Kerry betrayed his brothers who were left behind in Vietnam. The old adage is “no man left behind”. But Kerry has betrayed everything he learned at officers training school. He sucked up to the communists then, he’s sucking up to them today.
As chairman of the Select Senate Committee on POW/MIA Affairs, created in 1991 to investigate reports that U.S. prisoners of war and soldiers designated missing in action were still alive in Vietnam, Kerry badgered the panel into voting that no American servicemen remained in Vietnam.
“[N]o one in the United States Senate pushed harder to bury the POW/MIA issue, the last obstacle preventing normalization of relations with Hanoi, than John Forbes Kerry,” noted U.S. Veteran Dispatch.
“But Kerry’s participation in the Committee became controversial in December 1992,” reported the nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity, “when Hanoi announced that it had awarded Colliers International, a Boston-based real estate company, an exclusive deal to develop its commercial real estate potentially worth billions. Stuart Forbes, the CEO of Colliers, is Kerry’s cousin.”
The “odd coincidence,” according to FrontPageMagazine.com, involved a deal worth $905 million.
Jeff Jacoby, the token conservative columnist at the Boston Globe, notes that Kerry continues his apologia for Vietnam’s never-ending atrocities. “Far from taking the lead on the Vietnam Human Rights Bill, he has prevented it from coming to a vote. He claims that making an issue of Hanoi’s repression would be counterproductive.”
Counterproductive for his cousin, maybe. Kerry himself could probably care about the money, being that he’s a poodle to Teresa Heinz Kerry, but what of the men that were left behind?
Take a look at Persecution.com and take a look at what people suffer at the hands of communists–or read a little of the following.
COMMUNIST EXPLOITATION OF RELIGION
In solitary confinement I was the first 2 , nearly 3 years. It was in the most beautiful building of Bucharest in the building of the Secretariat of State for Internal Affairs. It is a building before which all foreigners stand and admire it. I can tell you that your White House is a very little building in comparison with ours. And there beneath the earth 10 meters beneath the earth are the cells. There are no windows in the cells. Air enters through a tube. And there were a few desks with a mattress, with a straw mattress. You had but three steps for to walk. Never were we taken out from these cells except for interrogations when prisoners were beaten and tortured.
For years I have never seen sun, moon, flowers, snow, stars, no man except the interrogator who beat, but I can say I have seen heaven open, I have seen Jesus Christ, I have seen the angles and we were very happy there.
But the treatment was very bad. The purpose was to make us mad. You didn’t hear a noise. A whisper you didn’t hear in this cell. The guard had felt shoes. For years, not to hear anything. In all these years of prison we never had a book, we never had a but of paper, we never had a newspaper, nothing to distract our mind except that from time to time tape recorders were put on the corridor. I didn’t know what a tape recorder is. I had not seen such a thing. But at once we heard beautiful Rumanian music, and then we enjoyed it. We didn’t know what has happened with the Communists that they make us enjoy, and after 10 or 15 minutes at once you heard, “Ha, ha, ha don’t beat,” the torturing of a woman. This lasted for half an hour the torturing of a woman. And of 100 prisoners who had been in that cell, in that corridor, everybody recognized that it is his wife or that it is his girl. I myself thought also that it is my wife.
This is still happening…in China, in Vietnam, in communist and totalitarian regimes like the Sudan–all over the world. John Kerry supports and adores regimes like communist China and the communists in Nicaragua.
Here’s the testimony of a Vietnam POW:
One-time Navy pilot Paul Galanti was shot down over North Vietnam in 1966 and spent seven years in the infamous Hanoi Hilton.
He told the Los Angeles Times on Tuesday that he learned of Kerry’s April 1971 testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee while being tortured by his Hanoi Hilton guards.
According to the Times, “during torture sessions, [Galanti] said, his captors cited the antiwar speeches as ‘an example of why we should cross over to [their] side.’”
In his account to the Senate, Kerry accused U.S. soldiers of routinely committing rapes, beheadings, mutilations and all manner of atrocities against the Vietnamese people.
Galanti told the Times that Kerry’s decision to publicly allege that U.S. soldiers were war criminals “jeopardize[d] those still in battle or in the hands of the enemy.”
