All Grenadians are asked to come out and defend our country.
United States paratroopers have invaded Grenada with helicopters, gunships.
Grenadian people are asked to block all roads and obstruct the enemy's progress.
Grenadian people are asked to block all roads and obstruct the enemy's progress.
In commemoration of the 11th anniversary of the invasion of Grenada,
The Midnight Ravers presents Invasion 201,
directed and starring Ronald Reagan, George Bush,
Eugenia Charles, with a cast of thousands,
script written and produced by the Pentagon,
coming on WBAI 99.5 FM on Friday, November 25th,
from midnight to 3 a.m.,
Invasion 201, coming soon.
The Midnight Ravers, where every show is a special.
And you're listening to radio station WBAI.
It's just about 10 o'clock.
Time for Off the Hook.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a call.
I couldn't get much worse, but if I could, I would.
Bondi Lippon for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that fun is good.
Bondi Lippon!
And a very good evening, everybody.
This is Emanuel Goldstein with Off the Hook for this particular Wednesday.
What is it, the 19th or something like that?
The 16th?
I don't know, something like that, but yeah, it's the 16th,
because next week, next week we're having a very special program
where, after 10 months, Fiber Optic gets released from federal prison.
And we'll be live on the air with that.
We have a special expanded program next week,
and in fact, people might find this kind of fun,
we're going to be having a parade down Broadway,
live during the show, as Fiber Optic returns to New York.
Whether it's a ticker tape parade or not depends on those of you who live on Broadway,
and whatever else you care to throw up in the air.
We'll be giving you more details on that.
Hopefully we'll be hearing from Fiber Optic a little later on in the program
for this, the last program where he will be in prison.
For those of you that don't know and find this kind of strange-sounding,
Fiber Optic is someone that we've had on the program for a number of years now,
and I guess the majority of those years were spent caught up in a case,
a case of computer hacking and conspiracy and all kinds of evil, nasty things
that the authorities said that he was up to.
And what it boiled down to was that he was sentenced last November,
about a year ago, to a year and a day in prison
because of conspiracy and access to federal interest computers.
Basically, any computer that the government feels is important.
Well, that could be anything.
And, in fact, it's being expanded to include just about anything on the Internet,
so it would be increasingly easy to put people in prison for things
such as logging into a system without permission.
Whether or not that's right or not,
I think a lot of people came to realize over the past year
that putting somebody in prison for such a thing
is not exactly a good way to carry out justice.
Anyway, we've been keeping in touch with Fiber Optic over the past 10 months
in various ways.
First, through mail, through recorded messages,
and finally, through live appearances over the phone lines.
And your cards, letters, and thoughts have certainly helped make this time go by.
I think once he gets out, it'll be the dawning of a new era of sorts.
We'll just have to see.
So that's going to be taking place next week from 10 o'clock to 1145.
The return of Fiber Optic to New York and to New York Airwaves.
It's going to be quite an event.
So plan on being around.
Might even want to be on Broadway to watch the caravan go by.
Okay.
We have a couple of other bits of news.
Some of it's kind of sad, actually.
And some of it's kind of awe-inspiring.
One of the...
Actually, it's all kind of sad.
Let's get to the national scene first, okay?
It's all national, but this is pretty much dealing directly with the Clinton administration.
This is an article that appeared on the Internet.
It was reprinted from the San Jose Mercury News Sunday, October 23rd.
And I think it puts forth a lot of the ideas that we've been trying to get forward here at this particular radio program.
And I think it echoes the sentiments of a lot of people listening as well.
Rush Limbaugh may view the Clinton administration as a nest of left-wing permissive radicals.
But you couldn't prove it by looking at some of the federal government's cyberspace policies.
The Clintonites say they want to spur information technology, the so-called information superhighway.
Last week, for example, they opened a White House site on the Internet's World Wide Web.
At least they have a clue about this stuff.
But they don't trust us.
When it comes to civil liberties online, the Clintonites haven't just been indifferent.
They've been actively hostile.
In the name of public safety and social justice, they are sending us a disturbing message.
In cyberspace, you can forget your constitutional rights.
Consider, this administration persuaded Congress to pass a digital wiretap law.
As we do more and more online, this noxious law will expand greatly government's ability to spy on us.
It forces telephone and other communications companies to build in doors, allowing government surveillance of your calls and other electronic communications.
Cyber crooks are bound to use the same doors.
I should point out, by the way, that this is not me saying all these cyber things.
I'm just reading this from the article.
I can't stand when people do that.
But the article itself is pretty good.
Cyber crooks are bound to use the same doors, and compliance will cost a fortune.
We will all pay via taxes and phone bills.
This administration launched the infamous Clipper Chip Plan.
The idea was to produce devices that would encrypt or scramble communications using a method that, in theory, only the government could crack from the outside.
Apart from the assault on civil liberties this would be, domestic makers of telecommunications equipment and software aren't likely to sell much overseas, when buyers know the U.S. government has the keys to supposedly secure communications.
Clipper is in trouble.
But the Clinton folks still like the concept.
This administration hauled the owners of a computer bulletin board to the height of the heart of the Bible Belt and prosecuted them on obscenity charges.
An abuse of the criminal justice system and a direct attack on First Amendment rights.
If the couple's conviction stands, standards in the nation's most repressive communities could determine what you and I may read, hear, or view.
You may recall that case involving amateur action we had the system operator on this program.
Not a very optimistic case at all.
This administration again tossed free speech overboard when the Education Department's Office of Civil Rights sided with three California college students who were offended by sexist remarks on a campus computer messaging system.
The proper response to offensive speech is not censorship, but more convincing speech.
A concept that eludes more and more people these days, and not just in government.
The technology that is making it easier to spy on us also is giving us the tools to keep the spies at bay, whether the spies are our government, big business, or the cyber crook down the street.
And to send and receive materials others deem offensive.
To stop this, you have to make criminals of people who use these tools, no matter how pure their motives.
The administration denials to the contrary.
That's the clear direction in which we're heading.
I am not indifferent to law and order, or national security, nor to the reality that bad folks are using cyberspace in damaging ways.
But, I'm convinced that government control of this new medium will do far more harm than good.
It will derail innovation, and it will erode people's faith in the system of security from prying eyes, governmental or otherwise.
In the end, I guess I trust us more than our government.
That article came from Dan Gilmore, San Jose Mercury News, Sunday, October 23rd, 1994.
It's a lot of what we're trying to say into some very good perspective.
It's reaching the stage where people using encryption will be suspect, potential criminals, maybe even breaking the law.
We're moving one step closer, it seems, every week.
One of the saddest sides to this whole story centers around a group, a group of people that started up a few years ago and now is being widely perceived throughout the NET community as having turned their backs on civil liberties.
This comes from an internet newsletter that was posted in various places on the NET over the past couple of days.
And, basically, the headline of this is EFF, Electronic Frontier Foundation, co-founder admits they could have killed digital telephony, the digital telephony bill.
On Friday afternoon, October 21st, we were surprised to see some accusations on com-priv, a USENET news group, that the Electronic Frontier Foundation, EFF, had, in the closing days of Congress, taken actions that pulled the rug out from under the efforts of the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the ACLU, and also an online group called VTW, to stop the FBI's dreaded digital telephony bill.
