Enough Sabre Rattling Already!

Folks, this is starting to sound pretty ominous. The Washington War Party is coming unhinged and appears to be leaving no stone unturned when it comes to provoking Putin's Russia and numerous others. The recent collapse of cooperation in Syria----based on the false claim that Assad and his Russian allies are waging genocide in Aleppo---- is only the latest example.
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The Nicole Shanahan Announcement And RFK’s Route To The White House

When John F. Kennedy chose his running mate in 1960, he was not in the ideological check-the-box business. He was in the race to win, and to do that he needed the 26 electoral votes of Texas and to retain as many of the 101 electoral votes in the rest of the historic “Solid South” […]
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Rogue Central Banking In Several Lessons, Part 2

Once the inflation genie was out of the bottle with the CPI clocking in at 6.0% by the fall of 1970, the Fed struggled for more than a decade to put it back. Consequently, any focus on stimulating growth, jobs, housing and investment was infrequent and definitely secondary to inflation-fighting. We amplify the 1970s flood […]
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Rogue Central Banking In Several Lessons, Part 1

What passes for central banking today is really a perverse form of Wall Street-pleasing monetary manipulation. We describe it as “rogue” because it employs the vocabulary of central banking, but in practice it fundamentally undermines main street prosperity, even as it showers the 1% with unspeakable financial windfalls. So here’s the first and most important […]
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The GOP Spenders Did It Again!

House Republicans proved once again today that they are sniveling fakes when it comes to fiscal responsibility. Fully 101 Republicans voted for a 1,018-page omnibus appropriations bill that was delivered in the dead of night at 3AM. It contained $1.2 trillion of sight unseen spending authority for 70% of the government including DOD, Homeland Security, […]
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RFK To Jay Powell on Day #1: You’re Fired!

RFK has pointedly announced that he will pardon Deep State prisoner Julian Assange on day #1. That sent a powerful message that the destructive rule of Washington’s bipartisan War Party will be brought to an abrupt end if he is elected President. Likewise, RFK should announce an intent to stop dead in its tracks the […]
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Stop The Fed, Stop The Debt

If you want to understand why US fiscal policy has gone to hell in a handbasket, the chart below tells you all you need to know. To wit, after Greenspan went full retard at the Fed’s printing press in response to the dotcom crash, a yawning gap opened up between the soaring level of the […]
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A Thousand Years of Prison Time Over a 6-Hour Delay of Congress

Yes you read that correctly.  Every student of the First Amendment knows about the infamous Alien and Sedition Acts, the Palmer Raids of World War I, the railroading of the Chicago 7, crackdowns on anti-war movements, and the FBI’s infamous COINTELPRO abuses and surveillance of Martin Luther King and the Black Panthers.

But the single greatest mass infringement on fundamental First Amendment freedoms is happening right now. But the civil liberties establishment, which rakes in millions annually parroting the civil rights talking points of the 1970s, has turned its back on the greatest mass political persecution in American legal history: the railroading of January 6 defendants.

As these words are written, the US District Court for DC is approaching a grim milestone: sometime in the next few weeks, a total of a thousand years of prison time will have been handed out to J6ers.  January 6 injustices are eclipsing all other American legal disgraces.

I myself am a J6 criminal defense attorney who has written hundreds of motions and participated in eight J6 jury trials.  Although I have a comparatively winning record among other J6 defense lawyers—measured by total counts defeated adversely—I and my co-counsels have nonetheless lost every case.

After three years of litigation, the conviction rate for J6ers is 100 percent before juries; and 99.5+ percent before judges.  This may go down as the very highest conviction rate for any specific category of criminal case in any court venue in US history.  The DC venue does not offer fair trials for opponents of the government who are deemed to be conservative, rightwing, or Republican.

The average prison sentences for J6ers are by far the longest in American history associated with rioting or demonstrating.  Prison sentences associated with the Civil Rights movement, anti-war riots, labor demonstrations, or Red scares don’t even come close. None of the Civil War’s confederate leadership served as much prison time as an average J6er who simply pushed against a police riot shield outside the Capitol on January 6. (Jefferson Davis himself served only two years.)

