Armstrong Economics Blog/Socialist Re-Posted Mar 28, 2023 by Martin Armstrong
Karl Marx said:
Is the WEF is a Marxist Indoctrination Center?
Tag Archives: Moderators
DOJ Tells Republican Congress Not to Expect Cooperation and Thank You
Posted originally on the CTH on January 20, 2023 | Sundance | 200 Comments
The U.S. Dept of Justice (DOJ) has sent a five-page letter to congress, copying Politico for the public distribution therein. [SEE pdf HERE]
The snarky and passive aggressive Lawfare tone inside the letter is rather remarkable in its sanctimony and condescension. Essentially, Main Justice is telling congressional oversight, specifically House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, not to expect any timely responses because there’s a lot going on.
Additionally, as the letter directly implies, Republican oversight is not in the favor of the current administration or DOJ and, well, in general terms, get over it – they aren’t complying. However, feel free to initiate the formal negotiation process that will likely take several years.
From the letter to Jim Jordan, “Your January 17 requests—made now in your position as Chairman—initiate the constitutionally mandated accommodation process. Under this process, the Legislative and Executive Branches have a constitutional obligation to negotiate in good faith to meet the informational needs of Congress while protecting the institutional interests of the Executive Branch. We look forward to beginning this process in response to your January 17 letters.” (link)
(Via Politico) – […] The letter, addressed to Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), acknowledges the GOP’s multiple requests for information during the last Congress but doesn’t divulge any new information. Instead, Uriarte outlines how he hopes DOJ could have a “productive relationship” with Republicans in the new Congress, as Jordan had in previous letters accused the DOJ of “stonewalling” their requests, raised the possibility of a subpoena and said the committee could resort to “compulsory practices” to obtain the requested information and documents.
It’s an early marker of DOJ’s position as Republicans pledge to probe President Joe Biden’s administration over a laundry list of issues, including with a select subpanel that has a broad mandate to investigate the federal government. Conservatives have hinted they would use that panel to try to look into certain ongoing law enforcement investigations. (read more)
I think at this point everyone outside the professional political class in the Legislative Branch knew this was going to happen. However, the Republicans in Congress will likely pretend to be stunned by this development, Fox News Sean Hannity will be outraged by it, and then the RNC and RCCC will dispatch fundraising campaigns citing the refusal of the DOJ. Win, win, win… wash – rinse – repeat.
Predicting this approach was exactly why CTH said the House Subcommittee on Weaponized Government should not waste time looking for assistance, documents and or internal support from the various DC silos. Instead, the oversight committees need to go through the formal request process (blah, blah, blah) but focus their efforts at getting documents from the private sector collaborators outside the DC silo system.
If it seems like the Democrats always know how to use power more effectively than Republicans, you would be absolutely correct. However, few people really understand the reason for it. So, I will repeat.
The Republicans want money. The Democrats want power. The Republicans use power to get money. The Democrats use money to get power. The ideology of the Democrats drives their donor funding. The donor funding of the Republicans drives their ideology.
This core truism carries forward beyond electoral politics and into the realm of legislative battles and oversight conflicts. Republicans want money as their primary objective. If the Biden administration wants to get an ideological bill passed, the Democrats simply buy the votes of Republicans (especially Senators).
As an additional outcome, Republicans in congress have no core values, no core objectives, no goals to achieve. After all, their structural goal is money.
Give Republicans power and they don’t know what to do with it, because the voters essentially boosted the dog to catch the car… now what?
What you see in the outcome of elections is that Republicans do not have any plan for power, because it’s not the issue that takes up their intellectual time. That’s reserved for deep analytical thoughts about how to make money from (XXX).
The Democrats know this, they know the main mission of Republicans. Ergo, the Lawfare DOJ pats the Republicans on the head and waits for the frustrated voters to get sick of the GOP doing nothing again, and the Democrats simply wait them out.
We have been in this repetitious abuse cycle for about two decades.
Battered Conservative Syndrome is a very real thing.
There are an enormous amount of codependent enabling voters in this process. I call them Seagull Republicans because they are voters who will fly down and shit over anyone who complains about this reality – then they fly up to their high perches and look down their noses.
In case you missed it, the Seagull Republicans are currently aligned to support Harmeet Dhillon and Ron DeSantis.
