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Coming Soon: Your Travel Will Be Restricted By Personal Carbon Allowances

“Experts suggest” your standard of living be reduced by over 85%

A report on the future of travel and tourism, co-authored by a travel agency called Intrepid Travel and The Future Labs Institute, posits a future deeply impacted by climate change and restrictions on tourist travel to combat it.

“A Sustainable Future for Travel”, warns of “travel extinction”, where some areas suffer such radical climate change that all tourism there ceases, and “personal carbon allowances” that will restrict how often one is permitted travel.

From the report (pardon the length, emphasis added):

“Carbon Passports

A personal carbon emissions limit will become the new normal as policy and people’s values drive an era of great change.

As demonstrated by a worldwide tourism boom, the frequency at which we can fly is once again seemingly unlimited.

Conscience and budgets permitting, we feel free to hop on planes from one place to the next. But this will change. ‘On our current trajectory, we can expect a pushback against the frequency with which individuals can travel, with carbon passports set to change the tourism landscape,’ says Raymond [Martin Raymond, Future Laboratories co-founder]

Personal carbon allowances could help curb carbon emissions and lower travel’s overall footprint.

These allowances will manifest as passports that force people to ration their carbon in line with the global carbon budget, which is 750bn tonnes until 2050.

By 2040, we can expect to see limitations imposed on the amount of travel that is permitted each year.

Experts suggest that individuals should currently limit their carbon emissions to 2.3 tonnes each year – the equivalent of taking a round-trip from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia..

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh III; Grieving: There Are No ‘Solutions’ to Overshoot

Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh III

August 14, 2020

Athens, Greece (1993) Photo by author

Grieving: There Are No ‘Solutions’ to Overshoot

My comment posted on The Tyee in response to an article highlighting the increased occurrence of earthquakes as a result of hydraulic fracturing by the oil and gas industry in an area of British Columbia, Canada, and imperilling local infrastructure and construction of a large hydroelectric dam.

_____

Until and unless there is a complete dismantling and dismemberment of the current sociopolitical and socioeconomic systems in place globally, these type of situations and associated abuses of people and the planet will continue will little disruption.

I realise that a significant majority of people believe democracy, technology, and human ingenuity can save us from ourselves but this is highly unlikely (impossible?). We are so far down the rabbit’s hole that such magical thinking is likely common so as to reduce our cognitive dissonance en masse (and compounded by the constant propaganda thrown at us). It does nothing to resolve our dilemmas; in fact, it might actually hamper ‘solutions’ by avoiding more effective pathways and harvesting our finite resources even faster.

I truly believe we need to move quickly through Kubler-Ross’s stages of grief, getting past the denial and bargaining (for this is what is happening as more and more people come to realise we are pursuing unsustainable and suicidal ways, but don’t want to face the uncomfortable and negative consequences that are becoming increasingly obvious; they engage in magical thinking to convince themselves we’re okay with just a tweak here or a tweak there).

We need to come to accept that our chasing the infinite growth chalice must stop, and that all the ‘baubles’ promised from this pursuit by the sociopathic ‘leaders’ that profit from their control of the wealth-generating and -extraction systems that arise from this economic/political quest of growth are not worth the journey over the cliff ahead.

If we do not choose to stop this insanity now, we can be assured that nature will do it for us and we are not going to enjoy the choices nature makes for us to reset things to some sort of balance. The collapse that accompanies overshoot is never ‘fun’ for the species experiencing it.

And we have a species that will be fighting over the scarce resources remaining with the most destructive weaponry in human history. In fact, this fight has been going on for some decades (one could argue it’s been going on since humans first ‘arrived’ on the planet) and seems to be intensifying quickly (and has little to do with the left/right political spectrum disagreements, but a result of diminishing returns on our exploitation of resources). If we should have learned anything from the spread of Covid-19, is that exponential growth moves much faster than we imagine and can overwhelm a system in no time.

While it is very likely (guaranteed?) that our sociopathic ruling class will not stop this insanity (for it is their revenue stream and base of power), it is up to each and every one of us to remove ourselves as much as is possible from the Matrix and all the components of it that supports the unsustainable systems we are enmeshed in.

