Feds Bust Hezbollah Sleeper Cell Charged With Plotting NYC Attack

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The FBI and NYPD announced Thursday that two suspected Hezbollah sleeper cell operatives they recently arrested have been charged with plotting terrorist activities for the Iranian proxy group.

Hezbollah, a Shiite terrorist organization, takes direction from the regime in Tehran. The jihadi outfit was founded in 1985 in Lebanon as a military arm to expand Iran’s caliphatist ideology, and also to conduct attacks against the state of Israel. Since then, the group has expanded to operate as a worldwide terrorist network and has heavily involved itself in the Latin American drug trade.

The two alleged Hezbollah operatives, Ali Kourani, 32, of New York City, and Samer el Debek, 37, of Dearborn, Mich., “received military-style training, including in the use of weapons like rocket-propelled grenade launchers and machine guns for use in support of the group’s terrorist mission,” acting U.S. Attorney Joon H. Kim said in a statement Thursday.

According to the FBI complaint, Kourani was tasked with conducting surveillance on military targets in New York City and then delivering that intelligence to his handlers in Lebanon. On behalf of the terrorist group, Kourani allegedly conducted surveillance on an FBI office, a U.S. Army National Guard facility, and a U.S. Army Armory facility. Kourani also cased several overseas diplomatic facilities belonging to the United States and Israel, the complaint says.

El Debek was reportedly trained as a bomb-maker for the terror group. The FBI said he “received extensive training as a bomb maker, has a high degree of technical sophistication in the area, and was trained in techniques and methods similar to those used to construct the improvised explosive device used in Hezbollah’s 2012 Burgas, Bulgaria, bus bombing.”

American intelligence has long been concerned about the presence of Hezbollah sleeper cells in America. The group uses its extensive drug network in Latin America to clandestinely move throughout the Western hemisphere.

Analysts have long feared that the weakness of the U.S. border with Mexico, coupled with Hezbollah’s relationship with the Mexican cartels, could allow for the easy smuggling of people and weapons into the United States.

Hezbollah is currently heavily engaged in the Syrian Civil War in support of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. On Thursday, U.S. forces in Syria shot down an armed drone and bombed militants aligned with the Iran/Hezbollah/Assad regime axis. The pro-regime drone reportedly fired on coalition forces in the area, but missed its target. (For more from the author of “Feds Bust Hezbollah Sleeper Cell Charged With Plotting NYC Attack” please click HERE)

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Kansas Republicans Ditch All Pretense of Limited Government

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In our times, Republican majorities aren’t worth the paper voters cast their ballots on. That’s the lesson out of Kansas this week, and it can easily happen in D.C.

In one swift blow, the signature achievement of a conservative administration was undone by liberal Republican lawmakers who valued increased government spending over small government and individual liberty and who wanted to distance themselves from an unpopular chief executive.

On Tuesday, lawmakers in Kansas passed a $1.2 billion tax increase that would raise income taxes and end a tax exemption on small businesses, affecting 330,000 farmers and business owners. The tax increase was a rebuke of Governor Sam Brownback’s 2012 tax cuts, which lowered income taxes and reduced some business taxes to zero in a successful effort to spur business growth.

Kansas Governor Sam Brownback, R, promised to veto the legislation, and he followed through on that promise. Tuesday evening, his veto was overridden.

“Senate Bill 30 is a $1.2 billion tax hike, making it the largest in state history,” Brownback warned the legislature the night before the vote. “This is bad for Kansas and bad for the many Kansans who would have more of their hard-earned money taken from them.”’

Brownback’s prognostications were not enough. Kansas faces a $900 million budget deficit, and the local media in Kansas has been on a crusade to blame the state’s budget problems on Brownback’s tax cuts – rather than the recalcitrant legislature’s refusal to cut spending and the Kansas Supreme Court’s mandates for increased spending. A sagging local economy is the result of external commodity markets beyond the government’s control. The governor’s approval rating is the worst in the country, and his political capital has been all but extinguished, as he is term-limited and rumors circulate that he will leave office for a federal position.

Legislatures respond to political incentives. The state Senate and House voted 27-13 and 88-31, respectively, to override Brownback’s veto.

“I look at this as bittersweet. I don’t like the bill. I hate the bill. But we have to move forward as a state,” said Rep. Dan Hawkins, R-Wichita.

“We have to move forward.” There, in a nutshell, is the mentality of a squish. “It doesn’t matter if the policy is harmful; the government needs to appear to do something.” “Doing something” always results in bigger government – in Kansas, that means a $1.2 billion tax increase.

