Abolishing Adolescence

Says the daddy of Alberta neo-cons; Ted Byfield.

One of those old-style teachers, who died in the early '50s, was Sir Richard Livingstone, a classics prof and educational philosopher.

Livingstone defined what he called "educable ages" of human beings.

We are most educable, he said, when we're very young, least educable in the teen years and early 20s, and become highly educable again as adults.

In effect, he was abolishing the whole concept of the teen-ager, the adolescent.

If nearly everybody at 12 or 13 joined the work force, they would in fact become part of the adult world.

Wait a minute weren't he and his neo-con pals the same ones that want to raise the age of sexual consent to 16. Decrying any sexual relations between teen agers and adults as child abuse and equating it with child porn. Yep they were.

And they are of course the same ones who want the age lowered, perhaps to 10, to be able to try teen-agers and children as Adults for crimes like murder. And we recently say how effective that was with the Stephen Truscott case.

Ted is the Pater Familas of the Byfield clan, whose influence is spread through out Canada's social conservative political lobbies.

Ted created the conservative weekly St. Johns Edmonton Report, which later became Alberta Report ,as part of a tax free religious charity associated with St. Johns Boys School. A school founded on the principle's of same sex education and spare the rod spoil the child.

At least one blogger noted this would be a return to the 19th Century use of child labour. Actually child labour in Canada was abolished through Factory Acts beginning in the late 19th Century. In Alberta child labour laws were not passed until 1917. And now child labour has returned in B.C. and Alberta.

And perhaps this is the real subtext of what Byfield is saying, since Alberta and B.C. are suffering from massive labour shortages.

Adolescence and the concept of the teen-ager began after WWI with the post war boom and the consumer culture created by Fordism. It became a mass cultural phenomena world wide after WWII. It is the result of the post war baby boom and concurrent development of post war industrialization. By the late fifties and early sixties, teen agers were in news first as juvenile delinquents, then as student rebels. The rise of the student movement and an anti-war culture, would result in the development of the New Left.

For the post Viet-Nam new right it became a simple formula; abolish adolescence and you abolish rebellion. And in their political agenda there are only children and adults.

In fact this idea of children between 12-21 being adults is a throw back to an much earlier age. The Medieval Age. Which is where Byfield remains to this day.

Of all the books on childhood in the past, Philippe Aries's book Centuries of Childhood is probably the best known; one historian notes the frequency with which it is "cited as Holy Writ. " (18) Aries's central thesis is the opposite of mine: he argues that while the traditional child was happy because he was free to mix with many classes and ages, a special condition known as childhood was "invented" in the early modern period, resulting in a tyrannical concept of the family which destroyed friendship and sociability and deprived children of freedom, inflicting upon them for the first time the birch and the prison cell.

To prove this thesis Aries uses two main arguments. He first says that a separate concept of childhood was unknown in the early Middle Ages. "Medieval art until about the twelfth century did not know childhood or did not attempt to portray it" because artists were "unable to depict a child except as a man on a smaller scale."(19) Not only does this leave the art of antiquity in limbo, but it ignores voluminous evidence that medieval artists could, indeed, paint realistic children.(20) His etymological argument for a separate concept of childhood being unknown is also untenable.(21) In any case, the notion of the "invention of childhood" is so fuzzy that it is surprising that so many historians have recently picked it up.(22) His second argument, that the modern family restricts the child's freedom and increases the severity of punishment, runs counter to all the evidence.

The idea that adolescence was not recognized as a category of development separate from both childhood and adulthood is a more subtle distinction, but only just. The primary evidence concerning this outlook is the lack of any term for the modern-day word "adolescence." If they didn't have a word for it, they didn't comprehend it as a stage in life.

This argument also leaves something to be desired, especially when we remember that medieval people did not use the terms "feudalism" or "courtly love." And again, there is some evidence to refute the assumption. Inheritance laws set the age of majority at 21, expecting a certain level of maturity before entrusting a young individual with financial responsibility. And there was concern expressed for the "wild youth" of teenage apprentices and students; the mischief that youth can cause was frequently seen as a stage that people pass through on the way to becoming "sad and wise."

In towns and cities, children would grow to become the laborers and apprentices that made a craft business grow. And here, too, there are signs that society as a whole understood the value of children. For example, in medieval London, laws regarding the rights of orphans were careful to place a child with someone who could not benefit from his death.

Among the nobility, children would perpetuate the family name and increase the family's holdings through advancement in service to their liege lords and through advantageous marriages. Some of these unions were planned while the bride- and groom-to-be were still in the cradle.

"The psychodynamics of mystics, their symbol formations and their actions are based on excessive early trauma. . . . There is evidence that medieval mystics
were deprived and also emotionally and sexually abused as children."
-- Childhood and Fantasies of Medieval Mystics, Dr. Ralph Frenken

". . . Frenken's mystics each attempted to achieve their desired transcendent knowledge, albeit through perverse methods resulting from their horrid childhoods -- they were merely attempting to create psychic homeostasis."

"The production of pain, bleeding, religious symbol scarification, self-flagellation
and wearing body-injuring garments all served the mystics' purpose of achieving unity with the divine as a substitute for childhood psychic abuse, of merging with an idealized Mother and as a defense against normal sexual emotions."

"Whatever ecstasy they may have achieved was short­lived because it
never addressed a resolution of childhood trauma."

-- Jerrold Atlas, Ph.D.

The idea of childhood is disappearing.

Writing a new preface three years ago for the re-released version of the book, Postman, who teaches media and political culture at New York University, confessed that, "sad to say," he saw little to change in his 1982 text. "What was happening then is happening now. Only worse."

In Postman's view, the postmodern culture is propelling us back to a time not altogether different from the Middle Ages, a time before literacy, a time before childhood had taken hold as an idea. Obviously, there were children in medieval times, but no real childhood, he says, because there was no distinction between what adults and children knew.

Postman's book recalls the coarse village festivals depicted in medieval paintings - men and women besotted with drink, groping one another with children all around them. It describes the feculent conditions and manners drawn from the writings of Erasmus and others in which adults and children shared open lives of lust and squalor.

"The absence of literacy, the absence of the idea of education, the absence of the idea of shame - these are the reasons why the idea of childhood did not exist in the medieval world," Postman writes.

