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Sunday, December 22, 2013

[mukto-mona] Quader Molla's fact and fiction: An Impartial Investigation



কুখ্যাত যুদ্ধাপরাধী কাদের মোল্লার ফাঁসির পর পরই মিথ্যাচারী এবং মিথ্যার বেসাতি করা জামাত শিবির কেবল কাদের মোল্লাকে কসাই কাদের থেকে পৃথক করার মিশন নিয়েই মাঠে নামেনি, তাকে মুক্তিযোদ্ধা হিসেবে পর্যন্ত প্রমাণ করতে চেয়েছে। কাদের  নাকি একাত্তরের যুদ্ধে গ্রামে বসে মুক্তিযুদ্ধের প্রশিক্ষণ নিয়েছিল। কাদের মোল্লা নাকি ছিলো ঢাকা বিশ্ববিদ্যালয়ের 'গোল্ড মেডেলিস্ট' ছাত্র, আর সাথে বোনাস হিসেবে পাওয়া গেল গোলাম মওলা রনির উস্তাভাজির গল্প, চিরকুট আরো কত কি!  (গোলাম মালিক খোঁজে, মালিক গোলাম, কি আর বলা)।

যা হোক বিডি নিউজে প্রকাশিত এই লেখার মাধ্যমে জামাত শিবির আর তাদের সহচরদের মিথ্যার বেসাতি উদঘাটনের উদ্যোগ নেয়া হয়েছে:
==============

কাদের মোল্লার আসল নকল: একটি নির্মোহ অনুসন্ধান



অভিজিৎ


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Re: [mukto-mona] Christmas' Pagan Origins



Jesus might very well be a complete fiction, a humanized sun god borne by mother Mary(Venus) by immaculate conception.  The story is a poor echo of Sun being conceived by the Morning Star as the Mithra community in Persia believed.


On Mon, Dec 23, 2013 at 3:25 AM, ANISUR RAHMAN <anisur.rahman1@btinternet.com> wrote:
 

Quite informative.

Many monotheistic traditions, particularly celebrations, have pagan origins. For example, both of the Muslim Eids come from pagan tradition. Even Hajj comes from pagan tradition. It is of no surprise at all as paganism predates monotheistic religions, these religions borrowed some of the practices from pagan pantheism and passed them on as divine transcendence. 

- Anis Rahman  


From: Sudhir-Architect <ar_sudhirkumar@yahoo.com>
To: mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Sunday, 22 December 2013, 15:13
Subject: [mukto-mona] Christmas' Pagan Origins

 
Christmas' Pagan Origins
Few people realize that the origins of a form of Christmas was pagan & celebrated in Europe long before anyone there had heard of Jesus Christ.

No one knows what day Jesus Christ was born on. From the biblical description, most historians believe that his birth probably occurred in September, approximately six months after Passover. One thing they agree on is that it is very unlikely that Jesus was born in December, since the bible records shepherds tending their sheep in the fields on that night. This is quite unlikely to have happened during a cold Judean winter. So why do we celebrate Christ's birthday as Christmas, on December the 25th?

The answer lies in the pagan origins of Christmas. In ancient Babylon, the feast of the Son of Isis (Goddess of Nature) was celebrated on December 25. Raucous partying, gluttonous eating and drinking, and gift-giving were traditions of this feast.

In Rome, the Winter Solstice was celebrated many years before the birth of Christ. The Romans called their winter holiday Saturnalia, honouring Saturn, the God of Agriculture. In January, they observed the Kalends of January, which represented the triumph of life over death. This whole season was called Dies Natalis Invicti Solis, the Birthday of the Unconquered Sun. The festival season was marked by much merrymaking. It is in ancient Rome that the tradition of the Mummers was born. The Mummers were groups of costumed singers and dancers who travelled from house to house entertaining their neighbours. From this, the Christmas tradition of caroling was born.
In northern Europe, many other traditions that we now consider part of Christian worship were begun long before the participants had ever heard of Christ. The pagans of northern Europe celebrated the their own winter solstice, known as Yule. Yule was symbolic of the pagan Sun God, Mithras, being born, and was observed on the shortest day of the year. As the Sun God grew and matured, the days became longer and warmer. It was customary to light a candle to encourage Mithras, and the sun, to reappear next year.
Huge Yule logs were burned in honour of the sun. The word Yule itself means "wheel," the wheel being a pagan symbol for the sun. Mistletoe was considered a sacred plant, and the custom of kissing under the mistletoe began as a fertility ritual. Holly berries were thought to be a food of the gods.

The tree is the one symbol that unites almost all the northern European winter solstices. Live evergreen trees were often brought into homes during the harsh winters as a reminder to inhabitants that soon their crops would grow again. Evergreen boughs were sometimes carried as totems of good luck and were often present at weddings, representing fertility. The Druids used the tree as a religious symbol, holding their sacred ceremonies while surrounding and worshipping huge trees.

In 350, Pope Julius I declared that Christ's birth would be celebrated on December 25. There is little doubt that he was trying to make it as painless as possible for pagan Romans (who remained a majority at that time) to convert to Christianity. The new religion went down a bit easier, knowing that their feasts would not be taken away from them.

Christmas (Christ-Mass) as we know it today, most historians agree, began in Germany, though Catholics and Lutherans still disagree about which church celebrated it first. The earliest record of an evergreen being decorated in a Christian celebration was in 1521 in the Alsace region of Germany.

