By: Sami Bishara Mashney

        The poignantly painful May 15 day of infamy, indelibly etched in the individual and collective Palestinian psyche since 1948, grudgingly came and went like a haunting spirit that refuses to die. That dark day marks the Palestinian Nakba (catastrophe), when highly-trained and lucratively-financed Zionist terrorist gangs managed to violently drive away the majority of the Palestinian People from their ancestral homes and cultivated lands and establish their sectarian “Jewish” state where Jews are supreme by law as well as by practice, while Christians and Muslims are second class unwanted gentile subjects.

        The establishment of Israel was the last sorry episode of the last century of Western colonialism which resulted in the establishment of the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. And while the US, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa have managed to stamp out legal discrimination against the endogenous people, enacted civil rights laws, repudiated and repealed segregation; slavery and apartheid laws, the recalcitrant Apartheid Jewish state insists on being the appendix of history and refuses to recognize the inalienable rights of the original inhabitants of Occupied Palestine—the Palestinian people.

        Israel refuses to acknowledge the right of return of the Palestinian refugees to their homes and lands from which Israel drove them out by force, refuses to acknowledge that Jerusalem belongs to all faiths and not only to the Jewish faith, refuses to pay reparations to the Palestinian people for their multigenerational loss of life, property and liberty at the industrially-efficient brutal hands of the successive Jewish governments, refuses to treat the Palestinians living under its repressive military occupation like fellow humans, and so on and so forth.

        Israel’s racist and oppressive treatment of the Christian and Muslim Palestinians was unambiguously condemned by respected and credible world leaders like Nelson Mandela, Bishop Desmond Tito, and President Jimmy Carter. Zionist organizations in America, such as the ADL—not surprisingly dubbed as the Apartheid Defense League—which act as mouthpieces for the Apartheid Jewish state, maliciously smeared Mandela, Tito and Carter as alleged “anti-Semites!”

        When the Zionists forced the Palestinians en masse to flea in horror their homes in Haifa, Jaffa, Acre and other parts of Occupied Palestine, they left with only their clothes, carrying their young, disabled and elderly, marching on foot for miles and miles under the scorching sun to reach safety. The Palestinians fled after becoming aware of the massacres recently committed by the Zionist terrorist gangs in Qibya, Dir Yassin and other places, in a diabolical Zionist plan effort to instill panic in the minds and hearts to the Palestinians. The Zionist’s violent plot worked and the majority of Palestinians were transformed from comfortable landowners to penniless refugees living in squalid refugee camps—many till today! Most Palestinian refugees still carry with them the keys to their homes which they locked before they fled thinking that they were leaving for a short period of time till the Zionist nightmare is supposedly dealt with by the incompetent and quisling so-called Arab “leaders.”

        The Zionists wishfully thought that the Palestinians will eventually forget Palestine. They were dead wrong because as the years go by, the Palestinians and their friends worldwide continue to intensify their efforts to remind the world of the biblically-proportioned injustice that Zionists inflicted and continue to inflict on the Palestinian people. The boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) solidarity movement supporting the Palestinians continues to crescendo and its only a matter of time before it reaches the critical mass which will usher the pivotal moment in history where Israel has to face the inevitable question of whether to be known as the world’s (including the USA-its present placental sponsor) pariah or learn from the South African experience, treat all people of all faiths equally, and legislate Zionism out of existence and into the trash bin of history just as Nazism and Apartheid were. The sooner Israel takes this path, the more leverage it will have and less blood will be shed. If it takes Israel an inordinately-long time to reach this critical and inevitable historical juncture, more and more blood will be shed and the Jewish population in Occupied Palestine may not be able to sustain itself there in the future. Time is a very critical factor!

        On May 15^th, at such times of hyper-euphemism, Israel will be celebrating its so-called “Independence.” A cruel circus atmosphere is already being orchestrated by the Israelis and their Zionists Amen Corner in the United States. Spineless American politicians like philandering San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsome and flippantly warmongering President Bush will be at hand to witness the cruel cirrus of the Palestinian Nakba marketed as Israeli “Independence.” Meanwhile, the Palestinians will reminisce, continue to lick their historically-fresh wounds, work tirelessly to unite and gather enough economic and political influence to convince the world—especially the American People—that Israel is a racist segregationist Apartheid country.

