COLLUSION OR COUPLLUSION?

COLLUSION or COUP-LLUSION?

By Hugh Murray

From the first days after his inauguration as president, there were charges that Donald Trump had won the 2016 election over Democrat Hillary Clinton, through collusion with the Russians. Soon after, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed a Special Counsel, Robert Mueller, to investigate. No specific crime was cited in the order creating the new investigatory section, which would be allocated large funds, so critics deemed it a fishing expedition. After 2 years and limited oversight, unlimited funds, Mueller has found evidence of corruption, but nothing directly linking Russia to the Trump campaign, so far.

The response of some conservative Republicans is that there is solid evidence of collusion with the Russians by a major American politician, but that occurred when Democratic Senator Edward (Ted) Kennedy sought Soviet support for his efforts to derail and sabotage Republican President Ronald Reagan. Reagan sought to defeat “the evil empire.” To do so Reagan wanted America to embark upon a Space Defense Initiative (SDI). This was a space-based missile defense system and a very costly project. Unfortunately for our opponents, the Soviets quickly realized they could not afford to compete with the US in this field.(p. 402) However, the Soviets could try to block the SDI through propaganda. They pressured Western European nations not to allow missiles on their soils, arguing that if they did, they were setting up their own people for massive causalities in case of war. Sen. Kennedy and the Democrats also generally opposed Reagan's proposed SDI, mocking it as “Star Wars.”

Paul Kengor, in his book Dupes, wrote: “The KGB (Soviet CIA) report is dated May 14, 1983, less than two months after Kennedy first ridiculed SDI. KGB head Viktor Chebrikov sent the memo..., directly to General Secretary Yuri Andropov. The subject line read: 'Regarding Sen. Kennedy's request to the General Secretary of the Communist Party [of the USSR] Y. V. Andropov.' It concerned a 'confidential' Kennedy offer to Andropov.”(p. 407)

“According to the KGB memo, Senator Kennedy had conveyed his message to the Soviets through 'his close friend and trusted confident' John Tunney – the same go-between he had used in approaching the Kremlin in March 1980,... Chebrikov said that Kennedy was 'very troubled' by 'the current state of Soviet-American relations,' which the senator attributed not to ...the Kremlin but to 'Reagan's belligerence,... the current threat is do to the President's [Reagan's] refusal to engage any modification to his politics.'”(407)

“...Chebrikov conveyed the U.S. senator's precise offer to the USSR's general secretary: 'Kennedy believes that,..., in the interest of peace, it would be prudent and timely to undertake the following steps to counter the militaristic politics of Reagan.' Step number one...Andropov to invite the good senator to Moscow for a personal meeting... 'The main purpose... according to the senator, would be to arm Soviet officials with explanations regarding problems of nuclear disarmament so they would be better prepared and more convincing during appearances in the USA.'” Kennedy urged that Andropov be interviewed on American television by the likes of Barbara Walters or Walter Cronkite. Kennedy assured the Soviet leader that the senator and his friends would use their influence to get such powerful media people to conduct such television interviews.(408)

“Kennedy indicated he could help organize this media blitz, since he wanted Soviet military and government officials to 'have an opportunity to appeal directly to the American people about the peaceful intentions of the USSR.'”(409)

“The memo concluded with a discussion of Ted Kennedy's political prospects, mentioning that the senator 'wants to run for president in 1988' but also 'does not discount that during the 1984 campaign, the Democratic party may officially turn to him to lead the fight against the Republicans'”(409)

Andropov died shortly after Kennedy's appeal, so nothing resulted from it. Yet, Kengor finds it shocking that the honored American senator, the “Lion of the Senate,” would deem Soviet policy more peaceful than America's. Shocking too, that Kennedy sought the Kremlin's help to “counter” the policies of Pres. Reagan, and weaken the standing of the American president.(411) Kengor adds that the general American media refused to cover the story of the KGB documents and Senator Kennedy when it first appeared the The Times of London in February 1992.(411)

