Don't upset the golden applecart

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Reagan Revenants Return to Enforce Empire's Agenda
If Obama and crew actually had an agenda – as the hyper-militarist Dick Cheney had, when he and his front-man seized power in 2000 – then they could have pushed through any number of genuine, substantive reforms, with strong public support. But it should be clear to anyone by now that Obama, like Clinton before him, has no real idea of what he wants to do in government, or what he wants government to do: he just wants to enjoy the props and perks of power for awhile, to play the role of president, like Michael Douglas or Martin Sheen in a Aaron Sorkin fantasy, then bask in celebrityhood the rest of his days. The only real agenda of the Obama Administration is keeping Democrats in office, as Joe Biden revealed the other day, and winning a second term for the Prez. And then? Big book contracts, lucrative speaking engagements, corporate directorships, some charity PR....whatever.
                                                                                                                                            Chris Floyd

Happy Afghan anniversary

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Eight years ago, on Oct. 7, 2001, the U.S. launched a war upon Afghanistan.
“With regret,” a Russian official said in September 2001, trying to warn the U.S. of what lay ahead should we invade Afghanistan, “I have to say that you’re really going to get the hell kicked out of you.”

Cofer Black, Director of the CIA’s Counter-Terrorist Center, responded: “We’re going to kill them,” he said. “We’re going to put their heads on sticks. We’re going to rock their world.” [Bush at War by Bob Woodward, p. 103]

This is the attitude that got the United States into this war. This is the attitude that invaders and occupiers of Afghanistan have always had before they end up withdrawing years later in shame and defeat.

Director of Potty Prosecutions

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Black bra, red stockings: is that a fair cop?
ONE woman is dressed provocatively in a black bra. Another sports red high heels and stockings. Their long-haired male companions are dressed in scruffy blue boiler suits and the occasional riot helmet. The costumes may look harmless, but for the Space Hijackers — a small group of part-time anarchists with a penchant for street entertainment — they have been enough to earn them charges of impersonating police officers. In what critics say is a misjudged effort to justify police tactics at the protests, Keir Starmer (right), the director of public prosecutions, brushed aside objections and decided last month that 11 of the Space Hijackers would face a four-day trial at a magistrates’ court in February.

Keir Starmer, you are a TOSSER!

Unwinnable

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For Britons, The Party Game Is Over
On the day Prime Minister Gordon Brown made his "major policy speech" on Afghanistan, repeating his surreal claim that if the British army did not fight Pashtun tribesmen over there, they would be over here, the stench of burnt flesh hung over the banks of the Kunduz River. Nato fighter planes had blown the poorest of the poor to bits. They were Afghan villagers who had rushed to siphon off fuel from two stalled tankers. Many were children with water buckets and cooking pots. "At least" 90 were killed, although Nato prefers not to count its civilian enemy. "It was a scene from hell," said Mohammed Daud, a witness. "Hands, legs and body parts were scattered everywhere." No parade for them along a Wiltshire high street...More than MPs' fake expenses, it is this corrupting and trivializing of life and death that mark a fitting end to the "modernized" Labour Party, the party of criminal war.