Commissar Order

Russian Political Commissar, at Soviet-German military parade in Brest-Litovsk, 1939, credit Wikipedia

Commissar Order,
by Bill Hartley

Commissars can be traced back to the Commissaire politique of the Revolutionary Army during the French Revolution. Armies are something of a blunt instrument, a necessary arm of the state but in some countries notoriously unreliable. Having people in the ranks to keep them onside has been considered necessary by various political groups. For example, they were introduced into the Red Army by Leon Trotsky, who was tasked with ensuring that the party could rely on the loyalty of the military.

Commissars served alongside commanding officers exerting ideological control over and being closely involved in command decisions, with the power of veto. Even the Nazi’s were not above taking a leaf from the Soviet book. In the latter stages of the Second World War, when doubts arose about the loyalty of elements of the Wehrmacht, they appointed National Socialist leadership officers.

An article in American Thinker in March of this  year wondered what the difference is between a Soviet political commissar and a diversity officer. The article described the diversity officer as being tasked with enforcing ‘leftist policies in corporations, universities and government agencies’. Although definitions vary somewhat, diversity claims to eradicate prejudice and discrimination.

The Americans had the advantage of an early start in this field. The UK isn’t that far behind though, and for this we have the unintended consequences of the Equalities Act (2010). A piece of legislation which ought to be within the remit of a corporate Human Resources department to manage has become the building block for an exciting new field of employment. Some organisations and businesses seem to have convinced themselves that the only way to avoid criticism or worse is to get with the programme and employ diversity equality and inclusion officers to ensure ideological conformity. Of course, when it’s public money the decision is easier and the NHS isn’t short of diversity officers.

Just what does a diversity officer do? There’s no shortage of information for anyone contemplating a career in this field. He or she starts the day by checking social media to find the latest views and trends. Meetings feature prominently in the working day; diversity officers tend to be in close proximity to people who actually do the work, presumably just like any commissar, to ensure ideological conformity.

Prior to getting into this field of ‘work’, preliminary training is considered important. Some diversity practitioners recommend ‘unconscious bias’ training in order to ‘unpick core beliefs’. The job itself is all about ‘promoting positive attitudes’ and ‘reviewing policies’. Diversity people like finding things to do. One example is the diversity and inclusion survey, to discover how employees ‘feel’ by delving into their comments to gain a deeper perspective. There are organisations which can do this for a company. One advertises this as a way to ‘spark change with actionable diversity and inclusion surveys.’ Another is able advise how to ‘overcome barriers and create a safe space’. Rather dubiously it has been claimed by one source that adopting a diverse and inclusive culture resulted in a ‘19% higher innovation revenue than companies with below average diversity’. This rather obscure term is defined as a way of increasing competitiveness or organisational effectiveness, by listening to employees. Quite how it was measured isn’t stated.

Interestingly one critic from an ethnic minority commented that when it comes to diversity you can never say anything bad about it. He noted that the vocabulary is constantly changing and suggested that this leads to a culture where people are too afraid to say anything. Inclusively has its limits though. Although religion is a protected characteristic under the Act, it is often avoided, since practising Christians may have socially conservative views. This is something surveys steer clear of.

In the relentless drive for diversity, training videos are available. Some of these are both inept and unintentionally funny. One example involves a white middle-aged male (naturally) ‘helping’ a female select a team leader for a project for which she has oversight. The woman proposes a name and the man immediately dismisses him as being too introverted. The individual referred to works in IT and has an Asian name. Inference: racial stereotyping, even though he does elaborate on his view. In contrast, the woman says nothing. She makes no attempt to explain why this individual might be a good choice. As the conversation continues the man insists on talking over the woman, who adopts an expression of saintly fortitude. Another name arises and the man emphasises his familiarity with this individual by using his nickname. He suggests this man is a good candidate, the sort who can quickly get the project underway and enthuse people. Bad manners apart, he at least makes a good case for the candidate, unlike the woman who simply endures his clumsy attempts to help.

