Counterinsurgency and the Drug War, the Impact of Plan Colombia. That's the title of the
fall conference for the Colombia Media Project, which will take place at Columbia University's
law school on Friday, November 17, and Saturday, November 18, as the situation in Colombia
enters a critical phase. The need for a thorough examination of the U.S. role in the internal
war has never been more urgent. The Colombia Media Project has brought together leading
academics, journalists, and activists, including indigenous representatives from the southern
province of Putumayo, the focus of Plan Colombia, for this two-day conference. Again, it will
be Friday, November 17, and Saturday, November 18, at the Columbia University Law School,
435 West 116th Street, Room 102. For more information, call the Colombia Media Project
at 212-802-7209. That's 212-802-7209.
And coming up next on WBAI, a very special episode of Off the Hook.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a call.
It couldn't get much worse, but if they could, they would,
for Billy Boone, for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood, for Billy Boone.
For Billy Boone.
And a very good evening to everybody. The program is Off the Hook. Emmanuel Goldstein
here with you this week, as opposed to last week when, unfortunately, we were preempted.
We didn't get to do our election night show, but you know what?
Election night is still going on, so we can do it anyway.
Come on! We've got work to do!
There's one thing I think
It's bad because it's all that I like
It's bad because it's all that I hate
It's bad because it's all that I like
It's bad because it's all that I hate
It's got to be fun
Annoying
Annoying
Annoying
And a very good evening to everybody.
The program is Off the Hook.
Emmanuel with you here in New York.
Isaac is out in the middle of nowhere.
Yeah.
How you doing?
Figuratively.
I mean, not figuratively this week, but literally this week.
Quite literally.
Yeah.
That's something.
And Mike joins us here.
How you doing?
Columbia University.
Here in the studio.
Other assorted people as well.
I just, I got back from Philadelphia.
I was down there for the trial of Shapeshifter, which I'll tell you all about in just a little
while.
Boy, what an experience that was.
So, Isaac, you're out there.
Why?
Well, I'm out in beautiful Las Vegas, which is a little chillier than normal, for Comdex.
Oh, joy.
Consumer Electronics Expo here.
Wow.
How about that?
Well, you're a consumer electronic consumer, I guess, right?
Well, yes.
I tend to be a consumer.
So, I'm sitting here in the media center and people are giving me strange looks now, but
that's okay.
Well, unfortunately, we weren't on last week.
We had that Pacifica, National Pacifica Radio thing going on.
Yeah, that whole election bit.
Last-minute election programming.
But you know what?
It's still going on.
So, we get the last word anyway.
Or maybe not.
You know, I don't know.
I don't know what's going on.
Oh, joy.
You know, I'll tell you this right now.
You know, this election day from several months earlier had the feel of something different
to it.
I credit all the activism and interest and various alternative political outlooks, but
I'll tell you, if nothing proves that these two candidates are exactly the same, the fact
that they get the exact same number of votes, I mean, what else do you need?
It's just unbelievable.
Not much else.
No.
The news I got on that issue was that the Department of State of Florida, her name escapes
me at the moment, but...
Harris, I believe, is the name of the one.
Yeah, Harris.
Yeah.
The final deadline, as indicated by Florida state law, is that returns have to be in from
the manual counts by Saturday at 5 o'clock.
Yeah.
If they're not, it's a $200 penalty for every day over and for each person involved.
Wait a minute.
Wait, wait, wait.
Who pays this?
Hold on a second.
$200 penalty for who?
The voters?
Hell, I'll pay that.
I mean, come on.
$200 for each person per day?
So they can count?
Well, hey, the idea is to get in on time.
You know, you don't want to have to skate on that issue, but...
Yeah.
Well.
What about the Tuesday 5 p.m. deadline?
Is that just...
The Tuesday at 5 p.m. deadline, which one?
There was some deadline at Tuesday 5 p.m.
Well, Tuesday at 8 was when the polls were supposed to close last week.
No, today is Tuesday.
No, we're talking about today.
According to my Sprint phone, the Tuesday 5 p.m. deadline has held,
but they're still counting anyway, and they're going to try to submit those later
with the absentee ballots.
Ah.
So that should be kind of interesting.
Now, here's an interesting fact.
I'm going to get to that Secretary of State person in just a second,
but I want to tell you something.
I went to Philadelphia, and the thing that happens when I go to Philadelphia
is I take the train, and when I take the train, I pick up a copy of USA Today.
It's the only time I ever read that paper.
Yeah, because everyone has it.
No, it's just because, you know, I've got nothing else to do.
And so I was looking at various articles,
and there's one that really caught my attention about the overseas ballots.
We've learned so much in the last week about how the system works.
Now it doesn't work.
I don't know.
You're going to love this, Isaac,
but I really think we should get the U.N. in here to help us with our elections
because we have no clue as to what's going on.
We'd do it for any other country.
If it was Bosnia, you know we'd be over there in a second helping them out.
Yeah, just being friendly onlookers, you know?
Why don't we get some people from, you know, Zaire or something to come and help us?
Well, you can suggest that to whoever the next president happens to be.
The U.N. is within listening range.
They can hear me.
They know what to do.
Anyway, let's look at this.
The overseas ballots.
Florida's 67 counties must certify their vote counts by 5 p.m. today,
according to Secretary of State Katherine Harris,
but that won't put an end to the counting.
Hundreds, maybe thousands of overseas ballots,
which might well determine who wins the Electoral College and the presidency,
still might need to be counted,
and final results from those counts won't be reported by the Secretary of State until Saturday.
More than 5,000 overseas ballots were requested and mailed out before Election Day.
All right, so that's really where the decision's going to be made.
There's no telling how many have been mailed back,
but if 1996 is a guide, that number could top 2,000.
And probably since voter turnout was heavier this year, maybe closer to 3,000.
Now, this is the interesting part.
The voters using overseas ballots had to select their candidates
and sign and date the ballots before or on Election Day.
Correct. They also have to have a witness.
That doesn't say anything about that.
No, you don't witness absentee ballots.
An absentee ballot?
No, I didn't from Massachusetts when I voted in the primary.
Anyway, the interesting part here, the ballots did not have to be postmarked by then.
They simply had to be filled out on that day, and they have to get here by Friday.
County election offices must receive them by Friday,
and each ballot must bear a postmark that proves it came from overseas,
like a foreign postmark or an Army post office postmark.
