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Secrets of Obama family unlocked
The Times ^
| 1/28/07
| Michael Sheridan and Sarah Baxter
Posted on 01/27/2007 9:15:10 PM PST by bruinbirdman
WHEN Barack Obama, Americas newest presidential hopeful, was hit by allegations that he had attended a radical Islamic madrasah school as a boy in Indonesia, the claims spread like a virus through the media and internet.
It was a lie the school was barely more religious than British church schools but it was also a sign that Obamas chances of winning the presidency depend to an unusual degree on his life story and character.
The race is on to define the gifted but little-known senator for Illinois and The Sunday Times can reveal that his heritage is far more diverse and astonishing than anything American voters have heard so far.
Obama, 45, has two half- sisters, one living in Britain, and five surviving half-brothers, the eldest of whom converted to Islam, and whose stories span the globe.
Nobody was more surprised to hear that Obama had reportedly been educated in a madrasah than Julia Suryakusuma, a close friend of his mother until her death from ovarian cancer in 1995.
Suryakusuma, 53, one of Indonesias most outspoken feminist writers, has fearlessly taken on extremist Muslim clerics in print. Last week she described Ann Dunham, Obamas mother, as a liberal and a humanist, who learnt to speak fluent Indonesian and adored the culture.
She was interested in religions but didnt follow one. She was a free-thinker, Suryakusuma said. She was a pioneer and when she came to Indonesia she was ensnared and enchanted.
On the coffee table in her cool modern house in Jakarta, full of the beautiful Indonesian fabrics and carvings which captivated her friend, lies an album of photographs which record the happy times.
There is Dunham, pale-skinned, jolly and frizzy-haired, celebrating with her friends at an art gallery opening or a drinks party, wearing the baggy, free-flowing clothes often favoured by bohemian western women in Asia. She always seemed to be laughing.
You know Ann was really, really white, smiled Suryakusuma, looking through the album, even though she told me she had some Cherokee blood in her. I think she just loved people of a different skin colour, brown people.
Dunham was from Wichita, Kansas, but her parents moved to Hawaii in search of a better life. According to Obama, a distant ancestor was a full-blooded Cherokee.
Dunhams first marriage was to a Kenyan student, also called Barack Obama, but he left the family to study at Harvard and returned to Africa.
She went on to marry Lolo Soetoro, another foreign student, and moved to his native Indonesia with six-year-old Barack in 1967, after the new dictator Suharto summoned the countrys citizens home.
Soetoro became a government relations consultant with a big US oil company. He changed when he came back to Indonesia, Suryakusuma recalled. Men can be a certain way when they are in the West and when they come back they are sucked into their own culture.
In his memoir, Dreams from My Father, first published in 1995, Obama does not conceal the estrangement between his mother and stepfather as Soetoro made compromises with Indonesias power elite. They divorced and he died decades later of a liver complaint.
At 10, Obama returned to Hawaii, where he lived with his grandparents and attended an elite private school. His mother went back to Indonesia with Obamas half-sister Maya, now a professor at the University of Hawaii, and became an expert on the feminine crafts, such as weaving and basket-making, practised by the women of Java.
Suryakusuma recalled that Dunham called her son Berry Barry with an Indonesian lilt. We were both mothers and we talked about how difficult it was for a mother to separate herself and send her child away, but she was really concerned about Barrys education.
She first met Obama when he came to visit his mother as a young adult. She was so proud of him. I remember she was glowing with pride when he became the first black president of the Harvard Law Review.
You know, having a white mother and a black father and coming to Indonesia, Suryakusuma reflected, I could see he had the same kind of empathy with people that his mother had.
Obamas multi-hued heritage has put a distance between him and the African-American community, which has been reluctant to claim him as a brother.
Americas white community, in contrast, has embraced Obama as a hopeful affirmation that the fabled melting pot can transcend race. With his middle name Hussein (like Saddam) and surname Obama (like Osama), he is a rare and exotic figure in American politics.
I believe the American electorate is ready to support leaders who embody the American dream despite their differences. In doing so, we affirm ourselves as a tolerant people, said William Galston, a senior fellow in public policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
Yet there are details in Obamas life that have yet to be subjected to full scrutiny. It may not be the information itself that matters, according to Galston, but how Obama talks about the facts as they emerge and handles questions and controversies.
