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Thank you. 
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 Kyle. 
Yes. 
Rob T. 
Firefly out in Skype land. 
Good evening. 
Gila. 
Good evening. 
And Alex. 
Indeed. 
Good evening. 
And Alex, once again, you got to raise your levels every week. 
We can't spend any more time on this. 
Please just raise your levels every week. 
We get a new microphone. 
I don't know. 
Go somewhere else. 
But we can't be spending all these hours, literally, getting your levels up. 
Okay. 
So I think we're all in different places today. 
Gila, you're somewhere else, aren't you? 
I am. 
I'm actually still in my office. 
So not home yet. 
Usually you're in the same room as Rob. 
So I guess we're taxing the system by having three different locations. 
But anyway, enough of this, because we have some important things to talk about tonight. 
A lot of stories, a lot of listener mail. 
I'd love to get to it. 
But unfortunately, there's so much news that one particular story, or actually, it's a story that takes several different forms. 
We really need to focus some time on that. 
And Alex, I really hope you get your microphone fixed, because I want to hear your thoughts and feelings on this. 
Because there are legal matters. 
There are international matters. 
There's all kinds of technological issues here. 
I'm talking, of course, about Twitter, and the latest controversy taking place as we see that once mighty platform begin to unravel, or continue to unravel, actually. 
Latest being the battle, what seems to be a personal battle, between Elon Musk and the country of Brazil. 
Yeah, currently, the platform Twitter, which some people know as X, I will continue to call it Twitter. 
Because, have you ever tried looking for X online? 
I mean, you can't search for a single letter. 
And if you speak about X, you can be speaking about all kinds of things. 
You don't own the letter X. 
Sorry, Elon. 
Twitter it is. 
So, it was one of the world's most popular social networks. 
And it is currently offline in Brazil, which has, believe it or not, and I believe it, the fifth largest digital population. 
I'm not sure he knew this, but yeah. 
A whole lot of people from Brazil are online. 
And, boy, a lot of them were on Twitter, at least in the past. 
So, Elon Musk has refused to comply with their local laws. 
Yeah, because he knows better. 
He's a billionaire. 
He knows better. 
He sends things to space. 
By the way, there are people being sent to space by Elon Musk on, I think, Friday. 
You know, it's probably too late to get you out of the craft or whatever, but please, just think it over. 
Just think it through carefully and logically. 
You know, look at this guy and tell me that you trust him to send you up there. 
To do something that's never been done before, by the way, and to do a spacewalk, I don't know. 
I just, I'm having nightmares about this. 
So, you know, if you're involved, please, intervention something. 
Anyway, continuing. 
So, millions of Brazilian Twitter users found themselves unable to access the network Saturday morning as internet providers and mobile phone companies began to enforce the ban. 
Large numbers of Brazilian shelter on a rival network known as Blue Sky, which many of us are already on. 
It looks a lot like what Twitter used to look like, too, by the way. 
They gained millions, millions of new users in the past few days. 
And they are becoming very fluent in Portuguese as well. 
So, the banning of Twitter, which, again, has more than 22 million users in Brazil, is the climax of a politically charged, months-long arm wrestle between the country's top court and the right-wing tech billionaire. 
And he has gone full-on right-wing, fascist, Trump, MAGA, I don't know how many possible adjectives I can use here, but what was basically flirting with, well, you know, why can't we just allow free speech? 
And, you know, why are we fighting free speech to complete buying into the ultra-right-wing, not only in this country, but throughout the world? 
It's been scary to see that transformation. 
Not the first time I've seen it, but it's scary when it's something that is so familiar to you. 
You mean, like, championing that particular side, not just, like, the overall idea of ideas? 
Yeah, when you buy into one political ideology. 
I haven't been paying attention to what's being said there. 
Everybody values free speech. 
Everybody wants to be able to say what is on their mind. 
But when somebody continuously just sides with the right-wing and the ultra-rich and, you know, various corporations and things like that, and doesn't really pay attention to those people who are truly marginalized, you have to worry. 
You have to say to yourself, this isn't really about free speech, is it? 
So, that is basically what Elon Musk has been trying to frame this whole kerfuffle as being about free speech. 
But actually, Alexander de Mores, and I'm sorry, Your Honor, if I'm mispronouncing your name, I probably am, but I'm going to continue to say it that way because I don't know any better. 
Alexander de Mores is the influential Supreme Court judge that is responsible for the ban. 
He has been spearheading an attempt to force Twitter to purge anti-democratic, far-right voices in the wake of, and you might not remember this, the January 2023 uprising in the capital of Brasilia, carried out by supporters of the former far-right president. 
Have you pronounced J-A-I-R? 
Somebody must know. 
I don't want to make a fool of myself. 
I already have. 
Hi-year, I believe. 
Hi-year? 
Okay. 
I can say Bolsonaro, and I'm not going to say his first name again. 
I'll just say Bolsonaro from now on. 
The former far-right president. 
And I know what you're saying. 
Wait a minute. 
You're confused. 
You're talking about former right-wing President Trump and people storming the capital in January of 2021. 
No, I'm not. 
I'm talking about the sequel that happened in 2023 in Brazil where almost the exact same thing happened. 
And Elon Musk has been a good friend of Bolsonaro and a lot of right-wing dictators. 
And it's super disturbing to see. 
Now, he has not only aligned himself with Bolsonaro and Trump, but figures all over, all kinds of wretched people. 
He has pushed back against the Supreme Court judge, accusing him of squelching free speech, trying to censor conservative views. 
His public attacks on Morris, which are infantile and vulgar in many instances, were reminiscent of his repeated online digs at the British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, during the recent far-right U.K. 
riots. 
Yeah, now we're in the U.K. 
If you recall a few weeks ago, there were riots throughout the country, throughout England, because of this disinformation that was being passed around, saying that migrants were murdering little girls. 
And that brought people out in droves with all kinds of repressed hatred and anger. 
And the country devolved quickly. 
It was disgusting. 
You saw cars being stopped, people being asked, are you white? 
I'm not making this up. 
This happened. 
And it happened because of Elon Musk's Twitter and his refusal to do anything about it. 
And what they're doing in Brazil right now is saying, we're not going to have that. 
We're not going to have a repeat of what happened in January 2023. 
We're going to push back. 
We're going to insist that you not allow this kind of hate speech, this kind of disinformation, this kind of incitement of violence and racial hatred. 
You have to take some responsibility. 
Elon Musk is refusing to do that. 
And that is how this whole fight has transpired. 
Now, the final straw before Twitter's blocking in Brazil came last Thursday, when Musk ignored a 24-hour deadline to name, a simple thing, name a legal representative after they closed their local office in mid-August. 
You know, a simple thing. 
Name your legal representative after you closed your office. 
In a ruling on Friday, ordering the ban, Moras accused Twitter of treating the social network like a no-man's land, a veritable land without law, by allowing the massive propagation of misinformation, hate speech, and anti-democratic attacks. 
Hours later, shortly after midnight, Brazilian users began noticing that they were no longer able to connect to Twitter. 
Now, Musk ramped up his attacks on Moras, calling the judge Voldemort and tweeting a meme of a dog dangling its scrotum in the face of another animal. 
Yeah, this is real high-level discourse here. 
He is a dictator and a fraud, not a justice, Musk wrote, although Brazilian users could no longer read his words without using a virtual private network. 
And, of course, you may have noticed this, prominent right-wing voices immediately rallied to his side, including many in this country, underlying the growing affinity between not only the Brazilian far-right, but the American far-right and the far-right all around the world, and the world's richest person. 
Nicholas Ferreira, a prominent right-wing congressman in Brazil, said, I'm going to radicalize, even if I do it on my own. 
You are a freedom fighter, Musk replied to him. 
Real love fest going on here. 
Progressive Brazilians scoffed at Elon Musk's claim to be defending free speech, with many celebrating the Supreme Court's decision to show him that he was not above the law. 
Left-wing congresswoman Erica Hilton wrote, If billionaires want to have companies that make billions in these parts, they need to learn to respect the laws. 
Long live the rule of law and national sovereignty. 
And, again, a lot of people have moved over to Blue Sky. 
They've gained 2 million new users over the last week. 
And that seems to be pretty much the trend that's going on. 
The other thing that has been reported is that Brazilians don't really care that much about Twitter. 
When the justice ordered the suspension, many people just weren't bothered at all. 
They say they prefer Instagram anyway. 
Shirley Sampio said if they took Instagram away or WhatsApp, that would hurt. 
But people don't use Twitter. 
Yeah, the nation of 215 million was an early and enthusiastic adopter of Twitter, once commanding its largest international market. 
More than 40 million Brazilians, nearly one-fifth of the population, routinely took to the network to engage in heated discussions on politics or gossip over the latest episode of Big Brother Brazil. 
Big Brother Brazil, I guess is the name of the show. 
It was credited with mobilizing massive and wide-ranging protests in 2013 and then helping to propel former President Bolsonaro's rise to power. 
So, yeah, it can be used for good and for bad. 
Now, since then, Twitter's cloud in Brazil has shrunk considerably. 
At last count, the social media network had an estimated 22 million Brazilian users. 
That's about half of what it used to have. 
And that's before the shutdown. 
Surveys showed Brazilians were far more likely to use WhatsApp or Instagram, even the Chinese video-sharing app Kwai, than they would Twitter. 
In 2022, only 3% of Brazilians cited the social network as their preferred location to consume political news, the area in which Twitter was once strongest, according to a survey by the Institute for Democracy and Democratization of Communication. 
Now, under the leadership of tech billionaire Elon Musk, the losses have deepened. 
He bought the platform in 2022, reinstated banned users, changed content moderation standards, and rechristened it as X, a global public square. 
He says, for all people and views. 
But not really. 
I mean, you know, to use myself as an example, there's this little icon whenever you post something on Twitter that says how many people have read your tweet. 
And when I would post something, you know, I have, I think, around 10,000 followers. 
That number would go shooting up past at least 500 into over 1,000 in most cases. 
Recently, recent days, when I post things, many of which are critical of Elon Musk, doesn't even hit 100. 
Not even 100. 
I know a lot of people have left, but there are still people there. 
There are still people there, and those numbers make no sense. 
So, yeah, doesn't really support all views. 
Now, last week's controversy has made it even more apparent that the network is growing weaker and weaker in Brazil. 
So, as I mentioned, the judge requested that Musk name a representative. 
Musk refused. 
According to this article from The Washington Post, Brazilians shrugged. 
Yeah, some accused Marais of judicial overreach. 
Some said their freedom of expression was being infringed. 
But most have gone about their lives. 
They no longer use Twitter that much anyway. 
The suspension has further weakened its capacity to compete with other social media companies. 
In the days since it was removed from the Brazilian Internet, more than 1 million Brazilians shifted to Blue Sky, created by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey. 
That's a little subtext to that. 
Others have flocked to Threads, which is a social media company run by Meta, who owns Facebook. 
And, by the way, a couple of days ago, Monday, a Supreme Court subcommittee affirmed the ruling unanimously. 
Yeah, the truth is, this is Justice Flavio Dino, the truth is that public digital governance is essential in a domain where power is monopolized and concentrated in the hands of few businesses. 
The rules can be written by private autocrats who can dodge their responsibilities without caring about the system's risks or negative outcomes that their businesses cause. 
Now, the Internet provider Starlink, which is another business owned by Elon Musk, you may have heard of them launching thousands of satellites into the sky. 
They're active in Brazil, and they said they were going to refuse the order, too. 
They were going to refuse and continue to allow people who use Starlink to access Twitter. 
Yeah, well, they cut off their bank accounts. 
