INTRODUCTION
I am opening a new thread even though there is an existing thread on this topic,
The Controversy of Zion
as recently, in an effort to better understand the infamous ‘The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion’, I commenced a modernized transcribing of them from the existing available English text. I must confess I have found it deeply depressing work – the further in I have gone, the darker the impression it has left on my spirit, as if I was wading through hell itself – and of late, having only made it to Protocol 15 out of 24 and being reduced to a stifled trickle, I decided to give my mind some air and parked the project for a while.
Now, thanks to COVID-19, as we seem to be entering some kind of build up to the end game (to quote that monster Churchill ‘…this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning’), I thought however that I would share what I have done to date with forum members and receive any feedback before I go forward to tackle the rest.
MY APPROACH TO TRANSCRIBING
Having mused on them for years in light of everything that has happened in the last decade since I first read about them, (I must confess only this recent act of transcribing has made me actually read the protocols themselves rather than commentary about them), it is the obvious platitude to say they remain a startling blueprint for so much that has taken place on our planet for the last century – and appears to be still happening or heading to fruition now.
They are of course the go-to document of the damned in the tin-hat brigade that believe it proves it’s all the Jews! That’s why in even as daring, radical and as important a book as Laurent Guyénot’s FROM YAHWEH TO ZION they do not even get a disparaging or cursory mention. The assured kiss of death in other words for any serious researcher. So right up I need to say my thinking has become way more nuanced than this idiotic trap.
That is why instead when I set about working on this new version I approached it as if I were a psychopath writing about ‘my type’ versus ‘their’ type i.e. humans. I went so far as to use these two words as my direct perspective. This I discovered was immensely liberating (perverse I know!) in the sense that everything truly began to make sense. The next logical step was to remove any references to GOYEM and replace it with ‘humans’ thus removing what I’ve come to think has been the Jewish cover story all along. Much of the veil started to fall away and the stark, predatory, ‘alien’ nature of the literary style and the convoluted thinking began to make total sense.
For if we remember Castaneda:
Then we should expect that any of these types who actually commits pen to paper should produce something that reflects that mind-set – and that is what I found.
Talk of a forgery never focuses on a critical analysis of the internal mind of the writer (assuming it to be a sick anti-semite) but rather dates, its supposed and self-evident racism, pre publication source materials, but never the face value psychological profile of the writer. What I found was that it is entirely consistent, and beneath all the bravado and grandiosity, a terrible feeling of ‘otherness’ and a total terror of being found out! However, it is brilliance of a sort – albeit terrifying – and it never wavers in its brilliant understanding of human nature (as ‘it’ sees it) or of itself. As Nobel Prize winner Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote, the book exhibits;
This is not to be expected by a forgery. Indeed even Israeli journalist Israel Shamir admits:
I changed nothing else, but simply sort to find the clearest modern English I could so as to sort out its syntax in such a way that a modern reader would not be hypnotised into bla-di-bla by its constantly tortured misplacement of clauses and endless repetitions.
It is also important to state that I take it as a given that the whole ‘Jews are to blame’ has always been a cover story to keep the Jewish masses herded and controlled by an elite group of psychopaths masking themselves as ‘Jews’
To quote Dr. K R Bolton whose paper I refer to further below:
FOOD FOR THOUGHT?
As I have worked these are some of the key thoughts that have struck me:
1. Is it possible that, rather than the information concerning the ‘Dark Moon’ i.e. 4th Density STS that (I think) Laura has posited was the subject of the turn of the century furore among secret societies over a leak of information, that it was this document that was in fact the cause of such a stir? That someone senior intentionally broke ranks - because it was ‘time’, under the protective guise of a clearly anti-semitic work, to spread the message far and wide to authoritarian types and other psychos – or someone more junior who attended what appear to be lectures, wrote them down and let them out for whatever reason (that they were horrified by what they heard – an early whistle blower?). This possibility would go a long way to explain the extraordinary, and still ongoing, efforts to (a) damn them to hell and (b) weave so many impenetrable webs around their true origin? Signal to noise ratio?
