how vital D-day was

The landings by the Allies led by the American and British forces on the 6th of June 1944 on the golden beaches of Normandy in northern France weren't only important because of the fact it gave the Allies a solid foot hold on Western Europe in which they could from there fight the Nazi's on a second front to that of their allies the Soviets, the Allies had a landing force of 175,000 men crossing the English Channel, by the end of the month after securing ports in northern France they had 1,600,000 men and machines on mainland Europe.

Although I may have sounded indifferent to the Allies fight in the Europe as compared to the Soviets who did the bulk of the fighting (killing 4 of every 5 German soldiers killed in the war) the landings in Normandy were vital to the timely defeat of the Germans.

Not only that but the speedy delivery of logistical support for those fighting against the Germans but also carried with it a good psychological effect on the millions of Soviets fighting on the Eastern Front.



The Soviets had suffered over 20,000,000 casualties after being lain under heavy siege by German oppression for nearly three years.

They had suffered massively and their land had been destroyed during the start of the German offensive because of their scorched earth policy which included the dissembling of factories and burning of crops for miles (that can't have been good for their economic growth of industry), to say they were weary of war would be an understatement.

But they had a fighting chance against the German forces, using massive infantry they overran the Germans where they could, eventually 80% of the German Army were sent fighting in the Eastern Front, several of these forces were pulled from Western Europe to avail in the fight to defend the Reich, the Luftwaffe had been put on the defense of Germany, therefore it would be unable to cover several other parts of Europe.

After the Atlantic Wall was formed in Europe, Hitler thought that any landing would be a failure and that if the Allies failed to spearhead a secure reinforcement zone in the north of France the Allied troops would be trapped and slaughtered by the German Army forces.

However history turned out to be much different, if this had been the case it could have seriously broke the morale of the Soviet Army and might have even prompted Stalin to except a peace treaty with Hitler bringing them back to where they started with the 1939 agreement, which would have seen Soviet forces drawing the border with Nazi Europe in eastern Poland, although Hitler didn't have anything sufficient to hit the several American bases in England with at this time, come 1945 if the D-day landings had failed the Americans would have probably hit the heart of Germany with the atomic bomb and burn the Reich from inside out. (That would be a very alternative to the history we have of two Japanese fishing cities being hit by these deadliest weapons in a vicious attempt to deter the Soviets).

However even though the tremendous sacrifice put forward by the Soviets (something that isn't properly remembered) did sufficiently strain Germany's war machine the timely injection of aid that came in the form of the Normandy landings helped the Third Reich come down before it had a chance to properly revive itself and cause more unthinkable damage and horror.

same difference: American Iraq and Soviet Afghanistan

As the "the Naughties" come to close one has to wonder if the world has become better, worse of indifferent, we as a people (in the west) have become used to the American occupational wars being waged in Iraq and Afghanistan (and the subsequent (sometimes daily) casualties that go with them), the former one has to wonder with detailed hindsight was a wise move to any stretch of the imagination.

The policy of using direct military might to promote an ideology over a third nation was something that drove the Americans to arming the Afghan Mujahideen rebels against the Soviet Army when they intervened on behalf of the socialist Afghan government in Kabul on Christmas Eve in 1979.

Regardless of the fact that 1,000,000 Afghans were slaughtered during the Red Army's nine year presence in the country the truth is from their point of view their comrades were being slaughtered since these rural dwellers of Afghanistan where being armed with high-tech portable anti-tank and anti aircraft guns, something that one their position couldn't take lightly.

Now lets look at Iraq since 2003:

The US had it's fair share in the killings of millions in Central America the same time the Soviets were doing their deeds with the Afghans, but when a third party arms insurgents (in this case Iran to insurgents in the Shia south of Iraq) the Americans don't take this too kindly when they feel the hurt it can cause:



What is different in this case however is the fact that the United States invading Iraq and the Soviets intervening in Afghanistan was that the US went in with the ideals of promoting freedom and democracy, however ended up bogged down in a bloody war with thousands of Iraqis fighting an occupational power for their own freedom instead of having their country transformed into a geopolitical platform for the countless cooperation's to promote their free market ideals.

Well over a million Iraqis have been killed in the past ten years, and probably a million more from the ten years before following the sanctions imposed after the Persian Gulf War of 1991.

