Community | October 19, 2010 | 42 comments

Saudi prince found guilty of murdering servant in hotel

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Bandar Abdulaziz, 32, was found beaten and strangled in the Landmark Hotel, Marylebone, on 15 February 2010.

The Old Bailey was told the assault by Saud Abdulaziz bin Nasser al Saud had a "sexual element" and he had attacked Mr Abdulaziz many times before.

Al Saud, 34, had admitted manslaughter but denied murdering Mr Abdulaziz in their suite at the five-star hotel.

Champagne and cocktails

The Saudi prince was also found guilty of causing grievous bodily harm with intent in relation to an earlier attack in a hotel lift, a charge which he had denied.

It took the jury an hour and 35 minutes of deliberation to find Al Saud guilty of both charges.

The 34-year-old was fuelled by champagne and cocktails when he bit his servant hard on both cheeks during the attack, the court heard.

The pair had just returned from a Valentine's Day night out when Al Saud launched the ferocious assault.

In court his lawyers tried to cover up evidence of his homosexuality.

If he ever returns to his home country he faces the possibility of execution - not because of the killing, but because being gay is a capital offence in Saudi Arabia.

The verdict means a long jail term for the prince, who is a member of one of the world's richest and most powerful dynasties.

Al Saud will be sentenced on Wednesday.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-11571822?utm_source=twitterfeed&...
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42 comments // Saudi prince found guilty of murdering servant in hotel

  • good_stuff
    • 0
      good_stuff  
    • So, what was the sentence? I bet he will get diplomatic immunity and that he will get sent home, where he will be embraced and his family will deny that he is gay.

      As the previous comments say, family is the strongest tie in that part of the world.

    • 1 year ago
  • scamgea
    • 0
      scamgea  
    • Massive inbreeding among Muslims has been going on since their prophet allowed first-cousin marriages more than 50 generations (1,400 years) ago. For many Muslims, therefore, intermarriage is regarded as being part of their religion. In many Muslim communities, it is a source of social status to marry one’s daughter or son to his or her cousin. Intermarriage also ensures that wealth is kept within the family. Islam’s strict authoritarianism plays a large role as well: keeping daughters and sons close gives families more power to control and decide their choices and lifestyles.

      Westerners have a historical tradition of being ready to fight and die for their country. Muslims, on the other hand, are bound together less by patriotism, but mainly by family relations and religion. Intermarrying to protect the family and community from outside non-Islamic influence is much more important to Muslims living in a Western nation than integrating into that nation and supporting it.

      Today, 70 percent of all Pakistanis are inbred and in Turkey the amount is between 25-30 percent (Jyllands-Posten, 27/2 2009 “More stillbirths among immigrants“). A rough estimate reveals that close to half of everybody living in the Arab world is inbred. A large percentage of the parents that are blood related come from families where intermarriage has been a tradition for generations.

      A BBC investigation in Britain several years ago revealed that at least 55% of the Pakistani community in Britain was married to a first cousin. The Times of India affirmed that “this is thought to be linked to the probability that a British Pakistani family is at least 13 times more likely than the general population to have children with recessive genetic disorders.”

      The BBC’s research also discovered that while British Pakistanis accounted for just 3.4% of all births in Britain, they accounted for 30% of all British children with recessive disorders and a higher rate of infant mortality. It is not a surprise, therefore, that, in response to this evidence, a Labour Party MP has called for a ban on first-cousin marriage.

      Medical evidence shows that one of the negative consequences of inbreeding is a 100 percent increase in the risk of stillbirths. One study comparing Norwegians and Pakistanis shows the risk that the child dies during labor increases by 50 percent. The risk of death due to autosomal recessive disorders — e.g., cystic fibrosis and spinal muscular atrophy — is 18 times higher. Risk of death due to malformations is 10 times higher. Mental health is also at risk: the probability of depression is higher in communities where consanguine marriages are also high. The closer the blood relative, the higher the risk of mental and physical retardation and schizophrenic illness.

