{"id":212,"date":"2019-11-07T07:06:23","date_gmt":"2019-11-07T07:06:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/populareducation.in\/loksamvad\/?post_type=article&#038;p=212"},"modified":"2019-11-07T07:06:23","modified_gmt":"2019-11-07T07:06:23","slug":"becoming-by-michelle-obama-mainstream-lying-genocide-ignoring-holocaust-ignoring","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"http:\/\/populareducation.in\/loksamvad\/article\/becoming-by-michelle-obama-mainstream-lying-genocide-ignoring-holocaust-ignoring\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cBecoming\u201d By Michelle Obama \u2013 Mainstream Lying, Genocide Ignoring &#038;\u00a0 Holocaust Ignoring"},"content":{"rendered":"By <strong>Dr Gideon Polya<\/strong>\r\n\r\n\u201cBecoming\u201d by Michelle Obama is an inspiring, feel-good story of how a working class African-American woman became a Harvard graduate,\u00a0 corporate lawyer, perfect mother and thence\u00a0 First Lady of the US. However \u201cBecoming\u201d has numerous\u00a0 extraordinary\u00a0 absences e.g. the Harvard Law School years, Black felony laws, the Israel Lobby, 130,000 US veteran suicides and 30 million preventable US deaths since 9-11, pro-Apartheid America, who killed Osama, and egregious US violation of 12 countries under Obama.\r\n\r\n\u201cBecoming \u201c by Michele Obama [1] is well written but it has also been very well edited to the point of massive lying by omission, genocide ignoring\u00a0 and holocaust ignoring. Michelle Obama comes across as a strong, smart, family- and community-oriented\u00a0 caring person, a hard worker, a\u00a0 good wife, a pragmatic idealist and an excellent mother. Her book will no doubt be an inspiration for both Black and White American children,\u00a0 girls, women, mothers, husbands and families.\u00a0 It is a feel-good, rags to riches story that attempts to validate American capitalism and the American Dream \u2013 no matter who you are and from where you come, work hard, keep your nose clean,\u00a0 and you too can rise to the top of the pile. The only catches are\u00a0 the societal realities and the statistics \u2013 thus it took 240 years after American Independence in 1776 for \u00a0an African \u2013American man to become President of the United States (POTUS) and for\u00a0 an African \u2013American woman to become First Lady of the United States (FLOTUS).\r\n\r\nAnd of course this didn\u2019t happen, on top of ability and hard work, simply by serendipity, accident and good fortune. The real story of how and why the neoliberal, One Percenter American Establishment chose Barack Obama to be president will very likely never be told, notwithstanding the authoritative insider pretensions of \u201cBecoming\u201d.\r\n\r\nIndeed in the stuff of legend, \u201cBecoming\u201d has it that crucially Barack Obama asked his 8 year old elder daughter Malia in mid-2015 for her opinion on whether he should run for president: \u201cTo this day, Malia and I still crack up about the fact that she\u2019d\u00a0 been eight years old when Barack, clearly feeling some sense of responsibility, posed the question one night when he was tucking her into bed. \u201cHow would you feel if Daddy ran for president?\u201d \u201cSure, Daddy!\u201d she replied, pecking him on the cheek. His decision to run would alter nearly everything about her life after that, but how was she to know? She\u2019d just rolled over then and drifted off to sleep\u2019 (page 255 [1]).\r\n\r\nIndeed, in relation to family approval for Obama running for president, Michelle Obama further states: \u201cBarack and I talked the idea through, not once, but many times, right up to and through our Christmas trip to visit Toot in Hawaii. Some of our conversations were angry and tearful, some of them earnest and positive. It was an extension of a dialogue we\u2019d been having over seventeen years already. Who were we? What mattered to us? What could we do? In the end,\u00a0 it boiled down to this:\u00a0 I said yes because I believed that Barack could be a great president\u2026 I said yes because I loved him and had faith in what he could do. I said yes, though I was at the same time harboring a painful thought,\u00a0 one I wasn\u2019t ready to share: I supported him in campaigning , but I also felt certain he couldn\u2019t make it\u2026 Barack was a black man in America, after all. I didn\u2019t really think he could win\u201d (page 226 [1]). In similar vein she commented: \u201cAnd so I gave my approval to his first run for office [for the Illinois Senate] (page 183 [1]).\r\n\r\nThe first half of \u201cBecoming\u201d was a terrific and inspiring account of the childhood, family, education and friends of an African American woman from the impoverished South Side of Chicago. One has nothing but admiration for Michelle Obama the child and\u00a0 young woman, for her wonderful parents and grandparents,\u00a0 her music teacher Aunt Robbie (in whose house they lived), her brother Craig , her school teachers and mentors. A crucial event was\u00a0 Michelle Obama\u2019s mother responding to Michelle\u2019s complaints about a hopeless teacher by getting her school to shift Michelle to a better class with a competent\u00a0 teacher. A further key event was going to a good high school as a teenager.\r\n\r\nHowever \u201dBecoming\u201d makes clear\u00a0 the economic disparities between the largely and increasingly African-American South Side of Chicago and the rest of Chicago, the real obstacles to advancement for African Americans, and the escalating gang violence in the South Side that is tragically exampled towards the end of the\u00a0 book by the shooting killing of\u00a0 15 year old school girl , Hadiya Pendelton,\u00a0 shortly after she had attended the second inauguration of Barack Obama as a band member (pages 380-382 [1]). ( A professional person very dear to me had to attend an interview at the University of Chicago but as a non-American he\u00a0 was not aware of the deadly violence in the immediately\u00a0 adjacent South Side and innocently booked a room at a conveniently located\u00a0 South Side hotel. However the hotel\u00a0 would only take cash but gave him an armed escort to a nearby automatic\u00a0 teller machine. Throughout\u00a0 the night he heard the sound of gunfire).\r\n\r\nThe \u201cpolitical\u201d second half of \u201cBecoming\u201d is an interesting \u201cbehind the scenes\u201d account that presents Michelle Obama as\u00a0 a very good mother (very protective of her daughters Malia and Sasha in the bizarre but necessary presidential and political security environment ), as an honest\u00a0 campaigner (upset by variously false and unfair denigration of her husband and even of herself by partisan commentators), and as a community-oriented person who used her position as First Lady to advance several key causes (better nutrition and exercise for American children,\u00a0 child ambition, child education, and better back-up for the veterans and their families).\r\n\r\nHowever while \u201cBecoming\u201d is a feel good and inspiring account, it must be criticized for resolutely sticking to the Mainstream American narrative involving massive lying by\u00a0 omission, genocide ignoring, holocaust ignoring and the ignoring of a veritable Herd of Elephants in the Room. Neocon American- and Zionist Imperialist (NAZI)- subverted US Mainstream media and US- and Zionist-subverted Western Mainstream media in general have a dominant culture of censorship, self-censorship, lying by commission and massive lying by omission. Of course lying by omission is far, far worse than repugnant lying by commission because the latter at least permits public refutation and public discussion [2-5].\r\n\r\nExtremely pertinent here are the words of Margaret Atwood\u00a0 (Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, environmental activist and\u00a0 author) on the unacceptability of silence (2009): \u201cPowerlessness and silence go together. We\u2026should use our privileged positions not as a shelter from the world\u2019s reality, but as a platform from which to speak. A voice is a gift. It should be cherished and used\u201d [6].\r\n\r\nBarbara Kingsolver (American novelist, essayist and poet) in her great novel \u201cThe Lacuna\u201d (lacuna meaning hiatus, blank, missing part, gap, cavity, or empty space) has\u00a0 Russian Communist revolutionary and theorist Leon Trotsky (Lev) and his assistant Van having the following discussion about media (2009): \u201c\u201dBut newspapers have a duty to truth\u201d, Van said. Lev [Trotsky] clicked his tongue. \u201cThey tell the truth only as the exception. Zola [French novelist of \u201cJ\u2019accuse\u201d fame] wrote that the mendacity of the press could be could be divided into two groups: the yellow press lies every day without hesitating. But others, like the Times , speak the truth on all inconsequential occasions, so they can deceive the public with the requisite authority when it becomes necessary.