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Comment by rvense | Hacker News Reader

An amazing place. I visited twice about 15 years ago and have many fond memories of it, but mostly when I think about it I'm filled with sadness, because the people there deserve so much better. They're constantly knee-deep in corruption, both street level and just the very blatant kleptocratic presidential family. There's a lot of ethnic Russians, both expat workers and ones that didn't manage to leave after the collapse of the Soviet Union, that are very openly racist towards ethnic Tajiks but were usually allowed to run free. The people were hospitable and open and very happy to have guests in their country, but it also seemed like a very bleak place, with few good prospects for the future.

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Your description does not sound like an amazing place that you said it is in the first sentence?

The people are friendly and welcoming, and the scenery is amazing. As a tourist, I don't much mind paying a few bribes to policemen (who barely get paid a wage), and I can stand to keep my mouth shut about their president when I'm there (even though he's obviously a bastard). But it's painful to think what it must be like to live there and have nowhere else to go.

The vast majority of the world is amazing if you come with western money as a tourist, Cuba, Turkey, Kirghizistan, &c. you'll have a great time, most locals are great people but living there as an average citizen isn't that amazing in term of quality of life, access to necessities, infrastructure, ...

Nothing beats being rich in a poor country

Being filthy rich in a rich country, perhaps? :)

No because in a rich country you need to adhere to laws and regulations while in a poor country you can just pay bribes and do what you want

That really depends on what you want. A poor place may simply not have a “utility” that you might want to fully entertain due to inherently low standards. They may literally not know any better and nobody went there to fix that.

In rich countries the things you want to do are already legal, or are in the rich country next door

but worse case for violent criminal things, there isn't a functional difference between a campaign donation to the district attorney in a wealthy nation or a couple bucks to a police officer in your face in a poor country

That still holds true in rich countries...

It really doesn't. Rich countries have base rules that all must follow. Justin Timberlake was just arrested for drunk driving. He might get off because he can afford the best lawyers, but he was arrested. That is a thing that happened. It would not have happened in somewhere like Tajikistan where a roadside bribe would nullify the entire situation. For the equivalent of a few hundred bucks they would have given him a ride home and nobody would be the wiser.

Just make sure to be a cop and then you'll be fine.

I had a sheriff's officer I knew tell me he'd been stopped five times for drunk driving and each time he'd just pulled out his badge and they'd waved him along.

I have a friend from Nigeria and he said you can avoid arrest with a $2 bribe. That shocked me.

really just a function of how much money, and how you define "rich".

poor countries just shift that number lower. but if I had $100MM I'd rather be sorta-rich in Los Angeles than mega-rich in Bolivia

Some of the most beautiful mountain scenery I've ever seen and very hospitable people. A very nice place to visit. Not a very good place to live though unless you're so rich that you don't have to rely on the local infrastructure and services for survival and quality of life.

I find life to also be bad if you are the only rich person isolated in a bubble when 99% of the people are in extreme poverty. You just can't feel good, unless you don't care.

Also, sharp gradients inherently incentivize attempts to equalise. It is an unstable situation.

You'r definitely not be the only rich person there. There's thousands of rich corrupt people in their own bubble.

Being in Venezuela in the first years of Chavez was bizarre.

National university professor's family (so, upper middle class) living behind 3m concrete walls topped with broken glass and shuttling between there and similarly armored swim clubs.

It made me reflect on the difference between token security and actual security.

Being a walking dollar sign in a poor country is seriously dangerous!

Money matters, but so does muscle.

Also makes you a target, living life constantly watching your back and being careful about any stranger you meet.

There’s a reason most rich people stick to developed countries.

> Some of the most beautiful mountain scenery I've ever seen

based on the pics in the article, it seems pretty similar to Himalayan regions of Pakistan, India, Nepal. What was so special?

I think most people find the Himalayas pretty special

I visited last year. I agree with everything you said. It was beautiful. I didn't notice many Russians there at all though. Many more in the surrounding stans.

> many fond memories of it, but mostly when I think about it I'm filled with sadness, because the people there deserve so much better. They're constantly knee-deep in corruption, both street level and just the very blatant kleptocratic presidential family

I spent 2 years driving the length of the Pan-American Highway, and 3 years driving right around the African continent.