Right.
So, the logical question is, what keeps somebody from voting after Election Day
and just writing November 7th on the ballot?
I would imagine, for the overseas individuals, that there's a witness thing involved.
I don't think there's a witness involved,
but even if there is a witness involved, what's to prevent both you and your witness
from filling 11-7 on the form, or 7-11 if you're over there, I guess,
and sending it in, making sure it gets here by Saturday.
Now, you know, after last Tuesday, there was a bit of a controversy,
and we knew that it was a couple of hundred votes away from a decision one way or another.
Do you think maybe it's possible that some people in the military might have said,
hey, cadet, you fill out this voter registration or absentee ballot thing and send it on in,
and don't vote your conscience, vote my command?
It could happen so easily.
What's to prevent this?
You know what prevents it?
I'll tell you what prevents it.
What prevents it?
It's against the law.
It's a felony under Florida law to backdate a ballot.
But there is no way to know if somebody backdated a ballot.
How do you prove something like that?
It just has to get here by Saturday, and that's it.
Well, isn't the date on the foreign postmark?
No, it doesn't have to be postmarked by November 7th.
It just has to get here by Friday, so they can count them by Saturday.
That's it.
That's the only thing that's keeping one guy or another from winning the presidency.
I don't think these votes in Florida are what's going to decide it.
I think it's the overseas ballots.
Well, let's see who the military is going to vote for.
Who do you think the military is going to vote for?
I would tend to think our servicemen overseas are far more interested in seeing a Bush presidency
than a Boar presidency.
Yeah, I would tend to agree with you on that.
It's probably the only thing I'm going to agree with you on tonight, but I would tend to agree with that.
And I also would tend to agree that if pressure was put out,
the military are great people to put pressure on to do something just because I say so.
So, I don't know.
Who's overseeing this?
It doesn't seem like anybody is overseeing it.
People can just fill out these...
And the reason it's so simple is because it never meant anything before now.
I think you have to request one in advance.
Yeah, you request one of the forms.
I don't know how they prove that the same person that requested the form fills it out.
I don't think there's any...
Well, they mail it to you.
Yeah, they mail it to you.
So, someone was tampering with your mail.
What do you think an absentee ballot was going for in the army barracks?
How much could you sell one of those for over the last week?
I'll bet they're fetching...
Like cigarettes in prisons.
What are you talking about?
Absolutely.
Don't say that.
You really don't think there's a black market for absentee ballots in the military this last week?
I do.
No, I don't.
I think they're honorable men who are serving their country.
And they have the chance to pick the commander-in-chief.
A couple of hundred of them can do it.
Yeah, I guess your honor would hold up under that kind of pressure.
Speaking of honor holding up, this Florida Secretary of State...
Oh, my God.
I mean, you could just not...
You could not write fiction that would be believable.
I'm going to read you, again, USA Today.
Actually, this comes from the Associated Press.
A Harvard-educated blue blood from one of Florida's wealthiest families,
Secretary of State Catherine Harris is no stranger to controversy.
She's been investigated for campaign finance violations
and criticized for spending state money jetting around the world,
spending up to $500 a night for hotel rooms in Washington.
And she has also been one of George W. Bush's most prominent political supporters.
She's campaigned for him in Florida and elsewhere.
And she's the person who said,
No, you may not count past 5 p.m. today.
Because I'm Secretary of State, and I say so.
She sits as one of six elected members of the Florida Cabinet,
which works with Governor Jeb Bush on issues ranging from the mundane
to the momentous that affect schools, the environment, and other statewide concerns.
I mean, can you believe the governor of Florida is the president's brother,
and he's the guy that gets to do certain things?
I mean, she's second in command to him.
This is like an episode of Dallas or something,
where all the characters keep meshing together.
But what is probably the easiest of the cabinet positions,
she's made it awfully difficult, state Democratic Party spokesman Tony Welch said.
In her first two years on the job,
she spent $100,000 in taxpayer money on foreign trade missions
to places such as Barbados and Brazil.
This is Florida.
Sounds good to me.
The state of Florida having foreign trade missions.
As well as the Olympics in Australia,
all kinds of foreign trade you could do at the Olympics.
Her travel expenses were significantly higher
than those of the other cabinet members,
and three times more than the governor's.
Harris defended her travel by saying she has brought
millions of dollars of international trade to the state,
and established cultural ties such as a cooperative ballet
between the state and Mexico.
Cooperative ballets are nice.
It means you don't throw stones at them.
Do we really need $100,000 worth of them?
You can't get a ballet to come to your state
unless you go there in person.
The Secretary of State has to do this personally?
You can't have the American ballet director go to Mexico
and chat with the Mexicans?
What's he going to know about ballet?
The Secretary of State, you know,
they would know something about this kind of thing.
I don't know.
Harris defended her travel by saying she...
Oh yeah, I already said that part.
She's very busy, as we've already found out.
Yeah, very busy.
In 1994, Harris became implicated
in a campaign finance scheme
surrounding her first run for public office.
She was forced to reimburse $20,000
after state investigators discovered
that employees of Risk Corp, Inc.,
an insurer, were improperly reimbursed
for their contributions to her 1994 Senate campaign.
And this year, this is a good one.
Harris approved a taxpayer-financed
public service announcement
that featured a statement
that featured retired General Norman Schwarzkopf,
a Bush ally, urging Floridians to vote.
Now, if you heard Norman Schwarzkopf
on the radio telling you to vote,
who do you think you'd vote for?
Not Ralph Nader, I'll tell you that.
In his voice, you know, it's a hidden command
in there to tell you who to vote for.
Norman Schwarzkopf.
But, you know, he wasn't doing it
out of the goodness of his heart.
$30,000 got thrown away
on that public service announcement.
So that aired during the final month
of the presidential campaign.
And he's the kind of person
that's making the decision
as to who the next president's going to be.
Well, this is also the kind of person
who originally said that they're going to have
to go to the hand count anyway,
which upset a lot of people in the GOP.
So to insinuate that she's being partial
to the Republicans...
Wait, when did she say
that they were going to go to a hand count?
Wasn't she the one who announced it?
No, the one who announced it
She's gotten death threats, of course,
and all kinds of horrible things for doing that.
But basically she said the only way
to solve this thing is to go to a hand count
and figure out exactly what these votes were for.
