Let Iran enrich uranium
Christoph Bertram
March 26, 2007 9:00 AM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/christoph_bertram/2007/03/getting_to_ye=
s_with_iran.html
There is a wise American saying: "If you are in a hole, stop digging."
The six governments currently considering the next steps to prevent
Iran from developing a nuclear bomb - the five permanent members of
the UN security council and Germany - should heed that advice.
Otherwise, they could end up without any handle on the Iranian nuclear
programme and with only one (useless) option left: a military strike.
Yet the six governments seem determined to continue with what has been
their strategy so far. Their condition for negotiating with Iran is a
prior halt of its nuclear enrichment activities. Only in exchange for
Iran's permanent renunciation of enrichment will they provide major
rewards - from lifting all sanctions and trade restrictions to
security guarantees.
Straight talking
Francis Fukuyama
March 26, 2007 8:30 AM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/francis_fukuyama/2007/03/the_trouble_wi=
th_japanese_nati.html
Barely half a year into his premiership, Japan's Shinzo Abe is
provoking anger across Asia and mixed feelings in his country's key
ally, the United States. But will the Bush administration use its
influence to nudge Abe away from inflammatory behaviour?
Abe's predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi, was a mold-breaking leader,
reviving Japan's economy, reforming the postal savings system, and
smashing the long-ruling Liberal Democratic party's faction system.
But Koizumi also legitimised a new Japanese nationalism, antagonising
China and South Korea by his annual visits to the Yasukuni Shrine. If
anything, Abe is even more committed to building an assertive and
unapologetic Japan.
What are European values?
Charles Grant
March 25, 2007 4:00 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/charles_grant/2007/03/why_values_matter=
_in_a_wider_e.html
The larger the EU becomes, the more important it is for the people who
live in it to enlarrealise that their union has been built on common
values. So I am delighted that the Berlin declaration, issued at the
special EU summit marking the union's 50th birthday, stresses European
values and principles.
In its 50 years of history, the union has achieved nothing more
magnificent than enlargement, which has helped to spread democracy,
stability, security and prosperity across most of the continent.
Enlargement is not only good for the countries that have joined the
union (22, including East Germany), but also for those already in it.
Economically, enlargement creates a bigger market and allows more
economic specialisation, encouraging economic growth. Strategically,
it gives the union more weight in the world.
Stop apologising!
Simon Jenkins
March 25, 2007 3:07 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/simon_jenkins/2007/03/there_can_be_too_=
much.html
There can be too much of any good thing. The week's obsessive
celebration of the ending of the slave trade had reduced me to media
hibernation. Every politician, churchman, radio and television
presenter has sought to outdo every other in telling us that slavery
was evil. Historians, musicians, playwrights, comedians, poets have
joined in. The BBC's current affairs output has became a monotony of
smothering moral self-righteousness. The judgment has been appalling.
The point of history is to find out what happened and why, and thereby
gain wisdom. It is not to make the present feel smug about the past.
Why invest events 200 years ago with words such as guilt, apology,
atonement and reparation? Is there some more recent guilt we are
trying to conceal? If the BBC board had been around in 1807 how many
flotillas would they have been financing, and what moral turpitude are
they known nervously concealing? By Sunday night my brain was starting
to turn. Perhaps there was something to be said for the slave trade
after all.
Peace in our time
Ilana Bet-El
March 25, 2007 1:00 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/ilana_betel/2007/03/a_successful_securi=
ty_policy.html
The commentary surrounding the 50th anniversary of the signing of the
Treaty of Rome is beginning to sound increasingly like the radical in
Monty Python's Life of Brian mounting a case against the Romans:
"Apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and
irrigation and public health and roads and a fresh water system and
baths and public order ... what have the Romans done for us?"
The list could as easily apply to the EU, with the added extras of
open borders, liberal democracy, international trade and a single
market.
