on WBAI. Thanksgiving evening
following the WBAI evening
news and ending at midnight
here on WBAI 99.5 FM on your
dial. That's Jimi Hendrix.
Thanksgiving evening following
the evening news until
midnight. Here on WBAI listener
sponsored non-commercial
community radio in New York
City. Here, music to soothe the
world. Yeah, nice abrupt ending
there. This is radio station WBAI
in New York. It's eight o'clock
time for Off The Hook.
The telephone keeps ringing, so
I ripped it off the wall. I cut
myself while shaving. Now I
can't make a call. We couldn't
get much worse. But if they
could, they would. Fundidly
bond for the best, expect the
worst. I hope that's
understood. Fundidly bond.
Fundidly bond.
Fundidly bond.
Fundidly bond.
Fundidly bond.
Fundidly bond.
Fundidly bond.
Fundidly bond.
Fundidly bond.
Fundidly bond.
Fundidly bond.
Fundidly bond.
Fundidly bond.
Fundidly bond.
Fundidly bond.
Fundidly bond.
Fundidly bond.
Fundidly bond.
Fundidly bond.
Fundildly bond.
Fundidly bond.
Ha-ha-ha!
guitar begin
Headphone lips surround us as we
go about our work.
Sickness and
Sickness and disease in every nook and cranny lurk
You may soon succumb beneath this ever-present threat
But you cannot avoid it, so it's meaningless to fret
Wretching nausea, headache, fever spot before the eyes
And you can't either sleep or know if it ever will end
You may need to vomit, but you can't get out of bed
You may think that bells are ringing loudly in your head
You may get the drops or maybe doubled up in pain
You may get so sick that you'll not get sick again
You may give your sickness to your family and friends
And it goes round and round and it may never end
Sickness and disease in every nook and cranny lurk
I could rant about this for hours, but I'm not going to.
Just imagine the worst thing you could possibly imagine
and multiply and you're pretty much at it.
Now this was an interesting week otherwise.
And I say that because this was the week of one of those celestial events
that happened once in a lifetime that so far I've witnessed about four of them.
This one, of course, was the Leonid meteor shower
which took place last Saturday night.
Saturday night into Sunday morning.
I don't know if very many people actually stayed up until 3 or 4 o'clock a.m.
But a bunch of us out on the island, apparently, more people than I thought would do it
made it out to various beaches on the South Shore.
You had to look onto the South Shore of Long Island
or actually the South Shore of anywhere, the southern sky, the southeastern sky.
Pretty much all over North America people were able to catch this show, I guess,
is the best way to describe it, where basically you had a meteor shower,
a shooting star every second or two.
And it was pretty amazing that such a thing could actually happen.
Astronomy is one of the other passions of mine.
I'd like to just get out there and look at the stars occasionally
and see planets and shooting stars and UFOs and satellites and things like that.
And this is something that I don't do enough of.
It's something that, I guess, when you're busy all the time,
when you're working all the time, when you're constantly stressed out
with the day-to-day drudgeries of life, you forget about the stars.
And occasionally you just have to go out there and remember them.
You have to go out there and just see the sky and see what's out there
and realize that everything that goes on here, this radio show, this country,
the various wars going on that have gone on, all of history,
every book ever written, every painting ever made, every song that's ever come out,
it doesn't mean anything once you get past our atmosphere.
Not a thing. Not to any of those little dots in the sky.
Not one of them. It doesn't matter at all.
And, you know, some people get depressed when they get that kind of feeling
of insignificance, how nothing really matters.
But somehow that cheers me up.
It makes me feel like all the garbage doesn't really matter either.
And also think of all the things that are out there.
Think of all the different worlds, the different pieces of music,
the different wars, the different civilizations
that we don't know anything about yet.
We stayed out there so long and saw so many shooting stars.
I'd have to say we saw many hundreds.
But we stayed out there so long that the stars actually moved.
You could actually tell by standing in the same place for about 3 1⁄2 hours
that the stars had rotated a little bit.
And Jupiter, which was up in the sky, had actually moved a bit to the west.
I just thought that's pretty cool if you can actually find time
to watch the stars move.
You know, whether you're old, young, rich, poor, healthy, sick,
I think you're doing okay if you can just watch the day go by
or hear the day go by or however you want to do it.
Just get away from all the nonsense for a while.
With that said, we're going to get right back into the nonsense
because, of course, there's an awful lot of it going on.
As we all know, it continues as we watch the country spiral down
into despair and doom.
Mike here got a letter from President Bush today.
Was it today?
Yeah, I got it today. I don't know.
What did he have to say?
He thanked me for writing about the acts of war committed against the U.S.
on September 11th.
Did you write him about the acts of war committed against the United States
on September 11th?
I don't think so, no. Not in those words, anyway.
Oh, okay, not in those words.
Well, maybe he embellished a little bit.
Yeah. He also gave me a website I can go to.
He gave you your own website?
No, no, no. A website.
Oh, okay. He has mystical powers.
Tell me what else he did.
That's what he did.
What did he say?
He said, you know, in the face of this evil,
that our country remains strong and united,
a beacon of freedom and opportunity to the rest of the world.
And our government continues to function without interruption,
which I guess is supposed to be a good thing.
And was that a big postcard he sent you?
Well, it came in an envelope, but it was hand-addressed.
Not by him, but by someone.
It was hand-addressed? Do you have the envelope?
You didn't bring the envelope. That's the most important part of it.
Sorry. It was postmarked in Baltimore, which is kind of strange.
Handwritten. We should do a handwriting analysis.
He just did that.
