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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political control & freedoms > Human rights > Civil rights & citizenship
How prisons around the world shape the social lives of their inhabitants Prison Life offers a fresh appreciation of how people in prison organize their lives, drawing on case studies from Africa, Europe and the US. The book describes how order is maintained, how power is exercised, how days are spent, and how meaning is found in a variety of environments that all have the same function - incarceration - but discharge it very differently. It is based on an unusually diverse range of sources including photographs, drawings, court cases, official reports, memoirs, and site visits. Ian O'Donnell contrasts the soul-destroying isolation of the federal supermax in Florence, Colorado with the crowded conviviality of an Ethiopian prison where men and women cook their own meals, seek opportunities to generate an income, elect a leadership team, and live according to a code of conduct that they devised and enforce. He explores life on wings controlled by the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland's H Blocks, where men who saw the actions that led to their incarceration as politically-motivated moved as one, in perpetual defiance of the authorities. He shows how prisoners in Texas took to the courts to overthrow a regime that allowed their routine subjugation by violent men known as building tenders, who had been selected by staff to supervise and discipline their peers. In each case study O'Donnell presents the life story of a man who was molded by, and in return molded, the institution that held him. This ensures that his reflections on law and policy as well as on theory and practice never lose sight of the human angle. Imprisonment is about pain after all, and pain is personal.
This book shows how surveillance society shapes and interacts with journalistic practices and discourses. It illustrates not only how surveillance debates play out in and through mediated discourses, but also how practices of surveillance inform the stories, everyday work and the ethics of journalists. The increasing entrenchment of data collection and surveillance in all kinds of social processes raises important questions around new threats to journalistic freedom and political dissent; the responsibilities of media organizations and state actors; the nature of journalists' relationship to the state; journalists' ability to protect their sources and data; and the ways in which media coverage shape public perceptions of surveillance, to mention just a few areas of concern. Against this backdrop, the contributions gathered in this book examine areas including media coverage of surveillance, encryption and privacy; journalists' views on surveillance and security; public debate around the power of intelligence agencies, and the strategies of privacy rights activists. The book raises fundamental questions around the role of journalism in creating the conditions for digital citizenship. The chapters in this book were originally published in a special issue of the journal, Digital Journalism.
It was the final speech of a long day, August 28, 1963, when hundreds of thousands gathered on the Mall for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. In a resounding cadence, Martin Luther King Jr. lifted the crowd when he told of his dream that all Americans would join together to realize the founding ideal of equality. The power of the speech created an enduring symbol of the march and the larger civil rights movement. King s speech still inspires us fifty years later, but its very power has also narrowed our understanding of the march. In this insightful history, William P. Jones restores the march to its full significance. The opening speech of the day was delivered by the leader of the march, the great trade unionist A. Philip Randolph, who first called for a march on Washington in 1941 to press for equal opportunity in employment and the armed forces. To the crowd that stretched more than a mile before him, Randolph called for an end to segregation and a living wage for every American. Equal access to accommodations and services would mean little to people, white and black, who could not afford them. Randolph s egalitarian vision of economic and social citizenship is the strong thread running through the full history of the March on Washington Movement. It was a movement of sustained grassroots organizing, linked locally to women s groups, unions, and churches across the country. Jones s fresh, compelling history delivers a new understanding of this emblematic event and the broader civil rights movement it propelled."
