This is Chapter 12/Section 2, of the 2024 Serialization of the second edition (2013) of the book by Steven Jonas: "The 15% Solution: How the Republican Religious Right Took Control of the U.S., 1981-2022." The book was first published in 1996. The second edition is available in Kindle on Amazon. A third edition of the book, which will be in print, is currently in preparation and should be published sometime next month.
In practice, this Amendment, also at its time colloquially called "The Balancing Amendment" (that is, balancing things out in favor of White people) re-established anti-Black racism as official policy of the United States.
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The 34th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States (2010) [1]:
Section 1. The thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments to the Constitution of the United States are hereby repealed.
A Connie Conroy Note (April 13, 2010)
Man-oh-man. What a performance! The Prez [Jefferson Davis Hague] has set a speed record for this one. Introduced in the Congress on Opening Day, Tuesday, January 5, 2010, and a little more than three months later-- bang, we got it through the states, and almost unanimously too. The only holdouts? Hawaii (too many slant"'eyes), New York (too many Renegade Yids), Massachusetts (too many Kennedy-Catholics), and Vermont (who knows?). We'll have to do something about them.
Anyway, you gotta love the way the Prez sold this one. "Back to Original Intent," he said. "We just have to be consistent," he said. "I know the liberals" (he meant "liberalniggerlovers" but he does go out of his way to be nice, this man) "are not going to be happy. But God, and our Party, and the American people have not been happy about what the liberals have been doing to our country since 1865.
"They have put the Federal government between the people and the Constitution, between the people and their true voice, the state governments, and they started it by sneaking through Congress these amendments we're now getting rid of, when half the country wasn't even represented there. So we are going to put things back, we are going to set things right, we are going back to the Original Intent of the original Founding Fathers. And we are going to set this country on the path of righteousness once again."
That is what he said. That is what President Jefferson Davis Hague said [2].
It's all so simple. That stuff in the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments was anything but in the original Constitution. Slavery was in the original constitution. Now, by God, no"'one (well almost no"'one) has any intent to go back to slavery. It just doesn't work very well. And no body needs field hands today anyway (heh, heh). But we have to be consistent, the Prez sez. Oh yes, the Prez sez: Original Intent is our guide. I remember Clarence B. Carson's description of his great historical work, Basic American Government, discussing this very issue (NLJ):
"It would be considerable fraud to do a book on American government which talked as if the Constitution were still being substantially observed, that pretended that when presidents took the oath of office they intend ed to observe the bounds set by the Constitution, that Congress men recited their pledges with the same intent, and that federal judges were still construing the Constitution as it was written. In sum, any book on American government worthy of the name ought to make clear how remote from the Constitution the government has become."
Well, this President intends to observe and is observing the bounds set by the original Constitution, and thank God, we've got a 2/3's-plus majority of Congressmen who do the same. Since we passed the 28th back in '99, we've been headed no where else but right back to the Original Intent of the thing, what the Founding Fathers were aiming for. And what had the liberalniggerlovers done since 1865, from the conclusion of that unconstitutional civil war (NLJ)? Taken us right the opposite way.
Take the 28th, our first effort. Well, it didn't work very well. It didn't get the budget balanced. But we tried. And we've done better with all the ones we got passed since. Get ting back the Constitution to the way it oughta be: America for us. We put morality first. Then we really balanced things, and got rid of the income tax (no Original Intent anywhere in that dead letter). Then we put God in first place, just like the Founding Fathers said (Falwell). So now we're just being con sis tent.
And who needs those amendments, anyway? The 13th? Slavery's a dead letter. That reference to abolition in the Constitution just puts off so many of our core white supporters around the country. We don't need it, so good riddance to it.
The 14th? [3] A lot of the trouble started when they extended due process to the states, as the boys used to say back in the 90s. It's there in the 5th, and if you ask me, one mention in the Constitution is enough for that troublemaker of a clause. Section 2 of the 14th, that round about, really unfair, way they tried to secure the vote for the niggers, was never used any way. So we've just gotten rid of some clutter. Section 3, the one that put in political penalties against former Confederate officials, was put to bed by a 2/3rds vote of each House of Congress in 1898, so it's moot. Section 4, on Confederate debt, is moot too. No reason not to toss them all out.
