November 2011

The Holiday Season Comes to Ocean Beach!

November 30, 2011 by Patty Jones
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Lots of Events Coming Up to Celebrate the Holidays, OB Style!

  • Kids, help Santa decorate the OB Tree!
  • Adults, don’t miss the annual auction to benefit the OB Food and Toy Drive
  • Shop local and eco-friendly for the holidays – OB Craft Fair!
  • 32nd Annual OB Holiday Parade – Surf Paradise
  • Fun Zone at the Pier
  • Ocean Beach Merchants Light Up the Season
  • Food and Toy Drive at the Farmers Markets

Details inside!

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Occupy Detroit Shows Movement How to Confront Racial Tensions

November 30, 2011 by Source
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By Trymaine Lee / Huffington Post / November 30, 2011

DETROIT — In recent years Grand Circus Park, despite the slow gentrification of downtown Detroit, has been most welcoming to hard-luck natives, laid-off blue collar workers and other jobless, the self-medicating and many of the city’s chronic homeless. Many of them, like the majority of the city itself, were black.

So when the Occupy protests sprouted here, and waves of young, mostly white protesters arrived from outside the city with their tents and their cardboard signs and people’s microphones, the park’s invisible demarcation lines of class and race were for a time blurred, eroding in small measure what has been one of the central complaints about the movement, its lack of diversity.

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Enough handwringing about Occupy, already.

November 30, 2011 by Source
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By rexymeteorite / Daily Kos / November 29th

There has been a lot of hand-wringing about the direction of the Occupy movement, its message, its leaderless nature, its outside-of-the-beltway tactics and the everyone-is-invited attitude of the Occupiers. There has been much consternation about Occupy foregoing the two party system debate and instead focusing on direct action, and other ways to influence our rusted out old political system without having to argue about democrats or republicans. While concerns about the movement should be addressed, and problems solved in a timely manner, these specific criticisms have gotten as stale as week old bread.

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In response to illegal arrest of voter registrar, Occupy San Diego activists vow to return to Plaza and do more voter registration.

November 30, 2011 by Frank Gormlie

At 7:30 pm sharp last night, several lawyers associated with Occupy San Diego denounced the arrest yesterday afternoon of Ray Lutz by San Diego police as he was registering people to vote. Lutz had set up a table in the private property area of Civic Center Plaza and was proceeding to register new voters when he was taken into custody for “trespass”.

The lawyers, other supporters and activists of the movement vowed to return today – Wednesday, Nov. 30th – to continue to register new voters. They plan to begin at 10:00 a.m. This was announced last night just before the nightly General Assembly.

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The State of the Occupy Movement in France

November 30, 2011 by Randall Erickson
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The Occupy Movement has taken on a certain ampleur around the United States and in a few European countries such as Greece, Italy, and Spain where there have been mass demonstrations. That hasn’t happened in France though. Different magazines and newspapers here have asked the question of why it is so feeble in France and have given different responses or theories.

At most there have only been a couple of thousand or a few hundred occupiers. These small numbers have made an intelligent change of plans. Before, they protested in traditional central Parisian sites, like the Place de la Bastille in the eastern part of Paris.

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What constitutes “false advertising”: a discounted manicure or a shellacking?

November 30, 2011 by Judi Curry
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With all that is going on in the world today, this little problem I faced today is a small one. None-the-less, I have never liked being screwed without a climax and I think that screwing almost took place today.

Like most residents in San Diego, I receive several monthly advertisements offering me discounts, free gifts, reduced price items. This is not about those advertisements; rather it is about one particular advertiser.

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Major West Coast Occupy Movements to Mobilize to Shut Down Ports December 12th

November 30, 2011 by Source

By Cristian Tapia / FOX40 News / November 29, 2011

Occupy movements in major West Coast cities are planning a coordinated blockade and shutdown of their local ports on December 12.

In a press release received Tuesday morning, it states, Occupy L.A., Occupy San Diego and Occupy Portland are listed as some of the major port cities joining Occupy Oakland to mobilize thousands of people to shut down their local ports

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Selective Enforcement? San Diego Occupier Arrested While Attempting to Register Voters at Civic Center Plaza

November 29, 2011 by Frank and Patty
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After setting up a table at Civic Center Plaza this afternoon to do voter registration, an Occupy San Diego organizer was arrested by police for “trespass and refusing to leave”.

