Thursday, October 29, 2009

Post Titled: Death told me about the painter, sculptor and
-well-
artist
Shary Boyle
whose work is just really great.

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As we continue to renovate
I went with the girls to the hardware store
where we picked up a lot of free wood for the fire
but as we were on our way home they got sucked into
the make-up section of the local drug store...
for a really long time
which was really boring for me.
So I explored the fragrance setion:
There were all these 'scents'
-"a new fragrance from Kate moss",
kylie minogie,
naomi campbell
christina aguilera
and even avril lavigne...
and they all had one thing in common:
they were awful
I sprayed the testers onto various sections of the 5-foot-long
4x4 I was carrying,
so by the end it was like this huge smelly piece of lumber
additionally I learned that make-up is just
ridiculously expensive.


My dad sent me a link to an article this morning in the NY
Times:
"Germany Looks at Ways to Protect Online Journalism"

to which I replied:

"Journalism itself is rife with pseudo-cannibalitic practices, -we rip quotes rom other articles
or build stories out of sheer anonymous quotes.
Really, our main goal is get "clicks"- aka, to attrack traffic to the site.
Since the best way to make money via online journalism is through advertising,
I think the solution is to just have aggregators link more prominently to the original sources...

Having said that, I still don't think that can 'save' traditional journalism.
Like: no matter how many steroids you feed a horse, a car is still a faster, better means of transportation.
Still... that metaphor isn't quite right... mh. Maybe fire vs. electricity is better...
The metaphor I gave my former roomate- who writes for some pretty hefty publications-
was that traditional jornalism/madss media is basically this big tough overconfident animal,
which is now in denial about being severley wounded and pretty much being eaten alive by insects."
HURM.

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Wednesday, October 28, 2009

NOTE: UPDATE ADDED BELOW SINCE YESTERDAY's Schwyzerdütsch story...

Post Google won't rest until there is nipple equality in america
it is simple, EITHER:
men should not be allowed to
expose their nipples in public and in the media
OR
women SHOULD be allowed to expose their nipples in public
and in the media...

and in the meantime, where do man-boobs fit into
the argument's equasion? Answer: they don't.
A man boob is a boob too, therefore -by current standards-
it's nipple should, so either stop these outlaws or let's work
to change the law.
have to be covered.
The system is broken folks, and it up to us to fix it.


...tits.

Furthermore: Schwyzerdütsch Schwyzerdütsch Schwyzerdütsch Schwyzerdütsch
On a semi- related note, folks, more sad news of racial hatred on the continent of Europe:
I'm not sure how much more of these
villager's white-on-white hate-crimemongering I can take, jeezus, Rodney King, aiaiai:
Swiss... Germans... can't they all just realize that in the
grand scheme of the universe that they're
the same damn thing?
checkit: Alena Gerber
OH, but there is a followup story- in thich Alena Gerber strikes back at t

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Thursday, October 22, 2009

NPR FRESH AIR INTERVIEW WITH TRACEY MORGAN was really amazing.
After listening to this show for years this was the fist time I can recall ever having heard Terry Gross even falter. Really lovely moment, though...
Do listen:

tracy tracey morgan crying on radio npr interview tina fey 30 rock
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geheimkonzert nicht mehr so geheim: robbie williams kostenlose konzert in berlin Max-Schmeling-Halle am 23. Oktober, 2009
indeed, -an unusual post for post-google: Robbie Williams is going to do a secret concert in Berlin, in front of the Max-Schmeling-Halle! obviously it isn't so secret anymore, but Entrance is apparently FREE... his management has confirmed this today. post google is also highly skeptical of the claim that anything might ever be "free" in germany (a country where one pays to use most public restrooms and also for extra condiments at fast food joints)
... nevertheless...
having been in europe for most of the 90s, post google's deep dark secret is that we do have a soft spot for robbie williams (-not so much take that,) and are even considering going to this show.