\u201d Van got up from his chair to gather the cast-off newspapers. Lev took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. \u201d I don\u2019t mean to offend the journalists; they aren\u2019t any different from other people. They\u2019re merely the megaphones of other people\u201d \u2026 [Trotsky observes to his assistant Shepherd] \u201cSoli, let me tell you. The most important thing about a person is always the thing you don\u2019t know\u201d\u201d [7].\r\n\r\nThe numerous gaping\u00a0 absences, holes or lacunae\u00a0 in Michelle Obama\u2019s \u201cBecoming\u201d\u00a0 narrative are\u00a0 succinctly set out below.\r\n\r\n(1). The missing Harvard Law School Years, 1981-1984.\r\n\r\nMichelle Obama got her first degree from\u00a0 Princeton University and deals at great length with her connections with Princeton \u2013 starting with her brother Craig\u2019s Princeton basketball scholarship\u00a0 \u2013\u00a0\u00a0 in Chapters 5, 6 and 7, encompassing pages 59-91. However this is in stark contrast to the almost nothing\u00a0 that Michelle Obama has to say about her 3 years at the prestigious Harvard Law School: \u201cI was bound for law school \u2013 Harvard Law School, as it turned out \u2013 the affirmation was overwhelming. I was applauded just for getting in, even if the truth was I\u2019d somehow squeaked in off the wait list. But I was in. People looked at me as if I\u2019d made my mark on the world.\u00a0 This may be the fundamental problem with caring a lot about what others think: It can put you on the established path \u2013 the my-isn\u2019t-that \u2013impressive path \u2013 and keep you there for a long time. Maybe it stops you from swerving, from ever even considering a swerve, because what you risk losing in terms of other people\u2019s high regard can feel too costly. Maybe you spend three years in Massachusetts, studying constitutional law\u00a0 and discussing the\u00a0 relative merits of exclusionary vertical agreements in antitrust cases. For some, this might be truly interesting, but for you it is not. Maybe during those three years you make friends you\u2019ll love and respect forever, people who seem genuinely called to the bloodless intricacies of the law, but you yourself are not called. Your passion stays low, yet under no circumstances will you underperform. You live, as you always have, by the code of effort\/result, and with it you keep achieving until you think you know the answers to all the questions \u2013 including the most important one. Am I good enough? Yes, in fact\u00a0 I am. What happens next is the rewards get real . You reach for the next rung of the ladder , and this time it\u2019s a job with a salary in the Chicago offices of a high-end law firm called Sidley &amp; Austin\u2026 [much later] Next to your name [on a mentoring list] is another name, that of some hotshot law student [Barack Obama] who\u2019s busy climbing his own ladder. Like you he\u2019s black and from Harvard\u201d (pages 91-93 [1]).\r\n\r\nThe book\u2019s\u00a0 missing Harvard Law School Years of 1981-1984 [1, 8] overlaps\u00a0 with a similar \u201clacuna\u201d in Barack Obama\u2019s interrupted academic training between graduating from Columbia in 1983 and commencing law at Harvard Law School in 1988\u00a0 [9, 10].\u00a0 Wikipedia: \u201cHe graduated with a BA degree in 1983 and worked for about a year at the [CIA-linked] Business International Corporation, where he was a financial researcher and writer,\u00a0 then as a project coordinator for the New York Public Interest Research Group on the City College of New York campus for three months in 1985\u2026 Two years after graduating from Columbia, Obama was back in Chicago when he was hired as director of the Developing Communities Project, a church-based community organization originally comprising eight Catholic parishes in Roseland, West Pullman, and Riverdale on Chicago\u2019s South Side. He worked there as a community organizer from June 1985 to May 1988\u201d [9]. Wikipedia informs that \u201cBusiness International Corporation (BI) was a publishing and advisory firm dedicated to assisting American companies in operating abroad. It was founded in 1953. It organized conferences, and worked with major corporations. It had ties to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)\u201d [11]. In his book \u201cDreams from My Father\u201d Obama makes scant reference to Columbia, Harvard, and British atrocities in Kenya, and no mention at all of his stint in 1983-1984 with the CIA-linked Business International Corporation.\r\n\r\n(2) American Apartheid \u2013 wealth-based racial Segregation and Felony Laws disenfranchising African Americans.\r\n\r\nMichelle Obama\u00a0 qualitatively describes the\u00a0 outrageous inequities of opportunity, employment, housing, income and wealth applying to African Americans (notably to her parents,\u00a0 grandparents and other relatives) and recounts how Barack Obama was active in Black voter registration in Chicago via Project VOTE! (page 180 [1]). However what is missing is quantitation of these inequities.\u00a0\u00a0 Thus she describes but does not quantitate the enormous implicit wealth differential (housing is the biggest wealth asset,\u00a0 African American wealth is about 5 times lower\u00a0 than that of\u00a0 Whites, a $75,040 average home value for Black Americans versus $217,150 for Whites (2013) and $154,285 average household assets for Black Americans versus $783,224 for Whites (2013) [12-14]).\r\n\r\nIndeed the Black-White discrepancy in America has been locked in for 50 years with (i) 2 times higher unemployment rate for African Americans than for Whites since 1963 (in the range\u00a0 from 1.8 times higher\u00a0 to 2.7 times higher) [14],\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 (ii) 11.6% average unemployment rate for African Americans (1963-2012) ( 5.1% for Whites, 6.7% American average during recessions) , (iii) $55,000 \u2013 $32,000 = $23,000 White-Black household income gap (2010) versus $49,000 \u2013 $28,000 = $21,000 (1972), ( iv) 6-fold White\/Black wealth disparity in the period 1983-2010, (v) 42%\/11% Black\/White \u201cbelow poverty line\u201d (1966) to 23%\/7% (2000) and to 28%\/10% (2011), and\u00a0 (vi) 45% of African Americans children living in areas of concentrated poverty (poverty rate\u00a0 30% or greater) versus 12% for White, 21% for Asian and Pacific Islander, 35% for Hispanic and 39% for American Indian children [12-14].\r\n\r\n\u201cBecoming\u201d describes the demographic shift in the South Side of Chicago (and in schools) as White and some wealthier\u00a0 Black families fled to nicer, richer and safer suburbs, but the words \u201cSegregation\u201d, \u201cApartheid\u201d and \u201cEducational Apartheid\u201d are not used. Thus in 2009\/2010,\u00a0\u00a0 74.1% \/ 38.1% of African Americans children were in in Segregated\u00a0 (50-100% non-white)\/ Intensely\u00a0 segregated (90-100% non-white) schools versus 76.6% \/ 64.3% in 1968\/1969 [12-14]. Notwithstanding the great move to school desegregation in the 1960s due to John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy, African American children today are subject to huge Educational Apartheid [15, 16]. Adam Sanchez: \u201cOne would think that the first Black president of the United States might shift course against the privatization of public education and toward desegregation and equity in our public schools\u201d [15, 16].\r\n\r\n\u201cBecoming\u201d observes that Barack Obama benefited in his various election campaigns from Black voter registration, but what is missing from Michelle Obama\u2019s narrative is what Dr Michelle Alexander has described as \u201cthe New Jim Crow\u201d in America\u00a0 based on differential wealth and disenfranchising Felony Laws. Thus\u00a0 5-6 million Americans have been disenfranchised because of felony convictions and more than a million of these disenfranchised Americans are black. Felony convictions restrict 13 percent of the country\u2019s black male population from voting. Other restrictions may prevent African Americans from voting\u00a0 [17-19]. Dr Michelle\u00a0 Alexander ( author of \u201cThe New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness\u201d [18],\u00a0 and former director of the Racial Justice Project of the ACLU in Northern California): \u201cIf you take into account prisoners, a large majority of African American men in some urban areas have been labeled felons for life. (In the Chicago area, the figure is nearly 80 percent.) These men are part of a growing undercaste\u2014not class, caste\u2014permanently relegated by law to a second-class status. They can be denied the right to vote, automatically excluded from juries, and legally discriminated against in employment, housing, access to education, and public benefits, much as their grandparents and great-grandparents were during the Jim Crow era.\u201d [19].\r\n\r\nAfrican Americans\u00a0 and Hispanic Americans\u00a0 have\u00a0 about half their \u201cfair share\u201d of representatives\u00a0 in Congress and 5-6 times less Congressional\u00a0 representation than\u00a0 Jewish Americans. Thus the ethnic mix of the United States (2010 data) is as follows: Whites (72.4%), non-Hispanic White (63.7%), Hispanic (16.4%) , White Hispanic (8.7%) , African American\u00a0\u00a0 (12.6%) , Asian American (4.6%), Jewish (1.7% to 2.6%), and\u00a0 Native American (0.9%). In 2012, the American Jewish population was estimated at between 5.5-8 million, depending on the definition of the term, with this constituting between 1.7% to 2.6% of the total US population [20].