Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

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  1. It has been widely reported that Barack Obama’s white ancestors owned slaves.

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    Reitwiesner found in 1850 census records from Kentucky that one of Obama’s great-great-great-great grandfathers, George Washington Overall, owned a 15-year-old girl and a 25-year-old man. The same records show one of Obama’s great-great-great-great-great-grandmothers, Mary Duvall, owned two black adult slaves.

    The Baltimore Sun first reported Reitwiesner’s work and asked genealogical experts to review it, but they would not confirm the findings.

    Obama spokesman Bill Burton said the senator’s ancestors “are representative of America.”

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    p>In addition, the owning of slaves by Muslims on the African Continent is alive and well even in this day.  

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    p>Perhaps Barack Obama can use his recent roots in Africa to help end this barbaric practice amongst his people.

    • In addition, the owning of slaves by Muslims on the African Continent is alive and well even in this day.  

      Perhaps Barack Obama can use his recent roots in Africa to help end this barbaric practice amongst his people.

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      p>Didn’t the “barack Obama is a Muslim” meme die over the summer?

    • There are complicated issues all around.  But the information provided above smacks too much of ‘other people do it too’.  There is no mitigating slavery by comparing it to other slavery pasts or other places in the world.  

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      p>The comment above is apologist in nature,… but why?  Why be defensive about slavery rather than just accept it should be condemned.  

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      p>Just a conservative reflex I guess.  Bizarre.  

      • …as poorly worded as it maybe.

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        p>But I do agree that it is bizarre in absence of comment and analysis. Is Eabo, like Mr. Lynne posits, an apologist for past American terror and atrocities like you suggest? That I object to.

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        p>Is Eabo saying because a.) Barack’s ancestors owned slaves and b.) that Muslims in Africa, the home continent of Obama’s father, own slaves, that those facts somehow diminish and trivialize the journey of the Jim Robinson family? That is ridiculous and I certainly object to that.

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        p>It is useful to get the whole context of America’s complex past and how it manifests itself in the DNA of ourselves, our neighbors, and our public figures. But Eabo’s tone and history indicates that he wasn’t offering up these facts for further constructive dialogue.

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        p>Is Eabo’s last comment a real concern for human rights (I doubt it), or is it a priggish attempt to find a pretend flaw in the President-elect? Care to clarify, Eabo?

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        p>And speaking of ending barbaric practices of one’s own people, where is Eabo’s vocal opposition to America’s practice of holding children at the Guantánamo Bay torture prison?  If that doesn’t meat the definition of barbaric, then the word is useless. My personal guess is that Eabo cares equally about the Muslim slave trade in Africa (or Asia) as he does about the children in Gitmo, let alone the innocent adults held there, or at Iraqi prisons, or who were wrongly imprisoned through lawless rendition.**

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        p>barbaric | adjective
        1 savagely cruel; exceedingly brutal: he had carried out barbaric acts in the name of war.
        2 primitive; unsophisticated: the barbaric splendor he found in civilizations since destroyed.
          *uncivilized and uncultured.

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        p>———————-
        **To the “tblade blames America first!” crowd: me pointing out contemporary American atrocities does not excuse or trivialize atrocities committed overseas and it is not to change the subject; to be sure, the slavery Eabo mentions is abhorrent. I bring up the Gitmo Children because I, like Eabo, am not a Muslim and am not a citizen of an African or Arab nation, I am a citizen of the United States. I have no power over what happens elsewhere, but I can exercise a degree of agency and influence thought and actions in my own country.

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        p>My point is that before we get all indignant about what happens abroad, we must first remove the mote/plank from our own eyes and set our own house in order.  After all, how can Satan cast out Satan? America divided against itself and its core principals cannot stand. To further build on these three biblically allusive metaphors, just as Jesus said in Luke that “the Kingdom of God is within you”, I believe that moral authority of human rights must first exist within us, the United States, before we can effectively plant the human rights mustard seed elsewhere and allow it to grow great branches under which all people may lodge and enjoy its shade.  

        • EaBo is a born follower.  Dollars to donuts he borrowed the smear from Free Republic or another Republican opinion source.

          • Here it is in today’s American Thinker.  There’s a long intro explaining that Obama’s name is really Muslim, followed by:

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            Obama could tell us that there is only one way to understand Africa and slavery and that is to understand political Islam.