Because, you know, I had no idea.
I really had no idea.
I've always voted the same way.
You voted in Massachusetts, right?
I voted here this time.
But you voted in Massachusetts before.
What kind of machines do they have over there?
I did absentee.
I had no idea they had these punch card fiascos anywhere.
They're in the Stone Ages.
I'm told, though, that the machines that I use,
which are the lever-flipping things,
they're also the Stone Age machines.
The machines are 30 years old.
They break.
There was one assembly district
this past Tuesday
where the machine had somehow been configured
so that you could vote for state assembly
or for state senate, but not both.
And then when they came and tried to fix it,
they reset the machine.
So everyone who had voted in the morning,
gone.
Where'd you hear this?
I know people in the Green Party who were affected.
Oh, okay.
So a little anecdote there is
far from an official reply.
He's calling you a liar.
No, I'm not calling him a liar.
I'm just saying that, you know...
You don't believe him.
You don't believe the story he just told.
What incentive would I have to make that up, Isaac?
No, I don't think you have reason to make that up.
But, you know, things get distorted
Look at it this way.
Do you doubt such a thing is possible
after seeing what we've seen in the last week?
Oh, I think a lot of such things are possible.
There's no doubt in my mind that it could happen.
Okay, this is something I really wonder about.
And I'd like our listeners to help me on this one.
Even though, for some reason,
we only have one incoming line tonight
that's really going to be competitive.
And we're not going to pick up
anyone who calls in this early,
so don't even bother.
How come, in this country,
we don't have a system like most other countries have
with elections, where basically you have
a bunch of people run.
Everybody votes for who they want to vote for,
not the lesser of two evils.
Then you have a runoff with the top two candidates.
And that way, you vote for the person
you really want to vote for.
You see what kind of support that person gets.
And then, when the eventual victor is announced,
you know exactly where it came from,
where the support came from,
and what the people who voted for you
really want you to do.
If, say, Ralph Nader got 25% of the vote
in a situation like that,
and then Gore got an extra 25%
when the runoff came,
you'd know where that support came from.
Why is such a system like that
something that we don't do?
This is insane, the way we elect people.
I had no idea how crazy it was
until I saw all this happen.
They do those runoffs not for federal elections,
but in some southern states, they do them.
The problem is they're expensive
and people don't show up the second time.
I personally am in favor of his instant runoff voting,
where you mark your first, second, third,
whatever choices,
and then they count up the ballots,
they eliminate the person who got the fewest votes,
and all of his supporters
get their second choice ballots counted,
and so on, until someone has a majority.
I guess that works.
That seems kind of complicated.
There are a lot of systems that have been proposed,
and all of them have their flaws, including this one.
Yeah, well, this one seems to have a lot of flaws.
I don't remember an election like this in any country
in a long time.
Well, ones that have come to bloodshed, I guess,
but any country that claims
that it's one of the leaders of the world,
I don't recall anything quite like this.
Well, do keep in mind,
this country has used a system
at least very similar to this,
obviously without the machines
back in the 18th century,
for well over 200 years,
and we've managed to shift power peacefully
every four years
fairly efficiently.
Fairly efficiently?
We're living through history at the moment.
Well, I guarantee
it's such a toss-up.
If you had somebody up in the mountains
with an army waiting for some weakness
to occur in the government,
then you'd see a little bit more fear,
but there's nothing like that here.
It's basically...
Most people I talk to don't really care
one way or another who it is that gets in.
They're just fascinated by the whole soap opera
of the thing.
What people have been saying all along,
people in alternate parties,
that you can't tell the difference...
It's really funny to watch
each side do what the other side
was supposed to do.
For instance, when the Republicans went to federal court
to stop the counting after preaching
state rights all this time,
it really made you wonder,
who stands for what?
You have to look at all this,
and I agree entirely
that what people do
is more important than what they say.
What do you think? Electronic balloting?
Is that around the corner?
Oh God, I hope not.
I'm mixed opinion on this one.
Electronic elections are quite possibly
one of the worst evils that have ever been suggested.
Okay, but why?
Why?
Because the most simple argument
I can pose,
ignoring all the technical arguments
where you could have fraud for encryption
or whatever else...
That would be something new for us.
The single biggest argument
against electronic elections
that you can do from your home
is that there is at least,
when you go to a polling place,
you slide behind the curtains
and there is really no way
you can be compelled
to vote a certain way.
If you were to do this from your home,
you could have,
for instance,
say you're an unfortunate woman
and your husband beats you.
You sit down at the computer,
you go to pass your vote,
and he's just standing there
with his arms crossed behind you
waiting for you to vote a certain way.
If you have to go to a polling place,
you walk into that ballot machine
and no matter what people do,
bribe you or threaten you or whatever else,
they have no idea how you voted.
And if you try to distribute that
in electronic means or any other means,
you wind up losing that ability.
I'm talking about electronic ballot.
I didn't say in your house.
At a polling place?
At a polling place with a similar machine
and those kind of safeguards?
Computers, you know,
these things that we use
for every other facet of our lives.
Then that would just be utilizing a technology
in a system that is very similar
to the one we have now.
Except that computers are designed
to count things and do it very fast
as opposed to these punch cards
that specify that this was exactly what occurred.
With a computer, there's no real record
unless you have a line printer
that just spits it out.
There's a possibility for something
to happen behind the scenes.
But there's certainly that possibility now,
isn't there?
They keep discovering boxes with ballots
all over the place that somehow disappeared.
We're talking about punch cards here.
Boxes of punch cards.
The possibility will exist
and it always has and it always will.
There are flaws inherent to every system.
But therefore, we should pick the system
with the fewest flaws.
You should pick the system with the fewest flaws, yes.
Or the fewest openings for fraud.
At the moment,
this seems to be the system that works.
And I've, you know,
even in the middle of this problem,
not that I think it's a problem,
but even in the middle of this history-making,
I doubt very much that there's any evidence
that this system that we have now
is flawed in any real way.
I think that's the problem,
is that there's no evidence,
because there was no way to get the evidence
until we saw just how badly screwed up it was.
I didn't even know they were using punch cards.
I thought everybody used the same kind of
lever voting machines that I,
which was kind of old to start with.
But I mean, just look at those things.
How could they possibly work?
You know, the machines don't count things
if they're not punched through completely.
You don't even know if it's punched through completely.
