Like many of you, like many Americans, I have felt frustrated and betrayed by the state of the mainstream media in this country.
A media whose priorities seem out of step with their responsibilities.
We need a media that strengthens democracy, not a media that strengthens the government.
We need a media that enriches public discourse, not one that enriches corporations.
Hi, I'm Jane Fonda, and this is WBAI, listener-supported, non-commercial radio in New York.
Thank you, Jane. It is WBAI, New York. It's 7 o'clock. It's Wednesday night. Everything's lined up perfectly for another edition of Off the Hook.
Off the Hook.
Off the Hook.
Off the Hook.
And a very good evening to everybody. The program is Off the Hook.
Emmanuel Goldstein here with you on this Wednesday evening, joined tonight by Rob T. Firefly.
Good evening.
And that's it in the studio. That's all we have in the studio.
Bernie S.
Greetings from Pennsylvania. I'm on a new phone. How do I sound?
Is it a landline?
No, it's on the Verizon wireless network, and it's a BlackBerry V30 phone.
Well, good for you. You got a BlackBerry, and you went to Verizon.
It's the only choice. They're the only one that sells this BlackBerry phone.
But anyway, I hope I sound better than my usual crappy audio.
We'll let our listeners be the judge of that, but congratulations on that move.
We are back after an absence of a week where some listeners reported hearing us and some didn't.
I don't understand what happened.
We've had a few reports that we were on a repeat program from two years ago at 8 o'clock,
but people who are listening on the air didn't hear.
I don't know. We're hearing conflicting reports.
So if you heard something weird last week, let us know what it was just to satisfy our curiosity.
It's kind of a strange day here in Harlem.
In case you didn't hear about it, a building blew up on the eastern part of Harlem.
It's not really close to here.
On my way over here, though, I got to tell you, it was kind of weird.
I was driving down 145th Street, and there were just emergency vehicles everywhere.
Now, it was pretty far from where it actually happened,
but there are still emergency vehicles going all over the place
because apparently there's concern that this might be affecting other buildings.
In fact, I was driving down the street, and this fire truck was coming in the other direction.
It's a two-way street, so I pulled over to the right, which is what you should do.
Unfortunately, that's exactly where the fire truck wanted to go.
Then I had to back up, and another fire truck was coming from behind me,
and others were converging.
When it was all over, I was literally boxed in by four fire trucks.
It was a box of fire trucks and me in the middle of it.
I've never had that happen before, and I didn't know what to do.
I was kind of just stuck there for a while until they figured out that this guy really shouldn't be there,
especially if a building's about to blow up because they were breaking into this building.
Apparently, there was a smell of gas.
This is happening all throughout Harlem.
We just got a report by the number one train, Broadway, 137th Street,
that there's some kind of fire of some sort over there, possibly an explosion.
Hank, he was telling us that he just witnessed that.
So if something happens or anything more happens around here, we'll certainly let people know.
But wow, it's been quite a day over here so far.
Also, this is somewhat interesting.
People are smelling gas in various places.
Now, natural gas has no odor.
It's an odorless gas.
So what they do is, I guess this is our tips for terrorists for the day,
there's a special chemical.
I think it's called ethyl mercaptan or something like that.
Mercaptan, yes.
Ethyl mercaptan.
Okay, that's what it is.
It's very potent.
If you drop, I think, two drops, an entire block will stink of the stuff.
It's very easy to make people panic just by dropping, if you can get this chemical, dropping it around.
And it's also possible that natural gas might not have that chemical,
so you wouldn't smell it if it's about to blow up.
So, yeah, people are kind of on edge around here for a number of reasons.
Yeah, not without reason with everything that's going on today.
Yeah.
Bernie, is everything calm in Pennsylvania at least?
Nothing has blown up here today anyway, so that's good.
Okay, good, good.
And what a week, too.
Are you talking about developments and things like that?
Developments?
I'm not sure what you mean.
Developments of new stories or are you just talking about disasters like buildings blowing up?
Well, this was the main story in this particular neighborhood today is buildings blowing up.
I guess if we had to look at another story, it's missing airplanes as well.
It seems to me Google can help with this.
They're good at finding things.
I'm sure Google has an app or a program or a website or something
to probably figure out what happened to that plane.
But do you guys have any theories?
It's probably in beta.
Uh-huh. The plane?
Maybe.
Okay.
Now I'm not sure.
Bernie, how about you?
There's a lot of conspiracy theories and one is telephony related, which I thought was interesting.
Oh, do tell.
Family members of people who were on that plane have reported that they've been calling their loved ones' cell phones.
Yes, yes, I heard this.
Which were last seen on the plane and they hear ringing as opposed to the calls going straight to voicemail.
I don't know why that would be because the plane, well, it certainly can't still be in the air because it would have run out of fuel long ago.
But in any case, it's giving people a bit of hope, but unfortunately I think it's false hope.
But it is intriguing, though, that people are hinging hope on the fact that they're hearing a ringback tone.
Well, that and the surprising lack of information they're getting from all official sources.
And conflicting information, too.
One day we hear that the plane is supposed to be on a particular trajectory.
Then the next we hear that, no, it made a sudden left turn and inexplicably went in a different direction after turning the transponder off.
So, yeah, people are going to cling to whatever hope they can find.
It's definitely a weird, bizarre story, but I think in the end it's probably going to hinge more on lack of communication and incompetency more than anything else.
I would think, Emanuel, that various intelligence agencies, not just the U.S., probably might already know what happened.
But if they were to reveal what they've learned, it would compromise their sources and methods.