The journey will not be easy nor straightforward, but if we reach a tipping point of world citizens that reject the systems imposed upon us by the ‘elite’ we may just have a chance…maybe.

Canada To Create Registry Of Podcasters In Potential Censorship Initiative 

Canada To Create Registry Of Podcasters In Potential Censorship Initiative 

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is taking Canada down a dangerous path of censorship to regulate streaming services and social media platforms. The next regulation phase comes as some podcasters will soon have to register with the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission.

The Online Streaming Act, formerly Bill C-11, goes into effect on Nov. 28, meaning any online streaming service that operates in Canada and generates revenue of more than $10 million in a given year will have to register with CRTC.

The Canadian government pitches the new rule as a “modern broadcasting framework that can adapt to changing circumstances. To do that, we need broad engagement and robust public records.” It requires those podcasters to register with CRTC ‘only once’ and “collects basic information” from them, such as:

“First, the CRTC is setting out which online streaming services need to provide information about their activities in Canada.”

So what’s with the government creating a database of prominent podcasters?

One potential reason could be for the Liberal government to censor unapproved government narratives quickly. Having a registry of podcasters and the type of content they create makes it much easier for those in the government’s censorship department.

The CRTC now wants to regulate podcasts,” Toronto Sun’s Brian Lilley posted on X, adding, “Here is my simple message to them. Go to hell.”

On Sunday morning, Elon Musk chimed in on the conversation, responding to X account Wall Street Silver: “Regulate podcasts!?” 

While Trudeau has called everyone under the sun a ‘Nazi,’ from a Jewish member of parliament named Melissa Lantsman to “Freedom Convoy” trucker protesters, the radical leftist prime minister recently applauded a literal Waffen-SS Nazi with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky in Canada’s Parliament.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Canada Launches UN Declaration Targeting Online ‘Disinformation’

Canada Launches UN Declaration Targeting Online ‘Disinformation’

Canada has launched a U.N. declaration that calls for action to protect what it calls “information integrity” and to tackle “disinformation.”

Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly has launched a United Nations declaration that calls for action to protect what it calls “information integrity” and to tackle “disinformation.”

Ms. Joly launched the Global Declaration on Information Integrity Online jointly with Dutch Foreign Affairs Minister Hanke Bruins Slot during the U.N. General Assembly in New York on Sept. 20.

“Information integrity is essential to help ensure the strength of democratic processes and to protect fundamental rights,” says a joint statement by Canada and the Netherlands.

“The erosion of information integrity, including the propagation of disinformation, weakens the strength of democratic engagement.”

In a speech on Sept. 20, Ms. Joly said the declaration is a “concrete step toward establishing global norms on disinformation, misinformation, and information integrity,” the National Post reported.

Speaking to the U.N. on the same day, Ms. Bruins Slot said the emerging online environment makes it difficult to determine what is and what is not truthful.

“Every day, the world is flooded with disinformation and misinformation. Rapid advances in technology—particularly generative AI—make it more and more difficult to tell fact from fiction,” she said.

Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, Japan, and South Korea are among the 30 countries that have signed the declaration.

The declaration promotes concepts such as respect for “the right to freedom of opinion and expression, and the freedom to seek, receive, and impart information.”

It says signatories need to “take active steps to address misinformation and disinformation targeted at women, LGBTIQ+ persons, persons with disabilities and Indigenous Peoples.”

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Science Snippets: “If We Start Right Now …”

Science Snippets: “If We Start Right Now …”

Every day, I receive an email message from at least one person with this line, or something like it: “If we start right now …” The message then goes on to say that, if we start right now, we can fix the climate emergency. We can preserve habitat for human animals if we start taking action, collectively, right now.

The latest message came from Bill, of course. Bill knows the message from the corporate media is nonsense. In fact, the content of Bill’s message was one line, followed by a link to an article in Axios. The line written by Bill was, “More hopium soaked BS.” Sure enough, the article in Axios was, and is, hopium-soaked BS. Here’s the title of the paper published 13 June 2023, and then I’ll describe and quote from the article: “Climate extremes raise questions, concerns about faster warming.”

