[00:00.000 --> 00:09.060]  It has been proven that none of the people that carried out 7-7 were Arabs, or none of them were asylum seekers, or none of them were refugees in this country.
[00:09.600 --> 00:18.480]  Mr Blair, he wants to transform this country from a pillar of human rights to a country where it's going to become a graveyard for human rights, for his own personal agenda.
[00:18.840 --> 00:22.880]  The men are all appealing the decision to deport them on human rights grounds.
[00:23.360 --> 00:26.900]  This is Naomi Fowler in London for Free Speech Radio News.
[00:30.820 --> 00:33.400]  You've been listening to Free Speech Radio News.
[00:33.400 --> 00:35.000]  I'm Aura Bogado.
[00:39.680 --> 00:44.580]  You're listening to 99.5 FM, WBAI New York.
[00:44.880 --> 00:48.440]  It's 7 p.m., time for Off the Hook.
[00:53.820 --> 00:58.380]  The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
[00:59.240 --> 01:03.860]  I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a call.
[01:04.560 --> 01:06.780]  We couldn't get much worse.
[01:07.140 --> 01:12.120]  Von Dilly Bum, but the best, expect the worst.
[01:12.780 --> 01:14.660]  I hope that's understood.
[01:14.840 --> 01:15.720]  Von Dilly Bum!
[01:59.090 --> 02:00.550]  And good evening, everyone.
[02:00.690 --> 02:02.250]  The program is Off the Hook.
[02:02.870 --> 02:06.310]  We're here joining you live from the WBAI studios in New York.
[02:06.610 --> 02:07.750]  This is Red Hacked.
[02:07.990 --> 02:09.530]  I'm joined tonight by Jim.
[02:09.690 --> 02:09.930]  Hello.
[02:09.930 --> 02:10.790]  Mike.
[02:11.110 --> 02:11.390]  Hi.
[02:11.690 --> 02:12.150]  Red Bird.
[02:12.410 --> 02:12.730]  Good evening.
[02:13.090 --> 02:13.630]  Arseny.
[02:13.830 --> 02:14.010]  Hi.
[02:14.290 --> 02:14.690]  Walter.
[02:15.030 --> 02:15.170]  Hello.
[02:15.810 --> 02:16.370]  Bernie S.
[02:16.490 --> 02:17.010]  on the line.
[02:17.630 --> 02:18.670]  From Philadelphia.
[02:18.830 --> 02:19.330]  From Philadelphia.
[02:19.390 --> 02:19.730]  Hello.
[02:20.190 --> 02:24.410]  And we're about to dial Emanuel and get him on the phone.
[02:24.670 --> 02:26.370]  So this continues our tradition.
[02:26.490 --> 02:33.970]  We just have this strange telephone number that we dial, and we don't know exactly where it's going to connect us to.
[02:34.450 --> 02:36.290]  It's just somewhere in the world.
[02:36.850 --> 02:41.570]  If we dial this phone number, we'll reach Emanuel, and we have a number.
[02:41.670 --> 02:54.910]  Usually it's a three-digit number that we say to the person on the other end, but I think tonight it's a four-digit number, and these people speak to us in a language we don't know, and we speak to them in English, and somehow they play strange sounds,
[02:54.950 --> 02:56.450]  and somehow this usually works.
[02:57.150 --> 02:58.990]  Hopefully it will work again tonight.
[03:00.630 --> 03:01.150]  Wow.
[03:01.490 --> 03:04.030]  Do we have this voice talking to us?
[03:06.130 --> 03:11.130]  No, we don't have this voice because we need to not do it this way.
[03:12.650 --> 03:13.170]  Yeah.
[03:13.530 --> 03:16.090]  So let's try again, and we'll call...
[03:16.090 --> 03:16.690]  No, it's connecting.
[03:16.970 --> 03:18.110]  Oh, look at that.
[03:19.090 --> 03:19.950]  A foreign ring.
[03:23.280 --> 03:23.880]  Hi,
[03:27.380 --> 03:29.260]  room 2906, please.
[03:31.000 --> 03:31.600]  2906.
[03:31.880 --> 03:33.480]  Okay, just a moment, please.
[03:48.520 --> 03:49.480]  Name that tune.
[03:57.580 --> 03:59.460]  This is taking an awful long time.
[04:02.840 --> 04:04.020]  It's kind of catchy.
[04:10.760 --> 04:11.660]  Good morning.
[04:12.360 --> 04:13.560]  Emanuel, is that you?
[04:14.060 --> 04:15.700]  Um, yeah.
[04:16.980 --> 04:17.860]  Yes, it is.
[04:17.940 --> 04:18.480]  How about that?
[04:18.540 --> 04:19.200]  It's still me.
[04:19.420 --> 04:20.580]  And where are you today?
[04:20.940 --> 04:24.540]  Uh, well, I'm in Tokyo right now, where morning has broken.
[04:25.260 --> 04:27.460]  Uh, and I'm greeting the light.
[04:27.800 --> 04:29.540]  It's about 8 o'clock in the morning here.
[04:30.140 --> 04:32.280]  Um, and I guess it's evening over there.
[04:32.360 --> 04:32.780]  Is that correct?
[04:33.260 --> 04:34.040]  Yes, it is.
[04:34.480 --> 04:35.800]  Well, very good morning to you, Redbird.
[04:35.980 --> 04:37.100]  Uh, good morning, Red Hecht.
[04:37.240 --> 04:37.460]  Hey.
[04:38.300 --> 04:39.280]  Uh, good morning, Michael.
[04:39.580 --> 04:40.020]  Hi.
[04:40.260 --> 04:41.160]  Good morning, Jim.
[04:41.480 --> 04:41.920]  Hello.
[04:42.800 --> 04:44.800]  Good morning, Walter.
[04:45.160 --> 04:45.520]  Hey.
[04:46.100 --> 04:46.760]  Ah, ha, ha.
[04:47.240 --> 04:48.480]  Um, good morning, Ars.
[04:48.620 --> 04:49.020]  Yes.
[04:50.020 --> 04:51.100]  Uh, good morning, Bernie.
[04:51.820 --> 04:52.480]  Good morning.
[04:52.580 --> 04:53.840]  Are you going to have sushi for breakfast?
[04:54.360 --> 04:57.580]  Uh, well, you know, it's interesting because there's so many convenience stores.
