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And you're listening to Radio Station WBAI New York.
The time is 7 o'clock.
Time once again 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 cough.
We couldn't get much worse.
But if they could, they would.
Bum-diddly-bum for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood.
Bum-diddly-bum!
Bum-diddly-bum!
Bum-diddly-bum!
Bum-diddly-bum!
Bum-diddly-bum!
Bum-diddly-bum!
Bum-diddly-bum!
Bum-diddly-bum!
Bum-diddly-bum!
Bum-diddly-bum!
Bum-diddly-bum!
Bum-diddly-bum!
Bum-diddly-bum!
Bum-diddly-bum!
Bum-diddly-bum!
Bum-diddly-bum!
Bum-diddly-bum!
It's a small studio.
We can't hold that much more.
It's a smaller studio, and we don't have as many people.
It's intimate.
It is. It is rather intimate.
I guess it's a good way.
We weren't here last week,
so we're back after two weeks,
but we have a very special appeal,
I guess, to our listeners.
I guess the traditional part
of the fundraiser is over,
and then there's the nontraditional part
of the fundraiser, which continues.
If you've been listening to the radio station,
you might have heard that we are facing
an unprecedented emergency.
Basically, something that we need
very, very much is in jeopardy,
and that, of course, being the transmitter.
What has happened is
the transmitter
has fallen into arrears.
The transmitter bill, which I think
is something like $54,000 a month.
If you ever thought of putting an antenna
on top of the Empire State Building,
that is what it costs to do that.
What other radio station would tell you that?
These kinds of details
usually are kept secret.
We can tell you that that's what we have
to pay, and because
of all kinds of circumstances
involving how much
we've raised and basically
how things have worked out
because of natural and man-made
disasters of various sorts,
we have not been able to cover that
in recent months, and we desperately need
to do that by the end of this month.
Otherwise, Kyle, what's going to happen
to our transmitter?
It gets turned off.
It's going to be on eBay. They're going to put it up there,
and they're just going to peddle it off to anybody who wants it,
but it won't be in our control.
That means a big fat nothing
over 99.5 FM.
If you're listening to us on the Internet, you might say,
how does this affect me? I don't even use
the transmitter. Well, the difference between
us and one great big podcast
is that we are a radio station
broadcasting from the top of the Empire State Building
reaching, oh, I don't know, four
states, is it? It's really
incredible. Kyle, we were upstate, right?
Yeah, a whole heck of a
heap of an area.
We were way up north, like 50,
60 miles, I think, maybe more,
and we got it really very
clearly.
The unmistakable sounds of WBAI we heard
in upstate New York, and you can hear
that going out to eastern Long Island. You can hear it
going into Connecticut. You can hear it going out west
deep into New Jersey, in fact,
even hitting Pennsylvania, and you can go down
south in New Jersey and get the station
for a very, very long time.
So that is the difference.
Now, you might still say, well, how does this affect me
if I listen to it from Chicago or something
on the Internet?
The difference is that we are a radio
station that reaches all kinds
of people in random
moments of their life,
whether they're driving in their car
or just listening to a radio.
You hear all these things
about people not listening to radios anymore,
but I know people who do listen to radio.
I listen to radio. They are
still out there. They are still relevant.
And there's just something
different about a radio station that actually broadcasts
over the air than
one of millions of
podcasts that go out
and aren't really answerable
to listeners, per se.
Maybe I'm not
phrasing it as well as I could,
but I just think there's a certain magic in broadcast
radio that isn't going to simply be replaced.
In addition
to that, we are a radio station, first
and foremost, so if we can't broadcast
over the radio, there's basically not
going to be any broadcasting done from here, I don't think.
We're not going to broadcast for
just the Internet. We can't do that. We are a radio
station. We need to broadcast.
I guess I should give out the phone number,
because what we are asking people to do is to donate
to the WBAI Transmitter Fund.
And what that means is
you call 516-620-3602
and say, yes,
I want WBAI to stay on the air.
I want that transmitter to keep broadcasting,
keep pumping out all the wattage that gets
to all these different states so that
WBAI will continue to exist as an entity.
And that's really
what we're asking. We're asking people to make that
donation. The premium that you get in return for that
is the transmitter, is the
continuation of WBAI broadcasting
from the top of the Empire State Building. Yeah, we could move
to someplace else. It wouldn't
get very far, because New York City
has a lot of tall buildings. You can't get around the tall
buildings. It's basic radio
physics. You need to be
on the tallest structure to be able to reach
as much as possible.
So, 516-
620-3602.
Please call that number. Pledge any
amount. Obviously, the bigger amounts will get us
further. We need to raise $500,000
by the end of March.
Otherwise, big trouble
ahead. And some radio stations, if they
need $500,000, they would just sell
10 extra minutes of commercials
or something like that. And you would
pay for it. The people
would pay for these commercials by
paying for the things you buy every
day, whether you want them or not. You say, oh, no, I won't. But you know what?
You already have. You don't have that choice.
You don't have the option to get out of it.
You already do. It's factored
into everything that you buy,
advertising budgets. So, yeah, you're paying for that.
This is something you have a choice.
And so what we get by not doing
that is, you'll hear the rest of the program, we will
criticize powerful entities. We do it
almost every time we're on the air.
And if one of those powerful
entities was like, we want 10 minutes of airtime,
we are
so happy to be able to say to them, no,
we are not for sale at this station.
We are responsible only to
our audience. So
show that you're part of that audience. Show that
you don't want us to have to take
the government's money or
the big corporations' money or anything
like that.
And I can't see the number from here.
You didn't memorize the number? I did not memorize the number.
516-620-3602.
