~ The Art Of Change ~ with Carol Omer ~

Art and Creativity as Mediums for Empowerment , Connection and Change…

Unchecked Power & the Mechanics of Coercive Control in America today.Part 2

Posted by carolom on January 18, 2026

Punishment As Policy Through The Lens Of Coercive Control. Trump’s Campaign to Seize Greenland.

In Part 1 (link) in a series of articles documenting the use of coercive control in leadership, I highlighted how Donald Trump’s use of coercion, that the U.S. must control Greenland, caused visible distress to Greenland’s Foreign Minister Vivian Motzfeldt.

This 2nd article examines his escalation from pressure to punishment.

According to reporting from Huff Post Trump has now stated he may “punish” countries with tariffs if they do not support the United States controlling Greenland.

He described any outcome other than US control as unacceptable & framed compliance as a national security obligation.

When viewed through the lens of coercive control rather than political negotiation the behaviour is not abstract.
It mirrors the same dynamics experienced by people living with intimate partner abuse driven by narcissism entitlement & grandiosity.

Below are 5 clear ways this behaviour replicates coercive control.

  1. Punishment For Non Compliance:
    Trump explicitly threatens tariffs if countries do not agree. In abusive relationships punishment is used to enforce obedience. Affection, autonomy, money, safety & freedom are often withdrawn until compliance there is compliance.
  2. Escalation When Resistance Appears:
    Diplomatic engagement did not produce submission so the tactic escalated. This mirrors how coercive control intensifies when a partner does not give in.
  3. Framing Control As Necessity:
    By declaring control of Greenland necessary Trump removes the legitimacy of consent. Abusers often frame domination as “protection” or inevitability or safety they must enforce.
  4. Use Of Economic Power As Leverage:
    Tariffs are not negotiation tools they are weapons. Financial control is one of the most common mechanisms of intimate partner abuse used to limit choice & independence.
  5. Emotional Impact Is Treated As Irrelevant:
    The visible distress of Minister Motzfeldt is ignored. In coercive control the emotional harm caused is dismissed as collateral or weakness rather than recognised as real.

When the media stops reporting these actions as exceptional political theatre & instead recognises them as coercive control, the pattern becomes unmistakable & is exposed.

The source of the behaviour is the same as that endured by partners living with domination, punishment & enforced compliance.

Coercive control impacts both those who are directly targeted & vicariously as the atmosphere of coercion, instability & on-going threats does not have boundaries.

Coercion creates ripples that contribute to a sense of instability, powerlessness, irrationality & the mental & emotional health impact of living with the possibility of escalation & punishment.

With coercion, there is no accountability, systems collapse & chaos inevitably follows.

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Unchecked Power & the Mechanics of Coercive Control in America today Part 1.

Posted by carolom on January 18, 2026

The headline today was stark.
A Greenland minister tearful as she described “intense pressure” while Donald Trump threatens to take territory.

This is not diplomacy or accountability.
This is coercive control.

Vivian Motzfeldt met with US Vice President JD Vance at the White House to discuss the future of the Danish territory.

What followed was not respectful negotiation but pressure exerted from a position of overwhelming power imbalance.

Toxic masculinity.
The emotional toll was visible. The language was telling.

For those of us who work in the field of domestic abuse & coercive control the pattern is instantly recognisable.

Coercive control is not about physical force first.

It is about:
threats
dominance
intimidation
destabilisation &
the removal of choice.

It relies on fear, intimidation, creating uncertainty & the relentless assertion of entitlement.

Donald Trump is no longer love bombing.
That phase is long over.
Love bombing was used to secure MAGA attachment & compliance from “My beautiful Christians”.
Once position & power are secured it is dropped.

What replaces it is threat, pressure & entitlement.

We are watching that transition unfold in real time on a global stage.

Threatening to take territory is not foreign policy bravado.
It mirrors the language of an abusive partner who believes they have the right to take, to override consent, to disregard autonomy.

The message is simple:
I decide. You comply.

The impact is also the same.
Stress responses escalate. Trauma is activated.
Decision making narrows. Public officials, like victims in private relationships, are forced into a state of vigilance rather than clarity.