One UniParty consisting of two wings, the RNC and the DNC. One bird, two wings.
The GOPe priority around money is the one constant on the right wing. But don’t worry, because the Seagulls are promising that Ron DeSantis will protect us from teh geys.
Uniparty Peace or Violence? Ray DiLorenzo
| Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable – John F. Kennedy Is violent or peaceful revolution on the horizon? The United States of America as the ‘Great Experiment’ in self-government is failing. While people slept, elites have been allowed to take over, not in governing, but in ruling. Elections are awash in fraud. Government institutions are seemingly impotent in applying checks and balances…corruption is overflowing. Our culture has been pushed to decline by a godless social ideology. The elite have taken an active part. They know the world is about to collapse or be changed, but they are prepared, lifeboats at the ready, while the common folk stare at the cold water nearing their feet. People are now talking about the Uniparty. Who are they? What are they? The Uniparty is a resurrected buzzword for the joining of the Democrat and Republican establishment to obfuscate the will of the American people and push forward The Great Reset for their own interests. The perfect marriage. They’re a veritable fifth column working to destroy America as founded, sometimes competing with each other for lead turncoat. It includes bureaucrats, members of the media, big business, and academia. The Republicans involved (RINOS) are closer to Democrats than members of their own party, but many are so far up in seniority they dare not leave the party. They have become an unrecognized third party, more recently, a party dedicated to stopping the outsider, Donald Trump. Make no mistake, Mitch McConnell would rather be Minority Leader in the Senate than just a senator in a majority Senate. Why else would he withdraw millions in support of 2022 Senate candidates? He’s responsible for trillions in spending under Biden and the inflation we are all feeling. He is a RINO in the first degree, a failure and a disgrace. Polled Democrats and Republicans say they are not well represented in government (PRRI). Except for a brief respite during the Trump presidency, the GOP hasn’t truly represented their voters for many years. The term Uniparty has been applied loosely from time to time from at least FDR, but Ralph Nader gave it proper context in 2000 meaning the Washington establishment. People have used ‘Uniparty’ for various purposes, neo-liberalism, green causes and the like. But, it is now used primarily by conservatives to attack the linking of mainstream Republicans and Democrats against America First or conservatism. The Uniparty is not on our side. They are essentially socialist and globalist or just lowlifes looking for opportunity. They are a government within a facade of a government. They have an agenda, and you are not part of it. Even though George Washington abhorred the thought of political parties, the human trait of forming tribes was always too great. And now the tribe mentality has crossed party lines. Why does it seem like America is on a fast track to a destination no one voted for? No matter how we vote, no matter what we say, no matter what we reject in the market place, the country seems headed over a cliff, and we have no control over it. How is it that Trump was able to turn our country around a full 180 degrees in just a few short years? We were being held back by past administrations. The Uniparty has put our country on autopilot and programmed that autopilot with no input from the people. With only 15% of Americans saying our country is going in the right direction (AP), did we really vote for increased crime, inflation, higher taxes, open borders, more drug trafficking, censorship, the elimination of any morality? Do Americans want 4,000 page bills smelling of pig, made into law in the middle of the night that no one has read? Do Americans want legislation written in the shadows? Why can’t we win an election that reflects the voter’s sentiment? Even Democrats are getting nervous (80%). Why do Disney and Hollywood keep releasing movies that shock our moral conscience, even when they fail at the box office? Hollywood complains that their earnings have fallen, yet they continue to give us junk. Why is it more profitable to stay home rather than work? Why do politicians seem to ignore their constituents? Why do the Biden, Clinton and Pelosi families get to break any law they want? Why does Congress name bills that don’t reflect content. Over a year and a half ago, Congress approved Biden’s $2.5 trillion infrastructure bill. Where’s the infrastructure? Now we find out that only 25% of the bill had anything to do with infrastructure. We did get a $20 million heated sidewalk. Americans were lied to with regularity during the Bush and Obama administrations and now with Biden. We were not allowed to get what we wanted during the Trump administration… nor were we allowed to get what we voted for in 2020 and in 2022. Not allowed? By whom? The Globalist Uniparty. Since Tucker Carlson reported that the