Social Media Turned Us Into Rats

Hungry Rats at That

I think the Great Pause of the pandemic gave us enough time to digest what just happened last decade. It's rare that you get to reflect on things in such a leisurely manner. The experience had some parts Boccaccio's 'Decameron' and some parts 'The Plague' by Camus.

One of the things that really struck a cord was how social media effectively turns us into hungry rats, addicted to the stimulus of other people's posts and news items. Indeed, there was a certain level of irony in all the doom-scrolling we did during lockdown. Now that the pandemic is in the "let's-just-ignore-it-and-it-might-go-away" phase, it's weird to reflect on the things we thought and did as we took cover from the unseen foe. As Genesis once pointed out in their songs, how does one fight a o deadly when you don't even know it's there? That in a nutshell is how dinosaurs went extinct. 

Anyway, here is a song decrying the horror that was the betrayal inherent in the Cambridge Analytica episode that gave us Brexit and Trump in 2016. 

 

Quick Shots - 07/Feb/2017

More On the Liberal Party Split Thing

As it turns out, there's more about Cory Bernardi that's worth knowing. We could have guessed it, but it bears pointing out:

Bernardi first sensed a problem in 2009, when during a heated and divisive partyroom debate on whether the Coalition should support Kevin Rudd's emissions trading scheme, one of his colleagues, the now deceased West Australian MP Don Randall, rose to his feet and said: "I don't give a stuff about the national interest, I want to get re-elected and this needs to go away." 

Bernardi went back to his Senate office and wrote down the quote. He never forgot it. It was the beginning of the end.

I don't know how else to put it but that right there is the mocking gun that these Liberal Party politicians are nothing but hacks sucking on the pubic teat. As if Bronwyn Bishop and Sussan Ley weren't enough proof, here in the segment above is the distilled essence of how these bastards think. 

The late WA MP Don Randall said he doesn't give a stuff about the national interest, he just wants to get re-elected. It begs the question why the hell we need to re-elect such a person; as it turned out, he died shortly before the recent election and truth be told, judging from the quote, it was probably a good thing too, because he certainly had no intention of serving the national interest. It's easily arguable that the most he served the national interest was when he died, thus depriving himself of more opportunities to suck at the public teat. 

That Cory Bernardi thought the quip was worth writing down as quote to which he is going to make his political credo, tells us well enough that he too doesn't think much about the national interest - he too is all about getting re-elected. It's strange that he thinks he has a better chance not as the Liberal Party's No. 2 on the SouthAustralian Senate ticket but as an independent. Maybe there's more money in being a leader of a party of one. It's hard to figure how the dollars an cents work out, but it would be remiss of the media if it didn't investigate this strictly pecuniary angle. After all, the man's motto amounts to, stuff the national interest, he's only in it for himself.

If I may offer a bit of gratuitous advice to Corgi BurntNazi, it is that the ALP have found "Disunity Is Death". Leaving a major party that would put you in as a senator is likely the dumbest move he's made in politics. 

Grexit Again?

If there's one thing that really puts the fear in the markets the world all over, it's the notion that Greece will default on its debts. That being said, the narrative to date has been, the Euro Zone won't let that happen, and the Greeks have to eat a lot of humiliation not to be allowed to default or leave the Euro. This has resulted in the ECB cycling through a lot of money that pays off the debt for Greece in exchange for Greece making immense cuts to its expenditure - some of which might have been reasonable but others that have resulted in terrible cuts to services. There doesn't even seem to be any coherent link between the cuts demanded by the Euro Troika and how the money is spent seeing that most of the money goes to paying off the bonds. And as the Greek economy shrinks and shrivels, it loses any chance paying off the debt.

With that in mind, here's something from Yanis Varoufakis, the ex-finance minister of Greece.

“This two-pronged preparation is the only way to prevent another excruciating retreat by the prime minister in the short term and [German Finance Minister Wolfgang] Schaeuble’s plan in the long term,” Varoufakis wrote. 

In his article, Varoufakis suggested that Schaeuble’s strategy is to lead Greeks to the point of exhaustion so they ask to leave the euro themselves. 

Noting that the “parallel payment system was already designed in 2014”, Varoufakis stresses that Tsipras had “two delusions” that led the government to the current impasse:

• a. that on the night of the referendum, the dilemma was between Schaeuble’s Grexit Plan and the 3. bailout
• b. that the obedience to the 3.bailout could be political manageable through a parallel, society-friendly program.

Both of these “working assumptions” were based only on autosuggestion, the ex finance minister stresses adding that he tried to explained this to the Prime Minister on the night of the referendum 

“In reality there was never a basis for hope that the toxic 3 bailout would be gradually rationalized, in terms that the European Commission would support Athens so that the austerity and anti-social IMF measures would relax, the IMF would force Berlin to accept debt restructuring and lower primary surpluses, the ECB would include Greece in the bond purchase program (QE),” Varoufakis wrote 

He accused leading European negotiators of lying. 

“That Moscovici [EU Monetary Affairs Commissioner], Coerer [ECB] and Sapen [French finance minister] might have given such promises was not an excuse.
Since May 2015 we were fully aware that these gentlemen know how to lie and fail to deliver on their promises when they do not lie.”

Greece remains the thin end of the wedge. If Greece goes, then, the dominoes are in play for the rest of the PIIGS, and will lead to the destruction of the Euro. While it stays in the Euro Zone, the world can live with the fiction that everything is okay, except there is the glaring issue of Brexit, whereby cozy assumptions about the health of the Euro Zone can't be ignored. If the UK can leave, then it offers a practical blueprint for Greece to leave.

The weird thing is that the UK need not ought to have voted to leave, while Greece needs to leave if it wants any semblance of control over its finances. The horror show of bluff and intimidation made by the Troika to keep Greece in the fold and to keep taking the austerity medicine in a sense informed the UK public as to the failings of not having control. Even more ironic may be the case that the UK already had kept its pound sterling as opposed to adopting the Euro, so in a sense it was the state with the least problems of losing control to the Euro Zone. thus if the UK still seems it fit to leave the Euro Zone, then it follows that perhaps Greece needs to reconsider its desire to stay.

If all things are equal, the next time the Grexit show hits the road and world markets panic over the possibility of Greece leaving the Euro Zone, it might be better to put your money on the likelihood that it does leave, and that it's a good thing.

