Full transcription of interview between David Lopez and Charles Manson

March 23, 2011

Lopez: Yes, this is David from Vanity Fair.

Manson: Ah, and you have some questions for me.

Yes, I have some questions but I cannot hear you very good. Let’s try to do it this way. First of all, thank you for talking with me and thank you for helping us with this interview.

Mr. Manson I don’t know if you can hear me properly, but let me ask you my first question. I was wondering to show to the people in Europe that don’t know so much about your case as in the United States, but I want to ask you who was Charles Manson in the past and who is Charles Manson today.

Everyone is God. Some wake up, some don’t. The humans have already condemned themselves in many directions in English… entiendes más palabras en español, pero yo no hablo correcto, …. I got the thoughts from the prisons of the United States of Wall Street business people, money mongers and bureaucrats, and lying media have convicted me for their crimes and blame me for their children. Does that answer that question?

Yes, all right. Mr. Manson? I’m sorry, it’s a difficult connection and I can’t hear you properly, can you hear me OK?

I can hear you well.

I hear you very very low, but it’s OK. Let me please repeat my first question as I think it was impossible to hear anything. I was asking you to tell to the European people where our magazine is sold, who was Charles Manson and who is Charles Manson today?

All right. Charles Manson is everyone. He is the air, the trees, the green things that give us air. He’s the bottom of the ocean and the highest of the sky, he’s nothing and everything. No one ever died, he’s all death, he is all the graves, past and present, future there’s no such thing, there’s only now, he’s now, Charlie Manson is now. No one has ever been here, no one will ever be here. There’s no one here at all. There’s only reflections of the stars that are in eternity, forever. God, love, truth, yourself, it’s inside of you, it’s inside of everyone. If you don’t let God live on Earth, there will be no life on earth. God is all life, life is all. Man and the son, that’s all there is. If that can’t live, if that is kept down by confusion, lies, and distorted, twisted, greedy lust, passion, ruling the souls of people media of Wall Street won’t let live, then it must fade away. All the money’s dying because the people won’t give rights. All the preachers are saying one thing and going in the other direction when no one’s looking. It’s all darkness. Manson is zero. Does that communicate? Am I communicating?

Mmm…. I imagined that.

Mr. Lopez.

Yes, it’s very difficult to hear. I only hear a little noise and I’m very concentrated trying to understand his words but it’s almost impossible. I don’t know if he can hear me.

We can hear you.

I was saying that everybody I talk with about you told me that you are a very very smart person. And I was thinking OK if Mr. Manson is so smart, how could he never be seen showing no remorse or repent about what happened in the past if he was never going to get the chance to get a release from a parole hearing.

Well everything doesn’t hinge on release. Release is in your mind. Prison is a thought. Everyone outside thinks what they think about prison, but everybody in prison has the opposite thought of what everybody outside thinks. There is a day and a night, a light and a dark. And in the darkness, there are different thought patterns than in the light. In the graves are different thoughts of the dead, in the dead, than in the light. The Pharaoh never died, he just built a big pyramid and went inside of it. There’s an inside and an outside. The inside and outside, nothing ever dies, because nothing ever lives.

Living and dying are two games that are played with time and war. That’s money, that’s greed, lust and the passion of all the humans that call themselves people. And human beings, they’re actually just a fungus in the universe, just a piece of dirt floating through space. I’m not really smart. Everybody is as smart as I am. There’s only one mind, and we all have a piece of it. We give it to God, or we take it and run. We’re little rabbits running across the Universe, or we’re stationary temples for God and his will for ATWA.

The air that we breathe is order. We need to save our air. The trees that give us the air and all the green things from the bottom of the ocean to the tops of the mountains - that give us air - we must protect. That’s PHU*. You can do more in prison to change the world than you can in the bureaucrat, and the lying-ass media and what they call the United States of Wall Street; it’s just about money, and they feed on other countries with their war games to take the money. That’s all they want, is the money. They live and die by their God money.

You have got to turn your God inside yourself, and find out that God lives inside of you; that you are God. Until you find that out, then... you think I’m smart? You’re as smart as anybody else. There’s nobody else but you, to you. Prison is not a bad place, it’s just another place. People that work in prison are just other people, like people that work in factories or sweep the streets. People are just people. My friend used to give guided tours over there in one of your prisons.

