[browardchad]

Many thanks for the links. I hadn't seen the first two articles before.

The "reminiscences" of his Indonesian friend, Rully Dasaad, in that Guardian article, have some serious credibility issues, chief among them being his assertion that in 1967, Ann Dunham "worked for USAID, helping Indonesian women in the countryside to live in a more Western fashion." She didn't work for USAID until sometime after she returned to Indonesia, having completed two years of study in anthropology at UH grad school in 1974. And the late 60's was certainly no time for a white female American, newly arrived and unfamiliar with local customs, to be wandering through the countryside teaching "Western" ways in a country that had recently undergone a bloody slaughter of so-called "Communists," (a label applied to all suspected enemies of the new government) -- a purge in which it's highly likely Lolo Soetoro was required to participate as a proof of loyalty.

Nice touch about the rock-throwing injury to Barry's head, though -- that injury was portrayed quite differently in "Dreams" -- as an intentional act by neighborhood kids who regularly bullied him. The incident supposedly prompted Lolo to teach him how to fight back -- but according to Dasaad, Barry's mom taught him not to fight back and the Indonesian kids just immediately accepted the first black American kid they ever met into their social group. Because, of course, everyone knows the US is the only country in which racism exists, per the Obama mantra.  And Dasaad tells us Barry learned Indonesian in three months, contradicted, of course, by other accounts, including at least one teacher, that he never mastered the language.

That's what those 4 am tutoring sessions with his mother were about; the Indonesian school system had a reputation for years as among the worst in the world. Couple that with the fact that he could barely speak the language, and he was likely learning next to nothing in school. The situation probably became intolerable -- both educationally and socially -- by the fourth grade, so back he went to Hawaii.

Dassad's "memories" -- like most of the glowing retrospectives of Obama's chosen "spokespeople" -- sound very much like a concoction designed to coincide, politically if not chronologically,  with what was already in print, by Obama and the sycophantic media, concerning his years in Indonesia. It's the rare adult indeed who remembers such specific details of his childhood without some form of embellishment -- and Dassad's story appears to contain more embellishment than fact.

I have Maraniss' articles. He's an odd one: he provides new details, such as how long and where the Dunhams lived in California, Oklahoma and Texas, and then gets their arrival in Seattle wrong -- they were there a year before Ann entered high school, living in Seattle proper, where she attended eighth grade, as we know. He provides details of the Hawaiian newspaper articles about Sr., but has no clue concerning the financing of his education. Yet, his own paper, the Washington Post, reported five months earlier , on March 30, 2008, that:

 "During his 1959 trip to the United States, the 29-year-old Mboya raised enough money for scholarships for 81 young Kenyans, including Obama Sr., with the help of the African-American Students Foundation. Records show that almost 8,000 individuals contributed. Early supporters included baseball star Jackie Robinson, who gave $4,000, and actors Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier.
There was enormous excitement when the Britannia aircraft took off for New York with the future Kenyan elite on board. After a few weeks of orientation, the students were dispatched to universities across the United States to study subjects that would help them govern Kenya after the departure of the British. Obama Sr. was interested in economics and was sent to Hawaii, where he met, and later married, a Kansas native named Ann Dunham. Barack Jr. was born in August 1961.

I seriously doubt that a man with as high opinion of himself as BO, Sr. would have willingly chosen to study at UH without a scholarship. UH definitely lacked academic clout, as your link to the East-West Center's history correctly reports: "Though first-rate in a few fields, such as tropical agriculture and marine biology, the university was best known for a summer hula course, low faculty pay and an uninspired board of regents."  Having a UH degree didn't exactly embellish one's resume, which would also explain his drive to go to Harvard -- a graduate degree that would go a long way towards obscuring the below-par undergraduate school.

Although the East-West Center  wasn't formerly established until after Sr. graduated, the article does say that "the university set up the center as a confusing blend of graduate and undergraduate studies" in 1960. I would think Russian was on the list, as a hot-ticket item back in the early '60's. (Lolo Soetoro, BTW, was a student at the East-West Center. The A&E Biography briefly shows a shot of Lolo's UH ID badge, in which the date is obscured, but which clearly indicates "East-West Center." He looks incredibly young in the photo ID.)

Maraniss lends more weight to Sr.'s "contemporary" quote than he does his own paper's reporting, but considering the pathetically low journalistic standards the Hawaiian papers have demonstrated throughout the campaign, I doubt they were much better back then. Sr. was also something of a BS artist, like Jr., so if the papers did quote him correctly, he may have been talking through his hat.

I agree with you about the unexplained income needed to live off-campus and tour the US, but I don't believe the funds came from UH. It's more likely that the Dunhams supported him in exchange for his agreement to be Barry's surrogate father. In a sense, he would have been the perfect choice: a man of some prestige who was hell-bent on leaving Hawaii, as evidenced by his acceleration of his studies which enabled him to graduate in three years, and his anxiety to get to Harvard before he got called back to Kenya. He would play the role only briefly, and then they'd be done with him. Ann threw the monkey-wrench into the arrangement, apparently, by contacting him for some reason -- perhaps in support of her fantasizing to her son about his awesome birth father. Or perhaps it was the other way around: he was down and out in Kenyan political circles in 1971, and flat broke. The visit to Hawaii may have been a form of blackmail.

Even if Obama is the biological father (which I question) he might have required monetary persuasion to assent to paternity -- an issue that Madelyn Dunham would have been desparate to resolve, even by purchase.

[Chief Engineer]

There is an interesting article in “Time” about the Kenyan student airlift which I will see if I have in my favs. It was written in 1960 or so and explains the funding acquired for its execution. I found it when I was searching for info on Tom Mboya.
Another question which I haven’t been able to answer is:
How did Obama Sr manage to travel to HI in 1971 considering that the Boston.com article clearly stated that he had his passport pulled for several years after Mboya’s death in 1969?
As an aside, I noticed that Mboya’s widow, Pamela, passed away suddenly in South Africa in January of this year. I read a very short article which said she passed away suddenly while receiving treatment in South Africa. Her daughter, Dr Susan Mboya, now lives in Cincinnati and works for P&G.

[Beckwith]

Re: “he might have required monetary persuasion to assent to paternity — an issue that Madelyn Dunham would have been desperate to resolve, even by purchase.”

I believe Senior’s Christmas trip in 1971 was to re-adopt (or whatever) Barack after his adoption in Indonesia, so he get get the Punahou scholarship.

I believe Obama was paid off by the Dunhams to do/sign whatever to get it done.

The Dunhams paid for his living arrangements. They probably paid for the airline ticket too.

I'd like to know more about the “family business” Senior was into.