The Disinformationists
CJ Hopkins
Above: A Russian spy whale from Russia. You can tell because of the spy harness.
So, the election-meddling Putin-Nazi disinformationists are at it again! Oh yes, while Americans have been distracted by Russiagate, Obstructiongate, Redactiongate, or whatever it’s being called at this point, here in Europe, we are purportedly being bombarded with Russian “disinformation” aimed at fomenting confusion and chaos in advance of the upcoming EU elections, which are due to take place in less than two weeks.
The New York Times reports that an entire “constellation” of social media accounts “linked to Russia and far-right groups” is disseminating extremist “disinformation,” “encouraging discord,” and “amplifying distrust in the centrist parties that have governed for decades.”
These accounts share some of the same “digital fingerprints,” and are engaging in “tactics” similar to the “tactics used in previous Russian attacks,” notably the Kremlin’s notorious mass-brainwashing of millions of defenseless African Americans with those deceptive anti-masturbation memes during the 2016 elections.
Now, this is not just a bunch of nonsense dressed up with authoritative-sounding lingo. No, The Times spoke to “analysts” and “advocacy groups,” which informed them that certain websites in Italy “share the same signatures” as certain other websites sharing certain “pro-Kremlin views.”
Moreover, two “political groups” in Germany used the same Internet service providers as those “Russian hackers” who attacked our democracy by stealing those Democratic Party emails that transformed Americans overnight into a nation of Trump-loving white supremacists!
That hasn’t happened here in Europe yet, but I’m not sure how much longer we can hold out against this relentless onslaught. According to an “analysis” concocted by some cloud-based cybersecurity firm and authoritatively cited by Politico, at this point, “more than half of Europeans might have seen some form of disinformation” spread by “Russians” on social media.
They might have been exposed to “extremist views” and “amplified content” possibly produced by the far-right Alternative for Germany party, and even (God help them!) supporters of Brexit.
SafeGuard Cyber (the cybersecurity firm in question, which offers “digital risk protection and empowers businesses to embrace new technologies,” or whatever mumbo jumbo it says on their website) identified, and is now presumably surveilling on a more or less around the clock basis, “a vast network of automated social media accounts allegedly controlled by Russian actors” which is spreading this “amplified extremist content.”
Although Politico “was unable to independently verify” whether the social media accounts the SafeGuard Cyber analysis “identified” (and used to generate a meaningless graph) were in any way actually linked to Russia, and although SafeGuard Cyber would not provide Politico with a list of the users it assured Politico were “linked to Russia,” SafeGuard Cyber’s CTO informed Politico that his team of experts had used “more than 50 identifiers,” among them, the location from which the messages were sent and “activity linked to Russian interests,” to identify these “Russian actors” who are exposing innocent Europeans and expatriate Americans like myself to Lord knows what kind of jargon-laden, dangerously amplified, extremist content in order to disinform and confuse us.
And it’s not just the upcoming EU elections that the Putin-Nazi disinformationists are targeting.
An outfit called Global Security Review, which “publishes objective, solutions-oriented insight into geopolitical issues” which can be authoritatively referenced by the corporate media to lend whatever story they are pushing an air of credibility, warn that Russia is conducting a campaign to “overwhelm democracies” with disinformation!
According to the experts at GSR, Putin-Nazi disinformationists working for Russia Today and Sputnik brainwashed the citizens of Catalonia into voting for their independence from Spain with a network of bots (or “zombie accounts”).
In France, they brainwashed the Gilets Jaunes protesters into attacking the windows of upscale stores and setting fire to luxury vehicles by “magnifying the brutality of the French police,” who have been doing their utmost to show restraint as they shoot people’s eyes out with rubber bullets and indiscriminately tear-gas the hell out of everyone.
And then there’s the evil Russian spywhale, which the disinformationists want us to believe is just a harmless “therapy Beluga” for kids, but which has clearly been strapped with some sort of monstrous, mind-controlling apparatus that enables the Kremlin to remotely implant a host of dangerous “populist” ideas in the brains of defenseless Norwegian fishermen, weaponizing them into a horde of neo-Odinist Viking berserkers who will scream down out of Scandinavia and storm the EU Parliament in Brussels smelling of akvavit and fermented shark.
