In a move so audacious our jaw has dropped, the Berkeley Daily Planet has published a long commentary in its April 2, 2009 edition that may entirely upend a core premise of this website.  One of this website’s key contentions is that the Berkeley Daily Planet reserves its fullest measure of venom for Jews and Israel.  If Becky O’Malley is merely a radical free speecher, as she claims, then why are there never hateful articles aimed at Muslims, blacks or gays?  And, indeed, the Berkeley Daily Planet says that they would never publish anything aimed at these groups (we are not suggesting that they should).

But now comes an article filled with pure hate, but not aimed at either Jews or Israel.  It is aimed instead at police. 

We need time to think out the ramifications.  Should we place this information in the “Is this Journalism?” section of the website?  Should we put it in our section on anti-Semitism, but then re-label that section to include this second object of the Berkeley Daily Planet’s hatefest?   Does O'Malley deserve a notation in our "Kudos Corner" for more equitably spreading the hate around?  We are all in a tizzy here at DPWatchDog.com, and really do not know what to do.

OK, let’s calm ourselves and take this from the beginning. 

The April 2, 2009 edition begins with two warm up acts.  On page 11, J. Douglas Allen-Taylor pleads with us to understand the circumstances of parolee and serial rapist Lovell Mixon’s murder of four Oakland police officers from his point of view.  Aren’t the Oakland police of today just like those strike breaking police of 100 years ago?  Then on page 14 comes an article by Jean Damu, asking aloud just why it is that when the news broke of the murder of the four police officers, attendees at a Hip Hop convention erupted in spontaneous cheering.  But, as we said, these were just the warm up acts.

The real deal came in a lengthy commentary entitled, “The  ‘Karmic Justice’ of Lovel Mixon’s Act,” by Joseph Anderson.  It is so breathtaking, that our meager attempt to summarize would barely do it justice.  So let the article speak for itself in some excerpts:

Most people of color know that the cops, and police departments as institutions, historically represent the street enforcement arm of white American racism. Indeed, the police were born out of the white slave patrols. . . .

American flags were officially flown at half-staff for those killed cops—summarily tried, sentenced and executed in the streets, just like they do with people of color. . . .

While the cops and the media come up with suspiciously last-minute (and technically unconfirmed) stories to try to tell us just “how bad” Lovell Mixon was (how about research into those dead cops’ background to see how abusive and dirty they were?), many of us see it as karmic justice, regardless of what person killed the four (and almost five!) cops, all in a brief afternoon’s work.

Lovell Mixon’s name will be legendary in the Bay Area—long after people forget the names of the four cops he killed in one afternoon. And it’s karmic justice that just as many blacks in America have been murdered by cops during a “routine” traffic stop, these cops were killed during a “routine” traffic stop.