There's a lot of very sophisticated spy satellites out there that have sensors of all kinds that search for explosions, search for...
I will bet that there's satellites that just track all the plane's movement in addition to all the other radio-type methods,
using radar and other signal methods to track where aircraft are going, whether the transponders are on or off.
I would bet that some government agency knows, but they don't want to reveal that they have this technology because it's just how they are.
That's what I don't understand, is how something like this could happen where a plane, even if a plane goes missing for a few seconds,
if there is not some kind of technology in existence now that can track its movement from moment to moment
and report when something goes wrong or communications are lost or something like that.
It just seems that we have this technology surrounding us in all sorts of areas.
Something as big as a plane, something involving so many people, you'd think that would be top of the list as far as keeping track of it.
It boggles my imagination that they honestly have to spread out over tens of thousands of square miles to figure out where this thing might have gone down.
When they're supposed to be in touch with it constantly, there's radar, all kinds of ways of keeping track of something like this,
and they should know the moment something goes amiss.
Interesting development, just an hour or so ago, CNN is reporting that the Chinese authorities are releasing satellite imagery
that show what they think might be wreckage, and it's directly along the flight path, pretty close to where contact was lost.
When you add all that up, you have to ask yourself, why in God's name weren't they searching there to start with?
Why weren't they focusing the search in that area?
And why did it take from Sunday morning, when the Chinese authorities found this image from a satellite,
until today, which is actually Thursday morning in that part of the world,
why did it take them so long to reveal this information?
That really is kind of stunning, if that is true.
But not surprising, considering the usual speed of bureaucracy.
Well, in a case like this, you would hope bureaucracy might be put aside for just a moment.
One might hope.
So yeah, okay, so those are a couple of interesting stories that are breaking around us that we're following.
Tonight is a special program for us.
Yes, it's a fundraising program.
We are in the midst, maybe we're at the end, of the WBAI Winter Drive.
It's a very crucial drive because, as you've probably heard many times,
the station's future is rather uncertain with all the expenses that we have to meet.
Now, we've cut back quite a bit.
We no longer have the Wall Street offices, which I think was about $25,000 a month.
We no longer, unfortunately, have a lot of our employees, which we had to let go last year.
We still have the transmitter on top of the Empire State Building, which cost about $50,000 a month just to have that there.
And from what I'm hearing, that is going to be going up to something like $75,000 over the next few years.
Apparently, there's nothing that can be done about that.
Apparently, there are no programs or ways that non-commercial radio stations can get a discounted rate.
It really is a crime, I think, to charge that kind of money for something so essential.
But that is the reality if we don't have our transmitter on top of the Empire State Building.
Odds are, if you're listening to us now, you can't hear us.
The transmitter just simply will not broadcast through a city with tall buildings
and certainly not 60 miles in all directions as we do now.
It's very important.
And you move the transmitter to another location, you don't get to move it back when you feel like it.
It's a big ordeal, you have to get permission, you have to change the contours,
and it's quite likely, definite in fact, that another station would simply move in on the areas you can no longer reach.
So it's an essential expense.
It's just a phenomenal one.
We need to figure out over the months and years ahead how we can cover that more easily.
We've cut down on expenses quite a bit.
We might need to cut down some more.
Or we might just need to be smarter as far as how we raise funds.
Maybe we need to have some kind of an underwriting program that simply will cover the transmitter cost,
$50,000 a month.
It sounds like a lot.
It is a lot.
But for many stations out there, especially commercial radio stations, it's nothing.
So we might have to change the way we think as far as how we operate.
And, of course, in the middle of all this money spending that we have to do,
we've also been spending much of the last year building our new studios so that we can get out of where we are.
We're still basically crashing on the couch of our friends at WHCR at City College in Harlem,
who have been graciously letting us use one of their broadcast booths to keep our station on the air.
We're not going to do that forever.
We're going to have our own station again, but that means we have to build it into our new space,
which is in a nice location in Brooklyn, a lovely area.
And I look forward to going there.
Right smack on Atlantic Avenue.
Absolutely, right by everything.
That, to me, is a godsend right there.
That shows me there is hope that we could find a place in such an easy-to-get-to location,
right in the middle of all the hubbub there,
that is a building that we could conceivably own and really turn things around.
It's possible.
So we're not that down and out yet where things look completely hopeless.
No, there is hope on the horizon.
We are a radio station that can reach the entire city and 60 miles in the surrounding area,
right smack in the middle of the commercial band.
We have some incredible programs, and hopefully we'll get a lot more.
And we have our listeners.
There is a lot of hope.
There are just so many challenges that we have to get past.
But you know what?
We went on the air in 1960 for the first time, and we're still here.
You can't really find any other radio station in New York City that can make that claim,
that has not changed their entire staff, changed their format, changed their frequency even.
Now, that's another concern.
That's another possibility that's being raised.
I think, and I've said this from the very first days that I ever went on this radio station,
because it was being considered back then too, a signal swap would be a very bad idea.
The reason being, let's say we took 99.5 FM.
We moved everybody at WBAI down to another frequency way down at the bottom of the dial,
a station perhaps I could only reach maybe 20 miles in every direction instead of 60 miles.
We would lose a significant chunk of the audience.
We would not be in the commercial band.
We would just basically be minimizing the station in a very major way.
The fact that we are on top of the Empire State Building, the fact that we are at 99.5 FM,
the fact that we have the history and the longevity of this frequency of this station,
that is the true value of WBAI.
That is what needs to be supported.
We start messing with that, and it's basically chopping away at something hugely significant,
and I think it would be a major mistake.
