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Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt
I just finished Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt by Chris Hedges and Joe Sacco. It is superb, and I've spent a fair amount of time typing in passages from the book below in order to capture some of its theme.
The "me" of twenty years ago wouldn't be caught dead reading a book like this. It is, after all, an unflinching assasination of our present capitalist system. As a younger person, I was wholeheartedly (and more than a little ignorantly) devoted to a dog-eat-dog, lassiez-faire capitalist system. And, in my adult life, I have lived that way, at least inasmuch as I created, built, and sold a successful business and have, before, during, and after that time, been a very active participant in the financial markets (both by way of trading as well as writing).
Experience and observation have moderated my views, however. At the outset I will say that I still regard capitalism as the most proper, natural, and constructive economic system, but I'm a much firmer believer in a modified version - - consistently-regulated with a distribution of wealth more akin to the 1970s than the present day - - than I ever imagined I would be.
This passage from the preface of the book captures the pages that follow nicely:
The ruthless hunt for profit creates a world where everything and everyone is expendable. Nothing is sacred. It has blighted inner cities, turned the majestic Appalachian Mountains into a blasted moonscape of poisoned water, soil, and air. It has forced workers into a downward spiral of falling wages and mounting debt until laborers in agricultural fields and sweatshops work in conditions that replicate slavery. It has impoverished our working class and ravaged the middle class. And it has enriched a tiny global elite that has no loyalty to the nation-state. These corporations, if we use the language of patriotism, are traitors.
Days of Destruction take the rather novel approach of combining superb journalism (Chris Hedges) with world-class graphic art (Joe Sacco). It is part graphic novel and part diatribe. And, I need to tell you right now, this is not a feel-good book, and the balance of words and art work well. The Walt Whitman piece, I Sit and Look Out, is offered within these pages to embellish the picture further:
I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all oppression and shame;
I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men, at anguish with themselves,
remorseful after deeds done;
I see, in low life, the mother misused by her children, dying, neglected, gaunt, desperate;
I see the wife misused by her husband--I see the treacherous seducer of young women;
I mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love, attempted to be hid--
I see these sights on the earth; I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny--
I see martyrs and prisoners; I observe a famine at sea--
I observe the sailors casting lots who shall be kill'd, to preserve the lives of the rest;
I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons upon laborers, the poor, and upon negroes, and the like;
All these--All the meanness and agony without end, I sitting, look out upon,
See, hear, and am silent.
And if you need any more convincing as to the non-fuzzy-feelings you will have while reading it, here is another poem offered - a brief haiku in the chapter about Camden, New Jersey:
The sack of kittens
Sinking in the icy creek
Increases the cold
There are several broad regions of the United States covered in the book, including the Indian reservations of South Dakota; the mean streets of Camden; the wretched lives of the produce-pickers in Southern Florida; and the "moonscape" of West Virginia's coal country. It is this last area that includes a talk with Larry Gibson, an activist in West Virginia who grew up there, had to leave for a while due to family poverty, and has returned to try to fight for the region's sake. He says the following, which is perhaps my favorite section of the entire book:
“Living here as a boy, I wasn’t any different than anybody else. First time I knew I was poor was when I went to Cleveland and went to school They taught me I was poor. I traded all this for a strip of green I saw when I walking the street. And I was poor? How ya gonna get a piece of green grass between the sidewalk and the street, and they gonna tell me I’m poor. I thought I was the luckiest kid in the world, with nature. I could walk through the forest. I could hear the animals. I could hear the woods talk to me. Everywhere I looked there was life. I could pick my own apples or cucumbers. I could eat the berries and pawpaws. I love pawpaws. And they gooseberries. Now there is no life there. Only dust. I had a pigeon and when I’d come out of the house, no matter where I went, he flew over my head or sat on my shoulder. I had a hawk I named Fred, I had a bobcat and a three-legged fox that got caught in a trap. I wouldn’t trade that childhood for all the fancy fire trucks and toys the other kids had.
I have a tremendous amount of respect for that point of view. There was a time in my life I craved a lot of stuff. There was a time I thought rich people were rich because they were sharper and harder-working than the rest of us.
