ONLY IN EUROPE?
In Europe, Muslims Trying to Kill Jews is a Mental Illness
In Europe, Muslims Trying to Kill Jews is a Mental Illness
"Many people who are psychotic read the Koran.”
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
Martin Colmans was selling furniture in the Albert Cuyp market in Amsterdam when he was stabbed in the thigh. His son, Sharon, ran out to help him and protect his mother and was stabbed in his back and chest. But he succeeded in preventing the stabber from getting to his mother, Orly.
Tarik Ghani, the Muslim man who stabbed him, ran a hookah shop in the market. The victim said that he noticed a sudden change in his attacker after he returned from the Middle East and was often seen, “reading the Koran.” “He stopped talking to us, shaved his head and prayed all the time. He also began giving us nasty looks.” Other vendors in the Cuyp market stated that Tarik hated Jews. There had been warnings that he might turn violent and attack someone. Those warnings were however disregarded.
Instead of sending him to prison, a Dutch judge sentenced Tarik to a year of psychiatric treatment. The Colmans had asked the judge to take his anti-Semitism into account, instead the judge accepted Tarik’s claim that he was mentally ill and had been hearing voices. There was no evidence for this claim.
"Many people who are psychotic read the Koran," a psychiatrist explained.
Tarik hadn’t been obsessively reading the Koran before the attack because he was a terrorist, but because he was psychotic.
Around the same time as a Dutch court was exempting Tarik from responsibility for his anti-Semitic attack, a French court was giving Kobili Traore another pass for the brutal murder of Sarah Halimi.
Sarah, the elderly head of a Jewish nursery school, was brutally attacked in her apartment. Her brother had said that the killer had previously called them, “dirty Jews”. The police had been called before the attack. They had heard Kobili loudly chanting verses from the Koran. Reinforcements were called, but the police did nothing. Meanwhile Kobili climbed through the window into Sarah’s apartment.
The Muslim beat her until her nightgown was covered in blood while shouting, “Allahu Akbar”, verses from the Koran and anti-Semitic rhetoric. Neighbors called the police and described what was going on. The police did nothing. At some point during the brutal assault, the killer crushed Sarah’s skull with a telephone. Finally, he shouted that his victim was “mad and about to commit suicide”.
And then he threw her out the window and returned to his apartment.
That was in 2017. Since then multiple courts have ruled that Kobili Traore was not responsible for his actions because cannabis had been found in his system. He had been smoking pot. And that had allegedly brought on some sort of psychotic episode that prevented him from being responsible for his actions. Like Tarik Ghani, he is likely to remain in a hospital until the shrinks decide to set him loose.
Kobili has had three psychiatric reviews, none of whom agree with each other, but all claim he was unfit.
But trying to belatedly make Sarah’s murder look like a suicide showed that he knew what he was doing. He had calculatedly cased her apartment early in the day and had calculated exactly where to drop her.
The cover-up of the murder began from before it even happened. Instead of taking Kobili to prison, the cops took him to a hospital. A urine test found cannabis in his system. And the narrative was set. And yet the killer admitted that he had been motivated by his hatred of Sarah’s Jewishness.
He told investigators, "When I saw the Torah and menorah in her home, I felt oppressed." By the Torah, he likely meant a copy of the bible in his victim's home. (His reference to the menorah that Jews light on Chanukah has been unhelpfully mistranslated as “chandelier” from the French by the media.)
The psychiatrist argued that Kobili could be both anti-Semitic and insane because "during delusional episodes among Muslims, an anti-Semitic theme is common." The psychiatrist was making the case that the killer wasn’t guilty because Muslims are inherently anti-Semitic, and he was acting on that inherent anti-Semitism, but wasn’t truly in control of his actions because he had smoked 10 joints beforehand.
Muslims are predisposed by their religion and culture to hate Jews, but Kobili would not have done so unless he had suffered a psychotic break. That argument simultaneously characterizes Muslims as anti-Semitic, while excusing anti-Semitic murders as a form of mental illness uniquely suffered by Muslims.
Homicidal Muslim anti-Semitism was diagnosed as a form of mental illness. Sarah had been killed because of “the fact that she was Jewish”, but the killer was not responsible for his actions.
