Co-Wiki-dences: Maybe Birthers Are Right...

New Evidence Reveals Some Editors of Obama’s “Eligibility Sensitive” Natal Information on Wikipedia Were Connected To His Covert Propaganda Machine.

A Daily Pen investigation
by Dan Crosby

On January 21, 2009, one day after being shoe-horned into the White House, Barack Obama’s first order of business was not to investigate the mortgage collapse. Nor did he assign an order to implement economic solutions. Nope.

Instead, he signed a far more important policy order to guard something far more valuable than America, in his eyes. He invoked Executive Order No. 13489 which essentially handicaps, if not outright prevents, the release of Presidential Records through the National Archives & Records Administration without that information being censored first. The astonishing order implements executive privilege authority over the discretion of the National Archives and the Freedom of Information Act when the release of Presidential records and information is requested.

The new era of covert opacity continues.

Thank God we have Wikipedia, right?

Among the documented facts previously discussed about Obama's Constitutional eligibility, there are several other coincidences which support reasons to question Obama’s natal identity, his character and his legitimacy as a President. The peripheral situations are based on facts coincidental to Obama’s election and they further indicate a need for a full investigation of the circumstances surrounding his tenuously vetted candidacy.

OBAMA ON WIKIPEDIA

Wikipedia a free web-based and collaborative multilingual encyclopedia. Wikipedia's 13 million articles have been written mutually by millions of user volunteers around the world, and almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone who can access the site. Wikipedia is currently the largest and most popular general reference work on the Internet. Wikipedia and its affiliated sites consistently rank in the top 10 most used sites in the world.

Though the information provided on Wikipedia is reliable and corroborated for the greatest majority of its articles and features, the information is not always accurate. As an encyclopedia site that is openly collaborative, the articles are not always edited honestly. And, often vigorous debates ensue within the “talk” module of the site about the authenticity of sources and revisions.

Despite excellent screening and arbitration of users, Wikipedia is vulnerable to exploitation by political propagandists who might use the site to disseminate erroneous information, favorable or not, about Barack Obama. When this happens, the information is rarely corroborated with documented fact creating a false perception about Obama to inexperienced users who mistakenly attribute the information to the authority of Wikipedia.

The risk of internet “vandalism” is always a threat to a massive web resource like Wikipedia. Though the security features to correct malfeasance are excellent on the site, it is still vulnerable to intentional misinformation and abuse against high profile biographies like Barack Obama’s. Wikipedia has been used by highly proficient users to “construct” facets of Barack Obama’s identity without the necessary source documents to back the claims made in his biography.

The bio page “Barack Obama” information appeared for the first time on Wikipedia’s Main page in the website’s “Today’s Featured Article” on August 18, 2004 as a short story about his then position in Illinois government. Since then, several standard Articles have been created about his life, his career, and his family. Of these, the primary biography page called “Barack Obama” has grown in popularity currently receiving tens of thousands of views per day. On Election Day alone, November 4, 2008, the “Barack Obama” bio page was viewed 2.3 million times. In July, 2009, the page was viewed 697,335 times. Along with the large amount of attention, abuse and false information have been troublesome and wide spread on the page, mostly since the summer of 2006.

A review of the revision history of the Wikipedia “Barack Obama” biography page shows that there have been utterly tens of thousands of revisions to his specific biographical information. Within his biography there is currently an ‘Early Life and Career’ section containing Obama’s birth information that has been edited approximately 5,000 times alone. This is significant because page statistics show that no other biography within the entire library of Wikipedia’s global website has had the subject’s natal information revised as much as Obama’s. This is an indication of widespread awareness of the controversy surrounding his origins and natal identity and, most importantly, an indication of the complete lack of resolution Americans, and the world, have about the matter.

Unfortunately, any argument against Wikipedia’s authority to determine the significance or accuracy of Barack Obama’s natal information is greatly diminished by the fact that Obama himself has been so evasive on the matter. The massive numbers of reversion and reiteration in the data is accountable only to Barack Obama and his advisors. This is the consequence of intentional ambiguity.

At the time it of its original posting on Wikipedia in 2004, then Senator Obama’s biography Article called “Barack Obama” remained largely unrevised for almost 2 years, except for minor edits. This activity remained consistent until August, 2006, when information regarding his trip to Africa coincided with revisions made to his birth information. This is not to insinuate that there is a connection between the trip and the change of birth information, but the timing simply raises another of many flags in the circumstances we will discuss. By searching media and internet data, we found interesting "activity" surround the movements and appearance of many of Obama's key staff.