I say
it in my sleep now. This speaks
nothing of the mental pollution
that all those ads kind of contribute
to your life.
And
the other unique thing about this station is
that you can participate. You can get involved.
You can call in if
something's said on air
that you disagree with. You get to participate.
We take calls on this show
and we hear from people who've never heard
of the show. They don't know anything about computers
or telephones or anything like that.
And they get to speak their mind or they get to ask
really good questions and it
opens up the conversation.
So we're asking you to call in and support
the WBAI Transmitter Fund.
That phone number is 516-620-3602.
That's correct.
Yes.
Some of us remember the phone number.
Now go ahead, Rob, see if you can remember the phone number.
And we are indeed answerable to our audience
and that's even more direct if you
support the station and become a voting member
of the station. You get a voice in
what we do next. So if you call
516-620-3602
and show your
support, not just for Off the Hook, but for
WBAI, the platform that lets us
all do what we're doing. And the thing to remember,
and this is what I agree with Mike about,
is that we criticize.
We criticize all sorts of things. We criticize powerful
entities. We criticize
non-powerful entities. We
criticize ideas. We criticize each other.
Mike, I don't like that tie you're wearing
today. See, I can do that. I can say that
and there's no ramifications. I think you're right
on that. I'm going to not wear a tie from here on out.
Maybe that would be best. All right.
516-620-3602.
Call that number. The pleasant people
on the other end of the phone will gladly take your
information and it will all
wind up going towards
the goal of keeping WBAI's
transmitter in place. Now,
once we are over that
hurdle, we are now in a new
location. We're over at
Harlem Community Radio
Facilities. We're saving a ton
of money by being here and not being at Wall
Street anymore. So
we are in
the process of finding our own home
because right now we're basically on somebody's couch.
We're basically a guest
in someone else's location
for the immediate future until we find
our own place. But imagine that, having
our own location somewhere
in the metropolitan area, a building that WBAI
owns, and
real
security for the future.
That can happen, but of course we absolutely
have to pay our bills and
get back on solid ground. We were sinking,
sinking fast because of the
hurricane, because of all kinds of financial
challenges that we weren't able to meet,
but we've turned a corner and we
are here now in this amazing facility,
the nicest people I've met in a long time
here at City College.
It's
incredible. It's a really good sign
and you can help us continue
in that positive
mode by calling 516-620-3602.
This really is a crisis.
This really is something that
threatens the future of the radio station. It would be a
damn shame. I'm sorry for the strong language,
but it would be if we
lost this voice.
It's a good opportunity to regroup and
kind of
plot the course for the new direction of the station.
Again, the
name of the premium is WBAI
Transmitter Fund. You can call
516-620-3602.
For
those of you listening to us on other means
than live, podcasts
and so forth, you can always go to
WBAI.org. Follow
the links there to support the station and
keep us afloat.
A lot of the time we say
on the radio, we have our premiums. They're
only available during the hour.
If you miss it, this
is not limited just during the
hour. If you're listening tomorrow,
then you can,
once you finish repairing your time machine, you can
tomorrow call 516-620-3602
and say,
I want to support the WBAI Transmitter Fund
and they will take your money.
First of all,
don't make it sound so evil,
but basically, yes.
Tomorrow, though, will be today for them.
Maybe you should not repair your time machine
first. You should call first
before you figure out the temporal
stuff. You can call anytime to
516-620-3602
and pledge for the WBAI Transmitter Fund.
Keep in mind, WBAI has been on the air since
1960.
I prefer that it not go off the air
during our watch. That would be bad.
There's all kinds of
issues, all kinds of things
we can talk about.
We can probably come up with ideas
on ways to do things better, but
the indisputable fact is that
having this place here is better than
not having this place here. That's the vote
that we're asking you to cast.
516-620-3602.
We're going to come back to that towards
the end of the show. Hopefully, many, many people will
call in and show that
this place means something to them.
It's not the first struggle we've had.
We've had many struggles.
Sometimes they don't turn out well.
Sometimes they do turn out well.
Most recently,
last week or so, we got
some very good news. We got some very good news
from none other than the Wall Street Journal.
Title of the article,
Long Live the Hotel Pennsylvania.
Yeah. What do you think about that?
Why do we care about the Hotel
Pennsylvania? Because that is another one of our
homes. It's where we have the HOPE conferences.
If you recall, back in
2008,
we basically had the last HOPE.
A lot of people mistook that for being the actual
last HOPE. It wasn't. But the hotel
was facing demolition.
Demolition by Vornado, the
realty company that was determined
to put a new office tower in its place.
Ever since then, we've basically
been kind of
struggling to keep the place there,
showing up at hearings,
trying to get landmark preservation status
for the hotel, arguing that
a hotel right across the street
from Penn Station is much better than
another office tower. Many people
from foreign countries come there and
stay there. And of course, obviously, we have
our conferences there. We'd like to be able to continue doing
that. So, according to this
story in the Wall Street Journal dated
March 5th, it's been a week of
reversals for Vornado Realty Trust.
On Monday,
Vornado decided to bail on its investment
on retailer J.C. Penny Company.
They moved to sell
various bits of stock, but also, more importantly,
Vornado chairman
Stephen Roth told investors
at a Citigroup, Inc. conference
that the company
was abandoning its
long-time plan to replace the Hotel Pennsylvania
in Manhattan with an office tower.
The company has instead
finalized its plan to invest in an upgrade
of the downtrodden hotel
across from Madison Square Garden. That move
is likely to involve bringing in a new operator
and partner. We're not going to tear
down the hotel, Mr. Roth said.
In fact, we're going to invest in it aggressively
and try to make it into a really profitable, really
good hotel for our purposes.