Meanwhile, what Kobili did before the brutal murder, besides smoke pot, was ignored.
Before the murder, Kobili had visited the Omar Mosque in Paris whose previous imam, Mohammed Hammami, had been expelled from the country for promoting terrorism and anti-Semitism. The mosque had been set up by Tabligh Jamaat, an Islamist group at the center of terrorism in France. It’s been estimated that the majority of Islamic terrorists in France have been linked to the movement.
Many Tabligh Jamaat members joined Al Qaeda. That includes Zacarias Moussaoui, the 20th hijacker, and shoe bomber Richard Reid. Al Qaeda was able to use the Islamist organization as cover for its members. And it’s far from the only Islamic terrorist organization that Tabligh Jamaat has been associated with.
Tabligh Jamaat is also notorious for recruiting troubled young men and subjecting them to extensive brainwashing. In one report, a Malian, the same country of origin as the killer, described recruits being kept awake for long periods of chanting and praying until they lose touch with reality. That has ominous similarities to the behavior of Kobili Traore, obsessively chanting, on the night that he murdered Sarah.
Sarah’s killer had visited an anti-Semitic mosque linked to a cult-like Islamist movement that recruits troubled young men, as Kobili had been recruited in prison, and drives them into frenzies while teaching them that their duty is to conquer the world for Islam. And that’s exactly what Kobili did in Paris.
There is a tragic and ugly pattern.
In 2015, Farid Haddouche attacked Rabbi Acher Amoyal, his son, and another man, who were leaving a Marseilles synagogue on the Sabbath. Farid had shouted, "Allahu Akbar" and stabbed one of the men in the abdomen. He was deemed unfit to stand trial after a psychiatric evaluation even though his mother admitted that he had no history of mental illness. But he had been drunk at the time. Protests by the Jewish community eventually led to an actual trial and he was sentenced to four years in prison.
In 2003, Sébastien Selam, a Jewish DJ, was stabbed to death by Adel Amastaibou. The Muslim killer told the cops that it was the will of Allah. He boasted to his mother, "I killed a Jew! I will go to paradise."
Prior to the murder, Adel had assaulted a Rabbi and threatened a pregnant Jewish woman. But he was found unfit to stand trial on account of mental illness.
Like Kobili, Adel had been getting high. His drug of choice though was hashish.
Adel was hospitalized, but in a foreshadowing of just how little that will mean in the cases of Kobili and Tarik, he was given passes to leave the hospital and go off to parties.
It’s not just in Europe where homicidal Islamic anti-Semitism gets a psychiatric pass. Ahmed Ferhani, who plotted to bomb a New York City synagogue, became a popular progressive cause. The Nation claimed that he was a mentally ill man who had been entrapped by the cops. After a suicide attempt, the Center for Constitutional Rights held a vigil on behalf of the murderous anti-Semite.
The toxic combination of substance abuse, Ferhani had sold drugs to finance the Islamic killing spree, allegations of mental illness, and a plot to kill Jews, is becoming ubiquitous. As is the general effort to whitewash lone Islamic terrorists as being mentally ill because their behavior appears irrational.
There can be a thin line between crazy and evil. And some behavior that isn’t aberrant in the Muslim world, for example Kobili’s fear of demons, can in our context resemble mental illness. But, as Jamie Glazov noted in his recent book, Jihadist Psychopath, there isn’t a necessary contradiction there.
The rush to exonerate killers on the grounds of mental illness because they have alcohol or cannabis in their system, because their brutal crimes defy reason, and because it is easier than following the links to places like the Omar Mosque that the authorities don’t want to go, is encouraging Islamic violence.
In 2016, in Strasbourg, France, Chalom Levy was stabbed by an attacker shouting, "Allahu Akbar". Levy was wearing a 'kippa', a Jewish religious skullcap on his head, and had been preparing for Shabbat.
Levy, who had previously rushed into a burning car to save a woman trapped inside, was able to fight off the attacker and run for help. His attempted killer was arrested outside a café, Levy had escaped to.
The authorities and the media rushed to describe the attacker as mentally ill. And indeed, he had previously spent time in a psychiatric hospital after he had stabbed another Jewish man in 2010.
