h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Yes, the last Vikings. If you can read an Icelandic newspaper, you can read the Eddas. This should go over to the origin and dispersal of language thread.

*emerges from reading entire backlog*

skipping back to the communism thing i really recommend 'wild swans' by Jung Chang for a good veiw of what communism was like for real people.
it is the story of her life and the lives of her mother and grandmother it spans the manch empire(foot binding, concubines ect) through the koumintang rule, japanese rule,civil war (koumintang vs communists), hardships at the beggining of communism, prosperity and eventual decline.

i also want to throw in this (coz i can) it is the voiceover from and advert for 'uktv'
Home.
a place of conker love and camper van hate.
where we invent the best sports in the world, then get good at playing them badly.
at home we like to do ourselves down but we're pritty pluck when we wanna be.
we are john lennon.
we are the sufferagettes.
we are the man who invented the bobble hat.
come in out the cold, have a cup of tea and make yourself at home because it's good here.

it gives me a nice warm glow that does. this is my kind of patriotism!

now to add. i think someone needed to take a tough stance with iraq granted. but someone also needed to put forwand the case for a gentler approach and the combanation of the two is beggining to have a little effect. thats rational debate. thats democracy. name calling by bush got us nowhere.

(remembers the thing about checking no of beer cans and the time before pressing send on anythig which might upset peeps...no beer cans but it is midnight...what the hell)

I like that form of patriotism much better than what sometimes (annoyingly) is put forward as patriotism here in Canada which amounts to "I'm not American". Most of the world knows the difference; we don't have to yell what we're not. When I spent my time in the South of Italy, I didn't go around yelling "I'm not a German"; I was quiet and if someone asked, I said "Canadese". After that they gave me half of everything they owned.

*conker love*

I think the empathy Canadians have with the Brits is well founded. Most of our core beliefs are the same. That is why we are outraged even more with Blair than Bush. At least Bush is recognisable as what he is.

Our Prime Minister has made a political choice to commit our troops to Afghanistan rather than the *war* with Iraq, perhaps not the bravest choice but one which we can ultimately accept as a nation and a whole.

I doubt I'd ever be as well liked in Italy as some Canadese. This is a very interesting discussion you've been having.

For those who don't know already, I'm what the Census Bureau likes to term a "native-american" under the theory, I suppose, that no matter how often you hyphenate it, it's going to remain a nation of educated consumers in quest of THE DREAM!

Well, guess what? I dream of something else, and it's got little to do with being a consumer of products, services or bullshit.

In fact, my usual response to the term, native american, is to say, "You can be native or american but not both." That of course brings my patriotism under suspicion. They shouldn't bother.

Patriotism is a foreign word to me anyways. Or as the oppulent young lady in Powwow Highway remarked after she warned the protagonists about foreigners and they protested that they were in America. "Well, you can't get much foreign than that."

I shouldn't rag too much on the immigrants though. They need a place to live too. I just wish it wasn't always the place I was living. Even when that place is allegedly unable to support human life, they often find stuff underground they just can't live without or they decide since it's uninhabited anyways, what a convenient place to dump nuclear waste.

So I guess I sort of have my on NIMBY thing. (NIMBY being an accronym for "Not in my backyard!") And I should just shutup about it and be glad I'm ain't a Mohawk.

But I do often find it amusing when people bring up the Pledge of Allegience that didn't even exist until people got scared of the Reds after they'd more or less rubbed out the Redskins. And the "under God" thing came right along with Senator McCarthy, probably on the theory than Communists wouldn't be able to say it except backwards. That would constitute a reliable test for the modern inquisition no doubt.

Now it's all getting reversed. Except neither me nor my cousin could ever remember the thing anyways or what all those stars and stripes mean. "In God trust" was even more of a mystery. We figured it was just misspelled actually. What they meant to say was, "In Fraud we trust", but it didn't come out that way because they get their Gs and FRs confused.

