Tag: Switzerland

Fake Democracy in Europe

A fake election in Europe barely secures victory for the EU-supported pro-EU party:

Moldova’s ruling pro-EU Action and Solidarity Party (PAS) has secured a narrow majority in the nation’s parliamentary election, according to preliminary results published by the Central Election Commission (CEC). Votes from abroad pushed PAS past the threshold needed to continue governing without a coalition partner. Inside the country, however, it received only 44.13%, with its strongest support in the capital, Chisinau, where it polled at 52.68%. Initial counts suggested the party would fall short of an outright majority. But PAS dominated the diaspora vote, getting over 85% in some Western countries. As ballots trickled in from overseas, its overall total rose and eventually crossed the 50% line.

Meanwhile, in Switzerland, a “voluntary” electronic ID barely passes in its second attempt because the usual cantonal approval was not required and a state-controlled corporation illegally donated to the pro-ID campaign.

The referendum committee against the law on digital identity (e-ID), which was narrowly approved on Sunday, called on Monday for the vote to be annulled. It claims that the result was influenced by illegal interference by Swisscom, which is controlled by the state. The referendum committee regards Swisscom’s involvement in the campaign as a flagrant violation of the freedom to vote guaranteed by the Federal Constitution. Companies close to the government are bound by political neutrality and must not influence the democratic process through unilateral interventions.

The pattern in these anti-democratic Clown World votes is very clear. The EU and NGOs are heavily involved in financing and backing the campaigns. Technical rules are subverted and utilized against political opponents, minor and presumably temporary changes are made to permit revotes of failed measures, the non-resident vote-by-mail heavily supports all the measures that the residents oppose, and all of the non-populist parties put their differences aside in order to support the government-endorsed policies.

It’s all just a thin, pseudo-democratic charade meant to obscure the ever-growing, ever-tighter grip that Clown World is attempting to exert on the European nations with an illusion of popular legitimacy. But these attempts will fail, because all of the economic and philosophical justifications for Clown World’s “democracy” have failed. These are just the last gasp of political measures being applied before Clown World openly turns to violent repression and then completely collapses due to its lack of popular support.

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Switzerland Isn’t Neutral

The Swiss media is quite rightly beginning to worry about the inevitable implications of the Swiss government’s decision to abandon neutrality now that the rest of the world has taken note of the way in which the Swiss government is waging economic and proxy war on Russia at the behest of the European Union.

Is Switzerland still neutral? People ask Google this question, or a similar one, some 14,000 times a month – outside Switzerland and in English.

In a trial search, an English-language article from Turkish state media shows up quite high on the list. “Why Switzerland is breaking away from 500-year-old neutrality,” says the headline. Although the text itself is more nuanced, the headline sets the wrong tone and skews the readers’ interpretation. And as journalists know, far more people read the headline than the actual article.

There are various reasons why people abroad may be asking Google about Swiss neutrality. One is that foreign players – in particular Russian propaganda channels – are spreading misinformation on the issue.

It is important that people who take the trouble to research Swiss neutrality have access to reliable and accurate information. Anyone who claims that Switzerland is no longer neutral is assuming that Switzerland has picked a side. And anyone who has taken sides can be viewed with hostility.

It is therefore in Switzerland’s interest to ensure that its neutrality, which has been the guiding principle of its foreign policy since 1815, is correctly communicated to the international public. If a person hears over and over again that Switzerland is no longer neutral, they can easily come to perceive this as the dominant view. This is the case even if the statement is made multiple times by the same source but reaches them through different channels. Frequently repeated untruths have a proven effect.

And frequently repeated truths have an even greater effect, because the most powerful rhetoric points toward the truth.

Switzerland obviously isn’t neutral. It has engaged in many hostile actions toward Russia over the last three years. In fact, it has engaged in so many of them that it has been formally declared an “unfriendly nation” by Russia as a result of those actions.

The Russian Federation has decided to add Switzerland to its list of “unfriendly nations”, after the country imposed sanctions on Russia following its invasion of Ukraine. The move follows a letter from the Russian Foreign Minister, who asked the Swiss government, “Which side are you on?”

