The Scanner-International Edition, 11/14/08 (Insight into Obama’s Background, the Luo of East Africa; The Unrecognized Foreign Policy Work by Bush that Will Help Obama; How the Occupation of Iraq May Look in the Future)

~~By InsightAnalytical-GRL

Here are a few international stories that have caught my eye over the last few days. The first one gives a detailed background on Obama’s roots, including some of the reputed personality traits of the Luo’s that are evident in Obama. If you think that Bush was in Obama’s camp before the election, the second story may give you even more things to think about. Obama will be taking credit for a lot of the groundwork laid by Bush. The final story discusses some developments that might affect the future of Iraq that the reader might be unaware of.

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From The East African, Kenya:

An ‘irresistible, awful, marvellous people’: The Luo of East Africa

By DAVID KAIZA

Obama’s name is unavoidable anywhere, but when pronounced at Mpaaro, thereis an added urgency to its sound…

It is not altogether fanciful to say that, some 628 years ago, a time barely thought of now, the seeds of Obama’s ascendancy to the world stage were sown here.

Dates and facts are hard to pin down, details are much disputed. But it was here that a Luo man, perhaps one of Obama ancestors, changed for good the world of his time.

The scale was smaller, distances were not so great, but the assumption of power, in the year 1380, over the lands that now comprise Uganda by one Rukidi Isingoma-Mpuga Labongo, son of Olum, leader of the migrating Luo who entered Uganda from Sudan towards the last decades of the 14th century, set in motion cultural-political changes whose impact echoes in many of the conflicts still taking place in northern Uganda and the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

For Andrea, as indeed for scholars and guardians of the traditions of Bunyoro-Kitara, the emergence of Obama was marked by a polish, drive and determination that had not been seen before in this part of the world.

“These were men of substance,” Andrea says of the Luo aristocracy that invaded and occupied Bunyoro. “They were very, very intelligent. They were generous. The people liked them.”

Historians speak of the “immense impact” that the Luo migration had on the societies they passed through.

Historian and Catholic priest, J.P. Crazzolara in his foundational study, The Lwoo (1950), writes hyperbolically, “They marched on and came upon people who trembled at their sudden appearance. The Lwoo were at sight the absolute arbiters of this population, who had no time left to think and try to repel such an unexpected mass of invaders.”

He describes them as an “irresistible, awful, marvellous people” that “spread (their) shadow” over the older areas of western and southern Uganda.

The displacement of former rulers and inhabitants by this “appearance” is said to be partly responsible for the ethnic pressures and traumas afflicting eastern Congo, for those who lost out in those years were never to regain their footing and continue to be landless, stateless peoples to this day.

Crazzolara’s heraldic language over-privileges Luo achievements, yet 2008, emerging as a hyperbolic year for Africans, is on a scale Obama’s Luo ancestors would never have dreamt of scaling on the plains of Sudan, Uganda and Kenya.

The year started on a bad, but well-publicised note. With the horribly botched Kenyan election, the word “Luo” started to circulate internationally.

Barrack Obama’s candidature would bring in the phrase “son of a Luo father.”

On a smaller scale, outside Kenya, President Yoweri Museveni, in the middle of a face-off with the kingdom of Buganda, sought to reduce the Kabaka’s standing by publicly stating that the latter was a Luo.

Much of the descriptions made of the Luo are stereotypes like those applied to any other ethnic group, but unlike other ethnic groups in the region, the Luo are spread across five countries, forming a continuous chain that runs 1,200km from Sudan to the southern shores of Lake Victoria.

Crozzolara’s contradictory label “awful and marvellous” points to a central Luo paradox: Their descendants’ occupation of Uganda’s thrones contrasts with the depths of their suffering in wars in northern Uganda, southern Sudan and southwestern Ethiopia. The pendulum of Luo history has swang dizzyingly from immense success to immense failure.

However, to traverse this 1,200km is to be overcome by the similarities in the physical, cultural and personal characteristics of the Dinka, Nuer, Anuak, Shilluk, Wau, Acholi, Lango, Alur, Padhola and Kenyan Luo.

The numerous elders along the trail keep track of their kith and kin.

It is an identity with real cohesive power that can break out in a visceral possessiveness on discovering each other.

It grips, whether felt at the entrance of a tomb in one country, or in victory jigs on the streets of Kisumu.

Spread across centuries and continents, similar descriptions are made of their leaders as “intelligent,” “socialist,” “generous,” “driven,” “aggressive…”

Indeed, putting aside for the moment the adjective-defying import of Obama’s achievement, the weird thing is that his oratorical skills, penchant for the extravagant and appeal to the crowd are right out of the standard caricature of a Luo politician.