Here's to the next 50 years
Michael Moore
March 25, 2007 11:00 AM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/michael_moore/2007/03/europe_the_next_5=
0_years.html
The Berlin Declaration, announced by Europe's leaders this weekend to
celebrate the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Rome,
is thankfully a good deal more interesting than the usual EU summit
pronouncements. For a start, its two-page brevity is a particularly
welcome departure. That European integration has been an astonishing
success need not take 100 pages plus annexes to express.
The longest sustained period of peace and prosperity in history, a
divided continent reunited, a unique governance role model - these are
familiar but striking achievements. The key principle to celebrate on
this anniversary, however, can be briefly put: the sharing of
sovereignty to give states greater control over issues otherwise
beyond their influence. This remains as robust and relevant as ever.
Incredibly, we are about to legalise modern domestic slavery again
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2042657,00.html
To pander to the new plutocracy, the Home Office is planning to remove
migrant carers' rights to change employer
Madeleine Bunting
Monday March 26, 2007
The Guardian
We may not have got a full apology from the government to mark the
200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade but we've had
pretty much everything else - "expressions of regret", apologies from
Ken Livingstone, a service of remembrance in Westminster Abbey
attended by the Queen tomorrow, the BBC in commemoration mode and,
most importantly, action on one of the most painful modern echoes of
slavery - human trafficking. Last Friday, the government announced it
would sign the Council of Europe's convention against trafficking and
the Home Office produced an impressive action plan on how to tackle
the problem in the UK. The Home Office is, unusually, basking in the
warm afterglow of appreciation from campaigners.
Lagos turns on kickbacks
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2042678,00.html
There is hope for Africa in Nigeria's current crisis over corruption
and political succession
Peter Preston
Monday March 26, 2007
The Guardian
One road for Africa leads to penury by way of Zimbabwe; another leads
to something far better via a nation that is far bigger. But Nigeria,
with 10 times the population and greater natural riches, is developing
problems of its own. The old curses of corruption and political
instability are back.
President Obasanjo is stepping down on April 21 at the end of his
second term. He didn't want to go. He tried to alter the constitution
and get himself a third term. He needed more time to finish slaying
the dragon of bribery, he said. But new Nigerian democracy wouldn't
let him linger. And nor would his own vice-president, Atiku Abubakar.
The curse of retro-cinema
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2042677,00.html
The new French biopic of Edith Piaf reflects a wider dearth of
imagination in US and European studios
Agn=E8s Poirier
Monday March 26, 2007
The Guardian
La Vie en Rose, the first major French biopic which opens this week in
London, tells the story of the most famous French chanteuse, Edith
Piaf. Conceived with marketing savvy as the next big international
French film that will conquer the world, it had distributors from
around the world at Cannes last year driven fou with anticipation
after a 10-minute trailer. The film's producers only had to wait while
distributors bid against each other to get a little piece of Edith's
sacred shroud.
Confident Turkey looks east, not west
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldbriefing/story/0,,2042861,00.html
Simon Tisdall
Monday March 26, 2007
The Guardian
Turkey was not invited to Europe's big birthday bash yesterday despite
being an official candidate for EU membership. Ankara expressed
disappointment at a "missed opportunity". Media reaction to the
perceived snub was sharper.
"In the 1990s, the EU was a giant organisation governed by prominent
leaders," said leading columnist Mehmet Ali Birand. "Today it has
become a fat midget that lacks perspective and is governed by small-
thinkers."
Disillusion with the EU has deepened since Brussels part-suspended
talks in December after a row over Cyprus. The hostility, as seen from
Ankara, of French presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy and the
German chancellor, Angela Merkel, has poisoned the pot further.
This weekend's TV
http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv_and_radio/story/0,,2042945,00.html
Sam Wollaston
Monday March 26, 2007
The Guardian
It was my birthday the other day - it's not important which one - and
my girlfriend gave me a small non-stick saucepan and a manual milk
frother for making cappuccinos at home, and in the evening she took me
out to a restaurant for dinner.
