UPDATE: THE PERSON IN THE VIDEO IS NOT POLARIK!
I’ll be addressing this issue in my next comment. Stay tuned!
END UPDATE
Everything that guy just said is bullshit. Thank you. –Vincent LaGuardia Gambini
I will address each of the claims made in the video in separate comments to this post.
k
15 comments
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November 24, 2008 at 11:36 pm
koyaan
EXHIBIT A: The Pixel Problem
NOTE: See addendum at the end of this comment.
Polarik, at 1:12 into the video:
I had learned about the story accidentally through World Net Daily. And when I went to look at the image, something looked strange about it. Something did not look right to me.
When I enlarged the image and took a look at the text, that’s where I spotted anomalies in the text that could only have been made if someone had intentionally altered the text that had been there.
I immediately recognized this as a graphically altered image.
In other words, someone had covered up the existing text, and typed in new text right over it.
So what exactly was it that caused Polarik to immediately recognize it as a graphically altered image?
Polarik, at 1:57 into the video:
When you look at the image of this document, you should be able to see clear black text on a green background. There should not be any gray and white pixels in between the letters because obviously you have black print on the green background there should be green between the letters.
The problem that I found was that there were no green between the letters. There were only gray and white pixels which are dots of color.
This is the claim Polarik first made on his “Greater Evil” Townhall blog earlier this past summer. And when I first read it back in July, it told me without a doubt that Polarik had absolutely no real experience with digital graphics and imaging.
White and gray pixels between the letters would NOT be the sign of a graphically altered image. Digitally overlaying text onto an existing image DOES NOT produce that phenomenon. Just the opposite. It produces precisely what Polarik says SHOULD be seen if the image were NOT altered.
It was obvious when Polarik made his claim he had absolutely no experience digitally overlaying text on an existing background, as no one who had such experience would never make the claim that Polarik did.
It is a simple matter to prove this by going through the steps which Polarik describes above, i.e. covering up existing text and typing in new text on top of it.
To do this, we’ll start out with the high resolution scanned image from FactCheck’s website:
Scanned Image from FactCheck
And while we’re at it, let’s zoom in on “CHILD’S NAME” and take a look at those “Pixel Problems” that Polarik is talking about:
The Pixel Problems
As you can see, there’s a paucity of green pixels around and between the letters as well as inside the closed or nearly closed portions of letters such as C, D, S, A, B, R, etc.
Now let’s cover up Obama’s name under “CHILD’S NAME” in the image by simply grabbing a piece of the background and placing it over the text in the image:
Scanned Image, Name Removed
Voila. Name’s gone.
Next type in some text over the area that was covered up. I’ll use Polarik’s name just for fun.
Polarik’s New COLB
Let’s zoom in and take a look:
Zoom of Polarik’s New COLB
As you can see, the digitally added text produces none of the “Pixel Problems” Polarik claims is a telltale sign that text has been digitally added.
There’s no magic here. That’s simply what you get when you use any graphics editing program to overlay text on an existing image. And anyone with any experience at this would know as well.
Now, I would like to make a point here and I don’t want it to be missed so please excuse the upper case bold letter:
IN ALL THE MONTHS THAT POLARIK HAS BEEN CLAIMING THAT THE WHITE PIXELS WERE CAUSED BY OVERLAYING TEXT ONTO AN EXISTING IMAGE, AND AFTER I HAD CHALLENGED HIM TO DO SO ON SEVERAL OCCASIONS, HE HAS NEVER DEMONSTRATED THIS TO BE THE CASE BY PROVIDING ANY SORT OF EXAMPLE. SOMETHING WHICH WOULD HAVE BEEN TRIVIALLY EASY FOR HIM TO DO IF HIS CLAIM WAS FACTUAL.
So what DID cause these “Pixel Problems”? Something Polarik also obviously has no real experience with, scanners and JPEG processing.
I’ll demonstrate this next.
