Tuesday, September 30, 2008

WTF?


Excuse me, but What the fuck is this bitch saying?

Katie Couric: Why isn't it better, Gov. Palin, to spend $700 billion helping middle-class families who are struggling with health care, housing, gas and groceries; allow them to spend more and put more money into the economy instead of helping these big financial institutions that played a role in creating this mess?

Sarah Palin: That's why I say I, like every American I'm speaking with, we're ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health-care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy, helping the -- it's got to be all about job creation, too, shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So health-care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans. And trade, we've got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive, scary thing. But one in five jobs being created in the trade sector today, we've got to look at that as more opportunity. All those things under the umbrella of job creation. This bailout is a part of that.

Thursday, September 25, 2008

Iraq's SS


العراق – يجب وقف نزيف الدم العراقي فور

النظام العراقي الحاكم بدعم من قوى الاحتلال الامريكي والبريطاني هو المسؤول عن تفاقم وانتشار العنف الطائفي والمذهبي

غداة دخول قوات الاحتلال الى العراق انتشرت الفوضى والفساد وفقد اي احساس بالامن والامان لدى المواطن العراقي العادي.
ومع ظهور الاحزاب الدينية المدعومة من قبل المرجعيات, وانتشار المليشيات وفرق الموت وتورط الاحزاب في قتل المواطنين وارتكاب الفظاعات من تطهير عرقي على الهوية والخلفية المذهبية .

ولم تستثنى الاقليات الدينية والمذهبية واقليات اخرى مثل مثليي الجنس الذين تم قبولهم واثبتوا انسجامهم واندماجهم في المجتمع العراقي على مر الازمان وخصوصا في عهد النظام السابق.

اما اليوم وبعد ظهور حكومات تستقي قراراتها من مرجعيات النجف, ولعل هيمنة رجال الدين في الحياة السياسية واليومية في الشارع والمشهد العراقي خير دليل على ما الى اليه العراق اليوم.


Is that upsetting to see?

Do you think there's something suspicious here?

Is the new "free" Iraq at all free?






Iraq’s many LGBT victims of the death squads

Here are details of a few of the LGBTs who have been murdered in Iraq in recent months:

● Anwar, aged 34, a taxi driver, was a member of Iraqi LGBT and helped run one of the group’s safe houses in the city of Najaf. He disappeared in January 2007. He was arrested in his taxi after being stopped at a police and militia checkpoint. His body was found in March 2007. He had been subjected to an execution-style killing.

● Nouri, aged 29, a tailor, was kidnapped in the city of Karbala in February 2007. He had received many death threats by letter and phone in the past, accusing him of leading a gay life. He was found dead a few days later, with his body mutilated and his head severed.
Khalid (left), a 19 year old gay man, a college student who lived in al-Kadomya, was kidnapped in December 2006. Three months later, his family was handed his tortured and burned remains.

● Hazim, a 21-year-old man, was taken by police officers from his house in Baghdad in February 2007. He was well-known to be gay. After threats because of his homosexuality, his family was forced to leave their home. Hazim’s body was subsequently found with several shots to the head.

● Sayf, a gay 25-year-old, worked for the Iraqi police as a translator. He was kidnapped in the Al-Adhamya suburb by black masked men in Ministry of Interior security force uniforms who drove a marked police car. Almost certainly they were members of the Badr militia which has infiltrated the Interior Ministry and police. Sayf’s body was found several days later, with his head cut off.

● Khaldon, a 45 year old gay man lived in al-Hurriya, a mainly Shia neighborhood of Baghdad. He worked as a chef. The Sadr militia, the Mahdi army, kidnapped him in November 2006. His decaying corpse was found in February 2007.

Hasan Sabeh (left), a 34 year old transvestite - also known as Tamara - worked in the fashion industry designing women’s clothes. He lived in the al-Mansor district of Baghdad.

Hasan was seized in the street by an Islamist death squad and hanged in public on the holy Shia religious day, 11 January 2007. His body was mutilated and cut to pieces. When his brother-in-law tried to defend him, he was also murdered.

