Susan Llewellyn – June 2, 2008
Stanley Ann Dunham Obana Soetoro (November 29, 1942 - November 7, 1995), known as Ann Dunham and/or Stanley Ann Dunham, was an American anthropologist, left-wing social activist, and the mother of Senator Barack Obama. She was born in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, to Stanley and Madelyn Dunham. Her father was a furniture salesman in downtown Seattle, Washington, and her mother worked for a bank. After a year living in Seattle, her family moved to Mercer Island, Washington, in 1956 so that 13-year old Ann could attend the Mercer Island High School that had just opened. At the school she was on the debate team and graduated in 1960.
Her family moved to Hawaii and Ann attended the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where she studied anthropology. When Ann Dunham arrived in Hawaii, she was a full-fledged radical leftist and practitioner of critical theory. She also began to engage in miscegenation (inter-racial relationships) as part of her attack on society. Susan Blake, one of her friends, has stated she never dated 'the crew-cut white boys'. She had a world view, even as a young girl. It was embracing the different, rather than that ethnocentric thing of shunning the different. That was where her mind took her. In Hawaii she met Barack Obama, Sr. from Kenya in her Russian language class. Barack Obama, Jr. was born August 4, 1961, but was called 'Barry.'
Barack Obama, Sr. left Ann and their son in 1963 to attend Harvard in Boston. Press reports claim Ann Dunham and Barack Obama Sr. were divorced around this time; however, no evidence has yet been discovered to show they were ever married. The senior Obama obtained a masters degree in economics at Harvard and returned to Kenya in 1965 where he obtained a position in the Kenyan government. He was killed in an automobile accident in 1982.
Two years later, when her son was five, Dunham married Lolo Soetoro, an Indonesian oil manager and practicing Muslim whom she met at the university. In 1967 they moved to Jakarta, Indonesia. While in Indonesia Ann got a job at the American embassy teaching English.
Barack's half-sister, Maya Soetoro was born in Indonesia. Ann, Barry, and his sister Maya moved back to Hawaii. Ann Dunham soon returned to Indonesia with Maya but divorced Soetoro in the late 1970s.
Dunham traveled around the world, pursuing a career in rural development that took her to Ghana, India, Thailand, Indonesia, Nepal and Bangladesh. In 1986 Ann Dunham worked on a developmental project in Pakistan. Later that year Ann and her daughter traveled the Silk Road in China. In 1992 she earned a Ph.D in anthropology from the University of Hawaii. Her dissertation, 'Peasant Blacksmithing in Indonesia: Surviving and Thriving Against All Odds,' was 1067 pages long. She worked for the Ford Foundation and promoted Microlending. During this time, while his mother was roaming around the world, Barack Hussein Obama Jr 'Barry' was being raised by his grandmother....the same woman he would later describe as a 'typical white person'. His affectionate nickname, used by grandparents, was 'Bar.'
In 1980, Barry announced to everyone that he would no longer be called Barry, but would only answer to his formal name, also the name of his father, as Barack. He explained that he wanted his identity to mirror that of his paternal lineage.
During Obama's campaign for the 2008 presidential election he has portrayed his mother as just an ordinary conservative girl from Kansas; however in reality she was a radical leftist and cultural Marxist. She lived in the Seattle area, spending her teenage years in Seattle coffee shops with other young radical leftists. Obama claims his mother's family were conservative Methodists or Baptists from Kansas. Not true in any way. His mother's parents were members of a left-wing Unitarian church near Seattle. The church located in Bellevue, Washington was knicknamed 'the little red church,' because of its leftist leanings.
The school Ann attended, Mercer Island High School, was a hotbed of pro-Marxist radical teachers. John Stenhouse, board member, told the House Un-American Activities Subcommittee that he had been a member of staff. Two teachers at this school, Val Foubert and Jim Wichterman, both Frankfurt School style Marxists, taught a critical theory curriculum to students which included; rejection of societal norms, attacks on Christianity, the traditional family, and assigned readings by Karl Marx. The hallway between Foubert's and Wichterman classrooms was sometimes called 'anarchy ally.'
Dunham has been described by her friends as 'a fellow traveler... meaning a communist/socialist sympathizer.
In an interview, Barack Obama referred to his mother as 'the dominant figure in my formative years... The values she taught me continue to be my touchstone when it comes to how I go about the world of politics.'
Before she died Ann Dunham wanted to adopt a mixed-race Korean baby fathered by a Black American stationed in South Korea. Ann Dunham died in Hawaii in 1995 of ovarian cancer and uterine cancer.
On his campaign trail, practically none of Obama's descriptions of his family history, environment, his developmental years, schooling and/or his parents are anywhere near truth or historical, verifiable fact.
Last updated 20/06/2008
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