Joined in Outrage
May 2, 2008
After more than 110,000 Japanese Americans were interned in desolate camps for three years during World War II, many said “Never again.”
Never would the United States turn its back on its own citizens — some of whom were born here and had roots in this country stretching back generations — imprisoning them out of widespread fear and irrational panic.
But as history has taught us too many times: Never say never.
The parallel experiences of Japanese Americans during World War II and Muslim, Middle Eastern and South Asian Americans post-9/11 were underscored last weekend when, as Emily Leach reports in this issue, Muslim Americans joined Japanese Americans on their annual pilgrimage to Manzanar, the most widely known internment camp.
The system for targeting non-citizen Muslim males, called the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System, was even modeled straight from the process that imprisoned Japanese Americans. More than 80,000 immigrants have been registered through NSEERS, and more than 13,000 deported.
But these groups were bonded not by victimhood but outrage. Outrage at a country they had embraced as their own, as part of themselves, that had cast them out, violently. A country that had dehumanized them, replacing names with ID numbers, and held them in barbed wire outposts that were essentially prisons.
Japanese Americans and Muslim Americans on the pilgrimage agreed that the most basic shared trait between them was innocence. “The discussion came up about the commonalities with the Holocaust, the internment and post-9/11, and the bottom line is a lot of good people who didn’t do anything were targeted,” one attendee said.
To ensure that a community’s dignity and humanity are never taken away again, we must, like the two communities last weekend, join together with other people of color and marginalized communities to strengthen our voices and bind our arms, learn our shared stories in America and create new ones.
The barrenness of Manzanar surprised Muslim Americans on the trip. “When I first saw Manzanar, I saw nothing — shrubs and twisted branches. I was swept with a feeling of loss.”
We must make sure that this history and memory are not lost.
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24 Responses to “Joined in Outrage”
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History repeating itself, the chain needs to be broken. It’s really upsetting and awful what Muslim, Middle Eastern and South Asian Americans are subjected to in America today. Taking the models straight from the internment camp process is disgusting, just an utter disgrace that America is using what they did to Japanese Americans and are now applying it to another group. But it is amazing that these groups are coming together to support each other. I absolutely agree, we minority groups in this country cannot turn a blind eye to injustices again and again. We need to unite through commonalities and experiences and stand up for each other.
What drivel!
“The system for targeting non-citizen Muslim males…”
They are NOT US CITIZENS. What are you crying about? The piece never says WHY 13,000 were deported. It’s probably terrorism related and when you keep in mind the fact they are not US citizens, you can keep your bleeding heart.
Folks:
This is getting funnier by the minute.
Literally.
Although it still hurts when I laugh here.
First of all, Anh Tran, you never did answer as to WHEN you “arrived.” I’ve been here 88 years and counting.
Methinks you are overly impressed with your “legal” status and far too “secure” in your BELIEF that such “status” is forever “quo.”
On that last point, I have news for you, personally experienced almost 60 years ago AND repeating today, in a very “real:” sense.
So long as you continue to play your “house slave” role, like that Nguyen kid in the CNN “experts” talking-head panels a few years back, or even John Yoo, he of the infamous “waterboarding” is not only legal but de rigueur in Guantanamo, you may well be “safe.”
Along with those married to chief-high-poobahs in the Beltway. But if you are simply just one more easily misidentified face in a lineup, anywhere, or even in a line at the airport, you may well find yourself hoist on YOUR petard of being overly grateful for being “admitted.”
As for Marcus H, the way things are going, I doubt very much ANY “Asian” with smarts would even want to BE in this country. Our great and glorious universities have, increasingly, become second-class, at best, “higher institutes of learning.”
When the redoubtable Dershowitz, of Harvard yet, can be caught up in the pitiable likes of internecine, Jewish here, “tenure” in same, it is high time to question the validity of such claims.
Oh, and Anh, whereas Paul Craig Roberts HAD to be a “conservative” when he served as a Reaganite, today, he is a consistent contributor to the likes of Info Clearing House, and/or Counterpunch, either 0r both of which DO, I believe, qualify as “progressive,” in these days of diminishing significsnce in labels and values thereof.
Finally, kiddo, I ask you, as I did another compatriot, now that you have “yours,” you would deny the “privilege” to others? How sad. Not to mention purely selfish.
