January 2021 – education and deconstruction.com

Our Leaders Are Like Teens

OUR LEADERS ARE LIKE TEENS
sung to the tune of “Only In My Dreams” with apologies to Debbie Gibson.

The powers-that-be are keeping secrets.
We need to end their gravy train.
We’re losing our democracy,
in shrill-whining-Debbie-Gibson pain.

We must return to basic civics,
and regulate again.
Bring back laws on guns and Wall Street,
and cut how much we spend.

Yes, our leaders are like teens
with their social schemes.
They manipulate the scenes.

We need a lot more governing.
Not more polls. Not more Tweets.
Now we see our world come tumbling down.
Now all they see are Party seats.

Congress has to get the tough votes,
and go back to how it used to be:
The good bills got enough votes.
We’ll know again how it feels to be free.

Yes, our leaders are like teens
with their social schemes.
They manipulate the scenes.

Yes, yes, yes, yes our leaders are like teens
with their social schemes.
They manipulate the scenes.

Yes, our leaders are like teens
with their social schemes.
They manipulate the scenes.

Yes, yes, yes, yes our leaders are like teens
with their social schemes.
They manipulate the scenes.

Yes, yes, yes…

The Book of the Week is “Secrets of the Kingdom, The Inside Story of the Saudi-U.S. Connection” by Gerald Posner, published in 2005. There has been a two-faced relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia (also called the Kingdom) for forever. The author provided numerous examples (it got a bit tabloidy) of the greed and power-hunger of historical figures who have adversely affected countless people’s lives by controlling oil prices one way or another. The consequences of the power-brokers’ actions have run the gamut from inconvenience and economic hardship to ruined lives and needless deaths through the decades of the twentieth century into the twenty-first.

In 1973, Saudi Arabia’s King Faisal told Aramco (the oil company jointly owned by the United States and Saudi Arabia’s royal family) to refrain from shipping oil to America to create an artificial oil shortage to push prices up, leading to record profits for mostly the royal family and Aramco. Another excuse for having fun with oil-pricing was the Yom Kippur War.

By the mid-1970’s, Faisal and his family members were deriving inconceivable riches from oil. American businesspeople of all kinds (including executives of financial institutions) were overly eager to get the lucky Saudis (numbering in the thousands) to spend those riches on the trappings of modernity and luxury goods. The Kingdom imported foreigners to fill undesirable jobs, and contracting jobs.

The United States government became an accomplice to the culture of corruption (bribery and money laundering) that permeated the country. There was also a culture of anti-Zionist, anti-Semitic practices, called the “Arab boycott” (for more information, see this blog’s post, Bitter Scent). In March 1975, King Faisal was assassinated but not much changed.

June 1977 saw president Jimmy Carter of the United States sign an anti-Arab-boycott bill (which got an “A” for effort), but even his policies were handcuffed by the Saudis’ control over oil prices. Inter-agency rivalry raged between the National Security Council and the Justice Department over suppressing the latter’s investigations into Aramco’s (secret, highly lucrative and criminal- in American civil law) transactions.

In the late 1970’s, U.S. colleges such as USC, Duke and Georgetown got small endowments from the Saudis for creating Islamic or Arab studies departments. Even the Smithsonian jumped on the bandwagon.

To make the 1970’s an even more eventful decade for oil-pricing manipulation, there occurred the American president-Carter-brokered peace agreement between Israel and Egypt. The Iranian Revolution prompted the president to send American troops to the Kingdom to protect the oil there. But refused to sell it missiles. So it got missiles from China.

Yet more ugliness that affected geopolitical dynamics included a terrorist attack in Mecca in November 1979, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan the following month; not to mention the Iran-Iraq War. Around this time, the United States became the globe’s biggest importer of oil from the Kingdom and a supplier of weaponry to it.

In June 1982, King Fahd became the new leader of Saudi Arabia. Radicals forced Islamic extremism on ordinary Saudis– telling them when to pray, how to dress, how to eat, how to live, and whom their enemies should be– non-Muslims, Israelis, Jews, women.

Greedy American dealmakers didn’t care. They secretly knuckled under on the Arab boycott, even though it was against American law. They hoped to make, or were making megabucks, in the Kingdom and other Arab nations. This included former president Carter, who needed money for his presidential library. He allowed weapons seller Adnan Khashoggi to hold a 1983 fund-raiser for him in New York.

