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Zero, zero, nine, three, zero, zero, one.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a cough.
We couldn't get much worse, but if they could, they would.
One did it bomb for the best, it's paid for worst.
I hope that's understood.
One did it, boom!
One did it, boom!
One did it, boom!
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, hey.
Out in Signal Land, we have Rob T. Firefly.
Good evening.
We have Gila.
Good evening.
And we have Alex.
You do.
Good morning.
Okay, so that tells me right away that you're somewhere else again.
Where are you this time?
It could be.
I'm actually in a city I've never been to before, other than yesterday and today.
I'm in Manchester, England at the moment.
Oh, Manchester.
That's a wonderful place.
That's where the series Shameless was inspired.
All kinds of fun things happened.
Manchester United, Manchester City, of course, Liverpool, nice, friendly town, just a stone
throw away.
Yeah, this is a great city.
I've never really spent much time in the north of England.
I've lived in England and go back and forth and teach at King's College in London, and
I've never really been up to the north, but there's a contracted party summit here with
ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, yesterday and today, and
actually on Monday as well.
And so I've been here a couple of days, and I'm really liking it.
People are extremely nice.
There's a lot of nerdy stuff that people would be interested in here in Manchester.
I mean, Alan Turing was here, and there's a wonderful Alan Turing monument and memorial
in a park right around the corner from my hotel.
Very, very cool place.
People are really nice, friendly.
It seems like the farther north you go in England, the friendlier people become.
You need to watch League of Gentlemen.
But before you do that, let me remind you that coming up this Friday is one hell of a 2600
meeting in Manchester.
It's one of the best ones.
So I suggest you stick around and attend that.
Well, I'll be back.
I'll still be in the UK, but I'm leaving Manchester tomorrow, heading back to London.
Otherwise, I would have definitely stuck around for that.
Well, there's a meeting in London as well.
You can't get away from the meetings, Alex.
They're everywhere.
So yeah, this Friday coming up, May 1st, about 5 p.m.
Look it up.
2600.com slash meetings.
Yeah.
What are these meetings all about?
Can you tell me about them?
Well, I assume that you're just asking, for the benefit of listeners, that you actually
know damn well what they're about, because you've been to many of them.
That's right.
Basically, they're public gatherings in the middle of a public space, such as a food court
or a mall in England, even in pubs, that kids are allowed in.
So that's the important thing.
We don't cut off access by age.
And it's basically a place where people can trade information about technology, hacking,
kind of like what the radio show does, except in person.
And it's a good opportunity to get away from the computer screen and just kind of hang out
and look at your phone screen.
No, I'm kidding.
Don't do that.
Hang out.
Talk to people.
It's very informal.
And it happens on the first Friday of every month, for the most part, all around the world.
And you can get more information at 2600.com slash meetings.
You can start your own.
It's been going on since 1987, if you can believe that.
You know, I can believe it.
And I have met some really interesting characters at the 2600 meetings over the years.
And in fact, I think, Emmanuel, you and I met for the first time at a 2600 meeting many,
many years ago in the 90s.
That's quite possible.
It would have been the one at what was known as CityCorp back then.
That's right.
Yep.
Near the lobby of payphones.
The same location where it takes place in New York City to this day.
And Rob, what's it called now?
What's that food court called in what's known as the City Group Building now?
Yes.
In the City Group Building now, that whole first floor area is called the Hue, as in the name
Hue, H-U-G-H.
And that's what they named their food court, which is actually a decent place.
They remodeled it recently.
And we started having meetings there again.
And it is just, it's a great place to hang out, have a meeting, chat with people.
We'll be there.
We'll be there this Friday evening.
More info on our particular meeting here in New York.
You could go to nyc2600.net, and it's got all the info on there.
Or you could always go to 2600.com slash meetings, find one near you.
If you don't have one near you, there's the info there to start one near you.
Anyone can, any place that needs one can have one.
All the details are there.
I was a bit upset last time.
Kyle and I went to the April meeting, and it turned out it was Good Friday.
I didn't know everybody took Good Friday so seriously at that particular food court.
But they did.
Most places were closed, and people still showed up.
We had a great meeting, talked to a lot of people.
But I don't know.
Is May Day a holiday in the mall world?
I think May Day should be all right.
It's a celebration.
It's a celebratory sort of day.
And yeah, so check it out.
I mean, in the old days of the original City Corp Center sort of food court area,
there really wasn't much to be had in the way of food for the most part.
Oh, people didn't eat nearly the same amount back then.
Yeah.
It's a lot more.
Yeah, no, they didn't.
But the options are a lot nicer now.
That's true.
