Midweek link dump

[tangaroa]

• In the U.S., the Republican Party is outraged that the Department of Justice has hired lawyers who stood against Bush's abuses of power regarding Guantanamo Bay Naval Station. One of the very few things that George W. Bush got right was that far-right Islamic terrorists "hate us for our freedoms"; ironically, the same can be said of the far-right Republican Party. The Republicans are condemning as traitors those lawyers who defended the principles of American freedom when these principles came under attack by the Bush Administration. As a further irony, this nonsense will be cited to discredit anyone who has a rational concern about actual terrorist infiltration of the U.S. government.
• U.K. Enviornment Minister Jim Fitzpatrick accuses the Islamic Forum of Europe of being pro-Sharia and infiltrating the Labour Party.
  • Andrew Gillagan of the Telegraph interviews Labour councillor Lutfur Rahman of Tower Hamlets, who spends the entire interview refusing to deny the allegations.
  • The Ramadan reading list of the the Islamic Forum of Europe's Young Muslim Association is entirely the works of terrorist supporters.
• A Pakistani Christian was sentenced to life imprisonment for sending blasphemous text messages to random Muslims.
• Abu Sayyaf killed 11 in an attack on a village on Basilan island in the Philippines.
• Jewish nationalists attempted to visit a synagogue in Jericho until expelled by Israeli police; National Union spokesman Itamar Ben-Gvir called for explusion of the Arabs.
• The U.S. has accused electronics manufacturers Samsung, Sony, Lucky Goldstar, Hitachi, and Toshiba of collusion.
• A German court declared that data retention laws are an illegal infringement on privacy.
• University College London's inquiry into Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab appears to be compromised.
• The Stop the War Coalition gives its support to the claim that Israeli rescue workers in Haiti are kidnapping and killing children to steal their organs.
• A hospital in the District of Colombia fired several employees who were unable to reach the hospital during a snowstorm. At least two of the fired workers were near retirement.
  • The Post has a follow-up: additional employees were fired and a few were re-hired.
• The Church of Scientology is paying veteran journalists Russel Carollo, Christopher Szechenyi, and Steve Weinberg to write a hit piece on the Saint Petersburg Times.
• After an atheist group met with White House staff, Fox News reporter Sean Hannity falsely claimed that "religious groups have not received this kind of treatment from the Obama White House." This comes a few days after Obama personally met the Dalai Lama, a high-profile event that brought a rebuke from China.
• The advocacy group Americans United for the Separation of Church and State has accused Jerry Falwell's Liberty University of endorsing a political candidate, which non-profit organizations are not allowed to do.
• The Rabbinical Alliance of America, claiming to represent over 1,000 Jewish priests, blames homosexuals for the Haiti earthquake, the Indian Ocean tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, and the September 11 attacks.
• British writer and libel defendant Simon Singh discusses Britain's libel laws.
  • Related: A copy of the article that Singh was sued for.
• The Daily Mail claims that a British farmer was fined for not having electric lights in his barn.
• New Mexico's bureaucracy cost a man $700 in telephone fees to collect an unemployment cheque.
• During the 1920s, the U.S. government poisoned the industrial alcohol supply to kill drinkers breaking Prohibition.
• Paul Drye writes about the U.S. experience with anarchist terrorism in the early 20th century.
• This flowchart explains one of the reasons why copyright infringement is an attractive alternative to buying DVDs.
• The Israeli embassy in Spain has been inundated with hundreds of letters from schoolchildren falsely accusing Israel of murdering civilians. The obvious conclusion is that Spanish children are being indoctrinated in terrorist propaganda.
• British rescue workers left a woman to die because they were under orders not to use their equipment on the general public.
• Texas has posthumously pardoned Tim Cole, a college student who was wrongly convicted of rape in 1986 and died in prison in 1999.