I've certainly learned otherwise. I've learned that "stuff" is boring and unfulfilling. And I've learned that some rich people - - and I've known a lot, including a couple of billionaires - - can at times be some of the biggest dumb-fucks you'd ever encounter. One in particular thought he was some kind of genius, when in fact he was simply born into a rich family and was too blinkered to recognize that his accidental circumstance had no bearing on his (dim) wit.
The chapter goes on with another activist.........
Gunnoe is a thin woman with curly black hair. She is part Cherokee. Her vocal opposition to the coal companies, like Larry Gibson’s, has engendered the fury of many of her neighbors, who fear the loss of the coal industry will mean and end to any viable employment. One of her dogs was shot dead and left in the parking lot where her children catch the school bus. Another dog was shot and killed while tied up in the back of her house. The gas tank to her truck was filled with sand, requiring $1,200 in repairs. Her children have been taunted at school as “tree huggers.” She has erected a six-foot protective fence around her house that she calls “my cage.” But she says that even for the miners who blast away the mountains, the destruction can be overwhelming.
I figure even if there's no such thing as hell, the universe would have conjured one up for whatever low-lifes would stoop to killing a dog (it should be mentioned that Mr. Gibson's dog was also killed, and his current dog was hanged, but he was able to save him in time). Humans I can do without. Dogs, on the other hand, have no business being harmed. Particularly by "people."
Gibson again:
“It’s a sacrifice zone. It’s so the rest of the country can have electric toothbrushes and leave the lights on all night in parking lots for used cars and banks lit up all night long and shit like that. We have been a national sacrifice zone. Hell, that phrase was created thirty-five, forty years ago. Now it’s terminal. There is no way to stop it. I haven’t had any hope for a long time. But the only reason I keep going is, why the hell not? I’m going to die. Shit, might as well hold my head up. I don’t want Bill Raney, the president of the Coal Association, to be able to tell his lies without somebody saying, “Bill, that’s shit, that’s not true.” These corporations are going to strip the whole country. If you have this reality, then you become a guerilla. You blow up the damn thing. I can’t go to there, because they will put me in penitentiary, and I don’t want to go there. I know they would catch me eventually.
Hedges' training in divinity (his father was a minister, and he himself got his Masters degree from Harvard) is present, although not heavy-handed, throughout the book. But his firm Chrstian beliefs certainly don't lead you to a polite, hands-in-lap, gentle list of suggestions in the final chapter. The man is Pissed. Off. And he uses the (presently inert) Occupy movement as the shining example of what should be happening in America:
There comes a moment in all popular uprisings when the dead ideas and decayed systems, which only days before seemed unassailable, are exposed and discredited by a population that once stood fearful and supine. This spark occurred on September 17., 2011, in New York City when a few hundred activists, who were easily rebuffed by police in their quixotic attempt to physically occupy Wall Street, regrouped in Zuccotti Park, four blocks away. They were disorganized at first, unsure of what to do, not even convinced they had achieved anything worthwhile, but they had unwittingly triggered a global movement of resistance that would reverberate across the country and the capitals of Europe. The uneasy status quo, effectively imposed for decades by the elites, was shattered. Another narrative of power took shape. The revolution began.
Hedges goes on:
The American dream, we now know, is a lie. We will all be sacrificed. The virus of corporate abuse – the perverted belief that only corporate profit matters – has spread to outsource our jobs, cut the budgets of our schools, close our libraries, and plague our communities with foreclosures and unemployment. This virus has brought with it a security and surveillance state that seeks to keep us all on a reservation. No one is immune. The suffering of the other, of the Native American, the African American in the inner city, the unemployed coal miner, or the Hispanic produce picker is universal. They went first. We are next. The indifference we showed to the plight of the underclass, in Biblical terms our neighbor, haunts us. We failed them, and in doing so we failed ourselves. We were accomplices in our own demise. Revolt is all we have left. It is the only hope.
