“Why is everyone criticising Starmer? He hasn’t done anything …”. That’s a Bob Hope joke from more than half a century ago. Hope was talking about Eisenhower but the gag came to mind recently whilst perusing the latest YouGov opinion poll. Labour is nine points behind the Conservatives, and Starmer is behind both Johnson and Don’t-Know in the Best Prime Minister stakes.
 
Given that the same polls rate this administration as the worst in living memory, given that Starmer won the Labour leadership primarily because of his so-called electability, and given that even the Tory press is giving him an easy ride, one might have thought that a significant lead would be … well, a given.
 
After all, as Tony Blair said dismissively when Jeremy Corbyn was a few points ahead in the polls, “yes, but he should be 20 points up.”
 
Yes, he should have been. And so should Starmer be now.
 
Each day brings more news of government corruption and cronyism. Each morning we hear of more statistical manipulation and lies. Day after day, we learn of yet another fiasco, yet more failures.
 
But we don’t hear the ‘forensic’ voice of Keir Starmer. He’s gone to ground.
 
It’s not the message. There isn’t really one at all. So it must be the medium.
 
True, the occasional tweet sneaks out. Now and again, an article under his byline will appear, usually behind a paywall. Once in a while, we will see him claiming that some government perfidy requires ‘looking at’. But that’s about it.
 
And his deputy and the rest of his shadow cabinet are also keeping schtum.
 
The bastards who screwed us in 2017 are kicking up a fuss. Pay them off.
 
Eliminate factionalism by expelling every faction. Except ours.
 
Don’t mention Dawn Butler. Until Boris Johnson does.
 
We’re only nine points down. Don’t rock the boat.
 
Trouble is, the boat is already rocking. Membership is declining. Some are resigning. More are allowing their membership to lapse. Amongst those who will remain, there is a sense of despondency and depression.
 
So is Labour a lost cause?

Not necessarily.  In the latest Survation poll, which was published at the same time as YouGov, Labour was four points ahead amongst those under 65. But amongst over-65s, the Tories had a 46 point lead. (Hence the nine point lead overall.)
 
As a man in his seventies, I have often thought there was case to be made for 65 being the cut-off age for voting. Those who vote should have a vested interest in the future rather than the status quo.
 
Nearly 50% of Tory voters are over 65, compared to just 14% of Labour voters.
 
So I have a modest proposal for you.

We don’t need to dissolve the people and elect a new one.
 
We don’t need proportional representation or single transferable votes.
 
We simply need to make voting the sole prerogative of those between 16 and 65.
 
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: We have just passed through the ‘Days Between’ and so Jerry has been on my mind and my turntable. Today, from the night he died, it’s Bob Weir and Ratdog at Hampton Beach. You know our love will never fade away.
 

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent. Friends have alerted me to the fact that it is more than 100 days since I last posted at Not Dark Yet: in other words, not a single post during the quarantine. True, I have had more time at my disposal but I have wasted these weeks. I have been musing rather than thinking, reading more than writing, drinking more than eating. And those issues which I cannot discuss, I have consigned to silence. Now, due to popular demand, I give you what has kept me going during these 100 days or so:
 
 
Angst and Anger
 
But primarily anger.
 
Anger at the sheer incompetence of this government – the lies, the procrastination, the inability to ensure the most elementary of precautions – testing? tracing? supporting? - until it is too late.
 
Anger at the sacking of Rebecca Long-Bailey, based on a malicious conflation of legitimate concerns about the actions of the Israeli government with anti-semitism. It allows Netanyahu free rein to continue with his annexation. It diminishes the cause it claims to espouse.
 
Anger at the media – not solely for what it is telling us, but what it is not.
 
 
Words
 
Other people’s words. As ever, I have been reading and re-reading a great deal of crime novels and thrillers, notably Don Winslow’s The Force, a morally nuanced policier which I commend to everyone. But I have also managed to force my brain into gear in order to understand Carolyn Steedman’s History and The Law: A Love Story. What I relished in these essays on the minutiae of interactions between the two disciplines is the focus on the lives and works of ordinary people. It is what Carolyn does best, and never better.
 