The Chicago Sun-Times columnist Lynn Sweet was the first to spot in 2004, when Obama burst on the national stage at the Democratic party convention, that his memoir, Dreams from My Father, contained composite characters and changed names.
Except for public figures and his family, it is impossible to know who is real and who is not, she pointed out.
Obama admitted as much in his introduction, saying he had altered characters for the sake of their privacy. As with the revelation that he took cocaine in his youth, he appears to have been candid about potential areas of controversy.
Obamas African family is particularly complicated. By his own account, his father never really left Kezia, his first wife, in Kenya. She bore Obama Sr two children, Roy and Auma, who now works in social services in Berkshire.
They were separated, Obamas mother claimed, but it was a village wedding and there was no document that could suggest a divorce.
His own father and mothers wedding in Hawaii may not have been properly documented either. How and when the marriage occurred remains a bit murky, a bill of particulars that I have never quite had the courage to explore, Obama writes in his memoir.
After his father left Ann and two-year-old Barack to study at Harvard, he went to Africa with another American woman, Ruth, who became his third wife. She bore him two sons in Kenya, one of whom died in a motorcycle accident, but Obama Sr continued to see Kezia.
Traditionally, she was still his wife, a relative explained. Kezia went on to bear two more sons, Abo and Bernard. Although their paternity is disputed by some relatives, Obama Sr regarded them as his own. Later in life, he fathered another son, George, by a young Kenyan woman.
After his parents split up, Obama saw his father only once before learning that he had died in a car crash in Kenya in 1982.
Obamas eldest brother Roy moved to America and went on to convert to Islam.
Obama, in contrast, became a committed Christian while he was working as a community activist in Chicago. Last week he denounced the reports that he was educated in a madrasah as a ludicrous smear.
Larry Sabato, professor of political science at the University of Virginia, believes Obamas richly textured African and Indonesian background will attract voters, no matter how controversial it is.
America loves a success story the new generation that rises from the sins and misfortunes of the older generation, Sabato said.
In Indonesia, Suryakusuma said she could still feel the warm presence of Obamas mother Ann. She would be so proud if she knew about Barry, so proud to think that her little boy would be running for president of the United States.
TOPICS: Culture/Society; Miscellaneous; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: obama; polygamy
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To: All
Its a shame kerry dropped out.......With obama as his running mate we might have finally heard an interesting version of kerry's prowess in vietnam.
To: Paloma_55; All
"it was a village wedding..."Now Hitlery told all of you... "It Takes A Village!"
22
posted on
01/27/2007 9:43:31 PM PST
by
SierraWasp
(Wasn't one "Co-Presidency" enough? Will we now have to see who SHE "does" in the oval office???!!!)
To: boop
I think it notable that his father was a Muslim who insisted that Obama have a Muslim name. Also his father insisted that he be enrolled at a school specifically as "a Muslim".
23
posted on
01/27/2007 9:45:10 PM PST
by
BunnySlippers
(SAY YES TO RUDY !!!)
To: BunnySlippers
"There is Dunham, pale-skinned, jolly and frizzy-haired, celebrating with her friends at an art gallery opening or a drinks party, wearing the baggy, free-flowing clothes often favoured by bohemian western women in Asia. She always seemed to be laughing.""This article is so precious. I really think this is over the top for an American president. "
Obama whackos will portray Hussein as "a flower/love child".
24
posted on
01/27/2007 9:48:27 PM PST
by
bruinbirdman
("Those who control language control minds." -- Ayn Rand)
To: uncle fenders
".......With obama as his running mate we might have finally heard an interesting version of kerry's prowess in vietnam." The Kerry/Barry ticket.
yitbos
25
posted on
01/27/2007 9:52:01 PM PST
by
bruinbirdman
("Those who control language control minds." -- Ayn Rand)
To: BunnySlippers
"Barry Obama."Or as Hillary says, "Bury Obama!"
yitbos
26
posted on
01/27/2007 9:53:38 PM PST
by
bruinbirdman
("Those who control language control minds." -- Ayn Rand)
To: Miss Didi
Hildebeast will teach the "boy" his place. After all, Hildebeast
is a superior to all she encounters. Why, weren't Bubba's conquests mere trailer trash? Wasn't Dick Morris just another Jew-boy? Didn't the Clintons reportedly fight with each other, using the most foul racist and bigoted epithets?
