Orange County News Blog

​What began as a routine traffic stop Wednesday ended with the arrest of a 78-year-old Garden Grove man for allegedly battering a much younger police officer--an attack the cops say included grandpa kicking the patrolman in the nuts.

Twice!

Caucasian students fear competition?

Do you remember the exciting drama that unfolded in the summer of 2007, when a small group of anti-communist protesters began to make life a living hell for the publishers of two Little Saigon newspapers, Viet Weekly and Nguoi Viet Daily News? No? What, did the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the election of Barack Obama, and the world economic cataclysm distract you from this important controversy?

If so, you could be forgiven for forgetting the mortal sins committed by the two media outlets accused of being agents of Hanoi: Viet Weekly ran an editorial celebrating the communist victory in the Vietnam War--alongside one defending America's war against communism in that country--and Nguoi Viet Daily News made the mistake of running a photograph of a foot-bathing bin painted in the colors of the South Vietnamese flag (a tribute to the artist's immigrant mother-in-law, who put her kids through college thanks to her nail salon business.

Some folks haven't forgotten. A handful of protesters lead by Ngo Ky, a former aide to legendarily-anti-communist congressman Robert K. Dornan, and Trung Doan, a former South Vietnamese military official, spent months picketing Nguoi Viet Daily News. Their protest lead to the dismissal of the editor who approved the supposedly offensive photograph -- that'd be Hao-Nhien Vu of Bolsavik fame -- but even that move wasn't enough to get the protesters to withdraw their demand that the paper acknowledge its communist leanings.

Finally Nguoi Viet sought an injunction against the demonstrators, which led to a civil trial, which the paper finally won yesterday. No word yet on what the protesters will be sentenced to, but one has to wonder what kind of punishment will bother a group of folks who don't mind sitting on the same street-corner in a little-traveled cul-de-sac for months on end, waving placards at the few passing motorists who've long forgotten what their beef is.

The decades-old Little Saigon sport of falsely labeling a fellow Vietnamese immigrant "a Communist" if that person doesn't share your right-wing politics now finally has consequences. Just ask Sinh Cuong Cao. In 2007, Kimoanh Nguyen-Lam (pictured) was fired as the nation's first Vietnamese American superintendent of an American school board after Cao labeled her a Commie to members of the Westminster School District.

For certain infamously reactionary board members like Judy Ahrens, it didn't matter that Nguyen-Lam, who fled Communist Vietnam in 1975, was not Communist. They used Cao's claim to can a remarkably accomplished woman who spoke no English when she arrived in this country and, after years of succeeding in school, obtained a Ph.D in education.

You may recall there was considerable outrage by what Nguyen-Lam endured. She eventually sued Cao for committing slander. That case remains unresolved.

But in a key side legal issue, Cao last year asked the state court of appeal based in Santa Ana to overturn Orange County Superior Court Judge Charles Margines' ruling that the evidence was strong that Cao slandered Nguyen-Lam with actual malice--meaning the false labeling was made recklessly with the intent to cause public scorn.

As a defense, Cao amazingly argued that he shouldn't be held responsible for slandering  Nguyen-Lam because he'd never met her and had no first hand knowledge of her politics. Margines wasn't amused by the attempted logic. He noted, "Nowhere does [Cao] say, 'I learned she is a Communist from this source or that source or from her own words. If you put both of those together, what do you have? You have no place to go for his belief that she's a Communist."

The judge went on to compare Cao's assertion to the "product of his imagination."

On February 26, a three-justice court of appeal panel backed Margines' ruling. Cao "held himself out as having inside knowledge about [Nguyen-Lam]" when all he knew about her he'd read in newspapers and "nothing in those reports hinted she was a Communist," concluded justices Richard M. Aronson, David G. Sills and Kathleen O'Leary.

The justices also rejected Cao's argument that calling someone a Communist isn't derogatory nowadays. They observed what could be the understatement of the year: "The word 'Communist' has some real sting in the Vietnamese community in Orange County, California."

"We're thrilled with the court of appeal decision," said Donna Bader, who--along with Katrina Foley (a member of the Costa Mesa City Council)--represented Nguyen-Lam, who went on to become an elected member of the Garden Grove Unified School District board. "Dr. Nguyen-Lam lost what would have been a prestigious position and now she will be able to have her case decided by a jury."

