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An American activist group has shut down a local Elbit Systems facility in Massachusetts in protest of the fighting in the Middle East.

"Right now, Israel is using Elbit's weapons to massacre thousands of Palestinian men, women and children," an activist with the liberal organization CODEPINK said outside an arms manufacturing facility in Cambridge on Thursday.

Elbit Systems, an Israel-based international defense electronics company, is the largest weapons supplier to Israel. The company's American subsidiary, Elbit Systems of America, has operational facilities in Texas, New Hampshire, Alabama, Virginia and Florida, according to the company's website. The Cambridge Innovation Center was opened in December 2021 as part of the company's recent expansion, which also included the opening of facilities in Chicago, San Fransisco and Merrimack, New Hampshire.
...
Codepink has vocally supported the Palestinian cause since the fighting erupted on October 7, participating in several pro-Palestine rallies and calling on the U.S. to halt military aid to Israel.

"Israel has cut off food, water, electricity, and any sort of aid from reaching Gaza. They've also bombed the only way to get out. This is a genocide being carried out with US military backing," the organization wrote in a post on X, formerly Twitter, on Wednesday.

The protesters seen outside of the Elbit facility on Thursday said they chose to take action "because we live in beautiful, comfortable, white utopias, like Cambridge" and because "we also want to be an example that there's genuine anti-imperialist actions to take within our own communities."
...

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/israels-biggest-weapons-supplier-elbit-systems-targeted/ar-AA1i6H8A

 

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6 minutes ago, G650 said:

Who exactly are these people? I haven't seen anyone remotely trying to do this regarding this attack.

For starters, Hamas. I don't think @956 Worldwide is necessarily implying it is anyone on this thread. I mean, twitter right now is full of misinformation that is designed to make Israel look bad. You aren't actually suggesting that isn't happening, are you? 

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1 minute ago, Dahobbs said:

For starters, Hamas. I don't think @956 Worldwide is necessarily implying it is anyone on this thread. I mean, twitter right now is full of misinformation that is designed to make Israel look bad. You aren't actually suggesting that isn't happening, are you? 

Um, alright. I was just considering posters in this thread, but yeah, I agree Hamas definitely is and I actually deleted Twitter because it's utility fell off a cliff.

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9 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

I think the issue here is that you can have both (1) people honestly wanting to weed out inaccurate information in a time when it is prevalent, and (2) people wanting to do anything to hurt the credibility of Israel.  Unfortunately, criticisms directed at (2) can look a lot like criticisms directed at (1). I don't think @956 Worldwide's intent is to denigrate the former and I think he understands the need and want for accurate information. 

That’s not at all how I read his body of work on the Israel threads. 

And as G650 implied above, category (2) is a null set on Surly as far as I can tell. 

 

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6 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

For starters, Hamas. I don't think @956 Worldwide is necessarily implying it is anyone on this thread.

You’re too generous. Unless Hamas is tweeting about atrocity propaganda, 956 is clearly talking about those of us on these threads who have pointed out that it’s a well documented phenomenon and thus people should consider withholding judgment on sensational details until the dust settles a bit. 

Edited by BrickHorn
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3 minutes ago, BeardIP said:

Longhornmatt has also made good points, to which you negged him, which seemed petty.

I negged him because it’s ludicrous to insinuate that anyone is letting this drag out “indefinitely” when the events happened, what, 3 days ago? That’s not a serious criticism at this time. 

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6 minutes ago, BeardIP said:

Admitting that in the immediate fog of war and age of dis/misinformation that one should not readily accept things at face value and that attrocity propaganda is a powerful tool, at this point, is it controversial to admit that Hamas was beheading babies, with the confirmations we've seen thus far? Can you acknowledge it and the implications thereof?

What I’ve seen from the news today are conflicting reports. Which is completely unsurprising. 

