The Mystery Surrounding President Obama’s Birth
Bill O’Reilly of Fox News and lawyers for John McCain’s presidential campaign claim that they investigated the issue of Barack Obama’s original birth certificate and are convinced that he is a natural-born U.S. citizen and therefore eligible to serve as American President. But WHAT, exactly, did O’Reilly and McCain lawyers investigate? WHAT did they examine?
WHY is the White House failing to convincingly put the issue to rest? Why are there so many misrepresentations and outright lies in regard to the matter? Why is CNN’s Lou Dobbs ordered to drop the matter, and why do some even call for his termination for simply addressing it? Those who ridicule the ever-growing number of Americans DEMANDING that President Obama release his original long-form birth certificate sound less and less convincing–and they appear to give more and more the impression, perhaps inadvertently, that something needs to be kept secret and hidden.
What IF Barack Obama was not a natural-born U.S. citizen, but born in Kenya, as some claim? The consequences would be unthinkable. Every piece of legislation which he signed would be invalid, and so would every appointment that he made. This would include his appointment of Joe Biden as Vice President. This would mean, until we have new elections, Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, would be acting President.
The discussion was picked up by the European mainstream press. Der Spiegel Online published a German article on July 29, addressing the issue in its typically sarcastic way by making fun of conspiracy believers who question Mr. Obama’s claim that he was born in Hawaii. Nevertheless, until Mr. Obama releases his original long-form birth certificate, the debate is bound to continue.
Robert Gibbs’ Claims on President’s U.S. Citizenship
Politico 44 wrote on July 27:
“White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs once again dismissed conspiracy theories about the president’s citizenship in his daily briefing Monday, noting that proof of President Obama’s birthplace had been posted online and Obama’s citizenship had been demonstrated ‘ad nauseam.’ But Gibbs, sounding alternately bemused and exasperated, told White House reporters that conspiracy theories about the president’s birthplace would never go away…
“Attempting to put the issue to rest, once more, Gibbs assured reporters: ‘The president was born in Honolulu, in the 50th state of the greatest country on the face of the earth…There are 10,000 more important issues for people in this country to discuss, than whether or not the president is a citizen when it’s been proven ad nauseam.'”
But some contend that Gibbs’ comments are simply untrue.
WND wrote on July 27:
“President Obama has still not provided simple, incontrovertible proof of his exact birthplace. That information would be included on his long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate which Obama has steadfastly refused to release amid a flurry of conflicting reports. He has only proffered a ‘Certification of Live Birth’ to assert he was born in Hawaii, but many people remain unaware a child does not even have to be born in Hawaii to receive a COLB…
“WND has reported that at least two reports have cited Obama’s birth in Kenya. Wikipedia also was found to have been reporting on Obama’s birth in Kenya, before a series of scrubs placed his birth in Honolulu.
“That came on the heels of several online information sites changing the president’s supposed birthplace from one hospital in Hawaii to another… WND has yet to be able to identify any physician or medical attendant present at Kapi’olani in 1961 who can recall Ann Dunham, Obama’s mother, giving birth to Barack Obama at the hospital or who can identify the name of the attending physician…
“Some of the lawsuits question whether he was actually born in Hawaii, as he insists. If he was born out of the country, Obama’s American mother, the suits contend, was too young at the time of his birth to confer American citizenship to her son under the law at the time.
“Other challenges have focused on Obama’s citizenship through his father, a Kenyan subject to the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom at the time of his birth, thus making him a dual citizen. The cases contend the framers of the Constitution excluded dual citizens from qualifying as natural born.”
Obama Born in Kenya?
Infowars.com wrote on July 14:
“Contained in an otherwise relatively mundane account of Obama’s recent visit to Ghana in the Daily Graphic news outlet is a sentence sure to raise eyebrows amongst people like journalist Jerome Corsi, who has been at the forefront of the Obama birth certificate scandal since well before the election. The full paragraph reads, ‘For Ghana, Obama’s visit will be a celebration of another milestone in African history as it hosts the first-ever African-American President on this presidential visit to the continent of his birth.’…
“In April a transcript from an interview with Obama’s step-grandmother was released in which she discussed being present at Obama’s birth in Mombasa, Kenya. ‘WND is in possession of an affidavit submitted by Rev. Kweli Shuhubia, an Anabaptist minister in Kenya, who is the official Swahili translator for the annual Anabaptist Conference in Kenya, and a second affidavit signed by Bishop Ron McRae, the presiding elder of the Anabaptists’ Continental Presbytery of Africa,’ reported Corsi. In his affidavit, Shuhubia asserts ‘it is common knowledge throughout the Christian and Muslim communities in Kenya that Barack Hussein Obama, Jr., was born in Mombasa, Kenya.’”
