The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - SMT -- Who To Believe

Episode Date: October 18, 2023

Another horrific scene, this time in Gaza, and of all places a hospital.  Who did it and why?  That is the question today as accusations and counter-accusations reverberate across the Middle East and the world. Bruce Anderson is by with a classic SMT on this.  Plus some thoughts on Pierre Poilievre's apple-picking video.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. It's Wednesday, Smoke, Mirrors and the Truth with Bruce Anderson. Lots to talk about today. And hello there. As so often happens in the Middle East, you have a story, and then within moments, you hear a different side of the story. You're left unsure of what the truth is, how much smoke mirrors and the truth is involved in telling the story.

Sometimes they're small, sometimes they are big stories. And the one we are faced with, the world is faced with, quite frankly, 24 hours after it happened is still unclear as to who to believe. Do you believe the Palestinians who were first out of the gate, or Hamas, actually, first out of the gate with their claim on the story that the Israelis had blown up a hospital that has left hundreds, who knows where the final figure will end,

dead in Gaza? And then shortly after, you have the Israelis saying, it wasn't us. It was, in fact, a Hamas rocket that destroyed that hospital and killed all those people. In between, you have people reacting around the world, including leaders of countries, including, to a degree, Canada's Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau. But in the moment, at this moment, it's still unclear, and it may take days, weeks, months before everything is analyzed

to say this is how it happened. But that hasn't stopped the reaction, which was instant and has left both sides on this story arguing their claim. And as often happens, the media and social media, legacy media, you name it, is trying to sort it all out and arguably not doing a very good job. What do you make of this? Well, I think the first thing is the incredible tragedy of people in a hospital being killed by this explosion, whatever caused it.

And just another reminder that the situation in that region is devastating uh for people um palestinian people jewish people and the um and the rest of the world i believe or most of the rest of the world hopes that that um that violence comes to an end very soon. You and I were talking about last night, the potential that President Biden showing up in Israel was a signal that perhaps there was some progress being made behind the scenes to find some way to seize the risk to human life, even if the next step is some sort of safe passage from the Gaza Strip into other places that won't be subject to a ground invasion. I guess to your specific question about what do we make of a situation like this, I think the, you know, I'm struck by a couple of things. One is that Canadians in general don't have any trouble feeling anxiety and fear and empathy for the Jewish people globally who faced a lot of anti-Semitism over a long period of time and a lot of violence aimed at them.

And so there is a kind of a profound sense of sadness that this never seems to go away, that this seems to be something that parts of the world, parts of society around the world want to continue to reignite. And there's a very strong instinct to defend people of the Jewish faith. I think there's also been developing in Canada over the last few decades, a feeling of anxiety about the life lived by the citizens in the Gaza Strip who aren't involved with terrorist organizations who want to live peacefully in the land that they consider to be their home. And so Canadians have come to fervently wish both for and then to the anti-Semitic eruptions and the attacks on Jewish people, and also a hope that people in Palestine can live peacefully as well.

And so I think we're seeing in the way in which people react in Canada and the way in which politicians and sometimes journalists react is a reflection of the fact that people hold both those thoughts at the same time, that Israel and Jewish people have faced decades of profound risk and millions of murders. And at the same time, a worry that the the way in which this plays out now will lead to the deaths of more innocent people, which obviously has already been the case. So in, in any scenario these days, Peter, it feels to me that the way in which information is transmitted has advantages over what we used to see in the past, but also significant disadvantages. The advantage is obviously that more people can get more information more quickly through the Internet than was ever possible before.

The disadvantage is more people can get misinformation more quickly than was ever possible before. If in the past you could sort of say, well, the editors of news organizations play a crucial role in making sure that what gets carried as news is safe for public consumption in the sense that it's accurate and it won't lead to misinformation and the wrong reactions. Those positions don't appear to exist, or if they do, they don't have the same degree of influence as they used to. And so here we are hours after, a significant number of hours after this incident at the hospital in Gaza, really unsure of what happened. It's hard to even think about, is there an encouraging sign in this? But, you know, maybe for me, if there is one, it is evident in how Israel reacted that they understand that they don't want to be bombing hospitals. You know, I feel like there are perhaps more people than should who wonder if maybe that's

what Israel will do in order to exact some sort of vengeance for the terrorist attack on their people. And so I don't want to call it an encouraging sign, but I do think looking through the various interviews with Israeli leaders, including a military leader who gave a very interesting interview to David Cochran the other day. I think there has been a consistent effort on the part of those voices to say, our goal is not to harm Palestinian civilians. It's to eradicate Hamas and to live within the international rules or laws regarding combat. Yeah, well, let's get to that interview in a

moment because I think it is interesting to discuss. I want to, I just want to stay with the overall story. First of all, I should advise listeners and viewers on our YouTube channel that we're, you know, we're recording this interview. Things are going to change depending on when you listen to this today.