Hedges doesn't agitate for a particular candidate; he doesn't suggest a new set of regulations; he doesn't ask that Blankfein be brought to trial. He wants a revolution, not unlike that would swept away the Communists from Eastern Europe. He states:
The preconditions for successful revolution are:
+ discontent that affects nearly all social classes;
+ widespread feelings of entrapment and despair;
+ unfulfilled expectations;
+ a unified solidarity in opposition to a tiny power elite;
+ a refusal by scholars and thinkers to continue to defend the actions of the ruling class;
+ an inability of government to respond to the basic needs of citizens;
+ a steady loss of will within the power elite itself together with defections from the inner circle – a crippling isolation that leaves the power elite without any allies or outside support;
+ a financial crisis
Well, I guess some of those elements are in place already, right? But he's just getting started:
Welcome to the revolution. The elites have exposed their hand. They have shown they have nothing to offer. They can destroy but they cannot build. They can repress but they cannot lead. They can steal but they cannot share. They can talk but they cannot speak. They are as dead and useless to us as the water-soaked books, tents, sleeping bags, suitecases, food boxes, and clothes that were dumped into garbage trucks after the New York City police raid that November night. They have no ideas, no plans, and no vision for the future.
Get back into your cages, they are telling us. Return to watching the lies, absurdities, trivia, celebrity gossip, and political theater we feed you in twenty-four-hour cycles on television. Invest your emotional energy in the vast system of popular entertainment. Run up your credit card debt. Pay your loans. Be thankful for the scraps we toss. Chant back to us our platitudes about democracy, greatness, and freedom. Vote in our rigged corporation elections. Send your young men and women to fight and die in useless, unwinnable wars that provide huge profits for corporations. Stand by mutely as our legislators plunge us into a society without basic social services while Wall Street speculators loot and pillage.
Our dear friend, Lloyd Blankfein - - the man doing God's work, remember? - - is often cited in Days of Destruction. He is held up as just about the closest thing to the anti-Christ as can be imagined, almost directly responsible for the murder of millions.
The rogues’ gallery of Wall Street crooks – such as Lloyd Blankfein at Goldman Sachs; Howard Milstein at New York Private Bank & Trust; the media tycoon Rupert Murdoch; David and Charles, the Koch brothers; and Jamie Dimon at JPMorgan Chase & Co. – no doubt think the Occupy movement has passed. They think it is back to the business of harvesting what is left of America to swell their personal and corporate fortunes. But they have no concept of what is happening around them. They are as mystified and clueless about these uprisings as the courtiers at Versailles or the Forbidden City, or the inner sanctums of the communist elites in Eastern Europe, who never understood until the very last days that their world was collapsing.
The political philosopher Sheldon Wolin uses the term inverted totalitarianism in his book Democracy Incorporated to describe our political system. In inverted totalitarianism, the sophisticated technologies of corporate control, intimidation, and mass manipulation, which far surpass those employed by previous totalitarian states, are effectively masked by the glitter, noise, and abundance of a consumer society. Political participation and civil liberties are gradually surrendered. Corporations, hiding behind this smokescreen, devour us from the inside out. They have no allegiance to the country.
The novel 1984 is also an important touchstone in Days of Destruction, and Orwell is quoted frequently as a fount of truth.
We, like those who opposed the long night of communism, no longer have any mechanisms within the formal structures of power that will protect or advance our rights. We, too, have undergone a coup d’etat carried out not by the large stone-faced leaders of a monolithic Communist Party, but by our largely anonymous corporate overlords. George Orwell wrote that all tyrannies rule through fraud and force, but that once the fraud is exposed they must rely exclusively on force. We have now entered that era of naked force. There are no excuses left.
Either you join the revolt or you stand on the wrong side of history. You either obstruct through civil disobedience, the only way left to us, the plundering by the criminal class on Wall Street, and accelerated destruction of the ecosystem that sustains the human species, or become the passive enabler of a monstrous evil. You either taste, feel, and smell the intoxication of freedom and revolt, or sink into the miasma of despair and apathy. You are either a rebel or a slave.
The way you react to this book depends a great deal on who you are and what your experiences in life have been so far, particularly with respect to your own financial and personal security. I found the book partly inspiring, partly infuriating, but very readable. One of the few things the United States still has going for it - - for now, at least - - is freedom of expression, and I'm glad a book like this is available to all who care to be more aware than their fellow countrymen, and I'm grateful to live in a place where I can be permitted to offer my favorite passages from the book and encourage you to read the whole thing yourself.