It could be just hanging off the edge.
It bothers my imagination
that this kind of thing hasn't happened before.
It probably has happened before.
The only reason we're talking about it now
is because the President of the United States,
the two candidates are separated by 300 votes.
You know, that's the only reason this has come up.
How many times in the past
has this exact same scenario played out?
I mean, we've had these machines forever.
Who knows how many elections
have gone to the wrong person because of this?
Well, I doubt if, you know,
it's gone to the wrong person.
I mean, they were within 300 votes.
Well, there have been close elections before.
There have been close elections before, granted.
But on a state level,
or are we talking a national level?
On both.
You know, when they're doing the recount in Florida,
I'm wondering how many people in the state
and local races are also being affected.
Nobody's talking about that.
True.
Well, on the other hand,
you had the situation with Kennedy and Nixon,
where Nixon conceded rather than put the country
in the middle that we're going through now.
Yeah, but Nixon also got his ass kicked.
I mean, it wasn't a close election
by any stretch of the imagination.
Well...
He lost and he knew it.
You know, this is a situation...
No, Gord called Bush, if you recall,
and then called back to take that back.
Yeah, to quote CBS News,
they got bad information,
and that's basically where he got it from.
This whole thing started
with someone at Fox News Channel
Speaking of which, you want to talk about
the irresponsibility of the media in this whole thing?
Oh, it's insane. It's completely insane.
But we've known that before.
This is nothing new.
The fact that we depend on them
for this kind of information is what surprises me.
Well, it's a little different
in that previously the networks
used to do their own exit polls,
and you could wind up having different information.
But eventually they...
What was this? Maybe 8 or 12 years ago,
something like that,
they combined their efforts,
so they made the Voter News Service, or VNS.
Right, a single source.
A single source of data that conducts the polls.
And then everyone shares the data,
and each of the networks interprets it
the way they feel it should be interpreted.
And it's always exactly the same way, it seems.
Well, yeah, it's the same data.
What do you expect?
But I find flaw with the very fact
that you have this kind of data
showing up during the middle of the day.
I mean, you have the people who are voting
between 9 and 12 o'clock.
That data comes in, and then Fox News is saying,
well, George Bush is well ahead
in whatever state.
And then the Gore people,
who are going to be getting off at work at 5 o'clock
when most of the votes come in,
it's been suggested to me,
say, oh, well, I guess Bush already has a state.
My vote's not going to matter.
Well, I don't think anybody gets anything
until the polls actually close.
Isn't that how it works?
What?
Well, based on exit polls, but not based on...
Based on exit polls, yes.
But you can't really stop that.
I mean, that's an opinion type of thing.
Well, they're being established,
a gentleman's moratorium by the networks
that they wouldn't release that kind of data
for just this reason,
that they could affect the outcome of the election.
So I don't think you can really stop something like that.
That's people expressing opinions.
That's the media just broadcasting
whatever it is they want to broadcast.
You have to tell people not to pay attention
Yes, unfortunately.
But, yeah, it's a carnival, it really is.
What do you think the solution is?
The solution is to wait around
until the end of the week.
And do what?
And congratulate George Bush
on his election to the presidency of the United States.
Let me tell you something.
Last week,
after getting out from wherever we went
after the show...
I don't even remember.
I don't know where we were,
but we stumbled out onto the street
and everybody was just looking
really, really sad.
And that's when I said,
oh, well, it looks like Bush won.
And I looked at my Sprint phone,
sure enough...
That's when you think Bush won, huh?
That's when people were sad.
The Sprint phone told me that Bush won as well.
I turned on the news station
and sure enough on the news station
it said George Bush has been elected
the next president of the United States.
Which one was that?
All the conservative people on, you know.
Oh, 770 WABC.
Yeah, I won't speak its name.
And I heard the voice of reason,
this bastion of free thought.
You know who I heard?
Who did you hear?
Lynn Samuels, formerly from WBAI.
One of my favorite people.
She was saying these things on the radio
about how it seemed awfully weird
how Florida had just flip-flopped like that
and that this election,
even though Gore had conceded,
may not really be over.
And imagine how crazy that sounds.
Listen to somebody on the radio say
well, yeah, he conceded, but the election may not be over.
And of course, all these conservative people
from West Virginia and Kansas
they were calling up, you know,
attacking, I don't know how they get the signal out there,
but they were calling up, attacking Lynn,
saying, oh, can't you just take the feet, you know?
And sure enough, everything she said
just started to unfold.
It was amazing.
And Bush was able to go on and take back his concession.
And even I wasn't believing that.
Even I didn't think that could possibly happen.
But it did.
It was weird.
Let's just flip a coin and get it over with.
There's no difference between them anymore.
Yeah, there's no difference,
but I think Bush would be a whole lot worse.
But you know, I've got this weird streak in me
where I kind of like the worst.
Like when there's a storm coming,
I want it to be as bad as possible.
I want the power to go out.
Chaos is reigning.
And nobody knows what's going to happen next.
People are learning an awful lot about the system.
What works, what doesn't work.
Well, I think that's good.
Yeah, I think it's great.
I want to see it get even worse
and see all kinds of horrible things happen.
Can you imagine a civil war
between Gore and Bush?
Gore and Bush supporters?
How would that work?
Bush has more friends in the military.
It would be very strange.
It would be very strange.
Anyway, we're going to take phone calls
in just a little bit.
I want to read a letter that we got.
Of course, we weren't on last week,
so we weren't able to talk about
the whole election thing that we did
on the 2600 site,
but we had some interesting results
where Ralph Nader actually won.
Harry Brown came in second
with about half the votes that Nader got.
And then Bush and Gore and all the rest
just got like 1% each.
Buchanan was up there, too.
I think he was tied with either Gore or Bush.
Yeah, that was the popular choice
of Florida's senior citizens.
Especially the Jewish ones.
Yeah. Go figure.
Oh, come on. Pat's a good guy.
Okay, fine.
You tell the senior citizens down in Florida
how nice a guy he is.
I'm sure they'll be very interested in that.
We got an interesting letter from...
We got a lot of interesting letters, actually,
but I didn't get to read because I thought
it addressed a lot of good points.
Then we'll get into the shapeshifter trial
and then we'll take some phone calls
on the only line that's working.
You might as well hang up now, whoever's calling in,
because I'm not going to take that call.
