Yet, as with all political things, fortune contrived to smile kindly on the Tories. With the initial shock of people being forced to stay home, combined with record job losses, significant cuts to the income of millions of others, and the fear covid-19 has struck into our collective hearts, this sheer incompetence wasn't much noticed. Labour's new leadership also fought shy of trying to highlight it fearful of Keir Starmer being seen playing politics with a life-or-death crisis. Therefore, many were prepared to forgive the government their innumerable sins because we needed them to get it right and, well, no one had been in this situation before. See, the Tories are lucky. The wrong choices could be put down to exceptionalism.
Nothing lasts forever, not even polling honeymoons facilitated by a deadly disease. In this last fortnight, the Tories have appeared determined to do everything to take their immense advantage and throw it around like non-functioning testing kits. We saw the imbecility of forcing open the schools while picking fights with teachers and their unions, retreats on ending furlough early and on NHS charges for foreign-born NHS workers, and a collapse in support thanks to the eternal Dominic Cummings crisis. And the government's response to this state of affairs couldn't be worse. Mindful of the u-turn-if-you-want-to nostalgia of the Tory imaginary, and the barrelling approach to Brexit, they've decided to hunker down and go through with school openings and further lockdown relaxations, with arbitrary dates set for the resumption of sports and opening of non-essential shops. This despite infections and death rates standing many times higher than the next worst afflicted European country. That's what they think of the science they're supposedly led by.
Over the coming decades the awful decisions of this government are sure to be pored over. They're going to be a factor at the general election in four years time and be scrutinised with a fine tooth comb at the upcoming round of trials. Well, you can't blame a guy for dreaming. But what is the root of this bloody-minded idiocy? We know Johnson is lazy and would know a brief if one came to get him out of jail, but it's more than having a personality indifferent to the suffering of others. Remember, this is someone entirely driven by self and the desire for popularity - you couldn't find a politician more appropriate to the age of the attention economy. The government's psychopathy isn't thanks to the personality traits of its Prime Minister and chief adviser, it's the collective property of the dominant wing of the Tories. Before the fall out of Dominic Cummings forced the right wing press to reflect the anger of its readers they were strongly agitating for lockdown restrictions to be eased. Whence does this will-to-psychosis come?
There are two intertwining aspects to understanding the Tories here. The first barely needs much rehearsing because it will be familiar with anyone reading anything to the left of the liberal press: class politics. The history of the Tory party is of its being the preferred, but not sole, arena for the political articulation of ruling class interests, for organising those interests, and representing these sectional interests as if they're identical with those of the country/people. The Tories' hesitation over implementing quarantine measures, their being forced by the measures already taken by the public was, transparently, about keeping the UK's stagnating economy from seizing up. How they've supported people through the crisis by tying subsistence to employers, keeping Universal Credit low, propping up landlords and issuing loans to businesses demonstrated their first concern was maintaining the disciplinary complex underpinning waged labour and market competition. No matter how many old people are shipped back into coronavirus-riddled care homes to die, no capitalist relations of production will be harmed by the pandemic. Even if some changes to the workplace are accelerating. Therefore the lifting of the lockdown is about putting profits before people, reasserting employer authority over employee, and starting the bounce back from the viral depression.
The second is about authoritarianism, which has been the ingrained common sense of British state craft since Thatcher. This is different to what we see in Russia, Hungary, the US, and elsewhere but is driven by the same sorts of processes. As Andrew Gamble observed in his 1988 book, The Free Economy and the Strong State, Thatcher's roll back of the post-war social order was not possible without the state tooling up. Famously it did so to see off the labour movement in the key disputes of the 1980s, but the authoritarianism ran deeper than handing the police more powers and carte blanche to do as they pleased. The Thatcher project was about positioning the government as the absolute authority within the state system. Her attacks on the civil service, the restructuring of education and health, the gutting of local government, and her overall disdain for expert knowledge (except when it was in accordance with her prejudices) reinforced Downing Street as the seat of command to which all other institutions cleaved. Tony Blair settled very well into this practice of government - the rows with the BBC, enforcing more marketisation on public services, and so on. Ditto for Dave's lash up with the LibDems and their programme of austerity in defiance of economic sense, and doubly so with Johnson first on Brexit and now with coronavirus. The parading of SAGE is just there for show - Johnson has no intention of abiding by their advice not because he thinks they're wrong and he's right, but because it goes against the entirety of his political socialisation. There cannot be room for alternative bases of authority in government if, crucially, the Thatcherite settlement within the state apparatus is to be maintained. I therefore fully expect the government to declare victory over the virus some point this summer while infections head toward a second peak and deaths accumulate at a greater rate than present.