Sick of the total BS of rampant PC? This brazen, furiously funny book is the antidote to today's poison of political correctness. With humor and chutzpah, attorney, commentator, and popular radio host Michael Smerconish takes on today's oversensitive culture with a collection of entertaining, outlandish anecdotes about PC gone wild-stories that are hilarious, horrifying, and unbelievably true. Why are sports leagues handing out trophies to losers? Why are little old grandmas hired to guard 200-pound prisoners? Why are newborn babies and old men with walkers singled out at the airport while likely terrorists are ushered through security with ease? This book shows through these absurdities that today's atmosphere of censorship and multiculturalism is paving the way for serious threats to our cultural identity and national security: "It's one thing for the forces of political correctness to muzzle our day-to-day lives here at home in the US, quite another when that same cancer metastasizes into the war on terror." We must eradicate the PC disease. Our sanity-and our very lives-depend on it. "Michael Smerconish talks the talk: If you say unpopular things,
watch out Using vivid examples of PC rubbish, Muzzled will lead you
into a world that would terrify Rod Serling. An entertaining and
provocative book." "Reads like fiction, too bad it's true." "The PC virus is out of control . . . and it's worse than you
think In this entertaining and important book, Michael Smerconish
chronicles just how mindless things have gotten in politically
correct America. He tells fascinating stories that will make you
laugh . . . right up until the time they make you scream. Thanks to
the PC crowd, we are all living in The United States of the
Absurd." "I really squirm whenever I find myself agreeing with
Smerconish. (I know the feeling is mutual.) I did a lot of
squirming while reading this provocative book. All true liberals
and conservatives must agree with Smerconish that the PC muzzles
must be removed so that people can decide based on the marketplace
of ideas." "I don't often find myself on the same side of the political
barricades as Michael Smerconish. But Muzzled is a witty,
provocative, and timely book. Even when Michael is wrong, which is
often, he draws you in and keeps you reading." "By proving the link between America's political correctness at
home and its looming defeat abroad, Smerconish performs a great and
courageous public service. Citizens should take this book to heart
. . . and then vote to defeat the rogue multiculturalists who value
'ethnic and racial sensitivities' far more than America's
survival." "In Muzzled, my American Blood Brother of
status-quo-obliterating defiance, Michael Smerconish, once again
smokes out the cockroaches of political correctness . . . Muzzled
is a great title for a book that I am convinced every American
school kid should read and be tested on. If a new generation
doesn't grow some intellectual balls, our Once Great Nation will
continue to repeat horrific mistakes and pay the price . . . Read
it. Live it."
The American Civil Liberties Union partners with award-winning authors Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman in this "forceful, beautifully written" (Associated Press) collection that brings together many of our greatest living writers, each contributing an original piece inspired by a historic ACLU case. On January 19, 1920, a small group of idealists and visionaries, including Helen Keller, Jane Addams, Roger Baldwin, and Crystal Eastman, founded the American Civil Liberties Union. A century after its creation, the ACLU remains the nation's premier defender of the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution. In collaboration with the ACLU, authors Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman have curated an anthology of essays "full of struggle, emotion, fear, resilience, hope, and triumph" (Los Angeles Review of Books) about landmark cases in the organization's one-hundred-year history. Fight of the Century takes you inside the trials and the stories that have shaped modern life. Some of the most prominent cases that the ACLU has been involved in-Brown v. Board of Education, Roe v. Wade, Miranda v. Arizona-need little introduction. Others you may never even have heard of, yet their outcomes quietly defined the world we live in now. Familiar or little-known, each case springs to vivid life in the hands of the acclaimed writers who dive into the history, narrate their personal experiences, and debate the questions at the heart of each issue. Hector Tobar introduces us to Ernesto Miranda, the felon whose wrongful conviction inspired the now-iconic Miranda rights-which the police would later read to the man suspected of killing him. Yaa Gyasi confronts the legacy of Brown v. Board of Education, in which the ACLU submitted a friend of- the-court brief questioning why a nation that has sent men to the moon still has public schools so unequal that they may as well be on different planets. True to the ACLU's spirit of principled dissent, Scott Turow offers a blistering critique of the ACLU's stance on campaign finance. These powerful stories, along with essays from Neil Gaiman, Meg Wolitzer, Salman Rushdie, Ann Patchett, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Louise Erdrich, George Saunders, and many more, remind us that the issues the ACLU has engaged over the past one hundred years remain as vital as ever today, and that we can never take our liberties for granted. Chabon and Waldman are donating their advance to the ACLU and the contributors are forgoing payment.
Past debates over social movements have suffered from a focus on Anglo-America and Europe, often neglecting the significance of collective actions of citizens in the Global South. This authoritative new title redresses this imbalance with case study material from movements for change in Brazil, India, Bangladesh, Mexico, South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria. In these examples, social movements have formed without the benefits of the structural or institutional resource base found in the North, and have persevered even when the state does not have the resources to effectively respond to collective demands. Each expert contribution points to the complexity of relationships that influence mobilization and social movements; unsettling the notion that social activism leads inexorably to democracy and development and questioning what motivates collective action and what does it achieve?