Pursuing a career as a diversity practitioner entails coming up with appropriate answers to interview questions. However, help is at hand. One question someone might be asked at an interview is, ‘what would you do if you overhead someone making an inappropriate remark?’ The correct answer is, publicly confront the person immediately and tell them you do not wish to hear that remark again. An alternative answer might be, ‘I need more diversity training so that I can accept people with opinions that diverge from my own’. It calls to mind an imaginary painting in the Socialist Realism style entitled, ‘Challenging the Inappropriate Comment’, featuring a group of people sitting around a conference table, one pointing accusingly at another.

Curiously all of this training seems designed for the office workplace or for what used to be called white collar employment. Manual work doesn’t seem to feature much in the world of diversity training. Challenging an inappropriate remark among, say, a group of scaffolders, would likely be beyond the capacity of even the most dedicated diversity officer.

If blue collar workers aren’t the best choice for expansion then catching them young seems to be the alternative. One organisation tells parents, ‘your child belongs in our circle’ and ‘we commit them for the next step at school and beyond’. Older children should be ‘involved in conversations about fairness and equality’. There are even ‘anti-bias’ lessons available for pre-schoolers.

Diversity is a big business. The afore-mentioned article in American Thinker reported that the average American university now has more than 45 people devoted to promoting diversity on campus, which is a more generous allocation of commissars than a regiment in the Red Army used to receive. A whole career structure has sprung up supported by training and qualifications. Yet it has its critics who will point out that such training isn’t effective. In ‘Diversity Inc.’ subtitled ‘the failed promise of a billion-dollar business’, Pamela Newkirk points out that in the US, whilst diversity targeting is flourishing, diversity is not. She considers it a feel- good exercise and maintains that such initiatives can ironically make matters worse by triggering resentment. Furthermore, organisations who wish to put in place the symbolic structures of diversity don’t bother to test their efficacy. In other words, the diversity apparatus doesn’t have to work it just has to exist. Newkirk concludes that such training can be counterproductive by making stereotypes more prominent and reinforcing them. For companies it may be little more than a box-ticking exercise, helping people answer survey questions in the way that they ‘should’. Even those tasked with managing these training programmes recognise them as ineffective, although in the public sector it would be unwise to voice criticism. Just as soldiers in the Red Army disdained but feared political commissars, today’s employees view them as useless pen pushers but wisely elect to say nothing.

 William Hartley is a Social Historian

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Six Poems, Concerning An Affair

Woman’s Head, Picasso, credit Wikipedia

Six Poems Concerning An Affair

Near Waterloo Bridge

I’m not sure why I did it.
She’d said something self-deprecating
This young girl; semi-star-struck, smitten;
Who’d taken me to some hippy pub in Lower Marsh.
Theatrical props, psychedelic paintings,
All wrapped-up in Victorian brick.
I put my arm around her
And kissed her on the top of the head
And in that moment I felt every muscle
In her body relax,
Every anxiety evaporate
Like Jasmine steam from an evening bath.
Fallow-blonde hairs against my chaffed March lips
Seemed to sink down, like a blanket
Onto the safety of a warm bed.
In that dim-lit cellar
Life itself seemed as psychedelic as the paintings,
But as certain as the Empire brick.

 A Nose for History

As they gathered at St Mary the Virgin
That crisp Harvest Festival evening
Just for an hour or so
It was 1662.
The language, the rituals, even the must
Were the same
And like those Civil War re-enactors
With real ale fetishes
And far too many folk music CDs
They were one with their ancestors;
A hundred hands reaching back to the Restoration.

Which brings me to your nose.
In the Old Alresford of 1662
I can hear some burring yeoman
Leaving his acres at dusk
Even he’d see it: “I suppose
“Your knows ‘er nose is your nose!
“That’s why you likes it so!
“It says in Song o’ Songs:
‘Your nose is like the Tower of Lebanon
‘Lookin’ towards Damascus.’
“Even they know’d the allure
Of a nice, sharp nose!”