[04:57.800 --> 05:00.680]  Literally, there's three convenience stores every block, it seems.
[05:01.220 --> 05:03.080]  Uh, and they have the most interesting snacks.
[05:03.240 --> 05:07.980]  You walk in, and there's just these seaweed-wrapped, uh, uh, plastic, uh, containers.
[05:08.300 --> 05:09.580]  And they're all really, really good.
[05:09.900 --> 05:14.720]  And I'm very upset because I keep having these things, and I know when I get home, I'm going to want more of them.
[05:14.720 --> 05:16.320]  And I won't be able to find them anyplace.
[05:17.120 --> 05:18.700]  You might be able to find them in the city.
[05:18.860 --> 05:20.160]  I mean, something like them.
[05:20.300 --> 05:25.920]  I'll be able to find something like them, but I won't be able to find the exact same kind, which I'm becoming slowly hooked upon.
[05:26.320 --> 05:27.660]  Are they really expensive?
[05:28.520 --> 05:29.340]  Uh, not really.
[05:29.480 --> 05:30.380]  And, you know, that's the thing.
[05:30.400 --> 05:32.300]  Everyone tells you that Japan is extremely expensive.
[05:32.300 --> 05:32.860]  It is.
[05:33.040 --> 05:36.160]  Uh, you can, you can certainly lose life savings here very quickly.
[05:36.340 --> 05:38.500]  But you can also be somewhat thrifty.
[05:39.060 --> 05:45.120]  And, you know, I've been able to, to, uh, to have decent meals for, you know, about the same price I would pay in New York.
[05:45.780 --> 05:47.080]  And, uh, you can do it.
[05:47.240 --> 05:51.040]  You can spend a lot, or you can spend a little, depending on, on how, how much you work on it.
[05:52.200 --> 05:54.160]  Did you hear the story in Japan today?
[05:54.800 --> 06:00.740]  Uh, well, I just woke up, so I don't know if there's any story out there yet that I can see why, what happened.
[06:01.120 --> 06:13.000]  Well, apparently one of their, uh, leading politicians is, uh, is, uh, pushing to have their, uh, post office, their rural post office system eliminated.
[06:13.460 --> 06:17.340]  And apparently in Japan, there's a big controversy over this.
[06:17.340 --> 06:25.800]  Apparently in Japan, the, the rural post offices also serve as banks, uh, and they do, and, um, other services.
[06:25.820 --> 06:28.660]  And the people in the rural areas are very upset about this.
[06:28.880 --> 06:31.760]  Well, that's, that's not, that's hardly, uh, a story today.
[06:31.900 --> 06:33.400]  That's actually been a story for quite some time.
[06:33.540 --> 06:36.860]  Uh, in fact, we have elections here on September 11th, which is Monday.
[06:37.420 --> 06:45.720]  Uh, and the major issue is postal reform, which I think is, I wish I lived in a country where the major issue was postal reform.
[06:46.180 --> 06:53.240]  Uh, but apparently that's going to make it or break it for the prime minister, uh, whether or not that particular, uh, whether people see it his way.
[06:53.400 --> 06:54.260]  When are the elections?
[06:54.980 --> 06:56.080]  On September 11th.
[06:56.460 --> 06:57.240]  Which is Sunday.
[06:57.720 --> 06:58.640]  Here it's a Sunday.
[06:59.080 --> 06:59.480]  Is it Sunday?
[06:59.480 --> 06:59.860]  I'm sorry.
[06:59.960 --> 07:00.880]  Maybe I got that wrong.
[07:01.120 --> 07:01.260]  Okay.
[07:01.640 --> 07:02.340]  Whenever it is.
[07:02.820 --> 07:07.640]  Um, you know, in many countries, the elections are on Sunday so that people can actually vote.
[07:07.840 --> 07:08.720]  No, we can't have that.
[07:09.200 --> 07:10.680]  No, no, that would, that would be wrong.
[07:10.680 --> 07:13.340]  Um, but yeah, you know, it's a very busy place.
[07:13.680 --> 07:16.400]  Um, I, I gotta tell you, and Jim, you would appreciate this.
[07:16.540 --> 07:16.760]  Oh?
[07:16.980 --> 07:23.080]  The subway system here, uh, makes New York seem like, like, uh, something so incredibly simple.
[07:24.000 --> 07:37.660]  Um, if, if, if you really want to read horror stories, read my, my, my travel diary, uh, at www.2600.com slash travel, and just look at the recent entries in Japan, you'll see how badly I've messed up as far as traveling around.
[07:37.660 --> 07:41.040]  Just finding the subway took me about a half hour when I first got here.
[07:41.460 --> 07:44.100]  Turns out there's three separate lines, all right?
[07:44.100 --> 07:46.380]  They all look like subway trains, but they're different.
[07:46.540 --> 07:51.040]  They all come together in the same stations, but you have to pay for each one separately.
[07:52.380 --> 07:52.940]  Uh-huh.
[07:53.160 --> 07:53.760]  It's true.
[07:54.080 --> 07:58.180]  Uh, you get a ticket, and, you know, you don't know if you're entering or exiting the system sometimes.
[07:58.180 --> 08:01.340]  I've exited the system thinking I was entering the system, and vice versa.
[08:02.200 --> 08:03.340]  Uh, there's, uh, the change.
[08:03.840 --> 08:04.280]  I'm sorry?
[08:04.280 --> 08:08.140]  I said, that's quite a trick, because usually you know whether you started inside or outside.
[08:08.620 --> 08:14.960]  Yeah, well, it all, it all started kind of badly when I came from Osaka, and, uh, you're supposed to hold on to your ticket, which I did.
[08:15.340 --> 08:18.620]  I used it to get out of the gate, and I didn't take the ticket again.
[08:18.800 --> 08:19.620]  I thought that was it.
[08:19.680 --> 08:21.040]  I thought it was over at that point.
[08:21.260 --> 08:27.080]  But apparently what you have to do is you have to take the ticket again, and then use it for a third gate, which I'm not quite sure I understand the purpose of.
[08:27.400 --> 08:29.740]  I didn't do that, and that's where all the confusion started.
[08:30.760 --> 08:35.120]  Uh, what we have here basically are three separate kinds of trains.
