General News
The Four-Letter Word
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But he has brought the word back into the language. Now people speak again about peace. Shalom. PEACE? WHAT is peace?
General News
Juneteenth 2017
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June 19, Juneteenth, commemorates June 19, 1865, the day the Major General Gordon Granger and United States troops landed in Galveston, Texas with news that the Civil War was over and that the slaves were free. The Emancipation Proclamation had gone into effect on January 1, 1863, and many slaves had heard the news then and had walked away from slavery. Many of them, my maternal grandmother’s grandfather among them, walked away from slavery and joined the Union army. The 13th Amendment to the US Constitution that abolishes slavery having already passed the Senate in 1864, passed the House of Representative on January 31, 1865. It was well on the way to confirmation by the time Maj.
Culture
Haitian Mourning Rituals and Just Don't Wear Red!
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Upon hearing news of the death of an older cousin, I immediately recalled times spent in the lakou (yard) of his late grandmother, whom everyone knew as Aunt Boots – the family matriarch and piercer. I call her that since she had done all our ears at the most tender age to assure the making of girls in Haiti. I remember running around freely with the scent of roasting coffee beans swarming us. She had a coffee and peanut butter business. On Saturday afternoons, grownups sat on wicker ladder-backed chairs, catching up on the latest news, and family matters.
General News
On "Crossin' Over"
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I am blackwoman in America. And, I love being a blackwoman in America. I agree with Zora Neale Hurston when she says:
“I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow damned up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes. I do not mind at all.
General News
China builds new type of globalization
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Major corporate media around the world warn that the gathering signals the end of the American Century — the U.S. claim to be the world’s sole superpower. Numerous analysts suggest the project could shift the center of the global economy and challenge the U.S.-led world order.
General News
Remembering May 28, 1917 in East St. Louis, Illinois
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In February of 1917, 470 African-Americans were hired to replace striking white workers at the Aluminum Ore Company in East St Louis. On May 28, white workers expressed their concern about African-American migrants at a city council meeting. After the meeting, rumors of an attempted robbery by an African-American man of a white person inflamed whites who formed mobs that attacked African-Americans on the street. Blacks were pulled off trolley cars and beaten. The state’s National Guard was called in to maintain peace, but racial tensions continued to simmer.
General News
Global Population and the Insane Policy of US State Dept.
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Just a Glimpse
Here’s a question about doing good in the world. How could we prevent nearly half a million unintended pregnancies, unsafe abortions, or maternal death? I was stunned to read recently that the U.S. State Department eliminated American contributions to the United Nations Population Fund, an organization that has done just that, year after year. I have to believe that the white men in suits who made that decision cannot begin to imagine its consequences for real women all around the world. Several decades ago I spent a year working in health in rural Nepal, and learned in my first week of work what family planning services, or not having them, can mean to women of the Global South.
General News
The Women's Balcony — a delightful film!
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The Women’s Balcony, a movie which captures a beautiful
slice of Israeli life, is a huge upper at a time when many
people are feeling depressed and saddened by the state of our world. The movie captures the way that Jewish women have been
marginalized in parts of the Israeli Orthodox religious world,
and how they mobilize themselves to achieve power in the face
of rabbinic authority that is dismissive of their concerns. Yet this is
not another of those “religion is evil” or “men are jerks” kind of
dismissals, but rather a sensitive portrayal of how men and
women find a way, even within the boundaries of orthodoxy, to
recapture each other’s humanity, to stand up against irrational
rules, and find a path that is at once affirming of women and
affirming of parts of the Jewish tradition that these Israeli women
wish to retain in their lives. It is, in its own caring and complex way,
a celebration of the actual and potential power of Jewish women, and
it’s highly enjoyable to watch.–Rabbi Michael Lerner, Editor, Tikkun Magazine
General News
Draining the Trump Russia Swamp
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With the dismissal of Former FBI Director James Comey, the smell from the Trump Russia swamp is becoming more and more malodorous. Something stinks in Washington D.C. At first, President Trump and his supporters wanted us to believe that the reason he unceremoniously fired James Comey was because of his actions regarding the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server. Most people never believed this rationale. Trump has since said that the Russia investigation was on his mind when he was thinking of letting Comey go. However, that is not the subject of this essay.
General News
The Settlement Legality Debate: FAQ
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One could quibble further about the language of the Balfour Declaration (for example, it seems to promise only that the “national home for the Jewish people” will be somewhere “in Palestine,” rather than providing for the constitution of Palestine as a whole as a Jewish national home). However, the establishment of the State of Israel, with its over-fulfillment of the “national home” policy, suffices to render the related provisions of the Mandate obsolete.