Why Everyone Matters

Neanderthal Man, Cro-Magnon Man, Modern Man 

© 2010 Craig Chereek, all rights reserved.

Beginning with the first little wiggle in the ocean and going to the very stars, the only path from your ancestors to your descendants runs through you. So if you want to play in traffic, for your family’s sake, at least wait until after you have reproduced, or all that have come and gone before you will have done so in vain. For you, and you alone, carry a unique message encoded in your genes, one-half of a blueprint for future individuals of your kind, and, within some range of environmental limits, a wealth of contingency plans. Evolution is a relay race, and a slowly-morphing baton is passed from generation to generation by individuals.

Within the bounds set by their individual (and so-far mysterious) mating decisions. a large variety of genetic combinations are tried. Occasionally, an advantageous combination comes to predominate within a family line and the dis-advantaged trait falls by the way.

Just as they have for the whole of history, the descendants produced of such individual decisions that may carry any advantageous trait, will prove better adapted to prosper through whatever lies ahead, and prevail, reproductively. It’s why we’re ALL shaped just like this, within just this range of variability. By hook or by crook, blueprints containing just these traits out-survived and then out-reproduced all others offered. Any trait that inhibited that, passed into history with the individuals whose genetic messages included them.

As the environmental conditions and unintended consequences ahead of us may be unknowable in the longer run, and as any given line is just as likely as any other line to be among those best suited to whatever conditions have by then unfolded, any message at all may turn out to be precious to our human future, and all are therefor equally priceless beyond all measure, completely irreplaceable; and therefor so is each messenger. for from an individual, a trait may radiate globally. It would be a shame to lose for all time the specific message that you carry to a moment of cruelty, carelessness or recklessness. Think about tomorrow and stay out of traffic, metaphorically speaking. And just as it would be a shame to lose the genetic message only you carry, so, too, any message, and therefor any messenger.

A paradox lies in that, while no message is replaceable, none is indispensable. The planet cares not a whit how well-suited any species is to the changing conditions it presents at any given time, and will reward with continuity whoever and whatever shows up to pass along their messages most prolifically.

Genetically, there is no other measure. Ask any Neanderthal, he’ll tell you the same thing: “I wish somebody hadn’t played in traffic…”

But it is not apparent who that somebody was, even after the fact, let alone in advance, so the lesson of the extinct is: be careful, and take care for the children, all of them. We can best do that by ensuring our habitat remains within the environmental range that our blueprints specify. Exceed those, and we void all warranties, and can take a seat beside the Neanderthals.

That seems obvious enough, yet we are failing to do that, for reasons that escape my limited comprehension. By knowingly and unnecessarily heating our atmosphere, we are playing in traffic, indeed, and about to settle for the remaining versions of the human blueprint that best handle wide climate swings, drought, famine, dehydration, pestilence and civil unrest. Any other conclusion is arguing with simple arithmetic, and must be discounted accordingly. Even if it preserves short-term financial profit for some, it is longer-term suicide... for all.

The Senator's Song

(c) 2009 Craig Chereek, all rights reserved

I know you’re very busy, I heard it from your aide.

Admir’l, facts trump policy: the facts up here have changed.

Rockslides block the pass and we‘re now elbow-deep in snow,

on this Afghan mountainside with Pakistan below.

The Senator from Warbucks, Inc. arrived today at dawn.

Some agent, sent from Kabul, came, too, with an iPod on.

We are in a pickle, sir, they made too much noise in the pass,

chatter’s up from Pesh’war, and his Bradley’s out of gas.

I am but a Corporal, sir, not twenty-one years old,

raised in Colorado, and I’ve never been this cold.

The Senator says he’s busy, sir, and can’t come to the phone.

He’s sitting in my vehicle, he’s made himself at home.

The Senator came from Khandahar, the Agent came alone -

his camel spits and tests her ropes, some Sheik is on his phone.

The object of the exercise, the reason we are here

is something no-one talks about, we’re here because we’re here.

While I’m on your satellite, and we are in these hills,

where are my B-52’s? My water purification pills?

When the locals ran away the rumor mill did spin:

something to get shot about is blowing in the wind.

The Senator flew from Khandahar, he brought along his aide,

they swap jokes with the Agent, laughing, like they’re not afraid.

that’ll all change soon enough if I don’t get some bombs.