2. That it seems clear to me that this document contained a deliberate anti-Semitic trope so that it would inevitably be dismissed as a forgery – as the writer/s knew full well that its own foot soldiers/useless idiots in the media etc would – when required – would step in and stain it forever as untouchable by anyone who did not wish to be tainted as an anti-semite or insane. The perfect inbuilt red herring cover story in other words, like an Intel black-op. That’s why they waited nearly 20 years until it had gained serious purchase among many thinkers and commentators before apparently dismantling it via its agents in the London Times. This way – like such other examples such as the collapse in serious interest in crop-circles due to the two old fools with their string and boards – they caused maximum long-term damage to its credibility leaving the document absolutely toxic to touch – but freely available nonetheless.
3. That the ‘original’ may not even have taken such an obvious anti-jewish slant as now, and in fact these elements may have been added or added to significantly post drafting, even as part of its original first publication as well as to later versions.
For the interested I will briefly summarize some of the key facts/issues below but in truth it is a labyrinth not unlike trying to unravel the JFK mystery – for it has multiple tentacles and they often double down blind alleys or go full circle to meet yet another tangle… now doesn’t that remind us of many other very purposeful ‘obscured’ critical events...?
OH WHAT WICKED WEBS…
The argument has always been that The Protocols were inspired by the First Zionist Congress, held in Basel, Switzerland, August 29 to August 31, 1897. So that means it is generally accepted their composition must have taken place after this date.
Following this line and given a rough estimate of a minimum of 6 months drafting, editing, finalizing, etc, that means say February 1898 – at the earliest.
Well, the earliest accepted publication of the Protocols took place between August 28 to September 7 1903, in Znamya, a Saint Petersburg daily newspaper, owned by rabid anti-semite/nationalist Pavel Krushevan.
From wiki:
So straight off there is a different title with a subtly different angle. Further from wiki:
If that last comment is correct (and Wiki claims it has no citation) then we are dealing with a serious break in chain of custody…
In terms of the Joly comment above, again I may post on it later, but for now let’s say there is significant evidence leading to the likelihood that it was Joly who plagiarised the protocols, not the other way round.
Anyway, there’s a possible six year silence/gap…. in which this fiendish plan to tarnish the Jews could feasibly have grown in someone’s mind… but why wait so long if the matter was clearly that urgent…?
However, in his book The Non-Existent Manuscript, Italian scholar Cesare G. De Michelis studied early Russian publications and claims The Protocols were first mentioned in the Russian press in April 1902, by the Saint Petersburg newspaper Novoye Vremya (The New Times). The article was written by famous conservative publicist Mikhail Menshikov and was titled "Plots against Humanity". The author described his meeting with a lady (Yuliana Glinka… perhaps the subject of a later post as she links to Madame Blavatsky and even possibly Gurdjieff!) who, after telling him about her mystical revelations, implored him to get familiar with the documents later known as the Protocols; but after reading some excerpts, Menshikov became quite sceptical about their origin and did not publish them.
In 1905, Sergei Nilus published the full text of the Protocols in Chapter XII, the final chapter (pp. 305–417), of the second edition (or third, according to some sources) of his book, Velikoe v malom i antikhrist, which translates as "The Great within the Small: The Coming of the Anti-Christ and the Rule of Satan on Earth". According to wiki of all people:
Paradoxically, early Russian editions of the Protocols assert that they did not come from a Zionist organization. The text, which nowhere advocates for Zionism, resembles a parody of Herzl's ideas.
Nilus claimed it was the secret proceedings of the First Zionist Congress, but when it was pointed out to him that the First Zionist Congress had been open to the public and was attended by many non-Jews (a major flaw in the whole argument of a ‘forgery’ by the way), Nilus changed his story, saying the Protocols were the work of the 1902–03 meetings of the Elders, but contradicting his own prior statement that he had received his copy in 1901…!
A subsequent secret investigation ordered by Pyotr Arkadyevich Stolypin, Prime Minister of Russia, and Minister of Internal Affairs of the Russian Empire from 1906 to his assassination in 1911, came to the conclusion that the Protocols first appeared in Paris in antisemitic circles around 1897–98.
Then there’s the issue of the total absence of reference to the Dreyfus affair which literally convulsed all sections of French society from 1894-1906; i.e. for the entirety of the period during which The Protocols were supposed to have been "forged" in Paris.
