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Comment by ArkVark | Hacker News Reader

Why does this feel like the USA cutting Japan off from metal and oil shipments months before WW2?

> months before WW2

What's the definition of WW2 here? US supplied oil and metal to Japan until 1941 [0], 3 years after Japan invaded China [1].

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Events_leading_to_the_attack_o...

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Sino-Japanese_War

From a US perspective when it comes to Japan, the definition of WWII is typically “Pearl Habor” since Japan was not at war with the US until that point. From your first link in the first paragraph it says “ In 1940 Japan invaded French Indochina... This move prompted the United States to embargo all oil exports”. The Pearl Harbor attack was in 1941 and at least partially caused by the US cutting off oil to Japan.

My dad's uncle fought for the USA in the Pacific. At one point during the war, he was close to a Japanese bomb when it exploded. He survived. The interesting part of this story is that some scrap metal from the bomb had a stamp that said "Framingham, Massachusetts". He was from Northampton, MA, and he'd almost been kill by scrap metal made at a factory less than 100 miles from his home.

https://goo.gl/maps/npoRDeSFHKcXVKjQ6

Bonus story: My dad's uncle was scheduled to get out of the Army on December 8, 1941. He was on a ship from Pearl Harbor to San Francisco. When his ship got the news that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor, his shipped turned right around. He was in the infantry, and he spent the next 3+ years fighting in the Pacific, including storming 4 beaches (e.g. just like storming the beaches of Normandy in the first scene of Saving Private Ryan). His battalion had 250% turnover during the war, and by the end of the conflict, he and 1 other guy were the only original soldiers left.

Bonus bonus story: He told me about a time when the Japanese were shelling US soldiers from the top of a hill with an artillery piece. The artillery was hiding behind some pretty thick trees, and was hard to target, so the US decided to have soldiers run up the hill in a direct attack. I guess it's smarter to charge artillery that's shooting at you if you have no place to hide? Anyway, it was a trap. As most of the soldiers got close to the top of the hill, the Japanese fled. It turned out the Japanese had stuffed the hill with explosives, and they blew that hill up big time. My dad's uncle was towards the rear of the charge, and he got knocked out from the shockwave of the explosion. When he awake, he was buried up to his waist in dirt and surrounded by the body parts of his fellow soldiers. Holy crap :P

Thank you for the stories! I study in Worcester, MA but haven't lived there for very long so I'm not too aware of the local history. I'll have some fun looking into this.

> His battalion had 250% turnover during the war,

Ye gods. That reminds of Felix, a character from the book Armor, by John Steakley.

> It turned out the Japanese had stuffed the hill with explosives

Well, there you go. Nothing is new under the sun. Beneath Hill 60 [0] is a movie about the Allies doing the same thing to the Germans in WWI. The explosion was heard in London, about 250km away. It killed around 10,000 Germans [1], but according to the movie had very little effect on the eventual outcome.

I thought it must have been pretty unique event. Apparently not.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beneath_Hill_60 [1] https://www.military-history.org/articles/world-war-i-hill-6...

If foundations of geopolitics is anything real, then pitting the US vs China would be the ultimate best outcome. The book believes China is the true threat to Russia and "must, to the maximum degree possible, be dismantled".

As secondary goal would be the disruption of the US which also has been propping China up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics#Con...

Yeah, but Russia is so isolated these days that pitting anything non-Russian vs. something else non-Russian is almost guaranteed to be advantageous to Russia.

That also doesn't change the fact that long term, China is the biggest threat to liberal democracies. In terms of geopolitics, Russia is actually quite complementary to China due to its large area having an abundance of resources to feed Chinese factories and both countries being authoritarian governments.

Why would China be a threat to liberal democracies? I get that people don't like the fact that China is not democratic, but how does that suddenly turn into a threat?

People are being drummed up into a cold war mentality left right and center. Its become increasingly obvious recently.

I suspect the people of Hong Kong or the Uyghurs will have a different view.

