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Goodbye to the Internet: Interference by Governments Is Already Here
Goodbye to the Internet: Interference by Governments Is Already Here
There is a saying attributed to the French banker Nathan Rothschild that “Give me control of a nation’s money and I care not who makes its laws.” Conservative opinion in the United States has long suspected that Rothschild was right and there have been frequent calls to audit the Federal Reserve Bank based on the presumption that it has not always acted in support of the actual interests of the American people. That such an assessment is almost certainly correct might be presumed based on the 2008 economic crash in which the government bailed out the banks, which had through their malfeasance caused the disaster, and left individual Americans who had lost everything to face the consequences.
Be that as it may, if there were a modern version of the Rothschild comment it might go something like this: “Give me control of the internet and no one will ever more know what is true.” The internet, which was originally conceived of as a platform for the free interchange of information and opinions, is instead inexorably becoming a managed medium that is increasingly controlled by corporate and government interests. Those interests are in no way answerable to the vast majority of the consumers who actually use the sites in a reasonable and non-threatening fashion to communicate and share different points of view.
The United States Congress started the regulation ball rolling when it summoned the chief executives of the leading social media sites in the wake of the 2016 election. It sought explanations regarding why and how the Russians had allegedly been able to interfere in the election through the use of fraudulent accounts to spread information that might have influenced some voters.
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US Conservatives Pursue a ‘Ben Option’ of Global Ramification
US Conservatives Pursue a ‘Ben Option’ of Global Ramification
Are we ‘Rome’? The question has weighed heavily on the minds of American conservatives, libertarians and Catholics at their various conferences. Is America headed the way of the Roman empire? Bureaucratic decay, massive public debt, an overstretched military, a political system seemingly incapable of responding to challenges – “the late Roman empire suffered these maladies, and so, some fear, does contemporary America”, notes The American Conservative, a journal which has been pursuing this ‘line’ diligently, and with a growing constituency, over a number of years. (Note that this is not the constituency of Vice-President Pence who represents an Evangelical, fundamentalist, literal insistence on imminent Redemption, with its ‘Rapture’ politics).
The American Conservative rather warns:
“If libertarians on the Right worry about structural collapse – cultural and religious conservatives add a moral and spiritual dimension to the debate. Rising hedonism, waning religious observance, ongoing break-up of the family, and a general loss of cultural coherence — to traditionalists, these are signs of a possible Dark Age ahead”.
And this is their narrative in response to these fears: Around the year 500 (CE), a generation after the Franks deposed the last Roman Emperor, a young Umbrian man (i.e. hailing from a rural province in Italy), was sent to Rome by his wealthy parents to complete his education. However, disgusted at ‘Rome’s decadence, he fled to the forest, to pray as a hermit.
His name was Benedict. And he went on to found a dozen monastic communities, and wrote his famous ‘rules’ which are credited with having helped an earlier culture and its values survive in needy times. Professor Russell Hittinger summed up Benedict’s lesson to the Dark Ages like this: “How to live life as a whole. Not a life of worldly success, so much as one of human success”.
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Faith No More: America’s Trust in Mainstream Media Hits Rock Bottom
Faith No More: America’s Trust in Mainstream Media Hits Rock Bottom
Gone are the days when US consumers looked to the nightly news and print media as a trusted source of information, and especially if they hold conservative views, according to a new poll by the Columbia Journalism Review.
Things are going from bad to worse for the US legacy media as its trust credentials have reached an all-time new low, as if that were possible. It has even achieved a lower trust rating than lawyers and members of Congress.
The introduction to the CJR poll provided the following ominous opening: “For decades, we’ve known that Americans don’t trust the press. What we haven’t known is how people view the makings of journalism, from the use of fact checkers and anonymous sources to the question of whether money skews journalistic decision-making. This new national poll for CJR answers those questions, and points to how big the trust gap remains.”
Indeed, the cynicism on the street should have every mainstream media purveyor in a state of absolute panic.
