Categories
Rule of Law

For your sake and ours, please don’t look away

Justin Borg-Barthet, a Maltese citizen, is a Senior Lecturer in EU law and Private International Law at the University of Aberdeen. He is the author of The Governing Law of Companies in EU Law (Bloomsbury/Hart 2012) and several papers on mutual recognition in EU law.

In the Maltese Parliament yesterday, Simon Busuttil MP appealed to the international press to keep a watchful eye on Malta. Malta, he says, needs this independent and objective scrutiny more than ever now. He’s right, of course. Freedom of the press in Malta is under grave threat. Daphne Caruana Galizia was, in many ways, the last line of defence.

Her assassination completes a process begun many years ago in which the media has been systematically intimidated, weakened and bribed to the point of effective castration. Consider, for example, the eerie silence in the press in matters concerning Pilatus Bank, the Malta-based money-laundering outfit for international Politically Exposed Persons and the failure of anyone (bar Daphne) to comment on the quiet deletion and censoring of what little they dared publish. This silence from the local media appears to be a consequence of threats from the aforementioned bank of costly (but vexatious) legal action in the United States. Reportedly, Daphne too was in receipt of such heavy handed threats but stood fast to her truths.

Malta now relies on the international press to provide a truly free account of the deterioration of the rule of law and corruption of administrative practices there.

But keeping a careful eye on Malta is not only in Malta’s interest. It is in the global interest too. This is why the Treaty on European Union enables action against Member States who persistently breach the rule of law. It is not because the EU is a safety net for the Member States, but because judicial, administrative and legislative decisions of Member States have extensive external effects. Contrary to President Juncker’s recent protestations, when Simon Busuttil pleaded with the EU to cast its eye over Malta, the rule of law in a Member State is not a purely internal matter. The EU is duty bound to keep one of its own in check, for the good of the wider bloc.

While we’re on the subject of President Juncker, let’s not forget his spine-chilling defence of Joseph Muscat in the European Parliament. It is an open secret that Joseph Muscat intends to replace Donald Tusk as President of the European Council. And here is President Juncker publicly defending and enthusiastically applauding an ambitious man, a man whose connections to Azeri and Chinese corrupt dealing – particularly in the oil, gas and solar energy markets – are, at best, at arm’s length.

But back to the rule of law in Malta: Malta is an EU Member State. The Member State remains the basic unit of EU law and policy-making. The adoption of legislation requires the consent of Member States, usually achieved on the basis of consensus. This means that compromises are made to accommodate Malta’s position. Malta sometimes has formal veto rights too. The European Council, made up of heads of government of the Member States, determines general EU policy direction.

The Member States also have powers of appointment; they nominate members of the Commission, the Court of Justice and the Court of Auditors. The gravity of a Mafia State holding such sway over the largest trading bloc in the world hardly needs explanation.

But it gets worse. The EU/EEA internal market functions, primarily, on the basis of the principle of mutual recognition. Mutual recognition essentially means that that which is lawful in Malta is presumed to be lawful elsewhere. This includes gambling services, letterbox companies, and the many other services Malta has developed since 2004 to reap the benefits of EU membership. The EU has several international trade deals, some of which enable mutual recognition in the services market. In future, Malta may well be in a position to provide passporting rights to Canada, for example. In other words, laws and administrative decisions determined by a Mafia State are automatically recognised, and their effects felt, far beyond its borders.

This is true of judgments of the Maltese courts too. The Brussels I Regulation requires judgments of courts of one EU Member State to be recognised and enforced elsewhere in the EU. There are movements towards a similar global convention to further develop the Hague Choice of Court Convention. The EU, and therefore its Member States, is party to these negotiations. Decisions to weaken judicial independence in Malta have global effects.

In other words, the assault on press freedoms in Malta concerns you directly. Daphne Caruana Galizia was assassinated because she exposed the crooks who have come to control an important part of EU and global governance. This is not of concern only to fewer than half a million Maltese citizens, but genuinely affects the entire globe. It is that serious.

To the international media, I have this to say: Please, for your sake and ours, do not look away.

