Daniel Pipes advocates Concentration Camps

[Moses]

Columnist Pipes Calls for Crackdown on Civil Liberties for all Muslim-Americans [/size]

By E&P Staff

Published: December 31, 2004 1:00 pm ET

NEW YORK When an opinion survey released by Cornell University last week found that 44% of Americans wanted to curtail the civil liberties of all Muslim-Americans, with better than one in four saying they should all be required to register their location with the federal government, many commentators expressed concern. Not syndicated columnist Daniel Pipes, however.

In his latest column he declares that he was “encouraged” by the Cornell survey, calling it “good news.” But he also identifies “the bad news,” which he describes as “the near-universal disapproval of this realism. Leftist and Islamist organizations have so successfully influenced public opinion that polite society shies away from endorsing a focus on Muslims.”<br>
In addition to those who want all Muslim-Americans to register, 29% agree that law enforcement agents should infiltrate Muslim civic and volunteer organizations, and 22% said the federal government should profile citizens as potential threats based on the fact that they are Muslim or have Middle Eastern heritage.

Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum, says the backlash against such notions stems from a “revisionist” negative view of the Japanese internment during World War II wielded by such “radical groups” as the American Civil Liberties Union.

He hailed the recent work of columnist Michelle Malkin, who supports the Japanese internment and claims the apology by President Ronald Reagan in 1988, plus the nearly $1.65 billion in reparations paid to former internees, was premised on faulty scholarship.

According to Pipes: “Malkin has done the singular service of breaking the academic single-note scholarship on a critical subject, cutting through a shabby, stultifying consensus to reveal how, given what was known and not known at the time,’ FDR and his staff did the right thing.

“She correctly concludes that, especially in time of war, governments should take into account nationality, ethnicity, and religious affiliation in their homeland security policies and engage in what she calls ‘threat profiling.’<br>
“These steps may entail bothersome or offensive measures but, she argues, they are preferable to ‘being incinerated at your office desk by a flaming hijacked plane.’”

[Moses]

Thu, Dec. 30, 2004

Why the Japanese internment still matters
By Daniel Pipes
Middle East Forum[/color][/b]

For years, it has been my position that the threat of radical Islam implies an imperative to focus security measures on Muslims. If searching for rapists, one looks only at the male population. Similarly, if searching for Islamists (adherents of radical Islam), one looks at the Muslim population.

And so, I was encouraged by a just-released Cornell University opinion survey that finds nearly half the U.S. population agreeing with this proposition.

Specifically, 44 percent of Americans believe that government authorities should direct special attention toward Muslims living in the United States, either by registering their whereabouts, profiling them, monitoring their mosques or infiltrating their organizations.

That's the good news; the bad news is the near-universal disapproval of this realism. Leftist and Islamist organizations have so successfully influenced public opinion that polite society shies away from endorsing a focus on Muslims.

In the United States, this intimidation results in large part from a revisionist interpretation of the evacuation, relocation and internment of ethnic Japanese during World War II.

Denying that the treatment of ethnic Japanese resulted from legitimate national security concerns, this lobby has established that it resulted solely from a combination of "wartime hysteria" and "racial prejudice."

As radical groups like the American Civil Liberties Union wield this interpretation, in the words of columnist Michelle Malkin, "like a bludgeon over the War on Terror debate," they pre-empt efforts to build an effective defense against today's Islamist enemy.

The intrepid Malkin, a specialist on immigration, has re-opened the internment file.

Her recently published book, bearing the provocative title In Defense of Internment: The Case for Racial Profiling in World War II and the War on Terror (Regnery), starts with the unarguable premise that in time of war, "the survival of the nation comes first." From there, she draws the corollary that "Civil liberties are not sacrosanct."

She then reviews the historical record of the early 1940s and finds that:

• Within hours of the attacks on Pearl Harbor, two U.S. citizens of Japanese ancestry, with no history of anti-Americanism, shockingly collaborated with a Japanese soldier against their fellow Hawaiians.

