Little girl, little girl, why are you so sad? It's almost time for Christmas.
My family doesn't celebrate Christmas.
Oh, Jewish?
Uh-uh.
Muslim?
Uh-uh.
Buddhist?
Nope. My family doesn't practice any religion, and we don't believe in things that are supernatural.
But haven't they heard? There are many ways to enjoy and celebrate Christmas that are completely naturalistic.
Really?
Really! And this Christmas, they can learn all about having a perfectly wonderful naturalistic Christmas on Equal Time for Free Thought's Naturalistic Christmas Special.
Naturalistic Christmas Special?
That's right!
When?
3 to 5 on Christmas Day!
3 to 5 Christmas Day!
Right here on 99.5 WBAI!
And you're listening to 99.5 FM WBAI New York. It's 7pm, 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.
Bon Diddley Bon for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood. Bon Diddley Bon!
And good evening, the program is Off The Hook. Red Hacked here in the studio, manning the board, while Emanuel's away.
Joined tonight by Mike.
Hi.
Dot Rett.
Hello.
Rob T. Firefly.
Good evening.
Jim.
Hi.
And on the phone, we have Bernie Astin in Philadelphia. No?
We will. I have to press the right button.
Do we have Bernie Astin in Philadelphia? We still don't.
This time it's not my fault.
All right, well, we'll skip Bernie for now.
No, no, we're here in Philadelphia.
Oh, there you go. And I think we have Emanuel also.
Yes, I'm here with Kyle. Kyle, say hi.
Hi.
And can you hear us?
Yes. Loud and clear.
How do we sound? Loud and clear, you say?
I mean, you sound a little echoey, but not in the way that a satellite phone sounds echoey, just in kind of that you're sitting in a room.
I assume you're not speaking into a telephone handset.
Let me tell you how we are making this phone call.
All right.
We actually are making this phone call through Gmail, and we're using a service that is completely free for anybody that has Gmail.
They simply click a little thing that says call a phone, I think, or something like that, and you simply enter a phone number, and you can call for free to the United States.
What we didn't know was that it works outside the United States of the United States.
We can't call anywhere here in Denmark, which is where we are right now, but we can call the United States, and it's pretty cool.
Neat.
So it goes over the Internet, you say.
It uses the Internet.
You sound good. You sound a little bit VoIP-y, but apart from that, you're understandable.
You guys sound pretty clear as well.
Of course, this is saving a ton of money because we don't have to make phone calls on regular telephones.
Wow.
I'm just amazed it's this easy.
The future.
Well, we'll see just how cheap it stays.
If I remember correctly, they said that it's going to be free at least until the end of the year, so we don't really know what's going to happen after the end of the year.
You have services like Skype out there, which do the same thing, but they just charge per minute.
Still relatively cheap.
I've got to figure out how to get Skype to work at the radio station, so this is so much easier.
It's literally a click of a button.
We're still forbidden from calling you, though, because that's a special WPA policy.
Well, there are ways you can call us, but we won't get into that here.
But if this doesn't work, we have backup methods.
But anyway, yeah, we are in Copenhagen right now.
In fact, we just arrived about 25 minutes ago.
There is chaos all throughout Europe as far as travel.
And we took a train today from Stockholm down to Copenhagen, and there is just complete mayhem in the train station in Stockholm.
It looked like Penn Station one of those days where the Long Island Railroad completely screws everything up.
People are waiting for hours and hours.
Difference is they really aren't very good at announcing things.
They're very bad at telling you where tracks are.
And our train was supposed to leave at 6 minutes past 5 p.m., and we were watching it on the board, waiting for the track to be announced or waiting to find out if it was going to be delayed.
And it just disappeared off the board.
It just vanished.
There was no more 1706 train.
And we were asking everybody, what happened to this train?
They were telling us, it vanished.
It's going to come back.
But we didn't believe them, and we just basically jumped on the first train to Malmo that we could find.
And unfortunately, that meant we had to stand most of the time because we didn't have reserved seats on that particular train.
And then when we arrived in Malmo about five hours later, we discovered that that was our train.
Somehow, that had become a different train, even though it was still our train.
And maybe we had seats the whole time in a different car that we didn't know about.
So you came over the Oresund Bridge?
Well, yeah.
After we reached Malmo, we had to do that to get to Copenhagen.
Is it still the longest bridge in the world?
I don't know.
That was probably the least interesting part of the entire day.
It's a fascinating bridge.
Well, it may be a fascinating bridge if you have time to look at that.
But we were trying to get here for the show, and we had all kinds of heartache along the way dealing with crazy train systems that didn't quite work out the way we wanted them to.
Yes, go ahead.
Have you ever taken the train from, I think it's from Copenhagen to, I forget the name of the city in Sweden, the train that travels across the water?
That would be the train I was just on.
Are you listening to the show here?
Yeah, I'm talking about the train that pulls into a ship.
You're thinking of the train that goes to Germany, which does go onto a ship, yes.
I don't think it's, no, I think it's from Denmark to Sweden.
They built a bridge, Bernie, so that they don't have to do that anymore.
Oh, okay.
It was an amazing experience.
This train just pulled into this giant ship, and then the ship set sail on the high seas.
There was even a casino in this ship that the train was riding in.
It was very strange.
Do they still have that on the train from Copenhagen towards Hamburg and onto Berlin?
But now there's a bridge to Sweden, so they don't have to do that anymore.
Progress.
Yes.
But you have that same amazing experience if you just go to Germany instead.
Did you get out of the train while it was on the ship?