WIKIBAMA

The Wikiuser log shows that a very active Obama information screener, a wikiuser known by username ‘HailFire’ had never made a revision to Barack Obama’s Wikipedia article page before August 25, 2006. The date is significant in that it coincides with the exact day of Barack Obama’s visit to Kenya during his well publicized six nation tour beginning in Cape Town, South Africa on August 19th.

A review of the Contribution Summary, a record of edits of all registered users on the Wikipedia site, revealed the total number of edits made by ‘HailFire’ as of August 4, 2009, over a 3 year period, for all sites, at 10,511. This large number peaked curiosity about the role “HailFire” plays within the Wikipedia community. Upon review of the USER:HAILFIRE bio page, no personal information is provided other than a quote and a tag emblem on the USER BIO page stating:

“This user is a member of WikiProject United States presidential elections."

‘HailFire’ is an example of the kinds of digitypes operating within the realm of media information supporting the Obama Administration. Statistics show this user as the most active contributor to Obama’s Wikipedia sites. As of June, 2008, ‘Hailfire’ had made 1300 revisions to the “Barack Obama” site alone. This is 800 more than the next closest contributor. This is not to imply complicity with any effort to manage misinformation, but it is interesting how uncorroborated, secondary information can become truth over time, despite the absence of facts.

Along with data about 'Hailfire', another interesting account is a revision made by username ‘Wizzy’ to the “Barack Obama” Wikipedia biography.

‘Wizzy’s’ first revision was also made on August 25, 2006, as well, but an hour and 41 minutes prior to ‘HailFire’s’ first revision. This revision was made to Obama’s ‘Trip to Africa’ section of his page. Unlike ‘HailFire’, though there is detailed personal information available on ‘Wizzy’ including his name, contact and blog information, places of African, Britain and American employment and other biographical information including growing up in Kenya and travel throughout Africa and south asia. When cross referenced with 'Hailfire's' access to Obama information, we made an astonishing discovery. The days and times of access are proportionately disparate...as though they were working together.

A review of ‘Wizzy’s’ user contribution information reveals his number of edits as being 4,777 as of August 4, 2009. A cross reference of the ‘Wizzy’ username with previous other Wikipedia page revisions revealed thousands of entries on several hundred pages containing information and content about African nations, leaders, politics and geographical information. In actuality, more than 98% of “Wizzy’s” edits were in this genre of Wikipedia’s web content. The revisions to these Africa themed pages was so numerous, compared to other normal user-editors on Wikipedia, it led one to believe ‘Wizzy’ has a particular capacity or knowledge about African affairs and cultural specifics. Additionally, a review of the discussions between ‘Wizzy’ and other users prompted curiosity about his expertise in computer applications and his involvement with the technical operation of the Wikipedia website. A review of the page revisions by ‘Wizzy’ reveals the use of WPCD template technology which is described as a document template application used for “transclusion” which allows revisions to many Wikipedia articles and pages at one time. This type of application allow for bulk, "universal" edits of information in a very short amount of time. So, if 10,000 people each make a change to a different page, the WPCD technology would allow a single editor to search for those changes and revert them back to original information or change them to whatever the user editor wants.

Some might say that ‘Wizzy’ visited Barack Obama’s page merely because he had interest in Obama’s trip to Africa. However, if the personal information above is an accurate identification of 'Wizzy', having grown up in Kenya, it is difficult to imagine how he had never heard or read about Barack Obama before and given his expertise in the Wikipedia subroutines that he or she would have never made a revision to the biographical information of a Presidential candidate who has family ties in the same country ‘Wizzy’ grew up in.

What is clear, however, based on the Wikipedia revision records for the Barack Obama page, the username ‘Wizzy’ had never appeared on the revision page until the day of Obama’s visit to Kenya on the 25th, after having already been in Africa for a week. Since then, ‘Wizzy’ had only made 3 revisions to Barack Obama’s biography page as of August 9, 2009.

THE HOSPITAL NAME CHANGES

In the original ‘Early Life’ section of Barack Obama’s biography, beginning on March 3, 2004, it was stated that he was born in Queens Hospital. It was later clarified as Queens Medical Center. The ‘Early Life’ section which contains information about Obama’s birth first received specific revisions by ‘HailFire’ on September 13, 2006 when he or she removed the reference to Queens Medical Center. No explanation is given for the removal of the phrase “…at the Queens Medical Center” from the Barack Obama page and no cited source was given as a reference for removing the information.