● Four gay friends had been receiving threatening letters at their Baghdad houses. All four were arrested on 26 December 2006 by militia at a roadside checkpoint. They were interrogated about whether they were Sunnis.

Their identity cards showed that three of the men were Shia. These three men were released after several hours of interrogation. The fourth man, Samer, a 26 year old a Sunni who lived in Zayona, was later found with gunshot wounds to his head, his eyes blindfolded and his hands tied behind his back. His body showed marks of torture and many burns. It is not clear whether Samer was executed because he was Sunni or gay or both.
Alan Thomas, was a 23 year old, Christian gay Iraqi who lived in al-Gadeer, a Shia majority district of Baghdad. He received many threats for being gay and was eventually kidnapped and executed by Shia death squads in late 2006.

Alan Thomas, was a 23 year old, Christian gay Iraqi who lived in al-Gadeer, a Shia majority district of Baghdad. He received many threats for being gay and was eventually kidnapped and executed by Shia death squads in late 2006.

‘His older sister spoke to me over the phone from Baghdad; explaining how the murder of her only brother caused the death of their sick elderly mother,” said Mr. Hili. She told me: The new Iraqi evil regime does not provide effective protection to the population of Iraq. Shia militias act in collusion with security force gangs to take revenge on the Sunni’s and other minorities.’”

Occasionally, some victims of the fundamentalists have been able to buy their survival. Hamid A, a 44 year old bisexual man, from the Al-Talibya district. He was kidnapped twice by the Sadr militia. The first instance was in April 2006 when he, his nephew and his brother were kidnapped and tortured. He was released in May 2006 after his tribe members paid a huge ransom to save his life and the lives of his relatives. Hamid was kidnapped for a second time in November 2006 by the same Sadr militia, when an informant reported that he was drinking alcohol and that he was suspected of being gay. He was held in a big office in Sadr city, along with other detainees - most of them Sunnis and Christians. Again, he was ransomed and is now in hiding; a rare survivor of the Sadr militia interrogation centres.

“Heterosexual friends of gays are also executed,” Mr. Hili said.

“This happened to Majid Sahi, aged 28, a civil engineer. He had been helping Iraqi LGBT members in Baghdad. Abducted by the Badr militia from his home, they objected to his association with gay Iraqis.”

His family was advised by the Badr forces that their son’s “immoral behaviour” was the reason for his kidnapping. His body was found in Baghdad, with bullet wounds in the back of his head, on 23 February 2007.

“Despite the great danger involved, Iraqi LGBT has established a clandestine network of lesbian and gay activists inside Iraq’s major cities, including Baghdad, Najaf, Karbala, Hilla and Basra,” reports Peter Tatchell of OutRage!, who is working closely with Ali Hili and Iraqi LGBT.

“These heroic activists are helping gay people on the run from fundamentalist death squads; hiding them in safe houses in Baghdad, and helping them escape to Jordan, Syria and Lebanon,” said Mr Tatchell.

Ali Hili is making an appeal for donations to fund the work of Iraqi LGBT: “Iraqi LGBT needs donations to help gay people in Iraq who are fleeing the death squads.

“We need money for safe houses, food, electricity, security protection and clothing - and to help pay the phone bills of members of the Iraqi LGBT group. They are sending us information about the homophobic killings, at great risk to their own lives.

“Many of the people we are helping had nothing but the clothes on their backs, when they fled the attacks by fundamentalist militias.

“We are also paying for medication for members who are HIV positive. Otherwise, they will not get treatment. If it is discovered that they have HIV, they will surely be killed,” suggested Mr Hili.

■ The UK-based gay rights group OutRage! is working with Iraqi LGBT to support its work. Iraqi LGBT is coordinated by Ali Hili from the safety of London UK. The group does not yet have a bank account.

Operating an Iraqi LGBT bank account in Baghdad would be suicide. For this reason, it has to operate its finances from London. All the group’s members in London are Iraqi refugees seeking asylum. Their lack of proper legal status makes it difficult for them to open a bank account in the UK. This is why Iraqi LGBT is asking that cheques be made payable to:

“OutRage!”, with a cover note marked “For Iraqi LGBT”, and sent to OutRage!, PO Box 17816, London SW14 8WT, England, UK.

