Plame on surviving the Washington spy game

They had no shame, those men that destroyed the trust of the CIA employees. Cheney made them all collateral damage in his little pissing contest.

I will say up front that I was a Psych major in college, with a Sociology minor. So the commodities futures trading market, specifically the Energy commodities, makes about as much sense to me as Farsi or Dutch for that matter. But this WaPo article, via TruthOut has me scratching my head:

One year ago, a 32-year-old trader at a giant hedge fund named Amaranth held huge sway over the price the country paid for natural gas. Trading on unregulated commodity exchanges, he made risky bets that led to the fund’s collapse – and, according to a congressional investigation, higher gas bills for homeowners.

But as another winter approaches, lawmakers and federal regulators have yet to set up a system to prevent another big fund from cornering a vital commodity market. Called by some insiders the Wild West of Wall Street, commodity trading is a world where many goods that are key to national security or public consumption, such as oil, pork bellies or uranium, are traded with almost no oversight.

Part of the problem is that the regulator, the federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission, has had a hard time keeping up with the sector it oversees. Commodity trading has exploded in complexity and popularity, growing six-fold in trading volume since 2000 – the year that a handful of giant energy companies, including Enron, successfully lobbied to get Congress to exempt energy markets from government regulation.

Is this crap cheating? At the very least it’s screwing over consumers so that a very small, specific group of individuals make a whole lotta money. It’s quite pathetic that we even need to consider government oversight because of that nasty trait in human beings called…

GREED.

Enron manipulated the electricity market to such a degree that, as a resident of California, I was screwed blue and suffered through Blackouts. One of which was indirectly responsible for the death of a good friend of mine in San Diego. I can tell you from first hand experience that it sucked royally and was a legal (at the time) financial mugging of the highest order.

So you can understand my frustration dear reader when I read that WaPo article this past Sunday morning. I definitely felt my blood pressure rise I can tell you that. But what to do? What should the government, if anything, do about this callous activity fueled by greed? Per the WaPo article:

Lawmakers and even some in the industry say more oversight of commodities is needed. ICE, the unregulated exchange that hosted the debacle, has begun to share some trading information with the CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission). But there is little agreement on how far a new law should go, or whether commodity trading can be effectively monitored.

That’s in part because a significant percentage of commodity trading doesn’t happen on any organized exchanges, regulated or not. They take place in private, as over-the-counter trades. It is difficult to know how many of these are occurring.

Prosecute the perps, on what statutes? Pass laws and provide job opportunities for more federal contractors to oversee the futures market? Ronnie Reagan wanted open markets..he wanted free markets that were not under the scrutiny of watchdog groups, so they could..cough..grow and prosper. Of course the Republican-led administration is continuing in that tradition.

I have a growing hatred for hedge funds my dear reader.

But the Democrats love those market guys too, don’t get me wrong. I am not so blinded that I believe they aren’t culpable as well.

Amaranth did get its comeuppance, praise Buddha on that. The fund had over $9 billion, that’s with a B, under company management and reports indicate their losses may exceed 65 percent, which translates to a whole heck of a lot of money. In 2006 they liquidated their assets. WaPo puts the final toll at 6 billion bucks.

In 2007, Hunter started a new hedge fund don’t ya know, Solengo Capital Advisors.

On July 25th 2007, the CFTC charged Amaranth and Brian Hunter with attempted manipulation of the price of Natural Gas Futures and making false statements to the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX).

But meanwhile..millions of consumers gave much of their hard earned paychecks to gas companies just to heat their homes. Over half of the homes in America are heated by gas. No one is lining up to give them their money back..not the folks invested in the hedge funds anyway.

Tags: Energy Commodities, Cheating the consumer, Brian Hunter, Amaranth, hedge funds

Originally posted at Dark Wraith’s The UnCapitalist Journal

A bitch stands in solidarity with members of the Navajo Nation who have testified before Congress about the damage done through the use of Navajo land to test and mine for uranium.

The EPA estimates that there are 520 abandoned uranium mines in the Navajo Nation.

The Southwest Research and Information Center estimates there could be as many as 1,200 abandoned mines and related sites on Navajo land.

These sites pose a continued surface and groundwater contamination risk, continue to poison the land and put Navajo people at risk for illness and death.