View From The Couch - 25/Jan/2017

The Hollowing Out Of Cities

This is something generational and likely going to freak some people out, but the ageing population situation in Tokyo is creating holes in the urban landscape. As old people pass away, they leave behind apartments in which they dwelled, and because of the age of the buildings, have little resale value. This is creating a problem because the buildings start accelerating in their decrepitude as more people die and fewer people are there to support the body corporate sinking funds.

The thing about this is that a lifetime is spent paying off loans for a box in space and then the box loses value. That's the first problem. The second problem is that there is no real way to redevelop these buildings without public monies. It's beginning to turn into a spiral in Tokyo. This is instructive about what happens when a property bubble keeps out a generation of people from buying in and having kids. In a sense, the collapse of a younger population in Tokyo is a direct reflection of the property Bubble of the 1980s.

Not to say this is whites going happen to Australia's major cities. For one, our cities are not built to such densities, and for another, majority of the high density apartments are relatively new and so will not be spiralling down so soon. It takes a good 50 years for that to take place and that would be four decades away. The more problematic area might be that the ageing population will mean a higher burden on the fewer working generation who will be working from outside the major city centres while the inner city becomes predominantly grey.

It's weird but you can see it already in Sydney, where the people buying into the higher density closer to the city aren't first time buyers because they can't afford it. it's older couples downsizing or investing, and Sydney's urban metropolitan heart is already looking kind of grey.

Sydney's Housing Un-Affordability

Anyway... just how bad is Sydney?

The Harbour City's eye-watering house prices were trumped by only Hong Kong in the Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey, which examined more than 400 cities in nine countries including the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and Canada. 

After being sworn in as New South Wales Premier yesterday, Gladys Berejiklian used her first press conference to put the spotlight on housing affordability. 

The report ranked middle-income housing affordability using a "median multiple" score, which is calculated by dividing the average house price by the average household income. 

Anything with a score of 5.1 and over is dubbed "severely unaffordable", so let's break it down:

Rank: Least affordable City - Median multiple

1. Hong Kong ..................18.1
2. Sydney, NSW ..............12.2
3. Vancouver, Canada ......11.8
4. Santa Cruz, USA .........11.6
5. Santa Barbara, USA.....11.3
6. Auckland, NZ ..............10
7. Wingcaribbee, NSW .....9.8
8. Tweed Heads, NSW .....9.7
9. San Jose, USA ..............9.6
10. Melbourne, VIC ...........9.5

Hmmm. That looks far more insane than any chart I've seen up to this point. We know Hong Kong is nuts because it's essentially an island and a point and lots of land reclamation going on in the attempt to make more Hong Kong than God intended (so to speak). But Sydney to be leading the second pack of cities with multiples at roughly12 is pretty gaudy when London, New York, Tokyo, Paris, Rome and Berlin are entirely missing in the top 10. That's some list. The fact that Wingcaribbee and Tweed Heads makes the list tells you that something stupid is going on. 

Our banks are lending money to people who want to have these multiples, just to live in these places. It has no bearing to the reality of any other real estate market on the planet except maybe Hong Kong,and so you have to say that Australian property owners and investors are collectively bidding up the numbers with no concern of the downside to the market, - which of course is a sign of a bubble.

Of course, Mark Latham has a radical plan to deal with this issue. He says, cut immigration.

“[Housing affordability] is all about supply and demand. It’s not rocket science. The problem with extra supply in Sydney is the urban sprawl, the lack of infrastructure, the wretched traffic jams a million miles from the city centre, people struggling to get anywhere near for their schools, shops their employment. So, supply has the problem of sprawl”. 

“[But] you’ve got to do something about demand. And whether we like it or not – and the two parties have got consensus about a Big Australia – the driver of housing demand in Sydney is immigration. The 200,000 a year plus immigration program – add to that the refugee program – that’s the driver of demand. And unless you address that, you can have all of the housing bonds, press conferences and forums that you like – and sort of puffy stuff in the media – and you won’t get a solution. So, break the consensus about Big Australia, slash the immigration program, drive down demand, and finally you will have a sensible solution to housing affordability”. 

“You won’t have to spend as much on infrastructure funding because the place is not sprawling as much. And the other benefit you get is environmental sustainability. It’s something The Greens used to talk about, but now they talk about 50,000 to 100,000 refugees – they are Big Australia as well”. 

“So, there is real room here for a sensible solution based on cuts to immigration”.

That sounds like an oversimplification, but it's certainly one different view to add to the mix.
Anyway, I just thought all that was interesting in light of yesterday's Berejiklian notion that supply would fix housing affordability. It most likely won't, and the longer they leave it, the worse the problem is going to be down the track.


To Un-Fuck The Goat Brexit

Things are getting a little convoluted with this Brexit thing. The Supreme court in the UK has just told the UK Government that Article 50 definitely can't be started by the government alone, it has to be put to the vote both houses.

Lord Neuberger said the judgment was not about the referendum result or a comment on the merits of leaving or staying in the EU. 

"The referendum is of great political significance, but the Act of Parliament authorising it did not say what would happen afterwards," Lord Neuberger said, meaning any action taken now must be in keeping with the UK’s constitution.
The Independent reported today that ministers are likely to be ready to publish the Bill that MPs will vote on by the end of the week. 

After the judgement, Attorney General Jeremy Wright said the Government was "disappointed" by the final decision in its historic battle over who has the right to authorise the start of Brexit. 

He added: "The Government will comply with the judgement of the court and do all that is necessary to implement it." 

It is unclear what would happen legally if MPs vote against such a bill, as much of the constitutional law related to Brexit remains as yet untested, although Jeremy Corbyn has "asked" his MPs to vote not to obstruct it. 

The judges' ruling is a victory for Gina Miller, a philanthropist and banker, who brought the case against the Government. She was also backed by a crowd-funded group called The Peoples' Challenge, who described themselves as a group of "concerned EU citizens". 

Although the Government lost the challenge, the justices unanimously ruled that there was need to consult with the devolved powers in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
In a statement released immediately after the ruling, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said his party would not "frustrate the process for invoking Article 50" but would seek to amend the Government.

Well that's a surprise and a half. Last we knew, 70% of MPs didn't want a Brexit, so this actually offers them a second bite at the cherry. Now, Jeremy Corbyn says he won't frustrate the government over invoking Article 50, but what if enough MPs banded together block it in the House of Commons? Or even if it passes there, what happens if the House of Lords shoots it down?