You sure it wasn't one of those sophisticated computers
that can do things like that, make it seem as if it's a real person?
It could have been, but it looked pretty convincing.
I think Publishers Clearinghouse uses things like that.
It was definitely more convincing than the standard cursive font.
So, I'll say it was.
Okay.
Okay, we're going to bring in Bernie S.
We're going to do it in a special way.
Recently, I went to one of those big warehouse-type stores
where you can buy 50-gallon drums of mayonnaise and things like that.
Well, they also have prepaid phone cards sitting at the cash register.
And basically, it was the lowest rate I'd ever seen, ever.
3.5 cents a minute.
I mean, you can't beat that rate anywhere, I don't think.
You can beat that rate?
It's hard.
Where do you beat that rate?
Hang on, Dave is here.
Where can you beat 2.5, 3.5?
At the deli.
At the deli?
They have, like, the 1.1 cents a minute.
1.1 cents?
That's got to have a big asterisk next to it, though.
Yeah, it's a $20 Connect fee.
But after that, it's 1.1 cents a minute.
Surely, you jest.
At least a little bit.
Well, this one says there's no hidden surcharges,
and then there's an asterisk next to that.
Of course, there will be a surcharge for all calls.
Now, for calls made from payphones,
they don't say how much a surcharge is, though.
We're not at a payphone now,
so we can actually not get that surcharge.
But I want to test it to see if there's any kind of catch to this
because it just seemed too good to be true.
3.5 cents a minute, that's not a bad deal.
Minutes based on U.S. domestic calling,
which is what we'll be doing.
Bernie S. is in Philadelphia.
International flat rates are higher than U.S. domestic flat rates.
That makes sense.
They differ according to destination called and are subject to change.
And there are some examples of how many minutes you would get
calling a different country,
which is definitely more expensive.
For some reason, Mexico is more expensive than any of them,
but I don't know quite why that is.
Now, the interesting thing is that you can't just wing one of these out the door
and then pick it up later and expect it to work and not pay for it.
You can't stick it on the side of a two-ton container of Pampers
and, you know, like it's a coupon or something like that
and wheel it out the door and expect that you can unstick it later and use the card.
The cashier has to actually take this thing and key in special numbers
and use computers to talk to other computers
to actually make this thing get turned on.
So here it is. It's in a little package.
I have not yet opened it.
I don't even know if it's going to work.
I paid something like $15 for this.
It's 500 minutes.
So I think that comes out to about 3.5 cents a minute.
All right.
Now, on the back of this card are instructions to dial a certain number,
and then I'm going to need a coin.
Actually, I have a coin.
That's OK. Thank you. I have a coin.
I have to scratch off gently with coin the card number.
That's security.
That's better security than we have at our airports, I'll say that.
All right.
I thought the coin was for some kind of to put in the phone.
No.
Well, it should say on the thing that you do need a coin.
That is kind of important.
OK, it's a 12-digit number.
It begins and ends with a 6.
I'll tell you that much.
Only 10 to the 10 combinations we could guess.
Well, I've given out more information than I should have.
So let's get a dial tone here.
Dial tone. OK, great.
Now we're going to call the 800 number,
and I have no qualms about giving out the 800 number,
but you'll have to translate the touchdowns here.
OK, let's see what happens.
AT&T.
AT&T.
For instructions in English, press 1.
Para instrucciones en español, presione 2.
Let's go for English.
Enter your card number.
That's an instruction? That's a command.
All right, I'll enter my card number.
But I'm turning down the volume for this.
Non-stop.
Thank you for using AT&T prepaid card service.
Please shop again at Sam's Club.
To call within the U.S., Canada, or the Caribbean, press 1.
To call another country, press 2.
To add call time to your card, press 3.
For U.S. directory assistance, press 4.
To receive your current card balance, press 9.
Let's do that first.
To cancel a call, press star 3 times.
You have 500 minutes of domestic call time remaining.
To call within the U.S., Canada...
OK, let's call Bernie.
...and the area code and number.
All right, we're going to turn down the volume there, too,
so that people don't call Bernie.
You have 500 minutes of call time for the number you dialed.
OK, that should be enough.
But let's keep track of it.
That way we know if we're being ripped off.
I'm saving BAI a lot of money here, too, by doing it this way.
Very kind of you.
Yeah.
Hello?
In the interest of science.
Hi, Bernie, how are you?
I'm good.
You know, you sound like you're on some kind of a really cheesy
one-centimeter connection or something.
Oh, now maybe that's the catch.
You sound fine, but are you saying that my voice is not all it could be?
No, actually, you sound fine.
I sound fine, too.
I don't know what the catch is.
I don't know what the catch is.
I was surprised that AT&T is carrying this call.
Uh-huh.
Yeah, yeah.
3.5 cents a minute.
What do you say?
I have a prepaid phone card from a competing wholesale club.
Have we talked a minute yet?
No, we haven't.
I'll call you in a second.
I've got to test this out.
I just want to see if they actually charge more than...
You could have pressed star, star, star.
Yeah, but I want to do the whole thing over again.
That way, I'll see if there's a surcharge for disconnecting.
And I apologize to Bernie S if he's listening out there for hanging up so abruptly,
but I wanted to make sure I hung up before the minute was over.
AT&T, for instructions in English, press 1.
Okay, we know how to do this.
Not really instructions.
Enter your card number.
It's that command there.
And I'm entering the number again, which soon I'll have memorized.
Okay, I've entered the number.
Thank you for using AT&T prepaid card service.
Please shop again at Sam's Club.
Yeah, yeah.
To call within the US, Canada, enter the area code and number.
Okay, we're entering Bernie S's number one more time.