And back to Marcus H, I’ve been here likely far too long to suit many, but the fact is I AM a “native-born” citizen who damned well claims ALL his “rights” and privileges, with or WITHO UT the ACLU. Never used them and never will. I’ll fight my own battles just as I have taken care of my own health, such as it is or is not, SANS either Medicare OR VA input.
Not that the latter are to be diss’d. They’re doing the best job they can with the leavin’s the likes of this administration allows them. As for Medicare, the ONLY possible solution is a one-payer system, as that dear and endearing Michael Moore has been insisting.
And both of you: MASS importations? The last I recall is that occasioned by our idiocies in Vietnam AND Cambodia, where we never instituted “war.”
Which brings us to today, where one of the Cockburns on Counterpunch uppoints the continuing threat of further Bushy-tailed idiocies in Iran.
Our No. ! “enemy.”
My vote for said position of honor is this administration itself, the greatest “terrorist” of ALL time. To date, that is.
As for the PRC being outed as No. 3 and scaring the beJesus out of 3-mil Chinese-Americans, count me the exception here, and, may I ask, how can you further “scare” someone who is closing in on 89. I’ve been 86′d out of my share of bars too.
And I’ve been, literally, trailed and snapshotted, bnck when I was young and handsomer, by the idiot FBI, when all they had to do was ask. I had nothing to hide then, nor do I now but for the fact that I insist I totter when they say I teerer.
Spies and spying? Reazd today’s hilarious LATimes account of ricebowl spies like that Taiwanese guy spying in Hainan Island for “Taiwan.”
C’mon guys, at least credit me with enough smarts to know that Taiwan needs that info like I need one more hole in my pointy head than I already have.
So, when are we going to nuke the Mainland. Before or after Tehran.
Oh, I almost forgot, today’s online gleanings include a revelatory, to me at least, “book review” of one Akex Abella’s new tome, “Soldiers of Reason . . . ”
An expose? of the inner workings and history of the Rand Corp. “think tank,” a WWII offshoot of the Army Air Corps, just as the CIA is vis-a-vis the Office of Strategic Services?
Whatever, Johnson, an occasional “fellow” of said think tank, seems to consider the book more hagiography than expose, although to me, it’s expose enough.
To think, I lived for decades, literally cheek-by-jowl to the Laurel Canyon enclaves of the “wine-drinking,” “pool-partying” principals involved. And Rand was/is a Santa Monica entity? Are you listening, Digby?
Ennahoo, what gave me several charges and rises wasn’t so much the “Daniel Ellsberg” affair, but a seeming recollection that J. Robert Oppenheimer himself had second thoughts about his part in the A-bomb, unlike the literally by-the-numbers types predominating the Rand scene.
As Chalmers Johnson points out, all these whiz-kid, gee=whiz geniuses forgot was the X factor, the nonphenomenazl and immeasurable element of the spirit, the psyche, the sine qua non that is itself purely human and totally nonquantiable.
Upshot, to me at least:
THIS is thc cesspool, the cloaca, of human hubris and human arrogance, where numbers rule, and the individuzal does NOT exist. Well, make thzat “matter.”
As in consequences, or “blownback,” or blowby, or “blow,” for that matter.
What struck me is, HERE, here lies the fallow idiot ground for the “neocon” idiocies.
And these furrows continue to sprout noxious weeds.
As for the paranoia the “Backlash” piece should engender, it is NOT paranoia when the threat is real, as witness all those swiftboating Sinophobic “thugs and goons” like Jim Erbes, and their “enablers,” like our Christian. Et tui, Emil?
A final, funny:, thought here, to wit:
Were I moneyed, as in solvent, I would consider hiring, at a “living” wage mind you, someone to sport a lightweight. plastic? as in thank my Monsanto gods. sandwich board that proclaims, front and back, “Shills and Pimps,” and pay him/her to parade, politely and not blocking either ingress or egress, in front of EVERY CNN office, especially the home in Atlanta, the satellites in D.C. AND in Gotham, plus the one in Lalaland.
Said hireling is to smile at all the mere hirelings, sincerely at that. but to make certain to now to the bigwigs, AND when they spot either Lou Dobss OR Jack Cafferty to chant, ever so politely, “Are you ‘goon,’ or are you ‘thug’?
