Unfortunately, if my memory serves, the current President of Kenya is one of our esteemed President's cousins who he helped into power by campaigning for him. Not looking for much justice in Kenya.
I would think another essential element of due diligence would have been to obtain an account of the document's provenance from the source of the document.
Orly's filing such as it was was for the resources to do just that.
That was the cause of my immediate skepticism when I first heard of the document. Who would have requested the certificate in 1964, I asked myself, and how did it subsequently fall into unfriendly hands? Not having a satisfactory answer, I started off assuming it was a forgery.
Actually this was answered very quickly, this document was dated to coincide with the divorce between Stanley Ann and Barack Obama, Sr. These proceedings started in January of 1964 and the Divorce decree was granted in March, so the timing was very convincing rather than being a problem.
Instead, most people keyed in on the issue of the Republic of Kenya thing that seemed premature because Kenya officially became a republic in December of 1964.
Frankly, much analysis went into many of these issues and came up with the only way to answer most of these questions was to get an actual copy of a similar document from the exact same period and location. Which would require someone to go to Kenya and find another Copy prepared in this time region, something that would cost thousands of dollars, take perhaps a week or more and be done at some risk.
Also, it appears Orly never had anything to examine beyond the bad photo of the document that was posted on the web.
This is a point of controversy. If this was clearly known at the beginning folks would have simply ignored it. The photo we had was purported to be of a document in Orly's possession. If this isn't the case, then we were misled.
Zooming in on digital images of limited resolution is no substitute for a loupe on a physical document, as numerous posters on these threads have learned. Is it an E or K?? LOL! Sheesh!
I wouldn't have spent 10 minutes thinking about it if I believed that Orly only had a photo of the document. A photo keeps you from examining the ink on the paper. You can do anything if you are allowed to keep a document examiner away from the paper.
Pixel abuse is no way to examine documents.
I agree, a big waste of time as far as authenticating something. It has its uses if your only purpose is to debunk.
If my memory serves, Obama's cousin didn't win. He went on a killing rampage after he lost instead. Fully endorsed by Obama no doubt.
That was the best theory I could come up with. Lousy theory, however. Here's what I wrote Sunday evening:
I've been trying to understand the document's chain of custody, assuming it's not a forgery. Why would anyone other than Zero's parents have ordered the document, and why would it not presently be in Zero's possession? About the only semi-plausible theory I've been able to think of is that Stanley Ann's lawyer ordered the BC in support of her divorce petition. And instead of turning it over to her, he left in his files, where someone found it recently and sent it off to Orly.Of course, a forger would have thought of the custody chain implausibility issue and might well have chosen the February 1964 date with the divorce in mind.
Others posted similarly lame theories, such as that the document was stolen from his mother's effects after she died in 1995 (very lame, since no one would have realized the significance), or that it was stolen from Toot's effects (also very lame, since Obama had had plenty of opportunity to prevent that).
The thing is, Orly needed to say from whom she got the document and where that person got the document, etc.
The photo we had was purported to be of a document in Orly's possession. If this isn't the case, then we were misled.
So we were. If Orly had the paper document, she should have posted a big fat 600 dpi scan of it, instead of that eye-straining teaser on Scribd (BTW, I hate Scribd!).