Pablo Bachelet is one of the the Miami Herald/McClatchy's resident Latin America experts. http://www.mcclatchydc.com/167
Personally, I prefer the work of the Herald's Tyler Bridges. Maybe it's because of his conversational style, but his stories stay with me a lot longer than Bachelet's.
Like so many reporters and columnists at the Herald, he blows both hot and cold, often within the same story, often on consecutive days.
Sometimes, like the proverbial blind pig who finds an acorn, he stumbles upon something that comes perilously close to insight, or at least an original thought on Latin America, a specific country there or some aspect of U.S. foreign policy towards the area.
One that I haven't already read in Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs or don't recall anyone having already uttered at some foreign policy event at SAIS, Brookings, AEI or over at the Wilson Center for International Scholars, whose Latin America program is great,
http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=topics.home&topic_id=1425
[This would've been before they moved into the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center on Constitution and Pennsylvania Avenues, NW, http://www.itcdc.com/ and were still in the Smithsonian Institution's iconic castle on the Mall. http://www.si.edu/visit/infocenter/sicastle.htm
(Trivia note: the huge parking lot shown in the film version of Bob Woodward & Carl Bernstein's All the President's Men, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074119/ which featured some unintentionally humorous shots of Robert Redford as Bob Woodward freaking out about possibly being followed, is where the Reagan Bldg. is currently located.)
The Latin America dept. at Wilson rarely had something going on there which didn't attract a large crowd of well-informed and very vocal partisans with a dog in that particular fight, even decades-old fights that had been chewed on and dissected a million times before.
For instance, like Reagan's support for the Contras, Pinochet's middle-class opportunistic allies who looked the other way, why Argentina is always self-destructing, was Brazil too big and unmanageable for its own good, etc.
In that regard, of course, it reminded me a lot of Miami, where no old slight or fight is ever forgotten, merely placed in storage somewhere for a bit like Christmas ornaments, ready to come out again when the time is appropriate.
Unfortunately, for the most part, not unlike the Wilson Center's always topical and prescient Russian studies program -The Kennan Institute, run by Blair Ruble, http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=topics.profile&person_id=4997&topic_id=1424 -which had guests predicting something like perestroika publicly before the C.I.A., it was often just elites -and authors at that!- speaking to other elites in the room.
That's why my usual pattern at these events after the panel was over was to always let the requisite back-patting Q&A go on for a bit before I'd rise, walk over to the mike and pepper the guests with questions they didn't usually get at such gatherings.
Like, but to cite the most obvious example, why they couldn't or wouldn't accept the fact that, however much they wished that it weren't so, Latin America was/is indeed held in low regard by so many Americans precisely because of demonstrable facts, and not simply of misperceptions, the card that they continually play, premised on the kind of silly arguments you rarely hear said with a straight face outside of South Florida to rationalize points lacking in logic or reason.
Sort of like the problem that the militant Islamic apologists at CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations pretend don't exist, by insisting that America is the problem, not the actions of individuals. Talk about bad salesmanship!
For proof of that , you only need to read Neil MacFarquar's story in today's New York Times titled, Abandon Stereotypes, Muslims in America Say http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/04/us/04muslims.html
(Somehow, despite the topic, MacFarquar conveniently forgets that one of the reasons that former Times reporter Judith Miller was considered radioactive was because she personally phoned a Chicago Muslim group to give them a warning, right before the FBI was going to serve a warrant on them to search for info that they were intentionally fooling well-meaning American Muslims, legitimately interested in zakat, by illegally funnelling millions to overseas terror support groups. Oh well!
In case you didn't know or have already forgotten, the U.S. attorney in Chicago investigating that Chicago case was Patrick Fitzgerald, the very same federal prosecutor who went after Miller in the Valerie Plame/Scooter Libby blackhole of a 'perjury trap,' which was un-necessary because Fitzgerald already knew that Colin Powell's assistant Richard L. Armitage was the source of Bob Novak's column.