With a fax campaign to key congressional offices, including Wyoming Senator Wallop, two weeks previously, they had a hold placed on the bill as Congress went into its final hours.
If that hold could have been maintained, the bill would not have passed.
This outcome was in marked contrast to the official propaganda from the EFF that started in late July, which maintained that the legislation was a done deal, and that only a last-minute effort by the EFF had gotten privacy protections added to an otherwise draconian measure.
And Mark Stallman was daring to say that at the last minute, EFF had actually gone out to ensure the passage of the legislation, legislation completely contrary to EFF's carefully cultivated image of the nation's leading electronic civil liberties advocacy group.
We did some telephone research with some amazing results.
Here is what we posted to com-priv on Friday evening.
After EFF embraced the bill, EPIC and ACLU continued to fight it, and by the last weekend of the congressional session, had it bottled up and effectively dead for this year.
Until EFF's own co-founder, John Perry Barlow, scuttled what EPIC and ACLU and all the other groups had achieved.
In Barlow's own words from The Well on Monday, October 17th,
Digital telephony was a bitter pill for me to swallow, a real political deflowering of whatever idealism I had left.
This was made worse by my realization in the final hours that I had it in my personal power, through my sometime friend Malcolm Wallop, to kill the bill.
After much hard self-examination, I called Wallop's office and asked them to release their hold on the bill.
I knew that we had to get some legal protections in place on transactional analysis, that the process had to be opened up before the telcos incrementally granted the FBI everything it was asking for.
That getting either of these things would be much harder without Don Edwards, that betraying Senator Leahy would be tantamount to abandoning the Senate for EFF.
Apparently, once EFF got through with its much vaunted privacy enhancements, what also was changed at the same time was that the cost of the bill was shifted to the taxpayer and off the shoulders of the telephone companies.
At that point, EFF activity on the bill apparently ceased, the EFF's corporate telephone sponsors having what they wanted.
We asked Dave Hughes to comment. Here is what he wrote.
The passage of the door-opening digital telephony bill, admittedly facilitated by John Perry Barlow, who now appears to regret his actions, certainly calls for the EFF to look at itself in the mirror.
Born as a high-profile organization, funded by the personal fortunes of prominent computer mavens, it was theoretically created to act as the defender of individual computer and communications freedoms against the heavy, uninformed, or clumsy hand of big government.
But in pursuing its ends by playing the Washington Insiders games, it just helped the enemies of electronic freedom and privacy and blew a lot of credibility for itself.
I suppose the die was cast when EFF moved its offices inside the Beltway, hired Jerry Berman, a Washington insider with lots of prior political baggage, and tried to influence the course of legislation by becoming a traditional old-boy lobbying organization, making reasonable compromises, using money, names, and good-guy image-making press,
while other organizations with less of all three, such as CPSR and EPIC, implacably stick to their first principles, work behind the scenes to oppose and defeat every politically expedient attempt to start sucking the promising new information society with free individuals at its center into the swamp of industrial-age collectivism.
Well, one can argue whose tactics, that of Washington insiders or outsiders, can be more effective in curbing the abuse of government power in the long run,
but there is no arguing that those who play the insider-Washington game are vulnerable to rationalizing every compromise in terms of getting things done,
and can end up believing their own press about what a great job they are doing.
There are some damned unhappy EFF constituents out there today after the telephony bill breezed through.
And here's an editor's note, we have it on very good authority that the EFF board does what it wants regardless of what its constituency may appear to back.
The FBI director free, stuck to his guns, why the hell didn't the EFF?
That's some of what's been going on in the internet over the past couple of weeks.
This has caused quite a bit of discussion, of controversy.
And I guess it's a topic that a lot of us should be concerned with.
If you're in a position where you have the means to make something really, really bad, not quite as bad,
is that the road you take?
Or do you just stand up for what is right, even though you're destined to lose?
Which is better? It's a tough call. It really is.
And I just know I'm not happy with the way it turned out.
The digital telephony bill was signed, passed the Senate, and basically we don't really know where this is going to head.
A lot of privacies will be invaded in various ways, probably in ways that have not yet been invented, but now it's legally okay.
All right, we're going to be taking phone calls in just a little bit,
and we have a special problem with our phones tonight.
I wasn't here last week, so apparently this has been going on for some time.
Hopefully it'll be fixed by next week.
Our first five lines are out, so the only number that you can really call is 212-279-3405.
And that only leaves two lines open, so you're going to be getting busy signals, so keep trying.
Those are the only lines we're going to be taking calls on, so we'll be racing through those as quickly as possible.
We'll be taking calls in just a couple of minutes.
First, I want to tell you an adventure story.
This is an adventure story that anybody can partake in.
It's real, real simple.
All you have to do is pick up your phone and call 9X.
Call them in the middle of the day, and you'll see what an adventure it is trying to get a hold of the phone company.
I found out, I looked at my phone bill, and this is something else that everybody should do.
You should always look at your phone bill, because you may think that the computers get it all right,
and if you subscribe to a certain kind of service, well, that's what you're going to be billed for.
But, no, it's not that way.
It's not that way at all.
They have this service known as flat rate service in various parts of the state.
What that does, for an extra $10 or so, it allows you to make phone calls to your basic local area,
such as your exchange and the other exchanges in your central office,
and usually the neighboring central offices as well.
And for an extra $10 a month, you're allowed unlimited calls to these numbers
for however long you want to speak for.
You don't get charged for the call.
You don't get charged for the time you spend.
You just get charged at $10, and you have a rather small local area where you can make unlimited phone calls.
Well, guess what?
I discovered, by looking at my bill carefully,
that not only was I paying the extra $10 a month to have this service,
but I was paying for each and every phone call on top of that.
It was like I was getting both services at once.
And I'm surprised they didn't charge me some sort of a fee for that.
But, yeah, I was managing to pay for the phone calls twice.
And this is not a case where one phone company isn't talking to another phone company,
and you have all this kind of bureaucratic mix-up.
Now, it wasn't that, because this is one phone company, one page of the phone bill.
And clearly, something is wrong.
So, I thought it would be nice if I called 9X to say, you know, hey, what's up with this?
Let's get this fixed here.
Do you know, today, I spent over two hours on the telephone.
Not two hours on the telephone with 9X, mind you.
Two hours on the telephone trying to get to 9X.
Now, what happens when you call 9X?
Well, several things.
First of all, you get their nice little press 1 to do this, press 2 to do that kind of thing, okay?
So, you press all the buttons.
You go through this nice menu.
You want to talk about your phone bill, okay?
You want to talk to a representative, okay?
This is the 20th century.
Fine, hit this button.
And then after you do all that, you get a busy signal.
And if that's not good enough, sometimes you don't get a busy signal.
Sometimes you get a ring.
And then that leads you to a whole series of new recordings.
I think there are three in total, where they tell you how everybody is so busy
that they have to play these recordings for you.
And they play those three times.
Finally, they say, this is the last recorded announcement you will hear,
unless you want to count the music that we're going to play.
Which will make you sick.
They keep that on for another ten minutes.
And then, miracle of miracles, it happens.
The music stops, and the phone rings.
You hear a ring, and you know that any second now,
you'll be speaking to the 9X representative.
You know there's only one.
