Neil K. Lai

Seeking Political Stability


In 1958, Neil K. Lai left Shanghai by himself at the age of 16. His father was dead, and his mother wanted Neil to flee for security to Hong Kong. Their family had been turned upside down by the Communist Party rule that started in 1949. Mr. Lai's father, a former factory owner, had been branded a capitalist. Neil Lai worked for two years in his uncle's tailor shop in Hong Kong before attending night school. He learned English, which landed him a series of relatively well- paying jobs through the mid-1970's. But the sight of Vietnamese boat refugees in the waters around Hong Kong made him realize that the Asian political situation was unstable. So at the age of 34, he came to the United States to study at a community college in Arizona. He transferred to Arizona State University, where he studied accounting a skill that eventually led to his job at the New York State Office of Taxation and Finance. Mr. Lai wanted his two teenage children to maintain straight A's in school. "His experience had told him education is a path to success," said his wife, Yvonne.

Profile published in THE NEW YORK TIMES on November 13, 2001.

:::::EDIT::::: 9/11/09:::::

Neil has been gone 8 years now. It's hard to believe that so many years have passed, it seems some have forgotten the horror from that day. Neil is in a better place, a place where religious zealots and extremist as non-existent. Neil - I hope one day we can meet and have a beer somewhere far away from this crazy place, somewhere where are people are kind to one another.


:::::EDIT::::: 9/11/08:::::

Neil has been gone for many years now. We as well as his family will always remember him. We will continue to fight against the Islamic Radicals that took his life until the day we meet up with Neil far away from this world.

Eight Christians burnt to death in Pakistan after Koran is ‘defiled’

Paramilitary troops patrolled the streets of a town in eastern Pakistan yesterday after Muslim radicals burnt to death eight members of a Christian family, raising fears of violence spreading to other areas.

Hundreds of armed supporters of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, an outlawed Islamic militant group, set alight dozens of Christian homes in Gojra town at the weekend after allegations that a copy of the Koran had been defiled.

The mob opened fire indiscriminately, threw petrol bombs and looted houses as thousands of frightened Christians ran for safety. “They were shouting anti-Christian slogans and attacked our houses,” Rafiq Masih, a resident of the predominantly Christian colony, said. Residents said that police stood aside while the mob went on the rampage. “We kept begging for protection, but police did not take action,” Mr Masih said.

Police and local officials said that at least eight people, including four women and a child, were killed in the fires. Two others died of gunshot wounds. Residents said that the casualties were much higher; one claimed that the number of dead could be in the dozens as many bodies were still buried under the rubble.Shahbaz Bhatti, the Minister for Minorities, said that 40 Christian homes were torched in rioting. He said there was no truth to allegations that a Koran had been defiled, and accused the police of ignoring his appeal to provide protection to Christians.

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911 Call on Gates Never Mentioned Race

The woman who called police about a break-in at Harvard professor Henry Gates' home never said anything about race, according to her attorney and the Cambridge, Mass., police commissioner.

BOSTON -- The 911 caller who reported a possible break-in at the home of black Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. did not mention race in the call, according to a statement issued by her attorney and backed up by Cambridge Police Commissioner Robert Haas.

Lucia Whalen placed the 911 call July 16, saying she saw two men on Gates' front porch who appeared to be trying to force open the front door. The call led to the arrest of Gates by Cambridge police on a disorderly conduct charge, and a resulting national debate about racial profiling.

In the statement issued Sunday by attorney Wendy Murphy, Whalen -- who has not spoken publicly -- said she only saw the backs of the two men and did not know their race when she made the call. Murphy said Whalen, who works nearby, called because she had been aware of recent break-ins in the area and wanted to correct "misinformation" suggesting that she placed the call because the men on the porch were black.

"Contrary to published reports that a 'white woman' called 911 and reported seeing 'two black men' trying to gain entry into Mr. Gates home, the woman, who has olive colored skin and is of Portuguese descent, told the 911 operator that she observed 'two men' at the home," Murphy's statement read.

Haas said Whalen, after questioning by the dispatcher during the 911 call, speculated that one of the men -- who turned out to be Gates and a black car service driver -- may have been Hispanic.
"It was very clear that she wasn't sure what the men's race was," Haas said in an interview with The Boston Globe Sunday night.

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Report: Hamas Summer Campers Re-Enact Abduction of Israeli Soldier

Idyllic days at summer camp usually involve kickball, arts and crafts and some smooth sailing on a placid mountain lake.

But when the camp is run by Hamas, kids also have to make time to learn the finer points of kidnapping.

Palestinian children in Gaza are being indoctrinated at Hamas summer camps, where they have re-enacted the abduction of Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit — all while top Hamas officials look happily on, according to The Jerusalem Post.

Young campers put on a show acting out the taking of Schalit in the presence of the senior Hamas official who is leading negotiations with Israel over the soldier's release, according to the paper. Schalit was snatched in a cross-border raid in June 2007 and is still being held hostage by Hamas.

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FBI interviews detail Saddam Hussein's fear of Iran, WMD bluff

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- In 2004, even after being captured by U.S. forces, Saddam Hussein told an FBI interrogator he believed Iran was a greater threat to Iraq than the United States, according to newly released FBI documents.

The FBI interviews took place while Hussein, then identified by the FBI as "High Value Detainee 1" was held captive by U.S. military forces at Baghdad International Airport between February and June of 2004.

Hussein regarded the Iranian threat as so serious that it was the major factor in his decision not to allow United Nations weapons inspectors to return, he said. Citing their shared border and his belief Iran would intend to annex southern Iraq, Hussein said he was more concerned about Iran discovering Iraq's weaknesses than repercussions from the United States and the international community. He believed that the inspectors would have directly identified to the Iranians where to inflict maximum damage to Iraq.