Lest one forget that the Iran-Contra Affair revealed honor among thieves– even sworn enemies (!): In 1983, “Israel supplied the weapons [missiles to Iran] and the Saudis paid for them.”

In 1985, Saudi Arabia bought military planes from Great Britain instead of from the United States, as the Israel lobby in America did achieve small victories from time to time. Nevertheless, terrorist attacks continued through the 1990’s.

Fast forward some years. As is well known, 9/11 was a particularly thorny, game-changing event for everyone involved in Middle Eastern politics, as a significant number of Americans died. It led to many outrages, but initially, little punishment for the planners, aiders and abettors (mostly from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia– NOT Afghanistan and NOT Iraq) of the terror attacks.

The George W. Bush administration coddled almost three hundred outright terrorists, government officials and royal-family members who had special knowledge of and ties to the guilty, by allowing them all to leave the United States on seven private flights while all other flights were suspended, within a week of the attacks. Those special people were never questioned, though they would have been valuable witnesses in connection with the investigation into the attacks.

Read the book to learn about a wealth of other ethical conflicts American government and business leaders faced, and still face in trying to: keep oil prices low, minimize worldwide bloodshed, and make maximum profits (never mind ethics); and additional history on the Kingdom, including its relationship with Osama bin Laden, and a national security scheme it allegedly put in place that, if triggered, would deliberately (!) make it a cancer cluster like Chernobyl. Forever.

Revolution 2.0 – BONUS POST

The Bonus Book of the Week is “Revolution 2.0, The Power of the People Is Greater Than the People in Power, a Memoir” by Wael Ghonim, published in 2012.

Born in 1980, the author attended high school in Egypt. The country had a rote education system, and cheating was rampant. The underpaid teachers derived the bulk of their income from private tutoring.

The 1980’s had seen the government of Egypt start to change for the worse. There was increasing poverty, brain drain, and oppression of religious groups. In 1987, Hosni Mubarak first came to power. He initially promised to serve only the two-term limit as president. But as he acquired more power, he acquired more ownership. And more power. And broke his promise. Every presidential “election” every six years thereafter, was rigged to allow Mubarak’s reelection three more times. There was only one political party. His.

While attending university in 1998, the author launched an Islamic website that featured audio tracks of the Qur’an. He was a technology geek, and became especially well-versed in Web communications. In 2004, a group of dissidents formed a group called Kefaya, meaning “enough” in Arabic. In 2006, ordinary Egyptians began protesting against the corruption of the regime.

In 2008, after eight months of numerous interviews, the author got a job with Google. In January 2010, in order to escape Mubarak’s oppressive regime, he and his wife and children moved to Dubai. It was around then that the author became politically vocal about Egypt’s rotten government. He wrote, “Out of hopelessness came anger.”

The author and a friend launched a Facebook page to promote an opposition candidate to Mubarak, as another “election” was coming up in 2011. The regime’s public relations machine was a master at smearing its political enemies; so it did, early and often.

In June 2010, the author created a Facebook page to tell the world about how the Egyptian government tortured and killed a dissident, and he posted a gruesome photo of the said dissident. Users commented on it in droves. In the coming months, the author and others used social media to plan peaceful protests to bring down the Mubarak government.

The author helped spark a movement that experienced growing-pains typical for such a movement. For a while, it became a victim of its own success: when a movement grows significantly in a short time– due to the increasing number of people in it– members begin to form factions and disagree, and go off and do their own thing. So some disgruntled members sabotage the original group’s goals.

Also, the political enemies of the movement see it growing, so they send infiltrators to divide and conquer it. That is why progress has been so slow for so many seemingly large political movements, such as civil rights and feminism.

In autumn 2010, the author was starting to get emotionally burnt out. He mistakenly used his personal account that revealed his true identity. Up to then, he had been super-careful to use false identities in his social media accounts, so as to avoid being arrested, jailed, interrogated, tortured and possibly murdered.

Egyptians were encouraged by Tunisia’s street protests, which were going on around the same time. But Egypt’s problems were worse. The author took the plunge to call Egypt’s movement “Revolution Against Torture, Poverty, Corruption and Unemployment.” He helped shape the protest messaging that convinced the public to peacefully take to the streets on Egyptian Police Day, January 25, 2011. He explained that he opposed only human rights abuses committed by law enforcement officials, not the respectful maintenance of order.

