312 thoughts on “Thanks for Your Service, Veteran- Now “Go Back to Your F****** Country” [UPDATED]”

1. You get a slightly different angle from ABC News. Note how they caption it “Officer Accused” rather than, say, “Gulf war veteran assaulted”.

2. Emails can be just as personal, if not moreso. And they do get noticed.

   i can attest to emails getting noticed.. emails get things done.

   hopefully we can all contribute and make more noise of the issue, and hopefully it will make a difference.

3. Imus once called CBS management “Jewish money-grubbing bastards,” and once called Howard Kurtz a “boner-nosed, beanie-wearing Jewboy.” And guess what? They didn’t make headlines! In fact, you never knew of it until today! Right?

   wow pissed, you read slate?

   that’s like some way cool, under-the-radar blog right? OH….what? It’s owned by an old establishment shoe-rag, WaPo.

   but, please, do go on in your quest to label all who dare to address any subject involving Judaism as anti-semites–that’s sure to lessen the power of anti-semitic language in public discourse. Brilliant strategy.

4. SM Intern:

   ” Enough. They were exonerated and the cop might be, too ONCE THERE IS AN INVESTIGATION. All we are asking for is that this incident be looked in to– and there is no harm or shame in that. No one here fancies themself judge or jury.

   You are not witty or snarky with the Duke refs. Further comments about lacrosse players? Deleted. Stay on topic.”

   In case you are implying so, comment # 208 wasn’t made by me. You make a good point – we should make news in order for this incident to be further investigated but until then we should reserve judgment. However, contrary to your own admonishment, you seem to have accepted SALDEF’s/Nags’ allegations at face value:

   ” And will there ever be a point in my lifetime when someone doesn’t tell a South Asian American to go back to where they “fucking came from”?” and, ” this xenophobic police officer screamed at him”

   I think it’s clear to everyone that the officer’s ‘ alleged ‘ racist rant is the most incriminating part of his conduct. Since you don’t seem to consider the racist language just ‘ alleged ‘ but instead something that in fact happened, what other facts are we waiting for to emerge before we burn down townhall?

   As much as there’s a history of police brutality in this country, there’s a history of people lying and using racism to deflect their guilt. I have given examples of the latter in comment # 155 in the form of incidents which by the way have been subject of your blog’s posts. The aggrieved in those cases concocted choice racial abuse that they claimed was hurled at them. Why lean on one kind of history? Why not stay neutral until the facts emerge?

   Note to intern – In the following few sentences I am responding specifically to a couple of comenters but generally to the tone this thread has adopted. So I’ll appreciate if you let the comment stay in its fullness.

   Santosh:

   ” Disgraceful! Where’s NAACP and ACLU when you need them? “

   NAACP was busy lusting for Imus’ blood. The questions should be where was NAACP when DJ Star ( Troy Terain ) used much more vile and racist language while talking to an innocent Indian call centre worker at the other end. That bastard got away with something like a week’s diversity training. What’s more pathetic? None of his hundreds of thousands of mostly Black listeners called in to complain or report the matter to the media.

   Shruti:

   ” It’s about time that racist got called out”

   Just to let you know a couple of things about Imus; He championed Harold E. Ford Jr. during his run for U.S. Senate in Tennessee, and bitterly decried the slow government response to Hurricane Katrina. The former while enduring a death threat and in the latter case while pointedly asking if the slow response was because most victims were Black. His enormous charity work has benefited minorties just as much. He was an equal opportunity insulter with mostly powerful Whites being the butt of his jokes. In this case he went too far because he targeted a group of private individuals and used racist language. He apologized profusely for it but it was not enough for some hypocrites ( don’t get me started on Sharpton and Jackson ). But I’ll tell you one thing – this is a watershed event for many people in this country. Thousands upon thousands of moderates are very angry at the double standards at play in this country. In the next few weeks watch out for a sudden swell in conservative-talk-show audience.

   Shruti again:

   ” this guy knew that he wasn’t going to get away with it if it were some rich white guy whose car was parked with expired tags outside his mansion, know’m sayin’? This guy is not a “bad apple”. If anything, a good cop is a “good apple” on a rotten tree. Police brutality and racial profiling are not sanctioned, they’re straight up institutionalized.”

