Cinie has uncovered a lovely bit of conspiratology. I'm not sure what it all means; maybe nothing, or maybe much. Ponder:
Did you know that Turbo Tax Timothy Geithner, tax cheat (TTTG, tc) is the son of Peter Geithner, former Ford Foundation head of the Indonesian region’s microfinance program, which formerly employed one S. Ann Sutoro, Program Director, and Mother of the Obamessiah? Betcha didn’t.
No, Cinie, I didn't. Here's what I did know. Forgive the self-quotation, but these key paragraphs should help newcomers get up to speed on an important, but neglected, aspect of history:
Ann spent most of her time in Indonesia, where she was married to an executive with the American Mobil corporation. The CIA had, of course, played a key role in Indonesia's history. At least one Agency veteran of the time has said that "the CIA took it upon themselves to make, not just to enact, policy in this area." (Also see here and here.)
To make a long and very gruesome story far too short: Back in the 1960s, two oil companies linked with the Rockefeller dynasty -- Stanvac and Caltex -- felt that their investments in Indonesia were threatened by President Sukarno, who was considered soft on Communism. Stanvac, for our purposes, is simply another name for Mobil.
To protect American business interests, the CIA engineered a coup in Indonesia in the 1965-67 period, which led to one of the most appalling episodes of mass murder in history. Over 500,000 people died in the resultant bloodbath, which ended with the installation of a CIA puppet named Suharto.
Lolo Sotero, Barack Obama's stepfather, was the key liaison between Mobil/Stanvac and the Suharto regime.
These events may now seem "long ago and far away" to many modern Democratic voters. But the situation was quite different in 1967, when Ann Dunham married Lolo Soetoro. An active leftist -- which Ann Dunham supposedly was -- with an interest in international affairs would have known all about the bloodbath. It was in the newspapers. Any true student radical would have refused to eat lunch with a Suharto/Mobil functionary.
And yet she married the man.
How does the Ford Foundation fit in? Well, if you fire up Google -- or better still, head into a university library -- you'll see plenty of evidence that the CIA and the FF were likethis during the period when Timmy's dad and Barry's mom took such a keen interest in Indonesia. Given the wealth of available material, I hate to cite Wikipedia -- but if you want a quick summary, you can do worse than to run your eyeballs over the following:
The former Binghamton University professor of sociology, James Petras, and other critics accuse the Foundation of being a front organization for the CIA. Petras names the exchange of high-ranking personnel between the CIA and the Foundation, Ford Foundation's big donations to the CIA-backed Congress for Cultural Freedom, the former Foundation president Richard Bissell's relationship with DCI Allen Dulles and involvement with the Marshall Plan during the 1950s, among other things. According to Petras, the Ford Foundation funds "anti-leftist human rights groups which focus on attacking human rights violations of U.S. adversaries".
Another American academic, Joan Roelofs, in Foundations and Public Policy: The Mask of Pluralism (State University of New York Press, 2003) argues that Ford and similar foundations play a key role in co-opting opposition movements: "While dissent from ruling class ideas is labeled 'extremism' and is isolated, individual dissenters may be welcomed and transformed. Indeed, ruling class hegemony is more durable if it is not rigid and narrow, but is able dynamically to incorporate emergent trends." She reports that John J. McCloy, while chairman of the Foundation's board of trustees from 1958 to 1965, "...thought of the Foundation as a quasi-extension of the U.S. government. It was his habit, for instance, to drop by the National Security Council (NSC) in Washington every couple of months and casually ask whether there were any overseas projects the NSC would like to see funded." Roelofs also charges that the Ford Foundation financed counter-insurgency programs in Indonesia and other countries.
Now, instead of bitching about the inclusion of a quote from Wikipedia, why don't you do something useful -- like, y'know, double-checking the information? While you're at it, consider looking into the very interesting backgrounds of John J. McCloy and Richard Bissell...
If you want a much more extensive history of the Ford Foundation, the CIA and the ghastly Indonesian coup, read David Ransom's piece here. Bottom line:
But it is the foreign-investment plan that is the payoff of Ford's twenty-year strategy in Indonesia and the pot of gold that the Ford modernizers -- both American and Indonesian -- are paid to protect. The nineteenth-century Colonial Dutch strategy built an agricultural export economy. The Americans are interested primarily in resources, mainly mineral.
But the real prize is oil...
Isn't it always...?
You may also want to visit here, where you'll learn why many left-leaning journals rarely discuss the relationship between the FF and the CIA. The Ford Foundation has tossed a fair chunk of money at the left-wing media. That loot may explain why the old left media (Z magazine, The Nation, and so forth) tended to avoid CIA stories.
Let's get back to Cinie's piece. She quotes from a resume for Timmy's dad.
Peter F. Geithner is an advisor to the Asia Center at Harvard University and a consultant to the Asia Pacific Philanthropy Consortium, Rockefeller Foundation, Sasakawa Peace Foundation, and other organizations...
The last-mentioned Foundation is not without interest. Homework assignment: Look up Roichi Sasakawa and his links to fascism, the Yakuza and Reverend Moon.
Prior to joining The Ford Foundation, Mr. Geithner served with the U.S. Agency for International Development in Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Washington, D.C.
AID...? The very mention of those initials is enough to make any old spook-watcher break into fits of Heath-Ledger-as-the-Joker laughter: Ha. Ha. HA. Heh. Heh. Ha ha ha. Ha.
Did Papa Giethner know the Mother of the Blessed One during their time together in Indonesia? Did little Barry and little Timmy play together? This has yet to be established, although the likelihood seems high, considering the natures of Lolo's job, her job, and Peter's job. Still, you may want to heed these words from Cinie...
Stanley Ann Dunham Obama Dunham met her second husband, Lolo Sotoero, at the East West Center on the University of Hawaii Campus. Ann Dunham had met her son’s father, Barack Obama, Sr., on the same campus years earlier, that time in a Russian language class. She seems to have had a thing for men who work for oil companies, too, since ObaOne worked for Shell and Lolo worked for Mobil.
By the way, Cinie links to this earlier post on Cannonfire (referenced above), of which I'm rather proud: Spies, lies, Barry and his mom. That piece probably would have received a great deal of attention in lefty circles if Barack Obama were a white Republican. But he's neither, which means that the evidence I present will never be considered sufficient, and the questions I raise will always be ignored.
Nevertheless, if you have a bold streak and an open mind, check it out. And if you know what Barry and his mom were getting up to in Pakistan, please share the information with the rest of the class.
Fred Burks has acted as an interpreter for George W. Bush. (Note: "translation" is written, "interpretation" is oral.) Burks wrote the following letter to Bob Fertik of Democrats.com, who avers that he has verified that Burks did indeed hold down that job:
As a deep insider myself, I have independent confirmation of President Bush using an earpiece to assist him in communicating intelligently with others. I've worked as a contract Indonesian language interpreter with the US State Department for over 18 years. I first started interpreting at the presidential level in 1995 at a White House meeting for President Clinton and President Suharto of Indonesia with their top advisors. You can read a short story of the many small miracles that led me to interpret for presidents at www.gcforall.org/inspirations (scroll down to Issue #1, where it is the second story).
On September 19, 2001, just eight days after 9/11, I was in the White House interpreting for an important 90-minute meeting between President Bush and President Megawati Soekarnoputri of Indonesia. This meeting made national news on all the TV networks, as at the time, the administration wanted to show they were supportive of our Muslim friends. Indonesia has the largest population of Muslims in the world. Over 80% of Indonesia's 220 million people are Muslim.
This was my first time interpreting for Bush. The previous day, I had been given the 22 points Bush would be covering in this meeting in order to familiarize myself with the topics to be discussed. About half of these "talking points" had to do with terrorism, which was to be fully expected given what had just happened. The other points, however, involved many details of Indonesian politics which even I would have had a tough time addressing, let alone Bush, who I assumed had limited knowledge of Indonesia.
During those 90 minutes, President Bush not only covered all the points, he covered them quite well and without any notes! Not once during the entire meeting did he look at any notes or receive cues from anyone present in discussing the Indonesian political situation with depth and intelligence. I was astonished! "How could this be?" I asked myself. It was a huge surprise. I concluded either that Bush was much more intelligent than we had been led to believe, or that somehow someone was feeding answers to him through a hidden earpiece. At the time, I really didn't know which of these was true.
Having worked directly with President Bush twice since then, and having additionally talked with many of my fellow interpreters who have worked directly with him, I am now certain that he could not have had that much knowledge of Indonesia. He doesn't even read the daily newspaper to keep up with what's being reported in the press. I am convinced that he must have been using some sort of earpiece through which someone was telling him what to say.
Having interpreted for media guests touring large TV studios, I've seen how the news anchors all have hidden earphones, and how the news producers are feeding them all sorts of information even as they talk live on TV. "20 seconds to a commercial," "15 seconds of filler here," "wrap it up quick " etc... This is standard practice for live TV shows. The "let me finish" comment made by Bush in the debate was only confirmation of something I already knew.
