Category Archives: Afghanistan

FTAC: Aghanistan, Corruption, and Greed

28 Tuesday Sep 2021

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Afghanistan, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Europe, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, North America

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While the Modern West most certainly appears to be at war with feudal-medieval, narcissistic, and totalitarian forces and tendencies worldwide, there seems a part in which the Modern face off with the Modern over the management of corruption and greed. This note From the Awesome Conversation may be accompanied by a minimum of inline or separate references, but I do believe each claim or implication easily substantiated with a little bit of online research effort on the reader’s part.

From the Awesome Conversation (Now Growing Old as I Grow Old) 🙂

Inline URLs have been added to the original plain text.

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HE was thinking “Putin”, whose black market provided the Taliban with arms and materiel and whose white market sells defense goods to allies on Afghanistan’s border. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/08/20/trump-peace-deal-taliban/ Grand Game thinking and Rare Earth Minerals have been a part of this tug-of-war between Moscow and Washington as has been the intent of “updating” Islam or Islamists hewing to impossibly archaic beliefs and execrable behavioral standards. Russia now has the Taliban where it has needed them — in power, out in the open, and free of any kind of support from Washington. 🙂

Moscow’s “Absolutism”, “Active Measures”, “Hybrid Warfare”, and Medieval “Realpolitik” have been somewhat proven against EU/NATO, which by “Reflexive Control” (see “Business Insider, Zawahiri, Russia“) has itself been pushed toward the “New Nationalism” with Hungary, Italy, Poland, and Turkey motivated most of all to march forward into the feudal-medieval past.

Add the arc of Soviet / post-Soviet alliances x Areas of Control x Regions of Influence, and one may glimpse the persistently barbaric and feudal world Moscow has in mind for the global future.

Not only Zawahiri but Jeffrey Epstein as well had Moscow stays in Russia], and the medieval emphasis on “kompromat” — and potential public embarrassment — may have come through most clearly during the Trump Administration (and Trump especially had relationships involving criminal elements and substantial sums of Russian money — start with Craig Unger on all of that).

One more note on Afghanistan: the fate of that state would seem inseparable from corruption and greed on the part of all involved, from the native warlords to American industries fueled by Big Defense contracts and supported by complex battle systems requiring the cooperation and presence of ready assets, especially air-related, and the administrative and technical abilities needed to run and sustain operations.

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Related Online

Kazmin, Amy, Benjamin Parkin, Katrina Manson. “Low morale, no support and bad politics: why the Afghan army folded.” Financial Times, August 15, 2021.

Wilkie, Christina. “‘9/11 millionaires’ and mass corruption: How American money helped break Afghanistan.” CNBC, September 10, 2021.

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FTAC: The Modern of the World v Feudal-Medieval Barbarity — What the Taliban Represent

11 Saturday Sep 2021

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Afghanistan, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars

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No introduction.

True scope: East-West Rivalry; Moscow v Washington; Political Absolutism – i.e., the power of the sovereign to destroy property and persons alike with impunity – v Democratic Distribution of Power & Rule of Law. Flies in the ointment: black markets; corruption; guerrilla wars; low intensity conflicts; wars by proxy.

Start here with 9/11: https://www.businessinsider.com/exploring-al-qaedas-murky-connection-to-russian-intelligence-2014-6

For fair good reason, the nuclear powers seldom directly confront one another. Financial and political arrangements and families have become deeply entangled above the table and below it, and there’s not much we ordinary people can do about it but ride out the storms with awareness that ultimately the modern world, as we would know it, is well at war with feudal-medieval power as well as barbaric and primitive forces in nature expressed through history.

We’ll survive.

And the Taliban?

The Taliban are already failing Afghanistan, and Afghanistan, by way of our investment and presence across 20 years, has now to choose for itself — out of sight but in the hearts of Afghans and through resistance — what it wishes to be.

One may hope the warlords and others have no wish to become or remain themselves irrecoverably backward.

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Taliban: The Whole World Is Watching

06 Monday Sep 2021

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Afghanistan, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Political Psychology

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And what is the world watching?

Potentially barbaric medieval ethical, moral, and spiritual decision-making in near real time for which the modern of this 21st Century need have no respect.

Here are two old examples of that kind of decision-making — According to the lore, Muhammad had had Safiyah’s husband killed for his treasure, and the murder was done in the most gruesome and torturing way: a fire was made on his belly to force his confession of knowledge of where the whole of that treasure had been buried. In proximate time, the prophet had taken Saifyah as war booty and later elevated her status to wife and free woman. How nice.