I'm asking Bernie.
Yes, you can get out.
There are actually train tracks embedded in the bottom of the ship, and it opens up its mouth like a giant animal.
And the train just pulls right into the ship, and then you just board the train, and you can walk around.
There is a big casino and a liquor store.
Boy, those Swedish people were loading up on the liquor, I'll tell you.
Well, probably it was tax-free, right?
Yes, exactly.
It was tax-free, and they were loading up entire full-size shopping carts.
They were loading up with hard liquor on the ship to take to Sweden because it was so much cheaper.
I don't think I've drank that much my whole life that people were carrying in a single shopping cart.
It was amazing.
I hear they're looking into ways to put that ship with a train inside it onto a plane and then put the plane on some roller skates.
Well, speaking of Swedes, we've encountered quite a number of them over the last few days that we were in Stockholm.
And one of the people who is very interesting, actually, is at the center of that whole terrorist attack that took place a couple of weeks ago.
Actually, that sounds really bad the way I said it.
But this person was there.
His shop, actually, was next to where the suicide bomber blew himself up.
And what's interesting about this story, he's a watch salesman.
He owns a watch store.
And he provided police with video footage that showed the Stockholm suicide bomber and gave them information that they didn't already have.
His name is Naresh Lakhwani.
And he basically had all this footage on December 11 when the bomb went off.
He handed it over to the police.
They were very grateful.
A couple of days later, he got a visit from the county administrative board, which handles permits for security cameras.
And they said, you don't have the right permits for these security cameras, and you must take them down immediately or we're going to fine you.
And it just seemed really crazy that that is how they treat somebody who basically gave them all this valuable information.
And they're quite perturbed by that.
They've got a petition going in the store.
And it's the talk of the town, and I think the talk of the world as well.
You would think they would just say, hey, maybe you should apply for a permit, or then you have to take them down.
You need a permit to put up a camera in Sweden?
I mean, that's kind of nice.
Yeah, it's awesome.
They should really enforce this law.
I like it.
Well, I think they need the permit if they're going to be filming anything outside of the store.
That's a great rule.
Well, yeah.
But the thing is, I'm not sure how easy it is to get this permit.
It might be, you know.
You're sweetening the deal.
Hopefully it's really hard.
Okay, you do understand that sometimes it's good to have security cameras when you have security issues.
And if it's not tied into the whole Big Brother Orwellian system, then it's a different matter than what they're doing in England.
I don't know you anymore, dude.
Yeah, well, we were talking to some of the shopkeepers today,
and they were recounting some of the events that transpired and, like, what happened.
And the women that worked there actually said that basically they were fearful to be there without these cameras.
It gave them a sense of security working in a place that has expensive merchandise.
And that was sort of the most important thing about having this surveillance.
And it's totally private and independent.
You know, it's their own system.
And, well, we did notice there were quite a few cameras.
I mean, he's pretty well covered.
But the one woman that we spoke with said that they had just put them up.
There was another case about a year or two ago involving an incident that happened right outside,
and they didn't have any sort of security cameras.
And when the police asked, the guy said, oh, yeah, I'm working on it.
I'm going to get some sort of security camera installed.
And so now he has it, and it's quite substantial.
I mean, there's, like, five cameras outside the front door alone.
But, yeah, so now he's got it, and he's being sort of made into an outlaw as far as the shopkeepers on this one street go.
Very interesting.
Yeah, yeah, it is.
So what's going on there in New York?
Well, the Internet just, you know, got split in two.
Did you hear about that?
Hello?
Are you referring to the net neutrality stuff?
Yes, I am.
Apparently the FCC proposed some rules and then passed them very quickly.
I didn't know the FCC could actually move that fast, but they proposed them on, like, on one day,
and then they got passed, like, two days later.
But basically they say that there's some limited net neutrality requirements,
and we should explain what that is in a second, for wireline connections, so your DSL and cable connections.
But on your mobile phone, apparently the carriers are now allowed to do whatever they want,
which means they're allowed to block access to services they don't provide.
They're allowed to prioritize their own services so that even if you can still get to a service, it's slower.
And apparently if it's on the wireless, they can do whatever they want.
So hope you didn't plan on visiting WikiLeaks on your mobile phone or anything.
It's also interesting because it doesn't specifically bifurcate wireless
and wired from the standpoint of mobile phones versus, you know, cable and DSL.
Quite a few people use some of the 4G wireless Internet access from,
it's like WiMAX service from companies like Clear or Clearwire.
And a lot of times it's fixed, but it's fixed wireless in the home, but it's just a wireless last mile.
And apparently this net neutrality rule does not apply to people who could do,
to people who use that kind of ISPs for that kind of service, which a lot of residential customers use.
So it's a concern they did not just apply this net neutrality wholesale across all the Internet service providers.
Although I get the feeling that in the case of someone who's using wireless for their residential access,
it'd probably be a harder pill to swallow than if they say, oh, I can't go to some website on my phone.
So in terms of a customer relation standpoint, I would hope that those companies don't, you know, take advantage of them.
But they might, they might, you never know.
If there are loopholes, someone will take advantage of them.
That's the way of the world.
And the FCC has not actually released the entire text of this new rule yet.
Yeah, that's very true.
And the Republicans are already vowing to block this.
I like that.
They're already vowing to block this thing that hasn't been released publicly in full yet.
So whatever it is, we're against it.
All the Republican FCC commissioners, there's some Republicans and Democrats, commissioners in the FCC,
but apparently Democrats outvoted the Republicans on there.
