Christian Democrats in the United States
Domestic Issues - Drugs and Alcohol If we have not encountered these problems ourselves, all of us have known someone touched by these vices. When individual abuse of drugs and alcohol causes problems for that individual or for society at large, we advocate a compassionate response of rehabilitation rather than the brutal response of violence. As a society, we must attack the economic and moral hopelessness that leads to the downward spiral of alcohol, drugs and violence. We recognize that prisons are a breeding ground for criminality, and we support the release and rehabilitation of all non-violent offenders with no record of offenses against others, property or public safety. Because demand for drugs leads to imports that fund enemies of the United States, the government must adopt a rational approach that enables it to better control that demand within a civil, medical framework. Subscribe to Posts [Atom]
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
10:31 AM
Putting government bureaucracies in a monopoly on consumer goods is against everything America stands for, regardless of the fact that pot is a drug. Moreover, it's an atrocious idea to give government an incentive to market drugs to the people. Imagine if government were the monopoly on booze, and made money on it, actively pushing alcohol on psychologically vulnerable citizens, and in a position to lower the drinking age to increase the market. Besides which, though I no longer imbibe, I imagine government booze would be some nasty swill.
Floating the idea that government could make money off pot sales, because pot prices are so high, is destined to fail, so these p.r. stunts really are a way to keep pot illegal and keep the black market prices high. Meanwhile our streets are overrun with gangs paying for their guns with these artificially inflated prices, funding an illegal industry that produces drugs like crack and methamphetamine and ropes people into literal slavery as producers, mules or prostitutes.
If pot were legal to grow, it would have zero value as a drug commodity. Anyone can make chums with people who like to smoke weed. It is easy to grow and people would probably just give it away to their friends. Even the $50 ounce sold by the government under this bill might last an occasional smoker for a year... much less than tobacco. Given the argument that tax revenue is needed, where's the money in that? It's a waste of time.
Marijuana is so easy to grow that, if legal, hemp's only value would be in bulk as an industrial commodity. It could seriously compete with the timber and mining industries to make paper goods, cardboard, heating pellets, fuel, board material and plastic-like goods, but without blowing up our mountains or ripping down our forests. Like other bio-fuels produced in sunlight, it would remove carbon from the atmosphere over time because the pulp material made after pressing the oil would eventually be buried after potential use in paper goods. It doesn't take much water and it likes hot weather.
The government monopoly's "discount prices" would still be too high to make industrial use possible. Industrial use is the only scenario that might actually be good for jobs, the economy, and domestic tax revenue. Otherwise, you've got the government pushing dope on a bunch of unemployed young people, like it's soma or something to keep them in line.
Violent drug cartels and some of our major industries have common interests in big profit. Timber, mining and fossil fuel and weapons industries make or break the bulk of our politicians in legislature. The strip club taxes being floated along with these particular proposed marijuana rules are just a shakedown as no doubt many strip clubs and other business are extorted by gangs and everyone in the associated black market industry who fund their legal and secondary market weapons purchases with high marijuana prices. If marijuana really isn't all that bad, and was never bad to begin with, and is something adults can make responsible decisions about for themselves, and was in fact quite useful for making rope and other things, in this case the law only serves to fund criminals and divide society: a tool of fascist dupes. Are you a tool? It's the same racket either way - Follow the money.
measures to tax pot are lies set up to fail
California's legislature is now considering a bill that would legalize marijuana and set up government to sell and tax pot at a reduced rate. This measure and one like it being circulated by petition are false hopes and false promises deliberately set up to fail.Putting government bureaucracies in a monopoly on consumer goods is against everything America stands for, regardless of the fact that pot is a drug. Moreover, it's an atrocious idea to give government an incentive to market drugs to the people. Imagine if government were the monopoly on booze, and made money on it, actively pushing alcohol on psychologically vulnerable citizens, and in a position to lower the drinking age to increase the market. Besides which, though I no longer imbibe, I imagine government booze would be some nasty swill.
Floating the idea that government could make money off pot sales, because pot prices are so high, is destined to fail, so these p.r. stunts really are a way to keep pot illegal and keep the black market prices high. Meanwhile our streets are overrun with gangs paying for their guns with these artificially inflated prices, funding an illegal industry that produces drugs like crack and methamphetamine and ropes people into literal slavery as producers, mules or prostitutes.
