Commenter Profile

Total number of comments: 76 (since 2010-06-20 15:09:19)

Live in Brooklyn, independent socialist, gay, middle-aged, free-thinker, believe social justice is a spiritual pursuit

Website: http://thecahokian.blogspot.com/

Showing comments 76 - 1
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• Paul's challenge to progressives
  • ish January 4, 2012 at 8:54 pm

    Seriously I feel like I am in a bizarro world where you and other commenters are looking at someone's right foot and trying to convince other people and yourselves that it is their left foot.

    Ron Paul is a far right extremist. He's a conspiracy theorist and no friend to women, gay people, people of color or... the movement to support the rights of the Palestinian people.

    This is lunacy. Just stop it.

  • ish January 4, 2012 at 2:11 pm with 3 replies

    If you think Ron Paul opposes American imperialism you are very very naive.

  • ish January 3, 2012 at 2:06 pm

    What damage does Ron Paul do to the debate when "our" side of the argument becomes associated with rightwing crackpots like Paul?

  • ish January 3, 2012 at 2:04 pm with 1 replies

    Are those your only choices?

  • ish January 3, 2012 at 12:20 pm with 3 replies

    The daily peans to Ron Paul here are very very disappointing.

    At least in 2008 the mistaken hopes were placed in the basket of somebody who claimed to be progressive. Now we're going to put our hopes in an extreme right-wing crackpot? That's called doubling-down on a bad bet.

    Marching together in Tahrir, great idea, a lesson for the American movement. Voting for Salafists, not so much.

• More responses to Ron Paul's surge
  • ish December 31, 2011 at 1:08 pm

    I'm finding the endless rationalizations here for this horrifying bottom-of-the-barrel extreme right-wing crackpot candidate deeply disturbing.

• Ron Paul and the left
  • ish December 29, 2011 at 9:40 pm with 15 replies

    As an opponent of Israel and zionism I have been accused of being anti-Semitic many times, as I'm sure many of you have. To disprove my anti-Semitism I look for opportunities to root it out when I see it.

    If the head of Stormfront tried to get anywhere near me, much less in a photo with me, I would be screaming and yelling. Loudly.

    If somehow the head of an organization like that snuck in a photo with me I would be denouncing him and the photo all over the place.

    Left hand yellow. Right foot blue. Stop playing that game. The man is standing next to a Nazi. Have you ever stood next to a Nazi and not complained about it? This is not complicated.

  • ish December 29, 2011 at 2:35 pm with 6 replies

    Because those of us who learn from an early age the different between left and right can see that Ron Paul is to the extreme right of the Republican party and we find it disturbing that people with rational-enough minds to correctly identify the issues in the Middle East are engaged in this bizarre series of rationalizations around Ron Paul.

    Anyone not engaged in an emotional game of Twister built around the slim, and in my opinion deluded, hope that Ron Paul is for a rational foreign policy can see who Ron Paul really is. He is not a new archetype on the American scene.

  • ish December 28, 2011 at 10:13 pm

    Left foot blue.
    Right hand yellow.
    Go ahead, spin the wheel again.

  • ish December 28, 2011 at 8:53 pm

    Jesus, Frankie, Jesus?

    I believe in separation of church and state thank you very much. And you wouldn't catch my cold dead corpse anywhere near a Republican primary.

    What is wrong with you people?

  • ish December 28, 2011 at 8:48 pm

    dumvita are you effing serious? Are you asking me since I have denounced arsenic whether I would prefer hemlock, cyanide or strychnine? I would prefer not to be poisoned thank you.

    My choice is the people in power. Am I going to vote next year? I'll get back to you in October.

  • ish December 28, 2011 at 4:18 pm with 2 replies

    "Ron Paul's Website Boasts Of Endorsement From "Death To Gays" Christian Pastor "

    link to joemygod.blogspot.com

    Yeah, encouraging to those of us who are gay.

  • ish December 28, 2011 at 3:33 pm

    Awesome point Keith.

  • ish December 28, 2011 at 2:35 pm with 10 replies

    Are we so uncreative that that's our only choice? Barack Obama or Ron Paul? Have we learned nothing from the past year? Anything is possible.... unless you follow Ron Paul down his rabbithole and then well, good luck with that.

