Although 59 years have passed since World War II, Poland and Germany have not reconciled on many issues yet,
including compensation to the victims of the Holocaust.
The project of building the Center Against Expulsions, which Steinbach calls, quote-unquote,
a monument to German martyrdom, proves that still much needs to be done on the way to full reconciliation.
In Warsaw, I'm Danuta Szafraniec for Free Speech Radio News.
You've been listening to Free Speech Radio News. I'm Nell Abram.
You're listening to 99.5 FM WBAI New York. It's 7 p.m. on a Wednesday. Time for Off the Hook.
Off the Hook.
Yes.
Emmanuel, are you there?
I am here. Greetings, everybody. I'm sorry I'm not there.
But actually, I'm not in the way because being here is so much better right now.
I'm speaking to you from Halifax, Nova Scotia, which is a really nice city.
It's a bit foggy today, but decided I just had to get away for a little while to keep my head, to keep my sanity.
And I'm looking for my sanity here, and I think I'm on the verge of finding it.
I'm also here with Mike, who joined me on this road trip.
We're heading up to Newfoundland and also to the islands of Saint-Pierre-Miquelon,
which is part of France, as we've talked about before.
So you're driving to France?
Pretty sort of, because you can only drive as far as the city or town of Fortune,
and from there you hop on a boat, I believe a motorized boat, which takes you to the islands.
You can't take your car with you. However, when you get there, you will find cars are there.
European cars somehow have gotten there, and you are, in fact, walking through the streets of Europe.
So it's a very strange place. I'll take some pictures, and hopefully we can show them on the radio when I get back.
All right.
I believe Bernie is also joining us today.
In Philadelphia.
How about that? The marvels of technology.
I'm here in Halifax, you're there in Philadelphia, and the studio is still in New York, last I checked.
One thing, I just would like to make this offer to people, if we have any listeners in Halifax,
and I know we do, but I'm not sure if they're listening to us live,
we would like to meet up with you after this radio show.
And Mike, I believe we have set up a meeting place for 10 p.m. tonight.
It's an hour ahead where we are right now, so right now it's 8 o'clock.
So we would like to meet anybody in Halifax at 10 p.m. at what place did we say we were going to go to?
There's a restaurant called The Argyle, which is on Argyle Street, 1575 Argyle Street, right near the end of the street.
That's more than I've ever heard you say Argyle before.
It's not a word I use very often, but there's a restaurant called Argyle on Argyle Street.
I'll tell you what, you know what we'll do?
How many options?
If you're a listener to us in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and you meet us at 10 o'clock on Argyle Street, 15 what Argyle?
1575.
1575 Argyle Street, we will buy you dinner.
Yes, we will do that if you meet us there at that point in time.
Now, let me point out too, just so that people don't go crazy and call their relatives in Halifax
and have 50 people show up and meet us thinking they're going to get a free meal,
you have to know something about the show, you have to be a listener, because we are going to quiz you on that.
So you have to be a bona fide listener, not just somebody who has gotten a tip that you can meet these suckers from the United States.
That's why it's an hour after the show, because we have to write the quiz.
Yeah.
And, Emanuel, you should warn listeners who show up that there's a sign in front of the place that says,
no shoes, no Argyle socks, no service.
Oh, you've been here?
Yes.
Yeah, it's an amazing place.
You know, tomorrow, by the way, is the Tall Ship Festival.
It begins.
Unfortunately, we're leaving tonight, so we're going to miss the whole thing.
But everybody's talking about it, that these tall ships are sailing into the harbor in Halifax.
Of course, you can't really see them at all, because it's so foggy, you can barely see a few feet in front of you.
But they're there, or they're coming, and we will be on our way to the ferry that takes you over to Newfoundland,
leaving, I believe, 8 o'clock tomorrow morning.
There are a lot of boats involved.
We drove up through Maine, and we had to take a ferry known as the Cat.
Now, Mike was especially impressed with the Cat.
He can't stop talking about it.
I actually have stopped talking about it.
Oh, have you stopped talking about it?
It's a very fast boat.
It's the fastest—well, there are a lot of conditional phrases here.
It's the fastest international North American car ferry.
I don't know if there are any others.
Well, it basically means it's faster than their competitor.
It goes 55 miles an hour on the water, which is pretty fast.
Oh.
Yeah, so we took that from Maine all the way over to—what was the port that we called in?
Yarmouth, Nova Scotia.
Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, where the Acadians are prevalent.
There's an Acadian Congress, whatever that means.
It means it's the largest group of Acadians gathering anywhere in the world later this year.
And if you don't know what an Acadian is, well, we can't really help you at this point in time.
You're going to have to look it up.
But suffice to say that there is Acadian power manifesting itself right here on Nova Scotia,
and it's something to behold.
But when we got to Yarmouth, we figured, you know, it wouldn't be that big a deal.
We're coming on a boat.
Usually passing on a boat isn't as strenuous or difficult as going through one of those, you know,
long lines of people trying to get into a country.
And I figure since, you know, a year or two ago—actually, it was two years ago,
and I tried to do this trip once before by way of Montreal,
and I was turned back because the person I was with had a record that stretched back 10 years,
and apparently that meant that they couldn't accept that person into this country
until a couple more years had passed by.
Last year, I went up with RedHack to Montreal.
We also got pulled aside.
Remember that, RedHack?
Yeah. We were interrogated.
We were interrogated. A lot of fun.
So I figured, you know, maybe this wouldn't happen again.
But you know what? Out of, what, 140 boats on the—
140 cars.
140 cars. I'm sorry.
We were one of, what, two, three?
Three.
Yeah, that were pulled over for additional scrutiny.
And they asked us all kinds of questions.
Now, Mike, you saw them doing things to my luggage that I didn't see.
Yeah, they were very thorough in poking through the luggage.
We're just the suspicious types. What can I say?
Well, they were touching my phones, right? What did they do to my phones?
They swabbed your phones with some kind of swab
and took the swabs back into their building for further analysis.