The story is going to keep changing. At least some of the facts are going to keep changing around it. But I don't think the basic sense of who did it, why did they do it, how did it happen. That debate and discussion is going to continue. It's having an enormous impact already. President Biden is supposed to be in or is in the Middle East on this day. But some of his meetings have already been canceled by the other half of the meeting, saying we don't want anything to do with this.

We're not going to meet the American president right now. He's too aligned with Israel, et cetera, et cetera. But let me go back to, you kind of raised it, but our friend, you know, Ian Bremmer, who's the head of the Eurasia Council. It's been, you know, we've talked to him in the past. You. We've talked to him in the past. You and I have talked to him in the past. You often see him on television, on all networks around the world, for that matter.

He had a tweet last night. I'll read it short. Absent facts, the guilty party is the one you don't like. This problem, amplified massively by social media, is destroying democracy. That's pretty blunt. That's pretty out there in terms of the impact of the way things are being reported on social media. They're claimed by both sides. But as he's saying, absent the facts, and none of us have the facts, unless we push the button on that rocket.

Absent facts, the guilty party is the one you don't like. That seems to be the way this is boiling down. Well, it's a very powerful statement, and it is a comment, I think, that applies beyond the scope of the Israeli-Palestine conflict right now, or the Israeli-Hamas conflict. It's obviously very pertinent, and especially in these hours right now, in that conflict. But on any other day, when talking about the evolution of politics in today's

time, that statement holds that what's going on is that people are consuming misinformation, are being fed misinformation, are being, in some cases, not taking the initiative to find out what is fact and what is not, but settling into their side of a culture war or a political divide, blue states versus red states, and deciding that every sparrow that falls is caused by the political side that they don't like. And so I think it's an important point that Ian is making about the Middle East. I think it's a really important point about society and politics and the role of fact now. the White House and hoping, obviously, that from my standpoint, that there aren't more Trump years in the White House. But the degree to which Trump made it his business to tell people things that

weren't true, not because he didn't know the truth, not because he thought that the facts were kind of debatable, but because he thought he could get away with it. He thought he could rally people to his side by saying, they're telling you this is black. I'm telling you it's white and you should be with me and against them. we've never, we've never seen anything like that, um, before played out at the highest office in politics in the world. And, um, people like me anyway, or me, I'll speak for myself, um, watched it and thought, well, this is going to catch up with him. At some point, people are going to say, no, well, we don't want to live with this

as an acceptable political methodology, except it didn't. Yes, I understand the argument that the Democrats won more contests than the Republicans in the aftermath of that, of Trump arriving in the White House. But they were all close, and he's the frontrunner for the nomination again, and he continues to do what Ian Bremner is talking about, although Bremner's comment, I'm sure, is related to the Middle East, which is to tell people things that aren't facts

on the understanding that they're going to like what he says and they're going to assume they're fact enough for the purposes of getting through their day and disliking their political opponents. So democracy is definitely at risk, not just from a lack of hard information, but from an effort to misinform, which is bigger and more pervasive and scarier than anything I've ever seen of that sort before. The politics of the lie has always existed to some small part, but there's no question that after the 2016 election, it has become a major part of politics, mainly in the United States, but not solely in the United States. The very fact that Trump is still around, I mean, he was lying from day one of his administration.

Day one, called him out a liar on the whole issue that he forced his people out in terms of the crowd size of the inauguration. That seems pretty petty now, like who cares really. But that was a signal of what it was going to be like. And it's turned into that on so many issues. But it, I may hate to say it, but, you know, it's clearly work. You're right. They've lost every contest since then. But he's still there.

