SIRATYST (Stuff I Read and Thought You Should Too) -- “To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.” (Calgacus, as quoted by Tacitus, Agricola 30-31)"
Saturday, October 29, 2022
Wednesday, October 26, 2022
Tuesday, October 25, 2022
Striking CNH Workers in Burlington, Iowa Speak Out to Will Lehman's Campaign (https://www.willforuawpresident.org/)
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Supporters of my [Will Lehman'scampaign recently visited CNH workers on the picket lines in Burlington, Iowa, and spoke with them about the issues which have driven them to remain on strike for nearly six months. In September, I issued a statement calling on workers to mobilize in defense of the CNH strikers: https://www.willforuawpresident.org/s...
Should People Be More Worried About Long COVID? -- Interview with Dr. Eric Topol
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Video with Transcript at:
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/982506
Maggie Fox: Welcome. I'm Maggie Fox, consulting editor to WebMD and Medscape. I'm here with Dr Eric Topol, editor-in-chief at Medscape. We're talking about long COVID, which affects at least 13% of people after they've been infected with COVID, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That adds up to millions of people who could be affected by severe fatigue, heart symptoms, brain symptoms (known commonly as brain fog), and a range of other problems.
There's no specific treatment, and it's not clear how long some of these people will be sick. Yet, Americans in general appear to have largely given up on protecting themselves from COVID. Dr Topol, I wanted to talk to you about that. Is that something people should be thinking about when they're deciding what their own risks are?
Eric J. Topol, MD: Well, first, Maggie, it's great to be with you, particularly on this important topic. Long COVID is not getting nearly enough regard of its importance and, as you mentioned, the lack of any treatment. It's a really vexing situation where we have millions of people, and we don't have anything to offer except supportive type things. The real issue here is that at the moment, we aren't doing enough to give the recognition to these people that this is a serious matter that we want to avoid.
The only way to avoid long COVID is to not get infected, or, if you've had COVID, to not get infected again because there's still risk even if you've had a prior infection. Why should you go all out to keep yourself protected? Because you don't want to get this, and the problem is that it's unpredictable.
It chiefly affects people with mild to moderate COVID. People in their 30s and 40s are the group that are showing up with these protracted symptoms. They can be quite debilitating. There's only one surefire way of preventing it, which is not getting infected. The vaccine and boosters provide some protection, but it's not entirely clear whether it's 50% (more or less). But there is some protection, and that's another reason to stay up with vaccines and boosters.
Saturday, October 22, 2022
Tuesday, October 18, 2022
Trump’s Rant Against Jews and the Growth of anti-Semitism in the US--Patrick Martin--WSWS.org
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Donald Trump declared Sunday morning that American Jews should “get their act together” and provide him greater support than his current dismal standing in the polls among Jewish voters. The would-be dictator claimed that while he had been a staunch ally of Israel during his four years in the White House: “Our wonderful Evangelicals are far more appreciative of this than the people of the Jewish faith, especially those living in the US.”
This statement published on his Truth Social platform ended with the scarcely disguised warning that Jews should convert to the Trump camp “Before it is too late!” Prominent Jewish spokesmen in both Israel and the United States denounced what one called “a former US president using threatening language about American Jews at a time when antisemitism is on a global rise.”
Trump was speaking, not just for himself, but for the fascist elements who now dominate the Republican Party. Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene embraced the neo-Nazi “Great Replacement” theory at a recent pro-Trump rally in Arizona, condemning the Biden administration for alleged plans to “replace” white, Christian Americans with black and brown immigrants.
Doug Mastriano, candidate for governor of Pennsylvania, blasted his Democratic opponent, state attorney general Josh Shapiro, labelling him an elitist who had attended “privileged, exclusive, elite” schools and had “disdain for people like us.” The anti-Semitism was clear in context, since Shapiro attended a Hebrew Academy in the suburbs of Philadelphia, the Jewish counterpart of a Catholic high school.