 
Thanks & Regards,


Sudhir Srinivasan
B.Arch, MSc.CPM, Dip.ID, Dip.CAD, Dip.PM, Dip.LD
| Architect |





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"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it".
               -Beatrice Hall [pseudonym: S.G. Tallentyre], 190




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[mukto-mona] ১৯৭০ থেকে ২০১৩ সাল পর্যন্ত বাংলাদেশে মাথাপিছু আয় (আমেরিকান ডলারে):



১৯৭০ থেকে ২০১৩ সাল পর্যন্ত বাংলাদেশে, ভারতে, মাথাপিছু আয় (আমেরিকান ডলারে):

স্বাধীনতার আগে ১৯৭০-৭১ মাথাপিছু আয় ছিল মাত্র ১০০ আমেরিকান ডলারের মতো
১৯৭২-৭৩ অর্থবছরে মাথাপিছু আয় ছিল ১২০ আমেরিকান ডলারের মতো
১৯৭৪-৭৫ অর্থবছরে মাথাপিছু আয় ছিল ২১০ আমেরিকান ডলারের মতো

১৯৭৬-৭৭ অর্থবছরে মাথাপিছু আয় ছিল ১৭০ আমেরিকান ডলারের মতো
১৯৮১-৮২ অর্থবছরে মাথাপিছু আয় ছিল ২৪০ আমেরিকান ডলারের মতো
১৯৯০-৯১ অর্থবছরে মাথাপিছু আয় ছিল ৩০০ আমেরিকান ডলারের মতো
১৯৯৫-৯৬ অর্থবছরে মাথাপিছু আয় ছিল ৩৩০ আমেরিকান ডলারের মতো
২০০১-০২ অর্থবছরে মাথাপিছু আয় ছিল ৪১২ আমেরিকান ডলারের মতো
২০০৬-০৭ অর্থবছরে মাথাপিছু আয় ছিল ৫২৮ আমেরিকান ডলারের মতো
২০০৮-০৯ অর্থবছরে মাথাপিছু আয় ছিল ৬৩০ আমেরিকান ডলারের মতো
২০০৯-১০ অর্থবছরে মাথাপিছু আয় ছিল ৭৫১ আমেরিকান ডলারের মতো
২০১০-১১ অর্থবছরে মাথাপিছু আয় ছিল ৮৪৮ আমেরিকান ডলারের মতো
২০১১-১২ অর্থবছরে মাথাপিছু আয় ছিল ৯২৩ আমেরিকান ডলারের মতো
চলতি ২০১২-১৩ অর্থবছরে (৫ সেপ্টেম্বর ২০১৩ পর্যন্ত) মাথাপিছু জাতীয় আয় ১০৪৪ আমেরিকান ডলার

২০২১ সালের মধ্যে মাথাপিছু জাতীয় আয় ২০০০ (দুই হাজার) আমেরিকান ডলারে উন্নীত করার লক্ষ্যমাত্রা ধরে 'প্রেক্ষিত পরিকল্পনা ২০১০-২০২১ চূড়ান্ত করেছে বর্তমান সরকার'।

Data source: 
বাংলাদেশ পরিসংখ্যান ব্যুরোর চূড়ান্ত হিসাবে ও বাংলাদেশ অর্থনৈতিক সমীক্ষার তথ্য 
Bangladesh Govt Statistics, 
Daily newspaper like the Daily Star, the Janakantha, the daily Shomkal, the daily Songbad etc
World Bank, World Development Indicators, World Bank National Accounts data and OECD National Accounts data files - Last updated April 23, 2013

সত্য সত্যই এবং সত্য প্রকাশিত হবেই!

জয় বাংলা 
জয় বঙ্গবন্ধু 

প্রকৌশলী সফিকুর রহমান অনু
আই,ই,বি, ফেলো, অকলেন্ড, নিউজিলেন্ড

E-mail: srbanunz@gmail.com


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Call For Articles:

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"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it".
               -Beatrice Hall [pseudonym: S.G. Tallentyre], 190




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Re: [mukto-mona] Christmas' Pagan Origins



Quite informative.

Many monotheistic traditions, particularly celebrations, have pagan origins. For example, both of the Muslim Eids come from pagan tradition. Even Hajj comes from pagan tradition. It is of no surprise at all as paganism predates monotheistic religions, these religions borrowed some of the practices from pagan pantheism and passed them on as divine transcendence. 

- Anis Rahman  


From: Sudhir-Architect <ar_sudhirkumar@yahoo.com>
To: mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Sunday, 22 December 2013, 15:13
Subject: [mukto-mona] Christmas' Pagan Origins

 
Christmas' Pagan Origins
Few people realize that the origins of a form of Christmas was pagan & celebrated in Europe long before anyone there had heard of Jesus Christ.

No one knows what day Jesus Christ was born on. From the biblical description, most historians believe that his birth probably occurred in September, approximately six months after Passover. One thing they agree on is that it is very unlikely that Jesus was born in December, since the bible records shepherds tending their sheep in the fields on that night. This is quite unlikely to have happened during a cold Judean winter. So why do we celebrate Christ's birthday as Christmas, on December the 25th?

The answer lies in the pagan origins of Christmas. In ancient Babylon, the feast of the Son of Isis (Goddess of Nature) was celebrated on December 25. Raucous partying, gluttonous eating and drinking, and gift-giving were traditions of this feast.

In Rome, the Winter Solstice was celebrated many years before the birth of Christ. The Romans called their winter holiday Saturnalia, honouring Saturn, the God of Agriculture. In January, they observed the Kalends of January, which represented the triumph of life over death. This whole season was called Dies Natalis Invicti Solis, the Birthday of the Unconquered Sun. The festival season was marked by much merrymaking. It is in ancient Rome that the tradition of the Mummers was born. The Mummers were groups of costumed singers and dancers who travelled from house to house entertaining their neighbours. From this, the Christmas tradition of caroling was born.
In northern Europe, many other traditions that we now consider part of Christian worship were begun long before the participants had ever heard of Christ. The pagans of northern Europe celebrated the their own winter solstice, known as Yule. Yule was symbolic of the pagan Sun God, Mithras, being born, and was observed on the shortest day of the year. As the Sun God grew and matured, the days became longer and warmer. It was customary to light a candle to encourage Mithras, and the sun, to reappear next year.
Huge Yule logs were burned in honour of the sun. The word Yule itself means "wheel," the wheel being a pagan symbol for the sun. Mistletoe was considered a sacred plant, and the custom of kissing under the mistletoe began as a fertility ritual. Holly berries were thought to be a food of the gods.

The tree is the one symbol that unites almost all the northern European winter solstices. Live evergreen trees were often brought into homes during the harsh winters as a reminder to inhabitants that soon their crops would grow again. Evergreen boughs were sometimes carried as totems of good luck and were often present at weddings, representing fertility. The Druids used the tree as a religious symbol, holding their sacred ceremonies while surrounding and worshipping huge trees.

