Your call cannot be completed as dialed.
Please check the number and dial again.
I am two.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a cough.
It couldn't get much worse, but if they could, they would.
Bum Diddly Bum, for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood.
Bum Diddly Bum!
Bum Diddly Bum
Bum Diddly Bum
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.
Hello.
Rob T. Firefly.
Good evening.
And I forgot to mention where you are.
You're in Signal Land.
I am.
Coming to us with the magic of signal.
And we also have Gila.
Hello.
And we have Alex.
You do.
And it's Thursday here in Blighty.
Good morning.
Say what now?
It's Thursday here in Blighty.
Are you okay?
Did you hit your head or something?
What are you talking about?
Blighty.
What is that?
You don't know what Blighty is?
B-L-I-G-H-T-1.
No, I'm kidding around.
Of course I know what Blighty is, whatever you're saying.
Yeah, I'm just making...
No, I have no idea what you're talking about, Alex.
Blighty.
Blighty is an affectionate term for England.
So it's England.
I'm in London.
Okay.
Why couldn't you just say that?
Well, I could have, but it would have been not nearly as much fun to see you confused like this.
Okay.
Well, that was a minute of the show gone.
Okay.
We have all kinds of things to talk about tonight.
Wow.
All right.
So different world this week than last week.
How do you all feel?
Can everybody make it to this crazyville okay?
Sure.
Super.
All right.
Alex, there's that weird noise again.
You hear that?
I don't know.
It's like someone's frying eggs.
Hey, Rob, can you cut your audio?
All right.
I will mute now.
Oh, okay.
It went away right before you said that.
So, but I do think it's you.
I think it's coming from you somehow, and it's getting worse.
I'm sorry, Alex.
You were saying something.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Other than the fried eggs here, it was strange.
Let's not keep talking about it, please.
I'll try not to mention the fried eggs anymore for the rest of the show.
Yet, we're still talking about it.
Can you please say what you wanted to say?
Okay.
Anyhow.
No, I have had a lot of issues for this.
So, one of the reasons why I'm here in London is because on Saturday, I'm supposed to go
to Mumbai for the ICANN meeting.
ICANN, of course, being the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which is the
not-for-profit.
Alex, my advice is for you to say to ICANN, I can't.
Because, seriously, flying over there at this time, I think, would not be—everybody's
firing missiles at everybody.
It's insane.
It gets worse.
It gets worse.
I haven't even told you the best bits of this either, right?
So, I came here because I have to teach at King's College, number one, right?
So, I'm doing a couple lectures this week, and I was like, oh, this is perfect timing.
I'll pop over to London, and then I'll leave from London and head to Mumbai.
So, I'll be kind of halfway to Mumbai and get some stuff done while I'm here in London.
And then this whole war thing kicks off that everybody's calling World War III.
I really hope it doesn't devolve into that.
But, my connecting flight from London was actually in Abu Dhabi, which was hit by missiles.
You know, the airport was hit by missiles, and people died.
But, yet, my British Airways flight right now still says it's on time.
Yeah, because they will say that up until the last day, and then they'll tell you, oh, yeah, we can't do that.
Yeah.
So, yeah, I wouldn't count on it.
And even if you could count on it, I wouldn't do it.
Well, that's the decision that I came to today.
I mean, I'd really come to this decision yesterday and really almost the day before.
But I got into London last night, and you're starting to see where everything goes.
And it's not good, right?
And you have the U.S. Embassy in Doha being targeted.
I'm sorry, Dubai being targeted.
And it's just, it was a bad decision that I had to make today, but I had to pull the plug for all of ENS, all of the Ethereum name servers.
We're not going to the ICANN meeting.
I just cannot have people traveling to make a meeting that I asked them to go to and to put themselves in harm's way to do it.
And the potential to be stranded in the Middle East right now is really awful.
Also, one of the things that I was told at the British Airways desk when I was checking into the flight in New York at JFK was really quite interesting as well,
which was that most people are trying to go through India now to try to avoid the Middle East.
So India is an absolute nightmare in terms of all of the airports.
And I can only imagine landing in Mumbai right now with all these people trying to flee the Middle East or at least get home in some way through India has really got to be fairly awful.
But ICANN, on the other hand, has put out a statement saying, we know this will represent some kind of travel disruptions for a lot of people, and it might be difficult, but we're still going to have the meeting as planned.
We're still going to go ahead with this.
I think that's a little bit crazy.
The person saying that, no doubt, is already in India, so I'm sure that's why they think it's no problem for everybody else.
But, you know, obviously India is not the Middle East, but to get there, your flight path may very well cross into a hot zone or two.
Yeah, it mostly does.
I mean, you're either – there aren't a lot of direct flights to Mumbai.
You're either going through Doha, Dubai, or Abu Dhabi in some way, and that's where your connecting flights are generally hitting.
And all of those places are not great places to be flying when there's missiles going around.
Now, what you could do, you could fly to China over the Pacific Ocean and then get another flight from China into India.
That might be a little inconvenient, but it would get you there without going through those hot zones.
But by then, who knows?
