"All of which gives rise to these questions: Those men and women who remained silent in the face of this evil -- are they truly good? Or are they cowards who were simply not willing to take a modest personal risk for the preservation of the one thing they supposedly valued most?"
Penn State's Cowardly Lions
By Michael Goodwin
Published November 14, 2011
It is a cliché to say that football is like life. At Penn State, it is also insufficient. For under Joe Paterno, football was life.
And now a glorious era is finished, demolished beyond redemption. The scandalous end of Paterno’s career has wiped out the university’s sterling reputation and shattered the trust of an entire sport. Riots by crackpot students and death threats punctuate the madness.
To Pennsylvanians and millions of football fans everywhere, the fall of the House of Paterno is like the collapse of an empire. It crashed without warning or mercy.
In truth, the core values rotted away over the years, the work done secretly in the dark, like that of termites and cancer. The end only seemed sudden.
It could be a long time before we know the full extent of the pedophilia horror allegedly perpetrated by a former coach and the outrageous silence of many, perhaps dozens, of people. But already the most important lesson is clear.
Civilizations, from single universities to national cultures, must be defended with relentless vigilance and courage, or they will not survive. Only the details of their demise will differ.
A sage, perhaps Edmund Burke, once said, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”
That describes the fate of Penn State. The brilliant days of sunshine, victory and integrity in Happy Valley were not a mirage. They were real for generations of players, parents, students, alums and fans who, over the 46-year tenure of Paterno, believed in the “grand experiment” -- of winning the right way, with honor.
But evil triumphed because of a fundamental failure by Paterno and others to uphold the principles the experiment represented. And so the whole enterprise lies in shambles, everyone associated with it tarnished and generations of adherents suffering an angry loss of faith.
I share that loss because I grew up in the shadow of Penn State, just 30 miles from the shining oasis he created. In my youth, Paterno and Penn State football were synonymous with the working-class values of the hardscrabble mountains of central Pennsylvania.
He was the pope of a secular religion that forged friendships and family bonds. Under his benevolent dictatorship, “old school” became a term of rectitude and integrity.
Uniforms were simple, the players were legitimate students and the code of sportsmanship meant something.
Paterno and his wife contributed $4 million to the university, some of it to enhance the teaching of classics.
The righteousness of the path was confirmed by the fact that Paterno won more games than any major-college coach in history.
Yet the rot was quietly hollowing out the foundation. The first report that respected coach Jerry Sandusky was a pedophile was quietly investigated, and dropped without explanation in 1998.
Other reports followed, with the most important one coming in 2002, when a young assistant said he spotted Sandusky, then retired, raping a child in a locker-room shower. The assistant told Paterno, who told his supervisors -- but nobody told the police.
So Sandusky, according to the shocking indictment against him, was allowed to continue his predations for nine more years.
The price for that shameful silence must be measured in tens of millions of dollars, reputations lost and lives ruined.
All of which gives rise to these questions: Those men and women who remained silent in the face of this evil -- are they truly good? Or are they cowards who were simply not willing to take a modest personal risk for the preservation of the one thing they supposedly valued most?
I believe they are cowards. Their goodness was found wanting when it was needed most, and so was shallow if it existed at all. They are sunshine patriots who could not be counted on when the stakes were highest.
In life, even more than in football, courage is required.
Michael Goodwin is a Fox News contributor and a New York Post columnist.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/11/14/lesson-penn-state-life-requires-courage/?cmpid=NL_BestofOpinion_20111114#ixzz1dj5l08EH
TORAH TRUE JUDAISM FROM BILL O'REILLY:
13 comments:
Penn State scandal: Learning Torah from the Goyim:
One of the ironies of the Penn State scandal is the embarrasing spectacle of a Jewish writer trying to show the superiority of Judaism by the misdeeds of non-Jews. He condemns certain non-Jews - who while acting according to their legal obligations - failed to act on the highest moral level. This article unfortunately failed to note that in fact the widespread response of Jewish rabbis and communities in dealing with abuse is not only not in accord with the secular law - but it is not in accord with the halacha and is morally bankrupt.
