Thursday, March 18, 2010

Explaining the “Obvious”: Why It’s Necessary

By Barry Rubin

A frustrated pro-democracy reader from a Muslim-majority country asks me: “Do we have to explain that the Earth is round to any idiot who says it is flat? Or do we have to hold a rational argument about the evils of cannibalism with someone who practices it?”

What bothers him are the frequent articles I must write stating the “obvious,” things like radical Islamist forces aren’t about to moderate; too much of the Western world is missing the obvious threats; that it’s wrong and dangerous to indoctrinate people in Western countries to be hostile to their own countries, viewing their histories as shameful; and much of what occupies our media and universities regarding international politics is rubbish.

If stoning people, mutilating little girls, and forcing children to wed while still in grade school can be regarded as acceptable cultural practices simply because they are carried out by societies where we don’t live, it has become necessary–even, sad to say, courageous–to talk about these things.

Ten or more years ago, who would have thought this to be necessary? But when you have to deal with an article saying that Iran getting nuclear weapons is a good thing (New York Times), an Islamist takeover of Turkey is something we should celebrate (Newsweek), and—well, you can add to that list—there’s some serious insanity loose in the world.

My reader’s flat-earth/cannibalism analogy is closer to the truth than many would think. There were times when cultures strongly believed in these things as the very gemstone in their cultural crown. At the time, it could have been said–and indeed was said–that one could not challenge such cultural norms or they would face serious punishment.

It was a sign of progress in history when people could respect what other cultures did rather than view them as barbaric and inferior. But it is a sign of regression when people are not allowed to distinguish between things they see as good–maybe worth borrowing–and those they see as abhorrant.

I never thought we’d be living in such a situation either. What’s especially dismal for me is to have to explain to younger people that things weren’t always like that. I can only do my best to try to see that things won’t be that way much longer.

Is there hope? Sure. The best hope is that reality forces people to acknowledge itself, eventually; that the enemies of democracy push so hard that they force people to fight them, and that the “common” people have a lot of common sense even when their “betters” do not.

Oh, yes, and some day someone will write history books (or, by then, perhaps history blogs) recording that some folk stood up for what was right even though it cost them dearly. It has been ever thus, hasn’t it?

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His new edited books include Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict and Crisis; Guide to Islamist Movements; Conflict and Insurgency in the Middle East; and The Muslim Brotherhood. To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books. To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.

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The Great Debate over America: Promise Achieved or Promise Broken?

Posted: 17 Mar 2010 01:08 PM PDT

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By Barry Rubin

My son made a casual remark that showed me the whole basis of the debate over America today. His teacher had told the class that while in the Declaration of Independence said, “All men are created equal,” but that this promise has not been kept, because of the treatment by America of African-Americans, Native Americans, and others.

Or, let’s cut through all the double-talk, the teacher is conveying to these kids that America is both evil and a failure.

Anyone who says such a thing–in either the more polite or nastier versions–does not understand three points of the greatest possible importance. Indeed, comprehending these things marks the difference between, on the one hand, loving America, appreciating its greatness, and being able to make it better or, on the other hand, reviling and destroying it, ruining what may well be the greatest society in human history and a beacon for others to succeed in building their own nations in their own way.

The first point is about the nature of American history. There is a huge difference between saying that the promise hasn’t or wasn’t kept, and, on the contrary, saying that it took a while to fulfill that promise. In the end and along the way, though, the promise was kept.

Therefore, American history is not a series of shames and disgraces but one of heroic fulfillment. Everything bad is matched by more that has been good. Or, to put it another way, it is not that wrong things weren’t done but that they were corrected. Now here’s the key: That was possible because of the nature of the promise, the foundation it created, and the system it set up.

And that is the difference between celebrating America and its history—with no need to conceal its (almost always remedied) flaws and failures—or in contrast teaching self-hatred and anti-Americanism. That also means the people of today cannot claim to be great geniuses of morality and wisdom but merely the lucky inheritors of what has been achieved by those who lived before them.

Second, the reason the promise could be kept was that the founders laid a foundation which made that possible. Even if they did not then, in the 1770s and 1780s, openly and consciously possess every belief that made for a fully equal society which did not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, gender or national origin, they implicitly understood all these things.

They planted the seed. The history of the United States is the story of its growth into a healthy tree–the founders would have called it the tree of liberty–that fulfilled that dream and that plan.

If you have that foundation that includes a belief in human liberty, individual responsibility, the limit of government; division of powers to guard against tyranny or bureaucratic dictates; and basic equality then you can achieve great things. But if you lack that basis, no matter how beautiful the words or lavish the promises made, the result will be ashes and dust.

