Link: http://wsws.org/articles/2010/jan2010/cold-j07.shtml

A protracted cold spell eased somewhat Wednesday, but wide areas of the US—from the Northern Plains to the East Coast and stretching to the South—were bracing for more winter weather and freezing temperatures this weekend. The cold snap has spelled misery for many, especially in areas unaccustomed and ill-prepared for the frigid conditions. The freezing weather has placed in sharp relief the devastating social impact of mass unemployment, growing poverty and the refusal of the Obama administration to provide any serious relief for the victims of the economic crisis.

Link: http://wsws.org/articles/2010/jan2010/cia1-j07.shtml

In an apparent campaign of revenge, at least 20 people have died in drone missile attacks in Pakistan since the December 30 suicide bombing that killed seven CIA operatives and a Jordanian intelligence agent.

Link: http://www.counterpunch.org/porter01062010.html

New revelations about two documents leaked to The Times of London to show that Iran is working on a "nuclear trigger" mechanism have further undermined the credibility of the document the newspaper had presented as evidence of a continuing Iranian nuclear weapons program. A columnist for the Times has acknowledged that the two-page Persian language document published by The Times last month was not a photocopy of the original document but an expurgated and retyped version of the original.

Link: http://www.truthout.org/106093Levine

The pro-nuclear Department of Energy is set to offer this month the first of nearly $20 billion in loan guarantees to a nuclear industry that hasn't built a plant since the 1970s or raised any money to do so in years. But although the industry is seeking to cash in on global warming concerns with $100 billion in proposed loan guarantees, environmentalists, scientists and federal investigators are warning that lax oversight by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) of the nation's aging 104 nuclear plants has led to near-meltdowns along with other health and safety failings since Three Mile Island - including what some critics say is a flawed federal health study apparently designed to conceal cancer risks near nuclear plants.

Link: http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion/512598/2010_isn_t_1994_yet

With the revelation last night/this morning that veteran Democratic Senators Christopher Dodd (CT) and Byron Dorgan (ND) are not seeking re-election this year, the mainstream press is going wild with speculation that these retirements herald doom for the Democrats in this year's midterm elections.

Link: http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2010/01/06/surveillance/index.html

Every debate over expanded government surveillance power is invariably framed as one of "security v. privacy and civil liberties" -- as though it's a given that increasing the Government's surveillance authorities will "make us safer." But it has long been clear that the opposite is true. As numerous experts (such as Rep. Rush Holt) have attempted, with futility, to explain, expanding the scope of raw intelligence data collected by our national security agencies invariably impedes rather than bolsters efforts to detect terrorist plots.

Link: http://socialistworker.org/2010/01/06/aid-convoy-attacked-in-egypt

EGYPTIAN AUTHORITIES have attacked a convoy carrying humanitarian relief supplies destined for the people of Gaza. Information was difficult to obtain, but members of the Viva Palestina convoy managed to report that they were facing a force of more than 2,000 riot police in the Egyptian port city of El Arish, and that numerous participants were detained and suffered injuries in the clashes

Link: http://socialistworker.org/2010/01/06/we-must-cut-ties-to-israel

U.S. trade unionists began circulating an open letter in December to AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, challenging his attack on the movement for boycott, sanctions and divestment (BDS) against Israel and explaining why the BDS movement is necessary, especially in the wake of Israel's brutal assault on Gaza a year ago. While the letter received tremendous support, it also came under attack from some quarters. Here, Labor for Palestine responds to these attacks and issues a call for trade union members and activists to add their voices in solidarity with the Palestinian people.

Link: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24340.htm

A tiny part of a tiny part of the population of the earth will set the terms for the future of all humans. A tiny part that is broken, spent out, and increasingly disillusioned. That sliver of humanity is the broken, spent out, and increasingly disillusioned American middle class, burdened with the task of spending all America out of catastrophe. When they break under the weight of desperate impossibility, how will the heartlands good citizens react, and what will they do?

Link: http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_5436.shtml

We all know that Britain has the highest ratio of CCTV cameras to people in the world, but I want to take a closer look at some stories from within the past two months to see at what is going on right now.

Link: http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=49901

"Did you have to pay for anything?" is the obligatory question these days in the waiting room at the Mother and Child Hospital in Fernando de la Mora, on the outskirts of the Paraguayan capital, where people still have doubts that the public health services are free of charge, as the government had announced.