Nice, you may be thinking. But you'd be quite wrong. Nice is
irrelevant and doesn't even come in to the equation - and it is an
equation. There was no emotion involved; she had calculated what would
be to her advantage (future cappuccinos, made by me for her, I
imagine) in a system driven and defined by numbers. You see, my
girlfriend is an individual information processor, motivated solely by
self-interest. As am I. We continually watch and strategise against
each other, both of us seeking only our own personal gain. Our
relationship, like the world outside it, is based on mistrust and the
delicate equilibrium of terror.
'My son lived a worthwhile life'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,2042734,00.html
In April 2003, 21-year old Tom Hurndall was shot in the head in Gaza
by an Israeli soldier as he tried to save the lives of three small
children. Nine months later, he died, having never recovered
consciousness. Emine Saner talks to his mother Jocelyn about her
grief, her fight to make the Israeli army accountable for his death
and the book she has written in his memory.
Monday March 26, 2007
The Guardian
It is one of the poignancies of Tom Hurndall's short life that he had
gone to Gaza in search of a story, and ended up becoming it. A 21-year-
old photography student at Manchester Metropolitan University, he went
to Baghdad in February 2003 to photograph human shields, activists who
were trying to protect ordinary Iraqis from the threat of Anglo-
American attack. While he was there he heard about Rachel Corrie, a 23-
year-old American peace activist with the International Solidarity
Movement (ISM), who had been protecting a Palestinian's family's house
in Rafah, in the southern Gaza strip, when an Israeli bulldozer
crushed her to death. Tom went to Gaza to find out what had happened.
'At that moment life stopped for a part of me, as it had for you'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,2042735,00.html
Monday March 26, 2007
The Guardian
Seeing Tom for the first time
I have no recollection of walking up the stairs of the Soroka hospital
in Beersheva, Israel, where Tom had been taken. It was four days since
he had been shot in Rafah in the southern Gaza strip. The director had
told me that he had a "very, very serious head wound", a gunshot
wound, and that the bullet had entered the left frontal lobe and
exited at the back. I have only a dim memory of benches along a wall
on which Arab men in white robes were sitting, smoking, and of
stepping over sleeping bodies in what seemed like a waiting room. I
did not know then that these people had come from all over Israel to
be with Tom.
'I'm not gonna be a tool for anyone'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,2042736,00.html
Two years ago Conor Oberst was at the top of the American charts. When
he sang mockingly about Bush and his chats with God, the left was sure
he was just the person to rally the kids against the president and his
war. But Oberst had other ideas . . . He talks to Laura Barton
Monday March 26, 2007
The Guardian
Early 2005, and a generation of Americans is in search of its poster
boy. All eyes rest on Conor Oberst. Twenty-four years old, Oberst is
the pivotal force in the band Bright Eyes. He has lyrics that blush
with sensitivity and a voice that sounds like the first downy hairs on
a top lip. He is anti-war and anti-Bush; he has a really pretty face.
Bright Eyes have just released two albums simultaneously: the folkish
I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning, and the more fidgety electronica of
Digital Ash in a Digital Urn. The press has anointed both albums
"masterpieces". Sales have gone crazy. A couple of months earlier, two
of Bright Eyes' singles had occupied the top positions in the American
Billboard chart and the band joined the Vote for Change tour, in
advance of the presidential election, alongside Bruce Springsteen, REM
and Neil Young.
Blair warning to Iran as diplomatic efforts fail to trace captured
patrol
http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,2042794,00.html
=B7 PM denounces 'unjustified and wrong' seizure
=B7 Tehran claims Britons admitted incursion
Julian Borger, diplomatic editor
Monday March 26, 2007
The Guardian
Tony Blair yesterday denounced Iran for the "unjustified and wrong"
seizure of 15 British sailors and marines, rejecting Tehran's claim
they had entered Iranian waters, and warning that the situation had
become very serious.
"I hope the Iranian government understands how fundamental an issue
this is for us," the prime minister said at a European summit in
Berlin. "They should not be under any doubt at all about how seriously
we regard this act, which was unjustified and wrong."
