John Judis and What Army?

As nearly always: once you say it, Al, it sounds so obvious:-) And I have to admit, this constant having-to-find-fault-with-Obama is getting on my nerves, too. I can not remember any President or Chancellor (in my country) who was more successful in his stated goals or even comes close.

Here.

If you have nothing to complain about, invent something? I guess that's a way to fill column inches.

He appears to be doing a hell of a job so far.

This particular one of Alinsky's rules is the one that tends to stick in my mind the most, especially since it seems to be the most ignored by many on the left today.

They seem to hope that if someone, somewhere will just wave a magic wand, the world will become whatever they think is a utopia. They aren't willing to do the hard work of actually changing it, which is slow and incremental.

It seems some of the effete lefty elite are advocating a type of war against Obama to advance their own agenda, pretending that it is the agenda of "the people." Even if they had a base to rally, the arrogance of their stance, and the willingness to step on or otherwise destroy the movement to attain their ends, assures they will, in the end, discover failure.

Some among the elite intellectual lefty class in history have overcome that arrogance and actually found something to say to the world that matters, but only after first stepping off their perches to experience life in the trenches, as opposed to being content to preach from the ivory tower of privilege they inherited.

One person I'm thinking of in particular is John "Jack" Reed ["10 Days that Shook the World]. Here's what he had to say about the type of "war" Judis and others of his ilk are now advocating:

War means an ugly mob-madness, crucifying the truth tellers, choking the artists, sidetracking reforms, revolutions, and the working of social forces. 

That's what I see going on with these folks, particularly in the blog world. They seek to insite the mob against the interest of the larger movement to sate their own egos. It's a strategy that is doomed, regardless of its success or failure. 

Two points:  First, I think you misstate what Judis is saying.  He isn't saying that the unions, MoveOn and Campaign for America's future are the organizing framework for the left.  He's looking around for any organizing, any popular pressure, and he's using those groups as examples of where it might be but isn't.  Agreed, he overlooks OFA, but, frankly, Howard Dean had lots of house parties, too. I know because I held some at my house.  OFA isn't a real popular movement now.

So, aside from the efite circles Judis travels in, he's basically right -- there is no popular left movement in America right now and that is one reason the stimulus bill was, for example, 38% tax cuts.

Second, I think you're right that people aren't stirred up and pissed off at President Obama and they aren't about to rise in opposition to him.  But, people in California right now are very, very pissed off at the worthless wastes of space who inhabit the Capitol in Sacramento.  I'm sure this is also true in Nevada, where the state is going to lay off between 15% and 35% of teachers and educational staff statewide and economic devastation can be seen on practically every block.  Yet there has been little, if any, effective organizing and movement building around these issues that cut to the bone of the lives or ordinary people.

In America, the last real successful popular movements began with the organizing that came out of the southern civil rights movement.  That organizing strategy and style came not from Saul Alinsky, but from the Highlander Folk School in New Market, TN. It grew from the work of Bayard Rustin and his constant organizing and the learning he took from Ghandi's movement in India.  These organizing models spread to the white middle class via the anti-war movement and eventually into the envirnomental movement, the women's movement and the gay liberation movement.  Watch the movie Milk, what Harvey Milk did in San Francisco is classic community organizing.

This was a popular movement that got the the Civil Rights and the Voting Rights Acts through Congress, the Equal Rights Amendment through Congress and through a majority of state legislatures.  It was a movement that got Title IX through Congress and that got Richard Nixon to sign the Endangered Species Act.

It was a popular movement that is villified to this day by the Republican Party and many conservative Democrats.

So in that sense, Judis is mostly right, IF there was a popular movement, well organized and highly mobilized, legislation that moves through Congress would look a lot more progressive.  Restrictions of bank executive compensation would, for example, be more draconian.  Or it wouldn't be so necessary for President Obama to bow to "our cultural differences with Sweeden" when deciding how to deal with banks that are insolvent.

The operative term, though, is IF.  There isn't, and I guess Judis's unspoken point is that we should be getting together to organize a movement.  He, himself isn't, however, volunteering to do so.

Which leads us to what is written on Marx's headstone in Highgate Cemetary:  "The philosophers [and this could include journalists like Judis] have only interpreted the world in various ways -- The point, however, is to change it."

