THE FUTURE IN YOUR OWN HANDS.

From Occupied London: 

          An interview with M1 from Dead Prez and Bonnot who are part of AP2P – all power to the people. This interview was filmed in Exarchia, Athens – Greece. They talk about global movements as well as what is happening in Greece, and the need for revolutionary struggle. This film also explores the importance of neighbourhoods which serve as a bastian of resistance, like the anarcho bohemian neighbourhood of Exarchia in Athens.  

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THE ANARCHIST CRITIC, LATEST ISSUE.

The latest issue, No. 98 May/June of The Anarchist Critic is now available as a free PDF download HERE.

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SPANISH MINERS RESISTANCE TO AUSTERITY.

           Our media is never eager to spout the facts but more inclined to paint a nice picture or report on turmoil in countries far- far away, but everything here is just fine. Our lords and masters are trying hard to solve the “Euro crisis” and once that is sort then everything will be just hunky-dory. Of course right here on our doorstep there is resistance to the financial Mafia's “austerity” measures. Country after country is seeing the people take action to defend themselves against the onslaught of slash and burn tactics of the financial mafia. One event that has received little or no coverage by the media is the strike by 8,000 miners in Asturias in Spain. An area with a long militant anti-right-wing history.

 This fromWikipedia.

         “The Asturian miners' strike of 1934 was a major strike action, against the entry of the CEDA into the Spanish government on October 6,[1] which took place in Asturias in northern Spain, that developed into a revolutionary uprising. It was crushed by the Spanish Republican Navy and the Spanish Republican Army, the latter using mainly Moorish troopers from Spanish Morocco.[2]

Franco controlled the movement of the troops, aircraft, warships and armoured trains used in the crushing of the revolution. Visiting Oviedo after the rebellion had been put down he said; " this war is a frontier war and its fronts are socialism, communism and whatever attacks civilization in order to replace it with barbarism." [3] Though the colonial units sent to the north by Franco consisted of the Spanish Foreign Legion and the Moroccan mercenaries of the Regulares Indigenas, the right wing press portrayed the Asturian rebels in xenophobic and anti-Semitic terms as the lackeys of a foreign Jewish-Bolshevik conspiracy.---”

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         This present strike has been going on for more than 3 weeks, there has been running battles with the police, the miners have blocked main roads and devised guerrilla tactics in their fight against the heavy state repression being used to try and break their strike. 

This report from BBC:

         "Striking coal miners have clashed with police in northern Spain, in some of the worst disturbances since the government imposed austerity measures. The interior ministry said at least seven people had been injured in the clashes outside a mine in Asturias. Miners fired sky rockets and ball-bearings at riot police who responded with rubber bullets and tear gas.

        The miners are protesting at plans to cut government subsidies from 300m euros (£242m; $376m) to 110m euros. Thousands of miners have been on strike across northern Spain for weeks. The interior ministry said police had been trying to remove roadblocks of burning tyres at El Entrego, near Oviedo, when they were met with a barrage of missiles fired by the miners. Police fired tear gas and rubber bullets and after several hours of clashes the miners took to the surrounding mountains and forests for cover, reports said.---"

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TIME FOR RIGHTEOUS ANGER.

      What does the financial Mafia's "deficit" reduction mean to ordinary people? In just a matter of a couple of years decent ordinary hard working people in Greece have been reduced to begging on the streets. This photo from Teacher Dude's Grill and BBQ, captures something horrifying in so much that it looks like a clean proud family, ashamed of their situation but forced to beg to support themselves and their family. There is no need for their shame, it is anger that they should be displaying. The have a genuine claim to righteous anger.

TIME FOR RIGHTEOUS ANGER

We talk of justice, we ooze compassion

you and I. Our comfort sure

with a gracious smile a token give

those "SO deserving poor".

Where is compassion when children lose

carefree innocent play,

where is justice when children meet

hunger along the way

Children who, in this world of excess

create a newsreel scene

cradled in a starving mother's arms

expiring on your TV screen.