Only after the development of the printing press, and of literacy, did childhood begin to emerge, he says. Despite pressures on children to work in the mines and factories of an industrial age, the need for literacy and education gradually became apparent, first among the elite, then among the masses. Childhood became defined as the time it took to nurture and transform a child into a civilized adult who could read and comprehend complex information. The view American settlers was that only gradually could children attain civility and adulthood through "literacy, education, reason, self-control and shame."

It was during that time, Postman notes, that public education flourished, that children began celebrating birthdays and that a popular culture especially for kids developed around games and songs. Postman places the high-water mark for childhood at between 1850 and 1950.

"Childhood was invented in the seventeenth century."

So begins chapter seven of Neil Postman's Building a Bridge to the 18th Century. I highly recommend the entire book, but this chapter in and of itself deserves special consideration. Postman was a brilliant writer and social critic, rest his soul, and I wouldn't presume to improve on his presentation. What I can do is summarize and tantalize enough that you'll head out to the nearest library and pick up a copy of the book yourself. Or at least internalize and spread the meme.

Of course children existed prior to the seventeenth century, but that's not the same thing at all. Childhood is a social construction, a collective agreement to set aside some time between infancy and adulthood largely free of responsibilities that is enforced by behaviors, social norms, and laws. (What this time is for is a major question that we'll get to later.)

Surveying Children and Childhood

Hugh Cunningham has taken on a formidable challenge in this book: describing the history not only of the Western idea of childhood, but the actual experience of children over a span of nearly five hundred years.

The book first explores the evolution of ideas about childhood in the Western world. Beginning with a brief but lucid examination of the classical and medieval world, where the most important change in the notion of childhood came with the spread of Christianity, Cunningham turns to the period beginning about 1500. His aim here is to describe the rise of what he calls a "middle class ideology of childhood." This ideology has its origins in the thinking of a succession of figures, the first of whom was Erasmus. Erasmus's stress upon the importance of the father and of education--for boys, at any rate--was the first step in the creation of a distinctly modern vision of childhood. Interestingly, Cunningham argues that the Reformation's importance was in advancing the notion of the importance of education for Catholics and Protestants alike. Though he concedes that there were differences--the Puritan obsession with original sin and the Catholic elevation of the priest above the familial patriarch, for example--Cunningham prefers to stress continuities across the religious divide. John Locke, the next important contributor in Cunningham's view, was important for undermining the idea of original sin, and for encouraging the secularization of the western ideal of childhood. It was left for Rousseau to follow Locke's secular ideal to its logical conclusion: nature, rather than the Church, should be the director of a child's growth. These romantic ideals were immensely influential among educated Europeans, and were popularized still more after the publication of Wordsworth's "Ode on Intimations of Mortality from Recollections of Early Childhood." This work, says Cunningham, "came to encapsulate what was thought of as a romantic attitude to childhood: that is, that childhood was the best part of life" (p. 74). And unlike Locke's own gendered notion of childhood, Wordsworth and Rousseau made no distinctions between boys and girls; children of both genders were "godlike, fit to be worshipped, and the embodiment of hope" (p. 78).

Of course these ideas were the product of elites, and until the nineteenth century rarely applied to any other children, as Cunningham recognizes. The rest of his book traces the ways in which this "middle class ideology" came to be applied to all children. In the early part of the period, Erasmian prescriptions had no place in the experience of the vast majority of children, who were trained from about the age of seven to take their place in the adult world of work. But beginning in the seventeenth century, education, sponsored by churches and lay charity, began to have a broader impact. Many of the free schools founded in English towns in the period, for example, followed, if only loosely, Lockean ideals. While their goal was usually to teach a useful trade, they also provided literacy skills and made the experience of schooling more common for the non-elite majority.

Industrialization, Cunningham argues, did little to alter the structure of the family, but it radically changed the experience of its members, as people moved from agriculture to industry. Children, accustomed to work in the fields, quite naturally took their places in the factory work force. Here the Romantic ideal began to have its effect upon the majority of children, as middle class reformers pressured Western states to limit the impact of industry upon children. A hallmark of the century after 1750, Cunningham tells us, was the dramatic increase in state intervention in child-related matters. Regulation imposed upon child labor was one feature of these policies. Eighteenth-century governments had deliberately encouraged the rapid introduction of children into the work force, teaching them trades, but by the mid-nineteenth century the goal was to exclude them from the shop floor. Most important of all was the introduction of compulsory schooling. Although feeble state efforts at requiring education had been underway since the early eighteenth century, it was not until the latter half of the nineteenth that school became a common experience for all.

While compulsory education reinforced the Romantic ideal of childhood, Cunningham points out that Western states had far more in mind than assuring fun and games for youth. Increasingly sophisticated economies required sophisticated skills. Schools served the interests of governments and their rulers: children pledged allegiance, saluted portraits of kaisers and kings, and learned about the benefits of the status quo. Moreover, the state's increased role in the lives of children--not simply through schooling, but also through public health programs and social work, both of which emerge simultaneously with the public school, "entailed an unprecedented degree of surveillance of the working-class population" (p. 168). Despite the utility of such policies for governments, there is no doubt but that the Romantic ideal of childhood dominated public action. Even science did more to serve the ideal than challenge it; pediatrics, a branch of medicine unknown much before the turn of the century, helped ensure a dramatic fall in infant mortality rates, a shift Cunningham emphasizes is of great importance.

SEE:

Jamestown; The Birth of Capitalism

Smurfs are Commies

Oliver In Alberta

Temp Workers For Timmies

Foley's Follies=Sexual Harassment

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Chupacabra

What is it? And since she found this corpse in July why are the professionals speculating instead waiting for the forensic pathology and DNA test of this creature. Dog, fox, coyote, whatever, lets quit the 'scientific' explanations until the science is done thank you.

Phylis Canion holds the head of what she is calling a Chupacabra at her home. She found the strange looking animal dead outside her ranch and thinks it is responsible for killing many of her chickens. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

But what folks are calling a chupacabra is probably just a strange breed of dog, said veterinarian Travis Schaar of the Main Street Animal Hospital in nearby Victoria.

"I'm not going to tell you that's not a chupacabra. I just think in my opinion a chupacabra is a dog," said Schaar, who has seen Canion's find.

