Arab spring uprises Tunisia/Egypt/Libya/Syria

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An old news fact, but did no find discussion on the forum about it.

Just my opinion:
1) I had not clue the situation in Tunisia was like this, compared to some of the Neighboring countries it looked like an example.
2) I really like that the changes were introduced by people protests with limited weapons and not by a group supported by military forces.

Questions I'm stuck with:
1) Can this be an example and a contra movement to the "President-Dictators" in the North of Africa that will spread?

2) Why did this not happen in Nazi-Germany in the late 30ies or with the Taliban in Afghanistan?
 
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Fear of personal injury and people, like frogs in a pan of slowly heated water,
will sit and suffer until too late unless prodded.

It could spread but good or not would be left to be seen.

The Wikileaks thread had a post about it.
 
While a bit hyperbolic, the following article presents an interesting point of view on your question.

http://tarpley.net/2011/01/16/tunisian-wikileaks-putsch/
Tunisian Wikileaks Putsch: CIA Touts Mediterranean Tsunami of Coups; Libya, Egypt, Syria, Algeria, Jordan, Italy All Targeted; US-UK Want New Puppets to Play Against Iran, China, Russia; Obama Retainers Cass Sunstein, Samantha Power, Robert Malley, International Crisis Group Implicated in Destabilizations
[Translate]

Webster G. Tarpley
TARPLEY.net
January 16, 2011

Washington DC, January 16, 2011 – The US intelligence community is now in a manic fit of gloating over this weekend’s successful overthrow of the Tunisian government of President Ben Ali. The State Department and the CIA, through media organs loyal to them, are mercilessly hyping the Tunisian putsch of the last few days as the prototype of a new second generation of color revolutions, postmodern coups, and US-inspired people power destabilizations. At Foggy Bottom and Langley, feverish plans are being made for a veritable Mediterranean tsunami designed to topple most existing governments in the Arab world, and well beyond. The imperialist planners now imagine that they can expect to overthrow or weaken the governments of Libya, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Algeria, Yemen, and perhaps others, while the CIA’s ongoing efforts to remove Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi (because of his friendship with Putin and support for the Southstream pipeline) make this not just an Arab, but rather a pan-Mediterranean, orgy of destabilization.
Hunger revolution, not Jasmine revolution

Washington’s imperialist planners now believe that they have successfully refurbished their existing model of CIA color revolution or postmodern coup. This method of liquidating governments had been losing some of its prestige after the failure of the attempted plutocratic Cedars revolution in Lebanon, the rollback of the hated IMF-NATO Orange revolution in Ukraine, the ignominious collapse of June 2009 Twitter revolution in Iran, and the widespread discrediting of the US-backed Roses revolution in Georgia because of the warmongering and oppressive activities of fascist madman Saakashvili. The imperialist consensus is now that the Tunisian events prefigure a new version of people power coup specifically adapted to today’s reality, specifically that of a world economic depression, breakdown crisis, and disintegration of the globalized casino economy.

The Tunisian tumults are being described in the US press as the “Jasmine revolution,” but it is far more accurate to regard them as a variation on the classic hunger revolution. The Tunisian ferment was not primarily a matter of the middle class desire to speak out, vote, and blog. It started from the Wall Street depredations which are ravaging the entire planet: outrageously high prices for food and fuel caused by derivatives speculation, high levels of unemployment and underemployment, and general economic despair. The detonator was the tragic suicide of a vegetable vendor in Sidi Bouzid who was being harassed by the police. As Ben Ali fought to stay in power, he recognized what was causing the unrest by his gesture of lowering food prices. The Jordanian government for its part has lowered food prices there by about 5%.
Assange and Wikileaks, Key CIA Tools to Dupe Youth Bulge

The economic nature of the current unrest poses a real problem for the Washington imperialists, since the State Department line tends to define human rights exclusively in political and religious terms, and never as a matter of economic or social rights. Price controls, wages, jobless benefits, welfare payments, health care, housing, trade union rights, banking regulation, protective tariffs, and other tools of national economic self-defense have no place whatsoever in the Washington consensus mantra. Under these circumstances, what can be done to dupe the youth bulge of people under 30 who now represents the central demographic reality of most of the Arab world?