Instead of sending him to prison, he had been deemed unfit to stand trial and had been hospitalized.
This is what happens when Muslims murdering Jews ceases to be a crime and instead becomes a mental problem that a bit of time playing with dolls, talking about your dreams, and gobbling pills can solve.
The time will come when the attempted killer will stab someone else. And they may not survive.
If, as Tarik’s psychiatrist claimed, “many people who are psychotic read the Koran” and, as Kobili’s shrink insisted, "during delusional episodes among Muslims, an anti-Semitic theme is common”, then there’s no meaningful distinction between Islamic terrorism and mental illness. And if you characterize terrorism against Jews as a form of mental illness, then no Muslim terrorist should ever go to jail.
Murdering Jews or anyone in the name of Islam is not a form of mental illness. It’s genocide.
Saudis, Airplanes, and the Pensacola Killings
America doesn’t do retribution like it used to.
I went through all of December 7 this year without thinking about the date, so it wasn’t until the morning of December 8, when I watched a video somebody had posted on Facebook, that I realized I had missed Pearl Harbor Day. The video showed the glee club of the Naval Academy singing the Navy Hymn, “Eternal Father, Strong to Save” (which, as it happens, was my mother’s favorite hymn), on December 7, 2016, the 75th anniversary of the Japanese attack. At one point the video cut away from the singers to black-and-white images of the devastation caused on December 7, 1941. It was deeply moving. And it was also thought-provoking. At the time of the attack on Hawaii, the Japanese had already conquered Korea, much of China, and Indonesia; within days after Pearl Harbor, they had taken Hong Kong, Thailand, Kiribati, and Wake Island, and within a few more months they had swallowed up what are now the countries of Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Burma, Timor-Leste, and Papua New Guinea, plus Guam.
Yet less than four years after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States, having just taken part in the utter destruction of Nazi Germany, brought Japan, too, to its knees. Not only did we beat their butts; we also crushed to bits the twisted set of beliefs, including a conviction that the Emperor himself was a god, that had been at the heart of the Japanese mentality for centuries. Having been told they were invincible, they were stunned to the core by the impact of the atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Those bombings, and the subsequent occupation under General Douglas MacArthur, totally rewired their minds. In short, we humbled them and, in doing so, kicked off a sea change that would have been inconceivable before the war – the transformation of what had, for centuries, been a warlike empire populated by would-be kamikazes into a democratic Western-style nation and staunch U.S. ally whose people are preoccupied with the peaceful manufacture of electronics.
On September 11, 2001, the U.S. was the victim of another surprise attack, one even more horrific than the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The weapons were our own airplanes, and fifteen of the nineteen perpetrators were Saudis, several of whom had attended flight school in Florida. Last Friday, an atrocity at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Florida, revealed to the American public that Saudis, even now – eighteen years later – are being trained to fly by the U.S. military. The guilty party, Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, 21, an aviation student and a second lieutenant in the Saudi Air Force, opened fire in a classroom building, murdering three and wounding twelve before being killed by two local sheriff’s deputies (raising the question, incidentally, of why county cops made it to the scene before armed personnel).
Alshamrani was, by the way, not a “lone wolf.” Six other Saudis, fellow students of his in Pensacola, were “detained for questioning” after the shootings; one of them, reportedly, had filmed the shooting spree, while two others watched from a car, which suggests, of course, that they may have known about, and approved of, Alshamrani’s plans beforehand. And yet one of the claims made in the hours after the atrocity was that all Saudi subjects selected for training at U.S. military installations are intensely vetted by both Saudi and U.S. officials.
That was troubling news. Even more troubling were President Trump’s tweets. After offering “thoughts and prayers” for the victims and their families, Trump added that “King Salman of Saudi Arabia just called to express his sincere condolences” and that Salman “said that the Saudi people are greatly angered by the barbaric actions of the shooter, and that this person in no way shape or form represents the feelings of the Saudi people who love the American people.” Now, I’m a huge fan of President Trump, but nineteen years after 9/11, I find it appalling that, during his tenure, our military is training Saudis to be pilots. It wouldn’t have surprised me under Bush or Obama. But it surprises me under Trump. It’s also depressing to see Trump doing emergency PR work for the Saudi government, which is widely believed to have played a role in the 9/11 attacks. As of Sunday morning, Trump’s own Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper, was still refusing to call the shootings an act of terrorism. This isn’t why we elected Donald J. Trump.
