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You are here: Home / Archives for Civil Rights / Women's Rights / Women's Rights Are Human Rights

Women's Rights Are Human Rights

Womens March(es), This Weekend?

by Anne Laurie|  October 16, 20205:15 pm| 64 Comments

This post is in: Organizing & Resistance, Women's Rights Are Human Rights

This weekend, march with us from anywhere. Over 380 sister marches have been organized across all 50 states, including socially distanced in-person and virtual events.

Find an event for you here: https://t.co/z3g4OnTRMN pic.twitter.com/bdYhh1XAOb

— Women's March – Text WOMENSWAVE to 44310 (@womensmarch) October 13, 2020

I saw a story in the Washington Post about this some time ago, but there hasn’t been anything on the twitter feeds I read, and there is so much news every day these days! Anybody planning on attending one of these events, virtually or IRL?

The Washington Post, yesterday — “Women’s March will bring thousands of marchers to D.C. and cities nationwide this weekend”:

The Women’s March will return to the nation’s capital and to hundreds of cities across the country on Saturday, drawing thousands of people to the streets in the middle of a pandemic to protest the Supreme Court nomination of Amy Coney Barrett and to urge Americans to vote President Trump out of office.

In Washington, D.C., organizers expect between 6,000 and 10,000 people to gather on Freedom Plaza for a midday rally focused on voting rights and calling on Congress to suspend the Supreme Court confirmation process, according to a permit issued by the National Park Service on Wednesday. After the rally, participants will march to the U.S. Supreme Court and the U.S. Capitol…

Saturday’s Women’s March in D.C. is expected to be one of at least 415 marches and events taking place in person and virtually in cities across the country, O’Leary Carmona said. That’s significantly fewer marches than the first Women’s March in 2017, when millions of people flooded the streets in about 700 marches across the country in a historic demonstration protesting Trump’s inauguration.

But O’Leary Carmona said organizers aim to reach the same number of marches as they did in 2018, when about 500 events were planned nationwide. Among the events planned for Saturday are golf-cart processions, car caravans and a march that will begin at Ginsburg’s college dorm at Cornell University.

Unlike during past years’ marches in the nation’s capital, Women’s March leaders are hoping for a relatively smaller crowd in the District because of social distancing concerns. They are discouraging participants from traveling to D.C. from states that are on the self-quarantine list and are not involved in organizing any buses from other cities. Instead, they encourage supporters to attend local marches or to get involved with its “text-a-thon” efforts, O’Leary Carmona said…

Womens March(es), This Weekend?Post + Comments (64)

Breaking News: Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Has Died at Age 87

by Adam L Silverman|  September 18, 20207:44 pm| 181 Comments

This post is in: America, Civil Rights, Domestic Politics, Election 2020, Open Threads, Politics, RIP, Women's Rights, Women's Rights Are Human Rights

Breaking News: Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Has Died at Age 87

From NPR:

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the demure firebrand who in her 80s became a legal, cultural, and feminist icon has died. The Supreme Court announced her death, saying the cause was complications from cancer.

Architect of the legal fight for women’s rights in the 1970s, Ginsburg subsequently served 27 years on the nation’s highest court, becoming its most prominent member. Her death will inevitably set in motion what promises to be a nasty and tumultuous political battle over who will succeed her, and it thrusts the Supreme Court vacancy into the spotlight of the presidential campaign.

Just days before her death, as her strength waned, Ginsburg dictated this statement to her granddaughter Clara Spera: “My most fervent wish is that i I will not be replaced until a new president is installed.”

She knew what was to come. Ginsburg’s death will have profound consequences for the court and the country. Inside the court, not only is the leader of the liberal wing gone, but with the Court about to open a new term, Chief Justice John Roberts no longer holds the controlling vote in closely contested cases.

Though he has a consistently conservative record in most cases, he has split from fellow conservatives in a few important ones, this year casting his vote with liberals, for instance, to at least temporarily protect the so-called Dreamers from deportation by the Trump administration, to uphold a major abortion precedent, and to uphold bans on large church gatherings during the coronavirus pandemic. But with Ginsburg gone, there is no clear court majority for those outcomes.

