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chronologically . . .
Senior
Barak Hussein
Obama
(Senior) was
born in Nyangoma-Kogello, Siaya
District, Kenya in 1936 (or 1934). He was a member of the Luo
tribe and grew up in the sleepy village of Alego-Kogello.
Update: Documents in
Senior's Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) say Senior was born in 1934.
The myth, as written by Obama in "Dreams...," is that Senior was a goat herder.
Senior may have herded some goats that were part of Grandfather's extensive livestock collection, but
Senior spent his time at school
where he was actually an extremely bright student and sufficiently
educated to go on to obtain degrees from the University of Hawaii and
Harvard.
In 1955, at 18 years of age,
Senior
married a girl called Kezia from the
local village. It was Kezia who remained his one true love
and to whom he
always returned.
Senior seems to have inherited his
father’s attitudes towards the colonial power. He was also arrested, for
attending a meeting in Nairobi of the Kenya African National Union (KANU), the
organization spearheading the independence movement. Sarah told Obama that
his father, unlike her husband, had been held only for a short time in the white
man’s prison: "Because he was not a leader in KANU, Senior was released
after a few days."
Shortly after his arrest, in 1958, Obama Senior was
awarded
an American sponsored scholarship in economics to the University of
Hawaii
at Manoa. He was selected by a former Kenyan cabinet minister, the late Tom Mboya, who was earmarked as
the successor to Jomo Kenyatta,
Kenya's first prime minister and leader of the terrorist
Mau Mau.
The presumption was that Senior would return to Africa
and use his "Western-honed skills in a new Kenya."
Chief Engineer found this 1960
"Time"
article about Tom Mboya. On page 8 it mentions the "Jackie
Robinson -- Harry Belafonte Fund" which Susan Mboya oversees and which
has already been used to send 81 Kenyans to the U.S. to be educated.
While Mboya has refused to release her father’s papers, some of them
may be among the personal papers and correspondence Mboya (father) had
with students who participated in the airlift. Those papers are at
Stanford and personal correspondence is listed as one of the items in
the holdings.
Of interest in the
"Time" article, it mentions Pam Odede was sent to Ohio as one of the
students. Pam would later become Mboya’s wife and it is no
coincidence that their daughter Susan now lives in Ohio.
In June, 1959, at the age of 23, Senior became the first African student enrolled at the
University of Hawaii at Manoa.
Obama Sr. showed up in Hawaii
under his own steam, he wasn't part of the
first
airlift of students. And HIS father, Hussein Onyango Obama, was
cook to Gloria and Gordon Hagberg (second and third right respectively
in this photo),
shown with Tom Mboya (fourth right
in same photo)
who personally selected Obama Sr. to receive the scholarship to Univ. of
Hawaii.
Kezia, who is pregnant,
remained in Kenya.
Senior would have two more children with Kezia in subsequent years.
Eventually,
Senior will have three wives and one mistress. With them, he
will have seven children, although there are some reports of an eighth.
Early Education
Senior was
described as highly intelligent and quick to learn, but also very
mischievous. After Senior’s first day at the Mission school in the
village, he told Grandfather that he did not want to attend school
because he already knew everything that was being taught, and the
teacher was a woman. Grandfather shared this contempt for women,
so Senior was sent to a school 6 miles away where the teacher was a man.
Only after this male teacher beat him repeatedly did Senior learn to
accept a woman teacher. Senior was often a truant, not attending
school for weeks on end, but mastering the entire subject matter just
before the final exams and coming in first in the class.
Senior
had taken the entrance examination for the Maseno Mission School, an
elite college preparatory institution which very few Africans were
allowed to attend. He was admitted to this school and seemed to
have a great future ahead of him, but he soon encountered disciplinary
problems. He insisted on violating the rules by bringing girls
into his dormitory. He and his friends stole chickens and yams
from nearby farms because the dormitory food was not to their liking.
At first the teachers were indulgent because Senior was such a good
student, but he was caught one too many times and was expelled.
When he returned home he was severely beaten by Grandfather.
Senior’s life began to change when he encountered two American women
missionary teachers. They helped him to sign up for a
correspondence course leading to a secondary school certificate.
He took the equivalency test at the US Embassy, and passed. He
then applied to numerous universities in the United States, and in 1958,
with the help of Tom Mboya, won a scholarship at the University of
Hawaii.
More on Senior's time as a student at Maseno School
here.
The Airlift
"When Senior arrived in Hawaii
in June 1959, Kenya's future president, Jomo Kenyatta was in jail in Kenya," as
reported by a story done in Hawaiian paper after he arrived:
"The Washington Post reported that when Barack Obama, Sr. first
arrived in Hawaii he was interviewed by the Hawaiian Press, the reporter
Hirozawa relays Obama’s comments, "he would study business
administration and wanted to return to Kenya to help with its transition
from tribal customs to a modern economy."
He was concerned, he
said, about his generation’s disorientation as Kenyans rejected old ways
yet struggled with "westernization," the date of the story was June,
1959.
The whole story is a lie right from word one of daddy
arrived courtesy of an airlift. He didn’t even arrive with the
other students, he arrived months before them, so the question becomes
why?
All of this can be found at the following
link aside from
speculation of why. Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier, and
Jackie Robinson appeal letter, Aug. 24, 1959, box 3, Robinson Papers;
Smith, "East African Airlifts of 1959, 1960, and 1961," 25–43.
Barack Obama wrote that his father "had been selected by Kenyan leaders
and American sponsors to attend a university in the United States," but
a list of the students who landed in New York on September 9, 1959, does
not contain the name of the elder Obama. Tom Shachtman, working in
the African-American Students Foundation (AASF) papers for a book on the
airlifts, has found that the elder Obama came in 1959 with support from
the AASF but appears to have been routed a different way as he made his
way to the University of Hawaii.
Barack Obama, Dreams from My
Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (New York, 1995), 9; "Eighty-One
Kenya Airlift Students Arrived New York Sept. 9th 1959," box 3, Robinson
Papers; Tom Shachtman telephone interview by James H. Meriwether, Aug.
19, 2008, notes (confirmed via e-mail by Shachtman) (in James H.
Meriwether’s possession).
Senior Arrives In Hawaii
This photo,
published in a Honolulu newspaper in 1959 shows [Ann's father --
hands in pockets] Stanley Dunham escorted by uniformed U.S. Navy
personnel, greeting Barack Obama Sr., as he arrived in Hawaii from
Kenya."
In the photo, Dunham stands next to Obama smiling.
National-security guru Angelo Codevilla contends that the CIA might well
have assigned Dunham to keep an eye on Obama, an unwitting pawn in the
agency’s mission to woo the emerging African elite.
If Codevilla
is right, then
Sally Jacobs’ new book is close to all wrong. In her account,
Obama arrives, alone and friendless in Hawaii, not surrounded by 20
well-wishers, chief among them a future father-in-law who was not yet
supposed to be there.
If the date of the photo can be verified as
1959, Codevilla is likely right, and the mystery deepens.
Jackie Robinson
"[Tom Schachtman] has found that the elder Obama
came in 1959 with support from the AASF but appears to have been routed
a different way as he made his way to the University of Hawaii."
From Tom Schachtman’s book, Airlift:
"As far as can be determined
from incomplete records, Mrs. Roberts and Miss Mooney paid his fare to
Hawaii and provided a partial scholarship.
Mboya, while unable to
transport the twenty-three-year-old, did put him on the AASF list to
receive one of the handful of scholarships contributed by the former
baseball star Jackie Robinson, which the Scheinman foundation was
administering, and encouraged him to look to the AASF for further help
if needed, which he later did. "
From LLI (now ProLiteracy.Org):
With a letter of recommendation provided by Mooney and initial
financial support from Laubach Literacy International 5, Obama’s
application to study economics at the University of Hawaii was accepted.
He was admitted on a scholarship and started his studies in the fall of
1959.