The author learned that: his contacts and access to communications were more important than plans, because best-laid plans always go awry– conditions on the ground change rapidly, and “People’s attachment to ideas is much stronger than their attachment to individuals, who can be doubted and defamed.”

Read the book to learn the details of the backstory, and what happened next.

Fighting For Common Ground – BONUS POST

PLEASE READ THE POST BELOW THIS ONE, AS BUGGY SOFTWARE PUBLISHED IT OUT OF CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER.

The Bonus Book of the Week is “Fighting For Common Ground, How We Can Fix the Stalemate in Congress” by Olympia Snowe, published in 2013.

Born in Augusta, Maine in 1947, the author was of Greek extraction. In the mid-1970’s, when she ran as a Republican for the state Senate in Maine, she rode a bicycle around to personally knock on doors to get votes. In the mid-1980’s, the NIH was still (!) providing federal funds for medical research only on men. In 1987, the Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Health and the Environment acknowledged this abomination. Finally in 1993, the author and others pushed through legislation that created an office of the NIH that conducted research on women, that spurred additional research on women at other organizations.

The author wrote that in the early 2000’s, Karl Rove proposed an evil plan involving five issues, with the goal of keeping the Republicans in power indefinitely. In George W. Bush’s second term, the Republicans pushed for and got a federal education mandate, but the other four initiatives were never fully implemented (fortunately): a Christian agenda, privatization of Social Security and healthcare accounts, and some immigration reform.

The author spent a large portion of this book lamenting about how gridlocked Congress has become due to the hostility between America’s two major political parties. Republicans had traditionally believed in maintaining a balanced budget, but that went out the window with the uncontrolled deficit spending in the George W. Bush years.

In early August 2011, Congress members went on their summer recess, shirking a boatload of important business. As a result, America’s national debt rating was downgraded by Standard and Poor’s for the first time in history.

Read the book to learn about the author’s recommendations on how to change the Senate’s protocol and rules in order to improve its functioning, civility and ability to compromise to achieve consensus.

Panama, The Whole Story

The Book of the Week is “Panama, The Whole Story” by Kevin Buckley, published in 1991.

“Weapons cost money, and selling, or helping in the sale of, cocaine produced the enormous revenues that produced the weapons.”

As is well known, democracy is not usually a “thing” in countries that have extensive black markets in weapons and drugs. So by the mid-1980’s, Panama had become a military dictatorship.

Over the course of two decades, Manuel Noriega, a general in the Panamanian army, became the king of trade in illicit weapons and cocaine. He was cozy with president Ronald Reagan, vice president George H.W. Bush, CIA head William Casey, secretary of state George Shultz, colonel Oliver North and a few other top American officials, plus the Drug Enforcement Agency and Fidel Castro.

Noriega controlled Panama’s ports, customs and railroads. The U.S. State Department was well aware of his drug trafficking, money laundering and human rights abuses. President Reagan loved him because he provided training facilities for the Contras– the militia who were fighting supposed Communists in Nicaragua. A major goal of the Reagan administration was to provide funding, weapons and military assistance for the Contras so that Central American countries wouldn’t fall to the Communists like dominoes. Assistance by any means necessary. Even via adolescent-boy spy, secret, treasonous means.

Anyway, through the 1980’s, Noriega engaged in various actions that angered common Panamanians– including ordering a hit on one of his Panamanian political enemies. He had one major American political enemy– Senator Jesse Helms. When the senator’s assistant visited Panama on a fact-finding mission, the American press (was told to) spread smears and lies about her. In June 1986, New York Times journalist Seymour Hersh finally outed Noriega as the detestable creature that he was, revealing details of his wickedness. But the U.S. was still not ready to oust Noriega.

In June 1987, patience among ordinary Panamanians was running short. Panama’s true fearless leader Noriega had crashed the economy (never the mind the figurehead Panamanian “president”) with his dictatorial shenanigans in collaboration with the United States. A minority of Americans were also fed up. They helped form the National Civic Crusade at Panama’s Chamber of Commerce in Washington, D.C. Their goal was to oust Noriega and bring ethical behavior back to Panama’s government.