The results of your polls so far
show the majority of visitors to your website
agree Nader is the best choice for president.
However, Harry Brown came in second
with nearly one-third of the vote.
That disturbs me.
The libertarian platform can be summed up
This is in sharp contrast to the green platform,
which stands for government of, by, and for the people,
not the moneyed interests.
All of the recent issues that 2600 has been involved in,
the Mitnick case, the DECSS, DMCA,
and domain name cases,
were caused by large corporations abusing government,
not by the government itself.
In Mitnick's case, there can be no doubt
that Motorola, Nokia, Fujitsu, Novell, NEC, Sun,
Colorado SuperNet, Netcom, and the New York Times
all used their corporate money and influence
to make an example of him.
In the DECSS case,
the MPAA quietly used its corporate money and power
to get the DMCA passed into law.
Now they are using their money,
high-priced lawyers, and influence
to make life a living hell
for anyone who dares question their rights
to control how consumers play their personal DVDs.
This includes the usual legal prosecution,
but also labeling these people as pirates in the media.
In the domain name disputes,
corporations are using their high-priced lawyers
to twist existing laws
and prevent ordinary citizens
from voicing opinions
that they do not agree with.
What we are fighting is abuse of corporate power.
Rather than concentrating on eliminating government,
we should be concentrating on bringing control
of the government back to the people.
Nader and the Greens understand this.
It is one of their key issues.
They want to end corporate crime,
end corporate welfare,
enforce antitrust laws,
protect consumer rights,
increase people's power to fight back,
reform campaign finance to limit corporate influence,
and encourage civic education in schools
so people understand their rights and duties
as citizens.
Brown and the Libertarians, on the other hand,
don't even address excessive corporate power as an issue.
Rather than limiting corporate power,
Brown is for increasing it.
He wants to decrease government regulation
and taxation of corporations.
By decreasing government control over corporations,
he would increase corporate control
over real people.
That is exactly the opposite of what we want.
The Libertarian platform is very attractive.
It's very easy to blame the government
for all of our problems.
However, as citizens of a democracy,
we are the government.
When things start to get tough,
when our rights are being taken away,
it is our civic duty to fight for change.
We can't just give up.
When we give up on the government,
we give up on ourselves.
That letter came from Nick,
and I think it was really well done.
Well, Nick is unfortunately a little deluded.
You think so, huh?
Yes, I think Nick is fairly deluded
because he thinks that unimpeded corporations
would be a positive sort of thing to occur.
I don't think Nick was saying larger government.
I think he was saying not to shave it
into minimal government.
I think that's the point of that letter.
Well, what exactly is the role of government
when we get down to it?
You're going to tell us, I hope.
No, it's a question for the floor.
The floor is not going to be able to speak.
All right, fine.
Well, it's one of the essential topics of debate
about what is government supposed to be.
If you head up to Canada,
or you head over to the UK,
or you go into one of those other socialist states,
you wind up finding that the government
is supposed to provide the individual citizen
with certain services, and this, that, and the other thing.
You wind up going back over to the Soviet Union,
and the government is supposed to provide you
with everything because everyone is supposed to be sharing.
You know there's no more Soviet Union, right?
Yes, I understand that.
But if you were to come here
to the United States of America,
which was founded on freedom and liberty,
and the concept of...
Hang on, we've got a fife here.
We're just trying to warm it up.
Keep going.
Yeah, okay.
And the concept of self-regulation
and a personal code
of how things are supposed to be done,
where government is simply an entity
which exists for ironing out the boundaries
of where individual rights start to overlap,
you're going to find that
the government is supposed to be
an entity which exists for ironing out the boundaries
of where individual rights start to overlap.
That would be what the Libertarian Party
is starting to fight for.
And I give them a lot of credit.
Well, it seems overly simplistic to me.
It's basically, you know...
What's wrong with overly simplistic?
Because overly simplistic in complex matters
tends to be catastrophic.
It really...
Would you prefer a complex solution?
I prefer a thought-out solution.
I prefer a thought-out solution
because the problem is...
And deal with it that way
rather than just say,
okay, we're just going to eliminate this
and the problem will go away.
The problem's not going to go away.
You think by just eliminating taxes
for... cutting taxes for corporations
is going to act more naturally, more...
You cut taxes for everyone.
That's when it gets simple.
Yeah, poverty. That's what it gets.
What poverty?
You have more money in your pocket.
You do, with your vote.
The government doesn't give you anything.
Why do you expect the government
to give you something?
The government is not there
to give you something.
The government is there to regulate
where your rights and someone else's rights
manage to mesh.
It's not some big handout silver platter.
People have to realize this.
I don't think we're talking about
the government just handing you things,
like just, you know...
An assembly line of...
I'm talking about basic services,
health care, highways, things like that.
How can we have possibly survived
for 200 years
with family doctors
and, you know, home practitioners
when, you know,
the medical system of this country
has been so vilified
by certain people
in favor of a nationalized health care system
and there are people lying in
from all over the world
and there are circumstances
that our medicine can provide.
Well, those people flying in
from all over the world
can afford the high prices
that those doctors are charging
for whatever disease
they might happen to have.
But a lot of people
are also going over the border
to get health care in Canada.
Sorry?
Would you prefer to wait
60 days to see a doctor?
I have to wait about 30 days
because I don't have health care
and they don't just take you right away.
Well, then I would suggest
finding a new doctor.
You're not listening.
I don't have health care.
I don't have a doctor.
There's no way to get a doctor
without...
You don't have a doctor
that you can call up
and say,
hey, I'm not feeling very well?
I want to talk about the trial today
of Shapeshifter down in Philadelphia.
Shapeshifter was one of the demonstrators
down at the Republican National Convention
back in August.
He also was our layout artist for 2600.
And basically, if you recall,
he was held on half a million dollars bail.
He was arrested
while walking down the street
talking on his cell phone
and charged with,
I believe, conspiracy
and obstruction of justice
and all kinds of
bogus charges that you can just make up
on the spot for literally anybody
walking down the street.
He was held in prison for a week
under really bad conditions
from what everyone else held in prison
said.
And his trial finally came up
today.
And
it was a really interesting presentation
by the prosecution.
You know how many witnesses they had?
One witness.
An off-duty police officer from
Washington, D.C. with a video camera.
That's right.
This guy
was just walking around the street
on, I believe it was
Tuesday of that week.
