zazen

A good video in relation to this also (best listened to at 1.5x speed) From Plato to NATO and Dun Kirk to Charlie Kirk - that’s the arc of how civilization weaponizes its own ideals to corrupt itself. They’re framing this moment as if it’s a fight for Western civilization like those who fought in Dun Kirk. Martyrdom machine goes brrrr whilst money printer also goes brrrr whilst end stage capitalism and empire go brrrr bye bye

The obvious is that the conditions of occupation and being “under control” give rise to Hamas. Palestinian’s have a right to self determination that doesn’t depend on their “SpIraL DyNaMicS sTaGe”. Omg Afghanistan and Russia are so backwards in stage red / blue bro let’s go deliver them democracy whilst simultaneously denying them any sovereignty that’s foundational to democracy in the first place lol Israel already have self determination, but this right isn’t extended to the Palestinians - isn’t that the crux of the problem here.. Also, Hamas don’t pose a threat to Israel’s existence - a country with a small border to keep fortified along with their technological superiority and backing of a global superpower. You say that’s how it was before: a manageable oppression where Palestinians knew their place and suffered quietly while the world looked the other way. Only issue is the world is all eyes on Israel now, unlike anything before. I spy with my third eye ..

Blinken didn’t even blink lol

Epstein files Just some snippets

@Twentyfirst Charlie Kirk was speaking of the predatory monetary system ie extractive rentier economy led by financialization and their elites - on Turkey Carlson’s show. He could have been a future president with his following and young age meaning he had a long runway for politics. It could speculatively be a deep state job, along side a Zionist one. The two are intertwined. Any threat to either of those axis’s is a threat to the current power structure. Surface politics of socio-cultural issues (trans, abortion etc) is not a threat to the power structure the same way questioning the financial architecture or Zionism is - which is an outpost for US dominance. That outpost ensures (violently or by the mere threat of it) the petro dollars use that underpins that very financial system. Not sure if anyone’s been able to verify but what about that George Zinn guy in the crowd who was taken and released - apparently he was at other tragic events and in a 9/11 video. I can’t verify. But between that and the other guy who pulled out a decoy gun - it just seems this wasn’t a lone wolf job - even if a lone wolf was chosen for it as the patsy. No one’s conclusively saying it’s a conspiracy - but speculating it to be one is definetely not outside the realm of possibility considering the nature of the beast and what it’s historically done and continues to do right in front of our eyes. Foolish to just dismiss it. If there’s more to this then that’s also the very same reason why we won’t ever get to the bottom of it. That’s not gonna stop people from milking it for their own causes and narrative - just look how the following doesn’t come out and say who did it but sequences clips in such a way that suggests it: Candace is getting millions of views on her videos within days - pretty nuts.

Coincidentally news just in: https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2025/9/17/saudi-arabia-signs-mutual-defence-pact-with-nuclear-armed-pakistan “The agreement states that any aggression against either country shall be considered an aggression against both” NATOesque vibes if more countries start joining this as Iv seen some comments suggest. People saying the idea was floated at the Doha summit in response to Israel’s attack - banding together of some sort of defence arrangement for the Middle Eastern countries. Don’t think it would happen - wouldn’t be a good idea imo. Anyone not in the circle immediately feels threatened for not being so. Creates bloc politics raising tensions and getting one country tangled up in any one other who’s security happens to get breached by a “outsider”.

I agree - no doubt Trump has been a bad influence. Maybe we’re circling on the same thing just splitting hairs. I think one distinction that seems subtle but is meaningful is separating what’s a cause vs catalyst. Like you highlight in the AI analysis - the crude discourse and behaviour accelerated. Trump caused / normalised the crudeness of politics - but didn’t cause populism itself, he only accelerated it by his rhetoric and behaviour. Trump, Farage etc have been catalysts tapping into grievances and distorting them - latent energy of discontent waiting to be exploited. They’re framing those grievances in a toxic way and then offering solutions that cause more problems than they solve. The cause though has been structural - economic struggles + cultural uprootedness. In simpler terms: bread and belonging. If we remove Trump, the structural trends causing masses of people to feel betrayed still remains - as shown in Europe via Brexit, La Pen etc before Trump came in. The tricky thing with populism is they take half truths then shit on a bunch of false truths in how they frame those “facts”. They say “facts over feelings” but are literally steering people to feel a certain way about certain facts. Also agree with your response on the previous page which was well put. I think regardless of which side is more evolved or less (or what we think of them) - both sides think the other need to evolve to their level - which seems to be causing the polarization and deadlock.

