How George Soros Sacked Glenn Beck

A recent interview of Fox News chief Roger Ailes by Howard Kurtz suggested that the channel is becoming less conservative by design. The real question, not addressed in the piece, is whether the relentless attacks on the channel by George Soros-funded groups have anything to do with this change in the direction of the popular channel and the demise of the Glenn Beck program in particular.

On Glenn Beck’s new TV program, carried on the Internet, Beck himself seemed to indicate this was the case. Talking about Orson Wells, his career, vision and his “Citizen Kane” movie, Beck said, “One of the biggest things [he taught me was] he picked a lot of ill-advised fights, sometimes risking his entire career against titans of industry. It did occur to me recently maybe I should have considered that little part of his life a little more before I locked horns with George Soros.”1 The implication is that Beck’s battle with Soros left him without a job on Fox News.

If this is the case, then we have reached a point in the United States when a private individual has obtained the power to prevent the most popular cable news channel in the country from subjecting his financial and political influence to scrutiny. It is important to see how this was done.

In fairness, Fox has covered Soros after the end of the Beck program. But Beck was doing so in a systematic manner by devoting whole shows to the topic. The sheer magnitude of organizations financially supported by the billionaire makes such an analysis necessary. That is what America’s Survival, Inc. we are doing through our Sorosfiles.com project.

As someone who had been writing about Soros in depth since 2004 (see The Hidden Soros Agenda: Drugs, Money, the Media, and Political Power), Beck’s interest was welcomed and represented what many conservatives hoped would be a long-overdue effort to cover the activities of what the left would call a “fat cat” in the political process. The left, of course, doesn’t apply that label to Soros because they receive so much of his money. To them, he is a sincere “philanthropist.”

Beck, who had one of the most successful programs on the channel, left Fox News on July 1, 2011, and launched his own Internet TV show, which appears to be a success in terms of paid subscribers. But some are saying that its influence pales in comparison to the perch that Beck had on Fox News. Clearly, the “progressives” who feared Beck were far more concerned about his Fox News Channel program than his Internet venture.

At the recent “Take Back the American Dream Conference,” held October 3-5. 2011, in Washington, D.C., former Obama “Green Jobs Czar” Van Jones claimed that Beck wasn’t on television any more. He said this in the context of admitting that his exit from the Obama Administration, in response to charges made by blogger Trevor Loudon and Beck and others, had been a traumatic time for him.

In fact, of course, Beck is on television, albeit Internet TV. But the point was that Beck was gone from cable television, which was much more of a powerful position in terms of the resources he was able to bring to bear to expose figures like Jones. It is a sign of Beck’s declining influence that Jones was rehabilitated and emerged at the conference as director of the “Take Back the American Dream” movement.

As Howard Kurtz told the story, there has been a “course correction” at Fox News and that the change was “quietly adopted at Fox over the last year” because of the problem posed by the “inflammatory rhetoric” of Glenn Beck, such as “his ranting about Obama being a racist.” Ailes was quoted as saying that this had become a “a bit of a branding issue for us.”

There was no ranting from Beck on this topic. His comments were based in part on Obama’s own statements on racial issues, such as his attack on the police for arresting a black professor, Henry Louis Gates. Obama called the police “stupid,” without knowing the facts about Gates’ obnoxious behavior.

The implication is that Beck was fired – technically a deal was reached in which Fox News said Beck would “transition off” the channel – because of charges that Beck was a racist. But Beck had accused Obama of racism in the summer of 2009 and lost his show over a year later. Something must have happened in the meantime. That “something” was that Beck picked a different target – billionaire George Soros.

It’s true that Beck had been the subject of an advertiser boycott, organized by a group called “Color of Change,” founded by Van Jones, but he still had the number three show in cable news. Howard Kurtz reported Beck still had “monster ratings.”

Beck began his campaign against Soros on November 10, 2010, when he announced that he was “pulling back the structure progressives have worked decades to put in place” and that, “Beneath every layer lies one common thread: George Soros.” Beck called Soros the “Puppet Master” and “one of the most powerful forces in the Progressive Movement.”

But because Soros is Jewish, a line of attack soon emerged against Beck that his criticism of the billionaire speculator was anti-Semitic. Some of this had to with Beck noting the fact that Soros, when he was a 14-year-old boy in Nazi-occupied Hungary, had assisted in confiscating property from Jews, and that he said he had no guilt over it.

