By Alex Millson

‘Plot to assassinate Barack Obama’ uncovered as police find weapons haul during routine traffic stop

Four people are have been arrested in connection with a possible plot to kill U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama.

   Arrested: Nathan Johnson & Tharin Gartrell

One of the suspects told authorities they were ‘going to shoot Obama from a high vantage point using a rifle sighted at 750 yards’.

Police arrested 28-year-old Tharin Gartrell after he was spotted driving erratically near Denver, where Mr Obama is due to speak at the Democratic Party convention later today.

Officers recovered two high-powered rifles with scopes, camouflage clothing, walkie-talkies, wigs, a bulletproof vest, a spotting scope, licenses in the names of other people and 44 grams of the drug methamphetamine.

Police alerted federal officials because of heightened security surrounding the Democratic convention, Dudley said.

‘Clearly we found there are federal implications - otherwise we would not have notified them,’ Detective Marcus Dudley said. ‘The weapons clearly would cause great concern.’

Police went to a nearby hotel to contact an associate of Gartrell. But that man, identified as 33-year-old Shawn Robert Adolph, jumped out of a sixth floor window to escape detectives.

Adolph broke an ankle in the fall and was captured moments later.

Sources say he had a handcuff ring and was wearing a swastika, and is thought to have ties to white supremacist organisations.

A third man - an associate of Gartrell and Adolph - Nathan Johnson, 32, was also arrested. He told authorities that the two men ‘planned to kill Barack Obama at his acceptance speech’.

Johnson, along with his girlfriend, Natasha Gromek, are also under arrest on drug charges.

The Secret Service, FBI, ATF and the joint terrorism task force are all investigating the alleged plot.

The U.S. Attorneys Office has scheduled a news conference for later today. The U.S. Attorney in Denver said it does not believe there is a credible threat to Obama or the convention.

‘It’s premature to say that it was a valid threat or that these folks have the ability to carry it out,’ said a U.S. government official familiar with the investigation.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.

U.S. Attorney Troy Eid said the case was under investigation.

‘We’re absolutely confident there is no credible threat to the candidate, the Democratic National Convention, or the people of Colorado,’ Mr Eid said in a prepared statement.

Popularity: 10% [?]

This is an example of the CIA Meddling in African Affairs during the cold-war era
| Other CIA activities in Africa |

By Douglas Okwatch

Fresh details of a conspiracy that could have provided a motive for the assassination of Cabinet Minister Thomas Joseph Mboya have emerged ahead of the 39th year since his death.

Kenyatta
The CIA appears to have recruited the flamboyant minister and former trade unionist in a heavily funded “selective liberation” programme to isolate Kenya’s founding President Jomo Kenyatta, who the American spy agency labelled as “unsafe.”

Declassified information in an undated issue of Ramparts, an American political and literary magazine published in the 1960s and early 1970s, accessed by The Standard at the Kenya National Archives, shows an elaborate conspiracy by CIA to prop up Mboya and isolate Kenyatta.

Ramparts closed shop in 1975. Whether this scheme sowed seeds of suspicion and mistrust between Kenyatta and Mboya, who at the time of his assassination was the Economic Planning minister and Kamukunji MP, is a matter for further investigation.

The revelations come four months after Mboya’s widow, Pamela, wrote to Mr Kofi Annan, former UN secretary-general who also chaired talks that ended political violence in Kenya early in the year, asking that the matter be investigated afresh by a truth commission.

“The assassination of my husband, like others after him, is a matter that has remained shrouded in mystery and speculation, and which has been avoided by successive regimes in this country,” she wrote.

Trail of Questions

In a telephone conversation with this writer last month, Mrs Mboya promised to “drop the bombshell” in an interview. But she later changed her mind. Her last word was that she would spill the beans at an “appropriate time.”

Questions also abound on whether the convicted assassin, Nahashon Njenga Njoroge, was actually executed. The testimony of the assassin’s own brother and anecdotal evidence that he has been seen by a retired military officer, among other claims, pile on the doubts of his execution.