Please take the time to read this article.

If your Representative is a member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform please contact them and let them know how you, the people, feel about this issue.

All together now, people…

Dodd understands America must lead to protect our security not only on Iraq, but also on the rise of state-less terrorist organizations around the world

Chris Dodd is appalled by the current administration’s assault on our Constitutional Rights. That is why Senator Dodd introduced the Restoring the Constitution Act, which would restore habeas corpus and require the US to live up to the Geneva Conventions. It would remedy much of the harm done to our nation’s commitment to due process rights by the misguided Military Commissions Act.

The reviews are in – from environmentalists to the leading voices on the issue of global warming: Chris Dodd’s bold energy plan is setting the standard in the presidential race. With a Corporate Carbon Tax that makes polluters pay to his call for historic fuel efficiency standards that break America’s dependence on Middle East oil by 2015, Chris Dodd is the only candidate in the field with a plan to make America the world leader on climate change and bring energy costs down for families and businesses.

Chris Dodd has worked to ensure that every American has health care coverage, regardless of their economic status. He understands that we simply can’t afford to fail again when it comes to ensuring that all Americans have access to affordable, quality health care. Dodd brought together Republicans and Democrats to pass the landmark Family and Medical Leave Act to ensure that Americans never have to make the choice between the job they need and the family they love. As a result, 50 million people have been able to take up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for a new child or a sick family member. The problems are known and so are the solutions – what we need is the kind of bold leadership Chris Dodd will bring to the White House to meet the health care challenge. He’ll get the job done.

want to know more? chris dodd for president

tags: 2008 elections, change, choices

Please keep these people in your thoughts, today.

Bush is supposed to arrive in San Diego, today, so get ready for another outrageous photo-op by our “fearless leader”.

On to other news:

From Reason Online:

(More on Michael Mukasey)
The Gap in Mukasey’s Testimony:

During his recent confirmation hearings, Michael Mukasey, the former federal judge nominated to be the next attorney general, conceded that “the president doesn’t stand above the law.” Yet Mukasey, who is expected to be easily confirmed, also suggested that the president is entitled to ignore certain laws.Since the law “starts with the Constitution,” he said, the president need not obey a statute that interferes with his inherent constitutional authority “to defend the country.” Now that the War on Terror has replaced the Cold War as a reliable rationale for extending executive power, the breadth of this authority to defend the country will be a central issue in national politics long after Mukasey completes his service as attorney general.

Fat Pride World Wide:

According to fat pride activist Marilyn Waan, the American medical establishment has lost its head over the nationwide “obesity epidemic,” and its prejudice is claiming victims. In one case, Waan says, a doctor told a fat woman complaining of shooting lights in her vision that the problem must be her weight. Her next doctor discovered a brain tumor.Meanwhile, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, along with healthcare consortium Kaiser Permanente have found a great new way to fight childhood obesity: the Amazing Food Detective. The computer game, released last week, features ten “case files” of unhealthy children—click on each prisoner-style mug shot and you proceed to help a fat child make a healthy choice. The solution to chubby 12-year-old Emily’s dilemma is to install a security camera to catch and stop her eating at home (After all, “Those large portions were quite suspicious!”); little Cole has to learn that he can only eat raw carrots and bananas because, “Healthy snacks are the way to go!” And the game comes complete with a time-out after 20 minutes: “You should take a break and do something active, like 100 pushups!” Gee whiz-that sounds fun!

From Yahoo! News:

Alzheimer’s memory loss faster among well-educated:

Having more years of formal education delays the memory loss linked to Alzheimer’s disease, but once the condition begins to take hold, better-educated people decline more rapidly, researchers said on Monday.

From The Lab:

Chronic cough? You may need more iron:

Instead of cough drops, some women may need to reach for an iron supplement to treat that pesky cough, Italian researchers say.The study, presented at the scientific meeting of the American College of Chest Physicians in Chicago, suggests iron deficiency may help explain why some otherwise healthy, nonsmoking women have persistent coughs.

From Telegraph:

Micro-robot that can clear arteries:

A microscopic robot small enough to travel through blood vessels has been built by scientists.Less than a millimetre in size, the robot walks like a crab on six legs and has been designed to clear blocked arteries.

It was produced by researchers at Chonnam National University in Korea, who found the robot was able to travel 55 yards in a week.

