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thecreaturecodex · 2 years

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Phytoi

Image © @chimeride

[The Alexandrian Romances are a genre of medieval fiction we’ve seen before on the Codex, with the skolex and the odontotyrannus. A staple of the genre is Alexander’s army encountering one or more of the “monstrous races”, the various humanoids said to live outside the boundaries of civilization. Some of these, like the blemmyae and the sciapods, are found in Pliny, but others, like the phytoi, are unique to specific versions of the Romances (and the ones that later plagiarized them). ]

Phytoi CR 9 CN Monstrous Humanoid This enormous humanoid giant is taller than a building. It has long, thin horns and long craggy feet, and serrated blades grow along its arms from wrist to elbow.

The phytoi are enormous giant-like humanoids that dwell in forested hills. They are renowned for their skill at woodcraft, using their immense bladed arms to cut down trees and process lumber. They tend to dwell in small villages in rough terrain, surrounded by a palisade for extra defense. Phytoi are omnivorous with a taste for nuts and fruit, and their villages are surrounded by food forests that provide their staples and attract game.

A phytoi is not necessarily hostile to all comers, but they expect others to respect their boundaries and leave their territory alone. Phytoi are very large and intimidating, and usually try to stop fights before they occur with their size and threats. If combat ensues, they prefer to use their natural weapons rather than manufactured ones, although they will hurl trees as missiles if enemies keep their distance. They are sure-footed, and attempt to flee over cliffs or crags in order to slow pursuers.

A phytoi stands about 35 feet tall. Male phytoi have horns growing from their crown, but these are delicate and more useful for display and ritual sparring than for lethal violence.

Phytoi CR 9 XP 6,400 CN Gargantuan monstrous humanoid Init +1; Senses darkvision 120 ft., low-light vision, Perception +14 Defense AC 22, touch 7, flat-footed 21 (-4 size, +1 Dex, +15 natural) hp 114 (12d10+48) Fort +10, Ref +9, Will +11 DR 3/- Offense Speed 40 ft. Melee 2 armblades +17 (3d6+8) Space 20 ft.; Reach 20 ft. Special Attacks deadfall burst, trample (3d6+12, DC 24) Statistics Str 26, Dex 13, Con 19, Int 11, Wis 16, Cha 12 Base Atk +12; CMB +24 (+26 sunder); CMD 35 (37 vs. sunder) Feats Dazzling Display, Great Fortitude, Improved Sunder, Intimidating Prowess, Power Attack, Weapon Focus (armblade) Skills Acrobatics +12 (+16 jumping), Climb +23, Craft (carpentry) +11, Intimidate +21, Perception +14, Survival +14; Racial Modifiers +4 Acrobatics, +4 Climb Languages Common, Giant SQ sure-footed Ecology Environment temperate hills Organization solitary, pair, party (3-8) or clan (4-40) Treasure standard Special Abilities Armblades (Ex) The armblade of a phytoi is a primary natural weapon that deals slashing damage. Attacks made with an armblade ignore the first 5 points of hardness of a wooden creature or object. Deadfall Burst (Ex) As a standard action, a phytoi can throw a log or tree 100 feet. It bursts in a 5 foot radius, dealing 2d8+8 points of bludgeoning and piercing damage to all creatures in the area (Reflex DC 24 halves). The save DC is Strength based. Sure Footed (Ex) A phytoi gains a +4 racial bonus on Acrobatics and Climb checks, and is not considered flat-footed while balancing or climbing.

#phytoi #Alexander the Great #pathfinder 1e #world tour #medieval romance #chimeride

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thewatsonbeekeepers · 3 years

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I realise that what’s been going on in Ireland is trending at the moment with the police murder of George Nkencho, and though I normally use tumblr as a ‘destress’ I think it’s really important to explain the situation in Ireland to everyone. Cn: racial violence and murder, paedophilia mention For context, I’m white Irish, but I hope this post can be useful to us/uk centric tumblr.

The African Advocacy Network Ireland called George Nkencho’s killing by police an execution (x) and as an Irish person, it’s difficult to see otherwise. Irish police (gardaí) are almost all unarmed. We call them the garda síochána - literally, the guardians of the peace. I can’t remember the last time I heard of the gardaí killing anyone. When I go abroad to the UK or the rest of Western Europe, I am always incredibly freaked out by the armed police everywhere - and that’s not even as bad as America. So in Ireland, having the armed section of the police go after a mentally ill black man is really not normal. It is already suggesting an act of violence that our police normally are not allowed to commit.

It’s worth noting that whilst our police are not armed, they are still as complicit in state violence as in any other country - ACAB still applies in Ireland on a huge level. Police are complicit in deporting immigrants, in the mistreatment of those arrested, in the mistreatment of sex workers etc., and that should not be ignored. Our police also have a horrendous track record on corruption - our previous government nearly fell because a whistleblower on corruption in the police force was reported by the police as a paedophile and had his life destroyed. (x) The gardaí have a horrendous track record of closing ranks when an accusation is levelled and of doing anything they can to protect their own, and unfortunately Ireland is so small that institutions historically are capable of carrying out huge, cosy corruption. The gardaí are absolutely at the centre of this and this needs to be drawn attention to.

Ireland is more than 92% white, and only 1.3% black. (x) I don’t know a single non-white person in this country who does not feel constantly aware of their difference and constantly excluded. Again, being a small country does not help with this - the smallness of the country exacerbates how difficult it is to exist as a person of colour in Irish society, because everywhere you go there is a very homogenous, white, Catholic, Irish culture. I don’t want to say more on this because I don’t personally have experience of being black in Ireland, but I hope this contributes to your understanding of how clearly racially motivated Nkencho’s shooting was. The coincidence of the armed police (of which there are very few) going after a black man (who are statistically a huge minority) is really too much for me to buy given how endemic racism is in our country.