They kept asking us if we knew anybody around here,
how long we were going to stay for.
We promised we were going to leave at some point.
You'll notice I said that they did this to your phones,
and they didn't swab my phone because it was in my pocket,
and they didn't really ask me what was in my pocket.
I have a question.
How many telephones did you have on you that were swabbed?
Well, I just have the two that I carry with me at all times,
but Mike had his phone, and they asked me which phone is whose,
and I said they're both mine.
What they didn't do was ask Mike, well, do you have a phone too,
and might that phone be on your person?
You had a suspicious number of phones.
I'm sorry?
You had a suspicious number of phones.
I don't think that's why I got pulled over, though.
Well, no, but that's why they were swabbed.
My guess is that they saw more than one phone.
They figured one might be an improvised explosive device,
and they swabbed it for traces of nitrogen-based compounds.
So, Jim, your position is that if you carry two phones,
that the second phone is likely, in their eyes anyway,
going to be a suspicious device.
I think we should send someone to Canada with a whole batch of phones
and hidden cameras and watch all hell break loose.
That might be a worthwhile pursuit, but I don't really know at this point.
What we did do was we watched what they were doing.
Did we bring that piece of paper up with all the little notations?
No, we didn't.
Okay.
Well, we'll have a piece of paper where they wrote down certain things.
They made us go into this other building where we were interrogated by a woman.
Maybe interrogation is a bit of a strong term.
She looked over her glasses at us and asked us some questions such as,
have you ever been in this country before?
When was the last time you were in this country?
Why did you come back to this country?
Don't you want to go to another country?
Things like that.
After all that, she gave us a piece of paper.
We walked all the way back to where the car was,
and there were certain things written down on that piece of paper,
which we will reveal to the world when we find the piece of paper that we copied it onto.
Just to clarify, the woman worked for immigration.
The searchers worked for customs.
But you were already in Canada.
Weren't you just traveling from one part of Canada to another?
No, no, no.
We had arrived from Maine, and we had arrived on the ferry,
so we were in Yarmouth at that point.
I see.
Emmanuel, doesn't this differ from your experiences before crossing that border
that generally you only experience problems passing into the U.S. as opposed to into Canada?
That's what's odd, Bernie, is that in the past,
if you listen to archives of this program in the past,
you will notice that I always had trouble coming into the United States.
One time at the Canadian border, several times coming over from Europe.
Now it seems almost every time I go to Canada,
in fact, the last three times in a row over the last two years,
I've been picked out and interrogated.
Well, last time we had trouble coming back from Canada, too,
but only because of certain suspicious items in the trunk.
Oh, that's true, yeah.
We did get that cranky border guy.
It was like four in the morning.
We were carrying satellite equipment back from Canada.
That's true, yeah.
But somehow I feel that's different because we were suspicious at that point
because we were doing something that was kind of crazy.
We were carrying equipment back into the States,
supposedly to send it back to Canada, so he got a little confused by that.
In this particular case, as in the other ones going into Canada,
though, we were picked out before anything suspicious was found,
just based, I guess, on the way we looked.
Right.
All right, I hate to interrupt you, but tonight's actually a fundraising night,
and we've got several premiums we're offering.
As you all know, WBAI relies on the support of the listeners.
It's public radio.
Tonight we're offering an off-the-hook T-shirt for a pledge of $50.
We have the WBAI premiums, which WBAI has T-shirts.
That's for a pledge of $65.
You can get the WBAI gold package, which is a cap, a mug, and a tote bag.
That is $125.
You can get the baseball cap by itself.
That's for a pledge of $65, and the mug is also a pledge of $65.
Now, Redhack, I have a question.
Yeah.
What must one do to obtain these wonderful premiums?
Call 212-209-2950.
That's my alternate accent.
That doesn't sound like your voice.
Redhack's been practicing.
Yes.
Well, you sound just like Ken there.
Ken, I believe, is our studio liaison there,
who's going to tell us all kinds of things relating to the radio station
as far as premiums, if we get more of them.
212-209-2950.
You call that number, and one of the volunteers will answer,
and you can tell them which premium you want.
And if you become a member of the station,
you get to vote for the local station board,
and you get all kinds of incendiary literature
from the various sides who are battling one another
for membership on this board.
That alone is worth the membership.
Yeah.
If you have the right frame of mind, it is.
If you have the wrong frame of mind, it can be depressing.
If you have the right frame of mind, it's hilarious.
I encourage all Republican hackers
who have called up the last two or three shows to pledge
so that we can surreptitiously infiltrate the WBII
and exert our will on it for a change.
No, I'm only kidding.
You can run for the board.
Any of those Republican hackers who called
can run for the local station board.
Wait, wait, wait.
I don't think we should be consistently encouraging Republican hackers
to run for the board.
I encourage anybody to run for the board
because, you know, we need diversity.
We need people who care.
As long as you care about the radio station,
that's as much prerequisite as I can think of that matters.
I know we do have a lot of right-wing people
that support what we do,
so that's not necessarily the issue here.
What is the issue are people that don't like the fact
that the radio station is here.
They don't like the fact that people are speaking freely
and saying things that run counter to corporate America.
And there are people like that in all different camps,
and they are the true enemies of free speech,
of radio stations like WBII.
So if you find yourself somebody who is loathe to express those kind of views,
you're probably somebody who could help us out by pledging
and by being a part of the radio station.
And I believe, Ken, is it true that pledges of $25 or more people can vote?
Yes, absolutely.
$25 you can vote and you would get all that wonderful literature.
It's an interesting experience comparing
because there's various factions and there's various voting blocks
and they're sniping at one another and calling one another all manner of names.
It's amazing.
Ken, is this voting done electronically by any chance?
Not yet.
No, it is done with a piece of paper and marking boxes,
which as I've said many times on the show is a very reliable way of voting.
If I could just add a couple more premiums that are being offered tonight.
We have three books that are being offered.
One is The State of the World 2004.
That's by the World Watch Institute.
The Buying of the President 2004 by Charles Lewis.