The U.S. Senate even voted to suspend Noriega’s leadership while it investigated charges that he fixed his country’s “presidential” election in 1984. February 1988 saw Noriega indicted in absentia on drug charges in Miami– which indicated that Americans finally viewed drug trafficking as more anathema than Communism(!).

In spring 1988, as per usual for a non-democratic country, government troops fired at civilian protesters in Panama City streets, killing tens or thousands (no source was able to verify its own estimate). However, a U.S. Army memo admitted that the U.S. Defense Department wanted to deny compensation to the deserving victims’ families who asserted that the U.S. was legally liable for the harm done, as there might be too huge a number of such claims.

Read the book to learn of wrenches in the works that kept Noriega in power way longer than otherwise (hint: the Panama Canal Treaties, the 1988 U.S. presidential election, Elliott Abrams’ misleading pronouncements, etc., etc., etc.) and the events that finally forced matters to come to a head (hint: 23 Americans died in the fighting.)

West of Kabul, East of New York

“For all of us, surrendering to diversity is probably the only plausible path left to attaining unity. The international community is supposedly committed to helping the country rebuild, but the lost world will not be constituted. Whatever rises from the rubble, will be something new…”

The author wrote the above about Afghanistan, presumably after 9/11.

The Book of the Week is “West of Kabul, East of New York, An Afghan American Story” by Tamim Ansary, published in 2002.

Born in Kabul in Afghanistan in 1948, the author, who had an older sister and much younger brother, lived a childhood typical for his time and place– primitive living conditions, but in a communal space with multi-generational households of extended families.

In the mid-1950’s, the author’s father, through his former classmate, got a job on a U.S.-sponsored irrigation project, helping to further Afghanistan’s technological advancement. The goal was to “…sell the harvest for cash abroad, and use the currency to buy machines.” The author’s family lived in a corporate village with American expat families. They had Western leisure facilities– tennis, swimming, bicycling, square dancing, American music.

However, the project failed because the Helmand river branches changed their courses, so salt contaminated the water. Later on, water shortages, rather than lack of know-how or aid, caused crops to fail, when land reform (alleged equitable re-distribution of land among the peasants) was instituted.

In 1959, royal-family females were allowed to doff their veils, and coeducation was introduced at the local high school: about one hundred boys and four girls. Ironically, it was the Communists who forced the schools to educate the females, but (Muslim) Afghan leaders with old-school tribal and clan sensibilities got angry at that. Religious zealots (mullahs) in Kandahar incited a riot, in which some people died. “Within hours, the government put tanks on the streets [in Kabul] and jets in the air.” It had actually been a planned anti-Western campaign, but luckily, it failed.

Grades at the school, in a rural village, were based on only exams thrice every year in each of eighteen subjects. A few men (in their twenties) from the Soviet-trained military were sent there to get educated. Schools in Afghanistan’s cities got aid from the West.

The author’s mother was an American citizen, so when political turmoil flared in Afghanistan, and the author was awarded a high school scholarship as a sophomore in America, he, his mother and siblings moved to the United States. The author’s father was a citizen of only Afghanistan, but he could have become a college professor in America. Nevertheless, he chose to stay in his native country.

In the early 1970’s, the author found a community that mirrored his childhood’s– with an extended counter-culture “family” in Portland, Oregon. In 1979 (the year the Soviets invaded Afghanistan), while in Morocco, he met Sunni Muslims who didn’t pray in the mosques.

One of them explained that, “Because the religious scholars have sold themselves to the governments… When the people are lost, the gangsters are safe.” There must be the right balance of power and integration between a nation’s leaders and the people, politically, economically and culturally (including religion). If the government acquires too much power, the people become lost. If the people acquire too much power, there’s revolution.

Individuals’ mentalities are shaped by their experiences. The author’s much younger brother, Riaz, when he became an adolescent, apparently had a bad experience of culture shock after the family moved to the United States. Riaz’s early Afghani childhood in the late 1950’s must have been a comforting, happy experience. For, in early adulthood, he turned to radical Islam in finding his identity.

Read the book to learn how the author coped with reconciling the cultural clashes he encountered in his life.

Precarious

PRECARIOUS

sung to the tune of “Aquarius” with apologies to the Fifth Dimension.