Have 499 minutes of call time for the number you dialed.
Okay.
Sounds good to me so far.
Nice, good connection.
Cheap calls.
I guess you just got to belong to one of these clubs to get the card.
That's maybe the catch.
You know, I was just cursing out Sprint PCS for dropping another one of my calls.
I apologize.
I wasn't able to notify you that I was disconnecting so fast,
but I wanted to make sure we got this in under a minute.
I want to know, does this bill, Emanuel, does this bill in fractional minutes,
like 6-second increments?
No, I don't think so.
I think it's only in, I mean, come on, 3.5 cents.
I don't know.
How much would that be?
Do the math.
It would be less than I'd care to pay.
Six seconds would be a third of a cent.
Yeah.
Well, we have a good connection.
We have a good connection.
We have a cheap rate here, so let's see if we can keep this going.
And, you know, there's nothing to stop me from buying a whole lot of these
and then selling them to those poor people that can't afford to be part of these clubs.
Right?
I guess so.
Nothing preventing me from doing that.
Okay, we have some interesting news to let people know about,
and I'm sure Bernie has some information as well.
First, some interesting news from the world of WIPO.
I don't know if you guys remember WIPO, the World Intellectual Property Organization.
I wish I could forget.
Yeah.
It sounds like a consumer soap product.
They reached into some realm of logic that I have not yet been to.
And coming down with this decision in the domain name of VivendiUniversalsucks.com.
Now, does anybody know what Vivendi Universal is in the first place?
They're a music label.
They're a music label?
Okay.
Probably several other things too.
Well, somebody, to make a long story short,
somebody apparently put up a site or pointed a domain with that particular name
to, I guess, register their displeasure,
just the same way that we've done with many of our sites.
It came before the WIPO board, who has been entrusted to decide these things.
And this is the logic they used in awarding the site to Vivendi Universal, I suppose,
not to the person that says they suck.
That's the weirdness here.
This panel, by a majority,
is of the view that the addition of the word sucks to a well-known trademark
is not always likely to be taken as language clearly indicating
that the domain name is not affiliated with the trademark owner.
Yes.
Two examples of the use of the word sucks,
which do not so indicate, even to English speakers,
and they really had to reach somewhere to get this,
are, number one, the use of the word sucks purely descriptively,
as in the advertising slogan,
nothing sucks like Electrolux.
Yes.
That's a vacuum cleaner, I believe.
If there were a website at electroluxsucks.com,
it would be unlikely to be taken as unaffiliated with the company Electrolux.
I mean, you've got to hand it to them for coming up with that example.
That's like, you know, okay.
You know, if the name of the company was actually sucks,
that would be an example, too, you know,
because then it'd be sucksucks.com.
You'd be all confused.
So, yeah, of course, you have to, like,
take every site that has the word sucks in it
and say, you know, you can't have that.
And the second example they came up with,
the website of the band Primus, primussucks.com.
That was so named after the album Suck on This,
in parentheses, 1990, in case you want to look it up.
The website of the band's lead singer, Les Claypool,
at lesclaypool.com, has a link to the primussucks.com website.
So, yeah, they used the word sucks,
and I guess that means that, you know, people would be confused
if someone said that Primus sucks.
But as far as I know, Vivendi Universal did not put out anything called sucks,
and they also don't make vacuum cleaners.
So there's no reason in the world for this logic to apply to that.
However, Wipo decided that it did,
and here's the icing on the cake here.
More importantly, it must be borne in mind
that not all Internet users speak English as their mother tongue.
So because of this, they could be confused by anything that's put there.
So, you know, you could say that Vivendi Universal is a really lousy company,
and I'm not affiliated with them at all,
but this is my opinion solely dot com.
And because somebody in some country doesn't understand that
because they don't speak English,
that site, by Wipo logic, has to go to Vivendi Universal.
Bernie, did I miss anything on this?
Is that logic clear as a bell to you?
Well, if they can't read English,
then nothing on the site is going to confuse them anyway
because they can't comprehend it.
Uh-huh.
Yeah, but they're going to go through life thinking that that site belonged to them,
and they'll, I don't know, I don't know.
It could be irreparably harmed emotionally by, I don't get it either.
What's the voting record, Emmanuel, of this Wipo board
as far as deciding for or against individuals
in favor or against corporations or other powerful interests?
Well, it's not very good.
It's really not that good at all.
I don't think that they favor individuals very often.
Yeah.
Sorry, go ahead.
I'm impressed with this panel's knowledge of pop music.
I didn't know Wipo panelists.
It was probably one of their kids that told them that.
I guess.
But it's just hilarious, the logic that they used to come up with this decision.
I mean, you know, at least say that, you know,
they don't think that criticism is allowed in that form.
At least say that.
But to come up with these bizarre examples, that's something I just can't understand.
I have an example.
Go ahead.
What if somebody were to incorporate under the name of Wipo or Wipo Sucks?
You know, I think that we have a site like that.
In fact, I've lost track of all the sites.
Not a site, but an actual incorporation.
So they can't take that away from you because you say,
look, I'm doing business in the state of New York as Wipo Sucks.
And we sell, you know, vacuum cleaner, cleanser, you know,
we're a vacuum cleaner, cleanser club.
Well, they probably just use Wipo's past decision to sue you in a regular court
and get a judge to say, hey, look, Wipo said this,
so you can't exist as that entity no matter what.
I don't know.
It's setting bad precedent.
And that bad precedent would be reinforced in all different courtrooms.
Oh, that's how I imagine it to be.