Do you feel Mr. Manson that you are a kind of a martyr of our society?

Say that again.

Do you feel that you are a kind of martyr of the society?

Well, we all are. Everybody in prison is. There’s no crime. Crime is a big game that these people are playing with their children. The people they lock up are for movies. They make movies and television shows. Crime is a business, crime is a big business called Government, and Government is a big business called war, and wars feed on their young children, ‘feeds on their young men. Their bodies come back. They are not allowed to kill people, they only get killed. They’re bought and sold by the slaves of Wall Street, who study how to control humanity with their psychology and their philosophy games, and it all points out to how much profit you can make, how much money have you got. That’s killing the atmosphere. That’s killing the trees and the animals. Look in the zoo if you wanna see Charlie, look in the zoo, is that the prison? Is there prison in zoos? Or are your zoos in prison? Why do you have your children locked up in cages, calling it prison and crime? It’s suffering and misery created by Wall Street, created by greedy people who want to be somebody and put on faces, and play-act life as a movie; it’s not. Life is all the graveyards that’s been piled up for the last 2000 years in the name of God, Jesus Christ. Sad painted flower.

Mr. Manson you have now a new lawyer Giovanni di Stefano who is doing new movements to get your release from jail.

No, that’s just another Roman Catholic. That’s a Roman Catholic conspiracy to take my life and use my life for what in Siciliano Italians are doing in the Mafia. That’s a mafioso. It’s the same district attorney with a different face on, that’s all.

But, what do you mean with that?

When you hear what Omar Gaddafi talking about what he’s going to do with the world, because he’s representing the people over here that he’s got locked-up in the law game. That’s Vincent Bugliosi, that’s just another face from the Roman Catholic Church. That’s some Bishop somewhere. Bishop Mahony in Los Angeles built a cathedral in the name of our children, the martyred souls of all the people they’ve got locked-up in prison for doing what they raised them up to do. How are you gonna raise children up to do things and when they do it call them criminals, and lock them up in prison? That is not even sensible nor reasonable, nor intelligent. It’s not that I’m intelligent. It’s just that you are ruled by a lot of stupid bureaucrats who won’t listen to their own children. All the Manson family was, were their children. Their unwanted ones, thrown in the dirt, kicked out the back doors, locked-up in juvenile halls and reform schools. The slaves have taken over the United States from the Confederate war, the past is crawling up the side of the future, looking at it like it was prey and predator. Dreams of dreamers dreaming dreams.

Mr. Manson, now that you’re talking about the news, what do you think about Obama?

Obama?

Yes, what do you think about him?

I think he’s foolish for doing it. I don’t know how they tricked him into doing that. Someone tricked that guy into that. He doesn’t realise what they’re doing to him. They’re playing him.

But, do you like him? Do you think he gives some kind of hope for someone or not?

I have no room for liking or disliking. I set the truth, I don’t like or dislike it.

You look like at peace with yourself. Is it the way you show it or is it the way it is?

I don’t see it. I don’t believe the media, to start with. I don’t believe anything the media says, not one word. I’ve learnt that over a period of my life. I’ve learnt that the media, they play the game, they play for themselves. They don’t care about nobody else. And that’s Wall Street, and that’s the dead. They’re all dead, they’re brain dead. They’re holding on. They’re brain dead, and they’ve got a slave in the President’s office.

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I’d like to ask you a question about your case in ‘69. Of course the case is still generating a lot of doubts, but I have my own doubts about it and I’m going to explain them to you. I was wondering after what happened the first day in the Sharon Tate house, why you drove your people the next day to LaBianca’s house?

Why did I drive the people to the LaBianca house. I’ll have to search my mind there, that ah, you know, that’s a long time ago. That’s like saying why did you eat an ice-cream cone in 1946. It’s over 40 years ago.

Yes, but you have always said that you didn’t ask anybody to kill anybody.

No, no.

So, if you know what happened the first night with your people, why you drove your people the next night to the LaBianca house?

To start with, you’re on a false premise. It wasn’t my people.

Ok, your friends, I’m sorry.

They were just people that lived in the same ranch I lived in.

OK. Let’s call them your friends.