Cao, who was represented by Mark W. Bucher (a local Republican activist) and John L. Dodd, can appeal that ruling, but if he's not successful, the superior court slander case against him will resume in coming months.

Will this civil case finally end the tired "Communist" madness in Little Saigon? Probably not. But if he loses the slander case and is forced to pay Nguyen-Lam substantial compensation for causing her to lose her job, Cao and his ilk might think twice about spreading harmful lies in the future.

--R. Scott Moxley / OC Weekly

Went to a celebration last Friday in honor of LULAC's 80th anniversary at the Garden Grove Community Room next to their City Council chamber, and I grabbed a flier with pictures and short bios of councilmembers along with phone numbers for the city's various representatives. It was hilariously outdated--Dubya was listed as president, and it didn't mention that Andrew Do joined the council last November--and I thought there was also missing data. All the councilmember bios revealed their city of birth with the exception of Dina Nguyen. Errors happen, so I was mystified the following day when I went on Garden Grove's website and found the same omission (it ain't racism on the part of city bureaucrats; Do lists "Vietnam" as his birthplace). I even found Nguyen's website for her hilarious, disastrous 2008 campaign against Janet Nguyen for the Board of Supervisors--nothing. All Nguyen reveals on both her city council and campaign website is that she "has spent her entire life in Orange County since arriving to California in 1977." From where, Dina? Jupiter? What's with the lack of disclosure like your Garbage Grove peers?

Too bad that the Weekly moved its world headquarters away from SanTana and back to Costa Mesa's industrial-park blackhole this week (although the offices we now occupy ain't that bad), because the best non-Carona story to emerge this weekend was the shutdown of the revolutionary FOB II art exhibit by SanTana officials and not the usual elderly Vietnamese brigade of First Amendment haters. The exhibit, held by the Vietnamese American Arts and Letters Association, got those aesthetic Know Nothings yelling and accusing artists of communism because one of the pieces in question featured imagery of the Republic of Vietnam. Much better coverage about the issue on the Bolsavik blog.

But here's what's interesting. In a city where virtually every civic, state, and national code gets violated daily, where artists create makeshift lofts in industrial areas and people engage in all types of illegal activity, why on Earth did Don Papi Pulido decide to shut down FOB II? Yes, the building in which it was held wasn't zoned to exhibit art, but wanna know something? The former Weekly world headquarters is still the home of the Santa Ana Business Bank, where all sorts of shady characters sit on the board of directors? The permit for that building's elevator was expired for TWO YEARS (they were just renewed), yet I never saw SanTana code enforcement take the building's owner to task--maybe because bigtime developer Mike Harrah owned it for so long? Art Pedroza has his own theories as to why Don Papi Pulido's shock troops closed FOB II, but I won't add any here. I will point two things out:

1. In a city that supposedly prides itself on its Artists Village, to shut down FOB II is foolish and ignorant. The original FOB exhibit was a landmark presentation held in 2002 in a building owned by Nguoi Viet that  showcased a new generation of Vietnamese artists (I wrote about it then but can't find the damn link). Any city that truly cared about fostering an arts scene would've bent over backwards to host it. But since VAALA isn't involved in SanTana politics, no go.

2. Speaking of the Artists Village, a challenge to ustedes and the people over at the Santiago Lofts: which will be the brave, permit-holding gallery to offer FOB II a new home?

*Note on picture: disregard Chinese script and focus on the guy!

Chris Prevatt at The Liberal OC posted a fascinating piece over the weekend about efforts by Assemblymember Van Thai Tran to muzzle a critic on the Little Saigon airwaves. Reading excerpts from Tran's cease-and-desist letter to radio host Do Son was deja-vu all over again for me.

In late 2003 and early 2004, I wrote a series of stories detailing a fight between Diane Vo and Tran. Vo originally came on the political scene after fighting against the Garden Grove City Council's onerous cyber-cafe ordinances. She won a lawsuit against them (Tran sat on the council at the time) and used her newfound public political voice to attack Tran after two sisters accused him of ripping them off. Van responded by sending Vo's radio bosses a cease-and-desist letter. Salem Communications, which owned the radio station from which Vo broadcast, never released the letter, but an email obtained by the Weekly sent by Tran's attorney to Vo's legal representation claimed she made "slanderous comments . . . against him and others in the community, and that she made threats against Mr. Tran and friends of Mr. Tran on the air" and also "contend[ed] that programs such as Ms. Vo's cause great harm to the Vietnamese community due to their divisive nature." All of this happened, mind you, while Tran was merely candidate for State Assembly.