In 1941, we went all-out in our response to the attack on Pearl Harbor. We were right to do so. And it worked. We turned a jaguar into a kitten. Nuclear fission helped. I’m not saying we should have used nukes in response to 9/11. But a nuke wasn’t necessary. Surely we could have reduced the Kaaba, the Great Mosque, and other key structures in Mecca to rubble on September 12, 2001, by using conventional missiles. Yes, every government and media organ on earth, of course, would have reflexively condemned us for doing so. But perhaps the condemnations would not have been all that vicious or gone on all that long. If you’re old enough to remember 9/11, you’ll recall that the whole non-Muslim world was in shock, and briefly, anyway, everyone on the planet, other than the most fanatical America-haters, was on our side; the ridiculously widespread, utterly counterfactual image of Muslims as victims that now dominates Western culture had yet to be firmly established.
Think of it. Before Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the U.S. showered those cities with leaflets telling the inhabitants what was coming and warning them to clear out pronto. We could have done the same with Mecca. After nearly 3000 people had been massacred on our soil without warning or provocation in the name of Allah, bombing a few deserted structures in the Arabian desert would hardly have seemed a disproportionate response. In any case, America ended up being reviled anyway because of our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which cost massive sums of money and countless lives on both sides without ever coming close to resolving the actual problem at the root of Islamic terrorism; surely the criticism of the U.S. for bombing Mecca to kingdom come in a single day’s sortie, would not have gone on nearly as long as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq lasted, along with the daily worldwide condemnations thereof. And it would have been lots cheaper.
Most important, it would have been even more stunning, in its own way, than the attacks of 9/11 themselves, making it crystal clear to every Islamic terrorist, potential terrorist, or terrorist cheerleader, as well as to the rulers in Tehran, Cairo, Riyadh, Baghdad, Kabul, Ankara, and other Islamic capitals, that America meant business. Such an attack would have paralyzed every devout Muslim on earth – it would, with any luck, have wiped the very concepts of jihad and sharia out of their heads and knocked the Korans out of their hands, setting off a metamorphosis that, in the long term, would probably have done them a great deal of good, just as the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were, in retrospect, the best favor anybody ever did Japan. But it’s too late for such thoughts now. Eighteen years too late. Instead of a reformed Muslim world, what we have today is a Western world, including an America, that, since 9/11, has undergone a shift in attitudes that makes it difficult for most of us even to talk frankly about the perfidy that is Islam and to call an obvious act of terrorism by its true name.
WHO IS FINANCING ALL THE TRUMP AND
SON-IN-LAW’S REFINANCING SCAMS???
FOLLOW THE MONEY!
"I doubt that Trump understands -- or cares about --
what message he's sending. Wealthy Saudis, including members of the extended
royal family, have been his patrons for years, buying his distressed properties
when he needed money. In the early 1990s, a Saudi prince purchased Trump's
flashy yacht so that the then-struggling businessman could come up with cash to
stave off personal bankruptcy, and later, the prince bought a share of the
Plaza Hotel, one of Trump's many business deals gone bad. Trump also sold an
entire floor of his landmark Trump Tower condominium to the Saudi government in
2001."
“The Wahhabis finance thousands of
madrassahs throughout the world where young boys are brainwashed into becoming
fanatical foot-soldiers for the petrodollar-flush Saudis and other emirs of the
Persian Gulf.” AMIL
IMANI
I recommend that Ignatius read Raymond
Ibrahim's outstanding book Sword and Scimitar, which contains accounts of dynastic
succession in the Muslim monarchies of the Middle East, where standard
operating procedure for a new monarch on the death of his father was to
strangle all his brothers. Yes, it's awful. But it has
been happening for a very long time. And it's not going to change
quickly, no matter how outraged we pretend to be. MONICA SHOWALTER
TRUMP AND THE
MURDERING 9-11 MUSLIM SAUDIS…
Why is the Swamp Keeper
and his family of parasites up their ar$es??
