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tv   Opaque Worlds  Deutsche Welle  June 2, 2022 8:15pm-8:53pm CEST

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you know that they've helped out with the schools. we would still be that small town struggling to find an industry to come here. after the, the early ninety's timber industry shut down below, closing saw mills saw prime views, unemployment rate rise to about 20 percent. then came facebook, but in 2022, the data center employed only about 350 people. instead of taxes, facebook makes donations to the town for things like school renovations, courses, and programming, and infrastructure. does that make prime village politicians susceptible to influence? i think their 3rd um, our leaders. why? because they know they'll get money from they know they're not support some of the projects and things and the economy itself can't afford to do. they're more powerful than the government. i mean, they really are and i don't know where or hell
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from a legislative point of view, you can interact with something that you can't anticipate, that that's a problem. facebook is opening its 11th data center on the site in 2023. the facility will soon have an area of 4000000 square meters. the company confirms that it is given out $3000000.00 in voluntary grants. yes, facebook has a huge presence here. and yes, a lot of people work work up there, but i don't think, i guess we're a facebook city in the fact that we're one of their partners and we've worked closely with them to build like they have. but i think our identity still is a timber, a timber town, whole facebook's tax break and trying ville won't end until 2027. only then will the town find out whether it's deal with the company was
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a good one. it isn't just small towns that have to negotiate with tech. james entire countries depend on them. how did individual companies get so big? one answer takes us back to 2007. the start of the financial crisis and, and the soaring fortunes of financial services firm, black rock as the banking sector faltered then federal reserve chair timothy guyton are allowed black rock to oversee the winding down and restructuring of banks. so come the financial crisis. you have to, for instance, rapidly dismantle a bank like bear stearns. who do you asked to do it for you? while you don't really want expertise in the federal reserve of new york, the habits hands too dirty. you draw the contract this out and you find people who really know their way around this, like black rock, for instance, at the time, a relatively unknown company, but with huge expertise black rock close the banks and bottom,
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ailing financial institutions. it became the 1st big winner of the crisis. by 2020, the group was managing assets worth 9 trillion us dollars. and then crucially, it becomes a predator. so it becomes an entity that has the ready cash to buy other people's assets as they look for capital black rock also struck in europe, had rising the european central bank and buying up a share of major british bank barclays in 2009 and black hawk uses the embarrassment of barclays 2 pounds on this portfolio and dismantle it and incorporated into black box business. and it jumps black rog away from its major competitors at the time schools and vanguard, and pushes black rock into a much bigger lee. so help you, god. so help me in an effort to prop up failing banks. you as president bush and obama pumped massive amounts of cheap money into the system, buying stock in the banks with state capital. if you delay acting on an economy of
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this severity, then you potentially create a negative spiral. that becomes much more difficult for to get out of the whole strategy in early 2000 to $9.00 is to prevent the avalanche rolling again. that's the key, right? you can do word creation, you can do stimulus, you can begin to repair american society with a health care program. but well, you can only do any of that if you stall the banks pooling. the financial system didn't collapse. the u. s. economy began to recover in part because investment capital was so cheap. one man especially took clever advantage of that fact. jeff bezos, economics professor scott galloway, has analyzed the rise of amazon and people forget in your early to thousands. a lot of smart analysts thought that amazon was gonna face liquidity crisis and could go
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out of business, and their stock underperformed for the better part of a decade. basis, focused on spending revenue and easily gotten capital on the optimization of his supply chain. the goal was to make products, reach the customer faster. it's easy to put up a website, but it's hard to make it really good and it's hard to make sure that the stuff arrives in good condition on time. what's unusual about amazon, it's not a victory marketing, it's not a victory of innovation. really, it's a victory of supply chain. they have managed to get more products, more people faster than anyone else in the world. amazon is one of the most valuable companies in the world. along with apple, google and facebook. as of september 2021, they're worth together around 7 trillion dollars. you show up with more capital than your competitors. the odds are you are going to win. so access to cheap capital is important and has become a key strategy. now. at amazon growth is everything,