Well, you know, it's kind of
what we were saying, that the hotel really
should be renovated and
preserved and used to
the best of its ability.
And that's really
a good thing. Now, of course, people are
warning us that this could price the hotel
out of our range, and that is
something we should
be worried about, I guess, a little bit. But more importantly,
more importantly, an historic building
is being preserved that has so much
history, and it'll be there.
So congratulations to everybody involved
in that, particularly
our friend Pyro,
who spearheaded the Save the Hotel
campaign and was relentless
as far as showing up at meetings
and getting the word out, and I really, really
think it made a big difference. I think
it got to a lot of people, and
yeah, I'm quite happy to
be a part of that.
So whatever
we call the hope after
Hope No. 9
in 2014, it'll be
at the Hotel Pennsylvania, and hopefully we can
afford it. Yeah, it's nice to finally
relax on that matter after the, what,
six years or so that they've been
threatening to tear the place down. I think that's about as long
as it's been. And
yeah, thank you very much to
Pyro and to everyone else who's thrown in on the movement over
the years, you know, handed out flyers
with us, tried to spread
the word, all sorts of things, went to
community board meetings and that sort.
It's the culmination of all that, and
thanks everyone. Yes, indeed.
So yeah, we can win.
We can
put our heads together and come up with ways
to get the word out
and basically
help in all sorts of
manners.
Okay, we have other things to
discuss. We don't have
phones yet, I don't think, do we? I see
phones around here, but I don't think we can take phone calls on them.
It's pretty sad. Yeah,
so unfortunately we can't do that. We can't take
listener phone calls. We're working on it, though,
hopefully next week or
thereabouts we'll be able to do that.
But we do have other things to
discuss, other things to
focus on. The interesting
story that came out this week
had to do with Bradley
Manning, and
we have a leak.
We have another leak involving Bradley Manning, so
this time he's not responsible for it. Someone else did
this. We assume he isn't. I don't know
how he could have possibly pulled this off, but
the hearing, the recent
hearing where Bradley Manning
pled guilty to
leaking the collateral
murder video, amongst other things,
that hearing
was held in secret.
It's weird, because
the public could go to the hearing,
it's just that no transcript
was released, no
recordings were officially made,
or at least that the public can get.
It's this weird kind of semi-
public thing that I don't get.
Well, what happened
somehow is that the audio
of his pretrial hearing has
been posted online.
Freedom of the Press Foundation, which
was a group co-founded by Pentagon Papers
leaker Daniel Ellsberg,
posted the 68-minute recording
of Manning's voice on its website.
They also posted an edited
5-minute version on YouTube,
which features Manning's
rationale for sending WikiLeaks an
unclassified video of a deadly 2007
U.S. Army helicopter attack on
civilians in Iraq. And now
for the first time ever, I believe,
the voice of Bradley Manning
on these airwaves.
Really, here it comes.
...
...
...
All rise.
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
I entered active duty status on 2 October, 2007.
I enlisted with the hope of obtaining both real world experience and earning benefits under the GI Bill for college opportunities.
A recruiter informed me that I should select an MLS that complemented my interests outside the military.
In response, I told him that I was interested in geoclinical matters and information technology.
He suggested I consider becoming an intelligence analyst.
These little musical interludes didn't happen in court. This is from the YouTube video.
Bradley is next going to talk about the video itself, when he witnessed it and when he decided to leak it.
Facts regarding the unauthorized storage and disclosure of the 12 July 2007 Aerial Weapons Team video.
The video depicted several individuals being engaged by an aerial weapons team.
At first, I did not consider the video very special, as I had viewed countless other porn-type videos depicting combat.
However, the recorded audio comments by the Aerial Weapons Team crew and the second engagement in the video of an unarmed bongo truck troubled me.
It was clear to me that the event happened because the Aerial Weapons Team mistakenly identified various employees as a potential threat,
and that the people in the bongo truck were merely attempting to assist the wounded.
The people in the video were not a threat, but merely good Samaritans.
The most alarming aspect of the video to me, however, was the seemingly delightful bloodlust the Aerial Weapons Team appeared to have.
They dehumanized the individuals they were engaging, and seemed to not value human life by referring to them as
quote, dead bastards, unquote, and congratulating each other on the ability to kill in large numbers.
At one point in the video, there is an individual on the ground attempting to crawl to safety.
The individual is seriously wounded. Instead of calling for medical attention to the patient,
one of the Aerial Weapons Team crew members verbally asks for the wounded person to pick up a weapon so that he can have a reason to engage.
For me, this seems similar to a child torturing hands with a magnifying glass.
Shortly after the second engagement, a mechanized infantry unit arrives at the scene.
With their menace, the Aerial Weapons Team crew learns that children were in the van,
and, despite the injuries that occurred, the crew exhibits no remorse.
Instead, they downplay the significance of their actions, saying, quote,
it's their fault for bringing their kids into a battle, unquote.
For me, it's all a big mess, and I'm left wondering what these things mean, and how it all fits together, and it burdens me emotionally.
I saved a copy of the video on my workstation.
At the time, I placed the video and words of engagement information onto my personal laptop.
On about 21 February 2010, I used the WLO submission form and uploaded the documents.
The WLO released the video on 5 April 2010.
And that's pretty much all we're going to play tonight.
It goes about 68 minutes, but that's the voice of Bradley Manning in a military court
explaining why he felt it was important to release that video.
Could you guys understand that fairly well?
It's kind of difficult.
I think it was recorded off of a cell phone or something.
It sounds like that.
There's also unofficial and official written transcripts, if that's more your thing.
Well, now there can be.
It came from this, right?
Or was that actually in the public record?
So there was an unofficial transcript that I don't know how it was prepared
that came out very shortly after the hearing itself.
