Wars: US Militarist Factions in Command - by James Petras
http://dissidentvoice.org/2015/11/wars-us-militarist-factions-in-command/
"...The overarching militant ideology which permeates US imperialist foreign policy obscures a deep and recurrent weakness - US policy makers master the mechanics of war but have no strategy for ruling after intervening. This has been glaringly evident in all recent wars: Iraq, Syria, Libya, Ukraine etc..."
(paraphrased) "The American political class is unwilling to work together with Russia, Iran, and the Assad government in Syria to end the threat of terrorism in that region. They would rather the conflict continued. To work with these other governments would indicate that the US is no longer the "invaluable" and "essential" state, the hegemon, something the polical class cannot accept. Only those solutions which the US dictates, only those solutions in which all others compromise - but the US barks out orders from its imperial throne- are acceptable to this monstrous regime.
Hence the US "support" for the idiotic Turkish downing of the Russian jet.
(from one of the commentators, very much paraphrased, in the show on the downing of the Russian jet.)
"...The overarching militant ideology which permeates US imperialist foreign policy obscures a deep and recurrent weakness - US policy makers master the mechanics of war but have no strategy for ruling after intervening. This has been glaringly evident in all recent wars: Iraq, Syria, Libya, Ukraine etc..."
If there is a strategy at all, it accords with the situation as described in #348. Punishment all around. Casualties at home and abroad should be considered together in order to better appreciate the scale of the disaster that America is. Nations like The UK, Germany, Canada, France, etc, are it's mini-me's.
Slumberjack clearly doesn't know what schizophrenia is, so uses the word to make himself look clever. Shame on slumberjack.
Slumberjack clearly doesn't know what schizophrenia is, so uses the word to make himself look clever. Shame on slumberjack.
What part of what I said about America and it's police schizophrenia seems unfounded to you, enough that would give you a sense that I'm unclear about what that word implies?
You still don't get it.
I don't get what you're saying that much is true. If it is so clear to you that I don't know what schizophrenia is, what precisely has led you to that conclusion?
"The US is the most dangerous country in the world."
The United States is historically the most dangerous country in the world as well as the most fearful and unsafe, Mexican newspaper La Jornada stated Monday in an opinion article. “Everything (in the U.S.) is about threat, everything is dangerous and everybody is a suspect,” the daily wrote. “And although politicians and mainstream media insist threats come from the exterior—such as Islamic State terrorist, drug traffickers, Colombians, Mexicans, Venezuelans and non-white immigrants—the true menace to the country comes from within.”
USA! USA! We're number one! ooh rah! Hell Yeah!
"Each day, 89 people die in the U.S. Each year, 32,000. Between 2001 and 2013, over 406,000 people have been shot to death."
This content was originally published by teleSUR at the following address:
"http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/US-Is-the-Most-Dangerous-Country-in-the-World-Says-La-Jornada-20151130-0034.html". If you intend to use it, please cite the source and provide a link to the original article. www.teleSURtv.net/english
According to Wikipedia, Mexico is actually ahead of the U.S. in gun deaths.
If you exclude suicides, and look only at homicides -- "people [who] have been shot to death", Mexico's rate is nearly triple.
Nice deflection Magoo. Try appling for a State Department job. lol.
The story makes the very good point, which of course you completely ignored, that "although politicians and mainstream media insist threats come from the exterior—such as Islamic State terrorist, drug traffickers, Colombians, Mexicans, Venezuelans and non-white immigrants—the true menace to the country comes from within.”
Any Mexican data has no bearing on that claim. Try again.
You might also want to refrain from your apparent religious faith in Wiki data.
The story makes the very good point, which of course you completely ignored, that "although politicians and mainstream media insist threats come from the exterior—such as Islamic State terrorist, drug traffickers, Colombians, Mexicans, Venezuelans and non-white immigrants—the true menace to the country comes from within.”
I ignored it because it's just someone's opinion.
The gun death numbers that you quoted are actually [i]measurable[/i].
You might also want to refrain from your apparent religious faith in Wiki data.
If it's false, show us.