        Time is on the Palestinian side.

        The writer is an American attorney of Palestinian descent and is the publisher of The Independent Monitor, the national newspaper of Arab Americans.

By: Michael Gillespie

        The American people want to trust their leaders.  Most Americans want desperately to believe in the American Dream, in the principles and values at the heart of that dream, in the essential goodness and decency of their nation.  The problem is that their leaders have so routinely deceived them, so flagrantly betrayed their trust, manipulated their hopes, desires, and fears so frequently and for such ignoble purposes, that the very concept of truth has lost its purchase in American life.  Big Media, Big Business, and Big Politics have turned professional journalism and American public discourse into a theater of the absurd, a house of mirrors, an echo-chamber designed to perpetuate corruption that serves special interests and the ruling class.  The goal seems to be the creation of a public so crass it will accept any crime, any atrocity, even penury and enslavement. 

        Let’s look at the evidence.  Let’s examine one iconic lie in the ever-lengthening litany of lies that so regularly come rolling off the tongues of America’s political leaders.      

        “Wage and price controls have failed since the time of Diocletian.  I ought to know.  I’m the only one here old enough to remember that,” Ronald Reagan famously quipped during a Republican debate in 1980 while he was running for president. 

        The remark ranks among the grossest misrepresentations of historical fact in modern American political discourse.  It flies in the face of America’s greatest economic and military accomplishments.  Yet today Big Media commentators across the political spectrum still recall the quotation to burnish the widely popular president’s reputation as “the Great Communicator,” and, more specifically, to illustrate the then-69-year-old former actor’s deft use of humor to deflect questions and concern about his age.

        Reagan’s joke was carefully calculated to deceive as well as to disarm.  In addition to neutralizing fears that he was too old to be president, his comment promoted the political agenda of the Big Business interests he served so well.  Less than a month from his 70th birthday when he was inaugurated, Reagan was America’s oldest president.  Though he wasn’t old enough to remember Diocletian’s reign, Reagan was in his 30s during World War II when Franklin Delano Roosevelt, America’s 32nd President, instituted remarkably successful wage and price controls, essential elements of a larger economic plan that was astonishingly successful.

        Make no mistake:  It was the vast agricultural, manufacturing, and industrial capacity of the United States of America, efficiently and effectively organized, regulated, and expanded by the Roosevelt administration, that made possible the crushing defeat of the Axis powers in 45 months, less than four years from the day America entered the war.

        FDR had resurrected the Advisory Commission to the World War I Council on National Defense in May of 1940 and added price stabilization and consumer protection divisions.  He merged them, creating the Office of Price Administration and Civilian Supply (OPACS) within the Office for Emergency Management, by Executive Order (E.O.) 8734 on April 11, 1941.  With E.O. 8875 he established the Office of Price Administration (OPA) within the Office for Emergency Management (OEM) on August 28, 1941.  The Emergency Price Control Act of January 30, 1942 made OPA an independent agency with the power to place ceilings on all prices except agricultural commodities and to ration scarce supplies of other items, including tires, automobiles, shoes, nylon, sugar, gasoline, fuel oil, coffee, meats and processed foods.  Eventually the OPA froze almost 90 percent of retail food prices.  OPA also established rent controls and set maximum rents for most homes, apartments, rooming house and hotel rooms.

        Roosevelt established the War Production Board (WPB) by E.O. 9024 on January 16, 1942, on January 24, with E.O. 9040 gave it supreme authority over procurement of materials and industrial production.

