Scribblings of the Metropolitician

Completely OWNED

What a tool.

I can't stand when so-called "conservatives" try to get all historical, yet know less history than the average grade schooler. Especially when it's the crux of one's point. Look it up on Wikipedia at least, fer chrissakes., before going on national television and making an idiot of oneself. Or, alternatively, shut the f**k up.

This tool got owned on national television. I'm sure he'll go back to his radio show and whine about how he got railroaded or something -- but in the end, he's just stoopid dumm.

A Sad Day Has Come

This is the last time I will post here. My time as the "Metropolitician" is up.

I've realized a lot of things over the last week or so, since falling for a certain young lady of a more conservative persuasion, who has quite literally rocked my world. I realize that a lot of the liberal ideas I had formerly and formally adhered to were largely misconstrued notions I had held, distortions of ideological ramifications that simply had no precedence in either established fact, dilapidated fiction, or even (and not either) the demonstrated dialectics of most people's dystopic desires.

In short, a new kind of love has made me into a harder, more turgid man.

No longer will I carry the torch for a a deluded liberalism, nor be the voice for lefty illiberality. What I truly hanker for is a haughty helping of a hunk of cheese that isn't defined in terms of a mere neo-Freudian kitsch, but the kind of cheese one can count on, like money in the bank; indeed, one needs sustenance so solid and reliable one can literally stick it in a pipe and smoke it.

So I can no longer continue to write here, after having fallen for someone like the one who has learned to call me "oppa." Such is an experience I never thought I could have had, either as a black man, or a Star Trek fan, and her highly-developed sense of what I have previously called here mere "fetishized femininity" has caused in me an emotional rise that is quite epic in its tense and torpedo-like tautology. Indeed, they didn't call Moby a "Dick" for nothing, as they say. Unlike the proverbial Ahab, my little lady has actually caught her whale.

When wondering why I have decided to forgo any further forays into formalism and endorse not Barack "Aladdin" Obama, but rather John McCain, the answer becomes perfectly obvious, does it not?

When you ask yourselves these questions, as you struggle for the answers, yet still can't bring yourself to face the truth, realize that Tom Cruise once said, quite poignantly, that the "truth could not be handled" and that in a similar situation, Al Pacino pointed a finger and said that the entire Supreme Court was indeed, very much "out of order."

In the same way, I was once out of love, and was so lost without her, but believe you me -- I now realize that it's hip to be square. Or did not Huey Lewis not give you that news?

So, it is with heavy hands that I make my last entry here, since the Metropolitician that was me has completely and totally ceased to be he.

For Pak Geun-hye's youngest daughter knows how to hit me where it counts, and to not just do that to me once, but likes to hit me, baby one more time, all the time, if you catch my meaning, number one Negaroni! See, I don't shrink away from saying, loudly and proudly, what needs to be said. And if you didn't get it from the passage above, you need a double dose of dis doubletalk. April mothafuckin' fool's, bitches!

Word to your mother, yo!

Obama: A Perfect Speech, a Perfect Candidate

I am still reeling.

Is this man for real? Am I in some weird kind of dream?

And did he really, in this day and age, write that speech himself?!

Did I just see a black candidate for President of the United State just make clear, in perfect rhetorical form, what many Americans can barely even bring themselves to talk about, what few of us Americans feel comfortable discussing in mixed company?

Did I just see a political speech actually lay down historical anchors, with mention of the slave trade protection clause in the Constitution, deft presentation of sociologists Massey and Denton's analysis of how wealth production in the black community was prevented by discriminatory Federal Housing Adminisation, GI Bill, and exclusionary real estate practices? Then move right into the silent anger of the black community, followed by mention of how the black community has often been complicit in its own misery?

Did I also just see a black candidate for President of the United State channel sources of white frustration, talk about why many whites reject the criticism of "white privilege", and the understandable fears and prejudices that makes whites guilty of being nothing more than human, as opposed to "racist?"

Whoa. This is the most powerful and historically lucid speech I have seen in all my short 36 years of time spent on earth. This is a man who is not only a uniter, but eminently "presidential" and who truly transcends the petty politics of reductionist identity. It is worth watching in its entirety.

[Read the transcript.]

This speech is simply amazing, on several levels.

Firstly, it was a risk. He let people off the hook, put himself potentially on it -- he didn't make political potshots, and kept it classy.

