Posted on 03/30/2008 1:49:47 AM PDT by GodGunsGuts
SECRET CABINET PAPERS
How Kenya’s best kept secret became a hotbed of insurgents
By John Kamau
Dateline: Saturday, December 12, 1964. At around 3 pm, just as Kenya turned into a republic, the newly sworn-in President Jomo Kenyatta’s convoy drove from State House, Nairobi to the flag-decked Thika Road to officially open what he described as "Kenya’s best kept secret" and Jamhuri Day’s "big surprise" – the so-called Lumumba Institute. He didn’t know it was a communist school of politics designed to topple him.
Forty years later, questions are still asked about how the new Vice President, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, managed to trick Kenyatta to approve a plot to topple him. It was a move that not only left top schemer Tom Mboya dazed but also confused Kenyatta’s inner circle — composed of Mr Mbiyu Koinange, Mr James Gichuru, and Dr Njoroge Mungai.
And when they realised what had happened they threw senior Chinese and Russian "spies" stationed at the institute out of the country. Others simply disappeared....
(Excerpt) Read more at eastandard.net ...
Can you point us to recent comments by Obama showing his support for this guy?
Also, can you tell us about the make-up of the current Kenyan government?
I’m not doubting you, but we need more specifics. Family relationship does not a scandal make.
ping!
Let’s leave blood relationships out of the discussion. I hope I don’t have to answer for the sins of all my ancestors.
OK, so what?
Does it make it right for Obama to support such a murderous thug?
Obama's support for Odinga is the issue here, not the relationship.
Didn’t I read somewhere on here yesterday that Odinga’s mother was a sister of Obama’s father? That would have made them first cousins—and Odinga’s father, Obama’s uncle.
On Kenyan radio, Obama urges calm
News & Observer, The (Raleigh, NC) - January 30, 2008
Author: Shashank Bengali, Mcclatchy Newspapers
NAIROBI, Kenya — Post-election tribal violence claimed its first political victim Tuesday — a young opposition lawmaker — as Sen. Barack Obama and former United Nations leader Kofi Annan urged Kenyans to find a peaceful solution.
Obama , D-Ill., whose late father was Kenyan, spoke on a popular FM radio station and urged President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga to negotiate without conditions.
“To refuse to do so ignores the will of Kenyans and the urging of the united international community,” the Democratic presidential candidate said on Nairobi’s Capital FM. “Now is the time for Kenya’s leaders to rise above party affiliation and past divisions for the sake of peace.”
More than 800 people have died in the violence in recent weeks after Kibaki claimed victory in an election that neutral observers say was rigged.
At talks presided over by former U.N. Secretary-General Annan on Tuesday, neither Kibaki nor Odinga signaled that he would give up claims to the presidency.
“I wish to pledge my support, and that of my entire government, to this process,” Kibaki said at a brief opening ceremony. When the 76-year-old president finished speaking, Odinga didn’t applaud.
Mugabe Were, a freshman member of parliament, is the first politician to die since the violence began a month ago. Were was shot as he arrived at his home in a middle-class Nairobi suburb shortly after midnight. As he waited for the gate to open, two gunmen dragged him out of his car and shot him in the head and chest, according to news reports.
A shadowy gang known as the Mungiki, whose members come from Kibaki’s Kikuyu community, claimed responsibility. The group, which is notorious for cultlike rituals and beheading its victims, also threatened several top political journalists, according to the news network KTN.
Odinga blamed Were’s killing on government supporters.
“This is an attempt at blackmail, intimidation of our members to succumb to an illegitimate, illegal regime,” he said.
Were, 39, was a popular civic activist who established an orphanage for HIV-affected children in the poor Nairobi neighborhood of Dandora. He had been elected last month as part of Odinga’s slim majority in the parliament. News of his death brought opposition supporters into the streets of Dandora, where they set Kikuyu-owned homes and businesses ablaze.
