Jefferson Corner

Salam, Peace, Shalom
To all people of good well
Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah and Happy New Year
May the new year brings freedom and liberty to all those under Israeli Occupation, may all those in exiles returns homes, may all the needy finds support and help, may sick find health.
May the unemployed find employment, may the killings and murder ends in Syria, in Yemen, in Pakistan, in Afghanistan, in the USA, in Palestine, in Libya, in Sudan and Nigeria, in Mali
May America becomes free again, free from the Lobby, from the NRA, from Wall Street that looted America, may the people of the United States retires members of Congress once and for all and elect truly representative of the people.
May Palestine and Israel find peace in a One State Solution, a State for all of its people?
Peace, Shalom, Salam
Happy New Year

Sami Jamil Jadallah

No need to wonder what went wrong with the “Right Nation”. Every thing that could go wrong with America did since Reagan aligned himself with Christian Evangelical Fundamentalists and their allies Jewish Zionist and adoption of Milton Freedman economic polices of “supply side”.

One has to wonder what went wrong with a nation that has all the fundamentals to be a great nation, great with its ideals of freedom and liberty for its people and the world, a right nation that abandoned its people to poverty, unemployment, lack of health care, expensive higher education, deteriorating infrastructure and abandoned and run down urban cities and rural areas that has seen better times even in the Great Depression. We became a nation where middle class citizens pay more in taxes than multi billion dollar corporations and where Congress and Wall Street declared war on the nation and its citizens.

America is a nation that can boast the best in higher education (albeit expensive and unaffordable to families and students) in the world with the majority of American universities in the top 500. While 85.5% finish high school only 22% earned bachelor degree, nothing to boast about.

America is a nation that boasts of the best of medical colleges and institutions attracting kings and heads of states p from around the world. Great institutions such as Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, Mount Sinai, and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, among many private clinics and hospitals yet the majority of citizens hardly could afford medical care fit for this nation.

America is a nation that boasts the best business schools in the world such as Harvard, Yale, Michigan, Stanford, Chicago, Indiana, yet the leading crooks, thieves and corrupt leaders on Wall Streets are among the top graduates of the best business schools in the country. Wall Streeters, bankers and lawyer that took the nation and the people to ruin while earning tens if not hundreds of millions in salaries and bonuses. I wonder whatever happened to “business ethnics” courses we studied while in graduate schools. I guess greed and lost value system became the model of a corrupt and corrupting Wall Street.

America is a nation with best law schools in the world colleges such as Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton, UCLA, Berkeley, Michigan, Chicago and Indiana with great constitutional scholars with many of the graduates heading to Wall Street to earn multi million dollars in annual fees charging corporations hundreds of millions of dollars in legal fees for single merger and acquisition, public offering among other services. Consumers of course end up paying for these billions charged by Wall Streets in the form of added costs to products and services. One has to question the rates and fees charged by these Wall Streeters.

America is a nation that boasts of having the best IT and engineering schools in the country such as MIT, Stanford, Illinois Institute of Technology, Purdue, Berkeley, Virginian Tech among others, yet our government entrust our national security to foreign companies and foreign citizens from country (you guessed it) that killed and murdered our citizens in cold blood, spies on us, endanger our national security, took us to many wars, yet this country and its citizens are at every level of our national government from the White House, to Congress, to Homeland Security, entrusted with the nation and its safety and yes endangering our lives and liberties.

America is a nation with a history of ingenuity, creativity, entrepreneurship that created such great companies as IBM, Boeing, Ford, GM, Dow Chemical, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Eastman Kodak, Hewlett Packard, with great geniuses entrepreneurship such as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Thomas Edison, Thomas J. Watson, Howard Hughes, among many of the great and greater who built this nation into an industrial power and the largest economy in the world and who created the best and highest paying jobs in the nation.

America is a nation in less than10 years took man to the moon and back, and recently landed the space ship “Curiosity” on Mars. Great engineers, committed scientists, brave astronauts and test pilots defying gravity and failures, yet we are unable to upgrade our failing and deteriating infrastructures of bridges, roads, railways, electrical grids and power lines that with the slightest of storms hundreds of thousands of homes remain without electricity for days if not weeks. A nation unable to reach down to earth and fix our own neighborhoods, streets and schools.