A few months ago I thought I’d have some fun and create a blank template for a 2008 COLB by creating all the printed material on the page, i.e. border, text, and printed seal.
Here’s the PDF file for it:
Hawaiian Certificate Blank
I laser printed it onto a sheet of solid green paper and then scanned it at 300dpi on an HP All-In-One (scanner, copier, printer).
Test Scan on Green Paper
Even though the physical document was nothing but pure black toner on a solid green sheet of paper, that’s not quite what you get when you scan it. Even when viewing the scanned image at 1:1, you can see white and lighter colored pixels around the letters of the text.
Here is a zoomed in image of one of the iterations of “BIRTH” from the raw scan before I saved it out as a JPEG, which adds further to the “Pixel Problem”:
Zoom of Raw Image Scan
As you can see, in spite of the physical document consisting of nothing but black text on a solid green background, there are a significant number of full white pixels around the edges of the letters. This is an artifact of the scanning process.
And here is a zoomed in image of the same iteration of “BIRTH” from the JPEG image I provided above:
Zoom of JPEG Processed Image
As you can see, where in the raw, unprocessed scan there were decidedly green pixels between the B and the I and the I and the R, those pixels are now virtually colorless. Also, the green inside the closed portions of the B and the R are also reduced compared to the raw scan. This is caused by the JPEG processing.
There are basically only two possibilities as to how Polarik could have come to make the claim he did regarding the “Pixel Problem.”
One, it was an erroneous assumption on his part due to sheer ignorance and lack of experience, or two, he intentionally made up the claim out of thin air and relied on the sheer ignorance and lack of experience of those he was attempting to deceive.
The bottom line is that the claim is factually, and demonstrably false.
Addendum
In a post over on YouTube, 0pteryx wrote the following:
You lied on your blog Koyaan, the reason your example forgery did not have pixel distortion around your letters was due to higher .jpg quality, the example you provided was 4,29 MB (615 DPI), while the initial one with with pixel distortion was same resolution, but 1,37 MB at 300 DPI.
Quantization step in the .jpeg algorithm causes artifacts when reducing the DPI while maintaining the same PPI resolution, particularly around areas that have neighboring pixels with sharp contrasts to each other.
First, DPI/PPI is meaningless here. A digital image has no inherent dimensional quality to it. It’s just pixels. And in this case, both images are 2550 pixels by 3300 pixels. In other words, both images are of the same resolution. Changing DPI/PPI does not effect the resolution of the digital image.
DPI/PPI is really only meaningful when you’re either scanning a document or printing a digital image.
The difference in file size between the two images is purely a matter of the level of JPEG compression.
When I altered the original image to remove the original text and replace it with Polarik’s name, I pulled the file in as a simple bitmap. Which means it was a rather large file since there was no compression. And when I then saved it out after having added the text, I did so at the highest JPEG quality level. This is why the image with the altered text is larger in size than the original.
However 0pteryx misses the whole point here.
The point wasn’t to demonstrate what JPEG artifacts look like. The point had to do with Polarik’s claim that the white/gray pixels around and between the letters in the scan of the Obama certificate was a telltale sign that the original text was covered up and new text was digitally added. This is a completely separate issue to JPEG artifacts.
And what was demonstrated here was that when original text is covered up and new text digitally added, it DOES NOT produce the white/gray pixels around and between the letters, contrary to Polarik’s claim.
However just for the sake of completeness, I have redone the Polarik certificate but saving it out at a very low JPEG quality level (only 25%), which resulted in a file size of less than 500kB.
Polarik’s New COLB (Low Quality)
And here’s the blow up.
Zoom of Polarik’s New COLB (Low Quality)
While you can see some rather nasty JPEG artifacts, there is still none of the white/gray pixel haloing around, inside and between the letters.
k
November 25, 2008 at 12:27 am
koyaan
EXHIBIT B: Different Borders
Polarik, from 2:24 into the video:
Strange about the border on this certificate was that it was blurry. It was not in the same level of detail as the rest of the certificate. That can only mean it was applied on top of an existing image that had a higher detail.