If I wasn't in London on my way to Mumbai, that would make a lot of sense.
But then I would have to go all the way back to New York and then all the way back to California, let's say San Francisco or Seattle or whatever, and then over to China.
It's just too much.
Well, we can discuss your travel itinerary after the show, but –
We'll do that in detail.
Please stay safe.
And that goes for any listeners out there, too, because the world is crazy, and there are certain crazy people who have way too much power.
In fact, you know, I was just reminiscing about the – I remember July 1st, 2024, that's when the Supreme Court ruled that presidents have absolute immunity for acts committed as president, no matter what.
And apparently assassination is something that – one guy decided to do that.
How do we feel about this?
One guy decided to kill the leader of another country.
It doesn't matter, you know, how bad that leader is.
That's not the issue here.
The issue is one person having that kind of power just deciding not only to assassinate a leader but to start a war.
And there's no question he started the war.
He did.
One person.
And it's just weird seeing our system – you know, we talk about broken systems all the time.
That's how we're tying it into hacking here.
We have a broken system.
Today, the War Powers Act was voted on by the Senate and was defeated.
They voted not to do their job.
They voted to not hold the president accountable for anything, let alone we have this crazy-ass system where if they did pass it and say that Trump has to get permission before he starts bombing countries and assassinating leaders and things like that,
he can veto that.
I mean, that is the dumbest thing I have ever – if you're trying to rein somebody in, they shouldn't have the power to say,
no, I'm vetoing your right to rein me in.
It just seems like that's the kind of thing that he should have been exempted from having a say in.
But we didn't even get to the point of doing that because our senators – the Republicans mostly and one Democrat – don't even want to have that kind of responsibility.
They just want to trust it all with one person.
Our country has never been about that.
One person making all the decisions.
But basically, looking at this ruling, I was just reading over what Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote.
She said granting immunity from prosecution would reshape the institution of the presidency and risk permitting criminal conduct by presidents.
She said that the majority opinion would effectively expand what may be considered official acts beyond their core duties,
depriving prosecutors of an effective means of bringing charges.
She expressed concerns that a president would be immune from prosecution in a number of hypothetical situations,
such as in ordering assassinations of political rivals and taking bribes for pardons.
Political rivals.
That's different than foreign leaders.
But it's on the agenda.
It's there.
He can do it.
She wrote that the ruling on presidential immunity was more expansive than the founders would have recognized.
Justice Roberts responded to the dissent, stating that the majority opinion was a narrower ruling than Sotomayor had described and referred to her hypothetical scenarios as fear-mongering.
Not so sure anymore.
So that is where we are.
That's the world we are in right now.
And Justice Katanji Brown-Jackson wrote another dissenting opinion, arguing that the ruling on presidential immunity would effectively empower the judiciary as a gatekeeper of accountability,
resulting in downstream effects of weakening the power of Congress and removing incentives against presidential abuse of power.
That's pretty much what we saw today.
Weakening of Congress by Congress.
Well, if there's one thing that the branches of government have proven in the past, well, decade now,
it's that reigning in President Trump is not something they're interested in doing in any context.
And what we're seeing now is the logical next step to the inaction we've been seeing.
And, you know, they could decide that, you know, he's not prosecutable for his crimes.
I wonder if the same would hold true for, say, international courts that prosecute war crimes.
But that all remains to be seen.
Well, our country doesn't recognize those courts.
And that's something else.
That's, you know, this is when you see the result of just casting aside,
even if you don't agree with the conclusions they reach, even if you think there's corruption in those courts,
you have to respect something so that you can come together and have a conversation.
We're not even at the stage of doing that.
And, you know, the rifts are getting deeper between our own allies.
And, you know, it might seem like smooth sailing right now because, believe it or not, this is the easy part.
You know, where you're just bombing another nation into submission and you have all the weapons.
Sure.
But, you know, I read just before Showtime that, you know, one missile fired by Iran, it costs about $20,000.
It can cost up to $3 million to shoot it down.
So how long do you think that's going to be sustainable for?
And there's a dozen other depressing facts that we could look at.
But the reality is we're in a world now where we just seem to be doing, we meaning the United States, whatever we want.
Nobody else can do anything about it.
And we just have to kind of, you know, hold our breath and say, well, you know, what happened in Texas last night, maybe that's a sign.
If we can make it another, what is it, three years?
I'm losing count.
Alex.
It just seems to me like Congress is uncomfortable with its role as a check and balance on the president at this point, right?
I mean, how could they?
I don't understand how they can abdicate this kind of responsibility either.
I mean, it's constitutionally mandated that they check the president, right?
I mean, this dissatisfaction with unilateral presidential action, you know, needs to be turned into some kind of legally binding constraint on presidential action, right?
Otherwise, what we have and what we result in is the centralization of additional powers in the presidency.
And that may serve the Republicans well right now when their man is in office, but it's not going to serve them well when their man is not in office and it doesn't serve the country well at all in the long term.
Any kind of centralization of power in the presidency is not great.
That's why we have a system of checks and balances that was designed in the 18th century to prevent this very thing from happening.