During his time in Hawaii and in need of support as a full
time student, Obama reached out to Laubach Literacy International for
additional financial assistance. In the spirit of the organizational
belief that it could help "build tomorrow’s teams in centers and abroad"
the organization awarded Obama a Fund Scholarship to support to his
United States studies.
The record of this funding was noted in
the organization’s 1961 Annual Report: "Barack Obama, from Kenya, is in
an undergraduate program at the University of Hawaii. An honor
student, Barack may come later to Syracuse for literacy journalism."
Because of her deep belief in his skills and abilities, Mooney also
provided personal financial assistance to Obama to support his tenure at
the University of Hawaii.
The University Of
Hawaii
When Senior moved to Hawaii in June
of 1959, it has been well documented that he originally lived in a room
at the Atherton Y.M.C.A., not far from campus. He later moved to a small, single story
wooden home located at 625 11th Ave., located in the St. Louis Heights
area. Senior remained at 625 11th Ave. until he left Hawaii on
June 22,1962 after graduation.
Senior quickly
adapted to the rhythms of student life. One of his frequent
hangouts was the snack bar in an old Army-barracks-style building near
his business classes. It was there that he met the Abercrombie
brothers, first Neil and then Hal, who had escaped the darkness of
Buffalo to attend graduate school in Honolulu, and their friends Peter
Gilpin, Chet Gorman and Pake Zane.
They were intellectuals,
experimenters, outsiders, somewhere between beatniks and hippies, and
they loved to talk and drink coffee and beer. They were immediately
taken by the one and only African student in their midst. "He was
very black, probably the blackest person I've ever met," recalled Zane,
a Chinese-Hawaiian, who now runs an antiques shop a few miles from the
university.
"Handsome in his own way," Zane said. "But the
most impressive thing was his voice. His voice and his inflection
-- he had this Oxford accent. You heard a little Kenyan English,
but more this British accent with this really deep, mellow voice that
just resounded. If he said something in the room and the room was
not real noisy, everybody stopped and turned around. I mean he
just had this wonderful, wonderful voice. He was charismatic as a
speaker."
It was not just the voice, said Neil Abercrombie, who
is now the congressman for Hawai'i's First Congressional District, but
Obama's entire persona -- the lanky 6-foot-1 frame, the horn-rimmed
glasses, the booming laugh, the pipe and an "incredibly vital
personality."
"He was brilliant and opinionated and avuncular and
opinionated. Always opinionated," Abercrombie said. "If you
didn't know him, you might be put off by him. He never hesitated
to tell you what he thought, whether the moment was politic or not.
Even to the point sometimes where he might seem a bit discourteous.
But his view was, well, if you're not smart enough to know what you're
talking about and you're talking about it, then you don't deserve much
in the way of mercy. He enjoyed the company of people who were
equally as opinionated as he was."
A "Transient Alien"
Senior was never at any time
an immigrant to the United States, by
intention or by law. He was a person of a "transient" nature to
the United States.
On the US State Department’s website on the
page entitled
Immigrants to the U.S. it clearly states:
Immigrating to the United States to live here
permanently is an important, and complex decision. This section
provides information to help foreign citizens desiring to
permanently immigrate to determine the visas, requirements, and
related materials they will need to apply to immigrate to the United
States.
Senior had no intention of residing in the
United States permanently, he was here in the early 1960’s because he
was hand picked by the founder of the socialist, Nairobi People's
Congress Party to come to the United States to study in preparation for
Kenya’s independence.
There are two types of student visas for
the United States, F-1 and M-1. Both are classified as
nonimmigrant visas by the U.S. State Department.
He Lived Like A hermit
Remembering my friend
Barak Obama
Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D.
met
Barak Obama for the first time in the courses in economics that we took
together at the University of Hawaii, in the early 1960’s. It was
not difficult to spot Barak, as he was a rare African student on the
Campus at the University of Hawaii, in Manoa Valley, Honolulu.
His easy-going manner, especially his infectious smile, and his proud
bearing struck me the most. He was always very inquisitive and
active in class discussions and after classes as well.
Although
he was not an East-West Center grantee, he was always with us,
especially at a Guest House owned and operated by the Asia foundation,
situated on the top of road leading to Manoa valley. Atherton
House was a place where most East-West Center grantees gathered for a
drink or a chat.
Taken in
Hawaii in 1961 at Arnie and Suzie Nachmanoff's house (Pearl Harbor):
from left to right: Kiri Tith (then Cambodia), Kitaichi (Japan),
Marda (USA), Ichiro (Japan), Suzie Nachmanoff (Host, USA), Dave
(USA), Kunio (Japan), Bob (USA), Rajapakse (Sri Lanka), Barak Obama
senior (Kenya), Anne (USA)
Barak and I were a part of a small group of foreign
students who participated in group discussions in various places
(Churches, sinagogues, junior colleges) around the campus and in town.
Those discussions centered on the role and impact of former Soviet Union
and China had in the developing countries. Barak, was more hopeful
than I was about the role and the influence of these two major Communist
countries in the developing nations in the world, because I had the
opportunity to study in Europe, and in France, especially, I was more
aware of the nature of communism than Barak was.
In these
debates, Barak was always very eloquent, and enthusiastic. We
often were not on the same side, when discussing Communism in the
developing countries. In our disagreement, Barak was always very
gracious and fair. He was a very good listener which helped a
great deal in making those discussions more constructive and pleasant.
This photo of Senior attending
a University of Hawaii party in the early 1960s show him enjoying the
company of fellow students without the presence of Dunham. Obama's
demeanor evident in the photographs suggests a familiarity with women
that would give no indication he was engaged to be married or already
wed.
Note: The woman sitting to Senior's left is named,
"Anne."
Running Around With
Several Girls
Sally Jacobs
says that in spring
1961, during Obama’s second year as an undergraduate at the University
of Hawaii, Sumi McCabe, the school’s foreign student adviser, raised the
first questions about Obama’s marital status.
In April 1961,
McCabe called immigration officials and expressed concern that Obama had
recently married a young woman named Stanley Ann Dunham -- who would
become president Obama’s mother. She was concerned because Obama
already had a wife back in Kenya, according to a memo written by Lyle H.
Dahling, an administrator in INS’s Honolulu office. What’s more,
McCabe told the INS office that Obama, "has been running around with
several girls since he first arrived here and last summer she cautioned
him about his playboy ways. [Obama] replied that he would 'try' to
stay away from the girls," according to the memo.
Neither McCabe
nor Dahling knew quite what to think about Obama’s womanizing.
Obama is a member of one of Kenya’s ethnic group’s known as the Luo,
among whom polygamy is common. Obama told McCabe that in Kenya,
"all that is necessary to be divorced is to tell the wife that she is
divorced . . . [Obama] claims to have been divorced from his wife in
Kenya in this method," according to the memo.
But Obama was not
divorced at all, according to his first wife, who was living in Kenya
with their two children at the time he married Dunham in February 1961.
Grace Kezia Obama, now 70, lives in Bracknell, England, and maintains
that she remained married to the elder Obama until his death in 1982.
INS officials considered whether Obama could be deported if he were
convicted of bigamy, but decided against it. Instead, they decided
that Obama "should be closely questioned before another extension is
granted -- and denial be considered."
Obama's Life Beard
I routinely refer to Hawaiian congress-critter
Neil Abercrombie as
Obama's "life beard," because Abercrombie is the only human being on the
planet to put Barack Hussein Obama Sr. and Stanley Ann Dunham in the
same room together. The first time that there was any
documentation of a relationship between the two was in 1971, when Senior
mysteriously
showed
up in Hawaii,
"to attend to family business."
Neil Abercrombie is currently
Governor-elect of Hawaii.
The Abercrombie
brothers, Neil and then Hal, had escaped the darkness of Buffalo, NY, to
attend graduate school in Honolulu. Along with their friends Peter
Gilpin, Chet Gorman, and Pake Zane, they
hung out at the "snack bar" in an old Army-barracks-style building
near their business classes. They fancied themselves as
intellectuals, experimenters, outsiders, somewhere between beatniks and
hippies.