- advertisements -
People will not say enough until the free government hand out's are gone and they have to take care of themselves. That is a long time away, because at the first sign of any real ground swell of discontent people will be moved to FEMA camps and they will go willingly because of the promise of more free things. The majority of the country is content with being told what to do, when and how to do it, having to think for oneself takes too much time away from TV, internet, X-Box, etc... We are where we are today because of the choices we made until we are all willing to stand up and say, "Boy, I really made some mistakes", nothing is going to change. I'm not seeing many people standing up and admitting mistakes, I do see a lot of finger pointing everywhere. How about we all just stop pointing out what is wrong with the other person and look in the mirror?
...if this post and too many comments) were "typical ZH", then ZH would shrivel die...the world has always been, is currently, and will always be a mess, especially if that is what you where you want to focus...and beyond that, here is a news flash: Life Is Not Fair
...so I don't need a "pissed off Harvard Christian" defining problems and then trying to ensnare me into a guilt trip because I happen to have a nice life--and continue to believe my lying eyes when I drive thousands of miles (on Interstate highways) through basically untouched territory, or indulge in what I enjoy with abslutley no concern for some idiot environmentalist's assessment of my activities...
God gave us a wonderful world but he also gave us suffering and pain along with joy and enlightenment...and as we may well be heading towards much more of the former than the latter, best be well set with you own moral code and ready to defend you precious liberty...
Also, buy silver and gold!!
Narcissist.
The arguments against free markets and/or pro-regulation always turn to the problem of externalities.
However, externalities are easily dealt with via private property rights.
http://www.learnliberty.org/content/externalities
The reason you do not want to give government the control of externalities is that government uses coercion as its primary tool. Over time it learns to use coercion for other purposes inamicable to freedom.
Funny thing about revolutions, they usually end up really bad when you come out the other side. You may want to read up on a few. Breaking free from an empire on the other side of the world is one thing, the ones on the same continent usually end up with the proles getting their heads lopped off for thought crimes and gulags. You may want to ask yourself this: name one good person birthed from the halls of Harvard?
I have no problem losing my head as long as I see 1,000 oligarchs lose theirs first.
:)
Dr. Paul Farmer.
Reality sucks, but it's all we have, so we must embrace it.
Time has come for a revolution.
If you want a revolution then break the backs of the two parties; send the incumbents home.
Revolution World Wide scheduled to begin Dec 21st, 2012
Bring your slingshot and plenty of marbles
I'm not sure you still have any marbles...
"I have lived that way, at least inasmuch as I created, built, and sold a successful business"
YOU DIDN'T BUILD THAT!!!
~ Barack Hussein Obozo
LOL!
I can resist everything except temptation!
YouTube - 'Obi-Wan Kenobi... You Didn't Build!' sez President Obama
YouTube - 'Nazi Party? Adolf Hitler... You Didn't Build That!' sez President Obama
YouTube - "You Didn't Build That Frankenstein!' sez President Obama
I can resist everything except temptation!
You can surrender without a prayer.....but never really pray....pray without surrender.
You can fight....fight without ever winning.....but never ever win.....win without a fight.
"Resist"
Rush from the album Test for Echo.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mb1UaRu0JVA&feature=related
I've been looking forward to both this book and the revolution. Guess I'll get the book first.
I care about solutions, and a just and equitable society.
But... With none of that possible under the current status quo... I just want to burn the fucking house down.
I fight it, I wrestle with it, I am tormented by it, but I just want some of these institutions and people to die like fucking dogs.
I love my people and the spirit of the country handed carefully to me as a boy, but I hate my government and the people and corporations that have bought it.
I will live and die a slave for the love of peace, but I will kill for the love of my son and all the children of this nation.