In the press conference announcing the sanctions, Swiss President Ignazio Cassis dismissed Russian accusations of a violation of neutrality by saying, “Playing into the hands of an aggressor is not neutral.” Speaking to Blick about the allegation made by Vladimir Putin that western sanctions amounted to a declaration of war on Russia, the president said, “Switzerland is not at war with Russia.”

“Switzerland remains a neutral country,” said law professor Oliver Diggelmann, from the University of Zurich. He noted that a commitment to neutrality did not mean a commitment to inaction and that “the Swiss government recognised that not fully sanctioning such a blatant violation economically would make (Switzerland) an indirect accomplice of the aggressor.”

These word games don’t fool anyone. Cassis’s response is both irrelevant and disingenuous, and is the sort of sophistic rhetoric that doesn’t even merit being taken seriously, let alone at face value.

Doing nothing is not “playing into the hands of an aggressor”. It is, quite literally, NOT doing that. It is, quite literally, doing nothing. If we combine both statements by Cassis and Diggelman, it’s easy to see how inverted the “economic sanctions are neutral” logic is.

  • Neutrality does not mean doing nothing.
  • Doing nothing would make Switzerland an indirect accomplice of Russia
  • Enacting economic sanctions is necessary to avoid becoming an indirect accomplice of Russia
  • Enacting economic sanctions makes Switzerland a direct accomplice of Ukraine, the EU, and the USA
  • Therefore, neutrality requires Switzerland to become a direct accomplice of Ukraine, the EU, and the USA
  • In other words, neutrality requires Switzerland to take sides against Russia.

This isn’t merely incorrect logic, it is inverted sophistry that relies upon an implicit redefinition of the term “neutrality” from “not taking sides” to “not taking the side of the aggressor”. Which means that the “interventionist neutrality” approach literally requires the abandonment of genuine neutrality and the replacement of the word with something that means its exact opposite.

The claim that Switzerland has taken a side is observably true. The claim that Switzerland is still neutral is observably false.

We’ve seen this sort of inversion before. We’ve seen it many, many times. As with the EU’s “democracy” that fights the will of the people and the UK’s “liberalism” that imprisons people for having opinions, this new Swiss “neutrality” is the exact opposite of what everyone historically understood the word to mean. The worldwide observations of the recent Swiss abandonment of neutrality aren’t false, they are 100 percent correct.

The more important point is to recognize that no one from Beijing to Washington cares even a little bit about how Swiss policy or Swiss law formally defines neutrality. All the legalistic word games are irrelevant. Unlike the tango, it doesn’t take two to war. If Russia says you’re at war with them, then guess what? You’re at war with Russia. And as has been made very clear by the SCO summit, if you’re at war with Russia, then you’re at war with China too. Good luck with that.

The small nations of Europe are still stuck in the post-WWII mindset of an invincible USA, but the post-WWII era is over. The USA can’t defeat either Russia nor China anymore, and it would now lose both a land war in Europe and a sea war in the Pacific. At this point, the US military might not even be able to prevent a joint invasion if the Sino-Russian alliance elected to launch a 10-year all-out war of invasion and occupation, although fortunately neither China nor Russia has any interest in doing that.

So while taking sides is foolish, taking the side that is guaranteed to lose, taking the side that has the military-industrial deck stacked even more heavily against it than the one that was stacked against the Axis powers in WWII, is downright insane.

It’s not too late for the Swiss. No one in China or Russia is under any illusion about the Swiss people wanting to go to war with them. They know perfectly well who is responsible for the economic war on them. But that means it’s time to start fixing the diplomatic damage of the last three years, not to double down and make it worse while trying to deny it. It needs to be fixed before it’s too late and no one cares anymore what is said or done.

The Swiss government’s opinion on neutrality is perfect clear. It is absolutely against it.

Bern, 26.6.2024 – The popular initiative ‘Safeguarding Swiss neutrality’ (Neutrality Initiative) seeks to enshrine neutrality and its practical application in Switzerland’s Federal Constitution. At its meeting of 26 June 2024, the Swiss Federal Council decided to recommend that the people and the cantons reject the Neutrality Initiative.

