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Today's Stories

October 25, 2004

Uri Avnery
On the Road to Civil War

October 22 / 24, 2004

Alexander Cockburn
You Can't Blame Nader for This

Rev. William Alberts
On Bended Knee: Faith-Based Deceptions

Willliam A. Cook
Killing for Christ

Saul Landau
George W. Bush: a Man of His Words?

Bill Quigley
I Held the Bullet in My Palm: Masked Haitian Police Shoot Children While Arresting Priest

Christopher Brauchli
Seal It With a Frown: What Compassionate Conservativism Really Means

William S. Lind
Fallujah and the Moral Level of War

Sharon Smith
Guilt Trippers for Kerry

Greg Bates
Kerrynomics: "Hurt the Ones Who Vote for Us"

Justin E.H. Smith
Is Lesser Evilism a Compromise with Evil?

Rebecca Evans
Tarnished Legacy: Pinochet and the Chilean Military

Mike Whitney
Al Hurra TV: the Second Invasion

M. Junaid Alam
Purchasing Individuality in America

David Krieger
Nuclear Non-Proliferation: Examining the Policies of Bush and Kerry

David J. Ledermann
The Emperor's New Crumbs

Lawrence Reichard
Same Old FBI Story

Website of the Weekend
Lie Girls: the Real Coalition of the Willling

 

October 21, 2004

Ben Tripp
The Undecided Voter Examined

Joshua Frank
Kerry and the Environment:
It's Not Easy Pretending to be Green

Stan Cox
What the Left Doesn't Get About Small Businesses

Bill Martinez
State Depart and Cuban Visas: Only Anti-Castro Agitators Need Apply

Mark Engler
The War and Globalization

Lina Britto and Lucia Suarez
Bolivia: a Year After the October Insurrection

Website of the Day
Two Pampered Children of Wealth

 

October 20, 2004

Yitzhak Laor
"Did You Two Squabble?": a Bullet Fired for Every Palestinian Child

Jason Leopold
Sinclair Broadcasting's Air War: a Long History of Journalistic Deception

Jesse Sharkey
A Teacher's Account of How Military Recruiters Prey on High School Students

Col. Dan Smith
Choking Free Speech About the Draft

Dr. Teresa Whitehurst
Using My Religion

David Vest
If Bush Wins, Blame Me

Jack Random
The Jackson 17: Reflections on a Mutiny

Ron Jacobs
Time to Kick It Up a Notch

James Brittain
Plan Patriota and the FARC: a Change in the Countryside?

Christopher Dols
Bombing Madison: Michael Moore's Fright Fest

Dave Lindorff
First They Came for the Nurses...

Website of the Day
Banana Republican Catalogue

 

October 19, 2004

Jeffrey St. Clair
Party Favors: the Political Business of Terry McAuliffe

Jeff Taylor
Confessions of a Swing State Voter

Matt Vidal
American Myopia: "More Money in Your Pocket"

Victor Kattan
"It's Not Who You're Against; It's Who You're For": Palestine Takes Center Stage At Euro Social Forum

William Loren Katz
What Goes Around Comes Around

Sean Carter
O'Reilly Should Shut Up About Extortion Claiims

CounterPunch Wire
Who's Really in Bed with Republican Funders: Kerry or Nader?

 

 

October 18, 2004

Saul Landau
Facts and Lies; Slogans and Truth

Dave Lindorff
Bulletin on the Bush Bulge

Diane Christian
Sheep and Goats: On the Language of Goodness

Greg Bates / Dave Lindorff
Betting on War: a Wager on the Fallout of a Kerry Presidency

Uri Avnery
Ariel Sharon's Philosophy

Peter LaVenia
Leaving the Greens So Soon? a Response to Josh Frank

Mike Whitney
O'Reilly at the Whipping Post

Elaine Cassel
The Other War: Civil Liberties Three Years After 9/11

 

October 16 / 17, 2004

Alexander Cockburn
The Free Speech Movement and Howard Stern

Leslie Brill
Unmerciful Judge, Merry Executioners: the Death Penalty as the True Measure of Bush's Character

Jules Rabin
Reckoning Deaths in an Agitated World

Dave Lindorff
About the Bush Bulge: Was There a Pucker in That Jacket or Was the President Just Glad to be There?