The "chupacabras" could have all been part of a mutated litter of dogs, or they may be a new kind of mutt, he said.

Wildlife officials say the animal is actually a very sick, grey fox that possibly has a parasite.

Phylis Canion found the corpse of a strange looking critter on her property in late July. Claiming that the animal killed numerous cats in the area and sucked the blood from her chickens for a number of years, Canion collected the blue-colored road kill off Hwy.183. Upon closer inspection, she couldn’t place a name to it.

Determined to find out the identity of her discovery, she contacted KENS-5, a CBS broadcast affiliate in San Antonio. The news station was also curious, and sent a tissue sample to Texas State University-San Marcos for DNA testing.

The Department of Biology received the remains late this summer and is currently running tests to divulge the classification of the animal in the lab’s Beckman-Coulter CEQ 8800 DNA sequencer.

“This is part of a Mexican, Caribbean and Latin-American cultural phenomenon,” said Michael Forstner, professor of biology at Texas State and facilitator of the DNA tests. “While we don’t have the skull, from the images we have we can tell you that it’s a canid, it’s in the dog family Canidae.”

The reason the department doesn’t possess the skull is because the head of the animal was removed by Canion. She placed it in her freezer to preserve it for a decorative mount on her wall, leaving DNA testing as the remaining means in which to conclusively identify the beast.

“We’ll extract the DNA and amplify it using DNA markers suitable for mammals and carnivores,” Forstner said. “When we’re done, we’ll run the results against our online database and see what it matches.”

Supposed chupacabras that have undergone testing in the past often turn out to be wild dogs, foxes or coyotes. In this case, Forstner says the department should easily be able to find a match.

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Rudderless Liberals

Well they have a new mascot, a dance and possibly a new party song. That's a start.

Liberals can win the next federal election, but only if they come up with clear policy alternatives, some fresh ideas, new faces and a simple message, the party's pollster said Thursday.

While Canadians still don't trust Harper entirely, MPs said Marzolini told them voters aren't particularly enamoured of the Liberal team or its agenda either.

The problem is their Leader.

Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion, second from right, and his wife, Janine Krieber, relax aboard the tour boat Atlantic Puffin in Bay Bulls, Nfld., August 28, 2007. Dion was gracious and polite, but humour challenged, the Star's Susan Delacourt says.

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Liberal Party Song

Along with their new official mascot and dance the Liberal Party could adopt this as their anthem.

The Puffin Song

Copyright 1990 by Tom Knight

I'm not like the penguin, don't confuse me with ducks

I'm dressed for dinner in my finest fancy tux

My beak it is pretty, my feathers are fine

Long time ago, the hunters wanted mine

Call me a Puffin, 'cuz that's my name

I live on an island just off the coast of Maine

But I wasn't born here, I was brought by a man

And now my burrow is here on Egg Rock Island

Chorus:

Come fly with me

Fly across the sea

Come fly with me

Puffins we will be

My brothers and sisters, my lovely wife

We like to gather, we love the social life

A picnic for puffins, a tasty old treat

I hope you like fish, it's our favorite thing to eat (Chorus)

And here is an exercise they could try at their next caucus meeting.

An original dramatic action song – “Underwater World” – proved the perfect
opportunity for all age groups to work together.

" For a Puffin likes nuthin',
more than tasty fish,
And a beak thats full for stuffin',
is every Puffin's wish."

The value of this sharing was soon apparent. The children
worked in mixed age groups and the P3 seaweeds (7-8 year olds) were
soon swaying as gracefully as the P7 ones (11-12 year olds). The P1 shoals
of fish (5-6 year olds) were shown how to twist and wriggle by their older
brothers and sisters, and the young puffins took no time at all to copy the
older ones in tossing sandeels in their beaks, while waddling around the
stage! There was a great sense of togetherness and of each individual
contribution being an important part of the whole

For their next convention they could invite the Puffins to play.

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Puffin Dance

Now that the Liberals have adopted the Puffin as their official mascot their Great Leader does the Puffin Dance.



After all the Puffin is known as the "clown of the sea,"

Yes, yes I know this photo is already controversial.

However to be fair and balanced here are some more goofy politician photo's.





















I guess that was Day doing his

Stanfield imitation.





















And of course who can ever forget this.
The Queen of the BBQ circuit
before he became King.





















Apparently it's a Liberal Leader tradition
to also be the Minister of Dance.
Pierre does the pirouette.












H/T to Engaged Spectator.



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Bush Apologizes to Witches

Good news Wicca has been officially recognized by the U.S. Military as a religion.
In this BBC report an update on the recent recognition of Wicca as a religion by the U.S. military.

Pagan branch gains strength

31 Aug 2007

Followers of Wicca, a branch of paganism, have stepped up efforts for recognition of the religion.

Historic Headstone Dedication at Arlington National Cemetery for Wiccan Priestess on the 4th of July -

Of course considering the U.S. military operates from the Pentagon, itself a form of Pentagram, and uses the Star on as its symbol on its equipment, perhaps they realized how silly this was. Or perhaps their reluctance was that they were afraid of being outed as a Satanic conspiracy like poor old Procter and Gamble.

A Wiccan military family who got dissed last week by President Bush when he was meeting with military families who lost loved ones in Iraq, gains an apology from the Pres.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State today commended President George W. Bush for his apology to a Wiccan war widow who was excluded from a private meeting with veterans and their deceased family members in Nevada earlier this week.

Roberta Stewart, whose husband Sgt. Patrick Stewart was killed in combat in Afghanistan, was not invited to meet with Bush and other family members of soldiers who have died in combat. Other members of Sgt. Stewart's family were invited to the meeting.

"He apologized for the exclusion and the error that was made and said that he admired me for my spirit and thanked me for accepting his apology and said that he hoped he would have the opportunity to someday meet me," Stewart continued. "I was very pleased with the way the conversation went, very pleased that he did call and put this right."

Lynn asked Stewart if the president touched upon her Wiccan faith. She replied that the president told her that "he would not discriminate against someone because of their religion."

Unlike other Born Again Christians who are still at war with the Old Religion.

The Return of the Old Gods: A Challenge to Green Evangelicals

Just as they are against secular society which allows Wicca and other alternative religions to flourish in spite of Christian Hegemony.



