Anti-Obama Protests threaten to derail White House’s planned Mandela Photo-op

By Patrick Henningsen
Global Research, June 29, 2013
21st Century Wire
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As Barack Obama and his family continue their $100 million taxpayer-funded African safari junket this month, it seems like a given  that the White House will cynically attempt to seize the PR opportunity that exists – to place the US President next to the ailing 94-year-old global icon, Nelson Mandela, to stage a high-profile, touching photo-op in Pretoria – a move designed to boost Obama’s rapidly sinking international credibility.

Who would have ever expected that the South Africans themselves would step in to throw a massive spanner in Ben Rhodes and David Axelrod’s PR spin cycle.

THE AFRICAN KING: Hail Caesar – Obama positioning himself for career as special Africa UN envoy after 2016.

In Pretoria, hundreds of people were demonstrating today against a visit by U.S. President Barack Obama, burning the U.S. flag in protest and calling out Obama as “arrogant and oppressive”. Between the drone assassinations, Benghazi stand-down orders, the IRS scandal, the gun-running to al Qaeda in Syria and the NSA shamelessly spying on Americans – there can be little argument that these protesters are echoing the sentiments of Americans.


 TAKING ADVANTAGE: White House eyeing a PR bounce – by aligning Obama with the ailing Mandela.

The most expensive holiday in world history

As austerity and budget haranguing dominates the US domestic agenda, America’s Royal Family has taken a blank check to fund the most expensive presidential holiday in US, if not world history. The envelope includes hundreds of U.S. Secret Service agents  dispatched to secure facilities in Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania, as well as a Navy aircraft carrier, amphibious ships, a mobile medical trauma center, Fighter jets flying 24-hour shifts, military cargo planes to airlift in 56 support vehicles, 14 limousines, and three trucks loaded with sheets of bullet-proof glass to cover the windows of the hotels where the first family are staying.

This African adventure, more than any other event during his Presidency, shows how out of touch both the President and his White House truly are, lavishing off the public purse in a way that would embarrass even Julius Caesar …
Articles by: Patrick Henningsen

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