Those are both premiums for a pledge of $100.
And War and Globalization by M. Chossudovsky for a pledge of $75.
212-209-2950 is the number to call to pledge.
And I should also point out that every pledge, was it 25 and above,
you'll get an off-the-hook T-shirt?
50.
I'm sorry, what was I thinking? 50 and above.
Okay, well 25 and above you get the voting rights.
And for another 25, not only do you get the voting rights,
you get the T-shirt that you can wear while you vote.
There are plenty of commercial interests who would like to see the station gone
because they'd like to own the airwaves.
So it's important that people support the station
and keep programming like this on the air.
Absolutely.
Now the Democratic Convention is occurring right now.
In fact, we're going to have some coverage of that later on tonight, I believe.
But have you guys been watching it, following what's been going on?
I've watched some of it.
A little.
It's interesting.
I've been trying to watch what's going on in the protest pen,
but it doesn't seem to be covered very well.
It's so hard to see from the media section.
I mean, with the double chain link fences and the black meshing,
how would anyone actually see it?
Even the protesters are pretty much avoiding the protest pen.
The only protesters actually in the protest pen
were those protesting the existence of the protest pen, believe it or not.
Where do you protest that?
No, they actually dressed up as the Abu Ghraib slash iPod icon,
the man with the black hood on his head and the strange shift.
Orange jumpsuits?
No, no, no.
It's a dark shift, sort of like a poncho,
and the black hood on the head,
the guy standing with his arms extended.
Do you remember that picture?
Wearing the iPod.
Yes, it later became a famous iPod parody.
There were a whole bunch of people dressed as that.
They were the only people to actually go into the protest pen,
which is across the street on the back end of the Fleet Center,
underneath, I believe it's an elevated subway,
it might be an elevated highway, invisible to the world.
But they were there to protest the fact that
protesters would be forced to be in that pen, away from everything.
And where were the protesters?
Other protesters were on a march the day before the convention,
walking past the pen.
Other protesters were on Boston Commons, a few other places.
But apparently everybody is avoiding the pen as a protest.
Well, I mean, you wouldn't be seen in the pen.
There's barbed wire around the top of the pen,
the only razor wire at the entire convention.
I saw a clever sign, though, that someone was holding.
There are pictures online of the protest pen.
And their sign said,
terrorists are loose while patriots are caged.
I thought that was kind of clever.
That's interesting. I've heard a few reports.
We're able to listen to radio. They have radio up here.
And we're able to hear some of the reports of what's going on,
as far as protests.
So far, the protests seem to be, what do exist, seem to be rather small.
I think, Mike, 3,000 was the number we saw of protesters yesterday?
There was a march a few days ago.
Yeah, and about 3,000 people showed up.
But I think the big event has been the Boston Social Forum,
where they've been kind of holding, you know,
workshops and discussions and all that
on creating alternatives to the allegedly democratic process
and, you know, creating actually democratic alternatives to the Democratic Party.
I believe there was some controversy, too,
about the veracity of a claim that various law enforcement agencies were making
that protesters were planning, or activists or protesters,
were planning on using explosive devices on media vehicles.
Remember hearing anything about that?
Well, there was a group, what's it called again?
Black Block?
Black Tea Society.
Black Tea Society.
But I think this is a different story.
Well, from what I've heard, there's concerns that an anarchist group
is going to target mass media.
I just find that whole thing really, really humorous.
But it shows that the media themselves are getting in on this whole paranoia act
and saying, well, who would dislike us the most?
Probably those darn anarchists.
And what if they had power?
They could really cause problems.
I heard a CNN reporter say, basically, without quoting anyone,
she said that the anarchists were planning on doing this.
And I thought that was pretty interesting,
since she didn't quote any sources or offer any evidence.
No, because odds are probably some anarchist somewhere in the world
is wishing to do this.
Okay, fine.
That doesn't prove anything as far as there's going to be
some kind of organized conspiracy to do anything.
The whole thing is just really silly.
And I think what's going to come out of this,
people, I've already heard some commentators stating this,
that it looks like complete overkill.
It looks like people will say, you know, we didn't need all this security.
But do you honestly think that that means they're ever going to conclude
we shouldn't do it this way in the future?
I think what they'll get out of this, they'll look at Boston and they'll say,
you know what, nothing bad happened in Boston.
There were no protests.
There was nothing that caused any kind of problem whatsoever
except for the fact that we came in and closed off all the streets.
So let's do it that way in New York.
It works.
It works.
So let's do it that way.
I'm not so convinced, and I think New York is going to be
a completely different kettle of fish.
Keep in mind, the Democratic Convention,
these are the people that could conceivably, in fact,
I dare say they're the only people that could conceivably get Bush out of power.
So I think most of the protesters are going to be focusing on Bush,
on the Republicans, on New York.
So I would not be misled by the fact that there were few
and far between protests in Boston.
New York is going to be a completely different story.
It's been predicted, and I'm just going to say that,
take that with a grain of salt because predictions are predictions,
that there will be a quarter of a million protesters at the RNC.
But you never know with these sort of things.
Is that your own prediction or is that coming from someone else?
It was from some source. I can't quote it right now.
Well, you know, there are all kinds.
Is there a plan for a protest pen?
Is that the deal in New York City?
There are supposed to be free speech zones.
Free speech zones.
Last I checked, United for Peace and Justice was going to have a march
past the Madison Square Garden on 7th Avenue.
On 7th Avenue? I think that's what they wanted to do.
They acquiesced.
Last I heard it was going to be on the West Side Highway.
Well, they acquiesced to the city plan, the compromise city plan,
which was essentially starting a bit south, heading north on 7th Avenue,
heading west on 34th, heading over to the West Side Highway,
heading south to Chambers Street,
and then loudly protesting miles away at Chambers Street.
Now, last week I talked about possible alternate ways of protesting,
one of which is just to go into Central Park yourself,
which is where they wanted to have it originally, in the Great Lawn,
and hold your own protest sign.
And how could they possibly stop people from just going on their own
and protesting in that way?
