[dissident]

It's a cheap ploy to demonize the leader. In the case of Russia this is equivalent of demonizing the majority of the people. For the Six$ hate retard, there are polls by western polling agenices that demonstrate who supports Putin in Russia and how sizable is the majority.

Why the f*ck should Russians bow to some haters from the USA and their imbecilic perceptions? They have their own lives and interests. Putin delivered and delivers.

Interesting how during the 1930s there was lots of praise for the USSR being sung in the west. This was when it was the worst in terms of commie excesses. But the west went into a rabid frothing of the mouth by the 1960s when the situation in the country had vastly improved. The same pattern is apparent from the coverage during the 1990s vs. today. During the 1990s Russia was a gangster's paradise ruled by a compardor despot (yes, despot who had people sent to jail to do hard time for stealing a loaf of bread to eat because they were starving) the west was singing the despot's praises (as the LA Times put it: Yeltsin was a palpable humanitarian). Now that life in Russia has become vastly better compared to the 1990s, we have the same rabid frothing of the mouth. I see a pattern and that pattern is: when Russians suffer the west is happy, when they are doing well the west is filled with psychotic rage.

"Palpable humanitarian" Yeltsin did f*ck all to advance civil rights in Russia. It was "tyrant" Putin who released 180,000 people from jail and introduced proper judicial reform, including jury trials and probation. People in the west can believe their media when it feeds them some fairy tales about "Putin's dictatorship", but to Russians who actually live there the western narrative is simply demented. Some empire wannabe "hyper" power with its two names on the presidential ballot is bleating about tyranny in a country with, over the last 15 years, between 4 and 8 names on its presidential ballot. Please tell me more about how free you are after the shenanigans to exclude Ralph Nader from the presidential ballot. Cannot have a non-approved by the one party with two wings regime candidate on the ballot can we now.

[radon1]

Putin delivered and delivers.

Our glorious leadership look increasingly like a bunch of clowns now. Said that they had a grand deal with China - and that all fizzled, China gave no penny in advance. No deal apparently, only noise. "Death of petrodollar, death of petrodollar!", yeah the currency swap with Turkish lira would be the killer. Now look at the exchange rates. Then going to Saudis to plea for production cut - now that's something. Real indication that they have no clue what to do next, if not panicking. So, Saudis "are meddling in Syria, and generally supporting extremism", and then they go to them to seek favors and demonstrating to the entire word just how insecure they are and exposing all their vulnerabilities. Saudis look like the kings of rationality and diplomacy - "we cannot reduce production because we will lose market share to the shale producers". How tactful, probably they have a good laugh in private over this bunch of incompetents, and rightly so. Especially given that the Saudis can hardly do anything about the oil price anyway.

Russian Central Bank... Holding atrociously high rates for years. Analysts unaware of the local specifics could issue a warning - "Russia is experiencing a slowdown, the central bank may lower rates tomorrow". And what would the CBR do the next day? Right, a rate hike. But when it is really necessary to hike rates, just to keep the things under control as the market expects, they hold them steady and the rouble collapses.

"Grand plan". Bunch of incompetents (hopefully, not outright abusers).

[dissident]

Putin delivered and delivers.

Our glorious leadership look increasingly like a bunch of clowns now. Said that they had a grand deal with China - and that all fizzled, China gave no penny in advance. No deal apparently, only noise.

This demonstrates your absurd liberast expectations. Do you go to a store and give them money in several years in advance for some product you will buy that has not reached the market? I bet you wouldn't even consider it. But here you are expecting China to pay up front to some level that you don't even bother to specify. You just bitch about it.

You are also spreading BS. You implicitly claim China will spend not one cent on the delivery of gas to its market. I guess you get to make up facts since you are a liberast. China will invest $20 billion.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/m ... deal-china

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101693525

http://business.financialpost.com/2014/ ... ojects-td/

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-11-1 ... ccord.html

"Death of petrodollar, death of petrodollar!",

I dare you to give examples where this is a mantra emanating from Putin's administration. Another specimen of BS you pull out of your a**.

Now look at the exchange rates.

I know, since you are a rabid monetarist it makes you cringe. But guess what, genius, the ruble devalued by 35% and the oil price fell by less than 30% so that the Russian oil industry which operates on rubles is actually making more money. So where is that massive government deficit much bleated about by your idols?