Kengor alludes to an earlier approach by Sen. Kennedy to the Soviets for help. In 1980 Ted Kennedy challenged Democratic President Jimmy Carter for the Democratic nomination for president that year. The Massachusetts senator believed that Carter also was guilty of “belligerence” and of "escalating Cold War tensions.” According to his KGB contact, “Kennedy felt that 'the Carter administration was trying to distort the peace-loving ideas behind [Soviet leader of that time, Leonid] Brezhnev's proposals... and the escalation was fueled by Carter.'” As in the later case of the 1990s, Kennedy's emissary was California Democratic Senator John Tunney, “who declared that Kennedy was approaching the Soviet leader because Kennedy saw it as 'his duty to take action himself.'”(363)

In Michael Pillsbury's The Hundred-Year Marathon...c. 2015, that long-time China expert discusses some of the background to the opening up of China in the early 1970s. “...There were additional factors at work that persuaded Kissinger and ultimately President Nixon to move toward Beijing. While Kissinger was still attempting to discern Chinese intentions, Senator Ted Kennedy was seeking to visit China. The Chinese even mentioned this possibility to Kissinger during his secret trip to Beijing in July 1971, consistent with ...manipulating hawks and doves. Nixon reacted as anticipated and instructed Kissinger to ask the Chinese to invite no other U.S. political figure to visit China before Nixon. Nixon believed, with good reason, that Kennedy was attempting to steal his thunder and become the first American politician to travel to Beijing. Raising the possibility in public speeches of renewed relations with Communist China, Kennedy was putting together what looked to be a foreign policy platform for the 1972 presidential election.”(57)

So it seems as if Sen. Ted Kennedy had a long history of approaches to major Communist governments. Some might contend that his approaches, countering the clearly enunciated policies of the American Presidents, and seemingly endorsing and favoring Soviet peaceful intentions above American “belligerence,” - some might suspect that all of this bordered on treason.

But, consider a little further back in time. Several decades ago a French journalist was having a lunch-time discussion with the new, Cuban strong-man, Fidel Castro. Jean Daniel had been sent as an informal emissary by President John Kennedy to make an attempt to smooth out the rough problems of Cuban-American relations, to try to establish some peaceful relations between the two nations. Their conversation was interrupted when an aide told Castro of an important phone call. Fidel related the news he had just heard to the journalist, President Kennedy has just been shot in Dallas. The Cuban dictator then added, “There goes your mission of peace.” After reflecting a bit, Fidel added, “They're going to blame us.”(Peter Kornbluh, “Kennedy's Last Act: Reaching Out to Cuba,” Unredacted, 20 Nov. 2013)

Why would President Kennedy send a French journalist rather than a regular diplomat to Havana? In the early days of his presidency, Kennedy believed he had been misled by the CIA. A plan to invade Cuba and overthrow the Castro regime had originated during Eisenhower's presidency, and many assumed his vice-president, Richard Nixon, would succeed him. Nixon lost a very close election to Kennedy, but the CIA wanted to go ahead with the plan anyway. They got Kennedy to approve. I can still recall hearing the news on WWL, the 50,000 watt, Jesuit-owned, CBS radio affiliate – the large-scale rebellion in Cuba, reports that Raul Castro may have already been killed, the Castro regime possibly about to collapse, ...In the following days we learned it was all bull, all lies. The US sponsored invasion of the Bay of Pigs in Cuba had gone badly. When it was clear that the Castro regime would defeat the invaders, the CIA and others demanded that Kennedy order air support and possibly troops to oust the Castro regime. Kennedy refused, and was angry because he had been misled about the Bay of Pigs group winning over the Fidelistas. Kennedy said he would smash the CIA into a thousand pieces. We know that relations between Attorney General Robert Kennedy (John's brother) and his subordinate, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, were not cordial. And many of the anti-Castro refugees blamed JFK for the failure of the invasion of Cuba.

Robert Kennedy had for a time served on Sen. Joseph McCarthy's committee that investigated Communist subversion of the US government. Neither Robert nor John were “progressive” Democrats; they were anti-Communists. But as President, John seemed to worry more about the possibility of mutual destruction through nuclear war. He began to suggest peace proposals, as in the American University speech of 10 June 1963.

Yet, during his term, he increased the number of American “advisors” to the military of the South Vietnam government, from several hundred to over 11,000. But what were his intentions? Some say he wanted to withdraw entirely after the 1964 election. But things changed. On 2 November 1963 Ngo Dinh Diem, the President of SVN was killed in a coup, as was his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, the number 2 man in the regime. His sister-in-law, Madame Nhu made the cover of Time magazine as she denounced the violent overthrow of the government in Saigon. Diem's very Roman Catholic government was unpopular with many in SVN, but it is unlikely there would have been a successful coup without the support of the American CIA. The agency saw a victory through violent regime change.

