Extinction

Marie Smith Jones, R.I.P. She was the last person who was fluent in Eyak, a language of Alaska. Too bad. We really are losing more than we will ever be able to recoup.

"With her death, the Eyak language becomes extinct," Krauss said.

Cool Idea

This is a cool idea, whose time may have arrived.

How Low

Can the world-wide right go?

On a recent evening, Marcos Suarez celebrated his first birthday with a single candle on a cake from the family he never knew existed until months ago.

Suarez, 31, is the latest of the "recovered grandchilden," as Argentines call them: the youngest victims of the "Dirty War" that the country's military waged against leftist opponents from the mid-1970s until 1983.

As many as 500 infants, according to relatives and witnesses -- some abducted with their parents, others born to pregnant activists in clandestine torture centers -- were never returned to their next of kin. In a calculated scheme to raise the children of leftists with conservative values, the babies were secretly given away, mostly to military couples or sympathizers.

There appears to be similarities to how the right responds to anyone who challenges there messianic belief that only they have the ability to rule others. Of course, the right in America will claim that they never took/take children from their parents. It doesn't take a lot of googling to find this:

He argues that through the boarding schools, reformers, educators, and federal agents waged cultural, psychological, and intellectual warfare on Native students as part of a concerted effort to turn Indians into "Americans." School administrators and teachers cut children's hair; changed their dress, their diets, and their names; introduced them to unfamiliar conceptions of space and time; and subjected them to militaristic regimentation and discipline.

For those of my loyal four readers who are interested, here's a brief summary of the training that the Argentine military, among many other Latin American rightists, received in the United States at The School of Assassins, or The School of Dictators, take your pick. In either event, it's enough to want a normal person to take a shower & scrub themselves. Still, the collective grime is hard to remove.

After Argentina's return to democracy, Viola was convicted and sentenced to 17 years in prison for criminal responsibility for human rights violations during Argentina's so-called "dirty-war against subversion" in the 1970s. 8 Viola was succeeded by Lieutenant General Leopoldo Galtieri, another School graduate, who ruled from December 1981 until June 1982. Galtieri led Argentina during the unsuccessful war with Britain over the Falkland Islands.

Home

Ojibwe religion returned.

...said the scrolls depicted ceremonial songs "concerning the most fundamental laws and needs of the [Ojibwe] people."