America: The Punishment Society. “Violence is the Defining Hallmark of the US”
Once upon a time, a dental or medical exam was an opportunity to read a book. No more. The TV blares. It was talking heads discussing whether a football player had been sufficiently punished. The offense was unclear. The question was whether the lashes were sufficient.It brought to mind that punishment has become a primary feature of American, indeed Western, society. A baker in Colorado was punished because he would not bake a wedding cake for a homosexual marriage. A county or state clerk was punished because she would not issue a marriage license for a homosexual marriage. University professors are punished because they criticize Israel’s inhumane treatment of Palestinians. Whistleblowers are punished—despite their protection under federal law—for revealing crimes of the US government. And children are punished for being children.
But not by their parents. Police can slam children around and seriously injure them. But parents must not lay a hand on a child. If a child gets spanked, as everyone in my generation was, in comes the Child Protective Services Gestapo. The child is seized, put into “protective custody,” and the parents are arrested. The CPS Gestapo receives a federal bonus for every child that they seize, and they want the money....
"17,000 American public schools have a police presence. All common sense has long departed.
Five and six year-olds who get into a shoving match are arrested and carried off in handcuffs. Police issue tickets and fines to students for what was ordinary behavior in my school days. Suspensions result as do police records that hamper a child’s prospect of success.
The violence that Ben Fields used against Shakara is routine. Mother Jones reports that a Louisville goon thug, Jonathan Hardin punched a 13-year old in the face for cutting into the cafeteria line and of holding another 13-year old in a chokehold until the student became unconscious. A dispute over cell phone use resulted in a Houston student being hit 18 times with a police weapon.
The police violence extends beyond the schools. Any American unfortunate enough to have a police encounter risks being tasered, beaten, arrested, and even murdered.
Protesters, war and otherwise, are beaten, tear gassed, arrested. The American police state is working hard to criminalize all criticism of itself. Violence has become the defining hallmark of the United States. It is even the basis of US foreign policy. In the 21st century millions of peoples have been killed and displaced by American violence against the world."
Awash in blood, violence and death.
Every day in the USA is Hallow'een. But it's no trick or treat. It's just a bloody axe through the head.
Kosmos, do you really think you're doing anything for your cause by citing a ranting anti-gay bigot like Paul Craig Roberts? He equates the CIVIL SERVANT who illegally refused to do her job and marry gay people, with pro-Palestinian activists, as victims of state oppression. You really think that's gonna help win anyone(besides Roberts' fellow fascists) over to the Palestinian cause?
You guys are always whining about how Obama and his liberal imperilaist crowd try to portray themselves as the champions of gay equality, in order to justify going after supposed homophobes like Putin. But you can hardly blame them, when anti-imperialists themselves are rushing forward to embrace bigots like Paul Craig Roberts.
Oh, and by the way, businesses in Canada can also be punished for refusing to serve customers based on sexual orientation, and parents can be legally sanctioned for hitting children too hard. So, if that's your criteria for a police state...
Kosmos, do you really think you're doing anything for your cause by citing a ranting anti-gay bigot like Paul Craig Roberts? ...
When not only unranting progressives but even "ranting bigots" recognize that the US is awash in violence and death, it makes a stronger point. It certainly doesn't mean anyone endorses odious homophobic views. The truth is that even the worst bigots and the most enlightened saints of the left have a common interest in a non-violent home and planet. And a safe world trumps everything else.
I read recently a remark by Chris Hedges about so-called cultural diversity and post-modern identity politics. It was in the context of trying to understand the frothing racism from (poor white) people who, themselves, are suffering.
" The liberal class failed for decades to decry neoliberalism’s assault on the poor and on working [people]. It busied itself with a boutique activism. It is not that cultural diversity is bad. It isn’t. It is that cultural diversity when divorced from economic and political justice, from the empowerment of the oppressed, is elitist. And this is why these liberal values are being rejected by a disenfranchised white underclass."
This boutique activism is a snobbish version of the struggle for social justice. When the struggle for freedom is an act of exclusion, then you know somthing is rotten. We on the left have to take people as they are, warts and all, and show them what we have in common. That's how we defeat our political enemies.
It is that cultural diversity when divorced from economic and political justice, from the empowerment of the oppressed, is elitist.....
...thanks for this powerful statement!!
Chris Hedges is worth reading even if you disagree with him. He has an article every week on TruthDig and a TV show on TeleSur.