Peter Linebaugh
Judging Judges: a Few Pages from The Mirror of Justices

Gary Leupp
Iran and Syria: How to Effect Regime Change and Expand the Empire

M. Shahid Alam
America, Imagine This!

Ron Jacobs
Trying to Cross Lake Champlain

Fred Gardner
The Flu Vaccine Question: How Bush Blew It

Jenna Orkin
The Toxic Legacy of 9/11

Dave Zirin
Name the DC Baseball Team: Contest Results

David Hamilton
Alone and Exposed: Bush as a Strong Leader?

Ralph Nader
Criticizing Israel is Not Anti-Semitism

Doug Giebel
Thinking the Unthinkable

Mark Engler
Crimes in Freedom's Name: Dick Cheney's El Salvador

Derek Tyner
Blacks Didn't Get the Vote by Voting: an Interview With Clarence Thomas on the Million Worker March

Evan Jones
Gimme That Ole Time Religion: Cash and "The Mind of the South"

Poets' Basement
LaMorticella, Klipschutz and Albert

Website of the Weekend
No More Bush Girls

 

October 15, 2004

Paul Craig Roberts
Where Did These "Conservatives" Come From?: The Brownshirting of America

Laura Carlsen
Wal-Mart vs. the Pyramids of the Sun and Moon

Greg Bates
Empire of Insanity: Kerry's Iraq Troop Numbers

Michael Donnelly
News from a Swing State: Does Anyone Here Have a Spine?

Katherine Lahey
The Venezuelan "Threat": Why Do Kerry and Bush Fear Hugo Chavez?

Robert Jensen / Pat Youngblood
Election Day Fears

Leah Caldwell
From Supermax to Abu Ghraib: the Masterminds of Torture and Abuse

Website of the Day
An Anti-Billionaire Policy? Why That Would Be Economic Racism

 

 

October 14, 2004

Darcy Richardson
The Other Progressive Candidate: the Lonely Crusade of Walt Brown

Willliam A. Cook
Turning Myths into Truth

Laura Santina
Water, Women and War

Evelyn Pringle
Free Speech Banned by Big Pharma: What You Can't Say About Drug Importation

Alan Farago
Lessons from Nature

Rep. Maxine Waters
A Letter to Colin Powell on Haiti

Nicole Colson
Maimed for Oil and Empire

 

 

 

October 13, 2004

Bishop Thomas Gumbleton and Bill Quigley
Aftermath of a Coup: The Other Disaster in Haiti

Sharon Smith
Barak O-Bomb-a?: Democrats Target Iran

Christopher Brauchli
God and the Bush Administration

Mike Whitney
The Real Meaning of the Hamdi Case

Paul de Rooij
Amnesty International: a False Beacon?

Website of the Day
Operation Truth

 

 

October 12, 2004

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
"Indian Country"

Greg Bates
The Year of Voting Dangerously: a Survey Request of Nader Voters in Swing States

Steven Conn
Progressives as Pawns: Kerry's War on Nader

Jason Leopold
Under Cheney, Halliburton Helped Saddam Siphon Billions from UN Oil-for-Food Program

Security Scholars for a Sensible Foreign Policy
Time for a Change of Course

Timothy J. Freeman
Dying for a Mistake

Pierre Tristam
Deconstructing Bush

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The 2nd Debate: the Blurring of Act and Audience

Bill and Kathleen Christison
Israel as Sideshow

Website of the Day
John Kerry's Personal Off-Shore Tax Shelters

 

October 11, 2004

Robert Fisk
Iraq: Unforgivable Betrayals and Broken Promises

Kevin Pina
The Untold Story of Aristide's Departure from Haiti

Patrick Gavin
Rethinking Columbus Day

Chris Floyd
Tribes with Flags in the New Afghanistan

Daniel Wolff
Radioactive Money: Entergy, Political Cash and America's Most Dangerous Nuclear Plant

Walter Brasch
The Only Ones Who Believe Saddam Had WMDs are Bush, Cheney...and 40% of All Americans

Mike Whitney
The Phony Afghan Elections: Ballot of the Disappearing Ink

Ari Shavit
"He Talks to Condi Rice Every Day": an Interview with Sharon's Lawyer

Paul Craig Roberts
The Debates and the Big Lie

Website of the Day
Dylan's Greatest Recording?

