The Trilateral Commission: Usurping
Sovereignty
by Patrick Wood
www.augustreview.com/
The Trilateral Commission was formed in
1973 by private citizens of Western Europe, Japan and North America
to foster closer cooperation among these three regions on common
problems. It seeks to improve public understanding of such problems,
to support proposals for handling them jointly, and to nurture
habits and practices of working together among these regions."2
Further, Trialogue and other official
writings made clear their stated goal of creating a "New
International Economic Order." President George H.W. Bush
later talked openly about creating a "New World Order",
which has since become a synonymous phrase.
This paper attempts to tell the rest
of the story, according to official and unofficial Commission
sources and other available documents.
The Trilateral Commission was founded
by the persistent maneuvering of David Rockefeller and Zbigniew
Brzezinski. Rockefeller was chairman of the ultra-powerful Chase
Manhattan Bank, a director of many major multinational corporations
and "endowment funds" and had long been a central figure
in the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Brzezinski, a brilliant
prognosticator of one-world idealism, was a professor at Columbia
University and the author of several books that have served as
"policy guidelines" for the Trilateral Commission. Brzezinski
served as the Commission's first executive director from its inception
in 1973 until late 1976 when he was appointed by President Jimmy
Carter as Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs.
The initial Commission membership was
approximately three hundred, with roughly one hundred each from
Europe, Japan and North America. Membership was also roughly divided
between academics, politicians and corporate magnates; these included
international bankers, leaders of prominent labor unions and corporate
directors of media giants.
The word commission was puzzling since
it is usually associated with instrumentalities set up by governments.
It seemed out of place with a so-called private group unless
we could determine that it really was an arm of a government -
an unseen government, different from the visible government in
Washington. European and Japanese involvement indicated a world
government rather than a national government. We hoped that the
concept of a sub-rosa world government was just wishful thinking
on the part of the Trilateral Commissioners. The facts, however,
lined up quite pessimistically.
If the Council on Foreign Relations could
be said to be a spawning ground for the concepts of one-world
idealism, then the Trilateral Commission was the "task force"
assembled to assault the beachheads. Already the Commission had
placed its members in the top posts the U.S. had to offer.
President James Earl Carter, the country
politician who promised, "I will never lie to you,"
was chosen to join the Commission by Brzezinski in 1973. It was
Brzezinski, in fact, who first identified Carter as presidential
timber, and subsequently educated him in economics, foreign policy,
and the ins-and-outs of world politics. Upon Carter's election,
Brzezinski was appointed assistant to the president for national
security matters. Commonly, he was called the head of the National
Security Council because he answered only to the president - some
said Brzezinski held the second most powerful position in the
U.S.
Carter's running mate, Walter Mondale,
was also a member of the Commission. (If you are trying to calculate
the odds of three virtually unknown men, out of over sixty Commissioners
from the U.S., capturing the three most powerful positions in
the land, don't bother. Your calculations will be meaningless.)
On January 7, 1977 Time Magazine, whose
editor-in-chief, Hedley Donovan was a powerful Trilateral, named
President Carter "Man of the Year." The sixteen-page
article in that issue not only failed to mention Carter's connection
with the Commission but also stated the following:
"As he searched for Cabinet appointees,
Carter seemed at times hesitant and frustrated disconcertingly
out of character. His lack of ties to Washington and the Party
Establishment - qualities that helped raise him to the White House
- carry potential dangers. He does not know the Federal Government
or the pressures it creates. He does not really know the politicians
whom he will need to help him run the country."3
Is this portrait of Carter as a political
innocent simply inaccurate or is it deliberately misleading? By
December 25, 1976 - two weeks before the Time article appeared
- Carter had already chosen his cabinet. Three of his cabinet
members - Cyrus Vance, Michael Blumenthal, and Harold Brown -
were Trilateral Commissioners; and the other non-Commission members
were not unsympathetic to Commission objectives and operations.
In addition, Carter had appointed another fourteen Trilateral
Commissioners to top government posts, including:
C. Fred Bergsten (Under Secretary of
Treasury)
James Schlesinger (Secretary of Energy)
Elliot Richardson (Delegate to Law of the Sea)
Leonard Woodcock (Chief envoy to China)
Andrew Young (Ambassador to the United Nations)
As of 25 December 1976, therefore, there were nineteen Trilaterals,
including Carter and Mondale, holding tremendous political power.