In near history, the rape of a 13-year-old Aisha Abrahim Duhulow by three men was followed up by stoning her to death for adultery. The private act of her tormentors has never been punished while her punishment unto death took place in a stadium before a thousand or so spectators.

How would such “justice” serve had what was meted to Safiyah or Aish involved your wife, daughter, or mother?

In such primitive manner, Muslims become the victims of more malign, narcissistic, and strident Muslims who have chosen to cover their own piratical behavior with familiar dogma.

Sweet words?

Foul deeds.

Two reports related in ethical, moral, and “spiritual” dimensions have surfaced recently in Afghanistan.

BBC. “Afghanistan: Taliban accused of killing pregnant police officer.” September 6, 2021. To be fair, the BBC has reported, “Details of the incident are still sketchy as many in Firozkoh fear retribution if they speak out. But three sources have told the BBC that the Taliban beat and shot Negar dead in front of her husband and children on Saturday.”

We shall have to wait and see whether the “New Improved Taliban” step up to the challenge of undertaking an empirical investigation using modern forensic methods amidst popular challenge. What integrity will they put on display; with what broad acceptance and trust may their findings be met? So we shall see.

Here’s another telltale with fear in the wind —

Looking pale and shattered having already suffered a beating at the hands of Taliban thugs, Gulafroz spoke in English, saying: ‘I was one of the very senior policewomen in Afghanistan.

‘I did everything to encourage women into the police, against the wishes of the Taliban. Now my life is in danger. Real danger.

‘Please help me and my family.’

Stewart, Will. “Top female Afghan cop beaten and hunted by the Taliban pleads for help from the West after eight-month-pregnant policewoman is executed by the terror group for removing a flag.”. Daily Mail, September 6, 2021.

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FTAC: Global QOL (Qualities of Living)

25 Wednesday Aug 2021

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, A Little Wisdom, Afghanistan

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Instead of focusing on disaster, it would be more helpful if the Good of the world focused on improved Qualities of Living — biological, financial, psychological, social, spatial, spiritual — near and far. We need healthy communities globally as well as a healthy planet, and where there’s open conflict, we are collectively failing at both.

There’s the word from my low on-high seat, but I believe there’s some truth to having our obsessions and worries controlling our destinies in place of strong good possibilities and dreams appropriate to our individual and global existential challenges. If the latter attitude were prevalent across cultures, we would be chasing large fires with plantings conducive to producing a right human-healthy planetary atmosphere.

And why not?

Why not view natural destruction as opportunity for lending nature a hand on the positive side?

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In Afghanistan this past month, people, notable people, people in positions of great responsibility and power, allowed or enabled corruption and greed to overtake better judgment and ceded power — for the time being — to the most absolute, fanatical, narcissistic, and ruthless of malign actors who will now proceed to destroy modern education at its outermost reach and with its Draconian views dishearten its population. The Taliban, so expert in barbarism and terror, will probably fail at every modern challenge and task, further inviting into their medieval sphere greater and more controlling powers, one criminal, the other dystopian, when modern Afghani People could just as well run circles around their malignancy and regain for themselves a more authentic contemporary dignity and freedom.

And why not?

Why not view the Taliban as the egregious insult to universal dignity, freedom, prosperity, and security that it has proven itself to be?

Afghanistan, should it reenter a politically coherent and cohesive phase, would be wise to help its latest burden fly off the rails on its own.

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While the Taliban debate their 7th Century beliefs and Afghanistan goes dark, figuratively if not literally (but that’s a real possibility), the more advanced worlds as well as the Taliban might with to reconsider the Qualities of Living involved in the management of any geopolitical space (again biological, psychological, social, spatial, spiritual): where on earth does God, nature, or the universe, for that matter, protect air, soil, and water quality? Ask the same about security for persons and property? Given that we are all part of a gregarious species, what are “social freedoms” and what might the best societies offer in latitude and range for the full suite of our human enthusiasms, interests, and shared as well as dissenting values? What are our best options in our spiritual existence in relation to choice and reason?

Are forced confinement, control, and the delivery of feudal-medieval darkness really the best the Taliban’s Kabul might do?

While the Taliban appear on track for that, the world has changed and will continue changing beyond them for the better and by the most progressing of contemporary democratic standards. Perhaps all, including the Taliban themselves, would do better to dwell on transformations more suited to defending and serving earth and her human cargo — i.e., all of the rest of the world — than to a now deeply impoverished 7th Century system of belief and hypocritical religious egotism.

