In a prelude to a coup, American President Barack Obama
kicked off his Latin American hustle first visiting with CIA funded dissidents
in Cuba, then visiting the CIA installed new President of Argentina. The purpose
of the trip was to set new coups in motion and to congratulate the grand
wizards of the clans of the coups already in progress.
It was time for Obama to take inventory of the handiwork of
the neocons in the State Department installed under George W. Bush and untethered
by Barack H. Obama. From Wayne Madsen at
Strategic Culture:
Obama’s Grotesque Legacy in Latin
America
President Barack Obama’s recently
announced trip to Cuba, the first for an American president since that of
Calvin Coolidge in 1928, does not represent a new chapter in US-Latin American
relations.
Instead, Obama’s Latin American
trek is meant to put his seal of approval on more than a decade of gross US
interference in Latin American affairs that has seen Central Intelligence
Agency covert support for coups, attempted coups, economic warfare, separatist
movements, and open treason by opposition party leaders.
Yowza, that can’t be.
Obama is opening up new opportunities for the people of Latin America
who have been living under corrupt leaders, unlike our “Dear Leader.” We, Americans are exceptional and we want to
make the world exceptional.
Adding insult to injury by visiting
Argentina and its new neo-fascist president Mauricio Macri following his trip
to Cuba, Obama chose as the date of his trip to Buenos Aires March 24, 2016,
the 40th anniversary of Argentina’s last military coup.
The US ambassador to Argentina,
Noah Mamet, insists that there is no significance to Obama’s arrival date but every Argentine citizen knows March 24 as
the date military dictatorial fascism last swallowed democracy in Argentina….
Gawd, Obama sounds like a tin horn dictator, first they fly
Russia’s flag upside down, now they spit in the face of the Argentine people by
awarding a visit to the CIA installed dictator Macri.
In 2002, the George W. Bush
administration became so mired down in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it only
had time to try to pull off a single coup in Latin America. The Bush administration
tried unsuccessfully to oust Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in April 2002. After that coup failed, the Bush
administration largely retreated to a policy of «benign neglect» in Latin
America…
All that changed after Barack Obama
became president….
The CIA-financed National Endowment
for Democracy (NED) stepped up its influence operations and economic warfare
against the Evo Morales government of Bolivia, the Chavez government in
Venezuela, and Correa in Ecuador, as well as the Dilma Rousseff government in
Brazil and the presidency of Cristina Kirchner in Argentina…
Obama’s visit to a remerging
fascist state in Argentina more than offsets his burying of the decades-old
conflict with Cuba...
But Obama’s choice of Argentina to
visit, a country where progressive opposition forces to the Macri regime are
being fired from their jobs and even imprisoned, represents a victory dance for an American president who could never
shed the CIA clothing earned while a Latin American analyst for the CIA front company
Business International Corporation in Manhattan during the early 1980s.
Whoa Nellie, run that by me again. Did you just say that Barack Hussein Obama
worked for the CIA as an analyst for Business International Corporation in the
1980’s? Why weren’t Americans told this
when he ran for President? Didn’t we
have a right to know? From LewRockwell.com:
Excerpt:
Investigative journalist Wayne
Madsen has discovered CIA files that document the agency's connections to
institutions and individuals figuring prominently in the lives of Barack Obama
and his mother, father, grandmother, and stepfather….
President Obama's own work in 1983
for Business International Corporation, a CIA front that conducted seminars
with the world's most powerful leaders and used journalists as agents abroad,
dovetails with CIA espionage activities conducted by his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham in 1960s post-coup
Indonesia on behalf of a number of CIA front operations, including the
East-West Center at the University of Hawaii, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and the Ford Foundation…
In 1967, Obama and his mother joined her husband in Jakarta. In
1965, Lolo Soetoro had been called
back from Hawaii by General Suharto to serve as an officer in the Indonesian
military to help launch a bloody
CIA-backed genocide of Indonesian Communists and Indonesian Chinese throughout
the expansive country...
Dunham Soetoro worked for the elitist Ford
Foundation, World Bank, Asian Development Bank, Bank Rakyat (the majority
government-owned People's Bank of Indonesia),
and the CIA-linked USAID while she lived in Indonesia and later, Pakistan.
