By RASNA WARAH

The campaign by the republican Party to discredit Barack Obama’s credentials as presidential material has shown how low American politicians and campaigners are willing to sink in order to gain votes.

The recent smear campaign is being orchestrated by a Mr Dinesh D’Souza, a conservative American with Indian roots, who has started to solicit donations for a “Compassion Fund” for Obama’s half-brother George, who has inadvertently become a poster child for the Republican Party’s twisted presidential campaign strategy.

Mr D’Souza claims that he started the fund to show the world that Sen Obama is a hypocrite who claims to care for the underprivileged but does nothing for his own poverty-stricken family in Kenya.

Meanwhile, the Western media has been following the 26-year-old college student around and taking his pictures showing “the youngest brother of the coolest politician in the world” (as the UK’s Sunday Times put it) living in a slum in Nairobi.

To all his detractors, I would like to say just one thing: Read Obama’s memoir; Dreams from My Father, and repent.

Nowhere in this deeply insightful and honest book does Obama pretend that his family in Kenya is living in the lap of luxury, nor does he claim to be their saviour.

Sen Obama is not ashamed of his family in Kenya; he understands that the condition of being poor is not a crime, as some Republicans would have us believe.

But it is a result of global and national forces, which he is seeking to change, not just for the sake of young men like George (whose only fault, he writes, was that he was “born on the wrong side of our father’s cloven world”), but for all the world’s underprivileged people, who remain silent and ashamed of who they are because the world tells them they will never be good enough.

During his visit to Kenya when he was in his 20s, Obama tried to understand how the reality of living in Kenya forces people to turn against their own.

For instance, he even finds it in his heart to empathise with the waiter at Nairobi’s New Stanley hotel, who ignored him and his half-sister Auma, choosing instead to serve white tourists.

The waiter, he writes, has “learned that the same people who controlled the land before independence still control the same land, that he still cannot eat in the restaurants or stay in the hotels that the white man has built…He can’t escape the grip of his memories.

And so he straddles two worlds, uncertain in each, always off balance, playing whichever game staves off the bottomless poverty, careful to let his anger vent itself only on those in the same condition.”

When Obama met his father’s side of the family for the first time, he realised that family was more than just a genetic chain, a social construct or an economic unit.

For him, family became a series of concentric circles that get progressively larger to embrace not just one’s immediate family, but entire nations and races.

Unlike Kenyan politicians, who cannot think beyond their village or constituency, Obama dared to think of family as all those, regardless of race, tribe or nation, who are committed to a particular “moral course.”

He sees himself not just as someone who can uplift the lives of his immediate family or the people of the US, but as someone who puts the world on a path where not just his half-brother George will have a chance to improve his life and expect justice, but where everyone on this planet will have a reason to hope for a better world.

In Dreams, Obama talks of the “survivor’s guilt” that many successful black men experience as they leave behind the throngs of jobless black men who cannot dream of securing a well-paid job, let alone aspire to be president of the most powerful nation on earth.

He realised early on his career that gaining individual power for himself was futile because “without power for the group, a group larger even, than an extended family, our success always threatened to leave others behind.

And perhaps it was that fact that left me so unsettled â?? the fact that even here, in Africa, the same maddening patterns held sway; that no-one here could tell me what my blood ties demanded or how those demands could be reconciled with some larger idea of human association.”

There are few books that have the ability to make me cry with joy, but Obama’s left me completely wet in the face. It is a book that transcends race, class and continent by seeking to find the links that unite all of us as human beings.

My plea to the board that decides which books Kenyan school children and university students should read is that they should include Dreams in their list of required reading, for the sake of present and future generations of Kenyans.

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About The Author: Rasna Warah is Editor of Habitat Debate, a UN-HABITAT periodical, based in Nairobi, Kenya. Rasna Warah, a Kenyan of of Indian origin, is also photographer. She was born in Nairobi in 1962, a year before Kenya became independent. Click Here To Read More About Rasna.

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ReTHUGliTOM Dinesh D’Souza is attempting to embarrass Mr Obama by soliciting donations to a “Compassion Fund” for the senator’s half-brother, George Onyango Obama, who lives in Nairobi’s Huruma estate.

By KEVIN J KELLEY in New York and ERIC OLOO in Kisumu, Kenya

More mud is being flung to discredit US Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, even as robbers raided his grandmother’s home in Siaya.

Prominent US conservative Dinesh D’Souza is attempting to embarrass Mr Obama by soliciting donations to a “Compassion Fund” for the senator’s half-brother who lives in Nairobi’s Huruma estate.

