Gold itself is not a "problem," up or down. It is a barometer measuring the problem. The less confidence people have in the US Dollar, the higher the price for an ounce of gold climbs.
And that barometer is zooming more than you suspect. Gold 10 years ago was roughly $200 an ounce. 5 years ago it was $600 an ounce. 1 year ago it was at $1000 an ounce, and now it's floating between $1,900 and $2000. That is a HUGE spike in just the last year. And it portends bad things for the US currency. For the conspiracy nuts out there, there already exists a "global currency", it's the US Dollar. It is the Petro dollar of choice, meaning crude can only be purchased in US Dollars. It's why Germany, France, the UK, et al all hold billions of USD in reserve. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange has opened up 5 different avenues (in the last year) of crude purchasing power using currency other than the USD. If that becomes a wide spread trend, if we are no longer the reserve Petro Dollar, then why would these nations need to store billions of our currency? Why would our debt be worth holding? What gold's driving price does is send up a warning flare. If we continue to devalue our currency (read: print and spend) to the point that sovereign funds feel it no longer stable enough to use as the globe's Petro Dollar, then it's lights out for us. Gold isn't the problem, it's the screaming symptom of the problem, and thus is very important to monitor.
Thursday, October 6, 2011
On what we DID agree upon ...
"The question facing the American people right now ... is a question of whether or not we, as a people, WANT all our "problems" solved by the government rather than by ourselves. We (the Bund) may NOT want that, but it is undeniable that many in America right now do want that... because they see it is free and easy relief from the daily troubles that plague all of us."
I completely agree. That is the choice, the fight, before us.
This is what I mean when stating we must defeat the argument, the entire premise, not just the man. I gave a history lesson on the "man" simply to illustrate there is nothing about his ideology for us to compromise with.
I've thought a lot about this - the appeal of the president's message. Not just now, but the fact that this state based ideology rears its' ugly head every other generation or so. And on a philosophical level this is the conclusion I've drawn about what our mind set, our argument, must be: as thinking people we must all agree that man is imperfect. By definition then his society will be made imperfect. The president and his followers insist they can remedy this. Where we would insist that the only path to the optimal society is to ensure maximum liberty for the individual, he believes we can achieve paradise in this life by state mandated collectivism. What we must know with certainty is that man can not achieve paradise in this life. There is no collective salvation. Any more than there exists a collective Right. There is no Right that I do not possess as an individual that suddenly becomes available to me as part of a collective. To believe such is to immediately devalue the worth of the individual. There is no responsibility belonging to society that I am not called to personally. To do is to immediately devalue charity. And in turn there is no salvation available to me as part of the collective that I can substitute for personal salvation. To believe so is to immediately devalue the worth of the soul.
That is the defining issue of our time - can man best achieve "salvation" (or the optimal society)through self rule, or must he be shepherded into collective salvation bound and gagged within the arms of the state? Having chosen where we stand, we must demand that those seeking elected office, especially those claiming to be on "our side", do the same.
I completely agree. That is the choice, the fight, before us.
This is what I mean when stating we must defeat the argument, the entire premise, not just the man. I gave a history lesson on the "man" simply to illustrate there is nothing about his ideology for us to compromise with.
I've thought a lot about this - the appeal of the president's message. Not just now, but the fact that this state based ideology rears its' ugly head every other generation or so. And on a philosophical level this is the conclusion I've drawn about what our mind set, our argument, must be: as thinking people we must all agree that man is imperfect. By definition then his society will be made imperfect. The president and his followers insist they can remedy this. Where we would insist that the only path to the optimal society is to ensure maximum liberty for the individual, he believes we can achieve paradise in this life by state mandated collectivism. What we must know with certainty is that man can not achieve paradise in this life. There is no collective salvation. Any more than there exists a collective Right. There is no Right that I do not possess as an individual that suddenly becomes available to me as part of a collective. To believe such is to immediately devalue the worth of the individual. There is no responsibility belonging to society that I am not called to personally. To do is to immediately devalue charity. And in turn there is no salvation available to me as part of the collective that I can substitute for personal salvation. To believe so is to immediately devalue the worth of the soul.
That is the defining issue of our time - can man best achieve "salvation" (or the optimal society)through self rule, or must he be shepherded into collective salvation bound and gagged within the arms of the state? Having chosen where we stand, we must demand that those seeking elected office, especially those claiming to be on "our side", do the same.