    • 1 year ago
  • scamgea
    • 0
      scamgea  
    • scamgea:

      "Muslims are the first victims of Islam" Dr. Nicolai Sennels is a Danish psychologist

      "And then there are the findings on intelligence. Research shows that if one’s parents are cousins, intelligence goes down 10-16 IQ points. The risk of having an IQ lower than 70 (criterion for being “retarded”) increases 400 percent among children from cousin marriages. An academic paper published in the Indian National Science Academy found that “the onset of various social profiles like visual fixation, social smile, sound seizures, oral expression and hand-grasping are significantly delayed among the new-born inbred babies.” Another study found that Indian Muslim school boys whose parents were first cousins tested significantly lower than boys whose parents were unrelated in a non-verbal test on intelligence.

      It is estimated that one third of all handicapped people in Copenhagen have a foreign background. Sixty four percent of school children in Denmark with Arabic parents are illiterate after 10 years in the Danish school system. The same study concludes that in reading ability, mathematics, and science, the pattern is the same: “The bilingual (largely Muslim) immigrants’ skills are exceedingly poor compared to their Danish classmates.”

      These problems within Islam bring many detriments to Western countries. Expenses related to mentally and physically handicapped Muslim immigrants, for instance, severely drain the budgets and resources of our societies. Look at Denmark, for example: one third of the budget for the country’s schools is spent on children with special needs. Muslim children are grossly overrepresented among these children. More than half of all children in schools for children with mental and physical handicaps in Copenhagen are foreigners — of whom Muslims are by far the largest group. One study concludes that “foreigners inbreeding costs our municipalities millions” because of the many handicapped children and adults.

      What must our role be as a humanitarian society to this rising crisis? We know that the greatest concern among pregnant women and their husbands is for their child to be healthy. It is not difficult to imagine the sorrow and stress among interrelated couples who are forced to marry and pressured to have children. Is it not our duty to fight for the rights of these human beings subjected to such barbaric and inhuman predicaments?

      What is it we can do?

      Denmark is a pioneering example of where to begin: in order to counter forced marriages, the country does not allow Danish citizens to marry foreigners younger than 24 years old. It also offers non-Western immigrants up to 15 thousand euros or 20 thousand dollars to emigrate back to their countries of origin. Immigrants who are not Danish citizens are banished from Denmark if they commit violent crimes. The state does not support families economically for having more than the country’s average amount of children. This prevents foreigners from coming to Denmark who have plans to have a lot of children and live off the state’s child support system. The country also denies resident permits to foreigners who are marrying their cousin in Denmark. Right now, the country is working on a complete halt to immigration from countries that are not oriented towards Western values (mainly Muslim countries).

      We must simply forbid intermarriage among first cousins. Doing so will not only help slow down all the terrible consequences of inbreeding, but also prevent Muslims who insist on practicing this damaging practice from moving to our countries.

      Let us keep in mind that Muslims are the first — though maybe not the biggest — victims of Islam. As long as we know that our motivation is to help them, then our conscience is clear in the face of the left’s accusations that we are somehow “anti-Muslim” when we show our concern about Muslim babies who are born with mental and physical defects — and about their parents who endure endless suffering and worry. In fact, it is the left’s callous silence on this issue (and on so many others) that exposes who is truly “anti-Muslim.”

      As long as we stick to facts, have a compassionate motivation, and are still able to be brave, we can be certain that not only are we right to reach out to protect Muslim people, but that in doing so we are also protecting ourselves from destroying our own basic humanistic and Western values while struggling against anti-human and aggressive practices and ideologies.

      Dr. Nicolai Sennels is a Danish psychologist who worked for several years with young criminal Muslims in a Copenhagen prison. He is the author of Among Criminal Muslims. A Psychologist’s Experience from the Copenhagen Municipality. The book will be out in English later this year. Contact him at nicolaisennels@gmail.com.

    • 1 year ago
  • utubemafia
  • scamgea
    • 0
      scamgea  
    • Cousin Marriage Conundrum

      The ancient practice discourages democratic nation-building

      by Steve Sailer

      The American Conservative,
      Jan. 13, 2003, pp. 20-22

      Tiny URL: http://tinyurl.com/7k63m

      Steven Pinker (The Blank Slate) chose this for inclusion in his anthology: Best Science and Nature Writing, 2004

      iSteve.com Home
      E-mail me
      Many prominent neoconservatives are calling on America not only to conquer Iraq (and perhaps more Muslim nations after that), but also to rebuild Iraqi society in order to jumpstart the democratization of the Middle East. Yet, Americans know so little about the Middle East that few of us are even aware of one of one of the building blocks of Arab Muslim cultures -- cousin marriage. Not surprisingly, we are almost utterly innocent of any understanding of how much the high degree of inbreeding in Iraq could interfere with our nation building ambitions.

