“8 unwanted terrorists” obliterated U.S. Bill of Rights, democracy ─ David Hoffman

Can (will) ordinary Americans fix what high officials, corporate media icons have broken?

Excerpting, editing, minor comment by
Carolyn Bennett

T

We the People
One Nation Indivisible
Are we?

oday at Pravda Ru David Hoffman lists and lays charges against “eight terrorists” for killing and or eroding freedoms enshrined in the U.S. Constitution’s Bill of Rights: First Amendment’s ‘freedom of speech’ (erased by University of Colorado and government spy programs); First Amendment’s ‘freedom of press’ (erased by government spying); Fourth Amendment’s freedom from ‘unreasonable searches and seizures (nullified by U.S. legal system’s failure to prosecute government officials’ high crimes against people domestic and foreign);  Fifth Amendment’s freedom from self-incrimination (erased by a new doctrine of ‘guilty until proven innocent ─ provided a person is first extra-judicially executed’); Eighth Amendment’s freedom from ‘cruel and unusual punishments’ (killed by the use of torture and extrajudicial executions); and Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments’ clauses prohibiting government’s taking of life, liberty, or property without ‘due process of law’ (murdered by the existence in the United States of all reasons stated above) ─ David R. Hoffman─

 

From his op-ed “America’s eight most unwanted terrorists”, these are edited highlights.

Unwanted TERRORISTs Number Eight: Corporate-Controlled Media

These media’s greatest acts of terrorism occurred shortly after the attacks of September 11, 2001. 

…Airwaves became filled with ‘talking heads’ screeching how these attacks ‘changed the rules.’ Suddenly governmental intrusions into people’s private lives, unthinkable before 9/11, were myopically accepted by the corporate-controlled media as part of the ‘changed rules,’ and (former president George W.) Bush’s lies about the necessity to invade Iraq were unquestioningly regurgitated as truth.

Additionally, America's corporate-controlled media make prominent use of the ‘what came first, the chicken or the egg’ quandary.  When critics condemn them for feeding Americans a steady diet of garbage, these media respond that they are only ‘giving the people want they want.’

This garbage has been largely responsible for the ‘dumbing down of America and for the glorification of ignorance, irresponsibility, selfishness, and stupidity that may have even helped launch the ‘patron saint’ of ignorance, George W. Bush, into the White House.  

Unwanted TERRORISTs Number Seven: University of Colorado and Colorado ‘Legal’ System

“…As underscored by current government spying, freedoms have not been lost only through violence ─ but also through stealth.  … The University of Colorado (in the ‘war on terror’ era) continued (the 1960s FBI COINTELPRO) tradition of using stealth when it obliterated academic freedom throughout the United States by firing Ward Churchill, a tenured professor, for writing a controversial essay about the 9/11 attacks.

“…Because of actions by UC, the Colorado ‘legal’ system, and the fear of economic retaliation they have engendered, academics throughout the United States are reluctant to publish any writings, or conduct any studies, that could remotely be construed as ‘controversial.’”

Unwanted TERRORISTs Number Six: Jose Rodriguez and CIA

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency is “One of the biggest ─ if not the biggest ─ terrorist organizations in the world. CIA’s hands drip with the blood from shattered democracies, torture, political assassinations, and extrajudicial executions.”

Dark sites

The CIA’s legacy, as that of the FBI, “is so sordid that it once contracted with members of organized crime to assassinate (Cuban President) Fidel Castro.”

 

Despite this record, “the CIA’s illegal and unconstitutional tactics, as of the FBI’s, have been met with the George W. Bush and Obama administrations approving ‘nod and wink’. For example ─

Former CIA Director Jose Rodriguez’s ‘National Clandestine Service’ illegally destroyed videotapes depicting CIA tortures. 

And while the offense, if committed by an ordinary person, would have prompted charges of ‘obstruction of justice’ and ‘evidence-tampering’, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder refused to prosecute Rodriguez; and in ‘gratitude,’ Rodriguez sought to profit from the blood upon his hands in writing a book in which he denounces the Obama administration for condemning ‘waterboarding’ as torture.

Detention without charge
Without trial
Without end
With Torture

Unwanted TERRORISTs Number Five:  John Yoo, Jay Bybee, David Margolis

‘Torture memos’ authored and signed Yoo and Bybee “are responsible for providing the ‘green light’ that made torture an American institution. 