There were many Americans who would have been furious had they known JFK was trying to negotiate peace with Castro. Among them was David Ferrie, a pilot who worked both for Carlos Marcello (Mafia boss in New Orleans), and Guy Banister, former FBI man in Chicago, former head of the New Orleans Police Dept., and right-wing activist with connections to various intelligence agencies. Lee Oswald, as a teen, had been in Ferrie's Civil Air Patrol, and may have been encouraged to sign into the Marines through his influence. When back in New Orleans in summer 1963, Oswald worked with Banister to distribute anti-Castro leaflets, and perform other activities to pretend to be a Left-winger. Bottom line, 22 November 1963 in Dallas, President Kennedy was assassinated. The Warren Commission blamed it on a lone-nut Marxist, but demanded that many documents be withheld from the public for 75 years. I assume they were not trying to protect the family of Oswald! No, the purpose of the delay for decades, and the destruction of documents was to protect certain agencies.

Kennedy did not get to smash the CIA into a thousand pieces. Allen Dulles, former head of the CIA, was one of the members of the Warren Commission. Hoover's FBI provided the investigation for the Commission. The New York Times and major media all accepted the conclusions of the Warren Commission. The National Enquirer ran articles alleging conspiracy.

A New Orleanian, I got to attend several sessions of the trial of Clay Shaw for conspiracy to kill Kennedy. Jim Garrison's investigation revealed much more about what was going on in New Orleans in the early 1960s, but witnesses would flee to other states, and Republican Governors Reagan and Rhodes refused to extradite, and federal agencies infiltrated Garrison's prosecution squad, and so on. Moreover, Garrison was unable to present a closing argument nearly as effective as did Kevin Costner in the film, “JFK.”

Though, even at this late date, many refuse to think that a President could be eliminated by the Deep State. Kennedy had made enemies in the bureaucratic deep state of the military, agencies, and others. I think it is clear, JFK was offed by members of the Deep State. It was a coup. We did not invade Cuba, but we did invade Vietnam. That disaster brought second, and more sober thoughts, even by the military.

Ted Kennedy probably suspected that his brother had been killed by the Deep State. He probably was aware that his brother, as president, went beyond the usual diplomatic channels to get his point across. Perhaps, this is why Ted reached out to China and the USSR in strange ways.

If the Deep State staged a coup in the US with the assassination of John Kennedy, what about the Deep State's attempted coup against Donald Trump at the opening of his first term?

Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe spoke on television (CBS "60 Minutes," 17 February 2019) how he and Deputy Attorney General Rob Rosenstein met in the early days of Trump's term. They spoke of deposing the new President, using the 25^th Amendment, meant to remove a president who has a stroke or major health problem. They plotted to do this, though Trump is quite health. They plotted so one might wear a wire, trying to get Trump to say something that might incriminate him. They stressed he fired FBI Director James Comey. So! Trump got Rosenstein to write the memo on why Comey was fired. Trump had every right to fire Comey, and McCabe and Rosenstein. These men were counting which members of the Cabinet might vote to oust Trump and replace him with Vice-president Pence!

Worse, the FBI and other agencies had done nothing to gather evidence to convict former Sec. Of State Hillary Clinton for her misuse of her mobile phones, whereby even classified information was found on the pornographic phone of Hillary Clinton's aide's husband, Anthony Weiner. Many other privileges were granted to Hillary and her entourage, so charges would not be brought. Meanwhile, using Hillary funded anti-Trump scurrilous misinformation, the FBI got warrants from secret FISA courts to justify spying on the Trump campaign. The agency was aiding Clinton and determined to sink Trump. When he surprised them by winning the election legitimately in the Electoral College, then Deep State sought to remove him quickly through the Rob Rosenstein weary wire, and getting the Cabinet to expel Trump. When that failed, Rosenstein plotted a 2^nd method, by appointing Mueller as Special Counsel, not to find a specific crime, but to fish around for anything so Congress could impeach the president. With the help of ex-CIA leader Brennan, ex-national security man Clapper, and other Deep State officials, the resisters and obstructors to President Trump continue to try to evict him from the White House.

