Kenyan government puts a gag on Obama family

And you are doing this because…"We are doing this because we want to ensure a better flow of information” say the Kenyan government officials. Just how does gagging someone enable a “better flow of Information” again?

By de Andréa

The Kenyan government has barred unapproved contacts between the media and Barrack Husein Obammah's family.

Family members will be required to receive permission from the government before making any public statements about their famous relative, according to the Nairobi Star.

"We are doing this because we want to ensure better flow of information," Athman Said, an under-secretary in the Ministry of Heritage, told the Obama family in Kogelo.

"The government has decided that you should inform its officers who will be based here if you want to address the media."

Journalists wishing to speak with the family must first be approved by the government.

This is not the first attempt to block press interest in President-elect Obama's African connections.

Prior to the U.S. election, Jerome R. Corsi was detained in Kenya while investigating Obama's close ties to the nation's Muslim Prime Minister /Dictator, Raila Odinga who Barrack Obama helped get elected, orchestrated the detention

Corsi, whose recent book, "The Obama Nation," raised questions about Obama’s country of origin when he was a candidate for president; had scheduled a news conference in Nairobi to discuss his discoveries during his visit this fall. He was however jailed on Orders from Odinga and held without food or water for much of a day until he was escorted onto his already-booked flight leaving Kenya with the sendoff, "See you in hell."

This must be an Obama/Odinga thing because Corsi said “I was able to interview Obama's uncle, Sayid Obama, the brother of Obama's father, when I was doing the research for 'The Obama Nation, but Auma Obama, Barrack’s half-sister, declined an interview by telephone, telling me that the Obama campaign had advised the Obama family not to speak with me, either from the United States by phone, or in person in Kenya."

Two weeks ago, Odinga passed the Kenya Communications Amendment Bill, a controversial measure that gives the state of Kenya the power to raid TV stations and newspaper offices, as well as to control broadcast content. Sounds similar to what Obama did in Missouri during his campaign there, they must have similar goals.

Kenya's press independence was tested in 2006 when armed and masked police officers raided news offices following a series of exposés about official corruption.

While the latest attempt to embargo news about and from the president-elect's African family may anticipate passage of the "media gag" bill, economics, tourism, and boosterism are also part of the equation.

Under-secretary Said, who informed the Obama’s they were muzzled, announced the formation of the Barrack Obama Cultural Home project, which will include a museum, a gallery and a leadership center in Barrack Obama’s birthplace, the family's town of Kogelo. A video featuring Mama Sarah Obama, the president-elect's grandmother who witnessed Barack Obama’s birth in Kenya, will relate the Obama’s' family history. Said added that the Ministry of Heritage is negotiating with the U.S. government to display Obama's publications.

The investment in the family's village so far has caused land prices to double in the past several months. Electricity service has been routed to the community and investors are rumored to be planning hotel construction to serve the tourists expected to travel the "Presidential Heritage Tourism Circuit."

Heritage minister William Ole Ntimama confirmed the government's intent to invest in the project.

"This is a great opportunity to open up the western tourism circuit and we have asked the Treasury to find us some money so that we can roll out a number of projects that will make this a truly memorable cultural site," Ntimama told the Star.

THE BOTTOM LINE: It is certainly a precious fanfare that they are doing to memorialize Obama’s birth place, but how does this qualify Barrack Hussein Obammah to be President of the United States again? I mean, if he was actually born in Hawaii wouldn’t one think the Hawaiian Heritage minister would be working on a plaque or something at the hospital where Obama was born? Oh! I forgot, they can’t find the hospital where Obama was born, not in Hawaii anyway….

Oh well, he's got his picture on the money allready.

de Andréa