      In Iraq, as in much of the region, nearly half of all married couples are first or second cousins to each other. A 1986 study of 4,500 married hospital patients and staff in Baghdad found that 46% were wed to a first or second cousin, while a smaller 1989 survey found 53% were "consanguineously" married. The most prominent example of an Iraqi first cousin marriage is that of Saddam Hussein and his first wife Sajida.

      By fostering intense family loyalties and strong nepotistic urges, inbreeding makes the development of civil society more difficult. Many Americans have heard by now that Iraq is composed of three ethnic groups -- the Kurds of the north, the Sunnis of the center, and the Shi'ites of the south. Clearly, these ethnic rivalries would complicate the task of ruling reforming Iraq. But that's just a top-down summary of Iraq's ethnic make-up. Each of those three ethnic groups is divisible into smaller and smaller tribes, clans, and inbred extended families -- each with their own alliances, rivals, and feuds. And the engine at the bottom of these bedeviling social divisions is the oft-ignored institution of cousin marriage.

      The fractiousness and tribalism of Middle Eastern countries have frequently been remarked. In 1931, King Feisal of Iraq described his subjects as "devoid of any patriotic idea, ? connected by no common tie, giving ear to evil; prone to anarchy, and perpetually ready to rise against any government whatever." The clannishness, corruption, and coups frequently observed in countries such as Iraq appears to be in tied to the high rates of inbreeding.

      Muslim countries are usually known for warm, devoted extended family relationships, but also for weak patriotism. In the U.S., where individualism is so strong, many assume that "family values" and civic virtues such as sacrificing for the good of society always go together. But, in Islamic countries, loyalty to extended (as opposed to nuclear) families is often at war with loyalty to nation. Civic virtues, military effectiveness, and economic performance all suffer.

      Commentator Randall Parker wrote, "Consanguinity [cousin marriage] is the biggest underappreciated factor in Western analyses of Middle Eastern politics. Most Western political theorists seem blind to the importance of pre-ideological kinship-based political bonds in large part because those bonds are not derived from abstract Western ideological models of how societies and political systems should be organized. ? Extended families that are incredibly tightly bound are really the enemy of civil society because the alliances of family override any consideration of fairness to people in the larger society. Yet, this obvious fact is missing from 99% of the discussions about what is wrong with the Middle East. How can we transform Iraq into a modern liberal democracy if every government worker sees a government job as a route to helping out his clan at the expense of other clans?"

      Retired U.S. Army colonel Norvell De Atkine spent years trying to train America's Arab allies in modern combat techniques. In an article in American Diplomacy entitled, "Why Arabs Lose Wars," a frustrated De Atkine explained, "First, the well-known lack of trust among Arabs for anyone outside their own family adversely affects offensive operations? In a culture in which almost every sphere of human endeavor, including business and social relationships, is based on a family structure, this orientation is also present in the military, particularly in the stress of battle. "Offensive action, basically, consists of fire and maneuver," De Atkine continued. "The maneuver element must be confident that supporting units or arms are providing covering fire. If there is a lack of trust in that support, getting troops moving forward against dug-in defenders is possible only by officers getting out front and leading, something that has not been a characteristic of Arab leadership."

      Similarly, as Francis Fukuyama described in his 1995 book "Trust: The Social Virtues & the Creation of Prosperity," countries such as Italy with highly loyal extended families can generate dynamic family firms. Yet, their larger corporations tend to be rife with goldbricking, corruption, and nepotism, all because their employees don't trust each other to show their highest loyalty to the firm rather than their own extended families. Arab cultures are more family-focused than even Sicily, and thus their larger economic enterprises suffer even more.

      American society is so biased against inbreeding that many Americans have a hard time even conceiving of marrying a cousin. Yet, arranged matches between first cousins (especially between the children of brothers) are considered the ideal throughout much of a broad expanse from North Africa through West Asia and into Pakistan and India.