\u00a0 Of the 113th Congress (100 Senators\u00a0 and 435 Representatives) there were 12 Jewish Americans in the Senate (12.0%; 11 Democrats, 1 Independent) and 22 in the House of Representatives (5.1%; 1 Republican, 21 Democrats) or 6.4% overall [21, 22]. However, during the 113th Congress (commencing in 2013), the Congressional Black Caucus had 1 Senator, 41 voting Representatives i.e. 7.9% of total [23]. Thus African Americans have about half their \u201cfair share\u201d of representatives\u00a0 in Congress and roughly the same representation in Congress as Jewish Americans while having a 5-fold greater population [12].\r\n\r\n(3) No mention of Israel, Apartheid Israel, Zionism, Palestine, the Palestinian Genocide or the hugely disproportionate Jewish make-up of the Obama retinue.\r\n\r\nThrough hard work and ability (the latter possibly selected for by a millennium of persecution and pogroms in Europe) Jewish Americans\u00a0 (about 2% of the US population) are disproportionately represented in US government\u00a0 and business.\u00a0\u00a0 Thus in 2013 Jews represented 6.4% of the US Congress (12.0% of the Senate and 5.1% of members of the House of Representatives )[12, 21, 22]. While numerous anti-racist\u00a0 Jewish intellectuals are resolutely\u00a0 critical\u00a0 of the\u00a0 ongoing Palestinian Genocide [24-28], Western Mainstream Media variously\u00a0 censor\u00a0 or white-wash\u00a0 the nuclear terrorist, genocidally racist, and grossly human rights-abusing conduct of Apartheid Israel.\u00a0 A part\u00a0 explanation for this huge moral discrepancy is that the American 60% of the world\u2019s 30 biggest media companies have a disproportionately high\u00a0 Jewish Board membership. Jews and females represent 2% and 51%, respectively,\u00a0 of the US population but average 33% and 19%, respectively, of Board members of the top 18 US media companies [29]. 48% of U.S.\u00a0 billionaires are Jewish [30], there are 10 Jews in the Forbes list of the top 50 billionaires [31], and in 2013 the World\u2019s 165 Jewish billionaires were worth a combined $812 billion [32].\r\n\r\nNow America has always\u00a0 been a\u00a0 very flawed Democracy that has transmuted into a Kleptocracy, Plutocracy, Murdochracy, Lobbyocracy, Corporatocracy and Dollarocracy \u2013 all terms, apart from Democracy, totally absent from the Index of Barack Obama\u2019s \u201cThe Audacity of Hope\u201d [33] \u2013\u00a0 in which Big Money purchases people, politicians, parties, policies,\u00a0 public perception of reality, judicial perception of reality, votes, more power and more personal wealth.\u00a0 The One Percenters who\u00a0 control 50% of the wealth of the world are disproportionately powerful politically.\u00a0 Numerous\u00a0 anti-racist Jewish activists,\u00a0 academics,\u00a0 and American humanitarians resolutely oppose the crimes of nuclear terrorist, genocidally racist, democracy-by-genocide Apartheid Israel and its ongoing Palestinian\u00a0 Genocide and Palestinian Holocaust ( 2.2 million Palestinians killed by from violence, 0.1 million, or by imposed deprivation, 2.1 million, since the British invasion of Palestine in WW1) [27, 34]. However Lobbyocracy America, US Mainstream media\u00a0 and indeed Western Mainstream media\u00a0 are dominated by immensely rich Neocon American and Zionist Imperialists (NAZIs) . As with \u201cBecoming\u201d, US and Western Mainstream media largely ignore the horrendous genocidal crimes of Apartheid Israel in its ongoing\u00a0 Palestinian\u00a0 Genocide and Palestinian Holocaust [34].\r\n\r\nAstonishingly, given the high proportion of Jewish aides (and most likely fervently pro-Zionist) aides\u00a0 in the Obama Chicago and Washington retinue, \u201cBecoming\u201d only mentions the term \u201cJews\u201d once in relation to comments by his political opponents\u00a0 in Chicago: \u201cFrom the start of the campaign [Chicago Democrat primaries for Congress], Barack\u2019s opponents and their supporters had been propagating unseemly ideas meant to gin up fear and mistrust among African-American voters, suggesting that Barack was part of an agenda cooked up by the white residents of Hyde Park \u2013 read, white Jews \u2013 to foist their preferred candidate on the South Side . \u201cBarack is viewed in part to be the white man in blackface in our community,\u201d\u00a0 Donne Trotter told the Chicago Reader. Speaking to the same publication, Bobby Rush said, \u201cHe went to Harvard and became an educated fool. We\u2019re not impressed with these folks with these eastern elite degrees.\u201d He\u2019s not one of us, in other words. Barack wasn\u2019t a real black man , like them \u2013 someone who spoke like that , looked like that, and read that many books could never be\u2026 In March, Barack lost the Democratic primary in what ended up being a resounding victory for Bobby Rush\u201d (pages 197-198 [1]. (Elsewhere in the book Michelle Obama recounts a fellow school child asking her why she didn\u2019t talk like them).\r\n\r\nWhile \u201cJews\u201d gets one disputational mention in \u201cBecoming\u201d and \u201cbar mitzvah\u201d gets 1 mention, there is zero (0) mention in \u201cBecoming\u201d of anti-racist Jews, Apartheid Israel, Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), Gaza Concentration Camp, Genocide, Holocaust, Israel, Israeli Apartheid, Jerusalem [Al Quds],\u00a0 Jew, Jewish, Jewish Holocaust, Netanyahu, Palestine, Palestinian, Palestinian Genocide, Palestinian Holocaust, Passover, Seder, pro-Apartheid, Zionism or Zionist.\r\n\r\nYet Jewish American writer Jodi Kantor in the New York Times describes an annual Passover Seder held in the White House by the Obama\u2019s with their children and Jewish staff (2010): \u201cIn the Old Family Dining Room, under sparkling chandeliers and portraits of former first ladies, the mostly Jewish and African-American guests will recite prayers and retell the biblical story of slavery and liberation, ending with the traditional declaration \u201cNext year in Jerusalem.\u201d (Never mind the current chill in the administration\u2019s relationship with Israel.) Aides like David Axelrod [Jewish] and Valerie Jarrett [African-American] will attend, but so will assistants like 24-year-old Herbie Ziskend [Jewish] . White House chefs will prepare Jewish participants\u2019 family recipes, even rendering chicken fat \u2014 better known as schmaltz \u2014 for just the right matzo ball flavor. If last year is any guide, Malia and Sasha Obama will take on the duties of Jewish children, asking four questions about the night\u2019s purpose \u2014 along with a few of their own \u2014 and scrambling to find matzo hidden in the gleaming antique furniture\u201d [35].\r\n\r\nJewish American writer Donald Harrison comments on the Jewishness of the Obama Administration (2018):\u00a0 \u201cAs a Jew, I empathize with the feeling that Mrs. Obama enunciates, that to members of a minority group, it feels as if one must do twice as much to go half as far.\u00a0 As I read her classifying people into categories of black (friendly) and white (possibly hostile), I realized that through my Jewish eyes, the world often takes on a similar dichotomous appearance.\u00a0 There are Jews (understanding, understandable) and non-Jews, be they Christian, Muslim, or some other religion (all possibly anti-Semitic). I read the \u201cBecoming Me\u201d chapter warily, especially when I learned that one of her earliest exposures to politics was through her girlfriend Santita Jackson, whose father was the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who unfortunately will long be remembered by Jews for describing New York City as \u201cHymietown,\u201d notwithstanding anything else that may commend him.\u00a0 Add to that name, in the \u201cBecoming Us,\u201d section, that of her and Barack Obama\u2019s minister, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, pastor of Trinity Church, whose outbursts against white people and Jews were so well reported that they overshadowed anything good that he may have done. However, I learned from this memoir that the Obamas also had a wide network of Jewish friends, advisers, and, in the \u201cBecoming More\u201d section, a considerable group of Jewish aides during their White House years.\u00a0 These Jews were not simply tokens; they were trusted friends and advisers, people who meant a lot to the Obamas. Reading about such people, peppered throughout the book, I found myself relaxing.\u00a0 If these people, whose names and roles I shall enumerate, found their way into the Obamas\u2019 hearts, then clearly the Obamas, far beyond any ceremonial Chanukah greeting,\u00a0 had felt real friendship for Jews, even if, as we all know, his feud with Israel\u2019s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was epic (and not mentioned in the book\u201d [36].