Racial Profiling in Contempt of Court case?

ATLANTA (AP) – A judge ordered the arrest of a Muslim woman who refused to take off her head scarf at a court security checkpoint.

The judge ordered Lisa Valentine, 40, to serve 10 days in jail for contempt of court, said police in Douglasville, a city of about 20,000 people on Atlanta's west suburban outskirts.

Valentine's husband, Omar Hall, said his wife was accompanying her nephew to a traffic citation hearing when officials stopped her at the metal detector and told her she would not be allowed in the courtroom with the head scarf, known as a hijab.

Valentine violated a court policy that prohibits people from wearing any headgear in court, police said after the Tuesday arrest.

Hall said Valentine, an insurance underwriter, told the bailiff that she had been in courtrooms before with the scarf on and that removing it would be a religious violation. When she turned to leave and uttered an expletive, Hall said a bailiff handcuffed her and took her before the judge.
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There are so many things wrong in this story, leaving aside the almost certainty that the AP got some of the details wrong, as they invariably do.

First of all, the security requirement is Big Brother gone wrong. If security were truly a concern in the headgear ban, then court attendees would be required to remove everything but their underwear--and items that scare judges can be hidden in underwear more easily than in a headscarf. It's extremely insensitive to the millions of people in the world, men and women, who wouldn't feel dressed without headgear, and an insult to the common sense of most everyone else.

Secondly, it smacks of political correctness. Look at the names: these are evidently Euro-Americans who converted to Islam. Lisa just didn't look like a Muslim, and the guard evidently felt quite free in refusing to accommodate her religion. If so, it just goes to show that racial profiling is basically impossible to eliminate. The White Man has been the target of just such a You-don't-look-like-you-could-possibly-qualify denial of special treatment.

Thirdly, the story is all given from Lisa's side, with the sole admittance that she uttered an expletive at the guard before being cuffed and booked. In my book, cussing out a security guard is not only stupid, it's probably illegal, given the language she likely used. But giving the judge, who never even saw her, power to throw her in jail for it is a denial of due process. She should have been arrested and arraigned. But that's not how it works in our Brave New World in which judges disdain to function in their appointed judiciary role alone, but demand their share of the legislative and executive roles as well.

Well, in this story, political correctness trumped racial profiling, and Lisa got off scot-free:
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The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations urged federal authorities to investigate the incident as well as others in Georgia.

"I just felt stripped of my civil, my human rights," Valentine told The Associated Press on Wednesday from her home, after she said she was unexpectedly released once CAIR got involved. Jail officials declined to say why she was freed.

Municipal Court Judge Keith Rollins said that "it would not be appropriate" for him to comment on the case.
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Would that we all had such friends in high places. Better yet, though, that none of us did.

Jihad in Jos

While most of the world's attention was focused on a small group of Muslim commandos attacking Western interests in Bombay, a slaughter of far greater magnitude was going on in Nigeria. And you're not likely to hear much truth about it from the major news media.

As it happens, The White Man has access to reporters on the scene, and can vouch for the truth of this account of the events surrounding the November 27 elections in Jos, Nigeria:

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CHRISTIAN SOLIDARITY WORLDWIDE


1 December 2008

JOS, NIGERIA – ‘INACCURATE REPORTING’ CAUSES RESENTMENT AMONG CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY
Although tension has eased in Jos, Plateau State, following a weekend of deadly violence, there is increasing resentment in the Christian community at “biased and inaccurate reporting of events” by the international media.

Several international news agencies have reported that the violence was triggered by the results of a local government election. However, sources in Jos point out that voting passed off peacefully and the violence broke out in the early hours of Friday 28 November before electoral results had even been announced. Moreover, instead of targeting political institutions, rioters armed with guns, spears, machetes and other weapons immediately attacked Christian businesses, churches and the homes of clergymen. A local source informed Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW): “As usual they took Jos by surprise, and are now hiding behind election results to launch and excuse their mayhem.”

Of even greater concern are reports that appeared to suggest that Christians had killed 300 Muslims over the weekend, whose bodies were deposited at a central mosque. In reality, the men died while obeying orders from a mosque in the Dilimi area, which was using its loudspeakers to instruct all Muslims to defy the authorities, participate in the “jihad”, loot properties for money and then burn them. Local security sources insist the rioters were shot while defying a night-time curfew and launching fresh attacks, including an unsuccessful large-scale assault on police barracks. Commenting on these deaths the General Secretary of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) Engineer Salifu said: “It was not Christians who killed them; it was their own unfortunate attitude”. He also articulated local concern that such inaccurate reporting could fuel further violence against Christians elsewhere.

While a final Christian death toll has yet to be determined, Engineer Salifu informed CSW that so far more than 16 churches are known to have been burnt down and at least four pastors are confirmed to have been killed, including a pastor from the Church of Christ in Nigeria (COCIN) who was shot dead in the suburb of Congo-Russia, and another from the Evangelical Church of West Africa (ECWA), killed in the Rikkos area. “From all indications, the final death toll will not be less than 100”.

There is also growing evidence that the weekend’s violence may have been planned in advance. So far 500 Muslim rioters have been arrested, some of whom were dressed in fake police and military uniforms. Two hundred are now known to be citizens of the neighbouring Republic of Niger, while 300 are from the northern Nigerian states of Kano, Katsina and Sokoto. Some of the rioters informed police that they arrived in Jos three days prior to the violence. “They had weapons, many weapons” said another source, “they were ready, very ready”.

Commenting on the weekend’s violence, Rt. Rev Dr. Benjamin Kwashi, Anglican Archbishop of Jos told CSW: “This crisis is a wake up call to state and federal authorities to undertake a serious appraisal of all the previous crises in Jos and elsewhere that have affected the church in northern Nigeria, and to ensure that truth is told, truth is maintained and justice is done. We have become a convenient scapegoat and target for those with grievances about events both at home and abroad. The Church in northern Nigeria needs urgent national and international protection. We have suffered this violence for over 20 years and it is now becoming unbearable”.


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Is Calvinism a Religion?

In the previous post we explored the allegation that Calvinism is a cult, and found wanting sufficient evidence that it does now, or ever has, fit into that definition. I don't consider the question yet closed, however, just because historian Ruth A. Tucker has weighed in on the negative side of the question. Although Church History is her specialty, and there's no reason to doubt her sincerity, there are a couple factors bringing down the weight of her testimony, as so far presented:

1) She apparently lacks an adequate proficiency in Latin, so some of the earliest history of Calvinism is probably a closed book to her;
2) She's a Calvinist of some standing (however tenuous) in the Christian Reformed Church, so it's in her best interests not to dig up anything that may turn out to be embarrassing.

So, we leave it to the side in affirmation of the question to make the next move, and proceed to the next question, in which long-forgotten history does not play a crucial role: Is Calvinism a Religion?

A Religion can be defined as a broad system of belief that makes exclusive claims. Religions by nature are quite diverse within themselves, containing a wide variety of denominations. For example, within the Muslim religion we find the main trunks of Sunnism and Shi`aism, and within these the branches respectively called Salafists, Wahabists, Barelwists, and Deobandists; the Imamis, Isma'ilis, Alawites, and Zaidists; along with the Kharijite and Sufic side trunks with their various minor branches. Some of these various denominations would just as soon kill each other as greet each other, but stick any mix of them together in a mosque at prayer time and they will all bow toward Mecca and intone on cue that Mohammad is the prophet of God. They all belong to the same religion, and all recognize each other as fellow Muslims. Should any branch wander so far from the center as to refuse to do so, it is in danger of losing its identity as a Muslim sect and being branded an infidel religion, as happened to the Druze and Baha'i religions, which started out as syncretistic sects of Shi`a Islam.

Initially, Calvinism started out as a sect of the Protestant movement away from Catholicism. As such it had much in common with Lutheranism, which held sway in the Teutonic nations, and Anglicanism, which ruled England. Ironically, it was the only one of the three main branches of Protestantism that didn't result in a denomination named after its founding theology. The Calvinist churches took names such as Reformed and Presbyterian, with much Calvinist influence also being found in Free and Baptist churches. But this influence all worked one way; members of Reformed or Presbyterian churches who found themselves at odds with Calvinism were put out of the church, either by expulsion (as in Castellio) or execution (as in Servetus). Calvin himself supported this practice, even going so far as to say that anyone who did not join with him in denouncing a non-Calvinist as a heretic was a heretic himself.

Calvin's disciples today would not hold to so strict a view as to condemn their opponents to the flames, but their basic belief system, being the same as Calvin's, requires them to admit that anyone who disagrees with them is a heretic and not a true believer in actual Christianity. This can be traced from the very earliest days, when the Geneva Council declared Calvin's Institutes to be "holy doctrine which no man might speak against," down to the present day, when his disciples label their own sectarian doctrines as, not "The Five Points of Calvinism," but "The Five Doctrines of Grace." And everywhere in between, we see the same. In "A History of the New School, and the Questions Involved in the Disruption of the Presbyterian Church in 1838," Calvinist historian Samuel J. Baird contends that “the doctrines, all of them, of the connected system set forth in the [Westminster] Confession, are the very and infallible truth of God, and gospel of salvation.” In other words, the Westminster Confession, that unchangeable and infallible Manifesto of Calvinism, is equated with the truth of the Gospel, which no one can question without being condemned as a heretic. The Bible itself must bow to this supreme authority, or not speak at all.