That's one thing.
I was talking with Mish last week, and he came up with a brilliant idea.
Is he in the studio?
Hello.
Hi.
You want to tell us this idea?
It's really, really good.
Our idea was to enter the subway with a sign at Times Square
and just take the 1, 2, 3, or 9 train down one stop to Penn Station
and come out of the subway with your sign.
There could be hundreds of people who just enter the subway at Times Square
and come out right at Penn Station, right in the middle of everything,
with their signs.
And we could just have another march going right back up to Times Square.
It could be a cycle of people with signs.
And there should be enough people to do that.
The beauty of this is that when you emerge at Penn Station,
you are right in the middle of the zone.
You cannot get inside there except by subway.
So imagine all these protesters, a string of protesters, hundreds, thousands,
just pouring out of the zone and being put back into the street
where they go right back uptown and come down again
and do the exact same thing.
It could happen all week long.
They're supposed to have two exits at Penn Station open.
It would be pretty cheap with an unlimited metro card.
And speaking of democracy,
I just want to mention that we have $300 pledged so far to our station, WBAI.
And if you'd like to pledge, the number to call is 212-209-2950.
We're offering the extra large size off-the-hook T-shirt
for a pledge of $50 or more
and assorted other stuff that you can ask the pledge volunteers for details on.
And keep in mind that your pledge, you get more T-shirt for your pledged dollar.
If you ask for our T-shirt, the BAI T-shirts are for $65.
But you'll get both.
If you pledge $65, you'll get theirs and you'll get ours.
Everybody over $50 will get ours.
Oh.
So that's a lot of shirt for your money there.
But while your finger is poised over the button wondering,
should I actually make this phone call, ask yourself.
Turn around the dial, both the AM and FM,
and see if you can find any other discussions of this sort
where people are just freely speaking their minds
and opening up the phone lines to other people that do the same
about issues that affect all of us.
You know, there are other stations that discuss this kind of thing,
but nearly all of them are run by people with a very specific goal and agenda.
And it's not open.
It's not open to your input.
And it's also sponsored.
It's sponsored by corporations, the same corporations that we criticize.
So, of course, you don't have that freedom.
You can't just go out there and tear them down because if you do that,
well, they won't give you money and then you don't have a show.
In our case, you're the show.
You're the sponsors.
You're the people that keep us on the air.
That's why 212-209-2950 is the number.
We'd really like you to call now and show the support for the radio station.
Emmanuel, about the Republican National Convention coming up,
I think you were talking maybe last week
or asking if anyone was volunteering there who could be inside it during the RNC.
Oh, yes.
Get us in there.
I know someone who has signed up and gone to the volunteer meetings.
He doesn't like Bush or the Republicans,
but he's volunteered for the RNC just to get inside and see what it's all about.
So I could maybe ask him to find out about it, maybe write something for us.
That would be great.
That would be great.
Now, it's not a prerequisite that people don't like Bush or anything like that.
We're not going to go in there and single-handedly tear the place down or anything like that,
but we are going to go in there one way or another.
That sounds like a threat, but I didn't mean it that way.
We're going to attempt to infiltrate one way or another,
and I think that's a good thing to do,
so that we can report back to the people in much the same way that we report things that we see
when we're traveling or when we're just in the city,
ways that our listeners can appreciate things that might not be seen or understood otherwise.
Maybe we'll take pictures of technical things that you'll never see in a newspaper or on a TV station,
just basically the hacker perspective.
And I know people will never understand that.
People on the inside will never understand that that's a good thing and not a threat.
But again, the appeal goes out.
If people have a way of getting in there, since they did not accept our application as media,
apparently we're not bona fide media enough.
We're not special enough.
We have to figure out other ways to do that.
Well, there's a letter we got.
I'd like to read this letter from one of our listeners.
We've gotten a few.
I was at Hope.
I like the part where Bernie S.
social-engineered his way to have the baggage people at Amtrak let him get his package when it was closed.
Nice job, Bernie, by the way.
I heard your show last week and heard of how one of your guests was denied a magazine press pass
to the Republican Convention.
Actually, that was us that was denied the press pass.
Maybe you guys can do just what Bernie S. did with the baggage people
and get into the convention that way.
What do you think, Bernie?
I don't think my faux security outfit would fly in the face of the Secret Service.
Weren't they offering FedEx uniforms on eBay not too long ago?
Do you think we could get one of those and just walk in and say,
we have a package here?
And they left FedEx into everything.
That is very possible.
I don't know if that would classify as mail fraud or not,
but it's worth trying for someone who has more courage than I.
No, I strongly think that people shouldn't try that
because you'll see the inside of all kinds of institutions over that week, I'm sure.
Probably even talking about this is going to get us in trouble.
Speaking of conventions, nobody mentioned yet that the Al Jazeera news booth
at the Democratic National Convention was censored.
They had their illuminated sign, unlike all the other illuminated signs
and all the other news organization booths, was switched off.
And they couldn't get it back on again, and it wasn't a technical problem.
I heard a radio person in Boston talking about this, actually.
He had noticed it the first night that Al Jazeera was there,
right in the center of things.
And he said he couldn't imagine that the Democrats would want to see that
all week long, Al Jazeera right there in every shot of the convention.
So he was certain that they would try and do something
to make sure that didn't happen again.
And sure enough, that is what happened.
I would wish that they would have enough guts to actually say,
you know what, it's fine to have international media of all sorts here.
And in fact, we're going to keep the international media,
the independent media, right here in the center,
just so you can see how diverse and how many different groups of people
we are completely open to communicating with.
Al Jazeera, all kinds of foreign networks, all kinds of IMC-type networks.
And the major networks, you know what, they can figure out a way to get the access
because they already have all the power.
They don't need to be right up there in the center
with their logos and banners and things like that.
Let's see some other people.
I think you're making a serious mistake here.
You're assuming that the Democrats have any guts at all.
I said I would have liked to have seen it.
I didn't say I expected for a second to see it.