Descriptions of Obama sound like a recycling of phrases used of men like the Odingas, Tom Mboya, Apollo Milton Obote, Kabalega and Labongo before him.

For East Africans, seeing Obama reduce crowds to tears is oddly reminiscent of Ugandan independence leader Obote, a man said to be devastating with a microphone.

Indeed, Obama, who rose to fame through his “mobilisation skills,” was himself literally the (accidental) product of the mobilisation skills of a man with whom he shares his ancestry, Tom Mboya. It was Mboya who sent Obama Sr to the US.

There are many barroom jokes in Nairobi now. The funnier one is that when McCain elected to deliver his nomination acceptance speech to a modest, indoor audience, and Obama went for a mammoth event, it was typical of the “outsized” egos of Luo politicians.

“When I see Obama, I see a typical Luo man,” says Kenyan anthropologist Othieno Aluoka.

(MORE)

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From Inter Press Service News Agency, Italy

U.S.: Obama Foreign Policy May Not Require a Clean Break

Analysis by Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Nov 10 (IPS) – While much of the world and many of his U.S. supporters are expecting a sharp break with his predecessor’s foreign policy after President-elect Barack Obama takes office Jan. 20, they may be surprised by the degree of continuity between the two administrations.

That continuity — which would be made more concrete if, as expected, Pentagon chief Robert Gates is asked to remain at his post — has less to do with Obama’s hesitation in following through on his more sweeping campaign promises than with the fact that President George W. Bush, has quietly — if grudgingly — moved key U.S. policies in directions that are largely compatible with Obama’s own intentions.

(SNIP)

n addition to earning Obama great goodwill overseas, all of these steps will help dramatise the contrast between his more open and inclusive approach to the world and that of his predecessor, whose unilateralism and cowboy image have brought Washington’s standing among foreign publics to an all-time low.

To be fair, however, that image — so richly earned during his first term when neo-conservatives and other hawks ruled the roost — is somewhat outdated. Chastened by the Iraq war and guided step by halting step by the foreign policy realists, notably Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Gates, and his top military commanders, who have come to dominate the last two years of his presidency, Bush has essentially — if not explicitly — laid the groundwork for Obama’s “new dawn”, especially with respect to key crisis areas that are certain to figure near the top of the new president’s agenda.

Despite loud protests and repeated efforts by hawks around Vice President Dick Cheney to deep-six the process, for example, Bush has stuck by Rice and her top Asia aide, Christopher Hill, in making the necessary concessions to keep the “Six-Party Talks” to de-nuclearise North Korea alive.

Similarly, Bush broke his own diplomatic embargo on Iran — along with Pyongyang, the last surviving member of the “Axis of Evil” — by sending a senior State Department official, Undersecretary of State William Burns, to sit down with his Iranian counterpart as part of a larger meeting including other permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany last summer. Significantly, Burns will serve as the State Department’s chief liaison with Obama’s transition team.

The administration also appears close to announcing that it intends to set up an Interests Section in Tehran even before Obama takes office. Such a step will no doubt make it far less controversial for the new president to open comprehensive, high-level talks with Iran without conditions when he chooses to do so (possibly after Iran’s presidential elections in June so as to avoid boosting President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad chances of re-election).

And after effectively ignoring the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for nearly seven years, Bush finally re-launched peace talks at Annapolis last November. While those talks have made little progress and now, with Israeli elections scheduled for February, have no hope of reaching an accord by the time Bush leaves office, he will bequeath, as Rice, the effort’s most dogged booster, noted this weekend, a process that Obama can use to fulfill his promise to make a two-state solution an urgent priority.

Even on Iraq and Afghanistan, Bush has helped lay the groundwork for Obama’s plans to accelerate the withdrawal of combat troops from the former and rapidly deploying more to the latter, which the president-elect has long argued, unlike the incumbent, constitutes the “central front in the war on terror”. By acquiescing in a still-pending accord with the Iraqi government, Bush has also accepted a 2012 deadline for the withdrawal of all U.S. troops — not just its combat forces, which Obama has pledged to withdraw by mid-2010.

As for Russia, whose intervention in Georgia last August brought bilateral ties to their lowest ebb since the end of the Cold War, Bush, like Obama, has acted with relative restraint, particularly compared to the urgings of Obama’s Republican rival, Sen. John McCain.

