As Barack Obama campaigns to be the next president of the United States of America, his slogan is that he is the agent of change. What exactly that means is not clear. From what he says, it seems to mean that he will tax the rich and redistribute the wealth. With the money garnished from the rich (e.g., a family earning over $250,000 per year), domestically he will provide universal health care, better education for every child, revive the economy and make serious inroads into energy independence. In foreign affairs, he will bring our boys home and/or redistribute them to Pakistan. He will sit down and talk to Iran's Mad Jihad Man without preconditions — although Ahmadinedjad has some preconditions of his own. He will take immediate action to reviving the peace process between Israel and those who are fixated on destroying Israel, with an aim of redistributing land to the Palestinian Arabs.

Raila Odinga ran for president of Kenya on the slogan: "Your agent for Change." Odinga is not coy about saying what he means when he announces he is an agent of change. He is an admitted Communist (with a Capital C) and he wants eventually to replace Kenya's current democracy with a government that will give more weight to groups now elbowed out of power. He is of the Luo tribe — as was Obama's father — and he certainly wants a bigger slice of the pie for his tribe. A nominal Anglican, he has also made an alliance with the Muslims, but the terms of their agreement are not clear.

At issue is the claim that Obama supported Odinga's bid for the presidency, and when Odinga lost, helped force the winning side to take Odinga on as prime minister.

We start with an excerpt from

"Interesting Facts from Obama Nation"
by Jerome R. Corsi
September 12, 2008
http://www.nobama.com/members/index.php?option=com_idoblog&task= viewpost&id=188&Itemid=46

John Corsi is a very vocal critic of Barack Obama and has written a best-selling book about him called Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality. In this summary of points made in the book, Corsi states:

Obama inserted himself into Kenyan politics by supporting the communist, Raila Odigna, who also has an alliance with the muslims, to make Kenya muslim by law. Obama's trip to Kenya in 2006 was not just personal, he actually campaigned for Odinga. Odinga is a radical politician who was educated in communist East Germay. Obama was pictured several times with Odinga, and denounced the opposing side and claimed they were corrupt.

After the presidential election in which Odinga lost [by some 230,000 votes], he charged he had been denied the presidency by voter fraud, and he pressed for a power-sharing arrangement in which he would be prime minister and Kibaki would be president. Odinga's claim of voter fraud led to widespread violence and one thousand people killed.

Senator Obama continued to insert himself into Kenyan politics. On January 1, 2008, two days before the Iowa caucuses, Obama called Secretary of State Condeleezza Rice requested to tape a message for Kenya after his campaign rally in Davenport, Iowa.

www.PolitiFact.com, which claims to be politically neutral, took issue with Corsi's claim that Obama promoted Odinga's campaign.

"Errors abound in anti-Obama book"
by Angie Drobnic Holan
Wednesday, August 20th, 2008
www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2008/aug/20/obama-nation-corsi-facts-fire

Holan writes this on Obama's trip to Kenya and support of Odinga:

Corsi's description of Obama's role in Kenyan politics is filled with overt errors and errors of implication. Corsi writes incorrectly that Obama "openly supported" opposition leader Raila Odinga for office and implies that his purpose was to promote the religion of Islam. "We have to ask," Corsi writes, "whether Obama, by supporting Odinga openly in Kenya, lent his name also to endorse Odinga's leftist politics and Odinga's alliance with radical Muslims pushing Islam in Kenya." But Obama has remained neutral in Kenyan politics, stating publicly at the time of his trip that it was up to the people of Kenya to choose their own leadership. We examined the statement that Obama "openly supported" Raila Odinga for political office in Kenya and found the statement False.

Obama made three visits to Kenya. By coincidence, the relevant trip to Kenya took place just two years before Holan's article, in August 2006, when Odinga's run for the presidency was just getting underway.

"Barack Obama Visits Poorest Part Of Nairobi"
August 28, 2006
http://cbs2chicago.com/politics/Barack.Obama.Nairobi.2.272019.html

This item was filed at 1:20pm US/Central, without author.

NAIROBI Kenya (CBS) — Sen. Barack Obama urged Kenyans to take control of their country's destiny by opposing corruption and ethnic divisions in government during a policy speech Monday at the main university in his father's homeland.