It was there, that they met Barack Hussein Obama Sr.
The group was immediately taken by the one and only African student in
their midst. "He was very black, probably the blackest person I've
ever met," recalled Zane, a Chinese-Hawaiian, who now runs an antiques
shop a few miles from the university.
Members of the snack bar
crowd don't remember the Obama-Dunham relationship. In this
report, Hal Abercrombie said he never saw them together. Pake
Zane could not recall Ann from those days but had precise memories of
Senior.
However, Neil Abercrombie, the Democratic congressman
from Hawaii, was part of those regular gatherings and claims that Anna
was "the original feminist." Abercrombie says he remembered her
appearing at some of the weekend gatherings. Obama was such a
strong personality, he said, that he could see how the young woman was
awed and overwhelmed by him.
"She was a girl, and what I mean by
that is she was only 17 and 18, just out of high school. And he
brought her at different times. She mostly observed because she
was a kid. Everybody there was pretty high-powered grad-student
types."
Maybe everybody else, including his own brother, was
drunk all the time.
Neil Abercrombie has continually provided his
imprimatur to the "legend of Barack and Stanley." In July, 2009,
Abercrombie attempted to
sneak language into an innocuous resolution celebrating Hawaii’s
statehood anniversary that affirmed Hawaii was Barack Obama’s
birthplace. The measure was
blocked by Rep. Michele Bachmann on the floor of the House.
If he is elected governor of Hawaii, you can bet that all kinds of
documentation supporting Obama's fable-ific life story will be
discovered, and anything prejudicial to Obama's version of events or
eligibility to serve as Commander-in-Chief will disappear -- forever.
You know that the full weight of Obama's Chicago machine will be
pressed into the service of his campaign.
Senior's Politics
Senior was one of the featured
speakers at a Mother’s Peace Rally in Ala Moana Park on Sunday May
13, 1962.
International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) leaders,
including Jack Hall,
joined the march and rally.
Senior, who was studying economics at the University of Hawaii,
Afro-American Affairs Institute, told the crowd of 350, "Anything which
relieves military spending will help us...Peace will release great
resources..." The march for peace was featured in the May 18, 1962
issue of the VOICE OF THE ILWU. Other speakers included Patsy
Mink, Thomas Gill, Ralph Vanderslice, Rev. Nicolas Dizon, Rev. Seikan
Higra, Rabbi Roy Rosenberg, Rev. Delwyn Rayson, and Dr. John Mollet.
The ILWU was opposed to the escalating U. S. involvement in Vietnam and
held many activities to educate its members and the public.
Frank
Marshall Davis, in his own writings, had said that Robeson and Harry
Bridges, the head of the ILWU and a secret member of the CPUSA, had
suggested that he take a job as a columnist with the Honolulu Record,
"and see if I could do something for them." The ILWU was
organizing workers there and Robeson’s contacts were "passed on" to
Davis, Takara writes.
Cliff Kincaid
ties up
all the loose ends in his white paper, "Communism in Hawaii and the
Obama Connection."
Living Apart
Memo from William Ward, INS file, dated
31 AUG 1961,
on page 34 states:
"They have one child born Honolulu
8/4/1961 -- Barack Obama II, child living with mother (she lives with
her parents & Subject resides at 1482 Alencastre St)."
Senior
Leaves Hawaii
In August or September of 1961, Senior
enrolled
and attended classes in his final undergraduate year at the University
of Hawaii, from which he would
graduate with a Bachelors Degree in economics and mathematics in
June, 1962 --
after three years in Hawaii, as a Phi
Beta Kappa straight-A student.
Senior’s main monetary sponsor for his schooling in the U.S.was
Elizabeth Mooney Kirk. Kirk wrote a letter to Tom Mboya in May
1962 asking if another sponsor could be found so Senior could attend
graduate school, preferably at Harvard. She was unable to continue
her sponsorship as she had two step children who were going to be
attending University. Tom Mboya ended up sponsoring Seniorr for
his Harvard studies.
So senior’s plans weren’t definite in May
of 1962. Some time between August 1961 and March
1962, Barack Obama Senior was
accepted
into Harvard's Ph d. program in economics. He left
Hawaii on June 22, 1962, while his still-teenage wife and child
remained in Seattle.
Obama's autobiography claimed
Senior had rejected a scholarship at the Marxist New School
for Social Research in New York City that would have paid for his family
to come with him. He chose to attend Harvard, where there was no
allotment for his family. Shortly after arriving at Harvard, and he took up with Ruth Nidesand, who
introduced him to scotch whiskey, and would become his
third wife.
In "Dreams...," Obama claims that Senior left when he was two years old,
when, in fact, Senior left before Obama was 1 year old.
A Honolulu Advertiser story on the day he left, June 22, said Obama planned a
several-weeks grand tour of Mainland universities before he arrived at
Harvard to study economics on a graduate faculty fellowship. The
story did not mention that he had a wife and an infant son.
A second article, from the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, also
has Senior leaving Hawaii in June 1962. There is no mention of
Obama or his mother in this article either.
Note: Stanley Ann
had arrived in Seattle WA, by the
middle of August, 1961.
San Francisco
On his way east, Obama
stopped in San Francisco and went to dinner at the Blue Fox in the
financial district with Hal Abercrombie, who had moved to the city with
his wife, Shirley.
1962 Letter Ignores Obama, Anna
Jerome Corsi
says a letter written by Barack Obama Sr. in 1962 raises new
questions about the veracity of the official Obama nativity story
related by Barack Obama Jr. in his autobiography, "Dreams from My
Father."
In a May 1962 letter he wrote from Hawaii to his
political benefactor in Kenya, Tom Mboya, Barack Obama Sr. discusses his
"wife," but without mentioning Ann Dunham, his alleged Hawaiian bride
and the alleged mother of Barack Obama.
Toward the end of the
letter, Obama wrote, "You know my wife is in Nairobi there and I would
really appreciate any help you may give her."
Clearly Obama Sr.
is referring to his first wife, Kezia Aoko, whom he had married in 1954
at age 18 while she was pregnant with their first child. Obama
left Kenya in 1959 to study in Hawaii.
The handwriting next to the paragraph appears to be
Mboya's: "Ask Odiawo to see me."
There is no documentation that
Obama's alleged father has ever claimed paternity.
As the next
item shows, the spelling of Obama's name, Barack, is incorrect, as the
next item demonstrates, and the letter is probably a forgery.
Harvard Wanted Senior Out
Heather Smathers
is reporting that Harvard University officials are speaking out on
the release of the
immigration file on Barack Hussein Obama, Sr.
Documents uncovered through a Freedom of Information Act request to the
United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, formerly known as
the Immigration and Naturalization Service, show that Harvard University
officials worked with the INS to deny Obama’s student visa extension. An
INS investigator, M.F. McKeon, wrote on June 8, 1964:
"They
(Harvard officials) weren’t very impressed with him and asked us to hold
up action on his application until they decided what action they could
take in order to get rid of him. They were apparently having difficulty
with his financial arrangements and couldn’t seem to figure out how many
wives he had."
Another memo by McKeon, dated May 19, 1964, says:
"OBAMA has passed his general exams, which indicates on academic
grounds he is entitled to stay around here and write his thesis;
however, they are going to try to cook something up to ease him out. All
three will have to agree to this, however. They are planning on telling
him that they will not give him any money, and that he’d better return
to Kenya and prepare his thesis at home."
Jeff Neal, a spokesman
for Harvard University, disputed those allegations.
"While we
cannot verify accounts of conversations that occurred nearly 50 years
ago, a review of our existing files did not find any support for either
the language or the implied intent described by the U.S. government
official in the government documents."
Neal said that university
documents predating the INS file, which was compiled between 1961 and
1965, indicate "the University’s Center for International Affairs faced
serious constraints in providing financial support for research by
international graduate students in Cambridge, and that these students
were required to secure and demonstrate independent and sufficient
sources of funding in order to remain on campus."