Proofs for Obama’s Birth in Hawaii?
Politicalwire.com reported on July 24:
“David Weigel talked with Trevor Potter and other lawyers for Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign who said that they did look into the Obama citizenship rumors and found them without merit. Said Potter: ‘To the extent that we could, we looked into the substantive side of these allegations. We never saw any evidence that then-Senator Obama had been born outside of the United States. We saw rumors, but nothing that could be sourced to evidence.
“‘There were no statements and no documents that suggested he was born somewhere else. On the other side, there was proof that he was born in Hawaii. There was a certificate issued by the state’s Department of Health, and the responsible official in the state saying that he had personally seen the original certificate. There was a birth announcement in the Honolulu Advertiser, which would be very difficult to invent or plant 47 years in advance.'”
Was Original Long-Form Birth Certificate Destroyed…?
USA Today wrote on July 29:
“In an attempt to quash persistent rumors that President Obama was not born in Honolulu on Aug. 4, 1961, Hawaii’s health director reiterated Monday afternoon that she has personally seen Obama’s birth certificate in the Health Department’s archives:
“‘I, Dr. Chiyome Fukino, director of the Hawaii State Department of Health, have seen the original vital records maintained on file by the Hawaii State Department of Health verifying Barack Hussein Obama was born in Hawaii and is a natural-born American citizen. I have nothing further to add to this statement or my original statement issued in October 2008 over eight months ago’…
“Despite Fukino’s statements, the issue has continued to resonate from Capitol Hill to the national airwaves. Last week, CNN’s Lou Dobbs demanded Obama’s original birth certificate. CNN/U.S. President Jon Klein told staffers of Lou Dobbs Tonight that the issue is a ‘dead’ story…
“In an e-mail, the Times reported, Klein wrote that CNN researchers determined that Obama’s 1961 birth certificate no longer exists because Hawaiian officials had discarded paper documents in 2001 — a claim denied Monday by Hawaiian health officials. In 2001, Hawaii’s paper documents were reproduced in electronic format, but ‘any paper data prior to that still exists,’ Health Department spokeswoman Janice Okubo said. Okubo would not say where Obama’s original birth certificate is but said, ‘We have backups for all of our backups.’
“A congressional resolution introduced by Rep. Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawaii, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of island statehood was delayed Monday. The resolution includes a clause noting Obama’s Hawaiian birthplace. The line ‘Whereas the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama, was born in Hawaii on August 4, 1961’ appeared to be construed by birthers as a thinly veiled attempt to get Congress to affirm Obama’s U.S. citizenship, said Dave Helfert, an Abercrombie spokesman. As the issue came to a vote Monday, Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., rose to object, saying there was not a quorum present. The House later voted 378-0 to approve the resolution. Bachmann voted in favor of the resolution.”
Lou Dobbs Ordered to Stop…
WorldNetDaily reported on July 27:
“Directly contradicting CNN chief Jon Klein – who ordered host Lou Dobbs to quit discussing President Obama’s birth certificate – the Hawaii Department of Health affirmed that no paper birth certificates were destroyed when the department moved to electronic record-keeping…
“Klein wrote in an email that CNN researchers found Hawaiian records were discarded in 2001 when the state’s records system went electronic. Therefore, Klein said, Obama’s original long-form birth certificate no longer exists.
“A computer-generated-abbreviated version that has been promoted on the Internet is the official record, he said. ‘It seems to definitively answer the question,’ Klein wrote. ‘Since the show’s mission is for Lou to be the explainer and enlightener, he should be sure to cite this during your segment tonite. And then it seems this story is dead – because anyone who still is not convinced doesn’t really have a legitimate beef.'”
Obama Approval Rates in Decline
The Rasmussen Reports wrote on July 30:
“The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Thursday shows that 28% of the nation’s voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty percent (40%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -12. That’s the lowest rating yet recorded for President Obama…
“Forty-nine percent (49%) now say that America’s best days have come and gone. Just 38% believe they are still to come. Thirty-four percent (34%) say the country is heading in the right direction. Seventy-five percent (75%) want the Federal Reserve to be audited.”
New Health Care Plan — Small Business Under Attack
USA Today wrote on July 27:
“Now, what about this so-called mandate requiring small business owners to provide health insurance or face a government fine?… Under the House measure, employers with payrolls of more than $400,000 a year will be required to provide health insurance or pay an 8% penalty. Businesses whose payroll falls between $250,000 and $400,000 a year would pay a lesser penalty. Businesses with fewer than $250,000 in payroll would be exempt. A Senate version would exempt employers with fewer than 25 employees, and the fine for bigger companies not complying would be $750 fine per employee per year.