You'll be speaking to the 9X representative,
and they will do whatever they can to make you glad that you called.
Well, I went through this little routine maybe five or six times today,
and the same thing happened each time.
That's not counting the times I got the busy signal.
Each and every time, the phone would ring after being put on hold for at least ten minutes,
and then it would stop.
It would ring once, and then silence.
Now, I don't know what kind of way this is of treating customers,
but every single time I called,
I would get disconnected or put in some kind of weird limbo.
And once I decided to stay on and see what happened,
you know, maybe I was being put on hold before I was even talked to,
but nothing ever happened.
Basically, I was just there, somewhere, inside 9X,
not speaking to anybody, and apparently not existing.
Well, after a couple of hours of this,
I started to get kind of peeved,
because, you know, the day was going by,
the sun was going down,
and nothing was being accomplished,
other than my blood pressure going up.
So, I did what all of us should do from the very beginning,
and this is what I recommend.
Don't waste your time.
Go straight to the top, right from the beginning,
because starting out at the bottom is a big waste of time.
If you don't believe me, call tomorrow.
Call tomorrow during the day sometime.
Apparently, this is their rush season or something.
They must have done something particularly horrendous,
and everybody is calling to complain about it.
So, what I did was, I called the President's Hotline.
Now, the President's Hotline is 1-800-722-2300.
They are there 24 hours a day.
They are required by law to pick up the phone and be human.
1-800-722-2300.
You call that number,
and then you tell them what problems you were having.
Now, I told this guy the problems I was having with connecting to them.
I explained the whole thing pretty much like I just did here on the radio.
And he said, okay, let me try.
And so, for the next 10 minutes,
the two of us basically wasted our time on hold together,
waiting for 9-x to pick up.
Of course, they never did.
And eventually, he just said, look, let's forget about this.
I'll simply have them call you tomorrow at some point.
What a great idea.
But basically, I tied up this guy's time
and took him away from all the complaints he could be getting
and managed to leave a message for them to call me.
Of course, they probably won't,
or they'll get my machine or something like that,
and we'll have a wonderful round of phone tag.
If the President's Hotline doesn't help you,
invariably something doesn't quite work out with that,
you can always call the Public Service Commission,
1-800-342-3377.
Call them and complain.
And guaranteed, 9-x will get back to you quickly
because they don't like that and they're very afraid of this.
But it's really the only way.
You know, I've been noticing this problem
for over a year.
The same problem, you know,
where the phone rings and nothing happens
or it just immediately disconnects you
after you've been on hold for 10 minutes.
Now, something obviously is not getting fixed,
and I can't believe I'm the only person this is happening to.
So, to get these things fixed,
you have to complain,
and that's why you have to call these people.
I mean, yeah, you might get a black mark on your phone bill.
They might think you're a troublemaker,
but what's wrong with that?
So, take a note of those numbers.
Use them.
Don't abuse them.
Use them for good purposes.
By the way, the Public Service Commission can't help you at night.
They can only help you up until 4.30.
All right.
That's pretty much my gripe session here.
I'll keep people updated as to if that problem ever gets fixed.
We'll just have to see.
212-279-3405 is our phone number.
And please keep in mind that other people are trying to get through,
so we're going to try not to take too much time
with the various people on the telephone this week.
Remember, that's the only line we'll be taking phone calls on.
212-279-3405.
If you dial any other number, you're just wasting your time.
Seriously.
Good evening.
You're on the radio.
Hello.
I'd like to ask if it's true,
as it appears to be,
that 9X is abandoning its street phones,
its pay phones,
and why they might be doing this.
I apologize.
I didn't hear anything you just said.
Could you repeat that?
Yeah.
It appears that 9X is abandoning their pay phones on the street.
They're always out of repair
or full of money,
and they seem to make no attempt to keep them up.
Right.
Yeah.
That has been going on for some time, actually.
In fact, it was particularly prevalent during the last strike,
but it has not improved.
The reason being pay phones aren't really all that profitable for 9X.
9X can make a lot more money
if they have people use calling cards and pay surcharges,
and then they don't have to pay somebody to go out there and collect the money
because the money is already in their bank.
I see.
Now, a pay phone has mechanical parts.
Mechanical parts break down,
especially when the phones are frustrating
and people put M80s in them
because they see no other way to express themselves.
So that's why you're not seeing them get fixed.
That's why you're seeing on the subway platforms
those little blue credit phones
because they don't take coins at all.
There's no moving parts in them.
You're seeing a move towards that kind of way of making phone calls,
which is very bad for people that don't have calling cards,
very bad for people that don't feel like paying an extra, what,
50 cents per phone call
for the privilege of using a calling card.
Yes.
Oh, so we're going to have to be forced to do that from now on.
Well, it's not a question of being forced.
It's a tendency.
You're moving in a particular direction.
How we move depends on the public outcry.
If pay phones are important to us, then we should say that.
We should write letters saying pay phones are important,
pay phones with incoming capabilities are important,
pay phones with touch tones are important.
A lot of times what they do is they say it's part of the war on drugs.
And that's a real smoke screen
because you can pump out all the oxygen in neighborhoods
and say it's because of drugs.
It's the only way to stop it.
It doesn't really accomplish anything
to take away capabilities that we've all come to expect from pay phones
simply to prevent people from using drugs.
You can outlaw beepers.
It's not going to do anything.
People are still going to figure out how to use drugs.
You can take away touch tone phones.
I don't think that's going to stop people from using drugs.
Basically, we should have the full capabilities
of whatever technology is out there and use it for our advantage.
Well, the pay phones are not working on Madison and Fifth Avenues
where there's no drug problem.
Well, I don't know what reason they will give,
but what I suggest you do is report the pay phones.
First of all, dial 611.
Report them there.
Report them every day they are out of service.
And if after a week of doing this they're still out of service,
call the number I gave before, the Public Service Commission,
and say there's a pay phone there that needs to be in service.
It's a risk to safety because, you know,
you do need pay phones to call the police if something bad is happening.
So definitely don't be afraid to do that.
Okay. Thanks a lot.
Okay.
Bye-bye.
Thanks for calling.
212-279-3405 is our phone number.
And again, those phone numbers that I was giving out to complain
would be a real annoyance to the phone company,
but only when they deserve it.
And they do deserve it almost all the time.
Public Service Commission, 1-800-342-3377.
That's your last resort.
That's if nothing else solves the problem.
President's Hotline, 1-800-722-2300.
That's if you want to give 9X one last chance to get it right.
Okay.
Good evening.
You're on the radio.
Good evening.
I'm glad you used such a sweet salutation.
I would like to bring to the attention of the WBAI audience and the world
the fact that I'm confessing.
The reason I call the station is for the good of the station,
for the good of humanity, and for the good of the listenership.
Well, there you have it.
I call.
Listen, Emmanuel, I have been cut off by everybody from Bernard White
to Bob Fast to Paul Gorman to Betsy Lenke to Mike Fader,
who will cut everybody off thinking he's getting me, but he's not.
Are you there?
Yeah, and you're within 15 cutoffs of the all-time,
not only the all-time BAI record, the all-time New York radio record.
That includes WABC and all those other stations.
And part of the reason why this guy keeps getting cut off all the time
is he never listens, isn't it?