I have also been listening to words. Podcasts and audio books are the soundtrack to my daily route marches around the parks of Leamington. Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which I read as a chore as a young man, illuminated a couple of cloudy days along the river. Joyce promised that his life and writing would be based on “exile, silence, and cunning”.
 
I wish those words had registered with me 50 years ago.
 
​
Music
 
The lethargy-inducing impact of the lockdown has been mitigated significantly by Bob. First, he gave us three pre-releases from the new album, Rough and Rowdy Ways. And then, the new album itself. If we thought the plethora of allusions in Murder Most Foul or the exquisiteness of I Contain Multitudes was sufficient raw material for exegesis, it’s because we hadn’t then heard Key West. I am still playing this album a couple of times a day, still learning and enjoying as it reveals more on each listening.
 
(By the way, was anyone else confused by Bob’s reference to playing the Moonlight Sonata in F# rather than C# minor? I have since discovered that F# is urban slang for ‘fuck off’! Not many people know that. Or perhaps you did.)
 
 
Family, Friends and Other Bubbles
 
The family are fine – thanks for asking. I have now managed to see my Mum, now in her 94th year, three times face-to-face or mask-to-mask. She lives alone and has no wifi or internet skills. It’s been tough.
 
Most friends, of course, have the means to communicate virtually. And we have relished the apéros, the conversations, the debates on policy, the projections of the 60 game baseball season, the test-and-trace initiatives, the concerns over diminishing cellars, the celebrations of Coventry City’s return to the Championship, and a million other things.
 
Only once have I consciously broken the quarantine advice. Black Lives Matter is a cause which cannot wait and Jill and I were proud to be part of the demonstration in our town. It was, most of the time, physically distanced but emotionally and politically close.
 
The pubs can open on Saturday. Chances are I will call in to one or more during the day, even though my instincts and “the science” say we are re-opening too early.
 
“Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself. (I am large, I contain multitudes.)”

​“The last quartets of Beethoven are mistakes, absurdities, the reveries of a sick genius. I would burn everything I have composed if someday I wrote anything resembling such chaos.”
 
Being an aficionado of sick genius and musical chaos, I confess I first read these words of George Onslow, the “French Beethoven”, as a compliment. I thought it an honest recognition that everything written before would pale into embarrassing insignificance.
 
Having now heard a piece by Onslow, his string quartet in C minor, Opus 8 No.1, I acknowledge that the world of musicography would not be diminished in any way had Onslow burned everything he had composed.
 
It was a clever juxtaposition by the Consone String Quartet at the Pump Rooms last Friday, as the familiarity of Haydn (Opus 9 No 4) and the banality of the Onslow provided a marked contrast with the sublime complexity of Beethoven’s Opus 131.
 
I first heard the C# minor half a century ago, in a recording by the Amadeus. Since then, I have heard it performed many times – notably by the Petersen, the Emerson and the Lindsays – but the Amadeus has remained my go-to version. Until now.
 
The Consone play instruments with gut strings using early 19th century bows and extracted new (to me at least) sounds without losing the warmth and complexity of the score with its long emotional sweep from opening fugue (beautifully articulated by the Consone) to its charging, dashing, careering finale.
 
Of course, although there are seven movements, the quartet is played without pause. It is seamless, fluid and, ultimately, cathartic. And last Friday, the Consone owned it.
 
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: The Consone has not yet recorded the 131. But on Friday, in the break between the Onslow and the Beethoven, I managed to acquire a CD of Shostakovich’s 4th Symphony by Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia. I used to have this on vinyl, and although I’m a Kyril Kondrashin kinda guy when it comes to Dmitri, I have been playing this “essential” re-release and can confirm that it is exactly that: essential.  

Tomorrow, Jewish members of the Warwick and Leamington Constituency Labour Party are organising a vigil outside the Town Hall to support Holocaust Memorial Day. Implicit in this, of course, is support for anti-semitism, anti-islamophobia and anti-racism. It will start at 11am, and I'll see you there.
 
This year, the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, anti-semitism is at the top of the agenda. Or rather, alleged anti-semitism in the Labour Party is at the top of the agenda, with all leadership candidates agreeing to the 10 ‘pledges’ – they are actually demands – put forward by the Board of Deputies.