These presidential appointees represented almost one-third of
the Trilateral Commission members from the United States. The
odds of that happening "by chance" are beyond calculation!
Nevertheless, was there even the slightest
evidence to indicate anything other than collusion? Hardly! Zbigniew
Brzezinski spelled out the qualifications of a 1976 presidential
winner in 1973:
"The Democratic candidate in 1976
will have to emphasize work, the family, religion and, increasingly,
patriotism...The new conservatism will clearly not go back to
laissez faire. It will be a philosophical conservatism. It will
be a kind of conservative statism or managerism. There will be
conservative values but a reliance on a great deal of co-determination
between state and the corporations."4
On 23 May 1976 journalist Leslie H. Gelb
wrote in the not-so-conservative New York Times, "(Brzezinski)
was the first guy in the Community to pay attention to Carter,
to take him seriously. He spent time with Carter, talked to him,
sent him books and articles, educated him."5 Richard Gardner
(also of Columbia University) joined into the "educational"
task, and as Gelb noted, between the two of them they had Carter
virtually to themselves. Gelb continued: "While the Community
as a whole was looking elsewhere, to Senators Kennedy and Mondale...it
paid off. Brzezinski, with Gardner, is now the leading man on
Carter's foreign policy task force."6
Although Richard Gardner was of considerable
academic influence, it should be clear that Brzezinski was the
"guiding light" of foreign policy in the Carter administration.
Along with Commissioner Vance and a host of other Commissioners
in the State Department, Brzezinski had more than continued the
policies of befriending our enemies and alienating our friends.
Since early 1977 we had witnessed a massive push to attain "normalized"
relations with Communist China, Cuba, the USSR, Eastern European
nations, Angola, etc. Conversely, we had withdrawn at least some
support from Nationalist China, South Africa, Zimbabwe (formerly
Rhodesia), etc. It was not just a trend - it was an epidemic.
Thus, if it could be said that Brzezinski had, at least in part,
contributed to current U.S. foreign and domestic policy, then
we should briefly analyze exactly what he was espousing.
Needed: A More Just and Equitable World
Order
The Trilateral Commission held their annual
plenary meeting in Tokyo, Japan, in January 1977. Carter and Brzezinski
obviously could not attend as they were still in the process of
reorganizing the White House. They did, however, address personal
letters to the meeting, which were reprinted in Trialogue, the
official magazine of the Commission:
"It gives me special pleasure to
send greetings to all of you gathering for the Trilateral Commission
meeting in Tokyo. I have warm memories of our meeting in Tokyo
some eighteen months ago, and am sorry I cannot be with you now.
"My active service on the Commission
since its inception in 1973 has been a splendid experience for
me, and it provided me with excellent opportunities to come to
know leaders in our three regions.
"As I emphasized in my campaign,
a strong partnership among us is of the greatest importance. We
share economic, political and security concerns that make it logical
we should seek ever-increasing cooperation and understanding.
And this cooperation is essential not only for our three regions,
but in the global search for a more just and equitable world order
(emphasis added). I hope to see you on the occasion of your next
meeting in Washington, and I look forward to receiving reports
on your work in Tokyo.
Brzezinski's letter, in a similar vein,
follows:
"The Trilateral Commission has meant
a great deal to me over the last few years. It has been the stimulus
for intellectual creativity and a source of personal satisfaction.
I have formed close ties with new friends and colleagues in all
three regions, ties which I value highly and which I am sure will
continue.
"I remain convinced that, on the
larger architectural issues of today, collaboration among our
regions is of the utmost necessity. This collaboration must be
dedicated to the fashioning of a more just and equitable world
order (emphasis added). This will require a prolonged process,
but I think we can look forward with confidence and take some
pride in the contribution which the Commission is making.
The key phrase in both letters was "more
just and equitable world order." Did this emphasis indicate
that something was wrong with our present world order, that is,
with national structures? Yes, according to Brzezinski, and since
the present "framework" was inadequate to handle world
problems, it must be done away with and supplanted with a world
government.