Ah, I can dream, mayn’t I?
That is, IF “freedom of speech” is still extaznt in this land of the brave and home of the free. You too, Anh.
Okay.
Forgive me my misspellings and typos.
IdEology.
UnquantifIABLE, errant fingers.
Other typos courtesy of need for backup.
Heh. And hah.
“Buber embraced the idea of a “shared” political establishment with Palestinians.
Therefore, I propose the coining of yet one more neologism, “neo-Zionism” for those who deny the rights of subjugated, apartheid?, neighbors.
And, in that respect, I admit to anti-neo-Zionism
Frank Eng on Nov 10, 2007
That’s your Eng in his magnanimous form.. giving a decent shake to a possibly workable idea: shared politics and government to solve the intractable issue.
Now mention the Dalai Lama, with his meagre demands, and Eng is in the taunting ring with his own, you know, Han tribe, paranoid cultural super-ego revealed, knee flexes of the fatherland overruling detached reason. There he will be, commiserating, of course the DL is a megalomaniac not worthy of a moment’s dialogue. Sure, he pours on his verbal salad dressing to avoid the obvious appearances, but to no avail. Eng looks to have some Dr Jekyl & Mr. Goon&Thugs syndrome seen out in the light. Except I think each one knows quite much of the other, the makings of a true hypocrite and subconscious liar.
Guys:
I refuse to demean myself by deigning to address the likes of that “Erbes: chap, so, will someone please prove kind enough to advise him that:
First, there are those who love rather than hate.
Second, those who believe giving is the better part of taking.
Third, that, at the very least, HALF of humanity MUST believe that the nurturing, caring instinct, genetically, can be the ONLY way of life, of honoring the “human” in humankind — else the species is doomed.
Frank Eng
P.S.: All those smartasses who insist that EVERYone else is constituted in their own shameful, meaningless, and pitiful “lives” are deluted by their own arrogance and assumptions. Money and “power” are ideational concepts, not “realities.” And only the individual who recognizes and begins to understand the relativities of life and living is blessed. The rest are consigned to the living Hell of the darkness of their individuazl nights.
I don’t have an issue with the US doing what is needed to make this country safe. If all Chinese were sent to camps if a war broke out between China and the US, its probably safer to be off the streets anyway. The issue that I have is when we do it to one group and not another. The Germans and Italians were not sent to camps during WWII, because they were whites.
While it is necessary to attack Islamic extremism, and countries that harbor terrorism, we must also stop harboring terrorism of our own, the KKK, who terrorize blacks and minorities. They’re like the Jinjaweeds of America. Mia where art thou? KKK members hold many goverment post and law enforcement jobs. Expect these hate groups to revive as the economy collapses. Is this paranoia? Providing a safe place for our citizens to live and work is the most basic of all human rights. Men in white robes burning down houses are common images associated with the KKK. That’s what you call despicable.
Dear Huang Fong:
I honor your thoughtful and caring viewpoints, and, very especially, am enlightened by some of your references and insights relative to the thorny “basklash”/”bashing” issues of late between this oountry and the PRC.
But, I absolutely part company with you, respectfully of course, with all but the racial reference therein, to the first paragraph of yours above.
“Safe”?
Safety for whom and from what?
In the case cited, it appears to me that Chinese-Americans, indeed, ALL “minorities,” need to be SAFE from the haters and bashers, and an administration AND agencies, like the so-called “Homeland Security” crowd AND the “great job, Brownie” FEMA bunch, rather than to any “foreign” danger. For certain.
‘As for the safety from the likes of the KKK, and their cronies IN the halls of governance AND “policing,” it is the swearing-in job AND obligation of same to uphold the LAWS of the land rather than indulge their bigoted and brutal practices.
When the “new” term, “thugs and goons,” taking over from “shock and awe,” are applied in the media these days, they refer only to those perceived on the Mainland, and never to the living, breathing, oppressors raht-cheer.
No, dear Huang Fong, this would be the WORST possible time for Chinese-Americans, in my view, ALL Americans, to submit to the proposition that it is “safer” to be in a veritable “concentration camp,” of whatever denomination, guise, OR practice.
And I doubt very much, today is NOT ‘41, that many would quietly march to the beat of THAT drummer.
