James H. Fetzer
Encyclopedia
James Henry Fetzer is an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 philosopher, professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota Duluth
University of Minnesota Duluth
The University of Minnesota Duluth is a regional branch of the University of Minnesota system located in Duluth, Minnesota, USA. As Duluth's public research university, UMD offers 13 bachelor's degrees in 74 majors, graduate programs in 24 different fields, a two-year program at the School of...

, and a well-known conspiracy theorist. He has written on the philosophy of science and on the theoretical foundations of computer science, artificial intelligence, and cognitive science. Two of his most recent books were on the evolution of intelligence and philosophical aspects of "the Christian Right
Christian right
Christian right is a term used predominantly in the United States to describe "right-wing" Christian political groups that are characterized by their strong support of socially conservative policies...

's crusade against science". He is also an advocate of the 9/11 conspiracy and John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories
John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories
There has long been suspicion of a government cover-up of information about the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. There are also numerous conspiracy theories regarding the assassination that arose soon after his death and continue to be promoted today...

. He has published three collections of studies on the death of JFK, co-authored another on the plane crash that took the life of Senator Paul Wellstone
Paul Wellstone
Paul David Wellstone was a two-term U.S. Senator from the state of Minnesota and member of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, which is affiliated with the national Democratic Party. Before being elected to the Senate in 1990, he was a professor of political science at Carleton College...

, and edited the first book from Scholars for 9/11 Truth, an organization he founded. Fetzer makes frequent appearances on radio and television.

Biography

James H. Fetzer was born in Pasadena, California
Pasadena, California
Pasadena is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. Although famous for hosting the annual Rose Bowl football game and Tournament of Roses Parade, Pasadena is the home to many scientific and cultural institutions, including the California Institute of Technology , the Jet...

, in 1940, and attended South Pasadena High School
South Pasadena High School
South Pasadena High School is a public high school serving grades 9-12 located in the city of South Pasadena, California.The school is one of five schools in the South Pasadena Unified School District....

. He went on to study philosophy at Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....

 and graduated magna cum laude in 1962. After four years as a commissioned officer in the Marine Corps he resigned his commission as a Captain to begin graduate work at Indiana University. In 1970 he completed his Ph.D.
Ph.D.
A Ph.D. is a Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree.Ph.D. may also refer to:* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip*PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...

 in the history and philosophy of science.

Fetzer taught at various schools including the University of Kentucky
University of Kentucky
The University of Kentucky, also known as UK, is a public co-educational university and is one of the state's two land-grant universities, located in Lexington, Kentucky...

, the University of Virginia
University of Virginia
The University of Virginia is a public research university located in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States, founded by Thomas Jefferson...

 (twice) and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is a public research university located in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States...

 before he received tenure at the University of Minnesota Duluth
University of Minnesota Duluth
The University of Minnesota Duluth is a regional branch of the University of Minnesota system located in Duluth, Minnesota, USA. As Duluth's public research university, UMD offers 13 bachelor's degrees in 74 majors, graduate programs in 24 different fields, a two-year program at the School of...

, where he taught from 1987 until his retirement in June 2006. At the University of Kentucky, he received the first Distinguished Teaching Award from the UK Student Government.

Works

Fetzer has published more than 100 articles and 20 books on philosophy of science, computer science
Computer science
Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...

, artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...

 and cognitive science
Cognitive science
Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary scientific study of mind and its processes. It examines what cognition is, what it does and how it works. It includes research on how information is processed , represented, and transformed in behaviour, nervous system or machine...

. He also founded the international journal, Minds and Machines, which he edited for eleven years, the professional library, Studies in Cognitive Systems, which includes thirty volumes, and the professional organization, The Society for Machines & Mentality. The Society for Machines & Mentality has been accepted as a special interest group (SIG) of the International Association for Computing and Philosophy (IACAP). His first article in the philosophy of computer science, "Program Verification: The Very Idea", Communications of the ACM (1988), ignited an international debate that has not subsided to this day.

Controversial views

Fetzer has written about the John F. Kennedy assassination and has been interviewed on his theories about the September 11, 2001 attacks
September 11, 2001 attacks
The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks (also referred to as September 11, September 11th or 9/119/11 is pronounced "nine eleven". The slash is not part of the pronunciation...

, by Richard and Kate Mucci, hosts of Out There TV
Out There TV
Out There TV is a newsmagazine hosted by Kate and Richard Mucci which deals with the paranormal, and other topics which involve U.S. Government activities involving paranormal activity and environmental stories. The show airs on several networks such as America One and iTVi's Internet television...