CIA had a hand in the JFK assassination, one can imagine Uniparty implication. Representative Constitutional Democracy is dead in America! It is dead because the Uniparty has willed it so. Their power is more important than your freedom and liberty. It is considered ultra-conservative today to preserve our nation as founded. There is, however, a cadre of Republicans like Andy Biggs (AZ), Bob Good (VA), Andy Harris (MD), Lauren Boebert (CO), Matt Gaetz (FL), Matt Rosendale (MT), Eli Crane (AZ), Chip Roy (TX), and Byron Donalds (FL) that are determined to fix Washington, and they will not be deterred. They refuse to compromise with a political cartel that is destroying America, or Kevin McCarthy who has a Conservative Review score of 54% (F). They are our last refuge in this government…true courage! These Representatives are doing their job. They are representing their constituents who put them there and standing for the principles for which this country was founded. What a concept. Maybe McCarthy will lower his head a bit in remorse for his past political transgressions. We are no longer the same country. It’s in the hands of the globalist establishment and they are not about to let go. Oh, they may have allowed us to win a thin margin in the House because the number of votes couldn’t be overcome, or they just want us to think everything is normal, but who is the Speaker of the House?… an establishment shill? Trump was sold as the anti-establishment president, yet many of his appointments were head scratchers. It was a swinging door. It was no surprise that he couldn’t get the wall built or the swamp drained. Paul Ryan was Uniparty. Trump constantly criticized Bush’s WMD/Iraq war and then he appointed Bolton as National Security Advisor. Go figure. I am not an anti-Trumper, but during the Trump administration, it became apparent that it was going to take more than a president to fix this country. Trump was checked at every turn until his checkmate in 2020. In times of emergency, some react quickly, some slowly, needing time to process, in many cases to their detriment. Now that agents from Hell are working to undermine our nation, removing the foundation holding it up, people are still trying to process what is happening in spite of all the evidence. Time is running out. My great fear is that the Uniparty is going to continue destroying our country for their purposes without opposition. Elections now seem futile. The judicial system has been neutered. Congress and the judiciary does not act even when they have legal precedent. Partisanship has taken the place of patriotism. Too many of our patriot politicians are mealymouthed, instead of expressing outrage. Profiles in courage seems relegated to a remote past. The new Congress must take the lead in fixing our country. If the people take the lead, it is not going to be pretty. If enough people feel they no longer have a say in our government, my fear is that they will push back, and push back hard. Americans will put up with just so much. Admiral Yamamoto recognized this after Pearl Harbor and said with regret, “I fear all we have done is awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.” Will the Uniparty relent, give power back to the people and bring us peace and stability or hold on to their power with a jealous obsession and inevitably bring about violence? What does history say? |
Ukraine Used New Year’s Even to Kill Russians in Barracks
Armstrong Economics Blog/War Re-Posted Jan 2, 2023 by Martin Armstrong
Zelensky’s forces of the Ukrainian military had fired four long-range missiles that had been provided by the US (HIMARS) with US training to kill Russian soldiers in the barracks on New Year’s Eve. Russia says that they shot down two of the four. Just after midnight on New Year’s Day, Ukrainian missiles were fired and struck a vocational school in Makiivka that housed soldiers. Some 300 are injured and 63 are dead. While that is not supposed to be fair in war just killing soldiers in the barracks rather than on a battlefield, this war is anything but normal.
The Ukrainians used New Year’s Eve. We should be on guard now for attacks over Orthodox Christmas. Both sides will most likely attack fiercely.
Understanding Insurrections for Dummies
How the Democratic Party Abandoned Liberals | Dave Rubin | POLITICS | Rubin Report
Re posted from the The Rubin Report Published on Rumble on May 20, 2022
Dave Rubin of “The Rubin Report” talks to Tucker Carlson, Lewis Howes, Larry King, and the Babylon Bee about why the Democratic party is turning so many liberals into conservatives in this special “best of” episode. Was Dave Rubin ahead of the curve for leaving the left? As identity politics and the oppression olympics destroy the Democratic party, many more Democrats are being turned towards conservatism and classical liberalism. Whether it’s trainings about intersectionality in the workplace or talk of reparations for slavery no one can run away from woke politics any more. Dave discusses what he learned about systemic racism from Larry Elder, and why collective guilt and victimhood culture are pushing many on a similar political journey.