It isn’t simply that the Japanese-American citizens in ‘42 were literally dispossessed, they had, what?, three days?, in which to divest themselves of their “holdings,” before being herded into Manzanar, Heart Mountain?, and other Yankee equivalences to their bigger, nastier, and totally obscene Nazi prototypes.
But, bottom line here, the ultimate obscenity and absolute injustice is the stripping of dignity and individuality, not to mention any possibility of the “free” and “democratic” right to the pursuit of “happiness,” never mind your own bed and board and “ambiance.”
And this is why I challenge Emil, for one, Art Hu for another, to JUSTIFY their veiled stances of Sinophobia herein.
Emil, YOUR candidate, Billary, has proved beyond a doubt to be Lieberman Lite. Indeed, she has positioned herself to the Right of McCain, at least thus far, in re “Iran.”
As for the end-game Mainland, gee, if those Pentagon geniuses, along with their think-tank gurus, targeted a mere 114?, or was it 144? “major” “Soviet” cities back in the good ol’ Cold War days for first-strike pre-emptive nuking, can you imagine the blinking, buzzing map of at the very least double the number of “major” “Chinese” “cities” today?
Apparently Hiroshima and Nagasaki were but trial runs, and what are a few more million “gooks”? A billion? That too.
These idiot assholes are the absolute dregs of what we cheerfully refer to as “civilized” “western” “scientific” leaders and shakers.
They are the proud progenitors and proprietors of the most destructive and insane arsenal in the “history” of humankind, to date.
Trust me, Huang, idiot and doddering would-be observer from “another planet” as I am, “China” will NOT be the one to incept any war that “breaks out” here.
And, if they have not learned from Iraq, as apparently they have not, and if they play children’s games with other peoples’ lives as they do in Colombia/Venezuela and, today, in Bolivia’s “westernmost,” and most prosperours and buyable province, and with Admiral Fallon interdicted, Iran can still be nest.
And, if so, can the Mainland lag far behind?
In such exercises and the considerations thereof, I refer you to yesterday’s? Chalmers Johnson’”review” of the new tome on the inner workings of the Rand Corp. think-tank crowd, whose “evil” droppings continue to strew the global landscape with guano of the infernal kind.
No, Huang, if your lovely little daughter is to be “safe,” I doubt she would be any safer in a “relocation center” than in Justin Herman P laza OR the Embarcadero, where some 12,000 of my peers appear to have materialized, overnight, to the etonnement of those 6500 “torch” “protestors.”
Frank Eng
P.S.: At the very same moment, I must give pause to today’s cautionary account in MSNBC about cadre accountings in neighborning nations and their farms and farmers and farming. Now, there would appear to be the beginnings of plausibble rivals to Monsanto and duPont?
Is THAT the true casus belli here? A pox on both their houses. But, at least, Dalai “clique” talks are ongoing in Beijing? And whatever happened to the Barmata? He LOOKED like a likelier pin-up for the West.
Did I neglect to mention, in the above regard, both “life” and “LIBERTY”? As for “pursuits,” chacun a son gout.
Dang me.
Forgot just one more word, yet, to wit:
EXPROPRIATION.
Didn’t the Colonies toss tea into Boston Harbor?
Whatever, taxation without representation continues apace in the Beltway.
And the possibility, probability?, of mass incarcerations sans habeas corpus, forget trial by one’s peers, should beget worse.
I hope so. I believe so. I pray so, infidel that I remain.
What else can one say about the face of the renewed ugly China___? Your “Jinjaweeds” are bought and paid for by China, burning down scrubby little houses with people in em right this very minute so China can have a steady supply of –>OIL<–! But no way Jose, the Han piggies can’t admit to outsourcing the dirtiest of work.
I’d have to say the KKK over here is a bit on the retired side, and some even reformed enough to think about voting for Obama! having heard firsthand these practical blue collar guys who want to teach the establishment a lesson. Anyway, only people burning down houses today are said Janjaweed patrolling Darfur as outsourced by Eng’s & Fong’s Han tribesmen.
All of this brings to mind how a billion Chinese screaming at the Dalai Lama make those AZ Minutemen look tame in comparison.
wow, jim… beeravo!
interesting juxtapositions !
