time, the cabin was engulfed in flames, with CNN helicopters broadcasting plumes of black smoke from a distance of five miles. A single gunshot is reported from within the house. A narrative quickly emerged among the mainstream media, which we should recall was conspicuously absent from the scene, that police agencies had only deployed tear gas, and that perhaps Dorner himself had set the fire. Soon, what seems to be a cache of ammunition is exploding sporadically.

But for those of us listening to the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department radio frequency, there was little question what had occurred. Nearly a half hour prior, officers had referred to “going ahead with the plan with the burner,” with another adding that the plan was to “back the Bear down and deploy the burner through the turret.” (Live audio during the preceding shootout seems to confirm this intention). Soon, the message was straightforward and expected: “Seven burners have deployed and we have a fire.” No surprised tones, no suggestion that the fire be extinguished.

In fact, there was the exact opposite: a female voice on the scanner repeatedly asks if the fire crews should be allowed to approach, and is told that it’s not time yet, that we need to wait until all four corners are engulfed, then that we need to wait until the roof collapses. At one particularly repulsive point, those on the scene realize that the house has a basement, and an authoritative male voice indicates that the fire crew would not be called until the fire had “burned through the basement.” They were going to let him die.

References to the 1993 massacre at Waco, Texas, the murderous 1985 bombing of the MOVE Organization in Philadelphia were immediate, and will serve as opposing frames for Dorner’s death in the days and weeks to come.

A murder? An assassination? A lynching? An execution.

State of the Union: Flammable

This is a day of a million possible metaphors, but central among these should be the image of the burning house. In an effort to distinguish what he called the “house negro” from the “field negro,” Malcolm X had once observed that the two responded differently when the master’s house caught fire: “But that field negro, remember, they were in the majority, and they hated their master. When the house caught on fire, he didn’t try to put it out, that field negro prayed for a wind.” While the metaphor may seem a strange one, given the fiery death of a man some have compared to a runaway slave. But as many Americans choose to gaze, mesmerized, at the glowing embers of the Dorner saga rather than watching the State of the Union, it’s worth wondering: whose house is really on fire? And who is praying for wind?

The eclipsing of the State of the Union, with some networks airing a split screen of the President’s speech alongside images from Southern California, or omitting pre- and post- speech coverage to report on Dorner’s likely death (a speech given in the context of ongoing war and occupation, unending recession and social crisis and a heated debate about, well, gun control) speaks volumes about our society, the conditions which produced Dorner and has helped produced a surge in mass killings generally. Persistent racist policies couched in the language of security, and failed imperial ventures with war tactics re-imported into American policing, are routinely covered over by the trite conflicts of celebrities, whether they be Kardashians or Congressmen.

Dorner was not just a product of a racist police department, he also no doubt adored his ‘fifteen minutes,’ stealing time from the President he nevertheless supported during the biggest planned speech of the year. Although Dorner’s actions were not driven by a radical consciousness, they are ‘as American as cherry pie’ in an apolitical vacuum that (at least on the surface) resembles Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers far more than the political contexts of the 1960s.

As Obama was taking to the lectern, police agencies were insisting that they had not set the fire that killed Christopher Dorner, and the compliant media were parroting this clearly implausible message. As members of Congress stood and sat on cue to rapturously applaud the Commander-in-Chief, more than 14,000 people have liked just one of the Facebook pages in support of Dorner, some because they know what racist policing is like, some because ours is a time of resisting injustice by any means, and some simply for the joy of backing an outlaw to the grisly end.

Dorner was not a radical, but his short war was not simply the story of broken man or of individualistic vengeance. The issues of brutality and racism perpetually covered up by a corrupt police department created the insurgent Dorner and resonated with many people who endure the reality of urban policing on a daily basis. The sympathy and the support Dorner received is a clear indicator of the very real and deep structural inequalities that helped forge the path of Dorner’s life and his fiery death. The great radical historian Mike Davis concluded a recent article on Dorner with a peculiar question: “Does anyone cheer Dorner?” What is peculiar is that, for better or worse, there’s no denying that the answer is “yes.”

There’s no telling what sort of a fire they could start tomorrow.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS
George Ciccariello-Maher is assistant professor of political science at Drexel University. He is the author of We Created Chávez: A People’s History of the Venezuelan Revolution and can be reached at gjcm(at)drexel.edu.

Mike King is a Ph.D candidate in sociology at UC Santa Cruz, and can be reached at mikeking0101(at)gmail.com. Both study policing and counterinsurgency.

Media Mayor Cory Booker Bombs in Home Town of Newark

By Linn Washington Jr., This Can’t Be Happening!

Newark’s mayor Cory Booker is more popular outside of Newark than in the city he runs

Cory Booker, the charismatic Democratic mayor of Newark, NJ currently considering a campaign for the U.S. Senate, enjoys extraordinary media exposure — exposure that exceeds that of many top-tier entertainers and professional athletes. However, that fawning media coverage from CNN to Vogue Magazine of this mayor rarely reports facts like the increasing ire among Newark residents over Booker’s practices and the right-wing political roots of this politician who is generally portrayed as possessing solid center-left credentials.

Those right-wing roots, for example, provide an under-examined explanation for Booker’s lashing out at President Obama last May after a campaigning Obama criticized economic deprivations caused by hedge fund manipulations when he took Mitt Romney to task for the then GOP candidate’s tenure as head of venture capital firm Bain Capital.

Journalist Glen Ford has reported extensively on Booker’s conservative connections for over a decade, beginning with Booker’s September 2000 New York City address at the Manhattan Institute, one of America’s leading right-wing think tanks.

“It’s amazing that most people don’t see this background,” Ford said.