Interestingly, these Soros comments were taken from a December 20, 1998, CBS “60 Minutes” interview of Soros conducted by Steve Kroft. It may constitute the last serious interview of Soros conducted by a major media figure. In recent years Soros has gone to more sympathetic talking heads for a platform, such as Fareed Zakaria of CNN, someone Soros thanks in the acknowledgements section of his book, The Bubble of American Supremacy.

Michael T. Kaufman’s sympathetic biography of the “messianic billionaire” called the “60 Minutes” story “bizarre” and accused Kroft of interviewing Soros with “prosecutorial gusto.” But the story was nothing of the sort. It was a matter-of-fact treatment of a controversial billionaire who had made most of his money through speculating about the rise and fall of nations’ currencies.

This interview caught Soros off-guard, especially in terms of the reaction. It helped to alert the public — and Jewish people in particular — to one reason why Soros had been decidedly unsympathetic to the Jewish state of Israel. It may have been over the top to suggest that Soros had been a Nazi sympathizer or collaborator. On the other hand, his activities could not be easily dismissed, even though he was young at the time. Most of the damage was caused not by what he did as a boy, but by Soros looking back on that period in his life and rationalizing or excusing what he had done in terms of the operations of markets.

However, it’s precisely those activities that continue to haunt Soros and cry out for media scrutiny and investigation. That was the trail that Beck was on at the time that the rug was pulled out from under him.

It is rare for top public figures, in the media or elsewhere, to publicly challenge Soros. In October 2004, when Soros was spending millions of dollars to defeat President George W. Bush for re-election, Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert charged that Soros was getting money from mysterious foreign sources possibly connected to the illegal drug cartels. Soros, who favors legalization of hard drugs, strongly denied that connection and threatened to sue Hastert for suggesting it. Soros’s defenders in the press said it couldn’t be foreign money because Soros had become, according to a press account, a naturalized American citizen in 1961.

But being an American doesn’t mean you don’t get foreign money. The hedge funds that Soros operates rely on mysterious and secret sources of funds.

Kaufman’s own bio of the billionaire notes that his “somewhat Byzantine money-making operation,” the Quantum Fund, was based in Curacao and consisted of “very rich individuals” whose identities may or may not have been known to Soros himself. One of his other funds, Quantum Partners, was chartered in the Cayman Islands.

In other words, Soros had based his funds off-shore, in order to avoid scrutiny by the U.S. Government and the press.

Hastert’s comments may have been a reference to the fact that Soros was reported to have invested in Colombia when the Drug Enforcement Administration was warning of drug money being laundered in the banks down there. Soros had been convicted of insider trading in France.

In October 2011, at a time when several “progressive” groups were cooperating with “Occupy Wall Street” protests, it seemed strange that Soros was avoiding similar scrutiny. Perhaps his bankrolling of the progressive movement that Beck was beginning to uncover had something to do with it.

However, before the controversy developed over what Beck was saying about Soros, Simon Greer, President and CEO of a group called Jewish Funds for Justice, said that he and other Jewish leaders had a July 2010 meeting with Fox News President Roger Ailes and the producer of Glenn Beck’s television show, Joel Cheatwood, and “spoke for almost an hour about the concerns held by many Jews about Glenn Beck’s constant and often inappropriate invocation of the Holocaust and Nazi Germany on the air.” Beck had made those comments in reference to what he perceived to be a totalitarian future for the U.S. if certain ominous trends were not reversed.

Greer said that, “We were assured by Ailes and Cheatwood that they understand our concerns and would explain them to Beck. Two days later, I received a hand-written note from Beck, which stated: ‘Simon, Joel shared the details of your meeting yesterday. Please know that I understand the sensitivity and sacred nature of this dark chapter in Human History. Thank you for your candor and helpful thoughts.’”

However, Cheatwood was quoted as saying about the meeting that, “We absolutely stood behind Glenn Beck 1000 percent.” and that his references to such matter as the Holocaust were appropriate.