It's like we've forgotten all of this.
In a sense, it's very, very basic civics.
And Congress just seems unable or unwilling to act to check the president.
Yeah, well, it's something about living in fear of that one person.
And it seems like every Republican congressperson lives in fear of Donald Trump.
And I can't I don't understand that because what is the worst thing he can do?
He can make you not win reelection.
OK, is that really the worst thing to not win reelection?
You know, how how what kind of a hell is it to live your life knowing that you didn't speak your mind when that was the right thing to do and when you actually had power to make some kind of a change and you didn't do it?
You know, I think that's a far worse fate than, you know, getting this this guy pissed off at you.
In fact, I think that's that's a badge of honor.
Well, I don't think that's right, though, Emanuel.
I think that there are far worse things that the president can do.
And I think he would do.
And I think he has done in many respects.
So I think you're right that some of these lawmakers are obviously concerned about not getting reelected.
And that's that's the short term interest that they have.
But the longer term interest is that, well, the president has shown his ability and his willingness to abuse the office of the presidency, to abuse the Department of Justice and its investigative powers to target his political enemies.
So if you're seen as a political enemy of the president, he's going to weaponize the machinery of government against you.
And he knows and people know that that's the possibility that can happen.
And the the ironic thing is that the more you abdicate your responsibility to act as a check and balance on the executive power, the more power is centralized, the more power that is become centralized in the in the president itself.
And the more powerful that person becomes to abuse the very processes that you're supposed to use to check that person.
And so this this abdication of Congress's responsibility of acting as a check and balance on the presidency is really detrimental to our democracy as a whole in the long run,
because it is creating this centralized, essentially rogue cis admin for the government who has no check on him whatsoever right now.
You would think they would know that, you know, these are not stupid people.
We can call them stupid.
They do stupid things, but they're not stupid people.
So how is it that that thought process is not, you know, inching its way through their brains?
Well, think think about what's happened, right?
I mean, as soon as as soon as Trump came into power, he he started to dismantle all of the machinery that could keep him in check.
One of the first things that he did was to fire the inspectors general of most of the federal agencies that were around.
And these are the inspector generals are the guys that are there and the women that are there to stamp out fraud, waste and abuse.
In other words, that's that's long form for corruption.
And I think that's a that's a real problem with the system that he is able to do that.
I mean, that's that should be one of the checks and balances right there that he should not have that authority.
Yet somehow he did.
Well, the whole presidential appointee system is crazy in and of itself, too.
I mean, that that is that is problematic on so many levels as well.
I mean, if you think about this issue that we had going back to to George W. Bush in was it around 2002, 2003, I think, with the stove piping of intelligence.
Right.
You know, and the first Iraq war, which I think there is a real analog to be drawn now as well, obviously, with what's going on in the Middle East.
But there was there was a lot of criticism about George W. Bush appointing people in the intelligence community that would just do whatever the hell he said and would stovepipe, essentially send him over directly intelligence that seemed to support his position without looking at the facts objectively.
And that's the case.
You look at the you know, the director of the CIA is a president.
Most of the directors of all of the intelligence community are presidential appointees.
The general counsel of the Central Intelligence Agency of CIA, for whom I used to work a long time ago, is a presidential appointee.
It doesn't seem right that those people should be appointed and serve at the will of the president.
They should be accountable to the people, not to the political whims of the president.
OK, so we are identifying design flaws in our system of government that really need to be addressed, need to be fixed one way or another.
I want to turn things a little bit, be a little bit more positive here and say the word anthropic, because, you know, anthropic is an example of what happens when a company or an individual shows integrity.
Um, yeah, you know, you'll piss off the powers that be and, uh, you might lose some money, but, um, you can hold your head proud, high.
And, um, you know, a lot of people will look to you as, as a model.
Um, now, anthropic CEO, uh, Dario Omari, am I saying that right?
Uh, told investors Tuesday, his company is still in talks with the Pentagon to try to deescalate the situation.
Um, he, um, uh, basically, if you recall last week, uh, anthropic refused to, um, get rid of their safeguard.
This is what the Pentagon was demanding, that they get rid of their safeguards and, um, um, uh, I, I guess not insist that that noise is really loud, wherever it's coming from.
Guys, can you just mute your audio until we figure out what that is?
Thank you.
Um, yeah, I, I don't know where we get these weird noises from, uh, but anthropic basically was saying that, um, uh, they, uh, they were not comfortable, um, handing over artificial intelligence, uh, technology to the Pentagon.
If the Pentagon could not, uh, promise not to use it against the American people, not to use it for mass surveillance, uh, it's really, um, uh, you know, it's a no brainer, but no other company would do something like this.
So, um, of course, Trump was outraged by that.
He canceled anthropic's government contracts.
Um, Pete Hegseff, uh, uh, called the company a supply chain risk.
Uh, and, uh, the, the, uh, CEO, um, uh, said that the label, that label was retaliatory and punitive.
And he pledged to fight that designation in court.
