Hate Without End

Mark Steyn hits one out of the park with this column. This one is a must read from start to finish. Please click the link.

In Toronto, anti-Israel demonstrators yell “You are the brothers of pigs!,” and a protester complains to his interviewer that “Hitler didn’t do a good job.”

In Fort Lauderdale, Palestinian supporters sneer at Jews, “You need a big oven, that’s what you need!”

In Amsterdam, the crowd shouts, “Hamas, Hamas! Jews to the gas!”

In Paris, the state-owned TV network France-2 broadcasts film of dozens of dead Palestinians killed in an Israeli air raid on New Year’s Day. The channel subsequently admits that, in fact, the footage is not from Jan. 1, 2009, but from 2005, and, while the corpses are certainly Palestinian, they were killed when a truck loaded with Hamas explosives detonated prematurely while leaving the Jabaliya refugee camp in another of those unfortunate work-related accidents to which Gaza is sadly prone. Conceding that the Palestinians supposedly killed by Israel were, alas, killed by Hamas, France-2 says the footage was broadcast “accidentally.”

In Toulouse, a synagogue is firebombed; in Bordeaux, two kosher butchers are attacked; at the Auber RER train station, a Jewish man is savagely assaulted by 20 youths taunting, “Palestine will kill the Jews”; in Villiers-le-Bel, a Jewish schoolgirl is brutally beaten by a gang jeering, “Jews must die.”

In Helsingborg, Sweden, the congregation at a synagogue takes shelter as a window is broken and burning cloths thrown in. in Odense, principal Olav Nielsen announces that he will no longer admit Jewish children to the local school after a Dane of Lebanese extraction goes to the shopping mall and shoots two men working at the Dead Sea Products store. in Brussels, a Molotov cocktail is hurled at a synagogue; in Antwerp, Netherlands, lit rags are pushed through the mail flap of a Jewish home; and, across the Channel in Britain, “youths” attempt to burn the Brondesbury Park Synagogue.

You can shrug and let the “elites” turn their rage on Israel. You can let a hopelessly corrupted Western media fill in the narrative. You can join the Jew hatred. Or you can experience 15 seconds in Sderot. That is how much time you have to reach shelter when the Hamas rockets begin to fall. 15 seconds.

Steyn link via Memeorandum.

Double Standard

Marvin Hier, a rabbi and the founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, writes in the Wall Street Journal about the double standard applied against Israel and the Jews.

The world-wide protests against Israel’s ground incursion into Gaza are so full of hatred that they leave me with the terrible feeling that these protests have little to do with the so-called disproportionality of the Israeli response to Hamas rockets, or the resulting civilian casualties.

My fear is that the rage we see in the protesters marching in the streets is far more profound and dangerous than we would like to believe. There are a great many people in the world who, even after Auschwitz, just can’t bear the Jewish state having the same rights they so readily grant to other nations. These voices insist Israel must take risks they would never dare ask of any other nation-state — risks that threaten its very survival — because they don’t believe Israel should exist in the first place.

Just look at the spate of attacks this week on Jews and Jewish institutions around the world: a car ramming into a synagogue in France; a Chabad menorah and Jewish-owned shops sprayed with swastikas in Belgium; a banner at an Australian rally demanding “clean the earth from dirty Zionists!”; demonstrators in the Netherlands chanting “Gas the Jews”; and in Florida, protestors demanding Jews “Go back to the ovens!”

I remember the US media’s reaction to the 1967 war. It was overwhelmingly admiring of the Israeli repulse of the Arab invasions and subsequent victories against the massed attacks. Things have sure turned around since then. Now a rain of terror rockets dropping down on civilians is supposed to be shrugged off by the Israelis. If not, then they are condemned. The west will again impose a ceasefire – which Israel will abide by while Hamas ignores it.

No Decency, No Humanity

This is appalling. A member of the Dutch parliament stood at a pro-Palestinian rally while people were chanting, “Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas.” Via Jihad Watch. Perhaps Harry van Bommel yearns for the “good old days” of the Henneicke Column.

Meanwhile, here in the US an alliance of ANSWER and pro-Palestinian groups are unleashing an intifada on the streets of San Francisco. From Zombietime’s blog.