And it's worth checking out.
Do you know why it's called the Hue?
Why is it called the Hue?
Why is it called the Hue?
Thank you for asking.
Thank you for asking.
The Hue is named after the architect of the building, a man named Hue Stubbins.
I did not know this.
Why didn't they just call it the Stubbins?
Why did they call it the Hue?
Usually things are named after your last name, not your first name.
Because every Tom, Dick, and Harry is named Stubbins.
All right.
I guess that's as good a reason as any.
So, Alex, now, have you decided yet where you will be settling in the UK?
Have you picked a city, or are you going for more of an agrarian type of a thing?
I would love to go for an agrarian type of thing in the UK.
I mean, it's quite beautiful once you get out of the cities and pastoral and rolling hills
and cows and all kinds of wonderful things here in this strange little island of the
United Kingdom here.
But, no, I mean, I think I'm partial to London, though.
I mean, I love London.
I used to live in London.
I should warn you, it's expensive.
It's expensive there.
Yes.
But, you know, I think you'll be happy there.
I really do.
You think so?
I do.
Yeah.
I mean, I'm not resettling or anything like that.
I mean, I'm just hoping they let me back in the country.
Wait, wait.
Wait, what?
Did I misunderstand you?
You haven't left the country to settle in the UK?
No, I have not left the country to settle in the UK.
Yeah, I'm not leaving America.
I'm not giving up people.
Who the hell told me?
Why did you tell me that?
I swear, our research department.
Okay, but Alex.
Wait, don't pin this on the research department.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Well, it's not my job.
Look, Alex, we have to address this.
I thought you were safe.
I thought you went to the United Kingdom, you know, in search of democracy and, you know,
but you intend to come back here to this country?
I'm going to come back.
You know, I feel safer when there's a written constitution as opposed to an unwritten constitution.
I like to see the words, you know, on the page.
Poor summer child.
Look, there is no written constitution anymore.
It's all been destroyed.
The whole thing is in shambles.
Have you not been keeping up with what's going on in the news lately to tell you that coming back to this country is a bad idea unless, you know, you have a plan of some sort?
But do you have a plan?
Alex's plan, obviously, is he's over there while they sent the king over here.
So the place is just, like, unruled right now.
And Alex has marched in to fill the gap, I think, and take over.
Oh, King Schming.
It doesn't make a difference.
The king has no power.
He can't stop this.
But he was pretty impressive, though, I have to say, in terms of his defense of constitutional democracy and whatnot, wasn't he?
Yeah, too bad he's not running the country.
It would be nice.
You know, to have somebody who recognized the importance of that.
Look, yesterday, they indicted the former head of the FBI because he took a picture of some seashells that Trump didn't like.
That's literally what happened.
That is literally what happened.
And it's not even the first time they've tried to do this.
They're going to keep going after the guy.
Look, as hackers, we have had a history with law enforcement.
You know, we've had a history of, you know, butting heads with people who are trying to put us in jail.
All right?
It's a given.
And you're going to have an adversarial relationship.
So it's weird for me to be defending the former head of the FBI, but it's more familiar for me to see how justice can be corrupted on an agency level.
In this particular case, though, we're not just talking about a couple of inept secret service agents, you know, that are taking people's rotary phones when they raid their houses because they think there might be evidence in there.
No, this is system-wide, where basically the Justice Department, this is something I'd like you to speak to, Alex, the Justice Department is speaking in Trump's voice, meaning they send out tweets or whatever service they're using these days with, you know, all caps and just this emotion and glorifying of the leader and all that kind of thing and saying the exact same thing.
We have to be saying we have to have a ballroom.
That's so important for our security, which is utter nonsense.
But within a couple of days of the events of Saturday, to have all of this just in motion, you know, doesn't that scare the crap out of you?
Absolutely.
It really does.
It absolutely does.
And the Department of Justice is supposed to be an independent agency that has its client as the United States of America, not necessarily the president of the United States, but the United States of America is the client of the Department of Justice.
And they're supposed to seek justice and work towards justice, not necessarily working towards some kind of political end.
And I think what we see here is the co-opting of the Department of Justice and using the same talking points as the president of the United States is a really it's a scary thing here.
It indicates a lack of independence and indicates a lack of purpose and an objective that is is everything political and nothing independent.
And that's a very scary time, I think, for the United States, because it means that the justice system has been weaponized for political purposes.
It's it's been corrupted.
You know, if this were a Linux installation, we would be wiping the hard drive and starting over again because something clearly went wrong.
And we have the system now where basically it doesn't matter what you say or what you do.
If you piss off Trump, you're going to be the victim.