The Iraq War has proven over the years that the US Army isn't fit for what it's doing there and most Iraqis resent them for what they have done, the same as the rural Afghans did with the Soviets back in the 1980's, making it okay (in one sense for the Americans) to arm the Taliban of its day, of which Ronald Reagan called:

"the moral equivalent of America's founding fathers"

The dissidents of which American forces in Afghanistan are saying is the main threat to eventual peace and democracy spreading across the region!

The Solution:

The western world should adopt a limited government when looking at countries such as Iraq (and Iran) and under the United Nations if necessary the powers of west (and east) should intervene unilaterally to secure regions directly threatened by these so called rogue states, instead of empires from both sides of the world competing on spreading ideals into indifferent countries and in turn ending up being hypocrites in their own modern history.

the bulk of the fighting

The most familiar image relating to the turning point of World War II in the Western world is the iconic image of American and British forces landing at the beaches in Normandy as they proceeded to liberate France from Nazi oppression, however what they fought through was an already war ravaged Europe, it took them six months to conquer what the German Army did in six weeks!

Not only was that because they had unchallenged air space for most of the way but it was also because only 20% of the German Army was all that was left behind to defend that space, not until the Battle of the Bulge which saw the Germans launch a massive offensive against a larger force of Americans using their big artillery guns.

The bulk of the fighting that had slowly eroded the solidity of the German military might was the war on the Eastern Front against the Soviet Union, which saw the Russians not only fighting back the invading Nazi Army but also Finns and several other states seeking independence from Stalin's Soviet Russia (most notably Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia).



But what the Soviets did do was break the back of the German Army after being besieged in their major cities of Moscow, Leningrad and Stalingrad (which saw 20,000,000 people slaughtered), the Soviet counter offensives broke the back of the German Army which had broken into three divisions (Army Group North, South, Centre) which ended up too widely stretched to defend Germany itself.



Emptying the Baltic States, Ukraine, Poland and several other smaller states in Eastern Europe of German forces the Soviets eventually entered Germany itself and captured Berlin meeting the Allies at the Elbe River not long afterwords, they were the biggest single party to contribute to the war effort of ridding Europe of the Nazi's.

Even though they received American equipment from the Lend Lease they gave the manpower logistical support and the practical elements of winning such a huge war, right down to the guns, boots and uniforms that made up their large infantry groups.

While the American effort did help Britain fight out a hefty amount of the war in the European Theater, in the Battle of Britain the Royal Air Force cut down hundreds of Luftwaffe bombers and fighters and from 1941 on had proceeded to fly bombing raids against Germany and the occupied countries in Western Europe, this accelerated into the devastating firebombings of Dresden and Hamburg near the closing stages of the war.

However the Lend Lease from the United States which resupplied Britain during the war cost the equivalent of $500 billion today, a loan that literally bankrupted Britain after the war and was only paid off in 2006!

the 'Hand from grave' deterrent

More commonly known as the 'Dead Hand' the nuclear fail safe deterrence system was put online around 1985, this was to save the Soviets from winning 'the' nuclear exchange between it and the western countries if all of its high command were to be killed in a decapitation strike.

It would respond with overwhelming force against the western nations countries, possibly all members of NATO, it was of course kept a closely guarded secret until the collapse of the Soviet Union.

It's been theorized that if one side carried out a successful decapitation strike against the other it might have been able to severely hinder a quick and sustained response.

It's these simply facts kind of remind me of that line from Dr. Strangelove in the war room when talking about the fictional Soviet doomsday machine:

"Yes, but the ... whole point of the doomsday machine ... is lost ... if you keep it a secret! Why didn't you tell the world, eh?"

The joke is that obviously if one had this kind of deterrent it should state just that fact to 'deter' their opponent from attempting a first strike in the first place!

America put forward Yeltsin?

In 1991 the Soviet Union was collapsing, Germany was reunified and most of eastern Europe was gaining it's independence from the Soviet Union, hard liner communists blamed Gorbachev's reform program feeling he was giving too many powers to the republics, Gorbachev was put under house arrest and pronounced ill to the Russian people, he had only recently offered an end to the Cold War with the United States probably trying to buy time but was flatly turned down.