I would like to see somebody have that kind of guts.
As we know, the independent media center was referred to the Secret Service
when they tried even to attend a press conference.
I don't think we have much hope for this vision.
It's noteworthy that Al Jazeera is covering live on television,
the DNC conference, four hours a night live,
unlike all the commercial U.S. TV media,
which you're only covering at one hour a night.
So they're giving four times—
Al Jazeera is covering this live on television more than ABC, CBS, and NBC combined.
That is pretty amazing.
Of course, C-SPAN is really the place to watch all of it.
It starts, I think, at 4 o'clock in the afternoon and runs well into the night.
And, of course, you don't have any idiots giving you commentary,
telling you what you're seeing.
You're listening to Off the Hook on WBAI New York 99.5 FM.
And the phone number to call to pledge your support, 212-209-2950.
If you're interested in becoming a part of the radio station,
remember for $25 and more you become a member, a voting member,
who can actually help determine the direction the station goes
and how it's run and all kinds of things like that,
keep it from falling into the wrong hands as it almost did a few years ago.
$25 and above, you'll get that.
And $50 and above, you'll get an Off the Hook t-shirt.
And there's all kinds of other premiums, which we're going to very quickly go over here.
The WBAI premiums that are being offered are t-shirts in any size for $65.
A baseball cap is also $65.
The mug and the tote bag are $65, or for a pledge, $65.
And with all those pledges, you also get the Off the Hook t-shirt.
Or if you want all four of those things, for a pledge of $125, you get those.
And the Off the Hook t-shirt.
There are also three books, The State of the World, 2004, and The Buying of the Present, 2004.
Those are for a pledge of $100 for each one of those.
And the number is 212-209-2950.
Right.
There's two callers so far.
We have more volunteers than two, so you can still call in.
That's right.
And it's tax deductible as well.
You can get your Off the Hook t-shirt tax deductible.
And it feels great, too.
It feels great to actually make that call and know that you're helping out, that your voice does matter, it does count.
Because that's how the station has been built up over the years, by a bunch of individuals.
Not a bunch of corporations, a bunch of individual people just like you making that phone call.
When you go down that phone line, many people who have been there before you have gone down that same path
and made that phone call and felt great for doing it and helped us get to the stage where we were today.
212-209-2950.
Volunteers also are so friendly.
It's worth calling to talk to them.
Yeah, we often spend many hours afterwards just talking to them after we leave the station or leave the show
because they're great people just to chill with and talk to.
And you can have a little bit of that joy just by calling up and talking to them on the phone.
They'll help you find other premiums, too, because there's all kinds of things that are being offered.
So if what we've mentioned is not quite to your liking, I'm sure there's something else that will be.
But most importantly, it's not the premiums you should be calling for.
I say this quite a bit.
The real reason that you should be calling is simply because you want to support the radio station.
This is your voice, your way of sponsoring us and making sure that we're there in the future to talk about whatever it is that's going to happen.
Because you know what?
A lot of things are going to be happening in the future.
There's one heck of a year happening right now.
And imagine, just imagine if you will, Bush winning and four more years of Bush.
What kind of things do you think will happen in those four years?
You're going to want a radio station like WBAI around.
And even if Kerry gets in, I'm sure there's going to be all kinds of things happening, too,
that the authorities won't want us to be reporting on.
But we're going to be there anyway, and we'll have that opportunity thanks to you.
212-209-2950.
And your pledge also, in addition to supporting the radio station,
it indicates to the people behind the radio station what sort of show you want to listen to.
And if you pledge during Off the Hook, obviously it means you like Off the Hook.
You like our irreverent commentary and our bits of hacker news,
hacker computer science, computer civil liberties, all that sort of stuff.
Now, I have a little interesting article that Greg, one of the convention organizers,
the Hope, sorry, Hope convention organizers, sent to us.
Greg Newby.
Greg Newby, yes.
Apparently, well, for those of you who were at Hope for the first day or so,
we had trouble getting online.
And this was not due to any fault of our own, but it was rather Verizon's fault
because we'd asked for two lines and one didn't work and the other one wasn't even set up.
So our T1 lines weren't available for that time.
And this also, I mean, Verizon, it apparently doesn't just affect us with their screw-ups,
but also the Democratic National Convention, the media center at the media pavilion
where all the journalists are lost their Internet connection for about an hour.
So, you know, we had a loss for a day.
Prime time too.
This is like right at like from 6 o'clock to 7 something.
Yes, 6 p.m., so 6 to 7 about.
And so they were unable to communicate.
I guess they had to use their phones and whatnot, but they weren't able to get on the Internet,
which I'm guessing nowadays for the media is a big deal.
You know, as I was walking around Halifax today, I saw many workers for the phone company
who are not working because there is a strike against the phone company here.
It's called Alliant, whatever that means.
Alliant?
I don't know.
That makes as much sense as Verizon.
It's one of these non-words.
Anyway, Alliant apparently merged or whatever.
I don't quite understand the story.
But their workers have been on strike for the past 14 weeks
demanding a pension plan and other things.
The strike is not about wages, I'm told, but just some basic on-the-job respect and job security.
And Alliant is refusing to negotiate with these workers.
And so they have been out here for 14 weeks on strike.
And they told me they unfortunately don't see an end anytime soon.
And just yesterday, in fact, the top story on CBC was that the Alliant workers
are urging customers to go with the competition as, I guess, kind of a desperate move
because they're not being heard any other way.
And they're hoping that the customers themselves will voice their opinions through their pocketbooks
and force Alliant to actually do something about these conditions, these demands.
So, yeah, that's something that's happening all throughout the Maritimes, Maritime provinces here.
We'll keep an eye on that situation as well and see if anything else comes up.
Also, I should point out, we are in Halifax, as we mentioned.
And, again, that offer stands if people want to meet us at the place in Halifax called the Argyle,
which is on Argyle Street, and you should know where it is if you live in Halifax.
We'll buy you dinner at 10 o'clock tonight, but you have to be listening to the show live.