If pot were legal to grow, it would have zero value as a drug commodity. Anyone can make chums with people who like to smoke weed. It is easy to grow and people would probably just give it away to their friends. Even the $50 ounce sold by the government under this bill might last an occasional smoker for a year... much less than tobacco. Given the argument that tax revenue is needed, where's the money in that? It's a waste of time.
Marijuana is so easy to grow that, if legal, hemp's only value would be in bulk as an industrial commodity. It could seriously compete with the timber and mining industries to make paper goods, cardboard, heating pellets, fuel, board material and plastic-like goods, but without blowing up our mountains or ripping down our forests. Like other bio-fuels produced in sunlight, it would remove carbon from the atmosphere over time because the pulp material made after pressing the oil would eventually be buried after potential use in paper goods. It doesn't take much water and it likes hot weather.
The government monopoly's "discount prices" would still be too high to make industrial use possible. Industrial use is the only scenario that might actually be good for jobs, the economy, and domestic tax revenue. Otherwise, you've got the government pushing dope on a bunch of unemployed young people, like it's soma or something to keep them in line.
Violent drug cartels and some of our major industries have common interests in big profit. Timber, mining and fossil fuel and weapons industries make or break the bulk of our politicians in legislature. The strip club taxes being floated along with these particular proposed marijuana rules are just a shakedown as no doubt many strip clubs and other business are extorted by gangs and everyone in the associated black market industry who fund their legal and secondary market weapons purchases with high marijuana prices. If marijuana really isn't all that bad, and was never bad to begin with, and is something adults can make responsible decisions about for themselves, and was in fact quite useful for making rope and other things, in this case the law only serves to fund criminals and divide society: a tool of fascist dupes. Are you a tool? It's the same racket either way - Follow the money.
> detail, links and comments >>
Thursday, May 21, 2009
12:13 PM
Similarly in the 1980's wars in Central America against communism, the door opened for the cocaine and crack market in the United States and began large-scale smuggling, because the opportunity was there.
Meanwhile, the Reagan administration pursued a second front in the war, to combat the demand and black market economic side on the domestic front. They associated the drugs with the worst of the people they had to deal with overseas to wage their foreign wars, so they waged war on the domestic front in the only way they knew how to fight - with outright violence, the same violence they decided to levy against communism abroad.
Then the people implementing these measures came down hardest on those parts of society who had the most to be angry about - namely African Americans and other minorities. On the domestic front, many victims were citizens who had fallen to the economic and emotional fringes of society and used drugs to alleviate (or pretend to alleviate) their sadness, and also many happy dead-heads who had never really done anyone any wrong. Pushed underground, some accepted the illusory "necessity" of violence since they could not reconcile the hypocrisy of a public government that oppresses anyone.
Reflecting back on the covertly violent and overtly economic wars against communism in the western hemisphere, we note that we lost on that front. The Reagan Cabinet's double dealings arming the Iranians against Saddam Hussein and Saddam Hussein against the Iranians came back to bite them in the ass, and there was no political option but to abandon the struggle south of Mexico.
And yet, Central America has not fallen to totalitarian communist control, and it's doubtful that they will. Not because of Uribe's iron hand "balancing" narco-fascists in Columbia. Not because it is economically impossible in the long term to control inflation and shortages of sundries and utilities in Venezuela or Bolivia, or the free competition in the rest of the hemisphere that ensures people will still get what they need when those centrally managed systems eventually fail.
People using the party name "Christian Democrats" in the southern parts of the western hemisphere have helped in reconciling the needs of people as individuals, as groups, and as nations, and restraining violent backlash against one or another faction from the other side of the disagreement.
Part of their success, ironically, is a strategy of coming down from the "grand arena" of good versus evil, and dealing with real problems by devising real solutions that are socially, economically and morally acceptable.
Many may argue that communism was bound to fail anyway due to economic viscosity, regardless of the willingness of post-world-war-two U.S. administrations to levy death against whole populations in defense of the freedom of others against the governments of those populations. I don't see a way to determine that with any certainty, we do not live in that imagined universe or branched timeline, so we can do nothing but guess. But we are nevertheless able and entitled to make moral judgments. If hindsight is 20/20, foresight is at least 20/40, and we have to ask in hindsight if the leaders America entrusted with their common welfare exhibited any foresight at all. Beyond that, we have to ask in hindsight if they did the right thing, regardless of whether it accomplished their goals.