So do you think that this is going to open the floodgates for any corporation
who has some individual who's not happy with their product or service
who'd registered a domain name that that corporation sucks.com or whatever?
Do you think that this is going to open the floodgates?
Yeah, yeah.
I think it's a shot in the arm for those that want to quell speech.
They certainly are getting a lot of shots in the arm lately.
I want to talk about security a bit,
mainly security that's been going on as a result of the events of September 11th.
We mentioned this story last week,
and it's come up again because a few of our listeners have written to us concerning this.
It's the case of someone who was prevented from getting on an airplane a few weeks ago.
Let's see.
Yeah, and the last off the hook, the November 13th one,
you talked about Nancy Oden being stopped.
When I went to the site Snopes.com in their war section,
it says that the Oden story is an urban legend.
Now, this is the site that talks about urban legends.
And for the most part, up until now,
I've thought that they really hit the nail on the head, you know,
and investigated their story.
But what I saw here was really kind of disturbing.
I mean, it was very disturbing.
This is how it reads.
Claim.
Green Party activist Nancy Oden was denied permission to fly
because she represents a political party that opposes the bombing of Afghanistan.
Status, false.
All right.
Well, you see, that in itself is possibly true.
We don't know why she was stopped.
We just know that she was stopped.
These things do happen.
They don't tell you why they stop people.
I've been stopped a number of times by customs agents,
and on at least one occasion they said that my name came up in a computer.
So you might get different answers depending on who you talk to.
We read the story last week,
so we won't repeat the story that we read.
But I'd like to read what this site says in regard to that story.
Origins.
Another example from the never attribute to bad behavior
what you can blame on political persecution file.
Nobody has to be told that traveling via air
has become a considerably different experience since September 11th.
Passengers have to arrive two or three hours before their scheduled flights.
National Guardsmen are stationed at airports.
Travelers and their luggage are subject to more frequent and stringent searches,
and a number of commonly carried items such as scissors
are now verboten aboard aircraft.
Although the process is intended to protect everyone's safety,
it can be quite wearying both for air travelers
and those tasked with enforcing the new security rules.
A little cooperation goes a long way.
Sometimes passengers are now selected for additional scrutiny
either by a random selection process
or by matching the criteria of a profiling system
developed by law enforcement agencies.
Such criteria might include what type of ticket was purchased,
how it was purchased, or how it was paid for.
That is what happened to Nancy Oden on November 2nd.
She was selected to undergo a more stringent screening process
before boarding her flight.
Yes, she ended up missing her flight to Chicago
for a Green Party USA meeting
when security declined to allow her on the plane.
And yes, Nancy Oden is a representative of a political party
that condemns the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan as inhumane
and an act of state terrorism against a starving and impoverished nation.
But the evidence to support a claim that a causal connection exists
between these two facts just isn't there.
Well, it would be nice if they actually went into some evidence
as to just why that is, but they don't.
They continue on.
As mentioned above, a little cooperation goes...
The person you called is no longer on the line.
Well, why not?
To call within the U.S., Canada, or the Caribbean, press 1.
To call another country, press 2.
To add calling time to your cart, press 3.
We'll call them back.
Enter your area code and number.
There's no way to redial, I suppose.
Don't be silly.
Well, that would be nice, wouldn't it?
I could just hit a single button and get Bernie S. back.
You have 488 minutes of call time for the number you dialed.
You get three guesses as to whether this was AT&T or SprintPCS who dropped the call.
Well, if it was SprintPCS, you'd get the little beeps that told you it was SprintPCS.
I assume it was them.
I hope it was them.
Was it them?
You hope it was SprintPCS?
Yes.
I'm assuming it was because I had far more calls dropped by SprintPCS than I have AT&T.
Okay.
Well, don't move.
All right?
That's rule number one when you use SprintPCS.
Don't move.
If you're sitting in a chair, don't move your hand.
I was standing on the beach watching the shooting stars, talking to people on the phone,
and I would lose the signal while I was standing on the beach.
You know, not moving.
It was unbelievable.
But anyway, let me finish with this story.
As mentioned above, a little cooperation goes a long way,
but Ms. Oden, by her own admission, was far from cooperative.
She insulted the woman manning the x-ray machines by insisting they wash their hands
before they put them on the x-ray machine.
She was far from cooperative.
She insulted the woman manning the x-ray machines by insisting they wash their hands
before handling her luggage, even though they wear rubber gloves.
She reached for her bags as they were being searched.
No, no, as the searchers don't know that you aren't seeking to grab a weapon stashed therein.
She pointedly ignored or argued with National Guardsmen,
and she objected to being touched with the metal-detecting wand.
Is it a surprise to anyone other than Ms. Oden that an unruly, uncooperative passenger
who caused problems with every step of the security screening process
might be declined permission to board an airplane?
And as noted, all this can be gleaned from her version of events.
The versions related by others involved are less charitable.
Now, I have yet to find a version put out by her that says anything remotely resembling this,
and I have a version that was put out by her that I'll read as well,
but listen to what the airport officials said.
Thank you for writing, which implies that these people actually took the time to write to the airport security people.
Ms. Oden's version of events, while certainly exciting, are far removed from reality.
Her green status was and is irrelevant.
The passenger in question was asked to undergo additional screening, i.e. a hand-wound examination,
because the manner in which she purchased the ticket triggered her concern
under the new federal screening guidelines post-September 11th.
She refused to cooperate and became quite abusive.
It is illegal for an airline to fly an unscreened passenger.
Accordingly, the airline denied her boarding.
She never got near a plane.
She never went through security.
No screen, no fly.
It is as simple as that.
The situation was entirely of her own making.
