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Nuclear Ukraine?

Kiev is capable of building an atomic device, and its leaders often outline such thoughts

By Olga Sukharevskaya | RT | January 6, 2023

Last year, Western media and high-ranking politicians actively discussed the possibility of Russian troops using atomic weapons in Ukraine. There has even been speculation on the likelihood of a nuclear war breaking out. However, it could be said that the risk is probably a lot higher on the other side of the barricades.

Ukraine’s Atomic History

Ukraine was a nuclear state after the collapse of the USSR, when 1,700 active atomic warheads remained in the country. Its politicians of that time had the prudence to abandon this status. The weapons were taken to Russia under international control, and their means of delivery were destroyed. Ukraine’s missile silos, with the exception of one which is now a museum near Kiev, were blown up, while its strategic bombers capable of carrying nuclear weapons were either transferred to Russia or destroyed.

Despite this, there were still many nuclear specialists in Ukraine, as research into nuclear fission has been conducted in Kharkov since the 1930s. In addition, five nuclear power plants were built in Ukraine during the Soviet years: Zaporozhye, Rovno, Khmelnitsky, and South-Ukrainian, as well as the infamous Chernobyl, where an accident involving a power unit led to an explosion that spewed radioactive fallout throughout Europe.

In addition, uranium is extracted at a deposit in Ukraine’s Kirovograd Region and enriched at a plant in the city of Zheltye Vody. In the 2010s, there were plans with Russia’s Rosatom to build a plant in Ukraine that would produce fuel for nuclear power stations. However, these were abandoned after the Maidan coup in 2014, when the country adopted an adversarial stance towards Russia.

At present, three of Ukraine’s five original nuclear power plants remain under its control. Chernobyl, which continued to generate electricity even after the 1986 accident, was finally decommissioned in 2020, while Zaporozhye, the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, has been guarded by Russian troops since last year. It is currently being run by Rosatom but does not produce electricity, largely for safety reasons. This is due to regular rocket and artillery attacks by Ukrainian troops, which have damaged numerous pieces of auxiliary equipment.

Push to Reobtain Nuclear Weapons

It should be noted that not everyone in Ukraine was happy that the country gave up its nuclear weapons. Ukrainian politicians have often failed to hide the fact that their dream of reobtaining nuclear weapons is not so much connected with their country’s security, as the desire to dictate their will to the rest of the world. Radical Ukrainian nationalists were particularly dissatisfied with the abandonment of the country’s nuclear status, and many of their manifestos contain a clause calling for it to be restored.

For example, “the return of nuclear weapons” is specifically cited as a goal in paragraph 2 of the Military Doctrine section in the program statement of the Patriot of Ukraine organization, while paragraph 7 of its Foreign Policy section reads: “The ultimate goal of Ukrainian foreign policy is world domination.” Patriot of Ukraine was created in 2014 by the notorious Andrey Biletsky, who formed it based on the ideology of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion and had dreamed of Ukraine possessing nuclear weapons as far back as 2007.

In 2009, the Ternopil Regional Council, which was then dominated by Oleg Tianibok’s neo-Nazi Svoboda Party (called the Social-National Party until 2004), demanded that Ukraine’s president, prime minister, and head of the Verkhovna Rada “terminate the Budapest Memorandum of 1994 and restore Ukraine’s nuclear status.”

Ukraine’s longing for an atomic bomb especially increased after February 2014. In an interview with USA Today in March of that year, Ukrainian MP Pavel Rizanenko called Ukraine’s accession to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons a “big mistake.” And that was not just the opinion of one MP. Just a few days later, representatives of the Batkivshchyna party, headed by ex-Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko, and UDAR, headed by Kiev’s current mayor, Vitaly Klitschko, including the secretary of the parliamentary Committee on National Security and Defense, Sergey Kaplin, submitted a bill on withdrawing from the non-proliferation treaty. Kaplin claimed that Ukraine could create nuclear weapons in just two years because it already had almost everything necessary: The fissile materials, equipment (except centrifuges), technology, specialists, and even means of delivery. In September of the same year, Ukraine’s minister of defense, Valery Geletey, also expressed the desire to develop nuclear weapons.

In December 2018, the former representative of the Ukrainian mission to NATO, Major General Pyotr Garashchuk, announced the real possibility of Ukraine creating its own nuclear weapons. In 2019, Aleksandr Turchinov, who usurped power in Ukraine in February of 2014, called Ukraine’s renunciation of nuclear weapons a “historic mistake.” Following him, in April 2021, the Ukrainian ambassador to Germany, Andrey Melnik, stated that if the West did not help Ukraine in its confrontation with Russia, the country would launch a nuclear program and create an atomic bomb. And on February 19, 2022, before the start of Russia’s special military operation, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky announced at the Munich Security Conference that Ukraine has the right to abandon the Budapest Memorandum, which proclaimed the country’s nuclear-free status.

Perhaps the most striking statement by a Ukrainian politician was made by David Arakhamia, the head of the Ukrainian parliament’s ruling parliamentary faction, Servant of the People. “We could blackmail the whole world, and we would be given money to service (nuclear weapons), as is happening in many other countries now,” he said in mid-2021.

Range of Possibilities

Is Ukraine technically capable of creating an atomic bomb? Absolutely. Yes, enriching uranium-235 to the purity necessary to set off a chain reaction would cost a lot, primarily to create centrifuges for separating isotopes. However, though this may be the most effective way to separate isotopes, it’s not the only one. The first American bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were created without the use of this technology.

In addition, it should not be forgotten that there are not only uranium, but also plutonium bombs. Breeder reactors are used to synthesize this chemical element, most often using heavy-water reactor technology, and research reactors are capable of producing weapons-grade plutonium. There is presently a nuclear research installation at the Kharkov Institute of Physics and Technology, and a VVR-M reactor suitable for plutonium production at the Institute for Nuclear Research of Ukraine’s National Academy of Sciences in Kiev. Until March 2022, there was a US-built facility in Kharkov that could produce isotopes by irradiating the starting materials with a powerful neutron flux, which could also be used to develop fissile materials for a bomb.