Where do I belong? This is a question all mobile persons are bound to ask themselves at one time or another. When crossing borders, individuals establish links with States, which can be the basis for legal claims against these States.This book discusses the issue of these links and, more specifically, the question of how EU law defines the link needed to obtain the right to reside in a Member State and the right to social and employment protection in that State. When it comes to claiming rights from States, traditionally nationality is the answer to the question where a person belongs. However, in the context of European integration and the development of an EU legal framework of internal market rules, citizenship rights and immigration rules, different answers to these questions have been developedFrom this perspective the various chapters of this book examine instruments such as the Citizens Directive 2004/38, the Family Reunification Directive 2003/86, the Long-term Residence Directive 2003/109, the Social Security Coordination Regulation 883/2004, the Rome I Regulation 593/2008 and the Posting of Workers Directive 96/71. The case-law of the Court of Justice on these issues is of course a central element therein.The analyses of scholars from different legal disciplines in the fourteen chapters of this book show that EU law gives a multitude of answers to the question which link is necessary and sufficient to create an individual's right vis--vis a State. The definition of this link, the criteria used and the legal consequences differ according to the legal framework the individual finds himself/herself in and the legal instrument he/she invokes. Moreover, the criteria used in legislation and case-law continue to be the subject of problems of interpretation and application, which in turn leads to legal uncertainty or even confusion.
Sexuality, Human Rights, and Public Policy explores the intersection of public policy, human rights, and sexuality as they relate to inclusion and exclusion across diverse cultural settings. It examines how knowledge is formed and experienced at the intersections of culture, sexuality, race, and other axes of identity. This volume engages an array of questions including how public policy shapes the conceptualization of sexuality and rights and by extension the phenomena of inclusion and exclusion in contemporary society across the world. By evaluating how public discourse is employed to re-inscribe differences of gender, sexuality, and rights of citizens, this book provides a comparative analysis of how these processes and dynamics resemble each other or differ cross-culturally. This book demonstrates that in the realm of sexualities, approached from the ideal of human rights as a predominantly Western notion is increasingly challenged by diverse views and new interpretations of human rights in non-Western societies such as Africa and the Middle East.
This book uses John Dewey to articulate discursive practices that would help citizens form better intellectual and moral relationships with their fragmented, shifting political environment. These practices do not impart more or better information to citizens, but instead consist in dialog exhibiting rhythms and patterns that increase their interest in inquiring how distant events and communities affect their individual lives. The basis for these practices can be found in Dewey's claim that teachers can lead class discussions with particular "aesthetic" qualities that encourage students to expand the scale of the realm of events that they deem important to their lives. The ability to forge moral and intellectual links with distant political events becomes all the more necessary in our current environment-not only are individuals' lives increasingly affected by global events, but also such events constantly shift across an increasingly "liquid" social landscape comprised of decentralized institutions, instantaneous communication and easy transportation. Dewey saw early on how such "aesthetics" of society, or its spatial and temporal qualities, might undermine citizens' understanding and concern for the larger public. This concern for how the movement and location of elements of the social environment might affect citizen perception ties Dewey to many contemporary geographers, economists and social theorists normally not associated with his work. If Dewey's classrooms were to be reinterpreted as political associations and his teachers as organizers, individuals discussing the origins of their seemingly local issues in such associations could forge passionate moral connections with the contemporary liquid public. Subsequently, they might begin to increasingly care for, participate in global politics and seek solidarity with seemingly distant communities.
Go Get Mother's Picket Sign tells the story of American suffragists who worked to balance their public and private lives as wives, mothers, and homemakers. American suffragists battled an intense fight against the idea that women in America could not engage in politics without also creating a great void in the home. It was believed that if women allowed this void to occur, the decline and decay of the home life would destroy 19th and 20th century society. Men could not help women fill the role of homemaker, as it was thought that men had neither experience nor the ability to learn the order and method of caring for home and children. The family framework known by Victorians remained doomed. However, to counter this concept, suffragists created a new woman who functioned in both the home and the public world. All of their suffrage materials showed that these women did not forget their responsibility to the home. Everything they used encompassed the right of suffrage and maintained the image of the dutiful wife and mother. By combining the forces of material culture and suffrage, this work will further the study of women's suffrage and expand knowledge of women within both political and domestic spheres.