Meanwhile, Dunham
Soetoro's mother, Madelyn Dunham, who raised young Obama when he returned to Hawaii in 1971
while his mother stayed in Indonesia, was
the first female vice president at the Bank of Hawaii in Honolulu.
Various CIA front entities used the bank.
Madelyn Dunham handled escrow accounts used to make CIA payments to
U.S.-supported Asian dictators like Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos,
South Vietnamese President Nguyen van Thieu, and President Suharto in
Indonesia.
In effect, the bank was engaged in money
laundering for the CIA to covertly prop up its favored leaders in the
Asia-Pacific region.
While in Pakistan, Dunham's son Barack visited her in
1980 and 1981. Obama visited Karachi, Lahore, and Hyderabad, India during his
south Asia visits…
The Thailand and Philippines
delegations were pushing hard for U.S. funding for an economic development
fund, which may have provided the impetus for later USAID projects in the
region, including those with which Peter
Geithner and Obama's mother were intimately involved.
President Obama has
twice postponed official state visits to Indonesia, perhaps fearful
of the attention such a trip would bring to the CIA connections of
his mother and Indonesian step-father.
Barack Obama’s employment as an
editor for CIA front Business International Corporation (BIC) after his
graduation from Columbia University in 1983, came at a time when such small
business and political risk consulting firms were mushrooming and their ranks
growing with retired senior CIA personnel.
The expansion of BIC and similar
firms in the early 1980s also came at a time when major corporations were
phasing out their internal risk departments and relying more on companies like
BIC.
However, Obama’s contacts with the
CIA came earlier than his work for BIC. Obama’s attendance at Occidental
College in Los Angeles from 1979 to 1981 is significant considering the
college’s close ties with the CIA….
Two recruits came from Columbia University. Obama graduated from Columbia in 1983 after reportedly studying
under Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former National Security
Adviser to President Carter.
After eight brutal years of George
W. Bush and Dick Cheney, the nation was ready for any change….
The CIA answered the call with
Obama and most of us bought him and his “Hope and Change” propaganda fecundity
“nurtured” by CIA programs going back some sixty years.
Well, well President Obama’s mother and Treasury Secretary
Timothy Geithner’s father were intimately involved with the CIA and USAID. That puts Obama’s Latin America hustle in a whole
new light.
You know what strikes me?
The Reagan Democrats knew all about Obama’s CIA ties in the 2008 primary
and with the assistance of Zbig Brzezinski whose daughter Mika an MSNBC analyst
were able to steal the candidacy away from Hillary Clinton.
From Rachel Maddow to Chris Matthews’ tingling leg at the
sight of Obama, MSNBC shouted over and over Hillary can’t win, she doesn’t have
the delegates. She’s trying to steal the
election from the black guy, the Clinton’s are racists.
So let’s see what others in the world think of Obama’s jaunt
to Cuba to meet with dissidents who are being paid by the CIA. From Sputnik:
Obama’s ‘Historic’ PR Sham in Cuba
When US President Obama touched
down in Cuba at the weekend the visit was hailed as a “historic” occasion. Only
in a crassly superficial sense can the official state visit be viewed as
historic.
Yes, Obama is the first American
leader to visit the island in nearly 90 years since President Calvin Coolidge
in 1928.
But otherwise, fundamentally, the
relationship between the US and Cuba has not changed and is unlikely to do so
in the foreseeable future. It is still a
relationship of unmitigated and criminal domination by Washington towards its
southern Caribbean neighbor.
Washington continues to impose a
crushing trade embargo on the island state and it continues to occupy Cuban
territory at Guantanamo Bay — all in
defiance of international norms and Cuban sovereignty…
Obama and his family will spend
three days in Cuba where he will dine with socialist President Raul Castro. The
White House has ruled out meeting the elder Cuban statesman, Fidel, brother of
Raul. It was Fidel who led the
revolution to victory in January 1959 against the US-backed despot Fulgencio
Batista…
However, US media coverage of
Obama's visit is the usual weird triumph of hype over reality. All the supposed
changes in bilateral relations do not
alter the fact that the United States remains a reprehensible aggressor towards
the nation of Cuba…
What 2016 Presidential Race Means
for the Future of US-Cuban Relations… That
any power appoints itself the right to use economic warfare against other
countries is the real issue here.