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FA0611FB3C550C768CDDAE0894DF404482
For background on the the Dallas trial referred to in his article, see
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=technology&res=9F00E3D6133DF93AA25751C1A9649C8B63
The Washington Post's excellent index of their stories and essays on the Valerie Plame/Scooter Libby matter is at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/09/29/LI2005092901976.html
Reminder: Lest you forget, I agreed with President Bush's commutation of Libby's sentence.
http://southbeachhoosier.blogspot.com/2007/06/pardon-libby-or-at-least-read-his-book.html )
Still, regardless of the fireworks inside the room, after everyone retired to the lobby area, they always had a nice food and drink spread, which made the après-ski portion of the program always entertaining and amusing!
Nothing like watching well-known experts arguing 'till they're blue in the face while simultaneously holding their wine glasses in the air, just like some made-for-TV movie about the Georgetown diplomatic crowd at play. Sorry about the tangent!)
Unfortunately for Bachelet, this past Sunday was not one for the highlight reels, for either him personally or the folks behind the Herald's sad-sack Issues and Ideas section, long a national laughingstock of an OpEd section, especially when they were running nothing but puff pieces extolling the Carnival Center before it was finished, which, to my way of thinking, Chinese wall and all that, more appropriately belonged in the Tropical Life section, if not in a paid advertising section. (Didn't anyone learn from the LA Times' Staples scandal?)
But that's how the boosterish Herald is when they get behind something -ethical lines are crossed and ignored.
The section was more muddled thinking than I was expecting for a Labor Day weekend and certainly more than I personally can dissect here. Suffice to say that I'll concentrate here on the most glaring self-evident factual mistake.
As most of you know by now, I've been a vocal supporter of Bill Richardson since first meeting him and talking to him fairly frequently in the early 90's, when he was still a New Mexico congressman. He's really a great guy and has a perceptive mind that's well beyond most politicians and reporters in Washington.
As it happens, I was the person who first told him -at the Georgetown Park Mall no less- just who then-House candidate and now current U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont was, and what his whole background and "Independent" modus operandi was.
Sadly, I had to throw in the towel completely on Bill Richardson during the recent Iowa debate televised on ABC News, when, on top of all the issues he's consistently gotten on the wrong side of frommy point of view, he just couldn't have seemed less compelling or able to seize the moment by displaying the solid qualities I know he has.
Plus, well, I've support the war in Iraq since the beginning, so Richardson and company's silly emails to me over the past few months just got old and irritating.
He could've really shown some strength and played the Sister Souljah card by taking advantage of his unique background and said that the horrific slayings in Newark show that, whatever else you think, immigration advocates who are so zealous in their desires -and personal hatred of President Bush- that they willfully ignore the consequences of the ripple effect of having thousands and thousands of illegal alien criminals in our society, preying upon honest legal immigrants as much if not more than native-born Americans, do themselves no favor.
He could've done that, but he didn't.
Once he threw in his lot with the Daily Kos folks and the George Soros folks who were part of ACT -America Coming Together- which just paid $775K in fines to the Federal Election Commission, http://www.fec.gov/press/press2007/20070829act.shtml -a story that couldn't possibly have gotten less media coverage!- I knew it was time to throw him and his silly campaign overboard toute-de-suite!
(Also see the Times' honest editorial of September 1st, The Slow Pursuit of Political Wiseguys
where they blast ACT.
"Federal regulators are getting around late to one of the worst abuses in the last presidential election — the channeling of unregulated “soft money.”)
I'm hopeful that he'll learn something from the experience and perhaps in the future, wiser from the experience, not repeat the same mistakes and realize that you only have one chance to make a good first impression on the American people.
Arguing for defeat in Iraq and leaving a vacuum is not the way to do it.
Please note for the record that even in South Florida, the U.S. Constitution still attaches:
Constitution of the United States, Article II, Section 1, Clause 5:
No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.
As I've always known and Bill Richardson's own website makes crystal clear for even the dumbest of reporters or editors, http://www.richardsonforpresident.com/about_bill?id=0004
Bill "was born on November 15, 1947 in Pasadena, California to William Richardson and Maria Luisa Lopez-Collada. William Richardson was a banker who had been working in Mexico City for decades and he settled his family there shortly after Bill's birth."
Red highlighting below the result of an Indiana University education.
