TEL AVIV (JTA) — Al Hambra Deli, a neighborhood cafe and wine bar in Jaffa, would usually expect to be bustling on this Thursday night, the beginning of the Israeli weekend. Located on Jerusalem Boulevard., one of the city’s main arteries, it’s right on the path of Tel Aviv’s recently opened light-rail system, and not far from a soccer stadium.
But this week, its doors have been shuttered. A sign greets passersby: “Beloved neighborhood, half of us are in the army and half are protecting our homes. We love you and are waiting to return, Staff.”
It’s a mood felt throughout the city and others in Israel’s crowded central region: Five days after an attack by Hamas killed and wounded thousands in the country’s south, streets in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem are chillingly quiet aside from sirens warning of incoming rockets. Schools are closed and residents are yearning for ways to help as they cope with the physical and emotional fallout of the massacre and the war Israel is now fighting against Hamas in Gaza.
Earlier this week, supermarket shelves emptied out as authorities recommended that Israelis stock up on three days’ worth of food. Shufersal, the country’s largest grocery chain, set limits on purchases of bread, bottled water, milk and eggs.
Details of the atrocities in the south continue to emerge, and 300,000 Israelis have been called up for reserve duty. Rockets continue to target Israeli cities, and Israeli airstrikes hit Gaza, as the country girds for what will likely be a prolonged conflict.
“We live in a permanent state of fear,” said Inès Forman, 29, a French-Israeli writer, describing the last week in Tel Aviv. “I feel anxiety and fear in my body every second that I am awake.”
Forman has committed herself to spreading news on social media about Saturday’s massacre. Many of the Instagram posts on her profile are about art or literature, but the images she’s shared over the past 24 hours are of a different kind: widely circulated clips of reporters describing the scenes they’ve encountered in towns on the Gaza border, and photos and video condemning Hamas and its supporters.
“We are working on fighting fake news… basically all day” she says of her new routine, keeping a schedule that involves waking up and starting at “five or six until very late at night. Yesterday, I finished at around one” in the morning.
On Thursday, Forman attended the afternoon funeral of her friend’s younger sister, Shira Eylon, 23, who was presumed captured until her body was discovered in the woods on Wednesday amongst those who were murdered at the massacre at the music festival outside Kibbutz Re’im.
“My beautiful and pure fairy — today you received wings. I love you forever,” her older sister wrote on Instagram, announcing her death.
“There is not anyone who doesn’t have a loved one who’s either been killed, someone who they know, a friend or a loved one, or injured, or taken captive” said Melanie Landau, a 50-year-old Australian-Israeli therapist living in the Baqa neighborhood of Jerusalem. “So many people are on the front line and just worried about their loved ones.”
Many residents have left Tel Aviv, traveling abroad or to an area of Israel farther from Gaza, and have listed their apartments on spreadsheets coordinating housing for refugees from areas in Israel’s north and south that have been evacuated. Several people described the normally crowded city as a “ghost town.”
Some Tel Aviv residents have relocated within the city. Lotte Beilin, a 30-year old British-Israeli news producer, is staying in a friend’s apartment because her own building is older and doesn’t have a bomb shelter. The city streets are “so quiet you can hear a pin drop.”
There are more “uplifting” moments too, Landau said, adding that “the sort of resilience and strength of the human spirit” has been on display this week.
Throughout the country, many efforts are underway to collect needed supplies for the hundreds of thousands of soldiers who arrived at their bases lacking some critical resources.
Lee Mangoli, a 32-year-old Canadian-Israeli yoga teacher in Tel Aviv, recalled that “on Sunday we started to come out of shock and I realized I needed to take action to help myself.” She met with a friend and started collecting food and other “basic amenities” like shampoo and socks for soldiers.
Very quickly, she says that their small project “exploded with money coming in from abroad… and we are dealing with a lot of requests from a lot of different bases that cost money.”
While there have not been any issues raising funds, her group has run into difficulties sourcing the supplies. “We are not finding the goods anymore. UPS and Fedex are not delivering to Israel” and certain much-requested items like Leatherman utility knives have been nearly impossible to locate. “I could buy 200 and have soldiers to give them to but nobody has them,” she said.
For others such as Becky Schneck, 36, a physical therapist and mother of four young children, the burden of her husband’s call-up to reserve duty on Saturday, in addition to the closure of schools until further notice, has been too overwhelming to consider volunteering for the war effort.
“I am so busy, I don’t even want to think about it too much,” she said. “I do not have the emotional capacity to deal with everything going on in my house and also everything going on in the country.” Neighbors in her community of Tzur Hadassah, outside Jerusalem, have stepped up to deliver food to families like hers.
While Masa Israel, an umbrella group for gap year programs, said shortly after the massacre that none of its 5,700 fellows were harmed, at least one program has closed — the Yahel Social Change Fellowship, which engages its participants in social action and volunteering across Israel.
“With a heavy heart, the Yahel board and staff have made the difficult decision to temporarily suspend the Yahel Social Change Fellowship until things calm down here,” announced Yahel’s executive director, Dana Talmi.
Others are pressing on. At the Pardes Institute for Jewish Studies in Jerusalem, staff “are doing the best we can… [going] into overdrive to support our students as much as humanly possibly,” said Meesh Hammer-Kossoy, the dean of students. “Pardes is pretty serious about running” in spite of the war. Of the approximately 80 students studying year-long, 18 have joined classes via Zoom from abroad.
“We are resolutely gathering for regular prayer and trying to study as best as we can,” she said.
Landau said that many Israelis are engaged in “a battle of consciousness.”
“There are a lot of people getting overexposed to a lot of the imagery and I think that is part of the battle,” she said. “Not to lose faith in humanity and not to be pulled in by that.”
A newly remodeled Ford F250 Super Duty truck is displayed at the new Louisville Ford truck plant in Louisville, Kentucky, U.S. September 30, 2016. REUTERS/Bryan Woolston/File Photo
A senior Ford executive said Thursday the automaker is “at the limit” of what it can spend on higher wages and benefits for the United Auto Workers, and warned the union’s strike at the company’s most profitable factory could harm workers and slash profits.
“We have been very clear that we are at the limit,” Kumar Galhotra, head of Ford’s combustion vehicle unit, said during a conference call Thursday. “We stretched to get to this point. Going further will hurt our ability to invest in the business.”