I doubt Johnson consciously see things this way. His modus operandi is opportunism, not ideology or an appreciation of the interests of his class. As such, he's also well suited to the government machine bequeathed him by his predecessors. He doesn't have to be held to account, no one in the civil service is going to say no, experts and critics are rubbished as activists with political axes to grind, and they have zero authority in the state system anyway. Whether an active authoritarian like Thatcher or a couch potato authoritarian like Johnson, they want to maintain government privilege - hence also the outright refusal to sack Cummings, even at the risk of diving poll ratings.
In the 1970s, right wing columnists and rent-a-quote Tory MPs used to regularly describe Britain as the sick man of Europe because of rising inflation, sclerotic growth, strikes, inflation, and a generalised malaise. With an unenviable record and a rate of transmission higher now than when we entered quarantine, more people are going to be getting ill, getting incapacitated, and dying as other European countries start easing things and begin the slow journey back to something approximating the normal. Our continued morbidity contrasts unfavourably with their recovery. But our sickness is deeper - the illness of the social body is exacerbated by a disease of the mind, of a governing party and a Prime Minister prepared to sacrifice the many to conserve the profits and power of the few, and a practice of government that encourages him to do so.
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27 comments:
this is nuts.
Lots of people banging on now about the second wave. If there isn't, then that's a lot of people who have wrongly called for a prolonging of a lockdown that costs jobs, lives, and freedom. Lots of people won't be forgetting that.
What is "nuts" is lifting lockdown measures, opening non-essential shops, and letting more people mingle when the UK's infection and death rate is much greater than other countries doing the same. You boast about being a scientist so why don't you follow some of it.
Sweden has never had any lockdown, but its new deaths are down to low double digits! For the last day's data available it had just 17 deaths. Its population is about a sixth that of Britain, but even on a per capita basis that equates to only around 102 deaths in Britain, whereas the actual number in Britain with its lockdown is on average around 400.
The lockdown has been pointless and ineffective in preventing deaths most of which are of elderly and sick people, and so not surprisingly people in care homes and hospitals. Tragic as any deaths are, putting it into context its not some existential threat. The number of deaths is about double the number of flu deaths in 2018, and we have vaccines for flu. The 40,000 deaths represents just 0.3% even of the 20% of the population actually at risk from it, and just 0.066% of the total population. It represents just half the number of people who die every single year from smoking related illnesses. None of that justifies having crucified the economy and the jobs of millions of workers, and their lives and livelihoods for years to come.
The left has completely lost its head over this issue in a rancid bout of opportunism in which it has simply put a plus sign wherever Trump or Johnson put a Minus Sign. As Trotsky put it, the Left on this issue needs to Learn To Think.
The left has completely lost its head over this issue in a rancid bout of opportunism in which it has simply put a plus sign wherever Trump or Johnson put a Minus Sign.
I don't think it's that: I think it's also the combination of irrational fear and "anti-capitalist" asceticism that also leads many on the left to oppose nuclear power.
George,
The latte is almost certainly true, because a strong dose of Malthusian catastophism afflicts the Left, which is also imbued with Sismondism the origin of Malthus' own ideas. The ideas of the "anti-capitalists" and "anti-imperialists" are pure Sismondism of the type also of the Narodniks, as I have been demonstrating in my current series of posts on Lenin's writings on that kind of Economic Romanticism.
The catastrophism no doubt leads many on the left to see the economic catastrophe caused by the lockdown as the kind of event that leads to capitalist collapse - which it won't - or at least leads to workers rising in revolt, which again it won't for the reasons Trotsky sets out in Flood Tide, and The Curve of Capitalist Development. Such crises unless they occur at the peak of workers strength and class consciousness - for example 1917 - never lead to such results, but always to the victory of reaction. Indeed, that occurred in the 1920's, and 30's, including in the USSR.
