tagged w/ Poland
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The head of NATO has announced that the United States, Russia and NATO should link their missile defense systems together to defend themselves from potential threats. Many officials are saying this is a new era for U.S. and Russian relations, but how much will really change?The head of NATO has announced that the United States, Russia and NATO should link... more
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The big Russia news today is that the Obama administration abandoned plans (cooked up back during the Bush administration) to build a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic.
For a little background, Bush pitched this missile defense shield to the two former Warsaw Pact countries as a way to defend the West against a potential Iranian nuclear threat. The Russians totally hated it.
Der Spiegel is one among many in chorus of reports that Moscow is jubilant over the decision. (Though FP asks how much the Czech Republic and Poland really wanted the installations anyway.)
So the question today is: Did the US just capitulate? Did the Obama Administration give the Russians a big strategic win?The big Russia news today is that the Obama administration abandoned plans (cooked up... more
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The United States is to shelve plans for a missile-defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday, cheering Russia but triggering concern in Central European capitals.
Citing unnamed current and former US officials, the Journal said Washington will base its decision "on a determination that Iran's long-range missile program has not progressed as rapidly as previously estimated, reducing the threat to the continental US and major European capitals".
"The findings, expected to be completed as early as next week following a 60-day review ordered by President Barack Obama, would be a major reversal from the Bush administration, which pushed aggressively to begin construction of the Eastern European system before leaving office in January," it added.The United States is to shelve plans for a missile-defense system in Poland and the... more
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PRAGUE – President Barack Obama has decided to scrap plans for a U.S. missile defense shield in the Czech Republic and Poland that had deeply angered Russia, the Czech prime minister confirmed Thursday.
NATO's new chief hailed the move as "a positive step" and a Russian analyst said Obama's decision will increase the chances that Russia will cooperate more closely with the United States in the dispute over Iran's nuclear program.
Premier Jan Fischer told reporters that Obama phoned him overnight to say that "his government is pulling out of plans to build a missile defense radar on Czech territory."PRAGUE – President Barack Obama has decided to scrap plans for a U.S. missile... more
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The U.S. is to shelve the Bush administration's plans for a missile-defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic.
Barack Obama confirmed the decision in a telephone conversation with the Czech prime minister, according to the country's media.
The Bush administration's claims that these missile systems in Poland and the Czech Republic were to defend against Iranian missiles was an insult to intelligence.The U.S. is to shelve the Bush administration's plans for a missile-defense... more
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Somers Town (2008) is fresh and lighthearted coming of age story that has real-life charm and drama. It is serious yet fun look at growing up. The people you meet and the situations you get into, as well as your dreams, truly shape who you are. Being filmed in black and white gives it a clean feel that enables you to focus on the events and characters without distraction. The original music by Gaven Clark is refreshing and perfectly fits the style of the film...Somers Town (2008) is fresh and lighthearted coming of age story that has real-life... more
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dbin78
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added this
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2 years ago
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Oh good! A Polish website that isn't full of racial hang-ups! Let's try out the Polish-language version of the site...
Click on the link above to see the actual image .......Oh good! A Polish website that isn't full of racial hang-ups! Let's try out... more
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The Ill-Fated Pact
Bartosz T. Wieliński
2009-08-21
The German and Soviet invasion of Poland was a prelude to a destructive war and the communist enslavement of eastern Europe, 140 German intellectuals write in a declaration.
'We thus respond to those in Russia who are trying to defend Stalin. They don't seem to be living in the 21st century,' says CSU deputy Hartmut Koschyk, one of the declaration's signatories.
The declaration is an appeal to Europe to not forget, while celebrating the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Iron Curtain, the circumstances in which the continent was originally divided seventy years ago.
'We are aware, and this is a painful awareness, that without the German-started World War II neither the communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe nor the division of Europe and Germany would have happened,' write the German intellectuals. Rather than identifying 1 September 1939 - the day of the German invasion of Poland - as the beginning of the tragedy, they point at 23 August 1939, when the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact was signed in Moscow. In it, the Third Reich and the Soviet Union divided Central Europe between themselves. 'It was an ill-fated pact,' reads the declaration.
The declaration was initiated by Marianne Birthler, head of the Stasi Records Authority and the Foundation for Research into the DDR Dictatorship, and former DDR dissident, Wolfgang Templin. It was signed by nearly 140 persons, including, among others, ex-president of the Bundestag, Prof Rita Süssmuth, the first head of the Stasi Records Authority, Joachim Gauck, historians Arnulf Baring, Dieter Bingen and Heirinch Winkler, journalists and politicians.
