Category Archives: Political Psychology

FTAC – Language, Islam, and ‘Cultural Metonymic Stability’

21 Tuesday Jun 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Philology, Political Psychology, Politics, Religion

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Re. Language — https://www.amazon.com/Language-Cultural-Daniel-L-Everett/dp/0307473805 The author, Daniel Everett, challenges a substantial basis or claim in Chomsky’s theorizing about language.

My kernel for how languages work would be metonymy with paired, primary, and secondary sound/other signal associations. N.ย may want to catch this because it’s one of the elements involved in conflict within Islam that make winnowing the issue down to the “God Mob” (such may not be restricted to Islam but may be archaic elsewhere) so difficult. If one asks, for example, what the term “homosexual” means in terms of its resonance — what else does it call to mind? — we have several approaches to analyzing that. The science community might want to know and then refer to the incidence in behavior in nature x species and fit that data and theorizing about it with similar data compiled for Homo Sapiens sapiens.

The bohemian-creative communities, long on hedonism, unconsciously selfish or deep down exploitive and willful, give it a glance, give it a go, paint, write, dance, sing (“Take a Walk on the Wild Side”) about it, include it, dismiss it as trivial, so many other things considered, and move right on to their next scene. Dig? ๐Ÿ™‚

And the religious refer to holy scripture and the logic of edict that must follow, which mentality went hard on the witches of Salem, not too many hundreds of years ago, and has visited similar villainy to . . . gays in an Orlando nightclub.

Bored, confused, dead-ended, invisible, still energetic and searching for answers — and then comes imam or speaker Farrokh Sekaleshfar who explains that the Muslim response to homosexuality is death, and it would be merciful to get it over with.

Now we have an issue: how stable is that message in Islamic jurisprudence and scholarship?

That’s really asking a question about metonymy within Arabic and within Islamic thought.

Then: how authoritative and how deep goes the distribution of that thought through the Ummah?

The Dhimmi and infidel on the defensive before such a cultural and political program may approach the same thought with external ideas, and chief among alternatives authoritative secular governance founded on reason undergirded by science and research and wedded to compassion, humility, inclusion, and tolerance.

Counterterrorism is a complex field, but in the language part, many recognize aspects of the talk (e.g., invoking the term “crusader west”) that key into signature by way of talk x behavioral change x foreign travel / association with Muslim Brotherhood figures x media obsessions x planning x arming.

In the west, wild poets alter the meaning of elements in language on an experimental basis, at least, and the public picks up and sustains what it finds “cool” — and, for the most part, the culture, the whole shebang, recapitulates itself into the modern English world.

In the Ummah, one still meets Farrokh Sekaleshfar sincerely plying old and frankly monstrous thought with authority. He’s got his hands full today (as a person of interest to western authorities), but what he’s drawn from in language has “cultural metonymic stability” — i.e., he’s not the only one talking that talk and pushing it into everyone’s future.

Related on BackChannels

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/06/12/omar-mir-seddique-mateen-known-to-the-fbi/ – 6/12/2016.

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FTAC – Moscow-Tehran – Far Left Connection – Distilled

15 Wednesday Jun 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Political Psychology, Politics, Syndicate Red Brown Green

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One might agree with the sentiment in “BDS is mainly the invention of self-hating Israelis and Jews” but the truth is it’s mainly the invention of historic Russian anti-Semitism ported through the Soviet Union to the “comrade networks” that today have morphed into the New Old Now Old Far Out and Lost Left.

Here’s one of their portals, and I think a glance at the names still on the marquis, as it were, tells of the “longer game” being played on the world stage.

http://www.blackforpalestine.com/

In the wings, imho, but not without cause: the Russo-Syrian effort to sustain their systems of feudal absolute power far into the 21st Century. As KSA realigns westward, or follows its massive investments in the west, Moscow and Tehran may remain committed to installing in the west greater chaos, dissension, and threat.

It’s a big picture view, but the connections between so-called “liberation movements” (add the Far Right New Nationalists like Viktor Orban to the mix) seem to me unmistakable. Possibly, Obama and his subaltern Shapiro are giving signal, whether lip service or sincere, back to Moscow, as the Palestinians remain incapable of challenging the PLO / PA (set up by the KGB way back when) and Hamas (whom Moscow today refuses to designate a terrorist organization).

Does the suggested political architecture work?

Test it.

Directly related on BackChannels, which is now well woven: Syndicate Red Brown Green.

Addendum – 7/6/2016

Golding, Shenequa. ย “Ray Lewis Blasts Black Lives Matter Over Silence On Black-On-Black Crime.” ย Vibe, April 7, 2016.