I also want fellow Irish people, if you’re reading this, to put pressure on the press. The Irish Times, one of the country’s main news sources, is very clearly coming out in favour of the gardaí here, and it’s not unfeasible to see the country’s elites (the same who fucked us over earlier this year in golfgate x) work with the government to smooth this over. Our government and their allies are a boy’s club, as golfgate proved. If you’re Irish and you’re able to, please go and protest - I can’t because I’m immunocompromised, but I will be writing to the government and to the Irish Times etc. - those of you who are not Irish, protesting embassies (safely) and writing to the press and to Irish government officials would be hugely helpful - please pretend to be Irish when you do this, otherwise they will ignore you. Please do not use template emails when writing to the government as our government filters them out!

Petition: https://www.change.org/p/department-of-justice-justice-for-the-unlawful-killing-of-george-nkencho-justiceforgeorge?recruited_by_id=95429be0-4b41-11eb-a239-2bc7a8cae2dd [please don’t donate to change.org!]

These are Irish organisations that really need your donations! I haven’t explained the other horrific racist apparatuses of the state because this isn’t the post for it, but Ireland has been condemned by the UN for the way it breaches human rights of asylum seekers, so these are all vital (x).

Irish Refugee Council, who support people seeking protection in Ireland

Doras, an independent NGO working to protect the rights of migrants in Ireland

Immigrant Council of Ireland, an independent law centre working to provide assistance to people from a migrant background and protect their rights

Migrants and Ethnic-minorities for Reproductive Justice (MERJ Ireland), an organisation of migrant women of colour actively campaigning for reproductive justice and for all and contributing to feminist discourse in Ireland

Movement of Asylum Seekers in Ireland, a platform for asylum seekers to seek justice, freedom and dignity for all asylum seeker

Email the Minister for Justice, Helen McEntee, here: [email protected]

Thank you for reading - I realise this is a long post. Please do dm me if you want any more info/resources - always happy to help.

#long post #blm #black lives matter #george nkencho #rest in power #say his name #cn racism #cn racial violence #cn paedophilia mention #acab #ireland #racism

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workingclasshistory · 3 years

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On this day, 30 September 1919, the Elaine massacre, one of the worst incidents of racial violence in US history, began in Arkansas (cn: racial violence). Around 100 Black workers, mostly sharecroppers employed by white plantation owners, attended a meeting of the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America at a church to try to organise for better pay. The union placed armed guards outside the church to protect it from attack. The exact cause of the incident is disputed, but a shootout broke out which left a white sheriff's deputy injured and a white railroad security officer dead. In the aftermath, up to 1000 armed white racists descended on the town and began murdering Black people, while US troops locked up hundreds of African Americans in makeshift stockades, torturing many. They remained locked up until they could be questioned by their white employers, who could then get them released. Authorities completely denied the massacre took place, and instead charged 122 African Americans with various crimes, 12 of whom were swiftly convicted and sentenced to death by electric chair. This sentence was later reduced on appeal, but 77 Black people ended up serving often lengthy prison sentences. The exact number of victims is unknown, but estimates of African Americans killed ranges from 100 up to several hundred. None of the white perpetrators of the massacre were charged with any crime, despite some admitting to participating in torture. Pictured are some of those sentenced to prison https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.1819457841572691/1820167988168343/?type=3

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pghlesbian · 3 years

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CN: transgender, homicide, racial justice, Rest in power, Pooh. Your life was filled with beauty, spice, and style as well as friends who loved you dearly. You deserved better — we did not take care of you or keep you safe. Resisting the bigotry and violence that took your life is our life’s work. May your memory be a revolution. Titanizer Mua #TitanizerMua #BlackLivesMatter #Transgender #SayHerName #RIP #BlackWomen #BIPOC #QTPOC #woc #trans #transwoman #Shreveport #Louisiana #BLM #PoohJohnson https://www.instagram.com/p/CTUttKar992/?utm_medium=tumblr

#titanizermua #blacklivesmatter #transgender #sayhername #rip #blackwomen #bipoc #qtpoc #woc #trans #transwoman #shreveport #louisiana #blm #poohjohnson

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yetanotherlesbianonthiswebsite · 2 years

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Please feel free to not answer this as it deals with a very heavy subject matter, the 60s Scoop.

Do you think the Chantry would do/have done something similar to the Scoop towards the Dalish and other non-Andrastian countries/peoples? We know the Chantry is not above doing the equivalent of the Crusades and other despicable acts that have real-life parallels to medieval Christianity, so I feel this wouldn't be too far-fetched.

I don't see how my opinion on this question holds any meaning, since I am white, but alas.

CN genocide for the following text

Before I can even attempt an answer, I want to make two things clear: The term "Sixties Scoop" describes a structural mechanism of genocide. Despite its name, it is still ongoing.

As for the definition of genocide, I want to point to the Rome Statute:

Article 6 Genocide

For the purpose of this Statute, "genocide" means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

[...] (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

I will not get into the details of how the abduction of children from indigenous communities was and is justified in the state of Canada, but there has been an openly communicated intent of cultural destruction and a targeted assimilation of indigenous children into white families under the use of state violence.

As for the name "Sixties Scoop", it was developed by the very institutions that implemented it; institutions by the federal and provincial governments that were the perpetrators of that violence. There is an overarching trend in the entirety of Canadian political rhetorics that frames colonial violence and genocide as a thing of the past, and that very term falls into that rhetorical framework. It's never just the sixties. The genocide in which mass abduction is a core mechanism is ongoing since indigenous groups first encountered white settlers. And the specifics of government agencies implementing legalistic adoption programs have their roots in the fifties and are very much unchanged. Nowadays, these institutions hide behind justifications of "cooperation with indigenous leadership", but we see in unceded Secwepemc lands at the very moment that the government's answer to indigenous leaders not approving of their actions is tanks and machine guns.

So, as for your question, do I think that the chantry is capable of something akin to an ongoing, current, real genocide?

