Below is the one illustration that clanged the loudest and clearest in my heart when I first saw it on Tan’s webpage.

From "The Red Tree"

As a concept, the book is inspired by the impulse of children and adults alike to describe feelings using metaphor – monsters, storms, sunshine, rainbows and so on.

The title of the memoir written by Vietnamese American author, Lac Su, – “I Love Yous Are For White People” – alone raised my eyebrows when I first came across it. The title spoke to me on a visceral level based directly upon my upbringing as an Asian boy in a White household. The two stereotypes the title forces the reader to confront is that Asian people are educational and career-oriented automatons and White people are romantic, carefree heroes.

The stereotype of Asians being loveless and joyless robots was culturally ingrained in me, and the rest of America, via the popular media. I couldn’t objectively know whether it was true or not, due to the fact that I was raised by White parents in a homogeneous suburban neighborhood. Regardless, the thing about stereotypes is that they seep into your subconscious and never leave you. Eventually, something in the air titillates them and they become activated and then your mind automatically starts trying to sort fact from fiction, doing a terrible job at it, and finally stereotypes solidify into your prejudices.

However, in reality, “I love yous” were a rarity in my Irish Catholic household. Respect for parental authority was held in the highest regard and disobedience was dealt with swiftly and once in a while quite painfully. It was impressed upon me at an early age that educational achievement was to be my primary concern, and if any “extracurricular” activities got in the way of my education I was to drop them like a bad habit. My parents were especially strict with me because, I think, they wanted me to set a good example for my younger siblings. Sounds kind of “Asian”, doesn’t it? Harhar.

Once I neared the ending of Lac’s memoir, I soon noticed the irony contained in the title - “I Love Yous Are For White People” – and appreciated the clever scrambling of racial stereotypes in order to tell a more nuanced tale of boyhood and a boy’s conflicted relationship with his father whom he ultimately loves.

As much as Lac recounts tales of horrific physical and emotional abuse at the hands of his father, and systemic dysfunction within his family that appears to result from said abuse, the main thing that redeems Lac’s stories is his determination to find a lesson among the shards of pain reflecting back at him which are sprinkled throughout his young life. Another redeeming quality of Lac’s memoir is that he recognized the hurt and pain he was experiencing and put it down on paper, ostensibly to share his story with the whole world. This was a bold act that would confirm for him later on, when he decided to write this memoir, that his life was not in vain. What he could not express to his father, Lac wrote down or drew out on paper as clues leading back to who he had been and who his father may have been to possibly make sense of it all.

What I find indicative of Lac’s relationship with his father can be read into two instances when his father applies Tiger Balm to his son’s body. Tiger Balm is an evergreen-colored ointment that you apply to sore muscles in order produce the sensation of heat that will supposedly speed up the healing process. The first time the ointment is applied is when his father beats the living crap out of Lac after he learns that Lac has been stealing money out of his mother’s piggy bank in order to exchange the bills for quarters to give to a friend who’s obsessed with playing this one video game; the second time his father applies it is when Lac staggers back home after a vicious payback beating dealt to him by the brother and friends of a schoolmate whom Lac previously beat senseless.

I guess a lot of the answers to the questions posed by Lac Su’s memoir lie in the Tiger Balm.

I was excited to see which photo the organizers had chosen from the 10 I had entered. When I got to the event space in the Pacific Rim Center, I was pleasantly surprised to see so many 8×10 photos arranged in rows under each category. Suffice it to say, I immediately searched for my photo. I saw one under the category Spaces & Places. Then I went from category to category and noticed that five more of my photos appeared under the category The Marketplace. I was very pleased with the printout of my photos.

This is the first time I’ve ever entered photos in  a contest and the first time I’ve seen my photos exhibited in public. It was a tiny thrill for me at the end of that long rainy day.

The organizers also announced that the Tet in Seattle committee would like each of the finalists to submit one photo to be exhibited during the event, since, I guess, they were impressed with the range and quality of the photography of the Little Saigon neighborhood. Very nice of them. Also, in the near future, each of the photos will be featured on a separate webpage on the Seattle Chinatown International District Preservation and Development Authority‘s website and people could vote for the ones they like the most.

Below are my photos that are on display at the Pacific Rim Center until today:

Older. But, am I wiser?