In September 1974 Brzezinski was asked
in an interview by the Brazilian newspaper Vega. "How would
you define this new world order?" Brzezinski answered:
"When I speak of the present international
system I am referring to relations in specific fields, most of
all among the Atlantic countries; commercial, military, mutual
security relations, involving the international monetary fund,
NATO etc. We need to change the international system for a global
system in which new, active and creative forces recently developed
- should be integrated. This system needs to include Japan. Brazil,
the oil producing countries, and even the USSR, to the extent
which the Soviet Union is willing to participate in a global system."9
When asked if Congress would have an expanded
or diminished role in the new system, Brzezinski declared "...the
reality of our times is that a modern society such as the U.S.
needs a central coordinating and renovating organ which cannot
be made up of six hundred people."10
Brzezinski developed background for the
need for a new system in his book Between Two Ages: America's
Role in the Technetronic Era (1969). He wrote that mankind has
moved through three great stages of evolution, and was in the
middle of the fourth and final stage. The first stage he described
as "religious," combining a heavenly "universalism
provided by the acceptance of the idea that man's destiny is essentially
in God's hands" with an earthly "narrowness derived
from massive ignorance, illiteracy, and a vision confined to the
immediate environment."
The second stage was nationalism, stressing
Christian equality before the law, which "marked another
giant step in the progressive redefinition of man's nature and
place in our world." The third stage was Marxism, which,
said Brzezinski, "represents a further vital and creative
stage in the maturing of man's universal vision." The fourth
and final stage was Brzezinski's Technetronic Era, or the ideal
of rational humanism on a global scale - the result of American-Communist
evolutionary transformations.11
In considering our structure of governance,
Brzezinski stated:
"Tension is unavoidable as man strives
to assimilate the new into the framework of the old. For a time
the established framework resiliently integrates the new by adapting
it in a more familiar shape. But at some point the old framework
becomes overloaded. The newer input can no longer be redefined
into traditional forms, and eventually it asserts itself with
compelling force. Today, though, the old framework of international
politics - with their spheres of influence, military alliances
between nation-states, the fiction of sovereignty, doctrinal conflicts
arising from nineteenth century crises - is clearly no longer
compatible with reality."12
One of the most important "frameworks"
in the world, and especially to Americans, was the United States
Constitution. It was this document that outlined the most prosperous
nation in the history of the world. Was our sovereignty really
"fiction"? Was the U.S. vision no longer compatible
with reality? Brzezinski further stated:
"The approaching two-hundredth anniversary
of the Declaration of Independence could justify the call for
a national constitutional convention to reexamine the nation's
formal institutional framework. Either 1976 or 1989 - the two-
hundredth an anniversary of the Constitution - could serve as
a suitable target date culminating a national dialogue on the
relevance of existing arrangements... Realism, however, forces
us to recognize that the necessary political innovation will not
come from direct constitutional reform, desirable as that would
be. The needed change is more likely to develop incrementally
and less overtly...in keeping with the American tradition of blurring
distinctions between public and private institution."13
In Brzezinski's Technetronic Era then,
the "nation-state as a fundamental unit of man's organized
life has ceased to be the principal creative force: International
banks and multinational corporations are acting and planning in
terms that are far in advance of the political concepts of the
nation-state."14
Brzezinski's philosophy clearly pointed
forward to Richard Gardner's Hard Road to World Order that appeared
in Foreign Affairs in 1974, where Gardner stated,
"In short, the 'house of world order'
would have to be built from the bottom up rather than from the
top down. It will look like a great 'booming, buzzing confusion,'
to use William James' famous description of reality, but an end
run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece, will
accomplish much more than the old-fashioned frontal assault."15
That former approach which had produced
few successes during the 1950's and 1960's was being traded for
a velvet sledge-hammer: It would make little noise, but would
still drive the spikes of globalization deep into the hearts of
many different countries around the world, including the United
States. Indeed, the Trilateral Commission was the chosen vehicle
that finally got the necessary traction to actually create their
New World Order.
Understanding the philosophy of the Trilateral
Commission was and is the only way we can reconcile the myriad
of apparent contradictions in the information filtered through
to us in the national press. For instance, how was it that the
Marxist regime in Angola derived the great bulk of its foreign
exchange from the offshore oil operations of Gulf Oil Corporation?
Why did Andrew Young insist that "Communism has never been
a threat to Blacks in Africa"? Why did the U.S. funnel billions
in technological aid to the Soviet Union and Communist China?
