WEBVTT

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Hi! My name is Sarah.

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I'm a Minority Rights activist
and an Egyptian.

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For the past three years,
being an Egyptian has meant for me

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reclaiming my belonging to this nation.

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This is because, for the past
three years in Egypt,

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I've been part of a collective effort
to formulate who we are,

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but more importantly, what we want.

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This is new because for the past 30 years
in Egypt, we've been taught by our regime

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that what we will do is connected
to who we are as individuals

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and not to what we want as people.

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So, for the past 20 years,
I've been planning my future

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independently from the fate
of my own people,

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and I ended up leaving Cairo for Paris

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on January 17, 2011,
to pursue my education.

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On January 18,

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I met this German journalist,
Camille, in a bar in Paris,

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and she was doing work
on the uprisings in Tunisia.

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After a few drinks,
she inevitably asked me,

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"So, what do you think will happen
now that Ben Ali's regime is down?"

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and I told her, "What do you mean?"

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She said, "Well, don't you think
Egyptians will have their own revolution?"

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I smiled at her sarcastically
and I said, "Of course not."

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Obviously, she was right and I was wrong

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because the revolution went ahead
and took place on January 25, 2011.

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And I just couldn't believe I left Egypt
a week before the revolution,

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and now I had to sit back
and watch it from so far away!

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So, I developed a love-hate
relationship with this revolution.

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I loved it because, for the first time
in my life, I could envision an Egypt

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that I wished for and could be part of.

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In fact, the idea was that anyone
could be part of this new Egypt.

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I hated it because its very
existence reminded me

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that I had lived for the past 20 years

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completely disconnected
from my own people.

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In June 2011, I went back to Egypt,

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and I decided I will have random
conversations with friends and family

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to make up my mind about this revolution.

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At this time, Egypt was already
questioning the path

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that it had taken to democracy.

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And I soon discovered

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that many of us shared this bitter-sweet
relationship with the revolution.

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Ahmad El-Gamal, who was a blind journalist

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I met on the course of a Minority Rights
training I was organizing in Egypt,

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is a good example of that.

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Ahmad might be blind,


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but it honestly took me five minutes
on a noisy bus ride in Cairo


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to discover that he sees Egypt
much more clearly than I do.

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And if you ask Ahmad
about his story with the revolution,

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he will tell you two things.

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He will tell you that three years
before the revolution,

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he met his assigned officer
from the Ministry of Interior.

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This officer was responsible
for monitoring his anti-regime writings

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and would come and pick him up regularly
in the middle of the night from his bed,

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so he could spend the night
in prison for his writings.

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Then Ahmad will amazingly fast forward

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to January 28, 2011,

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a date that Egyptians
call the "Day of Anger,"

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where he will tell you that he saw
all the colors of Egypt at Tahrir Square.

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And he will tell you that it's on this day

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that he realized that there
will be freedom in Egypt.

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You see, before January 2011,
there was no freedom in Egypt.

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Ironically, the best way to describe it
is to say that Egypt was a pyramid.

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And depending on your class,
education, gender, ethnicity, religion,

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you would be somewhere in this pyramid.

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In a way, we were all
stuck in these categories

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that defined who we are
and where we are in this structure.

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There was no way to change that.


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It went on for so long, because it allowed
everyone to exclude at least someone:

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the rich excluded the poor;
the men excluded the women;

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the Muslims excluded the non-Muslims.

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If you ask Egyptians about
how to call this type of regimes,

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they will tell you two things.

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Either they will tell you
it's not a dictatorial regime,

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it's not an authoritarian regime,
it's not a military regime.

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They will refuse all the above
categories that we usually use.

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Or, they will tell you that
they can't agree on how to call it.

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But, one thing they will tell you
is that they all felt excluded,

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and that, no matter
where they were in the structure.

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So no one knew the only chant everyone
agrees on about the revolution

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is the Egyptians want
the end of the regime.

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Unfortunately, the end of the Mubarak
regime in February 2011

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did not mean the end
of the exclusion regime.

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In fact, in February 2011,
the military took over,

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and, while they were announcing
presidential and parliamentary elections,

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a lot of street movements
like trade unions and youth unions

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went on demonstrations
and became violent on November 2011.