   You should have had the decency to not put out this moronic statement on the very day that all the charges against the three ” Rich White kids ” in the Duke rape case were finally thrown out. A case in which not just DA Nifong, the ‘ students of color ‘ at Duke, the general Black community of Raleigh-Durham, steeped-in-guilt peofessors ( 88 in number ) but also the local police force were complicit in destroying the life of three innocent undergrads. No ‘ innocent until proven guilty ‘ for these kids. If America were such a hellish place for minorities where the system is irreparably stacked against them, then how come the checkered testimony of a two-bit Black stripper with serious mental problems was given such a collective ear? All this in a country where a novice two-year senator with almost zero political experience and quite a few imprudent votes ( for example- opposition to CAFTA which eventually ended up lifting thousands out of poverty in Central America ) to flaunt ends up raising several millions more than any of the seasoned and much more accomplished presidential contenders. Why? Because of the color of his skin. And he is not White. In fact he is the only non-White contender. Only in America!

5. In the abc news it is mentioned that his wife took some pictures of the incident. If only she had a videocam…

6. Duke the Naacp hardly even helps black people and that I know of I had friends who are black muslims get dissed by the Naacp they are a shadow of themselves,but I will say this I am not apathic to this case at all even though I am black I know how it is to get pulled over by the police and it ain’t pretty. Btw Dom Imus should have kept his stupid racist clap trap to himself.

7. Stategy is important –

   First, get all the facts in.

   Second, use it to focus on the issue. Anna said it well in the thread.

   Third, use the publicity to ensure a successful outcome. DO NOT HARP on all cops or the ‘bigotry’ of the system, or frankly get all hippie on things. Use the publicity to be successful – as a part of the the publicity, encourage more funding and training for police officers (AKA more dollars for the department), this means the unions and knee jerk response from police groups is tempered as they see you meaning well, trying to get more awareness and training in (AKA more resources for the department from the money), yet will give you leeway in going after a bad apple.

   Another thing I beat to death, as John Boyd said (paraphrased) – do your homework and make sure you factually right first. Then plan your strategy, and commit to it with 120%. Playing the broken record (and pretty empty tune) of big bad brother, bad police, evils of white america, in this case won’t work. Desis do not have enough population gravity to force such an issue. One needs to be far more strategic, tactical, and go for what works.

   • Congressman
   • Court police via ‘training dollars’
   • Push for factual information and lessen rhetoric that attacks a larger population. Divide and conquer.

8. You could write them. I have a hard time believing that a cop would go straight to violent abuse. Yeah, but regardless of whether the cop’s actions might have been justified, the cop’s racist rant was not. (…And if the amount of violence alleged was truly used, then it’s hard to imagine what Mr. Singh would have been doing which could justifiably provoke the cop’s response, but that’s a digression.)

   I’m sorry, I didn’t write that well. What I meant was that if this officer did this violent attack as alleged, it seems likely to me that he has escalated through a series of similar incidents in his career. I don’t think you skip right to beating up middle-aged men while shouting racist epithets. My guess is that someone who does that also has done smaller incidents of police brutality, and a story in a local paper might bring some of those to light.

   When I wrote “go straight to violent abuse”, I wasn’t referring to provocation during the incident, although it certainly reads like that. My bad.

9. “Um…just because charges are dropped doesn’t mean they are innocent. Ooh, big surprise, a bunch of rich white guys got off. How unusual.”

   I know man, I know. Sort of like OJ. But seriously, I know it’s hard for you to give up–had such juicy elements–but you could choose a better case than the Duke thing to make whatever point you wanted. DNA wasn’t there. Even the “victim” recanted. Nifong wanted his PC wings very badly, enough to lie, because he knew there was no case. White liberals see themselves as potential Ghandis. They will shred their lower SES white brethren to oblivion in this ambition, and if the brethren are rich, all the better. But in the end, even he knew the case was ridiculous. The law firm where my friends work was laughing through the whole thing, not because rape is funny but because that case was absurd. Undoubtedly there were such cases many years ago, but nowadays–I am privy to certain opinions–no sane or sober white man would risk a law suit and go near a black person with personal intentions. Even drunk ones have second thoughts. I could tell you about plenty of horrific cases where the perps were definitely guilty and got off, and not because they were white and/or rich. There’s no rhyme or reason to the justice systems.