Categories
Campaign 2017

The truth when they lie

The fog of war is thick. The battle lines of this campaign were drawn around the question of truth. There is no doubt that whatever Joseph Muscat had in mind when calling this election it was not really the supposed prosperous golden age that the country is passing through but rather the long list of failures in the field of governance (check out this site) that were not going away anywhere soon. The dangers of institutional breakdown remains the main motivator for this campaign: on the one hand you have a collective force, a coalition of sorts, whose campaign is built around getting a corrupt clique out of power as soon as possible, on the other hand it has become evident that the sole aim of the campaign (of the election itself) is to build a huge smokescreen around the issue of governance.

So the government of redacted contracts, hidden deals, selling of public land, and of structures to hide income in shady jurisdictions came up with an idyllic utopia storyline: The Best Time (L-aqwa zmien). Muscat is supposed to be some kind of mixture between Midas and Pericles and all the commoners of this world will enjoy the trickle down effect of the fabled Muscatonomics. The propaganda machine is well oiled and we now have learnt that the PL knew it would call an early election much before the most recent Panama Paper allegations. The groundwork of newspeak had been prepared with the main two “facts” to be thrown as a foundation for L-Aqwa Zmien being (1) record unemployment, (2) budget surplus. A slick machine that is well honed to reap the short-term benefits of the austerity policy while hiding real figures and projections under a huge carpet the size of GWU headquarters served the purpose. The implication: Par idejn Sodi? Look no further than Muscat.

This is one giant Potemkin village fashioned out of bubbles and risky deals in order to impress. Above all it is fashioned in order to distract. This blog had sussed out Muscat’s modus operandi from the beginning. He is a master in prestidigitation – using one hand to wrought a brilliant illusion while the other is busy at work behind everyone’s back. This election campaign is all about that. The whole front is a distraction from the truth. The truth is what he wants you to look away from. The truth is what his campaign will attack with vigour in order to attempt to prevent it coming out. Potemkine villages existed for Soviet Russia. They could work because in Soviet Russia the means of communication were under strict control.

This is not Soviet Malta. Yet. The danger signs are clear though. Only this morning we read that Jacob Borg of the Times has been summoned to court over a report regarding Pilatus Bank. Matthew Caruana Galizia of ICIJ fame was blocked from Facebook after being reported to the Zuckerberg company for having published documents related to the Panama Papers saga. The government that championed whistleblowers came down on the latest whistleblower that hit the headlines like a ton of bricks. I could go on but you get the idea.

The battle over the truth is getting vicious. It will bring out the worst of the worst and the irony of it all is that once this election is over we will only just have begun. The necessary reforms that must be put in place will require hard work and coordination as well as commitment. We are really risking the fine line between a modern liberal democracy and a third world country best described by the great Hitchens (in Love Poverty and War).

“Sooner or later, all talk among foreigners in Pyongyang turns to one imponderable subject. Do the locals really believe what they are told, and do they truly revere Fat Man and Little Boy? I have been a visiting writer in several authoritarian and totalitarian states, and usually the question answers itself. Someone in a café makes an offhand remark. A piece of ironic graffiti is scrawled in the men’s room. Some group at the university issues some improvised leaflet. The glacier begins to melt; a joke makes the rounds and the apparently immovable regime suddenly looks vulnerable and absurd. But it’s almost impossible to convey the extent to which North Korea just isn’t like that. South Koreans who met with long-lost family members after the June rapprochement were thunderstruck at the way their shabby and thin northern relatives extolled Fat Man and Little Boy. Of course, they had been handpicked, but they stuck to their line.

There’s a possible reason for the existence of this level of denial, which is backed up by an indescribable degree of surveillance and indoctrination. A North Korean citizen who decided that it was all a lie and a waste would have to face the fact that his life had been a lie and a waste also. The scenes of hysterical grief when Fat Man died were not all feigned; there might be a collective nervous breakdown if it was suddenly announced that the Great Leader had been a verbose and arrogant fraud. Picture, if you will, the abrupt deprogramming of more than 20 million Moonies or Jonestowners, who are suddenly informed that it was all a cruel joke and there’s no longer anybody to tell them what to do. There wouldn’t be enough Kool-Aid to go round. I often wondered how my guides kept straight faces.