Poor Pablo, he and the Herald editors just don't know the law of the land.
Very McClatchy!
__________________________________________________
http://www.miamiherald.com/campaign08/story/221823.html
Miami Herald
Sept. 2, 2007
Debate on Latin America shallow
BY PABLO BACHELET
It has become an article of faith for U.S. presidential hopefuls: If elected, they would give Latin America the attention it deserves.
Among the Republicans, Mitt Romney pledged to ''rebuild relationships of trust,'' while John McCain said Latin American nations are ``natural partners of the United States.''
Democrat Bill Richardson wants to resurrect the Kennedy-era Alliance for Progress, while rival Barack Obama promised a listening tour, starting with a visit to Bolivian President Evo Morales, who has been critical of President Bush.
Such words are a welcome development for a region that largely sees Bush as too distracted by the war in Iraq to reverse the drop in U.S.-Latin American relations.
''Latin Americans are looking with a certain degree of enthusiasm for a new administration in Washington,'' said Peter Hakim, who heads the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington think tank. ``They're basically very unhappy with the Bush administration, and there is a degree of anticipation.''
But peel away the presidential hopefuls' lofty words, observers say, and there have been few substantive proposals on issues that matter the most to many Latin American governments: treatment of migrants and access to the U.S. market. Instead, there is plenty of fiery rhetoric condemning anti-U.S. leaders like Hugo Chávez and Fidel Castro -- but few proposals that deviate substantially from what the Bush administration has done.
Hakim argued that Latin Americans should be ''cautious'' because presidential candidates are not pushing an agenda that suits them on trade and migration. Bush, he added, has been friendlier on issues such as comprehensive migration reform, free-trade pacts with Peru, Panama and Colombia, and cutting farm subsidies that anger Brazil.
With states with large Hispanic populations like Florida and California moving up their presidential primaries and foreign policy becoming a key debating point, Latin America is receiving more attention than usual at this point in the race.
McCain delivered a Latin America speech in West Palm Beach in June in which he pledged to re-create the defunct U.S. Information Agency to improve Washington's diplomacy outreach.
Romney has tried to show his interest in Latin America by putting out statements for the national days of Peru, Colombia, Cuba and Venezuela, speaking in favor of free trade and condemning Chávez and Castro. He has also announced high-profile campaign advisors, including Al Cardenas, a Miami Cuban American and former head of Florida's Republican Party, and Mexican American Roger Noriega, a former assistant secretary of state for the Western Hemisphere.
On the Democratic side, former White House Chief of Staff Thomas ''Mack'' McLarty describes Sen. Hillary Clinton as an ''engaged internationalist'' who, as first lady, visited 17 Latin American countries.
Connecticut Sen. Christopher Dodd, chairman of the Western Hemisphere Subcommittee of the Foreign Relations Committee, speaks fluent Spanish and has met with 49 heads of state from Latin America and the Caribbean since 1987, according to his campaign.
Richardson, who was born in Mexico and speaks nearly fluent Spanish, is a special Organization of American States envoy to Latin America on migration issues. Besides reviving Kennedy's Alliance for Progress, he says he would move key government agencies to Miami because of its nearness to Latin America.
But while the candidates may know and talk about the issues that matter most to most Latin Americans, they also face pressures of domestic political considerations.
''It's very predictable that the three issues where Latin America and presidential politics intersect are going to be immigration, trade and Cuba-Venezuela,'' said Nelson Cunningham, a former special advisor on Latin America for the Clinton administration.
Immigration can be a toxic issue for Republicans because many conservative voters are angry over a perceived flood of undocumented migration from Latin America. ''Any time a Republican candidate talks about Latin America, they have to link to two things,'' Cunningham said. ``One is being tough on immigrants, and No. 2, being tough on Castro. That's become their one-two punch.''
Democrats, for their part, are reluctant to tackle free trade because their organized-labor partners oppose it. John Edwards has blasted pacts like the North American Free Trade Agreement for having ''devastated towns and communities across this country.'' Clinton and Obama say they favor free trade but opposed an agreement with Central America and the Dominican Republic in 2005, claiming it lacked sufficient provisions to protect workers and the environment.
