Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter Says EU is Colluding in a Human Rights Crime

By Jonathan Steele and Jonathan Freedland

Referring to the possibility of Europe breaking with the US in an interview with the Guardian, he said: "Why not? They're not our vassals. They occupy an equal position with the US."

The blockade on Hamas-ruled Gaza, imposed by the US, EU, UN and Russia - the so-called Quartet - after the organisation's election victory in 2006, was "one of the greatest human rights crimes on Earth," since it meant the "imprisonment of 1.6 million people, 1 million of whom are refugees". "Most families in Gaza are eating only one meal per day. To see Europeans going along with this is embarrassing," Carter said.

He called on the EU to reassess its stance if Hamas agreed to a ceasefire in Gaza. "Let the Europeans lift the embargo and say we will protect the rights of Palestinians in Gaza, and even send observers to Rafah gate [Gaza's crossing into Egypt] to ensure the Palestinians don't violate it."

Although it is 27 years since he left the White House, Carter recently met Hamas leaders in Damascus. He declared a breakthrough in persuading the organisation to offer a Gaza ceasefire and a halt to Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel if Israel stopped its air and ground strikes on the territory.

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Spooks Promise Terror Attack For New President

National intelligence spooks are all but promising that history will be repeated for a third time running, and the new President of the United States - likely Barack Obama or John McCain - will be welcomed into office by a terror attack that will occur within the first year of his tenure.

"When the next president takes office in January, he or she will likely receive an intelligence brief warning that Islamic terrorists will attempt to exploit the transition in power by planning an attack on America, intelligence experts say," according to a report in the Washington Times.

"Islamic terrorists bombed the World Trade Center in February 1993, in Mr. Clinton's second month as president. Al Qaeda's Sept. 11 attacks came in the Bush presidency's first year....The pattern is clear to some national security experts. Terrorists pay particular attention to a government in transition as the most opportune window to launch an attack."

Naturally, the Washington Times article makes out as if a terror attack within the early stages of a new presidency is a bad thing, but both Clinton and Bush exploited terror in America to realize preconceived domestic and geopolitical agendas.

The 1993 World Trade Center bombing was an inside job from start to finish - it did not come as a "surprise" to the U.S. government since they ran the entire operation, having cooked the bomb for the "Islamic terrorists" that they had groomed for the attack.

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Constitutional Scholar: Bush Claims More Power Than King George III

Massachusetts School of Law at Andover

The Bush administration has arrogated powers to itself that the British people even refused to grant King George III at the time of the Revolutionary War, an eminent political scientist says. “No executive in the history of the Anglo-American world since the Civil War in England in the 17^th century has laid claim to such broad power,” said David Adler, a prolific author of articles on the U.S. Constitution. “George Bush has exceeded the claims of Oliver Cromwell who anointed himself Lord Protector of England.” Adler, a professor of political science at Idaho State University at Pocatello, is the author of “The Constitution and the Termination of Treaties”(Taylor & Francis), among other books, and some 100 scholarly articles in his field. Adler made his comments comparing the powers of President Bush and King George III at a conference on “Presidential Power in America” at the Massachusetts School of Law, Andover, April 26^th.

Adler said, Bush has “claimed the authority to suspend the Geneva Convention, to terminate treaties, to seize American citizens from the streets to detain them indefinitely without benefit of legal counseling, without benefit of judicial review.

He has ordered a domestic surveillance program which violates the statutory law of the United States as well as the Fourth Amendment.” Adler said the authors of the U.S. Constitution wrote that the president “shall take care to faithfully execute the laws of the land” because “the king of England possessed a suspending power” to set aside laws with which he disagreed, “the very same kind of power that the Bush Administration has claimed.”

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GAO Report: Investigators finds gaps in port security program

A Department of Homeland Security program to strengthen port security has gaps that terrorists could exploit to smuggle weapons of mass destruction in cargo containers, congressional investigators have found.

The report by the Government Accountability Office, being released Tuesday, assesses the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (C-TPAT), a federal program established after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to deter a potential terrorist strike via cargo passing through 326 of the nation's airports, seaports and designated land borders.

Under the program, roughly 8,000 importers, port authorities and air, sea and land carriers are granted benefits such as reduced scrutiny of their cargo. In exchange, the companies submit a security plan that must meet U.S. Customs and Border Protection's minimum standards and allow officials to verify their measures are being followed.

A 2005 GAO report found many of the companies were receiving the reduced cargo scrutiny without the required full vetting by U.S. Customs, a division of DHS. The agency has since made some improvements, but the new report found that Customs officials still couldn't provide guarantees that companies were in compliance.

