Author:

Woodrow Tom Thompson was once a big player in the LA news scene . He began
in Yuma, Arizona at KBLU, doing sports radio and TV. After a stint at CBS station KOOL in Phoenix, he reinvented himself with a career in print journalism as news editor for the LA Free Press, one of the nation’s original alternative weeklies.

Penny Grenoble was editor and Charles Bukowski wrote dirty stories. Ron Cobb did cartoons. Tom was a very big man then. He weighed almost four hundred pounds and he covered some very big stories. Not the way the LA Times did. He often got inside info from the people who knew what was going on. Phil Ochs would show up. So would the FBI.

He was a great teacher. All news editors should be like Tom Thompson . He knew how to make a story jump off the front page like a snake. “Who is, or was, Ms. Moon Solstice?” “How did the LAPD Operate its Secret Red Squad?” Tom pushed stories–essential LA Stories the LA Times would never touch. He went behind the news to chase a story. How come the LA County Art Museum bought only certain painters and did not buy others? Could board members be on the take? The Pasadena Chandlers didn’t want to handle stories like that.

As news editor Tom Thompson, a former football player for Temple U., and for one season on a semi-pro league, the Festerville Falcons, weighed in with two smashing fists. Even the publishers of the Freep, as it was known to readers, disliked his pushing the LAPD around. And the IRS.

When the Freep’s owners sold out, and the new publisher changed the format to Star Wars and porn stories, Thompson split and called together a group of former Freep writers and proposed the idea of a collectively run successor alternative paper. Thus was the LA Vanguard born. The new paper, with Tom as ME, Dave Lindorff and Ron Ridenour as editor/reporters, and myself as arts editor, published a manifesto from the Weather Underground. Tom encouraged us to take on the entire US Government by publishing pieces on the phony Warren Commission investigation and cover-up of the JFK hit.

All along the way, at both the Freep and the Vanguard, Tom encouraged reporters to go beyond the WHO, WHAT,WHERE and WHEN and HOW into the essential WHY. And to ask WHO are the real bad guys?
Woody Thompson, Luke and the author

 
“Pariah” Makes Friends

Hearty applause, cheers, and a standing ovation met the team of “Pariah” following this morning’s 8:30 a.m. showing at the Sundance Film Festival. A product of the Sundance Institute’s screenwriting and directorial labs, with production and guidance from Spike Lee, the movie about a 17-year-old African-American butch lesbian’s emergence is in competition for the U.S. Dramatic prize.

The dynamic between shy, but sly Alike (Aderpero Oduye), who is also a talented poet, and her friend and mentor, the irrepressible Laura (Pernell Walker) forms the most compelling and, at times, quite humorous core of the movie. The biggest laughs come when Aleke “straps up” for the first time, with Laura’s help. Shifting awkwardly in the stiff dildo, Aleke frets about the device.

Laura offers encouragement: “You’re not supposed to wear it over your pants,”

“Couldn’t you get a brown one?” Aleke, who prefers to go by her nickname, Lee, complains. “Take it back.”

“I’m not going back; it was embarrassing enough,” Laura replies. “You gonna walk around with a dick in your hand? Just put it on.”

By an historical coincidence, both Julian Assange and Luis Posada Carriles were brought before Western courts around the same time in late 2010 and early 2011—Assange in Britain and Posada in the United States. The contrast in their treatment by the U.S.-Anglo system of justice and in their handling by the Western establishment media is enlightening.

Posada, now 82, is a self-confessed terrorist, Bay of Pigs veteran, School of the Americas graduate, and CIA operative who has been credibly placed at two meetings where the plan was hatched for the October 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed all 73 civilians aboard. He also has been implicated in numerous other terrorist acts in which people were killed or injured and property destroyed, and he played a role in the United States’ arms-smuggling network in Central America that eventually came to light in the Iran-Contra investigations.

“The CIA taught us everything,” Posada told the New York Times in 1998. “They taught us explosives, how to kill, bomb, trained us in acts of sabotage.” Posada was a star pupil. But as a longtime CIA asset and, until the past decade, the “most notorious commando in the anti-Castro underground,” the U.S. justice system has never charged Posada with a crime related to terrorism or the death of civilians, even though a former FBI counterterrorism expert who investigated the Cuban airliner bombing claims that Posada was “up to his eyeballs” in its planning. Surely this is because his killings and bombings were carried out against targets of U.S. policy, and because he almost certainly would have implicated the CIA.

