While we would like to write about more positive things, protecting democracy and free speech, guiding people towards healthy lifestyles, how we the punters can save the planet (especially from the idiocies of the Warmageddonist lobby) and so on, we find far too much of our time is spent trying to get the truth about important issues in front of readers. Mainstream media has abandoned news reporting in favour of simply repeating government and corporate propaganda. Terrorism is one issue on which you will only finds out facts from new media. Contact us:
The Obama Administration, and in particular The State Department which under the leadership of John (57) Kerry looks after foreign policy has all in all had a nightmare few months since the turn of the year. The unlikely (and unholy) Saudi Arabian - Israeli alliance in cahoots with U.S. neocons and military / industrial complex corporations have pressured the President into escalating U.S. aggression toward the secular government of Bashar Al Assad in Syria. When Obama can tear himself away from focusing on gay rights issues he has turned his attention to manufacturing opposition to Assad while ignoring major the military gains being made by the Islamic State (ISIS) and Al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front.
Islamic State’s taking control of Ramadi, Iraq, in May was an embarrassmentone to the U.S. military s on a scale not seen since the loss of Vietnam, but it was compunded a few says later by the loss of Palmyra, an important archeological site being one of the oldest cities in the world with cultural activity having been traced to 2,300 BC and the site of a Neolithic settlement carbon dated at around 7,500 BC, Syria, brought the incompetence of US foreign policy to the attenyion of mainstream media. This is an administration that, until recently, claimed to have gained the upper hand against Islamic State. Now we can clearly see that the Islamists are closer than ever to setting up a Theocratic nation state in the middle east, on land won from Syria and Iraq.
Back in March 2015, Gen. Lloyd Austin, of U.S. Central Command, told the Armed Services Committee in the US Congress that the Islamic State (aka ISIS or ISIL or Daesh) was no longer able to conduct major military operations, while in April Vice President Joe Biden removed his foot from his mouth for just long enough to state that “ISIL’s momentum in Iraq has halted, and in many places, has been flat-out reversed.”
Shortly afterwards President Obama made his contribution to the American sport of declaring victory prematurely, issuing an optimitics message after meeting Iraqi leader Haider al-Abadi: "We are making serious progress in pushing back ISIL out of Iraqi territory. About a quarter of the territory fallen under Daesh control has been recovered. Thousands of strikes have not only taken ISIL fighters off the war theater, but their infrastructure has been deteriorated and decayed. And under Prime Minister Abadi’s leadership, the Iraqi security forces have been rebuilt and are getting re-equipped, retrained, and strategically deployed across the country."
Well at least Obama is consistent in his ability to be totally wrong about everything. In the wake of the ISIS victory in Ramadi, opponents of the administration such as political commentator Charles Krauthammer, former U.S. Ambassador John Bolton, and Sen. Lindsey Graham, have labelled such views "out of touch and “delusional." Those present affirmed that Obama sounded strangely disconnected on Tuesday when telling The Atlantic that the ISIS gains did not represent a defeat.
It seemed a lot like the Titanic's captain telling passengers that the hole below the waterline was a minor problem and everything was under control. Perhaps he's back on the crack pipe.
The view of the American right is no less insane however. Former Presidential candidate Sen. John McCain blames Obama for not doing more to bring down the Assad regime in Damascus, as if defeating an effective force against ISIS would be somehow strike a blow against ISIS itself. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and his Islamic Jihadists would love Obama to bomb the Assad regime to oblivion.
In fact, the US / NATO political leadership is clueless about how to deal with the problem, just as it was in 2003 when the disastrous decision by George Dubya Bush and Tony Blair to invade Iraq was backed without opposition. Politicians are stuck in a feedback loop in which journalists and 'special advisers' tell them what the corporate overlords want to hear and filter out anything that is 'off message'. Unfortunately reality has a way of leaking into the public domain.
Europe In Crisis About The Mediterranean Boat People
The intervention in Libya by western powers France, UK and USA (the FUKUS axis) was morrally and politically wrong as well as being perhaps the most stupid example of balls out politics by an American president ever. To overthrow the leader of any nation, no matter how unpopular he is with other world leaders, is a dangerous game.