Greer re-entered the picture when Soros came under attack, saying that Beck’s account of Soros escaping the Nazis was “a form of Holocaust revisionism” and “false.” He wrote a column on November 11, 2010, saying that Beck’s words “have consequences” and “advance a world view that ultimately places Jews like Soros in the crosshairs.” He added that he would be sending a letter with other Jewish leaders to Glenn Beck, Roger Ailes, and Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox News parent company News Corporation, expressing concern over this.

Whether Beck’s depictions were accurate or not, it seems apparent that the Soros controversy had much more impact on Fox News than Beck’s old comments about Obama’s alleged racism.

On top of Greer’s article, hundreds of rabbis signed an open letter to Murdoch, published on January 27, 2011, in the Wall Street Journal and the Jewish newspaper the Forward, requesting that Beck be “sanctioned by Fox News” and that Ailes apologize for saying that the complaints over Beck were made by “left wing rabbis who basically don’t think that anybody can ever use the word ‘Holocaust’ on the air.”

Joel Cheatwood responded that, “We haven’t seen the ad, but this group is a George Soros backed left-wing political organization that has been trying to engage Glenn Beck primarily for publicity purposes.”

The Soros-funded organization was the aforementioned Jewish Funds for Justice, headed by Greer.

In response to the accusation that they were defending Soros because they received money from him, an anti-Fox news site called “News Hounds” quoted the organization’s Chief Strategic Officer Mik Moore as saying, “OSI [the Soros-funded Open Society Institute] has given money to Jewish Funds for Justice for one of our managed projects, called the Funders Collaborative for Youth Organizing. We serve to essentially pass that money through to FCYO, which engages youth in civic participation work. Here is the listing on the OSI website. We do not receive any other funding from Soros or his philanthropies, although we would be proud to be supported by OSI and Soros.”

Despite the comments from Cheatwood and Ailes, these attacks took their toll and it was announced that Beck would leave Fox News. Since Murdoch had received a “National Human Relations Award” from the American Jewish Committee in 2009, it is not unreasonable to speculate that the charge that he had employed an anti-Semite, however false, was particularly hurtful. It makes sense to conclude that a decision was made in the higher echelons of News Corporation that Beck had to go. Beck’s comments quoted earlier, in regard to following the example of Orson Wells and taking on powerful business figures, add to this perception.

Writing in the Jerusalem Post, Caroline Glick blamed Beck’s departure from the channel on “the liberal American Jewish establishment” which rejected his “outspoken attacks on George Soros,” the “extremist leftist anti-American and anti-Zionist global financier who has given more than $100 million to radical leftist groups.”

If Beck is a Christian Zionist committed to Israel and someone who sees the role of the Jewish state in Biblical prophecy, it is just as certain that Soros is a figure who does not believe in any of that. Indeed, an avowed atheist, he stated in his book, Soros on Soros, that Zionism “just doesn’t appeal to me” and that he is in support of “reconciliation” between Israel and the Palestinians, including Hamas, which he conceded is an unsavory group.

His mentor, the philosopher Karl Popper (1902-1994), was equally opposed to the state of Israel and maintained “his outright rejection of Jewish statehood” until his death. 2

But it would be a mistake to say that the Jewish attacks on Beck were alone the deciding factor in his ouster from Fox. Beck began naming a series of groups getting Soros money and they all responded with their own attacks on the Fox News host. This serves as an example of how Soros performs as the “puppet master,” whether deliberately or not. The Soros-funded groups know that they are expected to support and defend their sponsor.

For example, the American Constitution Society (ACS) complained about Beck’s reference to the organization working “in the shadows” and cited another Soros-funded group, Media Matters, as debunking that claim.

For its part, Media Matters announced on October 20, 2010, that it had received $1 million from Soros. The group issued a statement from the billionaire saying:

Although Soros had not personally donated to Media Matters before that time, it was “developed” with help from the Center for American Progress (CAP), funded by Soros. CAP gave Media Matters some office space when it was being formed. What’s more, Media Matters received funding from the so-called Democracy Alliance, which is funded by George Soros.

The connections of Media Matters to the Democratic Party are substantial, suggesting that the organization functions largely as a Democratic Party front. The group’s “senior adviser,” Dennis Yedwab, served as the director of strategic resources at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and research director at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Other staffers have come from the Al Gore campaign, the Clinton-Gore 1996 Committee, the ACLU, the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund, and the Soros-funded Center for American Progress.