These Putin-Nazi disinformationists are not to be confused with the corporate media, or other sources of real information, like SafeGuard Cyber, Global Security Review, Bellingcat, Integrity Initiative, The Atlantic Council, E.U. East StratCom Task Force, Foreign Policy Research Institute, and countless other companies, foundations, think tanks, and intelligence agency fronts. These are legitimate information providers, who would never try to disinform the public to serve any sort of corporatist agenda, or to generate any kind of mass hysteria over “terrorists,” “Russians,” “fascists,” or “populists.”
OK, granted, these sources are not perfect, but it’s not like they intentionally lied about those non-existent WMDs in Iraq, or those babies that weren’t yanked out of their incubators, or those nerve gas canisters that Assad didn’t drop, or when Russia didn’t hack the Vermont power grid, or attack us with crickets, or hack into CSPAN, or “collude” with Trump via a secret server, or when Manafort didn’t meet with Assange, or when Corbyn didn’t lay a wreath for terrorists, and all the other things that didn’t happen … no, they just got their stories “wrong,” over and over, and over again.
Plus, what motive would they possibly have, these enormous corporate media conglomerates, and the transnational corporations that own them, and these intelligence agencies, and their fronts and cutouts, and corporate lobbyists and PR firms, and councils, and think tanks, and research institutes, to disinform the Western masses, or to manufacture an official narrative that allows them to systematically stigmatize, marginalize, criminalize, deplatform, demonetize, and otherwise eliminate any type of speech they deem to be “Russian disinformation,” or “extremist content,” or a “conspiracy theory,” or simply too “dangerous,” “divisive,” or “confusing” to circulate among the general public?
No … see? That makes no sense. That’s just an example of the type of fascist disinformation these Putin-Nazi disinformationists are trying to spread to confuse us to the point where we can’t even concentrate long enough to think anymore, or parse the meaningless jargon-laden nonsense they’re trying to deceive us with, and just devolve into these Pavlovian imbeciles conditioned to respond to specific trigger words, like “extremist,” “terrorist,” “fascist,” “populist,” “anti-Semitic,” “Russians,” “hackers,” and whatever other emotional stimuli we are being trained to instantly recognize and robotically react to like circus animals.
Or … I don’t know, maybe it isn’t. I’m not even sure what I’m trying to say. Probably they’ve already got to me. I’d better get back down into my anti-disinformation bunker, pull up The Guardian, or The Washington Post, or Der Spiegel on my child-proof computer, and immerse myself in some objective journalism, before the Putin-Nazi spywhale makes its way up the Landwehrkanal, takes control of what’s left of my mind, and forces me into going out and trying to vote for Hitler or something.
I recommend you do the same, and I’ll see you when this nightmare over.
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Geo-Politics is about the suppression of freedom of speech. The Tavistock Institute and Edward Bernays have a lot to answer for. As President Trump has claimed many times fake news is the enemy of the people and so it is. By inserting fake news stories into the media circus of wholly owned MSM outlets, control of the narrative is achieved and political discourse stifled.
Our right to freedom of speech is the right that all other rights are constructed upon. Take away our right to complain based on accurate information and all else falls into feudal anarchy. Unbiased, truthful reporting is not something that is allowed as a matter of right to the people but rationed by faceless bureaucrats and State Secret Security Actors protecting their piece of the turf war.
The BBC has been outed as a paedophile’s playground and yet the Director General in charge of the enquiry is sent to the US as Editor of the New York Times. Q the investigators.
The seminal fake news moment came when the orchestrated delivery of miss-information reached its zenith with the 911 crime against humanity. The blame game started with Bin Laden when in truth elements of the US government led by Dick Cheney[“It is easy to take liberty for granted, when you have never had it taken from you”] in concert with Mossad[“Wage war by deception”] controlled by MI6 and its own delivery system the BBC were the real culprits.
Fake news and false flag attacks end with the absurd notion that it is so dangerous to view the New Zealand mosque shooting video [showing CGI effects] that the penalty is 10 years jailtime if you send this aberration to someone else. This is the over-reaction made by this “five eyes” government in the immediate aftermath of the mosque shooting. This zealous protection of the video contents should alert us all to the danger of suppression of our most basic right “freedom of speech”.
If you want to know who governs over you find out who you are not allowed to criticise. Voltaire.