30.5.2025 – The Foreign Affairs Committee of the Council of States soundly rejected the neutrality initiative, reported SRF. The Council of States’ Security Policy Committee also resoundingly rejected the popular initiative in mid-February.

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Diversity Enriches Switzerland

Not even the uber-civilized Magic Dirt of Switzerland is enough to maintain order once a sufficient quantity of societally incompatible non-Europeans have been imported.

Dramatic riots have erupted in a Swiss city after a migrant teen was killed in a scooter crash while fleeing the police. Riot cops clashed with protesters who hurled Molotov cocktails in Lausanne as officials desperately tried to put a lid on escalating violence. The unrest comes with the Olympic capital’s police in the spotlight after four officers were suspended Monday following the unearthing of racist, sexist and discriminatory messages in private WhatsApp groups.

Marvin M, a 17-year-old Swiss resident of Lausanne, was fleeing police on a stolen scooter, hit a wall and died early Sunday, despite resuscitation attempts by emergency services. It was the third death in less than three months in Lausanne during a police intervention. There have been seven such deaths in the city and the wider Vaud region since 2016. Five involved men of African origin.

On Sunday night, ‘around 100 young people, wearing balaclavas’ set fire to several containers and damaged a bus, police said. The following night, 150-200 people set up roadblocks using trash containers, setting them on fire, police said. Some 140 cops clashed with the rioters, who torched buses and pelted them with stones.

Lausanne authorities sought Tuesday to head off a third night of violence in the Swiss city.

The problem is that the solution is a counterintuitive one for the social justice bureaucrats, whose entire philosophy and system of values render them unable to even begin to address the problem, let alone solve it.

Ironically, Lausanne’s best bet is to promote the four suspended officers and put them in charge of establishing and maintaining order, as they are the only authorities who clearly understand the nature of the challenge that has been created by incompatible immigration.

It’s been really fascinating to observe, over the course of two decades, how Europeans have gone from self-righteously preening about “America’s gun problem” to belatedly realizing that America never had a gun problem, America has an African problem that the Europeans have now brought upon themselves.

To quote the great historian Martin van Creveld, “Immigration is war”.

UPDATE: The vibrant youth also attacked a politician from Switzerland’s largest political party.

During that night, a Swiss People’s Party (SVP) politician, Thibault Schaller, was targeted in a lynching attack, which was caught on video. He wrote on X that he approached the unrest because he was curious what was going on. Upon getting closer, some individuals, whom he said he believed to be Antifa, recognized and confronted him.

“They ordered me to leave. I refused and asked what was happening. One pushed me, I pushed him back then stepped back. Someone shouted something, and 10, 15 people came running at me from everywhere. I ran away, took hits. They blocked my path, I fell, protected myself. I got up, ran, got surrounded again against a wall, then took blows. Then, I managed to get away by running. I’m fine, but we really need to take back this city,” Schaller wrote.

As I have previously pointed out, regardless of how one feels about immigrants, refugees, or fuzzy bunnies, there are two, and only two possible options for every Western country that foolishly opened its borders to the world, and soon, apparently, Japan. One is the repatriation of all non-European peoples. Two is mass violence. And everyone who opposes the former is implicitly choosing the latter.

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A Wake-Up Call

The Swiss government abandoned both banking privacy and neutrality under pressure from the USA and the EU. As a direct result, both its giant banks have already failed – one was bailed out and illegally given the resources of the other one at bargain prices – its peace summit is a complete failure, and now the world-famous Geneva Motor Show is shutting down after 119 years.

The Geneva International Motor Show is to end after more than a century due to lower interest and a tough market environment, organisers said on Friday. The organisers of the show have encountered difficulties in their preparations for the 2025 edition, they said. The signals from the market in favour of another edition were poor.

When asking the manufacturers to prepare for the 2025 edition, “we had the impression that we were going against the market,” Alexandre de Senarclens, President of the Geneva International Motor Show Foundation, told the Keystone-SDA news agency on Friday.

Translation: The Chinese, who have over 60 percent of the global electric car market and were among the few brands to appear at this year’s show, informed the organisers that they won’t be coming next year, in solidarity with their Russian allies.

