One of the many motivations for this post was a woman I know who is very busy in her life yet is getting guilt trips from others about how she’s “not posting enough” in support of “free Palestine,” etc. Translation: I have plenty to say about what I’m witnessing since October 7.
It is so that we as a single person, or even a group of persons, can do nothing about the atrocities going on around the world. There is one around every corner. The homeless, the people who have to work 3 jobs to get by, the disabled, the veterans, the Armenians, the ... you name it. The only thing we as single people can do, is try to lender the pain around us. A stray dog, a single person... it is a drop on a hot roof, but that is where we can start. Of course, if all countries were to keep to themselves, that would help a lot. But you and I can not forse them to do that. No elections can do that. No revolts can do that, we have seen that many times over. We have to live under the sun and the blue sky and pray is all we can do.
A tiny example of this "SQUIRREL!!" (Squirrel=latest distraction) phenomenon: I saw hubby roll his eyes this morning. Apparently the good citizens of my nation's capital are distressed that pro-Palestinian protests are being squelched due to noise by-laws. "But what about their RIGHT to PROTEST?"
Those same citizens were not nearly as concerned about the right of truckers, and a great many others, to protest around this time a couple of years back.
As my mama once said. It all depends on whose ox is being gored
“Life is a long lesson in humility.” – James M. Barrie (I seem to have an apt quotation for almost every situation!) Point being, I've been very slow to connect the dots on various things in my life. I've been wrong plenty! But... I'm still alive, still learning & growing. It's okay to be wrong ... & to keep right on learning!
Excellent points. All three underlying reasons are valid, but today I fear the AI directed “latest thing” projection is the strongest one. Manipulation to divide to conquer, manipulation to experiment with the minds of people to see to what extent our view of reality can be manipulated.
At least this focus on the latest thing is a litmus test for who is and who isn’t completely controlled by the powers that shouldn’t be.
I can't imagine how awful that would be to have friends who complain that I'm not posting enough about something on social media. It might sound harsh, but at some point you do have to ask yourself why you consider these people friends
It’s not just friends, either, is it? I understand that actors in London were told them at they would not find work unless they added some BLM rhetoric to their tweets. Senator McCarthy would have been out if his mind with excitement.
It is overwhelming. The amount of injustice and pain can't be absorbed. I'm focusing on helping the people in my small community, often the most overlooked are our neighbors in need.
Well said Mickey. I’m so weary of the constant manipulation of our souls and the fake zombie people who think they are the authority on compassion, empathy and being human.
Thank you, Robin, for taking the time to read and comment. I'm grateful to encounter so many folks who are willing to dig deep and find more and more questions!
Could it be all of the above? To know all the horrors going on around the world can be overwhelming. Choosing one that is blatantly in your face day after day is the easiest path for someone who feels they NEED to do SOMETHING to try and bring order from chaos - the chaos set up in their mind as they are overwhelmed.
A common answer to the question “why are you protesting this and not that?” seems to be “at least I’m doing something.” Translation: it makes me FEEL like I’m doing something and I feel gratified and not so helpless.
Then the virtue signalling sets in hard and becomes intolerance for everyone who doesn’t conform.
Great question, Mickey! I don’t know if there really is an answer to “why”.
Thank you, I feel this. In my "activist" years, I wanted so bad to feel like I was doing something, making a difference. It took a lot of de-programming to learn how to actually make that happen.
Well I do think there are reasons that this particular genocide is provoking massive protests in US, and not all of them have to do with virtue signaling, social media or who's doing the killing. Although for sure those things play a part, especially social media--as some have said, this is the first genocide that's actually taking place on social media in real time.
but, let me lay out a couple other reasons:
1. This conflict goes back at least 75 years and more likely a century. A lot of the people who are organizing protests now are children and grandchildren of those displaced 75 years ago. Also, many who are out now (from what I see) are people who were out protesting in 2006, 2008, 2014 and 2021, (yes even 2021) (like Jewish Voices for Peace) when Israel engaged in some of their "mowing the lawn" bombings of Gaza. So I think a lot of the outpouring now has built up for years. Not everyone of course. but a LOT.