From Charlie Hebdo to Christchurch the agenda of false and miss-leading information gathers pace. Everything must be done to ensure the people do not find out the truth of these state sponsored crimes controlled by the Illuminati and their bagmen, the elite Freemasons. Politics is undergoing a sea change in the UK and it is to be hoped that a fresh government can open up the truth of the Dunblane massacre[sealed for 100 years] and other agendas designed to take away our rights and freedom of speech. Over to you Nigel…..
Hello Laurence, RE: Dunblane, I’ve read a lot about over the last few years and the inconsistencies and witness testimonies which did not add up. To my mind and reading, this horrific event happened to cover up something far more sinister. I share in your hope, that terrible event, is truthfully investigated in our lifetime, to bring some truth to the people who were effected and lost loved ones. Sealed for 100 years, yup, so anyone who has any real inkling of happened there that day is long gone when the truth outs..
Mr Putin’s bot brigade is educating me about which women I can get a hard-on for. They are not allowed to have sex before marriage, that is for sure. They all think Mr Putin is a reincarnation of Stalin, pauperising every Russian outside Moscow and St Petersburg so brutally that they all vote for him whereas the rich beneficiaries of Mr Putin’s wealth redistribution hate his guts so much that they want a return to 1991. It is the new voting paradigm in Putin’s Russia: being a slutty submissive who votes for the Big Daddy who hits her wallet then f**ks her dignity.
You know the sort of thing: vote for the guys who organised 9/11 and crucify some guy who publicised some leaks.
Now did I not learn about this sort of thing at Sunday School? You know, spare the robbers but gook the discombobulator of Doublespeak? Strange that US churches are so strong on the theory but are still letting it happen 2000 years later in practice….
Funny thing about Mr Putins bots: their cybersecurity is so useless that NATO dumbos can hack their every move.
A ruthless intelligence chief like Mr Putin would get rather stern with useless cybersieves leaking more than Don Rumsfeld.
The fact that nothing ever changes does suggest Mr Putin is not the problem.
Dumb Mr Putin would have been overthrown years ago if he was that dumb.
Unless of course that Bolton et al could not organise a hookers convention on the Strip in Las Vegas….
That is of course a propaganda line for Mr Putin to take when brainwashing his own people of course….
Brilliant 🙂
This article reminded me of this I came across. Absolutely brilliant. Humour also a great way of getting people to starting thinking about these things. click on the short clip. It is hilarious and yet so true.
https://twitter.com/RaniaKhalek/status/1130599530276294656
This was retweeted by Off G – great stuff.
Damn hits the nail on the head. Feminism without a class analysis = identity politics. Boo! Hiss! Rhania Khalek gets it spot on, thanks for the link Loverat
Sounds great. The CIA now has a woman Torturer-In- Chief. How progressive and right on is that?
Disinfo has levels.
The first level is the individual or seeming individual’s sense of self-protected identity.
Extending from this is invested opinion that meets opposition or lack of acceptance and so develops strategic defences that inherently operate offensively – as the intent to undermine a perceived oppositional threat. These by nature are crafted to operate in secret or by deceit.
The nature of being is relational. There are no private parts at the level of being – which is to say that levels within being are a strategy by which minds differentiate.
In-form-ation is not merely bits of code that run assigned or programmed ‘meanings’ but that which structures and informs a self-organising awareness of existence.
The Disinformation Age might be seen as something that has been running for millennia – but which is now coming to plain sight – at least for those who can no longer invest identity in its framework.
Staying with what has actual substance remains free of the temptation to attack or react to ruses of the mind that seeks to avoid awareness of lack of substance or indeed an openly and directly hateful act – that would find little or no allegiance unmasked.
Signal and noise issues are proportionate to what we accept or tune into. To what do we give attention and why or for what? This is a level of personal responsibility AS consciousness that f NOT engaged abnegates consciousness to an acquired and inherited ‘identity’.
It takes one to know one – but the potential for deceit does not have to be invested in and reinforced by use. Choosing NOT to ‘play the game’ of deceit means that we bring everything back into the realm of our own conscious responsibility – or choice, BECAUSE we no longer engage the blame game of self-evasive protection-racketeering.
Cultivating an inner connected being is choosing NOT to use mind filtering as THE guide – but to ‘feel’ for dissonances and resonances of being – and attend or abide there. Anything not currently clear can be ‘bracketed’ as ‘to be revealed further in its own timing.