At approximately 1:30 pm, Ray Lutz was sitting at a table with several signs stating “Register to vote”, and was in the process of registering a man, when a half dozen police officers approached him – including Captain Mark Jones – .

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Occupy San Diegans Join Occupy LA In Solidarity in Face-off With Police

November 29, 2011 by Frank Gormlie
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Two dozen local activists join LA protesters at the hour of their eviction

When a few of us in Occupy San Diego this past weekend heard that our sisters and brothers in Occupy LA were facing eviction early Monday morning, about two dozen of us traveled up to LA and camped out with them in solidarity.

When OSD veteran Julie M. put up on facebook that she wanted to drive up to LA and show support for their occupation, a number of us jumped at the chance to drive up there with her. So Howard, Humberto, Claudia and I crammed into Julie’s Prius and headed out for LA, leaving from the Civic Center Plaza on Sunday, the 27th.

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OccupySD Sweet Potato WMD Destroyed; Cops Punk’d By Mini-Tent Encampment

November 29, 2011 by Doug Porter
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It was a strange day at OccupySD. Tensions with the police reached a breaking point on at least two occasions. Many people including our own Frank Gormlie were off to the north in support of what was expected to be a major confrontation between the City of Los Angeles and Occupy protestors there.

Incident number one occurred earlier in the day. Some good hearted soul donated three cases of fresh sweet potatoes to OccupySD. The police asked that the tubers be transported elsewhere immediately, saying that they were afraid of the yams being used as weapons.

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Some in Occupy San Diego Vow to Bring Back Tents

November 28, 2011 by Source
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By Dave Rice / San Diego Reader / November 28

Occupy San Diego is preparing to once again attempt to set up a tent encampment in Civic Center Plaza this afternoon, according to a brief release the group prepared last night.

Energized by a video shot in the early morning hours of Thanksgiving day depicting eight or more police officers holding a wheelchair-bound man face down while making an arrest, at least 50 members of Occupy San Diego have decided that they have waited long enough for a discussion with the city council on ending the sleeping ban that has recently been enforced in the Plaza and surrounding blocks.

See the video inside…

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Happy Today’s Day: Occupy the Present

November 28, 2011 by Jim Miller
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Every year I spend Thanksgiving and the weekend after it with my family and friends in the Anza Borrego Desert. On hikes with my seven-year-old son, we are grateful for our chance encounters with roadrunners, jackrabbits, coyotes, beetles, and the occasional lucky sighting of a big horn sheep. We have a friend who is a birder who can tell us what kinds of birds we are near from the sound of their calls. When we go back to eat, we break bread with another friend who beat cancer and whose presence reminds us that life is short and precious.

More than anything else, it is the beautiful stillness of the desert that brings us there—the way the landscape seems to listen. At night you can still see stars and think about the vastness of the universe in a way that reminds you of your smallness and your connection to the largeness of all that is. It is humbling and enlarging at the same time.

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SWAT Teams Meet in San Diego; Is Occupy on the Menu? You Betcha!

November 28, 2011 by Doug Porter
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While Occupy movements around California are struggling to maintain a presence in the face of ever-increasing pressures from local governments, law enforcement “tactical officers” from around the State are ensconced at San Diego’s Manchester Hyatt this week for their annual State-wide confab and trade show. There are well over a hundred departments within California featuring SWAT Teams—which is the common name for tactical police groups—, with San Diego County along offering up eleven such outfits. There are so many such outfits—not including University and other specialized police departments—that the California Association of Tactical Officers (CATO-not to be confused with the conservative/libertarian think tank of the same name) breaks the State into seven regions for administrative purposes.

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Thank you, thank you, thank you…

November 28, 2011 by Patty Jones

Good morning OB, San Diego and all points beyond! I hope all of you had a good Thanksgiving. We sure did! Actually it was one of the better ones for me during the last few years, we had more than a dozen family and friends here for dinner on Thursday, and then almost all of them came back Saturday for my mother’s 73rd birthday. We had chocolate cake and my two little grand-daughters (her great-grand-daughters) helped her blow out her birthday candles.

