Free Republic

President Barack Obama told a group of young African leaders on Monday that harvesting organs from humans that are killed as part of an African ritual was “craziness” and a “cruel” tradition that needed to stop. He warned of dehumanizing marginal groups of humans and of the problems that arise when “you are not able to see someone else as a human being.” In a wide-ranging question and answer session with members of the Young African Leaders Initiative [YALI], a woman from Kenya said “Persons with albinism in Africa are being killed and their body parts harvested for ritual...

President Obama has wrapped up his tour of Africa. It was notable, insofar as that word can be applied to the trip, for his somewhat condescending and neo-colonial lecture to his hosts on the need to ease up on the old homophobia. Certainly, Africa is not terribly gay-friendly. But nor are other parts of the planet. In his ardent wooing of Iran, for example, he doesn't seem to have been perturbed in the least by his new best friends' executions of homosexuals, anymore than he is by the brutalization of gays elsewhere in the Muslim world. You might deduce in...

....Obama is addressing the African Union (AU) in Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa, on the last day of his trip to East Africa. He is the first US leader to deliver a speech at the 54-member body, with security and action against terrorism likely to dominate the agenda.

Obama’s first trip to Kenya since becoming president has highlighted the disappointment that many Africans feel in his presidency. While President Bush earns high praise and achieved a great deal in Africa, particularly with regard to his efforts fighting AIDS, Obama . . . not so much.In his article entitled, “Africa’s Disappointment with Obama,” Edward-Isaac Dovere writes: Beneath the ecstatic welcome President Barack Obama will receive when he arrives in his father’s homeland of Kenya on Friday is a lingering sense of disappointment.More than the first black president, he’s the first African-American U.S. president, and that’s accentuated a frustration among...

President Barack Obama on Saturday lectured Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta about his country's gay rights record. "When you start treating people differently not because of any harm they are doing to anybody, but because they are different, that's the path whereby freedoms begin to erode," Obama said at a joint press conference with the Kenyan leader in Nairobi. "And bad things happen." Under Kenyan law, sexual activity between men is illegal and punishable with a maximum imprisonment of 14 years. Many Kenyan leaders had encouraged Obama not to discuss gay rights on his first trip to the country as President....

President Obama said he will voice support for gay rights during his Friday trip to Africa, despite warnings from some leaders to steer clear of the issue. In an interview with the BBC on Thursday, Obama said he has delivered a "blunt" message on gay rights to African leaders in the past and the topic will be "front and center" when he visits Kenya and Ethiopia.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama voiced strong support for gay rights in Africa on Thursday as he began a trip to the continent, bucking calls from some African leaders to keep his views on such controversial issues to himself. Obama, who departed Washington late Thursday for a trip to Kenya and Ethiopia, had faced criticism from rights groups and growing calls to press the issue aggressively while in a region known for a bleak record on human rights. In an interview with the BBC, Obama said he had been "blunt" with African leaders about gay rights in the past...

With the American and Kenyan flags behind him, then-Sen. Barack Obama speaks to students at University of Nairobi, Monday, Aug. 28, 2006. (AP File Photo) (CNSNews.com) – When he visits his father’s homeland in Africa later this month, President Obama is expected to run into vocal opposition over his administration’s high-profile promotion of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) issues. Obama’s trip to Kenya, his first as president, is scheduled to take place four weeks after the White House was bathed in rainbow colors to mark the U.S. Supreme Court ruling declaring that same-sex marriage is a right. At a...

Obama let the cat out of the bag again! On not visiting Kenya, his response was 'I try to spread the wealth around.' Over $100 million for a lavish family trip to Africa? It's YOUR wealth is he spreading around not just in this country, but to gallivant to others. Video here

U.S. spending now includes farm bill for cold storage projectsAlthough the House and Senate remain in a stalemate over what to cut or keep in the controversial Farm Bill, the Obama administration is proceeding with its own plan for farmers – in Kenya. The East Africa Regional Construction initiative overall could cost U.S. taxpayers $210 million. Pack-house and cold-storage facility construction “appropriate to the Kenyan rural environment” is the first step, according to a Request for Proposals from contractors that WND discovered via routine database research.