The declaration is unprecedented. To avoid being accused of historical revisionism - diminishing German responsibility for WWII - Germans seldom speak about Russia's responsibility for the war. Politicians usually steer well clear of the subject in order not to damage relations with Moscow. Yet the declaration leaves no doubt about what communism meant for eastern Europe.
'In the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and part of Germany, all weakened by the war and Nazi rule, the Soviet Union introduced a new regime. That had disastrous consequences for society, the economy and culture, as well as for the masses of people who were persecuted or lost their lives because they stood in the communists' way,' reads the declaration.
Markus Meckel (SPD), one of the signatories, assures Gazeta that no one wants to whitewash Nazi Germany. 'But we need to remember that there was another totalitarianism which also committed crimes and left scars on central Europe's collective memory. People in the West have to finally acknowledge this,' says Mr Meckel.
Moreover, the German declaration comes at a time when a group of Russian historians, acting on the Kremlin's orders, is trying to defend the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact. They are arguing that Stalin wanted to buy himself time to prepare for the war against Germany, that he was forced to sign the pact by the inflexible position of Poland which didn't want an alliance with Russia. Some have gone as far as to suggest that it is Poland that bears responsibility for the wear because it refused to meet Hitler's 'moderate' demands and surrender the 'Gdańsk corridor.'
Mr Meckel adds that the declaration is also an appeal to Russia to start an honest debate about the past. 'They should finally confront the vision of history of the Poles or the Balts,' says the SPD deputy. The signatories Gazeta has talked to hope that chancellor Angela Merkel speaks in a similar tone during the 1 September celebrations on Westerplatte, Gdańsk.
The German declaration is also a homage to the democratic opposition in Poland, Czech Republic and Hungary. 'We will never forget that it was especially the Poles who, fighting for our freedom and theirs, dealt the first blows to the communist regime,' reads the declaration.The Ill-Fated Pact
Bartosz T. Wieliński
2009-08-21
The German and Soviet... more
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Hollywood movie posters seem a bit Same-ish.
Seems the polish have got it down to a fine art
These are the polish posters for some of Hollywood's biggest blockbusters
much more creativeHollywood movie posters seem a bit Same-ish.
Seems the polish have got it down to... more
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On April 24, 1964, the key architects of the “Brussels EU” – all of them active members of the IG Farben/Nazi coalition during WWII – met at the “Brussels EU” headquarters to stake their claims on the future of the European continent.
1. Walter Hallstein, a German lawyer, had been appointed the founding president of the so-called EU Commission, the highest body within the “Brussels EU.” In 1964, the time above meeting took place, he had already been the chief architect of the “Brussels EU” construct for seven years. Hallstein, not legitimized by any democratic vote anywhere in Europe, ruled like a “tsar” – imposed by the successors of the IG Farben oil and drug cartel – over an army of 3,000 administrative servants in Brussels and a budget of billions of Euros (in today’s currency).
2. Ludwig Erhard had been an economic consultant to the Nazi/IG Farben-coalition. He was founder and head of the Nazi-financed “Institut für Industrieforschung” (“Institute for Industry Research”) from 1942.
After World War II, Erhard became an economic consultant to the Allied forces and later Minister of Economic Affairs and Chancellor in post-war Germany. He was then a member of the Christian Democratic Party (CDU). In his functions, he was responsible for the reintegration of the IG Farben managers sentenced in Nuremberg for crimes against humanity into leading corporate positions in post-war Germany.
One of those to be “reintegrated” was BAYER's WWII director Fritz Ter Mer. This executive of the world’s largest pharmaceutical (!) company was convicted in the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal No. VI for genocide in connection with the deadly human experiments with patented Bayer drugs in the KZ Auschwitz (www.profit-over-life.org).
3. Ludger Westrick was chairman of the board, president, and later central trustee of the state-owned “Vereinigte Industrie-Unternehmen AG” (VIAG) during the Nazi era. In post-war Germany, Westrick joined the Christian Democratic Party (CDU).
By 1964 – at the time of the above meeting – he had been appointed head of the German Chancellery, one of the most powerful positions in the German political system. In that function he controlled all key decisions of German politics, including economics, foreign policy, secret service, political funds, public relations and propaganda of the post-WWII German government.
Westrick, the man on the above picture, was the immediate successor of Globke and had been introduced into his office by this man.
4. Karl Carstens was an enthusiastic Nazi follower, joining the SA in 1934. He was a registered member of the Nazi party, the NSDAP from 1940 on. In 1955 he became member of the German Christian Democratic Union. Concurrently, he advanced to the position of Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs with the defined field of responsibility: “European Questions.”