And as for the 15th, that direct guarantee of votes for niggers, just like with Section 2 of the 14th, the liberal-niggerlovers back then were as lily-livered as they are now: it was never en forced either. Funny, if it had been, the liberalniggerlovers never would have needed their precious Civil Rights Acts of the 1960s.
So that's that. Our people asked for a pure Constitution. And we gave it to them. It is just as pure now as the driven snow.
Author's Commentary
Consistency, "Original Intent," and the Politics of Mythology
According to Conroy, all of this was done simply for the sake of consistency, and following the "Doctrine of Original Intent" (Reynolds). In so saying, Conroy illustrated that self"'contradictory thinking to which so many Right"'Wing Reactionaries of her time were in thrall. It is very difficult for observers from our era, even conservative ones, to under stand it. Even during the Transition Era most authorities on the Constitution of any stripe other than Far Right-Wing Reactionary did not give it any credence at all. Recall, for example, the writing of Federal Appeals Court Judge Irving R. Kaufman, certainly no liberal, that rather neatly disposed of the Doctrine (see Chapter five).
For the most part, all of the Right-Wing Reactionary amendments to the old U.S. Constitution Conroy cites were selfevidently not at all consistent with the Doctrine of Original Intent, as that doctrine was put forth by its own supporters. Virtually no basis for any of the provisions of the Amendments from 28 onwards could be found anywhere in the original document (see Appendix I), either explicitly or implicitly.
However, almost all of the themes played out in those amendments can be found in the 1992 Republican National Platform and other similar political documents from the late Transition Era (see, for example, Chapter seven). Yet the supporters of all those provisions that on their face were contrary to those of the original document were the self-same champions of the Doctrine of Original In tent.
As examples that little in the Right-Wing Reactionary agenda reflected Original Intent as they themselves stated it, consider:
" The Founding Fathers had discussed requiring a balanced budget and setting Congressional term limits and had rejected both ideas.
" A ban on immigration never crossed their minds, and given the nature of the country at the time, wouldn't have. The "naturalization" process wasn't mentioned until the adoption of the 14th.
" Legislating, and even worse, constitutionalizing certain views on morality was contrary to both the spirit and the words of the Jefferson/Madison Bill of Rights, while repeal of the Fourth Amendment was absolutely contrary to its letter.
" As for Presidential decree powers, that is precisely the type of concentration of sovereign power typical of the monarchical system of government the American Revolution had been undertaken to free the former colonies from. Further, the whole complex system of "checks and balances" was designed to prevent such a concentration of power from happening in the future.
" And finally, putting the "Law of God" (as defined by some men, of course) above that of the Constitution itself defeated the very pur pose of having a Constitution in the first place.
Thus if there were consistency in the Right-Wing Reactionary approach to these issues at the time, it is hard to discern it from this historical distance. It appears in fact that during the Transition Era and early Fascist Period the only occasions on which the Right-Wing Reactionaries invoked the "Doctrine of Original Intent" was when they were battling against some Supreme Court interpretation of the Constitution that served to protect an individual right or liberty.
When they themselves were battling to limit individual rights and liberties, as for example on the issues of freedom of choice in the out come of pregnancy, sexual identity/preference, relationship between church and state, or freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, the matter of Original Intent never seemed to come up, with one exception.
When Right-Wing Reaction wanted to deny the possible existence of an individual right, liberty, or freedom that wasn't specifically mentioned in the Constitution, they always conveniently ignored one provision that clearly is: the Ninth Amendment. It states: "The enumeration in the constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." But once again, Right-Wing Reactionaries were never much for letting facts get in the way of ideology.
Nevertheless, the themes of "Original Intent" and "consistency," repeated over and over again by the Right-Wing Reactionaries from the Transition Era onwards, were what the Hagueites used to sell the 34th Amendment. In fact the public relations name they gave to the Amendment was "Original Intent."
In their sales campaign (to the extent they needed to sell anything political in a setting in which they were virtually unchallenged), the Hagueites went back to the theory that the Supreme Court had used in Anderson v. Board of Education. (That was the case in which the Court had removed from itself the power to review actions of the other two branches of the Federal government for their constitutionality [see Chapter five].)