\r\n\r\nHere is a short list based on references\u00a0 in \u201cBecoming\u201d [1] of the Jewish retinue and Jewish key associates of Barack Obama (BO) and Michelle Obama (MO) (with some White House Seder attendees also\u00a0 included [35]):\r\n\r\nDavid Axelrod (Chief Strategist for BO\u2019s presidential campaigns and Obama Senior Advisor);\r\n\r\nDavid Brooks (influential\u00a0 conservative Jewish journalist with the New York Times, considered the Obama White House\u2019s favourite columnist e.g. for \u201cRun, Barack, Run\u201d (page 223 [1]);\r\n\r\nArun Chaudhary (has a half Indian and half Jewish family, BO videographer);\r\n\r\nNeil Cohen (husband of Susan Sher who was MO\u2019s chief of staff);\r\n\r\nRahm Emanuel (son of an Irgun Zionist terrorist, member of the US House of Representatives from Chicago between 2003 and 2009, Obama White House Chief of Staff from 2009 to 2010, thence Mayor of Chicago);\r\n\r\nSarah Hurwitz (senior speechwriter for BO and author of\u00a0 \u201cHere All Along: A Reintroduction to Judaism\u201d);\r\n\r\nValerie Jarrett (deputy chief of staff for MO; senior adviser to the Obamas; her great grandfather was Jewish);\r\n\r\nSam Kass (BO\u2019s Senior Policy Advisor for Nutrition Policy, Executive Director for MO\u2019s\u00a0 Let\u2019s Move! campaign, an Assistant Chef for the Obamas in the White House)\r\n\r\nVanessa Kirsch (social entrepreneur and founder of Public Allies that employed MO in Chicago);\r\n\r\nMichael Kors (fashion designer patronized by MO);\r\n\r\nEric Lesser, (former BO baggage handler and organizer of the annual White House Seder, thence assistant to David Axelrod);\r\n\r\nSusan Sher (MO\u2019s chief of staff);\r\n\r\nMolly Stern (edited \u201cBecoming\u201d);\r\n\r\nArt Sussman (in-house legal cousin for University of Chicago, employed MO\u2019s\u00a0 mother, helped MO get a job at the University of Chicago);\r\n\r\nDiane von Furstenberg (Jewish Belgian fashion designer patronized by MO);\r\n\r\nMelissa Winter (MO deputy chief of staff, former aide of rabid Zionist\u00a0 Senator Joe Lieberman);\r\n\r\nPatricia Winter (the mother of Melissa Winter, and gave matzo ball instructions to White House chefs);\r\n\r\nHerbie Ziskend (former White House advisor and one of the founders of the Obama White House Passover Seder).\r\n\r\nVery roughly, of people named as Obama connections\u00a0 in the \u201cpolitical\u201d latter half of \u201cBecoming\u201d, about one third are Jewish, about one third African Americans, and\u00a0 one third non-Jewish White, Asian\u00a0 or Hispanic Americans.\r\n\r\nWe will consider the Jewish Zionist Lobby below in the section entitled \u201cPro-Apartheid US\u201d, noting that there is a large body of decent, anti-racist Jews (including\u00a0 anti-racist Jewish Americans) who speak out about the horrendous crimes of Apartheid Israel and its ongoing\u00a0 Palestinian genocide [24-28].\r\n\r\n(4) 7,000 US war dead, 130,000 US veteran suicides, and\u00a0 30 million preventable US deaths since 9-11 (3,000 killed).\r\n\r\nMichelle Obama initiated\u00a0 4 good causes during her time\u00a0 as FLOTUS, namely \u201cLet\u2019s Move\u201d (an anti-obesity message of\u00a0 good nutrition and exercise, especially for children), \u201cReach Higher\u201d (promoting ambition for school children), \u201cLet Girls Learn\u201d (promoting female education) and \u201cJoining Forces\u201d\u00a0 (promoting better support for veterans and their families).\r\n\r\nHowever missing from \u201cBecoming\u201d were the appalling statistics relating to 1.7 million preventable American deaths annually from \u201clifestyle choices\u201d and \u201cpolitical choices\u201d, the breakdown (with some overlaps)\u00a0 including (as of 2015):\u00a0\u00a0 (1) smoking-related (440,000), (2)\u00a0 adverse hospital events (440,000), (3) obesity-related causes (300,000), (4) air pollution e.g. from coal burning, vehicle exhaust, or carbon burning in general (200,000), (5) alcohol-related (75,000),\u00a0 (6) lack of medical insurance (45,000), (7) drug-related deaths, this including\u00a0 21,000 US opiate drug-related deaths annually from US restoration and protection of the Taliban-destroyed Afghan opium industry (38,000),\u00a0 (8) motor vehicle accidents (33,000), (9) gun-related deaths (31,000),\u00a0 (10) suicides,\u00a0 with 7,000 being US veterans (30,000),\u00a0 (11) avoidable under-5 year old US infant deaths (21,000),\u00a0 (12) homicide\u00a0 (15,000), (13) deaths from jihadi attack in the US (4) [37-44]\r\n\r\nMichelle Obama laudably promoted a healthy diet and exercise to combat American obesity in her \u201cLet\u2019s move\u201d activism, but there was no mention in \u201cBecoming\u201d of the 0.3 million American obesity-related deaths per year x 17.75 years = 5.3 million Americans who have died\u00a0 from obesity since 9-11 (3,000 deaths).\r\n\r\nSimilarly, Michelle Obama laudably promoted child education through \u201cReach Higher\u201d and \u201cLet Girls Learn\u201d but there was no mention in \u201cBecoming\u201d of the horrendous existential realities of 15 million avoidable deaths from deprivation each year on Spaceship Earth with Neocon American and Zionist Imperialist\u00a0 (NAZI)-dominated America in charge of the flight deck (266 million such deaths in this Global Avoidable Mortality Holocaust since 9-11) [45]. Nor was there any mention of how a fundamentalist , state terrorist and non-state terrorism-supporting America has trashed secular governance, modernity, democracy, women\u2019s rights and children\u2019s rights in the Muslim world [46] , this being associated with an ongoing Muslim Genocide and Muslim Holocaust in which 32 million Muslims have died from violence, 5 million, or from imposed deprivation, 27 million, in 20 countries invaded by the US Alliance since the US Government\u2019s 9-11 false flag atrocity [47-51].\r\n\r\nMichelle Obama laudably promoted better care for veterans , their spouses and families through \u201cJoining Forces\u201d but there was no mention of the circa 7,000 veteran conflict zone deaths in the War on Terror [52], nor of the 20 veteran\u00a0 suicides each day since the 1960s [54], this corresponding\u00a0 to 7,300 veteran suicides per year and 130,000 veteran suicides since the US Government\u2019s 9-11 false flag atrocity (3,000 deaths) [37-44].\u00a0 There was no mention of the 72 countries\u00a0 invaded by the US since 1776 (52 since WW2)\u00a0 [55] nor of the $6 trillion long-term accrual cost of the War on Terror [56, 57] \u2013\u00a0 this huge fiscal perversion has involved committing $6 trillion to killing over 30 million\u00a0 Muslims abroad at the cost of 7,000 US military deaths in conflict zones, 130,000 US veteran suicides, and the preventable deaths of 30 million Americans at home from \u201clifestyle\u201d or \u201cpolitical\u201d choices .\r\n\r\n(5) Pro-Apartheid America.\r\n\r\nMichelle Obama and Barack Obama visited anti-Apartheid hero Nelson Mandela in South Africa (pages 367- 369 [1]) but there is no explicit mention in \u201cBecoming\u201d of\u00a0 \u201cApartheid America\u201d per se. Indeed the message of the first Black POTUS and FLOTUS\u00a0 is denial of the continuing appalling reality of an Apartheid America based not on discriminatory laws but on the harsh\u00a0 realities of wealth inequity in a\u00a0 ruthless neoliberal society.\r\n\r\nNelson Mandela and many of his anti-Apartheid associates have condemned\u00a0 Israeli Apartheid as just as bad and indeed worse than South African\u00a0 Apartheid. Thus Nelson Mandela in an address at the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People (4 December, 1997):\u00a0 \u201cThe UN took a strong stand against apartheid; and over the years, an international consensus was built, which helped to bring an end to this iniquitous system. But we know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians\u201d [58].\u00a0 Anti-racist Jewish anti-Apartheid hero Ronnie Kasrils on Apartheid Israel and Apartheid South Africa: \u201c The [Israeli] occupation reminds me of the darkest days of apartheid, but we never saw tanks and planes firing at a civilian population. It\u2019s a monstrousness I\u2019d never seen before. The wall you built, the checkpoints and the roads for Jews only \u2013 it turns the stomach, even for someone who grew up under apartheid. It\u2019s a hundred times worse\u201d [59].\r\n\r\nYet in \u201cBecoming\u201d there is no mention of Israel, Apartheid Israel, Israeli Apartheid, Zionism, Palestine, Palestinian human rights, or the\u00a0 Palestinian Genocide and\u00a0 Palestinian Holocaust ( 2.2 million Palestinian deaths from violence, 0.1 million, or from imposed deprivation, 2.1 million, since the British invasion of Palestine in WW1 [27, 34].\r\n\r\nThe Sharpeville Massacre in 1960 involved the killing of 69 Africans and the World responded with Boycotts and Sanctions that eventually brought down Apartheid in 1993 [60].\u00a0 By way of comparison, the Israeli Gaza Massacre in 2008-2009 involved 1,400 Palestinians killed and 5,300 Palestinians wounded, as compared\u00a0 to 13 Israelis killed and 518 Israelis wounded\u00a0 [61].