That is not how a democracy or a remotely democratic system is supposed to work.
Yet that's how it is now.
And I'm concerned that too many of us are just, you know, accepting it, saying, well, that's the way things are.
I know that a lot of big tech is accepting it, in fact, even embracing it.
And that's disgusting.
And we can't ever forget that.
I'm, you know, I'm at a loss.
I don't have the solution, but I think we we damn well better band together.
And dare I say it, 86, all of this.
Yeah, that's a phrase.
Kyle, I would just I would just say that you might be mistaking a lot of people.
A lot of people's disrespect for that as acceptance.
And I think after you've experienced and seen so many of these kinds of things or at least have a lot to a lot of better to compare it to that.
But when something deserves your disrespect, you definitely the cumulative effect is really made accepting things laughable.
Like I'm so beyond that personally.
And I think a lot of other people are like it's it's not that I accept that it's wrong.
It's that I don't really like respect the the kind of authority they're trying to wield at all.
I mean, it just it doesn't it doesn't deserve the respect or acceptance that you're talking about.
Right. Well, until attorneys and police chiefs and people, you know, who have some power stand up to this and say, no, we're not we're not recognizing this as legitimate.
It doesn't really matter what we think, because we have no power to make clear to us over and over again.
But it's not acceptance is what I'm saying.
I'm just saying it might be hard to kind of acceptance.
If you accept your fate doesn't mean you agree with your fate.
You're accepting.
Oh, you know, this is awful, but there's nothing I can do about it.
I know I'm saying kind of the same thing right now.
Well, I just think, you know, especially with May Day coming up, things need to grind to a halt a little bit so that we can address the situation.
Alex, well, well, look, if I chime in there, I think we have an obligation.
We have a duty to call this this type of activity out.
And as you probably saw, Emanuel, you know, and I talked about last week on our radio show about the habeas cases that I've been filing and and the crazy position that the United States has been taking in those inconsistent positions that the United States has been taking with respect to what the law is and how it and how it it should shape certain cases and how it affects certain cases.
And I published an article about this, calling it out specifically on Slate.com and on what was it?
I guess it was yesterday.
It was Tuesday.
All the days are bleeding into into one long day here.
But it was Tuesday and it was the front page of Slate.com was this article about the tactics of the Department of Justice and and basically taking contrary positions on what the law is, the exact type of stuff that we discussed here last week.
And I have to say, I was really pleasantly surprised to see them promote this article and put it on the front page for so long.
And you can still find it up there on on Slate.com.
But I think it's it's important to call this out and to call it like we see it, like we're doing right here on WBAI.
It takes a certain amount of courage, I think, to maintain that type of position.
Absolutely. And, you know, anyone can write articles, you know, letters to the editor, can phone in to TV shows, radio shows, whoever is taking phone calls and express your opinion.
And that's that's definitely a great step.
It's not the solution.
It's a step towards the solution.
And we need more people to be taking that kind of an interest.
That's a really, really good point.
And there's something I think that is understated in it.
And that's that you can have a right to speech, but you must exercise it as well.
I mean, especially when it's warranted or whenever you feel like.
But just to have and, you know, possess it in law and historically doesn't necessarily equate to the power you can have in exercising it.
Yeah. And I'm sorry if I sound angry, but I am angry because, you know, I value freedom and democracy and being able to speak your mind.
And I see all of that, all of that under threat.
And I'm not sure what the bigger threat is, if it's our complacency or the downright evil nature of the people currently running things.
It's it's it's difficult.
Look, we have James Comey, the former head of the FBI, who took a picture on a beach of seashells that spelled out eight, six, four, seven.
Now, OK, let me start by saying that he had every right to go to that beach himself loaded with seashells and arrange them on the beach.
Take an hour or two to do that and write eight, six, Donald J.
Trump. Awful lot of seashells.
But he could have done that.
Then taken a picture of it and put it on the front page of Time magazine, if they would have printed it or, you know, just basically made a huge poster and put it on the side of a building.
I don't know.
It's within his rights to do that.
You can say that he didn't.
He took a picture of what somebody else did.
And all it said was eight, six, four, seven, which, apart from spelling VoIP on a touchstone phone, is is basically a statement saying get rid of number 47.
Number 47 being the 47th president of the United States, Donald J.
Trump.
Eight, six does not mean murder, does not mean kill.
I mean, it probably does now because of how it's been completely dragged through the mud.
But eight, six is a very common term in the hospitality industry, in restaurants and bars.
I know this because I know many people who have been 86 from many bars.
So this this phrase means something.
It does not mean what they're telling you it means.