You may recall that the primary Transition Era exponent of the Doctrine was one Judge Robert Bork (1993) (see also Chapter five). His position can be paraphrased in one sentence: "Principles not originally understood to be and not clearly stated in the Constitution have no constitutional validity." It is certainly true that none of the principles stated in the 13th, 14th, or 15th Amendments were "originally under stood to be," much less "clearly stated" in the Constitution. And so-- out! But as illustrated above, none of the Right"'Wing Reactionary amendments could be "understood to be" part of the original thinking behind the Constitution nor "clearly stated" in it either.
It was just that, as pointed above, almost all of them were advocated as part of the Republican Party's own national platform, at least from 1992 onwards. But such inconsistencies had bothered neither the Republicans, nor the Hagueites. It was all part of the "Politics of Mythology" as Alex Poughton liked to call it.
The Right-Wing Reactionary Historical Theory behind the Amendment
In historical terms, this Amendment represented a frontal assault on the whole political basis for the structure of the nation since the conclusion of the First Civil War. Indeed, the ratification day for the 34th was arranged by the Hague government to be on Monday, April 12, 2010. That day was the 149th anniversary of the commencement of what would come later to be known as the First Civil War, when Southern rebel forces shelled the Federal Fort Sumter in Charleston (SC) harbor.
As has been noted, in the late Transition Era it was in vogue among the Right"'Wing Reactionaries to blame everything that was wrong in the country not only the (ill"'defined) "liberals" and the by"'then dead 1960s "Counter Culture" of 30 years before, but also on President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his "New Deal" of 60 years before. The Hagueites simply took this kind of thinking one step further back in time.
The Right-Wing Reactionary trend towards dating the beginning of the country's modern troubles back to 1865 had begun in the late Transition Era and had come to full flower in the early Fascist Period. It blamed everything that was wrong in the country not only on the Transition Era's favorite 20th century targets, but also on the First Reconstruction era policies of the Radical Republicans 1865-1876. (The latter were related only in name to their late 20th century descendants.) It was the three amendments repealed by the 34th that epitomized the First Reconstruction.
Thinkers such as Brent Johnson (1995) claimed that "citizenship" as conceived of by the Founding Fathers lay with the states, not the nation. This reflected the thinking of John C. Calhoun (1782-1850), chief ideologue of slavery (Niven). He held that within the United States, sovereignty lay entirely with the State governments, and thus that citzenship was entirely State, not Federal, in nature.
Calhoun's ideological descendants went on to claim that it was only the 14th amendment that created national citizenship, and that had by so doing somehow set the "Federal government between the people and the states." In this view, the Federal government had limited legitimacy on the one hand, and vast responsibility as the cause of any difficulties faced by the nation on the other.
Supporters of this view then went on to trace the origin of all the then"'current problems of the old United States to the adoption of the 14th amendment. They put forth the notion that citizenship should arise from each person's relationship to a state government, not to the Federal government. It was on this basis that they advocated repeal of the 14th. It was then an easy leap to include the 13th and 15th as targets for repeal as well, "for the sake of consistency."
In undertaking such advocacy, such thinkers ignored the fact that the old U.S. Constitution was designed specifically to develop a national government, that both the Preamble and a number of its operative clauses (e.g., Article I, Section 8), gave the national government broad responsibilities and powers, some of them preemptive, that by joining the union the states specifically gave up certain elements of their sovereignty, and that while the original Constitution did not define "citizenship" per se, the Preamble begins "We the people of the United States," and the body does refer to "citizen(s) of the United States" Article II, Section 1.
But be all that as it may, in summary the "Doctrine of Original Intent" seemed to provide an historical rationale for undermining both the foundations of the power of the Federal government (except for the Executive Branch when under the control of Right-Wing Reaction, of course), and the Constitutional protection of individual rights, freedoms, and liberties. It thus attracted a grand following among the Right-Wing Reactionaries.
The True Political Motives for the Amendment
1. Promotion of racism
As far as can be discerned from the present historical distance, as Conroy stated, the re-institution of slavery was not among the intentions of the promoters of the 34th (Calloway). But the Amendment was nevertheless clearly intended to exacerbate racism. First and foremost, there was its content, including the gratuitous repeal of the 13th Amendment. There were also the details. For example, the choice of the anniversary of the First Civil War's commencement as the date for the final ratification of this amendment could hardly have been coincidental.
