tagged w/ Al Qaeda
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On December 30 of last year, ABC News reported on a 16-year-old Pakistani boy, Tariq Khan, who was killed with his 12-year-old cousin when a car in which he was riding was hit with a missile fired by a U.S. drone. As I noted at the time, the report contained this extraordinary passage buried in the middle:
Asked for documentation of Tariq and Waheed’s deaths, Akbar did not provide pictures of the missile strike scene. Virtually none exist, since drones often target people who show up at the scene of an attack.
What made that sentence so amazing was that it basically amounts to a report that the U.S. first kills people with drones, then fires on the rescuers and others who arrive at the scene where the new corpses and injured victims lie.
In a just-released, richly documented report, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, on behalf of the Sunday Times, documents that this is exactly what the U.S. is doing — and worse:
Full Story: http://peacerally.org/pakistan/u-s-drones-targeting-rescuers-and-mourners/On December 30 of last year, ABC News reported on a 16-year-old Pakistani boy, Tariq... more
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Consider the following when debating the issue terrorism and why we need the Travel Suppression Agency (TSA)
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Scientists note that fear of terrorism makes people stupid.
As I’ve repeatedly noted, FBI agents and CIA intelligence officials, constitutional law expert professor Jonathan Turley, Time Magazine, and the Washington Post have all said that U.S. government officials “were trying to create an atmosphere of fear in which the American people would give them more power”.
Indeed, the former Secretary of Homeland Security – Tom Ridge – admits that he was pressured to raise terror alerts to help Bush win reelection.
In the real world, as the National Safety Council notes:
– You are 17,600 times more likely to die from heart disease than from a terrorist attack
– You are 12,571 times more likely to die from cancer than from a terrorist attack
— You are 11,000 times more likely to die in an airplane accident than from a terrorist plot involving an airplane
— You are 1048 times more likely to die from a car accident than from a terrorist attack
–You are 404 times more likely to die in a fall than from a terrorist attack
— You are 87 times more likely to drown than die in a terrorist attack
– You are 13 times more likely to die in a railway accident than from a terrorist attack
–You are 12 times more likely to die from accidental suffocation in bed than from a terrorist attack
–You are 9 times more likely to choke to death on your own vomit than die in a terrorist attack
–You are 8 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than by a terrorist
–You are 8 times more likely to die from accidental electrocution than from a terrorist attack
– You are 6 times more likely to die from hot weather than from a terrorist attack
(Moreover, the chair of the 9/11 Commission said that the attack was preventable).Consider the following when debating the issue terrorism and why we need the Travel... more
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He wouldn't allow some Travel Suppression Agent to pat him down to make sure he wasn't with Al Qaeda.
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Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul was detained Monday by the Transportation Security Administration in Nashville, Tenn., after refusing a full body pat-down, POLITICO has confirmed.
“I spoke with him five minutes ago and he was being detained indefinitely,” Paul spokesperson Moira Bagley said. “The image scan went off; he refused patdown.”
“My son @SenRandPaul being detained by TSA for refusing full body pat-down after anomaly in body scanner in Nashville. More details coming,” wrote the authenticated Twitter account of presidential candidate Ron Paul.
Like his father, Rand Paul has libertarian leanings and has been a fierce critic of TSA’s pat-downs of passengers at airports, which he views as government overreach. The senator grilled TSA Administrator John Pistole last year after a 6-year-old girl from Paul’s hometown, was patted down by airport security.
“I guess this little girl would be part of the random pat-downs, this little girl from Bowling Green, Kentucky, one of my constituents,” Paul said, according to the Lexington Herald-Leader. “They’re still quite unhappy with you guys as well as myself and a lot of other Americans who think you’ve gone overboard, you’re missing the boat on terrorism because you’re doing these invasive searches on six-year-old girls.”He wouldn't allow some Travel Suppression Agent to pat him down to make sure he... more
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFFF-m8HW88
All this debate about TSA oppressive security measures and radical, freedom stealing legislation such as Carl Levin's (MI-D) NDAA 2012 and Joe Lieberman's (I-CT) Enemy Expatriation Act are all based on one gigantic hoax called "Al Qaeda."
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An American investigative journalist says the al-Qaeda is a fairytale terrorist group made up by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Israeli spy agency, Mossad.
"In the US, the Zionist propagandists are spinning the fanciful tale that Iran was involved with "al-Qaeda," the fairy tale organization concocted by Mossad and the CIA, in carrying out the 9/11 attacks," Wayne Madsen wrote in an article published in Global Research.