Um, he said, anthropics sought to draw red lines in the government's use of its technology, specifically presenting it, uh, preventing its use for mass surveillance of Americans or for fully autonomous weapons.
I mean, you know, how crazy do you have to be to say, no, we, we, we insist on the right to make fully autonomous weapons.
Uh, and, um, we may spy on Americans or may not because, you know, who are you to tell us what to do?
Uh, he said, we believe that crossing those lines is contrary to American values and we wanted to stand up for American values.
Can we put this person in the white house for God's sake, American values.
Remember those disagreeing with the government is the most American thing in the world.
He said, and we are patriots in everything we have done here.
We have stood up for the values of this country.
Uh, Emil Michael is the Pentagon's chief technology officer.
That must be a fun job.
The, um, okay, now I'm echoing.
I'm not sure who's doing that.
The, uh, the military had offered written acknowledgements of the federal laws and military policies that restrict mass surveillance and autonomous weapons.
Though anthropics said that offer was paired with legalese that allowed the guardrails to be ignored.
Um, and, um, this guy, Emil Michael from the Pentagon said, at some level, you have to trust your military to do the right thing.
I couldn't agree more.
At some level you do.
And the Pentagon, uh, you guys should be working to achieve that level because we'd love to see you arrive at that finish line.
You're not there yet.
And we don't trust you.
I don't think anybody really trusts you.
Uh, so, uh, don't expect people to, um, uh, to, to assume you're going to do the right thing because you've certainly proven that you don't do it often.
So, uh, anthropic, uh, I, I really hope they don't, uh, cave.
Wasn't it something though that within minutes, within minutes of, um, uh, of Trump, uh, ordering, uh, all the contracts to be canceled and Hegseff saying what he said, that open AI announced they had reached a deal with the Pentagon within minutes.
How crazy is that?
That is where we are living now.
I just want to know more about how they're using AI in warfare, because, um, the thought of that is really terrifying, especially if you're one of the folks familiar with how poorly the technology, the technology actually works at this point in our history.
Um, are we using it to decide on targets to fire at, you know, because AI has trouble figuring a lot of basic things out.
And I don't know if I would trust it with any, anything relevant to whether, you know, deciding who lives or who dies basically.
And the fact that the AI bubble is so, um, prevalent that we're even seeing this sort of, uh, bickering going on in the, in the sphere of providing this technology to the military.
It's, it's at least as frightening as anything else that's going on right now.
Kyle.
I'm, uh, also wondering if incidents like the, uh, friendly fire where, um, uh, relative allies, uh, were able to down airplanes.
And if some of the decision-making models are our own systems, our own technologies that we've sold or otherwise, uh, lent to other nations, how those things could be used against and sort of, uh, backfire because of, uh,
well, their capabilities being, um, you know, so able, they could, um, in a situation where that isn't managed well, uh, with, with, um, whatever level of competence, uh, that it endangers people that are, are meant to be, um, otherwise protected because of, uh, the level of sophistication that that automation brings to the battlefield or whatever terms you want to, uh,
uh, uh, put it in.
But incidents like that where the unintentional hasn't been thought through and planned for adequately.
Yeah.
There's an old saying that military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.
Um, I don't think adding artificial to the equation is changing that.
Alex.
I think this is so heartening on, on so many levels too, because think about what we've been talking about over the last couple of months here.
And in particular, with respect to ice, you know, we, we had on the creator of the ice block app and talk about what he was doing with that and how he was helping people.
And we saw after the ice block app was taken off of Apple's app store, basically, as soon as the, as soon as the department of justice and this presidential administration had requested Apple to do something like remove that app from the app store, they didn't push back on it.
They didn't insist on getting a court order.
They didn't, they didn't try to narrow the scope of, of, of any of the government's requests at all.
They just did it.
They just blindly complied because they were afraid of being on the wrong end of a tweet or the wrong end of an executive order.
Uh, and that is really sad to me.
And you see all of these platforms, especially meta cozying up to the president, trying to curry favor with them.
And then on the other hand, out of nowhere, you have anthropic come over and say, no, I'm not going to curry.
I'm not going to try to curry favor here.
I'm going to resist.
I'm going to refuse.
And when they have refused, they're now making it easier for every other platform out there to see that resistance to the president is not some kind of treasonous act.
It's not some kind of suicidal business practices.
It's a legitimate, even expected part of their role.
They are essentially surveillance intermediaries for the government.
They're speech hosts.
They provide access to, to information, to data and, and, and, and to speech in, in ways that are extremely important to this, this democracy.
And by anthropic refusing to comply with the president's dictates and refusing to give in to his threats, they're hardening these norms, right?
Insisting on things like warrants, rejecting jawboning, all of this stuff that is, is a rejection of the, of the president's really strong arming tactics here is, is, is I think extremely important here because it changes the power dynamic.
It's so powerful because it proves that integrity can actually be an access control system here, right?
By maintaining their morals, maintaining their integrity, anthropic has denied the president access, has denied them some kind of back way, backdoor methodology of accessing their own systems that they created.
And they have the right to determine, they have the right to determine, they have the right to determine who their customers are.
