[00:00.000 --> 00:02.560]  For Free Speech Radio News, I'm Kristen S.
[00:02.760 --> 00:05.620]  reporting from Gaza City, occupied Palestine.
[00:15.230 --> 00:20.530]  Free Speech Radio News is produced by Kutta Messa at the studios of Pacifica Station KPFT in Houston.
[00:20.930 --> 00:25.310]  Headline editors are Randy Zimmerman and Nell Abram at WMNF in Tampa, Florida.
[00:25.750 --> 00:30.790]  Technical producers are Jade Padgett-Seekins and Pauline Bartalone at Pacifica Station KPFA in Berkeley.
[00:31.230 --> 00:35.050]  Josh Chappin is our DC editor at Pacifica Station WPFW.
[00:35.230 --> 00:37.830]  Web support from Vanessa Tate and Leslie Holmes.
[00:38.090 --> 00:44.310]  You can visit FSRN online at www.fsrn.org.
[00:44.830 --> 00:45.990]  I'm Deepa Fernandez.
[00:47.330 --> 00:51.510]  And you're listening to Radio Station WBAI in New York, where it's just about time for Off the Hook.
[00:51.670 --> 01:00.910]  This quick announcement, though, there's jubilant celebrations in the streets of Baghdad, and the Iraqi people are welcoming the Marines and the Army and all that kind of thing.
[01:01.010 --> 01:08.830]  So I have this announcement from the peace movements of the United States that they were completely wrong and that they have backed off and that they now fully support George W.
[01:08.970 --> 01:09.190]  Bush.
[01:10.470 --> 01:11.350]  Or do they?
[01:12.650 --> 01:13.530]  We'll find out.
[01:13.710 --> 01:16.230]  We'll find out the facts, the true facts, on Off the Hook.
[02:01.020 --> 02:02.420]  And a very good evening to everybody.
[02:02.640 --> 02:03.240]  The program is Off the Hook.
[02:03.320 --> 02:04.300]  Emmanuel Goldstein here with you.
[02:04.580 --> 02:07.320]  The first thing that we have to do is contact Bernie S.
[02:07.380 --> 02:10.140]  on the phone because, well, we couldn't get him before.
[02:10.960 --> 02:15.680]  It seems his battery was dying and he was running home to get a new battery.
[02:16.060 --> 02:19.540]  And he should have arrived right about now, so we're dialing his number.
[02:20.340 --> 02:22.360]  And about to enter the secret long-distance code.
[02:24.500 --> 02:25.660]  Which we won't play over the air.
[02:27.540 --> 02:28.600]  And in a moment, Bernie S.
[02:28.720 --> 02:29.320]  will be joining us.
[02:36.240 --> 02:36.840]  Good evening.
[02:37.260 --> 02:38.080]  Bernie, are you there?
[02:38.640 --> 02:39.420]  All out of breath.
[02:39.580 --> 02:39.780]  Okay.
[02:39.980 --> 02:41.620]  And do you have a new battery?
[02:41.880 --> 02:43.800]  Yes, I have the extra long-life battery.
[02:43.860 --> 02:44.080]  Good.
[02:44.260 --> 02:45.840]  Well, maybe next time you'll bring it with you.
[02:46.520 --> 02:47.180]  Good idea.
[02:47.360 --> 02:47.640]  All right.
[02:48.380 --> 03:04.720]  So, yeah, I just made the announcement that the peace movement is over because, obviously, looking at the TV set and looking at the newspapers, there's no possible way that anybody can justify, you know, objecting to this military action by George W.
[03:04.720 --> 03:04.960]  Bush.
[03:05.060 --> 03:06.640]  I mean, it's obvious that it was correct.
[03:06.640 --> 03:07.660]  It was the right thing to do.
[03:07.780 --> 03:14.160]  People are celebrating in the streets, you know, drinking Coca-Cola and, you know, everything else that, you know, good Americans will do.
[03:15.060 --> 03:17.240]  So, I mean, it's over, right, Bernie?
[03:18.800 --> 03:19.780]  I don't think so.
[03:19.900 --> 03:20.420]  You don't think so.
[03:20.480 --> 03:20.700]  Okay.
[03:20.820 --> 03:33.080]  Well, this is where we begin an interesting discussion because, well, I notice a lot of people are missing tonight and I wonder if the reason is that they don't know of any justification for their existence.
[03:33.080 --> 03:35.080]  Maybe they've been taken by the authorities.
[03:35.080 --> 03:35.600]  I don't know.
[03:35.980 --> 03:38.640]  We'll have to see what became of...
[03:38.640 --> 03:39.680]  Maybe they're out celebrating.
[03:39.860 --> 03:41.240]  ...various peace advocates here.
[03:41.680 --> 03:43.860]  Yeah, well, I don't know.
[03:43.860 --> 03:45.260]  There's a lot of celebration going on.
[03:45.380 --> 03:55.660]  If you turn on the television set, you'll see nothing but dancing Iraqis, pulling down statues of Saddam Hussein, waving American flags and all kinds of Iraqi flags and just dancing in the streets.
[03:56.280 --> 03:58.920]  I mean, how do you counter something like this?
[03:59.040 --> 04:02.220]  It's really... I mean, I have plenty of ideas, but I'm just wondering...
[04:02.220 --> 04:08.720]  I'd like to ask our listeners to phone in as well with their thoughts about what we're seeing and what we're not seeing.
[04:09.580 --> 04:15.060]  You know, for one, I'm happy that there's obvious jubilation there.
[04:15.380 --> 04:18.460]  I think it's long overdue that the Iraqi people are happy about something.
[04:18.940 --> 04:21.720]  But my main concern is, where does it go from here?
[04:21.820 --> 04:23.200]  How long does this honeymoon last?
[04:23.620 --> 04:34.160]  And probably the biggest question of all is the way in which it got to this point and whether that's something that can ever be overcome.
[04:34.760 --> 04:35.280]  I don't know.
[04:35.340 --> 04:38.600]  Jim, I suspect you have some feelings on this subject.
[04:38.860 --> 04:48.300]  Well, as you could probably guess, I'm diametrically opposed to the subtle undercurrent and subtext that you're representing.
[04:48.300 --> 04:50.760]  I'm one of those people dancing in the streets.
[04:51.560 --> 05:09.580]  But as I've mentioned before, not on the air, I have the unusual position of thinking that the war in Iraq is a fine idea, but that George Bush should be impeached for using the military in a limited but clear domestic security role.
[05:09.680 --> 05:13.780]  Can we refer to the war as an invasion?
[05:14.040 --> 05:15.100]  Because that's really what it was.
[05:15.240 --> 05:16.940]  Wars have invasions, so what?
[05:17.100 --> 05:20.540]  No, but I mean, there is a difference between invading a country and declaring a war.
[05:20.760 --> 05:23.140]  You know, Germany didn't have a war with Poland.
[05:23.280 --> 05:24.000]  They invaded Poland.
[05:24.180 --> 05:24.820]  You know, it's...
[05:24.820 --> 05:33.460]  Well, we were at war with Germany, and then we invaded France, and then after France, we invaded Germany, crossing the Rhine, remember, 1944 and all that?
[05:33.460 --> 05:34.720]  Okay, but I don't want to go back to World War times.
[05:34.740 --> 05:35.400]  I'm just making one example.
[05:35.400 --> 05:36.900]  Well, it's a good historical example.
[05:36.900 --> 05:37.680]  But what I'm saying is...
[05:37.680 --> 05:41.320]  You can't pick and choose your examples just to justify it.
[05:41.540 --> 05:43.860]  No, Iraq and the United States did not declare war on each other.
[05:43.980 --> 05:45.680]  There was no war between them.
[05:45.880 --> 05:46.720]  We invaded a country.
[05:46.900 --> 05:48.300]  I mean, that's basically what happened.
[05:48.400 --> 05:50.600]  So let's refer to it at least by what it really was.
[05:50.600 --> 06:03.360]  I'll grant you that, but on the other hand, I'll point out what George Bush has mentioned a couple of times, which is that under his interpretation of international law, and let's not go off on the tangent, at least not yet, of whether his interpretation is right,
[06:03.540 --> 06:20.360]  but under his interpretation, the UN resolutions give member states, singly and or jointly and or with the UN's purview, the power to enforce the resolution, which may include invasion.
[06:21.160 --> 06:23.820]  Well, Jim, any time that you have George W.
[06:24.000 --> 06:26.920]  Bush and interpretation in the same sentence, I think you're going to wind up in trouble.
[06:27.020 --> 06:29.140]  Well, like I said, let's handle that after.
[06:29.140 --> 06:31.060]  I just wanted to make the point that I made.
[06:31.060 --> 06:32.520]  The question is, oh, Mike, you're here.
[06:32.760 --> 06:33.160]  Excellent.
[06:33.300 --> 06:34.760]  We thought that you were taken by the authorities.
[06:35.180 --> 06:36.060]  Or the aliens.
[06:36.240 --> 06:37.020]  Or the aliens, yeah.
[06:37.760 --> 06:48.740]  We're discussing how we can possibly justify the peace movement at this point when it's so obvious from everything that's going on how we were so completely wrong.
[06:48.880 --> 06:53.740]  And Jim is doing his bit here to back up George W.
[06:54.060 --> 06:56.840]  and tell us that he was right all along.
[06:56.840 --> 06:59.960]  What are your feelings looking at what's on the television these days?
[07:00.100 --> 07:02.020]  I can't see the television, but I think I'm just as happy.
[07:02.220 --> 07:02.360]  Yeah.
[07:02.620 --> 07:05.280]  Well, I mean, you've heard of the dancing in the streets and the jubilation and all that.
[07:05.420 --> 07:05.760]  So I hear.
[07:05.980 --> 07:06.100]  Yeah.
[07:06.220 --> 07:08.960]  Well, I mean, we'll see what happens in a couple of years.
[07:10.860 --> 07:12.160]  Whether the U.S.
[07:12.200 --> 07:18.060]  is still interested in democracy or oil or whatever.
[07:19.380 --> 07:26.360]  I mean, as everyone, I think, knows by now that Saddam Hussein was, you know, supported by the U.S.
[07:26.440 --> 07:27.820]  until he became unpopular.
[07:28.140 --> 07:28.400]  Mm-hmm.
[07:28.760 --> 07:29.140]  Yeah.
[07:29.240 --> 07:32.780]  You know, that's what a lot of people seem to forget is that these regimes are installed.
[07:33.120 --> 07:38.180]  And then after a few years go by, we lose interest or we don't want to spend the money anymore to prop them up.
[07:38.340 --> 07:43.260]  And then you get your Shah of Iran's, you get your Saddam Hussein's, you even get your Osama bin Laden's.
[07:43.880 --> 07:46.460]  And then it all starts all over again.
[07:46.840 --> 07:57.720]  So I think, obviously, the people are happy to see what might be an end to the constant war or the constant starvation or whatever it is they've had to endure.
