Category: Essays And Commentaries

Long essays or op-ed length commentaries on the issues of the day or on topics of special interest.

Deadly climate change on Mars!

9:12 am

Junk science! A new computer simulation by scientists now proposes that there was microscopic life on Mars billions of years ago, but its existence served to destroy the climate and kill all life!

The press appears to be eating this story up, with enthusiasm. From the New Atlas story above:

Humans might not be the first lifeforms in the solar system to face the threat of their own activity changing the climate of their home planet. A new model suggests that ancient Mars was once habitable enough to support methane-producing microbes, and they may have wiped themselves out by causing irreparable damage to the Red Planet’s atmosphere. [emphasis mine]

A Space.com story is written better, but it still jumps on the bandwagon:
» Read more

6 comments

Alternatives to PayPal for supporting Behind the Black

12:24 am

In the past two days a large number of my subscribers have suddenly canceled their PayPal subscriptions to Behind the Black. I am certain this sudden activity is because these subscribers have also canceled all of their business with PayPal, because of its announcement that if it doesn’t like what someone says or writes, it will literally steal up to $2,500 from that person’s PayPal account. See this article describing the sudden exodus from Paypal due to this unethical policy.

For the past two years I have been steadily adding additional payment options so that neither I nor my supporters will have to depend on PayPal. These have included Patreon, Zelle, and mailing a check to me directly.

I have now added one more, Gabpay. This payment service has been formed by the same people who created Gab as a free speech alternative to Twitter. Gabpay appears to work almost identical to PayPal, but its fees are less and it has no intention of stealing anyone’s money because it doesn’t like what someone says or writes.

Thus, regular readers can now support Behind The Black in one of five ways:

  • Send me a check payable to Robert Zimmerman c/o Behind The Black, P.O.Box 1262
    Cortaro, AZ 85652 . With this method every dime you contribute goes to me.
  • Subscribe or donate through Zelle, using my email address zimmerman @ nasw dot org. This method also charges no fees. Every dime you spend goes only to me.
  • NEW! Donate through Gabpay, using my email address zimmerman @ nasw dot org. Gabpay takes a cut of about 2%.
  • Subscribe or donate at my Patreon website, which takes a cut of about 12%.
  • Subscribe or donate through Paypal using the buttons in the tip jar elsewhere on this page. PayPal also takes a cut of about 12%.

I encourage my regular subscribers on both Paypal and Patreon to consider switching to Zelle. Several subscribers have done so, and have found the process simple and easy, while also guaranteeing all of your donation reaches me. If you use Zelle to either newly subscribe or switch your old subscription, please use my email address to send me a separate email telling me the monthly amount of your subscription and your chosen payment date. Zelle does not send notifications for such things.

Regardless, I celebrate my readers who are quitting PayPal. It has proven itself as unethical as companies like Google, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, all of which I avoid at all costs. Rather than sit back like sheep, these readers are proving that they are free citizens willing to fight. Kudos to you all!

13 comments

The dam is about to break on the COVID shots

12:02 pm

Democrats might soon enter the Truth booth
Advocates of the jab are about to be forced, against their will,
to enter that door.

The research continues to pour in every day showing increasingly that the COVID shots that Democrats and Joe Biden forced down the throats of ordinary Americans are not only relatively ineffective at stopping COVID, they are downright risky to take, especially for the young and healthy.

One story however — having nothing to do with this scientific research — suggests strongly that the left’s fantasy-world about the jab is about to break, and break in a big way. These mind-numbed robots are suddenly discovering directly and personally how harmful the jab can be, in the worst possible manner.

Before I tell you about this one story, however, we first must review some of the new research and data that has popped up in just the past week. (For the substantial previous research about the harmful risks and uselessness of the COVID shots see Part 1 of my three part series on the COVID lie from the end of September, with parts 2 and 3 here and here.)

First, the uselessness of the jab:
» Read more

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Part 3: Against the COVID liars and their strong-arm edicts the wheels of justice are grinding forward slowly

1:43 pm

Renewing the Declaration of Independence
Renewing the Declaration of Independence

In the first two parts of this series I very carefully outlined the ugly corrupt lie of the experimental COVID jab, and then followed up with a detailed summary of the lies put forth to justify imposition of the many COVID mandates.

