After a long sleep, my Website is coming back to life with this lengthy post on 9/11 events.
This is my translation of little-known old article written by an Ukrainian journalist Konstantin Berkovets (a.k.a colonelwheeler) in 2011 – long before the Revolution and subsequent russian invasion. Nevertheless, it’s still worth reading as few pieces of independent analysis challenging numerous Kremlin-made fakes which spread through Internet like contents of burst sewage.
This translation is edited and enhanced with my comments and links.
BTW here is another worthy piece on the same matter.
An unprecedented and unique act of terrorism in the history of mankind – these are quite common words to characterize the events of September 11, 2001 in New York and Washington. Indeed, the number of victims, estimated in thousands and material damage, estimated in billions of dollars, is striking. And many other things more too. But one can recall other events – both natural and man-made disasters and, more appropriate as an example, malicious actions of some people that caused commensurate, or even greater casualties and damage. There were tragic and rather scandalous events. Also there were attacks on other highly protected objects. What gives the reason to consider September 11 attacks really unique? Only one thing: an unprecedented resonance. For a long time 9/11 has become almost the only subject of political life of the whole world and main topic in mass media.
But having a clear designation of this essential feature of 9/11 events of September 11th and leaving secondary issues aside, we’ll have to make a paradoxical (at first glance) conclusion that this “truly unique” terrorist act is NOT so unique…
Exactly two years before we observed events in Russia which strikingly stand out with similar features: those “extremely loud” cases, became almost one and only subject of internal politics and brought far-reaching consequences about. Events in Russia have caused war in Chechnya. And September 11 attacks have caused invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Of course, apartment house bombings in the cities of Buynaksk, Moscow (twice) and Volgodonsk, and similar bombing attempt in Ryazan. Thus the main feature, an extremely traumatizing influence on public opinion, both in the USA and in Russia, is equal. Events in both countries were the direct reason for involving of both countries in wars.
There are other, not so fundamental similarities, like attacking civilian infrastructure — residential buildings in Russia and a business institution in New York. (Of course this doesn’t apply to Pentagon, but shouldn’t New York be “enough”?)
If, God forbid, we had more examples of such terrorist attacks, then everyone would automatically put such events in a single row. As belonging, quite obviously, to one category. Just two examples are not so obvious due to the characteristics of human memory.
Can a similar handwriting be seen? Yes, of course. Maybe an attempt to investigate one of these terrorist attacks will “unexpectedly”help us to understand the other? For a few minutes, let’s leave the question who is behind the bombings in Russia and briefly transport ourselves to America.
“Alternative Versions”
Different people who distrust the U.S. administration provide the public with plenty of information on 9/11 events with their conclusions, based on their own information, as well as official one. Those people have active civil position, cause questioning authority means protection of democracy and freedom. But it doesn’t make them immune from criticism. Some of those people provide conspiracy theories about involvement of U.S. government agents in 9/11 terrorist act and even support it with some statements. But let’s say frankly, speculative thinking should not be used. All versions must be rational and “promising”.
How would the American (or of any country with developed democracy) administration act, facing 9/11 events? Just the same way as George Jr. Bush’s one, trying to minimize own responsibility by bureaucratic reasons.
How would any administration act, if a country is attacked by an adversary who cannot be fought back? It doesn’t matter what is at its disposal – solid evidence or just reasonable suspicion. If the country behind 9/11 attacks is Russia? A third world country. But with nukes. And for this reason alone, there is no way to deal with such a country as with Afghanistan. Obviously, the administration will hide what it knows from the public. A career is everything for an official. And to admit being powerless means guaranteed resignation. And the follower of such an official will accuse him, among other things, of starting a new Cold War, and who would want to accept such an accusation?
In alternative 9/11 investigations, a significant place is taken by criticism of official explanation of WTC towers collapsing. But here we didn’t find anything really worthy to debunk an “official version”, which gives rather satisfactory technical explanation. However, the rest of “official version” doesn’t deserve even the time spent for studying it.
Everyone who watches TV knows what “Islamic terrorism” is. Usually setting off some crude IED, always with large percentage of “failures” caused by incompetence and indolence of terrorists. 9/11 can’t stand in this row – we saw nothing like this made by Islamists either before or after 9/11.