Then going to Saudis to plea for production cut - now that's something. Real indication that they have no clue what to do next, if not panicking. So, Saudis "are meddling in Syria, and generally supporting extremism", and then they go to them to seek favors and demonstrating to the entire word just how insecure they are and exposing all their vulnerabilities. Saudis look like the kings of rationality and diplomacy - "we cannot reduce production because we will lose market share to the shale producers". How tactful, probably they have a good laugh in private over this bunch of incompetents, and rightly so. Especially given that the Saudis can hardly do anything about the oil price anyway.

Your projection fantasies don't matter much. Why are you not bitching about the fact that the Saudis are Uncle Sam's bitch? Russia has been dealing with the Saudis during the 1990s when they were supplying the Chechens with tanks. It's called intelligent foreign and economic policy and not infantile butthurt tantrum.

Russian Central Bank... Holding atrociously high rates for years. Analysts unaware of the local specifics could issue a warning - "Russia is experiencing a slowdown, the central bank may lower rates tomorrow". And what would the CBR do the next day? Right, a rate hike. But when it is really necessary to hike rates, just to keep the things under control as the market expects, they hold them steady and the rouble collapses.

The CBR is infested with monetarists just like you. All that the above shows is that Putin ain't no tyrant who micromanages every aspect of Russia. He has to deal with Yeltsin's legacy even 14 years after Yeltsin departed. If Putin was the Stalin-Hitler cartoon all you clowns believe he was he would have cleaned out the CBR in a couple of days.

Kudrin, a monetarist just like those in the CBR, is now a big time critic. It's hilarious how these two bit sellouts complain about the consequences of their own policies.

"Grand plan". Bunch of incompetents (hopefully, not outright abusers).

It's easy to be a critic and your bitching takes the cake for vapid criticism. Russian wages in US dollars went up from $80 per month in 1998 to $960 per month today and still growing. That is what I call delivering.

[dorlomin]

Interesting how during the 1930s there was lots of praise for the USSR being sung in the west. This was when it was the worst in terms of commie excesses. But the west went into a rabid frothing of the mouth by the 1960s when the situation in the country had vastly improved.

This is unhinged nonsense. The "praise" in the west was largely from Marxists and by your own terms the lives of ordinary Russians had improved immensely since the revolution. The worst excesses of human rights abuses were hidden. Enmity to the USSR and Marxism was a key plank in the rise of fascism across Europe, the praise was hardly universal. Strong criticism was probably more common than praise.

As for the 60, the USSR was locked in a nuclear stand off with the west. Knowledge of the conditions during Stalins reign of terror had turned many people away from the Marxist Leninist movement (Trotskyism, Anarchism and other variants were growing in popularity) while rising living standards were turning more people towards Social Democratic variant capitalism (the post war consensus).

You are whining like a child and over simplifying opinions of the USSR\Russia to portray yourselves as perpetual victims.

[Strummer]

Enmity to the USSR and Marxism was a key plank in the rise of fascism across Europe

I don't think so. The primary driver was the decline of the German and Italian economies after WWI and the subsequent collapse of the German economy after the 1929 financial crash. Communists (in Italy) and Jews (in Germany) were simply convenient scapegoats. Hitler got only 2.6% of votes in the 1928 election, and he would have never risen to power if not for the 1929 crash which swayed a large part of the population to his side.

[dorlomin]

Enmity to the USSR and Marxism was a key plank in the rise of fascism across Europe

I don't think so. The primary driver was the decline of the German and Italian economies after WWI and the subsequent collapse of the German economy after the 1929 financial crash. Communists (in Italy) and Jews (in Germany) were simply convenient scapegoats. Hitler got only 2.6% of votes in the 1928 election, and he would have never risen to power if not for the 1929 crash which swayed a large part of the population to his side.

The NSDP was able to supplant the DNVP in the period 28-33 in a large part because it was able to present itself as much more radically anti Marxist.