The Devil’s on the ridge and he’s brought some friends along.

I heard it on the radio, the bumper sticker’s, they all say,

“Support Our Troops!” Just politics, or are my bombers on the way?

You have got a Carrier Group while I just have one gun-

a shoeless boy in Pakistan will cherish when I’m gone-

for I cannot save the Senator, I cannot save myself,

unless you send us choppers soon and pull us off this shelf.

We could use some air support, Apache’s would be nice,

or you will see the Senator next when Spring’s thaw melts the ice.

I’d like to kiss my girl again, don’t tell me to relax-

the Taliban are coming with no mercy in their packs.

We’re running out of ammo and we’re running out of time.

If you’re not sending choppers, Admiral, please get off the line,

for I’ve got to tell the Senator, Sir, I doubt he’ll take it well:

some sailor is promoting him to the Senator from Hell.

I know you have your budget and you’re saving up your bombs,

be sure to point that out when you’re consoling all our moms.

I know you-re very busy, sir, I heard it from your aide.

I don’t mean to tell you twice, but things up here have changed.

Rockslides block the pass, we are now chin-strap-deep in snow

in the frozen Hindu-Kush with no place left to go,

on this Afghan mountainside with Pakistan below.

Lesson (yet to be) Learned

(c) 2010 Craig Chereek

Our American experience has been that when an economy has civil order, viable supply chains, stable currencies and functioning markets everybody benefits. So we give that to Afghanistan and they'll be prepared to fend for themselves. We have just assumed that others abroad would agree. From the collective experience of the last 150 years of British, Soviet and American occasional presence in Afghanistan, one lesson is as undeniable as it is hard to swallow: civil order, viable supply chains, stable currencies and functioning markets are much harder to deliver than a pallet of ammunition and a briefcase full of cash. 

We have to accept that you cannot obtain the former with the latter alone. Nor can we assume them to be obtainable by any means given current civil conditions. 

How shall we improve those conditions? What is preferred? By whom? Hamid Karzai's alleged Iranian handlers? Our State Department? The House Select Subcommittee on Agricultural? Regional warlords? Mullahs? Sheiks? Pakistani Intelligence? Our NATO allies? New Delhi?  Damascus?

It couldn't be a bigger stake game. These are Planetary stakes. There are knives in every boot, worse in some. Every player has lives and treasure on the line. And we are the newest player at this table.

I understand why National Security Advisers are so often tempted to say, screw it, "Waitress, er, I mean, Congress? I'll have a pallet of ammunition and another briefcase full of cash..."

Partisan epithets won't untangle this. We, not just we the government, but we, you and I and your brother Vinnie, and our fellow-citizens with whom we share the bus bench or the golf course, whoever and wherever we are, need to think, and talk this (and all world affairs, for that matter) through with the best intentions we can gather, and we need to keep thinking this through as conditions change. 

The LAST thing we need on such shifting sands is ANY fixed ideological approach. It's ineffective  to declare a domestically-marketable foreign policy and then just refer back to it henceforth reflexively. America may withdraw militarily, but we will always share a planet. And it is the only one we have to bequeath to our descendants. We get this wrong and they'll live to regret it.

(c) 2010 Craig Chereek

"Daddy, what's a local paper?"

A whole nation of small local corruptions (which used to be the meat-and-potatoes of the print media, back when America had real local papers and local reporters) is at least as big a deal as an International scandal. 

How we are going to discourage it in this new age of media consolidation is anybody's guess. I have no more idea what goes on in my own home town than I do in yours, there is no local investigative reporting going on, there are no courthouse or police station stringers. all reports are national, if not global. By satellite we are ALL the same distance from New York: remote.

While most municipalities have a usable website, and a cable channel carrying the required public meetings, a good local reporter would cover everything else, pursue the whys of the conflicts, the local history of the issues, and know the thinking behind the players, the winners and losers.  

Now my "local paper" (weren't there two?) reads like the editor has never been here and nobody's even phoning it in.

NOBODY WORKS ALONE

Just as it takes a nation to keep a well-equipped soldier in the field, there is a whole industrial army behind every guy who swings a hammer, supplying him with all he needs, from lumber and nails, to blueprints and boots. 


