Step in the elevator, press 13, then use the stairs. At the end of the hallway, there's a frosted glass door. I didn't tell you to go in there. Turn left. See that door with the bloodshot eye on it? It's not a psychic. It's not an oculus. It's a dick. America's only detective. He's ready for action. He's ready for adventure. He's Fred Hershkowitz-Samois, host of Home Fries, 8 p.m. Friday nights. Live radio, comedy, call-ins and music on WBI, New York City, 99.5 FM. I can't understand the feeling I get When you blow your pretty eyes that way You take my, you take my, but you don't care Do you feel like what you see? Let me also pay my respects to the coalition commanders that I just met and to the members of the armed forces that are here side by side with the United States, armed forces from other countries, shoulder to shoulder, and we are very grateful that this is a multilateral, not simply a unilateral, mission. Our U.S. presence, of course, is the dominant one. Weaponry, America's only international defense affairs, military hardware and history talk shows heard every Tuesday night at 1.30 a.m. Tune in for in-depth, often scholarly, multifaceted analysis of the ongoing crises in Somalia, the Middle East, what used to be Yugoslavia, and some other places you haven't heard of yet except here. International security policy, electronic warfare, the next generation of Navy carrier fighters, DOD-wide force reductions, Balkans Watch with David Isby, documentaries, interviews, technical analysis, oral history, and more, every Tuesday night at 1.30, only on WBAI Pacifica Radio in New York. And you're listening to another action-packed edition of Off the Hook, nothing seems to ever go right. Yes, well, regardless, this is WBAI New York. The program is Off the Hook. For the best, expect the worst. I hope that's understood. One minute more. Ah! as hectic a day as... Did you, did you, were you a victim of the rail condition? No. At the Brooklyn Bridge station? No, I was not. Okay, well I just was. I don't know what a rail condition is. Isaac, do you know what a rail condition is? It could be a slipped tie or, you know, the rail wasn't joined properly. I don't know. Well that's what they claim. They called it a rail condition. Did you go really slow? Well no, we went really nowhere. We stopped for a while and then they said because of a rail condition we're stopping at Brooklyn Bridge and then you have to switch to another train to get here and so I just made it. Something broke. Literally 30 seconds to spare which actually is quite liberal for some of the close calls I've had and Mike just got here now. Mike, you were locked outside the door and I just happened to look up and I saw you, you know, face down on the ground beating your fists on the rug there and the sight of that just maybe pushed the new button that was installed here which allows me to let anyone in I wish. It's not fair. Everybody, all of you, yes. Shh, they're not supposed to know about that. Okay, is there a way to let 30 people out of the station? Um, geez, I guess they got to come in and ask permission. Oh, there is. I just found the exit button. There they go. Anyway, enough of that. So, folks, what did you do this week? I had a really interesting week so I'm asking you first to get that out of the way and then I'll tell you what I did this week. This week, basically some minor projects of my own. A couple of decisions made and that's about it. Next? Oh, I don't know. I did a lot this week but nothing. Nothing you want to tell us? Nothing worthy. All right, fine. This is really a fascinating program so far. Oh, well, I did see the UK. Are you familiar with the UK New York program thing they're doing for these two weeks? No, I'm not. The UK sent over a bunch of guard, you know, the guys who stand out and do the changing of the guard in front of the castle. Yeah, the guys never laugh. Right, right, right. Well, they're in town and they're going to each of the city parks and they're doing a very nice performance basically saying, hey, we're the UK and we're with you all the way. I added the rhyming because they obviously have no humor to do the rhyming with. I went to France. I drove to France. I told you this last week and you didn't believe me. You drove? Yeah, you didn't think I was going to do this but I got in. It was an aqua car? Got a rental car. It's a rental car? Yeah, and I wasn't going to drive my car to France. Come on, Isaac, what do you think I am? No, I got a rental car. What kind of insurance do you need for that? Oh, just regular. Maritime? No, regular insurance works just fine. When you rent a car, something that you should, you should take note of. Yes, yes. You're a misfortune this summer with your rental car. You swerved. So people know Isaac is one of these animal rights people. I will not claim that. Well, it's obvious from your actions. You swerved to hit a paraplegic rabbit or something like that. He was already, you know, pretty much on his way out. He was wounded. He was old. He was about to jump off a cliff but he got in front of your car and you swerved and you went face first into a rock. Into a boulder, yes. That's admirable. Well, for a future reference, if anyone is interested in going hunting with me on my way out to DEFCON this year. You're going to be looking for that rabbit, huh? Exactly. Bring your own bow. But the thing is, you opted not to get the insurance and you didn't have insurance on an existing car. You see, that's the difference. It was not exactly an option of mine not to get the insurance. It was cost prohibitive due to some other fees that were thrown on me at the last minute. Yes, but it was also cost prohibitive for you to have to pay the damages, wasn't it? Yes, and I'm going about doing that now. All right. Well, if anyone needs to, wants to help Isaac out with that, we'll be giving out the toll-free number later for Isaac Aton. Okay, no, but I drove to France. I still can't wrap my mind around this. Well, okay, technically... Would you go glacier to glacier? No, I shouldn't tell a mistruth because technically I did not drive to France. Me and Terrence... Terrence is here from Philadelphia. You might recall him as Shapeshifter, the person that was put in prison. So, he swam and... For the Republican National Convention, $500,000 bond and a very dangerous person in the eyes of the Philadelphia police. Well, we thought the two of us should go to France by car. And just so you know that things are possible, if you put a mind to it, we made it almost all the way there. And then we find out that you couldn't bring a car in the boat. So, we had to ditch the car, park it and then take the boat over. So, we did that instead. Okay, so you drove out... It's only an hour and a half ride on the bus. You drove over to the pier here in Manhattan and took the boat to France. You shouldn't be back by now. Am I speaking Swahili? Is that what I said? No, I said I drove up to the border and took a boat over to France. To the French border? Yeah, yeah. With the United States? No, not the United States. You don't know geography very well, do you? What does France border with? France borders with many things. One of the countries that France borders