2. Yemen, Sudan. At least some people I know are aware of Yemen & were protesting that too, for years. Why didn't it take off as a "thing?" Well, the sheer numbers of people killed & bombs dropped on Gaza in 3 months is breathtaking, and has dwarfed the more "slow moving" genocides. Incidentally, what has gone on in Gaza for the past 15 years before "oct 7" has been characterized as a "slow moving genocide", so, outside of the people I spoke of above, no one paid attention. But over 22,000 dead in 3 months...almost half ot them children? that gets attention... sooo that's 3: the magnitude and rapidity of the attacks, and the fact that Israel is targeting hospitals and churches, and schools.
Again: how do we know that? Because as you said--it's a genocide taking place on social media. Most of the others have been slower and more easily hidden.
(also, interestingly enough--it is only the Yemenis (Houthis) who are coming to the aid of Palestinians. They understand that it's a wider conflict than what it appears to be (and that's becoming really clear, with the recent asassination of a Hamas leader in Lebanon)
3. Growing disgust with the US war machine. This is, although people don't realize it, also fueled by the anger growing through the past 3 years. A lot of long time anti war activists (like from the Vietnam era!) are jumping on this issue, and bringing their groups and organization with them. I hope this trend continues. And growing disgust with the fact that the Pentagon just got 886 billion budget and homelessness in US (as you know) is off the charts. Again. This is a hopeful trend and I hope it's not just a passing "thing."
So, sure, virtue signaling plays a big part in the numbers. but so do the things above.
If I were to wax philosophical, (oh God, stop me), I'd also say that there's some heavy, unresolved guilt here in the US over the genocide of Native Americans and stealing their land over 3 centuries. So maybe, maybe that plays a part in the heart strings being pulled by this genocide. That guilt also goes the opposite way, into support for the aggressor, but seemingly not so much now.
Thank you, Lorie. I dearly appreciate that you can disagree in a manner that dramatically adds to the discussion. That said, to be radically honest, I remain very wary in a 2020/George Floyd kind of way. But I want to add:
I pray that this *is* a tipping point moment, especially vis-vis the U.S. war machine. But I pray even harder that WAY more people accept that standard "activism" is and has been impotent. To do more than put on a show, we desperately need to have new eyes, ears, and minds to discern tactics that the parasites aren't already experts at coopting and deflecting.
Yeah, I agree in large part. I mean, millions protested the Iraq war (in 2003) and..nada. Bush went in anyway big surprise. And the George Floyd moment was pretty incoherent in terms of any real liberation (and yeah, manufactured). But I do have hope that this is a tipping point. It's so blatant, and it is an anti-colonialist issue. Oddly enough, I just came across an article by Vanessa Beeley that talks to just these issues in the last 4 years, from crisis to crisis. And power structures pushing this or that agend. take a look if interested & see what you think. https://beeley.substack.com/p/understanding-power-dynamics-and?publication_id=716517&post_id=140343521&isFreemail=false&r=ilq6b&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
I've been exhorting folks to make bigger connections for decades - complete with writing a dozen books and giving talks all over the country. My big lesson was that the facts are rarely persuasive in a vacuum. To facilitate the shift we envision requires the hardest task of all: individual personal change. That's where much of my focus has been for a while.
True. And I remember that article. I think it's pretty easy to get carried away by a group--of course, that's been proven, and self-knowledge is lacking in a lot of it, sure. People like Adorno also warned against "unthinking" activism, so you're in good company. I have never been an "activist" in any way shape or form, and to be honest, I don't know what an "activist" is, but I think it must entail a lot more than "putting on a show," or coming out for street protests. I'm agnostic about whether street protest works or not. Maybe not here in the US, not now, for whatever reason. But activism must include educating oneself, or, like you say, you jump on "the next big thing". I don't think individual personal change and organizing for something are mutually exclusive. In fact I think they have to go together.