What you said can equally be applied to many places I spent a good deal of time in. Incredibly friendly, warm, kind and happy people to a degree I did not know was possible on planet earth. Sadly they're held down by corruption, ineptitude and the West.

Happily, virtually every single person laughs, sings, dances and celebrates basically everyday, because they choose to be vibrantly happy despite all the BS.

> Incredibly friendly, warm, kind and happy people to a degree I did not know was possible on planet earth. Sadly they're held down by corruption, ineptitude and the West.

The problems are significantly of their own doing. I live in one such country (Nigeria), and many people say the same thing about my people- warm, friendly, and whatever.

But being warm and friendly doesn’t build a successful nation. Tribalism, high tolerance for corruption from the locals, and lack of the rule of law are what ruin these countries, and citizens are either too apathetic or outrightly support the same incompetent leaders ruining them.

Besides, some people are friendly to white foreigners but hostile to locals from another tribe.

> high tolerance for corruption from the locals

I wonder how much of this is equivalent to small towns in the US passing laws to become speed traps. They get their revenue from out-of-towners passing through as the natural design speed of the highway instead of the posted limit. The difference is that police bribes go directly to the officer's pocket while speeding tickets get sent to the municipal budget, then allocated to the officer's salary.

What do you think of the wave of companies trying to cash in on inexpensive labor from countries in Africa?

My experience working as a vendor to a company that hired Zimworks out of Zimbabwe was rather underwhelming. Pastoral care was all they offered for healthcare to the local Zimbabwean employees, and the time shift the local employees endured seemed to wear heavily on them.

While we can't blame colonialism for everything, "tribalism" throughout much of Africa is as much a product of colonial strategy (divide and conquer) as it is precolonial tension. British colonial administrators mastered this strategy.

>But being warm and friendly doesn’t build a successful nation

No, but kicking out the greedy WASPs and their lackeys and post-colonial infuence schemes does though - though seldom realized

> No, but kicking out the greedy WASPs and their lackeys and post-colonial infuence schemes does though - though seldom realized

This is the same mentality that contributes to these countries remaining poor. Just kick out the “WASPs”…so that the local kleptocrats take over.

The problem is corruption and lack of rule of law, not WASPs or whatever acronym can be used to blame foreigners instead of taking responsibility.

>This is the same mentality that contributes to these countries remaining poor. Just kick out the “WASPs”…so that the local kleptocrats take over.

The "local kleptocrats" are usually just lackeys of those WASPs, put in place, supported financially and diplomatically, with arms and so on (and by pressuring their opponents) to ensure the stealing continues. On their own, they're small time crooks, the real bulk of the countries riches still goes back to the post-colonial masters...

>The problem is corruption and lack of rule of law, not WASPs

Corruption and lack of rule of law is a feature, not a bug. A feature kept in place by those bugs, the WASPs, with the help of loyal local scum.

"But, but, but those WASPS kept the rule of law an order when they governed directly as colonial masters"

Yeah, when you rule a colony and live there as ruler, it tends to benefit you to keep the rule of law. You get to stroll safe, and besides all your own colonial stealing is done "by the book" and is a-ok since it's based on your laws.

It's when you leave the place (or get kicked out) that you opt for the "divide and conquer" and "get friendly local scum to power" approaches, and helping keep the country poor, corrupt, and at war, pays dividends...

And you have your establishment scholars point out how it's the local's bad culture and unfitness for rule of law that prevents them for flourishing.

It's the same kind of people who would have written that the locals are inferior races and need taming and someone to keep them in order, a century or so ago...

By your logic, Zimbabwe should be the flourishing paradise of Africa; I'm not sure there's a country that has seen so thorough an enmity between its post-colonial ruling elite and its former colonial master (well, maybe Algeria). Yet ZANU-PF's signature achievement is the forced redistribution of land away from the white settlers, and in the process promulgated the utter ruination of its own economy.

Zimbabwe kicked out all the WASPs. Where did they end up? A failed state.

The issue is not WASPs, it’s bad governance. But I guess life is easy when one can just blame WASPs rather than examine themselves to find fault.