Documents show
Obama, Sr. was denied an extension of his student visa in July, 1964 and
subsequently returned to Kenya. In 1965, Obama, Sr. attempted to return
to the United States. The INS file includes a letter from Harvard
Registrar Robert Shenton written to Obama, Sr., on Nov. 16, 1965, that
says the elder Obama had not registered his thesis title with the
Department of Economics and therefore the university did not authorize
his I-20, a document issued by a college for a student so that the
student may obtain a student visa, for his return to the country. Shenton
wrote:
"Under the circumstances, I could not consider
issuing an I-20 to you until the following steps have been completed and
the Economics Department approves your return."
The steps
required of Obama, Sr., included informing the Economics Department of
the thesis title; informing the department of the status of his thesis;
and sending the department any completed pages of the document. Neal
said the university would confirm that Obama, Sr. was a student at
Harvard from 1962-1964, and earned a Master’s degree in Economics.
Multiple attempts to get comment from the White House press office
have not been returned.
Related: Somewhere, buried in the bowels of The
Obama File, is a reference to Senior writing to his patron for more money
while he was at Harvard (I'll try to find the source/link).
"A Serial Womanizer"
The Daily Mail Reporter
says Immigration and Naturalization Service
records obtained by Heather Smathers show that Obama's father was a
serial womanizer -- "a slippery character" who had to be warned to stop
his "playboy ways."
And continues -- with a father like this, it
is little wonder Obama did not want to release his full birth
certificate. Though the proof that he was actually born in Hawaii
may silence some critics, a new, rather more interesting side of his
life has emerged -- that his father Barack Obama (Senior) was a serial
womanizer and polygamist who government and university officials were
trying to force out of the country.
An immigration memo, from June 1964,
records that Harvard officials were trying "to get rid of him" and
"couldn't seem to figure out how many wives he had." At least one
document, a memo, also specifies that he had a child -- Barack Obama
junior -- while he was at the university on August 4, 1961. On
another document, Senior leaves blank the question about children.
Other notes make reference to some kind of campaign to drive Obama
senior out of the country and back to Kenya. The memo advised
officials to withdraw his funding. The memo also notes that he be
"closely questioned before another extension is granted -- and denial be
considered."
It said: "Obama has passed his general exams, which
indicates that on academic grounds he is entitled to stay around here
and write his thesis; however [Harvard] are going to try to cook
something up to ease him out.... They are planning on telling him that
they will not give him any money, and that he had better return to Kenya
and prepare his thesis at home."
Senior Lied About His Degree
Sally Jacobs
says that although
Obama frequently claimed to have earned a PhD from Harvard and insisted
he be called Dr. Obama, he never fully recovered from disappointment
over his failure to get the degree he had worked so hard for. Let
go from jobs at both the Central Bank of Kenya and the Kenya Tourist
Development Corp. by 1970, Obama was unemployed for four years before he
landed a low level economist’s position at the Ministry of Finance and
Planning. He remained there until his death.
Obama’s PhD thesis, "An Econometric Model of Staple Theory of
Development," which was launched with such high hopes at Harvard,
apparently met an unhappy fate as well. Not long after he married
his third wife, Ruth Ndesandjo, in 1964, Obama said his thesis papers
had been stolen by burglars who had broken into their home.
"The burglars took the television, but in the process Barack
said that they took his doctoral papers, which were in a briefcase
somewhere," said Ndesandjo, who lives in Nairobi. "At least, that
is what he said. He was pretty upset about it because he never
went back to it and he didn’t have any copy of it."
Senior Returns To Africa
In June, 1964,
contrary to reports that Senior had a Ph D, he left Harvard with a masters degree in economics and returned to Kenya,
ultimately to join the
fledgling Kenyatta government as
a
senior economist.
On his return to Kenya, Senior was first hired by an US oil company,
then served as an economist in the Ministry of Transportation, and later
became senior economist in the Kenyan Ministry of Finance.
Senior's INS documents
show that he was denied an extension on his student visa in July,
1964, in part because Harvard University, where Senior was a Ph.D.
candidate, sought his removal. Obama Sr. eventually left the United
States willingly after becoming an illegal alien for remaining in the
country past the expiration of his visa.
An INS investigator,
M.F. McKeon, wrote "They (Harvard officials) weren’t very impressed with
him and asked us to hold up action on his application until they decided
what action they could take in order to get rid of him. They were
apparently having difficulty with his financial arrangements and
couldn’t seem to figure out how many wives he had."
Documents
show that Harvard officials considered Obama, Sr. to be a "slippery
character," and conspired with the INS to have him deported.
Years later, Abercrombie and another grad school friend looked up their
old pal during a trip through Africa.
At that point, the senior Obama was a bitter man, according to the
congressman, feeling that he had been denied due opportunities to
influence the running of his country. "He was drinking too much; his
frustration was apparent," Abercrombie said.
To Abercrombie's surprise, Senior
never asked about his ex-wife or his son.
Neil
Abercrombie
said of Barack Sr., "I know he loved Ann," but "I think
he didn't
want the impediment of being responsible for a family. He expected great
things of himself and he was going off to achieve them."
This article (.pdf),
published in the East Africa Journal, by Barak H. Obama Senior, was
written in 1965. In it, Senior describes the differences between
African socialism and Kenyan socialism. It's dry reading but is
useful in understanding Barack's father.
It's Barak, Not Barack
Although there are many newspaper reports that spell Senior's name,
"Barack," it is properly, "Barak."
Conditions In Kenya
As the Kenyatta regime became the
subject of increasing controversy, Obama Sr. found many of his
colleagues distancing themselves from him. He, in turn, took his
anger out on his wife, Ruth, according to several of his friends, and
his marriage began to deteriorate.
"Kenya
changed a great deal between 1963 and 1970," said David William
Cohen, former director of the International Institute at the University
of Michigan and a professor of African history. "Anyone brought
into the government with idealism in those early years either exploited
the situation, or was completely frustrated. Obama Sr. did just
what other frustrated intellectuals did at the time, which was to stay
in the bars until their minds go to rot."
Senior's Protector
Assassinated
On a hot July weekend in 1969, Senior was shopping on a busy
Nairobi street when he ran into his friend and mentor Tom Mboya, one of
Kenya’s most charismatic political leaders. The two chatted for
several minutes and Obama kidded him that his car was illegally parked.
I told him, "You are parked on a yellow line. You will get a
ticket," Obama, the late father of the US presidential candidate, would
later testify, according to press accounts at the time. And then
the two men parted.
Minutes later, Mboya was
shot twice and died in a pool of blood. It was a crime that
convulsed the newly independent nation and would, in Obama’s eyes,
trigger a steep decline in his own promising career. Then 33, and
a freshly minted government economist, he testified in the ensuing
trial, an act which probably enraged those responsible for Mboya’s
assassination.
Obama, according to one friend, was convinced he had been targeted
for murder after his testimony.
"He said he had been hit by a car not long ago and left for dead,"
said Pake Zane, 66, who attended the University of Hawaii with Obama and
had not publicly discussed their 1974 conversation until now. "He did
not say specifically who had done it, but he said it was the same people
who killed Mboya."
Senior
Visits
Senior's Christmas, 1971
visit may be significant. All lot of stuff was going on at this time.
It appears from the cross comparison on both the
Customs and DOS FOIA
released documents that on October 20, 1971 Stanley Ann Dunham Soetoro
(SADS) and son Barry (a.k.a Saebarkah Soetoro) together boarded Pan Am
Airlines Flight 812 unaccompanied by Lolo M. Soetoro in Djakarta
Indonesia and arrived in Honolulu Hawaii on October 21, 1971 and sought
entry into the USA on an expired Passport issued July 19, 1965 according
to the DS 1423 Form for REQUEST BY UNITED STATES NATIONAL FOR AND REPORT
OF EXCEPTION TO SECTION 53.1, TITLE 22 OF THE CODE OF FEDERAL
REGULATIONS with use of the expired Passport of July 19, 1965 shown as
page 6 of
Young "Barry" was queued up to enter Punahou School.
