Winter sun

winter sun
finally breaks through—
my mother
knew to cut my apple
so I could see its star

—A Hundred Gourds, 1:3 June 2012

*****************

The Daily Drift

Va Va Varoom!!

Some of our readers today have been in:

Angeles City, Philippines

Cape Town, South Africa

Bangi, Malaysia

Warsaw, Poland

Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei

Manila, Philippines

Aguadilla, Puerto Rico

Petaling Jaya, Malaysia

Pretoria, South Africa

Waterloo, Canada

Tallinn Estonia

Istanbul, Turkey

George Town, Malaysia

Belgrade, Serbia

Johannesburg, South Africa

Pekanbaru, Indonesia

Bangkok, Thailand

Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia

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Samarinda, Indonesia

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Lahore, Pakistan

Cairo, Egypt

Tbilisi, Georgia

Kangar, Malaysia

San Jose, Costa Rica

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Paris, France

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Thanh Pho Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam

Today is Boxing Day

(Yes, we know, but it's just an illustration).

Don't forget to visit our sister blog!

Non Sequitur

Today in History

1776		After crossing the Delaware River into New Jersey, George Washington leads an attack on Hessian mercenaries at Trenton, and takes 900 men prisoner.
1786		Daniel Shay leads a rebellion in Massachusetts to protest the seizure of property for the non-payment of debt.
1806		Napoleon's army is checked by the Russians at the Battle of Pultusk.
1862		38 Santee Sioux are hanged in Mankato, Minnesota for their part in the Sioux Uprising in Minnesota. Little Crow has fled the state.
1866		Brig. Gen. Philip St. George Cooke, head of the Department of the Platte, receives word of the Fetterman Fight in Powder River County in the Dakota territory.
1917		As a wartime measure, President Woodrow Wilson places railroads under government control, with Secretary of War William McAdoo as director general.
1925		Six U.S. destroyers are ordered from Manila to China to protect interests in the civil war that is being waged there.
1932		Over 70,000 people are killed in a massive earthquake in China.
1941		General Douglas MacArthur declares Manila an open city in the face of the onrushing Japanese Army.
1943		The German battleship Scharnhorst is sunk by British ships in an Arctic fight.
1944		Advancing Soviet troops complete their encirclement of Budapest in Hungary.
1945		The United States, Soviet Union and Great Britain, end a 10-day meeting, seeking an atomic rule by the UN Council.
1953		The United States announces the withdrawal of two divisions from Korea.
1962		Eight East Berliners escape to West Berlin, crashing through gates in an armor-plated bus.
1966		Dr. Maulana Karenga celebrates the first Kwanza, a seven-day African-American celebration of family and heritage.
1979		The Soviet Union flies 5,000 troops to intervene in the Afghanistan conflict.
2006		Former U.S. President Gerald R. Ford dies at age 93. Ford was the only unelected president in America's history.

Reality is ...

Rural tension to reach new high as thousands to hit the trail for Boxing Day hunts

Animosity between fox hunters and their opponents is more heated than at any time since the hunting ban was introduced in Britain eight years ago, and both sides have urged caution ahead of the biggest hunting day of the year. A quarter of a million people are expected to attend a Boxing Day later today, with more than 45,000 on horseback. But as pro-hunters claim that "saboteurs" have "upped the ante" in recent months, their opponents respond that they are having to police a rise in illegal fox hunting themselves.
About 80 per cent of hunts surveyed by the pro-hunting Countryside Alliance say at least as many foxes are being killed now as before the ban came into force. Although the Hunting Act 2004 banned traditional hunting with hounds, exemptions allow landowners to flush out a fox from cover to be shot, using no more than two dogs. There are allegations of illegality and foul play by both camps. The RSPCA's successful prosecution last week of the Oxfordshire-based Heythrop Hunt, with which the Prime Minister David Cameron has ridden, for hunting a wild fox illegally further inflamed antipathy. A group of MPs and peers including Lord Heseltine have accused the animal rescuers of breaching charity regulations.