It’s also his nose. And his wife’s.
And with that nose
Like the re-enactors now imbibing at The Bell Inn
Or the Hampshire worshippers receiving bread and wine
We connect with our ancestors
An unbroken proboscis-al line
Whispering: “Keep it going!
“It’s your duty to us!
“Keep it going, little organism!
“Keep it going!
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Endnotes, October 2023

Paul Nash; Landscape of the Moon’s Last Phase; Walker Art Gallery; credit Wikipedia

Endnotes, October 2023; in this edition, premiere recordings of British piano concertos from the Lyrita label, reviewed by Stuart Millson

Aside from the thoughtfully-chosen, sometimes recondite musical material, Lyrita enhances the latter with evocative artwork, lengthy and detailed sleeve notes, containing insightful biographies of the conductors and soloists who have created the Lyrita sound. For this new CD of recordings of British piano concertos, the booklet cover is Cumulus Head, a 1944 painting by Paul Nash, evoking an English downland landscape.

Herewith three piano concertos, by composers John Addison, Gordon Jacob, and Edmund Rubra respectively. Addison’s Variations for Piano and Orchestra of 1948 is an at times quirky, at times impassioned score, designed to test any soloist and draw in an inquisitive audience. In short, a superior ‘divertissement’. Addison was best known for his film music, such as his scores for Reach for the Sky (1956) and Alfred Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain. But he was also an accomplished composer of classical music, as his Concertante for Oboe, Clarinet, and Orchestra (1948) attests.

Gordon Jacob’s Piano Concerto (1957) has a similar style to that of Vaughan Williams. The work begins with an emphatic allegro passage. But in contrast to ‘RVW’s Piano Concerto in C, premiered in February 1933 and conducted by Sir Adrian Boult, Jacob’s concerto does not conclude in peace and seclusion. Now a largely forgotten figure, Jacob was a great teacher and a prolific composer. The concerto is informed by distinct elements of nostalgia. Under the baton of Stephen Bell, the National Orchestra of Wales do justice to Jacob’s bold argument and big sound.

Of the three composers featured in this CD, Edmund Rubra, a devout Roman Catholic, is unquestionably the more mystical and introspective. He composed a large cycle of symphonies. Those familiar with Vernon Handley’s recording for Lyrita of Rubra’s Festival Overture will understand why connoisseurs of British music maintain that Rubra’s oeuvre should be given a more prominent place in our concert and Radio 3 schedules. George Vass, a champion of contemporary British repertoire, exercises admirable control over Rubbra’s concerto, notably in the intensely spiritual opening on woodwind, followed by a violin solo. And credit to pianist Simon Callaghan, whose performances at the English Music Festival have made such a profound impression.

CD details; British Piano Concertos, Addison/Jacob/Rubbra. BBC National Orchestra of Wales, conductors Stephen Bell and George Vass. Lyrita SRCD.416

 Stuart Millson is Classical Music Editor of QR

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Advertisement;

Coming this October, a new performing edition of J.S. Bach, the Well Tempered Clavier by Vladimir Feltsman. The release will consist of two books each containing 24 Preludes and Fugues, alongside the release of all 48 separate scores. The scores are unaltered and are the edition published in 1886 by the Bach-Gesellschaft. However performing suggestions have been “added in light grey and are based around Baroque performing traditions, modern practices, and the editor’s experience of studying, performing, recording and teaching” (Vladimir Feltsman).

To accompany the release of the scores there will be a number of videos of each Prelude and Fugue available to help aid in the learning of the music. 41 of these are performance videos, 6 are a mix of videos and scrolling scores and one has just a scrolling score to follow.

Book 1 and 2 will be available to purchase from £19.99 and the individual scores from £2.99

For those interested in a film of Vladimir Feltsman performing J.S. Bach The Well-Clavier, you can find this available on the Nimbus records website for £19.99.

 

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Monteverdi 1610 Vespers

Fra Angelico, The Annunciation, credit Wikipedia

Monteverdi 1610 Vespers, I Fagiolini, plus English Cornett & Sackbut Ensemble, directed/conducted by Robert Hollingworth, Kings Place, Sound Unwrapped, Friday 29th September 2023, reviewed by Leslie Jones

In 1610, Claudio Monteverdi, maestro cappella at the court of Duke Gonzaga in Mantua, felt underpaid and was looking for new employment. At an audience in Rome with Pope Paul V, he presented a manuscript dedicated to the latter, containing a disparate collection of texts, both sacred and profane, including the main elements of what we now call the Vespers of 1610. This MS must constitute the most extensive self-advertisement in music history (see ‘Vespers (1610) – Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643)’, by Barry Creasy, Chairman, Collegium Musicum London).

