Kenya was a Cold War ally of the U.S. For example, Kenya boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games at President Jimmy Carter's request, a bigger sacrifice for Kenya than most of other 28 countries that boycotted, since the Olympic running events provide Kenya with its main shot at glory on the international stage. The international prestige of Kenya's first President, Jomo Kenyatta and Kenya's relatively successful evolution, meant that Kenya's "pro-capitalist" (in truth, crony capitalist) policies were a valuable counterexample during the Cold War struggle for hearts and minds of Third World countries.
There's a big mystery at the heart of Barack Obama's Dreams For My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance. What was Barack Obama doing seeking out Marxist professors in college? Why did Obama choose a Communist Party USA member as his socio- political counselor in high school? Why was he spending his time studying neocolonialism and the writings of Frantz Fanon, the pro-violence author of "the Communist Manifesto of neocolonialsm", in college? Why did he take time out from his studies at Columbia to attend socialist conferences at Cooper Union?
And there is more mystery in the book. Why does Obama consider working in a consulting house for international business like being "a spy behind enemy lines?" Why does he repeatedly find it so hard to explain his political views to others? Why was he driven to become a left-aligned political organizer? It's a question Obama again and again can't seem to answer to the satisfaction of the interlocutors in his own memoir.
If there is a mystery at the heart of Barack Obama's Dreams For My Father, one thing is not left a mystery, the fact that Barack Obama organized his life on the ideals given to him by his Kenyan father. Obama tells us, "All of my life, I carried a single image of my father, one that I .. tried to take as my own." (p. 220) And what was that image? It was "the father of my dreams, the man in my mother's stories, full of high-blown ideals .." (p. 278) What is more, Obama tells us that, "It was into my father's image .. that I'd packed all the attributes I sought in myself." And also that, "I did feel that there was something to prove .. to my father" in his efforts at political organizing. (p. 230)
So we know that his father's ideals were a driving force in his life, but the one thing that Obama does not give us are the contents of those ideals. ...
A bit of research at the library reveals the answers about Barack Obama's father and his father's convictions which Obama withholds from his readers. 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 [father of current Luo leader Raila Odinga, who recently claimed to be Sen. Obama's cousin], in a paper Barack Obama's father for the 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."
Ransom dug up from the stacks at UCLA the 1965 paper "Problems Facing Our Socialism" by Barack H. Obama in the East Africa Journal.
... 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.
Obama 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, ...
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) ...
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)
[More]
In short, the Presidential frontrunner's father's policy views were similar to Robert Mugabe's.
In Obama's memoirs, he plays up his father's failure to achieve the brilliant career seemingly open to him in the mid-1960s as due to ethnic politics (he was a Luo, Kenyatta a Kikuyu), and, later, due to his father's drinking. But the Presidential candidate skips over the more politically relevant ideological clash between his father and Kenyatta. As Mona Charen noted, leftism is more assumed than articulated in Obama's slippery autobiography.
Although, Barack Obama Jr. spent only one month of his life with his father, when he came to visit Hawaii when his son was a schoolboy at Punahou prep, the young man heard plenty about his father's brilliance and high ideals from his leftist mother, who remained a lifelong defender of her ex-husband, and leftist paternal grandfather.
Obviously, Obama is not going to impose his father's Mugabeist ideals on America. He's clearly evolved ideologically. Still, Ransom's important work raises the essential question: How far has he evolved? And has his heart kept up with head? The nominating process is practically over and we're only now beginning to understand just how far to the left Obama started out, and we really don't have a clue what the future trajectory of his personal ideology would look like.
Perhaps one of our thousands of political reporters should ask him?
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
Posts
30 comments:
And now someone else is writing about the Democrats' dilemma:
The Democrats' cul-de-sac
I'm not surprised. If you read between the lines in Dreams, it's pretty clear Obama Sr. is a Marxist in the Third World sense, while his mother was a grad school-type lefty.