By stepping up onto that "grand arena" where everyday problems are blown up into ideologies and universal, timeless struggles thus un-winnable by human means, these U.S. administrations who waged the "war on drugs" at home abandoned sympathy for the victims of drugs themselves, the addicts, the downtrodden, the abused, the forgotten. They had to leave that frame of mind as a necessity of waging "war," which by the intrinsic violence of the word leaves little room for sympathy. By chaining themselves into that dichotomy, they made it much more difficult for America to transcend the problems of the world, which is the only way to right its wrongs.
It's a good sign that the current administration is at least trying to move government away from the policy of "shoot first and ask questions later" and "kill them all and let God sort them out" which are so common in the elaborate pseudo-logic justifications of military policy churned out by grant-funded think-tanks and analytic groups. As the administration steps down from the idea that drug-users are A) somehow different from alcoholics and B) intrinsically evil, the administration has a much better chance of making life better for all Americans and for all people in the world by dealing with drug use as what it is: psychological patterns which can lead to physical addiction and self-destructive behavior.
By seeing a problem for what it really is, one can approach solutions to that problem. If pretending the problem is something else, some kind of grandiose metaphysical struggle which justifies and invites violence, solutions remain elusive; meanwhile, governments stain their hands with the blood of their people.
war is drugs
The "vice-grip" of villainous men upon the world is not one or the other of the contradictory opposites we are told to choose. You have to seriously look at the history of hard drugs in America beginning in the 1980's. When America began funding General Zia in Pakistan (who imposed rule after an early attempt at democracy failed), heroin came to the United States. General Zia's and others' Muslim piety against godless Soviets, the last stand in central Asia, may have saved the world from a worse fate, and was the reason of the Taleban eradication of the opium crops in the 1990's. The world ought to recognize and be gracious for that principle which unfortunately gets poisoned with a lot of woman-hating nonsense in the most severe Islamic legal traditions. However, opening the door of war opens the door to the devil, and heroin flooded into America.Similarly in the 1980's wars in Central America against communism, the door opened for the cocaine and crack market in the United States and began large-scale smuggling, because the opportunity was there.
Meanwhile, the Reagan administration pursued a second front in the war, to combat the demand and black market economic side on the domestic front. They associated the drugs with the worst of the people they had to deal with overseas to wage their foreign wars, so they waged war on the domestic front in the only way they knew how to fight - with outright violence, the same violence they decided to levy against communism abroad.
Then the people implementing these measures came down hardest on those parts of society who had the most to be angry about - namely African Americans and other minorities. On the domestic front, many victims were citizens who had fallen to the economic and emotional fringes of society and used drugs to alleviate (or pretend to alleviate) their sadness, and also many happy dead-heads who had never really done anyone any wrong. Pushed underground, some accepted the illusory "necessity" of violence since they could not reconcile the hypocrisy of a public government that oppresses anyone.
Reflecting back on the covertly violent and overtly economic wars against communism in the western hemisphere, we note that we lost on that front. The Reagan Cabinet's double dealings arming the Iranians against Saddam Hussein and Saddam Hussein against the Iranians came back to bite them in the ass, and there was no political option but to abandon the struggle south of Mexico.
And yet, Central America has not fallen to totalitarian communist control, and it's doubtful that they will. Not because of Uribe's iron hand "balancing" narco-fascists in Columbia. Not because it is economically impossible in the long term to control inflation and shortages of sundries and utilities in Venezuela or Bolivia, or the free competition in the rest of the hemisphere that ensures people will still get what they need when those centrally managed systems eventually fail.
People using the party name "Christian Democrats" in the southern parts of the western hemisphere have helped in reconciling the needs of people as individuals, as groups, and as nations, and restraining violent backlash against one or another faction from the other side of the disagreement.
Part of their success, ironically, is a strategy of coming down from the "grand arena" of good versus evil, and dealing with real problems by devising real solutions that are socially, economically and morally acceptable.