Works that study 9/11 from the position of criticism of the official version exhaustively disprove the involvement of Arabs in this terrorist attack. We ourselves see, on the one hand, poorly-made fake official videos, and on the other, an inexplicable “inability” to catch bin Laden for 10 years. The consequence of those actions is making human tragedies only worse – thousands of Americans still don’t know what really happened to their loved ones, they didn’t receive anything to bury.
One of well-known alternative version works is a book “9/11: The Big Lie” by Thierry Meyssan. Leafing through it, one can feel an atmosphere of 60-70s Eastern Bloc. It is full of moldy Soviet propaganda cliches. By such a repertoire, it’s not hard to identify even a specific organization that’s been repeating those words for decades with mouths of its numerous staff.
That is “Service A” of First Chief Directorate, KGB (“A” stands for “активные мероприятия”, active measures), currently SVR (Foreign Intelligence Service, служба внешней разведки). Which specializes on disinformation and influencing public opinion in Western countries. Defectors characterize the majority of its staff as “people dumped from all other services”. Meyssan’s book is “prudently” silent about USSR and Russia. A notable exception is the author’s complaint to bin Laden, expressed from a Soviet position. That bin Laden was fighting against the USSR in Afghanistan.
The common Westerner perceives the Cold War as a historical event, two decades away in the past. And because of his subjectivity, he is inclined to attribute a similar attitude to middle Russian. However, it’s very wrong! Unfortunately, Western MSM “had mercy” upon common man’s mind, keeping silence on almost nationwide rejoice of Russians caused by attacks on the United States. And today, the average Russian with his sick medieval “patriotism”, longs for destruction of the United States, seeing them as the main obstacle to Russia’s imperialist policy. He sincerely considers his impoverished, nuke-wielding country a superpower equal or even superior to the U.S. He doesn’t want to know about a better quality of life in the United States, doesn’t believe it and has an only counterargument “Death to America!” (Just like that!)
Meyssan’s “The Big Lie” features embarrassingly anachronistic Stalin’s thesis about the powerful military-industrial complex of U.S. and its lobby, which are responsible for 9/11. Allegedly they staged to “get profitable orders”. Is it so?
Before the events of 9/11 U.S. had a plan to deploy the missile defense system of a truly new generation. Against which Russia persistently objected. After 9/11, the United States was drawn into the war in Afghanistan – costly by any measure, carried out with outdated methods. So its military-industrial complex has never received a truly extremely advantageous order for the newest missile defense system, and Russia was satisfied with it.
After the release of his book, Meyssan gave numerous interviews. And very noticeably, he kept retelling it with adding almost none of new material. This is typical when the “author” simply didn’t write “his” book and just reads it several times to remember the material provided by someone else. And of course, doesn’t do anything to develop the topic of the book himself. (And somehow, Meyssan’s pro-russian attitude seems to perfectly coexist with his support of so-called LGBT! Seriously, there is nothing strange about it since Kremlin has plenty of lackeys on both conservative and liberal scenes).
“The Soviet (Russian) trace” is not seen in the works of many other authors of “alternative versions” either. But there are assumptions, or even statements that either American government staged 9/11 to start wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, or it was some kind of a coup d’état . It’s not difficult to notice the conspicuous connection with apartment block bombings in Russia as the origin of this version. The Kremlin has been convicted of those bombings. And these charges have been fully proven with the exception of legal formalities necessary only for the court.
One of typical actions of Kremlin propagandists is an absurd explanation well illustrated by the following example – Moscow responded to accusations of aggression against Georgia like that: “The US invaded Iraq, and why we can’t invade Georgia? You use double standards!” Lack of slightest logic in such responses is shocking, but that’s exactly what the Moscow keeps saying all the time. A simple scheme of russian answer is “we were accused of apartment block bombings, and to that we’ll similarly accuse the American government of staging the 9/11 attacks.” And logical flaws are evident here. The most important difference is that Moscow needed a war in Chechnya, but Washington didn’t need a war in Afghanistan! It was Moscow who needed it.
