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US rejects new Pakistani government intended talks with militants
2008-03-27 17:22:00
America is the center of the world! How could Pakistan i dare have a different view? So what is Bush going to do? I suppose he could finance a Musharraf coup. M&C A senior US official on Thursday opposed the new Pakistani government's intended talks with pro-Taliban militants who have launched a series of suicide attacks on security forces in recent months. 'I don't see how you can talk to those kind of people,' said US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte, adding they 'want to destroy our way of life.' [Whose way of life? US or Pakistani?] The visiting envoy said the 'extremist threat' in Pakistan is a cause of great concern. 'It occurs not only in federally administered tribal areas but it has spread to the settled areas,' he told reporters in the southern city of Karachi at the end of his four-day visit to the country. Pakistan's tribal areas are believed to be safe havens for al- Qaeda and Taliban militants, who fled to the area after the United States inv...
More About: Government , Pakistani government

Both Bill Clinton and Bush Suppressed Science of Global Warming
2008-03-26 22:20:00
AlterNet AMY GOODMAN: So, before we go on to the Bush administration, where you did have the most trouble, can you talk about what happened during the Clinton years and how you were able to express or not your research? DR. JAMES HANSEN: Well, the one particular event that stands out in my mind is when I wrote a paper called "Global Warming in the 21st Century: An Alternative Scenario," in which I emphasized that it's not only carbon dioxide, but other climate forcings -- methane and black soot -- and we need to address those also. And for some reason, the people in the White House didn't like emphasis on the non-CO2 parts of the story, and I just -- the press release just kept coming back, and I would try to change it, they would change it, and finally I gave up. I just couldn't get a press release through the way I wanted it. JUAN GONZALEZ: So, in essence, in these kinds of press releases, there's a back-and-forth, as the White House or the environmental people at the White...
More About: Science , Environment , Bill Clinton

Conflict in Basra Tests a Budding Nation
2008-03-26 19:11:00
This may be make or break time for the Maliki government. What is not clear is al Sadr's role in all this. His encouragement of civil disobedience seems milk-toast for the ruthless he is. Has he been bought off my the US to let the Iraq i gov't pacify his restive militia. The US has already paid him $300 million in "reconstruction" funds. That seems like the best explanation to me. He has much to lose holding back his militia now. They will feel abandoned. New York Times A day after launching a huge operation that ignited heavy fighting in two of Iraq?s largest cities, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki gave the Shiite militias controlling the southern oil city of Basra an ultimatum on Wednesday: lay down their weapons within 72 hours or face more severe consequences. As the fighting in Basra and Baghdad intensified on Wednesday, the American military command, speaking for the first time about the crackdown, characterized it as an Iraqi-led operation in which American-led force...
More About: Nation , Conflict , Tests

President Musharraf To Swear In Yousuf Raza Gilani as Prime Minister?
2008-03-24 19:32:00
President Musharraf is supposed to swear In Yousuf Raza Gilani as Prime Minister . Gilani is expected to ask Musharraf to resign or face impeachment. I expect Musharraf has something up his sleave since he certainly will not allow an impeachment. Hopefully, he is working towards a face saving transition of power, rather hoping to lead the next coup. He is a master of duplicity, so I will not predict his course, but I do think he would have resigned unless he saw a more favorable outcome. Favorable only to him. VOA News It came as no surprise that Yousuf Raza Gilani was selected Monday by the Parliament to become Pakistan 's 22nd prime minister. He was put forward for prime minister Saturday by the Pakistan Peoples Party, which is the largest in the new parliament. The runner-up in last month's national balloting, the party headed by former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, also pledged to support Mr. Gilani. Assembly speaker Fahmid Mirza announced Mr. Gilani received 264 votes of the...
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It will take more than one great speech for Obama to reassure some Democrat
2008-03-24 07:52:00
International Herald Tribune David Eisenhower teaches a class at the University of Pennsylvania on American political speeches. Senator Barack Obama , with his address last week on race and politics, gave him a new course. "It was a very powerful speech," said Eisenhower, whose grandfather was president of the United States and supreme allied commander in World War II. "Obama gives a very compelling reason as to why this is his time." The Obama speech was necessitated by videotapes of his former pastor assailing the United States and its white majority. With his presidential fortunes at risk, the Illinois Democrat could have simply disassociated himself from those remarks and the preacher, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright Jr. Instead, while addressing that issue, he used it as an opportunity to talk about the larger question of race in America. He did it with a candor rare in politics. There have been analogies to John F. Kennedy's 1960 speech on his Catholicism before a group of P...
More About: Great , Election , Speech

