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Autocracy Quotes

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Autocracy Quotes

“But no one who studies autocratic propaganda believes that fact-checking or even swift reactions are sufficient. By the time the correction is made, the falsehood has already traveled around the world. Our old models never acknowledged the truth that many people desire disinformation. They are attracted by conspiracy theories and will not necessarily seek out reliable news at all.”

LyingLiesPropagandaLiarsConspiracy TheoriesAutocracyDisinformationConspiraciesFalsehoodsAutocracies
Book:Autocracy, Inc.
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“The political scientist Lisa Wedeen has observed that the Syrian regime tells lies so ludicrous that no one could possibly believe them, for example that Syria, at the height of the civil war, was an excellent tourist destination. These "national fictions," she concluded, were not meant to persuade anyone, but rather to demonstrate the power of the people who were spinning the stories. Sometimes the point isn't to make people believe a lie; it's to make people fear the liar.”

LyingFearPowerLiesLiarsSyriaAutocracyUntruthsAutocracies
Book:Autocracy, Inc.
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“In Putin's Russia, Assad's Syria, or Maduro's Venezuela, politicians and television personalities often play a different game. They lie constantly, blatantly, obviously. But when they are exposed, they don't bother to offer counterarguments. When Russian-controlled forces shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine in 2014, the Russian government reacted not only with a denial but with multiple stories, plausible and implausible: they blamed the Ukrainian army, or the CIA, or a nefarious plot in which 298 dead people were placed on a plane in order to fake a crash and discredit Russia. This tactic, the so-called "fire hose of falsehoods," produces not outrage but nihilism. Given so many explanations, how can you know what actually happened? What if you can never know? If can't understand what is going on around you, then you are not going to join a great movement for democracy, or follow a truth-telling leader, or listen when anyone speaks about positive political change. Instead, you will avoid politics altogether. Autocrats have an enormous incentive to spread that hopelessness and cynicism, not only in their own countries, but around the world.”

LyingLiesLiarsCynicismHopelessnessNihilismAutocracyFalsehoodsAutocratsAutocracies
Book:Autocracy, Inc.
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“In a democracy, there will be more complaints but less crisis, in a dictatorship more silence but much more suffering.”

InspirationalWritingCountryPhilosophyWisdomGovernmentMotivationalSufferingQuotesFreedomSilenceKnowledgeDemocracyCivilizationSpeechCapitalismVoteCrisisSlaveryTyrannyMovieStoryRepublicDictatorshipRhetoricComplaintsDominationCreative WritingSlogansAmit KalantriAmit Kalantri QuotesPublic SpeakingProverbsElectionsSocial NetworkingBloggingCharactersAmit Kalantri WriterAdageNovel WritingBook WritingEssayScriptAdvertisementBlogMovie DialogueScript WritingCatchphrasesAlliterationsTag LinesScriptwritingCatch LinesSpeechwritingPunchlineAutocracy
Book:Wealth of Words
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“These selective, occasional murders don't just eliminate difficult opponents; they are also a form of messaging. The Saudi monarchy, the Cuban security services, the Kremlin, and the Chinese police don't have to kill every journalist in order to make all journalists in their countries afraid. Modern dictators have learned that the mass violence of the twentieth century is no longer necessary: targeted violence is often enough to keep ordinary people away from politics altogether, convincing them that it's a contest they can never win.”

PoliticsFearDangerThreatsAutocracyDictatorsMurdersAutocratsAutocraciesAssassinations
Book:Autocracy, Inc.
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“[W]e made the mistake of assuming that there is something inevitable about democracy - you know, that it's a - you don't really have to do anything. If you just sit still, it will come because it's the natural way that human beings are. And, you know, we forgot about, first of all, how turbulent our own democracy has been over 200 years, and we also forgot about the deep appeal of autocracy and the power of extremism. You know, there are people - there is a part of every society that's deeply bothered by rapid change - that dislikes - you know, whether it's the election of Obama or whether it's racial integration or whether it's rapid economic change - you know, that dislikes change, wants it to stop, dislikes political strife, wants it to end and prefers to be within a homogenous movement where everybody's united. It's funny - there's a kind of deep human desire for unity, and this is what autocrats see and intuitively understand and why some of them have been able to hold power.”

ChangeDemocracyExtremismInevitabilityAutocracyRapid Change
Author:Anne Applebaum
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“Liberty and Freedom are complex concepts. They go back to religious ideas of Free Will and are related to the Ruler Mystique implicit in absolute monarchs. Without absolute monarchs patterned after the Old Gods and ruling by the grace of a belief in religious indulgence, Liberty and Freedom would never have gained their present meaning. These ideals owe their very existence to past examples of oppression. And the forces that maintain such ideas will erode unless renewed by dramatic teaching or new oppressions. This is the most basic key to my life.”