Has Obama been deemed "Black enough" by the race police of the Demoncrat party? How long before one of the anointed "black" Liberal leaders claims Obama is just another zebra and not the 'right kind of brother' to represent them as the first Black presidential candidate?
The Demoncrats can, and will, brand Conservatives as congenital bigots, but their own history is a legacy of racism, bigotry, Jim Crow, slavery, the KKK and lynchings. Let's see how they destroy Obama, before he gets a chance to crawl out of the Demoncrat plantation.
27
posted on
01/27/2007 9:57:27 PM PST
by
Thumper1960
(Unleash the Dogs of War as a Minority, or perish as a party.)
To: bruinbirdman
Sounds like a Geraldo special.
28
posted on
01/27/2007 10:03:18 PM PST
by
TBP
To: bruinbirdman
It ain't over until the fat lady sings...Translation: Obama ain't over until Oprah says he's over...
To: bruinbirdman
When Obama was in Indonesia, he was known as Barry.
When he was sent to live with his grandparents (who he describes as 'white folk') in Hawaii, he assumed the name of Barack Hussein Obama. Why the change?
He converted to Christianity in 1992 -- in his 31st year -- Obama was a Muslim for 31 years.
30
posted on
01/27/2007 10:16:43 PM PST
by
Beckwith
(The dhimmicrats and liberal media have chosen sides and they've sided with the Jihadists.)
To: bruinbirdman
Wait til Obama finds out the results of southern voting and other red states...he of course will have some excuse about race and Oprah will come to his aid. The Carolina's should be a real treat to watch...ditto Virginia...Georgia...etc...
He stands ZERO chance with Hitlery in the race.
31
posted on
01/27/2007 10:20:52 PM PST
by
My Favorite Headache
("Head-On...Apply Directly To The Forehead, Head-On...Apply Directly To The Forehead")
To: Beckwith
He converted to Christianity in 1992 -- in his 31st year -- Obama was a Muslim for 31 years. Given all those years before conversion, and the fact that his father and step-father were both Muslim, he has to have many more friends and relatives who are also Muslim. What is their story as it relates to Obama?
To: bruinbirdman
Obama whackos will portray Hussein as "a flower/love child".
I'm not so sure. The fact, according to R. Emmett Tyrrell's book, that Bill Jefferson (Blythe) Clinton's father was not yet home from WWII at the time he was most likely concieved has never seemed to hurt his ability to get elected. And Bill Clinton's extended Arkie family tree is every bit as convoluted as Obama's ... Hillary Clinton can take no pride in a family consisting of Bill Clinton, Roger Clinton, Hugh Rodham and Tony Rodham, and getting into a lineage fight like this might do her candidacy more harm than good ...
Pass the popcorn!
33
posted on
01/27/2007 10:32:11 PM PST
by
yazd
To: bruinbirdman
She was a free-thinker, Suryakusuma said. She was a pioneer and when she came to Indonesia she was ensnared and enchanted.
The free-thinkers usually do get ensnared and enchanted.
Obamas African family is particularly complicated. By his own account, his father never really left Kezia, his first wife, in Kenya. She bore Obama Sr two children, Roy and Auma, who now works in social services in Berkshire.
They were separated, Obamas mother claimed, but it was a village wedding and there was no document that could suggest a divorce.
His own father and mothers wedding in Hawaii may not have been properly documented either. How and when the marriage occurred remains a bit murky, a bill of particulars that I have never quite had the courage to explore, Obama writes in his memoir.
Sounds like most Africans I know over here. Having husbands or wives either over here or back in Africa never stopped any of them (okay, I know a couple who don't swing like the rest) from indulging themselves. It's beyond Jerry Springer because they all expect the infidelity. "It's how they feel!" one woman told me. "It is their business. It's how God made them." They make Bill Clinton look like an 8th grader. In Liberia, over 95 out of every 100 girls have had at least 1 child by the time they reach 19 years of age and about 50% have had at least one child by the time they reach 15.
