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Debt Rattle February 14 2026

Feb 142026
 
 February 14, 2026  Posted by at 11:00 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  Add comments


John Singer Sargent The moraine 1908


• Ukraine To Ban Russian Literature – Culture Minister (RT)
• Zelensky’s Escape Hatch: An Emergency Election Could Be His Only Option (RT)
• EU Weighs Training Sites In Ukraine As Kremlin Warns: ‘Legitimate Targets’ (ZH)
• Donald Trump Negotiates Like King Solomon (Rabbi Michael Barclay)
• Microsoft AI CEO: Most White Collar Jobs Fully Automated in 12-18 Months (ZH)
• CNN ‘Circling the Drain’ As Warner Buyout Heats Up (Stephen Green)
• Even CNN Admits That Democrats Are in Big Trouble (Matt Margolis)
• Ellison Scalp? DOJ Antitrust Head Departs, Possibly Fired (CTH)
• ICE Director Says 800,000 Criminals With Deportation Orders Tracked (Salgado)
• Zelensky Attacks The Olympics (RT)
• Ilhan Omar Under Fire For ‘Execute Trump’ Tweet (RT)
• Trial Date Set For Trump’s $10 Billion BBC Lawsuit (MN)
• Sure, Take That Time-Out (James Howard Kunstler)
• Kathryn Ruemmler Out at Goldman Sachs Over Epstein Ties (CTH)

 


 

Lots of human voices. But how does AI understand AI?

 


 


Book burning. For a lot of Ukrainians, Russian is their mother tongue.

• Ukraine To Ban Russian Literature – Culture Minister (RT)

The Ukrainian authorities are preparing a draft law to take all Russian and Russian-language books out of circulation, Ukrainian Culture Minister Tatyana Berezhnaya told Interfax-Ukraine in an interview published on Thursday. Moscow maintains that Kiev’s discriminatory policies against ethnic Russians in Ukraine, as well as its persecution of the Russian language and culture are some of the fundamental causes of the current conflict. According to Berezhnaya, Ukraine’s media authority is working on a bill to ban Russian books with the support of her ministry. She did not specify whether the measure would only remove them from store shelves or include confiscations from private collections.


Vladimir Zelensky’s predecessor, Pyotr Poroshenko, banned the import of books from Russia and Belarus in 2016, long before the escalation of the Ukraine conflict six years later. Kiev has since systematically purged Russian literature from state curricula, and intensified a purge of cultural monuments, memorials, and inscriptions to remove historical links to Russia. Kiev has also steadily cracked down on the use of the Russian language in public life, restricting or banning its use in media and in professional spheres. Nevertheless, it remains the first and primary language for many people in Ukraine, especially in metropolitan areas and in the east of the country. In December, the Ukrainian parliament stripped Russian of its protection under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.

Berezhnaya at the time proclaimed that the move would “strengthen Ukrainian” as the state language. Moscow has noted that this crackdown has largely been ignored by Kiev’s Western backers. “Human rights – ostensibly so dear to the West – must be inviolable. In Ukraine, we witness the comprehensive prohibition of the Russian language across all spheres of public life and the banning of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Wednesday, accusing the EU and UK of not addressing the issue in their peace proposals. Russia has long said that stopping the persecution of Russians in Ukraine is one of its core peace demands, which it is ready to continue pursuing through military means if Kiev resists diplomacy.

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“Should Zelensky face a public backlash for using an unfair election to stay in power, his team has a ready-made excuse to roll out: Trump made them do it.”

• Zelensky’s Escape Hatch: An Emergency Election Could Be His Only Option (RT)

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky’s team has floated and later rejected the idea of holding an election this summer. Like much of what leaks out of his office, the report was likely an exercise in narrative management. Zelensky “has begun planning presidential elections alongside a referendum on any peace deal with Russia,” the Financial Times reported on Wednesday, citing unnamed “Ukrainian and Western officials.” By holding both a presidential vote and referendum this summer, Zelensky would reassure US President Donald Trump that he is serious about peace, the British newspaper explained. Simultaneously, Zelensky’s plan would “align with a US” push for Kiev to organize elections before May 15, or risk losing US security guarantees, it added.


The plan, as described by the Financial Times, is so well-developed that Zelensky is reportedly ready to announce it on February 24, the four-year anniversary of the start of Russia’s special military operation. Six hours later, Zelensky’s team denied the report. “As long as there is no security, there will be no announcements,” a source within his entourage told RBK Ukraine. Shortly afterwards, Zelensky reiterated that there will be no election planned until Ukraine receives “the appropriate security guarantees.” Zelensky has insisted ever since his presidential term ran out in 2024 that he will only hold elections if a ceasefire or peace deal is reached, citing the difficulty in administration, campaigning, and voting during an active conflict. The FT report is the first sign of a “political pivot” – as the paper puts it – by Zelensky.

Behind the text, the report bears the hallmarks of a trial balloon: flown by his staff to gauge domestic and international support, before being shot down with the subsequent statement to RBK. That Zelensky’s office would leak the story to the FT is unsurprising. The reporters credited in the piece, Christopher Miller, Henry Foy, and Max Seddon, have worked together on multiple stories relying on leaks and inside information from US-Ukraine peace talks. All three are considered close to power in Kiev.

Miller is a veteran reporter with US state media in Kiev, and Seddon is a former Buzzfeed writer who now “exposes Kremlin policies” for the FT. Foy is the paper’s Brussels bureau chief, who reported that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s plane had been subjected to “Russian GPS interference” while en route to Bulgaria in August. The report was later proven false by open source flight data. It is also no surprise that Zelensky is toying with the idea of holding an election sooner rather than later. His popularity has been in freefall since some of his closest associates were ensnared in an ongoing corruption scandal last year; his approval rating sank to 20% in December, and a recent poll found that almost half of Ukrainians want his “completely tainted” cabinet out of power after a peace deal is reached.