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employees are monitored, forming a union is difficult. there are 2000000 amazon retailers that depend on the giant for their survival. much like your koba i have, you know, like on since the chef, when our whole business model is aligned with amazon, without amazon, when we wouldn't exist on the amazon is basically our lifeline log lim thought off . amazon takes care of storage, shipping, and returns for yahoo. bah, in return, it takes commission for every euro of sales who bought her house to hand over $0.30 to amazon in 2019 amazon mead. almost $60000000000.00 is from these commissions alone problem. as people will say, well, it's a 2 sided tray, the retailers don't have to work with amazon and i would get that's not really true . amazon is now 50 percent of all
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e commerce. so to not be on amazon is really to not have an e commerce offering, and that just isn't an option for most people. germany's online trade association has surveyed almost 1000 retailers about their experience with amazon. nearly 80 percent of respondents saw amazon as a difficult partner that dictated prices and encourage dependency on the platform. in may 2021, amazon cut who backers, inventory, half of his products were removed, resulting in a 6 figure los in turnover. the kinds of foster just minus was enough. you don't sleep very well when suddenly the foundation of your business is taken away and you have to put all of your employees on reduced hours overnight to print with no notice banquets on my chicken mustn't. this is any that's not something you can prepare for it and try to switch gets split and, and then suddenly you're virtually out of business. awesome, perfect. responding to an inquiry. amazon gave the pandemic as the reason for its
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actions. warehouses were overcrowded and hygiene measures had changed its logistics procedures. when did the lack of response? couple of these inventory caps go on for another 2 months. i'll have to close down as a does. i wouldn't survive because the overhead costs keep running low vital ups. i have 35 employees here when i have to pay, and most amazon didn't pay compensation who butter had to bear the loss in turnover on his own. meanwhile, amazon founder jeff bezos was flying into space of his own rocket. the market power of big tech firms also stems from buying up other companies, both inside and outside their own sector, they purchase hundreds of competitors. then they either use the newly acquired technology or barre it. apple park in silicon valley. the headquarters
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of another tech giant apple was founded in 1976 on starting capital of just $1300.00 us dollars. in 2022 is the most valuable company in the world, with a stock market value of around 3 trillion dollars. much of its profit coming from the app store founders, steve jobs presented it in 2008. as a platform for selling software apple as sold nearly 2000000000 i phones world wide. the success of software can depend on its presence in the app store for which apple charges 15 to 30 percent of revenue. davi dynamite. hanson can't accept that. the entrepreneur lives in malibu, california. he became famous in tech circles with his base camp software. and
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so she tells if you don't like a deal, you can just get out of here. you can just shut down your visit. how is that a choice? it's it just felt like mafia tactics even the way they showed up to demand. the money was just despicable. i know my hands on wanted to distribute his new email software without paying huge commissions and producers 30 percent of the whole economy and printing to say, like my said 30 percent, not 40 percent. maybe we should just raise our prices. this is a captive audience, nonetheless, which is exactly the essence of monopoly power. other companies are also taking action against apple's commission in 2019 spotify sued in europe, prompting the european commission to initiate anti trust proceedings. in the u. s. game developer epic games also filed an anti trust complaint in 2020 apple c. e o jim cook had to defend himself in court. this is about the strap. all this isn't
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about saying anyone. this is about giving us all a chance. an access to the market and the tech companies decide under what conditions others can enter their system. in the process, they collect oceans of data. facebook holding company meta alone, as a total of $3000000000.00 users, thanks to it's acquisitions of whatsapp and instagram. shashana zuba of an author and professor america at harvard cause it surveillance capitalism. they invade our private lives through surveillance. they extract from our lives, rendering what they extract as behavioral data. and then they claim those behavioral data as their private property. that's how surveillance capitalism works. this is a fundamentally illegitimate operation. the deed is used to advertise