We are a nation of dedicated scientist, medical researchers, research institutions winning many Noble prizes, that succeeded in developing miracle medicine, vaccines and cures for many diseases, eradicating or controlling diseases such as polio, tuberculosis and small box among others yet we have failed so far and after years of research yet to succeed in finding cure for cancer, diabetes, malaria, Alzheimer among many of the diseases that kills hundreds if not millions of Americans every years. We even discovered the Genome of mankind the first nation in the world to do so, thanks to great-dedicated minds and private and public partnership and thanks to scientists and researchers such as Craig Venter and Francis Collins and yes, thanks to NIH and CDC for their contributions.

America is a nation that rose from soup lines, Great Depression; high unemployment went on to win the Great War, liberating hundreds of millions of people, rebuilding nations and cities destroyed. And with our help, Japanese and European cities such as Frankfurt, Hamburg, Munich, Dresden, Nagasaki, Hiroshima are now thriving cities, while our own cities that produced the machines and weapons to destroy these cities are dying of neglect, cities such as Detroit, Cleveland, Oakland, and St. Lewis among others. What a great contrast between those cities we help destroy and our now destroyed and run down cities.

We are a nation that declared War on Poverty and yet after 40 years the level of poverty in this nation is the highest ever in its history with some 40 millions below poverty lines. And tens of millions of our children suffer from malnutrition and could not afford a balanced breakfast. We declare War on Drugs yet our nation is infested with drugs that our leadership helps bring to this country by sponsoring drug lords in Afghanistan, perhaps in Columbia and Mexico.

America is a country of declared equal opportunity and equal rights for its citizens yet our jails tells us otherwise and our schools are unequal in funding with such large disparity between schools in rich affluent districts and those of poor and ghetto neighborhood. Yet we want our kids to compete fairly and squarely in the job market. And worst we wonder why kids of poor neighborhoods turns to drugs, crimes and prostitution.

We are a nation that spent three trillions ($3,000,000,000,000) on illegal wars, thanks to George Bush and Israel, under false flag pretenses and lies taking the nations to financial ruins and putting generations of our citizens and tax payers under great financial burdens for decades to come, mortgaging our nation to countries like China, thanks to Wall Mart.

America is a country that claims freedom of speech, assembly and associations, yet our media is perhaps the most corrupt, biased, unfair in its reporting, beholding to foreign nation and ideology. With few exceptions nothing but garbage coming out of the likes of Fox News, CNN and the mouths of Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly and Howard Stern, guys who are paid tens of millions in annual salaries only to insult our sensibility and intelligence. A media that is embedded with government (the War on Iraq, and War on Terror) and act as a cover providing excuses for ill-conceived policies failed to inform the nation and people and stifled the debate on such important issues as war and peace, War on Terror and 9/11 and national security. Now mainstream media lost the courage to “news fit to print”.

We are a nation of generous people and yes decent, hard working and honest, who give and contribute more than $80 Billions annually, to charity at home and aboard. We are a nation of great philanthropists such as Bill and Melinda Gates who gave away billions and continue to give away billions fighting poverty and disease in developing countries and the likes of Warren Buffet. We must not forget foundations such as the Hewlett Foundation and the Ford Foundation that contributed millions if not hundreds of millions to worthy causes here at home and abroad.

The question that bothers me and I am sure bothers hundreds of millions of America if not the world why with so much talent, decency, and fairness, do we have corrupt incompetent if not criminal political, economic and financial leadership as we have. Republicans and Democrats, Liberals and Conservatives. A Congress under the control of lobbies and is for sale to the highest bidder and in collusions with financiers and Wall Street. Political, legal and financial system that produced the worst in America.
No one would believe that America’s business leadership does not give a damn about the nation with companies like such as GE, Boeing, Citigroup, AT&T paying their CEO tens of millions of annual fees and bonuses while paying hardly a dollar in taxes and worst, many receiving tax breaks. According to Freedom Tribune “Eighteen of the 26 companies received cash back or credits to apply against tax in the future”.