In addition, Ukraine has the technical capability to create a nuclear weapon based on uranium-233, rather than uranium-235, which is usually used. A similar bomb was tested by the US in 1955 during Operation Teapot, and its power was comparable to that of the Fat Man bomb that destroyed the Japanese city of Nagasaki. To obtain uranium-233, it is enough to replace one of the fuel assemblies of a conventional nuclear power plant reactor with a thorium-232 cassette, a supply of which is located near Mariupol, a city that was fiercely defended by Ukrainian nationalists from the Azov regiment earlier this year.

There is another indirect sign that both uranium and plutonium versions of nuclear weapons have been secretly developed at the direction of the post-Maidan authorities. At the beginning of 2021, Ukraine completely banned the export of spent nuclear fuel (SNF) to Russia, as was required by an agreement on its supply by Rosatom. SNF, among other things, is a source of weapons-grade plutonium, which can be isolated from fuel cells that have been in a nuclear power plant reactor.

Nuclear Power on the Brink of Disaster

Just as dangerous is the nuclear power policy pursued by the Ukrainian government.

Ukraine inherited five nuclear power plants with 18 active reactors from the USSR. Three of them located at the Chernobyl NPP were decommissioned by 2000. Five of the six reactors at the Zaporozhye NPP, three of the four reactors at the Rovno NPP, one of the two reactors at the Khmelnitsky NPP, and all three reactors at the South Ukraine NPP have exceeded their original lifespans and received extensions of their operating lives for another 10 to 15 years. The license extensions have sometimes been granted with violations of existing regulations since, after 2015, Ukraine’s State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate stopped cooperating with Russian vendors and has not overhauled reactor vessels, which become brittle after prolonged exposure to neutron radiation. Back in 2015, independent experts noted the critical condition of Reactor 1 of the South Ukraine NPP, which, nevertheless, has had its service life extended until 2025.

Ukraine’s Union of Veterans of Nuclear Energy and Industry sent a warning letter to the government in April 2020, arguing that the country’s nuclear energy sector was faced with a “threatening situation,” which, according to the authors of the letter, could well result in “a new Chernobyl.”

The lack of accountability, which led to the 1986 disaster, does not stop at neglecting the technical condition of the reactors that are not being properly monitored and maintained by their developers. During Viktor President Yushchenko’s administration, the decision was made to replace some of the standard fuel rods in Ukrainian reactors with unlicensed fuel assemblies supplied by Westinghouse Electric Company. In 2012, that experiment led to an emergency shutdown of Reactor 3 of the South Ukraine NPP, after Westinghouse fuel assemblies were damaged due to the specific design features of the American counterfeits.

That fuel assemblies fabricated by Westinghouse tend to malfunction in Soviet-designed reactors was not a revelation. They have repeatedly caused emergencies at NPPs in Finland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia, but that did not deter the Ukrainian leadership. Not even losses of around $175 million caused by using non-standard assemblies persuaded Ukraine against conducting risky experiments with its nuclear assets.

The new ‘revolutionary’ government, which came to power in 2014, was quick to plunge into its own experiments with nuclear power together with Westinghouse, which was suffering from financial distress. For the company, which filed for bankruptcy in 2017, the Ukrainian market could have been a much-needed lifeline – however, it wasn’t to be, because it once again emerged that the counterfeit fuel assemblies were dangerous for VVER-type reactors. Emergencies at Ukrainian NPPs became a routine event, and yet Westinghouse assemblies accounted for 46% of all nuclear fuel used in Ukraine by the end of 2018.

These risky experiments went beyond using non-standard fuel assemblies. In the fall of 2014, Kiev sent direct orders to boost electricity production at the South Ukraine NPP by 5 to 7%. To achieve this, three VVER-1000 reactors were supposed to operate in “controlled runaway mode,” and a whole algorithm was developed by Ukrainian and British engineers. It was this type of experiment that resulted in the explosion at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in 1986. A potential disaster was only averted by an ‘Italian strike’ organized by the NPP personnel, who refused to fulfil outsiders’ orders. This might have been what former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen meant when he said: “We have, upon Ukrainian request, sent a small team of civilian experts to Ukraine to assist the Ukrainians in improving security of their civilian nuclear plants.”

‘Revolutionary expedience’ was used as a pretext for a mass exodus of experienced nuclear engineers from Ukrainian NPPs. As Ukrainian MP Viktoria Voytsitska said in 2018, literally all categories of workers were thinking of leaving Ukrainian NPPs, from steam engine drivers and riggers to engineers who controlled reactors and other high-tech equipment.

Provocation for Nuclear Escalation

After Russian forces assumed control of the Zaporozhye NPP, it became a target for incessant Ukrainian shelling, sometimes with the use of Western-made multiple launch rocket systems, heavy artillery, and attack drones. The plant sustained significant damage and was forced to stop generating electricity due to the destruction of auxiliary equipment and the threat to the reactors themselves. At the same time, an IAEA mission “was unable” to establish who was firing on the nuclear site, where Russian soldiers were present.

As the Western media was busy whipping up hysteria over the potential use of tactical nuclear weapons by Russia in Ukraine, it transpired that Ukraine was allegedly plotting a provocation of exactly that nature. According to Russian intelligence services, in October 2022, the Eastern Mining and Enrichment Combine in the town of Zheltye Vody and the Kiev Institute for Nuclear Research were in the final stages of developing a dirty bomb on the orders of the Ukrainian government. A missile plant in Dnepropetrovsk built a mock-up of the Russian Iskander missile, which was supposed to carry a radioactive charge and be “shot down” over the Chernobyl exclusion zone. The goal was to accuse Russia of using nuclear weapons and push NATO to retaliate in kind. In other words, to start a nuclear war in Europe.

All these facts mean that present-day Ukraine is arguably a real threat to nuclear security not just in Europe, but on a global scale. It has everything it would take, from irresponsible people in charge of safety and security at nuclear sites, to the technical capabilities.

Olga Sukharevskaya is an ex-Ukrainian diplomat.