Because he did, Galanti said, “John Kerry was a traitor to the men he served with.”
“The Viet Cong didn’t think they had to win the war on the battlefield,” the ex-POW said, “because thanks to these protesters they were going to win it on the streets of San Francisco and Washington.”
John Kerry betrayed his brothers at arms who were still in Vietnam. Alive or dead, they deserved to come home.
John Kerry must release his records and let us know the truth…and what is in those 100 or so missing pages.
Image: LindaSog.com
Join the blogbursts to help FREE Kerry’s 180 every Tuesday!
We’ve formed a blogburst group and here are the bloggers who are contributing so far. If you want to join the blogroll for Free Kerry’s 180, click here to email me, include the url for your blog. The blogburst is every Tuesday, so don’t forget to blog about it. All you have to do is encourage Kerry to set his 180 FREE, I’ll send you the code for the blogroll.
The more people we have, the merrier!
NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only.
Descent Into Kerryland
From Cao’s Blog, this lil notice:
We’ve formed a blogburst group and here are the bloggers who are contributing so far. If you want to join the blogroll for Free Kerry’s 180,
Blastnostricful
Today’s dose of NIF – News, Interesting & Funny … It’s a Kerry-180 Tuesday
I get really pissed every time I see this Traitor’s name — John “HANOI FONDA” Skerry
“Damn Proud To Be His Brother”!
I recieved another Email from Mike Cawley, The Brother of Marine Staff Sgt James W. Cawley, the first Utah casualty in the Iraq War. Here is Mike’s loving tribute to his brother. I nearly shorted out my keyboard with my tearsreading Mike’s great word…
[...] John Kerry pushed to make the POW/MIA issue go away, and his cousin made a $905 million deal with Vietnam. Coincidence? Cao’s got the incredible story. [...]
GET OVER IT! The way you nutters bend over backwards to kiss the *** of a coward while denigrating the service of a REAL veteran astonishes me.
bwahahahaha! REAL Veteran. Don’t make me laugh.
A REAL veteran doesn’t find a loophole in the regs to find an excuse to run away–doesn’t throw his medals away–doesn’t switch sides and support the enemy–and most certainly doesn’t MAKE SURE the remains of POWs never come home….or insure they never come home with a snakey deal for his cousin’s monetary benefit.
A REAL veteran doesn’t talk at the Winter Soldier Investigation with a bunch of pretenders and liars and give the enemy fodder to read to the POWs still being held by the communists who read his testimony to them while they were torturing them, giving that as the reason they should sign phony confessions to war crimes.
A REAL veteran goes by the saying “no man left behind”.
Kerry left his brothers to die…and insured that nobody would find their remains, and what’s worse, he insured that if any of them are still alive, none of them would come out alive, if any of them were still clinging to any hopes or dreams that they might get out.
In addition, he made sure that we “normalized relations” with Vietnam so people can “vacation” there and see the areas that have been sanitized for western consumption, much like areas on Cuba and elsewhere that don’t tell the story of what communism does to its own people.
Telling the story of what communism stands for isn’t “bending over backwards”, it’s telling the truth.
Vietnam
HO CHI MINH CITY, August 30 (Compass) — Local authorities shut down a 500-member, international church here on Saturday, August 27. The church had sought a permit to meet since its inception eight years ago.
**
For several years now an informal “underground railroad” of Montagnard villagers in Vietnam has been assisting Montagnards hiding in the forest in Vietnam, as well as those fleeing to Cambodia. If discovered, many of the guides and helpers face arrest, interrogation, torture, and imprisonment for as many as eight years on charges of “organizing illegal migration” under article 91 of Vietnam’s Penal Code.
A Mnong man from Dak Nong helped his father, a prominent Dega church activist, hide in the forest and then escape to Cambodia in early 2004. In late April 2004, he was arrested by six police officers as he was returning home from his farm. He was handcuffed and sent by jeep to the district jail. He was not served an official warrant but police accused him of taking people across the border to Cambodia:
More than twenty people were arrested the same day as me. There were four Montagnards in my cell who were beaten badly and injured. One, a fifty-five year old man the same age as my father, had his ribs broken when police kicked him in the side. Another man was hit in the face and kicked in the chest and beaten badly. Afterwards, he was urinating blood. Another man was kicked in the stomach and might have suffered a ruptured spleen. Afterwards he couldn’t eat because his throat was swollen. The fourth man was beaten around the ears and lost his hearing in both ears––he had also been helping people cross the border.