ReligionFreedomLibertyPowerScience FictionMythologyTyrannyTheologyIdeologySocial SciencePost ApocalypticAutocracy
Book:Heretics of Dune
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“On February 24, 2022, Russia launched a full-scale war against Ukraine, the first full-scale kinetic battle in the struggle between Autocracy, Inc., and what might loosely be described as the democratic world. Russia plays a special role in the autocratic network, both as the inventor of the modern marriage of kleptocracy and dictatorship and as the country now most aggressively seeking to upend the status quo. The invasion was planned in that spirit. Putin hoped not only to acquire territory, but also to show the world that the old rules of international behavior no longer hold.”

WarDemocracyRussiaDictatorshipUkraineInternational RelationsAutocracyKleptocracy
Book:Autocracy, Inc.
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“এরা কে? তার মানে, অনেক কাল আগেকার মানুষও কি মিছিলে যোগ দিয়েছে? ঐ তো, মিছিলের মাঝখানে ইসলাম খাঁর আমলের খাটো-ধুতি-পরা ঢাকাবাসী! এমনকি তারো আগে চালের বস্তা বোঝাই নৌকা বেয়ে যারা সোনারগাঁও যাতায়াত করতো তারাও এসেছে। বাঙলা বাজার, তাঁতীবাজারের মানুষ লুপ্ত-খালের হিম হৃদপিণ্ড থেকে উঠে এসেছে? ঐ তো ইব্রাহিম খাঁর আমলে শাহজাদা খসরুর সঙ্গে সংঘর্ষে নিহত পাগড়ি-পরা সেপাইরা। শায়েস্তা খাঁর টাকায়-আট-মন-চালের আমলে না-খেয়ে-মরা মানুষ দেখে ওসমান আঁতকে ওঠে। ৩০০ বছর ধরে তাদের খাওয়া নাই- কালো চুলের তরঙ্গ উড়িয়ে তারা এগিয়ে চলে। মোগলের হাতে মার-খাওয়া, মগের হাতে মার-খাওয়া, কোম্পানীর বেনেদের হাতে মার-খাওয়া - সব মানুষ না এলে কি মিছিল এত বড়ো হয়? রেসকোর্সের কালীবাড়ির ইটের শুকনা পড়ত খুলে খাঁড়া হাতে নেমে এসেছে মারাঠা পুরোহিত, মজনু শাহের ফকিররা এসেছে, ঐ তো বুড়ো আঙুল-কাটা মুষ্ঠির ঘাই ছুঁড়তে ছুঁড়তে যাচ্ছে মসলিন তাঁতী, তাদের কালো কালো খালি গা রোদে ঝলসায়। ৪০০০ টাকা দামের জামদানী-বানানো তাঁতীদের না-খাওয়া হাডডিসার উদোম শরীর আজ সোজা হেঁটে চলেছে। সায়েবদের হাতে গুলিবিদ্ধ বাবুবাজার মসজিদের ইমাম মোয়াজ্জিন মুসল্লিরা চলেছে, বিড়বিড় করে আয়াত পড়ার বদলে তারা আজ হুঙ্কার দিচ্ছে, 'বৃথা যেতে দেবো না!' লালমুখো সাহেবদের লেলিয়ে-দেওয়া নবাব আবদুল গনি-রূপলাল মোহিনীমোহনের শ্বাদন্তের কামড়ে-ক্ষতবিক্ষত লালবাগ কেল্লার সেপাইরা আসে, ভিক্টোরিয়া পার্কের পামগাছ থেকে গলায় দড়ি ছিঁড়ে নেমে আসে মীরাটের সেপাই, বেরিলির সেপাই, স্বন্দীপ-সিরাজগঞ্জ-গোয়ালন্দের সেপাই। না হে, তাতেও কুলায় না। যুগান্তর অনুশীলনের বেনিয়ান ও ধুতি-পরা মাতৃভক্ত যুবকেরা আসে, তাদের মাঝখানে কলতাবাজারে নিহত ছেলে ২টিকে আলাদা করে চেনা যায়। নারিন্দার পুলের তলা থেকে ধোলাই খালের রক্তাক্ত ঢেউ মাথায় নিয়ে চলে আসে সোমেন চন্দ। ঐ তো বরকত! মাথার খুলি উড়ে গেছে, দেখে একটু ভয় পেলেও ওসমান সামলে ওঠে। এত মানুষ! নতুন পানির উজান স্রোতে ঢাকার অতীত বর্তমান সব উথলে উঠেছে আজ, ঢাকা আজ সকাল-দুপুর-বিকাল-রাত্রি বিস্মৃত, তার পূর্ব-পশ্চিম-উত্তর দক্ষিন নাই, সপ্তদশ-অষ্টাদশ-উনবিংশ-বিংশ শতাব্দীর সকল ভেদচিহ্ন আজ লুপ্ত। সীমাহীন কাল সীমাহীন স্থান অধিকারে জন্য ঢাকা আজ একাগ্রচিত্ত। ওসমানের বুক কাঁপে; এই বিশাল প্রবাহের সঙ্গে সে কতোদূর যেতে পারবে? কতোদূর? গোলক পাল লেনের মুখে কলের নিচে কাঁপতে-থাকা কলসি যেমন পানিতে ভরে স্থির হয়, আমাদের ওসমান গনির বুকটাও দেখতে দেখতে পূর্ণ হলো, এই অবিচ্ছিল স্রোতধারার ক্ষুদ্রতম ১টি কণা হয়েও তো সেই এই হৃৎপিন্ডে তাপ বোধ করতে পারছে। তাই বা কম কিসে? ভরা-বুকে মুষ্টিবধ হাত তুলে সে হুঙ্কার দেয়, 'বৃথা যেতে দেবো না'।”