After the referendum, it sure didn't look like there was an opening for overturning the result, but suddenly there's a puncher's chance of Brexit getting de-railed in Parliament. And if it did, well, would that really be a bad thing after all the sloppy lies that got it over the line?

It would be rather interesting should things come to pass that Brexit couldn't get up because Article 50 couldn't be triggered? They'll laugh in Europe; they'll probably even swear. David Cameron sure would. Of course, the MPs may well rubber stamp the thing to just let it through and out of their hair. after all who would want the furore that would follow a scuttled Brexit?

View From The Couch - 05/Jul/2016

It Doesn't Get Better For Malcolm

Pleiades rang me yesterday morning to let me know that just about everybody was writing off Malcolm Turnbull. Columnists as far and wide across the AFR, The ABC, The Australian and The Guardian as well as Fairfax were essentially rolling up their sleeves and sharpening their pens to writ Malcolm Turnbull's political obituary.

Pleiades was particularly interested in discussing Barrie Cassidy's prognosis that the Coalition won't get the seats to form government, and Ian Verrender's piece where he couched the problem in a historic context where the political elite have worn out their welcome with the wider electorate. The most damning might be Mark Kenny:

The scale of the failure is colossal. Turnbull's key promise in the final weeks was the assurance of that most valuable thing: stability. Indeed, this emerged as his key edge, his point of market differentiation over the unstable Labor-Greens-independents nexus. 

Two points on this. First, stability is not a policy per se and can no more be promised than happiness. It is rather, the by-product of sound policy, effectively designed and successfully delivered. "Stability" in a democracy, is ultimately the people's to give and in this case, the people have expressly withdrawn it. 

Second, Turnbull in his anger, ignored the electoral message on Saturday night and thus missed the opportunity it gave him to communicate internally. Voters opted for the centre. They voted in more-or-less equal numbers for his style of economic management, but Labor's higher taxes, and more spending on health and education. Ditto for the NBN and climate change. 

Bill Shorten became the first mainstream leader in a generation to actually propose higher taxes and higher spending. Some voters perhaps many, said yes.

It seemed a bit strange that a lot of that noise was also going from the far right of the Liberal Party who are still under the misapprehension that Tony Abbott might have fared better had he been the PM contesting it. Oh, and Peter Reith had stuff to say that made about as much sense as a dog turd omelette. Of course when even Amanda Vanstone points out how out of touch such a view might be, then maybe they have to consider that they might be bad at this politics thing. I guess the corollary there is that if you make Amanda Vanstone look like the voice of reason, you're probably lacking in much reason.

By late in the day even Bill Shorten was calling for Malcolm Turnbull to resign - although it's hard to decipher on what basis he thinks that Malcolm would take on board his expert advice. I guess Bill Shorten knows very well what a terminal leadership looks like given his track record. If Malcolm were his leader, Bill would've removed him by now.  Maybe Mr. Turnbull should accept it as free expert advice.

Of course, there's this non-endorsement from Steve Kilbey of The Church.

Batman Vs Superman

I finally caught with this turd nugget on Fetch TV. I know Warner Brothers are in a hurry to ramp up the DC cinematic universe but this was a dog's breakfast with a side order cat food and birdseed. No, really, I can't poke fun at this film enough. It is as misguided as it is incomprehensible; it is lame as it is dumb and teetered towards the unwatchable and outright laughable in many spots.

The benchmark for the genre is the first 'The Avengers' where the marvel heroes gather and do battle with the aliens threat. This one is a three way tango between Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman, where you can't fully comprehend the motivations for any of the characters. They don't come together - they fail to even gel convincingly. The patina of the film is so dark and grimy, you lose sight of the fact that you're supposed be watching Superman.

Actually, having watched Season 1 of 'Supergirl' (and what a triumph that was) it was distressing to see a film that utterly failed to make Superman 'super'. Or Wonder Woman wonderful for that matter. Gal Gadot is a great bit of casting. It's a shame they gave her so little to do. Ben Affleck as Batman was okay. He wasn't the worst thing in the film as once feared. But Jeremy Irons totally phoned in his Alfred performance. It was just boring. Again, 'Gotham' is doing great things with Alfred, and this film utterly failed to match that intrigue and interest between these characters.

It's hard to believe this is the film that follows up 'Man of Steel'. It's hard to believe Christopher Nolan was even involved. It's hard to believe they're going to launch Ezra Miller as The Flash on the back of his cameo in this film. It's pretty clear that at this point Grant Gustin has him beat. It's no contest, it's not even close; and that tells you the Miller/Flash movie is going to flop - it may as well be stillborn now. There's no point in doing that film. Even the standalone Wonder Woman movie is going to be deeply problematic judging form this movie.
They're doing this all wrong. Unbelievable.

Just A Side Note On Brexit

I want to share a couple of videos worth watching. The first is the inimitable 'Jonathan Pie'.



He's wonderful, this comedian. This is a great character. I guess if he was working in America they'd offer him a show. heck maybe there's a show in that - Jonathan Pie is sent to cover DC.
Anyway, he makes a fair point about branding the people who voted to leave as all racists and xenophobes.

A more apt description might have been "lied-to". Try this video for size:



Basically, the people who voted for Brexit believing they had very good reasons might have been fed false information to come to their conclusions. Of course it doesn't stop Boris Johnson from continuing to spout forth these lies. Such is life in the world of sane men led into terrible waters by madmen and megalomaniacs.

Quick Shots - 02/Jul/2016

It's Freakin' Election Day

For a long campaign, it sure creeps up on you when you're doing your best to ignore it.
The pollsters are calling it 50-50 which usually means they don't know what they're talking about and there's about to be a massive swing. Or maybe they're right. Short theALP winning, it would actually be kind of fun to see if we get a hung parliament. Yes, that re-run would be fun too, and well deserved. See if Malcolm Turnbull can stick to his guns and say he won't form an extended coalition with the cross bench seats.

With 27% of those polled saying they haven't decided but they're likely to vote for  minor party, this is anybody's guess as to which way it will swing, let alone prognosticate by how much. Truly, there is no justice when it comes to elections so I'm just going to sit back and watch the carnage unfold. 2013 sucked so much I'm sort of possessed by schadenfreude. Secretly, I wish they all suffer - but they can't because somebody has to win.