I might ask what the chantry exactly is, in return. The chantry is a fictional organization modelled after the catholic church written by some white centrist authors living on indigenous lands. Under that lens, the answer could be yes and no. Dragon Age is full of references to and fictionalizations of actual genocides. So yes, I wouldn't put it past the writers to reference the Sixties Scoop in another act of horrible appropriation of suffering not their own sometime in the future. On the other hand, David "you shouldn't cheer on missionaries dying someone have pity with those poor catholics" Gaider has proven consistent in his excuses for the violence of the catholic church and thinks the state of Canada holds legitimate sovereignty over the lands it occupies. He would never acknowledge the extent of violence that hides behind that unassuming term "Sixties Scoop", the Vatican's involvement, and the fact that the government of Canada runs on blood. So if you are looking for an author-focused answer, there's reasonable arguments in both directions there.

Do I believe that, ignoring authorial positions, the chantry would enact mechanisms of genocide of a similiar structure in-universe? I mean, the entire system of circles is build on the forced mass abductions of children from their families, their placement in an unfamiliar and hateful other group, with the intent of destruction towards a specific and well-defined group of people. The southern chantry as an institution truly came to be in the invasion and colonization of the Dales, it is agent and complicit supporter in several in-universe genocides. So yes, I believe the chantry capable of and interessted in such mechanisms of violence. And we ultimately see that such violence would be highly effective on the personal scale if we consider Sera's character; how growing up adopted by a human woman shattered her relationship to her people, community, culture, belief systems, and feelings of self-value.

However and ultimately, my answer to your question doesn't mean anything. I have never experienced the violence you ask about, and my answer therefore is a matter of speculation and conjecture. The question of "could this real violence see fictional representation in this fantasy world" should never be answered without those who suffer under that violence. That is the original sin of Dragon Age, if you will; the belief of a handful of white people that they could write about racism and translate it into a fantasy setting. Ironically, the good side of Dragon Age, the reason why I remain in this fandom, also emerges from that place: because many who have experience with that violence have reclaimed this botched allegory and grown things of beauty on this tainted soil. It is black artists creating black OCs and telling stories that focus on them, it is indigenous artists talking about reconnection and community via this fictional world, it is Islamic and Jewish creators expressing faith and culture with Dragon Age as a medium. If you truly seek an answer to your question that holds meaning, ask my partner, or perhaps wait and see if they comment on this post.

#cn genocide #ask

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cyberkevvideo · 4 years

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Monster Conversion - Trogg (Warcraft RPG to PF1e)

Last month, I released a conversion of a couple of Pathfinder 2e monsters converted to 1e. At the time I did it for the Throne of Night adventure path that sadly did not get completed, but lots of people are still running it despite that setback. Recently, I came across another adventure that could be fun to play as a side game for the AP, but I quickly learned that one of the monsters exclusive to it the scenario is not anywhere online. Instead of explaining to people how I’d change it, I thought it would be just as easy to convert it myself and show rather than tell.

By the by, the adventure is called “Unearthing Bael Moden” and it can be found in the Warcraft RPG Horde Player’s Guide on page 235. It was originally written for four level 2 PCs.

The trogg is a humanoid creature from the the Sword & Sorcery release of the Warcraft RPG. Rather than explain in detail what exactly these creatures are, I’ll just link their RPG write up instead. Way easier.

For those not looking to read all of that text, the TL;DR version would be “the first life form created by titans and are a grotesque parody of a dwarf, considered very distant cousins. Their flesh is living stone, and they have a capacity for great violence.”

What I found interesting is that there were two official stat blocks for the creature, including their own system rules. Unfortunately, Pathfinder 1e has to ignore some of those, so I combined the two stat blocks and converted it over as best as the monster creation rules would allow, while keeping the abilities as close to the original as possible. Note that Warcraft has the language Low-Common, which I switched to Undercommon.

Art is from the Warcraft RPG book.

Without further ado, the trogg’s stat block.

TROGG (CR 1; 400 XP) CE or CN Medium humanoid (earth, trogg) Init +1; Senses darkvision 120 ft.; Perception +3 DEFENSE AC 15, touch 11, flat-footed 14 (+1 Dex, +4 natural) hp 15 (2d8+6) Fort +6, Ref +1, Will +1; +2 vs. poison Defensive Abilities defensive training (+4 dodge AC vs. giants), ferocity OFFENSE Speed 30 ft. Melee club +4 (1d6+4) or slam +4 (1d4+3) Special Attacks hatred (+1 atk vs. dwarves and giants), rage of the earth STATISTICS Str 16, Dex 13, Con 17, Int 8, Wis 12, Cha 7 Base Atk +1; CMB +4; CMD 15 Feats Alertness, EnduranceB Skills Intimidate +3, Perception +3, Sense Motive +3, Stealth +5; Racial Modifiers +4 Intimidate Languages Dwarven, Undercommon SQ stonecunning, weapon familiarity (greatclub) Gear club SPECIAL ABILITIES Armor Trained (Ex) A trogg is proficient with hide armor, leather armor, and light or heavy shields. A trogg can move at their normal speed while wearing hide armor. Rage of the Earth (Ex) This ability is similar to the barbarian’s rage ability, except that it lasts a number of rounds equal to 5 + the trogg’s (newly improved) Constitution modifier. This ability stacks with barbarian levels when determining the total number of rounds a trogg can rage per day. Stalker (Ex) Perception and Stealth are always class skills for troggs.

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I don’t have a Patreon, but I do have a Ko-Fi page (linked) for anyone who’d like to support me monetarily. There’s no pressure or obligation to do so.

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youarenotthewalrus · 6 years

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Thoughts on that that “enforced monogamy” article (cn: NY Times paywall):

Mr. Peterson’s home is a carefully curated house of horror. He has filled it with a sprawl of art that covers the walls from floor to ceiling. Most of it is communist propaganda from the Soviet Union (execution scenes, soldiers looking noble) — a constant reminder, he says, of atrocities and oppression. He wants to feel their imprisonment, though he lives here on a quiet residential street in Toronto and is quite free.

“Marxism is resurgent,” Mr. Peterson says, looking ashen and stricken.

I say it seems unnecessarily stressful to live like this. He tells me life is stressful.