Watched it - whats he mainly dismantling? I think the argument was over whether they bombed a town whilst it was inhabited (war crime) or after people had mainly fled? He said he was there when he saw it bustling etc but how do we know if that glide bomber came right after he left or was it much later after which it was emptied out because the expansion of the war etc I'm not sure. But if his case is that Russia can be cold blooded and ruthless and un-developed (Kursk) which he was shining a light on and the Russian's didn't like then nothing I disagree with there. @BlueOak I guess it depends on the different definitions of sphere of influence. In the classical sense it was meant for core states that are great powers. The actual phrase itself is closer to what your describing though ie influence. That can mean many countries are being influenced or coming under the influence of BRICS etc. But from a classical sense BRICS isn't a sphere of influence because they aren't a single geography or core state but multiple. BRICS sphere would envelope most of the world otherwise as they include a nation on each continent. Whether Europe intended to or not - them outsourcing the hardest dimension of sovereignty makes them a vassal in the sense that you can be dictated to by a external power because the most crucial aspect of your survival depends on them. That's why the gulf countries are also vassals to the US and will simply toe the line when it comes to Israel and its plans - they aren't in any position to be defiant or define their own foreign policy. That can only change if they start hedging and obtaining security partners from others (Turkey, Pakistan perhaps). I agree Putin made a maximalist decision. Not sure why he couldn't have tried leveraging the cutting off of energy to force the negotiations regarding a security architecture and end to tensions in West Ukraine. We don't have access to the same intel that they had - perhaps part of their calculus was seeing the build up of interoperability between NATO - Ukraine and they decided they can't waste time using any other tactics, who knows. Also agree that EU is developing its own sphere - because they are now securing the hardest dimension of sovereignty which is security. The core states are Germany-France that lead the pack via Brussels - they just need to make sure all other countries are on the same programme and okay with that - including Germany and France being on the same page with the main issues at hand - economic competitiveness, foreign policy etc. Btw this is a really good video I think you'll enjoy - going over what you mentioned before regarding Russia potentially vassalising itself (to a degree) to China: Another very interesting point he brings up is that total sovereignty can actually make a country more dangerous - because if a country has total sovereignty in terms of energizing itself, feeding its own population, raw materials for industry and arms - what stops them from abusing that position in feeling insulated from the consequences of bullying the world around. Theirs a way inter-dependencies can help maintain stability in preventing other powers from abusing their power - because of those very dependencies. Maybe what allowed America to act with impunity is because their ''sovereignty index'' is very high (energy, food, dominating global finance via the reserve currency, geographic distance from their wars and any fallout from them). China is actually quite vulnerable in terms of food and energy - which it's securing now via land (Eurasia, belt and road) to not remain vulnerable to naval choke points.

No one gives a fuck about trans - exactly! Most people wonder why its part of the discourse to the degree it is, and corporately fed and paraded to such an extent. Yeah it's a two party system with a binary choice - the question is: why does the anti-establishment option get voted in despite that particular candidate being seen as a agent of chaos with divisive rhetoric and low approval? I'm pointing to the larger current and trend that's driving this politics - it's bigger than just one man or crude manifestation ie MAGA. Obama also ran on hope and change as a outsider - a change to the status quo that isn't working for enough people. When Obama's "change" turned out to be more of the same (wall street bailouts, endless wars, corporate friendly policies) people looked for the next vessel to channel their grievances to. Trump inherited that current from Obama's unfulfilled promises. Many didn't switch because they were were die-hard MAGA fans. The larger point is that there's systemic reasons that have been simmering over many years to explain the general shift more center-right/right wing towards outsider/anti-establishment politics across the West - not simply that its fringe. It's a mistake to conflate MAGA or Trump with that larger current and dismiss it. The candidate or ''movement'' ie MAGA may be fringe, but the discontent and shared disillusionment from the status quo driving it aren't. It shouldn't simply be seen as some Frankenstein accident of American politics alone - that doesn't explain why a similar populist surge is happening across the West. Maybe you need to cross the pond and touch European grass to realise that. First hand experience - agreed. There's a reason European politics started moving right before Trump. Europe got hit the hardest from migration crisis (proximity to war torn regions with land bridge etc)

