This article appears in the February 12, 2016 issue of Executive Intelligence
Review. Mike Billington
Escalating Toward World War
III
by Robert Ingraham
Feb. 7—If they desire to live, well-meaning
political leaders, military commanders, and the people of Europe and the United
States must wake up from their self-imposed fantastical dreamworld. The ruthless
crushing of the Martin O’Malley presidential campaign, an action taken by the
Obama White House together with its masters in London and Wall Street, has now
signaled a commitment by the British Empire and the Obama administration to
rapidly escalate the war confrontation with both Russia and China. Everything
which has happened so far—from Ukraine, to Syria to the South China Sea—is a
mere prelude, a preface to what is now about to unfold. A terrifying scenario is
upon us.
Russian President Vladimir Putin with Chinese President
Xi Jinping.
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As Matthew Ogden characterized recent remarks by Lyndon LaRouche
in the Feb. 5, 2016 LPAC Webcast, “the abrupt termination of the O’Malley
presidential campaign, even before the final Iowa results were announced, was [a
signal] that leading British circles, controlling the Barack Obama Presidency,
are desperately escalating their preparations for war against Russia and China.
The actions against O’Malley were, in effect, a red-dye indication of the war
preparations already well underway. The fact that there were escalating British
Crown provocations against Russian President Vladimir Putin, coincident with the
actions against O’Malley, sealed the case.”
The top-down decision to force O’Malley from the presidential race
was taken mere days after Lyndon LaRouche had identified O’Malley as the only
viable candidate around whom a new Presidency could coalesce, a Presidency whose
first order of business would be to terminate the murderous speculative
activities of Wall Street. It was the specter of a LaRouche-influenced O’Malley
Presidency which forced the hand of Obama and his friends, and which has now
catapulted them into a desperate flight forward.
I. Casus Belli
Some analysts offer the opinion that it is the crisis and
disintegration within the trans-Atlantic banking and financial system which is
propelling Western leaders to opt for war. That is only apparently true, and
ultimately represents misinformed opinion. Rather, there are two far more urgent
considerations confronting the oligarchs and pseudo-oligarchs of London and Wall
Street. The first of these is the reality of the catastrophic collapse of the
productive economies of both Europe and the United States, a collapse that began
in the 1970s but which has escalated non-linearly, since the repeal of
Glass-Steagall, during the last
fifteen years of the Bush and Obama presidencies. This collapse includes both an
ongoing destruction of the physical economy, that is, industry, infrastructure,
and science, as well as the destruction of the cognitive powers of the
workforce, in terms of skills, education, and culture. The starkest example of
this take-down of productive potential has been the almost complete annihilation
of the remaining U.S. space program by Barack Obama.
This ongoing, escalating collapse of productive capabilities has
created two problems for the forces of Empire. On the one hand, since the repeal
of Glass-Steagall, the entire trans-Atlantic financial system has been
transformed into a speculative house of cards, with gambling bets being
multiplied daily and hourly, the whole multi-quadrillion dollar edifice of paper
becoming ever more precarious by the minute. Yet, at the end of the day, those
financial obligations rest on top of a physical economy which is disappearing
and a workforce which is being driven into the ground. The physical means to
sustain the gamblers’ carnival no longer exists as of 2016. The U.S. and
European physical economy—and the humongous financial parasite which feeds off
of it—is going, going, gone. In response to this reality, some people will jump
out of windows; others will go to war.
The second, and from the imperial viewpoint, more urgent problem
associated with the collapse of the trans-Atlantic economy is that, simultaneous
with this process of western physical decay and death, the world has also
witnessed the explosive economic and scientific emergence of Russia and China,
as well as several other nations associated with them through the BRICS, the
Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the Chinese “One Belt, One Road” policy.
China, Russia, and their allies are now surpassing the West in terms of
manufacturing, energy production, basic science, and space technology and
exploration, and this gap is widening rapidly. The reality that a new
China/Russia-led world is coming into existence—a world directionality which is
increasingly determined by this explosive growth of productive potential—is a
mortal threat to the interests of the British Empire and Britain’s self-obsessed
puppet Barack Obama. A future world, wherein the outlook of the win-win
philosophy of Xi Jinping becomes hegemonic, is a world in which the British
Empire will no longer exist and the oligarchical outlook will be
obliterated.