Ford is open to reallocating money within its current offer in further bargaining with the union to secure an agreement, Galhotra said. Ford is also working with the UAW on a way to bring workers at joint-venture electric vehicle battery plants into the UAW-Ford agreement, he said.
UAW President Shawn Fain on Wednesday ordered a strike at Ford’s Kentucky Truck factory after Ford negotiators did not present a richer contract proposal.
UAW negotiators turned their attention on Thursday to talks with Chrysler parent Stellantis (STLAM.MI), union President Shawn Fain said, confirming a Reuters report.
“Here’s to hoping talks at Stellantis today are more productive than Ford yesterday,” Fain wrote on social media. Stellantis did not immediately comment.
The standoff between the UAW and Ford could soon affect thousands of workers who are not among the nearly 34,000 Detroit Three workers Fain has ordered to walk off the job since Sept. 15.
About 4,600 Ford workers could be idled because their jobs depend on production of Super Duty pickups and large Lincoln and Ford SUVs at Kentucky Truck, said Ford manufacturing vice president Bryce Currie.
Already, 13,000 workers at Ford suppliers have been furloughed because of earlier UAW walkouts at two Ford assembly plants, Ford supply chain chief Liz Door said. The shutdown of Kentucky Truck, Ford’s largest factory, could push a fragile supply chain “toward collapse,” she said.
Fain and other UAW officials have countered that Ford, General Motors and Stellantis can afford to increase pay for UAW workers beyond the 20% to 23% they have offered, end lower wage tiers for lower seniority and temporary workers, and restore defined benefit pensions lost in 2007 if they rein in share buybacks and cut excessive executive pay.
The walkout at Kentucky Truck was a sharp escalation in the UAW’s slow-building campaign of strikes, and sent a warning to Stellantis and General Motors (GM.N), whose wage and benefits offers fall short of Ford’s, based on summaries the automakers and the UAW have released.
Fain has scheduled a video address for Friday at 10 a.m. EDT (1400 GMT). In past weeks, Fain has used Friday addresses to order additional walkouts, or announce progress in bargaining.
Fain has yet to tip his hand as to what actions he will take Friday, if any.
Some analysts saw Fain’s decision to shut down Ford’s Kentucky Truck plant, which builds Super Duty pickups and Lincoln Navigator SUVs, as a sign that the endgame could be starting in the nearly month-long round of coordinated walkouts at the Detroit Three.
“Pressure was always needed to force a deal,” Evercore ISI analyst Chris McNally wrote in a note on Thursday.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the administration was closely monitoring the economic impact of the widening strike and still hoped both sides will reach a “win-win agreement.”
Last Friday, Fain said if needed, the UAW would strike the GM assembly plant in Arlington, Texas, that builds Cadillac Escalade, Chevy Suburban and other large, high-priced SUVs. GM’s Flint, Michigan, heavy-duty truck assembly plant is another potential strike target.
High-profit targets at Stellantis include the automaker’s Ram pickup truck factories in Sterling Heights and Warren, Michigan, as well as two Jeep SUV factories in Detroit.
“This puts everybody on notice,” said Sam Fiorani, vice president of global vehicle forecasting at AutoForecast Solutions. “If they haven’t brought anything new to the table since last week, GM and Stellantis should be worried.”
Analysts at Wells Fargo estimated that Ford will lose about $150 million per week in core profit from the Kentucky plant strike.
Ford officials said on Thursday that cutting a deal that does not allow the company to survive makes no sense and that striking the Kentucky truck plant would also hurt the UAW’s profit-sharing checks.
In a sign of the strike’s expanding impact, Delta Air Lines (DAL.N) said on Thursday it is feeling a pinch from the automotive and entertainment labor strikes. Delta President Glen Hauenstein said the UAW strike has curtailed a “significant” amount of business in Detroit.
Automakers have more than doubled initial wage hike offers, agreed to raise wages along with inflation and improved pay for temporary workers, but the union wants higher wages still, the abolishment of a two-tier wage system and the expansion of unions to battery plants.
The UAW has room to expand its walkouts and increase the pressure on the Detroit Three to offer bigger wage gains, richer retirement packages and more assurances that new electric vehicle battery plants will be unionized.
Even with 8,700 workers at Ford’s Kentucky Truck plant now on strike, less than a quarter of the 150,000 UAW workers at the Detroit Three automakers are now on strike. However, thousands more have been furloughed from jobs at operations that are not on strike because automakers said the walkouts made their work unnecessary.
Ford said on Thursday that it already had 13,000 layoffs at its suppliers and that 4,600 of its own workers could be laid off at other plants.
Ford warned that workers at a dozen other factories could be sent home because of the truck plant walkout. Officials said new layoffs stemming from the Kentucky strike could begin in the coming days.
Its Kentucky truck plant, the company’s most profitable operation, generates $25 billion in annual sales, about a sixth of Ford’s global automotive revenue.
Fain and other UAW officials called a meeting with Ford at on Wednesday evening and demanded a new offer, which Ford did not have, a Ford official said.
“You just lost Kentucky Truck,” Fain said, according to the Ford official and a union source, speaking on condition of anonymity because the talks are not public.
Ford said the decision was “grossly irresponsible.”
Fain has said his aim is to keep the automakers off-balance by taking targeted action rather than a full strike.
The Detroit automakers will report third-quarter financial results between Oct. 24 and Oct. 31, and the UAW could use what are expected to be robust profits to press their case for a richer contract.
Before Wednesday’s Ford announcement, the union had ordered walkouts at five assembly plants, including two Ford assembly plants, at the three companies and 38 parts depots operated by GM and Stellantis.
Kensington’s temporary open street on Beverley Road has officially been transformed into a permanent pedestrian plaza.
Since 2022, Mayor Eric Adams’ administration has worked in conjunction with community partners to host weekend open streets on the westernmost block of Beverley Road between East Second Street and Church Avenue in Kensington. On Oct. 11, the stretch was transformed into a colorful, permanent plaza that adds approximately 5,600 square feet of space to the existing Kensington Plaza, which sits adjacent to the road.