Since the NSDAP did very well in areas that had traditionally voted for the DNVP like East Prussia and Pomerania, the German historian Martin Broszat wrote that would strongly suggest that most of the DNVP voters had deserted their old party for the NSDAP.[97] Broszat argued that what happened between 1929–1932 was that the supporters of the radical right-wing DNVP had abandoned it for the even more radical right-wing NSDAP.[98] Hugenberg had decided to use as his next wedge issue to destroy the middle-of-the-road parties that supported the Weimar Republic the theme of anti-Marxism (in the Weimar Republic the term Marxism was to describe both the SPD and the KPD). The media mogul Hugenberg used his vast press empire to wage a hysterical campaign warning his papers' mostly middle-class readers that Marxist SPD and KPD were going to mobilize the millions of unemployed created by the Great Depression to stage a bloody revolution and that only an authoritarian regime willing to use the most drastic means could save Germany.[99] The Comintern's Third Period, which meant that the Communists spent most of their time attacking the Social Democrats as "social fascists" was not reported by the Hugenberg press, which instead portrayed the KPD and the SPD as working together for a revolution. The Hugenberg papers argued that the only the DNVP could save Germany from revolution, and that democracy and civil liberties were major impediments to battling the supposed Marxist revolution that was just on the verge of happening.[100] The major beneficiaries of the Hugenberg press's anti-Marxist campaign were not the DNVP as intended, but rather the National Socialists who were able to portray themselves as the most effective anti-Marxist fighting force.[101]

The DNVP was declining rapidly as many workers and peasants began to support the more populist and less aristocratic NSDAP while upper-class and middle-class DNVP voters supported the NSDAP as the "party of order" best able to crush Marxism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_National_People%27s_Party

The NSDAP both was millitantly anti Marxist and adopted Marxist themes of anti Capitalist revolution. To be fair the party was a total incoherent mess ideologically at this stage with the likes of the Strasserites being almost left wing in economics, the Rhomists being all for anti capitalist revolution and yet many of the key industrialists joined the party being for a managed market economy.

In power free marketeers like Hjalmar Schacht was appointed to head much of the economy and undertook a major program of privatisation up till Kristallnacht when they fell out of favour replaced by the Mercantilism of the Prussian aristocratic faction (basically thinly disguised wilhelmites\royalists led by fat Goring.

The nazis were a total basket case of contradictory ideas.

[rangerone314]

People believe all sorts of crap, whatever they read and agree with is 'the truth'. Whenever I read comments of people claiming the US is a net exporter of crude etc. I realise the world is fucked. People are sheep, and the media has no morals at all and is just promoting an agenda with no regard for the truth. What is shocking to me, is that this actually works. It's getting worse, not better, the lies are getting bigger.

What we are seeing is very worrying. It is as if back 70 years ago it took iron fisted state propaganda to spread the big lie but today it is emerging spontaneously from the "free" media. Maybe people back in the 1930s did not have college degrees to the level they do today, but they appeared to have more caliber as individuals. We have gotten soft, soft in the head from easy living.

Quote from wikipedia:

"The Roman philosopher Seneca recog­nized the progress of knowledge, but he did not expect from it any improve­ment in the world, because any advance in the arts and inventions promotes deterioration by ministering to luxury and vice."

I think that applies now as well as 2000 years ago.

[Cid_Yama]

The NSDAP both was millitantly anti-Marxist and adopted Marxist themes of anti-Capitalist revolution.

That is total absolute nonsense.

The Nazis were not anti-Capitalist. They were funded and supplied by the American Capitalist regime. National City Bank, DuPont, Standard Oil, Remington Arms, Ford, several others.

In 1933 those Corporations plotted to overthrow FDR and establish a Fascist government in the US.

They supplied Hitler until they were forced to stop under the Trading with the Enemy Act. Long after the war had started.

Hitlers Regime was a far-right Corporatocracy. Krupp, Porche, ... the list is extremely long. Hitler supplied them with slave labor.

But Hitler would not have acceded to power had it not been for the support of the US mega-corporations of the time.

Do you just make this shit up or what?

[Sixstrings]

The Nazis were not anti-Capitalist.

Do you just make this shit up or what?

I wouldn't say the nazi's were "anti capitalist," but Dor is correct in that it was national SOCIALISM. National Socialism.

There was a lot in there for the working man, like nice vacations for everyone, and everyone got a free radio or something. And the Volkswagen, the "people's car."

I saw a long documentary on the nazis once and it was interesting, there was a lot of socialism to the national socialism.