\u00a0 The 2014 Gaza Massacre\u00a0 involved 2,256 Palestinians killed, and 17,125 Palestinians wounded, as compared to\u00a0 85 Israelis killed and 2,629 Israelis wounded [62]. According to Wikipedia, the 2018-2019 Great March of Return involved 183 Palestinians killed and 9,204 Palestinians wounded, as compared to\u00a0 1 Israeli killed and 11 Israelis wounded [63], but\u00a0 Al Jazeera estimates\u00a0 266 Palestinians killed and 30,398 wounded [64].\u00a0 Notwithstanding Zionist-driven Western hysteria, Palestinian rocket attacks on Apartheid Israel killed 32 Israelis in the period 2004-2014 [65].\u00a0 Gaza has been devastated with massive destruction of homes and infrastructure to the point that in 2018 the UN reported that it is now \u201cunliveable\u201d [66].\r\n\r\nThere are now 7 million Palestinian refugees, and\u00a0 of 14 million Palestinians (half of them children, three quarters women and children) about 50% are forbidden to even step foot in their own country on pain of death, only 1.9 million\u00a0 Palestinian Israelis\u00a0 are permitted to vote for the government ruling all of the former\u00a0 Mandated Palestine, and 5 million Palestinians\u00a0 have zero human rights [67] as Occupied Palestinians in West Bank ghettoes (3 million) or in the blockaded and bombed Gaza Concentration Camp (2.0 million). However the \u201clucky\u201d Israeli Palestinians are Third Class citizens subject to over 60 Nazi-style,\u00a0 race-based laws [68, 69]. The land of Palestine has now been 90% ethnically cleansed [27,\u00a0 70-73].\r\n\r\nWhile Indigenous Palestinians represent 50% of Apartheid Israeli subjects, nearly three quarters of them cannot vote for the government ruling them \u2013 egregious Apartheid\u00a0 that is declared by the UN to be a crime against Humanity [74].\u00a0 Personal disclaimer \u2013 I am an anti-racist Jewish Australian humanitarian and was happily married for 52 years to a non-Indigenous Black Australian resident and thence citizen. We were , of course, utterly opposed to racism and to Apartheid in particular for obvious humanitarian reasons but also for personal reasons \u2013 if we had lived in Apartheid South Africa\u00a0 we would have been prosecuted for miscegeny and jailed. When we worked in the US in the late 1960s we would have been persecuted in the Deep South of Apartheid America.\r\n\r\nThe Obamas must have been aware of Israeli Apartheid and the gross violation of Palestinian human rights but political pragmatism (and indeed political\u00a0 survival) demanded that they go along with the fervently pro-Zionist narrative of Neocon American and Zionist Imperialist\u00a0 (NAZI)-subverted America. For Obama the fanatical demands of the ferocious Israel Lobby wore thin when he was publicly humiliated by Apartheid Israeli PM Netanyahu when this serial war criminal addressed Congress and received 29 standing ovations (not mentioned in \u201cBecoming\u201d as noted by Jewish American journalist\u00a0 Donald Harrison [36]).\r\n\r\nThe public humiliation of Obama by the Israel Lobby and Apartheid Israeli PM Netanyahu is described in detail by anti-racist Jewish American Peter Beinart,\u00a0 a self-styled \u201cliberal Zionist\u201d (oxymoronic because Zionism is genocidal racism) and of Sephardic Jewish South African origin, writing in his book \u201cThe Crisis of Zionism\u201d\u00a0 [75, 76]. He describes how Obama was influenced by the liberal Jewish tradition that was heavily involved in Black civil rights and desegregation (see Chapter 5, \u201cThe Jewish President\u201d [75]) but when he made noises about civil rights for Palestinians he was bullied, humiliated and whipped back into the racist Zionist fold by the powerful ADL (Anti-Defamation League) and AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) and their overwhelmingly supportive Congressional lackeys. Serial war criminal and genocidal racist\u00a0 Israeli PM, Netanyahu, in a speech attacking the president of the United States (Obama) received 29 standing\u00a0 ovations (see Chapter 7, \u201cThe Clash\u201d and Chapter 8, \u201cThe Humbling\u201d [75]). Obama found some courage in one of his last acts by refusing to veto and merely abstaining from\u00a0 UN Security Council Resolution 2334 that otherwise unanimously condemned the gross Apartheid Israeli violations\u00a0 of International Law\u00a0 in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (Trump America and US lackey Australia opposed Resolution 2334) [77-79].\r\n\r\nMichelle Obama utterly ignored Apartheid Israel and the ongoing Palestinian Genocide in \u201cBecoming\u201d, this astonishing omission thereby adding greater weight to the perception of the Zionist tail wagging the American dog since Apartheid Israeli acquisition of nuclear weapons in 1967 [80-85]. Senator J. William Fulbright, Chairman of U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations (1973):\u00a0 \u201cIsrael controls the U.S. Senate. [\u2026] The great majority of the Senate of the U.S. \u2013 somewhere around 80 percent \u2013 are completely in support of Israel; anything Israel wants Israel gets\u201d [80].\r\n\r\nThe mendacity of Zionist-subverted Mainstream media hides the deadly realities that the per capita GDP for Occupied Palestinians is a dire $3,000 as compared to\u00a0 $40,000 for the Israeli Occupiers [86], that Israelis kill ten times more Israelis in Apartheid Israel than do terrorists [87], and that 2.2 million Palestinians\u00a0 have died from violence, 0.1 million, or from imposed deprivation, 2.1 million, since the British invasion of Palestine in WW1\u00a0 as compared to 4,000 invading Zionists dying at the hands of Indigenous Palestinians\u00a0 since 1920 [88, 89]. Princeton and Harvard graduate and First Lady of the US for 8 years, Michelle Obama somehow didn\u2019t notice.\r\n\r\n(6) Who killed Osama bin Laden?\r\n\r\nThe mendacious and serial war criminal Bush Administration \u2013 that according to the US Center for Public Integrity told 935 lies about Iraq between 9-11 and the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003 [90] \u2013 claimed that the 9-11 atrocity\u00a0 (3,000 killed) was executed by Al Qaeda led by Osama bin Laden i.e. men in caves were responsible for this massive atrocity. Pertinently, Al Qaeda was backed by the US against\u00a0 Russia and Serbia; the FBI had Osama bin Laden on its most wanted list but not for 9-11;\u00a0 none of the 19 Bush-asserted 9-11 perpetrators were from Iraq or Afghanistan (the first Muslim countries war criminally invaded by the US after 9-11); and numerous science, architecture, engineering, aviation, military and intelligence experts conclude that the US Government was responsible for 9-11, with some cogently arguing for a key involvement of Apartheid Israel and Saudi Arabia in the atrocity [51, 52].\r\n\r\nNeocon American and Zionist Imperialist (NAZI)-subverted Mainstream media throughout the world rapidly fell into line with the lying Bush \u201cofficial version\u201d of 9-11, brooking no dissent from the version offered by this mendacious war criminal \u2013 indeed a\u00a0 UK BBC TV journalist in New York with an intact World Trade Center (WTC) building\u00a0 7 (WTC7) behind her, reported the\u00a0 demolition of WTC7 (not hit by planes and suffering only minor fires) 15 minutes before it actually happened [51]. Even President Donald Trump and former Vice President Al Gore hold blame US intelligence failures for 9-11, with Al Gore stating : \u201cThese affirmative and repeated refusals to listen to clear warnings constitute behavior that goes beyond simple negligence. At a minimum, it represents a reckless disregard for the safety of the American people\u201d [51].\r\n\r\nMichelle Obama\u2019s \u201cBecoming\u201d scrupulously and absurdly avoids commentary on world affairs\u00a0 but makes an exception in relation to Apartheid South Africa\u00a0 (pages 367- 369 [1]) and the Barack Obama-asserted\u00a0 extrajudicial killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011: \u201cI knew it was coming\u2026 seven thousand miles from the White House and under cover of darkness, an elite team of U.S. Navy SEALs had stormed a mysterious compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, looking for Osama bin Laden\u2026 Barack was coming out of our bedroom\u2026 \u201cWe got him,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd no one got hurt.\u201d. We hugged. Osama bin Laden had been killed . No American lives had been lost. Barack had taken an enormous\u00a0 risk \u2013 one that could have cost him his presidency \u2013 and it had all gone okay. The news was already travelling across the world\u2026 I\u2019m not sure anyone\u2019s death is reason to celebrate,\u00a0 ever. But what America got that night was a moment of release, a chance to feel its own resilience\u201d (pages 363-364 [1]).