It is not just anarchists or autonomists that have problems with this.
Leo Panitch and the rest of the crew at SR are for socialism in the
abstract but think that the Russian revolution and every other
revolution that was inspired by it were disasters.
---
It's certainly not an opinion held by
Well, as I said, if we in the US had what they have in
Sweden or the Netherlands, we'd think we had won. And
certianly it would be a great victory.
The grass always seems greener on the other side of the fence. What you
shouldn't overlook is that inequality and disparities have increased a lot
--- Jurriaan Bendien [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
people talk about the market as if there was
only one market, which operates according to uniform
principles. This is not the case at all. It is a
bourgeois fetishism. In reality, class and sectional
forces operate through the market, to strengthen
Spain To Withdraw Troops From Iraq
Zapatero's Socialists campaigned against Spain's support for the Iraq
war.
Fresh off his surprise electoral victory, Spain's prime minister-elect
Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero announced on Monday he would withdraw the
country's troops from Iraq.
Less than 24
TOP OUTSOURCER: American Express
Contributions directly to the President Bush: $39,000
Soft Money contributions to the Republican Party: $422,405
TOP OUTSOURCER: Bechtel
Contributions directly to President Bush: $10,300
Soft Money contributions to the Republican Party: $465,150
TOP OUTSOURCER:
Good news for the Green Party -- Camejo taking the lead in the Green
Party primaries, and the Green Party is likely to nominate the
Nader/Camejo combo:
* March 14, 2004
Camejo takes the lead
Peter Camejo won 99 of 132 state delegates in the California
primaries, garnering 75.4 percent of the
* The New York Times
March 13, 2004
Brown University to Examine Debt to Slave Trade
By PAM BELLUCK
PROVIDENCE, R.I., - When Ruth J. Simmons became the president of
Brown University nearly three years ago, one striking fact could not
be overlooked.
A great-granddaughter of slaves, Dr. Simmons
Today is the one year anniversary of the death of Rachel Corrie.
Please join a vigil in your city or fax, call, and/or email your
Representative in Congress and ask him/her to cosponsor the Rachel
Corrie Resolution (House Concurrent Resolution 111) -- click on
Ken Hanley wrote:
I have no idea what Classical Marxism is supposed to mean. Marxism-Leninism
seems to be included. Is Maoism classical Marxism?
Most certainly. The observation that political power grows out of the
barrel of a gun is about as classical as you can get. What drives me crazy
about
Professor Lord John Eatwell, one of the brightest British reformist
economists(http://www.jims.cam.ac.uk/people/faculty/eatwellj.html) wrote a
very simple but quite prophetic article at the beginning of the Clinton era,
which I've edited a little, with ten new subheads to fit with the current
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
Michael Hoover wrote:
i confess to not knowing what constitutes revolutionary socialism
Me either, and I wish someone would explain it to me. Armed takeover
of the White House and the New York Stock Exchange? Really, could
some self-identified RS clarify?
Doug
The first
Although the new Spanish socialist government, reflecting the strong
pressure of its supporters, says it will leave Iraq, analysts interviewed in
todays Wall Street Journal are sceptical it will do so.
The US has been working behind the scenes with Germany and other European
states to effect a
Yoshie, Doug is correct that fake questions implies that he is not
communicating in good faith.
On Tue, Mar 16, 2004 at 09:47:59AM -0500, Doug Henwood wrote:
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
Michael Hoover wrote:
i confess to not knowing what constitutes revolutionary socialism
Me either, and I
At 9:47 AM -0500 3/16/04, Doug Henwood wrote:
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
Michael Hoover wrote:
i confess to not knowing what constitutes revolutionary socialism
Me either, and I wish someone would explain it to me. Armed takeover
of the White House and the New York Stock Exchange? Really, could
the westerners don't come close to us indians when it
comes to being
conservative about this stuff. we literally wrote the book
on sex, but
now we don't even touch or kiss each other during sex ;-)
;-).
--ravi
^^
How do you avoid
touching during sex ? Must be quite a trick.