From the fascinating 2018-19 paper The PROTOCOLS of ZION: In Context by Dr K R Bolton:
Dr K R Bolton also states:
I’ll stop there before the plot thickens even more…
NUMEROLOGY ?
There is a minor issue of interest that I will not go into in detail here (and I confess I have not got very far with this idea and have certainly not come close to cracking any code if there is one) but I have a strong suspicion the document is structured in some form of cosmological or ‘black’ magic fashion using some form of code or Cabalistic pattern.
There are 24 Protocols (2x 12 = 2 ‘years’ with 12 moons in each. 12 is also the number of years for a full cycle of Jupiter, etc)
The first 12 have 23 internal headings, and 148 sections
The second 12 have 15 internal headings, and 144 sections
It is for example interesting to note regarding the 38 total internal headings:
38 = The number of years it took the Israelites to travel from Kadesh Barnea to the Zered valley in Deuteronomy. “And the space in which we came from Kadeshbarnea, until we were come over the brook Zered, was thirty and eight years; until all the generation of the men of war were wasted out from among the host, as the LORD sware unto them.”
Kadesh Barnea is a key feature in the common biblical formula delineating the southern border of the Land of Israel (cf. Numbers 34:4, Joshua 15:3, Ezekiel 47:19 etc.) and thus its identification is key to understanding both the ideal and geopolitically realised borders of ancient Israel.
There are a number of other confluences I have noted but as yet but no distinct pattern. But again I suspect this issue is in there and again hints at a genius code maker being involved in its final shape if not its composition.
Suffice it to say, the Protocols and their history are not what they seem!
I am opening a new thread even though there is an existing thread on this topic,
The Controversy of Zion
as recently, in an effort to better understand the infamous ‘The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion’, I commenced a modernized transcribing of them from the existing available English text. I must confess I have found it deeply depressing work – the further in I have gone, the darker the impression it has left on my spirit, as if I was wading through hell itself – and of late, having only made it to Protocol 15 out of 24 and being reduced to a stifled trickle, I decided to give my mind some air and parked the project for a while.
Now, thanks to COVID-19, as we seem to be entering some kind of build up to the end game (to quote that monster Churchill ‘…this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning’), I thought however that I would share what I have done to date with forum members and receive any feedback before I go forward to tackle the rest.
MY APPROACH TO TRANSCRIBING
Having mused on them for years in light of everything that has happened in the last decade since I first read about them, (I must confess only this recent act of transcribing has made me actually read the protocols themselves rather than commentary about them), it is the obvious platitude to say they remain a startling blueprint for so much that has taken place on our planet for the last century – and appears to be still happening or heading to fruition now.
They are of course the go-to document of the damned in the tin-hat brigade that believe it proves it’s all the Jews! That’s why in even as daring, radical and as important a book as Laurent Guyénot’s FROM YAHWEH TO ZION they do not even get a disparaging or cursory mention. The assured kiss of death in other words for any serious researcher. So right up I need to say my thinking has become way more nuanced than this idiotic trap.
That is why instead when I set about working on this new version I approached it as if I were a psychopath writing about ‘my type’ versus ‘their’ type i.e. humans. I went so far as to use these two words as my direct perspective. This I discovered was immensely liberating (perverse I know!) in the sense that everything truly began to make sense. The next logical step was to remove any references to GOYEM and replace it with ‘humans’ thus removing what I’ve come to think has been the Jewish cover story all along. Much of the veil started to fall away and the stark, predatory, ‘alien’ nature of the literary style and the convoluted thinking began to make total sense.
For if we remember Castaneda:
The predators' mind is baroque, contradictory, morose, filled with the fear of being discovered any minute now. ...
'I know that even though you have never suffered hunger... you have food anxiety, which is none other than the anxiety of the predator who fears that any moment now its manoeuvre is going to be uncovered and food is going to be denied… the predators inject into the lives of human beings whatever is convenient for them. And they ensure, in this manner, a degree of security to act as a buffer against their fear.'" (Castaneda, 1998, pp. 213-220)
Then we should expect that any of these types who actually commits pen to paper should produce something that reflects that mind-set – and that is what I found.