Absolutely.
Go ahead, Bernie.
I just wanted to ask, as you pointed out, WBAI is in the middle of the commercial band
as opposed to on the low end of the band where there's like 88, you know,
88, 89, 90 megahertz in that range, which back in the days of analog radios,
you had to, you know, turn the knob all the way to the left several times to get down there,
and most people would just twiddle the knob around the middle of the band
and grab the signals there, and it had value.
Now that the phone, there's no analog radios in cars anymore for the most part.
They're all digital and scan.
How do you think people behave differently with a digital radio in a vehicle,
or, you know, in their home for that matter, compared to an analog radio?
Do you think there's that same value of it being in the middle of the band,
or do you think there's sort of a, people look at it in a negative way,
that the radio station has a frequency down in the noncommercial band?
I'm curious about the psychology of this.
I think a lot of people avoid the region below 92, the far left of the dial.
I think they're afraid of what goes on down there.
Even on digital radios, you still have the scan button,
and if you're listening to Hot 97 or whatever they're called,
and you hit the scan button, I think we pop up next.
So we still, we get a lot of people who accidentally tune in to us
because they happen to be in that region, and most radios, they still have a knob.
They still have, or an up and down button where you can manually go to the next frequency
and sort of search around yourself.
That's how you find radio stations in the first place.
But you do tend to stick to a particular region.
I'm not saying that's a good thing, but that does seem to be reality.
And being at this particular, well, first of all, being in the middle of the dial
allows us to have power that we could not get at the other end of the dial.
There are no stations below 92 in this area that have the reach that WBAI has.
So it's, to me, that's the most essential part of this place,
is where it is, how far it can reach, the longevity of the place.
What we need, what we need, I think, more than most anything is outreach,
a way to let people know that 99.5 FM is a pretty cool place to tune your radio to
and listen to some rather interesting content.
At least at this time, I think, if I dare say so, between 7 and 8 p.m. on Wednesdays,
I think we have some things to share.
Yes, Bernie?
I just wanted to say, I like the fact that WBAI is in the middle of the commercial part of the FM band.
I liken it to something like Occupy Wall Street, where you had a bunch of social activists
in the middle, surrounded by corporate interests, but loud voices right in the middle there
of all this corporatization speaking out, speaking for the truth, giving voices to common people.
Actually, you know, Bernie, the parallel is pretty succinct,
but we actually did occupy Wall Street, but the problem is that we paid for it.
Unlike the people that occupied Ducati Park, they didn't have to pay any rent.
We did, and that's what nearly bankrupted us.
But, yeah, the mentality, you know, we have that same spirit, I believe.
There's also the matter that where we are on the dial, our neighborhood is where it's all happening.
It's akin to opening, you know, you want to open a new shop somewhere, where do you go?
Do you go into Times Square where you've got everything else going on around you,
or do you open it on a deserted island out in the middle of the ocean somewhere?
No, you want to be where it's going on.
And the mid to high 90s is always where it's all going on, on the radio dial, and that's our neighborhood.
That's where we are, and that's where we'd like to stay.
We are the last station in the 90s on the FM dial in New York City.
I don't know if there's a slogan in there somewhere, but there's no 99.7, there's no 99.9,
and the next station is, I think, 100.1 or something.
So I don't want to say we're stuck in the 90s, but we're 99.5, and we're just a little above normal.
98.6 is a normal temperature, right?
We're a slight fever.
You know, there's a slogan in there somewhere.
We're stereo, but not typical.
I don't know.
There's something.
Let the marketing team work on that.
Okay, so what's our solution to all this?
Well, we have obviously a fundraiser going on right now.
I'm not sure if this is the last week of it, or if next week is the last week of it,
or if it's just going to be ongoing forever.
It depends.
We just have to keep doing what we do in order to sustain the place.
Every radio station has to do this in one way or another.
Most stations do it with commercials.
We don't.
So that's why we need our listeners.
What we are doing today is something that has proven to be quite popular with our listeners.
And we first tried this last October with some rather controversial material that we collected ourselves.
Well, we didn't get the material ourselves, but we pretty much brought it all together into a single place,
which you might think has been done already, but it really hasn't.
It's really, really difficult to find this information.
And what you're about to hear is what this – all this information can be found on.
Listen carefully.
I don't think that came across very well.
Hang on.
All right.
It might have.
It went across the room there.
That, my friends, is a thumb drive.
Rob, describe to the people what a thumb drive is.
If you promise not to throw it at me again.
I think it's broken.
A thumb drive is a USB drive or a flash drive, or you might have heard it called a memory stick, although that's a proprietary term.
And what it is is –
It's a proprietary term.
So let's call it a memory stick then.
But what it is is a small drive about the size of your thumb that you can plug into any computer and access the files on it.
You can copy them over to your computer.
You can copy them onto other devices, other drives.
You can back it up, make as many copies as you wish.
And that's how you transfer a large amount of data without you having to sit and download the whole thing off where it is scattered across the Internet or anything else.
It's a small, safe, easy way to get data from place to place.
Well, not only are we offering you that amazing bit of technology called a thumb drive, we are stacking that thumb drive with all kinds of controversial material.
We have the Wikileaks and NSA thumb drive package for a pledge of $125.
What you'll get with that is something like 5 gigs, I believe.
It's more than 5 gigs of information, the leaked documents that Wikileaks has put out over the years, the Edward Snowden leaks that have been the focus of so many headlines over the past year.
It'll all be in this one magical device that you can use.
You can copy it onto your computer.
You can post it on your website.
You can print it out and display it on the side of your building.