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FTAC – On ‘Different Talks — Same Walk’

13 Monday Jun 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Political Psychology, Politics, Religion, Syndicate Red Brown Green

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https://conflict-backchannels.com/syndicate-red-brown-green/

When it comes to autocracy and insanity, more or less, think “Different Talks — Same Walk.”

The combines of bipolar and malignantly narcissistic psychology cross cultural, ideological, and religious divides to produce the kind of person that becomes a dictator or the kind of person that becomes a terrorist.

Scaled in terms familiar in social psychology, some percentage of population drifts toward and into the available extremes at the margins of their chosen channels.

While the “Kool-Aid” varies, there are a lot of language- and information-related processes ferrying the right kind of personality into their kind of combat or political action.

With Islam — as opposed to, say, post-Soviet neo-feudal Russian nationalism — I / we, perhaps, have been on a journey from knowing very little to knowing enough to at least get the big picture about right, and with that we’re getting to see how the “jihadists” differ from Muslims who really have no wish to force on others or otherwise vigorously purvey “Political Islam”.

Greater than Islam may be our general transition and transformation from the medieval worldviews represented by “Red Brown Green” to the modern one of greater cooperation, integration, integrity, and inclusion plus, not a small thing, the want of being helpful to others.

Although one cannot overlook the medieval character of medieval religions and related behaviors; however, one may choose to set aside aspects of the content of one screed or another to more closely focus on the political and social psychology at work ย — to be found on this blog: “social grammar”, “malignant narcissism”, “medieval vs modern”, etc.

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Posted to YouTube 4/6/2016

Related: Quinn, Liam. ย “‘Let’s get rid of them’: British-born Islamic preacher who has called for gays to be ‘executed’ was giving lectures in Orlando weeks before nightclub massacre.” ย Daily Mail, June 13, 2016.

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Zionism – Wistrich on Herzl – Excerpt from an Essay

10 Friday Jun 2016

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Israel, Political Psychology

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According to the account which he gave to the Hebrew writer, Reuben Brainin, less than a year before his death, Herzl was attracted to the Messiah legends of the Jews from early adolescence. At the age of twelve, he had a โ€œwonderful dream,โ€ which he recounted as follows:

The King-Messiah came, a glorious and majestic old man, took me in his arms and swept off with me on the wings of the wind. On one of the shining clouds we encountered the figure of Moses. The features were familiar to me out of my childhood in the statue by Michelangelo. The Messiah called to Moses: โ€œIt is for this child that I have prayed!โ€ And to me he said: โ€œGo and declare to the Jews that I shall come soon and perform great wonders and great deeds for my people and for the whole world!โ€ 19

Shortly after this dream Herzl read a popular science book which presented electricity as the new King-Messiah which would liberate the nations and all mankind from servitude. At first he was indignant but then he began to wonder if electricity might not be the promised redeemer and decided to become an engineerโ€”a childhood ambition which he never fulfilled. What is striking in this dream is the strong identification with Moses, with the Exodus from Egypt and technological advances that could totally transform the lives of humanity. It is precisely such a fusion of tradition and modernity, the idea of a new Jewish exodus and the Promethean redemption of mankind through the Zionist enterprise, that provided the รฉlan vital of Herzlโ€™s project.

Wistrich, Robert S. ย “Theodore Herzl Between Messianism and Politics”. ย PDF. Page 25. Essay republished online at Goodnewsto blog, n.d.

Such essays are passed to BackChannels along with the day’s feed in news. ย Although so much reading online makes for a fragmented educational and informational experience, the fragments, when they are true — valid and reliable — do come together in three-dimensional mosaic. ย The Torah, commentaries, histories far and near, and current events test each sentence.

Are dreams such as that of the “King-Messiah” poppycock?

Having attained and age in which cynicism and skepticism greet sentimentality too often, the BackChannels editor might say, “Probably so”, but let’s see where it goes. ย However, the sentence, “It is precisely such a fusion of tradition and modernity, the idea of a new Jewish exodus and the Promethean redemption of mankind through the Zionist enterprise, that provided the รฉlan vital of Herzlโ€™s project” has its weight supported by Israel’s exuberant contributions to the world in the creation and manufacturing of the broadest spectrum of new and continuously improved technologies.

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Putin, While Messing With the West, Grows a New Russian Economy

09 Thursday Jun 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Eurasia, International Development, Political Psychology, Politics, Russia

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Two points of reference:

Medetsky, Anatoly, Matthew Campbell, Yuliya Fedorinova. ย “Putin is Growing Organic Power One T-34 Tank-Tomato at a Time.” ย Bloomberg, June, 7, 2016.