They made it so that Starlink could not operate in the country, at least not without losing a ton of money. 
And I believe they are now complying. 
I believe they are now blocking access to Twitter on Starlink. 
It is a mess. 
It is something like I've never seen before. 
But I think it illustrates just what happens when when billionaires come up against countries, you know. 
And what's what's interesting also is that Elon Musk in the past has complied with very, very similar rulings from right wing regimes. 
Now, you might notice that Brazil has has gone more left wing than Bolsonaro, not too hard to do if you get rid of Bolsonaro. 
And that has really rubbed the right wing in this country and around the world the wrong way. 
And that's why you're seeing all this feigned outrage at these restrictions. 
Why aren't you allowing free speech? 
Because, you know, you're a leftist regime and you're you're you're you're cutting off our right to say anti-immigrant things and to spread lies and to spread hatred. 
Why won't you let us do that? 
Oh, right wing dictators, you want us to shut up? 
Yeah, we'll do that. 
No problem. 
We're just going to focus on the left wing. 
OK, I've said enough. 
Who wants to tackle this first? 
So Gila, you first. 
So I I found something very interesting when I was getting ready for the show, and I apologize for not having sent this to everyone. 
But apparently there is one segment of Brazilian population that was still very actively on Twitter, which I'm going to continue calling Twitter. 
Thank you. 
Absolutely. 
And apparently a lot of fandom accounts were run out of Brazil. 
I read something from the AP, like from six hours ago, that apparently the Brazilian Twitter ban has cut global fandom social media off at the knees. 
What is fandom? 
So as an example, people who run accounts talking about outfits at the Met Gala, who have thousands, nay, millions of followers on Twitter talking about outfits at the Met Gala. 
Did you just use nay in a sentence? 
I did. 
Wow. 
OK, props. 
Thank you. 
I'm glad that English degree is paying off. 
So sometimes two 18-year-old girls, they're kids in college, they started this account about the Met Gala, and they just share celebrity news all the time. 
There's some young woman who started an account about an actor who's in a movie called Red, White and Royal Blue, and she thinks he's hot. 
And now she has a fandom account about him and just talks about him all the time. 
And she's like, OK, this has been great. 
But if they don't reverse the Twitter ban, I guess it's going to be done. 
Apparently, a huge number of celebrity-focused Twitter accounts have come out of Brazil. 
And that whole universe is in a really unpleasant kind of environment right now because Twitter ban, and there's not another place for people to go because they can't put videos up on Blue Sky in the same way. 
They can't share stuff on Instagram because it's going to get copyright claimed. 
Apparently, for these folks, it's Twitter or bust. 
And I guess right now it's bust. 
Well, temporarily, you know, things can be developed just because Twitter does something one way doesn't mean nobody else can ever do it that way as well. 
So, you know, I feel for them, but these are bigger issues, and they need to be dealt with. 
And I'm sure there will be a time when they'll be able to regain all their followers and post videos to their heart's content. 
But right now, this is the issue that really needs to be addressed. 
And Alex, go ahead. 
Yes, hi. 
And hopefully, my levels are a bit better. 
You sound great now. 
Do that next time. 
Yeah, yeah. 
All right. 
So, what I had to do was actually connect my iPhone. 
Nobody cares. 
Microphone. 
I know. 
Yeah. 
In any event, I mean, it's hard to even figure out where to start given the massive amount of information that you had, I guess, vomited at us there, Emmanuel. 
Wow. 
Okay, that's quite a – does that foreshadow? 
Do you have a disagreement with the things I might be saying? 
No, I generally agree with most of the things you've been saying, shockingly to say. 
But, I mean, why don't we just start a very, very basic principle of the law here when we're thinking about this? 
I think it's always good to go back to basics and just think about things from first principles. 
And one of those principles is that if you're a company or if you're a person or some kind of legal entity, you are going to be subject to the national laws of the country within which you operate. 
That's just really, really basic. 
I mean, I don't understand how somehow we have gotten to the point where it's okay for billionaires to think that they are just completely above the law that they need to – or rather they have the right to just completely ignore national laws of countries within which they operate. 
Are you new to this country, though? 
Because that has been pretty much practice forever, billionaires getting away with things. 
Getting away with things, but that's totally different than just ignoring legal process. 
Well, it's a development – sorry, my mic's a little spicy. 
No more of that. 
It's the development of a certain attitude and the idea of too big to care about flouting regulation and the sort of effective altruism and the sorts of we know better types of ideas because we have more or just have the ability and don't need to really consult with what society thinks of your idea. 
Yeah, I agree with that. 
I also think that Twitter had the opportunity here to comply with the law. 
The judge gave them the opportunity to comply with the law. 
They chose not to comply with the law. 
They didn't have a lot of time. 
So I do see how on the one hand this can be considered to be a victory for national sovereignty in the face of the burgeoning powers of billionaires and social media platforms. 
But yet on the other hand, and I don't think that we've addressed this yet, the judge's order also goes, I think, in my opinion, way too far in penalizing users or potentially penalizing users. 
I completely agree with that because I think they were going to fine them something like $9,000 a day, which is annual salary or something, ridiculous amounts like that. 
I think they backed off from that a bit, but that was stupid. 
That's how you get people against you. 
It could be misinterpreted in a broad way. 
Yeah, of course they jumped on that. 
Yeah, absolutely. 
I think it was around $8,000 for anybody who used a VPN to access Twitter in violation of the ban within Brazil, which is totally insane. 
I mean, to think, how are they going to get that information anyway? 
They'd have to get the information, I guess, from ISPs about anybody who connected to a particular VPN. 
The VPNs aren't going to comply or don't have logs with that. 
And then the only other place that would actually have the information that would allow them to enforce that local law would actually be, ironically, Twitter or X, whatever the hell we want to call it. 
But here's the main point, though, because I think on the other hand of this or the other side of the argument, we have these free speech absolutists who are continuing to say, look, this is a matter of free speech. 
Elon Musk is claiming this is all about free speech. 
But I think we really have to question the motivations here. 
And I think you were hinting at this, Emmanuel. 
I mean, is he a proponent of free speech or is he simply protecting a business model that's predicated on platform engagement? 
Is this a case of duty and self-interest happily coinciding for once or are there larger economic interests at stake for Elon Musk here? 
And I think it's very much the latter here. 
I think it benefits him tremendously economically. 
If he can turn around Twitter, this $44 billion megaphone that he has purchased and the way in which he does that is to promote some kind of free speech absolutism, which, you know, if you're going to to promote engagement on your platform, you want it to be as divisive as possible. 
You want it to be as disgusting as possible. 
You want people to operate in as tribal a manner as possible. 
So I really question the free speech or rather the absolutist love of free speech at heart. 
Well, he is certainly succeeding at making it as disgusting as possible. 
So if that was his goal, hats off. 
He did a fine job with that. 
But also, you know, you say $44 billion. 
That's what he paid for it. 
It's not worth that anymore. 
It's not worth anything near that anymore. 
So it has plummeted like a rock. 
And that must also be something that's motivational. 
Rob, go ahead. 
First of all, talking of disinformation, I misspoke earlier when I said that Bolsonaro's first name was Jair. 
It's actually pronounced Jair. 
Made a fool of me. 
So I mispronounced it. 
Wow. 
Okay. 
Made a fool of us all. 
And I'll keep doing that. 
But what I find fascinating about this is, yes, the alignment of the government's move with a left-leaning government, but also with the issue of free speech. 
But, and I am really, I find myself personally really conflicted about this because I do, you know, find myself on the side of free speech. 
And, you know, yeah, everyone should be able to say whatever they want, even if it makes them look like an idiot. 
But I can see their point, and I can see the progression of this, which can be traced back to Musk refusing to appoint a legal representative for X in Brazil. 
So, yeah, he was given rules to follow. 
He refused to follow those rules, and he found himself no longer to wag his ego machine around in that particular country. 
And there is also part of me that feels really good about him suffering some sort of consequence for running the hellhole the way he runs it. 
And so, yeah, I am really interested in how this is all going to shake out. 
As far as fandom culture and everything else and people and businesses who depended on the reach of Twitter, I mean, the reach of Twitter has been, you know, swirling down the toilet for quite a while now. 
And this is just a bigger than usual bubble in that. 
And social media as a whole has always, in the past, historically, had the ability to find the next place to be. 
And I think it's long past time that, you know, people who depend on Twitter found the next place to be. 
Go ahead, Alex. 
Go ahead, Alex. 
So, yeah, I had to unmute there. 
The other aspect of this, too, is that – and something I think you were dancing around as well, Emmanuel, which is that Elon Musk, as the world's richest person, seems to have his hand in so many geopolitical conflicts and issues at the moment that it's absolutely frightening. 
I think terrifying to think of the reach of this one particular man who also is seemingly quite unhinged when you look at his tweets. 
I mean, you mentioned a canine scrotum being used to represent the Supreme Court. 
I mean, it's absolutely insane. 
So, I mean, you think about this, even in places like China, right? 
So, he has influence in China because of the Tesla factories there. 
And he did that, and he put those Tesla factories in China against the recommendations of the United States. 
So, he really angered the United States by putting these Tesla factories there, this really high-level technology when it comes to electric vehicles. 
And the United States is competing globally for, I guess, hegemony when it comes to electric vehicles, and China is actually winning. 
People actually also believe that China may have stolen some of the technology from Tesla. 
Look at the conflict in Russia and Ukraine and the role that Starlink has played in providing access to the Ukrainian military in the face of Russia, Russia's initial massive bombing of Kiev. 
And then removing access from the Ukrainian troops when they planned an attack on Crimea. 
That's really, really interesting, too, because that's Musk injecting his own version of what he believes should and should not happen in wartime, in a battlefield. 
And utilizing technology to hamstring one opponent against another. 
You mentioned, as well, in the United Kingdom, you see Elon Musk castigating repeatedly Keir Starmer, the new prime minister, and instigating, I guess maybe not himself, but through his platform, the propagation of disinformation and misinformation that sparked a lot of the riots in the United Kingdom. 
You even see Musk having influenced in the Israel-Gazza conflict because there was actually issues with respect to Starlink once again. 
And he had intended to provide Gaza-based organizations with Internet access, angering this time Israel, of course, and then determined, I believe, that they would only do that in certain areas with Israel's approval. 
And then you have them being banned in Brazil right now, the largest country in South America. 
And at the same time, simultaneously, providing plans to go pick up astronauts that are stranded over at the International Space Station for the United States. 
So, I mean, this guy has his hand in the world's politics. 
He's seemingly unhinged. 
And it's terrifying to me that he may, in fact, have more power and more reach than most national governments, including the United States. 
This is something I think we really need to think about. 
Well, fortunately, there's nothing impending in this country that could be considered controversial or that might pit people against each other. 
That he might have undue influence in. 
So, count our blessings for that. 
But to get to England for a second, yes, very much in the front lines there. 
He has actually shown public support for the racist backlash that was based on fake tweets. 
People posting things that were not true, that were designed to get people outraged. 
What you were saying before about how that is the model for the platform, to get people upset, to get people engaged. 
Well, they got engaged, all right. 
They got engaged right out there in the street when they were burning police cars and terrorizing people that weren't white. 
That is what he was backing up. 
And then he said that civil war is inevitable in England and feigned disbelief that people would be upset by that. 
You know, it's one thing to have a spirited debate. 
You know, we do that many times here on the radio station. 
But to intentionally put out fake information that is designed to get a particular reaction, in many cases a violent reaction, and, you know, shrug your shoulders and say, oh, it's just free speech. 
You know, there is responsibility. 
You know, and there are consequences for the things that you do and say. 