January 6, 2023 Posted by | Militarism, Nuclear Power, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | 2 Comments

‘It is Immoral to Fund This’: GOP Rep Blasts Ukraine’s Zelensky for Rejecting Christmas Truce

By Ilya Tsukanov – Samizdat – 06.01.2023

On Thursday, in response to an appeal by Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a ceasefire across the front in Ukraine starting at noon on Orthodox Christmas Eve and running through Christmas Day January 6-7.

Arizona Congressman Paul Gosar has slammed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for rejecting Russia’s truce offering, and reiterated his position that continued US assistance to Ukraine is “immoral.”

“Unsurprisingly, Zelensky has rejected peace. It is immoral to fund this war,” Gosar tweeted.

Zelensky stated late Thursday that Ukrainian forces would not join their Russian counterparts in adhering to the 36-hour Orthodox Christmas ceasefire, and accused Moscow of seeking to use the truce as a “cover” to stop the Ukrainian military’s advance and to bring more troops and equipment to the Donbass.

Ukrainian presidential advisor Mikhail Podolyak dismissed Patriarch Kirill’s ceasefire request as a “cynical trap and a piece of propaganda,” and suggested the Russian Orthodox Church is “not an authority for global Orthodoxy.”

President Biden also dismissed the truce, accusing Russia’s Putin of “trying to find some oxygen” and charging him with war crimes.

The vast majority of Orthodox Christians, including Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians and their various denominations, celebrate Christmas on January 7, in accordance with the Julian calendar.

The United Nations said Thursday it would welcome an Orthodox Christmas truce, even if it would “not replace a just peace” in Ukraine.

Russian officials including President Putin have repeatedly floated peace talks with their Ukrainian counterparts going all the way back to late February and March of 2022, outlining a series of terms for peace including security for Donbass and Crimea, and Ukrainian neutrality in exchange for security guarantees. Media reported in September that Russia and Ukraine appear to have agreed on a tentative peace deal in April, but the deal was scuttled after now ex-UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson flew to Kiev to sabotage an agreement. Since then, Ukraine has rejected all Russian overtures toward peace talks, and has been pumped up with tens of billions of dollars of NATO weapons assistance.

Representative Gosar has become a consistent critic of US support for Ukraine, voting against new aid packages and calling on Washington to address America’s domestic problems, such as the national debt, homelessness, and the crisis at the border with Mexico. The Arizona Republican is one of twenty House members of the GOP holding up the selection of a new House speaker, rejecting California Congressman Kevin McCarthy’s bid on charges that he would do the bidding of the “uniparty” establishment.

January 6, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , | 2 Comments

American Japs Imprisoned

Tales of the American Empire | January 5, 2023

A famous tale from World War II are the heroic deeds of the US Army’s 442nd Infantry Regiment that was manned by nearly all second-generation Japanese Americans. These men served a government that had arrested them and their families for the crime of being Japanese descendants, imprisoned them, and looted their property. The US government then drafted young men in these camps and demanded they fight in its foreign war. Approximately 300 men at various camps refused to join the military were sent to a harsh prison at Tule Lake California. Many stated they would serve if their families were freed, but were still treated as criminals. Hundreds of those who served in the US Army were killed and thousands wounded as the 442nd regiment was ordered to conduct dangerous attacks in Europe. The survivors of the 442nd were deemed heroes after the war, but those who refused to serve their captors showed greater courage.

______________________________

“A Time of Unreasoning Hatred”; Eric Niderost; Warfare History Network; https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/202…

“Executive Order 9066”; Wikipedia; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executi…

Related Tale: “FDR’s War to Unite the World”:    • Roosevelt’s War t…  

Related Tale: “The Genocide Called World War I”:    • The Genocide Call…  

Related Tale: “The Bloody 1944 Crusade in Europe”:    • The Bloody 1944 C…  

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“The Looting of Japanese-American Assets During World War II”; Thomas Muller; Winter Watch; December 17, 2021; https://www.winterwatch.net/2021/12/t…

January 6, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | , | 1 Comment

Germany’s digital minister meets with Elon Musk, says Musk “agreed” to EU’s censorship laws

By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | January 5, 2023

Germany’s Minister for Digital and Transport Volker Wissing said that he is less worried about Twitter under Elon Musk’s leadership after meeting with the CEO in San Francisco.

“Thanks @elonmusk for a constructive conversation in San Francisco. My stance is clear: the platforms’ self-commitment against #disinformation must be strictly adhered to until the #DSA comes into force. Elon Musk agreed with me,” Wissing tweeted.

The DSA (Digital Services Act), expected to come into effect in February 2024, requires, among other things, platforms to remove “harmful” content immediately. The legislation aims to protect consumers from content considered harmful as well as illegal content.

In a December interview, Wissing, the General Secretary of the Free Democratic Party (FDP), expressed concerns about Musk’s leadership of Twitter and said that he was undecided on whether he would continue using the platform.

Since taking over in late October, Musk has made some changes that censorship-lovers some might deem controversial. He rolled back the COVID-19 misinformation policy and reinstated some previously banned accounts, including the account of former US President Donald Trump.

In a letter to the EU Commission, Sven Giegold, the State Secretary for the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs, raised concerns about abrupt changes at Twitter and the relaxation of censorship policies.

January 5, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | 1 Comment

Israel arrested 410 Palestinians for social media activity in 2022, report says

MEMO | January 5, 2023

Israeli occupation authorities arrested 410 Palestinians, including women, children, journalists, activists and community leaders, for expressing their opinion on social media, according to a report by the Palestine Centre for Prisoners Studies (PCPS).

The report, co-authored by the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Prisoners’ Affairs, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society, Addameer Association for Prisoner Care and Human Rights and the Wadi Hilweh Centre highlighted Israel’s use of a new ‘Vigilance Unit’ to monitor Palestinian social media accounts and issue recommendations to the security authorities to arrest them on the pretext that their opinions and publications call for incitement and violence.