Washington, D.C., has a similarly dismal political environment spurred by an unpopular chief executive. President Trump has accurately described the alleged Russia-collusion controversy surrounding his administration as a “cloud” that is emboldening Democrats to obstruct his agenda. Republicans, meanwhile, are looking for areas to compromise the conservative aspects of Trump’s agenda.

Take tax reform. Where President Trump promised big tax cuts on the campaign trail, Republicans in Congress are talking about raising some taxes to keep the plan “revenue neutral.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has made “revenue neutral” tax reform a condition of any tax bill package to come up for a vote in the Senate. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady, R-Texas, has previously said President Trump may sign on to calls for revenue-neutral tax reform. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, has floated the creation of a new border-adjustment tax to meet that condition.

“As far as I’m concerned, virtually any potential [offset] for reduced tax rates should be on the table, and that includes the so-called border-adjustment tax,” Hatch said Wednesday.

Raising taxes in any form would be a retreat from President Trump’s campaign agenda. But Republicans have already retreated from the Trump agenda in budget negotiations and on repealing Obamacare.

The lesson to be learned from Kansas is these retreats and betrayals will become worse if the president continues to hemorrhage his approval rating and if he lets distractions like the Russia controversy take the administration off-message. President Trump needs to reset on the issues that helped him win the presidency. He should come out strong, with a consistent message on terror, on Obamacare, on taxes. He should use his bully pulpit to put the legislature on the hot seat, demanding that they get to work to make his agenda become law.

Legislative accomplishment and good governance are the only things that can save Trump’s approval rating. The trains need to run on time for the political environment to improve. Failing this, Republicans will turn on the president as they turned on Gov. Brownback, and the American people will suffer under bad policy. (For more from the author of “Kansas Republicans Ditch All Pretense of Limited Government” please click HERE)

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NYT Offers Totally Inadequate Defense of Story Comey Says Is False

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There’s something odd about the explanation The New York Times offered for standing by a blockbuster report that former FBI Director James Comey characterized as “almost entirely wrong” in testimony before Congress Thursday.

“Would it be fair to characterize that story as almost entirely wrong?” Republican Sen. Tom Cotton asked Comey during the hearing. “Yes,” Comey replied. And at another point in the hearing he said of the report, “in the main it was not true.”

The paper of record reported Feb. 14 that U.S. intelligence officials had intercepted repeated communications between the Trump campaign and senior Russian intelligence officials in the year leading up to the election, based on accounts from four former and current U.S. officials. The news firmly planted the as yet totally unsubstantiated narrative that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to sway the election in his favor.

Despite Comey’s strongly worded statements, The NYT announced Friday it had completed a review of the facts and would stand by the report in its entirety. The three reporters behind the story offered a dubiously reasoned explanation as to why in a separate piece that includes an odd admission about the review process — no one was able to get in touch with the original sources.

“The original sources could not immediately be reached after Mr. Comey’s remarks, but in the months since the article was published, they have indicated that they believed the account was solid,” the reporters wrote. (Read more from “NYT Offers Totally Inadequate Defense of Story Comey Says Is False” HERE)

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Gay Pride Month and the ‘Shot Heard Round the World’

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Quick quiz: According to statements published by the U.S. government, where was the shot fired that was “heard round the world”? Lexington and Concord, you say?

Good answer — but you’re only halfway there. There was another “shot heard round the world,” says the National Park Service. That one was in June 1969, at the Stonewall Inn in New York City, where two nights of rioting “led to the development of the modern LGBT civil rights movement.”

The Gay-Rights “Shot Heard Round the World”

You read that right. The U.S. government has co-opted Ralph Waldo Emerson’s deeply symbolic phrase to make the birth of the gay rights movement symbolically equal to the birth of our own country. To fill in the rest of the quotation:

The riots inspired LGBT people throughout the country to organize and within two years of Stonewall, LGBT rights groups had been started in nearly every major city in the U.S. Stonewall was, as historian Lillian Faderman wrote, “the shot heard round the world … crucial because it sounded the rally for the movement.”

There’s history at Stonewall, to be sure. And its reach was indeed global. The month of June is now designated “Pride Month,” and almost 150 gay pride festivals are scheduled in cities around the world.

But what does this mean for true freedom?

The Depth of Our National Confusion

It’s worth noting that Lillian Faderman’s full quote read, “to many homosexuals, male and female alike, the Stonewall Rebellion was the shot heard round the world” (emphasis added).

I give her credit for identifying the group who might have seen it that way. The Park Service’s version leaves that out, making it a statement for us all.

I shudder to think of how celebrations in 2017 would have turned out if Stonewall had happened a week later that year, on July 4. As far as I can tell, the White House has never been lit up in red, white, and blue. We’ve all got images seared on our brains, though, of it lit up in the six rainbow colors of the gay rights movement.