Duma wants Putin to back Georgian separatists
2008-03-24 05:39:00
International Herald Tribune Parliament on Friday urged the Kremlin to consider recognizing the independence of two separatist regions in neighboring Georgia, stepping up Moscow's campaign to keep the former Soviet republic out of NATO. The lower house of Parliament, the State Duma, voted overwhelmingly to adopt a statement calling on President Vladimir Putin and the government to "consider the question of the expediency of recognizing the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia." The statement also says the government should speed up efforts to support the sovereignty of the two regions in case Georgia "accelerated" its drive to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, suggesting that Moscow should move swiftly toward recognizing the regions if the alliance puts Georgia on track for membership at a meeting next month. The vote was 440 to 0 in the 450-seat chamber. The statement calls on the government to increase support for Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which broke away...
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Blogs and Politics Survey 2008
2008-03-21 17:48:00
Stony Brook University Blog Survey We would like your help with an important research project being conducted by the Stony Brook University Department of Political Science. This survey is part of an effort to better understand the role of internet communication in American politics, and to examine opinions about the 2008 election among people who use blogs. We would like answers from people who vary in their knowledge and interest in politics.
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Bin Laden Moves to Reclaim Jihadi Leadership
2008-03-21 06:59:00
Al Jazeera English Osama bin Laden has said that the best way for Muslims to help Palestinians is to support Iraq is fighting against the government and US forces. In the audiotape, which was the second to be released by the al-Qaeda leader in 24 hours, he also accused Arab leaders of backing the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip. "The nearest jihad battlefield to support our people in Palestine is the battlefield of Iraq ? It should be taken care of and supported," he said the audiotape released on Thursday. "Palestine cannot be retaken by negotiations and dialogue, but with fire and iron". The tape, whose authenticity could not be immediately verified, came a day following another audio message in which bin Laden warned Europe of a "reckoning" for publishing controversial cartoons of the Prophet Muhammed. Addressing the "intelligent ones" in the European Union, the speaker said publishing the "insulting drawings" was a greater crime than Western forces targeting Muslim villa...
More About: Leadership , Bin Laden

Poll finds broad pessimism over economy
2008-03-19 07:32:00
Yahoo! News More than three in four Americans think the United States is in a recession according to a USA Today/Gallup Poll released on Tuesday. Not since September 1992, two months before President George H.W. Bush lost his re-election bid, have so many Americans said the economy was in such bad shape, USA Today reported. Seventy-six percent of to those polled said the economy is in recession, compared to 22 percent who said it is not, USA Today said. Asked if the United States could slip into a depression lasting several years, 59 percent said it was likely and 79 percent said they were worried about it, the newspaper reported. The poll was completed on Sunday, AlterNet Remember - and don't let any of your acquaintances forget - what we're experiencing is a direct result of GOP fiscal policies that began during Ronald Reagan's reign, and that were elevated to the high art of social theft during the Bush years. The GOP pyramid scheme is collapsing. Lee Atwater, prototype...
More About: Economy , Class Warfare , Broad