I don’t actually feel my age because I’m not exactly certain what my real age is. As far as I know, I don’t have a birth certificate verifying the date, time, and place of my birth, or the identity of my biological parents. It’s as if I appeared out of thin air, like the Terminator.

I’m stronger than this Daily Me could fathom. This strength isn’t something I’ve imported; it isn’t something I purchased; it isn’t anything I’ve concocted. Power is what I draw into myself from the external environment I inhabit. The strength I exhibit and which I own is the hundreds of breaths I take within a day, that imbue the Who I Have Become.

Nguyễn Văn Trỗi (1947 – October 15, 1964)

p.43

To sit long with our various alienations and our sumptuous paralyses and our nervous fears is to come indeed to a startling realization. It is this: melancholy connects us to our fundamental being.

p.47

I learn again that my lonely meditations on death breed lively musings on life. I am further instructed in the mysteries of the universe, in the cosmic interplay between transience and permanence. Alerted to this pattern, I overcome my alienation and realize that I, like all other creatures, am a meeting place of wondrous oppositions, wings and dirt, stars and slugs.

Using graphic design tools and techniques an Australian artist uses an historical photo, which to this day still stands as an iconic document of the Vietnam War, recognized by most adults of a certain age around the world, in order to convey quite a hyperbolic message of outrage with respect to the massive oil gusher in the Gulf of Mexico from an oil well owned by British Petroleum (BP) that many suspect has done permanent damage to the environment.

Nonetheless, the conflation of a 1968 execution of a political prisoner (or POW, if you’re so inclined) with the corporate logo of a deeply discredited petroleum company put my memory in reverse, recalling that BP (and big oil, in general) has had quite an influence on Vietnam since the end of its civil war.

Follow the Onyx Brick Road, if you will:

Petro Viet Nam, established in 1975, chose to use Production Sharing Contacts (PSC) with oil companies which allowed greater flexibility and more rights for oil companies on a number of issues. But it wasn’t enough – oil companies wanted more.18 Modifications were made! The Law of Foreign Investment in Vietnam (1987) and the Petroleum Law (1993) plus a system of specialized legal documents and regulations “played an important role in attracting foreign investment into the oil and gas industry.” This included the Joint Operating Agreement (JOA). Further Amendments to the Petroleum Law since June 2000 have given even greater incentives (more money) for foreign investment in the industry.19 PetroVietnam has foreign partners: BP Amoco of the United Kingdom, Conoco of the United States, and ONGC of India.20 Standard Oil (Rockefeller) bought out British Petroleum (BP) on January 27, 1988 and renamed the newly-merged company BP-America. Almost immediately, BP-America bought and merged with smaller companies and is now known as BP-AMOCO.21 Standard Oil also owns Mobil (Exxon-Mobil).

[from The Power Elite Playbook, Viet Nam - Plundered Part 9]

+++

Every day jet planes would take off from the carriers, bomb locations in North and South Vietnam, and then using normal military procedure when returning would dump their unsafe or unused bombs in the ocean before landing back on the carriers. Safe ordnance drop zones were designated for this purpose away from the carriers.

“Even close-up observers would only notice many small explosions occurring daily in the waters of the South China Sea and thought it was only part of the ‘war.’ The U.S. Navy carriers had begun Operation Linebacker One, and Standard Oil had begun its ten year oil survey of the seabed off of Vietnam. And the Vietnamese, Chinese and everybody else around, including the Americans, were none the wiser. The oil survey hardly cost Standard Oil a nickel, the U.S. taxpayers paid for it.”

Marshall Douglas Smith. (2001). Black Gold Hot Gold, Ch. 3

[from The New U.S.-British Oil Imperialism Part 1]

“In everyman chest, mm – there beats a heart.”

The European colonialist past crops up here and there in my life, sometimes without my knowing it and other times when I do notice it and intentionally seek it out to examine it closer. As a young pupil in school, my history classes informed me about colonialism and the European empires, exclusively. From the start the history teachers focused my attention on color-coded maps, teaching me which parts of the world were affected and which territory belonged to whom – British, French, Dutch, Spanish, etc. The regal portraits of “explorers” and striking pictures of “settlers” presented people who seemed to have the world at their fingertips. The teachers would carefully list these people’s major accomplishments and feats of daring. Respect seemed automatically conferred to these historical figures whenever their names were mentioned.