Forget the famine rationale

in a sickly syrup word,

mouthed by those crazy apes

until the truth is blurred.

Feel the anguish of the other

hear their pitiful cry

see the hunger steal their future;

loudly cry out,  why?

Then act out your righteous anger

fan the passions flame,

create a world of social justice

end this human shame.

 

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MORE ON THE CO-OPERATIVE MOVEMENT.

         Since this is 2012, International Year of the Co-operatives, another view on the co-operative movement. This time from Workers Solidarity Movement: 

 

          Workers’ co-operatives have always been championed by sections of the left and wider labour movement - from their advocacy by 19th century Welsh social reformer and utopian socialist Robert Owens to Proudhon through to their existence in various state capitalist countries today such as Cuba. While workers’ co-operatives can provide a small example of anarchist ideas based on self-management, direct democracy and mutual aid in action, we should not be blinded by their contradictions and should query their effectiveness as a strategy for real revolutionary transformation.

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CO-OPS, AN UNTAPPED RESOURCE.

       Another interesting article from The Commune. Though the honour of the first co-op can be disputed, as recently details were found that gave this honour to Ayrshire in Scotland. I have no doubt that other places will stake their claim to be the first Co-op, as I'm sure the idea is a natural tendency among us social creatures called humans. Whoever was first, co-ops, large and small are an important form of community organisation that can help take us away from the capitalist model. 

Extract:

          The late development of theory around worker, producer and community co-operatives could be one explanation for the widespread indifference of communists to this part of the working class movement.(1) In the UK, ignorance about its reach, nature and significance contrasts with an apparently inexhaustible, tailending-the-left fascination with party or group politics and rank-and-file trade unionism. Yet people are often ready with an ideological view of co-ops; they are self-exploitation, or bourgeois, or prefigure communism, or impossible, and so on.

        The International Co-operative Alliance (ICA) defines a co-op as an “autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations through jointly-owned and democratically-controlled enterprises”. Co-operatives are a type of collective organisation for the satisfaction of needs unmet by private enterprise and the state – for work, shelter, access to markets, land, leisure activity, credit, clean water, food, health, education. 

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HOW MUCH WILL WE LOSE BEFORE WE FIGHT?

           One reason I go on about the plight of the Greek people is because I don't see it as a unique set of circumstances. I tend to see Greece as a forerunner of what is about to happen to more European countries as the financial Mafia try to make up their gambling losses by plundering the public assets of country after country. Their policy of paying off debt with debt and getting the taxpayer to take care of the “deficit” is bound to end in disaster. What we should be doing is organising to take control of the crumbling capitalist edifice before the financial Mafia can re-group and start their casino all over again. Now is the perfect opportunity to organise to shape society the way we want it to be, one that sees to the needs of all our people. Occupations and people's assemblies must play a large part in our strategies. Organising in the community to circumvent and undermine the rules of their game of greed and exploitation. Hopefully that anger will make its self apparent long before we reach the situation in which the Greek people find themselves. In Greece they are now running out of medicines, people are finding it increasingly difficult to get medication for serious health problems from cancer to mental health problems. The usual capitalist compassion rules, the pharmaceutical companies are demanding payment up-front before they will ship any medication to Greece. Anger will grow, people will be looking for answers, and if our answers are not on the table, then they will pick up what is there. The state is preparing for public unrest, they expect trouble as they slash at the living standards of the people at the behest of their masters the financial Mafia. We either accept the situation where we watch our friends and relatives die a slow death from the lack of available treatment or we take control of the situation. Society doesn't have to be modeled on the capitalist greed plan. There are alternatives based on co-operation, and justice. We can build a society where we take care of all our people, we have the resources, the ability and the imagination, all we need is the will to come together and start the demolition job, then build that better world.

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DIRECT ACTION, - THE ONLY ROUTE.

