SOFTWARE SPECIALIST REPORTEDLY STATES THAT SOME PHOTOS OF OBAMA’S RING WERE “PHOTOSHOPPED”
by Sharon Rondeau
(Oct. 14, 2012) — On July 19, 2012, Dr. Jerome Corsi reported that Barack Hussein Obama had worn a ring on the third finger of his left hand prior to his marriage to Michelle Robinson in 1992. Corsi had referenced an article published by The Huffington Post in 2010 which showed close-up photos of the ring which described it as “Indonesian” but did not suggest that Obama wore it prior to marrying Michelle.
Four days after the initial article, on July 23, 2012, Corsi published a follow-up story, stating that a Harvard-produced satirical publication made reference to his wearing of a ring on the left fourth finger.
To date, there has been very little released about Obama’s alleged years at Occidental College, Columbia University, or Harvard Law School. Photographs of him in New York City have been said to have been photoshopped and have disappeared in some cases. A reference to a photo of Obama with his grandparents purportedly in New York City published in an article by Jack Cashill leads to a photo with the grandparents without Obama in the middle at the website Salon.com. An article attributed to Don Nicoloff from April 2009 contains the photo with Obama still in it.
The Post & Email has attempted to contact Nicoloff regarding an interview but received no response. There are doubts that Obama attended Columbia and numerous statements that no evidence exists that he did. Prominent businessman Donald Trump has highly publicized his desire to see Obama’s college applications, hypothesizing that Obama attended college on foreign scholarships.
On October 10, both Bob Unruh and Corsi published articles about the ring and its reported Islamic inscription translating to “There is no god but Allah.” Unruh’s piece focused on the possible significance of the ring in regard to Obama’s view of the Middle East if the inscription proved accurate, while Corsi’s story included “newly published photographs of Obama from the 1980s” showing the ring on Obama’s left hand.
Also on Wednesday, The Blaze published several statements from Islamic experts which appeared to confirm the translation of the inscription, although arguing against the contention that it means that Obama is a devout Muslim, stating, “This first part of the Shahada, though specific to Islam, is a tenet that any monotheistic adherent can relate to.”
Corsi stated that an Islamic scholar inspected photographs of Obama’s ring and determined that “the first half of the Shahada is inscribed on it.” The Shahada is the First Pillar of Islam, which translates to “There is no god but God and Muhammad is the prophet of God” and must be recited in the presence of two Muslims by a new convert. The Shahada is also part of a “daily ritual prayer” called the “Salat.’
On Friday, blogger ObamaReleaseYourRecords stated that he communicated with Mara Zebest, an Adobe Photoshop expert who had declared Obama’s long-form birth certificate image a forgery in June of last year in a press conference with Dr. Corsi, about the ring inscription and her response was, “”The images to show Arabic letters are all Photoshopped enhanced…This is a major hoax in my opinion.”
In an article published on Friday reported to have “addressed the questions” raised by Zebest’s assessment, Corsi stated that the number of analysts providing confirmation that the ring has the first phrase of the Shahada inscribed on it had increased. He referenced a “detailed analysis” of the inscription on the ring by Joel Gilbert, the producer of a DVD entitled “Dreams From My Real Father” which hypothesizes that Frank Marshall Davis is Obama’s biological father, but the link to the analysis is now dead. Gilbert was reportedly the “first to conclude that the ring bears the Islamic declaration of faith” and reportedly admitted to “reducing the contrast about 50%” in the photos published by The Huffington Post. Corsi acknowledged in the article that “the authenticity of photos used” in WorldNetDaily’s October 10 article.
Corsi’s article describes the “computer software and graphics expert” consulted by ObamaReleaseYourRecords as unidentified, although a slash was placed through the word “unnamed” by ORYR at some point and replaced with the name “Mara Zebest.”
Gilbert reportedly told Corsi that the photographs “were not altered.” A search for the term “Joel Gilbert” at WorldNetDaily now yields just one story mentioning the producer of the DVD and alleged Middle East expert. The WND story published on October 10 does not appear in the search, although it contains the name “Joel Gilbert” and describes him as “an Arabic speaker and an expert on the Middle East.”
Gilbert’s DVD is “temporarily out of stock” at Amazon.com as of this writing. Gilbert reports that he has mailed 1,500,000 copies of his DVD to Florida addressees at no charge to the recipients, and 1.2 million more have been mailed to residents of Colorado and Iowa. Gilbert spoke about his work at the National Press Club on the same day on which Corsi wrote his first article about Obama’s ring. Corsi has stated that Gilbert makes a “compelling case” that Barack Obama Sr. is not Obama’s father.
Bob Unruh has also written about Gilbert’s video production. Links from Gilbert’s website back to WND stories promoting his work and theory are functional as of this writing.
Gilbert said he had run a “national publicity campaign” to promote his DVD, with The New York Post placing a full-page ad last month.
Zebest’s reply to Gilbert’s response was “Reducing the contrast about 50 percent is Photoshopping.”