Among the problems:

A company is generally certified as safer based on its self-reported security information that Customs employees use to determine if minimum government criteria are met.

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NWO: Brzezinski Says Preemptive Strike on Iran Would Hurt America & Israel

By Zbigniew Brzezinski and William Odom

American military option "remaining on the table," simply intensifies Iran's desire to have its own nuclear arsenal. Alas, such a heavy-handed "sticks" and "carrots" policy may work with donkeys but not with serious countries. The United States would have a better chance of success if the White House abandoned its threats of military action and its calls for regime change.

Consider countries that could have quickly become nuclear weapon states had they been treated similarly. Brazil, Argentina and South Africa had nuclear weapons programs but gave them up, each for different reasons. Had the United States threatened to change their regimes if they would not, probably none would have complied. But when "sticks" and "carrots" failed to prevent India and Pakistan from acquiring nuclear weapons, the United States rapidly accommodated both, preferring good relations with them to hostile ones. What does this suggest to leaders in Iran?

To look at the issue another way, imagine if China, a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and a country that has deliberately not engaged in a nuclear arms race with Russia or the United States, threatened to change the American regime if it did not begin a steady destruction of its nuclear arsenal. The threat would have an arguable legal basis, because all treaty signatories promised long ago to reduce their arsenals, eventually to zero. The American reaction, of course, would be explosive public opposition to such a demand. U.S. leaders might even mimic the fantasy rhetoric of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad regarding the use of nuclear weapons.

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Over 60% of People Do Not Trust the Government

A poll conducted by the World Public Opinion (WPO) has found that over 60% of the population of Great Britain and the United States do not trust their governments. The poll showed that 67% of Brits have low levels of trust in the Labour Government while 60% of Americans feel the same way about the Bush Administration.

Overall dissatisfaction of government responsiveness was much higher with 77% of Brits and an even higher percentage, 83% of Americans.

With each passing year, we see Western Governments becoming more brazen with lies and imposing limits on our freedoms and privacy.

The poll also asked “Whose Benefit is Country Run For?”

Unsurprisingly, 60% of Brits perceive their government as serving powerful special interests rather than the interests of the people as a whole, likewise 80% of Americans said the same.

Distain for corporate influence on governments is clear, but perhaps the lack of faith in the government goes even deeper. Obviously there has been fabrication of evidence and spinning lies to the population in order to gain support for the illegal invasion and occupation of nations.

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Key Witness: Ehud Olmert Received Money in Envelopes!!!

A US businessman at the centre of a political corruption probe has admitted in court that he gave cash-filled envelopes to Ehud Olmert, the Prime Minister of Israel, but denies that he expected any favours in return.

Morris Talansky, 75, a New York-based fundraiser, told a Jerusalem court that he had handed Mr Olmert sums ranging from $5,000 to $15,000 over a number of years before Mr Olmert's appointment as Prime Minister in 2006.

"I didn't expect anything from the Prime Minister and I didn't receive anything," Mr Talansky was quoted by Israeli reporters as telling the court.

Mr Olmert is under investigation by Israeli police for allegedly accepting up to $500,000 (£250,000) in illegal contributions or bribes before taking office. He denies any wrongdoing.

The Prime Minister, whose appeal to prevent Mr Talansky giving preliminary evidence was rejected by Israel's Supreme Court last week, confirmed that he had received campaign contributions from Mr Talansky for Jerusalem's 1993 and 1998 mayoral elections and for his Likud Party's internal elections in 1999 and 2002.

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Jimmy Carter says Israel has 150 nuclear weapons!

Israel has 150 nuclear weapons in its arsenal, former President Jimmy Carter said yesterday, while arguing that the US should talk directly to Iran to persuade it to drop its nuclear ambitions.

His remark, made at the Hay-on-Wye festival which promotes current affairs books and literature, is startling because Israel has never admitted having nuclear weapons, let alone how many, although the world assumes their existence. Nor do US officials deviate in public from that Israeli line.

Carter, who has immersed himself since his presidency in Israeli-Palestinian relations, was highly critical of Israeli settlers on the West Bank, and of Israel's refusal to talk to elected officials of the Islamic party Hamas, although he said that Israel's security was his prime concern.

Carter, whose presidency was dominated by the 444-day siege in which Iran held 52 American diplomats hostage, said "my advice to the US would be to start talking to Iran now" to persuade it to drop its nuclear work. But he cited Israel's nuclear arsenal - and those of the US, Russia, China, Britain and France - in arguing that Iran would find it almost impossible to develop, in secret, many weapons and the missiles to deliver them.