Even if those people have a beef with the CCP, and even if Adrian Zenz’ stories about Uyghurs are true (which still remain to be seen, as there are many flaws in his methodology), what does that have to do with the rest of the world? Do you think that the US’s Hong Kong “Human rights” bill really does anything to help the ordinary citizen of Hong Kong?

If you really want to help the Uyghurs, offer them passports, or refugee status, instead of using them as an excuse to start another cold war. They'd appreciate it more, it would be cheaper, and it would be far less likely to escalate into a shooting war.

But given how Syria went, we know that given the option between bombing a place for some geopolitical aim, or taking Muslim refugees, the US would take the first option every time it presents itself.

That's because nine times out of ten, the humanitarian plight is the excuse for war, not the end to itself.

Because we need to focus on an external enemy to divert our attention from our domestic problems.

Because China is buying compliance.

Australia recently pushed for an investigation into COVID-19 and allowed Hong Kong citizens to obtain permanent residency. Both of which China strongly opposed. As retaliation they imposed tariffs on Australian imports, issued travel advisories telling students not to travel there and directly told the government to comply.

Now a country like Australia which is heavily dependent on China for trade and overseas students has in this case had to choose between ethics and economics. And China is doing the same thing with countries all around the world with smaller ones being forced to comply or risk severe economic harm.

Australia has been drumming rhetoric about China for a long time now. They’ve been talking about decoupling.

And now China is actually decoupling. Shouldn’t Australia be happy that they’re getting what they want? Why did it suddenly turn into “China is bullying us with tariffs”?

As for Hong Kong, are you aware that most of the protesters are young people with poor backgrounds and without higher education? And that many protesters are not so peaceful, and rioted? Yet Australia announced the other day that they will only accept people without a criminal record, and only people who are highly skilled. What?? Is Australia genuine in wanting to help Hong Kong citizen?

Do you believe Australia’s push for COVID-19 is genuine? Yes China did make mistakes in the beginning, but for more than a month after the Wuhan lockdown, at which point countries outside China had almost no cases, various countries neglected to take action despite obvious warning signs. So if an investigation is to be initiated, it should not only be about China’s mistakes, but everybody else’s mistakes too. Why does Australia not talk about investigating everybody? Do you think Australia would accept a bidirectional investigation?

Is Australia really as innocent as you believe?

Does China have no right to disagree?

China is trying very hard to shut down all criticism of China and/or the CCP, worldwide. That makes China a threat to free speech worldwide.

Does freedom of speech mean freedom from consequences?

If you are my supplier, and I accuse you of various crimes (which may or may not be true), and as a result you stop supplying me, then are you shutting down my free speech? Do you have an obligation to keep doing business with me no matter what I say?

> consequences

That is on the assumption of there is an accusation. Australia will simply be doing anything not in China's interest, that does not mean it oppose China nor accusing China or anything but China would immediately retaliate. Which in reality means if you are a major business partner to China you are ultimately controlled by China.

And you are right, no one has obligation to do business with anyone. And that is why some people has decided not to do business with China.

All right. But one thing I don't understand. Australia has been talking about decoupling for a long time now. Now China is actually decoupling, shouldn't Australia be happy that they are getting what they want? Why did it suddenly turn into 'China is bullying us' the moment their wish came true?

"Russia should use its special services within the borders of the United States to fuel instability and separatism, for instance, provoke "Afro-American racists". Russia should "introduce geopolitical disorder into internal American activity, encouraging all kinds of separatism and ethnic, social and racial conflicts, actively supporting all dissident movements – extremist, racist, and sectarian groups, thus destabilizing internal political processes in the U.S."

They seem to be getting that part right...

It's wishful thinking to hope that people realize there's more in common than differences. Class/racial strife is the most effective bludgeon remaining, unlike traditional nations surrounded by enemies where suspicions can be inflamed effectively (ex: "It's the '-ists!'"). The Project Lincoln co-founder John Weaver is a registered foreign agent (Russia), a spy, endorsing a political candidate.

Your comment seems awfully misleading and inflammatory considering John Weaver publicly announced that he has cancelled the contract with ROSATOM and did not accept any money.

Further, a “spy”? There’s no evidence of that.

