Madness Gone Mad - Orwell's Warning Rings Ever More Loudly

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The Madness:

City report on Confederate monuments raises idea of renaming Austin

Posted: 6:39 p.m. Friday, July 27, 2018

Known as both the “father of Texas” and the namesake of the state’s capital, Stephen F. Austin carved out the early outlines of Texas among his many accomplishments.

He also opposed an attempt by Mexico to ban slavery in the province of Tejas and said if slaves were freed, they would turn into “vagabonds, a nuisance and a menace.”

For that reason, the city of Austin’s Equity Office suggested renaming the city in a report about existing Confederate monuments that was published this week.

Also on the list of locales to possibly be renamed: Pease Park, the Bouldin Creek neighborhood, Barton Springs and 10 streets named for William Barton, the “Daniel Boone of Texas,” who was a slave owner.

To be sure, the identified streets and parks are only suggested for reconsideration. And the city, Bouldin Creek, Pease Park and the Barton-related landmarks — a group that includes Barton Springs — were included in a lower-tier list of “assets for secondary review” in the report. Still, the report did identify several streets staff consider related to the Confederacy and worthy of more immediate action. Those streets are:

• Littlefield Street

• Tom Green Street

• Sneed Cove

• Reagan Hill Drive

• Dixie Drive

• Confederate Avenue

• Plantation Road

The city estimates that it would cost $5,956 to rename the seven streets.

While the cost of such changes might appear reasonable, opposition to similar renamings has tended to revolve around the inconvenience and expense faced by longtime homeowners and business owners who must deal with a new address. Complaints along those lines surfaced earlier this year when the Austin City Council changed the names of two streets recognizing Confederate leaders.

Before the council renamed Robert E. Lee Road as Azie Morton Road and Jeff Davis Avenue was changed to William Holland Avenue, the city gathered input from residents along those streets. A majority opposed the changes, which occurred in April.

Some accused the city of whitewashing history.

The latest report acknowledged the likelihood of opposing viewpoints and nodded to inconveniences to businesses and residents and the view that changing the names could be considered a threat to historical preservation. It also asked whether the proposed changes reside on a slippery slope.

“What’s next and where do we stop?” the report asks.

Any changes to road names would require public hearings and action from the City Council. Before the city changed the two street names in April, the city’s staff had reached out to all residents to seek their input.

A change to the city’s name, meanwhile, likely would require an election since “Austin” would have to be struck from the city charter and replaced.

The report also identified numerous historical markers related to the Confederacy on city property that could be targeted for removal. Those include a marker for the Confederate States of America that’s located at Congress Avenue and Cesar Chavez Street.

However, the city would need approval from the Texas Historical Commission and the Travis County Historical Commission to move them.

Any new street names might fall in line with a 2017 recommendation from the Austin Commission for Women that called for the city to address gender and racial disparities in the naming of public symbols. The commission also suggested preference should be given to individuals connected to Austin and having a “positive relationship and history with the community.

The Equity Office’s report concludes, “It is essential to acknowledge that societal values are fluid, and they can be and are different today compared to when our city made decisions to name and/or place these Confederate symbols in our community.

“It is also important to acknowledge that nearly all monuments to the Confederacy and its leaders were erected without a true democratic process. People of color often had no voice and no opportunity to raise concerns about the city’s decision to honor Confederate leaders.”

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The facts:

     These things have been pointed out over and over again.   The normal fear one might have is that a well-founded Republic, or monarchy, can be lost due to the willingness of a population devoid of a reasonable moral catechism and a devotion to productivity.   Without intervention against the "progressive movement" this can and will cause the sacrifice of the cornerstone of  good, plenty, and beneficence on the Planet at this time, that place being the United States.  The Gods of Avarice are grooming their Carrion Buzzards even now to glean every sinew, be it meat or bone, from what is now known as the United States of America.

     This newspaper article, from the ultra-left Austin American Statesman clearly steers  around facts while searching for arcane and pointless comparisons to the goodness of nihilism as opposed to the badness of common law, limited government, and good moral and cultural order.