That is why I was so encouraged with the pieces carried on this blog late last year about organizing that was going to happen in Madison and Chicago. Organizing around issues like foreclosure.   How is that going these days?

Re: California

My view of Judis and others who mourn the lack of a vital Left is that they waste their time babbling about such things.

The primary rule of any movement, regardless of its inspiration, is a classic philosophy across all struggles: Don't mourn. Organize! 

That's what this feels like.

Don't get me wrong, I have my concerns too: weatherization and other important items, especially support for state budgets and education, were slashed in the so-called centrist compromise.

On the other hand, rolling back the last-minute $50 billion scam by the fossil and nuclear lobby required exactly the kind of grassroots mobilization that Judis has been looking for.  But he'll never see it until he takes the cap off his camera lens.  This, not the temporary loss of weatherization funding, is the signal accomplishment of a week marking the return of democracy and accountability to Congress.

So look at what actually happened.  The Democrats united and delivered the package everyone -knows- has to happen.  It won't fix the Great Recession, but it will put a floor under the dive.  It dramatically reverses the utter negativity of policy for the last 18 months amounting to a free grab by the same crowd that caused the collapse, letting them loot the halls before escaping out the back door unscathed.

It puts government back in the business of doing things for people and not just for corporations and the bloated imperial machine.

It shines a spotlight on the pathetic Republicans, madly rowing over the Falls of Historical Oblivion.  America is the land of choices, and that is the one they have taken, so let them.

I had to laugh at the hand-wringing over the "late night" Senate vote.  First of all, the Republicans thought nothing of keeping either body in session around the clock, and flaunting their own rules on time limits for voting and every other manner of regular order, when it suited them.  Nothing got in the way of their exercise of the ruthless power principle.

Second, having Sherrod Brown come back from the memorial for his mother, cast his dramatic vote and then return to her funeral only underlines the nobility of the stimulus effort.  Republican intransigence on allowing any quarter on this makes them look unfeeling, anti-family and just plain mean.  And it heartily annoyed other senators who are spending the first morning of their recess travelling rather than getting a good night sleep back at home.

And it shows the world that Obama really is the president we need for this time, highlighting the less-than-zero performance of his predecessor.  George who?

A thumping, thumping win.

I thought the parallels you drew between Huey Long's movement and Hugo Chavez's movement - right down to the revolutionary socialist rhetoric fueled by oil windfalls - were fascinating.  I'd really like to hear your take, and anyone's in this comments section, on how much both Long and Chavez genuinely improved their citizens' lives versus how much they were/are dangerous fledgling dictators whose programs were/are unsustainable, counterproductive, and antithetical to progressive values.  

I googled around for stuff you'd written about Chavez, and most of what I found seems to be critiques on US coverage that, while valuable, only lightly touches on policy and life in Venezuela.  I'm a bleeding-heart liberal Chavez hater, so I'd be really grateful to see a good defense of him by you or someone whose work you admire at some point.  I agree that US media coverage of Venezuala has been prety unhealthy and retro Monroe Doctrine.  There's alot to chew on about Venezuala, though: the skyrocketing crime and murder rate (there's got to be, I would think, some parallels there with Mexico's police situation), the human rights situation, the perils of a rentier economy, and unsteady balance between fighting America's often ham-handed meddling in Latin American vs. many Latin Americans' fears of Chavez's interfence in their countries (case in point: Humala's defeat in Peru's elections).  

My opinion is pretty much in-line with FDR and David Kennedy's take on Huey Long - that Long's Lousiana was the closest thing to a dictatorship in American history, that his social program would cost 300% or so more than America's then-GDP, and that he was the greatest threat to the New Deal.  So I'd like to hear any good defenses of Long from a progressive point of view. Kennedy talks about Long here (see 236 especially)

http://books.google.com/books?id=cL85ggyT9oYC&client=safari

-- Al thanks for your insights and knowledge -- always perks me up...

Holding the issue aside as to whether there is a "true" left movement or not, what I have been surprised about on the lefty bloggs and commentariat, is the sheer ignorance of how to get big things done. 