Many may argue that communism was bound to fail anyway due to economic viscosity, regardless of the willingness of post-world-war-two U.S. administrations to levy death against whole populations in defense of the freedom of others against the governments of those populations. I don't see a way to determine that with any certainty, we do not live in that imagined universe or branched timeline, so we can do nothing but guess. But we are nevertheless able and entitled to make moral judgments. If hindsight is 20/20, foresight is at least 20/40, and we have to ask in hindsight if the leaders America entrusted with their common welfare exhibited any foresight at all. Beyond that, we have to ask in hindsight if they did the right thing, regardless of whether it accomplished their goals.
By stepping up onto that "grand arena" where everyday problems are blown up into ideologies and universal, timeless struggles thus un-winnable by human means, these U.S. administrations who waged the "war on drugs" at home abandoned sympathy for the victims of drugs themselves, the addicts, the downtrodden, the abused, the forgotten. They had to leave that frame of mind as a necessity of waging "war," which by the intrinsic violence of the word leaves little room for sympathy. By chaining themselves into that dichotomy, they made it much more difficult for America to transcend the problems of the world, which is the only way to right its wrongs.
It's a good sign that the current administration is at least trying to move government away from the policy of "shoot first and ask questions later" and "kill them all and let God sort them out" which are so common in the elaborate pseudo-logic justifications of military policy churned out by grant-funded think-tanks and analytic groups. As the administration steps down from the idea that drug-users are A) somehow different from alcoholics and B) intrinsically evil, the administration has a much better chance of making life better for all Americans and for all people in the world by dealing with drug use as what it is: psychological patterns which can lead to physical addiction and self-destructive behavior.
By seeing a problem for what it really is, one can approach solutions to that problem. If pretending the problem is something else, some kind of grandiose metaphysical struggle which justifies and invites violence, solutions remain elusive; meanwhile, governments stain their hands with the blood of their people.
> detail, links and comments >>
Saturday, July 28, 2007
11:18 AM
However, the author of the original post does this just as much by crying only in private, which again is the wrong circumstance, and as she admits, a lie to cover up what sounds like a long-passed family shame. I suppose it's difficult for a lot of people to poop in public, too, but we all know we all do. Plop plop.
If we could learn to cry with each other, gently and get it over with, human emotions would not come crashing down as crises in our lives. I agree, none of it has anything to do with gender, in as much as gender is a gradient over a series of genetic events that tend mostly to end up in one form or the other. It is only about one's will not to be a slave to reality. Sheesh, get on with it, cry and laugh and love and poop and die — we've all got problems — it's a lot easier to be there for each other when we accept we're not alone, being human.
I guess I am posting this here because I do not believe that chemicals are the manifestation of predestination in the mind. Living in a psychotic world, I wonder frequently if psychosis is not a totally natural reaction. At any rate, I believe it is wrong to cast people out, or to begin fearing them and accusing them of psychosis, simply because they have used drugs. Nor are the insane left out of the sight of God, for that matter.
The core of anger and violence is still not chemicals in the body, whether developed or ingested. The issue is falsehood. Falsehood in our relationships and internally in our minds. The real issue is, why do people seek relief in drugs and alcohol when instead they could confess their sins and emotions to one another, love one another and cry together?
Why do we refuse to cry in public?
Maybe higher testosterone leads to crying about stuff that doesn't matter, because it increases psycho-reflex responses to lie to survive; subsequently one may only shed tears in response to the wrong circumstances. So the cycle perpetuates itself by seeking negative stress through conflict and violence to both suppress and validate these emotions, leading to testosterone generation in response to regular stimuli of adrenaline and (blood) alcohol.However, the author of the original post does this just as much by crying only in private, which again is the wrong circumstance, and as she admits, a lie to cover up what sounds like a long-passed family shame. I suppose it's difficult for a lot of people to poop in public, too, but we all know we all do. Plop plop.
If we could learn to cry with each other, gently and get it over with, human emotions would not come crashing down as crises in our lives. I agree, none of it has anything to do with gender, in as much as gender is a gradient over a series of genetic events that tend mostly to end up in one form or the other. It is only about one's will not to be a slave to reality. Sheesh, get on with it, cry and laugh and love and poop and die — we've all got problems — it's a lot easier to be there for each other when we accept we're not alone, being human.
I guess I am posting this here because I do not believe that chemicals are the manifestation of predestination in the mind. Living in a psychotic world, I wonder frequently if psychosis is not a totally natural reaction. At any rate, I believe it is wrong to cast people out, or to begin fearing them and accusing them of psychosis, simply because they have used drugs. Nor are the insane left out of the sight of God, for that matter.