It’s pretty amazing having four generations of family all together in one place and we are blessed that we all live close and can do it on a pretty regular basis. It’s one of the thing that I am thankful for.

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San Diegans Call for Resignation of Police Chief William Lansdowne

November 26, 2011 by Source
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An Online Petition by Citizens of San Diego

Why This Is Important

Chief Lansdowne has mishandled the Occupy San Diego Protest. He has facilitated the waste of over 2.4 million dollars in 30 days on suppressing free speech at Civic Center Plaza in San Diego.

He has ordered the macing and beating of peaceful protesters and continues to waste over $57,000 per day on intimidating, harassing, and suppressing the peaceful protest rather than protecting and serving the interests of those exercising their freedom of speech and assembly.

We the Citizens of San Diego call on Chief Lansdowne to resign his post as Chief of Police immediately.

Sign this Petition!

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The shocking truth about the crackdown on the Occupy movement

November 26, 2011 by Source

The violent police assaults across the US are no coincidence. Occupy has touched the third rail of our political class’s venality

By Naomi Wolf / guardian.co.uk / November 25, 2011

US citizens of all political persuasions are still reeling from images of unparallelled police brutality in a coordinated crackdown against peaceful OWS protesters in cities across the nation this past week. An elderly woman was pepper-sprayed in the face; the scene of unresisting, supine students at UC Davis being pepper-sprayed by phalanxes of riot police went viral online; images proliferated of young women – targeted seemingly for their gender – screaming, dragged by the hair by police in riot gear; and the pictures of a young man, stunned and bleeding profusely from the head, emerged in the record of the middle-of-the-night clearing of Zuccotti Park.

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Ocean Beach Local and San Diego Occupier Continues Hunger Strike Through Thanksgiving

November 26, 2011 by Annie Lane
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For most people, Thanksgiving Day is as much about the food as it is self reflection. The turkey cooked to a golden brown, mashed potatoes topped with gravy, salty stuffing, sweet cranberry sauce and a collection of pies for the tasting.

But for OBcean John Kenney, this Thanksgiving was spent sipping glasses of water and contemplating the state of politics.

Kenney has been on a hunger strike for 19 days.

He announced his intentions at the San Diego City Council meeting on Nov. 8 and has since only indulged in water and the occasional coffee. His hope is simple: to get the attention of the City Council members and begin a dialogue regarding the rights of San Diego occupiers to gather at the Civic Center.

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Occupation Matters: News, Media, Opinions on ‘where we go from here’, and other Observations

November 23, 2011 by Source

Here’s a round-up of Occupation matters:

Police crackdowns on Occupy camps are the real threat

By Linda Lye / SFGate / November 23, 2011

Around California and all over the country, we have been told that Occupy encampments must come down because of “health and safety concerns.” But all around the country, we have seen the police take down these encampments with an overzealous use of pepper spray, tear gas and flash-bang grenades. The real “health threat” we should be concerned about is the threat to the health of our democracy when the government reacts to peaceful political expression with police violence. Go here for the remainder of this article.

San Diego Police on UC Davis Pepper Spraying: ‘We don’t want that here.’

By Danya Bacchus and Sarah Grieco / NBC San Diego / Nov 21, 2011

What happened at UC Davis has local law enforcement talking. San Diego Police officers have said they’ve had the tough job of balancing the first amendment rights of Occupy San Diego protesters and enforcing the law.

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Point Loma Whale Being Towed to Fiesta Island

November 23, 2011 by Staff
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UPDATE:Biologists have finished their necropsy of a dead fin whale.Siri Hakala with NOAA said the necropsy on the dead 67-foot fin whale shows whale died from a ship strike. …….Marine Biologists To Perform Necropsy On Fin Whale

On Wednesday, November 23rd, San Diego Lifeguards are towing the dead fin whale that washed up on an isolated Point Loma beach out to sea and then over to Fiesta Island.