The League Against Cruel Sports said it had received almost three times as many calls about "suspicious" illegal hunting activity to its Wildlife Crimewatch line this year as it did in 2010. More than 60 per cent of the reports related to crimes against foxes. Joe Duckworth, the chief executive of the League, said: "There is a war in the countryside and we will get more calls than ever on Boxing Day this year." The organisation, which is investing an additional £1m in its operations team, has quadrupled the number of investigators working covertly in the field this season. The League said their data suggests "a heavy leaning towards illegal fox hunting".

The head of investigations at the League, Paul Tillsley, also believes tensions are higher than they have been for a while. Mr Tillsley was hit with a whip by David Bevan, from the West Somerset Vale Foxhounds, who admitted common assault. Mr Tillsley said: "Hunts have become more confident they can get away with things. It's back to the old days for them." The Countryside Alliance denied that illegal hunting was on the rise and stressed that it was still campaigning for the ban to be repealed. A spokesman said: "There are more than 300 registered hunts operating in the UK which carry out a combined total of around 20,000 days' hunting a year. Given the general level of confusion about hunting and the Hunting Act it is no surprise that the LACS receives a few hundred phone calls."

Unwavering NRA opposes any new gun restrictions

An unwavering National Rifle Association said Sunday that not a single new gun regulation would make children safer, that "a media machine" relishes blaming the gun industry for each new attack like the one that occurred at a Connecticut elementary school, and that a White House task force on gun violence may try to undermine the Second Amendment.

"Look, a gun is a tool. The problem is the criminal," said Wayne LaPierre, the CEO of the nation's largest gun-rights lobby, in a nationally broadcast television interview.

LaPierre hardly backed down from his comments Friday, when the NRA broke its weeklong silence on the shooting rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

LaPierre's assertion that guns and police officers in all schools are what will stop the next killer drew widespread scorn, and even some NRA supporters in Congress are publicly disagreeing with the proposal. Rep. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., called it "the most revolting, tone deaf statement I've ever seen." A headline from the New York Post summarized LaPierre's initial presentation before reporters with the headline: "Gun Nut! NRA loon in bizarre rant over Newtown."

LaPierre told NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday that only those armed guards and police would make kids safe.
"If it's crazy to call for putting police and armed security in our schools to protect our children, then call me crazy," LaPierre said. "I think the American people think it's crazy not to do it. It's the one thing that would keep people safe."
He asked Congress for money to put a police officer in every school. He also said the NRA would coordinate a national effort to put former military and police officers in schools as volunteer guards.
The NRA leader dismissed efforts to revive the assault weapons ban as a "phony piece of legislation" that's built on lies. He made clear it was highly unlikely that the NRA could support any new gun regulations.
"You want one more law on top of 20,000 laws, when most of the federal gun laws we don't even enforce?" he said.
LaPierre said another focus in preventing shootings is to lock up violent criminals and get the mentally ill the treatment they need.
"The average guy in the country values his freedom, doesn't believe the fact he can own a gun is part of the problem, and doesn't like the media and all these high-profile politicians blaming him," he said.

Some lawmakers were incredulous, yet acknowledged that the political and fundraising might of the NRA would make President Barack Obama's push for gun restrictions a struggle.

"I have found the statements by the NRA over the last couple of days to be really disheartening, because the statements seem to not reflect any understanding about the slaughter of children" in Newtown, said Sen. Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut independent.

He said the NRA is right in some of the points it makes about the causes of gun violence in America.

"But it's obviously also true that the easy availability of guns, including military style assault weapons, is a contributing factor, and you can't keep that off the table. I had hoped they'd come to the table and say, everything is on the table," Lieberman said.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said LaPierre was "so extreme and so tone deaf" that he was making it easier to pass gun legislation.