Katie Barge, the former director of research for Media Matters, became research director for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), only to resign under fire when she was alleged to have participated in an effort to fraudulently obtain a credit report on Maryland’s Republican Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele, who was running for the U.S. Senate. Her subordinate at the DSCC, Lauren B. Weiner, was charged with a crime in the case but there was no explanation of why Barge was not.

At the 2011 Campaign for America’s Future conference, Ilyse Hogue, a senior adviser to Media Matters, was a speaker. She had been the Director of Political Advocacy and Communications for the Soros-funded MoveOn.org.

Media Matters is run for former conservative David Brock, who abandoned the conservative cause and announced he was a homosexual.

Brock’s 2002 book, Blinded by the Right, is quite extraordinary in that it begins with a prologue admitting that the author was responsible for telling “lies” and ruining reputations. Assuming some parts of the book are true, at least those concerning Brock personally, it describes a young man struggling with an immoral lifestyle. Writing about college, for example, he says, “With some hesitation, during my freshman year, I went on uneasy dates and had hurried sexual encounters with other guys in neighboring dorms.” Later, he writes that he would go “out to bars looking for one-night hookups with some frequency, always by myself, very late at night, with few knowing, and no one caring, who I was.”

In two Esquire articles, Brock repudiated his Clinton muckraking and apologized to the president. His flip-flop appears to have been related to the close relationship that Brock, a closeted homosexual, established with Hillary Clinton’s openly gay press secretary, Neal Lattimore.

My only encounter with Brock came when he was a conservative and wanted help with an article he was writing about the left-wing Christic Institute. I had researched the organization extensively and had debated its leader on C-SPAN. I provided much of his research to Brock, who came into my office on the condition that he credit me in his piece. He did not.

Years later, when he became an ex-conservative, his Media Matters group published an item falsely implying that I had fabricated a letter from the Afghan Ambassador. The Brock group rushed into print with this defamatory item without checking the facts beforehand. Then it refused to retract or apologize after being caught. Like Brock, the organization can’t be trusted to say or do what is right.

But when Glenn Beck made minor errors, such as saying that the American Constitution Society operated “in the shadows,” the Soros-funded media network went crazy. Beck’s charge was sensational but misleading. It is a fact, however, that Soros himself has operated “in the shadows” and this is an area that the liberal media, except for some notable exceptions, have not examined.

Another factor was the backlash caused by Beck’s exposure of Obama official Van Jones’ communist background. The attack on Jones had preceded the exposing of Soros.

In fact, blogger Trevor Loudon of New Zealand had broken the story about Van Jones on April 6, 2009. Beck ran with the story, forcing Jones from the Obama Administration.

On June 20, 2011, attorneys acting on behalf of Jones — Sandler, Reiff, Young & Lamb — had sent a letter to Fox News demanding that the network immediately cease using six characterizations about Jones and demanding a retraction from Glenn Beck. There is no evidence that such a retraction was made, but the letter was a form of intimidation that must have had some effect.

Marvin Olasky wrote an article for World magazine mentioning that Jim Wallis’s organization, Sojourners, received $200,000 from Soro’s OSI and had a printout of a page from the website of the Open Society Institute showing this to be the case. When asked about this, Wallis exploded: “It’s not hyperbole or overstatement to say that Glenn Beck lies for a living. I’m sad to see Marvin Olasky doing the same thing. No, we don’t receive money from Soros.” Wallis went on, “We don’t receive money from George Soros. Our books are totally open, always have been. Our money comes from Christians who support us and who read Sojourners. That’s where it comes from.”

Soon, however, the listing of the grant disappeared from the OSI website. Nevertheless, Olasky still found it on one of the OIS tax returns, showing the $200,000 grant. Wallis was forced to admit making a mistake.

Wallis claimed to have forgotten the fact of his funding from Soros, but it is certainly true that it is controversial, to say the least, for a self-described Christian activist to take money from a foundation associated with the atheist billionaire. So the denial of funding may have stemmed from embarrassment over the source of the funds.