And then just yesterday or the day before,
Manning's lawyer was able to release a redacted version of the statement that was prepared.
And it's really interesting to look at the redacted version.
It's not heavily redacted.
You won't miss much.
But what you will miss is things that are not really secret but not really public,
like the name of Manning's aunt and boyfriend and commanders and all this stuff.
But also Saddam Hussein's name is blacked out.
And it's very clear from the context that they're talking about Saddam Hussein,
but they black out the name.
How do you know?
I mean, what kind of context do they give?
The context is we were looking at the rules for catching in Iraq former members of Blank's deposed government.
I guess that does narrow it down slightly.
There's another reference to the in 2009, January 2009,
the then recently elected Blank who promised to close Guantanamo.
See if you can guess who that is.
Oh, I know this one.
No, wait, I don't.
So they blanked out Obama's name.
Yeah.
They blanked out Obama's name?
Yes.
Wow.
I mean, what kind of person would – what were they thinking?
Do you have any idea?
I have no idea.
I mean, you've dealt with redacted material before.
Usually it's because you can't figure it out.
So the names of private individuals are blacked out maybe to protect their privacy or whatever.
Maybe if it's someone who turned Manning in then to protect them from retaliation or whatever.
But Obama?
I mean, come on.
Yeah.
Anything else?
Any other gems that they decided?
They blacked out the name of the author of a book.
But if you Google the book, you'll find the author right there.
Like, it's really weird.
Are they trying to prove Bradley Manning's case?
I mean, it sounds that way that the secrecy is silly and kind of random as well.
Well, Alexa O'Brien actually –
Hang on.
We don't know who you are yet.
Oh, I'm sorry.
Introduce.
Shh.
I'm making a redacted name.
We can't speak before we get introduced.
Rob, you do the introductions.
Yes.
If you're not on mic, it doesn't happen.
I brought a friend with me today.
This is Griffin Boyce.
Hello, Griffin.
Introduce yourself.
Hello, everyone.
I'm a hacker.
Griffin Boyce sounds familiar.
Sounds like you spoke at Hope, I believe.
Yes, I did.
Okay.
About what?
It's actually kind of interesting.
I was at Hope, and I spoke about censorship, getting around censorship in the Arab Spring.
And people seemed to really enjoy it.
And thankfully, I remember most of the weekend.
Well, that's good.
Yeah.
Many people don't, but it's always good to remember that.
Yeah.
But staying with the Bradley Manning story just for a couple of minutes.
Now, the Army is angry about this because they like to keep more secrets, I guess.
Well, think about it.
Think of the things they want to keep secret.
They obviously want to keep the video secret.
They don't want the world to know that U.S. military was basically engaged in a massacre
against innocent people, children, all that kind of thing.
They want that.
They don't want people to be able to hear what Bradley Manning sounds like.
They want to black out weird bits of information that we already know.
They have said in the statement they've notified the military judge that there was a violation of the, quote,
rules for court, unquote.
U.S. Army is currently reviewing the procedures set in place to safeguard the security and integrity of the legal proceedings
and ensure that Private First Class Manning receives a fair and impartial trial.
Somebody wrote that with a straight face, too.
Yeah.
I actually applied for access about a year ago so that I could show up as media and take transcripts and things like that.
And they sent me back this long list of rules.
And one of them was that you could be completely searched.
And talking to other people that actually are there on a regular basis, they, like, feel the seams on your clothing
and they, you know, look at all of your electronics equipment.
So whoever managed to sneak something in was really, really sneaky about it.
These days, it's really not hard to record things.
Right.
Kyle, we've been dealing with all kinds of recording devices of various sizes and shapes.
Yes.
They're everywhere now.
People are always recording things.
No matter what happens, somebody's going to get it on tape.
Yeah.
There's a lot of really amazing technology out there.
And people are using it, which is important.
Well, it's not just the governments using it.
It's the individual people using it.
And, of course, the governments hate that.
When we start talking about drones, drones are the big topic these days.
Well, individuals are getting their hands on drone technology and using it in creative ways.
And the authorities, of course, hate that because they might be the ones being watched.
Yeah.
But if you reflect the same kind of tactics back to these kind of authorities, it empowers you.
And you're not at a loss of power.
You're able to be expressive and be heard and show wrongdoing where it is and stuff.
And I love how much this sort of thing seems to really confuse the people in power who would like to sort of keep things secret.
It seems like the military court releasing a redacted version of a document that's already online
and thinking that people won't figure out the difference, let alone the ridiculousness of redacting the president's name and things like that.
But just the whole inability of the system to sort of adjust to technical realities of the world we're living in today is always, I think, entertaining.
And moral realities, too, because the world wants to know this.
The world deserves to know what's going on out there, what the U.S. government is doing in its people's name.
And I think even though there's a lot of negative reaction against Bradley Manning.
Just go to any news story and within five comments you'll see somebody calling for him to be executed.
I think there are a lot of people, surprisingly many to the mainstream, I would say, that get it, that understand why this information has to get out
and how it actually makes us stronger as a society to have the bad things revealed and exposed and hopefully prosecuted.
Were any of the people responsible for the murders that were captured on video, were any of them prosecuted?
No.
Yeah, well, that's something. That's something, isn't it?
And that's something we should be talking about.
Bradley Manning is not the guy who should be in court. Those guys should be in court.
And we should definitely not only have access to as much of this as possible, but be taking notes.
Because make no mistake, this is a historical event.
There is the crux of so much happening with this one trial and the events around it.
They'll be talking about this 50 years, 100 years, 1,000 years from now.
And we're living it right now, and we're not allowed to see what's going on.
Incredible.
