I'm Amy Goodman.
Join me September 11th at Cooper Union's Great Hall with Juan González, WBAI's Bernard
White, jazz legend Charlie Hayden and his Liberation Music Orchestra, folk singer Dora
Williams, Tony Award winning actor Sarah Jones, poet Suhair Hammad, my brother journalist
David Goodman, hopefully Susan Sarandon, and maybe even Jack Black.
It's Democracy Now!'s 10th anniversary.
The event is at 7.30 p.m., pre-event reception at 5.30, where you can get a signed copy of
our new book, Static, Government Liars, Media Cheerleaders, and the People Who Fight Back.
This event is a joint WBAI Democracy Now! benefit.
That's Monday, September 11th at Cooper Union's Great Hall at 3rd Avenue and 7th Street, Astor
Place here in Manhattan.
Let's break the sound barrier together with voices of peace.
And you're listening to WBAI New York, and what you're hearing, what just got cut off,
yes, what you're hearing in the background is illegal.
It's time for Off The Hook.
Off The Hook.
And very good evening to everybody.
The program is Off The Hook.
Emanuel Goldstein here with you, coming live from a very unusual setting tonight.
No, actually, we're right here in the studio, but we're connected.
We're connected online to something that the US government really does not want you to hear.
In fact, it'll go to great lengths putting people in prison for daring to share this
information with people.
As threatened, because of all the craziness of the last few weeks, we have a simulcast
of Al Manar in the background.
This is live, coming to you from Lebanon.
The voice of Hezbollah, oh my God.
Anybody who wants to leave at this point is free to.
I will think nothing less of you if you do.
People are walking in.
People are walking in.
Okay, well, that's the kind of attitude we like to see here at WBAI.
And a very good evening to one and all, starting with Mike.
Hi.
And you're not afraid of this, are you?
No, it's kind of annoying.
It is kind of annoying.
Well, we'll turn it down a little bit.
And usually they don't do this.
Usually it's a lot of talking.
But you can understand that even less.
And Redbird is here.
Good evening.
As well as Arseny.
Hi there.
And I believe Redhaq is joining us tonight.
I made it.
Good for you, good for you.
I'm sorry, I was out of the country.
Out of the country?
Yeah.
Out of the country is fine, you mean.
Me too.
But we'll get into that.
Kevin is also here.
Hello.
I understand you lost power almost all of last week or something.
Not just power.
Uh-huh.
Internet, television, and phones.
And cellular phones, you mean.
Everything.
Wow.
So what have you been doing?
I've been waiting in my room.
Uh-huh.
Okay.
Well, I guess there's a lot of that going on.
I'd say you should read a book, but you need light for that.
Bernie S. joins us from Philadelphia.
Yes.
How's Al Manar sounding over the telephone lines?
It's rather melodic, but I don't know what they're saying.
Well, do you really need to know what they're saying?
I mean, a lot of that rock and roll music that comes out,
you don't know what they're saying.
It's true.
It's actually one of the hallmarks of rock and roll music
is to make it intentionally hard to understand.
And it's the melody.
The melody is what carries the tune.
Yes.
Oh, Jim, you're here too.
Crikey, I say.
That's not very nice.
No, it's not.
Maybe it's not nice.
I mean, I'm remembering somebody with this catchphrase.
Yeah, I guess.
What was Diana's catchphrase?
I have no idea.
All right.
Well, why don't you look into that and get back to us?
But we are doing this right now as sort of, I guess,
sort of a protest to show that this is easy to get a hold of.
A couple of weeks ago, this guy in Staten Island
named Javed Iqbal was arrested because he was accused
of helping people to receive the broadcast of Al Manar.
And this television station has been designated
by the U.S. government as a global terrorist entity.
Now, that may all be fine and good,
and they may not be very nice people.
But to arrest somebody simply because he helped people
to receive a signal through the air that I assume,
I assume there was no financial transactions.
We did a little research on this over the past week.
And I believe, am I right, Bernie,
in saying that this is a free-to-air service?
Yeah, well, it's apparently not available free-to-air now,
but it was earlier.
In fact, both Redbird and I were present at an event
in March of this year, as was Juntz,
where Al Manar was being received from just a one-meter dish
on the roof of the two-story hotel
that we were in in Cultsville, Pennsylvania.
Al Manar was being received.
It wasn't such a big deal then.
No, it was like, oh, well, man.
Well, I mean, according to something that was posted,
Al Manar is supposed to be carried free-to-air
on Arabsat 2B, 30.5 East.
Is there any update on that?
Yes, but it appears that unless you have
a really sensitive receiving system with a large dish
pointed practically at the horizon,
you're not going to be able to pick that up
in our part of the world.
This was being carried on another...
Al Manar was being carried on another satellite
earlier this year, on a Dutch satellite,
but they took a lot of heat for doing that
and are no longer carrying it.
But it's still carried free-to-air on Arabsat 2B,
but it's hard to get in this country
unless you have special equipment.
Well, I imagine big dishes would be
special equipment to many people.
True, but you can also get the live video
and audio stream on the Internet,
and I have the URL for that.
You want to read the URL? Go ahead.
I'm going to read it slowly,
because it's a few characters long.
I should have done a tiny URL for this,
but I didn't.
It is www.manartv.com.lb
slash news site
slash manarlive.aspx
question mark
language equals EN, as in English.
