One of Ours

If you've been following the election coverage, you know how angry you're supposed to be. This has been called the Armageddon election in the 50-50 nation, a civil war between the Blue and the Red states, a clash between churchgoers and secularists hopelessly separated by a values chasm and a culture gap.

But do Americans really despise the beliefs of half of their fellow citizens? Have Americans really changed so much since the day when a candidate with Ronald Reagan's soothing message could carry 49 of 50 states?

To some scholars, the answer is no. They say that our basic differences have actually been shrinking over the past two decades, and that the polarized nation is largely a myth created by people inside the Beltway talking to each another or, more precisely, shouting at each other.

These academics say it's not the voters but the political elite of both parties who have become more narrow-minded and polarized. As Norma Desmond might put it: We're still big. It's the parties that got smaller...

Five Iraqis have been killed during clashes with US forces in a Shiite slum district of Baghdad...

One of the dead is Karim Daraan, a Mehdi Army field commander in the sprawling Sadr City slum, which is home to over 1 million Shiite Muslims.

Hundreds of Iraqis have waved assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers in the air during Daraan's funeral, vowing loyalty to Sadr.

...gunfights with US forces often break out in Sadr City, the young cleric's main power base...

...one new member of the European Parliament is backed by its own heavily armed private militia.

Sinn Fein, the political front organisation for the IRA terror group, won a seat in Ireland's EU election and is expected to win another in Northern Ireland.

This cross-border success makes Sinn Fein one of Europe's few parties with seats in more than one country.

...Sinn Fein has a history of backing its demands with dark threats about its armed wing, which it has no connection with, no sirree...

I was a little boy in school when I learned that some vaccines are made of the same germs of illness, but in small or light dosage.

So today I was taking our lawyer to do some business in companies registry office when he told me that nobody can imagine the number of private companies being established and registered these days, they are more than lawyers can register and more than private chartered accountants can do accounting. So I told the man about the idea that as well as the car bombs and random assassinations negatively can affect our lives, it’s got a positive affect too. Because we are [becoming] immune against such disease (terrorism). At the same time we were passing the crowded area of “Tahreer Sq.” where a bomb car were just exploded and it was still crowded just like nothing happened.

[...]

After I got out of Tahreer Sq. and avoided traffic jam I passed the building of Baghdad Stock Exchange...my partner said last Friday about it “its going to be opened this month and they practiced a test exchange last Saturday, and there was a great job done by the coalition helping the Iraqis old team to reopen as soon as possible”. Laws was changed, a new board of directors without government representatives, a new place, a new techniques of exchange, and of course many more job opportunities for the market staff and for brokers companies and for the investors.

[...]

...I will keep the site visitors informed about what’s new in ISX (and thats Iraq Stock eXchange)reopening and its all on http://www.isx-iq.net/ .