 

 

October 9 / 10, 2004

Alexander Cockburn
"There Are No Innocents"

Paul de Rooij
Northern Ireland is Still the Issue: a Conversation with Gerry Adams

M. Shahid Alam
Making Sense of Our Times

Laura Carlsen
Protest and Populism in Latin America

Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: ASA Goes to Court

Col. Dan Smith
Bush's Credibility Gap

Paul Craig Roberts
Faith-Based Economics

Greg Bates
What If Nader Critics Get What They Demand?

Joshua Frank
Cobb, the Greens and the Collapse of the Left

Felice Pace
Wilderness, Politics and the Oligarchy: How the Pew Charitable Trust is Smothering the Grassroots Environmental Movement

Walter A. Davis
Of Pynchon, Thanatos and Depleted Uranium

William A. Cook
The Agony of Colin Powell

Phyllis Pollack
Twas No Crank Call Love Affair: London Calling, 25 Years Later

Poets' Basement
Klipschutz, Albert, Ford

Website of the Weekend
Abu Ghraib: the Taguba Annexes

 

October 8, 2004

Jennifer Loewenstein
The Israeli Invasion of Gaza

Moshe Adler
Edwards' Gambit: He Hoped No One Would Notice the Similarities

David Swanson
Media Blackout: Press Continues to Ignore Labor's Opposition to Iraq War

Dave Zirin
CounterPunch Contest: Let's Name the New DC Baseball Team!

Rep. Ron Paul
The Draft is a Form of Slavery

William S. Lind
Keeping Our SA Up

Samar Assad
Kerry v. Bush: No Difference When It Comes to Israel / Palestine

Jim Ingalls and Sonali Kolhatkar
The Elections in Afghanistan

 

 

October 7, 2004

Dave Lindorff
All Out of Volunteers: A Draft is in the Air

Masha Hamilton
Fear in Kandahar

Christopher Brauchli
Master of Corruption: the Ripening Scandals of Tom Delay

Jason Leopold
Is There Still Time to Impeach Bush?

Bruce K. Gagnon
Bombing the Panhandle: Fighting the Pentagon in Rural Florida

Meredith Kolodner
Where is the Urgency?: The Anti-War Movement's Election Year Challenge

 

 

October 6, 2004

Jeffrey St. Clair
"Please, Dude, Can I Take Them Out?": Targeting Civilians in Fallujah

Ron Jacobs
Going Nuclear: the Ghost of Edward Teller Lives

Michael Colby
The National Flip-Flop: Suddenly Bush is Unfit to Lead?

Tarif Abboushi
More of the Same: Israel Wins the Debates

Matthew Behrens
Canadian Firms Profit from Iraqi Blood

Mike Whitney
Rethinking WMDs

John Pilger
Stealing Diego Garcia

Ben Tripp
Kerry's "Triumph"

Kevin McKiernan
Cheney's Poison Lab: Wrong Time, Wrong Target

Patrick Cockburn
Elections Will Not End the Fighting in Iraq

Website of the Day
Is There an Islamic Problem?

October 5, 2004

Anthony Loewenstein
Rupert Murdoch and the Marginals: "Personally Creating Outcomes"

Mark Clinton and Tony Udell
The Suicide of an Iraq War Veteran

Greg Bates
Trading Idiots: an Open Letter to Eric Alterman

Dave Lindorff
What's the Frequency, Karl?

Norm Dixon
Why Washington Won't Save Darfur Villagers

Larry Kearney
God Talk and Burning Children

Bill Linville
Dirty Politics in the Land of "Clean" Government

Gary Leupp
What Edwards Should Ask Cheney

Website of the Day
A Guide to Halliburton for Tonight's Debate

 

October 4, 2004

Diane Christian
The Gates of Hell

Joshua Frank
An Interview with David Cobb

Doug Giebel
Incurious George: What If Bush Didn't Lie?