​You may think, as do I together with Naom Chomsky and Jewish Voice for Labour and Jews Sans Frontières amongst others that there are some issues here. The most succinct rebuttal I have come across is from @blepharon which I circulate here for those who do not follow him on Twitter or read The Canary. 

I am disappointed that our leadership contenders have 'signed up' to these 'pledges'. I am particularly disappointed that a man of the legal calibre of Starmer and the instinctive Labourism of Long-Bailey have kow-towed.

But we understand that this is not to do with an appeal to the Labour membership. It is everything to do with appeasing the liberal elite, who have chosen to use this issue as their focus for attacks on a socialist agenda.

It is a shame that this trivialisation of the issue should be the case. But tomorrow, at 11am, we shall remind ourselves of the real issue.

The holocaust. The six million who died - horribly - under the Third Reich.

My mother, now in her 90s, is one of the last of the generation who was alive when this happened. But we have told our children who will tell our grandchildren who, I hope, will tell their children.

מיר וועלן ניט פאַרגעסן​

Today from the everysmith vaults: I am listening to Bob's shows from 2000 version of the NET. I saw several of these shows in September of that year, but the one that is playing today is from April, in Omaha, Nebraska. It is not solely the acoustic set, but that band is one of the best he has assembled. 

In the summer of 2018, during the third test between Australia and South Africa, the TV cameras at Capetown showed Cameron Bancroft applying sandpaper to the ball. This attempt to make the ball swing unnaturally was and remains one of the most egregious examples of cheating in a game which prides itself on its ‘gentlemanly’ behaviour.
 
Rightly, it took down not solely Bancroft, but also the Australian captain, Steve Smith, and the vice-captain, David Warner. All three were suspended, sent home, and banned from the game. The coach, Darren Lehmann, also resigned from his post.
 
Throughout the world of cricket, the shock and anger was palpable. And it was no consolation for English fans that the culprits were Australian. It was an assault on the game itself and we were all affected.
 
We now know that, at the same time, the other great summer game, baseball, was also under threat.
 
The Astros were stealing signs, using a video camera in centre field. They did so during their World Series-winning 2017 and again in 2018.
 
And the man who was ‘an active participant in the scheme’ was the Astro’ bench coach.
 
Alex Cora.
 
Alex, who won his successive World Series ring with us in 2018, is no longer in charge at the Red Sox, who acted quickly and definitively when the MLB report was published.
 
The Sox did not wait for the verdict of the parallel investigation into the steal-signing allegations in during the annus mirabilis of 2018.
 
They fired him. I guess even Alex realised that there was no future for him. Not at Fenway. Probably not in baseball.
 
Why? Why did he do it?
 
Because the pressure for success from owners and fans is so overwhelming? Because the need to win is more important than the game itself? Because the distinction between success and failure is so small that the tiniest advantage is worth the risk?
 
Barry Bonds was the greatest player of his generation before he embarked on his steroids. Lance Armstrong would have been a Tour de France winner without blood transfusions. Steve Smith is one of the greatest players cricket has seen.
 
The Red Sox would probably have won the World Series without steal-signing. So would the Astros the year before.
 
The outrage we feel is moral outrage. The individuals  involved have been named and shamed, the Series championships won by the Astros and the Sox will be accompanied by an asterisk.
 
But the loss is the game itself. And on its behalf, I am not just disappointed. I am angry.

Today from the everysmith vaults: Chris Forsyth from The Colony in Woodstock at the turn of the year. A great performance and a great, warm recording. 
 

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Those of you who went to sleep at all on the night of Thursday 12th of December awoke to the news that the country had an unassailable Conservative majority and that even those Tories with whom one could actually have a conversation were no longer in the party or Parliament. All liberal-minded Conservatives had been purged. In the face of this, Labour appeared helpless. Its attempts to bring the country together with a balanced policy was seen as obfuscation. Defeat was inevitable; the scale of that defeat was not. But as Corbyn announced his intention to step down, Labour HQ emails talked of a ‘state of numbness’ and called for a ‘period of reflection’.
 