I previously commented that moderate appearance to the contrary, Obama would emerge as a more or less unreconstructed left/liberal in actual practice. It's fair to conclude he has a genetic predisposition to the left, and further has been indoctrinated and/or sought out liberal/left/black national associations in every formative phase of his life until becoming a Senator. There is an issue: is Obama's soft-peddling of his liberalism in public statements a result of a thoughtful migration to the center (and an un-lefty consideration of the actual history of the world during his lifetime), or the result of calculation to disguise his true intentions until elected? I conclude the latter, but primarily because of Obama's body language, inflections of voice, and similar cues to the personality-reading unconcious. It's tempting to draw the other conclusion because we, ourselves, haven't followed Obama's left path and have a more rational cast of mind than Obama received from his white side. I previously commented that Obama is probably a Myers Briggs "F" personality type, reflected in both parents and his books' emotional ruminations. This would incline him to the "feelings" option, rather than the rational one, in decisions (While much discussion of MB is psycho-babble, the key to the F/T distinction in actual practice is that the F type will sometimes make unfathomable choices because a logical presentation of facts doesn't register much, while a general feel and sense of a situation does). The fact that Obama makes excellent readings of social nuance doesn't mean that he is an entirely calculating, rational person; this is a less exceptional skill anyway for people born post-1960 and growing up in a media rich environment. I can't claim Obama is a hysterical lefty; that's obviously not so, but the point is his feelings inclination is stronger than Steve's, and this will have an impact on his decisions.
I've been having fun passing around the six articles of "Obama's" economic platform to people on the Internet who let down their guard after April Fools' Day. Some people are pretty gullible.
Who cares what Obama’s Father was? He left him when he was 2 years old!!! Jesus Christ’s Father was a Jew, but Christ formed a different Church, and a different religion. Karl Marx did not come from a communistic family, he came up with those ideas on his own. Hillary Clinton’s Father was a Republican. Ronald Reagan was formerly a Democrat, and he turned into a Republican President.
This idea of trying to attack someone through their birth, their race, their family, or their Pastor (or, in the case of Ronald Reagan, judging by his past political affiliation) is idiotic at best, and disingenuous at worst. Listen to what the candidates are saying. Listen to the speeches they made before the Iraq War. Look at their voting records. If you have something good or bad to say about any of the candidates concerning THEIR OWN voting records or something they advocate in their speeches or the political positions on their websites, then say it. Otherwise, quit slicing the baloney!
Mitt Rommney’s Father was a Liberal Democrat of the FDR mold and Rommney, an arch consevative, has consistently and properly praised his father. Even if my father had been a Ku Klux Klansman (he wasn’t) I would still owe much to my father–our parents bring us into existence and provide us with the raw materials and DNA to build a unique person–a person who develops their own ideas, their own life, and their own politics.
The point is that it doesn’t matter whether your Father (or Mother) was a thief or a murderer, a communist or a coward, a rogue or a notorious sinner. The tradition of both Christianity and of America is that children do not inherit the sins of their parents. The meaning of God’s gift of free will and our constitution’s guarantee of individual liberty and freedom of thought and political expression is that we aren’t judged by the sins or errors of our parents. Everyone gets a chance to rise and fall on their own merits. The twisted argument you are making is the same one they tried to make about the blind man in the New Testament. “Was it because of his parents sin that he was born blind” they asked? Christ set them straight–we are NOT punished for the sins of our parents, and we are not to judge others by what their parents may have done in the past. Every human person is a free and unique individual that should be judged on their own individual merits. If what I am saying was not true, then we would all be hopelessly dragged down by the weight of the many sins and mistakes of our ancestors–nobody could progress forward. And just because Obama honors his Father does NOT mean that he agrees with him on his political views or anything else for that matter. There’s a really great set of rules that I would recommend to you called The Ten Commandments. It’s found in both the Christian Bible and the Jewish Torah, and it is the primary basis for our judeo-christian ethics and laws. One of those commandments is “Honor Thy Father and Mother”. Note carefully that the Commandment does NOT say to honor your Father and Mother because they are good, or honor them when you agree with their politics–it simply says to honor them. As Children, we honor our parents for being our parents (just as we honor God for being our God). And if Obama chooses to honor his Father, whether in a book or otherwise, then he is simply following that particular Commandment as he understands it. Your “parents’ views=childrens’ views” argument flys in the face of that reality.