That's why it's important to listen to the radio show live.
I know a lot of people listen to it later, and they say,
Well, you know, I really want to support you guys, but the fundraiser is over now by the time I got to listen to the radio show.
It's great to listen later, too, but sometimes you have to listen live.
Sometimes you have to listen and get things while they're hot.
The premiums are being offered tonight.
They're only being offered tonight for off the hook.
And so is this deal that we're offering you here in Halifax.
It's got nothing to do with the fundraiser, although it would be nice if people in Halifax also pledged.
But we're on our way out of here tonight.
With the money you save on dinner, you can pledge to the radio station.
That's right.
You know what?
You would have had to eat tonight anyway here in Halifax, so we're going to buy you something,
and hopefully you won't go crazy buying things at this place.
With that money, we're not going to force you to do that,
but maybe you could pledge to the radio station instead and show your gratitude that way.
But I also want to point out we're heading out of Halifax tonight,
and we're going to be driving all through the night to a place called North Sydney,
which is on the other end of the island.
And then tomorrow we'll be catching a ferry over to Port-A-Basque in Newfoundland,
driving all the way around Newfoundland down to this place called Fortune,
heading to Saint-Pierre-Miquelon, which is technically a part of France,
and then coming back, I believe, on Sunday and driving to St. John's.
Now, the reason I mention this is because we have a listener in St. John's who has been writing to us.
Bernie, I believe you've been in correspondence with him concerning the glass CRT issues.
Do you remember this?
Oh, yeah, the guy with the thermal imager.
Yeah, and, in fact, that's the real reason we're heading up,
because we're heading up to check out your story.
So we're coming directly up to you to see exactly what it is you're talking about.
Now, actually, we're just heading up here because it's nice weather and a nice time of year,
but if you want to meet up with us too, please send us an e-mail, oth at 2600.com.
We'll be happy to.
But, Bernie, where does that story stand?
Bernie?
I'm here. I'm sorry.
Where does that story stand with the CRTs?
Do you remember how he left it?
He's still doing some experiments to determine.
Definitely with the CRT, it wasn't one of these flat LCD displays.
Okay, well, I'll read you what he said to us.
He said, the monitor I'm using is a CRT.
As for other heat-generated things in the building,
if you were to direct the camera at a DC wall adapter, it would indicate the heat emissions quite well.
Actually, Bernie, for the sake of those people who might not know what we're talking about,
what was the gist of the first letter this guy sent us?
Well, he has access.
I think he works for a volunteer fire company up there,
and he has access to what's called a thermal imager,
which is, among other things, used by firefighters in smoky buildings to find the people
because you can detect heat signatures through smoke and haze and so forth.
It's also used by surveillance by law enforcement agencies to look for heat behind walls or through roofs
to see where people are, to see if you have marijuana-growing lights, that sort of thing.
But anyway, he was really surprised that when he pointed this thing through a window from the outside,
the heat from some devices was detected, but the heat from his CRT monitor was not detected.
And it's a very strange puzzle.
So I hope you can get up there and actually witness the phenomena.
Well, to finish his letter this week, the glass I was directing the camera,
from what I can tell, is just standard shatterproof glass, glass with wire mesh throughout it.
I have since learned that the camera has more settings and can actually be used within a fire,
not just a smoke-filled building.
To add to the question in the last email, what about for security reasons,
people could easily hide from the thermal imaging of these devices?
And then finally, some words about St. John's.
Newfoundland has the oldest city in North America, which is St. John's,
and is quite up-to-date in terms of buildings.
So we do have many glass structures as well as glass-surrounded rooms.
And it's also not that cold up here.
Our average temperature has been about 30 degrees Celsius,
which is actually 86 Fahrenheit for most of the summer.
That's signed Rob out of St. John's.
Rob, we'd like to meet up with you at some point, so send us an email, oth at 2600.com.
And again, those of you in Halifax, please show up at the Argyle at 10 o'clock tonight.
1575 Argyle Street.
What else? Should we take some phone calls or try to take some phone calls?
Well, we have some news, whatever you want, phone calls or news.
If I can interrupt.
Jim, tell us what news you have.
Well, I got a couple things which I'll run through quickly.
Sad story to start with.
In Possum Kingdom Lake, Texas, Robert W. Beamer, age 84, died.
Now, that name probably means nothing, but he happens to have been the inventor of ASCII,
the scheme by which 128 alphanumeric characters are assigned numerical values.
This was the first thing that enabled different computer manufacturers
to allow their devices to speak to one another one way or another.
He later invented COBOL, which you may recall,
the older hackers among us, as a business-oriented language.
A couple other things.
It's a sad day.
Our HOPE cards, our punch cards that were handed out to all the HOPE attendees,
were actually encoded and punched with binary ASCII code.
So it was not EPSIDIC?
It was not EPSIDIC.
You could code them either way, but I chose to have them done in ASCII
so people could read them more easily.
What's ironic is that he died on the first day of HOPE.
Wow. Interesting.
How about the guy who invented EPSIDIC, though? Is he still around?
I don't know the name. I could start looking it up.
Probably hiding in shame, whoever he is.
One of our authors has been arrested a few weeks ago.
A man known as Decoder had an article in the Winter 2004 issue.
Verizon is on his tail.
The federal prosecutors are charged that he could have disrupted
emergency 911 service up and down the East Coast.
Well, hell, I could have taken out all the electricity on the East Coast
if I had had enough bombs, too.
Well, they don't have your address right.
They fixed the typo and you should be getting your indictment soon.
It's another case of, yeah, you could have done that if, if, if.
He wrote under the name Decoder on freaksandgeeks.com
mostly articles on how to change your default phone answering system
for Verizon, things like that.
What's it called? Call...
Bernie, what's it called where you block calls from numbers
that don't identify themselves?
Anonymous call rejection.
Anonymous call rejection, right.
He gave the 800 number that Verizon technicians could call
to cancel that on any line, allowing anybody who was rejected to go,
pretend to be someone else, enter that person's phone number,
eliminate it, and then call back and allow them to accept anonymous calls.