The longest prison term stemming from the infamous Alien and Sedition Act prosecutions of the 1790s—which every law student learns were the most tyrannical abuses of speech and political expression in early America—was 18 months. The longest term served by Black Panthers who chased out the California legislature from the State Capitol with assault weapons in 1967 was one year in jail.

Compare Eugene V. Debs’ ten-year prison sentence handed down in 1918 for sedition, to the 22-year prison sentence of Proud Boy leader Enrique Tarrio for seditious conspiracy stemming from January 6.  Debs’ sedition conviction involved claims that Debs’ anti-war speeches undermined America’s military preparedness during World War I.  (Note that President Harding commuted Debs’ sentence in 1921.)

Today, civil libertarians regard Debs’ conviction as a stain on the history of the First Amendment.  But Enrique Tarrio wasn’t even at the Capitol on Jan. 6; he was watching the events on the news from a Baltimore motel room.  Prosecutors cobbled together a “sedition” case from Tarrio’s social media posts and texts decrying 2020 election improprieties and generally praising the mass uprising on January 6. (Tarrio did not testify but later said the DOJ originally offered to release him if he would just say the Proud Boys attacked the Capitol upon Trump’s instructions.)

Nothing—literally nothing—in the evidence linked the Proud Boys to any definitive or detailed planning behind the chaotic breach of the Capitol on Jan. 6. Ethan Nordean, the highest-ranking Proud Boy at the scene, merely led followers in a rambling march around the Capitol while drinking a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon.  Nordean later entered the Capitol reluctantly, via a wide open door, after hundreds of others were already in.  Nordean is now serving 18 years.

The same is true with Stewart Rhodes and the Oath Keepers.  Rhodes is serving an 18-year prison sentence for seditious conspiracy despite never going in the Capitol and urging followers not to go inside.  The Oath Keepers, in fact, provided actual security for speakers at Trump’s rally earlier in the day—in coordination with the Secret Service—on the morning of January 6.  But the Secret Service texts on January 6, including texts regarding the finding of pipe bombs at buildings adjacent to Capitol Grounds, have mysteriously gone missing.

One J6er got 14 years for picking up a discarded spray container and test spraying it. Another J6er, literally dying of cancer, was given 10 years for spraying pepper spray toward officers. The kind of pepper spray that can be purchased at 7-11, over the counter. Jacob Chansley was given three-and-a-half years for the crime of demonstrating in the Capitol while wearing a strange costume.

These long prison sentences for J6ers are derived by applying math tricks to the sentencing guidelines.  Judges stack enhancement upon enhancement to arrive at stratospheric sentences, even for first-time offenders.  For example, judges applied ridiculous “terrorism enhancements” to the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers by pointing to instances of property damage—such as the breaking of a window or the bending of a decorative fence—and then attributing such property damage to “intimidation or coercion.”  Several Proud Boys, such as Tarrio and my client, Dominic Pezzola, didn’t even touch the fence they were accused of destroying; but jurors convicted them on strained “aiding and abetting” theories.  (Tarrio was some 40 miles away at the time.)

Journalist Steve Baker has documented that prosecutors and government witnesses committed blatant perjury at Rhodes’ trial, and even presented false evidence that Oath Keepers terrorized a black officer inside the Capitol.  But rather than investigate such perjury, the Department of Justice chose to charge Baker, the investigative journalist, with crimes.

Mainstream news media dutifully reports these exorbitant prison sentences as if the judges are being lenient to J6 defendants for issuing sentences below prosecutors’ recommendations or “the Guidelines.”  Readers are left thinking Guideline ranges are calculated mechanically.  The Guidelines do not dictate precise sentences but direct users to apply analogous sentences to crimes that aren’t specified in the manual.  In every J6 case of disorderly conduct (a misdemeanor not specified in the manual), judges and prosecutors have applied a guideline range that applies to assaulting officers (a felony).  And many judges punish J6 defendants with “obstruction of justice” enhancements if the defendants dare to testify in their own defense but are later (almost inevitably, given the venue) convicted.