   Here is why I’m commenting. It’s a given: Most people care mainly about themselves and people like themselves. Ergo, a string of 200 or more comments on this nasty incident. You are angry about seeing a fellow desi get abused by cop. One picture’s worth a thousand words. I got angry too, and I am not desi ,partly because the guy is a veteran but mostly because it’s so disgusting after all this time that a cop should do this. But that was just one cop–there are some great cops who would never do such a thing. Your desi-oriented focus is appropriate, but wait a minute about the “white racist crime” forcryingoutloud. What are the stats? Are you really that beleagured? Do you cross the street if you see a group of whites approaching? I’m serious. Of course you’re talking here about a cop, so that’s a different situation from a criminal criminal, but still. Desi crime (is there any?) is a non-issue in the U.S., but somebody made a color connection with black Americans. As far as black/white crime, there is a general feeling among whites in discussion blogs, that they are the forgotten victims, their victimization way higher than the amount of coverage given. I was skeptical until I realized I’d never heard of most of these crimes and cases. Also suffocated by the negativity of the threads. My belief is that nothing remains hidden forever, and the truth emerges eventually, in its own good time. Just as you on sepia discuss desi victims in varying degrees of outrage and rationalization, they do the same for theirs. They too feel aggrieved and ignored. Some rationalize. There is a festering undercurrent of such grievance in this country, sadly. Nobody thinks their suffering gets enough attention. And the stats do change from century to century. The grand irony is that most here, be they black, brown, white or yellow, are probably better off and safer than in most other countries they could be in, as long as they choose a user friendly neighborhood. Maybe you are right, though, that browns get little attention, as I haven’t read much about them either as perps or victims. I know many people who have been the victims of interracial crime in recent decades, and none are black or brown, but then that’s just me. I’m open to information, but I am also expecting others to be. Maybe different race/ethnic groups should meet and compare notes from the combat zones? If so, all need to come armed with facts, not just emotional screeds. I haven’t met many, if any, whites who particularly dislike “desis” because of color or race. Mr. Cop maybe, although Arabs seem to be his real problem. Indeed, another irony, considering the current topic, is that I once knew a blond cop who made great friends with an Indian family in Baltimore. So my sympathies for Mr. Nag, assuming he’s in the right, and I fully concur with any efforts to redress such an occurence. I’d even sign a petition. It is especially bad as he’s a veteran and should be respected. But as I read comment after comment attributing race crime to whites (not all but many) I began to wonder (although I understood why these good people think this way) if I was living on the same planet much less the same country, my experience is that different. As I find with the white grievance blogs, and black grievance blogs, negativity is suffocating. If we want justice, we must accept the naturalness of our personal bias, but investigate thoroughly and objectively. Do something positive and move on. And don’t think there are any more people out to get you than are out to get the rest of us.

10. just blew up on digg…

11. excuse me, probably not “just” sorry for being so slow.

    and I just saw that this one had even more diggs… there were so many dupes. Not saying it deserves less coverage but it would be better to channel all of our efforts into one story for these social bookmarking sites.

12. What I meant was that if this officer did this violent attack as alleged, it seems likely to me that he has escalated through a series of similar incidents in his career. I don’t think you skip right to beating up middle-aged men while shouting racist epithets.

    Megan – the TV news story indicates he had only been on the force a short while, just 15 months. Hopefully you’re still right, and there’s a consistent pattern of behavior, but there may not be.

13. Inside the Beltway- Yeah, like OJ’s case was representative of any kind of pattern. And yes, I am familiar with racist/homophobic police harrassment and profiling in NY, and so is my family. And post-9/11 targeting has made things even worse for desi families. You have no place telling me what I can and cannot be concerned about.

14. you seem to have accepted SALDEF’s/Nags’ allegations at face value

    SALDEF is on the ground you are not. They are professionals who have talked to Nag and his family and concluded that they have a legitimate case. Who should we give the benefit of the doubt, them or a rogue cop who, at the very least, assaulted a desi veteran so roughly that he had to spend 5 days in a hospital? All that Nag’s violation deserved was a ticket.

    As much as there’s a history of police brutality in this country, there’s a history of people lying and using racism to deflect their guilt.

    Complete nonsense. For every attempt to falsely use the race card there must be 100s of examples of police brutality. Police brutality has a far less chance of being caught than lying criminals. Rogue cops are far more threatening to a just and civil society.