[07:58.240 --> 08:03.420]  And, you know, as I said on the other radio show, I think if it was like a Klingon army or something, they would be welcoming them as well.
[08:03.560 --> 08:06.880]  You know, anything that will just, you know, signal some kind of an end.
[08:07.360 --> 08:09.780]  But, you know, they've watched television.
[08:09.920 --> 08:11.020]  They've seen the satellite news.
[08:11.200 --> 08:14.820]  They know about prosperity and all the things that we have that they don't have.
[08:14.880 --> 08:15.840]  They want a bit of that now.
[08:15.940 --> 08:17.340]  They see a chance to get that.
[08:17.920 --> 08:20.640]  And, you know, they have not gotten much out of their regime.
[08:20.640 --> 08:23.340]  So, of course, you know, I don't see this as a huge surprise.
[08:24.800 --> 08:28.140]  I'm just very worried about the way we got here in the first place.
[08:28.340 --> 08:33.060]  You know, the way we basically just said, you know, we don't like this person.
[08:33.160 --> 08:34.440]  We don't like this person running this country.
[08:34.680 --> 08:37.420]  And we're going to just invade and get rid of that person.
[08:37.840 --> 08:44.360]  And there's nothing anybody else can do about it, despite the fact that obviously, obviously, a large part of the rest of the world had big problems with it.
[08:44.500 --> 08:49.040]  Rather than stick around and try and work things out in a different way, we decided to go this way.
[08:49.300 --> 08:51.500]  The question is, where does it stop?
[08:51.680 --> 08:53.120]  Do we go into Syria next?
[08:53.200 --> 08:54.200]  Do we go into Iran next?
[08:54.320 --> 08:56.920]  Do we go into Turkey or Saudi Arabia or God knows what?
[08:57.140 --> 08:59.540]  Turkey and Saudi Arabia are on our side for the moment.
[08:59.760 --> 09:02.020]  Well, you know, Iraq was on our side during the Iraqi-Iran war.
[09:02.140 --> 09:03.340]  You've got to keep up with these things.
[09:03.440 --> 09:05.860]  You've got to constantly check, you know, to see who we're enemies with today.
[09:06.600 --> 09:10.640]  But it's, you know, troubling questions here.
[09:11.040 --> 09:12.740]  You know, what happens next?
[09:12.800 --> 09:13.360]  Where do we go?
[09:13.500 --> 09:17.240]  What happens when, you know, they elect a government that we don't approve of?
[09:17.860 --> 09:19.100]  That happened in Algeria.
[09:19.340 --> 09:29.360]  Algeria elected a Muslim government, you know, an Islamic government that the army did not agree with and they simply threw the election out.
[09:29.360 --> 09:43.540]  I mean, that's important to remember that Turkey, our ally in the war on terror or whatever they are this week, regularly the army goes in and bans Islamic parties because, you know, it doesn't like them.
[09:43.660 --> 09:48.060]  Plus, they're not too fond of the Kurds, which were supposedly there to, you know, to help out.
[09:48.500 --> 09:50.340]  So, you know, the whole thing is very complicated.
[09:50.480 --> 09:51.580]  Right now, yeah, people are happy.
[09:52.620 --> 09:55.260]  But, you know, I'm afraid that's not going to be very long-lived.
[09:55.480 --> 10:04.880]  And I'm also afraid, what are other countries going to say when, like, for instance, Pakistan or India, when they say, well, this country obviously has weapons of mass destruction and we must do something about it and the people are being held captive.
[10:05.160 --> 10:11.600]  You know, what's to stop any other regime from invading another, you know, another country on the example that we set?
[10:11.840 --> 10:13.740]  That's what really worries me here.
[10:13.760 --> 10:15.140]  I never got an answer.
[10:15.280 --> 10:18.800]  Did Turkey invade Iraqi Kurdistan or not yet?
[10:18.800 --> 10:25.400]  They sent troops in, but apparently it was somewhat subdued and nothing really horrible has happened as of yet.
[10:25.700 --> 10:30.280]  But, you know, what happens after the Iraqi regime has changed, it's up in the air.
[10:30.320 --> 10:33.020]  Who knows what, you know, what that's going to turn into.
[10:33.460 --> 10:35.280]  It's going to be pretty interesting, though.
[10:35.720 --> 10:36.520]  They set up a...
[10:36.520 --> 10:36.880]  Hang on.
[10:37.480 --> 10:37.760]  Yeah.
[10:37.900 --> 10:39.040]  They set up a buffer zone.
[10:39.260 --> 10:45.820]  Turkey set up troops to set up a buffer zone and their excuse was to prevent the Kurdish refugees from coming into Turkey.
[10:46.100 --> 10:47.920]  But, of course, it doesn't really make any sense.
[10:47.940 --> 10:49.760]  Yeah, I mean, we've heard that excuse in Kosovo.
[10:49.920 --> 10:54.180]  We've heard that excuse used many, many times where, you know, we're doing it for their own protection.
[10:54.360 --> 10:57.960]  And, of course, you know, it doesn't always work out that way.
[10:58.040 --> 11:01.480]  Also, did we ever find any chemical weapons?
[11:01.700 --> 11:02.740]  Well, that's an interesting question.
[11:02.880 --> 11:05.500]  Okay, look at this headline from yesterday's CNN.
[11:05.660 --> 11:06.200]  Was this yesterday?
[11:07.060 --> 11:09.360]  Actually, it was April 7th.
[11:09.440 --> 11:09.820]  What day was that?
[11:10.160 --> 11:10.280]  Two days ago.
[11:10.360 --> 11:10.760]  That was Monday.
[11:10.920 --> 11:11.020]  Okay.
[11:11.980 --> 11:13.960]  Basically, the headline is chemicals found.
[11:14.900 --> 11:16.900]  And that was a big smoking gun.
[11:17.680 --> 11:20.800]  Chemicals were found during one of the raids.
[11:21.680 --> 11:31.520]  And if you read the story, if you actually read the story, the same page, you clicked on that link, you heard, or you read this paragraph, U.S.
[11:31.760 --> 11:38.580]  troops were testing suspicious materials as possible chemical weapons agents at an agricultural complex in central Iraq.
[11:38.880 --> 11:40.680]  Samples of the materials are being studied.
[11:40.820 --> 11:42.680]  No conclusive determination has been made.
[11:43.100 --> 11:49.220]  The materials stored in barrels and buried had not been weaponized and might simply be pesticides.
[11:49.660 --> 11:51.040]  And that's what it turned out to be.
[11:51.140 --> 11:52.040]  That's what it turned out to be.
[11:52.120 --> 11:53.720]  But, you know, that wasn't the headline.
[11:53.840 --> 11:56.200]  The headline was chemicals found.
[11:56.760 --> 12:00.400]  It sounds... reminds me of Bernie S.'s story about the dental amalgam.
[12:00.480 --> 12:00.700]  The dental amalgam.
[12:00.740 --> 12:01.620]  No, no, wait a moment.
[12:01.700 --> 12:02.320]  Wait a moment.
[12:03.460 --> 12:11.660]  As an ex-chemistry major, I'll tell you just one thing, which is that you can easily make nerve agents out of pesticides.
[12:12.400 --> 12:12.720]  Okay?
[12:12.860 --> 12:14.580]  What, the Iraqis aren't supposed to have pesticides now?
[12:14.700 --> 12:15.120]  No, no.
[12:15.200 --> 12:21.460]  But if they have an outlandish amount of pesticides and no pesticide exporting industry, then you get suspicious.
[12:21.860 --> 12:22.180]  Okay?
[12:22.360 --> 12:23.180]  I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.
[12:23.180 --> 12:24.340]  I think it's a bit of a reach.
[12:24.460 --> 12:24.940]  I mean, you know...
[12:24.940 --> 12:25.840]  No, it's not a bit of a reach.
[12:25.840 --> 12:29.400]  If you want to hide it, you build up your own pesticide industry.
[12:29.620 --> 12:30.940]  I know, but this wasn't a forum.
[12:31.340 --> 12:31.940]  Jim, I...
[12:31.940 --> 12:34.300]  It wasn't an agricultural area where they tend to use pesticides.
[12:34.500 --> 12:36.840]  Yeah, like I said, I'm willing to say it's a maybe.
[12:36.840 --> 12:44.100]  But the point is, the whole reason for this invasion in the first place, or at least one of the top three reasons, was that there were definitely weapons of mass destruction.
[12:44.100 --> 12:45.720]  What happens now if those are never found?
[12:45.880 --> 12:47.340]  You have the cheering people on the streets.
[12:47.560 --> 12:48.680]  Does that justify it?
[12:48.740 --> 12:49.480]  Does that mean it's okay?
[12:49.660 --> 12:55.120]  And any time we think that we can get cheering people on a street to support us, does that mean we can invade that country?
[12:55.120 --> 12:57.000]  I mean, you know, there's various countries...
[12:57.000 --> 12:59.720]  We could invade England, and I'm sure there'd be cheering people on the streets somewhere.
[13:00.120 --> 13:01.680]  But does that justify it?
[13:01.800 --> 13:03.140]  Does that alone justify it?
[13:03.600 --> 13:04.020]  You know?
[13:04.160 --> 13:05.880]  Are we ever going to find these weapons of mass destruction?
[13:06.020 --> 13:07.180]  Now, that's the real question.
[13:07.400 --> 13:11.060]  But I'm just surprised to hear that Jim is such a fan of organic farming.
[13:13.060 --> 13:14.280]  Well, I'm not sure about that.
[13:14.380 --> 13:16.100]  But, Jeff, your feelings on all this?
[13:16.480 --> 13:21.540]  No, I had to actually turn my headphones down a little bit and just sit back and watch you guys go at it.
[13:21.600 --> 13:21.920]  Oh, yeah.
[13:22.060 --> 13:22.940]  No, it's great.
[13:22.960 --> 13:27.500]  This is where it gets interesting, because we're seeing what the next step is.
[13:27.620 --> 13:30.000]  And this is what a lot of people have been predicting.
[13:30.220 --> 13:30.560]  You know?
[13:30.620 --> 13:35.960]  I don't think anyone really thought that the United States was going to lose as far as the attempt to topple the regime.
[13:36.100 --> 13:39.480]  The question was how long would they have to, you know, fight this battle.
[13:39.780 --> 13:48.320]  And, you know, it might still go on for a very long time or, you know, they might completely capitulate seeing how, you know, the war is pretty much already lost with the statues toppling and all that kind of thing.
[13:48.740 --> 13:55.200]  But the real question is what happens in the years ahead and what happens to other countries in the region, what happens to other countries in the world.
[13:55.800 --> 14:05.020]  I just, I don't even know if it's really over as far as, you know, just, you can see where people may say, well, let's just backpedal a little bit or maybe we'll ambush later.
[14:05.540 --> 14:11.000]  You know, I mean, I have just a bad feeling about the whole thing and how this came about so easily and quickly.