With only days left in the Soviet Union the hard line communists who prepared to launch the 'August Coup' as it was come to be known demanded that Gorbachev issue a state of emergency to buy some more time, after he refused he was put under house arrest and was told to be ill.

The emergency committee that had taken over had sent in tanks to Moscow after declaring a state of emergency, however nobody knew where or how Gorbachev was, several soldiers taking part refused their orders, Gorbachev's former rival Boris Yeltsin spoke out against the coup.



Before it had gotten bloody the coup had collapsed since the Committee in control had no way to go forward and hadn't the loyalty in the military, from this Yeltsin used the coup's failure to eliminate the political power of the Communist party of the Soviet Union (CPSU).

This meant the end for Gorbachev and hastened the end of the Soviet Union, Yeltsin had instead proposed a commonwealth of ex Soviet nations, primarily Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, Yeltsin had told the president of the United States George HW. Bush about what had been done before informing Gorbachev.

One has to wonder if American influence had put Yeltsin forward to help orchestrate a speedy fall of the union, what followed after the fall was the Yeltsin era marked by widespread corruption, economic collapse, and enormous political and social problems.

By the time he left office, Yeltsin had an approval rating of two percent!

the Soviets in space

In history the Soviets were always in short failed in defeating the Americans in the space race in which they had started when the world trembled at the sound of their rockets and Yuri Gagarin was the first man ever in space.



As of with the American rockets the Soviets were able to evolve the original designs and plans from the defeated Nazi's, (NASA was founded after the Americans figured out basis of how the V-2 ballistic missiles worked).

The Soviets however were the first to:

Have the first animal, first man and first woman in space.

First multi space craft docking.

First probe to land on the surface of the moon.

Send a probe into the orbit of another planet (Venus) and to land on the surface of another planet (Mars).

First data recorded off of another planet (Venus).

The moon landing in 1969 of the American Apollo 11 was truly a breakthrough for the Americans, the Soviets were unlucky as their massive N-1 rockets planned for such missions had exploded on test launches!



But the truth was while the United States government made a tradition of cutting big government funding for NASA shortly afterwords and focusing their attention for the next five years on sending men and equipment to fight in the jungles of Vietnam the Soviets were sending probes as far away as Venus! (see Venera 9).



Following the breakup of the Soviet Union they were left with the worlds first space station the Mir which was to be (unknown or planned by the Soviets) the main prototype of today's International Space Station.

But with the Cold War well over and both east and west working together in space related technologies one has to wonder the contribution that will be put forward by the former Soviet republics of Russia and the Ukraine.

handy to have the Swedes on your side

During the height of the Cold War in the 1980's the Americans were forging alliances all across the world, even arming the Mujahideen, the Contras and other anti-Communist guerrillas, literally throwing anything they could at the Soviets and prepping other countries to put up an absolute bitter fight to the end in the case of a Soviet invasion.



However Sweden had remained neutral (even in World War II) but due to it's close proximity with the Soviet Union and it's strategic location towards Europe and the fact it needed to enforce it's neutrality it ended up fielding a large enough nearly entirely self made military.

But unlike it's neighbors (such as Norway) it never joined NATO or even (knowingly) aided any foreign military personnel or equipment, however the United States had put forward a clever psychological operation to convince the Swedish people to have a lot of fear in the imminent threat posed by the Soviet Union, this meant that the Swedish military could be a buffer and serve the interests of the United States and the United Kingdom.



They achieved this by operating (mostly American) submarines in Swedish territorial waters (including in Stockholm harbour) appearing to be hostile and not warning or telling the Swedish government of these certain operations, the close proximity of these patrols and the Swedes believing them to be "enemy" submarines meant that the government had to take more solid measures regarding Sweden's impressive forces to counter the threat of such a present danger.

Not only that but Sweden (along with several other non NATO countries) had stay-behind agents that in the case of the Swedish military being crippled or Sweden invaded would operate large scale insurgency groups making it truly hell for the invading Reds.

Although geographical size and the military comparison would have made it look like readying up Sweden for a war an attempt of holding off a serious Russian force would have looked futile.


Click to enlarge

However the Soviets probably thought the same when they invaded Finland in 1939.

fall of the union

With Ireland being the only one to vote in the Lisbon Referendum one has to wonder if giving more power to smaller numbers of people in centralizing the diverse 10,180,000 square kilometers that is Europe is really a smart idea.