"Look, he blames everything but guns: movies, the media, President Obama, gun-free school zones, you name it. And the video games, he blames them," Schumer said.
But Lieberman didn't seem to be buying it. He said the NRA's stand on new gun rules means passing legislation next year won't happen easily.
"It's going to be a battle. But the president, I think, and vice president, are really ready to lead the fight," he said.
Obama has said he wants proposals on reducing gun violence that he can take to Congress in January, and after the Dec. 14 shootings, he called on the NRA to join the effort. The president has asked Congress to reinstate an assault weapons ban that expired in 2004 and pass legislation that would end a provision that allows people to purchase firearms from private parties without a background check. Obama also has indicated that he wants Congress to pursue the possibility of limiting high-capacity magazines.
If Obama's review is "just going to be made up of a bunch of people that, for the last 20 years, have been trying to destroy the Second Amendment, I'm not interested in sitting on that panel," LaPierre said.

The NRA has tasked former Rep. Asa Hutchinson, R-Ark., to lead a program designed to use volunteers from the group's 4.3 million members to help guard children.

Hutchinson said the NRA's position was a "very reasonable approach" that he compared to the federal air marshal program that places armed guards on flights.
"Are our children less important to protect than our air transportation? I don't think so," said Hutchinson, who served as an undersecretary at the Department of Homeland Security when it was formed.
Hutchinson said schools should not be required to use armed security. LaPierre also argued that local law enforcement should have final say on how the security is put into place, such as where officers would be stationed.
Democratic lawmakers in Congress have become more adamant about the need for stricter gun laws since the shooting. Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California is promising to push for a renewal of expired legislation that banned certain weapons and limited the number of bullets a gun magazine could hold to 10. NRA officials made clear the legislation is a non-starter for them.
"It hasn't worked," LaPierre said. "Dianne Feinstein had her ban and Columbine occurred."
There also has been little indication from Republican leaders that they'll go along with any efforts to curb what kind of guns can be purchased or how much ammunition gun magazines can hold.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., noted that he had an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle in his home. He said America would not be made safer by preventing him from buying another one. As to gun magazine limits, he said he can quickly reload by putting in a new magazine.
"The best way to interrupt a shooter is to keep them out of the school, and if they get into the school, have somebody who can interrupt them through armed force," Graham said.
LaPierre also addressed other factors that he said contribute to gun violence in America, but he would not concede that the types of weapons being used are part of the problem.
He was particularly critical of states, which he said are not placing the names of people into a national database designed to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and the dangerously mentally ill. He said some states are not entering names into the system and 23 others are only putting in a small number of records.
The American Psychiatric Association responded to LaPierre's comments by saying that he seemed to conflate mental illness with evil at several points.
"People who are clearly not mentally ill commit violent crimes and perform terrible acts every day," said Dr. James Scully, chief executive of the trade group. "Unfortunately, Mr. LaPierre's statements serve only to increase the stigma around mental illness and further the misconception that those with mental disorders are likely to be dangerous."

The truth be told

Why George Bush, Sr resigned his lifetime NRA membership

Here's ex-president George HW Bush's public letter of resignation from the his lifetime membership to NRA, sent after Wayne "Armed guards in schools" LaPierre gave a speech blaming gun laws for the Oklahoma City bombing, implying that the victims were "jack-booted thugs" "wearing Nazi bucket helmets and black storm trooper uniforms."

Al Whicher, who served on my [ United States Secret Service ] detail when I was Vice President and President, was killed in Oklahoma City. He was no Nazi. He was a kind man, a loving parent, a man dedicated to serving his country -- and serve it well he did...
...I am a gun owner and an avid hunter. Over the years I have agreed with most of N.R.A.'s objectives, particularly your educational and training efforts, and your fundamental stance in favor of owning guns.
However, your broadside against Federal agents deeply offends my own sense of decency and honor; and it offends my concept of service to country. It indirectly slanders a wide array of government law enforcement officials, who are out there, day and night, laying their lives on the line for all of us.