In one particular finding, it was revealed that many news consumers believe that reporters, seemingly in an effort to push forward with a political agenda, are too quick to run with a story before knowing all of the facts. This has never been more true before than in the Trump era where anything goes, so long as it trashes conservatives.
We have just witnessed ample proof of that media tendency in several high-profile cases. This week, attorneys for Nick Sandmann, a student from Covington Catholic High School, filed a lawsuit against the Washington Post, seeking $250 million in damages for negligence.
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Final Steps of the Multipolar Revolution: Containing the US in Europe
Final Steps of the Multipolar Revolution: Containing the US in Europe
We discussed in the previous article how China and Russia are using diplomatic, economic and military means in areas like Asia and the Middle East to contain the belligerence and chaos unleashed by the United States. In this analysis, we will examine the extent to which this strategy is working in Europe. In the next and final article, we will look at the consequences of the “America First” doctrine in relation to South America and the Monroe Doctrine.
The United States has in the last three decades brought chaos and destruction to large parts of Europe, in spite of the common myth that the old continent has basked in the post-WWII peace of the American-led world order. This falsehood is fueled by European politicians devoted to the European Union and eager to justify and praise the European project. But history shows that the United States fueled or directed devastating wars on the European continent in Yugoslavia in the 1990s, with the conflict between Georgia and Ossetia at the beginning of the 1990s, with the war in Georgia in 2008, and in the coup in Ukraine in 2014, with the ensuing aggression against the Donbass.
The major problem for Washington’s European allies has always been summoning the will to contain US imperialism. For many years, especially since the end of the Cold War, European countries have preferred to defer to Washington’s positions, confirming their status as colonies rather than allies. It is fundamental to recognize that European politicians have always been at the service of Washington, eager to prostrate themselves to American exceptionalism, favoring US interests over European ones.
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What If They Started a War and No One Showed Up?
What If They Started a War and No One Showed Up?
The humiliation of United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Warsaw last week was a good thing. The ancient Greeks, exercising their demonstrated ability to synthesize defining characteristics, had a word for it: hubris. Hubris is when one develops an extreme and unreasonable feeling of confidence in a certain course of action that inevitably leads to one’s downfall when that conceit proves to be based on false principles.
Pompeo was in Warsaw for a “summit” arranged by the US State Department in partnership with the Polish government to discuss with representatives of sixty nations what to do about the fractious situation in the Middle East. In advance, he promised that the meeting would “deliver really good outcomes.” The gathering was initially conceived as a “war against Iran” precursor, intended to pull together a coalition against the Persians, but when it became clear that many of the potential participants would balk at such a designation, it assumed a broader agenda concerning “Peace and Security in the Middle East.”
Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine and Syria were not, not surprisingly, invited as some of them were the expected targets of whatever remedial action the conference might recommend. Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu was, of course, present, tweeting in advance of the gathering that it would be all about “war against Iran.” He also characteristically delivered a warning that Iran was planning a “second holocaust” for his country.
Many countries, including regional power Turkey, and global powers Russia and China refused to participate at all. The European Union, the French and the Germans all sent career diplomats to the meeting rather than their Foreign Ministers while Britain’s Foreign Minister Jeremy Hunt only agreed to attend at the last minute after he was granted his wish to head a discussion session on Yemen.
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Russia and China Are Containing the US to Reshape the World Order
Russia and China Are Containing the US to Reshape the World Order
Fortunately the world today is very different from that of 2003, Washington’s decrees are less effective in determining the world order. But in spite of this new, more balanced division of power amongst several powers, Washington appears ever more aggressive towards allies and enemies alike, regardless of which US president is in office.
China and Russia are leading this historic transition while being careful to avoid direct war with the United States. To succeed in this endeavor, they use a hybrid strategy involving diplomacy, military support to allies, and economic guarantees to countries under Washington’s attack.