[14:11.320 --> 14:25.520]  Yeah, and we also have, you know, really bad situations as far as things that have been happening over there that are being completely glossed over, such as the targeting of media people by tanks and planes.
[14:26.160 --> 14:28.920]  I mean, this has not gotten all that much attention in the United States.
[14:29.040 --> 14:29.560]  It's gotten some.
[14:29.740 --> 14:30.620]  You're talking about the Al Jazeera?
[14:30.620 --> 14:37.260]  Al Jazeera, Al Jazeera reporter was killed by, you know, one of our, I believe, a tank.
[14:37.400 --> 14:38.840]  It was a Palestine hotel.
[14:39.220 --> 14:39.900]  No, no, no, no, no.
[14:39.980 --> 14:41.660]  That was where the Reuters reporter was killed.
[14:41.660 --> 14:44.500]  No, and that was where the Al Jazeera reporter, it's the same building.
[14:44.800 --> 14:46.400]  And it was two separate attacks.
[14:46.660 --> 14:47.540]  Two separate buildings.
[14:47.640 --> 14:48.220]  Two separate buildings.
[14:48.480 --> 14:48.960]  Two separate buildings.
[14:48.980 --> 14:50.860]  Al Jazeera was in, had their own building.
[14:51.260 --> 14:53.460]  They had satellite up links and all that stuff.
[14:54.260 --> 14:55.540]  That got bombed.
[14:55.780 --> 14:55.960]  Right.
[14:55.960 --> 15:02.520]  And the Palestine hotel, where there were journalists from all kinds of news organizations from around the world, That was directly targeted by a U.S.
[15:02.600 --> 15:02.840]  tank.
[15:03.660 --> 15:09.300]  All the journalists in there afterwards said, we never heard any fire coming out of this building.
[15:09.640 --> 15:11.680]  The rationale was that U.S.
[15:11.760 --> 15:14.120]  troops were fired upon from that hotel.
[15:14.360 --> 15:19.500]  And I've been in a building once where somebody was shooting an AK-15 off the roof, and you can't miss it.
[15:19.980 --> 15:21.340]  You cannot miss that situation.
[15:21.340 --> 15:33.120]  And that denial was very strongly voiced on BBC, where interviews with journalists were presented on the air, and I think CNN did not do anything near that amount of coverage.
[15:33.360 --> 15:34.900]  So a lot of people don't know about this.
[15:34.940 --> 15:37.800]  A lot of people aren't aware that this kind of thing was happening.
[15:39.520 --> 15:43.000]  The Al Jazeera website... I'm sorry, the Al Jazeera website is up.
[15:43.720 --> 15:45.380]  Theenglish.aljazeera.net.
[15:45.460 --> 15:46.860]  I'm able to actually connect to it right now.
[15:47.960 --> 15:49.020]  Go over there, take a look.
[15:49.280 --> 15:50.280]  In fact, here are some stories.
[15:50.980 --> 15:52.000]  I'll pass them around the room.
[15:52.060 --> 15:56.560]  People can see for themselves how objective they try to be anyway.
[15:56.980 --> 15:59.000]  Certainly nothing like what we've been told.
[15:59.320 --> 16:02.340]  And I'm glad we're able to finally read what they say for ourselves.
[16:02.340 --> 16:09.880]  But there's one story here that's not entirely objective, and it's because of the fact that this person was killed.
[16:10.520 --> 16:13.740]  Colleagues of the Al Jazeera correspondent killed on Tuesday when two U.S.
[16:14.140 --> 16:19.340]  missiles struck the Baghdad offices of the Qatar-based channel have said they believe they were deliberately targeted.
[16:20.320 --> 16:26.060]  I will not be objective about this because we have been dragged into this conflict, said Tizer Aluni.
[16:26.440 --> 16:31.560]  We were targeted because the Americans don't want the world to see the crimes they are committing against the Iraqi people.
[16:31.560 --> 16:36.080]  His wife, Dima Ataboub, said she received phone calls from Ayyub every day.
[16:36.300 --> 16:38.360]  He was not scared at all, she said, as she wept silently.
[16:38.560 --> 16:40.720]  The last time she spoke to him was Monday evening.
[16:40.720 --> 16:42.500]  He was exhausted and his voice was tired.
[16:42.780 --> 16:45.220]  He said they were barely sleeping three hours a day.
[16:45.440 --> 16:49.760]  I tried to comfort him, and then he told me not to worry, saying that the situation was not bad for journalists.
[16:50.340 --> 16:51.740]  Probably everyone will forget him.
[16:51.820 --> 16:53.280]  Maybe Al Jazeera will forget him.
[16:53.400 --> 16:55.480]  But he is now with God, who does not forget anyone.
[16:56.180 --> 17:02.840]  Another cameraman, Zahir Araki, his last name is actually Araki, was slightly hurt in his neck by shrapnel.
[17:03.040 --> 17:07.240]  They were both standing on the roof, getting ready for a live broadcast amid intensifying bombardment of the city.
[17:07.340 --> 17:13.120]  When the building was hit by two missiles, according to Tizer Aluni, another Al Jazeera correspondent.
[17:14.160 --> 17:17.160]  Cameraman Araki came down bleeding, but Ayyub did not show up.
[17:17.360 --> 17:22.420]  I ran up as the shells were still falling and crawled on the roof and shouted for Tariq, but he did not answer, Aluni said.
[17:22.420 --> 17:24.860]  Aluni had gone down because of the intense bombing.
[17:25.000 --> 17:31.400]  He later went up, and with the help of Abu Dhabi TV correspondent, Jabber Obaid, found Ayyub's body.
[17:32.060 --> 17:36.200]  Aluni, Jabber, and others took Ayyub in an Abu Dhabi TV vehicle to a hospital.
[17:36.380 --> 17:37.620]  Shortly afterwards, U.S.
[17:37.680 --> 17:41.080]  warplanes returned to hit the neighboring Abu Dhabi TV offices.
[17:41.440 --> 17:47.060]  Another of Jazeera's Baghdad correspondents, Majed Abdel Hadi, called the U.S.
[17:47.140 --> 17:49.680]  missile strike and Ayyub's death a crime.
[17:49.680 --> 17:54.220]  Al Jazeera aired footage of Ayyub only one hour before his death as he was preparing to go live.
[17:54.220 --> 17:57.240]  He was leaning on sandbags and wearing a helmet and a flak jacket.
[17:57.780 --> 18:02.700]  I knew Tariq for 10 years, said Yasser Abu Hilala, Al Jazeera correspondent in Amun.
[18:03.100 --> 18:05.980]  He was very brave, professional, and a hard worker.
[18:08.000 --> 18:12.520]  And Al Jazeera offices located in a residential area, there was no way that the attack was a mistake.
[18:13.320 --> 18:15.500]  Ayyub, age 35, was married with one daughter.
[18:15.500 --> 18:23.460]  He traveled to Baghdad only five days ago to join the Al Jazeera team from the channel's Amun office, where he had worked as a financial correspondent for three years.
[18:23.900 --> 18:29.460]  Originally from Palestine, he had also worked for the Jordan Times and the International News Agency Associated Press.
[18:31.500 --> 18:37.760]  Earlier, Abdel Hadi told Al Jazeera that the office was deliberately targeted and it is not the first time.
[18:38.080 --> 18:40.200]  Our Kabul office was hit by four U.S.
[18:40.560 --> 18:40.560]  missiles.
[18:40.560 --> 18:41.320]  U.S.
[18:41.400 --> 18:47.780]  warplanes hit the Afghanistan office of Al Jazeera in 2001, just ten minutes after its correspondents had received warning of an impending attack.
[18:48.440 --> 18:54.900]  Last week, the hotel where Al Jazeera correspondents in the southern Iraqi city of Basra was also hit by four bombs that did not explode.
[18:55.480 --> 18:58.060]  The Al Jazeera team has no role in the war.
[18:58.380 --> 19:00.780]  We are only witnesses and are reporting objectively.
[19:00.780 --> 19:01.920]  This proves that the U.S.
[19:01.960 --> 19:04.480]  is trying to cover the crimes it commits in its war in Iraq.
[19:04.860 --> 19:07.740]  Targeting witnesses is the biggest crime.
[19:08.240 --> 19:15.200]  The bombing left Al Jazeera's offices in ruin, but the channel said it would continue its coverage of the U.S.-led war on Iraq that began on March 20th.
[19:15.320 --> 19:21.880]  It is impossible to work in the office, but we will continue to cover the war within the capabilities that we have and despite the difficult circumstances.
[19:23.160 --> 19:29.200]  And the story goes on for quite a bit, but it just goes to show that this kind of thing is a big deal.
[19:29.400 --> 19:29.860]  It really is.
[19:29.920 --> 19:33.860]  Maybe not here, but it's a big deal in just about every country in the rest of the world.
[19:34.600 --> 19:41.060]  One of the articles that you passed around points out that we didn't win the war yet because the U.S.
[19:41.100 --> 19:44.320]  only controls two cities, Basra and Baghdad.
[19:44.580 --> 19:48.220]  But that's just the southern part of all of Iraq.
[19:48.400 --> 19:52.040]  I mean, there's still a lot more cities left to...
[19:52.040 --> 19:54.180]  And also, it's a question of maintaining all this.
[19:54.520 --> 19:56.420]  I mean, this is not something that's easy to do.
[19:56.660 --> 19:58.520]  I mean, we can't even do it in our own country.
[19:58.660 --> 20:00.720]  We can't, you know, keep infrastructures from crumbling.
[20:00.720 --> 20:02.960]  We can't, you know, keep people fed.
[20:03.540 --> 20:08.620]  I don't know how we expect to be able to do this in another country with far more serious problems.
[20:08.660 --> 20:09.720]  Well, it's simple.
[20:09.860 --> 20:10.040]  The U.S.
[20:10.140 --> 20:12.260]  government doesn't care about keeping people fed.
[20:12.360 --> 20:15.160]  If you don't care, it's relatively easy to meet your standards.
[20:15.620 --> 20:15.980]  Yeah.
[20:16.120 --> 20:18.660]  Well, eventually, they're going to figure that out over there.
[20:18.880 --> 20:21.120]  That's what I wonder is going to happen.
[20:21.220 --> 20:22.260]  You know, what's going to happen at that point?
[20:23.600 --> 20:30.520]  Also, this piece of mail that we got today from one of the many people that are out there to send us pieces of mail like this.
[20:30.580 --> 20:34.140]  Please note, Al Jazeera is anti-American, anti-Christian.
[20:34.260 --> 20:35.020]  Christian spelled wrong.
[20:35.500 --> 20:36.680]  Make no mistake about it.
[20:36.740 --> 20:39.520]  Even war protesters should know they want to start an Islamic holy war.
[20:39.700 --> 20:44.420]  They're reporting anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-jewish news, not just lying outright.
[20:44.800 --> 20:49.620]  The newsman from Al Jazeera was in bed with a terrorist gunman, and I wouldn't mind them being run out of town.
[20:50.020 --> 20:54.500]  And then it gives all this technical information, apparently sent to us, so that we could take them off the net.