Castro and Chávez are condemned by all candidates, but there are some cracks on how to deal with them.
Obama and Richardson favor allowing more family travel to Cuba. Obama caused a stir when he suggested that under ''certain conditions,'' he would meet with U.S. foes like Chávez or the Castro government. ''Sometimes it is more important to talk to your enemies than to your friends,'' he told Miami Herald columnist Andrés Oppenheimer. Then he wrote an opinion piece in The Miami Herald saying he would allow more family travel and remittances to Cuba and held a well-attended rally in Miami's Little Havana on Aug. 25.
Hillary Clinton criticized Obama's positions as ''naive,'' but Obama is hardly alone in that stance. Clinton herself has, in 2003 and 2005, voted in favor of bills that would have relaxed restrictions on travel to Cuba.
Dodd, in a statement to The Miami Herald, said, ``We need to open up channels of communication with all sectors of Cuban society, including with Cuban government authorities.''
Richardson said he is ''a believer in negotiations'' without preconditions. He wants to lift the U.S. embargo if Cuba frees political prisoners and agrees to ''negotiated democratic reforms'' -- without going into specifics.
But, tellingly, neither Clinton nor Republican front-runner Rudy Giuliani has pronounced speeches on Latin America, although their campaigns say they plan to do so soon. Observers say this is in part because the Hispanic community isn't pushing the issue, and Latin America-related questions rarely come up in debates.
Polls show that Hispanics who vote in the United States resent discrimination against Latinos but rank bread-and- butter issues like healthcare as top concerns.
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In the Heart of a Great Country, Beats the Soul of Hoosier Nation
The South Florida I Grew Up In
Excerpts from Joan Didion's Miami, 1987, Simon & Schuster:
In the continuing opera still called, even by Cubans who have now lived the largest part of their lives in this country, el exilo, the exile, meetings at private homes in Miami Beach are seen to have consequences. The actions of individuals are seen to affect events directly. Revolutions and counter-revolutions are framed in the private sector, and the state security apparatus exists exclusively to be enlisted by one or another private player. That this particular political style, indigenous to the Caribbean and to Central America, has now been naturalized in the United States is one reason why, on the flat coastal swamps of South Florida, where the palmettos once blew over the detritus of a dozen failed booms and the hotels were boarded up six months a year, there has evolved since the early New Year's morning in 1959 when Fulgencio Batista flew for the last time out of Havana a settlement of considerable interest, not exactly an American city as American cities have until recently been understood but a tropical capital: long on rumor, short on memory, overbuilt on the chimera of runaway money and referring not to New York or Boston or Los Angeles or Atlanta but to Caracas and Mexico, to Havana and to Bogota and to Paris and Madrid. Of American cities Miami has since 1959 connected only to Washington, which is the peculiarity of both places, and increasingly the warp...
"The general wildness, the eternal labyrinths of waters and marshes, interlocked and apparently neverending; the whole surrounded by interminable swamps... Here I am then in the Floridas, thought I," John James Audobon wrote to the editor of The Monthly American Journal of Geology and Natural Science during the course of an 1831 foray in the territory then still called the Floridas. The place came first, and to touch down there is to begin to understand why at least six administations now have found South Florida so fecund a colony. I never passed through security for a flight to Miami without experiencing a certain weightlessness, the heightened wariness of having left the developed world for a more fluid atmosphere, one in which the native distrust of extreme possibilities that tended to ground the temperate United States in an obeisance to democratic institutions seemed rooted, if at all, only shallowly.
At the gate for such flights the preferred language was already Spanish. Delays were explained by weather in Panama. The very names of the scheduled destinations suggested a world in which many evangelical inclinations had historically been accomodated, many yearnings toward empire indulged...
In this mood Miami seemed not a city at all but a tale, a romance of the tropics, a kind of waking dream in which any possibility could and would be accomodated...
Hallandale Beach Blog
http://www.hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/
Hallandale Beach Blog is where I try to inject or otherwise superimpose a degree of accountability, transparency and much-needed insight onto local Broward County government and public policy issues, which I feel is sorely lacking in local media now, despite all the technological advances that have taken place since I grew-up in South Florida in the 1970's. On this blog, I concentrate my energy, enthusiasm, anger, disdain and laser-like attention primarily on the coastal cities of Aventura, Hollywood and Hallandale Beach.