Holding a wartime vote, therefore, presents Zelensky with the best possible chance of clinging to power. His secret police can bar candidates and arbitrarily close polling stations under martial law, nearly a dozen opposition parties have been banned since 2022, and there is no infrastructure in place for the millions of Ukrainian citizens living in Russia to vote. Furthermore, Zelensky has no clear challenger at the moment. Former commander-in-chief Valery Zaluzhny is widely viewed as his main rival, but he is currently a safe distance away in London. Former military intelligence chief Kirill Budanov is often portrayed as a viable candidate, but is now tied to Zelensky by heading his office. Former President Pyotr Poroshenko and Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko are both facing corruption cases, which Timoshenko has described as fabricated in order to “purge” potential contenders for the presidency.

Zelensky’s escape hatch: blame America
Should Zelensky face a public backlash for using an unfair election to stay in power, his team has a ready-made excuse to roll out: Trump made them do it. Speaking to the Financial Times, his officials said that they “signaled to the Trump administration that they were open to the extraordinarily swift timeline, despite the logistical hurdles of holding an election at short notice in wartime.” Likewise, if a referendum found broad support for territorial concessions to Russia, Zelensky could attempt to assuage nationalist anger by pointing out that he was forced by the US to hold the vote. Whatever insight Zelensky and his team gained from the publication of the FT report is unclear. Speaking to reporters on Wednesday evening, Zelensky said that he would not “go into details” as to whether the US was pressuring him to hold elections, but claimed that Washington does “not link elections with security guarantees.”

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Looking for war. If only Trump would join.

• EU Weighs Training Sites In Ukraine As Kremlin Warns: ‘Legitimate Targets’ (ZH)

The European Union is weighing plans to set up two military bases inside Ukraine to train fresh troops – a move Moscow has already warned could make them targets of military strikes. “We have been discussing the training of the Ukrainian soldiers, also on the soil of Ukraine,” EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said Wednesday. “We have identified two training centers that could be used for that purpose.”


The Kremlin made clear just a month ago: “The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs warns that the deployment of military units, military facilities, warehouses, and other infrastructure of Western countries on Ukrainian territory will be classified as foreign intervention, posing a direct threat to the security of not only Russia but also other European countries,” according to the warning of spokeswoman Maria Zakharova. Western governments have already trained tens of thousands of Ukrainian troops over the course of the four-year grinding war with Russia – but this has been concentrated in countries like Britain, Denmark, and Poland.

On Thursday, Colonel General Andrey Serdyukov accused Europe of accelerating preparations for direct confrontation. “The militarization of Europe is continuing at an accelerated pace, openly aimed at preparing for a military confrontation with Russia,” he said. He added that “The territories are being rapidly fortified, and the relevant infrastructure is being improved.” The alleged ‘NATOization’ of Ukraine was a prime reason Moscow listed for going to war in the first place. Since Putin’s ‘special military operation’ next door, the opposite trend has happened: NATO is firmly ensconced in Kiev, in terms of the billions in weapons, equipment, and funds already poured in.

Meanwhile, the EU has just this week approved a fresh $100 billion loan package for Ukraine. As for proposed ‘EU bases’ – it’s hard to see this as in reality less than a full NATO established outpost in Ukraine. Russian leadership will see it as a recipe from taking the proxy war toward a full blown conflict directly with NATO. The minute an ‘EU base’ comes under Russian aerial attack, the gloves would be off, and NATO would likely seize the opportunity to enter the conflict directly against a nuclear-armed superpower.

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“Iran never won a war but never lost a negotiation.”

• Donald Trump Negotiates Like King Solomon (Rabbi Michael Barclay)

U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met yesterday in Washington, D.C., for over two hours. Also at the meeting were Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. Witkoff and Kushner have demonstrated that they want negotiations to continue with Iran and believe they can structure a deal that will work for everyone. Hegseth has been busy preparing for whatever military action Trump decides upon. Rubio has been saying since October 7 that Hamas should be destroyed and that Iran should be kept from having missiles as well as nuclear capability. I’m certain a passionate discussion took place.


There is no way of knowing the content, other than that afterwards Trump said he hopes negotiations with Iran will work out, or else there will be military action that dwarfs what happened last June. It has also been reported by many sources, including the Wall Street Journal, that the U.S.S. George H.W. Bush aircraft carrier is being deployed to the region, but this has not officially been reported by the Pentagon. Based on where the Bush currently is in the Atlantic Ocean, it will take about two weeks to get to the area. To understand what all this means, Nimitz-size aircraft carriers like the Bush (and the Abraham Lincoln, which is already there) are over 1,000 feet long, move faster than 30 knots, and carry over 6,000 sailors and Marines. Each aircraft carrier is accompanied by a fleet of over 90 helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft, guided missile cruisers, guided missile destroyers, and additional support and weapons ships.

But while we would all hope that this show of military might would make the Iranians pause their decision-making, the Iranian regime instead keeps doubling down on their aggressive rhetoric. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi wrote on Wednesday night in a post on X that, “Reaching an agreement on the nuclear program is possible, but only if it is fair and balanced. Tehran will defend its sovereignty at any cost. Our rights and dignity are not negotiable.” Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said the U.S. and Iran are showing flexibility in negotiations over the nuclear program, the British financial newspaper Financial Times reported. According to Fidan, “It is positive that the Americans seem willing to tolerate Iranian enrichment within clear boundaries.” He added that expanding the talks to include the issue of Iranian ballistic missiles would lead to “nothing more than another war.”

So President Trump is placed in the unenviable position of being a judge. He must judge between the advice of those who seek to negotiate with Iran, despite the fact that every day this extends allows Iran to build more weaponry, and those who desire to immediately go after the Iranian regime, which will undoubtedly cause many deaths and casualties on all sides. Added into this equation for “Judge” Trump is the president’s own belief that “Iran never won a war but never lost a negotiation.” Perhaps that is why he chose Witkoff to be the chief negotiator with Iran in the first place: his belief that Witkoff may be a better negotiator than Iran. Except that Witkoff has, to all outside eyes, been extremely ineffective so far… although we should remember that none of us have any real idea whether Witkoff has been extremely successful and we just don’t realize it yet.

ut we all do know one thing about Trump: He is an extremely good negotiator. With all sides. So what happened yesterday? Netanyahu obviously came prepared for the meeting with proof about Iran’s lies and misdeeds, as well as information about how Gaza is still not safe and secure from Hamas, which has repeatedly been saying that they will neither disarm nor disband. Hamas is not, and has never been, interested in having peace with Israel; they are committed to the destruction of Israel, as exemplified not only in all of their statements but in their actual charter. Netanyahu came to Washington wanting U.S. support on two major fronts: the destruction of Iran’s military infrastructure and creating a Gaza that is a safe neighbor to Israel.