[20:54.760 --> 20:57.160]  As if we would approve of such a thing.
[20:57.340 --> 20:58.600]  Or, you want this?
[20:58.820 --> 20:59.000]  Yeah.
[20:59.160 --> 20:59.420]  Okay.
[21:01.460 --> 21:02.180]  It's really...
[21:03.460 --> 21:05.280]  It's crazy, the perceptions that are out there.
[21:05.340 --> 21:06.540]  People actually think these things.
[21:07.880 --> 21:08.960]  Go to the site yourself.
[21:09.160 --> 21:09.700]  Check it out.
[21:10.160 --> 21:11.720]  Tell us what you think.
[21:11.720 --> 21:13.880]  Now, we have a lot of phone calls, so I would like to get to those.
[21:14.460 --> 21:17.560]  Bernie, any other comments from you as far as what's been going on?
[21:17.840 --> 21:22.540]  Well, I'm all for people being happy, and I'm sure there are a lot of happy people in Baghdad right now.
[21:22.820 --> 21:33.020]  I'm just afraid the party is going to end very soon when they realize that they have little in the way of infrastructure, food, water, that sort of thing.
[21:33.020 --> 21:44.380]  And, frankly, I don't think Iraqis want an American government any more than Americans would want an Iraqi-controlled government.
[21:44.720 --> 21:47.820]  So, I don't think these people are going to...
[21:47.820 --> 21:52.540]  I mean, I think anybody would be happy after decades of a brutal dictator...
[21:52.540 --> 21:52.880]  Right.
[21:53.020 --> 21:55.780]  ...who our government once supported for a long period of time.
[21:56.820 --> 22:01.220]  But, you know, I hope everything is happy and everybody lives happily ever after.
[22:01.320 --> 22:01.800]  But it's just...
[22:01.800 --> 22:03.600]  I don't think it's going to pan out that way.
[22:03.940 --> 22:04.160]  Yeah.
[22:04.300 --> 22:05.520]  You know, even if...
[22:05.520 --> 22:07.260]  First of all, when did the troops leave?
[22:07.300 --> 22:09.260]  I mean, the goal was to get Saddam Hussein out.
[22:09.340 --> 22:10.100]  Apparently, he's out.
[22:10.420 --> 22:12.800]  The goal was to rid the country of weapons of mass destruction.
[22:12.800 --> 22:14.040]  Apparently, there aren't any there.
[22:14.460 --> 22:17.840]  So, okay, with all those criteria met, what do we do now?
[22:17.980 --> 22:19.200]  You know, what's the next step?
[22:19.600 --> 22:26.820]  I have a feeling the next step is going to involve years of occupation, of all kinds of permanent bases being set up.
[22:27.440 --> 22:35.120]  And, you know, had this been said from the outset, I believe a lot more people would have said, Wait a minute, is this really the right path to go down?
[22:35.140 --> 22:36.960]  What is this going to mean for the long term?
[22:37.100 --> 22:38.500]  Yes, for the short term, people are happy.
[22:39.300 --> 22:40.580]  It's like, you know, if you...
[22:41.100 --> 22:41.900]  Look at it this way.
[22:41.900 --> 22:54.180]  If you live in a rich family, all right, and you just basically steal kids from poor families, you know, they might be upset at first, but eventually they're going to say, you know, Hey, wow, this is great.
[22:54.180 --> 22:56.440]  You know, I've got all the things that I want.
[22:56.600 --> 22:59.860]  And they might forget that they, you know, came from a poor family.
[22:59.980 --> 23:01.440]  They might forget all about their heritage.
[23:02.260 --> 23:04.920]  And this kind of a thing, it's not right.
[23:05.280 --> 23:08.040]  It might make people happy for a little bit, but for the wrong reasons.
[23:08.040 --> 23:20.340]  You know, when you had the uprisings such as in the Philippines and East Germany, where people did this on their own, it somehow was a lot more legitimate and a lot more lasting.
[23:20.780 --> 23:29.820]  But when you have a foreign army sent in to basically destroy your government and then, you know, then say, okay, it's time to celebrate.
[23:30.620 --> 23:31.300]  I don't know.
[23:31.720 --> 23:34.140]  Can someone point to a time when that was successful?
[23:35.820 --> 23:36.520]  Didn't think so.
[23:36.700 --> 23:37.600]  All right, let's take a small call.
[23:37.760 --> 23:39.280]  212-209-2900.
[23:39.380 --> 23:40.420]  Just one more point before you do that.
[23:40.460 --> 23:42.720]  You said there may be years of occupation.
[23:44.280 --> 23:46.000]  What's happening in Afghanistan now?
[23:46.180 --> 23:48.020]  I've forgotten all about that country.
[23:48.120 --> 23:56.400]  Well, I've heard that very little, if any, money is being allocated towards humanitarian purposes now in Afghanistan, now that the Taliban have been driven out.
[23:56.400 --> 24:01.600]  In fact, I believe the leadership is rather upset with us right now because of all the attention we're paying to Iraq.
[24:02.800 --> 24:04.020]  So, it's a good question.
[24:04.160 --> 24:05.600]  I don't know what's going on over there right now.
[24:05.900 --> 24:12.580]  You know, basically, the official line is that we were victorious and that we helped restore all these nice things to them.
[24:12.620 --> 24:14.060]  But how are they really faring?
[24:14.160 --> 24:15.200]  I'd like to find out for sure.
[24:15.680 --> 24:17.100]  And, you know, what's the next step, too?
[24:17.180 --> 24:21.500]  We're now accusing Syria of harboring Saddam Hussein's henchmen.
[24:22.300 --> 24:25.360]  And it just sounds like the same kind of rhetoric that was used towards Iraq.
[24:25.360 --> 24:26.980]  Now it's being used towards a different country.
[24:27.200 --> 24:29.100]  And it seems like there's always going to be another country.
[24:29.500 --> 24:30.600]  There's always going to be another country.
[24:30.700 --> 24:33.680]  And are we now going to go into every single country that has a dictator?
[24:33.840 --> 24:34.480]  You want to do that, Jim?
[24:34.720 --> 24:35.240]  Every country?
[24:35.360 --> 24:36.360]  I mean, there's so many of them.
[24:36.500 --> 24:39.760]  I'd say the majority of countries in this world are not democratic regimes.
[24:40.040 --> 24:40.700]  Let's start with the U.S.
[24:41.120 --> 24:41.680]  Well, yeah.
[24:42.060 --> 24:47.520]  But the thing is, I don't think people will be cheering in the streets if, you know, another country comes in and takes over our government.
[24:47.660 --> 24:48.380]  No, I want the U.S.
[24:48.440 --> 24:49.240]  to invade the U.S.
[24:49.260 --> 24:50.400]  and turn it into a democracy.
[24:50.400 --> 24:57.600]  But if you decimate our country for, you know, a long, long time and, you know, basically things get really bad, then I'm sure they'll be cheering then.
[24:57.980 --> 24:58.440]  We'll see.
[24:58.800 --> 24:59.440]  Let's take a phone call.
[24:59.680 --> 25:00.960]  212-209-2900.
[25:01.040 --> 25:01.280]  Good evening.
[25:01.400 --> 25:01.740]  You're on the air.
[25:01.740 --> 25:04.180]  Yes, I'll just say this one thing, factual.
[25:05.300 --> 25:08.320]  1964 book, The Invisible Government by David Wise and Thomas B.
[25:08.420 --> 25:13.720]  Ross, and the 1971 book, Global Reach, both of those books together, and I've read them very extensively.
[25:13.720 --> 25:27.700]  They made it clear in the current situation in our world, even though it was way back when these books were written, they made it clear the men and women who helped fund the Nazi situation in Germany, who helped God knows put up how many banana republics,
[25:27.800 --> 25:38.780]  who set up all these dictators, who a lot of them, either asses of the CIA or various operatives, on the public record with various DOD agencies, NSC agencies, NSA agencies.
[25:39.400 --> 25:43.460]  These people together said, okay, let's make it, I'll make it real short here.
[25:43.600 --> 25:45.260]  Let's put an idiot president in office.
[25:45.440 --> 25:47.920]  Let's make sure he's voted in by the courts.
[25:47.920 --> 25:50.580]  Let's make, therefore, no, people have no real say over him.
[25:50.940 --> 26:00.480]  And let's just wipe out as many people as we got in this world, take what they got, and before they turn their attention to us in mass, let's just simply wipe it all out.
[26:00.600 --> 26:06.660]  I can't take it with me, and I'm not going to be able to pass it to anybody because I've killed most of my own family and friends and colleagues and allies.
[26:06.860 --> 26:09.340]  So, hey, if I can't take it with me, nobody can.
[26:09.340 --> 26:17.940]  And both of those books, even though it's not that gruesome the way the books said it, in detail, it just detailed how it got to where it is, how it structures, and who has real say.
[26:18.140 --> 26:19.220]  What are the names of the books again?
[26:19.640 --> 26:23.400]  The Invisible Government, it came out in two editions.
[26:23.700 --> 26:26.700]  One in 1964, written by Thomas B.
[26:26.860 --> 26:27.920]  Ross and David Wise.
[26:28.160 --> 26:33.360]  And it was not another book came out shortly after Watergate came out, but it was another edition, soft cover.
[26:33.620 --> 26:36.080]  And the other book is called Global Reach.
[26:36.080 --> 26:37.880]  It was made in 1971.
[26:38.440 --> 26:39.700]  I forgot the author's name for it.
[26:39.760 --> 26:54.200]  And Global Reach deals with, actually tells in detail, confirm public record and public corporate records, detail how multi-corporations owned by and bastardized various government agencies and corporations and quasi-government agencies throughout the world,
[26:54.300 --> 27:10.040]  but concentrated in the United States, in terms of, say, a company that starts small, that becomes global, doesn't care what the president or anybody in the United States says, and pretty much determines how world policy goes, because if that company literally has a budget as big as five or ten nations,
[27:10.140 --> 27:21.280]  no matter what the size, they can literally determine how the social situation will go, how the economic one will go, God knows how education will go, whether or not a nation will go to war, hint, hint, and anything else.
[27:21.400 --> 27:32.800]  And I mean, even now, you know, I criticized the book a lot until I called various companies, like Exxon, I called Citibank, I called some of these companies, and when I asked them certain information from the book, this is a 1971 book, and I called last year,
[27:32.920 --> 27:42.220]  and they confirmed over half of the information in the book, and I didn't say what I read, I just simply took pieces of information, whole chunks, whole sections, whole documents, and they said, no, is it true?
[27:42.440 --> 27:43.500]  It's on public record.
[27:43.600 --> 27:44.280]  It's in Congress.
[27:44.460 --> 27:50.920]  So the senators, in plain and simple, are saying they've been in bed so long, so deep, they can't afford to oppose these companies.
[27:51.020 --> 27:54.980]  They can't even afford to give the appearance of being, what do you call, impartial.