In 350, Pope Julius I declared that Christ's birth would be celebrated on December 25. There is little doubt that he was trying to make it as painless as possible for pagan Romans (who remained a majority at that time) to convert to Christianity. The new religion went down a bit easier, knowing that their feasts would not be taken away from them.

Christmas (Christ-Mass) as we know it today, most historians agree, began in Germany, though Catholics and Lutherans still disagree about which church celebrated it first. The earliest record of an evergreen being decorated in a Christian celebration was in 1521 in the Alsace region of Germany.

 
Thanks & Regards,


Sudhir Srinivasan
B.Arch, MSc.CPM, Dip.ID, Dip.CAD, Dip.PM, Dip.LD
| Architect |




__._,_.___


****************************************************
Mukto Mona plans for a Grand Darwin Day Celebration: 
Call For Articles:

http://mukto-mona.com/wordpress/?p=68

http://mukto-mona.com/banga_blog/?p=585

****************************************************

VISIT MUKTO-MONA WEB-SITE : http://www.mukto-mona.com/

****************************************************

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it".
               -Beatrice Hall [pseudonym: S.G. Tallentyre], 190




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[mukto-mona] How America Abandoned its "Undeserving" Poor



Ronald Reagan. (photo: AP/Jeff Taylor)
Ronald Reagan. (photo: AP/Jeff Taylor)


Conservatives triumphed intellectually in the 1980s because they offered ordinary Americans a convincing narrative that explained their manifold worries. In this narrative, welfare, the "undeserving poor," and the cities they inhabited became centerpieces of an explanation for economic stagnation and moral decay. [ ...]

Even though these arguments were wrong, liberals failed to produce a convincing counter - narrative that wove together a fresh defense of the welfare state from new definitions of rights and entitlements, emergent conceptions of distributive justice, ethnographic data about poor people, and revised historical and political interpretations of the welfare state.

http://www.salon.com/2013/12/21/how_america_abandoned_its_undeserving_poor/

How America Abandoned its "Undeserving" Poor

By Michael B. Katz, Salon

22 December 13

 
With poverty on the rise in the late 1970s, Reagan conservatives waged war on the needy — and won.

fter the mid - 1970s progress against poverty stalled. The 1973 oil crisis ushered in an era of growing inequality interrupted only briefly by the years of prosperity during the 1990s. Productivity increased, but, for the first time in American history, its gains were not shared by ordinary workers, whose real incomes declined even as the wealth of the rich soared. Poverty concentrated as never before in inner city districts scarred by chronic joblessness and racial segregation. America led western democracies in the proportion of its children living in poverty. It led the world in rates of incarceration. Trade union membership plummeted under an assault by big business abetted by the federal government. Policy responded by allowing the real value of the minimum wage, welfare benefits, and other social protections to erode. The dominant interpretation of America's troubles blamed the War on Poverty and Great Society and constructed a rationale for responding to misery by retrenching on social spending. A bipartisan consensus emerged for solving the nation's social and economic problems through a war on dependence, the devolution of authority, and the redesign of public policy along market models.


Urban Transformation

The years after the mid - 1970s witnessed a confrontation between massive urban structural transformation and rightward moving social policy that registered in a reconfigured and intensified American poverty in the nation's cities. It is no easy task to define an American city in the early twenty - first century. Fast - growing cities in the post - war Sun Belt differ dramatically from the old cities of the Northeast and Midwest as any drive through, for example, Los Angeles and Philadelphia makes clear. Nonetheless, all the nation's central cities and their surrounding metropolitan areas experienced transformations of economy, demography, and space that resulted in urban forms without precedent in history. These transformations hold profound implications for poverty as both fact and idea, and they underscore the need to understand poverty as a problem of place as well as persons. A long tradition of social criticism - from nineteenth - century advocates of slum clearance through the "Chicago school" of the 1920s to the most cutting - edge urban theory of the twenty - first century - presents poverty as a problem of place. In one version, which has dominated discussions, conditions in places - most notably, substandard housing - produce, reinforce, or augment poverty. In an alternate version, poverty is a product of place itself, reproduced independent of the individuals who pass through it. Both versions help explain the link between poverty and the multisided transformation of metropolitan America.

The first transformation was economic: the death of the great industrial city that flourished from the late nineteenth century until the end of World War II. The decimation of manufacturing evident in Rust Belt cities resulted from both the growth of foreign industries, notably electronics and automobiles, and the corporate search for cheaper labor. Cities with economic sectors other than manufacturing (such as banking, commerce, medicine, government, and education) withstood deindustrialization most successfully. Those with no alternatives collapsed, while others struggled with mixed success. Some cities such as Las Vegas built economies on entertainment, hospitality, and retirement. With manufacturing withered, anchor institutions, "eds and meds," increasingly sustained the economies of cities lucky enough to house them; they became, in fact, the principal employers. In the late twentieth century, in the nation's twenty largest cities, "eds and meds" provided almost 35 percent of jobs. As services replaced manufacturing everywhere, office towers emerged as the late twentieth century's urban factories. Services include a huge array of activities and jobs, from the production of financial services to restaurants, from high paid professional work to unskilled jobs delivering pizza or cleaning offices. Reflecting this division, economic inequality within cities increased, accentuating both wealth and poverty.

The second kind of urban transformation was demographic. First was the migration of African Americans and white southerners to northern, midwestern, and western cities. Between World War I and 1970, about seven million African Americans moved north. The results, of course, transformed the cities into which they moved. Between 1940 and 1970, for example, San Francisco's black population multiplied twenty - five times and Chicago's grew five times. The movement of whites out of central cities to suburbs played counterpoint. Between 1950 and 1970, the population of American cities increased by ten million people while the suburbs exploded with eighty - five million.

The idea that the white exodus to the suburbs represented "flight" from blacks oversimplifies a process with other roots as well. A shortage of housing; urban congestion; mass - produced suburban homes made affordable with low interest, long - term, federally insured loans; and a new highway system all pulled Americans out of central cities to suburbs. At the same time, through "blockbusting" tactics, unscrupulous real estate brokers fanned racial fears, which accelerated out - migration. In the North and Midwest, the number of departing whites exceeded the incoming African Americans, resulting in population loss and the return of swaths of inner cities to empty, weed - filled lots that replaced working - class housing and factories - a process captured by the great photographer Camilo Jose Vergara with the label "green ghetto." By contrast, population in Sun Belt cities such as Los Angeles moved in the opposite direction. Between 1957 and 1990, the combination of economic opportunity, a warm climate, annexation, and in - migration boosted the Sun Belt's urban population from 8.5 to 23 million.