Tears are not weakness.
They are evidence of psychological strain under sustained pressure.

This is what unchecked power looks like when wielded by someone with a history of disregard for boundaries, law & accountability.
That history matters.

A convicted felon holding immense political & military influence is not a neutral detail.
It is a warning sign.

When someone who has already demonstrated contempt for legal & ethical constraints is elevated rather than restrained, coercive behaviour doesn’t soften.
It intensifies.

Some may think comparing domestic abuse to geopolitics is inappropriate.
In reality coercive control operates on the same principles whether it occurs in a kitchen, boardroom or an international negotiation:
Entitlement.
Intimidation.
Pressure.
Erosion of autonomy.

The scale changes.
The system does not.

When power goes unchecked, the consequences are not abstract.
They are lived in nervous systems, in sleepless nights, in public tears & private fear. Whether the target is a partner or a nation, the damage follows the same path.

Recognising coercive control is the first line of defence. Normalising it as “strong leadership” is how harm becomes policy!

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I Am Woman – Not a spare rib of Man.

Posted by carolom on January 2, 2026

*Excerpt from memoir in progress: Defiant Women by Carol Omer

We learn a great deal about a society by interrogating it’s core Creation Myth.
All religions pass on stories about Origin.

The original garden story carries a deep and enduring toxicity in the way it casts Eve as contemptuous, weak and easily seduced, aligned with a snake and by extension the devil, a narrative that functions as the first witch hunt and the template for mistrusting women’s curiosity, knowledge and autonomy.

This framing did not merely shape theology, it laid the psychological foundations of a world in which men are positioned as superior, women as suspect, and women themselves are taught to watch men watching them, absorbing the gaze and the judgement.

It is vital that Women interrogate this story because it still influences our collective psychology, normalising surveillance by an invisible and powerful male authority while severing women from Mother Nature, intuition and embodied wisdom.

In replacing earth, Nature, rhythm, cycles and elemental belonging with control, obedience and a man made order of concrete and rules, the story trains both men and Women to distrust the natural feminine and to mistake domination for moral authority, a distortion that continues to shape how power, gender and worth are understood today.

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Donald Trump & the Epstein Files – Part  2 

Posted by carolom on December 28, 2025

*Continuing a series of articles highlighting the correlation between Donald Trump’s behaviours & the cycle of #CoerciveControl.



When the United States president uses his Truth Social account to describe critics as Democrat ”scum” it is not merely inflammatory language. 
It is a visible example of a well documented abuse tactic known as DARVO

This article builds on my previous piece to further explain what DARVO is & how it operates both in intimate partner abuse & in politics as a strategy to avoid accountability.

#DARVO  is an acronym that is commonly used in the area of domestic abuse & coercive control education.
It stands for:
Deny
Attack
Reverse 
Victim and 
Offender. 

It is a manipulation pattern identified in domestic violence research where a perpetrator responds to accountability by :
1. first denying harm
2. then attacking the credibility of the person raising concerns, 
3. reversing roles to present themselves as the victim.

The sequence matters. 
Denial comes first. 
The harmful behaviour is minimised, reframed or claimed to have never occurred. 

When denial is challenged, the attack phase begins

The accuser is labelled unstable, dishonest, malicious, crazy and / or dangerous. 
The perpetrator then claims persecution & casts themselves as the true victim of injustice.

This tactic is widely recognised by practitioners working in coercive control. 
It is used to:
confuse victims
distort reality 
discredit truth &
shift attention away from accountability and onto character assassination. 

Over time, it trains others to doubt those who speak up & to sympathise with the person in power.

In the context of Donald Trump & his long documented association with Jeffrey Epstein, the same pattern is visible. 
Questions about proximity, knowledge & responsibility are met with vehement denial, vitriolic name calling, insults, threats & irrelevant distractions.

When scrutiny persists, journalists, political opponents & women are further threatened & attacked as corrupt or deceitful. 

The final reversal positions Trump as the self proclaimed victim of a “witch hunt” & conspiracies.

This is not accidental rhetoric. 

It is a deliberate use of DARVO at scale. 

In intimate relationships, this tactic silences survivors. 