So if you were trying to get to somebody who had an anonymous call rejection,
Decoder printed the instructions on it and Verizon came down on him.
He was charged criminally with publishing this information?
Charged criminally.
He posted the secret numbers, codes, and how-to directions on the Internet
before investigators stumbled onto his plot a few months ago.
A plot?
Huh?
A plot.
A plot, yes. Yes, I love that.
Well, what would you do with this information besides plot?
I mean...
See, this is a tragic case.
It's really important when people stumble upon information like this,
unless you feel that you can take on all these authorities yourself,
you really need to have people on your side that will protect you, for one thing.
We've had many cases where people have sent us articles or confidential listings,
and whether it's a corporation or an angry investigator or even an agency,
there are always people who want that information.
They want to know where we got that information.
And we have never, to this day, told anybody what any of our sources are,
and we're very serious about protecting that information.
So, for people who get this kind of stuff, be careful.
Just know that there are either people on your side who will protect your privacy,
or just be very careful about how it gets released and how it gets obtained.
Or you could be going through hell, as many people who have been part of this radio show have already gone through.
Now, Mike's got an interesting story here about something DNC-related,
and then we're going to take phone calls right after that, 212-209-2900.
But first, I just want to make sure people know the pledge line, 212-209-2950.
Let's light that one up and get all kinds of people calling in.
You know all the premiums. We've gone over them a few times.
We're up to $720 right now.
We can do better than that.
We can break $1,000 for a one-hour show.
That would be really good if we could break $1,000.
I'd also like to thank Charlotte from Northport, New York,
and James from Gloucester, Massachusetts, for their donations.
That's very nice. Thank you very much for calling in.
212-209-2950.
Remember, everybody 50 and above gets an off-the-hook T-shirt made by 2600.
You can only get those by pledging.
We don't sell those to anybody.
So, 212-209-2950, and there's all kinds of other things.
Now, Mike, what's this story you have over there?
The website Cryptome, that's C-R-Y-P-T-O-M-E dot org,
has been publishing some materials by this guy, James Atkinson,
who is a security expert, at least self-described,
who has been going around the DNC before and during the events there
and finding all kinds of crazy security vulnerabilities.
So, for example, there's security barriers, also known as Jersey barriers,
which are kind of there, but they're not properly wired together
in a way so that they actually have effect.
So his claim is that if you had a Toyota Echo driven by a drunk freshman,
you could just go right through it.
And what else?
He's got a media pavilion next to the Fleet Center,
which he claims is not properly protected.
Ventilation systems and all kinds of things that are just out there
if there were actually any terrorists who wanted to do this.
He also notes, by the way, that the free speech zone, the protest pen,
no building permit was obtained for the enclosure,
and it lacks an occupancy certificate for a place of public assembly as required by law.
There are insufficiently many exits, the fence is made of flammable materials,
and there are no fire extinguishers.
The pen is unsafe and should not be used willingly by the public.
God forbid anything bad were to happen.
I just wonder how this kind of a thing would be looked back on,
the kind of decisions that would make something as crazy as a free speech pen.
Someone, I believe it, of all people, I believe it was Ted Koppel
who posed a question to one of the security people there inside the pen.
What if someone threw a bottle into the pen that, when it broke,
a white powder was scattered around?
And the security official was sort of dumbfounded that Ted Koppel would suggest
that there could be an attack on these people.
And he had no answer for how these people would get out in a hurry.
There just was no planning for any kind of rapid evacuation of the protest pen attendees.
I saw that, and the guy, after being nonplussed for a moment,
said that more or less, and I'm paraphrasing severely here,
but I'm getting the gist of his spirit of the answer.
He said essentially that the responders would be protected.
Yeah, yeah.
To heck with the people inside the pen, but the responders would be safe.
What a relief.
All right, Ken, how do you feel about taking phone calls?
We've got two guests on the phone line, and hopefully we'll want to keep everybody connected.
Oh, I think the phones might work well enough, and people are indeed calling.
All right, well, then let's take some phone calls.
But again, that pledge line, 212-209-2950, 2-900, for people who want to call on the air.
And good evening, you're on the air.
Hey, good evening, guys. How's it going?
You're calling from Echo Land.
No, I'm calling from a cell phone, that's why.
I'm not calling, but let me just turn on the radio.
Okay.
Okay, yeah, I called like a couple of months ago, man.
I'm the guy that was going to school.
I needed an application that would make me fill out one application for all of them.
I don't know if you remember.
I believe so.
Yeah.
Well, yeah, I'm just calling now because now I'm going to go to school.
I need a good computer.
So did you get approved? All your forms went through okay?
All my forms, yeah, thanks, guys.
I got a program that's called the LSAC program for law school.
Okay.
And I use that for all applications.
So now you're just looking for a good computer?
We're looking for a good laptop, man.
I have a Dell computer, a PC, but it's terrible.
Okay.
The customer service is not where it's cracked up to be. Sorry.
Well, this is definitely a question for the personal computer people.
They're coming on right after us.
Oh, okay.
Why don't we call them and ask them word for word that question because you won't get better advice.
Can I go on to the next caller?
You're on the air.
Hello.
You're on the air.
I don't think you pressed it, Ken.
Yes, you've got to press that button really hard.
Well, no, it went off.
While we're stumbling through this, let me point out the personal computer show will have a feature tonight on electronic voting and its insecurity.
So we know a lot of our listeners are interested in that.
So please stay tuned for the personal computer show tonight.
It's amazing to me that they can fit all that into just one hour.
I think you'd need six hours to do that.
Wow, it's amazing.
Every line seems to not be working.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Yes, I'd like to mention about the anonymous call.
You're right.
They don't seem to be working.
You get that annoying buzzing sound.
You get that annoying chirping sound.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Hello.
Hey, this is Mark in Indiana.
Are you guys taking a pledge drive tonight?
We are.
We're taking pledges at 212-209-2950.
Okay, great.
