“The current speculative attack on the Euro is a very powerful vote against EU states that investors (capitalists) do no believe have moved swiftly enough to cut their budget deficits. The rules of the Stability and Growth Pact agreed among EU member states say that budget deficits must not exceed 3% of GDP. Those rules were designed to put a cap on public spending. They have provided the occasion for various EU governments to slash and burn welfare and public services, and they effectively insulate any government that wishes to do so from criticism…”

“Both nations “deserve to keep the Aaa rating” and “the likelihood of a default is so small, particularly in the U.S. because all we do is print money to pay it back,” he said in response to questions after a speech in London yesterday. “The notion of a default is so absurd, it’s another reflection of the absurdities in the financial markets.” “

“Prior to the US-led offensive, which will be the first major attack on a Taliban-controlled region since US President Barack Obama announced a 30,000 troop increase in the occupation forces in December, Afghan soldiers visited local tribal elders to warn them to stay off the roads.

But Marjah tribal elder Mohammed Hakim said that people were “more afraid now. Everybody is worried that they’ll get caught in the middle of the fighting and that they will have no choice but to leave their land.”

“But if I have to leave my fields for months and months, how will I feed my family?” he asked.”

– The liberal veneer of free speech is tissue-paper thin, and only extended while politically convenient.

Murray Dobbin writes for rabble.ca.

Put the Panhandle Up on the Wall, Next to the Wolf’s Head | Paul Craig Roberts

An interview on US military atrocities, past and current, with Dr. Stjepan Mestrovic.

–Obviously, this is outrageous. The student movement in Venezuela continues to be lead by the right-wing.

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“The first US graduates of Havana’s Latin American School of Medicine are already healing victims of Haiti’s devastating earthquake, Cuban state media reported at the weekend… [the] young doctors had responded to a call last January by the US-based Pastors for Peace, urging US graduates from the prestigious Havana university to join a 350-strong Cuban medical brigade that had been working in remote Haitian communities for the last 10 years.

Pastors for Peace activist Reverend Lucius Walker hailed Elsie Walter, Nylon Manning, Wing Wu, Keyshia Covingtoa, Melissa Babie, Melissa Rose Michell and Martina Pierre as “dedicated and skilled young doctors who are ready to serve.”

“Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has tasked the country’s atomic chief with enriching uranium to 20 percent, in order to meet the demands of the country’s cancer patients.”

From CBC, Iran to produce higher-enriched uranium:

…the 20 per cent threshold is substantially below the 90 per cent-plus needed to make fissile warhead material… The Iranian president said he decided to ramp up production because Western governments have balked at his proposal for a fuel exchange to keep the medical reactor operating.

“Premier Shawn Graham says he had “no choice” but to ask Tourism and Parks Minister Stuart Jamieson to resign from cabinet for suggesting the proposed deal between NB Power and Hydro-Québec be put to a referendum.”

– Perhaps Jamieson has ambitions of running again.

“”I have the upmost [sic] respect for Mr. Jamieson and it has been an honour to serve with him. However, the custom of cabinet consensus must be maintained,” he (Shawn Graham) said.”

“In December prices jumped 7.3 per cent, and it is feared they could rise further over the next few months… With the government finding it hard to explain its policies, people’s anger is steadily rising.”

- The World Food Crisis was the subject of Monthly Review’s July/August issue. See in particular, Utsa Patnaik’s article, Origins of the Food Crisis in India and Developing Countries.

“Dwarfing recent opposition protests, more than 100,000 supporters of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez marched in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, yesterday in defence of the ‘Bolivarian Revolution’ and to celebrate 18 years since Chavez, then a lieutenant colonel, led a failed civilian-military uprising against the corrupt government of former president Carlos Andrés Pérez on February 4, 1992.

The second term of Carlos Andrés Pérez, from 1989-93, (he served previously as president from 1974-79), had been marked by a series of social crises, including a popular revolt, known as the Caracazo uprising on February 27, 1989 against IMF-imposed neo-liberal reforms, which saw up to 3,000 people shot dead by the military and security forces, as well as and two military rebellions (February 4, 1992 and November 27, 1992). In May 1993 Andrés Pérez became the first Venezuelan president to be forced out of office by the Supreme Court for misappropriation of 250 million bolívars of public funds.”

“The Slovenian cultural theorist Slavoj žižek – most centrally in his Revolution At The Gates – has made it his business to reintroduce the Russian Marxist Vladimir Lenin to a new generation of activists. This in itself is a worthwhile project. Most believe that in building a new left we have to “leave the Leninist legacy behind” and greet any attempt to resurrect Lenin with “sarcastic laughter”… This article will challenge žižek’s interpretation of the relationship between Lenin and democracy, Lenin and violence, and Lenin and Stalin. The net effect of žižek’s analysis is not to resurrect Lenin, but to resurrect Stalin – an utterly irresponsible project given the nightmare of Stalinism from which we have only just emerged.”

-An article by Paul Kellogg, who you can also read here.

–Some interesting analysis on the fragile nature of the EU economy. It is worth thinking more about how these new trade zones can have larger impacts on the world economy.

–The government could do a lot more to educate people on this issue. However, for the same reason that global warming will not be addressed, people will also be mislead about their effects on the climate. A more radical analysis is necessary than the one that is allowed in current corporate news-dominated discourse.

A brief chronicle of the decline of America’s left over the last 5 decades by Alexander Cockburn.

“American power is on the precipice, about to fall. Perhaps it is a good thing. The world will be rid of bullying, of invasions of innocent countries based on blatant lies, of torture and murder of woman and children, of redistribution of income from the poor to the rich.”

In its attempt to stamp out the growing Taliban insurgency and Al Qaeda, the US military has been arresting suspects and sending them to one of a number of secret detention areas on military bases, often on the slightest suspicion and without the knowledge of their families. These night raids have become even more feared and hated in Afghanistan than coalition airstrikes.

Jan. 21, 2010, will go down as a dark day in the history of U.S. democracy, and its decline.