April 11th, 2017
By Sami Jamil.
The other day, a friend of mine complained to me about America’s need for “White immigrants” and that America needs “White” immigrants and not immigrants from “Third World countries”, which prompted to write this article.
America and for a long time is a country of immigrants, mainly from Europe and for a long time, US immigrations favored and was tailored made to accommodate immigrants from Europe White” immigrants.
Of course, the economic and political situations in Europe changed over the years especially after the end of World War II, with Europe undergoing a big construction boom and with the establishment of the European Union allowing and funding many marginal and poor countries to improve its social and economic standards like Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Greece. Then came the fall of the Soviet Union and the great efforts of the UE to uplift many of these former Soviet republics like Poland, Hungary, Romanian, the Baltic States, the needs for immigrations from Europe slowed down.
For the most parts, countries that have been the major source of “White Immigrants” like England, Germany, Scandinavia, Ireland, prosper over the years and now enjoy much higher standards of living than that of the US.
Why would anyone from Europe immigrate to the US when most if not all have a standards of living that is the envy of most states in America, especially the poor states in Appalachia and the South and the Mountain States with European citizens enjoying universal health coverage, pension and retirement, 30 days vacation, less than 40 hours a week, free child care and paid maternity leave, free college education. Why would anyone in their right mind want to immigrate to America when Americans are denied these benefits, not to mention quality schools irrespective of whether the neighborhood is poor or with mixed populations?
Of course, my friend is afraid that “Third World immigrant” may have an adverse impact on his lifestyle and his standards of livings. Well, we don’t.
Not to disappoint my friend, his ills and that of tens of millions of “White Americans” are not the “Brown” immigrants from the Middle East, or the Far East or even from Latin America? The ills and misfortunate of “White Americans” are directly caused by America’s “White Institutions” from Congress to Wall Street to major corporations. It is “White America” that is in charge of the misfortune of “White” Main Street America.
Let us for a moment visit what happened to America since the end the big war.
America and until WWII was basically an agrarian country with agriculture as the basic industry with mostly small manufacturing and mining industry, and we have seen and lived that during the Great Depression.
Roosevelt’s New Deal and WWII came as a blessing for all Americans with the demands and needs of the war, transformed America into a major industrial, military and economic power, which continues to enjoy today.
Millions of returning war veterans came back to full employment in factories that converted from war industries to civilian industries turning out anything and every thing from housing construction materials, to cars, to home appliances, to radios and TVs, to vacuum, cleaners among many consumer goods.
Major factories such as the automotive industries experience a boom not see in generations with “America on Wheel” everywhere. Industries such as “steel” also enjoyed a boom with US Steel of Gary, Indiana (my hometown) had 40,000 employees working three shifts and add major steel companies like Inland Steel of East Chicago, Bethlehem Steel and cities like Youngstown, Ohio, and Pittsburg, Pennsylvania all enjoying a big boom. Cities like St. Louis, and Everett, Washington enjoying a big boom with the introduction of jet travel as the preferred travel in America, and now the basis of major military and commercial aviation.
That is how Main Street “White America” was enjoying its “Middle-Class” status with the head of household with only a high school education, working in these factories able to own a house, have two cars, afford to send his kids to college. Yes, these were the glorious days of high school educated “White Middle Class” America.
All that changed and thanks to America’s White Establishment through its political, economic and tax policies, it deprived White Middle Class America not only of its jobs but of its dignity and honor as well.
White Middle-Class America got the short end of the stick. National and international economies changed and with it major industries which were the solid base for White Middle-Class America moved overseas, through series of tax incentives and other policies instituted by America’s Congress, it is very own “White Institution” add to that another White America’s Institution” the US Presidency.
President Reagan while being labeled as the “icon” of and darling of “White America” was the one who truly failed “White America”. It was his tenure that saw the greatest shift in America’s economies and it was during his tenure that America began to witness a series of “looting” taxpayers in favor of big powerful “White” corporations. He was too busy making America feel great but never bothered to address the issues of loss of jobs, and the urgent needs to “retrain” America for the new international economies. Till now not Congress, not the presidency addressed these big major social and economic issues.
The demise of the White Middle-Class America began with Ronald Reagan and was not caused by Barack Obama though he is faulted by bailing out big time “White” institutions such as Wall Street and the automobile industry.
The General Accounting Office after reviewing the collapsed “Saving and Loan” industry in 1996, reported that taxpayers end up paying $132.1 billions to bail out “White” owned saving and loan banks.
The looting of taxpayers continued with Ronald Reagan deregulations of airlines. While saving consumers $5-$10 billion annually in tickets fare, more than trillion of shareholder assets disappeared with the demise of such American icons like TWA, Pan American, Eastern, National and Braniff airlines.
Over the years America’s owned “White” institutions saw the biggest fraud cases in US history with shareholders losing over $180 billion in investor’s assets due to fraudulent accounting by the management of WorldCom and the loss of 30,000 jobs.
Of course, all of us remember ENRON with big friends in the White House that looted $70 billion in shareholders equity and pension, and looted California consumers out of tens of billions in overcharges.
Another “White” big time business was HealthSouth inflated earning by $1.4 billion and the only reason the CEO “White” was caught is because he sold $75 million the day before the case broke into the open. He was acquitted on all 36 federal charges.
“White” not “Brown Immigrant” also committed the biggest Medicare fraud cases in US history with Columbia/HCA headed by “White” Rick Scott (Governor of Florida) paying $1.7 billions in fine. Johnson & Johnson agreed to pay $2.2 billion “ for improper promotion of certain drug (2013) and Pfizer settled for $2.3 billion (2009) and GlaxoSmithKline settling for $3 billion (2012).
The president (White) of Tyco did not fare well, he was convicted of looting the company out of $150 million and investors lost $2.92 billion.
Then came the biggest financial fraud in US history. No thanks to Bill Clinton (White) who working with America’s White Congress and “White” Wall Street, repealed the Glass- Steagall Act in 1999 which directly contributed to the collapse of the entire America’s Financial Institutions “ White”.
“White America” bailed out big time crooks of “White” Wall Street to the tune of $800 billion. Bailing out companies like American Insurance Group under the leadership of its chairman Hank Greenberg (White) after it declared $61.7 billion in losses, though the company and for many years was paying fines because of its standard cheating. $ 10 million in 2003, $115 million to Louisianan Pension Fund and $725 million to Ohio Pension Funds. Ironically no one went to jail and it paid its executives $165 million in bonus.
“White” America took care of its own self, with Lehman Brothers hiding $50 billion in losses and booking it as “sales” and in the same year, it was named as the most admired security firm.
It is not so surprising that none of the executives responsible for the financial crises of 2007 went to jail, and this proves that “White” America takes café of its own. America’s White Congress allowed Wall Street to charge $100 billion in legal fees fighting the tens of millions of consumers cheated and thrown out of their homes rather than force “White” Wall Street to compensate the tens of millions who lost their homes, pensions, and jobs.
Of course there are many “White” great companies that uplifted millions of Americans and made America the great country it is, companies and business leadership like Bill Gates and Microsoft, Steve Job and Apple, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google, Larry Ellison of Oracle, and companies like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop, General Electric that makes America very proud.
Oh, sorry I kept going on and on about “White” America as the root cause of the anger and frustration of “White” Main Street and rural America.
Please “White America” don’t blame “Brown Immigrants” for the loss of 5.5 million manufacturing jobs, and it is not the “Brown Immigrants” that caused the closing of 500,000 main street shops in rural America to make the China having the most billionaires in the world, it is your very own Wal-Mart, and don’t blame “Brown Immigrant” because there are over $ 4 trillion in corporate profits sitting in offshore accounts, blame it on your own “White Congress” being the best the money can buy.
It is not the poor hard working Latino who is the cause of your problem and the cause of “White” America losing its economic powers with Latinos working in back breaking jobs in construction, in agriculture and in food service industries.
Certainly, it is not the hard working and smart Asians with several families living together, taking care of their families so they can go to the best schools and universities in America.
And it is not the Indian immigrant whose families work in dangerous areas so they can afford to send their kids to the best schools and universities.
For sure it is not the Arab or Muslim Americas whose family values help produce some outstanding professionals in engineering, in medicine, in sciences, in IT that are the cause of the misfortune of “White” American. The misfortune of White America lies with the White Institutions of America.
Like you, we “Brown Immigrant” work hard like, we pay our taxes and we don’t “mooch’ on free government services and many of us are not on welfare or food stamps. We are your partners, not your enemies. That is why it is up to you to team together and change the very “White Institutions” that is the cause of your anger and frustration. Time to stop complaining and get back to work. There is much hard work in construction, in agriculture, in food industries. American can use more doctors, more engineers, more IT specialists, roll up your sleeves and stop complaining about us “ Brown Third World Countries” immigrants.
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January 13th, 2017
By Sami Jamil Jadallah.
What’s the hell, we have been not only hacking but buying, influencing, even killing in elections around the world for the last century. Stop crying Liberal America.
For the last few months, we have heard over and over that the Russian interfered in the recent presidential election in favor of Trump and to defeat Clinton.
The so-called “intelligence community “ was caught off guard and became confused as what to make of this hacking. The hacking of information passed on to Wikileaks (always of questionable background and loyalty, Russian or Israeli who knows?) revealed the shenanigan going on in the DNC and how the DNC was rigging and interfering in the primaries in favor of Clinton and mustering all of its resources to defeat the much better certainly winnable candidate Bernie Sanders.
The Russian hacking was not directed toward or against, any of the US government organizations or agencies but against one of the political parties and in this case the Democratic Party which was doing all it can to get Hilary to be the nominee and get elected.
Now in the last few days, the major media has been on the back of President-Elect Donald Trump breathing hot air, even trying to intimidate him like CNN tried to do, to have Trump admit that the Russian hacked the DNC in his favor and as such deny him the legitimacy of the US Presidency. This is what the main media campaign now from the New York Times to the Washington Post even to the Huffington Post is all about?
The main media simply forgot that the hacking was not a direct interference in the election or in any way affected the election process or the machines, etc. It only revealed the wrong doings of the DNC and I doubt it if it changed the minds of enough voters to swing the election in favor of Clinton. She forgot how much money the US put in support of Putin’s opponent. The man is getting even with her, nothing wrong with that.
Clinton and the DNC with a billion from rich Zionist and Israeli billionaires have the needed fund to use the most sophisticated ADA, the super and complex computer-using algorithm named after the 19th-century feminist mathematician Ada- Countess of Lovelace. This computer was performing 400,000 simulations a day and making the decisions for Clinton staff as if going out to the streets of Detroit was too old fashion.