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            p>The bulk of the article asserts that all African slavery is tied to Islam, then tries to find to something sinister in Barrack dropping “Barry”

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            Now here is the last little twist to Obama’s name. He called himself Barry, an Irish name, for many years in America. He changed what he wanted to be called after he went to Pakistan for a three-week stay. He left America as Barry and returned as Barack.

            Some whites may have bought slaves from Islam for 200 years, but after that, their culture was first to outlaw slavery. So Obama changed his name from a culture that abolished slavery to a name from a culture that has enslaved others for 1400 years and has a highly detailed doctrine of slavery.

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            p>CNSNews has similar dreck.  Feh.

            • I love how the American Thinker writer calls Islam “mythology”, but I doubt he would dare say the same thing about the New Testament.

          • My own.  If other people are using it good. Just me and the good old google.

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            p>I used this to show that we have a complex past and Obama’s relatives live in a complex present.  Laurel’s post screamed to me knee-jerk liberalism.  

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            p>tblade – care to show me where we are holding “children” in Gitmo?  By children do you mean 16 year olds who were trying to kill American Soldiers?  

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            p>Gitmo is a necessary evil to keep America safe.  The vast majority of people held a Gitmo are hard terrorists who would do us harm.  Even the NYT has come around to that albeit a little late.  

            • FIRST: Children at Guantanamo:

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              In a submission to the UN in May, the Pentagon said that no more than eight youths, aged 13 to 17 at time of capture, were held at Guantánamo Bay. But a prisoner list released in 2006 in response to US freedom of information act litigation names 21 inmates under 18 when they arrived. A separate defence department admission brings the total to 22. Testimonies collected by the charity Reprieve, which represents 30 inmates at Guantánamo, indicate the actual number is much higher.

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              p>By higher, a London-based legal rights groups says 60.

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              p>http://www.guardian.co.uk/worl…
              http://www.independent.co.uk/n…

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              The facts of Omar Ahmed Khadr’s case are grim. The shrapnel from the grenade he is accused of throwing ripped through the skull of Sgt. First Class Christopher J. Speer, who was 28 when he died.

              To American military prosecutors, Mr. Khadr is a committed Al Qaeda operative, spy and killer who must be held accountable for killing Sergeant Speer in 2002 and for other bloody acts he committed in Afghanistan.

              But there is one fact that may not fit easily into the government’s portrait of Mr. Khadr: He was 15 at the time.

              His age is at the center of a legal battle that is to begin tomorrow with an arraignment by a military judge at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, of Mr. Khadr, whom a range of legal experts describe as the first child fighter in decades to face war-crimes charges. It is a battle with implications as large as the growing ranks of child fighters around the world.

              Defense lawyers argue that military prosecutors are violating international law by filing charges that date from events that occurred when Mr. Khadr was 15 or younger. Legal concepts that are still evolving, the lawyers say, require that countries treat child fighters as victims of warfare, rather than war criminals.

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              p>http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06…

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              p>SECOND: Gitmo “keeping us safe”?

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              p>There is no good reason to believe that. A current officer in the US military who was a former interrogator said this in the WaPo:

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              I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq. The large majority of suicide bombings in Iraq are still carried out by these foreigners. They are also involved in most of the attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. It’s no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse. The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001. How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me — unless you don’t count American soldiers as Americans.

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              p>While I have no immediate reason to believe what this guy says wholesale, it does echo an opinion I’ve held for a while based on other evidence. As far as the question of whether Gitmo saved more American lives or cost more American lives, I’ll remain agnostic until I see empirical data to make one case or the other. But I can say that no good evidence that Gitmo has kept us safe has been presented and it is known that foreigners do fight and kill in Iraq to retaliate for Gitmo brutality.

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              p>At the least, the WaPo piece illustrates that the “Gitmo helped keep us safe” meme is far from accepted truth. Hell, your man McCain wants to see it shut down and Bush’s Supreme Court ruled in June that the whole premise behind Gitmo was unconstitutional.

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              p>Not to mention, only about 6% of the Gitmo detainees were captured on the battle field. 86% of the detainees were sold to us from allies like Pakistan, who would capture anyone that anyone turned in because they wanted the money.

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              p>I wonder how torturing innocent people, like this German citizen, was “necessary to keep America safe”?

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              According to Kurnaz, he was detained by Pakistani police at age 19 while traveling through the country and transferred to U.S. custody three months after 9/11. During his 60 Minutes interview, Kurnaz claimed that American troops held his head underwater during interrogations, shocked his body with electricity and suspended him by his arms from the ceiling of an aircraft hangar for five days while at a military base in Kandahar, Afghanistan.