        It should be obvious by now that if the workers play by the bosses rules, we will always lose. Two recent disputes highlight this, showing once again that direct action by the workers gets results. This from The Commune

          The wildly different trajectories of two recent industrial disputes provides us with an almost perfect lesson in both how they can be won and how they are generally lost. In both cases, the workers were members of the Unite union, as are around three million others in the UK, and in both cases the industry concerned was what might be called a ‘blue collar’ one. But one won, and is winning, while another lost badly.

         The ‘threat’ of a one day stoppage by oil haulage drivers gripped the ruling class just over two months ago, when Unite announced that 69% of respondents had voted for strike action over worsening working conditions and pensions raids. The media went into a frenzy of contrived scaremongering, and the government – sensing what a Tory memo called a “Thatcher moment” – went on the attack. Infamously, Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude told motorists to store “a little bit in the garage as well in a jerrycan”, even though Unite had not named a strike date, and they had to give seven days of notice under the anti-union laws.
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EUROPEAN FINANCIAL MAFIA'S SCAM.

       The fraudulent nature of the European financial Mafia becomes more blatant day by day. The latest scam they have performed is the Spanish fiasco. Spain stated that it didn't need a bailout, but its banks did need about £80+ billion and suggested to the European financial Mafia that they lend that amount directly to the Spanish banking system. However the gamblers at the helm of the financial mafia wouldn't entertain that at any cost. The reason being that if the Spanish banks went bust, they would lose their money. So their policy was to coerce the Spanish government into taking the £80+ billion and for them to hand it over to the Spanish banks. This would mean that if the Spanish banks go bust, then the European financial Mafia still get their money as it is the Spanish government that owes them, so the taxpayers will have to come up with the £80+ billion and this will be done by more “austerity” cuts.

         The double edge to the financial Mafia's sword is the fact that they have forced this £80+ billion loan onto the Spanish government means that Spain is now considered to be too heavy in debt and will have to pay an unsustainable interest rate to borrow, forcing it to seek a bailout and with that will come all the restriction and conditions that put the Greek people into a state of deprivation. 

"When we gamble, you wouldn't want us to lose, would you?"

        What ever happens, whether it be the destruction of the living standards of an entire nation, or pushing half the European people into deprivation, is of no consequence as long as the financial Mafia don't lose any of their money. Capitalism, how to screw the many for the benefit of the few.

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THE OLYMPICS, THE MOST EXPENSIVE TV SHOW EVER.

         The media having overdosed on the “jubilee” it is now ramming the “carrying the torch” down our throats, they get the kids out of school to make sure they have a crowd. May I suggest to all those good folk who line the streets to see the big cigarette lighter being paraded through their village/town/city, to take a good look as it will be about all they will see of the Olympics, unless they stay seated in front of a TV. What they probably don't realise is that, that television viewing will one of the most expensive viewings in their lives. They get to see the “torch” and pick up a tab of £24 billion for a television show.

      Our millionaire lords and masters spouted about the Olympics being a mere £2.4 billion which would be mainly private capital, however the price-tag rocket and private capital evaporate, leaving the tax payer to pick up the tab. By 2007 the cost was revised up to £9.3 billion, the public funding had tripled and private capital had dwindled to less than 2%. It doesn't stop there, the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee now put the cost at £11 billion with the tax payer taking the hit. While a SKY Sports investigation, including the transport upgrade put the cost at £24 billion. An awful lot of money for a TV show!! Since that is all most of the people of this country will ever see.

     The other more sinister side of this billion pound fun TV show will be the militarisation of London. The city will have surface-to-air missiles, a naval battleship moored offshore, 13,500 military personnel roaming around, which is about 4,000 more than we have based in Afghanistan. Hovering overhead will be lightweight aerial drones with elite firearms response units and snipers lurking below. All of this is not enough for the US, who will be sending their own security team which will include 500 FBI agents. This security comes at a price, £1 billion and counting. Plus it will set a precedent for drones, sniper and military patrolling our streets. Yes it will leave a lasting legacy, of debt and surveillance.

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THE GLASGOW RESHUFFLE.