Whatever it is you feel like doing with it, it's yours to have.
But ask yourself this, how hard is it for me to find this information right now?
It's out there.
It's been released.
True.
And it's been reported on.
But where can you get it all in one place?
It's not easy.
We know because we had to go and hunt it down and put it into one place.
So this is an amazing way.
And it's a bit ironic, too, that WBAI could be saved by leaked documents that indicate the corruptness of our intelligence community.
That is the cause of much controversy over the past few years between Wikileaks and Edward Snowden.
And what better symbolic way to show where your heart lies by getting this particular package?
212-209-2950 is the phone number to call as we offer this package for this hour.
212-209-2950.
You have a choice.
You can get all the material, Wikileaks and Edward Snowden documents for $125.
This adds for the Wikileaks NSA thumb drive package.
Or you can get one of each.
You can get just the Wikileaks thumb drive or just the NSA thumb drive for a pledge of $75.
Your choice.
I recommend getting all of it.
I recommend getting as much as possible.
212-209-2950.
Now, what's particularly interesting and what some people have said to us in the past is that it's really interesting to look at these documents as an individual because everybody reads them a little bit differently.
Yeah, we've heard about it reported in The Guardian and in The New York Times and The Washington Post.
But maybe the people reading the documents at those publications don't understand the nuances of what's being said in a particular spying program or particular revelation that has been obtained from the NSA that somebody else might see, someone who would not have gotten a chance to look at it otherwise.
So, by having many, many eyes looking at this material, reading these documents, we become more educated.
It's crowdsourcing.
It's a way of sharing our intelligence.
And it's something that you don't have ready access to on the net because, well, they simply don't make it available in one place.
We are making it available in a place that you can hold in your hand, plug it into your computer, copy it onto your computer, copy it wherever you want.
There's no DRM on any of this.
212-209-2950.
Yes, it's controversial.
Yeah, it's something that's caused for a lot of conversation and some condemnation, too, from various people.
But you know what?
It's out there.
It's information.
We're all about information, and we're all about power and sharing of material and comparing results and things like that.
What better way to support WBAI by pledging for one of these thumb drives?
212-209-2950.
Now, last time we offered this.
And by the way, we are still in the process of making copies because it takes a long time to make a copy of a thumb drive.
It takes many hours per drive.
But everybody who pledges for one of these will get one of these.
That's for sure.
And I forget what my point was there.
But there's a lot of information, I think, is what I was trying to say.
And it's a great way to show your support for this radio station.
Oh, yes, the last time we did this, I believe we raised about $8,000 for the radio station.
$8,000 is significant.
And I think we can do that again.
212-209-2950.
I know there are lots of people out there who don't have this.
In fact, I'd say the vast majority of people don't have this.
You could be the first on your block.
You could be the first in your town.
You could be the first in your country to have a full collection.
I don't know.
Can we send this to other countries?
Yeah, I guess we can.
It's already out there.
212-209-2950.
Place your calls now.
Ask for the NSA thumb drive package, the WikiLeaks NSA thumb drive package, or the NSA thumb drive, or the WikiLeaks thumb drive.
Your choice, whether it's a $75 pledge or a $125 pledge.
212-209-2950.
And for those of you who'd rather do things World Wide Web style, you can go to givethenumeral2wbai.org.
That's givethenumeral2wbai.org.
And put in your pledge that way.
Select off the hook.
It's the show you're supporting.
And you should see these premiums available for you to claim for your very own.
Edward Snowden just recently gave a keynote speech at an event called South by Southwest.
When did South by Southwest turn into a hacker conference?
They had Edward Snowden.
They had Julian Assange.
They had Glenn Greenwald.
I mean, come on.
We saw them first.
All these people are speaking.
No, it's great.
It really is.
I'm not complaining.
It's amazing.
But it goes to show you how this has gotten into the mainstream so much that these are sought-after speakers to huge crowds of people.
And it's front-page news everywhere.
It really is.
It's really relevant.
As it should be.
One of the points that Snowden raised during all this was he put this information out there not to undermine the government, not to force the government to bend to his will.
What he put it out there for was so the people could see what was going on, draw their own conclusions, and if they think it's okay, then okay, vote that way.
If they don't think it's okay, vote that way.
But what we are supposed to have is a representative government.
And we are only able to do that when the information is there for us to draw our conclusions and make our judgments on.
And by getting a hold of these documents for yourself, you become part of that.
You're able to look at these documents to process what's in them for yourself without any intermediaries, without having to wait for your favorite newspaper or talking heads or whatever to filter them into something safe for the public.
You have access to the whole thing.
You can make your own informed decisions by going to GiveTheNumeralToWBAI.org or by calling 1-212-209-2950.
And we prefer that you make the phone call because that way we see the results pretty quickly.
212-209-2950.
Yes, Bernie?
I just wanted to point out this information people risked their lives to make available to us.
Bradley Manning or Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange and Edward Snowden.
The U.S. government wants their heads on a stick.
They want them dead.
They already have Bradley or Chelsea Manning locked up for life in federal prison, in a brig, in an army brig.
There's a warrant out for the arrest of Edward Snowden for espionage, for bringing this government information to the public's awareness.
Julian Assange has been holed up at the Ecuadorian embassy in London for a couple of years now because if he steps foot out he'll be arrested.
This is really important information.
It's so important.
The government wants these people dead or silenced or their heads on a stick.
This information is what intelligence agencies refer to, coming from other countries, as raw intelligence.
Raw intelligence.
In other words, it's not filtered.
It's not filtered by some analyst telling you what it means.