Grandfather Stanley had lined-up a scholarship to the prestigious preparatory
school for Barry.
The Dunhams
moved into the apartment at S. Beretania St., to be within walking
distance of the school -- and out of the blue
comes the self-described "rake," Obama Senior -- the purpose of the trip? -- "to
attend to family business"
Senior only saw Obama once in his life,
during this trip, and this is
one of the two photos of Barry and Senior. It was taken
at the airport. The decorations clearly identify the visit as occurring
during the Christmas season -- December 1971. Senior arrived some time in
December 1971 and left some time in January
1972.
At the first sight of Senior, Barry
thought he seemed far skinnier than he had imagined, and more fragile, with
his spectacles and blue blazer and ascot and yellowish eyes. Senior was
recuperating from one of his many car accidents. He had injured his leg
requiring him to use a cane.
This photo, of Anna and
Senior, was also taken at the airport. When the photo first made
the rounds of the Internet, it was described as a photo of Anna and
Senior's alleged wedding. Needless to say, that report was bogus.
So, out of the blue,
Barry's long-lost father stepped briefly into his life, and just as quickly
disappeared. Obama and Senior would never see each other again.
It was not an
easy month, and what stuck in the boy's memory was the basketball that Senior
gave him as a present at the airport.
After the visit, Anna and Obama's half-sister
Maya returned to Indonesia. Except for occasional visits to Hawaii,
and in her final days, Anna, who
traveled throughout Southeast Asia on business, would remain based in
Jakarta for the remainder of her life.
Now, here's the mystery. Why
would Senior fly halfway across the world to make his only visit to his son at
this moment in time?
Remember, this was in the era before the deregulation of the airlines.
Round-trip airplane tickets from Kenya to Hawaii must have cost a small fortune even by
American standards -- much less third-world Kenyan standards.
The Dunhams surely paid for the airline tickets.
We know they paid for an apartment in their building for the month that
Senior was in town, and were undoubtedly providing him with some
walking-around money. The sad truth is Senior spent most of his
time
partying
with with his old snack bar buddies from the University of Hawaii, Neil
Abercrombie and Pake Zane.
Senior had no money. He
had already fallen into disfavor with the ruling Kenyan government.
His mentor and protector, Tom Mboya, was
assassinated in 1969.
Senior was present at the assassination and testified at the subsequent
trial, essentially ending his political career, and causing a hit and
run attempt on his life. He was
spending most of his time drinking scotch and crashing his
Mercedes-Benz.
It is clear that the Dunhams underwrote Senior's
visit, but why? It would seem reasonable to
conclude that Senior's pilgrimage had something to do with Barry and Punahou, but what?
What happened in these four weeks? What
was so important that caused Senior to travel 20,000-plus miles? What kind of deal
was made? What papers did he have to sign? Was there a payoff?
The Dunhams were getting ready to put Barry Soetoro
into Punahou. Whatever Senior was doing in Hawaii was connected to
that -- my speculation is that it was to establish or re-establish
paternity, or clean-up an Indonesian adoption -- and as soon as the paperwork was completed and he got his
payoff he returned to Kenya and never thought about the bunch of them
for the rest of his miserable life.
As an aside, it's pretty clear that the Dunhams
were going all the way for little Barry, and it's equally clear that
Senior couldn't give a rat's ass.
So why would Obama ever make the core of his
autobiography, this statement:
"It was into my father’s image, the black man, son of Africa, that I’d
packed all the attributes I sought in myself..."
Until this trip, Senior never acknowledge
Barry, and never mentioned him upon his return to Kenya. He was a serial bigamist. He abandoned his
wives and children. He became
a wife-beater and drunk. His arrogance destroyed his government
career. He killed a man and lost both legs in
alcohol-related accidents and eventually killed himself
behind the wheel -- hammered!
That's some role model.
How the Grinch Stole Christmas
I thought of something much simpler
that also fits in with what usually occurred in situations such as Ann’s
in 1961. The one story in Obama’s book which I do believe is actually true
is the one when there was a huge fight during Senior’s visit to Hawaii in 1971
which brought to light long buried resentments and recriminations all
because Senior tried to act like a father and told Obama to turn the TV off
and go study. Those resentments would be how Senior had acted in 1961 and
they came boiling to the surface when he visited in 1971.
The Dunhams made arrangements for Senior to sublet a neighbor’s apartment in
the same building at S. Beretania St. Notice how his one leg is
positioned oddly in the photo (photo not available)? He was recuperating from a car accident
in which he had injured his leg requiring him to use a cane.
The big family blowup happened during his visit when he told
Obama to turn off the TV and go study when Obama wanted to watch "How
the Grinch Stole Christmas" By the time the arguing had ended Barry was only able to watch
the last few minutes of the special.
That is one
story from his book that I actually believe and he says because of it
long buried hurts and resentments surfaced between the three Dunhams and
Obama Sr. By the time the arguing had ended Barack was only able to watch
the last few minutes of the special.
In "Barack and Michelle" [by Christopher Andersen]
the visit is described as being for R&R following Senior’s car
wreck/hospitalization in Kenya. You can discern Senior's bad leg(s)
in the photo.
Pretty expensive trip for someone whose job and
life were spiraling down the drain of alcoholism. Who paid for
Stanley Ann’s trip? Senior was there a month; Stanley Ann had
arrived two weeks prior to that, so she was away from her husband Lolo
and baby Maya for 6 weeks? Neither account mentions Maya being
there with her -- a baby who was 16 months old. And the Dunhams
leased an apartment for Senior to stay in for that month? And
Barry had just started at the very expensive private school, after HIS
expensive trip to Hawaii from Indonesia. That’s a lot of money
being shelled out for an impromptu visit from the man who hasn’t had the
time of day for his son in ten years?
"Dreams..." would have us
believe that Senior and Gramps were great pals -- drinking buddies who
thoroughly enjoyed and respected each other. It’s kind of an
unseemly undercurrent -- because why would any normal man be
best-friends-forever with a 23-year old man of a different race (1960
mores) who has committed statutory rape on his 17-year old daughter, and
impregnated her in the process, and then abandoned her and his son?
Some insight into some kind of reality, pages 62-63 of "Dreams":
"...the telegram Toot found in the mailbox
one day. ‘You’re father’s coming to see you’, she said. ‘Next month.
Two weeks after your mother gets here. They’ll both stay
through New Year’s."
"She carefully folded the paper and slipped
it into a drawer in the kitchen. BOTH SHE AND GRAMPS FELL
SILENT, THE WAY I IMAGINE PEOPLE REACT WHEN THE DOCTOR TELLS THEM
THEY HAVE A SERIOUS, BUT CURABLE, ILLNESS. For a moment the
air was sucked out of the room, and we stood suspended, alone with
our thoughts."
"Well," Toot said finally, "I suppose we
better start looking for a place where he can stay." Gramps
took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. " Should be one hell of a
Christmas."
Correcting The Adoption
The speculation that Senior's Christmas visit
was related to
providing provenance for Barry Sotoero in return for a financial payoff,
also provides an answer to an "anomaly" on the COLB. It has to be
considered in the context of time and place, ie, the normal social
traditions of Madelyn and Stanley Dunham's era -- that slip right on by
the notice of most people today.
People refer to Barry as Barack
Obama, Junior. The COLB, however, designates him as Barack Hussein
Obama II. There is a world of difference between the two. A
boy given the same name as his father is designated "junior." A
boy given the same name as someone OTHER than his father is designated
"II". "Junior" tells the world, "This is my son." A boy
given the same name as an uncle is "II", and says to the world, this boy
is named for someone we admire. The common explanation would be
that the "junior" is named AFTER the father. "II" is named "FOR"
someone else.
The designation of Barry as "II" on the COLB is a
flat-out statement that Obama of Kenya is not Barry’s father. That
he entered into a business arrangement as a cash-on-the-line favor to
his drinking buddy Stanley Armour Dunham. We know
Stanley knew Obama, and we know Stanley knew Davis. It follows
that Obama of Kenya, a big drinker, was very likely to have been
included in Stanley's and Frank Marshall Davis' drinking sessions.