See:

Gone to Croatan

Whitman Wicker Man

The Wicker Man Review

Wicca

Pagan



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The Ethnic Cleansing of Satanists

In America they only arrest the 'Satanic' Rock stars for immorality, and the evangelical Christian Right burns their records and claims they use back masking for recruitment.

This shows that the Fundamentalist Patriarchal Abrahamic religions share a common ideology when it comes to their war on Rock n Roll and Satanism.

"Iran Arrests 230 Youths Attending 'Satanic' Rock Concert," AP, August 5, 2007

Iran arrested more than 200 music fans at an underground rock concert that one official called a "satanic" gathering and authorities accused the youths of breaking Islamic law.

A witness said Sunday that police raided the concert as it was ending late Wednesday near the town of Karaj, some 30 miles west of the capital.

Calls to authorities were not immediately returned on Sunday. But the public prosecutor in Karaj, Ali Farhadi, said Saturday about 230 people were arrested during the concert.

"Most of them were wealthy young people who were not aware of the satanic nature of the concert," Farhadi told state television. "A female singer, who was performing, and some rock and rap music bands were among the detained."

He said concert organizers had told young people to attend if they were eager to learn how "devil worshippers" perform music.

Local media reported organizers hid cameras to tape the attendants' behavior and later blackmail them. The reports also said police confiscated large amounts of alcohol and drugs.

Boys and girls mingled and danced together during the concert, and some of the women were not wearing the modest clothing and Islamic headscarf required by law, media reports said.

And speaking of Satanists I would be remiss not to note that the Fundamentalists are murdering (ethnic cleansing) the Yezidi in Iraq. You see once you declare someone a Satanist, it is okay to convert them by the force of the sword.

Kawwal Khoudeida Hasan, the leader of a community of about 50 Yezidi families now living in Lincoln, Nebraska, is pleading with the U.S. Congress and with the United Nations to stop the genocide of the Yezidis, a Kurdish people in Iraq with a unique history and religion.

According to Kawwal, Genocide is occurring at this moment in northern Iraq to the Yezidis, a Kurdish people with a unique history and religion. Their persecution is coming at the hands of Islamic militants, who for centuries have slaughtered all Yezidis who have refused to convert to their religion.

On April 22, 2007, the world became shockingly aware of the Yezidi plight when 23 of them were lined up and systematically gunned down by a firing squad of Moslem Kurds. A few days later, 3 more Yezidi men were gunned down by Moslem extremists in the city of Mosul, thus bringing the total of Yezidi murders to 34 during the three month period from March to May, 2007.

Most recently, on August 12, 2007, the drivers of four bomb-laden trucks detonated their loads after driving into two residential areas near the town of Qahataniya, 75 miles west of Mosul, killing at least 250 Yezidis and injuring at least 500 more. This attack occurred in an area principally occupied by Faqirs, members of the Yezidi priest class, thus indicating that the ultimate goal of the culprits was apparently to strike at the jugular of the Yezidi religion by destroying its priests.

'They won't stop until we are all wiped out.' Among the Yezidi

"The attack came as no surprise to us," Prince Tahseen Sayid Ali, the temporal leader of the Yezidis, told the Guardian in his headquarters in Sheikhan, about 40 miles north-east of Mosul. Last April, the community came under the international spotlight when a Yezidi girl married a Muslim boy and was reported to have converted to Islam. She was promptly stoned to death by a mob in her hometown of Bazan. The murder was caught on a mobile phone camera and distributed on the internet. Yezidi leaders condemned the killing, but the damage was done. In response, gunmen pulled 23 Yezidi workers off a bus near Mosul and shot them dead. Hundreds of Yezidi students at Mosul university have since either fled or moved to universities inside the Kurdish autonomous area. For the past month, said Prince Tahseen, Yezidi leaders in Sinjar had been complaining of threats by Islamists. They said the militants, holed up among local Sunni Arab settlements along the Syrian border, had effectively blockaded Yezidi towns, preventing delivery of foodstuffs and fuel.

"The Islamic terrorists had made it very clear that they wanted to see rivers of Yezidi blood," said Prince Tahseen. But no one, least of all the US army, which is nominally in control of the region, was listening. "I'm sure it will happen again unless we take steps to protect ourselves," he said. "We are a peaceful people. We don't have force of arms. The only protection is for all the Yezidis is to be part of the Kurdish self-rule zone. But whether the Arabs allow us to vote on it as the constitution says we should, is another question."

A series of 4 massive car bombs in the Kurdish area of Iraq, near the Syrian border, killed more than 250 people yesterday. The attacks were aimed at the Yezedi sect, a pre-Islamic religious community that has been persecuted for centuries. Tensions escalated earlier this year however, when a 17-year-old Yezedi girl was stoned to death for falling in love with a Muslim boy and converting to Islam.

This stoning, incidently, led to the massacre of 23 Yezedis by Muslims who believed Du'a was murdered for converting to Islam:

Abdul-Karim Khalaf, a police spokesman for Ninevah province, said the executions were in response to the killing two weeks ago of a Yazidi woman who had recently converted to Islam after she fell in love with a Muslim and ran off with him. Her relatives had disapproved of the match and dragged her back to Bashika, where she was stoned to death, he said.

A grainy video showing gruesome scenes of the woman's killing was distributed on Iraqi Web sites in recent weeks, but its authenticity could not be independently confirmed.

The town of Ain Sifni is being garrisoned by a force of approximately 1000 Peshmerga (Kurdish militia) and police. It is not clear when Kurdish forces will leave but the Yazidis are quite intimidated at this point. The Yazidis have long endured persecution and intimidation from their Arab and Kurdish Muslim neighbors as have the Christian Chaldo-Assyrians of the region. It would be great if a legitimate reporter could get in and take a look at what’s going on but based on how a journalist was treated when we were there yesterday, they may be very restricted in their movement and activities.

The Yezidi are considered a 'satanic' religion, because as a gnostic religion they believe that the god of this world is Lucifer, the Peacock Angel.Their religion is an example of the transition from Goddess worship to that of the Patriarchal Monotheistic God. The polytheism of the the Goddess and God based cultures gave way to a polytheistic pantheon ruled over by One God.

Yezidism is syncretistic: it combines elements of many faiths. Like Hindus, they believe in reincarnation. Like ancient Mithraists, they sacrifice bulls. They practise baptism, like Christians. When they pray they face the sun, like Zoroastrians. They profess to revile Islam, but there are strong links with Sufism, the mystical branch of Islam.