“… America’s corrupt legal system, which rarely sees a government atrocity it cannot rationalize, proclaimed that persons tortured by the United States government ─ including American citizens ─ have absolutely no legal recourse against their torturers.”  This means ─

…thugs and sadists operating with the blessing of the American government can now kidnap, detain, and torture people at will, without fear of criminal prosecution or civil lawsuits, even when they mistakenly seize and/or torture an innocent person, a scenario that tragically happened to a German citizen named Khaled el-Masri. 

John Yoo is now teaching law ─ “the very subject for which he has demonstrated nothing but contempt” ─ at the prestigious University of California-Berkeley. The man who sanctioned human rights abuses, crimes against human beings that one lawyer in the U.S. Attorney General’s office dismissed as Yoo’s ‘poor judgment’, Jay Bybee, is now “a federal judge on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.”

U.S. Executive Branch

Unwanted TERRORISTs Number Four: U.S. President Barack Obama and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder

Holder has gone to extraordinary lengths to both defend and prevent prosecution of those who advocated, engaged in, or covered up torture. 

Despite all his lofty talk about hope’ and ‘change,’ if history is an honest judge then  ─

Obama will undoubtedly be remembered as the ultimate example of how American democracy is impotent when it comes to electing just and moral leaders or producing meaningful political change.

In several ways President Obama “has abused his power more than former President George W. Bush. 

He has set the precedent that gives the American government the power to extra judicially execute its own citizens, and

…has even used a drone to intentionally target and kill a sixteen-year-old boy. 

He has also rabidly reauthorized the so-called ‘Patriot Act’ so he could cite it as an excuse for NSA and FBI spying and other abuses of power. 

…once news of this spying became public, according to Reuters, President Obama was planning an investigation into who leaked the documents exposing this spying and other abuses of power.

Unwanted TERRORISTs Number Three:  George W. Bush, et al  (a “ruthless cabal of terrorists” against whom no meaningful investigations or charges have been conducted or laid)

Former U.S. President George W. Bush “first planted the seeds of government-sponsored terrorism in the United States.”  After the 9/11 attacks, … Bush claimed that foreign terrorists hated America because they were jealous of its ‘freedoms’  yet it was Bush and his minions, not foreign terrorists, who so ruthlessly decimated these freedoms (all having entered force and taken root in the United States of America thanks to George W. Bush and his cabal of terrorists):

U.S. Legislative Branch

…Illegal spying upon American citizens;

…detentions without charge or trial; denial of legal due process;

…extraordinary rendition;

…secret prisons; torture;

…murder;

…war crimes;

…abuse of material witness statutes;

…Guantanamo Bay;

…the ‘Patriot Act’;

…intimidation of officials who exposed his lies;

…corrupt awarding of no-bid military and ‘rebuilding’ contracts to political cronies;

…use of America’s military resources for personal, financial, and political gain;

…destruction of the Bill of Rights;

…outrageous powers given to agencies like the FBI and CIA, despite their histories of abusing such powers; and

…corruption and politicalization of the judicial branch of government

Unwanted TERRORISTs Number Two:  America’s ‘Legal’ System

Without the servile compliance of America’s judicial branch of government, the terrorist activities of the Bush and Obama administrations might not have been possible.  The judiciary branch’s “terrorism resides in the fact that since the start of the new millennium ─

…it has abdicated its constitutional responsibility as a ‘check-and-balance’ against the legislative and executive branches of government and has become nothing more than a rubberstamp for governmental abuses, injustices, corruption, and atrocities.

“…What is particularly tragic about the legal system’s obsequiousness (subservience, kowtowing or yielding of its responsibilities) is that standing up to Bush’s and Obama’s crimes could have had a positive effect ─

… in that any refusal by these men to obey judicial decrees would have exposed the extent of their tyranny and hypocrisy. 

Instead, America’s corrupt legal system has not only regressed to the point of endorsing pre-Revolutionary war legal practices, it has even turned the presidency into a monarchy.

Unwanted TERRORISTs Number One:  The United States Supreme Court. 

U.S. Judicial Branch

The United States Supreme Court ─ though a powerful part of America’s corrupt legal system ─ deserves a dishonorable mention all its own. 

Comprised primarily of politicized, unethical, and overtly biased ‘justices,’ this court has been responsible for much of the legal system’s terrorism.

Not only in its refusal to hear the Ward Churchill appeal and its sanctioning warrantless collection of DNA samples, the Supreme Court ─ from the coup of 2000 to the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission 2010 ruling ─ has gone far beyond mere destruction of the U.S. Constitution’s Bill of Rights and destroyed democracy. 