Right now, the US not only slaps
punitive economic measures on Cuba, it also entitles itself to do the same on
several other countries, including Russia, Iran, North Korea and Venezuela. The
political claims that Washington invokes in each case to justify its sanctions
are dubious if not outrightly fraudulent…
Cuba is a particularly lamentable
example of Washington's bully-boy behavior in the world. It is this imperialist
behavior that needs to be exposed, questioned, prosecuted and overturned.
Washington's rogue conduct is the primary source of world conflict and the
relentless threat of war….
But the only thing historic about Obama's visit to Cuba is that it is a
grotesque manipulation of public relations and reality. If the US was to
remove its boot off the Cuban nation's neck, then perhaps we could indulge in
plaudits.
As
things stand, Washington's relations with
Cuba — as with any other country
that dares to defy its hegemony — is testimony to more despotic American
business-as-usual.
Yep, that’s the state of the American President’s “historic”
trip to Cuba, to increase pressure on its boot on the Cuban nation's neck. After leaving Cuba Obama’s next stop was
Argentina to take financial inventory after the CIA coup that removed the term-limited
Kirchner’s socialist government and restore the brutal dictatorship. From Greg Palast:
Except:
Obama Lands in Argentina Vultures
Circle
Today, President Barack Obama
travelled to Argentina to speak with the country's new President Mauricio
Macri.
Marci just concluded a deal paying off US vulture fund operator Paul
Singer, a $2.5 billion pay-out which the Argentine government described as
"extortion."
The story of Argentina versus
Singer, aka The Vulture, looms hugely over the US Presidential election. As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton
attempted to prevent Singer from collecting this "extortion" pay-off
from Argentina. Singer, the top donor
to the Republican Party, is fuming.
So how did Macri come to power in Argentina? From Global Research:
Argentina: A Quiet Neoliberal Coup d’Etat in Latin America’s Southern
Cone
For the past few weeks the world
has been and still is focussing all attention on Syria... plus the endless fear mongering of more terror
in Brussels, Berlin, Rome, Paris, Copenhagen — you name it….
The neoliberal coup d’état in
Argentina happened almost unnoticed. Never mind that it is just about bringing
some 42.5 million people (2015 pop. estimate) under Washington’s rule.
Argentina’s general election 2015 ended on Sunday 22 November in a
run-off – the first in Argentina’s history – between Daniel Scioli, the
incumbent Governor of Buenos Aires Province, a Kirchnerite from the ruling
Front for Victory Party and Mauricio Macri, a neoliberal multi-billionaire and
Mayor of Buenos Aires from the right-wing Cambiemos party.
Against all odds, Macri won with
51.4% against Scioli’s 48.6% – a margin of 2.8%. A margin small enough not to
raise many questions of fraud.
At the end of July, three months
before the first election run, Scioli was leading with a 13.6% margin (38.8%
vs. 25.2%). The outcome of the 9 August Primaries left Scioli still with a more
than 12 point lead (36.8% vs 24.7%)…
This is not a typical pattern of
error for pollsters, nor an indication for a public opinion change, a public
that has benefitted from their government to the extent Argentinians did within
the last 15 years, since the economic collapse in 2001:
An average annual growth of between
6% and 8%, a highly distributive economic development, helping reducing poverty from 65% in 2002 to less than 10% in early 2015 and with a massive increase in countrywide free education and health services,
including in rural areas; not to mention the
elimination of foreign debt.
A simple question of logic: Would a people of which 80% to 90% have
massively benefitted from the ruling government policies vote with more
than 50% against the continuation of such policies – and instead for a neoliberal
politician, who promised to turn the clock back?
Hardly. Unless they have been
subjected to a massive media brainwashing and slander campaign, vote buying and
other democracy-destroying measures, through foreign induced destabilization.