America is a nation of immigrant, a reminder to the White Supremacist, ADL and AIPAC. Early immigrants came here seeking freedom and new opportunity, others mainly the Blacks came here as slaves by Whites. Later many came seeking a better life, or escaping prosecutions like East European Jews. We the people of America, White, Black, Brown, Christians, Jews, Muslims Hindus, Sikh and we must not forget the rightful owners of this country, the American Indians we all what makes America such a great nation. Our diversity is our strength, enriching our nation and people, with many immigrants contributing to the greatness of this nation. Certainly not the Skin Heads, the KKK, the ADL or AIPAC that made this country a great powerful country in science in technology, in industry, in social science in medicine, and education.

Now and since the criminal gangs of the NeoCons and the alliance of Evangelical Christian-Jewish Zionists took hold and control of this country, we became a country of hate, a country of many angry people who takes their failings and the nation failings on other simply because they looks different. Hate groups became an industry lead by over 25 different Jewish Zionist organizations the likes of ADL, AIPAC, Campus Watch well funded and well connected to the main stream media and Congress, incite little minded people to hate, anger, blames with some going further, shooting and killings.

However this racism and hate in this country is not limited to private organization, it has become mainstream with leading institutions such a the military (not like when I served) developing courses and teaching hate to military commanders and soldiers such the case of Lt. Colonel Mathew Dooley “ urging senior military officers to wage” total war” on Islam”. Colonel Dooley “spent weeks arguing that the US was at war with Islamic faith”. Of course any idiots would know that since the War on Iraq and Afghanistan was not War on Terror but war on Arabs and Muslims. False flag wars that killed millions of them and us, destroyed nations and almost destroyed our own country.

Just imagine how America would look like in 20 years if the Republicans and the likes of Romney and Paul Ryan and the majority of the Republicans in Congress and their allies on Wall Street and in Israel, succeed in taking over America for 10-20 years. We will be a nation with hundreds of millions unemployed, without health care and social security, with majority of the labor force earning minimum wage working at McDonald and Wall Mart. What remains of American industry will move overseas, thanks to tax incentives by a Republican control White House and Congress.

Unless there is a true American revolutions, a revolutions of idea and minds, that brings America back to the right track, a revolutions that re-invent America and bring it back to the basic that made it such a great nation. Unless that happens and quickly, we are as a nation doomed forever. A good start would be to fire 1/3 of members of Congress in the next election and put the Tea Party out of business once and for all and then go after the other 1/3 and in 6 years have a completely new Congress, a truly representative of the people. Unless we do some major reforms on our political, financial and economic systems as practiced in Washington and Wall Street our nation will fail, just like the Communist system and the former Soviet Union.

Note: The Right Nation is a book published in 2004 by the British authors Adrian Wooldridge and John Micklethwait.

Sami Jamil Jadallah

No, this essay has nothing to do with the film “Age of Innocence” (2007) but it has every thing to do with the Age of Ignorance that Muslims are living in and have lived in for a thousand years. If today’s leaders and clergy were in charge of Islam in its early days, Islam for sure would have died in infancy without ever spreading beyond Mecca and Medina.

I have to borrow the words of the late Justice Potter Stewart (1915-1985) when in Jacobellis vs. Ohio (1964) dealing with hard core pornography, he said” I know it when I see it” and so I too do not need do define “blasphemy” but I know it when I see it. And I do see it in the case of “Rishma” the 14 years old Pakistani Christian girl with a lower mental capacity falsely accused by a Muslim cleric of destroying and tearing some pages of a book that teaches readings of Holy Quran, a shameful blasphemy on the part of the nation and the Muslim clergy.

Of course in the Age of Ignorance in which Muslims live in, thousands of Pakistanis took to the streets seeking vengeance and calling for death of the young girl, but no one sought vengeances, from the Muslim cleric who falsely accused the girl. If the Pakistani people do believe in Sharia, then the Muslim cleric should be taken out whipped and lashed until his skin peals 7 times.

There is nothing more blasphemous in Islam these days than ignorance, illiteracy, poverty, injustice, hunger, lack of development, unfair distribution of wealth, lack of hope and opportunity, lack of centers of scientific research, learning and technology, poor housing, remote villages without roads, drinking water and electricity let along health clinics, certainly lack of any credible infrastructure serving the people and their future. This is real blasphemy.