This is the real deal.
These are the internal documents from the National Security Agency, from the U.S. State Department, from a host of other government agencies
that really show you what's going on, the steamy underbelly of what's going on in our government.
There's no other way to get it other than for people to put their lives on the line to make it available.
What we've done is, besides thanking these people for doing it,
followed up on their lead to make it available to as many people as possible
by collecting it, putting it together, and offering it to anybody who supports this kind of activity
and a listener-supported radio station like WBAI.
What's the phone number again?
I forget it.
I'm sorry.
212-209-2950.
9-0.
Yes, that's our phone number.
212-209-2950.
And, Bernie, a slight correction there.
Chelsea Manning is not locked up for life.
She's locked up, I think, for about 30 years and with good behavior and all that, could be out in less than 10.
That's my understanding.
I don't know how the military justice system, but in the federal system there's no parole.
But this is a military court, so they may deal with it differently.
The bottom line is Chelsea's locked up for the better part of her life for providing this information to WikiLeaks,
which then released it to the public.
And if this information were to remain obscure, it would defeat the purpose of what these brave people did.
So that's why we're trying to make people aware of it and not just talk about what these documents say,
but to make the raw documents available for anybody who calls in.
212-209-2950.
It's kind of scary how easily things can get erased from public knowledge, from history, from the Internet.
Many times I've looked things up that I know I've seen before, and it's just not findable.
It's either obscured by garbage or it's just been taken down one way or another.
And that could be the fate of all this information that people literally, as you say, risk their lives for and have paid heavy penalties for.
Edward Snowden faces arrest if he sets foot on U.S. soil.
He could be sent to prison for a very, very long time, and that's why he's basically sought refuge in Russia.
It wasn't his choice.
It's amazing to me how people—I get into lots of arguments with people about this—how people think that he went to Russia to get asylum
and how hypocritical that is because of Russia's human rights record.
If you recall, he started off in Hong Kong and was trying to get to another country in South America and was going through Russia,
and that's where he basically got stuck.
And fortunately for him, Russia gave him asylum for at least a little while, hopefully for as long as he needs it.
But it's ridiculous that this guy is not somebody who is testifying on Capitol Hill
and basically getting the people who have trampled on our rights into a lot of trouble.
Instead, he's the one who's viewed as the problem, and that's always been the case, that the people who are the whistleblowers,
the individuals out there, the courageous ones, they're the problem.
The status quo, yeah, that's okay, even if it's wrong.
That's something that we need to support.
Well, you can vote otherwise by calling 212-209-2950, pledging whatever you can afford.
Whether or not you want this package, it's the pledge that matters that keeps this place going,
where we can talk about things like this.
But if you pledge $125, we will send you a thumb drive chock full of over 5 gigabytes of WikiLeaks documents
and NSA leaked documents by Edward Snowden.
It's our way of saying thanks, our way of pushing freedom of information, freedom of speech, that kind of thing.
212-209-2950.
Yeah, and just to add to that talking point about Russia, it's really, you know, if someone brings that up,
it's really fun to consider the fact that this man, his life and liberty are more secure in Russia than they would be here.
And just that really speaks to how the system that put him there is messed up and needs fixing.
And it's not going to get fixed without the Edward Snowdens, without the Chelsea Mannings,
without these people willing to risk life and liberty, and in many cases losing it,
just to bring us the information that we've got on these sticks that we want to bring to you.
Here's something of what Snowden said at South by Southwest a few days ago.
I saw that the Constitution was violated on a massive scale.
The government has gone and changed their talking points.
They've changed their verbiage away from public interest to national interest.
We've got the most to lose from being hacked, he says.
And it's just incredible to me that somebody who is so interested in getting the truth out there,
exposing the injustices and the violations, that this is not somebody who is widely hailed as a hero,
as somebody who has convictions and is willing to stand up and take a big chance
by actually sharing this information with people who deserve to know about it.
You know, Bernie, I'm sure you got a good kick out of this story.
When the Snowden case first came out, one of the people calling for blood more than anybody
was Senator Dianne Feinstein of California.
And now this week, she found out that she is the one being spied upon,
and she is screaming bloody murder.
Is anything more retributive justice than that?
I love it.
She sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee.
She was, or is, supposed to be one of the overseers to prevent the NSA from spying on Americans
and other people without warrants, without probable cause.
And she's like, oh, we need this for national security.
Well, guess what?
When her own private Senate computer network that was analyzing documents about the Pentagon
got hacked or otherwise compromised by the CIA, she's screaming bloody murder.
Well, guess what, Dianne?
That's what it feels like to be an American.
So why don't you do your job and start doing your oversight like you're supposed to be doing?
Absolutely.
You find this kind of attitude very common among the people in charge of watching over and spying
and abusing people's rights.
When it happens to them, all of a sudden, it's a whole different case.
And you can see the same thing in day-to-day interaction with ordinary cops,
because if you start watching them the way they watch you, all of a sudden, that's something bad.
If you videotape a cop, oh, my God, how dare you do that?
But what's good for the goose?
Basically, we have the same abilities, the same rights, and abuse is abuse,
whether it's against an elected official or against a regular citizen.
And we saw the same thing with the Angela Merkel case.
As soon as a government leader was being targeted by this program, that's when it became a big deal.
Not when all the innocent people were being spied and monitored.
No, that was okay.
But as soon as one of us is feeling the effects of this, it's a whole different ballgame.
And that's the kind of thing that people like Snowden and people like Assange and people like Manning
have basically exposed as hypocrisy.