5. Karl-Günther von Hase joined the Wehrmacht, the German army in 1936. He participated in the Nazi-German Invasion of Poland in 1939, the Battle of France in 1940 and the Invasion of Russia from 1941 to 1945 and married the daughter of a Nazi-General. From 1962 to 1967 – including the time of the above meeting in Brussels – von Hase was head of the press office of the German government and responsible for its public relations and propaganda.
Only 19 years after the IG Farben/Nazi-coalition had caused the death of 60 million people and destroyed half of Europe during WWII, they were already at it again. Their third attempt to conquer Europe would not take place in military uniforms but in the grey suits of corporate and political stakeholders of the cartel.
Please have a look at the article itself as there is more information there. Also many translated documents are available on this site www.eu-facts.org which show the clear roots of the "Brussels EU."On April 24, 1964, the key architects of the “Brussels EU” – all of... more
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Life in Poland for an out gay person is not only restricted legally, but dangerous. Many are fleeing the country for safer more tolerant places.
"Polish gay activist Waldemar Zboralski speaks to LGF online about life in Poland for the LGBT community:
My first steps as gay activist began 25 years ago. Shortly after that the Polish Communist Police started a famous anti-gay action named “Akcja Hiacynt” (“Hyacinth Campaign”) which arrested around 11,000 gay men. This happened in 1985. In 1986 Bishop Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict 16th), started his campaign against homosexual people in an official Vatican-announcement". He described homosexuals as having strong tendancies towards "intrinsic moral evil" and said homosexuality was an "objective disorder".
"You could say that this started a second wave of hatred in 20th century: similar in size and intensity to Hitler’s campaign against homosexual people between 1933-1945.
All this must be explained to understand why so much immense hatred against gay people comes from in countries like Poland which are very strictly ruled by The Roman Catholic Church.
During my first period of political activity for a gay and lesbian movement, besides the “Hyacinth Campaign” in 1985, me and my friends, step by step achieved good results with regular meetings, discussions and intensified our political consciousness for the right to exist in our society. It was becoming better from year to year, more and more homosexual people in Poland were organized as politically conscious lesbian and gay citizens.
Everything was going well until 1993. Then, The Vatican, which has a very strong influence on Polish politicians, published a series of anti-homosexual announcements and from then on the Roman Catholic Church in Poland; started a prolonged “word-war” against the human rights of lesbian and gay people in Poland.
There is a difference between the experiences of LGBT people in Poland during the Communist era and today. The Communists wanted to control the activities of LGBTs. Now, the Vatican influenced Polish politicians want to completely eliminate any LGBT activity from Polish society!"Life in Poland for an out gay person is not only restricted legally, but dangerous.... more
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A Polish woman who claims her 13-year-old daughter got pregnant on holiday after using a swimming pool is suing the Egyptian hotel they stayed at.
Magdalena Kwiatkowska's reckons her daughter conceived "from stray sperm after taking a dip in the hotel's mixed pool" and wants compensation.
According to a travel industry source she refuses to entertain the notion that her daughter met any boys while away.A Polish woman who claims her 13-year-old daughter got pregnant on holiday after using... more
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richjm
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added this
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2 years ago
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Eleven-year-old Ewelina Bledniak was looking at a year split from her parents, friends, and everything she loves about living in America. The federal government was ready to deport Ewelina to her native Poland because when she was 3 years old, the family missed a deadline to file a key immigration document.
"I love going to school here, and my friends, I'm going to miss them," Ewelina said as she worried about being deported. "I like living here."
But things are looking up. An Immigration and Customs Enforcement attorney last week asked the U.S. Immigration Court in Atlanta, Georgia, to reopen Ewelina's case and terminate the deportation proceeding ICE had initiated. The motion asks the court to send the case back to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services for resolution.
"They seem to be willing to find a favorable solution to this matter," said Ewelina's attorney, Maria Odom of Atlanta. "... It's good news for the child, absolutely."
Her father, Hubert, came to the United States legally and is a naturalized U.S. citizen; and her mother, Agnieszka (Agnes), also arrived legally and is a legal resident. Ewelina is neither.
Under a temporary amnesty program at the turn of the 21st century, illegal immigrants could seek legal status without returning to their home countries. However, a previous lawyer for the Bledniak family missed an April 2001 deadline to file the petition, the Bledniaks say.
