WAR OF PERCEPTION

ACORN Officials Videotaped Telling 'Pimp,' 'Prostitute' How to Lie to IRS

Officials with the controversial community organizing group ACORN were secretly videotaped offering to assist two individuals posing as a pimp and a prostitute, encouraging them to lie to the Internal Revenue Service and providing guidance on how to claim underage girls from South America as dependents.

The videotape was made public Thursday on BigGovernment.com, a political blog launched by Andrew Breitbart as a companion site to his BigHollywood.breitbart.com blog.

 

In the videotape, made on July 24, James O'Keefe, a 25-year-old independent filmmaker, posed as a pimp with a 20-year-old woman named "Kenya" who posed as a prostitute while visiting ACORN's office in Baltimore. The couple told ACORN staffers they wanted to secure housing where the woman could continue to maintain a prostitution business.

ACORN — the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now — bills itself as the nation's largest community of low- and moderate-income families "working together for social justice and stronger communities," according to its Web site.

 

 The organization has been accused by Republicans and conservative activists with fraud in voter registration drives around the country and has been under fire since last year for its support of President Obama and for its planned participation in next year's census.

A spokesman for ACORN, Scott Levenson, when asked to comment on the videotape, said: "The portrayal is false and defamatory and an attempt at gotcha journalism. This film crew tried to pull this sham at other offices and failed. ACORN wants to see the full video before commenting further."

On the videotape, "Kenya" can be seen telling an ACORN staffer that she earns roughly $8,000 a month. The ACORN employee then suggests to "Kenya" that ACORN could submit a tax return for 2008 showing that she made $9,600 for the entire year — instead of $96,000 — and that ACORN would charge "Kenya" $50 instead of the usual $150 fee for preparing her taxes.

ACORN offers tax preparation and benefits application services free of charge during tax season; it charges nominal fees during non-tax season.

The ACORN staffer can also be seen suggesting that the prostitute list her occupation as a freelance "performing artist."

"It's not dancing, trust me," the "pimp" says.

"But dancing is considered an art," the ACORN staffer replies. "[Exotic dancers] usually go under performing artists, or yeah, they usually go under performing arts, which will be what you are — a performing artist."

The "pimp" later says that he and "Kenya" plan to bring up to 13 "very young" girls from El Salvador to work as prostitutes. Although an ACORN staffer points out their plans are illegal, she also suggests that the girls can be claimed as dependents.

"What if they are going to be making money because they are performing tricks too?" the pimp says.

"If they making money and they are underage, then you shouldn't be letting anybody know anyway," the ACORN staffer says, and laughs. "It's illegal. So I am not hearing this, I am not hearing this. You talk too much. Don't give up no information you're not asked."

The "pimp" then asks ACORN staffers to "promise" not to discriminate against his sex worker because of "who she is and what she does," according to the audiotape.

"If we don't have the information, then how are we going to discriminate?" the ACORN staffer replies. "You see what I am saying?"

If the girls are under age 16, the ACORN staffer says on the tape, then they are not legally allowed to work in the state, regardless of what they do.

"So it's like they don't even exist?" "Kenya" asks.

"Exactly," the ACORN staffer replies. "It's like they don't even exist."

The staffer goes on to suggest that as many as three of the underage girls can be listed as dependents at the home, but a "flag" will be raised if as many as 13 are listed.

"You are gonna use three of them," the staffer says. "They are gonna be under 16, so you is eligible to get child tax credit and additional child tax credit."

The ACORN workers also appear to be promoting the group's services to the "pimp" and "Kenya."

A second ACORN employee can be heard on the audiotape suggesting that the couple join the organization for an annual cost of $120 prior to attending one of its first-time homebuyer seminars, which are underwritten with taxpayer funds.

Later, when the "pimp" asks what would happen if the organization is somehow connected to the scheme, the ACORN staffer replies, "First of all, it's not gonna damage us because we not gonna know. And with your girls, you tell them, 'Be careful.' Train them to keep their mouth shut."

"These girls are like 14, how can we trust them?" the pimp asks.

"Just be very, very careful," the ACORN staffer says. "Whatever you do, always keep your eyes in the back of your head."

Reached by FOX News, O'Keefe said he was "shocked" at the level of assistance provided by ACORN staffers.