Joe Sacco's artwork looks like some of the old R. Crumb work on the American scene, with much the same depth of intent
Funny though that in the review you think to link to the CIA's information-control Wikipedia project, used to murder Muslims and slander political dissidents of the US ... Your not knowing that Wikipedia is a CIA project - thinking they are 'volunteers', ha! - is of course a symbol of the problem ... despite your image of Hedges with those quite-accurate quotes
You've never thought about Jimmy Wales, with his lies about how he got wealthy (intelligence agency money), the fraudster and hoaxer posing as the 'founder' of Wikipedia - after his stint as a pornography seller in the 1990s, where apparently his willingness to harm children showed the CIA he had the 'right stuff' -no crime or lie too disgusting for Jimmy Wales -
Jimbo Wales is so appreciated for his role as a Zionist extremist helping slander and murder people for Israel, that he attends private birthday parties with the Israeli President, while Wales' staff send their messages using CIA contractor e-mail addresses. They leave 90% of Wiki as fake 'neutral' so they can intensely target certain topics and individuals
Thus the sources of 'Free internet information' ... thousands of NSA and CIA and Mossad agents 'editing' Wikipedia etc ... Hedges and Sacco might not yet be important enough yet for the goons to start 'editing' their Wiki pages ... why would you link to something the CIA goons can change tomorrow to say the opposite of what it says when you made the link?
And you speak this related falsehood
« One of the few things the United States still has going for it - - for now, at least - - is freedom of expression »
You just don't know what is censored ... because the CIA's Google has erased it from the internet
Here in Belgium we have a political refugee from the US whom I know personally ... the intervention of the house of the King of the Belgians prevented the US from murdering him, but Google still blocks all his websites from search results ... I took my ZH avatar from a photo site of his, as a way of honouring him
Live Photo: Google Inc. Caught Censoring EU Search Results on US court corruption (for USA - CIA)
Google Internet Censorship - Censure d'Internet par Google - Internet censuur door Google
http://www.flickr.com/photos/22325431@N05/6100668211/in/photostream
Some of the articles on US court corruption censored by the CIA's Google Inc., while the author is slandered with hoaxes planted on the CIA's Wikipedia, and the author is blocked by Google Inc. from replying ...:
Foreign Companies Face Risk of US Court Corruption:
Doing Business in the Big Bribery Nation
http://www.banned-in-america.net/us-court-big-bribery-nation.html
America's Corrupt Legal System -
A Danger to Visitors, Travellers as Well as USA Residents
http://www.banned-in-america.net/us-corrupt-legal-system.html
Americans Murdering Their Judges, and the US Crisis of Judicial Corruption
http://www.banned-in-america.net/americans-murdering-judges.html
'Ex-Agent: CIA Seed Money Helped Launch Google', retired intelligence agent Robert David Steele interviewed by Paul Joseph Watson, and speaking of the CIA's Dr Rick Steinheiser and his connections with Google:
http://www.infowars.com/articles/bb/google_cia_seed_money_launched_googl...
Current case: Wikipedia and Google in the attack on Europe, trying to murder European citizens criticising the USA:
Report to the EU Parliament and the Commission of the European Union
Anti-Competition Crimes of EU Internet Monopoly Google Inc. (with CIA) and Wikipedia (with CIA), to Erase EU Journalism, to Slander and Murder EU - Polish Citizen, Writer, Journalist, Non-Zionist Jew
http://www.indymedia.nl/nl/2011/07/77181.shtml
As much as this article is a "breath of fresh air" I have to agree with you Bank Guy from Brussels. And, I am aware from separate sources and directions. Your individual references are extremely interesting, however, and I will certainly look into them.
Thanks.
What the fuck is your point! Cut to the chase. Milestones
"Get fucked!! Milestones"
Quoting you, so it must be correct.
Been looking forward to this book for sometime now, many thanks for the review.
Things need to get worse IMHO, like do or die bad b4 people will finally break. One interesting question is will people react the way we all hope? Focusing on the ills of our current political, economic, environmental and societal problems? I don’t think it is guaranteed and that is why I think Chris’s work I so important in trying to focus and inform us all. People could equally react in blind fear and follower the loudest, angriest clown around (Rush anyone?) and be lead to focus on the establishment’s latest enemies of the state, a la Germany 1939. Or worse, the establishment is rightly targeted and removed, but is replaced by some proto-fascist police state.
Interesting times….
I completely support the overthrowing of our government, but theres only one problem
If the system is overthrown, there wont be any more seasons of Jersey Shore and McDonalds will be closed!!! How you expect me to keep myself busy, by reading BOOKS(yuck!) or eating fruits(about to throw up ugh!)
And thats precisely the reason why the system will NEVER be overthrown
Get fucked!! Milestones
Mony Mony
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKyEyxwqS2c
Now THAT is a tasty book review ... peppered with insight and common sense! Hang on people. Change is coming, and things WILL improve.