OutRage! then forwards the donations received to Ali Hili and Iraqi LGBT for wire transfer to Baghdad.

http://iraqilgbtuk.blogspot.com reports on the ongoing murders of gays in Iraq.

Gay News Blog quotes Peter Tatchell from the UK:
The "improved" security situation in Iraq is not benefiting all Iraqis, especially not those who are gay. Islamist death squads are engaged in a homophobic killing spree with the active encouragement of leading Muslim clerics, such as Moqtada al-Sadr, as Newsweek recently revealed.

One of these clerics, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, issued a fatwa urging the killing of lesbians and gays in the "most severe way possible".



For gay Iraqis there is little evidence of the transition to democracy. They don’t experience any new-found respect human rights. Life for them is even worse than under the tyrant Saddam Hussein.

It is a death sentence in today’s “liberated” Iraq to love a person of the same-sex, or for a woman to have sex outside of marriage, or for a Muslim to give up his / her faith or embrace another religion.

The reality on the ground is that theocracy is taking hold of the country, including in Basra, which was abandoned by the British military. In place of foreign occupation, the city’s inhabitants now endure the terror of fundamentalist militias and death squads. Those who are deemed insufficiently devout and pure are liable to be assassinated.

The death squads of the Badr Brigades and the Madhi Army are
targeting gays and lesbians, according to UN reports, in a systematic campaign of sexual cleansing. They proudly boast of their success, claiming that they have already exterminated all “perverts and sodomites” in many of the major cities.

--

Eye-witnesses confirm that they saw the men being led out of a house at gun-point by officers in police uniform. Yes, Iraqi police! Nothing has been heard of the five victims since then. In all probability, they have been executed by the police - or by Islamist death squads who have infiltrated the Iraqi police and who are using their uniforms to carry out so-called honour killings of gay people, unchaste women and many others.

The arrested and disappeared men were Amjad 27, Rafid 29, Hassan 24, Ayman 19 and Ali 21. As members of Iraq’s covert gay rights movement, for the previous few months they had been documenting the killing of lesbians and gays, relaying details of the murders to the outside world, and providing safe houses and support to other gay people fleeing the death squads.

Their abduction is just one of many outrages by anti-gay death squads. lslamist killers burst into the home of two lesbians in city of Najaf. They shot them dead, slashed their throats, and also murdered a young child who the women had rescued from the sex trade. The two women, both in their mid-30s, were members of Iraqi LGBT. They were providing a safe house for gay men on the run from death squads. By sheer luck, none of the men who were being given shelter in the house were at home when the assassins struck. They have since fled to Baghdad and are hiding in an Iraqi LGBT safe house there.

Large parts of Iraq are now under the de facto control of the militias and their death squad units. They enforce a harsh interpretation of Sharia law, summarily executing people for what they denounce as “crimes against Islam.” These “crimes” include listening to western pop music, wearing shorts or jeans, drinking alcohol, selling videos, working in a barber’s shop, homosexuality, dancing, having a Sunni name, adultery and, in the case of women, not being veiled or walking in the street unaccompanied by a male relative.

Two militias are doing most of the killing. They are the armed wings of major parties in the Bush and Brown-backed Iraqi government. Madhi is the militia of Muqtada al-Sadr, and Badr is the militia of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), which is the leading political force in Baghdad’s governing coalition. Both militias want to establish an Iranian-style religious dictatorship. The allied occupation of Iraq is bad enough. But if the Madhi or Badr militias gain in influence and strength, as seems likely in the long-term, it could result in a reign of religious terror many times worse.

Saddam Hussein was a bloody tyrant. I campaigned against his blood-stained misrule for nearly 30 years. But while Saddam was President, there was certainly no danger of gay people being assassinated in their homes and in the street by religious fanatics."

CNN coverage

Gay City News

LA Times

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Her Highness


McCain Loses His Head

By George F. Will Tuesday, September 23.

"The queen had only one way of settling all difficulties, great or small. 'Off with his head!' she said without even looking around."

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Under the pressure of the financial crisis, one presidential candidate is behaving like a flustered rookie playing in a league too high. It is not Barack Obama.