But to be able to go after somebody of that stature, even, and say that they're threatening the life of the president by taking a picture of seashells with four numbers, it's the height of absurdity.
Everybody knows it's the height of absurdity, but nobody wants to say the emperor has no clothes because we might be next.
And I'm tired of living in fear.
Not that I have been living in fear, but I'm tired of seeing so many of us, you know, even the rich and powerful, maybe especially the rich and powerful, because they fear they're going to lose everything they have.
But you have to stand up to this.
History is not going to judge you nicely if you don't.
And, you know, Jimmy Kimmel, someone who I think is doing a lot for freedom of speech, he told a joke last week.
He told a joke saying Melania Trump looked like a what was the phrase again?
Expectant widow.
Expectant widow.
And what that, you know, what that means, it's a reference to age difference.
Trump is 80, she's 56, which is older than I thought she was.
And I just say that to be annoying.
But that was basically seen by these people, these evil people.
They wanted to blame the events of Saturday on somebody, and they had it in for Kimmel to start with.
So they blamed it on him saying he was encouraging people to kill the president by saying his younger wife is an expectant widow.
If you think about what that phrase means, it's obviously a reference to age difference, how he's going to die much sooner than she does, and how she's expecting that and is looking forward to that because she's just in it for the money.
It might not be true.
It might be in bad taste, but we're entitled to do that.
And Alex, you're in the UK right now.
You know, I know you never watched SNL in the United States, but they have SNL in the UK now.
I advise you to watch that because they are brutal in their humor against their political leaders.
This is nothing to them.
And it's understood that you have every right to say horrible things sometimes about your leaders.
The king is not out of bounds for that.
So, you know, we have a lot to learn.
Now, what happened with Jimmy Kimmel, they're demanding that he be fired from ABC because he made that joke.
He dared to make a joke.
Fortunately, he's not backing down.
So far, Disney, who for some reason is in charge of ABC, they're not backing down.
Not, you know, for now anyway.
And the federal government is now going after their licenses.
They are going after all of ABC's licenses.
You know, they're not due for renewal until 2028, but they're going after them now.
And the message is very clear.
We are punishing you.
And even though the FCC is not supposed to be just following what the leader says, that's exactly what they are doing.
So we're seeing all these things happen in quick succession.
And, you know, it's just because some psycho goes nuts at this press dinner and intimidates many, many people that they decide to interpret it as an attack by anyone left of center in this country on their great leader.
And we just cannot tolerate this.
This is a bridge too far.
Well, I tend to agree with that.
I mean, if the whole foundation of your political movement is to make America great again, I don't understand how you can do that and ignore the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.
Freedom of speech is what makes America great again.
And when you're threatening to yank a TV station's licenses over a monologue, you're basically saying to everybody, sure, you're free to speak.
You've got freedom of speech.
But so long as you clap your hands for the president, that's not freedom of speech.
That's that's basically a censorship regime being handed down from the president of the United States across the entire country.
It's a blanket of censorship.
It has nothing to do with the greatness of America.
How can we make America great again while we are undermining the First Amendment of the Constitution?
It makes zero sense.
And for those who are wondering, how does ABC have TV licenses?
They're a network.
They're not a TV station.
What they're doing is they're going after the stations that are owned by ABC and threatening those licenses.
Even though they had nothing to do with actually creating the content, they want to punish ABC for not following their orders.
And that that is where we are right now.
That is the the nation that we are in.
And a lot of us kind of let it get there.
But this is the time to start talking about it, to start fighting back.
So next week, at this time, we're going to have the monthly call in edition of Off the Hook for WBAI listeners.
So mark that on your calendars tonight on Overtime, which follows the show, 8 p.m. on YouTube channel 2600.
We will be taking calls there as well as discussing things further.
So anyway, I just wanted to address that issue because I think it's damn important.
It's something that we all need to be aware of.
I'm looking at the story about Comey now, and they're saying that each charge, how is there more than one charge?
I'm trying to figure that out.
Did they charge him by the shell?
They say each charge carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.
You know, this is what they want to do.
They want to imprison their opponents.
And he's not even that much of an opponent.
In fact, he's the guy that helped put Trump in power in the first place by investigating Hillary Clinton a couple of days before the election.
Yet, for some reason, he is considered an enemy of the state.
And now they will stop at nothing to punish him for that.
So, yeah, he's facing charges.
I don't know how.
It's more than one charge.
But for something silly like taking a picture.
And the moment he realized that it was being interpreted in that particular way, he deleted it.
He deleted it off, I believe, Instagram.
He said he didn't know what the numbers meant.
And I can believe that.
You know, he's kind of out of it.
And they tried to come after him for this before.