Today, in this concluding essay, we will take a look at the battle by many to resist and end those COVID mandates, a battle that is increasingly successful because the mandates themselves were both immoral and illegal. They desecrated all the fundamental tenets and principles that underlie all American culture and law.

First however an addendum to yesterday’s essay, where I noted that “The royalties possibly received by Fauci and others in the government for their work developing the COVID jab — that the government then mandated — boggles the mind.” Shortly after I posted that essay, this story hit the web:

Fauci’s Net Worth Doubled During Pandemic, As Americans Struggled to Make Ends Meet

In 2021 alone Fauci earned almost two million dollars in royalties, travel perks, and investment gains. We still do not know however exactly what companies paid Fauci this money, or the precise amounts, because, according to the organization Open the Books which obtained this data, NIH has redacted that information.

To paraphrase Shakespeare, “Something is very rotten in the state of COVID”. The only reason I can fathom for keeping the source of those royalties secret is if their unveiling would reveal a serious conflict of interest. Fauci was one of the most visible government officials pushing the COVID shots on adults and children. Was he also making money on each jab? The public has a right to know.

Now, on to the fight against the illegal and immoral COVID mandates.
» Read more

15 comments

Part 2: How the liars spread the ugly corrupt lie of the COVID jab

4:01 pm

Yesterday I outlined in detail how a growing body of research as well as a great deal of blatantly obvious public data is increasingly demonstrating that the COVID shots carry with them some risk, and that in many cases, especially for those younger than 50, the risks outweigh the relatively minor benefits the jab provides against the Wuhan flu.

Though this data was unknown when the COVID shots were first made available, the amount of uncertainty and risk was great enough to make it unconscionable for any politician or health official to require anyone to get the jab, no matter what. And yet, led by President Joe Biden, government agencies and big corporations nationwide demanded employees get the jab, or be fired.

The result: tens of thousands of individuals, especially the young and healthy, have died unnecessarily from the COVID shots, since COVID itself could never have killed them.

Today I am going to outline the lies perpetuated by politicians and government health officials almost from day one of the Wuhan panic that worked hide these basic facts. Many times these lies were committed with the best of intentions. Many times the liars honestly and sincerely believed the lie was their only course of action.

And in too many cases, the lies were merely lies, said simply to protect the individual from scandal and possible prosecution, should the truth come out.

No matter what the reason, however, these lies were not only dishonest, they were morally wrong, and resulted in routinely bad policy that only made the Wuhan epidemic far worse than it ever had to be.

To begin, let us look at the lies of some specific individuals.
» Read more

10 comments

Part 1: The ugly corrupt lie of the experimental COVID jab

2:16 pm

Joe Biden: dictator
Joe Biden: claiming the power to tell us what medicines we must take

On September 9, 2021, President Joe Biden announced harsh mandates nationwide that forced millions to get COVID shots. You had no choice. If you refused, you would be fired from your job and made a non-person, forbidden in all ways from participating normally in society.

“We’ve been patient, but our patience is wearing thin,” Biden said, making a direct appeal to the 80 million people who he said were still unvaccinated. “Your refusal has cost all of us.”

…”It’s simple [said an official]: If you want to work for the federal government, you must be vaccinated. If you want to do business with the government, you must vaccinate your workforce.”

Those mandates — unreasonably based on very uncertain knowledge at the time — have now been found to have killed thousands of people who did not need to die.

And worst of all, the people imposing those mandates were lying, and knew they were lying.

Killing young adults

For a large majority of the population that either voluntarily chose to get the COVID jab or were forced to submit under duress, the shots and boosters at this point appear to have been harmless. Most people have exhibited no negative symptoms once jabbed, and have so far been able to go on with their lives as if nothing had changed.

The problem is that for many, that jab was a death sentence, with the executioner often arriving unexpectedly but quickly, and completely unnecessarily.
» Read more

14 comments

The rising federal Gestapo

1:18 pm

The Houck Family: Targets of FBI harassment and arrest
The Houck Family: Targets of FBI harassment and arrest.
The little boy in the center clearly needs to be frog-marched to prison.

It can happen here. Anyone who denies this is merely guaranteeing that tyranny in America will arrive sooner.