Nature Bats Last Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

The article begins with a figure of daily global average sea surface temperatures plotted over time. Included in the graph is the 1982-2011 average, as if that’s a reasonable baseline. It includes the average for this period and it highlights sea surface temperature for all of 2022 and the first half of 2023.

Early on, the article includes a section called The big picture. Here’s the big picture, which includes embedded links to four additional stories: “Global surface air and ocean temperatures have spiked sharply in recent months, along with record low Antarctic sea ice, extreme heat events around the world, as Canada’s heat and wildfire crisis grips North America. Along with other developments, the combination of these factors have raised alarms regarding whether climate change is accelerating.”

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Canada’s Bill C-26: Yet Another Government Power Grab

Canada’s Bill C-26: Yet Another Government Power Grab

Technocracy – a 1933 cartoon by Winsor McCay.

Soviet Era Ethos Stomps Privacy and Due-Process

Another doozy from the Canadian government.

Following along several other bills winding their way along the Road to Serfdom…

  • Bill C-11 regulates the internet under the CRTC and paves the way toward institutionalized content moderation, the requirement for licenses to publish online, and regulation of user generated content (in Senate)
  • Bill C-36 the Online Harms Bill sought to designate political dissent as “hate speech” and invoked penalties for criticizing politicians (not sure where this one is at the moment).
  • Bill C-18 throws a funding lifeline to Canada’s flailing agitprop industry (a.k.a the mainsteam media), in that it will require tech platforms to pay licensing fees for content the media outlets post there (passed third reading in November). This bill will reward big media conglomerates like Bell, while freezing out small and independent organizations.

Here comes another one, Bill C-36: An Act respecting cyber security, amending the Telecommunications Act and making consequential amendments to other Acts, which passed first reading last June.

It’s been largely flying under everybody’s radar so far. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association has been actively raising awareness and Michael Geist had Brenda McPhail, their Director of the Privacy, Technology and Surveillance Program on his podcast last October.

 



We mentioned C-26 in AxisOfEasy #273 citing Gowling WLG’s coverage of it by Brent Arnold (Brent Arnold sits on the Internet Society Canada Chapter board, as do I, but I am writing this post from my role as easyDNS CEO, and not ISCC.)The Government Hereby Grants Itself The Following Powers:

The new bill is ostensibly a cyber-security and critical infrastructure bill, but it is riddled with nebulous, open-ended terms, Kafka-esque secrecy provisions, onerous penalties and conspicuously absent of any semblance due process:

…click on the above link to read the rest…

More Than Half of Canadians Worried About Putting Food on the Table: Poll

More Than Half of Canadians Worried About Putting Food on the Table: Poll

A new poll suggests that more than half of Canadians surveyed are worried about having enough money to put food on the table, while 86 percent of people are worried the country will face an economic recession in 2023.

Food inflation is reported at higher than 10 percent, and the most recent Canada Food Price Report released Dec. 5 says the cost of groceries will increase another 5 to 7 percent on average next year. These are the highest increases in food prices in the last 12 years that the report has been produced.

“This year’s report predicts that a family of four, including a man (age 31–50), woman (age 31–50), boy (age 14–18), and girl (age 9–13) will pay up to $14,767.36 for food, an increase of up to $966.08 from the total annual cost in 2021,” said the report.

Food price increases in Alberta, British Columbia, Newfoundland and Labrador, Ontario, and Saskatchewan will likely be higher than the national average in 2022, while price increases in the remaining provinces will be lower.

Gas Costs

Besides food prices, Canadians are also worried about putting gas in their cars and trucks. Sixty-one percent of 1,005 adult Canadians surveyed Nov. 11–15 in the Ipsos poll commissioned by Global News said they were worried they may not be able to afford fuel for their vehicles.

Seventy-one percent were worried that interest rates will rise too fast, while 42 percent said they were worried about losing their jobs if the economy did not rebound.