I think there is a fund-raiser for Canadian Dimension in Montreal with Hedges speaking. It's called the Algebra of Revolution. I'd love to see a post-event video of that.
Trump's Embrace of Fascism is America's Dirty Little Secret by Henry Giroux
What is truly sad, dangerous, and even cowardly is how few people along with the corporate media and his intellectual defenders recognize that Trump is symptomatic of the brutal seeds of totalitarianism now being cultivated in American society. Donald Trump represents more than the anti-democratic practices and antics of Joe McCarthy. On the contrary, he signifies how totalitarianism can mutate and take different forms in specific historical moments. Rather than being dismissed as a wild-card in American politics, it is crucial to recognize that Trump’s popularity represents a dangerous “political space…in both the wider culture and in recent history.” This is evident not only in his race baiting, but in his increasing support for violence against protesters at his rallies, and his call to “make American great again” by any means necessary, none of which is new to American society. What is new is the degree to which this endorsement of violence, racism, and the call to violate civil liberties are expressed so visibly and without apology. How else to explain the muted criticisms, if not almost non-existent public and media response, to his comments that: “we’re going to have to do things that we never did before. And some people are going to be upset about it, but I think that now everybody is feeling that security is going to rule… And so we’re going to have to do certain things that were frankly unthinkable a year ago…” This call to do “the unthinkable” is a fundamental principle of any notion of totalitarianism, regardless of the form it takes.
I read recently a remark by Chris Hedges about so-called cultural diversity and 'post-modern identity politics.'
I'm not sure if that term goes all that well together, post modernism and identity politics. I believe post modernism actually calls into question identity politics as yet another performative, hierarchical power structure.
Kosmos, do you really think you're doing anything for your cause by citing a ranting anti-gay bigot like Paul Craig Roberts? ...
When not only unranting progressives but even "ranting bigots" recognize that the US is awash in violence and death, it makes a stronger point. It certainly doesn't mean anyone endorses odious homophobic views. The truth is that even the worst bigots and the most enlightened saints of the left have a common interest in a non-violent home and planet. And a safe world trumps everything else.
But the article was about excessive punishments in the US, and was using the jailing of Kim Davis, who forced the state's hand by refusing to quit a job she didn't want to do, as AN EXAMPLE OF AN EXCESSIVE PUNISHMENT. In other words, Paul Craig Roberts doesn't know what the hell an excessive punishment is. So that completely trashes any credibility he may have on the topic of excessive punishment.
Money is raining down on the US military complex in the $1.15 trillion spending bill that was unveiled on Wednesday by various leaders of Congress. Of that portion, a good $572.7 billion is set aside for Pentagon expenditure. (These figures tend to be deceptive in themselves, given the notoriously unreliable accuracy of defence accounting.)
The Shocking, Unacceptable Levels of Hunger and Homelessness in American Cities
The U.S. Conference of Mayors today released its 2015 Hunger and Homelessness Survey, which gathered information on 22 cities around the country between Sept. 1, 2014, and Aug. 31, 2015. The cities reported on are led by mayors who serve on the U.S. Conference of Mayors’ Task Force on Hunger and Homelessness.
A number of important findings emerged from the survey:
● Emergency food assistance requests rose by an average of 2.8 percent during the survey period in more than half, 61 percent, of the cities involved in the survey.
● Twenty-three percent of requests for emergency food assistance in the cities surveyed went unmet.
● Food pantries and emergency kitchens had to cut back on the amount of food given out as groceries or meals in 47 percent of cities involved in the survey. Additionally, in far more than half of cities surveyed, 57 percent, families and individuals had to cut down on the number of visits to charitable food outlets they could make each month. The same percentage of cities were unable to meet food requests by homeless and hungry residents demand because they lacked sufficient resources.
● Lack of affordable housing, an issue that continues to worsen in many places around the country, was the primary reason given for homelessness among families with children. Poverty, unemployment and low-paying jobs were the reasons that followed.
● In 50 percent of cities surveyed, mayors indicated they expected homelessness to rise “moderately” next year. Similarly, 65 percent of cities say they expect emergency food requests to “moderately” increase over the coming 12 months.
USA! USA! How many homeless do you have to-day?!
what's with Amerians? is it private companies making a profit off of the lunch programs?
