November 4, 2002
November 11, 2002
November 18, 2002
November 25, 2002
The world must act now to avoid a crippling water shortage in a few years, according to experts.
If current trends in water policy and investment hold or worsen, mankind will soon face threats to the global food supply, further environmental damage and ongoing health risks for hundreds of millions of people lacking clean water.
That's the conclusion of a new study by the International Food Policy Research Institute and the International Water Management Institute.
Using sophisticated computer monitoring, the report projects that by 2025, water scarcity will cause annual global losses of 350 million metric tons of food production - slightly more that the entire current U.S. grain crop.
"Unless we change policies and priorities, in 20 years, there won't be enough water for cities, households, the environment, or growing food," said Dr. Mark Rosegrant, lead author of the report and senior research fellow at the food institute.
"Water is not like oil," Rosegrant told a Washington news conference Oct. 16. "There is no substitute. If we continue to take it for granted, much of the Earth is going to run short of water or food - or both."
Due in part to rapid population growth and urbanization in poor countries, water use for households, industry and agriculture will increase by at least 50 percent in the next 20 years, the report said. Increased competition for water will severely limit its availability for irrigation, which will seriously constrain world food production.
Declines in food supply could cause prices to skyrocket and higher prices will lead to significant increases in malnutrition, since many people in poor countries already spend more than half their income on food, it said.
"For hundreds of millions of poor farmers in developing countries, a lack of water for growing food is the most important constraint they face," said Frank Rijsberman, director general of the water institute.
"If countries continue to under invest in building strong institutions and policies to support water governance and approaches to give better access to water to poor communities, growth rates for crop yields will fall worldwide in the next 25 years, primarily because of water scarcity," Rijsberman said.
It would take only a moderate worsening in global water policy to bring about a genuine water crisis, the report said. If governments continue to cut spending on crop research technology, and infrastructure, while failing to implement institutional and management reforms, global grain production will drop by 10 percent over business-as-usual levels, equivalent to losing the entire annual grain crop of India.
"Currently, more than one billion people around the world do not have access to a safe water supply and adequate sanitation is even less available," said Dr. Joachim von Braun, director general of the food institute.
Making wealthy people in poor countries pay for water - as most urban dwellers must in industrialized countries - is recommended in the report.
"Although water subsidies are commonplace in developing countries, they tend to benefit relatively wealthy people," said Dr. Peter Hazell, director of environment and production technology at the food institute. ‘Making affluent people pay for water would encourage them to conserve. It would also free up financial resources to provide clean, safe water to poor people."
The report also recommends increased investment in crop research, technological change and rural infrastructure to boost water productivity and growth of crops in rain-fed farming, which will account for one-half the increase in food production between 1994 and 2025.
We need to invest in water conservation, for example, using innovative, low-cost, small-scale irrigation technologies - such as a $5 bucket and drip kit or manually operated treadle pumps - that allow small farmers to irrigate crops using less water and deliver water to crops when it is needed," said Rijsberman.
"A number of useful new small-scale technologies and community-level
water management innovations have emerged in recent years,"
Rijsberman said. "Governments must learn from these practices
in order to implement practical solutions for using less water
in agriculture. Without conservation, aquifers, lakes and wetlands
will be further depleted."
"A crisis is not inevitable," said Rosegrant. "The
world can both consume less water and reap greater benefits. To
achieve sustainable water use, we must act now. The required strategies
take not only money and political will, but time as well."
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The continuing secrecy surrounding the events of Sept.11 makes the work of independent investigators and publishers all the more essential to understanding what really happened.
"The most detailed analysis of how and why the World Trade Center collapsed could be forever kept from the public," the Associated Press reported Sept.30.
The evidence being withheld includes "rare photos and videos" that have been "collected," documentary evidence, maps of the debris piles, and three-dimensional computerized images of the fallen towers, according to The New York Times.
The evidence that is locked away, and may be permanently sealed, has been "gathered largely in secret" by experts who are forbidden by confidential agreements from discussing their findings, except with federal investigators, said Gerald McKelvey, a spokesman for Larry Silverstein, the leaseholder of the office space in the twin towers.
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owned the Trade Center complex, said in a statement that access to documents would be decided on a "case-by-case basis consistent with applicable law and policy."
Silverstein obtained control of the World Trade Center property a mere six weeks before the terror attacks by securing the 99-year lease with an initial payment of $100 million, most of which was reported to be borrowed funds. Silverstein is currently seeking to win some $7 billion on his relatively minuscule investment by suing the insurance companies and claiming that the WTC attacks constituted "two separate occurrences," rather than one.
The secret "expert analysis" is considered more authoritative than the investigation conducted by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which "suffered from too few resources and a lack of access to critical information," according to AP.
The secrecy surrounding Sept.11 has succeeded in keeping the American public in the dark about what truly caused the collapse of the twin towers, as well as the 47-story WTC-7, built by Silverstein in 1987.
WTC-7 mysteriously collapsed in the late afternoon.
Serious questions also abound about what actually struck the Pentagon and why no evidence of a commercial jet was found at the site.
AFP has worked with a number of independent investigators to uncover the most important information about the attacks. One of the best independent American investigators, Eric Hufschmid, has cooperated with AFP to produce a comprehensive book on the subject, Painful Questions: An Analysis of the September 11th Attack.*
Painful Questions presents compelling evidence that the attacks were "a scam of immense proportions."
Hufschmid says that explosives were used to take down the towers and WTC-7 and that the arab "terrorists" were mere patsies, like Lee Harvey Oswald in the assassination of President John Kennedy.
It is a well-written and lavishly Illustrated book that contains rare photos of great importance, some of which are certain to be among those the government is trying to hide. The high-quality large-format photos provide important evidence about what caused the collapses at the World Trade Center, WTC-7, and the Pentagon.
Hufschmid presents photographic evidence to support the theory that the twin towers of the World trade center were brought down using radio-controlled explosives.
Hufschmid says the emergency command center, a hardened bunker on the 23rd floor of WTC-7, was the actual control center for the attack, and that the two airplanes that hit the towers appear to have been guided by a homing signal coming from the bunker.
