Start Worrying – Biden Says ‘The US and West Was Not Plotting to Attack Russia’


Posted originally on the CTH on February 21, 2023 | Sundance

Speaking today in Poland, amid carefully managed stage theatrics, lighting and dramatic entrance for emphasis, Joe Biden said:

…”I speak once more to the people of Russia.  The United States and the nations of Europe do not seek to control or destroy Russia.  The West was not planning to attack Russia as Putin said today, and millions of Russian citizens who only want to live in peace with their neighbors are not the enemy”…

Given the reality that every foreign policy statement from the people around Joe Biden carries the exact opposite in both intent and outcome, we should now prepare for the Biden administration, CIA and U.S. State Department to begin open offensive military action directly targeting Russia.  Yes, this statement means it is time to start worrying.

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Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari Admits Goal is to Shrink Economy to Meet Decreased Energy Supplies


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on February 19, 2023 | Sundance

This video interview segment was sent to me today along with a “wow, you were right” message.  Apparently, the interview took place a few weeks ago (it’s new to me), but the admissions within it are quite remarkable.

The CNBC discussion surrounds inflation and the federal reserve raising interest rates. Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari is talking about the jobs report, inflation and the intention of the federal reserve to continue raising interest rates until they achieve 2% inflation, regardless of consequence.  Kashkari doesn’t hedge on the latter issue of consequence; he affirms with absolute guarantee the fed will keep raising rates until the economy shrinks enough such that 2% inflation is achieved.  However, watch what happens when Joe Kernan takes that outlook and overlays “supply side” energy policy.  WATCH (10:22 prompted):

The issue is quite simple, really.  When additional oil, coal and natural gas development is blocked as an outcome of policy, energy prices jump massively.  We are seeing 2022/2023 price increases in electricity, home heating, fuel, gasoline, natural gas and other total energy price outcomes in the 60%+ range.

As a direct outcome of energy policy, all of the downstream products and services have massive upward supply side price pressure.  When the input prices are driving upward of 60%, the downstream prices increase accordingly.  Farming costs, fertilizer, feeding, transportation costs, food at retail and wholesale, and just about every petroleum-based product, which is almost everything, increases in price accordingly.

If supply side energy price increases are pushing +60%, and the Fed will only accept a 2% inflation output result, the only method of achieving the desired result is to shrink energy demand.  This is the goal of the current Fed monetary policy.  In this interview Kashkari admits the dynamic for the first time in public.

Prior to this interview, the Fed was being too-cute-by-half as they talked about targeting the ‘demand side’ through increased rates.  The demand they were targeting is the energy demand, but people (mostly in the financial and business world) were not willing to accept that Federal Reserve monetary policy would intentionally try to shrink the economy.

When overall energy price increases are driving upward of 60%, it is going to take a major amount of economic contraction to drop energy demand to meet the diminished energy supply.  CTH has been warning about this ultimate objective for over two years.  It’s a simple economic situation.

+60% price on the supply side, with a goal of +2% on the downstream demand side, equals a major amount of activity needing to be removed. Essentially energy use needs to drop by half.

You can put everyone in an electric car and still not even come close to dropping energy demand 50%.  You cannot “energy efficient” your way to a 50% drop in demand; there just isn’t enough waste in the system, especially when people are already paying close attention to energy use because it costs so much.

This “transition to the new green economy” is a whole of society shift.

This “transition to the new green economy”, is a multi-generational shift.

The transition includes putting people in smaller houses, stopping their travel, stopping their purchasing of new goods, taking down entire industries and limiting human activity on a massive scale.

Something akin to the COVID-19 lockdown period would be needed, only this level of diminished economic activity would be permanent.

It makes you wonder if the COVID-19 lockdown was the test to see how much energy use would drop if everyone was stopped in place.  And yes, during the COVID lockdowns, human activity did stop, economic activity did stop, and energy use did drop by the nearly amount we are talking about.

When you accept what Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari is openly admitting in that interview segment, particularly as he is asked about the massive supply side costs and how that overlays, then you realize how prescient the image is below.