The United States considers the whole planet its playground. Its military and political doctrine is based on the concept of liberal hegemony, as explained by political scientist John Mearsheimer. This imperialistic attitude has, over time, created a coordinated and semi-official front of countries resisting this liberal hegemony. The recent events in Venezuela indicate why cooperation between these counter-hegemonic countries is essential to accelerating the transition from a unipolar to a multipolar reality, where the damage US imperialism is able to bring about is diminished.
Moscow and Beijing lead the world by hindering Washington
Moscow and Beijing, following a complex relationship from the period of the Cold War, have managed to achieve a confluence of interests in their grand objectives over the coming years. The understanding they have come to mainly revolves around stemming the chaos Washington has unleashed on the world.
The guiding principle of the US military-intelligence apparatus is that if a country cannot be controlled (such as Iraq following the 2003 invasion), then it has to be destroyed in order to save it from falling into Sino-Russian camp. This is what the United States has attempted to do with Syria, and what it intends to do with Venezuela.
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Merkel Stands Against Trump’s Energy Dominance
Merkel Stands Against Trump’s Energy Dominance
German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s speech at the Munich Security Conference this weekend was met with resounding approval from the gathering. Throwing barbs back at US Vice President Mike Pence over a myriad of issues Merkel expressed Europe’s dissatisfaction with the Trump administration’s belligerence and lack of diplomacy.
And that’s putting it mildly.
Trump’s pressuring Germany over the Nordstream 2 pipeline, withdrawing from the JCPOA and increasing NATO funding all have a common theme which even for an EU-firster like Merkel is a non-starter.
Trump is trying to make Germany’s economy uncompetitive by raising the cost of imported energy.
This is obvious when we look at the US’s opposition to Nordstream 2. Trump has made no bones about his distaste for the pipeline because he’d rather Germany, his ally, buy beautiful, clean LNG from Cheniere in Louisiana rather than from dirty, nasty gas from Russia, his enemy.
The other two issues, however, are just as energy-focused for Trump, or at least, economically-focused. Let’s start with Iran.
The JCPOA was signed in 2015 when it looked like the Operation to Blow Apart Syria for Fun and Profit was on the verge of victory. Giving Iran a lifeline to begin selling oil on the open market again was Europe’s ‘get’ in that war.
Turkey would ‘get’ Idlib, Aleppo, Afrin and Manbij. The Saudis and Qataris would ‘get’ gas pipelines into Europe. Israel breaks up the Shia Crescent with the newly-independent Kurdish territory and ‘get’ a US/Israeli campaign to undermine Iran’s government while leaving a hotbed of terrorism to export around the region.
Elijah Magnier called this creating a ‘Syrian jungle.’ I just call it vile.
But it didn’t work because of Putin, Hezbollah and the IRGC with China playing silent partner.
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Italian Meddling at French Maidan: When Will Russia Be Accused?
Italian Meddling at French Maidan: When Will Russia Be Accused?
Cutting diplomatic relations and sending one’s ambassador back home are acts associated with declaring war, which is what makes France’s decision to pull their ambassador out of Rome very unusual to say the least. The rhetoric from the French side even gives off a sort of “pre-war” aroma declaring that the Italians have supposedly made “unfounded attacks” against French policy regarding migration and EU economics, but the main spark that lit the flame of this decision to call back the ambassador is related to Italian meddling in the “yellow vest” protests.
The wildly diverse and bloody yellow vest protests are continuing throughout France with no sign of stopping anytime soon. It is important to note that all protest movements including those with yellow vests are organized by “someone”. There has never been a time where 10,000 people randomly all chose to simultaneously go clean their local park. But with talented organizers and some marketing 10,000 can be swayed to show up and clean said park no problem.
The driving force(s) behind the yellow vest protestors seems to be either unknown to the public or so radically diverse (there are many different groups with very different beliefs who are all on the “yellow” side) that there is no single actor driving this movement across the country.
Of course, by default there have been accusations that Russia is behind the chaos. When in doubt (and in the West) always blame Russia and never your own anti-populist policies bringing ruin to one of the most prosperous nations on Earth.