In this predicament, the CIA’s cyberspace predator drone Julian Assange and Wikileaks are providing an indispensable service to the imperialist cause. In Iceland in the autumn of 2009, Assange was deployed by his financier backers to hijack and disrupt a movement for national economic survival through debt moratorium, the rejection of interference by the International Monetary Fund, and re-launching the productive economy through an ambitious program of national infrastructure and the export of high technology capital goods, in particular in the field of geothermal energy. Assange was able to convince many in Iceland that these causes were not nearly radical enough, and that they needed to devote their energies instead to publishing a series of carefully pre-selected US government and other documents, all of which somehow targeted governments and political figures which London and Washington had some interest in embarrassing and weakening. In other words, Assange was able to dupe honest activists into going to work for the imperialist financiers. Assange has no program except “transparency,” which is a constant refrain of the US UK human rights mafia as it attempts to topple targeted governments across the developing sector in particular.
“Yes we can” or “Food prices are too damn high!”

Tunisia is perhaps the first case in which Assange and Wikileaks can make a credible claim to have detonated the coup. Most press accounts agree that certain State Department cables which were part of the recent Wikileaks document dumps and which focused on the sybaritic excess and lavish lifestyle of the Ben Ali clan played a key role in getting the Tunisian petit bourgeoisie into the streets. Thanks in part to Assange, Western television networks were thus able to show pictures of the Tunisian crowds holding up signs saying “Yes we can” rather than a more realistic and populist “Food prices are too damn high!”

Ben Ali had been in power for 23 years. In Egypt, President Mubarak has been in power for almost 30 years. The Assad clan in Syria have also been around for about three decades. In Libya, Colonel Gaddafi has been in power for almost 40 years. Hafez Assad was able to engineer a monarchical succession to his son when he died 10 years ago, and Mubarak and Gaddafi are trying to do the same thing today. Since the US does not want these dynasties, The obvious CIA tactic is to deploy assets like Twitter, Google, Facebook, Wikileaks, etc., to turn key members of the youth bulge into swarming mobs to bring down the gerontocratic regimes.
CIA Wants Aggressive New Puppets to Play Against Iran, China, Russia

All of these countries do of course require serious political as well as economic reform, but what the CIA is doing with the current crop of destabilizations has nothing to do with any positive changes in the countries involved. Those who doubt this should remember the horrendous economic and political record of the puppets installed in the wake of recent color revolutions – people like the IMF-NATO kleptocrat agents Yushchenko and Timoshenko in Ukraine, the mentally unstable warmongering dictator Saakashvili in Georgia, and so forth. Political forces that are foolish enough to accept the State Department’s idea of hope and change will soon find themselves under the yoke of new oppressors of this type. The danger is very great in Tunisia, since the forces which ousted Ben Ali have no visible leader and no visible mass political organization which could help them fight off foreign interference in the way that Hezbollah was able to do in checkmating the Lebanese Cedars putsch. In Tunis, the field is wide open for the CIA to install a candidate of its own choosing, preferably under the cover of “elections.” Twenty-three years of Ben Ali have unfortunately left Tunisia in a more atomized condition.

Why is official Washington so obsessed with the idea of overthrowing these governments? The answer has everything to do with Iran, China, and Russia. As regards Iran, the State Department policy is notoriously the attempt to assemble a united front of the entrenched Arab and Sunni regimes to be played against Shiite Iran and its various allies across the region. This had not been going well, as shown by the inability of the US to install its preferred puppet Allawi in Iraq, where the pro-Iranian Maliki seems likely to hold onto power for the foreseeable future. The US desperately wants a new generation of unstable “democratic” demagogues more willing to lead their countries against Iran than the current immobile regimes have proved to be. There is also the question of Chinese economic penetration. We can be confident that any new leaders installed by the US will include in their program a rupture of economic relations with China, including especially a cutoff of oil and raw material shipments, along the lines of what Twitter revolution honcho Mir-Hossein Mousavi was reliably reported to be preparing for Iran if he had seized power there in the summer of 2009 at the head of his “Death to Russia, death to China” rent-a-mob. In addition, US hostility against Russia is undiminished, despite the cosmetic effects of the recent ratification of START II. If for example a color revolution were to come to Syria, we could be sure that the Russian naval presence at the port Tartus, which so disturbs NATO planners, would be speedily terminated. If the new regimes demonstrate hostility against Iran, China, and Russia, we would soon find that internal human rights concerns would quickly disappear from the US agenda.
Key Destabilization Operatives of the Obama Regime