In political leadership it erodes public trust, destabilises truth & normalises the abuse of power.

DARVO is effective because it exploits empathy & fatigue. 
People want to avoid complexity & conflict. 
They are also aware that by speaking out they could be targeted next.

But understanding this pattern exposes the manipulation.
Denial is not evidence. 
Attacks are not defence. 
Victimhood claims do not erase misuse of power, accountability or criminal conduct.

Recognising DARVO is not about ideology, it’s is about identifying coercive control wherever it appears. 


Accountability begins when behaviour is examined rather than deflected.


Image Source: Crimestoppers Vic.

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Donald Trump and the Epstein files

Posted by carolom on December 28, 2025

Donald Trump’s statement responding to the Epstein files is a textbook example of gaslighting & projection by a man under threat.

Rather than addressing the gravity of sexual exploitation allegations or the enduring harm to victims he reframes the issue as a hoax a “witch hunt” & a partisan distraction.

This is psychological deflection.

The irony of Trump invoking the language of witch hunts:
His public life is defined by repeated campaigns against women he has personally named vilified mocked & pursued through his own witch hunts.
E Jean Carroll, Stormy Daniels, Hillary Clinton, Rosie O’Donnell, Megyn Kelly & multiple unnamed accusers were all subjected to character assassination, threats or relentless public denigration.

These aren’t isolated incidents.
They form a pattern of punishing women who speak up challenge him or refuse silence.
Gaslighting works by denying reality, attacking the credibility of others & reframing legitimate concern as malicious intent.
Trump’s language does exactly this.

He minimises Epstein by calling him long ago dead while simultaneously inflaming conspiracy thinking.
He reframes accountability as persecution & redirects attention away from sexual violence, towards imagined enemies.
This is the same pattern used by perpetrators to destabilise victims & confuse observers.

The absence that matters most in Trump’s post is concern for victims.
E Jean Carroll is not a political talking point. She is a woman who took a case to court & won.
Trump was found guilty of s. assault.

He has dozens of assault allegations against him.
He publicly bragged about grabbing women by the pus**y.
These are facts not opinions.

His response to the Epstein files sits squarely within this context & can’t be separated from it.
His feigned indignation, whilst calling Democrats “scum” is to dehumanise & demonise others.
They are coercive control tactics.

When a man who feels threatened escalates to schoolyard bully level of combat it signals fear not strength.
It’s the same behaviour pattern seen in intimate partner abuse where intimidation ridicule & projection are used to regain dominance.
Coercive control doesn’t disappear when a man enters politics.

Trump’s political coercive control mirrors seual coercive control.
Distract
Deny
Attack
Reverse Victim & Offender.

Accuse others of what you yourself are accused of.
Create chaos so truth becomes negotiable.
This is how predators survive in plain sight.

The cost of a sexual predator as president is not abstract.
It is borne by victims whose trauma is publicly dismissed.
It is absorbed by a culture that learns contempt for women is acceptable.
It is paid in the erosion of democratic norms & the degradation of international reputation.

America has shifted from aspirational democracy to cautionary tale.

When a president gaslights a nation the harm is collective.
The warning signs are clear & history will not be confused about what they meant.

DARVO (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender) is a manipulation tactic in domestic abuse where the abuser denies their harmful actions, attacks the victim’s credibility, and flips roles to claim they are the victim, deflecting blame and control. It’s a psychological strategy to avoid accountability, making victims doubt themselves and appear as the aggressor to others, often seen in gaslighting and coercive control.

The DARVO pattern:

  • Deny: The perpetrator refuses to admit they did anything wrong, minimizing or completely denying the abuse.
  • Attack: They attack the victim’s character, memory, or sanity to discredit them and shift focus.
  • Reverse Victim and Offender: The abuser claims to be the actual victim, portraying the survivor as the aggressor or “crazy”.

Example in action:

  • Victim: “You promised you’d help with the kids tonight.”
  • Abuser (Deny): “I never said that; you’re making things up again.”
  • Abuser (Attack): “You’re always trying to control me; you’re so selfish!”
  • Abuser (Reverse Victim): “I can’t do anything right; you always attack me. I’m the one who never gets a break!”.