Approximately 100 pages of declassified interview summaries, previously classified as secret, were obtained by the National Security Archive at the George Washington University through a Freedom of Information Act request.

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Report: AmeriCorps Feared IG’s Push for Further Probe into Case Involving Obama Supporter

Former inspector general Gerald Walpin has accused President Obama of firing him without the 30-day notification required by law for his investigation into the alleged misuse of federal grants by Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson.

Former Inspector General Gerald Walpin's determination to investigate further the alleged misuse of AmeriCorps funds may have led President Obama to fire him, a Republican member of the board overseeing the volunteer agency alleged to a Washington newspaper.

If true, the assertion contradicts an explanation provided by White House, which said Walpin, 77, was "confused" and "disoriented" at a recent meeting of the board, exhibited a "lack of candor" and "engaged in other troubling and inappropriate conduct."

Meanwhile, a bipartisan group of officials -- including four former U.S. attorneys, three former federal judges, one former attorney general and a former counsel to President Clinton -- sent a letter to the Senate Wednesday defending the integrity and competence of Walpin.
Walpin's dismissal came after he announced to the AmeriCorps board that he wasn't done with the investigation into the alleged misuse of federal grants by Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, a former NBA star and an Obama supporter who heads a nonprofit education group, according to The Washington Examiner.

A probe by Walpin's office found that Johnson and his academy, St. HOPE, which received $850,000 in AmeriCorps money, had misused the funds and AmeriCorps volunteers for personal purposes, by having them help in political campaigns and even wash his car.

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Hope and Change -- but Not for Iran

By Charles KrauthammerFriday, June 19, 2009

Millions of Iranians take to the streets to defy a theocratic dictatorship that, among its other finer qualities, is a self-declared enemy of America and the tolerance and liberties it represents. The demonstrators are fighting on their own, but they await just a word that America is on their side.

And what do they hear from the president of the United States? Silence. Then, worse. Three days in, the president makes clear his policy: continued "dialogue" with their clerical masters.
Dialogue with a regime that is breaking heads, shooting demonstrators, expelling journalists, arresting activists. Engagement with -- which inevitably confers legitimacy upon -- leaders elected in a process that begins as a sham (only four handpicked candidates permitted out of 476) and ends in overt rigging.

Then, after treating this popular revolution as an inconvenience to the real business of Obama-Khamenei negotiations, the president speaks favorably of "some initial reaction from the Supreme Leader that indicates he understands the Iranian people have deep concerns about the election."

Where to begin? "Supreme Leader"? Note the abject solicitousness with which the American president confers this honorific on a clerical dictator who, even as his minions attack demonstrators, offers to examine some returns in some electoral districts -- a farcical fix that will do nothing to alter the fraudulence of the election.
Moreover, this incipient revolution is no longer about the election. Obama totally misses the point. The election allowed the political space and provided the spark for the eruption of anti-regime fervor that has been simmering for years and awaiting its moment. But people aren't dying in the street because they want a recount of hanging chads in suburban Isfahan. They want to bring down the tyrannical, misogynist, corrupt theocracy that has imposed itself with the very baton-wielding goons that today attack the demonstrators.
This started out about election fraud. But like all revolutions, it has far outgrown its origins. What's at stake now is the very legitimacy of this regime -- and the future of the entire Middle East.
This revolution will end either as a Tiananmen (a hot Tiananmen with massive and bloody repression or a cold Tiananmen with a finer mix of brutality and co-optation) or as a true revolution that brings down the Islamic Republic.

The latter is improbable but, for the first time in 30 years, not impossible. Imagine the repercussions. It would mark a decisive blow to Islamist radicalism, of which Iran today is not just standard-bearer and model, but financier and arms supplier. It would do to Islamism what the collapse of the Soviet Union did to communism -- leave it forever spent and discredited.
In the region, it would launch a second Arab spring. The first in 2005 -- the expulsion of Syria from Lebanon, the first elections in Iraq and early liberalization in the Gulf states and Egypt -- was aborted by a fierce counterattack from the forces of repression and reaction, led and funded by Iran.

Now, with Hezbollah having lost elections in Lebanon and with Iraq establishing the institutions of a young democracy, the fall of the Islamist dictatorship in Iran would have an electric and contagious effect. The exception -- Iraq and Lebanon -- becomes the rule. Democracy becomes the wave. Syria becomes isolated; Hezbollah and Hamas, patronless. The entire trajectory of the region is reversed.

All hangs in the balance. The Khamenei regime is deciding whether to do a Tiananmen. And what side is the Obama administration taking? None. Except for the desire that this "vigorous debate" (press secretary Robert Gibbs's disgraceful euphemism) over election "irregularities" not stand in the way of U.S.-Iranian engagement on nuclear weapons.

Even from the narrow perspective of the nuclear issue, the administration's geopolitical calculus is absurd. There is zero chance that any such talks will denuclearize Iran. On Monday, President Ahmadinejad declared yet again that the nuclear "file is shut, forever." The only hope for a resolution of the nuclear question is regime change, which (if the successor regime were as moderate as pre-Khomeini Iran) might either stop the program, or make it manageable and nonthreatening.

That's our fundamental interest. And our fundamental values demand that America stand with demonstrators opposing a regime that is the antithesis of all we believe.
And where is our president? Afraid of "meddling." Afraid to take sides between the head-breaking, women-shackling exporters of terror -- and the people in the street yearning to breathe free. This from a president who fancies himself the restorer of America's moral standing in the world.

letters@charleskrauthammer.com

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