Russian journalist: Putin´s 15 years have been "a monumental moral catastrophe"

Kashin to Putin: "Whoever comes after you will have to create Russia
 all over again, from scratch."

Oleg Kashin, one of Russia´s most prominent independent journalists, who in 2010 was nearly killed in an attack, has written an open letter to Vladimir Putin and his puppet Dmitry Medvedev, which should be read by all the western leaders who are eager to co-operate with the Russian dictator:

But don’t flatter yourself: the last 15 years haven’t been a revival for Russia, and the country hasn’t risen from its knees. This time has been a monumental moral catastrophe for our generation. And both of you, Mr Putin and Mr Medvedev, are personally responsible for it.
In Russian society today, even obvious questions about good and evil have become impossible. Is it OK to steal? Is it OK to cheat? Is murder ethical? With each of these questions, it’s become customary in Russia now to answer that things aren’t so simple. All your good works have left the nation demoralised and disoriented.
But you carry on, managing your problems without even realising that you’re digging the hole yourselves. “Things aren’t so simple” is what the angry crowd will tell you in unison, when it comes time for you to run away. I suspect that you’re afraid of this crowd, but just remember that it was you who created it, and you’ve got nobody to blame but yourselves.

Having cut yourselves and your elites off from society, you’ve also cut yourselves off from reality. There’s a wall separating you from the rest of us, and everyone on our side shudders each time the next one of your goons decides to show what a thinker he is by stepping up to a podium and talking about how the population is being controlled by computer chips, about the “Euro-Atlantic conspiracy,” or about how the Americans are weaponising cellular research.

Whoever comes after you will have to create Russia all over again, from scratch. This is your only service to history– what you’ve spent 15 years achieving. Your favourite justification for all this (the only one, there are no others) are the troubles of the 1990s, but it’s important to understand that you preserved and strengthened everything about this period that we’ve come to hate today. You didn’t fix anything. You only made it all worse.

Garry Kasparov to Western leaders: "Stop legitimizing Putin"

Garry Kasparov is - as always - spot on:

Garry Kasparov

Bloomberg TV: "What do you think Obama should do now?"
Me: <pause> "Resign".
Ok, I don't expect that to happen, but my outrage is starting to overtake my grief over Boris's murder. To the question of what the leaders of the free world should do, look at what they have NOT done for years and years to constrain Putin. Treating him like one of the guys, just another leader, instead of a brutal dictator has enabled and encouraged him and is why he is invading Ukraine and why Boris is dead. It may be a little too much to say Obama, Merkel, Cameron, & Hollande have blood on their hands, but they will next time. They can have no more illusions about Putin's true nature. Stop legitimizing Putin, for by so doing, they delegitimize brave fighters like Boris.

Vladimir Putin - "A common criminal dressed up as a Head of State"

 "A common criminal dressed up as a Head of State"

Yes, Vladimir Putin is nothing but a "common criminal dressed up as a Head of State":

Russian President Vladimir Putin is a “common criminal dressed up as a Head of State” who ordered the murder of Alexander Litvinenko to stop him exposing him, the inquiry heard.

The former spy was murdered for trying to reveal Putin’s close links to organised crime and a cabal of crime lords who prop up his corrupt regime, it was claimed.

Ben Emmerson QC, representing the Litvinenko family, said the trail behind the “act of unspeakable barbarism” led directly to Putin’s door.

He said Russia was a “Mafia state” where the Kremlin and Russian organised crime syndicates were “indistinguishable”.

Mr Litvinenko could even show crimes committed or authorises by Mr Putin personally, it was claimed.

And the seeds of hatred Putin had towards his former agent which would eventually lead to the murder were first sown in clashes more than eight years before, the inquiry heard.
Putin was a “ruthless and deadly enemy” and “we find Mr Putin's fingerprints as clearly as we find the traces of nuclear material in the forensic evidence”, he said.
In his opening statement to the inquiry, Mr Emmerson said: "Vladimir Putin should be unmasked by this inquiry as nothing more or less than a common criminal dressed up as a Head of State.

Read the entire article here
 

An excellent documentary: "Putin´s Way"

 This excellent documentary on Vladimir Putin and the mafia state he has created is highly recommended:

The documentary does not address the question about how the free world should react to what has happened in Putin´s Russia, but in a separate interview Walter Clemens, professor emeritus of political science at Boston University and an associate of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University, gives his well founded opinion:


What should the international community do about Mr. Putin?