It's a remarkably confusing picture. And I still haven't got an answer to the main question: do they worship "Satan"?

In the centre of town I am greeted by Halil Savucu, a westernised spokesman for the Yezidi. Also with us is Uta Tolle, a German scholar of Yezidism.

In Halil's Mercedes we drive into the suburbs. On the way, the two of them give me their view of the faith. "Yezidi is oral, not literary," says Uta. "This is why it is sometimes hard to pin down precise beliefs. There are religious texts, like the Black Book, but they are not crucial. The faith is really handed down by kawwas, sort of musical preachers."

And who is Melek Taus? Halil looks slightly uncomfortable: "We believe he is a proud angel, who rebelled and was thrown into Hell by God. He stayed there 40,000 years, until his tears quenched the fires of the underworld. Now he is reconciled to God."

But is he good or evil? "He is both. Like fire. Flames can cook but they can also burn. The world is good and bad."

For a Yezidi to say they worship the Devil is understandably difficult. It is their reputation as infidels - as genuine "devil worshippers" - that has led to their fierce persecution over time, especially by Muslims. Saddam Hussein intensified this suppression.

But some Yezidi do claim that Melek Taus is "the Devil". One hereditary leader of the Yezidi, Mir Hazem, said in 2005: "I cannot say this word [Devil] out loud because it is sacred. It's the chief of angels. We believe in the chief of angels."

There are further indications that Melek Taus is "the Devil". The parallels between the story of the peacock angel's rebellion, and the story of Lucifer, cast into Hell by the Christian God, are surely too close to be coincidence. The very word "Melek" is cognate with "Moloch", the name of a Biblical demon - who demanded human sacrifice.

The avian imagery of Melek Taus also indicates a demonic aspect. The Yezidi come from Kurdistan, the ancient lands of Sumeria and Assyria. Sumerian gods were often cruel, and equipped with beaks and wings. Birdlike. Three thousand years ago the Assyrians worshipped flying demons, spirits of the desert wind. One was the scaly-winged demon featured in The Exorcist: Pazuzu.

The Yezidi reverence for birds - and snakes - might also be extremely old. Excavations at ancient Catalhoyuk, in Turkey, show that the people there revered bird-gods as long ago as 7000BC. Even older is Gobekli Tepe, a megalithic site near Sanliurfa, in Kurdish Turkey (Sanliurfa was once a stronghold of Yezidism). The extraordinary temple of Gobekli boasts carvings of winged birdmen, and images of buzzards and serpents.

The Yezidi are both an ethnic and religious minority in Iraq, Turkey, Iran,Georgia and in Armenia.

500 - 1,000 CE
Mohammed founds Islam (dies 632). Celtic Church outlawed by
Council of Whitby (664). Foundation of first Sufi secret
societies (c. 700). First written translation of Emerald Tablet
of Hermes Trismegistus. Charlemagne founds alleged first
Rosicrucian Lodge in Toulouse (898). Foundation of the Cathars,
Druzes and Yezedi (900). Heretical Catholic monks found first
Rosicrucian college (1,000).

And like all patriarchal dualist religions in the region they believe they are the chosen people. Coming from Persia they may have originated as a Zoroastrian fire religion of the Magi.

Roberts was inspired by a passage found in the Travels of Marco Polo. Upon Polo's visits to Persia (the land now officially known as Iran) he was given an unusual history of the Nativity which combined unique elements of Christianity and Zoroastrianism. The Zoroastrian religion was once the most embraced and popular monothiestic/dualist organized religion in the world prior to the advent of Christianity and Judaism during the reign of the Persian Empire. The world Zoroastrian population still exists, but the adherents to that once-most-popular faith have now dwindled to only about 100,000 people.

And unlike their Semitic neighbours they are Caucasian/Indo-Europeans which also sets them apart, and as a visible minority makes them more vulnerable to ethnic as well as relgious cleansing.

Two Kids: One Bright Future

I had been hearing about the Yezidi people who live in villages near Dohuk. Followers of an ancient religion, whose proponents claim it is the oldest in the world, there are thought to be about a half million Yezidis, living mostly in the area of Mosul, with smaller bands in forgotten villages scattered across northern Iraq, Syria, Turkey and other lands. Saddam had labeled the Yezidis “Devil Worshippers,” a claim I’d heard other Iraqis make, but no source offered substantiation. I wanted to know more.

Nearly everything I heard pronounced as fact about Yezidis was certain in only one narrow sense: before long, someone equally confident of their information would provide a different set of facts. The only way to find the truth would be to talk with Yezidis in situ, so I asked an interpreter in Dohuk to take me to a Yezidi village.

An older Yezidi man with whom I speak on occasion says there are seven angels: Izrafael, Jibrael, Michael, Nordael, Dardael, Shamnael, and Azazael. All were gathered at a heavenly meeting when God told them they should bow to none other than Him. This arrangement worked for a span of forty thousand years, until God created Adam by mixing the “elements”: earth, air, water and fire. When God told the seven angels to bow before Adam, six complied. A seventh angel, citing God’s order that the angels bow only to God, refused. Although this angel was God’s favorite, his disobedience cast him from grace.

There is some dispute among Yezidis about the identity of the seventh angel; some believe it was Jibrael, while others believe it was Izrafael. Much seems lost to time. But whatever his former name, when this seventh Angel, most beloved of God, fell from grace, he was the most powerful angel in Heaven and on Earth. He rose as the Archangel Malak Ta’us. (Although this, too, is the subject of some debate; some Yezidis call him Ta’us Malak.) His herald is the peacock, for it is “by far the most beautiful bird in the world,” and the name, Malak Ta’us, literally means “King of Peacocks.”

Most Yezidis equate Malak Ta’us with Satan, a mainstay in many religions but otherwise not mentioned in Yezidism. Some Yezidis claim that Malak Ta’us is like a god himself, at least in terms of his power-particularly over the fortunes of the descendents of Adam. In this religion, God created Adam, but no Eve, and therefore all men came from Adam alone. The Yezidis were first born among all men, and consider themselves to be “the chosen people.”

The Worst since 9/11

It has been a long time since mass murder in Mesopotamia has been news. Few still cry for Iraq. Hardly anyone has heard of Yezidis, the victims.