Finally, in Britain, the left, led by a host of virulent old lefties and washed up celebrities held a little riot in London. Powerline blogged it.

Hamas launches thousands of rockets at civilians. Women and children. Virtually every day brings multiple rockets attacks. Where is the outrage for that? No, we get rioting brought to the civilized west by representatives of these monsters.

All links via Memeorandum.

Hammer Fall

The Israeli Army has begun ground operations into the Gaza Strip.

Initial reports from both Israel and Gaza indicated that Israel Defense Forces troops had killed dozens of Hamas gunmen as they traded heavy fire upon entering the Strip.

“The objective is to destroy the Hamas terror infrastructure in the area of operations,” said Israel Defense Forces Major Avital Leibovitch, a military spokeswoman, confirming that incursions were under way. “We are going to take some of the launch areas used by Hamas.”

The IDF Spokesperson’s office issued a statement, emphasizing that this stage of the operation will further the goals of the eight-day offensive as voiced by the IDF until now: To strike a direct and hard blow against the Hamas while increasing the deterrent strength of the IDF, in order to bring about an improved and more stable security situation for residents of Southern Israel over the long term.

Large numbers of forces are taking part in this stage of the operation including infantry, tanks, engineering forces, artillery and intelligence with the support of the Israel Air Force, Israel navy, the Shin Bet security service and other security agencies.

Meanwhile, the cabinet has authorized an emergency call up of tens of thousands of IDF reservists.

Mark Steyn points out the rocket scientists of Hamas:

In Gaza, they don’t vote for Hamas because they want access to university education. Or, if they do, it’s to get Junior into the Saudi-funded, Hamas-run Islamic University of Gaza, where majoring in rocket science involves making one and firing it at the Zionist Entity. In 2007, as part of their attempt to recover Gaza from Hamas, Fatah seized 1,000 Qassam rockets at the university, as well as seven Iranian military trainers.

At a certain unspoken level, we understand that the Huntington thesis is right, and the Rice view is wishful thinking. After all, when French President Sarkozy and other European critics bemoan Israel’s “disproportionate” response, what really are they saying? That they expect better from the despised Jews than from Hamas. That they regard Israel as a Western society bound by civilized norms, whereas any old barbarism issuing forth from Gaza is to be excused on grounds of “desperation.”

Hence, this slightly surreal headline from The New York Times: “Israel Rejects Cease-Fire, But Offers Gaza Aid.” For whatever that’s worth. Wafa Samir Ibrahim al-Biss, a young Palestinian woman who received considerate and exemplary treatment at an Israeli hospital in Beersheba, returned to that same hospital packed with explosives in order to blow herself up and kill the doctors and nurses who restored her to health. Well, what do you expect? It’s “desperation” born of “poverty” and “occupation.”

These are the rockets Hamas rains down on civilians – a war crime under the Geneva conventions. If these were falling on San Diego from Tijuana, that city would cease to exist. If these were falling on Berlin from France, Paris would be no more. (Or the reverse.) The “elites” who are attacking Israel over their response to the Hamas war crimes have a seriously skewed moral compass. Or none whatsoever.

Via Memeorandum.

Life In Hell

Or Sderot, more or less the same these days. The unrelenting negative press the Israeli government is getting for finally having had enough is unsurprising, given the horribly slanted international press coverage these days. But maybe a look at the other side, the folks at ground zero, would be instructive. For life, such as it is, in Sderot should be considered when criticizing Israel.

Larissa Yaakobov stands before me sobbing. Her young daughter and nine-year-old son look on helpless. “I can’t do it anymore,” she says in broken Hebrew, “I can’t live here.” “Here” is Sderot, an Israeli border community adjacent to the Gaza Strip where Larissa has lived since she emigrated from Russia fifteen years ago. Larissa ’s son does not say a word. He hasn’t said much, she tells me, since the two watched a Qassam rocket slam into a woman a few feet away killing her instantly.

Less than twenty four hours before Israel unleashed its air-force on the Gaza Strip, I sat with four families in Sderot who have been injured and traumatized by Hamas rocket fire. In the hours before Israel ’s incursion, the mood was tense—even by Sderot standards. The streets were barren; everyone is bracing for new waves of rockets.