Such is the conclusion to which any disciple of John Calvin is eventually driven. In their minds, Calvinism is identical with Christian Orthodoxy, and many go so far as to say that no one who rejects their doctrines can be truly saved. By their exclusive claim to truth, and condemnation of all competing views of Scripture and those who hold to them, the disciples of Calvin themselves have defined Calvinism as not just a, but the, only true Religion.

Is Calvinism a Cult?

nicht kliken hehr
I realize that most people reading this article are already considering the possibility of a link between Calvinism and cults. So to save them some time, I'll give the short answer right now: No.

There. So if you're a Calvinist, you can hit the 'back' button right now and resume your search. Because you're not going to like the long answer, which we will get to anon, save yourself some frustration and keep your sub-collar temperature down by reading no further.

Cults are a topic I've studied from time to time over the past several decades. I clearly remember the morning I heard over the radio that hundreds of members of a cult in Guyana had been discovered dead, victims of an apparent mass suicide. I remember being approached by a Hare Krishna devotee at an airport, who asked me to donate to a fund that would help young people get off drugs. And I remember the following the long, drawn-out siege of David Koresh's Mount Carmel commune. Deception and death--along with, it will turn out, divorce--seem to sooner or later characterize all cultic movements.

But the question of cults has really hit home to me in recent years as I have watched a cult forming before my very eyes--perhaps several of them; they are all still in such early stages that it isn't yet possible to definitively describe them as such, but they share with other movements the seeds that generally develop into cultic behavior. So it has become important to me not only to identify the marks of a full-blown cult, but those of one in its infancy.

As a result of my studies, I've identified some stages in the Life Cycle of a Cult. Inherent to these stages are the labels which I've assigned to them, which are as follows:

Small Cult
Big Cult
Evolved Cult
Expired Cult

Every cult starts out small, focused on a single individual who brings his followers a never-ending stream of fresh messages directly from God. The lure of new revelation is a temptation to so many that Small Cults, in the normal progression of things, always grow rapidly. At this point the Leader needs to decide whether to keep his flock small enough to manage, or to share some of his authority with deputies who will hopefully carry on his vision. Should he choose the first option, his cult will eventually expire, but usually not until long after he is removed from the scene. Should he choose the second, his cult will go on to evolve into something so far removed from the original structure that even the word 'cult' will no longer adequately describe it as a sociological phenomenon. It will have become a religion.

This latter scenario turned out to be more of the case with the cult allegedly founded by Jean Chauvin. . .

Before closing out this post, I was surprised to find several websites already exist calling Calvinism a cult. So I see I will have to defend my opinions rather carefully.

[added on 11/24] This subject is really deserving of a full thesis, something of a far different nature than a blog post. The tremendous volume this post has generated--second only to my Obama chronology--drives me to finish it. But caution holds me back. I will continue to develop the theme as I have ample material to work with. . .

[added on 12/2] A reader has requested that we define our terms carefully. Very well; I call forth as witness noted Calvinist historian Ruth A. Tucker, in her book Another Gospel:
"A 'cult' is a religious group that has a 'prophet-founder' called of God to give a special message not found in the Bible itself, often apocalyptic in nature and often set forth in 'inspired' writings. . . . the style of leadership is authoritarian and there is frequently an exclusivistic outlook, supported by a legalistic lifestyle and persecution mentality."

See Dr. Tucker's response in the comment section below.

UPDATE MARCH 2012
Here's a rather useful dictionary definition, culled from another blog:

Cult n.

1. A religion or religious sect generally considered to be extremist or false, with its followers often living in an unconventional manner under the guidance of an authoritarian, charismatic leader.
2. The followers of such a religion or sect.
3. A system or community of religious worship and ritual.
4. The formal means of expressing religious reverence; religious ceremony and ritual.
5. A usually nonscientific method or regimen claimed by its originator to have exclusive or exceptional power in curing a particular disease.
6. 1. Obsessive, especially faddish, devotion to or veneration for a person, principle, or thing.
   2. The object of such devotion.
   3. An exclusive group of persons sharing an esoteric, usually artistic or intellectual interest.

Unintended Consequences and the Marriage Amendment--2004 and 2008

In 2004, as we recall, the Presidential Election was a close one. In the end, it came down to Ohio's 20 electoral votes, which George W. Bush won by a margin of 118,775 popular votes out of over 5.6 million cast. According to the New York Times, this is how it happened:

"Proposed state constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage increased the turnout of socially conservative voters in many of the 11 states where the measures appeared on the ballot on Tuesday, political analysts say, providing crucial assistance to Republican candidates including President Bush in Ohio and Senator Jim Bunning in Kentucky.

"The amendments, which define marriage as between only a man and a woman, passed overwhelmingly in all 11 states, clearly receiving support from Democrats and independents as well as Republicans. Only in Oregon and Michigan did the amendment receive less than 60 percent of the vote.

"But the ballot measures also appear to have acted like magnets for thousands of socially conservative voters in rural and suburban communities who might not otherwise have voted, even in this heated campaign, political analysts said. And in tight races, those voters - who historically have leaned heavily Republican - may have tipped the balance.

"In Ohio, for instance, political analysts credit the ballot measure with increasing turnout in Republican bastions in the south and west, while also pushing swing voters in the Appalachian region of the southeast toward Mr. Bush. The president's extra-strong showing in those areas compensated for an extraordinarily large Democratic turnout in Cleveland and in Columbus, propelling him to a 136,000-vote victory." --Nov. 4, 2004

I might add that Ohio's 60,000 Amish voters, who aren't even supposed to vote in state or national elections, were given special dispensation by their bishops to go to the polls in support of the 2004 marriage amendment. Once they got in the curtained-off voting booths, though, who knows what may have happened. Certain it is that Bush campaigned pretty hard in predominately Amish areas of the South and West, and there was plenty of parking for buggies at his rallies.

Fast forward to 2008. Again voter turnout was significant, but this time the effect worked in reverse. There were 'marriage initiatives' on the ballot in only three states this time. In Arizona, Florida and California various forms of constitutional amendments were voted on where marriage was defined as 'between a man and a woman'.

In each case, the amendments passed. In California and Florida these measures got about 52% of the vote--the same margin by which Barack Hussein Obama carried the popular vote nationwide.

In Arizona, the amendment needed 60% of the vote to pass--and it got it.

When pollsters analyzed the data they found something very interesting.

On average, whites voted AGAINST the measures 51% to 49%. This margin is significant because Whites make up the overwhelming majority both of the voting base and of actual voters. No Democratic candidate since 1964 has carried a majority of the White vote, but the pro-homosexual marriage lobby carried it this time.

Here is where it gets interesting. Blacks voted FOR the amendments 79% to 21%. There were record turnouts in the Black community, due to Senator Obama running for President--and they voted for him 96% to 4%. Pollsters agree the Black vote was THE factor in the victories, both of Obama and the marriage amendments. Without the large Black turnout voting overwhelmingly for the amendments that define marriage as between a man and a woman, these amendments would have failed.

Let that sink in for a moment.

It was Black voters who put Obama in the White House, against the wishes of the White majority. But those same Black Voters passed the marriage amendments in their states, against the wishes of the White majority. The Democrats took the White House because they fielded a Black candidate, but the pro-marriage amendment supporters also won because there was a Black candidate on the same ballot.

Black voters overwhelmingly chose Obama the person, but overwhelmingly rejected his liberal platform. Unfortunately for them, they won't be able to choose one over the other once he gets a chance to nominate Supreme Court Justices who will make the amendment by referendum process obsolete.

And by the way--even with Obama carrying Ohio this time, he got fewer votes there than John Kerry got in 2004. Despite record turnout nationwide, almost half a million FEWER people voted in Ohio this election. The NY Times was right--people voted AGAINST Kerry because they were already there to vote FOR a definition of marriage. If the marriage amendment hadn't been on the Ohio ballot in 2004, no one would have had the option of voting for a Black President in 2008.

What I look forward to in an Obama Presidency

The White Man has voted for the President of the United States only twice. That is to say, two different men have attained (or retained) the presidency, having done so in part due to a single vote cast in their favor by The White Man.

The White Man has cast a losing vote for President once. That is to say, his choice for the Presidency (who had not been his first choice, but rather the lesser of two evils) was not the choice of enough other voting Americans to allow him to win the election.

The White Man has voted 'Present' in one Presidential Election. That is to say, he voted, but left the line for "President" blank, not being able to hold his nose tightly enough to take responsibility for electing the lesser of two evils. As it turned out, that would have been a losing vote anyway.

The White Man, no longer a registered voter, has therefore abstained from all subsequent Presidential Elections.

