  The Bagger--Lambert construction of N = 8 superconformal field theories
(SCFT) in three dimensions is based on 3-algebras. Three groups of researchers
recently realized that an arbitrary semisimple Lie algebra can be incorporated
by using a suitable Lorentzian signature 3-algebra. The SU(N) case is a
candidate for the SCFT describing coincident M2-branes. However, these theories
contain ghost degrees of freedom, which is unsatisfactory. We modify them by
gauging certain global symmetries. This eliminates the ghosts from these
theories while preserving all of their desirable properties. The resulting
theories turn out to be precisely equivalent to N = 8 super Yang--Mills
theories.