Grunwald

I am researching the battle of Grunwald. It's the second last major engagement in the Crusades, and has the dubious distinction of pitting the Teutonic Knights against a coalition of Polish knights, Lithuanian light cavalry and some Tartars. The Poles were presumably Catholic at this point in time, and the Lithuanians were recent converts as well so, it was a kind of all-Catholic slugfest. As Crusade battles go, it is one of the less edifying moments. There is no Saladin or Richard the Lion Heart. Instead the leading characters are decidedly petty and perhaps a little personality disordered.  This is not a grand moment in the history of Crusades; it's more a lingering footnote, a cul de sac in history given that the Teutonic order, Lithuania and Poland all edged back from being big players after this battle.

The Teutonic Knights aren't exactly great protagonists. If anything they have the air of a psychotic cult, hellbent on conquering lands. A sort of an early version of the SS to come. Perhaps the SS even modelled themselves after the naked fanaticism and over-the-top brutality. If Crusade stories are told from the 'christian' side with the blessings of the Pope, then these would be your protagonists. It's kind of strange because the northern reaches of Central Europe don't exactly lend themselves to the Crusade project of taking and obtaining Jerusalem. But I guess heathens are everywhere if you look hard enough. The through the lens of religious fanaticism.

If of course you look at this battle from the point of view of the Poles and Lithuanians, this is the great defence of their motherland from the psycho cult Teutonic Knights. The reason I'm looking into this at all is because the battle of Grunwald represents the high watermark of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The Lithuanians see this as their moment in history. They may be right.

The battle of Grunwald took place in 1410. The nuts and bolts of it aside, basically the Poles lured the Teutonic Knights into a battlefield of their choosing. The Lithuanians attacked first with their light cavalry and they were beaten back badly. They eventually regrouped to re-join the fray. By that point the Polish Knights had beaten the Teutonic Knights back to their lines. The Teutonic Knights eventually lost their leader and were routed.

The way the Lithuanians see it, they carried the day with their daring strategy of leaving the battlefield and then coming back. Something they allegedly learned in an earlier war. The way the Poles see it, the Lithuanians turned and fled, only to come back at the end so as not to be complete losers. As you can see , it's hard to draw a completely positive picture of the Lithuanian contribution to the battle. As for the Teutonic Knights, they never really recovered after this loss.

After the battle of Grunwald, there was the battle of Varna in 1444, followed by the fall of Constantinople in 1453. After the fall of Constantinople, the crusaders lost a vital way point on the way tot he Levant. Instead of sending more troops to the Levant, Europe then spent a good deal of time fending off the advancing Turks.
I won't go into the historic irony of the Turks now wanting to join the EU.

Speaking of which...

The Brexit Call We Don't See

I was chatting online with Somebody who voted for 'leave'. He's an educated guy; not necessarily a conservative; and not like some rabid xenophobe. His position was that the Euro project itself was in most part faulty, and therefore doomed to fail. Not only was Brussels faulty as a political organ, the entire Euro project had too many contradictions even before the GFC. Since the GFC, the Euro Zone has been - according to him - patching over the glaring problems, the most problematic of which is Greece and its debt problem. On a plain ledger, if Germany runs a surplus and Greece runs a deficit, Greece has to pay back Germany even though Greece really hasn't the means to do so. If Germany runs a surplus, it effectively constricts growth not just in Germany but also right across the Euro Zone. Yet there is no recourse for Greece or for that matter any other country.

According to him, Germany makes a lot of money exporting stuff it makes at a cheaper price that if they were doing it with Deutsche Marks. Gemran exports are competitive because the Euro currency depresses the price of Germany's exports - This depression of price happens because the entire Euro averages out all the productivity of its member states. Thus Germany clearly benefits from Greece being much less productive. Yet Germany is extra reluctant to share its spoils from this interaction. Why should Greece stick around to be punished by Germany at both ends of the ledger? And if that's the case, what other states are losing out?

He figures the UK is similarly losing out to France and Germany; which is a claim I don't quite get. He argues the Euro project is a house on fire and Brexit is merely the UK getting out of the burning building first. The Scots are crazy for wanting to run back into the burning building. It makes some kind of internal sense. It's not like the handling of Greece made the EU look good or accepting compromise.

View From The Couch - 28/Jun/2016

Election 2016 Goes On

And just like that we're into the final week before we go to vote. After all the weeks of misrepresentative argumentation and assigning prior blame to people that can't be held accountable, after mischaracterising the policies of governments past and the contexts in which they were formed, we're going to head to the polls next Saturday none the wiser and less informed than we need to be. This must be the most confused, stupid, irrational election in a very long time; I can't recall one as irrational and idiotic in my lifetime of voting. We are reaching peak stupid when it comes to the political discourse in this nation.

As such, one would think the incumbents are going to win. Which is a real tragedy that will have a deep impact on our polity for years to come.

Part of the problem is that you really can't trust these people at all. Especially after the 2013 election where by Tony Abbott spectacularly promised not to make cuts to specific things like health and education and then promptly went back on all his promises the moment he got into power. The Liberal Party has not really explained itself why they had to so flagrantly break their election promises, nor have they acquitted themselves particularly well For having done so. Worse still they haven't changed course from Tony Abbott's disastrous direction-setting as Malcolm Turnbull has steadfastly stuck to the same stupid policies.  

The ALP aren't exactly mounting a great challenge.  It's competent - but it's going to need to be a bit more than competent to get that 4.5% uniform swing. The fear is that Bill Shorten is trying to get close but not necessarily to win, and ask the party for another shot after a narrow loss. It's a wonder that they just don't go for the jugular with facts given just how incompetent and awful the incumbents have been.

When you look at the Brexit vote and the rise of Trump in the USA, it appears that the victory of slogan-over-substance delivered by Tony Abbott was in fact an early salvo in the rancorous kinds of elections where radical rhetoric muscles into the middle of the political discourse. The self-defeating protest vote that installed Tony Abbott over the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd ALP government is the very same kind of self-defeating protest vote that delivered Donald Trump as the nominee of the Republicans as well as voted the UK right out of the EU.

The best news about this election is that at the very least we're not about to do something drastic because we've already done that in 2013 and hopefully have the hindsight to know that was crap. But you never know. These candidates are ordinary enough to fuck up even that sad silver lining.

How Bad Is It Really?