Let us briefly consider most popular “alternative versions” and particularly, the motivation attributed to the persons responsible, according to the authors’ opinion, for the attacks of September 11. If we do not engage in speculation, then checking the “analytic evidence” we are obliged to operate with exclusively valid, nonsubjective criterias.
The first version – 9/11 was a tip of the iceberg, and beneath there was a putsch inside the Washington establishment. This version can’t hold against valid criteria at all. In case of a putsch, we would see the “purge” which is impossible to hide. The putschists just could not leave their opponents near the power, fearing revenge or even sabotage. BTW it stinks with russian mindset – with a viewpoint of eternal Russian tyrannical Asiatic authoritarianism and its traditional palace coups. They just don’t understand how a developed democracy works.
The second version – 9/11 was staged by U.S. government to justify the invasion of Afghanistan. Here we also observe a paranoid attempt to paint the Russian situation on American soil (or like they say in Russia, toss it from sick head to the healthy one, валить с больной головы на здоровую). Russia needed the war in Chechnya, and that’s why the Russians were blowing up their own houses. The Americans did NOT need a war in Afghanistan, but nevertheless they attacked New York and Washington in order to find an excuse for that unneeded invasion. Are you surprised by this nonsense? Do not be – this is just Russian logic.
The third version – 9/11 attacks were beneficial to Israel, which had a goal of drawing the whole world, especially the United States, into the war against the Arabs with whom Israel has a long-term conflict. Because to argue with obvious benefits is a futile business, we’ll look for objective criteria that will help us to confirm or disprove this version. Here, too, everything is simple – there is nothing to confirm the fact that Israel had any direct benefit, from the consequences of 9/11. Arab-Israeli relations do not bear the imprint of the 9/11.
Is the Arab involvement in the 9/11 terrorist attacks believable? We’ve already recommended some researches of “alternative versions”. No, not believable. Is there any objective criterion for verification? Of course – we remember the “official version” of passenger jet crashing into Pentagon and its refutation in “alternative versions”. No passenger jet – NO Arabian trace! Though we won’t deny the possible participation of Islamic fundamentalists as low-level executors.
Thierry Meyssan, already mentioned above, explains lack of a passenger jet debris in Pentagon like “This attack could only be committed by United States military personnel against other U.S. military personnel.”
Of course he (or better to say, his KGB buddies) is dishonest here – everybody knows the organization which has industrialized studying and use of terrorism. GRU, formerly “Main Intelligence Directorate of USSR”, now it’s “Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation” – it has no differences from the predecessor besides its formal name. The same goals and methods.
Nobody other in the entire world has equal stubbornness in perfecting methods of “assaulting possible foe with methods excluding military force”. GRU’s arsenal includes portable rocket launchers, “behind-the-lines” attacks, using of captured vehicles and many other things.
By the way, nobody in the entire world except for USSR/Russia has such long-term conspiracy connections with militant and terrorist groups amongst Islamic fundamentalists. One must remember terrorist acts in different European cities in mid-2000s. (And now, several waves of more recent attacks, accompanied by blatant statements of Putin’s b#tches who don’t care about any cover for their plans anymore!) And scattered press reports regarding the exposed perpetrators, which remind us of already forgotten times of the Cold War, and contain the names of organizations controlled, or simply created, by the Soviets. There is no need to think that the long-standing connections of KGB’s “Service A” and the GRU are gone. No. Kremlin’s subordinate terrorist organizations are ready for use today – in those countries that dare to disagree with Kremlin.
Another “Unprecedented One”
And now let’s return to Russia, which we’ve left a few minutes ago. In police investigations, a “visual psychodiagnosis” plays a significant role. It’s necessary to evaluating the suspect in realtime, to make preliminary conclusion whether he’s lying or not, identify patterns and solve many other tasks. The result thus compiled is not some kind of “evidence”, but it helps to detect previously unknown information for its further verification by other methods.
In light of the foregoing, Putin’s behavior during his condolences speech on TV is spectacular. In cases of apartment block bombings in Russia and 9/11 attacks in the United States, the spectacular similarity of words and their “accompaniment”, like facial expressions, tone, even “response time”. No less spectacular is the fact that, he didn’t show similar behavior anywhere anymore. From checks of such “minor” facts, the search for serious evidence for the court should begin. (Or things like this photo, made shortly after the murder of Lech Kaczynski’s government by Putin and his lackey Tusk).