We have a set of complex, interrelated problems that were developed over time without any particular planning (other than greed and laissez fare). The O team has been in place about three weeks, during which time they had to appoint and get people in key positions and then freaking figure out where and what the status of these complex systems were -- One has to be careful just dictating and pulling things out and running stuff down  other people's throats.  Obama's team has been careful -- moving forward but knowing that not all parts of the wheel hit the ground at the same time, that certain facts and knowledge about this complex system would need to be surfaced before hard plans could be made -- and also that maybe certain lies and misrepresentations would have to be allowed to manifest themselves.

Instead, the lefty bloggs are running around screaming how things are going far enough, fast enough, screw the opposition and ram it down their throats -- as though there was not consequence to huge policy changes that the President is responsible for -- (Not Paul Krugman -- King Nobel)

I am very disappointed in these people.  Many of them are self serving and as superficial as the Republicans and maybe even more damaging.

We had better learn pretty quickly how the world works and how politics works.  Three years from now things will be better.  Will they be all the way back to the way they were before?  No -- but better than they were in some ways.  Big parts of the old paradigm will have shattered and be crumbling away.  Some of that will be painful and some of that will represent loss to powerful constituencies -- so you can just hear the noise machine now..

Again, our situation is complex and the remedy is not just do this or that.  Its do a number of small steps, look, assess, tweak, assess, do some more, talk to people, bring them along, communnicate, repeat.  Not jam it down throats and say goodbye to bipartisanship but say goodbye to faux techniques that don't have much to do with real problem solving for real people.

That's what this entry is. I love it.

I've so far only managed to find the full set of Alinsky's rules for radicals in two (2) places:  One was at the old site of The Field, and the other is at this site run by Craig Miyamoto, a public-relations expert who works with businesses and corporations, often to fight off people like us.  Here's his preface to his discussion of the rules:

To paraphrase some sage advice, "keep your friends close, keep your enemies closer." If your business or organization ever becomes a target of radical activists, it will be extremely helpful to know what strategies of attack will used against you. Short of having spies infiltrate their organization - a practice that is sure to be found out and exposed to your discredit - it would help to study their methods.

He then proceeds to list each of the rules -- and his own take on them -- in a way that would have Saul himself nodding his head in recognition.

Alinsky was resigned to the fact that, outside of the people who studied directly from him or from his top students, the people who understood him and his methods the best were, in fact, the very people he'd spent his life fighting.  His nominal allies, the liberals, didn't -- or didn't want to -- understand him at all; they thought him icky.  Yet he got results, which is why big business and the smarter conservatives spent a lot of time studying his career -- you can see the influence of Alinsky in the doings of Ralph Reed, for instance, especially in Reed's use of what came to be called 'single-issue politics'.

Check this out -- Alinsky died before he could pull this off, but Obama is on the verge of sealing the deal:

Norden began the interview by asking Alinsky about his latest and most ambitious campaign: to organize nothing less than America's white middle class.

PLAYBOY: Mobilizing middle-class America would seem quite a departure for you after years of working with poverty-stricken black and white slum dwellers. Do you expect suburbia to prove fertile ground for your organizational talents?

ALINSKY: Yes, and it's shaping up as the most challenging fight of my career, and certainly the one with the highest stakes. Remember, people are people whether they're living in ghettos, reservations or barrios, and the suburbs are just another kind of reservation -- a gilded ghetto. One thing I've come to realize is that any positive action for radical social change will have to be focused on the white middle class, for the simple reason that this is where the real power lies. Today, three fourths of our population is middle class, either through actual earning power or through value identification. Take the lower-lower middle class, the blue-collar or hard-hat group; there you've got over 70,000,000 people earning between $5000 and $10,000 a year, people who don't consider themselves poor or lower class at all and who espouse the dominant middle class ethos even more fiercely than the rich do. For the first time in history, you have a country where the poor are in the minority, where the majority are dieting while the have-nots are going to bed hungry every night.

Christ, even if we could manage to organize all the exploited low-income groups -- all the blacks, chicanos, Puerto Ricans, poor whites -- and then, through some kind of organizational miracle, weld them all together into a viable coalition, what would you have? At the most optimistic estimate, 55,000,000 people by the end of this decade -- but by then the total population will be over 225,000,000, of whom the overwhelming majority will be middle class. This is the so-called Silent Majority that our great Greek philosopher in Washington is trying to galvanize, and it's here that the die will be cast and this country's future decided for the next 50 years. Pragmatically, the only hope for genuine minority progress is to seek out allies within the majority and to organize that majority itself as part of a national movement for change. If we just give up and let the middle classes go to the likes of Agnew and Nixon by default, then you might as well call the whole ball game. But they're still up for grabs -- and we're gonna grab 'em.