This current genocide has no comparable crisis occurring now, first the US is directly involved, with money, guns and blocking cease fire, we have some responsibility in other refugees crisis currently occurring around the world but much more indirect. Second the intensity of three months killing civilians and destruction is overwhelming by any comparison. Even US former CIA, generals and military experts have expressed surprised of the magnitude of the action in only three months. Comparison with current Ukraine two year war where 10 times less women and children have been killed in two years vs just three months in Gaza. Or even comparisons of almost two million displaced in three months compared to Iraq or any war in recent history. The situation with the Israeli hostages carrying white flags and no shirt killed by IDF reveals the disposition of IDF with killing civilians, shoot first and ask later. Not even the worst atrocities reported during the battle of Mosul or even the one year battle of Fallujah compares to Gaza. the rules of engagement of Marines and US special forces with respect as to civilians are very well reported and even though there are some crimes are insignificant compared to the magnitud of indiscriminate killing of civilians by IDF. This is not emotional protesting these are facts that can be corroborated. There is no precedent in our current history of a genocide of this magnitude and and total destruction of schools, hospitals, bakerys , food markets, power lines, water treatment plants and any building or structure to support civilian living
I've stayed out of the latest "thing" in Gaza. I've known about the situation for more than 20 years after working a job in the Middle East. If my son had of been born there, he would be labelled a Palestinian refugee. Thankfully he's considered Australian.
I'm focusing on what I do know by writing a Substack on homeopathy. The way out is to really live the alternative and not feed the beast.
The general assessment of the Nazi Holocaust is that 6 million Jews were killed. That is an appalling number.
As many as 10 million Ukrainians were killed during the Holodomor a decade before, yet history remembers them scarcely at all.
It was a full century before the Armenian Genocide of WW1 was acknowledged as such. As many as 1.2 million people died during that atrocity.
1 million Irish died during the Great Famine from 1848 to 1852, yet it is not even counted as a genocide in the eyes of mainstream historians, even though British government policies were a direct cause of the deaths and the suffering.
Many would argue the Trail of Tears was an act of genocide against the indigenous people of what is now the southern United States.
Human history is replete with acts of savagery, barbarity, and depravity. Man's inhumanity to man is a constant theme throughout all of history. Ukraine, Gaza, Ngorno-Karabakh, and South Sudan are just a few of the places where that theme is very much the present reality.
We could not name all the acts of genocide, all the acts of evil, all the acts of cruel and degenerate inhumanity taking place in the world even today. There's not enough space nor enough time for us to make such a counting.
We each choose which evils most warrant our particular attention--we are finite beings with finite capacity to say or do anything--but we should be mindful that we oppose particular evils because they are evil, not because they are particular. Opposing the particular evils are how we mere mortals can stand against all that is evil.
None of us can do or say "enough" when it comes to opposing evil. There will always be more to say, more to do, and more evils to oppose. This is just how the world is.
Despite that, when we have done all that we can do, by definition we are done, and thereafter must leave the rest in God's hands. That, too, is just how the world is.
I think a part is that many today have as Jordan Peterson called it “Low Resolution Thinking”. LRT.
So the LRT leads to crude right-wrong situations and lots of virtue signaling. However over recent years many have signaled for what amounts to supporting a much dirtier thing:
Being a proud Branch Covidian and thinking the “experts are right” makes you look like a fool when a few hours reading would make you see the stupidity and corruption that really happened.
Being a proud Slava Ukranyii makes you trivialise the evolution of that state from the coup in 2014, the rise of neo-Nazis and the ignoring of attempted ethnic cleansing in the East by state forces. Yes it’s not nice being invaded but then it’s like the place has no sin.
But now being “pro Palestinian” actually puts you on what appears a more morally right side. It’s a complicated situation but it’s not exactly dense moral problems to not want kids bombed in their apartments. And bombed and bombed and bombed.
So third time lucky for many of these activists. Of course they may also have succumbed to the cult of MMGW but that’s a different story.
There must always be a cause. Because LRT cannot define life in more nuanced ways. And as long as your ledger is a bit more black...off we go
It is so that we as a single person, or even a group of persons, can do nothing about the atrocities going on around the world. There is one around every corner. The homeless, the people who have to work 3 jobs to get by, the disabled, the veterans, the Armenians, the ... you name it. The only thing we as single people can do, is try to lender the pain around us. A stray dog, a single person... it is a drop on a hot roof, but that is where we can start. Of course, if all countries were to keep to themselves, that would help a lot. But you and I can not forse them to do that. No elections can do that. No revolts can do that, we have seen that many times over. We have to live under the sun and the blue sky and pray is all we can do.
Amen. 🙏
And we must stop being so easily divided so we're not only acting as a single person.
These are my thoughts.,
Keep body and mind and soul strong..
Or..physical..mental..and spiritual body..
Fear..anger..antipathy..helplessness..drain all of these parts.