“Despite

the existence of these terrorists, America still is (Hoffman says with a sting) ‘the land of the free and the home of the brave.’  The problem is ─ 

…the ‘free’ are government-sponsored terrorists; and

…the ‘brave’ are those vilified and victimized, denied legal redress, prosecuted, and or imprisoned for exposing the government-sponsored terrorists.

For a long time the United States of America (land that I love) has been in a state of BREAKDOWN and regression. I have compiled at least three books dealing with indicators of this breakdown. Hoffman has fixed the blame, as he always does, with an accuracy that is almost too painful to bear.

A

re we Americans prepared for no more than fixing of the blame? Are we ready to fix the problem? Or are we prepared only to continue in the current character of blissful ignorance, arrogance, virtual action, viz., inaction in human relations terms, and inane defensiveness?

Sources and notes

“America’s eight most unwanted terrorists” (David R. Hoffman, Legal Editor of Pravda.Ru)

June 11, 2013, http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/11-06-2013/124806-america_eight_unwanted_terrorists-0/

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy

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Hoffman mourns passing of academic freedom, marketplace of ideas

Lost Liberty returns reluctantly if at all.

America’s determined regression against the common good

Excerpt, minor edit by Carolyn Bennett

David Hoffman ends his “Lies live forever” today at Pravda Ru

“Throughout its history, the United States has progressed and prospered thanks to the Constitution’s encouragement of a ‘marketplace of ideas.’

“More often than not, this marketplace has been replete with the studies, hypotheses, theories, opinions and polemics of academics.”

However, today, “thanks to the University of Colorado’s firing of Professor Ward Churchill, every tenured professor in America ─ and especially those labeled or considered to be ‘liberal’ or ‘leftist’ ─ will be hesitant to express anything that could remotely be construed as ‘controversial.’

And the chances that non-tenured professors will fill this void have been significantly reduced by academia's increasing reliance on poorly paid adjunct (part-time) instructors.

Professor Ward Churchill

…Since many of these adjuncts hope to eventually obtain full-time positions, there is an even greater reluctance for them to say or do anything that would impede their opportunity for advancement.

“Perhaps the greatest hypocrisy in the Churchill case is ─ to express their alleged ‘outrage’ over Churchill’s ‘Eichmann’ analogy ─ his opponents demonstrated little compunction about employing Nazi style tactics themselves:

Generating hysteria that favored emotion over reason;

Scapegoating Churchill to intimidate all academics labeled or considered to be ‘liberal’ or ‘leftist’; and

Disseminating ‘great lies’ to promote political agendas

“It should come as no surprise that the people who present the greatest obstacle to the success of these tactics are the intellectuals and thus there is the greatest incentive for a corrupt power structure to silence them.

 

“A

s the diversity of hypotheses, theories, opinions, and polemics that once provoked intellectual thought and discussion vanish from America’s marketplace of ideas, all that will remain are the regurgitation(s) of whatever propaganda powerful corporations, university officials, and self-serving right-wing media choose to feed the masses.

“And America will be weaker because of it.”

Lost Liberty returns reluctantly if at all

Perhaps one day, “as has often happened in the past, the remedial eyes of history will comprehend the extent of tyranny and injustice the University of Colorado and America’s legal system have unleashed upon the land; and then denounce those responsible as the mendacious and myopic reprobates that they are.

“However, by then, the damage done to the people and the nation might never be undone. This is the worst tyranny and injustice of all.”

Sources and notes

Hoffman began his article “Lies live forever”

“There’s been a horrific death in America ─ an assassination actually. But don’t count on the assassins ever being punished, not in this world at least. Instead they are undoubtedly gloating, ‘high-fiving’ each other and laughing about the magnitude of their crime.

“These criminals include mendacious officials from the University of Colorado (UC), judges that occupy or have occupied seats in the State of Colorado’s corrupt legal system and the so-called ‘justices’ on the equally corrupt United States Supreme Court. Together they have murdered one of the most precious commodities America once had to offer ─ academic freedom.

“The U.S. Supreme Court joined this corrupt cabal when it recently denied certiorari (cert.) by refusing to hear Ward Churchill’s appeal challenging his unjust firing from UC. Although I have written extensively about Churchill’s case in several other Pravda.Ru articles (“A Tale of Two Academics, Parts I and II,” June 17 and 18, 2009; “Boycott CU, TT and UCB”, October 27, 2009; and “Ward Churchill: The Lie Lives On,” November 29, 2010, to name a few) ─ for those who may have missed them, I will repeat the fundamental facts.