WHAT WILL TRUMP AND
HIS PARASITIC FAMILY DO FOR MONEY???
JUST ASK THE
SAUDIS!
JOHN DEAN: Not so far. This has been right by the letter of the special counsel’s
charter. He’s released the document. What I’m looking for is relief and
understanding that there’s no witting or unwitting likelihood that the
President is an agent of Russia. That’s when I’ll feel comfortable, and no
evidence even hints at that. We don’t have that yet. We’re still in the process
of unfolding the report to look at it. And its, as I say, if [Attornery General
William Barr] honors his word, we’ll know more soon.
WHAT WILL TRUMP AND
HIS PARASITIC FAMILY DO FOR MONEY???
JUST ASK THE
SAUDIS!
JOHN DEAN: Not
so far. This has been right by the letter of the special counsel’s charter.
He’s released the document. What I’m looking for is relief and
understanding that there’s no witting or unwitting likelihood that the
President is an agent of Russia. That’s when I’ll feel comfortable, and no
evidence even hints at that. We don’t have that yet. We’re still in the process
of unfolding the report to look at it. And its, as I say, if [Attornery General
William Barr] honors his word, we’ll know more soon.
“Our
entire crony capitalist system, Democrat and
Republican
alike, has become a kleptocracy
approaching
par with third-world hell-holes. This
is the
way a great country is raided by its elite.” ---
-
Karen McQuillan AMERICAN THINKER
PRESIDENT of the UNITED STATES DONALD TRUMP: Pathological
liar, swindler, con man, huckster, golfing cheat, charity foundation fraudster,
tax evader, adulterer, porn whore chaser and servant of the Saudis dictators
Opinion: Trump And
Pompeo Have Enabled A Saudi Cover-Up Of The Khashoggi Killing
In the weeks
following the death of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, President Trump spent
more time praising Saudi Arabia as a very important ally than he did
reacting to the killing.
Hasan Jamali/AP
Aaron David Miller (@aarondmiller2) is a senior fellow at the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former State Department Middle
East analyst, adviser and negotiator in Republican and Democratic
administrations. He is the author most recently of the End of
Greatness: Why America Can't Have (and Doesn't Want) Another Great President.
Richard Sokolsky, a nonresident senior fellow at the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace, worked in the State Department for six
different administrations and was a member of the secretary of state's Office
of Policy Planning from 2005 to 2015.
It has been a year since Saudi journalist and Washington Post columnist
Jamal Khashoggi entered Saudi Arabia's Consulate in Istanbul where he was slain
and dismembered. There is still no objective or comprehensive Saudi or American
accounting of what occurred, let alone any real accountability.
The Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's admission in a
recent CBS interview that
he takes "full responsibility," while denying foreknowledge of the
killing or that he ordered it, sweeps under the rug the lengths to which the
Saudis have gone to obscure the truth about their involvement in the killing
and cover-up.
The Saudi campaign of obfuscation, denial and cover-up would never
have gotten off the ground had it not been for the Trump administration's
support over the past year. The president and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
not only refused to distance themselves from the crown prince, known by his
initials MBS, but also actively worked to relegitimize him. The Saudis killed
Khashoggi but Trump acquiesced in the cover-up and worked hard to protect the
U.S.-Saudi relationship and soften the crown prince's pariah status. In short,
without Trump, the attempted makeover — such as it is — would not have been
possible.
The
Saudis killed Khashoggi but Trump acquiesced in the cover-up and worked hard to
protect the U.S.-Saudi relationship and soften the crown prince's pariah
status.
Weak administration response
The administration's weak and feckless
response to Khashoggi's killing was foreshadowed a year before it occurred. In
May 2017, in an unusual break with precedent, Trump visited Saudi Arabia on his
inaugural presidential trip; gave his son-in-law the authority to manage the
MBS file, which he did with the utmost secrecy; and made it unmistakably clear
that Saudi money, oil, arm purchases and support for the administration's
anti-Iranian and pro-Israeli policies would elevate the U.S.-Saudi
"special relationship" to a new level.
