The Great Moderation must have been too close for us to realize its unique excellence.

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In just one example, the venerable Al Azhar mosque and university in Cairo, which not too long ago was a paragon of Islamic moderation has been taken over by the Wahhabis and spews extremist propaganda on a regular basis.

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He said that claims that teachers had marked controlled assessments too generously were based on "paltry evidence" and called the moderation of the qualification "poor, stressed and chaotic".

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In fact, the history of such killings is so long, their number so great, and the definition of collaboration so elastic (often just moderation toward the Jews) that it may not be too much of a stretch to say that the current population of Gaza and the West Bank has been as much radicalized by Arab violence as by Israeli.

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But for investors who find buy-and-hold hopelessly boring and index funds too plain to bear, ETFs offer a relatively safe alternative when used in moderation.

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