The Deep State staged a successful coup in November 1963.  Will the plotters succeed in another coup against Trump?  After all, who should choose the American presidents, the American citizens, or the leaders of the FBI, CIA, etc.?

JFK - THE SITTING DUCK IN DALLAS

THE NOT-SO-SECRET SERVICE: AGENCY TALES …

(Waterville, OR: Trine Day, c2017)

BY VINCENT MICHAEL PALAMARA

Rev. by Hugh Murray

This is a difficult book to read, literally and figuratively. The author includes many clippings and articles from old newspapers, but the black print (at times blurred) on the seasoned columns can be impossible to decipher. Palamara also includes pages listing Secret Service Agents assigned to various missions: p. 61, 113-15, 157-59, 173-74. These lists should have been reduced to footnotes or included in an appendix, not in the text unless the purpose is to pad out a 200-page volume. The quotation by Pres. Truman that the Secret Service is the only boss that the President of the US has to obey is repeated several times (28, 29, 58), but the repetition is justified to stress to the reader the importance of this little-known reality.

What is positive about this book is that Palamara's research makes it abundantly clear that the Secret Service procedures normally followed elsewhere were not followed in Dallas. Reviewing reports, supplemented with photographs, of the motorcades going back to Franklin Roosevelt, the evidence is conclusive. Agents might place snipers atop tall building along the route of a president's motorcade. Along the route, buildings would be cleared of enemies of the president, or any other possible crank or violent person. If the Secret Service did not have sufficient men for this, they would be supplemented by local police or other agencies. Plainclothes officers might mingle with the crowds. If the president's limo were moving fast, it might be alone in the caravan, but when it slowed, motorcyclists would be beside and behind the limo, and on older cars, on the running board. Recent models had a place for agents to stand on the back of the limo, but some ran along side of the car. Palamara provides the old clippings to clinch his argument about what normal procedures were, and these were operative for FDR, Truman, Ike, and Kennedy. They were the procedures even for Kennedy's trip to Tampa of 18 November 1963.

In Dallas, there were no marksmen atop buildings, and the buildings were not purged of potential threats, and as the limo slowed down for the turns and deep turn in Dealy Plaza, there were no cyclists beside the limo, no agents running along with it or standing on the back of the President's vehicle. Palamara notes that an FBI informant on 9 November 1963 had taped Joseph Milteer when he spoke someone shooting Pres. Kennedy with a high-powered rifle from a tall building, and then having the murder quickly blamed on a patsy. Milteer was not questioned further at that time, and he phoned the informant on 22 November 1963 saying that he was in Dallas (though this is not mentioned by Palamara in this book.

Palamara does much to challenge the view, popularized by the best-selling author William Manchester, that the reason the motorcyclists and agents were absent from the sides of the President's limo was to obey the wishes of Pres. Kennedy himself; JFK had ordered the agents to stay away from the sides of the car because he wanted to be close to the people. Yet, the alleged source for this information in Manchester's book, Agent Floyd Boring, denied both the quotation and the content and even that he had ever been interviewed by author Manchester.(31) The effect of Manchester's assertion that Kennedy himself ordered the removal of the Secret Service agents from the sides of the limo was, in effect to blame the President for the success of the assassination. Thus, the Secret Service “was prevented from doing ...[its] job by the president.”(26)

Palamara concludes that the source of this “blame the victim” myth was Secret Service Agent Gerald Blaine, and part of this book is a debate between the claims of Blaine about the blame for the assassination, and Palamara's interviews with other agents that deny that Kennedy ever ordered the removal of guards surrounding the limo. Typical of Palamara's approach were his questions to Special Agent Vincent Mroz: “When asked point blank, if JFK had ever ordered the agents off the car, Mroz said forcefully, 'No, no - that's not true.' When asked a second time, the former agent responded with equal conviction: 'He did not order anybody off the car.'”(37)

Palamara concedes that the Secret Service may have been understaffed in 1963, that married men required to travel often may have missed some of their family life, and other problems. But this was no excuse for the failure to protect JFK in Dallas as they had done on his other trips.