Predictably, therefore, the administration's reaction to
Khashoggi's killing was shaped by a desire to manage the damage and preserve
the relationship. In the weeks following Khashoggi's death, Trump spent
more time praising Saudi Arabia as a very important ally, especially as a
purchaser of U.S. weapons and goods, than he did
reacting to the killing. Trump vowed to get to the bottom of the
Khashoggi killing but focused more on defending the crown prince, saying this was another example of
being "guilty before being proven innocent."
Those pledges to investigate and impose accountability would
continue to remain hollow. Over the past year, Trump and Pompeo have neither
criticized nor repudiated Saudi actions that have harmed American interests in
the Middle East. Two months after Khashoggi's death, the administration, in
what Pompeo described as an "initial step," imposed sanctions on 17
Saudi individuals implicated in the killing. But no others have been
forthcoming, and the visa restrictions that were imposed are meaningless
because none of the sanctioned Saudis would
be foolish enough to seek entry into the United States.
What's more, the administration virtually ignored a congressional resolution imposing
sanctions on the Saudis for human rights abuses and vetoed another bipartisan
resolution that would have ended U.S. military assistance to Saudi Arabia's
inhumane military campaign in Yemen.
The Saudis opened a trial in January of 11 men implicated in the
killing, but the proceedings have been slow and secretive, leading the United
Nations' top human rights expert to declare that "the trial underway in
Saudi Arabia will not deliver credible accountability." Despite
accusations that the crown prince's key adviser Saud al-Qahtani was involved in
the killing, he's still advising MBS, has not stood trial and
will likely escape punishment. A year later, there are still no reports of
convictions or serious punishment.
Legitimizing Mohammed bin Salman
The Trump administration has not only given the crown prince a
pass on the Khashoggi killing, but it has also worked assiduously to remove his
pariah status and rehabilitate his global image. Barely two months after the
2018 slaying, Trump was exchanging pleasantries with the crown prince at the
Group of 20 summit in Buenos Aires and holding out prospects
of spending more time with him. Then this past June, at the G-20 in Osaka,
Japan, Trump sang his praises while dodging questions about the killing. "It's
an honor to be with the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, a friend of mine, a man
who has really done things in the last five years in terms of opening up Saudi
Arabia," Trump said.
And you can
bet that when Saudi Arabia hosts the G-20, scheduled to be held in its capital
of Riyadh in November 2020, the Trump administration will be smiling as its
rehab project takes another step in its desired direction.
What the U.S. should have done
Trump has failed to impose any serious costs or constraints on
Saudi Arabia for the killing of a U.S. newspaper columnist who resided in
Virginia or for the kingdom's aggressive policies, from Yemen to Qatar. In the
wake of the Khashoggi killing, the administration should have made it
unmistakably clear, both publicly and privately, that it expected a
comprehensive and credible accounting and investigation. It should have suspended
high-level contacts and arms sales with the kingdom for a period of time. And
to make the point, the administration should have supported at least one
congressional resolution taking the Saudis to task, in addition to triggering
the Magnitsky Act, which would have required a U.S. investigation; a report to
Congress; and sanctions if warranted.
Back to business as usual
The dark
stain of the crown prince's apparent involvement in Khashoggi's death will not
fade easily. But for Trump and Pompeo, it pales before the great expectations
they still maintain for the kingdom to confront and contain their common enemy,
Iran, as well as support the White House's plan for Middle East peace, defeat
jihadists in the region and keep the oil spigot open.
Most of
these goals are illusory. Saudi Arabia is a weak, fearful and unreliable ally.
The kingdom has introduced significant social and cultural reforms but has
imposed new levels of repression and authoritarianism. Its reckless policies
toward Yemen and Qatar have expanded, not contracted, opportunities for Iran,
while the Saudi military has demonstrated that, even after spending billions to
buy America's most sophisticated weapons, it still can't defend itself without
American help.
Meanwhile,
recent attacks on critical Saudi oil facilities that the U.S. blames on Iran
have helped rally more American and international support for the kingdom.
When it
comes to the U.S.-Saudi relationship and the kingdom's callous reaction to
Khashoggi's killing, the president and his secretary of state have been
derelict in their duty: They have not only failed to advance American strategic
interests but also undermined America's values in the process.
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