When the boss was in the White House
and his cult confronted cops
then violence guided their protest
and hate did steer his props.

This is the dawning of the age of Precarious.
The age of Precarious.
Precarious! Precarious!

Scare-tactics and grandstanding,
hypocrisy, mistrust abounding.
Only falsehoods and derisions.
Hyper-hostile party divisions.
Economic devastation
and government’s deliberation.
Precarious! Precarious!

When the boss was in the White House
and his cult confronted cops
then violence guided their protest
and hate did steer his props.

This is the dawning of the age of Precarious.
The age of Precarious.
Precarious! Precarious!

As the votes got counted through the night,
can’t wait to inaugurate
to be the bearers of the new world order.
Only time will tell our fate.

We’re in the clutches of the age of Precarious.
The age of Precarious.
Precarious! Precarious!

Scare-tactics and grandstanding,
hypocrisy, mistrust abounding.
Evil, evil machinations,
germs-and-bullets consternation,
wrong-headed in policy courses
guided by historical forces.
Oh dear, us. Precarious.

Confucius Lives Next Door

The Book of the Week is “Confucius Lives Next Door, What Living in the East Teaches Us About Living in the West” by T.R. Reid, published in 1999.

In the mid-1990’s, the author’s American family moved from Colorado to Japan for a few years. The author described the cultural differences between his native country and East Asia, and provided extensive details on Confucius’ teachings.

In August 1994, the author’s ten-year old daughter, with her fairly new Japanese friend, took a day-trip un-chaperoned to Tokyo Disneyland. It was an hour and a half each way during which they encountered approximately 27 million strangers, and arrived home after dark. They had to change trains at three different crowded stations. On a daily basis, the author’s daughter had a long commute to elementary school five and a half days a week: a bus, a train, then another bus. Japanese parents had few worries about their children’s safety when they were out and about, even in urban areas.

The Japanese education system up until high school treated kids like little adults in giving them chores. They were expected to achieve group-oriented goals or else endure public shaming. The teachers did, on occasion, allow the classroom to erupt in total chaos. But just for several minutes. Then it was back to serious brainwork during the entire calendar year, except for three weeks of vacation in August.

The author sat in on Japan’s cultural ceremonies that were celebrated uniformly nationwide. One of them was on April 1. That was the day new graduates began work at big-name employers, where they lived in corporate villages. They were required to deposit their paychecks in their employer’s bank. Their lives were obviously highly structured and group-oriented. This kept them off the streets and out of trouble, unlike in the United States.

“But it is inevitable that some whose careers are creatively destroyed will stumble into marital discord, poverty, crime, drug abuse, and other social ills…
[Joseph] Schumpeter himself wrote that capitalism will eventually disintegrate because societies will no longer be willing to pay the social price.”

Along these lines, the author kept commenting on Americans’ cultural reputation as seen through the eyes of East Asians. Malaysia suggested establishing a “reverse Peace Corps” whereby Malaysians could volunteer to “… show Americans how to get along without murdering each other.”

Samuel Huntington’s 1996 book “The Clash of Civilizations” turned out to be correct. Huntington theorized that nations would have more tribal warfare rather than less, in the years after the Cold War. In recent decades, the United States has had more and more difficulty in distinguishing between
tourists and terrorists.

The author pondered whether Americans had too much freedom. He observed that the law-and-order East Asians lived squeaky-clean, straight-and-narrow lives through adhering to Confucius’ code of behavior; the trade-off was that they might have too little freedom. Some of the usual elements of democracy were lacking in their lives, BUT– they felt safe in their homes and on their persons, everywhere in their countries, any time of the day or night.

Read the book to learn about the additional aspects of the Japanese lifestyle from which– the author felt– Americans could take a lesson.

It Doesn’t Take A Hero

The Book of the Week is “It Doesn’t Take A Hero” by General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, written with Peter Petre, published in 1992.

Born in August 1934 in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, Schwarzkopf as an adolescent moved to Tehran in Iran to be with his father, a military bigwig. He then became an expat in other worldly venues– a boarding school in Geneva in Switzerland, more schooling in Frankfurt in Germany, Valley Forge Military Academy in Pennsylvania, and finally, the then-tuition-free West Point.