Channeling his inner Queen of Hearts, John McCain furiously, and apparently without even looking around at facts, said Chris Cox, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, should be decapitated. This childish reflex provoked the Wall Street Journal to editorialize that "McCain untethered" -- disconnected from knowledge and principle -- had made a "false and deeply unfair" attack on Cox that was "unpresidential" and demonstrated that McCain "doesn't understand what's happening on Wall Street any better than Barack Obama does."

more sensible distaste for a McCain regime from Will.

Imagine being stuck on a tiny island while McAint reads Faulkner, for hours and hours...

McTaint is sooo tied to the financial scandal, particularly the Freddie Mac.

Palindrone's "Witch Hunter" crazed pastor.

Oh, and the other guy Palin's f*cking? Brad Hanson, a former business partner of Todd Palin, and affair supposedly occurred in 1996. The Enquirer quotes by name a source who knows about the affair and passed a polygraph test.

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Lipstickpigalaska
troopergateepregodocious!

Always make you think these two are just a tad atrococious!

When they lie so often you're amazed they're so ambitious!

Dirtier than chimney sweeps with all the mud they're flinging

Lipstickpigalaskatroopergateepregodocious!


Riffing on the "bad Disney movie" theme envisioned so clearly by Matt Damon...




A round-up of McCain-Palin lies



1) Sarah Palin said, "thanks but no thanks for that bridge to nowhere." In fact, she was in favor of the bridge until Congress effectively killed the bill, but then kept the $200 million and built, instead, a road to nowhere.

2) Palin was an effective mayor who managed the city well. In fact, she hired a city manager to run the city, left the city of 7,000 people $22 million in debt, and was nearly recalled for trying to fire the librarian and chief of police for political reasons.

3) The rally in Virginia drew a crowd of 24,000 people. In fact, it was about 8,000.

4) Sarah Palin, in her first trip out of North America, visited Iraq on a "life-changing trip." In fact, she visited the Kuwait-Iraq border, but never entered Iraq. Also, although the campaign said she'd visited Ireland, it was only a refueling stop.

5) Barack Obama supported a bill in Illinois that taught sex ed to kindergartners. In fact, it was a program to help children recognize "good" touches from "bad" touches in an effort to help stop pedophiles.

6) Obama will raise taxes on the middle class. In fact, Obama will not raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 per year.

7) Sarah Palin has fought against earmark spending in Alaska. In fact, she applied for $256 million in federal earmarks, and received $346 million dollars. This is, per capita, ten times the national average, and in spite of the fact that because of Alaska's oil rich economy, Alaskans were each given a $1,200 energy rebate check - money that WE paid to THEM with OUR soaring energy costs.




--

In other sad news, David Foster Wallace died.

Friday, September 12, 2008

Joyful




the only time I watched The View was when visiting my Mom's house. By ten in the morning, their squawking could be heard from upstairs, and sleep ended.
showered coffeed, fed, I sat as they continued their debates over the years, and it dawned on me; this truly is a cross section of American women.

the yapping rightwing poodle,

the factually challenged Proud Black Woman,
(formerly the gaydar-deficient Proud Black Woman, now divorced)

the wisened too-cool Oscar-winning Proud Black Woman,
(formerly the hothead Irisher lesbian mom icon)

the worldly-wise doyenne, increasingly annoyed by the poodle and FCPBW,

the hip old gal who read McCain's beads about being a lying shit.

Co-host Joy Behar asked McCain, "There are ads running from your campaign... Now we know that those two ads are untrue, they are lies. And yet, you at the end of it say you approve these messages. Do you really approve these?"


To see Gramps get plucked in the henhouse, go to Huffingtonpost.com.

Elsewhere, apparently his new lipsticked barracuda got fried by Charlie Gibson.

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

A Really Bad Disney Movie




Forget pigs and lipstick! This is the mudslung on target!

Matt Damon's Warning About a Palin Presidency


Admirers say Sarah Palin's compelling narrative and working-mom credentials helped land her a spot on the Republican presidential ticket, but Hollywood star and Obama supporter Matt Damon said Monday the Alaska governor's story more resembles a "really bad Disney movie."