IF you lived in this part of South Florida, you'd ALREADY be in stultifying traffic, be paying higher-than-necessary taxes, and be continually musing about the chronic lack of any real accountability or transparency among not only elected govt. officials, but also of City, County and State employees as well. Collectively, with a few rare exceptions, they couldn't be farther from the sort of strong results-oriented, work-ethic mentality that citizens here deserve and are paying for.
This is particularly true in the town I live in, the City of Hallandale Beach, just north of Aventura and south of Hollywood. There, the Perfect Storm of years of apathy, incompetency and cronyism are all too readily apparent.
It's a city with tremendous potential because of its terrific location and weather, yet its citizens have become numb to its outrages and screw-ups after years of the worst kind of chronic mismanagement and lack of foresight. On a daily basis, they wake up and see the same old problems again that have never being adequately resolved by the city in a logical and responsible fashion. Instead the city government either closes their eyes and hopes you'll forget the problem, or kicks them -once again- further down the road.
I used to ask myself, and not at all rhetorically, "Where are all the enterprising young reporters who want to show through their own hard work and enterprise, what REAL investigative reporting can produce?"
Hearing no response, I decided to start a blog that could do some of these things, taking the p.o.v. of a reasonable-but-skeptical person seeing the situation for the first time.
Someone who wanted questions answered in a honest and forthright fashion that citizens have the right to expect.
Hallandale Beach Blog intends to be a catalyst for positive change. http://www.hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/
http://www.hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/
Hallandale Beach Blog is where I try to inject or otherwise superimpose a degree of accountability, transparency and much-needed insight onto local Broward County government and public policy issues, which I feel is sorely lacking in local media now, despite all the technological advances that have taken place since I grew-up in South Florida in the 1970's. On this blog, I concentrate my energy, enthusiasm, anger, disdain and laser-like attention primarily on the coastal cities of Aventura, Hollywood and Hallandale Beach.
IF you lived in this part of South Florida, you'd ALREADY be in stultifying traffic, be paying higher-than-necessary taxes, and be continually musing about the chronic lack of any real accountability or transparency among not only elected govt. officials, but also of City, County and State employees as well. Collectively, with a few rare exceptions, they couldn't be farther from the sort of strong results-oriented, work-ethic mentality that citizens here deserve and are paying for.
This is particularly true in the town I live in, the City of Hallandale Beach, just north of Aventura and south of Hollywood. There, the Perfect Storm of years of apathy, incompetency and cronyism are all too readily apparent.
Sadly for its residents, Hallandale Beach is where even the easily-solved or entirely predictable quality-of-life problems are left to fester for YEARS on end, because of myopia, lack of common sense and the unsatisfactory management and coordination of resources and personnel.
It's a city with tremendous potential because of its terrific location and weather, yet its citizens have become numb to its outrages and screw-ups after years of the worst kind of chronic mismanagement and lack of foresight. On a daily basis, they wake up and see the same old problems again that have never being adequately resolved by the city in a logical and responsible fashion. Instead the city government either closes their eyes and hopes you'll forget the problem, or kicks them -once again- further down the road.
I used to ask myself, and not at all rhetorically, "Where are all the enterprising young reporters who want to show through their own hard work and enterprise, what REAL investigative reporting can produce?"
Hearing no response, I decided to start a blog that could do some of these things, taking the p.o.v. of a reasonable-but-skeptical person seeing the situation for the first time.
Someone who wanted questions answered in a honest and forthright fashion that citizens have the right to expect.