Not that I support nazis in any way, of course, just pointing out historical fact about the socialism aspect. Which is just interesting to me, it's like there's a left wing kind of socialism, and then a right wing kind of populist socialism.

And at the end of the day -- the working man in Weimar Germany DID need some things done for him, and the same is true of today, and that's a good thing -- minus dictatorship though, and holocausts, and landgrab wars.

[Sixstrings]

Interesting how during the 1930s there was lots of praise for the USSR being sung in the west. This was when it was the worst in terms of commie excesses. But the west went into a rabid frothing of the mouth by the 1960s when the situation in the country had vastly improved.

This is unhinged nonsense. The "praise" in the west was largely from Marxists and by your own terms the lives of ordinary Russians had improved immensely since the revolution. The worst excesses of human rights abuses were hidden.

And don't forget the great famine in the early USSR, and Lenin (or was it Stalin) just let it go on and few people today know how grim and horrible that was.

The whole country was starving to death. Communists would come into a village and take all their grain, and the seed corn too -- leaving the peasants to STARVE and worse with *nothing to plant* next season, and so the famine grew exponential and horrible.

Many resorted to cannibalism.

And Herbert Hoover and Americans donating in churches, and reading about it in the newspaper, did the great relief project to feed and save Russia. But they were DEFINITELY dubious of communism, and at the time there was a lot of argument about why would we be helping communist Russia out to start with, but the famine relief was the right thing to do.

I don't know of any time in US history when Americans were ever enamored with Soviet communism.

[Sixstrings]

Why the f*ck should Russians bow to some haters from the USA and their imbecilic perceptions?

Well.. American voters listened to Europeans and the rest of the world that hated Bush so much.. that's the God's honest truth Dissident, it's part of what got Obama elected, we didn't want to be "the bad guy."

It's the truth. And it would be okay if Russian voters decide to do that as well, to determine that the nation is more important than just one man, and it's preferable to elect a new president that can maybe work better with the world.

No one man -- and his interests -- are more important than the entire nation.

By the way, I wish I actually had a dollar for every time you put $ in my name, if I did then I'd be as rich as a Russian.

I watched that one video about a store in moscow. How do you guys afford that. They wanted like $9 US just for a box of darn lipton tea. I pay $2 for that, over here, on sale.

And Pringles in Russia costs like $4, that's too much.

I think it's Russians that are rich. Which is cool, I'm all for that, just don't invade other countries is all, and start working with the world again.

And more sanctions and more ruble collapse will just make a box of tea in Moscow $20 and a can of Pringles chips $8. Who wins out of this? What's the point? Isn't it time to end the madness, and signal Russia is ready for a deal to keep Crimea but otherwise cut it out with all this separatist state stoking stuff?

Now that life in Russia has become vastly better compared to the 1990s, we have the same rabid frothing of the mouth. I see a pattern and that pattern is: when Russians suffer the west is happy, when they are doing well the west is filled with psychotic rage.

No -- that is wrong. All the criticism about Russia in the Putin years has been all about Putin and what he does, the human rights abuses, the anti-democratic things. If you'll recall things totally calmed down about Russia when Medvedev was president. You can even see that in historical poll numbers, that "Russia is a enemy" went down during those Medvedev years, and then back up again when Putin was president again.

Seriously -- it's Putin, it's all about Putin, for goodness sake just pick someone else. Russia has like a hundred million people, there's gotta be someone else that can do a good job besides that one man, Putin.

If you're not ready to vote against him now, then maybe you will be if the wars get worse.

Or when the civil liberties crackdown intensifies, to "protect" Russians from Western influence by sealing them off in Russia. Closing down radio stations, and media, all these new laws that come out of the duma -- LIKE FINGERPRINTING EVERYONE AND DOING A DNA DATA CARD for every Citizen that wants a driver's license. On and on like that. If all that keeps up and gets worse, maybe even you'll vote against him.

[Sixstrings]

Said that they had a grand deal with China - and that all fizzled, China gave no penny in advance. No deal apparently, only noise.

I was right! I was right! Remember? I said all that would happen when this China stuff was announced, I said it over and over, and I was right. How many times did I say "Chinese will just nickel and dime you, China will never invest big in Russia, and China isn't going to tank the US dollar or stop US trade or do one little thing that may cost one Chinese factory job. China cares about China, not Russia. How many times did I say all this, at the time.