Almost everyone who even touched a cop or pushed against a police shield on Jan. 6 is charged with assaulting a federal officer.  After their near-certain convictions, these J6ers find their sentences are enhanced or designated as aggravated assault for sentencing purposes, upon a theory that they selected their “victim” due to his “official status” or committed the crime with the “intent to commit another felony.”  Dozens of bogus assaulting-officers-with-a-“deadly-and-dangerous-weapon” convictions are based on acts such as spraying utterly-nondeadly pepper spray or tossing a traffic cone or a plastic water bottle.  One J6 participant named Ronald McAbee was even convicted of assaulting cops with a “deadly and dangerous weapon” for wearing biker gloves with reinforced knuckles—despite never punching anyone with the gloves.

The cruelty of prosecutorial vindictiveness against J6ers has totally evaded the attention of America’s civil liberties establishment.  Neither ACLU nor any other organization purportedly fighting injustice has bothered to notice.  At least sixteen J6ers who rejected government misdemeanor plea offers regarding their misdemeanor charges found themselves suddenly charged with felonies as punishment.  These superseding indictments frequently land immediately prior to the expected misdemeanor trial; accompanied by prosecutors’ insistence on no continuance of the trial date for the defendant to prepare against the new charges.

The DC jury pool is the most extreme pro-government jury pool in the United States, if not anywhere outside North Korea.  DC residents vote for Democrats more than 90 percent of the time.  Recent polling shows that almost half of DC residents think “life imprisonment or death” would be “a fair punishment” for J6ers.  Almost 70 percent of DC residents believe “anyone who participated in the events” should serve hard time in prison.

This is while the rest of the country has softened discernably regarding J6ers.  A USA/Suffolk University poll conducted at the 3-year anniversary of the event found that just 48 percent of nationwide voters said they thought the rioters were “criminals,” a significant drop from a survey conducted just after January 6.

Prosecutors know they can indict and convict a ham sandwich in DC (so long as they label the sandwich a Republican).  I recently tried a J6 case involving a DC Metro cop who grabbed my client’s tiny fiberglass flagpole, maliciously broke it in two, and cut his finger on the fiberglass.  My client is now jailed for “assaulting a federal officer, causing bodily injury”—one of the most serious charges in the U.S. Criminal Code, awaiting sentencing.  The bodycam footage clearly showed the officer held the flagpole between his two hands when he broke it.

I previously tried another case where a J6er excitedly spoke into his cell phone during a Facebook livestream, things such as “we’re storming the Capitol!” and “They can’t stop us!” while walking outside the building.  It is likely that no one around him could have even heard his statements; and a government official admitted that no one inside the building could have possibly heard the remarks.  Nonetheless, the client was convicted of “obstruction of an official proceeding” and now awaits sentencing (up to 20 years).

Normally, this lopsided imbalance would provoke judges to step up to protect the rights of defendants.  But in the cases of January 6 defendants, the judges have generally joined forces with prosecutors to maximize convictions and sentences.  For example, J6 judges have fundamentally altered the basic law of pretrial detention and bail in J6 cases in order to detain more J6ers prior to trial. Several DC federal judges have used their benches as pulpits from which to denounce J6ers as insurrectionists and condemn “conspiracy theories” about covert government planning on January 6.

“Conspiracy theories” (at least such theories which challenge government narratives) are never, ever, ever, given any hearing in the District Courts of D.C.  Any questions about the elusive pipe bomb “investigation,” or the presence of hundreds of undercover government agents among the rioters are strictly forbidden.  Prosecutors object instantly whenever a defense lawyer asks about such things; and judge immediately sustain the objections.

Some of the most important instigators of the Capitol breach on Jan. 6 have never been apprehended, despite their features being plainly visible to millions on widely circulated videos. The fact that Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris was at DNC Headquarters near the “pipe bombs,” instead of the Capitol, at the most crucial moments of January 6, was kept top secret for almost a year after the event.  Hundreds of indictments—which falsely said Harris was in the Capitol—had to be rewritten.  This means that hundreds of grand jurors were lied to or misled; and that grand juries had to be recalled and re-instructed, at a likely cost of millions of dollars.  The public still has not been provided any explanation.