I will also mention that a number of months ago a colleague of mine was in the room with President Bush and his advisors when Bush threw a full blown temper tantrum filled with foul language and all. He ranted and raved at his advisors for a number of minutes to the shock and dismay of my colleague who was standing unseen in the refreshment corner. When he finally finished blowing off steam, Bush turned towards the refreshment table only to see my colleague standing there. He instantly switched into his "good ol' boy" friendly demeanor and said, "Hey, how ya doin' buddy?"
Politics is not a pretty business. I have many stories from my experiences interpreting at international conferences and secret meetings attended only our leaders and their interpreters. I have seen a number of our world's leaders (not just Americans) acting like high school boys playing power games. But for now, I just wanted to confirm my own strong belief that President Bush is often fed what he is supposed to say at important events. Though he can truly be a friendly guy, I have not found him to be particularly bright or competent. To be fair, I must admit that I tend to be of a more liberal persuasion, but I thought you all would appreciate knowing some of what goes on behind the scenes. You take care and have a great day!
With best wishes, Fred
PS Though I am still on contract with the State Department, I greatly reduced my work with them two years ago. I saw how important it was for me to devote my time to getting the word out through the websites I manage, and through email lists like this. I have done only three weeks' worth of paid work this year. Thankfully, I am able to draw on money I had set aside for retirement to support me in focusing full time on this important work. I want to invite you to look carefully at what you can do in your life to help build a better world in these important times. You might start by sharing this email with your friends and colleagues.
The death of Indonesian dictator Suharto on January 27, wholly a creature of Washington's Cold War jihad against "international Communism," will be mourned by pathological killers, multinational corporations and their sycophants everywhere.
Between 1965-66, Suharto's "New Order" embarked on a killing spree that led to the slaughter of some 500,000-1,000,000 Indonesians. The massacres commenced again a decade later, when, with the blessing of President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the Indonesian army invaded and occupied East Timor and slaughtered some 200,000 Timorese. In the process, Suharto's uniformed thugs "opened up" the seabed off the coast of the beleaguered island for "development" by Western oil and gas companies.
The destruction of the Maoist-aligned Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) was so atrocious and diabolical that the normally staid New York Times called the purge "one of the most savage mass slaughters of modern political history." [New York Times, March 12, 1966.] The ensuing violence reached such malevolent proportions that Life magazine declared it "tinged not only with fanaticism but with blood-lust and something like witchcraft." [Life, July 11, 1966.] (cited in Blum, below)
Twenty-five years later, American diplomats disclosed that they had systematically compiled comprehensive lists of "Communist" operatives, from top echelons down to village cadres, and turned over more than 5,000 names to the Indonesian army, which hunted those persons down and killed them. The Americans would then check off the names of those who had been killed or captured. Robert Martens, a former member of the US Embassy's political section in Jakarta, stated in 1990: "It was really a big help to the army. They probably killed a lot of people, and I probably have a lot of blood on my hands, but that's not all bad. There's a time when you have to strike hard at a decisive moment." ... "No one cared, as long as they were Communists, that they were being butchered, said Howard Federspiel, who in 1965 was the Indonesian expert at the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research. "No one was getting very worked up about it."
Business as usual, move along...
Since after all, the "business of government is business", John Pilger writing in Monday's Guardian, lets the cat out of the proverbial (body) bag:
The deal was that Indonesia under Suharto would offer up what Richard Nixon had called "the richest hoard of natural resources, the greatest prize in south-east Asia". In November 1967 the greatest prize was handed out at a remarkable three-day conference sponsored by the Time-Life Corporation in Geneva. Led by David Rockefeller, all the corporate giants were represented: the major oil companies and banks, General Motors, Imperial Chemical Industries, British American Tobacco, Siemens, US Steel and many others. Across the table sat Suharto's US-trained economists who agreed to the corporate takeover of their country, sector by sector. The Freeport company got a mountain of copper in West Papua. A US/European consortium got the nickel. The giant Alcoa company got the biggest slice of Indonesia's bauxite. America, Japanese and French companies got the tropical forests of Sumatra. When the plunder was complete, President Lyndon Johnson sent his congratulations on "a magnificent story of opportunity seen and promise awakened". Thirty years later, with the genocide in East Timor also complete, the World Bank described the Suharto dictatorship as a "model pupil".
Merely the journalistic conceit of wishy-washy leftists and other malcontents, you ask? Here's what the CIA's own 1968 National Intelligence Estimate had to say:
An essential part of the Suharto government's economic program, therefore, has been to welcome foreign capital back to Indonesia. Already about 25 American and European firms have recovered control of mines, estates, and other enterprises nationalized under Sukarno. In addition, liberal legislation has been enacted to attract new private foreign investment. Tax incentives are offered and the rights of managerial control, repatriation of profits, and compensation in the event of expropriation are, in large measure, guaranteed. The prospects for private foreign investment in extractive industries are fairly good, but it will take several years before survey and exploratory work can pay off in large scale production, export earnings, and tax revenues. Some of Indonesia's traditional export industries such as rubber, tin, and copra are on the decline because of inadequate maintenance over the years and falling prices on the world market. Nevertheless, there is substantial foreign interest in new investment in relatively untapped resources of nickel, copper, bauxite, and timber. The most promising industry, from the standpoints of both foreign capital and Indonesian economic growth, is oil. Crude production, chiefly from the fields of Caltex/5/ in Central Sumatra, now averages 600,000 barrels per day, and daily output will probably exceed one million barrels within the next three years. On balance, however, Indonesia's export earnings (and, therefore, much needed foreign exchange) will probably grow slowly, not increasing substantially before the mid-1970's. [emphasis added]
Would that be one barrel for every dead "communist"? A bargain by any reckoning and consistent with the grim "metrics" of U.S. economic shock jocks.
But just for laughs, here is how The New York Times' Helen Berger describes the Dear Leader. Under the heading "Enigmatic and Magical" she writes,
Mr. Suharto was an unlikely character to play such a major role in his country's destiny. He was a private person, and although he wielded complete power, he spoke in gentle tones, smiled sweetly to friend and foe and presented himself as a man of humble origins, shy, retiring and enigmatic. Short and thick set, he almost invariably dressed in a Western business suit or a safari jacket once he gave up his military uniform, and a black songkok, the flat traditional Indonesian cap.
But as readers know only too well, fascists and other "friends of Washington" don't always shave their heads...
The election is very near, and I see little reason to attempt to persuade anyone to vote for John McCain -- or, more properly, against Barack Obama -- since every reader has by now surely made a decision. In all likelihood, Obama will win. Even so, the closeness of the race remains risible, given the disaster of the Bush years.
I can live with the results, whatever those results may be. True, I had planned to compose an An die Schadenfreude in the event of a McCain win, but an Obama presidency will eventually grant us Puma-folk some lovely told ya so opportunities. Besides, Barack Obama has such a fascinating history that I now would prefer to keep him in the spotlight.
What I call "The 1981 mystery" (discussed here) seems the most promising area of research. Although the proposition that American intelligence recruited a young Barack Obama may seem absurd at first, this theory explains quite a few things.
(I don't see why Obama supporters should be afraid to track these clues. Who knows? The truth may work to his credit.)
For quite some time, this blog has asked questions about Barack Obama's charmed college years. Occidental College, Columbia University, and Harvard are all very expensive schools. How did he pay for his education, relocation, and living expenses? Loans could explain much of the story, though not all of it. Scholarships? He was, by all accounts, a less-than-diligent student, at least until Columbia.
His grandmother earned a decent living but was not wealthy. After Columbia, he took a $12,000 a year job as a community organizer, which indicates that he felt unpressured to repay loans.
How did he become President of the Harvard Law Review? Via a "writing contest," or so we are told, although Obama refuses to allow us a glance at the winning opus. He never wrote anything for publication during his Harvard period, although any truly ambitious law student would have done so. Obama defenders have argued that other Presidents also had a phobia for writing, but this is not true.
And how did this little-known, utterly unpublished "author" score a massive advance for the autobiographical Dreams From My Father? Nothing about the project indicated high sales -- in fact, Obama had only a hazy idea of what he wanted to write about, even after he cashed the check for his advance. Most tyro authors are very lucky to sell 5000 copies of a first book, and the writer gets maybe a buck a copy. Obama received enough money to maintain an office, to keep his family in comfort, and to finance a trip to Bali. And even under those luxurious circumstances, he missed the deadline by a wide mark. (Some believe that he used a ghostwriter; see also here.)
"The 1981 mystery" refers to Obama's earlier mystery trip to Pakistan and India. He went on this very expensive sojourn during the summer between Oxy and Columbia, at a time when he reportedly wore thrift store clothing. During his days at Occidental, Barack Obama apparently came to know a Political Science professor who was also a key CIA consultant on Soviet matters. He had also made the acquaintance of two Pakistanis from influential families.
At first, one might suppose that his rich friends paid for the journey, at least for the Pakistani portion. (He also went to visit his mother in Indonesia.) But other factors appear to have been in play. Forgive the self-quotation (and skim ahead if this stuff is familiar), but some of you may have missed the weekend postings:
1. In 1981, Pakistan was under martial law, and U.S. travel was discouraged or forbidden. At the very least, we can say that a trip to a strife-torn forbidden zone would have constituted quite an adventure for any young man. So why does Obama refuse to mention this adventure in his books?