And while his insistence on deploying missile-defence systems in central and eastern Europe is clearly more provocative than Obama’s cautious ambiguity on the subject, Bush has also moved in recent days both to address Moscow’s concerns and lay the basis for a new accord on sharply reducing U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals, something that Obama is expected to make a high priority in the early days.

In other areas, Obama’s engagement strategy is likely to build on more positive achievements by Bush that have not received nearly as much attention as his “war-on-terror” debacles: most notably in East Asia, where, to the aggravation of the hawks, good ties with China have not only been preserved, but enhanced; India, where the new nuclear deal capped a rapidly growing strategic relationship; and much of Africa, where Bush’s five-year-old, 15-billion-dollar AIDS programme, strongly endorsed by Obama, is given credit not only for saving millions of lives, but also for making the region the most Bush-friendly by far, according to recent public opinion polls.

(MORE)

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From Inter Press Service News Agency, Italy

IRAQ: U.S. Pushes In Their Excellencies

By Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa al-Omrani

CAIRO, Nov 7 (IPS) – More than five years after the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq, Arab capitals are beginning to send ambassadors to Baghdad. But some Egyptian commentators question the timing of the move, which they attribute to pressure from Washington.

“Arab governments originally wanted a full withdrawal of foreign forces and a stable security environment before sending ambassadors,” Ahmed Thabet, political science professor at Cairo University, told IPS. “Yet the pending U.S.-Iraq security agreement promises to turn the current military occupation of Iraq into a constitutionally sanctioned one.”

(SNIP)

“Many Iraqis see this new Arab diplomatic drive as against their national interests,” added Thabet. “They see it as little more than a U.S. attempt to legitimise the occupation and bolster Arab support for the unpopular government in Baghdad.”

Thabet (Ahmed Thabet, political science professor at Cairo University) went on to say that some Iraqis fear recent Arab diplomatic activity “could eventually lead to the replacement of foreign occupation troops with a pan-Arab peacekeeping force to police Iraq.”

(MORE)

Parts 1 & 2–The Lineup: A Who’s Who of The Associates of Barack Obama

~~By Grail Guardian

Editor’s Note: Part 1 of “The Lineup” has been added to this post to make the information it contains easily available.–See the Part 1 for the comments to the original posting.–GRL

After Part 1 of this article was published, we received several requests/suggestions for more individuals to be included in the hit parade. As with Part 1, please circulate it to friends, family, co-workers, casual acquaintances, or anyone who needs to be educated about the truth the MSM has kept buried. And per a special request from reader Song, I would like to challenge each and every one of you to ask 10 people to vote against Barack Obama on November 4^th.

The Lineup: Part 2

Alexi Giannoulis: Became Illinois State Treasurer after Barack Obama vouched for him. He has been described as a “man who has long been dogged by charges that the bank his family owns helped finance a Chicago crime figure”. Giannoulis “pledged to raise $100,000 for the senator’s Oval Office bid,” Charles Hurt reported September 5, 2007, in the New York Post. Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun-Times reported, “Before he promised to raise funds for Obama, Giannoulias bankrolled Michael ‘Jaws’ Giorango, a Chicagoan twice convicted of bookmaking and promoting prostitution.

“Giannoulias is so tainted by reputed mob links that several top Illinois Dems, including the state’s speaker of the House and party chairman, refused to endorse him even after he won the Democratic nomination with Obama’s help.” States Congresspedia

Jim Johnson: Former Fannie Mae Chair that was hired to vet Vice Presidential candidates for the Obama Campaign. Johnson allegedly received $7 million from Countrywide Mortgage, one of the biggest players in the sub-prime mortgage fiasco. He received below market mortgage rates form the lender that Obama railed against personally:

“This is a company that is as responsible as any firm in the country for the housing crisis we’re facing today. When Countrywide Financial was sold a few months ago, its top two executives got a combined $19 million. These are the folks who are responsible for infecting the economy and helping to create a home foreclosure crisis….They get a $19 million bonus while people are at risk of losing their home. What’s wrong with this picture?”

Emil Jones: President of the Illinois Senate and Obama’s political mentor. When in the State Senate, all of Obama’s accomplishments were in his 7th year. Jones was discovered to have handed Obama all these bills after being worked on by other legislators. Jones is credited with the statement “I’m gonna make me a U.S. Senator.” When asked who that might be, Jones replied “Barack Obama”.