The left has lost its head because it has forgotten how to think critically. It is confined in ossified sects led by geriatrics that have been in [place for half a century, longer than most Stalinist tyrants. These sects are like cults with the word being handed down from on high, with the drones then repeating it in acts of tribal loyalty. When confronted with a reality that contradicts it, they can't respond other than by throwing out abuse, like the trolls they increasingly resemble, and charges of this or that denier in place of any rational argument. They have lost the capacity for independent critical thought.
They are like the sects at the end of the 19th century such as the SDF and ILP, which Engels told Eleanor Marx and her supporter to avoid like the plague, and instead to go straight to the workers in the Liberal Clubs. Any healthy socialists today will do the same thing and go straight to the workers in the LP, avoiding the cults like the plague.
Boffy, now firmly on the side of the 5 million business owners and their families, Trump, Bolsanaro and all the other reactionaries he pretends to rail against, is once again showing staggering levels of duplicity and dishonesty.
Comparing Sweden with the UK is stupid. And the Swedes did lock down travel and have benefited from the fact that everyone around them locked down! Still they have had far more deaths and hospital admissions than the nations you can almost reasonably compare them to, like Denmark.
Boffy stupidity is simply incredible, from calling this a moral panic, to claiming kids can't spread the virus, to claim that the NHS advised any Tom Dick or Harry to phone NHS direct. This dumb fuck should have kept his ignorant mouth shut but this self aggrandizing moron simply can't help himself.
Boffy will be claiming next that you can't catch the virus while it is sunny, which is what some dumb fuck Brexiter said on TV yesterday.
He is a fucking sociopath on stilts.
Carty is a cretin on stilts!
Why do you bother continuing with all these stupid names to present the crap you purvey, because we all know that they are you? It just makes you look even more stupid than you are, and that is no easy task because you clearly are extremely stupid.
Why don't you just go back to your Sentinel persona whose support for the BNP actually more accurately represents your underlying reactionary beliefs. Then your calls for millions of workers employed by KFC and others to lose their jobs by closing down such places, and all the other production of things you believe workers should not be allowed to enjoy would at least be put in a more rational context. Back then as the Sentinel you told us that destroying the economy was fine, because all of the millions of unemployed could just follow your example and pick up a fishing rod to go fishing to provide the food required by their families.
And that is the underlying reactionary nature of your beliefs whatever persona you adopt, and whatever blather and stupid abuse you throw out in trying to provoke a response. Its the ideology of Year Zero of Pol Pot, as you have set out here, and on Coatesy's Blog.
Pure idiocy that no one has any interest ion engaging with to meet your narcissistic desires to have people respond to the crap you produce.
I remember debating Boffy re Somali ‘pirates’, yes they are the pirates and not the British Navy! He argued that the British navy should be deployed in strength to protect ‘British seamen/interests’. Now no British Seamen had ever been killed by Somali pirates but in Boffy’s insane cost/benefit calculation his dumb fuck logic said we must send the very expensive navy to deal with it.
On a deadly virus that could eventually kill millions worldwide, he wants us to do fuck all.
Go figure.
Dumb fuck – we locked down way way too late. When we locked down it wasn’t anywhere near strict enough. Our lockdown was a joke.
And we are still in phase 1, with no idea how this is all going to pan out.
So shut the fuck up and let the W.H.O. speak.
This is not about leftists trying to undermine capitalism but about science and pandemics. We speak with science, Boffy and Carty speak religion, and their religion is the one and true 'economy'. And all must kneel before this monolithic structure.
There was a time before I identified that BCFG was just a continuation of his persona as The Sentinel, when I engaged in discussion with him. It was before I understood the nature of trolls, but once i did, it didn't take long to identify BCFG as just The Sentinel in other garb, just as has used DFTM, Socialism In One Bedroom, CAAC, Dave, Brian b, Chris, Rachel, The Only Sane Person etc, an no doubt dozens more.
As with his comments here he has nothing to say, just invective trying to provoke a response, which it is best not to provide. There is no point trying to debate with such trolls because they have no interest in such, indeed no actual set of beleifs, which is why he can present himself one day as some kind of "socialist", another as a fascist. Its just worth pointing that out every so often, without being drawn into pointless debate.
So, notice he provides no link, or reference to this supposed debate about Somali pirates, no actual quotes from it. Its just a ridiculous attempt to provoke a response, which he isn't going to get, and that is the best way to treat him and to piss him off further. I love it.