[08:35.340 --> 08:47.900]  We have the new subway, we have the old subway, um, which is also called the metro, and we have the JR lines, which are kind of like the overland trains, but they're, they look like subways, and they stop every, you know, a few feet like subways do.
[08:48.480 --> 08:50.520]  Uh, and they're all independent of each other.
[08:50.520 --> 09:00.600]  I found out last night, um, through somebody we met over here, that the subways actually were started by department stores, so that people could get from one store to another.
[09:00.820 --> 09:08.960]  And that's one of the reasons why, um, they, they, they carry the names of some department stores, and they are not interconnected.
[09:09.300 --> 09:11.160]  Well, they get to connect it, but they don't honor each other's tickets.
[09:11.320 --> 09:16.880]  I really hope that changes someday, because, you know, if it does, it makes things a whole lot easier to get around.
[09:18.600 --> 09:22.680]  Aren't there strange names, uh, of the stations, and aren't they numbered?
[09:22.940 --> 09:24.540]  I was reading a bit about what you wrote.
[09:26.000 --> 09:29.860]  Yeah, well, interestingly enough, uh, they do have numbers for every station.
[09:29.900 --> 09:30.780]  That's a very good system.
[09:30.920 --> 09:38.040]  Like, for instance, uh, if, if you want to go, say, Shinjuku, maybe that's, um, uh, G13, G being, being the line.
[09:38.160 --> 09:39.680]  Not that the train is called G, mind you.
[09:39.880 --> 09:46.760]  But every, every station that, that particular train stops at will have a G in front of it, and then there's a number.
[09:46.880 --> 09:48.500]  And each station has a different number.
[09:48.700 --> 09:51.440]  That would be a great system if it was honored every place you look.
[09:51.520 --> 09:52.060]  But it's not.
[09:52.200 --> 09:54.420]  It's, it's on some of the maps, not all the maps.
[09:54.560 --> 09:56.580]  It's not at the stations a lot of times.
[09:57.040 --> 10:00.480]  Uh, so, you know, it, it, it might be announced on the train.
[10:01.060 --> 10:02.700]  So, in theory, it's a good system.
[10:02.860 --> 10:10.500]  And then, you have another system in parallel with that, that also has numbers, but those numbers mean how many minutes it takes to get to that station.
[10:10.960 --> 10:14.380]  And they're represented in the same font, in the same color.
[10:14.660 --> 10:16.060]  It's very, very confusing.
[10:17.200 --> 10:18.580]  And, and, and one other thing, too.
[10:19.020 --> 10:20.200]  Uh, the lines.
[10:20.420 --> 10:23.260]  You know, I thought it was a simple thing of just knowing the red line, the green line.
[10:23.380 --> 10:24.340]  No, it's not like that at all.
[10:25.000 --> 10:26.880]  Uh, you have to know the name of the line.
[10:27.340 --> 10:30.660]  And, of course, the name is in Japanese, so that makes it a little bit difficult for me.
[10:30.660 --> 10:34.500]  Uh, and not every map has the names of every line.
[10:34.680 --> 10:36.800]  And, get this, not every map has every line.
[10:36.820 --> 10:42.280]  For instance, the metro, uh, maps don't necessarily have the subway lines, or the JR lines.
[10:42.380 --> 10:44.460]  The JR lines don't have the subways or the metros.
[10:45.020 --> 10:51.180]  So, you might have a train that goes directly to where you want to go, and you won't know it unless you, you're able to track down the right map.
[10:51.180 --> 11:02.780]  Uh, this, uh, sounds a lot like the pre-consolidation New York City subways with the, uh, IRT, the BMT, and in the 1940s, the IND.
[11:03.040 --> 11:05.300]  Uh, the IND was the city-owned line.
[11:05.500 --> 11:08.940]  The other two were independent, rival, private companies.
[11:09.260 --> 11:12.440]  And maps of one would not show maps of the other.
[11:12.640 --> 11:18.340]  In fact, the best thing for you to do is to get an IND map, because that was the first one to show the other two.
[11:18.340 --> 11:22.200]  Being the city map, it would show the private companies as well.
[11:23.420 --> 11:23.880]  Fascinating.
[11:24.040 --> 11:29.680]  I'd like to hear from some old-timers who, uh, who maybe remember those days, can tell us what things used to be like.
[11:30.260 --> 11:40.640]  Um, please send us mail, th, at 2600.com, because we'd love to hear, uh, that New York City subway system, when it was a lot harder to get around, maybe like it was here.
[11:40.800 --> 11:52.200]  My understanding is that, uh, this is a result of privatization, that subway lines have been becoming, and train lines as well, have becoming, um, are privately owned, and as such are competing with each other.
[11:52.300 --> 11:55.700]  For instance, going out to the airport, there are, I think, four different ways you can do it.
[11:55.760 --> 11:59.260]  They all use the same tracks, but do you want to use the Skyliner train?
[11:59.380 --> 12:02.580]  Do you want to use the Super Express, the Limited Express, the local?
[12:03.240 --> 12:08.300]  You know, it's, it's, it really, um, I don't want to think about this, this much.
[12:08.440 --> 12:08.940]  I really don't.
[12:08.980 --> 12:14.180]  I just want to take a train someplace, and it's, it, you have to really take a college course to figure out how to get from one place to another.
[12:16.600 --> 12:17.580]  Prices would be pretty low.
[12:17.780 --> 12:19.060]  What's the, what's the price of a ride?
[12:19.240 --> 12:20.080]  Oh, you'd think that.
[12:20.260 --> 12:21.380]  Uh, well, no, they're not.
[12:21.600 --> 12:27.200]  Um, it's, it's pretty much the same as, um, as a New York City subway ride, about, uh, the equivalent of $2.
[12:27.220 --> 12:28.260]  Now, it's different.
[12:28.280 --> 12:37.480]  If I, if I just want to go one stop, uh, then it can go down to, like, uh, 150, or, uh, $11.50 yen, basically, is, or $150 yen, I believe.
[12:37.820 --> 12:38.800]  Yeah, $150 yen.
[12:39.220 --> 12:41.580]  Uh, and that's about $1.50 or so.
[12:42.260 --> 12:45.840]  Um, if you go further, it costs, it costs more.
[12:46.380 --> 12:51.900]  But the problem is, if I want to go one place, and I want to switch to another line, then I've got to buy a second ticket.