This image is the exact future you see flowing from the “radical transformation,” or what is also called “managing the transition“…

At the end of the transition, you have two social societies.   One social system is a massive assembly of human activity all in close proximity. The alternative social system consists of those who do not wish to be jammed into Build Back Better cities yet forced to sustain themselves because the energy production and delivery resources in the larger geography have been stopped.

Now you know why I asked the question, “where would you live” over a decade ago.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis Takes His “Not Campaigning, Campaigning Tour” to New York, Illinois and Beyond to Promote Law Enforcement


Posted originally on the CTH on February 19, 2023 | Sundance

Keeping up the coy and deliberately managed strategy of not running for 2024 while running for 2024, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis will embark on a multi-state promotional effort to showcase his pro law enforcement outlook.

DeSantis starts Monday in Staten Island, New York, and the managers are counting on being able to do the ’24 run for office without angering the base Republican voters who see duplicity and deception in the construct.

As George Soros said of DeSantis personality, he’s “shrewd, ruthless, and ambitious,” the perfect blend of characteristics to operate as a pliable vessel operating on behalf of his Machiavellian management team.

NEW YORK – Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis will visit New York City Monday for a pro-law enforcement rally at a catering hall in Staten Island – a holiday incursion into one of former President Trump’s most loyal strongholds.

The 7:30 a.m. President’s Day speech at Privé will be the governor’s first stop on a multi-city tour to showcase his pro-cop bona fides as he gears up for an expected 2024 White House campaign, insiders said.

 “On Staten Island, we are proud to support our law enforcement,” said Assemblyman Mike Tannousis, the Staten Island GOP chairman. “I’m happy that our law enforcement community will get some recognition and support.”

The city’s reddest borough is packed with Trump backers, who gave him 57% of the island’s vote in 2020 – making Monday’s foray a crucial test of DeSantis’s chances among the former president’s remaining devotees. (read more)

Gate’s Plan to End World Hunger


Armstrong Economics Blog/Humor Re-Posted Feb 19, 2023 by Martin Armstrong

Neil Oliver, The Government Doesn’t Value Human Beings – But Technocracy Cannot Replace Human Skill


Posted originally on the CTH on February 18, 2023 | Sundance

For his weekly monologue U.K pundit Neil Oliver weaves the outline of how government officials, and the system creators who support them, have dismissed the inherent ability of humankind to advance itself without external inputs.

Indeed, in the biggest of big pictures the inherent skills and ability of the individual to overcome great challenge is factually a unique attribute to people, human beings.  We were born by the grace of a loving God, with a very unique set of abilities in the universe of life.  We can learn, discover, formulate and achieve great things when we focus as individuals on the issues of greatest priority.  Everything Mr. Oliver states in this monologue is inherently true, naturally true and empirically true.

Ultimately, as governments -consisting of people- and technocrats, again more people, attempt to subvert and replace unique human abilities with technological advancements, you always end at a place where a physical person with skill is needed to accomplish the mechanics of what the designed system cannot provide.

In very real terms, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Klaus Schwab and every person who operates within the system of creating or promoting artificial intelligence, likely does not possess the skill to manage their own household plumbing or repair a broken weld.  WATCH:

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Neil skirts around an issue that I have contemplated for years.  Just as surgeons possess specific sets of skills that can repair a human body, ultimately so too do blue-collar workers hold similar skillsets.

I can easily envision a time (it’s coming soon) when the average population is so critically incapable of fixing things, an outcome of diminished emphasis on doing, that the value of those who can fix things will afford them incredible income.

As technology continues to drive forward, the financial value assigned to irreplaceable physical human labor will ultimately invert.  Surgeons may indeed be replaced by machines, but robots will never be able to fix a leaky roof.  There are just too many variables and the technocrats do not think of such things.

It’s a 2016 Big Club Redux – RNC Likely to Demand Loyalty Pledge as Part of Debate Requirement


Posted originally on the CTH on February 18, 2023 | Sundance 

The Washington Post is framing this as a potential Ronna McDaniel requirement, however given the RNC under Reince Preibus ended up having the same 2016 pre-debate loyalty demand, the requirement is more likely an institutional Big Club proposal and not the idea of the chair.  The board and RNC charter members of the professionally Republican apparatus are the ones creating the litmus tests.