• The Japanese government had established "an extensive espionage network within the United States" believed to include hundreds of agents.

• In contrast to loose talk about "American concentration camps," the relocation camps for Japanese were "Spartan facilities that were for the most part administered humanely." As proof, she notes that more than 200 individuals voluntarily chose to move into the camps.

• The relocation process itself won praise from Carey McWilliams, a contemporary leftist critic (and future editor of The Nation), for taking place "without a hitch."

• A federal panel that reviewed these issues in 1981-83, the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, was, Malkin explains, "Stacked with left-leaning lawyers, politicians, and civil rights activists -- but not a single military officer or intelligence expert."

• The apology for internment by Ronald Reagan in 1988, plus the nearly $1.65 billion in reparations paid to former internees, was premised on faulty scholarship. In particular, it largely ignored the top-secret decoding of Japanese diplomatic traffic, codenamed the MAGIC messages, which revealed Tokyo's plans to exploit Japanese-Americans.

Malkin has done the singular service of breaking the academic single-note scholarship on a critical subject, cutting through a shabby, stultifying consensus to reveal how, "given what was known and not known at the time," FDR and his staff did the right thing.

She correctly concludes that, especially in time of war, governments should take into account nationality, ethnicity, and religious affiliation in their homeland security policies and engage in what she calls "threat profiling."

These steps may entail bothersome or offensive measures but, she argues, they are preferable to "being incinerated at your office desk by a flaming hijacked plane."

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Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum. www.DanielPipes.org

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© 2004 Star-Telegram and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
www.dfw.com

[Moses]

Pipes Favors Concentration Camps

That the Revisionist-Zionist extremist Daniel Pipes has fond visions of rounding up Muslim Americans and putting them in concentration camps isn't a big surprise. That a mainstream American newspaper would publish this David-Dukeian evil is. Of course, this is also a man that President Bush appointed to a temporary vacancy at the United States Institute of Peace, after the Senate understandably balked at a regular appointment for him.

Pipes's little project requires him to attempt to justify the internment of American citizens (of Japanese ancestry) during World War II, a violation on several grounds of the Bill of Rights. I hope Asian-Americans realize that a key wing of the Republican Party, i.e. the Neoconservatives, wishes them ill.

If the American yahoos ever start putting people in concentration camps, I think we may be assured that they won't stop with the Muslims or the Asians, and Mr. Pipes will come to have reason to regret his imprudence and, frankly, his demonic implication.


posted by Juan @ 12/31/2004 06:25:13 AM

[Moses]

Robert Matsui: 1941-2005


Mon, Jan. 03, 2005

Japanese-Americans remember Rep. Robert Matsui as a champion

LAURA WIDES
Associated Press

LOS ANGELES - When then-House Speaker "Tip" O'Neal tapped freshman Rep. Robert Matsui for the House Immigration Committee, the first-generation Japanese-American demurred and instead sought a post on the House Ways and Means Committee.

Matsui, who as an infant was sent with his family to an internment camp during World War II, entered Congress determined not to be pigeonholed as the Asian-American representative. Still, he never forgot his roots and went on to champion the fight for reparations for internees.

On Monday Japanese-Americans across the state mourned the charismatic Democrat, who died Saturday of complications related to bone marrow cancer, months after winning a 14th term representing a Sacramento-area district.

Some took the loss particularly hard because the number of Japanese-Americans in Congress is in decline.

Matsui, 63, was extremely private and didn't even tell his top aides about his illness.

"I still can't believe it," said Rose Ochi, a Los Angeles police commissioner, who was interned at a camp in Arkansas.

Matsui, who rose to head the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, is credited with helping pass the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which promised $20,000 to each of the approximately 120,000 residents of Japanese ancestry who were rounded up and put in internment camps during World War II.

He also was instrumental in making the Manzanar internment camp in California into a national historic site.

Peggy Tokushige, 74, a receptionist at Yu-Ai Kai, a Japanese-American community senior service in San Jose, briefly shared quarters in Fresno with Matsui's family before being sent to an internment camp in 1942.