Worse, it is happening here, right now, at this very moment. The Houck family to the right has been in the news the past few days because on September 23, 2022 they found their home surrounded by an FBI SWAT team with guns drawn, pounding at the front door to arrest the father, Mark Houck, for a minor pushing incident that had occurred months earlier that was so minor the court had dismissed the lawsuit against Houck almost immediately. Notwithstanding its utter triviality, the Biden administration, its Justice Department, and the FBI decided it gave them a great chance to intimidate and frighten someone who happened to also be a conservative and religious activist.
» Read more

37 comments

Today’s blacklisted American: Republicans and conservatives increasingly unwilling to talk to pollsters out of fear

12:45 pm

Joe Biden's
Joe Biden’s anti-conservative rally on September 1, 2022

Blacklists are back and the Democrats have got ’em: According to pollsters, the vicious almost slanderous attacks by President Biden against Republicans and conservatives — following decades of similar harsh language from Democrats nationwide — is causing these voters to increasingly refuse to talk to pollsters about their opinions.

In a Twitter thread, Trafalgar Group chief pollster Robert C. Cahaly said that President Joe Biden’s recent attacks on so-called “MAGA Republicans” will make polling supporters of former President Donald Trump even harder to poll than in previous years. Cahaly pointed out that in the last two presidential election cycles, name-calling and threats from prominent Democrats contributed to the phenomenon of the “shy Trump voter.” But as the 2022 midterms have begun in earnest, Biden’s escalating rhetoric against Trump supporters, accusing them of embracing “semi-fascism” and being a threat to America, will make these voters even harder to reach in polling.
» Read more

22 comments

The new in-space repair and refueling industries that are about to revolutionize space exploration

2:57 pm

Robot repair, as imagined in 1979
Robots doing work in orbit, as imagined in 1979

When Orbital ATK announced in 2016 that its robotic Mission Extension Vehicle (MEV) — designed to dock with and extend the life of defunct commercial communications satellites — had won its first contract with Intelsat, that contract award only came after several years of persistent campaigning.

In fact, Orbital ATK had had great difficulties getting any satellite communications company interested. At the time, all communication satellites were in geosynchronous orbit, were expensive to build, but lasted routinely from 10 to 15 years. The satellite companies didn’t see a need to fix them when they ran out of fuel. It seems better to launch a new replacement.

Even after winning that contract with Intelsat, it was still four years before that MEV docked with Intelsat’s satellite, bringing it back to life. In the interim Northrop Grumman (which had purchased Orbital ATK in a merger) had managed just one other contract, even as it had announced upgrades to the MEV to allow it to service many satellites, not just one.

The satellite industry seemed in those days to be largely resistant to the concept of repairing and refueling its older satellites.

No more. We are on the cusp of a major revolution in satellite operations, driven first by innovations like the MEV, but accelerated greatly by the new satellite companies launching low orbit constellations. These new companies are willing to take risks, and thus have also shown an eager desire to link their satellites to a variety of in-space services that they themselves did not wish to provide, from satellite repair and refueling to tug services to space junk removal to quick and controlled de-orbit technologies.

The variety and innovation of this new industry is somewhat astonishing, especially considering how young an industry it is.
» Read more

5 comments

The Ukraine’s big victory this past week was no accident

9:01 am

The Ukraine War as of August 30, 2022
The Ukraine War as of August 30, 2022. Click for full map.

The Ukraine War as of September 11, 2022
The Ukraine War as of September 11, 2022. Click for full map.

In the past week the Ukraine has scored a major victory in its effort to drive Russia from its territory, pushing the Russians back across a wide swath in the areas north and east of the city of Kharkiv. The two maps to the right, created by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) and simplified, reduced, and annotated to post here, show these gains, with the top map from their August 30, 2022 analysis and the bottom from their September 11, 2022 update. Red or pink areas are regions controlled by the Russians. Blue areas are regions retaken by the Ukraine. Red-striped areas are regions captured by Russian in its 2014 invasion. Blue-striped areas are regions inside Russian-occupied territories that have seen strong partisan resistance.