John Chuckman
Strange Victory: Sen. Obvious and the Pathetic Lump

Ramzy Baroud
Reverse the Picture: Anatomy of a Palestinian Outrage

Julia Stein
Remembering Mario Savio and the FSM

Sean Donahue
Outsourcing Terror: Kerry and Special Forces

Website of the Day
Mapping Mt. St. Helens as She Rocks

 

October 2 / 3. 2004

Paul Wright
John Kerry on Criminal Justice

Kathleen and Bill Christison
An Exchange with Israeli Historian Bennie Morris

Kathie Helmkamp
My Son Trent: a Marine Who Doesn't Want to Kill

Phillip Cryan
Indigenous Mobilization in Colombia

Lenni Brenner
The First Ex-Catholic Saint: Memories of Mario Savio

Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: In Case You Missed "Montel"

Ron Jacobs
It Did Happen Here: When Neo-Nazis Terrorized Olympia

Ben Tripp
Sticker Shock

William S. Lind
The Grand Illusion: Iraqi Security Forces

Dave Zirin
The Swindle of the Century: Baseball Comes to DC

Dave Lindorff
Lies from the Great Debate

Luscon Pierre-Charles
Haiti's Elections: a High-Tech Sham is Underway

Zoe Moskovitz & Sasha Kramer
Separating Lies from Truth About Haiti

Nelson P. Valdes
Habana Night vs. Latin American Scholars in Vegas: 61 Banned Cuban Academics

Alan Farago
The "Ownership Society" and the End of the Everglades

Nancy Haley
What is the Historical Jesus Trying to Tell Us?

Alex Billet
Long Live The Clash: London Still Calling After 25 Years

Steve Fesenmaier
Save and Burn: The War on Libraries

Poets' Basement
Smith, Holt, Albert

 

October 1, 2004

Steve Breyman
Kerry's Missed Opportunities

Rose Gentle
My Son Died for a Lie

Lee Sustar
Iran in the Crosshairs

Ralph Nader
What We Didn't Hear at the Debate: Where's the Exit Strategy?

Walter Andrews
We Are Less Secure Now Than Ever

Mike Whitney
Pandora's Government

Mickey Z.
Debate This

Saul Landau
The Iraq Invasion: Lessons from the Pinochet Cases

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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October 25, 2004

The Killing of Iman al-Hams

Executing Another Child in Rafah

By OMAR BARGHOUTI

Iman al-Hams was a 13-year old refugee schoolgirl who was executed -- after being wounded -- by an Israeli platoon commander on the sad sands of Rafah.

According to testimonies given by soldiers in the same company to the mass Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth, a soldier in the watchtower identified Iman and cautioned his commander shouting, "Don't shoot. It's a little girl". The company commander, the soldiers testified, "approached her, shot two bullets into her [head], walked back towards the force, turned back to her, switched his weapon to automatic and emptied his entire magazine into her." (1) Eyewitnesses corroborated the soldiers, account, saying that Iman was shot almost 70 meters away from the Israeli military position. After a bullet hit her leg, Iman, who was wearing her school uniform, fell. Then, they said, the officer went over to her, saw that she was bleeding from her wounds, but still shot her twice in the head to "confirm the killing", an Israeli euphemism for the practice of executing a wounded Palestinian. A cursory army investigation later cleared him of any "unethical conduct", as is customary, and suspended him only because of "poor relations with subordinates".(2)

In a flash, Israel proved to the world -- yet again -- that it is not only intransigent in its patent and consistent violation of international law, but also incapable of adhering to the most fundamental principles of moral behavior.

Three other children, almost the same age as Iman, were killed while sitting in their classrooms in UN-run schools in Gaza in the past few weeks. They were not caught in crossfire. They were not mistaken for adults. They were shot to death as part of Israel's overt plan to collectively punish Palestinian civilians for acts of resistance committed from their localities, in order to incite internal rifts and resentment aimed at the resistance movements. For instance, during the recent atrocious attack on Jabaliya, ostensibly to prevent firing of the rudimentary Qassam rockets, the Israeli forces destroyed houses, groves, infrastructure, water and electric supply lines in a manner that was called "wanton" and "indiscriminate" by the UN. Lest people fail to get the message, leaflets were dropped over northern Gaza by Israeli helicopters, warning Palestinians that "terrorism pushes you further into a life of misery and poverty."(3) And your children will be hunted, too, the leaflets forgot to mention.

