The following interview was done on Feb. 3 by Christine Schier of EIR's Wiesbaden bureau.

The negotiations between the EU/ECB/IMF "Troika" and Greece, over nation-killing austerity in exchange for a second big bank bailout, broke down again Sunday, perhaps for the final time.

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen downplayed Russia's opposition to a new Europe-based missile defense system as a threat to Russia in his interview with Associated Press at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday.

In a documentary aired on Russian state television on Feb. 2, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin reiterated his charge that the U.S. missile defense system is aimed at Russia, not anyone else. "Today, neither Iran, nor North Korea poses a threat....

The combination of record and near-record cold weather in the main Japanese islands with the near-total shutdown of its nuclear generation facilities has the country flirting with the possibility of massive power blackouts in one or more regions. Yesterday morning, operations stopped at Kyushu Electric Power Co.'s Shin-Oita thermal power station in Oita.

In North America, there is abundant fresh water in the far North that would make a vast difference were it to be brought south to water the American and Mexican deserts by means of NAWAPA. In China the situation is reversed, there is excess water available from the Yangtze river in the South while North China is dry, bounded by the Gobi desert.

Senator John McCain got into something of a war of words with Chinese Vice Minister Zhang Zhijun at the Munich Wehrkunde meeting this weekend, warning Zhang that "The Arab Spring is coming to Beijing." According to an editorial in Global Times, McCain, speaking on a panel entitled "America, Europe, and the Rise of Asia," lashed out at China on its human rights record and its "repression" of Tibet.

To the citizens of the United States,

Messieurs\Mesdames

Je suis Charles Luckson, jeune haïtien étudiant, activiste et présentateur de l'émission Révolution Larouchiste qui joue sur les ondes de Radio Tropicale Inter 95.9 FM stéréo, Cap-Haitien, Haïti.

The Russian Presidential election takes place March 4, one month from today. The follow-on rally to the "For Honest Elections" protests - which various Gorbachovites, liberals, and the Soros- and British-backed "color revolution" crowd are pushing as a drive against Prime Minister and Presidential candidate Vladimir Putin - took place as a march up Bolshaya Yakimanka St.

Morton Abromowitz, a former Ambassador and Project Democracy bigwig as director of the NED, nonetheless leveled a direct hit on Obama's moral hypocrisy, focused on his repeated refusal to lift a finger over North Korea's new hunger disaster.