Canada Goes To Pot

Canada is a nation of pot heads.

\Marijuana use in Canada is the highest in the industrialized world and more than four times the global rate, according to a report from the United Nations.

Forty per cent of Canadian cannabis is produced in British Columbia, 25% in Ontario and 25% in Quebec, the report noted.

 Health

   -   One in 10 Canadian women uses marijuana.

Experts and activists are not concerned about the high rate of Canadian marijuana use reported in 2007 UN World Drug report —even though young people are the largest users of the drug.

The report states that 16.8 per cent of Canadians between the ages of 16 and 64 used marijuana in 2004. Canada is ranked fifth in marijuana use and the country’s usage percentage is four times the world average of 3.8 per cent. To compare, the report found that 12.6 per cent of people in the United States and 6.1 per cent in Holland have used the drug.

Richard Mathias, a professor at the University of British Columbia’s faculty of medicine, said he is pleased with the results from the report and is not worried about the high numbers of young people using the drug.

“I think that marijuana is a safer drug than some other options and I know that youth is a difficult, highly stressful time and it is to be expected that youth will explore and that’s good,” he said. “I teach these kids. They’re not criminals.”

A study conducted in 2002 by Carleton University professor Peter Fried also concluded that only heavy pot smokers are negatively affected by marijuana use. Fried’s 70-person study found that only heavy marijuana users between the ages of 10 and 20 had a decline in their IQ scores. The rest saw an increase in their scores.

The study also found that those who smoked heavily and later quit returned to their former IQ level.

Eugene Oscapella, an Ottawa-based lawyer who specializes in drug policy issues, said the UN report shows that the legal status of marijuana in a given country seems to have little bearing on consumption rates.

The report found that only 6.1 per cent of people in the Netherlands, where marijuana use has effectively been decriminalized, reported trying pot.

This shows decriminalization has no bearing on rates of use, and Canada shouldn't be so afraid to follow the Dutch lead, Oscapella said.

"The criminal law does not prevent people from using marijuana, nor does legalization force people to use it," he said.

Jean Chretien's Liberals first introduced a bill to decriminalize small amounts of marijuana in 2003, but it was never brought to a final vote. Stephen Harper's Conservatives killed the bill when they came to office in January 2006.

Oscapella added that Canada should be focusing its resources on the root causes of drug abuse, rather than persecuting people for possession.

"It is a health and a social issue," he said. "The criminal law is not the appropriate mechanism for dealing with drugs in the vast majority of cases."

Marijuana and tobacco use among young adults in Canada

The authors characterized marijuana smoking among young adult Canadians, examined the co-morbidity of tobacco and marijuana use, and identified correlates associated with different marijuana use consumption patterns. Data were collected from 20,275 individuals as part of the 2004 Canadian Tobacco Use Monitoring Survey. Logistic regression models were conducted to examine characteristics associated with marijuana use behaviors among young adults (aged 15-24). Rates of marijuana use were highest among current smokers and lowest among never smokers. Marijuana use was more prevalent among males, young adults living in rural areas, and increased with age. Young adults who were still in school were more likely to have tried marijuana, although among those who had tried, young adults outside of school were more like to be heavy users. Males and those who first tried marijuana at an earlier age also reported more frequent marijuana use. These findings illustrate remarkably high rates of marijuana use and high co-morbidity of tobacco use among young adult Canadians. These findings suggest that future research should consider whether the increasing popularity of marijuana use among young adults represents a threat to the continuing decline in tobacco use among this population.

We have a large scale industry in producing illicit and licit marijuana. The latter for medicinal purposes. We have approved marijuana and its byproducts for medicinal uses.

Since the 1970's when the LeDain Commission recommended decriminalization to today when the right wing think tank the Fraser Institute recommends decriminalization for controlling grow ops and increased tax income.

Canadians favour decriminalization. However the Harpocrites ignored their old Fraser pals as they ignore 'polls' and once elected declared war on pot. Quietly without much fanfare, what had been Liberal policy waiting for a vote was squashed.

“We will not be reintroducing the Liberal government’s marijuana decriminalization legislation,” Harper announced at a Canadian Professional Police Association meeting. “I thought we might find a receptive audience here,” he added, according to a Reuters report.

The Harpocrites would rather pander to their regressive base with a phony war on drugs, blaming as they do the rise in crime and pot smoking on the Liberals, pathetic.

In view of the former Liberal government's determination to medicalize and legalize marijuana, it is not surprising that, according to a study of young people in Canada released in 2004, our youth now hold the distinction of topping all nations (Switzerland was second) in frequent marijuana use. The lead researcher for this study, Dr. William Boyce of Queen's University, stated that the increased use of marijuana in Canada was tied to the three As - affordability, availability and acceptability. He stated, "in Canada, I think all three of those things come together so that it's actually used quite a bit by kids here. It's not so expensive, it's definitely available and with the legislation introduced in the last Parliament - and perhaps again in this one - that decriminalizes marijuana use, it certainly provides a signal to kids that this is not a highly illegal activity."

Thank heaven, the Conservative government is now providing a different message to our youth on marijuana use.

Please write to Prime Minister Harper and Minister of Justice Toews to thank them for the planned enforcement of the present marijuana laws rather than legalizing its use. Their actions will make a significant difference to our nation's youth. Please also request that marijuana use for so-called medical reasons be stopped if and until such time that it can be scientifically determined that its use has in fact, medical benefits.

The Harpocrites have adopted the oh so successful American War On Drugs Policy. And they have included marijuana as a key element of their new anti-drug campaign. Look forward to more regressive stupidity in the fall sitting of the house as the Minister of Health declares a drug panic.

Clement to MDs: Get tougher on illicit drugs

Federal Health Minister Tony Clement delivered a tough, anti-drug message to doctors yesterday, saying young people need straight talk about the dangers of illicit drugs, including marijuana.

"The messages young people have received during the past several years have been confusing and conflicting to say the least," Clement told the annual meeting of the Canadian Medical Association in Vancouver.

"We are very concerned about the damage and pain that drugs cause families and we intend to reverse the trend toward vague, ambiguous messaging that has characterized Canadian attitudes in the recent past," he said.