Maybe someone could just make a tiny URL
by the end of the show.
People can play back the archived edition
from 2600.com slash OTH.
Yes, I will tiny URL it,
but we'll have to announce it next week.
Unless somebody can figure out
how to do it before the end of the hour.
You have a computer right there, don't you?
I just want to caution our listeners.
Manar is spelled M-A-N-A-R.
Okay, enough publicity for them.
It annoys me
when certain things
are deemed prohibited,
and if you even attempt
to listen or watch or see
or investigate, all of a sudden
you become the threat.
Whether this guy had close intimate ties
with Hezbollah, I guess that's what
the courts will find out,
but I suspect this is just going to be
another one of those cases that gets dropped
We generated quite a lot of interest
with our listeners on this subject.
Winston writes,
Regardless how you feel about censorship
or the constitutionality of blocking Al Manar,
you have to accept that it is not
the Lebanese equivalent of the New York Times
as you mentioned on the show.
That's a bad analogy.
The station is an organ of Hezbollah.
It is not independent.
A better equivalent would be the Voice of America.
Al Manar is the voice of Hezbollah.
So the U.S. blocking the station
is the voice of America.
My personal opinion is that
probably independent but arguably biased
news stations like Fox or Al Jazeera
should be left alone, but propaganda stations
as an instrument of war
can and should be blocked by those nations
who oppose the originating country.
Castro has a right to block VOA.
We have a right to block Al Manar.
What do you guys think of that?
I disagree.
I don't really want to be a lot like Castro.
Apparently this reader does.
I just think
let it be open to people
to listen to whatever it is they want to listen to
whether it's on the shortwave, whether it's on the internet
whether it's on satellite
or over terrestrial broadcasting.
Emmanuel?
There's a lot to be said for
one thing that our president
George W. Bush has been touting
and arguing for
over the past few years
and that is the freedom
to explore the marketplace
of ideas
and he's been trying to
argue that there's
there should be an open marketplace
of ideas all over the world
primarily in his case
his ideas
but in any case
I'm sure there's a lot of objectionable ideas
coming from Al Manar
as there may be from
our president's mouth
in any case, for there to be a free and open marketplace
of ideas, there cannot be government censorship
and that's exactly what the U.S. has been trying to do
in this case against this gentleman who simply
was setting up
people with inexpensive
equipment so they could receive an over-the-air broadcast
and I think nothing inspires
people to listen to forbidden broadcasts
more than being told that they're not able to
we wouldn't be broadcasting this right now
were it not for this case, I'm sure a lot of people
have never heard of Al Manar before
now are looking into it and maybe even like watching what they're saying
we have the tiny URL
tiny URL, go ahead, read it out
www.tinyurl.com
h-s-n-y-m
h-s-n-y-m
ok and that's tinyurl.com
ok and from that
you can also just go to the first part
the domain
www.manartv.com.lb
and click on English
without typing in all the rest
well you'll see a lot of Arabic so that might freak some of you out
it's true, it is a little freaky
but if you click English you'll be
in English land
by the way we're doing this without their permission
so we could be really annoying Hezbollah
not paying them their copyright fees or whatever
I don't know
but the point is, they're over there
and we're over here and it's important to
understand these things
there's a picture of, looks like
just a field with some trees and the moon
is over the sky
and the clouds are moving
and the lyrics to the song are being printed
and that's pretty much the whole thing that they have right now
I guess, what time is it now over there in Lebanon
must be in the middle of the night, right?
so this is what they do late at night
instead of infomercials, this is what they have
is it a follow the bouncing ball
kind of thing where the words go by?
no, they just kind of fade in and fade out
no jovial bouncing balls
or anything like that, there's a bug for
Al Manar station I believe up at the
upper right hand corner, there's some kind of statement
three words or so on the upper left
and then the lyrics in the middle on the bottom
but you know
I would prefer this to infomercials
not on every channel mind you
but infomercials are just one of those things
Lisa also writes in with a URL
that you might be able to
connect and read more
www.islamicdigest.net
www.islamicdigest.net
www.islamicdigest.net
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Okay, that's one bit of the puzzle solved.
The synthetic speech conversion
is able to recognize and
convert common text speech abbreviations.
The female voice used
in the message can even laugh,
and in the future will be able to send musical jingles
as part of messages
according to promises made by BT.
Heaven help us, as a reader writes.
Also,
BT
wholesale trial of
SMS to voice will establish any technical
and process issues so that they can be
resolved before a wider rollout.
I guess that's what we're waiting for, is the wider rollout.
Now, BT also has
a list of suggestions, 10 uses for
SMS to voice. Number
one. You know, all of these...
Oh.
Okay, that's the acapella
version, I guess. Alright.
We'll just keep that low in the background.
Yeah, okay.
Here are some of the reasons.
All of these seem a little bit lame to me, but number one.
For kids to tell their family
they'll be out late.
Eh, I guess. You can't get a fight back.
Number two. Sending a happy birthday message
to your grandparents. Yeah, because they don't want to hear
your voice, they want to hear Tom Baker's voice.
Yeah, of course. Number three.
To send a message to someone who can't text
due to physical impairment.
That actually is a good reason.
Okay, but they can't
text, but they can still... They can still read the text.
Yeah, they can still read the text, can't they?
Not necessarily, but there are plenty of people who can pick up a phone.
Blind people who aren't,
don't have an adapter for their computer.
