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Friday, May 18, 2007 |
BBC: "About 2,500 post offices - a fifth of those left in the UK - are to close by 2009, the government has confirmed."
Privatization and deregulation are ruining public services all over Europe.
10:56:14 AM 
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ChathamHouse Report: "Iraq has fractured into regional power bases. Political, security and economic power has devolved to local sectarian, ethnic or tribal political groupings. The Iraqi government is only one of several 'state-like' actors. The regionalization of Iraqi political life needs to be recognized as a defining feature of Iraq's political structure.
The surge is not curbing the high level of violence, and improvements in security cannot happen in a matter of months.
Critical destabilizing issues will come to the fore in 2007-8. Federalism, the
control of oil and control of disputed territories need to be resolved."
AlterNet: "Brilliant historian and essayist Chalmers Johnson argues that unless we face up to the tremendous strain our empire is having on America, we will lose our democracy, and then it will not matter much what else we lose.
George W. Bush has, of course, flagrantly violated his oath of office, which requires him 'to protect and defend the constitution', and the opposition party has been remarkably reluctant to hold him to account. Among the 'high crimes and misdemeanors' that, under other political circumstances, would surely constitute the Constitutional grounds for impeachment are these: the President and his top officials pressured the Central Intelligence Agency to put together a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq's nuclear weapons that both the administration and the Agency knew to be patently dishonest. They then used this false NIE to justify an American war of aggression. After launching an invasion of Iraq, the administration unilaterally reinterpreted international and domestic law to permit the torture of prisoners held at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and at other secret locations around the world."
10:50:19 AM
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At the expense of the taxpayer Tony Blair is spinning his exit and boosting his personal image. That saves him a lot of money he would otherwise have had to spend in public relations, to boost his upcoming memoirs and keep him as far as possible from incriminations for war crimes.
AFP: "US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair Thursday staged a White House swansong for their tumultuous double-act, defiant to the last over the Iraq war which sunk their political fortunes."
NHSBlogDoctor: "Tony Blair will declare himself a Roman Catholic on leaving Downing Street, according to a priest close to him.
In view of the Prime Minister's eminence we can surely expect an accelerated beatification. Canonisation is the final step. However, in the case of a candidate who is not a martyr, the church looks for another authentic miracle attributed to the candidate's intercession, as a sign from God of the candidate's heroic holiness."
10:40:38 AM
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© Copyright 2008.
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