Who, or why, or which, or what,
Is the Akond of SWAT?
— Edward Lear from “The Akond of Swat”
Let me show you something that Orly Taitz talks about, most recently before the Indiana Elections Commission (click to enlarge):
This image is a section from a passport renewal application signed by Stanley Ann Dunham Soetoro on August 13, 1968, while she resided at Djakarta, Indonesia. The document was obtained by me from the the US Department of State through the Freedom of Information Act.
Orly Taitz says that this passport renewal application is proof that Barack Obama’s surname at the time was “Soebarkah.” This leads me to the question that titles this article: What is “Soebarkah?” The short answer is that I don’t know.
I did a Google search on Indonesian web sites:
soebarkah site:id
and I got a number hits where Soebarkah was an individual’s name and didn’t see hits that looked otherwise. I tried Google Translate on the word (Indonesian to English) and it left it as is. From this, I concluded that it is a personal name.
While I am not a qualified handwriting expert, I feel pretty confident that the handwriting on this part of the form is the same as the handwriting on the first page of the form, which in context appears to be that of Stanley Ann Dunham. (If someone has expertise and wants to render an opinion, the full document is pages 2-3 embedded in my article on the Strunk FOIA.)
So we know what it is, a name, and we know who wrote it, but what does it mean?
The first thing to note is that the passport renewal application clearly states that Stanley Ann’s last name is “Soetoro” not “Soebarkah.” If, as the birthers claim, Obama was adopted by Lolo Soetoro, this “Soebarkah” name doesn’t match. Stanley Ann clearly intended the name on the back to be different from her name on the front. Trying to do some juggling with Indonesian language roots seems unreasonable, since this form is filled out by an American for use by the American Embassy.
The next thing I note is that the words “Barack Hussein Obama” are on the form. The “Obama” didn’t go away. It seems odd to say that his surname was “Soebarkah” when “Obama” is written there too.
Finally, I note that “Soebarkah” is in upper and lower case letters and in parenthesis. “Barack Hussein Obama” is in large and small capitals and not in parenthesis. This typographical distinction makes it clear that “Soebarkah” means something different from “Barack Hussein Obama.” I think that it is most likely an annotation. One other point about the parenthesis is that the word “EXCLUDE” on the form is also in parenthesis although that doesn’t add any light to the issue that I can see.
While I do not know why “Soebarkah” is on the form, I assert that Orly Taitz goes beyond the facts and reasonable inference when she says that it is Obama’s surname.
Some one, or nobody, knows I wot
Who or which or why or whatIs the Akond of Swat!
I always thought it was a nickname. Like “William Clinton (Bill) “, or “James Carter (Jimmy)”.
Not a bad suggestion. I suppose it could have been some Indonesian variant of Soe-barack used as a nickname, but a nickname on a passport renewal application seems odd.
I always thought it was a nickname myself (notice how it contains two main components, part from his mother’s name and part from his first name)
I haven’t seen the entire form, but maybe you are required to include known aliases (or Mama Obama thought so), and so it was included?
My understanding is that the Indonesians sometimes combine names, sort of like the Danes (?) (Dutch?) name a son Olaf Stefenson, and he names HIS son Stefan Olafson, and so on. Soebarkah is a combination of Soetero and Barack.
Swedes?
It is also not clear what the name is doing on the form. That section is for a passport amendment, but this was not an amendment (the Amendment box is not checked).
My guess is that Stanley Ann either intended to add/include Barack to her Passport renewal OR she wanted to remove him from a family passport issued in 1965 (lacking the 1965 application we don’t know of Barack traveled to Indonesia on an individual or a family passport).
My guess, however, is that the name was crossed out because it wasn’t an amendment, but a renewal. We know that Barack Obama traveled back to the US from Indonesia alone, which means that at some point he had to have his own passport. It’s not really clear to me what’s going on.
I think Paul nailed it. “Kah” perhaps means something too.
It always makes me giggle when I think about how much time Chris Strunk, Orly Taitz, and other birfers have surely spent trying to figure out what Soebarkah means.
I don’t claim to be an expert, but it looks to me like “Barack Hussein Obama” and “Soebarkah” may have been written on the form at different times.
