30 July - Quick Picks

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Open Letter | Our Water is Not For Sale!
A broad range of organizations and individuals have already signed on to our open letter, showing their concern about the Alberta governmen'ts plan to move to a province-wide de-regulated market system for water allocation.

Egypt Punishes Gaza More
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=52268
In mid-July, a Libyan ship bearing 2,000 tons of humanitarian aid arrived in Al-Arish after being prevented by the Israeli navy from reaching the Gaza Strip. The aid supplies were subsequently transported from Al-Arish to the Egypt-Gaza border, where some 700 tons of medical supplies were allowed to pass into the strip via Rafah.

The rest of the aid, however, consisting mostly of foodstuffs, had to be sent into the strip via the Egypt-Israel border crossing of Kerem Abu Salem.

The Libyan attempt was not the first aid convoy dispatched since Jun. 1 to run up against such restrictions.
Throughout June, several attempts to deliver humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, organised by Egyptian opposition groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood, met with similar results: while medical supplies were allowed through Rafah, everything else was forced to enter the strip via the Egypt- Israel crossings of Kerem Abu Salem (10 kilometres south of Rafah) or Al- Auja (50 kilometres south of Rafah).

"We tried very hard to get the entire consignment through Rafah, but authorities were adamant in their refusal," Hamdi Hassan, a Muslim Brotherhood MP who accompanied one such aid convoy to the border, told IPS. "While people and medical supplies were allowed through Rafah, everything else was forced to pass through the Israel-controlled Al-Auja crossing."


Anger Rises Over U.S. Tax Dollars for Settlements
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=52259
Anger has arisen in Palestinian areas over reports that millions of tax-exempt dollars from the U.S. are being funneled towards Israel's illegal settlement building in the Palestinian West Bank -- in flagrant violation of international law.

This is happening under the nose of the U.S. administration despite its claims of support for a two-state solution and criticism of Israel's continued settlement building.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) based in Ramallah has expressed outrage. "Adhering to international law is a big step towards holding Israel accountable for its actions," PA spokesman Ghassan Khatib told IPS from the Muqata (government) headquarters in Ramallah.

"Settlements violate international law, and the United States is supposed to be sponsoring a two-state solution, yet it gives deductions for donation to the settlements," said Saeb Erekat the PA's chief negotiator.

According to a recent report in The New York Times 40 U.S. groups have raised more than 200 million dollars in tax-deductable donations for Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem during the last ten years. U.S. tax rules prohibit the use of charitable funds for political purposes at home or abroad.

But U.S. tax laws encourage citizens to support non-profit groups whose ideologies might diverge from official government policy as long as their missions are educational, religious or charitable. Religious groups have no obligation to divulge their finances, meaning settlements may be receiving sums that cannot be traced.

An Honest Look at Obama's First Year
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=SWA20100723&articleId=20245


Slow Food Makes Some Rapid Advances
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=52267
Slow Food International is a non-profit eco-gastronomic organisation founded in 1989 to counteract fast food, the disappearance of local food traditions, and sensitise people to the impact of consumer choices.

The concept of slow food is catching on fast in the Balkans, where small- scale farming is severely threatened by the promotion of industrial agriculture and by commercial practices which keep small producers from selling directly to consumers.

A colourful contact lens may soon help people living with diabetes monitor their blood glucose levels
http://www.innovationcanada.ca/en/articles/seeing-red

Ignorance isn’t the problem.
http://boatrocker.wordpress.com/2010/06/14/ignorance-isnt-the-problem
They know Marcellus is a freshwater Gulf of Mexico disaster in the making, that there will be more toxic blowouts like the recent 16-hour, 75-foot, million-gallon blowout in the Clearfield County district of House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee chair Camille “Bud” George.
They know all that.
They just don’t care.
The people who know and care – but don’t drive public decisions – are the parents and grandparents of kids sickened by the chemicals; people who rely on truck-delivered water or expensive, energy-intense filtration machines because their wells are poisoned and their tap-water is flammable; and people who hear those stories and feel similar fear, anger and grief as our collective failure to stop fracking continues, and their private nightmare becomes our public one: the toxic industrialization, dewatering and death of our Pennsylvania home.
Get to know your neighbors.
Plant gardens.
And install cisterns.

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• Why Are the Palestinians Opposed to Ending the Occupation (nowpublic.com)
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