David Axelrod: Chicago political consultant and Chief Strategist and Media Advisor to Obama, Axelrod has worked on the campaigns of John Edwards, Deval Patrick, and Eliot Spitzer. He also owns ASK Public Strategies, a firm credited with mastering the tactic of “Astroturfing” or organizing a political effort and making it look like a grassroots effort. Wikipedia describes it as follows: “Astroturfing may be undertaken by an individual pushing a personal agenda or highly organized professional groups with financial backing from large corporations, non-profits, or activist organizations. Very often the efforts are conducted by political consultants who also specialize in opposition research.”

Tom Daschle: Former Democratic Senate Majority and Minority leader who was voted out of office by South Dakotans despite his presitgious position. Daschle is now a nationa Co-Chair for the Obama campaign. According to Wikipedia: “On February 13, 2006, Daschle became one of two Democrats (with Rep. Jane Harman of California) to endorse a warrantless domestic surveillance program conducted under the authority of President George W. Bush by the National Security Agency (NSA).”

Percy Sutton: This 87-year-old icon of the Civil Rights Movement recently recounted a story where he claimed he was asked to write a recommendation for Barack Obama to enter Harvard. Sutton’s quote follows:

“I was introduced to him by a friend who was raising money for him and the friend’s name was Dr Khalid al Mansour from Texas. He is the principle adviser to one of the world’s richest men. He told me about Obama. He wrote to me about him and his introduction was ‘there is a young man that has applied to Harvard and I know that you have a few friends left there because you used to go up there to speak, would you please write a letter in support of him?’ That’s before Obama decided to run. And he interjected the advice that Obama had passed the requirements, had taken, and passed, the requirements necessary to get into Harvard and become President of the Law Review. That’s before he ever ran for anything. I wrote a letter in support of him to my friends at Harvard saying to them I thought there was a genius that was going to be available and I surely hoped they would treat him kindly.”

Khalid al Mansour/Donald Warden: The mysterious man Percy Sutton referred to in his interview is somewhat difficult to identify (a very common name in several countries). The al Mansour that is also known as Donald Warden has ties to both the radical Black Panthers and has served on the board of a bank in Nigeria that may have connections to money raised for Barack Obama. For more detail, I recommend the following 2 articles, and bear in mind again the caveat “follow the money”: (photo not readily available)

More at Texas Darlin’s blog:

Dr. Khalid Abdullah Tariq al Mansour

Khalid al Mansour/Donald Warden: Obama Money Man in Nigeria?

The ACORN connection:

While not all directly associated with Barack Obama, these people formed the basis of his political philosophy and influenced him heavily, sometimes via theory, often via a strong organizational connection. Understanding who they are leads to a better understanding of the 2008 Presidential election.

Saul Alinsky: Writing a brief overview of Alinsky is nearly impossible; so I strongly urge you do look into the varied sides of this man further. That being said, Alinsky was a radical and community organizer (sound familiar?) who started the movement that grew into the SDS and ACORN (among other groups). Perhaps his own words explain his ideas best:

“Make the enemy live up to their (sic) own book of rules,” Alinsky wrote in his 1989 book Rules for Radicals. When pressed to honor every word of every law and statute, every Judeo-Christian moral tenet, and every implicit promise of the liberal social contract, human agencies inevitably fall short. The system’s failure to “live up” to its rule book can then be used to discredit it altogether, and to replace the capitalist “rule book” with a socialist one. (Courtesy Discover the Networks.org)

Alinsky served as mentor to many (including Hillary Clinton, who is said to have studied him and then continued on her political career, and Barack Obama, who still uses his techniques on a daily basis in this election), and put the fear of God into just as many (he one traveled to Oakland, CA and the local politicos were so shaken that they actually passed a resolution to ban him from the city). His talent was for organizing the poor into powerful political forces that can combat government and replace it with Socialism. Barack Obama is said to have taken Alinsky training when he began his Community Organizer career in Chicago. To understand Saul Alinsky and his followers is to gain much insight into Obama.

Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven: Columbia University radicals and creators of the so-called “Cloward-Piven strategy,” which called for swamping the welfare rolls with new applicants, beyond what the system could bear. The idea was that the resulting economic collapse would lead to political turmoil and ultimately socialism. This concept was used effectively in New York City, and was cited as one of the causes of the city’s financial collapse as welfare rolls jumped from 150,000 to over a million in just 10 years.

(Photo not readily available)

Wade Rathke: The founder and chief organizer of ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), a group Obama has worked for and represented in lawsuits, and Service Employees International Union (SEIU). Rathke’s brother Dale was reported to have embezzled over $940,000 from ACORN and it’s affiliates, which Wade did not report to the full board and kept hidden for 8 years. ACORN is under investigation for voter registration fraud in 18 states, and past employees have admitted to simply making up names of supposed voters. Many consider ACORN to be a leftist extremist organization using the principles of Saul Alinsky and Cloward & Piven.