Sderot has no shortage of children’s playgrounds—twisty blue and yellow slides, swings and handle-bars. But children are no where to be seen. I do see plenty of bomb shelters. Every bus-stop in Sderot has been turned into a lime-colored enforced shelter with a single shrapnel-proof window. I enter one of these rooms to see what it is like inside. A car screeches to a halt and the driver dashes out to join me in the shelter. He is panicked and out of breath. Seeing me enter the shelter, he mistakenly thought a rocket was headed our way. I apologize sheepishly for the confusion as he returns to his car and speeds away.

Thousands upon thousands of these terror rockets have fallen on Israel. Many people have been killed or maimed by them. The rockets are unrelenting and strike civilians. Yet the international media and the political elites across the world reserve their criticism not for the attackers, but for the victims.

Consider for a moment, as the author of this piece does, what the response would be if San Diego was under rocket attack on a daily basis from Tijuana. Think hard about that.

Mumbai, The Aftermath

Not only did the terrorists who attacked Mumbai targeting foreigners – especially American, British and Israeli citizens – kill many people. No, they also appear to have done much more. As in binding their captives and torturing them before finally killing them.

Asked what was different about the victims of the incident, another doctor said: “It was very strange. I have seen so many dead bodies in my life, and was yet traumatised. A bomb blast victim’s body might have been torn apart and could be a very disturbing sight. But the bodies of the victims in this attack bore such signs about the kind of violence of urban warfare that I am still unable to put my thoughts to words,” he said.

Asked specifically if he was talking of torture marks, he said: “It was apparent that most of the dead were tortured. What shocked me were the telltale signs showing clearly how the hostages were executed in cold blood,” one doctor said.

The other doctor, who had also conducted the post-mortem of the victims, said: “Of all the bodies, the Israeli victims bore the maximum torture marks. It was clear that they were killed on the 26th itself. It was obvious that they were tied up and tortured before they were killed. It was so bad that I do not want to go over the details even in my head again,” he said.

Obviously, if this report is correct, Indian security forces may have engaged in more than a little payback when they saw what had been done to the victims.

The doctors who conducted the post mortem said the bodies of the terrorists were beyond recognition. “Their faces were beyond recognition.”

There was no way of identifying them,” he said. Asked how, if this is the case, they knew the bodies were indeed those of the terrorists, he said: “The security forces that brought the bodies told us that those were the bodies of the terrorists,” he said, adding there was no other way they could have identified the bodies.

One terrorist was reportedly shot in both eyes. This may not have been an intentional act, of course. If the terrorists simply died in a hail of gunfire, it could all just be random.

Or not.

Regardless, this adds a whole new level of barbarity to an already barbaric act on the part of the terrorists. The attackers were stopped well short of their goal of killing thousands. But a horrible price appears to have been paid by many of their victims. Peaceful Americans as well as citizens of other countries and not a few Indians died in this terror attack, people who did these attackers no harm and meant them none. Yet here we are.

It is going to be a long war.

What You Will Not Hear From The Media

It would appear that there is ample evidence that we won – really won – in Iraq.

Ed Morrisey:

A bridal shop? A pool hall? I seem to recall the doom-and-gloom predictions of the war’s critics insisting that Iraq would turn into an Islamist theocracy. That doesn’t square with the image of nighttime commerce in the kinds of pastimes that would blow a Taliban aneurysm.
The surge worked.

Ed has a stunning video of the before and after.

Glenn Reynolds:

“THE WAR IS OVER AND WE WON:” Michael Yon just phoned from Baghdad, and reports that things are much better than he had expected, and he had expected things to be good. “There’s nothing going on. I’m with the 10th Mountain Division, and about half of the guys I’m with haven’t fired their weapons on this tour and they’ve been here eight months. And the place we’re at, South Baghdad, used to be one of the worst places in Iraq. And now there’s nothing going on. I’ve been walking my feet off and haven’t seen anything. I’ve been asking Iraqis, ‘do you think the violence will kick up again,’ but even the Iraqi journalists are sounding optimistic now and they’re usually dour.” There’s a little bit of violence here and there, but nothing that’s a threat to the general situation. Plus, not only the Iraqi Army, but even the National Police are well thought of by the populace. Training from U.S. toops (sic) has paid off, he says, in building a rapport.