Just keeps talking and talking.
I don't think he has a receiver.
I think he only has a microphone on his phone.
Yeah, it must be something like that.
Okay, you've got one more down,
and if you can do it by the end of the year,
I think you'll have the record.
Good evening, you're on the radio.
Hi, Emmanuel.
My question is related to the lady that called before about the access charges
when you use a calling card.
My long-distance company is MCI, and I have calling cards,
and I use it a lot for business.
But very often I can't go from one call to the other,
you know, just by pushing star like you're supposed to.
Uh-huh.
And I keep getting charged the $0.50 access fee.
So if you look at my phone bill, sometimes it's like, you know, $20, $30 a month.
Yeah, and a lot of that's just the surcharges.
Right, exactly.
That is the surcharges, just because I can't go from one to the other,
because I guess you're only supposed to be surcharged once
and then be able to make as many calls on your calling card as you want.
Is that their policy?
Do they say that?
Yeah, that's what they say, but it doesn't work that way.
Huh, that's, I didn't know that was even their policy, to be honest.
Oh, okay, because that was my question.
If there is some kind of a law, you know,
that says that you should be able to get through,
once you have access, you should be able to make as many calls as you want.
Right, well, basically, basically, it's everybody for himself.
You know, everybody has their own rules.
There are different rules for different long-distance companies.
The company that I suggest for people that don't make particularly long phone calls,
you know, from pay phones and things like that,
but don't want to deal with the surcharge each and every time is Metromedia,
because they have a 950 number, 950-0488,
and they have what's known as a preferred calling card.
There's no surcharge on that.
And the rate is about, I think, 20 cents a minute or something,
which can be kind of high if you make long calls.
But if you make just a bunch of short calls, it's a significant savings over AT&T, MCI, and Sprint.
Sure.
All right?
One more quick question.
Yeah.
You know those debit cards that they sell now?
What are the rates on those generally compared to if you were using the calling card type thing?
They are extremely high.
They are something like 50 cents a minute.
So that's not an alternative.
It's not a good alternative.
It's a good way to stay anonymous, I guess, if you're concerned about that.
But they're very expensive.
I mean, you just have to see how many minutes you get for $5, and you can figure it out very easily.
Okay.
Thank you very much.
Okay.
I believe we have Fiber Optic on the line.
Fiber, are you there?
I do.
I am here.
All right.
Well, it's good to hear from you this one last week.
Yes, this will be my last show in captivity.
All right.
Well, one week from today you will be, actually one week from yesterday, you will be a free man.
A free man.
And you will not be a number anymore.
No longer a number.
All right.
Well, it's something that this day is actually coming.
I guess it hasn't really flown, has it?
It seems like it's been the longest year I can remember.
Yeah.
I've almost forgotten what it feels like to do a lot of things that people take for granted.
Uh-huh.
Well, we're going to be doing a lot of those things, I imagine, in the next few weeks.
I just hope you don't get overloaded with all these activities that people of New York have planned.
I'll try not to, but I'm sure I won't.
Do you know the people of New York have spontaneously organized a parade for you?
A parade?
Yeah.
Now, we're not sure yet if it's going to be a ticker tape parade, as I was saying earlier.
That's up to the people that live along Broadway if they want to throw things out the window.
Things that don't fall fast, though.
Oh, okay.
Please make sure of that.
But next week, at around this time, well, I guess starting at 10 o'clock, you will be ushered down Broadway in some sort of a caravan on your way to the radio station.
And basically, the people of New York, on the day before the smaller Thanksgiving Day parade, will have the chance to actually look out their windows and wave and honk and do the various New Yorker type of things.
So that's a week from today.
And we also have extra time next week.
We'll be on until 1145.
Oh, great.
So, yeah, it'll be a big festive event.
I can relay my adventures.
Right.
And, of course, we'll be using the old 2600 phone company van to cruise throughout New York City.
I don't, by the way, I don't support the idea of having you ride on the roof of that.
I don't think that's a good idea.
I've said that to everybody else, but I'm in the minority, so I think you have to veto that yourself.
Oh, that sounds a little dangerous.
Yeah, I think it's very dangerous, especially at the speeds that they're thinking of achieving.
So, anyway, what's new in the world of federal prison?
Oh, where can I begin?
Well, something I wanted to bring up that's been on my mind the whole day is we have sort of an inmate-run film, I guess you might call it, showing, every weekend, usually Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and sometimes Monday.
Anyway, videotapes that were sent in by inmates' families through, say, their favorite video chain are, well, up until recently, were allowed through the religious services, through the chaplain, to be shown on weekends for, you know, for inmates' benefit, basically.
And recently, it's been put to our attention that this will no longer be allowed after a lot of time and effort has been put into organizing it to achieve what it is now, which is we have a reasonable-sized collection of videotapes, of movies, and we show them in the visiting room.
I'm sure you're familiar with the visiting room.
You've been there.
Oh, yeah.
It's the only place I've been, actually.
On weekends, we set up the chairs in a rather different arrangement, and they all face the television in the front of the room, and we show a movie.
So, now, they're going to stop this? For what reason?
They want to stop this.
Curiously enough, they claim, and I don't know the exact copyright law that they're supposedly citing, but they claim that no more than 30 people are allowed to view a videotape without the owner of the videotape licensing the tape and paying a fee.
Oh, for God's sake.
It sounds completely ridiculous.
It sounds like they're looking for an excuse of any sort.
Yeah, it's really ridiculous.
I think, from what I heard, anyway, the word came from somebody in recreation down in the FCI, probably because they weren't a part of it, and they didn't want anything to be organized by inmates.
As if Hollywood would be concerned that more than 30 prisoners are watching a film at the same time without paying for it.
Well, these people are claiming that that violates a federal law, and I don't know if this is true or not.
And I could see it being true, maybe, if you were charging these 30 or more people to see the video.
But I was under the impression that once you purchased the video, it was yours, and provided that you didn't copy it, you could show it to whomever you pleased.
Of course.
But the thing is, you're prisoners, for God's sake.
It's not like you have the choice to go out and buy your own or go out and see a film on your own.
This is all the entertainment you have.
Also, bear in mind, though, that there is something that's run in the FCI, which we happen to see just about every weekend,
that's part of something mysteriously called the Inmate Benefit Fund.
And supposedly, the Inmate Benefit Fund allows the same type videotapes, movies basically,
to be shown down in the FCI and piped in over coaxial cable up here to the camp as well, so we can watch them.
And, of course, there's absolutely no say in what gets shown.
The administration and the FCI chooses what movies are shown.
And they claim that they have paid this licensing fee in order to show these movies to, obviously, in excess of 30 people.
What we're doing is a camp-only thing.
Everyone is made aware of it.
And, you know, there's two units, two buildings that we all live in.
And everyone is aware of it.
It's not exclusive.
Anyone can go.
And it was coming along very nicely until this announcement recently came.
And, you know, it's not enough that I could just say, oh, well, forget about it.
I'm leaving Tuesday morning anyway.
But I know how it is when there's nothing to do on the weekend at night and you'd like to see a movie.
You know, it's great.
It really passes the time.
Of course.
I don't understand this mentality where they just seem to want to figure out ways of taking away things and making you feel worse.
How does that benefit anybody?