“Churchill was a tenured professor of ethnic studies at UC. Academic tenure is (or more accurately ‘was’) designed to protect professors from economic retaliation for engaging in controversial studies, or expressing controversial hypotheses, theories, opinions, and/or polemics.

“In 2001, Churchill wrote a controversial essay that essentially blamed America’s foreign policy and the exploitative nature of global capitalism for provoking the September 11, 2001 attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center. In doing so, he referred to some of the 9/11 victims as ‘little Eichmanns,’ a reference to the infamous Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann.

“The essay remained largely unnoticed until 2005 when Churchill was scheduled to speak at a college in upstate New York.

“It was then that the self-serving right-wing media ─ who have no compunction about using the United States Constitution’s protections of ‘freedom of speech’ and ‘press’ to promote their own agendas ─ demanded Churchill’s firing.

“Soon opportunistic and demagogic politicians such as Colorado’s then-governor Bill Owens joined the chorus with some Colorado lawmakers ─ even threatening to withhold funding from UC…” 

Professor Churchill was fired. He sued and appealed but the actions of power were stayed. Hoffman writes:

At first glance it seems strange that America’s legal system, which was supposedly created to protect the rights and freedoms enshrined in the Constitution, would be one of the primary instigators of their destruction.

Read the full article: “Lies live forever,” David R. Hoffman, Legal Editor of Pravda.Ru, April 15, 2013, http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/feedback/15-04-2013/124276-lies-0/

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy
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U.S. invasion of America: what goes around comes around

Spies come home to feed techie addiction

Re-reporting, editing, brief comment by Carolyn Bennett

Oblivious regression

What happens when we fail to progress. Political tribes who by nature are vested in the status quo are also vested in regress. In very harmful ways we regress (wane, decay, weaken, reverse, revert to the worst); and at some point in the future, the heirs of present generations will have to return to a point where we had appeared to move forward; recoup the losses; and begin again in some constructive forward movement.

Until then, officials in Washington will continue to secure their own positions while driving the United States ─ as they are driving (have driven) Iraq and Afghanistan, Syria and Yemen, west, central, and eastern Africa ─ into to antiquity.

W

Drone chief

John Owen Brennan: 

Director of the Central Intelligence Agency; 

former chief counterterrorism advisor to 

U.S. President Barack Obama: 

Brennan’s official title was 

Deputy National Security Advisor for 

Homeland Security and 

Counterterrorism and

 Assistant to the President.

orld Socialist Web Site’s headline March 19 sourcing Reuters “Plans for military surveillance of Americans’ financial records” doesn’t tell half of a story featuring Washington’s destructive elite. Here’s some of what the sources reported that to me reflects an U.S. invasion of America and a destruction of its spirit.

A series of administrations have effectively abolished the Legislative branch’s advise and consent mandate. Here again is an example of Congress, presumably representative of the people, opposing; and the Executive branch proposing. This time a deepening infringement on the rights of U.S. citizens is being resurrected by the Obama administration through the Department of the Treasury (not unlike his resurrected assassination drone chief), which had been rejected by the U.S. Congress.

The charge: “suspicious”

Surveilled criminals uncaught

Something called the “Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN),” a computer network for U.S. law enforcement and military agencies called the “Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System,” and reportedly involving the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in overseeing a spider’s web of links with the Department of the Treasury’s secreted database on “suspicious customer activity” is being resurrected and aimed at the American people.

Routinely, the news report says, “More than 25,000 banks, securities dealers, wire transfer services, and casinos regularly file ‘suspicious activity reports’ or SARs with the U.S. Treasury.” These include “reports of transactions exceeding $10,000 and those possibly involving money laundering.”

But the surveillance program didn’t stop, or it chose to ignore, the money laundering by big banks such as HSBC and others who operated inside the United States and against the public interest.

Addicted to the game

Spy Drones come home

The problem with narrow-focused technologically reckless pols and their agents in love with their surveillance or hacking toys is that nothing, no reach is ever enough ─ far is never far enough; they need more “apps.” Like a psychotic accelerating or cocaine addicts heightening the hit.