The necessary software.
Yeah, but they can't just talk back to Tom Baker when he calls.
No, no, but they can listen to it. If you can only
listen, this is the service that you want.
Okay, number four. Kidnappers who
wish to relay their demands.
Is that seriously in there?
Well, you don't think that's important, to be able to relay the demands?
I don't think that's seriously in there. Do you know how many times that gets messed up?
That demands don't get relayed properly? You know from experience.
I'm just telling you, that's always
the major hang-up with any
corruption, is getting the demands out
clearly. All these copycat people,
the media gets it wrong every time.
Yeah, no, that's a problem.
Where were you Christmas 1996?
No, number four actually is telling the office
receptionist you'll be late.
Number five,
why can't you just call her and tell her you'll be late?
Number five, ordering a take-away
when they're engaged.
For those of you who have no idea what I just said,
what that means, take-away is the same thing
as take-out in this country, and engaged means the phone
is busy.
I love how the English language
can confuse people who speak it.
Number six, as a soft wake-up
call. I don't know what's soft about it,
but alright. Number seven, to teach
someone how to pronounce a word.
I guess.
Tom Baker speaks to King's English, and
maybe you can't pronounce it yourself.
If you're going to be
bombing subways in Great Britain, this is an
excellent service to learn how to say,
I would like a one-way ticket please.
Very clever, Jim.
So, basically this service
is useless.
Well, we still have three more to go.
One of these could be the winner. Number eight,
as a better way of telling jokes by
mobile.
Because we know all the other ways have not worked.
That way you don't have to deal with the dead silence on the
other end. No, you don't have to hear that at all.
And Tom Baker won't care.
Number nine, as a
form of phone karaoke.
What?
Yeah.
Number ten, this is actually kind of good.
Number ten, it's my favorite one.
Admitting guilt without being shouted at.
So, those are the ten uses for
SMS to voice.
Well, I mean, okay, these are pretty funny,
but this is so useless.
No, it's not useless to BT. They make a lot
of money from this. Well, I guess so,
because there must be a lot of jokes being sent to people.
But, I mean, what if we get this here?
It's just, I can imagine picking up the
phone and it would be like some computer telling
me something. You know, like, buy this,
buy that. I mean, it already happens, but
if the technology is more widespread,
I'd imagine it would be everywhere.
Yeah. By the way, I just have to cut in here and say
that Al-Minar has now switched from
the sun or moon or whatever that was in the sky
with the trees to military people
running around with machine guns. Let's listen for a minute.
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
Okay, that's,
maybe somebody can translate that and tell us
just what it is they're saying. Maybe they found out that we're
broadcasting their signal and they're saying
something about us. That sounds like inspirational
Rocky kind of music.
Well, the inspirational Rocky type people running around
with machine guns in deserts, I don't know.
Okay, continuing though with the
SMS to voice. As
I said, we got a lot of mail, a lot of mail from all
over the world. This
from Wouter in the Netherlands.
I have some comments on sending text messages
to landlines. Here in the Netherlands, it's possible
to do that. When you send an SMS to a landline,
the operator, KPN, the phone company,
calls the landline with an automated voice system
that reads the SMS to you. I just tested
this. It seems like nothing is filtered.
And I don't know if they use a celebrity voice
there or if they use some kind of computer
voice of some sort.
Okay, dear 2600,
dear OffTheHook, I was listening to the show
in my car, and I heard you mentioning
about the text message to landline, how you never heard about it.
In Canada, on the Rogers network,
you can text a message that will be sent
to a landline number. When the person
picks up the phone, it starts by
mentioning this is a text to landline
message from a customer on the Rogers network,
then tries to
read out the message that is texted. Obviously,
acronyms like TTYL
and such are either read incorrectly or
spelled out.
And it costs 50 cents Canadian
per sent message.
That's from Luke. Yeah, that's a lot, isn't it?
I'm curious to know how this feature
works in bilingual
countries like Canada or
Belgium or where have you. How does
it know what language to read in?
I would say you probably have to dial star
letter pound to indicate language
maybe. Oh, come on. It would look at
the words because you're texting in the
spaces, and I'm sure it could recognize
them. Okay, it may say to the first one
this could be French, this could be English, but
after it's got several of them, it can decide
what language it is. You know, I don't know of a single service like that.
If I type in a language, it's going to tell me what
language it is? Google language doesn't
even do that. There's some services on the web
that can do that. I'm pretty sure that if you
only have two choices. But you know when you
take a bunch of text and you give it to Google
or AltaVista or something and say translate this,
you have to tell it what it is. You can't just say translate
this to English. You have to say translate Spanish,
Portuguese, French, and it would be nice if it was able
to do that for you. Yeah, but that's kind of
wasting their processing power if you know what
language you're trying to translate from. Like, I could
see it being useful to have a separate
maybe identifier service if you had
no idea, but I mean, if you know what
language it is, that's kind of, why
waste their cycles translating it?
And how will they know what language
to translate into? Well, I
imagine you've set some sort of default in your
cookie or whatever to always translate to English
or whatever language you want, but I don't
know. It would make Google seem all the cooler
if they were able to do this. You know, all about the
bells and whistles and things. Yeah, there's some research.
It's actually not that hard to identify
the language of written
text. You can base it
basically on letter pairs. You don't even have to
know common words.