"I was prepared for them to call the police, throw me out of the office and be hostile," he said. "Without hesitation, they helped me every way they could with evading taxes and setting me up with a brothel, with getting around federal tax laws — doing everything they could to help us. I was completely shocked."

House Republicans issued a report in July accusing ACORN of engaging in a scheme to use taxpayer money to support a partisan political agenda. California Rep. Darrell Issa, the top Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, called for a criminal investigation into the group, which dismissed the report as a "partisan attack job."

Fox News

Body with arms cut off found in Mexican city

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico – Police say a body with both arms cut off was found dumped on a street in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas.

Arturo Sandoval, spokesman for a regional prosecutor's office, says the victim was found late Tuesday with his severed arms crossed and placed on top of a cardboard sign on his chest. Soldiers immediately removed the sign and police have not released what it said.

Drug cartels often leave messages next to the victims they kill.

Sandoval says assailants stuffed plastic bags into the man's mouth and taped his eyes.

He says police were still trying to confirm the identification of the victim.

Ciudad Juarez is Mexico's deadliest city with more than 1,300 drug-related killings this year.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

VILLAHERMOSA, Mexico (AP) — Two rural journalists have been arrested for allegedly working as informants for a violent drug trafficking cartel, according to courts in the southern Mexico state of Tabasco.

Newspaper correspondents Roberto Juarez and Lazaro Abreu Tejero Sanchez are being held on charges that they accepted thousands of dollars from the Zetas, a fierce drug gang aligned with the Gulf cartel, the state court system said in a news release.

The two reporters signed confessions while being question by police and prosecutors, according to the court statement on Tuesday, but later retracted them when brought before a judge.

Prosecutors say the two kept some of the money in exchange for withholding stories and sharing police information, and distributed some of it to other journalists, who may also face arrest.

Police said they learned about the payoffs, which amounted to about $4,500 a month, from a Zetas lieutenant.

The reporters work at towns near the Guatemalan border for the Villahermosa newspaper Presente, where spokespeople said no one was available to comment about the arrests.

AP News

'Agent Provocateur' Hal Turner Trained By FBI

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) - A New Jersey blogger facing charges in two states for allegedly making threats against lawmakers and judges was trained by the FBI on how to be deliberately provocative, his attorney said Tuesday.

Hal Turner worked for the FBI from 2002 to 2007 as an "agent provocateur" and was taught by the agency "what he could say that wouldn't be crossing the line," defense attorney Michael Orozco said.

"His job was basically to publish information which would cause other parties to act in a manner which would lead to their arrest," Orozco said.

Prosecutors have acknowledged that Turner was an informant who spied on radical right-wing organizations, but the defense has said Turner was not working for the FBI when he allegedly made threats against Connecticut legislators and wrote that three federal judges in Illinois deserved to die.

"But if you compare anything that he did say when he was operating, there was no difference. No difference whatsoever," Orozco said.

Special Agent Ross Rice, a spokesman for the FBI in Chicago, said he would not comment on or even confirm Turner's relationship with the FBI.

Orozco spoke to reporters after a court hearing in Hartford on Tuesday. Turner, 47, of North Bergen, N.J., did not appear, because he is in federal custody in Illinois. His arraignment on the Connecticut charges was rescheduled to Oct. 19.

In June, Turner urged his readers to "take up arms" against Connecticut lawmakers and suggested government officials should "obey the Constitution or die," because he was angry over legislation—later withdrawn—that would have given lay members of Roman Catholic churches more control over their parish's finances.

He wrote in Internet postings the same month that the Illinois federal appeals judges "deserve to be killed" because they issued a ruling that upheld ordinances in Chicago and suburban Oak Park banning handguns. He included their photos and the room numbers of their chambers at the courthouse.

Orozco officially joined Turner's defense team in the Connecticut case on Tuesday, with approval from Superior Court Judge David Gold. Orozco said his Newark, N.J.-based firm has been representing Turner for the past five years, including during his FBI informant years.

Turner's Connecticut attorney, Matthew R. Potter, said it's too early to tell which trial will move forward first. Orozco said he plans First Amendment defenses in both cases.