We know about the NED (National Endowment for Democracy) and other
US based think tanks (sic), receiving
hundreds of millions of dollars from the State Department to train and fund
“NGOs” throughout the world, to
infiltrate in counties’ internal affairs, where Washington wants to achieve
soft regime change, as opposed to hard-core regime change – which involves the
US military, proxy-armies, mercenaries and – of course – the ever present NATO. – So far the election fraud worked in
Argentina without bloodshed…
If propaganda alone doesn’t do the
trick, the Washington imposed changes are being helped with false flags,
inducing armed conflicts and ‘civil wars’. Recent
cases in point are the Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Yemen, to name
just a few…
In 2011 Wikileaks revealed that Mauricio Macri asked the US Embassy in
Buenos Aires to launch a strong anti-Kirchner campaign, slandering her and
her political alliances, thereby massively discrediting Cristina Kirchner’s
Presidency…
Who is Mauricio Macri? – He was
born in 1959 into a family of owners of the country’s most important industrial
and economic groups. In 1975, the Macri
family possessed 7 enterprises; at the end of the military dictatorship the
Macri fleet of companies had grown to 46.
The Macri family benefitted greatly from business relations with
the totalitarian military government of Videla. In connivance with US banks, they built up false debt which later
had to be assumed by the Argentine government…
Mr. Macri is known as an extreme conservative, right-wing politician
following neoliberal policies, who will most likely turn the wheel of progress
of the Kirchner Administration back by seeking reduction of public expenditures to the detriment of labor,
privatization of public services and ending fiscal policies aiming at
redistribution of wealth…
All the while the Great Dictator
and its paid foreign minions are diligently working at discrediting the Governments of Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela, and of Dilma
Rousseff, President of Brazil; the
former with infiltrated and local mercenaries spreading unrest and violence;
the latter with defamation of corruption linked to the oil giant Petrobras, all
manufactured via henchmen and associated
banks in Florida and New York.
My, my, my. That was
last year so how are Argentina and more importantly their people doing since
Obama’s “financial shock treatment” kicked in? From World Socialist Website:
Excerpt:
Obama hails Macri’s attacks on Argentine workers
US President Barack Obama arrived
in Buenos Aires on Wednesday March 23, on the
eve of the 40th anniversary of the CIA-backed military coup that installed the
fascist military junta of Gen. Jorge Videla.
Amidst a massive police operation, involving helicopters and military
surveillance and fighter planes—some 700 security personnel had arrived earlier
in Buenos Aires to prepare for the US president’s arrival—Obama moved to
Argentina’s Government House, the Casa Rosada, met with the recently installed
Argentine president Mauricio Macri and gave a press conference.
An effusive Macri welcomed Obama:
“This is your house,” he declared. In a reference to Obama’s visit to Argentina
and Cuba, Macri praised the US for
trying to establish a “mature” relationship with the nations in the region.
In turn, Obama called for the US and Argentina to become “universal
allies” and praised the new president
for his measures of economic shock
that have so far resulted in the destruction of more than 100,000 public sector
jobs, wiped out energy subsidies and devastated living standards…
“I can tell you President Macri is
a man in hurry,” said Obama; “I’m impressed because he has moved rapidly on so
many of the reforms that he promised, to create more sustainable and inclusive
economic growth, to reconnect Argentina with the global economy and the world
community.”
This was a thinly veiled reference to the Macri administration’s
decision to pay off the Wall Street vulture funds that acquired billions of
dollars worth of Argentina’s pre-2002 debt…
As he did in Cuba during the
previous three days, Obama posed as a defender of civil liberties and open
government…
“Argentina is re-assuming its traditional leadership role in the region
and around the world,” declared Obama. Those words are ominous, given the
content of a US State Department information press release that was issued
following Obama’s discussions with Macri on Wednesday…
Buried in a list of proposed areas
of cooperation… there is a proposal for
the beefing up of Argentine military
reserves so that the Argentine armed forces can better intervene in
so-called peace-keeping operations in
Africa and elsewhere.
March 24 is a day of remembrance in
Argentina, marking the anniversary of the Videla coup that the US supported in
1976. Following the coup, it helped establish an alliance between the military
regimes that ruled in Uruguay, Brazil, Chile and Argentina in the 1960s and
1970s and assisted in the blood bath that followed…
Do cry for me Argentina, looks like the military
dictatorship has returned to Argentina. And
then there’s this article from Reuters:
Excerpt:
UPDATE 4-Argentina names banks for
bond offer
NEW YORK, March 22 (IFR) - Argentina has hired seven banks to manage
its upcoming international bond sale, its first in over 15 years, sources
familiar with the matter told IFR on Tuesday.