Now that Donald Trump won the election fair and square so many of the liberal media and members of the Democratic Party establishment are crying foul. That Clinton won 3 million more votes than Trump. Yes, she won these 3 million extra votes but she did not win by the rules set for the presidential election and the Electoral System, which is designed to ensure that small and medium size states are not overwhelmed by the big states like New York and California and of course this issue goes back to the days of Southern slavery.
Now the “intelligence community” which ironically failed to detect this hacking when it took place, combined with a mad dog media are after Donald Trump trying to demonize him and strip him of his legitimacy as president of the US. Of course, let us not forget that the “birther” issue and the delegitimization of President Barack Obama were the issues that propelled Trump to the national scene.
Now enough of Clinton, and Trump and back to the issue of hacking and interference in elections. The US political scientist Dov Levin who kept track of US interference in international elections calculated” the two powers interfered in 117 elections around the world from 1964 to 2000- an average of one in every nine competitive elections”.
While the Soviet Union occupied many countries and eliminated any form of democracy let alone elections, the US is notorious for the numbers of elections it hacked, rigged even incited murder to achieve its goals.
The United States through its Central Intelligence Agency has been involved in many, many attempted and successful coups, in overthrowing regimes and assisting in the murder of foreign leaders and otherwise spent tens of millions propping up political parties that favor the US.
Of course, the most and well known successful interference was the overthrow of the democratically elected Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953 replacing him with the one of the most ruthless criminal kleptomaniac monarch, the Shah, who in turn was thrown out by a popular revolt that brought Khomeini and his revolutionary guards to power. One has to imagine what kind of Iran we will have the US did not overthrow Mossadegh, will we have Khomeini, I doubt it.
Then there was the cold-blooded murder of the leftist leader of the Congo, Patrice Lumumba in 1964 when the US supported and supplied weapons to the Black opposition supported by colonial Belgium and the US, which ended in the downing the plane carrying the UN secretary general Dag Hammarskjöld killed along with everyone on board.
Of course Latin and Central America was the US favorite game of toppling regimes. In 1954 the US unseated the democratically elected president of Guatemala Jacob Arbenz in favor of United Brand, followed by other countries in Central America became known as the Banana Republics.
Not so distance was the assassination of a freely elected president of Chile, Salvador Allende assassinated and killed by General Augusto Pinchot with generous funding from the US. The war criminal Kissinger boasted saying “ we don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country goes Communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people”. Kissinger is the godfather of Clinton’s foreign policy.
The US reached out as far as Vietnam and the Philippine with the CIA operative running the successful campaign of the Philippine president Ramon Magsaysay.
Even Japan did not escape US interference with the generous funding of the center-right Liberal Democratic Party that secretly received generous funding from the early 50’s to the late 60s.
In Europe, the story was no different. The US government spent millions of dollars “ we had bags of money that we delivered to selected politicians to defray their political expenses, their campaign expenses for pamphlets and posters” says F. Mark Wyatt who was the agent in charge in Italy and in support of the Christian Democrats against Italy’s Communist Party.
Clinton as Secretary of State was so active in regime change in Haiti and in Honduras and this was the subject of major dispute between Clinton and Bernie Sanders during the primary campaign with Sanders making the policy statement that “ The US should be working with governments around the world not get involved in regime change”.
Regime change we did, in the Ukraine where the US under the direction of the US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland allegedly spent over $2 billion in regime change to overthrow Viktor Yanukovych importing hundreds of Israel former IDF to create chaos in Kiev and that they did.
In the Middle East, the US was no different. On January 25, 2006, Hamas won fair and square against the corrupt incompetent Fatah of Mahmoud Abbas in the Second Palestinian Legislative Council winning 74 seats to Fatah 45 seats. That did not suit Abbas, Israel, Jordan and Egypt and have course the US. Even though the election was fair and square by all international counts.
In coordination with Mahmoud Abbas, Israel began to round up members of Hamas arresting 450 members placing them under indefinite “administrative detention” which means no cause, no court, no hearing simply jail time and arresting 15 members of the elected Hamas members, prompting the Cater Center to complain “ they are guilty of nothing more than winning a parliamentary seat in an open and honest election.
The Quartet assigned to bring about peace between Israel and the Palestinians decided to put sanction on the newly elected government, the US withheld funds, and Israel withheld collected tax revenue. More troublesome, Abbas who had no legitimacy whatsoever since his term expired a long time ago decided on his own and unilaterally change the entire electoral system to favor Fatah.
Soon after and with Gaza under siege by the Israelis and by the Quartets and Mubarak’s Egypt, Hamas decided to take over Gaza routing Fatah leaders who looted the Gaza Strip out of hundred of millions and of course not long after, Israel with promoting from Abbas launched 2 major wars against Gaza that left over 10,000 dead and over 50,000 homes, hospitals and schools destroyed.
Well, the US should be lucky, at least no one was killed or murdered, no US department was hacked and the only issue is that Clinton lost the election. Is that bad for the country, No?
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December 7th, 2016
By Sami Jamil Jadallah.
America, the great democracy, could never find a dictator it did not like; of course, there are always exceptions to the rules, and the exception is Fidel Castro.
Too bad, the man who “liberated” Cuba from the America mafia of gambling, prostitution, and plantation slavery went on to become its new dictator.
No one can deny that Castro did many good things for Cuba. He re-invented its education, making sure every Cuban regardless of age or location is able to have basic education. He did the same thing, introducing basic health care system that is envy to many countries around the world especially developing countries, and he ended the practice of slavery in the sugar plantation.
Of course, Fidel Castro inspired “revolutionary leaders” around the world mainly in Latin and Central America, which for the most parts were ruled by the dictatorship that America loved and sponsored. A dictatorship that killed hundreds of thousands, looted the country, putting all the stolen wealth in a safe haven in South Florida. However, his success ended here.
Castro did not loot the country for his own private purpose, and he did not take over plantation or expropriated properties for himself or his families and did not have secret accounts in Zurich or Panama. He looted the country on behalf of the state, with the state becoming the owner of the entire country, ending private ownership. He nationalized anything and everything, keeping the poor, poor and making the rich poor, equality of misery and needs Soviets style.
While he liberated the people of Cuba from Colonial and Neoliberal capitalism, he did not provide his people with the vision, let alone the standards of “socialist-capitalist” states like Scandinavia where the quality of life is high and where government services are exceptional including quality education and health care, and where productivity is unmatched. He could have done that, but he didn’t. His style of Communism put Cuba in a time machine that stopped in 1962.
While delivering to Cubans the “safety net” all societies must have, he robbed Cubans of the very freedoms they fought for. Freedom of speech, assembly, elected and accountable government. Every right must be processed through Cuba’s Communist Party.
The Cuban community of South Florida is anti-Castro not because of the rights and liberties it lost, but because it lost many of the privileges it had during Batista regime.
Castro is not the only dictator to rule, but certainly he ruled longer than any other dictator. Many dictatorships ruled for generation, exercising the rights to rob and steal, to loot and jail, and exiles, certainly assassinate and murder, dictatorship like Anastasio Somoza of Nicaragua, General Pinochet of Chile, Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines, the Shah of Iran, Saddam Hussein of Iraq, Assad (father and son) of Syria, Miramar Qaddafi of Libya, Ali Sale of Yemen, General Suharto of Indonesia, Noriega of Panama, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Bin Ali of Tunisia and of course Yasser Arafat, a fraud who looted billions and came back only to manage the Israeli Occupation.
All of these dictators were the darlings of either the US or the Soviet Union. No need to mention many of the petit dictators of Africa, the likes of Teodoro Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea, Jose dos Santos of Angola, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Sani Abacha of Nigeria, Jean-Pedal Bokassa, and of course the infamous Mobutu Sese Seko of the Congo, sponsored by the colonial powers of France and Belgium and the US. Dos Santo was a big ally of the former Soviet Union and an ally of Fidel Castro who sent Cuban troops to fight along his side.
As Castro was an exception to the rule for America, there were two dictatorships that were the exception to the rules of dictatorships, exceptional in so many ways. In that they did not rob, or fleeced or looted the country and did not create the “personality cult” around them, they build their nation not destroying it. These exceptions are:
– General Park Chung-Hee who ruled South Korea for many years with an iron fist. He did not make the jails overflow with prisoners and dissident and he did not loot the country and deposits its wealth in Swiss bank account, but he is credited as the father that made South Korea into an industrial power it is today. He ushered the Korean Tiger economy by supporting capital investment in heavy industries such as steel, shipbuilding, electronic and consumers goods through the establishment of an Economic Planning Board, Ministry of Trade and Industry and Ministry of Finance, all working together to make South Korea and economic tiger it is today. Of course, as a dictator he was assassinated and killed, not because of corruption but because of his heavy handed in running the state. South Korea continued on its path of industrialization irrespective of its political upheaval, but nothing too serious to making South Korea a failed state.
– Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore: This man is truly an exceptional leader and exceptional dictator. When he took the lead to split from Malaysia in 1965, Singapore was a sleepy port town with a major waterway, the gate to the Orient. In short years he made Singapore into a world global power in commerce, finance, and transport. Under his guidance and leadership, Singapore became the 3rd largest foreign exchange market, the 3rd largest finance center, and the 3rd largest oil refining and transport hub.
Thanks to this man, Singapore ranked 11 in the UN Human Development Index beating many European countries and is ranked 1st in Asia in education, health and quality of life, certainly first in personal public safety and quality housing.
More important, Singapore is considered the least corrupt country in the world according to Transparency International beating the US and many European countries. The late Mr. Yew is known to have said, “ending corruption start at the top” and this is where many countries in the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America certainly in some countries in Europe failed to understand and do. Singapore is a model society where multi-racialism flourish and productive and where “meritocracy” takes its true meaning.
One has to wonder what if Fidel Castro was Singapore’s Yew what could he have done for Cuba and its people. But then there are dictators and there are dictators. Keeping in mind until the very recent past, Europe has it own dictatorships, the like of General Tito whose death participated the break up of the Yugoslav Republic and the ensuring of the ugliest civil wars in Modern European history. And of course who remember General Franco of Spain who handed over the reign to the young Juan Carlos and the infamous Oliveira Salazar who ruled Portugal with an iron fist jailing and murdering tens of thousands. Keeping in mind the Spanish Civil War between Royalist and Republicans cost one million lives.
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December 6th, 2016
By Sami Jamil Jadallah.
President-Elect Donald Trump, on the day he won the election promised to be the president of All American and he continued to repeat the statement. All of America will hold him to his promise.
America is great now and if President Elect Donald Trump wants to make “America Great Again” then he has in earnest takes all the necessary steps to reunite America, heal the wounds and divisions this past presidential election created.