“Those are some scary numbers, especially in a recession. The administration says that insuring more people and providing a public option will bring the costs of insuring employees way down, thus making the mandate far more doable than it might otherwise look. Would it work? It better, because insuring people at today’s costs verges on impossible and penalties are the last thing we need.”
Health Care Vote Delayed…
AFP reported on July 29:
“President Barack Obama said Wednesday there will be no vote on his proposed reforms of the US healthcare system before autumn, a setback that is costing him more political capital with each passing day. ‘This bill, even in the best-case scenario, will not be signed — we won’t even vote on it probably until the end of September or the middle of October,’ he said…
“Lawmakers are going through bills in both houses of Congress with fine tooth combs amid fierce opposition from Republicans and divisions within the Democratic majority and between the Senate and the House of Representatives. Obama has pressed lawmakers to vote on the initial bills before departing on their summer recess August 7, but acknowledged that is unlikely to happen. He was not clear whether he expected a final vote or only a first vote on the bill by the end of September or mid-October.”
Fall of the Dollar
Bloomberg wrote on July 28:
“The dollar fell to the lowest level this year against the currencies of six major U.S. trading partners… The Australian dollar advanced to the highest level since September against the U.S. currency… The euro climbed to a seven-week high against the dollar after Deutsche Bank AG said second-quarter profit rose 68 percent, beating analysts’ estimates… The U.S. currency fell 0.5 percent to 94.73 yen, extending its drop this month to 1.7 percent…
“Adding to pressure on the dollar, China’s Assistant Finance Minister… [said] that his government remains ‘concerned’ about the value of its U.S. assets. [His] remarks come after repeated public assurances by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner that the U.S. is committed to reining in a record budget deficit once an economic recovery is secured. China is the biggest foreign investor in U.S. government debt…”
Obama Administration “Not Naive” About Iran?
The Associated Press reported on July 27:
“Israel hardened its insistence Monday that it would do anything it felt necessary to stop Iran from getting a nuclear bomb, just the ultimatum the United States hoped not to hear as it tried to nudge Iran to the bargaining table.
“U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates reassured Israel that the new Obama administration was not naive about Iran’s intentions, and that Washington would press for new, tougher sanctions against the Iranians if they balk. He didn’t say what those might include.
“Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak used a brief news conference with Gates to insist three times that Israel would not rule out any response—an implied warning that it would consider a pre-emptive strike to thwart Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons…
“The question of how to deal with Iran’s rapid nuclear advancement has become a notable public difference between the new administrations in Jerusalem and Washington… Israel considers itself the prime target of any eventual Iranian bomb.”
“Crunch Time for Israel”
On July 28, John Bolton wrote in the Wall Street Journal:
“Defense Secretary Robert Gates[‘]… central objective was to dissuade Israel from carrying out military strikes against Iran’s nuclear weapons facilities. Under the guise of counseling ‘patience,’ Mr. Gates again conveyed President Barack Obama’s emphatic thumbs down on military force…
“Iran’s progress with nuclear weapons and air defenses means Israel’s military option is declining over time. It will have to make a decision soon, and it will be no surprise if Israel strikes by year’s end. Israel’s choice could determine whether Iran obtains nuclear weapons in the foreseeable future.
“Mr. Obama’s approach to Tehran has been his ‘open hand,’ yet his gesture has not only been ignored by Iran but deemed irrelevant as the country looks inward to resolve the aftermath of its fraudulent election. The hardliner ‘winner’ of that election, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was recently forced to fire a deputy who once said something vaguely soothing about Israel. Clearly, negotiations with the White House are not exactly topping the Iranian agenda.
“Beyond that, Mr. Obama’s negotiation strategy faces insuperable time pressure. French President Nicolas Sarkozy proclaimed that Iran must re-start negotiations with the West by September’s G-20 summit. But this means little when, with each passing day, Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile laboratories, production facilities and military bases are all churning. Israel is focused on these facts, not the illusion of ‘tough’ diplomacy…
“Worse, Mr. Obama has no new strategic thinking on Iran. He vaguely promises to offer the country the carrot of diplomacy—followed by an empty threat of sanctions down the road if Iran does not comply with the U.S.’s requests. This is precisely the European Union’s approach, which has failed for over six years…
“Relations between the U.S. and Israel are more strained now than at any time since the 1956 Suez Canal crisis. Mr. Gates’s message for Israel not to act on Iran, and the U.S. pressure he brought to bear, highlight the weight of Israel’s lonely burden.
