home / subscribe / donate / tower / books / archives / search / links / feedback / events

What You're Missing in our subscriber-only CounterPunch newsletter SHOULD SCOOTER LIBBY'S LAWYER BE DISBARRED? Law school dean Lawrence Velvel says, Maybe he should, if he sat idly by while client Libby spouted lies. What lies at the core of Zionism? Michael Neumann tortures Alan Dershowitz, without a warrant! "Sex-mad adulterer from British aristocracy claims to have 'revolutionized' philosophy." Yes, Bertrand Russell, they mean you! Alexander Cockburn on Smearing 101 in the British press. Get the answers you're looking for in the subscriber-only edition of CounterPunch ... CounterPunch Online is read by millions of viewers each month! But remember, we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! Get CounterPunch's Print Edition By Email! Call Toll Free 1-800-840-3683 or write CounterPunch, PO BOX 228, Petrolia, CA 95558

Today's Stories November 26 / 27, 2005 Alexander Cockburn How the Democrats Undercut John Murtha November 25, 2005 David Price How US Anthropologists Planned "Race-Specific" Weapons Against the Japanese Brian McKenna Will Bush Miss the Next Bhopal? Jeff Halper Peretz or Bust? Ray McGovern Will the US Seize the Opportunity for Troop Withdrawal? Leigh Saavedra Thanksgiving at Camp Casey Ingmar Lee How Have the Mighty Fallen? Website of the Day Saving Cathedral Grove   November 24, 2005 James Petras How to Think About War and Peace Bob Shirley Thanksgiving Torture: What the Puritans Fled Mike Fox Torture Survivors Speak for Themselves Niranjan Ramakrishnan Adrift? Perhaps. A Draft? Never! Greg Moses Thanksgiving Delayed: TX High Court Blesses Inequality Alexander Cockburn Turkeys in the Larger Scheme of Things   November 23, 2005 Ramzy Baroud The Great Gaza Border Deal: What Does It Mean? Mike Whitney Bush, Padilla and Thomas More Stan Cox Red, White and Blue Dawn: What a Bad Hollywood Film Can Teach Americans About Life Under Occupation Linda S. Heard Targeting Al Jazeera November 22, 2005 Kevin Gray / Mike Hersh Maxine Waters, the Real Leader of the Anti-War Caucus Ralph Nader What Do Dems Stand For? Michael Donnelly The "Vetting" of Bernard Kerik Mike Ferner The CIA's "Torture Taxi" in the Spotlight Pierre Tristam The Justice Deficit Marshall Auerback Bush's "Compassionate Conservativism": Neither Compassionate Nor Conservative Website of the Day I Don't Like Geldof   November 21, 2005 Mike Marqusee Clinton's Hypocrisies on Iraq Josh Frank Democratic Hawks: the Avian Flu of the Antiwar Movement Mike Whitney Hugo Chavez vs. the King of Vacations Norman Solomon Getting Out of Iraq Russ Baker Woodward's Weakness Robert Jensen A National Day of Atonement Paul Craig Roberts Lies and Official Secrets   November 19 / 20, 2005 Fred Gardner The Raid on MendoHealing Rep. Cynthia McKinney The House GOP Has Done a Heinous Thing: Stop Playing Politics; Get the Troops Out Now Ron Jacobs A Pathetic Congress: If It Walks and Talks Like a Withdrawal Resolution, Why Won't You Vote For It? David Vest The Politics of Surrender: It's as American as Robert E. Lee J.L. Chestnut, Jr. Condi Rice's Disdain for the Civil Rights Movement John R. Bomar Staying the Course on "Freedom's Frontier": a Vietnam Vet on Iraq John Ross The Dragon Flies High, But Not Over Mexico Phillip Cryan Colombia: "Political Kidnapping" and Murder in Cauca Dave Lindorff RIP In These Times Dick J. Reavis The Future of the Daily Press Jeremy Scahill Vegetarian Between Meals: This War Can't Be Stopped by a Loyal Opposition Dan Wright Cleaning Up Alaska's Scan Bay John Stanton Scowcroft Talks Turkey; Edmounds Fights Fascism St. Clair / Vest / Walker Playlist: What We're Listening to This Week Phyllis Pollack The Stones: Rarities Dr. Susan Block Our Night