Senator McConnell will now get his career long wish: to establish a permanent conservative majority on the Supreme Court. In January 2019, I wrote this as part of a post about Senator McConnell:

And he telegraphed during the hearings for Brett Kavanaugh that he’s gearing up to leverage another potential Supreme Court vacancy* in 2019 or 2020 as a political weapon in the 2020 presidential and senatorial elections.

* I’m expecting, provided Justice Ginsburg completes her recovery as expected and remains healthy, that the administration in conjunction with Leonard Leo from The Federalist Society and Senator McConnell will try to replicate with Justice Thomas what they did in the summer of 2018 with Justice Kennedy. Specifically, they’ll create a retirement and subsequent Supreme Court vacancy during the late summer to early fall of 2020 that the President and Republican senators can campaign for reelection on. Thereby replicating the dynamic that Senator McConnell created and the President leveraged in his campaign that it was necessary to elect him, in this case reelect him, and to reelect the GOP majority in the Senate to ensure that the Democrats don’t appoint the next Supreme Court justice, change the balance of the Supreme Court, and destroy the Constitution and thereby the United States.

The above analysis was based on an assessment I did for someone as the Kavanaugh hearings was coming to an end. That assessment is attached here:

McConnell_Rule_Pattern_Analysis

Now we wait to see what Senator McConnell decides to do, as well as the effects of RBG’s passing on the 2020 elections.

May her memory be for a blessing.

Open thread!

 

Breaking News: Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Has Died at Age 87Post + Comments (181)

Monday Morning Open Thread: As We Go Marching, Marching…

by Anne Laurie|  September 14, 20206:11 am| 175 Comments

This post is in: Biden-Harris 2020, Open Threads, Proud to Be A Democrat, Women's Rights Are Human Rights

Sometimes, you just have to. pic.twitter.com/9hbnAiXx6X

— Maggie O’Keefe (@MaggieJOK) September 11, 2020

26 years ago today the Violence Against Women Act, authored by @JoeBiden, was signed into law, ensuring survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence have access to the care they need.

Mitch McConnell is refusing to bring its reauthorization to the Senate floor.

— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) September 13, 2020

Programming note:

@LesterHoltNBC @NBCNightlyNews #hererightmatters https://t.co/15FIUA53lb

— Alexander S. Vindman (@AVindman) September 13, 2020

Trump purposely downplayed the pandemic and now 194,000 Americans are dead.

These aren’t just numbers on a page. These are real people, with families, plans, dreams—all stolen away. My heart aches for their loved ones and their communities.

It didn’t have to be this way.

— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) September 14, 2020

When President Trump talks about America leading the world, this is what he means. pic.twitter.com/z2KpYhojtB

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) September 13, 2020

Monday Morning Open Thread: <em>As We Go Marching, Marching…</em>Post + Comments (175)

‘The Russia Bitch’

by Betty Cracker|  June 23, 20201:11 pm| 153 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Politics, Republican Stupidity, The War On Women, Trumpery, Women's Rights Are Human Rights

It’s been 500 years or so since the impeachment, but remember Fiona Hill, formerly of the National Security Council? There’s a fascinating piece by Adam Entous in The New Yorker: “What Fiona Hill Learned in the White House.” If you were intrigued by Hill’s testimony, wondered about her background or are curious about how a no-nonsense public servant like Hill ended up working for Trump and Bolton, it’s worth a read.

Hill doesn’t seem to buy into the theory that Trump does Putin’s bidding because he (Trump) is compromised in any direct sense. She appears to believe Trump is a credulous ignoramus who is impressed by autocratic power and unaware of how the presidency functions. He follows his instincts — unleavened by knowledge of history or geopolitical considerations — and thus treats U.S. foreign policy decisions as personal transactions for his own gain. None of that surprised me.

Neither did my biggest takeaway from the article: that Trump is every bit as egregious a sexist pig as I imagined. But I’m seething over that aspect of his misrule anew after reading the article. Hill tells a story about her first day on the job, when she accompanied then-Secretary of State Tillerson and National Security Advisor McMaster to the Oval Office to debrief Trump after a call with Putin.

show full post on front page

As the Russia expert, Hill thought she would be contributing to a “substantive discussion about the call.” But Trump was preoccupied with editing a press release someone had written about the call, and he evidently mistook Hill for an administrative assistant. He momentarily confused her by waving the annotated press release at her (I’m imagining “YOUR EXLENCY” and “VERY” and “VERY STRONGLY” inserted via gold Sharpie). When Hill looked baffled, Trump said, “Hey darling, are you listening?”