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as of late mediumflow has been one of my most favorite websites to visit when i need a break from websites.
robert pattinson new moon naked shirtless actor star
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Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Post Titled: Angie verarscht! Angela Merkel bogus twitter accounts (are pretty funny)the only TWITTER profile we are following at work is the White House. Fine.
But when I went to follow the German government or a German official- whoops.
They are totally not in control of their Twitter accounts. aka: their idnetities have been hijacked.
to a painful degree.

all of the search results for her name seem to be bogus accounts-
look at a recent Tweet on the Merkel_CDU account:
"Westerwelle werde ich als Außenminister nicht zulassen. Die Russen und Araber würden sich totlachen, wenn ein Schwuler dieses Amt innehätte."
TRANSLATED:
"I can't allow Westerwelle to be Foreign Minister. The Arabs and Russians would laugh themselves to death if we had a homosexual in this position."
fraking "ouch" on that one, even if it seems like something they might actually say behind closed doors.
A recent
tweet on the (second search result) Angela_Merkel twitter account reads:
"ANGIE-AKTUELL: #Osama und #Obama trennt jetzt nicht nur ein Buchstabe, sondern ab heute auch der #Friedensnobelpreis."
TRANSLATED:
"ANGIE-UPDATE: After today there will be more than just a one letter difference between #Osama and #Obama, not there is also a Nobel Prize."

OTHER RANDOM SHIT: What I they just split the sports and had performance enhanced league and bio-league?
Like that nudie mag of all natural boobs... Perfect 10?-

INNOCENT MISTAKE:
overheard in the office
"This guy sounds pretty serious, he's a consultant for the WTO-"
"the WHO"
"oh..."
'He probably IS a consultant for the WTO as well, though."
grr.

and - last but not least- as a translator I found this interesting: Biblical scholars to Christians: "Mary was not a virgin"
- at least not in the original text. She acquired her virginity through an error in translation.

HUFFPO: Target Accused Of Organic Food Fraud



hot new photos of Robert Pattinson shirtless naked New Moon star dreamboat
heart-throb ladies man actor
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Sunday, October 18, 2009

 
Donatello
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Friday, October 16, 2009

FUCK YOU BANK OF AMERICA: CEO Ken Lewis gets $69 MILLION GOLDEN PARACHUTE as he exits. Good to know that all my overdraft fees went to a good cause!
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publicity stunt baloon boy hoax falcon henne and richard heene interview with wolf blitzer during cnn Awkward!
Authorities trying to save boy in balloon...
that is how is started, which developed into:
"Balloon Boy" Falcon Henne Admits: "We Did This For The Show"

Balloon Boy's Father To CNN: "I'm Appalled At You!"
awkward!!!

original flying saucer footage was so beautiful...

but as gawker said "Forget Balloon Boy, Today's All About Train Baby"
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Post Titled:"Operation Sapphire" + long-time coming revelation provided by 'The Dead Hand': The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and its Dangerous Legacy by David E. Hoffman
NOTE: personally, the information described in this post is such a relief. It just brings everything full circle, and makes life make a bit more sense afterwards...

SOME vital background info here as to why I am bothering to write this post:
As a teenager in the 1990s I stopped by my dad's office to get a ride home after some afterschool activity. At the time we were stationed at a major american military hub in europe. Long story short: he went to the restroom and I sat in his office chair. There was a document opened on his computer, which I began reading. The text described some very strange midnight hand-offs of a shipment. It involved some very unusual countries, contries I recall being very surpised that they would have had any dealings with each other at all... honestly, I don't remember many of the details other than it struck me as being really really odd.
On the ride home I asked my dad about the document. He instantly turned deadly serious and extremely angry, saying: "You'd better FORGET you ever read that! Understand???" When used this tone you knew he meant business.
As I said, that was approximately 15 years ago. I've thought about that document and the following incident from time to time, but to this day I've never dared to ask my fater what it was, -it has just been tucked away way way into the recesses of my mind... later on in college when people would ask me what my dad did I would sometimes cite this incident, saying- "Yea, I'm not really too sure what he does. He used to fly, but stopped that a long time ago... One time I accidentally read a secret document and he got mad as hell and told me to forget it."
That sounded cool.
Fast forward to October 2009:
I got out of work last week and put on my headphones to listen to NPR Berlin on my bike ride home. As soon as I started listening, the subject instantly sounded eerily familiar, and thought- "WHOA, this is IT- THAT is what I READ!":

"TERRY GROSS: Describe Operation Sapphire and how that worked?