This isn’t just happening on some obscure web page, in other words. The gay rights movement has become America’s new freedom movement. It perfectly depicts the depth of our national confusion.

Freedom Based in the Image of God

For there is “freedom,” and there is freedom.

There is the freedom for which our forefathers fought at Lexington, Concord and beyond. It was a view of liberty rooted in a biblical understanding of what it means to be human.

They knew that humans are made in the image of God. We’re not just today’s snapshot in some ever-changing course of evolution. Instead human nature is a stable, enduring, real. We have a moral nature based in God’s own character. We have a well-designed sexual nature, based in God’s plan for us as individuals, couples and families who build communities and cultures together. We have a destiny based on how we relate to God in Christ and to each other in accordance with God’s design for us.

Argue all you want about whether America was founded as a Christian nation, there’s no denying that our founders’ view of human nature that was deeply influenced by the Bible’s view of humanity. Even Thomas Jefferson, who was no Christian, knew at our inalienable rights come from our Creator. Not government, not courts, not even (later on) our Constitution.

Our founders fought for freedom from political tyranny that kept them from determining their own course. Their fight was never for the “freedom” to do whatever anyone chose, though. Quite the opposite. As Benjamin Franklin said, “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.” Freedom was not merely the ability to do as one wanted; it was the ability to do as one ought.

Or Freedom Based in Making Ourselves Our Own Creators

That’s the freedom for which the shots were fired at Lexington and Concord. Stonewall’s freedom has almost nothing to do with that. With all thought of a Creator cast aside, “freedom” now means being able to create ourselves after our own wills. Not satisfied with your sex? Create yourself all over again! Not content with the morality that’s held the Western world together – in spite of various wars and injustices – for centuries? Call it off! Re-make marriage while you’re at it!

And why not? The view now is that nothing about us is fixed. We’re evolving, so we can make ourselves whatever we decide to be. The same goes for human purpose and moral standards: There’s nothing there but what’s evolved over the eons, but we can alter that, too, as we will.

Our Choice: Celebrating Freedom or Free Fall

We claim this as a new-found freedom. But we’re like the kite that yearned to fly high and away, free of the string it thought was holding it down. Freedom? No. Free fall.

Yet this is the freedom our own Park Service symbolically equates with Lexington and Concord. The patriotism of red, white and blue is being displaced by the spectrum of the gay rainbow.

America was never perfect. It took us way too long to recognize that human rights belong to everyone. Still we got there in law and (to an obviously lesser, yet still helpful, degree) in practice. The shots fired at Lexington and Concord led ultimately to our country becoming the world’s greatest champion for true freedom. The shot fired at Stonewall is leading us in another direction altogether.

The LGBT crowd will be celebrating their “pride” this month. That’s their choice. Our own Park Service seems to be saying everyone else is obliged to join them. I can’t think of anything else that so clearly shows the depth of our national confusion. (For more from the author of “Gay Pride Month and the ‘Shot Heard Round the World'” please click HERE)

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Another Failed Attempt to Defend Sharia Law and Islam

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On Saturday, there were marches against sharia (i.e., Islamic law) in at least 20 cities in America. But according to the Bridge Initiative Team, these marches were both misinformed and misguided. “In reality,” we are told, “these protests are motivated by Islamophobia. They are organized by an anti-Muslim group, and are an attempt to further entrench and legitimate myths about sharia, ‘Islamic law,’ and thus Muslims everywhere.”

The marches were organized by Brigette Gabriel’s ACT for America. Previously, she claimed that “a ‘practicing Muslim,’ who believes in the teachings of the Koran, cannot be a loyal citizen to the United States of America.”

The Bridge Initiative Team categorically rejects this point of view. They also reject ACT’s “top 10 list of reasons as to why ‘Sharia Law is incompatible with American Law.’”

According to the Bridge team, the reasons “include cherry-picked and poorly translated verses from the Qur’an and traditional literature, and they cite only one book.” They say ACT for America is “completely ignoring over a thousand years of legal scholarship and richly diverse interpretations of Sharia” to “re-define what this aspect of Islamic law is.”

Examining Their Claims

Is the Bridge team correct? Let’s look at their claims one at a time.

1) The Quranic verses are cherry-picked. This is incorrect. The verses are cited fairly and are echoed in many more similar verses. In fact, violent verses outweigh “tolerant” verses in the Quran.

2) The verses are poor translated. This is incorrect. The verses are not translated at all. They are summarized or paraphrased. But they are summarized and paraphrased fairly and accurately.