Well, Daniel Ellsberg, as we mentioned, was a part of the Freedom of the Press Foundation.
The 81-year-old former Pentagon analyst said in a telephone interview from Berkeley, California,
that a foundation member brought the recording to the group's directors who decided after a heated debate to publish it.
You know, I wouldn't have had a heated debate. It seems pretty obvious that this needs to get out.
But I guess people do debate these things.
Ellsberg is, of course, the guy who leaked the Pentagon papers.
And he's now being held up by some people as a model of a good leaker.
And they're trying to contrast this with Manning's actions.
And this totally doesn't work.
And he's not doing that.
Ellsberg is totally not buying it, to be clear.
But anyone who is buying it, I have to say, is either intentionally trying to delude the public or has been deluded.
And, you know, what Ellsberg did was great.
But what Manning did, also great.
The only difference is it hasn't been 40 years, I guess.
So, you know, the Vietnam War was seen to be a mistake.
And I think for people who haven't yet seen the Iraq War and Afghanistan War as a mistake, they'll be seeing it soon.
And Manning's going to be one of the reasons why.
Well, Ellsberg said, Manning, who has been locked up for more than two and a half years awaiting trial, deserves to have his voice heard outside the courtroom.
We thought it was time for the public to hear his voice for the first time, he said.
So, I agree.
You know, I've never heard his voice before.
And it's, you know, what do you guys think?
He sounds confident.
He sounds like he knew what he was doing.
He did it for a good reason.
And I think he's okay with that.
I think, you know, despite the hell he's going through now and is facing, most likely for the rest of his life, I think in his heart he knows he did the right thing.
And he'll always say that.
He'll always believe that.
I think what's really important about this is that, or just to speak to the silliness of, like, these redactions and the way that the discussion is being limited,
is that it's so important to actually have a discussion.
If everybody's talking about this, it's a lot harder for the government to keep it sort of contained in this secret trial and all of that kind of thing.
So, it's really critical to actually have a little bit of content, a little bit of media,
because then it becomes a centerpiece of discussion that people can really focus around and really ask the questions that need to be asked
about, like, you know, how they feel about leaking and, like, what our government's been doing or what we're doing to control it
and, you know, the kinds of direction we're choosing for our nation and, you know, the world as a result.
So, it's really critical to have these kinds of things out there so we can talk about it and have intelligent debates and discussions.
Otherwise, the only people that get to have that angle is the government.
And then they get to channel all of the information about it.
And, you know, that's not very democratic.
It's not fair at all.
We see that all around the world.
We see governments that do that.
And there is no opposition allowed to speak.
Right. And people get convinced that they're against the nation.
They're against the will of the government if they don't support this treason or whatever it is.
And there's many angles of this.
So, it's got to be looked at in that sense.
Yeah. And I got to say, I read the transcript before listening to the audio of Manning speaking.
And given everything that he's surely gone through, he sounds all right.
He sounds like he's keeping it together rather well.
And, you know, I respect that.
And, you know, I hope he knows that the support is out there.
I hope that he realizes that there are people who get what he's saying and that will be there and will show up at the other hearings.
He's facing a lot more than what he has pleaded guilty to because he pleaded not guilty to 12 of the 22 counts.
And those include such things as aiding the enemy and espionage.
He was very clear.
He did this because it was the right thing to do and he had no intention of aiding the, quote, unquote, enemy.
And this was not espionage.
This was doing the right thing.
This was seeing a crime being committed and reporting it to the court of the world.
So, he's going to be going to trial, I believe it's in June, down in Fort Meade.
And we're going to be covering that as well.
Hopefully, some of us can make it there into the courtroom.
It will be scary.
I've had some scary experiences in that area.
But it needs to be done.
It needs to be covered.
So, as you mentioned, Manning has pled not guilty to aiding the enemy, which is good because he hasn't aided the enemy in any way that anyone can find out.
So, the government was asked, the prosecutor was asked, would you be prosecuting this case as hard as you're prosecuting it if the information had been leaked to the New York Times?
And the government, I think they're lying, but the government said yes.
If this information was leaked to anyone, that's a crime.
That's aiding the enemy.
And we're going to prosecute.
So, what the government is saying is that the enemy is us.
And that's really scary.
Wow.
Okay.
Well, Pogo was right, I guess.
Okay.
Well, that's the Bradley Manning update for this week.
And, of course, there will be a lot more coming up.
And, you know, it would have been really easy for Bradley to roll over and get other people in trouble and point the finger and say, yeah, Julian told me to do it and all that, or anyone else.
And I think he did the right thing.
And so many people don't do this when they're accused of something.
They don't say, yeah, I did it, and here's why I did it.
You know, I think we could all learn something from that.
And this is, to me, the definition of true patriotism, speaking up when everyone else tells you to shut up and keep things quiet.
So, next time you see a story about him on the mainstream media or you read the ignorant comments that follow any story that's printed on a website, keep that in mind.
And maybe write something to somebody.
Maybe get the word out that it's not as simple as they're making it out to be.
And you know what else is really interesting?
This kind of ties into what we were saying before.
So many people behind the walls listen to WPAI.
And because our signal gets out to so many places.
This is, okay, this is what I was looking for before.
You can't do this on a podcast.
You can't turn a radio on in a prison and hear it.
Not yet, anyway.
So, we get letters from people that are in prisons throughout this area, throughout the tri-state area.
And that is an audience that is very hard to quantify, very hard to get arbitrage statistics on.
But it's a very important audience.
And it's a group of people that we really like to hear from, that we like to be able to reach.
And I just hope that there's a station somewhere that Bradley can listen to
and hear other views besides the mainstream crap that's out there.
I know that he's subjected to all the time.