So I write on the topic of this November's Election from the standpoint of an outside, dispassionate observer.

Sixteen years ago, I looked forward to a Clinton Presidency. I hoped that a Democrat President would be able to push through some badly-needed bills that had been held up by a Democrat Congress. Whether he was successful or not may yet remain to be seen.

A year ago, I again looked forward to a Clinton Presidency and the return of Bill Clinton to the White House, this time as First Gentleman. But things have changed, and a Clinton Presidency is no longer in the cards for 2009. Barack Obama, scion of the Chicago Political Machine, has pulled his usual trick of procedurally eliminating his more popular opponent, and we face the likelihood of an Obama Presidency for the next eight years.

We are, in fact, in a very similar place as we were sixteen years ago. After several years of prosperity, the economy is slumping. "Inflation" is a problem. Taxes are high. The Democrat Candidate promises to stimulate the economy, tame "inflation," and raise taxes. I foresaw that Clinton would in fact increase inflation, and bought gold as a hedge against that likelihood. As it turned out, the tax decreases of the early 80's finally kicked in about the time Bush Sr. left office, bringing in a wave of prosperity fueled by the increased productivity of the Computer Age. Bush's and Clinton's tax increases are what have brought us to where we are today, fueled by the housing bubble brought on by the stupidity of sub-prime mortgages backed by the full currency-printing power of the US Government.

So what do I look forward to in an Obama Presidency?

For one, I look to see the printing presses shift into an even higher gear, with the demise of the penny coming by the end of a second Obama administration. I kind of doubt, though, that we will ever see the $1000 bill again; cash transactions will be more and more restricted.

I expect the federal deficit to double.

I expect, by the end the first Obama administration, to see Social Security Numbers made mandatory for medical treatment.

I expect to see more raids on religious groups, with all the children taken away from their parents regardless of any evidence of abuse.

I expect to see all churches lose more tax exemptions, or more churches lose all.

I expect riots should Obama fail by a thin margin to be re-elected.

I expect some well-placed Americans to be held hostage in a rogue state for years.

What good do I expect to come out of an Obama Presidency?

One thing: I hope that the Multi-level marketers who have hitched their hopes to the Republican Party will receive their comeuppance.

I hope, but unlike my other predictions, I hardly expect.

A bit of wit and wisdom

"If you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed." --Mark Twain

"I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle." --Winston Churchill

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul." -- George Bernard Shaw

"A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money." --G. Gordon Liddy

"Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner" --James Bovard, Civil Libertarian (1994)

"Foreign aid might be defined as a transfer of money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries." -- Douglas Casey, Classmate of Bill Clinton at Georgetown University

"Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else." --Frederic Bastiat, French Economist (1801-1850)

"Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it." --Ronald Reagan (1986)

"If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free!" --P. J. O’Rourke

"In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other." --Voltaire (1764)

"Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you!" --Pericles (430 B.C.)

"No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session." --Mark Twain

"Talk is cheap...except when Congress does it." --Unknown

"The government is like a baby's alimentary canal, with a hearty appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other." --Ronald Reagan

"The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery." --Winston Churchill

"The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools." --Herbert Spencer, English Philosopher (1820-1903)

"There is no distinctly Native American criminal class... save Congress." --Mark Twain

"What this country needs are more unemployed politicians." --Edward Langley, Artist (1928-1995)

"A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have." --Thomas Jefferson

"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies." --Groucho Marx; apparently a misquote of:

"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy." --Earnest Benn

A chilling twist in the case of Caylee Anthony

Final Edition
Note subsequent to Final Edition: Caylee's skull has been found. The Prosecution can continue their case with the needed evidence now in hand. Ironically, they could have had it long before, had they followed up on the lead that eventually led to this discovery. . .

Casey Anthony has been indicted for murdering her daughter Caylee.
That's right, the charges against her include first degree murder.
Now, what's so unusual about that is that the authorities are not even sure that Caylee is dead. Traditionally, for a murder charge to stick, you basically have to have a dead body. Otherwise you end up with the bizarre possibility of being convicted of murdering someone who subsequently turns up alive. But apparently the testimony of a forensic specialists will be crucial to establishing the presence of a dead human--specifically Caylee--in Casey's car trunk. To do so they will have to introduce into evidence the results of DNA tests on the undigested intestinal contents of maggots presumed to have spent time in the aforementioned car trunk.
But fat maggots don't prove that anyone died. The only incontrovertible evidence of death is the discovery of a portion of someone's body too big to live without--although I would also accept chewed-on bones in the wreckage of a plane that flew into the side of a mountain, regardless of their size.

I for one find this new development chilling. Has Caylee even been declared legally dead? I doubt it, as the one being charged with killing her would be the very next of kin who is expected to request a legal declaration.

I find other aspects of this case confusing. Cindy Anthony, Casey's mother, is the one who originally called the police to report Caylee missing. This was reportedly after Casey had herself gone missing for a month, only to return without her daughter. There are all sorts of legal questions to untangle here. Did Cindy have the legal authority to declare missing a child over whom she apparently had no custody (despite the fact that they lived in the same house)? By the mere fact of having reached her 18th birthday, did Casey have the right to disappear from her parents' home for a month? What intrinsic feminine reproductive rights would allow Casey to terminate her unwanted pregnancy a couple-three years later than the Supreme Court currently allows? Should a single woman living with her parents be allowed to have custody of her child just by virtue of having attained a certain age? And how does this relate to Todd and Sarah Palin's daughter Bristol, who plans to give birth as a single woman living in their home?

Chronology of the Resurrection

Some ramblings that will eventually be headed with the words Final Edition

I've been working on the Passion Week Chronology again. Here's a site that agrees with the astronomically established Crucifixion Date of Friday, April 3, 33 (Sorry, Wednesday-crucifixion advocates), but has a novel twist on the Chronology of the Resurrection: that Jesus did not leave "the belly of the earth" to ascend to his Father (John 20:17) until the following Monday, post a few selected appearances in his resurrected body.

Looking through a harmony of Passion Week, I keep running into the notion (having had a bit of experience with the legal system myself) that one night isn't near long enough to fit in all these events:
The Last Supper
The walk to the Garden
Agony in the Garden
Arrest
Appearance before Annas
Hearing before Caiaphas
Hearing(s) before the Sanhedrin
Hearing before Herod
Hearing(s) before Pilate

Interestingly enough, the pseudopigraphal guide to early church life, The Didascalia Apostolorum, says the following about the timeline leading up to the Crucifixion:
* * *
For when we had eaten the passover on the third day of the week at even, we went forth to the Mount of Olives; and in the night they seized our Lord Jesus. And the next day, which was the fourth of the week, He remained in ward in the house of Caiaphas the high priest. And on the same day the chiefs of the people were assembled and took counsel against Him. And on the next day again, which was the fifth of the week, they brought Him to Pilate the governor. And He remained again in ward with Pilate the night after the fifth day of the week. But when it drew on (towards day) on the Friday, [[182]] they accused him much [Mk 15.3] before Pilate; and they could show nothing that was true, but gave false witness against Him. And they asked Him of Pilate to be put to death; and they crucified Him on the same Friday.

He suffered, then, at the sixth hour on Friday. And these hours wherein our Lord was crucified were reckoned a day. And afterwards, again, there was darkness for three hours; and it was reckoned a night. And again, from the ninth hour until evening, three hours, (reckoned) a day. And afterwards again, (there was) the night of the Sabbath of the Passion. -- But in the Gospel of Matthew it is thus written: At even on the sabbath, when the first day of the week drew on, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the tomb. And there was a great earthquake: for an angel of the Lord came down and rolled away the stone [Mt 28.1-2]. -- And again (there was) the day of the Sabbath; and then three hours of the night after the Sabbath, wherein our Lord slept. And that was fulfilled which He said: The Son of man must pass three days and three nights in the heart of the earth [Mt 12.40], as it is written in the Gospel. And again it is written in David: Behold, thou hast set my days in measure [Ps 38.6 LXX]. Now because those days and nights came short, it was so written. [[183]]

In the night, therefore, when the first day of the week drew on, He appeared to Mary Magdalene and to Mary (p. 89) the daughter of James [Mt 28.1, 9 (cf. Jn 20.1, 14; Mk 16.1)]; and in the morning of the first day of the week He went in to (the house of) Levi [cf. Gosp. of Peter 14]; and then He appeared also to us ourselves. . . . on the fourth of the week they began to destroy their souls, and apprehended Me. -- For the night after the third of the week belongs to the fourth of the week, as it is written: There was evening and there was morning, one day [Gen 1.5]. The evening therefore belongs to the following day: for on the third of the week at even I ate My Pascha with you, and in the night they apprehended Me.

Yehoshua bar Yosef was born in the year Zero

"Genealogists," my alleged ancestor Mohammad ibn Abdullah is said to have quipped, "are all liars." That didn't stop him, though, from retaining one to trace his ancestry back to Ibrahim ibn Tarah, and thence to Adam. What makes genealogists so inclined to stretch the truth, however, is not so much a lack of ancestral names, but an overabundance of them. Dozens of different cultures have maintained genealogical lines going back to the dawn of history. Since this predates the Dispersion of Tongues, it means that the earliest ancestors have many different names by which their various lines of descent remember them, resulting in a tendency to sometimes inflate one's genealogy with duplicate names.