      In contrast, Americans probably disapprove of what scientists call "consanguineous" mating more than any other nationality. Three huge studies in the U.S. between 1941 and 1981 found that no more than 0.2% of all American marriages were between first cousins or second cousins.

      Americans have long dismissed cousin marriage as something practiced only among hillbillies. That old stereotype of inbred mountaineers waging decades long blood feuds had some truth to it. One study of 107 marriages in Beech Creek, Kentucky in 1942 found 19% were consanguineous, although the Kentuckians were more inclined toward second cousin marriages, while first cousin couples are more common than second cousins pairings in the Islamic lands.

      Cousin marriage averages not much more than one percent in most European countries, and under 10% in the rest of the world outside that Morocco to Southern India corridor.

    • 1 year ago
  • scamgea
    • 0
      scamgea  
    • Image
    • scamgea:

      Continued from above...
      Muslim immigration, however, has been boosting Europe's low level of consanguinity. According to the leading authority on inbreeding, geneticist Alan H. Bittles of Edith Cowan U. in Perth, Australia, "In the resident Pakistani community of some 0.5 million [in Britain] an estimated 50% to 60+% of marriages are consanguineous, with evidence that their prevalence is increasing." (Bittles' Web-site www.Consang.net presents the results of several hundred studies of the prevalence of inbreeding around the world.)

      European nations have recently become increasingly hostile toward the common practice among their Muslim immigrants of arranging marriages between their children and citizens of their home country, frequently their relatives. One study of Turkish guest-workers in the Danish city of Ish?und that 98% -- 1st, 2nd and 3rd generation -- married a spouse from Turkey who then came and lived in Denmark. (Turks, however, are quite a bit less enthusiastic about cousin marriage than are Arabs or Pakistanis, which correlates with the much stronger degree of patriotism found in Turkey.)

      European "family reunification" laws present an immigrant with the opportunity to bring in his nephew by marrying his daughter to him. Not surprisingly, "family reunification" almost always works just in one direction -- with the new husband moving from the poor Muslim country to the rich European country.

      If a European-born daughter refused to marry her cousin from the old country just because she doesn't love him, that would deprive her extended family of the boon of an immigration visa. So, intense family pressure can fall on the daughter to do as she is told.

      The new Danish right wing government has introduced legislation to crack down on these kind of marriages arranged to generate visas. British Home Secretary David Blunkett has called for immigrants to arrange more marriages within Britain.

      Unlike the Middle East, Europe underwent what Samuel P. Huntington calls the "Romeo and Juliet revolution." Europeans became increasingly sympathetic toward the right of a young woman to marry the man she loves. Setting the stage for this was the Catholic Church's long war against cousin marriage, even out to fourth cousins or higher. This weakened the extended family in Europe, thus lessening the advantages of arranged marriages. It also strengthened broader institutions like the Church and the nation-state.

      Islam itself may not be responsible for the high rates of inbreeding in Muslim countries. (Similarly high levels of consanguinity are found among Hindus in Southern India, although there, uncle-niece marriages are socially preferred, even though their degree of genetic similarity is twice that of cousin marriages, with worse health consequences for offspring.)

      Rafat Hussain, a Pakistani-born Senior Lecturer at the U. of New England in Australia, told me, "Islam does not specifically encourage cousin marriages and, in fact, in the early days of the spread of Islam, marriages outside the clan were highly desirable to increase cultural and religious influence." She adds, "The practice has little do with Islam (or in fact any religion) and has been a prevalent cultural norm before Islam." Inbreeding (or "endogamy") is also common among Christians in the Middle East, although less so than among Muslims.

      The Muslim practice is similar to older Middle Eastern norms, such as those outlined in Leviticus in the Old Testament. The lineage of the Hebrew Patriarchs who founded the Jewish people was highly inbred. Abraham said his wife Sarah was also his half-sister. His son Isaac married Rebekah, a cousin once removed. And Isaac's son Jacob wed his two first cousins, Leah and Rachel.

      Jacob's dozen sons were the famous progenitors of the Twelve Tribes of Israel. Due to inbreeding, Jacob's eight legitimate sons had only six unique great-grandparents instead of the usual eight. That's because the inbred are related to their relatives through multiple paths.