Seek peace, Obama urges Kenya
Chicago Tribune (IL) - January 9, 2008
Author: Mike Dorning, Tribune national correspondent
While campaigning in New Hampshire this week, Barack Obama worked the international phone lines to urge an end to the violence that erupted in his father’s home country of Kenya following disputed election results there.
Speaking to reporters Tuesday at a doughnut shop in Manchester, Obama said he had contacted Kenyan opposition leader Raila Odinga by telephone Monday and hoped to also speak with Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki.
Kibaki was declared the winner of last week’s presidential election, but allegations of vote-rigging have been followed by widespread ethnic clashes, the burning of villages and a growing humanitarian crisis. International mediators are trying to broker a political settlement to end the violence, but Odinga said Tuesday he would not attend an unmediated meeting with Kibaki.
Obama said Odinga , who has charged that Kibaki stole the election, “indicated that he would be prepared to meet with Kibaki.”
“Obviously, he believes that the votes were not tallied properly. But what I urged was that all the leaders there, regardless of their position on the election, tell their supporters to stand down, to desist with the violence and resolve it in a peaceful way in accordance with Kenyan law,” Obama said.
“He gave me some encouraging signs,” Obama added. “I have not spoken to President Kibaki as yet, but hope to get in touch with him sometime soon and want to see if I can be helpful.”
Last week Obama taped a radio message to the Kenyan people urging calm. His advisers said he also consulted with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who has been trying to mediate in Kenya.
(snip)
//
Obama in Africa Obama delivers civics lesson in Nairobi
News Sun, The (Waukegan, IL) - August 29, 2006
Author: By Lynn Sweet
Sun-Times NEWS GROUP
NAIROBI, Kenya - Sen. Barack Obama delivered a lecture on Monday against graft and patronage hiring, ethnic bloc voting that does not yield the best and brightest government leaders, and political families who hoard the spoils of power.
But his focus was not the scandals surrounding Chicago’s City Hall or public corruption probes in Springfield. Or the political tribes of Madigan, Stroger, Hynes and Daley.
Rather, at the University of Nairobi in a speech televised live, Obama used the platform he has as the wildly popular son of a Kenyan to tell this nation their freedom is jeopardized by public corruption.
“My own city of Chicago, Ill., has been the home of some of the most corrupt local politics in American history over the years,” Obama said, “from patronage machines to questionable elections.”
While government corruption is a “problem” in the United States, it is not at the epidemic levels it is in Kenya, Obama said.
“Here in Kenya, there is a crisis - a crisis that’s robbing an honest people of the opportunities they fought for.”
Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki ran on an anti-graft platform in 2002 but the government still has an international reputation as corrupt.
Obama did not mention Kibaki by name in his speech but raised concerns about Kenya’s slow walk to a transparent and open government when they met last Friday.
In a nation where ethnic identity is defining for many, Obama - a Luo - said “ethnic-based politics has to stop.”
It was reminiscent of his famed 2004 Democratic Convention speech where he urged the United States not to be divided between red (Republican) and blue (Democratic) states.
Kenyans vote along tribal lines; the winners, from the more populous groups, hand out patronage to their own.
“I have to tell you, that as someone who lives outside of Kenya, the notion that at this stage in the nation’s development there would still be politics primarily based on arguments between Luo, Kikuyu, Kamba and Maasi doesn’t make any sense,” said Obama , ticking off the names of the larger groups.
“Maybe if everybody was rich, we could afford to have these arguments.”
On Friday, Obama complained to Kibaki that Chicago TV crews were shaken down at customs. In Monday’s edition of the Daily Nation, the Kenyan government ran an ad with Obama ‘s name in the headline, saying allegations of corruption were “unfounded.”
The ad states customs receipts were issued. However, the CBS-2 reporting team in Kenya, Michael Flannery and Marcus Richardson, said they were never issued a receipt. Government spokesman Alfred Mutua handed them their paperwork when they went to interview him Monday.
Obama appeared with opposition leader Raila Odinga - a Luo running for president - at stops on Saturday in his father’s native district.