The green lines on both maps mark rivers that act as important military barriers. The blue arrows on the lower map east of Kharkiv show the Ukrainian military push this past week, first to the east to the river Oskil. From there the forces moved north and south. To the south the Ukrainians used the Oskil river to their left as a wall protecting them from Russian forces. That same river acted to pin the Russians down in the south, forcing them in the past day to quickly retreat to the east across the one remaining bridge under their control, but in the process abandoning large amounts of armaments that the Ukrainians can now use.

In the south, the Dnipro River also acts as a barrier for the Russian occupying forces north of Kherson.
The Ukrainians have spent the last month or so aggressively attacking the handful of bridges that cross this river, thus restricting Russian transport to and from its northern forces. As the Ukrainians made these attacks, they were remarkably public about their plans to follow up with a major campaign in the south to retake Kherson and all territory north of the Dnipro.

In that public campaign lies the key to this whole counter-offensive. As ISW noted in its update of September 11, 2022:
» Read more

50 comments

The evidence continues to pile up: The government’s strongarm policies against COVID were utter failures

2:05 pm

The modern basis of medical research in the dark age
Health policy during the Wuhan panic

Since my last COVID update in June, the number of research papers has continued to show, with increasing force, the total and utter failure of every single one of the draconian edicts imposed on the pubic by leftist governments both in Democratic Party controlled states in the U.S. as well as worldwide.

Below are a small sampling of this accumulating research. Read it and weep.

My sorrow however comes from knowing that this knowledge was patently obvious from day one. This new research really isn’t new, it confirms what was well known, and was confirmed quickly as early as March 2020. However, when skeptics like myself, mostly on the right, desperately tried to stem the panic, it was all to no avail. The government’s edicts were always wrong, but no one wanted to listen. The data below merely confirms what all the data, before and during the Wuhan panic, was already telling us.
» Read more

17 comments

The Ukrainian War: After Six Months

1:11 pm

The Ukraine War as of May 5, 2022
The Ukraine War as of June 6, 2022. Click for full map.

The Ukraine War as of August 30, 2022
The Ukraine War as of August 30, 2022. Click for full map.

It is now more than three months since my June update on the war in the Ukraine. It is also six months since Russia first invaded.

No new updates were necessary because little had changed, as indicated by the two maps to the right, adapted from maps created by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW). For their full interactive version go here.

On both maps red indicates territory controlled by Russia, light pink areas that Russia only tentatively controlled, light blue areas recovered by the Ukraine from Russia, and blue-striped areas regions of documented Ukrainian resistance within Russian-controlled territories. The red-striped regions were regions grabbed by Russia during its 2014 invasion.

The top map is from ISW’s June 6th assessment. The bottom map comes from its August 28th assessment.

Though I don’t solely rely on ISW for information (it tends to favor the Ukraine in most of its analysis), its maps have repeatedly appeared reliable and accurate, which is why I use them here.

As you can see, in three months not much has changed. Russia continues to grind away in the middle regions, gaining territory slowly but steadily. The Ukraine meanwhile has either stopped any further Russian advance in the north or south, or has chipped away slightly at Russian holdings in these regions.
» Read more

26 comments

How SLS reveals the difference between state-run propaganda and real journalism

10:10 am

The cost of SLS

On August 29, 2022, NASA will attempt the first launch of a government-built, government-owned, and government-designed rocket in more than a decade. The rocket’s development took more than eighteen years, moved in fits and starts due to political interference and mandates, cost more than $50 billion, and has been both behind schedule and overbudget almost from day one. Along the way NASA management screwed up the construction of one multi-million dollar test stand, built another it will never use, mismanaged that test program, dropped a rocket oxygen tank, and found structural cracks in an early Orion capsule.

This dubious achievement, even if the launch and month-plus-long mission of the Orion capsule to lunar orbit and back is a complete success, is hardly something to tout. NASA claims it and this rocket will make it possible for America to explore the solar system, but any honest appraisal of SLS’s cost and cumbersome design immediately reveals that claim to be absurd. SLS can launch at best once per year, and in truth will likely lift off at a much slower rate. It will also eat up resources in the American aerospace industry from technology better designed, more efficient, and more capable of doing the job.

Worse, the generally sloppy management of this program, with numerous major errors in design and construction, raises serious questions about the safety of any future manned flight.