As the Jewish Funds for Justice accelerated its attack on Beck, other Soros-funded groups, including Media Matters and the Center for American Progress, joined in. CAP writer Eric Alterman wrote a piece, “Think Again: Glenn Beck and the Uses of Anti-Semitic Propaganda,” in which he felt compelled to justify his own financial association with the billionaire:

He went on to say that he didn’t have the time or interest to rebut Beck’s accusations but that “Media Matters has addressed all of them,” adding, “How ironic that the only place in the media to go for a thorough airing of the issues raised by these attacks must be undertaken by an organization that has recently become a Soros beneficiary.”

It is more than ironic. Alterman apparently didn’t connect the Media Matters attacks on Beck with its subsequent receipt of funding from him.

Alterman asked, “Is this kind of ugly slander not a story worthy of significant investigation anywhere else in the mainstream media?” In fact, however, Beck’s investigations, while sloppy in parts, were greatly needed, at a time when “progressives” themselves claim to be concerned about the influence of big money in the political process.

This is the kind of attack that serves an obvious purpose for Soros. Alterman called on the media to investigate attacks on Soros, rather than Soros himself.

The year 2011 has unmasked, even to levels amazing to us here, the depth of corruption, mismanagement, and outright hatred of all things American by Obama, his Administration, and Soros and his minions.
Whether you choose to open your eyes to it or not, 2012 will be a year that will affect you, your family, and your posterity for the rest of time. America hangs in the balance here. It is up to every patriot to engage, and to educate others as to what is happening before our very eyes.
The radicals and Communists have never reached such a high water mark before in their 100 year march to destroy this nation.They feel emboldened to act, and to make the final push against an unsuspecting populace.
It is almost 100 years( 1913) since the formation of the Federal Reserve, the institution of the income tax(16th Amendment) and the 17th Amendment having Senators directly elected. These were the fruits of the “Progressive Era” of 1910-1917.
It took 16 years and a World War to tank the US economy 1913-1929, with eight of those years being used to inflate prosperity in the “Roaring Twenties”. The result was the Great Depression, an economic nightmare brought to a close only by a second, even greater World War.
In 1933, Roosevelt began his alphabet agencies and tried to subvert the Constitution multiple times.In 1941 we became the Allies, especially of one Joseph Stalin, one of the two dictators who invaded Poland on 9/1/39 and started WW2.The great moral , industrial and military might of America was harnessed to beat back the Nazis, Fascists, and Emperor worshippers in a titanic four year struggle that cost us the lives of 400,000 of our best and brightest men.
In 1945, after our complete and total victory over Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan, our own Communist- infiltrated State Dept. got us the United Nations, into the 45 year Cold War with the Soviet Union( 1946-1991),the Berlin Airlift in 1948, the loss of China to Communist Mao Tse Tung in 1949. We also got embroiled in the Korean War in 1950 against Communist China and Russia, ending in a stalemate in 1953. In 1954, Joe McCarthy was vilified for even suggesting a Communist infiltration in our government and entertainment industry and unions, a truth that was borne out in the Venona Cables released by the Kremlin in 1995, over 40 years later.
From 1959-1973 we were embroiled in a royal flustercluck called Vietnam, losing over 58,000 men to lose a political war when we won the military war.This divided the country terribly, thanks to the Communist fueled peace movement and social unrest here in 1968-1973. The Democrats cut off funding to South Vietnam when they were invaded by North Vietnam in 1975, so when South Vietnam fell, the sacrifice of these 58,000 men was in vain, and over the five or so years, over 43 million people were killed by the Communists in Southeast Asia. Some of the pukefaces responsible for this, such as John Kerry and Jane Fonda, went on to enjoy nice careers and to amass much wealth, and still live to inflict damage to America(witness Kerry's subversion of the SuperCommittee last month).
The closet socialist Carter lost Iran in 1979-1980,and gave up the strategic Panama Canal in 1977 (which Red China eventually exerted influence over) beginning the birth of the modern day Islamic jihad movement. The rise of Reagan in 1981-1989 derailed the Communists, more stunningly then anyone could hope for. Without firing a shot, the Soviet Union collapsed, and 500 million people in Eastern Europe were liberated, and the Cold War from 1945-1991 was ended. even the Berlin Wall fell in 1989.The Islamists were sent reeling by the threat of military action in Iran to free our hostages by Reagan in late 1980, and the putdown of Moammar Khaddafi in 1986.
