Three weeks ago, Dinesh D'Souza has written the cover story for Forbes Magazine. He based the story on his book, about to be published about President Obama. D'Souza's theory is that our President is driven by an anti-colonialist ideological hatred.
After the publication of the article, the White House spokesman Robert Gibbs was sent to contact the magazine editor, and in passing derided the magazine, saying: "It's a stunning thing, to see a publication you would see in a dentist's office, so lacking in truth and fact."
D'Souza claims to be a lot like Obama: both with cosmopolitan backgrounds, with roots in former colonized countries, nonwhite, influenced by mixed marriages, born the same year, attended Ivy League colleges and graduating the same year.
What seemed to inspire the author to write this book was an article he read back in 2008, in the London Telegraph titled "Barack Obama's Lost Brother Found in Kenya". The 26 year old George Hussein Obama was found living in a Nairobi slum. "I live here on less than a dollar a month." George said. Humiliated by his poverty, he confessed he never mentioned the famous half-brother. The two Obamas met briefly in 2006 when Barack was a senator, but the two didn't connect. D'Souza was shocked that the Senator, with a net worth in the millions of dollars did not lift a finger to help a destitute close relative. George wanted to be a mechanic, and D'Souza raised a couple thousand dollars to help George move out of his hut. By then D'Souza believes the Obama's presidential campaign caught up with the guy, and George was apparently told to go into hiding.
D'Souza believes that since childhood, Obama's dream was always to become an anti-colonial warrior. And also that his father's dream became his own. He makes the important distinction: Obama's first book is not titled "Dreams OF My Father" but "Dreams FROM My Father", a distinction that convinces D'Souza that the son admits he has inherited his father's dreams.
They wanted to change the systems, the hierarchies and change history. The problem, as D'Souza puts it: "How does a man like Obama get elected in a country which has virtually no awareness of the defining events of his life, no concern for the injustices that move him, and consequently no sense of urgency about the need to put the resolution of the colonial problem at the forefront of the national agenda?
Another important question from D'Souza: is Obama a descendent and disciple of Martin Luther King? No. Obama's politics arise from a very different source than Martin Luther King's dream. D'Souza says that MLK's dream is irrelevant to Obama's worldview.
Obama studied carefully the anti-colonial activist and writer Frantz Fanon. He acknowledges Fanon in `Dreams from My Father' numerous times.
Acording to D'Souza, Fanon should be credited to placing the mask on Obama, translating the "anti-colonial ideas into the language and imagery of modern American politics." D'Souza also says Obama added "his own vision and strategy".
Fanon wrote: "The wealth of the imperial countries is our wealth too... For in a very concrete way Europe has stuffed herself inordinately with the gold and raw materials of the colonial countries... Europe is literally a creation of the Third Word." The awareness, Fanon concludes, produces a double realization: the realization by the colonized people that it is their due and the realization by the capitalist powers that they must pay."
Obama befriended the radical Bill Ayers. Ayers wrote about his own take: "We had been insistent in our anti-Americanism, our opposition to a national story stained with conquest and slavery and attempted genocide." and "What kind of a system is it that allows the U.S. to seize the destinies of the Vietnamese people?" D'Souza says: "The Vietnam war was America's attempt to stop communism. But that is not how Bill Ayers and Ho Chi Minh saw it. For Ho and Bill, this was an anti-colonial struggle." Bill Ayers was an anti-colonial friend of Obama.
Alinsky advocated for the activist to join the middle class, because they have the power; to adopt their style and attitude, to dress like them, to act like them, to smile a lot because smiles are a great way to disguise rage and contempt. This way, the activist will build a rapport with ordinary Americans and mobilize them on behalf of radical causes.
D'Souza continues: "The critique of neocolonialism espoused by Obama's father operates on the conviction that Western banks, investment houses, insurance companies, oil and mineral companies, and - we can add for good measure - the automobile and the pharmaceutical industries, are owned and operated by rich fat cats. This group - let's call it the overclass - achieves its position by exploiting the weak and the poor. As he argued in his paper, Obama Sr. sought to use the power of the state to bring down this overclass." Meaning subduing neocolonial institutions Obama blocks offshore drilling for oil by United States.