PLAYBOY: The assumption behind the Administration's Silent Majority thesis is that most of the middle class is inherently conservative. How can even the most skillful organizational tactics unite them in support of your radical goals?

ALINSKY: Conservative? That's a crock of crap. Right now they're nowhere. But they can and will go either of two ways in the coming years -- to a native American fascism or toward radical social change. Right now they're frozen, festering in apathy, leading what Thoreau called "lives of quiet desperation:" They're oppressed by taxation and inflation, poisoned by pollution, terrorized by urban crime, frightened by the new youth culture, baffled by the computerized world around them. They've worked all their lives to get their own little house in the suburbs, their color TV, their two cars, and now the good life seems to have turned to ashes in their mouths. Their personal lives are generally unfulfilling, their jobs unsatisfying, they've succumbed to tranquilizers and pep pills, they drown their anxieties in alcohol, they feel trapped in longterm endurance marriages or escape into guilt-ridden divorces. They're losing their kids and they're losing their dreams. They're alienated, depersonalized, without any feeling of participation in the political process, and they feel rejected and hopeless. Their utopia of status and security has become a tacky-tacky suburb, their split-levels have sprouted prison bars and their disillusionment is becoming terminal.

They're the first to live in a total mass-media-oriented world, and every night when they turn on the TV and the news comes on, they see the almost unbelievable hypocrisy and deceit and even outright idiocy of our national leaders and the corruption and disintegration of all our institutions, from the police and courts to the White House itself. Their society appears to be crumbling and they see themselves as no more than small failures within the larger failure. All their old values seem to have deserted them, leaving them rudderless in a sea of social chaos. Believe me, this is good organizational material.

The despair is there; now it's up to us to go in and rub raw the sores of discontent, galvanize them for radical social change. We'll give them a way to participate in the democratic process, a way to exercise their rights as citizens and strike back at the establishment that oppresses them, instead of giving in to apathy. We'll start with specific issues -- taxes, jobs, consumer problems, pollution -- and from there move on to the larger issues: pollution in the Pentagon and the Congress and the board rooms of the megacorporations. Once you organize people, they'll keep advancing from issue to issue toward the ultimate objective: people power. We'll not only give them a cause, we'll make life goddamn exciting for them again -- life instead of existence. We'll turn them on.

Jesus Al,  once again I agree with almost everything you've written, but think the bile aimed at someone who, for the most part, should be an ally (Krugman), is less than constructive.  Krugman was a voice in the wilderness for much of Bush's presidency, he doesn't deserve to be described as a member of the "masturbatory frat house".

I, too, think his recent commentary hasn't taken into account what is politically possible in this moment, but I also realize that part of his role as an economist is to lay out the best stimulus design, aside from the politics of the situation.

Finally, I'll just say that I really appreciate your perspective and I've been checking back here daily since the stimulus package passed the House to see what you would have to say about it.  And you're description of the state of play with the unions is incredibly informative.

Krugman's recent commentary has been about the least helpful thing I can think of. However well he may understand economics, he doesn't seem to know much about politics. If he wants to be considered an ally, he should start acting like one.

I agree  Krugman is not a frat boy and he has much to say so long as he steers clear of politics. He was very tone deaf in his support of Hillary and criticsm of Obama during the primaries - so I don't think he has much accumen when it comes to the finer points of politics - however he was willing to take Bush on (when few did) and has raised his voice for stimulus spending - both to his credit.

I won't offer a full fledged defense of Chavez's policies here as my knowledge isn't that deep, although I tried to follow what he was doing for quite a while after he took power a decade ago. Just a couple of points:

1. I think the significance of the fact that Chavez has been repeatedly elected by a clear majority of voters in a process that has been given an overwhelming pass by international observers, including American ones like Jimmy Carter's group, is incredibly important and underappreciated.  The critique that he is a dictator doesn't hold water.  When the media portrays him as such, they count on us readers projecting what we know about previous S. American leaders who truly were dictators onto him, which is a total misportrayal of the facts.  There was really no precedent to his type of position in modern S. American history, as far as I am aware, especially with his ties to non-white Venezuelans.