It would be a great gesture if both President Barack Obama and President –Elect Donald Trump get together one more time, perhaps on December 12, 2016, (Connie Francis’s Birthday), and Declare “Love America Day” calling for a Re-united America, with winners and losers in this election can join in celebrating the free spirit that makes America a great country.
America is great not because of its politics or its politicians but because of it people. As my friend Hugh Traulsen once said: “ if America is to have a successful future, we must learn to lookout for each other, not look at each other”.
The month of December with its special holidays of Christmas and Hanukkah is the right month for both President Barrack Osama and President- Elect Donald Trump to stand up jointly and live up to the spirit that makes America not an exceptional country but a special country, united indivisible with liberty and justice for all.
America is a country of natives, of early immigrants, of recent immigrants, and yes, of “illegal immigrants” a country of many faiths, many colors, and races. A country of a rapidly expanding very rich, vanishing middle class, and an ever increasing poor class, with a very wide gap between Wall Street and Main Street. The recent appointments of Wall Street executive, millionaires and billionaires, as leading cabinet members does not bid well for those who voted for President-Elect Donald Trump, none without exception has shown or been advocates for those who voted Mr. Trump into the White House.
The power corridor of Washington-New York (the swamp) was never friendly to Main Street America, nor has it shown any empathy for the needs, wants or suffering of the very people who voted for Mr. Trump. One would expect that Mr. Trump will appoint a senior cabinet or senior advisor who will be an advocate for all those left behind to drown in the “swaps”.
We are all in the same boat, Republicans, Democrats, Independent, Green, Right, Left or Middle. What we need most at this time is a competent committed captain to lead our ship to safer shores, leaving no one behind. With the exception of the appointment of General Mattis as future Secretary of Defense, the other key appointments leaves a big question mark of President-Elect Donald Trump commitment’s to “clean the swamps” with strong reference to both Washington and Wall Street a corridor full of deadly crocodiles and venomous python, the cause of the ills of the nation; job and manufacturing loss, the financial meltdown, the loss of pensions and IRAs, and a deteriorating and falling apart infrastructure, especially the “Shorting of Main Street” of the very people who voted for President-Elect Donald Trump with Washington and New York as the masters of the “swamp”.
As a Veteran, with an ailing Veteran brother, I really have serious concerns if not fear with floating the name of Sara Palin as Secretary of Veterans Affairs. The fact she shot a couple of “caribous” does not qualify her to the very demanding job of Secretary of Veterans Affairs.
President Elect Donald Trump must show the same commitment to the active military with his appointment of General Mattis as Secretary of Defense, he must show the same commitment to Veterans by appointing a Veterans ‘s Veterans as Secretary of Veterans Affairs, not a washout politician. I dare say someone with the same caliber and commitment that Senator Bernie Sanders have shown for the needs and issues of Veterans.
Let us hope for and pray that both President Obama and President-Elect Trump will get together one more time on December 12 and calls for a Reunited America and declare “Love America Day”.
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November 10th, 2016
By Sami Jamil Jadallah.
Dear Mr. Trump.
First, let me congratulate you on your election and I have to admit, for a nonpolitician you did a hell of job understanding and speaking the language of Main Street America, which sad to say has been neglected by America’s political elite, Democrats and Republicans alike.
I am one of the millions who did not vote for you. I was a Bernie Sanders supporter not because he was a “socialist” or as some called him “Communists” but because he has almost the same message to Main Street you had, perhaps he was more eloquent, but nevertheless, he spoke in defense of the hundreds of millions disfranchised and feel neglected by Washington and its elites. And here I include lifetime members of Congress, and as he spoke of the collusion between Washington and Wall Street, a rigged system in favor of the rich and powerful, definitely against Main Street.
I did not vote for you because you disfranchise me as a Muslim-American. You offended me without knowing that I am a loyal citizen who served in our army with four other brothers who served in the US Army and Marine Corps. You ruled us
as disloyal citizens when in fact millions of us, made America our choice and are loyal Americans who care about the safety and security of our country, of our cities and our neighborhoods, as you do, given the fact that we are the first line of defense against terrorism.
We are just like all segments of American society. We are loyal Americans; law-abiding citizens with higher than average education, hard working and for the most part do not depend on government handout but on our hard work. We also share the same American values like our neighbors, our colleagues at work and our fellows at the health club. I think you were unfair to “us” as a group of citizens.
I did not vote for you because I was not convinced of your message and promise to bring back jobs to America when in fact in all your years as a businessman you did not invest in any manufacturing jobs to keep Main Street America working.
Rather you invested in casinos and you should know, never will assist a neglected city toward economic recovery, rather casinos only fleece the poor people who think they can beat the house and win the jackpot, they never do. Just look at Gary, Detroit or Atlantic City.
I did not vote for you because you did not offer a better health care plan for America that keeps the price charged by private insurers down and making it a universal coverage where everyone irrespective of income or state of health can have health care, pay for it, and need not chose between paying the mortgage or paying the medical bills, or deciding to split after 50 years of marriage to pay for catastrophic. Illness.
I want to tell you as a retired person I had to buy supplemental health insurance. I purchased a policy through AARP from UnitedHealth and I was paying $258/month. Only to find out that UnitedHealth CEO makes $60.5 a year, which means it will take me 19,500 years just to pay his annual salary. I don’t mind if CEO’s make millions in salaries, but we all know when there is something wrong.
Sorry to say that you did not mention or spoke of the millions of people who lost their homes, their jobs, their pensions, and their life saving during the financial crisis. While our government bailed out the banks, the banks never bailed out the very people who lost everything. Our neoliberal economy and financial system and in your own words are “rigged” and we hope you can fix it.
It is unconscionable for the poor, besides being poor to pay extra for everything from car loans to mortgage loan to health insurance or attend poor schools, just because they live in certain zip codes. As someone who employs thousands of these hard working people, you should do something about it.
America needs a sense of justice and fairness, so that whether we are rich or poor or whether you live in an upper scale or poorer zip code are not discriminated against by a ‘rigged’ system because you are poor.
You also spoke of taking care of Veterans and we hope you will do that because Veterans, after all, served their country, faced death, are not cowards or lazy to work. All those who maintained aircraft carriers, submarines, tanks, fighter jets, maintained and operated motor pools or were part of logistic or communication or engineering units they knew their stuff and are well qualified to not only to maintain but also to manufacture the necessary tools they worked on while in military service.
That is why the Veterans Housing & Education Foundation, a not for profit 501-C-3 organization looks forward to your support and the support of your administration to help us empower Veterans through education, through housing and more importantly through manufacturing jobs and through operating and managing technical and vocational schools. We have big plans to re-invent cities and towns in the Rust Belt setting up comprehensive “Veterans Villages” where veterans will live, work, their children go to school, with their clinics and rehabilitation centers and most importantly where they will run and operate the kind of manufacturing jobs you talked about. I do not mean minimum wage jobs, but high skilled manufacturing jobs producing goods and services that US military contractors can buy and use, and US consumers will give preference to. We know they will if they know “Veterans” make the products.
At the Veterans Housing & Education Foundation, we plan to cooperate and invite countries like Germany and Switzerland and Scandinavian countries that proved highly paid manufacturing job do not need to be exported to China or Mexico. We will partners with them in setting up vocational and apprentice schools for Veterans and where high schooler’s will have a choice between a minimum wage job or a highly paid skilled job. Learning and developing manufacturing skills and retooling the skills of hundreds of thousands of people who lost their job and whom our government neglected to do something about for over 30 years.
We do think that we can make a big difference in revitalizing towns and cities in the Mid-West and in states like North and South Carolina that saw the loss of many manufacturing jobs. Our Veterans have the skills and the talents and commitments.
The kind of jobs and skills they did to perfection in the military certainly they can do that in civilian life. We only need you and your administration to be on our side. We will revitalize towns like Detroit, Toledo, Youngstown, Allentown, St. Lewis, Milwaukee and many of the towns and cities that fell into a hard time. You talk about rebuilding the infrastructure; you have a ready skilled labor force to do just that.
There are millions of us and we are ready to go to work just like we did when we were in the military, dedicated, hard working and skilled, all is needed is the opportunity to get fully engaged to provide the honorable life for us and our families.
Our objective is to empower all Veterans through educational partnership securing at least one scholarship from each junior college or university campus, raise enough money through trust fund to help with interest-free down payment for 5 years, and set up maintenance and operation companies that can serve large communities working with developers to create opportunities for Veterans that will also have good return on investment, also to run and operate Veterans owned VA clinics and rehabilitation centers throughout the country.
In conclusion, I hope you are right, that you will be the president of All of the people irrespective of race, color, faith or national origin that you will keep your commitments to Main Street through the appointment of executive outside Wall Street. I am sure America have so many competent people outside the power corridor of Washington-Boston. America needs fresh faces with new innovative ideas not recycling of old faces and talents.
We wish you good luck. It will not be an easy task to heal the many wounds left as a result of this election, and you need to allay the fear of many people like me and the millions of immigrants who needs to know the next step. You must treat these people with respect and dignity as they are not thieves and rapists and terrorists, but people who fell on a hard time and without hope, they came to America seeking a better life. I hope that the “immigration issue” will be handled with the moral standard America holds, with fairness, dignity for all and does not scum to ugly hateful politics.
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November 3rd, 2016
By Sami Jamil.
In few days, the ugliest and most distasteful presidential election in US history will be over and we will see which is of the best of the worst candidate won to preside over the US as president. An election that is all about groping and email, making us the laugh of the world.
As we all saw in this campaign, there was little of anything about the priorities that really matter to the American people. Both candidates talk about bringing back job, industrial and manufacturing job knowing well both are liars and will never bring back the kind of industrial and manufacturing job that gave middle-class Americans the sense of dignity and security they deserve and earned.
The two candidates did their best to cater to the rich and powerful, the people with the money and the billionaires who always shaped our nation agenda and politics. Billions have poured into this year national elections, no different from previous national/presidential elections where close to $5 billion were injected in and invested in the elections. The returns are for the donors never for the voters.
America’s poor, not only Black and Hispanic but White as well have been neglected for a long time. They are getting the “ shaft” everywhere and from everyone, especially from Congress, that empower corporate America to screw the poor at every turn and in every way. And Congress does that through legislation that gives incentives to corporations to locate their manufacturing jobs overseas, that allows banks and financial institutions especially the credit card companies to give the shaft to the poor.
It should not be surprised that this great country of our have such staggering number of poor, over 45 million or 14.5% of the population, with the prospect that most Americans will be part of this category at least one year if they are between the age of 24-75 years.