President Trump recognizes the challenges and importance of both of these issues. But people forget that Trump is actually a peacemaker, committed to creating peace whenever possible. He recognizes that the immediate and greater threat to the United States is Iran, and also undoubtedly recognizes that there are problems with this entire Gaza Peace Council, but they are not as imminent nor as dangerous as the issues with Iran. So what probably happened at this meeting yesterday?

There was undoubtedly a lot of passionate dialogue between the parties present. President Trump probably listened a lot and was making internal judgments as to how he would want to proceed as he heard the conflicting voices of his advisors and allies. As a builder, he knows that one step should be taken at a time, with the most immediate challenges being taken care of first. And we know that he understands the art of a deal better than anyone and is extremely proficient at “horse trading” in order to get his desired result.

It would make a great deal of sense for Trump to make trades with Netanyahu—something to the effect that Israel would accept and go down the path of Trump’s plan for Gaza, and in exchange, Trump would be more aggressive with Iran. Looking at what has happened since the meeting, it seems as if this is exactly what he is doing.

Besides the meeting, two notable things happened yesterday. The Bush aircraft carrier and accompanying fleet have started traveling, apparently, toward the Middle East. This implies that the president is going down the military pathway of conflict with Iran. But less reported in most media, and equally important to understand, is that Netanyahu suddenly did the exact opposite of what he has been committing to: he agreed to be part of the Gaza Peace Council. He chose to start going down the path that Trump desires of Israel being actively involved in the reshaping of Gaza, even though others on that council are anything but allies of Israel. Given that Israel has been so recalcitrant to support Trump’s Peace Council vision of Gaza, it is probable that Netanyahu’s capitulation about this Council was predicated upon getting other direct support from the U.S. against Iran.

Whether we agree or disagree with the process, it makes sense on a practical level. The immediate threat of Iran will be eliminated, and a hopeful peace process can be created with Gaza as a new “Riviera of the Middle East.” Doing this will satisfy the contradicting points of view of his advisors without committing to only one side. Most importantly, it will hopefully lead to peace with Iran, a replacement of the Islamic regime, and still keep Trump’s optimism about the potential in Gaza for peace and prosperity. If this analysis is accurate, President Trump again demonstrated his negotiating skills and a judgment worthy of King Solomon.

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“.. AI will disrupt 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs over 1–5 years, while also thinking we may have AI that is more capable than everyone in only 1–2 years.”

• Microsoft AI CEO: Most White Collar Jobs Fully Automated in 12-18 Months (ZH)

The specter of mass job displacement now haunts governments around the world, even as the true body count remains murky amid broader economic headwinds.A recent Challenger report showed that AI was blamed for 7,624 job cuts in January, 7% of the month’s total, and linked to 54,836 announced layoffs across 2025. Since tracking started in 2023, AI has been cited in 79,449 planned cuts, roughly 3% of the overall tally. “It’s difficult to say how big an impact AI is having on layoffs specifically. We know leaders are talking about AI, many companies want to implement it in operations, and the market appears to be rewarding companies that mention it,” said Challenger.


A stark illustration is unfolding at Bay Area startup Mercor, which has quietly hired tens of thousands of white-collar contractors, often highly credentialed specialists in medicine, law, finance, engineering, writing, and the arts, to train the very AI systems destined to replace them. Paid $45 to $250 per hour for weeks or months of reviewing and refining model outputs for giants like OpenAI and Anthropic, these workers are, in effect, being paid to hand over the keys to their own obsolescence, the Wall Street Journal reports. However, some jobs still remain immune from AI – for now. High on the list are occupations that hinge on physical presence and skills such as healthcare professionals and tradesmen such as plumbers and welders.

Those are just a sample of jobs that are safe until AI-powered Optimus robots are on the move. Want to know if your job is safe? Click here to see the list.On the other side of the argument – Morgan Stanley analysts recently warned clients that “AI impacts may take longer to appear in economic data,” with the first undeniable waves likely hitting “later this decade and into the next.” “While AI adoption may be faster than past technologies, we think it is still too early to see it in economic data, outside of business investment,” Stephen Byrd, the bank’s Global Head of Thematic Research and Sustainability Research, told clients.

Anthropic Warns Over ‘Heinous Crimes’
Meanwhile, Anthropic is warning that their latest Claude models could be used for “heinous crimes” such as developing chemical weapons. “In newly-developed evaluations, both Claude Opus 4.5 and 4.6 showed elevated susceptibility to harmful misuse,” in certain computer use cases, the company said in a new sabotage report released late Tuesday. “This included instances of knowingly supporting — in small ways — efforts toward chemical weapon development and other heinous crimes.” Anthropic also noted that in some test environments, when prompted to “single-mindedly optimize a narrow objective,” Claude Opus 4.6 appears “more willing to manipulate or deceive other participants, compared to prior models from both Anthropic and other developers.”

The company says that the risk is still low but not negligible, however the sudden departure of an Antrhropic AI safety researcher suggests otherwise. “I continuously find myself reckoning with our situation. The world is in peril. And not just from AI, or bioweapons, but from a whole series of interconnected crises unfolding in this very moment. We appear to be approaching a threshold where our wisdom must grow in equal measure to our capacity to affect the world, lest we face the consequences,” said Mrinank Sharma, who led the company’s safeguards research team. Today is my last day at Anthropic. I resigned. Here is the letter I shared with my colleagues, explaining my decision.