        “The WPB’s chair, Donald Nelson, received sweeping powers over the economic life of the nation – now on an official war footing – to convert and expand the peacetime economy to maximum wartime production.” (S. Shimizu in The American Economy: A Historical Encyclopedia, Vol. 1)

        “The national WPB’s primary task was converting civilian industry to war production. The board assigned priorities and allocated scarce materials such as steel, aluminum, and rubber, prohibited nonessential industrial activities such as producing nylons and refrigerators, controlled wages and prices, and mobilized the people,” encouraging scrap drives and more than 20 million victory gardens that produced 9 to 10 million tons of fresh fruits and vegetables, an amount equal to commercial fresh vegetable production figures.

         “The WPB and the nation’s factories affected a great turnaround to war production. The construction of military aircraft that totaled six thousand in 1940 jumped to eighty-five thousand in 1943. Factories that had manufactured silk ribbons produced parachutes, automobile factories built tanks, typewriter companies converted to machine guns, undergarment manufacturers sewed mosquito netting, and a roller coaster manufacturer converted to the production of bomber repair platforms. Factories were expanded and new ones built. … The WPB ensured that each factory received materials it needed to operate, in order to produce the most war goods in the shortest time.”  (Oklahoma Historical Society, Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture)

        Rationing, wage and price controls, the expansion of the nation’s manufacturing base, and full employment quickly became defining features of American life during World War II.  To wake millions of workers so they could get to their jobs in the nation’s bustling offices, factories, and shipyards on time, the WPB authorized the production of alarm clocks.  No other wartime product illustrates the level of the Roosevelt administration’s well-nigh total regulation and control of the nation’s economic activity as effectively as does the War Alarm. 

        Several well-established clock manufacturers produced War Alarm clocks, and some companies produced more than one model.  Some were spring-driven wind-up clocks, while other more expensive models were electrically powered, more reliable, more accurate, and quieter in operation, but all War Alarms all share some unusual and distinctive characteristics.  All War Alarm clocks have the identifying words “War Alarm” on the dial in lieu of a manufacturer’s brand name or trademark.  WPB policy prevented manufacturers from putting a company brand name or trademark on War Alarm clocks but allowed the city, state, and country of origin, in small print.  Every War Alarm carries on its back a permanent OPA mark stamped or molded into the fiber, metal, or plastic case.  The OPA mark indicates the maximum allowed retail price for the model, “EX. TAX” (excluding tax), as set by order of the federal government. 

        WPB officials strictly regulated the production of War Alarms.  WPB decided the number of units each manufacturer was permitted to produce as well as the number of pounds of brass allowed per 1000 clocks.  The WPB quite literally dictated what companies and corporations would produce, how much they would produce, when and how they would produce it, and at what prices they might sell their products.  The end result of all this government regulation and control of the nation’s business and manufacturing sector – this massive government interference in the free market – was the greatest economic and military victory in the history of our world.  War Alarm clocks, now prized historical artifacts, provide physical evidence – proof – that Reagan’s assertions that wage and price controls never worked were patently false, hyperbolic partisan political propaganda delivered with seeming-sincere charm and wit.

        One might wonder, Did Reagan sleep through WWII?  He didn’t, but he might as well have.

        “By the time Kings Row was released in 1942, Reagan was in the Army.  He had joined the cavalry reserve in 1937 because he liked to ride horses and was called to duty in April 1942.  But Reagan’s nearsightedness disqualified him from combat duty.  He was assigned to the First Motion Picture Unit of the Army Air Corps, which had taken over the Hal Roach studios in Culver City a few miles from Reagan’s home.  Reagan spent the war at Fort Roach, as its inhabitants called it, making training films and appearing in a 1943 Irving Berlin musical, This Is the Army.  He was discharged on Dec. 9, 1945, with the rank of captain,” wrote Washington Post staff writer Lou Cannon in a June 6, 2004 article titled “Actor, Governor, President, Icon”.           

        The 40th president and the 33rd governor of California, Reagan was the quintessential company man.  America’s biggest defense contractor employed the former radio sportscaster and actor, trained him to promote and defend its political agenda, groomed him for leadership, and put him before his largest audiences.  During the 1950s, Reagan hosted one of television’s most popular programs, General Electric Theater.  According to Cannon, the relationship with the defense contractor shaped the corporate spokesman’s political perspective and career.