Just 18 years ago the Soviet Union collapsed the former republics gaining their independence, the diversity of these countries and their people shows just how different they all really are:

Armenia



Armenia is a unitary, multiparty, democratic nation-state with an ancient and historic cultural heritage.

After it split from the Soviet Union Armenia and Azerbaijan (see below), the war ended after a Russian-brokered cease-fire was put forward in 1994. The war was a success for the Armenians who managed to secure 14% of Azerbaijan's internationally recognized territory.

Azerbaijan



Azerbaijan is a nation with a majority Turkic and Shi‘ite Muslim population, is a secular and unitary republic. The Azerbaijan Democratic Republic was the first successful attempt to establish a democratic and secular republic in the Muslim world.

Belarus



It has been said that Belarus was the only dictatorship in Europe, governed by Lukashenko who is called by most people of Belarus as “Batka” - meaning father in English.

Estonia



Was one of the world's fastest growing economies for several years after becoming independent, very small population at only 1.4 million, it is said to be the most successful countries out of all of the former Soviet republics.

Georgia



Georgia is a representative democracy, organized as a secular, unitary semi-presidential republic, it had several skirmishes with the Ossetians which exasperated from Georgia forming a state called South Ossetia, a Georgian attack on there led to a devastating war in August of 2008.

Kazakhstan



Kazakhstan is the ninth largest country in the world.

It is ethnically and culturally diverse, in part due to mass deportations of many ethnic groups to the country during Stalin's rule. Kazakhs are the largest group. Kazakhstan allows freedom of religion, and many different beliefs are represented in the country. Islam is the primary religion. The Kazakh language is the state language, while Russian is also officially used as an "equal" language (to Kazakh) in Kazakhstan's institutions

Kyrgyzstan



Kyrgyzstan is a land locked in Southeast Asia, it is made up mainly of Kyrgyz's, Uzbek's and Russians.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union state-owned enterprises have been privatized, it has come under influence from the west and has seen a considerable amount of terrorism.

Latvia



Latvia is a unitary parliamentary republic and is divided into 26 districts. It's population is made up mostly of Russians and Latvians.

Today it is one of the poorest countries in the European Union and its people are among the unhappiest in the world!

Lithuania



The majority of the country are Lithuanians with only a small concentrated amount of Polish, the predominant religion there is Roman Catholicism.

Moldova



A small and practically unknown country to most Europeans, is a parliamentary democracy and has a very large wine industry.

Russia



Russia is the largest country in the world and takes up an eighth of Earth's surface, and has a population of 142 million people, following the breakup of the Soviet Union Russia's economy went to hell in the early 1990's after taking all of the debts the Soviet Union owed, it fought in two wars against Chechnya and in the last few years is rising back towards super power status.

Tajikistan



Most people that live in Tajikistan belong to the Tajik ethnic group, who share culture and history with the Iranian peoples and speak Persian.

Following it's independence from the Soviet Union it had a devastating civil war from 1992 to 1997, afterwords newly-established political stability and foreign aid have allowed the country's economy to grow. Trade in commodities such as cotton and aluminum wire has contributed greatly to this steady improvement.

Tajikistan is still however a very poor country!

Turkmenistan



Cotton production is big in Turkmenistan as was the President Turkmen-Bashi a dictator who controlled most aspects of his peoples lives up until 2007.

Ukraine



Ukraine is home to 46.2 million people, 77.8 percent of whom are ethnic Ukrainians, with sizable minorities of Russians, Belarusians and Romanians. The Ukrainian language is the only official language in Ukraine, while Russian is also widely spoken. The dominant religion in the country is Eastern Orthodox Christianity, which has heavily influenced Ukrainian architecture, literature and music.

They have changed their political orientation recently from East to West, but nothing has really changed!

Uzbekistan



Uzbekistan is made up nearly entirely of Uzbek's and has an economy based on commodity items like cotton, gold, uranium, and natural gas.


It's an interesting comparison, I was going to do one on Europe but the truth is Europe is nearly just as vast (even though it's much smaller) as the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union were, and only time will tell how history will treat the European Union.

one of the most feared Weapons of Mass Destruction

These days the term 'Weapons of Mass Destruction' were made famous by the series of lies that started the Iraq War, the fear that struck so many people in the west was of Iraq somehow being able to strike them (remember post 9/11 fear) with a nuclear weapon, but throughout recent history the most scary Weapon of Mass Destruction would definitely have to have been the Typhoon class nuclear ballistic missile submarine.