2. I think the criticisms about the limitations of what he has been able to do for the people of Venezuela are unreasonable.  I think the expectation that he is supposed to have drastically improved the condition of his country from the state that previous dictators left it for the vast majority of people is unbelievable. The type of goal posts that people set for these leaders, to me, represents a total lack of understanding of what existed before and even what their situation is now. He speaks in hyperbole in a way that is probably characteristic of the way many, many S. Americans express themselves (just listen to the way Spanish sounds compared to English, the color, and you might get the feeling) and it comes across sounding very strange in English. He is also very grandiose and ambitious in his plans, in a way that inspires many of his electorate, but probably also sets the bar so high for observers that it is easy to call him a failure rather than observe the many things he has accomplished.

These are my impressions from following this from a distance - those of you who are closer, am I way off?

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/02/two-progressivisms.html

You share Nate's dislike of David Sirota, but in some ways you seem more like what he calls a radical progressive rather than the rational progressive that Nate considers himself to be.  Or perhaps you don't find the dichotomy terribly useful.  In any case, I'd be interested to hear your point of view.

ikl - Nate's post reminds me of the saying, "there are two kinds of people in the world: those that think there are two kinds of people in the world, and those that don't."

In his "rational progressivism" vs. "radical progressivism" dialectic, I'm all over the map on both sides of it. I think reformative change can make paths to transformative change. I don't see them in conflict with each other. I think one can be outcome oriented and process oriented, just like one can walk and chew gum at the same time. I'm clearly with Nate in the empirical tendency and with seeing ideology as malleable (if we learned anything from the 20th century it's that ideology too easily becomes dogma or fundamentalism, brittle and then it snaps, too often violently). I'm also with Nate among optimists, but I believe one can be conversational and action-oriented at the same moment.

Finally, I see no conflict between incremental change and radical change. Here's an example: an incremental lessening of state repression can make it possible for more people to step forward and make bigger change. The first is often necessary for the second.

Where do those tendencies put me in Nate's terminology? I haven't the foggiest, nor to I care much about labels.

That said, I think Nate is a brilliant guy and a great human being. And I think the guy he's smacking down is analytically slow and not a good person. And I believe great radical change comes from working with the first kind as allies and not with the latter!

And as for the previous question on Chavez, I share Joel Wiens' view. Apparently the people of Venezuela do, too, as my sources say that tonight the results will show him winning today's referendum striking down term limits for Venezuelan office holders.

So you basically think this is a false dichotomy.  

I'm not sure what I think.  I do believe that Nate might have undermined his thesis by citing Sirota as a "radical progressive."  Sirota is so myopic that to hold him up as an exemplar of the other camp is sort of like loading the dice - it makes it hard to take it seriously as something that is intellectually coherent.

On the other hand, if Obama and the Democrats continue to be successful (as seems fairly likely in the short to medium term), this is going to expose differences in the left that have been somewhat submerged as long as everyone has been able to agree on opposing Bush as the most important order of business.  So I think that Nate is right that this is worth thinking about.

Bravo, man.  I've learned more about organizing, movement building, and the political meaning of "Left" reading your blog for the past year than I learned in all 16 years I spent in the US school system(California incarnation).  And my peeps were all out of the working class(building trades, beer and General Motors).  Talk about indoctrination!  Your work here has been, and continues to be, a revelation...

hard to disagree with this post

the organizing wins of 2008 may well have been fermented by pent-up opposition to corruption and the war(s), thus indirectly a referendum on these particular issues, but despite the solid progressive gains of the stimulus bill there's little to feel particularly "fundi" about (footnote: reference to green party electoral factions of the 1980's)

moreover it's tough to defuse republicans' neoliberal ideology, when most of it is strongly endorsed by the administration's top economic appointees. swedish banking policy is not yet the stuff of rebel yells, but that day will come when health insurance takes center stage, or after the depression dives some more (krugman is correct on substance)

Hi Al,

 What is your position on Obama's  approving of attack on Pakistan and his total support for Israeli aggression in Gaza?  Aren't they violations of International law?

And what do you think of Obama saying Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons and so all options , which means attack on Iran, are on table?  Do you support Obama's policy on these matters?

Thanks

Elena - I'm sorry, but I the phrasing of your questions makes them unanswerable.