Hallandale Beach Blog intends to be a catalyst for positive change. http://www.hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/
Hollywood in Cartoons, The New Yorker
Hollywood in Cartoons, The New Yorker
Hollywood in cartoons, 10-21-06 Non-Sequitur by Wiley, www-NON-SEQUITUR.COM
Miami Dolphins
Sebastian the Ibis, the Spirited Mascot of the University of Miami Hurricanes
Miami Dolphins Cheerleaders, April 28, 2007
Of cheerleaders past and present
Given South Florida's unique version of the melting pot -con salsa- demographics and mindset, these women in the photo above are surely what most South Floridians would consider attractive women. But for this observer, who's spent hours & hours at IU cheerleader tryouts and who has known dozens of cheerleaders -and wannabes- in North Miami Beach, Bloomington, Evanston and Washington, D.C., the whole time I was watching these members of the Dolphins' squad perform, I couldn't help but compare them and their routines to those of some IU friends of mine who ALWAYS showed true Hoosier spirit & enthusiasm.
Sitting at my table right near the stage and still later, while watching the long lines of Dolphin fans of all ages waiting to snap photos of themselves with the cheerleaders, I couldn't help but think about those friends who always left me and other Hoosier fans feeling positive & optimistic.
Was there anyone I saw in Davie who possessed these valuable intangibles: the dancing precision of IU Red Stepper -and Captain- Gail Amster, my talented and spirited Phi Beta Kappa pal from Deerfield (IL), who always sat next to me in our Telecom. classes as we took turns entertaining the other; the ebullient spirit & energy of two Hoosier cheerleaders -and captains- from Bloomington, Wendy (Mulholland) Moyle & Sara Cox; the hypnotic, Midwestern, girl-next-door sexiness of Hoosier cheerleader Julie Bymaster, from Brownsburg; or, the adorable Southern girl-next-door appeal of former Hoosier Pom squader Jennifer Grimes, of Louisville, always such a clear distraction while sitting underneath the basket?
Nope, not that I could see. But then they were VERY tough acts to follow!!!
And that's not to mention my talented & spirited friends like Denise Andrews of Portage, Jody Kosanovich of Hammond & Linda Ahlbrand of Chesterton, all of whom were dynamic cheerleaders -and captains- at very large Hoosier high schools that were always in the championship mix, with Denise's team winning the Ind. football championship her senior year when she was captain -just like in a movie. That Denise, Jody & Linda all lived on the same dorm floor, just three stories above me at Briscoe Quad our freshman year, was one of the greatest coincidences -and strokes of luck for me!- that I could've ever hoped for.
You could hardly ask for better ambassadors of IU than THESE very smart, sweet and talented women. In a future SBH post, I'll tell the story of one of the greatest Hoosiers I ever met, the aforementioned Wendy Mulholland, the Bloomington-born captain and emotional heart of the great early '80's IU cheerleading squads, and the daughter of Jack Mulholland, IU's former longtime Treasurer. The acorn doesn't fall far from a tree built on a foundation of integrity & community service!
(After he retired, Mr. Mulholland was the first executive director of the Community Foundation of Bloomington and Monroe County. I used to joke with Wendy that her dad's name was the one that was permanently affixed to the bottom of my work-study checks for years, while I worked at the Dept. of Political Science's Library, first, at the Student Building in the old part of campus, and then later, after it was refurbished, in magnificent Woodburn Hall, my favorite building on campus.)
In that future post, I'll share some reflections on Wendy's great strength of character and personality; my intentions of returning to Bloomington a few weeks before Fall '82 classes started, so I could help Wendy train and work-out to rehab her knee, so she'd feel confident in trying-out for the squad again, following a bad knee injury that'd left her physically-unable to try-out for the squad the previous spring, a big disappointment to those of us who cared about both Wendy and the team; my incredulity at, quite literally, running into Wendy while walking down a sidewalk one afternoon a few years later in Evanston, IL, when we were astonished to discover we were both living there, with me trying to hook on with a Windy City advertising agency, and Wendy then-attending Kellogg (KGSM) at Northwestern, right when the WSJ had named Kellogg the #1 Business School in the country.
I'll also share a story about Wendy performing a true act of kindness towards me in 1982, when I was having a real emergency, and she went above-and-beyond what I had any logical reason to expect. Yet, Wendy, along with her very helpful dad, Jack, came through for me when I was in a very bad time crunch. I've never forgotten Wendy's kindness towards me, and her true Hoosier spirit.
There's NOTHING I wouldn't do for Wendy Mulholland.
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