Think about it: If you were writing an autobiographical work, wouldn't you want to fill it with dramatic incident?
2. At the time, the CIA was offering clandestine support to the anti-Soviet "freedom fighters" in Afghanistan, who counted Osama Bin Laden among their numbers. Much of this support effort was run through Pakistan, using cut-outs.
3. Obama may have held an Indonesian passport, due to his Indonesian stepfather. This factoid is of unhealthy interest to those rightwingers pushing the "Obama as Muslim" smear. I'm not interested in that nonsense. I am interested, however, in the suggestion that a student holding such a passport could get into places where most Americans could not easily go.
A CIA-linked professor would have immediately understood that such a passport offers very interesting possibilities. For obvious reasons, the Agency likes to recruit people who hold multiple passports.
All of which may seem like insufficient grounds for suspicion of an intelligence link. Recently, however, the current de facto Prime Minister of Pakistan, Muhammadmian Soomro, made a startling revelation:
While in Karachi, Obama had stayed at the residence of his college friend, Hassan Chandio. In Jacobabad, he was the guest of Soomro family. Muhammadmian Soomro confirmed this information and said it was his first meeting with Obama.
"Yes, he had been our guest and spent three days in Jacobabad," he told The News. Soomro, presently in the US, his second home, said an American friend had told his father, Ahmadmian Soomro, about Obama's arrival in Pakistan and asked him to look after the American. Soomro's father was the deputy speaker of West Pakistan Assembly and had also later served in the Senate.
Ahmadmian Soomro had also served in banking industry and was considered a pioneer in cooperative banking. By the time Soomro's father had hosted Obama, he was only a college student who went to Pakistan on his way from Indonesia where his mother was working with the Ford Foundation's micro credit finance project. Also Obama's mother was a frequent traveller to Pakistan and according to Time Magazine, she had a little bit proficiency in speaking Urdu.
When Soomro was asked about the person who referred Obama to his father, he said he nowadays lived in some country in South America. He was, however, reluctant to disclose his identity, saying he will have to seek permission from that man before giving his profile.
Although, Obama has not disclosed his link with Soomro, he mentioned it during his canvassing campaign while talking to a Pakistani American, Shahid Ahmad Khan, member of Board of Trustees Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
I cannot think of a reason for Soomro to lie about such a thing. Can you?
If we dismiss the idea that Obama was working on behalf of American intelligence, then why else would Soomro's mysterious American friend make sure that the young student came under the protection of one of Pakistan's most powerful families? Obama had met no member of the Soomro clan during his Oxy period.
In my previous piece, I suggested that the mystery American must have been CIA. On reflection, I must admit that he might have worked for the diplomatic corps. For all practical purposes, the end result would be the same. Roughly half the people in any given embassy are working for their home country's intelligence service.
In my opinon, the fact that Soomro considers America his "second home" tells us much.
Some of my readers have suggested that we should trace the "fingerprints of intelligence" to an earlier period. Perhaps this is a family affair. Perhaps Obama's mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, also worked for the Agency.
Her proclivity for foreign adventures and her talent for foreign languages certainly made her the sort of person the CIA loves to recruit. Some would argue that her left-wing political views mitigate against such employment. Her outward political stance may have been a cover -- at any rate, the Agency has managed to recruit some rather unlikely "helpers" over the years. (Timothy Leary once claimed that he was aided by a "liberal" faction of the CIA, which he considered "the best mafia" in the world.)
All of which leads me to ask: What was Ann Dunham doing in Pakistan prior to 1981? Why would she learn so obscure a language (to Americans) as Urdu?
Ann spent most of her time in Indonesia, where she was married to an executive with the American Mobil corporation. The CIA had, of course, played a key role in Indonesia's history. At least one Agency veteran of the time has said that "the CIA took it upon themselves to make, not just to enact, policy in this area." (Also see here and here.)
To make a long and very gruesome story far too short: Back in the 1960s, two oil companies linked with the Rockefeller dynasty -- Stanvac and Caltex -- felt that their investments in Indonesia were threatened by President Sukarno, who was considered soft on Communism. Stanvac, for our purposes, is simply another name for Mobil.
To protect American business interests, the CIA engineered a coup in Indonesia in the 1965-67 period, which led to one of the most appalling episodes of mass murder in history. Over 500,000 people died in the resultant bloodbath, which ended with the installation of a CIA puppet named Suharto.
Lolo Sotero, Barack Obama's stepfather, was the key liaison between Mobil/Stanvac and the Suharto regime.
These events may now seem "long ago and far away" to many modern Democratic voters. But the situation was quite different in 1967, when Ann Dunham married Lolo Soetoro. An active leftist -- which Ann Dunham supposedly was -- with an interest in international affairs would have known all about the bloodbath. It was in the newspapers. Any true student radical would have refused to eat lunch with a Suharto/Mobil functionary.
And yet she married the man.
Does that seem likely to you?
Here's a question for those of you who dwell on the left: Can you recall any "socialist" of your acquaintance making such a match? If you are old enough to recall the student radicalism of that era, ask yourself: If a fellow activist had married a key functionary of a murderous, right-wing regime (Suharto has been rightly compared to Chile's Pinochet), would you not have felt just a little suspicious of that person's lefty bona fides? Wouldn't Ann's choice have set off your paranoia alarms?
There is reason to suspect that the Agency contacted (or at least kept an eye on) Ann during her marriage, if marriage it was, to Barack Obama Sr. See my earlier piece here.
Incidentally, one of the above links on Indonesia goes to a fine work by Lisa Pease -- who is now, I am sorry to say, a strong Obama supporter. (I met Lisa long ago, although she would not remember me.) Lisa, if you happen to read these words, let me ask this: What would you say about someone with Stanley Ann Dunham's history if her son had become the Republican presidential frontrunner? What conclusions would you reach? Be ruthlessly honest. How quick would you then be to rationalize away the connection between this "leftist" lady and the Suharto government?
Sometimes, I think that Cinie and I are the only bloggers who care about the possible links between Barack Obama and the intelligence agencies. Most people lump that line of research in with that "birth certificate" nonsense, not to mention the "Obi the Muslim" smear. I consider the possible CIA connections to be a much more serious area of inquiry. Here's a sampler of some of my previous writings on the topic.
No, I don't claim that these Agency links have been proven with the precision of a geometrical formulation. But the evidence is suggestive -- perhaps more than suggestive. Before we get to Cinie's latest, let's summarize the top ten reasons for suspicion:
1. Obama's mother Ann Dunham took Russian-language classes and married a potential up-and-comer on the Kenyan political scene, at a time when cold warriors considered Kenya "in play." If you don't think that the '60s-era CIA would have paid attention to such a woman, read a few books about the CIA in the 1960s.
2. Later, and despite her alleged "leftist" leanings, she married a key liaison between Indonesian tyrant Suharto and American oil companies. The CIA "made" Suharto by staging a bloody coup in Indonesia, all with an eye toward benefitting oil interests. No genuine lefty would have exchanged two consecutive sentences with hubby #2.
3. During Ann's Indonesia period, Tim Geithner's father Peter ran the Ford Foundation's microfinance program in Indonesia. Ann worked with him. Long story short: Ford Foundation = CIA.
4. Ann's extensive travels abroad, often under the Ford Foundation aegis, would provide excellent cover for intelligence assignments. Her talent for languages was just what the CIA sought and seeks. Nobody knows why she once visited Pakistan or why she tried to learn Urdu.
5. Nobody knows the real reason why Obama, who lived in Hawaii, chose Occidental College in Los Angeles, an expensive (but second-tier) private institution. Obama became very interested in politics at this time. The chief political science prof at Oxy was an old CIA hand, as well as a longtime crony of Zbigniew Brzezinsky, who later became something of a mentor to Obama.
6. As a young man, Obama possessed both multiple passports and knowledge of a rather exotic (by American standards) foreign language. The CIA loves to recruit people like that. The CIA also likes to recruit people from CIA families.
7. In 1981, Obama traveled to Pakistan for no discernible reason, despite a State Department warning of unrest in the area. (There had been a coup.) At the time, Pakistan was a key cold war front, due to the CIA's efforts to supply the Afghan mujahadeen.
8. Nobody knows how Obama paid for these travels. He claims that he was then quite poor. Nobody really know how he paid for his expensive schooling, or why he was later accepted into a prestigious institution like Columbia despite having done indifferent schoolwork.
9. In Pakistan, Obama stayed with the powerful Ahmadmian Soomro -- a key mover-and-shaker in that nation. This, despite the fact that Obama knew no-one in the Soomro family. Soomro was asked to take in Obama by an unnamed personage at the American embassy, who was almost certainly CIA. Nobody knows what messages Obama may have given to Soomro.
10. Obama went on to live a strangely charmed life, perhaps due to off-stage helpers. For example, he received a princely sum for his first autobiography, despite being an unknown tyro author fresh out of college, with extremely vague ideas as to what he wanted to write about. One could cite many more examples to prove the point -- and one has done just that, over the course of many previous posts.