What could be greater than the promises and pledges to produce utopia of the French, Russian, Chinese, Cuban, and Iranian revolutions? Yet all ended in horror, massive bloodshed, and misery. (It doesn’t make one an intellectual to remember their claims but forget their realities.) The Soviet constitution authored by Josef Stalin in the 1930s claimed to offer all good things, to fulfill all human desires, but was a sham because it was not really based on a true belief in individual liberty and equality. Equally, to extol the state or a class, or some all-embracing ideology over individual liberty is, inevitably, to engender tyranny.

And this leads to the third point, the system itself and its boundaries ensured the promise would be kept over the decades and centuries. If rights come from the Supreme Being—and if one doesn’t believe in a deity let’s say nature—then they cannot be taken away by any earthly power. If they belong to the individual, they cannot be taken away by any collective group, except with a really compelling motive. And even that motive is based on the protection of the individual rights of others.

There is also one other aspect of this last point. This is a system that gives opportunity, not guaranteed results, a level playing field, not a trophy for everyone. Without this approach, the system could not succeed because to guarantee results one must impose them, decisively limiting the rights of some to ensure nobody got too far ahead or behind.

How forgotten—or should one say, deliberately concealed!—is this third point today. The founders and the system began by promising to make the rules fair. And for the times when it would be discovered that the rules were not fair, the system was designed so as to be capable of adjustment in order the better to achieve that original goal.

The fact that there are people who are richer or poorer, happier or less happy, who make good or bad decisions is not a failure of the promise but an inevitable outcome of this world. Individuals get to define–within very broad limits–what life, liberty, and the persuit of happiness means for them. It is not for the state to do it in their stead.

This includes their right to engage in certain behaviors–eating fatty foods, drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes, saying mean things about other individuals or groups–that others see as wrong. But they are not allowed to impose their will on you and you are not allowed to impose your will on them, again except for reasonable and limited ways.

If a chemical is dangerous to public health it can be banned, for example, but not what individual adults do to themselves. If someone says things of which you don’t approve, you can engage in free speech to try to convince them to act otherwise. You don’t toss them into prison.

Trying to “fix” this system of basic rights combined with individual decision in order to achieve some kind of statistical equality or social engineering concept of “social justice” makes—as history has shown but as many still fail to realize—things much worse. Because if you can order around someone else today, they can do it to you tomorrow. And inevitably, the kind of people who seek and obtain power usually are the same kind of people who like using it to control others.

Some people call this kind of thinking conservatism or libertarianism but historically it has most often been called liberalism. Most Americans think of it as being moderate. Whatever you call it, one thing is clear: it’s not the kind of philosophy that people on the far left or far right like, whatever they call themselves.
In fact, let’s read the context which makes all of the above admirably clear:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

In Europe, the Government existed before the People; in America, it was the other way around. This is the essential spirit of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. It is explained in what is perhaps the most brilliant book ever written on governing, The Federalist Papers.

Notice that the Declaration of Independence does not say “consent of the majority” but rather says ”consent of the governed.” That’s no accident. It means that what even a majority can impose on everyone is limited.

The purpose of government is not to tell people what to do but to do what the “consent of the governed” permits. To prevent monopolies, prevent discrimination, ensure that food and drugs are safe, regulate banks, collect taxes, provide a social safety net, and many other things fall within this framework. Yet this is always within the context of limiting the sphere of government and protecting the sphere of liberty. Each such step must meet a demonstrably compelling need and be accepted with a strong popular consensus, the “consent of the governed.”

Suppose those in government claim they know better? The founders were well-acquainted with that argument, which was as familiar in the eighteenth century as it is today. But their view was that since power could not be trusted in the hands of mortal men–who would inevitably use it for their own self-interest, to bend others to their own personal preferences or both–it must be limited. Otherwise, where is one’s control over one’s own “life” and where is “liberty”?

Equally, they saw the purpose of government as not being to create the “perfect society” (since people will always disagree on what that is and define their own “pursuit of happiness”), not to hand people everything that (according to those in power, at least) they “need,” but to ensure their right to be secure in their persons and property, their right to define their own individual behavior and dream. Collectively, that’s called the American Dream.

Nothing is perfect by any means. But the promise has definitely been kept.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His new edited books include Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict and Crisis; Guide to Islamist Movements; Conflict and Insurgency in the Middle East; and The Muslim Brotherhood. To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books. To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.