        “Reagan’s contract with General Electric, initially for $125,000 a year and soon rose to $150,000, introduced him to a new generation of young people, many of whom would later vote for him.  It also provided an unusual political apprenticeship.  The contract required Reagan to spend 10 weeks a year touring GE plants, giving as many as 14 speeches a day.  ‘We drove him to the limit,’ said Edward Langley, then a GE public relations man. ‘We saturated him in Middle America.’  Out of this saturation came the polished and patriotic speech that Reagan delivered for Goldwater in 1964, two years after his GE contract ended,” wrote Cannon.

        In many ways, Reagan was perfect for the part GE had in mind for him.  His most memorable role in movies was as “the Gipper” in Knute Rockne, All American, a 1940 biographical film about the Notre Dame Football coach.  Reagan was cast as George ‘the Gipper’ Gipp, an outstanding player who died prematurely from a strep infection.  Lines attributed to Coach Rockne, a trusted figure, immortalized Gipp: “The last thing George said to me, ‘Rock,’ he said, ‘sometime when the team is up against it and the breaks are beating the boys, tell them to go out there with all they’ve got and win just one for the Gipper.’”  Reagan later used the phrase “Win one for the Gipper” as a political slogan and was often referred to as “the Gipper”.  In 1988 at the Republican National Convention Reagan publicly told his Vice President George H. W. Bush, who was running for president, “George, go out there and win one for the Gipper.”  At the 2004 convention shortly after Reagan’s death, then-President George W. Bush appealed to Regan’s memory during his acceptance speech with the remark, “We can now truly win one for the Gipper.”  Such references to the Gipper illustrate the power of entertainment media to create cultural iconography that can be put to partisan political use. 

        GE, the second-largest company in the world, “is a multinational conglomerate headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut.  Its New York main offices are located at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in Rockefeller Center, known as the GE Building for the prominent GE logo on the roof.  NBC’s headquarters and main studios are also located in the building. Through its RCA subsidiary, it has been associated with the Center since its construction in the 1930s.” (Wikipedia)  GE, which has long understood the political utility and value of Big Media in terms of what is euphemistically referred to as “perception management,” purchased the NBC television network in 1986 and 80 percent of Universal Pictures in 2004.

        WWII established our nation as a superpower and created the conditions for an American economic renaissance unlike any the world had ever seen.  Why then does Big Business desperately seek to misinform Americans about Roosevelt’s wartime economic policies?  Our corporate overlords, America’s ruling class, believe with John Jay that ‘Those who own the country ought to govern it.’  They fear and loathe nothing so much as a government of, by, and for the people willing and able to regulate Big Business and interfere with the unbridled and ruthless pursuit of profit.  That is why Ronald Reagan, a spokesman America’s biggest business, ignored the central role that massive and systematic government regulation of economic activity played in the Roosevelt administration’s successful effort to mobilize the nation in support of the U.S. military’s greatest triumph.  That is why Big Business has spared no expense in its ceaseless campaign to make a civic religion of “the free market.”  That is why Big Media product tends to glorify commercialism and greed while demonizing, denigrating, or simply disappearing Roosevelt and the wartime economic policies that were instrumental in America’s greatest economic and military accomplishments, while lionizing Reagan and presenting “Reaganomics” as a political panacea and an economic gospel to be venerated, worshiped.

        Following the near collapse of a systematically mismanaged, severely weakened, structurally unsound, and still teetering economy – a painful and costly economic debacle the bill for which their leaders sent to taxpayers and future generations – Americans are looking for and deserve truthful answers from responsible and capable leaders.  They understand that America is in decline, and they are worried about the future as never before.  They are disappointed, frustrated, angry, and unlikely to buy more snake oil.