Mboya
Secret letters, also declassified, further show that Mboya had a particularly tumultuous relationship with Mr Mbiyu Koinange, a minister and power broker of the Kenyatta presidency.

In one instance, Koinange wrote an emotional letter to Kenyatta to defend himself against allegations of disloyalty by Mboya.

“Sir, you know my loyalty to you personally, to our Kanu party; of my long loyalty to Kenya and latterly my loyalty to our new independent Council of Ministers.”

“My loyalty is beyond doubt, therefore, my Prime Minister. I frankly feel that there is no need for me to reply to Mr Mboya’s letter.”

“It is unfortunate, ill-timed, egoistic and, if I may say so, an irresponsible letter which is skilfully designed by one of my colleagues to endanger the good working spirit among us.”

Koinange was then Minister of State in the Office of the President and one of the most powerful figures in the Government. He died in September 1981.

The secret letters in our possession cover the period between 1961 and 1966. Desperate to extricate himself from the tag of traitor, Mboya, in a letter on March 11, 1961, pleaded with Kenyatta, who was languishing in a Lodwar jail: “I’d hate to appear a hero at your expense.”

He attached copies of various statements he had made in meetings with the Governor for Kenyatta’s perusal. The move appeared to capture his own internal consciousness that Kenyatta may have begun to perceive him as a threat.

The letters also reveal how the CIA used Kenyatta to finish Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, his Vice-President, politically by amending the Constitution to his office of all powers.

Traitor or nationalist?

Ramparts reported that: “The CIA programme in Kenya could be summed up as one of selective liberation. The chief beneficiary was Tom Mboya who, in 1953, became general secretary of the Kenya Federation of Labour.”

Koinange
Both a credible nationalist and an economic conservative, Mboya who was popularly known as ‘TJ’, was ideal for CIA’s purpose. The main nationalist hero and eventual chief of state, Kenyatta, was not considered “sufficiently safe” owing to his initial deep socialist leanings, the dossier said.

Ramparts quotes Mboya as saying: “Those proven codes of conduct in the African societies, which have over the ages conferred dignity on our people and afforded them security regardless of their station in life.

“I refer to the universal charity, which characterises our societies, and I refer to the African thought processes and cosmological ideas, which regard men, not as a social means, but as an end and entity in society.”

This powerful quote not only captures Mboya’s own prescription of African socialism, which endeared him to the West and made the CIA view his policy as safe, but it also paints the picture of an articulate, sophisticated and ambitious political thinker.

Soon after, Mboya joined the CIA jet set, travelling around the world from Oxford in the UK to Calcutta in India on funds from such conduits as the Africa Bureau and from the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU).

ICFTU, which played a key role in Kenya’s independence through trade unionism, is an aggregation of international trade union secretariats set up in 1949 to counter an upsurge of left-wing trade unionism outside the communist bloc, according to Ramparts. The CIA allegedly funded operations at the time.

But when George Cabot Lodge, one of the directors of the ICFTU, made the statement (believed to have been in specific reference to Mboya at the time) that “the obscure trade unionist of today may well be the president or prime minister of tomorrow,” he left no doubt about Mboya’s personal ambitions and by extension the CIA’s scheme of things.

Initially, CIA’s natural strategy was to underwrite Mboya and his labour federation as a force against Kenyatta. But when tact changed in accordance with the world order and the CIA’s new priorities, it was agreed that Western labour groups stop funding Mboya.

An accommodation with Kenyatta was now thought necessary, particularly to ensure that he did not support rebels in Congo, and to get him to close ranks against the agitating Kenyan left.

But the die had been cast. The CIA, through its activities, had effectively propped up Mboya as a possible future President of Kenya. That threat was real during Kenyatta’s time and even at the dawn of the second decade of his leadership, according to Ramparts.

It was a strategy that the CIA would use again to the benefit of Kenyatta against Odinga – use the credibility of the appropriate militant to crush the rest. The CIA link, which Mboya vigorously fought to distance himself with, would be used later to fight him politically by branding him a traitor and a man who could not to be trusted. He wrote lengthy responses in his defence.

But had the CIA sowed enough seeds of wrath between Mboya and the political establishment in Kenya to provide someone with enough reason to kill him?