It's honest and I respect Obama for not simply dumping a friend because it's politically convenient, especially when it would have been actually understandable -- nay, even expected -- that he do so.

He manages to rise above the mud-slinging fray and actually let Ferraro off the hook by equating her with Wright, and for suggesting that not only are her feeling expected, but even understandable.

He, for the first time since I have been politically self-aware as a political being, articulated the problems endemic to American society -- health care, housing, and education -- in terms of the need to rise up beyond the "not my problem" way of thinking when watching the "kids on the other side of the fence" go to failing schools, live in dilapidated and dangerous surroundings, or go without health care. Ever since Jonathan Kozol's book Savage Inequalities both angered me and cause me to well up with tears, I have never heard a politician make the central point that it's a crime for Americans to watch other Americans live like this, regardless of them being "other people's children."

[Source: The New York Times]

And this speech puts to bed that ridiculous but persistent notion that Obama is "all talk." After going toe-to-toe in several debates with the sharpest political animal imaginable, after showing that he is perfectly capable and deft when getting nitty-gritty on the "issues" but obviously has chosen to speak-to-inspire when on the campaign trail -- now, he has displayed a "third mode" for me.

The man knows how to integrate powerful political rhetoric with the hard facts of history, with an emotional suasion and clarity that speaks directly to the hearts of Americans of all backgrounds, who sit in their corners, too afraid to talk with one another, too timid to exchange anything other than polite pleasantries across the racial/ethnic divide, while the big, fat elephant continues to sit in the room, preventing us from solving any of the corollary issues that continues to keep our nation less than it should and could be.

This is a man who has just demonstrated that he is truly a class act, a level above anything Clinton or anyone like her could muster up, even on their best day.

This man is a true LEADER, and the most deserving of being elected President of the United States that I've seen in my lifetime. He's not the "not-Bush" John Kerry, or "Slick Willie" or even any of the men I've read about in history book for whom I might have voted (and hindsight helps): Carter, Johnson, Kennedy, FDR.

Is Obama as great as any of them? Quite possibly, but he ain't been president yet. But he's on the short list already, and I damn well wanna find out.

I'm voting for Obama WHEN he's chosen as the democratic nominee. I haven't this excited about politics in my life.

And back on earth, in the realm of petty politicking, I'm sure Hillary is hating that speech, because it was just so damn good, and she wishes she had made it. Well, if that were even possible.

Damn, Obama's good.

And that's the thing. He's not even trying to be. "Good," that is. He is just who he is.

And anyone watching that speech knows he just hit a fucking home run outta the park. Gone. Over the bleachers. Hit a skylight, too.

Gone!

Non-Sensical Comments as Well as Comment System

Typepad's comment filter is broken. I can't reply to Quius, and I can't even post test comments such as "I am a tree" on my own blog.

Good job, Typepad.

Here's my response to Quius, as well as comments like these:

I'm not going to waste my time refuting these pointless points in detail. Let me make it short:

- "Koreans have nothing against..." You don't speak for all Koreans. Irrelevant.

- "Some Koreans have married Jews." Irrelevant.

- "Most Koreans didn't even know about anti-Semitism until the West..." Not true for the Korean nationalist intellectuals, who in the 1890's trhough the early 1900's were reading Chinese and Japanese translations of racist Western sociology, anthropology, and history and very much translating Social Darwinism, racist notions of nation and culture, as well as anti-Semitic views into latent Korean ideology that has remained a streak among Korean "intellectuals" to this day.

- "Most of the major movie studios and media outlets are jewish-owned." OK, movie studios. Back when penny arcades and "moving picture shows" were considered lower-class pursuits, fresh Jewish immigrants often ran these businesses, much like Koreans coming from the 70's and 80's dominated greengrocers and liquor stores. Well before "movies" became a billion-dollar industry, many Jews were already placed here. The same is true for comic books, many of which were penned by Jewish hands when Jews found little room in other mainstream artistic and publishing outlets. It wasn't some "grand plan" and Jews were just lucky that these "vulgar" arts became mainstream only a couple decades later. Learn some history.

- "Financial companies" and "overcoming racism in Europe." Well, for as much as talk of Jews controlling Europe had far more currency than it does today, they certainly didn't seem to be able to stem the Holocaust that quite nearly wiped out all Jewry in Western Europe. Some influence, huh?