Can't see the connected dots for the forest...
Of course the sins of the father do not taint the son, that's not the automatic conclusion I drew.
President Obama named his book not Dreams OF My Father, but Dreams From My Father ... as in passed on to the next generation, him. I submit were you to investigate that book , you would agree. President Obama also spent 20 years in Jeremiah Wright's church listening to Black Liberation Theology, which at its' core (openly and proudly declared by Wright) is Marxism. He (Pres. Obama) admitted to acquiring audio recording of these sermons so that he could listen to them at night. And he went on a 1988 trip to Kenyan visiting Granny Sarah (where in the book he claimed to hear these stories first hand) prior to writing this book, which clearly enhanced (in my opinion) his anti-Western sentiments. He claims that in college he purposely sought out the Radical feminists, the Marxists, and so on. My point is that there is every reason to believe that he has willingly chosen to take on this "taint" as you described it. The "taint" is a man opposed to the traditional Western powers, opposed to the fundamentals of their culture (not race mind you, but individualist culture). And what ideology best represents the antithesis of that Western culture? What ideology best explains his policy decisions, speeches, legislation, and what ideology best fits with the familial past he was raised around and on?
Marxism.
The man is a Marxist.
I was simply providing background context which further illustrates why I believe this to be true. Background context that he didn't "inherit", but - as the evidence to date suggests - embraced and made a part of his mind set to this day.
So what does that mean for us now? It's simple (to me) - enough trying to compromise, water down, slow down, or stall this ideology (represented in this PoTUS). The entire premise must be defeated. In other words the GOP nominee need not be scared to talk about the unconstitutionality of Social Security (or at very least the inability for it to function); the nominee and the GOP in general must not be afraid to use the Constitution to declare the Dept of Ed unconstitutional; to reign in if not end the Federal Reserve; and on and on and on. As a Party the GOP must stop playing this game of , "We must live by the Constitution ... except here, here, here, and over here." And the only way that Party will have the backbone to do such a thing is if WE demand it.
And by the way, "Royal Colonist" described what I thought he was becoming, with his Czars answering only to "the reigning sovereign." It was meant to be a clever twist on the phrase. I wasn't implying, nor did I state, that Kenya was technically a "Royal Colony." You're right ... so little has changed.
President Obama named his book not Dreams OF My Father, but Dreams From My Father ... as in passed on to the next generation, him. I submit were you to investigate that book , you would agree. President Obama also spent 20 years in Jeremiah Wright's church listening to Black Liberation Theology, which at its' core (openly and proudly declared by Wright) is Marxism. He (Pres. Obama) admitted to acquiring audio recording of these sermons so that he could listen to them at night. And he went on a 1988 trip to Kenyan visiting Granny Sarah (where in the book he claimed to hear these stories first hand) prior to writing this book, which clearly enhanced (in my opinion) his anti-Western sentiments. He claims that in college he purposely sought out the Radical feminists, the Marxists, and so on. My point is that there is every reason to believe that he has willingly chosen to take on this "taint" as you described it. The "taint" is a man opposed to the traditional Western powers, opposed to the fundamentals of their culture (not race mind you, but individualist culture). And what ideology best represents the antithesis of that Western culture? What ideology best explains his policy decisions, speeches, legislation, and what ideology best fits with the familial past he was raised around and on?
Marxism.
The man is a Marxist.
I was simply providing background context which further illustrates why I believe this to be true. Background context that he didn't "inherit", but - as the evidence to date suggests - embraced and made a part of his mind set to this day.
So what does that mean for us now? It's simple (to me) - enough trying to compromise, water down, slow down, or stall this ideology (represented in this PoTUS). The entire premise must be defeated. In other words the GOP nominee need not be scared to talk about the unconstitutionality of Social Security (or at very least the inability for it to function); the nominee and the GOP in general must not be afraid to use the Constitution to declare the Dept of Ed unconstitutional; to reign in if not end the Federal Reserve; and on and on and on. As a Party the GOP must stop playing this game of , "We must live by the Constitution ... except here, here, here, and over here." And the only way that Party will have the backbone to do such a thing is if WE demand it.