What I will acknowledge is that it appears completely unambiguous that Hamas murdered hundreds of innocent civilians, including women and children. And that is more than sufficient for me to condemn them as an organization and to hope for retribution.

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9 minutes ago, BrickHorn said:

You’re too generous. Unless Hamas is tweeting about atrocity propaganda, 956 is clearly talking about those of us on these threads who have pointed out that it’s a well documented phenomenon and thus people should consider withholding judgment on sensational details until the dust settles a bit. 

And I think you're taking it too personal. He made general comments regarding atrocity deniers the same way you've made comments about atrocity propaganda. I haven't interpreted his posts to be direct attacks on anyone in this thread. I'm sure @956 Worldwide would be willing clarify. To me, the argument on this thread appears to be a misunderstanding. 

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NSIAP

https://www.ft.com/content/50f33279-d637-426c-bb8b-3ce3965c14f3?accessToken=zwAGB4qV2Udwkc9Q8zJ51jdCbNO7izzjllwU8w.MEQCIGSas8pZHWM4AgChRWgO6kIm2iI31NexQVlEc9UYtbp_AiBTbsHvdgSOaHhtRNPTstflzDKL0_xVRhJXNOWXaclWzQ&sharetype=gift&token=3a310e0e-9840-457c-b82a-d690cf22347f

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I look at people’s faces and see shock. Numbness. Our hearts are weighed down by constant burden. Over and over again we say to each other: it’s a nightmare. A nightmare beyond comparison. No words to describe it. No words to contain it. I also see a deep sense of betrayal. The betrayal of citizens by their government — by the prime minister and his destructive coalition. A betrayal of all we hold precious as citizens, and in particular as citizens of this state. A betrayal of its formative, and binding, idea. Of the most precious deposit of all — the Jewish people’s national home — which has been handed to its leaders to safeguard, and which they should have treated with reverence. But instead, what have we seen? What have we grown accustomed to seeing, as though it were inevitable?

What we’ve seen is the utter abandonment of the state in favour of petty, greedy agendas and cynical, narrow-minded, delirious politics. What is happening now is the concrete price Israel is paying for having been seduced for years by a corrupt leadership which drove it downhill from bad to worse; which eroded its institutions of law and justice, its military, its education system; which was willing to place it in existential danger in order to keep its prime minister out of prison. I also see a deep sense of betrayal. The betrayal of citizens by their government — by the prime minister and his destructive coalition Just think now of what we collaborated with for years. Think of all the energy, thought and money we wasted on watching Netanyahu and his family play out their Ceaușescu-style dramas.

Think of the grotesque illusions they produced for our disbelieving eyes. In the past nine months, millions of Israelis took to the streets every week to protest against the government and the man at its head. It was a movement of huge significance, an attempt to get Israel back on course, back to the lofty notion at the roots of its existence: creating a home for the Jewish people. And not just any home. Millions of Israelis wanted to build a liberal, democratic, peace-loving state that respects the faith of all people. But instead of listening to what the protest movement had to offer, Netanyahu chose to discredit it, to depict it as traitorous, to incite against it, to deepen the hatred among its factors. Yet he took every opportunity to declare how powerful Israel was, how determined, and above all — how well-prepared it was to face any threat.

Tell that to the parents driven mad with grief, to the baby thrown on the side of the road. Tell that to the hostages. Tell that to the people who voted for you. Tell it to the 80 breaches in the most advanced border fence in the world. But make no mistake, and do not be confused: with all the fury at Netanyahu and his people and his policies, the horror of these past few days was not caused by Israel. It was effected by Hamas. The occupation is a crime, but to shoot hundreds of civilians — children and parents, elderly and sick in cold blood — that is a worse crime. Even in the hierarchy of evil, there is a “ranking”. There is a scale of severity that common sense and natural instincts can identify. And when you see the killing fields of the music festival site, when you see Hamas terrorists on motorcycles chasing young partiers, some of whom are still dancing without realising what’s going on . . .  I do not know whether Hamas operatives should be called “animals”, but they have undoubtedly lost their humanity.