Lolo Soetoro's adoption of Barry made him Barry's "father."
All previous records were sealed. Effectively, the original father
no longer existed. The sire, whoever that may be, gave him up.
So the Dunham's import the only black guy they know, other than
Frank Marshall Davis. It would have to involve legal consent,
meaning an appearance in court, and signatures. This is the only
reason Senior would have been in Hawaii visiting his former "family" for
a month. We need to keep in mind that while this visit was taking
place, Stanley Ann was also visiting from Indonesia where she lived with
her husband Lolo. We know of this visit from only one source --
Obama’s "Dreams..." He gave no reason for the visit -- just, oh --
here comes dad, and I can hardly wait for him to leave.
Never A Word
Years later, Abercrombie and another grad school friend looked up their
old pal during a trip through Africa.
At that point, the senior Obama was a bitter man, according to the
congressman, feeling that he had been denied due opportunities to
influence the running of his country. "He was drinking too much; his
frustration was apparent," Abercrombie said.
To Abercrombie's surprise, Senior
never asked about his ex-wife or his son.
Neil
Abercrombie
said of Barack Sr., "I know he loved Ann," but "I think
he didn't
want the impediment of being responsible for a family. He expected great
things of himself and he was going off to achieve them."
Senior
Crashes
And
Burns
According to his daughter, Auma, Senior was an alcoholic who was extremely found of Scotch". He
killed a man
in a drunk driving accident in the early 1970's.
In 1982, Obama Senior killed himself in an alcohol-related car accident in Kenya, leaving
three wives, one mistress, six sons and a
daughter -- there is also the possibility of an eight progeny via a mistress.
Although Obama claims Obama Senior was an atheist, Obama Senior was
buried as a Muslim. The
rival
families of Obama's late father are still suing each other over his
meager estate.
One of Senior's former drinking partners, Kenyan writer Philip Ochieng
said that his friend's downfall was his
weak character.
In fact he was a menace to life, said Ochieng. "He had many
extremely serious accidents. Both his legs had to be amputated.
They were replaced with crude false limbs made from iron.
"He was just like Mr. Toad [from Wind In The Willows], very arrogant on
the road, especially when he had whisky inside. I was not
surprised when I learned how he died."
"Although charming, generous and extraordinarily clever, Senior was
also imperious, cruel and given to boasting about his brain and his
wealth," he said.
"He was excessively fond of Scotch. He had fallen into the habit
of going home drunk every night. His boasting proved his undoing
and left him without a job, plunged him into prolonged poverty and
dangerously wounded his ego."
The Daily Mail quotes a relative of Obama as saying, "We told him
[Obama] how his father would still go to Kezia and it was during these
visits that she became pregnant with two more children. He also
had two children with Ruth." [Kids 5 and 6]
According to the Daily Mail, even after losing both legs in the car
accident, Obama senior fathered yet another son, his eighth child,
[Okay, they got me, that would only be 7 by my count. Not sure old
BHO, Sr. was keeping a close count either] by yet another woman, and
"continued to come home drunk."
Regardless of the motives, in "Dreams from my Father" Obama never states
precisely how many wives his father had, or how many half-brothers and
-sisters he has from different mothers, whether married to his father or
not.
This is the guy who Obama romanticized in
his first book, writing, "It was into my father’s image, the black man,
son of Africa, that I’d packed all the attributes I sought in myself..."
-- some role model -- Senior was a serial bigamist. He abandoned all of
his his wives and children. He became a
wife-beater and drunk. His arrogance destroyed his government career.
He killed a man and lost both legs in
alcohol-related accidents and eventually killed himself behind
the wheel -- hammered.
Fathers And Sons
A bit of
research at the library reveals the answers about Barack Obama’s
father and his father’s convictions which Obama withholds from the
readers of "Dreams.... A first hint comes from authors E. S.
Atieno Odhiambo and David William Cohen in their book The Risks of
Knowledge (Ohio U. Press, 2004). On page 182 of their book they
describe how Barack Obama’s father, a Harvard trained economist,
attacked the economic proposals of pro-Western "third way" leader Tom
Mboya from the socialist left, siding with communist-allied leader
Oginga Odinga, in a paper Barack Obama’s father wrote for the East
Africa Journal. As Odhiambo and Cohen write, "The debates [over
economic policy] pitted...Mboya against...Oginga Odinga and radical
economists Dharam Ghai and Barrack Obama, who critiqued the document for
being neither African nor socialist enough."
A copy of Barack
Obama’s paper was obtained from the stacks at UCLA. The paper is,
as describe by Odhiambo and Cohen, a cutting attack from the left on Tom
Mboya’s historically important
policy paper,
"African Socialism and Its Applicability to Planning in Kenya."
The author is given as "Barak H. Obama" and
his paper is titled "Problems Facing Our Socialism", published July,
1965 in the East African Journal, pp. 26-33.
Senior stakes out
the following positions in his attacks on the white paper produced by
Mboya’s Ministry of Economic Planning and Development:
1. Obama advocated the communal
ownership of land and the forced confiscation of privately
controlled land, as part of a forced "development plan", an
important element of his attack on the government’s advocacy of
private ownership, land titles, and property registration. (p. 29)
2. Obama advocated the nationalization of "European" and
"Asian" owned enterprises, including hotels, with the control of
these operations handed over to the "indigenous" black population.
(pp. 32 -33)
3. Obama advocated dramatically increasing
taxation on "the rich" even up to the 100% level, arguing that,
"there is no limit to taxation if the benefits derived from public
services by society measure up to the cost in taxation which they
have to pay" (p. 30) and that, "Theoretically, there is nothing that
can stop the government from taxing 100% of income so long as the
people get benefits from the government commensurate with their
income which is taxed." (p. 31)
4. Obama contrasts the
ill-defined and weak-tea notion of "African Socialism" negatively
with the well-defined ideology of "scientific socialism", i.e.
communism. Obama views "African Socialism" pioneers like Nkrumah,
Nyerere, and Toure as having diverted only "a little" from the
capitalist system. (p. 26)
5. Obama advocates an
"active" rather than a "passive" program to achieve a classless
society through the removal of economic disparities between black
Africans and Asian and Europeans. (p. 28) "While we welcome the idea
of a prevention [of class problems], we should try to cure what has
slipped in .. we .. need to eliminate power structures that have
been built through excessive accumulation so that not only a few
individuals shall control a vast magnitude of resources as is the
case now .. so long as we maintain free enterprise one cannot deny
that some will accumulate more than others .. " (pp. 29-30)
6. Obama advocates price controls on hotels and the tourist
industry, so that the middle class and not only the rich can afford
to come to Kenya as tourists. (p. 33)
7. Obama
advocates government owned and operated "model farms" as a means of
teaching modern farming techniques to farmers. (p. 33)
8.
Obama strongly supports the governments assertion of a "non-aligned"
status in the contest between Western nations and communist nations
aligned with the Soviet Union and China. (p. 26)
Interesting!
Senior allies himself to the communist Oginga Odinga. Forty years
later, Obama, Senior's son,
allies himself with
Raila Odinga, Oginga Odinga's son, also a
Marxist-Socialist.
More commies in the
life of Barack Obama -- it just never stops.
A Serious, Fall-Down Alcoholic
Caroline Elkins, a historian at Harvard
and the author of "Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s
Gulag in Kenya," told me that she would be "extremely skeptical" of the
notion that Obama, Sr., was murdered. Elkins, who has excellent
sources throughout the country, including among the surviving members of
the Kenyatta-era generation, said that Obama, Sr., was a "serious,
fall-down alcoholic." Moreover, she said, it was entirely possible
that Obama’s family, especially now with an American relative in the
White House, wants to rewrite history and restore Senior’s reputation.
"While I’m sympathetic to the desire of some to reclaim his
reputation and his dignity, I am also very skeptical," Elkins said.