    Thousands upon thousands of moderates are very angry at the double standards at play in this country. In the next few weeks watch out for a sudden swell in conservative-talk-show audience.

    Let these so-called moderates come out of the closet and reveal their true fascist colors. Those who defend Imus’s right to be an obnoxious racist and sexist are just the audience these conservative talk show jerks like Savage and Limbaugh aim for. You obviously are a card-carrying member of this proto-fascist constituency. Your impassioned defense of rogue cops, cruel and racist talk show jerks, and the Duke Lacrosse Team (which has a notoriously bad reputation, apart from the dismissed case you are so excited about) expose you as a thuggish brute.

15. How is it “ironic” that you knew a white cop who was friends with an Indian family? So? What does that have to do with structural white supremacy? It does not make individual white people KKK members. Get a clue and buy yourself a sense of nuance.

16. insidethebeltway

    hear hear

17. “SALDEF is on the ground you are not. They are professionals who have talked to Nag and his family and concluded that they have a legitimate case. Who should we give the benefit of the doubt, them or a rogue cop who, at the very least, assaulted a desi veteran so roughly that he had to spend 5 days in a hospital? All that Nag’s violation deserved was a ticket…For every attempt to falsely use the race card there must be 100s of examples of police brutality. Police brutality has a far less chance of being caught than lying criminals. Rogue cops are far more threatening to a just and civil society.

    Let these so-called moderates come out of the closet and reveal their true fascist colors. Those who defend Imus’s right to be an obnoxious racist and sexist are just the audience these conservative talk show jerks like Savage and Limbaugh aim for. You obviously are a card-carrying member of this proto-fascist constituency. Your impassioned defense of rogue cops, cruel and racist talk show jerks, and the Duke Lacrosse Team (which has a notoriously bad reputation, apart from the dismissed case you are so excited about) expose you as a thuggish brute.”

    Go Prema!

18. It’s ironic because it’s his experience, it’s the same thing as when we pass judgement on selected incidents. We are by no means victims of the same kind of racism that african-americans are, even though we like to pretend we are. Desis are generally victims of the abuse Shilpa Shetty experienced in celebrity-BB which is quite another mechanism, it’s class hatered, from working class white people imagining that desis are a minority taking the middle class positions they feel they are entitled to. Then there is an ironic side of the racism that we experince, as this case clearly shows, it’s when people think we are arabs. The ironic side being, that we have been victims of terrorism for the past 50 years, and as any desi who have ever lived in the arab world knows (as I have), thats where we really are despised for being desis.

19. I think we have to realize that when certain influential people (e.g John Hagee) in America start to paint Muslims as being the Gog and Magog of this world it is only natural that this sort of thing is going to happen. The officer I am sure probably thought that this man was a Muslim. It is scary how many evangelicals believe that Muslim countries in general are the evil armies that will descend onto Israel like a cloud.

    It would be nice to be able to laugh of this kind of thing, and say that nobody or hardly anybody believes this. But that is not the case.

20. “The officer I am sure probably thought that this man was a Muslim.”

    The f***ing arab part makes it more than just probable.

21. “It’s doubly a shame when a police officer is on private property and uses corporal punishment for no valid purpose for someone that he believes was an Arab, even if he was an Arab he shouldn’t have been doing that,” said Andrew Seigel, attorney. Joliet police say they will be investigating the actions of one of their officers. [Link from the newstab]

    Just the fact that someone actually NEEDS TO SAY that! UGH!

22. The Joliet city ordinance in question:

    Sec. 19-233. Storage of inoperable and abandoned vehicles prohibited. No person shall store an abandoned or inoperable vehicle on any property located within the city of unless the storage thereof is specifically permitted by the zoning ordinance and is otherwise in compliance with applicable laws and ordinances. A law enforcement officer is authorized to issue an ordinance violation complaint or compliance ticket to the property owner, the vehicle owner and any other person having control of the vehicle or the premises, including tenants and lessees, in order to enforce theprovisions of this section. (Ord. No. 14262, § 1, 4-15-03) [Link]

    Seems a bit more than over-the-top to spot an expired tag at the end of a longish driveway and then proceed to follow up on it…

23. “even if he was an Arab he shouldn’t have been doing that,”

    unbelivable really…

24. “even if he was an Arab he shouldn’t have been doing that,”

    Samjay:

    unbelivable really…

    These things are always complicated because you want to say that “Indian’s didnt have anything to do with 9/11, so dont target us for your hate!”, but at the same time you dont want it to sound like you are saying “Go ahead and hate your heart out, but just dont be ignorant about it, make sure you know the culture of the person you beat down.”