What's sad is that she refuses to admit to and take responsibility for her own inappropriate behavior,
looking only for somebody else to blame for her own inability to cooperate with reasonable expectations under the circumstances.
99.9% of people selected are very understanding and cooperative, and the process only takes an extra minute.
Again, thanks for writing to express your concerns,
and we appreciate your efforts to objectively view the circumstances.
Those efforts seem to have fallen far short,
because there is no statement or no evidence that they ever tried to contact Nancy Oden about this
and find out her version and have her answer these statements that are attributed as fact,
only because they come from an authoritative source.
Now, maybe that is exactly what happened.
I don't know.
I wasn't there.
But I do know that there are some questions being raised, some very serious issues and concerns,
and I have heard them echoed in a number of other instances as well.
Now, there's another webpage, which is kind of a funny name, thisistrue.com.
Some weeks after terrorists turned several of our airliners into guided missiles,
I flew and got to experience our greatly improved security.
My experience has brought a lot of response from readers.
I found when I started doing some research that my experiences pale in comparison to the stories others have to tell.
I concluded my initial comments by saying it all comes down to the thought processes of a person
who wasn't smart enough to get a better paying job at the airport McDonald's.
If you think I'm exaggerating, think again.
United Security screeners denied boarding to a young man in Philadelphia because of the novel he was carrying.
His mother rebooked his flight and he came back with a new novel, a Harry Potter novel,
but he was again denied boarding.
Quite a few of my readers wrote to United when I alerted them to this story,
most saying they plan to boycott the airline either forever or until they hear a significant apology.
A number of readers forwarded United's response to those letters.
The FAA has mandated that airline security personnel follow strict procedures.
At this time, we are unable to comment on any security measures.
I wondered in print if the FAA would look kindly on United,
implying that the FAA has provided an acceptable reading list.
And sure enough, shortly after, United changed their reply according to what readers are now sending.
Thank you for taking time to express your feelings.
At this time, we are unable to comment on this matter or any security measures taken.
Rest assured, your viewpoints are appreciated and will be shared with the appropriate management.
Better even though it's still a form letter and no word of an apology.
I do think the airlines have to be careful, but they don't have to be stupid.
They will make mistakes, but when they do, they need to apologize for them.
The airlines are whining about how the public isn't flying.
Instead of offering more value to attract passengers, which is the way business is done in America,
the airlines are using the terrorist attacks as an excuse for cutting back on amenities,
like food service, and treating passengers even more like cattle,
which few frequent flyers had thought possible.
Will some airlines fail in the next year? Almost certainly.
But they'll point to terrorism as the cause,
rather than putting the blame where it really lies, directly on their own actions.
Here are some instances of things that have happened.
From Ron in California,
I fly almost every week.
Last week in Chicago on United, I was selected at random for extra security screening.
I was carefully wanded again, and then they went through my carry-on computer bag,
one pocket at a time, until the agent reached the pocket with my Bible.
She took it out, rifled the pages, smiled, and said,
I don't need to search anymore.
Apparently the Bible is on the approved United reading list.
As if no one who believes in God could possibly be a terrorist, right?
Yes.
Shortly after this example, United security screeners in Chicago
managed to let a passenger slip through with seven knives,
a can of pepper spray, and a stun gun.
He was going to a conference, apparently.
They had found two other knives on the man,
but let him through security without a more thorough check.
The Chicago Tribune reported two of the security employees were fired
because they stole the two knives they confiscated.
Shouldn't the entire...
If it wasn't so sad, it would be funny.
Shouldn't the entire security staff have been fired
for letting the guy get through in the first place?
And then there's Ben in North Carolina.
United is un-American, Taliban-like, enemies of freedom.
Wow, the price of bad service sure has escalated in the past month.
I fly a lot, and there are a lot of airline and airport employees,
as well as government officials out there,
working hard to make the best of a bad situation.
Through scrutiny of their practices,
though scrutiny of their practices is important,
seeing them ridiculed rubs me the wrong way.
Your comments seem off-base and sensational,
but that's one opinion.
According to this writer, Ben, you've seen nothing.
You have seen nothing yet.
And then we go into the Nancy Oden story from a different perspective.
Nancy Oden is a national official with the Green Party USA,
and on November 1st, she was on her way to a party meeting in Chicago
from Bangor, Maine. She never made it.
In an interview with wartimeliberty.com, who actually talked to her,
Oden says she was told by an American Airlines ticket agent
that she was selected for a full search.
The agent even told her that her selection was not random,
admitting you were in the computer to be searched no matter what.
That's a quote.
When she got to the screening area,
a National Guardsman yelled at her to come over to his position.
He grabbed my left arm. He started yelling in my face,
Don't you know what happened? Don't you know thousands of people died?
He went to grab my arm, and I said, Don't touch me.
I guess that's being non-cooperative.
I saw an older airline guy shake his head no, and he backed off.
As she walked away, I heard him say real soft,
Don't let her on the plane.
She was intercepted and not allowed to board.
The reason, the American Airlines ticket guy says,
because this guy says you didn't cooperate with the search.
When the ticket agent suggested that she might catch a later flight,
the National Guardsman would have none of it.
He ordered six more guardsmen to come
and stop her from flying out of that airport on any airline.
Was Odin blacklisted and punished for her divergent views
and for refusing to submit to assault
by someone representing the government that disagreed with her
in the United States of America?
Well, it sure looks like it.
Governmental stifling of divergent views in a country
dedicated to freedom of speech as one of the primary liberties
guaranteed by the Constitution's Bill of Rights is not pro-freedom,
and it certainly is not a valid use of the National Guard
nor excused in the name of airline security.
