This is Not a Birth Certificate By Servando Gonzalez Finally, after years of asking for proof and rising doubts about Obama’s true place of birth, the White House’s website posted this: Nevertheless, as any non-brainwashed American with eyes to see can testify, this is not a birth certificate. The Treachery of Images In 1926, Belgian surrealist painter René Magritte unveiled to the world one of his most famous and enigmatic paintings. He titled it The Treachery of Images. The picture depicts a pipe with the caption: Ceci n’est pas une pipe. (This is not a pipe.) As Magritte’s picture masterly exemplifies, a picture of a pipe is not a pipe. In the same fashion, a photograph of a UFO is not a UFO, Clint Eastwood is not Dirty Harry, Charlton Heston is not Moses, and a photocopy of Obama’s birth certificate is not Obama’s birth certificate. A picture, by itself alone, can hardly be accepted as “hard” evidence of anything. A photograph is nothing more than a sign pointing to something, existing or non-existing. Nevertheless, we are so used to dealing with photographs that most of the times we refer to them as if they were the real thing. A typical example is when a coworker pulls out of his wallet a photo of his family and says “this is my daughter, this is my wife, this is my dog, this is my house.” Of course, what you see in the photograph is not the real thing, just an image of the thing. If one is to believe the mainstream press, most Americans have already accepted the photocopy posted at the White House website as enough proof that Obama was born in Hawaii. But, as linguist Alfred Korzybski masterly expressed, “The map is not the territory.”[1] As nobody can smoke Magritte’s pipe, no army can use photographs of missiles, tanks and submarines to fight the enemy, and no judge would accept the photocopy posted at the White House's website as an evidence of anything. Images appearing on photographs are not things, but signs of things. The inability to distinguish between a sign and the thing it signifies is one of the characteristics of primitive, magical thinking. The fact is so obvious that we should waste no time discussing it. It seems, however, that the very fact that it is so obvious —somebody said that the best way to hide something is by placing it in plain view— has precluded most people from studying it in detail. Therefore, let us analyze the obvious. According to philosopher Robert Nozick, the main criteria for considering a fact objective is that it is invariant under certain transformations, and he gives three characteristics that mark a fact as objective: First, “an objective fact is accessible from different angles. Access to it can be repeated by the same sense (sight, touch, etc.), at different times; it can be repeated by different senses of the same observers. Different laboratories can replicate the phenomenon.” Second, “there is or can be intersubjective agreement about it.” Third, objective facts hold “independently of people’s beliefs, desires, hopes, and observations or measurements.”[2] One of the golden rules of intelligence work is to treat with caution all information not independently corroborated or supported by reliable documentary or physical evidence. Photographs are just information, and information is not true intelligence until it has been thoroughly validated. As a rule, most counterintelligence analysts believe that only information that has been secretly taken from an opponent and turned over is bona fide intelligence. However, if the opponent intended to turn it over, it is automatically considered disinformation. Intelligence services could exist only by dealing in hard knowledge. As scientists like to say: extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. In this case, the extraordinary proof has yet to appear. Up to this day, the claims that the person currently living in the White House is the legal president of the United States[3] seems to be more the product of theoretical, or perhaps ideological, considerations than direct observation, which have not been corroborated by independently checked, unfriendly sources. But there is more than meets the eye in the case of Obama’s birth certificate. Almost every single day new information surfaces about CIA’s involvement in the creation of Obama’s public image. One of the first to mention the CIA’s support for Obama was Webster Tarpley Griffin in his 2008 book Obama: The Postmodern Coup: Making of a Manchurian Candidate.[4] More recently, investigative reporter and former NSA employee Wayne Madsen wrote a three-part report extensively documenting that Barack Obama Sr., Stanley Annn Dunham, Lolo Soetoro and Barack Obama himself had deep ties to the CIA.[5] Among the many strange things surrounding Obama’s past is a total blackout of his personal records. Moreover, there is the unexplainable thing that, despite never being a Connecticut resident, his social security card was issued in that state. Now, there is only one organization in the United States with the power and the human and material resources to create that type of smoke screen: the Central Intelligence Agency. The Value of Documents Intelligence professionals believe that all documents are suspect, particularly the ones purposely left as “historical evidence.” Sir William Stephenson, the famous spymaster, once said that nothing deceives like a document. To intelligence analysts, all official recorded information is potential disinformation. This includes official records, memos, letters, photographs, etc., including audio recordings and, particularly after the advent of computer generated imaging, film, video recordings and all types of computer data. Intelligence is not the product of the collection, but of the analysis of all types of data. It only becomes true intelligence after the collected information has been thoroughly evaluated according to certain specific rules and criteria. An important element in the evaluation process is the verification that the information has not been intentionally created for disinformation purposes, that is, that the persons who created it have intentionally lied. As in Magritte’s famous picture of a pipe, a copy of a document is not the document. Some naïve reader may think that my contention that a copy of Obama’s birth certificate may not be a faithful rendering of the original, or that it may be total fabrication, is far-fetched. On the contrary, it is a totally justified concern. My main objection to accepting copies of documents at face value is simply that, for obvious reasons, it has never been an accepted practice among