Too Dangerous to Allow Elon Musk Control Over So Much Data Says Washington Post
Posted originally on the conservative tree house on April 19, 2022 | sundance
The latest developments in the effort to purchase the unsustainable magic coffee shop are quite revealing.
According to the New York Post, “Musk himself is willing to invest between $10 billion and $15 billion of his own cash to take Twitter private, two sources close to the situation said. That’s up from the current 9.1% stake in the company he revealed on April 4, which is worth about $3.4 billion.”
However, more revealing about the overall issue are the comments from the PR firm of the U.S. Intelligence Community, The Washington Post:
(WaPo) […] “Putting so much power in the hands of one company is bad enough, but putting it in the hands of one person, as is largely the case with Facebook shareholder Mark Zuckerberg and would be the case if Twitter were owned by Musk, would be incompatible with democracy.”
“There are simply no checks and balances from any internal or external force,” … “It would leave Musk, like Zuckerberg, with an amount of assembled data about people and the ability to use it to manipulate them “that cannot be compared to anything that has ever existed, and allows intervention into the integrity of individual behavior and also the integrity of collective behavior.” (read more)
People are starting to catch on to the reality that costs for data processing on many social media platforms (the free coffee), exceeds the ability of the platform to generate revenue. People are starting to understand that behind the scenes of the Big Tech consortium, there is something else, some other operational construct and mechanism, that subsidizes & facilitates their existence.
It is very revealing how the intelligence apparatus of the United States had no issue with Twitter data and influence, until the potential for private ownership, perhaps uncontrolled private ownership, surfaced. Do not be naïve in pretending not to know how The Washington Post represents the interests of the intelligence apparatus.
In the long arc of history, I truly believe we will discover the inflection moment for the merge of U.S. Deep State (intel community) and U.S. Social Media, will be identified in the early moments of the Arab Spring of 2010/2011. That was when Facebook and Twitter became tools for the State Dept operation in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Syria, Bahrain and beyond. That was the beta-test of synergy.
“Arab Social Media Report by the Dubai School of Government give empirical heft to the conventional wisdom that Facebook and Twitter abetted if not enabled the historic region-wide uprisings of early 2011.” (LINK)
It was from that original, albeit misguided and manipulative partnership, when the actual details about how to create the social surveillance state was first tested. Everything after those events more than a decade ago, has been this rapidly evolving blend of social media technology and the capacity of the U.S. intelligence apparatus to create and fund the underlying structures.
Daily, we see numerous examples of the ideological control that surfaces as a direct result of this public-private partnership, the closed-conversations between deep government interests (the Fourth Branch) and social media companies which are dependent on the subsidized technology for them to exist.
Perhaps 2022 represents the first time the commonsense of the American electorate begins to recognize the fallacy of the ‘free coffee’ business model. Personally, I am very optimistic people will soon recognize what many have suspected for a long time.
Ultimately the question becomes, how far will the U.S. Fourth Branch of Government go to stop people from understanding?
Marc Andreessen believes Govt and Big Tech will double, triple and quadruple down to keep their public-private partnership, the backbone of the Free Coffee Shop, hidden. I cannot say I disagree, because ultimately it is still only the minority of people who understand the stakes. However, on the upside, the number of people who are starting to understand it, is growing almost exponentially thanks to Elon Musk.
This is one of those situations where we should all welcome being called ‘conspiracy theorists’, because no matter how big the crowd is that refuses to believe it, ultimately the impossible business model of Jack’s Magic Coffee Shop will reveal everything.
That’s why the public-private partnership must stop Elon Musk. As the Washington Post noted, this level of revelation “cannot be compared to anything that has ever existed.”
“Very shadowy” indeed.
CNN New Subscription Based Service Likely to Collapse, Spent $300 Million Only Gained 150k Subscribers
Posted originally on the conservative tree house on April 19, 2022 | sundance
Put this in the tracking file for ratios and such. Axios is reporting that CNN+ is likely to collapse as Warner Bros has suspended all external marketing and product development and fired the Chief Financial Officer. The network has spent $300 million, and only generated 150,000 subscribers. A major fail by any measure.
