Unreleased Obama Records: Did Obama Attend Columbia?

Who is Barack Obama?
The Still Unreleased Obama Records
Why Won't the Press Ask?



Medical Records
Occidental College Records
Columbia University Records
Harvard University Records
Birth Records
University of Chicago Records
Khalidi Video

Did Obama Even Attend Columbia?

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Three days before Election Day 2008 and much of Barack Obama's past remains shrouded in secrecy. The same press that can tell you how much Sarah Palin's shoes cost can't seem to muster any curiosity over large gaps in the Obama narrative.

Indeed, that same MSM press is as intent on hiding information as it is publishing it. [Obama, Khalidi Hidden Video: The Evolution of the LA Times Excuses]

The remaining customers of the LA Times have been treated to the spectacle of the Times making news by not reporting news--a familiar position for the paper.

In July, even though John Edwards was caught at the Beverly Hilton visiting his mistress by reporters from the National Enquirer--and it was confirmed a few days later by Fox News--the LA Times instructed its reporters NOT to write about it on their blogs. [John Edwards-Rielle Hunter Love Child: LA Times Censors Reporters on Story]

So, readers of the LA Times are used to being kept in the dark. The Obama-Khalidi video is just the latest instance of this happening.

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ALSO at DBKP: LA TIMES Suppressing the Obama-Khalidi Video

* Obama, Khalidi Hidden Video: The Evolution of the LA Times Excuses
* LA Times Obama-Rashid Khalidi Video: $175,000 Reward Offered for Tape
* Obama-Khalidi Tape: Blogger Obtains Quotes from Hidden Video UPDATED

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The Missing Obama Records:
Did Obama Attend Columbia?



An interesting article appeared yesterday at Unqualified Reservations, "Did Barack Obama Go to Columbia?".

Interesting because it speculates that the reason the Obama campaign has not released his Columbia records is--that Barack Obama didn't really attend Columbia.

Far-fetched?

Perhaps, but not as far-fetched as a candidate getting this far in the political process without the press issuing its normal calls to see records.

My question is: was Barack Obama ever a student at Columbia? Because here's how one scurrilous compendium of racist smears puts it:
Obama graduated from Columbia College in 1983, and after spending a year in New York, moved to Chicago.

Wayne Allyn Root says, "I don't know a single person at Columbia that knows him, and they all know me. I don't have a classmate who ever knew Barack Obama at Columbia. Ever! ... Nobody recalls him. I'm not exaggerating, I'm not kidding.

Questioner: Were you the exact same class?

Root: Class of '83 political science, pre-law Columbia University. You don't get more exact than that. Never met him in my life, don't know anyone who ever met him. At the class reunion, our 20th reunion five years ago, 20th reunion, who was asked to be the speaker of the class? Me. No one ever heard of Barack! Who was he, and five years ago, nobody even knew who he was... the guy who writes the class notes, who's kind of the, as we say in New York, the macha who knows everybody, has yet to find a person, a human who ever met him. Is that not strange? It's very strange...

When asked about his undergraduate training at Columbia University, The New Times states that Obama "declined repeated requests to talk about his New York years, release his Columbia transcript or identify even a single fellow student, co-worker, roommate or friend from those years."

Many of his classmates don't remember Obama. He's not in the yearbook. Columbia couldn't find a picture of him at school.

What can be said with some certainty is that Mr. Obama lived off campus while at Columbia in 1981-83 and made few friends. Fox News contacted some 400 of his classmates and found no one who remembered him.

As the author, Mencius Moldbug, observes: "What is the chance that a budding young politician of undeniable talent and promise spends his junior and senior years at Columbia, and no one remembers him? What is the chance that my right ass cheek, through spontaneous quantum vibration, suddenly transmutes into a hemisphere of polished gold? Don't you feel these probabilities are at least roughly comparable?"

The normal minions of the Obama campaign descended upon the blog, filling the comments section with their usual spammery. But, this article points to one inescapable fact.

If Obama released his Columbia records, such speculation--well-reasoned as it is--simply would not be written. Moldbug could be writing about Obama's re-distributionary policies.

Moldbug asks a few questions that would have been answered already--if Barack Obama had released his Columbia records.

Barack or Barry - note that he is still Barry while at Occidental; at the next place we know he existed, Harvard Law, he has become Barack - spends two years at Columbia. He presumably receives two years worth of college credits. By taking two years worth of college courses.