Kidnappings came day before UN resolution
http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,2042858,00.html
Robert Tait in Tehran
Monday March 26, 2007
The Guardian
Defining demarcation lines in the Shatt al-Arab waterway has proved a
historical challenge for cartographers, so it is not unlikely that it
may have been beyond the 15 British sailors patrolling the
internationally sensitive route last Friday.
If so, their navigational shortcomings came as a welcome gift not only
to the Revolutionary Guard crew that intercepted them but to the more
hardline elements of Iran's political leadership.
The Britons were captured a day before the UN security council met to
approve a resolution imposing fresh sanctions over Iran's continued
refusal to suspend its uranium enrichment activities.
Guant=E1namo hearing for Australian detainee
http://www.guardian.co.uk/guantanamo/story/0,,2043009,00.html
Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
Monday March 26, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
David Hicks, an Australian detainee at Guant=E1namo Bay, is to appear
before a war crimes court at the US detention centre today, the first
inmate to go before the Bush administration's new military tribunals.
Mr Hicks, a 31-year-old former kangaroo skinner who has spent five
years as a prisoner at the US base in Cuba, faces a single charge of
providing material support to al-Qaida. His lawyers have said he will
enter a plea of not guilty.
Calls grow for Bush's attorney general to quit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2042756,00.html
=B7 Papers suggest Gonzales lied over sacking of judges
=B7 Republicans fear president will lose ability to lead
Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
Monday March 26, 2007
The Guardian
The challenge to President Bush's authority from a newly empowered
Congress deepened yesterday after leading senators - Republicans as
well as Democrats - openly questioned the credibility of his attorney
general.
"We have to have an attorney general who is candid and truthful. And
if we find out he's not been candid and truthful, that's a very
compelling reason for him not to stay on," Arlen Specter, the most
senior Republican on the Senate judiciary committee, told NBC
television.
NY police spied on anti-Bush protesters
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2042820,00.html
Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
Monday March 26, 2007
The Guardian
Undercover New York police officers spent more than a year spying on
would-be protesters ahead of the 2004 Republican national convention,
monitoring church groups and street theatre troupes which had no
intention of breaking the law, it was reported yesterday.
The scope of the inquiry ... - ... long suspected by activists ...
- ... saw officers infiltrating groups opposed to George Bush, or
monitoring their activities in web chat rooms, and filing daily
reports on their activities, the New York Times reported.
Key US ally 'helped Colombian traffickers'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/colombia/story/0,,2042800,00.html
Sibylla Brodzinsky in Bogot=E1 and Rory Carroll, Latin America
correspondent
Monday March 26, 2007
The Guardian
The CIA has obtained evidence that the head of Colombia's army, a key
US ally in Latin America, has collaborated with right-wing
paramilitaries and drug traffickers.
General Mario Montoya allegedly worked closely with illegal militias
during a military crackdown against leftwing guerrillas in 2002 which
left dozens of people dead or missing.
News of the CIA report, which was leaked to the Los Angeles Times, was
expected to add to pressure on the Bush administration to reduce its
annual =A3350m in aid to Colombia, most of which goes to the military.
It will also engulf President =C1lvaro Uribe in more political turmoil
over his government's ties to the paramilitaries.
West tries to unite Zanu-PF rebels to bring down Mugabe from within
http://www.guardian.co.uk/zimbabwe/article/0,,2042873,00.html
=B7 Whitehall and Washington talk to rebel faction chief
=B7 Crunch meeting this week could weaken president
Chris McGreal in Harare
Monday March 26, 2007
The Guardian
Western governments are working to split Zimbabwe's ruling Zanu-PF
from President Robert Mugabe ahead of a potentially decisive meeting
this week.
Diplomatic sources say Britain and the US believe that the strongest
challenge to Mr Mugabe comes not from the opposition but from within
the ruling Zanu-PF and they are encouraging dissent by reassuring
rebellious factions that their problem is with Zimbabwe's president
not the ruling party.
Western officials are looking in particular to the former army chief,
Solomon Mujuru, who is seeking to curtail Mr Mugabe's rule at a Zanu-
PF central committee meeting on Thursday.