DAVID E. HOFFMAN: Operation Sapphire was one of the most dramatic moments in these years just after the Soviet collapse. An American diplomat, Andy Webber, got a tip from a man who was in charge of a metals factory in Kazakhstan. Andy was a diplomat in Kazakhstan. He got a tip on a piece of paper. And the tip was that there were hundreds of pounds of highly enriched uranium. And by that I mean uranium that could be used for making a nuclear weapon in a warehouse, in this metals factory.

So Webber told people in Washington, and they organized a tiger team, an emergency team, and they worked with the Kazakhs who didn't really want the stuff. They found that the uranium had been abandoned by the Soviets after the collapse. It had been put there because they were building a new submarine and when the Soviet Union collapsed, the submarine project was abandoned. All this uranium, 90 percent enriched, laying in big canisters that look like hotel coffee pots, on sheets of plywood, in a Kazakh warehouse.

So the United States paid millions of dollars to the Kazakhs and conducted a secret operation. It was not announced ahead of time. A group of 35 Americans flew there in secret, in big transport planes, packed up that uranium over a month, and then on a cold snowy day put it into those C5 transport planes and flew it all the way back to the United States. And the reason they did this is that the Iranians were looking all over Central Asia for this kind of uranium. And if Iran had gotten its hands on it, it certainly would have help accelerate their efforts to build a nuclear weapon.

GROSS: So the Americans paid Kazakhstan millions of dollars to take their uranium away. Were we in a way trying to outbid a potential Iranian bid for that uranium?

Mr. HOFFMAN: Absolutely. And we didn't want Iran to get to the point where they could make a bid.

GROSS: Right.

Mr. HOFFMAN: We're one step ahead of them. The Kazakhs wanted to be rid of it. Remember, their country had been the nuclear testing site for the Soviet Union. They had health problems. There was too much of these nuclear materials around for them. So - and we knew they wanted to get rid of it. They also inherited a bunch of nuclear weapons when the Soviet Union collapsed, and they gave those back to Russia. So I think it was kind of an open-bazaar time, and one of the things that really shocked the Americans when they went to do this is they found a crate of beryllium. Beryllium is an element that is used to making nuclear weapons. And the crate had an address on it: Tehran.

GROSS: And we still have a lot of that threat out there. There are still weapons out there. There are still biological and nuclear weapons out there. So there's still a lot of work to be done right, right? I mean, you know, out there from the Soviet Union days."


This is one of the times that being an NPR junkie has truly paid off.
Had I not been listening to NPR (obsessively, as usual) then this strange situation from my youth might've been a permanent loose-end in my mind.

The FULL TRANSCRIPT is HERE and you can liten to the interview on Fresh air HERE.
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the internet and everyone
update: audio from john chris jones' reading at cafe ck on october 2nd, 2009 with a brief intro by helen dewitt
John Chris Jones reads from the internet and everyone Oct. 2, 2009, cafe ck berlin by tarARTrat
john chris posts to has a digital diary (which he also reads and broadcasts from live at the foundry in london)

"f r o m t h e e i g h t e e n t h c e n t u r y a n d a f t e r


...it seems to me now that it is the sensibility of the eighteenth century, plus the romanticism of the nineteenth, that is influencing these thoughts, giving form and direction to my attempts to rethink and react in any way that might undo what are now seen as mistakes of the twentieth... viewed from the twenty-first century that is now upon us and around...