It occurred to me, as I sat in my very particular state of physical and emotional numbness, drinking red wine on the Friday lunchtime, that thirty years before I had been lying in a coma in the Midland Centre for Neurosurgery and Neurology, midway between two brain operations. In the course of my period of reflection, I considered two things. The first was whether I would prefer to be still in a comatose state, and thus unaware of the unravelling of British democracy; and secondly, the fact that one of the most sophisticated centres of neurology in Europe is now a housing estate. It was the only specialist facility of its kind outside London, but it fell foul of the Conservative Government’s cost-cutting policies in 1996.
 
The NHS and MCNN (specifically Professor Edward Hitchcock) saved my life in 1989 and 1990, and my post-election musings moved on to consider how, despite the rhetoric, the Tories have always looked to undermine the NHS. Austerity in name was the boast of the Tory/LibDem coalition. But austerity has always been the agenda hidden behind the rhetoric.
 
The carefully structured attack on the NHS – starve it, criticise it, privatise it – was our priority at the last election. Our instincts were sound and they were supported by reams of paperwork concerning the trade talks with the US, articles by senior cabinet ministers, and the facts.
 
But it wasn’t enough to overcome the fatuous and simplistic ‘Get Brexit Done’, a slogan straight out of the Steve Bannon/Donald Trump playbook. You may think, as I do, that when a policy is supported unequivocally by Trump, Putin and Johnson, there is clearly something amiss. A great deal amiss, in fact – and I don’t refer to the great deal allegedly negotiated by Boris Johnson against the odds.
 
Here in Leamington, there was no room for argument. We had as our sitting MP the estimable Matt Western. He is a local candidate, independent-minded, intelligent, personable and trusted across the political divides.
 
Yet he managed a majority of less than a thousand, pushed close by a rich-boy Thatcherite Tory from Windsor who bought a house in Warwick and claimed to be local on the basis of his new home and the fact that he went to university locally.
 
I do not need a period of reflection to know for whom I will vote next time. But if the centrists in the Labour Party are to be believed, many will vote for or against the new leader of the Labour Party. ABC, they say – anyone but Corbyn.
 
I am not a Corbynista nor a Corbynite. But I admire his principles and his  policies even as I am exasperated by his stubbornness and refusal to play the game. A different word here, a an emphasis there, and the likes of Kuenssberg, Peston and the JLM would have no factual grounds for their hysterical headlines, no opportunity for wilful misunderstanding. But that’s Corbyn for you. His strengths are his weaknesses when they are being presented by the daily Mail, Express, Sun, Telegraph, Times and yes, even the Guardian.
 
As Alexei Sale points out, the real difference between Johnson and Corbyn is this: “The only people who like Johnson are those that don’t know him. And, conversely, the only people who like Corbyn are those that know him”.
 
Trouble is, in these days of right wing populism, it’s all about reaching out personally, giving the journalists what they want and avoiding serious questioning. This is why, if the ageing, nativist, nationalist, out-of-touch Tory membership got anything right, it was voting in Johnson as leader.
 
They now have five years to regret that decision, but the cost to the country could be immeasurable.
 
For me, the next five years will be five years of struggle against the privatisation of the NHS, the erosion of our human rights, climate change, racism and the return to free market economics.
 
There is more, a hell of a lot more, but this will do for a start.

Happy New Year!

Today from the everysmith vaults: Bob has graced us with his presence only once this year, but his fall tour in the States has been remarkable. Currently listening to the residency at the Beacon Theatre in New York. The stunning new arrangement of Not Dark Yet is only one of the many highlights.

When Matt Western, our local MP, his face full of gravitas (not a trace of a smirk), approached the Speaker on Saturday afternoon, he made one of his most telling announcements of his parliamentary career. “The ayes to the right: 322” he declared. “The noes to the left: 306.”
 
He did not, as he might justifiably have done, then raise an index finger in the direction of the prime minister. But I, virtually and triumphantly, did.
 
Not because the passing of the Letwin amendment throws the Brexit nonsense into yet more confusion – although it does.
 
Not because it is yet another defeat for a prime minister who is uniquely unqualified for (and should be disqualified from) his office – although it is.
 
And not because I am enjoying this saga of shenanigans, this cycle of crassness, any more than anyone else – although, perversely, I am.
 
It is because this decision is too important to be decided by lies and ego. It is too important to be rushed through without due diligence.(Even the most academic of our MPs cannot be expected to read and digest thousands of words of gnomic prose in such a short time.)
 