End of Part 1

Next month, The Road to Recovery: Heeding Eisenhower’s Warning

By FRANK SCOTT

This is written before the November elections but it’s easy to predict their outcome; the minority owners of the USA will win. Finance capital, corporate wealth and Israel will still dominate America and people will still live under a government purchased by that minority. This is a democratic system the way terminal cancer is a healthy organism. In fact, our social disease – capitalism – is a terminal condition.
The 20th century crisis called the Great Depression was survived by putting the economic cancer in remission with a primitive form of social democracy. It minimized the worst outrages of private fundamentalism with public spending which lightened burdens on at least some of the people. Its real purpose was to insure that minority wealth remain in control. Better informed capitalists understood that a complete breakdown might bring revolution and some kind of economic palliative was needed. Enter the “New Deal” which made it possible for taxpayers to subsidize the socially needed stimulants that profit seeking private capital would not finance. This introduced the novel idea of government spending to prop up the private economy with public money, as now. The point then and now was to protect the dominance of private capital by sanitizing the worst aspects of its fundamentalist fanaticism while placing the cost of social needs on the backs of the general public.
The protections for the corporate rich have grown even worse since then and we now have “recession” with greater inequality in wealth than during that “depression”. The disease which was in remission for a generation has returned to terminal condition and now threatens far more than the American people. In pandemic global form it menaces the entire planet. The human and ecological destruction caused by manic pursuit of private profit at public expense has never been more obvious even with consciousness control attempting to hide its reality.
Whether labeled a military industrial complex , climate change , media mind abuse, or corrupt government , the system rewarding minorities that live comfortably while much of humanity goes hungry, is murdered in wars and lives in debt, poverty or colonized misery is no longer tolerable . This election will hardly bring change in that global condition nor even advance democracy in the USA, save in isolated cases. But democracy means more than periodically marching to the polls and selecting from a pre-chosen group of professional employees of the ruling minority. It should involve citizens in the everyday life of the national community but that’s something we have only entertained in theory. Elections like the present fiasco make it more urgent we put that theory into practice.
This campaign of political pornography had more billions spent than ever before and candidates with no message but that their opponents were criminals, bigots, Nazis or psychopaths, while they were sent to liberate us from such fiends. One wing of the ruling party claimed the other was using foreign millions to elect its slate of monsters without mentioning the American billions being spent on the whole sordid process. And while screeching about foreign influence on American politics it said nothing about Israeli control exercised over national government and major media, since any mention of this can mean instant unemployment or a new career of public appearances to apologize for daring to say what many people think. The result of this hypocrisy and treachery is that the people lose and the disease gets worse.
In order to move from a terminal condition and go beyond remission to a healthy democracy we have to stop depending on representatives who not only carry the illness but spread its malignancy. Not an easy task in a society partitioned into competing individuals with occasional minority group cohesion, but powerless when up against the minority with trillions of dollars and massive weaponry at its disposal. Not easy, but hardly impossible and given the worsening conditions we experience, absolutely necessary. Moving from identifying simply as self or member of a minority to an identity as part of an American majority is absolutely necessary.
Groups working for peace whether in the Middle East or in local communities need to come together since none will succeed without unity among all who want a peaceful and socially just world. Those who demand government insured health care need to join with all workers, not just minorities, and form coalitions to bring a shorter work week which will enable small businesses to hire more employees without fear of horrendous health care expense. We need to raise the minimum wage for all and create a maximum wage as well and an economic stimulus that devotes hundreds of billions to public job creation rather than to private financial forces responsible for the present near collapse. Public banks are an obvious way to help finance what society really needs rather than continuing the obsessive and masturbatory economic focus on our nation’s private parts.
And foreign policy needs to be taken away from rich minorities operating for war profits and to benefit a foreign nation at the cost of American tax payers manipulated into supporting success for others which guarantees their own failure. The control of private capital over public minds must be fought and the propaganda countered with unbiased and respectful exchange of information that promotes understanding, unity and peace. That is in complete opposition to the competitive, disrespectful and bigoted model we live under which defies logic by calling itself democratic freedom in action.
The terminal system is economic but the potential victim is life itself and the cure for the disease is democracy, in politics, economics and morality. That is the work of the present in order to create a future. This election only makes it more imperative that we do that work.