     We have arrived at that point where university professors and politicians who specialise in buying votes with other peoples' money have trained up a solid two generations of sophomoric robotrons.  They fit well into the class of proles who would learn to listen to the never ending public address announcements in Orwell's "1984".

      It will, or perhaps already has, caused the end of American character and exceptionalism.   These believers upon the Government have fulfilled the prophesy of a culture where…"…Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right…(Orwell - 1984)"

    Oddly enough, by that point in life, Orwell's words and his method of thinking seem to increasingly give credence to a hidden, conservative, traditionalist, and limited government way of thinking.  Perhaps he was not even aware of it himself.   His leftist and egalitarian notions served him well enough for the greater portion of his life.  I think, however, one could tell that the little genie of correct thinking, somewhere in his brain or soul,  told him that socialism and communism and other forms of totalitarianism would always bring hardship and disaster to any country or culture.

Stephen Fuller Austin
1789 - 1836

     The notion of changing the name of Austin, the Capital of Texas is well beyond ludicrous.      Stephen Fuller Austin was essentially a good Mexican, during the time he was a Mexican. It was the numerous excesses and unpredictability caused by Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna that brought about Austin's, almost reluctantly, leading Texas into a war, and an ultimate separation from Mexico.

    He moved well among the Mexican / Spanish cohort of populace that existed in Texas before the arrival of scores and hundreds of colonists, principally from the American Southland, Ireland, and a few from western Europe.
     He suffered unjustifiable imprisonment at the hands of the volcanic, drug addicted, and manic / depressive Lopez de Santa Anna.   During his time of incarceration in Mexico City, a friend came to his side at the prison…an attorney and political activist…Lorenzo de Zavala.  As things would lead on, de Zavala would manage to argue for Austin's release for lack of reasonable charges.   Austin returned to Texas, trying to stave off the looming war, but finding the matter next to impossible.

Manuel Lorenzo Justiniano
 de Zavala y Saenz
(1789 - 1836)

    Lorenzo de Zavala who was from the Yucatan, but had travelled widely in the world, including the United States, France and  Spain where he served as Ambassador from Mexico, as well as Governor of the central State of Mexico also held property in Texas. He arrived shortly after Austin's return, apparently convinced Austin that because of the slaughter and destruction of the City of Zacatecas and much of the agricultural and mining might of the State of Zacatecas that Texas had to prepare for war against a large, well-trained, well fortified army that was moving north.
     It is known and needs no further elucidation in this publication concerning the fact that the Texian forces somewhat miraculously defeated the main corps of Lopez de Santa Anna's force, including the capture of the Generalissimo Presidente himself.   But what is not known widely is that Lorenzo de

One can note the name,
Estevan F. Austin on this
formal Mexican document

Zavala, with his legal knowledge, and being a republican democrat, as well as a very active York Rite Mason, agreed to "help" script the Declaration of Independence, as well as the first Constitution of the Republic of Texas.  Lorenzo also is thought to have contributed the equivalent of 3,000,000 dollars to the Texian cause (…it is difficult to calculate the value of that sum now, but it would be massive, perhaps 100,000,000 dollars).
     He also served as the first Vice-President of Texas (interim), while Estevan (Stephen) Fuller Austin served as the first President of Texas.   Lamentably both men would die late that same year of multiple involvements with influenza and pneumonia, thereby forcing Sam Houston to serve an interim term before the election of Mirabeau Bonaparte Lamar to the office in 1838.
     The point of all of this is to prove that one of the reasons Texas was born as a Republic was because of the bond between two profoundly close friends…both drawn from places distant to Texas, from two different lands, two different languages, but who understood each other perfectly.

     My anger forces me to withdraw from droning on further.   The notion that Austin, as a man of his time, would be literally thrown into some convenient dustbin in order to placate a zombie mass of snowflake marxists is infuriating beyond my point to reasonably control my further writing this evening.
May the force be with us.
El Gringo Viejo

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Marty Robbins ‎– Gunfighter Ballads And Trail Songs [Full Album]

Many, many nights El Gringo Viejo was put to sleep listening to this and about four or five other albums such as the soundtrack from Porgy and Bess, and the Trio Los Panchos, and other such manifestations.