To everyone else, the ruling narrative was clean and simple; to me, it eventually revealed itself to be a lie.

Humanity is made up of complicated individuals; their voices weave complex stories; their actions leave behind an ambiguous past. In my experience, legacies are real phenomena left behind for the descendants to understand, come to terms with, and struggle with. I’ve heard some argue that paying attention to the past is futile, and people should look ahead and strive for the attainable instead. These people reason that since you can’t change what happened, focus on the present to provide a better future. That’s an acceptable viewpoint when you don’t wish to learn anything beyond what’s next on the agenda and you choose to forget any injustice that’s happened to someone else. I don’t think what I just wrote should be taken as some kind of judgment; it’s an observable cause-and-effect.

The documentary Mugabe and The White African is but one example I’ve encountered that exhibits a European self-centeredness that ignores a colonialist past in order to righteously claim victimhood and demand redress. The story arc in the film is meant to be simple: A white farmer’s family in Zimbabwe fights against being forcefully evicted by a tyrannical and corrupt government run by blacks. The comforting message the film tries to convey is that this farmer’s struggle is not about race, it’s about human rights. I’m sure many people would find this comforting, as long as they ignore, or are not confronted with, Zimbabwe’s colonialist origins.

Formerly named Rhodesia, Zimbabwe was colonized by the British when a man named Cecil Rhodes [his will established the well-recognized Rhodes Scholarship] obtained mineral rights in the region in 1888 from indigenous leaders. He then spearheaded settlement by British subjects when he employed the so-called Pioneer Column that was made up of white settlers and members of the British South Africa Police to clear the way. Two major wars against the indigenous peoples followed (First Matabele War (1893-1894) and Second Matabele War (1896-1897)), and subsequently white minority rule became entrenched there. It wasn’t until 1980 that the country reverted back to black majority rule.

During the time of colonization, many black residents of Rhodesia were displaced from their land by white settlers. Also, once a Legislative Council was created in 1899, most of the electorate was made up of whites. This usurpation of power and land-grabbing followed a trend throughout not only Africa, but in other regions on other continents where European settlers got a foothold.

While searching for reviews of Mugabe and The White African, almost all of those I surveyed rated the film positively and did nothing to counter the silence on Zimbabwe’s colonialist origins and institutionalized exclusion of blacks from governing their own homeland. In spite of that, a review by Blessing-Miles Tendi deftly discloses the problematic characterization of the Campbells as being on the ‘good’ side and Robert Mugabe and his minions as being on the ‘bad’ side, i.e., white vs black.

It is precisely Bailey’s conviction that “you do not have to understand Africa”, from which the documentary’s primary shortcomings emanate. Zimbabwe is not Africa and Africa is not Zimbabwe. The documentary lacks a historical and political context. Land and race are important themes in the documentary but not once is the Lancaster House Independence Agreement (1979), which perpetuated racially biased land distribution in independent Zimbabwe, mentioned.

While watching this movie in the theater, I had kind of a separate movie playing in the back of my mind, reminiscing about my skewed history lessons. The preeminent lesson I was taught, and then reinforced time after time, was that everyone else – their cultures, their histories, their accomplishments, their heroes, their languages – stayed on the periphery while the white people had to be the focus of attention and deserved their place in history.

Mugabe and The White African represented another invisible needle in the eye for me. The portrayal of the black people in the film unwittingly categorized them into either ‘the angry’ lot or ‘the docile’ lot. Oversimplification of complicated matters and the exclusion of other people’s views are tools used by people whose primary concern is maintenance of the status quo. And, in my lifetime, the status quo has been Western hegemony. Such aversion to the transcendence of Eurocentric storytelling does a disservice to furthering mutual understanding.

By writing this post, I’m not meaning any disrespect or ill will toward the Campbell family, or any of the other farmers in Zimbabwe who are faced with being kicked off their land. On a purely personal level, the treatment these people have received and the anguish they feel in possibly losing a lifestyle that they had become accustomed to and felt entitled to is truly disconcerting. However, my sense of fairness and justice requires me to look at cultural productions, like this documentary film, with a skeptical eye. To improve one’s understanding of the world, or life in general, I think it’s best to keep in mind that nothing is ever as simple as it seems.