If we all join hands one by one by one we could stretch for miles..
God said..’For I did not give you the spirit of fear..but of Love and Power and a sound Mind..’ Ephesians..
Pray always alone and together..🙏🏽💕
Yes and amen, Pat, and blessings to you! 🙏🏽💕
Ephesians 4:13
Therefore I desire (want) that ye(you) faint not (be discouraged) at my tribulations (trials) which is your (on your behalf) glory!
🙏🏽💕
🙏
Happy New Year, All!
A tiny example of this "SQUIRREL!!" (Squirrel=latest distraction) phenomenon: I saw hubby roll his eyes this morning. Apparently the good citizens of my nation's capital are distressed that pro-Palestinian protests are being squelched due to noise by-laws. "But what about their RIGHT to PROTEST?"
Those same citizens were not nearly as concerned about the right of truckers, and a great many others, to protest around this time a couple of years back.
As my mama once said. It all depends on whose ox is being gored
Well said, Jaye (and your mama) and...who speaks for the ox?
Happy New Year!
"None of us is as immune from conditioning as we believe ourselves to be." True story!!
Thank you, Janet. I feel this should be everyone's starting point.
“Life is a long lesson in humility.” – James M. Barrie (I seem to have an apt quotation for almost every situation!) Point being, I've been very slow to connect the dots on various things in my life. I've been wrong plenty! But... I'm still alive, still learning & growing. It's okay to be wrong ... & to keep right on learning!
Amen to all of that! I accept the inevitability of me being wrong (often) but also accept the challenge to keep improving!
I’ve definitely learned this lesson since Covid 👍
Excellent points. All three underlying reasons are valid, but today I fear the AI directed “latest thing” projection is the strongest one. Manipulation to divide to conquer, manipulation to experiment with the minds of people to see to what extent our view of reality can be manipulated.
At least this focus on the latest thing is a litmus test for who is and who isn’t completely controlled by the powers that shouldn’t be.
Thank you, V...and I really appreciate the angle you took in your closing sentence.
I can't imagine how awful that would be to have friends who complain that I'm not posting enough about something on social media. It might sound harsh, but at some point you do have to ask yourself why you consider these people friends
When I was an "activist," this felt like the norm.
That's so bleak 🤯
It's bleak until you deprogram yourself.
It’s not just friends, either, is it? I understand that actors in London were told them at they would not find work unless they added some BLM rhetoric to their tweets. Senator McCarthy would have been out if his mind with excitement.
It is overwhelming. The amount of injustice and pain can't be absorbed. I'm focusing on helping the people in my small community, often the most overlooked are our neighbors in need.
I feel you, Becky, and bless you for doing such work.
❤️
Well said Mickey. I’m so weary of the constant manipulation of our souls and the fake zombie people who think they are the authority on compassion, empathy and being human.
Thank you, CL! I deeply appreciate your being open to tough but necessary conversations!
Excellent post
Thank you, Robin, for taking the time to read and comment. I'm grateful to encounter so many folks who are willing to dig deep and find more and more questions!
Could it be all of the above? To know all the horrors going on around the world can be overwhelming. Choosing one that is blatantly in your face day after day is the easiest path for someone who feels they NEED to do SOMETHING to try and bring order from chaos - the chaos set up in their mind as they are overwhelmed.
A common answer to the question “why are you protesting this and not that?” seems to be “at least I’m doing something.” Translation: it makes me FEEL like I’m doing something and I feel gratified and not so helpless.
Then the virtue signalling sets in hard and becomes intolerance for everyone who doesn’t conform.
Great question, Mickey! I don’t know if there really is an answer to “why”.
Thank you, I feel this. In my "activist" years, I wanted so bad to feel like I was doing something, making a difference. It took a lot of de-programming to learn how to actually make that happen.
Well I do think there are reasons that this particular genocide is provoking massive protests in US, and not all of them have to do with virtue signaling, social media or who's doing the killing. Although for sure those things play a part, especially social media--as some have said, this is the first genocide that's actually taking place on social media in real time.
but, let me lay out a couple other reasons:
1. This conflict goes back at least 75 years and more likely a century. A lot of the people who are organizing protests now are children and grandchildren of those displaced 75 years ago. Also, many who are out now (from what I see) are people who were out protesting in 2006, 2008, 2014 and 2021, (yes even 2021) (like Jewish Voices for Peace) when Israel engaged in some of their "mowing the lawn" bombings of Gaza. So I think a lot of the outpouring now has built up for years. Not everyone of course. but a LOT.
