Midweek link dump

[tangaroa]

• Womens' rights activist Gita Saghal has resigned in protest of Amnesty International's support for the Taliban. Related links, some from earlier posts:
  • Saghal reports that Amnesty is also ending its Stop Violence Against Women campaign.
  • Amnesty International head Claudio Cordone endorsed "defensive jihad", which outraged Indian human rights organizations who know what the phrase "defensive jihad" means in context.
  • Habibi at Harry's Place discusses Amnesty's alliance with al-Qaeda support group CagePrisoners, which does not only oppose the infinite detention of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay but supports al-Qaeda's jihadist ideology.
  • In 2009, Amnesty International attached its name and reputation to a cut-and-paste job of Hamas propaganda.
  • Algerian feminist Marieme Helie Lucas claims that Amnesty International supported fundamentalists against feminists in the 1970s.
• Most of the current economic recovery in the United States of America is in the financial sector.
• A U.S. judge declared the establishment by Congress of a National Day of Prayer to be illegal.
• Massey Energy has threatened to fire any workers who attend the funerals of employees who were killed in a mining disaster in West Virginia.
  • Related:After a miner's widow sued Massey Energy, a capitalist group's representative condemned the widow as wanting "free money".
• Al-Shabaab has threatened "Islamic justice" against any school in Somalia that rings a bell, because school bells remind them of church bells.
• Catherine Wentworth translates signs held by Thai Red Shirt protesters.
• Ian O'Doherty of the Irish Independent reports that the Irish Congress of Trade Unions is spending worker dues to promote anti-semitism.
• A poll of over 1000 "Tea Party" supporters finds a large number of Glenn Beck-watching George W. Bush supporters who don't like Barack Obama and cannot explain why.
• The U.S. has filed felony charges against high-ranking National Security Agency official Thomas Drake for leaking information to Baltimore Sun reporter Siobhan Gorman.
• The National Center for Lesbian Rights is filing suit on behalf of Clay Greene of Sonoma County, California, an elderly man "in good health" who was forcibly interned in a nursing home and had his home and possessions sold by the government after his homosexual partner fell ill.
  • Garland Grey has additional information.
  • The Santa Rosa Press Democrat has additional information.
• Britain's third party, the Liberal Democrats, are doing well in polls after a recent debate, but stand no chance to take a plurality of Parliament seats even if they win a plurality of votes.
• British author J. K. Rowling blasts Conservative politics.
• Barry Rubin fact-checks former U.S. President William Clinton on the Arab-Israeli peace process.
• The Waqf is once again digging on the Temple Mount while denying access to archaeologists.
• The New Orleans police department shot and killed a man after his wife called the emergency line for medical assistance. Additional coverage by WVUE and WDSU.
• A Connecticut schoolteacher has resigned in protest of his school's refusal to allow him to teach evolution.
• Studies suggest that people with the genetic disorder Williams Syndrome do not form racial stereotypes.
• British science writer Simon Singh has won his libel defense for saying that it is "bogus" to claim that all ailments may be cured by chiropracty.
  • A copy of Singh's column can be found on a Russian mirror.
• British Member of Parliament Khalid Mahmood accuses other trustees of the North London Central Mosque of forging his signature on legal documents. This mosque is same as the former Finsbury Park Mosque which was once led by al-Qaeda supporter Abu Hamza and held the "Magnificent Nineteen" celebration on the first anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks in 2002.
• Ta-Nehesi Coates discusses the influence of slavery on the American Civil War.
• Former U.S. Congressman Tom Tancredo told a Tea Party rally to send U.S. President Barack Obama "back" to Africa. Obama is Hawaiian.
• Adam Savage of television's Mythbusters spoke about his atheism in a speech to the Harvard Humanism Society.