Why did the U.S. apparently help its enemies while chastising
its friends?
A similar and perplexing question is asked
by millions of Americans today: Why do we spend trillions on the
"War on Terror" around the world and yet ignore the
Mexican/U.S. border and the tens of thousands of illegal aliens
who freely enter the U.S. each and every month?
These questions, and hundreds of others
like them, cannot be explained in any other way: the U.S. Executive
Branch (and related agencies) was not anti-Marxist or anti-Communist
- it was and is, in fact, pro- Marxist. Those ideals which led
to the heinous abuses of Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, and Mussolini
were now being accepted as necessary inevitabilities by our elected
and appointed leaders.
This hardly suggests the Great American
Dream. It is very doubtful that Americans would agree with Brzezinski
or the Trilateral Commission. It is the American public who is
paying the price, suffering the consequences, but not understanding
the true nature of the situation.
This nature however, was not unknown or
unknowable. Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) issued a clear and
precise warning in his 1979 book, With No Apologies:
"The Trilateral Commission is international
and is intended to be the vehicle for multinational consolidation
of the commercial and banking interests by seizing control of
the political government of the United States. The Trilateral
Commission represents a skillful, coordinated effort to seize
control and consolidate the four centers of power - political,
monetary, intellectual and ecclesiastical."16
Unfortunately, few heard and even fewer
understood.
Follow the Money, Follow the Power
What was the economic nature of the driving
force within the Trilateral Commission? It was the giant multinational
corporations - those with Trilateral representation - which consistently
benefited from Trilateral policy and actions. Polished academics
such as Brzezinski, Gardner, Allison, McCracken, Henry Owen etc.,
served only to give "philosophical" justification to
the exploitation of the world.
Don't underestimate their power or the
distance they had already come by 1976. Their economic base was
already established. Giants like Coca-Cola, IBM, CBS, Caterpillar
Tractor, Bank of America, Chase Manhattan Bank, Deere & Company,
Exxon, and others virtually dwarf whatever remains of American
businesses. The market value of IBM's stock alone, for instance,
was greater than the value of all the stocks on the American Stock
Exchange. Chase Manhattan Bank had some fifty thousand branches
or correspondent banks throughout the world. What reached our
eyes and ears was highly regulated by CBS, the New York Times,
Time magazine, etc.
The most important thing of all is to
remember that the political coup de grace preceded the economic
coup de grace. The domination of the Executive Branch of the U.S.
government provided all the necessary political leverage needed
to skew U.S. and global economic policies to their own benefit.
By 1977, the Trilateral Commission had
notably become expert at using crises (and creating them in some
instances) to manage countries toward the New World Order; yet,
they found menacing backlashes from those very crises.
In the end, the biggest crisis of all
was that of the American way of life. Americans never counted
on such powerful and influential groups working against the Constitution
and freedom, either inadvertently or purposefully, and even now,
the principles that helped to build this great country are all
but reduced to the sound of meaningless babblings.
Trilateral Entrenchment: 1980-2007
It would have been damaging enough if
the Trilateral domination of the Carter administration was merely
a one-time anomaly; but it was not!
Subsequent presidential elections brought
George H.W. Bush (under Reagan), William Jefferson Clinton, Albert
Gore and Richard Cheney (under G. W. Bush) to power.
Thus, every Administration since Carter
has had top-level Trilateral Commission representation through
the President or Vice-president, or both!
It is important to note that Trilateral
domination has transcended political parties: they dominated both
the Republican and Democrat parties with equal aplomb.
In addition, the Administration before
Carter was very friendly and useful to Trilateral doctrine as
well: President Gerald Ford took the reins after President Richard
Nixon resigned, and then appointed Nelson Rockefeller as his Vice
President. Neither Ford nor Rockefeller were members of the Trilateral
Commission, but Nelson was David Rockefeller's brother and that
says enough. According to Nelson Rockefeller's memoirs, he originally
introduced then-governor Jimmy Carter to David and Brzezinski.
How has the Trilateral Commission effected
their goal of creating a New World Order or a New International
Economic Order? They seated their own members at the top of the
institutions of global trade, global banking and foreign policy.