By now it is obvious even to members of Congress that the “pipe bombs” were actually some type of blown sting operation or undercover FBI or Secret Service false-flag operation.  But every question about the episode goes unanswered.  Long ago the FBI released video of the “pipe bomber” that was deliberately grainy—at a frame rate slower than any video camera sold at WalMart.  The FBI director told Congressman Massie that it was unable to track the “pipe bomber’s” cell phone because the phone’s signal was “corrupted.”

January 6 prosecutions have shattered boundaries of normalcy regarding criminal justice.   Pre-dawn raids with flash-bang grenades and armored vehicles had never previously been used for misdemeanor arrests. In fact, almost no retiree of the FBI remembers the agency ever actually arresting anyone for misdemeanors.  (In the past, such petty charges were generally initiated by citations.)

For J6 investigations, the FBI has employed the largest and most open-ended search warrants in history—so-called “geo-fence” warrants which compelled Google, AT&T, Verizon and other cell service providers to disclose location data of every cell phone near the Capitol on that day.  These were essentially the largest general warrants in human history; based on the premise that anyone who showed up should be investigated for a crime—to be determined later.

Mentioning the First Amendment is Prohibited.

Prosecutors file motions to forbid mentioning the First Amendment prior to every trial. Judges grant the motions almost summarily.  Prosecutors then use the judges’ orders as an offensive weapon.  I recently tried a J6 case where a prosecutor repeatedly assured the jury during closing argument that the defendant was “not” protesting.  (The judge’s pretrial ruling was that the defendant’s actions such as holding a flag and chanting political slogans had no constitutional protection whatsoever and that the defendant was only at the Capitol to attack, terrorize, obstruct or disrupt.)  So the prosecutor knew that she could falsely tell the jury that my client “was not” protesting while the defense could not tell the jury that the client “was” protesting.

Similarly, federal prosecutors are able to introduce any of a J6 defendant’s social media posts about ‘stopping the steal’ as evidence of the defendant’s corrupt intent to “overturn” an election; but defendants are prohibited from introducing other social media posts showing their good faith basis for their beliefs.

January 6 prosecutors and judges assert that J6 defendants forfeited all their First Amendment rights by breaking petty rules relating to trespassing or disrupting sacred government proceedings.  Long-settled First Amendment decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court have been cast aside.  For example, in Adderley v. State of Fla. (1966), the Supreme Court upheld trespassing convictions of protestors at a Florida jail but said the defendants would be protected by the First Amendment if the facility had been a legislative capitol.

Stay tuned!

 

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2024/03/no_author/a-thousand-years-of-prison-time-over-a-6-hour-delay-of-congress/

The One And Only Case for Lower Rates—Still Another Fix for Wall Street

There is surely no development more inimical to main street prosperity and democratic governance than the lock, stock and barrel capture by Wall Street of the nation's central bank. That baleful condition enables and sustains the two very worst forces in American society today---the spenders and warmongers of Washington and the Wall Street speculators, who otherwise claim to be traders and asset managers.

The not-so-secret sauce of the Fed's rogue monetary regime, of course, is artificial, ultra-cheap interest rates, which have been sustained over extended periods of time. In fact, the Fed's key policy instrument---the Federal funds rate---has stood at negative levels in inflation-adjusted terms for more than 93% of the time since March 2008. And even the current positive rates barely peeking above the zero bound per the chart below are still far, far below the healthier levels recorded from 1984 through the year 2000.

Yet ever since the real funds rate turned marginally positive in July 2023 the crescendo of drumbeats on Wall Street for a new round of rate cutting has become overwhelming. Then again, what the hell was so onerous or economically oppressive about the real Fed funds rate at just +1.82% in February?

To hear the Wall Street crowd tell it you'd think the US economy was about to be drop-kicked into the recessionary drink in the absence of a new round of rate cuts. But that's just risible, blithering nonsense. The only plausible reason for rate cuts after years of negative-cost money in real terms is to trigger and sustain a new bubble atop the already wildly inflated stock market.

Let us repeat. It's all about enabling leveraged speculators to chase stock prices higher. That's owing to the fact that lower rates will cause PE multiple expansion while simultaneously reducing the funding cost of those positions via cheaper margin loans or options premiums.