Last month Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei sounded the alarm on AI – warning of the following (via Axios):

Massive job loss: “I … simultaneously think that AI will disrupt 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs over 1–5 years, while also thinking we may have AI that is more capable than everyone in only 1–2 years.”

AI with nation-state power: “I think the best way to get a handle on the risks of AI is to ask the following question: suppose a literal ‘country of geniuses’ were to materialize somewhere in the world in ~2027. Imagine, say, 50 million people, all of whom are much more capable than any Nobel Prize winner, statesman, or technologist. … I think it should be clear that this is a dangerous situation — a report from a competent national security official to a head of state would probably contain words like ‘single most serious national security threat we’ve faced in a century, possibly ever.’ It seems like something the best minds of civilization should be focused on.”

Rising terror threat: “There is evidence that many terrorists are at least relatively well-educated … Biology is by far the area I’m most worried about, because of its very large potential for destruction and the difficulty of defending against … Most individual bad actors are disturbed individuals and so almost by definition their behavior is unpredictable and irrational — and it’s these bad actors, the unskilled ones, who might have stood to benefit the most from AI making it much easier to kill many people. … [A]s biology advances (increasingly driven by AI itself), it may … become possible to carry out more selective attacks (for example, targeted against people with specific ancestries), which adds yet another, very chilling, possible motive. I do not think biological attacks will necessarily be carried out the instant it becomes widely possible to do so — in fact, I would bet against that. But added up across millions of people and a few years of time, I think there is a serious risk of a major attack … with casualties potentially in the millions or more.”

Empowering authoritarians: Governments of all orders will possess this technology, including China, “second only to the United States in AI capabilities, and … the country with the greatest likelihood of surpassing the United States in those capabilities. Their government is currently autocratic and operates a high-tech surveillance state.” Amodei writes bluntly: “AI-enabled authoritarianism terrifies me.”

AI companies: “It is somewhat awkward to say this as the CEO of an AI company, but I think the next tier of risk is actually AI companies themselves,” Amodei warns after the passage about authoritarian governments. “AI companies control large datacenters, train frontier models, have the greatest expertise on how to use those models, and in some cases have daily contact with and the possibility of influence over tens or hundreds of millions of users. … [T]hey could, for example, use their AI products to brainwash their massive consumer user base, and the public should be alert to the risk this represents. I think the governance of AI companies deserves a lot of scrutiny.”

Seduce the powerful to silence: AI giants have so much power and money that leaders will be tempted to downplay risk, and hide red flags like the weird stuff Claude did in testing (blackmailing an executive about a supposed extramarital affair to avoid being shut down, which Anthropic disclosed). “There is so much money to be made with AI — literally trillions of dollars per year,” Amodei writes in his bleakest passage. “This is the trap: AI is so powerful, such a glittering prize, that it is very difficult for human civilization to impose any restraints on it at all.”

Call to action: “[W]ealthy individuals have an obligation to help solve this problem,” Amodei says. “It is sad to me that many wealthy individuals (especially in the tech industry) have recently adopted a cynical and nihilistic attitude that philanthropy is inevitably fraudulent or useless.”

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” I’m almost certain that Wolf Blitzer’s contract (first signed in 1990!) guarantees him an anchor spot for an additional 15 years following his death. This clause might already have kicked in.”

• CNN ‘Circling the Drain’ As Warner Buyout Heats Up (Stephen Green)

CNN might be “circling the drain” after losing two-thirds of its primetime audience in recent years, and with rival offers from Netflix and Paramount for the network’s parent company adding to the uncertainty. “The decrease, from roughly 1.3 million in 2016 to 553,000 now,” the Daily Mail reported Wednesday, fueled “rumors of a possible network sale — something CNN’s up-for-grabs parent company has vehemently denied.” “The network’s daytime lineup has seen a similar decline as hosts such as Wolf Blitzer failed to move the needle, dropping from 752,000 to 433,000,” the U.K. tabloid continued, and “when compared to the same part of the year in 2021, the drops were even more pronounced – 71 percent for primetime and 73 percent during the day.”


One line from the Daily Mail report was such a howler that I had to read it twice before sharing it with you: “CNN has lost nearly two-thirds of its primetime viewers over the past decade, even with fresh figures like Kaitlan Collins leading coverage.” Fresh. Figures. Collins is fresh in the sense that she’s been around CNN less time than, say, Jake Tapper has — and I’m almost certain that Wolf Blitzer’s contract (first signed in 1990!) guarantees him an anchor spot for an additional 15 years following his death. This clause might already have kicked in.

Anyway, Collins joined CNN nine years ago, so we can debate just how “fresh” her face is after nearly a decade. But even after we acknowledge that she’s at least far fresher than Blitzer, what freshness — what alternative viewpoint, what captivating news beat, what viral social media attraction — did she bring to the network? [crickets] And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the crux of CNN’s problem. CNN, whatever its biases, used to be the place people went for breaking news. We go to X for that now, and only a little later come back to your favorite PJ Media writers for the analysis and perspective needed to try and make sense of it all. I watched the Gulf War almost every waking hour on CNN. I watched Israel’s 12-Day War on X.

It’s impossible to tell what CNN’s social platform strategy is, aside from posting links to the stuff on their website — and even that’s a bit of a bellyflop. According to that Daily Mail report, CNN.com gets about 120 million visits per month, and according to publicly available data, most of those visits are brief. Scan a headline, maybe read the first few sentences, and then move on. A not-so-large communications company that I might happen to work for attracts roughly the same number of visitors — company-wide, not at any individual site — and does it with a staff and budget much smaller than CNN’s. And let’s not even talk about CNN+, the network’s attempt at a paid streaming service that cost $300 million to set up, and was shuttered after just four months.

CNN missed the move to social media, blew it on streaming, and its embrace of 24-hour-a-day nonstop TDS ten years ago just happened to coincide with the loss of nearly two-thirds of their viewers, many of whom are literally captive audiences in airport terminals around the world. But here’s the real shocker: TDS actually worked for CNN for a while. But like a short-term sugar buzz, they quickly came crashing back down.=In 2015, CNN’s viewership was at a lousy 711,000 during primetime. So when Daily Mail reported that viewership dropped to 553,000 from 1.3 million, that only tells part of the story.Typical for CNN, eh?