The quality of his work is the sole purpose, and the whole point, so far, of a complex network of logistics trains, all working towards the same ultimate end. All the parts have to be right. Not just his hammer, not just his lumber. 


I offer three apparently unrelated examples: footwear, raw materials and engineering.

Boots uncomfortable? Slow job. 
Bad nails? Bad job. 
Inaccurate blueprints? Expensive job.

Despite the initial bookkeeping, the cost for any of these failures is spread out amongst the players, and then slowly across the entire economy. Not immediately or evenly, perhaps, but ultimately all these costs are distributed.

The bad boots costs him sore feet, they cost his wife a grumpy husband, and they cost his kids a hike with Dad. They cost his boss overtime and profits. They cost the manufacturer future sales and your sister has her hours cut at the boot factory. Her friend is laid off, she doesn't buy that new car. 

The bad nails cost him aggravation (and maybe a sore thumb) and his boss overtime and profits, or if they pass undetected, they cost his customer, and his tenants, and their customers, and their families, when the structure fails prematurely. Not only does the cost spread, it increases. This is the multiplier effect at its hairiest.

The blueprint error costs everyone who relied upon it except the guy with the hammer (who, entrusted with finding and fixing it, is paid to rework it at least once), and is therefor disputed by the various insurers and litigated for years.

Whoever loses, the cost of any problem (along with the legal overhead required to argue it) is ultimately added not just to the cost of the particular job, it is also added to the price of future transactions, in the form of higher wage and benefit costs, capital costs, insurance rates, bond requirements, fees raised, rents charged and price tag jumps. 


These new price levels instantly become the new price floors, so over time, mistakes drive up the cost of just doing business in general. Prices must rise merely to maintain existing margins. Mistakes are therefor inflationary by their very nature.

 So you see it is critically important that every seemingly unrelated task is sufficiently incentivized to ensure quality work-product, for some may be working by themselves, but nobody really works alone.

THE CLASS-WARFARE CARD

In the run-up to the last election, I heard Fox  cable "news" anchor Larry Kudlow accuse a guest (who was being slightly critical of the Republican's "hands-off business-no-matter-what" policies) of "playing the class-warfare card". 
It got me thinking, just how many rich men are there who have no rational economic opportunity after High School but to enlist in the Armed forces? Just how many poor people control editorial boards? How many poor people set corporate policies? Investment strategies? Just how many rich men died digging the gold and copper out of other mens's mines? How many rich men died building the mighty railroads that criss-cross America's mountains and deserts?

 Do I hear you right, Larry? Two plus two isn't four because my shoes need a shine? That's no defense at all, it's a simple logical fallacy, Dr. Aristotle.  This old ad hominem defense,  accusing your critics of "playing the class-warfare card" just isn't gonna work, Larry. When what you are trying to defend are self-serving deceptions, byzantine frauds, massive greed, selfish motives, predatory reflexes, evasive accounting and PAC behavior that smells exactly like plain old-fashioned bribery. the jury is gonna want to hear a whole lot more than that. http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/ad-hominem.html

It doesn't take an economist to tell a dairyman from his cow. The one ending up with all the milk is... not the cow. Even more revealing, your remark marginalizes the glaring fact that there truly is a class war furiously raging, but it's been pretty one-sided so far, with one side doing all the warring, and the other? All the dying.

The "Class-Warfare Card" has been on the table for a long, long time, fruit of "the root of all evil..."

From Teddy Roosevelt: ”...the most dangerous members of the criminal class, the malefactors of great wealth...”. Asked how a meeting went, “It tires me to talk to rich men. You expect a man of millions to be worth hearing, but as a rule, they don't know anything outside their own business.” 

E. H. Harriman,
Skull and Bones

Of railroad magnate E. H. Harriman Roosevelt said, “...he said he could buy a sufficient number of Senators and Congressman to protect his interests, and when necessary, could buy the Judiciary.”

House Tyrant "Uncle Joe" Gurney

Senator Weldon Heyburn of Idaho: In opposition to the eight-hour workday: “People should toil from sunrise to sundown and to hell with the clock.” On calls to regulate lumber and mining interests in the West, “It is revolutionary to insist that the rights of the public to the national resources outweigh private rights.” 

