Web Letters | The Nation

This Year, Be More Generous Than Ever

Thank you, Katha Pollitt, for listing Youth Guidance in your article about giving. I am a teacher in Chicago public schools and taught in a school on the West Side that had Youth Guidance counselors. This is a social service agency that is privately funded and receives no money from CPS. Many school counselors are serving 1,000-plus students. Schools do not have social workers, so for schools like mine, Youth Guidance was a most important and integral part of our school community. Ninety-five percent of the students at my school were living at or below the poverty line, and for many of them I often wondered how they got out bed every morning and came to school. Our Youth Guidance counselors made such a positive impact on students and the school culture. They are absolutely worthy of being supported through our donations.

The Revolution Added Two Years: On Cairo

Take the passion out of the thesis

The journalist put effort, as an outsider, in collecting data about the subject (I was one of his interviewees). Yet I would argue that he collected the sort of data that meet his own preconceptions (which are secular by default). He stands, from my point of view, as an example of the notion that taking the passion out of the thesis is not an easy task to perform.

After Newtown, Beware Fear-Driven Policymaking

We need more analysis like this

MHP is on the mark. Thought and analysis, not mere emotional reaction, is necessary to deal with the issue of guns and gun violence. Two points requires greater attention. First—not dealt with here—is the role played by the business and industry of guns, and their diffusion and influence throughout society. But second is the complexity of the community dynamics seen in communities such as Newtown. The New York Times article “In Town at Ease With Its Firearms, Tightening Gun Rules Was Resisted”—which ran a couple of days after the killings and was buried immediately thereafter—confounds the ready kneejerk reactions presented in the media and from the pronouncements of politicians of all stripes. While we are understandably sensitive to the losses of so many families, little attention has been directed to the complexity and contention within the community itself that fostered a culture of guns.

Blocking VAWA, The GOP Keeps Up the War on Women

VAWA fosters false accusations

I was troubled very much by Erika Eichelberger’s lament at VAWA’s expiration, lacking as it does any recognition of the law’s grave defects, among them, the red carpet it offers to the immigrant female who wishes to gain a fast-track green card by leveling false accusations against her US resident spouse or domestic partner.

In October 2006, my wife, an immigrant from the Dominican Republic, who is bigger, stronger, and fifty pounds heavier than I, falsely accused me of first-degree forcible (later changed to third-degree nonforcible) rape, in order to win a fast-track green card under the Violence Against Women Act. She had been coached to do this by a cousin already residing in the United States.

I was banned and terminated by Barnard College as soon as they learned of the accusations against me, which led to a wrongful verdict, in October 2007, that was overturned on grounds of ineffective assistance of counsel in July 2008—prior to my acquittal of all charges at the conclusion of my second trial, in February 2009. See my profile in the National Registry of Exonerations.

By then—having been excluded from my profession for a year and a half, without even a job reference to show for my eight years of service to Barnard College, and unable to explain my termination without disqualifying myself instantly for every position I sought—at age 40 I found myself unemployable in the profession to which I had dedicated a BA from Cornell University, two master’s degrees and sixteen years of full-time experience. A considerably less qualified woman was recruited to replace me as Barnard College Archivist, while I collected unemployment benefits. Once those ran out, I was forced to subsist on part-time earnings as a tutor, paralegal, and interpreter, supplemented by Food Stamps and handouts from my mother. Health insurance was just a pipe dream. So I took the LSAT and was admitted to Brooklyn Law School, where, after a year’s leave of absence to attend to my dying father, I returned to full-time studies last year.

My case demonstrates that under the VAWA regime any man accused of domestic abuse is instantly guilty until proven innocent—except that our justice system does not permit anyone to be proven innocent; therefore, he is just permanently guilty, a victim of a latter-day bill of attainder: false accusations of domestic abuse, motivated by the promise of a fast-track green card under VAWA.

In addition to the protections it has afforded to genuinely abused women, the Violence Against Women Act and its implementing statutes and regulations have destroyed families and damaged children by promoting false allegations as a tool to gain the upper hand in divorce and, particularly in the case of immigrant women, to gain a fast-track green card—with no risk whatsoever to the false accuser. Thus, my wife could falsely accuse me to the police, the grand jury and the trial jury—without the slightest fear of ever being charged with perjury or anything else. Because of the myth that there is no such thing as nonforcible rape—belied by the modern penal law in New York and nearly every other state of the Union, which feminist and feminist-courting lawmakers (rightly or wrongly) modified decades ago to recognize a definition of felony rape so broad that it embraces accusing your husband of having sex with you when you claim you felt intimidated by him—which is “all” my wife falsely accused me of. (Of course, in New York women are never prosecuted for rape three, and almost never prosecuted for rape one and two.)

On March 18, 2010, I filed a malicious prosecution lawsuit in the Southern District of New York against my former wife, who, abetted by the New York Police Department and the New York County District Attorney’s Office, falsely and fraudulently accused me of nonforcible rape and battery in order to secure a fast-track green card pursuant to the Violence Against Women Act.

To reiterate, although I was in the end acquitted of all charges, it came at the price of my job of eight years and with it my career of sixteen years as a librarian and archivist, for the sake of which I had earned a bachelor’s and two master’s degrees; my health and retirement benefits; my reputation; three days in prison, during which I was illegally strip-searched; and $110,000 in legal fees, which exceeded my family’s life savings and mine.

