Welcome! "The Evening Blues" is a casual community diary (published Monday - Friday, 8:00 PM Eastern) where we hang out, share and talk about news, music, photography and other things of interest to the community.
Just about anything goes, but attacks and pie fights are not welcome here. This is a community diary and a friendly, peaceful, supportive place for people to interact.
Everyone who wants to join in peaceful interaction is very welcome here.
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Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music features Chicago West Side blues guitarist Jimmy Dawkins. Enjoy!
Jimmy Dawkins - You Don't Love Me
"Injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured."
-- Martin Luther King Jr.
News and Opinion
From the good news department:
Polk Awards Go To Journalists Entrusted with Snowden NSA Docs
Laura Poitras, Glenn Greenwald, Ewen MacAskill and Barton Gellman receive prestigious award for revealing extent of secret US surveillance programs
The four journalists most responsible for a series of explosive news stories in 2013 based on National Security Agency documents leaked to them by whistleblower Edward Snowden have been awarded this year's George Polk Award, one of the nation's most prestigious and coveted for investigative reporting. ...
According to Long Island University, which created and bestows the award, the four journalist earned the prize by conferring with Edward Snowden to negotiate the release of the sensitive documents and for using "their extensive backgrounds covering national security to explore the purloined files" and for revealing their "stunning import on the Guardian US website, describing how the NSA gathered information on untold millions of unsuspecting — and unsuspected — Americans, plugged into the communications links of major Internet companies and coerced companies like Yahoo and Google into turning over data about their customers."
John Darnton, curator of the awards, said: “In the tradition of George Polk, many of the journalists we have recognized did more than report news. They heightened public awareness with perceptive detection and dogged pursuit of stories that otherwise would not have seen the light of day. Repercussions of the NSA stories in particular will be with us for years to come.”
‘Why Have You Gone to Russia Three Times in Two Months?’—Heathrow Customs Agent Interrogates Jesselyn Radack
A lawyer [Jesselyn Radack] who represents National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden and has spoken on his behalf numerous times was detained while going through customs at Heathrow airport in London. ...
Former NSA employee and whistleblower Thomas Drake was with her and witnessed the interrogation. The agent barked the questions at Radack and had a “threatening demeanor. ...
Notably, Radack mentioned she was told she was on an “inhibited persons list.” Jennifer Robinson, an Australian human rights lawyer who has represented WikiLeaks, discovered she was on this list in April of 2012.
According to a report by Australian journalist Bernard Keane, this is a term the Department of Homeland Security uses. From a DHS document:
‘Inhibited status’, as defined in this rule, means the status of a passenger or non-traveling individual to whom TSA [Transportation Security Administration] has instructed a covered aircraft operator or a covered airport operator not to issue a boarding pass or to provide access to the sterile area.
Radack reacted to the intimidation and harassment afterward, “The government, whether in the US, UK, or elsewhere does not have the authority to monitor, harass or intimidate lawyers for representing unpopular clients.”
Her interrogation by a Border Force agent comes just after The New York Times reported, based off a document from Snowden, that NSA ally, Australia, has used the Australian Signals Directorate to spy on American lawyers. The spying involved Indonesia trade talks.
Spying by N.S.A. Ally Entangled U.S. Law Firm
The list of those caught up in the global surveillance net cast by the National Security Agency and its overseas partners, from social media users to foreign heads of state, now includes another entry: American lawyers.
A top-secret document, obtained by the former N.S.A. contractor Edward J. Snowden, shows that an American law firm was monitored while representing a foreign government in trade disputes with the United States. The disclosure offers a rare glimpse of a specific instance in which Americans were ensnared by the eavesdroppers, and is of particular interest because lawyers in the United States with clients overseas have expressed growing concern that their confidential communications could be compromised by such surveillance.
The government of Indonesia had retained the law firm for help in trade talks, according to the February 2013 document. It reports that the N.S.A.’s Australian counterpart, the Australian Signals Directorate, notified the agency that it was conducting surveillance of the talks, including communications between Indonesian officials and the American law firm, and offered to share the information. ...
The N.S.A. declined to answer questions about the reported surveillance, including whether information involving the American law firm was shared with United States trade officials or negotiators.