The failure of the century-old Geneva show is probably a bigger blow to Switzerland than the widespread international rejection of the one-sided peace summit. One hopes that the Swiss people will soon recognize from the ongoing collapse of the USA and the EU countries that obediently following the directives of Clown World is not progress to anything but material loss, societal degradation, and violent post-civilizational chaos.

China confirmed on Friday that it will not attend a Ukraine peace conference in Switzerland next month, as the meeting falls short of China’s requests, according to Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Mao Ning. The Chinese spokesperson emphasized that China consistently insists that international conference on Ukraine should have the recognition of both Russia and Ukraine, equal participation of all parties, and fair discussions on all peace proposals, as these three elements are crucial for the effectiveness of restoring peace.

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The Cost of Taking Sides

Russia is far from the only country that has rejected Switzerland’s false assertion of neutrality:

The leaders of Brazil and South Africa will not attend a conference on Ukraine to be hosted by Switzerland next month, reports have said. The summit, scheduled for June 15-16 at the Burgenstock Resort near Lucerne, is expected to revolve around Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s proposed roadmap for ending the conflict with Russia. More than 160 countries have been invited to take part, including members of the G7, G20, BRICS, and the EU. Russia, however, has not been invited to the talks.

China is another major BRICS member which presumably will ignore the Swiss meeting, according to Yury Ushakov, who is assistant to the Russian president for international affairs.

BRICS leaders won’t attend Zelensky’s ‘peace conference’ , RUSSIA TODAY, 17 May 2024

The rejection of Swiss “neutrality” by the BRICSIA nations should have been, but was not, foreseen. And if this isn’t a clear warning to the short-sighted members of the Swiss parliament who have unnecessarily trashed centuries of global confidence and goodwill in a vain attempt to appease the wicked gods of Clown World, at least it should suffice make the gravity of the situation obvious to the Swiss people. It means that voting for the proposed referendum on permanent constitutional neutrality, economic and military, is absolutely necessary no matter what one’s political preferences might be, and no matter what fig leaves and word magic are offered in an attempt to convince the people to let the politicians continue to redefine the concept.

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An Inept Defense

Word magic doesn’t work for domestic abusers and it’s certainly not going to work for wartime belligerents:

Switzerland’s neutrality remains unchanged, the country’s foreign ministry has insisted ahead of the peace conference on the Ukraine conflict next month. Russia has accused Bern of effectively siding with the West and Kiev in the current confrontation, making it an unfit mediator…

On Friday, Reuters quoted a Swiss foreign ministry representative as stressing that Bern’s neutrality is “constant” and will not be affected by the summit on June 15-16. The statement noted, however, that “being neutral does not mean being indifferent.”

“Switzerland strongly condemns Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. Outside the military realm, the right to neutrality does not stand in the way of solidarity and support for Ukraine and its people,” the ministry clarified, as quoted by Reuters.

Despite not being a member of either the EU or NATO, Switzerland has supported the West’s sanctions against Russia over its actions in Ukraine. Last month, the country’s national agency overseeing sanctions revealed that Bern was holding an estimated 13 billion francs ($14.3 billion) in Russian assets, which remain frozen in its financial institutions.

It’s certainly a fascinating attempt to deny the undeniable. It’s rather like a domestic abuser admitting that he repeatedly punched his wife in the mouth and pushed her down the stairs, but nevertheless insisting that he never abused her. You can’t sanction and strongly condemn another state and still claim to be neutral.

It’s not only inept diplomacy, it’s flat-out false, as even a cursory glance at a thesaurus will prove. The fact is that “being neutral” quite literally does mean “being indifferent.”

neutral

adjective as in impartial, noncommittal

Strongest matches

  • disinterested
  • inactive
  • indifferent
  • uninvolved

“Indifferent” is precisely what “neutral” means.