Note that the name ” Barack Hussein Obama” is printed in all caps but “(Soebarkah)” is not. It would be somewhat unusual for a writer to change printing styles in the same writing session, unless the lower case printing and the parentheses are intended to convey that it is a nickname.
It all does appear to be Stanley Ann’s printing.
Oh great. Well, there are worse songs to have lodged in my brain…
If Ann Soetoro were alive, I wonder if she’d have any clue about something she may have written 44 years ago.
(I prefer the convention used by her biographer, which is calling her by the name she used at the time; repeatedly saying “Stanley Ann” seems clunky to me.)
While we’re noodling around with anomalies, here’s one that bugs me:
If I have the surrounding circumstances correct, young Barack was just turned 7 at the time. He would spend another three years in Jakarta before returning to Hawaii.
But the story is that they moved to Indonesia when he was six. Why would Ann Soetoro need a passport renewal, only a year or so after she obtained her passport?
I also have a suggestion for a possible resolution of the problem. Her biographer, Janny Scott, is still alive and interviewed dozens of people who knew her in Indonesia. Perhaps you could contact her, Doc, and see if she could try to solve the mystery?
There is simply no real conclusion to meaning, origin, purpose or intent of the scratched out “(Soebarkha)” that can be ascertained, beyon mere wild-@ss specualation.
The only thing we know about it is that it was scratched out, and therefore viewed as some sort of “error” that didn’t even belong there.
Therefore, it will simply remain an irrelevant artifact of absolutely no value and consequence. It is about the most useless scrap of data that the Birthers can waste their time pursuing through the courts.
This is also an excursion into the mind of Orly, a place I generally fear to go.
But I’m sure Orly, the very first time she saw that word, was as puzzled as we are today. It was not a word that had ever been connected to the birther beliefs. It was something entirely new.
Today, of course, she has made her mind up that it was his surname, and no other possibility exists. She’d be glad to take the witness stand and “authenticate” the fact that it was his surname on Aug. 13, 1968, lol. I think she believes that 100%. To her, the very idea that it might have some other explanation is simply not possible.
When Sarah Riordan, the competent and professional attorney on the Indiana Election Commission, said essentially that there was no explanation of the meaning, Orly heard her say “I’m complicit in the crimes” instead.
Somehow, the word Soebarkah, which was a puzzlement at first glance to her, is now hard-wired into her brain as the president’s surname, and no other explanation is feasible, while the rest of us poor shlubs are still scratchin’ our headbones and thinking it’s a puzzlement.
If you could describe that mental process, you’d be in the psychology textbooks, Doc. 😀
Well said, Foggy!
Who is this, but the son of soetoro.
http://lamecherry.blogspot.com/2011/05/soebarkah.html
Posting in honor of LC ‘s return to the blogosphere, if only to post pictures of old silver certificates and federal reserve notes from her ninth district.
Wow, I didn’t know Lame Cherry was the only forensics linguistics expert that ever thought about the name. That’s a revelation to me. She must have attended the same school where Ron Polland learned to be a forensic document examiner.
http://www.worldweatheronline.com/Subarkah-weather/Jawa-Barat/ID.aspx
After independence, the Indonesians re-spelled the “oe” they had inherited from Dutch as “u”. It is easier to change place names (even the Dutch now spell Sumatra, and no longer Soematra) than family names however.
“Soe” or “su” ie a frquent start of names that means something like “Mister”. It is Javanese. Javanese do not normally have a given name and a family name. Soekarno, for instance, was only called Soekarno.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesian_names
So, yes, it could be a kind of nickname, but it could be a real name too (or even refer to the town). One wonders what it is doing there, however. Did his mother at one time have to submit an Indonesian document that said Soebarkah?
I suppose this is moot, but because of the 1972 re-spelling law, that changed oe into u (but allowed people to retain the oe in their name), we know the name must have originated before 1972.
In any case, this thing has no legal value. And it is struck out. You know what, that usually means someone made a mistake.
That was great!! BRAVO!
I am not sure about the Akond of Swat, but I do have some limited knowledge relating to the Akond of Hush, which can be found all over the world tonight. This should not be confused with Akond of Kush, which can also be found all over the world tonight.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Follow the link in the story. Some of the text is in both styles on the front of the form too.