Needless to say, the facts of torture and the continued practice of torture, even the express use of the word “torture”, has polarized the national demeanor and debate on the matter. We Americans have nearly exhausted ourselves by yelling over each other in order to be the first one to say, “I’m right, you’re wrong, end of story!” Unfortunately, very little sobering and truthful dialog has gotten through the din and made itself known. With regard to whether Americans support or condemn torture, most Americans walk around blind with anger at either side of the political spectrum or with indifference about actual evidence, facts or corroborated accounts that could cast doubt on official party lines and incense the general public to demand that wrongs be righted.

This brings me to my chosen profession in a field that concerns itself with bioethics and human subject research. Someone at work forwarded an email that included a link to a report (The Torture Papers) written by an organization called Physicians for Human Rights (PHR).  Their mission statement can be found by clicking on this link.

This organization’s report is based on its findings from examining government documents related to an “enhanced” interrogation program (EIP) that the CIA used to produce “enhanced” interrogation techniques (EITs). The report’s purpose is to document and comment on medical experts’ role in supporting the U.S. government’s endeavors to improve the EITs and provide legal cover for the CIA interrogators for whenever anyone decides to prosecute them for possible war crimes.

The systematic collection of personalized information from any human subjects, whether patients, volunteers, soldier-subjects, prisoners, or any other group, for purposes other than their direct benefit requires human subject protections, such as informed consent, and prospective review of and approval by an institutional review board (IRB), regardless of the information-gathering methods used or the stated purpose of the inquiry.

Read the above quote again, very carefully. It’s basically a summary of what I think about, almost exclusively, between the hours of 8am to 5pm. There’s an acronym that we commonly throw around at work that represents the breath of life in our industry: HRPP – Human Research Participant Protection.

Ever heard of World War II? Ever heard of the Third Reich? Ever heard of Dr. Joseph Mengele? Ever heard of the Nuremberg Trials? From out of the destruction of the Third Reich (aka, Nazi Germany) in 1945, some of the highest authorities of the Reich were put on trial in Nuremberg, Germany to answer for their crimes against humanity. German physicians were also put on trial and the details of their efforts at human experimentation were finally disclosed. In order to prevent such crimes against humanity from being repeated, the Nuremberg Code was developed. There are 10 points to the Code, but the one that I think needs to be highlighted is the very first one:

1. The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential.

In my mind, this one simple tenet stores all the reasons for upholding human rights around the world, but it’s also the lynch pin of America’s most treasured national political philosophy, the one that we supposedly honor every Fourth of July, — ”representative democracy”! The core belief inherent in the principle of “consent of the governed” is what should drive every American patriot to strive toward bettering this country and realizing its ideals.

After the Nuremberg Code, regulatory bodies fine tuned “human research participant protections”over the years and, in America, our government recognizes and enforces the Common Rule when it comes to experimentation on human subjects. You can take a gander at it here and here. Yes, the language appears rather dry and dense, but the spirit of the Common Rule is the reason the PHR’s report notes the following:

Human experimentation without the consent of the subject is a violation of international human rights law to which the United States is subject; federal statutes; the Common Rule, which comprises the federal regulations for research on human subjects and applies to 17 federal agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Department of Defense (DoD); and universally accepted health professional ethics, including the Nuremberg Code. Human experimentation on detainees also can constitute a war crime and a crime against humanity in certain circumstances.

Upon further reading of the report, it felt as if I were stepping off a cliff, immediately away from firm ethical footing, and rapidly plunging into ice cold legal waters that could make any moral Being freeze to death.

For the past 10 years, many Americans have either heard or read about John Woo and the Office of Legal Council (OLC), and the advice the attorneys gave to former President Bush regarding, among other things, “enhanced” interrogation techniques (euphemism for “torture”), “enemy non-combatants” and circumvention of the third Geneva Convention (treatment of prisoners of war). PHR’s report claims, and convincingly illustrates, that the OLC not only attempted to shield the CIA’s use of EITs from the conventional definition of torture, but also alleges that the government employed medical specialists to monitor the physical and mental health of detainees in order to ensure the interrogators did not cross the OLC’s defined threshold for torture and to gather data on the overall effectiveness of EITs.