And if you call in a bomb threat or tell people something's on fire when it's not, that's not free speech. 
You know, it's very, very different. 
And we have to be super naive to think that all this can be allowed without consequence. 
Well, people are paying the price for it right now. 
And we don't hear about it until Elon Musk finally has to pay the price for it. 
Kyle? 
Well, I think that that example right there in England in particular, if that information that it was precipitated upon was indeed fake, like it just goes to show that's why he's that. 
That's what he is there for is the racist backlash and that sort of overall, I think, explains it. 
And I think the way he's running it is sort of like, you know, what else can it do? 
Because that engagement stuff is just to basically, you know, feign an attempt to break even and maybe like this pipe dream of making any of that money back. 
But for it to generate revenue, yeah, that's how it works. 
But what else it can do for him is to leverage it in this way, especially in things that may advantage or otherwise benefit some of those horizontal entanglements in his industrial extant. 
So all of it sort of explains this paranoia about where his plane is and stuff, though, which I think is hilarious because he thinks he's untouchable. 
Yeah. 
The situation in England was particularly disgusting, but, you know, it spread to so many people. 
There was this woman named Lucy Connolly. 
She is the wife of a counselor, the West Northamptonshire Council. 
And she basically posted on Twitter that hotels, housing, asylum seekers need to be set on fire as well as mass deportations. 
Yes. 
Yeah. 
And she said, if that makes me racist, so be it. 
It makes you more than racist. 
Lucy, it makes you a hell of a lot more than just racist. 
Makes you a danger to society. 
And she is being sentenced for that next month. 
They move quickly in England. 
I'll say that. 
You know, it's a different system. 
You know, I'm not sure it would work over here. 
But there are consequences, just like for January 6th, there are consequences for certain actions. 
You can't just simply say, I was just exercising my freedom of speech when it goes well beyond that. 
You know, and it's just one example of so many of the horrible things that happened as a result of the disinformation being spread around. 
Now, I say disinformation, disinformation, I believe, is the deliberate spreading of false information. 
It doesn't have to be from a government. 
It can be from a company. 
It can even be from people. 
But if it's an organized conspiracy to spread falsehoods with a particular goal in mind, I don't think that's a mistake. 
And that's what I consider misinformation to be. 
That's simply spreading information because you're ignorant and you believe something that's not true. 
I could be wrong. 
And, Alex, I'm sure you'll tell me if I am. 
Yeah, that's right. 
And there's the difference between dis and miss. 
I mean, you think miss is, you know, it's easy to remember misinformation as being accidental. 
It's a mistake. 
So miss, the trick is in the name and disinformation has to do with the intentionality behind the information itself. 
But speaking of disinformation, just a few hours ago, there was an article posted on the Financial Times about the FBI and the U.S. 
government seizing 32 domain names that belong to a Russian disinformation campaign that had intended to promote some form of election interference and disinformation with respect to Ukraine and the Russia conflict and various other things. 
It's unclear exactly what domains they were. 
But one of them that was referenced in the article itself was WashingtonPost.pm. 
And I looked up the WHOIS data on that just before the show. 
And interestingly enough, that domain in the .pm, which is obviously the country code top-level domain. 
Okay, wait. 
What country is .pm? 
Who can get this? 
I don't remember. 
Somebody can look that up. 
No looking it up. 
We have to know. 
We have to figure this out ourselves. 
It's not Peru. 
Micronesia something. 
I don't know. 
There's no P in Micronesia. 
I don't know. 
But, you know, maybe it's some kind of – who knows? 
But anyway, the point is, while Rob is looking this up dutifully, I see him at work over there. 
You're cheating, Rob. 
Absolutely. 
You're cheating yourself. 
Yeah. 
But the point is, the domain was actually registered in November. 
I believe it was November 10th of 2023. 
And so, you know, nearly a year ago. 
And so, they're just kind of picking these things up now. 
They're just being activated. 
It seems like Gila has the answer to the CCTLD quiz we have here. 
St. 
Pierre and Michelin. 
You're kidding. 
I've been there twice. 
Wow. 
Those are the islands off the coast of Canada, off Newfoundland, that are actually part of France. 
Yeah, you can drive to the EU from here. 
Wow. 
I should have known that. 
I feel ashamed. 
Yeah, that's pretty cool. 
That is pretty neat, though. 
So, yeah, WashingtonPost.pn and apparently 31 other domains. 
It would be interesting to see what they are. 
But, obviously, this reflects the fact that the U.S. 
government is still very concerned with Russia. 
And Russia is still active with respect to the dissemination of disinformation. 
Well, okay, I saw the postscript to the Elon Musk Twitter story before we move on to other related stories because we're running out of time. 
But, apparently, his relationship with San Francisco is also nearly over. 
And city officials are far from heartbroken about that. 
Yeah, Elon Musk is shuttering his social media company's headquarters in a gritty downtown neighborhood in the coming weeks. 
And will move its last employees, based there, to offices in Palo Alto and San Jose. 
And new headquarters will be set up in Texas. 
Makes a lot of sense when you think about it. 
City officials, though, are not lamenting the exit. 
Twitter bears little resemblance to the company that San Francisco wooed with a tax break more than a decade ago to help anchor a budding tech hub in a downtrodden neighborhood near City Hall known as Mid-Market. 
Now it's turned into a horrible virus that's grown out of control and needs to be quelled. 
That's my quote. 
So, basically, Twitter once symbolized San Francisco's status as a startup capital, but the city's nonchalant response to the move amid public posts from Mr. 
Musk about San Francisco's inflexible tax policies and liberal politics shows officials are now less willing to cater to companies considering a move. 
Yeah, so good riddance to bad rubbish, I guess, is the message there. 
Okay, we have to talk about this quickly as well. 
The head of Telegram arrested in France as he flew in. 
Its CEO, Pavel Durov, again, apologies if I'm mispronouncing, arrested in Paris over the weekend, actually a couple of weekends ago, over allegations that his platform is being used for illicit activity, including drug trafficking and the distribution of child sexual abuse images. 
He was born in Russia, spent most of his childhood in Italy, as a citizen of France. 
And, yeah, this is interesting because, again, it speaks to responsibility when you run a platform. 
And Telegram has long been known as a bastion for far-right-wing gatherings and organizing and not much accountability. 
You can pretty much do whatever you want. 
I don't know, thoughts on the arrest here? 
First of all, I should point out that the far-right in this country immediately jumped to his defense. 
Now, you know, that just seems a little strange. 
Why is the far-right immediately jumping to this, you know, Russian-slash-French guy who runs this social media site that caters to neo-Nazis and child molesters and others? 
They're legitimate people as well, of course. 
That's where they get their favorite material. 
Well, it just seems a little, you know, they were on it within minutes. 
So, I don't know. 
It just seemed a little strange. 
Any thoughts from Skypland? 
Go ahead, Al. 
Yeah, sure. 
I mean, this interestingly happened. 
I think Pavel Durov was picked up in France. 
He arrived the day that I left. 
Remember, I was there two weeks ago. 
But I've been tracking this and following it, and it's really fascinating because, again, we have a nearly identical situation where you have a very large platform that's become very popular. 
Even though Telegram itself hasn't been making Pavel Durov billions, he is a billionaire. 
That comes from the sale of Vicontakte, which was essentially the Russian version of Facebook before he was forced to relinquish it several years ago. 
But you have a very similar situation where apparently France had been asking Telegram over and over and over again to comply with certain investigative orders that it was issuing to investigate things like CSAM, child sexual abuse materials. 
And remember, back in 2015, when there was that massive and horrific attack within Paris itself, apparently many of the terrorists that had perpetrated that attack in Paris had actually used the Telegram platform to plan that attack. 
And so for quite a while now, Telegram has possibly been in the crosshairs of French authorities because even back then, they refused to assist with those types of investigations. 
Whether they could or could not assist for technical means, I don't necessarily know. 
But it does seem like it seriously angered the French authorities. 
But this is another situation where a platform owner has essentially ignored the requests of a government. 
And we don't necessarily know in the case of Telegram how much Telegram has ignored or flouted the orders of the French government. 
But that seems to be what led to the arrest and now the formal investigation for possibly assisting with the dissemination of CSAM materials and money laundering and all of these terrible things. 
This is a huge wake-up call to any platform that is providing this type of interactivity amongst its users because prior to this, you would see some kind of civil action. 
You may have seen lower-level executives in various far-flung countries being threatened with fines or arrests, but you never necessarily saw the CEO of a company being picked up after his private jet landed in a country like Paris. 
This is a very, very clear signal that the time when platforms could operate with complete immunity and get away with it is long gone. 
Impunity. 
And that the fight against disinformation and CSAM and all of these other parades of horribles that happened on these platforms is really raging right now. 
And there's either going to be much more regulation coming down the pipeline or a lot more potential arrests of CEOs like Pavel and others. 
Yeah, and I think not having handled a lot of that stuff and not, of course, then not having a track record of stories where there's been sort of cooperation or various kinds of working with the courts throughout some of those things. 
If that hasn't been addressed and it is something they're interested in, then it kind of makes sense. 
I don't know if there has been a lot of news about telegrams being forthcoming in any of those situations. 
And I also think that there's a lot of other activity on that platform that is of interest to those with arresting powers. 
I'd like to read something, a quote from John Scott Railton, who's a senior researcher at the University of Toronto Citizen Lab. 
It says, popular telegram features like group chats and channels are not end-to-end encrypted. 
That means that telegram can access their contents. 
Similarly, messages between users are not end-to-end encrypted by default, which means that telegram could also access these messages. 
Only telegram's opt-in secret chat feature is end-to-end encrypted, which would prevent telegram from accessing the chat contents. 
So that's interesting. 
That tells you that they could, in fact, gain access to things under court order. 
But I think what the French are so upset about is the fact that they're just being ignored, not even acknowledged, not even saying that they're willing to work with them to come up with something that's mutually agreeable between them. 
Probably a bad idea with law enforcement. 
This reminds me of Parler and some of the other platforms being sort of clamped down upon. 
Go ahead, Alex. 
If the issue, though, is technical infeasibility of a platform to comply with some kind of lawful order, that's completely different. 
I agree. 
If they have the data, they may be legally obligated to hand it over. 
But if the data itself cannot be handed over because of an end-to-end encrypted communication, then I think we have to look at this French prosecution as a hell of a lot more dangerous than simply going after somebody who may or may not have been complicit in assisting with the dissemination of child sexual abuse materials or these other parades of horribles that we had mentioned. 
Because at that point, then what you actually are attacking is the use of encryption technology itself. 
So why wouldn't Telegram just encrypt everything then? 
Well, I'll tell you why. 
Because in a group chat, it becomes extraordinarily difficult to manage encryption keys. 
It's really, really hard to do that amongst a large number of people. 
Everybody would have to exchange everybody else's keys. 
It would be a total nightmare technically to try to keep that and maintain that, especially with new people keep coming onto the group. 
Everyone's going to have to have everybody else's key. 
It's a real pain. 
But I think John Scott Ralston brings up a really important point, which is that people operate very often under the erroneous assumption that any chat in Telegram is going to be end-to-end encrypted. 
That's simply not the case. 
I believe in WhatsApp and other messaging platforms that is the case. 
But you do have to turn on that feature in Telegram. 
I wanted to also talk about Facebook and their battle with Canada as far as not allowing any links to news because they're unwilling to pay for the content or the links. 
We've talked about this in the past, but it's persisted and it's continuing. 
And the thing that really gets me is that I keep reading week after week about how advertising dollars for journalism, newspapers, radio, TV, it's all plummeting like a stone. 