Her male colleagues left her hanging, perhaps afraid that it would anger Trump if they told him Hill’s actual White House function. Ivanka got huffy about it for some reason and thought Hill was being rude to Trump, maybe because Hill didn’t immediately leap up to do the press release edits? Who knows. But Hill found herself in Stepford right from the start and tried to fit in, sort of:

Until that point, Hill said, she had always let her work speak for itself. But she had noticed that women in the West Wing wore designer dresses and more makeup. After the meeting, she went out and bought a few new outfits, “just so I wouldn’t be conspicuous in my dowdiness.” It was well known that Trump put inordinate stock in appearances, particularly when it came to women. “Central casting is a real thing for him,” a longtime Trump adviser told me. Trump addressed his female aides as “honey,” “sweetie,” and “darling.” If he didn’t like how an adviser looked, he would say, “Honey, you look so tired.” Trump would sometimes say of his female advisers, “They look O.K. in person, but on TV they look really bad. Why do they look so bad?”

After Betsy DeVos, the Education Secretary, was interviewed on “60 Minutes,” Trump complained that she wasn’t attractive enough. When officials were discussing the possibility of a new position for Nikki Haley, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Trump said he didn’t like how her cheeks looked. He complained to officials that Kirstjen Nielsen, the Secretary of Homeland Security, wasn’t sufficiently aggressive toward migrants—and she was too short. When Trump insulted a female adviser, the men in the room would look away. “It throws you off your game,” a former female adviser told me. “It deflates you.” Another former White House official, a man, told me that Trump was “rougher with women. He has a problem with women.” It was soon evident that Trump had a problem with Hill. “Forgive me, Fiona’s attractive, but he doesn’t trust women that are kind of non-players in his world,” the former official said. He added, “Anyone who takes notes is suspect.” A former national-security official told me that, after the incident in the Oval Office, some of Trump’s top advisers, including Reince Priebus, his chief of staff, began referring to Hill as “the Russia bitch.”

I think we can all guess what the unnamed former male official meant when he said Trump “doesn’t trust women that are kind of non-players in his world.” Among the women who are “players” in that world are the empty-headed pouty wife and vacuous grifty daughter and vacant lying press secretary. I don’t believe for a minute he trusts any of them either but likely considers them interchangeably fuckable (except the wife, who is probably considered too old now).

It’s so hard to focus on any single aspect of Trump’s personal awfulness. He’s such an irredeemable asshole in every respect. His behavior is so consistently inappropriate and outrageous that it’s impossible to catalog it all, let along pause to acknowledge each horrendous and destructive aspect of it, at least in real time. It’s more difficult still to comprehend all the ways Trump’s elevation to the presidency cheapens and shames this country and demeans and alienates tens of millions its citizens.

But some day, damn it, we need to have a reckoning about Trump creating a low-rent escort service environment in the White House and the gross toadies like Reince Preibus who eagerly joined in. We should know the names of the cowardly shits — men and women — who not only did not oppose this outrageous behavior but didn’t even think it was worth mentioning. Hill didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know about Trump and the organization he runs, not during the impeachment hearings, and not in this article. But if we’re making a list of the things Trump wrecked that need to be fixed, I hope the vile misogyny he exuded and enabled at least makes the top fucking 5.

‘The Russia Bitch’Post + Comments (153)

Viewing Note: Roe v. Wading Into the Controversy, Again

by Anne Laurie|  May 19, 20206:34 pm| 107 Comments

This post is in: Women's Rights Are Human Rights

Posting this not at all currently relevant story about an attention seeking idiot who got showered with money and fame for volunteering to read scripted lines handed to her by reactionary ratfuckers while playing the victim.https://t.co/slkETyf0sd

— Galar Regional Medical Director (@weedlewobble) May 19, 2020

All subtext aside, I may have to sign up for Hulu to watch this. (Thinks about the Netflix account I haven’t streamed in months now… ) Norma McCorvey was never the Sanctified Victim both sides might’ve wished her to be, but she can surely stand as an exemplar for millions of women caught between their own (sometimes misjudged) actions and ‘the rules’. From Deadline:

… In one jaw-dropping part of the Nick Sweeney-directed docu, McCorvey, who was interviewed a few months before her death in 2017 was asked if she was being used as a trophy by anti-abortion groups. “I was the big fish,” she admitted. “I think it was a mutual thing. I took their money and they’d put me out in front of the cameras and tell me what to say. That’s what I’d say.”