Didn't work.
They're just trying again.
They're going to keep trying.
It's the same tactic that we have seen in the hacker world over the years where, you know, I'm thinking of Kevin Mitnick in particular, where the prosecutor said they were going to parade him around the country and charge him in all different districts until they got the sentence they wanted.
It's a really evil way of thinking, I believe.
And, Alex, I know you have experience with that, working in the court system yourself.
Yeah.
It's, yeah, I think we find ourselves in just a very unfortunate time right now.
And, you know, I think our civil liberties are very much under fire and have been under fire.
And, sadly, this is what was promised to us when Trump was running for re-election this time.
You know, he promised the weaponization of the Department of Justice to persecute his political enemies.
And it's exactly what he's doing.
He's delivering on those promises.
People voted for this.
A majority of America voted for us, which then raises the question, raises the issue, is this what America is now?
Are we still the same country?
We were, let's say, 15, 20 years ago when the Bill of Rights and the First Amendment and the Fourth Amendment meant something.
Or is this the country that we have become?
Well, if it is the country we have become, it doesn't mean it's the country that we have to stay like.
You know, events can change your perspective.
And I like to think that this might be opening up some eyes and waking people up.
And, you know, on that note, I think that we need to be able to communicate with people who did make a mistake and get them back onto the side of logic and freedom and all that would be nice.
But let me ask you something, Alex.
You said this was, I believe, an unfortunate time that we're in right now.
If you found yourself in the mid to late 1700s, would you consider that to be an unfortunate time?
You know, we're fighting a war and, you know, it was kind of messy and inconvenient.
Yeah, well, certainly.
I mean, in the 18th century, I think it was quite an exciting century.
It was definitely a messy time.
A lot going on.
You know, what the Brits called the War for American Independence and what we call the Revolutionary War, I think, was a very important war.
And it established a nation with a written constitution that was a glorious experiment in constitutional democracy.
And it's still very much an experiment in constitutional democracy.
But I think that those very principles that were established in the 18th century, you know, about America are under fire now because they are so important and they're so timeless.
And they enable a population to be informed, to speak with each other, to peaceably assemble and to petition the government for redress, which is exactly what our president right now does not want.
He does not find these civil liberties that make America what it is to be particularly convenient at this time.
And I think we have to continually push back against the erosion of these civil liberties and exercise those rights, because I think I've always maintained that our civil liberties and our rights, they're kind of like muscles.
If you don't continually exercise them, they're going to atrophy.
And once they atrophy, they're very, very hard to get back.
Well, if you were around in the 1700s, you might just want to be left alone and live your life, which was probably agrarian.
But that would be the worst thing you could do.
And had people not stood up and fought for what they believed in, we wouldn't have basically gotten a lot of what we've already had.
We wouldn't be having this conversation now, for instance.
I think we're at a similar time where people need to express themselves in order to determine the future, the real future of this country, perhaps beyond that as well.
Because, you know, I noticed that it doesn't always it doesn't only affect this particular place.
It affects countries all around the world.
I mean, look what's going on in the Middle East right now.
The vast majority of that is because of Trump's ignorance.
And it's driving up prices all over the world.
It's driving up civil unrest everywhere.
So people need to get involved.
And that's how you make change, by getting involved.
If you don't do anything, then someone else is going to do it for you.
So think about those early times.
And if not for this country, then for any place in the world that has built something that survives to this day.
You know, at some point, people had to stand up and make decisions and fight for what they believe in.
If you don't do that, you're guaranteed that you'll have a system that does not serve you.
I think that's especially true in the sorts of community building and things that people are doing already.
And I just think that people should think about setting up the kind of infrastructure, the kind of things that you would want if things go bad.
Or if you were to take advantage of new technologies and sort of offloading from dependence on other things in a good scenario.
Both cases, I think it's sort of a preparation.
So like getting to know your neighbors or establishing community networks or remote networks and finding ways to persist and to navigate what is an increasingly more difficult operating environment in every way from business to just getting by.
I mean, I think about all of the branding this leadership is doing.
It just feels a lot like someone's moving in for a long time.
Yeah.
You know, like putting your face on the passports and on money.
I haven't even gotten to that.
My God.
I'm thinking about this while you guys are talking.
I'm like, wow.
Yeah.
What if things get a hundred or like a thousand times worse?
We're not even halfway through this yet.
Yeah.
I don't know.
I mean, it just seems like that's what's being expected, especially with these attacks on speech and communications media and specifically broadcast and critiques of the administration.
Because we always had parody.
We always had sort of ridicule and stuff, political cartoons and satire.
Like there's a long tradition of that in American politics.