Okay, now let's get to Cinie's latest. She cites this WP story:
The Obama administration has proposed the creation of an intelligence officer training program in colleges and universities that would function much like the Reserve Officers' Training Corps run by the military services. The idea is to create a stream "of first- and second-generation Americans, who already have critical language and cultural knowledge, and prepare them for careers in the intelligence agencies," according to a description sent to Congress by Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair.
In recent years, the CIA and other intelligence agencies have struggled to find qualified recruits who can work the streets of the Middle East and South Asia to penetrate terrorist groups and criminal enterprises. The proposed program is an effort to cultivate and educate a new generation of career intelligence officers from ethnically and culturally diverse backgrounds.
Under the proposal, part of the administration's 2010 intelligence authorization bill, colleges and universities would apply for grants that would be used to expand or introduce courses of study to "meet the emerging needs of the intelligence community." Those courses would include certain foreign languages, analysis and specific scientific and technical fields.
The students' participation in the program would probably be kept secret to prevent them from being identified by foreign intelligence services, according to an official familiar with the proposal.
Just imagine the outcry on Kos, DU and HuffPo if Bush had tried such a move!
An early rumor about Obama's faith came from Insight, a conservative online magazine. The Insight article said Obama had "spent at least four years in a so-called madrassa, or Muslim seminary, in Indonesia." It attributed this detail to background information the Clinton campaign had been collecting.
After Obama denied the rumor, Jeffrey Kuhner, Insight's editor, said Obama's "concealment and deception was to be the issue, not so much his Muslim heritage," and he suggested that the source of the madrassa rumor was the Clinton campaign. The Clinton campaign denied the charge.
What "concealment and deception"? What "Muslim heritage"?
Alas, the WP never clarifies that the school was not a madrassa -- just an ordinary school in Indonesia that he attended between ages six and ten. Obama claims to be a Christian and no-one has ever presented any evidence that he is lying.
"It's not (an) Islamic school. It's general," Winadijanto [an Obama classmate] said. "There is a lot of Christians, Buddhists, also Confucian. ... So that's a mixed school."
Was Muslim extremism common in Indonesia in 1969-71? The country was run by Suharto, who was a Washington tool.
As for those spreading the smear: I doubt that they are Christians, judging from the contempt they've shown for the commandment against false witness.
Well, it seems that Texas Darlin's work has achieved its logical (?) end: A lawyer named Philip J. Berg -- of whom, more anon -- has filed a federal lawsuit alleging that Barack Obama does not meet the citizenship requirement to become POTUS.
There have been numerous questions raised about Obama’s background with no satisfactory answers. The questions that I have addressed include, but are not limited to:
1. Where was Obama born? Hawaii; an island off of Hawaii; Kenya; Canada; or ?
2. Was he a citizen of Kenya, Indonesia and/or Canada?
3. What was the early childhood of Obama in Hawaii; in Kenya; in Indonesia when he was adopted; and later, back to Hawaii?
4. An explanation as to the various names utilized by Obama that include: Barack Hussein Obama; Barry Soetoro; Barry Obama; Barack Dunham; and Barry Dunham.
5. Illinois Bar Application – Obama fails to acknowledge use of names other than Barack Hussein Obama, a blatant lie.
Seems to me that the only item here with any genuine foundation is point 5, and that is a matter for the Illinois Bar Association, a group which Philip J. Berg does not represent. (Or so I presume.) Points 1 and 2 are answered by the dreaded COLB -- sorry, folks, but it's real -- while points 3 and 4 are not relevant to any Constitutional questions. (By the way, has anyone ever presented any evidence for the "born in Canada" rumor?)
If Obama can prove U.S. citizenship, we still have the issue of muti-citizenship with responsibilities owed to and allegance to other countries.
Can -- should -- a person who has ever held dual citizenship become president? In my opinion, the question is genuinely intriguing. But I doubt that Berg's suit will resolve the matter.
Although Philip Berg was once a former Deputy Attorney General of Pennsylvania, his history does not fill me with trust, due to his involvement with the misnamed 9/11 "truth" movement. In 2004, he sued President Bush on behalf of 9/11 survivor William Rodriguez. Although the Affidavit begins by asking worthwhile questions concerning advance warning, it soon lapses into "controlled demolition" nonsense.
Berg later circulated a letter imploring "world leaders" to arrest President Bush...
Now, it is time for world leaders to take the lesson learned from Iraq and issue a warrant for the arrest of George W. Bush and Richard Cheney; arrest them; take them to a neutral country; try them for the murder of over 2,800 people from more than 80 countries on 9/11/01 and, when found guilty, sentence them appropriately.
Of course, any such arrest, or attempt to arrest, would be considered an act of war -- and would once more make George Bush a sympathetic and popular figure in this country.
That's your problem, Phil: You don't think these things through. Fortunately, no world leader is going to risk war with the United States of America based on the recommendation of Philip J. Berg of Pennsylvania.
Let us now pause to note the similarities between the 9/11 CD-ers and the current day "cult of the COLB."
As any reader of Daniel Hopsicker knows -- as any viewer of 9/11: Press for Truth knows -- many genuine questions still surround the events of September 11, 2001. All of those questions were swept out of the public mind when endless, unwarranted publicity was given to the pseudoscientific "controlled demolition" theories embraced by Phil Berg, Jim Fetzer, Jim Marrs, David Icke and their kin.
(By the way, don't bother sending in any defenses of that CD nonsense. I've heard 'em all, and have knocked most of 'em down in older posts -- yes, even all that stuff you're just dying to tell me about Building 7. Newcomers may not know that an obnoxious horde of "trannies" once threatened to take over this blog. I learned to treat the kook legions mercilessly. Once one of 'em gets a foot in the door, they invade the house like Alex and his Droogs.)
Just as the CDers have undercut all genuine attempts to re-investigate 9/11, the COLB culties have proven themselves more hindrance than help to the PUMA movement. There are many good reasons to oppose Barack Obama: He's a serial liar, he aided and abetted an oily gang of Chicago thugs, he embraced a racist church, he ran a crooked campaign, he played the race card shamelessly, he has cultivated a nauseating Messianic cult, and his economic advisers have dangerously libertarian tendencies. The COLB controversy diverts attention from all of that. Once again, pseudoscientific horseshit threatens to overwhelm legitimate criticisms.
Just as the CDers proved, in the end, to be Bush's best friends, so too the COLB cultists are proving to be Obama's best friends. And in the center of both "friendship circles" we find Philip J. Berg, Attorney at Law.
I've hesitated to comment on the rumors and reports of Obama's Islamic background, because I don't want to be accused of anti-Muslim prejudice. The "madrassa" smear, transmitted via a viral email, angered me, just as it angered most thinking people.
For the record, I would have no problem voting for a presidential candidate of that faith. Keith Ellison of Minnesota has done some very impressive things in his brief time, and might one day make a good choice for the Democratic nomination.
But, as many others have noted, we now face a problem of fibbing, not faith.
Recent statements by Obama's Kenyan half-brother Malik have elevated this controversy from the realm of rumor to...well, to something more than rumor. Oddly (or perhaps not so oddly), the story broke in the Israeli media:
As the Jerusalem Post reports, "Barack Obama's half brother Malik said Thursday that if elected his brother will be a good president for the Jewish people, despite his Muslim background.
Let me repeat a few previously-stated views. I think that most politicians are less religious than they pretend, and I suspect that Barack Obama falls into this category. However, the public likes a candidate to display a certain degree of piety. Thus, Obama chose a church that would help his ambitions. (He was thinking locally then, not nationally).
Still -- did he ever self-identify as a Muslim when young? He was registered as a Muslim while attending a public school in Indonesia. In his book Dreams From My Father he describes attending Koran class, which was not compulsory. (Indonesia has a mixed population.) Reports conflict as to whether or not he took a serious attitude toward his youthful instructions in the faith.
Does this religious conundrum impact the controversy over Barack Obama's birth certificate?
Quite a few people (I am not among them) doubt the authenticity of the recently-released birth document. Most of these people incorrectly think that Obama was born outside the United States and thus has no right to run for president. As a previous post has demonstrated, Obama would qualify to run for the presidency even if he had been born in his father's homeland.
And yet...
And yet the campaign did show a surprising reticence to divulge the birth certificate. When one finally appeared, it was an official computerized abstract issued in 2007, not a photocopy of the original 1961 document. The 2007 stamp, though visible, is on the reverse. The proportional font testifies to the use of a computer, and thus, to a modern origin. An actual certificate produced during that period would display typewritten or handwritten entries on a pre-printed form.
So we are dealing with an abstract, not a fake. Many states and provinces issue these abstracts, which suffice for most legal purposes. Unfortunately, they often display less information.
Why haven't we seen the original?
The abstract does not mention religion. In all likelihood, a 1961 Hawaii birth certificate would have had a space for "religion." (Other states required this information.) I think it very possible that Barack Obama's religion would have been marked as "Muslim," since that faith is patrilineal and his mother was an agnostic or atheist.
Obama's grandfather in Kenya was a noted convert to Islam. As mentioned previously, Barack Obama Sr. was irreligious. In the early 1960s, however, people still tended to identify themselves by the faith in which they were raised, even if they no longer practiced it. For example, my mother called herself a Catholic when filling out forms, even though she wouldn't enter a church at anything less than gunpoint.