I find it embarrassing as an observant Jew to acknowledge the shameful fact that in contrast to our rabbinical leadership - the Penn State trustees acted in accord with the highest moral standards in order to protect children and ensure that the college should be an example of moral leadership. They showed real moral courage by firing the extremely popular football coach and the popular president of the university - simply for failing to do what was right. In fact we need to understand that the Torah imperatives for these situations are those of the Penn State trustees - protect the children, to provide moral leadership - and accept full responsiblity to do everything possible to help others.
So even though our Sages (Eicha Rabba 2:9) say if someone says that there is wisdom amongst the goyim you can believe it but not if they say there is Torah - in this case it is appropriate to acknowledge in this abuse case that the goyim of Penn State have shown us what the Torah truly expects us to do.
BBC News:
"Dozens killed in Syria as Jordan king tells Assad to go
Dozens of people are reported to have died in continuing unrest across Syria, as the king of neighbouring Jordan urged President Assad to stand down.
15 November 2011
In one incident, more than 30 troops were killed in clashes with suspected army defectors in a southern town near the Jordan border, activists say.
King Abdullah became the first Arab leader to openly urge Mr Assad to quit.
He told the BBC that if he were in Mr Assad's position, he would start talks to ensure an orderly transition.
"I would step down and make sure whoever comes behind me has the ability to change the status quo that we're seeing," King Abdullah stated in an exclusive interview with BBC World News television.
He said: "If Bashar [al-Assad] has the interest of his country [at heart] he would step down, but he would also create an ability to reach out and start a new phase of Syrian political life.
King Abdullah added: "Whenever you exert violence on your own people, it is never going to end well."
Angered by the king's comments, about 100 Bashar supporters rallied outside the Jordanian embassy in Damascus late on Monday.
Three protesters scaled the embassy fence and took down the Jordanian flag, Jordanian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Kayed was quoted as saying by the Associated Press.
The spokesman added that no-one injured during the incident.
Many Arab leaders have condemned the crackdown on months of protests in Syria, and the Arab League voted on Saturday to suspend Syria's membership..."
UK Telegraph:
"Sir Salman Rushdie claims victory in Facebook name row
Sir Salman Rushdie has claimed victory in a battle with Facebook over the name he uses on his profile page.
By Christopher Williams, Technology Correspondent
15 November 2011
The dominant social network had been trying to force Sir Salman to use his first name, Ahmed, rather than the middle name under which he became one of the world’s best-known authors. On Monday he said he had prevailed in the dispute, however.
“Victory! Facebook has buckled!,” Sir Salman, 64, said on Twitter.
“I'm Salman Rushdie again. I feel SO much better. An identity crisis at my age is no fun.”
According to the author, who has never used his first name, Facebook deactivated his account over the weekend "saying they didn't believe I was me".
He was forced to send the firm a photograph of his passport to prove his identity. Facebook reactivated the account, but under the name “Ahmed Rushdie”. Frustrated, Sir Salman turned to his 115,000 Twitter followers for support.
“Dear #Facebook, forcing me to change my [Facebook] name from Salman to Ahmed Rushdie is like forcing J. Edgar to become John Hoover,” he tweeted.
"Or, if F. Scott Fitzgerald was on #Facebook, would they force him to be Francis Fitzgerald? What about F. Murray Abraham?"
"Is the real #Zuckerberg on Twitter? Where are you hiding, Mark? Come out here and give me back my name!," he said, addressing Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg.
Facebook apparently relented yesterday after Sir Salman’s followers took up his cause.
"Just received an apology from The #Facebook Team. All is sweetness and light,” he said.
Sir Salman Rushdie’s second novel, Midnight’s Children, won the Booker prize in 1981. He was forced into hiding in 1989 after his fourth, The Satanic Verses, sparked outrage in the Islamic world. He recently announced a move into television writing and is an enthusiastic social media user.
Facebook has a strictly-enforced rule that all users must register under their real name. Google has adopted a similar policy for its rival social network, Google+. It is argued that requiring real names makes impersonation and cyber bullying less prevalent."
5 Towns Jewish News:
"Leib Tropper Scandal Finally Put to Rest
International News
Tuesday, 16 February 2010
For many Orthodox Jews, it has been a very trying two months.