Madsen was referring to the latest US allegation that Iran was involved in the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.
On December 22, a US federal judge in Manhattan alleged that Iran, together with the Taliban and al-Qaeda, had been involved in the 9/11 attacks.
The court, meanwhile, withdrew Saudi Arabia's name from the 10-year-old case, even though 15 of the 19 attackers were Saudi nationals.
Tehran has condemned Washington's allegations as amateurish and baseless scenarios.
Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said that the US is jeopardizing international peace and security by repeating such groundless claims.
He added that the US role in founding the al-Qaeda and supporting it is common knowledgehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFFF-m8HW88
All this debate about TSA oppressive... more
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Everything you ever wanted to know about the 9/11 conspiracy theory in under 5 minutes.
Transcript and sources: http://www.corbettreport.com/?p=2594Everything you ever wanted to know about the 9/11 conspiracy theory in under 5... more
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Predictions are always problematic – there’s that pesky notion of “free will,” [.pdf] not to mention the stubborn refusal of reality to conform to our preconceptions.
1) War with Iran – One could argue we are already at war with Iran, what with US support for the terrorist Jundallah – a Sunni extremist group with links to al-Qaeda – which is attacking Iranian civilians and wreaking havoc in Iranian Baluchistan. Also, the sanctions we have imposed on Iran are, in themselves, acts of war – and we’ve seen how Iran is responding with threats to block the Strait of Hormuz, which a great deal of the world’s oil must pass through.
In line with my theory of “libertarian realism” – the idea that domestic political considerations determine a nation’s actions on the international stage – I’ll note that the number one force pushing for war with Iran is the indefatigable Israel lobby, which has been beating the war drums for years now and has the full support of both parties in Congress. Sure, the American people don’t want war – but since when have they had any say in our foreign policy?
Click source for predictions 2-6
7) The only antiwar presidential candidate will be continuously smeared, demonized, and eventually driven out of the GOP by the party Establishment – If Ron Paul even comes close to winning Iowa, he will have everything but the kitchen sink thrown at him by a grand alliance of neocons, Obama cultists, and Beltway fake-“libertarians.”
First they’ll blame the weather, then they’ll blame the “fanaticism” of Paul’s army of volunteers, and finally they’ll blame the voters, who are supposedly so poisoned by “resentment” that they must be declared officially mad. Delegates won fair and square will encounter “problems” with their credentials.
Gloria Borger will team up with a famous psychic to divine who really authored the infamous newsletters, and fresh non-scandals will be unearthed by enterprising “journalists.” In the end, a coalition of neocons and Romneyites will issue an encyclical, excommunicating Paul and his supporters from the Republican party – and opening the way for a third party bid that will threaten to put the GOP nominee in third in November.
Probability: 95%Predictions are always problematic – there’s that pesky notion of... more
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On Sunday, Iran rejected a ruling by Judge George Daniels in Manhattan that it is responsible along with al-Qaeda and the Taliban for the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast characterized the court decision as “clumsy scenario-making” by the United States. He said al-Qaeda has no presence in Iran and that it is quite “evident” that the United States created al-Qaeda and supported it.
In December 23, the federal court ruled ruled that Iran and the Lebanese Hezbollah materially and directly supported al-Qaeda in the September 11, 2001, attacks and are legally responsible for damages to hundreds of family members of victims who are plaintiffs in the case.On Sunday, Iran rejected a ruling by Judge George Daniels in Manhattan that it is... more
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Janet Napalitano doesn't inspire any confidence in her bloated bureaucracy's ability, or possibly lack-there-of to protect the nation's most critical infrastructure. Perhaps she is in the wrong line of work.
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U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano discusses the importance of bilateral and multilateral security efforts with the Council on Foreign Relation's (CFR) James M. Lindsay, detailing some of her department's most recent international collaborations in Europe and the Middle East.
"The things we know about don't keep me up at night as much as the things that are the unknown," Napolitano said, identifying themost concerning security threats as "the safety of travels, the security of cargo moving around the world, the ability to spot potential terrorists early before they can be successful, the ability to respond to a terrorist attack, and then the whole area of the protection of cyberspace."Janet Napalitano doesn't inspire any confidence in her bloated bureaucracy's... more
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Could you ever imagine that something like this could ever happen under a president who claims to be a constitutional lawyer? Add this to the fact that we don't have a documented case where any agent of the TSA has ever caught a terrorists, but we do have much documentation on TSA engaging in criminal activity.