[27:54.980 --> 27:59.640]  They can't do it, like a John McCain, who cares, you know, Ralph Nader, or that's another headache.
[27:59.780 --> 28:06.580]  He's a headache, man, so get him out of the way by simply saying, you can't talk, you can't run, you can't do anything, you know, but those two books make it clear.
[28:06.720 --> 28:14.700]  Like, opinion-wise, my opinion, the president should never have gone to an invasion, an invasive action against Iraq.
[28:14.720 --> 28:25.540]  I don't call it a war, because, like, one lady on WBAI says it's a massacre, and it basically is, like, we're going to probably see in the months to come that we're going to see a lot of dead civilians and a lot of dead soldiers, U.S.
[28:25.920 --> 28:30.360]  soldiers, that they're not going to account for, they're not going to talk about, not even counting the Iraqi personnel.
[28:30.700 --> 28:36.060]  And I'm going to, I mean, I can see my father was a Vietnam veteran, and he just told me stuff, horror stories, over Vietnam.
[28:36.380 --> 28:46.560]  And what I'm seeing now, with a president who's admitted he's not up to snuff in terms of information any other president would be on, he's going to say, look, I'm going to look the other way, and you guys do whatever you want.
[28:46.560 --> 28:49.440]  And the law, National Security Act of 47, it's written.
[28:49.640 --> 28:51.620]  As long as you look the other way, they can do whatever they want.
[28:51.640 --> 28:52.240]  And it's legal.
[28:52.360 --> 28:52.960]  It's not right.
[28:53.100 --> 28:53.740]  It's not ethical.
[28:53.900 --> 28:56.260]  It's sure not proper, but it's legal.
[28:56.400 --> 28:57.360]  And that's what they're going by.
[28:57.580 --> 28:58.060]  Okay, thanks.
[28:58.180 --> 28:58.840]  Thanks for your opinions.
[28:59.000 --> 28:59.300]  No problem.
[28:59.460 --> 28:59.720]  All right.
[29:00.240 --> 29:02.880]  202-209-2900 is our phone number.
[29:02.940 --> 29:14.920]  I think one thing that's very interesting is that you see a lot of the same people, you know, appearing year after year, decade after decade, the Kissingers and, you know, the Bushes and, you know, Rockefellers and all those people.
[29:14.920 --> 29:16.320]  They just never seem to go away.
[29:16.460 --> 29:19.260]  They're always, you know, controlling in some way.
[29:19.400 --> 29:23.680]  So, yeah, I think, you know, it's good to know the history, and that puts a lot of things in perspective.
[29:24.380 --> 29:25.320]  Let's take another phone call.
[29:25.400 --> 29:25.700]  Good evening.
[29:25.800 --> 29:26.360]  You're on the air.
[29:27.460 --> 29:28.480]  Oh, how are you doing?
[29:28.660 --> 29:28.780]  Good.
[29:28.860 --> 29:28.980]  How are you?
[29:29.500 --> 29:30.080]  Very well.
[29:30.240 --> 29:37.660]  You know, you talk about the history being helpful to put things in context, but, well, first I should compliment you.
[29:37.700 --> 29:43.120]  You addressed the big news today head on and put it right up as a topic of discussion.
[29:43.540 --> 29:56.160]  Unlike the BAI news that I heard earlier that did a quick gloss over, as far as the fellow personnel in the office that have all disappeared, I got the distinct impression that they did disappear today, too.
[29:56.260 --> 29:57.640]  I've been listening all day long.
[29:58.880 --> 30:00.220]  I wouldn't go that far.
[30:00.380 --> 30:02.820]  You might have heard local news, not national news.
[30:02.860 --> 30:06.440]  I'm not sure I didn't hear it myself, but I don't think people are trying to pretend this isn't happening.
[30:06.440 --> 30:06.940]  Right.
[30:07.200 --> 30:23.360]  I think that going back to history is something that people need to do now in order to pick and choose facts that support their predetermined position because it's getting harder and harder to do so and support that predetermined ideological position.
[30:23.880 --> 30:28.340]  You said you can't forget history, is what you told everybody a little while ago.
[30:28.500 --> 30:34.240]  But, I mean, I really should tell you, I mean, in my belief, history is only relevant up to a point.
[30:34.860 --> 30:42.780]  I mean, Churchill once said something, and I'm paraphrasing, that Americans can be counted to do the right thing as a last resort.
[30:42.980 --> 30:58.600]  And I know that we went ahead and used all of those countries out there as a filling station with no regard to their well-being, you know, of the people, to the institutions, and how they might develop to meet the needs of the people better.
[30:58.600 --> 30:59.500]  We haven't.
[30:59.600 --> 31:13.560]  But we went in today, into Baghdad, and on the news was an Iraqi Marine, and he frankly told the person that was, you know, interviewing him, you know, I really didn't know what to think about going in.
[31:13.700 --> 31:17.660]  But seeing what I see now, I don't really care why we went in.
[31:17.760 --> 31:19.520]  I'm just glad we're here now.
[31:19.520 --> 31:22.440]  So, there are two groups of people.
[31:22.640 --> 31:26.720]  One that say, hey, you know, it's justified, considering what we found here.
[31:26.880 --> 31:42.500]  And the other group that will always go to the motives, whatever they might be, they'll find an evil one, and they'll say, you know, no, maybe we should give the country back to the bath party, perhaps, and, you know, leave them with a bunch of reparations for the damage we've done.
[31:42.500 --> 31:44.540]  Obviously an absurd idea.
[31:45.260 --> 31:53.060]  Well, I mean, the real question is, who gets the country now, and how is that decision made, and how is that enforced, and how has that stand up over years?
[31:53.320 --> 32:01.440]  I think that's tricky, because I think about after one month, they're going to want us the heck out, and they're going to dislike us as much as the prior regime.
[32:01.600 --> 32:09.740]  I was aghast when I saw that flag go up over the face of the statue just before they pulled it down and then put up the Iraqi flag.
[32:10.000 --> 32:11.980]  Real bad thing to do.
[32:11.980 --> 32:13.640]  Yeah, and I also don't think it's appropriate for U.S.
[32:13.660 --> 32:15.920]  soldiers to be going around knocking over national symbols.
[32:16.100 --> 32:22.760]  Well, we walked from the beginning, and the group spontaneously came up to the symbol, started beating it with sledgehammers.
[32:22.800 --> 32:26.280]  If a group of people are Iraqi, that's one thing, but if it's, you know, U.S.
[32:26.400 --> 32:28.340]  Marines doing it, I just think that's completely inappropriate.
[32:28.600 --> 32:42.260]  I did think at that time that if I was the Marine commander on the ground right there, that I would have suggested to them that if they had that mission to do so, we would keep the area secure, and that they could go out and find a local bulldozer and keep it all Iraqi.
[32:42.460 --> 32:47.300]  Because I understand how Al Jazeera would spin that and how others would spin that.
[32:47.440 --> 33:00.860]  But on the other hand, that was an Iraqi-initiated and pretty well-controlled little operation that happened, and dragging the head through the streets there of Saddam's statue was, again, not some...
[33:00.860 --> 33:02.260]  I think that was kind of sincere.
[33:02.820 --> 33:07.180]  Well, I mean, if it was... I didn't see that, but if it was done by the Iraqi people, yes, then it probably would have been sincere.
[33:07.580 --> 33:08.360]  It was amazing.
[33:08.520 --> 33:09.780]  And let me ask you, you mentioned Al Jazeera.
[33:09.840 --> 33:11.240]  Have you read their English website?
[33:12.140 --> 33:15.620]  No, you know, I'm not really computer literate except for your show.
[33:15.780 --> 33:19.260]  I mean, I listened to it, have for years, and the computer show.
[33:19.260 --> 33:29.520]  But I'm only catching everything I can on the spectrum of cable TV and your radio station, but nothing on the web.
[33:29.840 --> 33:30.100]  Uh-huh.
[33:30.260 --> 33:33.740]  Okay, well, if you get access to the web, just type english.aljazeera.net.
[33:34.060 --> 33:37.580]  Decide for yourself if, you know, if they're spinning things in a different direction.
[33:38.140 --> 33:41.920]  Emmanuel, can I just say one thing about your...
[33:41.920 --> 33:54.120]  You brought up Poland and invasions, and I thought the most appropriate parallel, although no parallel is perfect, is when the Americans and the allies marched into France.
[33:54.360 --> 34:01.660]  Much of France was Vichy-controlled at the time by Marshal Pétain, who was the general in France that the Nazis left.
[34:01.740 --> 34:11.160]  And when they marched in to French-controlled territory, granted, the Nazis left them that territory and said, you know, if you don't administer it, then we'll take that, too.
[34:11.520 --> 34:14.960]  It was kind of clear that that was a liberation, not an invasion.
[34:15.020 --> 34:21.720]  In this case, I think that what's going to be the determinant is the reaction of the people, and we're still looking to see how they're reacting.
[34:21.940 --> 34:24.720]  Today was only one day, but I think the invasion...
[34:24.720 --> 34:30.140]  You know, it may be justified after the fact, in a sense, or at least defined after the fact.
[34:30.240 --> 34:37.100]  Well, I mean, I think there's a big difference between liberating a country from another foreign invader and liberating a country from...
[34:37.100 --> 34:38.140]  Yeah, I see the picture on...
[34:38.140 --> 34:42.660]  Can't really show the picture on the air, so yeah, everyone's pointing at a picture of an American flag over Saddam Hussein's face.
[34:42.660 --> 34:43.260]  Yeah.
[34:43.560 --> 34:51.100]  But the point is, you know, there's a big difference between liberating a country from another invader and liberating the country from its own leader.
[34:51.760 --> 34:55.100]  And like it or not, you know, Saddam Hussein was the Iraqi people's leader.
[34:55.340 --> 34:58.700]  You know, obviously, it wasn't done democratically, but so many countries aren't.
[34:59.080 --> 35:01.000]  And, you know, it's...
[35:01.700 --> 35:03.260]  I just don't know where you draw the line.
[35:03.480 --> 35:04.380]  U.S., for instance.
[35:04.580 --> 35:06.440]  I just wonder whether you feel that he needs to be...
[35:06.440 --> 35:10.580]  they need to be stuck with that leader because he is their, quote, leader.
[35:10.580 --> 35:13.480]  I mean, every fifth person was an informer.
[35:13.660 --> 35:16.880]  Every household had lost someone to his regime.
[35:17.420 --> 35:21.500]  Right, but compare it to Nicolae Ciesescu, the former ruler of Romania.
[35:21.900 --> 35:25.320]  Okay, that was somebody who every third person was an informant there.
[35:25.440 --> 35:27.700]  And the guy, you know, built palaces for himself.
[35:27.840 --> 35:28.880]  And his people lived in poverty.
[35:29.000 --> 35:30.680]  They had to turn the lights off at night all the time.
[35:31.080 --> 35:35.140]  And this was somebody that was driven out of the country by the people of the country.