These statements are just the crudest and most open in a much broader trend. Republican campaign ads and speeches in 2022 attack Jewish billionaire George Soros nearly as often as Joe Biden. Soros is a major financial supporter of the Democratic Party as well as an anticommunist who has funded “color revolutions” across Eastern Europe in conjunction with the State Department.
Republican candidates have long used the name of Soros, who escaped the Holocaust in Hungary as a child, as an anti-Semitic dog whistle. Among Republican-aligned white supremacist circles, the “Great Replacement” is presented as a Jewish conspiracy with Soros as its main backer. That was the premise of the neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017.
The rise of anti-Semitism in the United States is not limited to and cannot be explained solely by the increasingly fascistic politics of the Republican Party. The Democratic Party has participated in the redefinition of American politics and history largely in racial terms. While the Republicans seek to appeal to rural and suburban whites, the Democrats seek to combine racial minorities and sections of the white upper middle class, particularly women and gays, through identity politics.
The Democrats have sought in every way to suppress the consciousness of the common class interests of working people of every race, nationality and gender.
The Biden administration has been notably slow to condemn the remarks of Trump, Greene and Mastriano, among many others, waiting 24 hours after Trump’s online warning to “US Jews” before saying anything. And this was only in answer to a question asked of White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre in the routine daily press briefing Monday. There was no public statement and Biden himself said nothing.
Even this muted opposition to anti-Semitism has an entirely hypocritical and opportunist character. The Democrats condemn the anti-Semitism of Trump, but cover it up when it serves their own purposes, particularly when it comes to US foreign policy, whose main focus is the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine.
The Ukrainian government has elevated the Nazi collaborator and mass murderer Stepan Bandera to the level of a “founding father,” erecting monuments throughout the country. This is not just an ideological embrace; the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, which marches with the icons of the Waffen SS, has been integrated into the Ukrainian army and hailed as national heroes for their role in the war with Russia. Leading Democrats, including Representative Adam Schiff, chair of the House Intelligence Committee, met with the Azov Battalion during a recent visit to Ukraine.
The question of anti-Semitism has deep historical resonance. It is not merely a survival of the primitive, medieval bigotry rooted in the Christian churches and in rural prejudice towards a population found mainly in the towns. Modern anti-Semitism arose in the late 19th century, particularly in Europe, as a weapon of the capitalist class aimed at diverting class tensions and providing a convenient scapegoat for mass anger over deteriorating social conditions.
This urban anti-Semitism fused with the older, traditional version, under conditions of the collapse of capitalism in the Great Depression. Combined with violent hostility to socialism and the workers’ movement, it became the ideological foundation for Hitler’s Nazi Party. With the backing of the capitalist class, the Nazis took power in Germany to suppress the threat of working-class revolution. Commanding the resources of the strongest imperialist state in Europe, they carried out the most monstrous crimes in human history.
Anti-Semitism assumes a particularly toxic character during times of extreme social and economic crisis, emerging in explosions of violence, like the 2018 attack on the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, directly inspired by Trump, in which 11 people were killed by a fascist gunman, and in countless lesser incidents. This is a trend not only in the United States, but throughout Europe, including in Germany.
Anti-Semitism cannot be fought on the basis of moral appeals to the conscience or on vain hopes that in the 21st century such prejudice has been made obsolete by progress or growing tolerance. Anti-Semitism is fueled by the contradictions of the world capitalist system, and these contradictions have become more rather than less acute with the development of technology and the increasing global interconnectedness of humanity.
Still less can anti-Semitism be fought on the basis of Zionism, that bankrupt embrace of the outmoded and reactionary framework of the national state. In this historical period, globalization makes every national state—let alone a tiny one based on the expulsion or suppression of the previous inhabitants—a trap for its population.
It must be pointed out that the oppressive policies of the state of Israel towards the Palestinian people, including the provocative actions of fascistic “settler” groups on the West Bank, weaken the global sympathy for the Jewish people that was a legacy of the Holocaust.
In addition, the persistent campaign to smear any defense of the Palestinian people and opposition to Zionism as anti-Semitism, waged with particular force in Britain and the United States, undermines resistance to bigotry and cultivates an element of cynicism towards that issue.