Correct, I retract, FYI here's where he said it was a mistake (after signing) and not registering.

[1] https://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/444041-former-kasich...

The interesting thing is how they're succeeding. We haven't exactly seen a resurgence of the Klan of late, you might notice.

What's happening instead is that anything that can even be vaguely construed as racist, even if it doesn't hold up under scrutiny -- especially then -- becomes the subject of mob focus and attack.

Because if you can convince the mob to "righteously" attack innocent targets then you get fireworks. The mob is told that they're on the side of the angels and the target is a despicable fascist who should burn in hell, so they cross every line to take out the intolerable evil. Then it turns out the target wasn't, in actual fact, the literal devil, and that gets other people hopping mad at the mob over the real perils of mob justice. But by that point the mob has moved on to the next target who we're again assured is a very bad person, this time for real, promise.

It's tempting to go too far with this and come up with some kind of conspiracy theory where BLM as a whole is nothing but a Russian plot, but there are far too many real people in it for that.

What seems more likely is that you have an existing movement with many well-intentioned people but no strong leaders, and all it takes is an adversarial propaganda effort to whip enough of them into a frenzy and point them at a false target that will purposely generate a backlash.

Then you've got two huge camps of honest people fighting each other over a manufactured conflict which isn't even at the root of their genuine concerns.

>>We haven't exactly seen a resurgence of the Klan of late, you might notice.

Are you serious? While the Klan may be played out new fascist/racist groups are definitely on the march. Google "Boogaloo boys" as just one example.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boogaloo_movement :

> The specific ideology of each group varies, and views on topics such as race differ widely. Some are white supremacist or neo-Nazi groups who believe that the impending unrest will be a race war; other groups condemn racism and white supremacy.

> opinions on racism and attitudes towards law enforcement are among the views that differ the most between groups in the movement

> 4chan

> The term boogaloo alludes to the 1984 cult sequel Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo

> Hawaiian shirts

> satirical

It's the exact thing you would expect when the other side is desperately searching for an enemy to smash. Literally attention-seeking trolls from 4chan show up in a place and manner that causes people to pay attention to them.

Then law enforcement will take them seriously, because they have to, which gives them exactly the false legitimacy they're after.

And in any event not much of a big bad fascist/racist group when they can't even agree whether they're racists and the thing they do agree on is that they're anti-government, i.e. the complete opposite of fascism.

Interesting, had never thought from that angle, especially since Russia and China for most part seem chummy.

But in reality, they are neighbors and China has (or is in the process of) replacing Russia as the #2 power. So, while US has a lot to be careful for, it does indeed make sense that Russia has a more immediate threat.

If China becomes more powerful, it will start flexing muscle as the Russia-China border also, just like it flexes its muscle at its every other border.

Now, if we add that to the whole conspiracy theory about Trump and Russia, then things will start to add up even more.

Interesting...

> But in reality, they are neighbors and China has (or is in the process of) replacing Russia as the #2 power.

China is well beyond replacing Russia as a world power. Russia's GDP is ~1.658 trillion USD, which puts it below Canada. China's GDP? ~13.61 trillion USD.

Russia is pretty much a washed up has-been with nukes.

It’s shocking how far they’ve fallen. But they let corruption take hold of everything, gov, economy, etc., so no one in their right minds would want to invest.

They weren’t going to be the second economic power, but no reason they couldn’t have been number four behind Japan. But they could not help it, they squandered it.

Russian GDP is frequently touted as why they're overrated. However, the Russian kleptocracy believes real power is now coming from mastery of the cyberspace: disinformation, cybersecurity, offensive hacking capabilities, AI superiority[0]. This is a likely accurate understanding, and Russia has immense experience.

[0]https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/4/16251226/russia-ai-putin-r...

All they can do (bar actual war) is make other countries worse. It's pretty sad, "if we can't be better than them, then we'll make them worse off than us" is a terrible strategy for the world.

Making everyone else worse... the true Balkan curse.

If we can’t work, at least we can fight.

I don't think that theory is as true as you believe.

China ceded a whole lot of territory to Russia without too much of a fuss. The whole of Mongolia was part of Qing, and they gave that up. Dittobfor Vladivostok.