Ahh, Sailer is trying to paint Obama as a communist. Is that the new strategy?
Steve amazes me. After failing with his "Obama is a racist" line, he is now trying to push the "Obama is a Commie" line.
Fortunately, this strategy will fail as well.
Now that you've ransaked the archives and posted Obama's wife's college essay from more than 20 years ago, you're going at his father's essays from 40 years ago.
Since a 2-man election is a zero-sum game, what has motivated yourself to volunteer as a McCain oppo researcher?
Little to no mention here of the following facts:
(1) McCain would be one of the dumbest men ever to become president. Always at the bottom of his class in school, he rode his father's name and his second wife's inherited fortune into public office.
(2) Cindy McCain was a long-time drug addict, and in fact stole some of her opiate pills from a charity she was involved with. She had an affair with and stole McCain from his first wife.
(3) McCain took money to try to derail the investigation of a bank failure that resulted in a $600 million loss to taxpayers.
While I don't agree with the elder Obama's land grab in Kenya, I disagree much more with John McCain, whose election would ratify the control of the "Invade/Invite The World" people over the Republican Party, and who would soon after taking office sign an amnesty that would eventually legalize 15 million illegal immigrants, and bring in tens of millions more.
"Obama tells us that, "It was into my father's image .. that I'd packed all the attributes I sought in myself." And also that, "I did feel that there was something to prove .. to my father" in his efforts at political organizing. (p. 230)"
Great! Another spoiled brat trying to live up to his daddy's image. We've tried that already - hasn't exactly done us a power of good.
And what an ideal to live up to - that Obama Sr. - a deadbeat, a commie, and a lush.
This is really pretty hilarious stuff!
Assuming these claims aren't distorted, it looks like America may soon have not merely it's first black president, but it's first black *Communist* president, who was also originally raised as a Muslim!
None of this would really bother me all that much, except that I fear poor Obama will try to keep us in Iraq for years to come, and maybe even start another crazy war with Iran.
After all, he needs to show how "moderate" he really is.
The question keeps popping up how far left Obama really is. No one knows, and the public doesn't seem to care. After Bush, political labels seem pretty irrelevant. He's not Bush, and that's a political spectrum all its own. The only effective question is this: What will he do? Accept that he's as left as was his father (and in his heart of hearts, he probably is). What will that mean concretely, not in the abstract? Calling him names only emboldens his supporters, regardless. What will a far left black liberationist actually do in office?
Bob Brinker, host of the ABC talk radio show Moneytalk, criticized Barack Obama's federal tax plan last weekend and recommended he fire whoever presented the plan to him. After reading the evidence you have presented, it appears the plan originated with Senator Obama himself.
Bob Brinker on San Francisco's KGO radio.
"Barack Obama stands firmly on raising the marginal tax rate on entrepreneurs to levels not seen since John F. Kennedy………..he’s talking about a potential marginal tax rate of about 60 to 63%........Now I think with a marginal rate of 60 to 63%, I think that a lot of entrepreneurs will take a page out the old Johnny Paycheck Songbook, ‘Take This Job and Shove It, I Don’t Work Here Anymore.’ That line made the late, great Johnny Paycheck famous and it may make Barack Obama famous too, to a lot of entrepreneurs who may take up golf. Because the bottom line is if you are confiscating 60% or more of somebody’s compensation, in a lot of cases, they’re just going to find something else to do with their time.”
Thanks yet again for writing about the stuff that the media ignores, this is pretty enlightening stuff.