Anyway, if we compare pre-TDS CNN to today, the network has lost less than a quarter of its audience. The two-thirds headline number only comes from the 2016-2017 TDS sugar high, led as the DM put it, “by anti-Trump anchors including Jim Acosta, Don Lemon and Brianna Keilar.” Acosta and Lemon are gone and mostly forgotten, Lemon’s recent antics aside. And while Keilar is still at CNN, I had to check because she seems to have gone into stealth mode, unable now to even generate any crazy-eyed TDS hits on social media. At least as a way to grab viewers and ad revenue, this tells me that TDS is a spent force.

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“That conservative part of the Democratic Party — adios amigos, goodbye..”

• Even CNN Admits That Democrats Are in Big Trouble (Matt Margolis)

I don’t think any of this will shock you, but Democrats are in big trouble. But you don’t have to take my word for it, because even CNN is admitting it. CNN’s chief data analyst, Harry Enten, laid out the sobering reality for Democrats on Thursday morning, revealing how the party’s dramatic leftward shift is alienating mainstream voters. “The far left is significantly more powerful than they once were,” Enten explained, pointing to polling data that shows the transformation of the Democratic Party’s ideological makeup The numbers are quite alarming.


It’s hard to believe this, but back in 1999, conservative Democrats made up a sizable portion of the party, 26%, while just 5% called themselves “very liberal.” Enten emphasized that the far-left faction was “a smidgen, a smidgen, a smidgen” of the party. Fast-forward to today, and the party’s ideological diversity has pretty much disappeared. Now, 21% of Democrats identify as very liberal — more than quadrupling since 1999 — while conservative Democrats have nearly vanished, dropping to just 8%. “That conservative part of the Democratic Party — adios amigos, goodbye,” Enten said. Combined with somewhat liberal Democrats, three in five Democrats now identify as liberal, with the very liberal faction representing “a much larger portion of the party.”

According to Enten, “the far left, which used to just be a smidgen within the Democratic Party, has gained considerable power.” Here’s where things get really scary, though.When CNN asked Democrats whether they consider themselves Democratic socialists, the results were, frankly, disturbing: One-third of all Democrats — including independents who lean Democratic — identify with Democratic socialism.”Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani are not alone,” Enten noted. “They are a considerable part of the Democratic base at this point.” Among younger Democrats, the numbers are even worse. A crazy 42% of Democrats under age 35 identify as Democratic socialists.

“What happened to New York City is not some aberration,” Enten emphasized. “It is something that we are seeing grow within the Democratic Party at this particular point.” There is good news, though, I promise: Mainstream America is still very much turned off by the leftward shift of the Democratic Party. When asked whether the Democratic Party is too liberal, 58% of all voters now say yes — up from 42% in 1996 and 48% in 2013. That’s a huge jump. “The Democrats are moving to the left, the far left is gaining power, and there could be some electoral repercussions because what we see right now is voters — the clear majority — say that they are too liberal,” Enten concluded.

When CNN is admitting that the Democratic Party has become too liberal and too extreme for mainstream America and that there “could be some electoral repercussions,” Democrats should take that seriously. The party has moved so far to the left that they are alienating the middle.

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There’s muic in them chairs.

• Ellison Scalp? DOJ Antitrust Head Departs, Possibly Fired (CTH)

Asst Attorney General Gail Slater was the head of the Antitrust Division of the Dept of Justice. Today she announces she has “left her role.” CNN is reporting that AAG Slater was fired. Gail Slater was in charge of the antitrust division and a hawk on the mergers and acquisitions of Big Tech and Big Corporate media. As head of the DOJ Antitrust Division, Slater’s view on competition was against the interests of the major Big Tech billionaires and corporate media conglomerates who intersect with them. Slater was in a position to influence the Warner Brothers-Discovery’s deal to sell the Warner Bros. studio and HBO to Netflix, which Paramount (David Ellison) is trying to stop.


If you have followed the influence of Larry Ellison (Oracle, TikTok) and his son David Ellison (Paramount, CBS) in/around the Trump administration as it relates to Elon Musk (a beneficiary of Ellison), then the timing of Gail Slater’s removal doesn’t look good at all. Gail Slater came into the administration as a part of the JD Vance network (Peter Thiel, Palantir, etc.), and it looks like that same Vance network stood aside and watched Larry Ellison leverage his position to see her removed. Slater was a solid MAGA voice in a critical Antitrust position against the interests of Big Tech and Big Corp. However, I said on Christmas Day 2024 – we were likely to be very disappointed by the influence of Big Tech/Big Corp in the White House.

Via CNN[…] Slater said in her Thursday post on X: “It is with great sadness and abiding hope that I leave my role as AAG for Antitrust today. It was indeed the honor of a lifetime to serve in this role.” The anti-trust division is expected to play a critical role in assessing Netflix’s Warner Brothers Discovery’s deal to sell the Warner Bros. studio and HBO to Netflix, which Paramount is trying to stop by appealing straight to shareholders with its own bid. (CNN is owned by Warner Brothers Discovery.) In an NBC interview last week, Trump said, “I’ve decided I shouldn’t be involved. The Justice Department will handle it.” But Paramount CEO David Ellison returned to the White House last week to meet privately with Trump, two sources familiar with the matter told CNN. (read more)

There may be something else in the background that we do not understand. However, when former lobbyists and political consultants become key administration officials (Wiles, Bondi) these types of outcomes are possible.

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“ICE Director Todd Lyons testifies that ICE is currently tracking approximately 1.6 million illegal aliens with deportation orders in the US, approximately 800,000 of whom have criminal convictions.”