Oh, it doesn't.
But it's part of the whole negative mentality.
I was pointing it out to somebody the other day.
Something as mundane as a sign on a water dispenser in the dining hall that says something rather seemingly innocuous.
It pointed to two buttons on the water dispenser that said, do not use.
And it really got me thinking that everything around here, signs, anything, just mentality that the administration dictates, is what you can't do.
You're never told what's okay to do and you're never told what you can do.
And you're never told when you've done something good.
No, never.
You're constantly reminded, it's ground into your skull, what you can't do.
Constantly, every day, all the time.
You can't do this, you can't do that, you can't do this, you can't do that.
And if that's not enough, this is what will happen to you if you do do those things that you're not supposed to do.
Incredible.
It's kind of like, you ever trained a dog, Mark?
I can't say I have.
Well, there's two ways to train a dog.
I'm not comparing prisoners to dogs, but it's the same basic mentality.
You can whack him every time he does something wrong and you can intimidate him and he'll turn into one of these crazy animals you see on the street
that's always cowering and sneaking around and doing things to get away with them and all that kind of thing.
Or you can use positive reinforcement when the dog does something good.
You praise him and you let him know that that's good and he will try and do things that are good.
I mean, people are obviously a lot more complex than dogs, but I think what you have here as far as the owner mentality, the discipliner,
you have the two different camps, you know, the positive reinforcement and the negative reinforcement.
And, you know, I guess if you're seeing this kind of negative reinforcement at this stage in the prison, which is called a camp,
I can only imagine what it's like in the maximum security, medium security prisons.
It's not pleasant.
No, not at all.
So, those of you...
I guess I'm going to have to break it to the guys that were just all a bunch of Pavlovian dogs being manipulated.
Of course. I mean, yeah, that's exactly what's happening.
It's mind games.
Yeah, that's what it is, in a nutshell.
I mean, I've talked to a couple of your co-prisoners there, and they do play mind games with prisoners.
They try to get them to crack, and if they do get them to crack, that's considered good.
They've gotten somebody dangerous out of the circle there, and they've sent them across the street to the maximum place or whatever.
I've seen it happen.
Wow. So, anything on a more positive note?
But I imagine there'll be quite a few people there you're going to miss.
Yeah.
Certainly a lot that'll miss you.
On a positive scale, I'd like to give everyone an update on the two inmates that we met in weeks past.
Okay.
One by the name of Sal has recently left and gone to the halfway house in Manhattan.
That's good.
Which is a good thing.
Uh-huh.
Sal was which one again?
Sal was the attorney.
Okay.
That's the guy that he had a check for more than $10,000, and he cashed it in increments of less than $10,000, not knowing that was a crime.
Structuring.
I'm sorry?
This was considered structuring.
Structuring.
That's what they call it.
I see.
And that can wind you in jail.
Apparently so.
All right.
I'm glad I heard that.
I mean, I'm not likely to be doing that, but it's good to know.
Yeah.
And our other friend, Ira.
I have a very interesting thing to say about Ira.
Ira's the guy that got something like six years for having some sort of drug involvement?
Right.
He was sort of really peripherally involved with someone who was involved in the sale of ecstasy.
Ecstasy.
Yeah.
That great Satan.
Well, it just so happens that Ira won his appeal.
He did.
Which means that he will be resentenced and stands to have a reduction in sentence of at least 30 months.
30 months being...
Roughly three years.
About three years.
Yeah.
That is great.
Yeah, we were all cheering for him when we first found out.
And it turned out that he might serve as few as three years, maybe.
Well, the thing with Ira is that the law had changed, right?
I don't really...
Or was that...
No, that might have been the other guy, actually.
The law changed.
Yeah, the law did change on the structuring law.
That shows that you had to have prior knowledge that the law existed.
Uh-huh.
Okay, yeah.
Ira's caught up in the war against drugs, so I guess if anything, it's going to get worse.
Yeah.
Well, that's good.
That's good that there's some justice out there.
Considering that he's done practically a year here already, once he's resentenced, he'll
probably have to do roughly two more years, which isn't as bad as knowing that he had
to do five more years.
I can't even conceive of spending that amount of time in a place like that.
Yeah.
That's like eternity.
But yet and still, Ira is no longer with us.
He was transferred to Fort Dix in New Jersey.
At his request, or...?
No, it was simply they round up a bunch of people.
Some requested, most didn't.
And at least, if anything, the benefit would be that a lot of people are a lot closer to
New York that are from New York.
Uh-huh.
So that's better for their friends and family.
But that couldn't be the reason they do it.
Oh, yeah.
But I mean, in other cases, there are people who don't want to leave.
Right.
Ira wasn't particularly keen on leaving because he was more or less settled in here.
Right.
He's been here as long as I have.
Uh-huh.
Yeah, I'll miss him because I think I saw him every time I went out to see you.
Yeah.
But that is good that he won some small victory.
Hopefully, we'll find out how that turns out.
Yeah, I hope we'll know.
It's starting to get cold out there, too, much like when we dropped you off in January.
Well, I hope that it won't be anything near like that when we leave.
Yeah.
Well, I don't know.
It's probably going to be not very pleasant as far as the summertime that you missed.
Yeah, well, I'm just hoping we could squeeze off.
I mean, I'm not asking for very much.
You know, I'm leaving Tuesday morning.
Maybe we could squeeze off another one of those 60 or 70-degree days.
Well, if anyone out there is listening that can do that, that would be good.
So, what do you have planned?
Anything at all when you get back?
Well, we're going to spend a really big Thanksgiving at my aunt's house in Brooklyn, the whole family.
Uh-huh.
And I'm sure that'll be lots of fun because there'll be lots of real food to eat.
I'm sure you'll be the center of attention.
And we'll have plenty to...
Okay, that was the...
That was the final click.
That was the click.
Now, will you be able to call us back?
Uh, I should be able to call back within not too long.
Okay, that'd be good.
Squeeze in a call before the end of the show.
Okay, because we're going to take some more phone calls here.
All right, so either way, I'll be seeing you this weekend.
Okay.
In fact, I'm going to work as though I'm your very last guest.
Wonderful.
And, of course, we'll be seeing you at the festivities next week.
Definitely.
And everybody with the radio will be listening to you.
I can't wait.
All right, so we'll hear back from you in a few minutes.
Okay.
All right.
Bye-bye.
Take care.
212-279-3405.
We were just hearing from Fiber Optic,
live from Schuylkill Federal Penitentiary in Pennsylvania, the prison state.
More prisons per square foot than any other place, I think.
Good evening.
You're on.
Hello.
How you doing?
All right.
Hello there.
Yes, you're on the radio.
Go ahead.
Just a second.
Let me turn it down.
Okay.
How you doing, Emmanuel?
I'm fine.
I'm getting CB radio interference on my phone line and the stereo as well.
I went to the dance with the phone company.
They came out and put a filter.
Mm-hmm.
Did no good whatsoever.
And they told me I have to, you know, call the FCC, which I did.
And they sent me an information bulletin.
Uh-huh.
I'm back.
I brought this back.
Which doesn't seem to inform me very much.
They, I don't know.
It doesn't seem like there's much I can do.
Well, you're getting...
I thought you might be able to enlighten me.