Am I the only one who gets the feeling there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of black guys in America serving in state legislatures and city councils - guys with state college degrees, bratty teenagers, and suburban homes - who look at Obama, shake their heads, and quite justifiably think to themselves "I could do ten times better than this phoney"?
If you look at Obama, clearly he wants to do what his Father wanted. He will if elected do as much of it as possible.
Yes he's a hard-core Communist. A stealth one, but still a Communist.
One more viral video in the making. McCain won't make this case of course. But there is nothing to stop others from doing so. Video tools are cheap and easy. YouTube and other sites are available to host this. [Cinelarra is free/Open Source for Linux, Imovie free on Macs, Movie Maker free on Windows. No reason why this won't be an issue even with a Media blockade.]
I'm not sure where the evidence is that he's evolved ideologically? He's not going to make America a Communist state, because even as President he won't have the desire to do that, but I haven't seen any evidence that he is not himself a Communist.
"Perhaps one of our thousands of political reporters should ask him?"
Jesus, you're a racist.
Thank God not a single one of them is.
"Perhaps one of our thousands of political reporters should ask him?"
Don't bet on it.
And with the senile and outrageous McCain as the Repub nominee, it's likely he will nominate Condi Rice as his Veep. This will be an open invitation to vote for a 3rd party candidate.
In short, a bizarre series of events might well propel Barack Hussein Obama into the White House.
My heart is sinking.
...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 worte 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"...
Now if we fill in the missing information we have now learned about Barack Obama the elder -- that he held uncompromising socialist and anti-Western views in line with Kenyatta's principle political rival Oginga Odinga -- we can understand why he had conflicts of "principle" with Kenyatta and government. And the timeline begins to make sense. TIME magazine reports the open conflict between the anti-communist, pro-Western Kenyatta and the communist-allied, anti-Western Odinga in a story from June, 1965, a story in which Odinga declares "communism is like food to me." By 1966 Odinga was out of the government. In Obama's Dream For My Father these political events and their consequences for Barack Obama the elder are described in the voice of his sister Auma...
In August of 2006, Barrack Hussein Obama JR travelled to Kenya and appeared extensively with Raila Amolo Odinga, son of [Jaramogi] Oginga Odinga [and apparently the Kenyans were so disturbed by Obama JR's interference in Kenyan politics that they lodged a complaint with the US State Department]:
JPG: obama_odinga_august_2006.jpg
JPG: obama_odinga_august_2006_WIDE.jpg
Of course, this was the same August of 2006 trip to Kenya during which Obama was photographed in Muslim tribal garments:
JPG: Barack_Hussein_Obama_dons_Muslim_ga.jpg
A year later, in August, of 2007, Raila Amolo Odinga signed an agreement with Sheikh Abdullahi Abdi to implement Sharia law if Raila Amolo Odinga were to win the Muslim vote:
Kenyan Christians could be subjected to Sharia law
christiantoday.com
Google cache
Concerns Raised Over Alleged Vow to Enforce Islamic Law in Kenya
christianpost.com
Then, in the aftermath of the Kenyan elections, around the turn of the new year, Raila Amolo Odinga supporters burned and hacked Christians to death, leaving about 250,000 people homeless:
Children torched in Kenya church
theaustralian.news.com.au
At roughly the same time, Raila Amolo Odinga announced to the world that he was Obama JR's cousin:
I'm Barack Obama's cousin says Raila Odinga
telegraph.co.uk
Odinga says Obama is his cousin
news.bbc.co.uk
Subsequent to the burning & hacking of Christians, Raila Amolo Odinga and Obama JR conferred with one another in early January of this year:
Obama urges talks in phone call to Kenya's Odinga
brisbanetimes.com.au
Thanks to you, we do have a clue. Advancement of the coloured peoples of America and maybe the world.
My hunch is that Obama really models himself after Nelson Mandela, not his father.
Like Mandela, he´s a closet communist with a phony aura of sainthood.
But anyway, who Obama really is or what he intends to do does not matter much, because- let´s face it- the POTUS position is just a figurehead.