Charles
I suppose that we must look rather comical to some sitting in front of
our computers, laying out a strategy for revolutionary socialism.
First we need to be able to communicate why someone who has no idea
about the potential benefits of socialism should be interested in the
subject. Then we would
On Tuesday, March 16, 2004 at 09:47:59 (-0500) Doug Henwood writes:
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
...
The first thing to do is to quit asking fake questions in which you
aren't really interested.
Those are real questions. Who are you to declare them fake? I could
just as easily declare your reaction to
Yoshie, Doug is correct that fake questions implies that he is not
communicating in good faith.
I didn't imply it -- I stated it. Doug isn't interested in the
questions he asked, nor is he in any answers to them or thoughts
about them given by anyone here or anywhere else, based on my long
I think that you could find a less abrasive way of making your point.
On Tue, Mar 16, 2004 at 10:07:30AM -0500, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
Yoshie, Doug is correct that fake questions implies that he is not
communicating in good faith.
I didn't imply it -- I stated it. Doug isn't interested in
There is nothing wrong with not being interested in
revolutionary
socialism -- few in the United States are. Leftists
who are not
interested in revolutionary socialism should ask the
questions that
really interest them. It takes genuine interest in
a subject to come
up with useful
Michael Perelman wrote:
I suppose that we must look rather comical to some sitting in front of
our computers, laying out a strategy for revolutionary socialism.
Yeah, that's true. But not so comical to the young people who launched
lefthook.org a few months ago. When I met with them this weekend,
Doug asked:
I'd like to hear someone argue to the contrary.
At the risk of appearing impossibly arrogant and irresponsible, I think it
is quite possible to unleash a revolution in the United States, you just
need to attack the weakest links in the chain there. All that is required is
to create a
I think that you could find a less abrasive way of making your point.
Surely. I don't think it makes sense to ask questions about a
subject in which one isn't interested, and those who do so don't have
any useful thoughts about them, however wise they may be on all other
subjects, nor will they
On Tue, Mar 16, 2004 at 10:18:54AM -0500, Louis Proyect wrote:
Yeah, that's true. But not so comical to the young people who launched
lefthook.org a few months ago. When I met with them this weekend, we kicked
around some ideas about what role that their website might play in a couple
Yes,
There is nothing wrong with not being interested in revolutionary
socialism -- few in the United States are. Leftists who are not
interested in revolutionary socialism should ask the questions that
really interest them. It takes genuine interest in a subject to
come up with useful thoughts about
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
Surely. I don't think it makes sense to ask questions about a
subject in which one isn't interested, and those who do so don't have
any useful thoughts about them, however wise they may be on all other
subjects, nor will they be able to hear others' opinions about it,
Michael Perelman:
Yes, what can we do to spread the kind of enthusiasm you are describing
with the lefthook people?
Michael, the system is recruiting people to socialism in ample numbers.
Just the other day I got email from a 9th grade student doing a paper on
Che Guevara and the Cuban revolution.
I am glad to see that recruitment is working, but I am not so sure
about the ample numbers.
On Tue, Mar 16, 2004 at 10:37:54AM -0500, Louis Proyect wrote:
Michael, the system is recruiting people to socialism in ample numbers.
Just the other day I got email from a 9th grade student doing a
Coxian? Carroll has not done anything here.
On Tue, Mar 16, 2004 at 10:32:16AM -0500, Doug Henwood wrote:
The defensive
hostility of your answers suggests that you don't really know, and
want to turn the question into a Coxian accusation of bad faith.
Please convince me to the contrary.
It takes genuine interest
in a subject to
come up with useful thoughts about it.
--
Yoshie
Yoshie, please suggest a useful thought, then. This
is a genuine
question. I'm kind of at the end of my rope.
jks
Use, after all, is a topic of practice. Useful for
what? Useful for whom?
Louis wrote:
B-52's raining Volkswagen size bombs on peasant villages recruited me to
socialism, not elegant descriptions of the benefits of a future world.