CLEMENS: He should be indicted and brought before the International Criminal Court. Putin is probably guilty of all types of transgressions the court is authorized to prosecute—genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and aggression. As Russia’s president or prime minister, Putin dispatched Russian armed forces against the peoples of Chechnya, Georgia, and Ukraine while keeping them in a province of Moldova. His troops killed between 100,000 and 200,000 Chechens, split off South Ossetia and Abkhazia from Georgia, and watched as South Ossetians carried out ethnic cleansing of Georgian villages. Putin’s forces have seized Crimea, putting Tatars as well as Ukrainians at risk. Putin has fomented separatism in eastern Ukraine and sent several thousand Russians to fight alongside the separatists. He may not have intended for his proxies to shoot down a Malaysian airliner, but he provided the equipment and training that permitted them to do so and kill nearly 300 civilians. When weapons based in Russia strike targets inside Ukraine, however, there is no doubt about Putin’s intentions.

Vladimir Putin´s press conference on December 18, the birthday of Joseph Stalin

Putin:
"What [The West] is trying to do is chain the bear, take out his claws...what we're trying to do is maintain our sovereignty and independence."

Vladimir Putin has today, on the birthday of Joseph Stalin, held a televised press conference.
The leader of the world´s foremost thugocracy carefully followed the advice of another Russian leader, Vladimir Lenin, when answering questions: "A lie told often enough becomes the truth".

Anne Applebaum on Putin and his KGB cronies: "theft on a grand scale"

 "European politicians as high-ranking as Schröder and Silvio Berlusconi—all have been well compensated, directly or indirectly, for offering their support."

If you only read one article about the mafia state that Vladimir Putin has created, this is the one to read:

In place of a genuine media and a real civil society, Putin and his inner circle slowly put into place a system for manufacturing disinformation and mobilizing support on a new and spectacular scale. Once the KGB had retaken the country, in other words, it began once again to act like the KGB—only now it was better funded and more sophisticated. Today’s Russian “political technologists” make use of their state-owned media, including English-language outlets such as the TV news channel Russia Today; armies of paid social media “trolls” who post on newspaper comment pages, as well as on Twitter, Facebook, and other sites; fake “experts” whose quotes can be presented with fake authority; and real experts to whom Putin’s officials have granted special access, or have simply paid. Former Western ambassadors to Moscow, businessmen who have been recruited to Russian company boards, European politicians as high-ranking as Schröder and Silvio Berlusconi—all have been well compensated, directly or indirectly, for offering their support. --


Indeed, in the months since Putin’s invasion of Crimea, it has become fashionable to suggest that the harder-line face that Putin has more recently shown to the world is somehow, once again, the West’s “fault,” that we have provoked Russia into autocratic behavior through our talk of democracy in Ukraine or that—once again—the “reform process” was somehow brought to a halt because the Russians felt threatened by the expansion of NATO or by Western policy in the Balkans.
But after reading Dawisha’s book, and after absorbing the implications of the stories she has so carefully pulled together from so many sources, it is simply not possible to take this argument seriously. Since 2000, Russia has been ruled by a revanchist, revisionist elite with origins in the old KGB. This elite had been working its way back to power since the late 1980s, using theft on a grand scale, taking advantage of the secrecy provided by Western offshore havens, and cooperating with organized crime.
Once in power, the new elite sought to maintain control using the same methods that the KGB always used to maintain control: through the manipulation of public emotion, and by undermining the institutions of the West, and the ideals of the West, in any way that it can. Based on its record so far, it has every reason to expect continued success.

Garry Kasparov: "Putin’s bargaining power has been greatly overestimated"

Garry Kasparov´s speech at the Oslo Freedom Forum should be compulsory reading for European and American leaders:

After the fall of the Iron Curtain, it made perfect sense to integrate, to “engage”, with the morally and economically impoverished countries emerging from the Communist Dark Ages. But even after the European Union and NATO were expanded to their logical limits, the West continued to engage with authoritarian nations and leaders who wanted nothing to do with human rights and free markets within their own borders. Countries like Putin’s Russia and China received the economic benefits of engagement with the free world, but never ceased their crackdowns on civil society at home.