REFERENCES:

1. Thomas Joseph Odhiambo Mboya’s murder & the return of one-party State
2. Ready or Not - TIME
3. Setback for Tom - TIME

Popularity: 15% [?]

Popularity: 29% [?]

By: Paul Harris in Williamson, West Virginia

“Bigot” Democrats in rural strongholds refuse to give backing to Obama

The conservative Appalachian heartlands voted overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton - and will switch to McCain in November

Johnny Telvor was not happy about Barack Obama becoming the Democratic presidential nominee. Not happy at all.

Standing outside the sturdy courthouse in the sweltering heat of a West Virginia afternoon in the small town of Williamson, Telvor smoked a cigarette and bluntly gave his opinion of Obama’s historic mission to be America’s first black president.

‘We’ll end up slaves. We’ll be made slaves just like they was once slaves,’ he said. Telvor, a white Democrat who supported Hillary Clinton in West Virginia’s primary, said he planned to vote for Republican John McCain in November. ‘At least he’s an American,’ he added with a disarmingly friendly smile.

Such racist opinions are a rough antidote to the giddy optimism that has swept through much of America’s chattering classes over the past week. Since Obama beat Clinton and finally became the Democratic nominee liberal pundits from New York to San Francisco have eagerly discussed how Obama’s unique candidacy will put America’s racially charged past behind it. The United States, they have argued, is finally prepared to elect a black president and absolve its historic sins of slavery and Jim Crow. But the uglier truth is that part of white America remains secretly - or sometimes openly - deeply distrustful of the idea of a black president.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the vastness of the Appalachian mountains that run from Maine through West Virginia and all the way down to Georgia. Here Obama faces his greatest problem in convincing poor white citizens to vote for him. They certainly have not backed him so far. In West Virginia Clinton trounced Obama by more than 30 points. It is a place of deep poverty and astonishing natural beauty - and it is overwhelmingly white. Outsiders deride it as ‘hillbilly’ country. But it is also somewhere that has a special place in America’s heart. Appalachia is where the TV series The Waltons was set. It is a place of deep family values, where clannish folk have created a vibrant mountain culture of God and guns. It is also a place not used to voting for a black politician. ‘McCain will win here,’ said Telvor. ‘No doubt about it.’

Williamson is a typical slice of Appalachia. The town of 3,000 souls lies on the banks of the Tug Fork River, overshadowed by the mountains that surround it. A railway runs through the centre of town, which has long been used to hard times as the coal industry faded away.

The town is in the heart of Mingo County in West Virginia. In last month’s Democratic primary, a staggering 88 per cent of people in Mingo County voted for Clinton - the highest number in the whole state - compared with just 8 per cent willing to put a cross by Obama’s name. Those are landslide numbers that even some third world dictators would be embarrassed to record. And, as went Mingo, so went the entire state. ‘This state is white, elderly and working class. This is not natural Obama country. People are not used to having black politicians on the ballot,’ said Professor Allan Hammock, a political scientist at West Virginia University.

The sheer scale of Clinton’s win in West Virginia - repeated from Pennsylvania to Georgia - took many pundits by surprise. But it did not shock people in Williamson, Jack Spence among them. The elderly retiree, enjoying the hot weather on a street bench, said he voted for Clinton and, now she has lost, he plans to sit out the November election. ‘I can’t vote for a Republican. My daddy would just roll over in his grave,’ he said. But nor can he bring himself to vote for Obama, though he insisted it was not because of race. ‘That does not matter to me. Though it might to a lot of folks around here,’ he said.

Was there anything Obama could say during the coming campaign to convince him? ‘Nope,’ Spence replied. Then he broached the one issue many Americans consider off-limits: the potential security threat to Obama. ‘Look, someone will kill him. Whoever Obama picks as running mate will end up being president.’ Spence’s ready smile and chatty manner on the thorny issue of Obama’s possible murder gave little clue as to whether he thought it would be a bad thing or not.

   An Appalachian HillBilly — Clinging To God, Guns, and “MoonShine Liquor!”