[12:52.180 --> 12:56.900]  Now, they have things called day passes, but then they have day passes that are only honored by one type of train.
[12:57.140 --> 12:59.780]  If you want a day pass, it'll be honored by two types of trains.
[13:00.000 --> 13:00.540]  It costs more.
[13:00.540 --> 13:02.620]  Or three types of trains cost about $15.
[13:03.080 --> 13:03.980]  It's not worth it.
[13:06.140 --> 13:11.040]  What if you just, uh, don't want to deal with these people, and you can just walk, I guess?
[13:11.540 --> 13:12.280]  Walking is good.
[13:12.340 --> 13:15.140]  You just got to watch out for the bicyclists, because they, they go on the sidewalk.
[13:15.520 --> 13:16.640]  You could get a bicycle.
[13:17.460 --> 13:19.180]  Uh, well, yeah, you could do that.
[13:19.260 --> 13:20.240]  There aren't very many here.
[13:20.420 --> 13:22.220]  It's, it's nothing like it was in, in, in China.
[13:22.440 --> 13:27.940]  Or, actually, Osaka, I think, was the worst, because there you had full-speed bicyclists, uh, going down the sidewalk, not the street.
[13:28.580 --> 13:35.120]  And, uh, it's, it's, it's really hard to walk down the street, down the sidewalk, with, uh, bicyclists going left and right, everywhere.
[13:36.060 --> 13:45.120]  Um, but, um, the cars here, the cars in Japan, uh, actually yield to pedestrians, which, you know, that's something I have to go into Mongolia, I have to go into China.
[13:45.580 --> 13:51.080]  Uh, I've become used to taking my life into my hands whenever I cross the street, or with even anyone near a street.
[13:51.720 --> 13:53.260]  And, it's just very different.
[13:53.420 --> 13:56.340]  That the society is so different from the ones I've been in previously.
[13:56.420 --> 13:57.880]  It's, it's like night and day.
[14:00.540 --> 14:02.460]  It takes care of you if you get lost.
[14:02.620 --> 14:14.140]  For instance, I got lost in the subway multiple times, and I would ask somebody, and assuming the person actually spoke English, I'd say maybe one out of three people speaks, uh, enough English to be able to, uh, communicate with me.
[14:14.740 --> 14:24.620]  they, they take you to the exit, they take you to somebody, they take you to a subway person, explain to them the, the situation, and invariably that subway person will also help you once it's explained to them.
[14:25.360 --> 14:32.180]  Uh, it's just, it's such incredibly sincere, um, uh, caring and politeness that I see here.
[14:32.300 --> 14:35.280]  Of course, every time you, you leave a place, people bow to you.
[14:35.960 --> 14:39.080]  And it's, um, I, I, I've come to like it quite a bit.
[14:40.180 --> 14:40.600]  Emmanuel.
[14:41.340 --> 14:41.840]  Yes, Bernie.
[14:42.360 --> 14:49.660]  On your, uh, talk about the, uh, the mass transit system there, what, what kind of fare instruments do they use in such a high-tech society?
[14:50.760 --> 14:52.680]  Uh, you mean what kind of, the, the ticket reading machine?
[14:53.000 --> 14:53.400]  Yeah.
[14:53.700 --> 14:56.360]  Well, not the machine, but the, the fare instruments themselves.
[14:57.100 --> 14:59.260]  The fare instruments, you mean the, is it a token?
[14:59.460 --> 15:00.160]  Is it a MetroCard?
[15:00.420 --> 15:01.460]  You're asking if it's a ticket.
[15:01.820 --> 15:11.100]  It's a, it's a, it's a basically a little, like, um, miniature-sized ticket, uh, with, uh, what looks like a, a magnetic back of some sort.
[15:11.360 --> 15:12.800]  I've, I've, I've, I managed to keep one of them.
[15:12.960 --> 15:14.280]  You're not supposed to keep them, but I managed to keep one.
[15:14.380 --> 15:15.360]  I'll, I'll, I'll bring one back.
[15:15.520 --> 15:17.080]  But basically it gets sucked into the machine.
[15:17.760 --> 15:19.300]  Uh, you lift it up and the gate opens.
[15:19.380 --> 15:20.760]  Kind of like the London system, I guess.
[15:21.640 --> 15:24.740]  And some people have, uh, little cards that they wave over.
[15:25.260 --> 15:27.600]  And that's, uh, I think that's called the Penguin Pass.
[15:27.940 --> 15:31.380]  Because I see advertisements, and there's always a penguin in the advertisements.
[15:32.300 --> 15:34.060]  Now, mind you, that might be just for J.R.
[15:34.420 --> 15:34.420]  lines.
[15:34.820 --> 15:35.360]  Uh, J.R.
[15:35.380 --> 15:36.160]  being Japan Rail.
[15:36.400 --> 15:37.880]  They, they own some of the lines here.
[15:38.460 --> 15:40.700]  Maybe the system is, uh, run on, uh, on Linux.
[15:41.480 --> 15:42.240]  Uh, it could be.
[15:42.480 --> 15:42.920]  It's possible.
[15:43.020 --> 15:43.440]  Who knows?
[15:43.680 --> 15:45.940]  You know, strange sense of humor they might have.
[15:46.440 --> 15:47.520]  And so, go ahead.
[15:47.620 --> 15:47.760]  Sorry.
[15:47.840 --> 15:50.020]  And so by wave over, you mean like an RFID card or?
[15:50.420 --> 15:50.640]  Yeah.
[15:50.780 --> 15:50.960]  Okay.
[15:51.340 --> 15:51.460]  Yeah.
[15:51.520 --> 15:52.600]  A lot of people have those.
[15:52.840 --> 15:54.680]  Kind of like the Oyster cards in London again.
[15:54.920 --> 15:55.140]  Yeah.
[15:55.280 --> 15:57.040]  I think it's, I think the same basic principle.
[15:57.780 --> 15:59.460]  Um, are we ever going to get those in New York?
[16:00.340 --> 16:01.280]  We were supposed to.
[16:01.400 --> 16:02.540]  I don't, I don't know what happened to that.
[16:02.940 --> 16:03.700]  I was looking to that.
[16:03.840 --> 16:09.500]  They have something like that for the Skytrain, I think, or at least they have the, the turnstiles have something that I think you can wave over them.