And yet, as this launch day approaches, the American established press is going ga-ga over SLS. Below are just a small sampling:
» Read more

16 comments

There are no permanent political victories

12:43 pm

The fight for liberty never ends
The fight for liberty never ends

There has been much celebration in conservative circles today because of the victories in Florida yesterday in almost every school board election, sweeping leftists and Democrats from power.

Many of the winning candidates have been endorsed by the 1776 Project PAC, an organization that has been instrumental in flipping school boards from liberal to conservative across the country.

“We saw massive election victories all throughout the state of Florida tonight,” 1776 Project PAC founder Ryan Girdusky told Breitbart News Tuesday. “It shows the desire of parents and residents across the country for some normalcy in our education system, and that means pushing against transgender ideology, critical race theory, critical gender ideology, and equity which destroys merit in education.”

“The 1776 Project PAC hopes to take these successes across the country,” he said.

The sense I get, similar to the same sense I got when the Republicans finally regained control of the House of Representatives in 1994 — after decades of uninterrupted Democratic Party rule — is the false belief that yesterday’s victories at these school boards puts an end to bad and oppressive COVID policies and the teaching of the queer agenda and the racist and Marxist program dubbed critical race theory.

And as happened after 1994, the victories yesterday do no such thing. » Read more

36 comments

The Democratic Party of thugs and goons

11:34 am

Rick, stating the truth in Casablanca
Will the Trump raid finally wake Americans up?

While the outrage and fury has only begun to rise over the unjustified raid of the home of former President Donald Trump yesterday by the FBI, ordered by Biden Justice Department with a warrant issued by an Obama-supporting judge with ties to Jeffrey Epstein’s child sex operation, nothing about that raid was anything new or startling. For the past seven years, since Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016, the Democratic Party and its supporters have increasingly acted like Nazi storm-troopers, willing, able, and eager to crush their opponents at every opportunity, and to do so cruelly and with great viciousness.

I therefore ask, shouldn’t we have exhibited the same amount of rage and fury for the hundreds and hundreds of ordinary Americans these same thugs have harassed and ruined since 2016? Why did it take a raid on Trump to finally bring that rage to the forefront?

Two Americans committed suicide because of Biden administration persecution after they dared protest the questionable election of Joe Biden on January 6th. What about them?

Scores of conservative FBI agents in the past two years have been fired from their jobs, simply because they did not agree politically with the Democrats. What about them?

What about the arrest by the FBI of a Republican candidate for Michigan governor, simply because he had also protested on January 6th the questionable election of thug Joe Biden? Or the threats of violence and murder against Supreme Court justices by leftist Democratic Party allies?

What about the effort by Biden’s labor board to shut down the conservative outlet The Federalist, simply because its founder sent out an anti-union joke?

What about the former Trump lawyer whose career was destroyed, simply because he was a former lawyer of Trump?

These stories are only a small sampling of the political abuses of power exercised by Democrats and the Biden administration time after time against their political opponents in just the last eighteen months. The list is long and painful to read.
» Read more

44 comments

FCC decides to expand its power in space

8:18 pm

FCC: Now in charge of everything in space

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) today voted to initiate what it calls a “Notice of Inquiry” to begin a policy review aimed at expanding its involvement and regulation of “space missions like satellite refueling, inspecting and repairing in-orbit spacecraft, capturing and removing debris, and transforming materials through manufacturing while in space.”

From the Federal Communications Commission’s press release [pdf]:

Today’s action continues this modernization effort as in-space servicing, assembly, and manufacturing capabilities – or “ISAM” – has the potential to build entire industries, create new jobs, mitigate climate change, and advance America’s economic, scientific, technological, and national security interests. ISAM missions take place on-orbit, in transit, or on the surface of space bodies. The FCC’s effort to open up this conversation dovetails with the Office of Science and Technology Policy’s recent release of a ISAM National Strategy.

This policy review is part of the FCC’s broad effort to update its rules for the new space age. For example, the FCC is taking significant steps to update its satellite rules. The FCC also adopted new rules to lay the groundwork for giving satellite launch companies ready access to spectrum for transmissions from space launch vehicles during pre-launch testing and space launch operations.