of Weimar Love Poets Basement Albert, Engel, Ford, Harley and Louise   November 18, 2005 Michael Neumann The Palestinians and the Party Line Dave Lindorff Murtha and the L Word Michael Donnelly Black November 15 Mark Chmiel / Andrew Wimmer Uncrucify Them Don Monkerud A Decent Workplace Tom Kerr Grant Clemency to Tookie Williams Trish Schuh Faking the Case Against Syria   November 17, 2005 John Walsh A Fractured Anti-War Movement Rep. John Murtha Iraq Must Be Freed from the US Occupation Brian J. Foley We Are All In GITMO Now CounterPunch News Service Guardian Apologizes to Chomsky; Publishes Total Retraction of Brockes' Slurs Dave Lindorff In Post-Saddam Iraq, There are No Civilians Mark T. Harris Coming Out in an Up-and-Coming Sport Cockburn / St. Clair From Reporter to Courtier: the Decline of Bob Woodward   November 16, 2005 John F. Sugg Al-Arian Speaks: In His First Interview Since the Trial Began, Al-Arian Talks About What the Jury Didn't Hear Noam Chomsky Putting Out the Englightenment Dave Lindorff Shake and Bake: Pentagon Admits Using Phosphorous Bombs on Fallujah Evelyn Pringle Laurie Mylroie's War Sam Husseini Trying to Look a Female Suicide Bomber in the Eye Pierre Tristam Toturers' Theater Greg Bates Waffling Alito Charms DiFi Farrah Hassen Moustapha AkkadDavid Lean of the Middle East Killed in Amman Blast Bill Christison Evidence Mounts That Bush Wants New Wars Website of the Day Violent Oscillations   November 15, 2005 Todd Chretien My Evening in the No Spin Zone; Or Why Bill O'Reilly Hates San Francisco Leah Caldwell Death of the Jailhouse Press Frederick Hudson Rosa's Wreath: Miss Parks and Robert Williams Harry Browne Bush-Linked Judge Bows Out: Another Mistrial in Irish Ploughshares Case Jason Leopold Secret CIA Testimony: Iraq Posed No Threat Ingmar Lee Logging Lackies vs. Canada's Most Endangered Species Diana Barahona Showdown on the Silver Coast Tom Andre New Orleans, Two Months Later Website of the Weekend Ernest Crichlow: 1914-2005   November 14, 2005 Diana Johnstone The Origins of the Guardian's Attack on Chomsky Paul Craig Roberts Power Over All: Unlimited Detentions and the End of Habeas Corpus Conn Hallinan Provoking Syria: Cambodia All Over Again? Joshua Frank Off She Goes: Hillary in Israel Christopher Reed The Persistence of Racism in Koizumi's Japan   November 11 / 13, 2005 Alexander Cockburn First the Lying, Then the Pardons Gwyneth Leech Cross Connections: a Painter Reimagines the Passion of Christ in the Wake of Abu Ghraib Elmas Mallo Chillin' in the Blazin' Texas Sun: Inside the Texas Prison System Michael Neumann The Rebel King of Bluegrass: Jimmy Martin, an Appreciation Saul Landau Leakgate: the Screenplay Sam Husseini Bush and Zarqawi Bomb Because We Let Them Brian Cloughley Sleaze, Deceit and Torture Ron Jacobs Rep. McGovern's Withdrawal Resolution: a Step in the Right Direction? Lila Rajiva Dover Bitch: the Curses of Pat Robertson Michael Donnelly Hypocrisy Watch Joe Allen Murder in El Salvador: Who Killed Gilberto Soto? Roland Sheppard Lessons from the Montgomery Bus Boycott Justin E.H. Smith Another Monkey Trial? Ben Tripp The Cost of War St. Clair / Vest Playlists: What We're Listening to This Week Poets' Basement Jones, Louise, Ford, Smith, Albert and Engel Website of the Weekend Iraq Vets and Against the War Need Your Help!     