(see the first and last entries listed above, from an 18th century mansion on september 8th to some pinnacles of romanticism in a park in Berlin on october 1st)...

...and from America too comes benign influence... from the random I-beam drops of Chris Burden (see september 18th) plus his danger works and grown-up toys... to the social artwork of Helen DeWitt, Paul Thomas and Cory Andreen (in the former eastern sector of Berlin, see 1st october) which goes against commercialised art and publishing to further and to rescue works that may attempt what is our newness, from little books in modest exchanges to the tiniest electric windmill generator that could signal vast and necessary alterations in our collective energies and habits?...

...but not forgetting the natural world in its uncreatedness,
the unspeakable beauty of spontaneous evolution, from the insects to the stars (or vice versa)...

...but these are just sparks in dark places while the lights of a new culture may be difficult to discern... "
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Post Titled: poster of sarlac (actually spelled "sarlacc") somehow related to stitch wars.
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Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Post Titled:
Alexander Marcus

is
amazing.*

what IS it? -conscious neo-schlagermusik????
*No, really- he is. Thank you Cory.



cafe ck berlin konzert dj people's champion musik music facebook schlager musik myspace
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Post Titled: Jogi Löw in NIVEA campaign.
-love that guy.
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Post Titled: Pee Wee at the Alamo.

To paraphrase the conversation from earlier this month:

Dave: So my friend Gillian is painting me a painting of the Alamo.
Me: Does this painting involve Pee-wee Herman?
Dave: Why... yes, it does, actually.


Pretty wild really that my first association with the Alamo is a character inhabited by the tragically disgraced genius Paul Ruebens.
After a few minutes, my second association: Billy Bob Thorton. After another few minutes: Daniel Boone or Davy Crockett.

Anyhow, the real meat of this post is that a girl named Gillian Stefaniuk did a comissioned painting of Pee Wee Herman at the Alamo for my friend Dave in Edinburgh, which he emailed me a photo of the other day, here it is: 
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p.s. note: put my shirt on backwards twice in a row this morning. twice! ...that was a first.
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Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Post Titled: Blogger don't fail me now.
NOTE: THIS POST HAS BEEN ADDED-TO SINCE I ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IT.
uhm. so. been using internet explorer at work and it was just effing up the blogger UI so badly that eventually (as in TODAY) that I -literally- couldn't even post anymore.
This made the little Fox Muldner in my head wonder: is this a microsoft plot against google?
anyhow, here are the notes for posts I would've psoted recently which i am not too exhausted & annoyed to properly post:
NEW GERMAN WORDS I LEARNED THIS MORNING
schwärmen : to gush, to romanticize
für jemand / etwas schwärmen : to be crazy about, to adore, to dote upon
der Kugelstoß : shotput (sport)


ADVENTURES OF POWER update
Post Titled: Ari Gold's film "Adventures of Power" has a party in Los Angeles (SEE BELOW)... anyhow, here is a clip of a music video from the movie: A Little Like You
Schedule
for LA release party at El Cid Tuesday night:
8pm The Good Listeners.

9pm-10pm smorgasbord of music: Soko, Ethan Gold doing songs
from the film in costume, comics, clips from movie, and merriment
hosted by Stephen Perkins (Janes
Addiction).
10pm OZOMATLI.
Then more live music merriment
as before. Then dancing with DJ Mearii Hayden, with
live drumming by some of the best drummers on earth!
Do not ask
about tickets, parking, VIP, RSVP, guest list.
Anyone is welcome.
Admission is FREE. Please donate at least $10 to our music education charity.



A LOST COMMENT NEVER TO BE POSTED:
"yes yes... did they like the film(s)? ;)"

I originally was quite entertained when I came across this Daily Mail story on REDDIT, lots of fun photos- ahh, but then I get the re-spun version from "the PILL KILLS" facebook grouop, of which I am a member...

