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Show Me Your Tongue!

The other day Janna went into one of the local shops in our Jersey City neighborhood to buy some food. Janna is Deaf and she usually chooses not to use her voice with strangers because if you use your voice then you are expected to vocally communicate on both sides of the conversation and that puts her at a disadvantage when it comes to understanding what is being spoken by a large immigrant population with many accents and unique vocalizations that are impossible to always comprehend and interpret.

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Brown Paper Bag Experiences

We have all been subject to “Brown Paper Bag Experiences” when others evaluate us not by our inner selves — but by our outward appearances — and many times they wrongly judge us by jumping to incorrect conclusions. In my article, Coercing Faith, Gordon Davidescu posted this Brown Bag comment:

I think the best analogy (or at least the one I just came up with now) is this: Say you see a person walking down the street with a brown paper bag in his hand. Given New York’s liquor laws you know that he has some sort of alcoholic beverage inside. However, you don’t know if that alcoholic beverage is a beer or wine, or even a wine cooler – unless it is taken out of the bag. Converting is sort of like removing the bottle from the bag. Being Jewish means you have a Jewish Soul – but not everyone with a Jewish Soul hidden in their paper bag realizes that they are Jewish until they take it out of the bag – converting, that is.

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Dithering the Color Line with Violence

As we celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. day in the United States, MLKingwe are faced with the questions of antiquity that have bothered and constrained humankind: Do we still judge people by color?

Do we still prefer violence over getting along with each other and the world?

It is possible in any way to reclaim our tainted and lost humanity?

I wish those in the churches and the mosques and the community living rooms and the religious leaders would stand up to the politicians and say, “Don’t go to war in God’s name.

Don’t ask for our prayers to cover your bloodshed.

Don’t seek our religious protection for your unholy political wars.

Don’t ask for our faith votes in the polling place. Leave religion out of your killing fields.”

That kind of religious rebellion against the politicians would remove the brush cover from political fanatics who pretend they are doing God’s work in the fields of war by killing those who are of darker skin and lesser opportunity than those wielding the staff and the cross.

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Prime Pecking Points: My Iraq Timetable

Here’s my Iraq Timetable for the next two years.

August 2007:

The “Surge” didn’t work. The country is splitting into three region-states. American losses are outstripping any forward movement in the Iraqi coalition government. Now what?

Iraq Timetable


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Casting Caskets into the Iraqi Abyss

President Bush decided we’re going to surge 20,000 more troops into the abyss of Iraq and one can’t think he’s doing anything more than tossing more bodies into the volcano.

Casting Caskets

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