This is hilarious.

So he was radicalized, he says, because the “radical left” wants to eliminate hierarchies, which he says are the natural order of the world.

That seems like kind of a jump from “some of my patients had bad experiences with people going overboard on political correctness.” I’ve seen plenty of people burned out and disillusioned with tumblr sj, for example, and they’re still pretty strongly committed to things like racial and gender equality.

The left, he believes, refuses to admit that men might be in charge because they are better at it. “The people who hold that our culture is an oppressive patriarchy, they don’t want to admit that the current hierarchy might be predicated on competence,” he said.

Are there really people who think this guy isn’t a misogynist?

Mr. Peterson illustrates his arguments with copious references to ancient myths — bringing up stories of witches, biblical allegories and ancient traditions. I ask why these old stories should guide us today.

“It makes sense that a witch lives in a swamp. Yeah,” he says. “Why?”

It’s a hard one.

“Right. That’s right. You don’t know. It’s because those things hang together at a very deep level. Right. Yeah. And it makes sense that an old king lives in a desiccated tower.”

But witches don’t exist, and they don’t live in swamps, I say.

“Yeah, they do. They do exist. They just don’t exist the way you think they exist. They certainly exist. You may say well dragons don’t exist. It’s, like, yes they do — the category predator and the category dragon are the same category. It absolutely exists. It’s a superordinate category. It exists absolutely more than anything else. In fact, it really exists. What exists is not obvious. You say, ‘Well, there’s no such thing as witches.’ Yeah, I know what you mean, but that isn’t what you think when you go see a movie about them. You can’t help but fall into these categories. There’s no escape from them.”

Archetypes are objectively real and therefore we should live according to the Bible??? I hope he’s clearer in his lectures because when your ideas are this weird and dubious it is very important to make sure you’re being understood.

Violent attacks are what happens when men do not have partners, Mr. Peterson says, and society needs to work to make sure those men are married.

“He was angry at God because women were rejecting him,” Mr. Peterson says of the Toronto killer. “The cure for that is enforced monogamy. That’s actually why monogamy emerges.”

Mr. Peterson does not pause when he says this. Enforced monogamy is, to him, simply a rational solution. Otherwise women will all only go for the most high-status men, he explains, and that couldn’t make either gender happy in the end.

“Half the men fail,” he says, meaning that they don’t procreate. “And no one cares about the men who fail.”

The situation he is describing is that of a stereotypical polygamous society, where a bunch of rich dudes have lots of wives and consequently a bunch of poor dudes don’t have any, with the attendant social problems. Why he thinks this applies to Canada or anywhere else in the Western world, where monogamy is pretty well enforced outside of select subcultures and women often do not rely on the husband for financial support, is beyond my understanding.

I laugh, because it is absurd.

“You’re laughing about them,” he says, giving me a disappointed look. “That’s because you’re female.”

Perhaps a reporter of the more competent sex would have understood that we wouldn’t have mass shootings if the Chads didn’t steal all the gfs?

But aside from interventions that would redistribute sex, Mr. Peterson is staunchly against what he calls “equality of outcomes,” or efforts to equalize society. He usually calls them pathological or evil.

He agrees that this is inconsistent. But preventing hordes of single men from violence, he believes, is necessary for the stability of society. Enforced monogamy helps neutralize that.

I really don’t think he understands he doesn’t live in a polygamous country. I am very interested as to where he got the impression that he does.

In situations where there is too much mate choice, “a small percentage of the guys have hyper-access to women, and so they don’t form relationships with women,” he said. “And the women hate that.”

There is a lot wrong here. The idea that men want nothing from women except for sex, that women want nothing from men except long-term relationships, that there is a single, unified hierarchy of romantic/sexuality desirability... I really don’t understand how anyone can take this guy seriously.

(And then the rest of the article is about his fans, who either hate feminism or hate gay people or just enjoy the mixture of self-help and prejudice flattering.)

#uncharitable i know but his gender analysis is sexist nonsense and i'm not really inclined to take him seriously #walrus grumbles

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daniellehumanbean-blog · 7 years

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US did not fight nazism in WW2; why it matters

cn white supremacist image, discussion of racist policies

Hello all. Recently a number of humans have argued, in response to the violence carried out by US nazi groups in Charlottesville, Virginia, that the actions of these groups are contrary to certain parts of US history. I think there is a lot of truth to these arguments, and that certainly there are elements of human values in US and broader western history even in times where there was slavery, segregation and genocide. However there were definitely limits to the scope of these values and, crucially, how they informed policy.

One particularly topical argument that humans have made in light of current events is that during the Second World War, the US fought nazism. Different activists have made these comments publicly on places like Democracy Now.[1] Officials like US Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin have said that “it is a dishonor to [US] veterans to allow the Nazis and the white supremacists to go unchallenged.”[2] These arguments have also found expression through various internet memes.[3][4][5]

Brad Pitt. “Inglorious Basterds.” Dir. Quentin Tarantino. 2009. Universal/Weinstein.[30]

The trouble with the idea that the US fought against Nazism, and on behalf of Jews and others persecuted by the German government, is that it it doesn’t correspond to the US diplomatic and policy record during the Second World War. There is emphatic evidence here that the goal of the US government entering the Second World War was not to destroy nazism.