A massive new immigration also changed the nation and its cities. As a result of the nationality based quotas enacted in the 1920s, the Great Depression, and World War II, immigration to the United States plummeted. The foreign - born population reached its nadir in 1970. The lifting of the quotas in 1965 began to reverse immigration's decline. Immigrants, however, now arrived from new sources, primarily Latin America and Asia. More immigrants entered the United States in the 1990s than during any other decade in its history. These new immigrants fueled population growth in both cities and suburbs. Unlike the immigrants of the early twentieth century, they often bypassed central cities to move directly to suburbs and spread out across the nation. In 1910, for example, 84 percent of the foreign born in metropolitan Philadelphia lived in the central city. By 2006 the proportion had dropped to 35 percent. New immigrants have spread beyond the older gateway states to the Midwest and South, areas from which prior to 1990 immigrants largely were absent. Thanks to labor market networks in agriculture, construction, landscaping, and domestic service, Hispanics spread out of central cities and across the nation faster than any other ethnic group in American history. This new immigration has proved essential to labor market growth and urban revitalization. Again in metropolitan Philadelphia, between 2000 and 2006, the foreign born accounted for 75 percent of labor force growth. A New York City research report "concluded that immigrant entrepreneurs have become an increasingly powerful economic engine for New York City...foreign - born entrepreneurs are starting a greater share of new businesses than native - born residents, stimulating growth in sectors from food manufacturing to health care, creating loads of new jobs and transforming once - sleepy neighborhoods into thriving commercial centers." Similar reports came in from around the nation from small as well as large cities and from suburbs.

Suburbanization became the first major force in the spatial transformation of urban America. Although suburbanization extends well back in American history, it exploded after World War II as population, retail, industry, services, and entertainment all suburbanized. In the 1950s, suburbs grew ten times as fast as central cities. Even though the Supreme Court had outlawed officially mandated racial segregation in 1917 and racial exclusions in real estate deeds in 1948, suburbs found ways to use zoning and informal pressures to remain largely white until late in the twentieth century, when African Americans began to suburbanize. Even in suburbs, however, they clustered in segregated towns and neighborhoods. Suburbs, it should be stressed, never were as uniform as their image. In the post - war era, they came closer than ever before to the popular meaning of "suburb" as a bedroom community for families with children. But that meaning had shattered completely by the end of the twentieth century, as a variety of suburban types populated metropolitan landscapes, rendering distinctions between city and suburb increasingly obsolete. The collapse of the distinction emerged especially in older inner ring suburbs where the loss of industry, racial transformation, immigration, and white out - migration registered in shrinking tax bases, eroding infrastructure, and increased poverty.

Gentrification and a new domestic landscape furthered the spatial transformation of urban America. Gentrification may be redefined as the rehabilitation of working - class housing for use by a wealthier class. Outside of select neighborhoods, gentrification by itself could not reverse the economic and population decline of cities, but it did transform center city neighborhoods with renovated architecture and new amenities demanded by young white professionals and empty - nesters who had moved in. At the same time, it often displaced existing residents, adding to a crisis of affordable housing that helped fuel homelessness and other hardships.

The new domestic landscape resulted from the revolutionary rebalancing of family types that accelerated after 1970. In 1900 married couples with children made up 55 percent of all households, single - mother families 28 percent, empty - nesters 6 percent, and nonfamily households (mainly young people living together) 10 percent, with a small residue living in other arrangements. By 2000 the shift was astonishing. Married couple households now made up only 25 percent of all households, single - mother families 30 percent, empty - nesters 16 percent, and nonfamily households 25 percent. (The small increase in single - mother families masked a huge change. Earlier in the century they were mostly widows; by century's end they were primarily never married, divorced, or separated.) What is stunning is how after 1970 these trends characterized suburbs as well as central cities, eroding distinctions between them. Between 1970 and 2000, for example, the proportion of census tracts where married couples with children comprised more than half of all households plummeted from 59 percent to 12 percent and in central cities from 12 percent to 3 percent. In the same years, the proportion of suburban census tracts where single mothers composed at least 25 percent of households jumped an astonishing 440 percent - from 5 percent to 27 percent - while in central cities it grew from 32 percent to 59 percent. The share of census tracts with at least 30 percent nonfamily households leaped from 8 to 35 percent in suburbs and from 28 to 57 percent in cities. These changes took place across America, in Sun Belt as well as Rust Belt. Truly, a new domestic landscape eroding distinctions between city and suburb had emerged within metropolitan America. Its consequences were immense. The rise in single - mother families living in poverty shaped new districts of concentrated poverty and fueled the rise in suburban poverty. Immigration brought young, working - class families to many cities and sparked revitalization in neighborhoods largely untouched by the growth and change brought about by gentrification.

Racial segregation also transformed urban space. The first important point about urban racial segregation is that it was much lower early rather than late in the twentieth century. In 1930 the neighborhood in which the average African American lived was 31.7 percent black; in 1970 it was 73.5 percent. No ethnic group in American history ever experienced comparable segregation. Sociologists Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton, with good reason, described the situation as "American apartheid." In sixteen metropolitan areas in 1980, one of three African Americans lived in areas so segregated along multiple dimensions that Massey and Denton labeled them "hypersegration." Even affluent African Americans were more likely to live near poor African Americans than affluent whites. Racial segregation, argued Massey and Denton, by itself produced poverty. Areas of concentrated poverty, in turn, existed largely outside of markets - any semblance of functioning housing markets had dissolved, financial and retail services had decamped, jobs in the regular market had disappeared. Concentrated poverty and chronic joblessness went hand in hand. Public infrastructure and institutions decayed, leaving them epicenters of homelessness, crime, and despair. Even though segregation declined slightly in the 1990s, at the end of the century, the average African American lived in a neighborhood 51 percent black, many thousands in districts marked by a toxic combination of poverty and racial concentration. This progress reversed in the first decade of the twentieth century. "After declining in the 1990s," reported a Brookings Institution study, "the population in extreme - poverty neighborhoods - where at least 40 percent of individuals lived below the poverty line - rose by one - third from 2000 to 2005 - 09."