  • ish December 28, 2011 at 1:59 pm with 19 replies

    This thread is embarrasing. So many people making excuses for the unexcusable. Several of you could enter the Twister olympics. This is textbook delusion.

    Ron Paul isn't as racist as he could be? Really? He opposes civil rights laws. Opposes. Wake up.

    His opposition to war and to US Israel policy is absolutely irrelevant when you look at him as a whole. He is a far far right lunatic fringe candidate, and people who should know better are validating him.

    link to thecahokian.blogspot.com

• 'New York Times' implies anti-Zionism is anti-Semitic
  • ish December 27, 2011 at 7:56 pm

    I hear you Toivo. But all your arguments were made about Obama in 2008 and we saw how that worked out for those of us who support the Palestinians. I think in fact that Paul's campaign is not a signpost of something better but a signpost of ideological bankruptcy in America. And Paul's ounce of decency in the international affairs arena does indeed come with a lot of truly horrifying baggage. Obama at least paid lip service to things like, you know, civil rights. Movements like OWS which veer left do give me hope that something significant is changing in the US; but support of Paul is a rightwing derailment. And frankly, I find it very very hard to get past the fact that Paul is a nutbag; I think the numbers of people trying to twist themselves into pretzel shapes to avoid that obvious fact is damaging not liberating.

  • ish December 27, 2011 at 8:07 am with 7 replies

    And hopefully decent, progressive minded people will do everything in their power to keep this far rightwing nutjob out of the white house.

• The Ron Paul moment-- bad and good
  • ish December 27, 2011 at 8:09 am

    infowars. Now there's a reputable source of information.

  • ish December 26, 2011 at 9:18 am

    Believe what you want. George W. Bush ran on a platform of less US involvement abroad and an end to American "nation-building" of foreign countries. That worked out well, right?

    Anyone who thinks voting for Ron Paul will mean an end to war is delusional.

  • ish December 24, 2011 at 4:21 pm

    And here's a blogpost worth reading.

    link to ashleyfmiller.wordpress.com

  • ish December 24, 2011 at 4:19 pm

    Fascinating that people like you always presume that anyone disagreeing with you must be "posh." That narrative in your head is very loud. And wrong.

    "Forced busing" is a racist codeword. Period. At 53 I'm old enough to recognize that.

  • ish December 24, 2011 at 3:38 pm

    Wow."forced busing." It's pretty clear that Ron Paul's world is whites only. You kind of just proved it.

  • ish December 24, 2011 at 3:36 pm

    a RATIONAL person DOES not COMMENT like THAT.

  • ish December 24, 2011 at 9:57 am with 20 replies

    What a scary scary thread. Ron Paul is a right-wing idiot. I find it tragic that thinking people, in the aftermath of Obama's betrayals, would have such an insane reaction as to go for some creepy libertarian rightwinger who, if you pull a paper bag over your head, almost sounds like he might have some acceptable foreign policy positions if you squint. The man and his supporters are also f**king nuts. This thread has ample proof of that.

    "The Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not improve race relations or enhance freedom. Instead, the forced integration dictated by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 increased racial tensions while diminishing individual liberty." - Ron Paul, June 4, 2004. That's him, not some questionable newsletter that he authorized.

    If Obama sold out the Palestinians, and the Republicans promise to do worse, perhaps the solution is changing the game. Which does not mean for voting for this racist crackpot.

    Wake up! Occupy everywhere.

• Buttu, Erakat, Dajani, Rabbani and Abunimah respond to UN speeches
  • ish September 24, 2011 at 7:49 pm with 1 replies

    So then you're okay declaring the US a Christian state?

• See the children's drawings that terrified the San Francisco Jewish Community Relations Council and the Jewish Federation of the East Bay
  • ish September 12, 2011 at 2:28 pm with 25 replies

    Here's a super creepy pro-Israel blog about this:

    link to proisraelbaybloggers.blogspot.com

    "The Children of Sderot, just a mile from the Gaza border are truly living under siege, suffering from daily missile attacks."

• Arab LGBT Movement: "We are not victims in need of a white male savior working in London..."
  • ish June 23, 2011 at 3:43 pm

    I'm so glad this piece was published....And Seham, that's so incredible. We're lucky you're so vigilant.