That's the racket. That's the entirety of what the Fed's "rates policy" is all about. And it's a pretty pitiful state of affairs indeed because there is no imaginable reason of state to help the one-percenters speculate more successfully, and to thereby even further tilt the distribution of financial wealth to the tippy-top of the economic ladder.

Inflation-Adjusted Federal Funds Rate, 1984 to 2024



To be sure, the Fed heads and their Wall Street shills insist that the hideous repression of interest rates shown above was all in the service of making life better on main street. That is, causing higher levels of business investment, more residential housing construction and a less volatile business cycle.

The problem, of course, is there is not a shred of evidence for those propositions. And we mean none as in nada, nichts and nugatory.

For instance, here is a chart of the business cycle since 1948 as measured by the annualized rate of real GDP change. The recessionary bottoms during the last two recessions have actually been deeper than during any of the 10 downturns before the Great Financial Crisis of 2007-2009.  And aside from the aberration of the lockdown plunge and rebound of 2020, business cycle recoveries during recent decades have generally been weaker, too, which is not especially anything to write home about.

Awhile back, Ben Bernanke even had the nerve to crow about the "Great Moderation" during his early years on the Fed. The implication was that owing to the superior efforts and insights of the 12 members of the FOMC the historical turbulence of the business cycle had been thoroughly eliminated.

Alas, that untimely speech was given in March 2004, but everything on the chart right of that date more nearly suggests the opposite.

Annualized Rate of Real GDP Change, 1948 to 2023



Likewise, scratch a Fed apologist and they will say because housing. We think not, of course.

After all, the shift to rampant money-printing incepted with Greenspan in 1987 and has gotten progressively more aggressive ever since. Yet aside from the infamous Greenspan housing bubble of 20o3 to 2006, which was short-lived and gave everything back and then some on the downside, there has been no increase in the share of GDP devoted to residential housing construction. In fact, on a smoothed basis, the trend has been to lower, not higher, residential housing investment.

Besides, there is more than one way to skin a cat---if the societal policy objective is more housing opportunity for those most in need. The latter can be achieved via means-tested direct subsidies, say in the form of mortgage buydowns, at far lower cost and with none of the adverse collateral effects of cheap mortgage rates.

By contrast, artificially repressed market interest rates accrue to the rich and poor alike, thereby conferring far greater dollar value among the former who often use multi-million dollar "jumbo" mortgages to finance their primary residence, to saying nothing of second and third homes, too.

Residential Investment As % of GDP, 1978 to 2023



At the same time, the unfortunate collateral effect of below-market mortgage rates is to cause the price of existing housing stock to be bid-up, thereby conferring huge windfalls on existing homeowners and barriers to entry for newly formed households entering the market for the first time.
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How The Fed Monkey-Hammered The Middle Class, Part 1

RFK hit the nail on the head once again. America's industrial economy didn't just get up and migrate to China, Mexico and other low-cost venues because capitalism willed it. Nor did wealth massively shift to the top of the economic ladder in recent decades owing to the unbridled free market.

To the contrary, American capitalism has been deeply corrupted by bad money and the capture of the nation's central bank by Wall Street speculators and money-shufflers. In the process, the main street economy has been severely impaired and once steadily rising middle class living standards have stagnated badly.
“Made in America” used to mean made by the companies and middle-class workers that form the backbone of this country. But America’s industrial sector has moved abroad in search of lower costs. Today, Wall Street and the Fed run the show, printing trillions of dollars we don’t have and then speculating on the outcome. The result is that the middle class has evaporated, our economy is highly financialized, and the dollar is held afloat by America’s military might.
Yes, American industry and jobs moved abroad in search of lower costs, but what fueled that disastrous off-shoring flight was two erroneous propositions that have become axiomatic gospel at the Federal Reserve. To wit, the notions that---
  • moderate but persistent inflation is an economic elixir that fuels higher levels of growth, jobs and macroeconomic peformance.
  • Fed suppression of interest rates enables higher investment levels, thereby fostering rising wealth and living standards over time.
Both propositions are dead wrong. Excessive, cumulative domestic inflation is why America lost its industrial base and also why the burned-out zones of Flyover America are now populated with very angry MAGA hats. At the same time, artificially cheap interest rates and ultra-low bond yields are the mother's milk of Wall Street speculation, not a stimulant to productive investment on main street.