One of the first steps in any investigation is to outline the circle of suspects by different criterias, among which the most important are the questions, “To whom is it a benefit?” (“Cui bono?”) and “Who had an opportunity?” Who had an opportunity to bomb apartment buildings in Russia? The operation is complex enough to immediately outline the small circle of suspects – these are top dogs of the FSB-KGB and GRU, as well as other suspects from the SVR, the police and military units besides the GRU. We won’t consider ridiculous versions for naive people about North Caucasus resistance, Americans, space aliens etc.
The last of bombings in the city of Ryazan has ended in failure – the explosion was prevented, and terrorists with their FSB papers detained (but subsequently released by the order from Moscow). Which revealed the very organization that was acting on Kremlin orders, as well as in case of at least two successful identical bombings in Moscow. The one that took the “honorable” first place on this list – the KGB-FSB.
A comprehensive evidence is given in the book by Alexander Litvinenko and Yuri Felshtinsky, “Blowing up Russia: The Secret Plot to Bring Back KGB Terror”. The volume of the article doesn’t allow to give even a general outline of this large work. Litvinenko was killed in the fall of 2006 in London. Andrey Lugovoy, accused of this murder, besides being a former KGB-FSB officer is also so-called “deputy” – a member of Russian “Duma” parliament, where no one can be accepted without Kremlin’s permission.
As it’s known for everyone who keeps track on activitiy of Soviet and Russian secret services, each of their agents has a kind of plan – at least two recruits per year. Failure to keep it up will result in penalty. Under the roof of Russian embassies, there are resident stations of the SVR with several dozens of staff working on “political intelligence” and “foreign counterintelligence”, and these are only so-called “legal” residencies. Besides “illegal” ones, there is also GRU with its network of residencies of both types, and of course “intelligence” activity from the territory of Russia itself.
In addition it should be noted that other Russian structures, for example, large businesses close to the Kremlin, are also involved in undercover work. Like Ministry of Internal Affairs (police) and units of the FSB (ex. KGB), which have no official relations to espionage. One of the most famous “moles”, G. Prime, was supervised by the Third KGB Directorate – officially responsible for military counterintelligence. (Pedophile Prime worked for Russia, which now has KGB pedophile Putin as president. Looks like just a tradition.)
And they have a plan to recruit new agents – amongst those who have prospects to become a politician or an official, or have already became ones, amongst journalists, public activists, etc. There is no reason to be surprised about how many friends USSR/Russia has. Undoubtedly, such an army will be mobilized by Moscow to oppose the revelations set forth in Litvinenko-Felshtinsky’s book.
Western governments do not oppose Russian espionage and terrorism. Not only because they are plagued with Kremlin agents. Foremostly, because for a politician there is nothing more important than his career. To oppose the atrocities and crimes of Moscow means to take responsibility for “unleashing a new Cold War.”
Somewhere Far Away
Afghanistan. One of the poorest countries on our planet. Soviet intervention of 1970s has plunged it into civil war and chaos for decades. It has no strategic resources, no market for products except for ammunition for obsolete Soviet weaponry. It is of no interest to anyone – except the Soviets and their expansionism.
If we ignore what we know today and ask ourselves a question: “If U.S. is attacked and for career-bureaucratic reasons, the administration hides the true culprit from the public, who then will be appointed as a scapegoat besides bin Laden hiding somewhere in Afghanistan and will the U.S. government be able to avoid the invasion of Afghanistan?” As of autumn 2001 the world just had no other character to be suitable for such a “role” more than bin Laden. The invasion could not be avoided.
Even the Soviet marshal Ogarkov persistently emphasized the importance of the Vietnam War – only with “tied hands” America is good for Moscow. The situation is repeating in Afghanistan, Russia is happy with it. Whom Americans are fighting in Afghanistan? Guerrilla soldiers. Does anyone in the world have experience of victory in such a war? No. Such war can’t end in victory. It will devour tremendous resources. And in particular, it will distract the U.S. from new developments in the military-industrial complex.