Talk of a forgery never focuses on a critical analysis of the internal mind of the writer (assuming it to be a sick anti-semite) but rather dates, its supposed and self-evident racism, pre publication source materials, but never the face value psychological profile of the writer. What I found was that it is entirely consistent, and beneath all the bravado and grandiosity, a terrible feeling of ‘otherness’ and a total terror of being found out! However, it is brilliance of a sort – albeit terrifying – and it never wavers in its brilliant understanding of human nature (as ‘it’ sees it) or of itself. As Nobel Prize winner Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote, the book exhibits;
“…the mind of genius…” and exhibits “… great strength of thought and insight… Its design… is well above the abilities of an ordinary mind… It is more complicated than a nuclear bomb.”
This is not to be expected by a forgery. Indeed even Israeli journalist Israel Shamir admits:
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion are best described as 'pseudo-epigrapha', rather than 'fake'. They belong to the same category as Tomas Friedman's Letter of President Clinton to Mubarak. After all, pseudo-epigraphic genre is an old and venerable one. It is even better to consider the Protocols, 'a political pamphlet'.
I changed nothing else, but simply sort to find the clearest modern English I could so as to sort out its syntax in such a way that a modern reader would not be hypnotised into bla-di-bla by its constantly tortured misplacement of clauses and endless repetitions.
It is also important to state that I take it as a given that the whole ‘Jews are to blame’ has always been a cover story to keep the Jewish masses herded and controlled by an elite group of psychopaths masking themselves as ‘Jews’
To quote Dr. K R Bolton whose paper I refer to further below:
As one might say today, this seems to be something of a "protection racket". The Jewish masses are being milked of millions of dollars every year to fill the coffers not only of Israel but of numerous "Jewish defence" organisations such as the Anti-Defamation League, which continually feed the Jews the line that a pogrom or a new "Holocaust" is just around the corner if Jews don’t keep donating.
Here is what The Protocols say about "anti-Semitism". It is surely a strange passage if the authors are anti-Semites wishing to incite pogroms:
"Nowadays if any States raise a protest against us it is only pro forma at our discretion, and by our direction, for their anti-Semitism is indispensable to us for the management of our lesser brethren. I will not enter into further explanations, for this matter has formed the subject of repeated discussions amongst us." (Prot. IX).
FOOD FOR THOUGHT?
As I have worked these are some of the key thoughts that have struck me:
1. Is it possible that, rather than the information concerning the ‘Dark Moon’ i.e. 4th Density STS that (I think) Laura has posited was the subject of the turn of the century furore among secret societies over a leak of information, that it was this document that was in fact the cause of such a stir? That someone senior intentionally broke ranks - because it was ‘time’, under the protective guise of a clearly anti-semitic work, to spread the message far and wide to authoritarian types and other psychos – or someone more junior who attended what appear to be lectures, wrote them down and let them out for whatever reason (that they were horrified by what they heard – an early whistle blower?). This possibility would go a long way to explain the extraordinary, and still ongoing, efforts to (a) damn them to hell and (b) weave so many impenetrable webs around their true origin? Signal to noise ratio?
2. That it seems clear to me that this document contained a deliberate anti-Semitic trope so that it would inevitably be dismissed as a forgery – as the writer/s knew full well that its own foot soldiers/useless idiots in the media etc would – when required – would step in and stain it forever as untouchable by anyone who did not wish to be tainted as an anti-semite or insane. The perfect inbuilt red herring cover story in other words, like an Intel black-op. That’s why they waited nearly 20 years until it had gained serious purchase among many thinkers and commentators before apparently dismantling it via its agents in the London Times. This way – like such other examples such as the collapse in serious interest in crop-circles due to the two old fools with their string and boards – they caused maximum long-term damage to its credibility leaving the document absolutely toxic to touch – but freely available nonetheless.
3. That the ‘original’ may not even have taken such an obvious anti-jewish slant as now, and in fact these elements may have been added or added to significantly post drafting, even as part of its original first publication as well as to later versions.
For the interested I will briefly summarize some of the key facts/issues below but in truth it is a labyrinth not unlike trying to unravel the JFK mystery – for it has multiple tentacles and they often double down blind alleys or go full circle to meet yet another tangle… now doesn’t that remind us of many other very purposeful ‘obscured’ critical events...?
OH WHAT WICKED WEBS…
The argument has always been that The Protocols were inspired by the First Zionist Congress, held in Basel, Switzerland, August 29 to August 31, 1897. So that means it is generally accepted their composition must have taken place after this date.