[35:35.300 --> 35:36.040]  We didn't go in.
[35:36.240 --> 35:40.160]  Today, I imagine we would go in and topple him, you know, at the behest of the people.
[35:40.340 --> 35:42.280]  But then the people did it themselves.
[35:42.620 --> 35:43.400]  And you know what?
[35:43.460 --> 35:43.900]  It stuck.
[35:44.060 --> 35:44.600]  It lasted.
[35:44.800 --> 35:46.200]  You know, it never came back.
[35:47.240 --> 35:50.000]  As far as that, we should be out very, very quickly.
[35:50.000 --> 35:51.860]  But there's two schools of thought there.
[35:51.980 --> 35:53.860]  One is that we need to stay long.
[35:53.980 --> 35:55.360]  Well, I'll give you an example.
[35:55.520 --> 36:02.380]  We went through a village and then the elders came, joined the service members that were there.
[36:02.620 --> 36:04.180]  They went ahead and cooperated.
[36:04.560 --> 36:06.760]  The village was, quote, liberated, unquote.
[36:06.760 --> 36:07.660]  They moved on.
[36:07.960 --> 36:11.880]  The bath regimists moved back into the village and killed those elders.
[36:12.160 --> 36:15.440]  That's a report that came out through a couple of the channels.
[36:15.940 --> 36:16.420]  So that kind of...
[36:16.420 --> 36:17.300]  Where have you seen that?
[36:17.320 --> 36:17.800]  I haven't heard that.
[36:18.180 --> 36:19.020]  Oh, that was...
[36:19.020 --> 36:20.200]  You know, I kind of...
[36:20.200 --> 36:28.080]  You know, was scanning sort of compulsively, just going to each station and reading all the scrolling that goes on underneath.
[36:28.260 --> 36:31.640]  So that's not confirmed other than I saw it scroll through.
[36:36.760 --> 36:39.240]  The story doesn't turn out to be true.
[36:39.500 --> 36:57.080]  And that is, you can't go in and necessarily, you know, just say, okay, he's gone, goodbye, because there's much of those prior regime that these Iraqis are demonstrably so happy And future regimes, you know, future regimes that will sprout up as well.
[36:57.360 --> 37:00.580]  You know, it's impossible for a foreign country to control this.
[37:00.940 --> 37:02.860]  You know, bad things are going to happen over there.
[37:03.040 --> 37:04.360]  They will do it on their own.
[37:04.440 --> 37:08.760]  I think we just have to provide security for as brief a period of time as possible.
[37:08.900 --> 37:21.080]  Let them make their self-determination and make it real clear that we're there at their convenience and have a minimum of personnel there necessary to affect that with their invite.
[37:21.280 --> 37:26.200]  And if it doesn't look like that's what's happening, you know, we have to adjust and withdraw.
[37:26.600 --> 37:37.380]  But in that way, the jubilation that you see on their faces today and if you watch all of those pictures, it's kind of clear it'll continue on as a positive thing, you know?
[37:37.480 --> 37:38.600]  Okay, listen, thanks for your call.
[37:38.740 --> 37:39.220]  We're going to move on.
[37:39.460 --> 37:40.260]  Thank you.
[37:40.420 --> 37:40.680]  Okay.
[37:41.040 --> 37:43.320]  Jim, then Bernie.
[37:43.440 --> 37:44.280]  No, let Bernie go first.
[37:44.380 --> 37:45.100]  All right, Bernie, then Jim.
[37:45.980 --> 37:49.760]  I was listening to the BBC on Shortwave last night and I heard a terrific quote.
[37:50.480 --> 37:56.820]  It was from an Egyptian parliament member who was being interviewed by the BBC correspondent.
[37:58.260 --> 38:04.580]  And what this guy said was democracy cannot be exported.
[38:04.920 --> 38:05.540]  I'm sorry.
[38:05.780 --> 38:10.300]  Democracy cannot be imported on the wings of a Tomahawk missile.
[38:11.240 --> 38:12.980]  And that really stuck with me.
[38:13.320 --> 38:15.320]  That's kind of how we're imposing...
[38:15.320 --> 38:22.860]  I don't think the people there can even handle democracy, frankly, because no Arab country has ever had a successful democracy as far as I know.
[38:23.160 --> 38:31.060]  I don't know if that's just part of their culture, but I don't think you can impose a system of government on people that they will accept wholeheartedly.
[38:31.120 --> 38:34.300]  I just don't think people react to that properly.
[38:34.660 --> 38:48.380]  Well, this will be a fascinating study then to see what happens next because obviously people are receptive now to food, I guess, and to people not shooting at them and maybe to an oppressive dictator leaving.
[38:48.900 --> 38:52.900]  But will they be receptive to all the other things that go along with that?
[38:52.900 --> 38:55.780]  And it's going to be fascinating to watch how this plays out.
[38:57.220 --> 38:57.660]  Jim?
[38:57.920 --> 39:04.340]  Well, this is a little bit off topic, but I'm going to throw it out, not for discussion tonight, but I want people to think about this.
[39:04.520 --> 39:08.840]  You know, there's a lot of questions about morality, ours, theirs, and everybody else's.
[39:09.180 --> 39:11.400]  But just contemplate this thought.
[39:11.700 --> 39:20.560]  If the Nazi regime had not invaded Poland and if Hitler only killed German jews, would we be celebrating the 70th year of the Third Reich this year?
[39:21.840 --> 39:23.620]  your point being exactly?
[39:24.280 --> 39:31.080]  Being at what point do we, are we supposed to walk in when a situation is difficult in another country?
[39:31.300 --> 39:33.880]  Do we wait for them to clearly attack us?
[39:34.060 --> 39:38.800]  Do we go in to impose basic human values on a dictatorship?
[39:39.360 --> 39:40.560]  You know, at what point?
[39:40.640 --> 39:52.980]  I think any comparison to World War II really doesn't fly because, you know, you had a situation there of a regime invading other countries, expanding its power, and obviously being a major threat to the entire world.
[39:53.160 --> 40:02.540]  Here you had a situation of a crippled country that had been bombed into oblivion and all kinds of accusations made against a dictator that have yet to be proven.
[40:03.920 --> 40:09.800]  And, you know, the need for this kind of a thing is still very much in doubt.
[40:09.800 --> 40:11.420]  And I don't know if it's ever going to be explained.
[40:11.540 --> 40:13.540]  It's certainly going to be spun in a different way.
[40:13.660 --> 40:17.640]  Now it'll be the Iraqi people invited us in, you know, to help free them.
[40:17.640 --> 40:19.280]  And there was a mission of mercy.
[40:19.720 --> 40:25.840]  But tell that to the people that lived in the residential neighborhood that we bombed because we thought maybe Saddam Hussein might be in there.
[40:26.100 --> 40:28.400]  Of course, we can blame the other side.
[40:28.400 --> 40:33.100]  We can say, you know, they're hiding amongst the people, therefore we have to bomb the people.
[40:33.180 --> 40:35.140]  It's their fault because they were hiding amongst the people.
[40:35.220 --> 40:36.000]  They shouldn't have done that.
[40:36.960 --> 40:43.300]  They should take a cue from President Bush and never be seen with anyone who isn't security checked eight times.
[40:43.720 --> 40:44.600]  Yeah, that might be a good idea.
[40:45.040 --> 40:46.520]  Let's take phone calls.
[40:46.560 --> 40:46.940]  Yes, quickly.
[40:47.240 --> 40:48.860]  I just got an update on the peace movement.
[40:49.000 --> 40:50.040]  Should I say that now or later?
[40:50.260 --> 40:50.940]  What's the update?
[40:51.280 --> 40:53.420]  Basically, at 8.40 a.m.
[40:53.520 --> 41:05.160]  today, police surrounded and arrested 100 protesters and bystanders near the entrance of 712 Fifth Avenue without giving any orders to disperse or anything.
[41:05.160 --> 41:07.880]  They just lined up around them and moved in and arrested.
[41:07.880 --> 41:08.920]  What was the protest?
[41:08.920 --> 41:11.540]  I mean, was it a die-in or just a...
[41:11.540 --> 41:13.540]  M27 anti-war civil disobedience.
[41:13.800 --> 41:14.740]  This was on Monday, right?
[41:15.060 --> 41:15.920]  This was today.
[41:16.540 --> 41:17.020]  M27?
[41:17.440 --> 41:18.700]  Wouldn't that be March 27?
[41:18.980 --> 41:19.500]  That's the group.
[41:19.680 --> 41:21.160]  The group is called M27 Coalition.
[41:21.400 --> 41:21.980]  I don't know why.
[41:22.060 --> 41:27.280]  I double-checked it myself to make sure that it was today and according to the website it was today.
[41:27.540 --> 41:28.920]  Which website is this?
[41:31.020 --> 41:36.880]  www.m27 as in the numbers coalition.org and that's just a...
[41:36.880 --> 41:37.560]  Okay, thanks.
[41:37.560 --> 41:39.000]  Let's take a look at the phone call.
[41:39.200 --> 41:39.460]  Good evening.
[41:39.580 --> 41:39.900]  You're on the air.
[41:40.780 --> 41:41.140]  Hi.
[41:42.260 --> 41:50.420]  I wanted to talk about communications, global communications where they're using workers around the world to handle American accounts.
[41:50.620 --> 42:15.500]  I've noticed in the past six months or so at least maybe a year that when I call American Express when I call Citibank Visa when I call right now I just call Clear Choice Communications and I just spent an hour on the phone with different people people sounding like they had Dutch accents but what they do what happens is is that it appears as if American Express is using it doesn't matter what
[42:15.500 --> 42:21.220]  time of the day or night I call they're using folks from the Philippines and from India That's absolutely correct.
[42:21.220 --> 42:50.640]  And also Citibank Visa is using people use the services of people in India as well and Clear Choice today they wanted to lie and tell me everybody was from Texas One woman one woman sounded like she had a Dutch accent maybe she was in Aruba but they make them say that their names are things like June Jones which I know is a person actually who's been on WBAI but Ruth Smith Today,
[42:50.760 --> 42:51.820]  I got a Ruth Bean.
[42:52.080 --> 42:54.260]  And not only that, they have Ohio accents sometimes.
[42:54.540 --> 42:54.940]  Lovely.
[42:55.080 --> 42:56.640]  They sound lovely and they're very nice.
[42:56.760 --> 43:00.400]  But often, I can't get the kind of services because they're not trained fully.
[43:00.640 --> 43:09.900]  And what American Express did is they shipped in, oh, I guess, 100 or more folks from India and had them live in San Antonio and are training them.
[43:10.080 --> 43:14.240]  Now, some are staying, but many of them go back to their country.
[43:15.140 --> 43:20.020]  And my personal opinion is if we're going global, let's be honest about it.
[43:20.260 --> 43:28.700]  But I'm not hearing about this anywhere, and I think what's happening is that I keep on putting in complaints saying, I want to know your real name.
