I was reading Martin Luther King Jr's last speech (the one made just the day before his death) for one of my classes and among the passages that stood out for me was this:

"And Bull Conner would tell them to send the dogs forth and they did come; but we just went before the dogs singing . . ."

"And we'd go on before the water hoses and we would look at it, and we'd just go on singing . . . And they would throw us in, and old Bull would say, "Take them off," and they did; and we would just go in the paddy wagon singing . . ."

Sound familiar? Aia's father went down singing, and Ris mocked it before he killed Dartesas' kids.

It's not my intention at all to "trivialise" King's speech with this, btw. I just think it's amazing that even the "singing" part of this story has some historical link to real life. I hadn't read this speech until now, and until I did, I hadn't completely appreciate the rebellious pride in going down singing that Aia felt for her father. I guess I understood that pride on some logical level, but after reading this speech, it just seems to have a greater depth than before.

(As an aside, I was also reading Japanese history and it dealt briefly with ancient Japan's views of the indigenous group, the Ainu. The book flatly stated that the "hairy men"-- the Ainu-- were viewed as no different from animals back then by the other Japanese. Of course, one of the first things I thought of was how Vash looked at Sela in the beginning, and Osh's reaction to killing kisors.)