The core of anger and violence is still not chemicals in the body, whether developed or ingested. The issue is falsehood. Falsehood in our relationships and internally in our minds. The real issue is, why do people seek relief in drugs and alcohol when instead they could confess their sins and emotions to one another, love one another and cry together?
> detail, links and comments >>
Saturday, May 12, 2007
12:41 PM
I am saying, we should ascribe drugs and alcohol no power, treat them rationally and medically, toast libations responsibly, focus on stopping the flow of crazy-drugs to poor people and give poor people a way out, get over hemp and give up smoking pot as an act of will, and start using it for paper, wood, rope and fuel so we do not enslave our children to foreign oil.
Why would we want to rip down our beautiful forests to wipe our asses when we could grow paper again?
It was an economic foundation of the Trading Company. Criminals have exploited it through law. The people in the Company might still find redemption on the silk road if they stop exploiting people and enable them instead for the common welfare.
no religious experience
I've had a religious experience, and personally, it alone saved me from the pit of doom in drugs and alcohol, and was not stimulated chemically. I am not one of the blessed who can "believe without seeing and understand without hearing;" I think God basically hit me on the head with a very pretty, delicate, transitory brick that I happened to see at the right time.I am saying, we should ascribe drugs and alcohol no power, treat them rationally and medically, toast libations responsibly, focus on stopping the flow of crazy-drugs to poor people and give poor people a way out, get over hemp and give up smoking pot as an act of will, and start using it for paper, wood, rope and fuel so we do not enslave our children to foreign oil.
Why would we want to rip down our beautiful forests to wipe our asses when we could grow paper again?
It was an economic foundation of the Trading Company. Criminals have exploited it through law. The people in the Company might still find redemption on the silk road if they stop exploiting people and enable them instead for the common welfare.
> detail, links and comments >>
11:00 AM
Most adults would not want to give kids marijuana, and fewer would want to with penalties similar to giving them alcohol or cigarettes. Anyone who would is one of the same set of scumbags who deal pot to kids now. The black market profit gives people an incentive to deal marijuana to kids.
Kids can get marijuana more easily when it is illegal than if it were legal, because those scumbags have lots of money due to the high prices. If it were legal, and they had to show I.D., they wouldn't get any.
stopping kids from smoking pot
Adults have the willpower to quit smoking weed when they want to. Kids don't.Most adults would not want to give kids marijuana, and fewer would want to with penalties similar to giving them alcohol or cigarettes. Anyone who would is one of the same set of scumbags who deal pot to kids now. The black market profit gives people an incentive to deal marijuana to kids.
Kids can get marijuana more easily when it is illegal than if it were legal, because those scumbags have lots of money due to the high prices. If it were legal, and they had to show I.D., they wouldn't get any.
> detail, links and comments >>
8:36 AM
Being illegal drives prices up way more than they would be if it were legal.
Politicians keep it illegal, but come on, you know they don't really do anything about it. Every once in a while they let the cops make a bust for show, or take down some Mexican truck with a bunch of schwag.
Do you think the politicians (gasp!) could be on the take?
It's not the kind of bribe an agent could catch them in, because it would have to come from a known constituent. And even if you caught one, you can't indict the whole system.
The only way to take power out of the hands of politicians and drug dealers is to legalize and return to the natural state of hemp manufacturing that this country was built on. Prices would come down and drug dealers would lose a significant chunk of their funding. (Let's face it, prices don't matter much to consumers, people still buy it.)
I personally cannot support legalization of other drugs like crack, meth and heroin, because I've seen those drugs destroy peoples' lives and make them turn on their friends. But if we narrow the playing field, we can tackle those real sources of social harm.
politicians and black market prices
Consider the facts — in California, for example, marijuana is the number one agricultural product in the state in terms of dollars spent... by far.Being illegal drives prices up way more than they would be if it were legal.
Politicians keep it illegal, but come on, you know they don't really do anything about it. Every once in a while they let the cops make a bust for show, or take down some Mexican truck with a bunch of schwag.
Do you think the politicians (gasp!) could be on the take?
It's not the kind of bribe an agent could catch them in, because it would have to come from a known constituent. And even if you caught one, you can't indict the whole system.