Merkel proposes new spy-proof network for Europe
NSA snooping: MEPs table proposals to protect EU citizens' privacy
The European Parliament should withhold its consent to an EU-US trade deal unless it fully respects EU citizens’ data privacy, says an inquiry report on US National Security Agency (NSA) and EU member states surveillance of EU citizens, approved by the Civil Liberties Committee on Wednesday. It adds that data protection rules should be excluded from the trade talks and negotiated separately with the US.
The text, passed by 33 votes to 7 with 17 abstentions, condemns the “vast, systemic, blanket collection of personal data of innocent people, often comprising intimate personal information”, adding that “the fight against terrorism can never be a justification for untargeted, secret or even illegal mass surveillance programmes”.
"We now have a comprehensive text that for the first time brings together in-depth recommendations on Edward Snowden's allegations of NSA spying and an action plan for the future. The Civil Liberties Committee inquiry came at a crucial time, along with Snowden´s allegations and the EU data protection regulation. I hope that this document will be supported by the full Parliament and that it will last beyond the next European Parliament's mandate", said rapporteur Claude Moraes (S&D, UK), after the vote. ,,,
The full Parliament will vote on the resolution on 12 March in Strasbourg.
Hat tip to dharmafarmer - here are some links to documents of the EU Civil Liberties Committee (LIBE) dealing with the EU response to NSA spying, including the draft resolution referred to above:
Draft Resolution and Draft Amendments
The Divine Right of President Obama
Terrorism (ter-ror-ism; see also terror) n. 1. When a foreign organization kills an American for political reasons.
Justice (jus-tice) n. 1. When the United States Government uses a drone to kill an American for political reasons.
How's that morning coffee treating you? Nice and warming? Mmmm.
While you're savoring your cup o' joe, imagine the president of the United States hunched over his own coffee, considering the murder of another American citizen. Now, if you were plotting to kill an American over coffee, you could end up in jail on a whole range of charges including -- depending on the situation -- terrorism. However, if the president’s doing the killing, it's all nice and -- let’s put those quote marks around it -- "legal." How do we know? We’re assured that the Justice Department tells him so. And that’s justice enough in post-Constitutional America.
Through what seems to have been an Obama administration leak to the Associated Press, we recently learned that the president and his top officials believe a U.S. citizen -- name unknown to us out here -- probably somewhere in the tribal backlands of Pakistan, is reputedly planning attacks against Americans abroad. As a result, the White House has, for the last several months, been considering whether or not to assassinate him by drone without trial or due process.
Supposedly, the one thing that’s held up sending in the drones is the administration’s desire to make sure the kill is "legal." (Those quotes again.) ...
Last May, Obama gave a speech on the subject. ... In it, he insisted that any target of the drones must pose "a continuing and imminent threat to the American people." At the time, the White House also issued a fact sheet that stated: "Lethal force must only be used to prevent or stop attacks against U.S. persons, and even then, only when capture is not feasible and no other reasonable alternatives exist to address the threat effectively." ...
[I]t turns out that the supposedly tortured deliberations of the administration are not really necessary. Despite the president’s criteria, according to an unnamed administration official quoted by the Associated Press, Obama could make an exception to his policy and authorize the CIA to strike on a one-time basis, no matter what the circumstances. One way or another, it is Obama who decides who to kill and when.
Fisk: Pity About the Civilians...
The ethical disgrace of the drone syndrome is not that Mr Obama – or some US officer near Las Vegas – decides on the basis of satellite pictures, mobile phone calls, numbers dialled and the speed of vehicles, who should live or die. The really shameful aspect is that the drone war has become normal. It has gone on so long – and been the subject of so much protest, so regularly – that it has become banal, boring, matter-of-fact.
It was just the same in the 1990s when the US and Brits went hunting for Iraqi targets over the so-called “no-fly zones” in Iraq. For years they bombed and missiled “military targets” that supposedly threatened them. In the eight months up to August 1999, US and British pilots had fired more than 1,100 missiles against 359 Iraqi targets, flying about two-thirds as many missions as Nato pilots conducted over Yugoslavia during the 78-day bombardment of the same year. As well as anti-aircraft batteries, oil pipelines were blown up, storage depots destroyed and dozens of civilians killed, including several in a Basra housing estate. But each air raid was merely “nibbed” in our newspapers – a nib is a single paragraph in an inside-page News in Brief column – so that an entire air campaign was effectively carried out behind the backs of the US and British public in the years before the 2003 invasion.