WTC-7 was a most unusual building. While the hardened bunker on the 23rd floor had its own air and water supply, it had no accommodations for sleeping, which raises the obvious question about what kind of emergency it was designed for.
The WTC-7 building was subsequently destroyed by controlled demolition that lasted 18 seconds according to seismic data, yet the actual collapse took less that 10 seconds in the late afternoon.
The other powerful blasts were to destroy the evidence from the hardened bunker, according to Hufschmid.
The remarkable photos in Painful Questions show the top 30 floors of the South Tower tipping and falling in one piece, yet solid pieces of this section never hit the ground.
How can it be, Hufschmid asks, that the towers collapsed floor-by-floor as quickly as free-falling debris fell through the open air? The video and seismic evidence show that the towers collapsed in 8 to 10 seconds, which is how long a falling object dropped from the top of the tower would take to hit the ground.
The resistance of the undamaged base of the tower would have significantly slowed the collapse of the towers. For 110 floors to shatter in about nine seconds, each floor would have shattered in the blink of an eye. Hufschmid says, "There should have been a thump, thump, thump and the collapsing rubble impacted the floor below, but the video shows that the floors did not encounter any resistance as they fell."
Painful Questions explains how explosives could accomplish this trick.
Photos of debris being spewed horizontally hundreds of feet raise further questions about whether it was precision-timed explosions or "compression" which caused the towers to disintegrate, sending pulverized concrete and bits of steel flying over lower Manhattan.
John Iannarelli of the FBI's national press office told AFP that the bureau has "no evidence" of explosions at the WTC and that "compression" pulverized the concrete and sent steel beams flying horizontally for hundreds of feet.
On the other hand, Hufschmid says this is evidence that explosives were used.
Hufschmid dedicates one chapter to the questions surround the attack on the Pentagon.
While the Pentagon attack has been largely obscured by the collapses at the World Trade center, there are as many unanswered questions about what actually happened at the Pentagon.
In October, two books about 9/11 by French author Thierry Meyssan arrived in the United States. Meyssan focused on the Pentagon attack on his books, which have been translated from French, 9-11: the Big Lie and Pentagate.
His publisher, Patrick Pasin, told AFP that the television show "60 Minutes" was coming to France to interview Meyssan and that the author is now willing to travel the United states to discuss his work.
Meyssan and Hufschmid present photographic evidence that challenges the claim that a large passenger jet struck the Pentagon. Meyssan posits that an air-launched cruise missile, painted to look like a commercial jet, struck the Pentagon.
AFP has repeatedly asked the Pentagon, American Airlines, and the FBI for basic information about the 9-11 attack, in particular about the unexplained pieces of debris, assumed to be a piece of an American Airlines jet, that was photographed on the Pentagon lawn.
After numerous request for clarification about the status of the large piece of debris, Lt. Col. David Lapan, spokesman for the Department of defense, finally said, "It's not a Pentagon issue."
As American Airlines routinely forwards all 9-11 information requests to the FBI, AFP turned to FBI headquarters in Washington. The FBI's Iannarelli told AFP: "It is no secret that an airplane hit the pentagon."
However, the object that bored a smooth seven-foot round hole through six-reinforced concrete walls in the three rings of the Pentagon left no traces of itself behind.
"The plane that struck the Pentagon was pulverized," Iannarelli told AFP. "Never was any large piece of anything recovered at the Pentagon crash site," he said.
Asked whether the dense steel landing gear, which had carried right on through the WTC twin towers and landed blocks away, had been found at the Pentagon, Iannarelli said, "nothing that was recognizable" as coming from an airplane was found.
There are no clear seismic signals, which can be associated with the crash of a 100-ton airplane into the Pentagon, according to seismologist.
AFP asked Maryland-based seismologist Gerald Baum about the lack os seismic evidence from the Pentagon crash. If a large jet aircraft traveling 400 miles per hour struck the Pentagon, why did it not result in any recorded seismic shock waves?
Baum said that that although the seismometers near the Pentagon are "state-of-the-art," the fact that the Pentagon was built on swampland on a base that "is all fill" means the impact is less likely to have resulted in seismic shock waves because the building "is not anchored to the bedrock."
Readers of Painful Questions have told Hufschmid that Gen. Ben Partin's investigation of the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma city had already proven that Tim McVeigh was a patsy.
Hufschmid says he "soon realized what AFP readers have known for long time; namely, that a lot of critical information is being hidden by our corrupt media and government."
* Painful Questions, soft-cover, oversize format, 8.5
x 11 on glossy paper, with over 100 color illustration, 160 pages,
Item #1051, $22. Send payment to First Amendment Books, 645 Pennsylvania
Avenue SE, Suit 100, Washington, D.C. 20003. Call 1-888-699-NEWS
(6397) and charge to Visa or Master Card. Persons who do not believe
anything other than what the government contends occurred should
look for explanations for the mysteries this book brings up. The
inability to explain the attack is more evidence that we are witnessing
and incredible scam.
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The administration is showing the first signs of weakening of its determination to go to war with Iraq as peace protests mount.
As thousands of peace advocates prepare to gather in Washington, San Francisco, London, Paris, Tokyo and elsewhere on Oct.26, President bush gave the first signs of weakening in his resolve to go to war.
Both Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice said on Oct.20 that the administration's position has changed significantly:
The goal is not longer "regime change" but the disarming of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Hussein can stay if the White House is convinced that he no longer has, or is trying to achieve, weapons of mass destruction.
The significance of this was lost on The Washington Post and other mainstream media outlets, which made no or only incidental mention of the policy change.
The Post picked up on the story a day later, reporting on Oct.22 that Bush reiterated his demand for "regime change" while saying that if Saddam became a good boy, that would amount to "regime change" - that is, regime change without regime change.
If Saddam "were to meet all the conditions of the United Nations, the conditions I've described very clear in terms everybody can understand, that in itself will signal the regime has changed," Bush said.
In effect, bush and his spokesmen were saying that the administration accepts Saddam's position. Saddam has said repeatedly that the United Nations can have "unfettered inspections" to determine that Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction.
The UN Security Council wants to return to inspections to test Saddam's word.