At midnight on his first day of detention he was called out of his cell for questioning by nine police officers until 2 a.m.
They asked, ‘Where did you hide your father?’ I said my father just told me to take him far away and after that I went back home. I didn’t know where he was going. They slapped me in the ears and asked, ‘What did your father do?’ I said I didn’t know. Then they hit me in the face, slapped me, and pushed me onto the floor. They stepped on my throat and kicked me with their boots three times. Before they returned me to my cell they said: ‘Think hard and report everything you did.’
He was interrogated several more times after that. “Sometimes they beat me, and sometimes they just asked me questions and said they hoped that I would change my mind. In the beginning they beat me badly. When they finished interrogating me, they would write up an interrogation report. If I signed it, I would be free, they said. I was beaten because I didn’t tell the truth about my father. Each time I just said, “I don’t know.”
China
State security agents threatened Christian businessman, Tong Qimiao, while he was being hospitalized for a broken chest bone, caused by brutal torture. The agents showed Mr. Tong China Aid Association’s news release on his case and forced him to write a statement that he was never beaten during interrogation. The officials of the Bureau of Industry and Commerce also showed up at the emergency room and threatened him that his license would be revoked unless he cooperated with the state security agents. Mr. Tong Qimiao was so seriously beaten by the state security agents on September 30th that his chest bone was broken. Reliable sources told CAA that Mr. Tong and his family would not give in and they would file a lawsuit against the agents. “We are shocked by what happened to Mr. Tong, and it is even more inhumane and barbarian that this happened in the hospital,” said Bob Fu, President of China Aid Association. “This kind of case happens as the Chinese government is ambitiously developing the Western region. We urge the Chinese government to take exact steps to protect people’s freedom of religion, which is enshrined in the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China.”
Pray God will work out His justice in this case. Pray the Lord will heal Mr. Tong quickly. Pray international publicity concerning Mr. Tong’s treatment will bring an end to China’s persecution of Christians.
INDIA
Religious tensions in Punjab state increased last week, as police beat several Christians in jail. They had taken them to jail to presumably protect them from Hindu extremists. At least 40 Christians were praying at a home in Maloud the night of September 25th when a mob, including members of the Hindu extremist group Bajrang Dal, stormed the house. The mob threatened the Christians and beat some of them. Believers called the police, and four of them-Gurdev Singh, Balkaran Singh, Jaswant Singh and Amar Singh, a pastor-were taken into custody, as the mob grew increasingly violent. At Maloud’s police station, Assistant Sub-Inspector Hukum Chand Sharma, repeatedly struck the Christians, gravely injuring Gurdev Singh and Amar Singh. Later he also beat a 60-year-old pastor, Sukhdev Singh, who was later hospitalized with serious injuries.
Nine Christians in Chattisgarh’s Durg district are on trial for disrupting the peace between two communities, by “attempting to convert” Hindu villagers with offers of money. On Monday, September 26th, the pastor and eight members of a church appeared before a judge, who offered to dismiss the case if the Christians would agree to stop their activities.,They declined to do, asserting that the allegations against them were false. Police had arrested the group on June 6th and charged them with disturbing the peace, after a mob of around 200 people attacked the Christians and accused them of offering money to convert Hindu villagers. Police did not file any charges against the attackers. Meanwhile, two other Christians in another district of Chattisgarh are awaiting charges against them for their alleged role in fraudulent “conversion.”
Pray our compassionate Savior will physically and emotionally heal the injured believers. Pray they will display God’s heart toward their enemies. Pray the police will recognize that their attempts to wipe out Christianity were in vain.