Not all poor are unemployed living off the system, but there are millions of these poor who are working hard, very hard one or two jobs to make ends meet, with Hispanic and Black most likely to be among this category than Asians and White, with women more likely than men to fall into this category of working poor, with White males with less than high school education spending at least one year in this category.
It is hard to think, in this country of plentiful that 46.5 million earn less than $19,090 a year and with 20.4 million are in deep poverty earning less than $11,510 a year.
While our presidential candidate’s caters to the rich and powerful seeking their support, no candidates are talking about the poor paying jobs that Americans have with 50% of available jobs paying less than $34,000 annually or talk about the banks and financial institutions that looted tens of millions of their pension funds during the financial crisis of 2007-8 or the fact that Congress allowed corporations to restructure benefiting Wall Street and the investors while cheating workers out of their pension and health care.
Of course, Republicans talk about eliminating “entitlements” for the poor while forgetting or neglecting the kind of entitlement the US Military gets or the kind of entitlement corporations and rich executive gets as part of the deal worked out with members of Congress, entitlements that are triple what the hard working and poor American gets.
It is true that 27 families out of 100 get cash assistance, but not all of them are Black or Hispanic as we are lead to believe thus causing an outcry to end the Welfare system. I should note here that 90% of the entitlements goes to the elderly and the poor and retired workers on social security and Medicare amounting to $500 billion.
But then let us look at how the system, which is sponsored and nurtured by Congress screw American in every day.
Let us take, for example, the interest rates charged on credit card. In most cases, the poor are the ones who gets behind on credit card payments and as such, the interest rates charged is almost twice as much as the average rate and moreover if one gets behind on one payment on one credit cards, all the other credit card companies hike the rate. Thus the poor pay a higher price and costs.
With high-interest rates charged and the likely hood of default on one payment, then the credit ratings are changes forcing the poor to pay higher interests on car loans and on mortgage loans.
What is truly a rip off is the fact that companies like “payday loans” and “car title companies” while considered as banks receiving funds at less than 1% can charge borrowers 30 even 50%? Unconscionable.
The poor also get the shafts from health care companies especially supplemental insurance. Because of the fact that the poor are most likely to suffer from certain chronic diseases such as obesity, high blood pressure, and diabetes their rates are much higher than the average.
Add to that the way our schools are funded. Since we do not have a national tax plan that funds education, all the funding comes from property tax. As such if you are in a poor neighborhood, the income to support the schools system, the police, and the fire department is much less than in affluent communities and as such children get less quality education and most likely they will be among the poor who will live on government subsidies, and most likely these neighborhoods will having higher crime rate and higher incarceration. What the government saves in support of education it pays double that in the costs of crime and incarceration. Simply makes no sense.
I leave you with two incidents that I personally experienced.
– Supplemental Health Insurance: We, I mean those of us over the age of 65 have and must purchase supplemental health insurance to compliment our Medicare. I purchased a policy from UnitedHealth through AARP paying $ 258 a month. After almost a year I discovered that the CEO of UnitedHealth earned $60,500,000 a year in salary. I made a simple calculation and it was shocking to realize that I have to pay 19,500 years of monthly premium just to pay his salary for one year. Of course, I dropped UnitedHealth because of this.
– The other when I had my private company which offered auto dealers a smart loyalty card where dealers can add to the card special package such as oil change, discount on maintenance, and extended warranty, while consumers benefited from being able to keep track of their vehicle service and maintained records on the smart chip in the card (Patented), thus saving car owners from getting ripped off by duplicate or unwarranted repairs. Many dealers especially those in the poor neighborhood where charging the poor interest rates exceeding 20% on car loans, and forcing these poor guys to buy additional warranties charging them thousands of dollars of services they know they will never need to able to benefit from. I had to drop these dealers from my network.
Who knows maybe one day, we will have a Congress and presidential candidates who will represent not only the very rich but the very poor and the middle class and offer solutions that get the people to work and out of welfare and subsidies. The American people are not lazy but they need an opportunity, and Trump and Clinton will not bring that opportunity. America’s problem is not the presidency, but Congress and this is where the change must take place.
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October 16th, 2016
By Sami Jamil Jadallah.
If anyone thinks that the Prophet Mohamed ( pbuh) was not a social and theological liberation revolutionary, better think twice.
I have been thinking of writing this essay for more than few years since I became aware of the Christian Liberation Theology which has its roots in Latin and Central America and arose out of the Catholic Church indifference to the poor, the oppressed, the disfranchised, especially during the bloody years when the military dictatorship ruled with impunity and the murder of hundreds of thousands mainly in Central America, while the church was silent.
The Muslim and the Arab world is going through the same period where military dictatorship has ruled for decades since the end of colonialism and like the Catholic Church, the Muslim religious established was and continue to be indifferent to the misery and misfortune of hundreds of millions of Muslims throughout the Muslim world.
Liberation Theology came about as a reaction to the poverty and social injustice in the region when the Peruvian priest Gustavo Gutierrez wrote “ Theology of Liberation” in 1971.
This movement found support from many of the leaders of the Catholic Church such as Leonardo Boff of Brazil, San Sobrino of Spain, Juan Luis Segundo of Uruguay, and of course the US as sponsor of these military dictatorships was opposed to the “Liberation Theology” accusing it of being “Marxists” inspired, the Vatican and the US were on the same side.
The Vatican saw the “Liberation Theology” as a fight between the political establishment and the religious establishment and rejecting, in the word of Pope John Paul II “ this idea of Christ as political figure, a revolutionary, as the subversive of Nazareth, does not tally with the Church catechesis”
However, there was a change of mind when the “Second Vatican Council” addressed and recognized the Liberation Theology in Medellin, Columbia (68) and Pueblo, Mexico (79) thus giving legitimacy to the Liberation Theology which took hold in Latin and Central America. Soon after the words of John Paul II, the Latin American priest issued a 20-page rebuttal, which influenced the outcome of the conference and gave full legitimacy to the Liberation Theology. The Liberation Theologists argued, “Jesus mission was to bring about justice to the world” and “ with preference to the insignificant, marginalized, unimportant, needy, despised and the defenseless”. The present Pope came from the school.
In Islam the story is no different, with all schools of thoughts or Mathaheb” siding with the political establishments of the times and continue to do so until now, giving justifications and excuses that it is God’s will that people live in such misery.
It is so unfortunate that leaders of the “religious establishment” do not see the Prophet Mohamed ( pbuh) as a social and theological revolutionary and must be recognized as such. The social revolution he started 1400 years must continue now and for the future.
The Prophet Mohamed ( pbuh) must be seen as a liberator that brought about a “just society” with so many social changes that must be seen then and now as totally revolutionary.
It was his leadership, his vision, his commitment to social change that truly ended the “Age of Ignorance” in Arabia using the new faith as an instrument of social change addressing the rights of faith, gender, education, racial issues, conflict resolution, way ahead of civilization or faith of his times.
While many “religious leaders” today calls for the execution of Nonbeliever or those committing blasphemy, the Prophet (pbuh) reciting the Sura (2.256) “ there is no compulsion in religion” adding that there must not be “ compulsion, no destruction of houses of religion, no damage”. These words are lost today.
While it took America some 200 years after independence to give Slaves” full freedoms, the Prophet addressed racial equality when he stated, “ A White has no superiority over Black, nor does a Black have superiority over White except by piety and God’s action”.
Though Islam per say did not abolish slavery (an issue that I raise many times), however it introduced the very idea of “presumption of freedom” and addressed this issue when freeing slaves was deemed an act of religious duty, atonement of sins, using Alms for “manumission” and in these times these special ruling were revolutionary in comparison to the status of slaves in the Greco-Byzantine empires.
While the religious establishment in certain Arab and Muslim countries fight against education, especially women education, learning was mandated and given priority “ he who gives the best upbringing and education to his daughters shall enter paradise”. Not so sure which Islam the likes of Taliban and those opposed to women education learned. Certainly, it is not Mohamed’s teaching.
It is due to this revolutionary ideas of education by the Prophet (pbuh) that Islam at one time before the “religious establishment” took over, had great advances during the Golden Age, when science, algebra, medicine, astronomy, philosophy, all of which contributed the Western Renaissance, which Muslims badly need if and when they decide they need a new Islamic Renaissance.
While many in the West berate Muslims and Islam for the status of women, it was the revolutionary Mohamad (pbuh) that gave recognition and status to women as equal members of society, banning “honor killings” or “ female infanticide”, granting women the right to approve a marriage, right to own her own property even during marriage (this right was granted to women in the US in the mid 70s) to have and keep her own name after marriage (granted to women in US in mid 70s), the right to unilateral divorce in abuse cases, the right of widowed or divorce woman to decide on her own to remarry, and of course the right to inheritance and the rights to have support for her and her children. Yes, these are revolutionary ideas of the time. Marriage was deemed a “contract” not a “status”. What went wrong and why did stop there?
It was the Prophet Mohamed (pbuh) who according to the Jewish scholar Bernard Lewis denounced aristocracy, privilege, rejecting the hierarchy without talent, and with Islam as an egalitarian revolution as the basis of Islamic Doctrine.
It was not so easy to introduce all these revolutionary ideas in Pagan Arabia, but he did it. Not only did the Prophet (pbuh) introduced total social reforms, he used the new faith to introduce moral credence and social value system for the safety and security of the community, barring violence, introduced a taxing system for the public good and in support of the society, dispute resolution, and individual rights and that everyone is accountable for his or her action.
So what went wrong?
Not so dissimilar from the different doctrine within the Catholic Church, Islam also had its own “schools of thoughts” doctrine, or “jurisprudence” some based on “hadith” or “tradition/narrative” others based on “opinion” or “Rai, others based on “Aqidah/Creed” predestined or free will, while others based on “logic/rationalism”. The later is nowhere to seen or heard.
However, all of these “Mathahib” were not too independent of the rulers of the time and in most cased were used like today, in support of the ruler, irrespective of just or no just. We all should remember the birth of the Anglican Church at the demands of Henry VIII.
There are 5 schools of thoughts (Mathaheb) since most Sunnis recognize the 4 but ignore the 5th. These are:
– Ja’fari representing 23% of the Muslim faith.
– Hanafi representing 31% of the Muslim faith.
– Maliki representing 25% of the Muslim faith.
– Shafi’i representing 16% of the Muslim faith and
– Hanbali representing 4% of the Muslim faith.
I should note here that the Ja’fari or the 6th Imam of the 12 Imam of the Shiite represent the views and the doctrine that Ahlu el-Bayet (The House of Mohamed) i.e. Ali are the legitimate successors of the Prophet Mohamed ( pbuh) to rule the Muslim world.