[43:28.760 --> 43:34.220]  If it's Chuck or Barty, or if it's Reno or Cindy or something like that, I'd rather know.
[43:34.620 --> 43:36.760]  I'd rather just accept where we are.
[43:36.880 --> 43:49.840]  And also, the thing, though, that bothers me the most is that if they're being so quiet about it and making them say that they're from another town, like in America, or giving a fake name, what bothers me is that that means that they want to be secretive.
[43:50.260 --> 43:51.820]  And it's usually about money.
[43:52.120 --> 43:55.760]  And I suspect that they're not being paid as well.
[43:55.940 --> 43:57.020]  Oh, no, definitely not.
[43:57.020 --> 43:58.460]  I'll bet they're not unionized either.
[43:58.740 --> 44:00.240]  No, I'm sure they're not unionized.
[44:00.340 --> 44:01.760]  And I've said that to them directly.
[44:02.080 --> 44:05.460]  Sometimes I have the conversation just to get it off my chest.
[44:05.460 --> 44:14.740]  But I also ask them to put into management a request that they actually be allowed to say where they're from, what their true name is, or something.
[44:15.000 --> 44:23.400]  Like if they want to choose a June Joan kinds of name, as long as it's from their country, something respectful.
[44:23.400 --> 44:26.360]  Because what's happening is that everybody's hiding.
[44:26.720 --> 44:30.140]  They're uncomfortable because they're not allowed to say their name.
[44:30.140 --> 44:30.440]  Right.
[44:30.540 --> 44:34.600]  I'm saying, I know that you're not being paid what we are, but we're paying the same for the service.
[44:34.920 --> 44:46.820]  When they're billing the vendors, or when they're billing me for my card, or when they're charging me at the rate plus, prime plus, whatever the high rate is on the credit card, they're not lowering our rates.
[44:47.420 --> 44:51.160]  But what's happening is that the money's going into the coffers of management.
[44:51.440 --> 44:53.040]  And that bugs the hell out of me.
[44:53.300 --> 44:53.660]  Absolutely.
[44:53.800 --> 44:57.580]  Well, you know, I'm glad you brought that up because it is a very important issue, something that's been bothering me too.
[44:57.580 --> 45:04.200]  I suggest that when you call, because a lot of times these people are being monitored by their supervisors, and if they get into a conversation, they could really get into trouble.
[45:04.360 --> 45:05.540]  Who knows what happens to them over there.
[45:06.180 --> 45:11.520]  I suggest talking to the supervisors and telling them those same things, writing letters and things like that.
[45:11.720 --> 45:12.660]  Let's try a little experiment.
[45:12.800 --> 45:13.620]  Thanks so much for that call.
[45:14.620 --> 45:16.700]  But can I get a dial tone here?
[45:16.960 --> 45:17.160]  Okay.
[45:17.360 --> 45:19.640]  We're going to actually call American Express.
[45:21.400 --> 45:22.580]  And I'm not sure what's going to happen.
[45:24.240 --> 45:25.960]  Because this is live.
[45:25.960 --> 45:29.900]  You never know what's going to happen when you call something live.
[45:31.820 --> 45:33.080]  And we'll see just where they are.
[45:33.340 --> 45:35.420]  It's going to take a little while to get somebody.
[45:35.920 --> 45:36.640]  American Express.
[45:37.200 --> 45:38.580]  Please have your card available.
[45:38.580 --> 45:39.220]  Let's just hit zero.
[45:40.180 --> 45:41.620]  It's going to ask us for our card number.
[45:41.720 --> 45:44.220]  Enter the 15-digit card account number now.
[45:44.260 --> 45:45.220]  I'm not going to do that.
[45:45.500 --> 45:46.320]  It's a bad idea.
[45:46.420 --> 45:47.000]  You can just skip it.
[45:47.140 --> 45:47.400]  Yeah.
[45:47.900 --> 45:49.120]  Well, you can't skip it.
[45:49.200 --> 45:50.200]  It's going to ask you again, probably.
[45:50.340 --> 45:51.260]  No, you can just...
[45:51.260 --> 45:51.820]  I've always...
[45:51.820 --> 45:54.120]  I never put it in for anything, routing number...
[45:54.120 --> 45:54.520]  Uh-huh.
[45:55.000 --> 45:55.200]  All right.
[45:55.200 --> 45:56.520]  Let's see if somebody picks up.
[45:59.000 --> 46:00.760]  We did not recognize your...
[46:00.760 --> 46:01.200]  No, you see.
[46:01.200 --> 46:01.580]  I'm going to get scolded.
[46:01.960 --> 46:04.140]  Enter the 15-digit card account number now.
[46:04.360 --> 46:04.540]  Okay.
[46:04.600 --> 46:06.600]  Well, we can continue talking until...
[46:06.600 --> 46:07.800]  I hit the pound sign a few times.
[46:08.560 --> 46:08.980]  Yeah.
[46:09.020 --> 46:09.860]  That doesn't usually work.
[46:09.920 --> 46:10.980]  Sometimes it disconnects you, in fact.
[46:23.260 --> 46:24.100]  Eventually, they'll...
[46:24.100 --> 46:26.440]  Yeah, they always ask you a second time, even after you enter.
[46:26.620 --> 46:27.160]  Log on to American Express.com.
[46:27.160 --> 46:27.180]  Right, right.
[46:27.200 --> 46:27.840]  That's why I never do.
[46:27.960 --> 46:28.920]  It's really ridiculous.
[46:29.280 --> 46:30.240]  And register to manage your...
[46:30.240 --> 46:34.760]  The important thing now is to make sure that the person we talk to gives out the information that we want.
[46:35.280 --> 46:36.080]  Let's see what happens.
[46:38.860 --> 46:39.980]  Might get some hold music.
[46:40.260 --> 46:41.080]  Might just get a person.
[46:42.280 --> 46:42.860]  Good evening.
[46:43.020 --> 46:43.800]  My name is Edward.
[46:44.020 --> 46:44.960]  How may I assist you?
[46:45.680 --> 46:46.040]  Yes.
[46:46.140 --> 46:46.360]  Hi.
[46:46.360 --> 46:47.780]  I'm calling from the New York switch room.
[46:47.880 --> 46:49.740]  We're having a little bit of trouble with the tie line.
[46:50.220 --> 46:51.700]  Can you tell me what office you're in?
[46:52.700 --> 46:54.440]  I am in Toronto, Canada.
[46:54.640 --> 46:55.160]  You're in Toronto?
[46:55.660 --> 46:56.080]  Yes, sir.
[46:56.160 --> 46:56.520]  Okay.
[46:57.220 --> 46:57.580]  Okay.
[46:57.720 --> 46:58.280]  Thank you very much.
[46:58.480 --> 46:58.860]  You're welcome.
[46:59.520 --> 46:59.780]  Okay.
[46:59.840 --> 47:00.780]  He's in Toronto, Canada.
[47:01.320 --> 47:04.440]  Yesterday, I talked to somebody at American Express, and they were in Toronto as well.
[47:05.120 --> 47:07.120]  I've talked to people in India a lot, though.
[47:07.400 --> 47:08.600]  I have a whole big story about this.
[47:08.660 --> 47:09.680]  We're going to try it a few more times.
[47:09.780 --> 47:10.260]  Not today.
[47:10.320 --> 47:17.060]  It's actually a big call center industry in Canada because they pay people less, but they speak English as well as people in the States.
[47:17.180 --> 47:20.160]  The guy sort of wasn't sure of his name when he said his name at first.
[47:20.260 --> 47:21.460]  He was going to say something else.
[47:21.460 --> 47:22.560]  Unusual accent, too.
[47:22.840 --> 47:22.940]  Yeah.
[47:23.320 --> 47:24.400]  Maybe he wasn't really in Canada.
[47:24.720 --> 47:25.400]  Well, no, no.
[47:25.460 --> 47:26.400]  I'm not worried about that.
[47:26.500 --> 47:31.400]  But he seems to be an immigrant, I would say, from the accent, to Canada.
[47:32.280 --> 47:33.480]  Possibly from the United States.
[47:33.480 --> 47:33.720]  Yeah.
[47:33.780 --> 47:34.120]  You never know.
[47:34.200 --> 47:35.740]  They are immigrants all over the place.
[47:36.300 --> 47:37.200]  Let's take another phone call.
[47:37.260 --> 47:38.720]  212-209-2900.
[47:38.980 --> 47:40.120]  Let's go up here.
[47:40.740 --> 47:41.140]  And good evening.
[47:41.180 --> 47:41.620]  You're on the air.
[47:43.160 --> 47:43.860]  Speak up, please.
[47:44.300 --> 47:44.660]  Hello?
[47:44.660 --> 47:45.280]  Yes, go ahead.
[47:45.500 --> 47:45.900]  Yes.
[47:46.160 --> 47:49.900]  I was just going to agree with that lady who just called.
[47:50.040 --> 47:52.400]  And please check with Dell.
[47:52.700 --> 47:54.180]  I am from India, too.
[47:54.340 --> 48:00.020]  And please check with Dell services, support services, and also the Microsoft.
[48:00.340 --> 48:04.040]  They're all over in India, and they cannot provide much help.
[48:04.040 --> 48:11.220]  And even though they're nice people, they say their names are Americanized, and I know better.
[48:11.440 --> 48:13.320]  You mean those commercials with the Dell interns?
[48:13.320 --> 48:14.820]  Those guys are really in India?
[48:15.560 --> 48:16.540]  No, no, no.
[48:16.820 --> 48:22.880]  I mean, when you have a PC from Dell, and you want their support.
[48:23.240 --> 48:26.460]  And most of the times, they're in Bangalore or someplace.
[48:26.460 --> 48:34.820]  And if you... I can catch their accents, and they would say Philippines, and they would say, Oh, I don't know.
[48:35.260 --> 48:37.540]  I'm not supposed to tell where I am.
[48:37.660 --> 48:41.400]  Or you just suddenly start speaking their language, and maybe they'll just do it by instinct, you know.
[48:41.560 --> 48:44.540]  They'll answer you, and then all of a sudden, wait a minute, I'm not supposed to know that language?
[48:45.480 --> 48:45.880]  Yes.
[48:46.280 --> 48:46.780]  That's right.
[48:46.960 --> 48:47.320]  All right.
[48:47.660 --> 48:53.260]  If it makes you feel any better, when they used to hire Americans, they didn't know anything either, so...
[48:53.260 --> 48:54.140]  That's true.
[48:54.140 --> 48:54.200]  That's true.
[48:54.920 --> 49:01.860]  I'm just, you know, very concerned about what, you know, how we're taking advantage of the rest of the world by, you know, hiring people to solve our problems.
[49:01.880 --> 49:05.240]  And, of course, if they ever tried to come into this country, they'd be a threat to us.
[49:05.380 --> 49:07.640]  The heck with taking advantage of the rest of the world.