As has been noted before, using code words and coded signals, especially on the race issue, was an old Right-Wing Reactionary tactic dating from the Transition Era. Listen, for example, to one of the patron saints of Right-Wing Reaction, Patrick Buchanan, talking in 1993 about the First Civil War (EXTRA! Update): "The War Between the States [4] was about independence, about self-determination, about the right of a people to break free of a government to which they could no longer give allegiance."
This statement of Buchanan's could be interpreted as giving legitimacy to both secession and slavery, in the name of "fighting for freedom" (a strange juxtaposition, to be sure). But when in response to his statement the first black female United States Senator, Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois, noted simply that the Confederacy he was celebrating was built on slavery, Buchanan responded that she was just "putting on an act."
Buchanan's formulation on the nature of the War was contrary to the position taken by most pre"' and post"'Fascist Period historians from President Lincoln (see his Second Inaugural Address) onwards down to our own time. In that view, the First Civil War was primarily fought over the institution of slavery and the desire of the Southern states to extend it into the territories, without limitation.
Buchanan appeared to present the slave"'holders' position on the War, and by implication their justification of slavery: that blacks constituted an "inferior race." In reversing the Constitutional sequelae of the Civil War, the 34th Amendment put back into the Constitution the original formulation that a black person was the equivalent of three"'fifths of a white, the baldest kind of racist concept.
The motivation for this? To maintain its power, Right-Wing Reaction needed to maintain the "Politics of Difference" (Sklar; see Chapter four). The homophobia re"'generated by the previous year's Proclamation of Right was already wearing thin because there just weren't enough homosexual persons left out in the open to make any kind of believable enemy. But there were still plenty of blacks. It was a Right"'Wing Reactionary political tradition to blame the country's troubles on the blacks. The passage of the 34th helped to recycle the hate, for the nth time in American history. It would prove very important for that reason in the next year. It would also prove important then for a legal reason.
2. The End of Due Process and Equal Protection, and Expansion of the Camp System
Conroy summarized the content of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments pretty well. But whether intentionally or not, she left out a couple of important details about the 14th, details that had made major contributions to the development and maintenance of civil liberties in the old U.S. In addition to applying the due process clause to the states, the 14th defined citizenship and required the states to provide "equal protection of the law" for "any person within its jurisdiction."
The purposes and uses of the camp system created by President Pine's "Real Drug War" had long since been expanded beyond their original focus. The first major expansion was for enforcing the Consti tu tional ban on elective pregnancy termination following ratification of the Morality (31st) Amendment in 2005.
Since the beginning of Hague's second term in 2008, especially following repeal of the 4th Amendment that had been part of the 32nd Amendment of 2006, the camp system increasingly had been used to incarcerate certain political enemies of the Hague regime. Many were simply murdered by the Helmsmen (HM) or their less well"'organized but equally violent unofficial precursors in their "Death Squad" incarnation.
Other opponents could be charged with a conventional crime, be convicted, and placed in the ever"'burgeoning conventional prison system. That "crime" was usually "drug possession." Convictions were readily obtained using police-sourced-evidence," the collection and presentation of which had not been subject to Fourth Amendment protections since the late Transition Era. But still other opponents were neither murdered nor confined to the conventional prison system on spurious charges and convictions. They were simply picked up by the HM and sent to the camps, much as the SS had simply picked up per sons and sent them to the camps in Nazi Germany.
Forever having difficulty writing original material, the Hagueites borrowed the language of the directive that established this latter function for the camps from that of the Bosnian Serbs back in the First Bosnian Civil War of 1991-95 when they established their own camps for punitive action against Bosnian Muslims and other opponents in their territory (Gutman):
"Local citizens are to identify and expose ringleaders and operatives of enemy and other destructive operations; the security services are to arrest subversives, criminals, and the like; they may detain certain per sons in certain places, employing political isolation, in combination with other measures and procedures, including physical liquidation."