November 10, 2005 Peterside, Ogon, Watts and Zalik Delta Blues Again: Ken Saro-Wiwa, 10 Years Gone Pat Williams Will Alito Cost the Republicans the Senate? Steve Higgs Bush Crony Targets Indiana's Forests: 400% Hike in Logging Jimmy Massey Is Ron Harris Telling the Truth? Lucson Pierre-Charles Haiti: Insanity Takes Over Anthony Newkirk Syria in the Crosshairs Lawrence R. Velvel Why Did Libby Lie? Website of the Day Imperial Margarine November 9, 2005 Gary Leupp The Niger Deception / Plame Affair: an Incomplete Chronology Tariq Ali Blair Defeated on Terror Laws Chris Floyd The Philosopher's Stone Elaine Cassel The Shocking Trial of an American Citizen: the Case of Ahmed Abu Ali Joshua Frank Sen. Max Baucus's NASCAR Pay Day Alison Weir Memo to Jon Stewart: Glad You're Against Torture, So Why'd You Give Israel a Pass? Diana Johnstone Rage in the Banlieue November 8, 2005 Paul Craig Roberts Still No Jobs Roger Burbach Bush v. Chavez: the Imperial President Meets the Bolivarian Democrat Ron Jacobs An Interview with Behzad Yaghmaian on the Paris Uprising Ralph Nader "The Worst Marketed Disease on the Planet" Jim McGrath Voter Beware: a Cautionary Tale for Election Day David Bloom McCain, Israel and Torture: Setting the Record Straight Stan Goff Jimmy Massey, Ron Harris, and Ambush Journalism   November 7, 2005 Dick Reavis The Origins of Mr. Danger Jason Leopold Cheney and the Cover Up: the Vice President Lied Dave Lindorff What Country was Bush Talking About? Eli Stephens A Tale of Two Generals: the Lies of Colin Powell David Swanson The Bush-Cheney Ethics Refresher Course: a Syllabus M. Junaid Alam An Interview Stan Goff Matt Reichel Paris Uprising: a Rebellion in Real Time Naima Bouteldja Paris is Burning Jeff Halper Israel as an Extension of American Empire Website of the Day Dispatches from Paris   November 5 / 6, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Storm Over Brockes' Fakery: Guardian Fabricates Chomsky Quotes Lawrence R. Velvel Lying, Law Schools and Executive Power: What Senators Should Ask Alito Diana Johnstone Srebrenica: a Response to Certain Criticisms of My Essay Roosa / Nevins The Mass Killlings in Indonesia, 40 Years Later Niranjan Ramakrishnan Missing the Bus: When Conscience Bows to Calculation John Ross The Zapatistas' Otra Campaign for Mexico's Presidential Elections Mike Whitney Globalizing Sadism: the United States of Torture Mark Engler Will Big Business Turn On Bush?: the Economic Nightmare Unfolds Juliano Mer-Khamis They Shoot at Children, Too Ron Jacobs When Gen. Westmoreland Visited Jill S. Farrell Bird Flu and the Posse Comitatus Act Missy Comley Beattie Trent Lott's Untroubled Sleep Mitchel Cohen People of the Dome, Revisited Evelyn J. Pringle Bush-Cheney and Big Oil's Big Summer Reza Fiyouzat Signs of Life or Last Gasp? Structural Problems in the Democratic Party Charles Sullivan When Courage Fails: a White Southerner on Rosa Parks Zachary Richard Return to Louisiana Ben Tripp Beginning of the End? Don't Start Cheering Just Yet St. Clair / Vest Playlists: What We're Listening to This Week   November 4, 2005 Jeffrey St. Clair Blood on the Tundra, Betrayal in the Rotunda: Losing ANWR Dave Lindorff A Majority Now Favors Impeachment: If He Lied, He Must Be Tried Phillip Cryan Crackdown in Colombia Christopher Brauchli Katrina and Tax Breaks for the Very Rich William S. Lind Exit Strategy: You Can't Stay the Course in a Lost War Daryl G. Kimball Of Madmen and Nukes George Beres Laurels for Negroponte? Peter Montague Why We Can't Prevent Cancer   November 3, 2005 James Petras The Libby Affair and the Internal War Saul Landau Torn Families and Shot Down Planes: a Cuba Story Rep. Cynthia McKinney An Occurrence at Gretna Bridge Michael Dickinson Bang! Bang! You're Deaf! Sonic Weapons Over Palestine Joshua Frank Sham Behind Closed Doors Remi Kanazi Dancing with Perseverance Reza Fiyouzat Taxation or Racketeering? Website of the Day CIA Leak Investigation: Bigger Fish, Deeper Water?   November 2, 2005 Cockburn / St. Clair Holy Alito!: Not as Crazy as Scalia, But Just as Bad Robert Oscar Lopez Saving Rosa Parks from American Hypocrisy John Walsh The Philosophy of Mendacity: From Leo Strauss to Scooter Libby Brian J. Foley Why Most Americans Don't Care About Gitmo (and Why They Should) Ramzy Baroud Rolling Back Syria M. Junaid Alam What Moral Values? Todd Chretien Judgment Day for the Governator Bruce K. Gagnon The Democrats' Slap Happy Day Website of the Day Hands Off Dave!   