Protests Spread Across South China; Dalai Lama Threatens To 'Resign'
2008-03-18 18:32:00
Why does China care about Tibet? They remember well how the Mayor of Moscow brought down the Soviet Union. What's happening in Tibet could lead to a fracturing China, similar to what happened to the USSR. ABC News Protests and killing spread across Tibet today, in defiance of the Chinese government's crackdown on the protests in Lhasa that began more than a week ago on the 49th anniversary of the Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule. There were protests today across the Tibetan plateau, including in the Tibetan Autonomous Region, Kham and Amdo. [..]The fact that the protests are spreading to towns and villages is a significant development. "If it's happening in bigger places, that's understandable. But if it's going to start to spread to smaller rural villages and then towns, then they're really in trouble," said Robert Barnett, a professor of contemporary Tibetan studies at Columbia University. The next question is whether the protests continue, knowing that there is a hi...
More About: Dalai Lama , Resign , South

Ozone Rules Illegally Weakened at Bush's Behest
2008-03-16 03:57:00
washingtonpost.com The Environment al Protection Agency weakened one part of its new limits on smog-forming ozone after an unusual last-minute intervention by President Bush, according to documents released by the EPA. EPA officials initially tried to set a lower seasonal limit on ozone to protect wildlife, parks and farmland, as required under the law. While their proposal was less restrictive than what the EPA's scientific advisers had proposed, Bush overruled EPA officials and on Tuesday ordered the agency to increase the limit, according to the documents. "It is unprecedented and an unlawful act of political interference for the president personally to override a decision that the Clean Air Act leaves exclusively to EPA's expert scientific judgment," said John Walke, clean-air director for the Natural Resources Defense Council. The president's order prompted a scramble by administration officials to rewrite the regulations to avoid a conflict with past EPA statements on the...
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Petraeus Admits the Surge Has Failed
2008-03-16 03:42:00
WAPO Iraqi leaders have failed to take advantage of a reduction in violence to make adequate progress toward resolving their political differences, Gen. David H. Petraeus , the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said Thursday. Petraeus, who is preparing to testify to Congress next month on the Iraq war, said in an interview that "no one" in the U.S. and Iraqi governments "feels that there has been sufficient progress by any means in the area of national reconciliation," or in the provision of basic public services.
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FOX ATTACKS! Obama Part 2: Spreading the virus
2008-03-15 06:37:00
Fox is a Republican mouthpiece, not a legitimate news organization. Real news organizations must reject Fox's smears of Barack Obama , not parrot them. Do Something!
More About: Virus , Election , Part , Mass Media

Fascism in Amerika?
2008-03-15 04:04:00
Is Bush a Facist? You tell me.
More About: Fascism , Bush I , Amerika

Clinton's Foreign Policy Experience Claims Are Exaggerated
2008-03-14 15:21:00
Newsweek.com On March 6 Hillary Clinton claimed that, unlike Barack Obama, she and likely Republican nominee John McCain have "cross[ed] the commander-in-chief threshold." In a CNN interview the day before, Clinton had listed five foreign policy accomplishments. We can't determine how much behind-the-scenes work Clinton did while first lady, and she certainly took an active interest in foreign policy when her husband was president. Moreover, her time as first lady plus her longer Senate career do give Clinton more foreign policy experience than Obama. But the public record of her actions shows that many of Clinton's foreign policy claims are exaggerated. Clinton claims to have "negotiated open borders" in Macedonia to fleeing Kosovar refugees. But the Macedonian border opened a full day before she arrived, and her meetings with Macedonian officials were too brief to allow for much serious negotiating. Clinton's activities "helped bring peace to Northern Ireland." Irish officia...
More About: Experience , Policy , Foreign Policy , Election , Foreign

Laos' 'Lost Tribe' In Plea For Help
2008-03-13 19:31:00
The truth about America's wars is stark and never told. Here we see the results of our last war. Our allies have been hunted to genocide, few remain alive and clearly they will be wiped out soon. The Shia in Iraq know the fickle nature of the US alliance. They died by the thousands after the first Gulf War. More Iraqis will die every day, and a massacre will surely come after the US military leaves Iraq. Sectarian genocide results from an alliance with the US in war. Read the whole story. Al Jazeera English Al Jazeera's correspondent Tony Birtley travelled in secret to the jungles of northern Laos in search of the last fighters of the CIA's "secret army", a remnant from the days of the Vietnam War. This is his account of his journey.
More About: Lost , Tribe , Southeast Asia