The zenith of our post WW2 power was the victory over Saddam Hussein in 1991 in the Kuwait War,and the fall of the Soviet Union that same year, resulting in America being the world's sole superpower, but the installation of the Communist-educated and inspired Bill Clinton as President in 1993-2001 saw the erosion of moral, social,political, and military power in America, with huge informational and technology transfers given over to our enemies by the Clintons in exchange for campaign contributions and cash. We became embroiled in Bosnia in 1996; then again in Kosovo in 1999 on the side of the Albanian Communist Muslims for, well, who the hell knows why?
Thanks to Clinton and his Administration's Communists, we were so weakened, that just coming out of the contentious 2000 elections by a few months, we had to endure the 9/11/01 Islamic jihad attacks on our soil, killing over 3,000 of our own citizens.
That led to expensive and draining wars of attrition in Iraq and Afghanistan, while the Communists undermined the war effort here beginning about the fourth day after the invasion of Iraq in March, 2003. That effort led to a serious undermining of confidence in the war effort by 2006, with the election of the MOST RADICAL ANTI AMERICAN CONGRESS in history, taking the field in January 2007 and half being booted out in November 2010. The Democrat encouraged and unchecked expansion of the sub prime mortgage market was the direct cause of the 2008 financial collapse, just prior to the November elections.
But this was the incubation period and backdrop for one Barack Hussein Obama, a clearly Communistic construct, who was elected by a star struck dumbed down American electorate in 2008.
Since January 2009, we have seen the work of the most Communist infiltrated and radical Administration in history resulting in almost a complete breakdown of our own economy and an erosion of liberties almost stunning in its scope and breadth. There is not enough time nor space to recount all that has occurred in those three years. We have seen how Communist China has received over the last fifteen years, most of our industrial jobs and has become our biggest creditor, all fueled by an out-of-control Democratic Congress and President who have overspent, not by billions, but by TRILLIONS of dollars.
Not only that, the policies of this Administration and President have resulted in the rise of Islamist jihad power in the Middle East, undoing all the good our sacrifice of the ten year War against Terrorism has accomplished. That will result inyet another Sept. 11th type incident on our soil.
We have lived it. And we must change it. The sacrifice of our fathers and grandfathers since 1941 will be in vain if we shut down, close our eyes and keep pretending that what is happening is NOT happening.
It is, as Jefferson wrote once, a time labelled ‘when in the course of human events.......”.
The gauntlet has been thrown down, and the challenge has been issued against us by our own President and his cronies, while they simultaneously break our laws, refuse to enforce them, and plunder the assets gained by our hard work, in the interest of some nebulous thing called “fairness”.
We are witnessing the zenith of Communist ideology on our own shores, and the light of the city shining on a hill, the beacon of liberty to all mankind that has shone in the darkness for over 235 years, is going to be extinguished.
The common thread over the last 100 years is that the nurturing home of the Communists has been the Democrat Party,which has been completely overtaken and turned into a criminal enterprise. Look at the hearings just this past week on Fast and Furious and MF Global to see the in-your-face lawbreaking of these radical Democrats, who defy anyone to oppose them.
Unless we work to remove Obama, and to hold him and his Administration accountable under the law, and to re-institute the love of liberty and freedom in our homes, churches, schools and government at all levels, we do not deserve to be called Americans.
We never thought it would come in our day, but it has. We can ignore history, or we can use it to prepare us for the fight ahead.
2012 will be possibly the last peaceful election we may ever have in America. We may yet look back from the future at Thanksgiving and Christmas, 2011 wistfully, as the last time Americans gathered to celebrate their most cherished religious holidays in freedom and peace.
And then exhausted, we will tell our beleaguered, starving grandchildren of a time and place called “America” that we let slip between our fingers at the time of its greatest need.

The choice is ours. May we choose wisely.

Excellent post!

Where there's a shell, there's a way.

25 years ago, we had Ronald Reagan, Johnny Cash, and Bob Hope.
Today we have Obama, no cash, and no hope!

If you can't appreciate the pure beauty of the violin after hearing this, something's wrong with your ears.

Or you can get raw with these strings.

How about this gamechanger from America's Got Talent (which they SHOULD have won).

Either way, the violin is sweet yet lethal.

Do it!

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