Anyone who thinks that the 21st century Taliban is a new version is delusional. Taliban spokesperson Zabiullah Mujahid publicly stated, “Women will be afforded all rights within the limits of Islam [Shariah].” However, they have not explained what they mean by “the limits of Islam,” given their messages are not in sync with their actions on the ground. What form of education will be provided and will women’s rights be safeguarded as before? Will women be able to maintain their positions in media and government?

Even if the Taliban stick to their words, they would still fall short of their obligations under international human rights law. The Taliban’s way of justice translates to harsh punishments, including public executions and beheading of accused murderers and adulterers. It is very unlikely that they will accept any form of criticism, which is incompatible with the universal declaration of human rights.

Mahendru, Ritu. “Afghan Lives Matter: What Price Would Afghans Have to Pay for Peace?” The Diplomat, August 24, 2021.

QOL: Qualities of Living

Biological: Environmental and Human Health

Financial: Actualizing, Beyond Basic, Individual and Family Sufficiency

Psychological: High Degrees of Freedom, Positive Outlook, Potential for Fulfillment, Good Self-Concept, Reliable Community and Personal Security

Spatial: Bases and Boundaries x Person x Family x Clan x Tribe x Nation x Ethnic x Transnational Cultures / Defenses and Retreats

Spiritual: Broad Awareness, Consciousness, Conscience x Comprehension of Community and Personal Place in Time

Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), May 31, 2016.

Related: “Better Life Index”, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

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Taliban Poised to Suffocate Afghanistan (Again)

18 Wednesday Aug 2021

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Afghanistan, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars

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August 18, 2021.

Wikipedia offers a term for what happens next: “Talibanization“.

Read it and weep.

India Times, August 14, 2021.

From Journeyman Pictures, “Afghani Life Under Taliban Rule (1998)” — and regarding filming (in 1998): “According to Islam and according to our society, we are not allowed . . . under Islamic rule, there is no question of ‘why’. In Islamic society, nothing is allowed such as television, such as type (stet) such as any other recording, uh, recorders to play . . . .” (1:46-2:13).

From U.S. Department of State (November 17, 2001): “Report on the Taliban’s War Against Women”: “The life of Afghan women is so bad. We are locked at home and cannot see the sun” (Nageeba, a 35-year-old widow in Kabul).

The Taliban wants to establish an Islamic government in Afghanistan, ideally as an emirate, which would be led by a religious leader and draw its legitimacy from clerics. Afghanistan is currently an Islamic republic, which is led by a president and draws legitimacy from universal suffrage and accordance with international laws and norms.

Maizland, Lindsay. “The Taliban in Afghanistan.” Council on Foreign Relations, August 3, 2021 (last update).

Welcome back to the Old New (Old Medieval) World.

How long before Darkness — the affirmation of ignorance and the revival of medieval “Islamic” codes, punishments, and tortures resume?

Having won their war, the Taliban have seen Muslims flee their presence en masse.

Having won their war, the Taliban must now defend with weapons their authority in Afghanistan.

August 18, 2021.

Having won their war, the Taliban must impose their will on modern Afghani people.

August 16, 2021.
The full interview with Mahbooba Seraj may be viewed on YouTube –

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjYh6p0CGi8&t=5s

(August 9, 2021).

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The best and worst thing to ever happen to the Taliban?

17 Tuesday Aug 2021

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Afghanistan, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, Islamic Small Wars

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Winning.

The Taliban will have to defend Afghanistan now, and they will not be able to do that without serious Chinese and Russian and other support in the navigating of modern international legal, political, and technology systems.

Worse for the Taliban: Afghanis appear to fear them, not respect them.

Apart from fighting, first the Russians — and then the Americans who helped them stave off the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan — they have done nothing for Afghanistan apart from threatening, at least, to again impose their medieval will on a modern society. In that way, their “win” may more resemble the tyranny of the Islamic Revolution in Iran than true modern cultural Afghani self-determination.

Today, August 17, 2021.

To garner respect, the Taliban would have to deliver into their own outlook and politics the most advanced of the world’s standards having to do with comprehension of the human condition, the individual yearning for autonomy and freedom from absolute power — authoritarianism — and the dogma and propaganda employed to justify its own sadism. It has missed its own complete education thus far in the collective poetry of the world and while offering assurances has been quick nonetheless to paint over a vibrant modernity with its own darkness.

Will the Taliban escape their own darkness, in essence their own culturally suffocating presence, and make the steep climb into the light of awareness, compassion, and responsibility in concert with the decent, engaged, and responsible of the world?