Furthermore, in every other period of his life, he is known as the gregarious and charismatic young man he obviously was. Nor can his looks be described as ordinary. Nor is even his name ordinary. This man is a future president. And no one remembers him? No one?

The Columbia records are part of a pattern:

• no medical records released to the press;
• no Occidental records released to the press;
• no Harvard University records released to the press;
• no Columbia records released to the press;
• the fight to gain access to the Chicago Annenberg Challenge records;
• no original birth certificate released to the press

There's also another pattern: the press is perfectly satisfied to be kept in the dark. In 2004, CBS News had such a burning desire to see George Bush's service records, they foisted forged documents onto their viewers.

Perhaps that explains why CBS News has exhibited no curiosity to see the unreleased Obama records?

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ALSO at DBKP: The Missing Records of Barack Obama

* Obama Records: Obama Medical, College, University, Other Records Still Hidden
* Obama College, Medical, Birth Records: Who is Barack Obama?
* Obama Medical Records: MSM’s Don’t Ask, Obama’s Don’t Tell Policy
* Obama Records: Obama Campaign Still Refuses to Release Medical, Other Records

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Barack Obama certainly is a candidate for change. Consider:

• Barack Obama is the first candidate to opt out of public financing--after he promised on national TV he would not--since public financing started in 1976. That's quite a change.
  
• Barack Obama has not released his college, university or medical records. Obama has released more books (2) than he has records (0). That's also quite a charge.
  
• Barack Obama showed up in Joe the Plumber's neighborhood; Joe asked Obama a question and Obama's answer reveals an unpleasant fact: Obama wants to "spread (Joe's) wealth around". Obama partisans use state computers to look into Joe's supposedly private records and then leak the info to a lapdog press that publishes and broadcasts it. That's certainly a change.
  
• A Democrat attorney has to file suit in an attempt to see Barack Obama's birth certificate. The suit was dismissed over the issue of "standing". But the Obama legal team fought the suit instead of showing Obama's original birth certificate.

That's a lot of change.

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It would be easy enough to dispel the speculation surrounding the past that shrouds Barack Obama: Obama could release his records from Columbia.

And Occidental College.

And Harvard University.

And his medical records.

And his original birth certificate.

But he won't--and the press won't ask him.

Absent any of these records--which Obama has refused to release--speculation is not only correct, it's to be expected.

Obama has chosen to be a "fill-in-the-blanks" candidate.

Until the Obama records see the light of day, we'll fill in a few of those blanks.

Anyone who disagrees?

They know nothing; they are merely speculating as well.


by Mondo Frazier
image: dbkp file

Venezuela's Military at "High Alert", Embassy Closed - Are They Just Moves to Distract Opponents?

Full Military Mobilization
Embassy with Columbia Closed



History's lessons aren't lost on Hugo Chavez.

Venezuelan strongman and president, Chavez formally ordered the country's armed forces to "high alert" status.

Chavez also ordered the closing of Venezuela's embassy in Colombia and the mobilization of the nation's armed forces to the Columbia border.

At various times when times are tough domestically, authoritarian rulers have distracted domestic opponents and rallied support of wavering populations with external threats--both real and imagined.

And what caused the Venezuelan president to call out the troops?

"We are at a state of alertness. I am putting Venezuela on alert and we will support Ecuador," Chavez told his regular Sunday broadcast Alo Presidente. "Defense minister: move 10 battalions to the Colombia-Venezuela border. Tank battalions, military aircraft: deploy!" he ordered.

So it wasn't trouble at home that caused all this military motion?

Well, whatever it is, it seems that there's been any military challenge from Ciolumbia, a country that is battling narco-lords, guerrillas and problems from the left and right.

But that's Chavez's story and he's sticking to it.

During the same broadcast, Chavez strongly condemned the killing of Luis Edgar Devia, better known by the alias Raul Reyes, who was the de facto foreign minister for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), that nation's largest armed rebel group.

The Colombian army killed Devia in Ecuadorian territory. Ecuador responded with a protest letter sent via diplomatic channels.

Maybe the military's mobilized out of sympathy?

Chavez told the broadcast audience that he had received a phone call from Ecuador's president, Rafael Correa, in which Correa said he had recalled Ecuador's ambassador to Colombia and ordered the mobilization of troops to Ecuador's northern border with Colombia.

As was previously stated, Chavez has been battling opponents of his rollback of Venezuelan democracy. Street demonstrations are common.