, and radio hosts such as Laura Ingraham
Laura Ingraham
Laura Anne Ingraham is an American radio host, author, and conservative political commentator. Her nationally syndicated talk show, The Laura Ingraham Show, airs throughout the United States on Talk Radio Network...

, Jerry Springer
Jerry Springer
Gerald Norman "Jerry" Springer is a British-born American television presenter, best known as host of the tabloid talk show The Jerry Springer Show since its debut in 1991...

, Donny Deutch and several hosts on Air America
Air America Radio
Air America was an American radio network specializing in progressive talk programming...

, among others.
He has been interviewed on Hannity & Colmes
Hannity & Colmes
Hannity & Colmes was a live television show on Fox News Channel in the United States, hosted by Sean Hannity and Alan Colmes, who respectively presented a conservative and liberal perspective. The series premiered on October 6, 1996, and the final episode aired on January 9, 2009. It was the...

(twice) and on The O'Reilly Factor
The O'Reilly Factor
The O'Reilly Factor, originally titled The O'Reilly Report from 1996 to 1998 and often called The Factor, is an American talk show on the Fox News Channel hosted by commentator Bill O'Reilly, who often discusses current controversial political issues with guests.The program was the most watched...

as well as other television programs. Some have questioned his apparent endorsement of a military coup to overthrow the Bush administration, members of which he believes have betrayed the country and violated their oaths of office. From the fall of 2006 to November 2008 he co-hosted an internet radio program "The Dynamic Duo" on the Genesis Communications Network with Kevin Barrett
Kevin Barrett
Kevin James Barrett is a former university lecturer, Muslim convert. He is a member of the Scientific Panel for the Investigation of 9/11 , and is a founding member of the Muslim-Jewish-Christian Alliance , established October 30, 2004 with the stated aim of improving "interfaith dialogue,...

. He co-edits an on-line journal for advanced study of the death of JFK.

Assassination of John F. Kennedy

Fetzer maintains that John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....

 was assassinated as the result of a well-planned and precisely executed conspiracy, which included altering the autopsy X-rays, substituting another brain, and recreating the Zapruder film
Zapruder film
The Zapruder film is a silent, color motion picture sequence shot by private citizen Abraham Zapruder with a home-movie camera, asU.S. President John F...

 using sophisticated techniques of optical printing and special effects. He has edited three collections of studies on the assassination, run four conferences on the subject, and continues to make numerous talk show appearances on the topic. Fetzer has lectured on this subject at Harvard, Yale, and Cambridge Universities. In June 2007 he published a detailed review and rebuttal of Vincent Bugliosi
Vincent Bugliosi
Vincent Bugliosi is an American attorney and author, best known for prosecuting Charles Manson and other defendants accused of the Tate-LaBianca murders. His most recent books are Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy , The Prosecution of George W...

's massive study of the assassination, Reclaiming History
Reclaiming History
Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy is a book by attorney Vincent Bugliosi that analyzes the events leading up to and including the assassination of John F. Kennedy, focusing on the lives of Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby. The book is drawn from many sources,...

, for Assassination Research.

In January 2009, in collaboration with Jack White, he published a new study of the Moorman photo and the Zapruder film of the assassination. This was a recent development in a long-standing dispute with Josiah Thompson, which he has discussed in numerous articles, including New Proof of JFK Film Fakery and Zapruder JFK Film impeached by Moorman JFK Polaroid. A recent study, "Who's telling the truth: Clint Hill or the Zapruder film?" demonstrates inconsistencies between Clint Hill's description of his actions that day and what the film records. Another, "Did Zapruder take 'the Zapruder film'? argues that Zapruder cannot have taken the film that bears his name. Fetzer has observed that presuming its authenticity functions as the backbone of the cover-up, since it becomes impossible to reconstruct the actual sequence of events in Dealey Plaza
Dealey Plaza
Dealey Plaza , in the historic West End district of downtown Dallas, Texas , is the location of the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963...

 on the basis of a fabricated film.

In response to the announcement that a Dartmouth computer scientist, Hany Farid, had shown that the "backyard photograph" of alleged assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was authentic, after decades of controversy, he and Jim Marrs, the author of Crossfire (1989), one of the primary sources for Oliver Stone's "JFK", published an article arguing that Farid's research was inadequate on multiple grounds, including (a) that he only studied one feature (the nose shadow) of one photo, when there are four, (b) that he ignored other, more imposing proofs of fakery (including the block chin, the insert line between the chin and the lower lip, and the cut-off finger tips of his right hand), and (c) a demonstration by Jack White using the newspapers as an internal ruler that the person was too short to be Oswald or that the newspapers had been made too large.