If you get a large enough
sample inputs, you can do it
for hundreds of languages pretty accurately.
Uh-huh. Yeah, and
we also had another letter from
someone concerning the
text messaging. Thanks so much
for your program. You guys really know your stuff. Well, we try
sometimes. You mentioned emailing to
T-Mobile. What is the end email address
for T-Mobile, Sprint, and Nextel? I know
Verizon's is the number at Verizon.net.
I've tried to research T-Mobile's,
but no one knows. Not even
the reps or the stores. I think they know.
They just don't want to tell you for some reason.
Anyway, I can tell you that
the domain
is T-M-O-M-A-I-L.net.
T-M-O-M-A-I-L.net
preceded by the 10-digit
phone number. Thanks, Javier, for sending that in.
Bernie, do you know
what Sprint is?
Yes. It's your
Sprint PCS mobile phone number
at messaging
dot Sprint PCS
dot com.
Does anybody know
some of those other ones that were mentioned?
Nextel,
for instance.
Nobody?
There's a bunch of silence here.
You have AT&T.
Here's one.
Mobile dot MySingular dot com is
for Singular, I guess.
What else?
I'm just looking through the OTH archives.
Bernie, go ahead.
I'm really surprised that
that's such an easy way of sending
sequential... I mean, someone could easily write a script
to generate spam
sequentially to all these...
If you just know the area code and the exchange
for different mobile carriers,
you could just send tons of spam.
I don't want to give anybody ideas or not, but I'm just amazed
that more people don't get more spam on their cell phones
using that technique.
I was about to say,
I think they must have really good spam filters
because I actually have gotten spam,
but, like, twice at the most.
So, perhaps they're doing some really good filtering,
or perhaps...
I feel like someone's thought of this.
Obviously someone has because I've received spam,
but I feel like
someone... There must be something
at play that keeps
spam from getting through.
Okay, well,
they're giving speeches and things now on
Almanar, and
it looks like more...
I think I recognize some of those clerics from
CNN, but not in a positive way.
Yeah, well, you know, they're not giving
positive play on
CNN.
I think if you were able to see this, maybe it would be even less
positive play there.
But yeah, we are simulcasting the
sound of Almanar live, the
station that you can go to prison for
if you help somebody to get it.
So I can imagine the trouble we're in for
doing this, broadcasting it,
more than it's ever been broadcast in New York now.
Over 50,000 watts, going over the
Empire State Building, hitting
four different states, and going out over the Internet.
Think what
people are being infected with right now.
Yeah.
I don't
feel very infected, because I don't really
understand it. Well, maybe that's the key.
Ignorance is bliss, after all.
Okay, speaking of
fun things to do, this is something
that I was playing with yesterday
off the wall.
We were talking about Google,
we were talking about the ability to
recognize certain things, and
I guess how lots and lots of people
combining efforts can
contribute to a particular outcome.
There's a site on the
net that allows you to
identify objects, or animals,
or organs, or what have you,
simply by asking you a certain
number of questions. What I'd like to do here,
you guys familiar with this? It's called 20Q.net.
I just found it the other day,
and I was amazed. I was amazed at
how it was able to figure
out what it was I was thinking of so quickly,
without me apparently giving out vital
information. I was thinking
of a stingray, actually, right after
that guy got killed. And it
got it without asking a lot of really specific
questions. It asked things like, is it made out of wood, and things
like that. It was able to somehow
do process of elimination, and it scared me.
It really did. It's a very simple thing. I mean, I wrote
something like that in college.
It's not terribly complicated.
You're just going down a tree until you get to the end.
Uh-huh. Okay, well, let's test it out.
Let's think of something. I have a thing. Okay.
Should I say what the thing is? I don't know what you mean.
I have a thought. Do you want to
just be an intermediary, or shall I say out loud
what it is I'm thinking of?
This isn't like Kreskin's ESP here.
We're trying to identify an object.
This radio show. Uh-huh. This radio show.
No, no, no. Let me explain.
You can't have things like that, things that are really
that specific.
No, I'm talking about objects, things that
people all over the world would know about. Vegetables, minerals.
2600 magazines. No, no, no. You're not getting it.
It's not specific people, specific
commercial products or anything like that.
It's something like a cloud, a car.
I had it
get a curb stone the other day.
That wasn't bad. Things like that.
Okay, let's think of something.
A midget. A midget?
I like it. Do it. I don't think so.
It might find it. I don't know where you come up with these things.
No, let's think of something
that is in the studio, maybe.
A radio. A booger.
A radio.
Okay.
What do you think? What kind of radio?
Shortwave.
Let's just keep it simple. Just a radio.
I don't know. A radio seems too simple.
A clock radio, an alarm clock radio.
A clock radio.
Yes, an alarm clock radio that
wakes people up in the morning.
So the first question is, is it classified as animal,
vegetable, mineral? Actually, it's animal, vegetable,
mineral, other, or unknown.
So I guess we can agree that it's other, right?
Okay.
Okay, so next question.
Do you use it at night?
No. Yes.
It's night right now.
You'd be listening to the show.
It's a radio, so yes, you do use it at night.
Is it made of plastic?
It could be. Yes, it's made of plastic.
I've never seen a pure metal clock alarm.
Does it usually have
four corners?
Yeah.
Is it worth a lot of money?
Nope.
Does it sweat?
No. See, this is what I mean. Questions like this.