Fifty-two percent of Canadians surveyed said they were worried they would be short of money to buy Christmas gifts, and 48 percent said they were worried about overspending during the holidays. Eighty-one percent of those surveyed were worried inflation was making everyday items less affordable.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Be it Resolved: Don’t Trust Mainstream Media

Be it Resolved: Don’t Trust Mainstream Media

My opening remarks for the Munk Debates in Toronto tonight

Tonight at the Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto, I’m teaming up with The War on the West author Douglas Murray in the prestigious Munk Debates. Our opponents are Malcolm Gladwell, bestselling author and New Yorker staff writer, and Michelle Goldberg, MSNBC contributor and columnist for the New York Times. The subject tonight: “Be it resolved: Do not trust the mainstream media.”

You can probably guess which side I’ll be arguing. Below, a transcript of my opening remarks (you’ll receive this as the event begins). More on the event after its completion. Thanks to everyone for being patient this week as I prepared.

Be it resolved: don’t trust mainstream media.” My name is Matt Taibbi, I’ve been a reporter for 30 years, and I argue for the resolution. You should not trust mainstream media.

I grew up in the press. My father was a reporter. My stepmother was a reporter. My godparents were reporters. Every adult I knew growing up seemed to be in media. I even used my father’s TV mic flag as a toy. I’d go in the backyard, stand with my back to the house, and play “live shot”:

Chet, I’m in Norwell, Massachusetts, where firefighters are battling a three-alarm blaze…

I love the news business. It’s in my bones. But I mourn for it. It’s destroyed itself.

My father had a saying: “The story’s the boss.” In the American context, if the facts tell you the Republicans were the primary villains in this or that disaster, you write that story. If the facts point more at Democrats, you go that way…

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Canadian Banks Slammed For Continued Fossil Fuel Investments

Canadian Banks Slammed For Continued Fossil Fuel Investments

  • Canadian banks are receiving backlash from investors for their continued investments in fossil fuels.
  • All Canadian banks were revealed to have increased their exposure to fossil fuels between 2020 and 2021, by between 25 percent—TD and BMO—and 132 percent for CIBC.
  • The report is the latest example of investor pressure on financial institutions to reduce their lending to fossil fuel companies.

An investor group has criticized Canadian lenders for investing heavily in fossil fuels despite the Paris Agreement, noting that all of the largest Canadian banks still need to be ready for net zero.

In a report titled Net Zero Policy Report Card, Investors for Paris Compliance graded Canada’s largest banks on several indicators, including fossil fuel investments, climate targets, and emissions reporting.

In fossil fuel investments, all banks were revealed to have increased their exposure between 2020 and 2021, by between 25 percent—TD and BMO—and 132 percent for CIBC.

According to the report, RBC invested $48.5 billion in fossil fuels last year, up 101 percent on 2020, and Scotiabank increased its exposure to the sector by 87 percent to $38 billion.

TD’s fossil fuel investments rose to $26.4 billion, and BMO’s went up to$23.5 billion. CIBC invested $27.8 billion in fossil fuels in 2021, Investors for Paris Compliance said, noting that the sixth bank under review, National Bank, had no data published on its fossil fuel industry exposure.

The report is the latest example of investor pressure on financial institutions to reduce their lending to the fossil fuel sector and focus on emission reporting and reducing measures in line with international Paris Agreement commitments.

This, however, stands in stark contrast with warnings, including from the IEA, that not enough is being invested in the new supply of fossil fuels, including coal, which this year saw a real renaissance.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Oil is Bankrupt (If We Want It)

This figure shows how Alberta’s let-the-future-pay-for-cleanup funding model is playing out. The red curve shows the growth of cleanup liabilities, which accumulate as new wells are drilled and not cleaned up. The blue curve shows the assets that will pay for this cleanup — the industry’s future income (assuming various prices of oil and gas).

Albert’s oil-patch is a zombie, the walking dead. The companies that extract oil there owe more money than they can pay, more than they can borrow, more than they can earn. If they were made to pay their lawful debts, they would all go bankrupt, and, in so doing, would end the extraction of one of the dirtiest, worst sources of oil in the world.