Now, what does all this have to do with Jesus being born in the year Zero? Well, in addition to genealogists being liars, so are historians. History not being all that lucrative of an independent profession, historians tend to work for either the church or the state. Given that these two seldom play independent roles in establishing the facts of history, the two are for most historical purposes indistinguishable. Occasionally, though, a heretic will arise and point out that the officially sanctioned historians got it wrong. Although he may be shouted down for the rest of his (sometimes considerably shortened) lifetime, his version of history might just gain widespread acceptance--although it may eventually take a regime change to make it official.

One such case, joining history with both genealogy and biochemistry, was the long campaign of historical author Fawn Brodie to convince the historical establishment (of which she was not a bona fide member, never having majored in history) that Thomas Jefferson was the father, and his wife the aunt, of all the children born to their slave Sally Hemings. To do so, she had to resort to the chronology of respected Pulitzer-prize-winning historian Dumas Malone--and eventually, with the help of that new tool for forensic genealogy--DNA testing--won over all but the most ardent protectors of Jefferson's disputed honor, his adjunct descendants in the Euro-American line.

Another case has now come to my attention. John P. Pratt has proposed nothing more radical than that Dionysius Exiguus, a monk from Russia who died about 544, actually knew what he was talking about when he placed the conception of Jesus at the time of the spring equinox in the year he then called (European science not yet being familiar with the concept of Zero) 1 AD. This calculation, which set a date for Christmas which has never since ceased to be in effect, has nonetheless been ridiculed by some who have made the incredulous suggestion that Brother Denny "perhaps ... had never read the gospel account of the birth of Jesus" in researching for his momentous proclamation.

Ah well, another look at the evidence--by a published astronomer, no less--has now shown Brother Denny to have been right after all, at least to the significance of the spring equinox. Turns out that, in addition to failing to factor in the existence of a year named Zero, his assuming to have determined the date of Jesus' conception was a bit of a stretch; it was actually, though, within the Twelve Days of Christmas from the actual date of his birth.
Here's the article, in which John Pratt calculates Jesus to have been born the week of April 6, 0 AD. His public ministry began 29½ years later, and just about the time he was to have celebrated his 33rd birthday, the eclipsed full moon rose blood-red over the hill upon which he was crucified.

An Inconvenient Truth

George W. Bush


Guess which one The White Man would rather live in!


Al Gore Jr.

Thank you, Ray Boltz, for giving to the Lord

I was stunned, as many were, to read in The Washington Blade that Ray Boltz has embraced the homosecksual lifestyle. In fact, it was such a shock that I can't even process my thoughts enough to put them all down right now. But I do have a couple of things to say.

First of all, I really like some of Ray's songs. "Thank You for Giving to the Lord" brings a tear to my eye almost every time I hear it. "Watch the Lamb" never fails to move me. I heard both of those songs numerous times before I ever learned who wrote them. It was actually through a mutual friend that I was introduced to Ray Boltz as the composer. So finding out what happened to Ray Boltz doesn't change how I feel about the songs he wrote. Thank You, Ray Boltz, for giving those songs to the Lord. They are His now, and nothing you do can ever take them back.

Secondly--and this is a general observation--Ray and Carol were married for over 30 years. Ray now states--and Carol does not seem to be denying it--that he was, at the core of his being, a homosecksual the whole time. Now, I'm quite aware of the generally accepted view, which Ray now holds, that a person is born either gay or straight, and that nothing in his upbringing--even being raised by heterosecksual or homosecksual parents--can change that. Given that so many long-married men are famously coming out as lifelong homosecksuals, it raises the question: Where are the long-time homosecksuals coming out as having been suppressed heterosecksual all along? Or why, for that matter, don't any of them ever admit to having been bisecksual all along? What indeed is a bisecksual, other than a suppressed homosecksual on its way out of the closet?

Another question that arises from this observation: We are told that from 1 to 10 percent of all babies are born homosecksuals. Given that well over 100 children have been raised by homosecksual parents, there should by now be quite a number of homosecksual teens who grew up in a homosecksual household. Where are they, and how many of them will admit after 30 years that they were really suppressed heterosecksual all along?

Well, Ray says he's gay, and I don't dispute it. But his coming out of the closet seems to raise more questions than it answers.

At this point, I'm just asking them. I may be another 30 years getting the answers.

Postscript: My decency filter was making this page, and all added comments, inaccessible, so I went back in and respelled the offensive words.
This should address the problem; however, I decided not to approve comments on this post that use any of the forbidden words.

Was Eric Rudolph the Olympic Park Bomber?

Final Edition
Many of my readers will remember the 1996 Olympic Bombing in Atlanta. Suspicion immediately focused, of all things, on the security guard who discovered the bomb. This is somewhat akin to blaming the Pearl Harbor attack on the radar operator who reported the incoming bombers. With such an approach, it's no wonder it took prosecutors nine years to put the case to rest. . .

Law enforcement officials have a hard time. They are authorized--yea, encouraged--to deceive, intimidate, and deprive suspects in hopes of tricking them into making a confession. What they aren't allowed to do is simply to ask nicely for one (Miranda vs. Arizona). This is unfortunate, as it only encourages the suspect to say what he thinks they want to hear, rather than giving them what they won't give him--the truth. And it encourages a suspect who would have been likely to give them the truth, had he been asked, to refuse to say anything. Such was the case with Richard Jewell, who was eager to help solve the crime he had been the first to discover--until he realized the he was being deceitfully manipulated into confessing the crime himself.

The FBI suspected that Richard fit the "lone bomber" profile. This was preposterous, for the following reasons:

1) The bomb detonated at Centennial Park was a masterpiece of design. Somebody whose career has consisted of writing parking tickets is not going to have any idea of how to make a highly technical bomb. Somebody, on the other hand, who spent time in the airborne infantry would. Strike one for clueless investigators: Richard Jewell had no military experience.

1) Richard Jewell's background and training was that of a security guard and a police officer. This is not the sort of person who commits mass murder on the sly. Police officers are paid well, and like to keep their jobs and pension plans. Police officers are trained to prevent casualties and investigate explosions. Contrast this to a soldier: soldiers are focused on maximizing causalities, and don't get any training on how explosions are investigated--just on how they are carried out. Strike two for clueless investigators: again, Richard Jewell had NO MILITARY TRAINING!

Now, have you ever wondered why they call those outposts in Afghanistan "Terrorist TRAINING Camps?" Could it be because terrorists, in order to be effective, first need to be TRAINED?

One begins to suspect that none of the FBI agents assigned to the case had ever humped a pack on a 25-mile hike.

Given their cluelessness in the initial stages of the investigation, and the way they focused on entrapping Richard Jewell into confessing rather than investigating the crime itself, I was not impressed, years later, when authorities linked Eric Rudolph to the Olympic bombing.

Like accusing one of the investigators of the crime, it just didn't make sense. Rudolph was a crusader; his focus in recent years had been on targeting abortionists and their henchmen. The Olympics had nothing whatsoever to do with such a one-man crusade, and it just seemed par for the course for the FBI to jump at the chance of pinning the bombing on a suspect who wasn't available to defend himself.

Imagine my surprise, then, when, after his eventual apprehension by a rookie small-town cop on the lookout for teenage vandals, Eric Rudolph confessed to the Olympic Park Bombing. I still wasn't convinced; knowing the tactics used so far in this case, I expected this was probably a coerced confession. After all, he was already implicated in one murder, and given the public mood in the South at the time, would never see freedom again anyway. They actually execute abortionist assassins down there!

But Eric Rudolph, now safely ensconced at the country's only Super-Max facility, has written in detail as to why he set the bomb at Centennial Park. It was, as he tells it, actually just a trial run in his one-man crusade against abortionist and their fellow-travelers. Not wanting to hurt any innocent bystanders--then or later--he called in the bomb threat an hour before it was set to go off, so as to ensure that only investigators would be around when it blew. But alas, he hadn't counted on the dismal incompetence of the Atlanta 911 dispatch system; the first dispatcher hung up on him, and the second time he called the dispatcher failed to catch the location of the bomb. So it was that Richard Jewell discovered the bomb a full 10 minutes before the authorities finally received word that it was about to go off. Instead of killing the investigating policemen he expected, Eric Rudolph's first bomb injured 100 innocent bystanders, one of whom subsequently died. Hearing of the explosion on the news, a frustrated Rudolph set off the rest of his stock of bombs in a deserted area and fled the scene

Having cut short his career as a terrorist, Eric Rudolph narrowed his focus, culminating in attacks only on abortion providers and their protectors: first on policemen investigating an explosion, and, when that failed to produce the right kind of casualties, directly on the abortion clinic security guard investigating the remotely detonated explosive device that then took his life.