The Indictment and Trial of Bush and Cheney

By David Swanson

In a December 31, 2007, editorial, the New York Times faulted the current president and vice president of the United States for kidnapping innocent people, denying justice to prisoners, torturing, murdering, circumventing U.S. and international law, spying in violation of the Fourth Amendment, and basing their actions on "imperial fantasies." If the editorial had been about Bush and Cheney robbing a liquor store or killing a small number of people or robbing a small amount of money or torturing a single child, then the writers at the New York Times would have demanded immediate prosecution and incarceration. Can you guess what they actually demanded? They demanded that we sit back and hope the next president and vice president will be better.

I read a nice column within the past week or so on CommonDreams.org by a college professor named David Orr. He opened with these lines:

"The 44th president will assume office with powers greatly enlarged by his or her predecessor. Drawing on recent precedents, the next president could launch preemptive wars with only minor interference from Congress, ignore the ancient right of habeas corpus and imprison political enemies, spy on American citizens without serious legal restraint, use practically any federal agency for political purposes, manipulate the press in ways inconceivable prior to 2000, corrupt the federal justice system for political gain, destroy evidence in criminal cases, use the Justice Department to prosecute members of the opposing party, offer lucrative no-bid government contracts to friends, expand the creation of private security armies, use torture, create secret prisons, assassinate inconvenient foreign leaders, circumvent laws with signing statements, and a great deal more.

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Iran mosque blast plotters admit Israeli, US links: report

Iran's chief prosecutor said bombers who caused a deadly blast at a mosque in Shiraz had confessed of links to Israel and the United States, the ISNA student news agency reported on Friday.

"Those responsible for the attack against the Shiraz mosque have confessed to having links to worldwide oppression, in particular the United States and Israel," Ghorbanali Dorri-Najafabadi was quoted by the agency as saying.

They also admitted carrying out "one or two minor operations," the agency said, without providing further details except to say the group launched military operations a year ago.

The April 12 blast in the southern city left 13 people dead and more than 200 wounded. Authorities subsequently announced the arrest of 15 people.

Earlier Friday, senior Iranian cleric Ayatollah Ahmed Khatami said people had also plotted attacks in the holy city of Qom, 120 kilometres (75 miles) south of Tehran, and at a book fair held in the capital.

Iran has already accused Britain and the United States of training and financing those behind the bombing. In the past it has also blamed US and British agents based in neighbouring Iraq and Afghanistan for launching attacks on border provinces with significant ethnic minority populations.

The strike in Shiraz was the first in decades in Iran's Persian heartland. The normally placid city is not in a border zone, nor is it home to any significant ethnic or religious minority population.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080523/wl_mideast_afp/iranunrestusisraeltrial

U.S. Residents in Military Brigs on American Soil? Govt Says it's War!

By MATT APUZZO / Associated Press

If his cell were at Guantanamo Bay, the prisoner would be just one of hundreds of suspected terrorists detained offshore, where the U.S. says the Constitution does not apply.

But Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri is a U.S. resident being held in a South Carolina military brig; he is the only enemy combatant held on U.S. soil. That makes his case very different.

Al-Marri's capture six years ago might be the Bush administration's biggest domestic counterterrorism success story. Authorities say he was an al-Qaida sleeper agent living in middle America, researching poisonous gasses and plotting a cyberattack.

To justify holding him, the government claimed a broad interpretation of the president's wartime powers, one that goes beyond warrantless wiretapping or monitoring banking transactions. Government lawyers told federal judges that the president can send the military into any U.S. neighborhood, capture a citizen and hold him in prison without charge, indefinitely.

There is little middle ground between the two sides in al-Marri's case, which is before a federal appeals court in Virginia. The government says the president needs this power to keep the nation safe. Al-Marri's lawyers say that as long as the president can detain anyone he wants, nobody is safe.

A Qatari national, al-Marri came to the U.S. with his wife and five children on Sept. 10, 2001 — one day before the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington.

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Bush Power Grab Since 9/11 Deemed 'Rapacious' by Presidential Scholar

By Jeff Demers and Sherwood Ross

President Bush’s usurpation of power since 9/11 was termed “rapacious,” “predatory,” and “extra-Constitutional,” by presidential scholar Michael Genovese, director of the Institute for Leadership Studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Genovese said the “Unitary Theory” of the executive espoused by the Bush White House “is a very strange and ahistorical notion that says, ‘In a crisis all power gravitates to the president. No one, not the courts, not the Congress can interfere with the president and in effect, the president is the state.” 