Agree with this too. It's annoying to even have to box yourself into ''left'' or ''right''. If a liberal is trying to integrate their progressive views into the messy reality of politics and reality - are they now called a regressive centrist for trying to ground some of their utopian ideals and aspirations? Conservatives are too fixated on form and order - meaning rigid constraints. Liberals nobly want to loosen themselves and others from those constraints and introduce some flexibility and humanity into the equation - but the slippery slope is getting rid of all constraint for some juvenile idea of freedom that they try to apply to the real world.

NeoNazism is fringe, MAGA isn’t. If MAGA’s fringe why has it democratically been voted into power twice? It’s so fringe that we have parallels across the West - populism started hatching in Europe before Trump even came on the scene. Why? Because that structural tension I mentioned above is coming to a head - MAGA is manifesting as a symptomatic solution to that tension and is just one of the more cruder versions of it - populism with American characteristics. Even if MAGA is temporary, the conditions that caused its rise are structural and yet to be fixed. You’ll keep seeing similar movements that differ in name and keep mislabelling them as fridge. The reason it seems fringe or alien is because each side is standing inside a different cultural universe with different base assumptions about reality to the other. How do people share political space if one side believes reality/truth is more flexible and fluid (chosen) vs the other viewing it as more fixed or given (by God, biology, tradition)? Abortion is a thorny subject that exposes that divergence on reality. Both agree killing a life is bad, but can’t agree on when life begins (conception vs viability/independence). Their base assumptions about the reality of life differ, which means their problems and solutions will differ, which means their political visions will be mutually exclusive - as different as a flat earther vs a round earther. @Joshe Centrism can def be lazy both sides-ism or the harder work of integrating worldviews and complexity. Leftist progressivism can look brave, but be equally simplistic moral chest thumping that dodges the work of integrating ideals with reality. Basically, the left believe that the ideals of freedom, equality and inclusion are what allow society to progress - and that as long as we are moving towards that, society will progress. It believes there are no limits to those ideals and aspirations - but mother reality says otherwise. And if your politics is based upon the illusion that those limits don't exist and are merely self-imposed “constructs” by the relic of tradition, then the reality of ignoring reality will show itself in the form of unintended consequence. Also, ISIS and Taliban don’t seem to suffer from cowardice but lack of conciousness and wrestling with complexity.

This video was good: Covers a lot of what I was talking about in comments elsewhere which is the deeper double whammy cause of populism: economic dispossession from neoliberal globalization+ cultural disregard and dissolution from liberal universalism that views limited identities as backwards. Liberalism thinks it’s liberating people from those limitations, but instead uproots them in the process - populism is a backlash to that uprooting. People reach out for darker forms of belonging that are then exclusionary and crude - Hitlers Nazism being the worst manifestation. The major fault line of our times is how to reconcile that tension - how to align the interests of the I (individual), WE (communal/local), ALL (global/universal). From a big picture view the eternal tension is how to balance the security of the limited (human form) with the aspiration of the unlimited (formless Godliness). Or how to balance isness (internal essence) with what is (external form) which has constraints and limitations. Liberal technocratic globalists vs Conservative pragmatic nationalists is the socio-cultural-political manifestation.

This video was good: Covers a lot of what I was talking about in comments elsewhere which is the deeper double whammy cause of populism: economic dispossession from neoliberal globalization+ cultural disregard and dissolution from liberal universalism that views limited identities as backwards. Liberalism thinks it’s liberating people from those limitations, but instead uproots them in the process - populism is a backlash to that uprooting. People reach out for darker forms of belonging that are then exclusionary and crude.