G

overnment hacking into the affairs of citizens will never be enough; and the reasons, though purporting to be on the hunt for criminals, may themselves be nefarious, unlawful, even personal (an aggrieved neighbor seeking revenge, a relative scorned). Anyone under the colors of government including private independent contractors, of which there are legions, with an ax to grind may scour the affairs of other Americans.

Collateral damage: dissent silenced

An estimated “15 million ‘suspicious activity reports’ are filed annually,” according to the news reports; and institutions making these reports “cast a broad net” thus reeling in all kinds of people. This means untold numbers of people using banks in the United States ─ including those who have committed no crime ─ will “end up in the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network database.”

 

Mining information and sharing it with various private and public agencies will not touch the “bad guys” but they will infringe on the rights and legitimate constitutional freedoms of ordinary individual citizens. FinCEN records “will not help uncover actual terrorists, who can easily circumvent the types of transactions that would trigger ‘suspicious activity reports’,” Private investigator Kenneth Cummins told Russia Today,” but “the information being opened up to military intelligence can be used, for example ─

[t]o create profiles of anti-war activists and others who oppose the government’s policies by following their usage of debit and credit cards.

The military can track travel, donations to non-profit organizations, spending habits.

 

A

n agent or agency can destroy people and their reputations (in the same way as a private hacker can, but much more powerfully and lethally) and neither the injured, the deceased nor the family will be able under the rule of law to face the assassins or bring them before the bar of justice.

 Accusers secreted

U.S. (alpha)
Foreign and domestic
relations policy:Assassinate

Collateral damage

DemonizeDestabilizeDivideIntimidateInvade
Occupy
Provoke
Silence
SurveilViolate

“Under current law, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or National Security Agency (NSA) must request information from FinCEN on a case-by-case basis. Civilian-run agencies such as the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security already have full access to the FinCEN database. And institutions filing ‘suspicious activity reports’ on persons or businesses are shielded: “prohibited from letting the subject know that such a report has been filed.” SARs are also “exempt from Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.” 

The current administration is deepening the infringement on the constitutional rights of American citizens. The charge: “suspicious.”

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he executive branch, WSWS comments, “that has asserted its right to kill American citizens secretly and without charge or trial now insists  on allowing the U.S. military unfettered access” ─ without oversight ─ to the financial records of citizens of the United States of America. In July of last year, whistleblower and former National Security Adviser employee William Binney warned of

a ‘very dangerous process’ whereby Washington was secretly gathering information ‘about virtually every U.S. citizen in the country.’

Sources and notes

“Plans for military surveillance of Americans’ financial records” (By Ed Hightower),

March 19, 2013, http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/03/19/surv-m19.html

Reuters reported last week that it had viewed a document (dated March 4) from the U.S. Treasury Department detailing plans to provide military intelligence agencies with unfettered access to financial records of U.S. citizens. Under the new plan, there will be no need to request access to such records on a case-by-case basis.

“Exclusive: U.S. plans to let spy agencies scour Americans’ finances” (by Emily Flitter and Stella Dawson and Mark Hosenball, NEW YORK/WASHINGTON | Wed March 13, 2013 6:51pm EDT: NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration is drawing up plans to give all U.S. spy agencies full access to a massive database that contains financial data on American citizens and others who bank in the country, according to a Treasury Department document seen by Reuters.

William Binney

William Binney is described as one of the best mathematicians and code breakers in the history of the National Security Agency. Reported in December of last year, according to Binney the FBI records the emails of nearly all U.S. citizens, including members of congress.

An NSA whistleblower, William Binney resigned the agency in 2001 saying that he no longer wanted to be associated with alleged violations of the Constitution, such as how the FBI engages in widespread and pervasive surveillance through powerful devices called ‘Naris.’

Binney is a recipient of the Callaway award, an annual prize that recognizes those who champion constitutional rights and American values at great risk to their personal or professional lives.

http://www.infowars.com/nsa-whistleblower-everyone-in-us-under-virtual-surveillance/

Kenneth Cummins

Kenneth Cummins is a former investigative reporter, current freelance journalist and president of Capitol Inquiry, a firm that “provides investigative research support in criminal/civil background investigations, corporate/business intelligence investigations, litigation support, surveillance, process service (in-house servers), computer forensics, real estate investigations and domestic/family investigations.

“Capitol Inquiry investigators are experienced researchers with language capabilities in Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, French, Portuguese, Dutch and English.” The firm currently maintains offices in downtown Washington, D.C., and Bethesda, MD, http://www.linkedin.com/in/kcummins

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy

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