Gaddafi’s home town falls to Islamic State in anarchic Libya Under the rule of strongman dictator Muammar Gaddafi Libya was the most prosperous nation on the African continent and its nationals had the highest standard of living. Since the western Coalition, the FUKUS Axis led by Barack Hussein Obama (nee Barry Dunham) supported a rag tag army of dissidents, malcontents and religious fanatics by bombing the Gaddafi regime (along with much of Libya's infrastructure to oblivion, the nation has descended into near anarchy.
The West Is Always To Blame For Africa's Troubles
It seems to us that according to the the political left of European and north American nation, we in the west are responsible for all of Africa's racial, economic and it was even the 'evil white man' who instigated tribal wars and genocides that took place before and parts of the continent was colonised. But excusing Africa's endemic problems is a parh to self destruction.
http://media.breitbart.com/media/2015/03/Gothenburg-Shooting-Reuters-640x480.jpg
Police secure a street in Gothenburg (Image source - Sky News)
Two people have been killed, and eight seriously injured after attackers burst into a crowded pub screening a football game and opened fire in the Swedish city of Gothenburg, reports from Sweden say. It is not known if the casualty count is final.
Information from Swedish police warns that people should expect the death toll to rise over the next few hours. Witnesses described the shooting as having started extremely quickly and being over before aunybody understood what had happened. TheLocal.se reports that, in the words of a witnesswho was in the bar at the time: “I didn’t have time to think what was happening. Then I saw that my friend was bleeding. I tried to stop the flow of blood as well as I could with my hands”.
Despite strict gun laws imposed in many European countries, the attack demonstrates the ease with which organised criminals and terrorist gangs can obtain high-powered assault rifles via criminal networks in the former Soviet republics. The weapons used in the Gothenburg attack, the motive for which has not yet been determined, are the same as the Paris Charlie Hebdo killings, and the Belgium Jewish museum shooting, among others.
Although no suspects have yet been arrested, police are reportedly saying the attack is an incidence of gang-related violence, which has been on the rise in Scandinavia, due to an influx of immigrants from lawless third world failed states. The apparent normality of such violence is summed up by the comments of one local resident who remarked that despite the fact “this is actually a quiet area” he admitted “there have been occasional shootings”.
The conflict in Gothenburg, Sweden’s second largest city is largely between a group of immigrant cartels, determined to capture the local drug trade. Over one fifth of all those now living in the city are immigrants, with some of the largest groups coming from Somalia, Iraq, and Iran. In Gothenburg and other Swedish cities, extortion of business owners by migrant gangs offering protection from other such gangs is becoming a fact of life for some, with police “powerless” to act. This is leading to 'white flight', an exodus of European residents and businesses from the cities.
Banning Cash Will Stop Terrorism (and end war, poverty, disease and bad smells)
The cashless society has been talked of for a long time by worshippers of authority, science fanboys, supporters of left wing politics and other people who think that nice Mr. Hitler had some good ideas really, but leading the race to ban cash because it is an aid to terrorism is the extereme right wing National Socialist regime in France.
A witness said the girl probably had no idea that a bomb had been strapped to her body.
The explosion just before lunch killed 20, including the girl, and injured 18, according to the police.
Boko Haram did not immediately claim the attack, but the Islamic insurgents have increasingly used young girls as human bombs as they carve an African “Caliphate” from the plains of northern Nigeria.
Today, Boko Haram controls about 20,000 square miles of territory - an area the size of Belgium. Within this domain, the black flag of jihad flies over scores of towns and villages scattered across the neighbouring states of Borno and Yobe.
The latest conquest was the fishing town of Baga on the shores of Lake Chad, which fell to the Islamists last Wednesday.
“For five kilometres (three miles), I kept stepping on dead bodies until I reached Malam Karanti village, which was also deserted and burnt,” one surviving fisherman, Yanaye Grema, said.
Boko Haram’s fighters have now achieved mastery over 11 local government areas with a total population exceeding 1.7 million people, according to the official 2006 census.
Once, the movement’s fighters would launch hit-and-run attacks on defenceless villages. Now, Boko Haram’s realm stretches from the Mandara Mountains on the eastern border with Cameroon to Lake Chad in the north and the Yedseram river in the west.
The Nigerian army, crippled by corruption and incompetence, has shown itself unable to resist the jihadist advance.