In his informative programme notes, Robert Hollingworth, the founder and director of I Fagiolini, contends that ‘a big resonant space’ such as St Mark’s Venice, ‘inevitably smudges most of the detail for most of the congregation/audience’. The ‘clear’ acoustics of King’s Place, in contrast, provide, in his judgement, an opportunity to ‘untangle and clarify a little more of Monteverdi’s sumptuous detail…’ But some commentators, including this one, prefer what Hollingworth calls ‘the great wash of sound that is sonically glorious’. It was noticeable that when the performers moved up to the balcony, the sound became immediately richer. As Fatima Dabbah observes, when the Vespers are performed in a stone church as opposed to an ordinary concert hall, the ‘reverberation’ in the latter is ‘indescribable’ (‘All important acoustics, 9 things to know about Monteverdi’s Vespers, wfmt, October 14th, 2022). 

Observing I Fagiolini from close up reveals just how much their singing depends on unspoken communication within the ensemble. On this occasion, they were clearly enjoying themselves (at times, seemingly sharing a private joke) notwithstanding the immense mental and physical demands being made upon them. Indefatigable tenor Nicholas Mulroy evidently played a key role in tying things together.

Music, according to the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, ‘stands alone’ as its effect is ‘more powerful and penetrating…than the other arts’. Metaphysics aside, we concur.

Dr Leslie Jones is Editor of Quarterly Review

 

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Tales of Ancient Kings

 

Caracalla & Geta, Bearfight in the Colosseum, L Alma-Tadema, credit Wikipedia

Tales of Ancient Kings

Historia Augusta trans. by David Magie; revised by David Rohrbacher. 3 vols. Harvard University Press, 2022. $30.00. Vol. I: pp. i-liii, 1-471; Vol. II: pp.1-463; Vol. III: 1-562, reviewed by Darrell Sutton

Wading through the mound of scholarly matter on ancient Latin texts is a daunting task. Numerous opinions need to be considered. Historia Augusta (HA), so-called presently because communis opinio presumes it to be a work authored by only one writer, was handed down to modern readers in manuscripts dating from the Caroline revival to the Renaissance era. For a long time none of the texts were accurately reported. Within the MSS, notations and emendations by various hands are noticeable; but identifying the emendators is harder still. The HA remains crucial to studies of the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD.

From the inception of research on HA, it was thought that the MSS contained the lettering of six writers who composed biographies of various rulers;
I: Aelius Spartianus (Hadrian, Aelius, Didius Iulianus, Septimius Severus, Pescennius Niger, Caracalla, Geta); II: Iulius Capitolinus (Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius, Verus, Pertinax, Clodius Albinus, Opilius Macrinus, Maximini duo, the Gordiani, Maximus et Balbinus; III: Vulcacius Gallicanus (Avidius Cassius); IV: Aelius Lampridius (Commodus, Diadumenus, Heliogabalus, Alexander Severus), V: Trebellius Pollio (Valerianus, Gallienus, Thirty Tyrants, Claudius Gothicus); and VI: Flavius Vopiscus Syracusanus (Aurelianus, Tacitus, Probus, Four Tyrants, Carus, Carinus and Numerian).