The Middle East and surrounding region is the "Third Rail" of political discourse. I'm guessing that since religion plays such a big role in it that logic and reason went out the window long ago. One can't say anything on it - not even "all sides are wrong" - without being called names and accused of bigotry by one side or another.

My "stance," if I have one, is the same I took once the Iraq War shooting started: What If They Had a War and Nobody Watched?

About the Iraq War, which I opposed before it started, just like the first Gulf War more than a decade prior, I wrote in 2003:

"I refuse to read it. George W. Bush wants you and me to drop everything and pay attention to his global tantrum. I decline to waste my time on his "war." It is not even an Authentic War, because a war has a winner and a loser. Gulf War II, like his father's Gulf War I, will only have losers. I want no part of it, not even as a spectator."

You're asking those questions of me as if I'm a candidate for office and am supposed to fill out your group's questionnaire. I won't do it.

And the terms of your question are false, even dishonest. The President has not authorized "an attack on Pakistan." He said during the campaign that if he found "actionable intelligence" on the whereabouts of Al Qaida leaders in Pakistan and if the Pakistan government wouldn't act, the US would reserve the right to act. If you find that unreasonable, I can assure you that the great majority of citizens do not.

As for what you call his "support for Israeli aggressions in Gaza," I heard something different: His opposition to the senseless taking of civilian lives in Gaza or Israel. And I found it interesting, to say the least, that Israel ceased the worst of its attacks just days before Obama was inaugurated.

Still, that said, there's a real misconception out there in some circles that the US controls Israel and can tell it what to do. Even if the US cut off all funding and armament to Israel, do you really think that Israel would do anything differently than it does today? I think the evidence has been clear for decades that it would continue exactly as before.

Let me also turn your third question around on you. I think those of us who ask the questions should always be prepared to answer them first. Do you think that it would be a good thing if Iran developed nuclear weapons? Have you thought even for a moment about the nuclear arms race that would spark among various countries and its potential for bringing the entire world back into the days of the Cold War and the constant threat of thermo-nuclear self destruction by the human race?

Not taking an option off the table is not the same as using that option.

What I do see, in the very first steps the new administration has taken on any matter of foreign policy, is the appointment of special envoys - one of which had success in ending a similar regional and religious civil war in Ireland that had gone on for 800 years - to begin the hard work of diplomacy in the Middle East and Asian regions.

But I'm not going to participate in the dysfunction of any of the sides of that conflict. And your questions merely make you part of that dysfunction. I'd be more interested in seeing your suggested solution to the problems there than I am in taking your litmus test which is a game I don't play.

is why having your voice on radio would be so valuable.

It's also part of what made Obama's press conference so powerful.

One must begin answering any question by unpacking the underlying assertions on which it is premised, and challenging the validity of any with which you disagree.  Only then can you proceed to discuss the topic without being boxed in by the questioner.

You get it, Obama gets it, and unfortunately too many others don't get it, even other members of Obama's team.

Most leftie analysis seems colored by fear and stinks a little from the I'm-smarter-than-most-so-my-shit-smells-sweet kind of vanity. Maybe creative depressives are drawn to the left.

What's so remarkable here is that the analysis comes from a really brave place. Its just so good and refreshing.

Nice.  I see that you mention two people that I respect alot, and, indeed, it almost seems that my natural inclination to support Chavez and hold Hughey Long in esteem is connected to my DNA.   And I hated the hatchet job they did on Long in "All the Kings Horses"--the first film and the second with Sean Penn.  As well, I find the 'sneering' at Chavez to come from the deep undemocratic culture that is a product of historical amnesia and constant corporate propaganda.

The alienated, unorganized, apathetic, and passive nature of a huge swath of the US population is a function of many factors, and it might just take hunger and homelessness to snap folks out of it (it did me back in the day.)

My organizing is with my farm through my restoration efforts.

I will be travelling to New Orleans for Madi Gras (of course), and to hook up with Common Ground Relief about their wetlands and tree planting program.

There are myriad ways to make a positive difference--it takes thinking and getting off one's arse, though.

Obama is dealing with a US population that has been conditioned into passivity and 'repressive desublimation'.

The center of the current credit-card capitalism and unsustainable consumerism simply cannot hold, the ecological and social contradictions are too much.  We just have to push the vile system a bit more to the edge of the cliff.