with is Canada. Really? How is that? Well, okay. Basically, what you do is you get in a car and you go over to Connecticut, drive up through Maine, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and finally New Brunswick. And then... No, I'm sorry. I got it backwards. New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and then finally Newfoundland. You have to take a really long ferry to get there. Then you have to drive all the way across Newfoundland because the ferry lets you off there on the opposite end of the island that you need to be on to get the boat to France. And then you drive all the way around. Ten hours it took. Ten hours it took to drive from one point to another. And there's not a whole lot there that is of interest to people looking for something to do except drive. Well, it's Newfoundland, but everyone wants it to be lost again. The way to pronounce it actually is... How is it, Terrence? Newfoundland? Newfoundland, I think it's Newfoundland. You put the pronunciation on the end. But anyway, if you get to this little town called Fortune... Don't forget about the moose. There's moose everywhere except we didn't see a single one. There's signs. But there's more moose on that island than there are people. But if you drive to a little town called Fortune and you take a little ferry, you'll get to the islands of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, which are technically part of France. And when you go over there, you are in France. And we know this because we've researched once again. In fact, this particular time, things have changed since the last few times I've crossed the borders. Everybody searches now. I mean, they're all interested. They're all fascinated by what it is you're carrying or what you might be doing. Here's how it started. We went over from Maine to New Brunswick. And that's when we found out that Terrence's little problem with the Republican National Convention last year was still there. Want to tell us what exactly did they tell us? Oh, they were like, oh, you've been flagged before. So, yeah, I need to go talk to immigration. And so we went back through. We went back. Yeah, we had to go back to another border crossing like a mile down the road because his name came up in the computer as somebody who had been refused permission to enter Canada before. And the reason he was refused was because of the case, which had since been dismissed. If you recall, Terrence appealed it and he won. So he had no record at all. So there's no reason to deny him. But we had to go tell immigration this. And immigration was down the road. But that meant we had to go back into the states, went back into the states and they searched us. I mean, you turn around a little. All we're doing is trying to get into the country down the road. Yeah, we have to search you anyway. So they went crazy searching the whole car. And we went through all that and went down the road. And then we had to explain the whole thing while they searched the car a second time, a third time. Actually, a third. Well, I didn't really search the car the first time. They just told us we couldn't come in. OK, so the third time they searched the car again and asked Terrence all these questions. We had to have them go on the World Wide Web to to verify that he, in fact, had his charges dropped. They had Web access there. They couldn't find the story. But they they looked in in the computer crime database or just the criminal database and they didn't see anything there. So they figured he was telling the truth. And then they they they found out that I had credit cards into more than one name. As you know, I have many identities. And I went through this once before with the United States border. And yeah, I had to go through all that again, explaining to them why, you know, sometimes it's fun to get a credit card under a different name, you know, like, you know, Captain Kirk or something like that. You can do that because the credit card companies let you do that. They let you put different names on there. And so I had to explain all that to them. It took another hour, but, you know, they let us through. Everyone was friendly. And so then we took the long drive, wound up taking the boat to France, where once again, Terrence was searched in France on the island. Yeah. And it's weird because how big is France there? It's pretty tiny. It's just a town. But it's it's uniquely French. It's you're definitely not in the United States. You're definitely not in Canada. And people pay in French. I got this hat there. And as you can see, St. Pierre, there are price tags on this hat. Yes. And they're usually take those off. Yeah. Well, I kept them on to show you that there are French francs and things like that. So anyway, the point is you actually are in a different country when you go there. And it's it's pretty amazing. I mean, it's distinctly European. You see citrons parked facing the wrong way on the street, just like you do over there. How do they do that? I don't know. Do you do you just like swerve to the other side of the road at the right time or what? No, they park. You can park in all different directions. If you're driving into France and the road changes, do they have like a crossover device or do you just like swerve into the other side of the road at an intersection or something? I'm not sure. Well, no, they drive the right side of the road. Is that what you're asking? You're in the United States. You're on the right hand side of the road. You're approaching France. They drive on the right hand side of the road to take a boat first. Oh, the boat. OK, you just park on the right hand side of the boat. Bernie, yes. How are you? I'm fine. Yeah. Although I haven't I haven't driven to France lately. It's quite a thing. I hardly recommend it. But you've been doing some some interesting things with cars, I understand. I have. Well, some right. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Modifications, modifications, unauthorized modifications, I might add to unauthorized by the Federal Communications Commission, you know, in a way. OK, why don't you tell us what dangerous thing you're up to now? These are the two most dangerous people of Philadelphia we have on the radio right now, Terrence and Bernie. So let's let's hear what what you're planning. There is a a news blackout in the United States enforced by the Federal Communications Commission. And that news blackout is effectively preventing people from easily listening to media, alternative news sources while they're driving their cars. And you say, well, what might that alternative media news source be? I'm talking about the international shortwave broadcast, such as the BBC, which you can't pick up on their on their main frequency, but they still broadcast to the Dutch Antilles and you can pick up that feed. Well, Bernie, can I just step in and make a slight correction, if I will, to to what you're saying? You say international shortwave broadcast. How about this international broadcast period? When we were driving in Canada, we were listening to something called Radio One, which is their nationwide talk network. It's really it's it's like what NPR could be if they really put