INDONESIA
Christian Freedom International, a fact-finding mission to Indonesia, reveals alarming and growing evidence of religious persecution against minority Christians. Christian Freedom International (CFI) president Jim Jacobson, conducted a fact-finding mission to Indonesia, the world’s largest Islamic nation, in September 2005, visiting numerous forcibly closed churches in West Java. CFI urges the Indonesia government to allow religious freedom, to intervene and stop the forced shut-down of churches and to denounce the radical Islamic group known as AGAP. AGAP is an abbreviation for Aliansi Gerakan Ant Pemurtadan, which translated into English means Anti-Apostasy Alliance Movement. According to Jacobson, “AGAP has a mission to close churches and basically eradicate Christianity in Indonesia. They use fear, intimidation, threats, and obscure government regulations, in cooperation with local officials, to accomplish their goal.” At least 35 churches in Bandung and neighboring regions have been closed by Islamic mobs during the past 12 months alone. A free copy of the Christian Freedom International fact-finding report entitled, “Churches Forced to Close in Indonesia” can be viewed or downloaded online by visiting http://www.christianfreedom.org.
Pray Christians in Indonesia will remain faithful to Jesus, knowing His grace is sufficient for them. Pray that as the persecution of Christians increases, our powerful God will grow His church. Pray many Muslims will tire of the violence and seek the God of peace and His Son, Jesus Christ.
NIGERIA
Rejoice Gwammikat Daniel Chirdap, the 16-year-old who disappeared during a visit to her father’s house in Kagadama, Yelwa, has been returned to her family. Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) reports that Rejoice disappeared on September 12, 2005. Two days later her family received a letter from the Bauchi State Shari’ah Commission informing them it had given custody of Rejoice to Imam Yakubu of Kagadama, Yelwa. There has been no explanation as to how Rejoice, a minor, came to be in the Commission’s hands without parental consent. CSW states that following widespread publicity and high-level advocacy on Rejoice’s disappearance, the Bauchi State Police Force finally took action on September 23rd. “They intervened decisively and the Bauchi State Shari’ah Commission handed Rejoice over to her family. Although somewhat traumatized by her experience, a medical examination revealed that Rejoice was otherwise unharmed,” CSW said.
There are just too many questions without answers, that’s why we call for Kerry to release the 100+ pages that are missing from his record.
Kerry’s DD 214 lists a Silver Star with a combat “V” (for valor). Interestingly, the “V” is never awarded with the Silver Star. But the actual wording on Kerry’s DD 214 (see http://www.johnkerry.com) is: “SILVER STAR WITH COMBAT ‘V’.”
There is an abundance of anecdotal evidence that a combat “V” (called a “Combat Distinguishing Device”) is simply not awarded with a Silver Star. For example, a former Vietnam War POW told us that he has “three SSs, and there was no V for any of them.” Countless other Silver Star recipients all say the same thing. Why? Because, among other reasons, it would be redundant to award a Silver Star for “gallantry” (the statutory term) and then embellish it with a “V” for valor.
Most conclusive, however, is that the law is very clear about the award of Combat Distinguishing Devices. According to the Navy Awards Manual:
Bronze “V” (Combat Distinguishing Device).
Prior to . . . 1974, the “V” was authorized for wear on the Legion of Merit, Bronze Star Medal, Joint Service Commendation Medal, Navy Commendation Medal and Navy Achievement Medal. Between . . .1974 and . . . 1991, the “V” was authorized for wear on the Distinguished Flying Cross, Bronze Star Medal, Air Medal, Joint Service Commendation Medal and Navy Commendation Medal. [In] . . . 1991, the “V” was authorized for wear on the Legion of Merit, Distinguished Flying Cross, Bronze Star Medal, Air Medal, Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal and Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal. In all cases, the Combat Distinguishing Device may only be worn if specifically authorized in the citation. See also http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Valor_device.
Because the “V” is authorized for only the ten awards cited above, but not for the Silver Star, Kerry’s Silver Star citation (the “explanation” of why the award was made) does not even mention the “V” for valor (see http://www.johnkerry.com).
The presence of the combat “V” with Kerry’s Silver Star on his DD 214 raises two extremely disquieting questions. How did the unauthorized “V” get there, and why has Kerry allowed it to remain?
The first question should not be taken lightly because we are talking about possible federal crimes. We are talking about the possibility of a forged official document. We are talking, as well, about Title 18, United States Code, Section 1001, which states:
Was the combat “V” added by a sloppy clerk or a yeoman’s typo thirty years ago? Was someone pressured or persuaded to add it? If Kerry had nothing to do with the gratuitously added combat “V,” why didn’t he have his DD 214 corrected when he was separated from the Navy?