You're probably getting CB interference because somebody is doing something illegal with their CBs.
They're probably using a power mic and...
Does it come across in your TV set at all?
No.
Just the stereo and the phone.
Just your phone.
And I do not have a cordless.
Uh-huh.
I don't have an antenna phone.
Uh-huh.
There's just one line in.
Well, we have Mark on the line.
Mark, are you familiar with a problem like this where a CB radio leaks onto a phone line?
Well, similarly, I can compare it to a problem that we have at Echo, which is that we get a lot of radio interference on the telephone lines.
And we were getting, initially, a lot of the interference on one of the main voice numbers.
And even worse, we were getting radio interference on some of the modem lines.
And New York Telephone is supposed to be fixing them.
But it seems that at some point, because these wires were specifically run into where Echo is, where the equipment is, because there weren't enough phone lines underground to start off with.
So a lot of these are new cables.
The only thing I can guess is that they're not properly shielded at some point along the way from underground up into the apartment.
Well, the caller says that the phone company was out, and they put some sort of shielding on the cable.
Well, they put a, what I think they call it, a noise suppression filter or something.
Right, exactly.
Yeah.
And now he has to contact the FCC.
Well, I did.
And they sent me an info bulletin.
The woman I spoke with there said that they do not come out themselves.
They don't send a rep out to check out the situation.
Now, I'll just mention this.
In the bulletin itself, it says that the interference is not necessarily coming because they've got their frequency turned up too loud,
or they're using an antenna or whatever.
And they seem to put a lot of emphasis on the fact that it's you, that something is wrong with your phone.
Yeah, that sounds about right.
And like the CB guys, you know, poor guys are just doing their best.
Is it definitely a CB?
Yes, because at times it's impossible for me to hear the other party that's calling.
I can hear these guys loud and clear.
Sometimes it's pretty garbled, but other times it's, you know, as if I was speaking with you.
Do they seem to be the same people?
Yeah.
Okay, well, they're probably...
It sounds as if it's a dispatch office for like a limousine service, but the other ones are like private guys.
That's possible.
It's interesting you should mention that because in my neighborhood where I live back home,
a lot of the times the cab services in the neighborhood,
it seems like their dispatch radios are too powerful.
And a lot of the times I could be watching television in my kitchen,
and all of a sudden this really loud dispatch voice bursts in on the TV.
It completely disrupts the reception.
So in that case, it simply is the fact that the wattage on their radios is, you know, more powerful than...
Cranked up, yeah.
What I suggest, sir, is that you go to the part of your phone line where 9X stops, you know, where they come into your building.
Right.
You go right to the point where there's absolutely none of your wiring involved.
You plug in there and see if you get any interference at all.
If you do, then there's absolutely nothing that you are required to do because obviously it's not your problem.
And at that point, you say, look, 9X, I'm not getting phone service from you, so, you know, I want credit for all the phone service I am not getting.
And if they balk at that, you contact the Public Service Commission and you tell them that 9X is not providing you with phone service.
And you don't know the reason.
You know, it could be bad wiring, it could be whatever, but they have to fix it.
You know, it's not your problem if it's not coming from your wiring.
Well, I'll tell you why, this one fellow who came out the second time to, because after they did put the filter on, I was still getting any interference.
And this fellow kind of intimated that because they had changed some of the main cables that run through all the backyards.
I live in Brooklyn, Williamsburg.
He said maybe they didn't shield them correctly.
Sure, anything is possible.
The thing is, you shouldn't have to worry about this.
Yeah.
Bring it to their attention and they have to worry about it.
All right, well, I'll give that a shot.
Okay, good luck.
Have a good evening, though.
Thanks.
Bye-bye.
I was waiting to hear a CB voice coming over the phone there, but I guess we weren't that lucky.
It's amazing, though, that the FCC really doesn't take that much of an interest.
You know, they don't want to be bothered.
I know how we can get the FCC to go out to his house.
How about if he starts up a pirate radio station?
Oh, that'll get them there in a hurry.
They'll be there, and then while you're here, folks, take a look at this, you know.
It might cost you $10,000, but still, the problem may get looked at, at least.
Fortunately, the FCC is too busy carving up the electromagnetic spectrum like a pizza pie.
Yeah, well, someone's got to do it.
I hear they have dibs in the sun, too, if we ever make it over there.
All right, 212-279-3405.
Mark, you know, five of our phone lines are broken.
Really?
So that's why we have to give out 3405 as our phone number.
Oh.
So hopefully next week when you are here, we'll have all the phone lines working so
we can take all the phone calls.
I don't suppose this would have anything to do with some rogue CB user, would it?
I don't think so.
We're just getting a loud buzzing on all the other lines.
In fact, there's one foolish person that's calling on one of the non-recommended lines.
Let's see what happens if we try to take it.
Good evening.
You're on the radio.
See?
We can't hear you.
We can't hear you at all.
Don't even hear a buzz.
Can't hear a thing.
And you just spent money on this phone call.
Boy, you must feel very silly.
All right.
That's what happens.
Let's take a good phone call now.
Good evening.
You're on the radio.
Hi.
Going back to 9X for a minute, I can't do much about your double billing problem, but
I might be able to suggest how you might not have spent that long a time trying to get
through.
Okay.
I think that you might have been a victim of your own fondness for high tech,
and I would suggest that the next time, once you've dialed into their main number, you
just forget that you have a touch-tone phone in your hand and pretend it's a rotary.
Good point.
However, I did try that, too.
I tried just staying on, and eventually, you know, they say, okay, you don't have a touch-tone
phone.
We're going to transfer you to the operator.
And the same thing happens.
Either I get a busy signal or it puts me on hold on the same recordings for about 10 minutes,
rings once, and then hangs up.
I haven't had that experience.
I've discovered that I get through much faster on every one of these systems by pretending
I can't go any farther.
Uh-huh.
What area code are you in?
Uh, 718.
Okay.
I was trying this from 516, so if any of our listeners in 516 have been trying this recently,
let us know.
Also...
Yeah, I wanted to make one other suggestion, not about that, which is that the first thing
that you read from Dan Gilmore, the San Jose Mercury News?
Yes.
He's somebody you might want to look up and interview, because he's very involved.
He's a member of an organization I belong to called Investigative Reporters and Editors,
and he was one of the instructors at a conference on computer-assisted reporting I just went to
in Silicon Valley.
Uh-huh.
And he's somebody who has a lot to say about these issues, a lot more than was in that article,
so you might want to just hunt him up in person on the phone.
Okay.
I think I will.
Okay.
Thanks.
Thank you very much.
All right.
Take care.
Bye-bye.
You know, another way around the 9X fiasco that I thought of, I didn't do this, they have
a special Spanish number, 890-13... no, 1160, I think, or maybe it's 1360.
Of course, you'll be at a disadvantage when they pick up the phone if you don't speak Spanish,
but you may get through faster.
You may get through, period, which is the problem we've been having with 9X recently.
Um, Fiber, have you had any, uh, any problems in the past getting through to 9X?
Uh, I mean, nothing that was, uh, atypical.
Uh-huh.
I mean, uh, the usual amount of waiting, if I was, say, if I was calling the business
office...