Deutsche Bank, HSBC, JP Morgan and Santander were awarded the top role of global coordinators for the bond
sale, while BBVA, Citigroup, and UBS
will join as bookrunners, one of the
sources said.
All seven banks participated in a US $5bn one-year loan in January to
help the government of newly elected President Mauricio Macri bolster foreign
reserves…
The timing and currency of the bond
offering are not yet certain, but the deal is expected to come to market before
an April 14 deadline set in the agreement between holdouts and the government.
Expectations of a deal have been
building since Argentina sealed an agreement with major holdout creditors three
weeks ago.
Barring any objections from
Congress, the South American country could try to issue around US $12bn of bonds in April in an effort to
pay litigant investors and service past due interest on its restructured bonds…
Citigroup's head of emerging markets
Guillermo Mondino wrote this month that an Argentina bond sale could pay yields
of 7.25% on a five-year, 8.4% on a 10-year and 9.7% on a 30-year.
Newman said yields of around 8% for
a 10-year would be realistic.
Democratic front runner in the 2016 primary, Hillary Clinton
is despised by the vultures like Paul Singer and Reagan Democrats like
Obama. The Clinton Administration’s
Latin American policies were the polar opposite of the years of death squads
and military junta’s ushered in since the Nixon Administration and continued
under Reagan and Bush.
The best example I can give you is Haiti. Haiti, like Argentina and Brazil has been in
the crosshairs since the overthrow of the American government in 2000 and the
decision to destroy the Clinton legacy. This
article from 1994 should explain why today’s Duopoly will do anything to keep
Hillary Clinton from being President. From
Baltimore Sun:
Excerpt:
Clinton gives ultimatum 'Your time is up,' president tells Haiti's
leaders HAITI: ON THE BRINK OF INVASION
WASHINGTON -- President Clinton,
invoking graphic images of the brutality unleashed by Haiti's military leaders
against their own people, issued a blunt ultimatum to the island's dictators
last night to give up power -- or be ousted by U.S. military force.
"The message of the United States
to the Haitian dictators is clear: 'Your time is up. Leave now or we will force
you from power,' " Mr. Clinton said in a 16-minute Oval Office speech
televised to the American people and around the world…
Looking determined as he stared
directly into the camera, Mr. Clinton
recited the recent history of Haiti: its first democratic elections in 1990,
won by the Rev. Jean-Bertrand Aristide with almost 70 percent of the vote.
Then, seven months later, a military coup that installed a government
characterized by corruption, torture and political murder.
"Haiti's dictators, led by Gen. Raoul Cedras, control one of the
most violent regimes in our hemisphere," the president said….
As Mr. Clinton spoke, 17 U.S. Navy
vessels ringed Haiti, and two aircraft carriers steamed toward the Caribbean
nation…
However, in a defiant message
televised to the United States, General Cedras said he had decided to stay on
and fight…
But the president signed an
executive order yesterday authorizing the call-up of 1,600 reservists to
support the 20,000-person invasion force.
Earlier, General Cedras reportedly
offered through an intermediary to resign and hold new elections. But he set a condition that is completely
unacceptable to the Clinton administration -- that Father Aristide not be
allowed to participate…
Along with three-quarters of the
American public, I strongly oppose President Clinton's threatened invasion of
Haiti to 'restore democracy' to a land that, unfortunately, has never known
democracy," said Rep. Floyd D. Spence, a South Carolina Republican. "The president has failed to make
the case that any vital U.S. national interest is at stake in Haiti…"
In Congress, the politics of the invasion are the reverse of four years ago,
when Republicans were gung-ho in their support of President George Bush's
buildup on the border of Kuwait…
Now let’s take a look at the Haiti policy under George W.
Bush. This article is from the LA Timesin 2004:
Excerpt:
From His First Day in Office, Bush Was Ousting Aristide
If the circumstances were not so
calamitous, the American-orchestrated removal of former President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide from Haiti would be farcical.
According to Aristide, American
officials in Port-au-Prince told him that rebels were on the way to the
presidential residence and that he and his family were unlikely to survive
unless they immediately boarded an American-chartered plane standing by to take
them to exile….