In fact, the U.S. justice system never charged Posada with any kind of offense until early 2007, when a federal grand jury indicted him with the ludicrously lesser charges of making false statements during his naturalization interview two years earlier. After Posada had slipped into Miami’s anti-Castro Cuban-exile community in March 2005, he filed for political asylum but then quickly withdrew his application when he recognized that in the aftermath of 9/11 and Bush’s “War on Terror,” his past activities made him a “hot potato.”

But before he could disappear again, he held a news conference in Miami, and Department of Homeland Security agents grabbed him—and ever since he has faced a series of on-again-off-again perjury charges related to his original interview.

 
(NOTE: A copy of this letter to the commandant of the Quantico Marine base where Army Specialist Bradley Manning is being held in conditions of torture on orders of the Pentagon and the White House, first ran on David Swanson’s WarIsACrime.org website
 

From DAVID C. MACMICHAEL

General James F. Amos
Commandant of the Marine Corps
3000 Marine Corps Pentagon
Washington DC 20350-3000

Dear General Amos:

As a former regular Marine Corps captain, a Korean War combat veteran, now retired on Veterans Administration disability due to wounds suffered during that conflict, I write you to protest and express concern about the confinement in the Quantico Marine Corps Base brig of US Army Pfc. Bradley Manning.

Manning, if the information I have is correct, is charged with having violated provisions of the Uniform Code of Military Justice by providing to unauthorized persons, among them specifically one Julian Assange and his organization Wikileaks, classified information relating to US military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and State Department communications. This seems straightforward enough and sufficient to have Manning court-martialed and if found guilty sentenced in accordance with the UCMJ.

What concerns me here, and I hasten to admit that I respect Manning’s motives, is the manner in which the legal action against him is being conducted. I wonder, in the first place, why an Army enlisted man is being held in a Marine Corps installation. Second, I question the length of confinement prior to conduct of court-martial. The sixth amendment to the US Constitution, guaranteeing to the accused in all criminal prosecutions the right to a speedy and public trial, extends to those being prosecuted in the military justice system. Third, I seriously doubt that the conditions of his confinement—solitary confinement, sleep interruption, denial of all but minimal physical exercise, etc.—are necessary, customary, or in accordance with law, US or international.

Indeed, I have to wonder why the Marine Corps has put itself, or allowed itself to be put, in this invidious and ambiguous situation.

It’s all too appropriate that on the day that we celebrate the birthday of one of history’s most notable civil rights leaders, Arizona is in the national news spotlight.  Arizona,one of the last states to recognize Martin Luther King Jr’s birthday as a federal holiday only began doing in 1992.  Ironically, Arizona’s Attorney General Tom Horne, a supporter of the state’s tough new immigration laws, and author of a new ban on ethnic studies in the state’s public schools, continually cites his participation in MLK’s marches as proof that he’s not a racist.

Today , my anger over his actions, a “killing rage” that makes my heart pound, has burned itself out.  Instead, a steady determination sets in as I reflect on my disappointment over Arizona’s new legislation.  I realize that much of my anger, though directed at Tom Horne, comes from an awareness that though he may be extreme, he’s also an embodiment of most of white America, a testament to the painfully shallow understanding that most folks have about race in this country.

It actually reminds me of the beginning of medical school.  In addition to adjusting to new academic demands, the first fews months are a whirlwind recruiting process for the numerous clubs on campus.  Of the professional organizations, one can join the American Medical Association, the American Medical Student Association, the Black Medical Association, the American Medical Women’s Association, the Latin American/Native American Medical Association, the United Asian American Medical Student Association, and the Bisexuals, Gays, Lesbians, and Allies in Medicine.  Every year a white guy who thinks he’s pretty clever will ask, “What about me? How come there’s nothing for white guys to join?”  There is one and he’s already joined it.  It’s called the institution of medicine.