And that's why it's important to show your support for their actions, for what they have done,
and for what future whistleblowers will do.
I'm sure there are some of them listening now.
We know that courage is something that's contagious.
That'd be a good bumper sticker, wouldn't it?
Yeah.
So, 212-209-2950.
Get the Edward Snowden NSA package.
Get the WikiLeaks package.
Get both of them together for a pledge of $125.
Let's save this place.
Let's use the NSA's abuses, the exposure of the NSA's abuses to help save WBAI.
I can't think of something that makes more sense than that.
212-209-2950.
Absolutely.
Not only do we need these people who are willing to do so much to get the information out there,
but we need places like WBAI to keep that information out there,
to report on what's going on, and to bring that to you, the listener.
And the only thing that has kept us here at WBAI able to do this for the past 54 years now
has been you, the listener.
This is all we do.
This is our only source of support to keep this going.
We're not telling you what kind of car to drive or what kind of soda to drink or anything like that.
We are just asking for your help.
And the fact that you, the audience, have been giving us enough help to keep a radio station going
in this crazy city, in this crazy media environment,
everything that happened to bring this place into being was such a crazy alignment and coincidence
and, like, pipe dream.
And it never should have happened, but it did.
And if we lost it, it would never happen again.
So I'm sure your support by calling 212-209-2950 or by going give, the number 2, WBAI.org,
and saying that, yeah, we're worth keeping on the air.
We're worth the trouble.
We're worth having.
Again, a pledge of $125 gets you the full Wikileaks and NSA thumb drive package,
chock full of over 5 gigabytes of Wikileaks data, of Edward Snowden leaked documents,
$125, 212-209-2950.
By the way, in that package, you will get several different versions of the collateral murder video
that shows the basically war crime that the U.S. perpetrated against unarmed citizens.
And, you know, that in itself, that in itself should have resulted in a trial.
It did result in a trial, a trial of Bradley Manning,
but not a trial of the people that killed, the soldiers that killed innocent people.
That is the hypocrisy at work here.
You can vote against that kind of thing by voting to support this place and sharing,
sharing the revelations that those in power don't want you to share.
212-209-2950.
Here's what Edward Snowden had to say about the whole Dianne Feinstein mess.
He basically said that she was being somewhat hypocritical here.
Now, she asked for an apology on Tuesday after accusing the CIA of illegally searching her committee's computers
in regard to an internal CIA report on President George W. Bush-era interrogation techniques.
She also alleged that the search might have violated the Fourth Amendment against unreasonable government searches.
Well, Snowden, whose leaks, as we've said, exposed an NSA surveillance program
that collects metadata on millions of Americans and so much more, did not condone the CIA's actions.
But he said it's concerning that Feinstein was only expressing outrage now.
It's clear the CIA was trying to play keep away with documents relevant to an investigation by their overseers in Congress,
and that's a serious constitutional concern.
He referenced German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who expressed outrage last October
following reports that the NSA had monitored some of her communications.
But it's equally, if not more concerning, that we're seeing another Merkel effect,
where an elected official does not care at all that the rights of millions of ordinary citizens are violated by our spies,
but suddenly it's a scandal when a politician finds out the same thing happens to them, Snowden said.
Now, Feinstein, a supporter of the NSA program, has said she believes it is constitutional and necessary to protect the country from attack.
However, she has said it could benefit from more privacy and transparency protections.
The NSA has not ruled out the possibility that the bulk collection program has also swept up lawmakers' phone records.
It has said it cannot legally cull its database to check because it can only access records
that are reasonably suspected to be linked to a foreign terrorist group.
So basically they're saying, well, because we're not reading everything, we could be gathering even more.
It's kind of convoluted logic that we expect from them.
212-209-2950, show your support for WBAI, get the NSA documents, get the WikiLeaks documents,
show that you're not afraid to stand up to this sort of a thing and help spread the knowledge, help analyze these documents.
And let us know what you find, too, because there are so many of these things out there that it's quite likely something significant was missed.
This is your chance to go over your own copy and see just what is relevant, what is being said.
212-209-2950, we're only on until 8 o'clock, about 19 minutes away,
and this might be the only opportunity that we are actually offering this package.
Now, we basically raised $8,000 with this package last time around.
This time we hope we're able to do that again because it would be a significant chunk of what we have to raise to keep this radio station going.
And imagine, imagine if WBAI was not here to talk about this kind of thing.
You know, it's all related, it's all tied together one way or another.
The programs that you hear on this station and the people out there who are risking their lives to get information that stations like this can talk about.
It's front-page news, and it's hard to believe, but yes, this is what everybody is talking about these days.
212-209-2950.
Yeah, I love that argument that, oh, they're only collecting the information, but they're not looking at it.
You know, they're very choosy about what chunk of it they look at because that's the important part.
But even if you believe that, and even if you agree with the current administration, even if you think the people in charge now are the best people ever,
Obama is only going to be president for another couple of years.
Then somebody else is going to be in the driver's seat.
Every politician that you're looking at right now with a job will not be in that job forever.
Someone else will always be there further down the line to take their place.
What if the next person has some policies you don't agree with?
What if the next person sees these years and years of information that have been collected and decide they want to do a little more snooping through all that,
and then they've got every piece of data about you that you think is so safe and far from anyone's eyes now?
The fact is that it's being collected.
There are things that can be done with it.
There are things that will be done with it.
And as we've seen time and again, when a situation like this exists, it will be abused by those in power.
If you think this is important, if you think that this bears looking deeper into,
and if you think this bears coming to your own educated conclusions on, call 212-209-2950.