Obama underwrites offshore drilling for oil.... by Brazil with loans of 2 billion dollars, and also for Mexico. And not a drop of that oil will get to U.S.
D'Souza insists that to Obama the issue is not protecting the environment, its about shifting the balance of energy consumption away from the West and toward the developing world.
Through Cap and Trade Obama will curb America's energy production and consumption.
China is the world's no.1 leading producer of carbon dioxide. China accounted for most of the growth in the year's global greenhouse emissions. India was next. Neither of them care about reducing emissions. The agreement coming out of the UN Summit proposed that the West fork over 100 Billion dollars do developing countries. Obama administration supports this measure!
During his time in the Senate Obama sponsored the Global Poverty Act, that would have comited United States to spending over 800 Billion Dollars over a decade to eradicate poverty in the Third World. D'Souza believes Obama wants to make the rich nations poorer and the poor nations richer and that America and the West are using too much of the Earth resources. D'Souza point out that this is a huge theme with Obama; he never stops talking about it.
For almost 10 years America has been fighting the `war on terrorism'. President Obama has called an end to this. D'Souza believes Obama is conducting a war against what he considers to be the biggest rogue state of all: United States of America.
In The Audacity of Hope, Obama faults America for its role in supporting the repressive Suharto regime in Indonesia.
D'Souza points out that similar accusations come from Chavez in Venezuela, Russia, Zimbabwe, North Korea and the Islamic nations and that Obama's answer is to curtail America's power and influence.
Dinesh D'Souza gives two cheers (not three, because of the suffering inflicted) for colonialism. The British left a legacy previously alien in traditional Indian culture: democracy, rule of law, human rights, self-determination, individualism, people with better taste, opinions, morals and intellect, a capacity for better government, a free press, modern universities and research laboratories. Thanks to the Brits, English is D'Souza first language and he wrote this great book and many great other books before it.
D'Souza points out there is only one continent that missed out on the growth curve: Africa - with the exception of South Africa. The rest of Africa, as UN Secretary General Kofi Annan put it, is a "cocktail of disasters", a lethal combo of poverty, repression, civil war, and AIDS.
D'Souza makes the point: the suffering of Africa is not due to Colonialism. As D'Souza points it out, Africa was colonized for little more than half a century, or a single lifetime. He says that a strong case can be made that Africa's problem isn't colonialism but too little colonialism.
D'Souza adds that the British did stop slavery in Africa, reduced if not prevented tribal conflict, and constructed a railway network through Uganda and Kenya - built, by the way, by importing 30,000 "coolies" from India. Obama knows about this because he writes about it, and D'Souza knows because his great grandfather was one of those coolies.
But too few Africans were provided with decent jobs or decent education. D'Souza says the Western powers were hampered in their attention to the needs of two world wars and a Great Depression. D'Souza's incredible conclusion: "colonization in Africa was a tragedy - but it might not have been had colonization lasted longer, as it did in India."
For most part Africa rejected the route of the free market capitalism and adopted a route of centralized planning and African socialism. Overall, Africa rejected pro-capitalist Jomo Kanyatta's approach in favor of the socialist approach of Barack Obama Sr. Dictators like Mobutu in Zaire, Idi Amin in Uganda, Banda in Malawi, Mugabe in Zimbabwe are "thugs who learned the language of anti-colonialism and used it as a pretext to confiscate property and appropriate it for themselves and their cronies." "These men continued for decades to blame the failure of their societies on the legacy of colonialism, freeing them from the responsibility of raising the people's standard of living.
D'Souza quotes Obama in his speech in Ghana: "Africa gives off less greenhouse gas than any other part of the world, but it is the most threatened by climate change." Obama pledged "substantial increases in our foreign assistance", including technical assistance for crop production. Falling back into campaign mode, Obama concluded "Yes we can! Thank you very much."
D'Souza concludes that "anti-colonialism is dead; no one in today's world cares about it - except the man in the White House.
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