- And Israel. Yeah, yeah, "they" have lobbying power. But the concerns about Israel are bigger than that – anyone forget the Cold War? The beginning of major tensions in 1954 with Iran? The US overturning Mossadegh and installing puppets such as the Shah, which directly led to the fundamentalist backlash that was Khomeini?

- "America's blind support for Israel" Yes, I disagree with policies that seem that way these days. But it's not just "Jewish money" - it's geo-politicial circumstances, too. Hello? Fundamentalist/radical governments, the specifics of the PLO and Islamic groups becoming bedtime allies because of shared interests (one mostly political, the other overtly anti-Semitic)...come on, I don't agree with Israel on a lot of levels, but they are fighting for the right to exist while surrounded by some pretty hostile governments who would like them to cease to exist. And have attacked them with the purpose of carrying out that goal. But to say, in the end, it's just "Jewish lobbying" and not some very real, very concrete circumstances is...just...well, ignorant.

And calling Israeli nationalism, bad American foriegn policy, or anything else "fascism" in anything other than the rhetorical sense is just plain simplistic. I make the rhetorical parallel between Nazi anti-Semitism and some aspects of Korean ideology, but I never go so far as to say "Korean national ideology = Western European fascism." That's just ludicrous.

Quius – have you anything to say grounded in actual knowledge of history or logic? Have you any arguments based on anything other than superficial hearsay, which is itself mostly just recycled ignorant stereotypes?

It sounds to me like you're a high school or early college student who actually hasn't done a lot of reading about history or society; it sounds to me like your ability to constuct a rational, sound argument is pretty poor.

So far, you haven't offered anything in your comments besides, "I heard somebody say this" or "Everybody knows that X is true about this group." Frankly, your logic and way of thinking is pretty intellectually flimsy.

Wow - Nice to Know The Tools Are Still Sharp

I waded through the silly debate over "intelligent design" when the issue was in the news over the last few years, but came to the conclusion on this blog – which helps me work through issues and figure out where I am on things by writing about it publicly – that "intelligent design is not only an insult to science, but to faith as well. But it was a process:

"Chuck D - Public Enemy #1!"

"Why the Idea of Intelligent Design Is – and Isn't – Stupid"

"The Polarization of the Stupid"

In a nutshell, my thinking on the subject is that ID is obviously not science, but it is also not religion/faith, since these idiotic ID advocates are essentially saying they have found "proof" for the unprovable: the DNA machine is so complex and beautiful that some Being must have made it. OK, if you say so, but that's not science, and it's a betrayal of the principle of faith to say it is anything different from feeling the beauty of the Grand Canyon and feeling the presence of God.

That's a personal thing, and perfectly valid to the individual. And people come to possess faith in all kinds of different ways, ones that cannot by bottled up into a formula or process.

It's probably my cultural compatibility with Christianity, coming from a pretty Christian Midwest, that explains my interest in the subject, especially in terms of history; but it's the lack of the ability to make that "leap of faith" that so impressed me at the end of Indiana Jones 3 that prevents me from being a Christian.

But it's not because I see any conflict between science and religion, since an intelligent look at the subject tells you that there really isn't as much there as one would think.

And I'm glad that my few conclusions about the subject is echoed by a specialist in the matter, which gives great assurance to this spirited amateur:

Haught is an intriguing figure in the debate over evolution. He was the only theologian to testify as an expert witness in the landmark 2005 Dover trial that ruled against teaching intelligent design in public schools. Haught testified against intelligent design, arguing that it's both phony science and bad theology. But Haught is also a fierce critic of hardcore atheists like Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, who claim that evolution leads logically to atheism. He says both sides place too much faith in science. "Ironically," Haught writes, "ID advocates share with their ideological enemies, the evolutionary materialists, the assumption that science itself can provide ultimate explanations." [From Salon.com]

I'm gonna go read Jon Haught's books. Another one worth reading, and which has borne out what I've been saying about the idiotic people in the Christian Right who completely misunderstand the historical and theological factors that led to the separation of church and state, is American Gospel, by Jon Meacham. It's not academic, having been written by a journalist and being essentially a string of quotes linked by time periods, but it's a good coverage of the issue.