Shinkman, Paul D. ย “Beware Appeasement With Russia.” ย U.S. News & World Report, June 9, 2016.

Keep in mind the extreme duality presented by the Concert in Palmyra, for example, and the savaging of Syria by a tyrant accompanied by the incubation and encouragement of ISIS as a useful foil and poker chip for playing over the course of perhaps the World’s Grandest and Most Romantic Political Theater.

While burdening the west (and NATO) with the fallout in refugees and terrorists from the Syrian Tragedy and pestering the same through its activities in Ukraine, an assortment of “frozen conflicts”, andย its investment in “information warfare” online, Russia has been also (as Obama long ago suggested) growing its economy, the first fruits of which have been given pretty good play in Bloomberg.

About to this point, the image of a Moscow hard hit by dramatically reduced oil revenues and sanctions and by years of capital flight driven by corruption has held steady, but now we see The Bear has been planting all along.

Neither Russian artistic and intellectual high culture nor developing business success (finally!) can or will ethically or morally offset what Putin’s regime has done to degrade the lifestyles of Russians en masse (so far)ย nor erase the barbaric and contemptible way it has measured the worth of the lives and freedoms of others in Crimea, Syria, and elsewhere.

For whatever may have happened to Putin early in life, one may glimpse a Putin’s revenge taken against the enemies of the Soviet, perhaps old imperial Russia as well, and what he might brand as traitors to Russia in Eastern Europe — those who have joined with NATO — for while he has delivered refugees and terrorists and the confusions of RT and other state-controlled media operations to their lands and airwaves (and computers), he has placed the productive capacity of the state in the state-controlled private hands, and as the same wish to make a lot money, the tomatoes are going to be pretty good for eating (or throwing).

Note too that in the encouragement of Far Right and Far Left political organizations worldwide, Putin & Co. have blended with the tomatoes a heady mix of hippie values — what could be more pure than tomatoes irrigated by mountain waters? — and fascist nationalist dreams rooted in ethnolinguistic pride.

While NATO may prepare for and block greater Russian imperialist adventure, its more immediate and perhaps more real headache may involve meeting the challenge posed by Moscow’s autocratic, barbarous, and criminal “allowances” within Russia and far beyond its borders.

Posted to YouTube 2/3/2016.

Reference

AFP. ย “Millions more Russians living in poverty as economic crisis bites.” ย March 21, 2016.

Orttung, Robert and Christopher Walker. ย “Putin’s Frozen Conflicts: Each of Russia’s reform-minded neighbors is plagued by separatism. ย It’s no coincidence.” ย Foreign Policy, February 13, 2015.

Pomerantsev, Peter. ย “Russia and the Menace of Unreality.” ย The Atlantic, September 9, 2014.

Ragozin, Leonid. ย “Putin’s Core Support Begins to Waver.” ย Bloomberg Businessweek, June 9, 2016. ย (Added 6/10/2016).

Tolokonnikova, Nadya. “Criminal Godfathers and Dirty Birds.” ย Huffington Post, February 3, 2016.

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FTAC – Haaretz’s Noticing the Anti-BDS Community

02 Thursday Jun 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Political Psychology, Politics, Syndicate Red Brown Green

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The Soviet was not only a power structure. It had a mentality — and the same has been transitioned by Putin into the nationalist format — that served the intellectual and political engines of the Far Left. The Tired Old Politics of the New Old Now Old Far Out and Lost Left grind on absent of the Soviet, and Haaretz.com, among others, may be dropping those politics while flailing around for a distinct new social liberalism.

Article of Interest: David, Ariel. ย “In anti-BDS Move, Italy Bringing Huge Academic Delegation to Israel.” ย Haaretz, May 30, 2016.

Inspiration for the writing: “Ironic that Haaretz is reporting this story, considering that most of the BDS animus is fueled and justified by Haaretz writers.”

Those “Tired Old Politics of the New Old Now Old Far Out and Lost Left” keep duped and misdirected possibly millions of well-intentioned Americans (as well as anti-Semites) sitting politely in dozens to hundreds of organizations hooked up to representatives of the the BDS Movement, the International and Palestinian Solidarity organizations, and every other post-Soviet comrade tank.