Following this line and given a rough estimate of a minimum of 6 months drafting, editing, finalizing, etc, that means say February 1898 – at the earliest.
Well, the earliest accepted publication of the Protocols took place between August 28 to September 7 1903, in Znamya, a Saint Petersburg daily newspaper, owned by rabid anti-semite/nationalist Pavel Krushevan.
From wiki:
The text was serialized into nine issues, each carrying a headline "The Jewish Programme of the Conquest of the World". Actually the document itself was entitled: "The Protocols of the Sessions of the World Alliance of Freemasons and of the Sages of Zion", however by giving such a headline the editor anticipated, if not imposed, perceptions and conclusions of the readers.
So straight off there is a different title with a subtly different angle. Further from wiki:
The Znamya edition of the Protocols contained several notable differences from later editions. For example, it included Old Testament quotes later omitted. It made no mention of the Freemasons, which are prevalent in later editions. Paraphrases of Maurice Joly were mostly, but not entirely, lacking. This edition of the Protocols has never been translated.
If that last comment is correct (and Wiki claims it has no citation) then we are dealing with a serious break in chain of custody…
In terms of the Joly comment above, again I may post on it later, but for now let’s say there is significant evidence leading to the likelihood that it was Joly who plagiarised the protocols, not the other way round.
Anyway, there’s a possible six year silence/gap…. in which this fiendish plan to tarnish the Jews could feasibly have grown in someone’s mind… but why wait so long if the matter was clearly that urgent…?
However, in his book The Non-Existent Manuscript, Italian scholar Cesare G. De Michelis studied early Russian publications and claims The Protocols were first mentioned in the Russian press in April 1902, by the Saint Petersburg newspaper Novoye Vremya (The New Times). The article was written by famous conservative publicist Mikhail Menshikov and was titled "Plots against Humanity". The author described his meeting with a lady (Yuliana Glinka… perhaps the subject of a later post as she links to Madame Blavatsky and even possibly Gurdjieff!) who, after telling him about her mystical revelations, implored him to get familiar with the documents later known as the Protocols; but after reading some excerpts, Menshikov became quite sceptical about their origin and did not publish them.
In 1905, Sergei Nilus published the full text of the Protocols in Chapter XII, the final chapter (pp. 305–417), of the second edition (or third, according to some sources) of his book, Velikoe v malom i antikhrist, which translates as "The Great within the Small: The Coming of the Anti-Christ and the Rule of Satan on Earth". According to wiki of all people:
Paradoxically, early Russian editions of the Protocols assert that they did not come from a Zionist organization. The text, which nowhere advocates for Zionism, resembles a parody of Herzl's ideas.
Nilus claimed it was the secret proceedings of the First Zionist Congress, but when it was pointed out to him that the First Zionist Congress had been open to the public and was attended by many non-Jews (a major flaw in the whole argument of a ‘forgery’ by the way), Nilus changed his story, saying the Protocols were the work of the 1902–03 meetings of the Elders, but contradicting his own prior statement that he had received his copy in 1901…!
A subsequent secret investigation ordered by Pyotr Arkadyevich Stolypin, Prime Minister of Russia, and Minister of Internal Affairs of the Russian Empire from 1906 to his assassination in 1911, came to the conclusion that the Protocols first appeared in Paris in antisemitic circles around 1897–98.
Then there’s the issue of the total absence of reference to the Dreyfus affair which literally convulsed all sections of French society from 1894-1906; i.e. for the entirety of the period during which The Protocols were supposed to have been "forged" in Paris.
From the fascinating 2018-19 paper The PROTOCOLS of ZION: In Context by Dr K R Bolton:
For a document supposedly concocted to foster anti-Semitism, the exclusion of so much as a mention of the Dreyfus Affair exceeds credibility. If the authors were anti-Semites working in Paris, it is virtually certain that the case would have been woven into the passages in some manner, as is the "Panama scandal" (Prot. X).