2. Yemen, Sudan. At least some people I know are aware of Yemen & were protesting that too, for years. Why didn't it take off as a "thing?" Well, the sheer numbers of people killed & bombs dropped on Gaza in 3 months is breathtaking, and has dwarfed the more "slow moving" genocides. Incidentally, what has gone on in Gaza for the past 15 years before "oct 7" has been characterized as a "slow moving genocide", so, outside of the people I spoke of above, no one paid attention. But over 22,000 dead in 3 months...almost half ot them children? that gets attention... sooo that's 3: the magnitude and rapidity of the attacks, and the fact that Israel is targeting hospitals and churches, and schools.
Again: how do we know that? Because as you said--it's a genocide taking place on social media. Most of the others have been slower and more easily hidden.
(also, interestingly enough--it is only the Yemenis (Houthis) who are coming to the aid of Palestinians. They understand that it's a wider conflict than what it appears to be (and that's becoming really clear, with the recent asassination of a Hamas leader in Lebanon)
3. Growing disgust with the US war machine. This is, although people don't realize it, also fueled by the anger growing through the past 3 years. A lot of long time anti war activists (like from the Vietnam era!) are jumping on this issue, and bringing their groups and organization with them. I hope this trend continues. And growing disgust with the fact that the Pentagon just got 886 billion budget and homelessness in US (as you know) is off the charts. Again. This is a hopeful trend and I hope it's not just a passing "thing."
So, sure, virtue signaling plays a big part in the numbers. but so do the things above.
If I were to wax philosophical, (oh God, stop me), I'd also say that there's some heavy, unresolved guilt here in the US over the genocide of Native Americans and stealing their land over 3 centuries. So maybe, maybe that plays a part in the heart strings being pulled by this genocide. That guilt also goes the opposite way, into support for the aggressor, but seemingly not so much now.
Thank you, Lorie. I dearly appreciate that you can disagree in a manner that dramatically adds to the discussion. That said, to be radically honest, I remain very wary in a 2020/George Floyd kind of way. But I want to add:
I pray that this *is* a tipping point moment, especially vis-vis the U.S. war machine. But I pray even harder that WAY more people accept that standard "activism" is and has been impotent. To do more than put on a show, we desperately need to have new eyes, ears, and minds to discern tactics that the parasites aren't already experts at coopting and deflecting.
Yeah, I agree in large part. I mean, millions protested the Iraq war (in 2003) and..nada. Bush went in anyway big surprise. And the George Floyd moment was pretty incoherent in terms of any real liberation (and yeah, manufactured). But I do have hope that this is a tipping point. It's so blatant, and it is an anti-colonialist issue. Oddly enough, I just came across an article by Vanessa Beeley that talks to just these issues in the last 4 years, from crisis to crisis. And power structures pushing this or that agend. take a look if interested & see what you think. https://beeley.substack.com/p/understanding-power-dynamics-and?publication_id=716517&post_id=140343521&isFreemail=false&r=ilq6b&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Speaking of 2003 and much of what Beeley writes, something of mine: https://mickeyz.substack.com/p/looks-like-its-time-for-street-activism
I've been exhorting folks to make bigger connections for decades - complete with writing a dozen books and giving talks all over the country. My big lesson was that the facts are rarely persuasive in a vacuum. To facilitate the shift we envision requires the hardest task of all: individual personal change. That's where much of my focus has been for a while.
True. And I remember that article. I think it's pretty easy to get carried away by a group--of course, that's been proven, and self-knowledge is lacking in a lot of it, sure. People like Adorno also warned against "unthinking" activism, so you're in good company. I have never been an "activist" in any way shape or form, and to be honest, I don't know what an "activist" is, but I think it must entail a lot more than "putting on a show," or coming out for street protests. I'm agnostic about whether street protest works or not. Maybe not here in the US, not now, for whatever reason. But activism must include educating oneself, or, like you say, you jump on "the next big thing". I don't think individual personal change and organizing for something are mutually exclusive. In fact I think they have to go together.