Yeah, you see, I don't mind the waiting, you know, I expect to wait, but when you wait
for 10 or 15 minutes, and it rings once and then hangs up, and it does it several times,
you sort of start to lose your patience, you know?
Yeah.
Definitely.
All right, let's see if we can squeeze in a couple more phone calls.
Good evening, you're on.
Emmanuel?
Yes, go ahead.
How you doing?
Uh, I saw the new, uh, Details magazine with the article about you guys in it.
Oh, wasn't that a lot of fun?
Yeah, it was great.
Wasn't that great?
Yeah.
Every, every week, it seems a new magazine takes a, takes a stab at us.
I don't know where it's going to stop next.
Um, I was just wondering if there's going to be another hope, and, uh, if the video came
out for the first one yet.
Well, we have the videos, uh, the problem with the videos is that they're 26 hours long.
Uh, so once we figure out a way of, of, of distributing those a little bit better, uh,
we will be doing that, hopefully real soon, and hopefully for, for as cheap as we can afford.
Uh, as far as another hope, well, hope was for the 10th anniversary of 2600, and that's
not going to happen again, uh, but if we do something similar, it'll be in a couple of
years.
It won't be next year, that I can tell you for sure, um, because it just takes a lot of planning
and a lot of, uh, heartache and aggravation, uh, but, uh, you know, we'll, we'll, we'll
see what happens.
All right.
All right?
Thanks a lot.
Take care.
Uh, let's, uh, get one more phone call here.
Good evening.
You're on.
Hey, uh, it's Milo Phone Bill.
Hey, Milo Phone Bill.
How you been?
Okay.
You know, Fiber Optics on the line.
Oh, yeah.
How you doing, Fiber?
How are you?
Uh, listen, I want to ask you guys if you've got any comments on the so-called gang war in cyberspace.
Oh, which, which gang war might that be?
Oh, well, you guys better keep your eyes open for the December Wired magazine.
Oh, God.
Oh.
I feel like retching already, but okay.
Akron Showdown.
Apparently, Eric Bledex and Corrupt are going at it.
Well, I think what they're doing is they're latching on to news that's about three years
old.
Yeah, but it's complete with photos.
You see a photo of Fiber in there as well.
Uh-huh.
Yeah, I heard a little bit about it.
All it really was was excerpts from, uh, the new book coming out about the case.
Oh, boy.
Yeah, and I'm sure there'll be a movie and a miniseries and maybe even a real series.
Yeah, well, I wonder why they don't, uh, mention my old group, Naft.
Well, they don't mention False, either.
The old Freakers, Hackers, and Laundromat Service employees.
Oh, I was, yeah.
As a matter of fact, I was talking to the old sys-up of, uh, of False the other day.
There was no board called False.
False was just, False was, no, wait a minute.
I was part of this group.
I was one of the organizers of this group.
We didn't have a board.
We didn't.
Well, um.
This is revisionism.
Um, actually, no.
There, there really was.
Well, it wasn't, it wasn't run by us then.
I mean.
Oh, it might not have been, but it was called False Fido.
False Fido?
Yeah.
Wow.
That's the first I've been hearing of this.
No, the, the, the false conspiracy took place on the Osuni Bulletin Board, Sherwood
Forest, and Private Sector.
Yeah, and of course, I wouldn't know anything about Osuni.
No.
Maybe even Modem of Manhattan.
That was, that was way back, though.
Oh, no.
Yeah, that was way, way back.
Next thing you're going to tell me, it was on 8BBS.
No, it wasn't.
It wasn't on 8BBS.
No way.
Okay.
But, uh, yeah, the, the false, it's kind of funny because that was, uh, in 1983, and
the, uh, the false group was looked upon as, as this really well-organized conspiracy,
and, uh, we thought it was funny then that they would actually think that.
It's not so funny now that they actually put somebody in jail with the same misconception.
Uh, and who knows how we'll feel about this 10 more years down the road.
Yeah, well, I'd be interested to hear if, if there's any other NAFTA members that, that
would be interested in calling in.
Well, uh, they won't be able to today, but, uh, perhaps, um, they can, they can contact
you somehow, or just call us in the future?
No, just, just call in.
Okay.
I guess that means we're out of time.
We are pretty much out of time.
Okay, great.
Catch you later.
All right.
Take care.
Well, Mark, this is it.
This is it.
The last few moments of you in prison on the radio, anyway.
You still have another, another, what, six days there?
A couple of days.
A couple of days, yeah.
So, I guess for the first time, we're going to tell people not to write to you.
Right.
Because if they do, uh, your mail won't get to you.
Yeah, or we'll have to trust the prison system to forward it to me.
I don't think mail forwarding is all that great at the prison.
Uh, tell me, is there anything there that you're going to miss?
Um, gee, I'm thinking long and hard, and you know, I, I can't really think of anything.
Uh-huh.
I mean, sure, I'll miss, uh, some of the people that I've met here, but, uh, other than that,
uh, I can't think of anything at all.
Some of the guards, no doubt.
Oh, of course, yeah.
I mean, we all see the films where the sort of camaraderie develops between the, the inmates
and, and, and, uh, you know, the, the, the guards that want to keep them down.
That's sort of mutual respect for each other, right?
Yeah, especially when they call count time.
Yeah.
Oh, you're going to miss the counts.
Come on, Mark.
You're going to miss the counts.
I think what we'll have to do, so I can sort of ease into the freedom, is, uh, at 4.15
every day, we'll have to have, like, a formal count.
Uh-huh.
Somebody, uh, somebody could just call me up on the telephone, and I'll, I'll stand up
at attention, and, uh.
Well, Mark, you've been out of circulation for too long.
You haven't heard, have you?
Oh, no, what?
At 4.15 every day, there is a count.
Oh, no.
It's part of, it's part of the Clinton administration's new way of keeping track of everybody, but,
yeah, 4.15, we have to, uh, all line up, uh, on whatever street we happen to be
on.
I can't let you people do anything.
First digital telephony, and now this.
Yeah, it, it really, uh, slows down the day, too.
But hopefully, once you get out, you can start setting things right.
Yeah.
So remember, next week, starting at around 10 o'clock, actually, we'll be, we'll be organizing
before then, uh, we're gonna have a, a parade down Broadway in the 2600 van, and, um, does
starting where?
Good question.
We don't know where we're gonna start.
Somewhere uptown, uh, where, you know, parades tend to start.
Central Park.
Central Park, yeah, somewhere along Central Park and Broadway.
Columbus Circle, right?
Columbus Circle.
Okay.
Where are we gonna park?
Well, we're gonna figure this out somehow.
Yeah, we're probably gonna start at Columbus Circle around 10 o'clock and just wind our
way down Broadway and then wind our way around Manhattan and eventually wind up over here.
And, Mark, you'll be on a cellular phone, so you'll be able to keep in touch with us
throughout the whole, the whole ordeal.
Wonderful.
And, uh, people can line up, you know, next to the street and, and wave and cheer and block
traffic and all that kind of thing.
You know, and it's, it's, it's just a New York kind of thing to do.
I can't wait.
All right.
Well, you know, in a way I feel kind of sad.
This is the last time we're gonna be speaking to you this way, but of course it's stupid
to be sad about this because you're gonna be here in person from now on.
But, so, I don't know, I guess, any, any last words from prison?