I do not see how the one need exclude the other, and it really avoids the
question of what would recruit young people to socialism these
Could we introduce a little perspective here? I spent Saturday afternoon
at the conference too. Some interesting information, a few sharp
insights, certainly worth a Saturday afternoon. But it was just a
conference of 2000 predominantly academic leftists--not a sit-in,
march, demonstration, or
Jurriaan wrote:
The very term recruiting is problematic, because this suggests
that people are being conscripted into a military service under a Marx
commander, a Marxist boss. And this is one of the factors which gave rise to
autonomism in the first place.
This is a very good point. The appeal of
It sounds better than communism.
Charles
asked:
How do you
avoid touching during sex ? Must be quite a trick.
This is a slightly
"schizo" answer maybe, but I would say, it could happen in a dream. John Lennon
explains this as follows in his track #9 Dream, as follows:
On a river of soundThru the
mirror go round,
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
Surely. I don't think it makes sense to ask questions about a
subject in which one isn't interested, and those who do so don't
have any useful thoughts about them, however wise they may be on
all other subjects, nor will they be able to hear others' opinions
about it,
At 7:54 AM -0800 3/16/04, andie nachgeborenen wrote:
It was your terms, useful, so I thought you meant something by it.
I'd like somethging useful for me, of course, or useful for
Solidarity, or useful for people on this list, or useful for people
who are trying to engage in activities that
Joel Blau wrote:
Could we introduce a little perspective here? I spent Saturday afternoon
at the conference too. Some interesting information, a few sharp
insights, certainly worth a Saturday afternoon. But it was just a
conference of 2000 predominantly academic leftists--not a sit-in,
march,
Are we playing burden of proof here? What on earth is
your point?
I can think of lots of good things to do. Given my
time, I defend habeas cases pro bono, go to NLG
meetings, volunteer with the ACLU as a cooperating
attorney, gove talks on the Patriot Act, participate
as a legal observer at
This is a very good point. The appeal of autonomism is that you can call
yourself a revolutionary without actually forming organizations and taking
responsibility for anything. This was also the appeal of the New Left in
the 1960s.
But, with due respect, even there I think you are mistaken.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 03/15/04 07:10PM
I think it worth noting that almost _all_ substantial
changes (for the better) under capitalism have originated as part of
the
activity of various revolutionary tendencies. Briefly, Revolutionaries
make the best Reformers.
If what precedes is accurate at all,
btw, i didn't raise matter of 'rs' to offer opening for either those
who no longer/never did think 'the revo's gonna happen' or those who
consider themselves 'revolutionaries' to repeat whatever mantras each
has 'voiced' on this and other lists over years, i also didn't expect
(nor should i have
Doug writes: The idea of revolution in the U.S. or any of its imperial peers seems
like the
stuff of a drug-induced reverie right now.
The idea of a revolution _right now_ does seem to be merely a drug-induced reverie at
this point in history (as most advocates of RS, including all of those on
Michael Perelman wrote:
I suppose that we must look rather comical to some sitting in front of
our computers, laying out a strategy for revolutionary socialism.
Yeah, that's true. But not so comical to the young people who launched
lefthook.org a few months ago. When I met with them this weekend,
Devine, James wrote:
As I've said (but somehow was largely ignored[*]), RS ideals and
ideas should be used to decide which tactics and strategies to
engage in (when combined with concrete analysis).
I certainly agree with this - and with the importance of nonreformist
reforms. So at the present
I think the relevance of the classical Marxists, for myself at least, lies
in their analytical power, which is immense, rather than their predictive
power, which turned out to be negligible. Thats to be expected since it is
a lot easier to accurately interpret current conditions than to speculate
At 8:35 AM -0800 3/16/04, andie nachgeborenen wrote:
What on earth is your point?
It may or may not be useful to study today the actions and thoughts
of revolutionaries of the past, but it all depends on what you intend
to get out of them, what motivates you to learn from them, for what
purpose
Devine, James wrote:
As I've said (but somehow was largely ignored[*]), RS ideals and
ideas should be used to decide which tactics and strategies to
engage in (when combined with concrete analysis).