[SLIDE: ‘ENGAGEMENT’ PHOTOS: PUTIN WITH SCHROEDER, BERLUSCONI, LIPPONEN G8,]

Putin in particular has been very successful using the free world’s open borders, open press, and open political systems to his advantage. Just a note, that if not for Putin’s blatant aggression in Ukraine the so-called G-8 Summit would have taken place in Sochi last summer. Putin and his representatives have put many prominent Western politicians on his payroll, held fundraisers for political parties, brought influential western companies and executives into his network, and flooded western banks and markets with the easy cash they love, paid for with their own oil and gas money. However, Putin’s bargaining power has been greatly overestimated.

[SLIDE OIL & GAS IMPORT-EXPORT CHARTS]

The free world still has many advantages in this fight, and could have all the leverage it needs, if only it had the courage to use it. The EU, for example, gets only a third of its oil and gas from Russia. Substantial, and in many ways shameful, since it has been clear for years that Putin is not a reliable partner. Russia’s annexation of Crimea took place in March and Europe did nothing for seven months to find an alternative to Russian gas. And of course Norway could be one of the options! Today we still hear that “Europe could freeze” if Putin cuts the gas supply. But Russia exports over 80% of its oil and gas to the EU! Over 80%! Who has the leverage here? By boycotting or taxing those exports, or even making a credible threat to do so, Europe could cripple the cash flow that keeps Putin and his gang in power.
There are other powerful measures that could be employed. Russia’s hundreds of billions of dollars in cash reserves kept in Europe and the US could be frozen, as Iran’s were in 1979; Russian state corporations can be stripped of their cash flow; and Putin’s oligarchs’ assets can be seized to create a rift between the Godfather and his lieutenants. Total isolation is not possible today, but the free world must break all forms of dependency on dictatorships. Engagement with dictators has failed.

[SLIDE OF HEADLINES ABOUT PUTIN’S LOBBYING AND PROPAGANDA IN THE WEST]

This failed engagement policy of the West has given Putin something the Soviet leaders never dreamed of: an open frequency for propaganda and lobbying, and open markets for their natural resources and cash. Russia and China have channels on Western cable TV and teams of influential lobbyists in every capital. But sellers need buyers. Pipelines cannot easily be redirected. Russia’s ruling elite and their families have no desire to live in the country they have so effectively looted and ruined.
So the free world holds the winning cards in this game of geopolitical poker, but keeps folding its hand whenever Putin bluffs – and he does so regularly and successfully. A dictator knows what he must do to stay in power: he must look strong; he fights to survive. Democratically elected leaders are more worried about the next poll, the next election, or passing on tough decisions to their successors. Conflict and sacrifice aren’t winning campaign issues. Western leaders complain about jobs that could be lost from a confrontation, but how many jobs will be lost from global instability when dictators go unchallenged?
But we must fight – now, or later. If we have learned anything about dictators it is that they do not go away on their own. Putin is not a nightmare that goes away when you open your eyes! The longer we wait, the harder it will be. The price keeps going up every day. There is never a safe and easy solution. Sanctions can be effective, but they must be strong enough and fast enough to deter.
Read the entire speech here

Nigel Farage again defends Russia´s dictator Vladimir Putin

UKIP´s Nigel Farage has again defended Russian dictator Vladimir Putin´s aggression in Ukraine:

The West must stop opposing Vladimir Putin’s incursion into Ukraine and join forces with the Russian leader in the fight against Islamic extremists, Nigel Farage has said,

The Ukip leader said that Western countries must stop "playing war games in Ukraine and poking the “Russian bear with a stick” because Mr Putin is “on our side” in the war against Islamic extremism.

Mr Farage courted controversy earlier this year when he said that Mr Putin, the former KGB officer, is the statesman he most admires.

In a debate this morning at the European Parliament Mr Farage a sympathetic interpretation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, he said European states had “directly encouraged” the uprising that “led in turn to Vladimir Putin reacting”.

Mr Putin has been blamed by the West for prolonging the bloodshed in Syria and propping up the regime by supplying arms including helicopter gunships to President Assad, and repeatedly blocking moves to censure or sanction him at the United Nations.