But all of the rules have not been released publicly yet.
But that'll probably happen in the next day or so.
But all the Republicans on the FCC commission voted against these new net neutrality rules.
So it'll be interesting to see what the controversy is about, what they voted against specifically.
Can we ask on a scale of one to ten around the studio what people think as far as how good this is?
What's one and what's ten?
One is awful, ten is great.
Six.
Maybe six and a half.
I kind of would want more information and I'd want to see the fallout before I assign numbers to things.
Yeah, I'm going to reserve judgment until we get more information about this.
Right now I'll hover it around a five.
You people are so nonjudgmental.
I'm going to put it at four.
Based on the wording I'm seeing, I'll say things like that because, I mean, I've already seen wording like that they're allowed to have reasonable discrimination, the packets.
And, of course, that's a loaded term.
What will that mean?
Who decides that?
Jim says three.
Yeah.
Thank you, Jim.
Yes, that's good.
Free Press calls it a betrayal.
The legal term of reasonable discrimination reminds me of the COPA law, the Child Online Pornography Act that was ruled unconstitutional, which used the word indecent, which was also equally unconstitutionally vague.
You can count on anyone who is charged, any ISP who's charged with unreasonable discrimination to challenge that and tie it up in the courts for years and years.
Now, Bernie, I have a question maybe you can answer.
How does this all relate to wiretapping laws?
So you have these laws that are saying, well, they can look at the traffic and where it's going and block it, but aren't they then kind of examining the information?
I mean, how does that not fall under wiretap?
Well, this is nothing new.
The telephone carriers have for years been completely and legally allowed to monitor telephone calls in the name of quality control.
Even if they don't tell the consumer?
Absolutely.
This has been happening for many decades.
As long as the telephone service is around, telephone companies have been allowed to listen in on phone calls under the auspices of, we're just checking to see what the quality of the call is.
Is that?
That's embodied both under federal law and every single state's law.
Now, Mark mentioned something interesting about the wireless that they could be limited from.
They're not protected with the net neutrality rules, like maybe you won't get to go to WikiLeaks and whatnot.
But under the current rules, well, unreleased current rules, I'm already seeing mentioned that while they can't block unlawful content, there's this gray area about what will be considered unlawful and what can be blocked.
So, for instance, lawful porn is all right to have on the Internet, but the ISP could argue that they should be allowed to block porn that isn't quite lawful or BitTorrent trackers that maybe are going to follow some illegal content.
Or WikiLeaks.
Or WikiLeaks, yeah.
As Apple just blocked the iPhone app.
Speaking of WikiLeaks, something that happened since last week, Julian Assange is no longer in prison.
After a fashion.
Yeah, well, he's in England. I guess that's close to it.
He's stuck in England in someone's house.
In a mansion.
Yeah, a mansion in England.
With a tag.
With a tag around his leg.
Is that all?
So far with WikiLeaks.
Well, I guess.
Are you cutting in and out or just stopping talking?
It's hard to tell.
I'm trying to talk.
Can you hear me?
Yeah.
All right.
This is new and experimental, so I'm not exactly sure how well this sounds.
But, yeah, there have been a number of developments with the whole WikiLeaks saga as we continue to follow this story.
More releases have happened, of course.
More have been going on for quite some time, even while Julian was in prison.
Here's something interesting, though, that I saw just today, actually, about some of the people that were engaged in the denial-of-service attacks while WikiLeaks was being denied service as well from Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, various other entities.
And still is.
I'm sorry?
And still is being discriminated against.
Not was.
Is.
Right.
Okay.
Fine.
So, basically, this member of the group Anonymous, or somebody who refers to themselves as a member of the group Anonymous, told the BBC that, in fact, and this is rather amusing, the way that this came out.
They claimed they were not hackers, just average Internet citizens who felt motivated to act because of perceived injustices against WikiLeaks.
That sounds all good and fair, but then this guy went on to say, yeah, we're not hackers.
We have no interest in stealing credit card details or attacking critical infrastructure.
So, yeah, you know, it's one step forward, two steps back.
So, that was, yeah, the amusing WikiLeaks story of the day.
I do think that what the guy was trying to get across, though, was that he was, I think, trying to make the point that this rises to the level of civil disobedience, as in, like, phone bombing or, you know, just calling your legislators and tying up their phones kind of thing.
Because this was not like an organized group.
This was like anybody could download this application to use to make a denial-of-service attack against companies who were blocking WikiLeaks' funding.
And, you know, these were people who were not doing it anonymously.
Everybody who downloaded this app and did it did it with the full knowledge that, if they read the details, that their IP address could be immediately retraced back to them.
So, I really think that this denial-of-service attack rose to the level of civil disobedience.
I couldn't agree less, because it's just pure vandalism and thuggery, as far as I'm concerned, where you try to shut up your opponent.
And here's an interesting study that came out today, also on the BBC, where it basically has revealed that human rights groups and campaigners are the ones being hit hard by these huge web attacks, and they're being launched by people who are just opposed to their views.
Web-based campaigning groups are being attacked, and researchers expect the tempo of attacks to increase as the tools and techniques become more widespread.
And it urges human rights groups and independent media groups to beef up their defenses to avoid falling victim.
So it's got nothing to do with passive resistance or any kind of organized resistance to anything like that.
It's just basically people shouting louder than anybody else and trying to drown out people they don't agree with.
But how is it different than, say, a sit-in, except the fact that it's on a larger scale?
Right. Well, a sit-in is simply sitting in front of a door that you're targeting from getting into a particular door.
They can get around different ways.