And it is because, underpinning the whole Brexit debate, is the hard-/alt- right agenda which will see us denying workers’ rights, diminishing and deregulating our economy, opening ourselves to a Trump take-over of our NHS and other institutions.
 
Except, paradoxically, in Northern Ireland, which will continue to be subject to EU Law, including the European Court of Justice.
 
Lucky them.
 
I have no idea what will happen in the coming hours, days, weeks and months.
 
The Withdrawal Agreement Bill was released at 8pm last night. I didn’t read it. With a World Series about to start, I need to take every opportunity for sleep when I can. But nor can parliament be expected to take the most important decision for generations at such short notice.
 
And nor can parliament be expected to make the decision alone. At the very least, a confirmatory referendum is required.
 
Bizarrely, Labour is now the only party to commit to this.
 
It has taken months to arrive at this position, but it is the correct one. I applaud Matt Western, who was one of the first Labour members to come out in favour when so many of us were sceptical.
 
But that’s why we voted for him: for his judgement. And why, when the General Election is called, we will do so again.
 
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: I am told that an obscure Dead forum contained the following exchange over the weekend. Someone commented how nice it was to walk into a restaurant and hear Wake Of The Flood playing. To which someone else replied “was that Max’s in Leamington?” It wasn’t. But I am playing it in the office now if anyone wants to call by.

“He’s got a way with words and I do too” said Bob Dylan, referring to the poet, lyricist and his occasional collaborator Robert Hunter. “We both write a different type of song than what passes today for songwriting.” And Hunter felt the same about Bob.  “He’s the only guy I work with who I give the liberty to change things. After all, he is who he is.”
 
It has taken me some little time to get my (dead)head round the death of Robert Hunter, at the age of 78. Many Deadheads paid minimal or no attention to the lyrics of even the greatest songs in the canon. But I did. And the Dead did.
 
When the Dead was inducted into the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame, Hunter – who had never performed on-stage with them – was there, as a fully-fledged member of the band. And if there was occasionally a divergence in the visions of Hunter and Garcia – “For Christ’s sake, we’re a dance band. You might at least write something with a beat!” Garcia told him after perusing another bunch of lyrics – it is Hunter’s work, in for example Ripple, Dark Star, Saint Stephen, Terrapin which define the Dead, the latter being imho, a masterful version of Cavafy’s Ithaca.
 
When Jerry died in 1995, Hunter wrote what encyclopaedist Michael Gray called ‘a super-competent’ elegy:
 
Without your melody and taste
to lend an attitude of grace
a lyric is an orphan thing,
a hive with neither honey’s taste
nor power to truly sting.
 
But there is a case to be made for the true elegy being his collaboration with Bob on Together Through Life.
 
It’s a meditation on mortality and immortality, on the end of America. Beyond here lies nothing; life is hard; it’s all good.
 
How much is Bob’s and how much is Hunter’s? I don’t know, not for sure. But I do know that a stanza such as this must surely come individually and collectively from the relationship that both Bob and Hunter had with Jerry:
 
Ever since the day
The day you went away
I felt that emptiness so wide
I don't know what's wrong or right
I just know I need strength to fight
Strength to fight that world outside
 
Yeh, I know. They are not the best lines either of them wrote. But the sincerity and simplicity and authenticity is enough.
 
Both are clever wordsmiths. Both are masters of their craft. Both write a different kind of song.

But sometimes you don’t have to be a smart-arse for the sake of it.

Today from the everysmith vaults: Terrapin Station from March 1990.

​A week in politics is a long time. A year in baseball can be an eternity. 84 wins and 19 games back of the Evil Empire might be ok in Baltimore, but in Boston it’s pretty much a catastrophe. This time last year, the Sox were about to cruise to our fourth World Series championship in 15 years. This year, everyone’s gone home. And I fear that the off-season will be as disappointing as the regular season.
 
The word is that John Henry started planning (or at least considering) the departure of Dombrowski even as the duck boats were parading through central Boston. Maybe he knew that Dombrowski was intending to do nothing at all during the winter. Just as he had done last winter.
 
Sure, Eovaldi and Pearce got new thank-you contracts before they went on the DL. And you can’t blame DD for the dreadful seasons from aces Sale and Price. But you can blame him for going into the season without a closer (Kimbrel) or a set-up man (Kelly).
 