And by the way, "Royal Colonist" described what I thought he was becoming, with his Czars answering only to "the reigning sovereign." It was meant to be a clever twist on the phrase. I wasn't implying, nor did I state, that Kenya was technically a "Royal Colony." You're right ... so little has changed.
Speaking of conspiracy theories...
The one that seems to be popping up left and right today is the question of whether or not there is any gold still stored in the vaults at Fort Knox.
I've read the books and seen the shows... no public audits of the vaults since 1974, and absolutely no access to anyone (public or private) is allowed by the US Army onto the vault complex. National security is the official line, and perhaps there is some kernel of truth in the opinion that the public has a right to know whether that gold is there, and if it is... how much it is worth. I find it curious that, given the current value of gold and the nature of its value on the global commodities market at any given time over the last 40 years, the "value" of those hundreds of tons of bullion hasn't changed more than $0.45 an ounce since 1971. However...
I just don't see how it is pertinent to discussions about our current financial crisis.
The dollar hasn't been "backed" by gold since 1971, when Nixon removed the convertible nature of the US dollar into gold... so what is the problem? We have been a confidence currency ever since. The strength of our currency lies in the strength of our national economy, and when that economy slips, the value of the dollar slips accordingly.
Beck and other pundits love talking about how FDR and the other "progressives" in the White House destroyed the American financial system by making it "illegal" for citizens to own gold bullion (constantly referencing the New Deal policy of removing gold coins from circulation). This was NOT a seizure of private assets as it is so often described by Congressman Ron Paul... it was a means of buying the coins back from private ownership by the Fed at an established rate and building a stockpile of bullion (at Fort Knox) to have on reserve for the US Government. Period. Were this NOT the case, Glenn Beck would not be making hourly claims to "owning" such a precious and protecting commodity as gold in his own portfolio, would he?
Let us, for a moment, imagine that there is no gold in Fort Knox. Would the fact that the Fed has used, spent, traded or stored the gold somewhere else (roughly $300,000,000,000 worth of the stuff) really crash our financial system completely? Would banks fail? Would interest rates go through the roof? Would major companies go down the toilet?
How much does gold really effect the financial and industrial heart of America? How much does your daily life revolve around gold? What portion of your day is directly and measurably impacted by the fact that gold has now reached an all-time high in commodity pricing? Chances are, the answer to all these questions is very, very little.
But...
What if the price of a barrel of oil doubled tomorrow? Or tripled? Or increased by an order of magnitude over the course of a single decade? How different would your life be in ten years if THAT were to happen? How different would the national landscape be?
In 1971, the price for an ounce of gold was $40.62 (un-adjusted). In less than 40 years, that price has gone to over $2,000 an ounce... and most of THAT climb was in only the last 10 years. How different, and I mean fundamentally different, has our daily life been from before 1971 to beyond 2011? Different yes, but not fundamentally so.
The same timeline and increase in cost applied to the average barrel of light, sweet crude oil would mean an average price in 2011 of $890.00 per barrel. That would give us a price for gasoline (at the same tax rates as we have now) of just about $38 per gallon.
Which commodity do YOU think has the bigger impact on American and global financial matters?
A couple of questions...
Does it matter that Kenya was never a "royal colony"? How does the definition provided for the term relate to the essay itself?
Are we suggesting that Obama hates "the white man"? Or is the historical relationship between Obama and the Mau Mau rebellion somehow responsible for his fascination with collectivism and anti-capitalism?
In regards to Obama's ancestors being the root of his "pinko-commie" ways, does that mean the sins of the father ALWAYS taint the son? Why, then, did Washington not carry the "taint" of his loyalist forefathers? Or Lincoln the "taint" of his slave-owning ancestors and in-laws?
This sort of rant smacks of far-right conspiracy like that spewed out by Beck and Savage on a daily basis... and it does nothing to solve the problems facing the nation. You can cry that we need to understand the root of the problem before we can fix it, but that simply is not true.
The question facing the American people right now is NOT whether or not Obama has radical elements in his family's past, or in his own associations. Rather, it is a question of whether or not we, as a people, WANT all our "problems" solved by the government rather than by ourselves. We (the Bund) may NOT want that, but it is undeniable that many in America right now do want that... because they see it is free and easy relief from the daily troubles that plague all of us.