In southern Lebanon, the Israelis controlled for 28 years a torture prison at Khiam for insurgents and their families – women as well as men – and electricity was frequently used on inmates by Israel’s “South Lebanon Army” thugs. Amnesty, Human Rights Watch and the International Red Cross complained. But I will always remember the words of a Swiss Red Cross official when I asked him, within sight of Khiam, why the world did not condemn this dreadful place. “It has become normal,” he replied.
And that’s it. Kill or torture often enough, over a long enough time – not too many massacres, just a dribble of deaths over months and years – and you’ll get away with it. If you kill the bad guys, it’s OK. Pity about the rest.
Chris Hedges: Our Sinister Dual State
We live in what the German political scientist Ernst Fraenkel called “the dual state.” Totalitarian states are always dual states. In the dual state civil liberties are abolished in the name of national security. The political sphere becomes a vacuum “as far as the law is concerned,” Fraenkel wrote. There is no legal check on power. Official bodies operate with impunity outside the law. In the dual state the government can convict citizens on secret evidence in secret courts. It can strip citizens of due process and detain, torture or assassinate them, serving as judge, jury and executioner. It rules according to its own arbitrary whims and prerogatives. The outward forms of democratic participation—voting, competing political parties, judicial oversight and legislation—are hollow, political stagecraft. Fraenkel called those who wield this unchecked power over the citizenry “the prerogative state.”
The masses in a totalitarian structure live in what Fraenkel termed “the normative state.” The normative state, he said, is defenseless against the abuses of the prerogative state. Citizens are subjected to draconian laws and regulations, as well as arbitrary searches and arrests. The police and internal security are omnipotent. The internal workings of power are secret. Free expression and opposition political activity are pushed to the fringes of society or shut down. Those who challenge the abuses of power by the prerogative state, those who, like Snowden, expose the crimes carried out by government, are made into criminals. Totalitarian states always invert the moral order. It is the wicked who rule. It is the just who are damned. ...
Societies that once had democratic traditions, or periods when openness was possible, are often seduced into totalitarian systems because those who rule continue to pay outward fealty to the ideals, practices and forms of the old systems. This was true when the Emperor Augustus dismantled the Roman Republic. It was true when Lenin and the Bolsheviks seized control of the autonomous soviets and ruthlessly centralized power. It was true following the collapse of the Weimar Republic and the rise of Nazi fascism. Thomas Paine described despotic government as a fungus growing out of a corrupt civil society. And this is what has happened to us.
No one who lives under constant surveillance, who is subject to detention anywhere at any time, whose conversations, messages, meetings, proclivities and habits are recorded, stored and analyzed, can be described as free. The relationship between the U.S. government and the U.S. citizen is now one of master and slave. Yet the prerogative state assures us that our rights are sacred, that it abides by the will of the people and the consent of the governed.
VW workers in Tennessee vote against having union representation
In a stunning defeat that could accelerate the decades-long decline of the United Auto Workers, employees voted against union representation at Volkswagen’s plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, which had been regarded as organised labour’s best chance of expanding in the US south.
An official overseeing the vote, retired Tennessee circuit court judge Sam Payne, said a majority had voted against UAW representation by 712 to 626. About 89% of workers voted, he said. ...
The loss could further dent the prestige of the UAW, membership of which had plummeted 75% since 1979 and now stood at less than 400,000.
It was also likely to reinforce the widely held notion that the UAW could not make significant inroads in a region that historically had been steadfastly against organised labour and where all foreign-owned assembly plants employed non-union workers.
How Fear Beat the UAW in Tennessee
On Friday, a three-day election process ended when Volkswagen workers in Chattanooga, Tenn., voted against joining the United Auto Workers (UAW) 712 to 626.
Coming into the vote, both sides knew what was at stake — the union drive was a direct threat to the low-wage economy on which the South’s manufacturing base has been built.