their minds to it. Basically, you can turn on any time of the day or night, always get a signal, which is pretty much what you can do with NPR now. But instead of hearing classical music, you hear interesting discussions. You hear people talking back and forth. You hear analysis of the news, you hear call in shows and diverse opinions. At late at night, though, they broadcast international news from all around the world, as told by other broadcasters. You hear the BBC, you hear Radio France, you hear Poland radio I heard the other night. And it's all it's all done in English. It's all done directly from those places. And if you're interested in that kind of a thing, you can you can hear it. And everybody in the country is able to do that. And we can't do that here. It's not shortwave. It's just regular international broadcasting. Now, is it carried over on the North American FM broadcast band or North American AM broadcast band? Yes, it's on the it's on the FM broadcast band. Unfortunately, you can't get that very far into the into the United States. There were a few stations on AM that you could get in the United States. But those are for some reason there. What CBC is doing is is is curtailing broadcast on AM. They took their Toronto station off the air. I think they took the Montreal station off the air. I'm not sure what they're replacing them with and how that's working. There are some stations that are on, obviously, but the ones that I used to listen to in the States, I can't get anymore. However, I did come up with a scheme to to actually figure out a way not only to to to listen to radio, but to watch their TV. But I'm not gonna get into that until I know it works. You always have a scheme. I always have a scheme. Yeah, I have a backup. There's a lot you can pick up with with a satellite dish these days. I'm not talking about direct TV. I'm talking about just pointing a suitable dish and receiver at other satellites. Oh, yeah. Legal. There's a lot of information up there. And there are people doing things like this with every possible. I mean, you think what hackers are doing is is unique. It's not. People are doing all kinds of experimental things with technology in all different manners. Radio, TV, satellite technology, computers, you name it. That's that's what it's all about. Just let me cut to the chase. What we're doing here in Philly and any of our listeners can do, and I think you're interested in doing as well. Sony has come out with a a car stereo, you know, AM FM cassette. But it also receives most of the international shortwave broadcast bands. However, they're not selling it in this country because the FCC won't let them. They are. It's intended for the for the Middle Eastern market, believe it or not. But in the US, you can order it from a dealer in Dubai, which I think that sounds dangerous. Dubai is now this is this is this is legal. Aren't those where the evil people are? Dubai is not one of the bad. Oh, that's where the so-called terrorists are from that part of the world. The UAE. Are they on the United Arab Emirates? I think it's also correct me if I'm wrong there, Isaac. Is that is that not the UAE? That would be the UAE. Yes. OK. United Arabs. That sounds like something that the media has been saying is dangerous lately. United Arabs. We can't have that. Yes. And I don't think they're even going to define what an Emirate is. But in any event, OK, so tell us what you what you did and how other people can do the same thing. You can if I have the URL for this. Yes, you can go to Jackie's dot com. That's J.A.C.K.Y.S. Dotcom. And Jackie's Electronics is a is a dealer of electronics, communications dealer in in Dubai. And they will ship and they've done this for several other people. They will ship this car radio, which looks like a great car stereo in its own right, except it also receives international shortwave. You can program it to say to say BBC if you're on the BBC frequency or or radio Havana, Cuba, if you're listening to that wonderful station. And believe it or not, this thing cost about one hundred twenty seven dollars, but it cost you 70 bucks to have it shipped to the US. So you're going to still spend about two hundred dollars, which still isn't bad for a it's a first rate Sony car stereo, but you can listen to news broadcasts from all over the world. People that aren't regular shortwave listeners may not know that a great deal of international shortwave news broadcasts are made in English because that's a. Considered a universal language around the world, and frankly, a lot of these stations, which are run by foreign governments. They want to convince Americans of whatever point they're trying to make. Besides English is spoken in many countries. I'm sure you found when you were in France. Yeah, well, actually, there were a lot of French speaking stations there for some reason. But yeah, but it was easy. It's easy to figure out what they're talking about, even if you don't know the language. Yeah, they're insulting you. They're French. Yes. Well, you don't have to understand what's coming out of their mouth when they're looking down their nose at you. Exactly. OK, so it's just proven that. So in any event, OK, so this radio fits in a standard standard car radio, you know, dim sized hole in your dash. What is it? What is a dim sized hole? Dim is, I think, abbreviation for Deutsche Industrie Norm, which is a dim. OK. Dim, D-I-N, I've not used before. It's a standard size hole in your car's dashboard that radios are designed to fit into as a universal standard. Some American cars, Japanese cars, too, have like a non-standard dashboard where the manufacturer has things molded in a certain way. So you have to buy their radio from the from the factory and then you have to mount a third party radio under the dash or something. But a lot of cars still have a, you know, you can mount a standard. Well, Radio Shack sells like a little plastic kit that you can adapt with, which is nice. Most cars you can do that. Some are really hard to do that with most. Most you're OK with that. My big question is the antenna. That's a good question. Well, actually, you know, speaking of the antenna, that is an interesting question, because when Terrence and I went up to France, we had this terrific little scanner with us. Where is it? I'm wearing, in fact, it's I believe, Ernie, you know, the scanner we're talking about, the the ICOM IC-R3. The R3, I have one myself with the video display on it. We were watching television as we were driving, which, you know, by the way, is not illegal. I can I can I can set up a TV set in my car and drive into the city and watch all my favorite soap operas on the way in. People read papers on their way in. And that's not it. But but but answering the phone when somebody calls me, that's illegal. You know, that's there has to be a law against that. But but watching television or watching a feature length movie while you're driving, there's no law against that. It's also not illegal to put on eyeshadow or lipstick. And you know why? Because it's common sense. You're driving. That's a good thing for you, Emanuel. You're driving. Yeah. Thank you very much. You're driving recklessly. That's what's