I <3 ROMAN CATHOLIC PROPAGANTA

I so rarely encounter it these days...
JUST CHOCK FULL OF GEMS.
Reminds me of the horror slideshows they used to show us in Catholic School Sex Ed.
that's right: Catholic School Sex Ed.

from „The Pill Kills“
Subject: Charlton Heston v. Zac Efron: Is 'The Pill' Making Masculinity a Thing of the Past?
"Hey everyone,

Did you hear about this? American Life League released this last week:

A British researcher has added to the growing body of evidence showing the link between the birth control pill and the rise of the effeminate heartthrob.

Dr. Alexandra Alvergne, of the University of Sheffield, says the hormones in the pill and other hormonal contraceptives suppress a woman's interest in masculine men and make boyish men more attractive, reports the UK’s Daily Mail.

According to the theory, the Pill could contribute to the rising popularity of effeminate men in the last 40 years.

“We’ve gone from 1940s and 50s manly heroes Charlton Heston and Sean Connery to today’s baby-faced heartthrobs like Zac Efron and Johnny Depp,” said Katie Walker, American Life League’s communications director. “More reasons to never, ever go on the pill.”

The research confirms an August 2008 study from scientists at the University of Liverpool showing that "when the women started taking the pill, their preferences shifted towards the scent of men with more similar genes to their own."

ALL’s project director for “The Pill Kills Day,” Marie Hahnenberg, reported on the potential hazards this places on relationships.

“There is mounting evidence that the pill can seriously disturb a woman’s healthy, natural tendency to be drawn toward a mate with different immune system genes. This, in turn, can lead to having a genetically similar mate, which increases the risk of infertility and miscarriages. It also means that the pill can change a woman’s love interest so much that she could end up in a relationship with someone to whom she normally wouldn’t be attracted.”

American Life League’s “Pill Kills” project is dedicated to exposing the hidden emotional and physical ramifications of the birth control pill. In August 2008, ALL’s Michael Hichborn also released a video reporting on the hormonal phenomenon of “Pill Googles.”

“While previous generations of women dreamt about rugged intellectuals carrying them off into the sunset, today’s women are expected to pine over break-dancers who own hair dryers and wear skinny jeans,” Walker said. “Give me Charlton Heston any day.”
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Monday, October 12, 2009

Post Titled: Followup
a visitor yesterday (from NY)
pointed me in the direction of Alien Workshop's aesthetic, which - somewhat coincidentally -included a song we had had stuck in our heads: Animal Collective's MY GIRLS
but really: if you haven't watched a skateboard video in awhile, they"re quite amazing.

"Mind Field" a FILM by Alien Workshop

Filmed and built over the span of 2005 - 2008, Mind Field is the 4th full length audio/visual offering by AWS. A document of the team's raw talents and electric personalities interlaced with the workshop's undying pursuit of visual individuality and creative freedom.

Featuring
Heath Kirchart
Arto Saari
Mikey Taylor
Anthony Van Engelen
Josh Kalis
Dylan Rieder
Omar Salazar
Jason Dill
Rob Dyrdek
Steve Berra
Grant Taylor
Jake Johnson
Tyler Bledsoe

Music by Dinosaur Jr, J Mascis, Growing, Animal Collective and more.

NO copyright infringement intended
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Sunday, October 11, 2009