Skarp sent me a link from The Economist today, probably to alert me to the fact that Brexit really is alarming - not merely disquieting of disturbing, or perhaps eyebrow-raising. It is the full skid, brown an stinky.

People are trying to put a smiley face on the utterly untenable Brexit situation. By people I mean journalists and politicians and spokespeople for the finance sector. The reality is that the ructions caused by the Brexit vote re already besting the kinds of records set in August 2008 when the US congress decided not to hand over the TARP payments to bail out the banks at the height of the liquidity crisis. For all this talk about scaremongering, one would like to ask just exactly were people expecting when they advocated Brexit?

Here's a quick look at what the British leadership looks like right now:

Sixty hours have gone by since a puffy-eyed David Cameron appeared outside 10 Downing Street and announced his resignation. The pound has tumbled. Investment decisions have been suspended; already firms talk of moving operations overseas. Britain’s EU commissioner has resigned. Sensitive political acts—the Chilcot report’s publication, decisions on a new London airport runway and the renewal of Britain’s nuclear deterrent—are looming. European leaders are shuttling about the continent meeting and discussing what to do next. Those more sympathetic to Britain are looking for signs from London of how they can usefully influence discussions. At home mounting evidence suggests a spike in racist and xenophobic attacks on immigrants. Scotland is heading for another independence referendum. Northern Ireland’s peace settlement may hang by a thread. 

But at the top of British politics, a vacuum yawns wide. The phones are ringing, but no one is picking up. 

Mr Cameron has said nothing since Friday morning. George Osborne, the chancellor of the exchequer, has been silent. (This afternoon I texted several of his advisers to ask whether he would make a statement before the markets open tomorrow. As I write this I have received no replies.) The prime minister’s loyalist allies in Westminster and in the media are largely mute. 

Apart from ashen-faced, mumbled statements from the Vote Leave headquarters on Friday, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove have also ducked the limelight; Mr Johnson is meeting friends and allies today, June 26th, at his house near Oxford in what are believed to be talks about his impending leadership bid. Neither seems to have the foggiest as to what should happen next. Today Mr Gove’s wife committed to Facebook the hope that “clever people” might offer to “lend their advice and expertise.” And Mr Johnson’s sister, Rachel, tweeted: “Everyone keeps saying ‘we are where we are’ but nobody seems to have the slightest clue where that is.”

I thought that alone would fill you with joy. If that's not whacky-disheartening enough, there's a report that a British nuclear sub has made port at Gibraltar to exert pressure on the Spanish not to attack. Like, hullo! Brexit surely doesn't mean the UK goes on war footing with the EU. Who the hell is running the show?

This whole process of Brexit clearly wasn't thought through let alone war-gamed or tested. You know I've been talking to reasonable people explaining to me why they thought the UK should leave the EU and why they voted that way, but truth be known they probably thought about the whole thing a whole lot more than the idiotic advocates Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove. It's rapidly becoming clear these idiots have no plan (never even saw the point of one), and as such Britain is more rudderless and adrift rather than proudly sailing forth out of the EU.

The people who have been explaining to me the rationale for voting Brexit are actually rationalising a bad decision with great skill and imagination. It's crap. It's the full load of shit that's hit the biggest fan in the world and the shit is flying all over the planet as we speak.
As politics goes, this is a well-thrusted custard.
Bravo Stupid.

The Dinosaurs Scream At The Incoming Asteroid...

Michael Moore had an interview with Owen Jones in the lead up to the Brexit vote in which he likened the British desire to leave the Eu as being like a Premier League football club wanting to leave the Premier League, relegating itself out. In the same interview he likened the people voting for a Brexit to the sorts of people voting for Donald Trump and said that most of the time the demagogues represented the dying wails of the reign of the straight white man. That it was like dinosaurs screaming at the Incoming asteroid, "build a wall!"

The fact is that the demographic change is happening and with it will come a new generation of thinkers, writers, and most importantly voters. They will think and enact things that this current set of status quo politicians cannot imagine let alone enact. And if you fear the future, you just might put your foot down and scream with Michael Moore's dinosaurs, "build a wall!"

That got me to thinking about the demographic divide on many issues which, in usual discussion starts off with the difference on things like gay marriage, but more importantly cover things like education and health. The segment of people voting for the likes of Bernie Sanders are young. The segment of population in Australia that supports gay marriage is young.

These issues might be contested heavily in the future if they were divided along ideological lines but It turns out they are not. That means these issues will inevitably go the way the young people want it in the future. The urge to leave the EU because one is a Euro-sceptic and make  as the urge to vote for Trump who promises to make "America Great Again" (which has been lampooned as "make America White Again"), and even to the extent that Australians can be persuaded that locking up asylum seekers on Manus and Nauru is a good idea. In the not too distant future when there are more of the young than the old again, it will flip.

In the mean time the current regime of dinosaurs will try and stack things in their favour as much as possible, trying to build barricades - heck, build walls. These are all rearguard actions of an older mindset. There are still enough dinosaurs fighting the rearguard action, staving off the future in, say, the DNC as there are in-reconstructed racists and crackpots on the right who pushed Trump into the limelight. Equally they are in the Tories in the UK and LNP here in Australia. The LNP are so anti-progressive they are determined to be absolutely regressive - but they just can't get the youth vote doing that.

To that extent I am more optimistic than pessimistic About the future. It's a real shame Bernie Sanders won't get up this year as the Democratic Nominee, for instance - but something is going to come from the enormous movement he has built. Something like climate change denial is a sport for the intellectually dishonest, but the phenomenon itself is advancing inexorably. At some point in the future, the young voters of today will have the numbers to get their politicians in who will not only institute proper policies but maybe even find the means to reverse decades of carbon emissions.

I have to admit, I am secretly hoping this is the election where it changes over and the Australian dinosaurs are consigned to history.

Speaking Of The Great Wall Of Trump...

I had the funny insight given to me this month:
The Chinese built their Great Wall to keep the barbarians out. But they sure didn't try to charge the cost of building that wall onto the barbarians.

Even More Reflections On Brexit

Day 3 After Brexit

It's certainly strange that I have so much to write about the Brexit referendum vote even three days after the event. Part of the difficulty in getting my head around it has been just how unexpected the outcome was, given the advantages EU membership conferred upon the UK.