The left and right can't even agree on what a man is. This is the deeper issue as to why Western politics has become so polarized - their base assumptions about reality differ, which means they differ on what the problems are, including their solutions. It’s like flat earthers and round earthers trying to exist in the same political frame work. The crux of it comes down to economic and cultural anxiety and dispossession. The working class felt the those two forces first - which is what allowed them to tap into the energy of discontent and anger over a much longer time frame to galvanize and propel them politically. The middle class felt economic anxiety later (2008) as late stage capitalism started to bite their pockets, and the cultural anxiety of having right wing populism rise in power woke them up to potential cultural dispossession. These are the two same issues that caused Hitlers rise (economic+cultural dispossession). The reason the right are angrier and more violent (in some peoples eyes) than the left, is because they are more powerless (or were). This is structural. Urban centers are centers of power, and urban centers trend towards more liberal cosmopolitanism - which then dominates the country at whole on an institutional level (academia, law, corporations, media etc). This is why parallel networks were built (in media - social media) to counter the main stream media (''fake news'' lol) and are attempting to be build alternative academia (Jordan Peterson Academy). Power is blind to those who have it - including their abuses of it (cancel culture, de-banking, law fare). The logic becomes - act sorta authoritarian today to prevent future authoritarianism - whilst authoritarian undertones start creeping into their camp. Liberal / urban elites were historically sheltered from both anxieties. But now as right populism gains political ground - they’re experiencing cultural anxiety for the first time. They now fear conservative/nationalist values being imposed on them, just as conservatives felt liberal cosmopolitan values were imposed before. Both sides now feel the double squeeze (economic + cultural dispossession), but they don’t share the same definition of culture or the same solutions to their economic troubles. Their fighting over who ''we'' even is (identity - universal vs national), including what even is (reality). Liberalism began as the noble liberation of individuals from the harsh realities of power dynamics and domination (kings, priests, feudalism, tribalism) and mutated to liberation from reality itself (naive) - if the individual must be free then why not free them from gender roles, sexual norms and biology itself? Perhaps loosening of constrains it’s a better aim than freeing from constraints themselves - but be wary of the slippery slope they leads to. Reality became negotiable - which to many people who want to have a sense of rootedness (in tradition, geography, biology) seems non-negotiable. Late stage capitalism (causing economic anxiety for all) is now colliding with late stage liberalism (dissolving a cohesive cultural identity and worldview of reality for the many). Democratic politics only polarizes this further because now your neighbour can vote in a version of reality you are at odds with. It's healthy in a democracy to argue over the means, but now people are arguing over the ends (what the good life is, what reality is, who ''we'' even are). When you can't even agree on what the problem is, you are fundamentally at odds with each other. Instead of democracy being a safety valve, it becomes the amplifier of division - because the losing side experiences it as domination. Two “Americas” no longer share the same definition of the problem, let alone the solution. Populism is liberalism's shadow. The liberal establishment can't comprehend the nationalist, traditionalist worldview because they view any type of boundaries or constraints on reality as chains. They universalize and absolutize freedom - which manifested as globalization and financialization - which hollows out a nations people and sense of rootedness or belonging. The clash from another lens is about the legitimacy of globalization vs the legitimacy of the nation state, or national interest vs internationalists interests. Something Hitler also commented on in his speeches, and that we see commented on today. There is a smart way to go about this or a distorted dark way to go about this - as in the case of Nazism and fascism, but that’s another discussion.

Not Noah’s ark but Noticings arc:

So what’s the causal factor in rising political violence and populism in general? You guys are masturbating over semantics of whether the right are facist yet - it’s fair to say they are increasingly becoming so, with disagreement on where they are on the spectrum. We can all agree things are getting polarized - but why? Liberal types pride themselves on their empathy and systemic analytical skills looking at root causes of inequality and crime in their urban cities but don’t extend that over to rural MAGA die hards who are just racist red necks though.

I actually gave MAGA the benefit of the doubt initially and didn't agree with slapping them with the fascist label. But seeing how things are turning out it's slipping into that territory in its own way. There's actually nothing inherently fascist or wrong with grievance politics (grievances) or cultural panic (fear of cultural loss and belonging) - fascism is what shows up in the solution and its implementation. If that solution excludes or scapegoats whole groups, and uses intimidation or violence to enforce that solution - bingo you got some fascism no? It's legitimate concerns gone about in illegitimate ways - the problem of the left can be that they don't always consider or understand those concerns as legitimate - and simply slap on the racist-fascist label simplistically. Grievance politics shouldn't turn into purity politics that seek to purge those from society that are scapegoated as the cause of those grievances. Also - I literally commented on how US fascism isn't going to look like Nazi Germany or fascism of old. MAGA has the energy of facism but not the infrastructure to fully replicate it. It has the grievance fueled rhetoric of decline (cultural-national) and rebirth, scapegoats (immigrants, elites, wokies) and some flirtation with violence or full on affair with it depending on who you ask. But there's no paramilitary fusion with the state, and there's no replacement of the liberal technocratic bureaucracy with MAGA loyalists at the scale needed to call it a full blown fascist makeover of the state - it's not total and there are structural constraints as to why. They don't have a big enough pool of loyalists to pull from and staff the state at such a scale - which is also why they perhaps want to shrink or defund what they can't control. They want to shrink the state to concentrate power, and sidestep the need for a loyalist bureaucracy. Everyone's circling around the what, what about the why though?