The streetlights are turned out all over Pyongyang—which is the most favored city in the country—every night. And the most prominent building on the skyline, in a town committed to hysterical architectural excess, is the Ryugyong Hotel. It’s 105 floors high, and from a distance looks like a grotesquely enlarged version of the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco (or like a vast and cumbersome missile on a launchpad). The crane at its summit hasn’t moved in years; it’s a grandiose and incomplete ruin in the making. ‘Under construction,’ say the guides without a trace of irony. I suppose they just keep two sets of mental books and live with the contradiction for now.”

And now the PN

In the middle of all this there is a campaign that is still unfolding. I would add a little note on the PN and its reactions to some of the campaign issues. The imperative nature of voting this government out has overshadowed any criticism that might be directed to the outfit in opposition. Still, a few words of advice are not out of place and I will dare put a few here for the perusal of whoever might be interested in taking note:

1. On the issue of the www.simonbusuttil.com spoof site. Huge overreaction from the PN. There is nothing wrong with a spoof. Even during election time. The whole point of a spoof is to mock, satirise someone or something. If anything the reaction should be on a political level – more of a criticism – that the Labour Party has officially had to rely on spoof for its campaign rather than leave it to the satirists. Unfortunately satirists have had the wind taken from their sails since the achievements of this government (and I’m talking low levels) are beyond their ken. This government – from Panama to Velbert to Australia Hall satirises itself. Bottom line. The PN should get a grip and not make a big deal about this website. PL on the other hand is resorting to hopeless and desperate tactics in one big campaign whose only reason is to distort or hide the truth. The best repky by the PN would have been “sure it’s amusing, your little satire. We did not even need to create a spoof site… just go over to www.gov.mt … nothing shouts spoof more than our current cabinet and government”. Nuff said.

2. On the Broadcasting Authority. This is one of the authorities in our nation that has been completely neutralised by constant PLPN manipulation over the decades since 1964. Much fuss has been made over the decision to get David Thake and Norman Vella off air since they are candidates in an election and they should not have excessive airtime. Let’s face it the decision is ridiculous. Especially in this day and age when any candidate could simply open an online radio/podcast and transmit it. Why not prevent candidates from having blogs then? In any case though the PN here are only “victims” of their own underhand games that they were more than willing to play over the years. Besides, I am not sure whether silencing Thake and Vella is really a bad thing – in their case the Japanese proverb that the silent man is the best man to listen to really applies. Anyway, how many pensioners criticising the PN billboards could Thake really muster before going mad. Speaking of the Broadcasting Authority I have not seen any Forza Nazzjonali exponent lamenting the decision to leave out Alternattiva Demokratika from the debates, then again, hell has not frozen over yet.

 

Categories
Mediawatch

The truth, when they lie

lie_akkuzaThe World Wide Web turns 25 today. As Sir Tim Berners Lee makes a move to try to keep the “web we want”, the current state of affairs is such that the social media revolution is still the main motor behind the spread of the web worldwide. The availability of immediate information as well as the empowerment of citizens has gained momentum to the extent that the amount of data being exchanged about immediate events has increased exponentially.

Ellen De Generes’ selfie at the last Oscar Award ceremony threatened the whole infrastructure of twitter – an information superload. It’s not just the pink news that is doing it. Breaking world wide news is now seasoned with the input from literally millions of netizens – all giving their slant or take on what is going on. We are used to seeing major news sites asking for “on the ground” information – cue the BBC’s now standard box on a news item asking whether “you are on site” and whether you can provide immediate information.

The social media have also been at the core of the revolutions that swept across the Arab world and more recently in the Ukraine. Whether it is a natural disaster such as a tsunami or earthquake, or a human tragedy – a shootout, a crash – the social media is on the front-line. There is a problem though, and it is becoming more and more dangerous.

The lack of control over what is and is not published when it comes to netizen input means that a rumour or a conjecture can rapidly spread across the net and be treated as a truth. We are already familiar with fake deaths of stars that quickly go viral and before you know it the news is taken as being true. The problem is exacerbated when it comes to news from trouble zones such as we have recently seen in Syria or Ukraine and is with regard to crucial information such as the presence of snipers or attackers.

This problem is now being studied by researchers at five different European universities who are trying to develop an algorithm that filters online rumours and chooses the true (or potentially true) from the false.

Five European universities are working on a social media lie detector in an attempt to verify online rumors. The technology developed in the wake of the London riots is set to help not only journalists and the private sector, but also governments.