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Six of these massive beasts were made during the 1980's and designed to operate in the case of a war between the USSR and the United States, the GIUK gap a resupply line for the US backed Western Europe, this line consisted of several US Naval submarines, destroyers and aircraft carriers, the Typhoon class submarines however didn't even have to bypass any of this since they could simply fire their 20 nuclear ICBM's from the cold Arctic and devastate the eastern seaboard of the United States!



The subs length was about 574 ft which is about the size of three football fields, it could carry 20 SLBM (Submarine Launched Ballistic Missile) that specific one most common on the Typhoon class subs (the R-39 Rif) had a range of 8,250 km, weighs 90 tonnes and have 10 MIRV nuclear warheads each giving each one a blast yield of 200 Kt!

With all that it also has several recreational facilities for its crew including saunas and swimming pools, it was designed for long deployment being able to spend up to 180 days submerged under Arctic ice where it was nearly virtually impossible to detect.

However since the Cold War ended and the Soviet Union collapsed three of the six ever made were scrapped, one preserved and two remain in service, however these two usually remain in dock (at Severodvinsk which borders the White Sea), however these have been stripped of their nuclear SLBM's, it was rumored they might be modified to carry ordinary conventional cruise missiles or be used for mine laying operations.

However the two remaining active will be reserved for possible future repairs and modernization, and if the US keeps meddling on the Russian border with those fascist creeps like Yushchenko of Ukraine or Saakashvili of Georgia these machines o' war may be quickly revamped to their ordinary nuclear configuration to once again strike fear to those living in major eastern US cities such as New York City and Washington DC!

if the USSR had directly invaded the Islamic Republic of Iran

Relations with Iran and the US since Ayatollah Khomeini stepped off of his plane in Tehran in 1979 showed Iran breaking all rules of diplomacy especially after it seized American hostages in the US embassy in Tehran.

Before the seizure of hostages however one man named Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (Iran's current president) opposed the idea stating that it would boost the influence of the Soviets and that the real threat to them was not the Americans but Russia and the Marxists.



Saddam Hussein's Iraq was an alley of the Soviets and when over 70,000 Iraqi troops along with several divisions of tanks crossed the border into the oil fields of southern Iran the Soviets didn't condemn or oppose it and the UN Security Council called for a ceasefire but made no demand for Iraqi forces to withdraw from Iran, yes it failed to condemn a country that invaded another!

Right to the north of Iran was the Soviet border, the Shah's Iran had been America's most powerful ally, for it's strategic location and it's borders, and during the 1970's the Shah was buying up a lot of modern military equipment from the United States such as the 80 ordered (and 79 delivered) F-14A Tomcats which designed and built to defend US aircraft carriers from long distances, along with that ordered were over 300 F-16's but none were delivered, along with that already present were several different SAM networks and some very mobile but highly advanced army units would delay Soviet ground movements towards the south of the country to give the Americans time to defend Iran.



In 1980 that had all changed, the US Navy helicopters failed to reach Tehran to rescue the American hostages in the ill-failed Operation Eagle Claw and the Soviets ally Iraq had begun an invasion, after acquiring information on US estimates that doubted the present Iranian military were probably unable to properly operate it's tanks, SAM networks and fighter jets.

They were in one sense right but the Iranian military quickly rebuilt itself and had sent Iraq on the defensive in 1982 and resulted in a further six years of Iran on the offensive in a bloody war that would cost 1,000,000 lives on both sides!

Apart from that fact both the United States and the Soviet Union supported Iraq, the Soviets keeping open usual business with Saddam's government supplying them mainly with tanks and fighter aircraft as usual, while the US supplied Iraq (remember an ally of the Soviet Union) with thousands of assault rifles, and a handful of UH-1 Huey's for the Iraqi army after 1982 defending their vital oil interests in the Persian Gulf and Saudi Arabia.

However if the Soviet Union had invaded Iran in lets say the mid 1980's it would have been met with little opposition from the UN until they had crushed the Iranian regime and its accompanying military, it would have put them in a position with a massive eastern border to oil rich waters of the Persian Gulf and right in short striking distance of Saudi Arabia and the other smaller countries of the pro Western Emirates.