Go to give2wbai.org and show your support for this station and get hold of your own copies of all these goodies because they are important.
They are important, and they certainly could be under threat of not being around if certain people get their way.
The more copies that are out there, the harder it is to quell the information.
It's just the way the digital age works, and it can work to our advantage.
But we need people to stand up.
Yes, Bernie?
I just want to mention the listeners who pledged back in October for these USB flash drives with billions of bytes of classified information on them.
We're getting them out very soon.
I had some personal conversations just lately with the executive director of Pacifica, which runs WBAI,
and the blank flash drives are on their way, and we have a gang programmer.
We will gang program these flash drives and get them out shortly.
I just didn't want people who were hearing this that hadn't gotten there wondering, well, where's mine?
It's definitely on their way.
This goes to show you how important this is.
You spoke to the executive director of Pacifica, not just the radio station, but the entire network, because what has happened,
this place has been decimated by staff cuts, and it's hard to get things done sometimes.
So getting the thumb drives on order and arranging for the duplication took some coordination.
We weren't getting answers locally, so we had to go nationally to get this done.
It's a high priority for the entire network to get this done, and that's how seriously we take this.
So, yes, everybody is going to get exactly what it is they pledged for.
212-209-2950.
If we have to stay up all night to do this, and we have in the past, we will get these out.
212-209-2950.
Again, we have the WikiLeaks and NSA thumb drive package, over 5 gigs of information.
All of it is controversial.
All of it is something that the government did not want to have released.
$125 pledge, it's all yours.
Their worst nightmare.
Imagine that.
212-209-2950.
If you only want the NSA material, a pledge of $75 will get you that.
If you only want the WikiLeaks material, again, a pledge of $75 will get you that.
So we have three possible packages there.
We want to thank the people who are calling in.
We're getting a few people calling.
I think we can use more.
We don't see the phones lighting up live like we used to, but we get emails when people send a pledge our way.
Just a reminder, we only have 14 minutes left in this hour.
So if you want to call and pledge, we can guarantee it's available up until 8 o'clock.
It's likely it will be available after that.
I'm not around, so I don't know.
But I can say for sure it's around now.
It's available now.
212-209-2950.
Rob?
And also, if you can't pledge for $75, we should point out that any amount helps.
We can only give our gifts in exchange for the $75 or $125 pledges.
But if you pledge less than $75, you still get the most important premium, which is the radio station and which is this program,
because nothing else is keeping us on the air.
And you get your membership in WBAI.
You get a voice in where things go from here, newsletters, all that kind of good stuff.
So give us a call, 1-212-209-2950, or give the numeral to WBAI.org.
And Ed Snowden gave the talk to South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, a few days ago.
But he could have been talking to BAI listeners quite easily.
He said, you are the firefighters.
The people in Austin are the ones who can protect our rights through technical standards.
And, well, that's certainly true of the people who listen to this show.
A lot of them help design things.
A lot of them are influential in how things come about in the technological world.
And a lot of you who aren't influential in that particular field, you're influential in other ways,
just by spreading information around, by making people aware of the injustices out there.
You wouldn't be listening to WBAI if you weren't interested in that.
So that's why it's essential that everybody have a copy of this.
And by getting a copy of this, you're making WBAI stronger.
It seems like the perfect meshing of worlds and concepts and things like that.
212-209-2950 is the phone number to call to show your support.
We take all kinds of credit cards.
We take checks.
And as Rob was mentioning before, you can also go to the website, give2wbai.org, 2 being the number 2.
You can sign up for the BAI Buddy Program where you pay a certain amount per month.
I think $5 a month is where it starts.
And you can go above that if you want.
It helps.
Helps us pay that monstrous transmitter bill.
Helps us keep WBAI on the air and helps us move towards the day where we have our own studio in Brooklyn,
where we aren't quite as strapped as we are right now.
This is about as bad as it gets.
If we can survive this, we can probably survive anything.
And I got the feeling anything is coming.
So we'll need the strength.
We certainly will because places like this are dangerous.
I think we're proving it tonight.
212-209-2950, become part of the danger and help support this place.
Yeah, we're certainly.
I mean, I know it seems like we're always saying that things are really bad now.
You know, things are usually bad, but now they are really bad.
They are especially bad.
We're facing crises that this station has not faced in its 54-year history.
And we're doing it with a handful of staff, and we're doing it with a scrap of facilities,
and we're still making it happen because it's still that important to us.
But the only way we can keep doing that and we can keep the lights turned on
and we can keep the transmitter transmitting is with your help and your dollars.
So call 212-209-2950 or go to give to the numeral 2, WBAI.org, and show your support
because there will always be hurdles to face and things to get beyond.
And as long as there's a station here, we can work on that and we can keep doing that.
But once the station disappears, everything's null and void.
We can't come back from that.
Absolutely, yes.
Now, I want five more people to call.
We're on the air for about another 10 minutes.
If five people call and pledge $125 and get all these leaked documents and controversial material,
that is, hold on a second, $625, right?
Something like that, yeah.
Yeah, that's just a good chunk of change just by five people calling.
And you could be one of those people, 212-209-2950.
I mean, there really should be 50 people calling, I think, for the incredible thing that we're giving away.
And you know what?
Tune to any other radio station, not to boast too much here,
but tune to any other radio station that's asking for money, whether it's now or in the future,
any TV station asking for money, any organization.
And, okay, you know what?
You might get a coffee mug, you might get a towel or whatever it is they're offering this month.
We are offering WikiLeaks documents and NSA documents.
I think that right there says what the difference is, right?
I mean, we're hardcore.