By all definitions, Eric Rudolph was a terrorist in 1996. His attack on Centennial Park was only remotely related to his military objective of eliminating elective abortion in the US. But the shock of seeing his attack succeed instantly cured him of his terrorist tendencies. The bombing in which he was eventually implicated for first degree murder was not a work of terrorism, but a targeted assassination.

For his involvement in the Olympic Park Bombing, it is accurate to refer to Eric Rudolph as a terrorist. But to use that term to describe his later career is inaccurate and misleading. He is, and always has been throughout his post-military career, a crusader: one who attempts, through military means, to drive the infidels from the holy land. America is his holy land; rampant fornicators are his infidels.

Yes, Eric Rudolph was the Olympic Park Bomber. But this act of terrorism was an aberration in his long career as a crusader, and the term should not be attached to him as descriptive of his standard operating procedure. Never again did he place a bomb where it would be likely to injure an innocent bystander.

That, by the way, is why those who insist on keeping the term "American terrorist" in his Wikipedia biography are wrong.

And it is because of them that I wrote this article. I hope they read it.

Islamic Holidays for Protestant Union Members?

Hi Folks.

I've been away from my blog a bit too long. I didn't want to bury my Obama posts under other stuff as long as I was busy updating them, but meanwhile they've been getting lots of hits from search engines, so I might as well leave them as they are for now and just keep going. [Ed. note: Most additions have now been made.]

It's a mystery to me why my blog, which still draws less than a dozen hits most days, is so consistently in the top 5 hits on Google searches. I wonder if it's because I installed Google ads? But I'm not getting enough hits from them to even pay the handling fee to cash in. Anyway, with all my faithful readers out there, I want to keep this blog as current as I can, within the constraints of actually having something interesting to write.

Today's article feeds off a news item that a Tyson Chicken plant in Shelbyville, Tenessee has signed a union contract giving all its workers an Islamic holiday off instead of Labor Day this year. My mind goes so many different ways in reaction to this news that I'm not even yet sure how I'll write in response to it.

Here are the basic facts (please correct me if I got anything wrong):

1. Tyson Foods is one of the biggest suppliers of chicken to the retail and restaurant markets in the United States, with most of its plants in the South.
2. A poultry processing plant in Shelbyville, TN is owned by Tyson Foods.
3. The 1200 workers at the Shelbyville plant are members of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, which just signed a five-year contract with Tyson Foods.
4. One stipulation of this contract is the replacement of Labor Day with October First (at least in 2008) as a paid holiday.
5. While Eid al Fitr is a floating holiday based on the sighting of the crescent moon ending Ramadan, it is expected to fall this year reasonably close to Oct. 1.
6. Labor Day is a federal holiday, as well as a holiday in the State of Tennessee. Eid al-Fitr is only a holiday in countries with at least a regional Muslim majority.
7. It is not illegal or even uncommon to require workers to work on federal or state holidays as a condition in their employment agreements.
8. Most of the local union members are Somali Muslims, but hundreds of others are not. It's reasonable that probably most of them would identify as Baptists or Protestants.
9. Union members also get 7 other days off each year, some of which are traditional Catholic Holidays or their weekday equivalents. Others are governmentally decreed holidays.
10. Tyson Foods has a long history of offending customers with their corporate policies: giving millions to the Clintons, hiring illegal immigrants, etc.
11. Prior customer protest boycotts of Tyson have not been particularly effective.
12. The White Man, a former customer of Tyson, has not knowingly purchased Tyson chicken products at retail or wholesale since some time in the twentieth century.

Okay, so we now know about the situation, and my prejudices. But what is my take on it?

1. Holidays are just what their name implies: Holy Days. It seems kind of dumb to celebrate Labor Day by not laboring; so why not replace it with a truly Holy Day? But how ironic that Labor Day, which was first established by the instigation of the Union Movement, should be first eliminated by the same. The Union giveth, and the Union taketh away!

2. I'm not all that thrilled by the hundreds of union members who aren't Muslim having to work when most of their friends have the day off. But it is the nature of unions that the majority of the membership imposes its will on the minority of the workforce. The solution is not more or less holidays, but an end to the union shop method of workforce coercion. If these 500 non-muslims weren't union members, they wouldn't be coerced, along with management, to abide by the terms of the contract.

3. There are interesting implications to establishing a lunar holiday, which has no precedent in European or American culture. Communities with a majority population with roots in Israel, China, and Southeast Asia have long celebrated lunar holidays, usually with local concessions given to school attendance and employment. Should this trend continue, the ultimate expression will be the right to every union to vote in a Lunar Sabbath scheme by which the company has to shut down on a different day of the week every month. Obviously this country is not ready to be that consistent in allowing every community its own holidays. In fact, Sunday is still the only constitutionally protected holiday, unless one were to include July 2nd (or 4th) by implication.

While I don't begrudge non-union members the right to work for Tyson, or union members to set their own contract terms, provided that membership in the union is purely voluntary, I still see something sinister about this whole situation. Seven hundred immigrants have been able to overturn established policy with a company that has thumbed its nose for years at the protests of myriads of its customers. Why?

And why are there so many thousands of Somalis living in Shelbyville, Tennessee?

I refer my readers back to my earlier post on Islamic Influence.

Update on July 8, 2009
Sharia at Swift/026793.php

Update on August 3, 2012
It turns out that the Somalis found employment at Tyson through a government program.

An Obama Chronology

Note: These dates have all been compiled from online sources.

ETA: All information on Lolo Soetoro's time in Hawaii was corrected in September 2012 following the release of his INS file.

c. 1500. Sudanese tribal chieftain Isingoma Labongo Rukidi conquers the coastal area of Lake Victoria and establishes the Luo kingdom in what is now Kenya and Tanzania.

c. 1895. Nyaoke, one of the four wives of wealthy Luo tribesman Obama, gives birth to her fifth son, Onyango. Raised a pagan, he flirts with Christianity as a young adult.

1896-1914. The British build a railway from the Indian Ocean to Lake Victoria, gradually bringing the Luo kingdom under their influence and eventual control.

c. 1914. Onyango enlists in the British army as Private Johnson, serving in Europe and India before settling in Zanzibar, a Muslim sultanate just coming under the influence of the British, who had replaced Germany as the regional superpower.

October 3, 1915. Ralph Waldo Emerson Dunham marries Ruth Lucille Armour in Wichita, Kansas. Their first son, Ralph Emerson Dunham, is born 11 months later.
March 23, 1918. Ruth Dunham gives birth to another son, Stanley Armour Dunham.

c. 1920's. Onyango coverts to Islam, takes the Islamic name Hussein, & marries Helima.

October 26, 1922. Madelyn Lee Payne is born to Kansans Rolla and Leola Payne.

November 25, 1926. Ruth Dunham is reported dead the morning after Thanksgiving; the local newspaper reports it as a case of inadvertent poisoning, but Barack Obama II later writes that it was self-inflicted. Ralph moves back with his parents and their two sons Ralph and Stanley are raised by Ruth's parents.

c. 1930. It becomes apparent that Helima is infertile. Hussein moves back to his ancestral homeland of Siaya, Nyanza Province, and marries Akumu, who takes the Muslim name Habiba. They settle in the village of Alego, which was notorious for its witchcraft. The area was nicknamed “Alego tat yien” (Alego, the roof of medicine”)

late June 1934 OR 1936 Hussein and Habiba's new son is given the Muslim name Barack Hussein.

Jan 2, 1935. Lolo Martodihardjo Soetoro born in Bandung, West Java, Indonesia.

May 5, 1940. Furniture salesman Stanley A. Dunham (age 22) marries high school senior Madelyn Lee Payne (age 17) in Wichita, KS, against the wishes of Madelyn's strict Methodist parents. Madelyn stays in school long enough to graduate.

c. March 1942. Madelyn becomes pregnant.

June 18, 1942. Stanley joins the Army. He is eventually stationed at Ft. Leavenworth in Kansas. Madelyn takes a job at a Boeing assembly plant in Wichita.

November 29, 1942. Stanley, hoping for a boy, names his newborn daughter Stanley A. Dunham. She will go by her middle name, Ann, all her life--but will later take on the last name of her Muslim husband. The Dunhams never have any other children.

c. 1945. Habiba Akumu Obama divorces Hussein Onyango Obama. Hussein's third wife Sarah, a Christian, raises Barack Hussein Obama.

c. 1946. Stanley finishes his army service and gets back into the furniture business.*

c. 1946. Lolo Soetoro's father and brother are killed in the Indonesian War of Independence.

1950's. The Dunhams move from KS to CA (where Madelyn [and Stanley*] attend Berkeley) to TX to WA. Stanley sells furniture and Madelyn works in restaurants. [ETA: in 1953 Ann is a student at a Catholic school in Beirut.*]

c. 1954. Barack Hussein Obama (age 18 or 20) marries Kezia before starting college.