The period covered ranges from AD117-284. Each memoir purportedly was written during the reigns of Diocletian and Constantine I. Numerous documents and items of public record and recollection are used to support the profiles. Disagreement abounds. All the sketches do not exhibit the same literary qualities. Therefore debates on HA’s authorship teem with all sorts of claims. Scientific discussion of the texts originate in 1889 with Hermann Dessau’s paper, Über Zeit und Persönlichkeït der Scriptores historiae Augustae (Hermes Vol. 24, No.3). Dessau (1856-1931) was a pupil of Mommsen and an able text critic. His prosopographic research informed his theories regarding the HA. He rejected nearly all of what was commonly believed about it, eschewing popular beliefs of the day.  Continue reading

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Das Rheingold

Gustave Doré, Death on the Pale Horse, credit Wikipedia

Das Rheingold

Music drama in four scenes, music and libretto by Richard Wagner, conducted by Sir Antonio Pappano, directed by Barrie Kosky, Royal Opera, 20th September 2023, reviewed by Leslie Jones

Indicatively, Wagner called Das Rheingold a music drama, as he despised the audience interruptions, primacy of arias and puerile plots of conventional opera. His ambition was to emulate the Ancient Greeks no less, by uniting all art forms into a Gesamtkuntswerk (‘total art work’). Indeed, according to the programme of the forthcoming ‘Congress of the International Verband Richard Wagner’, he single-handedly ended ‘the predominance of the singers and the voice’.

As Cosima Wagner recorded in her Diary, ‘I have composed a Greek chorus’, R exclaims to me in the morning, ‘but a chorus which will be sung, so to speak, by the orchestra’ (quoted by Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough, in ‘The Intermingling of the Human and the Divine’, Official Programme). Acting, however, has invariably been the weakest link in this chain. The cast of Barrie Kosky’s new production of Rheingold struggled to convey emotions and ideas via body language. And as critic Philip Hensher observed, the gods’ polo attire detracted from the work’s mythic elements (Front Row, Radio 4, 14th September).

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Bigamy

Bigamy, film of 1927, credit Wikipedia

Bigamy
by Bill Hartley

This year marks the one hundredth anniversary of the Matrimonial Causes Act, the first Act to establish equal rights in divorce for men and women. In contrast, the first Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857 allowed a man to obtain a divorce by proving adultery. A woman had to prove aggravating circumstances such as cruelty or, significantly, bigamy. For some people the best way to escape a bad marriage was to disappear and start again.

The annual ‘Calendars’ (records of trials) in Liverpool, Chester and North Wales for 1923 show that the authorities prosecuted offences of a varied nature. For example, in January of that year Thomas Moore appeared in court in Liverpool charged with stealing some hen’s eggs and was sentenced to six strokes of the birch. Other cases involved theft of a nose bag (presumably belonging to a horse) and the theft of a dog collar. The Calendars also provide a rich source for trades long extinct, such as loomer and rope splicer. One accused hailing from an inner city address in Liverpool, was described as a ‘cow keeper’. Presumably he was involved in that long vanished enterprise, the urban dairy. Sounding like someone out of a novel by Sax Rohmer, Kok Lunn a ship’s cook with a previous conviction for ‘possession of a prepared opium pipe’, was fined £10 for keeping a house for the purposes of betting. Dang Con an assistant shopkeeper was prosecuted for being the occupier of premises ‘allowing same to be used for opium smoking’. He was fined £5 at the Liverpool Quarter Sessions.

Amongst this catalogue of crimes ranging from the mundane to the peculiar, bigamy occurred quite regularly. Although the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act was and remains the means for prosecuting acts of violence, bigamy was also included and designated as a ‘class one’ offence punishable by up to seven years in prison. Prosecutions for bigamy peaked during the First World War and after that went into a gradual decline. Cases attracted press attention and sometimes moral outrage. An article covering a case of bigamy in a 1910 edition of the Nottingham Evening Post was alarmingly headlined, ‘The Crime That Must Be Stopped’, though no advice was offered as to how this might be achieved.  Despite changes in the law, divorce was still difficult and expensive to obtain with both parties needing to be in agreement. For the poorer classes, it was often easier to simply disappear and make a fresh start elsewhere. Illegal remarriage was a way of regaining respectability. For vicars and registrars it was impossible to check that the information people gave on official documents was correct, because each district kept its own separate register of births, marriages and deaths.