The Beverley Road plaza is part of the Department of Transportation’s car-free public Open Streets initiative that aims to make more public spaces accessible to New Yorkers to promote economic development, support schools, provide additional ways for New Yorkers to interact with one another, and create more space for cultural programming. Beverley Road’s new open street transformation marks the 65th DOT art project to be implemented during the Adams’ administration.
“Every New Yorker deserves safe, accessible, and vibrant public spaces, and through our Open Streets program we are working with communities to bring these lasting benefits to neighborhoods across the city,” said NYC DOT Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez on Wednesday. “As we continue to launch new Open Street locations, we are working to deliver permanent upgrades to existing locations like Beverley Road and coupling these projects with community art where possible.”
The plaza is decorated with a colorful mural designed by Ukrainian artist Misha Tyutyunik. Photo courtesy of NYC DOT
The transformation of the block created 9,400 square feet of unified pedestrian space, with shortened pedestrian crossings on Church Avenue, East Second Street and Beverley Road.
The space also incorporated new loading zones on East Second Street for businesses and residences, and will eventually include granite blocks, planters, umbrellas, moveable furniture and more to brighten up the space and keep vehicles out.
“I am so thrilled to announce the expansion of Kensington Plaza today,” said Council Member Shahana Hanif on Wednesday. “Creating this extended open space in Kensington has been in the works for years. Unlike nearly every other neighborhood in District 39, Kensington has few public pedestrian spaces, so the inclusion of East Second Street and Beverley Road is a welcome addition. Creating accessible public spaces like the new Kensington Plaza is safer for pedestrians, good for small businesses, cuts down on our community’s greenhouse gasses, and will make our neighborhood stronger.”
Hanif also recently helped a local mosque secure an open street on Friday afternoons for outdoor prayer.
The new space has been decorated with an asphalt mural, “A Conversation on Beverley,” designed by Brooklyn-based Ukrainian artist Misha Tyutyunik, via the DOT’s art program. The program partners with community-based artists and nonprofit organizations to display art on DOT projects for up to eleven months.
“As an immigrant from Soviet Ukraine, I have always seen art as a global language,” Tyutyunik said. “The composition for ‘A Conversation on Beverley’ mural is distilled from the feedback sourced from community engagement workshops, where local residents were asked to imagine their community through symbols, words and colors. The result is a design that highlights connectivity, community, peace, love and diversity through the subtly interlaced imagery of faces, fresh fruit, homes, flowers, sun, moon and stars, utilizing vibrant colors and abstraction, to paint a vivid slice of local life.”
Outside the old Meghri train station in southern Armenia, a rusting locomotive, emblazoned with a fading emblem of the Soviet Union, sits on the tracks, as if still waiting for the passengers who stopped coming long ago, The Washingon Post reports.
The station’s overgrown courtyard and dilapidated waiting rooms were once filled with Armenians, Azerbaijanis and visitors from across the Soviet Union, traveling between Baku and Yerevan, or Moscow and Tehran. A modest cafeteria sold tea and snacks, and in summer, fruit sellers on the platform hawked persimmons and pomegranates, grown locally in the orchards that hug the valley.
Meghri sits at a strategic crossroads that regional powers, including Azerbaijan, Iran, Turkey and Russia, are competing to access — prompting fears it could soon be at the center of a new war.
Located just north of the Aras River and the Iranian border, Meghri is hemmed in by Azerbaijani territory. To the east lies Azerbaijan proper, whose border with Armenia has been shut since 1991. Roughly six miles to the west lies Nakhchivan, a landlocked Azerbaijani exclave that Baku has long dreamed of connecting to its mainland. A sliver of Nakhchivan borders Turkey.
Azerbaijan calls Meghri, and the rest of Armenia’s Syunik province, the Zangezur corridor. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and other officials have described opening this corridor as a top objective — one that is now in direct focus following Baku’s recapture of the long-disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.
The Zangezur corridor is a broken link in a longer, potentially highly lucrative east-west route called the “Middle Corridor” that would connect China and Central Asian countries to Turkey via Azerbaijan.
Yerevan pledged to open transport routes to Baku as part of a 2020 cease-fire after a brief war in Nagorno-Karabakh. But since then, Armenian officials have balked, saying that any such arrangement would effectively be the occupation of Armenian territory.
Betrayed by Moscow, which failed to prevent Azerbaijan’s military operation in Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenia now wants full control of the route. And it no longer wants Moscow’s security forces, who have guarded Meghri’s borders since the 1970s, involved.
Azerbaijan, meanwhile, is pressuring Yerevan for unfettered access to the corridor, aiming to reopen the old Soviet railroad from Baku to Nakhchivan, as well as a highway for cars. It has already begun constructing infrastructure in preparation for the route.
Aliyev has signaled that Baku would use force to seize the corridor if the 2020 deal is not upheld. “We will implement the Zangezur corridor, whether Armenia wants it or not,” he said in 2021.
“I think the threat of a flare-up is very real,” said Stefan Meister, a South Caucasus expert at the German Council on Foreign Relations. “The Azerbaijanis have a maximalist approach. … If they can take it, they will do it.”
Thomas de Waal, a senior fellow at Carnegie Europe who specializes in the region, said there are “two competing visions for the same east-west route,” with Armenia backed by the West, and Azerbaijan, Russia and Turkey aligned together.
“It is more likely that Baku and Moscow will jointly use all their pressure points on the Armenian government to coerce them to accept their plan,” de Waal said. “So this is shaping up into a real contest.”
Turkey and Russia, which would benefit from expanding transport links crossing Armenian territory, have backed Aliyev’s plans. Russia, especially, wants this southern route to circumvent Western sanctions. Moscow has been using Azerbaijan to continue selling oil despite import bans and a price cap regime coordinated by the Group of Seven nations.
But Iran, a powerful ally of Armenia and its only friendly neighbor, has strongly opposed the project, averse to any alterations to its border with Armenia. The proposed plan would hinder, if not disconnect, free trade and traffic between the two countries. It could also reduce profits from Iran’s gas contracts with Turkey and Azerbaijan.
Azerbaijan’s lightning offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh last month, which prompted more than 100,000 of the region’s ethnic Armenian residents to flee, has raised concerns that Baku — which has stepped up its hawkish rhetoric — may use force to get its way in the transit corridor dispute.