Marilyn Hoskin explores the sources and directions of public opinion toward new immigrants in four Western democracies. In her examination of popular theories about why citizens are hostile to foreigners, she concludes that virtually none of these theories are supported by empirical observations. Hoskin then illustrates the similarities between reactions to immigrants in American and European nations, concluding that acceptance and integration are functions of attitude rather than geography, national history, or economic context. The book begins with an overview of the cross-national dimensions of immigration and a comparison of the official and unofficial policies which have developed in the four nations included in the study. It then investigates factors which represent directed, popularized theories of why members of the mass public react in the way they do to immigrants. Hoskins devotes separate chapters to the validity of such theories. The concluding chapter returns to the original question raised in the overview, namely whether general or specific contextual factors are instrumental in shaping how mass publics respond to foreigners in their societies. Concluding with suggestions for reconciling policy and process related to this important sociopolitical issue, this work will be of interest to college audiences teaching or studying American, international, and comparative politics, as well as sociology.
This volume Struggle, Resistance and Violence examines the fact that all over the world the rights of citizens have come under enormous pressure and addresses the many ways in which people are 'making claims' against both autocratic and democratic authority. Without any doubt rule-breaking, riots and violent upheavals have become an aspect of political struggles for citizenship. The book takes up a conflict perspective that directs attention to these recent phenomena. It stresses the necessity of a careful analysis of resistance and violence as critical factors for coming to terms with social conflicts for citizenship from Europe to South America, as well as the Near East, the Far East and the Arab World.
Francophone African Women Documentary Filmmakers is groundbreaking edited collection which explores the contributions of Francophone African women to the field of documentary filmmaking. Rich in its scope and critical vision it constitutes a timely contribution to cutting-edge scholarly debates on African cinemas. Featuring 10 chapters from prominent film scholars, it explores the distinctive documentary work and contributions of Francophone African women filmmakers since the 1960s. It focuses documentaries by North African and Sub-Saharan women filmmakers, including the pioneering work of Safi Faye in Kaddu Beykat, Rama Thiaw's The Revolution Will Not be Televised, Katy Lena Ndiaye's Le Cercle des noyes and En attendant les hommes, Dalila Ennadre's Fama: Heroism Without Glory and Leila Kitani's Nos lieux interdits. Shunned from costly fictional- 35mm-filmmaking, Francophone African Women Documentary Filmmakers examines how these women engaged and experimented with documentary filmmaking in personal, evocative ways that countered the officially sanctioned, nationalist practice of show and teach/promote.
A practical guide to becoming solution-focused and construction solutions in brief therapy. At the core of the book is a sequence of skill-building chapters that cover all aspects of construction solutions. Each chapter explains and demonstrates a particular skill with discussion and exercises.
Renowned social and political theorist Bob Jessop explores the idea of civil society as a mode of governance in this bold challenge to current thinking. Developing theories of governance failure and metagovernance, the book analyses the limits and failures of economic and social policy in various styles of governance. Reviewing the principles of self-emancipation and self-responsibilisation it considers the struggle to integrate civil society into governance, and the power of social networks and solidarity within civil society. With case studies of mobilisations to tackle economic and social problems, this is a comprehensive review of the factors that influence their success and identifies lessons for future social innovation.
Douglas B. Rasmussen and Douglas J. Den Uyl's recent book Norms of Liberty: A Perfectionist Basis for Non-Perfectionist Politics (Penn State University Press, 2005) is being received in philosophy and political theory as an important and original defense of liberalism. The book offers a neo-Aristotelian ethic of human flourishing as a basis for a liberal conception of human rights. One of the authors' central contentions is that a key problem for any (liberal) political philosophy is how to establish a political/legal order which in principle does not require that any one person or group's well-being be given structured preference over that of any other. This companion volume, an interpretive and critical reader, features essays from both philosophers and political scientists, as well as an omnibus reply by Rasmussen and Den Uyl. Norms of Liberty makes challenging arguments about key issues, which makes a multi-disciplinary reader a valuable asset for both students and scholars. Reading Rasmussen and Den Uyl is designed both to explicate the book's arguments and to explore possible objections.
