Link: http://www.truthout.org/army-discharge-single-mom-rather-than-court-martial-her56846

On Thursday, February 11, Army Specialist Alexis Hutchinson, a single mother of an infant son, was informed she would be granted an administrative discharge from the Army. Last fall, Hutchinson was ordered to prepare to deploy to Afghanistan. On November 5, 2009, after her childcare plans fell through, Hutchinson was faced with the dilemma of having no one to take care of her son when she deployed to a war zone.

Link: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2010/02/2010211143651208687.html

Three years after President Felipe Calderon launched an all-out nationwide war against drug cartels in Mexico, narcotics-related violence is still on the rise in the city of Ciudad Juarez. Although around 10,000 troops have been deployed in the city, on average 10 people are killed each day there. According to the El Universal newspaper, last year more than one-third of Mexico's murders were in Juarez. Residents of the city now known as Mexico's new "murder capital" are putting pressure on politicians to act against a business that earns yearly revenues of $20bn.

Link: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100301/editors

"Energy. Budget Tax cuts. Lift American spirits." This was the infamous list of talking points scrawled on Sarah Palin's palm when she stood to address the first-ever Tea Party Convention in Nashville. It's fitting, given that the agenda of Palin and the movement for which she has become a tribune is short on details about how to govern the country. "Lift American spirits" is about as substantive a description of their agenda as you're likely to hear.

Link: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2010/02/2010211232952849823.html

Ahmadinejad says Iran 'has the courage to explicitly say it and build it' if it wants to make a bomb [AFP] The United States has expressed scepticism over Iran's claim that it has achieved higher levels of uranium enrichment. In a speech at a rally marking the 31st anniversary of the Islamic revolution on Thursday, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's president, said the country had produced its first batch of 20 per cent enriched uranium.

Link: http://wsws.org/articles/2010/feb2010/bank-f11.shtml

In an interview with Bloomberg BusinessWeek, President Barack Obama said he does not “begrudge” the bonuses of Wall Street tycoons Jamie Dimon and Lloyd Blankfein, who together were awarded $26 million last week. Bloomberg.com published Obama’s remarks on the bonuses Wednesday in a preview of an interview that will appear on the newsstands Friday. The interview is evidently part of an effort by Obama to placate Wall Street executives who have complained about his occasional exercises in anti-banker rhetoric and his announcement of token proposals to rein in speculative practices by commercial banks and impose a modest surtax on financial firms that received government bailout funds. He went on to make light of the bankers’ pay packages, saying that while $17 million is “an extraordinary amount of money” for Main Street, “there are some baseball players who are making more than that and don’t get to the World Series either, so I’m shocked by that as well.” Baseball players didn't steal the money from the American people with the help of a corrupt government.

Link: http://wsws.org/articles/2010/feb2010/pers-f11.shtml

For the first time since the introduction of its common currency, the European Union has made a country subject to its diktat. The European Commission intends to rigorously supervise the brutal austerity programme by which the Greek government plans to cut its budget deficit from 13 to 3 percent of the country’s gross domestic product within two years.

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/11/berlusconi-judges-italian-premier

Roberto Mancini guardian.co.uk, Thursday 11 February 2010 12.00 GMT Article historyLast week, while Silvio Berlusconi and seven of his ministers were on a state visit to Israel and workers and trade unionists from Sardinia gathered noisily outside Palazzo Chigi protesting against plans to close their factory, the House of Deputies debated and approved yet another new law to protect the prime minister and his ministers from court appearances.

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/11/us-military-propaganda-film

Nuclear Armaggedon has always had its funny side. But the US military wasn't laughing in the early 1960s as Americans, freshly shaken by the Cuban missile crisis, lapped up Stanley Kubrick's classic satire, Dr Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

Link: http://original.antiwar.com/charles-fromm/2010/02/10/iraqi-govt-expels-former-blackwater-contractors/

The Iraqi government has ordered hundreds of private security contractors who previously worked for Blackwater Worldwide or its subsidiaries to leave the country within seven days or risk arrest for visa violations, Iraq’s interior minister said Wednesday.