In a blunt interview with the Associated Press, the star of the Jason Bourne film series also said there was a good chance John McCain would die in his first term in office and the thought of a President Palin is "terrifying."

“It’s like a really bad Disney movie — the hockey mom…from Alaska, and she’s the president, and it’s like she’s facing down Vladimir Putin and using the folksy stuff she learned at the hockey rink. And it’s absurd, it’s totally absurd, and I don't understand why people aren’t talking about how absurd it is," Damon said.


"You do the actuary tables, there's a 1-3 chance if not more, that McCain doesn't survive his first term and it will be President Palin."



The only difference between these is a Disney movie ends, even the bad ones. This mightmare -- yes, a nightmare that might happen -- is just beginning.

Saturday, September 6, 2008

Palindrones

When have vice-presidential nominees become so important? Since a crackpot far rightwing third choice happened to be so full of scandal, her new handlers clamped down, wrote her a speech, and have now hidden her loose cannon mouth away from the media. Here's Joe Biden's okay response to the Palin-droning.



To catch up on the growing crapfest known as the Palin scandals, see Sarah Palin Exposed.

I'm off to the beach.

-- Sunday:

Yeah, the beach was great. Plenty of banal seaside postcard pix soon.

For now, more gristle with which to tame the self-proclaimed "lipsticked pit bull" and her senile master. Copy/paste relentlessly:


By JIM KUHNHENN, Associated Press Writer Wed Sep 3, 11:48 PM ET
ST. PAUL, Minn. - Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and her Republican supporters held back little Wednesday as they issued dismissive attacks on Barack Obama and flattering praise on her credentials to be vice president. In some cases, the reproach and the praise stretched the truth.

Some examples:

PALIN: "I have protected the taxpayers by vetoing wasteful spending ... and championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. I told the Congress 'thanks but no thanks' for that Bridge to Nowhere."

THE FACTS: As mayor of Wasilla, Palin hired a lobbyist and traveled to Washington annually to support earmarks for the town totaling $27 million. In her two years as governor, Alaska has requested nearly $750 million in special federal spending, by far the largest per-capita request in the nation. While Palin notes she rejected plans to build a $398 million bridge from Ketchikan to an island with 50 residents and an airport, that opposition came only after the plan was ridiculed nationally as a "bridge to nowhere."
PALIN: "There is much to like and admire about our opponent. But listening to him speak, it's easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform — not even in the state senate."

THE FACTS: Compared to McCain and his two decades in the Senate, Obama does have a more meager record. But he has worked with Republicans to pass legislation that expanded efforts to intercept illegal shipments of weapons of mass destruction and to help destroy conventional weapons stockpiles. The legislation became law last year. To demean that accomplishment would be to also demean the work of Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, a respected foreign policy voice in the Senate. In Illinois, he was the leader on two big, contentious measures in Illinois: studying racial profiling by police and requiring recordings of interrogations in potential death penalty cases. He also successfully co-sponsored major ethics reform legislation.

PALIN: "The Democratic nominee for president supports plans to raise income taxes, raise payroll taxes, raise investment income taxes, raise the death tax, raise business taxes, and increase the tax burden on the American people by hundreds of billions of dollars."

THE FACTS: The Tax Policy Center, a think tank run jointly by the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, concluded that Obama's plan would increase after-tax income for middle-income taxpayers by about 5 percent by 2012, or nearly $2,200 annually. McCain's plan, which cuts taxes across all income levels, would raise after tax-income for middle-income taxpayers by 3 percent, the center concluded.
Obama would provide $80 billion in tax breaks, mainly for poor workers and the elderly, including tripling the Earned Income Tax Credit for minimum-wage workers and higher credits for larger families.
He also would raise income taxes, capital gains and dividend taxes on the wealthiest. He would raise payroll taxes on taxpayers with incomes above $250,000, and he would raise corporate taxes. Small businesses that make more than $250,000 a year would see taxes rise.

MCCAIN: "She's been governor of our largest state, in charge of 20 percent of America's energy supply ... She's responsible for 20 percent of the nation's energy supply. I'm entertained by the comparison and I hope we can keep making that comparison that running a political campaign is somehow comparable to being the executive of the largest state in America," he said in an interview with ABC News' Charles Gibson.