Does not sweat. Can it be easily moved?
Yes.
Does it have lots of buttons?
And let me just say, the possible answers
are yes, no, unknown, irrelevant,
sometimes, maybe, probably, doubtful,
usually, depends, rarely, or partly.
So any of those you can use. Let's go with usually.
See if that screws it up.
Does it have lots of buttons? What did you say, Bernie?
It could be depends.
Depends on how many buttons it has.
Mike, break the tie.
It has buttons. I don't know about lots of buttons.
Okay, which one? Maybe. No, no.
Not no. We know it's got to have...
Sometimes, sometimes.
Do you need batteries to use it?
No. I would say sometimes.
Not always. Sometimes, yeah.
You certainly did. You had no power this last week.
That doesn't count. Yeah, but you have clock radios, and I'm sure...
Most clock radios you just plug in, not battery wall.
Sometimes. I could debate this. Can it be heard?
Yes.
Can you speak into it?
No.
Well, you can. It's just you're wasting your time.
Does it make music?
Yes.
It doesn't really make the music, but it plays the music.
Does it store information?
Technically, yes. It stores the time you want to get up.
That is information.
And by the way, that's 13 questions so far.
Does it use numbers?
Clock, time, numbers, yeah.
Can it be used to talk to others?
No.
Is it used for entertainment?
You use a clock radio for entertainment?
You turn on the radio.
I guess. Sometimes, I would say.
Can you read it?
You read the clock.
I am guessing that it is a clock radio.
Whoa!
18 questions. How is that?
I don't know.
Listen, I could have a conversation with you that would go on longer than this,
and you still wouldn't get it. I know it.
You're just talking about lots of data that's been input by lots of people over a lot of...
Like, it's basically...
It's literally building a tree,
and every time it comes to a place...
Don't kill the magic by explaining it scientifically.
Look, it's a computer.
It doesn't know, then it asks you.
Yeah, but okay, fine.
But I'm just saying, I'm able to explain this thing quicker than a lot of people I know
when I'm talking or thinking about it.
Okay, zygote.
Why would you say that?
Do a zygote.
One thing I would like to do...
I don't think it will get it.
The algorithm is actually slightly more complicated than you described
because there are people who might give different answers to some of the corner cases.
But it raises some issues sometimes.
When you have an answer,
it objects to some of the things that you say,
and it objected to our answer,
is it used for entertainment?
You said yes, I say no.
Oh.
Who's it to argue with us?
Well, this is just based on what other people have told it.
We have a whole panel of experts here.
Okay, but I just thought of a new game.
I just thought of this this moment, actually, and this could be really cool.
We basically go around the room
and answer each question
as it starts,
as it comes across.
Except none of us know what the object is.
And at the end,
it's going to
identify something.
It's going to guess, is this something?
And whatever that is, somebody has to bring to the next 2600 meeting.
How's that?
Alright, so I get to start this thing.
This is so serious, I even turned Al Manar down for this.
I'm not going to say animal
or vegetable because that could just be disgusting.
I'm going to say other
just to make it interesting.
Is it classified as animal, vegetable, mineral, other, or unknown?
Okay, now we're going to go around the room.
But what is unknown?
Let's not even go there. Who knows?
We might get to space aliens or something.
Okay, so Jim, now you have the first question.
We'll go Jim, Arsony, Red Hacked Redbird,
Mike, Kevin, Bernie,
and then, I guess, back to me.
Jim, your question is, is it square-shaped?
I would say no.
No, okay.
Now, Arsony, does it live above ground?
You've got to answer quickly.
Yes.
Okay, and now Red Hacked, can you buy it?
Maybe.
Alright, Redbird, is it used for entertainment?
Sometimes.
Sometimes.
Mike, is it an emotion?
No, no, I don't think so.
What a strange question.
Kevin, do you use it at night?
Yes.
Alright, Bernie, could you send it in the mail?
No.
It might die.
Now it's back to me.
Is it used for transportation?
Usually.
You've got to answer quick.
I'll say irrelevant, only because I've never said that before.
Now back to Jim, can any age group use it?
Probably yes.
Yes, okay.
Arsony, can you make sounds with it?
Depends.
Depends, alright.
Red Hacked, does it usually have four corners?
That would be painful.
Does it usually have four corners?
Sometimes.
Redbird, is it made of plastic?
Sometimes.
By the way, that's 13 questions so far.
Mike, do you need batteries to use it?
Of course you do.
Kevin, is it worth a lot of money?
No.
See, if you'd said yes, someone would have brought something worth a lot of money to the meeting.
Nice going.
My bad.
Is it comforting?
By the way, you can't mail it really because it would violate postal regulations.
Alright.
Does it have a cable? I'm going to say sometimes.
Oh God.
Alright.
We only have, I think, three more questions, or two more questions before it's going to guess something.
Jim, can it help you find your way?
That's really stretching it.
I have to say no.
Alright.
Arsony, does it come in specific sizes?
Yes.
I am guessing that it is a fetish.
Oh my God.
This is just great, guys.
Someone's going to bring a fetish to the meeting.
That is just what we need.
Well, that's the first time I've ever gotten it to do that.
Thank you.
Thank you so much for raising the bar on my favorite website now.
Is it a fetish?
Alright.
Our phone number is 212-209-2900.
Whoops.
I've turned Al Minar down.
I'm sorry.
No disrespect intended there.