I don’t even use that word. They were just themselves, whatever they did was their business. I live in the underworld. I don’t tell people what to do. They know what to do. If they don’t know what to do, they don’t come around me, because I am very mean. I am very mean, do you understand what I’m saying when I say mean?

Yes, I understand.

I’m mal hombre. Nasty. I’m in the bull-ring. I run in the bulls with the heart of the world. I don’t play, I shoot people. I’m bad, I’m a mean guy. I’m an outlaw, I’m a criminal. I’m everything bad. You must know what to do. That’s what Tex told in his book. He said that he didn’t tell me what to do, I knew what he wanted me to do and I did what he wanted me to do. Do you understand that?

Yes.

In other words, I have a mind, a brain, I know how to think with my mind and my brain, and nobody beats me and gets away with it, I’m a gangster, I’m a hoodlum. I’m a charlatan, a con man. I was raised all my life- I’ve been 63 years in prison. The prison is my home, I live in here. I’ve been here all my life. My people were imprisoned, my family has been imprisoned. I go all the way back to George Washington. George Washington was a crook and a criminal. George Washington’s navy were pirates. They were pirates and cut-throats. They called them United States Navy but they weren’t accepted in the English language. Does that communicate?

Yes. But, do you understand my question?

Let me explain this. In prison, like, you know, I don’t know how to explain it. I didn’t have any thoughts, I didn’t think one way or another. I didn’t go to LaBianca’s house. I went to Harold True’s house, which is next door. And LaBianca’s house was always an empty house. We used to use it to go there to have sex because nobody lived there. It was an empty house for a long time. And when we went there, there was a dog over there, and we went to see if Herald True was over there and there was somebody living there. They had just rented the house to somebody. I didn’t even know that was there. Tex was with me, and Tex stayed there, and I went on somewhere else. And he did whatever he did. It’s none of my business. It’s his business. I know what conspiracy is. I know what the law says, malice of forethought. I understand what murder is. Listen to me very carefully: I didn’t break the law, I don’t need to break the law. The law is 200 or 300 years old. It doesn’t work anyway. You can do anything you want and never break the law. You’ve got a mind, you use your mind. If there’s something you want done, you just think about it. Can you do that? Do you understand that?

Yes, I understand what you mean.

Remember Jomo Kenyatta in Africa and Kenya? It’s Voodoo. Voodoo, voodoo. It’s the devil. If you believe in God then you must believe in the devil too. I mean, there’s gotta be something good and bad if you’ve got anything going on a wheel. It rolls on two sides, doesn’t it? The light and the dark. I live in the dark, and I do what I want. And if you don’t do right, you don’t come around me unless you’re right. If you’re right, then that’s cool, I’ll be right along with you. That’s what they call in prison, “right on”. Do you know what right on means?

No, what does it mean?

Do you see that big fist? They say “power to the people”? That’s the hand of God. When God says something, it doesn’t have to go through his mouth. The rivers’ got a mouth but it don’t speak, it’s got a bed, but it don’t sleep. That’s what we do. We don’t talk, we don’t tell on each other. Whatever you do, it’s your business. Whatever I do is my business. And you don’t have no business in my business. If you beat me for my money, I’m coming. I’m coming for my money. You don’t beat me for my money. You just don’t do that. That’s like you don’t fly unless you get a plane because you don’t have wings. You know, whatever you do right, you do right. You do right, and you can say, right on, right on. God is great, God is wonderful. God is all, God is everything. And if you’re not doing what God tells you, then you’re not doing what you say you have to do for yourself. If you make an agreement with me and we’ve got into a deal and you’re underworld, and I’m underworld, you abide for what you say, ‘cause your word is your bond and your bond is your life. And if you don’t want to do what you say, then don’t say it, because if you say wrong, in the wrong place, then you don’t exist anymore. Because sooner or later God’s will will catch up with you, and you convicted me for being the will of God.

Mr. Manson, a smart person as you are, and as a person that knows the law as you say you know, have you ever felt criminal responsible for what happened?

Say it again.

As a smart person as you are, and as a person that knows the law as you say you know, I’m asking you if have you ever felt criminal responsible for what happened in 69?

I’m responsible for that?

No, if you have ever felt criminal responsible for what happened?