• ICE Director Says 800,000 Criminals With Deportation Orders Tracked (Salgado)

Of the 1.6 million illegal aliens with previous deportation orders who are tagged in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) tracking, 800,000 of them already have criminal convictions. That’s what ICE Director Todd Lyons reportedly testified in the Senate Thursday. While every illegal alien is a criminal to the extent that he or she broke the law to be present in America, millions of them also have charges or convictions for other crimes too, including such horrific crimes as murder, rape, pedophilia, assault, human trafficking, drug trafficking, and terrorism.


Fox News correspondent Bill Melugin, who was sharing updates about the hearing on X, posted, “ICE Director Todd Lyons testifies that ICE is currently tracking approximately 1.6 million illegal aliens with deportation orders in the US, approximately 800,000 of whom have criminal convictions.” He also noted: ICE Director Todd Lyons testifies that when ICE was about to conduct a large operation in Aurora, CO last year, targeting an apartment complex full of suspected TdA gang members, ICE gave a heads up to local authorities, who he suspects leaked the operation. Lyons says when ICE arrived, protesters were waiting for them and the buildings were empty.

That’s just one of many instances where local leftist authorities undermined federal immigration operations, and on behalf of the worst sort of human scum imaginable. And even now congressional Democrats are determined to defund the Department of Homeland Security as their latest ploy to sabotage immigration enforcement operations. No matter how much you loathe the Democrat Party, it isn’t enough.Just think about the extent of money and efforts that Democrats, both politicians and activists, lavish on shielding and defending illegal alien criminals. Sanctuary laws, ICE-free zones, lawsuits, mass riots, appeals in court, the 1,347% increase in assaults on ICE, the doxing networks, the social media campaigns — everything that goes into protecting aliens and wasting taxpayer and donors’ money. How can they justify it?

Speaking of sanctuary politicians, senators also grilled Minnesota Democrat Gov. Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison Thursday, including an interchange between Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) and Ellison. Moreno asked, “If you enter the country illegally, or you overstay a visa, should you be deported?” Ellison pompously replied, “My simple answer is, sir, it depends.” Moreno fired back, “Okay, sir, somebody breaks into your home. Should they be arrested for breaking and entering, or does it depend?” Ellison sputtered, “It’s an entirely different scenario.”

He ended up admitting that civil laws should certainly be enforced, but balked when Moreno pointed out this meant immigration law. Ellison doesn’t want rule of law; he wants to be the arbiter of what is considered legally enforceable. This exchange ties in to the statistics from Lyons because the reality is Democrats who have sanctuary policies don’t give a hang how many foreign criminals roam free in our nation.

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He likes publicity.

• Zelensky Attacks The Olympics (RT)

Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky has accused the International Olympic Committee (IOC) of playing “into the hands of aggressors” by banning a Ukrainian athlete while allowing Russians to compete under a neutral flag. Ukrainian skeleton pilot Vladislav Geraskevich was disqualified from the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics on Thursday for refusing to remove a helmet adorned with images of Ukrainian athletes killed during the conflict with Russia. The decision to ban Geraskevich was made because “he did not consider any form of compromise,” the IOC said in a statement.


Zelensky vented his frustration with the IOC in a social media post on Thursday evening. “The Olympic movement should help stop wars, not play into the hands of aggressors,” he complained. “Unfortunately, the decision of the International Olympic Committee to disqualify Ukrainian skeleton racer Vladislav Geraskevich says otherwise.” “And yet, 13 Russians are currently in Italy competing at the Olympics,” he continued. Despite these athletes competing under a neutral white flag, and not breaking the IOC’s rules on political messaging, Zelensky insisted that “they are the ones who deserve disqualification.”

At a press conference in Milan, OPC spokesman Mark Adams said that “you would have maybe five” countries represented at the Olympics if the organization banned every country engaged in wars or conflicts. “Because once you start, as a sporting organization, taking stands against wars and conflicts there is no end,” he said. However, Russia has accused the IOC of applying this logic unevenly. “The IOC has discredited itself entirely,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov declared in 2024, after the committee refused to apply any restrictions to Israeli athletes over the war in Gaza, but forbade Russian and Belarusian athletes from competing in the Paris games under their national flags.

The IOC’s ban on political messaging was put in place in 2021, a year before the escalation of the Ukraine conflict. Despite being offered other ways to honor fallen athletes, Geraskevich insisted on wearing his controversial helmet during all of his training runs in Milan, the organization said.Speaking after his disqualification, Geraskevich accused the IOC of making “a terrible mistake,” and playing “along with Russian propaganda.”

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“The US Republican Party has accused Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar of “calling for the execution” of President Donald Trump..”

• Ilhan Omar Under Fire For ‘Execute Trump’ Tweet (RT)

The US Republican Party has accused Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar of “calling for the execution” of President Donald Trump, after she called him a “pedophile” and suggested that he would be put to death if he were in her native Somalia.“Last night, Ilhan Omar tweeted, calling for the execution of the President of the United States,” the Pennsylvania branch of the GOP stated on Wednesday. Pointing out that “calling for the execution of a federal official is a felony under United States law,” the party urged Democrats to “take responsibility” for the apparent threat to Trump’s life.

One day earlier, Omar shared a clip of Trump condemning Somali-led fraud rings in Minnesota. Omar, who was born in Somalia and represents Minnesota in Congress, accused the president of trying to deflect attention from his name appearing in the recently-released Epstein files. “The leader of the Pedophile Protection Party is trying to deflect attention from his name being all over the Epstein files,” Omar tweeted. “At least in Somalia they execute pedophiles not elect them.”

The leader of the Pedophile Protection Party is trying to deflect attention from his name being all over the Epstein files. At least in Somalia they execute pedophiles not elect them. https://t.co/xC3Ype3zXI — Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) February 10, 2026

The Republican Party’s ‘RNC Research’ account also accused Omar of “casually” encouraging Trump’s execution, and noted that Somalia “has one of the highest child marriage rates in the world.” RNC Research’s post did not push back against her labeling Trump a “pedophile.”Omar has not faced any criticism from her own party for the tweet. The US Justice Department released more than three million files related to deceased pedophile Jeffrey Epstein last month. Among thousands of emails and text messages between Epstein and his associates, Trump’s name is mentioned thousands of times. However, no smoking-gun evidence has emerged linking him to any child sex crimes.