Meanwhile, my accuser keeps her green card; and to add to the multiple counts of perjury she committed in 2007 and 2009, in February 2010 she gave or sold my identity information to a gentleman who took out a phony New York State driver’s license in my name and used that to obtain store credit, and then $3,640 in jewelry, from the Zales at 417 Fifth Avenue in New York. When I reported the identity theft and the grand larceny to my local police department—at the same station where I had been locked up after my instant arrest on the sole basis of my wife’s false accusations—the detective who took my report told me that he lacked the time to investigate these crimes, but I that should be grateful that I did not have to pay the bill for the stolen jewelry. He also told me that since my ex-wife had once accused me of abuse, my testimony against her in any prosecution for identity theft would have no credibility in court.

Finally, in the summer of 2010, I was repulsed to learn that one of the pre-eminent law firms on the planet, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, was defending my ex-wife pro bono against my malicious prosecution claim, which has cost me some $7,000 so far. She was referred to them by Sanctuary for Families, “the largest nonprofit in New York State dedicated exclusively to serving domestic violence victims and their children. Each year, Sanctuary helps thousands of victims and their children build safe lives by offering a range of high quality services to meet their complex needs. These services include clinical, legal, shelter, children’s and economic stability services.”

What a disgrace that Sanctuary for Families and Paul, Weiss would offer untold thousands’ worth of free services to someone who leveled transparently false rape allegations against her husband to gain a fast-track green card! But no surprise, given the windfall of benefits, private and public, that my accuser—who drank excessively and abused me during the entire course of our marriage—has reaped ever since she began to accuse me. And not to mention the criminal gains she enjoyed by trafficking in my identity information.

I am positive that if VAWA were less sweeping in granting impunity to the accusers and denying due process to the accused, that the unpunished crimes of my ex-wife and the destruction of my own life and career would not have been possible in the United States of America, purportedly a nation where men and women are equal under the law, and the accused presumed innocent.

I am equally positive, though of course the evidence is unattainable to me, that for every wrongfully convicted “murderer” currently doing time, there are ten wrongfully convicted “domestic abusers” doing time, while their false accusers enjoy permanent legal residency, the wealth of the falsely accused, full and permanent custody of any children, and all the other fruits of liberty and impunity that the United States has to offer under the VAWA regime.

Gun Control and Congress

Put a muzzle on them

Screw you and your yellow journalism. We really need reform in the controlled media. New laws regulating the Unfree Press in this country. The problem is not guns. Its The one-sided liberal propaganda. Shit floats and all the libs have risen to the top of the Industry. We need journalist control, not gun control.

The Journeys of Fred Halliday

Dialectics are all too rare to be found in The Nation, with its frequent prognostications about catastrophic election cycles. This lack was all to evident in Susie Linfield’s poorly executed essay on Fred Halliday. He is repeatedly described as possessing a “dialectical” mind, but she confidently quotes him as having claimed that communism’s “failure was necessary, not contingent.” That’s fatalism. (Linfield herself refers to the “fatal flaws of communism”). Dialectical thinking emphasizes that human thought and activity are conditioned by their unique historical moment; it also, necessarily, emphasizes the shaping of history (including our centuries-old communist history) by human beings—especially by those self-organized against the class system.

Roots of a Rampage

Shattered mirror

“Rampage shootings” is too generic to be helpful when, as in this case, there is defining singularity in the symbolism. “He blew his mother’s face off,” did Adam Lanza. Neurobiology has established that Mother’s fond gaze imprints the earliest connection between pre-frontal cortex function and response to amygdalan fear memories from fetal origins and birth trauma. The symbolism of Adam’s act blows away all rational protection against return of earliest terrors of helpless ‘persecution’ in the birth canal. The “motive”, in the sense of instinctual compulsion, is to obliterate the image of himself mirrored in her eyes. Or: hatred of the self he sees in her face. This motive, to obliterate the bond to reality through that image, continued to rule the slaughter of the schoolchildren, also reminders of himself through her.

And that is how it went through and affected all, through consciousness of sympathy, already raised at Christmastime.

In the symbolic narrative, the world of oppressive Mother (unnaturally amplified by son’s functional defict) is blasted by pre-Oedipal male protest (undifferentiated development). And that is how it existentially generalizes to threat to Nanny State Government, posed by similar immature males with guns.

The Trembling Upper World: On Siegfried Kracauer

I hadn't realized that Schuefftan worked on Metropolis. The officially credited lensers are Freund, Rittau and Ruttmann.

After Newtown, Beware Fear-Driven Policymaking

Let us reason together

I wish to thank the author of this article for cool, clear level-headness. In the wake of such a tragedy as we saw a week ago, people tend to be very easily led to a conclusion. Let’s place strict gun controls, says the president. After that there come many that want to take away our Second Amendment rights.

I came to this publication to blast the editor for remarks made elsewhere about control of guns. Looking at the list of articles, I saw this article. This author makes a good case for all Americans.

This type of dialogue is just what is needed at times like this. I didn’t expect to see this here. If all Americans would use this logic, our country would be well on its way to healing. The two parties would begin to work togather.

As all Americans know logically, a gun doesn’t kill. People kill. It’s not fair to take away guns from the millions that enjoy shooting for whatever sport they choose. Legally owining a gun is part of our history. Without gun ownership, we wouldn’t have been able to win our independence. It was the gun owners that beat back the enemany long enough for our young country to get the money and equip an army, to take over the defense of our nation.

It would not be proper to blame cars for the deaths that drunk drivers cause. Each year about 30,000 people die of gunshots. Each year about 40,000 people die in auto accidents. A good number of people killed in autos, are by drunk driver, but it wouldn’t be right to place controls on cars.

You could go on and on with this compairson. The fact that the author chose to use a level-headed approach impressed me. Thank you, and keep up the good work. We do need to try to stop some of the violence in our country. My belief is we need to make the parents responsible for part of this. If the parent can’t control the child, then we need to have a system in place to help them

Five Assault Weapons You Can Pick up at Walmart [PHOTOS]

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