Why it’s used:

  • To avoid taking responsibility for abusive behaviour.
  • To manipulate others (like courts or family) into sympathising with the abuser.
  • To maintain power and control over the victim.

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Competent Leader Not Hero Required.

Posted by carolom on December 13, 2025

America has a long history dating back to the Pilgrims of the maverick leader with almost superhuman type powers & the extraordinary ability to not only fight dangers but to be the chosen one who can spot them.

Storytelling is full of it with blockbuster superheroes like Batman Superman & Wolverine.

All men.

Cults are full of heroes who are going to save The Chosen Ones from the inevitable attack by evil for forces who are a threat.

In fact the Hero is the only one who can save them.

In a world where bluster & super-hero propaganda over rides competency, psychological & emotional maturity, the rise of the superman hero, whose followers cast awe & wonder upon & elevate to a god like status, is wreaking havoc & heartache, not only across America but is influencing global politics.

In her recent book “Cults Like Us” Jane Borden writes that since the Mayflower sidled up to Plymouth Rock, cult ideology has been ingrained in the DNA of the United States.

She argues that Puritan doomsday belief never went away.
It went secular & became American culture.
From the fascination with cowboys & superheroes to obsessive allegiance to influencers & self help guru’s, to susceptibility to advertising & undying devotion to the “self made” man, Americans remain particularly vulnerable to a specific brand of cult like thinking.

What is the cost to pay when a charismatic narcissist, a voraciously ambitious man with a criminal history leverages cult like tactics to place himself in the highest position in the country?

From the love bombing of the “beautiful Christians” to gaslighting that only HE can steer the ship into a white utopia & return to an idealised past, it was not competency or solid inclusive policies that threw out the red carpet to the highest position in the country. For the second time.

It was the leveraging of the Saviour-Hero ideology & the promise to protect people from the threat that, not only could he identify & target, but would be the ONLY one to save them from.

Tactics such as name-calling, insulting, mockery & threats, revealed his true superpower to be Bullying & Coercion.

The dynamics employed in collective coercive control is the legacy of the utter devastation across Europe in the second world war by a man obsessed with targeting others & is not only a cautionary tale, but a template of what happens when somebody who is not competent or grounded in the true leadership principles of:
inclusivity
compassion
& innovation
is able to normalise the victimisation of everyday citizens & elevate The Chosen Ones, as we saw in George Orwell’s 1984 & Animal Farm.

A Competent Leader, not a hero is required for democracy to survive.

Freedom is never more than one generation away from disappearing.

This emperor is wearing no clothes & the machinations of the hero who has simply mastered the capacity to use the lowest common denominators in humanity as a platform, are on full display.

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Five Years of Your Digital Life for Entry to Trump’s America.

Posted by carolom on December 11, 2025

Australians are being told that entry to the United States may soon require handing over 5 years of personal social media history, along with extensive personal data.

Not because of criminal behaviour.
Not because of verified threat.
Simply because you wish to enter America.

This represents more than a policy change. It reveals an increasing rise of Orwellian social control.
Here in Australia we have already seen the political price of aligning with that culture.
A federal leader who openly signalled convicted felon, Donald Trump, lost not only his leadership but his political career.

Australian voters understand something deeper is at stake.

As a domestic violence & coercive control advocate, I have spent decades observing how power operates when it becomes untethered from ethics & accountability.
It always follows the same trajectory whether it is intimate partner coercive control or in political ambition.

Surveillance is never neutral.
It is always about who controls whom.

When a government demands your beliefs, associations & opinions as a condition of entry, that isn’t security, it’s ideological surveillance.

I have written extensively about the correlation between malignant narcissism in leadership & coercive control.

About how dominance disguises itself as strength.

How humiliation is reframed as leadership.

How fear is sold as protection.

The most common manifestation of this is when the narrative is that other people are a grave threat & danger & there is only one person who can save everybody from this threat.

This form of psychological gaslighting is common in cults.

When a convicted felon, found guilty of sexxual assault, is elevated to the highest level of power & then presides over systems that reward loyalty & silence, we are no longer witnessing democracy.
We are watching institutionalised coercion.