There is nothing more blasphemous than the death and destructions we see in the Muslim worlds, carried for the most part by Muslims against Muslims and non-Muslims. Of course I do recognize the war being waged and lead by the US and Israel against Islam and Muslims in 7 nations all in the name of “war on terror”. But that does not justify the suicide bombings and booby trapped vehicles killing tens of thousands of innocent people in Iraq and in Syria, in Yemen, in Pakistan and Afghanistan and in Indonesia, in Mali and Nigeria, violent acts of vengeance and sectarian strife promoted and advocated by political leaders, Muslim clergy and Imams both Sunnis and Shiites.

Muslim clergy and for a long time since the early days of Muslim dynastic rules of the Umayyad, the clergy then and as now have always played a supporting if not legitimizing role for the political leadership which in turn rewarded the clergy with many privileges even wealth a “symbiotic relationship” at best.

With the exception of the late Mohammad Abduh (1849-1905) the Muslim jurist, religious scholars and liberal reformer (Wikipedia) Abduh is perhaps the lonely Muslim liberal theologian in the past few centuries.

Unlike theologians within the Christian church, mainly Catholic and mainly Central and Latin America, Islam did not experience the teaching of “liberation theology” as that taught by such clergymen as Peruvian priest Gustavo Gutierrez “Theology of Liberation”, and the Brazilian Leonard Boff, Jon Sobrina of El Salvador, Juan Luis Segundo of Uruguay, all became champion of Liberation Theology as a result of the poverty which they see resulting from social injustice, unjust economic conditions, un just political an social conditions (Wikipedia) . Muslim clergymen always found ways to justify social injustice, poverty, misery, lack of basic services, unfair distribution of wealth as the “will of Allah” and who like the clergy of the early Christianity took the side of the political leadership advocating “obedience” to the ruler as part of the “faith”.

Even in Iran of the Shah, the Shiite clergy as a class was more interested in its privilege status and concerned with the lost of income than it was concern with freedoms, liberty, development and social justice. The late Ayatollah Khomeini rode the wave of social discontent and unfair distribution of wealth, to take charge of the masses and came back to rule and solidify the status of the “clergy” as a class, a class that is ruling Iran with an iron fist with chocking hold on every aspect of life in Iran. The “Mullahs” became the new aristocracy.

Sunni clergy and “Islamist” organizations such as Muslim Brotherhoods, Hizb Al-Tahrir did not rise calling for reforms, political freedom, liberations and advocacy of “liberation theology” but rose to have their shares of political powers, creating a “theocratic state” and in the case of Hizb Al-Tahrir a “dynastic Caliphate” and both failed to addressed social injustice and poverty and that such things are not the “will of Allah” but the failings of man kind and a failed corrupt political and economic system.

Today and sad to say, we see Muslim “clerics” leading the “sectarian” fights advocating vengeance, hate, killings and murder of others recruiting suicide bombers to bomb mosques, schools, and markets, with some even going further by anointing themselves the “guardian of virtues”, leading the fight against the rights of and equality of women, democracy, individual rights and freedom of speech and expression as we see today with the “salafis” in Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Palestine, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Mali, Somalia, Nigeria among many other places.

Today’s Muslim clergy are more concerns with “virtues”, social dress codes, sex, booze, arts, music, cinema, women driving than their concerns and advocacy with improvement of the quality of life for people, with freedom from hunger, freedom from ignorance and illiteracy, social justice, advancement of education and technology, accountability and transparency of governments and the rights of citizens to chose their own representative and the people as the source of political, economic and social powers.

With the kind of “clergy” we have among Sunnis and Shiites it is unlikely we will see enlightened well-educated truly intellectual clergy that are advocates of and promoters of Islamic Liberation Theology. For the most part, today’s Islamic clerics are the source of Age of Ignorance; a visit to your local mosque will confirm what I am saying.

Sami Jamil Jadallah

As an American and as a Muslim, I could not but feel the pain and loss the family of the late Ambassador Chris Stevens, Sean Smith and other officials feel for the lost of their loved ones. I feel the loss of my nation America and my people Americans and Muslims loss and sadness a result of this sad and tragic loss and I feel the shame that all those responsible for the murder should feel.