Thank you.
Oh I don't worry about the government.
I see the states, across this big nation
I see the laws made in Washington, D.C.
I think of the ones I consider my favorites
I think of the people that are working for me
David Byrne
A favorite musician of mine; thanks.
Here we go with the "Just regulate the Hell out of it!".
Regulations don't mean shit unless you enforce them. How do you propose to enforce them, Tim? Guess that's going to require a whole lot of people pulling their heads out of their asses.
IMO true lassiez-faire capitalism can't include corporate shields or strong central government. The amount of deregulation it would take for the system to work is unfortunately unpalatable (because they wouldn't be able to exploit political advantage), and/or unbelievable (because it is outside the capacity of their minds to encompass).
That is an attractive alternative. Eliminating the corporate bailouts (like 2008) would allow a more natural expurgation of the system as well. No TARP, no QE2, no QE3, etc.
Moral hazard.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_hazard
In economic theory, a moral hazard is a situation where a party will have a tendency to take risks because the costs that could incur will not be felt by the party taking the risk.
My only disagreement is that you don't nearly go far enough.
Clawbacks, asset forfietures, personal responsiblity (elimination of the corporate shield), elmination of FDIC, etc. is needed in addition to what you just suggested.
Furthermore, repealing the 17th amendment, removal of all other forms taxation except for a land tax with a high minimum threshold while severely limiting the amount of land government can own (and perhaps keeping capital gains and dividend taxes), and elmination of all derviatives, taxation and leverage on gold and silver should fix it for about 1000 years.
"The movement that I'm in favor of is a movement of libertarians who do not substitute whim for reason. Now some of them do, obviously, and I'm against that. I'm in favor of reason over whim. As far as I'm concerned, and I think the rest of the movement, too, we are anarcho-capitalists. In other words, we believe that capitalism is the fullest expression of anarchism, and anarchism is the fullest expression of capitalism. Not only are they compatible, but you can't really have one without the other. True anarchism will be capitalism, and true capitalism will be anarchism." -- Rothbard
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard103.html
Of course things are wrong. The question is whether we've reached the tipping point.
"Somewere a butterfly flaps its wings."
An immoral war or jailed banker it not itself a tipping point. The butterfly flaps its wings when it decides to. When it decides to, is clearly its will.
We should be evaluating will, not externalities.
-OCCUPY-
-ANONYMOUS-
-WE THE PEOPLE-
Starting Dec 21st, 2012
One chance to Revolt Globally!One free planet, One liberated people
Anonymity is an impediment to the quest for truth and justice. Speak your mind, show your face and rally others to your cause through openness, honesty and steadfast courage.
Meanwhile, under that evil socialist system in Europe, life goes on. The French actually do know how to live, despite all the propoganda.
Shhh, reality has a socialist bias, apparently.....
The redneck hicks, akhenatan worshippers and G.Gecko's at ZH think socialism is a rightwing politician thats black.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzBCiyDkXPw
It's coming to the USSA!
Or in this case, perhaps it's when an elephant takes a dump on the sofa. It isn't always about butterflies.
Die Thälmann Kolonne
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtQgNb1Z9p0
I'm not a commie, however, I find this inspirational.
Ah, but the sofa's in the living room, UR, which is only a set piece, while the den is where all the living is done, however electronic.
Except that the house has been foreclosed on, and nobody's there but the elephant.
Regardless of the metaphor, what is the state of the people. Presently they have no will.
Why no will?
This is the issue for investors. The chief question to answer. America, like a retired old actor, lives off the royalties of past success. No new blockbusters. No will to make any. Just fat, lazy and ambivalent. Keeping the gravy train going as long as possible. Hoping the fans will remember.
Triumph des Willens
The Revolution will be Televised Globally. The fun starts on December the 21st, 2012. Prepare now
See you there
Can I watch it at my local IMAX?
Does this book just bash the corporations, or does it give the government it's due, too? The whole structure has become to big to survive. Time to get local and small, wait for the grand Ponzi to crash.
If reading just the quotes in this piece doesn't make you sob, you are not sober.
The 4th Turning is here. Be prepared for sudden upheavals whether that be economic crashes, war or social unrest.