LifeWarFreedomHistoryDemocracyProcessionReminiscenceAutocracyOpression
Book:চিলেকোঠার সেপাই
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“If people are naturally drawn to the image of human rights, to the language of democracy, to the dream of freedom, then those ideas have to be poisoned. That requires not just surveillance, and not merely a political system that defends against liberal ideas. It also requires an offensive plan, a narrative that damages the idea of democracy, wherever it is being used, anywhere in the world.”

PoliticsFreedomDemocracyHuman RightsSurveillancePolitical SystemsAutocracyAutocrats
Book:Autocracy, Inc.
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“...I believe the citizens of the United States, and the citizens of the democracies of Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America, should begin thinking of themselves as linked to one another and to the people who share their values inside autocracies too. They need one another, now more than ever, because their democracies are not safe. Nobody's democracy is safe. Americans, with our long history of imagining ourselves to be exceptional, would do well to remember that our domestic politics have always been connected to, and influenced by, a larger struggle for freedom and the rule of law around the world.”

FreedomDemocracyRule Of LawInterdependenceAutocracyExceptionalismAmerican ExceptionalismAutocraciesDemocracies
Book:Autocracy, Inc.
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“You do not have to think very hard to figure out what happens to a democratic society (more accurately a democratic republic) when long-standing interpretations of the 'rules of law' are mangled to reflect the personal desires of a handful of extremely wealthy people…”

FreedomDemocracyOligarchyUs ConstitutionAutocracyDogeRules Of LawDystopian AmericaFederal Workers Mass FiringTrump Administrationstration
Book:Democratic Dilemmas and Divine Inspiration: On leadership and the fate of freedom in America
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“Sonnet 1984 Government IDs are just ankle monitors, issued to tag citizens like dogs, or I should say, apes. There can be governments without constitution, but there is no government without surveillance. When you elect a so-called representative, you're officially signing your life to them. Don't be naive enough to think otherwise, and then yell about human rights violation. Violation of citizen rights is right of the government, it's the unspoken rule of the handbook of democracy. Once in a blue moon you may get a benevolent government, but 9 times out of 10 you'll end up under an autocracy. A freethinking citizen is contradiction in terms, no good to the grand design of democratic dictatorship. Democracy in books is, for the people, by the people, democracy on street is rule of the apes in a land of sheep.”

FreedomDemocracyHuman RightsDictatorshipTotalitarianismSurveillanceFreethoughtPolice StateAutocracyThoughtcrime
Book:Azad Earth Army: When The World Cries Blood
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“The rights and liberties represented by democracy, many agreed, were losing ground across the globe to restrictions imposed by authoritarian autocracy… It appeared ignorance had indeed managed to secure an alliance with power (to paraphrase James Baldwin’s famous quote) to become the most ferocious enemy of justice on the contemporary historical landscape.”

