One World, Many Peaces

Who's Protecting the World's Endangered Languages (All 7000)? These Guys

 

When an insect only seven people have ever seen goes extinct in a place you need a government grant to get to, more than just environmentalists feel a part of our world has gone forever. Understandably so. But what about when a language once used by thousands is down to its last speaker, and the universe of relations and ideas that language conveys will not survive them? Who protests, who runs worldwide campaigns or passes legislation against hazardous, toxic notions like "official languages" and "world languages" that creep onto and kill ways of understanding what it means to be human? A group of fifty linguists meeting at the first-ever Endangered Languages Information and Infrastructure Workshop, funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, realize the tragedy but aren't superheroes.

In the last 500 years, half of the world's languages have become extinct. What is new is the accelerated rate of language extinction today. Linguists predict that in the next 100 years nearly 90 percent of the world's 7,000 languages will become extinct, with a best case scenario at only 35 to 50 percent surviving (Krauss,1992). "When we lose, say, 50 percent of languages, we're losing 50 percent of human cognitive ability," says linguist Lyle Campbell.  "Linguistics is a study of human cognition, what makes the mind tick, click, and work. It's our responsibility as linguists to do what we can." Unfortunately for Campbell and his colleagues, words difficult to pronounce just aren't as cute and cuddly as panda bears and Hollywood superstars have yet to milk endangered languages for their publicity value. Try asking a panda whether or not there is life after death. Unfortunately, while hundreds of groups protect species for biodiversity, none protect endangered languages for logodiversity.

The admirable work of these linguistics overlooks one major possibility based on a historical actuality: that as languages die, new ones can and are created not in their place, but in the space they leave behind. "A language is not just words and grammar; it is a web of history that binds all the people who once spoke the language, all the things they did together, all the knowledge they imparted to their descendants," says Anthony Aristar, professor of linguistics at Eastern Michigan University, in Science Daily. There is also such a thing as the languages of the future, beyond but also in between the lingua francas that are most likely to survive: English, Spanish, Chinese and Arabic. The languages of the future, whatever they may look or sound like, will be made from those of the present, which is why the study of multilingualism is at least as important as current event that can literally speak to the future.

Launch and Live Coverage of the PJSA Conference on the Power of Nonviolence

Bringing together scholars, activists, educators and leaders of many top local, national and international organizations, the Peace and Justice Studies Association (PJSA) conference starts today at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin (October 8-10, 2009). This year's topic is "Exploring the Power of Nonviolence," honoring Gandhi's 140th anniversary. For live coverage follow @AntonyAdolf on Twitter.

Randall Amster, Executive Director of the PJSA and a conference organizer, describe it thus: "a focus on grassroots organizations, working with individuals and groups in the region to help develop a bridge from dialogue to action. Plenary panels, breakout groups, brainstorming sessions, and an impressive list of keynote speakers will offer multiple points of engagement and opportunities for networking with scholars, activists, and educators in the pursuit of peace and justice. Some of the highlights include:

Sister Helen Prejean: author and real-life story behind Dead Man Walking (made into an Academy-Award winning film starring Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn), and also one of the world's great death penalty abolitionists, will give the opening keynote speech tonight. She is also the founder of "Survivor," a victim's advocacy group in New Orleans.

A Panel Discussion on "The Future of Peacemaking":  with Jonathan Schell, author of several books, most recently The Seventh Decade: The New Shape of Nuclear Danger (American Empire Project) and  George Cheney, Director of Peace and Conflict Studies, and of the Barbara L. and Norman C. Tanner Center for Nonviolent Human Rights Advocacy University of Utah.

Will Allen:  Founder of Growing Power and A MacArthur Fellow in 2008, Allen is an urban farmer who is transforming the cultivation, production, and delivery of healthy foods to underserved, urban populations, for which he was named . He will give a plenary speech on Saturday entitled "Food Sovereignty and Justice."

Special Sessions On: Violence in the Workplace, Transformative Nonviolence and the History of Peacemaking, Models for Peace Education, Social Media and Activist Education, and special sessions on the Gandhian tradition, Loyola, and Technology as well as field trips to peace organizations around Wisconsin.

Visit the PJSA Conference website, and get there as soon as you can! If you can't, get live coverage of the 2009 PJSA Conference by following @AntonyAdolf on Twitter. Antony Adolf will be presenting "Transformative Nonviolence and Cultural Change in World History" on Friday afternoon, and is certain this conference is a current event that will shape a more peaceful future for everyone.

Why the G8 is the Past, the G5 the Future and How Activists Need to Refocus

Members of the G5 (Mexico, Brazil, China, India and South Africa ) are making their differences with the G8 (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the US) clearer at their summit in Italy than ever before. However, they are doing so only according to the agenda they were handed. In this light, protesters may be mistaking longstanding enemies for potential friends, a risk strategic activists should be less eager to take in seeking to make a greater impact.
 