"Understandably, there are some Luos who have an interest in making
Obama, Sr., out to be a perhaps more heroic and high-ranking figure than
he ever was in real life."
Legend-building
-- attempting to make the Obamas larger than life, here and in Kenya,
and Indonesia and Hawaii -- and wherever else they landed during their
rolling stone lives.
All, of course, were "brilliant". So
are cubic zirconia. But that doesn't make them diamonds, does it.
Senior's
decline began after Tom Mboya's assassination in 1969. He was
fired from his job by Jomo Kenyatta, was blacklisted in Kenya, and began
to drink heavily. He had a serious car accident, spent almost a
year in the hospital, and by the time he
visited his son in Hawaii in late 1971, he already had a bad leg.
Senior's life fell into drinking and poverty, from which he never
recovered. His friend, Kenyan journalist Philip Ochieng, has
described his difficult personality and drinking problems in the Kenya
newspaper The Daily Nation. Obama Sr. later lost both legs in
another automobile collision, and subsequently lost his job. He
fathered another son named George. Six months after George's
birth, he died at the age of 46, in a third car crash in Nairobi.
He is interred in his native village of Nyang’oma Kogelo, Siaya
District.
Senior's Estate
Obama writes in "Dreams...":
..."It’s this business with the Old Man’s
estate. Sarah is one of the people who has disputed the will.
She’s been telling people that Roy, Bernard, myself -- that none of
us are the Old Man’s children." Auma sighed. "I don’t
know. A part of me sympathizes with her. She’s had a
hard life. She never had the chances the Old Man had, you see,
to study or go abroad. It made her very bitter. She
thinks that somehow my mum, myself, that we are to blame for her
situation."
"But how much could the Old Man’s
estate be worth?"
"Not much. Maybe a small government
pension. A piece of worthless land. I try to stay out of
it. Whatever is there has probably been spent on lawyers
by now. But you see, everyone expected so much from the Old
Man. He made them think that he had everything, even when he
had nothing. So now, instead of getting on with their lives,
they just wait and argue among themselves, thinking that the Old Man
somehow is going to rescue them from his grave..."
Read between the lines. "Granny" Sarah, as
the wife of Onyango, mother of YUSUF, JANE, ZEITUNI, OMAR AND SAYID, had
every right to protect the inheritance of HER CHILDREN. To allow
the children of Kezia to make claims, would have eliminated the rights
of her ELDEST SON YUSUF.
It was not just a matter of
inheritance, culturally, as the mother of the eldest son of ONYANGO, she
would have lost her STATURE in the tribe.
Who is NOW the tribal
elder? It isn't MALIK!
It's YUSUF! The older brother
of Barak Hussein Obama Onyango. He wears the hat of an elder, and
carries the whisk which proclaims his tribal position.
Obama's Version
From the
commencement address Obama delivered on May 29, 2011, to Miami-Dade
College graduates:
"I didn’t know him well, my father -- and he
lived a troubled life. But I know that when he was around your
age, he dreamed of something more than his lot in life. He dreamed
of that magical place; he dreamed of coming to study in America."
"And when I was around your age, I traveled back to his home country of
Kenya for the first time to learn his story. And I went to a tiny
village called Alego, where his stepmother still lives in the house
where he grew up, and I visited his grave. And I asked her if
there was anything left for me to know him by. And she opened a
trunk, and she took out a stack of letters -- and this is an elderly
woman who doesn’t read or write -- but she had saved these letters, more
than 30 of them, written in his hand and addressed to colleges and
universities all across America."
"They weren’t that different
from the letters that I wrote when I was trying to get into college, or
the ones that you wrote when you were hoping to come here. They
were written in the simple, sometimes awkward, sometimes grammatically
incorrect, unmistakably hopeful voice of somebody who is just desperate
for a chance -- just desperate to live his unlikely dream."
"And
somebody at the University of Hawaii -- halfway around the world --
chose to give him that chance. And because that person gave a
young man a chance, he met a young woman from Kansas; they had a son in
the land where all things are possible."
Daddy Had Two Birthdays, Three Wives, A
Girlfriend, And Seven Or Eight Kids
Every previous report and artifact has shown
that Barak Hussein Obama (Senior) was born in Nyangoma-Kogello, Siaya
District, Kenya in 1936.
However, Art Moore says,
overshadowed by reaction to the release of Barack Obama's long-form
birth certificate, was the unearthing of half-century-old files that
cast doubt on whether the age of Obama's father indicated on the Hawaii
document is accurate.
The applications, memos and other
documents from the Immigration and Naturalization Service acquired in a
Freedom of Information Act request by Heather Smathers of the Arizona
Independent -- which indicate Barack Obama Sr. would have been 27 at the
time of his son's birth, not 25 -- also suggest that Obama's father did
not leave the islands from the time of his August 1959 arrival until he
departed for graduate studies at Harvard in June 1962.
Some have speculated that Obama's parents ventured
together to Kenya while his mother was pregnant, but the files present a
picture of a financially strapped Barack Obama Sr. known for "playboy
ways" who two months after his reported marriage to Ann Dunham was still
"running around with several girls." His INS records, which show
he had a class F-1 student visa that had to be renewed annually, do not
preclude him having made a return trip to Kenya during his U.S. studies.
But the only indication of travel outside the U.S. was when officials
denied a request for a fifth visa extension and forced him to return to
his home country in 1964, when Barack Obama Jr. was 2 years old.
Among the released documents is a copy of a handwritten memo by an
immigration official that refers to Barack Obama Jr.'s birth in Honolulu
on Aug. 4, 1961.
The age of Barack Obama Sr. listed on the
Certificate of Live Birth released Wednesday by the president is 25,
consistent with his commonly reported birthday of June 18, 1936.
Several documents in the newly released immigration files, including
applications filled in by hand and signed by Barack Obama Sr., also list
a birth date of June 18, 1936.
However, about a dozen documents
-- including an alien
registration card with fingerprints and an immigration
arrival-departure card which presumably accompanied his passport -- show
a birth date of July 18, 1934.
In an application to extend his
visa that was approved July 28, 1960, officials notated: [Barack Obama
Sr.]: "presents valid British passport 84764 until 4/29/64."
Curiously, on an Aug. 17, 1962, application to extend his visa, Senior
filled in a line asking him to list the names and addresses of children.
The only child he listed was Roy Obama, a son from his Kenyan wife,
Kezia. At that time, Barack Obama Jr. was 1 year old. On
that application he also listed his mailing address as c/o the Koinoinia
Foundation in Pikesville, Md. The organization, according to a
website, was a "spiritual community" with "strong Quaker influences"
that sought to "take literacy, agriculture, health, and similar
practical skills into the undeveloped world." After 1970, it
"shifted to New Age and wholistic activities."
An Immigration
and Naturalization Service arrival-departure record filled in by hand
when he left the United States for Kenya in 1964 indicated a 1934 birth
date and British nationality.
The June 18, 1934, birth date also
was handwritten on an application to extend his temporary stay that was
submitted in Honolulu on Aug. 31, 1961, just weeks after Barack Obama
Jr. was born. On the application, Obama's father also indicated he
was married to Ann Dunham, and he asked for permission to get
employment, explaining: "because unable to get more financial
assistance."
Does it
matter? Maybe. What
kind of 27 year-old
married man with one child an one-on-the way knocks up a 17 year-old,
only mentions him once in his life, and that was for free money, and
then takes off?
I can
clearly see why Obama wrote the following in "Dreams..." -- "It was into
my father’s image, the black man, son of Africa, that I’d packed all the
attributes I sought in myself..."
Some set of attributes.
He's Illegitimate
Pamela Geller says: An illegitimate child, an
illegitimate president: despite multiple attempts, "No comment" from the
White House.
Talk about your proverbial can of worms.
Clearly, Barack Hussein Obama's Immigration file was the impetus for
Obama to release his "long form" last week. If he thought that
would put the matter to rest, it has had the opposite effect. It
has all raised more questions than it answered, as does the release of
shocking revelations in BHO I's immigration file.