By 2010 too, the camps were becoming "home" to an increasing number of people whose "crime" was simply that they were poor. The Morality Amendment had terminated public welfare at the Federal, state, and local levels. For a time, voluntary agencies had been able to cope with some of the load. But they were now being overwhelmed.
Similar to the response to the much smaller numbers of homeless persons who had appeared following the welfare and mental health system "reforms" of the 80s and 90s, cries went up, encouraged by Right-Wing Reaction and their minions, to "get those irresponsible good-for-nothings off the streets" (where they were increasingly accumulating). Where to put them? The camps, for them functioning some what like the old 19th century poor"'house/workhouse system, of course.
But there were these two legal impediments to all this arbitrary imprisonment (even though the Hagueites never referred to the camps as "prisons"): the "due process" clauses of the 5th and 14th Amendments, and the "equal protection" clause of the latter. Access to the courts was difficult, of course, especially for the poor, for both economic and political reasons. But occasionally a poor person or a political prisoner made it through to that venue. The result was occasionally embarrassing or inconvenient for the regime.
By 2010, all the camps had been put under the administrative control of the HM, just as Hitler from the beginning of the Third Reich had placed control of his camps with the SS. But the HM was a Federal agency, so 5th Amendment protections, in theory at least, applied. The Federal due process clause impediment to arbitrary arrest and imprisonment was dealt with by transferring all HM functions, including the camps, to the states. That meant that the Federal courts would simply no longer be involved with such matters.
Of course, state control of the HM was on paper only. The Federal government financed their operations completely, advised the States on who was to be in charge, and provided "Federal oversight" of the pro gram, to make sure that "the Federal taxpayers' dollars were being spent wisely." Thus, while there was the occasional bureaucratic foul"'up, the Hagueites maintained real control of the HM. But for the record, Hague could maintain that "the peoples' voices," the governments of the States, were running it.
The Fifth Amendment could have been repealed, of course, but to allow completely unfettered exploitation of natural resources the Hagueites needed to maintain its "just compensation" clause (see Chap ter 14). Therefore, they just left the 5th Amendment in place and made the due process clause functionally inoperative in reference to the HM. Then, with the 34th, the requirements for state due process and equal protection were simply wiped out. The HM, technically under state control, could operate without any judicial impedimenta. All nice and legal, just as on paper it had been in Nazi Germany (Deighton).
Although there is still some controversy among historians on this question, it is likely that Hague's primary motive for passage of the 34th Amendment was repeal of these two critical civil liberties clauses of the 14th, that is, due process and equal protection of the law. At any rate, removing the 14th Amendment from the Constitution played a very important role in the process that lead to the formation of the New American Republics, as we will see in the next chapter.
An Alex Poughton Letter
April 19, 2010
Dear Karl,
Today is "Patriot's Day" in the state of Massachusetts (one of only four states not to ratify the 34th Amendment, about which I presume you have heard by now). Although the true meaning of the event has been lost on most people (as for the rest, the day is redo lent with irony), they still commemorate the 1775 Revolutionary War Battle of Lexington on this day here.
They're still running the Boston Marathon too, for the 114th time today. I'm up here to cover the "social aspects" of it for the Sunday Times. "Social aspects," ha! I'm not allowed to mention that there haven't been any foreign runly will be someone who doesn't get below 2:15, while the winner in a rapidly dwindling women's field (the result of the repeal of all Federal requirements for equal treatment of women's sports a few years ago) probably won't break 2:35.
It's all getting to be so hollow. God, I wonder what the Adams cousins would think if they came back today. Or Crispus Attucks. Or Paul Revere. Or the men who died at Breed's Hill.
It's all so sad. I still think that despite the public face the Hague regime (I just can't bring myself privately to call them a "government" or "Administration" anymore) puts on things, the majority of Americans really don't approve of what is happening to their country, a la Germany at the time the Nazis took over. That is a guess, of course, and perhaps a wishful one. But I think it's true. Every one except the ACNP-actives is just so apathetic.
This whole business just kind of crept up on the Americans. And it's all been legal, of course. The Right won all these elections with ever"'dwindling voter turnouts, but they won them. The Democrats were just so concerned with "me-tooing" all over the place, and the left could never get out of its own way. So, as I've said before, there was just no significant op position.