Particularly pernicious is the manufacture of the myth of “left-wing anti-Semitism,” which seeks to separate the Jewish people from the socialist and working-class movement which has always been their foremost defender and ally, and their hope for the future.
The Fourth International, the world Trotskyist movement, has always stood at the forefront of the global struggle against anti-Semitism. As Leon Trotsky wrote, in our founding program:
Before exhausting or drowning mankind in blood, capitalism befouls the world atmosphere with the poisonous vapors of national and race hatred. Anti-Semitism today is one of the most malignant convulsions of capitalism’s death agony.
An uncompromising disclosure of the roots of race prejudice and all forms and shades of national arrogance and chauvinism, particularly anti-Semitism, should become part of the daily work of all sections of the Fourth International, as the most important part of the struggle against imperialism and war. Our basic slogan remains: Workers of the World Unite!
In the midst of World War II, when the Roosevelt administration was turning a blind eye to the Nazi death camps, blocking entry of Jewish refugees and rejecting appeals to bomb the train tracks leading into Auschwitz, the Executive Committee of the Fourth International declared:
The Fourth International, leader of the workers in the struggle for world socialism, welcomes the Jewish toilers into its ranks. Only by world socialism can the Jews, above all the Jewish workers, and all the oppressed nations and races be saved from the terrible fate world capitalism has inflicted on them and the even worse fate it has in store for ever-increasing numbers of them. Only in world socialism will human brotherhood become a reality and anti-Semitism a hideous memory.
These statements remain the basis of a principled struggle against anti-Semitism, which requires the political mobilization of the working class fighting for socialism and internationalism. Only the overthrow of capitalism on a world scale can put an end to anti-Semitism and provide genuine freedom and security for the Jewish people.
“I will back him 100 percent”: Growing Support for Rank-and-File Candidate Will Lehman
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Another worker with 12 years told campaigners, “We don’t have a union here, management has one. We just learned that the local is collecting more than half a million dollars in dues from us every month. At the last meeting, the Local 551 officials had the nerve to ask us to approve increasing the expense accounts for their cell phones and other things.
“We just came off temporary layoff, and we’re going to be down again. The union is leaving us completely in the dark. In all my years, I’ve never been laid off so much. It’s been at least six times this year. Every time it happens, you’ve got to move your bills around. We’ve got families.
“The UAW is not defending us. A lot of workers are thinking of getting out of the industry. I’m 51. Am I just going to leave and get a job at Walmart?
“We sacrificed and worked through the pandemic. They said bring your butts to work; we don’t care if you get sick. But we want a safe place to work, and we want to come home to our families at night.”
For more information, visit WillForUAWPresident.org.
Thursday, October 13, 2022
White House Draws up Blueprint for World War III -- Andre Damon
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Less than one week after US President Joe Biden warned that the US conflict with Russia could trigger a nuclear “Armageddon,” the White House published a national security strategy pledging to “win” American global hegemony through military violence.
The document pledged to expand the US military, “integrate” economic life with war-making, and “win the competition for the 21st century” in what it called the “decisive decade.”
Embracing in all fundamentals the 2018 national defense strategy published by the fascist would-be dictator Donald Trump, Biden’s national security strategy affirms that the United States is locked in an existential national conflict with Russia and, most of all, China.
“We are now in the early years of a decisive decade for America and the world,” declares Biden’s personal introduction to the document. “The terms of geopolitical competition between the major powers will be set.”
These opening remarks echo Biden’s declaration in March that the world is on the brink of a “new world order,” and that “we’ve got to lead it.”
Biden’s strategy, like Trump’s 2018 national security strategy, is violently nationalistic, declaring that the United States acts not in the interests of humanity or of its allies, but fundamentally to preserve its selfish interests. “Our strategy is rooted in our national interests,” Biden declares.
“Our military power continues to grow,” the document menaced, pledging to “Modernize and strengthen our military so it is equipped for the era of strategic competition.”