“az minutemen” & “billion screaming at the dalai
lama”
never heard “janjaweed” & “han piggies”
used in same breath,either!
Apparently the Eng approach is to drown your opponent in meaningless verbosity.
“he is a consistent contributor to the likes of Info Clearing House, and/or Counterpunch, either 0r both of which DO, I believe, qualify as “progressive”
You are foolish. Paul Craigs Robert is a paleoconservative; he only writes for those publications due to his anti-war stance (which is far more conservative than liberal). Moreover, PCR writes regularly on anti-immigration issues for VDARE, an immigration reduction non-profit group. Feel free to Wiki him as well, and you’ll see he refers to himself as a “true conservative”.
“KKK members hold many goverment post and law enforcement jobs. Expect these hate groups to revive as the economy collapses.”
Ah, the phantom of the KKK. The KKK is virtually defunct in America and your conjecture they hold “many government posts” is beyond absurd. Leftists use the KKK as the perpetual spectre of “racism” when in reality they are a hundred times more likely to be assaulted or murdered by black or latino gangs. Leftists, indoctrinated in a collegiate bubble, have an extremely delusional view of the world are apt to search for racism where there is none. And in that case, they simply create the racism so they have something to attack.
I thank god most Asian-Americans don’t buy into this racial wheelbarrowing that seems to plague this site.
While the Han piggies are busy building schools, hospitals, ports and roads in Africa, our American tribesmen are blowing them up in Iraq. While Eng’s & Fong’s Han tribesmen are building railroads, schools and hospitals in Tibet, China, the “Clique du Dala” are burning them down. Which one is the lesser of two evil, even the blind can see.
It seems that the US has become so efficient at destroying, that we may forgot how to build. Many of the jobs that were contracted out to US company for Iraq reconstruction, were left incomplete. They had to subcontract it out to China to get it done. The only thing that we can build efficiently here are war machines and fences. Patriotic Americans needs to stop playing the blame games like our politicians. Its dangerous to kick someone when you’re standing on ice.
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/0314immigration-tone0314.html
Hate groups like the KKK are making a comeback nationwide. Right now it is being fed by anti-immigration. If the economy worsens, and unemployment increases, I would expect the violence to increase. KKK is not only making a comeback in this country, but also in Europe and Australia. Hate groups are illegal in Canada, yet KKK members are growing their as well legally.
http://www.knightskkk.com/mainpage.html
Check out their website and see just how much they love Obama. Maybe they have reformed, but far from retiring and still lots of hate to share.
http://www.davidduke.com/general/about_90.html
If you think their invisible hand is not operating in government offices, you may be naive. I am sure their are more invisible members like David Duke. As the first article stated “The denial of the reality, I’m hoping it ends.”
Guys:
When it comes to “war” and “peace,” never having been able to get beyond page 50 of that translated classic, I, for one, Fong will have to speak for himself, which he does so ably, I give not a damn whether the subscriber to peace, against war is “conservative” OR “liberal.”
Both ideations, today at least, are meaningless in both converse and media.
But, Anh, liberalism embraces “war”?
If so, I resign.
And, also, my young, you ARE younger?, ancient Asian preceprs here, guys, friend, the fact that I am “foolish,” for sure, over most if not all of my superannuated years, does not, I repeat, NOT make YOU “wise.”
As for Paul Craig Roberts, his antiwar stance alone, his years as a Reagan plutocrat notwithstanding, endears him to ALL violence-loathing creatures EVERYwhere, including the er, ah, arguably “human.”
And, idiots, I repeat, “idiots,” who proclaim true love and reverence for the Dalai Lama, and I grudge you not, the while they cite “janjaweeed” rapists and murderers as the work of “Han” African colonialists, for “oil” yet, well, let’s let “history” be the judge. As to exactly WHO is culpable, and who is MORE culpable than the other.
You may call me names, or jeer, or taunt, but, no, you have neither my attention NOR my contemplation. Besides, I’m a “Tang” ren. And that AFTER I am a native-born American citizen, netixen as well, who KNOWS his own rights and privileges, even if some of you would deny them me.
In the event you take me to court, then, alas!, I may finally have to turn to the ACLU.
Frank Eng
P.S.: Anh, are you still fighting “communism”?
If so, YOU are the “fool.”