Take a look at the map. To the west of Afghanistan, there is Iran which is hostile to U.S. To the south and east there is Pakistan, and relations with it are worsening, which is in Russia’s interests. Pakistan once was a U.S. ally in this region. Could have Moscow before September 11, 2001, dreamed of such a destabilization of Pakistan? For the supply of troops in Afghanistan, only northern corridor remains.
To the north of Afghanistan, there are countries of the Central Asia – the former Soviet republics. Moscow has an extremely strong influence in this entire region. To the north of them begins Russia, therefore a corridor through Russia and Central Asia is required. Or a very narrow path through the Caucasus (Georgia and Azerbaijan) and the same countries of Central Asia. (We do not consider the “Chinese corridor” here.) Here, we immediately get the answer to the question of why Russia has invaded and tried to capture Georgia in 2008. Putin’s calls to the leaders of the Central Asian countries sounded paradoxically only at the first glance. Understanding of the situation is achieved through a simple fact: as a result of 9/11 attacks, the United States and its NATO allies became dependent on Kremlin, which was given the opportunity to put forward ANY demands.
As a result of war against the Taliban regime, Russia has finally got some relief – the seemingly inevitable loss of Moscow’s influence in Central Asia was no longer relevant. Today, Russia’s influence in the region is undivided.
Russia is the main beneficiary of the invasion of the United States and NATO allies in Afghanistan following the events of 9/11. Another beneficiary was Iraq. Unlike Afghanistan, things there went not according to plan – but not entirely.
Often, politics is just trade. A “strategic partnership” has been formed between the USSR and the USA. So George H. W. Bush turned a blind eye to Spetsnaz raids in Vilnius and Riga (not long before the Operation Desert Storm) – after all, one cannot criticize the “partner”. He failed to formulate even mildly critical remarks against Moscow, being on a visit there at the time of this terrorist attack. A few days later he went to Kiev where he delivered an outrageous speech in front of parliament. The meaning of that speech was that Ukrainians should be happy as a colony of Russia. Such a “partnership” continued until Christmas 1991. Bush refused to acknowledge the collapse of the USSR.
In the mid-1990s, Yevgeny Primakov was a head of the SVR, and before that he was an indefinite “expert” on the Middle East. We don’t know what was said during the contacts of this sinister figure with Saddam, but we know what happened then – Saddam invaded Kuwait. And spike of oil prices. However, unlike during all other Cold War crises, the USSR did NOT veto a UN Security Council resolution authorizing an invasion of Iraq.
The seemingly insignificant scene from the Persian Gulf war of 1991 is interesting either. Leaving Kuwait, Saddam’s troops for some reason set fire to Kuwaiti oil wells, disabling them for at least six months. Where is Iraq’s profit here? Nowhere, but there is Moscow’s profit – high oil prices.
Schemes that have brought success in business, politics etc. will be repeated. Always. Moscow attacks the United States and latter is are dependent on Russian veto in the UN Security Council. In exchange for not vetoing, Russia can demand whatever it wants from Washington. As we know today, it didn’t work with Iraq. So Russia lost this time? No. Only one thing was important for Russia about Iraq – high oil prices, everything else was secondary. Let’s recall oil prices for the time after the outbreak of the Second Iraq war. And now let’s think why it happened.
Who could destabilize Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam’s dictatorship? Apparently neither the Kurds nor the southern religious community – Saddam was in conflict with both. There were no prerequisites for sudden emergence of strong guerrilla movement that could not be created under a brutal and corrupt dictatorship of Saddam. It couldn’t be organized during an incredibly short period of time between the overthrow of Saddam and the destabilization of Iraq. To find an answer, let’s recall a little but curious fact that Iraq was the ONLY country outside the Soviet bloc where no SVR espionage activity took place. Only liaison officers of the 20th Department were assigned to contact Iraqis. In other words, Iraq was controlled by the Soviets entirely.
Getting answer to the question of who had the opportunity, let’s try to answer another one – who benefits from it? Who benefits from destabilizing Iraq and thereby maintaining high oil prices? There is only ONE beneficiary in the entire world…
Let me remind you of one, as it might seem, insignificant fact that the cost of oil extraction in Russia is high. Behind this “minor” fact there are events of global significance. For Russia, low oil prices mean not a just a decline in profits, but a disaster since the extraction would become unprofitable. Let’s recall oil prices at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s and what then happened with the USSR.