“That ahistorical view runs contrary to everything that we find in the Framers,” Genovese said. “For the president to say that he has all the authority he needs to do all he had to do without Congress, without the courts, is simply dead wrong. He may be the decider but he’s not the only decider.” Genovese urged the candidates for the White House discuss their views on the nature of the presidency. He said the Framers’ intention “was to get away from the rule of one man that they just fought a revolution to overthrow, and so the Framers invented a rule of law system, under a separation of powers, with checks and balances, under a constitution, and they invented an office, the president, who was to preside, not to govern, but to preside.”

The system they created was primarily concerned “about protecting freedom and liberty,” Genovese said, “not about the efficient use of power. That left very little room for the heroic leadership so many of us today yearn for and expect of our presidents.”

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Have Iraqi leaders Embezzled Billions of U.S. Tax Dollars?

By RICHARD LARDNER / AP

Two Democratic senators have asked the Treasury Department to investigate allegations that Iraqi leaders have embezzled or misspent billions of U.S. tax dollars intended for the country's relief and reconstruction. In a May 20 letter to Stuart Levey, the department's undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, Sens. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island called the scope of corruption within the Iraqi government staggering.

Levey's office, they said, should examine whether any Iraqi officials have set up bank accounts outside of Iraq "that might contain ill-gotten proceeds."

Citing recent congressional testimony from Arthur Brennan, a former State Department official, the senators said the inspector general of the Iraq's ministry of health had steered as much as $1 billion in medical supplies onto the black market and then pocketed the profits.

According to Brennan, it's likely some of that money is financing insurgent groups such as the Mahdi army, the militia loyal to Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

"In our estimation, the theft, conversion or other misappropriation of U.S.-provided funds and supplies by Iraqi government officials severely undermines our troops' mission in Iraq," Dorgan and Whitehouse wrote. "It is even more outrageous when these resources are diverted to our enemies and help finance, arm and equip attacks against American soldiers."

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Pentagon's PR Offensive to be Probed

The inspector general's office at the Defense Department said Friday that it would investigate a Pentagon public-affairs program that sought to transform retired military officers who work as television and radio analysts into "message force multipliers" who could be counted on to echo Bush administration talking points about Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and terrorism.

The announcement came a day after the House passed an amendment to the annual military-authorization bill that would mandate investigations of the program by the inspector general's office and Congress' investigative arm, the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

The GAO said it had begun looking into the program and would give a legal opinion on whether it violated long-standing prohibitions against spending government money to spread propaganda to audiences in the United States.

The Defense Department suspended the program last month, days after it was the focus of a New York Times article. The article described a Pentagon campaign to cultivate dozens of military analysts as "surrogates" to generate favorable coverage of the administration's wartime performance. The analysts, many with undisclosed ties to military contractors, were wooed by private briefings with senior government officials.

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U.S. Secretary of State Rice Defends Torture at Google Event

By Bill Van Auken / WSWS

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice found herself compelled on Thursday to defend the Bush administration’s use of waterboarding—a potentially fatal method of induced drowning used to break the resistance of detainees—claiming that America was in a “different place” in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, while insisting that the government’s actions were consistent with US law and international treaties.

The backhanded defense of torture by Washington’s chief spokesperson on the world stage came in response to a pointed question from the audience at a “town hall meeting” organized at the headquarters of Google Inc., the Internet search giant, in Mountain View, California.

Rice’s statement, the most extensive she has ever made on the issue of torture, followed the release earlier this week of a Department of Justice Inspector General’s report that included detailed accounts by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation who objected to sickening forms of torture that were inflicted on detainees at the US prison camp in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The nature of these so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” was made clear by the agents, creating what they called a “war crimes file” in which these reports were compiled.

Also included in the report was the revelation that senior Justice Department officials communicated the concerns raised by the FBI agents directly to Rice, who was then Bush’s national security adviser, along with the warning that the brutal practices at Guantánamo were “gravely damaging...the rule of law.”

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9/11= False Flag Terror!!

By Alicia Hope / GangsterGovernment

I was talking with a young man yesterday and I mentioned the term "false flag attack". The young man suddenly seemed dazed and confused! He immediately asked, "What is a false flag attack?" I was suddenly reminded of how insipid our national discourse can be at times and how the main stream media is a tool used to control the minds of the people.

I wanted to put my hands around the neck of this young man and squeeze ever so gently (joking) but I proceeded to share a bevy of sites and insights into false flag terror!

Today was a good day!

Iraq Spending Ignored Rules

A Pentagon audit of $8.2 billion in American taxpayer money spent by the United States Army on contractors in Iraq has found that almost none of the payments followed federal rules and that in some cases, contracts worth millions of dollars were paid for despite little or no record of what, if anything, was received.