Security was extraordinarily tight for what was scheduled to be quiet meetings with anti-AIDS activists and others. But as CBS 2's Political Editor Mike Flannery reports, Obama got another wild welcome.

Sen. Barack Obama said Monday that the Kenyan government must reduce patronage jobs and increase salaries to reduce temptation for taking bribes. (CBS, File)

Another day, another round of cheering crowds. This time Barack Obama was visiting the heart of Kibera, notoriously the poorest part of Nairobi — a place that sometimes literally stinks, lacking sewers, clean water and other basic needs.

"I want everyone to know the next time I come back to Kenya, this is where I'm going to come again. Because I love this area," he told a crowd of onlookers.

Obama warned that Kenya and other African nations will never thrive if their citizens cannot count on the government to deliver services fairly, regardless of their tribal background or ability to pay bribes, Obama told about 600 people at the state-run University of Nairobi.

"In the end, if the people cannot trust their government to do the job for which it exists — to protect them and to promote their common welfare — all else is lost," he said.

[...]

Government officials did not immediately respond to Obama's comments Monday. The senator had a closed-door meeting with President Mwai Kibaki last week.

[...]

Kenya has been roiled for years by widespread allegations of corruption. Kibaki won elections in 2002 promising to root out the corruption that had become endemic under the 24-year rule of his predecessor, President Daniel arap Moi. But now, he too is facing mounting pressure to respond to allegations of high-level corruption.

Kibaki's administration has pointed to its efforts to root out corrupt judges and ongoing investigations into high-level wrongdoing. Officials also have said that the government alone cannot fight corruption and asked individuals and companies to stop paying bribes.

Obama said Monday that the Kenyan government must reduce patronage jobs and increase salaries for the remaining employees to reduce temptation for taking bribes. It also needs clear laws and regulations, so that individual bureaucrats cannot twist the rules to their own ends, Obama said.

"Finally, ethnic-based tribal politics have to stop," he said to applause from the audience of students, university staff, business leaders and others.

Clips of his speeches entitled "Obama and Odinga Compaign in Kenya" are available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6eVVVKFHu0 For example, see
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1P_P8lBCsE&NR=1

Various clips from Obama's trip can be seen on Live Leak
www.liveleak.com/view?i=269_1224462962

Were Obama's speeches an attack on the Kenya government? In the previous article, they could be interpreted as advise from a friend, or they might be seen as a plug for more services for the Luo and other deprived ethnic groups. The next article, filed later the same day, is more explicit.

"Obama's Criticism Irks Kenyan Government"
by Mike Flannery
Aug 28, 2006 7:00 pm US/Central
http://cbs2chicago.com/topstories/Barack.Obama.Kenya.2.331658.html

Government Says Obama Is A Stooge For Political Opposition

(CBS) There are signs of tension between Sen. Barack Obama and African leaders. On Monday, Obama stepped up his criticism of government corruption in Kenya.

But as CBS 2 Political Editor Mike Flannery reports, the government fired back, saying Obama is a stooge for an opposing political party.

A surprise raid that seized and burned copies of Kenya's oldest newspaper, The Standard, still prompts journalists there to call last March 2 the darkest day in the more than 100 years they've been publishing.

"For us as an institution, I think it was the lowest point in the history of this newspaper," News Editor Douglas Okwatch said.

It was because of that raid that Sen. Barack Obama went to the Standard's offices. He declared that democracy can't work without freedom of the press and freedom of information.

"It is not just a loss for the Standard. It's a loss for the people of Kenya. So my hope is that this is one episode that won't be repeated," Obama said.

At the University of Nairobi two hours later, the senator offered more pointed criticism, something he's done almost every day since arriving last week. After remaining largely silent, the government of President Mwai Kibaki is beginning to respond, suggesting that Obama may have fallen under the spell of opposition leader Raila Odinga.

Obama and Raila Odinga (CBS)

A potential presidential candidate himself, Odinga's been at Obama's elbow here fairly often and is a member of the Obama family's Luo tribe.

"Sen. Obama has to look at critically about where he's receiving his advice from," said government spokesman Dr. Alfred Mutua. "Just because somebody, somewhere wants to run for president and is using Sen. Obama as his stooge, as his puppet to be able to get to where he wants to get to."