What has happened over the past half century, therefore, is that lagging investment in productive assets on main street has retarded productivity growth, even as the Fed's pro-inflation policies have pushed nominal wages and other domestic production costs steadily higher. As a consequence, unit labor costs (black line) have soared by nearly 350% (3.0% per annum) since 1971, but those drastically inflated wage costs didn't end up as real purchasing power for workers.

Instead, just one-third of the growth in unit labor costs translated into real hourly compensation gains (purple line). And even then, these gains translated to a very modest 0.96% per annum increase during this 53-year period.

So American workers experienced the worst of all possible worlds: Good jobs got off-shored in their millions, even as workers fortunate enough to retain their jobs ended-up on a treadmill, chasing living costs in an endless cycle of rising wages and soaring prices. Index Of Unit Labor Costs Versus Real Hourly Wages, 1971 to 2023

The gap between the two lines in the above chart was obviously caused by too much inflation and too little productivity improvement.  In turn, both of these adverse trends needs be laid at the doorstep of the Fed.

The Fed's financial repression policies have steadily reduced the net national savings rate. That means that investment in economic efficiency and productivity has taken a back seat to financial engineering and Wall Street bubbles fueled by speculators who have been flooded with abundant capital and limitless, cheap carry-trade debt.
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No Labels, No Thanks

We certainly agree with the No Labels folks on one count: The US Congress and Washington itself is entirely dysfunctional. Our elected leaders are allowing malgovernance to fester to such an extreme degree as to threaten the very future of constitutional democracy and main street prosperity in America.

But the malgovernance to which we refer is not merely the fact that partisan politics in Washington have gotten acrimonious, toxic and mean-spirited. Or that issues like abortion have been buried in vitriol and absolutist doctrine. Or that there are government shutdowns and debt ceiling crises with increasing frequency because what now passes for the budget process has become a moveable trainwreck. Or even that notable policy problems such as the border chaos have gone unaddressed decade after decade.

Indeed, we know all about partisan acrimony and stalemated governance. It's always been with us---not the least in the purported benign era of the 1980s when it was allegedly Morning in America under Ronald Reagan. Or at least that tale of bipartisan comity is what the liberal mainstream media would have you believe nowadays, especially owing to crooked revisionist histories promulgated by miscreants of the era like Chris Mathews of MSNBC.

Mathews worked for Speaker Tip O'Neill and we worked for the Gipper. And, boy, did we and our principals have minimum low regard for each other all around. And it did often present as partisan rancor and even personal vituperation. This was real partisanship and it was delivered in hearty doses in private meetings and conversations, which reality is not to be confused with the pleasant, staged pageantry of the President and Speaker occasionally swapping lewd Irishman jokes to start a meeting.

Government mostly didn't work then, either. Aside from the flush of victory in early 1981, when a fifth column of 40-50 southern democrats ("Boll Weevils") enabled one-time, flukish GOP victories on the budget and the Reagan tax cut, nothing of much significance happened that is inconsistent with the stalemates of the present era.

In the main, of course, that was a good thing. James Madison's inertia-ridden governmental machinery of checks and balances is the true genius of American democracy. That is to say, except for FDR's fabled 100 Days at the dark bottom of the Great Depression in the spring of 1933, we have not had unbridled democratic majoritarianism in America and therefore ruinous Social Democracy, as in much of Europe, either.

And that is to be celebrated. The ultimate evil is statism or what we were pleased to call Big Government back in the day. And we use the term in the larger sense of the all-encompassing Warfare State and Welfare State and their extensions into the private sector where public authority has been captured and appropriated by Big Pharma, the military-industrial complex, Wall Street, Silicon Valley and the larcenous lobbies of K Street generally.

All of these excrescences of Big Government sit astride the nation's capital, sucking the economic, social and moral vitality out of the nation's polity of free citizens.
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