Our email address, if you want to write to us, oth at 2600.com.
We'd love to hear your opinions, views, and also any news stories that you'd like to forward to us.
Because it's always something that's happening.
All these front-page headlines that we seem to be in the middle of.
People we know or things that we're involved in.
Somehow they just keep coming back.
And here's another indication of that.
Oh, and by the way, also the phone number to call to keep this radio station on the air
so we can continue broadcasting through that huge landmass
and keep the other listeners in other parts of the world tuned as well.
516-620-3602.
The WBAI Transmitter Fund.
Keep our transmitter from being confiscated.
Here's a headline from the Los Angeles Times.
Cyber attacks a bigger threat than Al-Qaeda.
Yeah.
Here we go.
Emmanuel, you kept reading after that?
I had to. I just had to.
It's like when you turn on TV and there's some awful program
and you just got to see how bad it gets.
This is pretty much what the news is like.
Cyber attacks and cyber espionage pose a greater potential danger to U.S. national security
than Al-Qaeda and other militants that have dominated America's global focus since September 11th.
That's according to the nation's top intelligent officials yesterday.
Discuss.
Please, because I don't understand it.
I mean, maybe they're right.
I don't know how much of a threat Al-Qaeda actually is outside of spy movies.
They blow things up.
They kill people.
I mean, I don't want to offend Al-Qaeda here, but they're not that competent.
They blow things up occasionally.
So the potential threat, yeah, maybe, but so what?
I mean, this is obviously an excuse for them to get more funding
and more funding for new things and all this stuff.
I try not to pay attention to these people because nothing good is going to come out of this.
They're talking about computer-launched foreign assaults on U.S. infrastructure,
including the power grid, transportation hubs, and financial networks,
and I wonder why would all that be accessible on a public network in the first place?
Also, how does a suicide attack work if you're using a computer?
Yeah, well, that's another thing.
They're not talking about suicide attacks, I guess.
To them, suicide attacks aren't as important as data,
as having financial information available, that kind of thing.
Isn't this a bunch of self-congratulating?
They're just basically moving the discussion into this new realm
so they can get more security state stuff that's electronic
and filter and do sort of this electronic surveillance and stuff
because they've done such a great job of neutralizing the threat that was Al-Qaeda,
which is silly in and of itself because terrorism, by definition, is disparate
and doesn't really have a state or anything like that behind it.
But it does feel like the discussion being moved towards a different sort of funding
because we have all the robots and big ships that we need,
so now let's get into some IT stuff.
I don't know. It just seems like they want to get everybody up to speed
and say, okay, here's why we need trillions and trillions for our defense
because now it's all computers and that kind of thing, NSA crap.
It's a bit nostalgic, too.
It's making me remember back in the 90s when you put cyber in front of everything
and suddenly it's more mysterious to the addled old people
who find themselves in positions of power.
Like cyber, that's mysterious.
Attack, okay, we have attacks all the time, but a cyber attack,
I don't know what that is. It's scary.
Therefore, let me throw a pile of money at it or a pile of publicity at it
and justify whatever I want to justify because people really don't know what it means.
I don't know, Robbie.
Okay, yes, the headline began Cyber Attacks, a Bigger Threat in Al-Qaeda,
and the story began Cyber Attacks and Cyber Espionage.
Okay, I guess I could sort of see that they do like the word cyber to get attention.
They're cyber afraid of cyber attacks and they went to cyber complain about it.
So what are they going to do about it? That's the real question.
Throw some cyber money at it.
Yeah, well, what they're going to do with that money is they're going to try and hire us.
They're trying and I hope that we as a community will say no.
Yeah, definitely.
I read this code for the DoD.
They all got iPhones and they're like, you know, really excited.
We do get email from people that want to hire hackers and want to have, what do they call it,
white hat hackers, people that are the good guys even though they know some of the bad guys.
It's basically the scare tactics, right, to get people to sign up and not go down a dark road.
It's, you know, it's next to signing up with the military except you're doing it, you sign up with the cyber military.
But, you know, some of these quotes really kind of worry me.
They're talking about computer hackers, organized groups could access some poorly protected U.S. networks
that control core functions, again, such as power generation.
But if somebody can do that, I'd like to know that they can do that.
Right now, the biggest threat to power companies are the power companies themselves
because they're the ones that are inept and constantly not building strong enough infrastructure to start with,
whether it be computerized or actually out there in the field.
Same thing with communication, same thing with financial.
Every time we hear about a security breach of one sort or another where people's credit information is compromised,
that's something that we need to know about.
We need to fix.
We need to hold the parties accountable who are responsible for that.
And I mean the people that are entrusted with safeguarding that data in the first place.
If they don't use good security, it's their fault that this happens.
And there are always going to be people and machines and robots and whatnot that will go out and take advantage of these things.
This is common sense.
You don't leave your own computer unguarded because something is going to catch up to it,
something is going to install malware on your system.
You take safeguards.
So we expect the people that we trust to do the same thing.
Is that fair?
Reasonably.
All right.
So I don't know.
I think ignorance is a bigger threat than al-Qaeda.
How about that?
Let's just substitute that.
Well, but see, to combat ignorance, we would have to fund education and the powers that be don't like that.
Oh, I forgot about that.
Okay.
We can't catch that and we can't fund education.
That's a threat.
All right.
Another story that I think we should also be paying attention to.
A court in New Zealand has ruled that mega-upload boss Kim.com can now sue the country's foreign intelligence service for illegally spying on him.
What do you think about that?
Yeah.
The court rejected a challenge to an earlier ruling allowing him to sue the government communications security bureau over his treatment.
GCSB worked with U.S. officials to investigate Mr.com over allegations of online piracy and money laundering.