This news was not brought to you by the Democrats in Congress, or reported in the mainstream media. Is there still a need for American troops there? Yes. But there is ample precedent. We are still in Germany and Japan all these years after the Second World War.

Giants

Kathleen Parker writes about an event in South Carolina organized for four living recipients of the Congressional Medal of Honor.

CAMDEN, S.C. — While the political class was focused on the meaning of pigs wearing lipstick, a few fortunate South Carolinians were riveted by the meaning of valor.

The occasion was a celebration of four of the state’s living recipients of the Medal of Honor — Charles Murray Jr., (Army, WWII, 1944), John Baker (Army, Vietnam, 1966), James Livingston (USMC, Vietnam, 1968) and Michael Thornton (Navy, Vietnam, 1972).

The four appeared in Camden (at an event my husband helped organize) to raise awareness and funding for the Congressional Medal of Honor Museum in Charleston, S.C., and for the Medal of Honor conventions to be held in Chicago in 2009 and Charleston in 2010.

To hear their stories, as recounted by Vice Admiral Edwin R. “Rudy” Kohn, Camden resident and retired deputy commander of the Pacific Fleet, against the backdrop of today’s political noise was to be reminded of how rare personal courage really is.

There are giants among us. Some 108 living members of one of the most exclusive rolls of honor that has ever existed. Here’s a link to the Congressional Medal of Honor Museum noted by Parker.

The Devil Went Down To Georgia

He was lookin' for a country to steal. Vlad "The Impaler" Putin has launched an all out attack on Georgia. Not the one from the song, the other one. Russian aircraft are bombing civilian apartment buildings. There is a notable lack of interest in any of that from the left blogosphere, as a quick perusal of Memeorandum indicates. If Israel isn't involved, the left is pretty much silent.

The Daily Mail is reporting that Russia is attempting to bomb the pipeline that runs through Georgia, delivering oil to the West.

The war in Georgia escalated dangerously last night after Russian jets reportedly bombed a vital pipeline that supplies oil to the West.

After a day of heightening international tensions, Georgian leaders claimed that the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which transports oil from the Caspian Sea to Turkey, had been attacked. But it is thought the bombs  missed their target.

Their claims came after Russian jets struck deep into the territory of its tiny neighbour, killing civilians and ‘completely devastating’ the strategic Black Sea port of Poti, a staging post for oil and other energy supplies.

Reports last night also said that Russia had bombed the international airport in Tbilisi.

The Russian knife is pointed at Georgia's throat, but the artery belongs to the West. Yet the Democrats in charge of the American Congress refuse to allow a vote on allowing oil drilling off the American coasts.

Think about that.

UPDATE: No sooner hit the publish key and this came up over at Memeorandum from HuffnPuffPo. Now we know why the left has been largely quiet. They were trying to think up a way to blame it on Republicans. Sleazy, even for HuffnPuff.

Sweet Freedom

There are a lot of happy families tonight after Colombian military forces tricked the increasingly badly led FARC guerrillas and freed 15 high-value hostages the “rebels” had been holding for years. Three Americans, a former Colombian presidential candidate and members of Colombia’s military and police were freed. FARC has retreated back into the jungles of Colombia.

BOGOTA, Colombia – Colombian spies tricked leftist rebels into handing over kidnapped presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt and three U.S. military contractors Wednesday in a daring helicopter rescue so successful that not a single shot was fired.

Betancourt, who was seized on the campaign trail six long years ago, appeared thin but healthy as she strode down the stairs of a military plane and held her mother in a long embrace.

“Thank you for your impeccable operation,” she told top military commanders. “The operation was perfect.”

Eleven Colombian police and soldiers were also freed in the rescue, the most serious blow ever dealt to the 44-year-old Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, which considered the four hostages their most valuable bargaining chips. The FARC is already reeling from the deaths of key commanders and the loss of much of the territory it once held.

Even the support of FARC by (T)Hugo Chavez isn’t helping at this point. The Colombian government is trying to get the remaining FARC forces to negotiate. They might want to think about that really hard, before their luck runs out completely.

Pink Loons

Well, since nothing else appears to be working for them, Code Pink is trying to enlist witches to help them protest the Marine recruiting office in Berkeley, California.

Code Pink is now resorting to witchcraft to beef up the number of its supporters protesting Berkeley's controversial Marine Corps Recruiting Center.

