LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Tony Blair: Middle East
built 237 days ago
Blair sent his own children to high-achievement schools - illustrating the problem with 'equal opportunity'. A society stratified by educational achievement is, paradoxically, a society stratified by class. There is no such thing as a 'level playing field' in a selective education system. Parents income, class, and education determine the child's educational achievement. No sociological research on this issue has ever shown otherwise. The children of Cherie and Tony Blair were born into an upper-middle-class family, in a London professional and intellectual environment.
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Neither will Mr. Blair, nor will he try to, as Alvaro de Soto, former UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process and envoy to the Quartet, explained in his leaked End of Mission Report. It noted Wolfensohn was originally to cover the entire peace process, but what emerged for him was a narrowly constricted role. De Soto said he was "highjacked....by US envoys and (Secretary Condoleezza) Rice." As a result, Wolfensohn stepped down from his job in April, 2006 with "a more jaundiced view of Israel (and US) policies than he had upon entering."
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Carrying his own suitcase, Blair boarded a train late Wednesday afternoon to return to his constituency in northeastern England. There he resigned from the parliamentary seat he has held for 24 years. That will allow him more time to focus on the Middle East as well as other new pursuits, including writing his memoirs.
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Nimer Hammad, a political adviser to Abbas, said the key to the solution in the Middle East remained in the hands of the US, not Blair. "The political portfolio in the Middle East remains in the hands of the US," he said. "Although the Quartet consists of other parties such as the EU and Russia, the Americans remain the main brokers."
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Blair said: "The facts are stark. By 2025, if current policy is unchanged there will be a dramatic gap on our targets to reduce CO2 emissions, we will become heavily dependent on gas and at the same time move from being 80% to 90% self-reliant in gas to 80% to 90% dependent on foreign imports, mostly from the Middle East, and Africa and Russia".
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