An American Expat in Southeast Asia
"...If anyone is still puzzled about the facts, in fact I have never been a Muslim. We had to send CNN to look at the school that I attended in Indonesia where kids were wearing short pants and listening to ipods to indicate that this was not a madrassa but was a secular school in Indonesia..." ~ Barack Obama, 24 February 2008
In a recent episode of Saturday Night Live that featured a parody of a Clinton Obama debate, a faux Campbell Brown chirped "Like nearly everyone in the news media, the three of us are totally in the tank for Senator Obama". Funny? Yes, but this might have hit a bit too close to home.
Surely Barack Obama wouldn't lie now would he? But did the Obama camp really send CNN to Indonesia? Are we to believe that when the accusations of Barack Obama attending a madrassa as a child first broke on Fox News last year that Sam Feist's reply to the Obama camp would be "Please relax. You furnish the money, I'll furnish the debunk."
Like many Americans, my parents raised me to believe that it is the truth that matters. It is. Network news broadcasts and newspaper reports have the power to shape our perceptions, consciously and subliminally and as consumers we naturally expect a bit of integrity on behalf of the networks and media outlets. We expect that opinion and commentary are clearly identified as such. What we don't expect is that the news has been manufactured or bought and paid for. That CNN would assist Obama in deceiving the American people is downright despicable and I think if what Obama is saying is true, then both CNN and Obama owe the American people an apology.
For Barack Obama, the facts are that he is a liar and no one, not CNN or Sam Feist is ever going to change that fact. There is no amount of spin, flooding the internet or debunking that is ever going to change the fact that Barack Hussein Obama was born a Muslim and that he practiced Islam as a child, no more than I can change the fact that I was born and baptized a Catholic and attended Catholic school as a child.
Barack Obama often speaks of hope and change, but for a man that truly aspires to lead our nation, hope and change will simply not suffice, there can be no dignity without honesty.
24 January 2007
CNN Calls The Kettle Black
Watching the catfight between CNN, Fox, Insight and the New York Times with everyone dogpiling on Insight Magazine and then praising their own merits is almost enough to make someone ill.
Tracing the story and acting as the referee, the New York Times reports that CNN's political director Sam Feist had seen Insight's story being discussed on "Fox and Friends" and then decided to jet John Vause to Jakarta from Beijing to follow up on a "holy-cow political story"
The article then goes on to say:
"The president of CNN US, Jon Klein, said that his network’s report was “not a response to Fox per se, though they did seem to relish repeating the Insight-reported rumor without bothering to — or being able to — ascertain the facts.”
And now this is where it gets funny... Just what did CNN do to ascertain the facts?
CNN's so-called debunking in in itself a fluff piece with it's own factual inacuracies and appears in it's closing to be nothing more than a mouthpiece for the Obama camp.
CNN didn't bother to see the other school that Obama attended and if they would have they would have found out that the dates and much of the information Obama has provided is not completely factual.
For a source CNN interviews a youthful Bandug Winadijanto who claims to have been a classmate of Obama's and yet mysteriously he seems to have evaded giving any interviews to the Indonesian media for the last several months. It is almost as if he appeared out of nowhere just in time for John Vause's interview.
I find it surprising that CNN didn't talk to Obama's classmates Rony Amir or Emirsyah Satar the CEO of Garuda Indonesia who have been describing to the Indonesian media how Obama was a such a very religious and devout Muslim.
In closing the report quotes Obama as if to present it as fact:
"Obama has noted in his two books, "Dreams From My Father" and "The Audacity of Hope," that he spent two years in a Muslim school and another two years in a Catholic school while living in Indonesia from age 6 to 10."
So there you have it folks. No need to do any real investigative reporting of your own, just repeat what Obama has said and present it as fact.
31 January 2007
Obama and the Audacity of CNN
"That's the difference between talking about news and reporting it. You send a reporter, check the facts, and you decide at home."