I certainly agree with this - and with the importance of
nonreformist reforms. So at the present
talk of [societal] revolution is pretty useless, except with people who already
share values, goals, theoretical conceptions, and the like. (Of course, it's okay to
talk about the diet revolution.)
and Doug is right that if you do stuff like pushing for a living wage, you're likely
to be
One minor point: although I agree with all the objectives that you lay
out, but I suspect that our preferred (Gramscian) role should be to
help others figure out what their demands should be rather than laying
out a plan for them. I say this without pretending in any way to have
been particularly
Marvin Gandall wrote:
The political strategies they bequeathed are less rewarding. They were all,
without exception, wrong - revolutionaries and reformists alike. This was
because the shared assumption upon which all of their differing
prescriptions rested was mistaken: that capitalism had
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
Suppose that you are really interested in the subject of
revolutionary socialism. What questions about it do you think would
be worth asking in the United States today, when no one -- the least
of all, revolutionary socialists -- envisions any revolution
happening
The Russian word for irony is ironiya. The word for iron is
zheleznoye. So no pun.
I wasn't sure if I smelt one or not.
Scanlan
Doug said:
I'd say that
developing new forms of union organization (involving workers
themselves and broader communities than the immediate workplace),
changing U.S. labor law, raising the minimum wage, agitating for the
basics of a civilized welfare state, reducing the role of
shareholders
An article from the Christian Peacemaker Teams' newsletter,
Signs of the Times http://.www.cpt.org
Iraq: Retribution - The Order of the Day
In hopes of gaining greater access to detainees held by U.S. forces,
three Iraqi human rights lawyers from the Organization of Human
Rights (OHR) tried to
Grant Lee wrote:
The recent reluctance of the left in developed countries to engage in the
class struggle at the level of relations of production, preferring instead
to obsess about double-edged issues like imperialism etc., is a constant
source of bemusement to me.
The New York Times
October 6,
Marvin wrote:
I think the relevance of the classical Marxists, for myself
at least, lies
in their analytical power, which is immense, rather than
their predictive
power, which turned out to be negligible. Thats to be
expected since it is
a lot easier to accurately interpret current
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 03/16/04 06:48AM
Over the last eight years, Nader has done more for the Green
Party than anybody else, said Howard Hawkins, a Green Party
organizer from Syracuse, N.Y. We should draft him and have a
candidate who can be in the national debates with Bush and the
expected
Grant wrote:
I'd say that developing new forms of union organization (involving
workers themselves and broader communities than the immediate
workplace), changing U.S. labor law, raising the minimum wage,
agitating for the basics of a civilized welfare state, reducing the
role of shareholders and
Doug writes: The idea of revolution in the U.S. or
any of its imperial peers seems like the
stuff of a drug-induced reverie right now.
Yes, it's an individual prproletarian'sipipedreamt the
moment. Still, the fact is that workers have erupted
with revolution on their minds at various times
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 03/16/04 06:48AM
Over the last eight years, Nader has done more for the Green Party
than anybody else, said Howard Hawkins, a Green Party organizer
from Syracuse, N.Y. We should draft him and have a candidate who
can be in the national debates with Bush and the expected
Yoshie said:
I'm not sure what you mean by the reluctance of the left in
developed countries to engage in the class struggle at the level of
relations of production.
I mean the willingness to take matters of identity politics (for want of a
better term) at face value, rather than examining
andie nachgeborenen wrote:
I do not expect to have
Social Security or Medicare, for example.
what did you folks think of kuttner's piece in business week (march 2004):
if you have a BW online id (i do not):
http://www.businessweek.com/premium/content/04_11/b3874042_mz007.htm?se=1
essentially,
Grant on union decline:
Similar trends abound in the developing world. I think this tells a lot
about the failure of social democracy/labourism/reformism on both the
industrial and political fronts, specifically the theoretical/strategic
bankruptcy of the mainstream left in the late 60s and
Michael Dawson said:
How does Sweeney's failure to change the AFL-CIO have anything to do with
New Left theorizing, however flawed that may be? In order to save itself
from the grave it's backing into, labor needs to sever its ties to
existing
political parties and radically overhaul its
Grant wrote:
I'm not sure what you mean by the reluctance of the left in
developed countries to engage in the class struggle at the level of
relations of production.