And it was never equated to like terrorism or like just blah.
You're, you know, you're the other side.
So we, we, we label you and cast you as some alongside our, our terrible immigrant problem.
You know, like we're just casting anyone who's not with us as a sort of enemy.
Of course.
Anyone that doesn't look like.
Yeah.
We delineate them.
We have different types of enemies, but they're all in that camp.
They're against us.
And that's the environment.
And then these attacks on like late night hosts and people of stature, like that led the FBI.
I think it's about even if they're petty and fail, because like James Comey, if you see his reaction, he doesn't seem very timid about it.
And I think a lot of people are like, stop bugging me.
Like you're, you have a country to mess up on your own.
Like you're, why attack us?
But the reason is because they want to have a chill amongst people that are already like stressed and a little bit like reluctant to exercise the rights you're talking about.
You see, you raise a very good point there.
He is not intimidated and he shouldn't be intimidated.
He has a lot of support and he's smarter than they are.
But, you know, not all of us will have that support.
Not all of us will have that confidence.
But I think that is a key weapon where if you are targeted, you laugh at the people doing it because they're idiots.
They don't know what they're talking about and they're ultimately going to lose.
And I know a lot of us don't believe that right now because we don't have that confidence.
And that's where we can help each other by giving each other that confidence, by being there.
Like what Alex is doing, you know, helping people who are being threatened with deportation, you know, giving them a chance, giving them hope, giving them that confidence.
This was also evident in Minnesota.
I mean, when some of the ice raids and as it still stands around the country.
So there's a lot of parallels with the sorts of networks and local organization that's necessary to prepare yourself for all eventualities, but just to not be a victim.
Right, right.
And, you know, to say it doesn't involve you, it doesn't concern you, it doesn't affect you, you know, that's missing an awful lot.
You're paying so much more for all kinds of things.
You don't have access to things you used to have access to.
You don't have the rights that you used to have only a few years ago.
It affects you.
You might not care.
You might be telling yourself you don't care.
But it affects you, it affects your kids, your grandkids, and it will affect a lot more people if we don't stand up and do something.
And this is not a political discussion.
This is a discussion about everything that surrounds us, every part of our everyday lives.
And if that means something to us, we should care about it.
And we should point out when something is terribly, terribly wrong.
Alex.
Yeah, I mean, two points on that.
You know, you mentioned the ICE issue and helping these people.
And one thing I'd really like to point out is that even though it's not in the news constantly and maybe ICE has stopped killing Americans on the streets temporarily, perhaps, but their activities are still going on.
It's still very pernicious.
And it's still happening here in New York.
Just this past weekend, I was involved in another habeas case where I had put together the entire petition for rid of habeas corpus on behalf of a woman who was a mother of two kids, been in this country for, I think it was about 10 years or so.
And she was the only caregiver for these two children.
And ICE had continually had her do these check-ins online and then told her to show up in person for an ICE check-in on this past Saturday and instructed her specifically not to bring her children with her, which is a very clear indication that she would be detained and arrested at her ICE check-in.
And so we were prepared.
We were prepared.
We had, I, along with a couple of other pro bono lawyers, had prepared this petition that would be ready to file literally at the moment that ICE detained her.
And thank God we prepared for nothing because ICE actually did not detain her on this past Saturday.
But we were prepared for it to happen.
And I'm really glad that it didn't.
I'm glad that all this work that I did on Friday was for naught.
But this is the fear that people are living in.
Imagine being that woman on Friday night, knowing that the next day might be the last day that you see your two children and that you are going to be arbitrarily detained.
That's how you have to live your life.
That this is America at this point.
And knowing that your life and your freedom and your liberty, your ability to ever see your children again, hangs on a couple of lawyers whom you've never met before in your entire life, kind of jumping in and helping out.
That's insane to be living in this type of America.
And then on Saturday night, and this is the other point I want to make, you know, we've had my son on this show quite a few times.
And it was one of the first times actually Saturday night that, you know, I got in an argument with him at the dinner table and he brought up the position and he said, you know, Sasha's a very smart kid and he's very historically minded.
And he basically was arguing with me at the dinner table and he took the position that he doesn't know if there's anything to be proud of being an American today.
And that was shocking to me.
It was really shocking to me to hear my son say that he's how old he's about to be 13 in a couple of weeks.
And so, you know, he's very smart, very free thinking, very contrarian.
And, you know, he takes after his dad in many ways, and he grew up with with all you lunatics.
So, I mean, what do you expect? Right.
Yeah. So to hear him say that position and my wife and I really pushed back and talked about America and its ideals and why we have to fight for it and the history of this country and how wonderful it is and whatnot.