I, I find it extremely heartening and I hope that other platforms will see this as confidence inspiring and follow suit.
Well, I've seen a lot of people say that they're going to stop using open AI or chat GPT and, and, and, and use Claude instead because they trust that company based on what they have done.
And, and hopefully that remains the case where they continue to trust the company, but, you know, I, I was thinking, do you remember all the, um, uh, fear mongering and anger at the so-called woke mobs that were canceling everybody in sight?
And that's, that's how a lot of the conservatives got into power, uh, by, by basically, um, devoting so much attention to that to make it seem like, uh, uh, they had all this power and then they turn around and just do the same thing themselves.
It wasn't that they were afraid they were jealous.
They wanted that kind of power.
Uh, and, um, now, you know, you see that, um, used wisely, it's not necessarily a bad thing, uh, to be able to shame companies when they do bad things, because right now they're all doing bad things and they're all basically following orders.
And that is scary.
That is very scary for us.
Um, there's also, you know, this, this anthropic thing has been going on for a while, both, um, externally and internally.
Uh, we didn't really devote any time to this, but there is an anthropic researcher, uh, who resigned, um, uh, a few weeks back, uh, in a very cryptic way.
Uh, his name was, uh, Miranak, his name still is Miranak Sharma.
Uh, he had led the Claude, uh, chatbot makers Safeguard's research team, uh, since it was formed early last year and, um, had been at the company since 2023.
And while at the company, Sharma said he explored the causes of AI, uh, uh, a sycophancy.
I don't think I've ever said that word before.
Hopefully I said it right.
Uh, developed defenses against AI assisted bioterrorism and wrote one of the first AI safety cases.
Uh, but, um, one day he posted that it would be his last day at the company uploading a copy of a letter he shared with colleagues.
It's painfully devoid of specifics, but hints at some internal tensions over the tech's safety.
Throughout my time here, I've repeatedly seen how hard it is to truly let our values govern our actions, claiming that employees constantly face pressures to set aside what matters most.
He also issued a cryptic warning about the global state of affairs.
I continuously find myself reckoning with our situation.
The world is in peril, and not just from AI or bioweapons, but from a whole series of interconnected crises.
Unfolding in this very moment, we appear to be approaching a threshold, uh, where our wisdom must grow in equal measure to our capacity to affect the world, lest we face the consequences.
So, uh, yeah, you know, there's quite a lot of, uh, deep thinking going on over at Anthropic, and, uh, maybe it had an effect.
Maybe, um, uh, these words, uh, help steer Anthropic into a better place.
I don't know.
Or there's probably many things we don't know.
There are probably a lot of things that we don't know.
Um, this person does seem to have other stuff going on, um, which...
It's difficult right now, because there are so many pieces of so many things that are going on that you can't say, well, this is one thing, and...
Like, I don't want to say, oh, this person is crazy, but this person might be crazy.
He's not wrong, but also he may be crazy.
Well, we all might be crazy.
I mean, what do we use to determine if somebody might be crazy?
Um, it's true.
I, it, a new school of philosophy called Cosmoerotic Humanism, apparently, was in one of the footnotes of the resignation letter, and, like, dude, I don't know.
Um, okay, that's one thing I know nothing about.
One of many things I know nothing about, so...
I'm not, I'm not in a position to judge one way or another.
Seems weird.
Um, yeah.
Alex, are you trying to say something else?
I, yeah, I mean, I don't know.
I, I think we're, we're all in a difficult position of trying to assess the validity of whatever the, this person resigning was saying.
We really have no idea what's going on in the company, what his intentions were, um, but perhaps his words, as you indicated, Emmanuel, maybe they had some kind of effects on Anthropic.
But it's, it's also often the case that people will resign in such a, uh, and create a public display around them, because they, they want to create some buzz for whatever they're doing next, right?
So that their name is in the news, that they're being captured, um, in media, like we're talking about it now.
Um, and, and it may have nothing to do with the company, or it could have everything to do with the company.
We, we really just don't know, and I think it's difficult for us to assess.
Yes, but I think what's right, though, is for us to assess Anthropic by its words and by its actions.
And they've stood by their words so far with their actions.
And that's what matters to me.
Yeah, and I think maybe we just look at the words and not try to assess this guy's whole background and, and, uh, way of thinking and things like that.
I think the words make sense, and it's something we, uh, we should pay attention to.
Something else, you know, I really think we should pay attention to, um, is, um, I'm gonna get all kinds of crap for this.
Twitter.
I think we should pay attention to Twitter.
You know, I, I get a lot of crap for still, uh, being on it.
But I'll tell you what, you know, every representative is on it.
Every representative is, um, is yammering away on there, saying some of the most vile things you could possibly imagine.
I'll give you an example, um, representative Randy Fine from Florida a couple of days ago said, Islamophobia is a lie.
Fear of Islam is rational.
This is an elected official from Florida saying this.
It might not surprise you, but there it is.
It's on the record.
And, um, something that, uh, even people of Florida are objecting to.
How about this?
Congressman, um, uh, Brandon Gill from Texas.