In other words, it was not part of the original document image.
I know that because the border did not share the same level of detail as the rest of the document image. That means it was created separately an added at a separate time.
No evidence whatsoever is given for this claim.
However thanks to Polarik, it is possible to demonstrate that the claim holds no water.
Here is a scan of a genuine 2007 COLB Polarik has in his PhotoBucket album:
Polarik’s File0016.jpg
Now let’s compare the borders:
Border Comparison
The border of the 2007 COLB in Polarik’s PhotoBucket album is on the top, the border of the high resolution image of Obama’s COLB from FactCheck is on the bottom.
As you can see, the border on the Obama COLB is no blurrier relative to its text than the border on Polarik’s 2007 COLB is relative to its text.
k
November 25, 2008 at 10:01 am
elliewyattt
Using Adobe Photo Deluxe (not Photoshop), I took the COLB image, pasted on a bit of green cross-hatch background (I outlined the pasted BG in red to show it), and placed text over it.
All of the green from the background is right there, between and within the letters.
http://i283.photobucket.com/albums/kk287/Elliewyatt/mildredo.jpg
http://i283.photobucket.com/albums/kk287/Elliewyatt/mildred.jpg
I don’t know what to say about Polarik, except that he needs a different hobby, because he doesn’t have the slightest idea about what he thinks he’s doing (or he’s a LIAR).
November 25, 2008 at 11:40 am
koyaan
THE PERSON IN THE VIDEO IS NOT POLARIK!
From 0.51 into the video:
I’m concealing my identity because I have received threats from people who are loyal to Obama and who don’t want the truth to be known
There was absolutely no need to disguise Polarik’s voice for this video. He had already appeared as a guest on Janet Folger’s radio program using his real voice just this past Friday.
While a vocoder can change the tonal characteristics of someone’s voice, it does not change the basic characteristics of one’s speech, such as accent, inflection, etc.
Darth Vader is a good example of this. While the vocoder used for his voice in Star Wars made the tonal characteristics deeper and with a synthesized quality, it did not change the basic characteristics of James Earl Jones’ speech.
Here’s the archived recording of Polarik using his real voice on Janet Folger’s radio program.
First the RealPlayer .ram version:
http://f2a.org/radio/2008-11-21.ram
Next, the MP3 version:
http://www.worldviewweekend.com/~janetfolger/2008-11-21.mp3
Compare the basic characteristics of Polarik’s speech to those of the person in the video. They are decidedly not the same.
Again, with Polarik having appeared on an archived radio program using his real voice less than a week previously, there was absolutely no need to disguise his voice. The purpose of disguising the voice was an attempt to conceal the fact that it wasn’t Polarik in the video, but instead someone else simply reading from a script, which would have been much more cost effective than sending someone down to Florida to actually tape the interview with the real Polarik.
k
November 25, 2008 at 12:55 pm
koyaan
EXHIBIT C: The Missing Seal
From 2:55 into the video:
One of the most prominent things that should have been on the certificate image is the seal of Hawii. This is a metal stamp that’s pressed into the paper and is embossed so you should be able to see that on a document scan.
The seal was not visible.
However, that did not stop other people from making it visible using image enhancement.
Wait a minute. The title of Exhibit C is “The Missing Seal.” Yet as is clearly stated here, the seal wasn’t missing at all.
And in fact, evidence of the seal was visible, even without image enhancement, in the high resolution FactCheck image.
I already linked to the FactCheck image in a previous comment and you can take a look at it for yourself. And here’s the seal portion on its own, cropped from the full size image:
Cropped Seal
The evidence of the seal are all the small, darker horizontal lines scattered throughout the center portion of the image.
From 3:22 into the video:
The problem with using image enhancement to find these features is that it really doesn’t tell you much about them other than they’re present.
I already knew that the original source for this document image was a real document at some point. I was just convinced that it was not Barack Obama’s certificate.