And he's still dominant within what's left of his party. And he appears to be the candidate for the Republicans going into the next election. And depending on what... If truth was a requirement in the minds of voters, to the extent that maybe we thought that it was,

he would be polling at almost the single digits, you'd think. But he's not. In a lot of these swing states, he's pulling ahead of Joe Biden. So I think we have to be really concerned that the moorings of democracy are really at risk is probably putting it too mildly. And when we look around the world at the sense that China is being more aggressive and ambitious in its aggressions,

that Russia is probably taking quite a bit of solace from what is happening in the Middle East right now, that the rest of the world that would otherwise be a rogue states is looking at the U.S. and saying, is this place strong enough? Is there an American consensus? Is America's power and influence going to be used in a way that we need to take heed of? Or is America vulnerable? Because it's divided, it's misinformed, it's distracted constantly. And the people vying for its leadership, the two main candidates don't enjoy enormous public support. I think that Biden is doing a good job on this right now,

but I think it's also clear from the data that there are a lot of voters who wish that he wasn't, and Democratic voters who wish that he wasn't the standard bearer because they're worried that he's a bit too old for the job. I will be intrigued at least to see how Biden does today, and I guess parts of tomorrow, in terms of this visit to the Middle East. Listen, you know, if this was going to happen, happening on the eve of a presidential visit,

you could hardly say, well, you can have the discussion about was it deliberate or was it an accident? You know, if it was deliberate, there's no way the Israelis, you would think, it would be simple to make the argument that the Israelis would never have done this deliberately on the eve of President Biden's visit to support them. Makes no sense. Was it an accident on Israel's part? Perhaps.

You know, rockets and defense mechanisms can go awry on you. On the Hamas side, was it deliberate? Well, you could make the argument it was to disrupt this visit. Was it an accident? You can absolutely make the same argument on the accident side. But somehow it happened, and somehow there will be a determination eventually because we have the capability of doing that. I mean, the generic we in determining stuff based on the records.

But meanwhile, let me return to the, you described it as the David Cochran interview with the Israeli military spokesperson. And you're right, it's quite revealing i should say for starters the israeli military now and has been for as long as i can remember they have a kind of public relations sector that is very impressive the guy that david interviewed has popped up on networks around the world, and other colleagues like him, they're available 24-7 to get these people because they realize it's part of the conflict. It's getting your side's story out. They have them available in all languages to speak to any network in the world. It's quite something.

And they're really clear speakers, seem to know the facts as best as can be known at the time. But this interview with David went a little, not off the rails, but it went a lot, you know, a little further than the average interview that we've seen. It was quite dynamic. You know, you can find it, just do David Cochran, you know, a little further than the average interview that we've seen. It was quite dynamic. You know, you can find it, just do David Cochran, you know,

Google it, David Cochran, Israeli IDF, Defence Force spokesperson. After we record, I'll tweet out a link to it to help people find it if they're interested. Yeah. So go ahead. You wanted to talk a little more in detail on it. Well, I was really interested in it because I thought it was a really useful interview. I thought that David Cochran put the questions that he put in a very thoughtful and respectful way, understanding that he was speaking to somebody who was quite

emotional about the responsibility that he felt to protect his compatriots, the Israeli people, from more harm. And that this was his priority. He had a sense of urgency, a deep personal kind of angst about what had happened and that he needed to do something to eradicate this threat of Hamas. And I think that hearing that from someone like him, Conricus, I think was his last name, in the military might have been more helpful in terms of affecting Canadian opinion, because I think sometimes Canadian opinion wonders

whether or not politicians in Israel share the same degree of concern about life, regardless of where it is, and instead can look at this as a contest between two states almost, and as somewhat political. And, you know, with the passage of time, I think it's also fair to say that a lot of people don't know all of the history of the plight of the Jewish people and the persecution and the Holocaust and the sense of fear and risk that Jewish people feel on a regular basis. And if that's true for some people, they might also have consumed quite a bit of information about the plight of the Palestinian people, civilians who aren't terrorists, who are living with a sense of fear and threat and deprivation. And so David Cochran in his interview wanted to raise those issues and to do it in a way that was not suggesting that the plight of those two peoples was equivalent, but that both of those thoughts were on people's minds. And I thought he did a good job of surfacing that while at the same time respecting