Looks like some kind of drama
on the television set right now.
Looks like, I don't know,
their version of 90210 or something.
I would say it's desire.
I don't know,
but they seem pretty,
they're having a serious conversation,
and I guess
you'll have to just tune in yourself
to see what's going on.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
You'll have to just tune in yourself
to find out what's really going on.
The voice of the illegal terrorist-funded
television station here
on Off the Hook.
212-209-2900.
According to the U.S. government,
this station is not merely terrorist-funded.
It is itself a terrorist organization.
So then all these people we're watching
going through their various problems of life
are terrorists too.
Look how innocent she looks.
Okay.
Let's move on to us.
Care of Off the Hook.
Actually, I did that wrong.
Off the Hook Care of WBAI.
120 Wall Street.
Oh, Walter's not here.
I'm sorry. Go ahead.
New York.
New York.
10005.
We're just going to have to take you out of the room
every time this happens now.
Why'd you go over my line?
I don't know. That's right.
I stepped on Jim's line.
I've never done that before.
Okay.
Please send us snail mail or send us regular mail.
A lot of people wrote in also
with BitTorrents
to help us out with the high-quality
help audio.
Here's one of them.
Tracker.pseudohacker.org
colon 6969 slash.
Spread the word.
Torrent of the 128 KPBS
help number 6 audio.
Anybody else have any other things to contribute?
That one worked.
That was the one I was going to read.
That will allow you to download that.
Of course, you can always get the DVDs from us too
or you can download the low-fidelity
versions as well.
All three you can do.
Did I mention the videos?
The videos are also available.
Is that what you meant by DVD?
Well, there's a DVD of audio too.
Oh, that's confusing.
Do you hear about this thing going on?
This is like a two-part story.
First of all, I heard this on the radio last week.
New York priests suspected
of sexually abusing children but protected
from expulsion by Catholic law
are being required to enter a lifelong
supervision program or leave the church
according to the New York Archdiocese.
It's weird because
I guess when you first hear this story,
it's like, what's going on with these people?
All they have to do is just resign.
They can get away with this.
We're looking at cases
that are beyond the statute of limitations.
Apparently, there's nothing that they can do
other than this, which is kind of crazy.
But then this led to something
even crazier in Ohio.
I'm not sure if anybody saw this.
An Ohio legislative panel last week
rubber-stamped an unprecedented
process that would allow sex offenders
to be publicly identified and tracked
even if they've never been charged with a crime.
Yeah.
Residents voiced opposition to the rules
submitted by Attorney General Jim Petro's office
to the Joint Committee on Agency Rule Review
consisting of members of the
Ohio House and Senate.
That's somebody's phone ringing in Lebanon.
The committee's
decision...
Hang on.
She's having a conversation.
The committee's decision
not to interfere with the rules puts Ohio
in a position to become the first state
to test a civil registry.
I don't know about you guys, but this is
scary. I mean, it's scary enough
having priests wandering around who don't get charged
with any crimes. Yeah, that's bad. That's horrible.
But look at the reaction. Look at what people
are doing. They're basically saying
okay, if there isn't enough evidence
or maybe too much time has gone by,
we can simply make a list
and make that public even though there's no
legality behind it.
I don't understand how this could possibly be
legal, but in this day and age,
who knows?
It makes people do strange things.
Of course, a lot of people
are freaking out over this kind of thing.
The rules spell out how the
untried process would work. It would largely treat a person
placed on the civil registry the same way
a convicted sex offender is treated
under Ohio's so-called Megan's Law.
The person's name, address, and photograph
would be placed on a new internet database
and the person would be subjected to the same
registration and community notification
requirements and restrictions on where he could live.
However, a civilly declared
offender could petition the court
to have their name removed from the new
list after six years.
How do you get put on this list
if you're not convicted of a crime?
You voluntarily say
hi, my name is Mark
David Carr, whoever his name was. I killed
John Burnet. Put me on your sex registry list.
Well, he's an exception to somebody who would do it himself
but I'm sure all sorts of people would line up
to put him on the list because they just think he's
kind of weird. Exactly, but the point is
you have the punishment,
the moral approbation,
the restrictions on what you can do
for a job, where you can live,
and there's no
crime that you're convicted of.
This is stunning.
Didn't they do this a few years ago?
They're probably still doing it now.
With people who are arrested
with suspected hookers in various cities.
They have their
mug shots and their license plates displayed
on the police department's website
and that's before they were ever convicted of anything.
That was Chicago and that was a few months ago.
Well, it's also a few years ago.
I remember this was going on for a while, so I guess it's still going on.
That kind of thing
really rubs me the wrong way because
arresting somebody
and convicting them are two very different things.
Alright.
212-209-2900. Also,
one other story before we go to the phones.
Related to this.
Young people using Windows Live
Messenger on MSN Messenger to chat
online with friends can now make a report to
the police with one click if they are
concerned their online buddy is a sex offender.
This is in the UK only, I thought.
Is it in the UK only?
You're right. It is in the UK.
Do you have to be a young person to use this feature?
Can you see where this is going?
I'm going to report you as a sex offender
if you don't pay me this amount of money
or say something that I want you to say
or just because I feel like doing it
and I want to be all powerful.
This is MSN, right?
This is not MSN.
It's W-E-O-P-dot-gov-dot-U-K.
No, no, the service.