To put the reality of the strategic disparity into tangible terms,
consider:
China is now the largest manufacturing economy in the world, with
a 22% share of manufacturing activity. The United States is in second place with
a 17.4% share. Between 1992 and 2012 China has gone from 7th to 1st place;
Russia went from 17th place in 2002 to 7th in 2012; and India went from 16th to
9th place. During this same period, manufacturing output in the United States,
Canada, Britain, France, Germany, and Italy dropped, and dropped precipitously
in some cases.
In 2000, the United States produced 102 million metric tons (mmt)
of steel. China, India, and Russia combined produced 214 mmt. By 2014, U.S.
production had dropped to 88 mmt, while the production of China, India, and
Russia leaped to 1,001 mmt, a 500% increase. China now produces ten times as
much steel as the United States. (An even starker picture emerges if one looks
at the 1967 figures, when the U.S. produced 115 mmt, and China and India
combined produced only 20 mmt.) As of 2015, the United States is now the largest
steel importer in the world.
There were almost 18 million Americans employed in manufacturing
jobs in 1998 (already substantially down from the post-World War II peak in 1979
of 20 million). By 2010, this figure had declined to slightly over 11 million, a
decline of more than 35% in twelve years. Despite the much ballyhooed Obama
campaign (and its phony statistics) to bring manufacturing jobs back to America,
this picture has not changed in the last six years. Seven million American
factory jobs have simply vanished in the “post-Glass-Steagall era” since 1999,
many from the most advanced U.S. industries and machine tool sectors. Today,
“public services,” as well as finance, insurance, and real estate all surpass
manufacturing in employment.
Even more dramatic has been the ongoing decay and collapse in
education, water delivery systems, electricity generation, transportation, and
other crucial infrastructure in America. Space does not permit a full
description of all of the particulars of this collapse in productive
capabilities here, nor an examination of the ongoing destruction of the culture,
cognitive levels, and productive skills of the American population. One has only
to look at the possibility that Flint, Michigan, could soon vanish as a city due
to the lead poisoning of its residents from untreated local river water, to gain
insight into the current state of physical breakdown in the United States.
CC/Khalidshou
“China has built over 12,000 miles of high-speed rail
lines.”
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Meanwhile, since 2007—i.e., in only nine years—China has
built over 12,000 miles of high-speed rail lines, with 7,000 additional miles
planned for completion by 2020. In nuclear technology, in addition to China’s
already operating 31 nuclear power plants, there are now 23 more plants under
construction, which will bring the total to 54. Additional reactors are also
planned, including some of the world’s most advanced. China’s current Five Year
Plan includes provisions for building six to eight new nuclear power plants a
year up to 2020, at which time it will increase to ten new plants a
year.
In the field of nuclear fusion, on Feb. 3, 2016 China’s
Institute of Plasma Physics reported that experiments on its EAST
superconducting tokamak had successfully created a sustained hydrogen plasma for
a record 102 seconds. The goal of EAST is to reach 100 million degrees in the
plasma and operate for 1,000 seconds, towards an eventual steady-state
operation, which will be required for commercial fusion power
production.
Space Exploration and the Galaxy
As LaRouche PAC leader Kesha Rogers has declared, in terms of a
national policy orientation that provides the platform for the future generation
of new scientific and productive potentials, the greatest crime of the Obama
administration has been the take-down of the U.S. space program. When Obama
ended the Constellation Project in 2009, he effectively terminated the
fifty-year U.S. space effort.
On Feb. 3, 2016, the same day as the breakthrough in fusion
energy research was announced, China’s Aerospace Science and Technology
Corporation announced that China is planning its next manned space launch, the
Shenzhou-11 mission, for later this year. Also, in 2016, China will launch its
second orbiting module, Tiangong-2. The Tiangong series is designed to develop
and test the technology that will be needed for the full-sized, manned station
in the next decade. There will be further test launches of China’s rockets this
year, including the heavy-lift Long March 5, which is needed to launch the
station modules and other heavy payloads, and the medium-lift Long March 7,
which will launch the future unmanned cargo vehicle, Tianzhou.