I’m responsible for everything. I’m responsible for the horses if they run over somebody, because I’m renting the horses out. I’m responsible for the tenants that live in my building that sleep in my house. I’m responsible for the dog if he bites somebody and I don’t have a leash on him. I’m responsible for my existence, I’m responsible for my moves. I’m responsible for my thoughts and my thinking. I would never do anything against myself because that would be a sin against God. I’m not stupid, man. I don’t do things that’s gonna hurt me, and if I do something, nobody is gonna know anything about it. And if nobody knows anything about it, then it does not exist to anyone, because to me there is no one. There is only my air, my trees, my green, my water and my zoo, and I’m trying to put all the animals back where they belong so that I can get on with my life. Does that communicate to you?

Yes.

Then that’s you, as much as it’s me. ‘You tell me something, you tell me one, two three, I’ve got one, two three in my head, you got one, two, three in your head. It’s the same head. There’s no difference between you and I. You have a guy over there who gives tours to the old Spanish prisons, that was in Alcatraz with me. I was in Alcatraz with a guy called Alvin Karpis. He went to Spain and he got a job in one of your old prisons, in one of your closed down prisons. Giving guided tours. He sent me a picture of him standing in the Spanish prison, with a flashlight, haha.

Let me ask you another question. You have always been talking about air, trees, animals, but it surprises me that there’s no room for people.

No, people convicted themselves. They didn’t give me no rights. They didn’t let me speak, they drove over me and did anything they wanted to do, so, go along with it. This guy says he wants to appeal for me; he doesn’t want to appeal for me, he wants to appeal for himself. Because they butchered themselves. That’s why the Pope is not Italian anymore. Do you know that? The Spanish in Madrid, the brotherhood of the Catholic Church in Madrid is not the same brotherhood as the Catholic Church in Rome, do you understand that?

Yes, yes.

Well, then I am more in line with you than I am with the Italians because the Italian is the district attorney who was actually the mafia gangster telling me not to talk to the cops, when he raised me up, as Alvin Karpis in prison; all the gangsters and the old guys that raised me up as a child, in prison. I was raised in prison, and I know everything in prison from the men that came into from the outside, because I never really had an outside in my mind. The only outside I had in my mind was at the ranch with the horses, and the horses were my friends. I looked out for the horses, and the kids. The kids that came around, but all the kids in the ranch, the family, were thrown away kids like myself. Do you understand what that means?

Yes, yes. I understand.

Do you understand what Jesus was? He was a thrown away kid.

But these people is not like a horse, part of the ecosystem too? I’m not talking about countries or leaders or nothing like that, just people.

Let me ask you this sweetheart: if you’ve got people but you’ve got no atmosphere, no air, no water, what does that mean?

Yes, but I mean, it’s another piece of the puzzle.

So, the order of your own mind would be to put a plastic bag on your head and tie it and say, I’m doing this for people and write a note, that you gave your life to them. And see if that changes them. They’re not going to pay any attention to you, if you die a thousand times. You’ve been dead for two thousand years and ain’t nobody done anything but feed on you. That’s all them Christians do every day, is feed on Christ. They don’t come back and say, we want to get you off the cross and let you out of prison, no. We want to keep you in prison, as long as you’re dead, we love you. But we don’t love you when you come alive. When you come alive, then you become the devil. And then we think things, and you think things, and then we go off and do what........

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Hello? I have Charlie on the line.

OK, great. Mr. Manson you phoned again. Thank you. ……. You speak Spanish?

Sí, muy poco. Banditos del otro lado. Se llama jefe con pistola. Muchos muertos hombres.

You still practice there in the prison? I mean, you have people there from Mexico?

Yeah, mucho gente.

And you talk with them in Spanish?

Yes, pero es pocho.

So maybe we could be doing this interview in Spanish?

Pero no entiendes correcto Español. Palabras sueltas que otra. Montañas, caballos y pájaros. The bird god, yeah.

Let me just do a little joke. When you learnt Spanish you didn’t use it to talk about birds; maybe you used it to talk about women.

Yes, about women too. I understand.

OK, Mr. Manson, let me do you another question. I’ve been talking with people that work in your case in the precedent years and that are still working on it during the parole hearings and they told me that when they say NO in a parole hearing it is because they still think you are a danger for the society. What do you think about that?