As the EU turns 50, Pope says it's on path to oblivion
http://www.guardian.co.uk/pope/story/0,,2042886,00.html
=B7 Europe 'ignoring Christian roots' says Benedict XVI
=B7 Merkel seeks more power for the European Union
Ian Traynor in Berlin
Monday March 26, 2007
The Guardian
European leaders yesterday celebrated the EU's 50th birthday, with
Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, telling the prime ministers or
presidents of 27 countries that modern Europe was a dream come true.
But the birthday party summit for the EU - staged with rock concerts,
Beethoven, beer and cake in brilliant sunshine in Berlin - was soured
by the German Pope, Benedict XVI, who delivered a profoundly
pessimistic verdict on Europe at 50, declaring that the continent
could be heading for extinction.
Amazon groups claim victory as soy plant closes
http://environment.guardian.co.uk/conservation/story/0,,2042781,00.html
Tom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro
Monday March 26, 2007
The Guardian
Environmentalists in the Amazon celebrated this weekend after
authorities shut down a soy distribution plant owned by US
agricultural giants Cargill.
Cargill's =A310m port in the riverside city of Santarem was built to
export Brazilian soy worldwide but has provoked non-stop controversy
since opening in 2003.
Soy farmers and big businesses hoped that with the planned paving of
the BR163, a muddy jungle road cutting through the rainforest from soy-
producing states towards the Atlantic coast, the port would become the
centre piece for Brazil's multibillion-dollar soy industry.
Fighting for air: frontline of war on global warming
http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,2042944,00.html
Progress comes at a high price for China and India, but there are
grounds for hope
Jonathan Watts in Linfen, Randeep Ramesh in New Delhi
Monday March 26, 2007
The Guardian
In the most polluted city on earth, the smog is so thick that it seems
to consume its source. Iron foundries, smelting plants and cement
factories loom out of the haze then disappear once more as you drive
along Linfen's roads. The outlines of smoke stacks blur in the filthy
mist. No sooner are the plumes of carbon and sulphur belched out than
the chimneys are swallowed up again.
"We only see the sun for a few days each year," said Zhou Huocun, a
doctor in the outlying village of Liucunzhen. "The colour of our
village is black. It is so dirty that nobody airs their quilts outside
any more so we are getting more parasites. I have seen a steady
increase in respiratory diseases as the air quality gets worse and
worse."
Vaccination campaign funded by drug firm
http://society.guardian.co.uk/health/story/0,,2042916,00.html
Sarah Boseley, health editor
Monday March 26, 2007
The Guardian
A campaign fronted by doctors and celebrities to persuade European
governments, including the UK, to vaccinate all young girls against
cervical cancer is being entirely funded by the drug company that
markets the vaccine.
Sanofi Pasteur MSD, which markets Gardasil in Europe on behalf of the
drug giant Merck, spent millions on what was billed as the "first
global summit against cervical cancer", held in Paris on Thursday with
doctors and patient organisations from across Europe.
The past was a stinker
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2041198,00.html
Emily Cockayne's account of dirt, disease and bugs in the 17th and
18th centuries, Hubbub, is not for the squeamish, says Kathryn Hughes
Saturday March 24, 2007
The Guardian
This is not a book to read if you are feeling fragile. Taking us by
the hand, Emily Cockayne leads us through the streets of early modern
London - Manchester, Bath and Nottingham, too - and shows us a series
of Hogarthian prints come to life. Slops pour down in a continual
river of liquid filth, hammers bang out an irregular tattoo well into
the night, and you have to peer hard to recognise your nearest and
dearest across a smallish room. Your nicest clothes are coated with a
permanent film of grease, and your lover's bed is spotted with crushed
bugs. Everyone smells, especially you, but you can't be fagged to do
anything about it. For what's the point in getting yourself all clean
and sweet when, within a couple of hours, you'll be as soiled as the
***** who sits nursing a slug of gin on the corner of your street?
Imperialist follies
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2041190,00.html
Saturday March 24, 2007
The Guardian
"A number of accounts have now emerged of how the Pentagon was so
unprepared for nation-building in Iraq," wrote Simon Jenkins in the
Sunday Times, reviewing Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside
Baghdad's Green Zone by Rajiv Chandrasekaran. "Most, such as Bob
Woodward's recent State of Denial, are written 'top-down' from
Washington. Chandrasekaran, a Washington Post reporter at the time,
watched the policy bottom-up from within and beyond the Green Zone.