The undoing of the human mind can be seen as the result of a self destructive evil – but only from within such a framework. The undoing of a false narrative is in itself not an attack on Self – but a prompting to reconnect to Self.
From my morning read – ‘The Teachings of the Inner Ramana”
Bravo, CJ.
Factchecking the news has become like searching through something my dog has just turned out on the lawn for an earing …but without the earing. It is more a case of diagnosis of the “institutional madness”: have we exceeded normative neurosis to the levels of psychosis? Is it a recoverable psychotic episode – or a complete and permanent disassociation from reality and descent into madness? Anyone who thinks the institutionalised patient is in a recoverable state had better submit themselves for therapy, IMHO.
Which is bad news for us: those who are subjugated by the corporate-statist insanity. If we are still entangled with the socio-political imaginary (I defined what I mean by ‘imaginary’ on Ed Curtin’s last forum): disentangling with rapidity would be my advice. The underlying trends are all trending down. Globally, we are entering a 2006-o7 redux: but with an exponentially greater debt-hangover. Yet we are supposed to believe we are in ‘recovery’: with rate cuts on the horizon. This is only part of the corporate-statist insanity.
There will be no real recovery: such a malignancy the system has become. I predict the restart will be with the SDR replacing the dollar, cashless societies, and negative yield interest rates (NIRPs). Yes, you pay your money and watch your investment dwindle. That is why cash – as a medium of value storage – will have to go. We already have 11tn euros in negative bonds. A restart with NIRPs will be like the current ZIRPs plus easing – but on steroids. Any productive enterprise will be cannibalized, loaded with debt, broken up, sold off in parcels – via leveraged buyouts, M&As, etc. Then what: when capitalism has eaten itself?
My humble suggestion is that we start thinking about that – now. What the current system has in store, is, I think we can all agree, unconscionable. Fascism is capitalism in extremis. I’m not saying we will be able to actualise our plan for a Universal Humanity – egality and solidarity for all – but it would be good to have a plan …even on the off-chance.
Capitalism is dead: like any mortally wounded animal – it threatens to take the world with it. Its media-culture industrial complex broadcasts the advanced state of its psychosis for all to hear. There will be no long term recovery – only decades of increasing misery. If anyone thinks that will be alright: that we will find a new planets worth of raw resources; that statist techno-ingenuity will save the day – for the corporate state (innovation is subject to entropy too – no resources, no ingenuity, just muscle power and permanent employment for all – age six and above); no soil: no farming; no insects: no farming; no water …you’ve got it.
If anyone thinks this is misinformation: I really would like to know your sources of scientific information. We are way beyond the point of hoping that someone else will innovate a recovery. And any less than superficial analysis of the capitalist hegemony over humanity has been nothing but alienation and immiseration …a coercive violence imposed on all. Who would want that to evolve?
Many people misunderstand evolution. We are micro-evolving moment by moment: but toward what? We are the future. The evolution will not be televised. The evolution will not be externalised. The evolution from dualism toward holism will be live. The evolution is us.
If you think the corporate-state will evolve: listen to its insane, surreal, disassociated psycho-political babblings …the rantings of the broadcast media. Does that sound like the voice of reason, sanity, or a closely-coupled reality to you. It sounds very much like unrecoverable insanity to me.
The sad side of all this is that we are unable to ‘disentagle’ fellow humans. You can not do this for others, they have to do it themselves.
I keep coming to OfG as an oasis to help keep sanity, but the fact is that there are just a handful of people here while the vast majority are totally insane or driving towards insanity at high speed.
This psychotic episode is the sign of the rite of passage human consciousness is going through. It will be over at some point (everything is impermanent) but it might take a significant swath of the world population with it.
It is a crisis and crisis are moments for growth and evolution…even if that means untold death and suffering….
I know it sounds ‘negative’, bleak…even apocalyptic…but I personally dont see how could we make it otherwise if we stick with facts.
Be mindful of the thoughts you accept true or you entangle under the belief that others and not you are entangled. A little light is indeed a basis on which to grow outside a framework of ‘darkness’ but the attempt to bring light INTO darkness is the fundamental Reversal from which psychotic (fear-destructive) outcomes are inevitable. Bringing the darkness to the light is different – and contra to all our ‘training’ or conditioned learning.