What has been done to, say, the Unitarian Universalist Associationย to produce the hallucinating Unitarian Universalists for Justice in the Middle East (UUJME) should be the subject of scandal, especially since most today either know or may easily know the Soviet KGB history involved in the creation of Yassir Arafat and Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) plus the promotion of the terrorism of that day (and Moscow has continued to meet with such as the PFLP and continues to refuse to designate either Hamas or Hezbollah as terrorist organizations despite the evidence over decades of their crimes, including, lately, the use of human shields, the practice of summary executions within their bailiwicks, and for Hamas the deaths of child tunnel diggers, among other abuses).

The Presbyterian Church USA has similar fallen for the same bunkย (December 2014).

(Each story has now close historic play online. ย As an accompaniment to the above statement, readers might enjoy Jeanne Bishop’s Presbyterian pro-Israel argument in Huffington Religion, “Why Proposed Presbyterian Divestment from Israel is Wrong” – August 10, 2014).

While BackChannels continues to note that this year will mark the 25th year out from the dissolving of the Soviet Union, the notion that inherently anti-Semitic pro-BDS furor represents the ghosts of another era, one may find online (with relation to “Cold War — Cold Struggle“) a most cynical partisan-to-Moscow approach the modern world’s wrestling with the medieval mind:

https://newcoldwar.org/

Here’s a declaration on the publication’s “About” page:

โ€˜Independentโ€™ does not mean non-partisan. You can find a statement of our broad views in the antiwar declaration approved at a conference in Yalta, Crimea approved on 7 July 2014 at a meeting of activists from Ukraine, Europe, Russia and North America. We believe great injustices are being committed by the government installed in Kiev in February against the whole Ukrainian people.

On the web, it’s too easy to surf off the BDS issue (in America and globally) and over to Moscow’s maneuvering in Syria and Ukraine, and yet these very different themes — BDS, Cold War, Syria, Ukraine, and Politics on the Left — would seem very much connected by a massive update on old agitation and propaganda methods. ย (As always, the sense of how the Soviet state worked may be obtained through any number of volumes relayed in the “Russian Section” of this blog).

The poison — anti-American, anti-Semitic, anti-Zionist; pro-mob, pro-power without warrant — spreads down to American villages in countless “activist” newsletters. ย Here’s a glimpse from the calendar page of the Hudson Valley Activist Newsletter:

Friday, June 3, KINGSTON: There will be a 7 p.m. screening of the documentary The Occupation of the American Mind: Israelโ€™s Public Relations War in the United States at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the Catskills, 320 Sawkill Rd. This film offers a sophisticated analysis of the Zionist strategy to keep Washington policymakers and the U.S. public on Israel’s side despite its subjugation of the Palestinian people.

Oh, please, End the Preoccupation!

http://www.alhaq.org/advocacy/topics/palestinian-violations

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/5019/hamas-palestinian-authority-human-rightsย (1/9/2015).

http://www.timesofisrael.com/human-rights-watchdog-hamas-pa-tortured-hundreds-in-2014/ย (1/29/2015).

Eastward across the pond, the Brits on the Left seem to be waking up — or at least pushed toward introspection with both Naz Shah’sย apology for earlier and mindless anti-Semitic cantย and the election of London’s first Muslim mayor, Sadiq Khan.

How come the American Left doesn’t get it?

Hamas governs Gaza — from examination of its constitution to human rights to billionaire status for both Ismail Haniyeh and Khaled Mashaal, there’s no lack of information online or in books for its goals, its history, its methods, its human rights record, and so on.

Similarly, the Palestinian Authority is the political authority in the West Bank. ย While Israel and its Defense Forces have defensive control over who and what moves in the disputed territory, the working police serve Abbas. ย In fact, the timbre of life — how things work within — are defined by the behavior of the Palestinian Authority in concert with others with whom it does business.

Reduction: Hamas occupies Gaza; the PLO / PA occupies the West Bank.

And those “poor Palestinians” may be read about on websites like these: Palestine Real Estate Investment Company, Padico Holdingย — find the boards of directors online and follow each mogul to related career terminals within the region.

For the Hate-America-Firsters”, perhaps some Americans should take another look at America.

Start here: “USAID: West Bank and Gaza“.