It’s very easy to take a portion of the background from one certificate image and overlay it, or paste it over top of another. To the average eye you would never tell the difference. To the trained eye, you would.
This simply makes no logical sense.
He says that Obama’s certificate was created using a real document. If that were the case, then there would be absolutely no need to take a portion of the background from one certificate image and paste it over the to of another. The real document he claims was used to make Obama’s would have already had the seal on it.
And it’s easy to say something was possible. However it doesn’t mean anything unless you can demonstrate that that’s what was actually done. Yet here Polarik provides absolutely no evidence whatsoever that anything was overlaid on anything else.
k
November 25, 2008 at 2:01 pm
elliewyattt
There is NO such thing as “Dr. Ron Polarik”.
“This video provides an analysis of Obama’s Certificate of Live Birth by Dr. Ron Polarik detailing the factors contributing to his conclusion that the document is not authentic. “Dr. Polarik” is a pseudonym and his identity is obscured in this video.”
(top of the page above the video) http://www.obamacrimes.com/
November 25, 2008 at 6:11 pm
elliewyattt
On October 25, 2008 at 4:42 am, on rosettasister.wordpress.com
Polarik Says:
“Ron Polarik is a real name, NOT a screen name”
But today, on Philip Berg’s site,
““Dr. Polarik” is a pseudonym”
November 26, 2008 at 3:47 pm
skeptical13
Koyaan, can you address the missing folds and conflicting features (some being from 2008 and some from 2007)? Thanks!
November 26, 2008 at 4:54 pm
koyaan
skeptical13 wrote:
Koyaan, can you address the missing folds and conflicting features (some being from 2008 and some from 2007)? Thanks!
Sure can!
Just got a bit sidetracked yesterday. I’ll try and get the rest of the “exhibits” addressed this evening.
k
November 26, 2008 at 11:24 pm
koyaan
EXHIBIT D: The Missing Fold
From 4:07 into the video:
In the Certification of Live Birth, that was reported to be of Barack Obama’s birth certificate, there was only one fold line when there should have been two.
The reason for that is that paper documents are trifolded and mailed in plain envelopes, so that there should be two folds visible. In the image there as only one fold visible at the top.
Even though some graphic artists were able to make the seal appear, the fact that there was no fold line, no second fold line in this document image can only have been the result of somebody covering it up from the background of another image.
Here Polarik demonstrates once again that he lacks any sort of meaningful understanding of how things work.
To understand the “Missing Fold,” you must first understand two things.
First, in order for any deformation on the document such as a fold or an embossed seal to be able to be captured in an image scan, it must be of sufficient height in order to cast a prominent enough shadow.
The greater the height, the more prominent the shadow and vice versa.
If the shadow isn’t of sufficient prominence, it won’t be picked up in the scan. Scanner settings such as brightness and contrast also play a significant role in whether or not the shadows will be picked up.
Second, it’s important to note that the two folds on the document are not the same.
The top fold has the top third of the document folded backward onto the back side of the middle third of the document. Where as the bottom fold is folded inward onto the front side of the middle third of the document.
So now let’s put all this together.
When the top fold was made, the paper fibers on the front face of the document were stretched.
When it’s unfolded, the stretched fibers don’t shrink back to their original state, but instead become bunched up, creating rather prominent ridges along the fold.
When the bottom fold was made, the paper fibers on the front face of the document were compressed, creating ridges similar to those of the top fold.
When it’s unfolded, the force of unfolding wants to pull the paper fibers on the front of the page back to their original positions.
This is well illustrated in FactCheck’s Photograph 5:
FactCheck Photograph 5
Note the ridges along the top fold. They’re rather dramatically taller than the ridges in the bottom fold, which are decidedly miniscule by comparison.
And of course the document shown in the photo is still partially folded, so when laid flat such as on a scanner, the top ridges would tend to get larger still while the bottom ridges would tend to get smaller.