Despite continued African American segregation, a "new regime of residential segregation" began to appear in American cities, according to Massey and his colleagues. The new immigration did not increase ethnic segregation; measures of immigrant segregation remained "low to moderate" while black segregation declined modestly. However, as racial segregation declined, economic segregation increased, separating the poor from the affluent and the college educated from high school graduates. Spatial isolation marked people "at the top and bottom of the socioeconomic scale." The growth of economic inequality joined increased economic segregation to further transform urban space. America, wrote three noted urban scholars, "is breaking down into economically homogeneous enclaves." This rise in economic segregation afflicted suburbs as well as inner cities, notably sharpening distinctions between old inner ring suburbs and more well - to - do suburbs and exurbs. Early in the twenty - first century, as many poor people lived in suburbs as in cities, and poverty within suburbs was growing faster within them.

In the post - war decades, urban redevelopment also fueled urban spatial transformation. Urban renewal focused on downtown land use, clearing out working - class housing, small businesses, and other unprofitable uses, and replacing them with high - rise office buildings, anchor institutions, and expensive residences. The 1949 Housing Act kicked off the process by facilitating city governments' aspirations to assemble large tracts of land through eminent domain and sell them cheaply to developers. The Act authorized 810,000 units of housing to re - house displaced residents; by 1960, only 320,000 had been constructed. These new units of public housing remained by and large confined to racially segregated districts and never were sufficient in number to meet existing needs. "Between 1956 and 1972," report Peter Dreier and his colleagues, experts in urban policy, "urban renewal and urban freeway construction displaced an estimated 3.8 million persons from their homes" but rehoused only a small fraction. The costs of urban renewal to the social fabric of cities and the well - being of their residents were huge. Urban renewal "certainly changed the skyline of some big cities by subsidizing the construction of large office buildings that housed corporate headquarters, law firms, and other corporate activities" but at the price of destroying far more "low - cost housing than it built" and failing "to stem the movement of people and businesses to suburbs or to improve the economic and living conditions of inner - city neighborhoods. On the contrary, it destabilized many of them, promoting chaotic racial transition and flight."

Neither the War on Poverty nor Great Society slowed or reversed the impact of urban redevelopment and racial segregation on the nation's cities. President John F. Kennedy finally honored a campaign pledge in 1962 with a federal regulation prohibiting discrimination in federally supported housing - an action that "turned out to be more symbolic than real" on account of weak enforcement. In the 1968 Fair Housing Act, President Lyndon Johnson extended the ban on discrimination, and the practices that produced it, to the private housing market. Unfortunately, weak enforcement mechanisms left it, too, inadequate to the task throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

For the most part, the War on Poverty and Great Society rested on an understanding of poverty as a problem of persons, or, in the case of community action, of power, but less often of place. Opportunity - based programs addressed the deficiencies of individuals, not the pathologies of the places in which they lived. This hobbled their capacity from the outset. The conservatives who seized on the persistence of poverty to underscore and exaggerate the limits of the poverty war and Great Society retained this individual - centered understanding of poverty as they developed a critique of past efforts and a program for the future, neither of which was adequate to the task at hand.

The coincidence of America's urban slide into deep urban racial segregation, concentrated poverty, deindustrialization, physical decay, and near - bankruptcy coincided with the manifest failures of public policy, notably in urban renewal, and in the efforts of government to wage war on poverty. No matter that the story as popularly told was riddled with distortions and omissions. This narrative of catastrophic decline and public incompetence produced the trope of the "urban crisis," which, in turn, handed conservatives a gift: a ready - made tale - a living example - to use as evidence for the bundle of ideas they had been nurturing for decades and which emerged triumphant by the late 1970s.


The Conservative Ascendance

The growth of urban poverty did not rekindle compassion or renew the faltering energy of the Great Society. Instead, a war on welfare accompanied the conservative revival of the 1980s. City governments, teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, cut social services; state governments trimmed welfare rolls with more restrictive rules for General Assistance (state outdoor relief); and the federal government attacked social programs. As President Ronald Reagan famously remarked, government was the problem, not the solution. The result of these activities reduced the availability of help from each level of government during the years when profound structural transformations in American society increased poverty and its attendant hardships.

Several sources fed the conservative restoration symbolized by Ronald Reagan's election as president in 1980. Business interests, unable to compete in an increasingly international market, wanted to lower wages by reducing the influence of unions and cutting social programs that not only raised taxes but offered an alternative to poorly paid jobs. The energy crisis of 1973 ushered in an era of stagflation in which public psychology shifted away from its relatively relaxed attitude toward the expansion of social welfare. Increasingly worried about downward mobility and their children's future, many Americans returned to an older psychology of scarcity. As they examined the sources of their distress, looking for both villains and ways to cut public spending, ordinary Americans and their elected representatives focused on welfare and its beneficiaries, deflecting attention from the declining profits and returns on investments that, since the mid - 1970s, should have alerted them to the end of unlimited growth and abundance.

Desegregation and affirmative action fueled resentments. Many whites protested court - ordered busing as a remedy for racial segregation in education, and they objected to civil rights laws, housing subsidies, and public assistance support for blacks who wanted to move into their neighborhoods while they struggled to pay their own mortgages and grocery bills. White workers often believed they lost jobs and promotions to less qualified blacks. Government programs associated with Democrats and liberal politics became the villains in these interpretations, driving blue - collar workers decisively to the right and displacing anger away from the source of their deteriorating economic conditions onto government, minorities, and the "undeserving poor."

Suburbanization, the increased influence of the South on electoral politics and the politicization of conservative Protestantism, also fueled the conservative ascendance. "Suburbia," political commentator Kevin Phillips asserted, "did not take kindly to rent subsidies, school balance schemes, growing Negro migration or rising welfare costs. . . . The great majority of middle - class suburbanites opposed racial or welfare innovation." Together, the Sun Belt and suburbs, after 1970 the home to a majority of voters, constituted the demographic base of the new conservatism, assuring the rightward movement of politics among Democrats as well as Republicans and reinforcing hostility toward public social programs that served the poor - especially those who were black or Hispanic. The "middle class" became the lodestone of American politics, the poor its third rail.