the fact that what is going on right now is a function of the fact that Hamas attacked and murdered Israeli civilians, and that the responsibility of the military was to prevent that from happening again. And their decided course of action was to go into that region, find those terrorists and remove them. And I guess the last thing that I'll say on this is that there is, and we heard it from Prime Minister Trudeau, this notion of what's legal and what's not legal in the context of war. And I think a lot of people probably find that awkward language in the sense that

they want there to be laws governing war, but war doesn't feel like something that is governable by laws very much and that saying something is illegal as though just uttering that will make people go, oh, well, we don't want to do anything illegal. I don't think that – I think the public can be excused for maybe not having so much confidence that the test of legality is what's going to decide the course of events, even if it should. And so what Conricus was saying was he was expressing a kind of a moral position, which is that his obligation morally was to help protect Israeli civilians and that the way that he was going to

do that given the orders that he was given would be to find and root out Hamas and when he was asked about protecting the lives of innocent Palestinian civilians he said well Hamas is putting them at risk and of course we're not going in there to try to harm them. And I think that that is a pretty crisp summary of what most people on balance would expect is the reasonable way for this to go, even though I think people want peace rather than conflict, obviously. Yeah. As I said earlier, Colonel Conricus is, you know, is very professional in his job,

and this has impacted him personally deeply. I've seen him talk about, you know, the comrades he lost on the Saturday morning massacre, comrades from the military, also friends in his personal life. So he, like many Israelis, is dealing with a lot and trying to outline the position of, in this case, the IDF. But let me reinforce again how smart they are in terms of their public relations, you know, offensive at different times on trying to get their story out in a time when they think, you know, there's confusion out there,

there are biases out there, and yet they're available seemingly to everyone to try and put their case forward and to get into a discussion, sometimes an argument on the different facts. You know, in my limited experience in the Middle East, at a much better time, I mean, there's always been difficulties between especially Hamas and the Israeli government. But one time in the early 2000s, in between the intifadas, I was there trying to deal with this story in a way that would give better understanding Canadians.

And I interviewed a Hamas person in the West Bank at a time when they had just won a number of democratic elections, the Hamas candidates. And he made lots of time available to me, and we had a good interview. And on the Israeli side, Netanyahu was then, I think, the foreign minister, the defense minister. And he kept going at me, saying, you don't understand how small a country we are. You come from southern Ontario, you come from Toronto,

and you can drop Israel into, you know, parts of southern Ontario. We're that small. And we'd already arranged to have access because it was the only way you could fly around some areas with the IDF to use a Black Hawk helicopter to go to a number of points he says i'm going to make sure that you see israel and you know we get in this black hawk with a camera crew and we we went up to the golden heights we went over the whole um coast of the mediterranean we went down near near gaza um and we did all this in a very short period of time.

And you suddenly realize how small it is and how vulnerable the country is. So on that day, you know, we kind of got both sides in a way of the story. And they were both very open. That's not possible right now to that extent, whether it will be at some point or not. I, I don't know. Okay. We're going to, we're going to move off this topic and, and bring it, bring it home as they say, with a discussion on the, something that's received a lot of attention the last few days,

especially on social media. And that's Pierre Poliev's Apple Pickin' Time. But we're going to take our first break before we do that, and then we'll be right back. And welcome back. You're listening to Smoke Mirrors and the Truth with Bruce Anderson, our Wednesday edition of The Bridge. You're listening on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform,

or you're watching us on our YouTube channel. We're glad you're with us wherever you're listening from. All right. This week I was a keynote speaker at a convention in Ottawa, the Canadian Real Estate Association. I was there on Monday, and it was a good time. 400 people from Korea, from across the country, were there. And obviously housing is a major issue right now.

And they want their say in trying to put forward their positions to government. And government and politicians were lined up at the conference, as often happens when a conference is heard in Ottawa, but especially so right now with housing being such a major issue. One of the speakers the night before I got there was Pierre Polyev. He spoke to this room, and I've heard him speak before. He's a good speaker. You've talked about it as well, Bruce.

He knows how to impress a room with his thoughts on whatever the issues are and as i said housing was a major one here but it wasn't just the speech he then he stayed um i'm told for almost 90 minutes after the speech doing doing the glad handing uh stuff with the crowd, talking to people, having photos taken. The whole bit that is part of a politician looking for success is meeting the people. And he certainly did it there in that room with those 400 people. So I assume he left that room pretty pleased with how things had gone. That's not what's on social media these days. What is on social media is him meeting, and he's put it out.