(Dizzy sez: Hmmm…I saw that movie and it didn’t end well for the humans when the nano-bots took over *wink*)

From AlterNet:

What If The Military Advertised With Disclaimers? [VIDEO]

From The Huffington Post:

D’oh! House GOP Website Pirates Simpsons Images?

Republican Representative Joe Barton, the ranking minority member of the committee whose name graces the top of this press release, who incidentally denounced Democratic Representative Pete Stark recently, for intemperate remarks on the House floor. While at the same time he’s issuing press releases making fun of toddlers being savaged by attack dogs — and blaming such behavior on Democrats (I assume he’s referring to Democratic Representative Rahm Emmanuel, the only “Rahm” in Washington of which I am aware). It’s downright surreal.But what caught my eye was not the text of the press release, which (after all) is covered by the First Amendment’s free speech guarantee of protection for political satire (weak though such satire may indeed be) — but the images themselves. Images are not protected as satire, unless the image itself is satire (the protection which covers all political cartoons). But these seem to be unadulterated images taken straight from The Simpsons television show itself. Which means it is a copyright issue.

You would think, after all, that a press release from a ranking House committee minority member with “Commerce” in its name would be aware of copyright issues. After all, this committee oversees the FCC — including television and internet issues — so how could they not be aware of current imagery copyright laws?

(Dizzy sez:
“Mommy, when I grow up, I wanna be a Congressman.”
“Why’s that, Honey?”
“Well, when I do something wrong, you send me to my room, but if I was a Congressman, I could do whatever I want and I wouldn’t get into any trouble at all!”
“OK, Dear. But, why don’t you aim higher? You could be President and get away with bigger crimes!”)

From News Hounds:

Krauthammer and Barnes: Bush and Cheney Serious About Threat to Bomb Iran. Playing Dangerous Game of Global Thermonuclear Chicken:

During Tuesday’s edition of Special Report the All-Star Panel discussion started off with a video clip of Vice President DIck Cheney addressing a weekend meeting at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, where he uttered yet another of his dire warnings to Iran. The Washington Institute was founded in 1985 by a former research director of AIPAC and has a long history of advocacy for pro-Israeli positions. Once again, pro-war neocons Fred Barnes and Charles Krauthammer suggested that President Bush will attack Iran before his term ends. His reason? Because he wouldn’t want to leave it for the next President to deal with!! Yeah, and coffee still costs a dime … With video.

(Dizzy sez: Hey, I got this great Rolex from that guy in the dirty trenchcoat and I just put a downpayment on a desert bridge. But, coffee for ten cents? Unfrigginbelievable!)

From The Mail:

Bush Touts European Missile Defense Plan

President Bush said Tuesday that plans for a U.S.-led missile defense system in Europe are urgently needed to counter an emerging threat of attack by Iran.“If (Iran) chooses to do so, and the international community does not take steps to prevent it, it is possible Iran could have this capability,” Bush said. “And we need to take it seriously — now.”

Bush’s latest warning about Iran’s nuclear ambitions came in a broad defense of his security policies at the National Defense University and it came not long after Defense Secretary Robert Gates told a news conference in the Czech Republic that the administration might delay activating the proposed missile defense sites until it has “definitive proof” of a missile threat from Iran.

In his speech here, Bush said intelligence estimates show that Iran could have the capability to strike the United States and many European allies by 2015.

“The need for missile defense in Europe is real, and I believe it’s urgent,” Bush said.

(Dizzy sez: I sure hope I got a good deal on that landlocked bridge…)

From Sign of the Times:

Navy’s Definition of Ignorance: US Signs Maritime Pact With Mongolia:

Somebody should have looked at a map.The State Department with great fanfare on Tuesday signed an agreement with landlocked Mongolia that will allow Mongolian ships to be boarded and searched if they are suspected of carrying weapons of mass destruction.

This despite the fact that Mongolia – a vast land that’s home to the Gobi Desert, windswept steppes and largely populated by nomadic yak herders – has no navy at all and lies thousands of miles from open waters.

(Dizzy sez: Alrighty, then!)

Phew! Glad I got through all of that. There’s not enough painkillers in the world to get over the splitting headaches I get whenever I read about Bubbles and the Boyz.

