Debbie Nathan

Just some photos I’ve taken lately in Mexico…Aprovechen los colores … Enjoy the colors!

Need it be said? A nationally important event starts in hours, and you have not learned of it from the New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times or big TV. To get notice, you’d have to have seen Slate, Salon, The Nation – or the cover story of last week’s London Times Sunday Magazine. Yes, cover story. On this side of the pond, nary a line in our lox-and-bagel newspaper mags.

Still, you should know. In the Washington DC area from today through the weekend, a second round of “Winter Soldier” hearings will take place.

Thirty-seven years ago, dozens of US military veterans gathered in a hotel in Detroit for the first such hearings. They testified about atrocities they’d seen and committed while on duty in Vietnam. Vietnam Veterans Against the War organized the 1971 event, and called it “Winter Soldier.” John Kerry was actively involved. A collective of young filmmakers, including Barbara Kopple, memorialized the hearings with a documentary that came out the next year. The hearings and film were virtually ignored by the American media. I finally saw the documentary last month, when excerpts were played in Brooklyn, at a fund raiser for Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW). They’re a new generation of anti-war soldier activists — short-haired compared with their elders, and equally brave.

At the fundraiser, some IVAW members previewed the outrages that witnesses will describe this weekend at Winter Soldier 2: immoral and illegal acts committed in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last few years. Then the vets showed the old film. It is stunning, devastating. The men testifying in 1971 are what Tony Kushner would call angels in America. They are young, mostly still in their 20s. They are smooth-faced, sexy, innocent. They are shocked and grief-stricken, with strange affect: sometimes tearful, sometimes with inappropriate smiles. They are guilty, purified, evil — and know it. They have committed rapes, mutilations, and the murder of civilians. They say they are testifying so no American soldiers after them will have to act like animals. In their confessions and anger they are heroes.

If you can’t go to Round 2 of Winter Soldier, or follow it online, at least try to see the old film (link here). But if you can make time for the current event, here’s contact information:

Iraq Vets Against the War has a website with details about the upcoming hearings and instructions on how configure your computer so you can follow the testimony, live, via streaming video and other technology.

Alternet is covering the events and providing online access (see here)

Reporters or others who want to attend in person: Call (202) 253-7298 or go to the hearing site, at the National Labor College, 10000 New Hampshire Avenue, Silver Spring, MD

To obtain the 1972 documentary Winter Soldier, check this site. You can also find clips by entering”Winter Soldier” on Youtube. And you can rent the film from Netflix.com.

(originally posted March 03rd 2008; reposted due to technical difficulties)

Calling all serious civil libertarians! News you can use:

The first political protest against sex offender civil commitment took place March 2. It happened in Coalinga, Calif., outside the grounds of a 1,500-bed state facility - the biggest sex offender civil commitment
lockup in the US. Hundreds of men there have already served their criminal time. Yet, in violation of a raft of constitutional rights, they are imprisoned at Coalinga indefinitely. (For more on the situation and on civil commitment in general, see this Los Angeles Times article).

There are words for this in different but similar situations: Gulag. Guantanamo. Both with “GU” at the beginning. Maybe “Coalinga” should be renamed “Gu-alinga.”

The protest was attended by dozens of people but got almost no coverage, except from a local TV station (see here).

For more information about the movement to insure civil rights for sex
offenders - the most reviled group in America (except, perhaps, for
accused Muslim terrorists) - visit this link.

(Post publication, one comment received from French Wall
March 3rd, 2008 | 6:02 pm)

For info re: the hunger strike and and action leading up to this
protest, check out “Uprising at California Sex Gulag”

Larry Mathews in the Washington, DC area. Kurt Eichenwald in Dallas and New York. Bernie Ward in San Francisco. All involved in child porn scandals while working in the media. And now there’s Dennis Melanson, in Canada. His story has been covered extensively but superficially by the Canadian press, including the CBC. The clip I’m posting, from Canada’s DAILY GLEANER, is the most detailed coverage available (for the web version, click here):

Judge finds former TV host guilty

By MICHAEL STAPLES
staples.michael@dailygleaner.com
Wednesday February 27th, 2008
Appeared on page A1

A former Fredericton TV talk show host found guilty in provincial court Tuesday of accessing child pornography will return for sentencing next month.

Dennis Melanson appeared upset after Judge Graydon Nicholas delivered his verdict. He could receive a jail sentence when he returns to court March 13 at 1:30 p.m.

Melanson, who was charged with accessing child pornography between Jan. 1, 2005, and May 10, 2005, admitted during his trial that he visited child pornography sites on a computer at Rogers Television during the timeline in question.