\r\n\r\nHowever\u00a0 leading figures with expert inside knowledge dispute the Bush-Obama narrative parroted by US Mainstream media and thence by Michelle Obama. Thus\u00a0 former US-installed Afghan President Hamid Karzai (10 September\u00a0 2015): \u201c[Al-Qaeda] is for me a myth [\u2026] For us, they don\u2019t exist. I don\u2019t know if al-Qaeda existed and I don\u2019t know if they exist. I have not seen them and I\u2019ve not had any report about them, any report that would indicate that al-Qaeda is operating in Afghanistan\u2026. [re the Bush version of 9-11] That is what I have heard from our Western friends. That\u2019s what the Western media says. There is no doubt that an operation, a terrorist operation was conducted in New York and in Washington\u2026 I neither believe nor disbelieve something that I don\u2019t know about. I can tell you that Afghanistan was as much a victim of terrorism as was America, as were the people who were killed in the September 11th terrorist attacks\u201d [51].\r\n\r\nSeymour Hersh (famed American Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist who exposed the Mylai Massacre) on the Obama-asserted killing of Osama bin Laden: \u201cDo you think Obama\u2019s been judged by any rational standards? Has Guantanamo closed? Is a war over? Is anyone paying any attention to Iraq? Is he seriously talking about going into Syria? We are not doing so well in the 80 wars we are in right now, what the hell does he want to go into another one for. What\u2019s going on [with journalists]?\u2026 Like killing people, how does [Obama] get away with the drone programme, why aren\u2019t we doing more? How does he justify it? What\u2019s the intelligence? Why don\u2019t we find out how good or bad this policy is? Why do newspapers constantly cite the two or three groups that monitor drone killings. Why don\u2019t we do our own work?\u201d and re the Obama-asserted killing of Osama bin Laden: \u201cNothing\u2019s been done about that story, it\u2019s one big lie, not one word of it is true\u201d [51].\r\n\r\nDr Paul Craig Roberts (an economist, academic, former editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal and Business Week, nationally syndicated columnist for Creators Syndicate, and author of numerous books, he served as an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration, earning fame as the \u201cFather of Reaganomics): \u201cAmericans live in a rigged system in which propaganda determines the public\u2019s awareness and consciousness. Americans, or most of them, live in the Matrix\u2026 Washington\u2019s phony wars based on lies and phony economy based on rigged statistics\u201d[91].\r\n\r\nDr Paul Craig Roberts re the Obama-asserted killing of Osama bin Laden: \u201cI do not believe Hersh\u2019s story for three reasons. One reason is that bin Laden was suffering from disease that no one can survive for a decade. His death was widely reported in 2001. One reason is that even Hersh\u2019s \u201ctrue\u201d account of \u201cwhat really happened\u201d is contradicted by eye witnesses and the initial Pakistani TV interviews of eye witnesses. One reason is that Hersh\u2019s story is too convoluted for an assassination raid, a routine event. He exposes lies within lies, indecision within decision, payoffs within payoffs, and reports such a huge number of people with advance knowledge of the raid that it cannot possibly have been kept a secret. I could add a fourth reason\u2013the US government\u2019s lack of credibility. Washington lies about everything. For example: Saddam Hussein\u2019s weapons of mass destruction, Assad\u2019s use of chemical weapons, Iranian nukes, Russian invasion of Ukraine. If, as Hersh reports, lies comprise 99% of Washington\u2019s tale of the raid in Abbottabad, why believe that 1% of the story is true and that bin Laden was killed. It is difficult to have murder without a body. The only evidence that bin Laden was killed is the government\u2019s claim. In my opinion, Washington\u2019s disinformation agencies have finally managed to deceive Seymour Hersh with a concocted \u201cinside story\u201d that saves Washington\u2019s claim of having murdered bin Laden by proving that the US government is an extraordinary liar and violator of law. Hersh\u2019s story does prove that the US government is a liar, but it does not prove that a SEAL team murdered Osama bin Laden\u201d [92].\r\n\r\nOn 2 November 2007\u00a0 Pakistan PM Benazir Bhutto ( 2-time PM of Pakistan in 1988-1990 and 1993-1996 and leader of the Pakistan People Party in 1982-2007)\u00a0 was interviewed by Sir David Frost at Al Jazeera shortly before her murder on 27 December 2007. In this interview she said: \u201cAnd he had also dealings with Omar Sheik, the man who murdered Osama Bin Laden.\u201d The same interview was published on the BBC website, but that key sentence was removed [93].\r\n\r\nWashington lies about everything [92]. Who should we believe, President Hamid Karzai, Pullitzer Prize-winning Seymour Hersh, famed Dr Paul Craig Roberts, 2-time Pakistan PM Benazir Bhutto \u2026 or Michelle and Barack Obama?\r\n\r\n(7). Egregious US Alliance violation of 20 countries under Peace Nobel Laureate Barack Obama.\r\n\r\nFor all that he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, Obama has an appalling record of violence against numerous countries as outlined below.\r\n\r\n(1) Afghanistan. Obama continued the Afghan Genocide and Afghan Holocaust in Occupied Afghanistan (started by his predecessor, serial war criminal\u00a0 George Bush) in which\u00a0 Afghan deaths from violence or deprivation\u00a0 total 7.2 million [48, 50].\u00a0 The most fundamental human right is the right to life. While legitimately criticized for the one party state, the death penalty, censorship, urban air pollution and harsh treatment of dissidents, China has been hugely successful in radically reducing infant mortality and maternal mortality in Tibet and in China as a whole. In stark contrast, the war criminal US Alliance occupation of neighbouring Afghanistan continues to be associated with an under-1 infant mortality and maternal mortality incidence that is 7 times higher and 4-12 times higher, respectively, than that in Tibet [45, 94, 95] \u2013 evidence of gross violation by the rich US Alliance countries of Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention [96] and of Articles 55 and 56 of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War that unequivocally\u00a0 demand\u00a0 that an Occupier must supply its conquered Subjects with life-sustaining food and medical requisites \u201cto\u00a0 the fullest extent of the means available to it\u201d [97]. The GDP per capita is $60,000 (US), $58,000 (Australia), and $40,000 (UK) as compared to $9,000 (China) and $600 (Occupied Afghanistan) [98]. Obama and the other\u00a0 leaders of the US Alliance need to be taken to the International Criminal Court over passive mass murder in Occupied Afghanistan and Occupied Iraq.\r\n\r\nAlso utterly ignored by Neocon American and Zionist\u00a0 Imperialist (NAZI)-perverted and subverted Western Mainstream media are the 1.2 million people who have died world-wide since 9-11 due to US Alliance restoration of the Taliban-destroyed Afghan opium industry from 6% of world market share in 2001 to 93% in 2007, the breakdown (as of 2015)\u00a0 including 280,000 Americans, 256,000 Indonesians, 68,000 Iranians, 25,000 British, 14,000 Canadians, 10,000 Germans, 5,000 Australians (7.2 million Afghan deaths from violence, 1.4 million, or\u00a0 imposed deprivation, 5.6\u00a0 million, 2001-2015) [48, 50].\r\n\r\n(2) Egypt. Apartheid Israel, Afghanistan and Egypt are the biggest recipients of US military aid and this continued under Obama\u00a0 after the 2013 military coup that removed Egypt\u2019s first ever democratically\u00a0 elected president ever, Mohamed Morsi, who died in prison in 2019 [99] (Egyptian deaths from deprivation 1.3 million, 2012-2019)..\r\n\r\n(3) Honduras. The US has a longstanding and appalling record of interfering in Latin American countries through subversion, coups or invasions, with Honduras serving as a base for such deadly operations [45]. Under Obama the US-backed military removed the democratically-elected government of Honduras in 2009 with consequent gross human rights abuses (Honduran deaths from deprivation 40,000, 2009-2019).\r\n\r\n(4) Iran. Sanctions against Iran\u00a0 by the US and its US Alliance lackeys date back to the Carter Administration response to the Iranian Revolution that\u00a0 overthrew the US-emplaced Shah regime in 1979 and the subsequent US hostage crisis. Agreement with Obama America and other US Alliance powers for the Iran Nuclear Deal (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, JCPOA) resulted in substantial lifting of sanctions in 2015. However Trump abrogated this treaty in 2018, has re-imposed sanctions, increased sanctions and threatened \u201cobliteration\u201d of parts of Iran [100, 101]. While Obama deserves credit for the Iran Nuclear Deal , he must\u00a0 wear the egregious racism tag of imposing\u00a0 deadly sanctions against non-nuclear weapons Iran (that has no nuclear weapons, has not invaded any other country for centuries, wants a nuclear\u00a0 weapons-free Middle East, and does not occupy the territory of any other country)\u00a0 while lavishing scores of billions of dollars of military aid on a nuclear terrorist Apartheid Israel (that has up to 400 nuclear weapons, has invaded 13 countries and occupies\u00a0 the territory\u00a0 of 3 other countries, namely Syria, Lebanon and Palestine) [45, 102] (Iranian avoidable deaths from deprivation averaged 74,000 per year and totalled 1.3 million in the 21st century)..