The audit also found a sometimes stunning lack of accountability in the way the United States military spent some $1.8 billion in seized or frozen Iraqi assets, which in the early phases of the conflict were often doled out in stacks or pallets of cash. The audit was released Thursday in tandem with a Congressional hearing on the payments.

In one case, according to documents displayed by Pentagon auditors at the hearing before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, a cash payment of $320.8 million in Iraqi money was authorized on the basis of a single signature and the words “Iraqi Salary Payment” on an invoice. In another, $11.1 million of taxpayer money was paid to IAP, an American contractor, on the basis of a voucher with no indication of what was delivered.

Mary L. Ugone, the Pentagon’s deputy inspector general for auditing, told members of the committee that the absence of anything beyond a voucher meant that “we were giving or providing a payment without any basis for the payment.”

“We don’t know what we got,” Ms. Ugone said in response to questions by the committee chairman, Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California.

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Justice Department has appointed at least 30 former prosecutors and other government officials as well-paid corporate monitors in arrangements that allow companies to avoid criminal prosecution!

Eric Lichtblau and Kitty Bennett / NY Times

The Justice Department has appointed at least 30 former prosecutors and other government officials as well-paid corporate monitors in arrangements that allow companies to avoid criminal prosecution, according to government data released Thursday by Congress.

In the last few years, the Justice Department has turned more and more often to “deferred prosecutions” to get companies suspected of wrongdoing to pay fines and change their practices without being charged criminally. Often, a corporate monitor is brought in to check on the company’s progress and ensure compliance.

The practice drew attention this year after it was disclosed that John Ashcroft, the former attorney general, had been selected by Christopher J. Christie, the United States attorney for New Jersey, as a corporate monitor for a medical supply company. The job, assigned without competitive bidding, would pay Mr. Ashcroft’s consulting firm up to $52 million. Mr. Ashcroft said at a contentious Congressional hearing in March that there was nothing improper about the arrangement.

Since then, Democrats in Congress have been pressing for more information about the use of deferred prosecutions, and the Justice Department responded Thursday by releasing documents showing that it had turned to the corporate agreements 85 times in recent years. (Congressional investigators said they had identified 12 agreements that were not included in the Justice Department’s list, for a total of 97.)

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Bilderberg Luminary To Select Obama’s Running Mate

It has been announced that Bilderberg luminary and top corporate elitist James A. Johnson will select Democratic candidate Barack Obama’s running mate for the 2008 election and in turn potentially act as kingmaker for America’s future President.

Johnson also selected John Kerry’s running mate John Edwards in 2004 after Edwards had impressed Bilderberg elitists Henry Kissinger and David Rockefeller with a speech he gave at the globalist confab in Italy that year.

The news further puts to rest any delusions that Bilderberg is a mere talking shop where no decisions are made. In reality, the group is shaping some of the primary developments in the domestic and geopolitical arena today, particularly in the context of oil prices which continue to accelerate towards Bilderberg’s target of $200 dollars a barrel.

It also ridicules once again any notion that an Obama presidency would bring "change" to the status quo of America being ruled by an unelected corporate and military-industrial complex elite.

"Former Fannie Mae CEO Jim Johnson has been asked by Senator Barack Obama on Thursday to start the search for a viable Vice Presidential candidate," reports Trans World News.

"Johnson and Obama are starting the top-secret search as Obama edges closer to the Democratic nomination. Johnson did the same job for Democratic nominees John Kerry in 2004 and Walter Mondale in 1984."

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Pentagon Can't Account for Almost $15 Billion

The inspector general for the Defense Department said yesterday that the Pentagon cannot account for almost $15 billion worth of goods and services ranging from trucks, bottled water and mattresses to rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns that were bought from contractors in the Iraq reconstruction effort.

The Pentagon did not have the proper documentation, including receipts, vouchers, signatures, invoices or other paperwork, for $7.8 billion that American and Iraqi contractors were paid for phones, folders, paint, blankets, Nissan trucks, laundry services and other items, according to a 69-page audit released to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

An earlier audit by the inspector general found deficiencies in accounting for $5.2 billion of U.S. payments to buy weapons, trucks, generators and other equipment for Iraq's security forces. In addition, the Defense Department spent $1.8 billion of seized Iraqi assets with "absolutely no accountability," according to Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), who chairs the oversight committee. The Pentagon also kept poor records on $135 million that it paid to its partners in the multinational military force in Iraq, auditors said.

The Army disagreed with some of the auditors' findings, saying that it is difficult to maintain an adequate paper trail in a war zone and that it has improved its record-keeping and accountability efforts. Robert L. Wilkie, assistant secretary of defense for legislative affairs, declined an invitation to testify before from Waxman's committee.

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