America is not just losing its moral authority, it is exporting a worldview where intimidation is strength, bullying is strategy & surveillance is approval.

And what are young Americans learning in real time?

They are being taught that power belongs to the loudest man. That dominance means entitlement.
That cruelty is currency.

Australians should not look away as we are witnessing a model of leadership that:
punishes dissent
rewards compliance
& treats privacy as privilege rather than right.

We know this pattern!
Every woman who has lived under coercive control recognises it immediately.

Coercive control always begins quietly, often with “lovebombing” eg “My beautiful Christians”.

By the time it becomes law, it is already too late to resist through legal channels .

No longer aspirational America has become a cautionary tale.

Link to ABC News article:

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Donald Trump the Grim Reaper of Democracy

Posted by carolom on October 3, 2025

Donald Trump has released an AI video of himself as the Grim Reaper.

For a man in the most powerful position in the country to be playing dress ups & fantasising about power while targeting Democrats as the problematic ones reveals not only deep pathology but also a new level of democracy being ridiculed & dismantled as the world looks on aghast.

The Democrats are being targeted during the strategic shutdown of the government & the crisis in America continues to unfold.
This is not satire or parody.
It is not an ironic sci-fi meme to be brushed off as spectacle.

It is an AI-generated self-coronation by a man whose narcissism has found fresh machinery through artificial intelligence, that placed him in the role of death itself.

What does it mean when a leader plays dress ups & creates an AI representation of himself as if starring in his own science-fiction movie?
It means he is engaged in psychological theatre that correlates directly to coercive control as a leadership model.

Arrested Development masquerading as governance.

An adult clinging to childish costumes instead of stepping into the responsibility of mature leadership.

Coercive control in intimate relationships thrives on:
intimidation
projection
blame
& constant reframing of reality.

What we are witnessing is the scaling up of those behaviours to the political stage.
A man obsessed with retribution parading himself as the Grim Reaper while his party pursues shutdown, chaos & destabilisation.
A leader who can’t accept the constraints of law & accountability has turned the highest office into a theatre of grievance & threat.
This is not strength. It is psychological weakness & emotional underdevelopment masquerading as power.

America is not witnessing greatness reborn but a state of democracy devolving into mockery.

Leadership requires maturity, emotional stability, vision, steadiness, wisdom & responsibility.

What America has instead is an attention obsessed man locked in fantasy, intoxicated by costumes of domination rather than the work of service.

The AI Grim Reaper is not a clever metaphor but a confession of pathology.
It is the mask of a psychology driven not by public good but by revenge, ridicule & delusion.

The world is watching. Some in horror. Many in disbelief, recognising that what is unfolding in America is not just the drama of one man’s fragile ego but the collapse of credibility for a system that allowed him to rise again.

A convicted felon, found guilty of s.assault & on record boasting about what he does to women behind closed doors, now projects himself as the Grim Reaper of his political enemies.

The tragedy is that the theatre works.
It distracts.
It destabilises.

This is not leadership, not worthy of reverence or fear.
It is the theatre of a vengeful, psychologically & emotionally underdeveloped man dragging a nation into chaos.

A pantomime president performing on the global stage.

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President Trump directs US generals to defend the United States from the “war within”.

Posted by carolom on October 2, 2025

Trump’s Projection & the Weaponisation of Coercive Control

It is no surprise to anyone who works in the area of coercive control that Donald Trump has again revealed his strategy.

On Tuesday he told the military’s top generals of his plans to send troops into “dangerous” Democratic cities, claiming “We’re under invasion from within.”

He framed this not as a defensive act but as the military’s duty to confront a domestic enemy.

Those who understand coercive control know perpetrators project their own behaviour onto others.

Trump’s plan to use the military is itself the very invasion he accuses Democrats of.

Through his narrative demonising Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris & Barack Obama he has cast Democrats as a satanic evil presence & MAGA as godlike saviours.

This manipulation & shadow projection is how coercive control becomes political control.

I have written a number of articles highlighting Trump’s behaviour, including how his leadership replicates cult dynamics (see comments’).