Letter of Resignation Sent By Bush to Rifle Association

The NRA’s fallen and it can’t get up

Call him the Six Billion Dollar Man.  Because that’s how much money NRA chief Wayne LaPierre’s nutty plan to put an armed guard in every school in America may cost on an annual basis. And how did the country responds to LaPierre’s proposal?  With a heart laugh.  Even repugicans are staying away:

Rep. Jason Chaffetz, a conservative from Utah, said on NBC he was worried about arming educators since he “had science teachers in high school who can’t negotiate a Bunsen burner for goodness sake.”

It’s rather extraordinary how quickly the NRA’s star has faded. The organization used to be looked at as invincible, and the gun control issue overall, untouchable.
Now, not so much.
It’s hard to know what was more disastrous: NRA executive VP Wayne LaPierre’s disastrous press conference this past Friday morning, in which he suggested that the answer to people with guns mowing down children was to put a whole lot more guns near children, or LaPierre’s Sunday morning appearance on Meet the Press in which numerous commentators noticed that LaPierre was quite literally “foaming at the mouth.”
First, the reaction to Friday’s press conference was swift and vicious.  New York’s two quasi-tabloids, including one that tends to veer right, perhaps said it best:

A vicious piece in the Daily News by Mike Lupica:

So now Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association, who attacks the mental health system in this country even as he sounds like he needs to be in it, goes on “Meet the Press” and continues to double down on his notion that the only way to keep our schools safe is to put armed guards at the front door and the side door and in every home room in America and maybe on every school bus, too.

LaPierre is the type who lies to stay in practice, as he continues to pass himself off as the front man for responsible gun owners when he actually is a front for their lunatic fringe. To say that the NRA represents mainstream thinking for gun owners is the same as saying that the Tea Party represents mainstream thinking in the Republican Party.

Then there was the rabies episode on Meet the Press:

Perhaps the chyron should have, “NRA SPITS UP.” 

 Adding to the crazy was NRA head Wayne LaPierre suggesting that most of the American media travels around with bodyguards. Which came as a surprise to most of the American media that has never traveled around with a bodyguard. From Erik Wemple at the Washington Post, who presumably does not have a body guard:

A suitable expert regarding media expenditures on armed protection is Martin Baron. He’s the outgoing top editor of the Boston Globe, the incoming top editor of The Washington Post and the former executive editor of the Miami Herald, among other editing jobs. So what about this armed-protection thing? Writes Baron via e-mail: “Never once heard of this, never authorized it, never paid for it and don’t for a second believe it. The only exception I can recall is, at times, for some security in Afghanistan and Iraq.”
More such sentiment comes from a CBS News source: “I can tell you definitively that the bureau and the CBS Broadcast Center guards are NOT armed. (Trust me, you wouldn’t want guns in the hands of some of those folks!) … I can’t speak for the correspondents who travel in dangerous areas internationally, but my guess is even they aren’t accompanied by armed guards.”

Apparently, the NYT doesn’t have armed guards, even in Kabul.
But, as always, the mass-murder of innocent Americans is always a boon for our country’s fetish with violence: ammo sales are through the roof, lest some sane politician decide that the presence of nearly 300 million guns in America, when that’s a little less than our entire population, might just suffice.

At a Denver gun show this weekend, ammunition for the AR-15 semiautomatic rifle — the style of weapon used in the Newtown attack — sold out within an hour.
“We’re worried we’re not going to be able our guns for our safety and we’re not doing anything wrong,” said one attendee, Crystalin Benedetto.

Yeah, you lost the right to cry about your “safety” when one of your fellow gun nuts decided to mow down 20 children a week before Xtmas.  Your safety is killing us.

Ahem ...

Did you know ...