DemocracyCivil LibertiesFreedom Of ExpressionAutocracyHuman Rights DayWriting PromptsCultural ArtsNo Kings DayLiterary ActivismNational Arts In Education Week
Book:Songbirds and Roses: The Unusual Life Story of an Unusual Poem
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“A few autocracies still portray themselves to their citizens as model states. The North Koreans, famously, hold vast military parades with elaborate gymnastics displays and huge portraits of their leader, very much in the Stalinist style. But many of the propagandists of Autocracy, Inc., have learned from the mistakes of the twentieth century. They don’t offer their fellow citizens a vision of utopia, and they don’t inspire them to build a better world. Instead, they teach people to be cynical and passive, because there is no better world to build. Their goal is to persuade people to mind their own business, stay out of politics, and never hope for a democratic alternative: Our state may be corrupt, but everyone else is corrupt too. You may not like our leader, but the others are worse. You may not like our society, but at least we are strong and the democratic world is weak, degenerate, divided, dying.”

PropagandaCynicismNorth KoreaPassivityAutocracyAutocratsAutocracies
Book:Autocracy, Inc.
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“In recent years various dictatorships--of both internal and external origin--have collapsed or stumbled when confronted by defiant, mobilized people." Those are the opening words of From Dictatorship to Democracy, an iconic pamphlet composed by Gene Sharp, an American academic. Sharp emerged from the world of pacifism, civil rights, and antiwar activism in the 1950s to become, by the 1990s, an advocate of nonviolent revolution. A student of Gandhi, King, and Thoreau, Sharp believed that dictatorships survive not because of the unusual powers or personalities of dictators but because most people who live under their rule are apathetic or afraid. He believed that if they overcame their apathy and fear, and that if they refused to acquiesce to the dictator's demands, then the dictator would no longer be able to rule.”

DemocracyRevolutionNonviolenceDictatorshipAutocracyDictatorshipsAutocraciesGene Sharp
Book:Autocracy, Inc.
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“Democracies should work, again in coalitions, to promote transparency, to create international standards, to ensure that autocracies don't set the rules and shape the products. We are becoming aware of all these things very late. Around the world, democratic activists, from Moscow to Hong Kong to Caracas, have been warning us that our industries, our economic policies, and our research efforts are enabling the economic and even the military aggression of others, and they are right.”

DemocracyStandardsResearchEconomicsCoalitionsAutocracyActivistsIndustriesAutocraciesDemocracies
Book:Autocracy, Inc.
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“Vladimir Putin pledges no allegiance to to the democratic articles of faith, but he does not explicitly renounce democracy. He disdains Western values while professing to identify with the West. He doesn’t care what the State Department puts in next year’s human rights report, because he has yet to pay a political price in his own country for the sins reported in prior years. He tells bald lies with a straight face, and when guilty of aggression, blames the victim. He has convinced many, apparently including the American president, that he is a master strategist, a man of strength and will. Confined to Russia, these facts would be sobering, but Putin, like Mussolini nine decades ago, is watched carefully in other regions by leaders who are tempted to follow in his footsteps. Some already are.”

DemocracyRussiaAggressionPutinInternational RelationsAuthoritarianismAutocracyVladimir Putin
Book:Fascism: A Warning
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“Russian military is a quintessential reflection of the state that created it. Autocratic, security-obsessed, and teeming with hyper centralized decision making, dysfunctional relations between civilian and military authorities, inefficiency, corruption and brutality. [Professor Zoltan Barany, January 2023]”

RussiaPutinAutocracyPutinismRussia Military
Book:Autocrats vs. Democrats: China, Russia, America, and the New Global Disorder – The Former Ambassador's Bold Vision for Confronting Authoritarian Threats
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“He is against politics in general and longs for the restitution of the monarchy. They have seen nothing but rioting and inflation in the five years since Wilhelm II abdicated. And Ania knows not to mention the Communists. Her father has not recovered from the shock of their brief takeover of Bavaria, which, for a few weeks in 1919, became the Bavarian Soviet Republic. If he begins on the subject, no one will hear of anything else for days. For Doktor Fortzmann all was better under the kaiser.”

GermanyCommunistNaziAuthoritarianismAutocracyThird ReichKaiserMonarchist
Book:The Women in the Castle
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“When the president theanthropize himself in matters leadership and governance and takes the constitution and its guardians secondary to his decisions, the chief Justice should assume the role of the deicide of the alloyed beast. If he shows signs of the faint-hearted, the judiciary firewalls become weak to not withstand the threats posed by the executive thus turning into the executive's de facto corporation. This is how autocracy is midwived!”