Dissociation runs much deeper than any social adaptation would allow. The propensity for psychosis is not relieved by intellectual understandings – but some framework of understanding that serves opening a deeper or more direct trust in ‘Life’ can obviously be helpful as long as it is a stepping stone rather than an invested identity or conclusion.
In terms of the body – life is ultimately destructive albeit self-perpatuating in ever changing forms. As long as identity is limited to ‘the body’, tyranny operates as ‘survival’, and all else – and anyone else is put second – such that the ‘lesser evil’ works a personal sense of salvation or indeed survival as a separate-self-interest. Private minds, each to their own body, set in power struggle that entangles the reinforcement of ‘separateness’ in a noise that effectively blocks the signal or receptivity to ‘Life’ or a direct recognition of being.
What we see is always reflecting what we are seeing with, or the ideas we are seeing through.
The solidity of ‘The World’ is really what we GIVE it. Fear SEEMS to make ‘solid’ but at a cost. There is another way to be in the world but not OF it.
You cannot live the lives of others – but in living what IS yours, you share, join and strengthen the quality of being that is in everyone regardless their current awareness or acceptance.
No one ‘comes out’ until they feel ‘safe’ enough to do so – unless of course they want to hurt themselves to ‘prove their fears true’. Tyranny induces a conformity at the level of FORM. We simply do not know the ‘inner life’ of others – but through our own, can find resonant connection across any seeming divide.
Human consciousness has developed under fear-defied and fear driven need-lack. Its abilities are marketised and weaponised for possession and control. The abilities need re-PURPOSING rather than denial or attack. Wholeness of being is a gift that cannot be stored, packaged or claimed copyright over – and so is INVISIBLE to the mind of possession and control – except as a sense of threat TO such a sense of personally invested ‘power’.
Binra, thanks for your reply. I dont read you though…You use to many “entagled” words…and the message gets lost in verbiage.
Regards
My prompting to you is that you are ‘seeing’ your error in ‘OTHERS’ and reacting as (if) true – (because you WANT it there – in the ‘others’). This is the nature of ‘entanglement’ in disinformation.
I choose each word I use towards giving form to Meaning that is already alive in the reader – but filtered out or blocked by current filtering beliefs. So I will not ‘make sense’ to the possession and defence of such identity. Just as your attempts to ‘disentangle’ others are frustrated. In which case why not simply BE the truth of you and release ‘others’ from your beliefs and corresponding perceptions?
I write in freedom and to the freedom of everyone to look and see, rather than think to already know.
The whole ‘mess’ is a result of thinking we know – and proceeding from a false premise. Everything that follows on from an error will extend or persist the error – but in a form that carries a sense of ‘good intentions’ – and finds justification in the ‘evil intentions’ seen in the ‘other’.
I wonder how in this world you are able to see what I see and how you are right and others (me??) are just confuse?…..I just wanted to save yout time in replying to me, but…if that feels good, so hit reply as much as you like my friend…
https://youtu.be/Ib8I5366irE
Your personal investment in me/you being right/wrong IS entanglement.
You illustrate the very thing you THINK to criticise in others, AS IF you are the exceptional or elite exception.
I am not making a personal claim nor seeking to divert the issues into the personal ‘attack or invalidation’ of the other.
I am more interested to show how that very device operates an insanely entangled human nightmare.
I am interested in the issues – and as you raised the issue of entanglement, I joined with you in looking at it.
The entanglement in self as a defence against reality, ‘sees’ threat everywhere.
I come to OffGuardian as an ‘oasis of sanity’ as well Ramdan, as well as a few other sites like Moon Of Alabama, Caitlin Johnston, The Saker, etc. It helps to know that others see what we see, and feel similar about the state of the world, about the state of society. I think I would’ve gone stark raving bonkers a while ago without sites like this to vent on and share with other like minded fellow travelers. If others think that’s sad, then sobeit. And you’re right – we can’t change others, or make others ‘see’. Only they can open their eyes.
Gezzah – so right as always.
I have done my utmost to provide a friend of mine with reason to delve into the whole issue of corrupt and negligent behaviour within the ranks of western governments and the msm. I sent him a copy of emails I sent to my local MP about Julian Assange and the latest OPCW scandal. These emails provided links to the relevant Off-Guardian articles.