That and more comments come from the site thisistrue.com
written by Randy Cassingham on November 9th.
I just think people need to ask questions and not just assume
because something is said by an authoritative source that it's true.
And if you ask these questions, you should not be looked upon
as somebody who is anti-U.S., anti-patriot or whatever
they choose to call you this week.
In many ways, by thinking, you're more patriotic
than any of these people who are blindly following.
I'd like to know.
I'd like to know if there are other people out there
who have had experiences at the airports or with National Guardsmen.
Now, Bernie, maybe you know this.
What rights do the National Guards people have?
I mean, who do they answer to?
You mean from a legal standpoint or from a practical standpoint?
Well, I mean, are they the same as cops?
Can they do everything that cops do?
Are they answering to some supervisor at the airports?
Can they intimidate people?
Are they allowed to do the things that they've alleged to have done
in some instances?
Well, legally speaking, they are not law enforcement officers.
They are military personnel.
How much training have they had?
Probably, well, law enforcement training?
Very little, if any.
And this is what apparently this is law enforcement
that they've been drafted into, or if not law enforcement,
arbitrary rule enforcement,
a lot of which the military is about anyway.
But you guys, imagine if they have any,
there might be some sort of crash training,
like a one-hour seminar before they're carted off to the airport.
Yeah, that's fine, one hour.
That'll do.
But they're not law enforcement professionals.
They have no legal training.
They are trained to kill people
or other subspecialties of support operations
towards the goal of ultimately killing people.
I mean, they are carrying weapons.
But if they're carrying weapons
and they're not trained in law enforcement,
then why are they there?
That's a very good question.
This is not to say that the people who are carrying those weapons
and wearing their camouflage in the airports are not nice people.
I'm sure the vast majority of them are.
But when you have somebody intimidating someone,
I take exception when I see people being intimidated
or hear even a suggestion of people being intimidated,
someone has to step up and say something.
And if somebody comes up to you and treats you with disrespect,
you have to let somebody know that
and not just be intimidated by them, I guess that's it.
I think we're learning that not just law enforcement,
but the military, as in National Guard.
I'm sure there's a lot of fine people in the National Guard
as there are in law enforcement.
The standard of accountability or the level of accountability,
which was very low to begin with, in my opinion,
that bar is much lower now, or higher,
depending on how you look at it.
The accountability is less than it has been.
So these folks seem to be able to, in the current mood of hysteria,
seem to be able to get away with manhandling a woman
who's obviously not a violent person
and getting away with keeping her from getting on a plane
without being accountable for her actions.
If that's in fact what happened.
And again, I'm not 100% convinced that happened
or that anyone's versions happened,
but I just don't like people saying,
this is a fact, this is how it happened,
without having been there themselves
or without having thoroughly investigated all sides of the story.
And that's why I'd like to hear from other people as well
who might have experienced similar things.
Do you have high hopes for law enforcement
or some official body actually investigating the situation?
No, I don't have high hopes for law enforcement doing it.
I don't have high hopes for our common, average,
everyday citizens like us doing it.
We're the ones that have to have...
And we can hold these people accountable then?
What ability do we as average individuals have
to hold people accountable for...
We can tell other people, we can spread the word,
and we can educate ourselves,
since it's not being done from any other source or authority.
But what you said about accountability I think is the theme,
because not having accountability
will be where we're going on this whole escapade.
When it all started,
and we were told to believe that certain people
were behind the attacks, fine.
A lot of people went along with it
without requiring to see any actual information,
because we were going to get the information later
when I guess everything was sorted out.
Now we're being told that,
well, there's not actually going to be anything like that,
there's going to be secret military tribunals
that will deal with this,
and that's not what it was really all about.
Now, who is that protecting?
By not having any evidence shown
as to how somebody was responsible
for this horrible terrorist act,
how are we making the world any safer?
How are we making our country any safer?
If anything, we're pretty much destroying
what our country stands for.
Those people who apparently want to dismantle freedom
that we were told about in September,
they seem to be in power,
they seem to be the ones that are here,
that are calling the shots,
that are calling for ID cards
and National Guard everywhere
and virtual martial law
and all kinds of other horrible things,
and we have to fight this.
It's not allying yourself with terrorists
to fight destruction of the country on another level.
Well, didn't you understand what George Bush said
when he said you're either with the U.S. government
or with the terrorists?
Yeah, you know, that kind of bothered me.
That kind of talk always bothers me,
this either-or thing.
I think it's very presumptuous and simplistic.
Let's read a couple of letters,
and we'll take some phone calls.
212-209-2900.
This guy gets the award for Idiot of the Week, I guess.
I was just wondering if someone should call
for a positive use of hacking talent
by employing it in the war on terrorism.
Okay, that's strike one right there.
Hackers are hackers.
They are not tools of any government
or any military operation.
Does the military address happen to end in .mil?
No, actually this ends in .net.
I think this is just a misguided person.
It goes on to say,
Al Jazeera.net is the website
for the fomentors of hate in the Islamic community.
Some have said that after we rid the world of al-Qaeda,
we should look at the causes of terrorism.
Well, Al Jazeera is the leading cause of terrorism.
I am not sure why we should wait.
Well, you stupid idiot.
If you want to read an excellent piece
of truly Orwellian doublethink,
this past Sunday's New York Times magazine
had an article about Al Jazeera
criticizing them for bias in their news reporting.
How horrid a concept in the media, bias.
And if you've ever read the New York Times,
you know what bias is.
Al Jazeera, for those who don't know,
is the Middle Eastern news network
that has brought a lot of people information
that ordinarily would not have gotten information.