Find yourself into a mortgage you can't afford? Why not vote for a leader that promises "fair and equitable" housing allowances? But you won't get a new house for free... you get your name on a waiting list for a tenement like those found in Obama's own Chicago-land, Cabrini-Green. Find yourself unemployed and unable to find work? No worries, the Fed will send you a UEC check for 99 weeks (or more) until you can find a job... but you shouldn't take a job that pays less than you were making, because that simply wouldn't make sense, would it?
We don't need to see Obama's birth certificate... or to study and understand his Mau-Mau ancestors (if any were) and their hatred of all things Caucasian... we need to know that government is not the solution to our problems. It is the cause of most of them, and a roadblock to solving even those that aren't caused by government.
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Occupy Wall Street
The CIA has warned that a domestic terrorist group named Anonymous, primarily computer hackers, have vowed to crash the NYSE on October 10th. To quote one intelligence source: "They don't make threats, they make promises." It is one of the creepiest pieces of audio I've ever heard. You can listen to the 2 minute, 4 second clip HERE. Particularly creepy in this cryptic message is the self identifying claim "we are legion." If you are at all familiar with the Bible you know (as does Anonymous) what that portends.
Now I mention this because Anonymous feels the Occupy Wall Street crowd is being thwarted, and they intend to take the "protests" to another level - declaring war on the NYSE.
And just a word on these protesters. They try and liken themselves to the Tea Party. They are not. These are thousands of wanna-be 60's radicals; socialists; communist; hard core wealth redistributionists; and revolutionaries. Why do I say that? Because of the Al Sharpton MSNBC interview (yes, he has a show now), and the countless other signs, statements and speeches in which the protesters and their chosen orators claim to be radicals, socialists, communists, wealth redistributionists, and revolutionaries. Said one man when asked by Sharpton what reforms he'd like to see, "We don't want reforms. We're not trying to fix this system, we're trying to end it."
And just to further demonstrate the difference between the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street: over 3 years and some 301 gatherings the Tea Party produced a grand total of ZERO arrests. We've seen two weeks of OWS, and well over 700 arrests.
This is NOT the same movement. They want to, "burn the mutha down." And those in the Tea Party should not fall prey to seeing a kindred spirit in these people.
Now I mention this because Anonymous feels the Occupy Wall Street crowd is being thwarted, and they intend to take the "protests" to another level - declaring war on the NYSE.
And just a word on these protesters. They try and liken themselves to the Tea Party. They are not. These are thousands of wanna-be 60's radicals; socialists; communist; hard core wealth redistributionists; and revolutionaries. Why do I say that? Because of the Al Sharpton MSNBC interview (yes, he has a show now), and the countless other signs, statements and speeches in which the protesters and their chosen orators claim to be radicals, socialists, communists, wealth redistributionists, and revolutionaries. Said one man when asked by Sharpton what reforms he'd like to see, "We don't want reforms. We're not trying to fix this system, we're trying to end it."
And just to further demonstrate the difference between the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street: over 3 years and some 301 gatherings the Tea Party produced a grand total of ZERO arrests. We've seen two weeks of OWS, and well over 700 arrests.
This is NOT the same movement. They want to, "burn the mutha down." And those in the Tea Party should not fall prey to seeing a kindred spirit in these people.
Decoding The Royal Colonist
Royal Colony (noun) - a colony ruled or administered by officials appointed by and responsible to the reigning sovereign of the parent state.
It was an unusual move, to say the least. Having done my own research during the 2008 campaign I was very aware that the man about to assume the Oval Office was “hostile” to the traditional sense of Americanism: capitalism, the free market, even the Constitution itself which he described as “inadequate” in a 2000 interview with Chicago NPR; but even knowing all that I was caught off guard. I mean, send back a bust of Winston Churchill? And not send it back as in “take this gift from Tony Blair, given to George W. Bush in the wake of 9/11, and put it in the basement,” or the Smithsonian, or simply another White House room. But rather he sent it back, back… To England.
Those of us in the know, those of us whom make it their business to follow the events of our nation, should have asked why. Now you may believe we did, for there was much discussion about this on talk radio and online. However, the general consensus, in which I partook, was that this was yet another example of the President’s opposition towards all things George W. Bush in specific, and his hostility towards all things “traditional” in general. We didn’t ask “why” on a more intimate level, and we should have.