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The TSA's 25 "viper" teams — for Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response — have run more than 9,300 unannounced checkpoints and other search operations in the last year. Department of Homeland Security officials have asked Congress for funding to add 12 more teams next year.
According to budget documents, the department spent $110 million in fiscal 2011 for "surface transportation security," including the TSA's viper program, and is asking for an additional $24 million next year. That compares with more than $5 billion for aviation security.
TSA officials say they have no proof that the roving viper teams have foiled any terrorist plots or thwarted any major threat to public safety. But they argue that the random nature of the searches and the presence of armed officers serve as a deterrent and bolster public confidence.
"We have to keep them [terrorists] on edge," said Frank Cilluffo, director of the Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University in Washington. "We're not going to have a permanent presence everywhere."Could you ever imagine that something like this could ever happen under a president... more
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The most-wanted man in the world was finally tracked down and killed by US special forces unit during a siege in Pakistan in May, bringing an end to a long search but failing to convince everyone that he was actually dead when no photos of his body were released by the military.The most-wanted man in the world was finally tracked down and killed by US special... more
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http://bcove.me/sxi31pzq (For video)
—The medical chart Abdisalam Osman’s mother uses to flick away flies says her youngest son suffers from acute malnutrition and the measles. A chest X-ray will soon reveal he also has tuberculosis.
When he arrived at Mogadishu's Benadir Hospital, 3-year-old Abdisalam weighed only 14 pounds. Each laborious breath made his tiny rib cage stick out even farther.
He lies beside his mother, unable to cry; all his energy reserved for his weak gasps.
“A 50-50 chance,” says Dr. Shafie Mohamed Jimale, gently touching the little boy’s emaciated arm. The 30-year-old Somali pediatrician, trained in Sudan, became a father two months earlier; his son was born at the height of the famine that is mainly killing children.
Many of his patients have died. About 50-50.
When Somalia’s famine was declared in July there were emergency calls for help and shocking statistics: 29,000 children had died in the worst drought in 60 years.
A global relief effort has helped save some. Last Friday, the United Nations Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit downgraded famine declarations for three southern regions, thanks to the rains that have finally come and emergency food aid.
But the UN warns that 250,000 are at risk as cholera, malaria and other diseases spread through crowded hospitals and camps. Tens of thousands of others still face starvation.
This famine should not have come as a shock. And if its roots are not understood and the world looks away again, Somalia’s cycle of despair — corruption, starvation, war, death — will continue, dragging children like Abdisalam into its abyss.
So what caused the famine?
Back-to-back droughts killed the livestock and destroyed the farms throughout the Horn of Africa, like the one Abdisalam’s family tended.
The southern region of the country is also warring with Al Shabab, the militant Islamic group that has pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda, and starved its own people by blocking outside foreign aid.
These are the easy answers.
These are the hard ones: Somalia’s rampant and criminal government-corruption; a war on terror at the expense of aid; and a lucrative crisis industry that spends millions that Somalis will never see.
This is why this country has topped Foreign Policy’s index of failed states for the last three years and why a drought that affected the entire Horn of Africa became a famine only in Somalia.
The scope of the tragedy is overwhelming. Last Friday’s UN announcement on easing famine conditions did not include Mogadishu. The city remains a famine zone.
Tents made of sticks and cloth, pitched between dilapidated buildings, house the starving and desperate. The sea of people in the camps ripples endlessly. It is difficult to get an accurate estimate, but it is believed that more than 100,000 have arrived since July.
Water is still scarce and largely contaminated. Mounds of human feces dot walkways between the shelters. Security is a problem. Rapes and abuses have been reported. Few foreign aid groups have come, with the exception of the Turks, who have taken over a large region of the city now called “Little Istanbul.”
Across the street from Tarabunka, a sprawling camp of more than 16,000, the graveyard is already near capacity. Ali Kafi, one of the farmers-turned-gravediggers, says he hunts untouched patches of red earth to find burial plots. Before 10 on one October morning, three babies and a young woman, nine-months pregnant, were buried. It was a typical day.
The good news for Mogadishu is that there are few visible remnants of the Shabab, which has waged war against the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) for nearly three years.
Weakened themselves by the famine and claiming to withdraw for “tactical” purposes, hundreds of Shabab fighters abruptly left the capital this summer.