THE FACTS: McCain's phrasing exaggerates both claims. Palin is governor of a state that ranks second nationally in crude oil production, but she's no more "responsible" for that resource than President Bush was when he was governor of Texas, another oil-producing state. In fact, her primary power is the ability to tax oil, which she did in concert with the Alaska Legislature. And where Alaska is the largest state in America, McCain could as easily have called it the 47th largest state — by population.

MCCAIN: "She's the commander of the Alaska National Guard. ... She has been in charge, and she has had national security as one of her primary responsibilities," he said on ABC.

THE FACTS: While governors are in charge of their state guard units, that authority ends whenever those units are called to actual military service. When guard units are deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, for example, they assume those duties under "federal status," which means they report to the Defense Department, not their governors. Alaska's national guard units have a total of about 4,200 personnel, among the smallest of state guard organizations.

FORMER ARKANSAS GOV. MIKE HUCKABEE: Palin "got more votes running for mayor of Wasilla, Alaska than Joe Biden got running for president of the United States."

THE FACTS: A whopper. Palin got 616 votes in the 1996 mayor's election, and got 909 in her 1999 re-election race, for a total of 1,525. Biden dropped out of the race after the Iowa caucuses, but he still got 76,165 votes in 23 states and the District of Columbia where he was on the ballot during the 2008 presidential primaries.

FORMER MASSACHUSETTS GOV. MITT ROMNEY: "We need change, all right — change from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington! We have a prescription for every American who wants change in Washington — throw out the big-government liberals, and elect John McCain and Sarah Palin."

THE FACTS: A Back-to-the-Future moment. George W. Bush, a conservative Republican, has been president for nearly eight years. And until last year, Republicans controlled Congress. Only since January 2007 have Democrats have been in charge of the House and Senate.

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Political Theatre



Screw those rightwing losers. Here's some political theatre that's a lot better.

Extreme Drone Makeover: RNC Edition!

In preparation for his debutante premiere at the audience-deprived, sad and saggy GOP convention, Babydaddy punk Levi Johnston, seen here earlier this year...


...got a little makeover; hosed down and trundled up in some beige Sears slacks and a sweater. Wow. What a makeover.


So, while Gramps angrily attempts to brush the hilarious scandal off the table, while crassly posing with the teenage burst of fame he's getting, Rethuglicans whine and complain about critics being anti-woman.

Well, Sarah's no stranger to that:


On January 15, Alaska governor Sarah Palin laughed along with an Alaskan shock-jock DJ who called her political rival Lyda Green a "cancer," a "bitch" and ridiculed her weight. US Magazine. (Green is a cancer survivor.)

So, it's safe to call Palin a bitch, since she did the same to her opponent.

Bitch also can't even run a car wash!

She was part-owner of an Anchorage car wash and didn't report this. The business went under due to their failure to pay state licensing fees.

ST. PAUL -- In addition to being a mayor and raising four children, Sarah Palin found time for another venture in her Wasilla years -- she was part-owner of an Anchorage car wash.

Palin and husband Todd each held a 20 percent stake in Anchorage Car Wash LLC, according to state corporation records filed in 2004.

A review of Palin's gubernatorial disclosure filings indicates that she failed to report her stake in the company on the form that requires candidates for governor to disclose any interest in a nonpublicly traded company.

The car wash venture was not entirely smooth sailing. State records show the business ran into trouble with Alaska's division of corporations business and professional licensing after Palin became governor of the state in 2006.

A Feb. 11, 2007 letter to the governor's business partner advises that the car wash had "not filed its biennial report and/or paid its biennial fees," which were more than a year overdue.

The warning letter was written on state letterhead, which carried Palin's name at the top, next to the state seal.

On April 3, 2007, the state went further and issued a "certificate of involuntary dissolution" because of the car wash's failure to file its report and pay state licensing fees.

Palin's gubernatorial disclosure filings also reveal her involvement in another failed startup -- a marketing business which was to go by the name Rouge Cou, which evidently is a literal French translation of "red neck." On the 2005 form, Palin describes the firm as one for which she secured a license but did not conduct any business.