Here is what BCFG/DFTM/CAAC/SIOB/Dave/Rachel used to write when he used the persona of The Sentinel, back in 2009.
All the same reactionary ideas shine though, but back then, instead of just arguing that millions of workers should lose their jobs for committing the crime of working in KFC and so on he also argued that bananas are a luxury that workers could do without, and as part of the autarky he sought for a Britain out of Europe, workers could simply pick up their fishing rods, and provide themselves with fish to eat!
It also shows the futility of engaging in any kind of debate with such trolls, which is why I now don't do it.
Who the hell is this Sentinel character you go about about you demented idiot!
And crap, this coming from the idiot who said this was a moral panic, claimed kids could not spread the virus, claimed that NHS direct wanted any Tom, Dick or Harry to phone in no matter how mild the symptoms.
Your crap is not only utterly contrary to all the available science but, in a very real way, dangerous.
After all the crap you have spouted over Brexit we now see, which i saw anyway, that there is literally no difference between you and the 5 million business owners and their families, Bolsanaro, Trump and the whole Brexit brigade.
For Boffy nothing but nothing gets in the way of their profiteering! Be it the EU or a deadly virus!
Boffy,
What you write on catastrophism (specifically, the view that economic catastrophe would lead to successful socialist revolution) makes me recall how Mikhail Gorbachev summed up Marxist ideology in the "Communism" episode of the documentary series "Big Ideas That Changed The World":
"Until Marx, most philosophers had thought poverty was accidental. But Marx said poverty was a deliberate creation of the capitalist system – and now he suggested a solution. Eventually, Marx said, workers would be made so poor that they would have nothing to lose – they would rise up and seize control. And a new kind of society would result: a communist society in which everything would be owned communally. It was a beautiful idea. The reality of communism was to be very different."
Are you sure you haven't misunderstood Marxist theory yourself, given that it's inconceivable that a former Soviet leader of all people would be ignorant of its fundamentals?
To me it seemed clear that an economic crisis that results in a collapse of production would see a rise in the salience of lifeboat ethics (and thus lead to a rise of genocidal fascism), but I would expected that a crisis that results merely in an unjust distribution of wealth would benefit the left. That doesn't seem to have been what happened though after the 2008 financial crash, as the Obama presidency in the US had only two years to do its thing before being sabotaged by the Tea Party reaction, and as almost all of Europe elected pro-austerity right-wing governments.
I think you're right though that this kind of catastrophist thinking (whether economic or environmental, although I'm unconvinced that the label "Malthusian" is actually appropriate for environmental catastrophism) is probably more influential on anti-nuclear-power and pro-lockdown thinking, than the kind of puritanical/ascetic mentality that I was imagining was to blame.
You also made a good point on how left-wing groupuscules today misunderstand the historical Russian Social Democratic Party, confusing the party's tiny covert hard core (created by necessity as the result of having to operate under the tsarist police state) with the party as a whole.
Another thing: given that our resident troll is an enthusiastic advocate of a much stricter lockdown than was ever implemented in the UK (so presumably something more like that implemented in Italy) and accuses anyone opposed to this of wishing to expend people's lives for the sake of "the economy" (completely overlooking how destructive such a lockdown is of society in a non-economic sense), I wonder what kind of personal life he/she must lead?
You know who he is, its you! Its not just that the whole style, the turn of phrase, the usual troll propensity to drag any discussion into your labyrinth of irrelevancies, huge pointless quotes snatched from doing Google searches to find something to back up your insanity is the same, and to link them into comments longer than a Doctoral Thesis. Both as Sentinel and as BCFG, you have posted comments that were over 5000 words long! But it was also proved long ago by using Google Analytics, and the fact that you used the same IP address to post as The Sentinel and as BCFG!
Look at Boffy's sock puppets, Sentinel (I assume), Speedy, GrahamB, SueR, Dipper - all arch reactionaries incidentally
Boffy the Brexiter, like all Brexiters doesn’t think anything should interfere with the ‘economy’. Taxes, Health and Safety legislation, these are all just costs.
Let us apply dumb fuck Boffy logic to health and safety. Let us say if we removed all health and safety legislation then that would cause between 5000 and 10000 additional deaths per year. Well that is far far lower than how many die during a seasonal flu. In fact, so says Boffy logic, more people probably die playing Scrabble each year. Therefore the dumb fuck logic goes, lets get rid of health and safety.