1956. The Dunhams relocate* from Seattle to Mercer Island. Madelyn becomes an escrow officer in Bellevue and Ann attends Mercer Island High, where subjects taught include Marxism, taught by Jim Wichterman, and human sexuality a la Margaret Mead, taught by Val Foubert. John Stenhouse, the Chairman of the School Board, is a member of the Communist Party and president of the Dunham's Unitarian Church.

c. 1957. Barack and Kezia have their first son, whom they name Abongo. He goes by "Roy."

April 29, 1959 Barack receives a British Colonial Passport #84764, good for 10 years.

July 29, 1959 Barack receives an American F-1 student visa stamp in his British passport and is issued Alien Registration Number A11-983-537.

August 9, 1959. Barack Obama arrives in NYC on a BOAC flight from London. He left his pregnant wife behind to enroll in the University of Hawaii on an $1000 scholarship from the African American Institute. He also gets $190 from the University (raised to $200 the following year). The Territory of Hawaii was in the final process of joining the Union.

c. June 1960. Ann Dunham graduates from high school in Mercer Island, WA.

July 19, 1960. Apparently (all records of this have been deleted) Ann receives a 5-year passport in anticipation of traveling abroad while in college. It would have been issued in her maiden name, of course.

July 23, 1960. Barack is fingerprinted by the INS after requesting a work permit. His address is listed as 2036 Round Top Terrace, Honolulu.

August-September 1960 Barack claims living expenses of $2040 a year, so he gets permission to work for Dole Pineapple to cover the shortfall. He reports wages that "varied at $1.33 per hour."

September 26, 1960. The Dunham family moves to Hawaii, where Ann enrolls in the University. Madelyn finds work as a teller for the Bank of Hawaii.

c. September 1960. Ann, an anthropology major, meets Barack, an economics major, in a Russian class at the University of Hawaii. He pronounces his name with the accent on the first syllable, "Bear-ick." At that time the study of Russian was inextricably mixed up with communism. They hang around in the same group of anti-war students; she is the only female in it, and the only teenager. Barack is known for "his playboy ways" and is admonished to control them. He promises to try.

early to mid November 1960. UH freshman Ann Dunham (17) reportedly becomes pregnant by Barack Obama (24-26). Apparently after she refuses to abort their child, he agrees to marry her. At the time, he claims to have been divorced from Kezia.

c. December 1960. Ann drops out of UH after only one semester.

Feb 2, 1961. Barack reportedly marries Ann--an illegal marriage, even in progressive Hawaii. No records of their secret wedding on Maui are available.

March 3, 1961. In an application to extend his visa, Barack lists his address as 1704 Punahou St Apt #15. He leaves the lines for Spouse and Children blank.

c. May 1961 Barack is out of school for the summer; a good time to get home to visit his wife and children, including Auma, the daughter he's never met.

August 4, 1961. The date listed for the birth of Barack Hussein Obama II in Honolulu, Hawaii, on his Certificate of Live Birth (also on his Kenyan birth certificate). Later, his Hawaiian birth records are sealed by the Governor (in 2011, an extensively altered electronic copy is released by President Obama). No witness has come forward to testify having attended his birth in HI, but several of his Kenyan relatives insist that he was born in Mombasa, Kenya.

August 8, 1961. On this day, Barack's student visa was set to run out. Barack Hussein Obama II's Certificate of Live Birth is filed, showing parents as Stanley Ann and Barack Hussein Obama. They call their son "Barry," with the accent on the first syllable.

August 13, 1961. The Honolulu Advertiser lists among its birth announcements "Mr. and Mrs. Barack H. Obama, 6085 Kalanianaole Hwy, son, Aug. 4." Actually, Barack still maintains his own residence, and Ann lives with her parents at the above address. They are never to share a home.

September 6, 1961 Barack is living at 1482 Alancastre St, just outside the University of Hawaii. Ann has already returned to Washington, living at 516 13th Ave East, Apt #2 in Seattle. Barack receives permission to finish up his last year at UH. Ann, however, takes Barry to visit friends on Mercer Island and enrolls as an extension student at the University of Washington, completing 20 credits by the next summer.

June 1962. Barack graduates from UH with a B.A. in Mathematics and Economics and moves to Baltimore for the summer as a guest of the Koinonia Foundation. On his application to extend his student visa, he admits to being married but lists "Roy Obama" as his only son--no address given. He leaves the "Spouse" section blank.

Spring 1962. Moving back to Honolulu, Ann and her son move in with the Dunhams and enroll on welfare. Ann continues her studies at UH.

September 1962. Barack moves to Cambridge, MA to take a scholarship from Harvard for an MA in economics. He is not yet legally separated from Ann, who remains in Hawaii. Barack would be required to show an additional $1500 a year income in order for her to accompany him to Harvard. His scholarships total $3500 a year, only $300 over the required minimum for a single student. Meanwhile, he is known around Harvard as a womanizer.


December 12, 1963. Kenya assumes independence, led by a coalition of Kikuyu and Luo politicians, representing the first and second largest of over thirty ethnic groups in the highly divided country. On an INS extension request dated June 16, 1963, Barack had, for the first time, claimed Kenyan citizenship--and leaves the lines for "marital status" blank.

1963-64. At UH, Ann meets another student, Lolo Soetoro from Indonesia, there on a 2-year visa (A14 128 294) that expire June 14. Ann files for divorce in Hawaii. Barack signs the papers in Cambridge.

January 1964. Ann files for divorce. Barack's Kenyan girlfriend flies from New York to London for an abortion. The American Unitarian-Universalist Committee, which disapproved the flight, revokes their sponsorship of her and she is not permitted back in the US.

March 8, 1964. Barack and Ann's marriage is dissolved by order of Honolulu judge Samuel P. King Sr., for reasons of "grievous marital suffering inflicted Libellant by Libelee."

April 1964. Barack's request for another annual extension to his student visa is received by the INS. Their uncertainty over how many wives he has results in an exchange of correspondence with Harvard. Harvard, tired of his womanizing, agrees to expel him as a full-time student so the INS can deport him, but waits until after he has taken his final exams to tell him, "in case he might get upset and use that as an excuse for not passing." Barack appeals unsuccessfully.

June 15, 1964. Lolo Soetoro applies for a one-year extension on his student visa, in order to get a year's experience working at $2 an hour for Park Associates (his prospective job upon return to Indonesia with a masters in geology will only pay $2 to $10 a month). 

July 6, 1964. Having been deported by the INS when Harvard refused to sponsor his continuation in the US to work on his PhD in Economics, Barack returns to Kenya from NYC, his American girlfriend Ruth Nidesand following him. Barack goes on to marry her. They have two sons in Kenya before she divorces him to marry a Tanzanian. Barack goes on to marry at least 2 more Kenyan women.


December 1964. Lolo is laid off from his job at Park, but gets another one at Hawaii-Pacific Engineers.

1965 — Barack writes a paper titled "Problems Facing Our Socialism," published in the East Africa Journal, harshly criticizing the administration of then-President Jomo Kenyatta for moving the Third World country of Kenya away from socialism toward capitalism. At some point he is briefly jailed for his political views.

March 15, 1965. Ann marries Lolo Soetoro in Honolulu. Lolo Soetoro writes to Senator Fong to receive permission to overstay his extended visa, citing hardship on his wife if he is required to return to Indonesia without her.

June 4, 1965. Much to the frustration of Dr. Zumwinkle, Lolo Soetoro's visa extension is approved for another year by someone in INS acting outside of official channels.

July 1965. The Indonesian government recalls its foreign students, sending a cable to the UH demanding Lolo's return. Lolo appeals for another year to save the money to move Ann to Indonesia with him.

July 19, 1965. Ann receives US Passport F77788. The  application has been deleted from her passport file, apparently to conceal the fact that it was actually a passport renewal application. At any rate, it is not issued to Ann Soetoro, so she was not yet using her new married name.
June 1965-June 1966. Lolo continues to resist deportation, claiming that it would harm Ann's mental health to be left behind were he deported 'early.' Meanwhile, Ann is living with her parents--as she did during her marriage to Barack.

November 16, 1965. The Registrar at Harvard University advises Barack, now living in Nairobi, to finish up his PhD thesis in Kenya before trying to return to the US.

1966. Lolo is finally deported on June 20, after overstaying his 2-year visa by over 2 years, leaving Ann and Barack back in Honolulu, where she pays Barack's sitter $50 a month. Lolo, making $10 a month, lives with relative in Jakarta. He continues to spend the remainder of the year appealing for permission to return to the US before the mandatory 2-year absence. Ann applies for a job at the American embassy in Jakarta.

August 1966. Ann completes coursework from UH but does not have enough credits to graduate. She anticipates receiving a BA in Anthropology by the next February. Barack starts kindergarten at Noelani Elementary School in an upscale neighborhood of Honolulu.

February 28, 1967. Final rejection by INS of Lolo Soetoro's appeal. Ann is still short a few credits, but hopes to graduate in June (she doesn't).

June 29, 1967. Ann, still listed as living with her parents at 2234 University Ave, applies to amend her passport F77788 to the name Stanley Ann Soetoro. Her signature on this application isn't dated, so it's unsure if this was to replace a lost passport, or if she really changed her name twice while married to Lolo.