But why, someone may protest, should we judge Israel based on this one incident, as heinous as it may be? A brief look at Israel's recent record of purposely targeting Palestinian children will provide a compelling response. The fact that more than six hundred and twenty Palestinian children have been killed by Israel in the past four years should show that rather than being a mere aberration, murdering Iman was the rule.

A look at the use of language, perhaps the most accurate gauge of a society's moral collapse, will reveal the degree of racism that has gripped Israel. Media outlets, politicians and even academics have seen fit to brand Palestinian children as "enemies", "beasts", "tormenting attackers" and "terrorists" throughout this intifada. The main motive behind resorting to such dehumanizing diction in reference to children is a prevalent belief in the Israeli mainstream that Palestinians are more than anything else an imminent danger to be dealt with. They are a people born with a predisposition to terror, as if due to some mysterious genetic disorder. A child is then just a potential terrorist, a literal time-bomb. Studies by prominent Israeli demographers often betray this attitude. Even some Israeli army officials are appalled at the intentional killings. Ha,aretz quoted a senior officer saying, "Nobody can convince me we didn't needlessly kill dozens of children.(4) Hundreds is more like it. Some of the most revealing instances will help substantiate this claim.

Even before the current intifada, in Hebron in 1996, an Israeli settler fatally pistol-whipped 11-year-old Hilmi Shusha. An Israeli judge first acquitted the murderer, saying the child "died on his own as a result of emotional pressure., After numerous appeals and under pressure from the Supreme Court, which termed the act "light killing", the judge reconsidered and, as the Aqsa Intifada was raging, sentenced the killer to six months, community service and a fine of a few thousand dollars. The boy's father accused the court of issuing a "license to kill." (5) Gideon Levy of Ha,aretz eloquently described the fine as the "end-of-the-season clearance price on children's lives, referring to the findings of B'tselem, Israel's leading human rights organization, which documented dozens of similar cases in which perpetrators were either acquitted or received a slap on the wrist.(6)

In the first year of the intifada, several human rights organizations, including the Boston-based Physicians for Human Rights, documented a pattern in which Israeli sharpshooters have targeted the eyes or knees of Palestinian children with a "clear intention to harm". Tel Aviv University Professor Tanya Reinhart writes, "A common practice is shooting a rubber-coated metal bullet straight in the eye -- a little game of well-trained soldiers, which requires maximum precision." (7) Those snipers, evidently, failed to see beyond their little, glittering target the face, the person, the human child, and they "took them out with professionalism". A New York Times journalist, who spent two weeks monitoring the "clashes between Palestinian children with stones and slingshots and the Israeli army with tanks and precision equipment at a flashpoint in Gaza, wrote, "Never during the time I spent at Karni did an Israeli soldier appear to be in mortal danger. Nor was either an Israeli soldier or settler even injured." In that period, at least 11 Palestinian [children] were killed during the day [time](8) by live ammunition.

Palestinian children have been fatally targeted in minor stone-throwing incidences by professionally-trained Israeli sharpshooters, who only fire with the intention "to hit the head". Because if a sharpshooter fires, "he fires for certain in order to kill", as transpired from the breakthrough interview Ha'aretz journalist Amira Hass (9) had conducted with a "left leaning" sharpshooter during the early stages of the current intifada. "Keenness to shoot", "lack of restraint", being "bored" or even "tired" were among the key excuses he gave to justify his army's shoot-to-kill policy. Citing the high incidence of killing or seriously injuring Palestinian children, Hass asked the sharpshooter whether he or his colleagues had intentionally targeted children. Adamantly denying the accusation, he emphasized: "You don't shoot a child who is 12 or younger. Twelve and up is allowed. He's not a child any more...Twelve and up, you're allowed to shoot. That's what [our commanders] tell us."

The veteran American journalist Chris Hedges went even further, documenting how Israeli troops systematically cursed and otherwise provoked Palestinian children playing in the dunes of southern Gaza in order to shoot them. He wrote in Harper's Magazine(10):

"The boys -- most no more than ten or eleven years old -- dart in small packs up the sloping dunes to the electric fence that separates the camp from the Jewish settlement. They lob rocks toward two armored jeeps parked on top of the dune and mounted with loudspeakers. ... A percussion grenade explodes. The boys ... scatter, running clumsily across the heavy sand. They descend out of sight behind a sandbank in front of me. There are no sounds of gunfire. The soldiers shoot with silencers. The bullets from the M-16 rifles tumble end over end through the children's slight bodies. Later, in the hospital, I will see the destruction: the stomachs ripped out, the gaping holes in limbs and torsos.