The confluence of the threefold factors of the shock at the appalling scandal, the silence of those who should not have been silent, and the idea of the seeming acceptance by leading Rabbonim of such lewd behavior was too much for many to stomach. Thankfully, the issues have been put to rest this past Sunday evening, with the signing of a notarized contract by Leib Tropper.
The results were not, by any means, a foregone conclusion. The progression of events went as follows:
Last Tuesday afternoon, leading Rabbinic figures in Monsey met. That meeting was put together by Rabbi Dovid Ribiat and was chaired by one of the most senior Roshei Yeshiva in Monsey, HaGaon HaRav Moshe Green Shlita, Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshiva Monsey.
Others present at that Tuesday meeting included Rav Shlomo Breslauer Shlita, Rav of Beis Tefillah; Rav Yisroel Dovid Schlesinger, of K'hal Shaarei Tefillah; Rav Chaim Schabes the Morah D'Asra of Knesses Yisroel in New Hempstead; Rav Shlomo Zalman Kaufman, Dayan of the Beis Horaah Beis Din and Rav Ben Tzion Kokis, Rav of K'hal Zichron Mordechai in South Monsey.
The idea was to have an expanded meeting on Sunday in Yeshiva Beis Mikreh of Monsey. There, the Rabbonim were to sign a Kol Koreh demanding for Tropper to resign all his posts and to leave Monsey. A messenger of the Rabbonim, Rabbi Yehuda Weissler, was dispatched to summon Tropper and to have him make himself available at 10:30 PM. Rabbi Weissler got hold of Tropper by phone and informed him of what the Rabbonim wanted.
In order to forestall the consequences of severe Rabbinic censure, one of the Rabbis, Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Schlesinger, associated with a good friend of Leib Tropper, prevailed upon Tropper to sign an agreement at the eleventh hour in which he would both step down and agree to a number of the demands of the Rabbis.
The agreement that Tropper signed began, In not fulfilling the requirement of Shulchan Aruch that a leader be Pircho No'eh, the undersigned is relinquishing his position. It further stated that he releases all rights and severs any connection he has to his former Yeshiva in Monsey and withdraws forthwith as a trustee of the organization."
"Leib Tropper Scandal Finally Put to Rest
Tropper also agreed to move out of Monsey within a few months.
The exact wording of the document states as follows:
To the Rabbonim of Monsey, under HaRav HaGaon Moshe Green Shlita, and HaRav HaGaon Shlomo Breslauer Shlita:
In not fulfilling the requirement of the Shulchan Aruch that a leader be pirko no'eh, I am permanently and irrevocably resigning from all positions, severing all connection and relinquishing all titles and decision-making authority with respect to Kol Yaakov Torah Center, Inc. a/k/a Yeshiva Kol Yaakov ('Kol Yaakov'), effective immediately, including without limitation the position of Rosh Yeshiva, maggid shiur, trustee, and all other positions in connection with the institution, administration, or students of Kol Yaakov.
The document was signed by Leib Tropper and notarized by Robert Simins.
The Rabbonim and those involved in making sure that the process has kept on course, have, in the past few weeks, received numerous messages attempting to interfere with the proceedings from various individuals. They remain undeterred both by the attempts at interference and numerous forms of harassment that include phone calls to their homes throughout the night, taxicabs falsely ordered to their homes, and threatening calls. One individual even received a rifle scope sent to his home. The latter incident is still being investigated.
Some askanim have expressed disappointment that the agreement did not deal specify specific future activities in which he would refrain from partaking. However, it was pointed out to them that the Kol Koreh can still be signed in the future, if the situation will warrant it.
The Rabbis in Monsey have been attacked and vilified by all corners. Their actions, however, have always been above board and their motivations have always been to act on Kavod Shamayim. They were not acting based upon hate of any individual, nor by the desire to cover up. These men have acted Leshaim shamayim, and are wise, scholarly, Talmidei Chachomim, who embody the highest ideals of what the Torah requires of leaders. They have, for the past few weeks, left the Ohel shel Torah to deal with this situation.
Although the Rabbis in Monsey are alone in publicly revealing their hand, it should be noted that there have been a number of Gedolei Torah in America and in Eretz Yisroel who have been instrumental in ensuring that the this assault on Kavod Shmayaim the past two months not continue. They have, behind the scenes, guided many of the askanim who have been involved.