As I stated before, all of these Imams lived during the end of the Omayyad Empire, during the Abbasid Empire and the Fatimid Empire and all were at one time or the other servant and instrument of the rulers of the time. Some like Imam ibn Malik was dragged through the streets of Baghdad stripped of his clothes and all his wealth was confiscated. Imam el-Shafi was killed in Egypt.
These Imams were funded, supported by the rulers through funding of their schools or publishing of their books and other financial incentives, no different from today, where the religious established is the beneficiary of the political establishment.
Most, if not all of these Imams lived during the period of 80 H and 700 H with Imam Hanafi, was the earliest and Imam ibn Hanbal was the last one. Since that time “ Ijtihad” was closed forever.
Since that time, there has been no effort from any religious leadership whether the one located in Al-Azhar or in Mecca, or Najaf or the one in Qom to dare to open and debate these doctrine of centuries ago, doctrine that appeared to doom intellectual and theological discourse, let alone address the miserable times the Muslim Umma is living through from poverty to illiteracy, to hunger, to sectarian wars, to corruption to denying women their rights, to failing to come up with a credible accountable governing political systems and institutions that takes into account the diversity of faith, race and culture that makes the Muslim world a unique place, rich and enriched with its diversity.
One has to ask what ever happened to the very revolutionary ideas of the Prophet Mohamed (pbuh) and why there is no Islamic Liberation Theology that speaks for the hundreds of millions if not billions of Muslim disfranchised and denied the basic right to life and liberty and dignity? The religious establishment too busy serving its masters, forfeited the rights to represent the “Ummah”. Time to pick up where the Prophet Mohamed (pbuh) left and carry his mantle of “Islamic Liberation Theology”.
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September 27th, 2016
By Sami Jamil Jadallah.
Not only candidate Donald Trump needs to read the US Constitution but every citizen and every voter must read it to understand that our problems and failings in the US are not the presidencies, but Congress.
Only last week the Senate failed to include authorization in the budget to fix the drinking water of Flint, Michigan, but many senators who voted against clean drinking water for Flint, Michigan, were not too happy with the $38 billion give away to Israel and are asking for additional funds. This is the Congress we have. A Congress that is at the pecking of AIPAC, Wall Street, and special interests groups, not the representative of the American people certainly not the representative of Main Street.
It is interesting to note that Congress spent tens of millions of dollars investigating the collapse of our financial system that affected tens of millions here in the US and around the world. After more than 2 years of investigation, Congress conclude its finding, issue a report of tens of thousands of pages, sealed the report and send it to the National Archives for 5 years, and not to the Justice Department to bring charges against specific names and specific banks named in the report. This is the kind of Congress we have, covering criminal enterprises.
Anyone believing that Donald Trump or Hilary Clinton will make a material difference to the future of the nation is stupid fool. It is the Congress that has the real power to reshape the nation and its future. The Speaker of the House while not enjoying the privileges of Air Force One and the trapping of the Presidency is the most powerful man in Washington.
While Article I vests the power of the Commander in Chief in the President, Section 2 limits and define such powers by “ advice and consent”.
Same is true of Article 1, Section 8 which gave Congress the power to tax and spend, add to that the 16th Amendment which gave Congress the exclusive right to levy the tax and authorize spending. While Clause 3 vest the “Commerce Powers” in Congress to regulate the movement of people, goods and trade between the different states and internationally. The president does not enjoy such powers.
So when you hear both candidates promise they would take charge and make the promised changes, they are lying and they know it. It is Congress that enabled through 30,000 pages of tax regulations, many of US companies to shift their manufacturing operation overseas, to put many people out of jobs and to allow companies to cheat workers out of their pensions and retirements without any problems and “park” more than $ 3 trillions of profits in tax havens.
It is the same Congress that allowed and enabled Wall Street to spend $100 Billion on legal fees to defend itself against the millions of people whose lives and the criminal and reckless negligence of Wall Street ruined the livelihood.
If we as American people want to shape the future of our America, then we must start with Congress, because this is where cancer that afflicts our nation lies. Don’t expect Congress or the Supreme Court to make the necessary changes, we have to take charge and do it at the voting booth. Without our votes, members of Congress could never get elected even if they spend $30 millions on an election campaign.
To achieve that we need to follow these 12 Commandments:
1. Candidates for local and congressional offices must be committed to term limits (6-8 years), thus transforming legislative houses to citizen houses, rather than a place for lifetime professional politicians;
2. Candidates must be committed to ending the seniority system, which gives a long time sitting politicians an unfair edge in money and influence in elections; and committed to changing this seniority system once in office;
3. Candidates must be committed not to seek or accept any funding from outside their local, congressional or senatorial districts, thus limiting the amount and influence of outside money.
4. Candidates must commit themselves to a maximum of 3 months of campaigning and accepting no “issue” funding from special lobbies.
5. Candidates must be committed to America first, before other countries; and seek to limit the undue influence Israel and its Fifth Column and AIPAC have over Congress and the White House;
6. Candidates must be committed to reform and overhaul the Tax System, simplifying it from 300,000 pages to less than 30 pages, making sure that every citizen, every corporation and every business pay their fair share of the tax; no more tax loopholes;
7. Candidates must be committed to re-invest in America First; in re-industrialization of America; in infrastructure; public transportation systems; public education; industrial education; parks and public facilities; to force the more than $3 trillion of America’s corporate money sitting in tax shelters back to the US;
8. Candidates must commit themselves to not accepting lobby money or favors, including paid trips by foreign governments, lobbyists or special interests.
9. Candidates must be committed to a drastic reform of the financial system, including reining in the undue and toxic influence Wall Street has on our political, economic and social life; and make sure that corporations (as “citizens”) are subject to criminal prosecution, with executives going to jail for crimes or fraud committed by their corporations;
10. Candidates must be committed to reform our judicial, criminal justice, social and welfare services system to bring America in line with other nations, and seek reconciliation between all of our citizens, making America the united nation we should be;
11. Candidates must be committed to a balanced budget with a budget cycle of 5 years, thus avoiding all the uncertainty paralysis facing our nation annually.
12. Candidates must be committed to no more wars while keeping our nation strong to defend itself against enemy aggression.
We as citizens and voters must not underestimate our power, the right to vote, which is more powerful than all the billions candidates can raise in elections. Without our votes, no one can win an office
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March 5th, 2016
By Sami Jamil.
Like many millions in America and around the world, I following the saga of the 2016 Presidential election unfolding, with candidates from the two main parties competing for the hearts and minds, even stupidity and racism of American voters, helped by the hundreds of millions of dollars raised from special interests (stockholders) by presidential candidates.
All candidates whether Republicans or Democrats claim they can change America, when the only thing wrong with America is its politics and politicians.
Some candidates are calling for “Making America Whole Again” others calling for “Making America Great Again”. With campaign slogans like these “ New American Century”, “New Possibilities, New Leadership”, “Reigniting the Promise of America”, “A Political Revolution We Believe In”, “and Every day American Needs a Champion and I want to be that Champion”. Big on slogans, little on specifics.
While some candidates are promising tens of millions of jobs (shipping American workers to China), others calling for political, social and economic revolution that puts limits on money in elections and politics, limits the role of Wall Street on our national economy, addressing the inequality of opportunities. With Clinton and Republican candidates emphasizing the use of American military powers.
Candidates are calling for American voters to support them so they can go out kill and destroy ISIS and all Muslims that stands behind it, others calling for building Walls just like the Berlin Wall between the US and Mexico, others calling for the mass deportations of over 12 millions undocumented aliens residing in the US. While someone like Trump is calling to ban Muslims from entering the country. All of them think they have the magic wand to change everything. In fact they do not.
It is the Speaker of the House, not the President who has the most powerful office in the land. The US Constitution is very clear on that.
While Article II Section I vests executive powers in the President of the United State, Article II is short on enumerating the powers of the presidency, with Article I of the US Constitution giving overwhelming powers to the Legislative Branch.
Article 1 vest the power of Commander in Chief in the president; even declaring war requires approval of Congress. Section 2 of Article 1, limits the power of the presidency by vesting Congress, the more powerful role of “advice and consent”.
Which means all presidential actions must secure the approval of Congress to take effect, from appointing cabinet ministers, appointing high ranking executives officers, appointing heads of independent commissions and agencies to appointment of supreme court justices, to negotiating and concluding treaties. All of these actions must have the approval of the one or two houses of the Legislative Branch. Ok the president has the absolute right to “pardon”, but that is about it.
As such it is false marketing and false campaign promises what these presidential candidates whether Democrats or Republicans are saying.
Just to name few of the powers Article 1 vested in Congress to include among others, Sections, 1, 2, & 3 (legislative powers), Sections 4, 5, 6, & 7 (Elections) Section 9&10 powers denied to Congress and States. Keep in mind that “gerrymandering’ is the most powerful tool Congress have over who gets in and who gets elected. Shaping congressional districts to suite incumbents.
Article 1 Section 8 enumerate the many powers granted to the Legislative Branch included among many are:
Clause 1: power to tax and spend. Certainly the most powerful instruments of government, add to that the 16th Amendment, which empowered Congress to levy income tax. Without tax and authorizations to spend it, the nation could never function. That is why Congress always uses this power as a “big stick” with the president.
More powers are in Clause 2, which vested powers in Congress to “borrow money” in the forms of bonds and other instruments and of course created the obligations to repay the debt.
Clause 3 vested all “Commerce Powers” in Congress governing and regulating the movement of people and goods between states and internationally, add to the that “communications”.
When it comes to naturalization, it is Clause 4 that governs such major and contentious issue in this year election. Without Congress approval, the US president could not do much, perhaps limited “executive orders “ certainly will challenged in court. While Clause 9 granted Congress the powers to create courts and to reorganize the governments into different department and agencies, Clause 10 gave Congress complete sweep of powers “necessary and proper clause”.
Very few nations or organizations, let alone the American voters, recognized the powers vested in Congress like Israel and AIPAC. Both and long time ago, in early 50’s recognized the limited powers of the US presidency and the unlimited powers granted to Congress and members of Congress.
AIPAC and Israel understood clearly that the president’s powers and tenure in office are limited, one term, two terms at most while there are NO term limits for members of Congress. That is why AIPAC spends its money on congressional elections and little money on presidential elections. AIPAC is right; it understood the powers and limitations of powers in America. What counts is money, and AIPAC knew it is Congress not the president that authorizes foreign aid.
Should Bernie Sanders pursues his vision for a new “revolution”, then he and millions of Americans must work on denying reelections to existing members of Congress, both House and Senate and start the revolution where it counts in the Legislative Branch of government — clean the Congress first. This is where the power to change lies, not in the presidency.