PCPS Director, Riyad Al-Ashqar, said the Israeli courts charged the detainees with “incitement” for simply expressing their opinion on social media, including posting a picture of a martyr or merely mentioning his/her name, or issuing an invitation to protect Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Palestinians have been sentenced to between several months and several years in jail by the occupation’s courts on charges of incitement, while some were being held under administrative detention without charge or trial.

Israeli authorities also forced detainees to sign pledges not to use social media platforms for several months, in addition to issuing financial fines and placing some under house arrest.

Al-Ashqar indicated that over the past few years, the number of Palestinians arrested for using social media platforms has increased from 145 arrests in 2018, to 184 in 2019, 220 in 2020, 390 in 2021, and 410 in 2022.

January 5, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | 3 Comments

Beware doctors bearing drugs

By Liz Hodgkinson | TCW Defending Freedom | January 3, 2023

When people ask whether I have had ‘my’ booster and I tell them no and that I wouldn’t dream of it, invariably the next question is: Are you an anti-vaxxer? While asking this they often back away as if I have some deadly plague.

My answer – although these questioners don’t want to listen to it – is that of course I am in favour of medicines that work and which don’t do harm. But there is ever-mounting evidence that the mRNA vaccines do cause harm, as the tragic stories of severe vaccine damage on TCW attest.

And the jabs don’t even protect you against Covid! Most people I know who have had the vaccine – and some have had up to five jabs – have caught Covid, sometimes badly.

Just last week I was talking to somebody who said that she had refused all Covid vaccines but that her husband had gone along with every one of them. She told me they both caught Covid, and with equal severity. Her husband’s jabs did not protect him in the slightest. I doubt if this couple are an isolated example. Maybe I am just lucky but in spite of never taking a single precaution against Covid or flu, I have remained completely free from all respiratory infections for the past three years; perhaps longer.

Ever since I began studying health and medical treatments in the 1970s I have learned that modern medicine is littered with apparent remedies that either don’t work or which do serious harm.

Thalidomide was a dramatic example but since then there have been many other prescribed medicines that were enthusiastically welcomed and then later found to do more harm than good. I am thinking particularly of benzodiazepine tranquillisers such as Valium and Librium. When I was a young mother in the late 1960s and early 70s most of my contemporaries (although not me) were on them.

How they blessed these ‘mother’s little helpers’ as the pills enabled them to get through the days of screaming babies, abusive husbands, and mourning their lost careers or the careers they were never able to establish. They sailed through their lives in an eerie calm; all seemed fine until they tried to come off these prescription drugs. Then the fun started. Although marketed as non-dependent, these pills were highly addictive and those who took them found that withdrawal was by no means easy.

They reported that they had to wear sunglasses to watch television as suddenly everything was too bright, but even worse, all the pains and mental anguish they had kept hidden with the tranquillisers rose to the surface. The problems had not gone away but had been buried deep by the pills. In some cases the dependence had become so severe that patients had to be hospitalised or go into rehab.

The addictive potential of benzodiazepines was bad enough, but it paled into insignificance beside the effects of OxyContin, a morphine-based slow-release painkiller prescribed to millions of Americans. The full story of this dangerous drug, formulated by Purdue Pharma, a company owned by the Sackler family, is well documented in the book Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe. It was also aired on the Disney+ channel under the title Dopesick. 

Doctors were bribed to prescribe OxyContin by slick salespeople offering incentives such as a case of champagne or exotic holiday. The Sacklers tried to redeem themselves by funding art galleries and university departments, much as rich families in Renaissance Italy became patrons of the arts after robbing everybody blind.

What made the OxyContin story particularly dreadful was that many of the Sackler family were doctors. Profit was all and the Sacklers netted many billions from their aggressive promotion of what was basically heroin.

The point I am making here is that it is very difficult to trust medicines which yield profits beyond most people’s imagining. In my lifetime I have never known a medical treatment to be so intensively pushed as the highly lucrative Covid vaccine; not just by doctors and scientists, but by most branches of the media as well. Anything that is so relentlessly plugged should be arousing suspicion, but so far we dissidents are in the minority.

If I wanted to book a face-to-face GP appointment just now, it would probably be impossible and yet I have received endless texts to go for my vaccine. In vain do I reply that I am not interested. They simply don’t hear. Perhaps the reason for their sudden deafness is that they get paid extra for administering the jab: £12.58 per injection per patient, and this is on top of their salary of £81,000 a year on average. If a GP surgery administers 60 jabs in a day – easily done as they only take a minute – that adds up to a handy £754.80. In a five-day week this bonus comes to £3,774.

TCW has published some excellent explanatory articles about what is in the Covid vaccines and how they can wreak havoc throughout the body. Many of these have been written by my former husband Neville Hodgkinson; I take notice of what he says as he has studied vaccines for decades in his capacity as a national newspaper medical and science correspondent, in the days when journalists took pride in telling the truth.

History, and especially medical history, has shown us time and again that when enormous sums of money and profit are involved, we must be very much on our guard and treat extravagant claims and endless reassurances with the scepticism they deserve.

January 5, 2023 Posted by | Book Review, Corruption, Timeless or most popular | | 3 Comments

Sweden Did *Better* Than Its Neighbours

BY NOAH CARL | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | JANUARY 4, 2023

Sweden’s decision not to lockdown in the spring of 2020 was variously described as “deadly folly” (the Guardian), “a disaster” (Time magazine) and “the world’s cautionary tale” (the New York Times).

Yet Sweden confounded its critics. The country’s first wave receded around the same time as Britain’s, and over the succeeding months it crept down the list of countries by official Covid death rate – as others caught-up-with and then surpassed Sweden’s death toll.

The argument then became: “But Sweden did worse than its neighbours!” Critics would point out that although Sweden did okay compared to the rest of Europe, it did worse than the other Nordic countries.

This was a weak argument at the time, as I’ve noted before. But now its premise is actually false: Sweden did not do worse than the other Nordics.

As you may recall, back in November of 2021 the ONS published estimates of age-adjusted excess mortality for most of the countries in Europe. These showed that up to June of 2021, Sweden had negative excess mortality – fewer people died than usual. On the other hand, its excess mortality was less negative than that of the other Nordic countries.