Reshuffle Pearce Institute Govan

Sat. Sun. 16-17th June
        The idea of the Reshuffle is that the answers and skills to resolve most of the communities needs, desires and problems, lies within the community itself. “We only need to ‘reshuffle’ our priorities to learn where the answers lie”.
      The question we are asking this year is. What would you reshuffle given the chance? Our big "R" is going to be going round the community engaging people in the questions. Looking at our community infrastructure. How can we motivate ourselves and others to think more about taking part in things, finding out what is going on and coming up with solutions to solving our own problems.
      We could also maybe look at the possibilities around us. What do we already have. How could it be improved on. What skills do we have to offer and what do we want to learn. How do we make our community and things in it visible to more people. After we collect some ideas and things we have a shared interest in we will look at places where we can gather to talk about these things. Using our community facilities and institutions, gardens centre's, libraries and local resources.
       We will of course need to make this work interesting, creative, educational and use a whole variety of media to explore ideas. We will also need to socialise the work, make it fun if the task is boring. We will also need to think about how to engage different age groups from
kids to older folk in working together.
       But that's for later. First we must identify some issues, trains of thought, germinating ideas to get us going. We would like to bring the big R to where you R and get started on discussing a few ideas, make recordings and film things.
More Pop into Sunny Govan or Pearce Institute or Dinner nights PI Tuesday from 6:30 for more info or lookout for the big "R" around Govan and beyond and at the Reshuffle. Updates soon, this part of the project is new And will be used to plan next years event.http://citystrolls.com/z-temp/z-pages/big-r.htm

Let's get doon theer an' help!!

Help needed on Saturday:To help run the cafe and move stuff around. Some leaflets to put out this week to. Can be collected at Pearce Institute.
http://citystrolls.com/reshuffle12/index.html

--www.citystrolls.com

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GET OLDER, SUFFER POVERTY.

            One way to measure a civilised country is to look at how it cares for its most vulnerable citizens. First we should remember that in spite of all the crap poured out by our millionaire lords and masters, this country is a very rich country. As we get older we take our place among the vulnerable, so how does Britain, a modern rich country, care for its elderly? Well British pensioners are among the poorest in Europe, in this country more than two million older people are at risk of poverty. In 2010 21.4% of elderly British were classed as being at risk of poverty, dwarfing the European average of 15.9%. The only nations in Europe who treated their elderly worse were Cyprus with 45.2%, followed by Bulgaria at 32.3%, then Spain at 21.7%. We are shamed by such figures as Hungary 4.1%, the Netherlands, 5.9% and Luxembourg, 5.9%. Of course it is not just the elderly that are at risk of poverty in this country. In 2010, 10.7 million people, 17.1% of the population, were at the risk of poverty, where as the European average is 16.4%. So all the nonsense pumped out by the media and the establishment, that we in this country are better off than everybody else is bullshit. What these figures show is that almost a sixth of the entire population of Europe is living with the risk of poverty and that risk rises as we get older. This is the best that capitalism can do, from this dismal position, thanks to the “austerity”, “deficit reduction” plans, we are heading in a downward direction. The system can only deliver poverty for millions while the financial Mafia grow fatter on salaries that have shown a 51% increase in the last couple of years. I find it strange that we tolerate a system that hands astronomical bonuses to parasitical fat-cats and sinks the rest of the population into Victorian deprivation. It doesn't take much imagination to come up with a system that would see to the needs of all our people, but first we have to get the fat-cats and the parasitical financial Mafia off our backs. Shed that burden and we are almost there.

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THE CRIME OF CHILD POVERTY.

 

            Scotland is a relatively rich country yet one in four of Scotland’s children are officially recognised as living in poverty. In some areas over one in three children grow up in poverty, in Springburn Glasgow it is over 50%. With Scotland’s undoubted wealth this is an unacceptable crime against future generations. Our child poverty rate is considerably higher than other European countries. In Denmark and Norway approximately 10% of children live in poverty, whilst Germany the rate is 15%, even these rates are unacceptable in any modern, supposedly civilised, country. All of these countries are wealthy yet they have children living in poverty, so it isn’t the lack of resources, it is the system we live under, that breeds poverty and then traps people in that poverty. It is an indictment of that system that poverty remains one of the most serious problems facing children today. Its effects last a lifetime, negatively impacting on health, education, social and physical development and seriously harming future life chances and opportunities.