The women's anti-war group has told ralliers to come equipped with spells and pointy hats Friday for "Witches, clowns and sirens day," the last of the group's weeklong homage to Mother's Day.

"Women are coming to cast spells and do rituals and to impart wisdom to figure out how we're going to end war," Zanne Sam Joi of Bay Area Code Pink told FOXNews.com.

The group's week of themed protests, which included days to galvanize grannies and bring-your-daughter-to-protest, appears to have done little to boost its flagging numbers.

A FOX News camera, which has a 24/7 live shot of the recruiting center's front door, recorded little action, and the gatherings have, until this point, been ill attended.

Apparently Code Pink's tenuous grip on reality has gone altogether. Ah, well. The best thing to come out in this article is that the protests have accomplished exactly one thing: increased recruiting.

But if events this week are an attempt by anti-war protesters to remarket their cause, the Marine recruiters in Berkeley tell FOXNews.com that Code Pink's presence outside their office has helped — not hindered — their mission.

"Ironically, it's actually helped us by putting our name out. We're now well known. And people know who we are, and where we are, and they come in to talk to us about enlisting. They've gotten us the publicity that we could've never afforded to pay for ourselves," (Captain John Paul) Wheatcroft told FOXNews.com.

"Just in the last three weeks, 10 people came in looking to apply, looking to become Marine officers, and that's much higher than normal," he said.

It would appear that the witches got burned.

Did They Get Him?

Iraqi authorities have announced the arrest of the head of al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Ayyub al-Masri. There is no confirmation from the American military, however.

Mohammed al-Askari said the arrest of al-Masri, also known as Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, was confirmed to him by the Iraqi commander of the province. There was no immediate confirmation or comment from U.S. forces on the arrest.

The U.S. military in Baghdad said "we are currently checking with Iraqi authorities to confirm the accuracy of this information."

Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf said that Mosul police "arrested one of al-Qaida's leaders at midnight and during the primary investigations he admitted that he is Abu Hamza Al-Muhajir."

News of the arrest was also reported by Iraqi state television and Arab satellite TV stations.

The state channel, Iraqiya, said that Minister of Interior Jawad al-Bolani would reward Mosul police for the capture.

A very big blow if it turns out to be correct. News from Iraq has been mostly absent these days. It's good to have some potentially good news from there. Expect another tape from bin Laden if it does turn out to be real.

Boomtown

A 1,500 pound World War Two German mine was destroyed on Stert Island in Bridgwater Bay, Somerset on Saturday morning. The leftover ordnance was discovered by a local fisherman.

A huge 1,500lb Second World War German mine washed up on a beach was detonated by bomb disposal experts yesterday.

Authorities set up a one-mile exclusion zone around the device after it was spotted in mud by a fisherman on Thursday.

The 10ft-long, 26in-wide mine, dropped by a German aircraft, was due to be detonated on Friday night but technical difficulties delayed the operation.

The detonation was a source of amusement for the locals, fortunately. There is still an awful lot of unexploded stuff turning up over in Europe all these years after the war ended. The Bridgewater Bay website has photos and videos of the event.

Bloody Shiloh

On this day in 1862, the first day of the battle of Shiloh (or Pittsburg Landing) saw a tremendous defensive effort by Union troops under the command of Brigadier Generals Benjamin M. Prentiss and W.H.L. Wallace in what became known as The Hornet's Nest. For seven long hours the Union troops stood their ground, giving the rest of the Union forces time to stabilize their defense positions under massed artillery at Pittsburg Landing. The next day, the Union forces under Ulysses S. Grant counterattacked all along the line, driving the Confederate forces from the field. I posted about this last year and Crosspatch provided a link to Grant's autobiography. 

The Confederate assaults were made with such a disregard of losses on their own side that our line of tents soon fell into their hands. The ground on which the battle was fought was undulating, heavily timbered with scattered clearings, the woods giving some protection to the troops on both sides. There was also considerable underbrush. A number of attempts were made by the enemy to turn our right flank, where Sherman was posted, but every effort was repulsed with heavy loss. But the front attack was kept up so vigorously that, to prevent the success of these attempts to get on our flanks, the National troops were compelled, several times, to take positions to the rear nearer Pittsburg landing. When the firing ceased at night the National line was all of a mile in rear of the position it had occupied in the morning.     