You know, the party, the Conservative Party put it out. Meeting with people in British Columbia who were in these kind of apple-picking, cherry-picking business and the difficult times they're having. But there was also included in there was an exchange he had with somebody who I believe is a local reporter, works for one of the local papers. And it shows, it shows too how Polyev is dealing with journalists. So some of what happened in this exchange, and we'll play a bit of it in a minute,

is what often happens when he has scrums in Ottawa. He challenges back the reporter. And there's, you know, some evidence that that works with a particular audience know some evidence that that works with a particular audience and some evidence that at times reporters say stuff that they can't back up and he's challenging them to back up um but it's interesting how two sides can look at that same clip and see things very differently one assumes the party thinks it really works well for him. Other people watching go, man, that's pretty rude,

the way he's kind of challenging this journalist while he's eating his apple on the side. So as I said, we'll play a little bit in a moment. But first of all, your thoughts on what you witnessed, Bruce. Yeah, I thought it was quite interesting. I think the question for me is that when the Conservatives put that out, I think what they were doing is part reflecting the fact that they feel some wind in their wings, that on the basis of the numbers right now, on the basis of what people know about Mr. Poliev and Mr. Trudeau, Canadians went on the basis of what people know about Mr.

Poliev and Mr. Trudeau, Canadians went to the polls. Now they would elect Mr. Poliev. Now, I say what people know about these individuals now, because increasingly with the lead that the Conservatives have in the poll, the focus will be on what kind of a person is Mr. Poliev and will people like him as much when they come to know more about him? That's an open question. For conservative partisans to look at that video, to look at that exchange, there probably are mixed opinions. There probably are some who are saying, yes,

he was so forceful in challenging his questioner that he showed us all how to do that, how not to be perturbed or how not to be put on the defensive, how not to accept the criticism, but instead how to fight. I think that there probably are others in the conservative tent who looked at an exchange that started around a minute to this relatively long video that was posted and said, if people see more of that kind of Pierre Polyev, it will raise more doubts about whether or not he's got the temperament that they're looking for in a national leader. And that's even before you get to the things that he said in response to his questioner. Effectively, that he didn't talk about left and right. He didn't use labels to try to demonize people who were on a different part of the political spectrum as him. Only for people to find out without very much effort that, of course, Mr. Polyev does do that and has been doing that. Now, some people say, well, why wasn't this individual more prepared to back up his questions

of Mr. Polyev with evidence that he's a polarizing figure, that he's trying to be this kind of polarizing populist? I think that's a very inside baseball thing. I think for most people, this looked like an exchange between a voter and a political leader. The voter said some fairly mild things to Polyev. And Polyev reacted with a degree of dismissiveness, I think, rudeness, your word as well, that you wouldn't use in talking with someone I wouldn't use. And I think this is for me the ultimate test is if more people see that side of Polyev, I don't think it will make them think, thank God we've got a strong man who's willing to stare down people who ask him mild questions like this. I think they'll think, why is this guy so hot-headed?

And if Polyev has been successful at anything in the last several months, it has been in part to reduce the number of instances where people can look at him as a hot-headed person and see him more in the role of a potential prime minister. And that's why I talked about what happened the other night when he spoke to that crowd and then went into the crowd for an hour and a half because he's clearly very different with, well, let's put it this way. He doesn't like the media. He never has liked the media.

And he's not shy about getting into one of these kind of back and forths. Now, you know, he's not the first guy to have done that. You know, Pierre Trudeau used to do the same kind of thing. But there's a way of doing it, right? And this was pretty in your face to this guy. He was an elderly guy. Nothing wrong. I think he was younger than us, by the way.

I suspect he might have been younger than us. He was definitely younger than me. But nevertheless, he was challenging him. And unfortunately, the guy either chose not to have the facts that he knew were the case or, or he didn't know him to respond. I honestly thought the things he was saying,

I don't know if you felt this way, Peter, I thought the things that this guy were saying were hardly contestable. I mean, he didn't. Well, let's show one example. Yeah, let's give one example. Because as you mentioned earlier, you know, Polyev was saying, I don't get it, a left-right game. Which is easy to prove that, in fact, he does.

