Midweek link dump

[tangaroa]

• U.S. President Barack Obama fired General Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, after a Rolling Stone journalist heard McChrystal and his staff insult the President and Vice President Joseph Biden. McChrystal will be replaced by General David Petraeus.
  • Alcohol was involved.
  • Rolling Stone has published its article.
• Hizb ut-Tahrir has "called upon the Muslim armies to march forth to fight the Jews, eradicate Israel and purify the Earth of Jewish filth".
  • Related: 500 Hamas supporters blocked a Chinese ship from unloading at the port of Oakland, California, under the mistaken impression that it was an Israeli ship.
• Kyrgyzstan claims to have an audio recording of Maksim Bakiyev, son of former President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, planning the current genocide against Uzbeks in Kyrgyzstan.
• Russian police seized 100,000 copies of a pamphlet written by Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir Milov of the Solidarity Party in opposition to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
• In the case of Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a law forbidding people from volunteering for designated foreign terrorist organizations in any capacity, in regards to an organization giving legal advice to the P.K.K. and the Tamil Tigers. The law is Title 18 Section 2339 which defines "material support" as including "expert advice or assistance".
• Police in Alexandria, Egypt beat a man to death in public and then claimed he had asphyxiated himself.
• The Democratic Party of Texas nominated a Larouchite, Kesha Rogers, for Congress.
• Verizon is threatening to fire workers who offer customers the ability to block unwanted costly services.
• The West Aceh district of Indonesia has banned Muslim women from wearing pants or skirts.
• Egyptian soccer player Emad Moteab faces charges of peace with Israel after joining a soccer team in Belgium that includes an Israeli player.
  • Nabih al-Wahsh, the lawyer who brought Motyeab's case under Egypt's Hisbah law allowing the public to charge people with crimes against Islam, has previously filed charges against writers Sayyed al-Qimni and Nawal el-Saadawi and composer Hassan Abu al-Saoud.
  • Wahsh has previously called all rape victims guilty of promiscuity.
  • Wahsh also instigated the ruling forbidding Egyptian men from marrying Jewish women.
  • Newsweek mentioned Wahsh in a 2001 article on Egypt's "war against intellectuals".
  • Wahsh once struck opposing lawyer George Sohby in the mouth during a court session.
  • Naguib Gobraiel, another Egyptian lawyer, has charged Wahsh with vanity under the Hisbah laws to try to force an end to his lawsuits.
• A New York woman wrote a letter to President Obama asking him for help to speed up her husband's application for citizenship, and the Department of Immigrations and Custom Enforcement responded by singling out her husband for quick deportation.
• Adam Curtis of the B.B.C. blames British Petroleum for the coup that deposed Iranian Prime Minister Mohamed Mossadegh in 1953 and led to the reactionary force that rules Iran today.
• A Lebanese schoolteacher was condemned in the press for giving her sixth-grade class an Earth Day essay written by an Israeli sixth-grade boy. The school's principal promised it would never happen again.
  • The source is a PDF file -- it looks like an English assignment for non-English speakers.
• An Indonesian court has ordered the removal of the Nyoman Nuarta sculpture Tiga Mojana for allegedly containing Christian symbolism by including depictions of three women.
• President Obama's approval rating is unchanged despite attempts by the Republican Party to blame him for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and to claim that this has made him unpopular.
• The governments of Hawaii and the U.S.A. are jostling for control of a trespassing case where a census worker was arrested after refusing to leave a man's property in Hawaii.
• Some U.S. businesses knew about sulfur-contaminated drywall imports from China two years before the issue became public knowledge but continued using the products.
• A man in Chattanooga, Tennessee was charged with a felony for running a red light to bring his wife to a hospital.
• A ten-year-old California boy made $1,000 selling jars of salsa but had to pay $2,000 in fees to the state to stay in business.
• Cathy Young discusses the 1964 Civil Right Act's ban on racial discrimination by private businesses and the reason it was needed.
• Small businessmen in New York complain that state tax collectors, under pressure to close the budget deficit, are charging them arbitrary amounts.
• In California, a report by Democratic legislator Noreen Evans of Santa Rosa finds that districts which historically vote Democratic tend to give more money per person to the state than they receive.
• Beryl Benderly of Miller-McCune Magazine reports that the lack of scientific career opportunities in the U.S.A. is driving students into other fields.