Maybe we should add this as number 11 to the communist manifesto:
11 Removal of all health and safety protections for employees
oh seems I'm late to this one and have missed the fun.
Anyway.
"So shut the fuck up and let the W.H.O. speak." Wasn't that the start of the problem? There was no human to human transmission, it isn't much of a problem, etc etc? Not letting Taiwan doctors speak because it would have upset China?
oh I started this, and Phil said "What is "nuts" is lifting lockdown measures, opening non-essential shops, and letting more people mingle when the UK's infection and death rate is much greater than other countries doing the same. You boast about being a scientist so why don't you follow some of it."
So how is that second wave coming along? And have I missed your condemnation of the BLM demonstrations breaking social distancing in London?
I am a scientist by training. I am following it. A lot is unknown, and a lot contradictory. I think the lockdown will be shown to have been a massively damaging waste of time. But governments have to err on the side of caution so don't disagree with it. I suspect most of the key facts were available from The Diamond Princess.
My policy would, a few weeks ago, to have started opening up carefully. The problem with the Lockdown is there is no way out of it. If you fear the second wave then in fifty years time we will still be in Lockdown fearing the second wave. So I would have started doing discrete experiments to find out whether we could open up by slowly releasing conditions and some areas and monitoring very closely, as that would provide evidence for more further actions, evidence which is currently lacking.
"Look at Boffy's sock puppets, Sentinel (I assume), Speedy, GrahamB, SueR, Dipper - all arch reactionaries incidentally
Boffy the Brexiter, like all Brexiters doesn’t think anything should interfere with the ‘economy’. Taxes, Health and Safety legislation, these are all just costs."
Obviously, The Sentinel/BCFG/DFTM/CAAC has burst a blood vessel, and gone completely off his rocker. Another feature of his posts, whichever persona he adopts, is his attempts to present me as the opposite of whatever it is I'm arguing. So, we have here the ridiculous idea that I am a Brexiter, when a simple look at my comments here, and on my blog shows militant opposition to Brexit; my opposition to the Theory of Socialism In One Country turns into me being a proponent of nationalism and and so on. All of course completely insane, and the hallmark of a troll simply trying to provoke a response.
But, the nature of this particular response from the Sentinel/BCFG opens up another possibility, which is that it is so insane, so confused and contrary to reality that it suggests that he is not just a troll, but a bot, sitting in a troll farm churning out endless crap in a variety of names, none of it making any actual sense, but all just based on a algorithm that has at its core a set of reactionary ideas.
Though to be honest I think most bots would probably be more intelligent than the sentinel/BCFG, and probably more worth talking to. Si I guess he is probably real, just a really sad, stupid person with narcissistic personality disorder. He really should go get some treatment.
Incidentally, not only can I definitely assert that I, Arthur Bough, well known of this Parish, most certainly am not GrahamB, i.e. Graham Ballmer, a fact to which can also be attested by Bill Jeffries, but I can also similarly attest that I am not Sentinel, Speedy, SueR, or Dipper.
On the contrary, not only has it been proved that BCFG et al is the same troll as The Sentinel, but I suspect that the other sock puppets he has listed here are also just his other manifestations, used as means of further provoking responses, as well as trying to set up straw men to attack, whilst at the same time feeding his narcissitic personality disorder.
I am as calm as anything dumb fuck, its you who are mixing me up with someone else.
I have no idea who this Sentinel character is, but given his deranged and dumb fuck views, he certainly sounds like one of your many sock puppets.
maybe this was was created so you can claim that someone who takes issue with your claptrap is said person.
But to reiterate I am not and never have been this Sentinel character.
So calm down Brexit Boffy
You have clearly just destroyed yourself, as your attempt to reconcile your contradictory statements designed only to provoke responses have sent you up your own arse.
My work here is done. What a beautiful day it is. I love it.
Only clearly destroyed in your deranged imagination! I can almost see the tears as you write what a beautiful day lol!
Brexit Boffy/Sentinel says virus a moral panic
The W.H.O. says it a global health emergency and pandemic
Who do we think is spouting crap and who is being scientific?