 

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1 hour ago, BrickHorn said:

He’s welcome to do so.

Well, for one, I was accused by a poster on this board (not you) of being a “fan of disinformation campaigns” when I originally posted this information from a credible outlet. And then when I posted a fucking POTUS quote, the same poster accused me of circulating “atrocity propaganda.” And as it’s slowly being confirmed and  there hasn’t been a race to admit that those original allegations of circulating disinformation were bullshit. 

That’s not you, and information sanitation is important. It’s also fair to have sensors up when the calls to be careful about believing stuff are only directed towards one side. And when the calls to be careful are based on spurious reasoning, like “be careful, this reporter is Jewish.” 

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1 hour ago, Dahobbs said:

I think the issue here is that you can have both (1) people honestly wanting to weed out inaccurate information in a time when it is prevalent, and (2) people wanting to do anything to hurt the credibility of Israel.  Unfortunately, criticisms directed at (2) can look a lot like criticisms directed at (1). I don't think @956 Worldwide's intent is to denigrate the former and I think he understands the need and want for accurate information. 

I would go a step further and say I'm not taking anything at face value that has come out of this conflict so far, and I would go as far to say that presenting the Israeli PM twitter account as a credible source for information is foolish, at this junction, when you consider who the PM of Israel is. How much credence did we give "From the Office of the President" communiques when Trump was in office? Propaganda runs deep, Hamas and Israel alike know how to utilize it well. I cannot trust the offices of Benjamin Netanyahu to give me credible information any more than I can trust Hamas' leadership to do the same.

I know one thing for sure, that until credible news sources start widely reporting it with corroborating evidence that goes beyond hearsay, I'm not going to take the reports of mass child beheadings at the kibbutz or whatever at face value, when the White House has walked back claims that Biden saw the photos for example. I'm not saying Hamas hasn't committed atrocities, I'm sure they have. The reason it's important is that this kind of propaganda is very commonly used to justify genocidal action or other kind of escalating warmongering throughout history. I always think back to the Kuwaiti babies lie that was used as a justification for the Gulf War when stuff like this comes up.

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9 minutes ago, Brian Fantana said:

I would go a step further and say I'm not taking anything at face value that has come out of this conflict so far, and I would go as far to say that presenting the Israeli PM twitter account as a credible source for information is foolish, at this junction, when you consider who the PM of Israel is. How much credence did we give "From the Office of the President" communiques when Trump was in office?

Este

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3 hours ago, bolverk said:

It's unsavory, but I assume they all used their real names in signing the letter and are all legal adults. Now, if some of them hadn't actually signed it, then, yeah, that's a problem.

There are reports that some of the groups never saw the statement before it went out with their signatures. I think members of those groups -- not simply officers -- are being doxxed as well because their group signed the petition. Those people never saw it either.

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11 minutes ago, C-Man said:

There are reports that some of the groups never saw the statement before it went out with their signatures. I think members of those groups -- not simply officers -- are being doxxed as well because their group signed the petition. Those people never saw it either.

Thanks for the clarification and adding more context. My reaction was based simply on that one post.

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35 minutes ago, 956 Worldwide said:

Well, for one, I was accused by a poster on this board (not you) of being a “fan of disinformation campaigns” when I originally posted this information from a credible outlet. And then when I posted a fucking POTUS quote, the same poster accused me of circulating “atrocity propaganda.” And as it’s slowly being confirmed and  there hasn’t been a race to admit that those original allegations of circulating disinformation were bullshit. 

That’s not you, and information sanitation is important. It’s also fair to have sensors up when the calls to be careful about believing stuff are only directed towards one side. And when the calls to be careful are based on spurious reasoning, like “be careful, this reporter is Jewish.” 