Also on BackChannels — Loose URL Reference

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/02/09/ftac-on-why-the-jews/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/05/07/ftac-on-the-soviet-contribution-to-contemporary-left-side-anti-semitism/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/05/07/ftac-on-the-soviet-contribution-to-contemporary-left-side-anti-semitism/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/05/18/ftac-mec-thin-wall/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/05/16/ftac-longitude-the-hebrews-judaism-and-law/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/04/29/soviet-anti-semitism-an-example-from-andrew-and-mitrokhins-the-sword-and-the-shield/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/10/22/ftac-approaching-anti-semitism-and-the-medieval-revanch/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/10/12/ftac-tip-to-the-kgbs-amplification-of-middle-eastern-anti-semitism/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/coins-and-other-terms/new-old-now-old-far-out-and-lost-left/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/syndicate-red-brown-green/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/04/24/reference-two-articles-bds-on-campus-bds-and-related-networks-undercover-investigative-reporting/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/03/08/bds-cult-modules/

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_Back to the Ethic_ Author Diane Weber Bederman to Appear on Janet Mefford Today — Today!

02 Thursday Jun 2016

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Political Psychology, Religion

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6-2-16 – On the next JANET MEFFERD TODAY: The Bible is the blueprint for the values of Western Civilization. And yet, our culture has neglected the very framework that holds our liberties intact. How do we rescue it? Diana Weber-Bederman joins me to discuss that and her book, “Back to the Ethic.” Plus: The Left’s new attacks on Christian colleges — and how some Christian colleges are undermining their own mission. That and more on Thursdayโ€™s JANET MEFFERD TODAY.

Announcement link:ย http://janetmefferd.com/podcasts/

Local Affiliate Radio Stations and Showtimes for Janet Mefferd Today:ย http://janetmefferd.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/JMT-Stations.pdf

Previously on BackChannels:ย https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/02/11/rediscovery-renewal-of-devotion-bedermans-back-to-the-ethic-reclaiming-western-values/

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FTAC – A Response to Advocacy for Putin’s Russia

27 Friday May 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Political Psychology, Russia, Syndicate Red Brown Green, Ukraine

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Re. democracies and monarchies: a dozen European states remain monarchies but tempered by their democratic complements in power (parliamentary systems).

Re. bigotry in the west — the point is the people fight it in concert with their governments. The real tension is between ethnolinguistic cultural majorities and their interest in preserving themselves and evolving as they themselves determine. As much has given rise to what I call the “New Nationalism” and, like Viktor Orban in Hungary, “New Nationalists”. Those on the Far Right in relation to those movements are often anti-Semitic, which goes with the defensiveness and, probably, patronage. Even in Hungary, however, such as Jobbik may become prominent but make the final climb into political leadership.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/…/a-note-on-hungarys…/

With Jobbik in Hungary, the revision is just weird, but explained some by the persistence of Soviet politics in the post-Soviet Era.

Regarding Ukraine, Alexander J. Motyl has been arguing for the ceding of Donbas, but it’s not about being Russian in any case. The truth is ordinary people resent state-enabled criminality and related criminal aggrandizement. Yanukovych worked to get himself shoved out of office, and some of Russian heritage with whom I’ve spoken — and some I have read about in Grigas’s book, resent being used by Moscow as “compatriots”. The claim of protection is seen as a pretext for aggression that either expands or strengthens Russia’s area of control and influence or that results in a “frozen conflict” lending itself to criminal enterprise (where there is no effective and functioning sovereign, there’s a lot of space available for mischief).

Even while posting about Nadiya Savchenko’s liberation, I have wondered about both inherent and legacy politics plus what the effect of fame and public interest may have on her political vision as she necessarily updates herself.

In the British sphere, I’ve unconditionally accepted Naz Shaw’s “turnaround” or present stance and, with either, her repudiation of the anti-Semitic facet of the Labour Party.

Finally, regarding criminality, we have all got some vanity, and our personal mixes of “reparative” and “malignant” narcissism generally fill out a moderate life. With the criminal class, immoderation becomes either desirable or habitual, partly because of what we think of as criminal has lost its brakes in conscience, busted through normative boundaries, and, here invoking the Islamic concept, “exceeded limits.” When these people are small and surrounded by a lawful society, the wind up in jail; when they’re large, they may go a long time in business before hitting any walls; and in politics, they can ruin states — and they do that in profound ways.

The want of the power to impose suffering on innocent others with impunity becomes, I believe, a facet of that political criminality we call “dictatorship”. It’s not just the firm hand that one may dislike to the point of loathing: it’s the dispensing of sadism that comes through those that the good find aberrant and abhorrent.

Welcome to Virtually New World.

Now that we’re all here and furiously chatyping, what are we (and leaders old and new) going to do with it?

We may try to recognize some things we don’t like about our Newest Age.

Also deeply related on this blog: “Why the Jews?”, a piece that is at bedrock about one human response to “absolute power” — within which concept BackChannels would include the power to make others suffer with impunity — that has worked its way around the world.

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