I hate to admit it, but The Arrow Book of Funny Poems is one of the most influential books in my life.
DrC:
Have you read The Stuffed Owl, or heard about this person:
http://homepages.wmich.edu/~cooneys/txt/Moore/Intro.html
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Please refer to the original lyrics of that song:
http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/2008/12/me-and-leo-down-by-the-court-yard/
And, don’t forget, a graphologist.
http://rosettasister.wordpress.com/2008/08/17/%E2%80%9Cthe-truth-about-obamas-forged-birth-certificate-what-polarik-never-told-you%E2%80%9D-techdude-%E2%80%93-israel-insider-%E2%80%93-free-republic-%E2%80%93-texasdarlin/#comment-237
I see she quotes the same Wikipedia page.
I wonder whether the town of Subarkah would be glad to know that some Americans actually think the name means “Is this the son of Soetor?” Of course, by her logic, Obama is also the son of Soekarno, Suharto and President Susilo.
Wait, he is also a Son of Sumatra and of Sulawesi. Sun of the soeil (to quote Louis XIV for a change).
OK, Let’s be serious: bar in Indonesian is well, a bar, and son of Soetoro would be Soetoroputra (or -poetra in the old spelling). It’s actually in the article she’s quoting (typically birfer art of quotation – quoting Wikipedia to claim you have studied the subject, but not reading it because you already know the answer).
And no, I still have no idea what it means. But neither has LC.
Her original passport was dated July of 1965. That’s why it was due to be renewed in 1968. It was actually one month expired.
OK, it’s making a little more sense. The original passport was probably a family passport, and Ann mistakenly wrote her son’s name in a block used for amendments thinking she had to list him under children, and it was scratched out because this wasn’t an amendment.
I speculated long ago that perhaps Soebarkah was the name of the person who told her to scratch it out, but that’s pure speculation.
Bat sh*t crazy, Foggy, bat sh*t crazy.
The thing that the birthers miss or fail to acknowledge is that is Obama had been adopted by Lolo Soetoro (and he may have been) it would make no difference at all.
US law seems quite clear that there’s nothing a parent can do to deprive a minor child of his native, natural-born US citizenship.
In Perkins v Elg (1939), the point was made that such a child, if still living overseas upon reaching adulthood, needed to choose. And there was a presumption that if such a child who was born of aliens parents and removed to the parents’ home country as a child continued living and participating in the other country well after reaching adulthood, there was a presumption that that person had relinquished his or her native-born, natural-born American citizenship. That seems to be a gray area.
Personally, I doubt that that gray area could apply to Obama, as he was born in the US of a US citizen mother. But even if it did, it still couldn’t, as he clearly did not go and live his life in a foreign country as an adult.
It is ALL pure speculation…
Amen! 8)
I should add that from the info I have, Obama returned to the United States as a 10-year-old, and participated in American society ever since. Well, except for the time he spent on Mars, and even that was at the behest of the CIA and in the service of the United States.
A reasonable view of reality is this: Big things count for a lot. Insignificant things don’t count for much. You weigh all the information you have and reach a reasonable conclusion on the basis of the evidence.
The birther view of reality is: You decide the conclusion in advance. It doesn’t matter how big or certain a thing is — if it doesn’t support your conclusion, you deny it. And if you can find anything, no matter how seemingly insignificant, that appears to support your conclusion, you latch onto that and use it to proclaim that your conclusion has been “proven.”
Or to put it another way: In Birther Basketball, if the opposing team scores 114 and the Birther team scores 6, that’s a “crushing victory” for the Birthers.
Elg’s parents were naturalized US citizens, not aliens.
Ah, three years behind the times, that’s me.
I guess I’ll give up on the B-side, “Play That Foggy Music” by Lame Cherry.
Yes, I know. And so was Steinkauler’s father.
But the Court in Perkins v. Elg first cited the Court in US v. Wong Kim Ark, stating the decision in that case was that a child born here of alien parentage becomes a citizen of the United States.
The Court then further stated:
It has long been a recognized principle in this country that if a child born here is taken during minority to the country of his parents’ origin, where his parents resume their former allegiance, he does not thereby lose his citizenship in the United States provided that on attaining majority he elects to retain that citizenship and to return to the United States to assume its duties.