The entire incident has been a source of enormous disappointment to the Torah communities both in the United States and in Eretz Yisroel. The silence has been deafening. The silver lining of the entire sordid cloud is the fact that a new class of Torah leaders has emerged that stands up for Kavod Shamayim and is undeterred by threats, vilification, and harassment."
Forbes:
"Buffett's Berkshire Adds CVS, Intel, Visa To Go With IBM
Steve Schaefer, Forbes Staff
11/14/2011
Warren Buffett famously steered clear of technology companies in the years preceding the dot-com bubble, and was widely quoted as focusing on businesses he felt more comfortable understanding. Things appear to have changed a bit at Berkshire Hathaway though, and Buffett’s portfolio welcomed a pair of tech heavyweights in the third quarter.
The Oracle of Omaha’s new 5.5% stake in IBM was disclosed earlier Monday – Buffett himself revealed the holding in an interview on CNBC – but it turns out Berkshire also opened a new position in chipmaker Intel during the July-September quarter.
These days it is not quite clear which investments are Buffett’s and which of those are the work of Todd Combs, the little-known hedge fund manager Berkshire brought on board this year to manage a small piece of the firm’s portfolio with an eye toward being one of the 81-year-old Buffett’s successors.
Of the new positions in Berkshire’s portfolio, only the $10 billion-plus stake in IBM is clearly a Buffett buy. The rest of the additions – 5.7 million shares of CVS Caremark, 4.2 million shares in DIRECTV, 3.1 million shares in General Dynamics, 9.3 million shares of Intel and 2.3 million shares of Visa – were all positions of less than $200 million, relative peanuts in a $59 billion stock portfolio.
Shares of IBM got an early Buffett bump Monday after the billionaire said he has bought nearly 64 million shares of Big Blue (up from the 57.3 million owned as of Sept. 30), but by day’s end had slipped just south of the break-even mark and lost less than 0.1%. After the closing bell the rest of the new additions made narrow gains ranging from 0.3% for DIRECTV to 0.9% for Intel."
For a guy that supposedly reads a lot it's surprising that Warren Buffett turns a blind eye to IBM's direct support for the Nazis and its helping them with the Holocaust.
Compare this latest:
"Buffett Invests $10.7B in IBM
Warren Buffett has typically avoided tech stocks, but on Monday he made his biggest technology investment yet—and it wasn’t Apple or Google. Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway invested $10.7 billion in IBM, taking a 5.4 percent stake in the company. The move made Berkshire Hathaway IBM’s second-biggest investor, and it paid immediate rewards, posting a 12 percent gain. Buffett went ahead with the acquisition even though IBM’s shares are trading near an all-time high; he says he’s not worried about a drop-off. The company, he told The Wall Street Journal, "fits all my principles … it's something we expect to own indefinitely.
Read it at The Wall Street Journal November 15, 2011"
To this well-researched work by noted writer Edwin Black:
"IBM and the Holocaust is the stunning story of IBM's strategic alliance with Nazi Germany -- beginning in 1933 in the first weeks that Hitler came to power and continuing well into World War II. As the Third Reich embarked upon its plan of conquest and genocide, IBM and its subsidiaries helped create enabling technologies, step-by-step, from the identification and cataloging programs of the 1930s to the selections of the 1940s.
Only after Jews were identified -- a massive and complex task that Hitler wanted done immediately -- could they be targeted for efficient asset confiscation, ghettoization, deportation, enslaved labor, and, ultimately, annihilation. It was a cross-tabulation and organizational challenge so monumental, it called for a computer. Of course, in the 1930s no computer existed.
But IBM's Hollerith punch card technology did exist. Aided by the company's custom-designed and constantly updated Hollerith systems, Hitler was able to automate his persecution of the Jews. Historians have always been amazed at the speed and accuracy with which the Nazis were able to identify and locate European Jewry. Until now, the pieces of this puzzle have never been fully assembled. The fact is, IBM technology was used to organize nearly everything in Germany and then Nazi Europe, from the identification of the Jews in censuses, registrations, and ancestral tracing programs to the running of railroads and organizing of concentration camp slave labor.