Simply, there are no excuses whatsoever for the criminal and armed attacked directed against the American consulate in Benghazi or the attack on the American embassy in Cairo.

The late ambassador and his colleagues have nothing to do with the film. America government and people have nothing to do with this film and have nothing to do with insults to Islam or the Prophet Mohamed (PBUH). The American government does not have the power nor authority to stop making let alone the distributions of such film. People in Arab and Muslim countries must know and understand that American government has such powers and control it does not.

The film produced and directed by the Israeli Jew Sam Becile and funded by some 100 American Jews played to empty seats in Los Angeles with no artistic value and is of no consequences to the value nor to the belief of Muslims. Certainly the film does not represent the American values of tolerance and freedom of speech and expression. Sam Becile and these 100 Jews have every right to make fools and “asses” of themselves in the same way the Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels did when he made it his business and mission to demean Jews.

The film according to its producer and director was and is intended to incite hate against Muslim which is not so surprising since these guys and many tens of thousands of them are only too happy when Muslims are incited to anger and take their revenge against Americans and America.

They simply love it when American blood is spelled. And they have contributed to the spelling of American, Jewish, Arab and Muslim blood for so long and they have the funds and the connections within the administration, within the Congress, within the media, within Hollywood, certainly within academia to just do it.

Sam Becile and these 100 Jews are but a small part of a nation wide network of American Jewish Zionist organizations well funded and dedicated to incitement of hate. They have been doing it for a long time and they became more viscous since September 11 perhaps to cover the involvement of Israel and its Fifth Column in September 11th.

Sam Becile and these 100 Jews equally share in the spelling of innocent American blood with those criminals who attacked the US Consulate in Benghazi.

Muslims around the world are warned not to fall into this trap set up by American Jewish Zionist groups and must understand and know that America has nothing to do with this incitement of hate nor defamations of religion or its symbols.

Reverend Terry Jones is simply a NO BODY and he made a name for himself when he announced his intentions to burn copies of the Holy Quran. Terry Jones can only represent the scumbags of America and yes there are many of them too.

Muslims must learn to behave in the ways of the Holy Quran which forbids the harming of foreign guests and emissaries of foreign nations and need to learn to celebrate life not death, celebrate building nations not destroying it.

This behavior of the mob in Benghazi is no different from the behavior of Sam Becile and that of Terry Jones. Civility is an art and a culture and a learned behavior and we all must learn to be civil among our self and with others, and accept and tolerate difference of opinions and difference of cultures and faiths. We all must learn that demeaning others is demeaning of our self and insulting other faiths and symbols of faiths is also an insult to ours elf.

Let us hope that no more blood is spelled as a result of this film. If we are to send a message to Sam Becile and these 100 Jews, then we must send a message of condolences to the family of the late ambassador and his colleagues, and the American nation and people.

Yes, perhaps it also time for the American government and the nation to apologies to Arabs and Muslims for the millions it killed and for the nations it destroyed and the tens of millions exiled and whose life it destroyed forever. Yes, Jewish Zionism is an evil that is killing innocent people and putting America and Americans in harms way. Question is when America will wake up and get rid of this cancer that is destroying the way of life for America and people around the world? Islam and Muslims are not the enemy of America, the real enemy is Jewish Zionism.

Sami Jamil Jadallah

America was and for a long times is a two nations, separate and unequal. The US Supreme Court did rule in Brown vs. Board of Education that ‘separate” even if “equal” is unconstitutional. However, the US Constitution, the Supreme Court, the two party systems, and the political and economic system failed to make this nation a one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

Yes, candidate Mitt Romney is right about certain people who think they are entitled to government hand out and benefits, but he got it wrong, both wrong on the percentage and on who are these 47%.

As I see it, Mitt could be right when he claims that certain people think they are entitled to government hand out and in this case it is not the 47% (Obama voters) but the 1% who are the biggest recipient of government benefits and entitlements, receiving tax breaks and incentives far outweigh the benefits individuals receive.