She gave an example of what she was told to say as the “former Jane Roe,” then she admitted it was all an act. “I did it well too. I am a good actress,” McCorvey said in the docu as people watched the footage in shock.

The documentary feature follows the true story of McCorvey in the landmark ruling on abortion rights. The docu features interviews with people she worked closely with on the pro-life and pro-choice side of things — including Gloria Allred and Operation Rescue. The conflicting arguments paint the nuanced complexities of McCorvey and a culturally significant part of history that still affects the country today…

Viewing Note: Roe v. Wading Into the Controversy, AgainPost + Comments (107)

Mors et Veritatis

by ruemara|  May 7, 20206:29 pm| 113 Comments

This post is in: America, Domestic Politics, The War On Women, Women's Rights Are Human Rights

This probably the first, last and only thing I’ll have to say about the Tara Reade issue, largely because I like to let a thing play out, so I can work with all the facts.

Detail of art from The Crocker Museum

The “Me Too” movement was started by Tarana Burke in 2006, to raise awareness not on sexual violence, but on it’s pervasiveness. Because of the nature of the sexual violence & harassment, despite it’s ubiquity, it feels unique. It’s happening to you, to your body, to your mind. And it traps you there. Yet, sexual violence and harassment is pretty much something every woman has experience with and a lot of men as well. We live in a world where corrective rape is a thing, for god’s sake. When the #MeToo movement had a surge due to the hashtag’s use on social media and it’s connection to the Harvey Weinstein case, it really felt like a damn had finally burst and a lot of toxic silence as well as the enabling behavior of people towards powerful abusers was about to end.

Fast forward to 2020 and for a second time, a presidential candidate stands accused of sexual assault. Others have done a lot of work examining the accusation and it’s inconsistencies, so I won’t go into that. What I’m more concerned about is the idea that the accusation is enough to demand that Biden step down and more disconcerting, that investigating the accusation and finding inconsistencies is being a rape apologist. Me Too came about to shine a light on the prevalence of sexual assault & violence, particularly in being heard, believed and to have these crimes investigated so there could be consequences. At least, that’s what it means to me. Has it changed? And what does it mean if we should believe without question?

Interpersonal interactions are not easy to navigate. What one person says and feels will not be what another person says and feels. That’s partially why dealing with sexual harassment has been hard. As we evolve as a society, interactions that were ok by a dominant group to a sub group are now not ok. I’ve had my share of unwanted hugs from people who were huggers and could mandate that as an interaction. Frankly, I’ve always found touchy, handsy people irritating because there is no concept of “this is cool for me, but I should ask if it’s cool for you”. Is it easy to believe Joe touched in a way that Reade didn’t like? Sure. Does that equate to believing he’s a rapist? No. Does that mean her claims shouldn’t be investigated? No. Does it mean it’s impossible it happened? No. In fact, to know the truth of the matter, we must investigate. Whatever details she can provide, her full truth must be heard so we, the voters, can make a decision on whether or not this is credible and therefore, actionable. Yet, I am seeing that the search for the truth means you’re ignoring sexual assault.

Truth is the most important thing to base our decisions on. Truth must inform our actions. And even when those truths are inconvenient, we must listen to the truth. It’s disturbing to see that Biden has been condemned in multiple corners of the internet based on an allegation. It’s even more disturbing that inconsistencies and interference from some of the people who broke the story are being reframed as rape apology. Aren’t we on the left supposed to be focused on facts? If we abandon facts in favor of what we want to believe, then we’re in trouble. There’s also another troubling question. Why aren’t we supposed to ask questions and instead supposed to simply react? I do believe we’re witnessing right now the destruction of our country by an entire party that’s given up on facts, truth and only reacts wildly to everything. How would aping that benefit any effort to stop it?