Fascism with American characteristics as I outlined in my previous comment. But why..what caused the rise of millennial and Gen Y neo-nazis? Why weren't there as many Gen X neo-nazis? Perhaps because liberal democracy’s contradictions hadn’t yet unraveled - because the conditions that made it viable (which are a narrow set of conditions) were still intact (wealth + cohesion). Prosperity and the future promise of it (social contract) cushioned the conditions for Gen X to exist in a sweet spot that assumed the universal sustainability of liberal democracy itself. Relative prosperity, equality and cohesion existed thanks to geopolitical stability (unipolar order), shared identity of ''we'' as Americans, wealth and the hopes of achieving it ie the American dream. Millenials and Gen X'rs radicalized because those conditions started to crumble (social contract ending) - 9/11, wars on terror, 08 financial crash, de-industrialization, multi-polarity knocking at the uni-polar hegemons world order. The result is populism, polarization and extremism beginning to surface on both ends (antifa, groypers etc) and now at their culmination. There's no longer a shared ''we'' or a transcendent identity to exist as a limited identity within - there is now only identity politics itself. A fight for ''we'' and identity. Identity politics took off in the 2000's because prosperity + empire could no longer subsidize cohesion ie conditions for it, the politics followed. Minority rights and protections of identities started much earlier but still existed within a larger “we”. That gave space for new identities to be recognized within the system, not against or outside of it. The fact that identity politics is even a thing is indicative that it is a child of liberal democracy’s contradictions. Outside the West there is still a shared larger ''we'' people exist within - religious, civilization, national. Liberalism is trying to liberate people from all of it. If all identities are just limited constructs, at some point people question the civic and national identity that makes liberalism work in the first place - via some cohesive glue. Liberalism starts to liberate people from liberalism itself eventually. Your point is a good point though - everything I wrote just above highlighting the dynamics of the breakdown - are only amplified by social media. Social media creates echo chambers and parallel realities that amplify the tribalism. Liberalism simultaneously uproots people from their ''limited and backward identities'' (which is noble) but doesn't realize the difficulty or development required for people to place themselves in a transcendent universal identity (the naive part). They then go hunting for belonging to some identity or sub-group which social media provides a buffet for. Without rootedness or cohesion people reach for extremes to feel rooted and cohesive again. Liberalism universalizes outward in its geopolitics and foreign policy (everyone must adopt liberal frameworks, pre-text for empire), whilst fragmenting inwards (the sacredness of individual expression that multiplies identities and differences). Social media then is the perfect tech embodiment of liberal democracy’s paradox: promises universal connection but delivers tribal fragmentation the same way liberal democracy promises universal belonging but splinters belonging into identity politics. The 90s were the last decade when the liberal order still “worked” for those of us in the West (myself included) - universalizing ideals + relative cohesion + prosperity + US or Western dominance. The good old days - nostalgic blockbuster feel good type shit. It felt like liberal democracy had finally solved history’s problems post cold war - but they were conditions masking the contradictions underneath that were yet to unravel when those conditions cease to exist - like today. P.S I’m not saying I have the solution - I’m simply sharing what I think is the crux of the problem facing much of the West today. A thesis in progress. People are searching for solutions. The rights is crude, the lefts is simplistic and naive. Both fail because they operate within the same paradigm that created the problem. The right want to double down on differences within a limited tribal identity of nation, religion, civilization (particularism). The left want to champion all differences (micro identities - pronoun gang) whilst simultaneously dissolving all those differences into a blob of universal oneness (universalism).