      Why do so many people around the world prefer to keep marriage in the family? Hussain noted, "In patriarchal societies where parents exert considerable influence and gender segregation is followed more strictly, marriage choice is limited to whom you know. While there is some pride in staying within the inner bounds of family for social or economic reasons, the more important issue is: Where will parents find a good match? Often, it boils down to whom you know and can trust."

      Another important motivation -- one that is particularly important in many herding cultures, such as the ancients ones from which the Jews and Muslims emerged -- is to prevent inheritable wealth from being split among too many descendents. This can be especially important when there are economies of scale in the family business.

      Just as the inbred have fewer unique ancestors than the outbred, they also have fewer unique heirs, helping keep both the inheritance and the brothers together. When a herd-owning patriarch marries his son off to his younger brother's daughter, he insures that his grandson and his grandnephew will be the same person. Likewise, the younger brother benefits from knowing that his grandson will also be the patriarch's grandson and heir. Thus, by making sibling rivalry over inheritance less relevant, cousin marriage emotionally unites families.

      The anthropologist Carleton Coon also pointed out that by minimizing the number of relatives a Bedouin Arab nomad has, this system of inbreeding "does not overextend the number of persons whose deaths an honorable man must avenge."

      Of course, there are also disadvantages to inbreeding. The best known is medical. Being inbred increases the chance of inheriting genetic syndromes caused by malign recessive genes. Bittles found that, after controlling for socio-economic factors, the babies of first cousins had about a 30% higher chance of dying before their first birthdays.

      The biggest disadvantage, however, may be political.

      Are Muslims, especially Arabs, so much more loyal to their families than to their nations because, due to countless generations of cousin marriages, they are so much more genealogically related to their families than Westerners are related to theirs? Frank Salter, a political scientist at the Max Planck Institute in Germany whose new book "Risky Transactions: Trust, Kinship, and Ethnicity" takes a sociobiological look at the reason why Mafia families are indeed families, told me, "That's my hunch; at least it's bound to be a factor."

    • 1 year ago
  • scamgea
    • 0
      scamgea  
    • scamgea:

      The rest....
      One of the basic laws of modern evolutionary science, quantified by the great Oxford biologist William D. Hamilton in 1964 under the name "kin selection," is that the more close the genetic relationship between two people, the more likely they are to feel loyalty and altruism toward each other. Natural selection has molded us not just to try to propagate our own genes, but to help our relatives, who possess copies of some of our specific genes, to propagate their own.

      Nepotism is thus biologically inspired. Hamilton explained that the level of nepotistic feeling generally depends upon degree of genetic similarity. You share half your personally variable genes with your children and siblings, but one quarter with your nephews/nieces and grandchildren, so your nepotistic urges will tend to be somewhat less toward them. You share one eighth of your genes with your first cousins, and one thirty-second with your second cousin, so your feelings of family loyalty tend to fall off quickly.

      But not as quickly if you and your relatives are inbred. Then, you'll be genealogically and related to your kin via multiple pathways. You will all be genetically more similar, so your normal family feelings will be multiplied. For example, your son-in-law might be also be the nephew you've cherished since his childhood, so you can lavish all the nepotistic altruism on him that in an outbred family would be split between your son-in-law and your nephew.

      Unfortunately, nepotism is usually a zero sum game, so the flip side of being materially nicer toward your relatives would be that you'd have less resources left with which to be civil, or even just fair, toward non-kin. So, nepotistic corruption is rampant in countries such as Iraq, where Saddam has appointed members of his extended family from his hometown of Tikrit to many key positions in the national government.

      Similarly, a tendency toward inbreeding can turn an extended family into a miniature racial group with its own partially isolated gene pool. (Dog breeders use extreme forms of inbreeding to quickly create new breeds in a handful of generations.) The ancient Hebrews provide a vivid example of a partly inbred extended family (that of Abraham and his brothers) that evolved into its own ethnic group. This process has been going on for thousands of years in the Middle East, which is why not just the Jews, but also why tiny, ancient inbreeding groups such as the Samaritans, the John the Baptist-worshipping Sabeans, and the Lucifer-worshipping Yezidis still survive.

