Monthly Archives: February 2009

Addie Stan has a nice post on Religion Dispatches about the thoughtful Oscar acceptance speech by Dustin Lance Black, who won Best Screenplay for the Milk script.

My own favorite moment from last night came once the show ended. As the credits rolled ABC played a bluesy Beck cover of the old Bob Dylan standard “Leopard Skin Pill Box Hat.” Intrigued, I did some digging this morning and learned that the song will appear on a benefit album for the UK-based charity War Child International. War Child asked some legendary musicians like Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, Stevie Wonder and Bruce Springsteen nominate artists to cover one of their songs for the benefit album. The result is a 15 song album called “Heroes” that is set to be released tomorrow. Proceeds from the album will go to War Child International, which is an umbrella organization for activist groups seeking to end the terrible scourge of child soldiers.

Kudos to ABC for giving this some play to such a large audience.

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The International Criminal Court just announced that it will reach a decision on whether or not to issue an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar al Bashir next Wednesday, March 4. Chances are the court will issue the arrest warrant. So why make the date public? The court says it is doing so out of concern of rumors (promulgated by the New York Times) that a decision has already been made to issue the arrest warrant. The court denies that this is the case.

Now that the court has set a firm date, look out for reprisals on internationals in Darfur. The Sudanese government is widely expected to disrupt on-going UN humanitarian and peacekeeping work Darfur in response to the arrest warrant. Those of us who have been championing ICC action in Darfur should understand that the pursuit of justice may come at the expense of near-term humanitarian concerns. That said, over the long run the court can be a useful tool and help create the conditions in which a lasting peace can take hold.
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In advance of International Mother Tongue Day on February 21, UNESCO launched an online World Atlas of Languages in Danger. It’s a pretty fascinating resource that uses a google maps application to provide up-to-date data on some 2,500 endangered languages.

According to UNESCO, here in the United States there are 75 “critically endangered” languages, all of which are Native American tongues. For example, I learn that Eyak, spoken by natives of south-central Alaska, became extinct in 2008 with the death of Marie Smith Jones.

In all, the atlas shows that 199 languages have fewer than ten speakers and 178 others have between 10 to 50 speakers.

Interestingly, the atlas shows that Manx Gaelic–the native tongue of the Isle of Man– officially died out in 1974 “when Ned Maddrell fell forever silent.” The BBC, however, smells a controversy, and finds one “Jennifer Kewley-Draskau, author of the handbook Practical Manx” who says that the extinct claim is potentially misleading.

“Unesco ought to know better than to declare Manx a dead language,” said Ms Kewley-Draskau. “There are hundreds of speakers of Manx and while people are able to have productive conversations in the language then it is very much alive and well.”

That may be true. And if this guy has his way we’ll all be speaking Manx soon.

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