For instance, the World Bank is one of
the most critical mechanisms in the engine of globalization.17
Since the founding of the Trilateral Commission in 1973, there
have been only seven World Bank presidents, all of whom were appointed
by the President. Of these seven, six were pulled from the ranks
of the Trilateral Commission!
Robert McNamara (1968-1981)
A.W. Clausen (1981-1986)
Barber Conable (1986-1991)
Lewis Preston (1991-1995)
James Wolfenson (1995-2005)
Paul Wolfowitz (2005-2007)
Robert Zoellick (2007-present)
Another good evidence of domination is the position of U.S. Trade
Representative (USTR), which is critically involved in negotiating
the many international trade treaties and agreements that have
been necessary to create the New International Economic Order.
Since 1977, there have been ten USTR's appointed by the President.
Eight have been members of the Trilateral Commission!
Robert S. Strauss (1977-1979)
Reubin O'D. Askew (1979-1981)
William E. Brock III (1981-1985)
Clayton K. Yeutter (1985-1989)
Carla A. Hills (1989-1993)
Mickey Kantor (1993-1997)
Charlene Barshefsky (1997-2001)
Robert Zoellick (2001-2005)
Rob Portman (2005-2006)
Susan Schwab (2006-present)
This is not to say that Clayton Yeuter and Rob Portman were not
friendly to Trilateral goals, because they clearly were.
The Secretary of State cabinet position
has seen its share of Trilaterals as well: Henry Kissinger (Nixon,
Ford), Cyrus Vance (Carter), Alexander Haig (Reagan), George Shultz
(Reagan), Lawrence Eagleburger (G.H.W. Bush), Warren Christopher
(Clinton) and Madeleine Albright (Clinton) There were some Acting
Secretaries of State that are also noteworthy: Philip Habib (Carter),
Michael Armacost (G.H.W. Bush), Arnold Kantor (Clinton), Richard
Cooper (Clinton).
Lastly, it should be noted that the Federal
Reserve has likewise been dominated by Trilaterals: Arthur Burns
(1970-1978), Paul Volker (1979-1987), Alan Greenspan (1987-2006).
While the Federal Reserve is a privately-owned corporation, the
President "chooses" the Chairman to a perpetual appointment.
The current Fed Chairman, Ben Bernanke, is not a member of the
Trilateral Commission, but he clearly is following the same globalist
policies as his predecessors.
The point raised here is that Trilateral
domination over the U.S. Executive Branch has not only continued
and but has been strengthened from 1976 to the present. The pattern
has been deliberate and persistent: Appoint members of the Trilateral
Commission to critical positions of power so that they can carry
out Trilateral policies.
The question is and has always been, do
these policies originate in consensus meetings of the Trilateral
Commission where two-thirds of the members are not U.S. citizens?
The answer is all too obvious.
Trilateral-friendly defenders attempt
to sweep criticism aside by suggesting that membership in the
Trilateral Commission is incidental, and that it only demonstrates
the otherwise high quality of appointees. Are we to believe that
in a country of 300 million people only these 100 or so are qualified
to hold such critical positions? Again, the answer is all too
obvious.
Where Does the Council on Foreign Relations
Fit?
While virtually all Trilateral Commission
members from North America have also been members of the CFR,
the reverse is certainly not true. It is easy to over-criticize
the CFR because most of its members seem to fill the balance of
government positions not already filled by Trilaterals.
The power structure of the Council is
seen in the makeup of its board of directors: No less than 44
percent (12 out of 27) are members of the Commission! If director
participation reflected only the general membership of the CFR,
then only 3-4 percent of the board would be Trilaterals.18
Further, the president of the CFR is Richard
N. Haass, a very prominent Trilateral member who also served as
Director of Policy Planning for the U.S. Department of State from
2001-2003.
Trilateral influence can easily be seen
in policy papers produced by the CFR in support of Trilateral
goals.
For instance, the 2005 CFR task force
report on the Future of North America was perhaps the major Trilateral
policy statement on the intended creation of the North American
Union. Vice-chair of the task force was Dr. Robert A. Pastor,
who has emerged as the "Father of the North American Union"
and has been directly involved in Trilateral operations since
the 1970's. While the CFR claimed that the task force was "independent,"
careful inspection of those appointed reveal that three Trilaterals
were carefully chosen to oversee the Trilateral position, one
each from Mexico, Canada and the United States: Luis Rubio, Wendy
K. Dobson and Carla A. Hills, respectively.19 Hills has been widely
hailed as the principal architect of the North American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA) that was negotiated under President George H.W.
