Midweek link dump

[tangaroa]

• There is a revolution in progress in Kyrgyzstan. The motive of the rebels is reported as purely political, to remove and replace the current government with an opposition party, and the immediate trigger is said to be an energy crisis that caused prices to triple.
• Adam Skaggs of the New Republic notes the increasing influence of interest money in judicial elections in the United States of America. With regard to the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United versus the Federal Election Commission, the magazine's web site asks "Did We Just Make it Legal to Bribe Judges?"
  • To answer the question of who elects judges, the U.S. Public Broadcasting Service reported that "Thirty-nine states elect judges at some level" as of 1995.
• Wikileaks has released a video in which U.S. forces kill medical aid workers in Iraq. This is likely the content which led government spooks to track Wikileaks operators.
  • Related: The U.S. found a Kalishnakov and a rocket-propelled grenade at the scene, which disputes a common claim claims that the killed were all unarmed.
• A U.S. Central Intelligence Agency group called "Red Cell" was caught advising European governments to produce propaganda in support of the war against the Taliban.
• A U.S. court has stripped the Federal Communications Commission of its authority to regulate Internet service providers.
• Melanie Phillips discusses the current levels of anti-semitism in mainstream English discourse.
• Forbes Magazine notes how the richest corporations in the U.S. practice tax evasion.
• Haitian refugees who were invited to the United States by U.S. officials were then jailed by other U.S. officials.
• The West Virginia mine which collapsed on Monday, killing twenty-five workers, had accumulated scores of safety rule infractions.
  • Related: Karoli at Crooks and Liars has background information on the mine's owner, Don Blankenship of Massey Coal.
• Der Speigel writes that scores of Germans are joining the Taliban.
• An extraordinarily well-armed and prepared al-Qaeda cell assassinated over two dozen enemies in the village of Sufiya, Iraq. The government of Iraq claims to have captured most of the attackers.
• Turkey has arrested four generals and fifteen other military officers in the Ergenekon investigation.
• The Supreme Court of New Jersey found that employees have a reasonable expectation of privacy for cached copies of personal e-mails on an employer's computer.
• France is removing its military forces from Senegal.
• Two on the U.S. banking crisis:
  • U.S. government investigators found that the bank Lehman Brothers committed $50 billion worth of accounting fraud.
  • U.S. government investigators have determined that American International Group did not commit any crimes.
• A Wisconsin prosecutor is threatening criminal charges against teachers who teach state-mandated sexual education courses.
• Matt Taibbi reports on corruption in Birmingham, Alabama.
• A sixth grade girl in New York City was arrested by police for scribbling on her desk, and her family is now suing the school for one million dollars.
• The current economic depression in the U.S. is the worst in terms of job losses since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
• Paul Anderson of City University London reports that opposition to al-Qaeda is being portrayed as "islamophobia".
• Cable News Network is trying to manufacture a new controversy over the years-old pornographic video game Rapelay.
• Photoshopped Conservative campaign posters.