A crumpled old railway map lies on the floor of the main building of the abandoned Meghri train station. When active, the railway connected Meghri to Yerevan, traveling through Nakhchivan. (Anush Babajanyan/VII)
It was war between Azerbaijan and Armenia that originally shuttered the Meghri station.
At its peak during the Soviet era, the station had 70 employees. Armenian and Azerbaijani residents lived side by side. One year, even one deputy mayor of Meghri was Azerbaijani.
But in 1992, with Armenia and Azerbaijan at war over Nagorno-Karabakh, revenge attacks escalated. A group of Azerbaijanis hijacked the train running from Yerevan to Kapan as it passed through Nakhchivan and took 12 wagons full of mostly Armenian passengers hostage for a week.
As official negotiations stalled, a group of men from Meghri took matters into their own hands. Climbing the high mountain paths to a radar station, they bribed a Russian border guard to let them cross into Nakhchivan. Then, disguised as Russians, they kidnapped a local man — a relative of an Azerbaijani official — who was exchanged for the 14 remaining passenger-hostages. Baku and Yerevan later signed an accord to safeguard passenger transport.
The next year, however, a rumor spread that Azerbaijanis had abducted a busload of Armenian passengers farther north. A lynch mob of angry Armenian residents gathered at the Meghri station. Thinking that Baku had violated the accord, Arman Davtyan, the deputy station director, halted the train.
“I gave the order to the duty officer to stop the incoming train,” Davtyan said in a recent interview, a smile twitching at the corners of his mouth, “and by doing this, I very nearly risked an international crisis.”
After two days of talks to ensure locals would not ambush the passengers, the train departed from the station — one of the last to ever leave Meghri. The station closed a few months later, in 1993, along with the whole line from Baku to Nakhchivan.
The Hamas massacre that took place over the weekend was not the result of decades of “occupation.” Israel left Gaza in 2005, uprooting families and wrenching the country into an impassioned debate along the way. Not a settler, nor single IDF soldier, nor any type of Israeli personnel has remained in the Gaza Strip.
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No, this massacre was a function of hate—the kind of toxic intolerance in its purest form.
It was years in the making, and just as it took sophisticated military and logistical planning, it also took years of ideological planting—sowing seeds of antisemitism. Indeed, one cannot look at what Hamas did without understanding their thinking about Jews.
Hamas and its co-conspirators in the Muslim world had been vilifying Jews for decades, starting with their founding charter, which is full of antisemitic bile. They constructed an entire architecture of antisemitism that spanned the world and spanned spheres from academia to religion, politics and culture. There were many people who should have been pushing for a just resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but instead had adopted an ideology of hate that did not see Jews as worthy of a piece of land or even as equal contestants in a historical struggle. It saw them as subhuman.
From the pulpits of mosques to the pages of op-eds to the stands of bookstores across the Arab world, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Hitler’s Mein Kampf and other timeless fictions and hateful works were peddled, updated, and perfected to the point that large swathes of the public stopped seeing Zionists or Israelis or Jews as human long ago. School children are taught to hate Israel, Jews are demonized as part of official curriculum, and “summer camps” involve learning how to fire automatic weapons and kidnap Israelis.
And this is how the massacre took place.
A world in which you see an entire tribe of people as lesser—as roaches, as vermin—this is how you justify gunning down hundreds of unarmed teenagers at a concert, how you rationalize men going house to house and murdering parents at point blank range in front of their children, how you legitimize intentionally setting houses on fire with infirm, elderly people trapped inside, unable to escape; how you explain kidnapping toddlers still not old enough to speak and mocking them in front of the camera; how you excuse desecrating corpses, stepping on their faces while grinning for the camera.
This is not normal, not by any standards.
However, it is normal in a historical context. There have been other times over the centuries where one people saw the other as anything but human. From Europeans and American slave traders who enslaved the people of an entire continent, to genocides in Rwanda and Cambodia, and, of course, in Nazi Germany.
The Third Reich constructed a vast edifice of empire predicated on the core idea of answering the “Jewish Question.” It expanded into all spheres, not just military, but arts, industry, faith, and more, instrumentalizing these sectors to pursue their objective of eradicating the world of the Jewish people. For years, their neighbors in Europe ignored the facts or underestimated their ambition or dismissed their stated goals. It took the combined forces of the Allied powers and the horrifying, singular discovery of the concentration camps, to awaken the conscience of the West, or at least force it to reckon with the price of its inertia and ignorance.
Few thought such an egregious moral failure could replicate itself. No one imagined it might be possible for the world to miss such a moment once again. I know what I would do, ordinary people have told themselves, trying to appease their consciences.
Think again.
And yet, even with the sight of brutalized, raped women being paraded across Gaza by gleeful militants and hooted at by cheering crowds, we see rallies across America and in European capitals extolling the resistance and denying the inhumanity so obvious that it boggles the mind and chills the soul. We see students at our most prestigious and famous university, Harvard, blaming Israel for the massacre of its own citizens. At ADL, we are tracking dozens of demonstrations and countless op-eds blaming Israel for this massacre of its own people at the hands of hooligans with automatic weapons, men funded and trained in the dark arts of death by the Islamic Republic of Iran.
If we are to move forward and address such moral corruption, it will not be achieved after a single military maneuver in Gaza. As we saw in the wake of the World War II, we need a philosophical and psychological reckoning, a wholesale cleansing of the ideology of antisemitism and hate that leads people to ridicule life and applaud death.
We need a modern day “de-Nazification” that seeks to find a political solution to the Israeli-Palestinian impasse. It must address the absolute moral rot at the core of the anti-Zionism that fueled the Hamas massacre, that fills the sermons of countless imams across the Muslim world, that informs the college students praising the massacre as “decolonization,” that tells activists that it’s reasonable to pull up swastikas on their cellphones when they see a Jewish person.
This is the real and long-term fight. In the short term, the difficult challenge for the Israeli military will be targeting the Hamas infrastructure—operation centers, where they store their materiel, where their Gaza leadership is hiding out—while making all efforts to limit civilian casualties. But it will take decades to rid the world of the disease of antizionism that has settled in like a permanent plague.