Yeah, that's not an accurate depiction of how that went and I have no idea what you are referring to with the "be careful, this reporter is Jewish" bit, but it certainly did not come from anything I posted. Sorry you ran here to push out a tweet and that the WH had to walk back what Biden said because it didn't hang with reality. 

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1 minute ago, Anastasis said:

Yeah, that's not an accurate depiction of how that went and I have no idea what you are referring to with the "be careful, this reporter is Jewish" bit, but it certainly did not come from anything I posted. Sorry you ran here to push out a tweet and that the WH had to walk back what Biden said because it didn't hang with reality. 

I was accused of pointing out that a reporter was jewish even though I thought he/she was a Briton and had no knowledge of their religion, either. People are just way too on edge about this topic.

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1 minute ago, chainsaw said:

I was accused of pointing out that a reporter was jewish even though I thought he/she was a Briton and had no knowledge of their religion, either. People are just way too on edge about this topic.

OK, well that had nothing to do with me and nothing to do with my exchange with 956, so one might wonder why he is suggesting that it did. 

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2 hours ago, longhornmatt said:

That’s pretty weak.  The issue is whether credible news sources corroborate it and report it as fact, not whether it’s been 3 days or 3 hours.

That’s a pretty naive view of how this works. “Credible news sources” often spread propaganda, even if unwittingly. Shit gets sorted out eventually, but it takes time. 

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1 hour ago, chainsaw said:

I was accused of pointing out that a reporter was jewish even though I thought he/she was a Briton and had no knowledge of their religion, either. People are just way too on edge about this topic.

I saw that one and it was ridiculous. Although, I once made out with my girlfriend during Schiendlers List so my opinion might not be appreciated.

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Babies decapitated by man with semi automatic rifle in the near east : turn it into glass!

Babies decapitated by man with semi automatic rifle in Texas : nothing can be done

Go ahead and level the house of the murderer in Texas as well.
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Article on the internal debate on how hard to go in and how long to stay. Discussions on what the IDF has done in the past in Gaza. Serious "this time is different" vibes, but we knew that. Ends with a rather ominous quote from the past and also a strong reminder.

 

As Israel Prepares for War in Gaza, Debate Is Over How and How Long
The country’s new unity government agrees that Hamas must be destroyed so it can never attack Israel again, but there is little appetite for a reoccupation.

Israel, already bombing intensively in Gaza, is gearing up for a major military operation there unlike any in the past, warning the world that for Israel, after the massacre of its citizens by Hamas on Saturday, the rules have changed.

“Every Hamas member is marked by death,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday night, reflecting the government’s aggressive new vocabulary. On Thursday, standing with the U.S. secretary of state, Antony J. Blinken, he compared Hamas to the Islamic State and said: “Hamas is ISIS, and just as ISIS was crushed, so too will Hamas be crushed.”

There is little discussion in the new unity government, which must approve the military’s plans, on the need to dismantle Hamas — to ensure that it can never threaten Israel again and that those responsible for the killing of more than 1,200 Israeli civilians are hunted down, officials say.

That a major operation is coming is hardly in doubt. Already, near the border, there are massive, overt Israeli troop and tank deployments, and the country has called up 360,000 reservists.

But there are tactical arguments over how any operation should start, whether it will begin massively or with raiding parties, and how to coordinate Israel’s overwhelming strength in land, sea and especially air power, said Yaakov Amidror, a retired major general who served as national security adviser to Mr. Netanyahu in an earlier government and has spoken to government officials.

There is of course also the issue of how best to encourage civilians to move out of the densely populated cities to safer ground, he added. And hanging over everything is the question of how long Israeli forces would stay.

“There is not one member of the cabinet who does not agree that Hamas must be smashed to ashes,” Mr. Amidror said. “How long it takes, the methods, how to minimize the number of civilian casualties, this is the dialogue.”

“If we have to take the whole Gaza Strip, we will do it slowly but surely, even if it takes six months,” he added, echoing what senior officers have said.