We should be wondering what kind of administration will govern the US if he´s elected, and in what way it will differ from McCain´s.
McCain is not senile. His weaknesses include the desire to have the approval of the Press, and the desire to pick fights with people, often his supporters (to get approval of the press).
Hillary's weaknesses are well known, a Nixonian personality prone to lying/exaggerating and blatant phoniness, along with weakness and unwillingness to fight for principle (she has none).
Obama's are his racist views on whites/asians, his desire to be "black enough" and his hatred of America (his crotch cradling during the National Anthem is telling). [Obama incidentally has set race relations back 50 years, as he's unabashedly endorsed Black racism while suggesting the White or other varieties are not OK. This empowers racists of all stripes since the hypocrisy is to open.]
Of all the candidates, he'd be the worst. He has no clue particularly how to deal with tribal peoples and would-be leaders. At least McCain got an up-close and personal view of the Third World and how it likes to treat Americans when it gets a chance (tribalism at it's finest).
[We're stuck in Iraq for probably a hundred years. Or we can withdraw and get followed home. Weak horse/strong horse. That's our choice. We're dealing with tribal people. Strength is respected, weakness despised. They have nukes -- Pakistan -- and likely enough more nations/tribes will have them. Being seen as strong and dangerous is the only way forward in the now tribal global environment.]
Obama is weak. Hillary nearly as weak. McCain is old but likely to induce fear. As long as the fear is bounded, it's a good thing. Obama per his Communist father has a whole laundry list of military spending he'll cut to "punish" and weaken America. Rev God Damn America was no accident, as the marxists say.
Steve Sailer: Obviously, Obama is not going to impose his father's Mugabeist ideals on America. He's clearly evolved ideologically.
Why do you feel compelled to include a throw-away line like that?
Why don't you have the courage of your convictions, and follow your reasoning through to its logical conclusion?
All of the developing evidence is beginning to paint Obama Jr as a closet Stalinist.
Obama senior's ideology reminds me of the late Kwame Nkhrumah's observation that, if he wanted a man to be a Communist, he would send him to an American university; if he wanted him to be an anti-Communist, he would send him to Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow.
The fifth commenter (anonymous) had one of the funnier lines I've read on the blog...
"Even if my father had been a Ku Klux Klansman (he wasn’t)"
ok got it- anonymous' father was not in the KKK- got it
Listen to what the candidates are saying.
Obama is saying he admires his father and his politics. Aside from that, he hasn't said much of substance.
Hope! Change! More Hope! More Change! Yes we can! Hope! Change! I'll unite this country! Did I mention hope and change?
Listen to the speeches they made before the Iraq War.
How about reading the books he wrote?
Dutch Boy, do you have a source for that statement?
"McCain would be one of the dumbest men ever to become president. "
I did not know that McCain was more than one person. Maybe that explains his politics, more person than one in one body. Wow!
"[We're stuck in Iraq for probably a hundred years. Or we can withdraw and get followed home. Weak horse/strong horse. That's our choice."
How are they supposed to follow us home if we don't let them in?
I would think the Mahdi army, Sunnis, Kurds, Yezidis, etc. would be content to stay home and fight each other for control of the oil.
Mayor Bloomberg, please save us from the mythomanical crook, the lunatic warmonger and The Man Who Doesn't Know Who He Is (unless he really IS a
America-hating, white-hating crypto-Commie).
On the latter see:
here
here
Obama is not Mugabe. A closer comparison could be made with Ian Khama, leader of Botswana - half African and half (English) White. Or perhaps Rawlings.
How are they supposed to follow us home if we don't let them in?
Neocon doesn't answer that question. Ever.
Which makes sense, seeing how he and the establishment are of one mind on the subject; no border control for countries established by Europeans (except Israel), ever, diversity is our strength, etc.
Not that it's an impractical position - our establishment would much rather see us dead than racist (and Israel racist than inconvenienced), so why even broach the subject (so the thinking seems to go)?
Post a Comment