Uh, how many Americans have to get Al-Aqbar before we realize Islam is a problem?
You know, saying these ignorant things while Islamic countries are actually being bombed by Iran shows the height of ignorance and, and, and, uh, prejudice and hatred that many of our elected officials carry.
Have always carried.
But, you know, it's, um, uh, it takes events like what's been happening over the past few days for it to be unleashed, where they feel they can just say whatever they want to say with no consequences whatsoever.
You know, that guy, he kept talking.
And I think that's, that's brilliant to be able to, um, uh, you know, to let people keep talking because oftentimes they hang themselves with their own words.
He said, immigration isn't good just because it's legal.
So now it's not just the quote unquote illegals that they're going after anyone, anyone, it's not necessarily good.
Even if it's legal, we want to, we want to cut back.
And of course, you know, um, a lot of people, uh, on Twitter, and there are a lot of good people still on Twitter because I, I see what they say.
Um, they pointed out the very, uh, undeniable fact that his wife is Indian.
Okay.
So, um, what are you saying?
You know, just, uh, the privileged few are going to be okay, but you know, if, if we don't like your ethnicity, no, you're not coming into this, uh, this country at all.
Uh, another, uh, another elected official was saying how, um, uh, because, um, uh, the, um, the mass shooter in, um, Austin, I think he was from, was it Senegal?
Uh, said, there's no reason anybody from that country should have been allowed here saying things like that.
This is what's going on.
Yeah.
It's, it's a cesspool.
It's filled with hatred, but you know, you can't just pretend it's not there.
That's why I didn't leave.
That's why I'm still there and I'm still giving them crap right back to them.
It means nothing.
What I say, because nobody sees what I say.
I know that I'm not pretending that, uh, you know, I have any influence whatsoever, but they're still talking.
People are still seeing what they say.
It's a, it's a good shortcut into their brain to see just how they work.
And that's the best way to defeat that, to, uh, you know, to learn how to short circuit that brain.
You know, imagine this, imagine, you know, ISIS in your neighborhood, they're downstairs, you know, they're doing all kinds of things downstairs.
Do you just say, you know what, you're, you're evil people.
And I choose not to acknowledge your presence.
What good is that going to do?
They're still going to be there.
They're still going to be there and you will have accomplished nothing.
You might have a better day yourself, but all kinds of crap is still going on downstairs.
You know, if ice comes into my neighborhood, I'm going to confront them as will many of our listeners.
And that is what you have to do.
You have to meet them where they are and defeat them there.
Not wait for them to come to where you've gone.
That's just how I feel.
Alex, go ahead.
I don't disagree with that sentiment and that philosophy of getting in ISIS face, as Billy Bragg would say in his new, this new, uh, uh, song that came out a couple of weeks ago.
But, but, but, but why is there a, but why does it have to be a, but why couldn't you just end the sentence there?
Go ahead.
But, but, well, you know me, there's always a but, right?
There's like, we've all got buts, so they all come up.
Anyhow, they, um, the, the but here is the assumption you're making is that the people that are posting these things are real people.
They're not necessarily bots.
You know, there's, there's so much of this automated crap that's out there that is just so divisive and generated and designed to sow more division.
The, the other day I, actually, no, it wasn't even the other day.
Now I think about it, it was just a long day.
Earlier today, I was on Facebook and somebody had posted something about some ice activity on Long Island.
And I thought, wow, that's interesting.
I was pretty close to, to where I had grown up and spent a number of years of my life.
And so I, I said, let me look at the comments.
All the comments under this ice activity were, they were entirely pro ice and anti-immigrant.
And what platform were you on?
What platform were you on there?
It was Facebook.
Facebook.
That's why, that's why.
But yeah, you stay on Facebook though, because you, you, you see this and you see, but you know, what you're seeing on Facebook, those are just, you know, uh, um, comments.
Common people like us.
I don't know, but that, that's my point though, Manuel.
I don't know if these were actual people.
That's possible.
You're right.
It didn't seem, it didn't seem likely to me that all of the comments underneath this post that was anti-ice and, and noting that there was activity in this particular part of Long Island and Suffolk County, um, could be pro ice.
I don't think that, that, that, that's right.
I think it was astroturfing.
I think these were bots.
And I think, I think we have to be careful about engaging on these types of platforms as well, because there was just so much automated activity.
But on Twitter, when you see a Congress person who's got the little grade check, uh, it's likely to be coming from that office.
And if it's not, they will say that somebody is impersonating me, but yeah, you're right.
When it's just individual people, you know, see if they, if it's a real name or whatever.
Um, but, um, uh, that could, that could easily be, um, a bot of one sort or another, by the way, you mentioned ice activity in Long Island.
I just want, since you brought it up, uh, today, March 4th, Hempstead, uh, Hop Hog, Central Ice Slip, Uniondale, uh, Central Ice Slip again.
A lot in Hempstead, Huntington Station, uh, Roosevelt, uh, these are all the places that ice has been active today.
And that means they'll probably be active in those places tomorrow because they, they tend not to move very far in a couple of days.