For those who are keeping score, it may be useful to pinpoint some of the destabilization operatives inside the current US regime. It is of course obvious that the current wave of subversion against the Arab countries was kicked off by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in her much touted speech last week in Doha, Qatar last week, when she warned assembled Arab leaders to reform their economies ( according to IMF rules) and stamp out corruption, or else face ouster.

Given the critical role of Assange and Wikileaks in the current phase, White House regulations czar Cass Sunstein must also be counted among the top putschists. We should recall that on February 24, 2007 Sunstein contributed an article entitled “A Brave New Wikiworld” to the Washington Post, in which he crowed that “Wikileaks.org, founded by dissidents in China and other nations, plans to post secret government documents and to protect them from censorship with coded software.” This was in fact the big publicity breakthrough for Assange and the debut of Wikileaks in the US mainstream press — all thanks to current White House official Sunstein. May we not assume that Sunstein represents the White House contact man and controller for the Wikileaks operation?
Every Tree in the Arab Forest Might Fall

Another figure worthy of mention is Robert Malley, a well-known US left-cover operative who currently heads the Middle East and North Africa program at the International Crisis Group (ICG), an organization reputed to run on money coughed up by George Soros and tactics dreamed up from Zbigniew Brzezinski. Malley was controversial during the 2008 presidential campaign because of the anti-Israeli posturing he affects, the better to dupe the Arab leaders he targets. Malley told the Washington Post of January 16, 2011 that every tree in the Arab forest could now be about to fall: “We could go through the list of Arab leaders looking in the mirror right now and very few would not be on the list.” Arab governments would be well advised to keep an eye on ICG operatives in their countries.

Czar Cass Sunstein is now married to Samantha Power, who currently works in the White House National Security Council as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director (boss) of the Office of Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights – the precise bureaucratic home of destabilization operations like the one in Tunisia. Power, like Malley, is a veteran of the US intelligence community’s “human rights” division, which is a past master of using legitimate beefs about repression to to replace old US clients with new puppets in a never-ending process of restless subversion. Both Malley and Power were forced to tender pro forma resignations during the Obama presidential campaign of 2008 – Malley for talking to Hamas, and Power for an obscene tirade against Hillary Clinton, who is now her bureaucratic rival.
Advice to Arab Governments, Political Forces, Trade Unions

The Arab world needs to learn a few fundamental lessons about the mechanics of CIA color revolutions, lest they replicate the tragic experience of Georgia, Ukraine, and so many others. In today’s impoverished world of economic depression, a reform program capable of defending national interests against the rapacious forces of financial globalization is the number one imperative.

Accordingly, Arab governments must immediately expel all officials of the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and their subset of lending institutions. Arab countries which are currently under the yoke of IMF conditionalities (notably Egypt and Jordan among the Arabs, and Pakistan among the Moslem states) must unilaterally and immediately throw them off and reassert their national sovereignty. Every Arab state should unilaterally and immediately declare a debt moratorium in the form of an open-ended freeze on all payments of interest and principal of international financial debt in the Argentine manner, starting with sums allegedly owed to the IMF-World Bank. The assets of foreign multinational monopolistic firms, especially oil companies, should be seized as the situation requires. Basic food staples and fuels should be subjected to price controls, with draconian penalties for speculation, including by way of derivatives. Dirigist measures such as protective tariffs and food price subsidies can be quickly introduced. Food production needs to be promoted by production and import bounties, as well as by international barter deals. National grain stockpiles must be quickly constituted. Capital controls and exchange controls are likely to be needed to prevent speculative attacks on national currencies by foreign hedge funds acting with the ulterior political motives of overthrowing national governments. Most important, central banks must be nationalized and reconverted to a policy of 0% credit for domestic infrastructure, agriculture, housing, and physical commodity production, with special measures to enhance exports. Once these reforms have been implemented, it may be time to consider the economic integration of the Arab world as an economic development community in which the foreign exchange earnings of the oil-producing states can be put to work on the basis of mutual advantage for infrastructure and hard commodity capital investment across the entire Arab world.