Sunset Grill

Aggravating, but the "Re-uniting of the Children with their families" is wrought with ill and horror.

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    Folks, it is not my wish to praise Ceasar but I cannot allow this burial of facts and reason to go on any further.   This is not a defense of Trump, nor Pena Nieto, nor AMLO, nor is it a condemnation of those personalities.   Please believe that I am certain in my knowledge, and that I have had seventy years and a little more of life, much of it involved with Mexico, Mexicans, Americans and Texans of Mexican and Spanish ancestry, along with a considerable bit of Central American understanding, study, and analysis.

     There are those who have accused me of being "hopelessly pro-Mexican", and that is a falsity.  A lesser number has said that I am a real live hater of the Latin sub-race…the response must be, "No, I am not".  The simple fact is that I was born into an environment that included numerous Mexicans from the "old Country" who were involved in the Bracero Programme of the WWII through early 1950s period.  The latter part of that episode were the years of my childhood.   From age 0 through age 10, except for school, Mexicans were a major part of the recipe of life on our farm and citrus care business.

     My studies advanced my understanding of the pre-Colombian times, and the Colonial Epoch, and the Republican Epoch of Mexico.   My eldest brother was a Ph.D. graduate faculty professor of very high regard.  He and I had common brainwaves and communicated on a level similar to twins.  He was an authority on historical linguistics, climate and geomorphology, and matters pertaining to historical and present day cultural geography.

     My wife and I operated an upper-case excursion company that toured all corners of Mexico, and we were in service for well over twenty years in that endeavour.   So please take these following words seriously, as truth that is true.  The clutching of the chest, and pointing to the sky, and howling about the horrors of "separating the children from the mothers and family" is such a shallow, ignorant, at times purposeful theatric sham that it must be contradicted in the strongest terms.

TO WIT:

     The entire event of the flood of Central American "refugees" and/or "migrants" was contrived by the Obama Administration when the State Department was under the command of Hillary Rodham Clinton and later John Kerry.   Your humble servant listens to a lot of overnight radio while he stays down at our home in the interior of Mexico.  AM radio transmissions reached my radios from broadcast positions located in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, and Guatemala (2 different big cities), and San Salvador, El Salvador.   Those AM radio stations would come in and fade out, but there were many nights and early mornings when their signal was excellent and prolonged.   We received Radio Rebelde from the Peoples' Republic of Cuba that unloaded literally tonnes of anti-Gringo and anti-American bilge continuously, with breaks every now and then for long and repetitive replays of Guantanamera.

     During the late night, around 22:00 - 24:00 hours, there would be talk shows wherein the guest, frequently and apparently an American consular official would opine and comment about the best way for people from Central America to access entry into the United States.  After the initial bilge talk about waiting lists, fees for application for an entry visa, the declaration of intention and purpose for visiting or wishing to enter the United States, the need to have a passport from the country of departure along with other life documentum vitae, the conversation would always turn to the inevitable.
     Speaking in conditional tense, it would be pointed out that a person, especially a woman with children, the younger the better, could possibly arrive at the banks of the Rio Bravo / Grande, arrange for passage with an inner-tube driver or similar, and then surrender to the first Border Patrolman encountered, declaring oneself as a "refugiada" (refugee).
     One night the 'locutor' (radio host) asked his guest, "But what if the woman has no children?  How can she leverage acceptance as a truly needy and urgently concerned person."
     The guest responded on that particular night…this time in Guatemala…"Ask around of family, perhaps a niece or nephew, or perhaps a neighbour might be willing to forward a child, especially if there are already relatives in the United States, established."