• Open letter to Gaddafi supporter Cynthia McKinney from disappointed Palestinians
  • ish June 23, 2011 at 4:49 pm

    Citizen, regarding 9/11, I have no reason to doubt it was the work of fundamentalist Muslims, having both legitimate and illegitimate complaints against the U.S. ranging from its Middle-East policy to alleged decadence of American society.

    I didn't say all struggle was class struggle.

    I'm not sure what this has to do with the topic at hand.

  • ish June 23, 2011 at 4:25 pm

    Thanks for reading my blog Citizen.

    I don't think hardly anyone is buying the idea that the US really supports the Arab spring, just like I don't think anyone buys the sophistry that NATO does not equal USA.

    PS I may not have specifically mentioned the "US-Israel special relationship" but I condemn the State of Israel all the time. In any case I'm not sure how that counteracts a "class struggle macro."

  • ish June 23, 2011 at 10:50 am

    Dear 'Taxi" person, I went to my first anti-war demonstration in the late 1960s when I was ten years old. I'm not sure why you think I'm some kind of "amateur." I have written at great length on my own blog about my opposition to the war in Libya (link to thecahokian.blogspot.com). But unlike those of you who seem to be embracing Qaddafi, I have not lost sight of the fact that the real division in the world is ruling classes and people, and frankly that puts Obama and Qaddafi on the same side, merely friends having a difference of opinion over who gets to rule the Libyan masses for themselves.

    Citizen's view of Qaddafi in "nobody's pocket" is hopelessly naive and ill-informed. Qaddafi has been neo-colonialism's best friend in North Africa since at least 2003.

  • ish June 23, 2011 at 10:41 am

    I don't disagree with that...why would you think I did?

  • ish June 23, 2011 at 6:38 am

    as opposed to the guys in the cave theory?

    Which is documented by facts? Yes.

  • ish June 23, 2011 at 6:37 am

    Daniel Ortega of 2011 is not the same as Daniel Ortega of 1979. Most of the leading left-wing Sandinistas have moved into opposition.

    And yes, Assad is a dictator too. Presumably you didn't enjoy Bush Jr being President but Assad Jr. is okay?

  • ish June 22, 2011 at 8:46 pm

    False? Misleading? I don't know. Isn't there an important fine line for suggesting that American Mid-East policy is partly to blame for 9/11 and embracing nutcase ideas about 9/11 being an "inside job"? One needs to choose one's source of opinion and news on the internet cautiously. Once I saw the anti-Semitism on that blog I stopped reading it. My point is that any propaganda war is complex. Much of the Left, in its absolutely correct opposition to NATO/US bombing, has taken the unnecessary step of pretending Qaddafi is some kind of freedom-fighting leftist.

  • ish June 22, 2011 at 8:39 pm

    Bandolero how dare you compare the dictator Qaddafi to the heroic Nicaraguan people. The Sandinista revolution was an actual revolution of the actual Nicaraguan people not a wealthy general using fake anti-imperialism to prop up his regime. Qaddafi is the biggest friend in Libya Neocolonialism ever had; he's virtually Berlusconi's best friend in conspiring to keep African immigrants out of Europe. You shame yourself and the entire left making any equivalence between the Sandinistas and the vile creature Qaddafi is.

  • ish June 22, 2011 at 5:25 pm with 17 replies

    And, Bandolero, one of those sources you link to, Aangirfan, seems to be not only conspiracy-theory-ridden but anti-Semitic as well. See this post of theirs: link to aangirfan.blogspot.com

  • ish June 22, 2011 at 4:10 pm with 23 replies

    The US/NATO attack on Libya is wrong and unsupportable. But if you think it's a choice between Qaddafi and NATO you're selling the people of the region short.

    McKinney's embrace of a dictator is disgusting, no less than those who have embraced alleged democracy at the hands of cruise missiles.

    Over and over again Qaddafi has shown him to be exactly the same kind of friend of the Palestinians as, well, the US government is. Which is to say no friend at all.

• How 'A Gay Girl in Damascus' became a mascot of the liberal west
  • ish June 16, 2011 at 12:11 am

    Great piece. I've noticed in all the hullaballoo over "Gay Girl" how many people start speculating on what the real life of gay people must be like in Syria...they usually start talking about beheadings and mass arrests. The truth is that such speculation is as factually groundless as "Gay Girl's" fake lesbian voice. While as a gay man I have no doubts it's easier to be openly gay in places like NYC where I live, it's about time we start listening to actual queer Arabs for a sense of realities on the ground and their priorities and aspirations.