For these reasons, the document threatens, “nations are seeing once again why it’s never a good bet to bet against the United States of America.”
“Nuclear deterrence remains a top priority for the Nation,” and is “foundational” to the US’s strategy.
War, Biden says in his introduction, will be a source of national rejuvenation: “the United States has a tradition of transforming…foreign challenges into opportunities to spur… rejuvenation at home.”
The document sets forth the concept of “integrated deterrence,” developing key concepts in Trump’s 2018 national defense strategy, which pledged that “long-term strategic competition requires the seamless integration of multiple elements of national power—diplomacy, information, economics, finance, intelligence, law enforcement, and military.”
Similarly, the new national security strategy declares, “We will leverage all elements of our national power to outcompete our strategic competitors”
It adds, “Our National Defense Strategy relies on integrated deterrence: the seamless combination of capabilities to convince potential adversaries that the costs of their hostile activities outweigh their benefits. It entails: Integration across domains, recognizing that our competitors’ strategies operate across military…and non-military (economic, technological, and information) domains—and we must too.”
In perhaps the most chilling passage, the document declares that “The Biden-Harris Administration has broken down the dividing line between domestic and foreign policy.”
These concepts, pioneered under the Trump administration that openly drew inspiration from the Third Reich, echo the infamous “total war” manifesto of Alfred Jodl, chief of the German High Command during World War II, which declared that “Only the singleness and unity of state, armed forces, and people can assure success in war.”
Noting the continuity with Trump’s fascist “America first” ideology, New York Times reporter David Sanger observed that “The president took some unusual positions, especially for a Democrat,” noting that “he took a dark view of the benefits of globalization, describing at length how it has fueled pandemics and disinformation and contributed to supply chain shortages.”
The central target of the United States is China. The document asserts, “We will effectively compete with the People’s Republic of China, which is the only competitor with both the intent and, increasingly, the capability to reshape the international order.”
So single-minded is the focus on China, that the war in Ukraine is not even mentioned a single time in the White House’s fact sheet or document. Despite the Biden administration’s claims that the world would bloom like a garden were it not for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the strategy does not predicate the US military buildup and preparations for war on the actions of the Russian president.
Rather, the US struggle to “win” the 21st century is predicated on the fact that the “post-Cold War era is definitively over and a competition is underway between the major powers to shape what comes next.”
Even as the national security strategy set its sights on China, the US continued to massively escalate the war with Russia. Speaking at a meeting of the U.S.-led Ukraine Defense Contact Group, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin made clear that the US has instructed its Ukrainian proxy forces to continue their offensive through the winter.
“I expect that Ukraine will continue to do everything it can throughout the winter to regain its territory and to be effective on the battlefield, and we’re going to do everything we can to make sure that they have what’s required to be effective,” Austin said.
Ahead of this week’s NATO summit, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg made clear that the US and its allies will respond to Russia’s threats to use nuclear weapons in the conflict with its own nuclear saber-rattling.
Stoltenberg announced, “Next week, NATO will hold its long-planned deterrence exercise, Steadfast Noon,” announcing his intention to launch a training mission for nuclear-capable bombers in Southern Europe.
Under conditions in which Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has called on NATO to wage preemptive strikes on Russia, and Russia has threatened to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, the NATO training exercise threatens to further escalate the war.
Viewing the present conflict within the context of Biden’s national security strategy, it is clear that the strategists of US imperialism see the war in Ukraine, horrific and bloody as it is, as just the opening skirmish of an even greater and more disastrous global conflict.
The Democratic Party, Identity Politics and the Los Angeles City Council Scandal -- Eric London
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https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/10/13/gxyx-o13.html
EXCERPT:
The audio of the meeting makes clear that identity politics has nothing to do with improving the conditions of workers. It is about weaponizing identity to enrich the affluent upper middle class. The Los Angeles Democrats’ racist comments took place in the context of proposing ways to use racial identity to win patronage over government contracts and secure domination of various union locals so as to gain access to dues money and staffing positions.