LeadershipDemocracyVotingDictatorshipElectionsJudiciaryAutocracyExecutive
Author:Njau Kihia
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“Kleptocracy and autocracy go hand in hand, reinforcing each other but also undermining any other institutions that they touch. The real estate agents who don't ask too many questions in Sussex or Hampshire, the factory owners eager to unload failing businesses in Warren, the bankers in Sioux Falls happy to accept mystery deposits from mystery clients—all of them help undermine the rule of law in their own countries and around the world.”

CorruptionFascismAutocracyKleptocracy
Book:Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World
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“Amantes Assemble Sonnet 99 Rise, revolt and roar out loud, No more pleading in front of prejudice! Breathe, burn and brave out loud, No more bearing in front of malice! Dream, dare and dance out loud, No more dangling as docile doormat! Heave, hold and help out loud, No more retreat in front of cold updraught! Fall, fix and forge out loud, No more settling as the forgotten figures! Grow, glow, and break out loud, No more groveling at the feet of bloodsuckers! Only antidote to oppression is civilian unsubmission. When the children go astray, it’s time for parental intervention.”

Civil RightsBigotryHate CrimeSystemic RacismHuman Rights ActivistHuman Rights ViolationHate SpeechAutocracyHumanitarian PoemSocial Justice Poetry
Book:Amantes Assemble: 100 Sonnets of Servant Sultans
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“As long as the United States remains a democracy, I want to be in the ideological fight against illiberal nationalism and continue to make the case for why a return to internationalism, multilateralism, and support for democracy and human rights worldwide best serves American national interests.”

DemocracyHuman RightsTrumpismAutocracyGlobalismMultilateralism
Book:Autocrats vs. Democrats: China, Russia, America, and the New Global Disorder – The Former Ambassador's Bold Vision for Confronting Authoritarian Threats
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“What options did this frightening country offer its intolerably anxious citizens? They could curl up into total passivity, or they could join a whole that was greater than they were. If any possession could be summarily taken away, no one felt any longer like anything was truly their own. But they could rejoice alongside other citizens that Crimea was 'theirs.' They could fully subscribe to the paranoid worldview in which everyone, led by the United States, was out to weaken and destroy Russia. Paranoia offered a measure of comfort: at least it placed the source of overwhelming anxiety securely outside the person and even the country. It was a great relief to belong, and to entrust authority to someone stronger. The only thing was, belonging itself required vigilance. One had to pay attention: one day Ukraine was where the important war was being fought, the next day it was Syria. In the paranoid worldview, the source of danger was a constantly moving target. One could belong, but one could never feel in control.”

FascismTotalitarianismAuthoritarianismTrumpismAutocracyMafia State
Book:The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia
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“Every time a court pushes back against the looming autocracy, we celebrate. But the looming autocracy often ignores the ruling of the courts. The question, day by day, becomes how well are all the institutions we need, we trust, we rely on still functioning? The answer, day by day, becomes only as well as the looming autocracy feels and hears and responds to the pushback against their destruction.”

LifePerspectiveDestructionInstitutionsProtestAutocracyPushStill Functioning
Author:Shellen Lubin
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“Government and revolution, the Tsar and the Radicals, were both philistines in art. The radical critics fought despotism, but they evolved a despotism of their own. The claims, the promptings, the theories that they tried to enforce were in themselves just as irrelevant to art as was the conventionalism of the administration. What they demanded of an author was a social message and no nonsense, and from their point of view a book was good only insofar as it was of practical use to the welfare of the people. There was a disastrous flaw in their fervor. Sincerely and boldly they advocated freedom and equality but they contradicted their own creed by wishing to subjugate the arts to current politics. If in the opinion of the Tsars authors were to be the servants of the state, in the opinion of the radical critics writers were to be the servants of the masses. The two lines of thought were bound to meet and join forces when at last, in our times, a new kind of regime, the synthesis of a Hegelian triad, combined the idea of the masses with the idea of the state.”

ArtFreedomCommunismDictatorshipLiterary CriticismAutocracyArt Politics
Book:Lectures on Russian Literature
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“In tribal times, there were the medicine men. In the Middle Ages, there were the priests. Today, there are the lawyers. For every age, a group of bright boys, learned in their trades and jealous of their learning, who blend technical competence with plain and fancy hocus-pocus to make themselves masters of their fellow men. For every age, a pseudo-intellectual autocracy, guarding the tricks of the trade from the uninitiated, and running, after its own pattern, the civilization of its day.”

MenRunningAgeTodayBoysGroupsMiddleMastersCivilizationIntellectualFellowsTradeMedicinePatternsLawyerTricksFancyPriestsJealousFellow ManCompetenceMiddle AgesPseudoGuardingAutocracyHocus PocusPseudo Intellectuals
Author:Fred Rodell
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