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January 30th, 2016
By Sami Jamil Jadallah.
It is in times of wars, conflicts, ciaos, terrorism and despair; investments in peace and development become more urgent.
Anyone with nominal understanding of international politics can see the Arab World is in deep, deep trouble, with failing states or in state of civil wars. Iraq, Yemen, Syria, Libya, Sudan are but a few.
Tens of thousands of “Jihadists” recruits are joining Al-Qaeda, Daesh, and Jabhat Al-Nusra. They are coming from Europe, the US, North Africa certainly the Arab Peninsula. Even Non-Arabs from Chechnya, Maldives and Indonesia are joining the fight. They are joining “Islamist” militias to kill and get killed, to destroy but never build.
The New Arab Foundation, a Not for Profit 501-C-3 Tax exempt organization, a think tanks (with a mission) and management consulting organization wants to change all of that and introduce a road map of achievable goals toward a New Renaissance for the Arab World.
The Issues and Causes
The Arabs are experiencing turmoil and conflicts not witnessed since colonial times, with nation states threatened from within and without.
The rise of military dictatorship in the 50’s, the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (the birthplace of the “jihadist” movement), and the Iran-Iraq War, First and Second Gulf War, these combined events formed a watershed in the Arab World. Trillions in fortunes and livelihoods were diverted from society building to regional, and “sectarian” wars, destroying nations and threatening the existence of others.
Military, nationalistic “secular dictatorship” and “jihadist” ideology”, combined with corruption, incompetence, inefficiency, looting of people’s assets and state wealth, nepotism, lack of transparency and accountability, lack of fairness and equal opportunity, lack of mentoring and inept bloated abusive humiliating bureaucracy — all are responsible for the failure of many of the Arab States, with investment in “winless” wars, and conflict produced the dire results we see today.
In the Arab World with majority of young population who for the most part marginalized, unemployed, humiliated at home and by governing institutions, living in poverty with no hope to escape the miserable life, they join “Jihadist” as a way out of this hell hole they find themselves in, putting the entire society and nations at risks.
The Opportunity
The Arab Peace Corps vision and mission is to break the negative, self-reinforcing spiral of vulnerable youth being mobilized by “religious actors” or “terrorists” to go fight against what they are told is the cause of their suffering (secular, sectarian opponents and “infidels”). And as a result, they are often killed in the fight, a situation that is advertised in order to reinvigorate the negative spiral and to recruit.
The Arab Peace Corps mission is to work toward implementing development programs for marginalized communities not only in the Arab World but in Europe, the US and Canada. Transforming the power and innocence of youth into positive, self-reinforcing contributions for the better good for themselves and their society, increasing their sense of belonging to their community, society and nation.
Inspired by President John Kennedy’s’ Peace Corps, the Arab Peace Corps is a voluntary two years service utilizing commitments, skills and dynamism of college graduates and retirees from within the Arab World, from the US, Europe, Canada, Australia among others, to help build and rebuild shattered or marginalized communities in education, health care, agriculture, artisan and small industries, community development and participation, tutorial and mentoring programs among many.
This community service not only makes a positive difference to those communities, but also provides valuable skills and life experiences to the individuals who volunteers and serve as members of the Arab Peace Corps.
The New Arab Foundation, through its first initiative the Arab Peace Corps, intends to turn around the current negative dynamic, by challenging young minds and talents to contribute to life not death, to contribute to building not destroying.
In the next few months we will be seeking the support of nations, private and governmental institutions, private sector and individual donors to raise $100 million “trust fund” specifically for the Arab Peace Corps.
We will also seek the partnership of corporations to commit to give priority of employment to our alumni’s, airlines to provide free tickets, universities to provide full or reduced tuitions for graduate schools, in part to give recognitions to all those who sacrificed and made the commitment to serve others.
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December 14th, 2015
By Sami Jamil.
To overcome Donald Trump phenomena I suggest that every American family, irrespective of race, color or faith invite neighbors or colleagues from other faiths, colors or race for a dinner a “getting together; sharing the bread”. Just imagine the results, a true goodwill among all during this holiday season.
Before Donald Trump family set foot in America, the Founding Fathers of the New Republic debated the presence and rights of “Muslims/ Mohometans” in the new country and the guaranteed rights of “Muslims” in America were settled and there is nothing that Donald Trump or the Republicans can do about it.
Professor Dennis Spellberg, author of “ Thomas Jefferson’s Quran: Islam and the Founders” in an interview with the Washington Post states “ in the formation of the American ideal and principals of what we consider to be exceptional American values, Muslims, at the beginning, the litmus test for whether the reach of American constitutional principles would include every believer, every kind or not”. It should be noted here that Thomas Jefferson as law student purchased an English translation of the Holy Quran.
Thomas Jefferson as a scholar, statesman and a founding father was heavily influence by the philosopher John Lock who earlier in England insisted that “ Muslims and all others who believed in God be tolerated in England” Thomas Jefferson followed suite demanding recognition of the rights of not only “Mohamadan” but also Jews and “Pagan”.
Such rights were also raised by Richard Henry Lee, who in a motion made in Congress on June 7, 1776 declared, “ True Freedom embraces the Mohomitan and the Gentoo (Hindu) as well as the Christian religion”.
The rights of “Muslims” were debated on both the national and state levels, and such rights were debated in North Carolina 1788 constitution debate and the same issues were raised in New England with James Madison writing his good friend Thomas Jefferson in 1788 that “ one of the objections in New England was that the Constitution by prohibiting religious test opened the door for Jews, Turks and infidels”.
Today, America can learn a great from France, a country suffered grave injury from “terrorists” acts which not only denounced “anti- Muslim” rhetoric but routed the far right “Front National” in the second round of regional elections denying the Front National any win in all of the regions.
Muslims in America must not be afraid of the likes of Donald Trumps or the 40% of Republicans who call for banning Muslims from America. Must not bunker down behind closed wall or inside “mosques” but go out and become active participants in local and national elections, as voters, as volunteers certainly as candidates.
Donald Trump is not America and Muslims must never show any fear and must not react negatively to the debate but turn the debate in their favor by becoming active citizens and key part of “Main Street” America.
I could never forget the number of friends from my military service or university who called after 9/11 showing their care and support. America is our country and Donald Trump will never change that.
Perhaps Muslims and Arabs in the Muslim and Arab world can begin an open and civil debate that can lead to the constitutional equal rights of “non-Muslims” and “non-Arabs”. Yes, we do have a lot to learn from America’s history. Donald Trump like his money is a passing thing. Let us show what Muslims can do next election. Don’t get angry get even at the voting booth.
May be the time has come for “political and religious leaders” in the Arab and Muslims world, to take time out and learn something about other religions and faiths, even introduces it as standard “curriculum”. They can learn a great deal and become much better leaders and human beings, certainly creating open tolerant societies that are the best defense against “terrorism”.
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October 31st, 2015
By Sami Jamil Jadallah.
In the last couple of weeks with persistent Israeli aggression around the Al-Aqsa Mosque culminating in preventing “Palestinians” from entering the Old City of Jerusalem, saw spate of violent confrontations mainly between marauding armed Israeli settlers harassing and shooting young Palestinians and young Palestinians retaliating by stabbing these criminal settlers and members of the Israeli Security Forces.
While these “unscheduled” escalations and confrontation seem to lead to a more organized Third Intifada, it is a well managed “venting of anger” by Mahmoud Abbas and his Palestinian Security Forces allowing young Palestinians to confront Israeli army and settlers, with limited Palestinians casualties.
Mahmoud Abbas and his Security Forces seen by most Palestinians as an “auxiliary” security forces for the Israeli Occupation tried to polish up its image by staging a standoff with Israeli defense forces in East of El-Bireh when Israeli forces arrested a young Palestinian and Abbas Security Forces came to the rescue. On queue the Israeli forces retreated and let go of the young man. The news of this “staged confrontation” was all over Abbas media.
With so many vested interests in Political Ramallah and its partnership with Palestinian Oligarchs, with big investments in the Occupied Territories and Israeli settlements, large investments in Israeli style “ Palestinian Settlement” like Al-Rawabi, billions of consumer loans at risk, with tens of thousands of Fatah operative relying on the monthly dole from Mahmoud Abbas it is unlikely that a Third Intifada will take place. There are too many financial and political vested interests to allow things to go out of control and see Abbas and Fatah go out of business.
Add to this the hundreds of NGOs, whose only functions is to spew reports on the occupation with questionable value, fully funded by international governments and organizations as part of keeping the “ peace process going”. No NGO dares to cross the red lines and promote, advocate, let alone manage a Third Intifada. All funding will dry up and hundreds of NGO’s will go out of business.
The First Intifada broke out in December 1987 when an Israeli truck deliberately drove over a civilian car in Jabalia Camp killing four civilians. It started as a demonstration, venting anger, and it escalated when Israeli forces started to use deadly force.
The late Yitzhak Rabin winner of the Noble Peace Prize ordered his army to “ break the arms of any and every Palestinians who throw a rock” against the IDF or Israeli settlers. Bibi Netanyahu told him army to shoot and kill any one throwing a rock.
News of the First Intifada was all over the front pages of international media and television pitting Palestinians armed with rocks and stones against, the Israeli “Goliath” with tanks and armored vehicles.
Yasser Arafat and his not so intelligent “intelligent agencies” were taken by surprise since the PLO and its leadership while enjoying comfortable hotels and hot brothels was not interested and had little knowledge or care of what was happening in the Occupied Territories.
The PLO, demoralized, broke with tens of billions looted, unaccounted for and marginalized after siding with Saddam Hussein in his invasion of Kuwait, saw the First Intifada as “Allah sent” gift to “reinvigorate” the PLO and its discredited leadership.
With what little money left, Arafat and Abu-Jihad injected few million dollars and were able to snuff out the First Intifada through “joint” Israeli-Palestinian agents who later returned with Arafat to form and organize his security forces. Ending the First Intifada was the favor that drove Yitzhak Rabin to begin secret negotiations with Yasser Arafat in Oslo.
The Second Intifada just like the First did not fair well. It started when Jibril Rajoub then head of Arafat Preventive Security Forces gave assurance to then, Shlomo Ben-Ami, Minister of Internal Security, that Ariel Sharon visit to the Al-Aqsa Mosque or Temple Mount (September 2000) will not create a problem as long as Sharon does not enter the Al-Alaqsa Mosque.
Young Palestinians angry at such visit from a man seen as the orchestrator of the Massacre of Sabra and Shatila began to throw stones and rocks at the Israelis surrounding the Mosque and also at Israelis at the Wailing Wall.