The files suggest that Trump had more contact with Epstein than he previously admitted, and that he knew the financier was involved with teenage girls. However, several documents revealed that he told Florida police that he was glad they were “stopping” Epstein, because “everyone has known he’s been doing this.” The document dump also contains anonymous complaints submitted to the FBI in 2020, accusing Trump of child sex abuse and complicity in murder. The Justice Department has dismissed these claims as “sensationalist” attempts to smear Trump ahead of the 2020 election.

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“..how globalist media like the BBC, funded by UK taxpayers, peddle disinformation to undermine the truth ..”

Is it legal to use taxpayers’ money to knowingly spread lies?

• Trial Date Set For Trump’s $10 Billion BBC Lawsuit (MN)

A trial date has been locked in for President Trump’s massive $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the BBC, following the broadcaster’s deceptive editing of his January 6, 2021 speech to falsely portray him as inciting violence at the Capitol. District Judge Roy Altman rejected the BBC’s motion to stay the merits-based discovery phase, allowing both sides to dig into evidence that could reveal the depths of this media manipulation. The two-week trial is set to kick off on February 15, 2027, one year from now, in Miami, Florida. This latest bombshell builds on the escalating saga that has already forced top BBC executives to resign in disgrace and drawn scrutiny from U.S. regulators, highlighting how foreign media outlets interfere in American politics with impunity.


Trump’s legal team accuses the BBC of splicing together disparate parts of his speech—separated by over 50 minutes—to create a fabricated narrative. In the doctored clip aired in a Panorama documentary, Trump appears to say: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol… and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell.” The BBC Conveniently omitted Trump’s explicit calls for peaceful protest, which undercut the entire “insurrection” hoax pushed by legacy media. The BBC has scrambled to defend itself, filing motions claiming lack of jurisdiction in Florida and denying the documentary aired in the U.S. via BritBox. A spokesman stonewalled with: “As we have made clear previously, we will be defending this case. We are not going to make further comment on ongoing legal proceedings.”

But the damage is done. As we previously reported in the President put the broadcaster “on notice” with a demand for compensation, a retraction, and an apology—or face a billion-dollar reckoning for “false, defamatory, disparaging, and inflammatory” content. That threat materialized into this lawsuit, amplified by revelations of internal BBC turmoil. Director General Tim Davie and News CEO Deborah Turness abruptly resigned amid the fallout, with Trump blasting them as “very dishonest people who tried to step on the scales of a Presidential Election.” Adding fuel to the fire, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr launched a probe into the “news distortion and broadcast hoax.”

Carr demanded answers from U.S. partners NPR and PBS on whether they aired the fake clip, warning that such manipulation is a “heinous act against the public interest.” Carr’s letter hammered the point: “That would appear to meet the very definition of publishing a materially false and damaging statement.” He pressed for transcripts and videos to ensure no tainted content poisoned American airwaves. This isn’t just about one edited clip—it’s a stark exposure of how globalist media like the BBC, funded by UK taxpayers, peddle disinformation to undermine the truth. Trump himself called out the foreign meddling, noting the BBC hails from “a Foreign Country, one that many consider our Number One Ally.”

Leaked internal memos, including one from former BBC adviser Michael Prescott, condemned the edit as “completely misleading,” arguing it ignored Trump’s non-incitement as a key factor in avoiding federal charges. With discovery now underway, expect explosive revelations about the BBC’s “reckless disregard for the truth” and potential “actual malice.” The broadcaster’s history of biased reporting, from Gaza coverage to anti-Trump narratives, could unravel under scrutiny. Meanwhile, UK regulator Ofcom is investigating, but the real accountability may come from this U.S. courtroom, where Trump’s team seeks not just damages but a blow against fake news empires.

Carr’s letter hammered the point: “That would appear to meet the very definition of publishing a materially false and damaging statement.” He pressed for transcripts and videos to ensure no tainted content poisoned American airwaves. This isn’t just about one edited clip—it’s a stark exposure of how globalist media like the BBC, funded by UK taxpayers, peddle disinformation to undermine the truth. Trump himself called out the foreign meddling, noting the BBC hails from “a Foreign Country, one that many consider our Number One Ally.”Leaked internal memos, including one from former BBC adviser Michael Prescott, condemned the edit as “completely misleading,” arguing it ignored Trump’s non-incitement as a key factor in avoiding federal charges.

With discovery now underway, expect explosive revelations about the BBC’s “reckless disregard for the truth” and potential “actual malice.” The broadcaster’s history of biased reporting, from Gaza coverage to anti-Trump narratives, could unravel under scrutiny. Meanwhile, UK regulator Ofcom is investigating, but the real accountability may come from this U.S. courtroom, where Trump’s team seeks not just damages but a blow against fake news empires.

Read more …

“Crisis is when brittleness meets shock. “— Yuri Bezmenov’s Ghost on X

• Sure, Take That Time-Out (James Howard Kunstler)


By shutting down the government for a minimum of ten days supposedly over funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Wile E. Coyote Democratic Party is about to blow up another Acme bomb in its mangy muzzle. I will tell you why. First, this DHS business is just a stupid prank to bamboozle the public. It will not shut down ICE operations, as Chuck Schumer pretends. ICE was already funded with $75-billion in last year’s Big Beautiful Bill. The shutdown will only defund the Coast Guard and airport security. (Does that sound smart?)


Second, senators will be leaving the DC swamp and going home to their states where, it turns out, polls show that voters of both parties combined overwhelmingly favor election reform by 84-percent. The House has passed the SAVE Act onto the Senate for action, up or down. For at least ten days of the shutdown, the senators will have to explain why proving that you are a citizen to vote is a bad idea — or conversely, why allowing non-citizens to vote is a good idea. So, thanks, Democrats, for sending the senators home to face their voters.