Essentially, you will remember in 2015 and 2016 the RNC demanded that all of the candidates swear an oath to whomever won the GOP nomination.  In the first Fox News debate of August 2015, the candidates were told to raise their hand if they were not willing to swear or affirm their intent to support the eventual nominee.  Everyone except Donald Trump (and Ben Carson) lied.  WATCH:

The construct of the loyalty oath was predicated around the fact the RNC institution did not support an outsider like Donald Trump using their club system to achieve the office of the presidency.  Trump was independent minded and held his own platform positions on trade, economics, border security and immigration that ran counter to the approved policy positions of professionally Republican members.

The RNC, as an institution of life-long tenured club members, viewed Donald Trump as not an acceptable RNC candidate, and therefore were worried he would mount an independent run if the RNC effort to remove him from their party was successful. The alternative fifteen candidates were all previously approved by the RNC establishment, except Donald Trump.

As a consequence, in the 2016 contest the RNC sought to portray Donald Trump as unapproved, yet they simultaneously needed to keep up the false pretense that U.S. politics was not subject to the whims and approvals of two monopolistic private corporations (RNC and DNC).  In the decade that preceded the 2016 election, CTH was one of the few places not pretending about this dynamic.

However, in the years following the 2016 revelations, there has been a much larger awakening.  The 2012 result of Mitt Romney (7% primary support) combined with the 2016 Hillary outcome (22% primary support) and the 2020 Biden outcome (6% primary support) have solidified as examples of how these corporation’s function.

Thankfully, today more voters understand that U.S. political candidates are controlled by two private corporations and the billionaire financial donors/institutions who fund them.

Here we enter the 2024 contest, again with the same pretenses needing to be maintained; thus, we see a replay of the loyalty test being demanded by the RNC to qualify the candidates for debate stage entry.

Unfortunately for the RNC, the overwhelming majority of 2016 RNC approved candidates, those who made and affirmed the pledge, lied about it.  The reality of their effort to tear down and diminish the eventual nominee Donald Trump, including during the general election and well into his administration, stands as empirical evidence of the bullshit construct of the loyalty oath. Insert the reminder of Senator Ted Cruz saying “vote your conscience” at the 2016 RNC convention and getting booed off stage.

The only honest person on that debate stage in August 2015, was the guy who raised his hand, Donald J Trump.

(WASHINGTON DC) -Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel is so concerned that party disunity will sink GOP hopes in the 2024 presidential election that she plans to require all candidates on the official primary debate stages to first pledge their support to the party’s eventual nominee.  But many of the likely contenders are pushing back.

Former president Donald Trump said this month that he won’t commit to supporting the winner if he loses the nomination. “It would have to depend on who the nominee was,” he told a conservative radio host. Former Maryland governor Larry Hogan, another potential candidate, recently tweeted that he “won’t commit to supporting” Trump.

Others have settled on more nuanced hedges. New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, who just created a new organization to help him explore a possible campaign, says he will support the eventual nominee, but is certain Trump won’t be that person. Former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson, who has not decided on whether to sign a pledge, has gone so far as to speak with McDaniel about his opposition to it, arguing that Republicans should not be enforcing litmus tests.

“Historically, our party has not taken party loyalty oaths,” said Hutchinson, who returned to Iowa this week as he explores a possible campaign launch in early April. “For leaders such as myself who believe Donald Trump is not the right direction for the country — and I said specifically that Jan. 6 disqualified him — that would certainly make it a problem for me to give an across-the-board inclusion pledge.”

The pushback has underscored McDaniel’s concern but has not shifted her plans, according to multiple people involved in the process who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the planning. The Republican National Committee’s Temporary Standing Committee on Presidential Debates plans to meet next Wednesday and Thursday to formally set the rules for officially sanctioned debates this year. They intend to require candidates to sign a pledge to support the eventual nominee modeled on a similar document circulated by the RNC in 2015.  (read more)

Oaths, loyalty pledges, litmus tests… all of it… None of it makes a damned bit of difference.  Because in the big picture, the professional Republican apparatus will never support Donald Trump… because the multinational RNC donors at risk from the America First economic agenda, will not allow it.