A boat is being used to tow the 67-foot whale carcass to the Mission Bay area where National Marine Fisheries Service scientists will perform an autopsy – necropsy – to figure out what killed it and its fetus.

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San Diego Is Spending $57,000 Daily and Has Spent $2.4 Million Total Patrolling Occupy San Diego

November 23, 2011 by Source
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Editor: It’s official: the City of San Diego and its Police Department have finally released figures on how much is being spent patrolling the Occupy San Diego protests. (Were they finally pressured to do so by our searing posts? See here.) The City has spent nearly $57,000 daily and a total of $2.4 million on the protests since they began on October 7th. This does not include costs for the County Sheriffs when they were used. Here’s the San Diego U-T coverage:

By Matthew T. Hall and Ashly McGlone / San Diego U-T / Nov. 22, 2011

The city’s police department said Tuesday it paid $143,918 in overtime costs for four major operations during the Occupy San Diego protests against corporate greed that began Oct. 7 at Civic Center Plaza.

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Mayor Sanders Presented Special “Golden Pluto” Award by Koch Brothers for His Handling of Occupy Demonstrators

November 23, 2011 by Frank Gormlie
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PALM DESERT, CA. At a special banquet last night held at Rancho Las Palmas – one of Southern California’s most exclusive resorts – San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders was presented with one of the most coveted awards given out annually by the famous, billionaire Koch brothers.

Mayor Sanders was handed the “Golden Pluto” award by David Koch himself during the lavish banquet feast, which was attended by many big-city mayors, conservative politicians, pundits, and select press from all over the South West.

Sanders earned the sparkling “Golden Pluto” for the manner in which his office handled San Diego’s version of the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators. Early in their occupation of Civic Center Plaza in downtown San Diego, the demonstrators had their tents removed and were ordered upon threat of arrest to get rid of all sleeping bags and personal property.

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Court takes Occupy San Diego’s request for restraining order against the City under submission.

November 22, 2011 by Source

Editor: Here is a brief report of Occupy San Diego’s day in court by Todd Cardiff, the attorney who argued the demonstrators’ case in Federal Court today.

By Todd T. Cardiff, Esq.

On November 22, 2011, the Occupy SD movement, represented by Plaintiffs Eugene Davidovich, Davina Lynch, and John Kenney, appeared in court seeking a temporary restraining order (TRO) preventing the City from enforcing San Diego Municipal Code section 54.0110. Attorney Todd T. Cardiff represented the plaintiffs. Bryan Pease is the lead attorney on the case.

Plaintiffs argued that the ordinance prohibited people from placing any object on City property.

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Why is the UC Davis Chancellor near resigning for pepper spraying her students, but the San Diego Mayor is not even questioned for pepper spraying his constituents?

November 22, 2011 by Frank Gormlie
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Calls for the resignation of UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi have not quieted down despite her public apology on Monday for pepper spraying by campus police of peaceful, non-violent student demonstrators last Friday, November 18th. In fact today – this afternoon – there will be a “town hall” meeting on the campus to discuss the incident, and she has been invited.

The UC Davis Faculty Association called for her resignation, as videos of the pepper spraying went viral. These calls have resonated with student leaders, who have also called on the Chancellor to step down. The campus police chief and two of the primary officers involved have all been placed on administrative leave with pay.

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Court Hearing Today on Occupy San Diego’s Application for Restraining Order Against City of San Diego

November 22, 2011 by Frank Gormlie
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Today is the court hearing on Occupy San Diego’s application for a TRO (temporary restraining order) against the City of San Diego in enforcing Municipal Code section 54.0110. The hearing is in Federal Court at 2:30 pm with Judge William Hayes in Courtroom 4 (Fourth Floor). The court is located on 940 Front Street (between Broadway and F Street).

People are asked to attend the hearing, but also to abide by federal court rules, ie, no signs, slogans, T-shirts with slogans, video/still cameras, audio recorders allowed, and all cell phones must be off.

Read the court document filed by OSD attorney: Here is the Complaint.

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Buy Nothing Day – Occupy Christmas!