Often such sentiments are dismissed as the ramblings of a few diehards, carrying with them the prejudices of a by-gone age. After all, Iowa, a very white state, was the place Obama first won. But the fact is Obama’s Appalachian problem is very real.

Williamson and West Virginia are far from alone in rejecting Obama. Take Pikeville, Kentucky. It welcomes visitors with a cheerful sign that boasts it is one of ‘the 100 best small towns in America’. But it is not friendly country for Obama. On Pikeville’s main street, just outside a now abandoned Obama campaign office, Stanley Little laughed when asked if he could support Obama. ‘I will vote for McCain,’ he said. Little, a maintenance man for local offices, had one simple reason why he too was rejecting his long family history of voting Democrat. ‘McCain is one of us. Obama ain’t,’ he said, leaving little doubt as to who he meant by ‘us’.

Pikeville’s rejection of Obama in Kentucky topped even Mingo County’s. Pike County, a huge stretch of forest and hills in the east of Kentucky, voted for Clinton by a thumping 91 per cent versus a mere 7 per cent for Obama. Only nearby Magoffin County (where Clinton scored 93 per cent) is even less friendly to an Obama candidacy.

It is not just an Appalachian issue. There are pockets of this sentiment across America from the working class white suburbs of Philadelphia to the rust belt towns of Ohio and Michigan. Many poor, white Americans are prepared to flock to McCain rather than face a black occupant of the White House. No public courtship between Obama and Clinton - carried out on the nation’s TV screens - is likely to change that. In Georgia a local bar owner has been selling T-shirts featuring Obama being endorsed by a cartoon monkey eating a banana. The sale prompted outraged coverage in the local media but the T-shirts quickly sold out. In Vincennes, Indiana, an Obama campaign office was vandalised on the eve of the state’s primary, its windows smashed and its walls spray-painted with the words ‘Hamas votes BHO’ (for Barack Hussein Obama).

The difficult truth is that Appalachia is unusual mostly because many people here are willing to openly talk about what some of their fellow citizens are secretly thinking. In exit polls of the recent primaries in Kentucky and West Virginia, one in five Democrats confessed to pollsters that race was a factor in their voting choice. ‘West Virginia and Kentucky were just more honest than other parts of the country. A lot of other people know it’s not socially acceptable to mention that sort of thing,’ said Professor Andra Gillespie, a political scientist at Emory University and expert on racial politics.

Indeed much of America’s media has been resolutely focused on a ‘post-racial’ vision of America despite the clear evidence that race remains a huge divide in American life. Obama’s own bi-racial background and his campaign’s language of inclusivity have conjured up a beguiling image of a race-free America. It has built on other recent black political successes in America, such as Newark mayor Cory Booker and Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick, who have won on the back of black-white voting alliances. There is truth to it too. Obama has run a remarkable campaign, winning many white states such as Kansas and Montana. He has attracted vast, racially diverse rallies, especially of young people who seem open to putting racial divides behind them. And indeed there is much hope that Obama can change things. Gillespie points out that recent studies have shown that white voters in US cities that have elected a black mayor for the first time prove far more willing to elect one for a second term. ‘They realise the sky has not fallen in. That life went on,’ Gillespie joked. If Obama does win the White House, that experience could be repeated on a national scale for all Americans. Few things could be more important in finally drawing the poison of racism out of American life.

But behind such optimism, another America looms. It is an America far from the headlines that have proclaimed Obama’s candidacy a revolution that will atone for a race-tinged history. This is the America where outrageous rumours that Obama is a Muslim are readily believed. It is the America where Telvor is able to voice a sentiment that ‘Obama might actually be the antichrist‘ without apparent irony or fear of contradiction. It is a slice of America trapped in the dreadful history of race relations and the legacy of slavery and segregation.