China's border disputes with India was created by the British, who just draw a line somewhere without consent. China offered to draw turn the Line of Actual Control into the official border, which means China would get about 30% of the land, but India rejected that offer, so now we are at a perpetual border conflict.

The PRC recognised Mongolia because it is not in a strategic location and because it needed the USSR.

Contrast with the ROC (Taiwan), which officially still includes it as far as I know although it treats it as an independent country in practice.

ROC also used their only veto to block Mongolia from UN recognition in 55.

Dugin's position on China is based off fear that an rising China is a vector for Atlantism aka alignment with the west / NATO. That risk has now dissipated so Russia and China's interest are now more congruent than ever.

Russia is grossly overrated, it's a second rate power compared to US and China.

Economically, yes. But they are still strong in defence tech. They are not that easy to push around just by threat of a war.

Is anybody going to go to war with Russia, China, or the US though? All three of these countries are too big and difficult to invade. You would quite literally have to decimate any one of them to keep hold of it. And economically it would be extremely unprofitable to the US and China. Russia could theoretically gain quite a bit if it managed to annex China but there is the whole issue of how would you even go about that? Nuclear war because it turns into an asshole measuring contest seems more likely but that is a straight doomsday scenario.

No I think future wars between these three will all be proxy and economic. It’s easier to do the asshole measuring in the Middle East than on your own turf. And economy is ultimately what matters.

I think the main issue is that Russia has a lot of tendrils in the US at this point starting with the one they have up Trump’s cloaca. They can do a lot of damage with cyber attacks and propaganda but ultimately it’s all about weakening the economy, not about annexation.

Yeah, you are right. Wars between these three are going to be proxy or economic.

I think actual war is unlikely between any two of these three but I think skirmishes are very likely. Russia and China/US I doubt as Russia doesn't seem to have a concern which overlaps with the interest from other two on ground except Syria I guess, but between US and China, South China Sea might become a flashpoint if they both keep pushing each other there out of ego.

Russia, as an ailing/former superpower, is quite sensitive to foreign incursions into its sphere of influence, especially the former USSR. Its wars against Ukraine and Georgia were motivated in large part by the fact that said countries were maneuvering closer to NATO and the West, for example. Conflict between Russia and China over expanding Chinese influence in Central Asia (given Chinese investment into infrastructure there) is not impossible.

Another flashpoint between Russia and China could well be the Russian Far East; Russia has long been pretty paranoid that China is going to try to claim the land as its own.

I think Russia might be fine with those considering they themselves[1] are part of China's flagship BRI project.

Didn't Russia and China settle their border differences in early 2000s?[2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_projects_of_the_Belt_a...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93Russia_border#Po...

> I think Russia might be fine with those considering they themselves[1] are part of China's flagship BRI project.

I can see that changing quite quickly if there's evidence of a political shift in Central Asia that disfavors Russia. Say a new Turkmeni strongman decides to start his foreign trips by visiting Beijing and doesn't call on Russia for a few years. Or a Putin-successor with flagging popularity sees being more combative here as an easy way to boost popularity (much as the Crimean annexation was driven in part by Putin attempting to improve his support)--although targeting Western country is more likely here.

> Didn't Russia and China settle their border differences in early 2000s?

The lack of existing border disputes doesn't mean that the population accepts the border. Take Alsace-Lorraine--the border was never a live dispute, but France and Germany sure saw fit to switch it to their side every opportunity in the early 20th century. The Chinese have their own self-image as being a nation unjustly carved up and tormented by foreign powers, and the current border is seen as being one of those examples [1].

To be clear: I don't see any of these flashpoints as likely; I'm just pointing out that there is a split between Russia and China that could lead to a war, and that war between any two of Russia/China/USA is plausible.

[1] https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2100228/c...

Further, these three countries are completely different, culturally and ethnically. Germany invading and occupying Austria might work - there isn't a great deal of difference between their people. But Russia, US and China are poles apart. Especially China

The rationale for Eastasia, Eurasia, and Oceania:

"YOU AND THE ATOMIC BOMB (1945)" http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html#part33

It looks like he may have swiped the tripartition from Burnham, THE MANAGERIAL REVOLUTION, but it also corresponds nicely to who has the bomb.