In 1961, when the birth certificate was being filled out, the elder Obama probably would have answered "Muslim" when asked to state his religion.
Again, I see nothing wrong in this heritage. Obama is at fault only if he has misrepresented his background for political expedience.
Notice how the Obots no longer slam Hillary for the "as far as I know" remark? Truth is, we don't know.
Hillary is ramping up pressure on Iran, the country which the neocons have long viewed as the ultimate prize. You may say that she is doing this only to placate Obama and his inner circle, and you may be right. But she is doing it nonetheless, and it's a damned dangerous course of action.
Meanwhile, here's an interesting perspective: The western media pays scads of attention to the allegedly "home grown" dissenters in Iran, but while ignoring the rebel movement in Egypt.
Confused? So are many Egyptians, who have seen their intense and sometimes deadly struggle against the repressive regime that rules them almost completely sidelined by the international media.
There is no space in this forum to detail all the ways in which the unelected political elite of the Arab world's biggest country consistently reject democratic freedoms, subvert the rule of law to protect their hegemony, and encroach on the human rights of that country's citizens day in, day out.
Nor is there room to describe the full breadth and strength of the grass-roots reaction these injustices have triggered in Egypt, from the spread of a strike wave so large it has been labeled "the largest social movement the Middle East has seen in half a century" to the astonishing trend of local communities not only facing down the bullets and tear gas of riot police, but doing so with such vigour that fleeing security officers have been forced to bunker down in their own headquarters to protect themselves from the masses.
The rage felt against Egypt's government may be one of those things that the U.S. will ignore until an Egyptian terrorist commits an act of mass atrocity on American soil. Oh wait -- that already happened. Isn't it odd that our right-wing media organs never discuss Hosni Mubarak's Egypt...?
The skewed news coverage is, of course, hardly anything new. I can recall when conservatives screamed daily about the imaginary horrors perpetrated by the Sandanistas in Nicaragua -- even though the same conservatives didn't give a rat's ass about the very real horrors perpetrated by Indonesia in East Timor, starting in 1975. That was a case of an Islamic nation committing genocide against Christians, yet even today you can't any right-wingers who will acknowledge that it happened. Why? Because Indonesia was and is our strategic ally.
Nevertheless, if you say that the press is managed, people will call you paranoid. People in the press will call you that.
Remember the interpreter? Fred Burks? The one who offered testimony buttressing the argument that Bush uses an earpiece?
You may want to read what Daniel Hopsicker has to say about him.
But before you peruse Hopsicker, let me offer a few words of caution.
Hopsicker, as most of you know, has been investigating the Florida connections to the 9/11 disaster. Along the way, he has uncovered many surprising data nuggets surrounding the activities of Mohammed Atta.
This work made Hopsicker a big player within the community of individuals who insist that we have not yet heard the full story about the World Trade Center attacks. That community is growing -- and growing nasty.
If you followed JFK assassination research, you know that people attracted to that field often became prickly and surly as the years passed. Unable to change the history books, the conspiracy investigators took their frustrations out on each other. They turned their community into a stormy realm where everyone hated everyone else -- a realm where people screamed "spook!" at each other as a way of punishing perceived rivals and enforcing conformity of thought.
This sort of behavior makes a terrible impression on outsiders, of course.
And that behavior now characterizes the 9/11 researchers. If you look at some of their recent literature, you'll see that, deep down, they're no longer very upset by the unpleasantness in New York. What really gets 'em fuming are fellow researchers who proffer scenarios at a variance with their own favored theories.
Those theories now come in a bewildering variety of flavors. There are people who think a missile hit the Pentagon. People who think the jets that hit the WTC fired missiles. People who think the twin towers had explosives planted inside.
And then there are those (including yours truly) who scoff at all such notions, but nevertheless suspect we have not yet been told anywhere near the whole story about Atta, Osama, and a host of other key players.
Since 9/11 theorists now routinely toss the "spook" label at anyone who does not happen to inhabit their own narrow strip of conspiracy acres, the preceding paragraph has probably made me a potential target.
Now, I told you all of that to set the stage for Hopsicker's snipings at Fred Burks.
I did not know until recently that Burks had established his own perch among the 9/11 theorists. You can find his web site on the subject here.
Here's where things get sticky: Fred has been associated with Michael Ruppert, another 9/11 iconoclast. Hopsicker does not agree with Ruppert. (Neither do I.) Hosicker tends to spook-bait Ruppert, who is perhaps the biggest of the big wheels within that fractious community. And since Burks is friendly with Ruppert, then Burks himself must also be a secret hireling of The Enemy -- or so implies Hopsicker:
...we wondered: who the f- is Fred?
And we were, of course, shocked -- shocked! -- when we discovered that Fred -- and this is a coincidence! -- used to work for, and sometimes still does, President George W. Bush, who was the beneficiary of a campaign by Fred to get people to pray for him.
We thought: isn't that precious. Then we read this quote from Fred: "I'll be sitting in a room with President Bush and President Megawati of Indonesia helping them to communicate with each other by interpreting. Several other top government leaders from the US and Indonesia will be present. What I like to do in these meetings whenever I'm not interpreting is to channel divine love to everyone present."
Now we thought: isn't that creepy.
Creepy? Not really. Kinda silly, kinda new-agey, yeah. But I've seen every damn movie David Lynch ever made, and I know creepy when I see it. It takes a lot more than Fred Burks' evocation of "divine love" to creep me out. Especially if the only proof that Fred Burks "works" for W comes down to that interpreting gig.
So why have I told you folks this long shaggy-dog story? A few reasons:
1. Readers deserve to know a bit more about Burks, since his name gets mentioned in a number of promptergate articles. Right now, I see no pressing reason to place much stock in Hopsicker's fears.
2. After the election, I may write further on the alternate theories of 9/11 -- although I hesitate to do so. That terrain has become a swamp.
3. The Hopsicker/Burks spat demonstrates the dangers of the conspiracy-spotter's mind-set. Hopsicker is a smart guy who has done valuable work. Alas, the earwig of paranoia has burrowed into the cerebellum of many a good man.
So far, the promptergate bloggers are a jolly, cooperative bunch. Let's make sure that our small community avoids the ugly divisiveness that has assailed others.
Time, once again, to catch up with the latest antics of our favorite con artists. Earlier today, the following message popped into my old email address (which I still look at from time to time)...
Good day Sir,
I read your posts back in 2009 and I'm afraid I have friends that joined the cult of Salvacion Legaspi and Mr Kempe. Check out Facebook and search for Maharlikan Tribe. The woman claims to live in a castle and had the indigenous people sign papers and claim her queen. She's now claiming to be the true queen of the Philippines. Check Facebook and tell me what you think? My guess is they might hypnotise people.
Very odd. How did this person access the old email address? At any rate, I don't do Facebook.
"Queen" Legaspi is indeed a cult leader in the Philippines: She claims to be the Messiah, or something similar. (Reports vary.) Her friends include Dr. Hans Kempe, the man who single-handedly cured cancer. (Just ask him.)
Another of her friends is everyone's favorite scammer, Wilfredo Saurin -- a.k.a. Yohannes Riyadi, a.k.a. Bill Hayward, a.k.a. The Richest Man in the World, a.k.a The Philippines Phantom.
Saurin first came to our attention back in 2009, when the Italians arrested him as he was carrying $134 billion in "Federal Reserve Bonds" into Switzerland. The right-wing conspiratorialists jumped all over this story. Bottom line: The "bonds" were all fakes, printed on an inkjet printer and artificially aged. The same fraudulent instruments have been used in many previous scams (and have also been sold on Ebay as novelty items). I have reason to believe that Queen Legaspi originally created the worthless things.
I never did figure out precisely how Saurin hoped to make money with these "bonds." In general, it is easier to scam rich people if you can convince them that you too are rich.
My original investigations into this story can be found here and here and here. Salon also did a piece on the Mystery Bonds; the writer was kind enough to cite my work.
A few years later, Wilfredo -- now semi-permanently inhabiting his "Riyadi" persona -- showed up again. This time, he had hornswoggled an actual British Lord (Lord James of Blackheath) into believing that he, Riyadi, was the richest man in the world, with over $15 trillion to his name. (Which he earned fair and square, by working hard.) As I wrote on an earlier occasion:
Saurin/Riyadi, as head of something called Foundation X, wanted to help the U.K. weather its current financial storm with a massive loan.
He even produced a document confirming his wealth, "signed" by Alan Greenspan and Tim Geithner.
Almost needless to say, many internet sensation-seekers have accepted this claim at face value. After all, if a British Lord believes it, then it must be real. Right?
The conspiracy theorists insist that Lord Blackheath is telling the truth, and that all doubt is slander. Why do they say this? Because -- to put the matter very succinctly -- Saurin has spun a paranoia-filled yarn about the Federal Reserve. Conspiracy buffs of a certain stripe will believe anything you tell them, as long as you tell them something dark and ominous about the Federal Reserve.
Saurin/Riyadi/Hayward was able to prove that his wealth was real by displaying an ACTUAL DOCUMENT issued by none other than HSBC. Allegedly. You can see it here.
Dare I suggest that Queen Legaspi fired up the printer again...?