Researchers, led by Sheffield University in England, are cooperating on the system, which could automatically ascertain if a rumor can be verified and whether it originates from a reliable source. It will attempt to filter reliable factual information from social media sites like Twitter and Facebook.

The project called PHEME is being funded by the European Union and has already been in development for three years. It is named after the Greek mythological character of Pheme, who was famed for spreading rumors. [REUTERS]

The filter will try to label information as being either speculation, controversy, disinformation or misinformation. The system will try and use three different factors to establish the accuracy of a nugget of information. It will examine the information itself (lexical, syntactic and semantic), and then cross-reference the information with a trust worthy data source and the dissemination of information.

In other words, PHEME promises to be the first frontier at combating online fraud and misconceptions although it will not entirely replace human judgement. The ultimate arbiter of what can or cannot be considered as potentially true will remain the gatekeepers at the newsdesks. What PHEME does is simplify their task – particularly as the new is live when it would be more time-consuming to follow leads – and provide a probability.ù

Mark Twain, Winston Churchill and Pratchett are all attributed different versions of the quote “A lie can travel half way around the world before the truth can put its shoes/pants/boots on.” With PHEME’s help the time gap might be shorter…

The truth, if I lie.

L’Express on PHEME

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Categories
Campaign 2013

Truth be told

The Eagle Party held a mass meeting this morning in Zabbar and it turns out that there were more than a handful of people who were willing to go along with the farce. I wouldn’t worry much about all these people voting for Nazzareno when push comes to shove, they were just there for the fun of the outing and for doing what Maltese do best: make fun of the village idiots. Tomorrow the village idiots will be out in force at the respective mass meetings of the two parties who are currently embroiled in a battle of scandals and finger pointing.

Which is where we left them. The parties I mean. In my last post I complained about the surreal obscenity of the fact that every election campaign will peter out into a series of scandals and counter-scandals. All that promise at the start of this campaign what with saving money on energy bills and tablets for all soon changed into mud-slinging of the highest order. The charade unfolds as I type and it’s like seeing the Emperor’s New Clothes – only this is the whole political establishment prancing around naked and ugly for all to see. Recordings? Ministerial Swiss accounts? Oil? Enough. Really. Enough. And here’s why.

Truth be told I still believe that Austin Gatt did not touch a penny of whatever was  going on in the procurement business. Truth be told I believe that there really is a web of corruption surrounding the oil procurement but I also believe that this was a group of persons taking advantage of a loophole  in supervision that was as wide as a house. Truth be told I believe that the Labour party knows that and does not want to admit it because it is politically convenient to “raise eyebrows” about Gatt’s involvement.

Truth be told I cannot digest Austin Gatt’s excuse that he “forgot” to declare his family accounts in Switzerland since 2005 – inherited or not. Truth be told I find the double standards in this respect to be glaring when contrasted to the treatment of AD’s chairperson in 2008 for having forgotten to pay some VAT dues over a defunct company.

Truth be told I find Joseph Muscat’s ridiculous throwing of “leads” to his former work colleagues with regards to a Minister who supposedly freed someone from a chip or a lock up disgusting. Truth be told I would prefer that if  he had such information he would be the one to bring it out. Truth be told it turns out that the alleged act was never done by a person qua Minister but earlier in his career – which means that Joseph Muscat was lying when he implied that a Minister used his powers to free someone from the lockup (also not necessarily from prison). Truth be told this is not the first time that Muscat has been economical with a lie in order to imply an inexistent truth.

Truth be told I find the nationalist party’s assault on Toni Abela yawn-inducing and so blatantly a diversive tactic from its moment of panic. Truth be told I do agree that Abela should be responsible for his actions, particularly covering up of illicit activity in Labour’s kazini much the same way as I expect those responsible in the nationalist party to take the hit for any illicit activity in their kazini. Truth be told I still ask the most important question with regard to the PN’s recordings: Why now? Truth be told the nationalist party sat on this information for three whole years and only now felt sufficiently indignant to do anything about it.