But there is little appetite for Israel to reoccupy the Gaza Strip, said Itamar Yaar, who helped plan Israel’s withdrawal of soldiers and citizens from Gaza in 2005 as deputy head of the National Security Council.

“Ground activity is not an end — it is a means” to achieve the political goal of ensuring that Hamas can never attack Israelis again, since that will be impossible only by air power, said Mr. Yaar, still a colonel in the reserves. But he warned that responsibility for governing the 2.3 million people in Gaza “is not good for us, and not for them.”

cont'd:

Spoiler

Ground operations will be varied, he suggested — taking over some territory, creating a buffer between different areas, doing raids based on intelligence and interrogations, trying to find and save hostages and trying to find and kill Hamas soldiers.

It is also clear to everyone, he said, “that a ground operation will have a high price in Palestinian lives and in Israeli casualties.”

The failure of the vaunted Israeli intelligence services and military to predict and confront the Hamas invasion has provided an important cautionary note, according to two defense officials who took part in meetings about the possibility of a ground invasion and who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.

Some senior officials questioned whether the army is capable of effectively conducting a fierce war against a decently equipped and trained guerrilla movement in a built-up area that is their own, the defense officials said.

But a failure to respond effectively to Hamas could create an “existential danger” for Israel, losing its deterrence in the larger Mideast, one official said, let alone, the second official said, destroying the vital covenant the state has to protect its citizens.

“The IDF is responsible for the security of the country and its citizens,” the chief of general staff for Israel, Gen. Herzi Halevi, said on Thursday, “and on Saturday, we did not live up to that.”

But the leap over the past is considerable. This time Israel must put aside some traditional values — that Israeli hostages must be protected and returned, that the lives of soldiers are precious and that Israel as a democracy strives to avoid international prosecution and calumny.

This time, the officials suggest, Israel must defeat Hamas even at the cost of its hostages and its soldiers and an extensive bombing campaign that is already causing hundreds of civilian deaths in Gaza.

In previous conflicts with Hamas in Gaza, but especially in 2009, there were significant debates about whether to reoccupy the territory and destroy Hamas, said Ofer Shelah, a former legislator and a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.

In 2009, the Israeli infantry entered Gaza and progressed so well and with so few casualties that the government of Ehud Olmert, the prime minister at the time, split over whether to continue the operation.

Mr. Olmert and Yoav Gallant, then head of the Southern Command and now the current defense minister, wanted to continue, Mr. Shelah said. Others, like Ehud Barak, the defense minister at the time, successfully argued that enough damage had been done and that Israel did not want to retain responsibility for the welfare of the Palestinians there.

There was a similar debate in the 2014 conflict with Gaza, which also saw a ground invasion by Israel and cost more Israeli lives than in 2009, with pressure on the government to retake Gaza or parts of it.

The military briefed the security cabinet then on the likely consequences. The predictions were many hundreds of dead soldiers and close to 10,000 dead Palestinians, said Udi Segal, the reporter who broke the story. The military said peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan could be at risk and the financial cost of controlling Gaza would be massive, Mr. Segal said in an interview.

The suspicion has always been that Mr. Netanyahu leaked the news of the briefing to bring some realism to the cost of a Gaza reoccupation. Mr. Segal will not disclose his source.

“I think the price today will be heavier than what was estimated then,” Mr. Segal said. “That still doesn’t mean that Israel won’t be forced to do it. All the previous moves were made with the thought that Hamas is not only a terrorist organization but also a government that can be reasoned with. Not anymore.”

The question is whether Israel will continue to try as hard as it has in the past — critics say, with little success — to obey the international rules of war against harming civilians.

President Biden has cautioned Mr. Netanyahu to respect the Geneva Convention and the rules of war, but Israel has already decided to cut off Gazans from electricity and water and bombed the official Rafah crossing to Egypt.

