Mostly Water — "Canadian" and International alternative news feed

By Jeremy Brecher, Tim Costello and Brendan Smith - November 20, 2008

...[A]s the leaders of the G-20 countries were winging their way to Washington, Bush announced, "The crisis was not a failure of the free-market system, and the answer is not to try to reinvent that system." It would be a "terrible mistake" to allow "a few months of crisis" to undermine faith in free market capitalism...Astonishingly, no one seemed to disagree.

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Mohawk Nation News - Nov. 17, 2008

Anger and frustration...is simmering across Akwesasne and beyond. If Canada wants to call trade in our cigarettes contraband, that’s their business. It doesn’t make it so. We think their gang wars are to get a piece of the action, as they see it. We don’t want any part of them. We want them to get their fake border, goons and dangerous behavior out of our community. If they want to do s--t like this, let them do it in their own bedroom community. We’ve had enough.

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By JONATHAN COOK - November 19, 2008

The middle-of-the-night eviction last week of an elderly Palestinian couple from their home in East Jerusalem to make way for Jewish settlers is a demonstration of Israeli intent towards a future peace deal with the Palestinians...Mohammed and Fawziya Khurd are now on the street...after Israeli police enforced a court order...to expel them...Since East Jerusalem’s occupation by Israel in 1967...Jewish settler groups have been waging a relentless battle for the Khurds’ home, claiming that the land originally belonged to Jews.

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For the Israeli government, murder is OK if the government says so.

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By Harsha Walia - Monday, November 17, 2008

...[I]n considering the past century of South Asian presence in Canada, I would argue that the most notable achievements of South Asians in B.C. are not those that are a result of an individual's perseverance surviving in the belly of the beast. The most profound contributions have challenged the social positioning of being passive and eternally grateful immigrants, those that have refused to accommodate the colonial nation and have fundamentally transformed this society for the betterment of all.

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By ROGER BURBACH - Counterpunch

Evo Morales is the latest democratically-elected Latin American president to be the target of a US plot to destabilize and overthrow his government...[T]he Bolivia coup attempt was a conscious policy rooted in US hostility towards Morales, his political party the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) and the social movements that are aligned with him.

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By FRANKLIN LAMB - November 18, 2008

"We, as Lebanese, are here to confirm that we cling to freeing every grain of our soil. We will not abandon the great national cause, which is the continuation of the liberation of our land. The resistance looks forward to hoisting the flags of victory again over the Kfarshuba hills, Shebaa Farms, Ghajar and Abbasieh where 80 percent of the land is still occupied".

--Sheik Nabil Qwork, Hezbollah leader addressing villagers at Abbasieh Village, 10/2008

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By Linda McQuaig - November 18, 2008

Isolated, repudiated by his people and even shunned by his own party, George W. Bush...still seems able to count on the support of at least one world leader: Stephen Harper...Just as Harper backed Bush's effort to block global progress on climate change, this time he helped Bush stymie European-led efforts at the G20 summit in Washington to restore regulations to international financial markets.

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Tuesday, November 18, 2008 - Gaza City

Fifteen Palestinian fishermen and 3 international Human Rights Observers (HRO's) were surrounded by the Israeli Navy and taken from their boats 7 miles off the coast of Deir al Balah, Gaza Strip...Fellow activists have been unable to establish contact with the HRO's or with the fishermen since they were abducted.

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Robert “Seth” Hayes is a U.S. political prisoner and former member of the Black Panther Party who has been imprisoned in New York state for more than three decades. When Seth was convicted in 1974, his sentence was 25 years to life. The implicit understanding at the time of his sentencing was that Seth would serve 25 years as a minimum, after which time he would be eligible for release based on his record and conduct in prison.

In December of 2008, Seth will be going before the parole board for the sixth time.

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By Paul Oestreicher - Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Seventy years ago this week the Nazis led a brutal attack on German Jews, their businesses and their synagogues, a prelude to the Holocaust. Paul Oestreicher remembers the night terror struck.

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By Jesse Washington - Sunday, November 16, 2008

From California to Maine, police have documented a range of incidents, including vandalism, threats and at least one physical attack. There have been "hundreds" of incidents since the election, many more than usual..."We saw the same thing happen after the 9/11 attacks as a wave of anti-Muslim violence swept the country."

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By Saul Landau - November 17, 2008

The...[P]residential campaign demonstrated the contemporary versions of institutionalized denial. For example, most members of the public and even Congress see desperately poor people every day, on their way to and from work, in streets, near their homes or from inside their cars. Yet, they accept an implicitly accepted dogma: do not, under any conditions, allow the use in political speech of the words "poor people."

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Fear is growing [as] the depression looms.

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By David Montero - Christian Science Monitor

More U.S. and NATO troops have died this year in Afghanistan than any other year since the 2001 U.S. invasion, in part because Taliban militants are launching increasingly complex and deadly attacks.

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By David Cronin - November 16, 2008

BRUSSELS, Nov 13 (IPS) - A political ideology based on the desire to exterminate Roma gypsies is emerging in parts of Europe, a Brussels conference has been told...Following a number of violent attacks on Roma by skinheads and other extremists in Bulgaria, it was announced during August 2007 that the far-right National Guard party was being established.

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By JOSEPH NEVINS and TIMOTHY DUNN - November 14/16, 2008

It is unclear when the U.S. government first began constructing barriers along the boundary, but through most of the 20th century, they were few and far between, located in urbanized areas and often in a state of disrepair and easily breachable. The absence for more than a century of strong physical barriers along the boundary reflects how immigration and boundary enforcement were largely nonissues until relatively recently.

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By BOKAR TURE and DEDRICK MUHAMMAD - November 12, 2008

Ten years ago, Nov. 15, 1998, Kwame Ture--formerly known as Stokely Carmichael--died. He died as he lived, fighting against social injustice, fighting with every bit of strength, intelligence and charm that was in his body. He died challenging the embargo against Libya and pledging allegiance and thankfulness to radical organizations and leaders like the Nation of Islam, Castro's Cuba, and African leaders Kwame Nkrumah and Sekou Toure, who all supported him and more importantly supported the Black liberation struggle to which Kwame Ture dedicated his life.

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The Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission is a hoax contrived by the legal establishment to evade culpability...The lead federal negotiator of the settlement contract was Frank Iacobucci of the Tory Law Firm that specializes in serving the blue chip corporate clients whose business interests diametrically opposes the truth concerning the genocidally unconstitutional invasion...

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By Omar Barghouti - Znet

A spate of recent news reports on international companies moving out of the occupied Palestinian territory (OPT) to locations inside pre-1967 Israeli borders gives the impression that boycotting products originating in illegal Israeli colonies is on its way to becoming mainstream, handing the growing boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement with a fresh, substantial victory. While this development should indeed be celebrated by all BDS activists anywhere, caution is called for in distinguishing between advocating such a targeted boycott as a tactic...and as an end in itself.

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