Post Titled: Territorial.
Sooooo the NY TIMES posts another ooh-how-cool,-grungy,-quaint-and-magical-is-Berlin travel story.
(Skip this paragraph, I'm just bitching- but to see the source of the bitching go directly to "IMPORTANT NOTE:" below...)
Regular readers may have noticed that on and off this Summer I had been grumbling about how my usual neighborhood haunts had quite suddenly and strangely become flooded by New Yorkers. Everywhere. A literal hipster plague.
Soooo, we now have yet another article on their front page (web) sweeping together a list of cool cool locations and generalizing the amazingness of Berlin... TO WHICH my BRAIN yet again responds like Ed Norton's character in Fight Club: "Marla, you liar! You big tourist! I need this! Now get out!"
My first few years here I was so happy to be so far away from the hordes of hollowed-out hipster american a-holes... now they seem to be embedding themselves. Fortunately, the turning of the weather is helping, chances are a good frost might kill most of them off.
IMPORTANT NOTE: There is another concern- despite my blatant one-sided rantings there are surely some amazing people visiting and I have met many of them, but- and here's the BUT- they are only ever in town for a couple of months... so, you can have a really great conversation, exchange info,l start meeting up, and your social circles may even mesh after a brief courting process BUT- after this little intellectual-emotional fling then they are gone. After a great Berlin expierence they are transported back to their stateside reality and you are left here, maybe happy to have given them a closer look at a life here that is quite unlike anywhere else, but ... ultimately it is so draining! And After this happens a few times... it just becomes frustrating, and you think: "I really like you, I wanna hang out with you and show you cool things but wait, wait, I've done this before. I've spent so much time and energy a relationship that had term limits. Another Summer fling friendship...ugh."
You could hypothetically do that over and over, but the reality is that these folks who are in town for a few months- despite how amazing they may be- don't have longterm friendship potential... so, you sttart to become a bit picky. People I once might've made an effort to keep hanging out with I now just sort of let go by the wayside, whereas people who you know are in Berlin for the long haul- those people are keepers. (or "stay-ers"?)

Granted it was cool to see Manfred's name in the NY TImes. But still... why can't they talk endlessly about Brussels or effing Antwerp? anyhwere else would do.
36 hours in Berlin by DENNY LEE

Urhm, side note: speaking of cool little hole in the wall Berlin venues, I had to pieces in a show last night at PremArts for the SIGNAL 09 POLYVISION show, which I was too busy to really collaborate on but the work was very clever- lots of animated projection which had its basis in some sort of very simple drawing...
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Saturday, October 10, 2009

Post Titled: men at work.
we had this lunchbox full of cassette tapes i used to listen to as a kid, there was lionel ritchie, paul mccartney and michael jackson, the flashdance soundtrack, culture club and -of course- men at work:

had heard the song a million times but just now came across the video-! thanks internet!
while we"re at it- YACHT is still on tour and still very fun

YACHT - Summer Song from Jona Bechtolt on Vimeo.

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Friday, October 09, 2009

Post Titled: open letter to google translate:
dear translate.google.com,
you do not include articles for translated words. in German the article is a part of the word…
for example:
“collar” is translated as “kragen” when it should be “der Kragen”
…that’s all.
Thanks,
-t

Post Subtitled: rapid-fire notes...

craziness, cult in Italy: http://www.damanhur.org/


http://www.carlabrunisarkozy.org/
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Thursday, October 08, 2009

Post Titled: recession woes of slim thug
The Daily Show With Jon StewartMon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Slim Thug Feels the Recession
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show
Full Episodes
Political HumorRon Paul Interview
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Monday, October 05, 2009

Post Titled: BEEN BUSY.
I wore myself and my immune system into the ground. Last week was busy. Art show and organizing a reading. All went very well... but kinda bed-ridden now.
john chris jones the internet and everyone cafe ck golden parachutes gallery galerie tarartrat tar art rat berlin painting art
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Post Titled: Political correctness is one thing... but just being a rascist asshole is another, which begs the question: is SARRAZIN BIG FAT RACIST? Or: is he just a typical bigot in an atypical city?
Granted, the man seems to have done a lot for Berlin in terms of getting the budget in order, but can he not keep his funtamentalism to himself? Last year I was honestly pretty shocked when he said that in the face of rising heating oil costs people should just put on sweaters (see: REUTERS), but NOW... now he has just gone too far:
"A large number of Arabs and Turks in this city, whose numbers have grown thanks to the wrong policies, have no productive function except selling fruit and vegetables,"
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