But social media companies, it's going into the heavens. 
They are making so much money off advertising dollars. 
There has to be a correlation here. 
There has to be a correlation. 
And people simply cannot say that they're not benefiting from this. 
Yet Facebook insists that there is no value to them whatsoever from news, links, news stories. 
And rather than pay, as Google has already agreed to, rather than pay for the content, they simply cut off access. 
So if you're mad at Canada, you might want to look into the story a little bit more and see why Facebook has taken this action. 
Because they don't want a precedent where they actually have to pay for the content that brings their image up. 
People have better conversations when there's an actual news story being discussed on Facebook. 
Whereas now, if you look at what the engagement is like in Canada, you'll see there's a lot of far-right propaganda being spread around because that's not considered news. 
But it's being discussed in Facebook. 
I wish we could talk about this more. 
We can talk about this on Overtime. 
We can talk about this next week on Off the Hook. 
Please support WBAI. 
It enables conversations like this and so many others throughout the course of the broadcast week to happen. 
Give to WBAI.org. 
Give the number to WBAI.org. 
Pledge whatever you can to keep this true voice of free speech on the air. 
Write to us, OTH at 2600.com. 
And please listen again next Wednesday night at 7 p.m. 
for another edition of Off the Hook. 
Oh, wow. 
It's going to be 9-11. 
That's going to be interesting. 
Stay tuned to WBAI New York. 
We'll see you next week. 
Good night. 
  And welcome everybody to Overtime here on YouTube. 
Kyle, you make it okay into Overtime world? 
Enough to answer phones and maybe AdLib. 
Yeah, a little bit of that. 
Moving to Skypeland. 
Rob, you make it okay? 
Yes, indeed. 
I'm here and we sound good on YouTube. 
We are on YouTube. 
That's good. 
Gila, you're still in your other location. 
I am. 
We are here. 
We are live. 
Welcome to the people who are with us on YouTube. 
And we have Alex as well. 
Alex, every time, can you just... 
I think he's messing with us. 
The mute button. 
I don't know why it's such a difficult thing to press the mute button. 
This is very funny. 
This is hilarious. 
You think you're doing it intentionally? 
I needed this. 
I don't think anybody needs this. 
Okay, we got a phone. 
Well, the phone call can wait. 
You haven't given out the phone number yet, for God's sake. 
I actually legally can't answer that. 
I'm trying... 
Okay, then don't answer it. 
I'm trying to get Alex to say a word that we can hear. 
He's not muted. 
Okay, yeah, I hear something. 
Alex, did you change something since the show? 
I think something turned off, given the period of time. 
So something automatically turned off. 
So this sounds better now, correct? 
You are with us. 
Yeah, you know, you just got to let us go in there and make all the settings so that things stay put. 
That would be nice. 
I welcome that. 
You know, I miss physically getting together on Wednesdays. 
I really do. 
It was always such a fun highlight of the week. 
But I'm pretty close to a window, as you may or may not be able to see. 
So I'm wondering, is there background noise coming in through my phone? 
No background noise to speak of. 
A gentle din. 
Yes. 
Whoever is calling before we even give out the phone number, we're not going to answer you, and we won't answer you in the future if you don't stop. 
This is outrageous. 
It's outrageous. 
I mean, I don't know who it is. 
Because we're not ready yet. 
We're just not ready for any of this yet. 
But don't make assumptions, Alex. 
Yeah. 
I wanted to continue talking about Facebook a little bit, because I think that's an important topic that needs to be discussed. 
And that's, of course, the blocking of news on Facebook. 
Why is Alex walking away? 
He excused himself, I think, or some sort of gesture that he had to maybe has to walk around. 
I can make a gesture, too, and excuse myself. 
You want me to do that? 
Here's the gesture. 
Whoa. 
Yeah. 
Now watch me walk away. 
I'll do that. 
No, no. 
Pump the brakes on me. 
No, I've had a day, okay? 
It's just, it's been, it's been... 
But continue with this news stuff, because this is really important. 
It's, like, blamed constantly in a lot of the rhetoric that, like, journalism's the problem and stuff. 
Look, we just saw, we just saw WCBS disappear a couple of weeks ago, all right? 
Bastion of journalism in the city. 
We see newspapers shutting down virtually every day. 
You know, we see television news being destroyed. 
We see all sorts of horrible things happen, and the thing you can always point to is that advertising dollars are way down, because people aren't advertising with those traditional media outlets anymore. 
But they are advertising with Facebook, and they are advertising with other social media entities. 
They are making a killing. 
So is it unfair to assume that they should, you know, give something back? 
Now, the people at Google said something that I thought was correct, actually. 
They said that you can't pay per link. 
That breaks the internet. 
That's not how the internet was designed. 
And that is true. 
But what you can do is set some kind of structure up where, when you're benefiting greatly from linking to news stories or having news stories on your site from another source, you need to support that. 
You need to keep that going. 
Just like, you know, we get harassed all the time when we go to a news site that basically says, won't you subscribe and support us? 
You can't subscribe to every newspaper, obviously, but I do understand the sentiment. 
And there are those select ones that I do subscribe to because I support them. 
And how else would you possibly survive? 
Advertising dollars, subscribers. 
At 2600, we do it without the advertising dollars. 
So it's a real challenge, but to simply say, no, it doesn't, we gain nothing from it and we're just not going to pay a penny for that. 
And by the way, we're just going to block all the access, you know, to any news story in Canada. 
And we're going to basically replace that with just made up news that our own people will put forth on the platform. 
It's just, it's nonsense. 
It really is. 
Yes, Rob. 
You know, I, what fascinates me most about this, and I've been browsing the, the post by Meta about changes to news availability on our platforms in Canada that they put up in June of 2023 when, when this all went down. 
And what fascinates me most about this is just the basic concept of news is no longer allowed in Canada, according to this. 
And what counts as news? 
Does it have to be from a big commercial entity? 
You know, would WBAI be news, even though it's a small non-commercial concern? 
Would a podcast be news? 
Would a blog be news? 
Would, you know, your Aunt Tilly talking about what Henry Crun and Minnie Bannister from over the road are doing this week? 
Like, is that news? 
What, where the line is, is I, I wish I knew more about what this is actually like for a Canadian user. 
And I would love to hear from somebody in the chat or over the phone who can speak more about this, because I would like to know what Facebook is like, um, if you can't use news. 
Right. 
I mean, I don't use Facebook, so I don't really know what's like with or without news, but I'd like to know, uh, how, how important news is to the user. 
Um, I do know it's important to Facebook. 
I do know it's important to, um, uh, you know, they benefit from it tremendously because it elevates the level of conversation that people have. 
You know, if you're talking about real news, as opposed to something that somebody just made up on their own, you know? 
Okay. 
So, um, Taylor Owen is a founder of, uh, McGill University Center for Media Technology and Democracy. 
Um, he says the, the news or she, Taylor could be a, a woman's name, I suppose. 
They, they said, uh, the news being talked about in political groups is being replaced by memes. 
The ambient presence of journalism and true information in our feeds, the signals of reliability that were there, that's gone. 
And you better believe that affects the quality of the discourse that, that follows. 
The lack of news on the platform and increased user engagement with opinion and non-verified content has the potential to undermine political discourse, particularly in election years. 
Um, that's according to, uh, uh, to researchers. 
Um, yeah. 
So it's, um, you can't say that, that, that news is valueless. 
It most definitely is. 
And there's certainly a connection between the, uh, the plummeting advertising revenue of, of journalism and the, uh, the booming advertising revenue of social media. 
Um, yeah, I mean, what, what, what do you read instead? 
If there is no, uh, authoritative journalistic voice in your community, what replaces that? 
I mean, this stuff instead is not equal. 
It's, it's, it is, uh, it's information, but it's not, it's not of the same quality and to, um, to sort of have trusted these, uh, platforms that they would curate and allow or otherwise, um, interoperate with the news, uh, who, and instead basically forcing them to create their own subscription models and, and compete with whatever's on their walled out platform garden. 
Basically they're walled from journalism, uh, from a lot of that stuff being distributed as freely and, um, take, taking all of those users out and, and then, um, amplifying speech that basically denigrates the idea of journalism is itself corrosive and has aided in all of that. 
And, um, I, I just, I, I don't know that Facebook or these platforms were ever the answer for what has happened to those sources of information, but consolidation and their benefit of, uh, from it and then, uh, refusal to cooperate on any level and instead wall it out is a consequence. 
And they, they bear a responsibility and have benefited, um, in, I guess, users looking at what they are curating. 
And, you know, it should also, um, show beyond a reasonable doubt that these platforms cannot replace journalism. 
They absolutely cannot because look what happens when you eliminate the journalism, when you don't have access to news, you get made up crap, you get conspiracies, you get panic and hatred. 
That's what it gets replaced with. 
So you need actual journalism to be out there. 
And if Facebook and their ilk want, um, uh, conversations that have any degree of legitimacy to them, they need those, those, uh, those, those journalist sites as much as the journalist sites need advertising dollars. 
Now, Google was about to do the same thing back in December. 
Um, they were about to cut links to, um, to news stories, but they reached an agreement. 
They reached an agreement that, um, requires Google to pay 100 million Canadian dollars annually, uh, index to inflation to news outlets. 
Yeah, that's, and they, they agreed to do this. 
Now, an announcement by Canadian heritage minister, Pascal Saint-Ange said the funding would be used for a wide range of news businesses across the country, including independent news businesses and those indigenous and official language minority communities. 
The statement said that Google would pay a single collective, which would distribute the funds to eligible news agencies based on the number of full-time equivalent journalists engaged by those businesses. 
A sustainable news ecosystem is good for everyone. 
Ms. 
Saint-Ange said, adding that newsrooms closing and laying off workers means that the health of the Canadian news industry has never been more at risk. 
Same thing here in the USA. 
We need people to, um, uh, to realize that and to, to save these places before they disappear. 
They don't come back when they disappear. 
And it's, it's, it's hugely important. 
Uh, defend them when they're being attacked too. 
Mm-hmm. 
It's, it's, uh, it's important. 
Can I, can I, can I read you, uh, a quote? 
Sure. 
We can take a phone call. 
It's from, uh, volume 40, uh, number four of a magazine called 2600. 
Familiar with it. 
Yeah, I bet you are. 
And it's, uh, from page 53. 
That's your column. 
That's your column, Alex. 
You're quoting your column. 
Uh, I submit. 
That's right. 
I am quoting my column. 
That's right. 
I submit that it's time to pull the plug, to reclaim the power of moral suasion that social media has usurped. 
And to the degree possible, we should revert to traditional entrusted sources of information that have served us all, well, our whole lives. 
And then the article goes on to some crazy, uh, Marshall McLuhan quote. 
Uh, but yeah, I mean, look, it, if it's in print, it must be right. 
I mean, we've been saying this, I think. 
Um, and in fact, I was arguing this just, what is it? 
Three issues ago, right? 
Well, yeah, there's a news, there's a news process and that this, uh, content, uh, has, has, uh, gone through it to a certain degree. 
And the, the platforms themselves have messed up and otherwise not, uh, controlled the way articles and news news is organized and, or they haven't paid for it or they're only accepting stuff that is paid to be there. 
So they, they, it was broken before, long before. 
Right. 
Okay. 
Yeah. 
I mean, you know, uh, just because something is in print, just because something is broadcast does not mean they are infallible. 
They are not, uh, uh, also subject to being scrutinized that they can't get something completely wrong, that they can't be, uh, um, uh, irresponsible. 
Absolutely. 
But when you simply open up the gates and say, everybody's the same, everybody can just make up news. 