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Three great articles on the US-Israel Crisis Posted: 16 Mar 2010 09:45 PM PDT One of Israel’s leading journalists on the moderate left, Ami Issacharoff, who doesn’t like Netanyahu, have written a great article repeating the basic points I’ve been trying to make with excellent clarity about how the Obama Administration is alienating Israelis: “America’s response to the government’s approval of 1,600 new housing units in Ramat Shlomo in northeast Jerusalem is excessive. While it extends a hand to Iran, which continues in its effort to acquire a nuclear bomb; and reaches out to Syria as it arms Hezbollah with advanced weapons, it seems the Obama administration has made a conscious decision to aggravate a diplomatic crisis with the Netanyahu government.” They add: “Attempts to imply that Israeli policy is endangering the lives of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, and even Iraq, verge on an insult to the intelligence - U.S. citizens particualrly. Afghans don’t care about Ramat Shlomo, or about the Palestinians and Netanyahu. They have problems of their own to deal with. As far as extremist Islamists are concerned, the seven-year presence of American forces on Iraqi soil is a good enough excuse to attack Americans. “Efforts by Obama’s senior adviser, David Axelrod, to imply otherwise in television interviews are dishonest. The only people who to suffer from Israeli policy decisions are the Palestinians and neighboring states that have peace agreements with Israel - Jordan and Egypt. Not a single U.S. soldier in Afghanistan is at risk because of 1,600 housing units in Jerusalem.” And they note that this U.S. policy actually damages any chance for a peace process, or even quiet, by making the Palestinians feel they can get more by being more aggressive in demands and perhaps through violence: “But perhaps what is most important is this: Palestinians see the Obama administration’s decision to attack Israel as an invitation to adopt a more confrontational line….But the PA has smelled blood….So why not start a riot and blame the Israelis, especially when the U.S. government is doing the same. Meanwhile, the Washington Post gets it, too in an editorial “Mr. Obama risks repeating his previous error. American chastising of Israel invariably prompts still harsher rhetoric, and elevated demands, from Palestinian and other Arab leaders. Rather than join peace talks, Palestinians will now wait to see what unilateral Israeli steps Washington forces…. If the White House insists on a reversal of the settlement decision, or allows Palestinians to do so, it might land in the same corner from which it just extricated itself….If this episode reinforces that image, Mr. Obama will accomplish the opposite of what he intends.” Then there’s David Rothkopf at Foreign Policy: “The bigger message that will be unintentionally have been delivered to the world at the end of all this is that the United States is willing to get fierce with its friend Israel over a perceived insult but that we are likely to remain ineffective in the face of self-declared Iranian enemies’ efforts to destabilize the entire Middle East with nuclear weapons. This is not only a problem for the president because the outcome is so dangerous. It’s also that “tough on your friends, weak with your enemies” is neither a common trait among great leaders nor is it a particularly good campaign bumper sticker.” Precisely.