Last September, Abubakar Shekau, the self-styled “Emir” of Boko Haram, proclaimed his ambition to conquer a “Caliphate” and follow the example of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil).
Oleg Orlov used the headline “Ukraine’s Forgotten City Destroyed by War,” to lead an observational report on a city in ruins after months of intensive bombing and shelling by the neo Nazi Kiev regime during July and August of 2014.
Though most of his article tiptoed around the question of which side carried out the bombing, no one can deny the aggressors were the Ukrainian Military Forces, while the defenders were irregulars of the local militias who lived in the invaded region and were trying to defend their homes. So, anyone with an IQ above 50 would have no problem understanding that the Ukrainian Air Force and Army were responsible for bombing this city — that the Government was bombing and trying to exterminate ethnic Russians who are Ukrainian citizens.
Here is the way that Orlov reported it:
“Towards the end of July, Ukrainian troops approached Pervomaisk but ran into stiff resistance and could not take it. A massive artillery bombardment began that would continue into August. Most people fled.”
He described the damage he viewed:
“Some blocks of this city, situated 50 kilometres west of Luhansk, have been practically wiped off the face of the earth by Ukrainian artillery barrages. Hardly any houses have escaped unscathed. We had seen such complete devastation in eastern Ukraine only [once before], in the villages of Khryashchuvate and Novosvitlivka, a few kilometres southeast of Luhansk. On that occasion, though, it was LNR (Luhansk People’s Republic) and possibly Russian artillery that opened fire in August [in order to] dislodge Ukrainian troops from the villages.”
Orlov ignores a few important facts, primarily this: The Ukrainian Government blocked aid convoys to the beseiged area thus trying to starve the residents there to death. To blame Russia for any of that failure of food to reach the starving (which the Kiev government echoed by the rent boy President in Washington have) is obscene. But at least Orlov's article is a start. That’s more than one can yet say for America's 'liberal' newspapers such as The New York Times, and Washington Post.
The New York Times, and Washington Post present themselves as authentic news organisations, not mere propaganda sheets. The Guardian has taken a step away from that type of politicised journalism that has become so pervasive in the free world, if only to the extent that Britain is, to a small extent, a party to the February 2014 Ukrainian coup. Perhaps that’s why the ‘news’ media in Britain are a bit freer to report the truth of that war than ours are.
Only in America is the misrepresentation by media about Ukraine’s war and the demonisation of Russia and Vladimir Putin (who to be sure is no angel) so pervasive. That’s because the Ukrain revolution and the proxy war with Russia is basically America’s war, although the American public is overwhelmingly against it. The American Government serves the American corporatocracy (the money) rather thn the public.
Maybe the British and European elite don’t hate Russians as much as America's rulers do, but for whatever reason, they’re not so committed to the destruction of Russia as Obama and the Corporate monopoly men he represents. The American oligarchs control America’s ‘news’ media, but they do not also control Britain’s or Europe's.
The situation in Ukraine is hard for propagandists such as the Obama Administration and the leaders of NATO nations and the EU to address. No sooner had they presented the revolution as a victory for freedom and democracy that the Kiev government outed themselves as fascist thugs. The American oligarchs cannot admit this, they desperately need war, with Russia, with ISIS, with Iran, to divert attention from how screwed Amewrica is economically and socially. And so the Obama administration has resorted to terror tactics.
Is it any surprise that in the Arab world, in Africa and increasingly in Europe and South East Asia the dissidents and malcontents are turning to terrorism and lawlessness when the world's leading military and economic powers are behaving like terrorist nations in their efforts to impose their will on smaller nations?
"Their children will hole up in basements!" screeched Ukrainian "President" Poroshenko, the oligarch and "Chocolate King." "This is how we will win this war!" He was talking about the children of the people of East Ukraine, whose cities are being bombed from the air by the US-supported Ukrainian military. Thousands have been killed, mostly civilians: Ukraine’s war on its own people has displaced nearly a million people. Many have fled to neighboring Russia, while a little under half a million are classified as internally displaced refugees. The Ukrainian military, which claims to be fighting "terrorists," is using cluster bombs – weapons that are banned in the civilized world, but freely used by Ukraine’s military, which includes the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion.