But it's nothing a fully-mobilized military can't handle.

by Mondoreb
image: file
Source: Venezuela put military on high alert



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Full Text of Bollinger's Remarks: QUESTIONS

[by Mondoreb]
By Lee Bollinger
via the New York Times

Before Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gave his speech at Columbia University Monday, he was introduced by Columbia President, Lee Bollinger. Bollinger, who came under fire, before the speech for being to "soft"(by many on the Right), now is hearing criticism from the Left: this time for being to "harsh" on Ahmadinejad. Here is the text of his remarks.

Sept. 24, 2007 | NEW YORK -- I would like to begin by thanking dean John Coatsworth and professor Richard Bulliet for their work in organizing this event and for their commitment to the role of the School of International and Public Affairs and its role in training future leaders in world affairs. If today proves anything it will be that there is an enormous amount of work ahead for all of us. This is just one of many events on Iran that will run throughout this academic year, all to help us better understand this critical and complex nation in today's geopolitics.

Before speaking directly to the current president of Iran, I have a few critically important points to emphasize.

First, since 2003, the World Leaders Forum has advanced Columbia's long-standing tradition of serving as a major forum for robust debate, especially on global issues. It should never be thought that merely to listen to ideas we deplore in any way implies our endorsement of those ideas, or the weakness of our resolve to resist those ideas or our naiveté about the very real dangers inherent in such ideas. It is a critical premise of freedom of speech that we do not honor the dishonorable when we open the public forum to their voices. To hold otherwise would make vigorous debate impossible.

Second, to those who believe that this event never should have happened, that it is inappropriate for the university to conduct such an event, I want to say that I understand your perspective and respect it as reasonable. The scope of free speech and academic freedom should itself always be open to further debate. As one of the more famous quotations about free speech goes, it is "an experiment, as all life is an experiment." I want to say, however, as forcefully as I can, that this is the right thing to do and, indeed, it is required by existing norms of free speech, the American university and Columbia itself.

Third, to those among us who experience hurt and pain as a result of this day, I say on behalf of all of us we are sorry and wish to do what we can to alleviate it.

Fourth, to be clear on another matter -- this event has nothing whatsoever to do with any "rights" of the speaker but only with our rights to listen and speak. We do it for ourselves.

We do it in the great tradition of openness that has defined this nation for many decades now. We need to understand the world we live in, neither neglecting its glories nor shrinking from its threats and dangers. It is consistent with the idea that one should know thine enemies, to have the intellectual and emotional courage to confront the mind of evil and to prepare ourselves to act with the right temperament. In the moment, the arguments for free speech will never seem to match the power of the arguments against, but what we must remember is that this is precisely because free speech asks us to exercise extraordinary self-restraint against the very natural but often counterproductive impulses that lead us to retreat from engagement with ideas we dislike and fear. In this lies the genius of the American idea of free speech.

Lastly, in universities, we have a deep and almost single-minded commitment to pursue the truth. We do not have access to the levers of power. We cannot make war or peace. We can only make minds. And to do this we must have the most full freedom of inquiry.

Let me now turn to Mr. Ahmadinejad.

THE BRUTAL CRACKDOWN ON SCHOLARS, JOURNALISTS AND HUMAN RIGHTS ADVOCATES

Over the last two weeks, your government has released Dr. Haleh Esfandiari and Parnaz Axima; and just two days ago Kian Tajbakhsh, a graduate of Columbia with a Ph.D. in urban planning. While our community is relieved to learn of his release on bail, Dr. Tajbakhsh remains in Teheran, under house arrest, and he still does not know whether he will be charged with a crime or allowed to leave the country. Let me say this for the record, I call on the president today to ensure that Kian Tajbaksh will be free to travel out of Iran as he wishes. Let me also report today that we are extending an offer to Dr. Tajbaksh to join our faculty as a visiting professor in urban planning here at his alma mater, in our Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. And we hope he will be able to join us next semester.

The arrest and imprisonment of these Iranian Americans for no good reason is not only unjustified, it runs completely counter to the very values that allow today's speaker to even appear on this campus.

But at least they are alive.

According to Amnesty International, 210 people have been executed in Iran so far this year -- 21 of them on the morning of Sept. 5 alone. This annual total includes at least two children -- further proof, as Human Rights Watch puts it, that Iran leads the world in executing minors.

There is more.

Iran hanged up to 30 people this past July and August during a widely reported suppression of efforts to establish a more open, democratic society in Iran. Many of these executions were carried out in public view, a violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Iran is a party.