Why What General Petraeus said is Wrong about the Middle East (or is it just being misinterpreted?) Posted: 16 Mar 2010 06:40 PM PDT Please become subscriber 9,547! Also please bear in mind that the GLORIA Center is grateful for tax-free contributions of whatever size. If interested in discussing details or helping out, please contact us. : By Barry Rubin General David Petraeus is a smart guy, one of the smartest in the U.S. government at present. But he’s no Middle East expert. Let’s examine two remarks he made in his congressional testimony. Before we do, though, promise me you will read paragraph 17 because there’s a very explosive point made there you won’t find anywhere else. Agreed? OK, let’s go. Please note, by the way, that what he actually said is far milder than earlier leaks claimed. In addition, of course, Petraeus has to support White House policy, whatever he really thinks or knows. The Defense Department’s recent Quadrennial review, also written to please the White House, contained not one mention of Iran’s drive to get nuclear weapons or the threat of revolutionary Islamism.  And he also has advisors who tell him the wrong stuff. Statement One: “A credible U.S. effort on Arab-Israeli issues that provides regional governments and populations a way to achieve a comprehensive settlement of the disputes would undercut Iran’s policy of militant ‘resistance,’ which the Iranian regime and insurgent groups have been free to exploit.” On the surface this makes a lot of sense. But let’s examine it closely. Let’s assume there is a comprehensive settlement to which the Palestinian Authority (PA) agrees. It isn’t going to happen but this is for demonstration purposes. In order to get an agreement, the PA would have to make some concessions, let’s keep them to the minimum for our discussion. At a minimum, it would have to say that the conflict is at an end, recognize Israel, renounce Palestinian claims to all of Israel, and agree to settle all Palestinian refugees in Palestine. In addition, it might have to make some small territorial swaps, not get every square inch of east Jerusalem, and agree to some limits on its military forces. What would happen? First, none of this would apply to the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. Hamas, Hizballah, Syria, Iran, Muslim Brotherhoods, and many others would renounce this as treason. Hamas would continue to attack Israel; its forces in the West Bank would stage cross-border raids into Israel and try to seize power in the West Bank. Would the kind of people who are now prone to support revolutionary Islamism then say: “What a fair settlement. This settles all our grievances. Thank you, America for being so wonderful!” While to many Western observers such a reaction would seem logical this is not what would happen. The Western onlooker is assuming a pragmatic, facts-based response rather than an ideological response based on massive disinformation by governments, media, religious leaders, and political movements. They would say, paraphrasing the words of an ancient Chinese military theorist: The enemy retreats, we advance. They are weak and fearful. The day of victory is near! They would denounce the puppet Palestinian state as a Western lackey. They would redouble their efforts to sabotage the settlement. Moreover, it would change nothing regarding their goal of overthrowing their own governments. What about the U.S. effort being “credible?” Credible to whom? It might be credible to the New York Times but will it be credible to al-Safir in Lebanon, to pick a newspaper at random? No matter how hard the United States tries it will not satisfy the criteria of those who profoundly mistrust America as inevitably infidel, imperialist, or both. It might be credible to an upper middle class intellectual in Cairo who has been educated in the West but will it be credible to the masses who believe in conspiracy theories? Would people in Egypt or Jordan not support the Muslim Brotherhoods there, to give only one example, because there was a “credible” peace process? Would anyone in Iraq or Afghanistan behave differently at all, distracted by their struggle to gain or hold power and to fight communal rivals because of such a “credible” process? The idea is absurd. And if what Petraeus says on this point is true, why aren’t the regimes—and the PA, too–doing everything in their power day and night to bring about such a settlement? Why do they just keep repeating: You owe us, it’s all your fault. Solve the problem? Why didn’t, say, Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip trigger a rush by Arab regimes to help establish and maintain a stable, moderate regime there? PARAGRAPH 17 BUT WAIT! There’s something remarkable here. Why should we assume–as most people remarking on the testimony have–that a “credible” effort means pressuring Israel for concessions? Actually, if there’s going to be a credible effort it requires pressuring the PA, which has been the main force opposing a serious peace process. Remember it was the PA who wrecked the peace process in 2000, and it was the PA which refused to negotiate for 14 months. Maybe there is no credible process because the current U.S. government has never once publicly criticized the PA! So, how about this: In order to have a credible effort, the U.S. government must tell the PA to stop incitement to murder Israelis, to start preparing their people for a two-state solution, to agree to compromises of its own. That’s the most important step to having a credible effort. Petreus never said that it is Israel which is blocking such an effort. And it isn’t Israel. Of course, Petraeus never said it was Israel’s fault. Perhaps he knows that. After all, if Israel doesn’t build one more apartment in east Jerusalem–something the PLO agreed it could do in 1993 as part of the framework for negotiations, something the U.S. government accepted last November–nothing would change. Here’s Petraeus’s second statement: “Additionally, progress on the Israel-Syria peace track could disrupt Iran’s lines of support to Hamas and Hizballah.” Why would this be so? What does Hamas care about the Israel-Syria track? Why should Iran give less support to Hizballah as a result? After all, Hizballah is trying to take over Lebanon, not the Golan Heights. Presumably, the subtext here is that Syria would be so happy to be making progress that it would subvert Iran’s relationship to Hamas and Hizballah. But why should Damascus undercut its relationship with Tehran just to have talks with Israel? Shouldn’t we remember the 1991-2000 period when there was “progress on the Israel-Syria peace track” and yet it had no effect on Syria’s relationship with Iran or the two Islamist revolutionary movements? The truth is that Syria knows it can give support to these groups and hold negotiations with Israel. True, Syria would not foment an attack by Hizballah on Israel that would set off a war (which it did foment in 2006) but it isn’t doing that any way. Hizballah is busy trying to take over Lebanon. The best guarantee that Hizballah won’t attack Israel at least for a while is the drubbing it received at Israel’s hands in 2006, even though Hizballah will never admit that. Let’s suppose there would be intensive Israel-Syria talks. Would that reduce by one dollar or by one gun the support Iran is giving to Hamas and Hizballah? Of course not. Of course, to be fair to Petraeus, he only said “could” disrupt not would disrupt. Oh and another “Paragraph 17″: Might not progress on the Israel-Syria track require a tougher U.S. stand on Syria so that Damascus would understand that it cannot back Hizballah (disrupting Lebanon) and Hamas (helping to make any Israel-Palestinian peace process impossible) while still getting U.S. concessions. How about, U.S. to Syria: If you ever want to get the Golan Heights back you better change your policy! So perhaps Petraeus could be interpreted in a totally different way. Yet the telling thing about the kind of points made by Petraeus–at least as they are generally interpreted–is that they are ridiculously easy to puncture. That shouldn’t be surprising. These claims have been made repeatedly for decades and have always proven wrong. I wonder if he knows that also. Like so much said about the Middle East, the two statements by Petraeus analyzed above–at least as they are generally interpreted (yes, the repetition is on purpose) might make sense to someone who wandered off the street into the middle of the movie and who hadn’t seen the first hour. Moreover, since there is close to a monopoly in the universities and mass media, where contrary arguments like those I’ve made above virtually never appear, it is even easier to reach such wrong conclusions. Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His new edited books include Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict and Crisis; Guide to Islamist Movements; Conflict and Insurgency in the Middle East; and The Muslim Brotherhood. To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books. To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.