Stung by Obama's continuing criticism of corruption in Kenya, government spokesman Alfred Mutua placed an ad in several newspapers. He reasserted that no bribe money was extorted from CBS 2 News during a customs dispute at the Nairobi airport that has now been widely publicized here, calling it instead a case of miscommunication. The $840 was returned to CBS 2 after Obama complained. Mutua said it was legitimate customs duties, but he could not explain why we were charged double the maximum amount allowed under Kenyan law.

The next stop on Obama's African journey is a wildlife safari at the Masai Mara Game Reserve.

Odinga did not run a polite campaign.

"Kenyan insiders say Obama was part of takeover strategy"
by Jerome R. Corsi
October 16, 2008
World Net Daily
http://wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=78132

Corsi writes of a Strategy Memo prepared by a 5-person Odinga 'core strategy team' on how to conduct Odinga's campaign. It reached the outside world when some of the "top ex-ODM officials who played key roles in Odinga's 2007 presidential campaign [turned] ... on Odinga when the candidate's memorandum of understanding with Sheik Abdullahi Abdi, the chairman of the National Muslim Leaders Forum, proved to be real." The Strategy Memo is posted at
www.network54.com/Forum/204096/thread/1200846405/last-1200846405/ODM

It lists Odinga's strengths and weaknesses -- they worried that his Communism was a threat, and planned to exploit Kibaki's promise in 2002 to be a 1-term president. They lay out how Odinga's campaign is to be run, activity by activity, when these activities are to be initiated and by whom. It advises the team "to pull all plugs." and to use "Ethnic Tensions/Violence as a last resort." This includes "discouraging voter participation in hostile areas," and "using ODM agents on the ground to engineer ethnic tensions in target areas". Incidently, the Memorandum lists major financial contributors. "Friends of Senator BO" contributed 66,000,000 (monetary unit is unspecified. Obama's contribution is usually said to be around 950,000 in American dollars.)

The memorandum makes fascinating reading by itself. It is even more important when considered as a particular instantiation of Communist doctrine. It is orthodox Communist philosophy than an excellent technique for gaining power is to cause a MAJOR problem -- the crisis is usually dramatic, economically draining and an embarrassment to the political system attacked -- and then be the saviour who steps in to solve it.

"Cloward-Piven Strategy - the generated crisis"
by Ted Belman
http://www.israpundit.com/2008/?p=4317"

This is Ted Belman's summary of an article by James Simpson entitled "Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis" in the September 28, 2008 issue of the American Thinker
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/09/barack_obama_and_the_strategy.html

This method not only has its proponents, it has a name: the Cloward-Piven Strategy. It describes their agenda, tactics, and long-term strategy.

The Strategy was first elucidated in the May 2, 1966 issue of The Nation magazine by a pair of radical socialist Columbia University professors, Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven. David Horowitz summarizes it as:

The strategy of forcing political change through orchestrated crisis. The "Cloward-Piven Strategy" seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse.

Cloward and Piven were inspired by radical organizer [and Hillary Clinton mentor] Saul Alinsky:

"Make the enemy live up to their (sic) own book of rules," Alinsky wrote in his 1989 book Rules for Radicals. When pressed to honor every word of every law and statute, every Judeo-Christian moral tenet, and every implicit promise of the liberal social contract, human agencies inevitably fall short. The system's failure to "live up" to its rule book can then be used to discredit it altogether, and to replace the capitalist "rule book" with a socialist one. (Courtesy Discover the Networks.org)

Newsmax rounds out the picture:

Their strategy to create political, financial, and social chaos that would result in revolution blended Alinsky concepts with their more aggressive efforts at bringing about a change in U.S. government. To achieve their revolutionary change, Cloward and Piven sought to use a cadre of aggressive organizers assisted by friendly news media to force a re-distribution of the nation's wealth.

In their Nation article, Cloward and Piven were specific about the kind of "crisis" they were trying to create:

By crisis, we mean a publicly visible disruption in some institutional sphere. Crisis can occur spontaneously (e.g., riots) or as the intended result of tactics of demonstration and protest which either generate institutional disruption or bring unrecognized disruption to public attention.

No matter where the strategy is implemented, it shares the following features:

1. The offensive organizes previously unorganized groups eligible for government benefits but not currently receiving all they can.
2. The offensive seeks to identify new beneficiaries and/or create new benefits.
3. The overarching aim is always to impose new stresses on target systems, with the ultimate goal of forcing their collapse.