    Eastasia - CN
    Eurasia - FR (sub/air only), RU
    Oceania - UK (sub only), US

Edit: FWIW, after skimming a summary of Burnham (the precursor to IngSoc), I'd say that capital, having devised hedge funds, LBOs, and PE, have shown they know well how to keep management in their place.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23810147

Conflicts between capital and management are nothing new: roman senators were not supposed to be "in trade", but owning commercial ventures was perfectly respectable. (I've heard it jokingly said that one's golf handicap in strokes ~= one's office time in hours per week...)

Really second tier [1], just holding nuclear weapon [2] and good brainwashing by state media. Economically far behind [3]. Nothing to gain with direct confrontation, no TSMC in Crimea, wars for prestige should be successful.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_with_nuclear_we...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...

Compared to US, maybe. But you are not doing justice to them just by looking at the USD expenditure since they produce almost everything within Russia and it might be far cheaper to produce stuff there. Here is what GFP ranks their military at: https://www.globalfirepower.com/countries-listing.asp. Even an economically more powerful country like China still has defence imports from Russia.

It's ranking countries by an opaque "power index" (sorry, "PwrIndx", because vowels cost more or something?), and there is no description of what this entails other than "over 50 individual factors". The only thing I could find to drill down on contains effectively a bare listing of things such as army size, population size, number of tanks, oil reserves, etc.--which emphasizes quantity over quality.

So you might understand why my trust in those numbers to mean anything is rather lacking.

Yeah, not sure about that power index calculation myself. But I think it would be very hard to compare things on quality. Like take the example of air power. Sure F-22, F-35, B-2/B-21 combination probably beats any other force. But after that, it gets murky as every country will hype its own inventory. I think PRC still purchases some of the planes and parts from them, so I guess Russian made planes might have an edge on them at least in some areas.

It's worth pointing out that there's a distinction to be made between having modern military kit and being able to effectively use it. This is a problem that most notably plagues the Arab militaries, in that they have the funds to buy the good stuff, but they are unwilling to invest in the training (or the operational independence) to effectively use it [1].

I'm not sure how modern Russia and China fare in this regard, compared to each other or to Western powers. Both countries have definitely showed signs in the past decade or so of trying to push through military reforms and adding more junior officers compared to senior officers.

[1] Classic case study: first Gulf War, where the casualty ratio was a lopsided 100:1, despite the Iraqi military having rough numerical parity and access to modern kit.

I was comparing to EU (France, Germany, United Kingdom, Italy in the list), maybe should compare with NATO. Following your logic China production is far cheaper. Israel has a lot of exports too [1] vs [2] but that's a good point [3]. Unfortunately your list is opaque.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_industry_of_Israel

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_industry_of_Russia

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arms_industry#World's_largest_...

When talking about war, the only measure more useless and irrelevant than GDP and economic strength is toenail length.

Afghanistan is sitting at around $500/capita. Russia and the US have completely failed there despite four decades of conflict. Vietnam was about $60-70 during the tail end of the Vietnam War[1]. We know how that ended.

I'd say that maybe you could win if you abandoned traditional war tactics and just bombed indiscriminately and avoided suffering too many casualties, but, well, that was tried and failed in those wars. You also wouldn't want to try it against a country that can and will fire back.

[1] https://countryeconomy.com/gdp/vietnam?year=2008

So you are comparing Afghanistan and Russia, my point actually

The description of that book reads like it was penned by a highschooler who went on a camping trip took some acid and wrote down how they’d conquer the world by channeling their version of Stalin.

Yet so many of its proposals came into reality over the past two decades.

it's really troublesome that every country is actively trying to create chaos in other countries. I'm wondering why this is the case.

I would assume because you want it to. The worlds are quite different, foremost being that there is no active war going on. Is there something more substantiative than “Trade controls in Asia” that is being drawn on to inform this opinion?