     As one might imagine, I was aware of this trickle of departures leaving the mess and disorder, especially of Honduras and El Salvador, even as far back as the 1980s.  The Guatemala thing seemed strange to me because it was not such a basket case as the other two.  One reason is because 35% of Guatemala's population is native…still with many who speak little or no Spanish and who seem content with their position and activity.   Honduras and El Salvador were in dire straights in 2004 - 2009 and after that things became even worse.
     Why were things worse?  Simply put, it was because of the growth of the horridly depraved gangs of subhuman murderers, extortionists, rapists, and generally violent individuals.   These gang members knew from their older brothers that causing havoc in the home country was fun, but only in the United States could a MaraSalvatrucha XIII or Callejon 18 really get down and boogie…murder, robbery, torture, drug trafficking, prostitution of children, extortion…almost always of their own "carnales" (same meat and blood).
     Every now and then they would venture out and harrass the Mexicans and the Angloids, but they concentrated on terrorising their own people into submission.   They are found in Houston, Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and lamentably many smaller cities and towns that have long been famous as citadels of tranquility and blessed boredom.
     Even the Mexican drug cartels had trouble with these types.   One time, a group of MS13 were contracted to guard a group of "migrants" (future illegal aliens) outside of San Fernando, Tamaulipas…this about 10 years ago.   During the detention, inside a barn with no facilities or food or water, the custodians demanded of the "migrants" to volunteer to "mular la mota"…a slang expression meaning "to become marijuana mules for the cartel".

This is not what the bad guys want to run into
in Mexico - A column of the 65th Regiment of
 Infantry on a patrol, search, and engage operation.

     The detainees demanded to be taken to the border according to the agreement that they had made and paid for.   After a 18 hour session of tequila, beer, and weed, the six MS13s slaughtered the entire group of 75.
     Only one person survived.  That individual remembered that there was a Mexican Army facility some miles back to the South, and he made his way there, although he was wounded.
     Some locals gave him a ride to that military facility south of San Fernando, where he made his report and received needed medical attention.  A detail en force departed, and encountered the barn on the ranch as described, with 75 dead "migrants" inside.  Later that day, there was an encounter between a company of Mexican heavy infantry up near Reynosa (McAllen's sister city) and a group of about 25 MS13 types and certain allies…two soldiers were wounded and 9 MS13 were killed, with the rest being wounded and captured.   Those who survived were transported to Mexico City for debriefing, then incarcerated.
     Later it was divulged that over the years most of those individuals had been killed in prison due to their contentiousness and violent disposition.  That has been their record in the prisons of Honduras and El Salvador as well.  Pointless violence, violence, violence.

    Moving right along to processing the illegal alien arrivals, we should point out that many, many children and other minors came in without any adult relative…auntie, sister, grannie, or male equivalent.   In fact, adult males doing much of anything to "help" the invasion of illegal aliens from 2012 through to the present constituted less than 2% of the total tsunami of humanity that came into just Texas alone.
     Recently released data, as of the 10th of July, 2018 shows that a minimum of 20% of the children of 5 years of age or less who were separated from their "mommies" had absolutely no biological relationship to said "mommies".   This fact was developed by DNA analysis.  Another grouping showed the "possibility" of collateral relationship of another 20%.
     The fact is that people who remained back in Honduras and El Salvador were (1) "loaning" their own children, for a price to a woman to use as a ruse, or (2)  having their children ripped away by MS13 operatives kidnapping tots and infants to thrust upon a supposed "mommie", once the "mommie" or her family came up with the price for the child, or (3) older children were being kidnapped and marked…and we are talking about girls aged 8 - 10 years of age…for service into forced prostitution when the time would be "right".  This in fact was and is the actual facts of this "migration".
     On top of that, even the ones who had "legitimate" concerns about health and safety for self and offspring were almost uniformly dull, unappreciative, sullen, and even contemptuous of volunteer gifts of food, money, clothes, or reading material, etc.   This matter of "separating families" is absolutely one of the largest red herrings ever presented to the body politic.  It is a mendacity truly engineered by people who have not the slightest sense of the value of truth in the discourse between citizens.  The leftist opposition to normalcy seems to be willing to leave no stone unturned in order to forward the purpose of nihilism, socialism, and the steady degradation of America as the true beacon of hope, progress, and the opportunity for the fullness of life.