The Obama White House, June 4, 2009.

While today’s west will always support indigenous self-determination and respect the sovereignty of independent states, it has demonstrated that it will not respect claims to ethnic, racial, or religious supremacism within its own bounds, and it will not approve or endorse as much elsewhere in the world. As a political bloc, EU/NATO will forever abhor absolutism, bigotry, cruelty, enslavement, hate, and subjugation — and all of that whether threatened by forces or processes within or by the enemies of freedom and security without.

Related Online

American Islamic Forum for Democracy

Fair, C. Christine. “Pakistan and the United States Have Betrayed the Afghan People.” Foreign Policy, August 16, 2021.

Jason, Mike. “What We Got Wrong in Afghanistan.” The Atlantic, August 12, 2021.

Muslim American Leadership Alliance

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Afghanistan Welcomes the Taliban

16 Monday Aug 2021

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Afghanistan, Islamic Small Wars

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The Telegraph, August 16, 2021.

Russia, duplicitous and playing beneath the table as well as above it, fairly owns that deck of cards labelled “REALPOLITIK”. It has in its underhanded fashion furnished the Taliban all along with Russian arms and materiel while at the same time mouthing its anti-terrorist stance. Yesterday, while former Afghani President Ghani fled Kabul with, possibly, so much loot that it would not fit in his helicopter, the Taliban was deploying guards to the Russian Embassy.

How sweet this victory for the most archaic, medieval, narcissistic, and selfish of human political minds across cultures.

The Afghan People, the Afghan Military, the United States of America, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) have been not only humiliated by the Taliban’s guerrilla putsch made possible by corruption within the Afghan government — or money would have reached its troops and those troops would have been more appreciated, moved, and better defended when most needed — the same have been looted by Moscow, more or less, and left to do their “lessons learned” back home, which from today may become less safe in relation to the deeply retrograde Islamic Revolution in Afghanistan.

Keys

–Rightful CIA intercession on behalf of the mujaheddin during the Soviet Army’s invasion of Afghanistan (see “Operation Cyclone” for the details).

— While both the CIA and Russian interests appeared to mirror one another in retreat from Afghanistan and leaving the state to its own devices, BackChannels believes Moscow directly influenced Ayman Al-Zawahiri during a 1996-97 detention in Russia and through him the compact with Osama Bin Laden that would produce Al-Qaeda and lead to 9/11 and successive acts of Islamist terror worldwide. Conspiratorial? Delusional? Look again at whose embassy is not only staying put in Kabul but which has Taliban guards keeping it secured.

–Today, “Moscow-Kabul” may be added to “Moscow-Tehran”, another block-and-goad nexus against western culture, democracy, humanism, and liberalism.

For peace, Asian powers as well as EU/NATO have with half-measures navigated what they have believed to be an “East-West Rivalry” sustained on business and political accommodations and tensions, and as much would seem in the natural course of diplomatic and international affairs. However, BackChannels has long noted a much different axis in conflict, and that has been the tension between Feudal-Medieval Personalities and States, the chief representatives of “Political Absolutism”, and the Modern of Mind devoted to universal dignity and freedom in the address of common and global challenges to human well-being and the survival of Earth herself.

Moscow and Company (lately Beijing as well) have been most interested in Power and Wealth benefiting select elites as determined in each respective absolutist and feudal-medieval framework while much of the rest of the world now cries for deliverance from them with hopes for modern improvements in Qualities of Living wherever life has planted them.

The deeply archaic and medieval Taliban were not welcomed yesterday in Kabul nearly as much as dreaded and feared.

Modern universal moral revulsion will now oppose the Taliban’s primitive narcissism, rigidity, and violence, and however disorganized it may be, it will by way of species-wide intellectual evolution emerge naturally and implacably — no less so than what mankind has done to create the culturally interwoven complex machinery that delivers the modern world in materials and services — and yesterday’s “victory” (over millions determined to flee it and now subject to living beneath the lowering shadow of the fear of it) may yet prove but the beginning of the Islamists own end.

Sky News, August 16, 2021.

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Afghanistan: On The Fall of Kabul

15 Sunday Aug 2021

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Afghanistan, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars

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CBC News, August 15, 2021.

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Two Afghan officials say President Ashraf Ghani has left the country.

The officials, one from former President Hamid Karzai’s office and another an aide on the Afghan security council, told The Associated Press that Ghani left Sunday. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to brief journalists.

Ghani left along with his National Security Adviser Hamdullah Mohib and a second close associate. It wasn’t immediately clear where they went.