At this point there is now an official boogeyman for France to blame and surprisingly it is not Russia, but Italy as Italian Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio has met and openly been photographed with key players inside the yellow vest movement.
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American Suspension of INF Treaty is Aimed at China
American Suspension of INF Treaty is Aimed at China
So it’s done. The US has suspended its participation in the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, and Russia soon followed suit. This almost certainly spells an end to this late Cold War relic, which banned the two superpowers from deploying ground-launched ballistic missiles and cruise missiles with ranges of 500-5,500km. There have been recriminations all round. But in the end, so far as two of the world’s three most greatest military Powers are concerned, upholding the INF Treaty could never have been done exactly to the letter.
The US has specified Russia’s Novator 9M729 (NATO designation: SSC-8) as the offending missile that finally prompted US action. Russian nuclear weapons analyst Pavel Podvig has noted that it is very similar to the Russian Navy’s Kalibr-NK cruise missile, which has a range well beyond 500 km and has been touted as a potential “carrier killer”. Podvig goes on to speculate that if the US had observed a test of the 9M729 from a land-based Iskander-M launcher – even if on just a single occasion – then all of them “would have to be eliminated” by the formal terms of the treaty. This is obviously not something that Russia could reasonably be expected to carry out.
Moreover, any number of US missile systems can be considered to be in breach of the INF Treaty. For instance, the Russians have argued that America’s AEGIS Ashore program – a ground-based cruise missile, for all intents and purposes – can also be considered to be in systemic breach of the INF Treaty. Incidentally, this system was itself enabled by America’s unilateral withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia in 2002, under the George W. Bush administration.
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How Chrystia Freeland Organized Donald Trump’s Coup in Venezuela
How Chrystia Freeland Organized Donald Trump’s Coup in Venezuela
On Monday, February 5th, Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland announced that the 14 countries of the Lima Group — who had actually formed themselves under her direction into this new group on 8 August 2017 in order to overthrow and replace Venezuela’s current President Nicholas Maduro — have now been joined (though she didn’t say to what extent) by the EU, and by 8 other individual countries. She stated:
“Today, we have been joined by our Lima Group partners, from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and Saint Lucia. We have also been joined in our conversations with our partners from other countries, for this Lima Group ministerial meeting. These include Ecuador, the European Union, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States.”
She, along with US President Donald Trump, had, all along, been the actual leaders of this international diplomatic effort, to violate the Venezuelan Constitution blatantly, so as to perpetrate the coup in Venezuela.
Her active effort to replace Venezuela’s Government began with her formation of the Lima Group, nearly two years ago.
Canada’s Ottawa Citizen headlined on 19 August 2017, “Choosing Danger”, and their reporter Peter Hum interviewed Canada’s Ambassador to Venezuela, Ben Rowswell, who was then retiring from the post. Rowswell said that Venezuelans who wanted an overthrow of their Government would continue to have the full support of Canada’s Government: “‘I think that some of them were sort of anxious that it (the embassy’s support for human rights and democracy in Venezuela) might not continue after I left,’ Rowswell said. ‘I don’t think they have anything to worry about because Minister (of Foreign Affairs Chrystia) Freeland has Venezuela way at the top of her priority list.’”
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The Venezuelan Coup and Gilets Jaunes: Great-Power Politics In a Multipolar World Order
The Venezuelan Coup and Gilets Jaunes: Great-Power Politics In a Multipolar World Order
The protests seen in France and the interference in the domestic politics of Venezuela highlight Western double standards, which stand in contrast to the respect for international law maintained by China, India and Russia.
In France on November 17, 2018, hundreds of thousands of citizens, angered by the diminishing quality of their lives, the social iniquity in the country, and the widening gap between rich and poor, took to the streets in protest. The protests can easily be encapsulated in the following slogan: “We the people against you the elite.”