Russia just needs to stop this and come back to the family.

Russians are European. Not Chinese. It was doomed from the start. China will only do what makes business sense for them, China will never follow Russia over an irrational anti-West cliff. China will never do anything that hurts their own economy, as Russia has done.

Then going to Saudis to plea for production cut - now that's something.

Good luck with that, if anything Saudis have boosted production I think? Or they certainly might, same as happened with Reagan in the 80s.

"Grand plan". Bunch of incompetents (hopefully, not outright abusers).

Great post Radon, and I admire your courage and intellectual integrity for voicing anti-regime views. It's possible to be patriotic, but still know when your leadership is wrong.

[Sixstrings]

It's easy to be a critic and your bitching takes the cake for vapid criticism. Russian wages in US dollars went up from $80 per month in 1998 to $960 per month today and still growing. That is what I call delivering.

But the wages of Polish people raised the same amount, in the same timeframe.

It was EU trade that did this, for Poland and for Russia, not Putin per se.

If anything, Putin's now closing the door and headed backwards on all that progress, prosperity through EU trade.

[dorlomin]

The NSDAP both was millitantly anti-Marxist and adopted Marxist themes of anti-Capitalist revolution.

That is total absolute nonsense.

The Nazis were not anti-Capitalist.

.....
Do you just make this shit up or what?

Ladies and gentlement, the Dunning Kruger Effect.

As I said the factions led by people like Rhom

Along with Gregor and Otto Strasser, Joseph Goebbels, Gottfried Feder and Walther Darré, Röhm was a prominent member of the party's radical faction. This group put emphasis on the word "socialist" and "workers" in the party's name; putting them ideologically closer to the Communists. They largely rejected capitalism (which they associated with Jews) and pushed for nationalization of major industrial firms, expansion of worker control, confiscation and redistribution of the estates of the old aristocracy, and social equality. Röhm spoke of a "second revolution" against the "Reaktion" (the National Socialist label for conservatives) to follow the violent Nazi "first revolution" purging of left-wing Communists and Socialists.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_R%C3%B6hm

And the Strassers

In 1925 he joined the NSDAP, in which his brother had been a member for several years, and worked for its newspaper as a journalist, ultimately taking it over with his brother. He took the 'socialist' element in the party's programme seriously enough to lead a very socialist-inclined faction of the party in northern Germany together with his brother Gregor and Joseph Goebbels. His faction advocated support for strikes, nationalisation of banks and industry, and — despite acknowledged differences — closer ties with the Soviet Union. Some of these policies were opposed by Hitler, who thought they were too radical and too alienating from parts of the German people (middle class and some Nazi-supporting nationalist industrialists in particular), and the Strasser faction was defeated at the Bamberg Conference (1926), with Joseph Goebbels joining Hitler. Humiliated, he nonetheless, along with his brother Gregor, continued as a leading Left Nazi within the Party, until expelled from the NSDAP by Hitler in 1930.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Strasser

Were anti capitalist.

This is basic history of the 20th century. But our "peak oil historian" has never opened a history book in his life. But thinks he is a genius. All mouth and no brains.

[radon1]

But guess what, genius, the ruble devalued by 35% and the oil price fell by less than 30% so that the Russian oil industry which operates on rubles is actually making more money.

I suppose "Russian oil industry" are a bunch of plutocrats in control of the cash flows. Who cares how much money they make.

And they don't. Lukoil's quarterly profit has halved.

It's called intelligent foreign and economic policy and not infantile butthurt tantrum.

This is a manifestation of absence of planning for contingencies, and it's not exactly inspiring confidence when the country's vital policies are concerned.

Kudrin, a monetarist just like those in the CBR, is now a big time critic.

Forget "monetarism" and other mumbo-jumbo, - Kudrin, along with CBR, are plain lobbyists on behalf of transnationals.

It's easy to be a critic and your bitching takes the cake for vapid criticism. Russian wages in US dollars went up from $80 per month in 1998 to $960 per month today and still growing. That is what I call delivering.

$960 for a country like Russia is a shame. And that happened over a period where oil prices have gone from $8 to over $100. Regrettably, Yelstin did not diminish the wages to $10 per month, otherwise this achievement would appear even greater.