Performed at the Vivian Beaumont Theater, Lincoln Center, New York

One of the biggest challenges for modern people trying to understand history is to conceive of the past beyond stereotypes. When we use Martin Luther King Jr. as an example of Civil Rights resistance, we must also consider the troops of housecleaners, preachers, construction workers, teachers and others earlier in the 20th century whose unyielding efforts made the movement work. In the 19th century, when we lionize Harriet Tubman and the brave people she brought to freedom, we must also cherish the imperfect people who did not escape. They are our Southern ancestors. And when we think of pre-Civil War America, we can’t simply conceive of black slavery and white masters – especially in New Orleans. We must consider the people of color who were both owners and, at various times and in various ways, enslaved.



That is the clear intention of the production, A Free Man of Color, by playwright John Guare and director George C. Wolfe Jr, which has just opened at New York’s Lincoln Center. It is a complex and intimate play, attempting to encompass the sweep of history from French colonial New Orleans to just after the Louisiana Purchase, including the influence of Spain, the United States and San Domingue (Haiti) on the sale

.

As Christmas is celebrated in Incarceration Nation, it’s worth remembering certain things about the two figures who dominate this holiday.

As more than 3,000 American sit on death row, we revere the birth of a godly man who was arrested, “tried,” sentenced, and put to death by the state. The Passion is the story of an execution, and the Stations of the Cross trace the path of a Dead Man Walking.

Less well know is the fact that Saint Nicholas, the early Christian saint who inspired Santa Claus, was once a prisoner, like one in every 100 Americans today. Though he was beloved for his kindness and generosity, Nicholas acquired sainthood not only by giving alms, but in part by performing a miracle that more or less amounted to a prison break.

Saint Nick was a con, and scammed his way to a jail-break

One and a half years of medical school has at least taught me one thing: medicine is all about getting the right diagnosis.  Sure, there are important things like treatment, but honestly, evidence based treatment guidelines and experiential wisdom can all be looked up.  And as people realize that the way we teach is just as important as what we teach, most clinically savvy professors have done away with the old-school method of disease definitions.  These days they give us the symptoms, we generate a differential diagnosis (the list of likely issues based on the case history), and then we learn the diseases.

And so basically, as medical students we’re taught pattern recognition and probabilities.  Have a person in the hospital that has sudden kidney failure a few days after an aggressive bacterial infection?  That’s the classic pattern for aminoglycoside toxicity.

Or maybe you’re told your patient who has a terrible cough that won’t go away.  She’s worried because she watched a movie with someone who had lung cancer that coughed in similar way.  Without any other information, sure, some sort of lung or throat cancer is on your differential.  Find out she’s never smoked and hasn’t had unexplained weight loss? Suddenly the chances of her having cancer are much lower.  And then it turns out she has high blood pressure and is on an ACE Inhibitor.  The odds are completely different now.  Cancer is way down and side effect of her medication is really high on the list.

Julian Assange, key initiator of Wikileaks, has been granted bail despite the British government’s appeal made in behalf of the Swedish government. A British district court judge had waited two days before approving bail in the amount of $ 316,000, on the condition that Assange wear an electronic tag, report to a police station daily, and comply with a 16-hour curfew allowing just eight hours of freedom from the “mansion arrest” in the house of a wealthy journalist/club owner.

At play here could well be documents Wikileaks released that show that US diplomats communicated with their State Department and White House bosses in Washington saying British troops in Afghanistan are not very good at the job. Brits are angry about this slur, especially given their long record of standing “shoulder to shoulder” with Bush’s in his terror wars.

Also, many Swedish politicians are angry after other Wikileaks documents exposing how, unknown to its parliament, Sweden’s military and secret services have long worked behind the scenes with NATO and have offered more assistance to the CIA than is legally permitted in supposedly neutral Sweden.

Assange wasn’t immediately released, as not all the bail money has been raised. It is difficult to get money to the defense, because the US government pressured conveyors of donations and website servers for Wikileaks’ homepage to end cooperation. Paypal, Visa, Mastercharge, Assange’s own Swiss bank, and other Establishment businesses have frozen Assange and wikileaks accounts and refused to process donations.

Santa Cruz — “Are you planning to vote on Tuesday?” I asked.  The food checker at our local natural food store was cheerful and friendly.  But she was a little befuddled by the question. 

“I don’t know where to vote,” she confessed.
 
“Have you gotten your sample ballot yet?” I asked. 

“No,” she replied.  “I don’t think so.”  She had voted some time back.  Maybe it was for Obama.  She wasn’t sure.  But she couldn’t remember where she had voted, or if it was an absentee ballot.

Election or reefer madness?