March 2, 2011

Huckabee Paints False Picture of President Obama’s Childhood in Defense of British Butcher

By Scotty Reid

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Republican Presidential hopeful, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee is in the news for making comments about President Obama’s worldview being shaped by British colonialism in Africa specifically referring to Kenya, the birthplace of Obama’s father.



Huckabee said that President Obama’s youth has caused him to resent the West and explains that this is why his foreign policy differs greatly from that of his predecessors. "One thing that I do know is his having grown up in Kenya, his view of the Brits, for example, (is) very different than the average American," Huckabee said during an interview with New York radio station WOR this week.

The major sticking point with Huckabee’s statement is that President Obama did not grow up in Kenya. Obama lived in Hawaii, his birthplace until the age of five at which point he then lived in Indonesia with his stepfather and his American mother who some have said worked for the CIA under the cover of teaching English to Indonesian children. By the age of ten, the young Obama then moved back to Hawaii to live with his maternal grandparents who would raise him until he left for Los Angeles to pursue an undergraduate degree that would be completed in New York.

Huckabee’s proof that President Obama resented the west was the removal of a bust of Winston Churchill, the former Prime Minister of England, from the Oval Office, which was replaced with a bust of Abraham Lincoln, a U.S. President whom Obama has cited as one of his American heroes. It should be noted however, that Churchill like Obama, had an American mother and would later be made (Churchill) the first honorary citizen of the United States.

I would like to ask Mike Huckabee who he considers “normal Americans” to be as his divisive rhetoric sounds much like Sarah Palin’s North Carolina campaign trail statement about small towns representing “Real America” which she would later apologize for making. Huckabee should also be asked why he would take issue with a bust of a British politician being replaced with the bust of Republican President Abraham Lincoln.

Another point of contention is how Huckabee, like many other “normal Americans”, have a habit of white-washing history, completely ignoring the inhumane and downright criminal actions of their white so-called champions of Democracy who saw no hypocrisy in denying the basic human rights of self determination to non-white populations of the world. Winston Churchill is most known as the English Prime Minister who led the British opposition to Adolph Hitler’s Nazi war machine during World War II. What is not widely known about Churchill is that he spent a lifetime of military service to the British Crown in helping to oppress non-whites in their homelands while the British raped them of their natural resources.

In fact, Churchill ordered the brutal crackdown in Kenyan against the native people who wanted their independence from British colonialism. President Obama’s paternal grandfather was detained in a 1952 uprising against British colonial rule in Kenya and Huckabee claimed that childhood stories told to Obama about the Kenyan Mau Mau rebellion is what caused him to remove the bust of Churchill. Another problem with Huckabee’s narrative is that Obama only met his real father once in his life and had no contact with his father’s side of the family during his childhood so it is evident that Mike Huckabee, a Baptist minister is lying about President Obama to score points with whom he calls “Normal Americans”.



It is also troubling that a man, who claims to be a follower of Christ, would take issue with the bust of the British Butcher, Winston Churchill being removed from the oval office. As stated before, Winston Churchill who was in his second term as the British Prime Minister order a crackdown on Kenyan freedom fighters in which crimes against humanity were committed by British forces. After the liberation of Germany’s concentration camps during World War II, the British would erect their own concentration camps in Kenya. A British officer described the “labor camps” as "Short on rations, the prisoners overworked, harsh brutality, humiliating and disgusting treatment and flogging, which were all in violation of the United Nations Universal Declaration on Human Rights." Churchill ignored all recommendations to improve the conditions and sought to cover them up. It has been estimated that between 50,000 to 300,000 native Kenyans may have been exterminated by the British and their African collaborators. All of this was done in the name of manifest destiny where Europeans believed that they had a God given right to invade already inhabited lands, steal natural resources and the land itself from the native populations subjecting them to genocidal methods of oppression.

That was the true nature and legacy of the man whom Huckabee wants to honor with a bust in the oval office. What is becoming clear is the true nature of Huckabee who wants to occupy the oval office in the near future. As far as Huckabee’s assertion that President Obama’s foreign policy differs from that of his predecessors is also false. President Obama has not only continued the US military presence in Iraq, he has escalated its activities in Afghanistan and has used predator drones to carry out deadly attacks in Pakistan. At every turn the Obama administration has sought to defend and shield former Bush administration officials from answering for their crimes against humanity which include torture and illegal dentition. A fact check of every point or issue raised by Huckabee during this interview with a right wing radio show will show that either Huckabee is terribly uninformed or has not problem lying to push a right wing neo-colonial worldview.

February 28, 2011

Justice Department Fails To Act In Shooting of Black Children by Alleged North Carolina Racist



In the Fall of 2009 in Caswell County, North Carolina, two African American elementary school aged children were walking down a road with another child when they were allegedly fired upon with a shotgun by John Fugua, a white male who neighbors say yelled racial slurs at the children. One of the children was hit in the face and the other child was hit the arm.

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The NAACP of North Carolina has been monitoring the case says that John Fugua who was charged with assault with a deadly weapon and assault with a deadly weapon inflicting serious injury, should additionally be charged with assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill. The attempted murder of these children occurred in September of 2009 and while the heinous crime has been covered by local North Carolina news media outlets, it has received scant national media coverage.

Rev. Dr. William Barber, President of the North Carolina NAACP, said “Many people across this state and across this country said if it were reversed and there were three white children and a black shooter, that we would have seen a very different course of justice,”

Caswell County NAACP President Nate Hall said "I think there is an attitude across the country that is not sympathetic to civil rights in general and that attitude we have got to change,"

The children’s attacker John Fugua was charged and released after posting just $5,000 bond with must bail bondsmen only requiring 10 percent, that means Fugua only had to pay $500 to obtain his freedom while awaiting trial. The parents of the victims were outraged at the low bail amount as reported by digtraid.com.

Because of outrage from the parents John Fugua was brought back in and his bond was raised to $140,000 which he posted and was released back into the community where his alleged victims also live.

How can John Fugua not be charged with a hate crime when witnesses reported he yelled ethnic slurs at the children before opening up on them with a shotgun? Why was he initially only given a $5,000 bond, does this show that the magistrate in questions thinks little of the value of Black children’s lives.

Digtriad.com also reported in 2009 that Caswell County District Attorney Joel Brewer said ethnic intimidation is a misdemeanor in North Carolina and he supports the NAACP's effort to launch a federal investigation. He said he was the first person to contact the US Justice Department about this case, since his reach only goes as far as North Carolina law, not federal law.

A spokesperson for the US Attorney's Office said the office is aware of the situation and monitoring the local prosecution.

Here we are in 2011, two years after the incident and Eric Holder’s and Obama’s Justice Department has yet to charge this monster with a hate crime under federal statutes. One must also ask why North Carolina considers hate crimes based on ethnicity to only be a misdemeanor offence.

Caswell County is under the The United States Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of North Carolina. Ripley Eagles Rand who was nominated by President Obama, was sworn in as the U. S. Attorney for the Middle District of North Carolina on January 1, 2011 and he can be reached by phone at 336-333-5351.

John Fugua’s trial date is set for June 27, 2011 in Caswell County, North Carolina.