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Note to some special, comprehension-challenged, knee-jerk speed-readers: Don't just glance at the pictures, dummies. This column is PRO-Obama.
In my web slogs through the internet, I have waded, rubber boots pulled high, through pig barns of ignorance, through white-trash stables befouled with racism, rafter-high with southern-fried, gag-making hatred of African- The paranoid racism scrawled on the net written by the most debased bigots robbed me of breath. One reads sites claiming that Barack Hussein Obama is “a secret Ay-rab planning to take over America and mongrelize the white race with his clandestine genes.” My god! Giant black studs will roam the American night ploughing pertinent white petunias,
I even found a rabbi’s blog (!) where a dim-bulb rabbi does not seem to know that Arabic and Hebrew are brother tongues, bedmates in the same Semitic chamber of languages. Asked about Barack, Obama’s first name, this supposedly learned ignoramus spews on, throbbing with badly concealed hatred of all Arabs, telling some unfortunate question-writer that berakhah and baraka have nothing in common. Nothing in common! Except that they are the same word, you unlettered racist buffoon! I guess it is safe to assume that this same rabbi would not know that Hebrew shares with Arabic the very word rabbi? In Arabic, rabb means ‘master, expert, lord, specialist.’ Even Allah is referred to in the Koran several times by the title Rabb. The Hebrew and Arabic languages both stem from the same ancient common tongue, sometimes called Proto-Semitic. There are not ten, not a hundred, but tens of thousands of words shared by Hebrew and Arabic, only slightly different in form, and sometimes almost exactly the same in meaning. What chutzpah! If you don’t know something, you tell your questioner. Then you look up what is true and give a correct answer. You don’t wallow around in folk etymology and unknowing. Is there a berakhah for such a rabbi? Yes! Baruch atta … May God send him to a library — far away from us.
Barack, Baraka, Baruch, Berakhah, Mubarak: All Words from the Same Semitic Root Here are the true histories and connections and derivations of Barack and all of the baraka and baruch and berakhah and mubarak Hebrew and Arabic words. It is a fascinating story, and — believe me — this is one of the few sites where the Semitic etymology is correct – even if I have to say so myself. All these words begin in the Proto-Semitic trilitteral verbal root b-r-k whose prime meaning is ‘to bless.’ Some of the Koranic and modern Arabic reflexes of this root are: Baraka or Barakah Barakah بركة This is a noun meaning ‘a blessing’ from Allah. A pious Muslim is enjoined by Allah and by the Koran as revealed to Muhammad to bring as much barakah upon himself or herself as can be obtained during a lifetime, chiefly by doing deeds that are pleasing to Allah. The Hebrew word ברכה berakhah is a reflex of the same root, with similar meanings in Hebrew and a few shades of significance different from its Arabic meanings. Many Muslims believe that one can receive blessing by touching sacred things. To receive baraka, millions of pilgrims to the holy city of Mecca circle the Kaaba—the house that Abraham built for God—performing the Hajj, the holy pilgrimage. Pilgrims touch and kiss a black rock—believed to be a meteor—framed in silver and gold. By touching this celestial rock and circling around the Kaaba, believers are said to be blessed by being in proximity to the divine. Baraka can inhere in blessed objects and thus be transferred. Thus hajji often bring back from Mecca blessed items. One of the more popular baraka-bearing things is water from the well of Zamzam. Mubarak Mubarak is a past-participial form that means “blessed.” In Arabic-speaking countries Mubarak is both a surname and a male given name. Consider the president of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak. Baruch Baruch (Hebrew: בָּרוּךְ , Standard: Baru ḫ Tiberian: Bārû ḵ ) Baruch is the Hebrew equivalent of Arabic mubarak, “blessed.” Baruch is a common given name for Jewish males and, less frequently, a surname among the world’s Jews. It too is a holy word that begins many a Hebrew prayer. Berakhot (blessings) traditionally start with the Hebrew words: Barukh attah, Adonai Eloheinu, melekh ha-olam. “Blessed are you, O Lord our God, King of the universe.”
So, my American friends, keep these true meanings in mind, as you peruse the Republican-financed filth and foul lies of American big business, as they do their best to prevent you from electing a champion who will run some of them out of Washington , perhaps not forever, but for a few years, delivering a respite that America needs desperately. Below is an assortment of slogans and bumper stickers from the American Presidential campaign year of 2008.
copyright © 2008 William Gordon Casselman
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Americans. Now, in respect to political speechifying, I am no giggling virgin, cheeks blushing behind my fan. I have read the hornswoggling blather of flannel-mouthed Canadian and American goldbrick artists all my life. But even a fecal mariner such as myself, fresh from bobbing upon flocculent seas of dreck, even I have been astounded at the fetid obaminations, the belligerence of the ignorance contained in internet articles purporting to tell what Barack Obama’s given name means. 
knocking over their mint juleps and violatin’ their lily chastity right there on the veranda! Why tumescent white garage mechanics, ithyphallic pool boys and boner-burdened pizza-delivery yokels will have to form a line for sloppy seconds! Hot damn, Lula Mae! It ain’t fittin’! No white woman is safe! When was the last time we read that canard? At a Georgia lynching? No, last night on a Republican website! Such prejudice-moist rants read as if America were still in the throes of Reconstruction, stained and bloodied from the Civil War. 
Has nothing changed? Apparently not the I.Q. of southern Republicans. I don’t know if John McCain has yet accused Barack Obama of keeping a spare camel in his garage. The bubba-brained bigots spread the lie that Barack is a “secret” Muslim. Oh yeah? Bet he doesn’t have a two-holed white sheet hidden in the closet though. 