Formally inducted into Ukraine’s US-backed military machine, the Azov Battalion was organized by openly neo-Nazi groups, and has been such a success that their deputy commander, Vadim Troyan, has been appointed the city of Kiev’s chief of police. Troyan is a member of the "Patriot[s] of Ukraine," a paramilitary group associated with the Social-National Assembly – an umbrella group, founded in 2008, uniting a number of ultra-rightist and openly neo-Nazi Ukrainian organizations. The appointment was made by Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, a member of the "moderate" People’s Front party of Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk.
While both Troyan and the Ukrainian government deny any association with neo-Nazis, the Human Rights Group of Kharkiv says he "ran for Ukraine’s parliament this year as a member of the People’s Front. He is described on their site as being a member of ‘Patriot of Ukraine.’" Before Troyan’s elevation to the top law enforcement position in the country’s capital, he and his fellow neo-Nazis were quite well-known to the police in Kharkiv, where they regularly beat up their political opponents as well as foreign students, migrants, and homosexuals.
So if you’re going to Kiev, perhaps to do a little sight-seeing, or maybe to attend a conference, and you’re a foreign student, or a homosexual – or even if you just look a little out of place – be forewarned: it’s not safe.
And if you’re a reporter covering the conflict in Ukraine, and you have any interaction with the Ukrainian government – specifically the Ukrainian intelligence service known as the SBU – be advised that you will be dealing with Yuri Michalchyshyn, formerly the chief ideologist of the neo-fascist Svoboda party, who has been appointed head of the SBU’s "Department of Propaganda."
The bitter irony here of course is that ISIS and it's parent Al Qaeda were not just born out of American meddling in middle eastern politics, this latest, most violent and most directly threatening to the peace and stability of western nation were funded by money from America and its middle eastern allies, its well organised and disciplined fighters were trained by American, British and French (the FUKUS axis) 'military advisers' and they are armed with weapons and munitions from FUKUS axis defence contractors (usually via intermediaries such as Turkey and Qatar as we learned during the Syria conflict).
Now I'm not a military strategist but it seems to me the most insane thing a nation can do in any conflict situation is train and arm its enemies.
Charlie Hebdo: No Wonder There Are Conspiracy Theories
With a little distance between us and the Charlie Hebdo killings, questions remain unanswered and are likely to remain so. These questions inspire conspiracy theories, which in turn trigger authority worshippers to dismiss anyone who asks legitimate questions as 'right wing nut jobs'...
It brought an instant response from web humourists who are sick (aren't we all?) of being lectured by self righteos hypocrites. I like this comment on The Obama's synthetic concern, and it is true of course. Thoughout his presidency to date the only thing barack Obama can find to boast of is that he is "good at killing people": the peasants of Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, Iraq, Uganda and Somalia don't need to look at Boggart Blog for confirmation of that, and I guess the poor of Nigeria will soon learn it without our help.
More Political Ineptitude Stirs Secterian Tensions
Amid the surfeit of scaremongering about Islamic extremist terrorism and attempts to secure immunity from attack by appeasement we have seen Oxford University Press ban all pig related words from its publications because pigs are an abomination to Allah and references to them will offend Muslims ...
Next CIA Target For Destabilisation And War - Nigeria
Just a short while ago (hours, not days) I posted at item from African Renaissance News over at the Little Nicky Machiavelli blog under the headline: Boko Haram Is A CIA Covert Operation - Wikileaks.
Wikileaks are not infallible but the report in the African news magazine seemed quite credible and ties in with things I have read before about the activities of western government security agencies in Nigeria and other resource rich African nations (read more at Little Nicky Machiavelli)
Now hot on the heels of that story, I stumble across this:
On 14th April 2014, Boko Haram, an insurgent group operating in Nigeria, abducted up to 230 girls from their school in Chibok. The leader of the group, Abubakar Sheka, recently said in a video that the girls could be sold into slavery.
This is, by any standard, a horrendous crime.
In response to the abduction, there has been a campaign by people in Nigeria to draw attention to the plight of these girls, as a way of building up international pressure for their safe release.
In recent days, however, talk has also started to turn to a potential military response to the kidnapping. The Guardian have reported that ‘The United States and Britain have offered military and technical support to Nigeria to hunt down the Islamist group which has abducted a new batch of schoolgirls'. Britain itself is prepared ‘to send special forces and intelligence gathering aircraft'.