• We're here, we're queer, get used to it
  • ish June 2, 2011 at 7:39 pm

    What an awful development.

    An activist friend of mine said on her facebook page, "I have been in this community since high school, and the people now running the Center are the most destructive non-leaders we have ever been subjected to. They don't know how to solve problems, and they have no moral impulse. They created this crisis through their bad judgement and now they are escalating through more bad decision making. The lack of intelligence and responsibility is stunning. "

• Netanyahu has nothing to worry about
  • ish May 21, 2011 at 12:25 pm

    I blogged about the Obama speech today. And I've linked to a terrific interview with Omar Barghouti on The Real News.

    link to thecahokian.blogspot.com

• Obama won't have to write another speech for AIPAC on Monday
  • ish May 19, 2011 at 6:18 pm with 3 replies

    Isn't calling for the State of Palestine to be "demilitarized" key here? I mean I'm quite against war, but the Palestinians must have the right to defend themselves. Otherwise this is just the proposal for a Bantustan a la Bophutatswana and Transkei. Apartheid indeed.

• Picking apart the New York Times Zionist narrative on the Nakba . . . using the New York Times
  • ish May 17, 2011 at 7:47 pm

    What a great article. Nice work digging up this stuff. Sad how easily history is rewritten.

• 'Geronimo EKIA'-- as Indian wars continue in Palestine
  • ish May 7, 2011 at 5:57 pm with 3 replies

    Noam Chomsky has some blistering remarks on all this. He further suggests that the US military naming its weapons "apache" and "tomahawk" would be like the Nazi army naming its weapons "jew" and "gypsy."

    link to kasamaproject.org

• Cairo 2
  • ish March 30, 2011 at 3:14 pm with 2 replies

    I strongly recommend this column:

    link to blackagendareport.com

  • ish March 28, 2011 at 11:30 pm with 2 replies

    Obama's gifts as an orator is to get people to want to see in his words what they themselves believe. It's the blank spaces we fill in with our own hopes. Unfortunately, I think we're all learning the hard way that that is a big mistake.

    I don't see how you can pull out of this hat the rabbit of more support for Palestine when every last one of his government's ACTIONS suggest the opposite.

    There were a LOT of blank spaces in that speech. Oh yeah, PS, who is NATO...oh right...75% the USA!

• Establishing the timeline on 'Cast Lead II'
  • ish March 23, 2011 at 4:38 pm

    we underscore that Israel, like all nations, has a right to self-defense.

    I wonder if that means Obama thinks Libya has the right to attack the United States now?

• Afghanistan. Iraq. Libya.
  • ish March 21, 2011 at 11:01 am

    Neocolonialism at its worst. Since when do the US, France and the UK get to decide who rules Libya? Who deserves to live?

    Stop the bombing!

• Leftist arguments for the int'l intervention, from Yassin-Kassab and Woodward
  • ish March 21, 2011 at 7:19 am

    People who think the choice is between Qaddafi and imperialism suffer from a peculiar lack of imagination. There is no liberation at the hands of cruise missiles, and when the foreign colonial power is offering fighter jets (yes how beneficent was France's occupation of Fezzan), you might want to consider what strings are being attached.

    Any so-called leftist who supports the rain of fire brought down on Libya by the United States is no leftist at all.

• Libya/Gaza
  • ish March 20, 2011 at 5:52 pm with 1 replies

    While it is not for me to tell the Libyan revolutionaries they are wrong for wanting international assistance in their just struggle against a dictatorship, it is for me as an American to warn them of being careful what you ask for. It is for me as an American to say that when our country uses its military force for what it pretends and rationalizes as just causes, the result is always unjustifiable murder and destruction.

    This massive neocolonial attack on Libya is absolutely wrong. Ask yourselves why Libya? It's not about the people. Why not Bahrain? Why not Yemen? Why not Palestine? This is about something else...it's about oil for Europe, about preventing African immigration to Europe, and about seizing control of the wave of popular unrest to make sure that the rest of the pro-western stooges running the Arab world are safe in their palaces.