REPORT – President Donald Trump Will Visit East Palestine, Ohio, Next Week in Support Effort to Keep Attention on Community


Posted originally on the CTH on February 17, 2023 | Sundance

According to Fox News President Trump is planning a visit to East Palestine, Ohio, next week to show support for the community in the aftermath of a massive toxic chemical spill, the result of a Norfolk Southern railroad derailment.

The East Palestine community and surrounding region are very concerned about the toxic chemicals that were leaked into the environment as a result of the decision to detonate the toxic cargo, and intentionally burn off the chemicals as a form of containment.

Despite state and federal assurances, small streams and rivers have shown major wildlife impacts including dead fish, frogs and other aquatic creatures. In turn, this raises alarms about water and air quality from the chemical release.  “Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine requested HHS and CDC assistance on Feb. 16, after being denied aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. FEMA told DeWine Ohio isn’t eligible for disaster assistance, even amid the derailment.

OHIO – Former President Trump will travel to East Palestine, Ohio next week to visit the area and members of the community as they grapple with the aftermath of the train derailment that led to a large release of toxic chemicals, Fox News has learned.

A source familiar with the former president’s plans told Fox News that Trump plans to travel to East Palestine on Wednesday to meet with members of the community. The source said Trump, who announced his 2024 presidential campaign in November, has a strong relationship with the people of Ohio.

Trump’s planned visit comes after a train derailment on Feb. 3, when about 50 cars on a Norfolk Southern Railroad train carrying vinyl chloride derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, a small community that is located along the Ohio-Pennsylvania border.

The company opted to release the gas from the derailed cars, releasing potentially deadly fumes and other dangerous chemicals into the air, to prevent a disastrous explosion. Local residents were told to evacuate the area during the release, but were assured it was safe to return on Feb. 9.

Residents of the East Palestine community have reported severe symptoms from toxins and chemicals that have seeped into the air and waterways since the derailment on Feb. 7. (read more)

The timing of the visit will be good for keeping public awareness of the issue at the forefront.  I can well imagine this entire region will need a great deal of long-term support; especially if the railroad begins to soften in its obligations to the community.

It Never Ends – Joe Biden Extends 2011 National Security Emergency over Libya Through 2023


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on February 17, 2023 | Sundance

In 2010 and 2011 the Hillary Clinton State Department, working with NATO allies (particularly France), triggered a crisis in Libya during the Obama administration’s intentional effort to remove Muammar Gaddafi from power.  This was a key element to the Arab Spring (Islamist Spring or Color Revolution) that flowed from the Cairo, Egypt, speech of President Obama a year prior.

Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice and Samanta Power (R2P) were the architects of the destabilization plan.  After the country was destabilized and thrown into severe violent crisis by the U.S. support for radical Islamists in eastern Libya (Benghazi region), President Obama then signed (Feb, 2011) a national emergency declaration in regard to the destabilized Libya his administration created.

Five years later, in April 2016, President Obama expanded the Libya emergency declaration to extend the 2011 declaration and envelop a larger portion of North Africa, under the auspices of expanded threats from AQIM (al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb).  This extension allowed the state dept to frame actions in neighboring Egypt, and block any effort to counteract Obama’s mid-east policy which was established to support the Muslim Brotherhood.   In April 2016 it was presumed Hillary Clinton would win the election and continue the policy.

Today, a full twelve years after Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton destabilized Libya throwing it into a tribal civil war, Joe Biden signs an executive order continuing the extension of the U.S. National Emergency with regard to Libya {White House Link}.

[…] “The situation in Libya continues to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States, and measures are needed to protect against the diversion of assets or other abuses by members of Qadhafi’s family, their associates, and other persons hindering Libyan national reconciliation.

For this reason, the national emergency declared on February 25, 2011, and expanded on April 19, 2016, must continue in effect beyond February 25, 2023.  Therefore, in accordance with section 202(d) of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1622(d)), I am continuing for 1 year the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13566.