November 1, 2005 Ron Jacobs An Interview with Kent State's Dave Airhart Gary Leupp The Plame Affair Leads to Rome John Ross Days of the Dead on the Border Bill Quigley Why Are They Making New Orleans a Ghost Town? Joseph Nevins From a Boundary of Death to One of Life Dave Lindorff Thinking About Impeachment Linda S. Heard Bashing Syria: Another Trojan Horse from the UN? Heather Gray Thank You, Mrs. Parks Michael Dickinson To Di For: Charlie and Camilla Cross the Pond Jeffrey St. Clair Kent State: Wise Up and Back Off   October 31, 2005 Elaine Cassel Libby's Lies Mark Weisbrot Pop Goes the Bubble: Bernancke and the Fed Mike Whitney Carry On, Patrick Fitzgerald Norman Solomon After the Libby Indictment, the Press Acquits Itself Farooq Sulehria Trading Weapons While Kashmir Burns Nicole Colson Scapegoating Immigrants Madis Senner Dhafir Sentenced to 22 Years: Another Erosion of Civil Rights Paul Craig Roberts Scooter and the Neocons October 29 / 30, 2005 Cockburn / St. Clair The Libby Indictment: Gotterdammerung for the Bushies? Peter Linebaugh The Wedges of Hephaestus Tim Wise Framing the Poor: Katrina, Conservative Myth-Making and the Media John Chuckman Bushspeak: Dark and Garbled Words Steven Higgs Green Hoosiers: Forging a New Democracy in the Heartland Brian Cloughley The Fifth Afghan War M. Shahid Alam Israel and the Consequences of Uniqueness Nikki Robinson Crack Down at Kent State Ralph Nader Let the PIRGs Begin!: Student Activism Thrives Joe DeRaymond Requiem for Bethlehem Steel? Joshua Frank Karl's Great Escape: Did Rove Rat on Scooter? Laura Santina Tongue-Tied on Iraq: Why Aren't the Dems Screaming Bloody Murder? Fred Gardner Death of an Organizer Michael Dickinson Insult Your Country Ron Jacobs Autumn in America Dr. Susan Block Fear and Sex: a Halloween Greeting Vanessa S. Jones Self-Portrait, 1994. Bronte Beach Jeffrey St. Clair Playlist: What I'm Listening to This Week Poets' Basement Marbet, Gardner, Ford, Albert, Engel, Krieger & St. Clair Website of the Weekend Red State Update   October 28, 2005 Jared Bernstein Inflation Up; Wages Down: Fastest Decline in Wages on Record Virginia Tilley Embracing the Anti-Aparthied Movement in Israel/Palestine Phil Gasper The Race to Execute Tookie Williams Jennifer Matsui It's Mardi Graft Time! Manual Garcia, Jr. Is the US Really Against Torture? Monica Benderman In the Name of Justice Jason Leopold Fitzgerald Focuses on the Forgeries Dave Lindorff Suddenly, Bush Endorses Right of Fair Trials Otober 27, 2005 Saul Landau The Scandal Isn't the Leak, But the Illegal War Stuart Hodkinson Bono and Geldoff: "We Saved Africa" Oh No, They Didn't! Ingmar Lee Stop the Troops!: No Glory or Honor in Iraq Lila Rajiva License to Bill: Gates Does India Ilan Pappe The Last Moment of Hope Niranjan Ramakrishnan Waiting for Fitzgerald Michael Donnelly Look Who's Talking Now: the GOP on Perjury Ron Jacobs Escape the Weight of Your Corporate Logo Cockburn / St. Clair White House in Meltdown   October 26, 2005 Kathy Kelly For Whom They Toll Gary Leupp Dialectics of the Plame Affair Mike Marqusee Empire of Denial Eric Ruder War Crimes in Afghanistan Patrick Cockburn Iraq: a Constitutionally Divided Nation Joshua Frank Fitzgerald v. the Bushies: Hold Your Elation in Check J.L. Chestnut, Jr. The Legacy of Rosa Parks Website of the Day Decent Work in America: the 2005 Work Environment Index     October 25, 2005 Paul Craig Roberts Condi and Syrian Regime Change: Could Somebody Recommend a President? Ken Sengupta / Patrick Cockburn Attack on the Palestine