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products and for political campaigns. surveillance, capitalism became the dominant economic paradigm. and it went from google to facebook from facebook, it became the default option in the tech sector. it reset the bar for investors because with a surveillance dividend, you produce more revenue more quickly than you know, doing capitalism the old fashioned way, which is actually creating products and service that meet people's real needs. marita shocked it from the netherlands is a former member of the european parliament. she's now international policy director of stanford university cyber policy center. my sense is that one of the biggest problems that silicon valley leaders have is that they believe that because their intentions are good, that the outcomes will be good. and that is really hard for them to imagine that
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despite their good efforts, some things have gone completely down the drain shocker and zoom off are part of a panel of experts that want to keep an eye on facebook. meanwhile, activists so placed body bags outside facebook's washington office. they see the company's role in election interference and misinformation, as deadly. especially during the pandemic. even if you may think, well selling ads, this is long, you know, life threatening. it can lead to dynamics that are life threatening with micro targeting with the going viral hatred with people taking to the streets because they actually believe that the election was stolen. wow. if you design the architecture for data and information with profit goals, that those become dominant and have been out of sight, even if society is the price. facebook founder mark sucker berg has testified before investigative committees several times like here in the us senate in 2018.
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my top priority has always been in our social mission of connecting people building community and bringing the world closer together. the u. s. government has been pursuing several cases against the tech giants in the early 20 twenty's, erica, around race, and the federal trade commission is suing facebook for creating a monopoly. the department of justice is suing google for life. the house of representatives is even considering breaking up the companies so far without much success. so i think things have flipped an hour, innovators and our tech companies believe that they in fact have the upper hand and more resources and are more powerful than the government that supposed to regulate our big corporations more powerful. the nations for rummage, sweeney ross on of the university of california. that's a crucial question. who is influencing how we feel,
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what we believe, what we think? who we connect with what we know read, there's no question that that's a crank far more intensely and ubiquitously been governance of our lives by, you know, a private tech company, a google's google search results facebook feeds, et cetera. right? and i think the awareness of the hearts of putting so much trust and responsibility in the hands of retail and advertising companies was a mistake. it really was a big mistake. and i think it's important that democratic governments start to use technology to advance their own democratic agendas and not have tech companies use them to advance their own corporate agendas. many critics or who all the you will curbed the power of tech giant to new directives from 2020 are expected to get
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things started. the digital service act or dsa, aimed to ensure that platforms like facebook and twitter take on more responsibility when it comes to things like the leading illegal content and maintaining transparency and fundamental rights. the digital markets act. dna defines fair competition rules to put simply allowing competition and sharing data . amazon, apple and google would be affected by the directives. european commissioner for competition, margaret of estonia, is taking companies to task with that size also comes responsibility. and then line up what you have to do and what you cannot do. facebook and its fellow rivals are fighting the planned regulations with help from lobbyists. in 2020 alone u. s. tech companies spent around 100000000 euros on political influence in brussels. they hired x politicians with the best connections. facebook even employs
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a former british deputy prime minister nick clay migration and existed of him fallen english bewitched m. duke wasn't. there's definitely an imbalance. wilson. yeah. how much of gotten to the big tech companies have a lot of resources to life jamita, but as members of the european parliament, we have very small teams with 3 or 4 employees in brussels, who write policies, carter communists and snap coordinator. and it's clear that as an individual m e p, you can't compete with the lobbying power, the big tech companies, hong kong, did you call or their resources or smart didn't this was easy to launched. ah ross most andresen represents the greens in the european parliament. he receives weekly requests for talks from lobbyists, this time it's a representative from amazon, amazon master. you're an amazon just wants to push it, chris, i just see the inversion ones 1st. i think they'll try to give us suggestions on how to water down the law. so it doesn't affect the see or doesn't change anything