The Chinese need more reasons to invade Taiwan right :-/

Can someone please bring up and discuss with world leaders that we are potentially heading toward terrifying conflicts. I'm very concerned about nuclear war over things like this.

I liked the world much better when we did our best to level the playing field (not always successfully) but which caused huge growth and prosperity for maybe billions of people.

We need a world forum on how we can move back to everyone playing by the rules - a new Bretton woods for our time that tries to prevent this technology arms race the Western governments and Chinese government want to fight with each other.

This is an extremely naive point of view. The CCP is a revisionist, expansionist rising power that already has been actively committing genocide of Uyghurs. It has more territorial disputes than it has physical neighbors. They want this, and have been fighting for this all this time.

Dude, you should check the map of the Qing, compare it to the Republic of China (Taiwan), then compare it to the PRC.

They ceded a whole lot of land all over the place, peacefully, as part of negotiations. For example the whole of Mongolia was part of Qing. They are not as war mongering as you believe.

The CCP is incredibly war mongering. Any look at 20th century history would tell you that. What is it with so many people reporting constant misinformation about the CCP into hacker news threads recently.

CCP is formed from people who wants to defend China's interests and defend the country from imperial powers of Japan, British, France and more. CCP fought wars to defend the country, it is the imperial powers that invaded China in the first place, and they thought to divide the land, the rich resources and colonize all of the Chinese people. Who is war mongering? Are we reading the same 20th century history? What about 19th century history?

CCP inherited many positions on sovereignty and territorial rights from Qing and Republic of China, which the US historically supported. Western media reports on China is far far from factual as well, with so much disinformation, biases and subjective views. Chinese positions and views are rarely covered in the media. Its so rare to see any positive views on China, despite a lot of amazing work that government has done to improve ordinary Chinese person's live. Here is the thing, we all view the world through our own lens and our culture. And the media is the reflection of how people interpret the world. The west has its position on China, Chinese people have their position on China. Chinese people and by extension CCP never want to dominate the world, they just want to defend what was part of China previously and be able to do so as equal peers. Any disputes and sovereignty claims should be negotiated and settled with mutual respect. And of course, no one is perfect, are there times when China is unethical and way to aggressive, definitely, but we should all use dialogue and attempts to understand each other's point of view.

Chinese wars are all about sovereignty and border disputes. U.S. wars are all fought on foreign lands in the interests of U.S. global dominance in foreign policy, trade, economy, technology etc. US uses diplomacy, ideology and identity politics, and military to challenge anyone who is considered a threat to the U.S. dominance. Who is more imperialistic and dominating you tell me.

What proof do you have that China is all about sovereignty and border disputes?

Why are they in Africa and selling advanced surveillance technology to countries?

They are in Africa to do business. I don’t know whether your claim of them selling surveillance technology is true, but even if it is, what does that have to do with your implied assertion that China is war mongering?

Many people point to the Sri Lanka port as an example of debt diplomacy. But what they fail to mention is that Sri Lanka is the ONLY example, that Sri Lanka is happy with the outcome, and that China recently cancelled debt payments for many African countries.

No I don't think they're war mongering, because a war is exactly what they don't want.

What they want is to leverage the power of a (well-run) hybrid command/market economy, huge population (larger talent pool), and power of being unsuspecting #2 and slowly absorb all the other countries and economies.

The US does this too, but at least we also want to spread democracy, so the people have a say.

If they can achieve the above, they will take control of the world.

What does 'absorb' mean? They want to be influential, that I agree with, but that's not really unique about China.

As for US spreading democracy, you should read up on how they overthrew Iran's democracy and replaced it with a dictatorship that suits the US interests better.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_Peo...

In a postnuclear world this comparison is absurd.

There is certainly some parallels but I doubt things will get so far.

It is in China's interest to stall for time. As their growth is higher than USA's, they will eventually have a bigger military and the US will be unable to fight a war over the South China sea.

Trump however is a joker. If he stands to loose the coming election he may choose to provoke a conflict.

Considering that we already have genocide being committed[1], the comparison is apt.

[1]:https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/07/15/uighur-genocide-xinjian...

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