Years later, when it authorities realized Ewelina had never achieved her legal status, ICE ordered her to return to Poland to apply for legal U.S. residency through the U.S. Embassy there. "That process could have taken a year," Odom said.
"The government gave Ewelina until July 23 to leave the country voluntarily; after that date, she would be deported and ineligible to return to the United States for 10 years," Odom said. The family has booked a July 20 flight to Warsaw, Poland, where the parents planned to stay for a few weeks before leaving the girl with her maternal grandmother while the immigration process played out.Eleven-year-old Ewelina Bledniak was looking at a year split from her parents,... more
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They found love in the horrors of a concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland, but despite an amazing escape, never managed to share the dream of a new life together.
This true and tragic war-time story is told on the pages of a Polish comic book. Those behind the publication hope it'll help improve young readers' understanding of history.
The comic book drawings are grim and frightening, but that’s exactly what graphic designer Lukasz Poller wants to achieve. Somewhat unexpectedly, this is actually a love story set when Poland was in the grip of the Nazis. The pair on the cover is not fictional.They found love in the horrors of a concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland, but... more
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[By award winning blogger Yoani Sánchez ] Generation Y Blogger, written on location from Cuba.
I was only fourteen and everything was happening too fast around me. The material shortages were severe and in the shops of my city it was already difficult to find the magazines with many colors but few truths that came from the USSR. We had seen the television show of General Ochoa’s trial*, and my parents lost the illusion watching how the law folded before the olive green uniforms.
News of what happened in Poland came in those same days. We didn’t understand anything, because until then the European socialist block seemed to us something designed for eternity. A distant cousin told us of her apprehensions after a short stay in Moscow, but we still believed that the COMECON, the Warsaw Pact and the Robotron typewriters would survive us all.
The word Solidarity had suddenly become fashionable and several schools in my city were still named People’s Republic of Poland. Although my Marxism-Leninism teacher was making an effort to idealize the East, something inside him snapped when he learned what was happening on the streets of Warsaw. If the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 had been difficult for our leaders to justify, the rebellion of the “Polish working class” left more than one without answers.
I grew up, had a son and he also came to repeat the slogan, “Pioneers for communism, we will be like Che.” Today he is the same age I was in that tumultuous 1989, when my doubts began, when I knew that everything they’d drilled into me might not be true.
*Translator’s note*
General Arnaldo Ochoa, a member of Fidel Castro’s 26th of July Movement, a prominent general in the Cuban army and a “Hero of the Revolution”, was arrested on June 12, 1989 and charged with corruption, drug trafficking (in alliance with Pablo Escobar) and treason. His trial was broadcast on Cuban TV (the films, subtitled in English, are available on line). Ochoa was executed on July 12, 1989.[By award winning blogger Yoani Sánchez ] Generation Y Blogger, written on... more
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WARSAW, Poland - The Rev. Ksawery Knotz has a message for all married Catholic couples out there: there's nothing wrong with a steamy sex life.
In fact, it's a good thing.
In his new book "Sex As You Don't Know It: For Married Couples Who Love God," the Polish friar provides a theological and practical guide for Catholics that has little in common with the strait-laced attitudes often associated with the Roman Catholic Church.
"Some people, when they hear about the holiness of married sex, immediately imagine that such sex has to be deprived of joy, frivolous play, fantasy and attractive positions," Knotz writes. "(They think) it has to be sad like a traditional church hymn."
But Knotz, a Franciscan friar from a monastery outside Krakow in southern Poland, wants to change all that. His book aims to sweep away the taboos and assure Catholic couples that good sex is part of a good marriage.
"The most important message is that sexuality does not deviate at all from religiousness and the Catholic faith, and that we can connect spirituality and a search for God with a happy sex life," Knotz told The Associated Press by telephone.
Much of the book stems from questions that Knotz encountered while counseling married couples.
"I talk with a lot of married couples and I listen to them, so these problems just kind of sit in my mind," he said. "I would like for them to be happier with their sex life, and for them to understand the Church's teachings so there won't be unnecessary tension or a sense of guilt."WARSAW, Poland - The Rev. Ksawery Knotz has a message for all married Catholic couples... more
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In an apparent attempt to be politically correct, much of the American media seems to go out of its way to deliberately avoid connecting the word “German” with the words “concentration camp”
“They like to call these camps ‘Polish.’ We would like them to be accurate and not mislead the public by calling the German camps Polish,” said Preisler whose committee has been fighting such misidentification for many years. “It’s been repeated so often, a lot of people have come to believe it.”