For those who were paying attention in history class, and remember that Roger Williams was exiled out of Mass Bay colony because he wanted to separate church and state to preserve the integrity of the CHURCH from the muddying and corrupting influence of worldly governments, this motive is crystal clear.

The present efforts to characterize America as a "Christian nation" along the lines of some theocracy are simply misguided and wrong.

If people want to set up a Christian theocracy in America – fine – it's one's right to try, even if it's Constitutionally, historically, and theologically (at least from the point-of-view of anything remotely more Protestant than Anglicanism, which is pretty much anything on the American side of the Atlantic) unsound. I have the right to advocate for a whites-only state, found a political party dedicated to putting an Xbox 360 into every home, or even one extolling the virtues of "man-boy love" – but reasonable people, laws, and the Constitution should make short shrift of such silliness.

As they should with those suggesting that the government should give a red penny to fund private religious organizations conducting religious activities.

On the other hand, the book provides a much-needed corrective to the idea that there is no such thing as "civic religion" in the US, which there always has been. Using religious symbology doesn't force one to adhere to the idea, especially since "God" is non-specific (that wasn't and has never been accidental) and doesn't actually have any concrete impact on one's life.

Case in point: you may have to swear on a Bible in court, but it's not the Bible that's going to get you sent to jail, but laws regarding perjuring oneself. People getting all up in arms because of some imagined dissolution of the church/state wall because of mention of the word "God" in public rituals also forget history.

Another case in point: the Constitution. How are rights defined as "inalienable"? Because they come from "God." Sorry – that's the logic, and a smart one it is. The point wasn't to say that these rights come from the one, true Christian God (and efforts to use just such language was quickly and vigorously dispatched), but simply from a plane higher than human affairs, and hence, untouchable.

They are simply "inalienable rights" and taken as the starting point for everything else. Basically, you can't fuck with that logic, since it exists on a plane removed from our ability to do so. Hence, that basic assumption stands, unable to be assailed short of resetting the entire system from scratch.

In other societies, rights stemmed from class, bloodlines, connections, and other ephemera of the worldly plane. Making the ultimate "hyperlink" to "God" solves this problem quite nicely, thank you very much.

Ah, history and context. It's so helpful towards cutting through the petty bullshit of the present.

And it's nice to know that the tools in the woodshed are still sharp, my recent vent-fest over the non-valuation of foreign intellects in Korea notwithstanding.

On that note, I need a vacation from Korea. Badly.

Thailand! Never been. Fruity drinks, sandy beaches, and spicy food for two weeks is my diagnosis. And maybe some Xbox. Can I get that on a beachside bungalow?

Maybe in February/March.

"Sieg, Heil!" Korean Style

[From the Donga Ilbo]

For those of you who don't read Korean, it says, "JEW" and "Jew Power" in the stars and stripes field. Lovely. (HT to the Marmot's Hole)

Here's one from the Nazi era. Love to see Korea keeping it old school, along with the tradition of Hitler bars, overt anti-Semitic ranting, and completely fallacious historical constructions that have their origins in the general Western European anti-Semitism that led to the Holocaust, and whose Prussian offshoots were passed onto the Japanese, who then influenced Korean intellectuals in the late 1890's and early 1900's. Jew-hating isn't new in East Asia, it only seems silly (since there are hardly any Jews here), but it's serious business – as the Aum Shinryaku showed when they gassed the Tokyo subways as a way to rid Japanese society of the (symbolic) Jews. [link here]

[Source -- "He is guilty for the war (WWI)!" -- translation mine.]

It doesn't matter if there are no Jews in Korea -- anti-Semitism has been and is alive and well, and is always a dangerous pattern of thought. Not just to Jews, but for all of the intellectual lightweights and demagogues who are not intelligent nor well-educated enough to present their ideas in a way that doesn't completely duplicate the racist anti-Semitism that eventually resulted in the Nazi's final solution.

Note: Anti-Semitic comment rants will be summarily deleted and the user banned. So don't waste both your and my time even making a Typepad ID to do it, please.

"No End In Sight"

Anyone out there seen this? I think I'd like to.

Whew. I hope those who voted for a Bush second term are happy. We should have never gone into Iraq, and now, we can't get out. "Quagmire." I learned that word in middle school, and applied it to history in high school. Too bad the bigwigs in charge of the country didn't think about that before getting us into a war we didn't have to wage.