First of all, the US and its allies’ international legal pretext for entering the war had nothing to do with Nazism— it was more to do with containment of German military power. Britain and France were simply honoring a military alliance with Poland, which was defending itself from a German aggression, when they declared war on Germany in 1939.[6] And the US similarly only joined them in 1941 in self-defense, when Japan and then Germany declared war upon them. Following the war, at the Nuremburg military tribunals, these countries made clear that the fundamental offense of Germany during the war was military aggression— not nazism—which they considered "the supreme international crime".[7]

Looking at the years immediately prior to the war, the US enjoyed normal relations with fascist countries such as Germany, and Italy. President Roosevelt wrote glowingly of Italian leader Mussolini, for instance, claiming that he was “much interested and deeply impressed by what he has accomplished and by his evidenced honest purpose of restoring Italy and seeking to prevent general European trouble.”[8] The US embassy in Germany regarded Hitler as a “moderate” who “appeal[ed] to all civilized people” and who could control the radical elements in the Nazi party.[9][10] A 1937 US State Department memorandum on Germany found the country’s fascism compatible with US values of liberalism and free trade, and expressed the belief that fascism was necessary to preserve private property and the existing social order. The report held that fascism in Germany “must succeed, or the masses, this time reinforced by the disillusioned middle classes, will again turn to the Left.”[11] Even as the US approached the war, as late as 1941, US officials distanced themselves from critiques of Italian fascism, insisting that that their sole issue with the country was its record of military aggression.[12]

US policy during the war also presents a strident rebuke to the idea that the US was committed to any sort of anti-fascist program. The US interned hundreds of thousands of Japanese-Americans during the war, for example, actions which the US later acknowledged were informed by “racial prejudice, wartime hysteria, and a failure of political leadership.”[13] There were deadly white supremacist riots throughout 1943 in US cities like Detroit, where the conduct of a mostly-white police force was described by the mayor as “magnificent,”[14] after it killed 17 black people.[15] Racial segregation was integral to US social programs like the Federal Housing Administration, which followed guidelines stipulating that “incompatible racial groups should not be permitted to live in the same communities.” [16][17]

“Detroit, Michigan. Riot at the Sojourner Truth homes, a new U.Sn federal housing project, caused by white neighbors' attempt to prevent Negro tenants from moving in. Sign with American flag "We want white tenants in our white community," directly opposite the housing project.” Arthur Siegel. February 1942. [18]

Other US policies had their admirers in countries like Germany, which felt that the US was “the one state” moving toward a more healthy racial order.[19] . The 1924 US Immigration Act, for instance, was lauded by Hitler himself, who noted especially how US immigration restrictions appeared to be “motivated by the theories of [the US’] own racial researchers” and how they had made “an immigrants ability to set foot on American soil dependent on specific racial requirements on the one hand as well as a certain level of physical health of the individual himself [on the other].”[20] A memorandum on US anti-miscegenation laws, presented by the German minister of Justice to a 1934 meeting of leading German lawyers, where the Nuremburg Laws were being drawn up, was discussed in detail.[21] US sterilization law, including the infamous 1927 US Supreme Court decision in Buck v. Bell, upholding compulsory sterilization, was praised in German scientific journals.[22] Some intellectuals in Germany even found these laws too radical, criticizing the punitive and arbitrary implementation of sterilization measures in some US states.[23]

If we scrutinize the ideas that informed these policies, I think we find that, while US officials were more diplomatic than their German counterparts, they were fundamentally in agreement in their worldview. At the 1938 Évian Conference, for example— ostensibly organised by the US to facilitate resettlement of German refugees— the US and other liberal democracies obliquely cited “serious unemployment” and concerns that existing “racial and religious problems” would be “made more acute” as grounds for refusing to accept additional refugees.[24] In a meeting with French military officials in 1943, president Roosevelt was more blunt, describing the “complaints which the Germans bore towards the Jews in Germany” as “understandable,” recommending that France restrict Jewish access to professions in order to prevent similar questions from arising.[25][26]

Marshall, Thurgood. “The Gestapo in Detroit.” The Crisis. August 1943. P. 232. Print. Cited in Sitkoff. “Toward Freedom Land.” University Press of Kentucky. 2010. P. 55. Print. [15]

I am sympathetic to those who look for elements of opposition to fascism in US history. However I believe those in the US who are serious about mitigating the legacy of racial injustice in their country cannot afford to understate the influence of these ideas historically on the architecture of US policy. Notions of the US government intentionally fighting nazi ideology in the Second World War are misguided and almost certainly harmful insofar as they obscure the history of deliberately racist action by the US government. Indeed in some cases, these policies are still effective or are considered exemplary. US Attorney General Jeff Sessions, for instance, has praised the 1924 US Immigration Act[27]. A US Federal appeals court compared the current president’s Muslim ban to a 1944 US Supreme Court decision which held the internment of Japanese-Americans to be constitutional[28]. The New Deal policy of denying financial services to people in certain areas based on their race continues to be widely practiced[29]. Concerted action is needed to reverse this agenda. Positions on concrete policies like these and their antecedents ought to be the standard for those advancing a meaningful alternative program of racial justice, rather than an appeal to a tradition of anti-fascism, which does not exist in the first place.

---

Notes:

[1] “Ta-Nehisi Coates on Charlottesville, Trump, the Confederacy, Reparations & More.” DemocracyNow.org. Radio broadcast. 26:34-27:28. Web. Accessed 22 August 2017. https://www.democracynow.org/2017/8/15/full_interview_ta_nehisi_coates_on

[2] Lamothe, Dan. “Veterans Affairs secretary says he’s ‘outraged’ by what he’s seen from Nazis and white supremacists.” The Washington Post. 18 August 2017. Web. Accessed 22 August 2017. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2017/08/16/veterans-affairs-secretary-says-hes-outraged-by-what-hes-seen-from-nazis-and-white-supremacists/?utm_term=.2b3421ba4558

[3] Woke Giant. 12 August 2017. Facebook status. Accessed 22 August 2017. https://www.facebook.com/wokegiant/posts/335308583572711

[4] The Other 98%. 3 August 2017. Facebook status. Accessed 22 August 2017. https://www.facebook.com/TheOther98/videos/1953444047999897/

[5] Thor Melsted. 15 August 2017. Facebook status. Accessed 22 August 2017. https://www.facebook.com/thormelsted/posts/10155574011736308

[6] “Speech by the Prime Minister in the House of Commons.” 3 September 1939. The British War Bluebook. Doc. 120. Web. Accessed 22 August 2017. http://avalon.law.yale.edu/wwii/blbk120.asp

[7] Nuremberg Trial Proceedings. Vol. 22. P. 426. Web. Accessed 22 August 2017. http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/09-30-46.asp