This edited collection contributes to studies of intra-EU migration and mobility, welfare, and European social citizenship by focusing on transnational labour movements from new to the old EU member states (Hungary-Austria, Bulgaria-Germany, Poland-UK and Estonia-Sweden). The volume provides a comparative analysis of formal organization and mobile individuals' use of European social security coordination, which involves mobile Europeans' access to and portability of social security rights from the sending to the receiving country (and back). The book discloses the selectivity criteria of welfare provision in four areas (unemployment, family benefits, health insurance, and pensions) that lay at heart of European cross-border social security governance. It also identifies specific discourses of belonging (gendered, ethnicized/racialized and class-related images of 'Us' and 'Them') that frame the institutional selectivity by constructing images of mobile EUcitizens' 'deserving' or 'non-deserving' social membership. The collection offers a detailed examination of inequality experiences mobile EU citizens from the new EU countries encounter while accessing and porting social security rights across borders. It will be of interest to a wide range of social science and interdisciplinary researchers, students, and practitioners as well as those interested in intra-EU migration and mobility, social security, European social citizenship, and transnational studies.
This book examines claims for recognition of cultural difference from immigrant and Indigenous minorities, highlighting the ways in which they intersect with ideas of national community. Busbridge argues that there is an important, albeit under-explored, relationship between nation and multicultural politics of recognition. Drawing on the Australian context, the book explores how nation features as a productive, if somewhat ambivalent, discursive resource in contemporary Muslim and Aboriginal struggles to be recognised. In demanding recognition, minorities enter into the business of 'making the nation' by positing alternative conceptions of national identity, culture and belonging that are more attentive to their differences and claims. This dynamic is engaged as an expression of 'postcolonial citizenship'. Postcolonial citizenship is imagined in terms of the ways in which minority groups actualise multicultural realities through rewriting ideas of national community. It underlines the critical importance of revising the power relations that deem some groups 'more national' and others less so - and which, in Western multicultural societies, are typically tied to notions of the 'West' and its 'others'. This book is an important conceptual, theoretical and political intervention that brings postcolonialism and multiculturalism into dialogue on the increasingly potent issues of nation and national identity. It will be of great interest to scholars and students of sociology, politics, postcolonial studies, culture, identity and nation.
Retrospective rule-making has few supporters and many opponents. Defenders of retrospective laws generally do so on the basis that they are a necessary evil in specific or limited circumstances, for example to close tax loopholes, to deal with terrorists or to prosecute fallen tyrants. Yet the reality of retrospective rule making is far more widespread than this, and ranges from 'corrective' legislation to 'interpretive regulations' to judicial decision making. The search for a rational justification for retrospective rule-making necessitates a reconsideration of the very nature of the rule of law and the kind of law that can rule, and will provide new insights into the nature of law and the parameters of societal order. This book examines the various ways in which laws may be seen as retrospective and analyses the problems in defining retrospectivity. In his analysis Dr Charles Sampford asserts that the definitive argument against retrospective rule-making is the expectation of individuals that, if their actions today are considered by a future court, the applicable law was discoverable at the time the action was performed. The book goes on to suggest that although the strength of this 'rule of law' argument should prevail in general, exceptions are sometimes necessary, and that there may even be occasions when analysis of the rule of law may provide the foundation for the application of retrospective laws.
The law of defamation contemplates the clash of two fundamental rights: the right to freedom of expression, including freedom of the media, and the right to reputation. The rules of defamation law are designed to mediate between these two rights. The central proposition that this book makes is that defamation law needs to be reformed to balance the conflicting rights. This discussion flows from a theoretical analysis of the rights in issue; the value underlying the right to reputation that has most resonance is human dignity, while the value that is most apposite to freedom of expression in this context is the argument that free speech is integral to democracy. The argument from democracy emphasizes that speech on matters of public interest should receive greater protection than private speech. This book argues that fundamental rules of defamation law need to be reformed to take into account the dual importance of public interest speech on the one hand, and the right to human dignity on the other. In particular, the presumptions that defamatory allegations are false and have caused damage, the principle of strict liability to primary publishers and negligence liability to secondary publishers, and the availability of punitive damages, should not survive constitutional scrutiny. The quantum of damages and costs rules, and the remedies available in defamation cases, should also be reformed to reflect the importance of dignity to the claimant, and the free speech interest of the public in receiving accurate information on matters of public interest.
