ANGLOPHOBIA
President Obama has been criticised for his open hostility to BP, preferring to call it ‘British Petroleum’ even though that is no longer the company’s name and that it is a multinational company with a very large number of US shareholders. Obama has preferred to blame BP for the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico even though it was an American firm operating the oil rig involved.
This follows on from his return of a Churchill bust to Britain and, far more importantly, his lack of support for the Falkland Islanders who have recently been subjected to Argentine threats, yet again. The Falkland Islanders are of course of British descent.
It has been alleged that Obama is hostile to Britain due to purported mistreatment of his grandfather in Kenya. Mrs Obama gave an interview in the Daily Mail in which she made a number of allegations. A letter in the Daily Mail today made the following response:
Obama and the myths about British “brutality”
As a district officer/magistrate in Kenya in the Fifties, I must refute some of Mrs Obama’s wild accusations (Mail) and correct some inaccurate statements. No “large tracts of fertile land” were given to white settlers. All land was fairly purchased from the Crown and all of it was above the 6,000ft contour uninhabited by native Africans, hence the name White Highlands. No native African was ever dispossessed of their land, as proved by a 1934 Commission of Inquiry.
Mrs Obama says her husband was arrested and sentenced to two year’s imprisonment in 1949 and received daily beatings by British soldiers. There were no British soldiers in Kenya at the time. The first British soldiers to arrive in Kenya were the Lancashire Fusiliers, drafted into Kenya in 1952 soon after Mau Mau was proscribed in late 1951. Even if Mrs Obama has her dates wrong, I’m sure no member of this fine regiment would agree to enter a prison and inflict daily beatings on its inmates. Kamiti Prison wasn’t a “high-security” prison; it was Nairobi’s local jail, containing petty thieves and other criminals.
Though possible, it’s highly unlikely Mr Obama involved himself with Mau Mau, a purely Kikuyu-speaking organisation, as Mr Obama came from the Luo tribe, no friends of the Kikuyu. Their language was very different; they didn’t circumcise, as did the Kikuyu, and they came from the area close to Lake Victoria. The Kikuyu homeland virtually adjoined Nairobi, several hundred miles to the east.
Mau Mau had no aim of self-rule for Kenya. The Kikuyu tribe’s homeland was, unfortunately, hemmed in by the Aberdare Mountains to the west, Mt Kenya to the north, the Wakamba tribal lands to the east and Nairobi to the south and had no means of expansion for its burgeoning population. They cast envious eyes on the now well-developed, white-owned farms and wanted that land for themselves. They had no intention of sharing it with other native Africans. This is borne out by the fact that most non-Kikuyu speaking Africans joined forces with the British in putting down the organisation and even many Kikuyu were against Mau Mau. In the Lari Massacre, a large Mau Mau gang burned down the village of Lari because the villagers refused to take the Mau Mau oath. As for the “British never do anything for the common good”, how about all the hospitals and schools we established?
This follows on from his return of a Churchill bust to Britain and, far more importantly, his lack of support for the Falkland Islanders who have recently been subjected to Argentine threats, yet again. The Falkland Islanders are of course of British descent.
It has been alleged that Obama is hostile to Britain due to purported mistreatment of his grandfather in Kenya. Mrs Obama gave an interview in the Daily Mail in which she made a number of allegations. A letter in the Daily Mail today made the following response:
Obama and the myths about British “brutality”
As a district officer/magistrate in Kenya in the Fifties, I must refute some of Mrs Obama’s wild accusations (Mail) and correct some inaccurate statements. No “large tracts of fertile land” were given to white settlers. All land was fairly purchased from the Crown and all of it was above the 6,000ft contour uninhabited by native Africans, hence the name White Highlands. No native African was ever dispossessed of their land, as proved by a 1934 Commission of Inquiry.
Mrs Obama says her husband was arrested and sentenced to two year’s imprisonment in 1949 and received daily beatings by British soldiers. There were no British soldiers in Kenya at the time. The first British soldiers to arrive in Kenya were the Lancashire Fusiliers, drafted into Kenya in 1952 soon after Mau Mau was proscribed in late 1951. Even if Mrs Obama has her dates wrong, I’m sure no member of this fine regiment would agree to enter a prison and inflict daily beatings on its inmates. Kamiti Prison wasn’t a “high-security” prison; it was Nairobi’s local jail, containing petty thieves and other criminals.
Though possible, it’s highly unlikely Mr Obama involved himself with Mau Mau, a purely Kikuyu-speaking organisation, as Mr Obama came from the Luo tribe, no friends of the Kikuyu. Their language was very different; they didn’t circumcise, as did the Kikuyu, and they came from the area close to Lake Victoria. The Kikuyu homeland virtually adjoined Nairobi, several hundred miles to the east.
Mau Mau had no aim of self-rule for Kenya. The Kikuyu tribe’s homeland was, unfortunately, hemmed in by the Aberdare Mountains to the west, Mt Kenya to the north, the Wakamba tribal lands to the east and Nairobi to the south and had no means of expansion for its burgeoning population. They cast envious eyes on the now well-developed, white-owned farms and wanted that land for themselves. They had no intention of sharing it with other native Africans. This is borne out by the fact that most non-Kikuyu speaking Africans joined forces with the British in putting down the organisation and even many Kikuyu were against Mau Mau. In the Lari Massacre, a large Mau Mau gang burned down the village of Lari because the villagers refused to take the Mau Mau oath. As for the “British never do anything for the common good”, how about all the hospitals and schools we established?
posted by erc @ 9:54 pm
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