Bush's stated policy, since the 9-11 terrorist attacks, has been that Saddam has to abandon his presidency. This left little wiggle room, since all experts agree that Saddam would only be driven out by force of arms.
Powell told a TV talke that a disarmed Hussein could stay in power and that is the current position of the president. "Remember where ‘regime change' came from - it came from the previous administration," Powell said.
The regime change demand, Powell said, "came out of congress in 1998 when it was believed that the only way to eliminate weapons of mass destruction was to change the regime. We will see whether the Iraqis cooperate or not."
However, "regime change" is a demand administration spokesmen have made often.
In another TV talkie, Rice echoed Powell's pronouncement.
"The goal here is to disarm Saddam Hussein," she said. "In order to do that, we are going to have to test his willingness to cooperate. This time it has to be a test of his willingness to disarm, because if he is not willing to disarm, then we're going to have to disarm him."
Powell ws asked if Vice President dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Ronald Rumsfeld, both administration hawks, shared his view that there can be disarmament without regime change.
"The president has made it clear what the United States' position is," Powell replied.
Meanwhile, organizers of the Washington rally said approximately 250 buses will be rolling in from around the country, about half of them from colleges. A significant number will carry Muslims who rallied last April against Israel's illegal and brutal occupation of Palestinian lands.
"I think we broke new ground in April, being able to forge alliances with the grass-roots Muslim community," said Brian Becker, co-director of the International Action Center, one of the groups belonging to ANSWER, the coalition that organized the protest.
Unlike the demonstrations against the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and globalization last September, Becker said, the march was not intended to block traffic or disrupt the city. Their tradition of peaceful protesting won praise from D.C. Police Chief Charles Ransey, who said "they are always peaceful."
The peaceful reputation helped organizers attract large numbers of the Muslim community, according to Mahdi Bray, executive director of the Muslim American society freedom Foundation.
"They were concerned - because they are law-abiding American
citizens and patriots - and they didn't want to be seen as troublemakers,"
Bray said.
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The lie that the United States won Desert Storm with few casualties has been blown apart by a nurse whose crusade to help veterans suffering from the mysterious Gulf War Syndrome has brought attention to the hundreds of thousands who have died or continue to suffer from the unexplained illness.
Of approximately 697,000 American servicemen and women deployed to the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm in 1991, some 40,000 are dead and 400,000 are currently suffering from various maladies associated with what has become known as Gulf War Syndrome.
Today, the administration is preparing for a new war with Iraq, dispatching hundreds of thousands of troops to the region and equipping them with flawed gear intended to protect them from biological and chemical weapons suspected of being in the arsenals of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
According to the findings of the American Gulf War Veterans Association, headed by Capt. Joyce Riley, RN, there are more than 250,000 flawed chemical and biological warfare protective suits in the military's inventory, which many believe will be issued to troops who will face the Iraqis.
Ms. Riley was a former Air Force Flight nurse in the 1970s who returned to active duty as an air-evac flight nurse at the onset of Desert Storm. She flew air-evac missions in a C-130 for six months during 1991 and returned to her position as a heart, lung, kidney and liver transplant nurse at the Denton Cooley Center in Houston, Tex.
Ms. Riley is also a victim of Gulf War Syndrome, which she says she contracted from U.S. troops she had treated from the war zone. However, she recovered and went on to found the American Gulf War Veterans Association.
Ms. Riley has been at the forefront of an on-going battle to force the government to admit the atrocities it inflicted upon hundreds of thousands of servicemen during Operation Desert Storm.
After extensive interviews with Riley and other reliable sources, the conclusions by American Free Press (patriots will surely cringe at the prospect) is that America's youth will unknowingly face a determined enemy in front of them and a back-stabbing government behind them.
DEFECTIVE SUITS
During Operation Desert Storm, it is estimated that the military obtained 800,000 chemical and biological protective suits from the Isratex Company of Rainelle, W.V., which Pentagon quality control should have known were defective, and contained holes and tears.
A single hole or tear in a protective suit can allow in sufficient biological or chemical material to kill the person wearing it.
Pentagon officials claim they did not find out about the defective suits until 1996—five years after the war ended and soldiers had returned home from the Middle East battlefield.
On Oct. 1, 2002, Dr. Anna Johnson-Winegar assistant secretary of defense for chemical and biological defense, testified before a hearing on biological warfare attack preparations of the House Government Reform Sub committee that 250,000 of 800,000 defective chemical-biological warfare protective suits have not been located and taken from inventory, meaning they will likely be is-sued to soldiers going to the Persian Gulf.
Isratex, which made millions from the Pentagon, declared bankruptcy in 1995. Most of its top-level management officials—none of whom can now be located—maintain strong ties to Israel.
Those officials include Isratex president Abraham Brin, vice president Yehudah Yoav Brin, and production manager Zoi Rosenthal.
After palming off the cheaply-made, defective suits on the Pentagon, company officials were charged with various OSHA safety violations and an $88,000 fine was levied against Isratex.
GWS SYMPTOMS
Gulf War Syndrome is a series of maladies, which many contend resulted from Iraqi chemical and biological warfare weapons being released upon U.S. serviceman, as well as toxic responses to depleted uranium which is used by the United States in anti-armor artillery shells.
Some of those Iraqi chemicals and biologicals were released by American forces.
During Desert Storm the military suspects that U.S. troops destroyed 100 bunkers located at Khamisayh, situated on the Euphrates River between Bosrah and Baghad. It is believed that these contained chemicals and biologicals exposing U.S. forces to the contents.
Desert Storm veterans have suffered a variety of deadly illnesses, including fast-moving brain tumors and leukemia.
They have also passed their health problems on to their loved ones. Children of vets have been born with deformities and various other defects, dooming them to a life of misery—if they even survive.
Nine out of 10 Desert Storm vets who have contacted Ms. Riley's national organization claim they are ill.
Of the 697,000 soldiers deployed during Desert Storm, the Department of Defense has determined that 580,000 are qualified for care through the Department of Veterans Affairs' medical facilities.
Due in a large part to illness, it is estimated that 90 percent of Gulf War veterans had left the service by 1995.
Ms. Riley has gathered extensive documentation to support her organization's fight to get help for veterans of Desert Storm.