Have you ever heard of the Mau Mau Rebellion? And no, this is not the rebellion so nice they named it twice. Not ringing a bell? Nothing? I’m not surprised. Few historians can discuss it with any authority, let alone the average American. Yet it affects every American’s life to this to this day, and has since 2008.
The year is 1949. Rumblings of revolution fill the air and the distinct odor of weakness permeates the British Empire. Post WWII they are a shadow of their former selves. And the colonized throughout the Near East can sense the opportunity to throw off their rulers. In Kenya they begin to meet, to talk, to consider the unthinkable - defeating an empire. By 1951 information is filtering back to London about secret meetings being held in the forests outside Nairobi. A secret society called the Mau Mau, believed to have been started in the previous year, requires its members to take an oath to drive the white man from Kenya. The movement grows.
By August of 1952 the British ruled Kenyan government imposes a curfew in three districts on the outskirts of Nairobi where gangs of arsonists, believed to be members of the Mau Mau, have been setting fire to homes of Africans who refuse to take the Mau Mau oath.
In early October of the same year a senior chief named Waruhui is assassinated in Kenya. He is speared to death in public, on a main road outside of Nairobi. Recently he had spoken out against increasing Mau Mau aggression towards colonial rule. The rebels, intent on ejecting the colonists, are starting with the easiest targets - fellow Africans sympathetic to the UK.
Soon after the British government fears things are getting out of control, and they pledge to send British troops to Kenya in order to subdue the situation.
On October 21st, 1951, and with the immanent arrival of British troops, the Kenyan government declares a state of emergency. Nearly fifty people have been murdered in Nairobi within four weeks and the Mau Mau, officially declared terrorists, have acquired firearms. As part of the overall clamp down Jomo Kenyatta, president of the Kenya African Union (the British proxy government), is himself arrested for alleged Mau Mau involvement.
On October 30th British troops initiate a round-up of at least five-hundred suspected Mau Mau rebels.
By November 1952 The Mau Mau declare open rebellion against British rule in Kenya. British forces respond by arresting over two-thousand suspected of Mau Mau membership. Suspicion is everywhere. Neighbor informing on neighbor. White land owners become suspicious of their servants, and their servant’s children. The volatility of the country is on a razor’s edge, they are falling into open civil war.
Amidst the chaos of round ups and skirmishes was a cook. A black African named Onyango whom served dutifully in WWII on behalf of the British in the “Luo’ regiment. At the time of insurrection he happened to be the primary chef for a well-to-do British Army officer living in Nairobi. Onyango was outspoken, politically oriented, and soon gained the suspicions of his employer.
Mr. Onyango was eventually arrested, detained, and interrogated. As a servant for a British Officer it was feared that he was in prime position to relay Intel to the Mau Mau Rebels. I warn you, the following account, offered by Mr. Onyango’s third wife Sarah, is not for the faint of heart:
He said they would sometimes squeeze his testicles with parallel metallic rods. They also pierced his nails and buttocks with a sharp pin, with his hands and legs tied together with his head facing down… The African warders were instructed by the white soldiers to whip him every morning and evening till he confessed.
“There was torture in Kenya during the Mau Mau emergency, institutional and systematic, and also casual and haphazard,” Professor Anderson writes in Histories of the Hanged: Britain’s Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire (2005). “Violence . . . was intrinsic to the system, and the use of force to compel obedience was sanctioned at the highest level.”
Mrs. Sarah Onyango went on.
This was like a death camp because some detainees died while being tortured… We were not allowed to see him, not even taking him food. [He] was told that he would be killed or maimed if he refused to reveal what he knew of the insurgency, and was beaten repeatedly until he promised never to rejoin any groupings opposed to the white man’s rule.
Even after he confessed, and renounced the insurgency, the physical abuse allegedly continued. An estimated 71,000 Kenyans were eventually held in prison camps on suspicions of Mau Mau affiliation. The vast majority were never convicted. Letters smuggled out of the camps complained of systematic brutality by warders and guards. And there were reports of sexual violence and mutilation, including the use of a device known as “castration pliers.”
Kenya would go through nearly another decade of on again off again war with the British Empire until finally gaining its’ independence in 1964. The total of Mau Mau activists killed is placed well above ten-thousand. During the same time period thirty-two Africans of European descent were reported murdered.