            There is a need, we have the resources, but money dictates that children live in poverty, that is not an economic system, that is a crime.

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SOCIAL SERVICES AT No.10.

          Prime Minister David Cameron left his eight-year-old daughter in a pub following a Sunday lunch, after a mix-up with his wife Samantha. The couple's daughter Nancy wandered off to the toilets while they were arranging lifts and they only realised she was not with them when they got home, The Sun said. The media goes on to put a nice friendly spin on the matter, however our ”family orientated” millionaire prime Minister would no doubt be filled with indignation if he read about such an event happening in a housing scheme, the media would have a field day abusing the parents and calling for the social services to move in and care for the child. I hope the social services will make a call at the millionaire parents home to see where else the poor child may be being neglected. Whether the pub staff looked after her well or not is not the question, to go home from anywhere leaving your child behind is neglect of the highest order, where was their "duty of care". It shows their priorities.

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THE UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE.

The Universal Language:

 “Fuck the Police” (Montreal, Night 47)

This from, Outside the Circle: 

            I feel like I probably saw and was in the middle of only a fraction of all the tides of popular protests against the Grand Prix tonight. But to likely understate it, the police (SPVM to SQ) totally lost control and the people totally held the streets. And as one person said to us on the streets as riot cops swarmed by us for the umpteenth time–after about the umpteenth time that nearly everyone (and by nearly everyone, I mean an eclectic mix of thousands and thousands of people, many dressed in fancy Saturday night party clothes, far from “the usual suspects” and not a black bloc in sight) pushed the police back or for all intents and purposes kettled the cops, and after the many umpteenth times that nearly everyone booed at and many threw plastic bottles (or a beach ball) at the police–there’s a universal language on the streets this evening, and it’s “fuck the police.”

          Of course, there was plenty of good reason to speak this global language on Montreal’s streets this evening: tear gas, batons, the incessant beating on shields, pushing, harassment, pepper spray, injuries, arrests. But none of those tactics worked. Nor did the tactic of attempting to divide the thousands of people “marching” or simply filling the streets. Each time the police managed to split enormous amounts of people into two, three, or four groups, or seemed to have dispersed people altogether, seconds or minutes later, there was a new massive group, or several, or another hot spot, with no rhyme or reason, and definitely no coordination. The sheer beauty of a mysterious spontaneity birthed of some sort of popular will and determination. Whether tourist or local, student or person in their seventies, a kid a stroller or an adult in a wheelchair, white or black, out for a drink or out for a protest, and on and on, people just kept coming at the cops again and again and again, with little fear and lots of animosity.

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THIS LAND IS OUR LAND.

Spread the word.

Dear all

      I have put a petition to the Scottish Parliament - asking for the Scottish Government to consider allowing people to use underused land for fruitful food growing. This is before the Scottish Parliament petitions committee on 12th June. The petition is at

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/S4_PublicPetitionsCommittee/Petitions/PE1433_Final_Version_22.5.12.pdf (unfortunately their petition software doesn't work! -

      So I've had to set up a separate petition that people can actually sign) I'm hoping to get 1000 signatures to present on the 12th June - so please do this now. Please encourage people to sign the e-petition below - and pass it on.

      Please sign the petition HERE;http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/land-for-landless-scots-for-grow-your-own

All best John
John Hancox

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DAY OF ACTION.