“Striking Iran’s nuclear program will not be precipitous or poorly thought out. Israel’s attack, if it happens, will have followed enormously difficult deliberation over terrible imponderables, and years of patiently waiting on innumerable failed diplomatic efforts. Absent Israeli action, prepare for a nuclear Iran.”
“Politicians Criticise EU-US Bank Data Talks”
The Local reported on July 27:
“Plans to share confidential banking data between the European Union and the US for anti-terrorism purposes have united disparate parts of the German political spectrum in opposition.
“EU foreign ministers today gave the go-ahead to European Commission president José Manuel Barroso to negotiate a deal with the US to allow their intelligence agencies access to the Swift system, which helps clear international banking transactions. German politicians have cried foul over the move.
“’It is unreasonable and excessive that banking data can be inspected without any criminal suspicion,’ environmentalist Green Party deputy parliamentary floorleader Jürgen Trittin said… ‘The federal government should not agree under any circumstances to allow this attack on principle of personal data privacy…’
“On the opposite end of the political spectrum, the head of the conservative Christian Social Union, sister party to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), also denounced the measure. ‘That such a wide-reaching intervention into the personal privacy rights of citizens by the bureaucracy is possible, without the involvement of the European or German parliaments, is a scandal,’ said CSU head Horst Seehofer at a speech in Munich on Monday.
“An agreement between the US and EU could be in place by autumn. In addition to being able to monitor financial transactions that cross borders, the US government could also have access to data about purely domestic transactions, warned the German government’s commissioner for data privacy, Peter Schaar.”
“Blair Faces Resistance as Candidate for EU President”
Der Spiegel Online wrote on July 27:
“Tony Blair is facing louder criticism than anticipated in his bid to become the EU’s first president. Support for the former British prime minister appears to be waning in Berlin and Paris as resistance builds elsewhere in Europe. Is Blair losing his chance to become the man to call in Brussels?
“London’s bid to promote Tony Blair as a candidate to become the first ever President of the European Union is being met with unexpectedly vocal opposition in a number of European capital cities. The person serving as EU president will effectively be the international face of the 27 member countries and would lead regular summits of state and government leaders. The creation of the post is contingent on the ratification of the EU’s Lisbon Treaty…
“The office of the EU president will replace the current tradition of the rotating presidency, which sees a different member state taking over summit organizing responsibilities every six months…
“Left-leaning leaders in some European countries dislike Blair for the allegiance he showed to the US during the Iraq war. And pro-European conservatives and business-friendly parties oppose the idea of having a top EU [representative] from a country that refuses to introduce the euro or join the Schengen agreement on border-free travel within Europe.
“Leaders of the EU’s most powerful players — France’s Nicolas Sarkozy and Germany’s Angela Merkel — once promised Blair the job because he managed to prevent a difficult British referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. But insiders in Paris and Berlin warn that enthusiasm for Blair as president has since waned.”
“The Beast of Capitalism”
In reporting about the worldwide financial crisis, The Financial Times wrote on July 27: “Animal spirits rarely stay down for long.”
The paper continued:
“The fall in output in the current recession has been sharp. In the US, for example, gross domestic product fell at an annual rate of just above 6 per cent in the two most recent quarters. In Japan, GDP is down by nearly 9 per cent on its 2008 first-quarter peak. The latest UK data suggest output is nearly 6 per cent lower than a year ago, the sharpest fall since 1931.
“The conventional wisdom is that the steepness of the fall means the recession will be long, and that the recovery when it happens will be anaemic. In the UK, for example, the National Institute of Economic and Social Research argued last week that GDP per head would take five years to get back to pre-recession levels… In the US, the consensus among forecasters is that growth at or near trend will not resume until the second half of 2010 and that the 2008 second-quarter peak level will not be regained until the first half of 2011.
“As late as the autumn of 2008, economic forecasters in general were far too optimistic about 2009. Are these same forecasters now too pessimistic about recovery?… the current circumstances are unusual. But so was the Great Depression. There is some evidence to suggest that, after recession has reached a certain size or duration, recovery is then harder and more sluggish. Keynes’ animal spirits become depressed. But it takes an awful lot to depress them for more than a couple of years. Capitalism seems a pretty resilient beast.”
The Insanity of the Afghan War
The Telegraph wrote on July 27:
“Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, has signalled the end of Operation Panther’s Claw, the bloody offensive by British troops to drive back the Taliban in Afghanistan… Twenty British personnel have been killed this month alone in Afghanistan – with 189 having died since the start of operations eight years ago…
“Foreign Secretary David… Miliband said ‘moderate’ members of the Taliban insurgency killing British forces in Afghanistan could be given seats in the Afghan government. He said that some members of the broad coalition of Islamic militants, tribal groups and hired fighters could be drawn into the Afghan political process.”