How Can Turkey’s Government be a U.S. Ally if it’s an Ally of Iran? Posted: 16 Mar 2010 10:36 AM PDT By Barry Rubin Syria’s government newspaper says Turkey is an ally of Syria and Iran. Iran’s president says that Turkey is an ally of Syria and Iran. And now the prime minister of Turkey says basically the same thing. Yet much of the West is blind to what is right there out in the open. The latest development is an interview that Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan gave to the BBC totally defending the Iranian regime and claiming that country has no intention of developing nuclear weapons. (Do you think the Obama Administration will persuade Erdogan to support sanctions when he insists that there is no problem at all?) Erdogan called Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a “friend.” He said,  ”Countries with nuclear weapons are not in a position to turn to another country and say: ‘You are not supposed to produce nuclear weapons.’” The Turkish prime minister insisted: “Iran has consistently spoken of the fact that it is seeking to use nuclear energy for civilian purposes and that they are using uranium enrichment programmes for civilian purposes only….That is what Mr Ahmadinejad has told me many times before.” Well as the old labor union song put it about coal miners in Kentucky: “They say in Harlan County There are no neutrals there. You’ll either be a union man. Or a thug for J.H. Blair Which side are you on?” The Turkish regime and its new friends–which include Hamas and Hizballah–know which side that government is on, when will the U.S. government notice?

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If men will not meet God’s terms they will be lost [Mk. 16:16; Jn. 3:3, 5; Pr. 1:24-31]: and if any become saved then turn back on God and persist in rebellion until death, He is not responsible.

If it were up to God only to save the lost and take them to heaven, all would be saved; but since all are not going to be saved, this proves that man does have a part in the matter.

Actually the failure of any man to be saved is his own failure, not God’s.
- Dake A.R. Bible – page 237.

MAN’S RESPONSIBILITY:
Deuteronomy 29:4
Yet the Lord hath not given you an heart to perceive, and eyes to see, and ears to hear, unto this day. [Dake]

On the surface this verse suggest that God was responsible for the people not having proper faculties, but it literally means they did not use their faculties properly and the grace that He permitted them to have that they might know Him better.

They did not use the means or take the advantages which they, as a people, had above other nations; therefore, they were not wise, loving, and obedient before God as they should be. Had they had eyes eager to see, ears eager to hear the Word of God, and hearts eager to obey it, they would have been commended; but by not using their own created faculties the right way it proved they had grieved God and hardened themselves against the Holy Spirit and the means of grace.

This was deplored of God [v4 Cp. 5: 29]. The same complaint was made by Isaiah and quoted in Matt. 13:14-16, which is a further explanation of this verse. See Isaiah 6:9-10.

Among those who refuse to hear, refuse to obey, and harden themselves when God gives them the opportunity to be broken and obedient, Pharaoh is an outstanding example, as well as Israel. [Further notes on Harden in Index: Dake A.R. Bible].

BACKSLIDING:
Deuteronomy 28:63
And it shall come to pass, that as the Lord rejoiced over you to do you good, and to multiply you; so the Lord will rejoice over you to destroy you, and to bring you to nought; and ye shall be plucked from off the land whither thou goest to possess it.

The theory that God will not punish, judge, and condemn His people when they backslide and persist in sin and rebellion has no foundation in any attribute, act, promise, prophecy, covenant, or revelation of God. He has been just and good to all in all ages, blessing men when in obedience and cursing the same men when in disobedience.

He is no respecter of persons and nothing can cause Him to be unlike what He is and has revealed Himself to be.

God has given hundreds of warnings for men not to backslide lest they be cut off and die in their sin and rebellion to suffer the fate of all sinners.

He has given us many examples of angels, demons, and men who have actually suffered and will yet suffer such destiny. The facts are facts and must be accepted as such.
- Dake A.R. Bible: page 237

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