Oh, sorry, Microsoft. Yeah, MSN Messenger.
Yeah, they were having a problem
with their chat rooms being like a place
where sex offenders would
I guess find
things to offend.
That's why a lot of their chat rooms
are being shut down.
I mean, it wouldn't be
terrible if maybe it did it
and then attached like a chat log or something.
Well, okay. Yeah, that's a good idea.
Because then at least
there'd be something to look at.
And if it was just somebody
messing around, then...
There's got to be some really bored officer
in the UK police land
who's reading all these
stupid chats between
people and their friends who are like
eh, I'm going to press the sex offender button now.
Irrespective, at least that would
attach something to the report.
I'm just saying that's got to be far more common
than actual sex offenders.
According to the
Child Exploitation and Online Protection
Center, seems like they're
at cross purposes there,
the chief executive of the
COP Center and
chair of
the VGT, which is
the Virtual Global Task Force,
Jim Gamble says
behind the report
abuse button will sit police and intelligence
officers who have been specially trained
to tackle child sex abuse.
We will tell you how to capture information
and how to seize online discussions
and then proactively do all we can
to track down the perpetrator.
It's
interesting to see where this is going to go.
202-209-2900
Let's take a phone call.
Good evening, you're on the air.
Protocols of the Elders of Zion
in 28 parts is one of the
shows on Al Minar
and I think it's important to let
the BAI audience know
that among the various shows
there's anti-Semitic, straightforward
anti-Semitic content
such as the Protocols of the Elders
of Zion in a series in 28
parts on Al Minar.
I think you might want to reconsider
your position.
It's not as simple as
the Palestinians are gravely
oppressed. There's no question about it.
Before you continue though,
I just want to ask you, what do you think
hang on, calm down, what do you think our position is?
Okay, you're not listening.
You gotta listen folks, that's what we're trying to
get across here. Listen.
People think we're taking the position that
we support what they're saying. No, we support
the fact that you have the right to listen to it
and I don't support
Nazi stations or KKK
stations or whatever else might be out there
but you don't get sent to prison
simply for accessing it.
Just because they say something that you
disagree with doesn't mean they should go to prison.
They can say something we all disagree with.
But when
you start saying you're going to go to prison if you
listen to that, that's when all of a sudden more people
I think with a brain in their head are going to
want to listen to it and see just what it's all about.
Okay, look at this, only one phone call?
Are people afraid to call this?
It might be a text message. Good evening, you're
on the air.
Speak up please.
Yeah, go ahead.
Yes, go ahead, fast.
Yes, a
comment on the speech you just gave
from Al Manar. This is a speech
for Hassan Nasrallah
and
it was given to the Lebanese
not to a hatred
speech against the Israelis or
to anything. It's just a speech for the Lebanese
to fight
against the Israelis' occupation
of Lebanon.
That was the speech.
The portion is not from Al Manar TV.
It's another
speech
to Hassan Nasrallah to Al Manar TV.
Okay, well we're getting a lot of interesting
information about just who said what about whom
but
the point is, you know, people are
listening and judging for themselves. That's really
what this is all about. But thanks for your call.
Let's go to another
phone call. Good evening, you're on the air.
Oh dear. Let's go down here. Good evening, you're
on the air. Speak up.
Hello. Hi, what's on your mind?
Hi, this is
unrelated to your current topic but somewhat
related to the whole terrorism, flying planes
in the building thing. I'm just
curious if you guys know
it seems only when I'm listening to
WBAI, which is just about the only radio
station I listen to, but where
I am, I don't know if this is
common, you know about it,
every once in a while something
breaks into the signal and I hear
this radio crosstalk back and
forth and I could never figure out what it was.
I was curious. I was wondering what it was.
In my paranoid times, I was like, you know,
what is that? What is that?
Finally, I figured out what it is.
It's airplanes. We live on
the approach to the
airport.
And I think I'm hearing, because
they're giving things like positions and
altitudes, I think I'm listening
to the cockpit talking to
the tower.
Is that possible? You're probably getting a
harmonic of some sort because I know that
radio broadcasts from airplanes
take place right above the FM dial. Bernie, do you know
if it's possible it could bounce down to
99.5 somehow? Yeah, I don't know if you're the
gentleman, the listener who emailed us about
this, but are you that person?
No, I'm not. Somebody emailed us
just a week or so ago with the same
exact problem.
This is actually
a phenomenon. This is a very common
thing with sort of
cheaply designed or poorly designed
FM receivers.
That's the guy's radio there.
That's very personal.
It's probably like a clock radio or something. It's not a
high quality FM receiver. It has
very poor filtering. It's easily overloaded
by a stronger RF signal.
As Emmanuel just noted,
the
aeronautical VHF band
is right above in frequency
the FM
broadcast band. So will it happen with
any radio station or does it have to be right in the
middle of the dial? What's the thing about...
If it's a weak station,
it's more likely to be overridden by a strong
airplane signal coming
down over you. But if it's a really
strong station that's like a strong
FM station that's right near you,
it's less likely to be overridden. FM, you have
this thing called a capture effect where the strongest signal
wins. So that's what's happening.
How close do these airplanes come to you?
They come right over here. We're in Morris
County, New Jersey, and they fly right over
on their way to Newark here.
This is where the big noise...
They had a big movement to cut the airport
noise and all that. How many feet above your house
would you say they are?