The only way to take power out of the hands of politicians and drug dealers is to legalize and return to the natural state of hemp manufacturing that this country was built on. Prices would come down and drug dealers would lose a significant chunk of their funding. (Let's face it, prices don't matter much to consumers, people still buy it.)
I personally cannot support legalization of other drugs like crack, meth and heroin, because I've seen those drugs destroy peoples' lives and make them turn on their friends. But if we narrow the playing field, we can tackle those real sources of social harm.
> detail, links and comments >>
Monday, May 7, 2007
9:25 AM
I've had two major car accidents in my life -- I had not smoked anything for months prior to either of them. One of them was my fault, I had a severe acid reflux attack and got distracted trying to find my water, then banged up the back of an SUV. In the other accident, a little 115-pound girl with a .19 blood alcohol level passed out in her Jeep Grand Cherokee and nearly took my head off.
That's why I -- and the vast majority of people under 30 in America -- laugh at anyone who says that weed should be illegal while they support a massive industry of alcohol. I don't drink because I say crazy stuff when I get drunk and people don't like me.
And cigarettes. I used to smoke cigarettes. Addictive, tolerance-building, fatal, expensive to treat medical consequences, and 100% legal.
America should respect personal choice. Laws against marijuana were imposed to put pressure on Mexican immigrants, and as another way to put down African Americans -- when they were slaves in this country they were forced to grow it, so they smoked it and it was passed down culturally. So what. Where's the offense, and who's being offended?
And the industrial fiber industry was forced to submit to plastics and mining. Marijuana is very easy to grow and could be used to replace most of the destructive timber industry, as it makes a very sturdy particle board. The jobs argument is a bunch of bull -- lumberjacks are not stupid, and are not robots -- anyone can work on a farm.
America should also implement reason in its drug policies. Other drugs like crystal meth, crack cocaine and heroin cause vastly more harm to our social fabric. If police were empowered to go after those real sources of social harm instead of wasting their time putting peaceful adults in jail for smoking weed, America would be a much safer place for everyone.
Just about everyone I have ever met except my mom has tried marijuana and doesn't think it's a big deal or deserving of the hatred it inspires in conservatives. It's time for all of America to stand up for reason and liberty in our drug policies.
the editor is a sinner - do you damn him
I confess, I sometimes toke some marijuana. It's a sin and a dirty habit, but I'm not hurting anyone but myself. The worst withdrawal that's ever happened is a few nights of fitful sleep. So nyah. This is America where people are supposed to be able to make their own decisions as long as those decisions don't impact other people.I've had two major car accidents in my life -- I had not smoked anything for months prior to either of them. One of them was my fault, I had a severe acid reflux attack and got distracted trying to find my water, then banged up the back of an SUV. In the other accident, a little 115-pound girl with a .19 blood alcohol level passed out in her Jeep Grand Cherokee and nearly took my head off.
That's why I -- and the vast majority of people under 30 in America -- laugh at anyone who says that weed should be illegal while they support a massive industry of alcohol. I don't drink because I say crazy stuff when I get drunk and people don't like me.
And cigarettes. I used to smoke cigarettes. Addictive, tolerance-building, fatal, expensive to treat medical consequences, and 100% legal.
America should respect personal choice. Laws against marijuana were imposed to put pressure on Mexican immigrants, and as another way to put down African Americans -- when they were slaves in this country they were forced to grow it, so they smoked it and it was passed down culturally. So what. Where's the offense, and who's being offended?
And the industrial fiber industry was forced to submit to plastics and mining. Marijuana is very easy to grow and could be used to replace most of the destructive timber industry, as it makes a very sturdy particle board. The jobs argument is a bunch of bull -- lumberjacks are not stupid, and are not robots -- anyone can work on a farm.
America should also implement reason in its drug policies. Other drugs like crystal meth, crack cocaine and heroin cause vastly more harm to our social fabric. If police were empowered to go after those real sources of social harm instead of wasting their time putting peaceful adults in jail for smoking weed, America would be a much safer place for everyone.
Just about everyone I have ever met except my mom has tried marijuana and doesn't think it's a big deal or deserving of the hatred it inspires in conservatives. It's time for all of America to stand up for reason and liberty in our drug policies.
> detail, links and comments >>
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