This slogan has been a recurring theme throughout the West over the last three years, shaking up the British establishment with the pro-Brexit vote, discombobulating the United States with Trump’s victory, overturning Italy with the Lega/Five-Star government, and bringing Merkel’s star crashing down in Germany. Now it is the turn of Macron and France, one of the least popular leaders in the world, leading his country into chaos, with peaceful protests drawing a bloody response from the authorities following ten weeks of unceasing demonstrations.
In Venezuela, Western elites would like us to believe that the situation is worse than in France in terms of public order, but that is simply a lie. It is a media creation based on misinformation and censorship. In Europe, the mainstream media has stopped showing images of the protests in France, as if to smother information about it, preferring to portray an image of France that belies the chaos in which it has been immersed for every weekend over the last few months.
In Caracas, the right-wing, pro-American and anti-Communist opposition continues the same campaign based on lies and violence as it has customarily conducted following its electoral defeats at the hands of the Bolivarian revolution.
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Bertrand Russell Diagnoses Washington War Madness and the Coming Rape of Venezuela
Bertrand Russell Diagnoses Washington War Madness and the Coming Rape of Venezuela
It is a scene depressingly familiar to inhabitants of Political Washington over the past 30 years since US armed invasion of small or vulnerable countries came back into fashion after being briefly discredited following the Vietnam War. This time it is Venezuela and its twice democratically-elected President Nicolas Maduro that is being demonized as a Diabolical Menace to the very survival of All That is Good and True.
One does not have to uncritically admire everything President Maduro has done as leader of his country to confidently predict what will happen if the US government succeeds in toppling him and imposing its own ridiculous figurehead – boyish, fearful, eager-to-please little Juan Guiado: Venezuela’s version of Mario Rubio and the nonentity being touted as his country’s liberator (how the spirit of Simon Bolivar must be raging – or laughing uncontrollably!).
Then, the miseries of the unfortunate Venezuelan people will not end: They will only just have begun.
Washington’s Armchair Heroes are determined to transform the Bolivarian Republic into the Gulliverian Republic – a joke of a state presided over by worthless tiny midgets.
We have seen this same infernal script play out in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Ukraine with efforts to impose it on Syria and Yemen.
The outcome is always the same: Worse wars, worse suffering, huge increases in civilian death tolls, collapses of economies, violent anarchy, flourishing extreme Islamist and other terrorist groups where previously there were none, enormous rackets sexually enslaving children and young women, soaring per capita drug abuse rates.
The philosopher-statesmen and wise pundit-prophets of Washington shake their heads sadly and move on every looking for new worlds to liberate – and destroy.
Why is this happening yet again as it has remorselessly before under the previous five successive US presidents?
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Pompeo’s ‘Pandora’s Box’
Pompeo’s ‘Pandora’s Box’
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, taking advantage of political bedlam inside the Donald Trump White House, has busied himself with “regime change” in Venezuela. Pompeo, working with National Security Adviser John Bolton and Iran-contra felon and arch-neo-conservative Elliott Abrams, worked secretly with Venezuela’s self-proclaimed “interim president,” Juan Guaido, to overthrow that nation’s duly-elected president, Nicolas Maduro.
Pompeo, Bolton, Vice President Mike Pence, and Abrams have been secretly negotiating with Guaido and the right-wing governments of Presidents Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil and Ivan Duque of Colombia to stage opposition demonstrations in Venezuela following Maduro’s January 10 inauguration in Caracas to a second presidential term. Maduro was re-elected as president in May 2018 in an election boycotted by the opposition and not recognized by the United States and its allies. Pence, Bolton, and Pompeo’s conspiracy against Venezuela included a series of timed events: Peru and Paraguay closing their embassies in Caracas after Maduro’s inauguration; the staging of violent anti-Maduro protests outside the Venezuelan embassies in Lima, Buenos Aires, Bogota, Quito, Ottawa, and Madrid; holding a massive protest among right-wing Venezuelan exiles in Miami; and Argentina expelling all Venezuelan government personnel from the country.