When I started this, the Eva Murry accusations of Biden ogling her breasts when she as a 14 year-old attended the Gridiron Dinner in 2008 just hit Twitter through Sasha Pezenik of ABC. The accusations fell apart pretty fast, but it’s starting to show a pattern of weaponizing Me Too and the natural instinct to punish sexual predators in power. Today, Jacob Wohl & his partner Jack Burkeman have been exposed in an attempt to take down Dr. Fauci (I beg forgiveness for the Reason link), using emotional manipulation of the accuser, knowledge of her past as an assault victim and plain old cash payments. It’s incredibly typical to take good things, necessary things and twist them so they’re no longer good.

For far too many cases of sexual assault & harassment, corroboration with tangible evidence is not likely. Women have had to have the presence of mind to preserve things like torn clothes, nasty emails, voicemails – you get the gist. And that’s to be believed. Reade’s story seemed like she had corroboration – until we learned that they had been carefully helped to remember. Reade herself has shifted her story, multiple times. From just anger at unfair treatment, to now, a rape charge. But here’s the uncomfortable truth. It could be true. She could be a crook, a fraud, an attention hound and she could be telling the truth, for once. Due to the people who have latched onto it for entirely political purposes, we may never know. That’s the trap. Weaponizing Me Too for political purposes.

Any hope of justice is gone. The waters are too muddied. The people who want to believe Biden is guilty of rape – either because they can’t bear the idea that someone could lie about something as awful as sexual assault for attention or power or perfectly fine with spreading a lie for power – don’t want to hear anything except acquiescence. The people who don’t want to believe Biden is guilty of rape, well, kinda in the same boat. Vox’s latest article covers Laura McGann’s efforts for a year, to get the story from Tara – who maintained in her Intercept interview that no media would talk to her. Turns out a lot of media would & did talk to her. Many of the details McGann took from her initial statements changed. Many of the corroborating people said one thing at first, then updated statements later to match the new story. You can’t take down the powerful like this.

Greyscale Detail, Dimensions of Black Exhibit

I feel the same knot in my stomach now as when I first heard of this. I’d like to know the truth. I mean, to a certain degree, I am always certain when I’m in the company of the powerful, I am in the company of people who have abused the weak. In small ways, in big ways, but in some ways. I guess I’ve seen a little too much to avoid having such a prejudice, but I acknowledge my prejudice and work to let people exist and judge only their actions. Biden will be fine, whether he wins or loses. I firmly believe if we win the Senate – supermajority style – and keep the House, the Presidency is less important. Disagree with me, I don’t care about that. What I care most about is that some on the left seem to have abandoned truth unless it services their purposes. The Biden story is just the latest iteration. It’s why there’s literally nothing the GOP does that isn’t met with “And Pelosi does nothing about it!”. If you push back on it, you’re a neolib moderate or rape apologist. If you say nothing, it’s tacit approval. We’ve adapted labels to stifle healthy discourse and intellectual approaches to tough issues. And I don’t know where this will lead. No one will bear a consequence for it. Too many factions who use internet bullying and courts of public opinion to control narratives. Controversy itself is a profitable brand. But we must make sure the Me Too movement survives and if possible, make it sacrosanct as a tool for gain. Women, men, non-binary people and all the marginalized groups who fit in those categories need it. It cannot be used like this. It’s too important. Everyone Me Too took down, went down under the weight of tons of evidence. Not flat belief. It took courage, it took persistence, it took years. That’s what the power of Me Too is. A demand to listen, support and investigate so every person is accountable. I’d love to believe this will be the last time anyone, at least on the lefty media side, does this. But I see the same people refusing to hear and I see the right wing media picking up the ball and running with it. All I know is, I’m furious and betrayed. I guess it might just be too much to ask that people stop reading content they want to believe and start reading content that presents enough facts to be believable. We’ll see what happens from here on out. I hope Ms. Reade finds peace, whether manipulated, or conwoman or both. It would be nice if many people familiar to us who immediately were sure Biden was credibly accused of assault said, “Hey, you know, I may have jumped the gun.” That won’t happen, of course. I hope we find the truth as much as we can even, as we focus on the goal of preventing more death and destruction in America. Because truth is worth protecting and fighting for.