Still, most Americans are very fine, decent people when you get to know them. They usually can take a good deal of ribbing too, until you mention that their rent is in arrears. Then they sort of invoke the doctrine of Mens Nullius aka being an airhead, or "as long as we didn't know we were being billed we don't have to pay". That's probably a little better than, "The check's in the mail", but I don't see how.

We'll talk about this some more maybe when I'm sober.

Well spoken and well read. Do you know anything of the other countries of North America and their treatment of First Nations? I like to think that Central America, Mexico, and Canada have a better system but I don't know for sure.

The old South African government studied our old Indian Act to get pointers on Apartheid, zoomer. The system in Mexico was to mate with the natives, so an awful lot of the distinctions got blurred. From Chiapas south the idea was more "if you see them, exterminate them." European History in the "New World" is not a pretty sight anywhere. Hopefully some states will make the future better. I'm hoping that Nunavut will be an example. And I hope that the Zapatistas can make something happen. (I well remember buying wonderful cheese in the Zocalo of Ocosinco a few months before it was shot up during the Zapatista uprising.)

Cheesy but poignant.

I am shamefully aware of my lack of knowledge on the subject. And this from a person who experienced (second hand) segregation of the most insidious and subtle way against First Nations when I was little. I will endeavour to learn more, and try harder.

I'm a native American. I was born in California.

The Pledge of Allegiance has been around since the late 1800s. I think it was written in the 1890s. 'Under God' was added in the 50s under President Eisenhower. That and the interstates were the only things he did as president. As things go, that's not a bad eight years.

Outside of war, I don't think presidents should be heard from very much. I think all those presidents between the Civil War and the Great Depression were great. If you can't name him, he's the guy for me.

I think Anhaga knows the system in Canada but the system in Mexico has been a little different than many people are apparently aware.

There is a sizable population of mestizos of course (mixed indian and spanish) but for most of the indians, it was repartiamentos initially. You can think of those as privately owned and operated slave labor camps supporting vast estates or mines.

These were followed by Church sponsored encomiendos or ejidos, collectives under clerical protection that were more or less gutted through the years, especially after the Jesuits were expelled from Mexico in the 18th century. They were revived under Presidente Cardenas after the Social Revolution but the persistant problem is they get encroached on by the big landowners a lot, including those sponsored by American multinational corporations, and they find it hard to compete with the huge haciendas with large acreages and mechanized farming and ranching. These concerns typically can undersell the local farmers, driving them out of business and off their land.

The Maya have persisted in Chiapas and Yucatan for many centuries in small villages with common lands without the benefits of modern civilization. This is the source of the problem in Chiapas.

The government wanted to take the land and develop it with hydroelectric projects and such. This generally benefits the mestizos more than the indians who can't afford electricity anyways. Development, whether by railroads, hacienderos or whatever has always posed a problem with encroachment on tribal lands held in common.

Mexico has never really had a reservation system. So there has never been land set aside for protection from encroachment by private interests other than the previously mentioned Church sponsored collectives.

Not that it matters from a practical standpoint because the reservation system in America was initially conceived as a way to isolate and destroy indian cultures not preserve them. So the practical effects have been essentially the same in the United States and Mexico.

The Yoemen (Yaqui) pueblos came under considerable pressure during the reign of Portifirio Diaz who sponsored American railroads and other enterprises in Sonora as a way of attracting hard currency and loans. The Yoemen boundary markers were frequently moved or destroyed to encroach on their land and when they revolted, they were severely put down. People were exiled to Yucatan where they served as virtual slaves on the estates there. Attrition was very high. Those who survived were often sold to planters in Cuba. A few managed to escape to Sonora where they lived in virtual disguise since they couldn't admit their tribal affiliation.

This was occurring as late as the 1930s or 1940s so there are probably still people alive today who remember it or remember their parents talking about it or experiencing it.

There is a reservation in Arizona for Yoemen who fled Sonora. It is one of the youngest reservations in the United States historically, being established in the 1970s or 1980s I think.