This current genocide has no comparable crisis occurring now, first the US is directly involved, with money, guns and blocking cease fire, we have some responsibility in other refugees crisis currently occurring around the world but much more indirect. Second the intensity of three months killing civilians and destruction is overwhelming by any comparison. Even US former CIA, generals and military experts have expressed surprised of the magnitude of the action in only three months. Comparison with current Ukraine two year war where 10 times less women and children have been killed in two years vs just three months in Gaza. Or even comparisons of almost two million displaced in three months compared to Iraq or any war in recent history. The situation with the Israeli hostages carrying white flags and no shirt killed by IDF reveals the disposition of IDF with killing civilians, shoot first and ask later. Not even the worst atrocities reported during the battle of Mosul or even the one year battle of Fallujah compares to Gaza. the rules of engagement of Marines and US special forces with respect as to civilians are very well reported and even though there are some crimes are insignificant compared to the magnitud of indiscriminate killing of civilians by IDF. This is not emotional protesting these are facts that can be corroborated. There is no precedent in our current history of a genocide of this magnitude and and total destruction of schools, hospitals, bakerys , food markets, power lines, water treatment plants and any building or structure to support civilian living
well put, Rafael, thanks.
Thank you, Lorie, for your informed and thoughtful analysis. What you have written makes perfect sense to me (and I would hope to many others.)
thanks Ned!
l
I've stayed out of the latest "thing" in Gaza. I've known about the situation for more than 20 years after working a job in the Middle East. If my son had of been born there, he would be labelled a Palestinian refugee. Thankfully he's considered Australian.
I'm focusing on what I do know by writing a Substack on homeopathy. The way out is to really live the alternative and not feed the beast.
The general assessment of the Nazi Holocaust is that 6 million Jews were killed. That is an appalling number.
As many as 10 million Ukrainians were killed during the Holodomor a decade before, yet history remembers them scarcely at all.
It was a full century before the Armenian Genocide of WW1 was acknowledged as such. As many as 1.2 million people died during that atrocity.
1 million Irish died during the Great Famine from 1848 to 1852, yet it is not even counted as a genocide in the eyes of mainstream historians, even though British government policies were a direct cause of the deaths and the suffering.
Many would argue the Trail of Tears was an act of genocide against the indigenous people of what is now the southern United States.
Human history is replete with acts of savagery, barbarity, and depravity. Man's inhumanity to man is a constant theme throughout all of history. Ukraine, Gaza, Ngorno-Karabakh, and South Sudan are just a few of the places where that theme is very much the present reality.
We could not name all the acts of genocide, all the acts of evil, all the acts of cruel and degenerate inhumanity taking place in the world even today. There's not enough space nor enough time for us to make such a counting.
We each choose which evils most warrant our particular attention--we are finite beings with finite capacity to say or do anything--but we should be mindful that we oppose particular evils because they are evil, not because they are particular. Opposing the particular evils are how we mere mortals can stand against all that is evil.
None of us can do or say "enough" when it comes to opposing evil. There will always be more to say, more to do, and more evils to oppose. This is just how the world is.
Despite that, when we have done all that we can do, by definition we are done, and thereafter must leave the rest in God's hands. That, too, is just how the world is.
I think a part is that many today have as Jordan Peterson called it “Low Resolution Thinking”. LRT.
So the LRT leads to crude right-wrong situations and lots of virtue signaling. However over recent years many have signaled for what amounts to supporting a much dirtier thing:
Being a proud Branch Covidian and thinking the “experts are right” makes you look like a fool when a few hours reading would make you see the stupidity and corruption that really happened.
Being a proud Slava Ukranyii makes you trivialise the evolution of that state from the coup in 2014, the rise of neo-Nazis and the ignoring of attempted ethnic cleansing in the East by state forces. Yes it’s not nice being invaded but then it’s like the place has no sin.
But now being “pro Palestinian” actually puts you on what appears a more morally right side. It’s a complicated situation but it’s not exactly dense moral problems to not want kids bombed in their apartments. And bombed and bombed and bombed.
So third time lucky for many of these activists. Of course they may also have succumbed to the cult of MMGW but that’s a different story.
There must always be a cause. Because LRT cannot define life in more nuanced ways. And as long as your ledger is a bit more black...off we go
Mange tout Rodney Mange tout!
There’s only so much room in your Facebook profile picture, Mickey, I mean, I guess if you have one.
Thank you.