Among that documentation is proof that Iraq obtained much of its biological and chemical agents directly from the United States—with the direct approval of the U.S. government.
According to Ms. Riley: On May 7, 1989, with U.S. government approval, American Type Culture Collections of Rockville, Md., sold to Iraq's Ministry of Higher Education batch No. 08-20-82 of bacillus anthracis (anthrax). On that same date, the American chemical and biological plant sold the ministry clostridium botulinum (botulism).
American Type Culture Collections obtains its anthrax from the Army's biological warfare laboratories at Fort Dietrich, Md.
Riley said that the Iraqis were shipped chemicals and biologicals in 55-gallon drums at various points from U.S. sources.
A Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs hearing
on May 25, 1994 determined that pathogenic and other biological-related
materials were exported to Iraq with the approval of the Center
for Disease Control in Atlanta and the Department of Commerce
between 1985 and 1994.
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One of America's best-known writers has called for an investigation into whether the Bush administration deliberately allowed the terrorist attacks to happen.
Writer and left-wing populist Gore Vidal, in a scathing attack on President Bush, has called for an investigation into the 9-11 terrorist attacks to determine if the administration deliberately ignored warnings of al Qaeda's terror plans.
In a 7,000-word commentary piece, titled The Enemy Within, Vidal claims a "Bush junta" used the terrorist attacks as a pretext to enact a pre-existing agenda to invade Afghanistan and abuse civil liberties at home. The war motive, he argues, is oil.
"We still don't know by whom we were struck that infamous Tuesday, or for what true purpose," Vidal writes. "But it is fairly plain to many civil libertarians that 9-11 put too much of a strain on our fragile Bill of Rights and our envied system of government."
The real motive for the Afghanistan invasion, which grew out of the "war on terrorism," was to control the gateway to Eurasia and Central Asia'‘s energy riches, according to Vidal.
He quotes extensively from a 1997 analysis of the region by Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser to President Jimmy carter and his colleague in the Trilateral commission, which has interlocking leadership with the secret Bilderberg Group.
For years, the Council of Foreign Relations' propaganda instrument, Foreign Affairs, had been predicting the fight over political ideology. According to Vidal, America's so-called "war on Terrorism" was the pretext for seizing control of critical world reserves of oil.
But BOTH Democrat and Republican administrations were aware that the American public would resist any war in Afghanistan without a widely perceived, massive external threat.
"Osama bin Laden was chosen on aesthetic grounds to be the frightening logo for our long-contemplated invasion and conquest of Afghanistan...the administration is convinced that Americans are so simple-minded that they can deal with no scenario more complex than the venerable, lone, crazed killer (this time with zombie helpers) who does evil just for the fun of it' cause he hates us because we're rich ‘n free ‘n he's not," Vidal writes.
Vidal attacks the American media for failure to discuss 9-11 and its consequences: "Apparently, ‘conspiracy stuff' is now shorthand for unspeakable truth."
Vidal raises questions about the two hours after the planes were hijacked. He writes that "astonished military experts cannot fathom why the government's ‘automatic standard order of procedure in the event of a hijacking' was not followed."
Under these procedures, fighter planes are automatically sent into the sky when a plane has deviated from its flight plan and presidential authority is not required until a plane is to be shot down, Vidal argues.
"By law, the fighters should have been up at around 8:15," Vidal writes. "If they had, all the hijacked planes might have been diverted and shot down.
Vidal asks why Bush stayed in a Florida classroom as news of the attacks broke: "The behavior of President bush on Sept.11 certainly gives rise to not unnatural suspicions.
Bush had been told of the first plane hitting the towers and all hoped it was a simple accident like the plane that struck the Empire State Building while flying low in a fog years ago, White House staffers said. When told of the second strike it was obviously terrorism and Bush bid the students farewell and left.
"The truth about Pearl Harbor is obscured to this day," Vidal wrote. "But it has been much studied. But 9-11 is never going to be investigated if bush has anything to say about it."
Numerous Revisionist historians in the past 60 years have written
that President Franklin Roosevelt had foreknowledge of the Japanese
attack on Pearl Harbor Dec. 7, 1941, and let it happen so he could
involve the United States in the European war, making it World
War II.
-------------------------------------------
For more articles (including this one) on the many puzzling circumstances
surrounding the 9-11 tragedy, order your copy of AFP's 50 Unanswered
Questions About 9-11 compiled by the staff. this is its forth
printing and has been updated each time with new information.
20 pages with plenty of illustrations. One copy is $5. Six copies
are $10. Forty or more copies are just $0.80 each. Send request
with payment to AFP, 1433 Pennsylvania Avenue SE, Washington,
D.C. 20003 or call 1-888-699-NEWS.
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a former White House chief of staff has joined forces with those trying to end a half-century of government cover-up of aerial phenomena.
John Podesta, White House chief of staff under President Bill Clinton, has called on the government to end decades of cover-up of information about unidentified flying objects, or UFOs.
"It is time for the government to declassify records that are more than 25 years old and to provide scientists with data that will assist in determining the real nature of this phenomenon," John Podesta told a Washington news conference Oct.22.
Podesta noted that controversy has swirled aroung the UFO issue for more than 50 years.
For decades, the government refused to release information on UFOs that cannot be explained, hinting that it was military research that must be kept secret from the Soviet Union. The Cold War ended a decade ago.
Podesta joined with SCI FI Channel, an advocacy group, in calling for an end of UFO secrecy.
SCI FI is backing a Freedom of Information Act initiative to obtain government records on cases involving retrieval of objects of unknow origin by the secret Air Force operations Project Moon Dust and Operation Blue Fly. Assisting in the FOIA effort is the Washington law firm of Lobel, Novins and Lamont.
"For the past decade, SCI FI programming has explored the often-blurred line that separates science fiction from science fact," said Bonnie Hammer, the network's president. "But when credible scientist conclude that 5 percent to 10 percent of UFOs cannot be explained by natural or artificial causes, we think it is worth taking a much closer look at what is clearly a real and ubiquitous phenomenon."