Mors et VeritatisPost + Comments (113)

ForPol After Dark Open Thread: NorKo Dragon Princess Yo Jong

by Anne Laurie|  May 2, 202010:24 pm| 137 Comments

This post is in: Foreign Affairs, Popular Culture, Women's Rights Are Human Rights

please enjoy this cursed content contributed by @Pasha_Spider pic.twitter.com/5iCPZf2xzv

— James "Stay In. Make Masks. Test People" Palmer (@BeijingPalmer) April 30, 2020


For those of you who don’t watch anime / read manga: That poster is hilariously, tragically on-point. BUT!…

In the first report of Kim Jong Un's public appearance for weeks, the North Korean state news agency said the leader attended a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a factory https://t.co/0mbnaO9pgr pic.twitter.com/KKG3zPpHkw

— Reuters (@Reuters) May 2, 2020

So — this time — ‘we’ don’t have to worry about the succession. (Here’s a good BBC explainer: Kim Jong-un and the brutal North Korea rumour mill.)

And yet, some of y’all dudes be weird. The WSJ guys Foreign Policy discusses are not (just) otaku amateurs:

Foreign Policy tackles the issue of our day: the Internet's worrying horniness for Kim Yo Jong.https://t.co/FgaFVwN4rz

— James "Stay In. Make Masks. Test People" Palmer (@BeijingPalmer) April 30, 2020

show full post on front page

As soon as speculation started about the unknown fate of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, the internet began heaving with a disturbing appreciation of Kim’s younger sister and possible successor, Kim Yo Jong. The idea that the 32-year-old would soon ascend to North Korea’s top spot triggered a range of fantasies. Internet users expressed their wish for Kim to torture them, choke them, or sentence them to hard labor; others were inspired to transform her into a winsome anime heroine or produce high-octane video montages in the style usually reserved for K-pop stars…

Long before any of these women were born, the West had a fascination with a woman whose image mirrors Kim Yo Jong’s more closely than anyone else: Empress Dowager Cixi, the original “dragon lady.” Cixi ruled, at least in name, over China during the dying decades of the Qing dynasty, a period during which foreigners were making inroads into the Middle Kingdom and finding themselves frequently and violently repelled, as in the Boxer Rebellion. Westerners were desperate to understand the inner workings of the Manchu court, but information was scarce, thus providing fertile ground for apocryphal tales, speculation, and outright fantasy…

… A century before Twitter memes and DeviantArt, “Cixi became one image among many that could be bought and consumed, sent in postcards around the world with captions in foreign languages.”

It’s not surprising that a similar erotic fascination has followed Kim Yo Jong, who could become the leader of the most tantalizingly mysterious nation in the world. From the time of her debut on the international scene in 2018 at the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, Kim has been by turns characterized in foreign media as a harmless angel and a terrifying dragon lady. A columnist for a South Korean paper complimented Kim’s “fit and nimble” physique; international media analyzed her outfits and makeup; some even likened her to Ivanka Trump—a female presence softening the image of the authoritarian man in charge. “If Kim Jong Un had intended to deploy his baby sister as a weapon, he was gambling that the world believes in the image of young, Asian women as incontrovertibly obliging,” Jiayang Fan of the New Yorker wrote at the time.

But, as Fan noted, the media narrative about Kim flipped in less than two days, with Western press suddenly ascribing to her sinister motives. A Wall Street Journal op-ed titled “Kim Yo-Jong is a Twisted Sister” warned that Kim, “with her freckles and enigmatic smile, is a trained and trusted royal brainwasher for a family regime.”

Once again, Western anxiety about an unknown regime is being channeled into fear and fantasy about sexual manipulation by a female sovereign—compounded by internet thirstiness that puts extremely hot and extremely online women (“e-girls”) on a pedestal and fetishizes male subservience. At any rate, as long as North Korea remains a nation of danger and mystery, the internet will keep simping for Kim Yo Jong.

ForPol After Dark Open Thread: <em>NorKo Dragon Princess Yo Jong</em>Post + Comments (137)

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