Randall Samborn, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in Chicago, said the office would not comment on Orozco's statements.

 

By KATIE NELSON
Associated Press Writer

Man carrying assault weapon attends Obama protest

PHOENIX – About a dozen people carrying guns, including one with a military-style rifle, milled among protesters outside the convention center where President Barack Obama was giving a speech Monday — the latest incident in which protesters have openly displayed firearms near the president.

Gun-rights advocates say they're exercising their constitutional right to bear arms and protest, while those who argue for more gun control say it could be a disaster waiting to happen.

Phoenix police said the gun-toters at Monday's event, including the man carrying an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle slung over his shoulder, didn't need permits. No crimes were committed, and no one was arrested.

The man with the rifle declined to be identified but told The Arizona Republic that he was carrying the assault weapon because he could. "In Arizona, I still have some freedoms," he said.

Phoenix police Detective J. Oliver, who monitored the man at the downtown protest, said police also wanted to make sure no one decided to harm him.

"Just by his presence and people seeing the rifle and people knowing the president was in town, it sparked a lot of emotions," Oliver said. "We were keeping peace on both ends."

Last week, during Obama's health care town hall in Portsmouth, N.H., a man carrying a sign reading "It is time to water the tree of liberty" stood outside with a pistol strapped to his leg.

"It's a political statement," he told The Boston Globe. "If you don't use your rights, then you lose your rights."

Police asked the man to move away from school property, but he was not arrested.

Fred Solop, a Northern Arizona University political scientist, said the incidents in New Hampshire and Arizona could signal the beginning of a disturbing trend.

"When you start to bring guns to political rallies, it does layer on another level of concern and significance," Solop said. "It actually becomes quite scary for many people. It creates a chilling effect in the ability of our society to carry on honest communication."

He said he's never heard of someone bringing an assault weapon near a presidential event. "The larger the gun, the more menacing the situation," he said.

Phoenix was Obama's last stop on a four-day tour of western states, including Montana and Colorado.

Authorities in Montana said they received no reports of anyone carrying firearms during Obama's health care town hall near Bozeman on Friday. About 1,000 people both for and against Obama converged at a protest area near the Gallatin Field Airport hangar where the event took place. One person accused of disorderly conduct was detained and released, according to the Gallatin Airport Authority.

Heather Benjamin of Denver's Mesa County sheriff's department, the lead agency during Obama's visit there, said no one was arrested.

Arizona is an "open-carry" state, which means anyone legally allowed to have a firearm can carry it in public as long as it's visible. Only someone carrying a concealed weapon is required to have a permit.

Paul Helmke, president of the Washington, D.C.-based Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said people should not be allowed to bring guns to events where Obama is.

"To me, this is craziness," he said. "When you bring a loaded gun, particularly a loaded assault rifle, to any political event, but particularly to one where the president is appearing, you're just making the situation dangerous for everyone."

He said people who bring guns to presidential events are distracting the Secret Service and law enforcement from protecting the president. "The more guns we see at more events like this, there's more potential for something tragic happening," he said.

Secret Service spokesman Ed Donovan said armed demonstrators in open-carry states such as Arizona and New Hampshire have little impact on security plans for the president.

"In both cases, the subject was not entering our site or otherwise attempting to," Donovan said. "They were in a designated public viewing area. The main thing to know is that they would not have been allowed inside with a weapon."

Representatives of the National Rifle Association did not return calls for comment.

By AMANDA LEE MYERS and TERRY TANG, Associated Press Writers.

Bloody Passovers Reported by a Jewish Scholar

Ariel Toaff is a professor at Bar-Ilan University in Israel who made a name for himself for his study of medieval Jewry. (2) He also happens to be the son of Elio Toaff, former chief rabbi of Rome.

That such a historian was demonstrating that crucifixions of Catholic children did in fact occur in Ashkenazi Jewish communities in the medieval period was big news. Further, he based his conclusions in good part on the trial records of the famous case of St. Simon of Trent, which he had found worthy of belief. More big news, especially since after Vatican Council II, the Vatican examined the same records, decided they were unreliable, and discontinued the popular cult of St. Simon of Trent.