illegal. You don't have to make a special law saying, oh, you know, if you're doing this particular action, that makes it illegal in all cases. I was driving with somebody and the phone rang and they they reached up to plug a wire into the into the the phone. Right. They had the phone was mounted on the underneath the dashboard, like where the cigarette ashtray thing is. And they had to plug plug something into that. At that point, the car lurched forward because they had lost control of the car and they were busy plugging this in while the phone was ringing. And then they had to reach for this headset that was lying on the other side of the car and put that on there on their head and answer the phone. And I'm like, you know, my whole life is passing before my eyes while this is going on. I realize after this is over, that's completely legal. What that person did is completely legal. They're wearing a headset, hands free device. But in order to set it up, they had to they had to put everyone's life at risk. However, if my phone rings, I just pick it up with one hand, one finger and say, hello, I've broken the law. It's not because, as you said, it's reckless driving. Yeah, that's true. But I wasn't about to bring it up on track. This is a highly subjective. The point is, there isn't a specific law against that. And nor should there be. That's reckless driving. And that's that's fine. But the way things are right now, that's OK. But doing it the safe way is not. I don't know. But continue with what you're saying, Bernie. Speaking of shortwave radios, I urge people if they don't want to get a radio for their car. Many of our listeners may not have a car for a while. I haven't had one either. But in any case, you should really get into shortwave listening, especially now during a war you can or an undeclared war. You can you can get a lot of interesting news perspectives from other countries broadcast. Broadcast that you would not get in this country. Well, you know, actually, I just realized I went off on that tangent. I never actually reached the point I started off with with the antenna, the shortwave antenna. We had the scanner and we were able to listen to shortwave. So not only were we able to watch TV, we're able to listen to shortwave cellular phone conversations on the 800 megahertz band, which is illegal in this country. But I don't think it's illegal where we were to listen to them. If it is, I hope not. Well, then we didn't listen to them. If that's the case, it never happened. Yeah, we're not really sure what we did, but we could have done that because this this scanner that I hold in my hand is not legal. This was this was obtained in Canada, where you can what you get to watch for. I'm wondering how long it's going to take him to get here. The show ends at nine and you'll be gone. So it's just amazing how many things have become illegal. You know, a radio receiver is illegal. But in any event, while we were in the car, originally we were very disappointed with the shortwave coverage. We couldn't really hear much. But then we came up with the brilliant idea of sticking the antenna out the window. Ah, big difference outside the Faraday cage. Yeah. Yeah. And apart from apart from scaring the people that we were passing in other cars, it worked very well. We were able to get all kinds of things. You know, Emmanuel, you should really get a little adapter that lets you plug your your car, your car's external antenna into your icon. That's what the cop said, too. And I think you're both right. Well, it's better than it's better than tying a fishing weight to a long wire and letting it trail behind you. Yes. That would be very bad. But if you had a balloon with a long wire on it, that would be the best until you hit an overpass or kite in any event. Or speaking of radio. Yes. Speaking of radios, there are radios falling out of the sky right now. Yeah. Over Afghanistan. It's part of George Bush's twisted program to bring communications to the people of Afghanistan. Twisted is the correct word. Large quantities of crank wind up, wind up radios. Mm hmm. The United States, Marines, psyops unit, psychological operations. They are dropping from cargo planes, large quantities of small wind up radios. These are variations of the of the Beijing portable radio that some of our listeners may be familiar with. It doesn't use batteries. I think variations of the small wind up toys we used to drop in Afghanistan when the Soviets were there to blow up in little children's hands. Probably similar. You didn't hear about that, Isaac? Well, you must must read your Reagan history. OK, but yes, you see that the thinking at least behind the wind up radio theory is that batteries are not generally all the 711s in Afghanistan are out of batteries right now. Yeah. Why not solar powered radios or are we that much against solar power that we won't even do it in this case? The Beijing radio that I have has a photovoltaic panel and a wind up so you can do batteries, AC, solar or wind it up yourself. It'll run about half an hour on a wind or a bit of both because you can supplement the wind voltage with the solar power. I got to tell you, though, I mean, in addition to all the things that are going on over there for somebody to to go to the trouble of stepping over minefields to find one of these radios, wind it up and to be greeted with American radio, I just think is adding insult to injury. It's not being represented as American radio. These are propaganda broadcasts by the United States government. In fact, there's a really, really cool looking leaflet that they're dropping all over the place, too. They dropped the radios and the leaflets at the same time, but the wind blew all the leaflets away. So they had to drop more leaflets. And I'm looking at a picture. If you go to the Associated Press, there's a picture of it on their website. Just do a search for Afghanistan and leaflet or something and you can find it. It's a picture of a it's a stylized drawing of a of a radio antenna tower with like lightning bolts coming out of it, like there's radio waves coming out of it. And it shows radios falling out of the sky. They look like boomboxes. They have a little cassette deck in the middle with a speaker on either side. And it looks like there's waves coming out of their antennas as well, like the sound is coming out of the antenna. I don't know. And then around the edge of the leaflet is Arabic writing, which I can't read, but a friend of mine decoded the numeric part of it. And it shows what time the broadcasts occur, which are like from five to eight in the evening. I guess that's prime time in Afghanistan. And on the frequency of eight point seven megahertz. Now, you're not gonna be able to hear them very well here in this country, but here in Europe, you could probably pick up these United States propaganda. I'm not saying propaganda is necessarily bad. Propaganda be good or bad, but propaganda is a fact of life, unfortunately. Exactly. And on that note, I think people in this country should stop making themselves crazy, spending hours absorbing stuff from the TV as if it was the Holy Gospel and look at it more as a highly targeted information fed to the media