You can blame him for not reading the runes when we went 3-9 for the first 12 games.
 
And you can blame him for Cashner, the one move he did make at the trade deadline.
 
You had one job …
 
Equally, he can take no credit for the season’s highlight, the break-outs of Rafael Devers and Xander Bogaerts, the latter being my vote for MVP. I predicted that from 3000 miles away.
 
But it won’t be Dombrowski putting together the squad that will bear our hopes in 2019. And it won’t be Theo, either.
 
There are noises coming out of Fenway which suggest that the entire role may be restructured, which implies that we may have someone out of left field. I don’t know.
 
I do know that it must be someone capable of working closely with Alex Cora.
 
I like Cora. I like his cockiness. I like that the players like him. I didn’t like his approach to the 2019 season, especially the regime (or lack of regime) in spring training. And did he really play Benintendi at lead-off? Jeez.
 
It’s going to be a long, hard winter and I’m scared. Scared of losing Mookie and JD. Scared of the implications of ownership’s instruction to stay under the luxury tax threshold. Scared of another season like this last, when we could never really engage with our team, when only Rafi and Xander excited us.
 
But come March 26, in Toronto, all this will change and I’ll be predicting the play-offs with a chance at the series.
 
Why? Because that’s what I always do. Go Sox!
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: 38 years ago yesterday, I schlepped to The Rainbow in North London to see the Dead play a great show. I’m listening now to an SBD (thanks to So Many Roads) and it’s a laid-back West Coast kind of show, with the band on top form. Just as I remember it.
 
P.S. I have been remiss in attending to these posts recently. I apologise. ‘Events, dear boy. Events.’

It’s not dark yet … but it’s getting there. I’m a week into my eighth decade and on borrowed time. I’m not thinking (much) about the inevitable physical and mental decline which kicks in about now and some would say already has. I’m more concerned about the state of my nations, here in the UK and over in New England, the home of the Red Sox Nation.

I will be devoting a column to the fall from grace of the 2018 World Series Champions shortly when I’ve got my head round the sacking of Dombrowski and its timing as well as the underperformance of the team from the start to the probable finish of the season. But right now, with Parliament prorogued, the government in chaos, and the country divided, there can be no doubt about the theme for the week.
 
It is, of course, what Donald Tusk has called “a dog’s brexit”.
 
One of the tangential issues of the ‘debate’ has been the diminishing of language. I am conscious that I have been guilty of this as emotion and anger takes over from reason. But I use this word advisedly: it is a coup: a sudden, illegal, takeover of government.
 
As such, it must be fought by all means.
 
Parliament has made a start. A no deal brexit is illegal. The Court of Sessions has found that prorogation is also unlawful and it is to be hoped that the Supreme Court will, on Tuesday, find similarly. It is worth noting that the English court did not make a ruling about the legality or otherwise of the suspension; like Pilate, it washed its hands of the issue, stating that this was a ‘political’ matter that is the preserve of the ‘politicians’.
 
That is not a judgement. It is not even an error of judgement.
 
It is an avoidance of judgement. It is an evasion of judgement. It is a shirking of judgement.
 
So much for the rule of law.
 
In law, the referendum was advisory. It was not mandatory. The country cannot be held to a promise made by David Cameron a few days before he resigned and retired to his shepherd’s hut to write a book I shall never read but suspect will be exculpatory in the extreme. (And there is a great deal to exculpate, which probably explains the rumoured volume - sheer bulk - of the volume.)
 
In law, the prorogation is unlawful because of its motives and its duration.
 
In law, no-one is exempt from the law. Not even a prime minister.
 
I’m entering this eighth decade with a profound sense of foreboding. But I shall be consoled by the generosity of my family: my Dylan weekend chez Grey and Beattie, our night in the New Forest, my birthday lunch and my life in a cake.
 
Thank you. This decade is on loan from you.
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: As the talk turned to Dylan covers – covers of Bob and Bob covers of others – Ms Beattie introduced us to a version of Absolutely Sweet Marie by Jason & The Scorchers. I have played it at least once a day every day since my return to the UK and suspect I will continue to do so throughout the next decade.
 
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