The ONS has now published updated estimates of age-adjusted excess mortality, which run all the way up to July of 2022. And they show that Sweden’s excess mortality is lower than Finland’s, Denmark’s and Iceland’s; only Norway did better.

Between January 2020 and July 2022 (blue dots), Sweden’s age-standardised mortality rate was 4% lower than the five-year average. By contrast, Iceland’s was 3.9% lower, Denmark’s was 2.8% lower and Finland’s was 1.7% lower. This means that Sweden did better than three out of four other Nordics.

In the summer of 2020, Sweden’s state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell said, “Judge me in a year”. One year later, Sweden’s excess mortality was below the European average. We can now judge him again, more than two years later: Sweden’s excess mortality is the second lowest in Europe. On top of that, Sweden saw the second smallest increase in national debt of all European countries.

Tegnell got it right, and his critics got it wrong.

January 5, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

Name & Shame – Companies Discriminating Against The Unvaccinated

Time to boycott

The Naked Emperor’s Newsletter | January 5, 2023

Almost a year ago, I wrote about the companies discriminating against their employees just because they were unvaccinated against Covid-19. I suggested boycotting those companies until they changed their policies.

Hopefully some of this pressure made these companies see sense, as a lot of these discriminatory policies have now been removed.

However, a year on and some companies have found a loop hole, making them appear less discriminatory. Now, they can’t be seen to be discriminating against their unvaccinated employees because they will only employ vaccinated individuals in the first place!

So it’s time to name and shame again. If you know of any companies that are still treating their unvaccinated employees differently or only employing vaccinated individuals, then add their names in the comments sections below (please add a link to their policy for verification).

Below is a list of companies, that I have compiled, that require vaccination for employment. I have only included large companies but there are thousands of examples of small companies that also require vaccination. These are for jobs including administrators, care home workers, chefs, dentists, plumbers, nurses, software engineers and support workers to name but a few.

I find it amusing how many of these companies have equal opportunities sections in their job listing postings. Equal opportunities for anyone except the unvaccinated!

And if anyone from any of these companies reads this post, I would highly recommend that you remove your policies for two reasons. Firstly for discriminatory reasons connected to any future employment law issues and secondly, you don’t want to have pushed vaccination on employees, just in case it turns out that the vaccines weren’t as safe and effective as you thought.

I would also be interested in hearing from anyone who has been turned down from a job or interview if they are unvaccinated.

A selection of companies requiring or encouraging Covid-19 vaccination for employment.

  • Accenture (Accenture requires all new employees to be fully vaccinated against Covid-19 as a condition of employment);
  • Amazon (Workers in New York City who perform in-person work or interact with the public in the course of business must show proof they have been fully vaccinated against COVID or request and receive approval for a reasonable accommodation, including medical or religious accommodation);
  • American Red Cross (As a condition of employment with American Red Cross, you are required to provide proof that you are fully vaccinated for COVID 19 or qualify for an exemption, except in states where it is prohibited by law);
  • AstraZeneca (AstraZeneca requires all US employees to be fully vaccinated for COVID-19 but will consider requests for reasonable accommodations as required by applicable law);
  • Carnival UK (To keep everyone on board fit and well, colleagues who visit or work on our ships must be fully vaccinated, including boosters);
  • CBS Studios (Must be fully vaccinated to work on-site. (To be considered fully vaccinated: 2 weeks after their second dose in a 2-dose series, such as the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, or 2 weeks after a single-dose vaccine, such as Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen vaccine);
  • Chainalysis (All employees are required to have or obtain a COVID-19 vaccination as a condition of employment at Chainalysis, unless an exemption has been approved. All employees shall be required to report their vaccine status);
  • Citi (Citi requires that all successful applicants for positions located in the United States or Puerto Rico be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 as a condition of employment and provide proof of such vaccination prior to commencement of employment);
  • Coca-Cola ( all new employees must be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 and provide Coke Canada with proof of vaccination);
  • Coles (As part of that commitment, you will need to be vaccinated against COVID-19 before joining the team at Coles, unless you’re medically exempt);
  • Fitch Learning (part of Fitch Group) (UNITED STATES ONLY: As part of its continued efforts to maintain a safe workplace for employees, Fitch requires that all employees who receive a written offer of employment on or after October 4, 2021 be fully vaccinated (as defined by the CDC) against the coronavirus by the first day of employment as a condition of employment, to the extent permitted by applicable law);
  • Jefferies Group LLC (It is Jefferies’ policy that all employees and visitors be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 in order to enter any Jefferies office or participate in any Jefferies or client event in person. Should an offer of employment be made, your acceptance of that offer means that you will comply with this policy);
  • Levi Strauss (LS&CO requires proof of being fully vaccinated for COVID-19 as a condition of commencing employment, except in those jurisdictions where prohibited by law);
  • Live Nation (Currently, we strongly encourage employees to be fully vaccinated or have received a negative COVID test within [24] hours of entering an office);
  • Marella Cruises (Please note that all applicants must be fully vaccinated against Covid-19).
  • Ministry of Defence (We therefore encourage all our employees and prospective ones to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 subject to any exemptions that may apply);
  • NHS (Whilst COVID-19 vaccination is not currently a condition of employment, we do encourage our staff to get vaccinated. If you are unvaccinated, there is helpful advice and information available by searching on the ‘NHS England’ website where you can also find out more about how to access the vaccination);
  • NSF International (NSF requires all employees to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 as a condition of employment, with exceptions only as required by law);
  • OmniAb (New hires based in the US will be required to demonstrate that they have been fully vaccinated and boosted for COVID-19 or qualify for a medical or religious exemption or accommodation to this vaccination requirement);
  • Overseas Adventure Travel (All trip leaders are required to be double vaccinated and boosted (as are all of our passengers));
  • Paypal (Depending on location, this might include a Covid-19 vaccination requirement for any employee whose role requires them to work onsite);
  • Qantas Airways ( It is the intention of the Qantas Group to require employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19 and this is being explored in all our international locations);
  • Universal Music Group (All UMG employees are currently required to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 or provide proof of a negative PCR or Antigen test before entering any Company offices unless they have been approved for an exemption or unless prohibited by applicable law);
  • Visier (As part of this commitment, we require all employees to be fully vaccinated for COVID-19 or qualify for an exemption);
  • ZE UK (Accordingly, following with provincial and federal vaccination’s approach, we require that all of our employees to be fully vaccinated and provide their proof of vaccination or substantiated grounds for exemption);

January 5, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Solidarity and Activism | , | 3 Comments

Will the War Party Wield the Speaker’s Gavel?