archivists. It is widely known that some U.S. government agencies have falsified documents, and that he CIA makes considerable use of forged documents. The authentication of a document whose source is suspect may involve verifying that the signature or any hand writing on them really corresponds to the persons who produced the document, as well as the typewriters in use at the time. But, as it happened in 1983 with the Hitler Diaries hoax, none of them is conclusive. If an organization with the technical means and know-how were intent in forging a document, the most rudimentary precautions they would take would be to find the proper typewriter and use a paper of the same size. The only way to really be certain is to have chemical tests made on the paper and its age, and the ink, looking for inconsistencies like, for example, the use of synthetic fibers in papers purporting to have been made at a time when this had not been yet introduced in paper manufacturing. Moreover, authentication is standard procedure in the sale of works of art. Many prestigious organizations specialise in the identification of fraud and forgery by art authentication procedures that include academic investigation, detailed archive research and forensic analysis. Somebody may consider the physical analyses of documents I have mentioned above to be pure and simple paranoia, but it is standard operating procedure for intelligence professionals, who have been using it successfully for centuries. The main reason for these precautions is that all intelligence services have whole sections devoted to the forging of documents. In fact, document forgery is an important specialization in the intelligence field. Consequently, intelligence officers are very careful not to fall in the same traps they normally set for their opponents. The comments above do not mean that I am absolutely convinced that the alleged copy of Obama’s birth certificate is false. The point I want to emphasize is that this copy has not been validated against the original document and authenticated by professional forensic analysts. Moreover, there is no way it can be validated for the time being because all of Obama’s personal records have been sealed. If Obama really wants to end this polemic, the next step he should take should be to open all his records to scrutiny by qualified forensic professionals and scholars in order to evaluate and authenticate them. In the meantime, all speculations and conclusions based on the alleged photocopy of his birth certificate should be considered tainted and, therefore, unreliable. On the other hand, the fact that the photocopy of the document posted by the White House is a falsification already has been noticed even by some forensic analyst aficionados. Currently, no less than 20 theories have sprung around obvious signs that Obama’s birth certificate is a falsification.[6] Actually, the fact that some of the alterations are so evident indicate that either the persons who performed the falsication are totally incompetent or made them on purpose. Does Obama has enemies at the CIA? Do the persons who put him in power have decided that it is time to get rid of him? Given the provenance of this document, added to the fact that Obama refused to provide it for such a long time as well as the impossibility of its authentication, such skepticism is merely prudent. On the other hand, the real case should not be against Obama, but against an inept, negligent or disloyal Congress and Judiciary that should have demanded the evidence of his birth certificate a long time ago. Obama’s refusal to provide access to his records, and the inability of the Congress and the Judiciary to demand them are a vicious attack on the document all of them allegedly swore to defend and protect: the U.S. Constitution. ------------------ Notes: [1] Alfred Korzybski coined the expression "The map is not the territory," in "A Non-Aristotelian System and its Necessity for Rigour in Mathematics and Physics," a paper presented before the American Mathematical Society at the New Orleans, Louisiana, meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, December 28, 1931. He reprinted it in his book Science and Sanity An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics (Englewood, New Jersey: The Institute of General Semantics, 1933), pp. p. 747–761. [2] See, Colin McGinn, “An Ardent Fallibilist,” The New York Review of Books, June 27, 2002, p. 39. McGinn’s article is a review of Robert Nozick’s book Invartiances: The Structure of the Objective World (Harvard: Belknap Press/Harvard University press, 2002). [3] See, Servando Gonzalez, “Why Obama? The Plot Thickens,” NolanChart.com, May 6, 2009, http://www.nolanchart.com/article6391_Why_Obama_The_Plot_Thickens.html. In this article, I explain that the case of Obama’a legitimacy involves not only his place of birth, but also his name and the fact that we do not know if he actually took his oath of office in the manner prescribed by the Constitution. [4] Webster Tarpley, Obama: The Postmodern Coup: Making of a Manchurian Candidate (Progressive Press: Joshua Tree, California, 2008), pp. 4, 8, 12. [5] Wayne Madsen, “The Story of Obama: All in the Company” (in three parts), The Wayne Madsen Report, August 18, 2010. [6] See, Gavon Laessig, “Top 20 Conspiracy Theories That Have Already Sprung Up Around President Obama’s Birth Certificate,” BuzzFeed, April 28, 2011, http://www.buzzfeed.com/ gavon/top-20-conspiracy-theories-that-have-already-sprun. Laessig based his article on an article published 2 days before, “Will Release Of Obama's Purported Birth Certificate Give Rise To New ‘Certer’ Movement?,” The Smoking Gun, April 27, 2011, http://www.thesmokinggun.com/ buster/barack-obama/birth-obama-certer-movement-098513. --------------- Servando Gonzalez is a Cuban-born American writer, semiologist and intelligence analyst. He has written books, essays and articles on Latin American history, intelligence, espionage, and semiotics. Servando is the author of Historia herética de la revolución fidelista, The Secret Fidel Castro, The Nuclear Deception and La madre de todas las conspiraciones, all available at Amazon.com. He also hosted the documentaries Treason in America: The Council on Foreign Relations and Partners in Treason: The CFR-CIA-Castro Connection, produced by Xzault Media Group of San Leandro, California. His latest book, Psychological Warfare and the New World Order: The Secret War Against the American People just appeared and is available at Amazon.com. Or download a .pdf copy of the book you can read on your computer or i-Pad.