Intimate partner coercive control scales into collective coercive control, using isolation, fear & narrative control.
Trump’s accusations of an “enemy from within” mark him not as a protector but as the embodiment of that enemy.
He is also a convicted felon, found guilty of s. assault on E Jean Carroll & recorded boasting about what he does to women behind closed doors, showing he is a man of dangerous behaviour & questionable character, common amongst cult leaders.

7 Points Linking Trump’s Tactics to Fascism & Classic Dystopias:

  1. Projection of Guilt.
    Like Hitler’s demonisation of Jews as a “threat from within,” Trump projects his authoritarian impulses onto Democrats, labelling them invaders to justify his invasion.
  2. Creating a Mythic Enemy.
    Hitler created an “internal enemy” to rally the public. Trump’s framing of Democrats as evil mirrors that.
  3. Militarisation of Politics.
    Using troops in U.S. cities echoes fascist moves to turn state violence inward on its’ own citizens.
  4. Cult of the Saviour.
    Both Hitler & the pigs in Animal Farm promised salvation from an invented threat while consolidating power.
    Trump’s MAGA movement mirrors this.
  5. Rewriting Reality.
    Like Orwell’s 1984, Trump reframes facts, casting the opposition as evil & himself as sole truth-teller.
  6. Isolation & Fear.
    Coercive control isolates & frightens. Trump’s rhetoric divides Americans, weakening resistance, as totalitarian regimes have done.
  7. Normalising the Unthinkable.
    Hitler’s early strategies & the pigs’ takeover in Animal Farm show how shocking acts become normalised. Trump’s military plan is this erosion of democracy.

America is in crisis. A convicted felon with a vengeful spirit is back in power.
This chaos & coercion was inevitable

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The Rupture Is Upon Us!

Posted by carolom on September 23, 2025

For those raised in fundamentalist Christian households “The Rapture” is spoken of as a moment when the “chosen” would be lifted to heaven, leaving behind the rest of us to face turmoil & despair.
It is a story that sits somewhere between sacred promise & religious folklore, wrapped in certainty about who is In & who is Out.

But today in America it is not The Rapture that is underway.

It is The Rupture.

The Rupture is not divine, nor is it holy.
It is the tearing apart of a nation once held together by a delicate balance of political difference & social contract.

A Democracy Under Attack from Within.

What used to be healthy disagreement across the Left & Right has been recast as a battle between good & evil .
One side has been demonised as the embodiment of Satan, while the other, the Christian Nationalist Right, embedded in patriarchal, white supremacy, proclaims itself the guardian of morality & virtue.

The One Truth
The Only Way
Our Way

Under the banner of Christian nationalism, the teachings of Jesus which model:
compassion
humility
justice
& love of neighbour
have been hijacked, twisted beyond recognition & weaponised against the very people he defended.

Instead they are used to justify:
demonising vulnerable minorities
stripping of women’s autonomy
targeting of trans people
& the sanctification of cruelty as strength.

Look closer & The Rupture becomes obvious:
Women’s reproductive rights are rolled back under the pretence of “protecting life”, while women are forced into impossible situations.
teachers are silenced
history is rewritten to erase uncomfortable truths about slavery & systemic racism
trans-youth are scapegoated, their very existence turned into a culture war weapon
migrants are dehumanised, spoken of as an “invasion” rather than as people seeking safety & dignity.

Violence is reframed as patriotism, with political leaders excusing or even encouraging the storming of democratic institutions.

This is not the kingdom of God. It is the kingdom of fear.

The infiltration of this belief system into politics has The Rupture shredding the fabric of democracy.
The vocabulary of faith has become a weapon & the pulpit has become a platform for power & coercion.

America has reached this strange, toxic, coercive, almost surreal moment when Trump, a man convicted of crimes including s. abuse, stands not in prison but at the at the highest office in the land!
When violent criminals who participated in an insurrection are released, back into society, rewarded for their violence.

When democracy itself fractures into d’mockery.

The Rupture is no longer coming.

The Rupture is already here.

The Rupture (n.): The tearing apart of democracy through the hijacking of faith, truth & justice by Christian nationalism, leaving division, fear & cruelty in its wake.

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