Israel has also announced that it will no longer alert residents of a building about to be bombed by dropping a nonexplosive projectile on the roof to warn them. Instead, it told Gazans to leave buildings that they know contain Hamas operatives or weapons, arguing that the convention permits the targeting of military objectives.

Israel is also being pushed to set up a humanitarian corridor to get urgently needed aid into Gaza, but that decision has not yet been made, according to Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, an army spokesman.

And Qatar, which has helped fund Gaza, is trying to set up a diplomatic channel to discuss the release of hostages by Hamas and a de-escalation. But a diplomat briefed on the talks, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid disrupting sensitive negotiations, said that neither side is interested in de-escalation now, and that the Israelis will not discuss anything until the women and children are released.

As for what may come afterward for Gaza, some point to 2002, when Israeli troops took over large areas of the occupied West Bank in difficult fighting during the second intifada, the largest Israeli military operation there since the 1967 war. Israeli troops finally withdrew from the cities and helped to strengthen the hold of the Palestinian Authority there.

But Gaza, said Mr. Amidror, is different; Israel has no interest in holding on to it and its population. Mr. Shelah suggests that it might be possible for the United States to organize a regional coalition to help Gaza including Egypt, the Gulf States and even Saudi Arabia, or to help restore the Palestinian Authority to power there.

But destroying Hamas entirely is a fool’s errand, said Mr. Yaar. “Hamas is a collection of people with religious faith, and this belief cannot be erased. What is possible is to damage their abilities.”

In 1956, Palestinian guerrillas attacked farmers in the fields of Nahal Oz, an Israeli kibbutz near Gaza, and killed and mutilated a young first lieutenant. The same kibbutz lost many people to Hamas last Saturday.

Then, Moshe Dayan, the prominent Israeli commander who was the chief of staff, gave a famous eulogy, in which he acknowledged that Israeli settlers were inspiring “potent hatred” among those “sitting in the refugee camps in Gaza,” because “before their eyes we have been turning the land and villages in which they and their forefathers lived into our own inheritance.”

He continued: “We are the generation of settlement, and without steel helmets and the maw of the cannon we will not be able to plant a tree or build a home.”

Their lives, more than anything, depended on their ability to defend themselves against the Arabs who wished to kill them, he said in summary. All the rest — development, the economy, society, and culture — were subordinate and must bend to the needs of security and survival.

Israel is today remembering his words.

 

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48 minutes ago, AnTiM said:

Argue all you like, there will be no peace until all of one side or the other are dead or leave the area.  Like it or don't, that is simply the sorry assed fact. 

This is such a horse shit take and I'm honestly so sick of reading it in this thread and elsewhere.

The hatred experienced on both sides has been slowly building over the past hundred years. It is learned behavior. Palestinians don't have hatred for Jews and a primal need to kill them baked into their fucking DNA, and Israelis don't have the primal need to oppress or kill Palestinians baked into theirs. This is all learned behavior. It can very goddamned well be unlearned. It is not an easy thing at all, and it absolutely would take a lot of time (decades) and concessions that the current Israeli government led by this coalition of absolute psychos is not likely to be willing to make on their own, but it abso-fucking-lutely can be done.

When you say shit like this, you know exactly what you're saying. Israelis won't leave and the Palestinians can't. There's only one side that has the capability to wipe out the other. You know what you're saying. It's probably not intentional, but it's there.

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Republican on Republican violence.  You hate to see it:

 

Glad to see you’re holding up well, all things considered.

 
I love history and politics (unfortunately on that last one) and I will tell you that even I’m surprised at the levels of anti-Semitism in America.  I’m not naive, I know it’s always been there but I’m surprised about the level.  (Like that dipshit Kanye West.)  I thought it was relegated to dark corners of the world and maybe some wing nuts in the US but over the last few years, I’ve learned I was wrong.
 
Just know we’re thinking of you.  Let us know if you need anything of just want t
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