              After six weeks in Kandahar, Kurnaz said he was transferred to Guantanamo where he faced beatings from guards, sleep deprivation and periods of solitary confinement. All the while, according to his American lawyer Baher Azmy, both American and German intelligence officials had begun circulating reports indicating Kurnaz’s innocence.

              However, according to Azmy, Kurnaz was held for another three-and-a-half years as U.S. officials kept producing new charges against him. Kurnaz was freed in August 2006, only after a personal plea from the German chancellor to President Bush.

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              p>Watch the 60 minutes piece here.

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              p>If you believe all that is necessary, then you do not believe in true liberty, or at least in liberty for anyone but yourself. That is shameful.

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              p>And as far as saying “The vast majority of people held a Gitmo are hard terrorists who would do us harm” – how the hell would we know? These people have not had public charges brought against them, they have never been told the reason for their detention and neither has the public, and they have most certainly not been tried.  

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              p>Are there bad people in Gitmo that should never see the outside world again? No doubt. But the facts do not bear out that Gitmo kept us safe. And the fact that we’ve held so many 13-14 year old detainees is vile.

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              p>You, Eabo, simply cannot make that case and you absolutely cannot justify the violations of human rights and international law committed at Gitmo.  

            • …knee-jerk liberalism.”  

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              p>That’s your problem.  The post is a comment on the relationship of the incoming first family and slavery.  There is nothing left or right about that commentary or the subject matter.  There is plenty to talk about with regard to racism and the party that perfected the southern strategy, but that’s not what was going on here was it?

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              p>The commentary wasn’t knee-jerk.  Your immediate defensive reaction was knee-jerk.  More to the point, it was an irrationally knee-jerk reaction that smelled of a conservatively framed apologist effort, or ‘others too’-ism,… as if Laurel were blaming conservatives or conservatism for slavery, which of course she didn’t and would be absurd too.

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              p>What does a feeling a need to defend a partisan stance from a non-attack, non-partisan comment reveal… guilty conscience?  

            • Eabo, how is being happy for Michelle, her family, and America by celebrating the journey from property, to property owners, to resident of the White House “knee-jerk liberalism”? SERIOUSLY?

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              p>For crying out loud – how many Americans gave their blood sweat and tears, dedicated their lives’ work, and made the ultimate sacrifice of death to make Michelle Obama a reality? Celebrating that, the abolitionists, and all the civil rights struggles is no more “liberal” then it is “conservative” to celebrate the military heroes who died in service during battle.

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              p>Statements like that, Eabo, make people question your intelligence, or at least sanity. “”Knee-jerk liberalism”? Give me a break. Yeah, being proud that our country has healed sufficiently so as to allow person with slave linage to occupy the White House is just bullshit liberalism. On a liberal blog, no less. Could anything be less historically impressive than the story of Michelle Obama’s lineage?

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              p>[sarcasm ahead]

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              p>I mean slavery was soooo pre-1860 – GET OVER IT ALREADY! Because Republicans always get over the past and never harp on things like being “the party of Lincoln” and keeping alive the ghosts of “the father of the conservative movement” Goldwater and Reagan.

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              p>While we’re at it, why even reflect on Pearl Harbor day? Grandpa: it was 67 years ago. get over it already! Normandy was great and all, but we’re past that now – get over it already!. And every year with this 9/11! OK, I get it, planes crashed into a building slaughtering innocent people. I’m against that. Can we just move on now? I didn’t have anything to do with 9/11. Why do I have to constantly be reminded about it? Come to think of it,  JESUS WAS CRUCIFIED 2000 YEARS AGO! Christians: get over it already! Haven’t you heard? Stuff in the past doesn’t have any effect on modern America! Or at least that’s the impression I get from “knee-jerk conservatives”.  

        • he did smacked of being defensive.  To which I have to wonder, what is he being defensive about?  What did he perceive as an attack that needed to be defended against?  Is it even appropriate to view that content of the post as an attack?  What does EaBo’s viewing it as an attack say about him?

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          p>You’re absolutely right that “It is useful to get the whole context of America’s complex past and how it manifests itself in the DNA of ourselves, our neighbors, and our public figures.”  

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          p>I just think its telling that he even sees this as something he should get defensive about.

          • I’m sure you know this, but of course I agreed with your comment and this one, and, although my comment was a reply to yours, the rhetorical questioning and the DNA concession was directed at Eabo. I fashioned my comment more as a logical extension of what you were saying and less a direct reply to you.