BY Tammy Obeidallah

        It is common knowledge that many so-called Christians throw unconditional, unyielding support behind the Jewish state. Known as Christian Zionists, or more recently “Israel-firsters”—indicating their degree of loyalty over and above the interests of their own country—it is estimated they are over 50 million strong in the United States alone. By stripping biblical passages out of their proper context and ignoring historical perspective, Christian Zionist leaders have convinced the masses that Jesus Christ will return when all Jews are gathered in Palestine, even if it means the systemic destruction of the Palestinian people.

        Questions remain how such a blatantly un-biblical doctrine hijacked an entire segment of the Christian community; moreover, how the doctrine came to be so widely accepted not only in churches but in the halls of political power.

        It has been argued that Christian Zionism originated as a spin-off of secular Zionism; that Christians were co-opted by political Zionists in order to gain support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Ironically, Palestine was sixth on the list for such a homeland at Theodor Herzl’s First Zionist Congress in 1897, behind locales including Argentina, Uganda and Turkey. It was in fact the Christian Zionists who were orchestrating the takeover of Palestine from the beginning.

        The Politics of Christian Zionism 1891-1948 by Paul C. Merkley provides startling evidence that the poisoned theology of Christian Zionism predates Herzl, long considered the father of Zionism. In fact, Herzl received a tremendous amount of support from William Hechler, the son of Anglican missionaries and author of an 1893 pamphlet entitled “The Restoration of the Jews to Palestine According to Prophecy.” It was Hechler who arranged meetings between Herzl and Kaiser Wilhelm II, promoting the Zionist ambition to usurp Palestine among world leaders.

        Early support for Zionism among United States policymakers was manifested through a handful of misguided religious nuts who manipulated leaders by flattering their sordid egotistical fantasies. According to Merkley, President Harry S. Truman compared himself to Cyrus, the Persian king who allowed Jews to return to Palestine in ancient times after the Babylonian captivity, although Zionist sympathies have run deep in America since its foundation.

        The Puritans drew a parallel between themselves and the Children of Israel, escaping religious persecution in Europe just as the ancient Hebrews were led out of Egypt. America was their “Promised Land,” making way for the doctrine of Manifest Destiny (that it was God’s divine will for the new country to stretch from sea to sea) that justified the abhorrent treatment of Native Americans. By the same token, Christian Zionism justifies the killing and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians to this day. Plymouth Brethren minister John Nelson Darby (1800-1882) popularized the doctrine under the name “dispensationalism,” which was further spread by the Scofield Reference Bible published in 1909. That edition contained copious footnotes instructing readers how to interpret Bible verses and prophecy centered around the re-establishment of Israel as a modern nation-state.

        Thus the Zionist heresy was mass marketed to a largely ignorant populace who are convinced they do not have enough sense to read the Bible for themselves. Today, support for Israel has gained momentum through apocalyptic preaching by televangelists who make large profits for supporting Israel. They have co-opted Christian laypeople into thinking they can bring about Christ’s return, ending suffering on earth.

        It would be scary enough if such ideas were confined to churches, but Zionist Christians have organized political lobbies such as Christians United for Israel (CUFI). Arguably, they have considerable influence over US foreign policy, particularly effective with neo-conservatives as witnessed during the George W. Bush administration. Numerous Christian groups encourage Jewish immigration to what is now called Israel through financial contributions while assisting ultra-orthodox Jewish groups to promote settlement expansion on Palestinian land.

        Not only do Zionists distort biblical history, they spread lies about more modern events as well. Proponents of Israel will often pander the tired Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini obfuscation in an attempt to connect all Palestinians to Adolph Hitler. Husseini was imposed upon the Palestinians in 1921 by the British Mandate’s first high commissioner, a British Jew named Herbert Samuel. Husseini was selected over the rival Nashashibi candidate and favored by the Zionist Commission. Husseini allied with Hitler to oppose the British, falling into the trap as so many others who have believed “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

        In this manner Christian Zionists have the ability to reach outside their own cult and snag more secular (although nonetheless misguided) individuals by linking Arabs—particularly exploiting the blood connection between Husseini and late President Yasser Arafat—with the epitome of “anti-Semitic” evil. These same “Christians” are poised to use the anniversary of the September 11 tragedy to accuse Muslims of celebrating the attacks. In reality, the end of Ramadan, Eid Al-Fitr, coincides with that date this year. Meanwhile, Florida pastor Terry Jones, leader of the innocuous-sounding Dove Outreach Center, is encouraging Christians to burn a Qur’an on September 11.

