This week the controversy about Obama’s birthplace resurfaced dramatically. A US Army Reserve, Major Stefan Frederick Cook, scheduled for deployment to Afghanistan, refused to serve claiming that the order was illegal because the American President was not legitimate. He argued that he should not be required to serve under a President who has not proven his eligibility for office.

“As an officer in the armed forces of the United States, it is my duty to gain clarification on any order we may believe illegal. With that said, if President Obama is found not to be a ‘natural-born citizen,’ he is not eligible to be commander-in-chief,” Major Cook said. “Then any order coming out of the presidency or his chain of command is illegal. Should I deploy, I would essentially be following an illegal order. If I happened to be captured by the enemy in a foreign land, I would not be privy to the Geneva Convention protections.”

The military created shock waves by revoking the deployment order without giving any reasons. Thereby it evaded a reply to Major Cook’s objection and implicitly acknowledged that it could offer no proof of President Obama’s birth in the USA. If the military cannot vouch for President Obama’s legitimacy the implications can be very far-reaching. Major Cook’s case is being heard in the court of US District Judge David O Carter. The judge told the plaintiffs to fix their paperwork and that he would listen to “the merits” of their case. The date of the hearing was fixed for 16 July.

It is unlikely that the US mainstream media will highlight the event. But regardless of the judge’s verdict, will the issue die? If it snowballs into a crisis America could face a cruel choice. While it battles a severe economic meltdown it may have to either remove a most popular President or violate its Constitution.

Even while US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pursues her five-day visit to India, an event has occurred in the USA that could conceivably snowball into a major controversy to cut short President Obama’s tenure.
Article 2, Section 1 of the US Constitution states: “No person except a US born citizen… shall be eligible to the office of President.”

During the last US campaign a controversy arose about Obama’s birthplace. Critics were unsure if he was born in the USA or Kenya. Obama’s campaign committee released a Hawaiian birth certificate on 13 June, 2008. Sceptics alleged that it had signs of forgery.

Obama maintained he was born in Hawaii. One hospital, Honolulu ‘s Kapi’olani Medical Center for Women and Children, claims it received a letter from the President declaring his birth there. But White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs refused to authenticate the letter. For nearly six months the hospital proudly declared Obama was born at its facility to create poll hype. Later it covered up and refused to confirm if the letter actually existed. The letter was purportedly signed by Barak Obama. If the signature was forged it was a most serious offence. Was any action taken against the Hospital?

Canada’s top court tossed out a drug conviction linked to the seizure of 35 kilograms of cocaine Friday, saying evidence obtained with “willful and flagrant” disregard for the Charter of Rights and Freedoms can’t be used in trial.

The ruling was one of four handed down by the Supreme Court aimed at clarifying when tainted evidence can be included at trial and when a person is considered detained by police.

While the ruling did turf out the drug conviction, it did allow the submission of evidence in three other cases. The rulings underscore that any breach of rights must be carefully balanced against the value of the evidence and the facts of each case.

In the cocaine trafficking case, Bradley Harrison and a friend were driving a rental sport utility vehicle to Toronto from Vancouver in October 2004 when they were pulled over by an Ontario Provincial Police officer near Kirkland Lake, Ont. The officer thought it was suspicious the SUV was driving at exactly the speed limit and didn’t have a front licence plate.

….crooks rule. Read more  HERE.

A Missouri truck dealer hopes to reverse a nationwide slide in sales with a catchy offer: An AK-47 with every new truck purchase.

The website for Max Motors of Butler, Mo., features a drawing of the Soviet-made assault rifle and an animated cartoon character wielding two handguns against the backdrop of a waving American flag.

Mark Muller, owner of Max Motors, is upgrading an earlier sales gimmick in which he offered new truck buyers to choose between a $250 gas voucher or a gun voucher. The website says the dealer is giving away guns again “due to popular demand.”

“Muller calls the initial deal an overwhelming success,” Business Insider reports. “He also says it generates a lot of publicity and really angers ‘liberals.'”

Muller tells CNN he is won’t be handing out the free weapons personally but will give buyers a voucher to use at a gun store.

Student hoax wins magazine’s top prize

Amid its traditional mixture of glossy celebrity and gritty reportage, the magazine Paris Match published this week a searing double-page spread on student poverty in France.

The excellent black and white photographs of students prostituting themselves or looking for food in dustbins won the magazine’s annual prize for student photojournalism. Student poverty certainly exists in France but the photos were entirely faked.

Before they received their trophy and €5,000 (£4,260) cheque at a ceremony on Wednesday, the prize-winners, Guillaume Chauvin and Rémi Hubert, read out a statement admitting to the hoax, stating that they had wanted to make a “powerful artistic gesture” attacking the “voyeurism” and gullibility of parts of the press.

The prize jury looked crestfallen but managed to applaud all the same. The two students, from the Strasbourg School of Decorative Arts, were handed their €5,000 cheque, which was later blocked by Paris Match.

The students said later that their teachers had approved the fake reportage. “There was nothing in the rules of the competition to say that rigged photos were banned,” M. Hubert told Le Monde.

“We pushed the clichés to the limit. We thought the whole thing was so hackneyed that it could never win … We wanted to call into question the inner-workings of the attitude of the kind of media which portrays human distress with complacency and voyeurism,” they said.

James Delingpole talks to Professor Ian Plimer, the Australian geologist, whose new book shows that ‘anthropogenic global warming’ is a dangerous, ruinously expensive fiction, a ‘first-world luxury’ with no basis in scientific fact. Shame on the publishers who rejected the book.

….read full article HERE.