How to calculate your fiscal cliff tax bill

That 1 in 3 Americans believe extreme weather is a sign of biblical end times

That atheists suffer discrimination and persecution around the world

That a McDonalds server would have to work 550 years to earn CEO's salary

Let's follow the money behind the New Town massacre

Do armed civilians stop mass shootings? Actually, no

Wal-mart vs. the Huffington Post

Here's understanding the hatred of the poor in America

You know it's bad when even Santa Claus can't get a job

That we could end homelessness for what Americans spend on Xmas decorations 

Priorities

Latin America has the happiest countries

Sure, if you like being happy, I guess it’s all fine and good. 

Gallup has a new poll of happiest countries and the least happy.  Latin America really stole the show, apparently.
From Gallup, here’s the list of top and bottom:

Source: Gallup

More from AP:

“In Guatemala, it’s a culture of friendly people who are always smiling,” said Luz Castillo, a 30-year-old surfing instructor. “Despite all the problems that we’re facing, we’re surrounded by natural beauty that lets us get away from it all.”
Gallup Inc. asked about 1,000 people in each of 148 countries last year if they were well-rested, had been treated with respect, smiled or laughed a lot, learned or did something interesting and felt feelings of enjoyment the previous day.
In Panama and Paraguay, 85 percent of those polled said yes to all five, putting those countries at the top of the list. They were followed closely by El Salvador, Venezuela, Trinidad and Tobago, Thailand, Guatemala, the Philippines, Ecuador and Costa Rica.

Having spent a bit of time in Guatemala ten years ago, I agree, it’s a beautiful country and lovely people. Antigua Guatemala and Tikal are two favorite spots in my travels but there’s plenty more to see there. Somehow I need to find a way to get to a few more of the countries on the list, like the Philippines. Air miles, take me away.

You can see the entire list here.

Export American natural gas? Not so fast

With the advent of the “shale gas revolution,” the United States has undergone a full-scale natural gas boom. Driven by ...

Continue Reading 

Principle ... yeah, that's the ticket

People Who Pay More Taxes Are Happier

Attention lawmakers scrambling to avoid huge tax increases next month: New research suggests people who pay more taxes are happier. At least German people.

People who pay higher taxes than other people tend to be more satisfied with their lives, according to a new paper written by six economists at the Institute for the Study of Labor in Bonn. The researchers analyzed 26 years of German panel data that asked about 25,000 people the question “How satisfied are you with your life, all things considered?”

After controlling for income, age, education and other variables that could influence someone’s level of well-being, the researchers found that people who paid more in taxes reported higher levels of happiness.

No single reason accounted for why those with a heftier tax bill were happier, but the economists found some evidence supporting several potential factors. One reason could be that people enjoy the public goods and services made possible by taxes. For example, German households who regularly attended cultural events such as concerts and plays, which are at least partially publicly funded in Germany, were happier to pay taxes than “inactive” households.

Other possible factors include a sense that redistributing wealth is necessary, altruism, and a measure of “tax morale,” the sense that there is a “moral obligation to pay taxes and if you don’t do it, you might feel bad about it,” co-author Sebastian Siegloch, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Cologne, said in an interview Wednesday.

Previous neuroscience research has shown that giving to charity, for example, can activate certain parts of the brain linked to “rewards processing” and paying taxes might generate a similar “warm glow motive,” the paper noted.

Motivation might also differ among varying groups of people, or include a combination of reasons, Mr. Siegloch said.

The research doesn’t answer whether people would be happier if their tax rates increase.

“You can’t rule it out, but I think it’s probably not very likely that it’s that direct of an effect,” Mr. Siegloch said.

Americans might also show different results than Germans. “It could be different in the U.S.,” he said.

In the U.S., most households will likely see some form of tax increase next year, regardless of whether the White House and Congress reach a deal to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff, the roughly $500 billion in tax increases and spending cuts scheduled to kick into effect in January. Even with a deal, tax rates are likely to climb for many upper-income households (with the income cut-off yet to be determined) and workers’ payroll tax rate appears likely to rise. Without a deal, individual tax rates will rise for all income groups and the payroll tax rate will rise.