Despite Obama's help, Odinga lost big. He was a very sore loser, and charged "voter fraud". This next article leaves no doubt that Odinga fomented the rioting and church-burning and looting that took place less than 24 hours after Kibaki was sworn in as president.

"Mob Kills Up To 50 At Kenya Church"
From the Associated press
January 1, 2008
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22460182/

They were hacking people and then setting them on fire,' survivor says

A Kenyan stands by the ruins of an Assembly of God church after it was burned down by Odinga's Muslim followers, members of Obama's tribe. At least 50 people were hacked to death and then burned. (AFP-Getty Images)

NAIROBI, Kenya — A mob torched a church where hundreds had sought refuge Tuesday, and witnesses said dozens of people — including children — were burned alive or hacked to death with machetes in ethnic violence that followed Kenya's disputed election.

The killing of up to 50 ethnic Kikuyus in the Rift Valley city of Eldoret brought the death toll from four days of rioting to more than 275, raising fears of further unrest in what has been one of Africa's most stable democracies.

The latest violence recalled scenes from the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, when more than a half-million people were killed. The question facing Kenya is whether the politicians will lose control of the mobs, triggering a civil war.

President Mwai Kibaki, who was swiftly inaugurated for a second term Sunday after a vote that critics said was rigged, called for a meeting with his political opponents — a significant softening of tone for a man who rarely speaks to the press and who vowed to crack down on rioters.

But opposition candidate Raila Odinga refused, saying he would meet Kibaki only "if he announces that he was not elected." Odinga accused the government of stoking the chaos, telling The Associated Press in an interview that Kibaki's administration "is guilty, directly, of genocide."

The violence — from the shantytowns of Nairobi to resort towns on the sweltering coast — has exposed long-festering tribal resentment.

The people killed in Eldoret, about 185 miles northwest of Nairobi, were members of Kibaki's Kikuyu tribe.

They had fled to the Assemblies of God Church on Monday night, seeking refuge after mobs torched homes. Video from a helicopter chartered by the Red Cross showed many homes in flames and the horizon obscured by smoke. Groups of people were seen seeking sanctuary at schools and the airport, while others moved into the forest.

2,000 attacked church

On Tuesday morning, a mob of about 2,000 arrived at the church, said George Karanja, whose family had sought refuge there.

"They started burning the church," Karanja said, his voice catching with emotion as he described the scene. "The mattresses that people were sleeping on caught fire. There was a stampede, and people fell on one another."

Karanja, 37, helped pull out at least 10 people, but added, "I could not manage to pull out my sister's son. He was screaming 'Uncle, uncle!' ... He died." The boy was 11.

Up to 50 people were killed in the attack, said a Red Cross official who spoke on condition of anonymity because her name would identify her tribe, and she feared reprisal. Even first aid workers were stopped by vigilantes who demanded their identity.

Tribal Unrest splits Kenya

Karanja said his two children raised their hands as they left the church and they were beaten with a cane, but not killed. His 90-year-old father was attacked with a machete, but survived, he said.

"The worst part is that they were hacking people and then setting them on fire," he added.

The attackers saw Karanja saving people and began stoning him, he said. Karanja said he ran and hid — submerging himself in a pit latrine outside the church property. He stayed there about 30 minutes until he heard people speaking Kikuyu.

The Kikuyu, Kenya's largest ethnic group, are accused of turning their dominance of politics and business to the detriment of others. Odinga is from the Luo tribe, a smaller but still major tribe that says it has been marginalized.

There are more than 40 tribes in Kenya, and political leaders have often used unemployed and uneducated young men to intimidate opponents. While Kibaki and Odinga have support from across the tribal spectrum, the youth responsible for the violence tend to see politics in strictly ethnic terms.

In Nairobi's slums, which are often divided along tribal lines, rival groups have been fighting each other with machetes and sticks as police use tear gas and bullets to keep them from pouring into the city center. The capital has been a ghost town for days, with residents stocking up on food and water and staying in their homes.

Parents in the capital's slums — home to a third of its population — searched for food, with many shops closed because of looting.

Anne Njoki, a 28-year-old Kikuyu, said she fled her home in a shantytown after she saw Kikuyus being attacked and their homes looted. She was camped near a military base with her sister, 3-year-old nephew and 7-year-old niece.

