Dirt begins to fly at Obama [View All]

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Dirt begins to fly at Obama
War opens with hints about ‘suspect’ backers

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/us_elections/article3177684.ece


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The unorthodox pastor of Trinity church is the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, who is refusing all interviews. He married Barack and Michelle Obama and baptised their two daughters. He is already attracting attention on right-wing websites for describing the September 11 attacks as a “wake-up call” to America for ignoring the concerns of “people of colour”, and for claiming that Americans “believe in white supremacy and black inferiority . . . more than we believe in God”.

Wright travelled to meet Muammar Gadaffi, the Libyan leader, in the 1980s with Louis Farrakhan, the black supremacist leader of the Nation of Islam, and subscribes to the “Black Values System”, which preaches self-reliance but claims “middle-classness” is ensnaring blacks.

“When enemies find out that in 1984 I went to Tripoli to visit Colonel Gadaffi with Farrakhan, a lot of his Jewish support will dry up quicker than a snowball in hell,” Wright once said.

The other potential threat to Obama comes from the indictment of one of his leading donors, Antoin “Tony” Rezko, a Syrian-born property developer in Chicago, who is accused of extortion.

Rezko has been indicted by Patrick Fitzgerald - the prosecutor who brought down the White House official Lewis “Scooter” Libby and the press magnate Conrad Black - for seeking millions of dollars in kickbacks from companies bidding for state business in Illinois. He is due to appear in court on February 24.

On the day the Obamas bought a new home in Chicago for $1.6m in 2005, Rezko’s wife purchased an adjoining piece of land, giving the senator’s family more privacy and a larger expanse of green than they had paid for. Obama later paid $104,000 for a strip of the land, even though it was known that Rezko was under investigation.

Obama has admitted that the deal was “bone-headed” and has given $37,000 of political donations by Rezko to charity.

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