Idaho Senator Fred Dubois

Idaho's Fred Dubois, Heyburn's Democratic colleague in the Senate from 1903-07, wrote to mine owner Harry Day,  of Weyburn, "You and I both know his faults, but at the same time he has virtues. One of these is that he will be outspoken and fearless in protecting all the industries of Idaho"".

Through the clear eye of history, the real "class-warfare card" looks just like a funeral invitation. 

SEE THE FUTURE! (Drive South)

Those of us concerned with civil liberties have been fighting with our eyes closed. The reason that we are getting no traction is that we are dismissing the reality of the brutality and terrorism being committed everyday by the meta-criminal organizations that now straddle the Mexican border. 


IT IS THIS VIOLENCE that is driving the increasing militarization of even our own police forces. It is not the weakness of our arguments, it is that we are proposing no alternative to the constitutionably-questionable executive tactics that have accompanied the desire to prosecute ever-stronger cartels and organized terror. 


I have found the motives, the intent of those charged with our safety to be honorable, even laudable, they're not fascists, they're overwhelmed and they are scared. When they adopt historically-repressive tactics in desperation, it is for lack of any other ideas.


We are trying to protect liberties by poking holes in their arguments in favor of harsh tactics, when it is not their arguments that drive the harshness, it is the facts.


What we need to address is "How else are to to protect ourselves?"


When unreasonable practices blooms, reasonable peoples do something about it. OK, what? 


What we are already doing is the only option anybody has yet placed on the table. When it hasn't been effective the only response so far is has been to do more of it. 


If progressive forces are to have any positive impact upon the way suspects rights are managed in the face of global terror AND well-funded murderers chasing profit, it is incumbent upon us to propose a more, not less, effective alternative.


Police corruption is the favorite tactic of both terror and crime. Corruption leads to compromise, cops are getting killed. Honest cops are open to new approaches, they don't want to die, they don't want to be blackmailed, or to have their families placed in jeopardy, either. If those charged with fighting corruption are corrupted, we have no effective tool at all against civil corruption. The press is powerless, a target of the same people, too. Without secure local reporters and local papers, all the remote media can give us are the crime blotters. Prepared by the police.


This is what is upon us all, left and right:

"A crackdown on a vicious Mexican drug gang has led to the arrest of five Tijuana police officers, including two who had been at the forefront of the border city’s efforts to rid the force of corruption...The five officers were caught at a house along with six cartel members who were holding two rival gangsters captive, Ramon Pequeno, head of the anti-narcotics division of the federal police, said... About 130 Tijuana officers have been jailed on corruption charges in a force of about 2,000. An additional 250 have been fired or pressured to resign.

"President Felipe Calderon has deployed tens of thousands of soldiers across the country to lead the crackdown on cartels. Drug violence has since surged, claiming more than 15,000 lives since Calderon took office in December 2006. Most were victims of turf wars between rival gangs, but police, government officials and journalists have also been targeted."

From http://www.streetgangs.com/cops/020910_tijuana

"Thirty-one police officers have been arrested in a central Mexican state on suspicion of collaborating with a gang of drug cartel hit men. The Public Safety Department says the officers were arrested as part of a months-long investigation into alleged ties between police and the Zetas in Hidalgo, a state north of Mexico City. Ninety-two police were arrested there in June, and the latest 31 were detained Monday...The investigation began last October, when federal police arrested seven suspected Zeta accountants and found evidence of monthly payments to Hidalgo police from the gang, which is linked to the Gulf cartel. Hundreds of police have been arrested across Mexico for alleged ties to cartels during federal government’s battle against drug trafficking".

From http://www.streetgangs.com/cops/091509_mexicanpolice

This did not become business as usual on this scale until fairly recently, and is one of the Elephants in the Room in any discussion of civil liberties. Only the Department of Homeland Security can tell you how big the corruption problem is in the battle against terror, and one cannot help but wonder about our defense and intelligence organs in their some-times quiet battles against state-sponsored forces.

(c) 2010 Craig Chereek

THE RED QUEEN WEARS A BADGE

Are we headed towards a Police State?

Not yet, not compared to the rest of the world. Abuses have always happened, if for no other reason than because justice is administered by human beings. With apologies to Lewis Carroll, in 1871 when the Red Queen in "Through the Looking Glass..." said, "First the sentence and then the evidence" this is what she meant. 