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at the core of their business model can figure shift from underneath and nuts. lobbying isn't to legal but isn't legitimate. andrea schwab represents the center, right, cd you in the european parliament, as well as under their own names. large corporations exert influence covertly through trade associations. uncommon seems to yes, they come to you as the 1st european association of american companies. then they come as the european association of digital companies. i and then the european association of tech companies out in the american business association. i'm like, than the american business association for tech companies. it won't uncall, they come and they come and they come at some point as a member of parliament. so you have to ask how much time you can spend on their concerns. shouldn't we be spending much more time on the concerns of other citizens and business eliminates either. lobbying is used to put pressure on undesired regulation. and if that doesn't work, there's a longer legal route. the european commission is proposing creating 80 positions to
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enforce the rules. but apples, legal department alone has a total of $900.00 employees. of course we cannot compete when it comes to the funding of lobbyists, and are we not compete when it comes to the number of lawyers? so you now, what we have to put into the process is of course a dedication and to get this right, go facebook and apple also put large sums into lobbying in the u. s. when the software developer adopted heiner, my grandson decided to fight apples. market power in 2021. he found out how strong that pressure is in several u. s. states. when i testified for the arizona, ah, house and the chair woman of that committee as her opening statement for the proceedings that apple had bought every lobbyist in town. and that
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before the hearing had even had a chance to happen. apple had tried to squat to do this, the company hired lobbyist, kirk adams, a former chief of staff to arizona governor doug doocy. the planned law would have enabled app providers to circumvent apples high commissions. arizona would have been the 1st state to crack down on the monopoly. in fact, i was sitting on a soon called for that final um meeting and we were waiting to deliver our testimony. and then in the middle of the proceedings, they simply said, oh actually we're not even gonna hear this bill. something has come up, it is no longer the agenda and you witnessed that anything. is this movie, there was no vote. instead, a deal was struck behind closed doors, the law that would have endangered apples market power was forwarded to
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a similar regulation. also failed in north dakota in 2021. so that was really just frightening to see up front. that power as being conjured by this monopoly and success gives you the resources to squash democratic accountability that when sovereign states like north dakota and arizona are not even powerful enough to hear a bill to bring it to a final vote. when asked about what happened, abil admitted, exerting influence, but defended his actions, saying this legislation threatens to destroy this very successful model, as well as the privacy and security mechanisms. our customers expect is the power of global mega corporations, a danger to democracy. one of the steps to tyranny was when private power overran.
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government government is supposed to represent our best interest and be a counter balance or a ballast, a private power. there will always pursue profits and ignore the extra nowadays, whether it's teen depression or misinformation or a weapon ization of our elections. and there are more, there are more full time lobbyist work for amazon, living in washington, dc. it and there are full time us and there are sitting us senators, the p. r and communications department of facebook. spinning their image is now bigger than the newsroom at the washington post. relations between silicon valley and washington are close. we are in the middle of the world who was a top donor to barrack obama's 2012 election campaign with united states corporations can essentially buy elections. the system is corrupted. so the system itself has to be transformed as well on the level of who influences are publicly
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elected politicians. the aged belgium alibaba. china's answer to amazon plans to open a distribution center here in november 2021. but the project is facing resistance from some local. so could you hold the pool to through aggression interest? got chris, also, shiner is the superpower that he'd advocates for its interest on a global scale, including through companies like alibaba in strategic sectors. it don't. if it's more, we're looking at a chinese expansion project here. don't push an expulsion, what the edge is. stop on the new silk road. china's major 21st century infrastructure project. the deal was brokered in 2018 by belgium's king philip seen here with jack. bah, founder of ali baba, the closeness between state and company is typical for china. says digital expert chi front caught up with, let's now the story to