Eventually, senators will have to return to the US Capitol and take up the SAVE Act. The act will require proof of citizenship to register, photo ID to vote in person and for requesting an absentee ballot. The bill would prohibit universal mail-in voting, require absentee ballots be received by election day, impose a five-year prison sentence for helping anyone to register without correct documents, and provisions to clean up the states’ voter rolls.

Additional legislation still in the House, introduced by Rep. Bryan Steil (R-WI), would provide for Election Day only in-person voting by paper ballots, and yet other bills awaiting action would eliminate electronic vote-tallying machines. All the provisions above are common in most other civilized nations (and even a few that are not, such as Afghanistan). The Democratic Party is against all of it because they can only win national elections by deceit and chicanery.

When Senators return to DC, they will have to overcome the filibuster in its current mode, which is the silent or so-called “zombie” filibuster. You see, in the old days, before 1972, if senators wanted to filibuster, they had to actually hold the Senate floor and keep talking — bringing all Senate business to a complete halt until either they gave up or the majority could gather enough votes for cloture (ending debate). It was physically very hard on the senators, an ordeal, and to get through the hours of mindless blather, they would read the phone book, or the World Almanac, or a Sunday newspaper from page one to the obituaries, which subjected them to ridicule.

After 1972, the Senate introduced what they called “the two-track” system, which allowed the body to move on to other business under a filibuster, without requiring a member to stand and speak. All that was needed was for a senator to inform the leadership that he intended to block a vote, with the backing of 40 other senators. This led to a dramatic increase in the use of filibusters — transforming them from a rare, physically demanding gambit into a routine procedural threat.

Now, the catch is that this change in procedure was never formally voted on. Going from “talking” filibusters to “silent” filibusters didn’t happen through a deliberate decision by the full Senate to change the rules — it emerged in 1972 from a procedural workaround that then Majority Leader Mike Mansfield introduced. It’s just a custom masquerading as a rule, and one that now Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) could declare null and void.

Doing so would bring back the old talking filibuster. Opponents of a given bill, such as the SAVE Act, would have to step into the well of Senate and offer arguments against election reform, or they could read through the Chicago phone book. In either case, they’d expose themselves to ridicule. Perhaps those ten days at home during the present government shutdown will lead to an attitude change.

If that doesn’t do it, consider that sometime in the weeks and months ahead, you will be seeing some results from the seizure of the Fulton County, GA, 2020 voting records that took place in January. Since the FBI went in there on a warrant — meaning a judge saw probable cause of voter fraud — the country will likely be exposed to real evidence, for the first time, that one crucial swing state ran a corrupt election operation, and it will no longer be possible for the Democrats to yell that such claims are “baseless” or “debunked.”

It’s an astonishing sign of cultural decay that we are even arguing over election reform at this point. The measures introduced during the dastardly Covid-19 trip — unlimited mail-in balloting, organized “ballot harvesting,” counting ballots for weeks after Election Day, doing so with Dominion / Smartmatic machines connectable to the Internet, and ignoring chain-of-custody requirements — these operations were patently and obviously dishonest. That’s what got you four years of “Joe Biden,” a walking-talking lie. Is there anything that the Democratic Party doesn’t lie about? I’ll wait for your answer.

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Chief Legal Counsel for Goldman Sachs is quite the job. She was paid $40-50 million.

• Kathryn Ruemmler Out at Goldman Sachs Over Epstein Ties (CTH)

Former White House legal counsel/fixer to Barack Obama, and former personal lawyer/fixer of Susan Rice, Kathryn Ruemmler was Chief Legal Counsel for Goldman Sachs for the past six years. Throughout those jobs and networked professional relationships, Kathryn Ruemmler was also a personal friend and advisor to Jeffrey Epstein. Yesterday it was reported that Kathryn Ruemmler has resigned from Goldman Sachs.


NEW YORK – Goldman Sachs’s top lawyer, Kathryn Ruemmler, resigned on Thursday in the wake of the Justice Department’s release of emails and other material that revealed her extensive relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier. Ms. Ruemmler and representatives for Goldman said for years that she had a strictly professional relationship with Mr. Epstein, a convicted sex offender. But emails, text messages and photographs released late last month upended that narrative, leading to Ms. Ruemmler’s sudden resignation, which surprised many inside the firm.

Before joining Goldman in 2020, Ms. Ruemmler was a counselor, confidante and friend to Mr. Epstein, the documents showed. She advised him on how to respond to tough questions about his sex crimes, discussed her dating life, advised him on how to avoid unflattering media scrutiny and addressed him as “sweetie” and “Uncle Jeffrey.” Mr. Epstein, in turn, provided career advice on her move to Goldman, introduced her to well-known businesspeople and showered her with gifts of spa treatments, high-end travel and Hermes luxury items. In total, Ms. Ruemmler was mentioned in more than 10,000 of the documents released by the Justice Department.

Ms. Ruemmler, in addition to being Goldman’s general counsel since 2021, was a partner and vice chair of its reputational risk committee. She earlier served as White House counsel under President Obama and was a white-collar defense lawyer at Latham & Watkins. (read more)

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Home › Forums › Debt Rattle February 14 2026

Viewing 7 posts - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
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  • February 14, 2026 at 11:00 am #230848
    Raúl Ilargi Meijer
    Keymaster

    John Singer Sargent The moraine 1908 • Ukraine To Ban Russian Literature – Culture Minister (RT) • Zelensky’s Escape Hatch: An Emergency Election Coul
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle February 14 2026]

    February 14, 2026 at 11:47 am #230857
    Topcat
    Participant

    From the positively deranged Trumptard Attorney General Pay fur Ply Pam

    Happy Valentine’s Day!

    February 14, 2026 at 11:49 am #230858
    Topcat
    Participant

    Kisses!

    February 14, 2026 at 11:50 am #230859
    Topcat
    Participant

    February 14, 2026 at 11:51 am #230860
    Topcat
    Participant

    February 14, 2026 at 12:11 pm #230861
    Topcat
    Participant

    Maybe Trump is being poisoned like FDR was.

    We know for sure he wants to be Immortal.

    Is that a tell?

    February 14, 2026 at 12:51 pm #230862
    Michael Reid
    Participant

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