"The public has a right to know what is being observed in our airspace, once it has been determined it is not a foreign or domestic aircraft," said Leslie Kean, whose articles on the subject have appeared in major U.S. newspapers."
"Scientists who have spent time studying, classifying
and analyzing these phenomena agree that they are real and that
it will require a sustained research effort to determine their
cause," Kean said.
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Some of the biggest and most respected companies are enjoying billions in profits from pornography, a new study has found.
If you own stock in or do business with certain large corporations you may be unwittingly profiting from a huge business in pornography, according to a report released Oct.30.
These forms were cited for porn profits: AT&T, MCI, Time-Warner, Comcast, Echo Star Communications, GM's Direct TV, Hilton, Marriott, Sheraton, Radisson, VISA, MasterCard and American Express.
"If you own stock in these companies you are profiting from pornography," Jan LaRue, a lawyer and author of the report, told a news conference.
"The average American groans about pornographic SPAM email and assumes pornography on the Internet can't be curtailed," LaRue said. "But if major credit cards would refuse to be associated with the smut on the Internet and stop doing business with them, pornography sites would shrivel up and die.
"Pornography earnings are estimated at $56 billion worldwide," said the report by Concerned Women for America.
"The corporate prospectus and reports to shareholders of theses ‘Porn-Wallers' will never mention that videos with seamy, pornographic titles are revenue producers," the report said. "It is no surprise that most corporate leaders are unwilling to speak publicly about the sex side of their business.
Forbes breaks down the global profits this way: "adult" videos, $10 billion; sex clubs, $5 billion; escort services, $11 billion; cable, satellite and pay-per-view TV, $2.5 billion; CD ROMs and DVDs, $1.5 billion; Internet (sales and memberships), $1.5 billion; novelties, $1 billion; and others, $1 billion.
An "underwriter at Centrex securities" is quoted: "I'm not a weifdo or a pervert, it's not my deal. I've got kids and a family. But if I can see as an underwriter going out and making bucks on people being weird, hey, dollars are dollars. I'm not selling drugs. It's Wall Street."
"The false assumption is that selling porn, unlike selling drugs, is always legal," said the report, entitled "The Porn Ring Around Corporate White Collars: Getting Filthy Rich."
But "hard-core" porn is prosecutable under federal and most state laws, it said.
The Supreme Court used the term "hard-core" in Miller v. California to identify pornography that can be prosecuted as obscene, saying: "A majority of this court has agreed on concrete guidelines to isolate ‘hard-core' pornography from expression protected by the First Amendment." the Miller court also included porn with simulated sex as prosecutable.
America's Founding Fathers would concur. The First Amendment was designed to protect controversial political, religious, religious, historical and scientific thought and speech, not the graphic display of sex acts.
"It is incomprehensible that any of these corporations would ever show their ‘adult' videos at the company Christmas party or annual stockholders' meetings, or permit employees to view the videos on the job," the report said.
"Hotel chains such as Marriott and Hilton earn about $190 million a year from in-room, pay-per-view porn videos," the report said. "The Hotel operator keeps 5 percent to 10 percent of the revenue and remits the rest to Lodgenet or On-Command - companies that provide pay-for-view services."
Porn is offered at most Marriott hotels although the founder and current heir - Bill Marriott - are Mormons. But the report said Marriotts around Salt Lake City, where the church is headquarted, do not offer porn.
Early in its history, Marriott hotels had no bars because drinking
is against the Mormon faith. But profits conquered faith and they
now have luxurious bars - and porn.
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The third-party movement gained much momentum this year, which is welcome news considering that the two major parties have a common agenda and serve the same masters.
Voters who register as third-party members or independents have increased dramatically as the two major parties lost ground, according to a report by the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate.
"The big winner is . . . those who register for third parties or as independents," the committee said. "The level of non-major party registration reached 15.7 percent of the voting-age population (VAP), up nearly eight-fold from the two percent who were so registered in 1962 and continuing an almost steady increase over the last four decades."
The committee studied registration figures in 26 states and Washington to determine current party preferences.
"Democratic registration likely fell to 30.1 percent of VAP, marking the ninth straight mid-term decline," the report said.
Republican registration fell slightly (0.6 percentage points) to 22.7 percent of VAP.
"But the big story in these numbers is the continuing decline in allegiance to either major political party which threatens American politics with a lack of cohesion, increased volatility and de minimus support of leadership and direction," the report said.
Third-party voters "are a landmine of disaffection from business as usual waiting to be detonated," said Curtis Gans, director of the committee.
Part of the Democratic Party's decline can be attributed to "its lack of consistent message, its lack of continuing grass-roots organization and its inability to maintain a consistent voice as the party of the average person and of popular governance," Gans said.
SERVING THE SAME MASTER
The growth of third parties and declines in the major parties reflects growing public awareness that Republicans and Democrats serve the same masters and have little differences on the issues. The major differences:
• President Bush's long-stalled judicial nominees are likely to be confirmed. Votes on his nominees have been blocked by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Ver.), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, who said they were too "right-wing" and "out of the mainstream." Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) is in line to become chairman when Republicans organize the new Senate in January.
• Republicans can make the tax-cuts passed permanent. Democrats voted for the tax cuts while saying they benefit "the rich" because they provide no refunds to people who earn so little they pay no taxes.
• Democratic plans to spend another $200 billion on social programs, outlined during the election recess by Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) and House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt (D-Mo.), are dead.
But on other major issues, Democrats and Republicans are "me-too" parties. Both parties support Bush's plan to go to war in Iraq. Both support forfeiting civil liberties to the Patriot Act. Both support creating a Department of Home land Security with powers to enforce the loss of liberty. The only debate is whether DHS employees should have civil service protections. Democrats say yes, Republicans say no.
Analysts note, however, that regaining control of the Senate,
giving Republicans control of Congress and the White House, strengthens
the hand of Attorney General John Ashcroft, the nation's greatest
threat to civil liberties.
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Amnesty International - hardly a "gang of right-wing bigots" - has condemned the murder and torture of Palestinians by occupying Israeli forces.
There is "clear evidence" that Israeli soldiers and their commanders committed war crimes against Palestinian civilians - including killings and torture - during a three-month campaign in two occupied cities in the West Bank, Amnesty International charged on Nov.4.