ISAM (In-space Servicing, Assembly and Manufacturing) refers to the final policy statement [pdf] of a working group in the National Science & Technology Council, created as part of the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Biden administration. That policy statement outlined six strategies that the federal government needs to focus on to encourage American success in space. From its conclusion:
» Read more

36 comments

Where to get legal help if you have been blacklisted by today’s control freaks

1:47 pm

As I have been chronicling the left’s shameless effort to blacklist, blackball, censor, and destroy its opposition during the past year and a half, I have also begun to assembly a list of non-profit law firms that are dedicated to fight this oppression, and have been increasingly successfully in winning their cases.

It seems appropriate therefore to provide that list to the public. Several blacklisted readers of these columns have noted in comments that they wish to also sue, and I would like to help them do so in every way possible. The following list, though obviously not all inclusive, describes what appear to be the most active and successful non-profit law firms presently winning first amendment cases nationwide. (Note too that the ACLU is not on the list, as that organization a long time ago abandoned its foundational goal of protecting free speech and has instead become an agent acting to increase the left’s power over ordinary citizens.)

In choosing among these law firms, make sure you review their entire website and the many cases they are handling. Some firms might be less appropriate for your situation, and it is necessary on your part to do the due diligence to figure this out.
» Read more

10 comments

Thank you All!

11:00 pm

July has now ended and so has my annual July fund-raising drive for Behind the Black, celebrating the website’s twelfth anniversary.

As always, I have been astonished by the number of people who freely donate or subscribe to my website, even though the site is available totally for free. It tells me I must be doing something right. Regardless, I cannot express loudly enough my heartfelt appreciation for this support. Thank you all, again and again and again!

I will leave this thank you at the top of the page for the next two days, just to make sure everyone can see it. And if you suddenly decide to donate or subscribe now, just find the tip jar elsewhere on the webpage for instructions.

Scroll down for new stories and updates.

20 comments

The growing revolt against the bigoted left across the entire education community

2:45 pm

A little child shall lead them, by James Johnson
“A little child shall lead them,” painting by James L. Johnson.

For the past year and a half in my daily column “Today’s blacklisted American” I have been documenting the oppressive actions of the intolerant left by noting the numerous times its members have aggressively blacklisted, censored, silenced, and destroyed anyone who stands in their way.

Take some time to glance through that full list. Some of the stories are truly horrifying. such as the time a 9-year-old was denied a kidney transplant because his donor, who also happened to be the child’s father, had not gotten his COVID jab.

Almost all are examples of the routine intolerance of the left. No one is allowed to think differently from them, act differently from them, speak differently from them, and even feel differently from them. If you dare to step out of line, their answer is to smash their boot into your face, as hard as they can. Once, that smashing was metaphoric. Today it has become literal.

Much of this oppression has been centered in the education community. The racist and Marxist ideology of critical race theory had it origins in the black study departments forcibly established in the 1960s in universities after violent protests. From there, these communist bigots spread outward into departments teaching the soft sciences of education, literature, psychology, and social science. They then moved downward into the high schools, and in the past decade into the elementary schools. Only recently they added to their program the queer agenda, aiming at perverting young children in the most vile ways possible.
» Read more

17 comments

The corruption of medical science is surges on

12:32 pm

The modern basis of medical research in the dark age
The modern basis of medical research in the dark age

Three stories this past week clearly illustrate that the field of medical science — based on the philosophy to always seek the truth no matter where it leads — is now teetering on the edge of death, and might already have died.

First we have the revelation that a major 2006 paper on the roots of Alzheimer’s disease is likely fraudulent, its results fabricated.

The investigation uncovered evidence suggesting several instances of image manipulation in the work of Sylvain Lesné, a researcher working at the University of Minnesota and an author of the 2006 study. The paper, which is cited by more than 2,200 academic papers as a reference, launched interest in a specific protein called Aβ*56 [a beta-amyloid] as a promising target for early intervention in Alzheimer’s disease.

…Whistleblower Matthew Schrag, a neuroscientist at Vanderbilt University, first flagged his concerns about the images to the NIH on January 2022. Science asked two image analysis experts to review Lesné’s published work. They echoed Shrag’s concerns. They identified a total of 20 “suspect papers” authored by Lesné, 10 of which had to do with Aβ*56, per Science.

This discovery might also explain why there has been a 99% failure rate for all Alzheimer drug trials. Most of that work was based on Lesné’s work, specifically on his paper that pointed to amyloids.
» Read more

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