Mostly Water — "Canadian" and International alternative news feed

By PATRICK COCKBURN - July 27, 2010

Dramatic increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukemia in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, which was bombarded by US Marines in 2004, exceed those reported by survivors of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, according to a new study.

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By Yifat Susskind - July 29, 2010

In its bid to maintain its occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, the Israeli government has launched a new offensive, this one against its own citizens. A bill that is currently before the Knesset would allow Israelis who support boycotts against Israel to be sued for damages. The bill is part of a government backlash against a small but growing number of Israelis who have taken up the tactic of boycott, sanctions and divestment (BDS) to bring about an end to their government’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

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Honest reports will document the massacre accurately.

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By CONN HALLINAN - July 29, 2010

Winning “hearts and minds” is just a tactic aimed at insuring our paramount interests...Be nice to the locals unless the locals decide that they don’t much like long-term occupation...Then “hearts and minds” turns nasty. U.S. Special Operations Forces carry out as many as five “kill and capture” raids a day in Afghanistan and have assassinated or jailed more than 500 Afghans in the past few months. Thousands of others languish in prisons.

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By CrimethInc. - Wednesday, July 28 2010

Looking back over the past decade, it appears that North American law enforcement agencies are increasingly utilizing conspiracy charges to target anarchists and others involved in radical communities. We’ve composed this review of recent conspiracy cases in hopes of analyzing this phenomenon. If conspiracy charges are becoming central to the state's strategy against anarchists, it is imperative that we develop a strategy of our own to respond and seize the initiative rather than simply reacting over and over to individual cases.

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It's been interesting to watch the discourse around the Afghan War Diary in the Canadian corporate press, and to see what they're talking about, and what they're not...On Sunday, Wikileaks released 91,731 documents about the war in Afghanistan. This is the biggest leak in US history. It'll take some time for analysts to comb through it all, but some reporting trends are already emerging.

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By DTES Power of Women Group

Over one hundred [Downtown Eastside] residents and concerned people across Vancouver gathered for an emergency rally to denounce police violence. This was in direct response to the recent controversy surrounding a [Vancouver Police] officer’s physical assault of a 26-year old woman with cerebral palsy in the Downtown Eastside...Shortly after the protest...the VPD announced that the police officer responsible was taken off the DTES beat and reassigned.

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A powerful indictment of all wars.

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By Alex Balch - 07/28/2010

In these times of economic uncertainty, when working class youth are increasingly susceptible to the hateful scapegoating of marginalized communities promoted by white supremacist organizations, it is vitally important that any attempt by fascists to organize is met with an overwhelming and unified response: Not on our watch!

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By Eva Gollinger - July 28, 2010

President Chavez ordered maximum alert on Venezuela’s border with Colombia after the Uribe administration made grave accusations against Venezuela claiming the Chavez government harbors terrorists and terrorist training camps...Colombia alleged that Venezuela is harboring “terrorists” from the Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN) and hosting several “terrorist training camps” near the border region that divides the two nations.

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By Joseph Jones - July 27, 2010

On 19 July 2010, three days after 28-year-old Loni Edmonds gave birth to her son Andre, a provincial ministry team came into her hospital room to forcibly separate her from her own newborn child. The "team" included a lot of enforcement: two RCMP officers, two hospital security staff, and one medical doctor. Supportive relatives of the parents pleaded with authorities, but they could not stop the snatch.

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By Justin Saunders - July 27, 2010

One of the three G20 arrestees remaining in custody has been released from a courtroom in North Toronto tonight, after more than a month in prison...Amanda Hiscocks, a community organizer in Guelph, is among 17 people facing conspiracy charges stemming from the police crackdown on G20 dissent.

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By Fires Never Extinguished (Phoenix Class War Council) - Tuesday, July 27 2010

A constant for those of us in Arizona who have been in the streets since the passage of SB 1070, has been the troubling presence of political opportunists...A "31 Flavors" of Left-wing political groups, most of them looking to jump on the anti-SB 1070 band wagon as a means to get their name out there, recruit new members, and/or use the human rights disaster we face to raise funds to build their presence.

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By RANDALL AMSTER - Counterpunch

Fostering an environment of racialized violence is the harsh reality of Arizona’s drive toward legislated intolerance. For those who might feel saturated by the incessant news about immigration, or who wonder “what’s the big deal?” about SB 1070 and the like, this is a reminder of the stakes involved. Will there be a climate of escalating fear, hatred, and violence that takes over, or will this be a tipping point toward social justice and human dignity instead?

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July 27, 2010 - rabble.ca

It may come as a surprise to some, but activist organizers who were arrested during the G20 Summit demonstrations in Toronto are still being held in custody -- for over a month -- while others are finally starting to trickle out of jail...G20 community organizers Leah Henderson and Alex Hundert were released on bail on July 19, 2010. They learned yesterday that the Crown is appealing their release.

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By Krystalline Kraus - July 26, 2010

The British government will not lay charges against London police for the death of Ian Tomlinson at the 2009 G20 protests in London.

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By CHRIS FLOYD - July 27, 2010

The savage cutbacks and vast, churning upheavals being pushed through, at breakneck speed, by [Britain's] new Conservative government...will send millions of people tumbling down into a permanent underclass -- and...gut the national health service with a stealth "Americanization" that will turn the operation of local doctors' offices over to private firms...and privatize public hospitals, allowing them to "fail"...if they don't produce enough cash for their elite shareholders.

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Criminal negligence is at fault.

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By Gideon Levy - 18.07.10

This piece might not be meant for everyone. Nationalists, racists and fans of militarism and fascism can continue to be satisfied by the developments of the past few months...This piece is not meant for the false patriots, the brutes and the brainwashed, for those who want a Jewish, Arab-free Knesset; a Jewish, foreigner-free society; and a state without B'Tselem or the High Court of Justice.

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July 18, 2010 - Znet

The basic conflict can be understood in very conventional terms of people enduring and trying to resist an occupation...I think Israel is behaving like most occupying powers behave...It wasn’t easy to get the French out of Algeria, it wasn’t easy to get the Russians out of Afghanistan, it wasn’t easy to get the Americans out of Vietnam...[T]he fundamental fact is that the Palestinians are not only deprived of their basic human rights but they’re slowly, inexorably, being dispossessed of their homeland by the Israeli juggernaut.

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