In the current line of thinking among many American conservatives, Palestinian militants’ horrific attack on Israeli civilians over the weekend can be at least slightly blamed on President Joe Biden’s policies. In this telling, a substantial measure of that fault has to do with the administration’s attempts to address climate change, though how exactly that connection works is a bit fuzzy.
That, at least, was one takeaway from ex-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) comments to reporters on Monday in the bloody aftermath of the Hamas attacks on Israel. The remarks contained many of the national security jabs one might expect—the President being, in McCarthy’s description, soft on Iran, weak on border security, and generally terrible at projecting U.S. strength abroad.
We’ll leave the dissection of some of those criticisms to our colleagues in Washington D.C. We will also leave aside the question of any role decades of unstinting and bipartisan U.S. support for Israel may have played in perpetuating the conflict, as the Israeli Defense Forces lays siege to a Palestinian enclave of 2.2 million that Israel’s prime minister has vowed to reduce to “rubble.” Instead, we’ll focus on one of McCarthy’s critical points: that Biden’s green policies have come at the expense of America’s national security interests and those of its allies, and—as the former speaker appeared to imply—indirectly created the conditions for the Hamas attacks.
“President Biden has said previously that he believes the number one threat America is facing is climate change. That is not true,” McCarthy said, going on to list terrorism, border security, energy production and Iranian, Russian, and Chinese power as greater threats. “Rather [than] focus on his Green New Deal, he should focus on protecting the American people,” he said.
Basically, McCarthy’s argument seemed to be that America and its allies are safer when the U.S. produces more oil. By “attacking” American oil production, Biden has empowered hostile petro-states like Iran and Russia.
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You can imagine U.S. environmental progressives saying to themselves, “would that it were!” Biden’s stance on new drilling has been, in essence, a balancing act between pacifying green advocates furious over his decision in March to permit a massive new oilfield in Alaska, and the political reality that high prices at the gas pump tend to be a one-way ticket to a one-term presidency. McCarthy omitted the fact that U.S. oil production is on track to set new records this year and next, despite an urgent mandate from the world’s scientists to cut fossil fuel emissions. Rather than squeezing oil production, Biden’s climate strategy has hinged on creating financial incentives for green energy and manufacturing. Perhaps the biggest bitter pill Democrats had to swallow when passing last summer’s Inflation Reduction Act was to allow even more oil drilling in exchange for desperately-needed green subsidies.
Beyond that, there’s good national security justification for cutting carbon emissions (Not to mention the imperative to help avert untold human misery around the world and potential civilization-level catastrophe). Unchecked global warming will swamp the U.S. with climate refugees, batter coastlines with mega-storms, and threaten food supplies, infrastructure, and even military bases overseas, and altogether make the world a more violent, unstable place. It’s also just obviously a good move, geopolitically speaking, for the U.S. to invest in building up its capacity to manufacture batteries and wind and solar energy, rather than allowing China to corner the global market. With the costs of those technologies falling, doubling down on fossil fuels would be akin to investing in horses back when the world was transitioning to petroleum.
None of that, though, will likely dissuade conservatives from attempting to use climate action as a cudgel to batter Democrats in the lead up to next year’s election. The strategy, it seems, is to paint a connection between emissions cuts and any current crisis, as if any attention the government spares for our biosphere must necessarily come at the expense of something else. But, as National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby told FOX News on Monday, with the vast resources of the federal government, not to mention a $816.7 billion defense budget, we’re perfectly capable of doing more than one thing at once. “We are a big enough, and powerful enough, and effective enough nation to be able to look after all these disparate national security threats,” Kirby said. “And one of them absolutely is climate change.”
NEW YORK — Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) was charged in a superseding federal indictment on Thursday with conspiracy by a public official to act as a foreign agent, intensifying the legal peril facing the veteran lawmaker as he continues to resist calls to resign.
Federal prosecutors charged Menendez, 69, and his wife Nadine with bribery last month, alleging that they accepted cash and gifts totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars in exchange for attempting to assist the Egyptian government.
The senator, his wife and three associates — Wael Hana, Fred Daibes and Jose Uribe — were charged with conspiracy to commit bribery and conspiracy to commit honest services fraud. The Menendezes also were charged with conspiracy to commit extortion as a public official.
Now they and Hana face an additional count for allegedly conspiring to have Menendez act as an illegal foreign agent on behalf of the Egyptian government, while he was serving as a U.S. senator with access to sensitive intelligence as the former head of the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee.
The couple and Hana all pleaded not guilty in U.S. District Court in Manhattan after the initial indictment. Menendez also gave up his committee chairmanship temporarily, in accordance with Democratic Senate rules.
The indictment described Menendez accepting gold bars, cash and a Mercedes in exchange for his cooperation with Hana, who was the senator’s U.S.-based go-between with Egyptian officials.
MOSCOW: President Vladimir Putinarrived in Kyrgyzstan on Thursday on a rare trip abroad for the Russian leader who was indicted earlier this year by the International Criminal Court for war crimes in Ukraine. In the capital, Bishkek, Putin met with Kyrgyz president Sadyr Zhaparov and Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev. He also attended an event marking the 20th anniversary of a Russian airbase in Kyrgyzstan. Putin is scheduled to take part on Friday in the commonwealth of independent states summit
, which Kyrgyzstan is hosting. Leaders of Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan will also attend the summit.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan will skip it, as Yerevan’s relationship with Moscow has frayed amid mutual accusations.
It is the first time this year that Putin has travelled outside Russia and Russian-held territories of Ukraine. Earlier this year, he visited the partially occupied Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Luhansk and Kherson, as well as the annexed Crimean Peninsula.
In March, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Putin over the deportation of children from Ukraine. Countries that have signed and ratified the Rome Statute, which created the ICC, are now bound to arrest the Russian leader if he sets foot on their soil.
The move caused Putin to skip an economic summit in South Africa in August and further strained Moscow’s ties with Armenia after it moved to ratify the Rome Statute earlier this month, even as Armenian officials sought to assure the Kremlin that the Russian leader would not be arrested if he entered the country.
The Kremlin has said that Russia doesn’t recognise the jurisdiction of the ICC and considers the warrant null and void.