I guess I’ll have to settle for another cuppa, instead.

You all take it easy and be safe, today.

(In case you get lost, you can find this post at Dizzy Dayz and The Katrinacrat blog and The Sirens Chronicles)

Dennis Kucinich is the only democrat running for President who has voted against authorizing the war in Iraq and against funding its continuation.

Dennis Kucinich is the only candidate for President with a plan for a Universal, Single-Payer, Not-for-Profit health care system.

A corrupt campaign finance system, coupled with vulnerable electronic voting have eroded America’s confidence in our elections. The USA Patriot Act and secret strategy meetings to set policy tear into the very concept of We the People. As President, Dennis will protect individual liberty and privacy and restore balance and fairness in America’s electoral system.

As the world population soars towards eight billion, critical issues of survival face all of us. Living on a planet of finite resources means that human life can not be sustained indefinitely without careful thought and compassion coupled with political courage.

Half the world’s population lives on less than two dollars a day. In 2003, 10.6 million children died before they reached the age of five. Without hope and stricken by the AIDS pandemic, religious strife and no opportunity for an education; desperate poverty is a fact of everyday life for the majority of the world’s people. It manifests itself in war, terror and genocide over scarce resources, hopelessness and intolerance. Dennis Kucinich will make it a national priority to fight poverty worldwide. He understands that the path to a safe, strong America is through peace, tolerance and committing our nation to eradicating the root causes of global poverty.

want to hear more? dennis kucinich for president

tags: 2008 elections, change, choices

So, I watch the live streams on the internets..from San Diego and Los Angeles. Firestorms that can do as much damage as a massive tornado in the midwest my dear reader, but on a much larger scale. The difference is..a tornado just touches down and then nature takes it away..not so with firestorms. I call my family every hour or so. I silently freak out at what I witness live and in burning color.

Four years ago this week was the Cedar fire. It was a horrible week long firestorm that took lives and hundreds of homes. These fires in San Diego have claimed at least one life and roughly 600 homes and 150 businesses. Friends lost their homes in that fire. Some lived with my sister, who has been evacuated this time, for weeks.

Back to the big sleep-in at the “Q”. There hasn’t been a “Katrina” debacle yet. People are being fed, they do not want for anything..except of course for this hell on earth to end. Michal Chertoff has of course been on the ground, surveying everything and sending in supplies to make sure San Diego doesn’t have a Katrina-like situation. The schools are also temporary homes for the displaced who have no where else to go, and most of those are full by now. People and pets are crowded into places with other victims of the firestorms..getting to know folks that are also afraid that their homes are gone when all this hell is over.

Its much too much reminiscent of the Cedar Fire for me..and I am sure for many of them, since the fires are taking some of the same paths they took 4 years ago. A few of my friends are suffering through PTSD at this point..the horrible nightmare of 4 years ago rushing back to them.

I feel so helpless, I can only sit and watch..and call them all..saying always that I love them..and they respond back the same. Its not the rich that are suffering like the Malibu fire in L.A., these are hardworking middle class families who have mortgages that are losing everything. Its the fear of losing everything that haunts them all as they sit somewhere unfamiliar with strangers in the same boat.

Unlike a tornado or hurricane..this will go on under the weather changes and the fires run out of fuel. They won’t run out of fuel until they burn to the ocean my dear reader..and that is what they are doing.

If you pray..pray for them..pray for all that are caught up in this hell on earth.

Tags: San Diego Fires, Qualcomm Stadium,

From Brilliant at Breakfast:

So what does the Administration have on Michael Mukasey?:

Democrats noted how his tone changed between the first and second days of his appearance, which makes me wonder what information he didn’t want to get out that the Administration showed him they had between those two days.Is this how they’ve gotten away with it over the past six years? Compiling dossiers on everyone, including guys like Arlen Specter and John Warner, who look like they’re going to do the right thing and then cave at the last minute? And if that’s the case, then Washington is an even bigger cesspool than we imagined.