Mr. Onyango would eventually be released and returned to his family… The Obamas. Mr. Onyango’s full name was Hussein Onyango Obama. He is President Barak Obama’s paternal grandfather.
The woman, the third wife of Mr. Onyango Obama whom so vividly recalls the details of her husband’s ordeal, is referred to as “Granny Sarah” in President Obama’s book Dreams from My Father. In that book President Obama recalls another of Granny Sarah’s stories about his grandfather‘s return home:
When he returned to Alego he was very thin and dirty. He had difficulty walking, and his head was full of lice. For some time he was too traumatized to speak about his experiences. From that day on, I saw that he was now an old man.
It should be noted here that the Prime Minister responsible for quelling the rebellion, initiating the original round ups, and the man responsible for sending the first waves of British troops to Kenya was none other than Sir Winston Churchill.
It should also be noted that another man was arrested and imprisoned for a short time during this ten years of war, for attending a meeting in Nairobi of the Kenya African National Union (Kanu), the organization spearheading the independence movement. That man’s name was Barak Obama Sr. - son of Mr. Onyango, father to our president. Barak Obama Sr. would later take advantage of a scholarship program initiated by JFK to enable Kenyan’s to self-govern their emerging country. That scholarship was taken at the University of Hawaii.
Let me ask you my fellow Americans, why is this story not widely known? Why has the media intentionally chosen to ignore, perhaps even cover up, information so vital to understanding what informs our Commander-in-Chief’s persona, his prejudices, to this day? Armed with this information is there any doubt as to why the bust of Churchill was returned? Is there any wonder why our President self imposes the role of “warrior” on behalf of those he sees as “colonized?”
This is a man weaned from birth on stories of the oppressive white man. Not theoretical dissertations, but personal family stories. He openly describes befriending Marxists, and purposely falling in with radicals while attending college. He insults our closest European ally on behalf of his family lineage. He routinely sides and sympathizes with the “colonized” Palestinian over the “colonizing” Israeli. His first call, literally his first phone call in his capacity as President of the United States, was to Abas, leader of the Palestinian Authority, whom is not even the head of a recognized state. In his first public appearance after the attack the President saluted the American Indian and their plight prior to addressing the mass murder of US soldiers on US soil by Major Nadal Hassan .
Now pause for a moment. Such a build up, as I have laid it out, may be stirring a resentment for the President within you, at this very moment - this is not my intent. My intent is to understand what informs his decision making process. Consider your own reaction. Your family, your people, your history. What if it were full of not general, not theoretical, but specific, real and measurable instances of intense brutality, of torture, or racism? Could the perpetrators, their descendants, their nation, ever find forgiveness in your heart?
So abandon the resentment and simply understand, it is our best strategy. Unlocking the president’s motives is the key to stopping the “change” he is attempting to bring this nation. This is a man dedicated - and this is vital to remember - a man dedicated to undoing the aggression of the traditional colonial powers, including America - their land, their status, their wealth, their power. In his mind it is all ill-gotten That is the “fundamental transformation” of America, “and the world” that he promised in 2008. He is orchestrating the bottom up reformation of our world as shaped by the 18th - 20th century powers, via their collapse.
Ironically if he is to be successful he must in the end become what he despises. He must “colonize” our traditions, our history, even our “inadequate” founding document. And replace it with “officials appointed by and responsible to the reigning sovereign.” Such push and nudge Czars are the only path to his collective salvation - the only way to cleanse us of our collective historic sins. In other words, he must become the governor of a royal colony in order to save us from our colonial past.
This family lineage has all along been made up of fighters. Senator Barack Obama is fighting using his brain, like his father, while his grandfather fought physically with the white man.
-Granny Sarah
*Sources:
Britain’s Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya (2005); Histories of the Hanged: Britain’s Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire (2005); UK Times Online; African History/About.
It was an unusual move, to say the least. Having done my own research during the 2008 campaign I was very aware that the man about to assume the Oval Office was “hostile” to the traditional sense of Americanism: capitalism, the free market, even the Constitution itself which he described as “inadequate” in a 2000 interview with Chicago NPR; but even knowing all that I was caught off guard. I mean, send back a bust of Winston Churchill? And not send it back as in “take this gift from Tony Blair, given to George W. Bush in the wake of 9/11, and put it in the basement,” or the Smithsonian, or simply another White House room. But rather he sent it back, back… To England.