Among those from the press covering the affair was Theodor Herzl, from Vienna. He concluded that if a Jew as assimilated as Dreyfus could be condemned, supposedly as the product of anti-Semitism, the only option for the Jews was separatism. In 1896 Herzl launched his book The Jewish State using the Dreyfus Affair as the rationale for the creation of the Zionist movement. Meanwhile, anti-Semitic Czarist agents were supposedly working diligently in Paris to forge a document that would indict Jewry, and somehow remained oblivious to the tumult around them.
…There is however an alternative explanation for the absence of Dreyfus in The Protocols, and that is the testimony that the document had been given to Mlle. Glinka as early as 1884 by Joseph Schorst. This gives rise to another interesting question which had been raised by Col. Fleischhauer at the 1935 Berne Trial. He pointed out that The Protocols (if obtained in 1884) refer to the Panama Canal scandal years before the scandal had become public knowledge (in 1892). Therefore whoever wrote The Protocols must have had inside knowledge of high powered financial manipulation.
Dr K R Bolton also states:
According to Philip Stepanov, formerly Procurator of the Moscow Synod, Chamberlain, and Privy Councillor, a copy of The Protocols was given to him in 1895 by his neighbour Maj. Alexis Sukhotin, Marshall of the town of Orel, who had been given his copy by Mlle Justine Glinka. (Sworn statement of Philip Stepanov, dated 17 April 1927).
Glinka, the daughter of a Russian general, had been in France since 1884, working for Gen. Orgevskii, secretary to the Minister of the Interior. Joseph Schorst, a Jewish member of the Mizraim Masonic Lodge in Paris, was in her employ, and offered to obtain a document which became known as The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. Schorst later fled to Egypt where he was murdered. Returning to Russia, she gave a copy of the Protocols to Alexis Sukhotin, who showed it to Stepanov and Professor Sergius A. Nilus. Stepanov had a copy of The Protocols printed in 1897, for private circulation.
Stepanov's telltale affidavit, translated from the Russian, reads as follows:
"In 1895 my neighboring estate owner in the province of Tula, retired Major Alexey Nikolayevitch Sukhotin, gave me a handwritten copy of the 'Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion.' He told me that a lady of his acquaintance (he did not mention her name), residing in Paris, had found them at the home of a friend of hers (probably of Jewish origin), and before leaving Paris, had translated them secretly, without his knowledge, and had brought one copy of that translation to Russia, and had given that copy to him, Sukhotin.
"At first I mimeographed one hundred copies of the Protocols, but that edition was difficult to read, and I resolved to have it printed somewhere, without mentioning the time, the city and the printer; I was helped in this by Arcady Ippolitovitch Kelepkovsky, who at that time was Privy Councillor with Grand Duke Sergey Alexandrovitch; he had these documents printed at the Provincial Printing Press; that was in 1897. S. A. Nilus reprinted these Protocols in full in his book, with his own commentaries.
"Philip Petrovitch Stepanov, former Procurator of the Moscow Synod Office; Chamberlain, Privy Councillor
I’ll stop there before the plot thickens even more…
NUMEROLOGY ?
There is a minor issue of interest that I will not go into in detail here (and I confess I have not got very far with this idea and have certainly not come close to cracking any code if there is one) but I have a strong suspicion the document is structured in some form of cosmological or ‘black’ magic fashion using some form of code or Cabalistic pattern.
There are 24 Protocols (2x 12 = 2 ‘years’ with 12 moons in each. 12 is also the number of years for a full cycle of Jupiter, etc)
The first 12 have 23 internal headings, and 148 sections
The second 12 have 15 internal headings, and 144 sections
It is for example interesting to note regarding the 38 total internal headings:
38 = The number of years it took the Israelites to travel from Kadesh Barnea to the Zered valley in Deuteronomy. “And the space in which we came from Kadeshbarnea, until we were come over the brook Zered, was thirty and eight years; until all the generation of the men of war were wasted out from among the host, as the LORD sware unto them.”
Kadesh Barnea is a key feature in the common biblical formula delineating the southern border of the Land of Israel (cf. Numbers 34:4, Joshua 15:3, Ezekiel 47:19 etc.) and thus its identification is key to understanding both the ideal and geopolitically realised borders of ancient Israel.
There are a number of other confluences I have noted but as yet but no distinct pattern. But again I suspect this issue is in there and again hints at a genius code maker being involved in its final shape if not its composition.
Suffice it to say, the Protocols and their history are not what they seem!