On the streets of towns such as Pikeville and Williamson, and in the minds of people like Little and Telvor, that past lives on. It is kept in the present by poverty, joblessness and a fear of the different. It is also a powerful force that should not be underestimated. It could even decide who will be the next President. ‘McCain will beat Obama. There’s a lot of Democrats around here that will be switching side to vote for him,’ Little said. Behind him a white-washed message in the closed Obama Pikeville office read: ‘Vote Obama 08: change!’ In the brutal summer heat it seemed a forlorn hope. It was asking for the overthrow of generations of entrenched prejudice. But, come November, a black president might finally be pulling up a chair behind the desk in the Oval Office. If he does, that slogan of change might just end up being a prophecy. Even in Appalachia.

Popularity: 30% [?]

Some angry comments I gathered on the Internet:

“Obama will NOT get my vote, and one step more,” Ellen Thorp, a 59-year-old flight attendant from Houston told me. “I have been a Democrat for 38 years. As of today, I am registering as an independent. Yee Haw!”

Jean B. Grillo, an “over 50″ writer in lower Manhattan, was pretty straightforward: “I am so tired as a white, ultra-liberal, McGovern-voting, civil-rights marching, anti-war fighting highly educated professional woman who totally supports Hillary Clinton to be attacked and vilified as racist and or dumb.”

Shauna Morris, a 44-year-old lawyer from Largo, Fla., said, “I am upper-middle class, and I still can’t stand him — and it has nothing to do with race, believe me.”

“Many of us feel slighted,” said Lynn Eyrich Harvey, 76, from Los Gatos, Calif. “We feel that years of supporting the party is unimportant, that we are to sit down and shut up — but be sure to vote Democratic in November.”

“How Obama’s campaign has treated Hillary will not be forgotten,” Janet Rogers, 55, who runs a Bed and Breakfast in Medina, Ohio. “I will vote for McCain if Hillary is not the nominee. My husband and friends all feel the same way.”

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LOL!

If you look at my postings on this blog, one thing is clear — I do not dislike Hillary as a person. I do dislike her tactics — race-baiting and so forth…

If she had beaten Obama fairly, I would have supported her unconditionally — for Republicans are FILTHY SLIME no human being in their right mind should support.

Hillary was not beaten by Obama with the help of the press for she had “FOX ‘Bigot’ News” plus numerous right-wing radio pundits pontificating to whites “frightened of black men” working for her, while MSNBC and left-wing radio favored Obama.

She just lost, plain and simple — to a better prepared candidate. Her arrogance, disorganization, lack of foresight and sense of entitlement did her in…and here are some more reasons why she lost.

…and by the way, there are millions of females, especially younger ones supporting Obama….why not you?

This prompts me to ask the question: “What the heck is the matter with these women?“…Obama has been a gentleman all through!

It seems to me that some of these women have taken the “I get the house and the children ’syndrome,’” a common divorce settlement in American courts too far!

…or is it Feminism taken too far? Here is something to chew on.

Obama has his work cut out for him — calming down millions of irate, sometimes dumb and racist white women.

It will be a very difficult task after the deranged narcissism exhibited by Ma. Clinton during this just concluded “Silly” primary season!

Ladies, remember to THINK before you cast your ballot in November — Your only other options will be McDUMB, McWarMonger, McSAME, McBUSH, McTHUG, McReTHUGlican and McBOMB….who sincerely believe in the following: click here to read

The just concluded democratic primary was not an episode of “Divorce Court,” rather it was a contest leading to the election of the most “powerful person” in the world — Obama floored the Clinton machine amidst “assassination threats,” blatant racism and rampant mis-information — fired from all directions, and he fully deserves to compete in the grand finale — in November, against ReTHUGlican John McBOMB.

By the way, Hillary gave a very strong speech today, and hopefully she will follow up to help Obama get elected.

If she follows up effectively, all will be forgiven. If she doesn’t and Obama is defeated because of her “White Female” core constituency — she better remember that in 2012(if she decides to run again) she may experience multiple episodes of “Angry Black Females,” “Angry Black Men,” “Angry Left-Wing Liberals” and “Angry Young Males and Females - White & Black” — Obama’s core constituency.

My guns are now aimed squarely at the forehead of McDUMB ….who by the way, and I sincerely believe, is not a bad man, but the thought of victory for Right-Wing ReTHUGlicanism just makes me want to puke!

Popularity: 28% [?]