The Raramuri (Tarahumara) are another tribe that has been encroached upon relentlessly but they still hang on in the drug lord invested canyons or valleys of the Sierra Madre. Their salvation has been in the remoteness of their territory but of course that is changing rapidly as modern development penetrates that territory and the war on drugs makes life somewhat risky for people caught in the crossfire.

These peoples share many lifeways with the indians of the American southwest. Traditionally there has been frequent trade or travel between the tribes from Durango north. Durango is on the edge of the Sonoran desert that extends north all the way to the Colorado Plateau. It is one of the great of deserts of the world and together with the Chihuahua desert forms a rich and unique ecological and cultural environment which unfortunately comes under a good deal of competitive pressure because the scarcity of resources to support human settlement.

The University of Arizona recently participated in an Arizona State Museum project to educate people about the region and its indigenous population. This project is summarized in a book entitled Paths of Life, edited by Thomas E. Sheridan and Nancy J. Pareto. It should be recommended reading for anyone interested in the topic who would like to learn more than has been made generally available to the public.

Between the Civil War and the Great Depression is a remarkable time for this country. I am dissappointed that you know so little about it. After all, it was the birth of the Gilded Age in America, a consolidation of power among the upper classes that required the blood shed of common people working in factories and mines all over this nation to undo. I recommend you read a little about that era, and maybe you'll learn everything your history teacher never taught you about men like Grant, Roosevelt, and Taft. Labor laws involving health and seafety were invented. Children were protected from sweatshop conditions, and eventually sent to schools. Monopolistic corporations were reined in so strongly, it took till the arrival of Ronald Reagan and his band of corporate thieves to set the clock back.
On a down note, I'm sure our Native American counterparts lurking around here can tell you how their history was inescapably altered when us white folk stopped killing one another over whether or not to oppress blacks in the South, and realized we could all agree on killing the redmen to the West. An entire population was nearly wiped off the map.
There really is too much for me to mention. But for a starter try reading "A people's History of the United States" by Howard Zinn. It'll give you an idea of what you're missing. Because if you can't name him, and he was a president, he probably was up to no good.

Analiese:

You're right: the "mate with them" bit was a gross over-simplification: it applies to a certain extent to the Valley of Mexico, but that's about it, and there it was principally the nobles that got "mated with".

You're right about when the Pledge of Allegiance was written but did you know that it wasn't until 1942 that it was adopted by Congress, Mr. Bit? Also, did you know the Pledge was written by a Socialist?

http://www.usflag.org/the.pledge.of.allegiance.html

I'm glad to hear you're a native american. I figured after all this time there had to be some living around here somewheres, despite the puritanical loathing of sexual matters exhibited by many immigrants. Of course you only have to manage the act once a year in theory to reproduce.

I sorry you can't name any presidents between the Civil War and the Great Depression. That's rather remiss in a so-called native american don't you think?

I can name all of them, beginning with Andrew Johnson and continuing with US Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, Chester A. Arthur, Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison, Grover Cleveland, twice notice, William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, William H. Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and finally Herbert Hoover.

And I don't think any of them were great, especially that drugstore cowboy, TR, who carried on the legacy of McKinley's imperialism after that "frontier" was finally "settled" and managed to get Americans interested in their worldwide mission of intervention and domination.

I suspect it's probably difficult to leave other people unmolested in their own land when you need more sales leads, but sooner or later you're going to run out anyways, especially if you have nothing very useful, valuable or necessary to sell.

I should add that I think native americans like you would be very easy to get along with if they would ever actually put down roots and stay put. But I know that's difficult in the real estate market.

The first mestizos were probably the Mayan children of two Spanish priests marooned in Cozumel in 1508 or 1509 I think. One of them became an interpreter for Cortes. He also taught Spanish to a young Mexi woman called Malinalli who came to Cortes along with 19 other girls as a peace offering from the headmen of Tabasco.

Without this young woman's linguistic and diplomatic skills, Cortes would have failed, according to his own admissions. Initially the Spanish priest, who could speak Quiche or Mayan would communicate with Malinalli, who would then communicate with the envoys of Moctezuma and then the process would go in reverse. After Malinalli learned Spanish, the priest was not longer needed, however.