The human rights group cited the killing of Palestinian women and children, the torture of Palestinian prisoners, the use of civilians as human shields by Israeli soldiers and the "wanton" destruction of houses in the cities of Jenin and Nablus from April to June.
Amnesty International said this constitutes violations of the Geneva Convention.
Earlier, Human Rights Watch had also accused the Israelis of the same atrocities.
HIDING THE TRUTH
Amnesty's 76-page report said the Israeli government prevented reporters, diplomats and others from visiting the cities to investigate charges of unlawful killings during the first weeks of the military campaign and that Israel never adequately investigated the charges itself.
"This failure on the part of the Israeli authorities has helped create a climate where the IDF [Israel Defense Forces], aware that no action will be taken against them, continue to carry out unlawful killings," Amnesty International said.
The report said that more than half of the 54 people killed in Jenin in the first two weeks of the Israeli campaign were not involved in fighting. They included seven women, four children and six men over the age of 55. In the first three weeks of the Nablus offensive, Amnesty said, at least 80 Palestinians were killed, including seven women and nine children.
At least 165 people were killed when Israel's bulldozers leveled their homes without giving them time to leave. They were crushed by rubble, Amnesty said. In the Jenin refugee camp, the homes of 800 families were destroyed - most after the fighting had ended - leaving 4,000 people homeless, the report said.
Human Rights Watch put the death toll in Jenin at 52, including 22 civilians.
Amnesty International also harshly criticized the targeting of Israeli civilians by Palestinian suicide bombers.
While Amnesty condemned the killing of Israeli women and children
in markets and restaurants, the targeting of Israeli troops by
bombers was not mentioned in the group's report.
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One of the world's prominent figures in both the Israeli lobby and the Holocaust industry has been caught stealing money intended for Holocaust survivors.
Exposed as an embezzler, Neal Sher was forced out of his post as chief of staff in the Washington office of the International commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims (ICHEIC). Sher was caught taking "unauthorized reimbursements" on his extravagant worldwide travel expenses for the ICHEIC.
Sher - a longtime leading figure in the worldwide Jewish community and a widely promoted "media star" - was effectively stealing from Holocaust survivors and their heirs by ripping off the ICHEIC.
Another of the growing Holocaust industry's leading forces, the ICHEIC was established jointly by a variety of leading European insurance companies, Holocaust survivor groups, state insurance commissioners, top Jewish organizations and the Israeli government to sort out and resolve claims by Holocaust survivors who allege that insurance companies refuse to pay their family's insurance policies.
Although Sher's resignation was announced on June 20, it was not known until recently that he had been the subject of a highly secretive, top-drawer corruption investigation carried out as the direction of former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger, himself the well paid chairman of the ICHEIC.
The sher scandal was considered so "sensitive" to Jewish lobby public relations concerns that Eagleberger actually asked William Webster, former director of the FBI and the CIA, to convene a formal high-level review of the secret internal investigation that led to Sher's forced resignation.
Sher's pilfering lends credence to the charge by many that "the Holocaust' has essentially become "a racket," a point driven home by American Jewish Professor Norman G. Finkelstein in his controversial book, The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering.
Finkelstein was denied academic tenure for writing that book because he raised questions about the ICHEIC and its profiteering administrators.
Another who has reason to smile at Sher's takedown is former Rep. Jim Traficant (D-Ohio).
For 11 years, until his departure in 1994, Sher was the director of the secretive "Nazi hunting" Office of the Special Investigations (OSI) inside the Justice Department. From his post as OSI, Sher and the OSI for framing Ukraine-born Cleveland autoworker John Demjanjuk, even the Supreme Court of Israel cleared Demjanjuk of the false charges of Sher and the OSI.
After leaving the OSI, Sher went on to serve as executive director of AIPAC, the powerful Israeli lobby unit that listed Traficant - a critic of U.S. favoritism toward Israel - as its number one target.
Ultimately, a clique of Justice department lawyers - using Sher-=style tactics - concocted a trumped-up corruption case against Traficant and sent the populist congressman to prison this past year.
As AFP noted on Feb. 18, the late former U.S. Attorney General Eliot Richardson, while serving as the attorney for the INSLAW corporation, discovered that the OSI was responsible for the theft of INSLAW's famous "Promis" surveillance software (which was then turned over to agents of Israel's intelligence service, the Mossad). The INSLAW scandal is ranked as one of the major scandals of the Reagan-Bush era.
Richardson also made the shocking allegation that Sher's OSI operated a covert-operations intelligence unit inside the Justice Department, involved in assassinations and other acts designed to silence American political dissidents.
At the time the INSLAW scandal was coming into the open, The Spotlight newspaper led the media in publicizing the affair. A Justice department attrney who was promoted to a federal judgeship in return for his services on behalf of the OSI thieves - S. Martin Teel - later issued the controversial ruling that killed Liberty Lobby, publisher of The Spotlight.
Despite having confessed to misappropriating Holocaust restitution council funds for his own use, the ex-OSI chief, Sher, will apparently not face criminal charges. Because of his close ties to the Justice department and because of his long-standing services to high-level forces in the global Jewish elite, Sher will not go to prison.
Although the story of Sher's thievery has been reported in the Jewish newspaper, Forward, the major media - radio, television and newspapers - loudly and repeatedly promoted Sher as some sort of "hero" who was "hunting Nazis" and "Protecting the interests of our ally, Israel."
Sher is said to have reimbursed the Holocaust outfit for the
fund that he stole. His longtime secretary at the OSI - who still
works for new OSI chief Eli Rosenbaum - hung up when AFP called
to ask if the OSI would be investigating possible misuse of OSI
funds by Sher during his tenure at the organization.
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The problems presented by the use of insecure voting machines have been ignored by the U.S. mainstream media, which minimized the widespread failures of voting equipment during the recent election as having been caused by "glitches" and "gremlins."
"The vitality of America's democracy depends on the fairness and accuracy of America's elections," President George W. Bush said as he signed the Help America Vote Act into law on October 29.
Judging from the numerous reports from coast to coast of serious problems with new voting machines, the "vitality of America's democracy" appears to be in mortal danger.