We Africans have autonomy but refuse to use it for good. It’s condescending to assume we have no role in our problems and, to follow the logic, no role in the solutions.

Isn't it a bit a matter of culture, though? Colonial administrations are built to extract wealth from a country. So, when you get independence, that's still what the government, hell, even the infrastructure, is built for. Half the rail lines go straight to a port, all the bureaucrats know is how to squeeze people. So you end up with 'bad governance', even decades later, because that's the culture of governance that gets passed on, generation to generation.

Many previously colonized countries have become very successful, e.g., Singapore, Canada, Ireland, Bahrain, Cyprus, etc. Heck, even the USA was a colony, so previous colonialism is no excuse for not building a thriving country.

Good governance can be learned and implemented within a short while. We Africans just refuse to.

I think the only country you've mentioned that's a) not a city state and b) run by the colonized people, not the colonizers, is Ireland. If you look around the world, there's a pretty strong correlation between length of colonial subjugation, and the misfortunes of the people who were colonized today. I mean, in the USA, it was a colony for a long time, and there are hardly any Native Americans left, and those that survived live in the worst parts of the country, generally in poverty. The same is basically true of Canada, or Australia.

Countries like Japan, never colonized, or China, only briefly and partially colonized, seem to recover way faster. I also don't think it's specifically an African thing: look at the Phillipines, or Pakistan, or large parts of the ME.

Okay, we can keep making excuses. If we follow your logic, these countries (including mine) are destined to be mediocre and nothing can change it in the short term.

We should never push for change...it's the colonizer's fault always.

I guess it's a question of what change you push for. Imagine you go to post-revolution Haiti, and you just try to push for economic growth. You recognize that the country has an internationally competitive sugar industry. So you work out ways to convince everybody to go back and work on the sugar plantations, producing sugar for export. Except, you're in competition with the slave plantations, so you can't really pay people good wages or have good conditions. People don't like that, so they revolt, and you repress them with force. Before long, you have produced something like pre-revolution Haiti.

Sometimes it's important to recognize the history in order to push in the right direction. I don't know what the right direction is, but I think saying that Africans just suck because they've been dealt an awful hand seems unfair. I figure it's just really hard to get out from under the feet of an international system that was built for and by colonizers, and there are very few clearly good choices about how to do it.

Why WASPs in particular? Not even Anglo or Protestant, just wondering.

How did you get across the Darian Gap?

I shipped the Jeep in a shipping container from Colon in Panama to Cartegena in Colombia.

I documented the whole enterprise here http://theroadchoseme.com/shipping-across-the-darien-gap-pt-...

> and the West

what?

Have you ever wondered why Switzerland is the world's second largest exporter of processed coffee, despite never growing a single bean? [1]. Germany is 3rd, Netherlands is 4th. Hmmmm.

Have you ever wondered why all those poor countries around the world sell unprocessed coffee to Switzerland for pennies rather than telling Switzerland to take a hike, processing it themselves and making way more money?

Have you ever wondered why many very poor countries around the world sell their raw minerals for a tiny fraction of the globally accepted price?

After three years on the ground in Africa, my eyes were very wide open. The multi-billion dollar loans from the IMF and World Bank have these countries over a barrel, and if they try to change the status quo, they will be sent back to the dark ages instantly. Spending time in Sudan was very educational, though it means I can never get a visa-wavier for the US. Why do you think that is? (Hint: gas in Sudan was 6 cents a liter..., diesel was half that)

Also very educational to try at get a visa for Ecuatorial Guninea (it has a TON of oil, and a TON of multi-national companies ripping it out). A foreigner can go to the island where the capital is no problem, but try getting permission to go to the mainland - you can't. Even with a valid visa you can't get in. (I camped in view of it here [2] )

Why? Because they don't want you to see what is happening there.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1096413/main-export-coun...

[2] http://theroadchoseme.com/cameroon-closes

> Have you ever wondered why all those poor countries around the world sell unprocessed coffee to Switzerland for pennies rather than telling Switzerland to take a hike, processing it themselves and making way more money?

Setting up a factory costs a lot of money, and almost no one is willing to make long-term investments in a corrupt and unstable country.