August 6, 1967. Ann finally accumulates the credits to graduate from UH.

August 21, 1967. INS official orders investigation into the citizenship and parenthood of Barack Obama II. It is concluded that he "is an American citizen by virtue of his birth in Honolulu Hawaii Aug. 4, 1961" and a stepson of Lolo Soetoro by virtue of his mother's marriage thereto. The INS copy of Barack's birth certificate has been withheld by the Department of Homeland Security on the grounds that its release "would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy."

October 1967. Ann and Barack travel to Indonesia to join her husband who has been there without her for a year. Ann finally gets a teaching job at the US embassy. The Soetoros settle on 16 Kyai Haji Ramli Tengah Street, in a poor Muslim neighborhood in Jakarta. Barry Soetoro enrolls in first grade at Franciscus Assisi Primary School, where he is listed as an Indonesian Muslim--in effect, having been adopted by his stepfather through marriage (Under Indonesian law, children could not inherit their mothers' citizenship, regardless of where they were born). Neighborhood children tease him for being a Catholic. He learns Indonesian at school; his mother tutors him in English at home.

August 1, 1968. Lolo's American residency is finally granted, expiring July 31, 1973.

August 13, 1968. Ann gets an amended passport in the name of Stanley Ann Dunham Soetoro. She claims no plans to return to the US, based on her marriage to an Indonesian citizen--despite the fact that he has just that month been granted US residency! She lists Stanley Armour Dunham, Bank of Hawaii, as her contact person. She also starts to list as a dependent Barack Hussein Obama Soebarkah, but crosses the name out. Apparently this is when Barack gets his own US passport, which will expire in August 1973.

1968. Barack and Kezia have another son, Abo. Lolo Soetoro completes the mandatory 2-year absence and is eligible to return and reside in the US. But the Soetoros remain in Indonesia, even after Lolo receives residency status.

c. 1969. Barry writes in a third-grade essay that he wants to be President when he grows up.

1970. Madelyn Dunham becomes a vice president of her bank in Honolulu. Lolo gets a lucrative job with the Union Oil Company, and they move to 22 Taman Amir Hamzah Street in the upscale Matraman Dalam neighborhood, replacing their motorcycle with a car.

1970. Barack and Kezia have another son, Bernard.

July 18, 1970. Ann's passport expires. Apparently she doesn't bother to renew it. Barack spends the summer in Honolulu with his grandparents.

August 15, 1970. A daughter, Maya, is born to Lolo and Ann Soetoro. She will go on to marry Konrad Ng, a Bhuddist, and will give their daughter an Arabic name.

1970. Lolo's family moves to an upscale neighborhood on Dempo Street, and Barry Soetoro joins the 4th grade at the Besuki Primary School. He studies Indonesian and Arabic. His report card indicates that he makes faces while memorizing the Quran.

October 21, 1971. Ann, who supposedly couldn't bear the separation if her husband were deported to Indonesia, leaves him behind, taking Barry and Maya back to Hawaii with her. She has to pay a $25 fee to re-enter the country on an expired passport (she doesn't pay the bill for another month). Barry takes the last name Obama again. Lolo continues to hold US residency during this 5-year period.

December 1971. Barack Obama I swings through HI for a month--the only visit with him that Barry will remember.

Jan 4, 1972. Ann finally gets around to renewing her passport that expired 18 months earlier. She lists her permanent residence as DJL Taman Matraman Barat 22 Pav, Djakarta, Indonesia, to which she states an intent to return to within 3-5 years. The new passport C 030097 is approved that very day.

1972. Ann enrolls in UH to receive a master's degree in the anthropology of Indonesia.

1973.  Lolo Soetoro files for American income tax as a non-resident, thus disqualifying him for reentry to the US as the spouse of an American citizen. His residency permit is not renewed for this reason. Apparently this is the year Barack's passport is renewed until 1978.

May 21, 1974. Ann Soetoro, still married to Lolo whom she hasn't seen for several years, forwards a reentry permit application to him so he can return to Hawaii. He returns it, apologising for incorrectly (but factually) claiming to be a nonresident and promises to pay any back taxes due to his fraudulent filing. He never receives the extension.

September 1975. Ann returns briefly to Indonesia with Maya to research her PhD in anthropology. Barry stays in Honolulu with his grandparents while attending the prestigious and prohibitively expensive Punahou private school on scholarship. He plays on the varsity basketball team, where he is known as "Barry O'Bomber."

June 2, 1976. Ann is issued a new passport Z2433100 in Jakarta. Her former passport had expired 6 months earlier.

1977. Barry gets a job at a pizza shop, where he would supposedly have been required to furnish a Social Security number. No public record of this number exists.

1978. Apparently this is the year Barack's passport expires. He may have renewed it until 1983.

1979. Barry finishes his studies at Punahou School, where weekly chapel attendance is mandatory. His entry in the yearbook tributes "The Choom Gang," a maijuana smoking club to which he belonged, and Ray, their supplier. He also mentions his grandparents, but none of his parents.

1979-1981. Barry, now calling himself Barack, studies at Occidental College in Los Angeles. Evidence that he applied and received funding as a foreign student from Indonesia has been sealed by court order.

June 15, 1980 (approved August 28). Ann files for a no-fault, no-support divorce from Lolo in Hawaii. Barack is listed on the divorce decree as an adult student dependent of the marriage, with Ann retaining custody of the minor Maya. Ann's maiden name is restored, but she eventually changes her surname to Sutoro.
July 30, 1980. The date on Barry's Selective Service Registration form. He gives his address as 1617 Beretania Apt 1008, Honolulu, (808) 949-2317 (his grandmother's address and phone number at the time this record was made public in September 2008). Funny thing is--according to the postmark, he mailed it the day before signing it. The currently available copy of his Registration bears the last 4 digits of a Social Security Number issued in Connecticut to a man born in 1890, and later turns up on the deed to his Chicago home as belonging to Barack Soetoro.

Nov 5, 1980. The divorce becomes final.

January 1981- December 1982. Ann is under contract to the Ford Foundation as Program Officer.

April 28, 1981. Stanley Ann Dunham, living in Jakarta, is issued passport 3037221 before the expiration of her previous passport.

c. 1981. Ann Sutoro spends time developing a microfinance program in Pakistan as a consultant of the Asian Development Bank for Pakistan Agricultural Development Bank’s Agricultural Development Program. Her son Barack goes there to visit her. According to a later lawsuit, both used their Indonesian passports to travel to a country on the US State Department no-travel list. On the same trip, Barack travels to Kenya to meet his paternal relatives.

1981-1983. Barack Jr. finishes college at Columbia University in New York, majoring in political science with a specialization in international relations. His further education is financed by a Saudi billionaire. He has a Pakistani roommate. It is probably about the time his passport expires that he begins to use multiple identities, his currently available (forged) SS form now having been back-dated with a SSN he didn't have at the time.

1982. Political outcast Barack Hussein Obama I, a heavy drinker, dies as the result of an incident of drunken driving while engaged to his fourth wife Jael, with whom he has already had a child, George Obama. His son Barack does not attend the funeral.

1983-1985. Barack works in New York for the Business International Corporation and the New York Public Interest Research Group (Ralph Nader's organization).

December 18, 1983 Ann Sutoro graduates from UH with an M.A. in anthropology.

1984. Ann returns to Hawaii with 14 year old Maya.

1985. Barack first meets his older brother Abongo, now a fundamentalist Muslim known as Malik, in Washington DC, where Malik frequently travels on business.

March 1986. Stanley Ann Dunham, living at 1512 Spreckles St. in Honolulu, orders an expedited passport for travel to the Philippines.

1985-1988. Barack works in Chicago as a community organizer for Saul Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation and Wade Rathke's ACORN, where he begins attending Trinity United Church of Christ in order to be able to answer the frequent question, "Where do you go to church?" He goes on to become director of Alinsky's Developing Communities Project, which receives funding from the Woods Fund of Chicago.

1987. Lolo Soetoro, a heavy drinker, dies in Indonesia of liver disease.

1987-1992. Ann Dunham, now styling herself as Ann Sutoro, returns to Indonesia to build a microfinance network.


mid-1988. Barack travels to Kenya to visit his father's family.

fall 1988. Barack enrolls in Harvard Law School.

1989. Barack wins the competition for editor of The Harvard Law Review as a first-year student. The next year he is elected "the first black president" of the Law Review. His bio claims he was born in Kenya.

1989. Barack works as a summer intern at Sidley and Austin in Chicago, where Princeton- and Harvard-educated lawyer Michelle Robinson is his supervisor, and where retired domestic terrorist Bernadine Dohrn had been employed.

1990. Barack works as a summer intern at Hopkins and Sutter in Chicago.

1991. Barack graduates with a J.D. and gets a fellowship at the University of Chicago Law School to write a book on race relations. He and Michelle get engaged.

c. 1991. Barack fills out an application to join the Illinois Bar, on which he affirms that he has never been known by any other name than Barack Hussein Obama.