But then his position is, well, all he's ever known almost his entire life where he can remember what America is, is the presidency of Donald Trump, Biden, and then Donald Trump again, where it's just been one crazy thing after another.
So this generation of children, all they know is an America that is plagued and beset with mindless and inane weaponization of politics, war, ice.
It's a terrible way for kids to see their own country, which I still maintain is an absolutely exceptional place in the world, and there's nothing like it.
And we have to fight for it.
We have to make sure that we continue to keep America great, not in a MAGA sense, but in the sense that we know America and the America that we want it to be.
I think I'm most concerned that he equates Biden with Trump. I hope he's able to see the difference.
Well, I think you do, but even during the Biden presidency, Trump was still very much a presence.
Well, yeah, okay, it was still Trump then. Trump has been around, yes.
Absolutely, yeah, that's it. He's basically been, you know, just poisoning the political dialogue of this country for so many years now.
That children born, children are 12, 13 years old. That's all they know. That's scary.
That's a hugely important fact. And the thing to remember is we let him do this, and we continue to let him do this, and we don't have to. Rob, go ahead.
Yeah, I think that is extremely astute, and I owe Sasha a high five next time I see him.
But the thing that we all, I think, would benefit from remembering is that Donald Trump is not America.
The administration is not America, and we all need to keep connected with the people around us, our neighbors, our fellow Americans, our people who, you know, are siblings in arms and everything.
This Friday, it's the 2600 meeting, but it is also International Workers' Day, also known as May Day, connected to the old celebrations of spring.
But it's also a celebration of the working class and the laborers going back to the 19th century.
In the 1950s, President Eisenhower decided that May 1st, let's not talk about those workers.
That sounds a bit communist. Let's declare May 1st to be Loyalty Day, where we talk about how great America is.
And let's declare it also to be Law Day, where we celebrate the significance of the law of the land.
But it's still May Day.
Law Day? I've never heard that.
Law Day. It was started in the 50s, and presidents since, including Donald Trump last year, reaffirmed that, yes, it's Loyalty Day and Law Day here in the United States.
I remember dancing around the Maypole for some reason as a kid.
I don't know what that was.
I didn't get any of you a Law Day card.
We still have a couple of days.
Yeah, we still have a couple of days.
But also, it is May Day.
It is the celebration of people, the people, not the billionaires, not the oligarchs, not anyone in control, but the people celebrating their, basically, community and their unity.
There is so much stuff going on all over the country and all over the world for May Day.
You could go to the site maydaystrong.org to find all the events going on.
Well, so many of the events going on in this city, all over the country.
There are things in other countries on there.
There's a nice clickable map and all sorts of rallies, protests, and happenings.
Well, I heard there was supposed to be a national strike, and I haven't heard anything about that recently.
I've been looking, too.
You know, getting the message out is a real problem.
There have been strikes and work stoppages.
There was a big deal in Madison.
You want to talk about this one?
In Madison, yeah.
So that's where our family lives.
And I was looking something up because our nephew's school is having a fun run next week, and I was curious about that.
So I was at the school's website, and there is a pop-up on every single page on the website that they're not having school on Friday in their school system because they polled the teachers' union, and over 70% of the staff was going to be calling out on Friday.
So for student security and student safety, they're just canceling school on Friday because so many people are going to be out protesting.
Well, that's a lesson right there.
Kids are going to learn an awful lot on that day.
But, you know, if there is something on a national level going on, you'll hear about it here on WBAI, obviously.
But we need to all as individuals try to find out more and try to make it more meaningful, but not stop there.
You know, there are a lot of ways to express yourself and to get the word out and to get more people involved.
The thing that bothers me, you know, there have been three No Kings protests over the past couple of years.
And first of all, a lot of people I know didn't go.
But what really bothers me is that of the people who did go, so few were young people.
Most of them are people 70 and above.
And maybe that's the case on Long Island, but that is what I observed.
And that points to a real problem.
You know, people should care at all ages, but especially people who are young and ideological and hopefully impassioned by what's going on.
Like, you know, your kid, Alex, he gets it.
He sees that there's something seriously wrong.
But I'm talking about people who are in college, you know, people who are in high school.
Why aren't they showing up?
Why aren't they showing up more?
I know in New York City we get a lot more young people, but that should be the case everywhere.
I couldn't agree more.
I couldn't agree more.
And, you know, it's easy to complain about the young generation and, you know, it makes me feel old to even do it.
But I think that they need our help.
They need our they need our coaxing and they need to understand that, you know, this is something that's fundamental to being an American.