In essence, the report contends that federal agencies using federal money conducted research on human beings without their knowledge, nor their consent. Thus, this research violated the Common Rule. The report also accuses the Bush administration of exposing the medical personnel to prosecution for war crimes, alluding to the history and reasons for which the Nuremberg Code was written and in which the international community still places faith. In most people’s estimation, the medical experts violated the Hippocratic Oath by allowing their knowledge to advance a government program that intentionally caused harm to their fellow human beings.

The ethical, moral and legal quandary the American government set up for itself and its medical personnel is quite a disastrously brilliant little gift to any prosecutorial team willing and able to bring certain people to justice. Possibly due to sheer arrogance and the sign of the times, the OLC decided to skirt “the rule of law” by making its own “rule of law”:

The OLC interpretation defined torture as an act causing “long-term” mental harm or physical “pain and suffering” equal to the pain and suffering inflicted by either organ failure or death. In particular, the authors of the OLC memos argued that the “enhanced” techniques would not constitute torture as long as they were applied in a manner that was “safe.” In a legal context, concepts of “pain,” “suffering,” and “safety” are questions of fact that relate to the experiences of the individual interrogators and people being interrogated. The OLC memo authors argued that if medical professionals approved the interrogations and monitored the application of the “enhanced” techniques, the abusive acts would not constitute torture.

In response to the OLC’s interpretations and arguments for using EITs, PHR’s report gives an excellent assessment of the ridiculous crosshatch defense used by the Bush administration meant to shield its interrogators from any future prosecution for war crimes:

Also, the “science” on which the authorization of the EIP was based is flawed by any reasonable standard because it served as a means of justifying a predetermined legal end of aiding in the authorization of torture. Even the claim of systematic medical monitoring in the name of making “enhanced” intelligence techniques (EITs) “safe, legal, and effective” is contradicted by official monitoring policy, which failed to adequately take into account the mental harm caused by the tactics, among other factors. In fact, the “enhanced” interrogation techniques are premised on the infliction of mental harm, so the concept of studying them to make them more effective is ethically impermissible, and studying them to make them “safer” is logically untenable – as the techniques are unsafe by design.

I guess my overriding concern, that appears in the form of a question, after reading The Torture Papers was this: How can America hold other countries accountable for potential war crimes when it decides that it will no longer follow the rule of law itself, and, indeed, feels that it is above the rule of law?

Time capsules have always tickled my keen sense of mortality. The shared, desperate, urge to preserve today’s posterity for future generations to unearth and gawk at seemed to my young, untested mind to be a bit of overkill on the part of the adults who corralled us kids into honoring the occasion with them. Probably almost every class in every elementary and secondary school in the U.S. has collected things to place in a time capsule and participated in a grand ceremony to watch the metal canister be lowered into the ground and finally buried.

Back then, it seemed like I had my whole life ahead of me, and the world just couldn’t wait to embrace a quirky, mild-mannered, and intelligent kid like me.

20-some-odd years later, I take the above photograph at a park near Lake Coeur d’Alene and I become wistful. I find myself standing in front of this polished rock (which actually looks more like a cemetery headstone), right hand on hip, and repeating the dates in my head, over and over. I wasn’t reminiscing (1987) and I wasn’t trying to envision the future (2087).

The incomplete truth that was orbiting around inside my brain was: “You won’t be alive to see them open this capsule.”

By 2087, if I were to still be alive at that time, I will be 114 years old. It’s not an impossible age to reach.

But, the thought of reaching that age has become like playing that inevitable parlor game, testing whether I’m really either an “optimist” or a “pessimist” based on a list of questions that I must answer, as quickly and as candidly as possible.

For right now, it’s kind of fruitless to even look forward to living that long. Would I even want to have lived for that long? I guess it mainly depends on how my life has been going, what I’ve achieved, and who’s still around.

Perhaps it’s just me, but reaching the age of 114 brings forth one of those ultimate fears: Knowing that you’ve outlived everyone you’ve ever cared for, and remembering how much they meant to you, and wondering when you can stop living so you can finally join them.