Years ago, for a time, I really got into the Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories and one thing became abundantly clear to me. If you truly wanted to hide a real conspiracy the best way to do it would be not to hide it, but to feed it. Conspiracies even real ones begin to lose credibility in direct proportion to the number of theories meant to explain them, the truth is lost in a forest of ever increasing possibilities.
In a way this is how I see the whole "birther" controversy. I believe that there really are things being hidden but it is not that Obama was not born in Hawaii. The simplest of all explanations is this, Barack Obama was adopted by his step father Lolo Soetoro while he was a child living in Indonesia or it is even possible that he was adopted prior to leaving Hawaii. This could have made Barack Obama a citizen of Indonesia. However since he was born in Honolulu and to an American mother and has never renounced his American citizenship, he is still an American citizen and eligible to by President of the United States.
I have a bit of personal knowledge about this. I have a niece whose mother married a Kuwaiti citizen here in the United States where she, my niece was born. As a baby the family moved to Kuwait where she has lived her entire life until just recently while she attends college (as a foreign student) in Boston. Just in what I have described from my own family, is a case of an American citizen attending college in America as a foreign student. In fact for many years when she traveled here to the United States she used an American passport. Not until she became a student here did she use her Kuwait passport. Not to fool anyone or to rip off America, in fact the opposite is true, as a Kuwaiti citizen the Kuwaiti government pays 100% of her education and living expenses. But she is still an American citizen, as well as a Kuwaiti citizen and since she was born here and to an American mother she maintains dual citizenship.
As I understand the current interpretation of both the law and the Constitution, my niece could be President of the United States, in which case she would be not only the first woman but the first Muslim to hold the office. Just kidding, though qualified, she is as yet too young.
There is at least circumstantial evidence of Obama's adoption and I suspect further proof of this adoption and duel citizenship could be found if someone seriously investigated. The circumstantial evidence is that Obama, during this time, went by the name of Barry Soetoro and he was enrolled in school (in Indonesia) as Barry Soetoro and listed as an Indonesian citizen. At this time students in Indonesia were required to carry identification cards with their legal name on it. It is very doubtful that his stepfather would register him in school with a false name, In addition during this time Obama's mother requested that Obama be removed from her American passport which very well could mean that he was going to get his own (Indonesian) passport, on this request she referred to her son by an Indonesian surname.
There would be absolutely nothing wrong with Obama being adopted or even being a citizen of Indonesia, especially as a child who had no control over these events. it might be hard to explain but there is certainly nothing illegal about it. If in fact Obama was adopted by his stepfather in Indonesia, a state (Hawaii) would probably recognize the adoption and this in itself might cause some very tricky problems when it comes to birth certificates and the release of them even more so if he was adopted while still a toddler in Hawaii.
Now here is where things might have gone astray and again I admit that all of this is just speculation on my part, although it fits what we know it is just another theory to add to the forest of possibilities. If Obama used this not all that unique situation (duel citizenship) to his advantage as a young college student, even if he did nothing illegal, at some point in the future it might look very suspicious and difficult to explain, especially for an ambitious politician.
To understand you must also add in another dimension to Obama's not quite normal childhood. Although Obama might legally be a foreign citizen (Indonesian), his mother divorced his step father who had adopted him. But even before this Obama had begun to reclaim and reuse his identity as the son of his natural father, Barack Obama Sr. a Kenyan citizen.
How does one go about being un-adopted in Indonesia from a step father who is not even married to your mother any longer? A step father who remarried before the ink had even dried on the divorce papers. In other words Barry Soetoro ceased to identify himself as the citizen and son of an Indonesian step father whom years before he had left and took back his identity as Barack son of a Kenyan father. It is entirely possible that Obama like my niece (a legal American citizen) could have been enrolled in college as a foreign student but not of the nationality he now identified himself as and was identified by his peers as being. American citizen Obama the Kenyan son was an Indonesian student. Pretty confusing isn't it? Reason enough to for a presidential candidate to keep college transcripts hidden, though there may be others.
To a young college student especially one whose whole image was based on trying "to avoid being mistaken for a sellout," and who "chose [his] friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists." this whole identity and citizenship issue really did not matter. In fact it very well may have had advantages both scholastically and the added advantage of being cool especially in the crowd he associated with. Isn't this in fact how he gained the public's notice and recognition? His unique and somewhat exotic life story? Barack Obama man of mystery, man of the world.
Years later though, when this grown man with duel Indonesian/American citizen with a Kenyan father who has written a book on "Race and Inheritance" suddenly has national political aspirations, the whole thing all becomes very complicated to explain to a national audience. Especially if you have been raised to believe the vast majority of that audience are inherently bigoted to begin with.
Then there is the possibility that Barack Obama's legal name is still Soetoro! If Obama was adopted did he go to the trouble to legally change his name back to his original birth name rather than just "reclaiming" his birth name? Under the circumstances a teenager might just ignore something like this, something he actually had no part in to begin with. Even if he did legally change his name there are still a host of potential problems. When did he legally cease being Barry Soetoro and become Barack Obama? Before or after he claimed himself a foreign student as a great deal of evidence shows he may have? Did he formally renounce his Indonesian citizenship? Then there are the documents a person must fill out over a lifetime which ask a very basic question, "Have you ever been known by another name or alias?" And how did he answer?
Indeed there are numerous little traps that being adopted by his stepfather may have caused Barack Obama in his future high profile life as a public figure. Traps which are compounded even more by the fact that he wrote a biography which we now know was filled with distortions and out and out untruths. but as his public stature grew he needed to maintain as the truth.
So what do you do if you are Barack Obama/Barry Soetoro on the verge of history? You do nothing and when people begin to question all the strange events that the unusual circumstances of your life have created, you ignore them. You ignore them because the only reason that they have become significant anyway is because you now have a realistic chance at being the President of the United States. At this point to try to explain all this could result not only in suspicion but further deeper scrutiny of your life. Scrutiny even beyond your carefully crafted but deeply inaccurate and deceptive autobiography.
The thing that makes Obama's autobiography so deceptive is not only what is in it that is not true, thirty eight at last count, but more so what is not in it which we have learned to be true. One such instance of deception by omission is the story of Barack Obama's mysterious trip to Pakistan in 1981. Which we will look at in part 2 of Magical Mystery Tour.
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