[8] Diggins. Mussolini and Fascism: The View from America. Princeton: University Press. 1972. P. 279. Print. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt13x16kq

[9] US State Department. 12 January 1932. “Ambassador in Germany (Sackett) to the Chief of the Division of Western European Affairs (Boal).” Foreign Relations of the United States Diplomatic Papers. 1932. Volume II. Document 192. Washington: US Government Printing Office. 1948. MSS. Accessed 19 August 2018. Web.https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1932v02/d192

[10] US State Department. 23 March 1933. “The Counselor of Embassy in Germany (Gordon) to the Secretary of State.” Foreign Relations of the United States Diplomatic Papers. 1933. Volume 2. Document 216. Washington: US Government Printing Office. 1949. MSS. Accessed 19 August 2018. Web. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1933v02/d216. Quoted in Schmitz. Thank God They’re On Our Side. Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 1999. p. 91. Print.

[11]US State Department. 16 February 1937. “Memorandum for the Honorable Norman H Davis: A Contribution to a Peace Settlement.” Box 24. Davis Papers. US Library of Congress. MSS. quoted in Schmitz. Thank God They’re On Our Side. Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 1999, pp 91-2. Print.

[12] Diggins. p. 278.

[13] US Congress. “Civil Liberties Act of 1988.” 10 August 1988. Print. Accessed 21 August 2017. Web. https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/STATUTE-102/pdf/STATUTE-102-Pg903.pdf

[14] Babson. Working Detroit: The Making of a Union Town. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. 1986. P. 119. Print. Quoted in Wikipedia. "Detroit Race Riot of 1943." Accessed 19 August 2017. Web.

[15] Marshall, Thurgood. “The Gestapo in Detroit.” The Crisis. August 1943. P. 232. Print. Accessed 22 August 2017. https://books.google.com/books?id=NFsEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA232&lpg=PA232&dq=gestapo+in+detroit+crisis+thurgood+marshall&source=bl&ots=wt8BjtujWr&sig=Y2Bvh4OGl0F7V6PGU08KaHZOmhI&hl=sv&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjPnKPQsOvVAhVM1oMKHYnOCdEQ6AEIPzAG#v=onepage&q=gestapo%20in%20detroit%20crisis%20thurgood%20marshall&f=false. Cited in Sitkoff. “Toward Freedom Land.” University Press of Kentucky. 2010. P. 55. Print. Accessed 19 August 2017. Web. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt2jcgvk.7

[16] Interview with Richard Rothstein. National Public Radio. 3 May 2017. Web. Accessed 22 August 2017. http://www.npr.org/2017/05/03/526655831/a-forgotten-history-of-how-the-u-s-government-segregated-america

[17] “1934–1968: FHA Mortgage Insurance Requirements Utilize Redlining.” bostonfairhousing.org. Web. Accessed 22 August 2017. http://www.bostonfairhousing.org/timeline/1934-1968-FHA-Redlining.html

[18] Siegel, Arthur. “Detroit, Michigan. Riot at the Sojourner Truth homes, a new U.Sn federal housing project, caused by white neighbors' attempt to prevent Negro tenants from moving in. Sign with American flag "We want white tenants in our white community," directly opposite the housing project.” February 1942. Black and white film negative. Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Photograph Collection. US Library of Congress. Accessed 21 August 2017. Web. http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/fsa.8d13572/

[19] Hitler. “Mein Kampf.” Quoted in Whitman. “When the Nazis wrote the Nuremberg laws, they looked to racist American statutes.” Los Angeles Times. 22 February 2017. Web. Accessed 22 August 2017. http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-whitman-hitler-american-race-laws-20170222-story.html

[20] Ed. Weinberg, Gerhard. “Hitler’s Second Book: The Unpublished Sequel to Mein Kampf.” Trans. Krista Smith. New York: Enigma. 2006. P 109. Print.

[21] Whitman, James. Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law. Princeton University Press. 2017. P. 1-2. Print.

[22] Kuhl, Stefan. The Nazi Connection : Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism. New York: Oxford University Press. 1994. P. 38. Print. [] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_v._Bell

[23] Ibid. P. 38

[24] “Decisions Taken at the Evian Conference on Jewish Refugees, July 1938.” Proceedings of the Intergovernmental Committee. Evian. July 6th to 15th. 1938. Record of the Plenary Meetings of the Committee. Resolutions and Reports. London. July 1938. Reproduced at learning-from-history.de. Web. Accessed 22 August 2017. http://learning-from-history.de/Online-Lernen/content/13337

[25] Parker. “The Second World War: A Short History.” Pp. 265-6.

[26] US State Department. 17 January 1943. Foreign Relations of the United States Diplomatic Records. The Conferences at Washington 1941-1942, and Casablanca, 1943. Document 349. Washington: US Government Printing Office. 1958. Accessed 21 August 2017. Web. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1941-43/d349

[27] Serwer, Adam. “Jeff Sessions’ Unqualified Praise for a 1924 Immigration Law.” The Atlantic. 10 January 2017. Web. Accessed 22 August 2017. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/01/jeff-sessions-1924-immigration/512591/

[28] Millhiser, Ian. “Judge compares Trump’s Muslim ban to one of the worst chapters in American history.” ThinkProgress.org. 15 May 2017. Web. Accessed 22 August 2017. https://thinkprogress.org/trump-korematsu-385265d02357/

[29] Badger, Emily. “Redlining: Still a Thing.” Washington Post. 28 May 2015. Web. Accessed 22 August 2017. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/05/28/evidence-that-banks-still-deny-black-borrowers-just-as-they-did-50-years-ago/?utm_term=.a0fd1cb2dcc1

[30] Brad Pitt. “Inglorious Basterds.” Dir. Quentin Tarantino. 2009. Universal/Weinstein.

#second world war #fascism #nazism #international law #racial justice #us history #eugenics #segregation #police brutality #foreign policy

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granvarones · 7 years

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CN: mentions of anti-Blackness, holding non-black people of color accountable, performative activism, colonialism, mentions of death, police brutality etc. PEASE READ if you can!