Germany’s Secret War in Afghanistan
The Local wrote on July 27:
“Rules of engagement for German forces in Afghanistan are being eased to allow soldiers to use their weapons more often. They will also be allowed to shoot at fleeing attackers, the Defence Ministry announced Monday…
“Until now, German soldiers were not permitted to shoot if their attackers had turned around and were fleeing. The ministry did not clarify if the change in policy had to do with a recently-launched offensive around Kundus in northern Afghanistan that includes over 300 German troops, the first offensive forces have taken part in since World War II.
“Germany’s involvement in foreign military operations, especially in Afghanistan, is extremely controversial with the German public. After the death of three soldiers last month, Jung, who belongs to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), refused to describe the fighting in Afghanistan as a war…
“’It’s incomprehensible why German soldiers in Afghanistan have, up until now, had less authority than a policeman in Germany,’ said Rainer Stinner with the pro-business Free Democratic Party. But he described Monday’s announcement as a change in policy that the government was not being completely open about…”
Germans Join Army Because of Recession
The Local wrote on July 27:
“Is economic adversity forcing eastern Germans to become ‘cannon fodder’ for the military?… Of the 6,391 soldiers on foreign missions, 3,143 are of eastern German background – about half, even though east Germans make up just one fifth of the population. Among the lower ranks, it is even worse: 62.5 percent are from the east. Yet easterners make up just 16.6 percent of officers. And none of the four generals on foreign deployments are from the east. The figures were made public shortly after three young German soldiers were killed in Afghanistan. The three soldiers came, respectively, from the eastern states of Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia.
“Rüdiger Göbel, a journalist with the leftist newspaper Junge Welt who recently earned a swift rebuke from the government for describing Ossis in the Bundeswehr as ‘cannon fodder,’ says the overrepresentation of eastern Germans in the military crystallises two pressing political issues in Germany: the unpopularity of Germany’s involvement in the war in Afghanistan and economic stagnation in the east. ‘We got a huge response after we wrote about this issue,’ he told The Local. ‘The fact is, the majority of people in Germany are against the war in Afghanistan but the majority in the Bundestag support it’…
“It is hardly surprising that people from economically depressed areas will be overrepresented in the armed forces. It’s a phenomenon seen around the world. Saxon Greens MP Peter Hettlich, who obtained the Bundeswehr figures via parliamentary inquiry, compared the situation with the high proportion of African-Americans and Hispanics in the US military. In the Mitteldeutsche Zeitung, he went so far as to say eastern Germans were being ‘exploited’ because of their economic situation.”
Habermas on European Army and Core Europe
The Irish Times wrote on July 29:
“There is something refreshingly honest about Jürgen Habermas’s take on the European Union. A critical supporter of the Lisbon Treaty, Germany’s leading philosopher, political scientist and public intellectual believes that Europe can and must do better. His new collection of essays, Europe, The Faltering Project, brings together a series of previously published papers and speeches on a wide range of philosophical, political, economic and cultural themes.
“At first glance there may seem to be little connection between Habermas’s reflections on the relationship between contemporary philosophy, religion and politics on the one hand, and the fate of national media in the era of corporate globalisation on the other. However, whether explicitly or implicitly, what binds these disparate essays together is the author’s desire to find better ways to regulate the market in what he argues is a post-national era…
“Habermas outlines his concerns with the current state of the European project and offers his tentative proposals for its future. He identifies three challenges. Corporate-led globalisation has undermined the ability of the nation state to regulate the market in the best interests of society. The rise of the US as the world’s sole superpower has produced a ‘reckless, hegemonic power politics’. In turn a ‘split within the West’ has emerged on defence policy, between the EU and the US and within the US itself, exemplified by the Iraq war.
“The response to each of these three challenges, argues Habermas, is to be found in deeper European integration. Effective regulation of capital can only take place at the supra-national level, requiring EU harmonisation of social, economic and fiscal policy. An alternative to the Washington Consensus demands a single European foreign policy promoting reform of global economic and political institutions such as the IMF and the UN. Ending US military unilateralism requires an EU army that can earn respect for European principles.
“… he argues for an end to the ‘convoy model’ of EU integration, ‘in which the slowest vehicle determines the speed’ allowing instead for core Europe to press ahead. Addressing the democratic deficit will require an end to the idea that ‘it is the privilege of the governments to decide the future destiny of Europe behind closed doors’. And it is here that the compelling logic of Habermas’s argument exposes its Achilles heel, as his desire for supra-national social democratic reform clashes with the undemocratic and neo-liberal reality that is the European Union today.”