Sorry, can you repeat that again?

I was saying that during the last weeks I was talking with a couple of people that were working in the past in your case and that are still working on it for example when you have a parole hearing in the prison, and they told me that they don’t release you because they still think you are a danger for society after 42 years in jail. I was wondering what you think about that. Do you think you could be a danger for society or that you could live outside the society?

That I couldn’t live outside?

In the society?

That I couldn’t live in society?

That you would be a danger for it.

Ha ha ha. That’s really a joke, man.

That’s what the people from the case say.

Yes, well, those are the people who can’t even live in their own minds, I guess. What is society? Society is a madhouse over here. I don’t know about Spain, but all the society I know, it’s: if you’ve got money, you can do anything. If you don’t have money, you can’t do anything. And if you’ve got money then they won’t give it to you. In other words, if I’ve got 900 million dollars in the bank and I go to draw it out, they say, ‘Who are you? Sue me.’ It’s not like the media is telling you, it’s not like you’re friends tell you. They tell you their point of view because that’s the way they know. What society? Society in the desert is with lizards and spiders and bugs. If I go over the mountains it’s the eagles and condors, the horses and mules. I mean, what’s not to get along in society? What level of society? What the hell is society? Is society downtown, main street, actors or carpenters? Or what? You know, society, that’s a vast....

How would you call it, the system?

The system. The system is money, that’s all that is. And they won’t give me any money. I say, ‘Well, let me get some money’. Everybody’s making millions; you know how much money has been made from my life? Do you know why they stole my life? Because I started out at Catholic boys school in 1946 and I wouldn’t go to their confirmation. They wanted to confirm me, you know, smack me in the face and all this shit. And I told them no, and they said, you must be the Devil then. I say, why do I got to be the Devil? They said, well you stand there and hold the door. So I stood and held the door for 300 kids that went by for confirmation, and I didn’t go to confirmation. I escaped and stole a bicycle, and they called me the Devil because I set the school on fire. Because I wouldn’t go to their schools and I wouldn’t listen to their garbage; because I’m from the South. My people were killed by that guy named Abraham Lincoln. You know, the slaves said the south will rise again. The slaves said that. You know why the slaves said that? Because it wasn’t like Abraham Lincoln freed anybody. In other words, what system, Abraham Lincolns’ system? He just did whatever he could get away with, just like they’re doing it every day. There’s no rights over here. They play-act like you’ve got rights. They make it look good if you’re rich and you’ve got money, but what’s the bottom line? You got people locked up over here for 20 or 30 years, and the procedures; the Supreme Court says you can only keep them locked up 21 days**, and they’re locked up 10 and 20 years, because nobody cared. And when you do care, then you’re considered crazy and you’re locked up in the nut wards. And then they’ve got filthy psychiatrists coming over with all kinds of garbage in their heads, they end up hanging themselves. We’ve got a madhouse over here. Talk about society, come on. There we are, society in Italy passes out wedding rings, and gives girls ones they like, they’re pimping the world, man. Look at what they’ve done to the Irish people, look at what they’ve done to the African people. And you think I want to adjust to that? Adjusting to that? I’m much worse than that. That’s the only way I can be better than that. I can’t be any better than that unless I’m worse than that. Because that’s worse than I can think about, I wouldn’t do it. I wouldn’t do half the stuff they do, and that’s what I told you about the President. I don’t know how they tricked him to doing that job, but he’s stuck with it.

Mr. Manson, seeing that you’ve been like a Rock Star for 40 years, it’s strange that someone who has been sentenced for murder, several people could see this person as a Rock Star, an iconic person.

You know, I can’t think what the other people think. I’ve got to try to figure out what I’m thinking, I can’t get into other people’s head and think what I think.

What do you think about that?

No pienso. I don’t got no mind, man.

Of course, you’re not going to be worried about that.

I no have no thoughts man. I’m free man. I don’t think. Thinking is a bad way to go, man. Thinking goes around in circles, no matter what you think, it’ never that way anyway. Buddhasafa, you know, all the ancient religions say... What other people think I was, that’s what they think, I don’t have thoughts in that. I go up to the sky and open up my mind and look at the stars, I go off into the universe and open my mind I’m all the cosmic conscience of all the stars you see in the sky at night, man. I’m nobody. I’m nothing.