[16:09.580 --> 16:12.040]  But I don't know if they actually have the cards for that.
[16:12.240 --> 16:13.920]  I don't think there's anything to wave.
[16:14.360 --> 16:14.560]  Right.
[16:15.780 --> 16:16.140]  Interesting.
[16:16.760 --> 16:22.020]  Well, I don't, I sort of don't want to spend the whole show talking about the transit system here in Tokyo, but it is interesting.
[16:22.240 --> 16:25.700]  It's, it's, it's fun to play with, but it can be awfully frustrating as well.
[16:27.200 --> 16:30.020]  We're, I'm here with a friend of mine now.
[16:30.280 --> 16:30.800]  Dave is here.
[16:31.100 --> 16:37.700]  And we're doing filming for, for, for Speakers World, which is now in Internet Movie Database, which is kind of cool.
[16:37.700 --> 16:43.140]  So if you're in Tokyo and you want to be in the film, please send us email, OTH at 2600.com.
[16:43.320 --> 16:54.340]  Basically, the film is, um, a collection of people talking about issues that are important to them, ranting, raving, uh, whatever it is that comes to mind, and speaking in your native language.
[16:54.800 --> 17:00.140]  And I think what we, we'll get out of that is just kind of a, a hodgepodge of what the world is saying.
[17:00.580 --> 17:05.680]  And, um, sort of like what Speakers Corner is in Hyde Park in London, except the entire world.
[17:05.680 --> 17:06.520]  And you can...
[17:06.520 --> 17:08.740]  Well, again, OTH at 2600.com.
[17:08.960 --> 17:13.820]  You can appear with confidence knowing that it's a real movie because it appears in the Internet Movie Database.
[17:13.980 --> 17:14.900]  Well, I can now.
[17:15.080 --> 17:19.160]  Now I realize that this is actually a real project, and I, I damn well better finish it.
[17:22.280 --> 17:24.200]  I'd like to read something, if I may.
[17:24.660 --> 17:25.220]  Please do.
[17:25.680 --> 17:27.560]  Um, this is something I found on the Internet.
[17:28.520 --> 17:32.760]  And, uh, you can find all kinds of things on the Internet, but this, this was one of the more interesting things.
[17:33.040 --> 17:34.360]  It's the beginning of an article.
[17:34.600 --> 17:36.040]  I'm going to read a couple paragraphs of it.
[17:36.660 --> 17:42.820]  It was a broiling August afternoon in New Orleans, Louisiana, the Big Easy, the city that care forgot.
[17:43.460 --> 17:47.380]  Those who ventured outside moved as if they were swimming in Tupelo honey.
[17:47.900 --> 17:55.400]  Those inside paid silent homage to the man who invented air conditioning as they watched TV storm teams warn of a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico.
[17:55.760 --> 17:56.820]  Nothing surprising there.
[17:56.920 --> 18:00.880]  Hurricanes in August are as much a part of life in this town as hangovers on Ash Wednesday.
[18:01.160 --> 18:06.600]  But, the next day, the storm gathered steam and drew a bead on the city.
[18:07.360 --> 18:12.480]  As the whirling maelstrom approached the coast, more than a million people evacuated to higher ground.
[18:12.640 --> 18:21.420]  Some 200,000 remained, however, the carless, the homeless, the aged and infirm, and those die-hard New Orleans who looked for any excuse to throw a party.
[18:21.800 --> 18:28.640]  The storm hit Breton Sound with the fury of a nuclear warhead, pushing a deadly storm surge into Lake Pontchartrain.
[18:28.880 --> 18:33.940]  The water crept to the top of the massive berm that holds back the lake and then spilled over.
[18:34.120 --> 18:39.760]  Nearly 80% of New Orleans lies below sea level, more than 8 feet below in places, so the water poured in.
[18:39.900 --> 18:56.660]  A liquid brown wall washed over the brick ranch homes of Gentilly, over the clapboard houses of the Ninth Ward, over the white column porches of the Garden District until it raced through the bars and strip joints on Bourbon Street like the pale rider of the apocalypse.
[18:56.980 --> 19:01.960]  As it reached 25 feet over parts of the city, people climbed onto roofs to escape it.
[19:02.340 --> 19:06.880]  Thousands drowned in the murky brew that was soon contaminated by sewage and industrial waste.
[19:07.240 --> 19:12.240]  Thousands more who survived the flood later perished from dehydration and disease as they waited to be rescued.
[19:12.480 --> 19:14.440]  It took two months to pump the city dry.
[19:14.620 --> 19:19.380]  And by then, the Big Easy was buried under a blanket of putrid sediment.
[19:19.740 --> 19:23.080]  A million people were homeless and 50,000 were dead.
[19:23.300 --> 19:27.160]  It was the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States.
[19:27.420 --> 19:29.080]  When did this calamity happen?
[19:29.640 --> 19:30.460]  It hasn't.
[19:30.640 --> 19:31.060]  Yet.
[19:31.380 --> 19:34.380]  But the doomsday scenario is not far-fetched.
[19:35.720 --> 19:43.180]  Now, such high-stakes compelled a host of unlikely bedfellers, scientists, environmental groups, business leaders, and the U.S.
[19:43.260 --> 19:53.180]  Army Corps of Engineers to forge a radical plan to protect what is left of the barrier reefs and everything else protecting New Orleans.
[19:53.400 --> 20:03.280]  Drafted by the Corps a year ago, the Louisiana Coastal Area project was initially estimated to cost up to $14 billion over 30 years, almost twice as much as current efforts to save the Everglades.
[20:03.420 --> 20:09.440]  The Bush administration balked at the price, supported instead a plan to spend up to $2 billion over the next 10 years.
[20:10.300 --> 20:15.340]  The reason I'm reading this is because this is from a National Geographic article of a year ago.
[20:16.260 --> 20:20.680]  And as you can see from this article, this was not a surprise.
[20:20.680 --> 20:22.580]  This was not something that was unexpected.
[20:23.100 --> 20:29.400]  And you can see right here laid out reasons why it was so much worse than it ever should have been.
[20:30.600 --> 20:32.560]  Certain things just were not taken care of.
[20:32.680 --> 20:36.380]  But to say this was a surprise, that it was unexpected, it's just wrong.
[20:36.740 --> 20:38.260]  You can read the entire article.
[20:38.400 --> 20:39.440]  I've made it into a tiny URL.