by their government with the explicit aim of creating a behavior change in the population at large. And you don't get that with shortwave. You may get a different viewpoint, but it's not one viewpoint. Because it's not aimed at one particular populace. It's aimed pretty much from one point out to the world. The stuff we get from CNN and, you know, ABC, NBC, CBS, Disney News, all these outfits is largely fed to them. This war news is largely fed to them by the United States government, and you're not going to be getting the straight story. So I urge people to listen to shortwave and get at least some other viewpoints, and you might actually get some other facts that you're not going to get on American media. And you may reach the same conclusions that you had before, too. But at least you'll be able to argue it intelligently without just simply quoting Imus and, you know, and whoever else is the factual radio person that you might listen to these days. And also on the radio topic, did you know the FCC is making a power grab with all this anti-terrorist fury going on? No, this sounds very, very ominous. Wait, what do you mean? They're making... The FCC already has a lot of power, but tell us what more power they have. Well, they don't currently have statutory authority to regulate the internet. Okay. Yeah, that's a good thing. Now, one of the handful of FCC commissioners, I think there's... What, I think there's seven of them? FCC commissioners? I don't know for sure. I think there's seven FCC commissioners. One of them, the head of it is now Colonel Powell's, I guess, State Department, Powell's son. Right. He's in charge of the FCC now. Very pro-business character, as they all are, I suppose. Anyhow, Michael Cox is another appropriate name, appropriately named FCC commissioner. And he gave a speech before communications lawyers in Washington on September 11th. I think it was a couple of days ago. And he said in this speech, and I'm going to quote him here. Here he is. In one area, Congress is already acting. The people's representatives are demanding electronic surveillance capabilities across technologies, be they telephone lines or internet pathways. The events of September 11th will move such policy and regulatory questions front and center, and the commission needs to be there. And he said some other things in the speech, too, which you can get off the FCC website, FCC.gov slash speeches slash Cox with UPs. And you'll read the speech. And it's kind of scary because what he's proposing, as one of the handful of people who set communications policy in this country, is he's looking for statutory authority to regulate the internet. And we don't know how he wants to regulate it, but I don't think it's a good thing. Well, how can they regulate the internet when the internet doesn't belong to them? We're talking about laws that would, you know, like you can't say certain words on the radio. Do we want laws like laws that prevent you from saying certain things on WBAI? Do you want laws regulating what you can say on the internet? I don't think that's what they're referring to. First of all, first of all, we don't know that, do we? Radio is fundamentally different because it emanates from a particular source. Okay. I can't do this particular radio program from a station in Finland because I'm not there. And maybe it can be rebroadcast there. I don't know. But the point is in on the internet, you can pretty much be anywhere. It's international. It's the entire planet. So how do I know if a bad just because a lot of a really bad law is unenforceable, does that mean it should be on the books? Well, no, but it's just it really sounds very silly that they actually think they have the power to even, you know, imagine they can do this. They do. They control interstate communication and they are designed to facilitate interstate communication. And since these internet lines are large chunks of fiber optic that go from like New York to Chicago and Chicago to Denver and Denver to Los Angeles, they regulate the data that goes over it. Now there is no precedent, say for seven dirty words that the FCC regulates what is the content. But they certainly regulate the method of transmission across state lines. So now how would they regulate something going from, say, England to Holland? Well, that's a very I don't think they can. And it's definitely not within their powers. But it is within our powers to make something go from England to Holland from here. We can do that. How? By simply setting up anonymous remailers and things like that. We can I can I have accounts on machines in different countries that I can set up to email somebody. You're going to force someone from Holland to use a service in the United States. That's the same kind of twisted logic that says, you know, this server sent me this pornography. I'm not sure I'm not following you. I'm saying I can use one of my email accounts in a different country to email somebody in another country and it never goes through this country is what I'm saying. And I can set it up as it leaves the border to go there. That's the information. What if I set it up to do this on an automated basis where I'm not actually up? What if I set it up while I was over there? If you set it up while you were over there, you had to my name. You had to put information across the United States border into the computer that's in the United States that's doing it. You're not talking directly to wherever you are elsewhere. I just don't think the United States can do this. I really don't think we'll be able to pull this one off. You wouldn't be using any of the anonymous surfing services that were formerly offered by zero knowledge system. Oh, yeah, that's true. We talked about that last week. But that's, that's pretty scary. So Bernie, where do you see this going? You know, it's hard to tell because his words, Commissioner Cops, his words were kind of vague, but I invite listeners to go to FCC.gov speeches, cops, read the speech off and try to figure out what, you know, where they're trying to head with this. I mean, that's an interesting precedent. The FCC has never been so vehement in its stated desire to regulate the internet before, and now it's using this September 11th incident as justification to do so. I think anyone who's using those horrible events to push through everything from tax breaks to, you know, to new laws, to all kinds of draconian things that are going on is really taking advantage. They're selling products. And I've gotten spam in the mail, too, for people that are selling things supposedly because of this. And it's just, it's disgusting to me. And I think we have to fight it all. I agree. I've always been behind some sort of law or constitutional amendment that basically says, I don't know how you'd write it because it's very difficult, but a suspension of legislative action in regards to a particular field after a major event. That's a very good idea. And so that's a very good idea. For instance, new gun control laws after the massacre. What was that? The two kids. You just couldn't stop, could you? Long Island Railroad is a perfect example. You have the two at the high school. Littleton. Thank you. And