This notice shall be published in the Federal Register and transmitted to the Congress. (read full)

U.S. Military Completes Mission to Recover Chinese Surveillance Balloon, Optics and Electronics Now Being Tested by FBI


Posted originally on the CTH on February 17, 2023 | Sundance

The White House is trying to put the best spin on the Chinese spy balloon events by claiming the U.S. military jammed the electronics attached rendering the ability of the surveillance equipment incapable of transmission to relays (satellites) or mainland China.

Additionally, according to the White House strategic communications spokesperson John Kirby, the main structure of the electronics, optics and surveillance system has been recovered by the U.S. military and the equipment is now being studied and reverse engineered. WATCH (05:18 Prompted):

(Via Reuters) – The United States said on Friday it had successfully concluded recovery efforts off South Carolina to collect sensors and other debris from a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon shot down by a U.S. fighter jet on Feb. 4, and investigators are now analyzing its “guts.”

The last of the debris fro the Chinese balloon, which was downed by a Sidewinder missile, is heading to an FBI laboratory in Virginia for analysis, the U.S. military’s Northern Command said in a statement.

Reuters was first to report the conclusion of the recovery efforts, which were halted on Thursday.

“It’s a significant amount (of recovered material), including the payload structure as well as some of the electronics and the optics, and all that’s now at the FBI laboratory in Quantico,” said National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby.

Kirby said the United States had already learned a lot about the balloon by observing it as it flew over the United States.

“We’re going to learn even more, we believe, by getting a look at the guts inside it and seeing how it worked and what it was capable of,” he told a White House news briefing.

The U.S. military said Navy and Coast Guard vessels that had been scouring the sea for nearly two weeks have departed the area.

“Air and maritime safety perimeters have been lifted,” Northern Command said in a statement.

The U.S. military has said it believes it has collected all of the Chinese balloon’s priority sensors and electronics as well as large sections of its structure, elements that could help counterintelligence officials determine how Beijing may have been collecting and transmitting surveillance information. (read more)

The Republican Big Club Are All In to Have Culture War and Anti-Woke Efforts Dominate 2024 GOP Primary


Posted originally on the CTH on February 16, 2023 | Sundance

Prior to the 2012 election and the rise of the Sandra Fluke free birth control narrative, we used to call them social issues; however, the usefulness of cultural wars has morphed into the larger war of wokeism.

In the big picture, keeping the base GOPe voter distracted from the economic expansion of multinational globalism, the corporate ‘masters of the universe’ (ie. the Big Club), need to keep pushing anti-wokeism as a political strategy.  The cultural issues are useful tools to keep control of an alignment of voters.  It has always been thus, and even more important now that people are starting to realize the expansion of the rust belt.

The rust belt, the diminishment of the U.S. economic manufacturing base, was an outcome of corporate control over politics.  Corporations and banks seek profit, those profits are inflated by a U.S. service driven economic model.  Skilled jobs require higher wages.

If the skilled jobs can be outsourced to lower cost labor nations, the subsequent lowered labor costs drive bigger margins.  Again, it has always been thus.

At the core of the U.S. political issue, you discover that both wings of the DC UniParty agree with this basic economic model.  Republicans and Democrats now use the catchphrase ‘service driven economy‘ with bipartisan frequency.  Many voters no longer have any reference to an economic system that is anything except a ‘service driven economy’, yet nothing about that system provides long-term value for U.S. voters or workers.

Within this very specific dynamic, you find the root of the support for Donald J. Trump.  A larger, formerly considered silent majority who comprise the baseline middle class workforce, find common understanding with President Trump because he sees the flaws in the economic model.

Not coincidentally, it is only Donald Trump who has ever discussed these economic issues. Factually, no national politician in the modern era prior to Donald Trump ever dared broach the subject of economic globalism, and the negative consequences therein, because they would find themselves in the target field of the corporations who fund the political system.  A general platform more akin to a code of omerta covered the entire subject of republican economic policy.

As the pandemic years have shown, economic security is deeply tied to national security.  As an outcome, economic policy ultimately drives foreign policy.  When combined, the economic and foreign policy outlooks form the structural alignment of the UniParty platform.