Ottawa plans a campaign emphasizing the dangers of all illicit drugs in any quantity, Clement said. "We will discourage young people from thinking there are safe amounts or safe drugs."

Meanwhile the Police and Senate disagree with the Harpocrites new War On Drugs.

Victoria's No. 2 cop testified in B.C. Supreme Court yesterday that neither the Vancouver Island Compassion Society nor its distribution of medical marijuana has ever been the subject of a criminal investigation.

Deputy Chief Bill Naughton said the society's Cormorant Street office of the Vancouver Island Compassion Society has not generated any complaints, adding marijuana ranks behind drugs like cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin in terms of Victoria police priorities.

"The enforcement of federal laws against marijuana takes a back seat," said Naughton, who was subpoenaed by the defence in the trial of Michael Swallow, 41, and Mat Beren, 33.

Also testifying yesterday in Victoria was Senator Pierre Claude Nolin, who chaired the Senate Special Committee on Illegal Drugs, which called in 2002 for the legalization of marijuana in Canada.

Nolin told the court the regulations, as they currently exist, are an obstacle to Canadians who want access to medical marijuana.

He said the rules ask doctors to be "gatekeepers" for access to legal marijuana. It's a role doctors don't want, and so Canadians are being denied access to a medical product.

"[The] medical profession is reluctant, generally reluctant," he said. "They don't want to be the gatekeepers, they don't want that responsibility."

Heck even the da Judge disagrees with the Government.

Rolling a joint might require the removal of stems and seeds, but the legal limbo in which pot smokers in Canada find themselves is far from clear-cut.
On July 13, an Ontario Court judge in Toronto acquitted Clifford Long, who was charged with possession of 3.5 grams of marijuana.
The court held that Canada's marijuana possession laws are unconstitutional. Justice Howard Borenstein cited a seven-year-old Ontario Court of Appeal case, which also described the possession law as unconstitutional, due to its ambiguity on medical marijuana.
Long argued in court that since the government of Canada allowed for medicinal use, but did not change the law on marijuana to accommodate this policy change, then all possession laws should cease to exist.

While the Harpocrites declare a War On Drugs, including marijuana, at the same time they approve big pharma profiting off Medical Marijuana.

GW Pharmaceuticals plc (AIM: GWP) and Bayer Inc., a subsidiary of Bayer AG, announce that Health Canada has approved Sativex®, a cannabis derived pharmaceutical treatment, as adjunctive analgesic treatment in adult patients with advanced cancer who experience moderate to severe pain during the highest tolerated dose of strong opioid therapy for persistent background pain.

While local marijuana growers are limited in providing medical marijuana to one or two Canadians. Clearly the Harpocrites missed the point of the Fraser Institute Report. Local grow ops legally functioning can produce medical as well as recreational marijuana that then could be taxed. Quality and consumer protection, would be assured.

A Vancouver Island grower of organic marijuana is being inundated with pleas for pot from disease sufferers, but Health Canada says he can supply only one person, a provincial court trial has been told.

Eric Nash said he wrote to Canadian Health Minister Tony Clement with a list of 121 people, all approved by Health Canada to use marijuana as medicine and asking him to grow it for them. One of them was a former RCMP officer diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

But Nash said regulations forbid him from growing for more than one person at a time. So his company, Island Harvest, can supply only two people, one each for him and his partner, although it could easily supply more.

And Tony's announcement of a new PR campaign in the War On Drugs looks suspicious in light of the governments failure to extend the license for the Vancouver Safe Injection Site.

The Canadian government is ramping up a massive anti-drug campaign, the first in 20 years, amid calls to keep open a Vancouver clinic that monitors heroin addicts as they inject themselves with the drug.

"Canada has not run a serious or significant anti-drug campaign for almost 20 years. The messages young people have received during the past several years have been confusing and conflicting to say the least," federal Health Minister Tony Clement said yesterday in a speech to the Canadian Medical Association in Vancouver.

Meanwhile, the Health Minister was vague about whether the Insite injection clinic in Vancouver would stay open. "There has been more research done, and some of it has been questioning of the research that has already taken place and questioning of the methodology of those associated with Insite," he said.

Isra Levy, president of the National Specialty Society for Community Medicine called for Insite to remain open in an interview with The Globe and Mail, stating that "illicit drug use is indeed a scourge, it's the cause of untold misery for those ill with addiction and their loved ones."

Is Harpers War in Afghanistan an excuse to expand his War On Drugs.....not only against opium but against the powerful Cannabis Indica and Afghani Hash....remember Afghani hash? It ain't been around in North America since the late Sixties and early Seventies when Hippies made their holy pilgrimage to Marrakesh and on to Afghanistan and back. It remains however a staple in Europe.

Hashish is produced practically everywhere in and around Afghanistan. The best kinds of Hash originate from the Northern provinces between Hindu Kush and the Russian border (Balkh, Mazar-i-Sharif). As tourist in Afghanistan it will be very difficult to be allowed to see Cannabis-Fields or Hash Production. The plants which are used for Hash production are very small and bushy Indicas. In Afghanistan Hashish is pressed by hand under addition of a small quantity of tea or water. The Hashish is worked on until it becomes highly elastic and has a strong aromatic smell. In Afghanistan the product is stored in the form of Hash-Balls (because a round ball has the less contact with air), however, before being shipped, the Hash is pressed in 100g slabs. Good qualities of Afghani are signed with the stem of the producing family. Sometimes Hash of this kind is sold as Royal Afghani. Color: Black on the outside, dark greenish or brown inside. Can sometimes look kind of grayish on the outside when left in contact with the air. Smell: Spicy to very spicy. Taste: Very spicy, somewhat harsh on the throat. Afghani can induce lots of coughing in inexperienced users.

Afghani
aka Afghanistan
Marijuana

Afghani Marijuana Strains - The origins of this seed strain come from Afghanistan and travel to Holland. Afghani has big round fat leaves and the same beautiful big fat buds. It usually has a rich smooth hash like heavy smoke taste. The Afghani marijuana plant tends to be very bushy and will yield large amounts of very sticky buds. Well known for excellent growth because it originated in mountainous conditions and over thousands of years a very stocky, sturdy and disease resistant plant was produced.

Well Cannabis in Afghanistan is back in a big way. As Canadian forces found last fall. Hey guys don't put that to the torch or ya' all will fall down.