By Dan McKnight | The Liberarian Institute | January 5, 2023

We’re witnessing a fascinating thing: Congress is actually debating and voting on something.

Remarkable!

For the first time in a century—and only the second time since the Civil War—the vote for the next Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives has entered multiple ballots.

To replace Nancy Pelosi, the Democrats have put forward Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, a walk-the-line party man.

Jeffries has supported curtailing the war on Yemen and has cautiously questioned the the American military occupation of Syria. But he’s a reliable yes-man for every Pentagon budget, and he’s committed to U.S. military intervention in Ukraine (the springboard for World War III).

This vote was intended to be a shoe-in for Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican House Minority Leader.

McCarthy—who already tried and failed to become Speaker in 2015—is bought and paid for shill of the War Party and military-industrial complex.

When Kevin McCarthy hears about a new country we’re bombing illegally, he gets dollar signs in his eyes. He has no saving grace when it comes to an America First foreign policy.

For pete’s sake, four years ago his nominating speech for Minority Leader was given by the reptile Liz Cheney herself!

So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that a small cadre of Freedom Caucus members are opposing his coronation to the speakership.

On Tuesday, on the first vote, there were an assortment of names put forward. The one with the strongest showing in opposition was Andy Biggs of Arizona.

Rep. Biggs is a patriot, and principled defender of the U.S. Constitution. He’s a signer of my organization’s Congressional War Powers Pledge, where he swore to not support a war that was not first explicitly authorized by a vote of Congress.

He has kept that pledge.

Just a few weeks ago, Rep. Biggs told Judge Andrew Napolitano, “These AUMFs, which I believe are unconstitutional to begin with, the AUMFs are being bastardized as we speak and they’re being used in every which way. And effectively, I gotta put it this way. We are fighting a proxy war with Russia today in the Ukraine. And there is absolutely no authority for that…”

That’s the sort of America First perspective that’s never entered Kevin McCarthy’s tiny mind.

On the second and third vote, the dissenters coalesced around conservative workhorse Jim Jordan of Ohio, who’s officially supporting McCarthy for the speakership.

Now, as I write, the House has finalized its sixth round of voting and has adjourned until noon today.

Twenty determined members have settled on Byron Donalds of Florida as their choice.

Rep. Donalds has only served one-term in the U.S. House, so it’s difficult to ascertain a full-scope view of his foreign policy.

He has voted to repeal the 2002 AUMF against Iraq, but last year supported giving even more military supplies to Ukraine than Joe Biden countenanced. Over the summer, like dozens of other Republicans, he flip-flopped and now opposes further aid.

Personally, I find the legislative process refreshing. This is how the people’s house is supposed to function!

(Maybe the whole country would be better off if they just vote on the Speakership a couple thousand times for the next two years).

In the meantime, while Beltway organizations sit on their hands waiting to see who they’ll be taking out to lunch in the new session, Bring Our Troops Home has continued our labor to pass Defend the Guard.

With this bill, we will prevent our National Guard’s deployment into illegal, undeclared wars and starve imperial Washington of manpower.

State Senator Eric Brakey of Maine, one of our most intelligent and committed supporters, has introduced Defend the Guard and is waiting to receive a formal bill number.

We’ve had Defend the Guard presented before a Maine House committee back in 2021, which you can watch.

I’ll let you in to a little secret: whoever becomes the next Speaker of the U.S. House, the swamp is not going to get drained. The War Party will not be kicked off its roost so easily.

But in state governments, closer to voters and the beating heart of our once proud republic, we can make real progress. We can fix our broken foreign policy.

Bring Our Troops Home is not working around the clock just for a dog and pony show. We’re meeting with legislators, gathering veterans, and educating the public to pass actionable legislation to end our endless wars.

When we go to committee again, and hopefully a floor vote—not just in Maine but in over thirty states in 2023—I need to know that we have your support.

To find out what you can do to defend the integrity of your state’s National Guard, visit DefendTheGuard.US

January 5, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Militarism | | Leave a comment

Torsades de Pointes and Cardiac Arrest after COVID-19 Vaccination

Primary Arrhythmia without Myocarditis is a Demonstrated Mechanism of Sudden Death

By Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH | Courageous Discourse | January 5, 2023

Torsades de pointes (French for “twisting of the points”) is one of several types of life-threatening heart rhythm disturbances than can cause cardiac arrest. When case reports capture this rhythm in a fortunate survivor of a cardiac arrest it is noteworthy particularly as our CDC VAERS system indicates 16,155 Americans through December 23, 2022, have died within a few days of taking of the COVID-19 vaccines.

Drs Abrich and Olshansky reported a 65-year old woman with hypertension, a left bundle branch block with a prolonged QT interval, and a mildly reduced left ventricular ejection fraction after at two dose series of the Pfizer BioNTech COVID-19 mRNA vaccine. She came to specialty evaluation because she completely passed out while sitting. An implantable loop recorder was inserted in the chest to monitor the rhythm and then five months later she took a booster and 12 hours later went into full blown cardiac arrest. She required prolonged CPR and 14 shocks of the heart to be revived. There was no evidence of myocarditis. She had a rocky hospital course and was discharged to an inpatient rehabilitation facility.

The lessons learned from this case are: 1) syncope (passing out) after vaccination can indicate a serious arrhythmia, 2) when there are abnormal heart tests (ECG and echocardiography) after two shots, boosters are ill-advised and can be fatal, 3) COVID-19 vaccination can cause a primary cardiac arrest without myocarditis and may explain cases of “died suddenly” when the autopsy does not reveal and obvious known vaccine injury (myocarditis, blood clot, VITT, etc).