Those of us in the know, those of us whom make it their business to follow the events of our nation, should have asked why. Now you may believe we did, for there was much discussion about this on talk radio and online. However, the general consensus, in which I partook, was that this was yet another example of the President’s opposition towards all things George W. Bush in specific, and his hostility towards all things “traditional” in general. We didn’t ask “why” on a more intimate level, and we should have.
Have you ever heard of the Mau Mau Rebellion? And no, this is not the rebellion so nice they named it twice. Not ringing a bell? Nothing? I’m not surprised. Few historians can discuss it with any authority, let alone the average American. Yet it affects every American’s life to this to this day, and has since 2008.
The year is 1949. Rumblings of revolution fill the air and the distinct odor of weakness permeates the British Empire. Post WWII they are a shadow of their former selves. And the colonized throughout the Near East can sense the opportunity to throw off their rulers. In Kenya they begin to meet, to talk, to consider the unthinkable - defeating an empire. By 1951 information is filtering back to London about secret meetings being held in the forests outside Nairobi. A secret society called the Mau Mau, believed to have been started in the previous year, requires its members to take an oath to drive the white man from Kenya. The movement grows.
By August of 1952 the British ruled Kenyan government imposes a curfew in three districts on the outskirts of Nairobi where gangs of arsonists, believed to be members of the Mau Mau, have been setting fire to homes of Africans who refuse to take the Mau Mau oath.
In early October of the same year a senior chief named Waruhui is assassinated in Kenya. He is speared to death in public, on a main road outside of Nairobi. Recently he had spoken out against increasing Mau Mau aggression towards colonial rule. The rebels, intent on ejecting the colonists, are starting with the easiest targets - fellow Africans sympathetic to the UK.
Soon after the British government fears things are getting out of control, and they pledge to send British troops to Kenya in order to subdue the situation.
On October 21st, 1951, and with the immanent arrival of British troops, the Kenyan government declares a state of emergency. Nearly fifty people have been murdered in Nairobi within four weeks and the Mau Mau, officially declared terrorists, have acquired firearms. As part of the overall clamp down Jomo Kenyatta, president of the Kenya African Union (the British proxy government), is himself arrested for alleged Mau Mau involvement.
On October 30th British troops initiate a round-up of at least five-hundred suspected Mau Mau rebels.
By November 1952 The Mau Mau declare open rebellion against British rule in Kenya. British forces respond by arresting over two-thousand suspected of Mau Mau membership. Suspicion is everywhere. Neighbor informing on neighbor. White land owners become suspicious of their servants, and their servant’s children. The volatility of the country is on a razor’s edge, they are falling into open civil war.
Amidst the chaos of round ups and skirmishes was a cook. A black African named Onyango whom served dutifully in WWII on behalf of the British in the “Luo’ regiment. At the time of insurrection he happened to be the primary chef for a well-to-do British Army officer living in Nairobi. Onyango was outspoken, politically oriented, and soon gained the suspicions of his employer.
Mr. Onyango was eventually arrested, detained, and interrogated. As a servant for a British Officer it was feared that he was in prime position to relay Intel to the Mau Mau Rebels. I warn you, the following account, offered by Mr. Onyango’s third wife Sarah, is not for the faint of heart:
He said they would sometimes squeeze his testicles with parallel metallic rods. They also pierced his nails and buttocks with a sharp pin, with his hands and legs tied together with his head facing down… The African warders were instructed by the white soldiers to whip him every morning and evening till he confessed.
“There was torture in Kenya during the Mau Mau emergency, institutional and systematic, and also casual and haphazard,” Professor Anderson writes in Histories of the Hanged: Britain’s Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire (2005). “Violence . . . was intrinsic to the system, and the use of force to compel obedience was sanctioned at the highest level.”
Mrs. Sarah Onyango went on.
This was like a death camp because some detainees died while being tortured… We were not allowed to see him, not even taking him food. [He] was told that he would be killed or maimed if he refused to reveal what he knew of the insurgency, and was beaten repeatedly until he promised never to rejoin any groupings opposed to the white man’s rule.