Schwarzkopf was accepted by one of America’s premier military colleges, even though he wasn’t a spoiled rich kid who had connections. It was July 1952. Culturally of its time– the school took a photo, rear and side, of each new (male) cadet naked except for a jockstrap. As part of this humiliation ritual, for his first full year, the cadet posted the photo in his locker.

Schwarzkopf’s military training consisted of the usual divestiture socialization, and an honor code. The latter was a vow of ethical behavior: “…a cadet does not lie, cheat, or steal, or tolerate anybody who does…” The year prior to his matriculation, the school had suffered a cheating scandal– the first in its history– after which ninety cadets, including the whole football team, were expelled. Tutors had revealed copies of exams in advance.

Schwarzkopf truly believed in Vietnamization, and cared about South Vietnamese soldiers, not just American soldiers, who were killed in the war. In 1965, he got down and dirty with the men under his command in Duc Co, in the Pleiku area. His first combat tour was crowded with incident: he participated in seven major operations, was wounded, survived malaria and dysentery, and was awarded two Silver Stars and three Bronze Stars.

Schwarzkopf enjoyed his tour because he had skilled, cooperative– the cream of the crop– Vietnamese military officers working with him, who successfully executed their missions. He didn’t know that most everywhere else, that situation was a rarity. So he thought the war was worth fighting.

When Schwarzkopf returned to West Point to fulfill his obligation to teach, the school had trouble finding quality students because no one wanted to be sent to Vietnam. In summer 1969, when he returned to Vietnam, he encountered a combination of the novel “Catch-22” and the TV sitcom “F-Troop.” But it was reality– needless deaths and ruined lives. Not without numerous difficulties, he whipped his subordinates into shape.

In late 1973, after eighteen months of laborious study to determine which military bases should close due to budget cuts, Schwarzkopf and the other naive members of his task force learned the hard way about the American government. The task force had done a whole lot of work and wasted a whole lot of time for nothing. Their recommendations were ignored.

To add insult to injury, Schwarzkopf was passed over for promotion: “The whole thing had been rigged and I hadn’t seen it. Obviously Walker had had the job from the start; O’Shei and I had just been there for show.”

In 1990, Schwarzkopf did what he was best known for: commanding troops in the Middle East after Iraq invaded Kuwait. He did the planning to send battalions of all kinds to Saudi Arabia: tank, mechanized-infantry, artillery, ordnance, transportation, medical, signal, and helicopters; plus engineers, technicians and armorers.

A Pentagon official told Schwarzkopf that the United States should not want to destroy Iraq as a nation, because it would continue to need it as a stabilizing influence on Iran. The goal was simply to cripple its ability to wage war. Iraq’s neighbors, feeling threatened, wanted to teach it a lesson, as it had committed a major sin in attacking a fellow Arab nation. France had a thorny problem on its hands– it supplied weaponry to both Saudi Arabia and Iraq.

Anyway, top American government officials, including then-secretary of state Dick Cheney, watched the PBS miniseries “The Civil War” which showed fighting men’s brutalities and traumas in the United (?) States of the 1860’s. The emotional impact of that video should have deterred all humans from going to war. Nevertheless, as is well known, twelve years later, sociopathic chickenhawks had taken charge of the American government.

Even Schwarzkopf, as goody-goody as he made himself out to be, was a bit of a mythmaker. He wrote, “To our delight, the Patriots [missiles]… knocked the Scud from the sky… eleven interceptions claimed by Patriot batteries…”

Schwarzkopf stood by his assessment that the Patriot was great at defending military targets, as far as he was told. Perhaps he got bad information and believed it, as happened in February 1991, when ground troops were sent into Kuwait. He received “…erroneous ‘mission accomplished’ reports… The fact that two days had passed and no correction had been made only made matters worse. I felt as if I’d been lied to.” Nevertheless, the Iraqis captured about fifty (yes) POWs of varying nationalities, while Iraq’s enemies captured about eighty thousand (yes) Iraqi POWs.

Read the book to learn much more about: the author’s military and personal adventures in Alaska, Mainz in Germany, Grenada (hint– “… an abysmal lack of accurate intelligence, major deficiencies in communications, flareups of interservice rivalry, interference by higher headquarters in battlefield discussions, our alienation of the press…”) Washington, D.C., Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, and his family.