Topic: WorldNetDaily
On April 4, WorldNetDaily published an article by Bob Unruh repeating Obama birth certificate obsessive Orly Taitz's accusations of "alleged cyber crimes connected to her work":
She cited a hacking into her PayPal account where donations to her foundation allegedly could have been diverted, sabotage on her website and the creation of an "imposter site" for one of the plaintiffs in one of her cases.
"All of these cyber crimes, together with all the other crimes that are handled separately, have one common denominator – a concerted effort to put Obama in the White House and keep him there by virtue of fraud and concealment of all of his records," she wrote.
As is the case with a lot of Unruh's work, Taitz's claims are uncritically presented as undisputed fact, and no other views are allowed to be heard.
Which is too bad in this case, because it may not be a "cyber crime" issue at all but, rather, a dispute with former partners.
Until earlier this month, Taitz was based at a web-based operation called Defend Our Freedoms. Lisa Ostella, who worked with Taitz until recently, tells her side of the story:
April 2, Orly reports to the FBI, Supreme Court and various officials that her sites, blogs and PayPal are being hacked and sabotaged.
open letter to the Supreme court-request for cooperation with the FBI investigation
I just gave a brief explanation on the last blog. That was not hacked. That was authorized by Orly.
These sites, defendourfreedoms.us and defendourfreedoms.org, were never hacked. Why does it matter? Because they are my sites on my accounts. I supported Orly and have always been involved with politics, campaigns and causes. So when I saw the antics with the java script program on the other blog, and it was never clear on how much she realized was going on, I took her over here to my accounts. Defendourfreedoms, all of the domains, are on my web accounts. So, when you are a guest in someone's establishment (my sites) and you start claiming injury (hacking/sabotage), that affects the owner, me.
DefendOurFreedoms, none of the sites, were ever hacked or sabotaged. Unable to get to a site due to network latency does not equal hacking. Traffic, congestion, line repairs affect network flow and all can always be checked on the Internet Traffic Report: http://www.internettrafficreport.com/
Reporting cyber crimes on web sites, servers and accounts affects the account owner, me. I have other customers and privacy policies in place with these clients. If reports of my servers and accounts being compromised occurred, I need to notify them of possible compromise of their data. But my accounts have not been hacked.
When Orly refused to clear up this report, I told her she had to move her sites.
So we proceeded to do this.[...]
Now, I have emails, phone calls, blog sites doing interviews on how I threatened Orly, I shut her down, yes folks, I'm the new Obama.
Here is a tip to make note of from the NetWorld. If you want to trash you webmaster. You may want to acquire your domains first. Because now, I am immediately canceling the transfer of DefendOurFreedoms.US. I am cancelling it to point it to this blog post. You have made it so I have to Defend MySelf.
Ostella is the person Taitz is accusing of "hacking into her PayPal account where donations to her foundation allegedly could have been diverted." Ostella responds:
In regards to these wild statements about money being stolen from Orly Taitz's hacked PayPal Account, again, it was not hacked. No money was stolen.
No one is disputing the email address was changed in the DefendOurFreedoms sidebar. I saw it. People that tried to donate saw it. Their donations came back because no such email address: orly.taitz@gmail.org exists. Money sent to dead emails come back. Hence NOT stolen.
The moderators to DefendOurFreedoms that had access to that side bar configuration was me, Fred Smart, Fran and Orly Taitz. One of us changed it. That is a nefarious activity, yes; but it is still not hacking.
Ostella has challenged Taitz to post her PayPal records, which Taitz has not done.
Ostella's site, meanwhile, demonstrates that Taitz is not needed to maintain a conspiratorial bent. One post appears to equate the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing with "the 'shots heard around the world' were fired at Lexington and Concord where the Minutemen began our Revolutionary War by engaging the British" as "a call to action to reclaim our sovereignty from a tyrannical government."
Who's correct here? We don't know. But Taitz's apparent attempt to turn a personal grudge into a (literally) federal case nicely illustrates the kind of people WND has chosen to align itself with.
Speaking of alignment, a closer look at Taitz's new blog shows just how close the connection is between Taitz and WND. An email attacking Ostella was CC'd to Unruh, WND editor Joseph Farah and WND reporter Chelsea Schilling (as well as to fellow birth certificate obsessives Alan Keyes, Philip Berg and Arlen Williams, Gary Kreep of the right-wing U.S. Justice Foundation, and foul-mouthed right-wing documentarian John Ziegler). Taitz sent other information Unruh's way as well.
Will WND indulge Taitz's apparent personal grudge against her former webmaster by once again uncritically reporting her claims, or will the people Taitz is attacking be allowed to tell their side of the story? We shall see.
UPDATE: We have our answer: An April 20 article by Schilling uncritically repeats Taitz's attacks on Ostella, then claimed that "Ostella did not respond to WND's request for comment." At no point does Schilling acknowledge the responses to Taitz that Ostella posted on the Defend Our Freedoms blog. We found them easily enough -- why couldn't Schilling?