> The multi-billion dollar loans from the IMF and World Bank have these countries over a barrel, and if they try to change the status quo, they will be sent back to the dark ages instantly.

Botswana, the best-governed country in Africa, has managed its economy well enough to never need an IMF bailout. Meanwhile, Ghana has gone begging for IMF bailouts 17 times [1]. If the Ghanaian leaders (voted in by citizens) weren't perpetually inept, the country wouldn't constantly go to the IMF with begging plates.

> Spending time in Sudan was very educational, though it means I can never get a visa-wavier for the US. Why do you think that is? (Hint: gas in Sudan was 6 cents a liter..., diesel was half that)

Sudan had a murderous dictator who reigned for three decades. He was toppled, but it didn't take long for the country to fall into a current bloody civil war.

> A foreigner can go to the island where the capital is no problem, but try getting permission to go to the mainland - you can't. Even with a valid visa you can't get in. (I camped in view of it here [2] )

Because Equitoreal Guinea is run by a comical dictator who lives lavishly while most of his citizens live in penury. Of course, he doesn't want foreigners to see the mess he oversees.

As an African (Nigerian to be specific), I'm actually tired of foreigners always finding excuses for our problems. It's condescending to assume we have no agency, and everything bad that happens to us is the fault of some foreign boogeymen.

1- https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/business/Year-in-Revi....

Processing coffee yourself takes skill that gangsters who take over a government don't have. The most successful countries after decolonization are meritocracies

>Have you ever wondered why farmers sell unprocessed grains to mills for millions of pennies rather than telling the mills to take a hike, processing it themselves and making way more money, all in the USofA and EU?

because it makes economic sense to do that.

but you can act locally, why do you buy clothing instead of knitting your own, and then with your spare time milling your own flour?

> ones that didn't manage to leave after the collapse of the Soviet Union

> openly racist towards ethnic Tajiks

Makes me wonder, maybe something happened between ethnic Tajiks and ethnic Russians between Soviet Union collapse and the present.

Most Russians hold racist views. It doesn't change if they are expats. As a result of the colonial conquests, Russia is a multiethnic state. But the minorities have never been fully accepted. The govt balances between suppressing the far right and managing it for its own purposes.

This wiki article has plenty of references, with many pointing to the racist actions by the senior officials https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_Russia

> Most Russians hold racist views

I understand that people are unhappy with Russia right now, but what a truly gross thing to say (and absolutely not true).

Very true when it comes to antisemitic views: only 1 in 10 Russians would be ok having a Jewish friend.

"In a Levada Center poll, for instance, 45 percent of Russians said they had a positive attitude toward Jews in 2021, up from 22 percent in 2010. Russians said Jews were the minority group they were most comfortable having close to them — but only 11 percent said they’re ready to have a Jewish friend, up from 3 percent in 2010."

https://www.politico.eu/article/vladimir-putin-ukraine-war-f...

That simply doesn't pass the smell test. I think you would be very surprised if you actually talked to any real Russians.

Oh please, Levada? lol. I understand there's a big psyops push to dehumanize Russians right now, but they are people like the rest of us. Crazy, right?

No, russians are incredibly racists and openly hostile to central asia migrant laborers. Experienced it myself

Wait, are you agreeing that Russians aren't humans?

Hitler and Pol Pot were also humans, yet they did very bad things to other fellow humans.

Nobody is denying that ru are humans, we are simply acknowledging that someone did very bad things against principles of humanity, did it deliberately, at scale, and over a very long time period.

Consider yourself lucky for being from a country that never bombed anyone. Mine killed about 4 million (mostly women and children) in the ME over the last 30 years, and are still at it by helping their friends pound Palestine into smithereens :(

https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/human/civilians

its not only bombing, it is casual everyday racism towards others that is a problem.

same like zionist jews think of themselves as superior to palestinians, same russians think of themselves as superior to Ukrainians and other ex-soviet nations. BTW a lot of Israeli jews immigrated from Soviet Union and some could argue they could pick up this superiority complex from russians

Yes, you're a vanguard for moral authority while actively also making what-about-x excuses for Russia.