Mitt Romney 1 % is entitled to tax breaks that we 47% are not entitled to. Many millionaires and multi-national corporations hardly pay any taxes while receiving tax incentives. Congress both Republicans and Democrats do keep writing tax codes that benefits corporations and high net individuals giving them tax breaks and incentives that average Americans are not entitled to. Worst yet they get these tax breaks and incentives for putting people out of jobs and exporting productions over seas. Complicated Tax Codes that takes experienced and highly paid lawyers and tax accountants to figure out how these individuals and corporations can cheat the government out of taxes.

Over the year a more ideologically driven Republican Party (thanks to the likes of Edelson and Kotch Brothers) emerged more and more like the KKK with its economic and social agenda directed toward the majority of Americans, and no thanks to a boneless, indifferent Democratic Party that lost the will and the vision to represent the majority hard working America. We are two nations separate and unequal.

To see what I am talking about, we all should take a short drive or even a walk in our cities and towns and see the two America’s I am talking about, America that is separate and unequal. Separate and unequal in housing, in public schools, schools, in jobs, in opportunities, certainly in education, more troubling is the two party system that is taking the country to ruins.

Just look at the neighborhoods and see the difference. Just look at the schools and see the bigger difference, just look at the bus lines and see the difference, look at the housings in the suburb and in the rundown downtown and in the old neighborhood.

We are a nation of have and have not. A nation where the 1% think that the 99% are there to serve their interests, with CEO earning more than the entire payroll of the hundreds if not thousands who do the work and are at the production line.

I could never forget the shock of seeing the two America as I rode the train from Chicago to Ft. Polk, Louisiana on my way to basic training. I thought Gary, Indiana was bad but I could never imagined that America of “Payton Place” could be so run down with tin roof shacks doting the landscape in Mississippi and Louisiana. Not much change as I traveled today to South and North Carolina, to Tennessee and Georgia even West Virginian and Florida. Not much change in these small towns and in big cities. In fact they became much worst place to live with no jobs and no factories only hamburger joints, KFC and the ever-present Wall Mart.

Here in the Washington DC, the nation capital, things are changing, with rich developers buying Black owned run down properties and homes replacing them with high end condos selling and renting them to highly paid white kids and chasing these poor Blacks out into the wilderness looking for a place they hardly could afford.

Washington is a city with Black majority does not offer its citizens highly paid jobs with most working in food service industries at a minimum wage and as security guard even if a Black is sitting in the Oval Office. Nothing has changed for the majority of Americans, Blacks, White and Hispanic. The gab between the have and the have not has widened over the years and it is unlikely it will ever become narrower.

This election is very important not only for this nation but for the world. Even though I am very disappointed with Barack Obama as a president, he failed to deliver the CHANGE he promised and he failed to take on a Republican Party and administration that delivered the country in financial and economic ruins and he failed to bring the useless worthless, financially corrupting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to a quick end. True he did inherit a nation in ruins, but he should and could have with some courage delivered a fatal blow to the Republicans and he failed to do that. I guess he did not have what it takes to take the Republicans on.

Well, we shall see if Mitt Romney is wrong about the 47% of Americans who feels they are entitled to government benefits.

Well, Mitt Romney as a member of the 47% and a tax payer paying an average of $40,000 in annual taxes, you bet I am entitled to every benefit this government offer, and I have no sense of shame or regret. I do pay for these benefits, not you nor your rich friends who fleece the treasury and corporation are doing me a favor, it is my money and I am entitled to it.

I think if the likes of Mohamed Hassanaein Haikal had the courage to speak up then as they speak now, perhaps there will be no need for an Arab Spring or a New Skyes Picot.

Mr. Haikal no doubt an intelligent man and a committed Arab Nationalist failed to do the right thing and failed to speak up when he was within the “inner circles” of the late Gamal Abdul-Nasser. The man who lead the military coup in Egypt that toppled the monarchy and who failed miserably to set the stage for the “democratization” of the Arab World.

An Arab World with free elections, political parties free and independent of military regimes, accountability, transparency, economic and educational systems that failed at every turn and of course a state and people free of the dreadful “Mokhabat” that controlled the lives of people and kept the regimes in place. But for Nasser’s failures Mubarak will be unheard of and could never qualify to be president of Egypt, nor will Bashar or Hafiz, Saddam, or Ali Saleh or Bin Ali or Qaddafi will be heard of.