September 11, 2001 attacks

Fetzer supports the assertion that elements within the U.S. federal government orchestrated the September 11, 2001 attacks for political and economic gain and that World Trade Center One and Two were destroyed using a novel form of controlled demolition
Controlled demolition
Controlled demolition refers to:* Demolition, the tearing-down of buildings and other structures* Controlled Demolition, Inc., Phoenix, Maryland firm that specializes in the use of explosives to create a controlled demolition of a structure...

 from the top down, while World Trade Center Seven was brought down by a conventional controlled demolition from the bottom.
Fetzer also believes the hijackings were staged and that calls from passengers to relatives and operators were faked.

During recent lectures, Fetzer encourages the study of the possibility that high-tech weapons, including ground or space-based directed-energy military weapons, may have been used to bring down the Twin Towers. He has not endorsed any specific hypothesis
Hypothesis
A hypothesis is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon. The term derives from the Greek, ὑποτιθέναι – hypotithenai meaning "to put under" or "to suppose". For a hypothesis to be put forward as a scientific hypothesis, the scientific method requires that one can test it...

 about the destruction of the WTC, but he has expressed skepticism that conventional explosives, including thermite
Thermite
Thermite is a pyrotechnic composition of a metal powder and a metal oxide that produces an exothermic oxidation-reduction reaction known as a thermite reaction. If aluminium is the reducing agent it is called an aluminothermic reaction...

/thermate
Thermate
Thermate is a variation of thermite and is an incendiary pyrotechnic composition that can generate short bursts of very high temperatures focused on a small area for a short period of time. It is used primarily in incendiary grenades....

, could have brought about such devastating effects. On May 17, 2007, he presented a two-hour critique of Steven E. Jones
Steven E. Jones
Steven Earl Jones is an American physicist. For most of his career, Jones was known mainly for his work on muon-catalyzed fusion. In the fall of 2006, amid controversy surrounding his work on the collapse of the World Trade Center , he was relieved of his teaching duties...

' work, which has been archived under the title, "The Manipulation of the 9/11 Community".

On June 22, 2006, Fetzer was a guest on Fox News Channel
Fox News Channel
Fox News Channel , often called Fox News, is a cable and satellite television news channel owned by the Fox Entertainment Group, a subsidiary of News Corporation...

's Hannity & Colmes where he discussed his stance on several 9/11 conspiracy theories
9/11 conspiracy theories
9/11 conspiracy theories are theories that disagree with the widely accepted account that the September 11 attacks were perpetrated solely by al-Qaeda. These theories arose because of what proponents of the conspiracy theories believe to be inconsistencies in the official conclusions or some...

. That weekend, he appeared at the 9/11 + The Neo-Con Agenda Symposium in Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...

. On December 18, 2006, he was the featured guest on a three and 1/2 hour television program devoted to 9/11, which was broadcast live from Athens by satellite worldwide. During June 2008, he was flown to Buenos Aires to present a series of lectures on 9/11 and JFK. His visit received considerable publicity, including a 20-minute television interview broadcast across South America and articles in the News Service of the Republic of Argentina. He was flown back to Buenos Aires and presented the principal lecture during "The International Conference for 9/11 Truth and Justice" held at The National Library on September 11, 2009. On 14 July 2010, he spoke along with Kevin Barrett and Gilad Atzmon at a symposium, "Debunking the 'War on Terror'", at Friends House in London, which was moderated by Ken O'Keefe.

In July 2006, Fetzer discussed Bill O'Reilly
Bill O'Reilly (commentator)
William James "Bill" O'Reilly, Jr. is an American television host, author, syndicated columnist and political commentator. He is the host of the political commentary program The O'Reilly Factor on the Fox News Channel, which is the most watched cable news television program on American television...

's remark that, if Kevin Barrett
Kevin Barrett
Kevin James Barrett is a former university lecturer, Muslim convert. He is a member of the Scientific Panel for the Investigation of 9/11 , and is a founding member of the Muslim-Jewish-Christian Alliance , established October 30, 2004 with the stated aim of improving "interfaith dialogue,...

 had been at his alma mater, Boston University
Boston University
Boston University is a private research university located in Boston, Massachusetts. With more than 4,000 faculty members and more than 31,000 students, Boston University is one of the largest private universities in the United States and one of Boston's largest employers...