“You must understand that the Manhattan Institute is not some eclectic entity,” Black Agenda Report co-founder Ford said. “This is what makes Cory Booker different from other right-wing Democrats. He comes from the bosom of the right-wing…he started there.”

Ford’s coverage includes Booker’s alignment with the conservative school voucher movement that seeks to siphon government funding from public schools into corporate and religious coffers – a defunding movement that has a profound detrimental impact on large numbers of minority students and minority professionals in public schools.

Favorable media coverage of Booker explains why most people across New Jersey and nationwide view him as progressive. That coverage portrays a mayor who saved a neighbor from a burning building, sustaining second-degree burns during that rescue. It focuses on him for raising more than $250-million in donations for projects in his beleaguered city.

“Most people in Trenton and South Jersey look at Booker as a great mayor because they see him on CNN and other television shows all the time,” Trenton, NJ community activist Daryl Brooks said. “But in inner-city areas of Newark, residents don’t view Booker as a great leader. There is a feeling that he is more interested in his national and international image than in doing something for poor people.”

A December 2012 New York Times article contained rare mainstream media criticism of Booker, citing growing complaints in Newark that Booker is “a better marketer than mayor.”

The telegenic Booker,43, a Yale Law graduate and Rhodes Scholar, counters criticisms like that from Trenton activist Brooks by citing polls showing 60 percent support for him in Newark.

But Bessie White, a 50-year resident of Newark who lives in the city’s South Ward, said, there is a great deal of disappointment regarding Booker, particularly around his leadership in the delivery of city services.

“We expected changes when [Booker] became mayor,” White said (Booker became Newark’s mayor in July 2006). “He is the first mayor to lay off police. We don’t have a sense of security anymore.”

The Newark Star-Ledger newspaper, in a July 2012 article, documented that Mayor Booker spent nearly a quarter of his time outside of Newark during an 18-month period ending in June 201.

While Booker boosted Newark during many of those trips (some of them day-trips), he also boosted his personal bank account with speaking fees estimated between $250,000-to-$500,000, that article stated.

Ras Baraka, the City Councilman for Newark’s South Ward, said he feels Booker’s “personal ambitions” have always exceeded his commitment to solving problems in Newark.

“The Mayor’s basically been a media darling and that has prevented him from tackling issues,” Baraka said. “The lack of jobs drives crime and other issues. Things can be done without millions or the need for rocket science. But we need leadership.”

Newark’s unemployment rate, hovering around 15 percent, is dramatically higher than the NJ rate, a statewide rate that is the fourth highest in the nation. The current unemployment rate in NJ’s largest city is also five points higher than when Booker took office in 2006.

Foreclosures in Essex County, which contains Newark, are the highest in NJ, the state with the nation’s second highest foreclosure rate.

New corporate business, construction projects and jobs are flourishing in Booker’s Newark. An October 2012 Bloomberg News article applauded Booker for bringing $700-million in new investments into his city, including the relocation of corporate headquarters, opening new factories and erecting affordable housing.

But benefits from all that economic development centered mainly in Newark’s downtown are not effectively trickling down into neighborhoods around Newark…at least that’s the perception that is driving rising disenchantment with Booker among increasing numbers of Newark residents.

Mayor Booker’s office did not respond to requests for comments and information despite promises to do so.

Interestingly, for a man garnering so much uncritical media coverage, Booker is often quick to bash his critics by contending their criticisms of him are crass efforts to garner favorable media coverage of their own.

When the ACLU-NJ sued Booker in 2011 for his refusal to release documents requested by a Newark parents group seeking details about the $100-million gift to Newark public schools from Facebook billionaire founder Mark Zuckerburg, Booker blasted the ACLU for seeking media “publicity” by attacking him.

Booker initially denied the existence of those documents, and then shifted, admitting the documents existed but asserted that mayoral executive privilege permitted him to withhold them. Booker also tried to blunt that lawsuit by claiming his acceptance of the Zuckerburg gift on Oprah’s then television show was not an official mayoral act.

A judge, in December 2012, ordered Booker to release the requested documents, rejecting Booker’s executive privilege and other claims.

Booker’s stonewalling on releasing the Zuckerburg gift documents and his failed November 2012 effort to install a candidate he backed into a vacant City Council seat (that trigger a mini-riot inside the Council chambers) seemingly contradicts positions he advanced during that Manhattan Institute address.

During that luncheon address Booker blasted Newark’s then political power brokers for constantly seeking to expand their “sphere of control, always hoping to control more and more resources and authority.”

Three weeks after Booker used an arcane procedure to install that Council candidate, a judge ruled Booker had no legal authority to vote on that candidate’s behalf.

One curious aspect overlooked in media coverage is that some of Booker’s harshest critics are former friends and/or political allies who use words like ‘betrayal’ when describing him.

Newark City Councilman Ronald C. Rice ran on Booker’s 2006 ticket. Rice even opposed his own father, who stepped into that mayoral race against Booker following the last minute withdrawal of the incumbent mayor.

“There are a majority of folks who like the man personally,” Rice said. “But those are the same people who are angry with conditions in this city.”

Rice joined the lawsuit voiding Booker’s Council candidate action.

“I don’t begrudge [Booker’s] celebrity, but he needs to do the non-glamorous work,” Rice said.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

While not yet quite old enough to collect Social Security, Linn Washington Jr. has been in the news business long enough to have seen both the introduction of computers into newsrooms and the current strangling of the news media unleashed not by the rise of the Internet but largely from greedy investors whose snatching of financial resources from profit-generating news operations has crippled news gathering. A columnist for the historic Philadelphia Tribune, the nation’s oldest African-American owned newspaper, Washington is also Associate Professor of Journalism at Temple. Washington also holds a law degree from the Yale University.