And he was basically
just filming protesters.
And they actually showed this in court.
They actually showed about
10 minutes of this videotape.
It was the most boring video I think I've ever seen.
Some guy walking around with a video camera
recording people chanting,
you know, walking down the street.
He even got some people sitting,
blocking an intersection.
But, you know, it wasn't mobs and mobs of people.
It wasn't really passionate.
I mean, I saw more passionate demonstration
than what he filmed.
The whole point of this, the whole point of this presentation
that he gave was to say that
Shapeshifter, Terrence is his real name,
Shapeshifter is what we call him.
He was the person
orchestrating all of this.
He described Terrence as
somebody who was walking down the street,
talking on a cell phone,
and then he was with about 10 or 12 people
in a group, and that group would follow him
wherever he went. So basically,
when Terrence walked in a certain direction,
these 10 or 12 people would walk with him.
He'd be talking on a cell phone,
and he would then put down the cell phone
and walk in a certain direction, and the people would follow him.
So it became obvious that he was calling
the shots. And then, he walked over
to 12th and Arch,
which was an intersection down there,
and he talked on the cell phone
again, and
then there was this demonstration a block away
on 13th and Arch where people were blocking
the street, and that's when the police officer
kind of lost track of Terrence. He didn't see
him at the demonstration, didn't see him at 13th
and Arch. The last time he saw him
was when he was talking on the phone at 12th and Arch.
So he's not even tying him into the
demonstration, didn't even
get him to
be at the location
of the quote-unquote crime, which was blocking
traffic. Now, at this demonstration
at 13th and Arch, he described
that. He said the protesters, about
30 or so protesters, were lying down
on the street, blocking an intersection for about 20 minutes.
They were given a warning by
police that if they didn't disperse
in five minutes, they would be arrested.
And you know what happened? They dispersed!
They left! Nobody was even
arrested at this demonstration. They just walked
away peacefully, and
at that point,
the cops still hadn't tied Terrence
into any of this. And you know what the best part of it
was? On camera,
he didn't even capture Terrence at
all. Didn't even capture him.
And the excuse he gave for this, he said that
while he had a camera
and by the time he hit
the standby button, Terrence
was no longer in the frame, so
he wasn't able to capture him
at all any of those
times. So basically what we have here, the entire
case is hinged on
this off-duty cop from
D.C. who's up there as a guest of the Philadelphia
Police Department to exchange God
knows what, and
he's walking around
following this guy, supposedly,
saying, hey, he's on a cell phone, he's directing
people, he's controlling the whole thing, it's all his fault.
And you know
what's really odd about that? Is that
not a single word of that made it into the report
he gave to the Philadelphia Police Department
that night. He didn't mention anything about Terrence, didn't mention
anything about the cell phone.
Wasn't in there at all.
Please tell me the judge threw this away.
I'd like to tell you that. I'd like to tell you that, Isaac, but
the judge did throw a few of the charges
away. So what's left?
But, well, let's see.
I wrote this down.
What's actually left was
disorderly conduct and obstructing
a highway. And
he was found guilty. He was found guilty
of those two things. Yeah, even though there's no record
anywhere, even though the cop didn't say that he
had blocked the highway.
Even, there's no record of him doing that,
but the cop didn't even accuse him of doing that.
And disorderly conduct, there was no conduct.
He wasn't in
confrontation with anybody.
Despite this, he was
found guilty. Now, four of the charges
were dropped.
Reckless endangerment, failure to disperse,
obstruction of justice, and
carrying an implement of crime,
which was the cell phone, which was completely
ridiculous from the start.
They dropped those, but they had two remaining.
It's almost as if, if you're
charged with something like this, you're just guilty.
There's no way, because the judge had no
evidence whatsoever. There was nothing, nothing
to tie him to this crime.
And, you know, even if there was, even if you
could prove that he was telling people where the demonstrations
were, how is that a crime?
You know? Organizing things, telling people
where things are happening. You know, I've
realized this. When they changed the date, because
they had the wrong date, they had said August 2nd,
and now they were saying that all this happened on
August 1st.
I was down there.
I was at Arch and 13th. I was calling
Terrence to tell him what was going on.
To say, hey, you know, this is what's
happening over here. What are you seeing
where you are? His mother was calling
him at that time, too.
It was you or his mother that was on the phone
while this guy was rolling? Well, we were, I'm sure other people
were calling him as well, but when you think about that,
you know, we're calling him because he's speaking
on the cell phone, all of a sudden he's targeted
as some kind of suspicious character, but
everything that happened, the way this whole
thing transpired leads me to believe that
he was not even considered someone
suspect until later on,
and that's when all this modification
of what really happened went on.
He didn't file any of this in the police report. He didn't say
that this guy was acting suspicious
or anything like that. That was all
said the next day when they arrested him.
They had his name. They had already
targeted him.
So, basically,
what this means is
he's not facing anything really, really bad.
The judge sentenced him to three months
probation and a fine of about $150.
Okay.
So, yeah, we have that at least,
but Terrence is still going to appeal this.
Someone
asked him, are you going to appeal?
He just looked at them like they were crazy and said,
of course I'm going to appeal. To him, what matters
is, you know, the whole point
of the thing, you know, and I
think that's really good. The courtroom was packed
with people. He could not get in there.
A lot of supporters, a lot of,
you know, real dedication
shown here. Now, we also had the case
of John Sellers,
who is the leader of the Rucker Society.
He was the guy who was held
on a million dollars bail.
And he was
a native of California, and they claimed
at the time, they said that the reason they held him on a
million dollars bail was so that
he wouldn't escape and not come
back. You know, they were really afraid that this guy
would not show up in court, even though he'd
been arrested before and he had always gone to
court to, you know, fight for what he believed in.
They said, no, you know, if we just
let him out on, you know, $100,000 bail,
he'll be gone, you know, he'll flee.
He won't come back. Well, he did come back. Everybody
came back. Everybody who was arrested has come back.
And you know what happened when he came back
today? What happened? The prosecution
said, oh yeah, we're going to drop the case.
Came all the way
out from California, friends, family,
all kinds of things like that, and yeah, we just dropped the
case, you know? So you have the situation
where Terrence is
held on half a million dollars bail.
John Sellers is held on a million dollars
bail. And in the end,
Terrence gets three months probation and
$150 fine. This guy gets the case dropped.