Link: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24338.htm

"Information Clearing House" -- I had just finished reading the uncensored edition of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s book, In The First Circle (Harper Perennial, 2009), when I came across Chris Hedges article, “One Day We’ll All Be Terrorists”. In Hedges’ description of the US government’s treatment of American citizen Syed Fahad Hashmi, I recognized the Stalinist legal system as portrayed by Solzhenitsyn.

Link: http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/70250

"...all it takes is to think of the horrors of Gaza, of the separation wall that separates Palestinians from each other and from their beloved Jerusalem or of the daily injustices meted out by the Israeli occupation, to turn away from that green Starbucks logo or to put down that tube of lipstick that is tainted with the color of oppression."

Link: http://www.democracynow.org/2010/1/6/obama_has_kept_the_machine_set

In an extended interview, award-winning journalist and activist Allan Nairn looks back over the Obama administration’s foreign policy and national security decisions over the last twelve months. “I think Obama should be remembered as a great man because of the blow he struck against white racism,” Nairn says. “But once he became president…Obama became a murderer and a terrorist, because the US has a machine that spans the globe, that has the capacity to kill, and Obama has kept it set on kill. He could have flipped the switch and turned it off…but he chose not to do so.” He continues, “In fact, as far as one can tell, Obama seems to have killed more civilians during his first year than Bush did in his first year, and maybe even than Bush killed in his final year.” [includes rush transcript]

Link: http://www.democracynow.org/2010/1/6/us_led_forces_accused_of_executing

In Afghanistan, hundreds have taken to the streets of Kabul and elsewhere to protest the US killing of civilians. The incident that has sparked the most outrage took place in eastern Kunar on December 27th, when ten Afghans, eight of them schoolchildren, were killed. According to the Times of London, US-led troops dragged innocent children from their beds and shot them during a nighttime raid. Afghan government investigators said the eight students were aged from eleven to seventeen, all but one of them from the same family. [includes rush transcript]

Link: http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=115495&sectionid=351020101

The US is helping the Pakistan-based Jundallah militants to enter Iran through the Persian Gulf and carry out terrorist acts in the country, a report said Wednesday. The United States has given a vessel to members of the Jundallah terrorist group to travel in the southern Iranian waters, an informed source told Basirat website, with close ties to Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC).

Link: http://forums.myspace.com/t/4703457.aspx?fuseaction=forums.viewthread

The clamor to ramp up airport security with invasive naked body imaging scanners has nothing to do with ensuring the safety of travelers. Rather it is part of an ongoing incremental push to break the will of the people and encourage mass subservience and meek obedience. Perhaps the most alarming aspect of the body scanner push is that people are willingly accepting it. As Bloomberg news reports today. “Passenger acceptance of airport body scanners has increased following the failed terrorist attack,”

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/07/world/asia/07afghan.html

American forces inspecting an engineering project in eastern Afghanistan paused to toss candies to a clutch of curious Afghan children on Wednesday when a large explosion tore through the crowd. The blast turned a common gesture of friendship by American forces into what for Afghans has become an all too common tragedy, setting off angry recriminations and protests.

Link: http://killinghope.org/bblum6/aer77.html

Mothers, don't let your children grow up to be Nobel Peace Prize winners
Lincoln Gordon died a few weeks ago at the age of 96. He had graduated summa cum laude from Harvard at the age of 19, received a doctorate from Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, published his first book at 22, with dozens more to follow on government, economics, and foreign policy in Europe and Latin America. President Lyndon B. Johnson praised Gordon's diplomatic service... Abraham Lincoln Gordon was also Washington's on-site, and very active, director in Brazil of the military coup in 1964 which overthrew the moderately leftist government of João Goulart and condemned the people of Brazil to more than 20 years of an unspeakably brutal dictatorship. Human-rights campaigners have long maintained that Brazil's military regime originated the idea of the desaparecidos, "the disappeared", and exported torture methods across Latin America...

Link: http://desertpeace.wordpress.com/2010/01/06/israel-is-definitely-behind-the-chaos-in-egypt/

It is too coincidental that Israeli leaders have been in constant contact with Egyptians over the past few days. It’s just too hard to believe that all these contacts and talks had to do with the release of Shalit. There is an entire nation being held hostage by the zionists versus one soldier being held by the Palestinians. Let us remember that. The old saying, “misery loves company’ comes to mind….. why should Israel take sole responsibility for the problems encountered by the Viva Palestina Convoy? Israel has more ‘friends’ that apparently are more willing to cooperate with them than meets the eye.