Email contact address: parvati_roma@yahoo.it

It's been over a year since I last posted and since then what's changed - the dead have risen, justice rules the world?? No, not exactly.

To sum up: the Iraqi corpse-pile has piled even higher, and the save-the-world rhetoric has kinda...tapered off. The January elections proved strictly sectarian - ethnic/religious voting blocks ruled the day, despite (or perhaps because?) the Iraqi attitude to politicians seems to mirror that of all Mediterranean and ME peoples, by whom such fauna is consistently viewed as a more or less "necessary evil" to be contemplated with due cynicism whilst bemoaning the politician-linked afflictions of one's own immediate human sphere. The newest horror is the blood-toll of sectarian hits and counter-hits, the newest hope is the overcoming of this horror through an idealistic aspiration towards the resurgence of national unity and pride.... in relation to all of which, the US military occupation has come to appear almost weirdly irrelevant.

So what else is new? The EU constitutional referendum? puhhlease....