Kyrgyzstan is not a signatory of the Rome Statute. In Central Asia, only Tajikistan is. Putin travelled to both countries last year after the invasion of Ukraine and amid increasing international isolation. He also visited other Central Asian nations in 2022, as well as Armenia, Belarus, China, India and Iran.
Later this month, Putin is expected to travel to China again. Last month, he also accepted an invitation to visit North Korea, although it remains unclear when that might happen.
President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has received the participants of the 53rd meeting of the Council of Heads of Security Agencies and Special Services of the CIS member countries – Director of the Russian Federation Federal Security Service, Chairman of the Council of Heads of Security Agencies and Special Services of the CIS member countries Alexander Bortnikov, Director of the Russian Federation Foreign Intelligence Service Sergei Naryshkin, Chairman of the State Security Committee of Belarus Ivan Tertel, Chairman of the National Security Committee of Kazakhstan Yermek Sagimbayev, Deputy Prime Minister of Kyrgyzstan, Chairman of the State Committee for National Security Kamchybek Tashiev, Chairman of the State Security Service of Uzbekistan Abdusalom Azizov, Chairman of the State Committee for National of Tajikistan Security Saimumin Yatimov, Head of the CIS Anti-Terrorist Center Yevgeny Sysoyev.
Welcoming the participants of the meeting, President Ilham Aliyev said:
– I am pleased to welcome our distinguished guests, heads of secret services of friendly states.
I am sure that the event in Baku will serve the cause of strengthening our interaction and make another contribution to deeper cooperation. It is noteworthy that your meeting is held on the eve of another CIS Summit, where the heads of state will have an opportunity to communicate and discuss very important issues of our interaction. Azerbaijan has always attached great importance to participation in the CIS. There are very close contacts in all directions, including, of course, the sphere of security. In the challenging international situation, your work, as well as the interaction with your colleagues, is of particular significance, as threats are growing, new centers of instability are emerging, and the stability and security of our countries largely depend on the operational work of your agencies.
I believe that at today’s meeting, you will also discuss ways of strengthening cooperation. Of course, it is necessary always to exchange operational information. You know better than anyone that information is of great importance, including how quickly it is received and how quickly it is responded to. Of course, the close interaction between our countries creates excellent opportunities for our cooperation to be sincere, targeted, result-oriented and aimed at eliminating or preventing possible threats.
There are, of course, external threats in the regions where our countries are located, and operational work in this direction allows us the opportunity to minimize the risks. It is gratifying to see that public and political stability in our countries is strengthening, and our states are successfully confronting many challenges.
As far as Azerbaijan is concerned, we no longer have any internal threats. As a result of the activities conducted three weeks ago, the sovereignty of Azerbaijan has been fully restored, and, of course, this opens up opportunities for strengthening security and achieving peace in our region. We are committed to this and believe that there is no alternative to it. Proceeding from the fact that the events of recent weeks are interpreted differently in the media, first of all, in the Western media, I would say in a lop-sided and biased way and do not reflect the history of the issue or the present-day realities, I would like to briefly inform you about what has been happening over the past three years. But in order to make my information more complete, I would like to make a small historical excursion.
I will begin by saying that an entity called Nagorno-Karabakh never existed in history. There was Karabakh Khanate, which became a part of the Russian Empire in 1805. The Kurekchay Peace Treaty was signed on behalf of the Azerbaijani by Ibrahim Khalil – the Karabakh Khan, whose title was called the Khan of Karabakh and Shusha. On the Russian side, it was signed by Czarist General Tsitsianov. The text of the Treaty of Kurekchay is available on the Internet, and everyone can familiarize themselves with it. There is no mention of the Armenian population or any special rights of the Armenian population in it. In other words, it clearly says again, and historians know it well, that Karabakh is an ancient land inhabited by Azerbaijanis who have lived on this territory for centuries, for millennia. After the Kurekchay Peace Treaty, there were two more treaties between Azerbaijani khanates and Russia – the 1813 Gulistan Peace Treaty and the 1828 Turkmenchay Peace Treaty, according to which other Azerbaijani khanates, including Iravan, became part of Russia. Also, these documents naturally referred to Azerbaijani lands. After the Sovietization of the South Caucasus, the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast was created. Why was it created? After those 19th-century documents, mass resettlement of the Armenian population to the territory of Azerbaijan from Persia and Eastern Anatolia began. By the time of Sovietization, the national composition of the Karabakh region of Azerbaijan was not the same as it was before the beginning of the 19th century. Based on this, maybe there were some other reasons, too, Soviet power; the Soviet Union created the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region, not even a republic, but a region within the Azerbaijan SSR. It was exactly one hundred years ago. By the time centrifugal tendencies started to emerge in the Soviet Union, Armenian separatism and aggressive extremism had risen. By the late 1980s, informal extremist organizations were created. Unfortunately, this was not properly assessed by the Soviet leadership, and in many cases, it was even encouraged by it.
We all remember who was at the head of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, and, naturally, it was impossible to expect anything else. All this led to the fact that the traditional relations of peace, friendship and harmony between the Azerbaijani and Armenian peoples were disrupted, a harmful ideology of national exclusivity and superiority was thrown in, and attempts were made to justify claims to the Karabakh land of Azerbaijan. These tendencies were transformed into overt aggression after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the occupation of Azerbaijani lands. As a result, about 20 percent of the territory of Azerbaijan – both the Karabakh region and the former Nagorno-Karabakh region, as well as seven districts that had nothing to do with that autonomous entity, were also occupied. Ethnic cleansing was carried out, more than a million Azerbaijanis were expelled from their native lands, and the situation remained as such until the fall of 2020.
Azerbaijan tried to resolve the issue peacefully in every possible way. We were engaged in long and fruitless negotiations under the auspices of the OSCE. By the way, the fact that this conflict was not resolved shows that the OSCE is in need of major transformation. We also see in this conflict the inability of the United Nations to use its authority and leverage because although four resolutions of the UN Security Council were adopted, demanding the immediate withdrawal of Armenian forces from Azerbaijani territory, they were not implemented. We waited for a long time. We had hopes. I was involved in the negotiations at different stages from 2004, but unfortunately, all hopes vanished in 2019. The prime minister of Armenia said that “Karabakh is Armenia, full stop,” thereby putting an end to all negotiations and rendering them completely meaningless. Not to mention the fact that it was an open territorial claim to the sovereign state of Azerbaijan because no country in the world, including Armenia itself, had recognized the so-called “Nagorno-Karabakh Republic.”