"Yesterday at this spot the Israelis shot eight ..., six of whom were under the age of eighteen. One was twelve.... Children have been shot in other conflicts I have covered -- death squads gunned them down in El Salvador and Guatemala, mothers with infants were lined up and massacred in Algeria, and Serb snipers put children in their sights and watched them crumple onto the pavement in Sarajevo -- but I have never before watched soldiers entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport."

Other than the direct approach to killing Palestinian children, Gideon Levy also reports on another form of slow death: the medieval-like siege. When a 10-year-old girl from El-Sawiya village near Nablus experienced severe abdominal pains, her father tried to take her to the nearest hospital in Nablus; the merciless Israeli siege, however, blocked all possible routes out of the village. In the morning Ella died from a burst appendix, which could have been easily treated at any hospital.(11)

Whether at the checkpoints, in their classrooms, in their living rooms or in the streets, Palestinian children have long lost any immunity they might have enjoyed under an occupation that used to be particularly sensitive to its image in the western public opinion. Alas, that was before 9/11. Since then, however, with the effective Israelization of US foreign policy, especially in the Middle East, Israelis felt they had a "windfall, as Netanyahu called the 9/11 crimes in his first public reaction. Indeed, Israel has steadily moved close to a combination of the French colonial model in Algeria and the apartheid model in South Africa, while enjoying unwavering protection from the new empire and a hypocritical, subservient attitude from most European governments which continue to treat Israel as a preferred partner and as a western outpost in the near east. Thanks to this shameful collusion, Palestinian children are no longer spared Israel's worst crimes, committed with revolting impunity.

When a nation tolerates, even encourages -- through failing to properly investigate killings or punish perpetrators -- the deliberate, cold-blooded murder of a defenseless child under the pretence of security, it does not only lose any claim to morality it may have ever had, but also kills any remaining argument for its worthiness to continue existing as a racist, colonial state that is essentially above the law. It is the responsibility of humanity at large, and the west in particular, to impose sanctions and boycotts on Israel similar to those struck against South Africa in the past in order to bring about its compliance with the precepts of international law and the ever-evolving universal moral principles.

Iman in Arabic means belief. It is hard to guess why Iman al-Hams, parents called her that name, but it may have been out of belief in their own ability to persevere, to live and develop despite occupation, exile and destitution. This belief lies buried with Iman in Rafah. With occupation, there is no room for true peace, for progress, for decent living or for any sense of safety. Palestinian children deserve life, freedom, dignity and hope. At the very least, they deserve not to be executed by the region's "only democracy".

Omar Barghouti is an independent Palestinian political analyst. His article "9.11 Putting the Moment on Human Terms" was chosen among the "Best of 2002" by the Guardian. He can be reached at: jenna@palnet.com

REFERENCES:

(1) Chris McGreal, A schoolgirl riddled with bullets. And no one is to blame, The Guardian, October 21, 2004.

(2) BBC News, 15 October 2004, http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/middle_east/3748054.stm

(3) Chris McGreal, 23 killed in Israeli raid on refugee camp, The Guardian, October 1, 2004

(4) Ha'aretz, December 12, 2000.

(5) Reuters, January 22, 2001; Phil Reeves, "Fury as court frees settler, The Independent, January 22, 2001.

(6) Gideon Levy, Ha,aretz, January 28, 2001.

(7) Tanya Reinhart, "Don't Say You Didn't Know, Indymedia, November 2000.

(8) Michael Finkel, "Playing War, New York Times Magazine, December 23, 2000.

(9) Amira Hass, Don't Shoot Till You Can See They,re Over the Age of 12, Ha,aretz, November 20, 2000.

(10) Chris Hedges, A Gaza Diary, Harper's Magazine, October 2001.

(11) Gideon Levy, Ha,aretz, January 7, 2001.

Weekend Edition Features for October 16 / 17, 2004

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