The stress of fighting Tran eventually wore Vo out, and she moved to Las Vegas. Tran became what Prevatt calls the Emperor of Little Saigon, but whom we'll from now on call Boss Tran, the grand puppeteer of Orange County's preeminent ethnic voting bloc (damn Mexicans will NEVER get their act together), who enforces dissidence through operatives and his own bullying tactics. Don't let Tranany Hall getcha, folks; email him at tranesq@aol.com and tell Boss Tran what a censorious fool he is.

Our good friend Hao-Nhien Vu, a.k.a. the Bolsavik, the ex-Nguoi Viet Daily News managing editor who lost his job thanks to anti-commie protests, has another big scoop on his blog today. Apparently, protesters who have been demonstrating outside the Historic Main Street offices of Viet Weekly for the past year have taken their miniature South Vietnamese flags, blaring martial music and desecrated Ho Chi Minh doll and gone home.

I wrote about the protests last month and sort of predicted this might happen. Or at least people I spoke to (like the Bolsavik) predicted it. Now, only one thought comes to mind: what the hell are these guys going to do with themselves now that they've given up trying to shut down the Vietnamese version of OC Weekly? Come after us? After all, I'm a commie agitator, too.

(I'm not, actually. Okay, GI? VC number 10!!!)

As usual, the Bolsavik has the answer. In his post today, he writes that "one of the leaders of the protests, Hung Phuong Nguyen, also a PR man for Assemblyman Van Thai Tran, went on the radio last night on the ironically named “Anti-Communist Forum” (Vietnamese: Dien Dan Chong Cong) and called off the protests against the magazine Viet Weekly. The reason he gave was that the protest organizer Coalition Against Resolution 36 has to prepare to picket against the visit to the U.S. of communist Vietnam’s Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung — whose itinerary does not include California."

The funniest thing about all this is the crazy accusations that keep flying back and forth about who's really communist. The protesters say Viet Weekly is a communist paper, others say the protesters are actually doing Hanoi's dirty work by dividing Little Saigon, and on and on. Check out the comments section of Bolsavik's post for just the latest examples.

Despite facing numerous lawsuits and an incredibly nasty public relations campaign by her Republican opponents in the past several months, Janet Nguyen sailed through yesterday's election to seal her supervisorial seat. Nguyen easily beat Westminster city councilwoman Dina Nguyen and Hoa Tran, a rare Vietnamese-American Democrat most famous for employing gang members as campaign workers.

Far more surprising than Nguyen's victory, however was who wasn't even on the ballot: Trung Nguyen, the favored candidate of Van Thai Tran who narrowly lost to Nguyen last year and, with the aid of GOP operative Michael Schroeder, harassed Nguyen with numerous appeals, lawsuits and allegations of fundraising shenanigans. For reasons that still aren't clear, Trung Nguyen backed out of the race earlier this year.

That didn't keep the race from being dirty, though, with just about all the candidates accusing each other of being commies. Nguyen's supporters have always argued that she represents a new type of Vietnamese-American politician, an independent-minded leader whose lack of accomplishments so far is the fault of the folks like Schroeder who've tied her up with petty distractions. Now that they've lost and she's won (again), it'll be interesting to see how she handles herself--and what Schroeder et al do with all their new-found free time.

Stay tuned....

The Weekly never passes up on an opportunity to make fun of our favorite local lawman—favorite, now that Sheriff Mike Carona's out of the picture, that is—Tony Rackauckas. So when we saw this item on the fiesty and irreverent Bolsavik blog by ex-Nguoi Viet Daily News managing editor Hao-Nhien Vu, we couldn't resist posting it here. (Actually Bolsavik got the item from both Red County and Reg staffer Martin Wisckol's blog).

Apparently, Rackauckas held a meeting with the beseiged editors of Nguoi Viet, who fired Hao-Nhien Vu and another top editor after local anti-commie protesters raised hell about a photograph they felt proved the paper is soft on communism. The protesters, of course, are about as right-wing as they come. But that fact seems to have been lost on Rackauckas, who seems to believe they're commies.

In a meeting with the publisher and the editor of Nguoi Viet, Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas said about the protests: “The District Attorney’s Office cannot say who really is behind the demonstration, but I’m sure that it would benefit the Vietnamese government if the community breaks into pieces and doesn’t have one voice.”