Ferraro Makes Power Look Right-on
2008-03-12 18:18:00
Geraldine Ferraro's comments about Obama being a candidate only because he is black, and then Clinton's refusal to dismiss her from her finance committee makes Obama's former advisor Power called Hillary a "monster". More in AlterNet
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Hamas Sets Terms; Israel Expands Settlements
2008-03-12 17:41:00
Secret negotiations are underway between Hamas and Israel with Egypt as the go between. Hamas has gone public showing it's strength relative to Israel. The Associated Press Gaza's Hamas prime minister publicly set his conditions Wednesday for a cease-fire with Israel to end the fighting that has killed dozens in recent weeks. Ismail Haniyeh demanded an end to Israeli military activity in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, a lifting of Israeli economic sanctions and the opening of Gaza's borders, which have been sealed since the Islamic militant group seized control of the territory last June. "We are talking about a mutual, comprehensive calm, which means that the enemy must fulfill its obligations," Haniyeh said in a speech at Gaza's Islamic University. "The Israelis must stop the aggression ... including assassinations and invasions, end the sanctions and open the borders." With U.S. backing, Egypt has been trying to broker a truce between Israel and Hamas following an especially ...
More About: Sets , Palestine , Terms

Abbas: Peace Deal Has Been Made, Except Missiles Still Fly
2008-03-11 19:32:00
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas says he believes a truce deal has been reached between Israel and Hamas, thanks to mediation by Egypt. Abbas told reporters: "I believe an agreement has been reached in principle providing for the cessation of Israeli attacks and Hamas rockets." He said Hamas would stop firing rockets on Israel and in return Israel would halt attacks on the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Abbas pointed out that the deal also provided for easing the siege on the Gaza Strip and the re-opening of crossing-points to the Palestinian territory. The Palestinian leader suggested that the deal would be declared within a few days. Except... Reuters A rocket fired from the Gaza Strip hit southern Israel on Tuesday just hours after Prime Minister Ehud Olmert visited the area and cautioned residents not to expect a lull in Palestinian attacks to last. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine claimed responsibility for the rocket strike, the first against Israel since...
More About: Peace , Missiles , Deal , Made

Swiftboating Obama
2008-03-11 17:12:00
Look what's coming to a campaign ad near you. AlterNet In early January, when Barack Obama was just one among many Democratic candidates, we published Swiftboating Obama's Religion: He Is Not a Muslim. Now that he is the putative Democratic nominee, here is a look at another potentially Swiftboat-able part of his record ? his tenuous connections to Michael Ayers and Bernadine Dorhn, who were members of the Weather Underground in the Vietnam War era ? and his one-time professional relationship with Dr. Rashid Khalidi, a one-time PLO media director.
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Hamas And Israel In Truce Mediation
2008-03-10 16:58:00
Al Jazeera English Israel i and Hamas officials are discussing a possible ceasefire through Egyptian mediators after Ehud Olmert, Israel's prime minister, ordered a halt to raids on the Gaza Strip. Olmert gave the order on Monday in response to a significant drop in the number of rockets and mortars being fired from the territory, offficials said. "We certainly appear to have entered a period of talking rather than fighting now," Al Jazeera's Jacky Rowland reported from Gaza. "For more than three days now there have been virtually no rocket attacks into Israel ... and also there have been no Israeli air strikes, no overflights of Gaza." Both Israeli defence officials and Hamas leaders have insisted that no formal truce has been agreed so far, but officials in Olmert's office told the Associated Press that he had ordered the army to scale back its operations to allow talks to proceed. "What we are seeing is a period of shuttling backwards and forwards to Egypt by Hamas represe...
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Bush Administration Still Denying Justice for Sami Al-Arian
2008-03-07 18:47:00
AlterNet Dr. Sami Amin Al-Arian, who has spent the past four years in jail despite a jury's failure to return a single guilty verdict against him, has been called before a third grand jury, despite the fact that Al-Arian signed a "no-cooperation" agreement with the government providing that he would not be required to appear before any grand jury. The announcement came on March 3rd, one month before his scheduled release. Past National Lawyers Guild President Peter Erlinder, Al-Arian's counsel in 4th Circuit and 11th Circuit appeals, on the "acquitted conduct" Supreme Court cert petition said, "The duplicity of the Justice Department and the failure of the courts to recognize basic contract-law principles in this case is an example of how politically-motivated "war on terror" prosecutions are distorting the American legal system. In the Al-Arian case, the Justice Department and the courts have made a mockery of the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial which should outrage all A...
More About: Bush , Bush administration , Discrimination , Administration