There is a video where two agents are preparing to run along with Kennedy's limo, and they are ordered back, away from the President's car. They look bewildered by this order, wondering why the regular procedure is being aborted. Palamara contends that the video reveals the agent who gave that order to stand down, was Emery Roberts.(195) Palamara reports that Agent Roberts was a favorite of Vice President Lyndon Johnson, and following the assassination, Roberts, while still assigned as a Secret Service agent, became the receptionist for President LBJ.(107) Palamara argues that Roberts abandoned the general policy of the Secret Service that agents be non-political; the receptionist post was political. Moreover, Johnson then nominated Roberts for a high-paying cushy job with the US Parole Board.(108)

Palamara relates that the Secret Service Agency destroyed files when the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) had already indicated it wanted to peruse some of those very files. Before that, in an attempt to cull the JFK file, Agent James 'Mike” Mastrovito had destroyed a fragment of Kennedy's brain that had been included in the file.(162) But in the 1990s the Agency itself essentially defied the ARRB in trashing files that had perked the interest of the new investigators.(162) Interestingly, Mastrovito in an interview with the ARRB revealed: “[Agent Thomas] Kelley interviewed Oswald in the DPD jail... he never wrote a final report....Kelley wrote detailed reports regarding his participation in the interviews with Lee Harvey Oswald.”(163) Did these notes reveal what Oswald said under questioning in Dallas?

In this book Palamara, after additional interviews and research beyond his earlier books, concludes: “JFK's assassination was either attributable to gross negligence or worse of the part of the Secret Service...At the very best, by standing down with security in the Dallas motorcade, the Secret Service left JFK a sitting duck.”(195)

Palamara's book covers more than the assassination of Kennedy, the attempted murder of Reagan and the many attempts on Truman and threats to all the presidents, up to those who jumped the White House fence and actually entered the White House itself. Palamara has interviewed many agents, including family members of agents, some of whom, like the woman who had led anti-Mussolini underground fighters in WWII Italy, had led fascinating lives of their own. But the details of the book are still centered on the Kennedy murder. Some of the rest is almost like a high-school year-book of the agency. There is padding and disorganization. Nevertheless, there is convincing material that makes the book worthwhile.

MURDEROUS EUROPEANS CREATE AN ICE-AGE? BULL

If you become too bored by the article, drop down to my comments about it below.  HM

America Colonisation ‘Cooled Earth’s Climate’

Jonathan Amos, BBC, January 31, 2019

Colonisation of the Americas at the end of the 15th Century killed so many people, it disturbed Earth’s climate.

That’s the conclusion of scientists from University College London, UK.

The team says the disruption that followed European settlement led to a huge swathe of abandoned agricultural land being reclaimed by fast-growing trees and other vegetation.

This pulled down enough carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the atmosphere to eventually chill the planet.

It’s a cooling period often referred to in the history books as the “Little Ice Age” – a time when winters in Europe would see the Thames in London regularly freeze over.

“The Great Dying of the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas led to the abandonment of enough cleared land that the resulting terrestrial carbon uptake had a detectable impact on both atmospheric CO₂ and global surface air temperatures,” Alexander Koch and colleagues write in their paper published in Quaternary Science Reviews.

What does the study show?

The team reviewed all the population data it could find on how many people were living in the Americas prior to first contact with Europeans in 1492.

It then assessed how the numbers changed in following decades as the continents were ravaged by introduced disease (smallpox, measles, etc), warfare, slavery and societal collapse.

It’s the UCL group’s estimate that 60 million people were living across the Americas at the end of the 15th Century (about 10% of the world’s total population), and that this was reduced to just five or six million within a hundred years.

The scientists calculated how much land previously cultivated by indigenous civilisations would have fallen into disuse, and what the impact would be if this ground was then repossessed by forest and savannah.

The area is in the order of 56 million hectares, close in size to a modern country like France.

This scale of regrowth is figured to have drawn down sufficient CO₂ that the concentration of the gas in the atmosphere eventually fell by 7-10ppm (that is 7-10 molecules of CO₂ in every one million molecules in the air).

“To put that in the modern context — we basically burn (fossil fuels) and produce about 3ppm per year. So, we’re talking a large amount of carbon that’s being sucked out of the atmosphere,” explained co-author Prof Mark Maslin.