The only problem with *even* that overly kind analogy to them is it assumes they could even put 6 points on the board…
…so far they’ve got ZERO.
Therefore, the bar is even lower from their perspective. They pat themselves on the back and declare “victory”, merely for being able to eventually locate the stadium where the game is meant to be played upon…
…So far, that’s about the extent of what they’ve accomplished over these 4 years in a nutshell.
perhaps it was the name of his sled.
That’s what got me kicked off my first five birther websites: pointing out that American citizenship is not the fragile thing the birthers think it is. And when they’d claim that Indonesian law controlled his citizenship, I’d point out that made them great Indonesian patriots, but American patriots not so much.
Oh now THAT’S clever! 😀
The heading states “AMEND TO INCLUDE (EXCLUDE) CHILDREN”.
I read this as Ann’s way of indicating that her child Barack was to be excluded from the passport:
BARACK HUSSEIN
OBAMA
(Exclude)
But why write “Soebarkah” instead of “Exclude” if this was the intent? Also, if she were attempting to amend the passport, she should have, i think, checked the Amendment check box on the front (not checked).
I actually think she was attempting to include Obama, but was told that it was unnecessary since he was already on the family passport. But no matter what the real story is, “Soebarkah” remains unexplained.
And always will. If it wasn’t crossed out, it might be slightly more worthy of passing interest in wondering what it meant.
As it stands, we’ll simply never know and it bears no real relevance anyways. So all we’re left with is an exercise in futility that can never be resolved beyond meaningless and useless speculation…
Beyond being an unknown artifact on the form application and including a combination of letters that “sound” slightly like “Soetoro” and “Barack”, there is nothing to go on and no other Obama family history related reference to “Soebarkah” to link it to. Nor is there any realistic expectation to support that further “digging” would lead to that same word turning up again.
So in the end, it simply is Much Ado About Nothing…and amounts to nothing more than chasing shadows and seeing shapes in the clouds…
That would have been Kuncup Mawar then (sounds like an actual name, only female), or Berani Jantung or Singa Bali Mena. That last one looks authentic Indonesian of course, but in the end ini semua penuh dengan suara dan penuh kemarahan – tidak berarti apa-apa. As G said. Don’t mention the Scottish play.
Subarkah (spelled previously Soebarkah as explained by Paul Pieniezny ) also indicates a place within the town of Sukabumi inside greater Jakarta. Could it be the residence ? Lia, frecently deceased daughter of Lolo Soetoro, was a resident of Sukabumi. Could it be a residence ?
My interpretation: she spells out his full name here to make it clear that although at that point her last name is “Soetoro,” his is (still) “Obama.” And I’ll go with the theory that the additional parenthetical comment only means, “he lives in Subarkah,” because, why not.
Circumstantial evidence, then, that he was not adopted, and as fully admissible as such as it is admissible for Orly’s claim that he’s adopted.
Which is to say: not a bit.
Those two places are 1.3 miles apart and I found a Dutch website which tells you how to get from one to the other.
Lolo was born in Bandung, which is also in the area, western Java. This is what prompted me to believe there may be a connection. But Ann’s passport applications always show them living in Djakarta (at one time literally in the last town development under Dutch rule: posh Kebayoran Baru).
But for all we know, Barack-Barry may just have known because of visiting family there once, that there was a place like that and when school friends told him Barack Obama was too difficult for them to pronounce, he may have got the idea that that place name was a good alternative.
The fact that it is written in a different style, may indicate it was something else than an official name. Or yes, they or only Barack may have been living there at the time.
I’ve just been watching for a time. But the stupid… it burns. Soe or Su is just a comman way of addressing a person. Get over it.
I am a resident of Hawaii, and all of this stupid long form/short form stuff is just ridiculous.
After my son “short form” was born with a foreign dad at Kapiolani, we immigrated to a Brtitish commonwealth country. My son was always a US citizen and traveled first my passport and then on his own. We spent time in Indonesia working with household industries while my son attended a multilingual preschool. No one questioned us about religion or anything else when we enrolled him.
Because of his multicultural heritatge, I gave him “Dreams of My Father” before Obama was famous, knowing that too many in the US could not understand his world view, and it would be difficult for him to find his cohort.