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Endnotes, September 2023

Endnotes, September 2023

Jean Sibelius by Favén (1925), credit Wikimedia Commons

In this edition: Walton in Mediterranean mood; Sibelius in Nordic splendour. Plus, Bach sonatas and a Russian romantic masterpiece. Reviewed by Stuart Millson

On August 3rd, The Quarterly Review was at the Royal Albert Hall for a Proms concert of Walton and Sibelius, given by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra under its Finnish conductor, John Storgards. The works of the maestro’s great countryman, Jean Sibelius, have greatly enriched the Chandos CD catalogue in recent years, with the Storgards/BBC PO cycle of symphonies garnering much critical approval. And a special sound from this partnership has also emerged, transferring to an equally memorable Carl Nielsen cycle: a velvety sound, with prominent, sometimes rugged brass, and superb attention to tiny detail ~ particularly woodwind writing.

The audience could hear ‘in the flesh’ that brilliant recording-studio/broadcast-orchestra sound ~ the Albert Hall stage and acoustic, doubling that intensity. Storgards carefully shaped a ‘spotlight sound’, meaning that each wind instrument, each pluck of a harp-string, gained prominence and attention. About five minutes into the Sibelius Symphony No. 1, after the immense initial symphonic argument and establishment of a theme, a contrasting delicate ‘dance’ appears, involving flutes, woodwind and harp; a fleeting, sparkling moment, before an angry section on timpani breaks the idyll.

A pizzicato passage then takes root, building up with glimpses of strange forest light ~ cellos and basses thrumming, as flute and clarinet phrases tumble and whirl. Critics often remark on the Tchaikovsky-like quality of Sibelius’s two early symphonies ~ big tunes, Russian-sounding romanticism ~ and yet, appearing out of the mists, comes the pure, Nordic Sibelius who would go on to give the world masterpieces such as the Fifth and Sixth symphonies and En Saga.

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Endnotes, August 2023

Gustav Doré, illustration for Idylls of the King, credit Wikipedia

Endnotes, August 2023

In this edition: English music for strings at JAM on the Marsh Festival; songs by Eric McElroy; reviewed by Stuart Millson, the Classical Music Editor of Quarterly Review

Still preserving a sense of rural remoteness, Romney Marsh in Kent is one of the country’s most unusual localities. Once a watery world of creeks and salt marsh, then drained and given over to crops and sheep-grazing, the green low-levels extend as far as Dungeness and Denge Marsh, a unique shingle promontory jutting into the English Channel ~ and designated as our nation’s only official desert. The scene is partly dominated by the atomic power station, which is linked to its sister-facility in the North-West of England, by way of a single-track railway line (spared by Beeching) that threads its way through the hamlets of the Marsh. The tower of Lydd Church provides a contrast to the austere atomic monolith on the Ness; and rising above the landscape just to the east is the equally impressive Church of St. Nicholas, New Romney ~ the venue for a London Mozart Players concert of English (and American) music for strings, held as part of the JAM on the Marsh Festival.

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How the West was Wrung

 

No Country for Old Men, credit Wikipedia

                   How the West was Wrung

Last month, the death was announced of the American writer Cormac McCarthy. Newspaper obituaries described him as a reclusive man who gave few interviews and let his books do the talking. For many years, success eluded him with none of his first five novels selling more than 3000 copies and as a consequence he lived a penurious life. McCarthy finally reached a wider audience when his 2005 novel No Country For Old Men was turned into a multiple Academy Award winning film. The book has been described as a modern Western and the American South West was a location which McCarthy used in other works. Indeed, he travelled extensively in the region whilst undertaking research, eventually settling in El Paso, Texas.

McCarthy remarked that apart from Coca Cola, the only other thing universally known about the United States was ‘Cowboys and Indians’. He added that nobody had taken the genre seriously for 200 years and had decided that he should.

Though a modern Western, No Country contained some archetypal characters such as the drifter, the bounty hunter, the kid, and the sheriff with a weary and reluctant sense of duty; a man gradually being overwhelmed by the savagery of people. Savagery and violence certainly weren’t confined to this book. McCarthy’s first foray into the Western genre was Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West, published in 1985. Although it didn’t attract much attention at the time, the book is now hailed as a masterpiece and for some merits the title of ‘Great American Novel’ but like his earlier works it sold poorly.

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