KBR Legally Dodges Taxes
2008-03-06 18:44:00
Conflict of interest means nothing to the Bush Administration. They have made corruption safe for government again. Think Progress No private contractor has financially profited from the Iraq war more than Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR), which until last year was a subsidiary of Halliburton. The firm currently has more than 21,000 employees in Iraq, and between 2004 and 2006, received more than $16 billion in government contracts — far more than any other corporation. Yet KBR hasn’t been passing on these enormous profits to American taxpayers or even its own employees, thanks to a plan that Vice President Cheney helped establish. Today, the Boston Globe reports that KBR has avoided paying more than $500 million “in federal Medicare and Social Security taxes by hiring workers through shell companies” based in the Cayman Islands.
More About: Taxes , Bush I

Why Isn't Iraq in the 2008 Election?
2008-03-06 15:25:00
AlterNet: Noam Chomsky The highly regarded British polling agency, Oxford Research Bureau, has just updated its estimate of deaths. Their new estimate a couple of days ago is 1.3 million. That's excluding two of the most violent provinces, Karbala and Anbar. On the side, it's kind of intriguing to observe the ferocity of the debate over the actual number of deaths. There's an assumption on the part of the hawks that if we only killed a couple hundred thousand people, it would be OK, so we shouldn't accept the higher estimates. You can go along with that if you like. Uncontroversially, there are over two million displaced within Iraq . Thanks to the generosity of Jordan and Syria, the millions of refugees who have fled the wreckage of Iraq aren't totally wiped out. That includes most of the professional classes. But that welcome is fading, because Jordan and Syria receive no support from the perpetrators of the crimes in Washington and London, and therefore they cannot accept t...
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Haliburton Employee Raped in Baghdad: Without Legal Recourse?
2008-03-05 15:34:00
THE NEW REPUBLIC Remember the story of Jamie Leigh Jones, the 22-year-old former Halliburton worker in Iraq who was allegedly drugged, gang-raped, and locked in a storage shed until the State Department rescued her after her congressman intervened? Thanks to an order signed by Paul Bremer, employees of U.S. contractors in Iraq are beyond the reach of the Iraqi criminal justice system, leaving them effectively in a legal black hole, as Michael Walzer wrote in our last issue. They could technically be tried in U.S. federal court for offenses committed in Iraq, but logistically that would be very difficult and the Justice Department has shown no interest in prosecuting Jones's case, meaning her assailants almost certainly won't face any criminal penalties. But, to make things worse, as Peggy Garrity points out in an op-ed in today's Los Angeles Times, Jones also will likely be unable to pursue a lawsuit in civil court. For one thing, Halliburton claims it has mysteriously lost the...
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Israel Threatens Gaza with "Holocaust"
2008-03-04 19:21:00
GlobalResearch.ca On Friday, 29 February 2008, Israel 's deputy defense minister Matan Vilnai threatened Palestinians in Gaza with a "holocaust," telling Israeli Army Radio: "The more Qassam fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, [the Palestinians] will bring upon themselves a bigger holocaust because we will use all our might to defend ourselves." This date will go down in history as the beginning of a new phase in the colonial conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, whereby a senior Israeli leader, a "leftist" for that matter, has publicly revealed the genocidal plans Israel is considering to implement against Palestinians under its military occupation, if they do not cease to resist its dictates. It will also mark the first time since World War II that any state has relentlessly -- and on live TV -- terrorized a civilian population with acts of slow, or low-intensity, genocide, with one of its senior government officials overtly inciting to a full-blown "h...
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Raped and Silenced in the Barracks
2008-03-04 15:49:00
AlterNet: Investigative Report When military sexual assault survivors call Susan Avila-Smith, she advises them to keep their mouths shut while she works on getting them home. ?It breaks my heart to do that,? she says, ?but I want to get them out alive and that?s my main goal.? Since she left the Army in 1995, Avila-Smith estimates that she has helped about 1,200 rape survivors separate from the U.S. Armed Forces and claim their Veterans Affairs (VA) benefits. As founder of Women Organizing Women, an online support group for survivors of military sexual trauma (MST), Avila-Smith has heard it all. [..]The Lauterbach case, according to Avila-Smith and many others, exemplifies the ?criminal failure? of all branches of the military to address sexual assault for what it is?a violent crime. It is a ?broken system? that she says puts victims on the defense, grants immunity to assailants and, in the end, puts rape survivors who have the courage to speak out, in even greater danger than if ...