This volume examines hospitality in American immigrant literature and culture, situating this ancient virtue at the crossroads of space and border theory, and exploring the relationship among the intersecting themes of migration, citizenship, identity formation, and spatiality. Assessing the conditions, duration, and shifting roles of hosts and guests in the United States, the book concentrates on the ways the US administers protocols of belonging and non-belonging, and distinguishes between those who can feel at home from those who will always be outside the body politic, even if they were the original "hosts." The volume opens with a genealogy of hospitality through a focus on its sites, from its origins in the Bible, to its national and post-national renditions in contemporary American literature and culture. The authors explore recent representations of immigrant spatiality, from the space of the body in Spielberg's The Terminal and Frears's Dirty Pretty Things, to the different ways in which immigrants are incorporated into the United States in Alex Rivera's Sleep Dealer, Karen T. Yamashita's I Hotel, Junot Diaz's "Invierno," and Ernesto Quinonez's Chango's Fire, concluding with the spectrality of the immigrant body in George Saunders' "The Semplica Girl Diaries." Timely and imperative in light of the legacies of colonialism, and the realities of modern-day globalization, this book will be of value to specialists in post-colonialism; American Studies; immigration, diaspora, and border studies; and critical race and gender studies for its innovative approaches to media and literary texts.
Dialogues on Migration Policy brings together leading American and European scholars of immigration politics to address migration policy. Editors Marco Giugni and Florence Passy's aim to present a number of informed 'dialogues' addressing three main theoretical concerns in this field: the role of the national state in a globalizing world, the determinants of policy change, and the role of collective interests in migration policy. Adopting an unconventional format, the novelty of Dialogues on Migration Policy lies in the fact that it is structured around a series of debates among authors. In each debate, expert contributors working in different theoretical traditions and with divergent views on the subject matter confront each other followed by a commentary from a leading scholar based on her/his reading of these authors' views. These lively debates are certain to engage scholars of migration, political science, and sociology.
Foreign policies have always played an important role in the movements of migrants. A number of essays in this volume show how the foreign policies of the United States and Germany have directly or inadvertently contributed to the influx from the former Yugoslavia, Mexico, the Caribbean, and the former Soviet Union. Now being faced with growing resistance to admit foreigners into their countries, both governments have once again been using foreign-policy instruments in an effort to change the conditions in the refugees' countries of origin which forced people to leave. This volume addresses questions such as which policies can influence governments to improve their human rights, protect minorities, end internal strife, reduce the level of violence, or improve economic conditions so that large numbers of people need not leave their homes.
The articles in this collection explore the wide range of reasons why women and men decide to move within and outside their native countries, whether it be for employment, upon marriage or in response to conflict. The authors stress the importance of seeing an individual migrant in her or his context as a member of a social network, spanning different locations. Understanding these links helps us to understand migration as part of a wider strategy for making a living. The articles also explore how migration may offer women a chance to challenge oppressive gender relations: migrants are exposed to different ways of being and doing, which show that culture is neither universal or fixed. Conversely, migration may be a route into continuing gender-based discrimination, because women become isolated from their support systems.
Manycolleges and universities are struggling to strike a balance between protecting free speech as a way of supporting their goal of academic freedom and promoting civility as a way of creating an environment where students can learn and faculty members can teach and conduct research. There have been numerous recent incidents of audiences shouting down speakers, burning books, and demanding that specific students be expelled or faculty members be terminated. In this highly fractious environment, schools are wondering "What works?" when seeking to attain the twin goals of permitting unrestricted speech but insisting on rules of decorum for debate and the exchange of perspectives. This book explores what schools have actually attempted, in some cases successfully and in some cases not successfully, to address these issues. It concludes that there are three primary strategies that tend to be effective: treating challenges to free speech and campus civility as "teachable moments"; exploring hypothetical scenarios with students, faculty members, and administrators before there is a serious incident; and approaching free speech and campus civility across the curriculum. The book also surveys United States case law on the topics of free speech, academic freedom, the right to protest, and similar subjects so as to provide faculty members and administrators with a concise resource filled with practical and accurate information. |
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