The alternative is an endless series of destabilizations masterminded by foreigners, and, quite possibly, terminal chaos.
 
That article sounds like anti-west propaganda that came straight from a nationalistic communist Russian youth frozen in time from the 1950s now working in a North Korean Ministry of Truth that's teamed up with Ahmadinejad.

All this article needs is the ending: "Death to America!" :rolleyes:
 
The president and his wife went to the national bank and demanded £38million ($61m) worth of gold ingots to be handed over, they loaded in onto the plane and left the country to Dubai.
They stole the country's money!. They need bringing back, or at least the gold does.
 
Fear of personal injury and people, like frogs in a pan of slowly heated water,
will sit and suffer until too late unless prodded.

It could spread but good or not would be left to be seen.

The Wikileaks thread had a post about it.

It does seem that wikileaks information about the food pice and the suffering of the people due to food issues did start a lot of action here.

So suffering is a motivation for revolt.

Reading about the old Communist famines in China and the USSR, there were essential to controls on the population in place:
1) military suppression
2) mutual control (based on fear) between people on not attacking the system in power

==================

I did not spend the time to fully read the article of Dotini, but got the next:

1) Wikileaks has influence => I was wondering if "powers in the world" would not start using it as a weapon.
2) There is an issue with long lasting "dictatorship like" governments. There is no alternative left. (Just read about Stalin giving up for a few days after Hitler was gaining terrain on him, but he was put back in power, since all the alternatives had been removed before.)
 
Suffering is always the motivation...
...or at least the perception of it.

Powers of the World have been using such weapons forever and that's all I'll say about that.

Stalin was a real piece of work and if Hitler had not been in the spotlight it would have been Stalin instead that we did battle with.
I do have sadness for the 6 million Jews who died in WWII and their suffering but the 26 million Russians that were also killed needed better or more PR...
...or at least some recognition of the kind of hardship the went through.
I can't imagine living in a country under a government that has as little concern for it's people as it does it's enemies.

That is why no government should never get to that point of total control or power, IMHO.

Anyway, what was this thread about again?
 
Thread is about how the event:

Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali steps down

can be seen compared to past and current oppression and people taking the power.

Russians that were also killed needed better or more PR

I completely agree.

History is written by the person that won the battle, it is rarely a neutral representation of facts.

to balance: I believe that the interactions with Native Americans (the whole continent) and Africans might not be represented to the right level either in Western (European & American) history. Not to mention "The Inquisition", ....


But people do revolt:
- "The french revolution" is an example.
- But at the same level the communist movements, both in China and the USSR were revolts of the people against injustice.

More recently - Thailand: People movements made the Prime Minister move out (since he had been creating a market for his own privately owned telephony business)
 
But at the same level the communist movements, both in China and the USSR were revolts of the people against injustice.

Unfortunately, those people unknowingly empowered a system that was completely paranoid about potential opponents. Few of the ordinary revolutionaries working in the factories or the fields would have imagined that within 2 decades they would be terrorised by secret police.
 
Unfortunately, those people unknowingly empowered a system that was completely paranoid about potential opponents. Few of the ordinary revolutionaries working in the factories or the fields would have imagined that within 2 decades they would be terrorised by secret police.

Coming back to the theme: Tunisia.

I get more and more the impression that the people in Tunisia have a similar situation.

1) They wanted to get rid of the dictator-president => done
2) Now they do not want people linked to him in the interim government => I understand that they do not inspire trust.
3) it seems a strong opposition that can give an alternative is missing (the police state avoided them to become strong or just bluntly ...)

this is a call for other players to find a local associate and put their political agenda up front in this new playground. Not clear what the result of this will be.

==============

Being Belgian: how far were the last election results in "The Netherlands" and "Belgium" a revolution? It seems both results made it almost impossible to form a stable and powerful government.
 