What do you think is going to happen? 
We're seeing it right now. 
Or, or they automate it, right? 
Because they had, uh, structures and departments that were doing news. 
And I think Google's case, I don't know if they're still doing that, but they're not really keen to integrate that into their business model, even though they're talking about organizing information that might be separate in terms of mission and scope, but then who knows? 
Because they're of course creating all of these parent, uh, shell companies. 
So what's their mission? 
Look, they're doing really well. 
They're doing really well. 
The way things are right now, they're doing too well because other companies are suffering and it's a direct result of the fact that they're doing really well. 
So let's even it out just a little bit and save journalism and make social media better. 
Is that such a bad thing? 
I don't think it is. 
Okay. 
Let's, uh, take phone calls. 
802-321-4225. 
I'm ready. 
802-321-HACK is the phone number. 
Uh, whoever was calling before, feel free to call again, assuming you're listening to us. 
Could have been a telemarketer, you know? 
We get those occasionally. 
You know, we should put a telemarketer on the air. 
That might be fun. 
I'll answer that call. 
Yeah. 
Well, we don't discriminate against area codes or anything like that. 
It's first come, first serve. 
I know we're just waiting now for the phone. 
Oh, there's the phone. 
You gonna pick that up? 
Yes. 
Okay. 
And here we go. 
Good evening. 
You're on off the hook overtime. 
Yes. 
I'm calling from my wired headphones this time. 
This is Rebel. 
Rebel, was that you calling earlier? 
No, it wasn't because I just got here. 
So, you know, I guess it's... 
And Kyle confirms, based on caller ID data, that it was not you that called. 
So, it was a mystery who was calling earlier. 
Truthfully, yes. 
They must have something really important to say. 
So, Rebel, make it quick so they can get through. 
Okay. 
I'm calling from my... 
Now, I'm talking away from the microphone. 
You said that already. 
Yeah. 
Yeah. 
But I'm talking away from the microphone now. 
Keep going. 
Keep moving away from the microphone. 
Keep moving. 
Well, now, because I'm talking into the microphone now. 
Ron, stop talking that way. 
By the way, when you... 
I... 
Last week, I was using my Bluetooth headset, and somebody in the chat said that it's terrible and you should get your money back. 
It's not the headset. 
It's your system that, you know, that you're... 
Okay. 
We are aware of this. 
We know that on... 
First of all, it doesn't happen on the radio station. 
It doesn't happen on VAI because we don't take phone calls, and also because they use compression. 
What we do here on YouTube is we take phone calls, and there is no compression, so the audio goes way down on phone calls, even though to us it sounds fine. 
We were going to test it, but nobody here communicates, so we weren't able to test it before the show. 
So, we're doing it again, and what our friend Junts has to do to put the archive up is he has to actually go in manually and boost levels for every time somebody talks on the phone. 
I'm talking about the sound quality. 
It's really your fault, Rebel, because you're talking on the phone, and your levels are way down. 
Look, it's all set, but it's... 
Make my volume louder. 
I'm talking about the sound quality. 
It doesn't matter how loud you are here. 
For some reason on YouTube, it gets way low, and everybody complains. 
I know this. 
We need to put some kind of compression in or something. 
I don't know, but we need to test it in order to do this, and that means communication. 
Okay, now I'm focused... 
Now you're really far away. 
Now I'm the Bluetooth headset. 
Uh-huh. 
I guess I sounded better on the wired headset. 
You're going to drive Junts crazy because you're demonstrating how low you sound, and he's going to boost that and make it sound normal, and it's just going to... 
He'll be institutionalized by the end of the week. 
Okay, but my point is that when I use my headset, and if I called you a cell phone, I would sound clear. 
I would sound clear if I called you a cell phone. 
Well, I'm not sure that's what it takes to make you sound clear. 
It's a long process. 
It's going to take work. 
I called somebody, I called my friend's cell phone with this Bluetooth headset with my cell phone, and it sounded clear. 
I actually had... 
Wait, how do you know how it sounded to them? 
You don't know how it sounded to them. 
Well, because I gave him my Bluetooth headset, and I had him talk, and I heard on my cell phone or on his cell phone that it sounded clear. 
And you spend your week doing things like this? 
Well, when we go to the... 
Are you going to be at the meeting Friday? 
Oh, there's a meeting on Friday. 
Rob, can I kick in here? 
Tell us about meetings. 
Hang on. 
There is indeed a meeting on Friday. 
If you go to 2600.com slash meetings, you can find one near you. 
You can start one near you. 
Hackers from all over the place convene and hang out. 
Friday's first Friday of the month. 
We should have said that on the radio. 
In fact, I should have mentioned how to get to YouTube on the radio. 
I forgot that as well. 
Kyle, can we break in on the current show and just announce that? 
Because I feel like we let our listeners down by not giving them all the information that we need. 
No? 
We can't do that? 
What? 
Some kind of room? 
Sure. 
Can we just break in? 
Break in to... 
To BAI. 
Just to make an announcement. 
It's important. 
Well, I think they may have some other programming, but... 
I know. 
I know. 
I think if we're quiet, I mean, we could just... 
Sure. 
You know what? 
Yeah. 
Okay, what if we just take one speaker? 
Can we take the left speaker and they have the right speaker? 
Don't ask me something like this. 
I mean, if you're serious, if there was an emergency, if something happened, if... 
You know, we could make some calls. 
Okay. 
All right. 
We could set something up if there was, you know, a crisis. 
I'm curious what kind of crisis would... 
Just don't ask me to do something unless you really want that done. 
And that's not just directed at me, folks. 
That's directed at all of you. 
Do not ask Kyle to do something unless you want it done. 
All right? 
That's always been the understanding. 
And Gila, go ahead. 
Well, first of all, I did want to point out that according to the WBAI website, the show that is currently on the air on BAI is at least being co-hosted by someone who has shuffled off this mortal coil. 
So, maybe... 
What are you implying here? 
Like, BAI is connected to what lies beyond? 
They're playing programming. 
I think it just means they haven't updated their website information. 
Yeah, that sounds a lot more likely. 
That sounds very possible, in fact. 
But what I was going to say was, if one of the hosts is, in fact, no longer on this side, yeah, they may need us to break in just so something's going on. 
Oh, boy. 
This took a turn, didn't it? 
Well, we... 
It's dark. 
I do apologize. 
Did want to shout out everybody in the chat tonight. 
The chat is popping this evening. 
Bob Cat did ask, why isn't Junts on the show? 
He's fun. 
And I don't know if that was to imply that the rest of us are not fun. 
Oh, no, we're not fun. 
We know that. 
We know that. 
And Junts is the life of the party. 
There's no question about that. 
Oh, no question. 
That's why it's hard to get him, because he's in demand. 
He's probably on some other station right now. 
Also... 
Next question. 
Is there a next question? 
Wait, we still have Rebel on the phone. 
I turned him down. 
You know how frustrating he must be? 
Rebel, it's frustrating, right, being on hold? 
Oh, you didn't hear what I was saying? 
No, you were talking while we were talking. 
You see, you have no regard for us talking. 
You just kept going, thinking that we were listening to you, but you must have heard our voices. 
Yeah, I've heard your voices, but I mean... 
And you just kept going. 
You just kept talking, regardless of the fact... 
You see, when you have a radio station, you can turn people down. 
You can turn people up, and then... 
That was your cue, Rebel, to say something. 
Okay. 
And then you can turn them down. 
I think we've made a lot of progress here. 
We've made a lot of enemies here. 
I think this session has been, you know... 
Good work. 
Powerful, yeah. 
It's a breakthrough today, I think. 
Yeah, definitely. 
Good session for everybody. 
We'll see you again next week, same time. 
Yeah, and yes, be sure to take the prescription that we give you. 
We'll see you at the meeting. 
Uh-huh. 
All right, so Rebel, I assume you're trying to tell us that you're going to be at the meeting. 
Yeah, of course. 
Will you be at the meeting? 
Because maybe we can... 
I could demonstrate the cell phone quality. 
Well, you know, I would like nothing better. 
I'm not sure. 
I'm not sure. 
It's always a last minute... 
Nice try, though. 
No, it's always a last minute decision if we're going to be at a meeting, and which meeting it might be. 
You know, where are we, you know? 
I actually just lost my cell phone, so I don't know where it is. 
I don't think I can help. 
You lost your cell phone? 
Yeah, I don't know where it is. 
Isn't that why you have three? 
I don't know where they are. 
All... 
You lost all your cell phones? 
All my cell phones. 
They're just vanished. 
Even the black one? 
That... 
You know, we shouldn't be talking about this on the air. 
Yep. 
Okay. 
That one, too. 
We have some talking to do afterwards, then. 
Rebel, anything else? 
Okay, I'm back on the wired headphone now. 
I was talking the whole time. 
Uh-huh. 
Okay. 
Yeah, let's wrap this up, even though it really didn't get off the ground. 
Okay. 
Well, let's see. 
Let everybody... 
Let me know in the chat how the quality is, because if it's not good, then it's the... 
It's your thing. 
It sounds like you're far away and a little muffled, if I have to be honest. 
How is that? 
Now you sound closer, scarily so, but definitely clear. 
Okay. 
Now how do I sound? 
Because I'm now... 
The microphone's down. 
Well, whatever you're doing now is making Kyle laugh uncontrollably, so I don't know if that's the effect you're going for. 
Gila, go ahead. 
What do you have to say about this? 
Uh, Rebel, um, I... 
The chat kind of turned on you a few minutes ago, so I don't know if anybody's going to be, uh, commenting on the headset differences, but have you considered becoming an eye doctor just to be able to go, is this better, is this better, is this better, is this better? 
Hold on. 
Let me, let me wait. 
Okay, no, hold on. 
Yeah, you see, this is what happens. 
He puts us on hold, and we fall for it every time. 
The Bluetooth headset. 
Okay, now I'm talking into the microphone. 
What, what are we even for? 
I don't, I don't understand any of this. 
I don't know what's going on. 
Um, yeah, I wish we had two lines, because we could just, you know, see who else is calling. 
We only have one line. 
You know, like, mix it, like a nice bed. 
Like, okay. 
We'll just see that somebody else is trying to get through. 
I'm sorry, Rebel, uh, you're, you're, what, go ahead. 
What about people in the chat? 
Well, people in the chat say that this Bluetooth headphone is not good, and I'm trying to say that it is not the Bluetooth headset that's, that's the problem. 
It's whatever you're calling into. 
So it's us. 
You're saying, you're saying it's us. 
We're the problem. 
Yeah. 
But you figured it out. 
We talked last, move on. 
Well, we talked last week about compression. 
I know that, yeah, that I, uh, last week we said that me talking on my cell phone, just without any headphones or headsets, you know, connected, it sounds better. 
I don't know why, but, uh, it's just, you know, maybe, you know, this is like one of those ham radio conversations where the people spend 45 minutes talking about their equipment and never get past that and never actually have a conversation. 
I'm going to be going to, I'm going to be going to also never hear each other, take ham radio classes and, you know, maybe I'll take the test for ham radio. 
That would be something to see. 
That would be something rebel. 
It's been great as always. 
Thank you for calling. 
Please continue your, your tests and whatever it is you're doing. 
It's good practice. 
Yes. 
Good practice. 
And, uh, we must move on and, and give somebody else a chance. 
Maybe the person who was aggressively calling us before, uh, eight zero two three, two one four two two five. 
That was, that was pretty enlightening, you know, even a little entertaining at times, but I feel, I feel kind of worn out. 
I don't want to be blamed. 
You know, we're here. 
Calls are there. 
The people listening, presumably, uh, now and in the future are, are also there. 