These executions and others have coincided with a wider crackdown on student activists and academics accused of trying to foment a so-called "soft revolution." This has included jailing and forced retirements of scholars. As Dr. Esfandiari said in a broadcast interview since her release, she was held in solitary confinement for 105 days because the government "believes that the United States ... is planning a Velvet Revolution" in Iran.

In this very room last year we learned something about Velvet Revolutions from Vaclav Havel. And we will likely hear the same from our World Leaders Forum speaker this evening -- President Michelle Bachelet Jeria of Chile. Both of their extraordinary stories remind us that there are not enough prisons to prevent an entire society that wants its freedom from achieving it.

We at this university have not been shy to protest and challenge the failures of our own government to live by these values; and we won't be shy in criticizing yours.

Let's, then, be clear at the beginning, Mr. President, you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator.

And so I ask you:
Why have women, members of the Baha'i faith, homosexuals and so many of our academic colleagues become targets of persecution in your country?

Why in a letter last week to the secretary general of the U.N. did Akbar Gangi, Iran's leading political dissident, and over 300 public intellectuals, writers and Nobel Laureates express such grave concern that your inflamed dispute with the West is distracting the world's attention from the intolerable conditions your regime has created within Iran? In particular, the use of the Press Law to ban writers for criticizing the ruling system.

Why are you so afraid of Iranian citizens expressing their opinions for change?

In our country, you are interviewed by our press and asked to speak here today. And while my colleague at the Law School Michael Dorf spoke to Radio Free Europe [sic, Voice of America] viewers in Iran a short while ago on the tenets of freedom of speech in this country, I propose going further than that. Let me lead a delegation of students and faculty from Columbia to address your university about free speech, with the same freedom we afford you today? Will you do that?

THE DENIAL OF THE HOLOCAUST

In a December 2005 state television broadcast, you described the Holocaust as a "fabricated" "legend." One year later, you held a two-day conference of Holocaust deniers.

For the illiterate and ignorant, this is dangerous propaganda. When you come to a place like this, this makes you, quite simply, ridiculous. You are either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated.

You should know that Columbia is a world center of Jewish studies and now, in partnership with the YIVO Institute, of Holocaust studies. Since the 1930s, we've provided an intellectual home for countless Holocaust refugees and survivors and their children and grandchildren. The truth is that the Holocaust is the most documented event in human history. Because of this, and for many other reasons, your absurd comments about the "debate" over the Holocaust both defy historical truth and make all of us who continue to fear humanity's capacity for evil shudder at this closure of memory, which is always virtue's first line of defense.

Will you cease this outrage?

THE DESTRUCTION OF ISRAEL

Twelve days ago, you said that the state of Israel "cannot continue its life." This echoed a number of inflammatory statements you have delivered in the last two years, including in October 2005 when you said that Israel should be "wiped off the map."

Columbia has over 800 alumni currently living in Israel. As an institution we have deep ties with our colleagues there. I personally have spoken out in the most forceful terms against proposals to boycott Israeli scholars and universities, saying that such boycotts might as well include Columbia. More than 400 college and university presidents in this country have joined in that statement. My question, then, is: Do you plan on wiping us off the map, too?

FUNDING TERRORISM

According to reports by the Council on Foreign Relations, it's well documented that Iran is a state sponsor of terror that funds such violent groups as the Lebanese Hezbollah, which Iran helped organize in the 1980s, the Palestinian Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

While your predecessor government was instrumental in providing the U.S. with intelligence and base support in its 2001 campaign against the Taliban in Afghanistan, your government is now undermining American troops in Iraq by funding, arming and providing safe transit to insurgent leaders like Muqtada al-Sadr and his forces.

There are a number of reports that also link your government with Syria's efforts to destabalize the fledgling Lebanese government through violence and political assassination.

My question is this: Why do you support well-documented terrorist organizations that continue to strike at peace and democracy in the Middle East, destroying lives and civil society in the region?

PROXY WAR AGAINST U.S. TROOPS IN IRAQ

In a briefing before the National Press Club earlier this month, General David Petraeus reported that arms supplies from Iran, including 240 mm rockets and explosively formed projectiles, are contributing to "a sophistication of attacks that would by no means be possible without Iranian support."

A number of Columbia graduates and current students are among the brave members of our military who are serving or have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. They, like other Americans with sons, daughters, fathers, husbands and wives serving in combat, rightly see your government as the enemy.

Can you tell them and us why Iran is fighting a proxy war in Iraq by arming Shi'a militia targeting and killing U.S. troops?