A more recent story about Saurin/Riyadi/Hayward, from February of this year, displays similar documentary "proof" from the Bank of Indonesia.
The $15 trillion apparently came from Riyadi’s stash of 750,000 tonnes of gold held in the US. This brings in an additional consideration to the case: Nevermind money, just how much gold is there in the world?
According to the World Gold Council, Riyadi’s claims cannot be true, as only 165,000 tonnes of gold has been mined in all of history.
Now, as it happens, there is one fabled horde that is said to contain so much gold that -- if it were made public -- experts would be forced to revise their estimates of how much gold actually exists. I refer, of course, to the legendary treasure trove called Yamashita's Gold, which is said to be secreted in various remote locations throughout the Philippines. (Some sources also mention Indonesia.) Author Sterling Seagrave has argued that the horde is real, and that right-wingers have used it to fund a series of covert operations which have slowly and subtly manipulated our political reality over the past three or four decades. It was widely reported, back in the late 1980s, that none other than General John Singlaub (of Iran/contra fame) was hot on the trail of the gold.
I seem to recall that one writer -- was it David Guyatt? -- once said that the money has been stashed in various secret bank accounts around the world. These accounts were in the names of various world leaders of the 1970s -- except the names were always slightly misspelled. (A la "Richard Nixen.")
Is there any truth to these claims? At this writing, I have no idea. I can say, however, that the legend of Yamashita's Gold has come up in previous articles about Saurin and Queen Legaspi.
Interestingly, a figure calling himself "Mr. Gold" has entered the scene, claiming that he has found the treasure. He has told his story not to the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal but to those bastions of journalistic excellence, The Barnes Review and the American Free Press.
Are "Mr. Gold" and wiley Wilfredo one and the same? Maybe; maybe not.
Do they know each other? Are they confederates? Well....let's just say that I would not be even slightly surprised.
In our last look at Saurin, we learned that he has a couple of American buddies: One calls himself Dr. Keith Francis Scott (!!) and the other is Alexander Mann. (Get it? He's just A. Mann.) Apparently, these fellows are all somehow involved with a Vietnamese "government in exile" located in Orange County, California. These people were connected to a CIA counterfeiting operation in place during the war: The idea was to devalue the North Vietnamese currency by airdropping billions in counterfeit notes.
So what has this band of scalawags been up to lately? Well, someone went out of his way to persuade me that Queen Legaspi has been practicing mass hypnosis in the Philippines. I don't know if that is true, but the allegation is now on the record.
This conspiracy blog recounts some of Saurin's activities with a confederate named Anthony Martin, which I suspect to be an alias of A. Mann. The story connects Saurin to the P2 lodge (but of course!) and to something called The Dragon Family.
This unusual blog (apparently the work of someone named Paul Collin) refers to Saurin as The Philippines Phantom. It seems that the wiley one has recently been using the monicker William V. Morales. Apparently, he had been trying to sell funny money to a group in the Philippines called the Presidential Commission on Good Government.
We found PCGG representative Gerry Ledonio [ TEL: (718) 358-8114 ] being "handled" by the law firm O'BUCKLEY ( New York, USA ) that was arranging secret PCGG meetings with the southern California Filipino man nicknamed "Cowboy" who was also very much an international bank paper trader who held a plethora of fraudulent international bank paper financial instruments [ i.e. bank guarantees ( BG ), certificates of deposit ( CD ), stand-by letters of credit ( SBLC ), safe-keeping receipts ( SKR ), etc. ] accompanied by a whole host of support documents, amongst many others, where the now-late former Philippines President Ferdinand Edralin Marcos (aka) Ferdinand E. Marcos was seen named within a Letter Of Instruction naming his sidekick to be "William V. Morales," an alias used by "Wilfredo S. Saurin" (aka) the "Philippines Phantom."
It's a little hard to make out exactly what all of that is supposed to mean, but I think that one key lesson is this: You can get important people to take you seriously if you wear a nice suit and if you carry official-looking pieces of paper.
The site also provides a list of Saurin aliases:
Wilfred Saurin (aka)
Datu G.L. (aka)
Wilfredo S. Ramos (aka)
William Morales (aka)
William V. Morales (aka)
Joseph E.S. Daraman Jr. (aka)
Joseph Eutiquio Severino Daraman Jr. (aka)
Joseph Daraman (aka)
Joseph Teo Hui Kiat (aka)
Johannes Riyad (aka)
Yohannes Riyadi (aka)
Saroeun Soush (aka)
Wilfredo Serion (aka)
Dr. Saroeun (aka)
Soush Saroeun
If you google the name "Saroeun Soush," you'll discover all sorts of fun stuff. Apparently, he was doing business in Cambodia...
A SHADOWY organisation that has been accused of fraud in multiple countries is operating in Cambodia, raising concerns about government oversight and the potential defrauding of foreign investors.
Asia Real Property Co, Ltd – a firm with offices on Norodom Boulevard – identifies itself in promotional material as a subsidiary of an international real estate consultancy known as “ARP-OITC Group Co Ltd (Cambodia)”.
OITC is short for the “Office of International Treasury Control”, a group that has been implicated in a series of bizarre scandals from Ecuador to Fiji while making grandiose claims about its links to the United Nations and the United States government.
In addition to real estate consulting, ARP-OITC offers “bank instruments”, including high-limit lines of credit, to foreign partners, ARP-OITC executive managing director Soush Saroeun said in an interview this month. He said the company was working on three joint-ventures in Cambodia with companies from Vietnam, Canada and France.
“Though not generally or publicly known, OITC is the largest International Institution of its kind,” the organisation says in a brochure. It claims to be “the largest single owner of gold and platinum bullion in the World” and “the largest single owner of Home Mortgage Securities in the World today”.
I also did a little research into the name "Joseph Daraman." This may actually be the name of a confederate of Wilfredo Saurin. Or perhaps two men use the same alias. Such things have happened before.
Joseph Teo Hui Kiat (another of Saurin's many personas) has produced an alleged document -- signed by Ben Bernanke! -- "proving" that he has deposited one billion dollars with the Federal Reserve. Hey, that's chump change for a guy who is worth $15 trillion.
It's also worth noting that, in a document reproduced here, Yohannes Riyadi expresses his anger with Wilfredo Saurin. Maybe they should duke it out, the way Ed Norton and Brad Pitt did toward the end of Fight Club.
You must be wondering: How do these scamps stay out of jail? Surely, there must be laws against printing up your own documentation allegedly issued by major banking concerns. At this point I should note, en passant, that other high-level con artists have been known to earn a "get out of jail free" card by doing the occasional gig for the spooks. (That ploy has its limits, as Ozzie LeWinter discovered.)
If Saurin and his associates keep finding ways to avoid the pokey, I'll probably be following their frantic antics for the rest of my life.
Added note: If you're a con artist, you may want to think twice before adopting the persona of The Richest Man In The World. That scheme has one huge drawback: Whenever you go out to lunch with a friend, you'll be expected to pick up the check.
What else can I say about Booman Tribune? They still keep spewing the canard that any liberal who criticizes the Lightbringer from Chicago must be a racist and a Hillary cultist.
This attitude persists even after Obama's many betrayals -- on the Wilson/Plame case, on FISA, on detention, on torture, on nationalization, on single payer health care, on the prosecution of Bush and Cheney, on Afghanistan and on so much else -- have caused many once-worshipful progs to wake up.
Why do the bots still go after Hillary and her aficionados? The reason is obvious: The Clintonites have no reason for apology and the Obots do. Bill Clinton was the finest President of the 20th century after FDR. Obama is shaping up to be the worst Democratic president since Johnson. Andrew Johnson.
Over on the Confluence, Dakinikat has contributed an excellent piece which touches on both ACORN and Wells Fargo's predatory lending practices. (The latter surprised me. I knew a Wells Fargo manager in the 1980s, and he was quite proud of his company's conservative stance on loans. Times have changed!) The reaction over on Booman?
These idiots will never get it. One of the people saying he's not so smart is someone named dakinikat who roused the rabble there a while back by blaming the mortgage crisis on black people. She blew all kinds of dog whistles in the post itself but forgot ACORN. She recovered quickly though by mentioning them in the comments. They're a gang of not too bright sore losers with a dose of racial resentment thrown in to make them especially awful.
I urge you to go read Dakinkat in the original. Then come back and tell me whether the afore-quoted precis of her words bears any relationship to reality. Dakinkat's amusing response:
I have to tell you, I'm sitting at BJ's in the ninth ward down here, round the corner from my house, and this post is getting so many laughs you can't believe it.
The big question every one wants to ask is if you live in a gated community some where up on the east coast?
Many black people live in the ninth ward of New Orleans. For some strange reason, Dkat's opponent refused to describe the place he calls home. Instead, he continued to insist that she was guilty of "internet race baiting exploits."
Again: Read her words and tell me if you see anything like "race baiting" in there. Obots are sick, sick, sick fucks.
Here's another snippet from the thread:
And I will never forget the stupid, irrational, childish, and even racist attacks on Obama from Clinton supporters.
This is an attempt at false equivalence: "Well, there were problems on both sides." I won't stand for that historical revisionism.