3) Only one book is cited. This is misleading. The list is intended to be popular, not scholarly, so one should not expect detailed annotation. That being said, hundreds of books could be cited to back every point on the list. This includes books on the life of Muhammad, books on Islamic history and books on Islamic jurisprudence.

4) The list ignores more than a thousand years of Islamic scholarship and interpretation. This is misleading. Everything the list states is supported by more than 1,400 years of Islamic history and theology. While there are other interpretations of the relevant sources within Islam, they cannot invalidate the many sources that do support violent Islam.

Let’s take one item on the list in more depth. Reason #2 states, “When a person leaves Islam, take them and slay them where you find them” (Quran 4:89). Is this mistranslated or taken out of context?

The full verse reads, “They wish you would disbelieve as they disbelieved so you would be alike. So do not take from among them allies until they emigrate for the cause of Allah. But if they turn away, then seize them and kill them wherever you find them and take not from among them any ally or helper.” (This is the rendition from the Quran.com website, which is obviously pro-Islamic.)

This directive is confirmed in the earliest traditions of Muhammad’s teachings. See, for example, Sahih Bukhari (52:260), “The Prophet said, ‘If somebody (a Muslim) discards his religion, kill him.’” This is one of many examples that could be cited.

A Closer Look at Apostasy

A pro-Islamic website, Islamqa.info, which answers questions about Islam, explains further: “If a Muslim apostatizes and meets the conditions of apostasy – i.e., he is of sound mind, an adult and does that of his own free will – then his blood may be shed with impunity. He is to be executed by the Muslim ruler or by his deputy – such as the qaadi or judge, and he is not to not be washed (after death, in preparation for burial), the funeral prayer is not to be offered for him and he is not to be buried with the Muslims.”

A Wikipedia article correctly notes, “Until the late 19th century, the vast majority of Islamic scholars in Madh’hab (Sunni) and Imamah (Shia) schools of jurisprudence held that for adult men, apostasy from Islam was a crime as well as a sin, an act of treason punishable with the death penalty.”

Today, Islamic countries like Iran and Sudan have the death penalty for “apostasy,” in harmony with the teachings of Muhammad and the Quran. So much for the ACT list misrepresenting Islam and sharia.

More broadly, Islamic legal scholar Joseph Schacht gives us a chilling overview of what sharia law dictates for non-Muslims: “The basis of the Islamic attitude towards unbelievers (i.e., non-Muslims) is the law of war; they must be either converted or subjugated or killed (excepting women, children, and slaves); the third alternative, in general, occurs only if the first two are refused. As an exception, the Arab pagans are given the choice only between conversion to Islam or death.” (Cited from his book An Introduction to Islamic Law, published by Oxford’s Clarendon Press.)

Who, then, is being faithful to the most authoritative Islamic sources? Who is representing them accurately? Judge for yourself. (For more from the author of “Another Failed Attempt to Defend Sharia Law and Islam” please click HERE)

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Trump Sidesteps Tapes Question, Denies Seeking Comey ‘Loyalty’

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Punching back a day after his fired FBI director’s damaging testimony, President Donald Trump accused James Comey of lying to Congress and said he was “100 percent” willing to testify under oath about their conversations.

Trump cryptically refused to say whether those private exchanges were taped — a matter at the heart of the conflicting accounts of what passed between them at a time when Comey was leading an FBI investigation into Russia’s interference in the presidential election and its ties to the Trump campaign.

He asserted that nothing in Comey’s testimony to the Senate pointed to collusion with Russia or obstruction of justice. “Yesterday showed no collusion, no obstruction,” Trump said. (Read more from “Trump Sidesteps Tapes Question, Denies Seeking Comey ‘Loyalty'” HERE)

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3 U.S. Soldiers Killed by Afghan Soldier

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Three U.S. soldiers were killed and another was wounded Saturday in eastern Afghanistan, the Pentagon said.An Afghan official said the deaths and injury stem from an attack by an Afghan soldier, who also died.In a statement from Washington, the Pentagon didn’t provide details about what led to the deaths of the U.S. soldiers. It said the incident was under investigation.A spokesman for the provincial governor in Nangarhar province, Attahullah Khogyani, said in a statement that the attack took place in the Achin district.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid says in a statement that a Taliban loyalist had infiltrated the Afghan army “just to attack foreign forces.” (Read more from “3 U.S. Soldiers Killed by Afghan Soldier” HERE)

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Illegal Aliens Offered Free Tuition at Georgia’s Freedom University

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A Georgia university provides illegal immigrant students tuition-free education as well as scholarship aid and skills for leading social movements.