It is not accidental that the racist conversation included the head of the county AFL-CIO, and it took place at its headquarters. Over the same period that the Democratic Party has made identity politics the axis of its operations, the trade unions have overseen massive losses in jobs and wages on behalf of American corporations, blaming foreign workers and promoting nationalism. De Leon and Cedillo were both longtime union bureaucrats before running for office, De Leon with the California Teachers Association and Cedillo with the Service Employees International Union.
Two of the figures exposed in the audio have close ties to the pseudo-left, which has long promoted nationalism and identity politics within the Democratic Party. In the audio, Cedillo talks about his former membership in the Stalinist Communist Party USA alongside previous Democratic Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. De Leon, for his part, spoke at a DSA-Los Angeles event in 2017. The Ventura County DSA hosted a “meet the candidate” event in 2018 to promote de Leon’s run for the US Senate.
Though the leaked audio exposes the racism of leading Latino Democrats, the Democratic Party is steeped in racialist politics. African American Democrat Stacey Abrams declared in 2018 that there are “inherent racial differences.” The New York Times’ 1619 Project is devoted to a racialist reinterpretation of history, presenting the past as well as the present as characterized by irreconcilable racial conflict.
The audio proves the Democrats’ racial politics and the open racism of the increasingly fascist Republican Party are only two sides of the same coin. Reading the transcript of the Los Angeles Democrats’ conversation on redistricting, one would hardly know that the slurs and jokes did not come out of the mouth of Trump himself.
Identity politics has greatly enriched the wealthiest minority of each racial group, but it has been a disaster for the working class of all races and nationalities. Nowhere is this truer than Los Angeles, where there are over 50 billionaires and 70,000 homeless people, where the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment is $2,800 and gas costs $6 a gallon, where public transit is in shambles and 96,000 Angelenos have died of the coronavirus. Masses of undocumented immigrants confront daily the threat of deportation.
The depraved incident shows that racial and identity politics have nothing to do with the interests of the working class. A powerful movement of the global working class is emerging across every continent, and the task of socialists is to unite the working class across all racial, national, gender and ethnic lines into one movement for social equality. This means turning to class politics based on the real, economic divisions in society. It means waging a ruthless struggle against identity politics in all forms.
Sunday, October 09, 2022
Friday, October 07, 2022
Congressional Leaders of Both Parties Welcome Members of neo-Nazi Azov Battalion to Washington
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Last month leading members of both US political parties met with high-ranking soldiers of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion at the Capitol in Washington D.C.
The week-long meetings in Washington by the fascist delegations, who were warmly greeted by Republican and Democratic politicians alike, have gone virtually unreported in the press.
In their posts first exposing the visit, journalist Moss Robeson revealed that one of the Azov soldiers that visited the Capitol was Giorgi Kuparashvili. Robeson wrote that Kupraashvili is a “a co-founder of the Azov Regiment and the leader of its Yevhen Konovalets Military School, named for the founder of the fascistic Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists.”
The Azov Battalion was founded in 2014 by white supremacist Andriy Biletsky. The organization is teeming with fascists and racists who idolize Stepan Bandera, a fascist who as a member of the OUN-B collaborated with the Waffen SS during World War II in carrying out the Holocaust in Ukraine.
The embrace of neo-Nazis in the Capitol by both big-business parties obliterates any pretense that the US government is fighting for “democracy” or “human rights” in Ukraine, or anywhere else.
In publicly available Telegram posts, the Association of Families of Azovstal Defenders, an organization comprised of family members of Azov soldiers, boasted that Kateryna Prokopenko, Yuliya Fedosyuk and Alla Somilenko joined Azov soldiers, Kupraashvili, Vladyslav Zhaivoronka and Artur Lypka in holding face-to-face meetings with Democratic and Republican legislators alike.
Kateryna Prokopenko is the leader of the Association of Families of Azovstal Defenders and is the wife of Denys Prokopenko, an Azov commander. Yuliya Fedosyuk is the leader of an antifeminist group linked to Azov according to Bellingcat journalist Oleksiy Kuzmenko.