The problem is the old one about power corrupting. 80 years before Alice met the White Rabbit, the Bill of Rights was ratified to help reign this in, so it’s hard to make the case that it is Un-American to wish to deter corrupt acts and willful abuses against individuals committed under color of authority. It’s not being “soft on crime” to oppose crimes by public officials. Any failure of political will to resist and frustrate even "small" official abuses historically leads toward broader and broader police discretion. Ask Europe. When mishandled, this abets official crime. 

Better training won't overcome a mean streak in a police officer, greed in his supervisors, or in those who may have corrupted them.

When we encounter willful official abuse, we'd like to think reporting it usually leads to stopping it.  The recent arrests of key city officials in Bell, California are the exception, not the norm. Let'see how motivated the new State Attorney is to continue pursuing these common crimes in other cities now that the 2010 election is past...

I submit that a Police State is just around the corner when abuses become routine, inevitable when they become accepted, and has arrived when they become policy. You’ve seen the news, where are we now? Where is north Mexico? Counting bodies. Juarez, a city of just 1.5 million recorded 2,600 killings in 2008. Think they don't wish Martial Law had been declared earlier, before the drug cartels grew so powerful? Think it can't happen here? Ask the San Diego PD. 

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Top 10 Signs you may be living in a Police State

#10 Police Administer “Instant Justice”

The list of documented unnecessary police beatings could fill a phone book. One such beating nobody can quibble about is the one we all witnessed, that of Rodney King in Los Angeles.If it later turns out ANY suspect “had it coming,” under the Constitution, it’s up to the Judiciary, not the arresting officers, to administer it. 

“Failure to follow instructions” is NOT acceptable grounds to cripple a person, no matter how alone, excited or scared you may be.

#9 Police Massage Reports
A large part of the training every officer receives addresses HOW TO fill out reports, not so that they are complete, logical, clear, factual and concise, but so as to make them more useful to the Prosecutor. The key message they take from the Academy is "Give the Prosecutor ALL and ONLY what he needs to get a conviction with no “complications..” No graduate believes his reports are intended to facilitate a just outcome, that's the defendant's lawyer's job, let him get his own evidence. It is the prosecutor, not the arresting officer, who has an adversarial relationship with defense attorneys, and is no reason for peace officers to "shade" their reports.

#8 Courts Turn Blind Eye to Police Misconduct
The King beaters were acquitted. If they hadn’t been caught red-handed, they would have never been prosecuted at all. 

On-duty cops should wear helmet cameras like race drivers, and turning one off should be a crime all on it’s own, like removing a Court-ordered ankle-bracelet. If you’re not willing to defend the actions it might record, don’t take them. 

It would also serve the function of putting the lie to every FALSE charge of police brutality as well. Why subject juries to unreliable "he said, she said" evidence when the FACTS are easily obtainable  with just a little readily-available, over-the-counter technology? The Police Unions and the ACLU should both be eager for this.

#7 Burden of Proof shifts to the Accused
Article 1, Section 9 states, “The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.” For better or worse, the Homeland Security Act now gives authorities not just the authority, but the responsibility to ignore the entire spirit of the Bill of Rights. When a situation is so dire as to require the suspension of Civil Rights, the only lawful Constitutional mechanism is an Executive Declaration of Martial Law. Although technically only Congress can suspend the writ of Habeas Corpus, it is almost certain in the wake of 9/11 to have done so. 

Washington (Whiskey Rebellion), Jackson (War of 1812), Lincoln (Civil War) and Kennedy (Civil Rights unrest in Selma, Alabama) had the courage to make it, G.W. Bush did not. 

Congress has not yet had the courage to face the conflict, and badly needs to strip those types of provisions from the Act when it next comes up for renewal. 

What does this matter to you and yours? Plenty. For when the government has to make no showing at all as to why someone is being detained, anybody can be detained for no reason at all. Or for nefarious reasons, like when in the pay of cartels.

#6 Evidence is “Prettied Up” by Prosecutors
When police reports and subpoenaed evidence are received by prosecutors, they have a legal duty to make it available to the other side. “Concealment, destruction or withholding of, or refusal to give material evidence which one has or knows and is legally or morally bound to reveal is normally considered ‘obstruction of justice,’ a criminal offense”.