Deep-pocketed union-busters mounted a coordinated campaign against organized labor. They even told Tennesseans that the union wanted to take their guns. And Stephen Greenhouse reported for The New York Times that “Grover Norquist, the anti-tax crusader, helped underwrite a new group, the Center for Worker Freedom, that put up 13 billboards in Chattanooga, warning that the city might become the next Detroit if the workers voted for the union.”
What’s more, Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam said that a ‘yes’ vote would result in the company losing its tax incentives. A powerful state lawmaker called the union drive “un-American,” and Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) said that he’d been secretly assured that a ‘no’ vote would win the plant the production of a new SUV — a claim the company flatly denied.
Fear campaigns work best in an economy where working people have every reason to be afraid, so the threats were especially potent in a state with an unemployment rate that remains stubbornly high at around eight percent. Tennessee has the fifth lowest median household income in the US.
How To Make Higher Education Free Without New Taxes Or More Government Spending - Robert Samuels
An interesting interview with economist Michael Hudson by an Irish reporter, well worth reading in full:
An Interview With Michael Hudson on Economic Violence
Q - Professor, we’re based here in Ireland which is a country, as we both know, currently in economic ruin at the moment. Unemployment is at 14%, graduate unemployment is probably double that. Where did it all go wrong for Ireland?
Prof. H: Your unemployment is intentional policy by the Irish leadership, of both parties. None of this unemployment is necessary. It doesn’t have to be this way. The government was suckered in to paying the debts for its corrupt bankers.
The problem is that even when you Irish did – as you should have done – and voted out the party in power, the incoming party has the same policy as the former one. It’s much like the United States, where we voted out Republican George Bush, and then got an even more Republican Democrat – Barack Obama. They all promise change, and then follow the financial sector’s directions.
So the underlying problem is that there is no body of theory or policy in Ireland to show that there is an alternative to this unemployment. There’s a belief, a Thatcherite belief that There Is No Alternative, and of course there is an alternative! You shouldn’t have paid uninsured bank depositors and bondholders, and you should not have to pay the European Central Bank, the I.M.F. or the other parties that misinformed you by telling your leaders that the cost of government bailouts would be easily managed, not a lost decade and economic disaster.
...
Q - One thing that was really striking during the Celtic Tiger here was that the entire profession of economists completely bought into the ridiculously flawed neoclassical models. Can you talk about how the profession of economists played their role in building all this up?
Prof. H: They’re indoctrinated. There are two ways the Chicago School of economics pushed neoliberal theories. In Chile, they went down under the Pinochet regime and closed every economics department in the country that didn’t teach their Chicago School theories. They assassinated labor leaders, they assassinated economists and professors, and had a continent wide terrorism campaign, Operation Condor, which killed tens of thousands of intellectuals. They didn’t have to do that in Ireland or America.
In American they gained control of the main refereed economic journals. And that means that in the United States – and probably Ireland and Europe too – when you graduate with your PhD and want to go into teaching, you have to get promoted by being published in a refereed journal. But the referees are Chicago boys or Harvard neoliberals. They are ideological totalitarians. The free market boys realize that you cannot have a free market without having utter totalitarian control. That’s what they’ve achieved. ...
UNICEF Report: U.S. Ranks 34th Out of 35 In Childhood Poverty
A sobering report released by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) found that out of the top 35 developed nations in the world, the United States comes 2nd to last in childhood poverty.
While many of the Scandinavian and Western European countries (i.e. countries with a robust social safety net) have very low rates of childhood poverty, America only just narrowly beat Romania for the worst. ...
Of course, as rich people like to point out, this isn’t to say that American children have it the worst in the world. The UNICEF study does not compare American children with that of, say, sub-Saharan Africa. It would not be fair to either group to make a comparison of some of the most destitute countries on the planet and one of the richest. What the study shows is that America isn’t doing a good job of helping it’s poorest citizens. It’s a systemic social problem when a country of fabulous wealth cannot or will not better the lives of every one of its citizens.
Countries that are much poorer than the U.S. have much lower rates of childhood poverty. Can that be considered anything less than a failure?
Portland protesters bring pitchforks and torches to City Hall over anti-homeless proposal
Protesters in Portland, Ore., showed up at the doors of city hall carrying actual pitchforks and torches, to express their anger about proposals to change laws related to homelessness in the progressive city.
