A young, ambitious Kenyan today should not have to do what my grandfather did, and serve a foreign master.
Obama
Yep, what happened to Obama’s grandfather under British colonial rule doesn’t hang heavily at all on his thoughts at all.
Though the racist, dog-whistling Guardian in 2009 seemed to think so…
Could Obama’s dual colonial heritage spell the end of the special relationship?
The intriguing question of whether the president’s dual colonial inheritance – of Kenyan and Irish ancestry – is helping reshape America’s supposedly “special relationship” with Britain.
The BBC’s own Nick Robinson thinks it’s a question worth asking as he’s doubtful about Obama’s allegiances and priorities…
Confronted directly by the BBC’s political correspondent, Nick Robinson, with the assertion that “unlike many of your predecessors, [you] have not looked towards Europe, let alone Britain,” the president yesterday denied any cooling had taken place.
Sunday morning on R4 we had Paddy O’Connell (10 mins 30s) putting the boot into Boris for being ‘a racist’. O’Connell had on Shirley Williams and Michael Howard to discuss Obama. Williams told us that she was ‘ashamed of the extraordinary comments’ made by Boris.
O’Connell didn’t challenge Williams on her claim and ask her to justify why she thought Boris was racist instead he tried to badger Michael Howard into distancing himself from Boris’ comments….
‘Can you just help us with this Lord Howard?…..Shirley Williams is concerned about the tone of the Mayor of London’s remarks, the ‘part-Kenyan’, I think he even said ‘Keenyan president’, do you distance yourself from Boris Johnson’s remarks about the background of President Obama?’
Where to start? Since when has Shirley Williams been the nation’s goto moral arbiter? The same Shirley Williams whose politics the Public roundly rejected and who would like to see Communism take over in the UK? Why does O’Connell use Williams’ remark as the baseline truth? O’Connell’s default position is that she is right and Howard should distance himself from the remarks…which is quite extraordinary conclusion if you have actually read Boris’ remarks and note that they are entirely innocuous and reasonable…especially when you consider, and have knowledge of, any context. O’Connell clearly falls short there…but what’s new for BBC presenters who think pious grandstanding and holier-than-thou comments are a good substitute for actual facts and analysis?
The real problem isn’t Boris but the likes of Williams, and indeed O’Connell who doesn’t seem capable of thinking for himself. It is their own comments that are in effect ‘racist’…Boris is blond and white, he’s supporting Britain and therefore he is ‘racist’ by default regardless of what he actually says…this is reverse racism by Williams and O’Connell….all White people are inherently racist is the line.
As for the ‘Tone’ of the debate….perhaps the BBC should be more concerned about politicians who cynically and deliberately play the race card to attack and discredit opponents, and to close down debate, rather than engage with their arguments…especially when the alleged racism is nothing more than an outright lie conjured up by the likes of Williams. Surely there is an important issue of freedom of speech and the tricks used to suppress it….tricks used by the BBC itself as here and deployed many times against Nigel Farage.
Of course context and a bit of history, a bit of connected thinking, is beyond the likes of the BBC’s O’Connell who seems more interested in attacking Boris than in putting the record straight. Has anyone ever raised the subject of Obama’s ancestry and its influence on his outlook? No…oh hang on….maybe…
Here’s a British Ambassador to Washington on Obama and whether his world view is shaped along European lines or by other influences…
Sir David Manning, who was Britain’s ambassador to Washington from 2003 to 2007 in testimony to a House of Commons foreign affairs committee, said that Obama “comes with a very different perspective” from other presidents.
“He is an American who grew up in Hawaii, whose foreign experience was of Indonesia, and who had a Kenyan father,” Manning said. “We now have a Democrat who is not familiar with us.”
So he thinks Obama’s non-European roots may shape his thinking….Sir David Manning…what a bleeding racist scumbag!!!
Let’s have a look at what the BBC itself has said about Obama and his Kenyan roots, his ‘Kenyan blood coursing through his veins‘…..do people think they are relevant and could they in any way have influenced his thinking?…..BBC racist scumbags!!!!…
His meteoric rise to political fame has propelled the name Barack Obama onto the lips of millions of Kenyans. He has Kenyan blood coursing through his veins and has been adopted as a Kenyan national hero, who just might become the most powerful man in the world. Barack Obama has never lived in Kenya and he has visited the country just three times. The Kenyan blood comes from his father, Barack Obama senior, who was born in the remote village of Alego where he herded goats as a child.
Here we have a report that tells of his ‘blood claims’ in Kenya….
Jealous pride
We are the envy of the whole continent and as for our cousins the Nigerians, this is the ultimate humiliation. They will never be able to live this one down. Then there is Kenya and I ought to tread gently for there might be some raw emotions here, since there are blood claims.
Then we get to Obama’s father and how he reacted to the ‘White world’……
US officials complained Kenyan students were becoming “anti-white” in the year Barack Obama’s father enrolled at university, previously secret files released at the National Archives in Kew reveal. The motives behind this enterprise, therefore, seem more political than educational,” the note stated. “The arrival here of these students, many of them of indifferent academic calibre and ill-prepared for the venture, is likely to give rise to difficult problems.”
Did Obama’s father pick up an anti-white attitude from his father? You may guess as much from what Obama himself says about his grandfather’s life under British rule…..the ‘foreign masters’.
