Two conservative activists posing as a prostitute and her pimp have rocked support for one of the US’ largest anti-poverty groups, with ties to US President Barack Obama, after secretly filming staff offering to help smuggle underage girls into the country to work as prostitutes, and giving advice on establishing a brothel.
Congress has cut off tens of millions of dollars in funding to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), which has been targeted by the Right for its work in helping the poor with housing and mobilizing disenfranchised communities to vote, who then tend to support the Democrats.
Obama once acted as a lawyer for ACORN and volunteered for a group funded by the organization.
The two activists, Hannah Giles and James O’Keefe, covertly filmed at various ACORN offices around the country while dressed as a prostitute and pimp seeking advice on tax and housing issues involving the sex trade.
One of the videos, filmed at an ACORN office in San Diego, appeared to show an employee, Juan Carlos, offering to help smuggle a dozen 13-year-old girls from El Salvador to work in a California brothel. In San Bernardino, another ACORN worker, Tresa Kaelke, was heard responding to explicit questions about using underage girls as prostitutes. She said it was illegal to run a brothel using minors, but went on to advise the pair on how to hide the source of the earnings.
ACORN has conceded that grave errors were made and has sacked the offending workers in the videos. But it has hit back by saying the sting was part of a long campaign by rightwingers to discredit it because it gets the poor to vote.
ACORN’s chief organizer, Bertha Lewis, said: “I think the right — the Republicans in particular — are mad as hell at the fact that Democrats are in power. They are mad as hell that poor people are participating, and this is their way of fighting back — lies, innuendo, smears. They try to blunt any progressive policies.”
Giles, 20, said she targeted the organization out of love of country and God.
“Why go after ACORN? Because I love America, I love God, and corrupt institutions don’t help that,” she said.
Indonesia yesterday began enforcing its newly ratified penal code, replacing a Dutch-era criminal law that had governed the country for more than 80 years and marking a major shift in its legal landscape. Since proclaiming independence in 1945, the Southeast Asian country had continued to operate under a colonial framework widely criticized as outdated and misaligned with Indonesia’s social values. Efforts to revise the code stalled for decades as lawmakers debated how to balance human rights, religious norms and local traditions in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation. The 345-page Indonesian Penal Code, known as the KUHP, was passed in 2022. It
‘DISRESPECTFUL’: Katie Miller, the wife of Trump’s most influential adviser, drew ire by posting an image of Greenland in the colors of the US flag, captioning it ‘SOON’ US President Donald Trump on Sunday doubled down on his claim that Greenland should become part of the US, despite calls by the Danish prime minister to stop “threatening” the territory. Washington’s military intervention in Venezuela has reignited fears for Greenland, which Trump has repeatedly said he wants to annex, given its strategic location in the arctic. While aboard Air Force One en route to Washington, Trump reiterated the goal. “We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security, and Denmark is not going to be able to do it,” he said in response to a reporter’s question. “We’ll worry about Greenland in
PERILOUS JOURNEY: Over just a matter of days last month, about 1,600 Afghans who were at risk of perishing due to the cold weather were rescued in the mountains Habibullah set off from his home in western Afghanistan determined to find work in Iran, only for the 15-year-old to freeze to death while walking across the mountainous frontier. “He was forced to go, to bring food for the family,” his mother, Mah Jan, said at her mud home in Ghunjan village. “We have no food to eat, we have no clothes to wear. The house in which I live has no electricity, no water. I have no proper window, nothing to burn for heating,” she added, clutching a photograph of her son. Habibullah was one of at least 18 migrants who died
Russia early yesterday bombarded Ukraine, killing two people in the Kyiv region, authorities said on the eve of a diplomatic summit in France. A nationwide siren was issued just after midnight, while Ukraine’s military said air defenses were operating in several places. In the capital, a private medical facility caught fire as a result of the Russian strikes, killing one person and wounding three others, the State Emergency Service of Kyiv said. It released images of rescuers removing people on stretchers from a gutted building. Another pre-dawn attack on the neighboring city of Fastiv killed one man in his 70s, Kyiv Governor Mykola
RSS