I'm Gonna Web Surf Like It's 1999

What a wonderful little time capsule from 1967.

And how far-fetched that must have looked. A home computer. Shopping through a screen. Online bill transactions. "Father checking the bills" for what Mother buys. Home printer. Taxes at home. Even multiple "windows" for different purposes, baby monitors, etc.

Now that's crazy!

Happy Birthday, America

"Impeach the President, pulling out my raygun!" - Chuck D

For those who might have missed it, read my own patriotic rant on America, written late in 2005. Here's Keith Olbermann doing it much better.

Read this and weep, fellow Americans. Read it in its entirety, please.

I accuse you, Mr. Bush, of lying this country into war.

I accuse you of fabricating in the minds of your own people, a false implied link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11.

I accuse you of firing the generals who told you that the plans for Iraq were disastrously insufficient.

I accuse you of causing in Iraq the needless deaths of 3,586 of our brothers and sons, and sisters and daughters, and friends and neighbors.

I accuse you of subverting the Constitution, not in some misguided but sincerely-motivated struggle to combat terrorists, but to stifle dissent.

I accuse you of fomenting fear among your own people, of creating the very terror you claim to have fought.

I accuse you of exploiting that unreasoning fear, the natural fear of your own people who just want to live their lives in peace, as a political tool to slander your critics and libel your opponents.

I accuse you of handing part of this Republic over to a Vice President who is without conscience, and letting him run roughshod over it.

And I accuse you now, Mr. Bush, of giving, through that Vice President, carte blanche to Mr. Libby, to help defame Ambassador Joseph Wilson by any means necessary, to lie to Grand Juries and Special Counsel and before a court, in order to protect the mechanisms and particulars of that defamation, with your guarantee that Libby would never see prison, and, in so doing, as Ambassador Wilson himself phrased it here last night, of becoming an accessory to the obstruction of justice.

When President Nixon ordered the firing of the Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox during the infamous “Saturday Night Massacre” on October 20th, 1973, Cox initially responded tersely, and ominously.

“Whether ours shall be a government of laws and not of men, is now for Congress, and ultimately, the American people.”

President Nixon did not understand how he had crystallized the issue of Watergate for the American people.

It had been about the obscure meaning behind an attempt to break in to a rival party’s headquarters; and the labyrinthine effort to cover-up that break-in and the related crimes.

And in one night, Nixon transformed it.

Watergate—instantaneously—became a simpler issue: a President overruling the inexorable march of the law of insisting—in a way that resonated viscerally with millions who had not previously understood - that he was the law.

Not the Constitution. Not the Congress. Not the Courts. Just him.

Just - Mr. Bush - as you did, yesterday.

The twists and turns of Plame-Gate, of your precise and intricate lies that sent us into this bottomless pit of Iraq; your lies upon the lies to discredit Joe Wilson; your lies upon the lies upon the lies to throw the sand at the “referee” of Prosecutor Fitzgerald’s analogy. These are complex and often painful to follow, and too much, perhaps, for the average citizen.

But when other citizens render a verdict against your man, Mr. Bush—and then you spit in the faces of those jurors and that judge and the judges who were yet to hear the appeal—the average citizen understands that, Sir.

It’s the fixed ballgame and the rigged casino and the pre-arranged lottery all rolled into one—and it stinks. And they know it.

Nixon’s mistake, the last and most fatal of them, the firing of Archibald Cox, was enough to cost him the presidency. And in the end, even Richard Nixon could say he could not put this nation through an impeachment.

It was far too late for it to matter then, but as the decades unfold, that single final gesture of non-partisanship, of acknowledged responsibility not to self, not to party, not to “base,” but to country, echoes loudly into history. Even Richard Nixon knew it was time to resign

Would that you could say that, Mr. Bush. And that you could say it for Mr. Cheney. You both crossed the Rubicon yesterday. Which one of you chose the route, no longer matters. Which is the ventriloquist, and which the dummy, is irrelevant.

But that you have twisted the machinery of government into nothing more than a tawdry machine of politics, is the only fact that remains relevant.

It is nearly July 4th, Mr. Bush, the commemoration of the moment we Americans decided that rather than live under a King who made up the laws, or erased them, or ignored them—or commuted the sentences of those rightly convicted under them—we would force our independence, and regain our sacred freedoms.