And then the Right just changed the Constitution in ways they had, for the most part, told everyone they would do if they ever got power. And they wrote the laws they told everyone, for the most part, they would write. And now they've got the "HM" to put entirely "legal" force and violence behind the whole thing.
And they are loading up the racist cannon again. I wonder what's coming next. I don't think anything could surprise me, but you never know.
All the best, Alex
References:
Barton, D., The Myth of Separation, Aledo, TX: Wallbuilder Press, 1993.
Bork, R.H., "The Senate's Power Grab," New York Times, June, 23, 1993.
Calloway, C., The 34th Amendment: Motives Real and Imagined, New York: The Scattered Home Press, 2043.
Deighton, L., Winter, "1933 "' 1938," New York: Ballantine Books, 1987.
EXTRA! Update, "News Briefs: The Noble South," October, 1993, p. 2, quoting from a P. Buchanan article that appeared in the New York Post on July 28, 1993.
Falwell, J., "The United States of America: Still One Nation Under God," Faith Partners, Old Time
Gospel Hour, Lynchburg, VA, 1994.
Gutman, R., "Federal Army Tied to Bosnia Crimes," Newsday, November 1, 1995.
Heard, A., "The Road to Oklahoma City," The New Republic, May 15, 1995, p. 15.
Johnson, B., "Freedom Bound promotional material," Nevada City, California Republic USA: 1995.
Niven, J., "Secession," in Foner, E., and Garraty, J.A., Eds., The Reader's Companion to American History, Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1991.
NLJ: National Liberty Journal, "Conservative Book Club advertisement for Basic American
Government, by Clarence B. Carson, April, 1995, p. 16.
Reynolds, W.B., "Power to the People," New York Times Magazine, September 13, 1987.
Sklar, H., "The Snake Oil of Scapegoating," Z Magazine, May, 1995, p. 49.
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Author's Notes:
1. There is no indication or evidence that Clarence Carson, Robert Bork, Brent Johnson, Patrick Buchanan, or any of the other historical personages or organizations mentioned or alluded to in this chapter or elsewhere in this book in a similar manner, would necessarily have supported or approved in any way of the repeal of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments, or any of the successor laws, regulations, policies, or procedures enacted pursuant to that repeal, or of any of the events that subsequently occurred in the United States or the New American Republics at any time in the future, subsequent to that repeal and the implementation of the policies carried out pursuant to it.
2. At perhaps the height of irony, and surely not knowing whom she was quoting, Conroy intoned the words "This is what he said." That was a famous line given the voice of the narrator in the 20th century American composer Aaron Copeland's cantata "A Lincoln Portrait." Amazing. Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves. A man named for the leader of the enslaving forces puts through a Constitutional amendment that reverses Lincoln's greatest achievement, and one of the man's minions refers to his words in words that had been previously reserved for praise of Lincoln.
In doing this however, Conroy was unwittingly following the example set during the Transition Era by certain Right-Wing Reactionaries such as Ronald Reagan and Newton Gingrich, of attempting to take over the legacies of great liberal American historical figures such as Jefferson, Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt, and pretend that Right-Wing Reaction was simply following in their tradition, which by its own definitions it was not.
3. Repeal of the 14th Amendment was high on the list of demands of many a Right-Wing Reactionary Organization during the Transition Era. For example, one Linda Thompson, who termed herself the "acting adjutant general" of the "Unorganized Militia of the United States," called for repeal not only of the 14th, but also the 16th and 17th Amendments (Heard). (The 16th, of course, went out with enactment of the 31st. The issue of the 17th would become moot with the establishment of the New American Republics in 2011.)
4. Buchanan was here using here the phraseology of the unreconstructed adherents of the Confederacy and slavery. The term "The War Between the States" was one of the most powerful of the many code words/terms that Right-Wing Reaction used from the beginning of the Transition Era onwards to signal to its constituency where it "really stood" on the race question. By using such using expressions, rather than the explicitly racist language of such later spokesmen as Curley Oakwood, Right-Wing Reactionaries of the Transition Era were able to "plausibly deny" that they were engaging in racism. In our time, most historians simply apply the Dino Louis Duck Rule, and easily determine what was what and who was who.
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