Biofuels Starve the World's Poor
2008-03-03 22:22:00
What is amazing here is that mainstream media didn't bring up this point before an whole bio-fuel industry launched towards consuming 30% of US corn. New York Times The world?s food situation is bleak, and shortsighted policies in the United States and other wealthy countries ? which are diverting crops to environmentally dubious biofuels ? bear much of the blame. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the price of wheat is more than 80 percent higher than a year ago, and corn prices are up by a quarter. Global cereal stocks have fallen to their lowest level since 1982. As usual, the brunt is falling disproportionately on the poor. The F.A.O. estimates that the cereal import bill of the neediest countries will increase by a third for the second year in a row. Prices have gone so high that the World Food Program, which aims to feed 73 million people this year, said it might have to reduce rations or the number of people it will help. The world has fa...
More About: Environment , Class Warfare , Biofuels , Poor

Israeli Military Invades Gaza
2008-03-02 22:27:00
BigNewsNetwork.com In a major all-out offensive, the Israeli army has swept into the Gaza Strip with tanks, armoured personnel carriers, and thousands of troops, while Israeli warplanes have stepped up bombings from the air. Haaretz newspaper says the death toll at the end of the day for Palestinians was 56, including five children, a 17-year-old girl and her 16-year-old brother, a 45-year-old man and his 20-year-old son, and two sisters, thought to be in their early 20s, who were blasted by Israeli tanks. Two Israeli soldiers also died. They were both 20-years-old. Palestinians say peace talks are over Senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat has said peace talks with Israel have been "buried under the houses that were destroyed" in the heavy Israeli military strikes on the Gaza Strip. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas sharply condemned the Israeli attacks, which have killed 88 Palestinians since a 47-year-old Israeli university student was killed in Sderot on Wednesday, an...
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Kofi Annan Mediates a Settlement in Kenya
2008-02-29 18:11:00
allAfrica .com Kenya n President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga have signed an agreement to end the country's post-election crisis. At a ceremony in Nairobi yesterday, the two men put their signatures to a power-sharing deal brokered by ex-UN head Kofi Annan . A coalition government comprising members of the current ruling party and opposition will now be formed. Some 1,500 people died in political violence after Mr Odinga said he was robbed of victory in December's polls. International observers agreed the count was flawed. Violence has mostly receded, but tensions are still running extremely high. Negotiations between the government and Mr Odinga's Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) lasted more than a month, stalling several times. Discussions centred on the creation of the post of prime minister, likely to be taken by Mr Odinga. Both sides agreed that there should be a prime minister, but had differed on what powers the new post would have. Speaking after the d...
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