25. Chicago Tribune has picked up this story

26. If we want justice, we must accept the naturalness of our personal bias,

    How many times have you seen an infant show delight or complaint on the basis of race? Any personal bias my friend, is completely learned. As in, unnatural.

27. Jeet #275,

    The Chicago Tribune story did not feel it to be necessary to mention that Mr. Nag is a decorated veteran. He is only mentioned as “an immigrant”. This is the way to bring fair and balanced reporting. You know this “immigrant” can be a drug dealer too … you know how “they” are changing America everyday !!

28. DukeRapeHoax

    So once again you chose to not wait out the facts to emerge but instead rushed to rage about an allegedly racial incident. Remember that Iranian guy at UCLA or the Leela Lounge incident? What about the Sikh youths allegedly getting their heads forcibly shaved by White supremacists? All those incidents turned out to be either hoaxes or not racist incidents. But of course you painted them that way and never did a follow up post when finally the facts did come out.

    [link]

    While I was at Leela Lounge last night for an Obama event, I asked one of the men who had been attacked (and had his nose broken) for an update about the incident. He said that the case is currently going to a grand jury after which indictments will be handed out.

    If you have information about the case that has not been revealed yet (and that supports your contention that the incident was a hoax or not racist), I’d suggest contacting the DA’s office.

29. Go prema!

    and then, the racism that we desis experince, it’s almost laughable. It’s because we look like arabs. How the hell do you tackle that!?

    No offense, but this is a totally ahistorical view of the racism desis have faced in the U.S. PLENTY of desis, especially Sikhs, have been targeted just for being brown or different, not necessarily because people thought they were Arab. And many have been abused specifically for being of South Asian ancestry! While I agree that we have not faced anywhere near the same brutality and racism as African-Americans in this country, I think there is a distinct regional and class dynamic when people argue that about the limits of anti-desi racism.

30. RC: The Chicago Tribune story did not feel it to be necessary to mention that Mr. Nag is a decorated veteran. He is only mentioned as “an immigrant”. This is the way to bring fair and balanced reporting. You know this “immigrant” can be a drug dealer too … you know how “they” are changing America everyday !!

    Good catch. We need to email Matthew Walberg, the writer of that story and point this out to him mwalberg@tribune.com

31. FYI, Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights is hosting a panel discussion of the post-911 experience of immigrants in the United States.

    I passed on the SALDEF press release and the subsequent Chicago Herald story to a friend who works at MAHR, and they are going to include the SALDEF material in their discussion forum. I doubt this will be of much help to Mr. Nag in the short term, but it is another way of getting the word out.

32. Thanks, Hema. I think there might be a typo in the link as you posted it: I found it here.

33. Thanks, chachaji!

34. RC, the story does say that Nag “served 10 years in the U.S. Navy.”

35. Seahawks fan, I hope you have heard about the award called BRONZE star.

36. RC wrote:

    He is only mentioned as “an immigrant”.

    I hope you know the meaning of “only.”

    The bronze star is significant, but the reporter didn’t ignore Mr. Nag’s military service, as your post implied.

37. The news articles in Chicago Tribune and Joliet News-Herald (which are identical) also quote the police dept as saying they had never heard directly from SALDEF or anyone else, only through the media…..?? At the end of the article there is a quiet line from SALDEF claiming to have sent a letter to the dept, but it is hardly comparably prominent to the police quote.

38. Both could be true. SALDEF may have sent a (hard copy) letter, and it may not have been received by the PD at the time this went to press. Isn’t SALDEF HQ’d in DC?

39. Nag, 49, a Sikh who emigrated from India two decades ago and served 10 years in the U.S. Navy, faces a felony charge of aggravated battery and a misdemeanor charge of resisting arrest. Police said there was no evidence to support Nag’s claim that the rookie officer used a racial slur.