This is why Abdisalam’s family trekked here from the south, believing there would be help in Mogadishu from the TFG, the UN-backed parliament of 550, propped up by a 9,000-member African Union peacekeeping force of Burundian and Ugandan soldiers.
The TFG had an opportunity to repair its badly damaged reputation and make the famine a priority. That didn’t happen.
As people began to starve earlier this year, the country’s president and its parliamentary speaker — President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed and Speaker Hassan Sharif, who are known as the “Two Sharifs” — were locked in a dispute, trying to shore up political support as they debated at conferences in Djibouti, Kenya or Uganda.
“They say the fish starts rotting from the head,” says Abdi Rashid, an analyst with the International Crisis Group. “At the height of the famine, there was a president who was busy holding meetings with clan elders, not talking about the famine, but about the struggle with the speaker of parliament.”
But the “Two Sharifs” are not the only members of the TFG accused of political gamesmanship or corruption.
One senior TFG official says he is disgusted with his government’s continued focus on politics and power.
“What are we doing?” he asks. “People are dying and we’re focusing on passing a road map?”
snip
Still, there is confusion, says Joe Belliveau, operations manager in Somalia for Médecins Sans Frontières. “The bottom line is that it certainly does not encourage humanitarian action,” Belliveau says. “It’s fine to say that these conditions are lifted and maybe that will help in the short term, but the fact that those laws are on the books remains a major deterrent.”
Abdisalam is defying the odds that have conspired against him — the war against the Shabab, corruption, ineffective aid groups and a famine that the world failed to stop but is now trying to ease.
The nutrition supplements provided by the hospital have made him stronger and TB medication has calmed his breathing.
“He’s a fighter,” said Jimale, the doctor who has volunteered at the city-run Benadir Hospital for the last two years.
Abdisalam was discharged from the hospital three weeks ago and Jimale said the little boy’s odds of survival had increased to more than 80 per cent.
But Abdisalam and his family haven’t returned home. The rains may have come and eased the drought, but a Kenyan-led offensive to fight the Shabab has left the region war torn again.
Abdisalam now lives in one of the camps, just one of thousands getting by, waiting for help.http://bcove.me/sxi31pzq (For video)
—The medical chart Abdisalam... more
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Another good one for America's Fake War on Terror.
Either the claim that Awlaki was killed last week is a lie or the claim he was killed in 2009 was a lie.Another good one for America's Fake War on Terror.
Either the claim that... more
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The United States government killed an American citizen in Yemen on Friday in hostile action, despite not having declared war on the country or charging the citizen, American-born Anwar al-Awlaki, with a crime.
In a statement Friday morning, President Obama hailed the killing as "a major blow to al Qaeda's most active operational affiliate." He also said the death "marks another significant milestone in the broader effort to defeat al Qaeda."
Time magazine reported al Awlaki was killed by airstrikes by the secretive Joint Special Operations Command, the same unit that took out Osama bin Laden in May.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/30/awlaki-killed-american-cl_n_988929.htmlThe United States government killed an American citizen in Yemen on Friday in hostile... more
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mab001
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added this
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4 months ago
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By Glenn Greenwald
Salon
It was first reported in January of last year that the Obama administration had compiled a hit list of American citizens whom the President had ordered assassinated without any due process, and one of those Americans was Anwar al-Awlaki. No effort was made to indict him for any crimes (despite a report last October that the Obama administration was "considering" indicting him). Despite substantial doubt among Yemen experts about whether he even has any operational role in Al Qaeda, no evidence (as opposed to unverified government accusations) was presented of his guilt. When Awlaki's father sought a court order barring Obama from killing his son, the DOJ argued, among other things, that such decisions were "state secrets" and thus beyond the scrutiny of the courts. He was simply ordered killed by the President: his judge, jury and executioner. When Awlaki's inclusion on President Obama's hit list was confirmed, The New York Times noted that "it is extremely rare, if not unprecedented, for an American to be approved for targeted killing."
After several unsuccessful efforts to assassinate its own citizen, the U.S. succeeded today (and it was the U.S.). It almost certainly was able to find and kill Awlaki with the help of its long-time close friend President Saleh, who took a little time off from murdering his own citizens to help the U.S. murder its. The U.S. thus transformed someone who was, at best, a marginal figure into a martyr, and again showed its true face to the world. The government and media search for The Next bin Laden has undoubtedly already commenced.