I saved the page, determined to purchase a copy of the book for review after its release. Some months later, when I finally got around to making the purchase, I learned that Bloody Passovers had raised a titanic storm in Jewish and academic circles. The book sold out its 3,000 copies the first week, and then was pulled by the author off the market, never to return.

Controversy and Pressure

　The controversy was set into motion February 6, two days before the book’s official release, when the Italian magazine Corriere della Sera ran an approving review by Sergio Luzzatto, professor of Modern European History at the University of Turin. The piece ran under the expressive title: “Ariel’s Toaff’s Disconcerting Revelation: The Myth of Human Sacrifice Is Not Just an Antisemitic Lie.”

According to Luzzatto, Toaff’s “courageous” book argues that some Christian children, “or perhaps even many,” were killed by Ashkenazic Jews between 1100 and 1500. Furthermore, Toaff described unleavened bread baked with dried blood, possibly taken from murdered Catholic children. Toaff also affirmed that the accusation against the Jews of Trent in the case of the murder of St. Simon of Trent “might have been true.” (3)

That review raised quite a furor. There was an immediate response from the professor’s father Rabbi Toaff and 12 other senior rabbis of Italy. They issued a joint statement condemning the book and denying the use of human blood for ritual purposes, stating that the only blood shed in any past centuries was “that of many innocent Jews.” (4)

　

In Israel, Knesset members urged legal authorities to bring Prof. Toaff to trial over his book Bloody Passovers. MK Marina Solodkin proposed filing civil suits against him for having damaged "historic truth and the reputation of the Jewish people." (5)

Abraham Foxman, chairman of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), immediately made a public statement calling the whole thesis ridiculous. “It is incredible that anyone, much less an Israeli historian, would give legitimacy to the baseless blood accusation,” he stated. (6)

Catholic scholars, such as Msgr. Ignio Rogger, the Church historian who led the investigation in the 1960s in the St. Simon of Trent case, jumped on the bandwagon condemning Toaff’s research. Rogger said Toaff had not presented any new documents and that he gave credence to confessions extracted under torture; therefore Toaff’s thesis was unsustainable. In fact, not a single historian dared come to his defense. (7)

At first, Bar-Ilan University remained calm, summoning Prof. Toaff to ask for explanations regarding his research. But as the pogrom against the Jewish professor swiftly escalated, University heads issued a condemnation against “any attempt to justify the awful blood libels against Jewish people.” Prof. Toaff’s career was on the line.

It must be said that at the beginning of the attack, Toaff stood resolutely behind his research, insisting there was factual basis for some of the medieval blood accusations against the Jews. “I will not give up my devotion to the truth and academic freedom even if the world crucifies me,” he dramatically stated. (8)

But his resistance didn’t hold out long. Under such strong, widespread coercion, a week after the publication of Bloody Passovers, Toaff published a full apology, stopped distribution of his book, and promised to rewrite problematic parts. To appease the powers that be, he announced that all the profits from its sale would be donated to the Anti-Defamation League.

 

The Case of St. Simon of Trent

　According to the reviews I read, what Toaff discovered was that the fundamentalist Ashkenazi Jews did actually steal and crucify Catholic children, obtaining their blood and using it for religious rituals, especially at Passovers. (9)

In particular, Toaff looked at the case of St. Simon of Trent, a two-year-old boy from the Italian town of Trent kidnapped by Ashkenazi Jews from his home on the eve of Passover 1475. He was murdered, his body mutilated and crucified head down. The killers were apprehended, confessed and found guilty by Bishop Hinderbach of Trent. Fifty years later, Pope Sixtus IV assembled a commission of six cardinals chaired by the best legal mind of that time for a retrial, and this court also found the murderers guilty. Records of the trial have survived for centuries.

　

St. Simon’s worship was approved in 1588 by Pope Sixtus IV, and every year the town of Trent celebrated his feast with processions and fanfare - until 1965. In that year, to foster better relations with the Jews after Vatican II, Paul VI ordered the Trent case to be re-examined, and ruled that the confessions of the killers were unacceptable because they were obtained under torture. A decree forbade the cult of St. Simon of Trent. His cult was discontinued and prohibited, and the remains of the martyred child removed and hidden to avoid resumption of pilgrimages.