        Although emboldened by all the media attention, proponents of these views are fortunately far from mainstream Christianity. The problem is that Christians who do take seriously Christ’s message of love are reluctant to gently—or not so gently—correct those hate-mongers masquerading as Christians. We must be willing to take back our faith by outspokenly refuting the heresy of Christian Zionism and its hateful manifestations both at home and abroad.

BY SAMI BISHARA MASHNEY
Editor-in-Chief, Anaheim, CA
 
  When I immigrated to the United States at age 23, I arrived in Jacksonville, Florida, in the height of the Iranian hostage crises when Americans were being held in Tehran in the aftermath of the Iranian overthrow of the Shah and the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
 I have to admit that I was quickly unnerved by the anti-Iranian-and-Muslim frenzy, maliciously whipped by the so-called “mainstream” media whose one of its major objectives is to create animosity and hostility between the American People, and the various peoples of the Middle East—Israel, of course, the “Chosen” State, is exempted as usual.
 Although I’m neither Iranian nor Muslim, as a Palestinian Arab recent immigrant, I looked Middle Eastern enough to be concerned with the high-pitched xenophobia, whose flames were fanned every 15 minutes with an unstoppable barrage of more and more “Breaking News,” etc.
 Being naive and fresh of the boat, I thought then that if I pretended to be Greek, I would face less hostility from an average uninformed Jacksonville redneck, who, after consuming several Budweisers, engages me in an unsolicited and heated political debate at the local discotheque.
 So my name became Sam Mashnikopolous who just emigrated from Greece. Of course, I was secretly loathing the likelihood that some random Greekophile would checkmate me by engaging me in a spontaneous Greek conversation, because, Greek, for lack of a better term, was still Greek to me.
 A few months went by and I regained my self-assurance, dropped the Greek act, and started and continue to audaciously refer to myself as an Arab American.
 To me, being an Arab is congruous with being an American. Both characteristics are compatible without any contradiction or dual loyalty problems, in the same manner as being Italian, Irish, Russian, are compatible with also being an American. As a matter of fact, our law allows naturalized Americans to have dual nationality.
Throughout my life in the USA, I infrequently encountered fellow Arab Americans who vehemently deny their Arab heritage. Some do so on myopic religious grounds, some on mindless regional ones, and some out of shear and unadulterated misguidance.
 When I founded the Network of Arab American Professionals of Orange County (NAAP-OC), I had to do a lot of convincing to persuade a fellow Arab American professional of Arabic Christian extraction that he can be a Christian, an Egyptian, a Lebanese, an Iraqi, an Arab, and an American, all at the same time since none of these designations are mutually exclusive to each other.
 I always use myself as a textbook example of someone who is a Palestinian, an Arab, a lapsed Catholic Christian, an American, and a human citizen of Earth.
While I’m very proud of choosing to be an American,   I am also equally proud of being Palestinian and Arab. When I look around me and see successful immigrant Americans, I can’t help but notice that no community reached its maximum potential by denying its very own existence!
 I once dealt with a government agent investigating my Lebanese Christian client for alleged membership of Hezbollah, the Lebanese Muslim Party of God. When I attempted to explain to the agent that my Christian client cannot be a member of an Islamic party, he laughed at me and said, “Christian, Muslim, Shiite, Sunni, all Arabs are the same!” The funny thing is that my client had no affiliation or affinity whatsoever to Hezbollah and was someone who would have considered Hezbollah a rival!
 So, irrespective of how we feel about our religious and regional differences, when we live in America, we are all perceived as “Arabs,” whether we like or not. So, we might as well positively assert our Arabness as a rallying point instead of apologizing for it and hiding it in the dark ethnic closet.
 This brings me to Allan Mansoor, Mayor of Costa Mesa, CA and candidate for the 68th Assembly District of California. Mansoor descends from an Arab father and a Swedish mother.
Mansoor wrote on his blog: “My father, though born in Egypt and with an Arabic name, was greatly influenced by European culture.” “I am taking exception to being classified as ‘one of three Arab-American candidates in city elections.’”
 I lived in Egypt five years when I went to Pharmacy School at Cairo University. There, I met all sorts of Egyptian People whom I liked and quickly became accustomed to. As an inexperienced 16 year old coming from sleepy Ramallah, I was quickly befriended by many Egyptian friends who quickly made it clear to me that they are Coptic Christians. I later learned that my Christian middle (father’s) name “Bishara” announced my Christianity to them and that’s why they befriended me!
 I got to know these friends very well and they were all proud to be Egyptians, Arabs and Coptic Christians. They did not consider being Christian inimical to being an Arab.
Well, Allan Mansoor, excuse me but I too take exception to your taking a weenie exception to being called an ‘Arab’ American. I am giving my vote to Phu Nguyen, a candidate who is not afraid to refer to himself as a “Vietnamese” American.
 As we say in Arabic, he who forgets his origin has no origin. That is the case of Allan Mansoor, who, in pursuit of success and influence, made the conscious decision to deny his origin, just like Peter and Judas denied Christ. Peter repented and went to heaven. Will Mansoor repent and stop denying his Arabic heritage?!