What's most striking about this is not that the U.S. Government has seized and exercised exactly the power the Fifth Amendment was designed to bar ("No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law"), and did so in a way that almost certainly violates core First Amendment protections (questions that will now never be decided in a court of law). What's most amazing is that its citizens will not merely refrain from objecting, but will stand and cheer the U.S. Government's new power to assassinate their fellow citizens, far from any battlefield, literally without a shred of due process from the U.S. Government. Many will celebrate the strong, decisive, Tough President's ability to eradicate the life of Anwar al-Awlaki -- including many who just so righteously condemned those Republican audience members as so terribly barbaric and crass for cheering Governor Perry's execution of scores of serial murderers and rapists -- criminals who were at least given a trial and appeals and the other trappings of due process before being killed.
From an authoritarian perspective, that's the genius of America's political culture. It not only finds way to obliterate the most basic individual liberties designed to safeguard citizens from consummate abuses of power (such as extinguishing the lives of citizens without due process). It actually gets its citizens to stand up and clap and even celebrate the destruction of those safeguards.
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/By Glenn Greenwald
Salon
It was first reported in January of last year that the... more
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Another for the dumbest story of the week.
Al Qaeda tells Iran's President Ahmadinejad to stop questioning 9/11. That's funny because the US government doesn't want anyone questioning 9/11 either.
"Al Qaeda" wants the world to know that they did the attacks and that it wasn't a government conspiracy.
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Terrorist organisation's magazine reportedly says it is 'ridiculous' for Iran's president to blame the attacks on the US government
Al-Qaida has sent a message to the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, asking him to stop spreading conspiracy theories about the 9/11 attacks.
Iranian media on Wednesday reported quotes from what appears to be an article published in the latest issue of the al-Qaida English language magazine, Inspire, which described Ahmadinejad's remarks over the 11 September attacks as "ridiculous".
"The Iranian government has professed on the tongue of its president Ahmadinejad that it does not believe that al-Qaida was behind 9/11 but rather, the US government," the article said, according to Iranian media. "So we may ask the question: why would Iran ascribe to such a ridiculous belief that stands in the face of all logic and evidence?"
The al-Qaida article insisted it had been behind the attacks and criticised the Iranian president for discrediting the terrorist group.
"For them, al-Qaida was a competitor for the hearts and minds of the disenfranchised Muslims around the world," said the article published in the Inspire magazine. "Al-Qaida … succeeded in what Iran couldn't. Therefore it was necessary for the Iranians to discredit 9/11 and what better way to do so? Conspiracy theories."Another for the dumbest story of the week.
Al Qaeda tells Iran's President... more
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PBS Frontline details FBI Special Agent John O'Neill's efforts to sound the alarms about al Qaeda's growing reach and threat to the U.S., only to be branded a maverick and roundly ignored. O'Neill left the FBI in the summer of 2001 and took a new job as head of security at the World Trade Center, where he died on September 11th.
The 9/11 Commission's investigation revealed that America's $30 billion intelligence community, spread over more than a dozen agencies, was disorganized, fractured and impaired by organizational and legal restrictions on the sharing of information.
These disclosures directly relate to John O'Neill's story. He came tantalizingly close to possibly uncovering the 9/11 plot. But his investigations into the USS Cole terrorist attack and into Al Qaeda's presence in the United States were both undermined by the CIA and FBI's failure to share information with each other.
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And if I may add to that by Mr. O'Neill's own admission, the thwarting of him doing anymore work on this in pursuing Bin Laden by the Bush administration. The Millennium Plot that was thwarted by the work of O'Neill led to the total ignoring of this threat under Bush. I suspect due to their ties to the Saudis. I wonder exactly how much Mr. O'Neill may well have uncovered about the money behind this and how far it actually went up the ladder in his own government. There is so much more to this that we may never know, but one thing we do know is that there was at least one man with the tenacity to do what was necessary to pursue the truth, and he paid for it ironically in the WTC with his life today ten years ago.PBS Frontline details FBI Special Agent John O'Neill's efforts to sound the... more
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There is one category of 9/11 victims, perhaps the most deserving of recognition, that will continue to remain hidden from public view. These are the Americans who died as victims of the 9/11 cover-up, before, during and after 9/11. Unlike other victims of 9/11, these victims were not accidental heroes. It was their beliefs and their convictions that lead to their deaths. And in some cases, they knew the danger they were involved in.So lets look back at some of these heroes of 9/11.
http://www.cabaltimes.com/2011/09/11/remembering-the-victims-of-the-9-11-cover-up/There is one category of 9/11 victims, perhaps the most deserving of recognition, that... more
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