These are some comments made by Obama in a speech to Kenyans in 2015….
So we can all appreciate our own identities, our bloodlines, our beliefs, our backgrounds — that tapestry is what makes us who we are.
My grandfather, for example, he was a cook for the British. And as I went through some of his belongings when I went up-country, I found the passbook he had had to carry as a domestic servant. It listed his age and his height, his tribe, listed the number of teeth he had missing. (Laughter.) And he was referred to as a boy, even though he was a grown man, in that passbook.
A young, ambitious Kenyan today should not have to do what my grandfather did, and serve a foreign master.
He also said this…which is interesting in light of his desire for Britain to be subservient to the EU empire….
[The] arc of progress — from foreign rule to independence; from isolation to education, and engagement with a wider world. It speaks of incredible progress.
Brexit then, freedom from foreign rule, would be ‘incredible progress’? Cheers Bro.
Does the treatment of Black people throughout history by Whites weigh heavily on his thoughts, and does it reflect in his policies? Yes to both those…here he is on the Confederate flag…to him a symbol of racism and slavery…hence it should go…..
Look at us in the United States. Recently, we’ve been having a debate about the Confederate flag. Some of you may be familiar with this. This was a symbol for those states who fought against the Union to preserve slavery. Now, as a historical artifact, it’s important. But some have argued that it’s just a symbol of heritage that should fly in public spaces. The fact is it was a flag that flew over an army that fought to maintain a system of slavery and racial subjugation. So we should understand our history, but we should also recognize that it sends a bad message to those who were liberated from slavery and oppression.
Here is the Times in 2008 reporting that…
Beatings and abuse made Barack Obama’s grandfather loathe the British
December 3, 2008
Ben Macintyre and Paul Orengoh
The President-elect’s relatives have told how the family was a victim of the Mau Mau revolt
Barack Obama’s grandfather was imprisoned and brutally tortured by the British during the violent struggle for Kenyan independence, according to the Kenyan family of the US President-elect.
Is the Times being racist or just reporting the facts?
Here is the type of conversation Obama had with his grandmother….would this and the likes of the previous report colour his views of Britain in any shape or form?…..
[Quoting his step-grandmother:] Like other boys, your father would be influenced by the early talk of independence, and he would come home from school talking about the meetings he had seen. Your grandfather agreed with many of the demands of the early parties like KANU, but he remained skeptical that the independence movement would lead to anything, because he thought Africans could never win against the white man’s army. “How can the African defeat the white man,” he would tell Barack, “when he cannot even make his own bicycle?”
It would be perfectly normal to suppose he might have some antipathy to White folks despite his mother’s colour, and that would impact upon his thinking even if subliminally. Clearly race issues loom large in his thinking as we’ve seen time and time again during his Presidency….it is almost inconceivable that how the British dealt with his grandfather didn’t have some impact upon his thinking in some shape or form.
However Boris didn’t actually say that…he only stated that there were many suggested reasons that may possibly have led to Obama removing Churchill’s bust from pride of place in the Oval Office….he made no suggestion hmself…and the one he concentrated on was that Churchill was possibly thought irrelevant for the modern age…which of course he denied.
From all the above examples, from ambassors, to Kenyans, the Guardian, to the BBC itself, Obama’s Kenyan heritage is clearly important to them and to him. How is that they can all raise the subject and tell us how his the ‘Kenyan blood coursing through his veins’ shaped him as a person and yet Boris can’t mention it in a passing comment that didn’t actually reflect his own personal view?
What if Paddy O’Connell’s great grandfather being beaten black and blue by the Black and Tans in 1916 and Paddy subsequently had misgivings about Britain due to that?…would that be racist to say such a thing if it were true at all at all? If it were true I’d bet that it was a subject that would bubble to the surface every now and again and a bitter tone about ‘the British’ would enter the conversation….a man whose sentimental emotions are near the surface….
Paddy O’Connell struggled to compose himself following a reading of a love letter from Emilie Blachere to Remi Ochlik, who died alongside Sunday Times journalist Marie Colvin in the besieged city of Homs last year.
After the end of the poem, which was read by Miss Blachere herself, the airwaves were plunged into silence for about 12 seconds before the presenter regained enough composure to speak again.
Ironically O’Connell works for the BBC which relentlessly peddles the same sort of narrative that they denounce Boris for supposedly arguing [even though that’s not what he said], of historical wrongs leading to modern violence…how many times has the BBC told us that Muslims in the UK are so concerned about the Crusades, the ‘carving up of the Middle East by Sykes Picot’ and the various wars ‘against Muslims by the West’ that such feelings have led to radicalisation and terrorism. And yet they vehemently discount any suggestion that Obama might be similarly effected by the historic oppression of ‘his people’. Seems like the BBC just makes it up as it goes along, picking and choosing narratives that suit their own agenda….defending Muslim terrorists or attacking anyone who wants to leave the EU as racist little Englanders.
The BBC, in league with the Government peddling pro-EU propaganda and carrying out witch-hunts and public show trials and lynchings of those it considers ‘enemies of the State’….The European State of course.
Here is Obama’s friend and mentor…Jeremiah Wright….telling us Obama does not ‘fit the mould’….the mould being white, European, rich and privileged…If you’re judged by who your friends are…….