Truth be told I have had enough of watching valuable pre-electoral debate time wasted in this battle of “your scandal is bigger than mine” or “oil purchasing is more important than drug trafficking” when it is blatantly obvious to anyone strong enough to wash off partisan blinkers that our supposed political elite is one big mess that is long past its sell-by date. Truth be told I have had enough of hearing snide comments about the hard-working folk at AD who can never yell about their presence loud enough so long as the village idiots are busy with their partisan banging and yelling about the inadequacy of the other side.

Truth be told this campaign is now expecting its final “election bomb”. It will be another “scandal” from each side announced close enough to the election date in order to hinder any possibility of throwing light and clarity on what it really is all about. It will be the mother of all messy mudballs slung by the mother of all slingshots. It will be as useful to our informed election of a proportionally representative parliament as a swimsuit in Alaska and yet the village idiots will indulge the parties with their Oohs, their Aahs and their chest beating.

Truth is, truth will never be told.

 

Categories
Campaign 2013 Zolabytes

Post Ranier – a zolabyte

A reader of this blog was inspired to write an essay-like comment after the post entitled “Your politics are ruining my country (and its future)“. I’ve decided to put it up as a Zolabyte in the hope that it provokes more conversation. Philip Serracino Inglott (currently pursuing a Ph.D. in the Philosophy of Technology at Delft writes:

Thanks for pointing out Ranier’s article, which set my mind reeling. Here’s a brain dump of the thoughts I had after reading this and Ranier’s articles:

It’s nice to see Ranier put a wager upon PN’s technical ability. The implication of his argument is: if it should turn our that PL plan works, this would mean that Austin and Gonzi are either incompetent, or they intentionally deceived the population, or both. If the PL plan were to fail, Ranier would have to call for Muscat’s and Konrad’s heads, but equally, should it succeed he’d have to be the first to call for Austin and Gonzi’s heads.

Of course the corollary to that is that when the PL claim that they are certain that their plan will work, they are implying that they are equally certain that Austin and Gonzi are incompetent, or that they intentionally deceived the population, or both.

That much, I guess, they’d willingly do. But the implication is much more onerous than that for this case. The level of incompetence and/or deceit is variable. It finally depends on the magnitude of the project or importance of the decision in the context of which it was done, in comparison to how easy or trivial it would have been to see and/or avoid.

When PL’s plan is compressed to its raw basic essentials its basically this: borrow a bunch of money from private investors; spend that money switching from HFO to Gas; Gas can be bought cheaply enough that we can pay off the debt for the conversion, the past debts, and still have left over to pass on to the consumer as reduced tariffs. The private investor who lends us the money gets to keep on selling us the gas/electricity for a long time after we have sorted it all out. So, sure, he/she’ll get a tidy profit too, but that is why he/she’ll invest in the first place. It’s that simple really. Just that one basic idea — switch to gas — is going to solve of high tariff problem. The rest is details that require a lot of work to sort out, but should be run of the mill really.

But, if this is actually it, then Gonzi and Austin are not merely incompetent and/or deceitful. If the crux of it all is the choice between gas and HFO, then Gonzi and Austin must be stupid idiots and/or criminally fraudulent, if not both. And that would be very serious indeed. If the PL plan is to succeed on the basis of the documentation revealed up to now; if that is all a voter needs to know to be confident that PL’s plan will succeed; I can see no way that, once elected, PL is not also morally obliged to investigate the current cabinet for fraud and criminal negligence for their approval of the use of HFO.

Of course, the much more realistic scenario is that there are many more variables. The truth is that the analysis required to know if the plan is worth voting for is way more complex. Even if in the future the current government will, with hindsight, be shown to have made a humongous mistake by going for HFO, the matter is complex enough that one cannot draw a straight line from there to the claim that the level of incompetence would have been criminal.

But then, this means that the whole ‘energy solution campaign thing’ going on is just a charade. That there is no way that a deep enough analysis can be brought to voters until March, with sufficient detail, that they can make up their mind rationally. As Michal Falzon seems to have implied (from Ranier’s wording), voters with have to vote on an act of faith. And that is not democracy at all! That is merely herding behavior!

So PL and PN have put themselves in a rather sad position, unless they are willing to admit that the current trend in the campaign is undermining democracy, they have to up the ante, and imply that the other side is consciously and malevolently trying to deceive and de-fraud the citizen!