My friend genuinely thinks of himself as a caring and compassionate person. I hoped my approach might prompt him to take an interest and hopefully spread the word. I also sent him the Peter Hitchens’ blog article in the hope that might be enough to make him sit up and take note.
After four days I received a brief reply from him thanking me for the information. He said that he didn’t know enough about the Assange/US situation to comment but thought “he ought at least to be prepared to go to Sweden to answer the rape charges”. And with regard to Syria and the OPCW, “[he didn’t] know enough about these subjects to give me [his] comments”.
This response confirmed what I suspected, knowing that my friend is a lifelong Guardian devotee. In his world, no events are of any significance if they haven’t been featured or endorsed by the Guardian. He probably spent the four days after receiving my email pouring over the Guardian seeing what they had to say. Because there was nothing along the lines of what I had raised then I ‘was obviously exaggerating or completely misreading the situation’. I deduced he hadn’t even bothered to link to the articles I’d enclosed.
18 months ago I suggested he look at the work of Vanessa Beeley and Eva Bartlett to see their evidence about the White Helmets, and I gave him links. He replied then that the Guardian said that they were complete phonies and bloggers lacking any credibility, so he wasn’t inclined to take seriously anything these “two strange women” (my friend’s words) might say.
Sadly, the reply from my friend closed with a comment that he was too busy with distributing leaflets for the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party to consider the matters I had raised in any more depth; in other words, politely telling me not to bother him with my conspiracy theories again. I started to draft a reply to facetiously make the observation that, when WW3 breaks out over lies, ‘Brexit’ will be the least of his worries. As well as to point out that as a ‘caring and compassionate’ person he might be well advised to look into matters that could continue to needlessly result in the deaths of many, many more innocent people i.e. call him out on his bullsh*t. But I didn’t finish the draft because it occurred to me I really was wasting my time.
Thanks Judy…. Same. Its sad, aye. I’ve even given names of websites like here, Moon Of Alabama, Neoliberalism Softpanorama, The Greanville Post, etc to some of my customers (I sell The Big Issue street mag) who I felt were more ‘enlightened’ about the World than most of my other customers, 2-3 weeks later would ask if they’d looked at those sites, and, no….”too busy” “I’ll check them out sometime” “maybe look one day”… I have a left wing friend who was adamant Douma was real, and when I told him too check out Vanessa Beeley and Eva Bartlett, he got back to me claiming they were stooges of Assad, and too friendly towards him! What can you do? Other friends, I realised few years ago it was absolutely pointless, espec when I got strongly worded replies: “Capitalism’s been very good too us, we fully support liberal democracy”. The full spectrum propaganda of msm at its very finest (sarcasm). Thanks Judy
Postscript: forgot to mention Judy, told my friend a week ago about the leaked OPCW report that Douma was staged, and to check the story on Moon Of Alabama and here. The only reply has been complete silence. There’s nothing to say despite him being adamant Douma was real last year.
#dolphin me too
How can anyone now look into the face of a dolphin and not apologise to him..her..it for being so brainwashed by the evil Putin Nazi disinformationists. I’m not sure if I know now what is more dangerous schools of Putin schooled dolphins or a has been reality TV star with his megalomaniac sidekicks, their trigger fingers itching for war with nuclear toys…? Hmm it’s a tough choice.
Clearly the MSM goes with the dolphins and the other phantasmagoria of russophobic nightmares, such as trolls in troll factories, little green men invaders, poisoned perfumes and doorknobs, dead ducks, barrel bombs, Novichock wafting through the sleepy cities of England. Oh and Brexit.
Yes, the whole failure [not through total corruption – no way?] of the western neo-liberal globalist model of wealth extraction is also due to Putin and his merry band of Nazi disinformationists. And nothing to do with the elites who have profited from its largess for so long and now see the whole scam hitting the buffers resulting in them going into melt-down?
No, it looks like dolphins and.. goodbye and thanks for all the fish, instead.
Obviously, the ” wicked Master’s who control our very existence ” have reached a point as the writer C J Hopkins correctly comments upon in total sanativity – of ” institutional madness “.
And, I personally have learnt that when all around one embrace madness – the solution is to conclude they are a part of the plague- and thus think accordingly.
Well said, C J Hopkins !