Neo-conservatives always tend to take advantage of situations to fill political power vacuums and as Trump’s administration has been rocked by one scandal after another, war mongers and regime change activists like Pompeo, Bolton, and now, Abrams, have grabbed key positions within the Trump administration. On January 25, Pompeo announced that Abrams was being appointed as the special envoy overseeing US policy toward Venezuela. But that announcement came after Pompeo, Bolton, Abrams, and Pence had secret meetings with Guaido in mid-December 2018 in Washington to coordinate regime change activities to force Maduro from office after his January inauguration.
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The Global Plague of Nepotism: Political Monarchy Creation in Action
The Global Plague of Nepotism: Political Monarchy Creation in Action
Political nepotism is nothing more than nascent monarchism. And it is on an increase around the world with the rise of political dynasties exercising control over both government and business. These de facto monarchies mask themselves as democracies, however, they are turning some democracies into kleptocracies, where a select group of corrupt politicians loot the national treasuries, and kakistocracies, where a group of unqualified and corrupt individuals – sometimes related by birth and marriage – dominate politics and business.
In fact, the United States has, through its history, practiced some of the worse political nepotism on the planet. While not all political dynasties have been malevolent, with some, like the Roosevelts of New York, Kennedys of Massachusetts, Lincolns of Illinois, Browns of California, Gores of Tennessee, Grahams of Florida, and Cuomos of New York being quite beneficial to the people of the United States, the same cannot be said of the Bushes, Tafts, MacArthurs, du Ponts, Wallaces of Alabama, Romneys, Cheneys, and the newcomers, the Trumps. Whereas Abraham and Robert Todd Lincoln, Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, John and Robert Kennedy, Pat and Jerry Brown, and Mario and Andre Cuomo have generally sought to better the lives of US citizens, George H. W. and George W. Bush, William Howard and Robert Taft, Douglas MacArthur and Douglas MacArthur II, George and Mitt Romney, Dick and Elizabeth Cheney, and, more recently Donald Trump, Ivanka Trump, and Jared Kushner, have been set on reducing the commitment of government to serve the interests of the people.
The rise of malevolent democracies is pervasive in countries around the world. One of the most egregious examples of a kleptocracy is Malaysia, where that nation’s former prime minister, Najib Abdul Razak, is accused of siphoning between $700 million to $1 billion from Malaysia’s sovereign wealth fund, 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB).
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Of Suspected Spies & Cathedrals… and Western Media Hypocrisy
Of Suspected Spies & Cathedrals… and Western Media Hypocrisy
It’s hilarious to see the double standards of Western media applied in the case of alleged American spy Paul Whelan who is being detained in Russia and facing trial.
Whelan, a former US marine, was denied bail this week in a Moscow court after it emerged that he had been found in possession of state secrets while supposedly holidaying in Russia.
Western media widely aired the theory that the American man has been “set up” by Russian state security after he had received a USB computer stick from someone while staying in a Moscow hotel last month. The person whom he received the disk from has not been identified, but presumably he or she was known to the American, otherwise why would he have accepted the item?
Whelan claims he was in Russia as a tourist and that he didn’t check the contents of the computer mini-disk at the time because he assumed it contained “images of a cathedral he had visited”. He was reportedly arrested soon after receipt of the disk, on December 28, by Federal Security Service (FSB) officers.
This sounds eerily familiar. Remember the two Russian men who visited Salisbury in March last year at around the time of the alleged poisoning of former Kremlin spy Sergei Skripal? Months later, those two men were identified as “suspects” on British CCTV cameras whose images were broadcast by media. Both then promptly came forward to give an interview to Russian media in order to clear their names, which they confirmed as Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov.
Petrov and Boshirov claimed they were in Salisbury around March 4 as tourists, not as Kremlin assassins as the British media were sensationally alleging. Asked why they were in Salisbury, the pair said it was to visit the medieval English town’s “famous cathedral” and its 123-meter spire.
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