Leadership: President Obama had some unsolicited advice for Africans on Sunday: Be wary of foreign powers — including the United States. So this is what our $100 million presidential junket is buying us? In the most mind-boggling statement yet on his latest trip abroad, America's chief spokesman and the leader of the free world warned the African continent against assuming "folks come here and they're automatically benefiting Africans. And that includes the United States. Ask questions in terms of what we do." It was as patronizing to Africans, who know all about Western aid rackets and do-gooder carpetbaggers, as it...

RUSH: Give me line one. We're gonna go to the phones. I just was gonna mention this -- and if I mention this, I'm gonna make the caller mad because the caller wants to mention it. So I may as well let the caller do it. It's Tom in Anderson, South Carolina. Tom, great to have you. Hello, sir. CALLER: Good listening to you. Rush, the man wants to shut down our coal plants, our coal digging, everything. But yet he unveiled Sunday a $7 billion paid for US taxpayer money to power Africa for hydro-wind solar power. It just...

Independence Day celebrations have been canceled at the Camp Lejeune Marine Corps Base and at the Army's Fort Bragg, both in North Carolina. The annual July Fourth celebration also has been scrapped at the Marine Corps Logistics Base in Albany, Ga. The reason is money — namely the lack of it.

When the first family arrived at the Senghor International Airport in Senegal to kick off their tour, first lady Michelle arrived wearing a $1,295 designer dress. It goes right along with the trip's $100m price tag

President Obama and former President Bush were not the only members of their family that were putting on a joint display of support on Tuesday. First Ladies Michelle Obama and Laura Bush have shown their mutual admiration at a panel in Tanzania where they complained about how the White House can feel like a prison. 'There are prison elements to it. But it's a really nice prison,' Mrs Obama said at the Tuesday panel in Tanzania. Her predecessor then added that the chef is an addition unlike other prisons, and Mrs Obama brought it back to the point, saying: 'You...

In Tanzania, Michelle Obama joked about the "prison-like elements" of being first lady. "[B]ut it's a really nice prison," she said. "You can't complain." Seat with Laura Bush, Michelle Obama said that wives of presidents "have probably the best job in the world, because while our husbands ... have to react and respond to crises on a minute-to-minute basis, we got to work on what we're passionate about. ... I have just found it a very freeing and liberating opportunity. ... [Laughing] There are prison-like elements, but it's a really nice prison. You can't complain. There are confining elements ......

Barack Obama spoke this afternoon at the University of Cape Town. He told the African students about his first public speech on apartheid at Occidental College. Obama said he was glad there was no tape of this speech.But, Barack forgot to mention that speech at Occidental was sponsored by Marxists and Weatherman terrorists. Barack ObamaÂ’s first public speech was at an Occidental College event sponsored by theStudents for Economic Democracy a branch of the Campaign for Economic Democracy [CED]. Far Left radical Tom Hayden who met with Marxist officials several times during his antiwar career chaired this fringe group in...

President Barack Obama's trip to Africa has largely been ignored by the U.S. media, and for good reason: it seems to have no real purpose. While attention to Africa is long overdue, the president is announcing no new strategy, concluding no significant agreements--merely announcing a new investment in African power generation, which African companies are arguably capable of funding and carrying out themselves. Much of his trip to Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania consists of sightseeing with his family--and an entourage of 1,000, at a cost to taxpayers of $60 to $100 million. Consider the reason Obama gave reporters about...

<p>So Obama is about to speak in Cape Town. Will he equate himself with Mandela? It is always all about him, ya know.</p> <p>That Twitter user didn’t have long to wait to receive an answer to his question.</p> <p>POTUS' speech at U of Cape Town about to begin.</p>

The breakneck pace of this trip is enough to make you dizzy. Or maybe I’m just getting a little seasick. Look at how we’ve been spinning just since we arrived in South Africa: President Barack Obama on Sunday will announce a new initiative to double access to electric power in sub-Saharan Africa, part of his effort to build on the legacy of equality and opportunity forged by his personal hero, Nelson Mandela. It is my understanding that in order to “build on the legacy of the equality and opportunity” of Nelson’s he intends to spread the wealth around by...