IBM and its German subsidiary custom-designed complex solutions, one by one, anticipating the Reich's needs. They did not merely sell the machines and walk away. Instead, IBM leased these machines for high fees and became the sole source of the billions of punch cards Hitler needed.
IBM and the Holocaust takes you through the carefully crafted corporate collusion with the Third Reich, as well as the structured deniability of oral agreements, undated letters, and the Geneva intermediaries -- all undertaken as the newspapers blazed with accounts of persecution and destruction.
Just as compelling is the human drama of one of our century's greatest minds, IBM founder Thomas Watson, who cooperated with the Nazis for the sake of profit.
Only with IBM's technologic assistance was Hitler able to achieve the staggering numbers of the Holocaust. Edwin Black has now uncovered one of the last great mysteries of Germany's war against the Jews -- how did Hitler get the names?"
TIME:
"The Newt Show in Iowa
By Michael Crowley
November 15, 2011
JEFFERSON, IOWA — Newt Gingrich is having his I-told-you-so moment. Within mere days of announcing his presidential campaign in May, the former House Republican Speaker from Georgia suffered a spectacular political meltdown that caused his staff to flee en masse, his fundraising to dry up and his campaign to plunge into debt, and produced some wonderful postmodern political comedy. Recounting his long, dark summer before a packed room at a community center in this central Iowa town today, Gingrich described what it was like trying to raise money. “I would call people and say, ‘Hi, would you like to donate?’” he recalled.
“But you’re dead!” came the response. “Why don’t you go find a new career?”
But Gingrich slogged on, largely ignored by the media and near the bottom of the polls. Now, however, Gingrich finds himself roaring back to life. He is replacing a fizzling Herman Cain at or near the top of several polls, nationally and in Iowa, and enjoying a chance to audition in earnest for that seemingly impossible role to cast: conservative alternative to Mitt Romney. Campaigning here on Monday, Gingrich was clearly enjoying his resurgence. “That’s the first time that anybody anywhere has introduced me as the leading candidate,” Gingrich joked after taking the podium, having been declared the frontrunner by the local GOP official who preceded him.
What followed was a classic Newt performance, a churning stew of audacious ideas, esoteric history, and plenty of reminders that Gingrich is, at least in his own estimation, one of the great thinkers of modern politics. “I have solutions as large as the problems,” Gingrich told the voters in Jefferson. “If you’re dealing with an elephant-sized problem, you should not come in with a chipmunk-sized solution.” Later, he noted that he doesn’t need much outside counsel. “I’m actually my own advisor,” he said. “When we had the national security debate the other night, I was my own primary advisor…. My preparation is learning, it’s not reading notes or points.”
And Gingrich was plenty eager to demonstrate the fruits of that learning, dropping references ranging from to the crooked doctor in New York who billed Medicare for 972 procedures a day to the oil and gas reserves of Alaska’s Chukchi Sea, the unemployment rate of North Dakota (3%) and neuroscience. “Every brain in this room has about the same number of synapses as there are known stars in the universe,” he said. It was a presentation reminiscent in its sprawl of Gingrich’s discursive nemesis of old, Bill Clinton.
And yet some of the specifics of what Newt wants to do remained unclear. He offered no specific plan for Medicare or Social Security; denounced the Supercommittee and promised better means of finding savings in government, but was vague about where; nor did he offer explicit contrasts to rivals like Romney, Cain or Rick Perry. (Indeed, Gingrich had sympathetic words about Perry’s infamous debate brain-freeze, saying when prompted by one question: “I have done what he did the other night, but not in front of quite as many people.”)
Still, the sheer volume of topics on which Gingrich alighted led one questioner to remark that “you have so many good ideas,” but that “there’s almost too many of them.” Gingrich seemed half-offended and half-flattered by this observation, then spun it to his advantage. “You touched on something that is very real. I’m very different from traditional politicians. What I am trying to do is very different.” That much was clear. Whether it’s enough to make Newt more than the latest conservative flash in the pan, and someone able to mount the first sustained challenge to Mitt Romney, remains to be seen."
The Huffington Post:
"Mr. President, Stop the Great Bank Heist
Posted: 11/14/11
A New York Times editorial of November 9, 2011 sounded the alarm concerning what I would refer to as the Great Bank Heist. The robbery, however, is not of the banks, but by them, with the Obama administration, I regret to say, helping them, in effect, to rob the public.