I mean the willingness to take matters of identity politics (for
want of a better term) at face value, rather than examining their
I tried that, lost my job, now I am a lawyer.
--- joanna bujes [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
Suppose that you are really interested in the
subject of
revolutionary socialism. What questions about it
do you think would
be worth asking in the United States
The social security crisis is much inflated. As with any social inusrance
system, the ratio of workers to retirees flattens as the system matures.
But talk of a crisis is merely a wedge to open some political space for
privatization, a scheme that would speed, rather than delay, the day of
Title: embedded journalists
U.S. Videos, for
TV News, Come Under Scrutiny
By Robert Pear
The New York Times
Monday 15 March 2004
WASHINGTON, March 14 - Federal
investigators are scrutinizing television segments in which the Bush
administration paid people to pose as journalists praising
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
Suppose that you are really interested in the subject of
revolutionary socialism. What questions about it do you think
would be worth asking in the United States today, when no one --
the least of all, revolutionary socialists -- envisions any
revolution happening today
Since my time as Education student, I have frequently pondered the
phenomenon of sectarianism. Here's my thoughts, for the record:
1. ORIGINS
Sectarianism refers to mistaken and stunted attitudes to politics, real
social movements and human relations. The point of departure of sectarians
is
Jurriaan Bendien wrote: you have to affirm the validity of what people
are already doing, and
demonstrate how they could work together more effectively, in a way that
is
really beneficial to them, as well as having a real political effect.
I've been following this thread on RS, noting the
One anecdote from a recent--about 3 weeks ago-- SOCIALIST CONFERENCE in
Turkey, organized by a socialist party and participated in by same
characters, Panitch, Dumenil, MacEwan, Filho, etc.: on the topic of the
Turkish working class, reformist character of certain anti-neoliberalist
economic
about two
months before the Russian revolution Lenin apparently wrote to Krupskaya
and said that they were not being able to see any socialist revolution
in their lifetime!
That's true as far as I know. Roman Rosdolsky actually published a really
interesting piece on this topic, about the
In a message dated 3/16/2004 10:15:20 AM Central Standard Time, lnp3
@PANIX.COM writes:
Jurriaan wrote:
The very term recruiting is problematic, because this suggests
that people are being conscripted into a military service under a Marx
commander, a Marxist boss. And this is one of the factors
Yeah, I know. This wouldn't be an individual project -- more like a
peace corps of the left.
j.
andie nachgeborenen wrote:
I tried that, lost my job, now I am a lawyer.
--- joanna bujes [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
Suppose that you are really interested in the
subject of
To see the notes of a talk I just gave to the Progressive Alliance at
Santa Monica College, see
http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine/talks/SMC03-16-04.htm. Thanks to Doug
Henwood, who found an (obvious!) error in my calculation of the profit
rate in my first graph.
Jim
The social security crisis is *not* much inflated--it is pure fiction.
The Trust Fund--containing only US Gov't bonds--is sufficient
to pay all obligations for well over 50 years. The scarecrow is
the threat that sometime before then, current social security/medicare
receipts will fall below
There are going
to be bosses. Leadership or being boss means you have accepted - one way
or
another, responsibility to do something.
Okay, so now there are going to be bosses. The question raised however is:
how do they become bosses, by what process ? How do they establish their
leadership ?
Jim:
Clicking on your talk, I get file not found.
Do you know what happened?
Joel Blau
Original Message:
-
From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Tue, 16 Mar 2004 14:09:29 -0800
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: talk
To see the notes of a talk I just gave to the Progressive
the main danger to Social Security is not demographic. It's people like Greenspan and
Bush. As Doug discovered years ago, the Trustees of the SS are low-balling estimates
future economic growth, making the situation look much more dire than it is.
Jim Devine [EMAIL
I didn't have that result. It
(http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine/talks/SMC03-16-04.htm) worked for me, using both
Netscape and IE.