“I was fired for giving food to children that did not have money,” the former Cherry Creek School District employee wrote. “While I know what I did was legally wrong, I do not feel bad about it and I would do it again in a heartbeat.”The district could not comment on the allegations, citing privacy for all personnel, but communications director Tustin Amole told ABC News the district’s current lunch policy has been in place for at least five years.
While not required by law, the district will give a student a hot meal and charge the parent’s account the first three times they forget lunch money, Amole said. The fourth time, the student is given a cheese sandwich and milk.
“I will never understand how the 'best' country in the world considers a cheese sandwich to be adequate nutrition for a child,” Curry said on Facebook. “I will never understand how one of the richest countries in the world cannot provide lunch for its children.”
There have been several stories over the last few years of school cafeteria workers making the terrible decision to shame students for not having enough money in their accounts. In 2014, a Utah school actually confiscated and threw away the lunches of 40 children whose parents were delinquent on lunch payments. There was a collective outrage when those stories came out. There should be an equal outrage with this one. A compassionate woman should not be out of a job because a district’s lunch policy is inhumane.
Chris Hedges on The Illusion of Freedom in the USA
No vote we cast will alter the configurations of the corporate state. The wars will go on. Our national resources will continue to be diverted to militarism. The corporate fleecing of the country will get worse. Poor people of color will still be gunned down by militarized police in our streets. The eradication of our civil liberties will accelerate. The economic misery inflicted on over half the population will expand. Our environment will be ruthlessly exploited by fossil fuel and animal agriculture corporations and we will careen toward ecological collapse. We are “free” only as long as we play our assigned parts. Once we call out power for what it is, once we assert our rights and resist, the chimera of freedom will vanish. The iron fist of the most sophisticated security and surveillance apparatus in human history will assert itself with a terrifying fury.
Remedy?
... if real change is to be achieved, if our voices are to be heard, corporate systems of power have to be destroyed. This realization engenders an existential and political crisis. The inability to confront this crisis, to accept this truth, leaves us appealing to centers of power that will never respond and ensures we are crippled by self-delusion.
Prospects?
"History may not repeat itself. But it echoes itself. Human nature, after all, is constant. We will react no differently from those who went before us. This should not dissuade us from resisting, but the struggle will be long and difficult. Before it is over there will be blood in the streets."
America’s Addiction to Violence - Henry Giroux
Violence runs through American society like an electric current offering instant pleasure from all sources of the culture,
whether it be the nightly news and Hollywood fanfare or television series that glorify serial killers. At a policy level, violence drives an arms industry, a militaristic foreign policy, and is increasingly the punishing state’s major tool to enforce its hyped-up brand of domestic terrorism, especially against Black youth. The United States is utterly wedded to a neoliberal culture in which cruelty is viewed as virtue, mass incarceration the default welfare program and chief mechanism to “institutionalize obedience.” At the same time, a shark-like mode of competition replaces any viable notion of solidarity...
in the last three years 1 child under 12 years-old has been killed every other day by a firearm, which amounts to 555 children killed by guns in three years. An even more frightening statistic and example of a shocking moral and political perversity was noted in data provided by the Centers for Disease control and Prevention (CDC), which stated that “2,525 children and teens died by gunfire in [the United States] in 2014; one child or teen death every 3 hours and 28 minutes, nearly 7 a day, 48 a week.” In addition, 58 people are lost to firearms every day.
... the United States government is willing to lock down a major city such as Boston in order to catch a terrorist or prevent a terrorist attack, but refuses to pass gun control bills that would significantly lower the number of Americans who die each year as a result of gun violence. As Michael Cohen observes, it is truly a symptom of irrationality when politicians can lose their heads over the threat of terrorism, even sacrificing civil liberties, but ignore the fact that “30,000 Americans die in gun violence every year (compared to the 17 who died [in 2012) in terrorist attacks.”
The United States isn't even in the top half of the world, when it comes to homicide rates per 100,000. They're 120th out of 218.
think we're talking 1st world vs 1st world. not 3rd world vs 1st world
Oh, of course. Those third world folk should just make out their will and wait.
There's lots of totally good, plausible reasons for why Mexicans should need to kill one another, but what's Amerikkka's excuse, amiright?
There's lots of totally good, plausible reasons for why Mexicans should need to kill one another, but what's Amerikkka's excuse, amiright?