Maj. Patrick Robichaud, commander of the operating base, this week characterized the security situation around Ma'sum Ghar as "fragile." He said Taliban insurgents appear to have taken advantage of a change in command among the Canadians and the Afghan National Army to slip back into the region. The insurgents are looking to strong-arm local farmers for a piece of the action in the impending marijuana harvest, said Maj. Robichaud.

Canadian troops fighting Taliban militants in Afghanistan have stumbled across an unexpected and potent enemy — almost impenetrable forests of 10-foot-tall marijuana plants.

Gen. Rick Hillier, chief of the Canadian defense staff, said Thursday that Taliban fighters were using the forests as cover. In response, the crew of at least one armored car had camouflaged their vehicle with marijuana.

"The challenge is that marijuana plants absorb energy, heat very readily. It's very difficult to penetrate with thermal devices ... and as a result you really have to be careful that the Taliban don't dodge in and out of those marijuana forests," he said in a speech in Ottawa.

Weed Fields in Afghanistan Video

The United Nations has conducted surveys of poppy crops, but has not done so for marijuana plants. The focus on poppies possibly reflects the view of international donors that highly addictive heroin is the more urgent problem.

Marijuana plants are widely grown in at least three of the 16 districts in Balkh province, which is home to Mazar-e-Sharif. Local authorities have sent letters to villages urging farmers to stop growing the illegal crop, but they have yet to decide how and when they will crack down.

"The farmers have planted this stuff like smugglers," said Saheed Azizullah Hashmi, head of the province's agriculture department. "We don't know how much there is out there."

He said many people associated with the hashish trade were linked to the Taliban and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network. But marijuana plants thrived well before they held sway over much of Afghanistan, and local commanders with large land holdings reportedly benefit from its cultivation.

Rouzudin and his fellow farmers made no effort to hide their plants, which loom over nearby cotton bushes. The two crops are interspersed along the road leading to Shibergan, the headquarters of Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, an ethnic Uzbek commander and powerful political figure in the north.

Farmer Majid Gul said he can get 5 million Afghanis, or about $100, for 2.2 pounds of hashish, 200 times more than he could earn for the same amount of cotton.

"When we're ready to sell, people in big cars will come from the bazaar in town," he said. "We don't know who they are, we just want the money."

. For the decade before the Soviet army invaded in 1979, the teahouses of Afghanistan were the toking tourist's hangout of choice. And even during 23 years of war, when the Afghans fought the Soviets and then one another, the hash trade thrived. "Afghan black" remained a staple sale for cannabis dealers across the world. Mazar-i-Sharif gave its name to a particularly potent variety. And last year, in the final weeks of the Taliban, Amsterdam's coffee-shop owners even boasted they were doing their bit for the war on terror by buying blocks stamped with a golden Northern Alliance stencil reading "Freedom for Afghanistan."

Now, as Afghanistan emerges from war, dope farming has never been so good�and the drought never so bad. The Taliban banned hash production, but in the postwar chaos of lawless fiefdoms that dot the land, growers and traders across the country are finding themselves free once again to cultivate and export hashish without fear, and often with warlord protection. Moreover, the international perception that cannabis is a relatively benign drug�prompting some authorities across Europe and Australia to decriminalize its use�has persuaded drug-policing agencies to largely ignore it. So, while opium cultivation is monitored to the acre, neither Interpol, the U.N. Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention nor the U.S.'s Drug Enforcement Agency can offer even rough estimates for how much hashish Afghanistan produces or what the trade is worth. But around Mazar it's almost impossible to find a field where hemp is not being grown, either openly or poorly hidden behind watermelons or knee-high cotton plants. "Everybody's farming chaars now," says former Taliban fighter Faizullah, 27, watering a verdant six-hectare oasis of hemp surrounded by desert. Cannabis used to be outlawed by the Taliban. "But now," says Faizullah, "it's a free-for-all."

Harpers War On Drugs is doomed to fail, as has the American campaign. But this proves once again that he and his pals have abandoned any pretense to libertarianism, while embracing the traditional right wing screed of Law and Order Republicanism. Heck Canadians even support the medical use of opiates despite this governments opposition.

While in the U.S. Republican Presidential Candidate and Libertarian Ron Paul embraces his inner Canadian and calls for decriminalization, and an end to Americas war on drugs. Why Is This Canadian Pot Dealer Campaigning for Ron Paul?

Also, a little known fact is that if Ron Paul got his way, there would be no federal war on drugs. He has called the war on drugs “as stupid as the war in Iraq”. He is uncompromisingly against federal laws banning medical marijuana, and completely opposed to the federal government coming in, when a state has legalized medical marijuana, and using force to nullify this legalization (such as has happened in California, where medical marijuana is legal, but the federal government uses force to effectively keep it criminalized. This would NOT happen under a Paul administration.)

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Harpers Latin American Success

Remember that mission to Latin America and the Caribbean that the Harper went on in July to promote development and bi-lateral trade. He missed Cuba, Venezuela, and Bolivia, but made it to Chile. Looks like the mission was a success.

Scotiabank to buy major stake in Chilean bank

Of course we just lost another thousand jobs at GM in Oshawa, despite all the corporarte welfare they got and the previous cuts announced this spring.

And Stelco just got bought by U.S. Steel.While we de-industrialize while watching Canadian resource companies get sold off to foreign capital, Canadian Banks go offshore to invest.

Of course when we think of trade and development Banks buying Banks is not what comes to mind. But thanks to all those bank fees, ATM charges, and tax breaks from the Canadian Government they have excess profits to invest. Profits made off the backs of their workers and Canadian taxpayers.

Bank of Nova Scotia's (BNS/TSX) international group may have taken a back seat to its domestic cousin when the company reported stronger-than-expected third quarter results Tuesday, but it still proved there is plenty of money to make overseas.

Profits at Scotiabank rose 9% year-over-year to $1-billion in the quarter, as domestic operations rung in profits of $391-million, up 23% from last year.

The international group, for their part, turned in profits of $270-million, a 15% increase from the year previous, after Scotia CEO Richard Waugh said operations in Peru, the Caribbean, South America and Chile all reported strong results.

SEE:

Contientalism

Afghanistan or Africa

Bank Union

Left Wing Pragmatism

Banks Profit From Job Cuts

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