It is far from safe to conclude that Democrats, who tend to support tax increases more often than Republicans, have unlocked the secret to happiness.

Personal happiness has also been linked recently to less regulation, long a rallying cry among Republicans. People living in countries with “less intense” regulation showed more life satisfaction, according to a new paper from the Austrian Institute of Economic Research.

And those who got a bigger boost of happiness from deregulation included not only free-market supporters, but also “political left-wingers,” according to the research.

“One should consider the possibility that individuals systematically miscalculate the value of certain government policies for their own life satisfaction,” the paper noted.

Alabama terror case could hinge on relationships

 

The terrorism case against an Alabama man accused of planning to wage Islamic jihad in Africa may hinge on just how well he knew a man on the FBI's most-wanted terrorist list.

Federal prosecutors portrayed Randy Wilson as an Islamic radical who wanted to reunite with Omar Hammami, an American who also grew up in Alabama but has since become one of the most well-known jihadists in Somalia. Wilson and another American who lived in Alabama for the last year, Mohammad Abdul Rahman Abukhdair, are accused of plotting to leave the country to join Islamic radicals fighting in North Africa.

The two men were arrested separately about two weeks ago in Georgia. Abukhdair was taken into custody at a bus station; Wilson was arrested as he was about to board a flight to Morocco.

Wilson's attorney has described him as a devout Muslim who was taking his family to Mauritania to study Islam, not wage jihad. Public defender Domingo Soto also said Wilson didn't live with Hammami, 28, about a decade ago, as the FBI has said, and the attorney questioned how well the two knew each other.

It wasn't clear whether Abukhdair has an attorney yet.
Wilson, 25, has a wife and two young children. He was known around his neighborhood in Mobile, along the Alabama coast, for his big yard sales. He was friendly and outgoing, neighbors said.
Court documents, interviews with acquaintances and a sworn statement by an FBI investigator paint a picture of Wilson's troubled childhood.
Debra Lynn Weaver and Randy Lamar Wilson married in Mobile in 1986 and had Randy Jr. nine months later. Wilson's father was arrested on drug charges in the first of a string of scrapes with the law, and his mother filed for divorce four months later, when he was 1.
Wilson's mother remarried an Egyptian man when he was 5. She converted to Islam with the marriage, and her son eventually became Muslim, too.
Ashfaq Taufique, president of the Birmingham Islamic Society, remembered first meeting Wilson when he was attending an Islamic school.
"I knew him as a Muslim as a young boy," said Taufique. "He went by Randy and Rasheed."
Soto said Wilson client has never been in trouble. While attending a Muslim school in Birmingham, he was offered prestigious scholarships to study abroad at places including Saudi Arabia, Soto said.
Shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, he became roommates with Hammami, who was the president of the Muslim Student Association at the University of South Alabama, the FBI said.
He was quoted in a campus newspaper talking about the attacks.
"Everyone was really shocked. Even now it's difficult to believe a Muslim could have done this," he told The Vanguard.
Hammami later wrote in an online autobiography that he already had turned toward radicalism by that time and privately praised Allah for the attacks.
Wilson and Hammami lived together for about 20 months until December 2004, the FBI said.
Hammami moved to Toronto in early 2005, and it's unclear whether he and Wilson kept in contact. Hammami later went to Egypt and joined Islamic insurgents, becoming a spokesman in videos and blogs.
He has since fallen out of favor with leaders of the Somalian terror group al-Shabab, which issued a statement recently distancing itself from Hammami, whom it accused of "a narcissistic pursuit of fame."
In 2010, Wilson met Abukhdair online, according to the FBI. A native of Syracuse, N.Y., Abukhdair moved to Egypt in February 2007 to study Arabic, the FBI said. He was among a group of people arrested in Egypt in 2010, on suspicion of being involved with a terror group there.
He was put in prison for two months, and then he was deported to the U.S. last year.
He lived in South Carolina and Ohio, before coming to Mobile in late October 2011 according to an FBI agent's sworn statement.
Agents already were watching Abukhdair and Wilson by then. The FBI said Abukhdair moved in with Wilson's family and gave the Friday sermon at a mosque in Mobile about a year ago.