Which has openly broken any established rules of war along with raping & genital mutilation being an actively encouraged tactic.

> we are simply acknowledging

We?

Please, for your racist views speak for yourself, without 'royal we'.

Also people like you always conveniently omit anything what would show your people not as those saints as you try to portrait it.

I am aware that this is a bold claim and that it may be hard to believe. I also wish this weren't true. That's why I put a reference to support it. Check out the section on Public sentiments and politics. In particular, that 60% of population support the statement "Russia is for Russians" and what that phrase implies. If you are curious to learn more, check out studies and polls by any organization that you support - Amnesty International, Russian NGO's, universities, etc.

I am pretty sure in most european countries people would vote for the same answer

I'm from the US South and am well traveled in Europe and Russia, including minority Russian republics like Adygea. In my experience, Russians are way less racist than Americans and Western Europeans - I almost never heard a racist word from them (I understand the Russian language).

Please watch these:

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_xq7WcM_J0

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdtCCi249xE

Also, feel free to hit that translate button on videos like these, especially the top voted ones. The comment from Russians are generally very positive (even heartwarming) towards foreigners who are adequate, learn the language and follow the local laws.

It's really not gross if you can accept that the author of such a statement would likely also believe racist is not a term that is used not as a binary (as in - you are either racist or not racist) but that racism is something we are almost all guilty of to some degree or another and not something that means you're going to hell or are a horrible person. In the same way that we are all at times capable of being selfish, or at times capable of being ignorant, or weak to temptation.

Saying they are racist in that light is more like saying that relative to the average, they are a bit more racist than the best of us.

This blanked statement is false. I’m speechless somebody can make claims like this tbh.

Definitely not false. Actually quite well covered by journalists and scholars.

As an example: https://academic.oup.com/edinburgh-scholarship-online/book/2...

The article studies properties of a nationalist group, which is in extreme minority, especially after 2010s, and doesn’t make claims that ‘most Russians are nationalists’.

You have to lurk really hard to find a nationalist there unless you count people love Dostoyevsky into this group. There are also a lot of glass ceilings in place for ethnical Russians, and distribution in elite universities, politics, and business don’t represent the country average, which suggests there’s an intentional ’reverse racism’ in place towards majority. Moreover, the word ‘Russian’ is banned in media and is replaced by ‘citizen of Russia’.

Yeah yeah, it's also well covered by journalists how all Americans are racist.

OP visited about 15 years ago so if you are hinting at the more recent event, it doesn't sound relevant. And if it is not that, I'm not sure what you are hinting at.

> I'm not sure what you are hinting at.

Probably the various ethnic cleansings that happened in the *stans at the fall of the USSR, where most more western ethnicities (Russians, Ukrainians, Belarussians, Armenians, ...) were at best swiftly & firmly reconducted to the nearest airport, and at worst killed on the spot.

It's best understood against the backdrop of a very long series of colonial endeavours. The circassian genocide is well documented.

> circassian genocide

You are aware that Circassia is 3 countries and more than 4000km away from Tajikistan, right? And that the ethnicities involved in the Circassian genocides are wholly separated from Tajiks?

Yes, why? Would Tajikistan for some reason be the only adequate example of muscovite colonial history?

Circassian genocide was especially nasty, but ancient history (and somewhat inline with America's genocidal colonial conquests West). And not that it justifies the genocide, the Circassians were big slavers of Slavs (especially young girls). Also some of the biggest bastards on the Russian side were actually ethnic German.

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigory_Zass

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_slave_trade#Circassi...

The late eighteen hundreds is "ancient history"? That's antiquity to you?

I get the impression that this might come as a surprise to you: 'In the context of the Circassian slave trade, the term Circassians did not necessarily refer to ethnic Circassians, but was used as an umbrella term for a number of different ethnicities from the Caucasus region, such as Georgians, Adyge and Abkhazians, in the same fashion as the term "Abbyssinians" was used as a term also for African slaves who were not from Abyssinia.'

That Moscow is a european colonial project was kind of my point but obviously that flew at a level seemingly mesospheric to you.

I’m well aware of the Mountain of Tongues and Circassia, having traveled that region extensively (including Adygea) and read a number of history books about it.