It seems rather clear that the reason for the “Missing Fold” isn’t due to someone covering it up with the background from another image, but simply because the ridges making up the bottom fold weren’t sufficiently large to have been captured in the scan.
This is further evidenced by the edge detected image of the scanned Obama certificate.
Edge Detected Scan
As you can see, only a portion of the seal is visible even with edge detection. The upper right portion is visible, however as you move toward the lower left it gradually disappears.
Compare this to the seal shown in FactCheck Photograph 5.
You can see that the prominence of the ridges making up the seal are greater in the upper right than they are in the lower left, although in the photograph, due to the acute angle of the lighting, they’re still visible.
For Polarik to claim that the “Missing Fold” can ONLY have been the result of somebody covering it up from the background of another image indicates that he’s either terribly inexperienced and not thinking, or he’s intentionally trying to mislead.
k
November 27, 2008 at 12:06 am
koyaan
EXHIBIT E: FactCheck’s Collusion
From 4:46 into the video:
The final question on this image was not answered until two months later when FactCheck allegedly took photographs of Obama’s Certification of Live Birth.
As a security measure, borders are changed every year to a different pattern. When the 2008 certifications came out, they had a different border and as it turns out, a different seal and signature stamp. Those to features are the most prominent ones on a real certificate.
FactCheck and the Obama campaign colluded to produce nine forged photographs. I know these photographs are forged because on this document image is a 2008 seal, a 2008 registrar’s stamp, but a 2007 border.
Without a doubt, these photographs are forgeries.
First, Polarik provides no compelling evidence whatsoever that borders are changed every year.
While clearly the borders on 2007 certificates are different from those on 2008 certificates, that does not mean that borders are changed every year. And Polarik nor anyone else has produced a 2006 certificate showing it to have a different border from a 2007 certificate or a 2005 certificate showing it to have a different border from a 2006 certificate.
However we do have some historical evidence that borders were not changed every year. The 2002 DeCosta certificate and the 2003 Tomoyasu certificate both share the same border, even though they were issued in two different years.
Second, there is also no compelling evidence that the embossed seals were changed every year either, for the same reasons give above with regard to border changes.
The 2007 certificate that Polarik relies on was issued in March 2007. Obama’s was issued three months later in June.
Had it been the other way around, this may have raised some questions. However there’s nothing to indicate that anything more was done than Hawaii simply had a new embossed seal made sometime between March and June.
As for the registrar’s stamp, again, there’s no evidence that this was changed every year either. In fact, the registrar’s stamp appears to be the same registrar’s stamp used back to at least 2002 on the DeCosta certificate.
For Polarik to say, based on the “evidence” he’s provided, that “without a doubt these photographs are forgeries” is to defy all logic and reason.
k
November 27, 2008 at 12:26 am
sluggojd
Good job as always, Se.
Truth, as always, is poison to liars.
November 27, 2008 at 1:36 am
elliewyattt
Lemme butt in on the ‘two folds’ subject.
This is a simple project to do at home! Take a piece of paper and crease it into a ‘Z’ shape. Flatten it back out. Note that the crease that receeds away is much less prominent than the crease that is raised. Exactly as Koyaan says… due to the stretching/spreading of the paper fibers.
As for seals and stamps, nothing says that the HI office didn’t use old AND new interchangeably. Old & new versions of a corporate seal were used in my office, depending on who handled them or what desk one was near. Both versions were legal and legitimate.
Interestingly, in 2005, HI issued rules/regulations that the Health Dept. seal shall be 2-1/4″ in diameter. Seems that nobody bothered with it.
November 28, 2008 at 1:36 pm
ctn21
Koyaan,
I’ve been banned from centerleft but I’d like to continue our discussion here.
Would that be acceptable to you?
November 28, 2008 at 2:05 pm
koyaan
Ha!
I’d just posted an invitation over at Center Left and right after that checked EMail and received the notification of your comment here. ;)
Yes, that would be fine.
Let me start a more generic thread for that first.
k