Portland’s leaders have begun debating a bill that would allow police to target homeless people sitting on sidewalks, according to The Oregonian.
The new laws would make it easier for police to clear out homeless encampments, which opponents say would merely exacerbate the problem as police discard homeless people’s only warm clothing and blankets during a purge.
Detroit bankruptcy bond fight a watershed for municipal market
The city of Detroit's effort to declare some of its general obligation bonds as unsecured debt will be challenged in bankruptcy court Wednesday in what could be a precedent-setting turn in the largest-ever municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history.
The issue in front of federal bankruptcy Judge Steven Rhodes is whether a pledge of Detroit tax revenue to pay off the voter-approved bond issues is a binding obligation under Michigan law, as argued by bond insurers in two lawsuits, or merely a promise.
The outcome of the dispute could have a far-reaching impact on the $3.7 trillion municipal market, where general obligation bonds made up some 60 percent of the issues sold in the last decade.
That could reduce investor interest in not only any future Detroit borrowings but in debt from other Michigan municipalities, forcing them to pay higher interest rates. And it could trigger similar concerns for municipal borrowers in other states.
Creepy Coincidence? 5 elite bankers die in apparent suicides
Ukraine government says it will grant amnesty to protesters
Ukraine announced Sunday that protesters arrested in anti-government unrest rocking the country would be granted an amnesty, in a minor victory for the opposition after it ended its occupation of Kiev city hall.
Activists vowed to maintain pressure on authorities over a host of other major demands, nearly three months after anger over President Viktor Yanukovych's decision to reject an EU trade deal in favour of closer ties with Russia boiled over into unrest.
And while city hall and many other highly symbolic public buildings occupied by protesters were vacated Sunday -- prompting the amnesty announcement -- Kiev's iconic Independence Square remained under opposition control, the sprawling tent city barricaded off on all sides from riot police.
"The (amnesty) law comes into force from February 17, 2014, and stipulates that charges against people having committed offences... will be dropped," Ukraine prosecutors said in a statement late Sunday.
Ukraine opposition seek curbs on Yanukovich powers
Ukraine's opposition leaders on Monday pressed President Viktor Yanukovich to accept curbs on his powers that would allow them to form an independent government to defuse a 12-week stand-off on the streets and save the economy from collapse. ...
[T]ension remained high with the opposition accusing Yanukovich and his allies of delaying discussion that could lead to his relinquishing what they see as "dictatorial" powers. They suspect him of trying to slow down the momentum of the protest movement.
But with foreign currency reserves depleted by repeated moves to prop up the weak hryvnia and fears of a devaluation growing by the day, Yanukovich is increasingly under pressure to name a new prime minister to replace the Russian-born Mykola Azarov, whom he sacked on January 28.
His choice could speed up disbursement of fresh credits under a $15 billion bailout package from Russia - a quick fix for the heavily indebted economy. But if he resists calls for constitutional change and names another hardliner, the streets could return to uproar.
"People want a complete rebooting of the system, that's the main thing," said boxer-turned-politician Vitaly Klitschko, one of three opposition leaders who are pressing for a return to an old constitution that would remove presidential control of the government and the judiciary.
The Evening Greens
Canadian Company Called U.S. Oil Sands Will Soon Start Extracting Utah's Tar Sands
In October, U.S. Oil Sands, Inc. joined Kentucky-based Arrakis Oil Recovery as the second company to receive a permit to produce U.S. tar sands. The Utah Water Quality Board gave U.S. Oil Sands a permit to extract 2,000 barrels of oil per day from Utah's tar sands reserves.
Despite its name, U.S. Oil Sands is actually a Canadian outfit based in Calgary, Alberta. The company currently holds leases on just over 32,000 acres in Utah's Uintah Basin. U.S. Oil Sands' mining will take place at PR Spring on the Colorado Plateau in an area called the Bookcliffs, which straddles the Utah/Colorado border. ...
U.S. Oil Sands received the Utah Water Quality Board permit despite questions raised about its potential commercial viability and an ongoing water crisis in Utah and the U.S. southwest at-large. ...