[49:07.840 --> 49:21.920]  There's a more imminent economic problem, which is, instead of paying Americans more money to do this, and maybe they'll spend some of the money on Dell computer and American Express cards, you're giving people way on the other half of the world almost no money,
[49:21.920 --> 49:26.940]  which they can't spend, afford the Dell computer or the American Express card or whatever.
[49:27.140 --> 49:27.240]  Right.
[49:27.960 --> 49:35.600]  And so, rather than... I mean, Henry Ford paid his people, you know, in the early 1900s a lot of money with the hope that they would spend some of it on a car.
[49:35.760 --> 49:35.920]  Mm-hmm.
[49:36.220 --> 49:38.340]  Now, you know, they have no hope.
[49:38.440 --> 49:39.500]  They just...
[49:39.500 --> 49:43.240]  And it's important to focus, you know, the attention on who the true culprit is.
[49:43.240 --> 49:46.240]  I know a lot of people are angry at foreigners who are taking our jobs, but...
[49:46.240 --> 49:46.660]  It's the corporation.
[49:46.940 --> 49:48.680]  Yeah, look at how it came about.
[49:49.000 --> 49:54.560]  You know, people in India did not say, you know, we demand American Express come over here and hire us instead of Americans.
[49:54.700 --> 49:55.960]  That's not how it works.
[49:55.960 --> 50:00.720]  Just a little aside, in the early 90s, when Nike eliminated its U.S.
[50:00.960 --> 50:07.680]  manufacturing and moved it overseas, the cost per shoe, not per pair of shoes, per shoe, went down $15 per shoe.
[50:08.120 --> 50:10.760]  The cost to the consumer went down $0.
[50:11.740 --> 50:12.700]  The price didn't go up.
[50:13.180 --> 50:14.240]  Yeah, just one quick comment.
[50:14.340 --> 50:20.460]  If I could have a nickel for every time I saw that statue topple on CNN while we've been in here doing this show, I could pay for our dinner tonight.
[50:20.500 --> 50:21.980]  Can you imagine on Fox?
[50:22.200 --> 50:26.760]  It's probably... they probably have, like, you know, a loop going of the thing, a little icon at the bottom of the screen.
[50:27.120 --> 50:27.900]  Let's take another phone call.
[50:27.960 --> 50:28.240]  Good evening.
[50:28.360 --> 50:28.980]  You're on Off the Hook.
[50:29.180 --> 50:29.720]  Oh, okay.
[50:29.780 --> 50:30.200]  Excuse me.
[50:30.260 --> 50:31.220]  Let me turn my radio down.
[50:31.280 --> 50:31.580]  Good idea.
[50:33.180 --> 50:33.840]  You know what?
[50:36.480 --> 50:37.720]  AOL does the same thing.
[50:37.860 --> 50:41.620]  You know, they send you the NGO, or Pakistan, one of the two.
[50:41.880 --> 50:45.020]  But, you know, I was listening to this gentleman that you have there.
[50:45.100 --> 50:46.860]  Forgive me that I can't recall his name.
[50:47.140 --> 50:53.000]  When he was saying about pesticides, it almost reminded me about a wallet looking like a gun.
[50:53.220 --> 50:53.500]  Yeah.
[50:53.640 --> 50:54.200]  Oh, wait a moment.
[50:54.300 --> 50:54.580]  Wait a moment.
[50:54.580 --> 51:01.520]  And you know that if they don't find anything, they're going to plant something, if they haven't already.
[51:01.760 --> 51:04.960]  But I just want to, you know, refresh that gentleman's memory.
[51:05.040 --> 51:27.960]  You know, with an article that was in January 1998, a lineup of conservative policy advisors warned President Clinton in an open letter that containment of Iraq was a failure, and removing Saddam Hussein from power now needed to become the aim of American policy.
[51:28.180 --> 51:31.600]  Among the signatures were Donald H.
[51:31.900 --> 51:33.560]  Rumsfeld, Paul D.
[51:34.180 --> 51:40.460]  Witherworth, you know, Richard Armitage, and Richard N.
[51:40.680 --> 51:40.940]  Pearl.
[51:41.180 --> 51:42.760]  Yeah, and these same names keep coming up.
[51:42.760 --> 51:43.020]  Right.
[51:43.240 --> 51:43.520]  You know?
[51:43.920 --> 51:44.380]  No penalty.
[51:44.820 --> 51:46.340]  Of the Republican administration.
[51:46.560 --> 51:48.060]  And the date of that was what, 1998?
[51:48.900 --> 51:49.340]  1998.
[51:49.900 --> 51:51.580]  Three years before the World Trade Center.
[51:51.760 --> 51:52.060]  Right.
[51:52.320 --> 52:01.360]  You know, and see, this is, you know, when I listen to folks, you know, that gentleman who calls, he sounds like one of those people who calls talk shows.
[52:01.700 --> 52:04.240]  He doesn't know about computers, but, you know, you could just, like, listen.
[52:04.500 --> 52:10.780]  Because they have these guys that call up talk shows and to try to put their ideas into the mainstream.
[52:11.020 --> 52:12.720]  Well, I think that's what everybody's trying to do.
[52:12.760 --> 52:21.460]  No, but, you know, we know that there were embedded NIS people in the newsrooms, you know, et cetera, et cetera.
[52:21.660 --> 52:24.300]  Yeah, but our callers are, I think, our real callers.
[52:24.400 --> 52:25.060]  Okay, well, all right.
[52:25.120 --> 52:25.920]  Because I like to think that.
[52:26.760 --> 52:36.080]  Anyway, you know, but the whole idea is that I would, if you recall, when the Nazis went into France, they cheered, too.
[52:36.080 --> 52:42.480]  When Israel went into Lebanon, they cheered, too, after bombing and turning off the water and electricity.
[52:42.800 --> 52:51.980]  I would be cheering, also, if I was finally getting a drink of water, if I was finally, you know, these guys are handing out letters with dollar bills in them.
[52:52.240 --> 52:57.000]  You know, they're doing all sorts of things that, you know, I don't recall.
[52:57.000 --> 53:06.520]  You know, I remember when they first started, you know, I looked at television for a minute for a heartbeat, and the Marines were tearing down most of the statues.
[53:06.740 --> 53:15.880]  And I wonder now how many of the Marine people who are doing the photographing, you know, here's $10, go help them tear that thing down.
[53:16.000 --> 53:27.320]  Here's what's-the-name to do that, you know, so that they can have these classic pictures that they beam all over the world, you know, and I look at it this way.
[53:27.440 --> 53:36.280]  I'm a black man who lives in Harlem, and I have seen police officers do what they had, what they wanted to do to get what they needed to get, which was numbers, you know.
[53:36.520 --> 53:53.860]  And on a larger scale, United States Marines and the people, not the Marines, the grunts, so to speak, but they have people who are over them who give them orders to do X, Y, Z, A, B, C, and they're going to follow just like the police officers in the street.
[53:54.060 --> 54:02.440]  Now, you're going to find, you know, like that article you read about the pet, you know, they found pesticides.
[54:02.500 --> 54:17.820]  And even that gentleman who's as intelligent as he is, you know, because I don't think he'd be around you if he wasn't, you know, for him to say, well, we can get some pesticides, and he prefaces it with that he was a chemistry major and that you can make pesticides.
[54:17.960 --> 54:27.080]  But, you know, you found this on a farm, you know, in an agricultural area, and even he is buying into the propaganda, so that means his...
[54:27.080 --> 54:28.080]  Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
[54:28.300 --> 54:33.840]  That's twice you've accused me of justifying the administration's position.
[54:34.020 --> 54:35.760]  I want to say the following, okay?
[54:35.760 --> 54:36.480]  You've got 20 seconds.
[54:36.480 --> 54:40.860]  As a hacker, my idea is to be a devil's advocate, okay?
[54:40.860 --> 54:46.000]  This is a liberal-oriented radio station and show, therefore I tend to be conservative, okay?
[54:46.000 --> 54:51.280]  I'm just offering the possibility that if they're hiding it, that's the way to do it, okay?
[54:52.000 --> 55:02.000]  The playing of the race card with the wallet as a gun is beneath the dignity that you have shown in the rest of your call, and I am highly offended by it.
[55:02.080 --> 55:03.200]  I don't think he was playing a race card.
[55:03.300 --> 55:07.580]  I think he was giving an example of how certain things can be represented as being different.
[55:07.820 --> 55:08.460]  And misrepresented.
[55:08.460 --> 55:11.740]  But we're not going to have time to really get into it right now because we're out of time.
[55:11.960 --> 55:14.480]  So we'd like to continue this fascinating discussion.
[55:14.540 --> 55:17.720]  No doubt next week we'll have even more fascinating things to talk about.
[55:17.960 --> 55:20.500]  So we'll see you then.
[55:20.620 --> 55:22.940]  Next week, another edition of Alpha Hook.
[55:23.020 --> 55:23.200]  Good night.
[55:24.240 --> 55:27.440]  So much that I know
[55:30.890 --> 55:35.930]  Each time Your face will be
[55:57.930 --> 56:04.290]  You've no space To turn it
[56:07.340 --> 56:08.760]  With Iraqi and U.S.
[56:08.840 --> 56:12.360]  casualties mounting, the world community has its eye on the U.S.
[56:12.500 --> 56:13.300]  anti-war movement.
[56:13.620 --> 56:19.260]  Can it become bigger and more powerful at a time when the Bush administration intends to intensify the war?
[56:19.540 --> 56:21.880]  Make that answer a resounding yes.
[56:22.160 --> 56:25.560]  Saturday, April 12th, at the White House in Washington, D.C.
[56:25.740 --> 56:28.180]  is the next big anti-war mobilization.
[56:28.400 --> 56:32.760]  Get on a bus and join many tens of thousands to say stop the bombing.
[56:33.100 --> 56:34.380]  Bring the troops home now.
[56:34.380 --> 56:42.220]  For bus tickets, information, and to volunteer, call the Answer Coalition at 212-633-6646.
[56:42.480 --> 56:46.480]  That's 212-633-6646.
[56:46.480 --> 56:50.380]  Or go to www.internationalanswer.org.
[56:50.540 --> 56:54.240]  Stop the War, Saturday, April 12th, Washington, D.C.
[57:13.520 --> 57:20.060]  WBAI has a new enhanced website at www.wbai.org.
[57:20.060 --> 57:23.160]  With all kinds of information of interest to the community.
[57:23.420 --> 57:30.480]  You can submit your community events for posting on the website by clicking on the community events calendar and filling out the web form.
[57:30.660 --> 57:35.460]  We'll consider events posted to the website for broadcasts on the community bulletin board.
[57:35.880 --> 57:42.960]  And be sure to consult the web calendar for a comprehensive listing of events in the WBAI broadcast area.
[57:43.280 --> 57:47.820]  Again, that's www.wbai.org.
[57:47.960 --> 57:49.020]  Spread the word.
[57:49.020 --> 57:50.350]  Spread the word.
[57:51.800 --> 57:56.600]  Oh, why can't we be what we want to be?
[57:57.080 --> 57:59.340]  We want to be free.