Bush in 1992.
The bottom line is that the Council on
Foreign Relations, thoroughly dominated by Trilaterals, serves
the interests of the Trilateral Commission, not the other way
around!
Trilateral Globalization in Europe
The content of this paper thus far suggests
ties between the Trilateral Commission and the United States.
This is not intended to mean that Trilaterals are not active in
other countries as well. Recalling the early years of the Commission,
David Rockefeller wrote in 1998,
"Back in the early Seventies, the
hope for a more united EUROPE was already full-blown - thanks
in many ways to the individual energies previously spent by so
many of the Trilateral Commission's earliest members." [Capitals
in original]20
Thus, since 1973 and in parallel with
their U.S. hegemony, the European members of the Trilateral Commission
were busy creating the European Union. In fact, the EU's Constitution
was authored by Commission member Valéry Giscard d'Estaing
in 2002-2003, when he was President of the Convention on the Future
of Europe.
The steps that led to the creation of
the European Union are unsurprisingly similar to the steps being
taken to create the North American Union today. As with the EU,
lies, deceit and confusion are the principal tools used to keep
an unsuspecting citizenry in the dark while they forge ahead without
mandate, accountability or oversight.
Conclusion
It is clear that the Executive Branch
of the U.S. was literally hijacked in 1976 by members of the Trilateral
Commission, upon the election of President Jimmy Carter and Vice-President
Walter Mondale. This near-absolute domination, especially in the
areas of trade, banking, economics and foreign policy, has continued
unchallenged and unabated to the present.
Windfall profits have accrued to interests
associated with the Trilateral Commission, but _the effect of
their "New International Economic Order" on the U.S.
has been nothing less than devastating. (See America Plundered
by the Global Elite for a more detailed analysis)
The philosophical underpinnings of the
Trilateral Commission are pro-Marxist and pro-socialist. They
are solidly set against the concept of the nation-state and in
particular, the Constitution of the United States. Thus, national
sovereignty must be diminished and then abolished altogether in
order to make way for the New World Order that will be governed
by an unelected global elite with their self-created legal framework.
If you are having negative sentiment against
Trilateral-style globalization, you are not alone. A 2007 Financial
Times/Harris poll revealed that less than 20 percent of people
in six industrialized countries (including the U.S.) believe that
globalization is good for their country while over 50 percent
are outright negative towards it.21 (See Global Backlash Against
Globalization?) While citizens around the world are feeling the
pain of globalization, few understand why it is happening and
hence, they have no effective strategy to counter it.
The American public has never, ever conceived
that such forces would align themselves so successfully against
freedom and liberty. Yet, the evidence is clear: Steerage of America
has long since fallen into the hands of an actively hostile enemy
that intends to remove all vestiges of the very things that made
us the greatest nation in the history of mankind.
Endnotes
Rockefeller, David, Memoirs (Random House,
2002), p.418
Trialogue, Trilateral Commission (1973)
Time Magazine, Jimmy Carter: Man of the Year, January 7, 1977
Sutton & Wood, Trilaterals Over Washington (1979), p. 7
New York Times, Jimmy Carter, Leslie Gelb, May 23, 1976
ibid.
Trialogue, Looking BackAnd Forward, Trilateral Commission, 1976
ibid.
Sutton & Wood, Trilaterals Over Washington (1979), p. 4
ibid. p. 5
Brzezinski, Zbigniew, Between Two Ages: America's Role in the
Technetronic Era (New York: Viking Press, 1973), p. 246.
ibid.
ibid.
ibid.
Gardner, Richard, The Hard Road to World Order, (Foreign Affairs,
1974) p. 558
Goldwater, Barry, With No Apologies, (Morrow, 1979), p. 280
Global Banking: The World Bank, Patrick Wood, The August Review
Board of Directors, Council on Foreign Relations website
Building a North American Community, Council on Foreign Relations,
2005
Rockefeller, David, In the Beginning" The Trilateral Commission
at 25, 1998, p.11
FT/Harris poll on Globalization, FT.co
New World Order page
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