You'd think maybe it wasn't a big deal from the
very beginning, you know, that this was
just kind of a punitive way of keeping people from
demonstrating and keeping people from going to
California for the Democratic Convention and
you know, maybe a way of scaring
everybody else.
So it's really
disheartening. I'm glad nobody
I know anyway is going to prison, but
it's
not a good thing when something like this happens.
I really thought, this was a good judge, too.
She was very fair, it seems. She was
listening to everybody, wasn't getting cranky,
wasn't yelling at people when they
laughed occasionally at the ridiculous things the cop was saying.
But
I don't know, that decision,
I just don't understand it. I wish somebody would
explain it to me, you know? It's just guilty.
Yeah, you're guilty. There's no evidence, but you're guilty anyway.
Well, it's being appealed and you can only
hope that it'll be thrown out later on.
He doesn't need something like that on his record anyway.
Yeah, well, you know,
it's more a question of precedent,
you know, if this kind of thing can be allowed.
I mean, you know, if anybody should be brought up on charges
it's the people that did this. I mean, there was a guy
there was a guy with
an impression of a foot in his face
that the cops claimed
had some kind of seizure.
He had a footprint on his
face, you know,
for about two weeks afterwards.
This is
not right. All right.
That's my spiel for tonight.
All right, we've talked about elections, we've talked about
libertarians, we've talked about demonstrators
and prosecution and all kinds of things like that.
Oh, yeah, we forgot.
Last week at this time, or
a little earlier,
we had a very
interesting phone caller.
Actually, we didn't have the interesting phone caller.
Someone else at the radio station
got someone
to talk to them.
He called us. President Clinton
called into the radio station. I don't know what
he was thinking at the time.
Apparently, he was going around calling
different radio stations
throughout the country
to get people to vote.
I'm amazed there isn't a big red asterisk
next to our station, but he called anyway.
Well,
he basically just wanted
to get people
to come out and vote.
What he didn't know was that our
esteemed reporter, Amy Goodman,
was in the studio
and
she was ready to ask him a bunch
of questions. Amy is here right now.
How are you doing? Hi, Emmanuel.
What was it like? I mean, you're just sitting
around, minding your own business, and all
of a sudden, the president's on the phone.
How did that happen? Well, I would never say I'm
minding my own business, but...
Sorry, I didn't mean that
the way it sounded.
Definitely looking out for all kinds of things.
Well, his people called
at about 10 to 9
in the morning when Democracy
Now! is about to go on, so no one
sane calls us at that time
because we're too
busy, but they said something like
White House Communications. I thought it said White Horse.
Isn't there a bar in New York called White Horse?
I'm sure there is.
I said, uh-huh, and they said,
the president would like to talk to you.
The president of what?
The president of the United States.
I couldn't
quite believe that this was true,
and in the end, he didn't call for a couple
hours, and so then...
You got an advance warning, then.
But I didn't really believe it. Oh, you thought it was a joke.
Yeah, and so that was that,
and I told the producers,
we may get a call from the president,
so think of a question, and
Maria said, yeah, right.
It didn't happen, and then La Nueva Alternativa,
Gonzalo
Huerta was on after that, and
that's when the call came in, and they...
Right at this phone here? Right here.
The phone is not working tonight. I bet that's a coincidence.
Is that true? It's not working? Not working at all.
So they called, and
so they came and got
me, and
they said, the president's on the phone, but he has to speak to
the vice president first, and then...
I said, what do you mean?
Cheer him up a little bit.
And then
we started, and
asked him about...
First, you know, I said, I understood
he's calling radio stations to get out the vote.
Why should people get out and vote when they feel that
the two parties are really
beholden to corporations? Why should they feel
they have any voice? And then...
He wasn't expecting that, was he?
No, I don't...
Do you think he knew at all what WBAI was
when he was calling us? I think he was...
I think it was a trick by one of his
aides to... It's a good question.
Right on his toes.
And then, well,
after he, you know,
tried to answer that one, and did do a good job...
I mean, he was quite serious about answering each point.
You know, I asked him whether he would be granting
the Native American activist
Leonard Peltier
executive clemency,
because this is the chance between the election
and when he leaves.
And he said he's going to consider it.
And then asked him a series
of questions on the Middle East, and why not
the moratorium on the death penalty.
And then asked him,
well, about what
Al Gore was so angry about, and that was
Ralph Nader, and this is what he had to say.
Okay, let's listen to a little bit of this.
Many people say that Ralph Nader
is at the high percentage point he is
in the polls because you've been responsible
for taking the Democratic Party to the right.
What do you say
to listeners who are
listening around the area right now?
Well, I'm glad you asked that.
I'm glad you asked that. This is the last question
I've got time for. I'll be happy to ask for it.
What is the measure of taking the Democratic
Party to the right? That we cut
the welfare rolls in half?
That poverty is at a 20-year low?
That child poverty has been cut by
a third in our administration?
That the incomes of average
Americans have gone up 15 percent
after inflation?
That poverty among seniors has gone
below 10 percent for the first time in
American history? That we have the lowest
African-American, the lowest Latino
unemployment rate in the history of the
country? That we have a 500 percent
increase in the number of minority kids
taking advanced placement tests?
That the
schools in this country, that the test scores
among... Since we've required all
the schools to have basic standards,
test scores among African-Americans
and other minorities have gone up steadily?
Can I say what some people...
Let me just finish. Let me just finish.
You started this, and every question you've asked
has been hostile and combative. So you listen
to my answer. Will you do that?
You just listen to me. You ask
the questions, and I'm going to answer.
You have asked
questions in a hostile, combative,
and even disrespectful tone,
and you have never been able to combat
the facts I have given you. Now, you listen to this.
The other thing Ralph Nader says
is that, you know, he's pure as the
Caesar's wife on the environment.
Under this administration,
43 million more Americans are breathing
air. We have safer drinking water,
safer food, cleaner
water. We have more land
set aside than any administration in history
since Theodore Roosevelt.
We have cleaned up three times as many toxic
waste sites as the previous
administrations did in 12 years.
Okay. I think...
Wow, Amy, you got yelled at by the president.
Oh, that's something.
I mean, in the end, I asked if he...
Why wouldn't he issue an executive
order banning racial profiling?
And then we said goodbye.