It brings people all kinds of news
that they would not see ordinarily.
For instance, Israeli perspectives
on Middle East issues to the Arab community.
And they get criticized by everybody,
but at least they are trying.
They're the only network that has actually broadcast
the statements that Osama bin Laden says,
that we're forbidden from hearing, apparently.
We're not allowed to hear exactly what he's saying
because if we listen to what he's saying,
we're legitimizing his position.
And I find that to be an extremely short-sighted
way of viewing things.
You don't have to agree with somebody
or even legitimize their position to hear
just what it is that they're threatening to do,
if in fact they're threatening to do anything.
We don't know what he's saying.
He might be saying that he doesn't understand
what this is all about, and please,
I'll turn myself in if you just tell me where to go.
We don't know what he's saying.
Apparently he's not alone in his ideas
of what should be done about al-Jazeera.
I don't know if it's true or not,
but I read that a few days ago
the news bureau of al-Jazeera in Kabul
was blown up by U.S. military.
Yeah, we bombed their offices in Afghanistan.
Now for those people who want to get al-Jazeera,
in addition to the big dishes,
you can get it on one DSS system
known as Dish Network.
They have an international programming option,
and you can actually get that signal.
Of course, there's been moves to turn that off,
to forbid that from being broadcast
into American homes.
Again, this is what's going on in the world,
and to just cut yourself off from things
that are happening from other perspectives,
you're basically ensuring
that you will remain forever ignorant.
Speaking of ignorance, the Patriot Act...
By the way, you can find out
who voted for the Patriot Act
and who voted against the Patriot Act,
which is not very many people at all,
by going to c-span.org
and just looking up voting record
and the keyword is Patriot.
You'll see that both of our senators,
Schumer and Clinton, voted for it.
The only senator to vote against it
was Russ Feingold of Wisconsin.
Unless you live in Wisconsin,
you can save some time.
The House version had very few people
voting against it as well.
I hope people realize this.
This is a bipartisan effort of ignorance here.
This is not something that you can just
blame on the Republicans or blame on the Democrats.
Yes, it's being led by Republicans,
there's no question about that,
but so many Democrats are going along with it
blindly because they're afraid to speak out
or maybe they actually agree with this nonsense.
Think of it in those terms.
It's not a question of Democrat vs. Republican,
left vs. right.
It's basically ignorance vs. being informed.
Anyway...
What Trent Lott said the day after the attack
on September 11th,
when he was standing there with Tom Daschle
before the microphone,
he said, there is no opposition party.
I kind of like having at least
some alternate viewpoint
of another political party being voiced,
but I guess not.
That sounds like socialist talk to me,
so we'll just ignore it.
But anyway, as we said,
Patriot stands for...
I forget what Patriot actually stands for.
Providing appropriate tools to, I don't know,
destroy our civil liberties.
This listener wrote in, as per our suggestion,
with an alternative series of words,
paranoia and tyranny rife in our time.
I think that should be
what's adopted from here on in.
Well, you know,
information will kill us
in the techno-terrorist age.
And who said that again?
UPenn bioethicist Arthur Kaplan,
who is responding to the government printing office,
has been ordering libraries
to destroy things.
Oh, really?
What things are they ordering them to destroy?
Some information on where dams are,
stuff like that,
which apparently could theoretically
be used by terrorists,
but is also of interest to environmentalists
who want to know
what these corporations are doing,
and they can't anymore.
Maybe we shouldn't tell people
where nuclear power plants are anymore,
because that information could be used in a bad way.
All right, 212-209-2900,
let's take some phone calls,
and hopefully we won't lose Bernie
when we try to do this.
Let's go over here.
Good evening, you're on the air.
Hello?
You know, I used to be in the National Guard.
Oh, good, okay, you can tell us something about it, then.
And, you know, you train
one weekend
once a month,
and then you have your annual training,
which can be anywhere from two to three weeks
once a year.
Normally, you're going to be doing your job
like I was an electrician.
And you're going to be doing that job.
Now, during your annual training,
you do six hours of...
where you have to be in a chemical
uniform where, you know,
your whole body's in this whole uniform.
You have to wear your gas mask for six hours.
You may do
some riot training,
you know, but there's no, like,
police-type training.
I mean, unless you're an MP,
which is the military police,
or something like that, you're not trained
to do what they're doing.
When I heard that the National Guard
were out at the airport and stuff, I'm like,
that's kind of scary.
Coming from a National Guard person,
that's kind of scary.
Yeah, I mean, that really was kind of scary
for me because I know that,
you know, you got a bunch of people
that they get together one weekend out of a month.
That's no real training
to do what these people are doing.
They're walking around with loaded guns.
You know, when we play, you know,
and you might play some war games or something,
you know, where you have some enemies and you're hiding
and you're shooting blanks and stuff like that.
The only time you fire live ammunition
is once a year to qualify with your weapon.
So this doesn't make these people
qualified to do what they're doing.
You know, not as a National Guard personnel.
Now, when you're actually
on site someplace, who is it
that you answer to?
You answer to the captain.
You know, it's a chain of command.
When you're in the National Guard,
you know, you have your captain
and the battalion commander, and it goes up,
you know, up all the way to the president.
But the difference between the Reserves
and the National Guard is that
the governor is in the chain of command.
Okay.
So that, you know, when the state has an emergency,
they call the National Guard.
How does it tie into local authorities,
like the police that might be on the scene?
I don't see how it ties in at all.
Mm-hmm.
Well, I mean, if the police are saying one thing
and the National Guard people are saying another,
who wins?