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL
Peter,
Thanks for your comment, which is encouraging. I've never really had any
despair about political prospects or the lack of them. I don't care about
that, it's none of my concern. For most of the 1980s and some years in the
1990s I was involved in various groups and campaigns on and off. But
In a message dated 3/16/2004 4:35:06 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
Okay, so now there are going to be bosses. The question raised however is:how do they become bosses, by what process? How do they establish theirleadership ?To explicate the problem simply, let's just take
I think that this thread has gone on enough.
--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929
Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
I came across this gem by chance:
http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_luddite.html
Thanks for providing the article James. I agree with
your assessment 100%.
Best,
Mike B)
=
...the safest course is to do nothing
against one's conscience.
With this secret, we can enjoy
life and have no fear from death.
Hey PEN-L:
I think the students' demo against fee increases was the largest protest at
the state Capitol since the anti-war rallies last spring.
Seth Sandronsky
Community college students march to protest planned fee hikes
By Lesli A. Maxwell -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 3:46 p.m. PST Monday,
- Original Message -
From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Yoshie, Doug is correct that fake questions implies that he is not
communicating in good faith.
=
But, but it is the non-defeasible self-determined privilege of some
Marxists to have incorrigible
Title: Message
Subject: The moon
The moon
Early Warning
When NASA was preparing for the Apollo Project, it took the astronauts to a
Navajo reservation in Arizona for training.One day, a Navajo elder
and his son came across the space crew walking among the rocks. The elder, who
- Original Message -
From: Charles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED]
How do you avoid touching during sex ? Must be quite a trick.
Charles
===
Remember the condom scene in The Naked Gun?
Ian
The main danger to SS is that they want to loot it. It's such a nice
pile of $$; why should the worker yahoos get it? In fact, they've been
looting it for years.
Joanna
Devine, James wrote:
the main danger to Social Security is not demographic. It's people like Greenspan and Bush. As Doug
U.S. Unloading WMD in Iraq
http://www.tehrantimes.com/Description.asp?Da=3/13/2004Cat=4Num=011
http://www.tehrantimes.com/Description.asp?Da=3/13/2004Cat=4Num=0
11
TEHRAN (Mehr News Agency) Over the past few days, in
the wake of the bombings in Karbala and the
ideological disputes that delayed
- Original Message -
From: Charles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED]
How do you avoid touching during sex ? Must be quite a trick.
Charles
===
Remember the condom scene in The Naked Gun?
Ian
Response Jim C: Or, there are those phone numbers for phone sex, plus
new
Yes, yes, who was it who said that before they happen
revolutions seem impossible, afterwards they seem
inevitable. The fall of Communism was like that too.
Nonetheless there are certain obvious differences
between 1917 and now, like the existence of mass
working class radical movements of the
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 03/16/04 2:02 PM
Even aside from the media question, it's no use denying that name
recognition matters in national politics, even to activists on the
left. For instance, this is what Doug had to say about Jonathan
Farley, a Green Party leader in Texas: I've come across very
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 03/16/04 10:20 PM
geez, nader could draw 2 activists and he'd top what i'd draw, but do
activists
really need to hear him, seems to me that non-activists need to hear him
(i'd rather they heard folks mentioned above, and you as well)...
above should have read: i'd rather they
[another iteration of the corporation as externality machine..]
Undercover capitalism
Paul Foot
Wednesday March 17, 2004
The Guardian
The dynamic genius of private enterprise capitalism was on display in the
House of Commons on Monday last week, though surprisingly no one mentioned
it.
Yoshie said:
I don't see any lack of willingness to examine struggles against
white supremacy, sexism, etc. in terms of their relationship to the
class struggle, and vice versa, among leftists who have some respect
for the socialist and other radical left-wing traditions. Whether or
not
- Original Message -
From: andie nachgeborenen [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Yes, yes, who was it who said that before they happen
revolutions seem impossible, afterwards they seem
inevitable. The fall of Communism was like that too.
Nonetheless there are certain obvious differences
between 1917
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