    Nag said: “All the time he was hitting me, he was saying, ‘You [expletive] immigrant, go back to your country or I will kill you.’ I was telling him, ‘I’m a [U.S.] citizen and a veteran. I’ve been here 21 years. What country do you want me to go back to?

    Folks, before you bombard the Tribune writer, these are two quotes from that article. It does state he is a veteran. As I’ve mentioned before, verifying an award or record is difficult. There has been a significant spike in people posing with military medals and what not, maybe the reporter is being cautious. I do not know.

    The article seemed down the middle to me.

40. The news articles in Chicago Tribune

    Woops, not the Tribune article…some other radio station WBBsomething-or-other.

    Both could be true.

    Sure, but one statement is featured far more prominently than the other.

41. Prema,

    After I wrote the following response to your uncalled invective I read your comment # 156. I think you are mistaken – this is not an IQ-free zone. As much as you complain about unfounded hate in the Western world I am dumbfounded by your own real unprovoked hate. I am sure your BS bit about the oppression of indigenous people is the ‘ root cause ‘ of the lynching of Asians by Ugandans ( see the latest SM post). I am also sure you live in the Western world where you or your parents were forcibly brought against their wishes.

    ” SALDEF is on the ground you are not. They are professionals who have talked to Nag and his family and concluded that they have a legitimate case. Who should we give the benefit of the doubt, them or a rogue cop who, at the very least, assaulted a desi veteran so roughly that he had to spend 5 days in a hospital? All that Nag’s violation deserved was a ticket.”

    SALDEF is doing its work, that’s right. However SALDEF believes ( rightly ) what the aggrieved minority tells it. SALDEF and similar civil rights organizations have in the past fallen for hoaxes like the ones where the Sikh boys claimed racist headshaving. You have already judged the cop to be ‘ rogue’ and you are not even on the ground. Need I say more about your idiocy? I am not favoring anyone, I am asking for neutrality.

    ” For every attempt to falsely use the race card there must be 100s of examples of police brutality. Police brutality has a far less chance of being caught than lying criminals. Rogue cops are far more threatening to a just and civil society.”

    You are wrong in the first statement. There are just as many hoaxes and ‘ brutality ‘ is an aberration that usually happens when overworked cops are stuck in unfriendly ( read criminal/thuggish ) neighborhoods for a long time. I agree with your second statement. Rogue thugs,criminals and terrorists are more threatening. Cops don’t go around killing, raping , carjacking, or flying planes into buildings full of innocent people.

    As for the rest of the venom you spit, I’d like to mimic the ridiculous O’Reilly – ‘ You are a far-left loon.’ Honestly I feel very sorry for the worldview you carry in your head.

    Camille,

    I can understand your cheerleading someone like Prema. I went over some of your comments. You share the same inverted worldview. And you have been called out by some here for your sensational half truths to which you have responded like, ‘ Oh I didn’t really mean that’. The next time you bandy words like ‘ brutality ‘ and ‘ violent ‘ provide some back up and also for fairness’ sake add that they are anomalies in this mostly free and fair society. Perspective is important. Strive for zero tolerance of racism in this country but please rid yourself of your victim mentality and not-so-hidden hatred for the West and the White race. Btw most hate crimes/ hate speech in this country after 9/ll that has been directed against Sikhs/Muslims/Arabs has come from minorities not Whites in particular Blacks but you don’t want to go there because that’ll explode your ‘ people of color ‘ solidarity myth and deflate ‘ us vs them ‘ rhetoric.

    Brooklyn Brown,

    There was a hearing on the Leela Lounge case on Feb 20 of this year. You should have asked the man with the ‘broken nose’ as to what came out of it.

42. I cannot imagine Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now radio/TV program not picking up this story. (http://www.democracynow.org/)

43. I apologize for posting again, but here is a direct link to the Democracy Now story submission form. http://www.democracynow.org/storyidea.pl

44. Folks, before you bombard the Tribune writer, these are two quotes from that article. It does state he is a veteran.

    What percentage of Veterans are Bronze star winners?? What percentage of “immigrant” are drug dealing criminals?? Tribune story didnt even put Mr. Nag being a Veteran, let alone a Bronze star awarded veteran, in the headline. Headline only mentions “immigrant”. This is a specific move to downplay Mr. Nag’s background.