But you know what?
Those people don't turn around and then block you from getting into your house.
You know, it's usually the people doing this are woefully outnumbered by cops and by the people that they're protesting against.
It's not basically everybody is able to do this, mostly anonymously, because most people, when they denial of service a website somewhere, you don't know who they are.
I really don't think that happens very often.
In this case, that's not the case.
Everybody who did one of these denial of service attacks by downloading that application was doing so not using other third-party computers.
They were using their own computers, so their IP addresses were being revealed, and therefore they were, in effect, allowing themselves to be held accountable for their actions.
Yeah, they were willful participants in the attack.
By the way, I wanted to make a correction.
Last week I said that this thing, you had to actually put the target into it.
There is a control mode for the software where you can give control of your computer for the attack to another person, but you're still willfully joining the attack.
So I still go along with what Bernie said in terms of being willful participants.
Okay, but the point is have we really run out of arguments, things to say where the only thing,
the only tactic is to simply drown them out and try to shut them up.
You know, it's embarrassing.
That's not the way I want to fight my fights.
It's also just not a very interesting tactic.
I mean, anybody can download this application.
I don't think everybody who downloads this application fully reads and understands the instructions and the principles behind how it works.
They just know, oh, I can use this thing to break something, or somebody told me to install this and I'm going to do it and be cool, or whatever.
That's the danger of having tools like this in the hands of people who maybe don't entirely understand their use.
And another thing I really think is important, and I keep going on about this, but there is no group anonymous to be a member of.
It's a banner that anybody can start anything under and participate in anything under.
And despite the fact that declaring yourself a member of this non-existent group can still apparently get you in the mainstream media as a consultant.
Yeah, pretty amazing.
And also there's this other story involving the federal government with their wish list of things that they want to have.
They want to make a computer firewall to block, and there's a quote, WikiLeaks pollution.
Yeah.
Basically, we know that the government wants their workers and federal contractors not to read the leaked classified documents, even when they're in the public domain already.
But now Fidelis Security, which is a Boston-based network security company, works with the military, other government agencies,
says it's being asked to set up a firewall against WikiLeaks document traffic, regardless of whether it flows from a website, email, or other source.
They sell a network security system to federal agencies designed to prevent data extrusion, which is an amazing word, or leaks.
But it can also be used to prevent data from coming into a network.
So it's incredible the tools that they're coming up with.
And of course, these tools can be applied anywhere, not just in the federal government.
They can be used with schools, with workplaces, on particular ISPs.
It's incredible how the effort they're going to.
Now, here you have an interesting conundrum, though, because if they're supposed to filter out this corpus of documents,
they'll have to come up with a way to do it without actually having the corpus at least, I assume, not running in the software.
Perhaps some sort of machine learning to train.
Well, this is probably a leaked cable, but I would assume that the firewall itself couldn't contain the 250,000 cables to compare against.
Hashes, maybe?
If you change one comma to a period, you've changed the hash.
No, probably some sort of machine learning.
But I think it's interesting.
I'd be interested to see what their solution is because I assume they're not going to have just the documents to compare against or something like that.
It runs Red Hacked on pure evil.
Pure evil.
Okay.
I think the U.S. federal government is doing a really great job in channeling Douglas Adams' ravenous, bug-bladder beast of trawl, which was so stupid it believed that if—
You couldn't see it, it couldn't see you.
Exactly.
So it's basically a head-in-the-sand approach.
They're going to make all their employees think that this problem doesn't exist if they can't see it.
Well, it sounds to me like they're kind of trying to bring the Great Firewall of China over to the United States.
And if they do that successfully to any degree, eventually, people will read very easily unless they know what they're doing.
You know, Bernie, yes, there's a group in the CIA that is actually dedicated to solving what they believe the WikiLeaks—the problem.
And they've named this group the WikiLeaks Task Force, which has the best acronym I think the CIA has ever come up with.
So, you know, I can say nice things about the CIA sometimes.
Yeah, I think I'm in favor of the CIA engaging in WTF tactics.
We apparently set that right off.
I don't know.
But we have a rap to play.
Yes, yes, we do.
And there's not nearly enough raps on this show, so maybe—
Should I kick it off, then?
Well, maybe we should explain what it is.
All right.
I think Rob knows better than anyone.
Well, I think the producers of this are called the Juice Media, I believe that is.
Yes.
And they do something called Rap News, which is a series of YouTube videos, MP3s and so on, which are basically news reports in the form of a rap music.
And they do impressions of public figures and things like that.
And I think that's really all the explanation this one needs.
Okay.
Juice News
Good morning, this is a Juice News call out
In the wake of Cablegate and the subsequent fallout
Balls out revelations, observations of diplomats
Giving actual confirmation of hidden facts
Spilling backroom deals, leaking leaders' chit-chat
Money laundering and tit-for-tat
Spits and spats, the picture that emerges
Provided by the service, shines light further
Behind the wire curtain
Certainly this has divided views of the populace
Some say it's obvious, nothing new in these documents
Others say it's ominous and applaud the revelations
Others still call for the messenger's assassination
Following Assange's arrest and calls for his head
Over 9,000 counterattacks on all of the web
The State Department being forced to defend
Spying at the UN and a secret war in Yemen
Despite DDoS attacks on Wikileaks' system
Day by day, cables still spray through mirror reflection
Will Cablegate change the game or lead to repression?
We get face to face with Hillary Clinton
Hillary Clinton, how does it feel to get leaked on?
