“This is a public safety issue, it’s a labor issue, and it’s a political issue,” said Larry Hamm, chairman of the People’s Organization for Progress and featured speaker at a rally to prevent the shutdown of the police department in mostly Black and Latino Camden, New Jersey. The financially distressed town would be patrolled by police from the surrounding, mostly white county. It’s a matter of self-determination, said Hamm. “They’re not going to stop with taking over the finance department; they’re not going to stop with taking over the schools; they’re not going to stop with the police force.”

Obama’s Orwellian Peace

President Obama’s claim that he will end the U.S. war in Afghanistan in 2014 makes sense only in the language of George Orwell’s 1984, said David Swanson, publisher of the influential website WarIsACrime.org. The president is actually planning to take U.S. troop strength “down to almost what it was when he moved into the White House, and calling it ‘peace,’” said Swanson. “And we’re calling drone wars ‘peace.’”

R.I.P. Rule of Law

“There’s been a very steady dismantling of the rule of law, both domestically and internationally, begun by the Bush administration and furthered by the Obama administration,” said veteran journalist Chris Hedges, one of the plaintiffs challenging the law allowing preventive detention of American citizens. U.S. lawlessness abroad “has been accompanied by a savage assault on our most basic constitutional rights,” said Hedges, “giving the executive branch the right to kill Americans.”

“Blowback” Coming After Dorner’s Demise

Chris Dorner, the former Los Angeles policeman and NAVY special operations officer who died in a fiery shootout, last week, was a “universal soldier,” said investigative journalist Mike Rupert. “I don’t think the LAPD or any police department will now so cavalierly terminate any combat veteran, for any reason,” said Rupert, who is also a former LAPD cop.

A friend and former athletic teammate of Dorner, identified only as “Ben,” told KPFA radio’s Davey D: “We watched this brother be assassinated on TV. There will be a blowback from this.”

Resolved: Corporations are Not Citizens

Move to Amend activist George Friday appeared with Rep. Rick Nolan (D-MN) at a press conference following Nolan’s introduction of a constitutional amendment to deny corporations the rights of citizens. Many millions of Americans, said Friday, “are ready to stand up against the inappropriate, illegitimate use of corporate power and corporate constitutional rights.”

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by executive editor Glen Ford

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.”

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