    I have felt like the last of the Obama defenders. No more. Here he becomes nothing more than a Bush rerun. Freedom never arrives under cover of American cruise missiles or neocolonialist French jets. Beware.

• Noted expert on Israel/Palestine, David Horowitz has never been there
  • ish March 12, 2011 at 2:42 pm

    What creeps me out more than Horowitz is the majority of the audience that licks his words right up. Vile.

• Nakba porn kingpin Michael Lucas bullies LGBT center against Anti-Apartheid Party
  • ish February 25, 2011 at 10:48 am

    That's an awful lot of words just to insinuate that anyone opposed to Lucas must be an anti-semite.

    One of the slimiest comments I've read.

• NY's LGBT center cancels pro-Palestinian event after donor/porn-merchant says it's 'anti-Semitic'
  • ish February 24, 2011 at 10:55 am with 1 replies

    Thanks so much for covering this!

• Educate. Motivate. Advocate: Come to DC March 5-7 to change US policy in Israel/Palestine
  • ish February 23, 2011 at 4:24 pm

    This is quite off-topic but I'm not sure how to convey a really interesting story to you.

    Israeli-American gay porn magnate Michael Lucas has just succeeded in getting a gay BDS group, Siegebusters, booted from New York City's Lesbian and Gay community center.

    Petition and info here: link to ipetitions.com

    A little backstory: link to joemygod.blogspot.com

• Barghouti: For the US, 'freedom' in the Middle East amounts to the 'liberty' to bow to its hegemony
  • ish February 19, 2011 at 10:10 am

    Wow. THAT is a powerful statement. Bravo Barghouti. I've linked to this on my blog.

• Obama gives big thumbs up to settlements at UN (and kills the two-state solution --Haber)
  • ish February 18, 2011 at 6:15 pm with 1 replies

    Just like Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama is now taking a stand in support of Apartheid. Disgusting.

• Palestinian queer activists challenge the 'pinkwashing' of the Israeli occupation
  • ish February 16, 2011 at 5:45 pm

    Thanks for this report. These folks held a talk in NYC but due to an overflow crowd many of us couldn't get in.

    As a gay man who is constantly arguing with pro-Israeli gays on a couple blogs, it's very gratifying to see Queer Palestinians speak out for themselves.

• The Egyptian revolution threatens an American-imposed order of Arabophobia and false choices
  • ish January 29, 2011 at 4:12 pm

    Well said!

    And no matter what happens, no matter how this all resolved, the U.S. is eternally on record as choosing the side of the dictatorships first. People will remember that.

    link to thecahokian.blogspot.com

• 'NYT' runs sloppy apologia for Islamophobic editor
  • ish January 26, 2011 at 12:41 pm

    Yeah although there's plenty of facts in this piece to condemn Peretz, the general tone is that of writing about one's eccentric uncle, oh there he goes being a little bit offensive again? Isn't he cute? We still love him!

    I think that's called enabling.

• Today in Egypt
  • ish January 25, 2011 at 2:04 pm with 3 replies

    Wow. The guys standing in front of the water cannon made me tear up. Amazing and inspiring.

• Secret House resolution says No to Palestinian statehood
  • ish December 15, 2010 at 1:55 pm

    I do not, Bumblebye!

  • ish December 15, 2010 at 12:18 pm with 8 replies

    Speaking of the Palestinians building a state with or without negotiations, the Gaza authorities are issuing postage stamps with AMAZING graphic themes.

    link to thecahokian.blogspot.com

• JNF embarks on NY gaywashing
  • ish November 28, 2010 at 3:34 pm

    Scott Lively is one of the American Evangelicals behind the capital-punishment-for-gays bill stalled in Uganda's parliament. He's a pig.

• Burston on the Jewishness of Israel
  • ish November 5, 2010 at 6:25 am

    Separation of church and state is a good thing. Everywhere. It's better for secular people, AND religious people.

• Me and 'Nejad' in Beirut
  • ish October 26, 2010 at 8:06 pm

    Thanks for that link, Walid.