It would also have opened up the large strategic land that is Iran for use by the Soviet Army and Air Force as a base in their war against the rebels in Afghanistan which would further isolate Pakistan.



However a war with Iran with Iraq as an ally would have forced the Soviet Union into deeper economic turmoil as Khomeini had truly united the country together under religious ties, as proved by the amount of volunteers that fought off and demoralized the invading Iraqi forces.

However it would have been worth it in one sense in the long term considering that it would have given the Soviets a massive platform for military forces to influence and dictate how things work in the Persian Gulf, along with it's ally Iraq very evenly splitting both superpowers control over the oil rich region, and would have enabled the Soviets to close off America's oil shipping through the Strait of Hormuz which could have crippled several western economies, it was here where US Navy warships had to protect their tanker convoys during the 'Tanker War' phase of the Iran Iraq War.



It's an interesting scenario and one which I'm sure was considered by the Soviets and feared by the Americans.

to what end?

The Cuban Revolution led by Fidel Castro in 1959 saw the 82 man guerrilla force enter Havana and take it under socialist control, Cuba was now Castro's and he quickly made changes, preferably showing off his revolution in the United Nations befriending the Soviet Union and nationalizing the free market system the US set up in Cuba during the time of Batista, the new Cuban economy was made up primarily of sugar cane which was burned by saboteurs who supported the US internally in all provinces in Cuba.



It was the only real wealth they had and made the Castro government angry, yet he had most of the country behind him and some 250,000 ready troops to repel any invasion (set up after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion attempt).

After the Bay of Pig's invasion in which 1,500 Cuban exiles trained by the CIA attacked Cuba was foiled before they could reach Havana and they were then abandoned by their American backers, Castro thinking he was safe and that the west couldn't touch him without serious circumstance he decided to export his socialist revolution to other parts of Latin America, the US military in a threatening manner practiced a mock invasion of another Caribbean island using 40,000 joint marines.



This was a big threat to Castro and Cuban forces were readying for an invasion, however Castro one of the worlds biggest believers in communism decided to directly hit the problem at its source, the United States.

Several Cuban people and CIA agents in Cuba around 1962 have stated that the nuclear ballistic missiles that were sent under the Americans noses to Cuba were literally just parked there, right in the public's eye!



What was at stake during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 for the United States was the possibility of nearly all of its strategic bomber bases and several major cities such as Washington DC, New York City and Dallas which were right under the hammer, only a few cities such as Seattle were out of range.

Robert McNamara stated that in 1992 he had learned something he didn't know before, that was that Castro knew the nukes were there, I quote McNarama as saying exactly this:

"I asked him 3 questions. One- did you know there were nuclear warheads in Cuba? Two- would you have recommended to Khrushchev to use nuclear missiles in the event of an American invasion of Cuba? And three- what would have happened to Cuba? He said, "One- I knew the missiles were there. Two- I would not *have* recommended it, I *did* recommend it! And three- we would have been totally obliterated."

Yes, after the socialist revolution that turned Cuba into exactly what 82 man team had envisioned (Che Guevra another notable member), Castro was ready to sacrifice it all in the ultimate fight that would (in his mind) destroy or at least cripple the center of capitalistic imperialism that was threatening the way of life he saw fit for the world.

one of the duller parts of Russian history

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When the Soviet Union was becoming more open to the west in its last six years in existence (1985-1991), it let something extraordinary happened, in 1990 the communist party allowed the opening of a McDonalds right in Moscow!

It was the first fast food restaurant ever to appear in Russia, and one of the biggest (located only a few blocks from the Kremlin), Russians from all around came to see this (at the time) extraordinary thing, the first fast food restaurant ever introduced to their side of the world, a true pearl in western society.

This Time Magazine Article shows the commotion of the time how it was getting jobs for the people and how people could earn their own money (the start of capitalism in Russia), that is true on one sense, it created a few jobs for waiters and managers and probably about twice as many jobs for wannabe heart surgeons.

It is a horrible thing to be put on the Russian people or any people in their own culture and environment, there is nothing wrong with most fast food restaurants but with McDonald's you're paying to be slowly poisoned!