So, this provocative, reckless, and I would even say suicidal, as it turned out, step of the Armenian leadership, as well as other provocative actions, including those of the military nature, led to the Second Karabakh War in September 2020, which lasted 44 days and ended with the complete defeat of the Armenian army and restoration of the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan. Through the mediation of the Russian Federation and personally, President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, a Trilateral Statement was signed on the night of 9-10 November 2020, according to which the territories of the districts adjacent to the former Nagorno-Karabakh region that were still under occupation were also returned to Azerbaijan, and the Russian peacekeeping contingent was deployed in the region.
This is a brief history of the issue. And the question may arise: what happened three weeks ago? Well, although the declaration I mentioned was signed, Armenia did not fulfill its provisions; namely, one of the most important provisions said that all Armenian armed forces should withdraw from the territory of Karabakh. This was not done. In fact, it was not done in a demonstrative fashion. Moreover, in the two years from 2020 to the beginning of 2023, when Azerbaijan did not control the border in the Lachin district, vast amounts of ammunition were brought in, amounting to millions, which was revealed quite recently. Mines were delivered, and our territory was additionally mined. All this led to the fact that Azerbaijanis continued to die on their own land. Since the end of the Second Karabakh War, we have 315 dead and badly maimed military personnel and civilians. Unfortunately, the number is growing every week.
Our repeated appeals to Armenia to put an end to territorial claims to Azerbaijan received a very odd response, which I would also like to inform you about. A year ago, last October, at a meeting of the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan with international partners, a statement was adopted in which both countries recognized each other’s territorial integrity and commitment to the 1991 Alma-Ata Declaration, which confirmed the territorial integrity of our countries. We considered this an important step on the part of Armenia, which would finally give up its territorial claims to Azerbaijan. But unfortunately, our hopes were in vain. Recognizing the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan in words and on paper, the Armenian leadership actually did the exact opposite. Azerbaijan’s repeated appeals to give up provocative actions, unfortunately, were not taken seriously. The situation was aggravated even more when, on 2 September, the Armenian prime minister sent a congratulatory letter on the anniversary of the establishment of the so-called “Nagorno-Karabakh Republic.” This was a crossing of a red line, which Azerbaijan, naturally, could not tolerate. It was an obvious claim to our territory. On 9 September, the so-called authorities of the so-called Nagorno-Karabakh held elections, chose a new “leader,” which represented complete disregard for the existing realities, and left Azerbaijan with no other option but to conduct a counterterrorism operation on 19 September and fully restore its sovereignty. As a result of the operation, which lasted less than a day, the Armenian army in Karabakh was completely disarmed, the contingent of many thousands – there were from 10,000 to 15,000 of them – was disarmed, and full control over the territory was established. At the same time, we have already published a plan for the reintegration of the Armenian population of Karabakh, which is also available on the Internet. An appeal was made to the Armenian population to stay in their homes because our operation was very targeted. Civilian infrastructure, civilian facilities and civilians were not harmed, and as I said, the whole operation lasted less than 24 hours. It was enough for the illegal armed formations of Armenia to be completely demoralized and, in fact, to surrender.
Today, the process of cleansing the territories from bandit gangs is underway. According to our information, there are still certain groups hiding in this territory. After September 20, there were armed provocations in Karabakh. The territory is quite large, with mountains and forests, so we will need time to clear the territory from these gangs completely. This is basically the history of the issue.
What is going on around us? I think you will also be interested to hear our assessment of what is happening from us. Well, let me start by saying that Azerbaijan complied with all humanitarian norms during the occupation, during the Second Karabakh War and during the counterterrorism operation. By the way, this is evidenced by international experts, including the UN mission, which visited the liberated territories just recently, yesterday and before that, about a week ago, twice, and noted that all humanitarian norms had been observed. Nevertheless, Armenia’s patrons in the West have launched a dirty, provocative, false campaign against Azerbaijan, accusing us of all possible sins. France plays the first violin here, and this is reflected in the statements of officials of this country, attempts to discredit Azerbaijan, an extensive media campaign against Azerbaijan, where everything is turned upside down.
Azerbaijan is portrayed as an aggressor, while Armenia is described as a victim. The history of the 30-year occupation, the destruction of all our towns and villages, the Khojaly genocide – all this is naturally ignored, and completely false stories are invented. By the way, I must say that just yesterday, I was shown a video where a candidate for the U.S. President makes accusations against Azerbaijan while showing the footage of Armenia’s missile attack against Gandja. Just imagine the degree of falsification and cynicism! During the Second Karabakh War, Armenia shelled our cities located hundreds of kilometers away from the conflict zone with long-range artillery, including ballistic missiles, and more than a hundred civilians, including children, were killed. So, the so-called candidate, blaming Azerbaijan, shows footage of the Armenian attack on Gandja and Barda.
What can we talk to these people about, and what can we explain to them? They do not want to hear anything. They have their own instructions, which are sent down to them from the center, and they act upon them. That is why now we are facing an unprecedented information war against Azerbaijan. Of course, we are fighting it with our own resources, trying to convey the truth about what happened. But we should realize that the forces are unequal. Countries such as France, which has a long colonial history, have much more media resources around the world than we do.
Nevertheless, using various platforms, international organizations and other ways, we are conveying and will continue to convey the truth about what has happened.
Speaking about France, I would also like to note the destructive and provocative role of the leadership of this country during the entire period between 2020 and now. Numerous accusations, groundless threats and blackmail against Azerbaijan have had no effect. The recent statement by the President of France that Azerbaijan has problems with international law is laughable. Azerbaijan has not violated international law. We fought on our territory; we suppressed separatism, and we observed all humanitarian norms and Geneva Conventions. In fact, international law has been violated for 30 years by France’s protégé and today’s main ally, Armenia, which occupied the territory of another state. As the saying goes, “remove the log from your own eye before trying to remove the speck from someone else’s eye.” One and a half million Algerians were exterminated by the French regime just because they were Algerians and Muslims. That is genocide. Not to mention France’s bloody crimes across Africa, in other parts of Africa and around the world. And the fact that France still retains its colonies to this day is incomprehensible. Azerbaijan, as the Chair of the Non-Aligned Movement, and I personally raised this issue at the summits of the Non-Aligned Movement. And this country, which has a bloody colonial past, which some African countries cannot get rid of to this day no matter how hard they try, accuses us of violating international law. This is absurd.