Prior to the 1970s, conservative Christians (a term encompassing evangelicals and fundamentalists) largely distrusted electoral politics and avoided political involvement. This stance reversed in the 1970s when conservative Christians entered politics to protect their families and stem the moral corruption of the nation. Among the objects of their attack was welfare, which they believed weakened families by encouraging out - of - wedlock births, sex outside of marriage, and the ability of men to escape the responsibilities of fatherhood. Conservative Christians composed a powerful political force, about a third of the white electorate in the South and a little more than a tenth in the North. By the 1990s they constituted the largest and most powerful grassroots movement in American politics. In the 1994 elections, for the first time a majority of evangelicals identified themselves as Republicans. Although the inspiration for the Christian Right grew out of social and moral issues, it forged links with free - market conservatives. Fiscal conservatism appealed to conservative Christians whose "economic fortunes depend more on keeping tax rates low by reducing government spending than on social welfare programs that poor fundamentalists might desire," asserted sociologists Robert Wuthnow and Matthew P. Lawson. The conservative politics that resulted fused opposition to government social programs and permissive legislation and court decisions (abortion, school prayer, gay civil rights, the Equal Rights Amendment, teaching evolution) with "support of economic policies favorable to the middle - class" - a powerful combination crucial for constructing the electoral and financial base of conservative politics.


Two financial sources bankrolled the rightward movement of American politics. Political action committees mobilized cash contributions from grassroots supporters while conservative foundations, corporations, and wealthy individuals supported individual candidates, organized opposition to public programs, and developed a network of think tanks - including the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the libertarian Cato Institute - designed to counter liberalism, disseminate conservative ideas, and promote conservative public policy. Within a year of its founding in 1973, the Heritage Foundation had received grants from eighty - seven corporations and six or seven other major foundations. In 1992 to 1994 alone, twelve conservative foundations holding assets worth $1.1 billion awarded grants totaling $300 million. In 1995 the top five conservative foundations enjoyed revenues of $77 million compared to only $18.6 million for "their eight political equivalents on the left."

As well as producing ideas, conservative think tanks marketed them aggressively. Historian James Smith writes that, "marketing and promotion" did "more to change the think tanks' definition of their role (and the public's perception of them)" than did anything else. Their conservative funders paid "meticulous attention to the entire 'knowledge production process,' " represented as a "conveyor belt" extending from "academic research to marketing and mobilization, from scholars to activists." Their "sophisticated and effective outreach strategies" included policy papers, media appearances, advertising campaigns, op ed articles, and direct mail. In 1989 the Heritage Foundation spent 36 percent of its budget on marketing and 15 percent on fundraising. At the same time, wealthy donors countered the liberal politics of most leading social scientists with "lavish amounts of support on scholars willing to orient their research" toward conservative outcomes and a "grow - your - own approach" that funded "law students, student editors, and campus leaders with scholarships, leadership training, and law and economics classes aimed at ensuring the next generation of academic leaders has an even more conservative cast than the current one."

Conservative politics fused three strands: economic, social, and nationalist. The economic strand stressed free markets and minimal government regulation. The social emphasized the protection of families and the restoration of social order and private morality. Where the state intervened in the right to pray or in religiously sanctioned gender relations, it opposed federal legislation and the intrusion of the courts. Where the state sanctioned or encouraged family breakdown and immoral behavior, as in abortion or welfare, it favored authoritarian public policies. Militant anti - communism composed the core of conservatism's nationalist strand, fusing the other two in opposition to a common enemy. It favored heavy public spending on the military and focused on both the external enemy - the Soviet Union - and the internal foe - anyone or anything threatening the socialist takeover of America. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the bond holding together the social and economic strands of conservatism weakened, replaced at last by a new enemy, militant Islam embodied in Iraq and Iran and in the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

Conservatives triumphed intellectually in the 1980s because they offered ordinary Americans a convincing narrative that explained their manifold worries. In this narrative, welfare, the "undeserving poor," and the cities they inhabited became centerpieces of an explanation for economic stagnation and moral decay. Welfare was an easy target, first because its rolls and expense had swollen so greatly in the preceding several years and, second, because so many of its clients were the quintessential "undeserving poor" - unmarried black women. Welfare, it appeared, encouraged young black women to have children out of wedlock; discouraged them from marrying; and, along with generous unemployment and disability insurance, fostered indolence and a reluctance to work. Clearly, it appeared, however praiseworthy the intentions, the impact of the War on Poverty and the Great Society had been perverse. By destroying families, diffusing immorality, pushing taxes unendurably high, maintaining crippling wage levels, lowering productivity, and destroying cities they had worsened the very problems they set out to solve.

Even though these arguments were wrong, liberals failed to produce a convincing counter - narrative that wove together a fresh defense of the welfare state from new definitions of rights and entitlements, emergent conceptions of distributive justice, ethnographic data about poor people, and revised historical and political interpretations of the welfare state. This inability to synthesize the elements needed to construct a new narrative and compelling case for the extension of the welfare state was one price paid for the capture of poverty by economists and the new profession of public policy analysis. It resulted, as well, from a lack of empathy: an inability to forge a plausible and sympathetic response to the intuitive and interconnected problems troubling ordinary Americans: stagflation; declining opportunity; increased taxes and welfare spending; crime and violence on the streets; and the alleged erosion of families and moral standards.


 


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[mukto-mona] FoucaultSpk1980




AN INTERVIEW WITH MICHEL FOUCAULT

CONDUCTED BY MICHAEL BESS

SAN FRANCISCO (3 NOVEMBER 1980)- http://sitemason.vanderbilt.edu/historydept/michaelbess/Foucault%20Interview

 

 

Question: You were saying a moment ago that you are a moralist. . . .

 

Foucault: In a sense, I am a moralist, insofar as I believe that one of the tasks, one of the meanings of human existence—the source of human freedom—is never to accept anything as definitive, untouchable, obvious, or immobile. No aspect of reality should be allowed to become a definitive and inhuman law for us.