Earlier this year, on January 14, China announced the Chang’e-4
mission, a project to land a rover on the far side of the Moon, possibly as
early as 2018 (see accompanying articles in this issue). Another lunar mission,
the Chang’e-5, is scheduled to land on the Moon in 2017 and return lunar samples
to Earth.
Meanwhile, the Feb. 3 issue of Popular Mechanics reports
that Russian engineers are creating increasingly detailed designs for a future
manned lunar lander.
Let there be no unclarity. These Chinese and Russian space efforts
represent the future of the human race, because they represent what the human
being actually is, in his innermost nature, as different from and opposed to any
animal. Discoveries about the processes of our solar system and our galaxy, new
scientific breakthroughs, new technologies and inventions that can revolutionize
human affairs on Earth—this endeavor is now being aggressively pursued by China,
Russia, and their friends. If allowed to develop, this future will leave the
institutions and axioms of the British Empire in the dustbin of history.
The Bigger Issue for the Monarchy
Please take note: None of what has been discussed so far is
occurring in a timeless vacuum. To understand “the why and the how” of how world
events are proceeding, it is absolutely necessary to view the current state of
affairs through the eyes of the last three to four generations of British
oligarchs.
Beginning in 1900 Bertrand Russell authored a battle-plan, on
behalf of the British Empire, to put the “Renaissance Genie” of human
development back inside the lamp. Together with his allies, such as David
Hilbert, Russell launched attacks on Gottfried Leibniz, Bernard Riemann, Albert
Einstein, and others. His intention was to destroy the Renaissance tradition in
science and to impose a linear, logical view of the universe, one in which human
creativity—that is, actual human nature—is deemed not to exist. Russell’s view
is that of the Malthusian British imperialist, of the type that has always hated
the human species.
This is not simply a topic for scientists or mathematicians. The
Florentine Renaissance of Brunelleschi and Cusa had created the culture from
which the founding of the United States of America sprang, and the “republican
virus” of the American Revolution had led, particularly after the Union victory
in the U.S. Civil War, to the spread of American Ideals throughout the world.
The Russia of Alexander II, the Meiji Restoration in Japan, and—most
importantly—the Germany of Bismarck all represented, in their own ways, the
American policy to eradicate the bestiality of Empire.
German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, Lincoln’s
ally.
|
Russell’s job was to turn back the tide. Joined by others, such as
H.G. Wells and Prince Philip, Russell battled throughout the Twentieth Century
to destroy science, destroy classical culture, and to impose a policy of
worldwide population reduction which would end human progress forever.
Unfortunately for the Monarchy, things don’t always go their way,
as seen in the case of Franklin Roosevelt or the Soviet Union’s victory over
Nazi Germany. And things are not going their way right now. If the progress and
optimism engendered by China and Russia are allowed to proceed, rule by empire
is finished. Yet, the British, with their puppet-on-a-string Obama, are fiercely
committed to their own agenda, the agenda defined by Russell. They will not
yield. Thus, the stage is set. The drama proceeds. It is not that everyone wants
world war. But that, most certainly, is the trajectory. Blunders, bluffs, and
miscalculations will all add to the danger.
II. Financial Armageddon and Rearmament
Since January 1, 2016, that is, within just the last 38 days,
major U.S. and European bank stock values have crashed by more than 30%. On
February 1, the German financial mouthpiece Handelsblatt declared that
“Deutsche Bank is in a free-fall,” adding that the real center of the collapse
of European finance is not on the periphery, i.e., Greece, Portugal, or Spain,
but is centered in Germany and France, the industrial heartland of Europe. One
financial publication estimates that Deutsche Bank, the largest foreign exchange
dealer in the world, is sitting on a pile of debt that is 70% “impaired.” On
Feb. 4, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported that BlackRock and
Qatar, the two largest shareholders of Deutsche Bank, might pull out if things
get worse. Other institutional investors have long since sold their shares.