The thing is in the deranged mind of Boffy the answer here is him! This is the sort of derangement that could easily create a clearly disturbed character like Sentinel.
Incidentally Dipper, you still, after numerous requests, have not given us the list of weak who have defeated the strong by being prepared to suffer.
You have a penchant for not backing up the shit you say when challenged. I am only surprised you didn’t distract from the point by claiming I was a troll or some demented and deranged character like Sentinel, who is possibly Boffy’s alter ego.
What other conclusion can I draw when he repeatedly and falsely claims Sentinel is me? He must be one of Boffy’s argument deflectors!
You are now just digging a deeper hole in which to bury your own corpse. Fine. Let the dead bury the dead. So long, it was not a pleasure knowing you. Rest in pieces the pieces of all your accumulated persona of Sentinel, Brian B, BCFG, DFTM, SIOB, CAAC, The Only Sane Person, all of the assorted "Boffy this or that", Chris, Dave, Rachel, Sartesian, Dipper, Speedy, and all the rest.
We will not miss you.
Boffy,
Surely (Tory) Dipper and (Blairite) Speedy aren't just more personas of BCFG/DFTM/CAAC, but on other blogs (including David Timoney's From Arse to Elbow and Michael Roberts's The Next Recession) I've seen a poster which seems to have very similar views, and goes by the name of "Herbie Kills Children" or "Herbie Destroys the Environment".
And I think that BCFG/DFTM/CAAC (contrary to your claim on 4 June 15:31) isn't actually is a believer in "Socialism in One Country": he seems more like a fifth columnist who wants to destroy our own country in order to eliminate its ability to inflict harm on the global South.
Carty - that is some level of research and triangulation that I am almost flattered you would go to the trouble to investigate, but actually is incorrect.
Incidentally, maybe you could trawl through this deranged characters Sentinels comments and give your opinion on that, seen as you think you are some kind of expert on the subject?
Sorry for the multiple posts but this should be the last for a week or 2:
“he seems more like a fifth columnist who wants to destroy our own country in order to eliminate its ability to inflict harm on the global South.”
This bit is fairly accurate actually; you mention it like it is a bad thing! If of course by destroy our own country you mean the British nation as a money laundering, supremacist and imperialist nation super exploiting labour both at home and in the global south.
Certainly eliminating its ability to inflict harm is on the global South is a core belief, and believe it or not, and listening to brexit Boffy this may come as a surprise Carty, this view is quite common on the left so it may not be surprising that you sometimes incorrectly mix me up with other characters.
But I am glad that a good way to distinguish between us is that you (and Boffy for sure) are ardent and loyal supporters of this nation and its ability to inflict harm on others and I oppose this.
George,
The troll isn't a believer in anything. Its one reason he doesn't have any knowledge or understanding of anything. The other is that lack of understanding combined with an insistence that you know everything is a sure fire way of getting the unsuspecting, as I was when ten years ago I didn't understand the nature of trolls, to respond to you. Its only a response that the troll requires, and then having drawn you in they can turn it into a pointless, never ending flame war.
That's why the troll can write as the BNP supporting Sentinel or as BCFG, DFTM and so on which proclaim to be some kind of Leftist, though always reactionary Leftists, which indicates his underlying nature. As for Dipper Speedy et al, I suspect they are all him, as in the past he also wrote as a Libertarian.
The same with the Socialism In One Country/Bedroom. Its not that he actually beleives any of that any more than anything else, in fact, its quite clear he does not understand the theory of Socialism In One Country. But for him its just another area in which to promote a flame war and to act as contrarian. So, as an opponent of SIOC, he tries to present me as actually being a promoter of it, just as being an opponent of Brexit he tries to present me as "Brexit Boffy", as an internationalist he tries to present me as a nationalist, and so on, and as you say, he writes using many different sock puppets on a number of websites and blogs.
He has been stalking me across the internet for more than ten years from my first encounters with him as Sentinel and BCFG, showing that I must have really got under his skin. he did the same with someone else ten years ago, and having threatened them, and been challenged to meet up in person, of course failed to materialise. He's undoubtedly one of those sad people that have periodically actually been pulled in by the police for such stalking activity, and who invariably turn out to be some kind of social inadequate, who sits in their bedroom all day churning out this crap. Its best to ignore them, and hope that sooner or later they get the medical treatment they require.
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