It's scandalous, this is a case of high treason
It's against the land of the brave and divine freedom
We're the good guys for democracy, we fight evil
And we've waged peace around the world, proud of the flag
These leaks could devalue this powerful brand
Bring military operations straight to a halt
Our shareholders, clients and partners would plainly revolt
But aren't you beholden to the American public?
And isn't the US one of the primary culprits in overthrowing governments?
Such as?
Chile, Iran, Nicaragua?
Please, stop with the drama
The American people are our employees
Whose taxes fund the wars that support our schemes
Their kids become troops we send overseas
In return for mega malls and the American dream
And if our client states don't like the things that we do
We install a dictator with a CIA coup
In foreign relations, subversion is the method we use
WikiLeaks threaten the system, so it's a terrorist group
But people of the world seem to generally approve
Of WikiLeaks' actions in spreading the truth
They do? Well then they're terrorists too
Dissenters are traitors, as history proved
And they always lose
That's curious
Weren't some of our greatest heroes persecuted for this reason?
Who?
Mandela, Gandhi, Jesus?
You idealists
Okay, now for another perspective
Prison Planet host, Alex Jones
People, heed the megaphone
Mr. Sanchez has apparently shown
The emperor on the palace throne grabbing at clothes
But I've heard anecdotes, I'll show it fits
This patch, he's a triple agent for the globalists
He claims openness, but he's actually a catalyst
For the one world government of commie Nazi fascists
Robert, I'm getting paranoid, I need to state
This is a false flag, a tank to bring in a police state
A cyber 9-11, that's the secret vision
Right now they're debriefing Julian in a British prison
So Wikileaks is an inside job?
They hide the truth to distract from the climate deal in Cancun
You try doing my job without hiding something
I ain't called Secretary of State for nothing
But surely, now you're exposed out on the stage
One would expect the world's leaders to be outraged
By the spying, lies, emerging charges
Now on the line, it's Colonel Gaddafi
As-salamu alaykum
Alaykum as-salam, are you outraged?
Well, now that there's a Muslim brother president of US
We expected secrets to be kept
Now we have to keep abreast of these huge security leaks
Obama must get firm grip on Wikileaks
How about you, Mr. Berlusconi?
Will your reputation fall more in this pandemonium?
Maravetto, gli italiani mi amano come bambini
E li amano come musulini
The American flag is symbol global of liberty
And I love Hillary, though she's a bit too old for me
By the way, Robert, how much for your new show?
I pay cash
I just got some rubles
Sorry, Silvio, we have scruples, it's not for sale
Robert, Hillary, come have a cigar at my hotel
Well, Hillary, it appears that the leaders are not that outraged
Are you serious? Of course not
We're one happy family tree, son
As you'll see soon, when we hang a cent for treason
Treason? Couldn't an Australian ever stand trial?
Ha! Australia's in the American empire
We have puppet states, franchisees, subsidiaries
Provided they obey their guaranteed liberty
We're not letting a cent get out of our grip
You know how hard it was to plant a condom that split?
Hell, you turd, your Bilderberg lies are blatant
But Alex, where's your evidence that Assange is an agent?
Well, obviously, this is a globalist psy-op plot
Designed to keep us in the dark
They're climbing in your windows, they're stashing your income tax
Pride and slavery's all you'll need to hide your kids, hide your wife
Buy a gun, buy a knife, watch the show, buy your gold
And buy your silver, cause they enslaving everybody out here
We don't have to look for no facts, we know this is true
They gon' chip you, they gon' tag you
But we can run and yell that, run and yell that, run and yell that
New world, new world order
We got his IV hidden left out of this and all
He is so done, he is really going on trial
But what is Assange accused of?
I was molested by Julian in the Stockholm
So done, so done, so done, so
Okay, it's almost time to end for the day
But until we meet again, a few questions remain
Is Wikileaks really the greatest threat that we face?
Or is it the response we're seeing in defense of the state?
A response which is building and seeks to turn back the clock
On freedom of speech and fundamental rights earned over a century
This should ring alarm bells for all who know their history
From this evidence, are we neglecting our memory?
And repeating the trajectory of the 20th century?
And if so, upon seeing the facts but ceasing to act
Don't we deserve the leaders we have?
What needs to befall before we open the door and yell
I'm mad as hell, I'm not gonna take it anymore
Or do we sit waiting for messiahs or aliens or a superhero
If they're not all one in the same meme?
History, dear viewers, is happening
Will we ever get a similar chance again?
History books will be written about events this month
The story they will tell is up to us
The Juice Media Rap News
It's a way of really getting the word out and expressing yourself
Yeah, this is a really creative tool
Like getting a visual element
I laughed when I saw this
These are the kinds of things that I think you need to see a lot of
In situations like this
Because when people can find humor in situations
I think they start to get it
Go ahead, Ro
Yeah, and in between all the jokes
It actually is a very decent explanation of, I think, the issues at hand
I wonder, maybe we should start rapping on this show
What do you guys think?
You first, Rob
How long do we have to wait? Come on
We could start a rap battle right here
And I think we'll all lose
That'd be something
Some news from Venezuela
Where the parliament has voted to tighten the rules on the internet
Under the bill, this is according to the BBC
Online messages inciting hatred or political and religious intolerance are banned
The new law also prohibits contents which are deemed to disrespect public officials
And opposition politicians voted against the measure
Which they said is a threat to freedom of speech
And Chavez gives some lengthy excuse for why it's really all okay
And we should distrust him
But, yeah, so
So, you know, some countries are ahead of the United States
In online censorship
How broadly is that applied?