similarly, after such events, we wouldn't pass death penalty legislation. Correct. You're looking at the cell phone thing with, you know, oh, the accidents went way up, and, you know, cell phone laws. I mean, this is a ridiculous reactionary kind of thing. And frankly, the politicians should be able to restrain themselves. But since they can't, they need to be restrained. Yeah, but I think they're also, you know, playing, they're playing up the hysteria and using it to, you know, to become more popular. Well, that's the point. If this is out there, six to eight weeks before you can even pass anything in relation. I don't know how you'd write it, which is very difficult. Emmanuel, here's a good example of a powerful corporate entity that was trying to take advantage of the September 11th incidents. And that would be none other than the recording industry of America. I have something on them, too. Be careful because the record retracted that story because the people who were involved weren't anywhere near where they said the meeting was going to be. Oh, that was my story. OK, I'm putting that away then. But that's not his story. That's not his story. I don't think we're talking about the same story. Is this is the R.A.A.O.L. like CNN and all these other big media? What about all these quotes? All these quotes were made up? Evidently. All right. Go ahead, Bernie. That's not what it's about. OK, so we'll get a phone call from me later. One of the R.A.A.O.L. lobbyists named Rich Glazier admitted to having tried to push through a week or so ago when this USA Act, you know, United. What does that stand for, Isaac? USA Act. United. I don't know. Unity, strength for America, something like that. Something that sounds good. But when you read the act, really, it was a coincidence that this fell out USA. They weren't really planning it. Basically, the anti the big omnibus anti-terrorism bill that the Senate and the House approved last week, there was an obscure part of it called Section 815. Well, there were a lot of obscure parts of it because no one read it. There were hundreds of obscure parts, but that was Section 815 was the part that was entitled Deterrence and Prevention of Cyberterrorism that made it possible, you know, if you committed any kind of computer related crime that with the aggregate damages exceeded five thousand dollars over one year, one or more year period could could result in your spending life in prison without parole. So anyhow, that kind of upset the believe it or not, that that provision upset the RIAA. Can you imagine why? Why is that? Well, that's because you can do up to five thousand dollars of damage. Well, here's here's why it's well, yeah, you think they would make it like one cent of damage. They said there was damage, which is usually how this stuff goes. But here's what happened. The RIAA lobbied to get an amendment, you know, like all these other entities try to get amendments to this. But this one just didn't make it through the through the funnel. The way this was worded, and I'm going to quote here, this is the RIAA's part of their proposed amendment to this bill. It says that no action may be brought under the subsection arising out of any impairment of the availability of data, a program, a system, or information resulting from measures taken by an owner of a copyright in a work of authorship or any other person authorized by such owner to act on its behalf that are reasonably intended to impede or prevent the unauthorized transmission of such work by wire or electronic communications of such transmission would infringe the rights of the copyright owner. Now, I didn't write that, and I know it's not good English, but what they're saying, what's that? I know what they're saying. They're saying that they would like to be able to hack into servers, PCs, whatever, to try to prevent the unauthorized exchange of copyrighted information, and they want to be exempt from this criminal law. That's really interesting that someone would even have, if your interpretation is true, the audacity to actually request that is astounding to me. I mean, I'm speechless. Is that your interpretation, too, Isaac? I think it's the same. I would only change that to say they reserve the right because I don't believe they have it within their powers to do right now. Well, in a nutshell, it would be like... They're keeping the door open. The recording industry wants the right to hack into your computer and delete your stolen MP3 files. Now, I wonder if we can get them defined as terrorists because they want to do that. You know, they want to hack something, and I don't know. Yeah. So, this almost happened, but there were so many amendments to this thing, and it was a lot of last-minute stuff. It just didn't make it through, but they're going to try again. So, maybe at the next terrorist act, this will get pushed through. Unbelievable. Now, the guy from Epic, Mark Rottenberg, he had a good quote. He said, This could lead to some really bad outcomes, like a program purposefully intended to delete MP3s that malfunctions and erases everything on your hard drive. And here's a good analogy he brought up, Mark Rottenberg. He said, Think of a repo man smashing all the windows and knocking down your doors to pull out this 27-inch color TV when you've missed a couple of payments. Yeah, yeah. That's the virtual equivalent, I suppose. So, here we have computer hackers being categorized as terrorists, but we have a corporate lobbying group who wants to be able to commit the same kind of terrorism they've been complaining about with impunity. I don't want to fall into the trap of, I know you're not falling into that trap, but I certainly don't want to use the term terrorism lightly, and I think that's something that's happening way too much. I have a good example of it right here. I don't know if you heard about this website that got hacked called WrestleZone.com. Basically, this appeared... I don't know how big WrestleZone.com is. It looks like a regular site for people into wrestling, but apparently it got hacked. And there was an open letter from the staff of this particular entity, I guess from the owner, to WrestleZone's daily readers. I apologize for the lack of news today on this being a Monday when we usually see an influx of visitors. WrestleZone.com was hacked last night, seriously, for the first time in over a year. Luckily, it happened at 2 in the morning and was eradicated by 8 in the morning. For any of you who came during those six hours, what you saw on WrestleZone was rather disgusting, so I am sorry if any of you had to witness that. I don't know what it was. We hope to have news ready and rolling by tonight, and we will cover RAW and hope to get everything back to normal. On a personal note to the no-name group of 13-year-old hackers that perpetrated this uncalled-for act, I would like to start by saying, get a life. That being said, I would like to add this. Even though, in the great scheme of things, this is only a childish prank, I think it really represents much more. Pro-wrestling is a favorite pastime of millions of people globally, mostly in the US and Canada. WrestleZone.com has been the number one independent source for people