Regardless, the important thing about neutrality is that the neutral party’s opinion of itself doesn’t matter in the slightest. If either party feels you’re taking the other party’s side, then you’re obviously not going to be recognized as a neutral. And if your partiality is obvious to everyone, then you have eliminated yourself from consideration for any role requiring a neutral party. It’s frankly shocking that the Swiss diplomats would prove to be so inept in this regard, although given the fact that plans for a Swiss Army knife without an actual blade have been announced, it’s very much in line with Clown World’s inverted approach to reality.

What’s next, an announcement that Swiss chocolate will hitherto be cocoa-free?

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The Answer is “No”

It’s mildly amusing how the global media keeps trying to push the “conference on peace” that will be missing the only party whose opinion matters if peace is going to be obtained. But China isn’t having any of it, if you understand Chinese diplomacy-speak:

AFP: Yesterday German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and President Xi Jinping discussed the high-level conference on peace to be hosted by Switzerland in June, which will not be attended by Russia. Chancellor Scholz noted that China’s word carries weight in Russia. Can you elaborate on China’s expectation for the high-level conference in Switzerland? Is China urging Russia to attend the conference?

Lin Jian: During his meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz yesterday, President Xi Jinping said China encourages and supports all efforts that are conducive to the peaceful resolution of the crisis, and supports the holding in due course of an international peace conference that is recognized by both Russia and Ukraine and ensures the equal participation of all parties and fair discussions on all peace plans. China will maintain close communication with all parties concerned, including Germany, on this matter. China believes that ultimately, any conflict will have to be resolved through diplomatic channels and political negotiation. On Ukraine, the only way out is to go back to the negotiation table. We’ve learned that the relevant conference is still under preparation and a lot of work remains to be done. China is ready to maintain communication with relevant parties. 

In other words, China will not support a one-sided conference being hosted by a non-neutral party, but it will support one that is genuinely neutral and acceptable to the two primary belligerents. If Switzerland still wants to play a role in peacemaking in the future, it has no choice but to stop taking sides and refrain from sanctioning anyone for anything.

This really isn’t that hard. Because it’s perfectly clear that none of the major powers are going to accept self-serving word games and contorted rationalizations as a substitute for genuine neutrality.

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The Swiss Demand Neutrality

Clown World is going to face an uphill battle trying to convince the Swiss to abandon their historic neutrality now that they’re already seeing how abandoning some of their other historical traditions has worked out for them. Given that giving into US demands has already cost them both Credit Suisse and their postal savings system, one shudders to think what the price of choosing the wrong side in WWIII will be for nations such as Japan, South Korea, and Switzerland.

Switzerland is heading for a popular vote on its long-standing neutrality amid a debate ignited by the the country’s decision to sanction Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.

Activists and the country’s right-wing People’s Party, the largest in parliament, want to enshrine the position of permanent, armed neutrality in the constitution. In addition to preventing Switzerland taking part in any military alliance, the initiative also wants to block participation in non-military coercive measures, which would include sanctions.

The group behind the proposal submitted its petition, backed by more than 130,000 signatures, this week, though the actual vote won’t take place for some time.

Switzerland has traditionally refused to take sides in European conflicts, but decided to adopt European Union sanctions against Russia in 2022. According to critics, that was a departure from neutrality and jeopardized the country’s role as an international mediator.

On the other hand, corporate leaders have been increasingly warning that neutrality is harming the country’s business prospects. Switzerland has been blocking weapon shipments from Germany and elsewhere to Ukraine, drawing international ire.

The People’s Party said this week that there have been “targeted attempts to undermine neutrality,” citing the country’s adoption of EU sanctions against Russia. It said this has undermined the international view of Switzerland as neutral.

The government says sanctions are compatible with neutrality and is trying to revive Switzerland’s relevance by hosting on a conference on peace in Ukraine in June. Russia has already said it won’t attend the meeting.

Both Spain and Switzerland did very well to stay out of WWII. No doubt it will be even more beneficial to stay out of the unrestricted warfare of WWIII.

Considering that Clown World will almost certainly be comprehensively defeated and in full retreat by the time the referendum takes place, the usual arguments about the economic benefits and inevitability of neo-liberal progress toward eine Rasse, eine Welt, ein Reich should appear almost comically outdated by then. The fact that Switzerland has already lost its ability to play host to major international peace talks, to say nothing have having been named a hostile state by the foremost military power in Europe is also going to provide rocket fuel for the referendum.