There is also another question. Some countries and international organizations are trying to mediate the normalization of relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia today. I recently said that if this policy is not one-sided and biased, we will accept these efforts. But when we see from the side of France, on the one hand, a flagrant violation of all diplomatic norms, statements bordering on insults, dirty insinuations, provocations and lies, and on the other, attempts to provide mediation services, it defies any logic. We do not need such mediators. That is the first. Secondly, if someone wants to engage in mediation, this should not be a PR attempt but actually aim to achieve a result.
I would also like to inform you that on October 12, a day later, at the suggestion of the Russian side, a meeting of the foreign ministers of Russia, Azerbaijan and Armenia was to be held in Bishkek. We perceive the mediation of the Russian Federation with gratitude because Russia is our neighbor and ally, as well as Armenia’s ally. This country is located in our region, unlike those who are thousands of kilometers away. Naturally, the history of relations between our countries presupposes the mediation of the Russian side. We took this proposal positively, and our foreign minister was ready to meet with his Russian and Armenian colleagues. Unfortunately, the Armenian side refused to attend that meeting. Now, this begs the question – does Armenia want peace? I think not because if it had wanted peace, it would not have missed this opportunity. The Armenian prime minister flies six hours to Granada and participates in an incomprehensible meeting there, where Azerbaijan is discussed without actually being present, but he cannot fly for two to three hours to Bishkek. He has other important things to do. This is what we all have to say openly.
Everyone can see that it but we should talk about it and proceed from it.
Concluding my comments, I would like to say a few words about the normalization of relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia. We are ready for that. We are ready to continue working on the peace treaty. In case the mediation of the Russian Federation is rejected by the Armenian side, I think that direct negotiations between the foreign ministers of Azerbaijan and Armenia may be an alternative. We will analyze any other platforms, taking into account the attitude of those countries that offer their services to the truth – not to Azerbaijan, but to the truth and international law.
I would like to thank you again for finding the time to visit. It is a difficult time everywhere; everyone has a lot to do, but the fact that you are in Baku today speaks about your attitude to our country, the level of cooperation between the secret services of our countries and is an important factor of security across the former Soviet Union. I think we should strengthen our cooperation. Historical ties and shared past – all these are factors that will contribute to strengthening friendship and mutual support in the CIS. So welcome again, and I wish you success with today’s event.
x x x
Director of the Russian Federation Federal Security Service, Chairman of the Council of Heads of Security Agencies and Special Services of the CIS member countries Alexander Bortnikov said:
– Dear Ilham Heydar oglu!
First of all, I would like to thank you for the opportunity to hold another meeting of heads of secret services of the Commonwealth countries in Azerbaijan. This is the fifth time we have organized our meetings during the existence of our Council. Azerbaijan has always created favorable and excellent conditions for our council meetings. Of course, we are grateful to the head of the Security Service of Azerbaijan for the work they have done in preparation for today’s event. Let me note that during the time of the Council’s existence, it has proved its relevance. Many issues you have just communicated to the heads of security services – they do exist, taking into account the problems we faced after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Unfortunately, every republic and every sovereign state has, to a greater or lesser extent, experienced the problems that we are discussing on the platform of our Council. These are manifestations of separatism, extremism and terrorism, and we have been constantly talking about them for years. We have encountered them in one way or another. We are talking about issues that have a direct bearing on the security, sovereignty and constitutional order of our states because some problems both inside our countries and external factors have a combined impact on security issues.
It is regrettable that almost all CIS states have recently been facing the issues you have just mentioned. I believe that our meeting today will contribute to the advancement of our joint work in many areas. I would like to thank you once again, Ilham Heydarovich, for the opportunity, for today’s meeting, for the guidance you gave us today, for the historical background and justification of the processes that are taking place in the CIS and in the region we are visiting now. This is very important from the point of view of understanding and objective perception of what is happening. Of course, we will do everything in our power to make the most effective and productive use of today’s meeting and address the issues of security of our countries in the future. Thank you very much.
Katzarova said she had been granted no access to Russia, adding that Moscow tried to “obstruct” her work.
Her findings were based on consultations with more than 60 Russian and international rights groups and individuals, in person, by phone or online, and nearly 100 written submissions.
Katzarova, who is due to present her report to the Human Rights Council later this week, said she had documented how recent legislative restrictions were being used to “muzzle civil society”.
“The often-violent enforcement of these laws and regulations has resulted in a systematic crackdown on civil society organisations,” she wrote.
“It has led to mass arbitrary arrests, detentions and harassment of human rights defenders, peaceful anti-war activists, journalists, cultural figures, minorities and anyone speaking out against the war.”
She urged Russia to repeal problematic articles of its criminal code, and to “immediately release those detained under the provisions, quash their convictions and expunge their criminal records”.
TORTURE, SEXUAL VIOLENCE
She also demanded the release of all arbitrarily detained political opposition activists, including opposition leader Alexei Navalny and dissidents Vladimir Kara-Murza and Ilya Yashin.
Katzarova said women, especially rights defenders, activists or journalists, had “suffered specific gender-based violence, humiliations and intimidation”.
“The persistent use of torture and ill-treatment, including of sexual and gender-based violence, puts at risk the life of people in detention,” she said.
Katzarova said “the environment of impunity, the unpredictability of changes to the law, in addition to their ambiguity”, had forced many Russians into exile.
She called for “an effective, impartial and independent investigation into all instances of use of force, arbitrary detention and other forms of pressure”.
Russia should also “ensure prompt, transparent and effective investigation … of all allegations of torture and ill-treatment in custody,” she said, demanding that all perpetrators be held to account.
Katzarova’s mandate is due to expire next month unless the UN Rights Council votes to extend it – something Moscow vehemently opposes.
The Russian foreign ministry has described efforts to extend her “illegitimate” mandate as “politicised and extremely confrontational”.
posted at 13:20:32 UTC by Радио СвободаviaРадио Свобода
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