The strongest reason for the obscene numbers of murders and assasinations in Mexico is that it is next door to the biggest market for illegal drugs in the world. Organized crime in Mexico fights over the wealth associated with that trade. The illegal drug trade also contributes to the horrific corruption in Mexico that can see over 40 student teachers slaughtered and only a perfunctory investigation to follow.
Imperialism imports all sorts of drugs for its brainwashed, impoverished, stressed population and exports corruption, violence and death.
Supplemental: The Deadly Genius of Drug Cartels | Rodrigo Canales | TED Talks
"Poor Mexico. So far from God and so close to the United States."
There's lots of totally good, plausible reasons for why Mexicans should need to kill one another, but what's Amerikkka's excuse, amiright?The strongest reason for the obscene numbers of murders and assasinations in Mexico is that it is next door to the biggest market for illegal drugs in the world. Organized crime in Mexico fights over the wealth associated with that trade. The illegal drug trade also contributes to the horrific corruption in Mexico that can see over 40 student teachers slaughtered and only a perfunctory investigation to follow.
Imperialism imports all sorts of drugs for its brainwashed, impoverished, stressed population and exports corruption, violence and death.
So, recreational drug use is just an imperialist plot to zombify the metropolitan? Funny, then, how the imperialists never figured out that legalization would be the best way to ensure that the masses consume as much drugs as they possibly can.
And, I guess Tom Mulcair, who said that the NDP's first act if elected would be to legalize weed, must be the REAL fascist collaborator up here!
The strongest reason for the obscene numbers of murders and assasinations in Mexico is that it is next door to the biggest market for illegal drugs in the world. Organized crime in Mexico fights over the wealth associated with that trade.
And once those narcotics are inside the U.S. border, goodwill and cooperation make similar violence unnecessary. Drug dealers work things out using their words, I guess.
But even Mexico only clocks in at #22. Look who's gunning for top spot.
Armed Militia, Including Bundy Brothers, Occupying Forest Reserve HQ in Oregon, Calls 'US Patriots' To Arms (and vid)
https://www.rt.com/usa/327762-armed-bundy-militia-oregon-ranchers/
"Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy's three sons and 'about 150' militiamen have occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge HQ to protest the pending imprisonment of two Oregon ranchers accused of arson, arguing the federal government has no authority in local cases...."
dp
So, recreational drug use is just an imperialist plot to zombify the metropolitan? Funny, then, how the imperialists never figured out that legalization would be the best way to ensure that the masses consume as much drugs as they possibly can.And, I guess Tom Mulcair, who said that the NDP's first act if elected would be to legalize weed, must be the REAL fascist collaborator up here!
Watch the Rodrigo Canales video that I've linked to above. Im not going to repeat his arguments especially if they are going to fall on deaf ears.
Drug culture is conservative culture. That's the truth. I'm a better activist when the police, and their secret police brothers, cannot use drug laws to harrass and imprison me. Ask any Latin American lefty about this question. The reply will surprise you. And the growing NA police state simply enforces extreme drug laws in poor neighborhoods and lets things go in rich neighborhoods. Such selective enforcement is part of the class war.
Decriminalizing weed or legalizing it would help, that's true, espcially since the US prisons are full of people on pot related charges who don't belong there.There are bound to be differences in the ruling elites about how to rule - legal drugs, illegal drugs, etc. - and differnet elements who make their profits in different ways. Its up to us to exploit the differences among them to win the day for better policies to help ordinary people.
I don't think you're getting how the whole thing works, VOTD.
What explains Russia's homicide rate being so much higher than that of the USA?
#OregonUnderAttack: People Slam Lack of Govt Action After Bundy's Military Takeover in Oregon
https://www.rt.com/usa/327809-bundy-militia-oregon-reaction/
"Bundy's armed rancher militia taking over a federal building in Oregon seems to have aroused no concrete action from the government, compared to notable standoffs such as Ferguson, where minorities were involved..."
Chris Hedges & Cornel West in Conversation on the Fall of America (and vid)
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article43884.htm
"Revolution, Rebellion and Resistance."
Cynthia McKinney Interview
Russian anti-war, anti-globalization tour. 'Cold warriors in Washington are calling the shots'.