I mean, is it just applied that if you're within the country
And you do something like that, then you're in trouble?
Well, Venezuela doesn't quite have the same reach as the United States
So it would be hard for the Venezuelan courts to get you
If you're not in Venezuela
No, I just meant in terms of
If you were to post it on a service that's outside of the country
Or something like that
Kind of what's there
If you're in Venezuela, I'm sure they don't care
Okay
I mean, the same as in the United States
If you're in the United States and you
Commit a crime
And you do something that violates the laws of the United States
But you use a web server that's somewhere else
They'll still come and arrest you if they can catch you
Right
Well, Venezuela is far from the only country
That's involved in this kind of controversy
The UK wants to block pornography at the source
So that children don't accidentally
Or on purpose go and see it
And people who run ISPs are basically
Trying to tell the British government
That that is simply not possible
In response to the government proposal
Nicholas Landsman, who is secretary general
Of the ISP industry body
Known as ISPA
ISPA firmly believes that controls on children's access to the internet
Should be managed by parents and carers
With the tools ISPs provide
Rather than being imposed top-down
I think it's incredible, though, that
In this day and age
A government thinks that
They can really do this
Get away with this
And simply make it impossible for anybody
To access certain things they find offensive
Without jumping through hoops
So how would it work?
Would there be an office in the British government
That's responsible for finding all the pornography
On the internet and making a list?
Checking it twice? I don't know
That's what they're thinking
They have to obviously know what to block
In order to be able to do it
But it's a nightmare
It would be something the ISPs would find impossible
What we've seen again and again with these sorts of filters
Is that they're both overbroad
In that they block content that is not in fact pornographic
They'll block information about breast cancer
Or homosexuality or all kinds of things
And then they're underbroad
In that they miss actual pornography sites
And then they're stupid in the first place
Because pornography is not generally illegal
In the United Kingdom
So it's really dangerous, this regulation
But it's a good place to start
If we start with something like pornography
That all the good, wholesome people don't like
Then we can move on to better, more dangerous things
Like Wikileaks
Of course, Wikileaks would find its way onto this list
If the list existed yet
But even without the abuse, it's just absurd
Well there's this organization
Known as the Internet Watch Foundation, IWF
And they exist now
They circulate lists to ISPs of various sites
That are found to be hosting illegal images
Of child sexual abuse
And they basically get that list together
Through information given to them by the public
But it only tackles illegal content found on websites
What the British government wants to do
Is create a system that would be dealing with
Millions of porn sites, chat rooms, bulletin boards
And basically, one of the people who is an expert on this
Says you'll end up with a system
That's either hugely expensive and a losing battle
Because there are millions of these sites
Or it just won't be effective
An important component of how this whole system would work
Is that pornography would end up being an opt-in thing in the UK
Where you would have to call your ISP and ask
Yes, please may I look at porn?
Exactly, and that's going to be very embarrassing
For a lot of people to do
No sex please, we're British
Doesn't this amount to basically
Governments investing in porn?
If they're going to be cataloging it
And becoming the biggest clearing house
For knowing where it is at all times
We could just see somebody compromising that
And then all of a sudden
We have these big indexes of where all this stuff is
And it just seems like a lot of expense
Towards, again, ignorance on the part of the government
It just seems like a lot of expense
Towards something that, as E mentioned a second ago
Maybe parents should be responsible for
And maybe as a society we should look at the bigger issues
Around our attitudes with sexuality
And what we're teaching youth and stuff
I do think it's important though
I don't want to be too one-sided here
I think we should give the other side a chance
To express themselves in a way that only they can do
And for that I think we should turn to Miranda Soot
Who is the co-chair of Safer Media
That they campaign to make media safe for children
She said to the BBC
That the pornography available on the internet
Was qualitatively and quantitatively
Different from any that has gone before
Ms. Soot cited a report compiled by
The U.S. conservative think tank
The Witherspoon Institute
Which suggested that easy access
There's nothing funny about that name
I'm sorry
The Witherspoon Institute
Which suggested that easy access to pornography
Was damaging some young people
Children are becoming addicted in their teens
To internet pornography, she said
They are being mentally damaged
So they cannot engage in intimate relationships
Safer Media
Backed the government call to block pornography at source
Said Ms. Soot
What we are talking about is censorship
To protect our children, she said
So Emanuel, is Ms. Soot saying that
Qualitatively, internet porn is
Qualitatively better or worse
Than the porn that preceded it
Well, I don't have her here to ask
But I imagine the pornography that she's familiar with
Is she saying is much better than what's out there now
Oh, I probably would disagree with that
But anyway
Well, we should trade notes, I guess
And figure out who's got the better stash
Uh-huh
And once we've done that
Yeah, let's change gears here
First of all, I'd like to make some phone calls
Because I'd love to test this system with listeners as well
To see if us talking into a computer here in Copenhagen
Paying not a single penny for it
Is something that will interface well with the VAI phone system
212-209-2900 is our phone number
But also I wanted to take a moment
To talk about what happened with Prometheus
Prometheus Radio Project in the last week
They basically are celebrating
A victory on low-power FM
And the local community radio act
Does anybody have more information on this?