Union Investment, a German fund owned by the Raffeisen (cooperative) banks and
credit unions, has halved its Deutsche Bank equities and warns of investing in
shares altogether. One analyst stated that European leaders are now desperate to
hide the actual nature of the crisis, “the real European problem: a giant
financial black hole being created in Germany.” Deutsche Bank alone holds 64
trillion Euros of derivative investments, five times the GDP of the 19-country
Eurozone.
CC/Epizentrum
Deutsche Bank, “a gigantic financial black
hole.”
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The banking sector on both sides of the Atlantic is crashing down.
While Deutsche Bank shares have fallen by 35%, those of Citicorp have sunk by
22%, Goldman Sachs by 6%, JP Morgan Chase by 14%, Morgan Stanley by 23%, Bank of
America by 22%, and Credit Suisse by 22%.
As financial expert Claudio Celani reported in the Feb. 5, 2016
issue of EIR, on Jan. 26 the entire European banking system came within
a hair’s breadth of collapse, which was only prevented by a decision of the
European Commission to allow a bail-out of bad Italian bank loans, in violation
of its own explicit rules.
As to the real physical economy, in the United States, mass
layoffs in January were 42% higher than in January 2015, and a whopping 218%
more than in December 2015. Retail cut the most jobs, with 22,246 announced mass
layoffs—a seven-year high—and the energy sector was a close second, with the
20,246 mass layoffs. Texas was the state worst hit in the nation, followed by
Arkansas, Ohio, and Virginia.
Meanwhile, the January monthly survey by the U.S. Federal Reserve
of loan requests from the manufacturing and commercial sector shows a dramatic
decline—more than 11%.
On the Hair Trigger
On Feb. 2, U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter delivered a
speech to the Economic Club of Washington, a speech wherein he presented what
can only be characterized as a military budget for World War III. Naming both
Russia and China as the two primary strategic threats to the United States,
Carter announced that the Obama administration will be requesting $3.4 billion
for the “European Reassurance Initiative,” way up from the current $789 million,
to fund an expanded U.S. military presence in Europe, more training, more
exercises, and more pre-positioned equipment, all designed to “respond
theater-wide if necessary.” At the same time, the Carter/Obama budget plan also
calls for $13 billion for a new ballistic missile submarine over the next five
years, to replace the current fleet of Ohio-class submarines, and it stresses
the need to fund all three legs of the U.S. strategic deterrent “triad”—not only
the new submarines but also new nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic
missiles and a new bomber for the Air Force.
U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Siuta B. Ika
U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton
Carter
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Other Obama Administration spokesmen have also emphasized that it
is the targeting of Russia and China, not the “war on terror,” which dominates
what passes for thinking in the White House. On Feb. 4, an interview with
Obama’s Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, was broadcast over all
major TV and radio outlets in the Washington, D.C. area. Clapper bluntly
declared, “ISIL is not a mortal enemy of the United States. It causes harm and
can kill our people. But it can’t inflict mortal damage to the United States.
Russia can.” He stressed the nuclear capability “that could render great harm to
this country,” and warned that Russia is “on a very impressive campaign to
modernize its military in all its dimensions.”
On Feb. 4, Obama’s lapdog, the bitch-in-heat Hillary Clinton, went
all in for a confrontation with Russia. Asked about Defense Secretary Ashton
Carter’s plan to massively build up advanced nuclear military forces on Russia’s
borders, Hillary said, “What Secretary Carter is looking at is the constant
pressure that Russia’s putting on our European allies. The way that Russia is
trying to move the boundaries of the post-World War II Europe. The way that he
[Putin] is trying to set European countries against one another, seizing
territory, holding it in Crimea. Beginning to explore whether they could make
some inroads in the Baltics . . . We’ve got to do more to support our partners
in NATO, and we have to send a very clear message to Putin that this kind of
belligerence, that this kind of testing of boundaries will have to be responded
to. The best way to do that is to put more armor in, put more money from the
Europeans in so they’re actually contributing more to their own defense.”