I saw one pass over me when
I was in a little town called Chester, which is
a higher elevation. It was
a foggy night. I went outside. I could see
right in the windows of the airplane. I could tell
who was reading a newspaper, who had glasses on.
That was really scary. That should have been
reported as a near miss.
Or a near hit.
They're on the approach. They're taking off
in their approach. They circle overhead too.
The whole stacking thing
that they do. I think something that close
would actually override even a strong
signal in much the same way that a lot of XM
broadcasts now. People are hearing Howard
Stern on 88.1 because
a lot of people set their
satellite radio to
broadcast on their regular radio
and they pick that frequency as a default
and it actually interferes with existing stations.
Oh, Emmanuel. Yes, go ahead, Bernie.
XM just got busted
by the FCC for this because some of their
receivers or their little FM
microtransmitters that you plug into your cigar
later so your FM radio
can do the
XM broadcast.
XM just got
cited with a notice of
apparent liability by the FCC because some of these
things were too strong and they were bleeding
the signal. As you just noted, the signals are
bleeding over into nearby cars and people
were hearing stuff on a frequency they
didn't want to hear. Imagine you're listening
to your local NPR station enjoying
a nice little concerto or something
like that and all of a sudden, Howard Stern
comes blasting by
for as long as you're next to
whoever is listening to him in the car next
door or whatever. That's frightened
a lot of people. They think that he's taking over.
Okay,
let's take another phone call.
Good evening. You're on the air.
Oh, dear. You know, one day I'd like to get
a phone where the light goes out when
the person disconnects.
That'd be nice, wouldn't it? Good evening.
The light stays on for like five seconds
afterwards. There's no way to know. Good evening. You're on the air.
Hey, guys.
Evening. I want to piggyback on that
last caller. I'm on the Jersey Shore right now
and for the last couple of years
I listen to airplanes all
the time and I think it's something along the
coast here where it's a little more wide open.
I get a lot. I was on the beach
a little earlier on Asbury Park.
I heard a couple
planes and I looked up and I could see them right overhead.
Sometimes they're high. Sometimes they're low.
So it happens all the time on BAI.
All over the place. It happens in the
North Jersey. Yeah, I imagine it happens.
I used to get this around 102.
I used to get it around 107
in the low 90s.
It's really just because of
poor receiver performance in there.
It's also the fact that the airplane is right above you.
There's nothing getting in the way. There's no trees.
There's no buildings. It's a direct line of sight thing.
It will overpower if there's a harmonic
of some sort. But good receiver. Well, first
of all, aviation equipment is usually very good
and I would probably guess that
there's no harmonics of significance
being transmitted from the plane but also
it's really the poor receiver that's
to blame and most commercial receivers
stuff that you can buy in the
store are going to be
relatively low quality to keep the production
costs down.
You know what's interesting? I worked for an airline
for a long time and it's usually
altitude reading.
It's a changing course usually
when I hear it. I can hear them say
going to a higher altitude
or lower altitude. It's kind of interesting.
Anyway.
It's also interesting. Did you note that these are
different accented English
languages sometimes?
Our caller has left us but yes, I imagine that you would
hear that many times. What's interesting is that
the international language for aviation
is English no matter where in the world you go.
So you'll hear
them say these things in English but
a lot of times it's
very heavily accented in different tones.
Okay, I'm taking another phone call. Good evening.
You're on the air.
Speak up, please.
Yeah, I was wondering if you guys could give the
address for the
Hope 6 DVDs again?
The address? You mean the website?
Yeah, the torrent.
Let's see. Where is that?
Hang on. Do you have that, Redbird?
You're looking for the torrent? Yeah, the torrent.
Yeah, the torrent. Let me find the torrent URL.
I'm finding it on paper.
Tracker.pseudohacker.org
Okay. Thank you very much.
Okay, good luck with that.
Torrent 2209-2900.
We only have a few minutes left.
The last few moments of Al Minar TV.
Looks like some kind of phone interview
while she's talking live into the camera
about talking to some guy
on a speakerphone. Who knows what they're talking about?
Even if it was in English, I don't think it would be
very interesting to watch. He's saying something
about he's getting harmonics from airplanes
flying over.
Okay, one more call. Good evening. You're on the air.
Oh, dear.
This will be the last one. Good evening. You're on the air.
Okay, you know what?
That is the last one. The dial tone wins. How about that?
Until we get a phone that can handle
that kind of thing.
Write to us again.
othat2600.com
Let us know what you think.
Suggestions, information,
that sort of thing.
Be sure to stay tuned for the
computer show coming up next.
And we're back again next week
with another exciting edition of
Off the Hook here on
The Voice of Freedom
WBAI, New York.
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New York
New York
A cast of thousands
And view of sun
Millions of tickets, the West is one The legend of Tinseltown, paved with blood and stars
Wood from the hanging tree, built a cinema
Black, white and silent, nation went to war Black, white and violent, up to us and more
Black, white and silent, nation went to war Black, white and violent, up to us and more
In a movie hero, then I look like me Pure pure face, kill off everybody
African, Indian with the apathy Even friendly alien like E.T.
In a cartoon, Tom kill off Jerry Her pure black legs is all you can see
She look like the maid I take you out to a party
I breathe a fire to all sharks, put them on fire
Nation went to war, up to us and more
Nation went to war, black, white and violent, up to us and more
Nation went to war, black, white and violent, up to us and more