The late Nasser and his inner circles set the stage for incompetent, failed Arab regimes in Yemen, in Sudan, in Syria, in Iraq, in Libya certainly in Algeria with a military that failed at winning wars (except Algeria war of independence) and setting the stage for a bloody “Arab Spring” in Libya, in Syria and of course the millions of causalities in Iraq, not to mention the failed leadership of Arafat. One can understand the frustrations of Mr. Haikal and many so called “Arab Intellectuals and nationalist” because they were and are “irrelevant” to the Arab Spring and the emerging freedoms taking place now.

These days, the “Arab Spring” is coming under assault from all sides from “Arab Nationalists” who see in it as an “American-Zionist” conspiracy and a new way for the West to divide once again the Arab World as Mr. Haikal claims to “Islamist Fundamentalists” who are hijacking the Arab Spring.

Haikal: “What happening now is not a ‘spring’ but a new ‘Sykes Picot’ to divide the Arabs”.

Nasrallah: “What Yemen, Syria and the region are witnessing is part of a Zionist-American plan of fragmentation”

More surprisingly, the Syrian Arab Spring is coming under attack and assault by the likes of Sheik Hassan Nasrallah who sees the people uprising against a criminal regime in Syria as a “conspiracy” against the “Syrian State” and the Assad regime and its claimed role of “steadfastness and resistance” of course not against Israel but against democracy and reforms in Syria.

Both Mr. Haikal and Sheik Nasrallah failed to give credit to the hundreds of thousands if not millions who took to the streets in Yemen, in Egypt, in Libya, in Syrian, in Tunisia and in Syria, demanding freedom, liberty and accountability from corrupt dictatorial regimes that oppressed the people and ruined the nations economies while looting the country through nepotism, corruption, mismanagement using the “police state” as an instrument of perpetuating their rules.

Arab intellectuals and nationalists give more credit to an insignificant almost a non-entity like Bernard Henry Levy while discounting the roles of the thousands who gave up their lives so that dictators like Qaddafi, Ben Ali, Saleh and Mubarak are out of power. The statements of Haikal and Nasrallah are an insult added to injury.

Of course on the other hand the Arab Spring was not the making of the “Salafis” nor of the Muslim Brotherhood, but the making of the people with active support and leadership of a non-political media savvy young people who with their commitments, courage breaking the wall of fears and strong commitments to the democratic process and democracy made all that happens. The Salafis and the Brothers simply road the wave and collected the fruits and rewards while those young paid dearly with their lives and because they are not well organized and well funded are now marginalized.

But for the fact that criminal ruthless leaders like Qaddafi and now Assad failed to see and recognize the people’s demand for freedom and liberty after years of oppression decided to use the military to wage war against the people and the nation we will not see the kind of menacing militias that are the main threat posing clear and present danger to the Arab Spring specially in Libya.

No one can deny the role played by these militias as those within Libya and now Syria and the brave fight they put up against criminal regimes and army, and the sacrifice they paid with their lives. However all that does not and should not justify the way they are holding the nation and people hostage as is the case in Libya and we hope it will not be the case in Syria.

If the Arab Spring is to succeed in countries such as Libya, Yemen, Syria, Tunisia and Egypt then these “Islamist fundamentalists” must give up their weapons and arms as is the case in Libya and allow the people to exercise their hard won rights to freedoms, to free speech, to free associations without having these militias and “Salafis” enforcing their will and vision of an “Islamic State” through the power of the gun and through black mail and intimidations of citizenry in the streets, in the media, and their dismissal if not abrogation’s of hard won rights for women in countries such as Tunisia.

What the Arab Spring needs most to succeed is an open democratic process that does not exclude any one based on race, ethnic origin and faith. In order for the Arab Spring to succeed it needs strong enlightened and intellectual leadership that can shape the vision for the future, establish a modern nation state where the people are the source and only source of power and constitutional powers, not the Mullah or the Militias as a substitute for the “army” or of the “mokhabartat”.
Keeping in mind democracy is a work in progress and could not be achieved over night even among the most enlightened people and nations.

The French Revolution continued for over 3 years, with more than 40,000 casualties and with “liberal assemblies” competing and fighting with “right wing” monarchists. So please give the Arab Spring a chance to find its way forward and mature.