On the same day as the Clinton speech, the Turkish government, in
defiance of the Open Skies Treaty, blocked a Russian crew from flying an
observation flight over Turkey. The next morning, Russian Defense Ministry
spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov tied the Turkish refusal to evidence
that shows Turkish troops are in the midst of preparations to invade Syria.
Konashenkov stated, “The Russian Defense Ministry regards these actions of the
Turkish party as a dangerous precedent and an attempt to hide the illegal
military activity near the Syrian border. Moreover, the Russian party has
reasonable grounds to suspect intensive preparation of Turkey for a military
invasion of the territory of a sovereign state—the Syrian Arab Republic.” Russia
is in possession of a video that shows the Turkish military shelling Syrian
territory using heavy artillery positioned close to the border. Konashenkov
stated, “This is what we call a fact. This is irrefutable proof that Turkish
armed forces shell borderline Syrian settlements with large-caliber artillery
systems.”
Russian Ministry of Defense
Igor Konashenkov, head of Press and Information of the
Russian Ministry of Defense of the Russian
Federation.
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Escalation in the region is not merely coming from Turkey.
Recent decisions have been announced by the Obama administration to send more
troops and military equipment to both Iraq and Syria, which in the case of Syria
is a direct violation of both Syrian sovereignty and international law.
Additionally, on Feb. 5 the government of Saudi Arabia announced its desire to
send ground troops to Syria to aid the anti-Assad “rebels” in their efforts to
topple the Syrian government, an action which would put them in direct military
conflict with Russia.
Desperate diplomatic efforts to diffuse the escalating
conflict—most particularly those of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in pushing forward Syrian peace talks in
Geneva—are being sabotaged by Obama and Obama’s controllers in London. Under
direct pressure from Obama, Kerry’s State Department was forced to add five
names to the so-called “Magnitsky List”—a list of leading Russian individuals
sanctioned by the U.S. government for supposed human rights violations. This
act, a blatant affront to Putin and the Russian government, came just days after
the Treasury Department issued the scurrilous attack on Putin personally, as
“corrupt,” and the simultaneous release in London of a judge’s report which
states that the 2006 death of Alexander Litvinenko was “probably” ordered
directly by Putin. All of this is intended by the murderer Obama and Buckingham
Palace to poison the well in Geneva and destroy the peace talks.
On the Other Side of the World
On Feb. 1, Global Times, a publication put out by
People’s Daily, the newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, published
a lead editorial warning that the United States is preparing for war, nuclear
war, against China. It called for China to “accelerate its speed of building up
strategic strike capabilities, including a nuclear second-strike
capability.”
The Global Times editorial references the U.S. deployment
of a warship within the 12-mile limit of one of its islands in the Xisha
(Paracel) Islands on Jan. 30, noting that this is not an unoccupied island, nor
an artificially created island, but rather the Zhongjian Island “under China’s
actual control, and China has released the territorial sea baseline of the Xisha
Islands, including Zhongjian Island. Therefore, the U.S. provocation this time
is more vicious.” The editorial goes on to state that this violation of Chines
territory by the U.S. military has to be seen within the context of both the
ongoing U.S. military occupation of the Philippines as well as a direct threat
to the enormous sea trade by China through the South China Sea.
On the same day as the appearance of the Global Times
editorial, Chinese President Xi Jinping participated in a grand inauguration
ceremony in which he awarded the ceremonial flags of the five reconstituted
military theaters. After the singing of the national anthem, President Xi spoke,
saying, “The establishment of the five theater commands and their joint
operational institutions is of great and far-reaching significance in ensuring
the People’s Liberation Army to be capable of fighting and winning battles and
effectively safeguarding China’s national security.” Xi said the move to
establish the theater commands and form the joint battle command system is a
strategic decision by the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and
the Central Military Commission aimed at creating a strong military. He
concluded by stating that the Chinese military should “always be prepared for
war, so as to safeguard China’s national sovereignty, security and development
interests.”