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a numb. it's increased significantly in the last year because of the expansion of so called party cells. tied sans and marty cells are effectively communist party representatives installed within various private sector corporations. and what especially in the tech sector. bye bye party functionaries are also working within ali. baba, profit and politics combined to serve the party, while only as former finance minister doesn't see any danger in this situation. gender luca, java fiddler luck. i don't want to be an advocate for authoritarians updates. will jell global trade is a reality? and i prefer for exchange to take place between democratic countries, but i'm not naive. i don't believe we live in a world where we're essentially good and only good could that would be wonderful. but it's not the reality. the peer suitor is. it's simply online trade or
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chinese imperialism. after the decline of the steel industry in the 20 ten's, the ages unemployment rate was high, is belgium, happy to pay any price for economic growth? when i used to out the scene of the $30.00 or 40 years, we've been swindled by the multi nationals until now. it was mostly u. s. companies. now we're going to try it with the chinese last. they're taking advantage of the fact that we have high unemployment and a desperate for foreign investors. like to close it. in 2021, 2 of the top 10 tech companies were chinese. another soon join them by dance, the parent company of tick tock known as doe yin. in chinese. the platform known for short videos has raced ahead of the u. s. competition thanks to a successful recipe on content underwood was they were able to improve the algorithm based on a much better understanding of our online behavior. on darwin also, china has an insanely large online community and low digital privacy lum. oscar
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light that's led to an algorithm that significantly better recognizing what we want to watch next. next, a sean wonder to talk has only been on the world wide market since 2018, but has already been downloaded over 2000000000 times more frequently than facebook . and what's up, the chinese state also has its place at the helm of parent company by dance, controlling data and sensory content was skipped and catalog guns and it even timon oh, is a catalogue of sensitive issues around domestic questions. in general, he element square sion, john, tim, hong kong and taiwan are all sensitive topics that are not allowed to be spread through tick tock or the chinese equivalent. skipped diesel lenient as of all. not these policies exist in europe in the us to scalp for i need more, nathan and bash. be of all. there is an example a few months ago where a user tried to criticize human rights violations and chin john under the premise
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of a make up video stick critiques, oils and the whole mentally. he was exposed within a few days and taken down that of the phenomenon from winning target on hold of alleged how much influence does the communist party have on tick tock? the company stresses that it complies with local laws. but when questioned about it, the chinese government won't answer if it has access to the data of tick tock, users fear is growing in beijing about the power of china's own tech companies. in a was 2021. alibaba had to pay 2300000000 euros in fines after an anti trust case. at by dance. the state has bought company shares. the regime has been tightening the screws on the tech market since late 2020, and is looking to banning certain business models. i think china looks at the u. s . in europe and says,
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these governments didn't over run by big tact and we're not going to get to this point. and they've made some very swear or grass of actions against big taxing when big tech overruns government, as it has an u. s. in europe leads to very bad places, or meanwhile, in nevada, our company is working towards doing business completely independent of local laws . here in the desert, near reno, tech companies are hoping to found their own city. ah, the model comes courtesy of crypto currency from block chines l. c. chief executive jeffrey burns wants to create so called innovation zones. acting like completely independent local governments, boons donated money to nevada, governor steve says,
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lack and hired influential lobbyists. a few months after back room talks in early 2021, the governor announced to bill journalist sam met has been covering the story. so under the innovation zones, as it was, propose, any tech company with a certain amount of land that promised a certain amount of investment could apply with the state to create an innovation zone, which would give them the powers akin to local government. the condition is that check companies invest at least $1250000000.00 us dollars in return. they're allowed to introduce their own local tax, judicial and school systems. so as sovereignty up for sale, i think the story of nevada is really the story of politicians trying to diversify
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a single industry economy. so 1st was mining and it was gambling and tourism. and now i think the pandemic has really made the state aware that it's hard to just rely on one industry the pandemic as hit nevada heart. the governor is hoping for a cash injection from block chains, l. l. c. i think in nevada, critics are worried about actors with enough resources to buy land higher lobbyists and get an audience with the governor. mm. why does jeffrey burns want to eliminate local governments? our requests for an interview went unanswered. only his security advisor was available. i think to me, there are ways we can incentivize places that have suffered a lot to be investment hubs for businesses. but i think it has to mean that they're
