It’s not because the president is black, of course. It’s because those upstanding Americans who cheered as US President Barack Obama’s predecessor rode roughshod over the Constitution in his “war on terror” have found a new enthusiasm for a strict adherence to the US’ supreme law. Specifically, they’re interested in a clause requiring the president to be born a natural-born citizen (although that doesn’t mean to say that they’re not still worried that Obama is secretly Muslim).
A long-brewing conspiracy theory has it that Obama entered this world as a subject of the British crown in east Africa because his father was Kenyan. A Hawaii birth certificate and birth notices in the Honolulu press went some way to dampen the feverish speculation when it emerged during Obama’s election campaign.
But now the issue has returned with a vengeance, driven in part by a high-profile CNN presenter, right-wing talk radio and a video of a woman haranguing her Republican congressman, prompting her supporters to recite the pledge of allegiance. Now, members of Congress are sponsoring a bill to require all future presidential candidates to show their birth certificates.
At the heart of the supposed conspiracy is Obama’s failure to produce a paper version of his birth certificate, because Hawaii digitalized its original records some years ago and now provides a printout of the electronic record. That printout shows he was born in Honolulu in 1961 — a fact that was verified again on Tuesday by the state’s health director, Chiyome Fukino.
He said: “I ... have seen the original vital records maintained on file by the Hawaii state department of health verifying Barack Hussein Obama was born in Hawaii and is a natural-born American citizen.”
But that is not good enough for what has become known as the “Birther Movement,” which would have the world believe that Obama was born in Kenya and smuggled into the country by his American mother, or some variation on that theme.
CNN business news presenter Lou Dobbs, who is openly hostile to the new administration, told viewers that the question of Obama’s place of birth “hasn’t been dealt with.”
Right-wing talk show host Rush Limbaugh told listeners last week that the president “has yet to have to prove that he’s a citizen.”
But the real impact has been a video that has attracted hundreds of thousands of hits on the Web.
It shows Republican Representative Mike Castle addressing a town hall meeting on health care in Delaware last month when a woman suddenly stands up, waving a bunch of papers. She says it is her birth certificate and demands to see the president’s.
“He is not an American citizen, he is a citizen of Kenya,” she shouts to applause from others in the audience.
Castle insists that Obama was indeed born an American. The crowd boos. As he tries to change the subject, the woman demands that everyone recite the pledge of allegiance. The entire hall stands, faces the US flag, with their right hands on hearts and begins reciting.
The incident reflected an undercurrent of suspicion among those who see Obama as un-American because of his politics or race, aside from the theory that he is secretly Muslim because his middle name is Hussein.
Ten members of Congress are sponsoring legislation to force future presidential candidates to find their birth certificates — widely seen as a tacit endorsement of the conspiracy theorists.
The tone of the questioning has raised unease at major networks. Dobbs’ producers have expressed concern over his repeated dwelling on the question of Obama’s origins. The president of MSNBC, Phil Griffin, told the New York Times that the issue was being driven by the fact that the US had elected a black president.
“It’s racist. Just call it for what it is,” he said.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including