who want the inside info on this sport, as well as a chance to reach other wrestling fans and enjoy the WrestleZone experience. What was done today was, in essence, an act of terrorism on the 150,000 people who would normally come to WrestleZone.com on a Monday and enjoy our journalism. Well, if their journalism keeps going along those lines, I think there are some openings for them in the tabloids. That kind of thing just really angers me so much when somebody takes something that they even admit is a prank, a childish prank, and they have the gall to equate that with something where people are murdered and terrorized, you know, for real. In real life, there is no comparison. There can never be a comparison between people suffering in real life and somebody being inconvenienced on a goddamn webpage. That's just the way I feel about that. Yes, Mike? I think leaving it at get a life would have been much wiser. Leaving what? Leaving it at get a life would have been much wiser. Oh, yeah, yeah. No, he should have stopped there. You're right. Here's some very depressing bad news as if this other stuff wasn't. Well, before you give out the bad news, let me give out some good news, and that's that our phone system seems to be back. Yay! And that means we can give out the old number, 212-209-2900. Let's see if that actually works, see if they start lighting up, which hopefully they will. Then Bernie S. can give us the bad news, and then we can start taking some phone calls. But they're not lighting up. Oh, there it goes, there it goes. One anyway. Well, we put them all to sleep. I guess people have to start waking up now. 212-209-2900. Go ahead, Bernie. How many of you folks are familiar with the Jim Bell assassination politics case? I've heard bits and pieces of it. Okay, well, the federal prosecutor, or at least the prosecutor above, one of the prosecutors who was involved with that case was just assassinated. I'm sorry? Really? Yes. This wasn't just like third-hand information. It was a press release by the U.S. Attorney's Office in that district, somewhere in the northwest. I just heard about this before I left work and came home to the show. Do they know who was behind this assassination? I don't know. Okay, well, that's not at all good. I'd like you to prepare a report on this for next week, Bernie, because I think we need to know more about this. No, I don't have more information. I just heard it like a minute before I left. Yeah, it's a bit of a bombshell, but that's hopefully... I'm not saying hopefully you can verify. Hopefully we can have more information so that we can talk factually about this. Isaac has a look of profound shock in his face. Speechless. Look at this. I've never seen this before. Wow. Maybe we should save this kind of stuff more often. I hope not, but in any case, for the people, for listeners who aren't familiar with assassination politics, it was an essay written by a guy named Jim Bell, who was prosecuted federally for stalking, I think, an IRS agent recently. He's going to be doing five or ten years. I think he was just sentenced. If he wasn't, he's going to get a lot longer sentence now, even though he probably had nothing to do with this assassination. This essay promoted a scheme involving a death pool lottery, encryption, and anonymous digital cash. It's a combination of those three things so that people could basically bet on the closest time and date of the death of any federal official who they thought was not serving the public's interest, and a pool of money would be established through anonymous digital cash that could be awarded to or claimed by the person who most closely guessed the time and date of this federal agent's demise. You know, there are good hobbies and there are bad hobbies. I don't think this is a good hobby, no. I definitely don't. Anyway, listen, Bernie, let's get more information on that as we learn it. Yeah, I'm hoping that's just some kind of a sick joke. Yeah. 212-209-2900 is our phone number. Let's see who's out there. All the lines lit up. In fact, I'm seeing lights light up. I never saw before, but let's try this one over here. Good evening, you're on the air. All right, maybe I shouldn't have tried that one. All right, I'll try over here then. Good evening, you're on the air. Yes, it's you. Speak up. Hi. All I want to do is give a message and say, basically, that people need to start standing up because right now what's going on in the United States, the government's blaming everything on terrorism, and now they're taking away rights, right and left. So basically, all I got to say is that people need to need to stand up and defend their rights instead of sitting around being scared that if they stand up, they'll get the piss beaten out of them. How would you suggest doing this? I don't know. When you look at the sites for the rallies and everything, there's like maybe three rallies a month or so. I mean, that's ridiculous. I know there are more people out there than just that. What sites do you go to? I haven't gone to many. I think one of them was, well, one of them that I think everybody knows is internationalanswer.org. Okay. I heard that one on protesting. I can't remember the other one. I got it in my bookmark somewhere. Okay. Well, one thing I hope that we're able to do here at this radio station is become a clearinghouse of information for just that kind of thing. Give out website addresses and hopefully a means for people to find out more as these things happen. I agree there should be a lot more discussion and dialogue going on, and there seems to be a lot of quelling of that. Although I heard from several people, Mike here included, that at the demonstration, one weekend ago, we had over 10,000 people in Union Square, and the police were extremely nice to everybody. The police actually overestimated the amount of people that were there, which never happens. That's something. But the people are there, and I think the feeling of wanting to communicate and have their voices heard, that's definitely there. So it's something that shouldn't be taken lightly. While we were driving through Canada, we noticed on the radio just the incredible dialogue that was going on over the airwaves there, which seemed to disappear when we got back here. It was back to commercials and music, and just the usual right-wing talk shows on AM where people are just calling for blood. I mean, that's all fine and good, but it's not balanced. I listened to one call-in radio show up there where people were criticizing the Canadian government. One caller criticized for not doing enough, for not standing up, for not sending troops over to fight in Afghanistan as well. And then the next caller criticized the government for cow-towering to the United States, the exact opposite opinion on the same radio show. And the host entertained both ideas, didn't attack one person, didn't let another person talk for 50 minutes about something. And that's what dialogue is about. You see that on C-SPAN a lot, which is good, but that's something that not everybody can get. It's not something that's available on the radio. So I think we need to do more work in that regards. But thanks for that call. Mike, do you have any