And, um, yeah, there's more things we can do, but, uh, we don't have the cables ready and it takes testing like he, uh, insinuated and yeah, I don't know. 
Speak clearly. 
Yes. 
It's set to a certain, you know, degree, but it's not great. 
We're doing the best we can. 
We'll try to do better. 
We'll see what, uh, we'll try it. 
We'll just try different phones. 
You pick up that phone. 
Yeah. 
I'm about to. 
Yeah. 
I made my point. 
All right. 
Good. 
Did you pick up the phone? 
Presumably. 
Yeah. 
Well, you didn't say anything, so I wasn't sure if you picked it up or not. 
Yeah. 
I said, okay, well, I didn't say necessarily. 
All right. 
Misunderstanding. 
Good evening. 
You're on off the hook. 
Over time. 
Go ahead. 
I'm the guy that called you in the beginning. 
Uh, the guy that, oh, you're the guy that called us in the beginning. 
You're, you're, you're the guy with the dog in Queens, right? 
Right. 
And I got a vote to pick with you guys. 
Uh-oh. 
Well, it's not my fault. 
He is honest. 
You guys are still going to talk to me. 
Okay. 
Hey, you talk about, uh, you, you think it's okay to block, uh, Twitter, but no, you got no problem in having all kinds, you know, back in the good old days with the phone company said, oh, they shouldn't be telling people what to do. 
That's the first thing. 
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. 
Who shouldn't be telling who, what not to do? 
Listen, when we were all hackers, we all believed in freedom. 
We believed that big companies or governments shouldn't control what we do with telephones. 
Yeah, we still believe that. 
And Twitter's a big company. 
Right. 
But hold on a second. 
Should we stop blocking companies? 
If they, if you don't like what Twitter is doing, you don't have to go there. 
If you don't like what someone's saying, it's just like with BAI. 
I'm not a big fan of BAI. 
I think they're too far left, but they got a right to be on the air. 
But if you had certain people in government would say, wait a minute, BAI is, it's a catch. 
Yes, but you know what, what BAI is a radio station. 
We follow FCC rules. 
If we stop following FCC rules, we wouldn't be on the air. 
And what, what Elon Musk wants to do is not follow Brazilian rules, whether he agrees with them or not. 
You're operating in another country. 
You have to follow the rules of the other country. 
But the internet is worldwide. 
Are you starting to say that companies, governments should stop blocking it, blocking communication? 
Look, the bank account in Brazil is not worldwide. 
It's a Brazilian business. 
So the Brazilian business has to follow Brazilian rules, period. 
And what Elon Musk is doing is pretty reprehensible as far as, as, as encouraging hate speech and not doing anything responsible that other social media companies are doing. 
Listen, I can listen to BAI. 
One man's hate speech may be one man's agreeable. 
I listen to BAI and I don't like what they say about Israel. 
I don't like what they say. 
Oh, you know, where they say Israel's so wrong. 
That's hate speech. 
But that's... 
I don't know if that's hate speech or just a different opinion. 
It depends on how it's, how it's presented. 
What I'm, what I'm referring to is something very definitely hate speech saying you should burn a hotel down with people in it. 
That's hate speech. 
Okay. 
That I don't, that I don't, that I disagree, that I totally disagree. 
You're right about that. 
If I say burn down a building, that's wrong. 
But I hear stuff on BA that come very close to saying, hey, anti, you know, antithetamism against Jews. 
I'd have a hard time pronouncing the word. 
But my bottom line is this. 
I don't know if you know this, but there's a rumor around that, you know, Musk is going to put up some satellites and fly them over that country and give Wi-Fi. 
He's already doing that. 
He's already doing that. 
And they're taking action against SpaceX, or I'm sorry, Starlink, for not complying with the rules of blocking access to Twitter. 
And I think they've yielded to that. 
I think finally... 
Because basically it's free. 
Basically, what he's probably going to do is say, okay, I'll provide free. 
I'll provide free internet. 
And you guys are right. 
What are you going to do? 
Start finding people? 
Look, he's already complied. 
He's already complied with similar orders from India and from Turkey. 
Why? 
Why would he comply with that and not Brazil? 
The reason is Brazil is leftist right now, and those countries are right wing. 
So that's really what this is about. 
I want to let Rob say something here, because I've got his hand up. 
Go ahead, Rob. 
Yeah, I'm starting to think of this like, you know, if you, in this country, you know, you're allowed to get a driver's license, learn to drive, and if you demonstrate your ability, you'll get your license and you're allowed to drive. 
But if you're out there driving and you're doing it dangerously, and you're doing it in a way that is a public hazard, they will, you know, punish you. 
And among the things they will do is take away your license, and you're no longer allowed to do that thing. 
And if Elon's company is out there in Brazil doing the local equivalent of being a public hazard, in this case, very much connected to real world things that happened and hurt people, yeah, he was getting penalized for that. 
And he just decided, nope. 
And he is, the company is suffering as a consequence. 
Maybe this is not the right example, but I want to get this out before you guys, you know, hang up on me. 
Let's go back to the 60s and the 70s, when countries were jammed on short waves. 
We, you know, where Russia would jam Voice of America, and we would jam Moscow, and we would not allow people to say things. 
You can't use the word of a car. 
This is freedom of speech. 
What I'm saying to you is my opinion. 
Should the government come in and say, what I'm saying is not truthful? 
It's just someone's opinion. 
Yeah, you're expressing an opinion. 
What you're doing is completely legitimate. 
That's not what we're talking about. 
We're talking about hate speech. 
We're talking about calls to violence and things like that, that Elon Musk refuses to police. 
What's happening now? 
Okay. 
Should, do you think it's hate speech? 
Would you have a bunch of people saying what's happening in Israel and painting stuff on buildings and stuff? 
Is that wrong or right? 
I mean, it's all in our eye of the beholder. 
Of course, I agree that we shouldn't have hate speech, but I think you've got to, you know, people have freedoms. 
Also, should we, should we have people monitoring phone calls? 
Telegram or any of that other stuff is like a monitoring of communications. 
The phone company needed to get a warrant to listen on calls, okay? 
Right. 
What I say to you, if we're speaking privately, that's our business. 
I don't believe in Big Brother. 
Look at what's happening now with Big Brother, with things like Tesla, where cars are spying on people. 
You know, the cars now, you know, because they have video connections, they can take pictures. 
Do you believe in a state, you know, in a state government where Big Brother monitors every movement? 
You should read 1984. 
I have read it on a number of occasions, but it's kind of strange to me that Elon Musk's company would be the one you're citing as spying on people. 
If he has such a pure view of what free speech and privacy is all about, he wouldn't be tolerating that, would he? 
Well, listen, do I agree with everything he does? 
No, but I think there should be, I think there should be free speech. 
Do I think we have a right? 
Listen, you guys may not like it. 
I'm a Trump supporter, okay? 
Do I think it's right to take Trump off? 
No. 
Do I think it's right for other companies to take off the left side? 
No, I think both sides have a right to say what they want to say, and it's up to the individual. 
Yes. 
If I go on and say, go down to XYZ store and burn that store down, then that would be wrong. 
Okay, and that's what we're talking about. 
We're talking about that. 
That is the kind of thing that the Brazilian court is upset about, that he is basically allowing hate speech against people there, against opposition and current politicians, and has no accountability, has no responsibility. 
That's not right. 
You have to take responsibility for things that are going on on your platform. 
You believe in the First Amendment? 
Yeah, I think I do. 
Well, the First Amendment says almost all speech. 
Yes, you can't yell fire in a movie theater, but you could say a lot of stuff. 
But I don't see, yes, that what happened in England is one thing, but if I go on and start talking about, I don't like policies or I don't like immigration, they can say that's hate speech. 
Well, that's a stretch. 
That's a big stretch. 
That's not what we're talking about. 
And also, the other thing you have to consider, the First Amendment does not apply in other countries. 
It's only in the United States. 
So other countries have different rules. 
But you've got other countries now trying to come and arrest people in the United States. 
I don't know if you know this. 
But in England, they can ask the U.S. 
to send someone over to their country, what the word is, if you violate their laws. 
Yeah, and we've been doing that forever. 
Julian Assange, remember? 
That was a whole big thing. 
And many, many times that happens. 
And guess what? 
I thought Julian Assange did the right thing. 
Okay, some people would say no. 
Some people would say, hey, he has to be arrested. 
I think what he did was okay in some ways. 
Just like the Pentagon Papers. 
You know? 
You know, some people would say that's against the government. 
And, you know, sometimes you need to break the glass to change things in this world. 
And by the way, if you start putting up firewalls and think, oh, your Internet can't come here, then the Internet is no longer free and it breaks down. 
The Internet was designed so that you couldn't stop communications. 
It was designed for multi-path communications. 
You know, it was designed as a web that if you cut off one leg or one arm, it would find a way around. 
It is true that you've got to have the ability to speak so that people can be aware of what discourse is out there. 
Otherwise, if it is suppressed and underground, it manifests and surfaces in often violent ways. 
So, yeah, you have to understand what people are feeling and what people are saying. 
But the government cannot always just be cleaning up, okay, the side effects of that. 
And by coming up with standards and working on this with private industry so that it doesn't erupt in unrest and or attacks on individuals or vulnerable people, then, you know, which is not the case. 
There's resistance, and it is being shrouded in this idea of speech, which is allowed, but it is not allowed to the effect of everyone who is, you know, the target of it. 
So, who should be the moderator? 
Because governments usually overstep their powers, and usually governments become dictators. 
Governments become very vindictive. 
You give a little power, they take a lot of power. 
I'll make just one comment about January 6th. 
I think that January 6th was set up by the FBI and other governments. 
I think that some of those people that caused some of that problem weren't there for Trump. 
They were there to do this because, you know, they were voting at that moment. 
They were voting on should they, you know, certify the election. 
Why stop it? 
If I was Trump, there's no reason I would have let it go on. 
But to have a right at that time, that hurt Trump more than helping him. 
Well, yeah, not now he knows that, but, yeah, it was the law that was being followed. 
The election was being certified. 
It wasn't a decision whether or not to follow the law. 
There was only one way that could go. 
Right, but I'll also say another thing. 
If you want to talk about conspiracies, I think that Trump set up his own shooting because... 
I don't think even Trump believes that, but all right. 
Because I'm going to tell you something. 
A bullet comes that close, you're going to be able to do it that carefully. 
I don't even know if that was the blood of a bullet. 
Because my air doctor said to me, he saw that, and he said, you get a bullet that close, even if it didn't hit you, you've got to cause damage to the air. 
I've got to say, I agree with you on this, because I was asking the question, well, couldn't that have been, you know, they said like a teleprompter shattered nearby. 
Could it have been something from that? 
And Trump's reaction to people who were suggesting that was really anger. 
You know, like, how dare you suggest that I wasn't hit by a bullet? 
He really wants that narrative to be out there. 
But again, you know, being hit by a bullet that close, it just feels like it might cause a lot more damage than that. 
That kind of seems like shrapnel or something. 
I was talking to my air doctor, and he said to me, hey, as a doctor, I don't believe it, there's something to it. 
So why would he, you know, why would the Secret Service help us do it? 
They want to see Joe Biden and, you know, Joe Harris. 
But how about the person, how about the person that died? 
How about the person that, there's a person who died as a result of this, and there's also the shooter who died. 
You think they went to all that trouble? 
Well, I will tell you this much, just like what happened to Kennedy, I don't trust this government. 
Well, I don't trust any government. 
I don't think anybody should trust any government, but there are degrees to how much you distrust. 
Well, I believe that Kennedy was assassinated by her own government. 