In many previous posts, I have documented the outrageous, non-stop hate-campaigns mounted by the Obot hordes. That mob mentality transformed this former half-hearted Obama supporter into a blogger determined to do whatever he could to prevent the Lightbringer from destroying the Democratic party -- a task which he is gleefully accomplishing at this very moment.
Booman actually went on to suggest that Hillary's alleged racism "put Jesse Helms to shame."
Unbelievable!
Booman has even compiled a list of quotes from Hillary and her supporters -- a list intended to prove that hers was a campaign founded on appeals to bigotry. All of Booman's nonsense was debunked ages ago. That doesn't matter: Taking a page from Atwater and Rove, Booman and his fellow Obots understand that a fib may enter history if repeated incessantly.
Let's deal with Booman's alleged "evidence":
Bill Shaheen:
In his remarks, Shaheen, a local attorney and Democratic powerbroker, said he was worried that Republicans would have a particularly easy time going after Obama's drug use as a teenager because he has been so open about it. He contrasted this with George W. Bush, who Shaheen said wisely ruled out answering questions about his behavior as a younger man during his presidential run in 1999 and 2000.
Obama's candor on the subject, on the other hand, would "open the door" to further questions, Shaheen had said. "It'll be, 'When was the last time? Did you ever give drugs to anyone? Did you sell them to anyone?'" he said. "There are so many openings for Republican dirty tricks. It's hard to overcome."
For some reason, BooMan expects us to consider this quote racist. He's nuts. Just plain bugfuck nuts.
Shaheen raised perfectly justifiable concerns that Obama's admitted drug usage might become a campaign issue. How is that racist?
Bob Kerrey:
"I've watched the blogs try to say that you can't trust [Obama] because he spent a little bit of time in a secular madrassa," the Nebraska Democrat said on the Situation Room with John King. "I feel quite opposite. I think it's a tremendous strength whether he's in the United States Senate or whether he's in the White House."
This is Kerrey's response to the Republicans who were spreading smear stories about Obama's schooling in Indonesia. In the first place, Bob Kerrey was not a player in the Hillary campaign. In the second place, the statement is absolutely accurate. In the third place, any rational person will understand it as a pro-Obama statement.
("Madrassa" is simply the Arabic word for "school." Kerrey seems to have been under the impression that Arabic is spoken in Indonesia -- the sole point on which he can be faulted.)
Another supposedly "damning" quote from the Hillary side:
Geraldine Ferraro:
"If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman of any color, he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept."
Absolutely true. My only problem with Ferraro's statement is her disdain for the subjunctive.
In previous posts, I have quoted polls which proved that a black male candidate has a distinct advantage over a female candidate of any race. Ferraro had data on her side; her critics never did.
To repeat an argument I've made before: How many black males have held congressional seats? How many females? How many cities have had black mayors? How many have had female mayors? During the campaign, one could buy a doll of Hillary dressed as a Dominatrix, yet no-one would dare to sell a figurine of Barack dressed as a minstrel.
Of course, when the Republicans picked Sarah Palin, the folks on Kos had no problem saying that she was picked only because she was a woman. Some of them even said that she was irresponsible to pursue politics instead of being a full-time mother.
Obama gained a teflon coating because his followers constantly hurled the "racist" accusation at anyone who said anything against him. That's how he won the nomination and everyone knows it. I am not a racist for daring to speak this truth. The true racists were the ones who provided the teflon.
If Obama were white, the "I barely knew Tony Rezko" lie or the NAFTA lie would have knocked him out of the race. Why is it that Joe Biden's 1988 presidential campaign ended when he was caught out as a plagiarist, yet Obama suffered no political consequences for far worse word-burglaries? New rules were put in place for Obama: Plagiarism suddenly became a minor matter -- "just words."
How the hell did someone like this -- with his onion-skin thin resume, his poor Senate record, his criminal associations, his outrageous history of facial multiplicity and his record of constant lying -- ever become president? How did he get a rep as an Iraq war opponent even though he was too cowardly to speak out against the war during his 2004 Senate campaign, and even though he refused to denounce the invasion during his 2004 DNC speech, and even though he established an Iraq war voting record demonstrably to the right of Hillary's?
I'll tell you how: Obama was protected by a Kossack corps convinced that voting for a black man earned both hipness points and life-long protection from ever being called a racist. Well, I've voted for black candidates on a number of occasions (including Jesse Jackson in '88), and I did so before many of those Kos Kids were born. Those candidates got my vote not for reasons of chic and not for reasons of race, but because I liked them. I will be damned before I vote for any person on the basis of skin color -- which is precisely what scoundrels like Booman and Moulitsas tried to "guilt" me into doing.
Booman is the true racist -- not Geraldine Ferraro.
Let's go back to the list of supposed offenses:
Bill Clinton:
"Jesse Jackson won South Carolina in '84 and '88," Clinton said at a rally in Columbia. "Jackson ran a good campaign. And Obama ran a good campaign here."
Any prog who considers these words racist must be one patty short of a Big Mac.
I well recall how overjoyed I was when Jackson won in'88. Of course, modesty forbade Clinton from mentioning the '92 winner. The 1996 and 2000 winners had the power of incumbency. Clinton's point, of course -- and this same point was made by many pundits (including those at The Nation) back in the 1980s -- is that South Carolina Democratic primaries have a history of going against predictions.
Let's let the Big Dog himself address the racism canard:
Okay, let's get back to Booman's laughable list:
Andrew Cuomo:
"It's not a TV crazed race. Frankly you can't buy your way into it," Cuomo said, according to Albany Times Union reporter Rick Karlin. He then added, "You can't shuck and jive at a press conference. All those moves you can make with the press don't work when you're in someone's living room."
So what?
I grew up hearing the phrase "shuck and jive" (or just "jive") used all the time, in all sorts of contexts. Nobody told me, when I was a boy, that the term originated in the black experience, and I do not recall it being applied to blacks. I recall it being used of fellow students who made unconvincing excuses for not doing work that they were told to do. (Granted, my experience probably would have been different if I had grown up in the deep south instead of California.)
The phrase long ago entered the lexicon. It sees a very generalized usage. It now it belongs to everyone.
For what it's worth: I also believe that the Clintonites who jumped on the word "periodically" were similarly grasping at straws. (Incidentally, I think that Cuomo's argument was stupid, though not racist.)
Once again, we look at the list:
Hillary Clinton:
"I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."
Perfectly accurate, at the time.
Like it or not, polls categorize the polled, and every candidate pays attention to how he or she is doing in each demographic. I don't know how one can talk about white voters or black voters or or female voters or rich voters or middle-class voters or working class voters without ever mentioning the words white, black, female, rich, middle-class, working-class or whatever.
Below, we will see examples of Obama supporters doing exactly the same thing. That is, they committed the "sin" of talking about white voters and black voters. Of course, they may do what Hillary may not.
Everyone knows that Obama entered the race with weak support from blacks -- and lots of black writers commented on that fact. Are black pundits allowed to speak of "black voters" while white people are forevermore disallowed from using the phrase "white voters"? Is that fair?
"Hard-working," in context, was just Hillary's attempt to butter up a voting bloc. She was sputtering in her determination to avoid the dreaded term "working class" (even though that's what she meant) because she knew that the working class in America prefers to think of itself as middle class (even though it isn't). She was not implying that black people don't also work hard.
Back to the list:
Ed Koch::
"I believe Obama probably will win [the Democratic nomination], although in politics you never ever can count anybody out," said former New York Mayor Ed Koch. "I think Hillary is doing a magnificent job and is a great candidate and if anybody can pull it out, she can. But my honest opinion is, it probably won't happen. And that he will be the candidate and that he will lose."...
"I am shocked, without knowing the reason that it is happening, that none of the allegations with the respect of Wright, his former pastor, have had any impact on his polling," said Koch. "I'm absolutely surprised because I think that all the things that Wright says -- and nobody believes that Obama supports those statements -- but he didn't have the courage to stand up and object for twenty years. If you are running for president, you can't be like some other poor guy in the pews who is afraid to stand up or even say something privately to the minister. You're the guy who wants to lead the country and you have to have courage to stand up and lead your own pastor. He did not exhibit that. But the fact that the Democratic constituency doesn't seem to care is a shock to me, but I'm certain that the overall constituency voting in November will care and that it will make the difference in the adverse way to his candidacy."
Ed Koch never spoke for anyone except Ed Koch. True, his prediction did not come true -- but so what? I defy anyone to name a political observer who never made a wrong prediction.
Like Koch, I also predicted, incorrectly, that Wright was going to play a huge factor in the general election Republican ad campaign. The fact that Wright went unmentioned led me to suspect that McCain did not really want to win.
(Imagine if the outcry -- the justifiable outcry -- if a follower of Jerry Falwell ran for president! I consider Falwell and Wright to have a rough equivalence of venality.)
At any rate, anyone who interprets the Koch quote as an example of blatant (or even subtle) bigotry is nuttier than the Planters factory. Then again, I suppose that one could read racism into the ingredients list on a can of beef stew, if one is determined to do so.
The Booman's list contains only two more "damning" quotes.