Which gives rise to the second disturbing question: If Kerry was not a party to the unauthorized “V,” why, for all these years, has he allowed his DD 214 to remain uncorrected and to repose on his website?
And most importantly, since you bring it up, are these the actions of a “REAL VETERAN” who takes these things seriously?
Quyen V. Ngo works for a local college. He was a boat person rescued by an American merchant ship after three nights at sea. Fifty-nine years old, Quyen was a schoolteacher in Vietnam and a Captain in the South Vietnamese army (ARVN).
He was born in Nam Dimh near Haiphong before the country was partitioned. Before the partitioning, his parents emigrated in 1953 to South Vietnam to escape the Communists.
When asked if he thought the war was worth it, Ngo said that American troops did not have to stay as long as they did. The Vietnamese people just wanted to be trained and supplied. They would do the rest. However, the Americans were trying to protect the people from the Communists and that was a good thing.
When asked if the Communists committed genocide after they obtained power, he said the Communists killed many people. Those who were not killed were placed in re-education camps. There they worked 12 hours a day and had little food.
Ngo never witnessed any atrocities by American soldiers, neither did he hear of any American atrocities. He said he did not believe a thing Kerry said about American troops, systematically committing war crimes. He thinks Kerry fabricated this.
He felt sorry for those who opposed the war because they did not see the truth about the war and the Communists. As far as he is concerned, they betrayed the American and Vietnamese soldiers. Testimony like Kerry’s, Ngo believes, resulted in encouraging the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong Communists to kill more Vietnamese and American soldiers.
Hoang-Phuong Vo is a 20-year-old immigrant from Vietnam. She is a student majoring in Pharmaceutical Science.
Vo said she came to America 10 years ago. She said that during her youth in Vietnam, she was shown propaganda movies of American soldiers, murdering, raping, and mutilating Vietnamese. They were also portrayed burning and pillaging villages.
Her father, also a teacher, had been in the Vietnamese Army and spent seven years in prison. Her parents met while fleeing Vietnam.
Thuoc Nguyen, 68, was also an ARVN soldier. Captured in June 1975 by the Communists he was imprisoned until October 1984. His crime was that he was an ARVN soldier.
Currently, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has cited several examples of atrocities by Vietnam’s Communist rulers. One such was the Easter week massacre. Montagnards, protesting the lack of religious freedom, were killed. According to HRW “. . . sources in the Central Highlands confirm . . . hundreds of demonstrators were wounded and many were killed by security forces . . . .”
Can you imagine if Kerry and the other Vietnam Veterans Against the War would have received such treatment during their famed Operation Dewey Canyon? Would Kerry have been able to conduct an “investigation” in North Vietnam?
Of course not, yet Kerry stated during his testimony that all political groups would be represented in a Communist Vietnam.
What a pile of unmitigated bullcrap and lies!
Or you can vote for the other guy
Saudi Arabia
Grandfather Tortured
The Saudi authorities accused him and five other expatriate Britons of waging a bombing campaign which centred around a bootleg alcohol turf war.
One Briton – Christopher Rodway – died in one of the blasts, although Mr Cottle was not accused of being involved in that attack.
After his arrest Mr Cottle was taken to the Ministry of Interior in Riyadh, where he was kept in a tiny cell for 10 weeks. For eight of those weeks he was interrogated for up to eight hours every day.
Quietly-spoken Mr Cottle said: “They just kept shouting `confess’. They told me I would be executed and said if I confessed they would try to stop it. I was chained to my cell door for six days with my hands tied together.
“I would do anything . . . I confessed to it and then said I did not do it I don’t know how many times. I would have done anything not to get executed but then at one point I did think `just get it over and done with’.”
Mr Cottle claims he was regularly made to stand with his arms in the air and forced to lie on the floor and lift his arms and legs for hours at a time. He said: “If I didn’t I would be hit with a pickaxe handle.” He says he was regularly beaten about the face with leather sandals. “I think they let me grow a beard to hide the scratches.”
Mr Cottle and the five other men, with whom he admits to drinking homemade alcohol, “like everyone else over there”, confessed to the bombings on Al Jazeera television on August 7 that year. He says he finally broke and confessed when a fellow prisoner was taken into his cell.