[20:39.780 --> 20:48.780]  So go to tinyurl.com slash 8P as in Peter 9HB and read that to your heart's content.
[20:51.060 --> 20:54.500]  Is that last letter a B or B as in Bravo or D as in Delta?
[20:54.880 --> 20:55.940]  That's B as in Bravo.
[20:56.280 --> 20:56.940]  Thank you.
[20:57.540 --> 20:57.800]  Yes.
[20:57.940 --> 21:01.180]  Maybe you should put this online on your travel blog as well.
[21:01.740 --> 21:04.120]  I was considering doing just that, actually.
[21:04.280 --> 21:04.480]  Okay.
[21:04.480 --> 21:12.240]  But I found it amazing that an article like that exists online, that especially the opening part of it, you'd think you were reading the news.
[21:12.520 --> 21:16.320]  There have been a number of such articles that people have pointed out.
[21:16.460 --> 21:23.860]  The local paper there did a long series, I think also about a year ago, on the topic.
[21:24.120 --> 21:29.280]  And yeah, there's really a wealth of research that this was bound to happen.
[21:30.060 --> 21:42.140]  ABC News made great hay of the fact that exactly four years before this hurricane struck, they had a two-hour special on New Orleans and the potential for flood and what was planned.
[21:42.560 --> 21:53.160]  The massive levee encircling the city as a rectangle and allowing the marshes to build up again to the south of the city.
[21:53.980 --> 21:55.400]  The Dutch people...
[21:55.400 --> 21:56.080]  Go ahead, Bernie.
[21:56.360 --> 22:09.480]  I was going to say the Dutch people in the Netherlands probably have an interesting viewpoint on this whole situation because they have a lot of experience with dikes and levees in their land.
[22:10.060 --> 22:20.220]  And back in, I think, 1952 or 53, they had a huge storm surge that killed a whole lot of people in the Netherlands.
[22:20.220 --> 22:38.480]  and they put together the resources to build dikes that would accommodate or that would basically save them from any storm surge that would occur in the next 10,000 years.
[22:39.020 --> 22:40.960]  They figured that out statistically.
[22:41.060 --> 22:49.720]  Whereas the ones in New Orleans were calculated to protect against any storm surge that happened within 100 years.
[22:50.260 --> 23:02.780]  So, the Dutch invested a little more money and it paid off and our government decided not to invest nearly as much money and it didn't pay off.
[23:02.780 --> 23:05.840]  Have the Dutch actually had a huge hurricane hit them yet?
[23:06.120 --> 23:06.820]  Or, I mean...
[23:06.820 --> 23:20.540]  Not a hurricane, but they had a storm that killed thousands of people back in 1953 and they said never again and they devoted the necessary resources and engineering expertise to ensure that would not happen again.
[23:20.720 --> 23:24.520]  Well, I'm just curious as to whether or not the situation has ever arisen.
[23:24.700 --> 23:31.240]  I mean, because New Orleans did have the levees and they hadn't had something like this happen.
[23:31.240 --> 23:37.960]  I mean, they had something happen before and then they built the levees and something like this wasn't totally...
[23:37.960 --> 23:39.460]  I mean, not such a huge...
[23:39.460 --> 23:45.640]  This was a big storm and there had been a lot of close calls before and the levees had been just fine.
[23:45.960 --> 23:54.820]  So, my question is have the Dutch have they had anything since that equaled what they had in the 50s to actually test their levees?
[23:55.060 --> 23:55.860]  No, but they're
[24:01.240 --> 24:04.800]  means, but I think they have had some pretty serious storms in Europe.
[24:04.960 --> 24:10.440]  I read about massive flooding sometimes, but they generally don't have hurricanes in that part of the world.
[24:10.780 --> 24:12.440]  New Orleans, though, does have hurricanes.
[24:13.000 --> 24:19.080]  So, even more so is the reason why if you put these two cities next to each other, which one should be better prepared?
[24:19.240 --> 24:27.660]  I would say New Orleans hands down should be prepared much more so than Amsterdam, say, simply because the risk is so much higher.
[24:28.720 --> 24:39.340]  Well, the Bush administration's been busy diverting resources that could have been used to strengthen these levies towards the war in Iraq, so it's clear where the priorities lie.
[24:39.700 --> 24:44.320]  I don't want to spend time bashing the Bush administration because I figure, you know, now it's time to give everybody else the chance.
[24:45.140 --> 24:46.420]  But it's so easy.
[24:46.680 --> 24:47.760]  Everybody's taking that chance.
[24:47.920 --> 24:49.460]  They've done such a terrible job.
[24:49.460 --> 24:50.760]  It's so easy to bash them.
[24:52.020 --> 24:56.520]  Well, the thing is, I've been watching, I don't get any American media here.
[24:56.520 --> 24:57.800]  except for the internet.
[24:58.580 --> 25:01.600]  But I get just Japanese channels.
[25:01.980 --> 25:04.020]  I don't get BBC in Tokyo, unfortunately.
[25:04.560 --> 25:07.760]  But just seeing what NHK is doing, you can tell.
[25:07.960 --> 25:12.580]  You can tell that they are very critical of how the thing was handled.
[25:13.120 --> 25:16.840]  You can tell that by looking at what they are choosing to show.
[25:17.060 --> 25:22.700]  You see Bush talking, and then you see a backdrop of the destroyed city.
[25:22.820 --> 25:30.920]  Then you see somebody else, who is criticizing what FEMA and Bush has been doing.
[25:31.520 --> 25:39.980]  And then you see coverage of a typhoon that just hit us, actually the western part of the country.
[25:40.660 --> 25:44.460]  And we've been getting rain and wind over the past few days as a result of that.
[25:44.780 --> 25:50.160]  You see rescue people on the ground while the storm is still happening.
[25:53.840 --> 25:55.560]  stopping flooding before it starts.
[25:55.900 --> 25:58.300]  And you see that these people here have a plan.
[25:58.480 --> 26:02.120]  And they jumped into effect almost immediately.
[26:02.120 --> 26:05.180]  I don't know what kind of casualty reports there are, if any.
[26:05.760 --> 26:09.260]  But I just got a sense that, wow, things are under control here.
[26:11.380 --> 26:17.500]  some of my colleagues went actually down to Louisiana over the weekend.