Banks and the government are intent on reducing the liability of the banks for their fraudulent and negligent conduct that led to the Great Recession. The two articles that best describe what is going on are the Times' editorial and a joint statement written by the attorneys general of New York and Delaware, Eric Schneiderman and Beau Biden, which appeared in Politico on November 6, 2011. The two attorneys general wrote:
We recognized early this year that, though many public officials -- including state attorneys general, members of Congress and the Obama administration -- have delved into aspects of the bubble and crash, we needed a more comprehensive investigation before the financial institutions at the heart of the crisis are granted broad releases from liability.
The Times editorial describes why Eric Schneiderman, Beau Biden and Kamala D. Harris, Attorney General of California, have refused to join the 47 other attorneys general who have agreed to the settlement. The Times editorial stated,
The proposed settlement reportedly would prevent the states from pursuing claims against banks relating to fraud or abuse in the origination of loans during the bubble. (In some states, the statute of limitations has expired for bringing challenges for faulty originations but not on all loans in all states.) It would also prevent states from pursuing claims for foreclosure abuses, like improper denial of loan modifications. And it would prevent them from pursuing banks' misconduct in their dealings with the Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems database, or MERS, a land registry system implicated in bubble-era violations of tax, trust and property law. The proposal would not preclude the states from pursuing the banks for wrongdoing in the repackaging and marketing of loans as mortgage-backed securities. But, as a practical matter, the ability to fully press such claims -- and to achieve significant redress -- could be impeded or blocked by the other constraints. Once one avenue of inquiry is closed off, it can be difficult to ascertain what happened along other points in the mortgage chain. In effect, the legal waivers being contemplated would let the banks pay up to
sweep wrongdoing under the rug."
"Mr. President, Stop the Great Bank Heist
The statement of Schneiderman and Biden makes a similar point, stating:
All 50 state attorneys general teamed up with federal agencies last fall to focus on the last of these four areas[a reference to different claims against the banks]. As our colleagues seek to settle these servicing-related issues, the financial institutions on the other side of the negotiating table have predictably sought releases that are as broad as possible from future liabilities, delaying the process. We look forward to doing whatever it takes to obtain servicing reforms -- whether through a negotiated deal with banks or through regulations issued by the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. But we will not release claims that we are currently investigating, including securitization, origination and MERS. Reforming the servicing of mortgages is crucial. But these servicing abuses did not create the mortgage bubble. Robo-signing did not blow up the U.S. economy. Rather, these are symptoms of a more far-reaching and insidious problem. The American people deserve a full investigation and public exposure of the conduct that got us into the economic quagmire we face today. We must ensure that it never happens again. And we must restore public confidence that ours is a nation committed to the goal of equal justice for all.
Hopefully, the three attorneys general opposing the proposed settlement will hold fast.
Why is the Obama administration seeking to assist the banks and endangering the broader claims that exist against those banks?
Why wouldn't the public be better served by having the trials expose the banks chicanery and fraud?
By pushing for the limited settlement, the U.S. government is aiding what in effect is a cover-up of the banks' misdeeds.
Why hasn't the Obama administration supported legislation that would give bankruptcy judges the power to reduce the principal of a mortgage or at the very least, allow the mortgage in question to be reduced to an amount that approximates current values, so that properties described as "underwater" -- worth less than the mortgage -- would be retained by current owners?
One of the greatest of the Obama administration's failures is its reluctance to assist homeowners while continuing to aid the banks."
http://www.lohud.com/article/20111026/NEWS03/110260361/New-Square-man-accused-murder-try-arrested-charge-violating-court-order
The hypocrisy in Skver is incredible. The Rebbe's hoiz bucher who is on trial for burning down the house and trying to murder a critic of the Rebbe was arrested again while out on bail. His lawyer is the modern orthodox menuvol Kenneth Gribetz who was disbarred for 10 years after a scandal. Skver used to ba'red Gribetz all the time that he is a lowlife who took cases against Skver. Now they hire him to defend the Rebbe's shick yingle rotzchim.
Another thing that Chabad got right
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=245575
Re Duvid Weinberger's (5 Towns)alegiance with women will soon surface.
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