War Fraud: The Great Lies Behind Imperial Warfare in the 21st Century
http://off-guardian.org/2015/12/29/war-fraud-the-great-lies-behind-imper...
"Problem. Reaction. Solution. NATO imperialist engineer or exploit problems to creation reactions, with a view to creating previously planned solutions. Typically, problems serve to engineer public consent (reaction) for illegal invasions (solution).
The popular notion that the wars are being prosecuted for humanitarian purposes is absolutely ridiculous. The whole process of death and destruction is not rational or moral and the degeneracy is beyond evil.
Commentators call it imperialism."
The Proof is In: The US Government is the Most Complete Criminal Organization in Human History
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article43905.htm
"Unique among countries on earth, the US government insists its laws and dictates take precedence over sovereignty of nations."
And Canada its shameful, servile vassal always..
US Dropped 23,144 Bombs on Muslim Countries in 2015: Report
http://presstv.com/Detail/2016/01/14/445781/Council-of-Foreign-Relations-/
"The Council of Foreign Relations (CCF), a New York-based think tank, has estimated that 23,144 bombs were dropped last year by the US on Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia..."
"Unique among countries on earth, the US government insists its laws and dictates take precedence over sovereignty of nations."
That's just factually incorrect - the principle of universal jurisdiction goes back to Nuremberg war crimes trials and before, and is current law in Spain and other countries. That's why Henry Kissinger is terrified to travel - he knows some countries would arrest him for his numerous crimes.
The US regime - whether nasty "conservative" or 'well-meaning" liberal - has an official policy of insisting that no US citizen shall be prosecuted (much less arrested) for any international war crime, etc. The official view ... is that Americans shall only be prosecuted under US law. They LITERALLY insist that they are above the (international) law. The Court in The Hague that found the odious US regime guilty of mining Nicaraguan ports, and killing many international citizens, was simply ignored. And so on. And so on. Forever. As Chris Hedges so eloquently put it, the leading lights of US public life, ""pay homage to the fiction of the "democratic state" and the supposed "virtues" of the nation, including the right to wage endless war ..."
There are plenty of other examples. For those who care about other matters, such as the decriminalization of pot, note that our own Prince of pot, Marc Emery, was basically blackmailed into surrendering to the barbarous US regime for "crimes" (ie, violating US law) WHILE HE WAS IN CANADA. This brutal regime, that spreads death like jam on bread, applies its own laws extra-territorially as a matter of course. They don't give a shit.
It's the monstrous hubris of Empire. The right to wage endless war is evil incarnate. There's nothing like it.
So, if other countries are all helpless to resist American extraterritorial application of its laws, how come the French, the Swiss, and now the Poles have all successfully declined to send Roman Polanski back to LA for sentencing?
Oh, and check out the case of Charles Ng, an American serial killer apprehended in Calgary in 1985. The USA had to wait for six years, until the SCOC decided that he could be deported to California to face trial.
Not denying that what was done to Emery was wrong(seeds being legal in Canada), but I think that it probably had more to do with the willingness of Canada to extradite him, than with any superhuman ability of the USA to make that happen.
'America's Ship is Sinking': Former Bush Official Exposes the Unfixable Corruption Inside the Establishment (and vid)
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-12-20/americas-ship-sinking-former-bu...
"This ship is sinking,' retired US Army Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson tells Abby Martin, adding that 'today the purpose of US foreign policy is to support the complex that we have created in the national security state that is fueled, funded and powered by interminable war..."
US Army Orders $900 M of Chemical, Biological War Projects
"The US Army has awarded 17 companies, including major corporations, $900 million in contracts for logistics and service support for biological and chemical war projects the US Department of Defense announced."
Our mass-murdering neighbours again..
US Army Orders $900 M of Chemical, Biological War Projects
"The US Army has awarded 17 companies, including major corporations, $900 million in contracts for logistics and service support for biological and chemical war projects the US Department of Defense announced."
Our mass-murdering neighbours again..
Can anyone find the original source for this "quote" in the article?
“were awarded a $900 million… contract to the Joint Program Executive Office for Chemical and Biological Defense,”
It ain't on Google:
https://www.google.ca/?gfe_rd=cr&ei=TZGaVvjEK4S-kgKatbK4AQ&gws_rd=ssl#q=...