Ok but seriously though, with everything that’s been going on in the past week (and forever, really), ie #PhilandoCastile's murderer being acquitted, and new developments of police killing #CharleenaLyles, the murder of Nabra Hassanen, and of course things that happen every day that will never make headlines. What are we as non-Black POC doing to dismantle anti-Blackness in our communities, families, etc. (especially us light skin folks)?

Like way beyond posting shit on social media to ease your conscience. I'm talking about chopping up all these big academic words about racial injustice with your tíxs, primxs, comrades, etc. I'm talking about explaining to folks WHY what they said/did was wrong. I mean stop excusing anti-Blackness as just glorified "messiness" I mean holding our community members accountable when they slip up, even if it's "just that one time". VIOLENCE IS VIOLENCE! Period. Full stop. I get feeling uncomfortable or feeling afraid of getting into an argument with someone you care for, but I'm SURE a bit of discomfort over dinner is a lot less worse than the violence Black folks face just for breathing and existing. Being uncomfy means you have stuff to unlearn!

Edit to add: before you say "But I'm not anti-Black" note that our very existence as non-Black people is INHERENTLY anti-Black. And at the end of the day, we don't get to decide what is or isn't anti-Black.

Our communities are rife with this shit. But we need to own up to our shit. Because the fact is we attended the colonizers' tea party, and we drank from their cups. And something most of have been afraid to admit is that WE LIKED IT. We liked being able to assimilate, to have a group more marginalized than us to feed our egos. We can be/have been JUST as anti-Black as white folks. We feel just as much entitlement to appropriate Black culture as white folks. (Hell non-Black Latinx have stolen a SHIT TON from Black cultures. ie. music, style/fashion, language/"slang" and much more. And let me tell you, almost all of us have that one family member who's still scratch their heads trying to wrap their head around the fact that Black folks can speak Spanish. (Hello Black Latinx erasure) *eyeroll* or who claims "pero yo soy blanca!!")

We need to start speaking the hell up! And doing our part, and make it crystal fucking clear that anti-Blackness has NO place in our communities and movements. And that it won't be tolerated. We need to be en la calle doing what we can! Like jfc stop being so silent. I'm not saying you have to know everything either... just like... damn put in the work! Quit with the performative activism. Stop with doing the bare minimum just to tell yourself that you're doing enough and feed your ego. This is LITERALLY life and death, people!

- Nik Angel Moreno

Nik Angel Moreno is a 24-year-old, disabled, queer, Chicano writer, poet, and crochet artist hailing from south Texas, but currently transplanted in northeast Pennsylvania.

His writing has been featured in Wear Your Voice Magazine, The Body is Not an Apology, and Latina Magazine. His poetry has been featured in Hooligan Magazine as well as his Chap Book titled Liberación (2016). He has also independently published zines such as This Not That: A Guide to Eliminating Ableist Language, and Why Disabled People Are Magic.

He mostly enjoys educating readers about Ableism, White Supremacy, and other institutional power structures through his writing and zines. He is actively involved in advocating for people with disabilities and involved in the discussion surrounding disability rights. He also is passionate in writing about rape culture, trauma, and survivor-ship of abuse and trauma. He is an activist and advocate for victims of rape, sexual assault, abuse, and trauma, and he is very dedicated to the healing and recovery of trauma survivors.

Nik continues to write and educate, resist, and express himself through his poetry, zines, as well as articles.

#thegranvarones #granvarones #anti blackness #latinx #gay #queer #latino #gender non binary #familia #pride month #orgullo #justice for philando #philando castile #charleenalyles #nabra hassanen #blacklivesmatter

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thecreaturecodex · 2 years

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Quaggoth

[The quaggoth is a perfectly fine monster, and has been around in D&D for ages. The first appearance I know of is in the 1e Fiend Folio, but I’m not sure if they appeared earlier in a White Dwarf column like so many of that book’s monsters did. Two things make the quaggoths in 5e stand out to me. One is that it got rid of the little round ears, which made them look more like feral Ewoks than anything. The second is giving them an origin story, having been pushed underground by elves. This implies that surface quaggoths were hairy, forest dwelling humanoids, so it was easy for me to make the ancestral quaggoth a sasquatch, and tie them into my ever-growing collection of Bigfoot and Bigfoot-adjacent monsters.]

Quaggoth CR 4 CN Humanoid This stooped and bestial humanoid has clawed hands, white fur and small, pointed ears.

The quaggoths are bestial omnivorous humanoids native to the Darklands. They are descended from a group of sasquatches that were displaced from their forests and driven underground by elven colonists. As they descended further into the depths, they grew pale and lean, eventually turning to cannibalism in order to find enough to eat. Much of their society has collapsed, replaced by that of those that would exploit them—drow and duergar in particular. Drow stoke the hatred that quaggoth feel for surface elves, inciting them to violence or keeping them as slaves.

Most quaggoths prefer to fight with their talons, but some use stone weaponry. They are fearless in battle, whipping themselves into frenzy and seemingly getting stronger the more badly injured they are. Quaggoths will eat almost anything organic, and are immune to toxins and venoms of all kinds. Their battle strategies are usually disorganized and competitive unless spurred on by one of their thonots.

Quaggoth Thonot Thonots are the lore-keepers of the quaggoths, imbued with occult power through exposure to strange Darklands energy. Many thonots seek to restore quaggoth glory, but they ride a delicate balance; a thonot who fails his tribe too often is killed and eaten in an attempt to absorb his power. A thonot is a quaggoth with the advanced simple template that can use the following psychic magic (10 PE); augury (2 PE), cure moderate wounds (2 PE), feather fall (1 PE), heat metal (2 PE, DC 13), mage hand (0 PE), mirror image (3 PE) A thonot is a CR 5 creature.