So, yeah, it's important to know these things.
It's important to let people know about these things.
Rob, go ahead.
I mean, so far as the, uh, you know, members of government being there on Twitter, you know, we were, we were all, I think most of us were there on Twitter in the early days when it was, you know, this fun little curiosity.
And then people such as members of government started going over to Twitter when they realized, hey, this is where people are talking.
And there are members of government who have moved on from Twitter to other sites like Blue Sky, even Mastodon, um, and, uh, are still doing their thing there.
But, uh, Twitter in itself, I'm going to continue to espouse the position that it's a lost cause.
It's a crap hole and it, uh, I think staying on there, um, where it is now this, this, uh, stewing pot of just people throwing the most vile things back and forth at each other, people and bots, but they're all validating one another.
They're all granting one another the confidence to be even worse people.
And I think continuing to, um, lend your legitimacy to it is not a good thing.
I think, uh, I think it's, it's something that should be left behind.
Um, it used to be a social media routine that a site would be cool for a while and then get left behind.
People would party somewhere else.
And I would like to see a world in which that's going on again.
I would like to see a world in which it is not one place or two places on the internet that everyone is expected to be.
And when those places on the internet are not profiting from the engagement fuel and the trolling and the clickbait and the ragebait that now fuels what Twitter is today.
Yeah, I agree with most of that.
I agree with, you know, not, not following the trolls and the, you know, the, the ragebaiting and all that.
But when it's people that are elected officials and that's where they're speaking out, I'm not going to wait for somebody to tell me what they said.
I want to see it the moment they say it.
I'm not there all the time, but if I happen to see them post something, I've, I've seen them within a minute post something hateful.
And, uh, you know, that needs to be spread around.
You can't wait for them to come to Blue Sky or to Mastodon.
I wish they would, I'd like it to get a list of how many elected officials are actually there.
But the fact is, uh, most of them aren't the vast majority or not.
If we can get them to go over there, but I don't see how you're going to get the hate filled ones to go to a different platform where their words won't be as accepted.
So, you know, it's important when you fight a war and this is a war, you fight on your enemy's turf and, you know, I would, I would spread that to a true social, invade that, tear that down, make it unpleasant for them there.
I know it's not pleasant for us.
It's, it's, you know, you're seeing a lot of ugliness, but it's not going away.
And these are people that are running the, the, the country and want to run the world.
It's, uh, it's, it's horrible.
I, I, I know.
But a place like Truth Social has a very active moderating staff that, uh, quickly zaps the accounts of anyone who dares speak opposite to how they want the, uh, conversation to go.
And, um, one of, one of the reasons Twitter has become what is it, what it is, is because their ownership and their leadership decided that, you know, you see this, uh, you see this end of the crap that's going on.
We're just going to go ahead and let that keep happening.
And there's the old example of a Nazi bar.
You know, you think you're running a regular bar, you're a bar owner and people come in and they enjoy your bar.
But then one day, one of the guys in the, up at the bar is a Nazi.
And then the next day he brings a couple of his friends and then they bring their friends.
And before you know it, you're running a Nazi bar.
And, uh, you know, there's nothing you could do about it at that point.
And I think Twitter right now is a Nazi bar.
Isn't there room for another analogy?
Because every time I have a conversation about Twitter, it turns into something about a Nazi bar.
You know, a phrase I never heard before, but apparently that's, that's, that's the way to defend against not, not, not, uh, not even, uh, you know, acknowledging their existence.
Look, I get what you're saying, but I just, I, I, I wouldn't have been able to read those quotes had I not been watching.
And I, you know, you don't have to engage, you don't have to, you know, go back and forth, but be aware of what's being said, what these people are doing, because, you know, the next thing they're going to do is, is implement what they're saying.
But also the value of these quotes you're saying is that it's showing you who these people are.
But I think also as members of government, they're on the record showing everyone who they are by what they're doing and how they're voting.
And I think, uh, that, that in itself is probably enough to tell someone is a butthole.
I'm sorry.
It's not, it's not because saying that legal immigration is not good.
They're not saying that in legislation.
They're testing that out.
They're seeing how people react to it.
And, you know, it's important that, um, we know the second they do that.
Kyle, go ahead.
Uh, I just want to observe, uh, I, I hear both of the things that are being said.
And I think it's two different things, although they're, they're interrelated and, um, there, I, I would just say that historically there's a discreet, distinct reason that government officials and, uh, celebrities and other people are on, uh, Twitter because that was used to gain, uh, more users, wider appeal, all of that.
It was, uh, it was, uh, an effort to, uh, increase the user base as that application grew.
Um, so that, that's the reason that it was, uh, integrated and is so widely used.
And that's sort of, uh, that led to the government sites being captive to this app or this, uh, uh, platform bar, as Rob put it.
Um, uh, even as the ownership has changed, it's just too cumbersome for so many official accounts to move.
Now, it doesn't mean that, uh, good people haven't moved to other platforms like blue sky or like, uh, uh, federated stuff, uh, that, uh, is akin to Mastodon and, and self-hosted platforms and many other types of websites.