We don't mess around.
We go right into the thick of it.
We always have.
Off the Hook has been on the front lines from the beginning.
We've had live calls from prison when you were locked up, Bernie.
We've talked to FiberOptic when he was going through his horrors with the judicial system.
We've talked to people all over the world who are fighting injustice
and using high technology in all sorts of ways that were not imagined that have been extremely significant.
It's what the hacker world is all about.
And WBAI is a perfect home for that.
And it all ties together in one way or another.
But it's key.
What is key is your support as far as keeping it alive, keeping it going.
Without that, this frequency becomes something else commercial.
We lose another voice.
We become part of the noise on the Internet.
And that's the only place you can ever wade through and hopefully find us one day.
This is better.
This is better.
Having a signal that reaches to four different states and is on top of the Empire State Building,
this is something that is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
And we need to preserve that.
212-209-2950.
I only have a couple of minutes left.
And again, $125 gets you all the leaked documents from WikiLeaks and NSA.
It's a unique package you will not find on NPR.
That's for damn sure.
They wouldn't touch it with a 10-foot pole.
No, they would not.
They would not even talk about it with a 10-foot pole.
And it really does go hand-in-hand.
WBAI has been around for 54 years now.
Off the Hook has been going on for 25 years now.
And nowhere else could this happen.
Nowhere else would give WBAI this chunk of the spectrum.
And nowhere else would a station let a show like ours onto their airwaves for 25 years.
A bunch of people like us, all the people that have been involved with this show over the years,
the hackers, the geeks, the lawyers, all these eclectic people from all these walks of life
who come together in the pursuit of something special,
that's what we're trying to do here.
And that's been allowed to happen for so long just because you, the audience, think it's worth it.
I'm convinced it's that culture, the culture here,
but the culture that also has spread through so many different forums throughout the net,
throughout the country, throughout the world.
I'm convinced that is what has led to this explosion of revelations
and sharing of documentation and just standing up to the authorities when they do something bad,
whether it be the Arab Spring, whether it be the NSA revelations,
whether it be protests in Zuccotti Park or anywhere.
It's all related. It's all part of this community.
It's a massive community. It involves hackers. It involves activists. It involves broadcasters.
But look what we did. Look what we've all done.
It's going someplace. It's significant. It matters.
And it's really pissing off the authorities.
Be a part of that. 212-209-2950.
We're almost out of here, and we've still got a couple of calls left to go.
212-209-2950. The NSA-WikiLeaks package is yours for a pledge of $125.
You'll get an 8-gig thumb drive almost completely loaded with all kinds of documents and videos and other material.
There's no way you could have seen all this online.
It's just not in any one place.
And think about that amount of disk space, how much there is,
and how impossible it would be for a handful of reporters to analyze it all.
That's why we need you. We need you, the listeners, the people out there,
massive amounts of people to read these things, to get them out there,
to learn, to share, and to not let it happen again.
212-209-2950. Yes, Bernie?
I just want to thank everybody who has made this possible.
Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, people like Bill Binney.
That's right.
People like the Pentagon Papers leaker.
My brain's not working tonight.
In any case, all the people—
Ellsberg. Thank you, Daniel Ellsberg.
And many more people have gone out, have risked their lives,
risked life or many years in prison to make people aware
of what's really going on in this world with their government and other governments.
And unless there's organizations like WBAI who will bring you the raw information,
their efforts will be for naught.
Their risks will have been fruitless unless people look at this information,
read it, understand it, and take action on it.
And once you have it in your hand and it's in your flash drive,
it cannot be censored or taken down off the web.
That's the importance of it physically shipping you media with it,
as opposed to just putting it up on a website,
on a lot of different websites, which would be hard to find at all
because it's scattered across the web and here and there and everywhere.
So that's why you really need to call 212-209-2950
to support these people's efforts, to support WBAI's efforts
to bring the truth to people, and to keep this radio station on the air,
which is the only place you're going to hear this kind of stuff.
Okay. I think we've laid it out there.
I think we've laid out the arguments why this is a good idea,
why it's something that you should support.
Now it's really up to you, our listeners.
212-209-2950. We'll be back next week, hopefully with a spring in our step
as we are successful in our bid to keep this place going.
212-209-2950 is the phone number.
oth at 2600.com is our email address.
Feel free to write to us and we will maybe respond,
maybe read over the air, who knows.
Again, 212-209-2950.
Thanks to those people who have called in so far.
Stay tuned for the Personal Computer Show,
and please keep supporting WBAI.
212-209-2950. It's Manuel for Off The Hook.
Have a good night.
Tell it like it is
We gotta stop going so fast
To figure out what's going on
Tell it how it is
I know it is last run
But we gotta try to be together
Tell it like it is
We're like a ship barely afloat
And we can't go on
Tell it how it is
I wanna be around for the good things
I wanna come along
Tell it like it is
We're in a race against time
That we should never run
Tell it how it is
We gotta try and take that time
To be together
Tell it like it is
I need to get it all straight
And I can't wait too long
Tell it how it is
I wanna be around for the good things
I wanna be strong
Tell it like it is
Maybe I'm wrong
Tell it how it is
I wanna be strong
Tell it like it is
We're in a race against time
That we should never run
Tell it how it is
I need to get it all straight
And I can't wait too long
Tell it like it is
Tell it like it is
I wanna be around
Tell it like it is
Hear me now
Man called Eazy-K
Tell it like it is
People!
Everybody!
Listen!
Tell it like it is
Tell it like it is
Hi. It's 8 o'clock here. WBAI. New York 99.5 FM.