Following the downstream effect of multinational corporate influence, modern Democrats support expansionist and interventionist foreign policy.  Meanwhile, modern Republicans, previously called “neocons” have always supported expansionist and interventionist foreign policy.  Leadership of both parties now align in a singular foreign policy outlook; thus, we see support for the Ukraine spending and intervention by both Democrats and Republicans.

However, outside the DC bubble of multinational corporate influence, the support for the interventionist foreign policy doesn’t exist in the same scale and scope.  Voters inside both the Democrat and Republican base do not support the intervention at the same level as the political leadership of both parties.  There is a structural breakdown between the priorities of voters and the priorities of the elected officials.  None of this is new discussion, we all accept this basic reality.

With political leadership of both parties supporting the same economic outlook, and both parties supporting the same foreign policy outlook, we find the source of opposition against U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Economic policy and foreign policy form the uniting bond that drives both parties to oppose Trump’s America First ideological outlook.

As long as Donald J Trump singularly represents the only counterforce against this UniParty globalist construct, he will continue to be targeted by the system of financial controllers who fund the political system.  For the sake of brevity this alignment of multinational corporate and financial economic interests is called “the big club.”

As part of the strategic political effort, the Republican wing of the Big Club needs to carve up the supporters of Donald Trump into smaller, easier to target, pieces.  This is where the value of the culture war, what is now considered as ‘wokeism’, plays into the strategy of those who seek to control political outcomes and remove the threat that Trump represents to their financial interests.

In many ways, this is why we are seeing prominent Republican officeholders pushing the culture war as a tool for their own political advancement.  The same Big Club members who are directly fighting against the America-First economic agenda, are the same Big Club members who are funding the Republican politicians to push the culture war.

The corporations, billionaires and multinationals who are funding the Republican candidates do not have any vested interest in the culture war. For them the social issues are a tool, technique or insurance policy to guarantee security of the interest that does matter, their financial status.

There are trillions at stake, literally trillions.  Additionally, decades of their prior investment interests are contingent upon the ‘service driven economy’ being maintained.

Dollars drive the U.S. global trade and financial exchanges.  The multinationals, both corporations and banks, have pre-deployed investments all around the globe.  However, many of those investments are entirely contingent upon the retention of the U.S. economic system they pre-established before the investment was made.  President Donald J. Trump represents the threat to that entire financial system.

Once you understand this, then a great deal of the more nuanced and granular U.S. political moves, almost all of which are funded by the corporations and billionaires who are attached to the global investment process, begin to make sense.

Every non-Trump candidate, funded to create the opposition to America First, is part of this process to use anti-wokeism as a strategy.

With this level of money at stake, do not be surprised when you look at how much is being spent to construct the system that guarantees the continuation of globalism. The money spent in funding the Republican candidates to advance the distracting cultural war pales in comparison to the amount of money at risk in the 2024 election outcome.

That’s the baseline for this:

…“GOP leaders and candidates should take from this poll one important lesson: voters expect them to fight wokeness,” American Principles Project President Terry Schilling said. “Support for policies protecting families from gender ideology is off the charts, with the majority of the base showing a strong preference for tackling these issues. Meanwhile, approval of Republican establishment priorities was much more muted, with most of those surveyed even agreeing that GOP elected officials have given up too much ground in the culture war.”  

…“Any candidate who expects to win a Republican primary next year for any office needs to lead on cultural issues in order to win over voters,” Schilling said. “Perhaps the two most prominent leaders on these issues so far have been Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, so it should be no surprise they are far and away the favorites in the presidential field. It’s time for the rest of the party to pay heed and set their priorities accordingly.” (more)

On the very significant upside… Relax, President Trump understands this.

Candidate Donald Trump also understands the real priorities of the Big Club extend beyond this useful cultural war, deep into the world of economics and foreign policy.

As each of the corporate funded Republican candidates hits the cultural war (wokeism) effort as part of the distracting political strategy, watch President Trump generally agree with the ‘social issues’, but then counter the distraction with arguments specifically targeting economic and foreign policy.

The entire field of Republican candidates will hold the same economic and foreign policy outlook (Ukraine example), with only Donald Trump representing an alternative.