(Via Axios) Warner Bros. Discovery has suspended all external marketing spend for CNN+ and has laid off CNN’s longtime chief financial officer as it weighs what to do with the subscription streaming service moving forward, five sources tell Axios.
• Why it matters: Inside CNN, executives think the launch has been successful. Discovery executives disagree.
• CNN+ has roughly 150,000 subscribers so far.
• Warner Bros. Discovery wants to eventually build one giant service around HBO Max.
• New leadership has replaced CNN CFO Brad Ferrer with Neil Chugani, Discovery’s current CFO for streaming and international, as part of a broader finance team restructuring.
• Other high-level positions at WarnerMedia across different business functions are likely to be eliminated to cut costs and streamline leadership in coming weeks.
What to watch: Sources say a plan is being considered to replace Chris Cuomo’s 9:00pm EST primetime slot with a live newscast, instead of personality-driven perspective programming. (read more)
Elon Musk Makes a Massive Proposal, Offers to Purchase Twitter for $41 Billion With Plan to Take Company Private
Posted originally on the conservative tree house on April 14, 2022 | sundance
April 14, 2022 | sundance | 553 Comments
The richest man in the world, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, made an offer to purchase the Twitter platform for a price of $41 billion. The offer represents a value of 38% more than the current evaluation. [SEC FILING HERE] The offer is filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission proposing a full takeover for $54.20 per share in cash.
Within the filing Elon Musk states his intentions:
“I invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe, and I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy. However, since making my investment I now realize the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form. Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company.
As a result, I am offering to buy 100% of Twitter for $54.20 per share in cash, a 54% premium over the day before I began investing in Twitter and a 38% premium over the day before my investment was publicly announced. My offer is my best and final offer and if it is not accepted, I would need to reconsider my position as a shareholder. Twitter has extraordinary potential. I will unlock it. (SEC LINK)
What Elon Musk appears to be doing is perhaps the biggest story that few understand.
I share this perspective having spent thousands of hours in the past several years deep in the weeds of tech operating systems, communication platforms, and the issue of simultaneous users. What Twitter represents, and what Musk is attempting, is not what most would think.
In the big picture of tech platforms, Twitter, as an operating model, is a massive high-user commenting system.
Twitter is not a platform built around a website; Twitter is a platform for comments and discussion that operates in the sphere of social media. As a consequence, the technology and data processing required to operate the platform does not have an economy of scale.
There is no business model where Twitter is financially viable to operate…. UNLESS the tech architecture under the platform was subsidized.
In my opinion, there is only one technological system and entity that could possibly underwrite the cost of Twitter to operate. That entity is the United States Government, and here’s why.
Unlike websites and other social media, Twitter is unique in that it only represents a platform for user engagement and discussion. There is no content other than commentary, discussion and the sharing of information – such as linking to other information, pictures, graphics, videos url links etc.
In essence, Twitter is like the commenting system on the CTH website. It is the global commenting system for users to share information and debate. It is, in some ways, like the public square of global discussion. However, the key point is that user engagement on the platform creates a massive amount of data demand.
Within the systems of technology for public (user engagement) commenting, there is no economy of scale. Each added user represents an increased cost to the operation of the platform, because each user engagement demands database performance to respond to the simultaneous users on the platform. The term “simultaneous users” is critical to understand because that drives the cost.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Twitter has approximately 217 million registered daily users, and their goal is to expand to 315 million users by the end of 2023. Let me explain why things are not what they seem.
When people, users, operate on a tech platform using the engagement features, writing comments, hitting likes, posting images, links etc, the user is sending a data request to the platforms servers. The servers must then respond allowing all simultaneous users to see the change triggered by the single user.
Example: when you hit the “like” button feature on an engagement system, the response (like increasing by one) must not only be visible to you, but must also be visible to those simultaneously looking at the action you took. If 100,000 simultaneous users are looking at the same thing, the database must deliver the response to 100,000 people. As a result, the number of simultaneous users on a user engagement platform drives massive performance costs. In the example above, a single action by one person requires the server to respond to 100,000 simultaneous users with the updated data.
As a consequence, when a commenting platform increases in users, the cost not only increases because of that one user, the cost increases because the servers need to respond to all the simultaneous users. Using CTH as an example, 10,000 to 15,000 simultaneous commenting system users, engaging with the servers, costs around $4,500/mo.