, "this guy'd be in the Charles River floating down, you know, toward the harbor", stating, "When public threats can be made to a citizen's life for expressing his opinions on a controversial topic and neither the government nor the media respond, that is a sure sign we are living in a fascist state." Fetzer agreed to appear on O'Reilly's show himself on October 12, 2006. Fetzer has detailed his research and theories during the Midwest Social Forum
Midwest Social Forum
The Midwest Social Forum is an annual gathering that creates a space for grassroots organizations, community activists, educators, students, and others committed to social justice to come together to exchange experiences and information, strengthen alliances and networks, and devise strategies for...

 held on the campus of the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee in a joint presentation with Kevin Barrett
Kevin Barrett
Kevin James Barrett is a former university lecturer, Muslim convert. He is a member of the Scientific Panel for the Investigation of 9/11 , and is a founding member of the Muslim-Jewish-Christian Alliance , established October 30, 2004 with the stated aim of improving "interfaith dialogue,...

, also a member of Scholars for 9/11 Truth, which they recently reprised at the University of Wisconsin–Madison

Scholars for 9/11 Truth

Fetzer is founder and co-chair of Scholars for 9/11 Truth, "a non-partisan association of faculty, students, and scholars dedicated to exposing falsehoods and to revealing truths behind 9/11". Differences in attitude and approach toward the science and the politics of 9/11 research led to a split with Steven Jones
Steven E. Jones
Steven Earl Jones is an American physicist. For most of his career, Jones was known mainly for his work on muon-catalyzed fusion. In the fall of 2006, amid controversy surrounding his work on the collapse of the World Trade Center , he was relieved of his teaching duties...

, whom Fetzer had invited to be his co-chair, in December 2006, almost exactly one year after its creation. Many 9/11 activists support Jones over Fetzer. A recent interview in which Jones was Fetzer's guest, which revealed the depth and breadth of their differences, elicited dozens of negative comments On August 3–5, 2007, he conducted the first conference sponsored by Scholars on "The Science and Politics of 9/11", and produced its first DVD.

In his most recent work as a columnist for Veterans Today, "Seven Questions about 9/11" and "More Proof of 9/11 Duplicity", he has presented evidence that all four of the plane crashes on 9/11 were faked, where no planes crashed in Shanksville or at the Pentagon and one or another form of fakery was used in New York. Even more strikingly, in collaboration with T. Mark Hightower, a chemical engineer, he has challenged "the myth of nanothermite" by explaining that it does not have the gas-expansion properties of explosives and, with a detonation rate of 895 m/s, cannot have destroyed the concrete or the steel in the Twin Towers, which would require rates in excess of 3,200 m/s for concrete and 6,100 m/s for steel, which has contradicted perhaps the most widely held belief within the community about how the towers were destroyed and accented his disagreements with Jones.

Fetzer has spoken positively of Judy Wood and Morgan Reynolds, who left Scholars due in part to disagreement with the organization, objecting to the unwillingness of the society to consider 'no big boeing' theories (conspiracy theories arguing that no large aircraft hit the World Trade Center and that video evidence of the planes hitting the towers have serious inconsistencies showing them to be "doctored"). Fetzer has been impressed by their efforts to clarify the extent of devastation at the World Trade Center and mentions a wide range of theories, including that a "satellite-mounted military weapon" may have been used to destroy it, as among those that deserve investigation. He has written that "the range of alternative explanations that might possibly explain the explanandum must include non-classic controlled demolition from the top-down using mini-nukes, and . . . non-classic controlled demolition from the top-down using directed energy weapons. . . . The specific weapons used to destroy the WTC could have been ground based or space based."

Video Fakery

For Fetzer, "Judy [Wood] appears to have done far more to develop her "proof of concept" than has Steven [Jones]". Steven Jones and others claim to have refuted the mini-nuke hypothesis Jones has responded to Reynolds and Wood directly, but they have not viewed his remarks as refutations. After featuring fifteen or more students of video fakery as guests on his radio program, Fetzer decided that claims of video fakery and claims that no planes hit the tower are logically distinct issue. He has become convinced that video fakery took place on 9/11 and has published several articles about it, including "Mounting Evidence of Video Fakery on 9/11" and "New Proof of Video Fakery on 9/11". Wood and Reynolds both contributed chapters to his first book for Scholars, The 9/11 Conspiracy (2007).

In Fetzer's use of the term "video fakery", however, he encompasses any use of videos to convey a false impression about the plane crashes, including what he now believes was probably a close formation of unmanned aerial vehicles that hit the North Tower and where the plane shown in the Hezarkhani and Fairbanks videos is performing feats that no real plane could do, including traveling at 560 mph at 700-1,000' altitude and smoothly entering the South Tower in violation of Newton's laws. He has therefore concluded that the weight of the evidence supports the use of a holographic projection, which could have appeared to have flow faster than a real plane and have entered the building in violation of Newton's laws. He has interviewed several students of about this possibility, including Stephen Brown, who had recently completed a course on holography at Cambridge and confirmed its feasibility. "Video fakery", therefore, does not necessary require the faking of videos themselves but can include the faking of the images of planes to create a false impression of real planes hitting the Twin Towers.