Abrich VA, Olshansky B. Torsades de pointes following vaccination for COVID-19. HeartRhythm Case Rep. 2022 Jun;8(6):393-397. doi: 10.1016/j.hrcr.2022.04.003. Epub 2022 Apr 9. PMID: 35433264; PMCID: PMC8993415.

OpenVAERS: VAERS COVID Vaccine Adverse Event Reports, Accessed January 5, 2023

January 5, 2023 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

Western media’s anti-Iran reporting waives journalistic integrity to manufacture hate

By Robert Inlakesh | RT | January 5, 2023

Since the eruption of civil unrest in the Islamic Republic back in September, Western media has not shied away from spreading uncorroborated or outright false stories about Iran’s government. The implications of the constant stream of disinformation is the justification of sanctions that kill Iranians.

Following the death in Iranian custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, back in mid-September, civil unrest in Iran spread far and wide, with protests sparked over foreign media reports that had indicated that the young woman was beaten to death by Iran’s morality police. Later, CCTV footage was released, which contradicted some reports on how the young woman had died, followed by a coroner report which indicated her death came due to cerebral hypoxia as a result of underlying issues. Despite this, the demonstrations that started on September 16 continued.

What started initially as a number of demonstrations, primarily in Kurdish-predominant areas of Iran, turned into a nationwide dis-united movement that took the form of violent riots, online social media campaigns, symbolic hijab burning protests and even deadly terrorist attacks against sites of worship. As Iran accused the United States and Israel of attempting to spark a Syria-style civil war, US President Joe Biden vowed to “free Iran” during a speech in California. Amongst the chaos and the media reporting that aimed to portray the Iranian government as a distinct kind of evil, the Biden administration began to tighten its ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions campaign. The current US sanctions campaign, first enacted under the former Trump administration, has been condemned by the International Court of Justice due to its impact on humanitarian goods, such as medicine, entering Iran.

Outright lies, anonymous sources and distortions

Perhaps the most prominent piece of disinformation that has been disseminated about Iran during the past few months was the assertion, by Newsweek, that 15,000 Iranian demonstrators were sentenced to death. According to the initial claims, the Iranian parliament had supposedly voted to approve this move, implying that the country’s judiciary took no part in such a massive decision. The story was spread by leading online personas and even Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau, who later deleted his post on Twitter about the matter.

However, since then the outlandish claims have not stopped coming. Prior to the Iranian national team’s game against the US in the FIFA World Cup, CNN released a report that no other major news outlet, save for a few tabloid news sites in the UK, touched. CNN quoted an unnamed “security source” that according to the report had managed to find out that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) had infiltrated Qatar in order to threaten the Iranian team’s players.

The CNN story states that the source somehow found out that the players were offered luxury gifts, such as vehicles, prior to the beginning of the World Cup, which would imply that the source had intel on the Iranian team when they were in Tehran before the tournament. The report goes on to say that IRGC officials threatened the Iranian players’ families with torture in the event that they may protest their government during the World Cup. CNN’s source also claims that the coach of the Iranian team, a Portuguese national, was also interviewed by the IRGC, although they weren’t able to hear what was discussed like they did with the players.

The same article makes the additional claim that the Iranian government was flying out pro-government supporters to watch the team play, in essence creating artificial fans. None of the claims have been corroborated, and it didn’t gain purchase with major news outlets, which is strange considering the severity of the allegations being made that the IRGC, an official branch of Iran’s armed forces, had violated Qatar’s sovereignty in order to threaten their own football team. The difference between the CNN and Newsweek piece is that with the “security source”, there is no way to determine with certainty whether the whole thing is made up or not.

In the advent of news that Iran had abolished its morality police unit, responsible for the arrest of Mahsa Amini, another false story emerged from a number of little-known crypto-currency outlets online, claiming that Iran was set to freeze the bank account of women who weren’t wearing the appropriate Islamic covering. The origins of the story came from an interview that was conducted with an ultra-conservative member of Iran’s parliament, Hossein Jalali, who allegedly proposed a three-warning system via SMS, with the end penalty being the freezing of bank accounts. This has never come close to being implemented or even been discussed in parliament. Despite this, tweets claiming that Iran was implementing this strategy went viral.

Posts on social media from influencers have claimed that the Iranian security forces “are raping children”, and that young women are being murdered for showing their hair in a “horrific” and “medieval” crackdown. These reactions naturally come as a result of the factual inaccuracies of the reporting about Iran and we continue to see more and more as the weeks go on.

The most recent misrepresentation of the facts has come in the coverage and reaction to a number of executions in Iran. Earlier this month, the second death sentence connected to the recent civil unrest was carried out. This led to headlines from the likes of the Associated Press (AP), that read ‘Iran execution: Man publicly hanged from crane amid protests‘, which is how we saw the sentencing of Majidreza Rahnavard to death, by the Iranian judiciary, framed throughout Western media. The AP piece opens with the following paragraph:

“Iran executed a second prisoner on Monday convicted over crimes committed during the nationwide protests challenging the country’s theocracy, publicly hanging him from a construction crane as a gruesome warning to others.”

Whilst the AP article did explain, further down in the piece, that the young Iranian man had stabbed to death two Iranian security officials, injuring 4 others, what is written works to present Tehran as a monstrous regime that is unjustly killing Iranian protesters as a warning to others. The reality is, Iran does have a death sentence and does carry it out, but since some States in the US do the same, the story has to be twisted so that Iran is singled out as a special kind of evil. Iran’s death sentence is handed out through a judicial process, during which Majidreza Rahnavard admitted to killing two security officials. The incident was even filmed. No country on earth would allow such a crime to go unpunished.

In total, roughly 400 Iranians have allegedly been sentenced to prison terms for their involvement in various criminal activities during the latest round of civil unrest. Two Iranians have been executed, after admitting to carrying out attacks against the nation’s security forces.

