Dayen’s news roundup from Valentine’s day includes stories you might have missed about Boehner’s House, mortgage settlements, Federal Reserve’s [non] enforcement, safety net, Obama’s budget, Nancy Brinker, Liz Warren, Crazy Pete Hoekstra, Herman Cain, Romney’s Maine win, Israel, India, and more.

The marketplace has always been at the heart of India–exuberant bazaars brimming with local hawkers and traditional wares and foods. But the country’s old-fashioned markets may soon be eclipsed by the towering “free market” of globalization, as multinational superstores push the government to open the gates.

The India Cabinet wants to enable businesses with 51-percent foreign direct investment to enter India’s retail sector–basically inviting in big box behemoths like Wal-Mart under the banner of efficiency and consumer choice. But many Indians aren’t buying it.

Indian athletes will meet on December 5 to decide whether or not to boycott the 2012 London Olympics. The issue is an Olympic sponsorship deal with Dow Chemical, “under fire in India for its ownership of Union Carbide, whose Indian subsidiary was responsible for the Bhopal industrial disaster, … estimated to have killed up to 25,000 people and injured over half a million.”

As U.S. drones continue to take flight over Pakistani soil and that country’s restive population becomes more and more resentful of what it views as excessive foreign meddling in its affairs by various actors – the West, Al Qaeda-inspired terrorists, and its old rival India – I think the topic of empire is more relevant than ever to the two countries that I consider my own.

This is a documentary about the aftermath. It will reach into your soul and make you angry at the “system.” As the title of the film tells us: The Bhopal Disaster DID NOT HAPPEN. IT IS HAPPENING. Max Carlson (Director / Cinematographer / Editor) and Kirk Palayan (Producer) present the continuing disaster happening in Bhopal today. You’ll see the contaminated water that is full of toxins that the population is drinking, generation after generation; the sicknesses continue to destroy bodies and families; the Union Carbide plant that is still polluting. It covers the legal history of the disaster. Warren Anderson, CEO of Union Carbide, who was arrested and bailed out, left India and has not been held responsible. What did the government of India get for settling the lawsuits as the sole representative of the victims?

What makes Ha-Joon Chang’s new book, 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism, such a joy to read, is not the challenge it poses to the bad economics that undergirds global finance, though it does precisely that. Just as Thomas did nearly 40 years ago, Chang’s book succeeds, fundamentally, because it challenges the dead language that is used to market as progress our growing political discontent.

The crisis sparked by US “consular employee” Raymond Davis shooting and killing two Pakistani citizens in Lahore on January 27 heightened on Monday, when it was revealed that his victims were part of Pakistan’s “security establishment”, that a second Congressional delegation had intervened with the Prime Minister on Davis’ behalf and that the widow of one of the victims had committed suicide. Developments in the case continue at breakneck pace, with the story once again breaking into the Washington Post for Tuesday, where we learn that the US “has suspended all high-level dialogue with Pakistan” over the incident. Dawn fills in more detail on that suspension, noting that Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari had been scheduled to visit Washington next month, but that trip now appears endangered. Further, we learn that Pakistan has added three more consular employees to the exit control list, preventing their departure from Pakistan. The unidentified employees are believed to have been in the car that rushed to Davis’ defense after the shooting, hitting and killing a third Pakistani who was on a motorcycle.

Given the avoidance of the economic crisis and its impact on American families in this week’s State of the Union speech, isn’t “winning the future” just a corporate branding exercise to differentiate America Inc. from India Ltd. and China Corp.?

A brief look at what’s happening in the news on Thanksgiving morning, 2010.

According to revised statistics, the US economy grew at a faster rate than first expected, up to 2.5%. Earlier growth in Q3 2010 was estimated at 2%. But there’s a problem here: despite record unemployment, and no hope for reductions clearly in sight, corporations have experienced all-time record profits, the highest since the Commerce Department started tracking the figure 60 years ago. They’ve learned to produce as many or more goods without workers.