Extraordinary also is the immense buyer's remorse being expressed by those who voted 'Leave' as a protest vote, only to find out they won. This dovetails with the strange report where Google searches for the EU went up after the vote closed, as people sought to find out what they have left. In other news related, Cornwall has sought confirmation that indeed the money they used to get from the EU would be replaced by the British government. This would be a fair cop if you had voted to stay and then against your wish been made to leave. What's particularly rich about this one is that Cornwall overwhelmingly voted to leave.

Northern Ireland is one of those issues that could turn into a disaster. The Good Friday Agreement that brought an end to long hostilities was underpinned by the EU laws and agreements whereby one side got just enough to be Ireland and the other side got be just enough to still be the UK, but there would have to be no border because they were all in the EU. That's now gone. It could very well slip-slide back into the chaos that was the Troubles with checkpoints guns and the lot (would you like some fries with your bombs?).  The horrors long thought to have been left behind in history just might come back - all thanks to this vote.

Nicola Sturgeon has already signalled a second referendum to keep Scotland in the EU which means secession from the UK. It's funny how the last Scotish referendum was argued as a session from the UK, and defeated because of the possibility of being kicked out of the EU. The Flow of ironies never cease.  This may all go to show how referenda in general are  more destructive to the polity than previously thought.

And so the news trickles in.
There was an observation made that Boris Johnson and Michael Gove didn't exactly look too excited by the outcome - more surprised and perhaps like deer in the headlights as history comes charging towards them. After all the unbelievable scuttlebutt is that Johnson might be the successor to Cameron. And Johnson being Johnson he would be aware of how difficult and mountainous the tags would be to actually managed the messy divorce with the EU, and that he would be charged with all the social costs. He would be stepping in to captain the Titanic having steered it in to the iceberg, having assured everybody on board that the iceberg represented no threat, and that the Titanic was unsinkable.
Maybe.

I'm not there; I'm not a citizen; and I sure don't have the vote in the matter, but had I been asked I would have offered remain was a better option. I've been searching my own feelings on this as it has been so unexpected that the Leave vote would win. The more I turn over the morsels of information I can find, the more I'm inclined to think the case for leaving was not made, and perhaps overstated its alleged advantages. Some people might even describe it as being built on outright lies. Let's face it, Nigel Farage was quick to rescind the £350m he was supposedly going to hand the NHS.

Farage might think he is steering the country into his vision of the future, but it's really a nostalgia trip. That being the case, the ultimate bit of the nostalgia trip might object to losing a chunk of her wealth and her realm...

Her Majesty's Role To Play

One thing I had not thought about is what the hell Her Majesty thinks of all this. Yes, as a constitutional monarch, she doesn't get a say in it, but let's face it - she is the Queen. Will she sit idly by and rubber stamp the referendum result into law? It's hypothetical but what if Her Majesty simply does not approve of the measures and refuses to sign off?  This is actually a curious question from a historic point of view.

The Brexit vote has the likely outcome of splitting apart the United Kingdom. And as per speculation during the Scotland referendum last time, Her Majesty would remain constitutional monarch to these countries, some of which will want to stay in the EU, and England which has opted out. The question then is does Her Majesty want to be the Monarch who presided over the breaking up of the United Kingdom? And if not, just how far would she be willing to go to stop it?

Writing as an Australian, I am reflecting on the rather vast 'reserve powers' of the Crown that removed Gough Whitlam as Prime Minister - and while nobody can quite claim Her Majesty had an active role in it (we know she was a sounding board as was Prince Charles), her crown certainly had the authority to make that political action stick. So what happens if the next Prime Minister puts through the bill to ratify the referendum and turns up at Buckingham Palace to have it signed off and the Queen refuses to sign? Or she actively vetoes the bill using her reserve powers? It would be utterly in-democratic, but it would preserve the status quo.

It might be inconceivable but again, from an Australian point of view, this is not a stretch. She likely has the power and authority to (pardon the pun) scotch this whole deal. If she null-and-voids the referendum result, thus keeping the UK in the EU, it would take the sharp edge off Scotland's desire to leave and solve the problem of Northern Ireland and the eventual break up of the realm. It would be a move that would hark back to Charles I or King John with its unilateral authoritarianism, but if Queen Elizabeth II wants to preserve the realm, the she might just have to bring out the bazooka. It may even start a civil war - after all, that was what happened with King John and Charles I - but the Queen as an institution is not the Queen for nothing.

It's hard to say if there is such resolve in a 90year old monarch in the Twentyfirst Century. Her reign has been successful exactly because her thoughts on politics are opaque. We simply do not know what she makes of all this business. I'm not much of a Royal-Watcher. I don't really care about the Royal family at all except as a curious historic artefact, but I do wonder what their household has been like in the last 72hours. I'm sure they would be cussing the name of David Cameron that brought about these terrible circumstances, and then turning to advice on just how much power they still have to stop this thing. Just remember, if her authority can dislodge a Prime Minister in the Commonwealth, it sure can whack some bill that emerges from popular referendum.

Let's just say, if I were a Conservative MP that didn't want Brexit to happen, you may well think that I would be talking to the Palace about such options, "but I couldn't possibly say". The ultimate 1%-er is Her Majesty the Queen, Elizabeth II. In turn, if Boris Johnson is indeed the next Prime Minister, and he really wants this Brexit as advertised, he might well need to have the resolve of Oliver Cromwell rather than the nationalist Ra-Ra of Winston Churchill. We'll certainly see.

More Thoughts On The Brexit Vote

David Cameron Opened The Door For The Far Right

It's been a couple of days since Brexit happened and I'm still trying to digest it's meaning. Some people are blaming ignorance and fear but I don't believe that covers the surge of votes that took it to the majority. Issues like the NHS have been raised but by the same token UKIP leader Nigel Farage was quick to backpedal from his £350m pledge towards shoring up the NHS.

The Tories really can't claim the vote a victory because it cost them their leader and Prime Minister. Indeed, in the tussle between rightists, the culturally inclined rightists seem to have beat out the economically minded rightists. David Cameron should go down as the worst Prime Minister in British history since Neville Chamberlain when he came home waving a piece of paper with Adolf Hitler's name on it.

And there it is, the rather uncomfortable reminder of the time the far right got centre stage in politics. Adolf Hitler of course snuck into the Weimar Republic government by dressing up his politics as a kind of conservatism - just enough to get Hindemburg to make him a partner in government. I know some of you will jump up and down and say "Ah! Godwin's Law. You brought up Nazis so this blog entry is without merit!" - but that is the very problem: The Far Right have clenched a legitimacy they need out to have been given, and they got it through David Cameron essentially kicking an own goal.

