History Forum / General / British History / July 2008

DSH
Lux et Veritas et Libertas
Vires et Honor

Barack Obama’s brother pushes Chinese imports on US

Michael Sheridan
Shenzhen, China

The Times of London

BARACK Obama’s half-brother has been helping to promote cheap Chinese
exports in a low-profile business career while the Democratic senator has
been winning worldwide fame in his race for the White House.

He has gone to extraordinary lengths to avoid public attention and his
family links remain unknown to most of his acquaintances in Shenzhen, a
border boomtown in southern China where he has lived since 2002.

Hmmmmmmmm... -- DSH

Mark Ndesandjo is the son of Barack Obama’s late father and his third wife,
an American woman named Ruth Nidesand who runs the up-market Maduri
kindergarten in Nairobi.

Obama, however, refers to him simply as “my brother” and says he was the
only uncontested heir after their father, a Kenyan, died in a car crash in
1982.

But the two men held sharply diverging views on their African heritage and
while Obama chose to live in the glare of publicity, his half-brother
submerged himself in the crowds of the most cosmopolitan city in China.

Watson, The Plot Thickens & The Game's Afoot. -- DSH

Friends say he has a long-term Chinese girlfriend in her 20s from Henan, a
poor landlocked province that sends millions of migrants to the coastal
cities.

Deeeeelightful! -- DSH

He lives in Nanshan, a brash new district of high-rises and streets teeming
after dark with young migrants eating spicy street food and cramming into
bars, karaoke joints and massage parlours.

“He is big, strong and full of energy, speaks good Chinese and is a really
easygoing guy,” said a Chinese friend, “He always wears a hat over his
shaven head. I believe he has several consultancy jobs.”

Is he a Muslim? -- DSH

Chinese officials said there are unanswered questions about his
internet-based company, Worldnexus Ltd. It has provided corporate
communications and website design to Chinese firms seeking customers in
English-speaking markets, of which the United States is the biggest.

Worldnexus is not registered to conduct business in Shenzhen and officials
at the city’s commercial administration bureau said this raised potential
issues of taxation and compliance with the law by its customers.

The company’s Chinese-language website promises “increased communication
efficiency” to clients and lists Shenzhen exporters of electronics and
machine parts among its contracts.

The website lists an office address in the west of the city but despite a
search of the area and checks with local police, no such building could be
located.

HILARIOUS!  Fly By Night, Inc.? -- DSH

Nor is Worldnexus Ltd legally registered in Hong Kong, where many businesses
choose to incorporate for their China trade, according to an official data
check.

Contacted by The Sunday Times last week, Ndesandjo said: “Thanks for your
interest. However I am not giving interviews at this time.”

NOT SURPRISINGLY. -- DSH

He did not respond to four subsequent requests for comment.

NOT SURPRISINGLY. -- DSH

However Ndesandjo told a Chinese businessman last week that Worldnexus was
not trading at the moment, saying that he hoped to “re-start the business
next year” and adding that the website was “out of date.”

"RESTART THE BUSINESS NEXT YEAR WHEN MY BROTHER IS PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED
STATES."? -- DSH

Any family connection between the Democratic presidential contender and the
flood of Chinese imports that are blamed by many Americans for destroying
American jobs could be politically embarrassing.

REALLY? -- DSH

Obama has staked out a populist position on trade with China in the US
election campaign, calling in December 2007 for a ban on all toys from
Chinese factories until safety inspections were put in place.

But although the kinship between the two men is bound to cause a sensation
in China – as in their father’s native Kenya, no distinction is drawn
between full and half brothers – they do not appear to be close.

Ndesandjo, who had an elite education in the United States, collecting a
degree from Brown University, a masters in physics from Stanford and an MBA
from Emory, did not share Obama’s emotional view of his roots.

Obama painted a disappointed picture of his half-brother in his 1995 memoir,
Dreams from My Father, in which he celebrated his own return to Kenya and
rediscovery of his African inheritance.

At a rather tense lunch, Obama quoted “Mark” – his family name is never
given away in the book - as saying Kenya was “just another poor African
country” to which he felt little attachment.

Mark added: “there’s not much work for a physicist, is there, in a country
where the average person doesn’t have a telephone.”

According to Obama’s account, Mark looked him in the eye and said: “You
think that somehow I’m cut off from my roots, that sort of thing. Well, you’re
right.”

AND LOOKING TO ESTABLISH ***NEW VERY PROFITABLE ROOTS*** IN CHINA WITH POTUS
& STATE DEPT ASSISTANCE? -- DSH

“At a certain point I made the decision not to think about who my real
father was. He was dead to me even when he was still alive. I knew that he
was a drunk and showed no concern for his wife and children. That’s enough.”

Barack Obama senior fathered eight children by four different women.

Hmmmmmm... A Good Candidate For Hollywood. -- DSH

Obama wrote that Mark didn’t want to ask himself a lot of questions about
the meaning of racial identity, dismissing the idea with the words: “life’s
hard enough without all that excess baggage.”

Asked last week whether he was quoted accurately in the book, Ndesandjo did
not respond.

Obama wrote that on parting, “we exchanged addresses and promised to write,
with a dishonesty that made my heart ache.”

DISHONESTY IS AN OBAMA TRADEMARK? -- DSH

Two decades after that encounter, the extended and complex Obama family is
bound to come under further scrutiny as the US election enters its final
months after the Democratic and Republican party conventions.

REALLY? -- DSH

“That not enough has been written about his family is strange,” wrote
columnist Roger Cohen in the New York Times last March, “If nominated, Obama’s
family baggage will be pored over.”

REALLY?
--
DSH
Lux et Veritas et Libertas
Vires et Honor
Veni, Vidi, Calcitravi Asinum