Now it’s USC—will they knuckle under?

Just posted in the OC Register: Little Saigon activists tell USC to take down Vietnam flag

.....Activists from Little Saigon say they are putting the University of Southern California on notice over a Socialist Republic of Vietnam flag that flies on campus.
.....Three activists – Hung Nguyen, An Son Tran and Tung X. Nguyen – approached an employee of the University Relations department on campus last week to make an official request that the school remove what is perceived as the communist flag by Vietnamese Americans or replace it with the red and yellow former South Vietnamese flag.
....."The red and yellow flag is the official flag of the Vietnamese American community," Hung Nguyen said. "The university has hundreds if not thousands of students from our community and they should honor our sentiments about the flag."
.....But USC officials don't plan to remove or replace the flag, said university spokesman James Grant.
.....USC is among the nation's most diverse campuses and has thousands of international students attending, Grant said. So far, no student has complained about this particular flag, he said.
....."The flags have been in our main building for a long time," he said. "They were made to conform to state and United Nations standards. We see no need to take them down."
.....The activists approached Irvine Valley College last month with a similar request. The college took down its entire exhibit of miniature flags from 144 countries after Westminster Councilman Andy Quach and Garden Grove Councilwoman Dina Nguyen and the activists objected to the presence of the communist flag in the exhibit.
.....Hung Nguyen said he and others intend to visit all California's campuses and urge them to remove the communist flag.
.....The Union of Vietnamese Student Associations, based in Garden Grove, also sent out a letter to USC two weeks ago after a Vietnamese American student there told them about the flag, said Bao Mai, a senior member of the student union.
.....“We have a good community of Vietnamese students, a few hundred, in USC,” he said. “We don’t want to see a large-scale protest happen there. We want to resolve the issue before that.”
.....But the students union would certainly join in a protest if it happens because USC has a Vietnamese Student Association on campus and is a member of the union, Mai said.
.....Hung Nguyen said community members from Little Saigon will attempt to have a discussion with top USC officials to make them see why the local Vietnamese American community is extremely sensitive to the issue.
.....The rapidly growing Little Saigon community is primarily composed of refugees who fled Vietnam in the '70s and '80s after the communist takeover in that country in 1975.
....."Our first step is to give them the information," he said. "The second step is to have a discussion between our Vietnamese elected officials and university officials to see if they will take down the communist flag. Our last resort will be to protest the university's approach to this issue."
.....Quach said he has not been approached by Nguyen to talk to university officials.
....."It is of course at the discretion of the university, but I don't think the university understands the political and emotional implications of their decision," he said.
.....Quach said he might send them a video tape of the 1999 protest of a Little Saigon video store owner who displayed a large banner of Ho Chi Minh outside his store. Thousands thronged outside the store in protest.
....."The video will show them how strongly anti-communist this community is and how strongly we feel about it," Quach said.
.....Grant said the university respects the community's sentiments about their flag.
....."They do have their right to express their feeling and opinions," he said. "But I don't think we did anything wrong by flying that flag. It is Vietnam's official flag."

The Adventures of Sunny Girl: Existential Cat

For Kris.

Recent videos of a similarly personal nature:

• The Adventures of Adam & Sarah: they drop by

Fear in Holland

From the LEDE: After Danish Cartoons, Dutch Film Sparks More Worries:

.....The aftermath has flowed predictably enough since Feb. 13, when Danish newspapers reprinted cartoons that sparked fury among Muslims around the world in 2006: There was more fury.
.....Street protests started in the streets of Copenhagen and spread to Sudan, Pakistan, Turkey and other parts of the Islamic world. Now, after more than a month, comes what might be the direst reaction in Osama bin Laden’s latest message.
.....“Publishing these insulting drawings,” he said, “is the greatest misfortune and the most dangerous.”
.....An analyst interviewed by The Associated Press interpreted the message as a “clear threat against E.U. member countries and an indicator of a possible upcoming significant attack.”
.....In The New York Times today, Michael Kimmelman writes that “many Europeans seem fed up,” including some of the cartoonists. One has been moving from safe house to safe house to elude any assassins, while another is struggling to find meaning in the second printing….
.....Meanwhile, a politician two countries away is planning to release a movie that has “triggered a panic in the Netherlands that could only be likened to the dread leading up to a massive storm,” according to Der Spiegel, a German magazine.
.....Geert Wilders’s 15-minute film reportedly juxtaposes excerpts from the Koran with beheadings and stonings on a split screen, a warning of “the threat of the growing Islamization of Western society,” he said in an interview with a Danish TV station, Reuters reported.
.....Even before the film’s release, Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende of the Netherlands insisted that his country did not share the views of Mr. Wilders, who is the subject of death threats — threats made all the more unsettling by the 2004 murder of another Dutch filmmaker, Theo van Gogh, who was killed for being “an enemy of Islam,” the killer said.
.....“I strongly condemn Geert Wilders’s condescending statements about Muslims,” Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen of Denmark said on Wednesday, according to Reuters. “I find these expressions extremely offensive.”….

Rebel Girl's Poetry Corner: "Orion walks waist deep"

.....Spring!
.....Once again.
.....Today's poem, courtesy of Kenneth Rexroth, from his cycle titled, "Toward an Organic Philosophy."

SPRING, COAST RANGE

The glow of my campfire is dark red and flameless,
The circle of white ash widens around it.
I get up and walk off in the moonlight and each time
I look back the red is deeper and the light smaller.
Scorpio rises late with Mars caught in his claw;
The moon has come before them, the light
Like a choir of children in the young laurel trees.
It is April; the shad, the hot headed fish,
Climbs the rivers; there is trillium in the damp canyons;
The foetid adder’s tongue lolls by the waterfall.
There was a farm at this campsite once, it is almost gone now.
There were sheep here after the farm, and fire
Long ago burned the redwoods out of the gulch,
The Douglas fir off the ridge; today the soil
Is stony and incoherent, the small stones lie flat
And plate the surface like scales.
Twenty years ago the spreading gully
Toppled the big oak over onto the house.
Now there is nothing left but the foundations
Hidden in poison oak, and above on the ridge,
Six lonely, ominous fenceposts;
The redwood beams of the barn make a footbridge
Over the deep waterless creek bed;
The hills are covered with wild oats
Dry and white by midsummer.
I walk in the random survivals of the orchard.
In a patch of moonlight a mole
Shakes his tunnel like an angry vein;
Orion walks waist deep in the fog coming in from the ocean;
Leo crouches under the zenith.
There are tiny hard fruits already on the plum trees.
The purity of the apple blossoms is incredible.
As the wind dies down their fragrance
Clusters around them like thick smoke.
All the day they roared with bees, in the moonlight
They are silent and immaculate.