Mutua, in the CBS-2 interview, said Obama may have been caught up in ethnic politics with Odinga “using Sen. Obama as his stooge, as his puppet.”
The honorable Joe Wilson. LOL!
In a blistering election day op-ed, Mr. Valerie Plame - Joseph Wilson - argues that “seasoned gladiator” Hillary Clinton is singularly qualified to weather the Republican attack machine in November because she “is one of the few who fully understood the stakes” in Plamegate.
Notably, Wilson speculates that Obama will fold in the face of questions concerning Obama’s association with Raila Odinga, leader of Kenya’s Orange Democratic Movement (and, according to Odinga, Obama’s cousin).
Wilson asks:
“How will Obama respond to charges by the Kenyan government that his campaigning activities in Kenya in support of his distant cousin running for president there made him “a stooge” and constituted interference in the politics of an important and besieged ally in the war on terror?”
Since this topic is way above my pay grade, I refer to Joe Conason’s explanation of the background facts:
Leading conservative blogs and publications charge that Obama recklessly aligned himself with opposition leader Raila Odinga of the Orange Democratic Movement. Followers of Odinga, a member of the minority Luo tribe, have perpetrated horrific atrocities against members of the Kikuyu tribe because incumbent president Mwai Kibaki and the nation’s ruling elite are Kikuyu. One of the worst incidents occurred in the village of Eldoret, where dozens of Kikuyu Christians burned to death when they sought shelter in a church that was then set afire by their rampaging pursuers.
These events are set within the broader story line of an alleged Muslim plot to overthrow the Kibaki government, which is friendly to the United States and the West, and replace the secular constitution of Kenya with sharia law, creating a haven for al-Qaida — which blew up the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi a decade ago and still operates there, according to American diplomats. During the Kenyan election, the Christian evangelical movement in Kenya circulated a “memorandum of understanding” allegedly signed by Odinga and a group of Muslim clerics that would commit his government to instituting Muslim strictures against pork and alcohol, setting up sharia courts and ending cooperation against terrorism with Western governments.
Denounced as a forgery by Odinga and Muslim authorities in Kenya, which it almost certainly is, that document nevertheless still circulates via the Internet and is quoted by American publications. The point is to raise questions about Obama and his connections with Odinga — who claims to be his cousin — and to infiltrate those doubts into the mainstream media.
It is true that Obama, whose family is Luo, lent support to the opposition leader during a visit to Kenya two years ago — and that they have maintained contact ever since. While that gaffe infuriated the Kibaki regime, it proved only that Obama lacked diplomatic expertise. During the current crisis in his homeland, he has tried to play a constructive role by taping radio announcements for the State Department that urge both sides to stop fighting and resolve their differences without violence.
This smells like a prime-time swift boat operation in the making. Conason predicts the GOP will lead the charge, but Wilson’s editorial leaves little question about the Clinton campaign’s willingness to man the helm.
http://spinmonkeys.blogspot.com/2008/02/wilson-torches-obama-on-kenyan-ties.html
Obama is black. Obama is a liberal. Obama is a socialist. Obama is a communist. Obama is a racist. Any of these, if you were a white male, would get you trashed. Because he is black, he gets away with it all.
Damn!!!! I can hear in the background the lyrics of, “We are Family “ by Sister Sledge.
What happened to the diversity Obuma??? I will be calling EEO and the UN for not having any Caucasians in this photo.
It’s, It’s so (Racists) satire
7.62 NATO,
NSNR
Good try.
I almost believed you, till I heard the socialist/communist plans O has and his voting (when he did), in Illinois and on the hill. Bad fruit.
Welcome to Free Republic.
At the end of the day... his interests are with Kenya more than his own country, period. That can’t stand. Maybe he should have run with Odinga there.
As Farrakhan said, he has been groomed well... and he should know.
Ain't that the truth. I have some who were very active in the 20's in Chicago, if you catch my drift.
ping for later
Barak Hussein Obama must reign the presidential race and the US Sentate - TODAY!
reign = resign
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