Leaders at the mosque didn't return telephone calls seeking comment, and a worker shooed away a reporter who visited.

The FBI said it kept tabs on the pair through an undercover operative. Wilson "described Hammami as a friend and showed the (undercover operative) an al-Qaeda video on his laptop praising jihad and the downfall of the West," the FBI said.

Wilson and Abukhdair began concocting ways to travel to Africa to join in jihad, an agent wrote.

Wilson, the FBI said, believed he would receive "special treatment" in Somalia because of his connection with Hammami.

"In addition to travel plans, they discussed their joy that Omar Hammami is now on the FBI 'Most Wanted Terrorists' list, and were excited that he is now even more famous," said the FBI statement.

Wilson lived next door to Tom Rothaar for two years. Rothaar said he was a friendly neighbor and who would have frequent yard sales with items he bought in bulk from big-box retail stores.

Rothaar said he was "staggered" by Wilson's arrest and tried to make sense of it during a 5-mile run.

"I couldn't," Rothaar said. "The only thing I can think is all the typical clichés about how I cannot believe he was living next door and seemed so normal."

The truth hurts

Dakota Indians mark hangings of 1862 with trek on horseback

 

The day after Xmas will be somber for Dakota Indians marking what they consider a travesty of justice 150 years ago, when 38 of their ancestors were executed in the biggest mass hanging in U.S. history.

Overshadowed by the Civil War raging in the East, the hangings in Mankato, Minnesota, on December 26, 1862, followed the often overlooked six-week U.S.-Dakota war earlier that year -- a war that marked the start of three decades of fighting between Native Americans and the U.S. government across the Plains.

President Abraham Lincoln intervened in the case, demanding a review that reduced the number of death sentences. But he allowed 38 to be executed, including two men historians believe were hanged in error, even as he was preparing the Emancipation Proclamation to free black slaves in the South.
This month, in an annual event that started in 2005, some Dakota are making a 300-mile trek on horseback in frigid winter temperatures to revive the memory of this footnote in U.S. history.
"It was just a terrible trauma that they had to endure, and we continue to have to endure this generational trauma to this very day," said Sheldon Wolfchild, former chairman of the Lower Sioux Indian Community in southwestern Minnesota.

This year's ride began on December 10 in Crow Creek, South Dakota, the reservation the Dakota were exiled to from Minnesota after the executions. It ends on December 26 in Mankato, where riders will attend a ceremony to remember the hangings.

Riders travel east across South Dakota, crossing the border into Minnesota and heading southeast to Mankato. Some ride the entire route, others join as their schedules permit. Support vehicles follow them.
The ride was captured in the documentary film "Dakota 38," which won a special jury award this year at the Minneapolis-St. Paul Film Festival.
"During the ride ... it feels as close to how we might have been in a camp," said Gaby Strong, who has participated in the ride or support for it each year. "That is really what we are doing over the course of the 10 or 15 days that we are all together."
Strong, 49, who lives in Morton, Minnesota, near the site of a key 1862 battle in the U.S.-Dakota war, said the ride has helped form bonds among the Dakota Sioux, especially the young.
"It's about healing, not only just for me, but for my community," said Vanessa Goodthunder, a rider and participant each year. "We are just bringing home our ancestors. You meet a lot of new people, and I get a lot of different perspectives."
Goodthunder, 18, who is majoring in American Indian studies and history at the University of Minnesota, said the rides have helped young Dakota connect with each other and their history.
"It's your identity. It is who you are," she said.