Now, there’s an argument that all the oil companies are busted, Alberta or no. If they were made to pay for the damage they’ve done to our world, the millions their deadly products have killed and the billions they threaten, they would all be cleaned out.

But that argument depends on making those companies pay for those debts, which are not legal debts, but moral ones. Big Oil has proven itself remarkably adept at avoiding those moral debts . The costs that Big Oil imposed on all of us are diffused, the profits they gained through their crimes are concentrated into their hands, so it’s very hard to hold them to account.

The economics researcher Blair Fix has written a long companion piece to The Big Cleanup, a report by his collaborator Regan Boychuk for the Alberta Liabilities Disclosure Project (ALDP).

In his essay, Fix examines the power relationships that have allowed the oil companies to go on risking our civilization and our species with impunity. He observes that many environmentalists claim that if the true costs of the oil industry were borne by the extraction companies, they’d all be bankrupt already.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

‘Canary in the Gold Mine’: Asset Seizures Could Skyrocket Due to Post-Pandemic Debt Default, Says Bailiff

‘Canary in the Gold Mine’: Asset Seizures Could Skyrocket Due to Post-Pandemic Debt Default, Says Bailiff

North Central Bailiffs in Kelowna, B.C., is busy. In fact, as pandemic restrictions and mandates continue to ease, owner Mike Sundstrom has never had more work end up on his desk.

From Sundstrom’s vantage point, the industry where he makes his living as a licensed bailiff and licensed sheriff isn’t prepared to handle the massive surge of claims he predicts is just around the corner.

His firm, one of several bailiff firms in the province, gets to see a sweeping overview where most of the financial and economic sectors collide. And given how many lenders and government agencies hit the pause button on collections during the past two and a half years of COVID-19 when Canadians’ ability to pay was most fragile, Sundstrom says every sector is now beginning to call him.

“[Bailiffs are] the canary in the gold mine,” he told The Epoch Times.

From banking to car dealerships to residential defaults, he says asset seizures continue to climb. Yet, he says, what has him even more concerned is the fallout when the slow pace of government claims such as tax files eventually make their way through the system.

“Every time I turn around there’s a new file coming in, and we’re seeing this all at once,” Sundstrom says.

“Everything is up. Repossessions are up, evictions are up. And this even though we’re not seeing Revenue Canada, PST [provincial sales tax], and WCB [Workers’ Compensation Board] back to full speed…

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Logging industry targeted B.C. old-growth forests for more than a century, SFU study finds

Logging industry targeted B.C. old-growth forests for more than a century, SFU study finds

Ken Lertzman’s paper shows between 1860 and 2016, 87 per cent of logging took place in old-growth forests

A man in a raincoat walks past a giant tree in a forest.
A man walks past an old growth tree in Avatar Grove near Port Renfrew, B.C. A new paper published by Simon Fraser University professor Ken Lertzman shows that decades of logging on the province’s Central Coast targeted the highest-value forests first. (Jonathan Hayward/The Canadian Press)

The worsening effects of climate change are compounding the historical loss of British Columbia’s old-growth forests, says the co-author of a new paper that shows decades of logging on the province’s Central Coast targeted the highest-value forests first.

“History tells us that we have really depleted these high-value elements of the landscape and that we can’t keep going,” said Ken Lertzman, professor emeritus at Simon Fraser University’s school of resource and environmental management.

“At the same time, [forests] have never been under greater threat from natural disturbances that are driven by a changing climate.”

Some forests have been set aside for logging because of their ecological and cultural value, only to be scorched by increasingly severe wildfires, he added.

That’s the reality today’s policy-making must reflect when it comes to determining how B.C.’s forests will be valued and used in years to come, Lertzman said.

Vital old growth first to be cut

The paper published Monday in the peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences examined more than 150 years of logging across 8,550 square kilometres of forests around Bella Bella on B.C.’s Central Coast.

Of nearly 570 square kilometres logged in the area between 1860 and 2016, 87 per cent of that logging took place in old-growth forests starting in 1970, it shows.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

“Ferocious Fiona” Makes Landfall In Canada, Leaving Hundreds Of Thousands Without Power

“Ferocious Fiona” Makes Landfall In Canada, Leaving Hundreds Of Thousands Without Power

Powerful storm Fiona battered eastern Canada on Saturday with hurricane-force winds and torrential rains, leaving hundreds of thousands of people without power.