The Second Intifada unlike the First, which was characterized by its non-violent nature and use of boycott of Israeli Civil Administrations and products from Israeli Settlements, was more violent leading to the death of 3,000 Palestinians and the death of 1,000 Israelis.
It was during the Second Intifada that saw the use of “suicide bombings” by Palestinian resistance movements targeting Israeli soldiers, businesses, buses and public places.
It also saw the deadly siege and attack of the Jenin Refugee Camp (April 1-11, 2002) when 55 Palestinians were killed and more than 140 homes were bulldozed and demolished. The US was able to prevent a UN board of inquiry into the attack on Jenin.
During the same period (April 2- May 11, 2002) saw the siege of the Church of Nativity when Israeli forces laid siege of the Church holding Palestinians members of the resistance.
The world saw footage of Israeli tanks deliberate driving over parked Palestinian cars, destroying light poles and side walks as added measures. Israel totally destroyed the entire infrastructure of the City of Bethlehem.
The US and Israel blamed Yasser Arafat for the Second Intifada, and he in turn took advantage of the Second Intifada to get rid of his potential rival Marwan Bargouthi, with the help of Arafat intelligence services Bargouthi was arrested and charged with multiple murders.
Arafat became irrelevant to both Israel, the US and the international community having delivered to Israel what it wanted more, full and unconditional recognition, a Palestinian Authority that is both an administrative and security contractor for the Israeli Occupation. Mahmoud Abbas took center stage.
The Second Intifada came to an end when Mahmoud Abbas in a “summit” with Ariel Sharon in Sharm el-Sheik gave his commitment to stop all acts of violence against all Israelis everywhere. Abbas kept his promise till today. Israel never stopped its violence against the Palestinians and never stopped expanding its settlements.
The Second Intifada once again showed the incompetency, recklessness of Yasser Arafat, committing same mistakes he did in Jordan and in Lebanon with no exist strategy not even as an after thought. He paid for his “stupidity” not his valor.
It should be noted here that Jibril Rajoub then head of notorious Palestinian Preventive Security abandoned and ran from his post in the $8 million Preventive Security Forces headquarter funded by the US, few minutes before the Israeli attacked the headquarter killing members of his security forces and prisoners he kept locked up while he fled.
An Intifada will not be an Intifada to end the longest occupation in history if is not a massive public movement, non-violent leading first to the disbanding of the Palestinian Authority and the PLO.
It must seek an international protection for at least 5 years, and see the evacuation of the Israeli army and the disarming of all Israeli settlers. It must have an international police force to protect all parties and an administrator to take over the administration of the disbanded PLO/PA and the evacuated Israeli administration.
In the end, the emerging new leaderships should have one objective and only one objective, the One State, Apartheid or no Apartheid.
The Palestinians must forget about the two states and independence from Israel. Their independence and freedom come when they are full and equal citizens of the One State for all of its people.
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September 2nd, 2015
By Sami Jamil.
I believe after many years of shifting congressional powers between Democrats and Republicans nothing has changed for Main Street America, with both parties committed to Wall Street and the influence of big money.
Both parties are the same, different sides of the same coin, failed Main Street in almost every thing, from jobs, to social security, to wars, to education, social services, health, housing, infrastructure certainly the environment and an unfair tax system.
Notwithstanding the lies and propaganda we hear from both Republicans and Democratic candidates, all of them are beholding to big dollars, to the rich and powerful, with citizens reduced to showing up at the voting booth as cattle’s at the watering hole.
Both parties, seek the necessary funding and alliance with the rich so that can convince the poor Main Street to vote for them through political strategists, polestars and 30 seconds advertisements that make mockery of voters and their intelligence hiding the stupidity and fakeness of these candidates.
With Citizens United, it is the money, the SuperPacs, the billionaires from Hollywood, Texas, Wall Street and Los Vegas already lined up behind major candidates from both parties. This coming presidential election is a test of who is more powerful and influential, the billionaires behind the Republicans or the billionaires behind the Democrats.
While admitting that reforming a corrupt inept political process could not take place over night or in a single election cycle, there is certainty that we as citizens and voters can change the entire political process as we see it now within the next 10 years.
And yes, we can defeat Citizen United not in grand halls of the Supreme Court but in the privacy of voting booths. We can defeat big dollars, pollsters, political strategists who package candidates with the 30 seconds sound bite and TV ads. Without our votes candidates with hundred of millions behind them could not win an office.
The key and focused objective of any new political movement is not to compete in the current presidential race but to target key congressional elections where candidates have shown themselves over an over as Wall Street First, Main Street Last, America Last, Israel First, and at the behest of lobbyists.
The new political movement must not be an extension or beholding to one or the two political parties as the Tea Party, and must not seek funding and support from major donors like the Koch Brothers, or Adelson, or Saban. Most important must not be ideologically driven by politics of faith, but politics of common sense.
Support and funding must come from individual voters and members. NO SuperPacs, but membership money and small donation, but most important commitment to vote. with the objective to transform and change the existing political landscape within the next 10 years. Seeking a majority of at least 40% in legislative houses across America and the nation capital. To achieve that,
- Candidates for local and congressional offices must be committed to term limits (6-8 years) thus transforming legislative houses to citizen houses not a place for lifetime professional politicians.
- Candidates must be committed to end the seniority system, which gives long time sitting politicians an unfair edge in money and influence in elections and change this seniority system once in office.
- Candidates must be committed not to seek or accept any funding from outside their local, congressional or senatorial districts. Thus limiting the amount and influence of outside money.
- Candidates must commit themselves to a maximum of 3 months of campaigning and accepting no “issue” funding from special lobbies.
- Candidates must be committed to America First and seek to limit the toxic and undue influence Israel and its Fifth Column and AIPAC have over Congress and the White House.
- Candidates must be committed to reform and overhaul the Tax System simplifying it from 300,000 pages to less than 30 pages making sure that every citizens, every corporation and every business pay their fair share of the tax. No more tax loopholes.
- Candidates must be committed to re-invest in America First, in re-industrialization of America, in infrastructures, public transportation systems, public educations, industrial educations, parks and public facilities forcing the more of than $3 trillions of America’s corporate money sitting in tax shelters back to the US.
- Candidates must commit themselves not accept lobbying money and favors including paid trips by foreign governments, lobbyists or special interests.
- Candidates must be committed to a drastic reform of the financial system including the undue and toxic influence of Wall Street has on political, economic and social life, making sure that corporations (as citizens) are subject to criminal prosecutions with executives going to jail for crimes or fraud committed by their corporations.
- Candidates must be committed to reform our judicial, criminal justice, social and welfare services system to bring America in line with other nations, and seek reconciliations between all of our citizens, making America a united nation we should be.
- Candidates must be committed to a balance budget with a budget cycle of 5 years thus avoiding all the uncertain paralysis facing our nation annually.
- Candidates must be committed to NO More Wars, while keeping our nation strong to defend itself against enemy aggression.
We as citizens and voters must not under estimate our power, the right to vote, which is more powerful than all the billions raised in elections. Without over vote no one can win an office.
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August 23rd, 2015
By Sami Jamil Jadallah.
When it comes to the Iran Nuclear Deal it is not the American public that will make the decision. The fate of the Iran Nuclear Deal is in the hands of Israel, its Fifth Column and in the hands of Israeli officials past and presents both pro and against the deal and Obama administration knows that very well.
The American public has been incited against Iran for a long time especially since the taking of American hostages (November 4, 1979- January 20, 1981) when American media set aside a special nightly program against Iran at the expense of all other national and international events. With a lingering anger about the hostage taking the general American public is lukewarm about the deal 28% v. 24%, while American Jews showing strong plurality for the deal 49% v.31%.
However at no time Ted Koppel nightly broadcast, ever-mentioned Israel’s deliberate cold-blooded murder of 34 sailors and civilians on the USS Liberty and the wounding of 171 sailors.
Against this background, Israel is the key player and decision maker on whether Congress will approve the deal and whether Congress can override an expected presidential veto.
Tens of millions of dollars have been committed, both for and much more against the deal funded mainly by AIPAC and associated organizations such as Citizens Against Nuclear Iran, United Against Nuclear Iran, Citizens for Nuclear Free Iran, with American Jewish multi millionaires and multi billionaire throwing a ton of money (more than $40 millions) trying to buy votes Congressional votes. At this moment it is neck and neck with the President of the United States loosing the comfortable margin he needs for his expected veto.
The administration desperate for votes has enlisted the help of American Jewish leadership with some 340 Rabbis announcing support for the deal and more are expected to announce their support this coming September when the Orthodox Union will try to bring hundreds of Rabbis to Washington.
The on going public debate for the most part specially on nightly news, features Israeli officials past and present. While President Obama is doing his best to secure support in Congress, Bibi Netanyahu personally and through the Israeli ambassador in Washington have been strongly lobbying Congress to vote against the deal with the Israeli ambassador secured meeting with 60 members of Congress in the last month.
Former members of the Senate the likes of Norm Coleman, Saxby Chambliss, Evan Bayh are following the lead of former Senator and Rabbi Joseph Lieberman who is leading the fight to defeat the deal in Congress.
On the other hand major former Israeli intelligence and military officers have been coming out in support of the deal.
Among those is the former head of the Mossad, Efraim Halvey “the attempt to change the rules of the game and to include further demands from Iran in the agreement, such as recognition of Israel and stopping support for terrorism shows that Netanyahu has no interest in the agreement whatsoever”.
Giving support to his counterpart, the former head of Shin Bet, Ami Aylon cam out in support of the deal, “ the deal achieved in Vienna is the best possible alternative from Israel’s point of view, given the other available alternatives.” Continuing to state, “ When it comes to Iran nuclear capabilities, this deal is best option”.
While members of Congress think they can get a better deal neither for Israel nor for America of course, have been raising issues of the competency of the technical team that helped negotiate the Iran Nuclear Deal.
Countering such claim is non other than Yitzhak Ben Israel, the Chairman of Israel Space Agency and the Chairman of the National Council for Research and Development in the Ministry of Science, Technology and Space “ there is a dialogue of the deaf, the agreement is not bad, at all, even good for Israel.”
It is yet to be seen whether America’s national security and world security will determine the outcome of the vote or whether Israel once again determine American’s national security and interests through its agents in Congress.
The debate as we have seen is hardly among and between Americans; it is almost exclusively among AIPAC, Israeli officials, certainly between members of the American Jewish community. In the end, the vote in Congress is not about Iran Nuclear Deal it is all about which comes first America or Israel. Remember that next November.
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June 17th, 2015
By Sami Jamil.
Whether we like it or not Lt. General Dhahi Khalfan Tamim, the Head of General Security For the Emirates of Dubai is an exceptional if not controversial figure perhaps with courage that few officials dare say.