The writer, a supporter of Republican candidate John McCain, told the Nation on Tuesday that the fund-raising was meant part to highlight Sen Obama’s “hypocrisy.”

“The Democratic candidate has been “harping on the theme of helping the underprivileged while doing nothing to help his half-brother,” Mr D’Souza said.

George Onyango Obama, a 26-year-old son of Barack Obama Snr, attends college in Nairobi, and has been at the centre of Western media.

On Wednesday, Sen Obama’s relatives in Kenya rubbished the fund, saying it was motivated by malice.

Mzee Abong’o Obama a paternal uncle to the said the fund was not set up “good faith“. Ms Auma Obama, a sister to the senator said those behind the fund had been ill informed by negative publicity in the Western media.

Ms Auma said that the family was never approached with any offer for help and dismissed any such need.

“We wonder where D’souza got the information about family misery. He should have come down to Huruma to see whether George is suffering,” said Ms Auma, adding that D’souza was only after tarnishing the image of the senator.

But D’esouza said money collected for the “George Obama Compassion Fund” will be forwarded to Sen Obama’s presidential campaign on the condition it be used to help the senator’s half-brother.

He wrote in his blog on Tuesday that he had seeded the fund with $1000 of his own. He urged his readers to send contributions to a post office box in California, saying “even a few thousand dollars would completely transform this man’s life.”

“Let’s foster Obama family values, and give a break to a guy who really needs it,” Mr D’Souza added in his appeal for donations. Because the effort has just begun, Mr D’Souza said, he did not know how much might be raised.

He has never spoken with George Obama, Mr D’Souza said, and does not know whether the senator’s half-brother wants help from American conservatives using him to help elect Sen McCain.

Mr D’Souza said he was unaware whether George Obama even wished to move out of Huruma.

George Obama has previously told reporters that he was content with his situation. He also defended his half-brother from charges of being neglectful of his Kenyan relations.

Mr D’Souza said he had not contributed to organisations that strive to improve housing conditions for thousands of Kenyan slum-dwellers because his “philanthropic activities were focused on India,” where he was born.

But in Siaya, the Obama family is demanding police protection after a robbery attempt. The senator’s grandmother, Mama Sarah Obama, said robbers broke the kitchen door and attempted to remove a solar panel from the roof of the main house.

“I only realised something had gone wrong when I went to make breakfast. I did not hear anything as it was raining”.

Mama Sarah said she saw a ladder against the wall at the back of the main house.

Although the incident appeared like an ordinary robbery, the family was not taking chances with security, given that their grandson was gunning for US presidency, she said.

“I don’t understand the motive of the thieves, since nothing had been stolen from the kitchen,” she said, adding that police needed to provide security to the family But these are just people from the village who know every corner of the home,” she added.

A month ago, the family requested for security from the Siaya police station, but their request fell on deaf ears.

District commissioner

On Wednesday, the Siaya police officer Johnston Okasida and district commissioner Boaz Cherutich visited the home and pledged that a patrol base would be erected at Kogello Village.

It also emerged that the State might indeed consider granting the Mama Sara security, but this can only be done after the provincial security committee led by Nyanza PC Paul Olando recommends it to the commissioner of police.

Deputy spokesman of police Charles Owino said depending on the analysis of the security situation on the ground, the local administration and regular police could consider deploying policemen to the home as they awaited the commissioner’s word.

“A local analysis will have to be done to ascertain the risk and recommend to the commissioner who also in consultation with other offices might approve and assign officers to her,” said the commissioner’s spokesman.

The family was also advised to seek the intervention of the divisional police officer in cases of clear and present danger.

Additional reports by Michael Mugwang’a and Dan Obiero

References:

1. One People’s Project — Dinesh D’Souza is soft-spoken genteel man at times (and we say this because listening to him can make you forget how much of an asshole he is), he is also a major conservative player, and as we see with black and other conservatives of color, frank and often pathetic deconstructions of our racial concerns become the order of the day. D’Souza is best known for this, courtesy of a 1995 book called the End of Racism: Principles for a Multiracial Society, which was so controversial, even black conservatives took offense to it.

2. Debunking Dinesh D’Souza’s “The End of Racism”

3. From HellBlazer.com — Dinesh D’Souza’s stinky loaf entitled Two Cheers for Colonialism provides a really great sniff test for this point of view. After reading this article, I had the distinct impression that D’Souza is nothing more than an Uncle Tom. A toady for the ruling class.

4. Dinesh D’Souza’s right-wing postings — | TownHall.com | Aol.com |

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