"They have taken our beds, blankets, even spoons," she said of the looters.

In the Mathare slum, Odinga supporters torched a minibus and attacked Kikuyu travelers, witnesses said.

"The car had 14 people in it, but they only slashed Kikuyus," said witness Boniface Mwangi. Five were attacked by the machete-wielding gang, he said.

Thursday protest march planned

The prospect of even more violence is ahead. Odinga insisted he would go ahead with plans to lead a protest march in the capital Thursday. The government banned the demonstration, but Odinga said: "It doesn't matter what they say."

The widespread violence and gathering international pressure could lead Kibaki to seek a compromise with the opposition.

The European Union and the United States have refused to congratulate Kibaki, and the EU and four top Kenyan election officials have called for an independent inquiry. In Britain, Kenya's former colonial ruler, Prime Minister Gordon Brown urged Kibaki and Odinga to hold talks.

Election commission chairman Samuel Kivuitu said Tuesday he had been pressed by both an opposition party and Kibaki's Party of National Unity to release the results of the vote. Western ambassadors "wanted me to delay announcing the results, even if it is for a week," to allow the commission to investigate alleged irregularities, he said.

Kibaki, 76, won by a landslide in 2002, ending 24 years of rule by Daniel arap Moi. Kibaki is praised for turning the country into an east African economic powerhouse with an average growth rate of 5 percent, but his anti-graft campaign has been seen as a failure, and the country still struggles with tribalism and poverty.

Odinga, 62, cast himself as a champion of the poor. His main constituency is the Kibera slum, where some 700,000 people live in poverty, but he has been accused of failing to do enough to help them in 15 years as a member of parliament.

By the end of January, the disputed election directly caused the deaths of more than 1,500 people and the displacement of almost 600,000 more. Odinga refused to rein in the troops.

How was the crisis resolved? According to the October 16, 2008 Corsi account (see above):

The ex-ODM sources said during the post-election violence Obama did not call on Odinga to drop his charges of voter fraud or to withdraw completely from his efforts to become head of state as a strategy to calm his Luo tribe supporters and bring a halt to the violence.

WND confirmed in Kenya that at one point Kofi Annan and Sec-State Rice actually pressured Kenyan Vice President Kolonzo to step down from his position to bring the Luo-mob protest violence to an end by appointing Odinga vice president so he could assume the nation's second highest political office.

When Kolonzo refused to step down, Annan and Rice proposed the Odinga-inspired plan to appoint him as prime minister, effectively allowing Odinga to share the head-of-state position with Kibaki, a solution that was adopted.

Odinga, the hero. The man who stopped the rioting, the looting, the rapes and murders of Christians by Muslims.

"Obama's Kenya Ghosts"
by Mark Hyman
Sunday, October 12, 2008
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/oct/12/obamas-kenya-ghosts/

After his appointment as prime minister, the press revealed a contract signed in August 2007 between Odinga and National Muslim Leaders Forum. Mark Hyman writes:

Mr. Odinga had the backing of Kenya's Muslim community heading into the election. For months he denied any ties to Muslim leaders, but fell silent when Sheik Abdullahi Abdi, chairman of the National Muslim Leaders Forum (NAMLEF), appeared on Kenya television displaying a memorandum of understanding signed on Aug. 29, 2007, by Mr. Odinga and the Muslim leader. Mr. Odinga then denied his denials.

The details of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) were shocking. In return for Muslim backing, Mr. Odinga promised to impose a number of measures favored by Muslims if he were elected president. Among these were recognition of "Islam as the only true religion," Islamic leaders would have an "oversight role to monitor activities of ALL other religions [emphasis in original]," installation of Shariah courts in every jurisdiction, a ban on Christian preaching, replacement of the police commissioner who "allowed himself to be used by heathens and Zionists," adoption of a women's dress code, and bans on alcohol and pork.

A watered down version was released in November; it only called on Odinga to work with the organization to improve relations with Muslims and give priority in budgetary allocations to the areas where most of the Muslims live.

It's difficult to sort out what the Muslims demanded for their support. It is safe to say that if elected, Odinga would have allowed the camel nose of Muslim Shari law into a largely Christian country. Given his position as Prime Minister, which includes a say on who is in the Cabinet, he may yet do so.

_________________________End of Story___________________________

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