A letter written by the Utah Division of Oil, Gas and Mining said, "It is expected that the mine will use 116 gallons of water per minute on a 24-hour basis, which equates to approximately 180 acre-feet per year" and that a production rate of 2,000 barrels of crude a day will consume approximately 4,000 barrels of water per day.
Native Americans vow a last stand to block Keystone XL pipeline
In South Dakota, home to some of the nation’s poorest American Indians, tribes are busy preparing for nonviolent battle with “resistance training” aimed at TransCanada, the company that wants to develop the 1,700-mile pipeline.
While organizers said they want to keep their strategy a secret, they’re considering everything from vigils to civil disobedience to blockades to thwart the moving of construction equipment and the delivery of materials.
“We’re going to do everything we possibly can,” said Greg Grey Cloud of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, who attended a two-day conference and training session in Rapid City last week sponsored by the Oglala Sioux Tribe called “Help Save Mother Earth from the Keystone Pipeline.” He said tribes are considering setting up encampments to follow the construction, but he stressed that any actions would be peaceful. “We’re not going to damage anything or riot or anything like that,” he said. ...
Two weeks ago, an alliance of Native American groups approved a statement saying emphatically that no pipeline would be allowed in South Dakota and that tribes stand ready to protect their “sacred water” and other natural resources.
That includes Native women, who opponents of the pipeline say would become easy prey for thousands of temporary construction workers housed in work camps. According to the federal government, one of every three Indian women are either raped or sexually assaulted during their lifetimes, with the majority of attacks done by non-Native men.
“If you like to drink water, if you like your children not being harmed, if you don’t want your women being harmed, then say no to the pipeline,” Grey Cloud said. “Because once it comes, it’s going to destruct everything.”
Harper Govt Makes Moves to Silence Canada's Leading Environmental Groups
In both the United States and Canada, activism against tar sands, pipelines and climate change has soared in recent years.
But while President Obama has encouraged citizens to "stand up and speak up" to demand change on energy, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper's administration has tried to silence critics of pro-tar sands policies.
In the most recent evidence, seven influential environmental organizations have become the subject of rigorous audits by the Canada Revenue Agency.
Activists allege that the scrutiny is an attempt by the Harper administration to subdue tar sands opponents as decision time looms for pipelines needed to bring Alberta's landlocked oil to market—the Texas-bound Keystone XL and the Northern Gateway to the Pacific Coast of British Columbia. ...
The revenue agency is auditing the environmentalists for possible abuse of their nonprofit charitable status, which exempts them from paying taxes and allows donors to claim contributions as tax deductions. Canadian law states that nonprofits can only use 10 percent of their resources for political advocacy work. The CRA is investigating whether the groups exceeded this limit.
For decades, Canadian nonprofits interpreted political advocacy to mean they couldn't endorse candidates or elected officials. Like in the United States for tax-exempt organizations, support for or criticism of government policy was customary.
"They are seemingly reinterpreting what they perceive as being political activity," said Tim Gray, executive director of Environmental Defence, one of the green groups being audited. "It is a shifting landscape."
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
Distorting Russia: How the American Media Misrepresent Putin, Sochi and Ukraine
From Occupy to Climate Justice: Merging Economic Justice and Climate Activism
North American leaders called upon to save monarch butterfly
A Little Night Music
Jimmy Dawkins - Goin Down
Jimmy Dawkins - Kant Sheck Dees Bluze
Jimmy Dawkins - You Don't Love Me
Jimmy Dawkins - Me, My Guitar and the Blues
Jimmy Dawkins - Lonesome
Jimmy Dawkins - The Way She Walks
Jimmy Dawkins - Chitlins Con Carne & Driftin' Sad
Jimmy Dawkins - She Got the Blues Too
Jimmy Dawkins & Hip Linkchain - Boogie Chillun
Jimmy Dawkins + Queen Sylvia - You Treat Me So Mean
It's National Pie Day!
The election is over, it's a new year and it's time to work on real change in new ways... and it's National Pie Day. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to tell you a little more about our new site and to start getting people signed up.
Come on over and sign up so that we can send you announcements about the site, the launch, and information about participating in our public beta testing.
Why is National Pie Day the perfect opportunity to tell you more about us? Well you'll see why very soon. So what are you waiting for?! Head on over now and be one of the first!
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