            We have to rise up against all forms of power—but not just power in the narrow sense of the word, referring to the power of a government or of one social group over another: these are only a few particular instances of power.

           Power is anything that tends to render immobile and untouchable those things that are offered to us as real, as true, as good.

 

Question: But we nonetheless need to pin things down, even if in a provisional way.

 

Foucault: Certainly, certainly. This doesn't mean that one must live in an indefinite discontinuity. But what I mean is that one must consider all the points of fixity, of immobilization, as elements in a tactics, in a strategy—as part of an effort to bring things back into their original mobility, their openness to change.

            I was telling you earlier about the three elements in my morals. They are (1) the refusal to accept as self-evident the things that are proposed to us; (2) the need to analyze and to know, since we can accomplish nothing without reflection and understanding—thus, the principle of curiosity; and (3) the principle of innovation: to seek out in our reflection those things that have never been thought or imagined. Thus: refusal, curiosity, innovation.

 

Question: It seems to me that the modern philosophical concept of the subject entails all three of these principles. That is to say, the difference between the subject and the object is precisely that the subject is capable of refusal, of bringing innovation. So is your work an attack on the tendency to freeze this notion of the subject?

 

Foucault: What I was explaining was the field of values within which I situate my work. You asked me before if I was not a nihilist who rejected morality. I say: No! And you were asking me also, in effect, "Why do you do the work that you do?"

           Here are the values that I propose. I think that the modern theory of the subject, the modern philosophy of the subject, might well be able to accord the subject a capacity for innovation, etc., but that, in actuality, modern philosophy only does so on a theoretical level. In reality, it is not capable of translating into practice this different value which I am trying to elaborate in my own work.

 

Question: Can power be something open and fluid, or is it intrinsically repressive?

 

Foucault: Power should not be understood as an oppressive system bearing down on individuals from above, smiting them with prohibitions of this or that. Power is a set of relations. What does it mean to exercise power? It does not mean picking up this tape recorder and throwing it on the ground. I have the capacity to do so—materially, physically, sportively. But I would not be exercising power if I did that. However, if I take this tape recorder and throw it on the ground in order to make you mad, or so that you can't repeat what I've said, or to put pressure on you so that you'll behave in such and such a way, or to intimidate you—well, what I've done, by shaping your behavior through certain means, that is power.

            Which is to say that power is a relation between two persons, a relation that is not on the same order as communication (even if you are forced to serve as my instrument of communication). It's not the same thing as telling you "The weather's nice," or "I was born on such and such a date."

           Good. I exercise power over you: I influence your behavior, or I try to do so. And I try to guide your behavior, to lead your behavior. The simplest means of doing this, obviously, is to take you by the hand and force you to go here or there. That's the limit case, the zero-degree of power. And it's actually in that moment that power ceases to be power and becomes mere physical force. On the other hand, if I use my age, my social position, the knowledge I may have about this or that, to make you behave in some particular way—that is to say, I'm not forcing you at all and I'm leaving you completely free—that's when I begin to exercise power. It's clear that power should not be defined as a constraining act of violence that represses individuals, forcing them to do something or preventing them from doing some other thing. But it takes place when there is a relation between two free subjects, and this relation is unbalanced, so that one can act upon the other, and the other is acted upon, or allows himself to be acted upon.

           Therefore, power is not always repressive. It can take a certain number of forms. And it is possible to have relations of power that are open.

 

Question: Equal relations?

 

Foucault: Never equal, because the relation of power is an inequality. But you can have reversible systems of power. Here, take for instance what happens in an erotic relationship—I'm not even speaking of a love relationship, simply an erotic relationship. Now you know perfectly well that it's a game of power, and physical strength is not necessarily the most important element in it. You both have a certain way of acting on each other's behavior, shaping and determining that behavior. One of the two can use this situation in a certain way, and then bring about the exact inverse vis-à-vis the other. Well, you have there a purely local form of reversible power.

           Relations of power are not in themselves forms of repression. But what happens is that, in society, in most societies, organizations are created to freeze the relations of power, hold those relations in a state of asymmetry, so that a certain number of persons get an advantage, socially, economically, politically, institutionally, etc. And this totally freezes the situation. That's what one calls power in the strict sense of the term: it's a specific type of power relation that has been institutionalized, frozen, immobilized, to the profit of some and to the detriment of others.

 

Question: But are both sides in the relation victims of it?

 

Foucault: Oh not at all! It would be pushing it a bit too far to say that those who exercise power are victims. In a sense, it's true that they can get caught in the trap, within their own exercise of power—but they're not as much the victims as the others. Try for yourself. . . .you'll see. [laughs]

 

Question: So are you aligned with the position of the Marxists?

 

Foucault: I don't know. You see, I'm not sure I know what Marxism really is—and I don't think it exists, as something abstract. The bad luck or the good luck of Marx is that his doctrine has regularly been adopted by political organizations, and it is after all the only theory whose existence has always been bound up with socio-political organizations that were extraordinarily strong, extraordinarily volatile—even to the point of becoming an apparatus of state.

           So, when you mention Marxism, I ask you which one you mean—the one that is taught in the German Democratic Republic (Marxism-Leninism); the vague, disheveled, and bastard concepts used by someone like Georges Marchais; or the body of doctrine which serves as a point of reference for certain English historians? In other words, I don't know what Marxism is. I try to struggle with the objects of my own analysis, and when it so happens that I use a concept that is also used by Marx, or by Marxists—a useful concept, a passable concept—well, that's all the same to me. I've always refused to consider an alleged conformity or non-conformity with Marxism as a deciding factor for accepting or repudiating what I say. I couldn't care less. […]

 

Question: Do you have any ideas about a system of power, for ordering this mass of human beings on the planet—a system of governance that would not become a repressive form of power?

 

Foucault: A program of power can take three forms. On the one hand: how to exercise power as effectively as possible (in essence, how to reinforce it)? Or, on the other hand, the inverse position: how to overturn power, what points to attack so as to undermine a given crystallization of power?   And finally, the middle position: How to go about limiting the relations of power as embodied and developed in a particular society?

            Well, the first position doesn't interest me: making a program of power so as to exercise it all the more. The second position is interesting, but it strikes me that it should be considered essentially with an eye to its concrete objectives, the struggles one wishes to undertake. And that implies precisely that one should not make of it an a priori theory.