November 22, 2011 by Source
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The first Buy Nothing Day was organized in Mexico in September 1992 “as a day for society to examine the issue of over-consumption.” In 1997, it was moved to the Friday after American Thanksgiving, also called “Black Friday”, which is one of the 10 busiest shopping days in the United States. Outside North America and Israel, Buy Nothing Day is the following Saturday. Participation now includes more than 65 nations.

From AdBsuters

You’ve been sleeping on the streets for two months pleading peacefully for a new spirit in economics. And just as your camps are raided, your eyes pepper sprayed and your head’s knocked in, another group of people are preparing to camp-out. Only these people aren’t here to support occupy Wall Street, they’re here to secure their spot in line for a Black Friday bargain at Super Target and Macy’s.

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Civil Society at Ground Zero: You Can Crush the Flowers, But You Can’t Stop the Spring

November 22, 2011 by Source

Editor: A shortened version of the following article by Rebecca Solnit appeared on the Op-Ed page of today’s LA Times. We thought the entire piece is worthy of your read, so here it is.

By Rebecca Solnit / TomDispatch.com / November 22, 2011

Last Tuesday, I awoke in lower Manhattan to the whirring of helicopters overhead, a war-zone sound that persisted all day and then started up again that Thursday morning, the two-month anniversary of Occupy Wall Street and a big day of demonstrations in New York City. It was one of the dozens of ways you could tell that the authorities take Occupy Wall Street seriously, even if they profoundly mistake what kind of danger it poses. If you ever doubted whether you were powerful or you mattered, just look at the reaction to people like you (or your children) camped out in parks from Oakland to Portland, Tucson to Manhattan.

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Honor John F Kennedy – assassinated 48 years ago today – by learning why he was killed.

November 22, 2011 by Frank Gormlie
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Editor: Please note this was written 2 years ago. It’s now the 50th anniversary and we are running a series of articles. Here’s the first one. The 2nd on CNN joining the cover-up, and the 3rd “The Big Lie”.

November 22, 1963, – 48 years ago today – was one of the most terrible days in US history. It was the day that John F Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas.

No one yet has been successfully prosecuted for his murder. Yes, Lee Harvey Oswald was caught and then killed by Jack Ruby – but to this day – no one besides Oswald has been punished for the most despicable act in our lifetime.

Plenty of us boomers remember those days. I was 15 when it happened and I vividly recall that day at Point Loma High when we heard about the shooting. I felt sick and literally tossed my lunch into the garbage can at school. And I was sitting with my father a day later in our Point Loma home when we both witnessed Jack Ruby assassinate Oswald live on national television.

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UC Davis Cop Who Did the Pepper Spray

November 21, 2011 by Source
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Processed Food Industry Shows Who’s Boss in the School Cafeteria Line

November 21, 2011 by Source
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By Ed Bruske aka The Slow Cook / La Vida Locavore / Originally published Nov. 17, 2011

First it was potatoes. Now it’s pizza. The processed food industry is reaching out to its friends in Congress to scuttle new USDA guidelines that were supposed to make school meals healthier.

House and Senate negotiators have approved agriculture appropriations language that would allow the tomato paste on pizza to be counted as a vegetable serving under the USDA’s new school meal guidelines. Count this as the result of lobbying efforts by processed food giants ConAgra and Schwan Food.

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Change the Game – Occupying the Winter and Beyond

November 21, 2011 by Jim Miller
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Last week Adbusters, a publication that was important to the birth of the Occupy Wall Street movement, put out the following:

TACTICAL BRIEFING #18
Occupy the High Ground!

Hey you creatives, artists, environmentalists, workers, moms, dads, students, malcontents, do-gooders and aspiring martyrs in the snow:

The last four months have been hard fought, inspiring and delightfully revolutionary. We brought tents, hunkered down, held our assemblies, and lobbed a meme-bomb that continues to explode the world’s imagination. Many of us have never felt so alive. We have fertilized the future with our revolutionary spirit … and a thousand flowers will surely bloom in the coming Spring.

But as winter approaches an ominous mood could set in … hope thwarted is in danger of turning sour, patience exhausted becoming anger, militant nonviolence losing its allure. It isn’t just the mainstream media that says things could get ugly. What shall we do to keep the magic alive?

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