Word: blowingly
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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LONDON: That repressive muzzle known as the Official Secrets Act hasn't stopped Britons from finding out what allegations are being leveled against their own intelligence services. On Thursday The Guardian broke the injunction on reporting whistleblower David Shayler's claims that MI6 tried to blow up Libya's Colonel Ghaddafi. How? The Guardian simply reprinted Wednesday's New York Times article on the subject. That forced the Foreign Office to actually deny the story for the first time; an official told Reuters it was "inconceivable" that they would grant the authority for assassinations "in normal peacetime circumstances...
...Whether Shayler has the skinny or not, the allegations come as a blow to British intelligence's attempt to lose its "license to kill" image. Only last week, MI5 -- the domestic spy service -- issued a booklet pointing out that while it holds 13,000 active files on British residents, it "does not kill people or arrange their assassination." Now it seems MI6, MI5's foreign-espionage counterpart, will be forced to bring out a similar glossy pamphlet denying everything. Mr. Bond will be most displeased...
Have you heard about the bartender who sank the Titanic? It happened on the record charts, not in the North Atlantic, and instead of an iceberg, the fatal blow was struck by Dave Matthews, a former barkeep turned leader of the Dave Matthews Band. After spending 16 weeks at No. 1, the once unsinkable Titanic soundtrack collided with Matthews' new album, Before These Crowded Streets. When it was over, Matthews reigned in the top spot...
Justice was right, of course. The privilege argument was rejected by judges over and over last week. On Friday, Chief Justice William Rehnquist dealt it a decisive blow. But for the White House, going to court may have been worth the trouble. Starr's legal vindication could be another of his Pyrrhic victories, a p.r. stumble that compares with his squeezing testimony from Monica Lewinsky's mother. Sworn to sacrifice their life to save the President's, plainclothes agents see themselves as the ultimate shield. By dragging them before his grand jury, Starr risks treating them like human bugging devices...
Insecure with the conflict that England has studiously avoided on the home front, both sides--whites and blacks alike--have behaved like irascible children on the playing fields. A blow from one side incites a retaliation by the other, but neither will voice the undeniable truth: England must move into the 21st century. It must change its image of an old boys club where highly-educated, aristocratic men play at ruling the world and admit to what it really is--a nation with more poor than rich and a large population of black citizens who deserve a voice...