"At that time we had no inkling of what he was going to become," Tokushige said. "He has done so much for the Japanese community.... It's kind of a big loss to the Japanese people because we don't have that much representation right now."

Matsui is the third Japanese-American serving in Congress to die in recent years. Patsy Takomato Mink, D-Hawaii, died in 2002. Spark Matsanaga, a congressman and senator from Hawaii, died in 1990. Mike Honda, D-San Jose, is the remaining Japanese-American in the House of Representatives, along with Hawaii Democrats Daniel Akata and Daniel Inouye in the Senate.

On occasion Matsui spoke publicly about his internment experience, describing a friend in the school yard who once asked him if he had been in "jail" because he was a spy.

"I was never given a trial. I never went before any magistrate, nor did my parents. To this day, I do not know what the charges that were lodged against me or my deceased parents at this time," he said in a 2001 speech at the John F. Kennedy Library and Foundation.

But in private he did not dwell on the past and sought to make his mark in broader areas, fighting against privatization of Social Security, working on tax and trade issues and helping provide health care coverage for uninsured children.

He was passionate, but he did not pound his fist on tables to get his point across, recalled, U.S. Transportation Secretary Norm Mineta, who served in Congress with Matsui.

Mineta remembered only once seeing Matsui lose his composure. When witnesses came to Congress to testify about their experience in the camps, "I turned and looked at him, and he had tears in his eyes," Mineta said.

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Associated Press Writer Bilen Mesfin in San Francisco contributed to this report.

[Moses]

Exhibition - Isamu Noguchi: Master Sculptor
February 10, 2005 - May 8, 2005
Location: Hirshorn Museum and Sculpture Garden



The exhibition brings together approximately 55 sculptures and 25 works on paper, and is the first museum show in 30 years to focus on Noguchi's sculpture, as distinct from his commercial designs. Some have rarely or never before been seen in public.

Noguchi experimented with diverse and unusual materials, ranging from plaster, terra cotta, and bronze to paper, string, Magnesite cement, chrome, plastic, and electric lights. His sculptures hang on walls, suspend from armatures, repose on the floor, and stand like apparitional figures. Drawing upon many cultural sources throughout his long career, Noguchi created his own resolutely individual art, characterized by poetic metaphor and technical mastery.


The son of an American writer and a Japanese poet, Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988) traveled extensively throughout his life. For more than six decades as an artist, he sought to understand and integrate various aspects of Asian, American, and European culture.


This exhibition explores in depth Noguchi's sculptures from the 1940s after his life was abruptly changed by the United States' entry into World War II. Persuaded that his design expertise could improve internees' living conditions, Noguchi spent six months of voluntary imprisonment in a Japanese-American internment camp in 1942. He was profoundly shaken to find that his mixed parentage could cause many of his fellow citizens to consider him an enemy alien. This experience moved him to create landscape-like sculptures alluding to his fears and dreams of escape, including This Tortured Earth and Night Land.

After these dark works, Noguchi created a series using white Magnesite cement, and lit the organic shapes with multicolored electric lights, creating the Lunar sculptures, which glow evocatively in the dark. Isamu Noguchi: Master Sculptor reunites for the first time all seven of the surviving Lunars.

The show also features the remarkable interlocking totem sculptures of the 40s, most in their original materials such as wood, gray-green slate,and brown marble. For Noguchi, the materials and methods of these pieces express the fragility of the human psyche and the tenuousness of personal relationships and national alliances, as he stated in an interview with Katherine Kuh, "The very fragility gives a thrill.… It's like life-you can lose it at any moment."

General Information

Hirshorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
Museum hours: 10 am - 5:30 pm
Plaza hours: 7:30 am - 5:30 pm
Sculpture Garden hours: 7:30 am - dusk
Admission: Free
Address: Corner of Seventh Street SW and Independence Avenue
Metro: L'Enfant Plaza, Smithsonian Museums exit to Maryland Avenue and Seventh Street SW (Blue, Orange, Yellow, and Green lines)
Phone: [phone]