You are confused, man. It took over a decade to grow the wages to $960, and 35% devaluation takes $960 ruble salary to what amount? All in the course of a few months.

[dorlomin]

Speaking of the European far right and Russia
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 83052.html

Cue the denial and bluster.

[radon1]

Seriously -- it's Putin, it's all about Putin, for goodness sake just pick someone else. Russia has like a hundred million people, there's gotta be someone else that can do a good job besides that one man, Putin.

Provide him guarantees that he can quietly retire, and he will. But it has to be structured in such way that his safety is assured, no some silly "gentleman's word".

But no one will go for it. Because no one needs it.

I was right! I was right!

Good job.

[radon1]

And don't forget the great famine in the early USSR, and Lenin (or was it Stalin) just let it go on and few people today know how grim and horrible that was.

And what happened then? Sanctions. The western countries did not want the Soviets to industrialise and banned trade in the Soviet gold. Stalin didn't blink and traded in the wheat instead. The famine ensued. Then the depression came, the ban was lifted because the westerners needed any trade they could find, and Germans and Americans came in and built industry for Russia. Everyone got what they wanted. Except people in graves.

Sounds familiar?

Russia now agreed gas discount for Ukraine (which Yanuk desperately wanted but never got), Crimea is kind of Russian, agreement with Europe is signed with qualifications respecting Russia's concerns, western cabinet formed in Kiev. But human lives lost and a plot of good land in the center of Europe is descending into a gungsta paradise.

Human cretinism is imperishable.

[Sixstrings]

Speaking of the European far right and Russia
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 83052.html

Cue the denial and bluster.

EXACTLY! Thank you Dor!

That's the TRUTH, the nazi parties in Europe LOVE Putin. So what's Putin do? Well of course he's going to fund and try to grow those parties, that's kremlin control extending into Europe.

Putin’s far-right ambition: Think-tank reveals how Russian President is wooing – and funding – populist parties across Europe to gain influence in the EU
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/putins-farright-ambition-thinktank-reveals-how-russian-president-is-wooing--and-funding--populist-parties-across-europe-to-gain-influence-in-the-eu-9883052.html

[Sixstrings]

Provide him guarantees that he can quietly retire, and he will. But it has to be structured in such way that his safety is assured, no some silly "gentleman's word".

You've said that many times before, but I've never read or heard any analysis, anywhere, that says that.

If only it were true. Good lord, build the man a taj mahal, pass a UN resolution that nobody will ever mess with him, give him $40 billion, whatever it takes, in the interest of world peace.

There really needs to be someone else, as president of Russia, there is just something about Putin that nobody can seem to work with. Now I realize that's what makes Putin a "Great" man, because he is so singular, but you guys are gambling it all with him. Russia can't really seriously take on the West, it just can't and it won't end well and the worst scenarios are either nuclear war or total collapse in Russia.

He doesn't HAVE to retire or be defeated in election (which is impossible, he's got an iron grip on the whole electoral process and has never let serious opponents rise), but anyhow he doesn't have to leave, he's just got to know when to tack to being truly reasonable in a way the rest of the world can trust.

It's far past time to come to the table and be reasonable, and get Russian Crimea recognized out of that, and you know what? That's actually a pretty fantastic prize, in the modern world annexations like that don't happen and get to stand, so Russia could pull that off and that's accomplishment enough.

If Russia pushes it, it will be its downfall.

I was right! I was right!

Good job.[/quote]

Thank you. 90% of you guys laugh at me, but I'm an INFJ -- that means extremely good INTUITION.

I just wish I'd joined a stock market forum and obsessed on that, five years ago, instead of hanging around here. Then my intuition would have been to some benefit to me, I could be a millionaire now if I had trained myself to stock picking instead of stupid geopolitics that mean nothing to me, personally.

I won't miss the boat on spacex, though. If that one goes public -- and it still looks as good as it does now -- them I'm gonna scrounge whatever pennies I got and put it into that. I hate it, I have missed out on *every single* Big Thing stock my whole life. If only there were time machine, and one knew when to buy an apple or an ebay or a google, for nothing.

I have good hunches, and my hunch on spacex is very strong. Which has nothing to do with this thread whatsover.