No information was entered to replace the blank entry for nearly 2 years, until June 7, 2008 when a revision attributed to the username “G.-M Cupertino” was made which contradicted the original entry as the hospital Obama was born in. The significance of June 7, 2008 is significant because it is one week before Obama released his ‘‘Certification of Live Birth’’ on the internet which was stamped by the Hawaiian Registrars office, June 6, 2007. Many believe the date of the stamp on the ‘‘Certification of Live Birth’’ is wrong by one year due to a clerical oversight and therefore the date was actually, June 6, 2008. The date suddenly becomes very signifcant!

A review of the “G.-M. Cupertino” User contributions page revealed this user has nearly 30,000 edits with a predominant history of revisions mostly to articles containing information about foreign celebrities, figures and leaders. Most interestingly , however, it reveals that this user only made revisions to Barack Obama’s biography page twice, out of 30,000 edits!

One of the edits was to add “Kapiolani Medical Center” as the name of hospital to his birth information.

On June 7, 2008, revision activity and discussion about the content of the Barack Obama biography Wikipedia page exploded. Revisions began to occur by the minute, many of them reiterative, back and forth. Unregistered users began making changes and debating the issue with established wikiusers. After several hours, action was taken by Wikipedia's administration to increase the security of the "Barack Obama" article preventing general users from further editing the page.

Attempts to track the identity of user ‘G.-M. Cupertino’ revealed that the user was conveniently banned from editing Wikipedia due to violations of the ban policy. No other explanation was provided and no source was ever provided for the now protected change to Barack Obama’s birth location which read "Kapi'lani Medical Center", prior to the infamous letter from the "white house" dated January 24th, 2009, just three days after Obama's inauguration, to Kapi'olani congratulating them on their anniversary and containing an uncorroborated claim by "Obama" that he was born there. The letter was later discovered to be a fake.

On July 12, 2009, another edit war began in another Wikipedia article called “Obama’s Early Life and Career”. This time the article was edited back and forth saying that Obama was actually born in either Hawaii or Kenya.

Regardless of any perceptible bias from wikiusers and the Obama Administration, in general, their contribution to the information filtering and control of information disseminated about Obama only contributes to the massive ambiguity surrounding his natural born identity.

Obviously the Wikipedia edit wars are just one of many sources of internet based controversy. We cannot decisively say that these specific individuals are involved in any formal effort to protect, reinterpret and misinform about Obama’s biographical information, but these circumstances only reinforce the difficulty in finding answers to basic questions about Obama’s natal identity.

Less than one week later, the Obama campaign allegedly, and conveniently, mind you, posted the infamous Hawaiian ‘‘Certification of Live Birth’’, a fake birth certicate, on three separate websites which shows his birth location as Honolulu, Hawaii.

Despite the fact that the Hawaiian ‘‘Certification of Live Birth’’ contains absolutely no information about the hospital of Obama's birth, the Wikipedia affair is symptomatic of how the media and the internet is used as a tool to reinforce the permission for uncorroborated, irresponsible information that is not proven...or provable.

The simple fact of the matter is that no official records have ever been provided from any authoritative source to prove that Barack Obama was born in Kapiolani Medical Center for Women & Children. More than a year later, no changes have occurred to the birth information on the Barack Obama article, mainly due to page security measures. This information is erroneous and has never been confirmed by primary sources or documentation from the Hospital, any birth records or eye witness accounts. Ever!

On January 24, 2009, just days after his inauguration, Barack Obama sent a letter to Kapiolani Medical Center (See Appendix) on the occasion of the hospital’s centennial celebration, in which Obama allegedly wrote, “As a beneficiary of the excellence of Kapi’olani Medical Center – the place of my birth – I am pleased to add my voice to your voice of supporters.”

Liars and abettors propped the letter as proof of Obama's Hawaiian birth...since, after all, it was written by...well...Obama, himself, of course.

It was later determined by administrators at Kapi'olani that the letter was a fake, probably sent by deranged Obama hacks desperate to create a chain of evidence to support the falsehood that he was born in Hawaii.

Somehow, it does not strike confidence in the mind to take the word of this man about his actual identity. Unfortunately, Obama has yet to offer any proof that he was born in America, let alone Hawaii, let alone Honolulu…let alone the Kapi’olani Medical Center. A letter claiming to be verification is just another piece of propaganda like a Hawaiian "Certification of Live Birth" and 78,000 Wikipedia edits.