The Janjaweed ARE carrying Chinese machine guns firing Chinese ammo… same kind found on the slow boat to Zimbabwe that was stopped in recent days by conscious Africans who apparently have some real concern about their less empoweed Africans under the wreckless hand of another old fool, Mugabe. The old fool of the moment’s only concern for others aside from his own, whatever he may call them, is boilerplate. History has called in early on this one.
http://www.motherjones.com/news/special_reports/arms/indonesia.html
Maybe we should also take a better look at Indonesia where we are training their mighty military with our great weapons(of shock and awe) to suppress the Acehese of East Timor so ExxonMobile can keep the oil flowing. As I said, its dangerous to kick someone when you’re standing on ice.
Guys:
One more old fool checking in. Again.
About arms and ammo, they ALL kill and destroy, whatever the source or imprimatur. And wanna bet that both “ours” AND the USSR’s brands predominate.
All over this er, ah “civilized” globe?
And NOTHING can hide the obvious fact: those who incite and inflame hatreds, of whatever stripe, are guilty of adding to the auto-da-fe this world seems to insist on, whatever the epoch and whatsoever the “issues” of the day.
The “Erbeses” are FULL of hate, and their bile poisons one and all.
Now, back to more important things, like today’s Part 2 of Pam Martenses’ two-parter on Obama’s Wall Street backers.
Read it and weep? Well, maybe laugh as well.
Still, on the single, tiny point of difference between the three “front-runners,” Obama at least professes to “talk” before “nuking.”
Little if anything has changed in American politics and American perceptions.
And nothing WILL, until REregulation becomes the norm AND law of the land.
Pam Martenses’ analysis of Obamania and its Wall Street backers and lobbyists is clear and simple. AND persuasive, to say the least.
It is pegged on stats that, if correct and I doubt it not, clearly places the Obama campaign squarely in the “mainstream” of old-time politics.
And one crucial point here is Obama’s 2005 vote on the “class-action fairness act.” Pro-Establishment and anti-populist.
All that said, does it make either Billary OR McCain more “palatable”? ‘Fraid not.
Since this country is, patently and egregiously, the most “powerful” and most lethally “armed” nation-state on earth today, it is this old fool’s belief that the following priorities stand for ALL children, women, and men of “good will,” of all tribez and nations, creeds and cultures, faiths and “isms,” to wit:
1: An effective STOP to access to the Iran button.
2: An “honorable” and “decent,” as much as possible, “withdrawal” from Iraq.
3: A return to focus on daunting domestic needs and issues, including employment, the intrastructure, “health-care,” “education,” legalizing and controlling/taxing “recreational” “drugs,” reexamining and reorienting “judicial” applications all around, a new “fix” on “immigration,” since “fences” are useless, and, maybe, just maybe, inaugurate a federal effort aimed at studying both “sexuality” AND “violence,” and our societal kneejerk responses thereto.
Yeah, and tomorrow, die ganze welt.
After all of which, each of us can repair to our personal and individual spiritual retreats — church, synagogue, mosque, temple — and thank our respective “God.”
Agnostics and atheists are on their own. And happy to be so and do so.
Frank Eng
P.S.: Where ARE you, Mohandas K.?
Folks:
Worse come to worst:
At the very least, I hope the young and the hopeful, the “change” mongers, the peacemakerws among us in the Democratic Party will, at the very least, be able to NAIL in an ANTI-war and Pro-Peace plank into the party “platform” before launching the party campaign for President.
NAIL the nominee to THAT true-blue and true “Christian” “cross.”
Folks:
Can’t stop yakking, Purely subjective.
Can’t stop thinking . . .
That the Nobel “prizes” for the “sciences” AND, very especially, the “peace prize,” are rooted in the fact that Alfred Nobel’s fortune and legacy are beholden to his turning nitroglycerin into “dynamite.”
It’s a “poetic” irony to rival that of the neo-Zionists’.
Arms and armaments, anyone?
wow, frank
the light just went on
what an irony & hilarity that
epiphany was…!!!
funny.
In addition to hijacking planes, Muslims are now apparently hijacking the history of Japanese Americans. This is a PR stunt by Muslim organizations that grossly exaggerate their mistreatment after 9/11. It’s very American though, everybody’s oppressed. Boo hoo.
Amen, Tim.