     So many people…Mexicans, and other foreigners…come into this country legally, AT GREAT EXPENSE and TIME and TROUBLE…and leave and return, and leave and return…compliantly, daily, going about their daily business, tourism, shopping, and such legal and pleasant pursuits, and yet we are supposed to give special deference to people who jump the line, pay nothing, and then disappear into the ether of the "population unknown and unseen".  Shame on the "progressives" who delight in the passive enslavement of hundreds upon thousands of people who genuinely should be shouldering efforts to improve the homeland they chose to abandon.

Enough!
EL GRINGO VIEJO

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Four Days of Torment, and finally a bit of success.

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     After four days of fighting the natural forces of computer programming and reconstruction, we have finally found a very circuitous and cumbersome method by which we can post a photo. 

    The scene displayed before the viewer is the lime orchard plantation of the Hacienda de La Vega, situated adjacent and to the west of the Quinta Tesoro de la Sierra Madre, the Mexico home of El Gringo Viejo and family.   This particular plantation is among the  very largest of a new variety of lime that is becoming very important to saloons of the highest category in New York City, Paris, Rome, Mexico City, Houston, and similar such places.

     The market has already expanded to general distribution potential for standard domestic marketting, such as for home culinary applications.  This particular lime has really hit a positive nerve in the market.   The trees that are in view are two years old and have been through a test of fire (or ice and snow) so to speak.
    During the past Winter, we went through four episodes of barely freezing weather.   Three of those episodes involved minor bursts of sleet and snow, a couple of times enough to leave a little on the ground.  The Sierra in the background picked up nearly two feet of snow in some places, and further West, there was a traffic tie-up on the main National Central Highway that involved over 100,000 vehicles, literally frozen in time…thirty-six hours…from one of those Winter episodes.

     Many of the recently planted orchards of these "magic" limes were destroyed.   Several around the nearby Victoria, Tamaulipas area did not have any "rebrote" (return to life), representing a loss of many, many millions of pesos to the scores of planters who had just put fortunes into the levelling, planting, purchase of saplings, and other such preparations.
     The orchard in front of the viewer had "burn" on the very tip-top part (about 12 inches) of the young trees, but no real damage beyond that.  Perhaps 13 or 14 trees at the opposite end of the field did die, but the remaining several thousand burst forth in a Spring and early Summer recovery that was truly remarkable.
     It would appear that we shall see a "setting" of flowering trees early next Spring, followed by a first harvest of limes during the late Summer.   Limes can produce in an unpredictable pattern, based on rains and irrigation and other conditions, so it would not be out of consideration to see a late Summer harvest and another around Christmas-time.   We shall see.

     The Hacendo (plantation owner) recently bought a brand new Massey Ferguson medium-heavy duty tractor with several attachments, and the OROG can see the new "beast" mowing the weed-growth produced by about 20 inches of rain during the March - June period of this year.

     Now that I have found a cumbersome route to post a picture or two, perhaps we shall be able to keep one and all a bit more informed.   Thanks for your interest.
El Gringo Viejo

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Concerning Children in Cages…"migrants"…and Immigration as a Human Right

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    So much is written and stated about how the present administration is brutalising "the children" by draconian immigration procedures.   Yea! Even adults are being brutalised by the Border Patrol, ICE, Trump, and the innate racism that defines the controlling classes in the United  States.

    There are several facts that one must have before he/she develops a solid opinion about these matters.  Among them:

(1)   There is no requirement that this Nation or any other be required to accept undocumented or non-Visa bearing arrivals at the frontier.  Nations who might accept such "applicants" do so at their own discretion and jeopardy.

(2)   Mexico began to allow people to come into Mexico without documents if they could demonstrate that they were "in transit" to the United States or Canada, and that there were people, already legally in the United States or Canada, who were waiting for them.  For this, Mexico was rewarded with the residuation of 2,000,000 Central Americans who melted into the major cities of Mexico and essentially disappeared.

    Others who have continued to the North have been subjected to kidnapping by cartel operatives, especially of girls and women, who are shuttled into the most horrid forms of "employment" one can imagine.  An estimated 30% of those illegal aliens who come into the United States are "employed" as cantineras (saloon girls), forced prostitution, free hand-labourers working for farthings, meals, or a corner with a mat in a room shared by 10 or 20 other unfortunates.