            • I was just commenting that I think the telling point is the defensiveness.  This point was in your comment, but slightly buried in it (among some other very useful stuff).  I thought it might need some emphasis lest it get lost.

    • It was recently reported that Barack Obama’s grandfather was brutally tortured by the British regime in Kenya.

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      p>So it’s not slavery, but it is racist violence, and its only two generations away.  

      • are easy to see in kenya in the form of stepped hillsides.  the british forced their construction, nominally for agriculture.  labor was “donated” by locals who were forced to work by the native “chief” that the british elevated to a position of local dictator.  as in all slave/forced labor  systems, there was cooperation from and financial/power benefit to a few of the locals.

    • You mean the American people, of course, since that’s who Obama’s “people” are.  He was born here (contrary wingnuttery notwithstanding); he barely knew his African father.

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      p>So you must mean the American people, right?  Otherwise, what in the hell are you talking about, EaBo?  Who are “his people”?

        • Any sensible administrator over at RMG would shut this nonsense down pronto.  They only make themselves look ridiculous by continuing to bang this pathetic drum.  Memo to the “Maybe Barack’s not a natural-born citizen” crowd: OBAMA IS GOING TO BE PRESIDENT FOR THE NEXT 4 YEARS.  GET USED TO IT.

          • … one of the challenges has been declined by the Supreme Court.  The sad news is there’s still another case out there:

            Philip J. Berg of Lafayette Hill, Pa., argues that Obama was born in Kenya, not Hawaii as Obama says and the Hawaii secretary of state has confirmed. Berg says Obama also may be a citizen of Indonesia, where he lived as a boy. Federal courts in Pennsylvania have dismissed Berg’s lawsuit.

            • To quote Ed Brayton:

              [Michelle Malkin:]

              They claim that the contemporaneous announcement in a Hawaii newspaper of Obama’s birth is insufficient evidence that he was born there. (Did a fortuneteller place it in the paper knowing he would run for president?) And they accuse anyone who disagrees with them of being part and parcel of the grand plan to install Emperor Obama and usurp the rule of law.

              …

              When Michelle Malkin is the voice of reason talking you down, you are so far out on the lunatic fringe that you’ve built a condo out there.

      • Americans have a dark and ongoing history of traveling to other countries to buy sex with sex slaves.  Therefore I do hope that this is what EaBo is referring to with “his people”, as I think we can all agree that sex slavery needs to end.

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        p>EaBo, how do you propose that we end the participation of Americans in the sex slave trade?  What should be the punishment for the johns/rapists and the “travel” coordinators?

        • I was thinking of White Slavery but neglected to work it in. Not only is it Americans traveling abroad, but Americans importing White slaves into the country.

          • and then there is the baby trade.  no matter the terminology or the reason for the trade (sex, money, power, adoption), a lot of souls are still on the auction block or in a sort of indentured servitude.  much work to be done…

            • Maybe that’s why I didn’t mention it, it’s too deep and complex an issue to capture in one or two sentences.  

              • This is a complex issue.  If he had stopped short of the crap after the blockquote, he would have added an interesting (though not thought through) element to the discussion.  Well, actually, I think he did anyway without meaning to, since I think the responses have been interesting (yes Bob, I see you smiling).

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                p>The Obama family isn’t the only American family with slave owners in their family tree.  Some interesting questions are:

              • who among us has bothered to find out if they are descended from slave owners, traders, or northerners/europeans who profited from slave-produced goods?
              • if that information can be found, what does one do with it and how is it personally or socially meaningful beyond personal curiosity?

    • … there was some way to prevent EaboClipper, and those similarly ideologically aligned, from being the immediate and first respondents.  I read the initial post with the hopeful thought of reading some equally interesting comments beyond the jump.   Instead, and yet again, the thread is hijacked by a first comment that is snarky, ill-conceived and fundamentally disrespectful.  This one has the added vile of being outright racist.   I have no desire to ban anyone, rather would wish that, in the absence of self-control on his part, some mechanism could be attained by which maladroit discontents like EaboClipper might be prevented from immediately hijacking a thread.

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      p>Hair trigger trolls are keeping this blog a few notches below what it ought to be.  

      • i don’t like the fact of eabos comment being first either, but it is never too late to chime in with a more thoughtful comment of your own to sway the balance.  have at it! 🙂

  2. This serves to remind us both that as a country we have made incredible progress and that there is still plenty of work left to do.

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