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For a lot of people
who had lived disconnected

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from the political life like myself,
this was a double struggle.

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This was a struggle
for political participation

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but it was also a struggle against
our own little governments: our mothers.

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Because we were prohibited -
my mum is in the public ...

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(Laughter)

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We were prohibited from going
to these demonstrations,

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so myself and a few friends decided

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that we will take the bus
to the university

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and then we would agree
with the bus driver from the university

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to take us to Tahrir Square
and then take us back home.

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So we would go there,
scream from the top of our lungs

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and then go home like nothing happened.

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(Laughter)

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As a journalist once put it, back then,

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"Egypt is the only country where youths
are more afraid of their parents

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than they are afraid of tanks."

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(Laughter)

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After a long fight, we eventually got
to elect our first civilian president

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in June 2012.

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The losers of the old regime
had become the winners of the new regime.

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Everything was wonderful
until, on November 22, 2012,

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I got this phone call
from a friend of mine, Manar,

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who's a journalist about my same age,

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and I was driving my little black car
in the crazy streets of Cairo.

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She said, "Where are you?"
I told her, "I'm coming to meet you."

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She said, "Well, pull over."
so I pulled over,

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and she said, "President Morsi
just announced a constitutional decree

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protecting his decisions
from all accountability."

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I sat in silence in my car,

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chocking in my deepest, darkest fears.

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I felt betrayed and I felt angry
because this was a "déjà-vu,"

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and the question of how we got there was
just running again and again in my head.

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I drove to my friend and,
as we sat talking and talking,

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our anger transformed
into hatred against the Islamists.

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And it hit me!

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I realized that the biggest crime
that had been committed against Egyptians

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for the past 30 years
is that the exclusion regime

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was so embedded in our very ideas,
in our very soul, in our very being,

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that we didn't even know about it.

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We didn't even know about it
until we hit rock bottom,

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and that rock bottom
was when our first elected president

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had just excluded us from decision making.

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You know, the more I think
about it, the more I tell myself

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that the January revolution
and the June movement

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and all the coming revolutions
are inescapable.

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This is simply because exclusion regimes
bear the seeds of their own destruction.

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With time and resistance,
they become violent.

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And I'm not only talking
about the kind of violence

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that Ahmad El-Gamal had to handle.

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I am talking about all
the other kinds of violence

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that are so subtle and end up
marginalizing everyone.

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A lot of people ask us
why we went down on November,

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and why we went down
against Morsi in June.

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My answer is "because
the question is not about elections

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and not about the parliamentary system.

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it's about building a system
where we can all find a place

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and realize our full potential."

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No, we were not afraid of dying
because we don't want to live in a country

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where we have to trade our freedom
and rights for a piece of bread

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so that we can't hold
our governments accountable

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for any other types of exclusion
that we have to handle everyday.

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A lot of people ask me
why I work on Minority Rights in Egypt,

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why I don't work on education
or raising awareness

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to help democracy strike.

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My answer is "because I believe
democracy starts at the margins."

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It's only when a society
looks inside itself

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and realizes the exclusion regimes
it is producing by its own self

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that it can truly become democratic.

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Today, the question in Egypt
and, I believe, everywhere is,

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how can we talk about equality
if we're not talking about discrimination?

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How can we talk about justice

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if we can't talk about the violence
that has been done to us?

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But more importantly, the violence
that we are doing to each other?

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If I've learnt one thing for the past
three years of revolution in Egypt,

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it's that democracy is about dialog,

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and not the pretty sugar-coated dialog
that we hear in the media

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about all the things we're doing right.

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I am talking about the blunt,
honest and painful dialog

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that we have to have with each other
about all the things we're doing wrong.

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Today, Egyptians have created

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the first electronic map

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for sexual harassment.

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They have engaged in monologues

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to tell each other about the experiences
of violence they are living.

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They have done things
like this and this

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where they will paint a wall

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that was made to prohibit
them from protesting,

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into their own vision of what it should
be and their own vision of the future.

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And this why today, if you ask me
right outside this hall,

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if I believe that the Egyptian
revolution will succeed,

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I will smile at you, 
and this time honestly tell you,

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"Of course yes!"

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Thank you.

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(Applause)