And so, you know, on Twitter, they ran an excerpt from this exchange with the guy, and then they ran a bunch of examples of, in fact, this is what happens. Let me make sure I've got all these controls right here. Let's try this. That's clearly not working is it uh left wing you know this and that right wing they know i mean it's that that type of ideological i never really talk about left or right anyways a lot of people i don't really believe in that okay a radical uh left radical left. Radical leftist authoritarian. This prime minister's leftist ideology. Marxist government.

Socialist policies. Big socialist governments. Radical leftist agenda. The socialist policies of the NDP with the government. Liberal NDP radical left. Champagne socialist. Leftist authoritarian. I never really talk about left or right.

But anyways. So, there you go. How long does that take? 35, 40 seconds? It's impossible for me to believe that Mr. Polyev forgot that he had used those terms. So all he was really doing was saying, you're a liar to this person who was saying something truthful. And it sort of raises the question that I've heard from people a little bit more lately, that maybe Pierre Poliev has a very thin skin, and that what he was really doing wasn't so much for him to repudiate that he used those terms, is that he was just annoyed that somebody was questioning him when he looked like he was trying to have a successful photo op

eating an apple in an orchard and looking like a regular person. I think that, you know, so his party put that out. I think that they probably thought it was good. Whether we'll see more exchanges like that, including the parts where he appears thin skinned and rude. I don't think so, because I think that they are in a mode where they think it's their election to lose. And it's this kind of thing that might make people have second thoughts about whether they want a Polyev government. You know, we have seen that Polyev before in scrums on the Hill, and I think they think it works when you challenge the media.

It's funny because the same chap had accused him of playing from the Trump playbook, and he said, what playbook where give me examples uh and the the irony is because the questioner asked for sure he did the questioner asked him people say you're using the Trump playbook or something like that preface with the people say and Paglia's comeback was, what people? Who are you talking about? And he didn't have a response to it. The irony is the people say part is straight out of the Trump playbook. Trump says that all the time.

People say blah, blah, blah, right? And nobody challenges him. And it's sort of, of yeah everybody's saying this everybody's saying that people say this when it's donald trump saying it nobody else but this was kind of it was ironic because it's the reverse on here the question is saying people say yeah and he's going what people yeah i don't think there's any doubt. And if there's another downside risk, and I'm sure conservative strategists will think I'm completely wrong about this, but if there's another downside risk for them with this video and how they dealt with the criticism of it is that we'll now enter a discussion or there'll be more of a discussion about whether uh polyev is more like trump um because then people will go and assemble well here's the evidence just like that that clip that you played a few minutes ago where somebody or

some organization found it pretty easy to identify the ways in which Polyev had already used those terms. I think there's plenty of evidence where you could compare the style of Pierre Polyev and the style of Donald Trump, the kinds of issues that they're active on and the way in which they prosecute their agendas, not as being identical, but certainly that there are similarities there. Trump playbook to some degree. And so maybe there's another opportunity there for Mr. Poliev's opponents to say, well, let's talk about how close he is to Donald Trump and to start to assemble those facts, even if that individual in that moment when he was challenged back by the conservative leader couldn't come up with them, doesn't mean that they're not there to be assembled. a few weeks ago, whose theory about whenever the election may be

was that if it was next year before the U.S. election, the best chance Tristan Trudeau has is to not only link Polyev to Trump, but to raise the Trump issue about who's best to deal with Trump if Trump becomes the president. So it was interesting. There's a lot of different thinking going on out there on different levels about how this is all going to play out. All right, we're up for our time for this week on Smoke, Mirrors, and Truth,

and it's been, you know, it's a really interesting week to have that discussion. So we thank you, Bruce, for this. Bruce will be back on Friday, of course, with Chantel for Good Talk. Tomorrow it's your turn. And I've seen a ton of stuff already this week that has come in. I'll try and go through it, boil it down to some particular parts. But it's been a big week for stories here on the bridge, and we're glad to have your input. That's tomorrow, along with

the random ranter and his thoughts on something. I'm not sure what he's going to talk about this week. Anyway, Bruce, thanks so much. We'll talk to you again in a couple of days. You bet, Peter. Take care. And thank you for listening. Be back in 24 hours.