Hotel Conn Hallinan Sleight of Hand: Iran, India and the US Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed Pulling the Court Strings Jackie Corr Barbara Bush: Poster Gorgon of the Houston Astros Robert Day Talk to Strangers John Sugg Judith Miller and Me   October 24, 2005 Dave Lindorff Revoke Judy Miller's Pulitzer Michael Donnelly Shades of Iran/contra Patrick Cockburn A Nation Stands on Trial Mike Whitney Apres Rove Norman Solomon Iraq is Not Vietnam, But... Bill and Kathleen Christison US Foreign Policy and Palestine   October 22 / 23, 2005 Alexander Cockburn When Divas Collide: Maureen Dowd v. Judy Miller Billy Sothern Letter from the Circle Bar, New Orleans Saul Landau Bush, an Assessment Ralph Nader An Open Letter to Bush on Harriet Miers Behrooz Ghamari Whose Justice Does Saddam's Trial Serve? Brian Cloughley Bush the Strategist: Pyrrhus Without a Victory? Diana Barahona Venezuela's National Workers' Union Fred Gardner Dershowitzed! Lee Sustar What the War on Terror is Really About Patrick Cockburn Murder of Saddam Trial Defense Lawyer Laura Carlsen Mexico City Seamstresses Recall 1985 Quake James Petras China Bashing and the Loss of US Competitiveness Joshua Frank Invading Iran: Who is to Stop Them? Manuel Garcia, Jr. Disasters are Us Michelle Bollinger When Abortion Was Illegal Missy Comley Beattie CSI: Iraq Kona Lowell Intelligent Design: Making High School Fun Ben Tripp Tanks for the Memories Jeffrey St. Clair Playlist: What I'm Listening To This Week Poets' Basement Albert and Engel Website of the Day Indictment Watch   October 21, 2005 Dave Lindorff The Democrats' Abortion Hypocrisy Winslow T. Wheeler Paying for Their Mistakes: Incompetence, Deception and the Defense Budget Col. Dan Smith The Destruction of the National Guard Norman Solomon Media at Crossroads: 25 Years After Reagan's Triumph Madis Senner Abusing Katrina Michael Donnelly Richard Pombo: DeLay in Cowboy Boots October 20, 2005 Dave Lindorff Impeachment Comes to NYC Ray McGovern 16 Fatal Words: Cheney's Chickens Come Home to Roost Jeremy Brecher / Brendan Smith Attack Syria? Invade Iran?: By What Constitutional Right? Patrick Cockburn Saddam Refuses to Recognize Court Kevin Zeese Was the Iraqi Constitution Vote Fixed? Ross Eisenbrey Millions Would Lose Pay and Protections Under Enzi Amendment Randy Shields James McMurtry Makes It in Dayton Justine Davidson Prosecuting Bush in Canada for Torture: a Small Victory After Lucas Cranach Judy and Holofernes Joe Allen The Scandalous History of the Red Cross     Subscribe Online

Weekend Edition November 26 / 27, 2005 First Kill the Language, Then the Culture When a Language Dies By JOHN ROSS "Cuando muere una lengua, las cosas divinas, estrellas, sol y luna, las cosas humanas, pensar y sentir, no se reflejan en eso espejo." "When a language dies, the divine things, stars, sun and moon, the human things. to think and to feel, are no longer reflected in this mirror." The planet upon which we dwell is no longer the Tower of Babel it once was. Like bio-diversity, linguistic diversity is drying up at an alarming rate. Of 6000 known human languages, half are in imminent danger of disappearing, and 90% could be erased forever within a century, according to dire UNESCO reports. One language system is lost every two weeks, the United Nations cultural agency warns--five Indian subcontinent languages were irretrievably wiped out during the tsunami that obliterated islands in the Bay of Bengal earlier this year. Because just a few people speak most of the world's languages--4% of the world's people speak 96% of its languages--most linguistic systems are extremely vulnerable to the vicissitudes of life and death. Linguistic diversity flourishes in the south--half of the world's languages are concentrated