The article also carries a quote from Barack Obama, which strongly suggests that any potential military response won't just be about securing the release of these girls (if it's even about that at all).
Could it be perhaps that the whole thing is another Washington / whitehall / United Nations false flag operation to soften us up for war in African where militant Islamic groups appear to be gaining the upper hand against NWO friendly puppet governments?
This, from Nigerian newspaper Vanguard suggests it might:
‘The world media has yet to report on a deadly attack in Gamborou Ngala in the Borno State. According to a report posted today by Vanguard, the jihadist terror group Boko Haram stormed the town.
At least 300 people were confirmed dead on Monday when Boko Haram gunmen in armoured vehicles stormed Gamborou Ngala town in Borno state.
According source the security forces earlier deployed to area, moved to the Lake Chad axis when they received intelligence report that some gunmen were sighted with abducted schoolgirls moving to the area.
The insurgents targetted a local market and fired sporadic shots into the crowd before proceeding into the town to wreak more havoc.
Gamborou, which is situated along Nigeria-Cameroon border is the administrative headquatres of Ngala local government of the state, about 200km from Maiduguri, the capital city.
Senator Ahmed Zannah, who is from the area confirmed the killings, said the invaders spent 12 hours wreaking havoc on defenceless civilians.
- See more at: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2014/05/boko-haram-misleads-army-kills-300-fresh-borno-attack/#sthash.TTaNKRUn.dpuf
Boko Haram's official name is Jama'atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda'awati wal-Jihad, which translated from the Arabic means "People Committed to the Propagation of the Prophet's Teachings and Jihad.” The group is a Takfiri offshoot of the Salafi movement. Salafi-Takfiris attack other Muslims and Christians they consider apostates. Boko Haram has worked to impose sharia law in Nigeria, north Cameroon and Niger. It has killed Christians, bombed churches, attacked schools, police stations, government installations, and has kidnapped western tourists.
Prior to the attack, the mainstream media covered an announcement on Monday issued by the Obama administration stating the United States will send military, intelligence and law enforcement advisors to Nigeria to help the government there locate and rescue more than 270 teenage girls abducted by Boko Haram.'
as I have always said, we should disbelieve everything that comes from the FUKUS axis propaganda machine and always oppose military intervention in foreign countries unless we are sure, absolutely sure, those pushing for military action have told us the truth about what is going on.
When Barack Obama called up the French and British leaders and reconvened the FUKUS axis that had done so much to trash Iraq (which was already in a bad state after a war and ten years of sanctions, the campaign to depose the tyrant Gaddafi went pear shaped very quickly. Coups, gangsterism and terror are the legacy of Nato's war in Libya.
Almost immediately the FUKUS axis kicked off another campaign of regime change, this time to overthrow they dictator Assad in Syria. No bombing raids this time, Assad was best mates with Russia, Iran and China as well as presenting a more formidable opponent in Syria's army, air force and navy. Because of this, western involvement was limited to arming and supplying rebels.
Unfortunately the rebels who had been presented as brave freedom fighters who desired only freedom and western style liberal democracy turned out to be savage, brutal, racist human organ noshers. Not good for PR.
The west could not back down however and having seen two attempts to justify military intervention vetoed by Russia and China in the United Nations Security Council, the USA staged a couple of false flag incidents involving toxic gas and sent a flotilla of warships to the eastern Mediterranean. And Russia and Iran stationed their warships off the Syrian coast, foiled a couple of American attempts to hit Assad's strongholds with missile fire, successfully demonstrating in the process that their surface to air missiles can down a fly from a rang of fifty miles, and said "Come and have a go if you think you're hard enough."
And the face off continued for a few weeks then the American fleet saied away to be available should the planned regime change in Ukraine descend into nastiness.
And while the FUKUS axis wee failing to cover themselves in glory elsewhere, Libya was festering because it is a crap way of doing regime change to overthrow a government, no mater how nasty and replace it with criminal gangs and tribal warlords.
Here's the latest news from Libya.
from The Guardian:
Iraq may have been a blood-drenched disaster and Afghanistan a grinding military and political failure. But Libya was supposed to have been different. Nato's war to overthrow Colonel Gaddafi in 2011 was hailed as the liberal intervention that worked.