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given all this power to basically become like their own states. that that's a violation on many different levels of a sovereignty of like state based sovereignty. i mean that, that to me, sounds like some sort of like district 9 or something or some sort of or like robo cops, some kind of dystopic sy fi after every criticism the bill was withdrawn in august 2021. governor steves to slack and block chains, l o c, are holding on to their idea however, to sell the powers of state to check corporations. meanwhile, in washington, the fight against the market dominance of google. apple. facebook and others continues. here in congress is relying primarily on anti trust laws, very simply put, they have too much power, this power. but how promising are these proceedings? legal expert chris segers is skeptical. personally, i think the,
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the risk with even very aggressive and i trust is not so much that it will rec, anything. it's just that whatever good it does won't be permanent. and what i fear is, you know, we, we may have this period of a few years of very aggressive intervention. and even though it seems unlikely, you know, perhaps the government will manage to break up google or facebook or some other firm. and then it will only be a matter of a few years before somebody else figures out how to make a new monopoly out of it. president joe biden has shown a willingness for the fight, but he's had to compromise. you know, democrats are in control of both houses of congress and the white house. ah, but in the senate, and it will be very difficult to, to adopt any legislation that doesn't have some republican support. and republicans
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will be very much against any very serious change. seniors estimates that proceedings in the us will take years to cyber expert, marita shaka prefers action on a global scale. it begins with awareness about the extent to which the outside power of tech companies, whether they're big or small, the entire echo system harms democracy. it's something that really has to be understood, so it will have to be a combination of mechanisms to make sure that that gets re balance back to putting democracy 1st and not putting technology 1st. mm. shashana zuba is calling for a ban on the business model of facebook and others that is collecting and selling user data. so we take an extraction, we make those operations illegal, the amplification of device of content for profit,
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the amplification of hate for profit, the amplification of lies for profit that kills make it illegal. zuba believes that the relevant laws are already in place. they just need to be adapted to the digital age, an incredibly important part of our global. i mean, we've also gone after markets. right, and we said down. we've said in democracy, we've long said, you can't trade in human beings. you can't trade in human organs, you can't trade in babies. you can't trade in illicit drugs. you can trade in things that make people sick or products that are dangerous wet we've, we've done that countless times now. it's just applying it to our reality in our era, in our time, in our digital century, with the uncontrolled power of mega corporations and the growing gap between
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rich and poor. the 2 go hand in hand, according to historian ripka brakeman. when was capitalism work? you know, for most people in the best way on the fifty's in the sixty's. oh, that taxes up to 8090 percent for the richest people worked perfectly well and only of the high economy growth we've ever seen. the high rates of innovation mm. you know, for many people who are sort of, you know, i don't know, 50 years old or 6 years old. they think, oh, those communism both come over work. and if you study history, you'll see that campus anywhere, greed for profit, new technology, and big politics. together they create an opaque world, one which each new generation will likely have to struggle to bring under control about people's liberties. we have regular warden. you made
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a unanimous consent request objection was heard. those are to the point, strong opinions, clear positions, international perspectives. russian troops are stepping up their offensive in ukraine's industrial hard land as the conflict because the war of attrition, ukraine pleads for additional heavy weapons to hold off the invaders is the ty turning and proteins favor to the point in 30 on d w. o. oh, she beat it out in a south a month, i was going to spend the rest of her life behind bars for murdering her 3 dogs. if
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you could call me back with part of psychosis is an awful illness to have her mothers nightmare starts june 4th oh d w ah ah ah ah ah,
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this is dw news alive from berlin, ukraine's president says a 5th of the country is now under russian control, but what a mere zalinski comments. com as the west promise is more weapons to keep. and russian forces edge closer to capturing the key eastern city. opposite aerodynamics .

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