\r\n\r\n(5) Iraq. US forces left Iraq in 2011 under Obama,\u00a0 leaving a devastated country\u00a0 and a bitter Sunni versus Shia divide that gave rise to IS in Iraq, thence in\u00a0 Syria and thence around the world. US Alliance countries (notably Saudi Arabia,\u00a0 Turkey, Apartheid Israel, the US, the UK, and France) variously supported jihadis (and hence IS) in their war against the Assad regime in Syria (4.6 million Iraqi deaths from violence, 1.7 million,\u00a0 or deprivation, 2.9 million, and 6 million refugees in 1990-2011) [48, 49].\r\n\r\n(6) Libya. The France, UK and US (FUKUS) Coalition invaded Libya with UNSC sanction in 2011, effected regime change,\u00a0 and devastated what was formerly a secular state and the richest country in Africa (0.2 million Libyans killed through violence, 0.1 million, or deprivation, 0.1 million, and 1 million refugees) [48].\r\n\r\n(7) Pakistan. Despite unanimous opposition from the National Assembly of Pakistan , the US since 2004 and under Obama has hit targets in Pakistan with drone-fired bombs targeted via the Australia-US joint electronic spying base at Pine Gap in Central Australia ( 6,000 Pakistanis killed with 1,000 being civilians [103] and 11.4 million avoidable deaths from deprivation, 2004-2019).\r\n\r\n(8) Palestine. For all his disingenuous\u00a0 talk of a \u201c2-state solution\u201d in Palestine (now impossible because of the ethnic cleansing of 90% of Palestine by the genocidally racist Zionists of Apartheid Israel ), Obama finished his second term as president by granting $38 billion in military aid over the next decade to nuclear terrorist, racist Zionist\u2013run, genocidally racist, democracy-by-genocide Apartheid Israel [104].\u00a0 Obama is a major player in the American Holocaust in which there have been 30 million untimely American deaths since 9-11 that are inescapably linked to the $40 trillion long-term accrual cost of Apartheid\u00a0 Israel to Americans [40]. Just as those supporting Nazi Germany can be reasonably considered to be \u201cpro-Nazi\u201dand those supporting Apartheid South Africa were considered to be \u201cpro-Apartheid\u201d , so those supporting Apartheid Israel can reasonably be condemned as \u201cpro-Apartheid\u201d and hence utterly beyond the pale for decent humans.\r\n\r\n(9) Philippines. By 2009 the US had 600 military plus CIA operatives involved in counterterrorism in the southern Philippines [105] (827,000 avoidable deaths from deprivation, 2015-2019).\r\n\r\n(10) Somalia. The US invaded Somalia in 1992 and the US Alliance occupation of a starving Somalia continues,\u00a0 variously involving the US, Ethiopia, and Kenya, with US lackey Australia involved in waters offshore ( 2.2 million Somali deaths from violence, 0.4 million, or from deprivation, 1.8 million, in 1992-2011) [48].\r\n\r\n(11) Syria. US Alliance countries (notably Saudi Arabia,\u00a0 Turkey, Apartheid Israel, the US, the UK, and France) variously supported jihadis (and hence variously IS) in their war against the secular Assad regime in Syria.\u00a0 Under Obama the US invaded Syria without permission from the Syrian Government (1.0 million Syrian deaths from violence, 0.5 million, or from deprivation, 0.5 million, in 2012-2019 and 11 million refugees).\r\n\r\n(12) Yemen. Since 2015 the US has been involved with drone strikes, weapons and advisers together with other US Alliance partners in the Saudi-imposed Yemeni Genocide in starving Yemen (70,000 killed, 225,000 deaths from deprivation in 2015-2019, 3 million refugees)\u00a0 [106].\r\n\r\nThe above is a partial list because the US Government subverts every country on earth including the US. The US has invaded about 72 countries (52 since WW2) [55], and has about 800 military bases in more than\u00a0 70 countries and territories [107]. John Pilger: \u201cShould the CIA stooge Guaid\u00f3 and his white supremacists grab power, it will be the 68th overthrow of a sovereign government by the United States, most of them democracies\u201d [108]. 15 million people die avoidably from deprivation each year on Spaceship Earth with the US in charge of the flight deck [45], and 120 million died thus during the 8 years of the Obama presidency. Obama has continued the War on Terror with sanctions, invasions and illegal drone strikes on 7 countries (Libya, starving Somalia,\u00a0 starving Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan). It is estimated that 32 million Muslims have perished from violence, 5 million, or from deprivation, 27 million, in 20 countries invaded by the US Alliance since the US Government\u2019s 9-11 false flag atrocity in 2001 [47, 51].\r\n\r\nIt is hardly surprising\u00a0 that Michelle Obama\u00a0 should have ignored these horrendous atrocities of Nobel Peace Laureate Barack Obama in her feel-good biography \u201cBecoming\u201d.\r\n\r\nFinal comments.\r\n\r\n\u201cBecoming\u201d by Michelle Obama is\u00a0 an inspiring, feel-good story of how an African American woman from the impoverished South Side of Chicago graduated\u00a0 from\u00a0 Princeton and Harvard, worked in a top law firm and thence in different roles in community leadership and the University of Chicago Medical School, and then as a splendid mother of 2 daughters helped her African American\u00a0 husband Barack Obama to achieve 8 years as president of the United States.\r\n\r\nBarack Obama was stymied by a hostile congress but managed some action on climate change and nuclear proliferation (the existential threats facing Humanity [102]). He also managed a limited recognition of Palestinian human rights (by abstaining from UNSC Resolution 2334), and saved the lives of scores of thousands of Americans through Obamacare (45,000 Americans die annually from lack of medical insurance [37]). Unfortunately these limited achievements of Barack Obama are all being wantonly undone by\u00a0 his crude, ignorant, stupid, mendacious and bullying successor, Donald Trump [37].\r\n\r\nMichelle Obama\u2019s feel-good \u201cBecoming\u201d is remarkable for its niceness and the paucity of personal criticisms.\u00a0 Thus she very briefly refers to a really bad teacher, a boy her punched her at school , a girl who bullied her, incorrect detractors\u00a0 in politics (e.g. Chicago politicians Donna Trotter and Bobby Rush and\u00a0 various media critics such as pro-Iraq\u00a0 War Christopher Hitchens ). However the only people she criticizes at length are journalists who quoted her unfairly and questioned her love of America (pages 262-269 [1]) and the misogynist reactionary Donald Trump (pages\u00a0 407-419 [1]). The evidently very well edited \u201cBecoming\u201d is a book that (absences aside) could be read with pleasure and utility by people from the Democratic Left to the Republican Far Right (excepting Donald Trump) \u2013 it is a triumph of endless, feel good\u00a0 niceness and smart, market-informed\u00a0 editing. A wasted opportunity for courageous truth telling.\r\n\r\nFamed anti-racist Jewish American writer I.F. Stone (Isidor Feinstein Stone, an outstanding US journalist, publisher of the newsletter \u201cI. F. Stone\u2019s Weekly\u201d and author of numerous books, including \u201cThe Hidden History of the Korean War, 1950-1951\u201d), told journalism students: \u201cAmong all the things I\u2019m going to tell you today about being a journalist, all you have to remember is two words: governments lie\u201d [109, 110].\r\n\r\nMore specifically, in relation to American mendacity, Gore Vidal (a great American writer) stated in an interview with Melvyn Bragg) (2008): \u201cUnlike most Americans who lie all the time, I hate lying\u2026 This is a country of hoax. P.T. Barnum is the god of this republic, which is no longer a republic alas. It is an oligarchy and a rather vicious one\u201d [111].\r\n\r\nThe extent of that neoconservative American Establishment deception has been cogently described by Professor Noam Chomsky (linguistics at 85-Nobel-Laureate MIT) and\u00a0 Professor Edward Herman (finance, University of Pennsylvania) (1988):\u00a0 \u201cIn sum, the mass media of the United States are effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propaganda function by reliance on market forces, internalized assumptions, and self-censorship , and without any significant\u00a0 overt coercion. This propaganda system has become even more efficient in recent decades with the rise of the national television networks, greater mass-media concentration, right-wing pressures on public radio and television, and the growth in scope and sophistication of public relations and news management\u201d [112].\r\n\r\nThe most important things in history are often those that are not stated, the absences, holes or lacunae. Michelle Obama\u2019s\u00a0 feel-good autobiography \u201cBecoming\u201d has many extraordinary, Elephant in the Room\u00a0\u00a0 absences that reflect the One Percenter-dominated Mainstream American media\u00a0 culture of lying by omission, genocide ignoring and holocaust ignoring that profoundly deceives ordinary Americans, including Michelle Obama, and indeed most of the West. However \u201cBecoming\u201d can nevertheless serve the interests of Humanity if decent folk tell everyone they can about its shocking absences.