            As for the middle positions--Which are the acceptable conditions of power?--I say that these acceptable conditions for the exercise of power cannot be defined a priori. They are never anything but the result of relations of force within a given society. In such a situation, it happens that a certain disequilibrium in the relations of power is in effect tolerated by its victims, those who are in the more unfavorable position for a period of time. This is by no means to say that such a situation is acceptable. They become aware of it right away, and so—after a few days, years, centuries—people always end up resisting, and that old compromise no longer works. That's all. But you can't provide a definitive formula for the optimal exercise of power.

 

Question: You mean that something freezes or congeals in the relations between people, and this becomes, after a certain time, intolerable?

 

Foucault: Yes, although it sometimes happens right away. The relations of power. as they exist in a given society, are never anything but the crystallization of a relation of force. And there is no reason why these crystallizations of relations of force should be formulated as an ideal theory for relations of power.

            God knows I'm not a structuralist or a linguist or any of that, but you see, it's a bit as if a grammarian wanted to say, "Well, here is how the language should be spoken, here is how English or French should be spoken." But no! One can describe how a language is spoken at a given moment, one can say what is comprehensible and what is unacceptable, incomprehensible. And that's all one can say. But this doesn't imply, on the other hand, that this kind of work on language will not allow for innovations.

 

Question: It's a position that refuses to speak in positive terms, except for the present moment.

 

Foucault: Starting from the moment when one conceives of power as an ensemble of relations of force, there cannot be any programmatic definition of an optimum state of forces—unless of course one takes sides, saying "I want the white, Aryan, pure race to take power and to exercise it," or else, "I want the proletariat to exercise power and I want it to do so in a total fashion." At that moment, yes, it's been given: a program for the construction of power.

 

Question: Is it intrinsic to the existence of human beings that their organization will result in a repressive form of power?

 

Foucault: Oh yes. Of course. As soon as there are people who find themselves in a position (within the system of power relations) where they can act upon other people, and determine the life, the behavior, of other people—well, the life of those other people will not be very free. As a result, depending on the threshold of tolerance, depending on a whole lot of variables, the situation will be more or less accepted, but it will never be totally accepted. There will always be those who rebel, who resist.

 

Question: Let me give a different example. If a child wanted to scribble on the walls of a house, would it be repressive to prevent him or her from doing so? At what point does one say, "That's enough!"?

 

Foucault: […] If I accepted the picture of power that is frequently adopted—namely, that it's something horrible and repressive for the individual—it's clear that preventing a child from scribbling on the walls would be an unbearable tyranny. But that's not it: I say that power is a relation. A relation in which one guides the behavior of others. And there's no reason why this manner of guiding the behavior of others should not ultimately have results which are positive, valuable, interesting, and so on.   If I had a kid, I assure you he would not write on the walls—or if he did, it would be against my will. The very idea!

 

Question: It's problematic. . .something one has to question continually.

 

Foucault: Yes, yes! That's exactly it! An exercise of power should never be something self-evident. It's not because you're a father that you have the right to slap your child. Often even by not punishing him, that too is a certain way of shaping his behavior. This is a domain of very complex relations, which demand infinite reflection. When one thinks of the care with which semiotic systems have been analyzed in our society, so as to uncover their signifying value [valeur signifiante], there has been a relative neglect of the systems for exercising power. Not enough attention has been given to that complex ensemble of connections.

 

Question: Your position continually escapes theorization. It's something that has to be remade again and again.

 

Foucault: It's a theoretical practice, if you will. It's not a theory, but rather a way of theorizing practice. [. ..] Sometimes, because my position has not been made clear enough, people think I'm a sort of radical anarchist who has an absolute hatred of power. No! What I am trying to do is to approach this extremely important and tangled phenomenon in our society, the exercise of power, with the most reflective, and I would say prudent attitude. Prudent in my analysis, in the moral and theoretical postulates I use: I try to figure out what's at stake. But to question the relations of power in the most scrupulous and attentive manner possible, looking into all the domains of its exercise, that's not the same thing as constructing a mythology of power as the beast of the apocalypse.

 

Question: Are there positive themes in your concept of what is good? In practice, what are the moral elements on which you base your actions toward others?

 

Foucault: I've already told you: refusal, curiosity, innovation.

 

Question: But aren't these all rather negative in content?

 

Foucault: The only ethics you can have, with regard to the exercise of power, is the freedom of others. I don't tell people, "Make love in this way, have children, go to work."

 

Question: I have to admit, I find myself a bit lost, without points of orientation, in your world—because there's too much openness.

 

Foucault: Listen, listen. . . How difficult it is! I'm not a prophet; I'm not an organizer; I don't want to tell people what they should do. I'm not going to tell them, "This is good for you, this is bad for you!"

            I try to analyze a real situation in its various complexities, with the goal of allowing refusal, and curiosity, and innovation.

 

Question: And as regards your own personal life, that's something different. . .

 

Foucault: But that's nobody's business!

           I think that at the heart of all this, there's a misunderstanding about the function of philosophy, of the intellectual, of knowledge in general: and that is, that it's up to them to tell us what is good.

            Well, no! No, no, no! That's not their role. They already have far too much of a tendency to play that role, as it is. For two thousand years they've been telling us what is good, with the catastrophic consequences that this has implied.

            There's a terrible game here, a game which conceals a trap, in which the intellectuals tend to say what is good, and people ask nothing better than to be told what is good—and it would be better if they started yelling, "How bad it is!

           Good, well, let's change the game. Let's say that the intellectuals will no longer have the role of saying what is good. Then it will be up to people themselves, basing their judgment on the various analyses of reality that are offered to them, to work or to behave spontaneously, so that they can define for themselves what is good for them.

           What is good, is something that comes through innovation. The good does not exist, like that, in an atemporal sky, with people who would be like the Astrologers of the Good, whose job is to determine what is the favorable nature of the stars. The good is defined by us, it is practiced, it is invented. And this is a collective work.

           Is it clearer, now?



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Mukto Mona plans for a Grand Darwin Day Celebration: 
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"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it".
               -Beatrice Hall [pseudonym: S.G. Tallentyre], 190




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