How would you like to be remembered once you pass away, as you’re a famous person?

I don’t even know what that means, ‘remember’.

How would you like to be reminded by people when you pass away?

There’s gonna be no people. You can’t seem to understand. Let me explain to you: your air is dying. Automobiles and fossil fuels are destroying your atmosphere. You cannot face that. If you cannot face that, and stop that fossil fuel, and stop all them automobiles, trucks, cars, and buses and planes, there’s gonna be no air to breathe. You’re not gonna have any brain to remember anything. You’re not gonna be there at all. Do you understand that?

Yes.

You’re not gonna be there. Your atmosphere is dying. Can’t you compute that in your....... what do you call it, society? Or system, or whatever, it’s not gonna be there. Your water is dying. The Black Water Blues is singing it. They’re singing it over here in the south, telling you, hey man, you’re killing all the water, making paper to make magazines. That’s one reason I had trouble with this magazine interview thing. Because you’re killing trees to make the damn magazine, and you’re all making money, and got a way of life, but it’s killing all your fucking air. You’re at war with your life support systems on the planet Earth, and you won’t face the truth about it. You won’t look at it. Those kids kill their lives to try to communicate to you people. They gave their lives. All of those children of the 60s, Mary, Susie, Leslie, Lyn, Patty, Sandy, Bruce, Bobby, Steve. All of those guys stood up, and they gave their lives with what they were doing.

Is there any solution? What can we do to avoid that happen?

I’m telling you, every time I got out, the desert is deader than it was before. The mule deer are gone, the deer don’t live there no more. These bugs are gone, those bees don’t exist. The birds don’t fly over here no more. How come?

So there’s no longer a solution to work against that?

Yeah, there’s a solution, yes there is one. There’s only one solution: everybody in the world accept God, air, and work for God, air. Everybody in the world accept air as God. Accept air as God, because without air you do not exist. If you’re going to exist, you have to exist with air. You’ve got to stop warring against air. Your sin is against yourself, ‘is your sin against air. Air is all you’ve got. If you’re making money to sell your air, you’re selling your own life. You’re buying and selling your own life to destruction. That system that you say that I’m not good, that I’m a danger to, I might be a danger to your stupidity and I’m a danger to your ignorance, but I’m not a danger to intelligent life forms. I’m not a danger to the people who want to exist on the planet. I’m not a danger to farmers, I’m not a danger to poor people, I’m not a danger to soldiers who don’t want to hurt nobody, who don’t wanna go to war, but who’s forced into war by the bureaucrats who want to destroy themselves. They ride around in big cars, wear expensive suits and they’ve got lots of money. And that money is their God. The money is not my God, the air is my God, the trees are my God, the water, I’ve got to have water. Have you ever been without water? Do you know how bad it gets when water gets gone? And they’re buying and selling water. You can’t buy and sell water. If you buy and sell water, what’s the animals gonna buy water with? They don’t have credit cards and cell phones. So I’m with the animals. I’m with the bugs, the birds, the bees. The preacher gets up there and starts preaching about how God is so great, but he don’t like bugs and birds, trees and dogs, horses and cows. Fuck that shit. I like all creatures, except the ones that are destroying everything.

Even your love for creatures, even people?

I love the people that love me and want to save the…..

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How little the world has become. And how fast we’re using up all the life support systems. How out-dated laws and ways of mind, thought patterns are, and how the time has become distorted. And each generation of kids bringing up much, and has pushed the people who are brain dead and stuck, calls up the necessity for a King of America. The King of America needs to become, because the US is not America. It’s out-dated monkeys; money-monkeys. And lies of people who will not face the real of the money – is the reasons for distorting and destroying the real…. ‘And uses all to cover up the reasons of life with the reasons of money, and the industrial revolutions that started before we were born, destroys the natural environment and overlooks and covers up the real of righteousness. And the best servant rules the house. Slaves were running the South when Abraham Lincoln freed no one. And the slaves said to the world, that the South will rise again. And the South will rise again. Love is the slave mentality in the will of God. Long life to the King of America of Forever. Myme, hahahaha…..

Spring 2011

* PHU= Protective Housing Unit.

** Solitary confinement was limited by law to a maximum of 21 days.

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