Uh, so long and thanks for all the fish.
Okay, good enough.
Well, this is off the hook.
We're off for tonight.
Be back again next week.
Special expanded show.
Return of fiber optic to New York City.
Not a good day to go to work.
So, take off that day and prepare for the festivities.
We'll see you then.
Take care.
Good night.
It couldn't get much worse.
But if it could, it would.
Bumbly Bump was the best expect the worst.
I hope it understood.
Bumbly Bump!
Good evening.
In the news tonight, President Clinton opens trade doors in Asia, but the World Trade Agreement, or GATT, is in trouble on Capitol Hill.
The North American Free Trade Agreement.
The North American Free Trade Agreement promised jobs in the U.S. and labor rights in Mexico, but what has it delivered?
And in New York, more protests over the mayor's budget cuts and some insight on the upcoming agenda for the Congressional Black Caucus.
With these and other stories, I'm Jose Santiago.
With these and other stories, I'm Jose Santiago in New York, with Verna Avery Brown in Washington, and this is the news for Wednesday, November 16, 1994.
First to Washington for the Pacifica National News.
President Clinton today met with Indonesian President Suharto and reportedly raised the issue of East Timor.
Indonesia invaded the former Portuguese colony in 1975.
According to U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher, Clinton explained that relations between the two nations can never reach their highest level unless Indonesia tries to respect human rights.
Indonesian officials say the 29 Timorese holding a vigil at the U.S. Embassy are free to go.
The protesters told reporters they're pleased that President Clinton stated that East Timorese should have more say in their own affairs.
However, they add, the U.S. should have pressed for more concrete steps.
Surrounded by business and congressional representatives, Vice President Al Gore pushed for passage of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, known as GATT.
A delay of the GATT would definitely kill the GATT, kill the opportunity represented by the GATT, and hurt our country immeasurably, hurt our ability to continue providing leadership in the world economy immeasurably, hurt our farmers and our business people immeasurably.
Republican Jesse Helms, who will be heading the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has suggested delaying GATT until next year.
Both houses of Congress are scheduled to vote on GATT at the end of the month.
Haitian President Jean-Bétran Aristide has formally resigned from the priesthood.
Reuters News Service is quoting unnamed Catholic church sources as making the request in a letter.
Aristide reportedly says he needs to be relieved of his priestly duties so he may concentrate on rebuilding the country.
The handling of a child sex abuse case is leading to the fall of Ireland's coalition government.
The leader of the Labour Party, Dick Spring, says it's pulling out of the coalition.
This despite an apology from Ireland's Prime Minister, Albert Reynolds, for appointing the Attorney General to the High Court.
The Attorney General took seven months to deal with extradition warrants for priests now convicted of multiple counts of child abuse.
California's passage of anti-immigrant Proposition 187 is having repercussions.
Eileen Alfonderry reports from Northern California.
Two Latina groups in Texas are calling for a boycott of California in the wake of the passage of Proposition 187,
which would bar undocumented immigrants from the schools, health clinics, and other services.
The measure is before the courts.
But in the meantime, the leader of the Mexican-American Democrats of Texas
and the president of a North Texas immigrant rights group say Texans, especially minorities,
should refuse to hold conventions in California and should boycott anything connected to the state.
A similar call has been issued in Arizona.
And the Mexico-based World Boxing Council announced a ban on title fights in California
to protest what it terms the racist measure.
California's governor actively campaigned for Proposition 187.
A spokesperson says a boycott would be irresponsible because it would hurt legal immigrants trying to succeed in America.
I'm Eileen Alfonderry in Berkeley for Pacifica Network News.
More than a million and a half children have been killed in wars in the past decade.
So says the London-based group Save Our Children.
War's toll on children, says the group, includes disabling, maiming, and blinding over 4 million
and rendering homeless more than 12 million.
Save Our Children charges that hundreds of thousands of children have been forced into uniform and trained to kill.
The charity group maintains that 9 out of 10 people killed or injured in war are civilians.
A truce between Angola's government and the UNITA rebels has gone into effect.
It will remain in effect until November 22nd, when a permanent ceasefire is expected to be declared.
The UN mediator for the Angolan talks calls the truce a light at the end of the tunnel.
And those are the stories topping the news.
President Clinton will have his work cut out for him when he returns home from his East Asian trip.
Topping the agenda will be the World Trade Agreement known as GATT.
Clinton tried to boost the prospects of congressional passage of GATT by promoting a new trade agreement
of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum, or APEC.
The announcement in Indonesia committed the Asian countries to create a new free trade zone early in the next century.
Today, the president told business leaders that the trade deal would open up huge new markets for American goods.
And he said congressional approval of GATT would be a first crucial step in reaching that goal.
But back at home, there were rumblings of resistance to the World Trade Agreement.
Pacifica's Don Rush has this report.
As the big vote on the World Trade Agreement approaches, congressional members are once again expressing doubts.
The biggest threat comes from Jesse Helms, the Republican expected to chair the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
He wants this month's vote on the GATT agreement put off until next year.
And he has threatened to give Clinton a hard time on foreign policy if it isn't.
White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta said today he doesn't believe Helms will be able to hold up the agreement.
And Vice President Al Gore issued this warning here in Washington.
It is abundantly clear that a delay of the GATT would definitely kill the GATT, kill the opportunity represented by the GATT,
and hurt our country immeasurably, hurt our ability to continue providing leadership in the world economy.
To get approval, the president needs 60 votes in the Senate because the cost of the agreement adds to the federal budget deficit.
And even the prospective Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole left open today,
the possibility that a vote might have to wait until next year.
Jane Danowitz is executive director of Citizens Trade Campaign.
She points to the Republican capture of Congress in this month's midterm elections as one of the reasons for so much dissent.
Without question, November 8th was a wake-up call to both parties that the voters are angry.
And the last thing in the world they want to see three weeks after they've sent a very strong message to Washington
is more of the same in business as usual.
And there's many, many elements of the GATT that reek of business as usual in Washington.
So what has gotten everyone so riled up?
For Kansas Republican Bob Dole, it's agriculture.
He's worried that international trade dispute boards might rule against his state's farmers.
And for North Carolina Republican Jesse Helms, it's textiles.
He's concerned that the reduction in trade barriers will allow companies to move their operations to countries with cheaper labor.
It's concerns like these, says Danowitz, that has divided American business.
It's very clear that the GATT is good for business, and they define business as big business.
Small businesses suffer tremendously under the GATT.
This GATT is really only good for multinational corporations.
The other group of businesses that have not been really heard from but who literally will go out of existence over the next 10 years is the textile industry.
And that is about a million jobs in this country.
Supporters claim that GATT will increase U.S. economic growth by up to $2 trillion over the next 10 years.
And as for the loss of jobs, they say that's the price that must be paid.
Brian Riley, an economist with Citizens for a Sound Economy.
The idea that we should put up a wall around our country and protect Americans from lower-paid foreign workers is just a way to make Americans overall poorer and worse off.
You might protect some jobs, but those jobs you protect are going to come at the expense of other American workers.
Critics, of course, question the growth numbers put forward by treaty supporters.
Ironically, conservatives are praising Bill Clinton for his support of GATT.
Just a month ago, they had chastised him for being the epitome of liberalism.