Meanwhile, the Taliban said it would further enter Kabul on Sunday night after spending hours on the city’s outskirts.

Seir, Ahmad, Rahim Faiez, Tameem Akhgar, Jon Gambrell. “Officials: Afghan president has left the country.” AP, August 15, 2021.

While ordinary Afghani cower within or flee their presence, the Taliban appear to have just won their chance to further fail and horrify Afghanistan.

Posted by Astra, May 11, 2016.

The Taliban were born when Mullah Omar took revenge on a tank crew and its commander for the rape of two village girls. The crew were killed and the commander as well by hanging him from his own tank barrel. Omar then fled with his band to recruit an army of resistance to the then Soviet invasion.

Most who have followed Afghanistan from the Cold War forward know that story and the subsequent arming of the mujaheddin, the defeat of the Soviet Army, the mirroring CIA retreat from the theater, and the final bankrupting of Soviet Union and the opening of the gangway for the lawless of Russia for 1992. At the time, I believe — unless corrected — the mujaheddin were left with their ideologies and weapons and a broken nation that would then be subdued by arms, but in an interesting turnabout, that loose energy would fall to Russian encouragement. The situation would be analogous to clearing a house of burglars only to leave one’s own gun out on the dining room table.

Ayman al-Zawahiri appears to have been by mutual intent detained in Russia at the end of 1996 and released to travel to Afghanistan in 1997. By 1998, he and Osama Bin Laden would have a deal plus funding plus manpower motivated against the west and would three years later deliver “9/11“. For the big recap of the narrative that followed, see Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). “The U.S. War in Afghanistan: 1999-2021. Here’s the copy at the end of that piece —

April 14, 2021
Biden Decides on Complete U.S. Withdrawal by 9/11

President Biden announces that the United States will not meet the deadline set under the U.S.-Taliban agreement to withdraw all troops by May 1 and instead releases a plan for a full withdrawal by September 11, 2021. “It’s time to end America’s longest war,” he says. The remaining 3,500 troops in Afghanistan will be withdrawn regardless of whether progress is made in intra-Afghan peace talks or the Taliban reduces its attacks on Afghan security forces and citizens. NATO troops in Afghanistan will also leave. Biden says Washington will continue to assist Afghan security forces and support the peace process. The Taliban says it will not participate in “any conference” on Afghanistan’s future until all foreign troops leave.

What have the Afghani People to look forward to under Taliban rule?

Compelled affirmation of archaic attitudes and beliefs enforced by continuous surveillance, intimidation, and violence — Afghanistan has just been returned to the status of a medieval theocracy;

Feudal-medieval conflict as religious principles fail to resolve personal, tribal, state, and international disputes or temper the criminality and greed that have corrupted not only the politics of the state but have seen the most unsavory of receipts fill the Taliban’s own war chest.

Afghanistan’s women will be diminished as persons, conservative or modern, and again mastered by a patriarchy infamous for its cruelties and most unbalanced and terrifying “guidance” as laid out by Islamic law.

Related Online

Coren, Anna, Sandi Sidhu, Tim Lister, and Abdul Basir Bina. “Taliban fighters execute 22 Afghan commandos as they try to surrender.” CNN, July 14, 2021.

Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). “The U.S. War in Afghanistan: 1999-2021.

Felbab-Brown, Vanda. “Drugs, security, and counternarcotics policies in Afghanistan.” Brookings, October 29, 2020.

Goodhand, Jonathan. “What the Taliban’s advance in Afghanistan means for the global drug trade.” Scroll.In, August 13, 2021.

Haider, Mobarak. Taliban: The Tip of a Holy Iceberg. Create Space Independent Publishing Platform, May 16, 2010.

Mohamed, Hamza and Ramy Allahoum. “President Ashraf Ghani leaves Afghanistan: Live”. Al Jazeera, August 15, 2021.

Sanger, David E. and Helene Cooper. “Taliban Sweep in Afghanistan Follows Years of U.S. Miscalculations.” The New York Times, August 15, 2021.

Schindler, John. “Exploring Al Qaeda’s Murky Connection to Russian Intelligence.” Business Insider, June 10, 2014.

Shamoun, Sam. “Compel them or Not?” Answering Islam, n.d.

Shamoun, Sam. “Fighting All People Until They Do What?” Answering Islam. n.d.

Ward, Alexander, Paul McLeary, Lara Seligman, David Cohen. “Taliban seize power amid chaos in Kabul.” Politico, August 15, 2021.

France 24 English, August 15, 2021.

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