      In summary, although neoconservatives constantly point to America's success at reforming Germany and Japan after World War II has evidence that it would be easy to do the same in the Middle East, the deep social structure of Iraq is the complete opposite of those two true nation-states, with their highly patriotic, cooperative, and (not surprisingly) outbred peoples. The Iraqis, in contrast, more closely resemble the Hatfields and the McCoys.

    • 1 year ago
  • timetide
  • scamgea
  • scamgea
    • 0
      scamgea  
    • Here in lies the problem "Islam produces idiocy"

      SATURDAY, 23 JANUARY 2010
      Inbreeding, Incest and Cousin Marriage in Islam

      Muslim inbreeding is causing a massive surge in birth defects:
      http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-513388/Minister-Muslim-inbreeding-Britai...

      Phil Woolas, an environment minister, said the culture of arranged marriages between first cousins was the “elephant in the room”. Woolas, a former race relations minister, said: “If you have a child with your cousin the likelihood is there’ll be a genetic problem.” The minister, whose views were supported by medical experts this weekend, said: “The issue we need to debate is first cousin marriages, whereby a lot of arranged marriages are with first cousins, and that produces lots of genetic problems in terms of disability [in children].” http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article3342040.ece

      Banned in Holland
      The Dutch cabinet wants to ban marriages between cousins and to introduce harsher educational requirements for import brides, PM Jan Peter Balkenende told the Parliament Thursday. http://islamineurope.blogspot.com/2009/09/netherlands-govt-to-ban-cousin.html

      Massive burden on health service
      Medical research suggests that while British Pakistanis are responsible for 3% of all births, they account for one in three British children born with genetic illnesses. The question to think about is: Could the practice of interbreeding be the key to the success and longevity of Islam? Could it be that the genetic and mental illnesses borne of interbreeding are a factor in the unquestioning nature of the majority of Muslims regarding spirituality? http://jacksachinghead.blogspot.com/2008/12/inbreeding-and-its-effects-on-geneti...

      In other words...

      ISLAM PRODUCES IDIOCY, AND IDIOCY PRODUCES ISLAM!

    • 1 year ago
  • CalgarC
  • thetrimsmith
    • +6
      thetrimsmith  
    • Think of this: when you fill up your gas tank, you are helping pay for his lifestyle and legal defense. One more reason for an alternative energy source!

    • 1 year ago
  • CalgarC
  • thetrimsmith
  • CalgarC
  • Nephwrack
  • keithponder
  • dudefromtherock
  • keithponder
  • artemis6
  • olddogdaddy
    • 0
      olddogdaddy  
    • WTF??? our Saudi visitors ignore the laws of our country and have no respect for human life?

      say it isn't so! now our politicians that have been kissing saudi backsides for the past fifty years will have to come up with more propaganda on how this innocent l'il prince was abused by our justice system and we'll send him home. come to think about it...why not send him home? i don't want to pay for this clown to live a soft/members only club lifestyle in our prisons for his whole life!

      where is BP when you need them? we need the team that negotiated the Lockerbie Bomber's release. sure his crimes may be punishable by death...but c'mon now, does anyone really think he will be killed at his own home with the king and fellow princes? he will likely get a heroes welcome for beating the rap of the great satan!

      if we don't, the oil crisis will escalate! oh, too late..it IS escalating and more American lives will be sacrificed in the name of oil!

      but hey, what do i know.....

    • 1 year ago
  • rhetoricallyineffective
  • dudefromtherock
    • +2
      dudefromtherock  
    • Wait a minute folks this guy is royalty...he is above the law y'all.What's the world coming to when a member of a royal family can't treat their servants like dirt? Times have gotten so twisted since the Middle Ages tsk tsk.

    • 1 year ago
  • keithponder
  • dudefromtherock
  • keithponder
  • artemis6
  • scamgea
  • themotivateddropout
    • 0
      themotivateddropout  
    • Fuck him.

      I'd never condone killing because of sexual preference, although I believe his sexual preference fueled his murderous rage, in his desire to hide it. So if the Saudi's want to take him home and stone him, fine by me.
      String the prick up.

    • 1 year ago
  • bailey78
  • thetrimsmith
  • bailey78
  • thetrimsmith
  • bailey78
  • thetrimsmith
  • Sparky2U
  • oppressed1
  • Dazedandconfused
  • Dazedandconfused
  • thetrimsmith
  • Incredulous
  • MisterWizard
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