He denies the charges.
He's fighting extradition to the United States.
But U.S. officials are alleging that pirated movies and other content shared through his mega-upload site cost copyright holders more than $500 million in lost earnings, making it one of the biggest cases of its kind.
Of course, you can always just make up these numbers and say that, yeah, all these people would have paid top dollar for this
had it not been available by going to this particular website that happened to be hosted at this particular place.
And it's just wild imagination at best.
Anyway, he faces a jail sentence of up to 20 years if convicted in the United States.
And if you recall, back in January of last year, his home, the offices of mega-upload, were raided.
And the GCSB was asked to spy Mr.com by police prior to the raid.
What do you think is more of a problem?
People downloading movies or illegal spying on individuals?
So, I mean, you have to give the New Zealand government credit here.
They are actually enforcing their own laws.
I wish they would do it before they spied on people against the laws.
But unlike the U.S. government, if the NSA or the CIA spies on you, you have no redress.
And we've covered all kinds of people on this show trying to get some redress and all pretty much failing.
So, good for New Zealand that there's some lawsuits going on.
We'll see what happens.
I've heard lots of good things about New Zealand.
I'd like to know more about New Zealand.
And if we have any New Zealand listeners, please write to us, othat2600.com,
because the way you guys do things, sometimes it seems to be much better, much, much better.
And we can all learn from that.
So that's yet another case that we're following.
And there's also this little bit of mischief.
The five major Internet service providers participating in the copyright alert system, known as CAS,
haven't been doing all that much to publicize it.
But a hacker group called NullCrew did instead.
They changed all that by altering Time Warner's support page to feature a cartoon gorilla.
Now, the ape is straight from that.
I don't even know what this means.
Russell, my Jimmy's meme made popular on 4chan.
Boy, I wonder why I don't know what this means.
I'm just so out of it.
Rob, you follow this, don't you?
Explain this meme to us.
Well, it's a picture of a gorilla, right?
And the caption is that Russell's my Jimmy's.
What does that mean?
And that equals humor.
Okay, all right.
Humor is good.
We hacked Time Warner Cable due to them attempting to participate in the Six Strikes, according to the hacker group.
Now, Six Strikes is a common nickname for the copyright alert system.
Basically, what they do is they inform users up to six times that they're pirating copyrighted files.
And it's drawn particular ire for the fifth and sixth alert, which tend to hamper users' service.
For Time Warner users, that means having their browser locked.
It's unclear exactly how that will work.
Somebody needs to copy a film six times and get back to us and let us know what happens.
And then they have to call the company, apparently, to have a little chat about copyright.
It's pretty demeaning and stupid, I think.
And, you know, a lot of these cases, we're talking about content that's available over the air for free anyway.
What they want is for you to be a captive audience to their advertising and to get it from the appropriate people in their eyes.
But in actuality, you know, all these people seeing this content only makes their profits go way, way up because more people are aware.
More people are quoting the movies.
More people are just paying attention to what they're saying.
And when it comes to books, when it comes to reading material, we want people to read more.
We want people to share content.
At least that's how I feel about it.
And I don't know why they have such antiquated notions.
But one thing is clear.
They do have a lot of power.
And they're able to get the providers to do whatever they want.
And the victims here are the people that simply are exploring and trying to view things.
And it's important to consider where all the decisions are going on.
This is not the government finding out that you're guilty of something and prosecuting you to the extent of the law.
These are private enterprises.
These are private companies basically deciding what you are and are not allowed to do and slapping you on the wrist when they think you're getting out of line.
And I don't want to give that kind of power over my experience, my life, my well-being to some service providers or some content writers.
And let me just speak to the people right now that are standing up and yelling at their radio and saying,
you guys just want to get away with seeing things for free and not paying.
Okay, you know what?
It's very arbitrary how these particular laws and rules are enforced.
And in many cases, we're talking about people who have already bought things that are being controlled and told you can't do that.
And I'm thinking particularly, Kyle and I, we were trying to get something to work on a television set.
Actually, not a pirated television set, a real television set that was bought with real money.
And it connects to the internet but doesn't really connect to the internet, does it?
It's kind of controlled.
No.
It was, yeah, certain content was not able to stream on the internet-enabled television set.
Whereas if it was on a computer or in a browser, you'd be able to watch the certain stuff, certain content.
And I don't want to get off topic too much.
But basically anything that you pay for lately, anything, any content, any software, any upgrade, anything, it is not worth it.
It's become more and more encumbered with past keys and codes and serial numbers and upgrade tokens.
And everything is mired in all of these things.
And as you just said, the enforcement and the rules are never clear.
Nobody has really figured it out.
We're still floundering and trying to figure out how to get paid for software we write or music that we create.
And the people that are really actually, I think, going to survive are the ones who are just like, whatever.
You know what?
Enjoy this stuff.
Come see me on tour or buy our hardware that goes along with the software.
We're going to release that.
There's a lot of models and people that are thinking creatively and doing things completely different.
Those people are winning.
They are definitely doing good stuff.
But I swear anything I've tried to pay for, tried to do it right has failed miserably.
And then you try to call someone and get it worked out on the phone.
And guess what?
They're in like five different countries and they don't know who to talk to.
They transfer you around for an entire day.
And it's ridiculous.
And so I could go on and on and on and on about this.
But there is absolutely no support and no use for software and services and content that you pay for.
It's ridiculous.
You pay for nothing.
You pay for the opportunity to pay for it.
And then you're left in the dust.
You have nothing.
And it's crappy stuff to begin with.
And it's really embarrassing if you ever bought something in the past and had it work.
Now it's just garbage.
It is really a disgrace.