Read the entire article here

Mr. Farage is totally wrong on this. I have a lot of sympathy for his criticism of the present European Union, but to defend the criminal and corrupted dictator Putin is unacceptable.

 

How does one deal with a mentally unstable dictator in charge of huge nuclear arsenal?

Western governments face a terrifying dilemma: How do you deal with a mentally unstable dictator in charge of a huge arsenal of nuclear weapons?

Vladimir Putin raised the spectre of nuclear war with the West on Friday as he defied international condemnation over his decision to send thousands of Russian troops and heavy armour into Ukraine.

Accused by Europe and Nato of launching a full-scale invasion of eastern Ukraine, the Russian leader boasted to a group of Russian youngsters that "It's best not to mess with us."

In language not seen since the height of the Cold War, he told his audience: "Thank God, I think no one is thinking of unleashing a large-scale conflict with Russia. I want to remind you that Russia is one of the leading nuclear powers."

Read the entire article here

The private life of dictator Vladimir Putin: "Singing songs together" with his English teacher on Sundays ...

 "His teacher helps him learn difficult words – singing songs together".

The result of Putin´s Sunday singing sessions with his English teacher?

Ben Judah´s Newsweek article "Behind the Scenes in Putin's Court: The Private Habits of a Latter-Day Dictator" makes interesting reading. This is how Judah describes the research behind the article:

In the course of my research I had the chance to interview everyone from former prime ministers, to Putin’s current ministers and regional governors, down to senior bureaucrats, close advisers, personal aides and ordinary people. Using information from these interviews, I have pieced together the private habits and routines of this latter-day dictator.

 The article includes e.g. the following interesting information:

The President keeps busy, even on Saturday and Sunday. At weekends, his schedule becomes more haphazard: but there are sometimes study sessions in the afternoon. Mostly, English language. His teacher helps him learn difficult words – singing songs together. There are times on Sundays he is said to pray or make a confession. But courtiers familiar with the office of the Patriarch are at pains to clarify – though not an atheist, perhaps a believer – his life is not that of a Christian. --

The President behaves as though he is made of bronze, as if he shines. He seems to know that they will flinch when meeting his eye. There is a silence around him. The voices of grown men change when they speak to him. They make their voices as low as possible. Their faces become solemn, almost stiffened. They look down: worried, ­nervous, alert.

Who ever told this to Judah, was spot on:

“The impression... you get from being close to him is that he would have been quite happy to step down. But he knows he has failed to rule Russia in anything else but a feudal way. And the moment his grip falters... it will all come crashing down and he will go to jail... and Moscow will burn like Kiev.”

Putin must be smiling: Merkel's chief foreign policy expert was celebrating with him at the recent St. Petersburg mega party

The fact that - in addition to former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder - Angela Merkel's chief foreign policy expert Philipp Missfelder also attended the much criticised party with Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg speaks volumes about Germany's cosy co-operation with Putin's mafia state. Merkel is now faking "furiousness", but in reality she and her government believe that German business interests are more important than Putin's aggression against an independent country:

Angela Merkel "furious" after reports that her foreign policy expert attended Gerhard Schroeder's birthday party with Vladimir Putin

German media reports said Philipp Missfelder, the chief foreign policy expert for Mrs Merkel's conservative Christian Democratic Party was also a guest at the controversial party held by a subsidiary of the Russian energy giant, Gazprom. --

Der Spiegel Online remarked that Mr Schroeder and Mr Putin were seen falling into each others' arms and embracing demonstratively, "in the middle of the most serious political crisis between East and West since the Cold War".
German MPs said Mr Schroeder's behaviour was "completely irresponsible". But subsequent reports that Mr Missfelder had also attended the party apparently caused " massive annoyance" not to say embarrassment within Christian Democrat Party ranks yesterday.
"Chancellor Angel Merkel is angry because she was not informed about the visit," Der Spiegel Online wrote.
Mr Missfelder, is known to be an ardent supporter of German business interests in Russia and has sympathised with the Kremlin's standpoint on Ukraine.