He’s a young adult now, and he is doing good things about the challenges we are facing,
I think Lame Cherry was on the right track but drew the wrong conclusions. The Indonesian suffix “-kah” indicates an interrogative. When affixed to a verb it means “May I” and when affixed to a name it means the same as “Who?”. So what “Soebarkah” may have been is a notation placed by a clerk under Barack Hussein Obama asking “Who is this Mr. Bar(ack)?” In parts of the US (especially in Louisiana people refer to children as Mr. Todd or Miss Karen for example.) This makes sense since Ann listed someone with a different surname in the spot where children are normally listed. A clerk might have been asking why he was listed then after a discussion that young Barack now had his own passport the entire thing was crossed out as being not applicable.
I found this web site with Indonesian affixes: http://indodic.com/affixeng.html
I have emailed this question to the a US Consulate in Indonesia. I tried every way to say up front “I AM NOT A BIRTHER” but I still do not expect an answer. If I hear something I will put this in a blog post. So far this is just pure speculation.
Except that Ann didn’t put that as her residence on the front page of the form. She said “Djakarta”.
My problem with this is twofold: First the handwriting appears to be that of Dunham unless she didn’t fill out ANY of the form. The lower case “h” is rather distinctive. If she didn’t fill out any of the form, then the person who DID fill out the form could have just asked her who the kid was.
Second, why would someone in the US Embassy be making annotations in Indonesian?
Finally, the passport renewal was almost certainly accompanied by the original passport which I would think would have indicated the relationship.
Those are good points. I am not sure on the handwriting. We need someone who speaks fluent Indonesian to opine. I think the least likely explanation is that “Soebarkah” is a different name. It might be that local Indonesians worked in the consulate as clerks. I cannot answer why it would be written in Indonesian other than he or she put a reminder to ask the question when processing the application. One person might have reviewed it and sent it back to get the question answered by another person on the staff.
Not trying to be toooooo horrid, but since this semi-intelligable chicken scratch has no actual legal, legislative, judicial, constitutional, ministerial, procedural, bureaucratic, executive or other significance, why, other than as an exercise in demonstrating Birther (anti) intellectual masturbation are we bothering discussing it…?
The only person who can shed actual light on it is long dead, it has no actual significance and cannot alter the facts of the Presidents birth and NBC status.
The only outcome of the ongoing discussion is to provide yet more ammunition for Birther clods to point at the length and extense of the discussions and say that THEIR MUST BE SOMETHING LOOK AT ALL TEH CONTORTINGF OBOTS !!@!!! ROTECTING THEYR MESSIAAHER
(Lame Cherry spelling off….)
But hey, what do I know…… 😎
I agree and I hesitated to add to the WAS (wild ass speculation) but Taitz keeps introducing this into “evidence” everywhere as if Barack Obama has had three names when all the facts point to the conclusion he has only ever had one.
Part of the problem is the lack of new legal writings from days long post that the birthers use and we then debunk. Long gone are the days where Mario would find some dusty treatise and claim it said something but really did not.
Now we left with playing with curious oddities that so obsess Orly. Given peoples inability to fill out firms correctly, as demonstrated so well by Orly, it boggles the kind how one scratched out oddity on an old firm could be proof of anything.
Maybe “Subarkah” is Indonesian for “Connecticut”? 😀
even if Obama was adopted. How does that affect his birthplace or citizenship?
It doesn’t. One must show he voluntarily renouced his citizenship and that he had the legal capacity to do so, something no 6 year old would be deemed to have had. Another birther dead end.
Clearly there was some back and forth with the 1968 renewal. Someone made some typewritten entries after Obama’s mother filled it out. Note that she left the first box under “Proposed Travel Plans” blank and the word “indefinite” was then typed in the box. Also she wrote out the date in long hand and the date was then typed in.
I’m beginning to believe that “Soebarkah” may indeed be a question. That is the only place on the application where the name “Obama” appears. If, as we believe, his mother printed “Barack Hussen Obama” on the form, a clerk at the consulate may have been wondering “Who is this person?” since at first glance there would be no obvious relationship to Stanley Ann Dunham Soetoro.