Yeah, I actually stopped by
I was at the headquarters of Prometheus yesterday
Stopping by to say hello
And I talked with Maggie and some other people there
About this very issue
And what this means is there will be
This law, which now has been voted on
By both the House and the Senate
And a president will be signing it any day now
Will allow many more low-power FM stations
That are non-profit community stations
To be established throughout the United States
And basically what it does is it allows
Some what are called second-adjacent frequencies
To be allocated to low-power FM stations
Up until now, for the past 10 years or so
Since Prometheus was successful
And a bunch of other people were successful
In getting third-adjacent frequencies allocated to LPFM
Basically what this means is
You look on the FM dial and there's
The stations will be at 99.5, which is WBAI
And there's 99.7, 99.9
They're at odd splits
So the National Association of Broadcasters and NPR
Has vehemently opposed stations being
LPFM, low-power FM stations
Which are only like 100 watts or so
From being less than three slots away
From a big flamethrower commercial or NPR station
And that's ridiculous
Because in any major market
There are no clear spaces
That are three adjacent slots away
So this new law allows low-power FM stations
To get licenses that are only two adjacent frequencies away
Which opens up way more slots
For low-power FM stations to establish
This is a really big deal, it sounds kind of technical
But it basically allows more channels to be available
In the existing FM spectrum
To non-commercial low-power community FM stations
And it's a really good thing
Probably not in urban areas, right?
No, still not in urban areas
There really aren't even a second adjacent frequency
Available in more urban areas
In more urban areas than before
So some of the smaller cities
Will now be able to have low-power
Community FM stations
And you go through any major market
Like New York or Philadelphia or LA
There's just so many radio stations
There just aren't even any more second adjacent slots available
How do I...
This is huge
How do I get one if I live in a not-too-populated area?
Well, the best guide really is
Go to prometheusradio.org
And you can find out exactly
How to go through the license application process
There's scores of stations
Hundreds of stations have been built
Over the past decade
Due to a grassroots movement
Largely headed up by Prometheus
And who's...
A regular speaker at the HOPE conferences
And good stuff
So check out the Prometheus Radio Project's website
For more information about how to establish
A non-commercial low-power FM radio station
In your community
And that website is prometheusradio.org
That's P-R-O-M-E-T-H-E-U-S-R-A-D-I-O
That's correct, thank you
Now, Emmanuel
You were mentioning
Someone by the name of Miranda Soot earlier
And this person is actually
She's the one behind
A lot of these quotes in the UK media
In favor of their censorship plan
She actually turns out to be
A fairly interesting individual herself
I have in front of me
Her bio on a site
Called The Christian Choice
It's an organization called
The Christian People's Alliance
There's a very interesting quote from her here
Let's see
Quoting Miranda Soot in her own bio
She says, we must not forget the influence of the media
It needs much stronger regulations
So that our young people are not constantly conditioned
By violent films, video games, and lyrics
Our country must be outlawed
So that it cannot undermine marriage
And the dignity of women
And encourage sex crime
All schools should teach Christian values
Wow
What a surprise
Yes, indeed
I'm shocked, I really am
On the subject of indecency
Someone has done something interesting
With the project of ours
Our Google Blacklist
Which we spoke of earlier
The words blacklisted from Google Instant
Which if you type into a Google search
Will not immediately return you results
And there are lots of words on that list
That naturally we can't say on the radio
Somebody has built an application
That's nice and seasonal
It will take these words, it will take this blacklist
And let you build holiday cards out of them
The website for this
And then you can email the cards or print them
Or do what you like
And the URL for this is googleblackchristmas.com
Very cool stuff
If you want to send holiday cards
And you don't have a lot of time
If you want to send a holiday e-card
That we could definitely not read on the radio
Check that out
I guess it really depends on who your friends are
Let me take some phone calls
Yeah, but let's say the phone number
So that more people can get in the queue
Once again, 212-209-2900
Alright, so
You're on the air
Hello
You're on the air
You are
Well I have a question
I'm probably just missing something
I think you guys should run it by
In terms of this net neutrality
And them saying that
They want to
Well the argument was
They're going to make people pay on different tiers
But isn't that already going on
Because Verizon asks you
If you want a certain amount of speed
You pay this
It's a good question
So currently
You pay for the amount of speed you want
But with that speed you can download
Any content you wish
With a new
Plan that is
Now legal
They could say
In this lower tier you can only visit
Our favorite 20 websites
And that's something that
Is quite frightening
Which is bothersome
I've asked all these legislations
I've noticed that you have to pay anyway
For different types of speed
And that was part of
I thought that was part of the conversation
Well it's more
Like Mike was saying
The speed you're paying for
Is this speed
And you get access to everything
At that speed
Whereas what you're talking about here
Is saying that okay you've paid for this service
And now these things will get better priorities
But it's not accessible at all
So yes you're paying for different speeds
But
And that's my primary question
I know what you're saying here
But my question is focused
Wasn't that part of the conversation
That people would have to then pay different
To access different things
Wasn't that initially part of the conversation
I understand what you're saying
But what my point is
Haven't they already begun to do that
Even when they were saying they were going to
I don't know if they have us doing it or not
But it seemed like they had already done it before
In short
Some ISPs have
A good case in point is Comcast
With BitTorrent
Which is partly what brought the discussion
Into the legal realm
Was that some ISPs were starting to
Slow down
Or just block
Certain kinds of content
But that's more what it's about
It's not necessarily about charging somebody
For services they're being provided
It's charging somebody for services
That they're being provided
And then saying well you know what
We're going to censor this
Or we don't like that content
Because it conflicts with some product we sell
What I'm also curious about
Is if they already started that
What I refer to
Are they already starting to limit
Or tell people where they cannot go
Because it seems for me when I surf the web
I think I notice that
Who's monitoring?
So far as we know
The answer is no
For a DSL or cable connection
But you're right
That there is no way to know for sure
Alright thank you fellas
Thanks for the call
Let's take this one
You're on the air
Hello am I on the air?