in just eight countries: Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, Australia, India, Nigeria, Cameroon, Brazil, and Mexico. Mexico's Oaxaca state, smaller than Portugal, is host to 16 distinct ethnic groups and speaks more languages than all of Europe. "Cuando muere una lengua todo lo que hay en el mundo, mares y rios, animales y plantas, ni se piensen, ni se pronuncian con atisbos, con sonidos, que no existan ya." "When a language dies, all that there is in this world, oceans and rivers, animals and plants, do not think of them, do not pronounce their names, they do not exist now." If each language was a room than Mexico would be a great mansion of 62 rooms, linguist/poet/historian Carlos Montemayor reflected at a recent presentation of a newly translated volume of Mexican indigenous poetry. "These languages are not dialects but rather complete linguistic systems. Purepecha is as complete as Greek, Maya as complete as Italian. There are no superior language systems. All have grammar and syntax and vocabulary and etymology. It is an expression of cultural racism to consider indigenous languages to be dialects." Nahuat (modern Aztec) is spoken by more than 2.000.000 people in 15 contiguous Mexican states. There are a million Mayan speakers in Caribbean Mexico, nearly twice that if you include inland subgroups such as Chol and Tzeltal, Tzotzil, and Tojolabal. Zapotec and Mixteco enjoy robust number of speakers in the sierras and along the coast of Oaxaca. Despite 500 years of cultural imposition during which the European invaders burnt their sacred books on public pyres and prohibited them from speaking their mother tongues under penalty of death, Mexico's indigenous peoples have refused to be silenced. Indian "flor y canto" ("flower and song") is resurgent. Montemayor, along with Miguel Leon Portilla, the most ardent non-Indian champions of native languages, labels the renaissance in indigenous literature "one of the most significant cultural phenomena's of the late 20th-early 21st centuries." Once strictly "indigenous" writers like the Nahuat poet Neftali Hernandez are crossing over into general literature, and it seems like every bi-lingual teacher in Mexico is writing a novel in his native language, attests Montemayor. But the downside is that this cultural revitalization has been largely confined to the dominant Indian languages while scores more are in danger of disappearing forever. "Cuando muere una lengua, se cierre a todos los pueblos del mundo, una puerta, una ventana, un asomarse, de modo distinto, a las cosas divinas y humanas en cuanto es ser y vida en la tierra." "When a language dies, the window and the door are closed up to all the people of the world, no longer will they be shown a different way to name the divine and human things which is what it means to be and to live on the earth." Where the languages are dying, drying up and blowing away like dust in the wind, is up in the northern deserts. Half of Mexico's 20 most endangered languages are rooted in these bone-dry eco-systems, many in Sonora and the arid Baja California peninsula. The most threatened language, Aguacateco, a member of the Mayan family linguistic group that migrated north from Huehuetenango Guatemala millenniums ago according to linguists at the National Indigenous Language Institute (INALI), is still spoken in the mountain badlands of Baja California South--but there are only 22 surviving speakers left. Equally endangered are a cluster of five Baja California Norte native cultures close to the Tijuana-Mexicali border, with less than 2000 surviving members between them--speakers of Kiliwa, Paipai, Kumiai, Kochemi, and Kukapa number in the dozens for each language group. Homogenized by the global lingo of the U.S.