And if they also understood that it could affect change, that being out there on the streets and having your voice heard could affect change.
And it's not just for the sake of doing it in and of itself.
Then then I think they would learn, you know, about about the nature and wisdom of protesting.
It absolutely would affect change.
There's no question about that.
If more people were exerting pressure all the time, I mean, look what happened in Minnesota.
People were on the streets and they weren't leaving and eventually ice back down.
Not not nearly enough, but they did back down.
And it's that kind of, you know, it took horrible events for that to even happen.
But that's the kind of pressure that we need to have 24 seven.
And maybe the way to convince them is to use the media and the mediums that this new young generation is used to these days.
I mean, we have to resort to social media, perhaps, you know, all these all these platforms that I can't stand, like TikTok and Instagram.
And have to see that, you know, if protesting were cool on TikTok or cool on Instagram, then they would show up just like they show up at these, you know, these places that become Instagram famous because they sell cronuts or, you know, big Sundays or something like that all through the city.
We need we need to make somehow these these idiotic, stupid reels and Instagram and TikTok feeds.
You're not winning them over using those adjectives.
No, I'm certainly not.
I'm not trying to at the moment.
But if I were, I'd yeah, I'd be slightly more.
But you're right.
We need people that are into that that can communicate on that level.
I'm not going to judge that.
You know, it's something that we failed as far as connecting with.
There's a lot of ways people communicate.
And, you know, these issues need to be discussed on all of them.
Before we go, we only have a couple of minutes on the subject of ice.
Apparently, ice bureaucrats are now planning to use special facial recognition glasses to collect data on Americans in real time.
These are financial statements that point to the development of a facial recognition platform modeled after commercially available AI smart glasses like Meta's widely widely panned pervert glasses.
Well, it was a mistake naming them that.
But ISIS, ISIS in-house model, it seems, will allow agents to monitor video and reference vast federal databases of biometric information on subjects, regardless of if they've been arrested or even charged with a crime.
Is this the first you're hearing that these databases exist, that this is the kind of thing that our government is planning?
Maybe this is what will outrage you and make you realize that it's time to stop them.
It's time to stand up in opposition to this.
Any thoughts in the minute we have?
I don't think it's worth being surprised that these sorts of things are happening.
I think this is just sort of the default thing.
It's so easy to assume nowadays.
And it's no wonder that people are just getting worn out by all this fury.
I would just say, like, we need to build counter surveillance systems, detectors like the Bluetooth and other things that can find them and identify them.
And we should hack our own to pieces.
I mean, really get access to different versions of these, just like license plate readers, disassemble them, find out what the components are made of, you know, what their strategies are, how they work and build your own, build, repurpose them and and and serve, serve a counter argument, a counterpoint to the to the use cases that they've built around them.
So if you can afford it or pool money, whatever it takes, but there's so we're in we're well positioned to take advantage of how many different things are out there.
Every evil piece of technology can be used for good if you gain control of it.
And that's something that as hackers, we can we can spread the knowledge of we can teach, we can experiment.
And I hope that's what we do.
I really do.
I also hope people support WBAI.
Go to WBAI.org.
Give to WBAI.org and support the station so that we can have conversations like this and continue when they're most needed.
And we'll see you again next week at the same time.
Again, we'll be doing a call in show next week on WBAI.
We're we'll be taking phone calls later tonight on YouTube on channel 2600.
And Rob, you want to say a word or two about the meetings coming up?
Yep.
So we're starting in the evening, around six, seven is usually when things get started.
But you had to say that, huh?
I did.
And you can join us.
I'll be there.
Love to say hi.
Members of your own community.
And as I was saying before, the real power in fighting against any of the crap that's going on right now is connecting with your local community.
This is how you do that in the hacker world is go to a 2600 meeting, nyc2600.net.
All right.
With that, we're out for the night.
We'll see you next week.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
It's you that I'm talking to. It's you that I'm talking to.
How'd you heard the latest news about the boy who was shot and abused?
The funny thing is, that's not all. It was your name that was called.
It's you that I'm talking to.
It's you that I'm talking to.
Now you're cute for being a good man. Take your marksman to the laurels of death.
Now let this be a lesson to you. Rootie, I'm talking to you.
It's you that I'm talking to.
It's you that I'm talking to.
guitar solo
Pick it up, pick it up
You're going around cause a disaster in my city
Now did you know you could never win?
But I tried
You had your family, they were running around
Trying to stop you from going down
It's you that I'm talking to
It's you that I'm talking to
Yes, it's you that I'm talking to
It's you that I'm talking to
Yes, it's you, you, you that I'm talking to
It's you that I'm talking to