I just wanted to call in and say that I've enjoyed your show for years, love your magazine, and thanks for all the work you guys do.
Well, thanks for calling.
It's people like you that make us want to keep doing it.
Thanks for your support.
Okay, thanks.
Thanks for taking another phone call.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Hi.
How are you guys doing tonight?
Good.
How are you?
Good.
Just to clarify, you may have already gone over this because I stopped listening about a minute ago.
Decoder was arrested because he was giving out DATU SAS numbers on his website.
What is a DATU SAS number?
Well, the DATU, D-A-T-U, I believe that's how it's pronounced.
It's a test number used by technicians so they can, I guess, call up and test phone lines.
You can disable a phone line and do a bunch of different other features.
And he had, I guess, used it, they say, about 100 times between January and April of this year.
That's interesting.
So basically you're saying that it was because he was giving out these numbers that he was?
Yeah, he was.
It was Brooklyn.
I believe it was some Brooklyn extensions that he was giving out.
He figured out, I think, most of them were on default, the passwords, which is like four ones.
Now you've just given out that information.
Well, that's available from Harris.
The company that manufactures it is Harris.
And if you go to their website, you can actually download in PDF format the manuals for it.
And it says the default password will be one, two, three, or four ones.
So he was charged with actually using this system without authorization.
Is that what you're saying?
Yeah, well, it was two things.
It was using the system without authorization.
And it was also the fact that Verizon is saying that they had to spend about $125,000 reprogramming all these numbers.
Come on.
That is what the article alleged that they had to spend.
Do you mean changing the phone number?
Well, they had to change the phone number, plus they had to go back and change the defaults.
That sounds like a mistake.
And they are the phone company after all, so changing the phone number shouldn't be too hard for them either.
Yeah, they said it was $125,000 worth of overtime for their technicians to change.
Gee, any smartphone company would have done that in the first place.
Well, not all the numbers, I guess, were on default.
I guess it took a little bit of social engineering to try to get the actual passwords out.
All right, we'll keep people updated on this story because it does sound very interesting.
There's a lot more that we're not hearing.
Yeah, it is going to be interesting.
All right, hey, thanks for the info.
Please keep us updated if you hear anything else.
All right, thanks.
We have some more people's names of pledges.
Yes, we'd like to thank Cheryl from Easton, Pennsylvania.
Wow, Bernie, you know that.
I know Easton very well.
You probably know the pledger.
We'd like to thank Mark from Bloomington, Indiana, and Kelly from Newton, Kansas.
Thanks for your pledges.
Wow, we're getting out there tonight, aren't we?
But nobody from Halifax, Nova Scotia yet.
Or New York even.
902 area.
Yeah, we did, Newport, New York.
Oh, that's Long Island.
I mean, I'm just reading the ones who wanted to be read on the air.
Oh.
Yeah, there are other pledgers, but yeah.
212-209-2950 to pledge.
Remember, 50 bucks gets you the off-the-hook T-shirt.
It's a wonderful feeling to pledge and to feel the T-shirt.
For $25 and above, you can participate in WBAI elections, which are quite important,
and you can help maintain the only real independent voice left in New York City media on the FM dial.
Yep.
Do we have time for another phone call or two?
Just barely.
Okay, let's see what we can do.
Okay, you're the last call of the day.
Oh, well, whatever your last call of the day, right?
How about you?
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Yeah, good evening.
Just a quick question.
The guys striking against the phone company with the stupid name, I think it was Alliance,
do they have a general fund or a website, or if people want to help them out,
is there some way we can contact them?
You know, I'm embarrassed not to know.
Well, what I would do is I would plug Alliance, which is spelled—how do you spell that, Mike?
A-L-L-I-A-N-T.
A-L-L-I-A-N-T.
Okay, plug that into a search engine and put the word strike after that,
and I'm sure something will come up that is a site having to do with the strike against Alliance.
Great.
Okay, well, if any of them are listening, good luck to our brothers and sisters out there.
All right, thanks for your call.
Thanks.
Take care.
And just to sum up, again, Mike, I'm hearing echo for some reason.
That's the phone.
Wow, that's kind of cool.
All right, it's gone.
Am I still there?
Yeah.
That's interesting how it stopped.
All right.
Just to sum up, Mike and I are here in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
We're leaving later tonight, but we'd love to meet up with anybody who is a listener in Halifax.
We'll be going to a place called the Argyle.
It's an outdoor café.
We'll be sitting over there, and if you come by at 10 o'clock, we'll buy you dinner.
I'll be wearing a 2600 T-shirt, but I'm sure you'll probably recognize me
just because I've got the kind of face that stops customs officials dead in their tracks, apparently.
We'll be heading up to Newfoundland and St. Pierre as well.
And we're preempted next week, by the way, so we won't be on at all next week,
but we'll be on again in two weeks.
All right.
Just so everybody knows that.
Again, thanks, everybody, for calling in and showing support.
And you can still do it for the next couple of minutes, 212-209-2950.
And stay tuned to WBAI for all kinds of coverage of the Democratic Convention
and the whole political process in general.
Any last words from anybody else?
Just that the Personal Computer Show is coming up with a special report on e-voting,
so stay tuned for them.
All right, guys. It's been a lot of fun, and I look forward to seeing you again.
All right.
You've been listening to Off the Hook on WBAI New York 99.5 FM.
Stay tuned for the Personal Computer Show.
And this is Donovan's new album.
Do I want to go to a beatnik cafe where the lights were low
The music is cool and the chicks are slow
Throw it in a berry as the sax he blew
And a bongo boy, go man, go
Can a kid wink to her beau
He asked her, do you want to go
To a beatnik cafe where the lights were low
The music is cool and the chicks are slow
Barefoot baby with a painted toe
As the reefer blow, go chick, go
Dig a deep sink with her beau
I asked you, do you want to go
To a beatnik cafe where the lights were low
The music is cool and the chicks are slow
Barefoot baby with a painted toe
As the sax he blow, go man, go
Beatnik cafe
Beatnik cafe