Quaggoth CR 4 XP 1,200 CN Medium humanoid (sasquatch) Init +5; Senses darkvision 120 ft., Perception +7, scent Defense AC 14, touch 11, flat-footed 13 (+1 Dex, +3 natural) hp 45 (6d8+18) Fort +5, Ref +6, Will +5 Immune poison Offense Speed 30 ft., climb 20 ft. Melee 2 claws +7 (1d6+3) or heavy mace +7 (1d8+3), claw +2 (1d6+1) Special Attacks wounded fury Statistics Str 17, Dex 12, Con 16, Int 7, Wis 12, Cha 9 Base Atk +4; CMB +7; CMD 18 Feats Athletic, Improved Initiative, Iron Will Skills Climb +17, Perception +7, Stealth +7 (+11 underground), Swim +6; Racial Modifiers +4 Perception, +4 Stealth (+8 underground) Languages Undercommon Ecology Environment underground Organization solitary, pair, troop (3-8) or tribe (9-24 plus 1-4 thonots) Treasure incidental Special Abilities Wounded Fury (Ex) When a quaggoth is reduced to 10 hit points or fewer, it gains a +2 racial bonus on attack and damage rolls until healed.

#quaggoth #sasquatch #pathfinder 1e #D&D #D&D 5e

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kendraserra · 5 years

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Difficult Speech in Feminist Communities

(This essay was originally published in 2017, as part of the Berkman Klein Center’s Perspectives on Harmful Speech Online collection. In the interest of making it more broadly sharable, I’m now posting it here.)

Many feminist communities online have developed sets of practices to accommodate, moderate and regulate speech. As we consider the implications of hateful speech on our online communities, it is vital that we also reflect upon how communities deliberatively deal with wanted yet complicated topics, and whether these practices can provide models for dealing with formulating and regulating speech according to community-developed norms. This essay discusses one such set of models – a set of interventions against what I call “difficult speech.”

Difficult speech is speech that is wanted yet may also cause discomfort or harm in a community with a shared set of norms. For example, a trans person in a community aimed at trans folks might want to discuss their body as part of seeking advice on dysphoria (a psychological condition of distress stemming from one’s body not matching one’s gender). However, for other trans folks, a person’s recounting of their feelings about their body may not be something that they cannot read without having suicidal thoughts. The issue is further complicated by the fact that what may cause difficulty for a person on their bad day might be perfectly fine a few days later. This variability, both across people and time, creates unique moderation needs. In writing this piece, I reviewed a small number (~5) of feminist sites, including both blogs with moderated comments sections and forums/private community spaces, to see how they deal with difficult speech. Content warnings and multiple channels with redirection are two options for handling this moderation that were common to multiple surveyed spaces.

Using Content Warnings to Offset the Impact of Difficult Speech

Perhaps the most obvious method of dealing with difficult speech is “content warnings” or “trigger warnings.” Content warnings are literal statements of the content of following text or images – for example, if a text contained the first-person narrative of sexual assault, a content warning might say “sexual assault.” (Generally, the term “content warning” is considered broader than “trigger warning” and thus I will use it.)

Content warnings are not unique to feminist communities, but are often more common in feminist spaces than elsewhere. Warnings can be used in a variety of circumstances, for content containing anything from depictions of rape to manifestations of white supremacy. In some communities, warnings are deployed along with tags that make the difficult material not readable unless moused over (“spoiler tags”). If material is not obscured, a content warning can be paired with a note about how long the warning will be in effect for (“CN: police violence, next 4 paragraphs”).

Communities often engage in discursive practices around what kinds of content requires a warning – allowing autonomy and discussion over shared values. Commonly chosen content warnings among some feminist communities surveyed include “sexual assault”, “transphobia”, “racism”, “war on agency” (reproductive rights), and “Nazis.” As demonstrated by this list, the potential options are broad, and often depend on the needs and characteristics of the members of the community.

Using Multiple Channels to Respond to Difficult Speech

Some communities use a combination between multiple channels and conversation redirection to handle difficult speech. For example, there might be two channels for a particular issue: #bodyissues and #bodyissues-unfiltered. When someone wants to talk about something that others might find difficult, either as explicitly mentioned in guidelines or just understood as a sensitive topic, they might post in #bodyissues with a content warning and a pointer – “I want to talk about a dysmorphia thing in unfiltered, if you’re up for listening meet me there.” Users who are able to support can view #bodyissues-unfiltered to read and comment. Other users who might not be worried about potential triggers can view the unfiltered channel as part of their daily community interactions.

Finally, a user who is finding a conversation taking place in the #bodyissues tag difficult can ask other users to move to #bodyissues-unfiltered. This allows for more situational reactivity than a more traditional content warning system.

Platforms, Affordances and Regulation

One notable characteristic of the aforementioned interventions that deal with difficult speech is that they rely on platforms having particular affordances, and making these affordances accessible to moderators – the power to ban members, to create multiple channels, and to block out speech (for example, with spoiler tags). Thus, difficult speech interventions may not be possible in communities that work on platforms without these. For example, a community on Facebook, couldn’t use spoiler tags, as they are unsupported by the platform.

Additionally, difficult speech interventions can be undermined by more traditional moderation actions by platforms. For example, imagine a racial slur is used in the context of explaining a recent experience and asking for reassurance. If an appropriate content warning is used, the harmful effects on members of the targeted community may be mitigated. Nevertheless, the post containing the slur might trigger a “shadowban” or “time out” from the platform due to the language – resulting in fewer people seeing the post at all, the exact opposite of what the user may need.

As I write this essay, Mastodon, an alternative social network, has been rapidly gaining popularity. Mastodon supports content warnings, and users from different Mastodon servers have been engaged in robust debate over what content deserves warnings, from politics to porn. Whether Mastodon ends up going the way of forgotten social networks like Diaspora or Ello or becomes widely adopted, it is notable that content warnings are now more integrated directly into platforms.

Since much regulation of speech is bound up in legal frameworks and debates over banned terms, community adaptations to difficult speech, like those taking place on feminist platforms or on Mastodon, suggest a new way forward for dealing with harmful speech online.

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