The result is jaw-dropping." "Chandrasekaran's patiently accumulated
detail of politically driven appointments is genuinely shocking,"
agreed Justin Marozzi in the Sunday Telegraph. "Many Iraq books have
already been written but if anyone ever wanted to read how not to plan
and conduct a war, here it all is in one volume."
Darfur: Europe's leaders respond to demands for action to stop the
genocide
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/africa/article2393302.ece
By Stephen Castle in Berlin
Published: 26 March 2007
Europe's leaders toughened their stand against mass murder in Darfur
yesterday, issuing new threats against the Sudanese government, as
their own 50th birthday celebration summit was thrown off balance by
the unprecedented appeal from Europe's leading writers for action.
Darfur forced its way on to the meeting's agenda after a coalition of
European writers and intellectuals spoilt the self-congratulatory
party with a devastating critique of the bloc's failure to act to end
the violence in the Sudanese province. Today, about 2.5 million people
are displaced and more than 200,000 civilians are dead as a result of
government-sponsored violence.
Despite the scale of murder since the conflict began in 2003 - the US
has described it as genocide - there has been no attempt to launch the
kind of humanitarian intervention that saved civilian lives in Kosovo.
'Quebec's Le Pen' likely to make major election gain
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article2393306.ece
By Hugh Winsor in Ottawa
Published: 26 March 2007
A young conservative populist sometimes described as Quebec's Jean-
Marie Le Pen is likely in today's election to throw a spanner into the
separatist versus federalist competition that has dominated Quebec
politics for decades.
Polls indicate Mario Dumont's Action d=E9mocratique du Qu=E9bec (ADQ), a
small fringe party for the past three elections, is about to seize the
balance of power in the first minority parliament in 129 years.
Ahmadinejad suspends nuclear co-operation
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2393399.ece
By Sadie Gray
Published: 26 March 2007
Iran has responded to the latest round of UN sanctions by announcing a
partial suspension of co-operation with the International Atomic
Energy Agency.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Iran would not stop its nuclear
programme despite the sanctions and would "adjust" its ties with those
behind the measure.
Blair refuses to bow to slave trade apology demands
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article2393346.ece
By Joe Churcher and Ben Padley, PA Political Staff
Published: 26 March 2007
Tony Blair refused to bow to demands to apologise for Britain's role
in the slave trade today, expressing instead "deep sorrow and regret"
for the suffering it caused.
Britain's first black archbishop, Dr John Sentamu, had earlier joined
calls for the Prime Minister to "go a bit further" than such
expressions of regret.
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown: It's understanding we need, not apologies
http://comment.independent.co.uk/columnists_a_l/yasmin_alibhai_brown/articl=
e2393376.ece
How can Tony Blair say sorry for slavery when he will never apologise
for Iraq?
Published: 26 March 2007
I don't want Tony Blair to apologise for slavery. My fear is that all
this demand for a gesture might just get our moralistic PM back into
the political pulpit he has made his own. I can see him, with eyes
slightly moist and that tremor in his voice, delivering an
unforgettable sermon seeking messianic redemption on behalf of the
nation. Could any of us bear to listen to him without heaving?
Besides, as we know, haughty Britannia, holds her trident tight; it
doesn't do humble.
Ken Livingstone thinks she should, So do Drexel Gomez, the Archbishop
of the West Indies, our archbishops and many black leading lights in
Africa, Britain and the US. Livingstone, returning to fine GLC form,
fired off a salvo last week demanding state contrition: "The British
Government's refusal of such an apology is squalid. Until recently,
almost unbelievably, it refused even to recognise the slave trade as a
crime against humanity, on the grounds that it was legal at the time."
.
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