III. History to Consider
In his autobiography, Marshal of Victory, General Georgy
Zhukov documents how the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany in June
1941 was an action taken, to a large degree, out of fear, weakness, and
desperation. By 1941 the economy of the German Reich was collapsing, held
together largely by slave labor and raw materials looted from conquered
territory. German industrial output actually declined from 1936 to 1940. The
ability of the Hitler government to fund and resupply the German military regime
was actually disappearing. Despite intensive efforts by the British ruling class
to entice Germany into attacking the Soviet Union, almost all of Hitler’s
military advisors warned that this was a war Germany could not win.
General Georgy Zhukov and General Dwight
Eisenhower.
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Conversely, between 1938 and 1941, Soviet industrial output
overtook and surpassed German production. The same is true for military
armament. By 1941 the Soviets were outproducing Germany in tanks and other key
equipment, and the gap was growing. The newer Soviet tanks and aircraft were
also superior to their German equivalents. By June of 1941, the situation facing
Hitler—in regard to going to war with Russia—was essentially “now or never,” as
any further delay would only increase the growing gap in industrial and military
capabilities.
A very similar situation existed in 1914. Between 1880 and 1913,
German coal production increased by 400%; steel production increased 500%;
German rail lines increased from 5,000 km to 47,000 km; 50% of all European
electric power generation was in Germany; other German manufacturing increased
by 500%. A physical-economic-scientific power was developing that posed a direct
threat to the global hegemony of the British Empire, an empire whose power was
waning, and one which was largely sustained through colonial wars of
extermination, drug-trafficking, and financial speculation. It was the growing
weakness and fear within the Empire which impelled it to act.
So today, we see the collapse of the trans-Atlantic region
proceeding apace with the industrial and scientific Renaissance emerging from
China and Russia. Will London respond any differently than in 1914 or than as
Hitler acted in 1941? Under the Putin leadership, over a relatively very brief
time span, Russia has achieved a startling revolution in its war-fighting and
war-avoidance capabilities. That includes new generations of military equipment
and well-trained personnel. Even the top NATO maritime commander recently
congratulated the Russians on the technological leap in their submarine warfare
capabilities.
On Feb. 2, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu held a
teleconference with the leadership of the Russian military leadership to review
the progress of its modernization programs. The proportion of modern equipment
in the Aerospace Forces has now reached 52%, with further deliveries of Su-35
fighters and Su-34 bombers, and Ka-52 and Mi-28N strike helicopters. They also
discussed the resumption of production of Tu-160 strategic bombers and the
implementation of automated planning systems and programs to improve the manning
of the armed forces in general, among other things.
Reviewing the staggering accomplishments of this effort for
military modernization, one is struck forcefully by the similarity to what was
accomplished under Stalin from 1938 to 1941.
Responses to these developments from U.S. military analysts have
been somber. Russia’s submarine fleet is now particularly feared, much more so
than during the Cold War, when the Soviet Union had many more submarines. NATO
submarines are seeing “more activity from Russian submarines than we’ve seen
since the days of the Cold War,” Royal Navy Vice Admiral Clive Johnstone,
commander of NATO’s Maritime Command stated in an interview. He added that NATO
submarines are encountering “a level of Russian capability that we haven’t seen
before . . . the submarines the Russians are building are much better than
anything they had before . . . Russia has made technology leaps that [are]
remarkable, and a credit to them.”
Johnstone’s comments followed, by days, an article in the
Jan. 31 London Independent, which reported on the “shock”
felt by Western military leaders who expected Russia’s military deployment to
Syria to fail in short order, but instead have watched the Russian military
sustain a complex operation at a high operational tempo for four months now.
“Russian military jets have, at times, been carrying out more sorties in a day
in Syria than the U.S.-led coalition has done in a month,” the
Independent reported. “The Russian navy has launched
ballistic missiles from the Caspian Sea, 900 miles way, and kept supply lines
going to Syria. The air defenses installed by the Russians in Syria and eastern
Ukraine would make it extremely hazardous for the West to carry out strikes
against the Assad regime or Ukrainian separatists.”
* * *
The American and European physical economies and productive
capabilities are in a shambles, declining and dying day by day. The
trans-Atlantic banking system and financial empire of derivatives is at the
point of vaporizing. What will Obama do? What will Queen Elizabeth do? What do
you think they might do?
Lyndon LaRouche stated during his Feb. 4 national Fireside
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