Feb 8, 1992. Stanley Armour Dunham dies and is buried in Hawaii.

August 9, 1992. Ann graduates from UH with a PhD in anthropology on blacksmithing in Indonesia.

October 3, 1992. Barack and Michelle are married at Trinity United Church of Christ.

1992. Barack is the founding director of Public Allies, and serves on the board of numerous organizations. He directs Illinois Project Vote, a drive to get Carol Moseley Braun elected as the US's first black senator. Her term is so tainted with scandal (she is implicated in corruption of the Nigerian government) that she declines to run for re-election in 1998, leaving the Senate without any black senator.

1992-2004. Barack teaches constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School.

1993-2002. Barack works for Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland, becoming inactive in 2002 when his law license expires. He also serves on the board of directors of the Woods Fund of Chicago, where William Ayers serves as chairman. Obama and Ayers approve funding for the Arab-American Action Network, an anti-Israel group created by mutual friend Rashid Khalidia.

1994. In one of his few courtroom appearances, Barack represents ACORN in a lawsuit to force Citibank to grant sub-prime mortgages to minorities--a policy that will eventually result in a worldwide economic meltdown that continues into his presidency.

1994. Barack moves to Bali to finish writing Dreams of My Father with help from his mother, whom he doesn't realize is dying. Ann, diagnosed with ovarian cancer, moves back in with her widowed mother.

November 7, 1995. Ann dies in Hawaii. Barack misses being at her deathbed but attends the memorial, in which her ashes are scattered in the Pacific.

1995-2001. Barack serves on the board of the Annenberg Challenge Grant, along with retired domestic terrorist and leading education theorist Bill Ayers, who receives 50 million dollars through the Grant. The Annenberg Challenge Grant was funded by the same organization that now funds FactCheck.org. Financial grants approved included $175,000 and $482,662 to groups founded by Ayers and run by former communist party leader Mike Klonsky.

1996. Barack Obama launches his first run for the Illinois Senate in the home of William Ayers and his wife Bernadine Dohrn — who hosted meetings to introduce Obama to their neighbors. He runs for what he expected to be an open seat, but when the incumbent, (whom he had been supporting as a candidate for a US House seat) decides to run for re-election anyway, he hires a political hit man to get her and the other three primary candidates removed from the ballot so he can run unopposed. He receives support for the general election from "The Democratic Socialists of America’s New Party,” a national organization based in Chicago of which he is a voting member.

1998. Barack is re-elected to the Illinois Senate. His daughter Malia Ann Obama is born.

2000. Barack runs for the US House of Representatives, overwhelmingly losing in the Democratic Primary.

2001. Natasha is born to Barack and Michelle Obama.

2002. Barack is re-elected to the Illinois Senate.

2003. Barack pushes through a 4.5 million earmark to build a cultural center for the Munta Dance Theater. His wife Michelle is on their board.

December 2003. Maya Kasandra Soetoro, a teacher at UH's charter high school, marries Konrad Ng, a Canadian of Chinese-Malaysian origin and a professor at the University of Hawaii. Half-brother Barack Obama gives the opening speech at the secular ceremony.

2004. Zeituni Onyango, Barack H. Obama I's half-sister, applies for asylum in the US. Her request is denied on the grounds that she could safely remain in Kenya. She defies the government's order to leave the country, and moves into government housing in Boston. She was mentioned in Dreams of My Father.

2004. Barack wins the Democratic Primary for an open Senate seat once held by Carol Moseley-Braun. Political hit man David Axelrod fights for a public release of all records pertaining to the divorce of the Republican candidate, Jack Ryan. Against the wishes of both parties to the divorce, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Robert Schnider orders the records opened. Allegations contained in these files paint Ryan as a sexual pervert, and he drops out of the race 3 months before the election.

summer 2004. Barack gives the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention and goes on to win election to the US Senate in a historic landslide against carpetbagger Alan Keyes in the first ever black-on-black Senate race. He pledges not to run for national office in 2008.

2006. Senator Obama travels to Kenya to get tested for AIDS along with his wife. While there, he interferes with the Presidential elections, supporting his cousin Raila Odinga against incumbent Kikuyu Mwai Kibaki.

February 2007. Barack Obama announces his candidacy for President of the United States on the 2008 Democrat ticket, and his resolve to quit smoking. He refuses to release his birth certificate or school records.

May 2007. Michelle Obama resigns from the board of TreeHouse Foods, a major Wal-Mart supplier, immediately following her husband's public remarks critical of Wal-Mart at an AFL-CIO forum in Trenton, NJ. TreeHouse paid her $51,200 in 2006. She reduces her other responsibilities, including the Vice Presidency of the University of Chicago Hospitals, in order to join his campaign full-time. She had earlier limited herself to 2 or 3 days a week, "for the children's sake."

December 2007. Senator Obama raises 1 million dollars for Odinga's campaign for the Kenyan Presidency. Genocidal riots break out across the country when Odinga loses to a Kikuyu. 800 churches are destroyed, but no mosques.

January 3, 2008. Obama edges past Clinton and Edwards by a single vote (56 to 55/54) in a crucial precinct of the Iowa caucuses. Due to Democrat primary rules, Clinton is never able to pull ahead, despite leading in the popular vote throughout the campaign.

June 2008. Obama emerges as the presumptive Democrat Nominee when Hilary Clinton grudgingly concedes the primary race. He encourages his supporters to pay off her $25 million campaign bill (most of which she had loaned herself), after which she pledges him her guarded support.

August 2008. Hillary gives her enthusiastic support to Obama at the Democrat National Convention. He picks Senator Joe Biden as his running mate and they receive the nomination, but not in time to legally qualify for the ballot in Texas. A legal attempt to keep them off the ballot is summarily dismissed.

August 21, 2008. At the Eastern District Court in Philadelphia, former State Deputy Attorney General Philip J. Berg, a Hillary supporter, files for a declaratory judgment and injunction against Barack Hussein Obama II's qualification for US President, on the grounds that having been born while Barack and Ann (a minor) were out of the country, he is not a natural born US citizen.

October 25, 2008. Philip Berg's suit is dismissed on technicalities. He appeals to the Supreme Court, case no. 08-cv-04083, Berg v. Obama.

October 2008. Barack suspends his campaign to visit his ailing grandmother in Honolulu, and to request that the governor seal his birth records. The stock market crashes due to the insolubility of major banks stung by the sub-prime mortgage debacle. Senators McCain and Obama suspend their campaigns to vote for a 1-trillion dollar bailout that includes the first step in monetizing the National Debt, printing dollars in exchange for worthless obligations held by the failed banks.

Oct. 28, 2008 — The Obama campaign passed the $660 million mark in contributions since the beginning of the 2008 election cycle — a record.

October 31, 2008. Barack's Aunt Zeituni is still living in Boston public housing, prompting a special directive from Immigrations and Customs Enforcement not to initiate deportation proceedings until after the Election. It is unknown whether or not she plans to vote for her nephew to become President; she isn't eligible to, of course.

November 3, 2008. Madelyn Lee Dunham, whom her grandson had referred to as "a typical white woman," dies in Honolulu, attended by her only granddaughter, Barack's half-sister Maya--now the only one of Barack's near relatives eligible to vote for him as President--and that only by virtue of their mother having lived in the United States for a couple of years after he was born.

November 3, 2008. Berg's petition denied by Justice Souder. Justice Souder also denies a similar petition by Leo C. Donofrio on November 6th.

November 4, 2008. An estimated 96% of Black voters choose Barack Obama for president, happy to be electing their first Black president. But Obama's connection to Black America is rather ironic: Obama's American ancestors weren't slaves, but slave owners. Some people are voting for a man who is descended from their ancestor's oppressors.

November 14, 2008. Leo C. Donofrio's petition refiled and submitted to Justice Thomas, who assigns it to Conference for December 5th.

December 8, 2008. The Supreme Court in Conference declines to hear Donofrio's case.

December 15, 2008. The Supreme Court in Conference declines to hear a similar lawsuit brought by Cort Wrotnowski.

January 20, 2009. Barack Hussein Obama II is inaugurated as the first Black President of the United States of America. CFR member and best-selling author Rick Warren gives the invocation. Atheist Michael Nedow files a suit to prevent him from mentioning Jesus in his prayer, and Obama from saying "so help me God" in his oath of office. Both happen anyway, and God blesses America.

There will be no further entries to this post.

ETA May 2011: Entries extracted from BHOI's Immigration File have been added chronologically.
*ETA 2014 or later:  Evidence has now come out showing that the Dunham family business, all the way down to grandson Barack, has been Company roughly since its inception. Stanley, for instance, took French and Poly Sci at Berkeley--not what you'd typically expect of somebody pursing a career in, say, furniture sales as opposed to, say, international intrigue. Ann worked for USAID, a known front organization. And Barack worked for another front. This, by the way, finally explains everything. All the obfuscation about his past turns out to be a cover-up to keep from blowing his cover.  I've written dozens of posts on the topic of his secret past, so please realize that this newest revelation puts everything I've said so far in a new light.