[26:17.820 --> 26:28.380]  And they were reporting that most of the rescue effort was just being done by random volunteers that FEMA and the Coast Guard and all these people still didn't have their act together.
[26:28.680 --> 26:34.840]  And were only just then starting to really systematically go around and look for people.
[26:34.840 --> 26:44.420]  Well, not to defend the Bush administration because I frankly feel that the head of FEMA should be hung and that George Bush should have his left hand amputated.
[26:44.860 --> 26:51.440]  But I'd like to point out that FEMA is not designed as a first responder.
[26:51.700 --> 27:00.120]  FEMA is designed to come in after the disaster and give aid, loans, housing, that sort of thing.
[27:00.320 --> 27:04.620]  Well, you know, we gave them lots of time after the disaster and their federal emergency management.
[27:04.620 --> 27:05.400]  I agree with you totally.
[27:05.660 --> 27:06.700]  There's a federal emergency.
[27:07.000 --> 27:07.700]  Where is the management?
[27:08.040 --> 27:09.200]  I agree with you totally.
[27:09.480 --> 27:09.880]  Okay.
[27:10.540 --> 27:15.720]  I mean, the looks around here at my statement about what should happen to George Bush are astonishing.
[27:17.340 --> 27:20.000]  But still, it's not designed for that.
[27:20.400 --> 27:24.720]  And you speak of the Japanese guys being on the scene as it happens.
[27:25.180 --> 27:31.640]  Japan doesn't have a federal-state dichotomy as to the chain of command.
[27:32.340 --> 27:33.900]  It doesn't have that problem.
[27:33.900 --> 27:38.060]  In the United States, that sort of stuff would be left to local governments, cities and states.
[27:38.480 --> 27:40.680]  Yeah, but Jim, I've seen FEMA in action before.
[27:40.680 --> 27:42.700]  I've seen them respond to hurricanes.
[27:43.120 --> 27:44.060]  I agree with you.
[27:44.120 --> 27:45.460]  They're a bunch of idiots.
[27:46.180 --> 27:47.940]  Well, I mean, something has happened to them.
[27:48.020 --> 27:48.840]  That's my point.
[27:49.420 --> 27:55.720]  They've lost any effectiveness by having their whole operation enveloped by Homeland Security.
[27:56.040 --> 27:57.240]  It's a very bad idea.
[27:57.460 --> 27:58.720]  I agree with you on that totally.
[27:59.220 --> 28:02.280]  I'd like to read a letter that we got today, actually.
[28:02.920 --> 28:05.420]  I've enjoyed everyone's commentary on the situation.
[28:06.180 --> 28:10.700]  Actually, I think this might be more of an off-the-wall letter, because I talked about this on Off the Wall too.
[28:11.820 --> 28:18.280]  But the commentary on the situation we have going on in southeastern Louisiana, communications down here have been sporadic at best.
[28:18.480 --> 28:20.280]  Cell phones aren't 100% dependable.
[28:20.600 --> 28:23.500]  I've been unable to check voicemail since the storm made landfall.
[28:24.040 --> 28:28.220]  Also, up until a day ago, I was unable to call a friend in Jackson, Missouri.
[28:29.080 --> 28:29.480]  Mississippi.
[28:30.160 --> 28:30.680]  Is that Mississippi?
[28:30.880 --> 28:31.060]  I'm sorry.
[28:31.260 --> 28:31.480]  Yeah, Miss.
[28:31.620 --> 28:32.380]  Jackson, Mississippi.
[28:32.900 --> 28:36.440]  And I would get a new operator recording that I never heard before.
[28:36.440 --> 28:40.160]  She would say, due to the hurricane, your call cannot be completed as dialed.
[28:40.320 --> 28:42.900]  You know, I've heard recordings like that.
[28:45.300 --> 28:49.920]  I think every possible scenario due to the storm, due to the emergency situation.
[28:50.660 --> 28:53.080]  And years ago, we used to find banks of them.
[28:53.380 --> 29:01.840]  You'd call, like, say, XXX 9951, 9952, 9953, and each one would be a different recording of a different type of event.
[29:01.900 --> 29:02.660]  So it was kind of interesting.
[29:03.360 --> 29:04.580]  They might even still exist.
[29:05.480 --> 29:13.060]  Continuing with this letter, you might be able to get it if you try to call someone in the 504 area code, as most switching stations are underwater.
[29:13.380 --> 29:15.600]  The situation in Baton Rouge has been crazy.
[29:15.860 --> 29:19.560]  We did not get much damage other than some downed trees and power lines.
[29:19.820 --> 29:22.800]  People were only out of power for three to five days for the most part.
[29:23.160 --> 29:25.640]  Baton Rouge has been used as a major evacuation point.
[29:25.640 --> 29:29.320]  We are the closest metropolitan area to New Orleans, only about 60 miles away.
[29:29.640 --> 29:37.220]  At Louisiana State University, our basketball arena is being used as a triage facility before people are transferred to a local hospital.
[29:37.760 --> 29:41.720]  The auxiliary gym that is attached to it is being used as a temporary morgue.
[29:41.720 --> 29:44.780]  That's a little creepy, but there isn't anywhere else to put bodies.
[29:45.160 --> 29:47.320]  I also listened to a manual show off the wall.
[29:47.460 --> 29:50.600]  He mentioned I-10 at Causeway when reading an article.
[29:51.040 --> 29:52.820]  And yes, I was a little confused by that myself.
[29:53.020 --> 29:55.300]  Causeway isn't a town, but a road.
[29:55.460 --> 30:01.540]  Causeway Boulevard is the road that leads to Lake Pontchartrain and continues across the lake to the North Shore.
[30:01.980 --> 30:04.260]  New Orleans has lots of weird names for its geography.
[30:04.440 --> 30:06.440]  The West Bank is actually more south than west.
[30:06.800 --> 30:10.100]  And at some points in the city, it is actually west.
[30:11.200 --> 30:14.620]  But that's due to the Mississippi River going more east, west, and north, south.
[30:15.160 --> 30:16.640]  Anyway, that's from Jason in Baton Rouge.
[30:16.760 --> 30:17.840]  Thanks very much for listening, Jason.
[30:17.940 --> 30:20.740]  And please let us know what's going on down there.
[30:20.800 --> 30:24.300]  And of course, any other listener who is from that area, we would love to hear from you.