A relatively minor force at such summits for five years now, the G5 is starting to steal the G8's thunder, if in some cases to environmentalists' dismay. With even bona fide G8 members such as France and Germany calling for a more inclusive and representative world economic summit, it may not be so long before the two Gs become one, and then some. How can activists shape this seeming inevitability coagulation, or at least prepare for it?
 
Reviving the formation of multilateral trade agreements to replace the gross asymmetries of bilateral trade between more and less developed countries (the crux of the stalled Doha talks) is probably where all this is heading. If so, protesters today may be pissing on the wrong tree, missing an opportunity to align themselves with major economic and political powers who already share many of their interests, and could possibly have their ears open to others.
 
Doing so would surely be no less effective than screaming on a freedom high in the G8's ears, deaf to all but their own narrow interests. The current G8 is not the past in the sense that it has or will soon disappear, but rather in that it's predominance will continue to wane as that of the G5 waxes. The recent, formal formation of the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) to counter the more and more amorphous Western bloc can be taken as a sign of events to come, and indicative of the new roles activists can and should take on.
 
Instead of protesting to no avail against the G8, activists of all denominations should be trying to get the G5 on their side. Because if they do, the G8 will sooner or later follow. It's time to stop being purely anti- and start being more pro-. Che Guevara shirts and confrontations with police may become a thing of the past too, if and when they are replaced with more effective business and law suits with a mind for the future rather than nostalgia for 1968.
 
The G8 and G5 are and will continue to be key current events creating the future, especially if their respective power positions are changing, let alone being reversed. Whether or not selective activism against or for them is (or, more precisely, becomes) effective depends entirely on how, and how well, activists refocus their efforts.

New Worldwide Ant Colony's Advantage Over Humanity? Non-Violence

This is not science fiction: an ant megacolony originally from Argentina has spread (with human help) around the globe, making it the most widespread species on earth after ours. One evolutionary advantage they have over us is that they will not harm one of their own, no matter where they're from. 
 
Saying the same about humans would be, well, science fiction. The facts are that while these ants (Linepithema humile) are hostile to other insects in their adopted ecosystems, when they meet their kind their very biological features trigger intra-species non-violence regardless of individuals' origin. That would be like the Taliban smelling Americans during this massive attack and proposing to smoke some opium with them instead of fighting.
 
"The enormous extent of this population," on all continents except Antarctica, "is paralleled only by human society,"  writes the entomologist who discovered the connection. It has been known for decades that intra-species non-violence vastly out-proportions lethal behavior in all species, but these ants are the first to be so on a global scale. For all the problems that invasive species cause, this one in its lessons may have some much-needed solutions to offer. Now we turn to science fiction.

"Humans created this great non-aggressive ant population," the researchers write in Insect Sociaux, the journal for the study of social insects. Imagine if us humans would only create and perpetuate that trait in ourselves, culturally if not biologically. This new worldwide ant megacolony's advantage in non-violence is a current event for their species,  and may learning from it help create a better future for 'us', in the sense that there will cease to be a corresponding 'them'.

Global Green Tech Rivalries Provide Model for Competitive Peacemaking

'Green race' must now be added to the notions of 'space race' and 'arms race': global competition between nations and their associations for supremacy in environmentally sound technology. China, Japan and Korea will unite in a pledge to cooperate to become worldwide leaders in green tech next month, opening possibilities for other kinds of beneficial 'races' to come, notably in peace and peacemaking.

"A new paradigm of qualitative growth which uses less energy and is more compatible with environmental sustainability" is what Korean Prime Minister Han Seung-Soo is seeking by devoting 81% of the country's economic stimulus package to green initiatives. In contrast, the fuel-fossil based industrial economy of the US will receive a green booster shot of only 12%. China and Japan, between these figures, only add momentum to Asia's speed in the green race.

Developing and commercializing green tech is easier when you're flushed with cash already, like Korea and China are and Japan seeks to be as a result of the race. Even European nations, not so well off, have embraced carbon trading. All the US has and is providing is green rhetoric and GE-type ecomagination, neither of which should be underestimated. Put together, all of this points to a "new paradigm" beyond Han Seung-Soo's green dreams.

The point I am making is that the very same buttons being pushed in this global green tech rivalry can readily be used in global peace and peacemaking. Imagine countries competing, racing to end conflicts quickly and permanently, provide basic necessities and establish viable infrastructures, what is called 'peace-building' today. Then, imagine them competing for friends on Facebook as on electronic commodities and stock exchanges. Sound crazy?

It shouldn't because that's what green tech companies do now, when just a few years ago they were 'tree-hugging hippies', and will only do more of as the green race becomes a sprint. A Time Magazine columnist calls these green rivalries 'green wars'; as current events creating the future, let them never be won or lost and spark others. Survival is itself a race for peace.