Anthony Lawson, who produced "This is an orange" and "9/11: Towers of Dust", which Fetzer admires, has attacked him repeatedly on the internet, to which Fetzer has replied with "9/11: An Open Letter to Anthony Lawson about 'Absurdities'", in which he forcefully rebuts (and in his opinion successfully refutes) Lawson's attacks on Veterans Today. He has also offered an extensive critique of the Toronto Hearings, "The Science and Politics of 9/11: The Toronto Hearings," which represents the culmination of his differences with those, including Steven Jones and Kevin Ryan, who split with him over the focus of research that should be pursued by Scholars for 9/11 Truth.
His latest 9/11 lecture, "9/11: False Flag Terror and the Rise of the Global Police State", was presented in Portland on September 9, 2011, and is now archived on YouTube.

Death of Paul Wellstone

Fetzer has co-authored a book in which the authors collect and analyze public information and witness statements, arguing that Minnesota
Minnesota
Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...

 Senator Paul Wellstone
Paul Wellstone
Paul David Wellstone was a two-term U.S. Senator from the state of Minnesota and member of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, which is affiliated with the national Democratic Party. Before being elected to the Senate in 1990, he was a professor of political science at Carleton College...

's death in an airplane crash was not accidental but resulted from a small-scale conspiracy to ensure Republican
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...

 control of the Senate. He has co-authored a study of the documents on which the NTSB's report was based with John P. Costella, a Ph.D. in physics with a specialization in electromagnetism, which was published in Michael Ruppert
Michael Ruppert
Michael C. Ruppert is an American author, a former Los Angeles Police Department officer, and investigative journalist and peak oil theorist....

's "From the Wilderness" newsletter.
He recently addressed this subject again in the context of an article inspired by the revelation of Seymour Hersh
Seymour Hersh
Seymour Myron Hersh is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist and author based in Washington, D.C. He is a regular contributor to The New Yorker magazine on military and security matters...

 that Vice President Dick Cheney had been running an assassination operation from his office. and in another article in Veterans Today, "Sen. Paul Wellstone: More Proof of Assassination". On October 25, 2011, the 9th observance of his death, he presented a public lecture at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, "What happened to Sen. Paul Wellstone?", which included new research.

Disinformation

In Fetzer's words, "in this day and age, we all have to become experts on disinformation
Disinformation
Disinformation is intentionally false or inaccurate information that is spread deliberately. For this reason, it is synonymous with and sometimes called black propaganda. It is an act of deception and false statements to convince someone of untruth...

." According to Fetzer, "disinformation... should be viewed more or less on a par with acts of lying. Indeed, the parallel with lying appears to be fairly precise." Misinformation
Misinformation
Misinformation is false or inaccurate information that is spread unintentionally. It is distinguished from disinformation by motive in that misinformation is simply erroneous, while disinformation, in contrast, is intended to mislead....

 Fetzer defines as "false, mistaken, or misleading information"; disinformation is misinformation propounded "in an intentional, deliberate, or purposeful effort to mislead, deceive, or confuse." Fetzer describes five levels of disinformation. He has been featured in the two BBC "Conspiracy Files" documentaries on 9/11, where he recently published a critique of the subtle ways in which his views were misrepresented in "The BBC's instrument of 9/11 misinformation" on Veterans Today.

Radio

From 2001-08, Fetzer made regular appearances on Black Op Radio, an internet broadcast dedicated to conspiratorial subject matter, primarily the JFK assassination. He still appears on the show occasionally, but less often than before. For a time, Fetzer co-hosted "The Dynamic Duo", a show on the GCN network, along with fellow 9/11 Truther Kevin Barrett. Today, Fetzer solo hosts a show called "The Real Deal" on Revere Radio. He has interviewed a wide range of experts on various subjects, including JFK, 9/11, election fraud, domestic politics and foreign affairs. A recent series of four programs was devoted to suspicious non-combat military deaths, a subject he was drawn into by research on the death of Cpl. Pat Tillman
Pat Tillman
Corporal Patrick Daniel "Pat" Tillman Jr. was an American football player who left his professional career and enlisted in the United States Army in June 2002 in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks. He joined the Army Rangers and served several tours in combat before he died in the...

 for his OpEdNews article, "Has Cheney been Murdering Americans?".

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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