Clearly, BHO I
was never divorced from his first wife in Kenya. Further, INS
suspected the BHO I/Stanley Ann Dunham marriage was a sham, arranged
strictly to secure immigration status for him. But if Barack
Senior was a Muslim polygamist, his "marriage" to Stanley Ann Dunham was
invalid. Obama Senior was a Kenyan citizen. Kenya was still
under English law at this time.
Illegitimate children had
different rights -- at least they certainly did in 1789. There is
no way that the founders of this great nation intended for an
illegitimate child of a foreign bigamist to attain the highest, most
powerful position in the new land.
Further, when BHO I returned
to Kenya, he apparently lived with his first Kenyan wife and his third
American wife, suggesting that the Dunham "divorce" was a transitory
ruse.
In 1964, Ann Dunham filed for divorce.
By then, Barack had taken up with Ruth Nidesand, a teacher of
Lithuanian-Jewish ancestry who became his third wife. A year
later, he gave up his doctoral studies and returned home.
[...]
In the last decade of his life, Barack Obama Sr. slid
slowly into the abyss. He was fired from a series of jobs.
He had, as Firstbrook puts it, "a reputation for having a massive
ego and a big mouth, both of which grew alarmingly when he started
drinking." He was also, according to Ruth’s son Mark, abusive
to his wife and children, and Ruth eventually left him, taking her
sons with him.
Hussein Obama is not natural born. His father
was not a US citizen; he is, by that very fact, disqualified to serve as
US president. For those who believe that "natural born" is no
longer relevant, you are wrong. Armaros points out in the
comments, "The reason the founders have created this requirement was to
prevent a British person from assuming US citizenship with the purpose
of ascending to higher office and compromise the USA. To prevent a
sort of sleeper spy/traitor from getting power in the new nation."
Clearly, from Obama's performance, that is a very clear and present
danger.
Multiple attempts to get comment from the White House
press office have not been returned (here).
An INS investigator,
M.F. McKeon, wrote on June 8, 1964: "They (Harvard officials) weren’t
very impressed with him and asked us to hold up action on his
application until they decided what action they could take in order to
get rid of him. They were apparently having difficulty with his
financial arrangements and couldn’t seem to figure out how many wives he
had." (NY Review of Books)
For years, the media and the
left have excoriated anyone who questioned the circumstances and events
surrounding the birth of Barack Obama. The lack of transparency
and honesty only gave rise to more suspicion. And rightly so.
One doesn't hand over the reins of power to just anyone, particularly
those with an unknown or sketchy past. The dearth of documentation
and paperwork led to more speculation. The American people were
like Helen Keller and the Obama machine kept moving the furniture.
Who is this man, and what is he hiding?
The birth certificate
issue became the rallying cry for those of us who questioned the
legitimacy of Barack Hussein Obama's eligibility for the oval office.
Our media did not vet BHO. In fact, they took it upon themselves
to destroy and smear those who did, or tried to.
Matt1234 has created
a great
summary of Senior's recently released immigration
files. The summary is tabular, allowing a more systematic
analysis. He has highlighted in yellow the more interesting
portions. This summary is useful as an introductory research tool
or a concise summation for semi-interested readers. Details are
excluded except where particularly interesting or unobvious.
Cashill On "The Other Barack"
Jack Cashill
says Sally Jacobs’ new book on the president’s father, "The Other
Barack," tells us as much about contemporary journalism as it does
Barack Obama Sr. What follows are some observations on both.
• The book opens well. The first two sentences read,
"Every man who has served as president of the United States had parents
who lived out their lives upon American soil. Barack H. Obama did not."
Race-baiters take note: Obama’s unique background is what drives the
"birther" movement.
• Not all journalists are created equal.
Jacobs of the Boston Globe received copies of INS documents that were
un-redacted while the same documents sent to Heather Smathers of the
less politically reliable Arizona Independent were redacted.
•
Jacobs does an excellent job tracking Obama’s career in Africa and an
oddly shabby job of tracking it in the United States.
• Jacobs
tells us nothing, for instance, about Obama’s wedding to Ann Dunham, the
birth of his son and the whereabouts of Dunham for the six months prior
to the birth. Yet, fathering the president is the only reason Obama gets
a biography.
• Jacobs describes the courtship and Kenyan wedding
of the American Ruth Baker and Obama with much more detail than she does
Dunham and Obama.
• Like Obama biographers Janny Scott and David
Remnick, Jacobs crudely bends the facts of the first year post-baby to
sustain the illusion of an Obama family life that that never was.
• Jacobs notes that in 1997 State Sen. Obama "deftly extracted
himself" from any claim on his father’s $57,000, but she does not say
why
• Jacobs cites 1988 as the year of Obama Obama’s first
African visit. Obama claims 1987.
• Jacobs makes unforced errors
as well. She talks about the "six years [Obama] lived in the United
States," when, in fact, he lived here fewer than five years.
•
Jacobs notes that senior Obama pronounced his first name "BEAR-ick" as
in army barrack. In "Dreams from My Father," Barry tells a friend she
can call him "Barack" only if she can "say it right." Barry, however,
has always said it wrong as "buh-ROCK."
• Jacobs primly conceals
the abortion senior Obama likely arranged for a Kenyan girl attending
high school in Massachusetts.
• One redacted document reads as
follows, "She may have gone to London for REDACTED and will undoubtedly
be seeking to return." The redacted space is the perfect size for "an
abortion."
• A second document notes that the girl claimed to be
going to London to visit a sick sister, but the INS determined she had
no sister. Says the document again, "She may have gone to London for
REDACTED." As the documents note, boyfriend Obama was frantically
working to get her re-admitted to the U.S.
• Jacobs pulls her
punches. Likely working from an un-redacted document, she writes, "The
girl was not only doing poorly in school but had taken an unauthorized
trip to London." That is it.
• Jacobs totally botches the
timeline of Dunham’s relationship with Lolo Soetoro. As Jacobs describes
it, the two "had fallen in love" when Obama was 4. In fact, they married
when he was 3. Maybe they fell in love later.
• "By 1968," writes
Jacobs, "Ann Dunham had married Soetoro, and the family settled in
Jakarta." No, they married in 1965, and mother and on moved to Jakarta
in 1967. Soetoro had moved there in 1966.
• The Wikipedia entry
on Soetoro gets the timeline of baby Obama’s first year right: Dunham
was "living in Seattle, Wash., with her infant son Barack from September
1961 to June 1962 while taking classes." So why can’t Jacobs, Scott, or
Remnick?
• On the occasion of Obama’s visit to Hawaii in 1971,
Jacobs claims he and Dunham drove by the house "where Ann and her
1-year-old son ultimately retreated to live with her parents after her
husband had left her." No, she left her husband for Seattle a year
earlier.
• To her credit, Jacobs notes that Obama was not on that
"famous first airlift" of African students to America, although his son
"declared it" many times on the campaign trail.
• As in the case
of his son, Jacobs uses the word "brilliant" or something like it
regularly to describe the senior Obama. Yet, he did poorly on tests,
which she finds "difficult to understand given Obama’s obvious
intellectual gifts."
In a recent article in the Claremont Review
of Books, national-security guru Angelo Codevilla makes a provocative
claim.
"Another photo, published in a Honolulu newspaper in
1959," he writes, "shows [Ann's father] Stanley Dunham escorted by
uniformed U.S. Navy officers, greeting Barack Obama Sr., as he arrived
in Hawaii from Kenya."
In the photo, Dunham stands next to Obama smiling. Codevilla contends
that the CIA might well have assigned Dunham to keep an eye on Obama, an
unwitting pawn in the agency’s mission to woo the emerging African
elite.
If Codevilla is right, then Jacobs’ book is close to all
wrong. In her account, Obama arrives, alone and friendless in Hawaii,
not surrounded by 20 well-wishers, chief among them a future
father-in-law who was not yet supposed to be there.
If the date
of the photo can be verified as 1959, Codevilla is likely right, and the
mystery deepens.