The Help America Vote Act allocated $3.9 billion in federal money to the states over the next three years to buy electronic voting machines to replace obsolete voting systems. While Bush called the bill "an important reform for the nation," in many states and counties where the new machines were used on Nov. 5, serious problems cropped up during the voting and vote counting.
While local newspapers have generally been diligent in reporting the voting problems, the national media minimized the "irregularities" by attributing them to "glitches" and "gremlins."
The election fiasco during the 2000 presidential election in Florida provided the political impetus for the sweeping reform act. This year Floridians in two of the state's largest counties, Miami-Dade and Broward, used touch-screen voting machines made by Election Systems and Software (ES&S) of Omaha.
On Nov. 6, the mainstream media reported that the Florida elections had been "an unqualified success," according to David Host, a spokesman for the Florida secretary of state.
While Associated Press reported, "Some touch-screen voting machines sputtered and crashed," and "faulty programming" had "sidelined" others, the national media generally depicted the utterly unverifiable voting machines in a positive light.
"Election Day passed with limited snags where electronic tallying made its general-election debut," AP wrote on Nov. 6. "The closely watched contest for governor in Florida was decided without a hitch."
The key election contest in Florida this year was the gubernatorial race between the president's brother and Republican incumbent, Jeb Bush, and Democratic challenger Bill McBride.
"We finally have this monkey off our back that we cannot conduct a proper election," Florida Secretary of State Jim Smith said. The "monkey," however, reappeared when "a computer glitch" was found to have "misplaced" 103,222 ballots in Broward County, causing them not to be counted on election night.
Broward County, which includes Fort Lauderdale, is a strong Democratic county with 487,626 registered Democrat voters compared to 279,978 registered Republicans.
Rather than focus on how an expensive "state of the art" voting system could "misplace" nearly 25 percent of the total votes cast, CNN sought to reassure the public, saying, "the missing votes did not affect the outcome of any races, according to county officials."
Broward County recently spent $17.2 million on touch-screen voting machines made by ES&S. Lisa Strachan, from the Broward County Supervisor of Elections told American Free Press that the "software glitch" was corrected by ES&S technicians. "ES&S is there to monitor everything," Strachan said.
"It's another screw-up and I'm not satisfied this is correct," Broward Republican leader George Lemieux told The South Florida Sun-Sentinel.
On Election Day, callers to a Florida radio talk show complained of "broken" ES&S Votronic touch-screen voting machines, according to the Drudge Report.
"I voted for McBride, but the machine counted it as Bush. It did this three times. The polling worker finally said, ‘We have to re-program this machine.' Another person was having the same trouble while I was there," a voter told Neil Rogers on his highly rated AM radio show.
"None of the major news networks are covering these problems," electronic voting expert Rebecca Mercuri told AFP. "Numerous and severe voting system problems occurred throughout Florida but the news reporting of these problems was overshadowed. More attention was paid to the long lines of people waiting to vote or people talking about voting on the new machines.
"A large number of voters are not computer savvy," Mercuri told AFP. "People are being led to believe these machines are safe and secure, when they are not. They are bamboozling the American public."
Mercuri, a computer science professor at Bryn Mawr College, told AFP that "democracy is down the tubes" if the trend toward insecure electronic voting systems is not stopped.
"The most vulnerable of these systems are the fully electronic touch-screen [Votronic] or Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) devices because of their lack of an independent, voter-verified audit trail," Mercuri said.
Mercuri has a comprehensive analysis of the dangers of electronic voting systems on her notablesoftware.com site.
Mercuri has testified before the U.S. House Science Committee regarding the need for the National Institute of Standards and Technologies (NIST) to establish criteria for the procurement and testing of election equipment.
"The voting equipment vendors and certifying authorities have taken a ‘trust us' stance," Mercuri said, although they are allowed to keep the machines and the computer code that runs the machines secret. In many cases, it is the voting machine company that actually operates the vote-counting machines on Election Day.
AFP learned that ES&S had programmed the individual "control cards" that ran the Precinct Ballot Counter machines for Cook County (Ill.) in their company offices in Chicago during the 2000 presidential election.
Three of the largest voting machine vendors in the United States have convicted criminals in high positions, says Mercuri. "How can it not be a criminal enterprise?" she asked
"Characterizing these serious problems as ‘glitches' makes it seem like poor engineering and incompetent election system management is somehow acceptable to the American public," Mercuri says. "It's not. A massive recall of these inappropriate and defective devices must be started immediately."
Mercuri is concerned that electronic voting machines could be used to conceal massive election fraud.
"It is entirely possible that Florida and other states may smooth out their election day problems so that it appears that the voting systems are functioning properly, but votes could still be shifted or lost in small percentages, enough to affect the outcome of an election, within the self-auditing machines," Mercuri says.
Mercuri proposes a moratorium on the purchase of any new voting systems that do not provide, at a minimum, a voter-verified, hand-recountable, physical (paper) ballot while appropriate laws, standards, and technologies are being developed to provide accurate, secure, reliable, and auditable voting systems.
In Florida and California former elections officials have recently been found to have had undisclosed ties to ES&S when they advised the state to buy voting equipment from the privately owned Omaha-based company.
A former Florida secretary of state profited by being a lobbyist for both the state's counties and ES&S.
Sandra Mortham, who served as the state's top elections official from 1995 to 1999, is a lobbyist for both ES&S and the Florida Association of Counties, which exclusively endorsed the company's touch-screen machines in return for a commission, The Tallahassee Democrat reported on Oct. 6. Mortham received an undisclosed commission from ES&S for every county that bought its touch-screen machines.
In Louisiana, the two parishes (counties) that paid more than $3 million for 700 ES&S Votronic touch-screen voting machines suffered "countless problems" with the new machines, ac cording to The Advocate of Baton Rouge. The ES&S machines "plagued voters and the clerks of court staffs in Ascension and Tangipahoa, the only parishes that use the new machines other than for absentee balloting."
Ascension Parish Clerk of Court Hart Bourque said Wednesday that more than 200 machine malfunctions were re ported.
"A mechanic would fix a machine, and before he could get back to the office, it would shut down again," Bourque said. "Unless we find a solution, next fall there's no way we can vote."