“There is a marked cooling around that time (1500s/1600s) which is called the Little Ice Age, and what’s interesting is that we can see natural processes giving a little bit of cooling, but actually to get the full cooling – double the natural processes – you have to have this genocide-generated drop in CO₂.”

Where’s the support for the connection?

The drop in CO₂ at the time of the Great Dying is evident in the ice core records from Antarctica.

Air bubbles trapped in these frozen samples show a fall in their concentration of carbon dioxide.

The atomic composition of the gas also suggests strongly that the decline is being driven by land processes somewhere on Earth.

In addition, the UCL team says the story fits with the records of charcoal and pollen deposits in the Americas.

These show the sort of perturbation expected from a decline in the use of fire to manage land, and a big grow-back of natural vegetation.

Ed Hawkins, professor of climate science at Reading University, was not involved in the study. He commented: “Scientists understand that the so-called Little Ice Age was caused by several factors – a drop in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, a series of large volcanic eruptions, changes in land use and a temporary decline in solar activity.

“This new study demonstrates that the drop in CO₂ is itself partly due the settlement of the Americas and resulting collapse of the indigenous population, allowing regrowth of natural vegetation. It demonstrates that human activities affected the climate well before the industrial revolution began.”

Are there lessons for modern climate policy?

Co-author Dr Chris Brierley believes there is. He said the fall-out from the terrible population crash and re-wilding of the Americas illustrated the challenge faced by some global warming solutions.

“There is a lot of talk around ‘negative emissions’ approaches and using tree-planting to take CO₂ out of the atmosphere to mitigate climate change,” he told BBC News.

“And what we see from this study is the scale of what’s required, because the Great Dying resulted in an area the size of France being reforested and that gave us only a few ppm. This is useful; it shows us what reforestation can do. But at the same, that kind of reduction is worth perhaps just two years of fossil fuel emissions at the present rate.”

The study also has a bearing on discussions about the creation of a new label to describe humanity’s time — and impacts — on Earth.

This epoch would be called the Anthropocene, and there is currently a lively debate over how it should be recognised in the geological record.

Some researchers say it would be most obvious in deposits that record the great acceleration in industrial activity from the 1950s onwards.

But the UCL team argues that the Great Dying in the Americas shows there are significant human interactions that left a deep and indelible mark on the planet long before the mid-20th Century.

MY COMMENTS:

ACADEMIC HATE-WHITEY IDEOLOGY

 MASQUERADES AS SCIENCE

 

The years I mention will be approximate. There was a Medieval warm period that began perhaps in 900 AD and lasted until 1200 to 1250. Around this time the Vikings were unleashed, going into Russia, founding cities like Novgorod, trading into the Ukraine with the Byzantines. The Vikings also conquered part of Britain (the Dane Law), Normandy in France, Sicily in the Mediterranean, and they settled Iceland, Greenland, and part of Canada that was warm enough to be known as Vinland (Wineland). The settlers on Greenland were large enough to have farms with cows grazing the greenland, and once converted, a bishop was appointed for the thousands of Scandinavian settlers.

 

The smaller settlements in Canada were probably wiped out by the Skrellings. But the Little Ice Age, 1300 -1700 was to wipe out the Greenland settlement by 1350 and almost destroyed that of Iceland. THIS WAS BEFORE COLUMBUS. Indeed, to what extent did Columbus know of Iceland and Greenland? Bottom line: The Little Ice Age began, with consequences, before those "terrible Europeans" rediscovered the New World.

 

Next, 60 million inhabitants in the New World before Columbus? Were there even 6 million? If you argue 60 million, then Mexico would probably be the main population center. You mean to say 30 million Mexicans were conquered by a few hundred Spaniards? Many Amerindians were wiped out by disease once the Spaniards came. But perhaps a third of all Europeans died in the Black Death, beginning around 1340 and the plague continued in a diminished manner on and off until 1650. But we do not blame the Silk Road and the Chinese for the plague. So why blame the Europeans, who liberated the Mexicans, for the diseases that decimated so many Amerindians?

 

The The University College of London study is ideological-driven propaganda with the appearance of science. But it is not science. It will receive favorable mention by the globalist, anti-white bigotry so fashionable in the media and academia. But it is not science. Hugh Murray

    (The original article was BBC, I copied it from AmRen; the comments are my own.)