This from 325:

From ABC LEEDS:

Day of Action in Support of John Bowden

Monday 11th June

       John Bowden is a militant prisoner who has been inside since 1980 (and in fact for most of his life before then). He is serving time for a murder which happened 32 years ago, but John’s two co-defendants have been free for 20 years. John has been writing about, and fighting against, injustice throughout his time behind bars, building up a huge and impressive portfolio of articles about every aspect of the prison struggle. He has paid a heavy price for speaking out though, spending years in the most brutal segregation units, and being targeted for repression time and time again. We do not define John, a good comrade, by the crime he committed 32 years ago, and neither do the State. He is not in jail for what he did then, but for what he has done since. If he did not have anti-authoritarian politics, if he was not a man of integrity who always comes to the defence of his fellow cons, John Bowden would have been out years ago.

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GLASGOW CRANE ANTI-NUCLEAR BANNER.

         For 30 years the Faslane Peace Camp has kept up a steady and relentless campaign against Britain's nuclear weapons of mass destruction and June being the camp's thirtieth birthday they are having a series of celebrations. It started to day with a massive banner being hung from the large crane at Finnieston Glasgow. The crane has stood there rather sad as one of the last remnants of the Clyde's shipbuilding era. Well now it has sprung to life and joined the anti-nuclear movement. The large banner reads, "Nuclear Disarmament. If Not Now, When?"!

        It is typical of the type of society we live in, a millionaire cabinet slashing at the living standards of the ordinary people, shouting "AUSTERITY, AUSTERITY" while at the same time pouring billions of pounds into keeping, developing and upgrading nuclear weapons of mass destruction. Let's all join in the Faslane Peace Camp's thirtieth birthday celebrations by raising our voices against these illegal horrendous weapons and join and support them in any way we can. 

This release from the Faslane peaceCamp:

        A Peace Camp banner drop is currently underway at Clydebank landmark gantry crane in Glasgow

 

 

      In a public display to commence our 30 Days of Direct Action Campaign, three Faslane Peace Campers are currently dropping banners from the Clydebank landmark gantry crane in Glasgow. The banner reads, "Nuclear Disarmament. If Not Now, When?"!
       Planning to make a day of it, they have taken a lovely packed lunch and some literature. However, quite a few police vans were on scene almost immediately and are making efforts to remove them. This is the first of many anti-nuclear actions planned to mark the 30th anniversary of the Camp. In this run up to a Scottish Independence Referendum coupled with the Westminster vote on Trident replacement in waiting, we have a very real chance to affect the shape of the future UK nuclear defence policies. Scotland could hold the key to UK nuclear disarmament.
      Now is the time for a renewed anti-nuclear insurgency. Come to the camp and join in our 30 Days of Direct Action.

Faslane Flossie
e-mail:faslane30@riseup.net

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DEATH OF THE BEAST.

Taken From Anarchist News dot org.

          “On the daily 8 o’clock newscasts, the voice of the regime’s spokesmen has lost all confidence it used to have in the past. The state representatives attend fiestas, parades, restaurants and public streets only as long as they have assured an escape route, just in case they will have to run. Supermarkets are full of commodities and empty of consumers. The government’s people are trying on khaki clothes, military jackets and quotients and make their voice sound squeaky and metallic, just like the one of Michaloliakos¹or of Papadopoulos². The numbers of suicides are dashed. Some other farfetched guys pretend to be political messiahs, create parties and climb on TV crates to talk about the salvation of the people. The streets of the Metropolis are filled with cops and homeless people, cops and laid-off people, cops and protesters.

        The Beast, which all these years had swallowed us, is now ill and at the same time pregnant. Corpulent and aged, it slowly dies out with the threat either to take us with it or to offer us to its newborn child as its legacy. Some have already loved the beast and refuse to face its upcoming end; some, having been trapped in its stomach for so long, cannot imagine any possibility of living without it; some others felt quite comfortable all these years with the safety it provided them and suddenly got terrified. Nobody knows what is there, outside the Beast’s stomach. Yet, the Beast is either going to die, or give birth, or both, and it’s getting ready for all cases. Now it’s our turn to start getting ready. In order to have the upper hand, we have to catch to kill it. At the same time, we must learn to live without it.”

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