You are
Hi my name is Loren from Mount Vernon
I don't know if I can ask
You guys this but
Do you guys know how to get legal internet?
Or
No?
Legal internet?
Yeah legal internet
Call your internet provider I guess
Alright
So I want to
Ask you guys another question
So with
Right now I can
Access a Wikileaks
So when are they going to like officially
Ban Wikileaks?
When are they going to
Officially ban Wikileaks? Hopefully never
Yeah I mean that would require
Some filtering kind of
I mean the government would have to
Impose some sort of filtering at the
Borders of the country if you will
Or at the ISP level and they haven't done that
And I don't believe that they have the right to
At this point
Well they haven't done it for the general public although they have done it for members of their own staff
Right if you're
The government if it's running your network
Because if you're in the military for example
Then they can do whatever they want and block whatever they want
But in terms of the general public
I don't think it's within their
Legal right to do that
Should this change I'm sure
We'll be talking about it so stay tuned
Thanks for your call
They don't even need to legislate it
You know they already have companies just you know laterally
Saying well we're not going to do business with Wikileaks anyway
But that's the company's decision
Not a government mandate
Anyway let's
Take another phone call
Hi what's on your mind
Oh yeah hi
Ok
Alright
See I just want to know for the record that Rebel hung up on us that time
We did not hang up on him
What's on your mind
Hi I'll ask and then listen
I don't have cable
I don't have TV
I don't have a cell phone
But my home computer is a laptop
Running on a
Sprint Air card
Which is broadband and wireless
And I'm going to be at their mercy
And I'll listen off the air
I think the short answer is yes
You're correct
Absolutely
I don't have anything reassuring to say
Sorry
Let's try this phone call
You're on the air
Yes sir
Alright that time we hung up on Rebel
And balance is restored to the force
You're on the air
Yeah hi
I'm Albert from Lower East Side
What's on your mind
We have just a minute left
I think we have to widen our view
And look at the whole world situation
And most of the major
Imperialist countries
Are imposing a lot of restrictions
On the people
And what we have to do here
Is stop reacting and start acting
We continually react
Everything that the right wing does
And it's all for the purpose of
Not them
They're just paid stooges
But it's the corporate elite
And the finance capital
That's pushing all of this
And for the final look
The final battle is coming up
The wars are going to continue
And more restrictions
Are going to be imposed
And unless we start uniting worldwide
Worldwide
We're not going to get anywhere
Separately fighting little battles
And skirmishes here and there
And reacting to whatever
They dictate and think they can get away with
Alright well we're out of time
But thanks for your thoughts
Alright
Send us an email at OTH at 2600.com
Any final words Emmanuel
No I think
This has gone really well
With the Gmail
Whatever this is called
It hasn't cost us anything
And I think you understood most of what we said
And I understood you
Yeah a ton of you participated too
I enjoyed it
Where are you going to be next week?
Do you know yet?
Next week we'll be at the CCC congress in Berlin
Don't bother going if you don't have tickets
Because it's sold out
For listeners interested in what
Emmanuel and Kyle are using right now
It's actually just the Google Talk plugin
You plug that into
You know from Mozilla Firefox
And you can
Then go on Gmail and have the calls
Go through the Gmail on the web
Alright and to take us out
We're going to have Jonathan Colton
So thanks very much
See you next week
Ok guys
Everyone ready to sing the song?
Great now remember
It's almost Christmas and nobody has any
Pod Save Christmas music
So that's your motivation here
Ready as I'll ever be
And Lynn and Nora from Jawbone, good to go?
Let's do this
And Adam Curry skyping in from the helicopter
Flying somewhere above your golden palace
You all patched in there Adam?
Adam? Adam?
Right I'm right here
We want a Pod Save Christmas song
We want a song that's safe to play
Don't think us rude
We don't want to get sued
By the thugs at the RIA
We have been good the whole year long
Santa don't delay
Give us a Pod Save Christmas song
To celebrate Christmas Day
Ok pretty good guys
Except uh Adam
You sounded a little bit like you were rushing it there at the end
You know what I mean?
Buddy?
What?
What?
What?
What?
What?
Buddy?
Whatever dude
Well I can't say I care for the attitude
But you know just pay attention next time
Now the rest of you I just wanted to go over
Adam
Adam did you say something to me?
No
That's funny I thought I heard you say something
No I didn't
Look I don't want to go through this with you again
We're here to sing a song about Pod Save Christmas music
And I just want everyone to do their best you know
I mean can you just give me a little effort?
Adam just give me a little effort ok?
Adam
Adam
Adam
Jesus what?
We want a Pod Save Christmas song
We want a song that's safe to play
Don't think us rude
We don't want to get sued
By the bugs at the RIA
We have been good the whole year long
Santa don't delay
Give us a Pod Save Christmas song
To celebrate Christmas Day
Santa don't delay
Give us a Pod Save Christmas song
To celebrate Christmas Day
Santa don't delay
Give us a Pod Save Christmas song
To celebrate Christmas Day
Hey
Nice job you guys
Really you nailed it
You nailed it
I don't want to speak too soon but
We may have saved Christmas
Special thanks to you Adam for paying attention
Yeah screw you
Happy Rehearsal
On December 29th
Join us for a critical look
It the Obama Presidency
hosted by Heidi Boghossian only on WBAI Radio 99.5 FM.
That's on December 29th between three and five p.m.
on WBAI Radio.
Yes we can, yes we can, yes we can, yes we can.