In one of the backward moves, on the 6th, the division commanded by General Prentiss did not fall back with the others. This left his flanks exposed and enabled the enemy to capture him with about 2,200 of his officers and men. General Badeau gives four o’clock of the 6th as about the time this capture took place. He may be right as to the time, but my recollection is that the hour was later. General Prentiss himself gave the hour as half-past five. I was with him, as I was with each of the division commanders that day, several times, and my recollection is that the last time I was with him was about half-past four, when his division was standing up firmly and the General was as cool as if expecting victory. But no matter whether it was four or later, the story that he and his command were surprised and captured in their camps is without any foundation whatever. If it had been true, as currently reported at the time and yet believed by thousands of people, that Prentiss and his division had been captured in their beds, there would not have been an all-day struggle, with the loss of thousands killed and wounded on the Confederate side.     

With the single exception of a few minutes after the capture of Prentiss, a continuous and unbroken line was maintained all day from Snake Creek or its tributaries on the right to Lick Creek or the Tennessee on the left above Pittsburg. There was no hour during the day when there was not heavy firing and generally hard fighting at some point on the line, but seldom at all points at the same time. It was a case of Southern dash against Northern pluck and endurance. Three of the five divisions engaged on Sunday were entirely raw, and many of the men had only received their arms on the way from their States to the field. Many of them had arrived but a day or two before and were hardly able to load their muskets according to the manual. Their officers were equally ignorant of their duties. Under these circumstances it is not astonishing that many of the regiments broke at the first fire. In two cases, as I now remember, colonels led their regiments from the field on first hearing the whistle of the enemy’s bullets. In these cases the colonels were constitutional cowards, unfit for any military position; but not so the officers and men led out of danger by them. Better troops never went upon a battle-field than many of these, officers and men, afterwards proved themselves to be, who fled panic stricken at the first whistle of bullets and shell at Shiloh.

24,000 casualties were recorded in the two days of Shiloh. Wikipedia details the Union casualties as 13,047: 1,754 killed, 8,408 wounded, 2,885 captured/missing.

Hanoi Jane Picks A Candidate

Jane Fonda has endorsed – or at least said that she is voting for, Barack Obama. 

Less examined is whether some celebrity endorsements may actually cost a candidate votes. This could be one of those less desirable votes for part of the country, especially if Obama was hoping to attract some crossover Republicans if he's the Democratic candidate come fall.

Obama, who was recently named the most liberal member of the Senate by the nonpartisan National Journal, has sought to portray himself as the earliest anti-Iraq war opponent and tagged his sole remaining opponent, Sen. Hillary Clinton, with voting to authorize the use of force in Iraq.

The problem for those of a certain generation that endured the Vietnam War and the sometimes violent domestic conflict that accompanied it at home is that during Fonda's controversial wartime visit to North Vietnam, she was photographed at a Communist anti-aircraft gun battery.

According to the photo caption distributed at the time, she joined North Vietnamese soldiers there in singing an antiwar song while preparing to shoot at attacking Americans.

Fonda, of course, did so much more than just sit at the battery. She was also part and parcel of the North Vietnamese propaganda machine – a willing participant to that. More importantly, after the POWs began returning, she denied they had been tortured:

During this visit she also visited American prisoners of war (POWs), and brought back messages from them to their families. When cases of torture began to emerge among POWs returning to the United States, Fonda called the returning POWs "hypocrites and liars."[14] She added, "These were not men who had been tortured. These were not men who had been starved. These were not men who had been brainwashed." On the subject of torture in general, Fonda told The New York Times in 1973, "I'm quite sure that there were incidents of torture… but the pilots who were saying it was the policy of the Vietnamese and that it was systematic, I believe that's a lie." Several American POWs and other eyewitnesses, including former POW, and future US Senator and Republican presidential candidate, John McCain, disagree with this sentiment.

Yes, I imagine John McCain does disagree with her assessment. He bears the scars to this day of the torture Hanoi Jane denied. Do I think this will be a huge blow to Obama? No, of course not. Do I believe it will make even a few people more likely not to vote for him? Probably. There are some of us who do remember Hanoi Jane's antics during the war. And we still do not forgive her.