Well, I guess the National Guard does,
because at this point, I'm thinking that
the National Guard is working for the federal government.
Mm-hmm.
Because the president may be calling them in.
I'm not sure if the president is calling them in,
because I'm not even sure.
Are they at every airport in the country
or just in this area?
I think every airport in the country, I believe.
And they're probably on federal duty now,
so they're working for the federal government,
and the federal government rules over everything,
doesn't it?
Seems that way, yes.
All right, well, thanks for your perspective.
That was a very enlightening phone call.
Yes, definitely. Very, very much so.
And, you know,
it just goes to show that
people who are actually involved
are as confused as we are
as far as just what exactly the role is.
All right, let's take another phone call.
Good evening. You're on the air.
Yes, go ahead.
Yeah, I didn't want to change the subject,
but if you don't mind me asking you,
what's the disadvantage and advantage
of having a portable
shortwave radio
and a desktop shortwave radio?
Well, Bernie, I'll let you take this one.
Let's make it fast so we can take
a couple more phone calls.
Well, it depends.
If you're going to be running around
and you want to listen to shortwave,
then a portable would make sense.
If you're just going to be sitting at home
or at your office or something
listening to shortwave most of the time,
then I guess a desktop one would make more sense.
But they both could get the same range?
Well, a larger radio
that's designed for home use
generally will have better performance
because there's more room in it
for better tuning
and circuitry and that sort of thing.
But if it's a portable...
The one I have here
is about the size of a pack of cigarettes.
It's one of the portable ones they have.
And it performs reasonably well
for pulling in
the larger international broadcasters.
But I can listen to it
while I'm riding my bike.
But I've got a larger Sony here
next to me on the desk.
It's an ICF 2010,
which is...
You couldn't ride your bike around
very easily with it,
but it is much better performed
as far as pulling in weak signals
and selectivity and that sort of thing.
So you're really comparing apples and oranges.
If you decide where it is you want to be listening,
then that will answer your question
about a portable you can run around with
or a desktop.
A good compromise might be
a not-so-small portable
like the Yacht Boy 400, for instance,
by Grundig.
It's about the size of a paperback book.
You can take it traveling very easily,
but the performance is not bad.
It's not a high-end radio,
but it's pretty good.
So you've got to decide
where you want to listen.
Thanks for the answer there,
and good evening.
You're on the air.
Peace, love, and blessings to you,
Emmanuel and crew.
I'm a long-time listener,
first-time caller.
Thank you all for keeping the humor
in the madness.
National Guard story.
A sister friend of mine's daughter's
schoolmate, a 23-year-old college student
walking in the 44th, 42nd Street,
Lexington Avenue area.
He had his headphone on.
Snatched, thrown into an alleyway.
Rifle pointing to his head.
Two National Guard,
one black, one white,
telling him what is he doing
walking down the street
with a Sodom picture
around his neck.
And the boy is baffled, dumbfounded,
scared, shocked, everything.
He has a picture of
Holly Selassie around his neck.
Oh, my God.
And they held him in there
for 30 minutes.
No one to come to his aid.
He was so shook that he had not...
This happened about a month ago.
Sometime, I'd say,
early, mid-October.
And my sister friend
called to tell me about it.
She said he didn't know who to report
should he go to the police
because it's like, this is the National Guard.
Are they going to really do anything about it?
They held him there.
They're so simple.
He's walking around with a picture.
And it's free country.
Black folks have been terrorized
like this since we got off the boat.
Has this been reported anyplace?
Was it finally reported to the police?
I told her to tell him
and tell his mother,
his father, whatever,
that they should really pursue it and report it.
Even if it goes nowhere,
at least pursue it as far as you possibly can
and see who doesn't respond.
And do the same thing
in the National Guard hierarchy as well
because that kind of thing,
even if he was walking around with Saddam Hussein
around his neck,
like you say, it's a free country.
We have to defend it.
That's not the story
coming from the African perspective.
I'm going to tell you that's why
you can't tell us nothing about terrorism
because we've been terrified.
Come on, you're walking a 23-year-old.
He didn't even hear them.
They must have called him.
His body slammed into an alley
into some spot where nobody even knows.
This is what people need to be hearing about
are abuses like this so that
we can stop it before it gets any worse.
That's right because I can see this really getting
and this is blown out.
This is like gone.
We're out of time. Thanks so much for calling.
Thank you for what you've done and doing
and keep it up and we need you.
Alright, thank you.
Those calls really blew me away tonight.
I'll say that.
Thanks everybody. I wish we had more time to take more
but obviously there are stories out there
and we want to hear more about them.
You can write to us, email oth
at 2600.com
or send regular mail to
off the hook, care of WBAI,
120 Wall Street, New York, New York 1005.
Bernie, I want to thank you
for being on the show again.
We'll talk again in the future.
Thanks to everybody else who participated tonight.
We'll be back again next week
hopefully telling some more
interesting stories
and trying to get to the truth of the matter.
Stay strong. Good night.
Non, rien de rien
Non, je ne regrette rien
C'est payé, balayé, oublié
Je me fous du passé
Avec mes souvenirs
J'ai allumé le feu
Mes chagrins, mes plaisirs
Je n'ai plus besoin de
Balayer les hommes
Avec leur drémolo
Balayer pour toujours
Je repars à zéro
Non, rien de rien
Non, je ne regrette rien
Ni le bien qu'on m'a fait
Ni le mal, nous sommes bien égaux
Non, rien de rien
Non, je ne regrette rien
Car ma vie, car mes joies
Aujourd'hui, ça commence avec toi
WBAI 99.5 FM, New York