\r\n\r\n<strong>COUNTERCURRENTS.ORG<\/strong>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Dr Gideon Polya \u201cBecoming\u201d by Michelle Obama is an inspiring, feel-good story of how a working class African-American woman became a Harvard graduate,\u00a0 corporate lawyer, perfect mother and thence\u00a0 First Lady of the US. However \u201cBecoming\u201d has numerous\u00a0 extraordinary\u00a0&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"issuem_issue":[8],"class_list":["post-212","article","type-article","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","issuem_issue-june-2019","entry","no-media"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>\u201cBecoming\u201d By Michelle Obama \u2013 Mainstream Lying, Genocide Ignoring &amp;\u00a0 Holocaust Ignoring - Lok Samvad<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/populareducation.in\/loksamvad\/article\/becoming-by-michelle-obama-mainstream-lying-genocide-ignoring-holocaust-ignoring\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"\u201cBecoming\u201d By Michelle Obama \u2013 Mainstream Lying, Genocide Ignoring &amp;\u00a0 Holocaust Ignoring - Lok Samvad\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Dr Gideon Polya \u201cBecoming\u201d by Michelle Obama is an inspiring, feel-good story of how a working class African-American woman became a Harvard graduate,\u00a0 corporate lawyer, perfect mother and thence\u00a0 First Lady of the US. However \u201cBecoming\u201d has numerous\u00a0 extraordinary\u00a0&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"http:\/\/populareducation.in\/loksamvad\/article\/becoming-by-michelle-obama-mainstream-lying-genocide-ignoring-holocaust-ignoring\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Lok Samvad\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"44 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/populareducation.in\/loksamvad\/article\/becoming-by-michelle-obama-mainstream-lying-genocide-ignoring-holocaust-ignoring\/\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/populareducation.in\/loksamvad\/article\/becoming-by-michelle-obama-mainstream-lying-genocide-ignoring-holocaust-ignoring\/\",\"name\":\"\u201cBecoming\u201d By Michelle Obama \u2013 Mainstream Lying, Genocide Ignoring &\u00a0 Holocaust Ignoring - Lok Samvad\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/populareducation.in\/loksamvad\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2019-11-07T07:06:23+00:00\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/populareducation.in\/loksamvad\/article\/becoming-by-michelle-obama-mainstream-lying-genocide-ignoring-holocaust-ignoring\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"http:\/\/populareducation.in\/loksamvad\/article\/becoming-by-michelle-obama-mainstream-lying-genocide-ignoring-holocaust-ignoring\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/populareducation.in\/loksamvad\/article\/becoming-by-michelle-obama-mainstream-lying-genocide-ignoring-holocaust-ignoring\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"http:\/\/populareducation.in\/loksamvad\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Articles\",\"item\":\"http:\/\/populareducation.in\/loksamvad\/article\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":3,\"name\":\"\u201cBecoming\u201d By Michelle Obama \u2013 Mainstream Lying, Genocide Ignoring &#038;\u00a0 Holocaust Ignoring\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/populareducation.in\/loksamvad\/#website\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/populareducation.in\/loksamvad\/\",\"name\":\"Lok Samvad\",\"description\":\"Lok Samvad  by Peace\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"http:\/\/populareducation.in\/loksamvad\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"\u201cBecoming\u201d By Michelle Obama \u2013 Mainstream Lying, Genocide Ignoring &\u00a0 Holocaust Ignoring - Lok Samvad","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"http:\/\/populareducation.in\/loksamvad\/article\/becoming-by-michelle-obama-mainstream-lying-genocide-ignoring-holocaust-ignoring\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"\u201cBecoming\u201d By Michelle Obama \u2013 Mainstream Lying, Genocide Ignoring &\u00a0 Holocaust Ignoring - Lok Samvad","og_description":"By Dr Gideon Polya \u201cBecoming\u201d by Michelle Obama is an inspiring, feel-good story of how a working class African-American woman became a Harvard graduate,\u00a0 corporate lawyer, perfect mother and thence\u00a0 First Lady of the US. However \u201cBecoming\u201d has numerous\u00a0 extraordinary\u00a0&hellip;","og_url":"http:\/\/populareducation.in\/loksamvad\/article\/becoming-by-michelle-obama-mainstream-lying-genocide-ignoring-holocaust-ignoring\/","og_site_name":"Lok Samvad","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Est. reading time":"44 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"http:\/\/populareducation.in\/loksamvad\/article\/becoming-by-michelle-obama-mainstream-lying-genocide-ignoring-holocaust-ignoring\/","url":"http:\/\/populareducation.in\/loksamvad\/article\/becoming-by-michelle-obama-mainstream-lying-genocide-ignoring-holocaust-ignoring\/","name":"\u201cBecoming\u201d By Michelle Obama \u2013 Mainstream Lying, Genocide Ignoring &\u00a0 Holocaust Ignoring - Lok Samvad","isPartOf":{"@id":"http:\/\/populareducation.in\/loksamvad\/#website"},"datePublished":"2019-11-07T07:06:23+00:00","breadcrumb":{"@id":"http:\/\/populareducation.in\/loksamvad\/article\/becoming-by-michelle-obama-mainstream-lying-genocide-ignoring-holocaust-ignoring\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["http:\/\/populareducation.in\/loksamvad\/article\/becoming-by-michelle-obama-mainstream-lying-genocide-ignoring-holocaust-ignoring\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"http:\/\/populareducation.in\/loksamvad\/article\/becoming-by-michelle-obama-mainstream-lying-genocide-ignoring-holocaust-ignoring\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"http:\/\/populareducation.in\/loksamvad\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Articles","item":"http:\/\/populareducation.in\/loksamvad\/article\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"\u201cBecoming\u201d By Michelle Obama \u2013 Mainstream Lying, Genocide Ignoring &#038;\u00a0 Holocaust Ignoring"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"http:\/\/populareducation.in\/loksamvad\/#website","url":"http:\/\/populareducation.in\/loksamvad\/","name":"Lok Samvad","description":"Lok Samvad  by Peace","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"http:\/\/populareducation.in\/loksamvad\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"}]}},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false,"issuem-cover-image":false,"issuem-featured-rotator-image":false,"issuem-featured-thumb-image":false,"lightbox":false,"search_results":false,"blog_entry":false,"blog_post":false,"blog_post_full":false,"blog_related":false,"portfolio_entry":false,"portfolio_post":false,"portfolio_related":false,"staff_entry":false,"staff_post":false,"staff_related":false,"testimonials_entry":false,"gallery":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"Peace","author_link":"http:\/\/populareducation.in\/loksamvad\/author\/admin\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"By Dr Gideon Polya \u201cBecoming\u201d by Michelle Obama is an inspiring, feel-good story of how a working class African-American woman became a Harvard graduate,\u00a0 corporate lawyer, perfect mother and thence\u00a0 First Lady of the US. However \u201cBecoming\u201d has numerous\u00a0 extraordinary\u00a0&hellip;","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/populareducation.in\/loksamvad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article\/212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/populareducation.in\/loksamvad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/populareducation.in\/loksamvad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/article"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/populareducation.in\/loksamvad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/populareducation.in\/loksamvad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/populareducation.in\/loksamvad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article\/212\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/populareducation.in\/loksamvad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/populareducation.in\/loksamvad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/populareducation.in\/loksamvad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212"},{"taxonomy":"issuem_issue","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/populareducation.in\/loksamvad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issuem_issue?post=212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}