     The vast  majority of the "migrants" are not coming for a "better life" as we might think of it.  They are coming because they want to gain free medical, food, and accommodation.   Most are not even concerned about anything that has to do with education, and who see schools essentially as baby-sitting services.

    They are almost all uniformly un-appreciative of private donations of clothes, money, and such, almost never expressing even the slightest courtesy of a "Gracias" or a smile and a nod.

(3)   The Obsolete Press has made much of the separation of children from their "mothers" or "parents".  Once again, as in the Obama Era photos, the pictures of very young children being held in dog-cages were employed to colour American opinion.  That they were Obama Era images was never discussed or revealed by said press.

     The fact is that many…very many…of the "unescorted" children, and the children who had mommies and the very occasional daddy, were actually escorted by someone to the edge of the Rio Grande or the international boundary.   Many of the "mommies" were not lugging their own children, but rather children who were "loaned" by families or cartel operatives to pose as the actual offspring of the "mommies".

    Now, we can suggest that even among the people who manage to continue to the North with some kind of credential and an Immigration Hearing Date (85% never report), the new environment is bleak.  Areas in American cities and towns…in all those areas where there are clusters of established Salvadorans, Guatemalans, and Hondurans, and now to some degree, Nicaraguans…those people do not want to see their "cousins" arriving.

    It always leads to new wave of recruitment and hideous terroristic brutality by such groups as the MaraSalvatrucha XIII.   Their brutality is beyond depravity.  They control large swaths of "The Community"…and therefore America and Texas.  They are a cancer

     The "neighbourhoods" in the central cities and various towns where these clusters have established have long since become the same hell-holes that the Progressives foisted upon America's central cities with the public assistance programmes starting in the 1960s with the "War on Poverty".

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IN THE MATTER OF PERMISSIONS AND CONTROL OF POPULATION MOVEMENT
(by Mexico)

    As many who follow El Gringo Viejo know, he and his boss own a small tract of property in the interior of Mexico.  The process of purchase of the land as a "non-immigrant resident" was daunting.

   Although the extent of the property was just shy of what would calculate to be three acres, the process of transferring title, registering the property, developing the "escrituras"(the writing of the new title and descriptions) by a qualified and reputable Notario Publico, and receiving the letter permissory took considerable time and money.

     It was required to demonstrate an independent income derived by activity other than employment in Mexico.   At that time, (a bit less than 20 years ago) it had to be roughly the equivalent of a minimum of about 700 American dollars per month.

     If married, it was necessary to submit a formal copy of the marriage certificate, approved by the Secretary of State of Texas in our case, being Texans.   It was necessary to obtain an authorisation by the Secretaria de Gobernacion de la Republica Mexicana, specifying that we would not invoke the military forces of the United States of America to defend our title.

     We were also admonished in that same authorisation to refrain from political activity in Mexico at any time, nor could we vote until completing citizenship, authorised by the Honourable Congress of the United Mexican States.   Also, during those days a foreign person had to maintain status as an FM-3 (migratory form three) which essentially was a Mexican passport, and it cost about 110 dollars per year.

   After about four years, however, the Mexican law was changed, allowing foreigners of good character and independent means to be able to own eligible property outright, but not property closer than 50 kilometres from a coastline or 100 kilometres from a terrestrial frontier or boundary.  There are other exclusions, such as military bases, national parks and forests, and certain very indigenous areas, and most of Mexico, D.F.

010203040

2010

• 20.02

     There are approximately 500,000 Americans who live in a semi-permanent or permanent way in Mexico, and who own or lease property.   About half of those rent their accommodations in places such as San Miquel de Allende, Lake Chapala Area, while the other half own their properties and structures.
     The above-posted graph shows Americans who have no good sense, or who are possessing better knowledge and understanding of Mexico than some, and still regard Mexico as a decent destination for fun, games, and the American (and Mexican) way.

We resign for to-day.  To-morrow we shall be in early departure for "extreme Central Texas" to count granddaughters, hobnob with close friends and family and generally try to relax a bit.   More later.
EL GRINGO VIEJO

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