From http://www.businessdictionary.com 

But to progress in their personal careers, prosecutors need a high conviction rate. Who will prosecute the prosecutor for obstruction? 

This is a structural conflict of interest, with nobody working to resolve it. If the conviction rate is the only metric by which a prosecutor is to be measured, the ruler is flawed.

#5 Population Fears Police More than Criminals
In how many neighborhoods is a victim of crime more likely to turn for help to members of the local gang than the police? Too many. The Police are certain to investigate the victim, too. If you call “G-Dog”, the worst that happens is that the crime goes unpunished. If you call the police, it may still go unpunished and you may be jailed yourself, for anything at all, from unpaid traffic tickets to immigration status review.

#4 Enforcement is Guided by Whim and Politics, not Law
When the local cop watches the well-known local make a lane change without using his turn signal, he says, “There goes Matt from the hardware store,” and just keeps on going. When a stranger does it, he says to himself, “No turn signal,” and immediately pulls him over. This is easily dismissed as just human nature, but it is also an individual deciding what laws to enforce on whom. In his mind, he is merely exercising the discretion delegated to him when, from a broader vantage point, he is making a consequential Policy Decision. Certainly it is of consequence to the individuals involved. So what? It leads to the same thing at work on larger levels. A textbook example is the creation of “Sanctuary Cities” where local governments instruct local Law Enforcement NOT to follow Federal Law. [specifically, the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act ( IIRIRA ) that requires local governments to cooperate with Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)].

And if cities can "opt-out" of this Law, why not other laws? Now we have a real problem: For if nobody knows what the rules are, or whether or not they are currently being enforced where they are at any given moment, how could anybody be expected to follow them? Nobody should be surprised when not everybody tries.

#3 Abuse Under Color of Authority Goes Unpunished
 “Police misconduct isn’t just about the obvious — police beating suspects because it’s easy for them to get away with it. It’s also about things like making up false charges to justify bad arrests, refusing to testify about other officers’ crimes (code of silence), refusing to accept complaint reports from citizens, threatening suspects who would otherwise take their charges to court into pleading guilty, and coercing women into performing sexual acts. And when police do things such as beat their wives, they can count on the fact that few other police officers will arrest them for it, and that the District Attorney will be lenient in bringing charges — if any are brought at all.“

from http://michaelbluejay.com/police/

#2 More Citizens are in Prison than Graduate from College
Approximately 2.700,000 were behind bars in the United States on December 31, 2007.

(from http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/p08.pdf). 

Only 1,169,275 received four-year College degrees that year.

(from http://nces.ed.gov/pubs97/web/97415.asp).  

That means in 2007 you were more than twice as likely to be in prison than to graduate from college. 

#1 You are afraid to admit you are already living in a Police State.

Denial won’t help you when both the Police and Prosecutor feel not just free, but obligated to “manage” the facts. They do it all day, every day, and so they are very good at it. You, on the other hand, probably aren’t. Not only that, but they are, for the most part, “above suspicion”, while you, being suddenly “under suspicion”, have no credibility at all. To admit that you live in a police state would obligate you morally to do something about it, which just might lead to a knock on YOUR door, or worse. No wonder we stay in denial. 

No I don't think we live in a police state, but if the nation isn't eternally vigilant, one is always a risk with no upside.

POWER FROM THE PEOPLE

POWER TO THE PEOPLE

 Corporations  now have 1st Amendment rights, which means they can contribute directly to political campaigns. More accurately, the individuals who direct their political contributions have the right to make contributions in the Corporation's name, using the Corporation's money (while remaining anonymous themselves). Thereby the electoral and legislative impact of the 1st Amendment exercises of all  living breathing people is diluted, if not dwarfed. 
Who directs a corporation's political contributions? It's Board of Directors. Now they can do it in secret.
How much stock would a "sovereign equity fund" have to buy to elect their own slate of Directors? ONE SHARE. One share permits them to gather proxies from the required 50% of the voting shares. When done through a third party offering shareholders a bigger dividend, it's not hard to do. Ask Carl Icahn.


For more on the subject see my post of FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 2010, MY MOTHER, THE CORPORATION.