By: Sami Bishara Mashney

Editor-in-chief

For almost three long years now, I have been publishing The Independent Monitor newspaper. The main purpose of publishing the newspaper is to help our besieged Arab Americans community bridge the chronic and widening gap of information between us and those who do not wish us well and want us to continue to be politically and economically powerless. Read the full story

By Sami Bishara Mashney, Chief Editor

Two and a half years ago, when I embarked on publishing The Independent Monitor, my decision was driven by my passionate instinct that Arab-Americans yearned for a strong and credible newspaper that eloquently articulates their news and views.

When I announced my decision, some friends and associates opined that it’s impossible to continuously sustain the publishing of an Arab-American national newspaper, without having to rely on strings-attached corrupting support. Being one who never takes no for answer, I determined at that point that I will see to it that this publishing project will head in the direction of successful fruition.

Today, we still have not reached our fullest potential but we have grown and made great strides. Starting with this August 2009 issue, our newspaper will have 36 pages and will be distributed in 19 states- making it the closest any Arab-American newspaper came to truly be the national newspaper of Arab-Americans. Our determination to strengthen and continuously improve The Independent Monitor is unshakable and incrementally grows with our publication of every new issue.

Our success in transforming our determination to publish into a proven ability to Read the full story

Will You Help Me?

By Sami Bishara Mashney, Chief Editor

We, the living and conscious members of the human race, can discern that we are being centrifugally sucked into the ever-growing cyclonic vortex of the black hole of human discovery and development of information, the most elemental building block of power. Read the full story

By Sami Bishara Mashney

Editor-in-Chief

Our nation and its capital city are abuzz with unprecedented excitement, expectation, and anxiety. With a new Democratic administration coming to power, worsening economic and environmental crises, and the abject failure of our foreign policy, as evidenced by failed unnecessary wars and occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the world’s longest running and most destabilizing refugee crisis still festering in the illegally-occupied Palestine and neighboring countries, and self-inflicted crises in relations with Iran and Russia, some very big changes are coming—soon. You can have a voice and a role in those changes. You can be an agent of change, if you will. Read the full story

Dear beloved supporters and readers,

It was almost like a Disney or Hollywood turbulent geographical turmoil that we were slowly but surely sucked into-like an operational tornado-when we moved our offices to our new location about three months ago. Predictably, the monthly production of The Independent Monitor lagged for three issues, July, August and September of 2008. Read the full story