I don't know who would have gained by this, by the setup. 
I can't figure this out. 
You know, who would have gained by this? 
I can't figure this one out. 
Well, I can tell you this. 
Trump definitely tried to gain from that as much as possible at the RNC, you know, with that very, very clean and square bandage that he wore the whole week and then removed on Friday. 
He gave it his best shot. 
Oh, no pun intended. 
But I don't know. 
Just because I like, just because I'm going to vote for it doesn't need any of the perfect judgment. 
I'm just telling you that it's so hard to believe the media. 
Do you believe Fox or do you believe CNN? 
I mean, you know, Fox is all the way to one side. 
You know, who's giving it a straight media? 
Again, I don't believe either of them, that there are degrees to which I don't believe them. 
So I'll leave it at that. 
Closing thought here because we have to move on. 
I don't like the Soviet Union, but now we want to close down our radio, our tape, you know. 
You know, we're going to get to censorship. 
You know, be careful what we ask for. 
That's all I can say. 
Hey, guys, I might be there Friday, but I had to say what I had to say. 
Okay, well, I'm glad you did. 
I'm glad you did. 
Don't let anybody keep you from saying what's on your mind. 
That's important. 
I hope you guys don't think I said personally. 
Not at all. 
Not at all. 
I like arguing. 
I really do. 
All right. 
Say hi to your dog for us, and maybe we'll see you on Friday. 
It's nice to be heard you. 
Okay. 
All right. 
Bye-bye. 
Bye-bye. 
That dog's not voting for Trump. 
I'll tell you that right now. 
I have it on good authority. 
The dog is not going to vote for Trump. 
I mean, do I really have to prove why? 
Ah, 802-321-4225. 
Thanks, guys, for all the backing up there as I was defending democracy on my own. 
Okay. 
I don't think we could really get a word in edgewise there. 
It was pretty intense. 
Alex, you're a lawyer. 
It's your job to get a word in edgewise. 
Yes. 
That's right. 
Yeah. 
With the delay and all that. 
What delay? 
Well, the delay between me trying to talk and then going and moving the mouse and hitting the mute button to turn it off. 
I think it was that involved to simply speak, but okay. 
That's so nice. 
We have another phone call. 
So nice. 
They were rolling in tonight. 
We have a call. 
Yeah. 
All right. 
This is what happens when we bring up interesting topics. 
Good evening. 
You're on off the hook over time. 
Go ahead. 
Oh, hi. 
First of all, I want to commend you on an excellent program, the one on BAI. 
Thank you. 
You really framed the issue. 
And, you know, I don't say that lightly. 
Sometimes I'm critical of you. 
I think part of it may be that you didn't do any pitching, but you really stayed on topic, and it was an amazing, good conversation. 
Now, relating to the last phone call, last night I was having a conversation, I'm not being ageist, with a little older friend. 
You and I, Emmanuel, are the same age. 
Don't ask me how I know this, but I know that. 
And, you know, it's interesting that this guy with the dog, I mean, your name is Emmanuel Goldstein, and he asked you if you read 1984. 
Obviously, he either doesn't listen, or he doesn't put two and two together. 
And, you know, with relation to my friend, people of a certain age who were adults in the 70s, in the 60s and 70s, have certain convictions referring to freedom of speech, and they sincerely don't understand that the situation now is different. 
It's not a matter of saying whatever you have on the top of your, off the top of your head. 
Twitter and other social, anti-social, as I like to call them, networks, allow people to scream fire in a crowded theater, the equivalent. 
And these people, you know, the guy you called, and my friend, and many others, don't understand the difference between just being able to have a discussion and having businesses that thrive on divisions, on hate, and just make money, because people are arguing constantly, and the consequences are there. 
As you say, in England, it's very visible. 
We have an equivalent here, too. 
You know, January 6th was largely the result of online activity. 
Then, of course, Trump incited the riot, and that's why he's on the hook. 
And I predicted this. 
The moment he got into the White House, I said, this is going to be the first ex-president who will go to jail. 
And they have to put him in jail, simply because the system has to defend itself. 
It has to show that this cannot be done without consequences. 
Because otherwise, you know, the next guy, who certainly is not going to be, you know, once Harris, hopefully she gets in, when her term or terms will be out, she will go. 
But there may be someone else, if Trump is not punished, as he should be. 
I mean, in my view, he's responsible of high treason and should be hung. 
But that's a different story. 
Let's just stick to the charges that are on the book right now. 
He has to go to jail. 
It's as simple as that. 
The charges are substantiated. 
There will be a trial. 
And he will go to the slammer. 
The system has to defend itself. 
Well, the system right now is not as pure as we'd like it to be. 
He definitely has some cards up his sleeve. 
And we'll see. 
We'll see what happens. 
Hopefully the system maintains its integrity or gets more integrity. 
But thanks for your thoughts. 
My pleasure. 
Thank you. 
Keep up the good work. 
All right. 
Take care. 
I fear we might have veered into some specific topics that really aren't that relevant to the show itself. 
But when you talk about free speech, I guess people feel compelled to bring up free speech. 
And that's fine. 
That's fine. 
Well, I think there's a lot of intertwined topics. 
Because the value of where we're getting other speech is being sort of put into question. 
And it's also heightened at a time of real political inquiry when there's a lot of things culminating and centered around the next couple months and next year. 
And the people will be put to, you know, asked the big question. 
They will be, you know, the appeal of the United States government will be to its people about what leadership direction is appropriate. 
And that's itself really a whole mess of other topics for people originating here in the United States. 
And it even encompasses people from around the world that may be listening or chatting or following along at a later date. 
So, yeah, I can see why. 
It's not surprising that it is moving around like this. 
And people are really passionate and rightfully, because a lot of the things that we understand, the ways we understand them, have to be passed along in some ways, even questioning the government. 
And I think there's some of that in the conversation, too, and trust of certain entities and how they work. 
But, you know, hey, what's it all for, though? 
Are you questioning the idea of government and in the ways we are self-government? 
I mean, I'm answering this call. 
Hopefully, questioning everything. 
Yes, that's what it's all about. 
Very, very fascinating, but varied. 
In a respectful manner. 
And, you know, I really hope this contentiousness ends at some point and that maybe, you know, after a couple of months, we can actually start working together again. 
That would be nice. 
We'll see. 
We'll see. 
Okay. 
I was going to give out the phone. 
The phone has already rung. 
And we already have a phone call. 
Good evening. 
You're on Off the Cover Time. 
Oh, for God's sake. 
Yeah, my name is Ryan, and I just wanted to make a comment about the gentleman who called earlier, the Trump supporter. 
Uh-huh. 
I don't know what his name was. 
But he was talking about the free speech thing. 
And one of the problems with Americans, to me, Americans have this ego. 
They think however things work in this country, that's the way it ought to work in other people's country. 
Like, you can't impose, if you, whatever Elon Musk does here, you can't impose that on Brazil or anywhere else. 
Right. 
They have their own laws. 
They have their own thing. 
So, you know, a lot of Americans just think that whatever works here, then they should be free speech everywhere. 
No, because this is, everybody's an individual country, and they run it the way they see fit. 
But, you know, and the other thing, he mentioned that Americans have, now they have this thing where other countries can, I guess. 
Extradite. 
I guess, I guess extradite, exactly. 
Extradite U.S. 
Americans. 
Well, Americans have been doing that forever. 
You know how many people in America have extradited from European countries? 
They've been doing that forever. 
I mean, these countries rarely, almost never actually extradite people from the U.S. 
I mean, the U.S. 
is the one that always does that. 
If you look at the ratio, most of these extraditions in the U.S. 
are doing it. 
Yeah, it's just feigned indignation. 
Yes, feigned indignation about how it's happening to us. 
My God, they're taking our citizens when we've been doing it forever. 
It's like the world court, you know. 
We have to hold dictators and people who violate the law accountable no matter where they are, unless they're in the United States, and then we'll send the military to defend them no matter who they are. 
It's hypocrisy. 
Yeah, but mileage varies with some of that. 
Oh, yeah. 
On every case. 
Yeah, the comparisons, I don't know. 
Go ahead, Colin. 
Anyway, no, actually, I just want to respond to that guy. 
You know, he seemed he had a lot of stuff on his mind, and he was just, you know, and I just found him interested, you know. 
He was making a lot of points that I thought were interesting, but. 
Well, I'm glad he got to make his points. 
I mean, the important thing is that, you know, you're able to make an argument and back it up. 
Yeah, yeah, yeah. 
And I'm glad you, you know, you spoke to him and you had a good conversation. 
It was an interesting conversation, honestly. 
It was a fun conversation. 
Well, I'm glad you liked it, and hopefully we have more conversations like that. 
All right, thanks. 
That's all I wanted to say. 
All right. 
Thanks for your call. 
Take care. 
8-0-2-3-2-1-4-2-2-2-5. 
8-0-2-3-2-1. 
Hack is our telephone number if you want to get in on the conversation that's happening now. 
You know, speaking while we're waiting for a call, speaking on what you mentioned about, like, in a few months, can we all get back to, you know, maybe working together again on things? 
I am just, whatever side of the aisle you're on, whoever you're voting for, I wonder how many others out there feel like I do, where I will just be so glad after the election's over. 
I'm very frightened about one particular possible outcome of it, but I will be very relieved when we don't have to talk about this election anymore. 
Yeah, I said that last time, too. 
I did. 
It didn't quite pan out that way. 
Gila, go ahead. 
Don't forget about midterms. 
That's what I was going to say, Kyle. 
There's never a time when we're not in the middle of a campaign. 
It's nonstop now, and I think that it might behoove us as a nation to reconfigure how some things are set up. 
And one of our listeners in Denmark just said, I hope you have a safe election. 
And yeah. 
I think this life cycle might be instructive for quicker elections in the future, because that's come up. 
I mean, as we pointed out, this is a much shorter... 
Considering one of the candidates was only announced, what, a month ago? 
Maybe that's how we do it in the future. 
Maybe we just start, you know, the year of the election and not announce anything until June. 
There's a phone call. 
There's a phone call. 
All right. 
Good evening. 
You're on off the govertime. 
Go ahead. 
Hello, Governor. 
Is this Zap from England? 
Yes, it is. 
Well, it's been a long time since we heard your voice. 
Yeah, and nobody's died, so I don't have any bad news. 
You always call us when someone dies, so that's good to hear that. 
Well, nobody we know died, but I'm sure people are dying all the time. 
But how's everything else? 
Yeah, I kept hearing you mentioning England and the recent riots, so I thought I'd phone in as a reporter from the UK. 
Okay. 
Tell us the real story. 
Well, what you said is more or less what happened. 
There was misinformation on Twitter being spread around, and all the bigots jumped on it, and basically decided to go looting, is really what they were doing, and destroying things. 
But no, in this country, we don't have a freedom of speech. 
We think we do, but we don't. 
So we have to be very careful what we say and what we say online now, because people that have been tweeting naughty things are being arrested, going to court, and going to jail. 
Yeah, I mean, they're already in jail. 
It's incredibly fast how the system over there works. 
But what do you think about that? 
Do you think that's being handled in the right way? 
I think some of the sentences that are being handed out are a bit extreme. 
I mean, some people are going down to prison for five years for what they wrote on Twitter. 
I don't agree with what they wrote on Twitter, but I don't think they should be getting five years. 
Yeah. 
Yeah, it's turning out to be a bit costly. 
Yeah, I mean, I don't know what they said. 
I don't want to repeat what they said, but undoubtedly it was something horrible, something having to do with violence or hate mongering or things like that. 