George Wiley: Mentor of Wade Rathke, founder and leader of the radical ACORN, best know for his use of the Cloward & Piven strategy. Wiley is known as the Founder of the National Welfare Reform Organization, and as a pioneer of the radical “franchise” concept, now used by ACORN and other groups, which helps local activists quickly build local outlets of national activist organizations by using church groups and other pre-existing community groups.

Carl Davidson: Former President of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) with Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dorhn (a precursor to the Weather Underground), Davidson is credited with organizing the 2002 Anti-War rally where Obama gave his infamous speech against the Iraq war. Davidson is a self-styled “progressive for Obama” according to his blog http://carldavidson.blogspot.com/

Claire McCaskill: This Missouri Senator has supported Obama since her children shamed her into it in the beginning of 2008. McCaskill has been a vocal supporter, and her name was bandied about as a potential VP pick by Obama. She has been accused by ACORN workers in MO of using the organization to bring out new voters to support her instead of registering new voters or getting them to support a minimum wage bill as they were hired to do. The workers were all fired from ACORN after refusing to campaign for McCaskill.

Herbert and Marion Sandler: A New York lawyer and Wall Street analyst that sold Golden West Financial (GDW), one of the largest savings and loans in the nation to Wachovia Bank just before their portfolio dragged the S & L under. Wachovia failed in the recent Wall Street crisis as a result of the high number of sub-prime mortgages it acquired in its $24 billion purchase of GDW. The Sandlers personally made billions (yes, that’s with a B), and went on to fund organizations like ACORN and the International Crisis Group, the staff of which is said to form the basis of the future State Department of an Obama Administration.

Peter Lewis: Chairman of Progressive Insurance who along with George Soros gave $23 million to Moveon.org, and formed a group called The Democracy Alliance, both strong ACORN supporters. In 2004 he was one of the top donors to 527 groups promoting a far left agenda. Lewis describes himself as “half screwball, half businessman” and once showed up to a City Council meeting wearing a Lone Ranger outfit.

For a look at ACORN on video, see Uppity Woman’s post from 9/30/2008 “Video:Barack Obama and ‘Let’s Take Over The World” Acorn .'”

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Part 1–A Who’s Who of The Associates of Barack Obama

~~By Grail Guardian

For months now, we’ve been reading and hearing from the Obama campaign that it’s not experience that matters for Barack Obama (whose paper-thin resume includes being a Community Organizer, Chair of the failed Chicago Annenberg Challenge, and running for public office), but rather the excellent judgment that he displays. In light of the continued media frenzy favoring Obama and shielding him from public scrutiny, I decided that it would be timely to revisit that judgment in the form of the people Obama associates with professionally and personally (both past and present). I personally have been able to find few people that are close to the Illinois Senator that I would want anywhere near the Oval Office, but I’ll let you be the judge. I intend this article to be part of a much needed grassroots effort to educate those that only get their news from the Main Stream Media or do not follow politics closely, so feel free to link it, print it, e-mail it, or do whatever you need to do to get the word out (giving proper credit and/or links to Insight Analytical and myself is always appreciated). You can consider it an Obama 101 Picture Book Primer and a serious attempt to save this great nation.

Part 1–THE LINEUP: A Who’s Who of The Associates of Barack Obama

~~By Grail Guardian

EDITOR’S NOTE: Part I has been combined in a double post with the follow-up with more Obama connections in Part 2 HERE.

For months now, we’ve been reading and hearing from the Obama campaign that it’s not experience that matters for Barack Obama (whose paper-thin resume includes being a Community Organizer, Chair of the failed Chicago Annenberg Challenge, and running for public office), but rather the excellent judgment that he displays. In light of the continued media frenzy favoring Obama and shielding him from public scrutiny, I decided that it would be timely to revisit that judgment in the form of the people Obama associates with professionally and personally (both past and present). I personally have been able to find few people that are close to the Illinois Senator that I would want anywhere near the Oval Office, but I’ll let you be the judge. I intend this article to be part of a much needed grassroots effort to educate those that only get their news from the Main Stream Media or do not follow politics closely, so feel free to link it, print it, e-mail it, or do whatever you need to do to get the word out (giving proper credit and/or links to Insight Analytical and myself is always appreciated). You can consider it an Obama 101 Picture Book Primer and a serious attempt to save this great nation.