FORGOTTEN WAR

Over the next three years, Americans will commemorate the 150th anniversary of a host of Civil War battles. Almost forgotten are the conflicts with Native Americans that occurred in the second half of the 19th century as the United States rapidly expanded west.

Few of those conflicts are well known, with the exception of "Custer's Last Stand" -- when flamboyant officer George Armstrong Custer and his men were killed by Sioux leader Crazy Horse and his warriors in 1876 -- and the Battle of Wounded Knee in 1890, which many historians consider a massacre and the end of the Indian wars.

Thousands of Native Americans, white settlers and U.S. soldiers were killed in the Indian wars. Native Americans were coerced to cede their lands and then forced onto reservations.
In the Upper Plains, that included members of the Great Sioux Nation, which comprises Lakota to the west, Nakota in the middle and Dakota to the east around Minnesota.

The seeds of the Dakota war were planted years earlier, in the 1830s, according to historians, when the fur trade that had been the basis of the region's economy since the late 17th century began to fade and land became valuable for settlement.

Under treaties in 1851, the four main Dakota bands ceded about 35 million acres of what is now southern Minnesota, parts of Iowa and South Dakota. In exchange, the U.S. pledged payments and allowed the Dakota a narrow tract of land about 10 miles wide on either side of the Minnesota River. Settlers swarmed onto the newly opened lands.

In 1858, just after Minnesota became a state, Dakota chiefs were summoned to Washington, D.C., and told they would have to give up the northern half of that narrow reserve, said St. Cloud State University historian Mary Wingerd.

By summer 1862, the Dakota, now largely dependent on government treaty payments that were long delayed, were starving. On August 17, young Dakota men out hunting killed five white settlers.
The hunters pressed Chief Taoyateduta, known as Little Crow, to back a war. Some Dakota, but not all, fought soldiers and settlers in the short, bloody war in August and September 1862.
Hundreds of settlers were killed and hundreds more taken hostage in the war during attacks on forts, federal Indian agencies, cities and farms around southwestern Minnesota. Thousands of settlers fled east, fueling a statewide panic, and federal troops marched in to quell the Dakota fighters.
The U.S. was victorious on September 23, 1862, and Little Crow left Minnesota.
Afterward, more than 2,000 Dakota were rounded up, whether they fought or not. Almost 400 men faced military trials, which often lasted just a few minutes, and 303 were sentenced to die.
LINCOLN'S REVIEW
Lincoln demanded a review limiting the death sentences to those Dakota who raped or killed settlers. The number sentenced to hang was reduced to 38, but even in these cases the evidence was scanty, said Dan Stock, history center director at the Minnesota Historical Society.

The 38 condemned men stood on a large square gallows surrounded by soldiers. Thousands watched as a single blow with an ax cut a rope and dropped the scaffolding.

Wingerd said she could understand why the Dakota fought, but the brutal killings of settlers could not be condoned and she could not agree with people who believed that no one should have been hanged.

"We have to understand it as a huge tragedy with victims on both sides," Wingerd said of the deaths of settlers and the forced marches and scattering of most Dakota from Minnesota.

"In fact, the Dakota nation did not go to war and most of the people who were expelled from Minnesota were guilty of nothing," Wingerd said.

About 1,700 Dakota women, children and older men who did not fight were marched to a prison camp at Fort Snelling, Minnesota, where up to 300 died that winter. They were exiled to Crow Creek, South Dakota, in 1863, but some began to return to Minnesota almost immediately.

"They continue to come home and this ride represents that," Strong said of Minnesota. "We continue to come home. This is our homeland."

Wolfchild said he wants authorities to recognize sacred Dakota sites in the area that is now the Twin Cities and its suburbs to help heal the lingering wounds from the broken treaties, Mankato hangings and exile.

"I would like to be buried where our people originated from," he said.