But he said he was researching the subject as a possible topic for his call-in talk show.

Nicholas said he could accept that argument up to a point, but not after February 2005, the date when Melanson talked to an RCMP officer about child pornography.

Sgt. Jacques Boucher, a cybercrime instructor at the Canada Police College, testified last summer that he appeared on Melanson’s TV show, Melanson Live, in February 2005 to speak about Internet safety.

He said that after the show, he and Melanson discussed briefly the possibility of him returning for another episode to talk about child pornography.

“In my opinion, the surfing the defendant did up to (the) RCMP interview could be educational,” Nicholas said.

Up to that point, the Crown failed to prove its case, Nicholas said. But the fact that Melanson continued to surf the Net for child-porn sites up until May went beyond the desired research, the judge said.

“It is my opinion, the defendant is guilty,” Nicholas said.

He said his decision was a difficult one because of a lack of case law.

Other than the Sharp Decision in 2001, which said there was no accessing child pornography unless it was for a purpose of education, nothing else was available.

Defining how the topic could be applied to education was unclear, he said.

“(There’s) not much case law as to what is an educational purpose.”

In bringing down his verdict, Nicholas warned the public of the consequences of going into areas such as child-porn sites that are forbidden under the Criminal Code of Canada.

Appropriate legal advice should be obtained, Nicholas said.

Melanson, meanwhile, offered no comment as he exited the courtroom and quickly left the building.

But his lawyer, Howard Peters of Fredericton, said his client was disappointed.

“I thought the evidence was clear, following the discussion with Mr. Watters and the RCMP that Mr. Melanson had given the appropriate parties the heads up that he was doing this research or intending to do this research for his shows, which was educational,” Peters said.

Fredericton lawyer Daniel Watters told the court during testimony in November that he encouraged the former host of Melanson Live to do a show on child pornography and that he could surf the Net to see how many images there were, but not to download anything.

Peters agreed there wasn’t much case law and that could be used as grounds for appeal.

The defence lawyer said he wouldn’t do anything differently if he had the trial to do over.

“We knew it was going to come down to a question of this definition or interpretation of education.”

Peters said under the Criminal Code of Canada, such a verdict mandates a jail sentence, but that he would be arguing for a conditional sentence — especially taking into consideration the type of evidence that came forward.

Crown prosecutor Kathy Gregory said she was pleased with the verdict.

Who’s the bad guy: Francisco Javier Dominguez Rivera or Nicholas Corbett? The first was a young Mexican man and four-year resident of California who was killed last year by Corbett, a Border Patrol agent. Today in Tucson (see link), Corbett goes on trial, accused of murdering Dominguez Rivera when he was crossing from Mexico into Arizona early last year. Dominguez Rivera had gone home to Mexico in late 2006 to

Francisco Javier Dominguez Rivera

visit his family. He was killed while making his return trip to the New York City area* in January 2007. He was undocumented, hence the desert crossing through Arizona when Corbett apprehended and shot him.

The trial is starting today, and I’m waiting for the press to get into the background of both these guys. Especially Dominguez Rivera’s. Because he had a “Vida Loca” tattoo on his hand, there’s lots of loose talk that he was a gang member or some such scuzz.

Is that likely?

I visited Dominguez Rivera’s family in Mexico last year right after he was killed. I spoke with friends and neighbors. I poked

Nicholas Corbett

around his bedroom and examined things like the DVD’s he liked to watch. The only impression I got was that he was a really nice kid. I took some pictures and wrote a photo essay for the Tucson Weekly. Click here to see it.

Word is that Dominguez Rivera’s parents, Laura and Renato, are in Arizona for the trial. I urge the press to go to talk to them, and also to visit his neighborhood in Cuautla, Morelos, to speak with neighbors. He had a girlfriend in the US, too. Go find her. And Dominguez Rivera’s New York City-area neighbors, too.

Do the same for Corbett, who is from suburban Philadelphia and didn’t join the Border Patrol until he was almost too old for the age cutoff (35). What was he doing before? Who was he when he joined? And afterward?

Humanize both these men for your readers and watchers and listeners. This immigration issue is so huge and deep that we need more than trials to explain it.

Francisco’s baby pictures

*My Tucson Weekly article has Francisco traveling to and living in California. One of his parents told me that. The other said he was in Stamford, CT, near New York. It turns out I erroneously went with California in the Weekly piece — trial testimony places him in Stamford, working at a cereal factory. His dad also told me he was at a cereal factory.