Word: blocs
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...depicting the faces of a few bold female candidates - something the Anbar women wouldn't dare to do. Iman al-Barazenchi, a European history professor at Baghdad University, has a loyal following of male and female students who are campaigning for her on campus. A candidate for the Iraqia bloc, Nebras al-Ma'mouri, makes frequent appearances as a political analyst on Iraqi television. "It's great to see a woman in politics," she says. "In America, for example, the Secretary of State is a woman. Why not here in Iraq...
Still, candidates for the Iraqi National Accord, Iraq's second largest secular party after the Kurdish bloc, say they see a window of opportunity. As Iraq moves toward its first round of nationwide elections in nearly four years, a complex political map of new parties and fluid, cross-sectarian alliances suggest that the country may be slowly moving beyond the Shi'ite-Sunni divide that characterized the post-Saddam Hussein politics of previous years...
...critics say these results may not be directly linked to NAFTA, and that the pact has been a disappointment on other fronts. The bloc has been seen by some as a symbol of insidious globalization, cordially invited into the U.S. only to eat away at the domestic job market. In 1992, before the treaty was ratified, independent U.S. Presidential candidate Ross Perot famously warned voters to prepare for the "giant sucking sound" of jobs moving across the border to Mexico, where NAFTA would enable companies to take advantage of cheap labor. Mexico's average hourly manufacturing wage is still only...
Iraq's parliamentarians, who rarely shy away from showboating, didn't disappoint either. There were rowdy scenes in the legislature as lawmakers from anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's bloc interrupted a discussion about the fate of non-U.S. troops in Iraq to demand al-Zaidi's immediate release. Noisy exchanges ensued, culminating with the mercurial speaker, Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, threatening to resign. "I can't work in such a situation!" he shouted, according to lawmakers who attended the session. It's not clear if al-Mashhadani, who is known for his outbursts, will follow through...
...nimbly dodged the size-10 leather projectiles. Al-Zaidi has penned a letter of apology to the Prime Minister, asking for a pardon and saying his actions were directed squarely against Bush and not at al-Maliki, according to Omar Almashhadani, a spokesman for the Sunni Tawafuk parliamentary bloc. "It is too late now to regret the big and ugly act that I perpetrated," al-Zaidi wrote in the letter, according to the Associated Press. "That's going to help him in court," Almashhadani said, "but if he's tried and sentenced to a few years, it will leave...