Those are the words of CNN's Anderson Cooper described by Fox as the "Paris Hilton of television news". CNN would have you believe that they actually investigated this story and checked the facts in their reporting with their sophmoric attempt to debunk both Fox News and Insight Magazine.
On the ground in Jakarta, CNN's John Vause paints a rosy almost pristine picture of what Obama's past primary school in Indonesia is like, taking time to even note the Western-style clothes that the students are wearing as they play outside the school.
To an American viewer one might imagine that this school is close to being like any other school in school in America or the West, having a diverse and multicultural student body who enjoy religious freedom.
CNN's so-called debunking seems to be primarily focused on the statements of two individuals at the school, who are overly eager to paint a utopian picture specifically designed for foreign consumption of what their school is like now in what can best be described as nothing more than a fantasy for the misguided and naive proponents of multiculturism.
This hideously deceptive picture of what primary school is like in Indonesia leaves us wondering here if this entire "debunking" was actually staged or whether CNN simply has their own agenda and is not as impartial as they claim to be.
For anyone truly familiar with Indonesia, the following statement will give you a chill down your spine:
"This is a public school. We don't focus on religion," Hardi Priyono, deputy headmaster of the Basuki school, told Vause. "In our daily lives, we try to respect religion, but we don't give preferential treatment."
If CNN would have done their report on a Friday, they would have found that all of the students in this government school both muslim and non-muslim alike are all required to dress in Islamic clothing. It would seem that Mr. Hardi Priyono does not consider this to be preferential treatment.
Avoiding any high profile names of individuals or classmates of Obama's named in this blog or who have speaking to the Indonesian media for the last several months. CNN suddenly finds a previously unknown classmate of Obama's who claims that the school has hardly changed in the last 35 years.
"Vause also interviewed one of Obama's Basuki classmates, Bandug Winadijanto, who claims that not a lot has changed at the school since the two men were pupils."
Apparently neither Hardi Priyono or Bandug Winadijanto seemed to remember the Indonesian Constitution recently being amended in 2003.
"...MPR approved changes to the Constitution that mandated that the Government increase "faith and piety" in education. This decision, seen as a compromise to satisfy Islamist parties, set the scene for an education bill signed into law in 2003 that restricted religious freedom by forcing elementary and secondary school students to undergo religious instruction, sometimes in a religion other than their own..."
US State Department - International Religious Freedom Report 2005
Besuki Primary School is not a madrassa (religious school), it is considered a public school, but if this is what a so called public school is like in Indonesia, it makes you almost wonder what an Indonesian madrassa is really like.
CNN's reporting which was devoid of any real investigation in this story was both misleading, deceptive and appallingly irresponsible. Not only did CNN fail to report the story honestly and accurately, they failed to present a clear and concise picture to the American people of what primary school education is like in Indonesia.
The repercussions from CNN's irresponsible and shoddy reporting have the potential to be far reaching. Both government and non-government agencies working in Indonesia who depend on foreign funds and have been working hard to convince Indonesia's political parties to have and ensure respect for religious freedom and to embrace further democratic reforms will now find it more dificult to raise donations and funds from a placated Western audience who now believe that Indonesia's reform is farther ahead than it actually is.
Ironically it is Indonesia's children who stand to suffer for CNN's irresponsible reporting and lack of journalistic integrity.
Edit:
The New York Times piles on both Fox and Insight in an editorial entitled "Feeding Frenzy For a Big Story Even If It's False"
To be fair, I have emailed both CNN and the New York Times outlining the points made here and the "Debunking of CNN's Debunk". Busy pursuing their own agenda, I don't expect a response.
Further, I enquired why no one had bothered to investigate what the school was like during the time Obama attended. Obviously that was really what relevant. Basically CNN denunked nothing.
http://laotze.blogspot.com/2007/01/obama-and-audacity-of-cnn-thats.html
Topic: IN A SANE WORLD, THIS PHOTO OF OBAMA WOULD BE THE KISS OF DEATH (Read 19798 times)