But there needs to be some kind of price to pay for calling for horrible things like that that can happen and oftentimes do happen. 
But maybe what you're saying is maybe it is a bit extreme. 
That could be part of the emotion behind it and maybe it'll be reduced in the future. 
But I think it sends a message that, OK, you do this kind of crap and we're going to come down hard on you and maybe people won't do that kind of crap. 
Yeah, I mean, I think they were trying to stop the civil unrest and that's what they were really trying to stamp out. 
But the only way they could really do this is to go after the people that were posting on Twitter, Facebook and other social medias are available and send out a clear message. 
Now, the other thing is we've just got a new government in power. 
We've got the Labour Party back in. 
And so they need to start doing things. 
And I think they were trying to be very proactive and to show that we mean business. 
And do you think a conservative government would not have done that? 
I'm not too sure, really. 
They may have done. 
We had some riots. 
I think it was in 2012 was the last time there was some major riots in the land. 
So this is the only time there's been a little bit of major civil unrest. 
And everything's been going downhill since Brexit. 
And that was since 2016. 
So things are always a bit dodgy now. 
I hate to say we told you so, but this time people in America did say that's going to be downhill if Brexit goes through. 
It's so sad. 
It's kind of built in, too, for this attitude of being ready to go for something, you know, whatever, like we talked about, a racist backlash or whatever it is, that people want to have it out like this. 
Yeah. 
And all the riots in the past, usually they were tied to some kind of policy, some kind of change, something they were upset at the government about. 
But this, this was particularly scary because it was, you know, tied to specific people, you know. 
And if you want a flashback to how the Holocaust began, things like this, where people took to the streets and targeted other people that weren't like them and started burning things. 
And you, you got to step in and stop that because it'll mushroom out of control faster than you can believe. 
Yeah. 
I do have to disagree on you. 
I think the last time I remember riots is 2010, and that's where the police shot a young black guy and a few people were up in arms. 
So they started rioting in the local area. 
It was in the summer holidays. 
There's all the kids not going to school because they're on holiday and they just use it as an excuse to go looting. 
A time before that, I remember it was in the 80s and that was on the minority groups from black people. 
And that was the Brixton riots. 
Right. 
Those are the only riots I really remember in my life. 
And I've been around quite a while now. 
We got some good special songs out of those riots. 
I remember that, you know, Ghost Town. 
But the thing is, yeah, those were civil unrest just in general against police brutality or against economic problems or things like this. 
This one, though, it was, you know, these people are evil. 
These people are bad. 
When, first of all, it was a complete lie. 
Even if somebody from that community had been the perpetrator, which they weren't, it's just a really scary thing to see that happening, to see a group of people being targeted by another group of people. 
And for people to think, oh, it's just free speech to, you know, say, go get them and let's do this to them. 
You know, they would be in, you know, in Germany in the early 40s or late 30s, they would be saying, yeah, it's just free speech. 
What could happen? 
Give me a break. 
Yeah, we all learn everything from history, hopefully. 
We know what happened in the 1940s, the Second World War. 
But, yeah, England is basically on a tipping point now. 
They're not very happy about the foreigners, shall we say, which is scary, considering my background. 
But, yeah, after Brexit, everything is really going downhill. 
I don't know how we can recover that. 
Hopefully, the new government will do something to improve people's lives. 
Unfortunately, that's not working out because they're taking away money from the old people in winter. 
They're taking away the fuel bill stuff. 
So, early days are not looking good. 
Well, that's unsettling. 
But hang in there. 
It's just beginning. 
You know, the new government has just taken power. 
So, hopefully, they get it right and don't screw things up. 
I mean, come on. 
What they were left with, it's kind of hard not to improve on that. 
So, I hope they find their way. 
That's true. 
Yeah. 
The thing is, you know, what you say about not liking the foreigners, we have the same thing here in this country. 
The thing is, what we can point to is we're all foreigners. 
Unless, you know, we're indigenous, we came from someplace else. 
We all came from someplace else. 
In England, you don't really have that. 
You have people that have been there literally for centuries. 
Not the people, but the families. 
And so, you have this entitlement that can lead to real animosity and hatred and ignorance and all that kind of thing. 
So, it's a tougher battle. 
It really is. 
And this is one of those things where I feel fortunate to be here because, you know, we've got a lot of evidence to say this particular viewpoint is completely wrong and against what the country stands for. 
It's a little harder in England's case, I think. 
Now, this is a first. 
This is the second time I'm going to have to disagree with you. 
In the same phone call. 
Yeah. 
And we'll have to go back in the recording to find out the first one. 
But the second one's going to be that people forget, in the history of Great Britain, Britain has been invaded by everybody. 
The Vikings, the Normans, who else? 
The Romans. 
So, there's been a mix of British blood. 
There isn't anything that's really considered British. 
I mean, the Scots, they've got a different story. 
Same with the Irish. 
But Britain has been invaded and the blood has been mixed so many times. 
They're not really like an English man, if you know. 
A typical, I could say I'm a strong, proud English man, you know. 
Because they've been invaded left, right, and center. 
And the only reason I know this is because my immigrant father pointed it out to me to say that the English don't really exist because they've been invaded left, right, and center. 
So, the blood's mixed all over anyway. 
So, who's the proper English man? 
Okay. 
I stand correct. 
When is the last time England was legit invaded? 
Oh, I'm not very good on the history. 
I would say it must have been around about the Norman times. 
The Normans coming in with the Anglo-Saxons. 
How am I going to know that? 
When was that? 
What year? 
William the Conqueror. 
William the Conqueror? 
Yeah. 
1066. 
1066? 
You still have us beat. 
We've only been here a couple of hundred years. 
At most. 
400-ish. 
Yeah, I know. 
But most people have, you know, their families immigrated in the last century. 
So, yeah. 
Okay. 
I think we're both saying the same thing here. 
It's just that there's so much more history in England. 
Yeah. 
Well, it's your fault for throwing us out on 1775 or whenever it was. 
Yeah, to think six. 
Yeah, what might have been. 
Well, yeah, I guess it was five. 
Well, yeah, they had to prepare paperwork for it. 
Anyway, Zap, I'd love to have this conversation forever. 
And you know what? 
We have to head over there and have more of these conversations because it is good to talk. 
Yeah, I'm glad when you were at Descon, you were talking to some lady from the Manchester 2600? 
That's right. 
We met one of the Manchester 2600 people. 
And boy, amazing people you have over there. 
You made a day. 
And the other thing I'd like to say is I know there's meetings on Friday. 
There's a bit of a problem with the boom of 2600 because they're celebrating their new two-year anniversary from version two of the meeting. 
And they're not doing a proper meeting. 
They're going to a restaurant or something. 
So, it might be a bit dodgy. 
Okay. 
Twitter for updates. 
As long as they pay the fine, we can forget about it. 
I'll tell them off. 
I will tell them. 
And, yeah, if you're coming to England, don't come to London. 
But London is where all the planes go. 
No, because you want to come and see us in the London 2600, go see the other 2600. 
They haven't seen you yet. 
We've seen you, like, twice. 
Yeah, that's true. 
I do get kind of tiring. 
I know that. 
Okay. 
So, tell us. 
I like to share. 
For the sake of listeners who are still with us, how many 2600 meetings are there in the UK? 
I don't know about the UK, but I know there's four in England. 
I think there's one in Scotland, and there's two in Ireland, one on the English side, one on the Irish side that I'm aware of. 
Well, since you're in England, tell us about the four in England. 
There's Bournemouth, Cheltenham, London, and Manchester so far. 
Okay. 
I don't know the first two. 
I really don't. 
I don't even know where they are in the country. 
Cheltenham's a little bit up north. 
Manchester's further up north. 
You've been to Manchester before. 
That one I know. 
I'm trying to think, and Bournemouth is down southwest. 
Okay. 
All right. 
All a good bunch of people. 
All inspired by London and basically me, I think. 
Well, you have been responsible for a lot of hacker activity. 
Shenanigans. 
Yeah, shenanigans. 
I'm a bad influence. 
Just ask them. 
Anyway, I'll go and let somebody else phone. 
I don't know if they're going to get time to get another phone call, and it would be nice. 
It's been an interesting night. 
It has been, but exhausting. 
I think we're done for tonight, but we'll hopefully talk to you again. 
Yeah, I'll phone you in. 
Yeah. 
I'll phone soon, but I don't like to phone too regular, not like Rebel. 
But I phone now and again. 
So if you mention England, and I've got a viewpoint on it, I'll phone in. 
We'll have to mention England more often then. 
Or, I don't know, maybe somebody else dies, and I'll phone in again. 
Or that. 
Or that. 
All right, Zap. 
Great hearing from you. 
Hopefully not for a while. 
All right. 
Take care, everybody. 
Thanks. 
Bye. 
All right. 
Bye. 
All right. 
I think that's going to do it for us tonight, because I think we're all exhausted, right? 
Yeah. 
Yeah. 
Physically, no. 
Okay, fine. 
Kyle, you can go on. 
I'm going to walk out and have a drink. 
I mean, I don't know about you. 
I've been exercising heavily this entire show, so I've got to cool down. 
We thought you were frozen on the screen a couple of times, but you just weren't moving for long periods of time. 
But yes, I think we all need to get up and move around a little bit and maybe do something else for a while. 
Well, but the same thing goes for our listeners, too. 
Please get out there and have adventures and things like that. 
Write to us, OTH at 2600.com. 
That's our email address. 
Any final thoughts from anybody? 
Yeah. 
Local 2600 meeting. 
Check out nyc2600.net. 
Follow us on Mastodon, off the hook at hackers.town. 
And be cool. 
Okay. 
Alex, go ahead. 
Oh, nothing really for me. 
Just good night, everybody. 
See you all next week on the auspicious September 11th show. 
Yeah, what are we going to do for September 11th? 
You know, the original September 11th, we were supposed to be on the air. 
That was on a Tuesday, actually. 
I remember that. 
I remember. 
Well, you weren't there, though, right? 
I wasn't. 
I don't think I was doing this show with you, but I was in touch with you that day. 
I think I was going to come into the city and meet you. 
And I actually came to the city. 
I actually drove. 
I couldn't get further than Queens, just east of Flushing. 
And I had to take a free bus onto a train and take that into the city and kind of make my way downtown, only to find out the station was off the air. 
Yeah. 
I also remember being, I mean, we can talk all about this next week, too, but I remember being in the city the very week after and being downtown and running into, I remember it was Dave Blumenstein who had just told us that he lost like 20-something friends in the tower. 
Yeah. 
The week before it was, you know, crazy. 
Maybe next week we can do some recollection of all this because, and certainly people can listen to our September 18th, 2020, 2001 show, where we talk about a lot of what had just happened the previous week. 
But how many years is it now? 
23 years? 
Boy, I can't believe as much time has passed. 
It's weird. 
It's weird remembering it and it becoming sort of a mute time to talk about what actually occurred in the run-up and then after. 
And so it becomes very somber. 
We hear the names read. 
And the only other time it's like really thought about outside of reflection and all of this kind of grieving is when it comes up as a conspiracy. 
But it really did influence a lot of even, I'd say, the migration and stuff that happened after conflict. 
And, I'd say, reaction over the next, you know, preceding decades that have brought us to this moment. 
And I think that's really hard for people that survived it, that were not directly touched by it as far as loss. 
We've lost a lot of other things in the process, I guess. 
We certainly have. 
And a lot of it can be traced back to that as well. 
So, well, I guess we'll have stuff to talk about next week as well, which probably will result in many phone calls. 
Okay, folks, have a good night. 
Good seeing everybody. 
Thank everybody for listening. 
And be well. 
Bye.