The National Hurricane Center said Post-Tropical Cyclone Fiona made landfall early Saturday morning on the northeast corner of mainland Nova Scotia. It added Fiona had maximum sustained winds of 81 mph, peaking at times of over 100 mph.

Canadian Hurricane Center said Fiona was one of the lowest pressured land falling storms ever to hit Canada. For some context, lower the pressure means stronger the storm.

As of 0800 ET, the storm was 160 miles northeast of Halifax, packing winds of 85 mph and barreling north at around 23 mph.

According to Nova Scotia Power, over 400,000 people across the province of about one million were without power as of 0800 ET.

… and there goes the internet.

Social media users tweeted footage of the damage left behind by Fiona.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

As the planet warms, people are moving. Will Canada welcome them?

As droughts, deteriorating farmland and rising sea levels push people around the world from their homes, advocates in Canada are calling on the federal government to support those who are — and will be — displaced by the climate crisis.

Last week, Climate Action Network Canada (CAN-Rac), a body of more than 100 environmental groups across the country, sent a letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Immigration Minister Sean Fraser asking them to grant permanent residency to all 1.7 million migrants in Canada, including half a million undocumented people. This “regularization” process is key to climate justice, explained Caroline Brouillette, national policy manager for CAN-Rac.

“Fighting the climate crisis is not only about reducing our emissions, it’s about how we care for one another — and that’s why we’re asking for this,” she said.

Climate change is already a factor causing people to immigrate to Canada, said Syed Hussan, the executive director of the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change (MWAC), which worked with CAN-Rac to send the letter. But while climate migrants come to the country as workers, students or refugees, they “may not even be able to describe their experiences having resulted from climate change.”

He said many migrants’ understanding of climate change is that it causes poverty.

“[Climate change is] actually closely linked to economic deterioration,” Hussan explained.

Take farmers, for example. Soil degradation is one of climate change’s greatest impacts, he said. Poor soil means poor crops, forcing farmers to move to towns and cities to find work. But many fail to find jobs in larger urban centres, he added, leaving them no choice but to leave their home country and seek opportunities in Canada.

Health Authorities Tracked Movements of Canadians via Cellphones During Pandemic

Health Authorities Tracked Movements of Canadians via Cellphones During Pandemic

PHAC claims data was anonymized.

Xinhua News Agency via Getty Images

Health authorities in Canada tracked people’s movements via their cellphones during the pandemic, with trips to pharmacies and liquor stores being logged, it has been revealed.

“BlueDot, an intelligence analysis company, prepared movement reports for PHAC using anonymized data acquired from mobile devices. The reports helped the public health agency understand movement patterns during the pandemic,” reports Reclaim the Net.

The Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) was able to obtain detailed insights into people’s movements and recorded their visits to liquor stores, pharmacies, visits to friends and trips to other provinces, also collecting information on time spent in each location.

“Questions remain about the specifics of the data provided if Canadians’ rights were violated, and what advice the Liberal government was given,”said Conservative MP Damien Kurek.

The ethics committee asserted that the PHAC should have told Canadians their movements were potentially being monitored and given them the option to opt out.

The PHAC claimed the program was “not about following individuals’ trips to a specific location, but rather in understanding whether the number of visits to specific locations have increased or decreased over time.”

As we highlighted last week, the CDC purchased tracking data for millions of Americans’ mobile phones with an intention of monitoring their movements to see if they were complying with lockdowns, curfews and travel restrictions during the COVID pandemic.

During the first winter lockdown in January 2021, a poll found that a plurality of people in Britain supported giving the government powers to spy on people’s movements via cellphone tracking to enforce lockdown.

In the same month, Conservative MP Jeremy Hunt called for the government to use GPS tracking technology to ensure Brits were complying with COVID quarantine measures.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Olduvai IV: Courage
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Olduvai II: Exodus
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