My country (America) had their own colonial project around that same time period (and also conflated various native groups) - like, ever heard of Manifest Destiny?

The US is still a colonial project, Puerto Rico being the obvious example. It's irrelevant however.

You describe 1863 as ancient history, so I'm not keen on putting any trust into the words you're using or claims to being educated on the subject.

What's your nationality? Because it is absolutely relevant. If you don't employ some empathy and self-reflection of your own history when judging the historical actions of others, you literally get no say in the matter.

My ancestors were mainly sami and travelling peoples. The swedish crown more or less eradicated them.

Not sure why that would make me empathetic towards muscovite genocidaires.

Well that makes you related to my wife, who’s part Komi (her father’s first language). But even they're not butthurt about what the Russians did to them - it was a long time ago. And actually, the Soviets made an effort to preserve the language - she had to take classes in school and much of the local signage is in Komi. People there on the river will even greet you in Komi, still.

And btw, the fact that Circassia itself was the result of the westward expansion of a Persian speaking people who also subjected other cultures (not to mention were big slavers) just shows that you have literally no idea what you're talking about and grasping deep into history for reasons to be bigoted against Russians. Not to mention that the people running the Russian Empire at the time were actually Germans (who also considered themselves superior to Slavs), including many of the top commanding generals behind the genocide.

Downplaying one of modernity's most complete genocides with 'they were actually persians that sold some slaves' and 'actually some of the people in charge were western european' is frankly disgusting.

Moscow's reach for the Black Sea had nothing to do with anti-slavery idealism or whatever you're getting at, they wanted ports and trade and didn't consider muslims as human as christians. It also seems to me that you don't consider serfdom a form of slavery, only international slave trade, which isn't a position I share.

Do NOT put words into my mouth about what I consider slavery or not (or anything, unless I explicitly write it). Yeah, Slav serfdom was shitty as was Russian Imperialism. And American Imperialism, British Imperialism and so-on.

And I'm not downplaying anything (and sure, the Russian Empire made justifications for what it did), I'm pointing out that my God - that was two centuries ago. By your measure, every modern American and Spaniard is a genocidal maniac...

I didn't. Your reading comprehension in english might not be as good as you think.

Sure you are. You're bringing up excuses.

Antiquity ended at the dawn of medieval times. That's like half a millenium earlier than where you want to put it. 1863 is quite some distance into modernity, well into the age of the railroad.

I haven't made anything in this about individuals, rather centering it around Moscow, which has at times been sacked by mongols, crimean tatars and culturally dominated by Paris. But well yeah, the US is quite genocidal. So what? Do you consider it the golden standard of statecraft or something?

Colonialism does not justify genocide

do you have source for your claim ?

Russians are the ones who conducted actual genocides:

  1. Ukrainian holodomor - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
  2. Kazakhstan famine - h ttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazakh_famine_of_1930–1933
  3. Genocide of Central Asian people in 1916 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Asian_revolt_of_1916
  4. Chechen genocide over two centuries + 2 major wars - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chechen_genocide
  5. Transnistria (Moldovan-Russia war) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transnistria_War
  6. Russo-Georgian war - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Georgian_War
  7. currently Russo-Ukrainian war

.. countless other russian made genocides I am tired of enumerating

Russia - is a failing imperial bloody state and Russians as a nation are bloody genocidal nation of maniacs.

Russia cannot exist in peaceful state, they always create and incite cnflicts and thrive on other peoples' misery and death

Russia has Cult of Death, they thrive, embrace, and preach for death

  https://thehill.com/opinion/international/3864092-russias-cult-of-death/
  https://maksymeristavi.substack.com/p/free-press-eristavi-russia-is-a-death
  https://wavellroom.com/2024/05/14/the-russian-army-death-cult/
  https://www.thebulwark.com/p/apathy-keeps-russias-death-cult-alive

Most likely the Tajikistani Civil War, 1992-1997.

There was this little thing here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1990_Dushanbe_riots

Russians were specifically targeted. A Russian TV reporter murdered on the street in broad daylight. A school bus evacuating families of Russian servicemen shot with an RPG. Churches destroyed and clergy killed.

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