We of this time—and our leaders in Congress, of both parties—must now live up to those standards which echo through our history: Pressure, negotiate, impeach—get you, Mr. Bush, and Mr. Cheney, two men who are now perilous to our Democracy, away from its helm.

For you, Mr. Bush, and for Mr. Cheney, there is a lesser task. You need merely achieve a very low threshold indeed. Display just that iota of patriotism which Richard Nixon showed, on August 9th, 1974.

Resign.

And give us someone—anyone—about whom all of us might yet be able to quote John Wayne, and say, “I didn’t vote for him, but he’s my president, and I hope he does a good job.”

Torture, American Style

Man – and I thought the Rodney King incident was bad.

Read this, if you can stomach it. That warning isn't so much because of the graphic content (although it is graphic), but because of how disgusting this case is, and how there are now more incentives (or just the knowledge that military policy is to look the other way) to torture to get information.

The guy in question, tortured by the cops to sign a confession, was saved only because his wife was smart enough to start a tape recorder before she was forced to leave the house. Had she not, who would have believed her? Or the petty drug peddler? Who believes the US or cops or the Bush administration is capable of any of this, even when they're caught red-handed?

And they've been caught red-handed! But the shit don't stick, apparently. Because it's the exception, right? Right? Even when the President is trying to make torture a part of US military policy? So when is this unacceptable? When it's OK to practice on American citizens? Or "those people?" Or you?

Funny thing is, exactly what happened to "those people" at Abu Graib happened to an American citizen. On tape. With an FBI transcript of the tape. Those guys went to jail because a smart wife got lucky. What if they had caught her with the tape? Think she would have gotten her Miranda rights read to her?

Same with Abu Graib. One good American out of the rotten of that bunch who were committing war crimes in those pictures handed them over to his superior officer when they came across his lap. As he should have. Now, he's in a witness protection program, because many of his fellow servicemembers consider him a 'traitor." But the men who are beating, raping, killing – and taking pictures of it, to boot – are the real traitors to all Americans.

People say we're fighting "a war on terror," but what's the point if you become as corrupt as the people we're fighting? And since now the "land of freedom" is detaining and torturing human beings in the very dungeons built by our former enemies in Eastern Europe and even Iraq, who's winning the war, again? Did we even win the Cold War, really?

This is fucking embarrassing, and enrages me, as an American, more than any of these fairweather patriots could ever know. I can't see how any true patriot could support an administration that even hints at defending laws and policies that include torture, secret trials, interrogation without counsel, or even being arrested and held without charge, or the government even having to acknowledge they have you. That's what Patriots I and II would enable.

Oh, and your citizenship to be stripped if you are declared a "terrorist." And guess who decides that? Without guarantee of due process of the law? Yes, it may sound alarmist, but the legal groundwork for the state to be able to do this to American citizens – to disappear you completely without legal representation, recourse, or even being able to make that proverbial phone call – is already half-laid. Patriot I is law, see. If there had been more terrorist incidents, and the fear got to an unimaginable fever pitch, do you think they wouldn't have easily passed Patriot II, which the Republicans, by the way, had already conveniently (and secretly) drawn up?

When did current events start resembling the plot of a Star Wars movie?

Oh, that was Reagan, actually. My bad. When he used a science-fiction movie as the basis for a national defense strategy, against the protestations of all the scientific minds consulted on the project at the time.

Now, I guess we're back to Episodes I, II, and III for reals, right?

Abu Graib, CIA torture chambers in Eastern Europe, the detention of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, the Patriot Act, and the fact that Patriot II was penned, its existence denied, and then admitted only after the full text of it had been leaked to the Internet.

Wait – the Republicans wanted to impeach Clinton for getting his Johnson Waxed™ and lying about it, but Bush, Cheney, and company are taking a drippy shit all over both the spirit and letter of the American Constitution, and it's OK?

I don't know how any Bushites can even look in the mirror and call themselves "patriots" and wave the American flag. They need to take a good, hard look at the first ten amendments and the Constitution and think about the unjust war we're in, the lies we were told to get us there, the shredding of our basic American principles when we torture people in secret dungeons, and how this bodes well for us in the long run of history – not just the short run of politics and vested interests.