All of which is great and, and, and, and should be more interoperable than it is with, uh, all of themselves necessarily, uh, but that is a separate art, uh, argument altogether.
The, the point being though, uh, that it, it is, uh, it's, it's important for us to, um, monitor and observe and understand that what you're getting there is what you're getting.
Uh, we can't be unaware of what official accounts are saying.
And sure, we'd love for them to be on our, our platform of choice for our own personal activities.
And we should be able to create community wherever possible, but, um, that's, that it, there is, there are ways that good journalists and other people on the platforms that we like that are also observing these other platforms.
They're just necessary evils, at least in so far as us being an informed pub public.
The fact is many of these people won't go somewhere else because they're comfortable where they are.
And I feel it's important to make them uncomfortable.
Um, FCC, uh, uh, uh, commission chair, Brendan Carr would like a word, uh, with us, with all of us.
Uh, he's urging broadcast media to air patriotic pro America content, uh, as part of our 250th anniversary in this country.
Uh, Carr and the FCC announced the pledge America campaign, uh, encouraging broadcasters to run programming that emphasizes the country's historical accomplishments from our founding through the Trump administration today.
What do you think guys?
Can we, can we, uh, show Brendan Carr how patriotic we can be?
You know what, Brendan?
I think we are being damn patriotic right now by questioning everything that this corrupt administration is doing, uh, and, uh, and, and, and talking about the history of this country, good and bad.
I mean, isn't that something that, uh, you know, what patriotic American would do?
Well, Alex, I think dissent is very patriotic.
And I think WBAI is synonymous with dissent for its entire history, which is a reason why you need to continue to support this particular radio station.
WBAI give to WBAI.org.
As a patriotic act, do that.
Absolutely.
It absolutely is.
Dissent is patriotic.
Resistance is patriotic.
This country was founded through an act of resistance to a monarch.
Don't forget that.
Yeah.
Kyle, go ahead.
Yeah, it just, it feels like it's, uh, it's not quite the year yet.
Maybe there, there's, um, there's more to unfold and it just might just be a, an off by one situation, uh, where we, we just have to wait it out and then it'll feel right.
Uh, but these directives, yeah, they should be in the mix with all kinds of other stuff.
The ultimate act of patriotism is election day.
And you better believe, Brendan, we're going to show up for that.
We're going to make you proud because we are going to make some changes, some real changes.
We're going to show you what people power is all about, you know, and I, I think that's something that, uh, can inspire us all.
So thank you.
Thank you for the motivation.
Uh, Rob, I believe you have an announcement for us and then we got to go.
We have overtime.
Overtime is at eight o'clock on YouTube.
Go to the, uh, channel 2600 on YouTube or go to the link on 2600.com.
Go ahead, Rob.
And, uh, this Friday, 2600 meetings are happening all over the world.
Go to 2600.com slash meetings to find one near you or start one in, uh, near you here in New York City.
It's at the city group building 53rd and Lexington in the food court this Friday evening.
And you can get a listing of all the meetings, 2600.com slash meetings.
There are a couple actually that aren't on Fridays, but they have little symbols that tell you when they are because, uh, the, it's, uh, you know, some, some, uh, some people,
some, uh, some, uh, countries can't make it.
In fact, uh, we have Qatar meetings now.
Can you believe that?
Or Qatar?
However people say it.
Anyway, we're out of time.
Uh, overtime starts at eight o'clock.
Uh, you can call us and be a part of things.
O-T-H at 2600.com is our email address.
See you next week.
Good night.
Wow, babies, I will tell it to you one time.
Here come the sound of the hypocrites and getting right.
As I would say, wow.
You carried my name.
With all you just do it in vain.
Hypocrite, where will you run tonight?
Hypocrite, you will get hurt somehow.
Hypocrite, I know the tide will tell on you.
Time will tell on you.
Give me this, I'm going over there.
Wow, I'm skimming away the over there.
I thought you were smart.
But man, you've got a wicked, wicked heart.
And though you're just being used.
When you're through, your will be reduced.
So, Hypocrite, where will you run tonight?
Hypocrite, you will get hurt somehow.
Hypocrite, I know the time will tell on you.
Time will tell on you.
Why do you have to be here with me?
Why do you have to be here with me?
Well, I beg your pardon, what did you say?
Then I watch what you do each and every single day.
Wow, baby!
I'm coast to coast, I'm feeling the force.
Want you to know you should never ever try to brag our balls.
Wake the town and tell the people that, yo.
Hypocrite is in the area.
Want you to know you have to watch what you do.
So, don't ever jump by roll and screw.
I thought you were smart.
But man, you've got a wicked, wicked heart.
And though you're just being used.
When you're through, your will be reduced.
So, Hypocrite, where will you run tonight?
Hypocrite, you will get hurt somehow.
Now, Hypocrite, I know that time will tell on you.
Time will tell on you.
Hypocrite, where will you run tonight?
Hypocrite, you will get hurt somehow.
Now, Hypocrite, I know that time will tell on you.
Time will tell on you.