I expect the government to do its best to pretend to fiddle with the laws, declare the problem solved, and argue that the people putting constitutional limits on its ability to take sides are now unnecessary, but given the way they’ve already played that card with regards to other issues, no one buys it anymore.

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Is Switzerland Still Democratic?

It appears we’re going to find out. Because you know both Clown World and its pet politicians are going to be pulling out all the stops to prevent this referendum on immigration from passing:

The Swiss People’s Party submitted 114,600 signatures to the federal chancellery in Bern on Wednesday. It demands that a new article on “sustainable population development” be added to the constitution.

According to the initiative, the population of permanent residents must not exceed ten million people before 2050. The government should then set a limit based on the birth rate. If 9.5 million people live in the country before 2050, the Federal Council and Parliament would have to act.

For example, temporarily admitted persons would then no longer be able to obtain a permanent residence permit. Family reunification is also to be restricted. International agreements with exemption or protection clauses would have to be renegotiated. If all this is not enough, the Agreement on the Free Movement of Persons with the European Union would have to be cancelled.

According to a party statement today, the high level of support for this initiative, “shows that the population urgently demands sustainable and independently controlled immigration for Switzerland.”

This sort of measure is absolutely necessary, and indeed, long overdue, for every European nation as well as Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the USA. It’s not only Clown World that can weaponize migration, after all; many have forgotten the global outcry that greeted China’s plan to settle 100 million Chinese in Africa. Already, in Namibia, Chinese immigrants account for more than 5 percent of the 2.8 million population there and have accounted for most of its post-2000 population growth; they could become the voting majority there in the blink of an eye if Beijing was ever inclined to wage unrestricted warfare against the Namibian people and thereby harvest its natural resources.

And the same, obviously, is true of the smaller European nations.

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The Price of Belligerence

The Swiss politicians are belatedly beginning to discover that the benefits of strict neutrality were considerably greater than they’d believed possible when they were being wined and dined by the diplomats of Clown World:

We don’t expect Switzerland to be directly attacked in the next six months. But we must prepare ourselves for a new range of threats, while the old, conventional threats have not diminished. The likelihood of Switzerland being attacked has increased over the last two years.
– Viola Amherd, President of Switzerland

This is precisely why General Henri Guisan, the hero of Switzerland in World War II, made it very, very clear to all the politicians of his day that surrendering to Nazi Germany would be an effective death sentence for themselves, and that their actions would be irrelevant anyhow. When the then-President of Switzerland was cozying up to the Nazis, in much the same way that the current Swiss administration is now cozying up to the European Union and NATO, he “punished” two young officers who were caught planning to assassinate the president by promoting them, then announced that no government authority, including the Head of State, had the power to surrender to any foreign power on behalf of the Swiss nation.

The current Swiss government is the party solely responsible for increasing the likelihood of Switzerland being attacked over the last two years. It very foolishly, unnecessarily, and very, very stupidly, chose to violate the nation’s historic neutrality in order to take sides against Russia on behalf of NATO, the EU, and the United States. Now Russia, China, and the BRICSIA nations now regard it as “a hostile entity” and, quite reasonably, no longer recognize Switzerland as an impartial party capable of hosting the sort of peace talks it has traditionally hosted for generations.

Now the government is at an important nexus. Having taken the first step into belligerence, it is now being forced to choose whether to join the EU, the UK, and the USA in their sanctions on China or not, which would be a much more serious step in economic terms than the sanctions on Russia were. One sincerely hopes that the politicians will learn from their previous mistake of violating the nation’s precious neutrality, and have the wisdom to step back from the brink and staunchly refuse to join the denizens of Clown World in leaping into the inevitable abyss of the military and economic ruin that is already in process.

If you choose to enter the ring, you cannot be surprised when you get punched in the face. And if you choose to enter the ring against a massive opponent who is four times larger than you and all your supposed friends combined, you are absolutely, 100 percent, going to lose, and you are going to lose badly.

The winning strategy, as generations of Swiss leaders have known, is to stay the hell out of the ring.

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