Maybe the next presidential candidate to emphasize “competence” won’t be laughed at:

I wouldn’t hold my breath, though. Still, considering that when George W. Bush took office, the prevailing wisdom ran the gamut of “Thank God the grownups are now in charge” and “Don’t worry, his father will be running everything anyway”, all that insistence on suits and ties and sexual restraint looks like just so much window-dressing now:

Yes, Virginia, now old SNL-alum movies are inspiring the CIA

Your tax dollars at work: Meet the CIA’s new “Terrorist Busters” logo:

(Dizzy sez: Maybe we are all characters in a really scary pre-Apocalypse novel. If not, will somebody please wake me up from this friggin’ nightmare cuz this story sucks!)

From The Huffington Post:

What Did Pelosi Know, and When Did She Know It?

Will House Speaker Nancy Pelosi come clean now that it is clear that the National Security Agency (NSA) was turned loose on American citizens well before 9/11? She has admitted knowing for several years about the Bush administration’s eavesdropping on Americans without a court warrant. She was briefed on it when she was ranking Democrat the House Intelligence Committee when Bush and Cheney took office.But was she told that within days of their taking office, the National Security Agency’s electronic vacuum cleaner had already begun to suck up information on Americans–criminal law and the Constitution be damned?

(Dizzy sez: Hmmm…good question…)

Report: State Dept Doesn’t Know “Specifically” What It Got For $1.2 Bn Private Security Contract

A pair of new reports have delivered scorching judgments about the State Department’s performance in overseeing work done by the private companies that the government relies on increasingly in Iraq and Afghanistan to carry out delicate security work and other missions

(Dizzy sez: Boy, am I glad the Republicans are so fiscally conservative, otherwise, this would be worse!)

From News Hounds:

Robert Novak Suggests Valerie Plame Part of Anti-Bush Cabal At CIA:

With the release of Valerie Plame’s book, FOX News did their best to discredit her on Hannity & Colmes last night (10/22/07). First, they re-aired Sean Hannity’s “investigation” into Plamegate (Hey, what happened to FNC’s claim that Hannity isn’t a journalist, so it’s no big deal that he raised money for Rudy Giuliani?). Then there was an interview with Robert Novak in which he said (amongst a slew of right-wing smears) that Plame is “very critical” of President Bush in her book. “She implies that he is deceitful and I think that she represents a substantial part, a substantial contingent of employees at the CIA who were very critical of their president. That’s a very difficult position to be in, to be critical of the president when you’re working at the CIA.” With video.

From DUCKPLOPS:

Halliburton Needs More Love:

“At their current rate, war appropriations could reach $1 trillion by the time Bush leaves office, a total that by some measures would exceed the cost of the Korean and Vietnam wars combined.”

Some posts on one of my favorite topics: Homeschooling

Home schoolers get creative en route to higher education:

Kate Cayley got into a Halifax university on the strength of an essay explaining her love for a 495-line poem. David Piechnik was accepted into art school in Vancouver after submitting a portfolio that included posters he designed for his church.The duo is among the nation’s growing number of home schoolers who have knocked on the doors of post-secondary institutions to convince them that kitchen-table classrooms are prime training grounds for higher education.

And the institutions are listening. Many schools that wouldn’t look twice at home-schooled applicants a decade ago are now crafting policies to accommodate them, ranging from the rigid to the welcoming. “I never really assumed I wouldn’t get in,” said Piechnik, a 22-year-old from Surrey who entered a formal classroom for the first time last year when he enrolled at the Art Institute of Vancouver. “But, I didn’t have transcripts, so I had to go meet with them.”

Why Homeschool?:

It was around this time that we attended a homeschool conference in Woodland Hills, California. I had heard a fair bit about the practice, but always assumed that it was mostly adopted by religiously orthodox families who didn’t want to expose their children to beliefs outside their own, or that it was something done by families in the most rural parts of the country who would otherwise have to walk four miles to get to school. Still, I went along with an open mind. We sat in on talks and picked up numerous books on the subject. But the one thing to emerge for me was this: homeschooling could certainly prove a successful alternative for families who felt that the system, for whatever reason, and at whatever level, had failed them. From preschool to high school, parents clearly wanted to take control of their children’s education.

Home-schooling guru keeps the focus on family not peers:

Q:What if you don’t know everything? How do you home-school effectively?I think when we have kids you make that commitment. It’s your ball, anyway. I’ve chosen to keep the ball in my court rather than hand it over to strangers in a peer group. When you don’t know something, you find it out. Or we find people in the community who can help us find the answers that we need. If you don’t know something there’s a way to find out… And that’s the beauty of home schooling. It’s not me sitting here telling my kids everything they need to know.