Being Belgian: how far were the last election results in "The Netherlands" and "Belgium" a revolution? It seems both results made it almost impossible to form a stable and powerful government.

I was talking about the former Soviet Union, not the two countries you mentioned above.
 
Last news on the area heard on the radio:

The neighboring countries are stocking up on grain to supply the market with food if needed and thus avoid the spread of revolutions towards their country.


Really made me think of "Bread and Games" of the Roman Republic. Keep the people happy to avoid social upraising.
 
The Egyptian revolt is in full effect. Yesterday, the country was technologically blacked out. Most of the country was without internet or cell phone service which was ordered by the government. The ruling party's head quarters have burned down and police have joined the riots. The Army has now taken to the streets. Mubarak's days as Egyptian ruler seem to be numbered.
 
Funny. I read about a lot of this in Imperial Hubris and similar books. These uprisings were in the making for a long time.
 
I also saw the news tonight.

Their analysis is that in Tunisia the military stopped to support the people in power.
Although the military are lenient towards the protesters in Egypt, they still are protecting the people in power, so the people in power do not need to leave the country.

There is movement in North of Africa though. There is a GTPlanet member in Egypt, I might try to contact him.
 
Meh, that was fun to watch for a bit. It doesn't look like the military is having any effect on the protests. The next big thing is to hear Mubarak address the public, which hasn't happened yet. If he says anything besides that he is stepping down, they are going to tear that country apart.

So who's next? Algeria? Jordan? Those two countries were mentioned in the broadcast.
 
^ I have my fingers crossed for Iran. Ahmadinejad's a douchebag.
 
My roommate at work is from Tunisia and he has always described the former regime as mafia. Apparently they didn't pay the military enough to stay in power. This doesn't seem to be the case in Egypt, where tanks have moved in against the protesters. I hope our friend from Egypt is well.

edit> Mubarak just spoke on TV to the people: He himself will not step down, but will have a new government installed tomorrow.
So the president stays in place and nothing really changes.
 
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That's a laugh. "I'll install a new government tomorrow." They'll probably advertise it like the I'm a Mac, I'm a PC commercials. :lol:
 
The media should stop calling these riots "democracy movements" because they aren't. These riots are merely a continuation of what have been going on europe and england e.g. economically motivated riots and mark my word, it will spread to the americas; the united states included.

As for the "regime change" in Tunisia, they don't care about democracy but merely replacing one dictator with another.
 
mark my word, it will spread to the americas; the united states included.

It would have to get pretty dire and I think the US has already seen the bottom of the "economic crisis". Don't get me wrong, there's some things happening in the US that we all hate, but by and large it's not as bad as Glenn Beck wants you to believe.

Look at the DJIA over the past year or two - we are recovering from the pit. Slow but steady, we've seen some job growth over the past few months. When we start seeing real estate prices recover, I'd say we're in 5th gear, pumping hard full straight ahead.

As for the "regime change" in Tunisia, they don't care about democracy but merely replacing one dictator with another.

Yup. Hopefully he's not some insane Western-hating extremist. Those guys aren't good for anybody.
 
In Albania too!

IMG_9599.JPG


179622_489534947750_225963747750_6490637_4856349_n.jpg


Egypt and Albania and Algeria too are going in that way,the world is in Riot!
 
I really hope that president Mubarak quits...I think that after the decisions made last week, there is no way back.
Hopefully our venezuelan neighbors take this as a good plan for them too, since Chavez can be expecting for 30+ years as a president
 
Funny. I read about a lot of this in Imperial Hubris and similar books. These uprisings were in the making for a long time.

What has amazed me is how quickly they've been able to overturn their governments. It basically tosses out everything we've (the US) done in the past three decades in the Middle-East. Combine what is going on in Egypt with the reports of unrest in Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan... This is going to be a lot of fun.
 
I was impressed by the message the president gave of sending fighter jets to low fly buzz the public over Cairo.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrPthz-IOc4&feature=related

Yeah, what an asshole. Can you imagine if Obama flew A-10 Warthogs over a mass of American citizens? It says a lot about the situation when you threaten to blow up your own people.