Read the entire article here

Garry Kasparov: The West should sanction the Russian oligarchs

Many western pundits still think that Vladimir Putin is defending Russia's "interests" (some even call them "legitimate") in Ukraine and elsewhere. Garry Kasparov, writing in the WSJ, knows better:

As I have said for years, it is a waste of time to attempt to discern deep strategy in Mr. Putin's actions. There are no complex national interests in a dictator's calculations. There are only personal interests, the interests of those close to him who keep him in power, and how best to consolidate that power. Without real elections or a free media, the only way a dictator can communicate with his subjects is through propaganda, and the only way he can validate his power is with regular shows of force.

Inside Russia, that force comes with repression against dissidents and civil rights that only accelerated during the distraction of the Sochi Olympics. Abroad, force in the form of military action, trade sanctions or natural-gas extortion is applied wherever Mr. Putin thinks he can get away with it.--

 

Kasparov also knows what kind of sanctions would be effective:

 

Thanks to their unfettered access to Western markets, Mr. Putin and his gang have exploited Western engagement with Russia in a way that the Soviet Union's leaders never dreamed of. But this also means that they are vulnerable in a way the Soviets were not. If the West punishes Russia with sanctions and a trade war, that might be effective eventually, but it would also be cruel to the 140 million Russians who live under Mr. Putin's rule. And it would be unnecessary. Instead, sanction the 140 oligarchs who would dump Mr. Putin in the trash tomorrow if he cannot protect their assets abroad. Target their visas, their mansions and IPOs in London, their yachts and Swiss bank accounts. Use banks, not tanks. Thursday, the U.S. announced such sanctions, but they must be matched by the European Union to be truly effective. Otherwise, Wall Street's loss is London's gain, and Mr. Putin's divide-and-conquer tactics work again

After his Olympic "peace project" is over, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin is ready to send his "team" to Ukraine

"By living together under one roof in the Olympic village you send a powerful message from Sochi to the world, that of a society of peace, tolerance and respect. I appeal to everybody implicated in confrontation, oppression and violence to act on this Olympic message of dialogue and peace.

"Tonight we can say Russia delivered all that it promised. What took decades in other parts of the world was achieved here in Sochi in just seven years. All the people of Sochi and Russia deserve our deep gratitude."

Thomas Bach, IOC President


With his Olympic "peace project" delivered, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin moves on to his next project:

Russian President Vladimir Putin has asked the upper house of parliament for approval to send Russian troops into Ukraine's Crimea region to normalize the political situation there, the Kremlin said Saturday.

Due to the "extraordinary situation in Ukraine," Putin said, there are threats to the lives of Russian citizens and Russian military personnel based in the southern Crimean region.

It comes on the same day that the new pro-Russian leader of Crimea, Sergey Aksyonov, asked Putin for help in maintaining peace in the Black Sea peninsula -- where Russia has a major naval base at Sevastopol.


Putin is not the least scared of what US president Obama says:

Krauthammer, a syndicated columnist and a Fox News contributor, said Russia will interpret Obama's remarks as complacency.
"He said, any violation of Ukrainian territory is destabilizing, and that's not in Russia's interest. He is instructing Putin on what's in Russia's interest?" Krauthammer said.  "I can assure you, Putin has calculated his calculated his own interests, and he's calculated that detaching Crimea from Ukraine and making it, essentially, a colony of Russia, is in Russia's interest - because he knows he has nothing to fear from the west, because it's not led by anybody. It used to be led by the United States."

 

A reminder: "Putin is a dictator"

What Masha Gessen wrote in the New York Times in 2012 is worth remembering:

Yes, I really mean to say that Putin is a dictator. The only reason this is still questioned after all that we have seen in Russia is that Western leaders and Western media refuse to call him one — while being perfectly content, for example, to brand Belorussia’s Alexandr G. Lukashenko this way. For this I see no good explanation.

Australian academics: Democracy should be replaced by 'elite warrior leadership' in order to fight global warming

The world is full of envirofundamentalist doomsday prophets, who paint a grim picture of what is ahead for humanity. Few are however as candid as the two Australians, professor emeritus of medicine David Shearman and philosopher and ecologist Joseph Wayne Smith, who openly attack the liberal democratic system, which they think should be replaced by an authoritarian "elite warrior leadership". 