34
posted on
01/27/2007 10:34:30 PM PST
by
aruanan
To: bruinbirdman
this is the american dream? more like a nightmare
35
posted on
01/27/2007 10:54:23 PM PST
by
wildcatf4f3
(Find out what brand the Ethiopians are drinking and send a case to all my generals.)
To: cr21
hey its like a disney othello....happy ending and all....wretch, puke
36
posted on
01/27/2007 10:55:21 PM PST
by
wildcatf4f3
(Find out what brand the Ethiopians are drinking and send a case to all my generals.)
To: bruinbirdman
His heritage doesn't bother me. His absorption of new age Liberal crackpot gibberish and its nebulous morality is a troubling matter. That it sells well with Liberals is no surprise. That it is the essence of this flaky dilettante so celebrated by the philistines who set the agenda in the MSM is a scary thing. Keep in mind that Obama could be the next Jimmy Carter and you see why I'm concerned, but this one will not even pretend he'd ask "Why not the Best?"
37
posted on
01/27/2007 10:57:16 PM PST
by
elhombrelibre
(After 9/11, Bush went to war with terrorists and their supporters. Democrats war against him.)
To: aruanan
In Liberia, over 95 out of every 100 girls have had at least 1 child by the time they reach 19 years of age and about 50% have had at least one child by the time they reach 15. I used to know a Liberian couple who had come here at the time of the civil war. The husband had worked for an agency of the American government. One time when we were out to dinner with some other Liberians, I noticed that the wife pointed to pictures on the menu when ordering; apparently she had minimal literacy. A friend of theirs told me that she was very lucky. She happened to be the one of her husband's several girlfriends who was with him when the Americans came to evacuate their workers. I was told that it was common for men with good paying jobs to have several partners.
To: All
But what happened to the 'story' he told in front of millions on TV at the RAT's 2004 Convention about his father being only a poor lowly sheep-herder?
There's a lot of history in Barack Hussein Obamba's background he doesn't want to get out if one cares to do some research.
Put aside the fact he has Soros backing him and him being mixed up with Rezko, the real story lies in his deals in Hawaii by the same crooks that paved the way to the WH for klinton.
[snip]
Obamas corrupt backers in Illinois seamy and fetid political swamps are matched only by the unsavory gaggle of politically-connected supporters assembling to back his candidacy in Hawaii. Obamas Hawaii support comes from a group of Democrat politicos around former Governor John Waiheeconsidered by some the dirtiest figure in Hawaiis very dirty politics. This is significant because Waihee and his cronies were also early money backers of Bill Clintons successful 1992 bid for the White House.
The little-known story of Clintons Waihee early money Hawaii connection is told in the 1997 PBS Frontline special The Fixers, a story which begins with poor Hawaii farmers being driven off their land by Honolulu police and even an SWAT team in a mid-1980s deal to build Maunawili Valley Oahu golf course deal with Japanese investors flush from the Japanese market and real estate bubble. Fixers (and Waihee associates) Gene and Nora Lum go from buying the entire Hawaii State legislature in order to pass a bill allowing golf courses on agricultural land to becoming early money Clinton financial backers. They engage in a series of transactions mixing Oklahoma gas leases, Democrat connections with Asian money and the sale of political influence to facilitate other Hawaii land deals. LINK: The Fixers transcripts.
The story continues into the Clintons better-known mid-1990s Asian money scandals involving John Huang, Charlie Trieh, Johnny Chung, the Lippo Bank of Indonesia, Clintons Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, Hillary Clinton, and 938 documented visits to the Lincoln Bedroom by hundreds of people who paid thousands for the privilege. Finally the story told in The Fixers ends with then-President Clinton, ten days after winning his second Presidential term, on his way to Asia stopping in Honolulu and playing golf with Waihee in the pouring rain on the Maunawili Valley Oahu course where it all started.
The early money backing of Clinton paid off handsomely for Waihee and his cronies. Clinton in 1993 signed the so-called Apology Resolution in essence apologizing for the 1893 overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom and 1898 US annexation of Hawaii and implicitly placing Hawaii Statehood in question.