  • ish October 26, 2010 at 8:02 pm

    To me it appeared there were strings attached for Saddam's kindness to Palestinians. Offering social services to Palestinian refugees was laudable no doubt. By bringing up what happened to the refugees afterwards I meant to suggest that reciprocating a relationship with a dictator was not a successful strategy. I certainly don't ascribe the original crime of the Nakba to anyone but Israel. My point was basically "beware of dictators bearing gifts," when they turn out to be paper tigers before American and Israeli military might.

  • ish October 26, 2010 at 11:40 am with 7 replies

    Psychopathic God I'm not sure how you got that out of my comment. It is a historical fact that Palestinians suffered after the Americans "liberated" Kuwait and ten years later overthrew Saddam. It was obviously not the fault of the Palestinians.

    Why are you being so hostile? Why do you I assume I support Israel in any way? I do not. The world is a complicated place. It's not supporting Zionism in any way to note that the Palestinians have been used and abused by people claiming to be their friends.

    You may apologize for making really slimy insinuations about my comment. Feel free to read my thoroughly anti-Zionist point of view on my blog.

    link to thecahokian.blogspot.com

  • ish October 26, 2010 at 10:39 am with 9 replies

    The situation described here reminds me of Saddam Hussein, who also posed as the Palestinians' best friend. Which was ulimately bad news for the Palestinian refugees in Iraq and Kuwait when Saddam's bluster proved to be just that. I remember during the first gulf war when Saddam sent scuds at Israel; all the Palestinian- and Yemeni-owned bodegas in my Brooklyn neighborhood immediately put up small pictures of him behind their cash registers.

• Barack Obama: Israel's lawyer
  • ish October 13, 2010 at 11:53 am

    These peace negotiations are a thieves' charade. Disgusting.

    link to thecahokian.blogspot.com

• The 'Times' smooths the path to the next Lebanon war
  • ish October 8, 2010 at 9:46 pm

    That Times article was such a shoddy piece of propaganda!

• In which a mild Palestinian voice on a U.S. Op-Ed page is greeted by a call for Muslim genocide
  • ish September 3, 2010 at 6:59 am with 1 replies

    Did anyone catch the letters to the editor in the Times the other day? The two letters they chose to print about the Qassam Brigades attack were tragically hilarious. The first began, "I am a proud former resident of Brooklyn who moved to Israel three years ago with my family..." signed by someone in Neve Daniel, West Bank. The second read in part "Settlements are an issue that must be addressed in the peace negotiations, but doesn’t this incident underscore that Hamas must cease its unprovoked violence if we are to have any hope of regional peace?"

    Does someone there have a bitter sense of humor or what?

• Palestinian guns - redux
  • ish September 2, 2010 at 7:50 pm

    Thanks much Ahmed for this essay...Its clarity is really useful.

• What is Hamas thinking?
  • ish September 1, 2010 at 10:26 am

    Richard Silverstein has a really excellent commentary on the Qassam Brigade attack.

    link to richardsilverstein.com

• Notice the pattern in the Israeli stories?
  • ish July 29, 2010 at 6:52 am

    The very language of that NYT article on Henochowicz and her medical bills gives a pass to Israel. I've analyzed it on my blog.

    link to thecahokian.blogspot.com

• Did State Department official get his Zionist swill about Lincoln from mytho-historian Michael Oren?
  • ish July 23, 2010 at 7:51 pm

    That's some lovely research. Thanks for this post.

• Dialogue re Kristof, non-violence, and stones
  • ish July 15, 2010 at 8:09 pm with 1 replies

    Non-violence has a beautiful spiritual and moral integrity.

    But before any non-Palestinian who advocates non-violence as a strategy for Palestinian activists should be taken seriously, they need to advocate non-violence for the State of Israel first. That's what creeps me out about Kristof: the constant NYT rationalizations for Israeli violence, and then the lofty condescension to the quaint noble savages. And aren't there all kinds of unstated implications: every time a liberal of Kristof's ilk lauds Palestinian non-violence, aren't they really issuing a silent condemnation of Palestinian militants, or worse, silent approval for Israel dispatching those militants who, we must assume, are getting what they deserve?

• 'NYT' reporter who grooved on Jewish terrorism made Chomsky out to be 'self-hating' nut
  • ish June 27, 2010 at 7:33 am

    There was another priceless bit of NYT's double standard a week or so ago in their report of an attempted hijacking in the Soviet Union by dissident Jews.

    See my own blog:
    link to thecahokian.blogspot.com

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