A friend of mine from Egypt shared with me recent article written by General Dhahi which I find not only interesting but thought provoking raising more question than it answer, casting serious doubts about the efforts to put an end to ISIS/Daesh.
General Dhahi recent article has every thing to do with ISIS or Daesh, from its sudden rise to power to its swift Blitzkrieg moving across great swath of land in Iraq and Syria, raising many questions and issues that so far defied credible answers.
According to Western intelligence (perhaps unintelligent sources) ISIS/Daesh is a rag tag army of mercenaries’ numbering between 20-30,000 recruits mainly from Arab countries in North Africa, the Arab Peninsula, England, Germany, Holland Belgium, France and far from the Maldives and Indonesia.
None of its member’s known to have graduated from top Western military academics let alone Russian or Chinese academies. Yet it was able within a short time to route and defeat professional armies and take over 1/3 of Iraq and Syria.
ISIS/Daesh does not have communication or intelligence satellites and does not have an air force and unmanned drones and does not have a navy and does not have air defense system as the Iron Dome or the Patriot.
Certainly, it does not have surface to air missiles and anti-aircraft missiles such as SAM, S-300 and Stinger. While Israel took couple of days to defeat the combined armies of Egypt, Syria and Jordan, the entire Western military might is unable to defeat ISIS in over a year.
ISIS/Daesh does not have intelligence services (or does it) to match the CIA, MI-6 or the Mossad. It does not have a budget of multi billions to conduct intelligence or spying operation reaching the inner offices of officials as Angela Merkel and François Holland. One has to wonder if America can spy on its allies in Europe how it was unable to detect the rise of ISI/Daesh and intercept its communication lines and prevent its rise?
Certainly it does not have the services of communication companies with spy wares that can access the inner operations of governments such as the hacking of Home Land Security database with access to over 4 million federal employees.
ISIS/Daesh does not have the benefits of think tanks such as Brookings, Heritage Foundation, American Enterprise Institute, Washington Institute for Middle Near East Policies, Strategic Studies institute and International Institute for Strategic Studies; certainly it does not have the benefits of Wolf Blitzer analysis.
ISIS/Daesh does not have the benefits of financial and economic advice of the World Bank or the IMF and does not have the support of armies of Wall Street financier to manage its money and cash flows.
Certainly it does not have the benefits of universities, medical and technical institutes with mathematics, science, biology, game theories, are far from its priorities. Its priorities are chopping heads, burning live prisoners and mass killings of those who do not scribe to its worldview of Caliphates.
Ironically, ISIS/Daesh has restrained so far from attacking any Western interests let alone Israeli interests, and has concentrated its efforts to unravel the “sovereign” states mapped out by Sykes-Picot agreement which drew the lines for most if not all present Middle East Arab states.
Gone the days of Al-Qaeda as the biggest strategic and international threat and welcome the days of ISIS/Daesh as the “international threat” for the 21st century.
President Barack Obama, the CIA and the Pentagon declared it would take years perhaps decades to end ISIS/Daesh as a threat, meaning the Arabs have to pay the price in cash and instability for years to come.
Question, how can thousands of aerial sorties by the combined air force of several countries using F-15s, F-16s and F-18s are unable to make a dent in ISIS/Daesh advancement and expansion? Is ISIS/Daesh that invisible hiding in tunnels and bunkers that defy bunker buster bombs.
The rise and perseverance of ISIS/Daesh and the failure of the West intelligence services to detect its rise and organization raises question as to who is responsible for the rise and funding of ISIS/Daesh?
Arab countries mainly the Gulf states and Iraq have been paying the high prices of wars and conflicts staring with Saddam war on Iran to the Gulf War I and II with trillions gone to fund wars. It seems every time the Gulf Arab States accumulate cash reserve there is another war to fund. Is there an invisible hand? For sure.
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June 6th, 2015
By Sami Jamil Jadallah.
Introduction:
It is no brainer for any one with little understanding of international politics to see the Arab world is in deep deep trouble, with many countries in state of civil wars such as Iraq, Yemen, Syria, Libya and Sudan.
With thousands of mercenaries joining Al-Qaeda, ISIS, Jab hat Al-Nusra, coming from Europe, the US, the Arab Peninsula even far from the Maldives and Indonesia. The are joining “”Islamists” militia, to kill and get killed, to destroy and never build, the New Arab Foundation wants to change all of that.
The Issue
The Arab and Muslim worlds are experiencing turmoil and conflicts they’ve not witnessed since colonial times and their nation states are threatened from within and without.
With the rise of military dictatorship in the 50’s, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan the birthplace of the “jihadist” movement, the First and Second Gulf War, together, these events forming a watershed in the Arab and Muslim world with trillions in fortunes and livelihoods been diverted from society building to regional, “religious” and “sectarian” war mongering and nation’s destruction. Promoted and well funded by international powers.
Military and “nationalistic” “secular” dictatorship and “jihadist” ideology, combined with corruption, looting of states, people’s assets and wealth, nepotism, lack of transparency and accountability, lack of fairness and equal opportunities, lack of mentoring, inept abusive humiliating bureaucracy, all are responsible for the failure of many Arab and Muslim states. This investment in wars and conflict has resulted in dire, unintended consequences. Much like Mary Shelly’s fictional monster Frankenstein, “jihadists” and “secular” dictatorships are now injuring and threatening the very states and institutions that created and nurtured them. The world is now witnessing the negative, self-perpetuating spiral of the monster. This is most recently evidenced in ease with which organizations like ISIS and al-Shabaab acquire sophisticated weapons and thousands of recruits from Europe, the US and the Middle East, putting the entire Arab if not Muslim worlds at risk.
Global statistics for people 15 to 35 years of age reveal as much as 50% of the world’s population may be classified as “youth”, including Arab, Muslim and Western countries. Large numbers of which live in poverty, often extreme, and consider themselves marginalized in their communities as well as in national and world affairs. Studies have shown that hopelessness and despair, rather than religious beliefs or commitment; provide the fodder for their recruitment to “jihad”.
The Opportunity
Our vision is to break the negative, self-reinforcing spiral of vulnerable youth, being mobilized by “religious actors” or “terrorists”, fighting what they are told is the cause of their suffering (i.e., secular, sectarian opponents and “infidels”), and as a result are often killed in the fight, which is used to reinvigorate the negative spiral. We break this otherwise indestructible force by redirecting the very energy that fuels it (the power of youth) into a positive, self-reinforcing contribution to the greater good.
Our efforts positively self-reinforce through each person’s achievement of a sense of belonging to the greater community and an increased sense of self-worth.
We intend to provide opportunities for talented and motivated young people to channel their energies and enthusiasm into life-changing community service. We believe there are many youths, college graduates with professional skills from the “Arab World” and outside like North America, Europe and Australia who would be interested in and willing to give a year or two of their lives to helping build better futures for their communities in the “Arab World”. This service will not only make a positive difference in those communities, but will also provide the youth themselves with valuable skills and life experience.
The New Arab Foundation through its first initiative the Arab Peace Corps plans and intends to change all that. Challenging young minds and talents to contribute to life and not death, to contribute to building not destroying; contribute to the future to outshine the past.
Approach
We know from successful models and similar programs like the US Peace Corps that young college graduates and other skilled professionals always rise up to the challenge of doing good and are willing to take time out for couple years not only to serve but learn and venture as well. An experience that makes them better citizens and better employees back home in countries of their citizenship and residency.
The Arab Peace Corps will also offer graduate students in the master and PhD programs an opportunity to study and serve contributing valuable experience and know how, making them outstanding candidates for employers and will seek future and preferential employments for veterans of the Arab Peace Corps with government and private sector.
From the work on conflict analysis and resolution, we know that individuals and groups of people are mobilized into action by key actors, or opinion leaders, with access to things such as charismatic personalities, moral authority, and financial and human resources.
The Arab Peace Corps will also seek out and provide the much needed supports and skill training for the “at-risk groups” in Europe, in countries like France, Holland, Belgium, Germany, England and in the Middle East and North Africa, generally youth and often those who are poor, otherwise marginalize, by focusing first on development of key actors/opinion leaders who will engage with each other to promote community service and become role models and mentors for other youth in troubled communities, who otherwise are easy prey to recruiters of “terrorist groups” giving them opportunities to work with the Arab Peace Corps volunteers.
We will recruit volunteers (Arabs, Amazighs, Kurds, Armenians and others) from within the Arab World and from around the world, with our selection reflecting the rich diversity and mosaic of the Arab world.
Our philosophy aligns with the motto of the New Arab Foundation: the Arab world is more than Arabs. We will recruit college graduates with degrees in education, health care, nutrition, agriculture, environmental protection, engineering and business, community building, conflict resolution, peace building and, put them together in teams with a senior mentor/leader and match their skills with a particular project or community.
The teams receive a month of training together, which includes skill building in teamwork, conflict resolution, leadership, planning, community organization and development.
The selected volunteers will be deploy for the subsequent 22 months for a total commitment of two years from selection, to training, to deployment to end of service. We will provide room and board and a small living stipend. In addition, all those who complete the full term will be given partial and or full scholarship for graduate study. We will start with one training center in a country still to be selected (and largely dependent on major donors).
Our long-term goal is to have teams active in countries across North Africa and in the Middle East with targeted communities in Europe, with marginalized and alienated youth.
We will learn from and draw on the long experience of the US Peace Corps, UNPD as well as the more recent history of the European Peace Corps. But approach and specific activities will be grounded in Arab culture and values, including political and religious norms of service and improving the common good. The main office will be in the US at the office of New Arab Foundation in Washington DC, with two regional offices, for training, orientation and deployment assistance.
One regional office will be in North Africa, possibly Morocco or Tunisia to serve North African countries and the other in Jordan, perhaps Lebanon to serve Egypt, Jordan, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Iraq.
We will also secure commitments from key players in the public and private sectors to give preferential treatments in hiring policies to veterans of the Arab Peace Corps as added incentives to recruit top and well-qualified candidates.
The Next Phase
Over the next few months, our team of volunteers will working hard to realize this most important projects by seeking funding for the initial phase of the project and once that is complete we will proceed to the next phase which included funding for recruitments, setting up the two regional offices (one in North Africa and the other in the Middle East), and the third phase is seeking long term funding for actual deployment.
Hundreds of billions if not trillions were wasted on wars and conflicts, let us hope that governments, businesses and private individuals rise up to the occasion and contribute the needed funds can make the difference in the lives of many. Time to invest in human development and the future, time to invest in life not death, time to invest in the future not search for the past. Time to help the New Arab Foundation to set up a $100 million trust fund for the Arab Peace Corps.
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