The Apology Resolution quickly became a politically correct guilt justification for corrupt Hawaii political operators to rake in millions operating lucrative state and federally funded programs and even private companies purportedly benefiting Native Hawaiians. One deal alone, Sandwich Isles Communications, has raked in $500 million in federal funds to provide useless fiber optic connections to Hawaiian Homelands residential lots--most of which are undeveloped.
Today Hawaiis political class is focused on passage of the so-called Akaka Bill a descendant of the Apology Resolution which would create a sovereign native Hawaiian tribal governmenta potential source of billions for Hawaiis venal elites. Obama has been such a strong Senatorial advocate for the Akaka Bill, he is often called Hawaiis third Senator.
In addition to the Hawaii Democrat dirty money machine Obama is tied in with Goldman Sachs, investment houses specializing in highly regulated industries and many Clinton administration figures as described in the December 6 Harpers Magazine article, Barack Obama, Inc.:
He (Obama) quickly established a political machine funded and run by a standard Beltway group of lobbyists, P.R. consultants, and hangers-on. For the staff post of policy director he hired Karen Kornbluh, a senior aide to Robert Rubin when the latter, as head of the Treasury Department under Bill Clinton, was a chief advocate for NAFTA and other free-trade policies that decimated the nations manufacturing sector (and the organized labor wing of the Democratic Party). Obamas top contributors are corporate law and lobbying firms (Kirkland & Ellis and Skadden, Arps, where four attorneys are fund-raisers for Obama as well as donors), Wall Street financial houses (Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase), and big Chicago interests (Henry Crown and Company, an investment firm that has stakes in industries ranging from telecommunications to defense). Obama immediately established a leadership PAC, a vehicle through which a member of Congress can contribute to other politicians campaignsand one that political reform groups generally view as a slush fund through which congressional leaders can evade campaign-finance rules while raising their own political profiles.
Goldman Sachs had substantial dealings with ex-Governor Waihee and the corrupt trustees of Hawaiis $6 billion Bishop Estate exposed finally in the late 1990s and documented in the current Hawaii best-selling book, Broken Trust.
Is Broken Trust a thing of the past? Obamas Hawaii steering committee taps into both Bishop Estate and the Waihee administration. As the December 13 Honolulu Advertiser explains, Chuck Freedman, a retired vice president of corporate relations for Hawaiian Electric Co. (HECO) and former communications director for former Gov. John Waihee, said the committee has contacted Obama's aides and has received a positive response. Currently three of the five Bishop Estate trustees are also board members of Hawaiian Electric. HECO monopolizes power generation and distribution in Hawaii and through a double-taxation scheme known as the General Excise Tax, supplies a large part of the State General Fund. HECO also provides many thousands of dollars of political donations to legislative incumbents. Bishop Estate is the states largest private landowner. Three of the five Bishop Estate trustees are board members of HEI the parent company of HECO.
Voters rarely got the truth from Bill Clinton; will they get the straight story from Obama? Not judging by his comments to Harpers: Progressive candidates generally have a harder time raising money, he said, and at times some of them will trim their sails on behalf of the people who are financing them.
Hawaii may not amount to much in the Electoral College, but to the National Democrat Party money machine, it is a fountainhead of cash. If Waihee and his cronies could parlay their dirty land deals into the Presidency for their selected candidate in 1992, they could do it again. Barack Hussein Obama will keep his Islamic past under wraps and his radical secularist sails trimmed. He will say whatever it takes to bring in the cash and win election. His candidacy, record and corrupt connections deserve close scrutiny now, before it is too late. "
[snip]
http://www.michnews.com/artman/publish/article_15480.shtml
IMO the plan is for hitlery to be the President for 8 years and Barack Hussein Obama as her VP, in-waiting to take over the WH for the following eight years.
To: bruinbirdman
Obamas multi-hued heritage has put a distance between him and the African-American community, which has been reluctant to claim him as a brother. It sounds as if he never even laid eyes on an African-American until he went to college.
40
posted on
01/27/2007 11:48:47 PM PST
by
Polybius
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