Is Farage Hitler? No. Maybe I should say No, not yet. Yet the stench of fascism and intolerance reeks in the outcome of the referendum, so much so you have to pinch your nose and pretend it is not there just to talk about the outcome in economic terms. My own view is, if it smells like shit, it probably is shit - no need to go tasting it. David Cameron is going to go down as the Prime Minister who let the Far Right into the middle of government, out of his own sheer desperation to stay in power. It's not a good thing.

Everybody Struggles For Relevance, Some More Than Others

The British Labour Party are obviously feeling like the referendum was a loss.   The worse aspect of this might be just how irrelevant they've become in Thatcherite England. Consider for a moment just how much of a sell-out Tony Blair's government was for a leftist concern. Add in the years of Thatcher herself and John Major, as well as David Cameron's stint, and you get the picture of the UK essentially living out the Neo-liberal economic programme for over a generation - 37 years if you count back to Thatcher's first win.

It's been a long time since the Labour Party sounded like the Labour Party.  Of course it doesn't hide the fact that they are very short on experience. The left utterly failed to shore up its base because the truth is that Blair-ite Labour sold those people down the river in order to win a government resembling the Tories. There's a credibility gap in going back to the very same demographic and asking them to support even more of the globalisation and free trade that has decimated those communities.

Arguably, there's a lesson right there for the left in Australia. The Rudd-Ian move to the social right carried within it the seeds of future disconnect with the ALP base.  There's a limit to what kind of political solutions can be achieved if you meet the Tories half way. Especially if the Tories insist on going far out to the right. This problem is also present in the current US elections where the Clinotnian compromises of the 1990s are not sufficient for the Democrat base because they amounted to selling out the base. The base is angry enough it would like to vote Sanders, but is willing to withdraw its support for Clinton, even in the face of Donald Trump. It is a pattern repeating around the world, whether it be the rise of both Syriza and Golden Dawn in Greece, or Podemos in Spain.

It's unclear whether the ALP under Bill Shorten can reconnect with its base. Certainly the Rudd-Gillard ALP government made a hash of it, and justifiably earned the scorned it received. The lesson in all of this is that the left struggles for relevance the more it has sold out its base in the last 40years. The credibility gap is simply too big.

What's Wrong With The Euro Zone?

In all of this I decided I'd have a quick think for myself what bothers me about the Euro Zone as it is constructed. The obvious problem is how the GFC revealed the structural problem of how the Euro currency itself is set up, and particularly how it pertains to Greece. Greece is in dire straits because it has large debts, but also because it cannot devalue its currency to balance out its relative weakness of its economy in comparison to the economy of Germany and France.

While this problem was not a problem for the UK who insisted on keeping the pound in the 90s, the fact that the Euro Zone as a whole is pushing globalisation in a way that would beggar the poorer economies is a problem. It's interesting to see if Scotland really think their welfare state would fare any better under Germany's auspices than George Osbourne. Judging from the way Greece has been handled, the last thing you might want to have is Germans in charge of your welfare state.

In general, the Euro Zone has demonstrated that some states are more equal than others. Young Greeks would do well to abandon Greece and head for Paris, Berlin and London for opportunities. Yet this reveals a structure whereby the UK contributes to the Euro but cannot directly assist Greece, all the while having to take on board economic migrants that are created largely out of the austerity that Germany insists upon. And while Germany's insistence on Greek austerity has varying degrees of legitimacy attached to it, one would think such claims would not be accepted in many parts of England suffering under the Cameron-Osbourne austerity policies of its own.

If you add in the fact that Eastern European nations have entered the Euro  exporting massive deflationary forces with their cheap labour, and with Turkey under Erdogan wanting to join, it's very much a good question as to whether it is a club within which the UK would want to stay. If that seems 'xenophobic' to some, it ought to be asked who benefits more from 'xenophilia' and blind acceptance of this cheap labour that is destroying labour value in the UK. Why should the working class continue to cop to the waves of globalisation that seemingly does not care about regional UK? It's simply not as clear cut as saying the rejection of the European Union is ergo xenophobia.

Imagine if you will, that there was a Pacific equivalent of the EU, but without the US. It might look like Australia, NZ, Canada, with the North Eastern Asian countries Japan, Taiwan South Korea. Add in the ASEAN nations, and you would have a pretty big trade bloc. The problem is labour prices across this region would be depressed because labour is very inexpensive in ASEAN. If there is free movement of people in this bloc, it's hard not to imagine there would be a flood of people heading for Sydney, Tokyo, Taipei, Vancouver, Auckland.  And if that cheap labour was depressing the wages of people in Australia, Japan, Taiwan, Canada and New Zealand, it wouldn't be very difficult to imagine a movement built upon getting out of such an arrangement.

The fact that there isn't such a bloc tells you a lot already, but it would have to be extremely obtuse to pretend the European Union which mainly featured France, Germany, Holland Denmark Spain and Italy at its start, is a very different proposition today when it also includes much of the old Eastern bloc, Greece and soon Turkey.

The Future The Young Did Not Want

Something like 70% and more of the younger voters voted to remain. It is the kind of number that reminds us of the support for Bernie Sanders among the younger voters. And just as Sanders didn't get their candidate, the younger voters of the U.K. Got the outcome they didn't want but have to live with, for much longer than older voters.

It is a stark demographic picture where Gen-X and Gen-Y combined could not beat the Baby Boomers and older generations. It's hard to tell what the fallout from this aspect of the referendum will be. One thing I can say is that we're not shooting each other in the streets in some civil war, because that's where the Spanish ended up in the years during the Great Depression. With any luck we won't be glomming into a World War.

Whatever else that can be said about it, on a demographic level, the Brexit vote is not a step towards the future, it's a blind shuffle back towards an imagined past that is not there. It's doubtful it existed and it's doubtful it will come to be as Nigel Farage seems to think. Now that David Cameron has had to resign, there will likely be an election in the UK by the end of the year. One wonders how the next vote will work out for the Tories. I can't imagine this is going to be good.

The World Of The Elite Consensus Is Ending

It's been pointed out elsewhere that the 1% who have all the money and power see borders very differently to ordinary people. The 1% move freely across borders with their capital. Compared to that, people who hang their hats on the sad identity politic of nationalism seem very quaint. This might be because in the past the 1% had their wars where they sent the people to fight and bleed for them on the basis that borders were important. It strikes me that it is somewhat silly of the elites to then be confronted by a popular vote - a revolt even - where they vote is ostensibly in favour of borders.