They have to imply that the others are not just “not as good as us” but that they are “evil!”. Since both sides play the game the election becomes a “final judgment” that determines who is on “the dark side” and who “has the force with them”. If any of the big 2 parties actually mean anything of what their garbled propaganda implies about their opponent, we would have to have a court marshal of the fresh opposition after every election.

Thank goodness, the only party that actually means all of the claims that it makes is the little green fellow with the good ideas but no clout or voice. After all, if AD had a bigger role to play in our political scene many of these silly charades would be quickly exposed, and we might have to actually think and evaluate substantial proposals before voting.

And who wants to do that?

*****
Zolabytes is a rubrique on J’accuse – the name is a nod to the original J’accuser (Emile Zola) and a building block of the digital age (byte). Zolabytes is intended to be a collection of guest contributions in the spirit of discussion that has been promoted by J’accuse on the online Maltese political scene for 7 years.
Opinions expressed in zolabyte contributions are those of the author in question. Opinions appearing on zolabytes do not necessarily reflect the editorial line of J’accuse the blog.
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Categories
Mediawatch

Information Overload?

The Subtle Roar of Online Whistle-blowing: Jul...
Image by New Media Days via Flickr

Wikileaks. It’s on everyone’s lips and laptops and risks becoming the first real flicker of life in some rudimentary form of global democracy. Or not. Until recently social collaboration and networking had their strongest point in the immediacy of transmission of information. Students rallied in record time and revolutions of the oppressed could be masterminded and managed over twitter and other social networks. Local (and national) scenarios have for some time included information centres that set up as an alternative to the traditional MSM and provide different information to the realities being spun in accordance to tradition (or requirements of the centres of power).

Enter Wikileaks and controversial founder Julian Assange. The man is now the subject of a virtual death warrant. It’s actually an arrest warrant by interpol issued on the basis of an allegation of rape. The timing of the arrest warrant could not have been better fuel for conspiracy theorists – it comes at a moment when Wikileaks is busy embarrassing the world’s largest superpower (at least military). Having said that it is interesting to observe the different stakeholders in the battleground over information sources. Amazon has just dumped Wikileaks from its servers : a clear sign of “go it alone baby”. While the leaking of diplomatic cables and information has been described as life threatening it is also prudent to wonder who or what benefits from these leaks exactly.

In a clearly functioning democracy, of the separation of powers kind, new information thrown into the public domain by third parties can serve to uncover the ruthlessness or corruption that might be setting in at the top. How does that work in a quasi-anarchic global system? Is outing American notions on Berlusconi’s lascivious entertainment preferences of benefit to anyone? I am sure it is but the question is to whom? To the Italian electorate? To the US electorate? And what message does it send to someone in (spin the wheel)… Tajikistan?

The question I am asking here is not so much the black or white “Is the Wikileaks good or bad?” but rather whether such random leakage actually has an effect beyond the sensational. Sure the press will have a free run for a while and the diplomatic centres around the world will have a new topic on their social agenda. Spies have been rendered redundant for a while (a very short while) and so on. But is Assange justified in stating that he has made the US in any way more accountable? On a more local (or national, pace Tonio) scenario you could compare the leaks to the random bandying of information on government contracts: sometimes the bull is hit and things get going. Most times the allegations and hunches serve simply to get the press heated for a little while. My concern is more on how a leak could be channelled to be less of a leak and more of a substantiated form of information that can hit where it hurts if necessary.

Otherwise leaks will just do what leaks always do… create a mess for which nobody is prepared to take responsibility and ones that nobody is prepared to fix. And we’ve got enough of that kind of shit on our hands.

addendum:

From Wikileaks: Lack of Information isn’t the problem (Steve Richards, Independent) :

Their words are reported in the brightest of colours because they were not written for public consumption. A locked door is open. As we look inside we discover that one of the revelations about the Wikileaks publications is that they are not revelatory. They confirm publicly available information and take us behind the scenes, like a tour of a theatre for an audience that has already seen the production. If the stories of recent days are reversed, they would have been mind-blowing exclusives: “Mervyn King called for increases in public spending!”; “Israel relaxed about Iran’s nuclear ambitions!” Instead, the mechanism of a leak generates excitement over predictable and unsurprising information. In this case the leak is on such a gargantuan scale that the intake of breath is even greater. But it is the mechanism that is sensational, not the words that arrive as a result.


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