What has amazed me is how quickly they've been able to overturn their governments. It basically tosses out everything we've (the US) done in the past three decades in the Middle-East. Combine what is going on in Egypt with the reports of unrest in Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan... This is going to be a lot of fun.

Oh yeah, it's not hard to start a revolution if you do it right. The Soviets mastered that art. I remember reading Michael Scheuer and basically what it is is a bunch of gang warfare on a grand scale. Each of the governments are just like an official mafia, and then there is the terrorist gang that is trying to topple the governments. The people are just caught in the middle. If the balance of power is affected, the people suffer under the actions of the newly-leveraged group.

It's basically a big mess is what it is. Yup yup. The challenge will be to see which group of people can buck off both influences and start their own business up right. The problem of course is that they then have both influences working together to usurp as much power as possible and put them back in the same situation from which they rose.
 
The next big thing is to hear Mubarak address the public, which hasn't happened yet. If he says anything besides that he is stepping down, they are going to tear that country apart.

So who's next? Algeria? Jordan? Those two countries were mentioned in the broadcast.

The media should stop calling these riots "democracy movements" because they aren't. These riots are merely a continuation of what have been going on europe and england e.g. economically motivated riots and mark my word, it will spread to the americas; the united states included.

As for the "regime change" in Tunisia, they don't care about democracy but merely replacing one dictator with another.

In Albania too!

Egypt and Albania and Algeria too are going in that way,the world is in Riot!

What has amazed me is how quickly they've been able to overturn their governments. It basically tosses out everything we've (the US) done in the past three decades in the Middle-East. Combine what is going on in Egypt with the reports of unrest in Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan... This is going to be a lot of fun.

Oh yeah, it's not hard to start a revolution if you do it right. The Soviets mastered that art. I remember reading Michael Scheuer and basically what it is is a bunch of gang warfare on a grand scale. Each of the governments are just like an official mafia, and then there is the terrorist gang that is trying to topple the governments. The people are just caught in the middle. If the balance of power is affected, the people suffer under the actions of the newly-leveraged group.

It's basically a big mess is what it is. Yup yup. The challenge will be to see which group of people can buck off both influences and start their own business up right. The problem of course is that they then have both influences working together to usurp as much power as possible and put them back in the same situation from which they rose.

I think these are genuine, from the ground up people's movements, inspired by knowledge of how people are living better elsewhere, and how poorly they are living under oppression at home. Social media and satellite TV have played an important role in informing and inspiring these folks.

For decades the US has stoutly supported the dictators in these countries, all the while talking big (when it was convenient) about human rights and democracy. For decades the oppressed peoples of these countries have suffered, building slowly into a smoldering, structural contradiction. Now Obama and the US are faced with a huge dilemma: Support their pet dictators or support the legitimate democratic aspirations of oppressed peoples. How Obama responds will reveal much about his own deepest character - is he a pragmatic authoritarian at heart, willing to talk big about rights and democracy but, when the going gets tough, is unwilling to come their aid? Or does he hold genuinely high ideals, willing to cut loose the old dictators and support democracy when the time is ripe?

The risks are high! Real revolution and democracy will enable people to choose the Islamist path like they did in Palestinian and Lebanese elections. The dominoes could topple all the way from Algiers to Riyadh, totally remaking the political face of North Africa and the Middle East.

Edit: As of this hour, the Egyptian Army has announced that the people have legitimate grievances, and the Army will not fire upon them. Huge crowds gathering in the central square of Cairo include women and children. The people have won and now hold the upper hand. It's easy to see Mubarek gone within days if not hours.

Respectfully submitted,
Dotini
 
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The risks are high! Real revolution and democracy will enable people to choose the Islamist path like they did in Palestinian and Lebanese elections. The dominoes could topple all the way from Algiers to Riyadh, totally remaking the political face of North Africa and the Middle East.

Respectfully submitted,
Dotini

Understatement of the week.

I think the situation in Egypt is a case of better the devil you know than the devil you don't. Much like the Shah, Mubarak is a POS. However, he doesn't lob bombs at Israel or give plastic keys and hand grenades to children and tell them to take one for team islam.

This is more about who will not start a war with Israel than what's best for Egypt. Then again, it's probably in their interest to not start a war...never mess with the Jews.
 
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