Tangipahoa Parish Clerk of Court John Dahmer said: "I can't say every precinct had a problem, but the vast majority did." Dahmer said at least 20 percent of the machines malfunctioned.
"One percent might be acceptable, but we're not even close to that," Dahmer said. "I have grave concerns. I think the state is going to have to address the fact that these machines had this many malfunctions . . . It's not a problem I can fix. The public seems very satisfied, but the public doesn't see the malfunctions."
Bourque said the ES&S machines were not the first choice of the clerks. Commissioner of Elections Suzanne Terrell had appointed a committee to decide which machines to purchase, and the committee had ignored the wishes of the clerks.
"The clerks had nothing to do with the selection of these machines," Bourque said.
Louisiana plans to purchase thousands of similar voting machines at a cost of many millions of dollars. Dahmer said clerks statewide were told that if the machines worked in Ascension and Tangipahoa parishes, then "everybody in the state was going to get these machines."
That could present a "very serious" problem and other
clerks need to be aware of the potential problems they face, he
said.
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Federal officials have been harshly and justifiably denounced for allowing criminal aliens to go free, but local officials in border counties do the same.
It's a felony in Texas and a misdemeanor in California, New Mexico and Arizona to damage livestock fences, but when ranchers catch illegal aliens in the act, authorities let them go, according to Jack Foote, spokesman for Ranch Rescue.
Ranch Rescue is a private organization doing what officials should but don't do: catch illegal aliens who destroy property in the process of criminally entering the United States from Mexico.
Foote stresses that his troops make no judgement as to whether these trespassers are illegal aliens - that's left to local and federal authorities. But they obviously are. In any event, they are trespassers committing criminal acts in damaging fences do they can steal livestock. They are also known for leaving filth behind, destroying water tanks and other malicious acts.
"These crimes are committed in all border counties ever day but none are prosecuted, "Foote told American Free Press. A check of the records for 1999-2000 showed no prosecutions though ranchers had turned over numerous criminals, he said.
SOUNDLY DENOUNCED
The Immigration and Naturalization Service has soundly denounced by Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Col.) and others for turning loose criminal aliens turned in by the Border Patrol and local authorities. But the reluctance of local prosecutors to deal with criminal aliens had been largely unnoticed.
A lawman in one border state arrested three illegal aliens carrying military assault rifles. He was ordered to release them and return their weapons.
When interviewed, the lawman asked not to be identified because he would be shipped to "our on version of Siberia" for telling his story.
"Most cops don't even bother notifying the INS when they pick up illegal aliens because they just let them fo," the lawman said. "Either 10 out of 10 times or nine out of 10 times they let them go." He said you are also called "racist" for picking up illegal aliens.
In Arizona, illegal aliens account for one-third of the prison population, he said. They are not jailed for being illegal aliens but for committing other crimes.
Ranch Rescue seized about 250 pounds of marijuana Oct. 15-16 from smugglers crossing a ranch near Lochiel, Ariz. Owned by the Nature Conservancy, the Arizona Daily Star reported. About 13 ranch Rescue volunteers participated in the surveillance operation.
Smugglers were observed trooping up a trail bearing bundles on their backs, Foote said, and Ranch Rescue members stepped out and yelled alto (halt). "They dropped their packs and ran off." he said a similar incident occurred about nine hours latter.
FOUNDING ‘RANCH RESCUE'
Ranch Rescue was formed in 2000 when Foote, of Abilene, Tex., was inspired by news accounts of Cochise County rancher Roger Barnett. For years, Barnett and family members have patrolled their ranch, sometimes detaining illegal immigrants.
Foote, in an interview with American Free Press, took issue with statements by the manager of the Conservancy's ranch, who was described as saying Ranch Rescue did not have permission to patrol the grounds.
Ranch Rescue had written authorization to patrol the ranch
and had advised officials that they were a private group and "not
the Border Patrol,' Foote said.
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Despite claims by the administration, floods of dangerous immigrants pour into the United States.
In spite of claims by the Bush administration that America's borders have been tightened substantially since the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, facts and statistics prove otherwise.
The state Department reports that, between Sept. 12, 2001, a day after the terrorists struck, and March 31 of this year, it handed visas to 51,529 nationals of Middle East countries. This does not include Israelis for apparent reasons of "political correctness."
Again excluding Israelis, the State department reports and additional 74,101 nations of Middle Eastern countries were issued non-immigrant or temporary visas in less than a five-month period this year - between April 1 and August 23.
The seriousness of the alien flow into the United States was recently illustrated by columnist Michelle Malkin's just released book, Invasion. Malkin shows that aliens' rights trump both citizens' rights and citizens; safety. No effort is made to control our borders. Malkin reports that in the six months following the Sept. 11 attacks, the State department issued 200,000 additional visas to Middle Easterners and Souther Asians, areas that are known havens for al Qaeda. People without visas enter unhindered from Canada and Mexico."
The immigration policies of Canada, as previously reported by AFP, are a farce.
Canada loosened its immigration laws since Sept. 11, allowing thousands of undocumented aliens into Canada without investigations of their backgrounds. These aliens are not watched and can easily slip across Canada's unguarded border into America.
"Visas continue to be granted indiscriminately even though the State Department knows that a high percentage will overstay their visas and disappear into the population," Roberts warned.
"The United States has become such a hodgepodge of different peoples and vultures that the Immigration and Naturalization Service has washed it hands of locating and deporting illegal aliens. Can a country conduct a war on terror when it cannot control its own border? Does it make any sense for a country that refuses to defend its own borders to invade another country?
Police officers form New York to California are constantly picking up illegal aliens, usually only to release them, throwing their hands up in frustration.
Any police officer knows that if an illegal is arrested he will most likely never appear in court after his initial arraignment and with too low bail being posted.
"Most likely, the illegal will disappear somewhere or
go back to his own country to escape prosecution," a Virginia
police officer told AFP.
"It is totally pointless to try to run an illegal alien over
to the INS for deportation, unless he has been arrested for a
crime of national significance." The officer concluded, "The
INS neither has the interest, not the manpower, to do anything."
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