The meetings are part of a US and global tour that is being conducted by the groups to build support in Washington, and abroad, for more direct military funding to the Ukrainian military, including the Azov Battalion.
Since 2018, Azov has been nominally barred from receiving direct funding and training from the US military. However, since the reactionary Russian invasion of Ukraine in February, the US government, with media partners, has embarked on a historical whitewash of the organization’s neo-Nazi past in order to reverse this ban in name only.
Beginning in a September 20 Telegram post, which continued throughout the week, the Association of Families of Azovstal Defenders wrote their delegation and “Azov” soldiers met with “a number of American congressmen.”
In a September 20 photo, the fascists boast that they were met “at the Capitol” by Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (California) along with over 20 other representatives, Republican and Democratic alike.
In addition to McCarthy, other Republican congressmen who met with Azov fascists last month include Texas Republicans Dan Crenshaw, Pete Sessions, Tony Gonzales and Michael McCaul. McCaul is one of the wealthiest members of Congress and the Ranking Member of the House Foreign Affairs committee.
Describing the warm reception they received on Capitol Hill, the Association of Families of Defenders of Azovstal, said “the congressmen….in particular, veterans of the US Army, expressed their admiration for the victory of the “Azov” regiment and declared full support for our “Azovstal” defenders, They were especially interested in the topic of the defense of Mariupol…”
The posts noted that “in general” the “American representatives ... expressed their sincere support to our delegation and Ukraine as a whole and assured that they have no doubts about the victory of our country in this war, and also repeatedly emphasized their admiration for the heroic Azov regiment.”
On September 21, Senator Rick Scott, who just this past Sunday defended ex-president Donald Trump putting a “DEATH WISH” on Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, was photographed meeting with the delegation.
While she did not meet with Azov members in Washington, “CIA Democrat” Mikie Sherrill was photographed with members of Azov in her home district last month.
In Washington, Chair of the House Intelligence Committee Adam Schiff (California) was photographed with members of Azov and the Ukrainian military in the Capitol.
Michigan Democratic Representative Elissa Slotkin, another CIA Democrat, was not photographed with members of Azov, but did meet separately with another contingent of Ukrainian soldiers whose visit, not coincidentally, overlapped with the fascists’.
This separate Ukrainian military contingent, as revealed in a Twitter thread by Daria Kaleniuk, an executive director at an “anticorruption” national government organization in Kyiv, met with several US senators over the exact same week members of Azov were in Washington. The female Ukrainian soldiers were photographed with Dan Sullivan (Republican-Alaska), Shelley Moore Capito (Republican-West Virginia), Jeanne Shaheen (Democratic- New Hampshire) and Joni Ernst (Republican -Iowa).
This same delegation also met with Robin Dunnigan, deputy assistant secretary at the bureau of European and Eurasian affairs at the US State Department.
A government profile of her notes that Dunnigan is a “career member of the Senior Foreign Service ... she has served overseas in Vietnam, Chile, Turkey, Cuba and El Salvador.” Dunnigan has been a longtime opponent of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, arguing in a 2015 conference that “Nord Stream 2 actually threatens not only Ukraine’s survivability and their resources, but it is a risk to fuel diversification in Europe, especially Southeastern Europe.”
After meeting in Washington with politicians, the Azov soldiers and the defenders of Avozstal group have embarked on a multi-city tour to gin up support for Azov. Speaking at a Ukrainian church in Detroit on September 24, Robeson reported that Azov commander Kuparshavili, recalled the reception the neo-Nazis received.
“We went to the Senators, Congressmen, from both parties. Honestly, the majority we met, there were like over fifty of them, and head of their [factions], they all gave 100% support. They started to work right from their office in front of us, picked up the phone, and started calling to different organizations which can influence—right now...”
The open embrace of Azov by US politicians in both parties shows that the only “unity” that can be forged in Washington is based on war abroad with the most reactionary and genocidal forces in world history. It is a further confirmation that there exists no constituency within the US ruling class for the defense of basic democratic rights and underscores that capitalism has nothing to offer humanity except war and fascism.
Monday, October 03, 2022
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