This is why most websites, even big media websites, do not have proprietary user engagement, i.e. commenting systems. Instead, most websites use third party providers like Disqus who run the commenting systems on their own servers. Their commenting systems are plugged in to the website; that defers the cost from the website operator, and the third party can function as a business by selling ads and controlling the user experience. [It also sucks because user privacy is non existent]
The key to understanding the Twitter dynamic is to see the difference between, (a) running a website, where it doesn’t really matter how many people come to look at the content (low server costs), and (b) running a user engagement system, where the costs to accommodate the data processing -which increase exponentially with a higher number of simultaneous users- are extremely expensive. Twitter’s entire platform is based on the latter.
There is no economy of scale in any simultaneous user engagement system. Every added user costs exponentially more in data-processing demand, because every user needs a response, and every simultaneous user (follower) requires the same simultaneous response. A Twitter user with 100 followers (simultaneously logged in) that takes an action – costs less than a Twitter user with 100,000 followers (simultaneously logged in), that takes an action.
If you understand the cost increases in the data demand for simultaneous users, you can see the business model for Twitter is non-existent.
Bottom line, more users means it costs Twitter more money to operate. The business model is backwards from traditional business. More customers = higher costs, because each customer brings more simultaneous users….. which means exponentially more data performance is needed.
User engagement features on Twitter are significant, because that’s all Twitter does. Not only can users write comments, graphics, memes, videos, but they can also like comments, retweet comments, subtweet comments, bookmark comments, and participate in DM systems. That is a massive amount of server/data performance demand, and when you consider simultaneous users, it’s almost unimaginable in scale. That cost and capacity is also the reason why Twitter does not have an edit function.
With 217 million users, you could expect 50 million simultaneous users on Twitter during peak operating times. My back of the envelope calculations, which are really just estimations based on known industry costs for data performance and functions per second, would put the data cost to operate Twitter around at least $1 billion per month (minimum). In 2021, Twitter generated $5.1 billion in revenue, according to the Wall Street Journal.
There is no business model, even with paying subscribers, for Twitter to exist. As the business grows, the costs increase, and the costs to subscribers would grow. So, what is going on?
The only way Twitter, with 217 million users, could exist as a viable platform is if they had access to tech systems of incredible scale and performance, and those systems were essentially free or very cheap. The only entity that could possibly provide that level of capacity and scale is the United States Government – combined with a bottomless bank account.
If my hunch is correct, Elon Musk is poised to expose the well-kept secret that most social media platforms are operating on U.S. government tech infrastructure and indirect subsidy. Let that sink in.
The U.S. technology system, the assembled massive system of connected databases and server networks, is the operating infrastructure that offsets the cost of Twitter to run their own servers and database. The backbone of Twitter is the United States government.
There is simply no way the Fourth Branch of Government, the U.S. intelligence system writ large, is going to permit that discovery.
Die Vaccinated
Armstrong Economics Blog/Vaccine Re-Posted Apr 6, 2022 by Martin Armstrong
A reader shared this story from last year, highlighting the stupidity of vaccinations. Germany permits legal euthanasia for those suffering from terminal illnesses who meet specific qualifications. One of those qualifications is that they must be vaccinated against COVID-19. The German Euthanasia Association announced in November 2021 that they would only assist patients who have received the vaccination or recovered from the illness. So although you may be ready to depart from this world and cannot handle any additional side effects, Big Pharma still needs to be paid.
The group demanded that suffering patients follow Germany’s 2G rule that permitted them to deny access to the unvaccinated (geimpft) or those who have recovered (genesen). The mental gymnastics needed to create this rule stated that since patients will come in close contact with caregivers, “human closeness” could be a “breeding ground for coronavirus transmission.” The associated declared, “[T]he 2G rule applies in our association, supplemented by situation-related measures, such as quick tests before encounters in closed rooms.” The phrase “encounters in closed rooms” is a delicate way to word suicide. I suppose St. Peter is checking for vaccination passports at the pearly gates in line with the pope’s guidelines.
The German Constitution protects personal freedom and the right to choose how to die, but you may not choose how to live.
Centinel2012 