-Mexican border, these languages are the sole surviving shards of the old ways of doing things in these ancient desert lands. A 17th Century census ordered by the Spanish Crown counted 23,000 Kukapas. But the fate of the Kukupas, "the people of the river", was bound up with the great Colorado river and as thirsty U.S. western states diverted and contaminated its waters, their numbers diminished in kind. Only 400 have survived this diaspora, living in four bands (one in Yuma, Arizona.) 52 Kukapa elders guard the secret of their language. For 7000 years, the Kukupas have fished the rivers flowing into the Sea of Cortez. Now environmental authorities have declared the region a wildlife sanctuary and barred the Indians from taking their prized "curvinas", displacing the young who now head north to find work in the U.S. and learn "gavacha" (English.) Migration is a killer of language. "Cuando muere una lengua, sus palabras de amor, entonacion de dolor y querencias, tal vez viejos cantos, relatos, discursos, plegarias, nadie, cual fueran, alcanzara a repetir." "When a language dies, its words of love, intonations of pain and caring, perhaps the old songs, the old stories, the speeches, the prayers, no one no matter whom will be able to repeat them again." Other Indian languages with less than a thousand speakers include Kikapu (138), Papago (141), Quiche (246), Tlahuica (466), Lacandon (635), and Pimi (741.) "Those of us in whom is mixed the blood of the Europeans who penetrated these language systems have a moral obligation to their preservation," enjoins Miguel Leon Portillo, Mexico's most dedicated rescuer of Aztec poetry. Although the constitution has designated Mexico a "multi-cultural, pluri-lingual" nation since the early 1990s, congress has only recently gotten around to ratifying the General Law of the Defense of Indigenous Languages. The law created the National Indigenous Language Institute, which was inaugurated last February 21st, United Nations Mother Language Day, under the direction of the mestizo anthropologist Francisco Nava. Nava, whose appointment was questioned by the National Indigenous Congress, has big plans for the INALI--a socio-linguistic census of Mexico. and bringing elderly native speakers into primary schools to rekindle dying languages --but no money, and the institute is a thin wall between disappearing language systems and total extinction. "We are in a race against time--the old are dying off each year and the young moving on yet there seems to be no urgency (in the Secretary of Public Education under whose aegis the INALI operates) to save these languages" Nava bemoans. "Cuando muere una lengua, ya mucho han muerto, and mucho mas pueden morir, espejos para siempre quebrados, sombras de voces siempre acalladas, la humanidad se empobreze Cuando muere una lengua" "When a language dies, then many have died, and many more will die soon, mirrors forever broken, shadows of voices forever silenced, humanity grows poorer when a language dies." - "When a Language Dies", translated from the Aztec by Miguel Leon Portillo (English translation: John Ross) John Ross is currently on the road in California where he is teaching four seminars on rebel journalism at the New College (San Francisco). His latest book is Murdered By Capitalism.

Coming in the Fall from CounterPunch Books! The Case Against Israel By Michael Neumann Click Here to Advance Order Philosopher Michael Neumann's Devastating Rebuttal of Alan Dershowitz WHAT'S INSIDE Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror by Jeffrey St. Clair CounterPunch Speakers Bureau Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid? CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues, as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org.