In his research, Dr. Ariel Toaff made a thorough examination of those court records preserved at Trent. His discovery was that the confessions of the killers contained material that could not have been known to the Italian churchmen or police. The secret rites practiced by the Ashkenazi community, which could not have been known by the judges, were faithfully reproduced in the confessions. Toaff told Haaretz News: “I found that there were statements and parts of the testimony that were not part of the Christian culture of the judges, and they could not have been invented or added by them.” (10)

Such data would seem to at least deserve a fair reading. One might expect that the Vatican in particular would welcome the confirmation by a Jewish scholar of the past findings of Church authorities in the Trent court hearings. But sadly, no hearing or welcome was forthcoming. Toaff discovered many cases of bloody sacrifices connected with the mutilation of children, the outpouring of blood and its baking in Matzo (unleavened Passover bread). The flood of blood accusations in the South Tyrol and upper Veneto at the end of the 15th century, were grounded in facts, according to Toaff’s research. Another Jewish scholar, Kenneth Stow, provides this summary of several chapters of Bloody Passovers:

“Discussions of the negativity Jews expressed about Christianity during the festivals of Purim and Passover and the prominence of blood-imagery especially in Passover rituals (chapters 10 and 11) are followed by the opening words to chapter 12, which say ‘The use of the blood of Christian children in the celebration of Passover was apparently framed by precise rules, or at least this is what the deposition to the Trent trial indicate.” (11)

What Toaff’s study certainly demonstrates is that the Catholic-Jewish antagonism of the Middle Ages was not a one-sided bias on the part of the Catholics, as it is generally presented today. But any discussion on this topic or the general thesis of Bloody Passovers - that Jews crucified Christian children and used their blood ritually - was summarily closed before it could start.

No Objections Permitted

　It is interesting to note that the strongest objections to Bloody Passovers came from those who obviously never read the book. The “reasoning” was this: If it is against the Jews, it is wrong, that’s all there is to it.”

We are simply supposed to dismiss as anti-Semitic ranting any argumentation, even data presented by a serious Jewish scholar, which would uphold that the Catholics could have been justified in their claims that Jews in the Middle Ages practiced blood libel, Kabbalitic black magic, and child crucifixions.

In principle, I regard Toaff’s testimony and research as scholarly, honest and authentic. I consider that the enormous psychological pressure he underwent that induced him to take his book out of circulation and apologize is equivalent to physical torture. Anyone with a little experience in law knows that an apology like Toaff’s, made under such violent and universal pressure, is worthless. Therefore, I don’t considerer his apology as a scholarly denial of his long research, and deem the assertions in his book valuable.

It is a pity that the book is no longer available. If any of my readers have it and would make a copy and send it to me, I would like to make a very detailed review of his arguments.

By Marian T. Horvat, Ph.D.

 

1. Pasque di sangue, ebrei d’Europa e omicidi rituali (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2007), 325 pp.
2. His works include The Jews in Medieval Umbria (1979), and The Jews in Umbria (3 vols., 1993-4), and Love, Work and Death: Jewish Life in Medieval Umbria, (1998). Toaff is the acknowledged master of the social history of Umbrian Jewry.
3. “Scholar Pulls Book Revisiting Blood Libel,” February 26, 2007, The Jewish Daily Forward online)
4. Arutz Sheva Israel National News online, June 14, 2007)
5. “MKs seek to try Prof. Toaff over claims in blood libel book,” Haaretz.com online, February 27, 2007.
6. “Scholar Pulls Book Revisiting Blood Libel,” op. cit.
7. “Bar-Ilan prof defiant on blood libel book ‘even if crucified,’” Haaretz.com online, February 28, 2007
8. Ibid.
9. From the book review of Kenneth Stow, Prof. Emeritus of Jewish History at Un. Of Haifa: “To begin with, the thesis of Pasque di sange is unambiguous: Jews crucified Christian children and used their blood ritually. The author’s disclaimers … are unpersuasive.” Storicamente website
10. “Scholar Pulls Book Revisiting Blood Libel,” op. cit.
11. Kenneth Stow, “Blood Libel: A Book Full of Sound and Fury,” Storicamente website. Stow vehemently opposes Toaff’s work, his chief argument being that Toaff trusts too much in the words of Catholic chroniclers and court notaries.