Give us as break Tony. Don't you read our paper? If you did, you'd know all about these protesters and their heartfelt opposition to communism. You'd know that Viet Weekly, not Nguoi Viet, is really a more likely candidate for red-baiting as an agent of Hanoi. And you'd also know that OC Weekly, the only paper in the county to ever put Ho Chi Minh on the cover, is the only local paper that really deserves being called pro-commie.

Bolsavik, the witty all-Viet-all-the-time blog, is reporting that Trong Doan (pictured), an anti-communist protester recently profiled by OC Weekly, has just been arrested for assault. Bolsavik is the latest endeavor by Hao-Nhien Vu, who lost his job at Nguoi Viet Daily News when anti-communists boycotted the paper over a photograph they didn't like.

One of those protesters who cost Vu his job is Trong Doan. According to a Westminster Police Department press release, police arrested Doan yesterday for physically assaulting a Nguoi Viet employee during a protest, an incident that was caught on videotape. Detectives interviewed Doan and booked him into the Orange County Jail. A police spokesman didn't immediately return our calls, but Doan was released today, according to Bolsavik.

"Detectives are continuing their investigations into other reported criminal activity including a bomb threat and other criminal threats made against employees of the newspaper," the release states. "As with this case, the results of their investigations will be forwarded to the District Attorney's office for review."

Until now, the anti-Nguoi Viet and anti-Viet Weekly protests have been peaceful. That hasn't always been the case. Let's hope cool heads prevail and that freedom of the press, such as it is, survives in Little Saigon.

Yesterday the feds punished Tina Tran, the Little Saigon criminal mastermind featured in a recent OC Weekly story, with a light sentence to fit her 4-foot-8 stature. Tran received a three year prison sentence--relatively soft considering she faced up to 25 years.

In 2005, federal officials accused Tran of trying to bring at least 70 Vietnamese and Chinese nationals to the U.S. in fake marriage schemes. She initially posed innocent. After many of her cohorts pleaded guilty, she changed her plea. According to federal court records, Tran charged $30,000 to $60,000 per person who wanted illegal entrance into the country. Officials said Tran's wedding scam included posing for fake wedding pictures, fabricating love letters and filing fraudulent joint tax returns.

The Orange County District Attorney's office has a pending case against Tran. They've charged her with 105 felonies for allegedly operating a national ID theft ring from a tiny Little Saigon rental house that stole millions of dollars from businesses.

Her favorite targets? Exclusive stores at Fashion Island in Newport Beach or South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa. Prosecutors have won convictions against more than 20 of her underlings in this case, but Tran has pleaded not guilty.

The animated fallout over my Aug. 17 story "Red Scare in Little Saigon," which detailed the anti-communist boycott of Garden Grove-based newspaper Viet Weekly ain't over yet. First there was the cartoon on Take2Tango, a Vietnamese-language website by an artist named Buibaro depicting me as an ugly, big-nosed puppetmaster with my hand up the rear end of Viet Weekly publisher Le Vu. The cartoon--based on photos of me covering a confrontation between Viet Weekly staff and angry store employees in a mini-mall--seemed to suggest I'm some kind of outside agitator pulling the strings on Little Saigon commies.

We're still scratching our heads over what the cartoon really means--and why Buibaro depicted me with a fountain pen for an arm.

Meanwhile, in its latest issue, Viet Weekly has its own take on the cartoon controversy, an almost Escher-esque chain of hand-in-rear puppeteers. According to the artist, who goes by the pen name Gucci, the 'toon "suggests that Buibarao's motive has been incited by many other Vietnamese political and media interests in Little Saigon with the help of Take2tango.com for posting around on websites."

While all the attention is flattering, the caricatures themselves are not--even less so than the one that ran of me in L.A. City Beat several months ago which gave me a big fat head and a teenie-weenie little hand.

Yesterday I got an e-mail from my good friend and former colleague Anthony Pignataro, who's now the editor of the Maui Time Weekly (lucky bastard). Anyways, when Pignataro's not busy teasing me about my recent depiction in the Vietnamese-language media as an ugly, big-nosed communist mastermind, he likes to show off his vast knowledge of history and literature. Most recently, he clued me in on what has to be just about the stupidest part of the stupidest speech President George W. Bush has ever made.