And I really salute it in its dying model because it's ridiculous.
So, anyway, as you can tell, I've been on, like, Microsoft customer support lately.
You needed to get that out of your system.
And I'm glad and I hope people realize that, no, it's not just about watching free movies.
There is so much more to it than that.
Actually, on the Xbox, if you want to pay money to download games,
you have to first pay them $50 for the privilege of paying them additional money to download video games.
Exactly.
And, you know, this doesn't even, you know, like there are so many bands and, you know, book writers and, you know,
everyone that publishes things on the Pirate Bay as a promotional tool.
I mean the Pirate Bay even has something called the Promo Bay where they promote different artists who have willingly put their stuff out there.
And a lot of them find that it actually boosts their sales.
And, of course, there's the whole Creative Commons and other freely licensed scene out there where people deliberately,
constantly put out streams of creative content that they purely want people to copy and experience and share.
I think it's healthy when these kinds of things happen,
when people are sharing and expanding upon and doing derivative works and parodies and things like that.
That's healthy and it should be encouraged rather than having all these YouTube-ish restrictions put on everything
because, wow, there's a cord from something that you didn't get a license from because you didn't pay somebody some amount.
You know, it's all nonsense.
And if we just eliminated that and were creative as possible,
we'd see so much more in the way of art, creativity, and just moving forward.
Yeah, and like the filmmaker Nina Paley, who we've had on the show in the past, she made a film called Sita Sings the Blues.
She recently took her movie, which she had released freely under Creative Commons,
and released it even more freely under the public domain
simply because she was being contacted by entities who wanted to broadcast her movie
and were asking her for the rights and didn't understand when she told them they already had the right under Creative Commons.
So for lack of wanting to deal with that, she found herself just releasing it even more freely,
and I'd love to see how they're going to deal with that.
I just wanted to say one last thing.
It's just basically that there's so much more lost in people having miserable software and miserable services
and creating a miserable experience for people because they're not going to use your service.
They're not going to come back to you ever.
Done. Gone.
They'll find something else.
They'll go elsewhere.
They'll go outside.
They'll walk.
They'll breathe fresh air.
They will stop.
Kyle, I think you might think too much of the consumer because a lot of times they do come back.
A lot of times there's no choice.
They have to use Microsoft again.
They have to use Apple again.
I don't want to get off on that.
You were obviously getting off on Microsoft, but Apple for me, people just keep going back and getting abused
and being talked down to, and they just go and line up and buy it again.
It's like those lab rat experiments where they're on drugs and they just keep going back and zapping themselves until they die.
Oh, we're going to get letters.
Yeah, it's true.
So here's the crazy thing.
They set up these laws, and basically the entertainment industry can pay Congress to write whatever law they want.
But then the entertainment industry decides that those laws are not strict enough, so they set up their own private enforcement.
And I was thinking about how I wanted to explain this, and I was going to say they collude with the Internet service providers,
but there's no collusion necessary because Time Warner and Comcast and all these companies,
it's the same people on both sides negotiating.
Of course Time Warner is going to agree with Time Warner to do whatever Time Warner wants.
So the laws that they have bought and paid for they feel are not strict enough, forget about public involvement.
It's crazy.
Media consolidation matters, people.
And it's like they've been planning this, basically laying their pieces in a row,
playing this massive game of chess so that when the day comes, yes, it's checkmate.
They have control over every single bit.
It's scary.
It's organized crime.
It really is, and it's something that we need to talk about.
And here we are on this radio station broadcasting to the exact same places that these massive organizations are able to get to by default.
We're the ones facing a threat because obviously we can't sell commercials, and it's very, very different for us.
And that's why it's so important for you, the people listening right now, to voice your support, invest in this place, keep it going.
Otherwise, you're going to face a world where there is no opposition, where it's just one way, and you can't even get your voice heard.
When we do have phones installed, you'll be able to call in, say whatever you want to say, and write in and have a dialogue.
You can't do that in any other place.
You really can't.
516-620-3602 is the number to call.
Save our transmitter.
We need to raise $500,000 before the end of this month or we face being silenced permanently because of the massive amount of rent that is due on the Empire State Building for sticking an antenna up there.
It's a challenge, but it's a challenge we can meet.
We met the incredible challenge of moving to CCNY here in Harlem.
The good folks at WHCR are letting us use their facilities for the indefinite future.
We were able to pull that off.
We got the station moved, and there are some hiccups.
We're trying our best to get past those, but it shows that we can do it if we band together, and that's why we need you to call 516-620-3602.
And alternately, support us through WBAI.org, or you can write a check or money order to support us.
You can send it to WBAI, P.O. Box 7032, Church Street Station, New York 1008.
Okay.
The personal computer people are at the door.
Oh, that's right.
The door is locked.
They can't get in.
Okay.
That's one of the new features of the studio.
Okay.
Let them in.
They're coming in now.
This is off the hook.
We're signing off now, but you can continue calling 516-620-3602 around the clock and pledge as many times as you want.
Pledge as much as you can, 516-620-3602, the WBAI Transmitter Fund.
That is the best premium you could possibly ask for.
Those of you waiting for premiums from us, we are basically working on as much as we can.
We're waiting for some of our premiums to be fulfilled by the people that were giving them to us,
and we're also trying to get these to the people that will mail them out.
But we have not forgotten anybody.
It's just there have been a lot of challenges lately.
The biggest challenge right now that we all have to pitch in for is the WBAI Transmitter.
Let us save that, 516-620-3602.
And if you want to write to us, you're at offthehookothat2600.com.
Until next week, Emmanuel for Off The Hook.
Have a good night.
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But WBAI.org, go check it out.
And help us with this antenna so that we can stay on the air.