Even after he confessed, and renounced the insurgency, the physical abuse allegedly continued. An estimated 71,000 Kenyans were eventually held in prison camps on suspicions of Mau Mau affiliation. The vast majority were never convicted. Letters smuggled out of the camps complained of systematic brutality by warders and guards. And there were reports of sexual violence and mutilation, including the use of a device known as “castration pliers.”
Kenya would go through nearly another decade of on again off again war with the British Empire until finally gaining its’ independence in 1964. The total of Mau Mau activists killed is placed well above ten-thousand. During the same time period thirty-two Africans of European descent were reported murdered.
Mr. Onyango would eventually be released and returned to his family… The Obamas. Mr. Onyango’s full name was Hussein Onyango Obama. He is President Barak Obama’s paternal grandfather.
The woman, the third wife of Mr. Onyango Obama whom so vividly recalls the details of her husband’s ordeal, is referred to as “Granny Sarah” in President Obama’s book Dreams from My Father. In that book President Obama recalls another of Granny Sarah’s stories about his grandfather‘s return home:
When he returned to Alego he was very thin and dirty. He had difficulty walking, and his head was full of lice. For some time he was too traumatized to speak about his experiences. From that day on, I saw that he was now an old man.
It should be noted here that the Prime Minister responsible for quelling the rebellion, initiating the original round ups, and the man responsible for sending the first waves of British troops to Kenya was none other than Sir Winston Churchill.
It should also be noted that another man was arrested and imprisoned for a short time during this ten years of war, for attending a meeting in Nairobi of the Kenya African National Union (Kanu), the organization spearheading the independence movement. That man’s name was Barak Obama Sr. - son of Mr. Onyango, father to our president. Barak Obama Sr. would later take advantage of a scholarship program initiated by JFK to enable Kenyan’s to self-govern their emerging country. That scholarship was taken at the University of Hawaii.
Let me ask you my fellow Americans, why is this story not widely known? Why has the media intentionally chosen to ignore, perhaps even cover up, information so vital to understanding what informs our Commander-in-Chief’s persona, his prejudices, to this day? Armed with this information is there any doubt as to why the bust of Churchill was returned? Is there any wonder why our President self imposes the role of “warrior” on behalf of those he sees as “colonized?”
This is a man weaned from birth on stories of the oppressive white man. Not theoretical dissertations, but personal family stories. He openly describes befriending Marxists, and purposely falling in with radicals while attending college. He insults our closest European ally on behalf of his family lineage. He routinely sides and sympathizes with the “colonized” Palestinian over the “colonizing” Israeli. His first call, literally his first phone call in his capacity as President of the United States, was to Abas, leader of the Palestinian Authority, whom is not even the head of a recognized state. In his first public appearance after the attack the President saluted the American Indian and their plight prior to addressing the mass murder of US soldiers on US soil by Major Nadal Hassan .
Now pause for a moment. Such a build up, as I have laid it out, may be stirring a resentment for the President within you, at this very moment - this is not my intent. My intent is to understand what informs his decision making process. Consider your own reaction. Your family, your people, your history. What if it were full of not general, not theoretical, but specific, real and measurable instances of intense brutality, of torture, or racism? Could the perpetrators, their descendants, their nation, ever find forgiveness in your heart?
So abandon the resentment and simply understand, it is our best strategy. Unlocking the president’s motives is the key to stopping the “change” he is attempting to bring this nation. This is a man dedicated - and this is vital to remember - a man dedicated to undoing the aggression of the traditional colonial powers, including America - their land, their status, their wealth, their power. In his mind it is all ill-gotten That is the “fundamental transformation” of America, “and the world” that he promised in 2008. He is orchestrating the bottom up reformation of our world as shaped by the 18th - 20th century powers, via their collapse.
Ironically if he is to be successful he must in the end become what he despises. He must “colonize” our traditions, our history, even our “inadequate” founding document. And replace it with “officials appointed by and responsible to the reigning sovereign.” Such push and nudge Czars are the only path to his collective salvation - the only way to cleanse us of our collective historic sins. In other words, he must become the governor of a royal colony in order to save us from our colonial past.
This family lineage has all along been made up of fighters. Senator Barack Obama is fighting using his brain, like his father, while his grandfather fought physically with the white man.
-Granny Sarah
*Sources:
Britain’s Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya (2005); Histories of the Hanged: Britain’s Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire (2005); UK Times Online; African History/About.
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