websites you might want to send people to for that kind of thing? List of protests in the... Is Indymedia good? The New York Indymedia Center, nyc.indymedia.org usually has that sort of stuff. Okay. Let's take another phone call. Let's go over here. Good evening. You're on the air. Hi. Hi. Can you give me your website? Again, I'm recording this station. The one where I can receive a radio from Saudi Arabia, which carries the shortwave band. Bernie, do you have something like that? It's www.jackies.com. And jackies is spelled J-A-C-K-Y-S. Jackies.com. Thank you so much. And the model number you were looking for, it's the... You better write this down. You ready? Go ahead. The model number is... Hold on here. X-R-C-A-620-X. And again, that's X-R-C-A-620-X. You mean to say they have several models that go in cars? That's... Well, this is the only one I'm aware of that Sony puts out that receives most international shortwave bands in addition to AM and FM that we pick up here. But you have to have it imported from the United Arab Emirates because it's not legal to sell in this country for reasons I would like to know. Yeah, me too. Okay. My other question is regarding... I'm interested in shortwave radio and I saw some of them which have the screen on them. In other words, they can carry television? No, the bandwidth of a shortwave signal is not nearly wide enough to carry video. Are you saying you saw a scanner with a screen on it? Yeah, that's what I've seen. Yeah, that's what we have here. That's not shortwave though. No. The scanner can list all different kinds of frequencies, including video frequencies. So if you know the frequency, say, for channel 2, you tune to that, you see video from channel 2. Well, more importantly, it can tune in amateur television stations across the band, in the amateur bands. Yeah, if anyone has frequencies for those, please let me know. I'd like to play around with that. Well, it doesn't carry television. It will carry some bands. Well, for instance, the R3 will receive from, like, 0 to, what, 2,000 MHz, Emmanuel? Something like that. Something like that, yeah. Shortwave frequencies only go from, like, 3 to 30 MHz. The frequencies that video are broadcasted on are much higher. They're in the hundreds of MHz, or sometimes thousands of MHz, generally hundreds of MHz. So just because a radio has a TV screen on it doesn't mean you're receiving, and it can receive shortwave, doesn't mean that you're receiving shortwave television. These are just different... It's like a combination radio-TV set. Just because you're tuning in the FM dial doesn't mean you're picking up a video signal on the FM dial. That's right. Okay, let's take another phone call. Good evening, you're on the air. Speak up. Hey, how you doing? What's up? I just wanted to comment on a few things. Your idea that politicians shouldn't be able to act so fast on a major event, I actually think quite the opposite. I think we all should immediately act, and I'll give you an example. I think now is the time that people like you and me should have a grassroots movement putting television ads up that tell the truth about solar and green energy sources and how viable they are. I mean, let's face it, this whole thing is about oil. No, it's not. I don't really know if it's about oil right now. I mean, maybe it got started because of oil, but I think we're well past the oil stage. It got started because of oil? That's why we were over there. What is wrong with you people? They blew up a building. There's 5,000 plus people dead. Isaac, Isaac, this thing started back a long time ago. In fact, well before the Gulf War. That's what I'm talking about. The Iraq War was purely about oil, and you cannot convince me in 100 years... It was about the defense of the nation of Kuwait. Yeah, right. If you believe that, there's some real estate downtown I can sell you. I'm sorry, go ahead. It was a great joke. Enjoy that. Go ahead. It goes way before that. I mean, and the thing is, this is public. I mean, super public now. I mean, it was always public, but now it's on the front page of the Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago, how Saudi Arabia was started with U.S. intervention in order to basically make an oil for government deal where we propped up this royal family. We weren't promoting democracy. We weren't promoting liberty, and the rights of the people were part of the deal. They didn't have any, but we got plenty of good favorable concessions for our company. We always got our company. We got first dibs on the oil, and we also... Standard oil. What's that? Standard oil. Yeah, well, I don't even know which companies, but this goes back 50 years. It probably was standard oil, and Exxon and Texaco and the rest of them, too. Guys, this is a great discussion, but we're into our last, like, 20 seconds, so can you wrap it up? Sure. I know, it's a tall order. I'm saying it's commercials. It's public opinion that has to be changed, and shows like B.A.R. are great for you and I to talk, but it's the heartland that has to be reached. Yeah, well, there has to be a desire for that, and people have to know that they have the power to do it, and that, I think, is a very important thing, and I think one of the ways you can get inspired to do that is to listen to what other places are doing. Listen to what's going on up north. Listen to what's going on in Europe, and maybe you'll say, hey, I want that here, too. Let's figure out a way to do it, and unfortunately, we're about finished doing that tonight. I want to thank people for calling in. I should say, though, that while listening to diverse radio from around the world, I'm reminded of nothing so much as this place, where we have all kinds of diverse opinions around the clock on this radio station, and I think that's a good thing that we're here, so hopefully we can build on that and keep things going. Bernie, thanks so much for being around and helping out. Thank you. I'm glad you made it back in time. Yeah, and I guess same goes for everybody else. Yep. I'll see you guys later. Take care. There's always justice And when justice is gone There's always force And when force is gone There's always mama So hold me, ma And you're la ma So hold me, ma And you're la ma So hold me, ma And you're la ma So hold me, ma And you're la ma So hold me, ma And you're la ma Your petrochemical arm Your military arm And your electronic arm So hold me, ma The previous program off the hook was brought to you live with portions of a recording of a listener sponsored noncommercial WBAI in New York at 10 p.m. Nuff said. At 9 p.m. Tahir Stay tuned to listen to sponsored non-commercial WBAI in New York. People think comic book is nothing but comic book shoots right across young culture in America. Shoots right to the kids. It hits the, it hits key kids who are decision makers in their groups. Comic books are read by people who read. Comic books are commented on by people who think. They're not, they're not for stupid people. And they're not for ignorant people. And they're not for non, non-leaders. They are for everybody but, as from my experience, they go directly to people who have things to say, who will have things to say in the future.