This is what the two "warriors" have to say in the foreword of their book 'The Climate Change Challenge and the Failure of Democracy':

We have known about these impending problems for several decades. 
Each year the certainty of the science has increased, yet we have failed to act 
appropriately to the threat. We have analyzed the reasons for this indolence. 
This understanding will lead you to ask yourself if Western civilization can 
survive in its present state of prosperity, health, and well-being, or will it 
soon suffer the fate of all previous civilizations—to become a mere page in 
history?
We will demand from you the reader, far more than your comprehension 
of the consequences of climate change and the workings of democracy. You 
will need to examine the limits of your introspection and the motivation 
bestowed upon you by biology and culture. The questions to be asked are 
difficult. You have a commitment to your children, but are you committed 
to the well-being of future generations and those you may never see, such as your great-grandchildren? If so are you prepared to change your lifestyle 
now? Are you prepared to see society and its governance change if this is a 
necessary solution? -

Chapters 6 and 7 demonstrate that the inherent failures of 
democracy that have lead to the environmental crisis also operate in many 
other spheres of society. They are inherent to the operation of democracy. 
Furthermore, we come to share Plato’s conclusion that democracy is inherently contradictory and leads naturally to authoritarianism.
In chapters 8 and 9 we argue that authoritarianism is the natural state of 
humanity, and it may be better to choose our elites rather than have them 
imposed. Indeed Plato, on seeing the sequelae of democracy’s birth, observed that it is better that the just and wise should rule unwillingly, rather 
than those who actually want power should have it. We analyze authoritarian structures and their operation ranging from the medical intensive care 
unit and the Roman Catholic Church to corporatism with the conclusion 
that the crisis is best countered by developing authoritarian government 
using some of the fabric of these existing structures. The education and 
values of the new “elite warrior leadership” who will battle for the future 
of the earth is described.

(bolded by NNoN)

PS

The authors do not - at least not in the foreword - say, what will happen to the global warming    'deniers' in their brave new world. However, the Gulags of Stalin and Mao should serve as good models ...

A dying empire celebrates in the Kremlin

Czar Putin is celebrating tonight at the Kremlin: 

Russian gas giant Gazprom will celebrate its 20-year anniversary Thursday at a $2 million gala evening at the State Kremlin Palace.

President Vladimir Putin is expected to personally congratulate the company's employees, as he did on Gazprom's tenth and 15-year anniversaries.

The evening at the Kremlin will continue with a concert that will include performances by British rock musician Sting and Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli. -

Putin's puppet, "prime minister" Medvedev, sent his congratulations:

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, who is on a tour of Latin America, congratulated the company on Wednesday, calling it a "leader of the global fuel and energy market." 

The prime minister said Gazprom has a staff of genuine professional and expressed the hope that the company "will continue to effectively develop in the interests of the country, in the interests of our citizens, increase the might of our nation."

One is sort of getting used to faded rock stars and other western media figures celebrating the former second rate KGB agent, but this may very well be one of the last such occasions:

Gazprom’s shipments to Europe have been falling steadily and the company’s share price has dropped 60 per cent since the advent of the fracking revolution. Former Soviet stalwarts such as Romania and Ukraine, among the most dependent on Gazprom, have started looking into exploiting their shale-gas deposits as well, while others, such as Lithuania, are leading the European Union’s competition probe.

Mr. Putin has tried to hit back, deriding fracking as dangerous and warning the EU that its competition probe could result in less gas flowing to the West. There is much at stake for the Russian leader, said Dieter Helm, a professor of energy policy at Oxford University.

“Putin’s government depends on oil and gas, and this weakens his position very considerably,” Prof. Helm said. “Now if their finances fall away, there’s not the money to keep sections of the population happy. I think you are creating the conditions for, in three, four or five years, for considerable resistance to Putin’s authoritarian rule.”

A weakened Gazprom also weakens Russia’s clout. As recently as four years ago, Russia could simply turn off the taps if a country such as Ukraine failed to agree to a new contract. Even Western European countries were wary of upsetting Russia for fear of jeopardizing energy relations.

Read the entire article here

Putin: "I don't deny myself anything."

The Wall Street Journal reports that dictator "Vladimir Putin marked his 60th birthday by granting reporters from Russia's NTV network what was billed as an unprecedented inside look at his presidential routine".

The hour long prime-time report surprisingly included one honest sentence:

"I really do whatever I want," he said. "I don't deny myself anything."

So true, Mr. President!