One comes from Representative Rob Andrews, who spoke of hearing ill-defined racial "signals" in a phone call from a Hillary campaign worker before a primary. Booman, scoundrel that he is, does not tell you that the Clinton campaign denied the accusation vociferously and that Andrews never provided specifics or one shard of evidence.
When Andrews made the statement, he had just lost badly to Frank Lautenberg in the Senate primary. He desperately needed party support if he wanted to get into the race to regain his House seat -- something he had promised not to do. In other words, Booman is relying on the word of a proven liar. Obviously, Andrews saw that Obama and his gang of Chicago thugs were the new rulers of the party. I think that Andrews (who has a rather sleazy voting record) told a huge fib in order to get in good with the new bosses.
The final Booman quote comes from Bob Johnson, speaking "as an African-American." He made a bizarre reference to Sidney Poitier. Frankly, I can't claim to understand the point he was trying to make, and I really don't care. Nothing said by Bob Johnson provides evidence of Clinton's supposed "racism."
Booman's evidence amounts to nada. Hillary Clinton never resorted to racism, disguised or blatant, during the primary. She never had any motive to do so. Even if she were a bigot in her heart of hearts (which I am sure she is not), tactical concerns would have told her not to take such a course.
For a long time, she had the black vote sewn up. Why would she alienate that constituency? No Democrat would do so. (For that matter, no Republican in today's political environment would dare to insult black people.)
Black voters abandoned Hillary only after the Obama campaign decided to smear the Clintons. Alas, smears do work -- and no voting bloc is immune. Maybe that's why Obama's campaign tactics have evinced more admiration from Republicans (such as Nancy Reagan) than from Democrats.
At one point, Paul Krugman admitted that nearly all of the outrageous statements made during the primary came from the Obama forces. As a reward for his honesty, many writers on the Daily Kos (an arm of the Obama campaign) smeared Krugman as a conservative and a bigot. That's right: The "progressive" movement embraced Andrew freaking Sullivan while smearing Paul Krugman.
They also spread a false story that Krugman's son worked for Hillary. He has no children.
That's how the Obots operate: They lie. During the campaign, they told lie after lie after lie -- and they never had to pay a political price for doing so.
But lying was hardly the worst of it.
During the campaign I received death threats from Obots -- a couple of which I documented in previous posts. ("Do the species a favor and kill yourself. Better yet, tell me where you live and I'll come do it for you.") I was not the only victim of cyber-terrorism; many other Obama opponents also received threats.
Remember what happened to radio host Steve Corbett and to Representative Emanuel Cleaver II? Remember Donna Brazile's thuggish warning that "there will be blood" if Obama did not receive the nomination? She spoke literally, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
Obama never denounced these tactics. He never denounced Donna Brazile.
I do not know of a single instance in which a Hillary supporter lobbed death threats at a pro-Obama writer. All of the threats -- ALL of them -- came from Obots.
What does that fact tell you about the dangers of the mob?
Here are some examples of things said by pro-Obama forces. Compare the following quotes to the alleged "outrages" listed by Booman. (I am culling these examples from previous posts; you can look up the links to the original sources by using the intra-site search engine at the top of the page.)
Obama is black? That’s just not acceptable at the cuntry club.
"Hillary is a liar and a cunt"
She’s a monster who just won’t die. In fact, she really should just die.
The good news is if Clinton wins (steals) the presidency she will likely be assassinated within a week. She is a total lying gas bag hag and deserves to [go to] her maker for what will only be described as a truly karmic moment which will last for all eternity.
Just slit her throat, lock her in a car boot, and drive the car into river in West Virginia. Ain’t gonna let no whore screw with the man
The heinous Hillary hag with a bullseye on her forehead is reason enough to vote for Obama
And a Drive-By Won't Be Out of the Question. What goes around, comes around. The stupid fucking bitch !!
Talk About WHITE TRASH that bitch better keep looking over her shoulder.
if hillary is elected we're gonna be stuck with whomever she picks as a running mate for the remainder of the term after she gets assasinated.
You know, looking at these Obot death threats against Hillary, I suddenly don't feel quite so surprised by the young Americans in Israel who recently called for Obama to be killed. Of course, I still believe that those fools should go to jail. On the other hand, we must admit that they treated Obama pretty much the same way that the Obots treated Hillary. What goes around, comes around...
By the way: Just imagine how Booman would have reacted if any Hillary supporter -- anywhere, on even the smallest blog -- had referred to Obama as "black trash." Why the double standard, Booman?
Hillary Clinton is not interested in what is best for our country; she is interested in what is best for her. She is a self-serving bitch.
Hillary's gonna lose you feminazi cunts.
Hillary is a liar and a cunt
Obama's great innovation in political discourse is his willingness to countenance the use of the word "cunt" in a political campaign. Not once did he denounce the things his supporters said on a daily (hourly) basis, even though he was urged to do so. Some of these quotes even came from his official campaign site. His refusal to decry the ghastly things being done in his name is tantamount to complicity.
They're all crazy cunts,taze them all!!!!!!
Cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt CUNT cunt cunt cunt CUNT cunt cunt cunt CUNT CUNT CUNT CUNT . . .
Yo! Cunt!
Imagine the shrieks of protest that would have been heard if any Clinton supporter, on even the lowliest of blogs, had referred to Obama as "nigger." Keith Olbermann would have devoted an entire segment to the topic. But "cunt" is a perfectly acceptable term in the Obot lexicon.
They may speak in any ugly way they want to speak. All others must watch their every phoneme for every hemi-demi-semiquaver of mis-construable connotation.
Bush Clinton crime family must be eradicated.
I thought Vince Foster was on the Clinton Body Count list
Does Hillary want to murder Obama? Probably not with her own two hands but one thing for sure: HILLARY WANTS BARACK OBAMA DEAD
Has Hillary ever denouced the bigots who support her?
Hillary is enabling racism which is why I could not vote for her.
That racist block is the constituency that is keeping her fight alive.
This next one looks particularly hilarious nowadays:
Barack is all about unity -- he talks about it all the time, so there's no question about whether he wants people who foster divisions associated with his campaign. The thing is, Barack doesn't SAY one thing and ACT in a way that doesn't fit what he said.
Now that's a spit-take inducer if ever the English language produced one!
Mr. and Mrs. Clinton went fishing in the waters of the KKK and the Aryan nation's pool of most eligibles.
Those fat old poor white women can go pound salt.
The numbers of hysterical, crazed old females who have emotionally latched on to Hillary is simply a phenomenon that can't be denied. I don't know what is causing this but it's REAL and can't be swept under the rug. There's a BIG bunch of unhinged, old white females, far beyond self-embarrassment, who are acting like screeching Hags for Hill.
Obama does not have a white problem, he has a backwater inbred ignorant racist appalachian hillbilly problem. And we can win without them.
Who cares if older white women stay home?
Gee -- I thought it was racist to speak in demographic terms. Isn't that what Booman wants us to believe? Where's the consistency?
What would be the point of kissing azz for some old hags/bigots?
Hillary supporters, needless Democrats.
We don't need Hillary's supporters! They can go on and vote for McCain!
NO UNITY!!!
Yeah. That Barack -- he sure is a uniter, all right. That's why he won a bare majority in a year that should have seen a landslide Democratic victory. He would have lost if the economic meltdown had hit a month or so later.
On the other hand, perhaps it is indeed fair to say that he has been a uniter. Politically, his administration has united itself with the Bush legacy.
"How about "Arkansas Uber Alles"? Seig Heil to Mrs Clinton!"
The menses makes the ladies crazy and unhinged. That's why we can never have a woman as president. They'd get all PMS-ish and start a nuclear war.
yes, she is the ultimate fag hag, isn't she?...
and her campaign in pennsylvania proved many of the gay men in the midstate (100% of whom support her) are a bunch of racist queens...
Hillary Clinton is a monster, and a bitter hag.
Any woman who votes for her is voting with her vagina, not her brain.
Women only like Hillary because she’s a fellow Vagina-American.
men who support her are castratos in the eunuch chorus
That's enough for now. As everyone knows, I could compile a list literally a hundred times longer, filled with similarly vile sentiments.
Can we compare the disgusting tactics of Obama's supporters to the statements made by Hillary's supporters? Sure -- but only in the sense that you might compare the Nazi war machine to the Gustav Mahler Appreciation Society. You can compare anything to anything else. In this case, the comparison reveals the truly odious nature of the Obama movement.
As long as I live, I will never forget the stench.
Cinie has uncovered a lovely bit of conspiratology. I'm not sure what it all means; maybe nothing, or maybe much. Ponder:
How does the Ford Foundation fit in? Well, if you fire up Google -- or better still, head into a university library -- you'll see plenty of evidence that the CIA and the FF were likethis during the period when Timmy's dad and Barry's mom took such a keen interest in Indonesia. Given the wealth of available material, I hate to cite Wikipedia -- but if you want a quick summary, you can do worse than to run your eyeballs over the following: 
Did Papa Giethner know the Mother of the Blessed One during their time together in Indonesia? Did little Barry and little Timmy play together? This has yet to be established, although the likelihood seems high, considering the natures of Lolo's job, her job, and Peter's job. Still, you may want to heed these words from Cinie...