After refusing to comment for years about the obvious parallels between his ill-concieved and poorly executed invasion of Iraq and the Vietnam War, Bush finally addressed the issue in a speech at the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Kansas City last Wednesday. Seems Bush finally heard of a certain book about Vietnam—Graham Greene's The Quiet American—that was written 52 years ago, and if Presidents Kennedy or Johnson had read it, they would have steered clear of Southeast Asia. And if Bush had read it, well . . . you get the idea.

Here's what Bush said about The Quiet American:

In 1955, long before the United States had entered the war, Graham Greene wrote a novel called The Quiet American. It was set in Saigon, and the main character was a young government agent named Alden Pyle. He was a symbol of American purpose and patriotism and dangerous naivete. Another character describes Alden this way: "I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused."

So far, so good . . . Bush definitely has been hitting his Cliff's Notes.

But then he continues:

After America entered the Vietnam War, Graham Greene—the Graham Greene argument gathered some steam. Matter of fact, many argued that if we pulled out, there would be no consequences for the Vietnamese people. In 1972, one anti-war senator put it this way: "What earthly difference does it make to nomadic tribes or uneducated subsistence farmers in Vietnam or Cambodia or Laos whether they have a military dictator, a royal prince or a socialist commissar in some distant capital that they've never seen and may never heard of?"

So in a nutshell, Bush is using a work of literature that specifically warned against America getting arrogantly involved in an unwinnable war to justify not withdrawing from an unwinnable conflict Bush personally started because he's such an arrogant prick.

That's it. No punch line.

Bush is a moron, folks, and the joke—if there is one, which there probably isn't since invading Iraq has killed thousands of Americans and tens of thousands, if not more, Iraqis and the entire fucking planet hates us now—is on you and me.

After a month in jail, Westminster resident and former CIA-backed Laotian Secret Army General Vang Pao is heading home. Yesterday, a federal judge in Sacramento granted a request by lawyers for Vang, 77, and 10 other defendants the government claims tried to overthrow the Lao People's Democratic Republic, to have their clients released on bail pending trial.

Their argument, in part: The defendants are mostly old guys who pose no danger to society. It probably helped convince the judge that Vang attended the hearing in a wheelchair and two other alleged coup plotters, Chong Yang Thao and Seng Vue, had to be hospitalized that day for stroke complications, as reported by the Sacramento Bee.
The news was cheered by thousands of Hmong-American protesters who revere Vang and gathered outside the courtroom chanting, "Free Vang Pao!" but not so much by federal prosecutors, who argued that the alleged coup plotters posed a flight risk and that Vang, in particular, could easily call out a hit on the undercover agent who busted him and his buddies if he gets access to a cell phone. Under terms of his bail, Vang will be confined to his home and only allowed to speak with family members and lawyers.

Garden Grove city councilmember Janet Nguyen is seems the winner of yesterday's special election in the Board of Supervisor's First District. The vote count currently on the Registrar of Voters website gives Nguyen a 52 vote margin of victory over second place finisher Trung Nguyen.

The big story out of yesterday's election seems to be the emerging clout of Vietnamese-Americans as a voting bloc, since neither Nguyen had the official backing of their party.

Is it too much to hope for that a photo will surface showing Trung Nguyen being consoled on his loss by Governor Schwarzenegger, John Wayne, and Abraham Lincoln?

Update: The day draws to a close, and things have gone from close to paper (ballot) thin. Now Trung Nguyen is on top by seven votes. Looks like a recount will be coming up, which means it'll be a while before we know whether a Trung, Schwarzenegger, Wayne, and Lincoln photo would show them all wearing silly hats at a victory party or not (Lincoln excepted, of course).

As home to the country's largest concentration of Vietnamese-Americans, any story about Vietnam is liable to generate strong opinions in OC. But regardless of how one feels about the current government of Vietnam, I think we can all agree that a story in today's Long Beach Press-Telegram shows that, at least in this case, the government has a shockingly poor understanding of human nature: "Vietnam Bans Alcohol in Karaoke Bars".

According to the Associated Press, "Karaoke bars in Vietnam will no longer be allowed to sell or have alcohol on their premises as part of the country's continued campaign against so-called 'social evils,' a government official said Friday." That's right, the government is attempting to impose sobriety on karaoke. I suppose there are people who engage in karaoke while sober, but I've never seen them. And I'm pretty sure I don't want to. It just seems so unnatural. To paraphrase Emma Goldman, "If I have to listen to karaoke sober, I don't want to be part of your revolution."

(Paul Brennan)