He said: “They brought James Lee to me and he confessed in front of me and said he did the bombing.”
Mr Cottle appeared in court just twice in 26 months and was unaware he had been sentenced to 18 years in prison. He was then transferred to Al-Hair prison on the outskirts of the capital where he spent the first year in solitary confinement and then spent the next year sharing with Peter Brandon, who was also imprisoned for the bombings.
Dutch – BOY … you need to tip-toe through your Tulips with your fish-eyed ****** rack-buddy, Tiny Tim, as you don’t know **** about ‘Nam nor John “HANOI FONDA” Skerry.
Kerry is of the liberal generation that would sell out to anyone – even Muslims. That is why they (Muslims) wanted Kerry elected – they knew he would stop the war on terrorism and let all those poor suicide bombers live.
Kerry’s 180: The Drum Beat Continues
Talk about a drum beat! Oh my aching head! [bad cold] So, I’ll simply inform, short and sweet.
254 days ago, John Kerry promised, on national TV, to sign form SF-180 and release his military records. He has yet to do so in a complete and p…
Iraq under Saddam Hussein
In 1979, immediately upon coming to power, Saddam Hussein silenced all political opposition in Iraq and converted his one-party state into a cult of personality. Since then, his regime systematically executed, tortured, imprisoned, raped, terrorized, and repressed the Iraqi people. Iraq is a nation rich in culture, with a long history of intellectual and scientific achievement, especially among its women. However, Saddam Hussein’s brutal regime silenced the voices of Iraq’s women, along with its men, through violence and intimidation.
In Iraq under Saddam, if you were a woman, you could face:
Beheading. Under the pretext of fighting prostitution, units of “Fedayeen Saddam,” the paramilitary organization led by Uday Hussein, Saddam’s eldest son, beheaded in public more than 200 women throughout the country, dumping their severed heads at their families’ doorsteps. Many families have been required to display the victim’s head on their outside fences for several days. These barbaric acts were carried out in the total absence of any proper judicial procedures and many of the victims were not engaged in prostitution, but were targeted for political reasons. For example, Najat Mohammad Haydar, an obstetrician in Baghdad, was beheaded after criticizing the corruption within health services. (Amnesty International Report, Iraq: Systematic Torture of Political Prisoners, August 2001; Iraqi Women’s League in Damascus, Syria)
Rape. The Iraqi Government used rape and sexual assault of women to achieve the following goals: to extract information and forced confessions from detained family members; to intimidate Iraqi oppositionists by sending videotapes showing the rape of female family members; and to blackmail Iraqi men into future cooperation with the regime. Some Iraqi authorities carried personnel cards identifying their official “activity” as the “violation of women’s honor.” (U.S. Department of State, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices-2001, March 2002; Iraq Research and Documentation Project, Harvard University)
Torture. The Iraqi Government routinely tortured and killed female dissidents and the female relatives of Iraqi oppositionists and defectors. Victims included Safiyah Hassan, the mother of two Iraqi defectors, who was killed after publicly criticizing the Iraqi Government for killing her sons after their return to Iraq. Women in Saddam’s jails were subjected to the following forms of torture: brutal beatings, systematic rape, electrical shocks, and branding. (U.S. Department of State, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices-2001, March 2002; U.S. Department of State, Iraq: A Population Silenced, December 2002)
Murder. In 1990, Saddam Hussein introduced Article 111 into the Iraqi Penal Code in a calculated effort to strengthen tribal support for his regime. This law exempts men who kill their female relatives in defense of their family’s honor from prosecution and punishment. The UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women reported that more than 4,000 women have been victims of so-called “honor killings” since Article 111 went into effect. (UN Commission on Human Rights, Report of the Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, January 2002)
Pictures of torture under Saddam’s Regime
Viet-Nam Vets File Lawsuit Against America’s Most Popular Traitor …
This may be the first time in American history that a presidential candidate was sued for actions taken by him and his campaign during an election. It may also be the first time that an antiwar activist was sued, if only tangentially, for allegations made about American military personnel.
John “HANOI FONDA” Skerry
Pretty damned cool, SSGT.