And do not forget who supports Venezuelan regime now – which is not contributing to lower oil prices as well.
A sight on the world
It’s not possible to predict the exact implementation of security tightening scenario in response to the 9/11 attacks. But the bureaucratic world is known to do stupid things. Russia carried out the genocide of the Chechen people, but human rights activists criticized the United States for Guantanamo, secret CIA prisons and the simple deprivation of the elementary civil rights for their own people. With such policies, Russia of course counts its crimes will be totally ignored.
Let’s recall how the creators of WikiLeaks promised to publish the exposure of tyrannical regimes, particulary the Russian one, but instead publishes American diplomatic correspondence and reports on the Iraq war.
Nevertheless, some actions of the American administration can be predicted in advance. For example, mute trials of terrorists and “terrorists”. An ancient unadvertised rule says “when the plan has worked, everyone is forced to defend it.” The Bush administration just could not allow the information about Moscow’s involvement in 9/11 attacks to leak – this was explained above.
And some idiotic actions were just difficult to predict. For example, NOBODY won but everyone lost something due to the elimination of anonymous banking under the pretext of combating money laundering and financing of terrorism. However, we see an increase in organized crime on a global scale and continuation of terrorist activities. What does the FATF do? It only helps economic crises to happen. Like it wasn’t bad enough for the world economy to be exhausted for a decade by excessive oil prices. The FATF also destroyed the mobile speculative capital that played an important role in the global economy. And which still cannot be taxed. But one can create difficulties for him and the consequences won’t be long in coming. The economic crisis is evidence of this. Unfortunately, not the last one if the FATF is not abolished.
The main, but not the only beneficiary of the global oppression and deprivation of elementary civil rights is Russia – again.
The Conclusion
A good investigation should begin with outlining the circle of suspects, but journalism has its own laws, so we will end with that list. Who were the suspects of 9/11 attacks?
Here is that list.
-
Russia
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Israel
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Islamist radicals (with or without bin Laden)
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American putschists
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Americans who needed to invade Afghanistan and Iraq by some reason
The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan makes no sense. It caused only losses.
The invasion of Iraq was carried out without the UN Security Council’s approval, with a casus belli of searching for WMDs. For that, bombing of own cities isn’t necessary. It’s the same nonsense as insuring a picture hanging in the house (but not the house itself), then blowing up the house to get insurance payments. So this version is rejected.
4th version. As written above, in this case certain events (the purge) would have followed – and there was none. Rejected.
3rd version. As written above, in case of no-plane theory there was no Islamist organization that planned 9/11. Rejected.
2nd version. As written above, the results were not exploited (please don’t put forward ridiculous “assumptions” like “at first, they attacked but then were frightened themselves and therefore did not use the fruits of their action”). Rejected.
There is only one version left: Russia.
It’s hard to find a topic more inopportune than the one discussed here. One can’t find friends trying to investigate 9/11 but can get new enemies very quickly. And the first of them will be the researchers of “alternative versions” – mostly brave and honest people. The entire federal U.S. political establishment, and the entire Western world, Islamic fundamentalists, Israel, the FATF, and journalists were criticized. And most importantly, no matter how hard one tries to be gentle, all of them will be offended. All such different stakeholders.
Journalists usually avoid this topic. Quite understandable from a political scientist’s view – though it’s their job, their professional competence, one can’t be forced to do the job which brings only losses.
We won’t apologize either before numerous Kremlin agents or separate citizens of Russia. We either won’t be saddened to name Russia an enemy – a country thoroughly corrupt with ideocracy, a threat to entire world and its neighbors first of all.
Usually Western journalists (those who are not bought by Russia) consider the people of Russia and some dissidents main victims of its regime. Such an approach demonstrates a withering abyss of misunderstanding. An average man is usually prejudiced by evaluating others through his own personality, therefore often having a poor representation of how the motivation of some individual or a group (here, an ethnic one) can be different from his own.
Russians forgive their own authority any crimes, even murder of billions of people. Something other is important for them: to make everyone afraid of their “great empire”. And they are proud of it, celebrating it with incomparable, unprecedented and unique amounts of vodka…
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