The promises of Free Trade are quite enticing. The problem however is that in many parts of the developed world, it means that in exchange for cheaper products, you lose your jobs to people in poorer countries. And the Elites, the 1%, the Tories and the big end of town dress up this exchange as a matter of productivity and competitiveness, but in reality it is an exchange the Elites have made, to sell down the future of their own people back home.

If the problem of the idiotic, uneducated, atavistic identity politics of such movements headlined by Farage and Boris Johnson and Donald Trump (and we should add Pauline Hanson to this pile) seems pernicious, it may very well be because the 1% have overly downplayed the importance of borders and identity, having sold it to the very same people as something of inherent value. What the Brexit vote shows is that the people won't be railroaded forever. If the benefits of "hands-across-the-waters" friendship is that everybody's living standards go down to a lower level, a lower common denominator, then you can't fault the people who say "bugger that, I'm keeping what's mine."
It's not quite as idiotic as it looks.

More tellingly, the Brexit vote reveals the middle is broken in British politics. If enough of the people in the middle are willing to throw their lot in with the likes of Farage, if enough of the working people who would have traditionally been Labour Party supporters vote with Boris Johnson, then whatever consensus that might have been in place may as well be pronounced dead. Of course in Australia, we've seen the broken middle consensus with the election of Tony Abbott in 2013, so it's not as if we don't know what this looks like. It's going to be a Carnivale of bad political judgment until such time the public gets another vote. Fortunately for us, Australia goes to the polls next weekend. Let us hope we can restore a sense of consensus by voting out this truly moronic Coalition Government.

Holy Smokes It's A Brexit

More Surprising Than The GFC Itself

What do you make of this result? If a month ago the notion of the United Kingdom leaving the European Union seemed like a non-issue, it all of a sudden heated up today as the polls closed an lo and behold the UK had voted to exit the EU. It's a staggering result that flies in the face oft only the rhetoric or accepted wisdom or common sense. Nigel Farage went from being a joke and a potential footnote in history to being the face of the man who rallied petty nationalism and jingoism to reverse the historic decision for the UK to join the EC in the first place.

Pollsters are looking really bad out of all this. Not only did they screw up the last election, they totally misread the public mood for this referendum. Also looking bad is David Cameron who called on the referendum and pitched for the 'remain' camp. In fact the majority of the British Parliament would support remaining in the EU so it will be curious to see how that respond to the outcome.

The vote result has caused chaos across global markets including the ASX where $50billion was wiped off the bourse today. That's like a regular day during the GFC for losses but still, you get the feeling that people are taking money out of markets just to feel like they're doing something. Also in the news today was the collapse of the Pound Sterling which has sunk to levels not seen since 1985.

All that being said, I did get a more nuanced whiff of just what was ailing the common voter in England, who were keen to tell me on Facebook just how much the rule of Brussels rankled with them, as well as just how much of a strain Europeans were putting on the NHS. If the British were going to protect the NHS, they had to - they argued - quit on the EU. There were other issues as well, such as just who these people in Brussels were to be making such sweeping laws ("un-eleced filth!") that supersede national sovereign laws of a land, and how such laws were handing over fishing right in waters around the UK to landlocked countries like Hungary.

Really, it wasn't really to do with the xenophobic impulses as claimed by the campaigners to remain. It had a lot more to do with the fact that Westminster had been relegated to rubber-stamping laws created in Brussels, and that those laws were not working at all in the British context. Europe will rightly be smarting from this result. The ramifications are multiple and here are a few that I can think of just off the top of my head:

• Scotland will want to have a do-over of their secession referendum. Scotland wants to remain in the EU. 
• Presumably Norther Ireland wants to stay in the EU. Otherwise it has to organise borders with Ireland. If Scotland and Northern Ireland split, the Brexit would have brought about the end of the Unite Kingdom. Not sure how the Queen deals with this as she's still Queen unto the Scots but it brings those old hoary questions back into the limelight. 
• Can the City of London stay the financial hub of Europe when it no longer is in Europe and will presumably have trade barriers with Europe? Will the British economy recede from its current model of being built around finance, insurance and real estate banking? 
• Grexit is firmly back on the agenda. If the UK can exit the EU, then Greece will see that they can force the issue to get out. This would be sensible except... here come another round of Grexit-Fear market gyrations
• What trade deals now and how? When the UK is out, what kind of barriers to trade will there be with Europe? One imagines these will be high, just to punish the UK for leaving. In fact Brexit means the UK has opted to go with less leverage when it needs to negotiate more.
• David Cameron must be done as Prime Minister. I can't imagine he survives the week now that he's spent his political capital and it all went up in flames. Could the next PM be *gasp* Boris Johnson? What kind of world are we living in when ugly populists like the Johnsons and Farages of the world win and ... heck why not mention it, Donald Trump is a nominee to be a presidential candidate for the Republicans?

Apart from the bit where David Cameron loses his job, a lot of that is actually quite difficult to digest. In any case, it's an historic day indeed.

It's kind of funny to reflect back on the moment the UK joined the EEC way back in 1972. France made it conditional that the UK ditch its favourable trade arrangements with her former colonies, and so Australia and New Zealand were - for a better word - 'dumped' by the Mother Country. Australia's modern identity really emerges from that historic moment when the Mother Country jumped into a bed with the French and the Germans and abandoned her children to make their own way in the world. The massive shift towards Australia's engagement with Asia which started in the mid-70s directly follows on from that rather uneasy historic moment. For the most part Australia has done okay out of that change. It forced the country to grow up quite a bit, become more cosmopolitan and less parochial, and maybe even a little more sophisticated in its dealings with the old dart.

That being said, should the UK start renegotiating all its trade deals and come knocking in Australia, and should there be an ALP government around, the UK would best be reminded of this history, and perhaps even be asked whether they would like to revisit 'Terra Nullius' in their Parliament - perhaps even offer an apology to the indigenous peoples of Australia and New Zealand. There's a lot of unfinished business to be discussed.

UPDATE: "And he's gone! David Cameron, gone for a duck...as he trudges away from the crease. Took a big swiping shot and skied the ball. Not a very good captain's knock..."