FINALLY, IRAN'S NUCLEAR PROGRAM AND INTERNATIONAL SANCTIONS

This week the United Nations Security Council is contemplating expanding sanctions for a third time because of your government's refusal to suspend its uranium-enrichment program. You continue to defy this world body by claiming a right to develop peaceful nuclear power, but this hardly withstands scrutiny when you continue to issue military threats to neighbors. Last week, French President Sarkozy made clear his lost patience with your stall tactics; and even Russia and China have shown concern.

Why does your country continue to refuse to adhere to international standards for nuclear weapons verification in defiance of agreements that you have made with the U.N. nuclear agency? And why have you chosen to make the people of your country vulnerable to the effects of international economic sanctions and threaten to engulf the world with nuclear annihilation?

Let me close with this comment. Frankly, and in all candor, Mr. President, I doubt that you will have the intellectual courage to answer these questions. But your avoiding them will in itself be meaningful to us. I do expect you to exhibit the fanatical mind-set that characterizes so much of what you say and do. Fortunately, I am told by experts on your country, that this only further undermines your position in Iran with all the many goodhearted, intelligent citizens there. A year ago, I am reliably told, your preposterous and belligerent statements in this country (as in your meeting at the Council on Foreign Relations) so embarrassed sensible Iranian citizens that this led to your party's defeat in the December mayoral elections. May this do that and more.

I am only a professor, who is also a university president, and today I feel all the weight of the modern civilized world yearning to express the revulsion at what you stand for. I only wish I could do better.

Papercuts analysis here.
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UPDATE: THE ISRAELI COMMANDO RAID ON SYRIAN NUCLEAR SITE

Update by Little Baby Ginn

From the London Times

Israeli commandos seized nuclear material of North Korean origin during a daring raid on a secret military site in Syria before Israel bombed it this month, according to informed sources in Washington and Jerusalem.

The attack was launched with American approval on September 6 after Washington was shown evidence the material was nuclear related, the well-placed sources say.

They confirmed that samples taken from Syria for testing had been identified as North Korean. This raised fears that Syria might have joined North Korea and Iran in seeking to acquire nuclear weapons.

While the world waits for the arrival of the President of Iran on US soil to address the UN General Assembly on Tuesday the news of the daring raid by Israeli commandos seizing nuclear material of North Korean origin in Syria has gone largely unnoticed by the MSM.

Ahmadinejad is supposed to directly address the people of the US in an interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes” airing Sunday night along with appearances at Columbia University, after all, Ahmad is an “official” celeb these days. Prior to his leaving Ahmad was up front and center during the “celebration” of the 27th anniversary of the Iraqi Invasion Of Iran.

TEHRAN, Iran - A day before flying to New York to speak directly to the American people, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad struck a confrontational tone Saturday with a parade of fighter jets and missiles and tough warnings for the United States to stay out of the Mideast.
Three new domestically manufactured warplanes streaked over the capital during the parade marking the 27th anniversary of the Iraqi invasion of Iran, which sparked a 1980-88 war that killed hundreds of thousands of people. The parade also featured the Ghadr missile, which has a range of 1,120 miles, capable of reaching Israel.
Some of the missile trucks were painted with the slogans "Down with the U.S." and "Down with Israel." The parade also featured unmanned aerial surveillance drones, torpedoes, and tanks.
From the Yahoo News

While Columbia University sets up its welcoming committee for Ahmad and rolls out the red carpet the news of the Israeli’s hitting the nuclear materials site in Syria after the commando raid confirmed the Syrians were in cahoots with the North Koreans, it’s been reported several of Kim’s guys were killed, the Really Big Story wasn’t about this it was about Ahmad’s attempts to show sadness by laying a wreath at the site of 9/11.

Why do I mention Ahmad in connection to Syria? Syria is nothing more than an arm of the Iran Revolutionary Guard. There are those here in the US who believe that Iran truly needs nuclear power, that no matter what Ahmad says about how they plan to "eradicate" Israel and the Jews, that he must be essentially a "good guy" who wouldn't, couldn't lie. Could he?

Syria, Iran's puppet, has been literally caught in an effort to pry open Pandora's Box. There was a time when people knew the horrors that would be unleashed upon the world if that box were to ever be opened. Those days seem to be over. Perhaps it is because those who witnessed Hiroshima and Nagasaki are old and no longer viable to the "Progressives" who embrace and believe the likes of Ahmadinejad. The very same "Progressives" who pander to this evil little man.
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