She is often thought of as the mother of the mestizos. They also have frequently accused her of being a traitoress to the indian cause, however, I think of her as the conqueress of Moctezuma II, someone who wasn't friendly to any indian cause I respect. Because without her Cortes would have never been able to gain an alliance with the thousands of Tlascaltecas he needed to subdue the Aztecs.

It's also interesting to note that after Cortes repudiated his association with Malinalli, known to the Spaniards as Dona Marina or La Malinche, he never again enjoyed any success in his further attempts at conquest. He died virtually a pauper in Spain trying to defend his reputation against his rivals.

As for Malinche, or Malintzin, the histories are silent about her after she married a Spanish knight, a marriage Cortes arranged when he broke up with her. She has subsequently sometimes been associated with La Llorna, the spirit woman who after dark frequents canals, irrigation ditches or other water courses and is said to be crying for her children.

It's interesting to note that Malintzin disappears from history shortly before the apparitions of the Virgin of Guadalupe.

My cousin wondered how these two events might have been related. She suspected they were but she was never able to prove it or to determine the exact relationship. She suspected Malintzin, despite her conversion to Christianity, was in fact a great nahualli or sorceress and that the apparition were her work to give the indians something of their old religion to sustain them through the 300 years of Spanish domination.

The Virgin is Tonantzin of course and this probably accounts for her being considered La Reina, the Queen of the Americas. By all accounts, Malintzin was treated as a de facto queen by the indians of Mexico, although she never took advantage of that position as the Aztec rulers had done.

Later, it was the banner of the Virgin that was raised in defiance of Spanish imperialism by Father Higalgo in 1810. So in a sense the revolution which Malintzin began with Cortes and his Towatl, and which was betrayed by the Spaniards, finally succeeded not only in overthrowing the oppression of the Aztec Speakers but also the Spanish Viceroys who succeeded them.

I suspect the Virgin is still at work among the Zapatistas and other indian revolutionaries. And there is still much work to be done until the next great turning point in the Aztec calendar.

I forgot to mention that Malinalli spoke Mayan because she had been sold to Mayan traders by her own mother evidently to prevent friction between Malinalli and her stepfather and to confirm that man's son in the inheritance of the office Malinalli's father had held until his death, under somewhat suspicious circumstances.

It sounds to me very like like a tale of intrigue and witchcraft from the beginning that would finally backfire and bring down the Aztec Empire.

And that's why Malinalli could converse with both the priest and the Aztec envoys.

Don't get me started, Nelson, or they'll toss me out of this discussion like they did the Iraqi one, if they haven't decided to already.

I should stop ragging though and get back on topic which I believe had something to do with American patriotism, although I'm quite confused now about what it might have been. I think somebody might have mentioned something about the ideals of American patriotism, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, the latter being equated with property by the Libertarians. I could almost agree with the Libertarians if they didn't exclude everything other than private property.

Anyways, nevermind, I shouldn't have become involved in this. It's a little too close to home as they say.

"So hearing all this "God bless America" from your president is really weird for me. Why is saying that? Does he speak for God? Promising his fellow Americans that they are blessed? Or is he asking for his country to be blessed?"

As a matter of fact Izzybelle Dubya said we(he)are doing Gods work in his last big speech, and in several instances since! That is really disturbing.

It used to be saying God Bless America at the end of State of the Union adress was pushing it, but acepted by most.To declare the following;
"The US is seeking to do Gods work against a great evil and Iraq is only the tip of the iceberg" Is most frightning aspect of this Presidency. To not be able to say the pledge of allegence in school yet have the President claim such is (?)more than ironic.I believe in God, but not in Dubyas plan.

Makes you wonder why people tell me I'm full of it when I call it a crusade doesn't it?

I think the New World Order plan is perfectly clear! It must be wide scale denial

I have enjoyed reading U and Annaga(sp?) posts.
Keep teaching!