Whilst there are others who may receive the death penalty, the Western media took it upon themselves to whip up a frenzy about an execution that was not even ruled. Earlier this month, several outlets ran headlines with allegations that an Iranian football player from Isfahan was next in line for execution. Reports claimed that a small-time football player, Nasr Azadani, had been sentenced to death and despite the Iranian judiciary denying this, the claims took hold on social media. 26-year-old Nasr Azadani was arrested in connection with the murder of several members of Iran’s security services. It has been reported that an indictment carrying the charge of “accessory to moharebeh” had been communicated with Azadani. The charge of “moharebeh” (“war against God” in Islamic law) can carry with it a death sentence, however, it is not clear whether being an accessory would be ruled this way.

The problem here is that Western media outlets jump on unsubstantiated claims, and repeat half truths, in an attempt to extract a predetermined anti-Iran narrative. From trusted outlets like the AP, to CNN, all the way to the tabloids, there is little care for fact checking and journalistic integrity. The goal is to delegitimize the Iranian government, to encourage outrage. Factual information is only important for nit-picking in a way that supports this biased narrative. At the same time, it is somewhat ironic that none of these media outlets, or Western politicians that repeat their claims and feign concern over Iranian prisoners, care one bit for journalist Julian Assange, who the US is attempting to extradite from the United Kingdom.

The outcomes of this kind of reporting are the encouragement of prejudiced hate against Iranian culture, the justification of sanctions that kill Iranians and the peddling of new-Orientalism talking points, all whilst claiming to be in support of human rights and feminism. There are various ways to make good faith criticisms of the Iranian government, but this is not what we are seeing, this is the Western media machine piling in on a regime change agenda, and everything they say needs to be taken with a pinch of salt.

Robert Inlakesh is a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the Palestinian territories and currently works with Quds News. Director of ‘Steal of the Century: Trump’s Palestine-Israel Catastrophe’.

January 5, 2023 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | | 1 Comment

The Evil Strategy of “Degrading” Russia

By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | January 5, 2023

One of the fascinating aspects of the war in Ukraine has been the extreme reluctance of the mainstream press and Pentagon-CIA supporters to acknowledge, much less condemn, the Pentagon for its role in bringing about this war. After all, the two concepts — the Pentagon’s bringing about the crisis and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — are not mutually exclusive. You can have both things happening — the Pentagon gins up the crisis with the aim of “degrading” Russia and then Russia falls into the trap by getting mired down in a deadly and destructive war against Ukraine.

But when one raises the first part of this equation — that is, the Pentagon’s role in ginning up the crisis — the mainstream press and Pentagon-CIA supporters go ballistic. For them, it’s heresy to point out what the Pentagon did to gin up the crisis. For them, the Pentagon and the CIA are innocent, virtuous babes in the woods that would never do such a thing. For them, the Pentagon and the CIA are nothing but a “force for good” in the world.

But we know that the Pentagon and the CIA do engage in these types of evil machinations. In fact, they did the same thing to the Russia in 1979. They lured the Russians into invading Afghanistan, with the same goal they had with their Ukraine machinations — to give the Russians their own “Vietnam,” which meant “degrading” Russia through the killing of massive numbers of Russian soldiers.

“Conspiracy theory”? Well, not exactly. That’s because National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, in a remarkable degree of candor, admitted that they had knowingly, deliberately, and intentionally done it. He was proud of it. He was bragging about how they had gotten the Russians to fall into their trap. The entire national-security establishment loved the fact that tens of thousands of Russian soldiers were being killed in the process. The more soldiers being killed, the more Russia was being “degraded.”

That’s why they are so ecstatic every time more Russian soldiers are killed in Ukraine. With each dead soldier, Russia is “degraded” a bit more. The more soldiers killed, the more Russia is“degraded.”

Ginning up a new Cold War with Russia was the whole idea behind keeping NATO in existence after the ostensible end of the original Cold War. The Cold War had been a great big cash cow for the U.S. national-security establishment. They weren’t about to let go of it that easily. So, they used NATO, which by this time was just an old Cold War dinosaur, to begin absorbing former members of the Warsaw Pact. That would enable the Pentagon and the CIA to install their military bases and nuclear missiles ever closer to Russia’s border.

Throughout this process, Russia was objecting, and Pentagon and CIA officials knew it. Moreover, Russia consistently made it clear that absorbing Ukraine into NATO was a “red line” for Russia, one that would cause Russia to invade Ukraine to prevent that from happening.

Once Russia made that declaration, the Pentagon and the CIA had Russia right where it wanted it. The Pentagon then sprung the trap by simply announcing that NATO intended to absorb Ukraine. Not surprisingly, Russia ended up invading Ukraine, which has given Russia another “Vietnam,” just like what happened back in 1979 with Russia’s invasion of Afghanistan.

There is nothing new about this type of thing. Back in 1964, the Pentagon knowingly, intentionally, and deliberately ginned up a fake and fraudulent crisis in the Gulf of Tonkin near North Vietnam. The goal? To embroil the United States in the Vietnam War. The strategy worked. President Lyndon Johnson used the fake and fraudulent Pentagon-induced crisis in the Gulf of Tonkin to secure a congressional resolution that authorized him to embroil the United States in a war that ultimately took the lives of more than 58,000 American soldiers and more than a million Vietnamese.

Why do Pentagon-CIA supporters get so bent out of shape when one points to these types of Pentagon-CIA machinations? Because the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA are a triune god to these people. And they don’t like it when someone exposes the evil actions of their triune god. After all, look at how much they love what U.S. officials have done to Julian Assange and Edward Snowden for disclosing the evil actions of their triune god.

There is something important to keep in mind about this strategy of “degrading” Russia. Every one of those Russian and Ukrainian soldiers who have been killed in this war had families or friends, just like American soldiers do. Those families and friends are grieving the loss of those soldiers, just like families of American soldiers grieve over the loss of their loved ones.

That is what makes the Pentagon and the CIA’s machinations so evil. When a regime is celebrating the deaths of massive numbers of people who are dying as a result of a strategy that is designed to “degrade” a foreign regime, that is an excellent sign that there is something fundamentally wrong, from a moral standpoint, with that regime.

January 5, 2023 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

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