Freedom University in Athens, Georgia, an unaccredited school founded in 2011 by illegal immigrant students, activists, and four University of Georgia professors, provides these services and others specifically to illegal immigrant students with the goal of helping them enroll in accredited colleges.

The school lists its mission as “to empower undocumented youth and fulfill their human right to education.” Billing itself as a “freedom school,” Freedom University claims to have assumed a “leadership role in the national sanctuary campus movement.”

Freedom University has also facilitated the development of Mass Emergency Lookout Text for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (MELT ICE), a program which notifies illegal immigrant students when ICE agents are in the vicinity, according to Campus Reform.

“We believe that all human beings – regardless of race, ethnicity, class, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or citizenship status – have a right to education,” states the university on its website. “We uphold Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states that everyone has the right to education and that higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.” (Read more from “Illegal Aliens Offered Free Tuition at Georgia’s Freedom University” HERE)

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Obama Admin. Election SCANDAL

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WITHOUT EVIDENCE …

Toobin’s take … Shortly after the public testimony of James Comey ended, CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin casually dropped a bomb, without evidence. Toobin said that President Donald Trump was under criminal investigation. He is pretty much the only one saying that, and he didn’t say why he thinks that. Nothing in the Comey testimony confirmed it. Take a deeper look

Dershowitz slams pundits like Toobin … For a few weeks, liberal law professor and ardent constitutionalist Alan Dershowitz has been trying to explain that the president has the legal authority to stop any investigation. Comey reluctantly admitted as much during his testimony yesterday. Now Dershowitz is taking a victory lap of sorts and admonishing those who are pushing a false narrative.

Media won’t cover Lynch bombshell … CNN’s John King admitted that the bombshell testimony of James Comey — that Loretta Lynch allegedly intervened in the server investigation on behalf of Hillary Clinton — won’t get much coverage. King said that “this won’t get much attention because it’s in the rearview mirror …” Our friends at NewsBusters have the full story.

LIVE BY THE TWITTER, DIE BY THE TWITTER …

He thought it was manga … Vanity Fair’s Kurt Eichenwald got caught with his cyber pants down. When he tweeted a photo including a browser tab with “hentai” on it, instead of coming clean, he chose to blame his kids. His story was that he was merely trying to show his wife that people look at deviant things with tentacles, and he did it for his kids because their mom wouldn’t believe them. Sometimes it is best to stop digging, Kurt.

It couldn’t be the Obama administration … NYT editor Jonathan Weisman tweeted out that “Comey says Attorney General Sessions told him not to call Russia probe an investigation but a ‘matter.’ Led him to step away from DOJ.” Which is completely opposite to what Comey actually said. It was Loretta Lynch who told Comey to call the Clinton server investigation a “matter.” Another instance of the media acting “without evidence.”

Marc Ambinder not much better … Former White House correspondent and current Annenberg Media fellow Marc Ambinder tweeted about the Lynch admission. But he left out a lot of detail. Here’s the tweet where he said, “The AG asked him to call it a ‘matter,’ not an investigation.” Um … Marc, which AG, and which matter?

All the news fit to tweet … I know you were breathlessly wanting to know if Trump broke his own record for not tweeting. Well, probably not. But the Washington Post’s Philip Bump thought you wanted to know, so he tweeted it. I’ll let you go straight to the record by clicking to see Bump’s tweet. File under “yawn.”

(For more from the author of “Obama Admin. Election SCANDAL” HERE)

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Comey Refuses to Answer Questions on Topic, Cites Sensitive Information

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While Thursday’s testimony by James Comey focused on his private discussions with President Trump, the fired FBI director still faces questions posed months ago over links between the bureau and a British ex-spy’s mysterious – and unverified – anti-Trump dossier.

Comey was asked about the dossier, prepared by former British spy Christopher Steele, early in his testimony on Thursday morning by Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C. But Comey declined to answer in open session, citing concerns about the sensitivity of some of the material in the report.

His decision not to discuss the issue – at least not publicly – is consistent with his response to date. As of Monday, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, has “still not received any response” from Comey in the matter of Steele, and his London-based company, Orbis Business Intelligence Ltd. Steele’s firm was hired by Fusion GPS, a Washington, D.C. firm, to collect opposition research on then-candidate Donald Trump during the 2016 campaign.

For months, in hearings and letters, a frustrated Grassley has criticized Comey for the bureau’s failure to provide documents requested and answer questions about Steele. Grassley also called out Fusion this week for allegedly not cooperating with his committee, sending a June 7 letter seeking “all responsive documents and information” by June 14 and warning that he could consider a “compulsory process” if necessary. (Read more from “Comey Refuses to Answer Questions on Topic, Cites Sensitive Information” HERE)

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