We’d think so but body count doesn’t matter as much as intent. If the word is defined as violence for political ends surely it fits the definition? Thats the point I was making in the previous comment about how we mentally fix a word to its most extreme or notorious example - anchoring bias at play. Terrorism doesn’t need mass casualties to be terrorism just like genocide doesn’t need gas chambers to be genocide. Just shows how the word “terrorism” is politicized and not neutrally used. Or maybe I’m getting too loosey goosey with my definitions.

@PurpleTree @Inliytened1 Words alone aren’t violent but the worldview behind them can be. I think the difference is in using words as analytical or descriptive vs as a moral marker on an enemy that justifies violence against them. I don’t think Israelis writing “To Amalek” on their missiles was them trying to identify Gazans analytically - that was to exterminate them. Obviously. On a side note - isn’t it odd how this fucker hasn’t been called a terrorist?

Felt cute, may start defending Israel now not sure.. There's a difference between defending their right to exist and defending their non-existent right to dominate.

I agree rifts happen within culture, but sometimes those rifts don't mend back together into one cohesive culture - they crystallize into a separate culture. So then you don't have a rift within a culture, but a rift creating two cultures that are now at odds and rifting with each other. They become different versions of what America should look like - almost like rival religions. Once you differ on the fundamentals of what is true (ontology) and what is good (morality) you are different cultures. The left and right differing on a whether a woman can have a cock or not, or whether women should remain virgins till marriage or not (heck even the idea of marriage itself) - are two sides walking the same planet but in different worlds all together. Semantic hair splitting aside - whether liberalism allows or creates diversity - the structural point is liberal democracy proliferates, politicizes and polarizes that diversity in a way that conservative non-democracies don't. A centralized un-democratic system becomes unstable when the demos get fed up enough not having their voice heard and revolt. A de-centralized democratic system becomes unstable when the demos fractures because too many voices within it diverge and fight over the political space their supposed to share. Rifts within culture create differences, that sometimes splinter into different cultures. Liberalism gives those differences legal protection and room to grow. Democracy then politicizes them by giving each faction the political power to impose their different visions via the state. Those differences are no longer private beliefs but become codified in policies that affect everyone. So suddenly, your neighbor’s worldview becomes a political threat, because it might be voted into law. In a non-democracy there's no political expression for all those differences to allow for that polarization.

The classic definition of facism and communist don’t cleanly map onto what’s happening today if we only use their worst historical examples as barometers. It’s like how Zionists will say genocide isn’t occurring because it doesn’t match the Holocaust or Rwanda like a carbon copy. Theirs a danger in using definitions too loosely - because it’s premature, demonizing and polarizing. But then again - there’s a preventive logic in broadly defining something as a danger in order to stop it in its tracks. People call something “fascist” or “genocidal” early on not because it resembles Mussolini’s Italy or Rwandas genocide but because they fear it could harden into that if left unchecked. But also - not every case is supposed to look like its worst example of those definitions. Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin notoriously cemented those definitions, so we historically gravitate to those examples as anchors whenever those words are evoked. It’s possible to have facism and communism with American characteristics. So what is US facism? I don’t think US christo-facism will look like the total fascism of the 20th century because they lack the educated bureaucratic staff to run the machinery of the state in such a total way as to impose their vision top down. The base is made up of blue collar workers which means they don't have the pool of white collar professionals needed to staff the institutions to carry out their vision. This is why “the establishment” generally leans liberal for that very structural reason. That’s why all they can do is gut institutions rather than have the capacity to build or revamp institutions in their own image. The same reason they can’t run a modern expansive government of a superpower is the same reason their international imperial empire will be in rapid retreat. This doesn’t mean it won’t be bad at home - it will be patchy authoritarianism using the existing tools of state, but not totalizing the state for their own end. Relief abroad from US imperialism, repression at home. The US right are reactionary populists with patchy authoritarianism and racists among their ranks. The US left are technocratic liberal reformists with commie revolutionaries among theirs. But the extremes within their own ranks don’t define the total. Generally, the right aren’t pushing an organized ideaology of racial supremacy and domination - and the left aren’t pushing a commie revolution to abolish private property. The larger point to all this is why the polarization in the first place? Ask yourselves if this is structurally due to the inherent contradictions within liberal democracy itself? If liberalism encourages diversity, and democracy gives those differences political power - then when those differences grow too divergent, each side uses politics to impose its “vision of America” on the other. Social media and dumbed down discourse doesn’t help in fueling that conflict over whose version should prevail.