The western powers might have had to twist the meaning of the UN resolution about protecting civilians, the city of Sirte might have been reduced to rubble, large-scale ethnic cleansing taken place and thousands of civilians killed. But it was all in a noble cause and achieved without Nato casualties.
This wasn't Bush and Blair, after all, but Obama, Cameron and Sarkozy. The people were free, the dictator was dead, a mooted massacre had been averted – and all this without any obvious boots on the ground. Even last year the prime minister was still claiming it had all been worthwhile, promising to stand with Libyans "every step of the way”.
But three years after Nato declared victory, Libya is lurching once again towards civil war. Over the past few days, the CIA-linked General Hiftar launched his second coup attempt in three months, supposedly to save the country from "terrorists” and Islamists. On Sunday, his forces stormed the national parliament in Tripoli, after 80 people were killed in fighting in Benghazi two days earlier.'
And now with rumours that the US Government is behind the boko Haram uprising in oil and minerals rich Nigeria it looks as if once again the FUKUS axis is preparing to leave behind unfinished business as it moves on to its next target for destabilisation.
Now hot on the heels of that story, I stumble across this:
On 14th April 2014, Boko Haram, an insurgent group operating in Nigeria, abducted up to 230 girls from their school in Chibok. The leader of the group, Abubakar Sheka, recently said in a video that the girls could be sold into slavery.
This is, by any standard, a horrendous crime.
In response to the abduction, there has been a campaign by people in Nigeria to draw attention to the plight of these girls, as a way of building up international pressure for their safe release.
In recent days, however, talk has also started to turn to a potential military response to the kidnapping. The Guardian have reported that ‘The United States and Britain have offered military and technical support to Nigeria to hunt down the Islamist group which has abducted a new batch of schoolgirls'. Britain itself is prepared ‘to send special forces and intelligence gathering aircraft'.
The article also carries a quote from Barack Obama, which strongly suggests that any potential military response won't just be about securing the release of these girls (if it's even about that at all).
Could it be perhaps that the whole thing is another Washington / whitehall / United Nations false flag operation to soften us up for war in African where militant Islamic groups appear to be gaining the upper hand against NWO friendly puppet governments?
This, from Nigerian newspaper Vanguard suggests it might:
‘The world media has yet to report on a deadly attack in Gamborou Ngala in the Borno State. According to a report posted today by Vanguard, the jihadist terror group Boko Haram stormed the town.
At least 300 people were confirmed dead on Monday when Boko Haram gunmen in armoured vehicles stormed Gamborou Ngala town in Borno state.
According source the security forces earlier deployed to area, moved to the Lake Chad axis when they received intelligence report that some gunmen were sighted with abducted schoolgirls moving to the area.
The insurgents targetted a local market and fired sporadic shots into the crowd before proceeding into the town to wreak more havoc.
Gamborou, which is situated along Nigeria-Cameroon border is the administrative headquatres of Ngala local government of the state, about 200km from Maiduguri, the capital city.
Senator Ahmed Zannah, who is from the area confirmed the killings, said the invaders spent 12 hours wreaking havoc on defenceless civilians.
- See more at: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2014/05/boko-haram-misleads-army-kills-300-fresh-borno-attack/#sthash.TTaNKRUn.dpuf
Boko Haram's official name is Jama'atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda'awati wal-Jihad, which translated from the Arabic means "People Committed to the Propagation of the Prophet's Teachings and Jihad.” The group is a Takfiri offshoot of the Salafi movement. Salafi-Takfiris attack other Muslims and Christians they consider apostates. Boko Haram has worked to impose sharia law in Nigeria, north Cameroon and Niger. It has killed Christians, bombed churches, attacked schools, police stations, government installations, and has kidnapped western tourists.
Prior to the attack, the mainstream media covered an announcement on Monday issued by the Obama administration stating the United States will send military, intelligence and law enforcement advisors to Nigeria to help the government there locate and rescue more than 270 teenage girls abducted by Boko Haram.'
as I have always said, we should disbelieve everything that comes from the FUKUS axis propaganda machine and always oppose military intervention in foreign countries unless we are sure, absolutely sure, those pushing for military action have told us the truth about what is going on.