At the airport, Aristide said, U.S.
officials refused him entry to the airplane until he handed over a signed letter of resignation.
After being hustled aboard, Aristide was denied access to a phone for
nearly 24 hours, and he knew nothing of his destination until he and his family were summarily
deposited in the Central African Republic. He has since been kept hidden
from view.
Yet this Keystone Kops coup has
apparently not worked entirely according to plan: Aristide has used a cellphone to notify the world that he was forcibly
removed from Haiti at risk of death and to describe the way his resignation was
staged by American forces.
The U.S. government dismisses
Aristide's charges as ridiculous. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has
offered an official version of the events, a blanket denial based on the
government's word alone…
Did the U.S. supply weapons to the
rebels, who showed up in Haiti last month with sophisticated equipment that last
year reportedly had been taken by the U.S. military to the Dominican Republic,
next door to Haiti?
Why did the U.S. cynically abandon
the call of European and Caribbean leaders for a political compromise, a
compromise that Aristide had already accepted? Most important, did the U.S. in fact bankroll a coup in
Haiti, a scenario that seems likely based on present evidence?
Only someone ignorant of U.S. history and of the administrations of
George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush would dismiss these questions. The
United States has repeatedly sponsored coups and uprisings in Haiti and in
neighboring Caribbean countries.
Ominously, before this week, the
most recent such episode in Haiti came in
1991, during the first Bush administration, when thugs on the CIA payroll were
among the leaders of paramilitary groups that toppled Aristide after his 1990
election.
Now let’s look at the Obama Administration’s Haiti Policy. From People’s World:
Excerpt:
Haiti: Massive electoral fraud ignored
(Morning Star) -- On Dec. 16 the
people of Haiti will mark the 25th anniversary of their first democratically
elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the liberation theology priest they
lovingly call Titid.
This is an important date,
especially because Haiti is the midst of elections - parliamentary, then
presidential, the final round scheduled for December 27.
But the elections, funded by the
U.S. to the tune of $30 million, are being stolen and since August tens of
thousands of people have repeatedly taken to the streets to protest at an
"electoral coup."
For the first time since 2004, when a U.S. coup removed
Aristide for the second time, his party Fanmi Lavalas has been allowed on
the ballot and its candidate Maryse Narcisse, a woman, has been personally
endorsed by him.
The election has been marred by
state violence and fraud. Maxine Waters, member of the U.S. congressional black
caucus and longstanding supporter of Haiti, wrote to the Secretary of State
John Kerry: "Many are calling for the resignation of the current CEP
[Provisional Electoral Council] and the annulment of the entire first
round."
She was ignored and on October 25
the second round went ahead. Again, intimidation and anomalies were reported
including by the Caribbean Community (Caricom) electoral observation mission.
A review demanded by Narcisse confirmed irregularities in 98 per cent
of the tally sheets re-examined. The executive director of the National
Human Rights Defence Network declared they reflected "massive acts of
fraud aimed at changing the results of the elections" to benefit Jovenel
Moise, the candidate backed by outgoing
president Michel Martelly and his US sponsors…
Meanwhile here in America the 2016 primary is in full swing
and the CIA tactics used in Argentina and Haiti, of flooding millions into
propaganda has had some interesting results as reported by CNN:
Excerpt:
Poll: Trump, Clinton score historic unfavorable ratings
Washington (CNN): Donald Trump and
Hillary Clinton register net negative ratings in double digits, indicating the front-runners for each party's
presidential nominations are viewed negatively at historic levels,
according to a new CBS/New York Times poll.
That makes Trump and Clinton viewed more unfavorably than any front-runner for
either party since 1984, when CBS began
polling voters on the question.
On the Republican side, Trump
scores a net negative of -33, with a favorable rating of 24% compared to 57% of
voters who view him unfavorably. On the Democratic side, Clinton fares only
slightly better with a net negative of -21, registering a 31% favorable rating
and a 52% unfavorable rating, according to the poll…
The previous highest unfavorable rating since 1984 actually belongs to
another Clinton -- former President Bill Clinton, who in 1992 had a net
negative rating of -17.
Hmmm, go figure. But in
his prelude to a Cuban coup, Obama is dancing the night away in Argentina doing
the Hustle.
By Patricia Baeten
No comments:
Post a Comment