That’s enough for today, but, once again, I’d like to remind you all to keep our friends in California in your thoughts and/or prayers. Be safe and take care.

(In case you get lost, you can find this post at Dizzy Dayz and The Katrinacrat blog and The Sirens Chronicles)

I am drained. I meant to write more about the CO’s…but Friday my eldest would have been 37 and grief has taken over me. I will admit to a change in my grief, hard to define and describe. It will never not be there, but the rawness of it has ebbed some. I still cry, fret that as he crawled on his hands and knees along the city streets looking for the help that came to late, he felt he died alone… that I did not care or love him. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Your first born has a quality about the experience, the births after it no less loved or precious, that is so intense. Every choice you make as a parent, every new thing your child does is so wonderful, so full of import. The circumstances around my first born heightened that time, the 60 are a crucible of American societal change. Being one of the world’s smartest 15 year olds certainly helped;-p. His father had just been drafted, my home life was one of abuse, I was young and in love ,surely all the terrible things adults told me were bound to happen would not happen to me~ I was infallible after all. I bravely or stubbornly, depending on your viewpoint, decided to reject the abortion offered by my Doctor, marry my love and we would strike out on our own. When that child was first placed in my arms the feeling was the best I had ever had and I knew that come what may I had made the right choice. He was my doppelganger~ the common face and voice, temperament, and in the years before the end, he showed me what I could have become had I not made the choices I did.

He had made the kinds of choices I never could~ living for only himself, lying, self-sabotage, and the biggie~ avoiding knowing himself. He was a semi grown man, 30, when the last terrible thing went down between us late one night. A physical fight, he began to hit and I retreated behind my bedroom door, he began breaking of many of my possessions, from family heirlooms to all my appliances having their cords cut. Finally his anger spent he went to sleep; I gathered a few things, my youngest and fled to my SO’s. That day I knew I had to try a last resort tactic~ He had to go in no uncertain terms, be told to never darken my door until he could look me in the eye and say, “I am a man, a good man”. How strong we Mothers must be at times, for that would take all my inner strength to do~ deny my own. It is still a decision I struggle with, even though that morning he died sober, working and a man, a good one. We had not made up, said I love you even though I tried repeatedly to reach out to him. A male friend who knew us both explained to me that a son could imagine doing nothing worse to his Mother than mine had done to me… how could those boys of ours not know how much we love them? That even this was not enough to stop those ties?

So after the horror of the phone call telling me he had died, I was left with this mess. I like to think it was the right thing to do, but can never really know. He was sober, so he felt every pain of his heart ceasing~ is that a good thing? I can only hope so.

All of my friends rushed to me, trying to help with the un-helpable. They defended me from myself, my guilt, blocked my self-hatred for what I had done for a good reason. Moreover, I think I could only deal with bits and pieces of this event, my mind refusing to take it all in because that way madness lies. I was on one level at peace with it, I believe that things happen as they should~ for reasons beyond my ken~ and that we know on some level how deep our love goes for each other. I never dealt though with the aspect of us not speaking with each other. At times it has made me feel cruel, heartless, some kind of monster. At other times, I think it was the most self-sacrificing act of my life~ to forget my hearts ease in order to try save him from himself. Then just those few months later Kelsey, my hearts angel, went to look for his brother…

Now on this day that should have been full of cake, presents and happiness I find I have more work still to do on this endless path of sorrow. I never let myself fully grieve for my eldest, and then was simply overwhelmed with the death that seemed to surround me. It’s ironic I have faced my own demise but never really thought this would happen~ that I would live beyond my children. I imagine most parents do not~ it is my fervent wish that fewer and fewer parents will have to. Peace.

The words to the poem in the picture follow:

Grief

by Gwen Flowers

I had my own notion of grief.
I thought it was the sad time
That followed the death of someone you love.
And you had to push through it
To get to the other side.
But I’m learning there is no other side.
There is no pushing through.
But rather,
There is absorption.
Adjustment.
Acceptance.
And grief is not something you complete,
But rather, you endure.
Grief is not a task to finish
And move on,
But an element of yourself-
An alteration of your being.
A new way of seeing.
A new definition of self.