45. Lets increase the local exposure of this. If everyone goes to the story and emails it, it will put the story on the list of most-emailed stories and come up every time a Tribune reader clicks on an article.

    See Jeet #275 for the link.

46. Camille, I can understand your cheerleading someone like Prema. I went over some of your comments. You share the same inverted worldview. And you have been called out by some here for your sensational half truths to which you have responded like, ‘ Oh I didn’t really mean that’. The next time you bandy words like ‘ brutality ‘ and ‘ violent ‘ provide some back up and also for fairness’ sake add that they are anomalies in this mostly free and fair society. Perspective is important. Strive for zero tolerance of racism in this country but please rid yourself of your victim mentality and not-so-hidden hatred for the West and the White race. Btw most hate crimes/ hate speech in this country after 9/ll that has been directed against Sikhs/Muslims/Arabs has come from minorities not Whites in particular Blacks but you don’t want to go there because that’ll explode your ‘ people of color ‘ solidarity myth and deflate ‘ us vs them ‘ rhetoric.

    As someone who has had extensive work and experience with both religious communities, people of color organizations, and civil rights organizations, I am passionately committed to a vision of an inclusive, diverse, and hate-free society. Furthermore, I am not sorry nor do I feel or identify as victimized for having this belief. I think this ideal is central to the long-term success and survival of a thriving, democratic society.

    I know this is an ideal, but I think it is worth working towards. I know and understand that cross-community dialogue is difficult, riddled with internal prejudices/stereotypes/racism, and not always perfect. Furthermore, as someone who has seen her friends brutalized and victimized by the police, I don’t appreciate when people try to degrade or deny that police brutality exists. It does. Now let’s do something about it.

    Lastly, I think it is a stretch, to put it mildly, that I hate the West or white people. A critical perspective is, in my opinion, necessary for progression and growth. I am not going to sit on my ass and do nothing when I know that this country, and its people, can do better. At least I try to act on my critiques — what have you done, aside from spew hatred?

    DRH, I am through with you and see no point in discussing anything with you at this point. Not because I believe you are incapable of dialogue, but because your posts have shown that you are incapable of making any argument that does not rely on completely degrading others. You are entitled to your world-view, but I honestly question your motive in cutting down others who simply point to the fact that racism exists and that it ought to be addressed. Please enjoy the confined, intolerant, and hateful life to which you have resigned yourself.

47. Brooklyn Brown, There was a hearing on the Leela Lounge case on Feb 20 of this year. You should have asked the man with the ‘broken nose’ as to what came out of it.

    DukeRapeHoax

    ummm…can i ask you instead?

48. just spoke to the acting director of the Joliet police department.

    1.He said he hsant heard from Mr Nag or his attorney.

    2.SALDEF is the only group to have contacted them so far.

    3.The racist angle wasnt brought to the police department’s attention till yesterday.

    4.An internal investigation into the allegations is underway.

    I called as a concerned and scared Sikh who wants to visit Joliet but doesnt know if its a good idea as I might get beaten up for an expired registration tag and asked to go back to my country.

49. Is there any point discussing these isolated incidents of Xenophobia? Any society has its share of Xenophobics. Admittedly, what happened to Mr. Nag was bad – very bad – but its not a reflection of the entire police, just one individual. Its really a waste of time to heap sympathy on Mr.Nag, and indulge in self-sympathy, just because you assume “IT COULD HAVE HAPPENED TO ME.” Yes, it will happen to you, if you go and visit some small town in Idaho. Just don’t go there. However, if you stay within the proximity of a city, the chances of an incident happening like this are one in ten billion. Debating such an incident then, is like debating “I JUST WON THE LOTTERY!.”

50. I’ve nothing new to add to this story. Instead, my comment here is to chime in with everyone else about how completely f*cked up this situation appears.

    Although I have family members who serve in law enforcement jobs, my own personal encounters with police (indeed the justice system in general) have left a very rancid taste in my mouth.

    While I’m not hasty to stereotype an entire group on the basis of a very small sample population’s behavior, I can say that my own personal experience with cops, judges, lawyers and courts has jaded my expectations. Cynical? Yes, I suppose I am. With reason? D@mn right it is!

    Thanks for posting this so that the matter may be digested by a broad public audience (not that most of them will read it, or that of those who do read it, that most of them will actually do something about what they read — sigh!).