And, uh,
the next day when we
played this, well, and
Gonzalo Bortov, Lanue
Alternativa, asked about why Latinos should
vote for
Gore and Lieberman, etc.
And the next day, after we ran
the interview on Democracy Now!, I got a call from the White House
and they basically were banishing
me. I thought we were banished
already.
And I have to keep the list straight. It's Indonesia.
I can't go to the White House.
But...
No, they said that
they would no longer cooperate with me.
And then the White House spokesperson
was quoted in Newsday saying that I broke the ground
rules. I wasn't clear exactly what they were, except
that they said that he had a couple minutes, and I said,
yeah, but he could have hung up at any... I mean, the man's the
leader of the free world. He could have hung up at any point.
I'll bet he had fun.
He sounded like he was having fun. He was having the first
conversation, intelligent conversations he's had probably in years.
She said he got a phone. He did say
he was having fun, but she also said that
I had agreed to ask questions
about getting the vote out, and I had
asked maybe the first question on the lines, but then
I strayed.
You know, that's sort of what journalists are supposed to do.
I have to make a confession that I'm not
entirely proud of, but I actually
gained some respect for him after listening
to that, because he seemed to actually be
thinking, you know, and I think that's very important.
When a reporter like you asks him really hard-hitting questions,
which he never gets ordinarily,
I think it sharpens him. If you look at other countries,
if you look at the Prime Minister of England,
he's constantly being attacked on the floor
of the Parliament,
and he's got to be sharp and respond
immediately. You would never get that here,
and I think we'd have a lot better leaders
if that happened more often. Anyway,
congratulations. I thought you did a great job.
Well, you know, it's an important opportunity,
and it's important that the press not be
on bended knee to power.
The motto is the exception to the rulers,
and that's what we should all remain.
Democracy Now! is on tomorrow morning.
What time? 9 o'clock.
All right. We'll listen then. Thanks again, Amy.
Amy Goodman.
Yelled at by the President. Oh, boy.
That goes on her resume.
I don't think I could take that quite as well.
Wow.
Anyway, let's take some phone calls.
Maybe we can yell at you for the couple of minutes
that we have. 212-209-2900. Again, we can only take
one phone call at a time, so only one person
will get in, and then everybody else will get a busy signal,
so let's try. And, of course,
I tried this before. It takes
a minute or two for the phone to actually light up.
There it is. Okay.
Let's take the first phone call.
Good evening. You're on the air.
Hi.
Actually, I have
something of a query
about when...
Oh, actually, is it okay
to talk about Clinton and Amy's interview?
If you can make it fast,
you can talk about anything.
Okay.
I was wondering what she was going to say
when he cut her off
and said that she was disrespectful.
She's asked him
questions in a combative way.
What was she going to interject?
What was she going to
be asking? I could ask her that,
but I'm not exactly sure what...
She was getting ready to say something,
and at that point, he said,
Will you let me say something?
That's what Clinton said.
At this point in time, it probably doesn't even matter anymore.
You can listen to the entire interview.
I've heard it.
There's no indication of what she was going to ask.
Maybe that should be a rematch.
Right. Bye.
Okay. Thanks for the call.
If you want to listen to it on
Indymedia.org or even 2600.com,
we have it on there as well.
I just wanted to get the word out
to a lot of people around the world
so they could hear this.
The net is really good to do that.
It wasn't being paid attention to
and it was important for people to hear what he had to say
and how he responded.
I don't think he did a bad job. I really don't.
No, he's quick on his feet.
He's quick willy.
Amy's interviewed George Regular Bush,
not George W. Bush, the first one.
George Regular Bush?
She interviewed him. He didn't know what he was getting into either.
That was a face-to-face interview.
I think it should be a tradition
of presidential candidates
to sit down with Amy Goodman.
If you can answer questions
that she asks, I think you might actually
have thought things through.
Even if we totally disagree with you,
we might actually respect you more.
That's something to think about.
Good evening. You're on the air.
Speak up.
Yes, go ahead.
I was calling in.
I wanted to comment about Terrence's situation.
Yeah, go ahead.
I just have to say
that I've been in the same situation before,
not necessarily with the protests
and whatnot,
but basically getting screwed over
by the government,
if you will.
It honestly really doesn't surprise me.
No, I can't say I'm surprised,
but I'm very dismayed.
I really thought this was the time
that something was going to go our way,
something was going to change,
people would be happy.
I agree.
I mean, we were to a degree,
because John got off,
you have this sinking feeling
that something just isn't right.
Agreed.
Thanks for calling.
Let's see if we can take one more phone call.
Make it quick. 212-209-2900.
Again, only one phone line working.
Speaking of phones, I'm looking across here
at an IP telephony booth, which is kind of cool.
That's really cool. Okay, we got another call here.
Good evening. You're on the air.
Hey, Emmanuel.
I just finished reading a book that discussed
a lot of the government tactics that you brought up.
It's called The COINTELPRO.
Agents of Repression,
The Secret War Against the Black Panther Party
and the American Indian Movement.
It's written by
a University of Colorado
professor, Ward Churchill.
He specifically goes
into the tactics like
keeping people tied up in
useless trials to break their will.
Yeah.
If you want to know more about it,
what's his name again?
Ward Churchill. The book is called
Agents of Repression.
Okay. Thanks for the info.
We're going to have to stop it there.
Thanks for
all the people calling in and listening.
Sorry we couldn't get to any more phone calls.
Hopefully next week we'll be able to do that.
Hopefully next week they'll finally figure out this nonsense
down in Florida, but you know, if they don't,
we'll still have fun up here. Isaac, you going to be back next week?
I'll be back next week.
Okay. I have some surprises for you.
Surprises? That's good.
Tune in next week to hear the surprises that we have for Isaac.
Until then, this is Emmanuel for Mike
and everybody else, and for Amy Goodman,
have a good night. See ya.
My name is Leonard Peltier.
I'm a Lakota and Chippewa
Native American. I am
currently serving two life sentences
for the deaths
of two FBI agents.
Did you kill the FBI agents? No, I did not.
President Clinton, what is
your position on granting
Leonard Peltier executive clemency?
Part of my responsibilities in the last
10 weeks of office after the election will be
to review the requests for pardons
and executive clemencies and give them a fair hearing,
and I'm pleased to do that.
Now is the time to support executive clemency
for Leonard Peltier.
Join thousands on Sunday, December 10th
in New York City.