Preisler thinks the media may want to be sensitive to the way the Germans might feel about always bringing up the past and their part in the Holocaust. “I wish they would be just as sensitive about the feelings of the Polish people and not confuse the American public by putting a ‘Polish’ label on Auschwitz or any other German concentration camp.”
WLIW21 apologizes for the misleading language printed in our April 2009 program guide, In Focus, regarding the upcoming broadcast ‘Swimming in Auschwitz’ that identified Auschwitz concentration camp as ‘Polish.’
“The language used was an editorial oversight due to space restrictions and was only meant to reflect the camp’s geography. The language was not intended as a characterization of Poland or its people.
“We sincerely apologize for any misrepresentation construed and offense taken by the statement, which was accidental. ‘Swimming in Auschwitz’ is being broadcast April 4 as part of WLIW21’s special programming in honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day throughout April as a way of acknowledging all the victims of Nazi actions.In an apparent attempt to be politically correct, much of the American media seems to... more
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WARSAW, Poland - A fast-moving fire tore through a three-story building housing homeless people in northwestern Poland early Monday, killing 21 people and injuring 20 more, including an infant, officials said.
The blaze broke out around 1 a.m. Monday in a shelter for poorer residents of Kamien Pomorski, some 370 miles from the Polish capital and near the Baltic Sea coast, said Pawel Fratczak, a spokesman for Poland's national firefighters.
Fratczak said many of the victims were so badly burned that it would be hard to identify them quickly.There were 77 people registered as residents in the building at the time of the blaze. Fratczak said not all were yet accounted for, and that the death toll could still rise.
The injured, many of whom suffered broken bones after jumping out of first and second-floor windows to escape the blaze, were taken to local hospitals. Two people were being treated for burns, including an 8-month old baby.
The injuries are not considered life-threatening, Fratczak said.
It was not immediately clear what caused the blaze, but police and fire investigators were on the scene to launch an investigation.WARSAW, Poland - A fast-moving fire tore through a three-story building housing... more
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A Polish politician has criticized his local zoo for acquiring a "gay" elephant named Ninio who prefers male companions and will probably not procreate, local media reported on Friday.
"We didn't pay 37 million zlotys ($11 million) for the largest elephant house in Europe to have a gay elephant live there," Michal Grzes, a conservative councilor in the city of Poznan in western Poland, was quoted as saying.A Polish politician has criticized his local zoo for acquiring a "gay"... more
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"As Europe diversifies, nearly every nation and culture on the continent seems to battle for victimhood status. Poles have especially good reason to see themselves as long oppressed, having been fought over and occupied for much of the last century by vicious regimes. Shifting political power struggles during and after the war, among other complications of Polish Jewish history, led some Polish Jews at certain points to side with Soviets against Nazis and Polish partisans. The whole moral morass, essential to Polish identity, tends to be lost on outsiders, many of whom unthinkingly regard the country, throughout most of the last century at least, as just a Jewish killing field.
Jerzy Halbersztadt is director of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw, which will soon begin construction of a new $60 million home next to the Warsaw Ghetto Memorial, paid for by the nation and the city.
Polish anti-Semitism persists, Mr. Halbersztadt said. “But Poles are more strongly pro-American, and a side effect is that Poland also has the strongest pro-Israel policy, to which there is no opposition anywhere on the local political spectrum,” he added. “Anti-Semitism is no longer an issue particular to us in daily life.”
Michal Bilewicz, a young Jewish psychologist who specializes in Polish-Jewish relations, echoed that thought. He sat one recent morning in his office at the University of Warsaw, in a building that used to be Gestapo headquarters, beside the former ghetto.
Not that there isn’t anti-Semitism in Poland, “but there is no place for it in public today,” Mr. Bilewicz said. “The last time a national survey was done here, in 2002, although the number of anti-Semites rose slightly — and these were almost all older people — more important the number of anti-anti-Semites went way up.”
He pointed to books like “Fear” and “Neighbors” by the historian Jan T. Gross, documenting pogroms at Jedwabne and other atrocities by Poles against Jews during and after the war, which provoked much public soul-searching and made denial of Polish complicity no longer possible.
Culture, despite the virtual absence of Jews here, has meanwhile helped shift attitudes in this country, not entirely but significantly. Walk into a Polish bookstore these days, and you’ll find shelves heaving with volumes about Jewish history and culture. There is a Jewish book fair here in Warsaw, a Jewish cultural festival in Krakow, not to mention Mr. Halbersztadt’s museum, planned to open in 2012.""As Europe diversifies, nearly every nation and culture on the continent seems to... more
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