[30:24.320 --> 30:26.280]  And please let us know if there's anything that we can do to help.
[30:26.440 --> 30:36.640]  Because over here, I just feel so helpless wondering what it is that we can be doing to make something better there.
[30:37.400 --> 30:49.060]  I'm still having about 50... about the phone thing you mentioned, I'm still having about 50% success rate and usually have to resort to text messages, even though my friend is here in New York.
[30:50.000 --> 30:56.960]  But interesting thing too, and this is something I found out over the past couple of days, but Google has a service.
[30:57.200 --> 31:07.580]  If you go to maps.google.com and click on New Orleans and zoom down on the maps to New Orleans, you'll see another little choice that pops up that says Katrina.
[31:08.000 --> 31:12.320]  And if you click on Katrina, you'll see pictures post-hurricane.
[31:12.580 --> 31:22.020]  So if you know exactly where your house is or where a friend's house is or where a particular area that you want to check is, you can look at that and see the condition after the storm.
[31:23.600 --> 31:28.940]  To add to that, if I could, Google, that's good if you want kind of a general idea.
[31:29.200 --> 31:29.720]  I checked it out.
[31:29.840 --> 31:33.340]  It's a little... it's blurry when you try to get up close.
[31:33.680 --> 31:46.800]  If you go to ngs.woc.noaa.gov slash Katrina, there they have really, really high quality satellite images.
[31:46.840 --> 31:48.380]  They're about 4 megapixels.
[31:48.540 --> 31:50.780]  So that's about 4,000 by 4,000 pixels.
[31:51.680 --> 32:01.500]  And there you can really get... if you're really interested, if you live there or you know someone who lives there and you want to see the condition of where they live, that'll get you really up close.
[32:02.700 --> 32:05.540]  And it's better than the Google Maps images.
[32:05.660 --> 32:11.820]  But if you're just interested in seeing kind of an overview of the area, then the Google Maps services...
[32:11.820 --> 32:15.540]  Now, on that system, how do you initially... do you need an address?
[32:15.700 --> 32:17.180]  Do you need GPS coordinates?
[32:17.480 --> 32:18.660]  No, it's very simplistic.
[32:18.980 --> 32:21.400]  There's just image maps with squares.
[32:21.480 --> 32:25.320]  And when you click on the squares, then you can click on smaller squares.
[32:25.480 --> 32:38.100]  And eventually, if you know where it is, because either by comparing it to a Google Map or because you live there, then you can... the very up... the actual images are very high quality.
[32:38.580 --> 32:41.260]  In other words, it's like zooming in on a satellite picture?
[32:41.580 --> 32:47.980]  Not exactly, because the image... the maps with the squares on them are drawings, map images.
[32:48.340 --> 32:51.860]  And then the final... the close-up is the actual satellite image.
[32:51.960 --> 32:54.440]  Well, then it's like the key map in a Hagstrom map.
[32:54.980 --> 32:59.360]  In other words, you have a map of the entire city, and there are 20 or 30 squares on it.
[32:59.460 --> 33:03.600]  And if you know where your... what neighborhood your block is on, you can...
[33:03.600 --> 33:04.140]  Exactly.
[33:04.300 --> 33:04.460]  Okay.
[33:05.060 --> 33:05.540]  All right.
[33:05.600 --> 33:08.960]  Here's a link to a mirror of a blog from downtown New Orleans.
[33:09.140 --> 33:10.480]  They've got some pretty good pictures.
[33:11.440 --> 33:15.740]  Supposedly some tech geeks have an OC3 line set up and have a generator going.
[33:16.200 --> 33:25.520]  It's www.livejournal.com slash users slash... and I'll spell this I-N-T-E-R-D-I-C-T-O-R.
[33:27.300 --> 33:29.400]  So that's something else of interest.
[33:30.860 --> 33:41.000]  And just in case anybody's listening who, as a Viet, has no idea where to contribute for a hurricane relief, I'm going to give you four or five quick URLs and phone numbers.
[33:41.440 --> 33:46.360]  The American Red Cross, redcross.org, 1-800-HELP-NOW.
[33:46.540 --> 33:50.900]  Habitat for Humanity, habitat.org, 1-800-HABITAT.
[33:50.900 --> 33:58.080]  The Salvation Army, salvationarmyusa.org, 1-800-SAL-ARMY.
[33:58.900 --> 34:10.960]  For pets trapped in New Orleans, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, ASPCA.org, 866-275-3923.
[34:11.400 --> 34:12.820]  And there are others as well.
[34:13.080 --> 34:14.600]  Yeah, you left out Pat Robertson's.
[34:15.100 --> 34:17.060]  I have no idea what Pat Robertson's is.
[34:17.460 --> 34:18.740]  Yeah, well, he's not FEMA.
[34:20.340 --> 34:21.440]  Well, yeah, I guess not.
[34:21.540 --> 34:24.680]  You know, I'm sort of... and maybe the listeners can help with this.
[34:24.800 --> 34:30.660]  I'm moving to have FEMA made into a word for completely messing something up.
[34:30.800 --> 34:31.040]  You know?
[34:31.320 --> 34:33.000]  You really FEMA'd today, didn't you?
[34:33.440 --> 34:34.260]  Or something like that.
[34:34.300 --> 34:36.040]  I think there's a good chance we can do that.
[34:36.040 --> 34:42.600]  I think you need to file a petition with the Oxford people and, you know, fill out the forms in triplicate and they'll get back to you.
[34:42.860 --> 34:43.200]  Wait a minute.
[34:43.280 --> 34:44.000]  I'm borrowing that paperwork.
[34:44.220 --> 34:48.020]  They did this with the word Santorum, and I will not give the definition.
[34:48.320 --> 34:49.700]  But the way to do it...
[34:51.980 --> 35:01.840]  The way to do it is essentially to use this quite often in one's online web postings, web pages, and such.
[35:02.220 --> 35:03.400]  We have the radio, Jim.
[35:03.760 --> 35:05.980]  I can just say you FEMA'd in that explanation right up.
[35:06.120 --> 35:08.960]  I know, but this is rather ephemeral, okay?
[35:09.080 --> 35:10.280]  And there's no written record.
[35:10.420 --> 35:12.180]  We want to get it into a dictionary eventually.
[35:13.440 --> 35:15.460]  It's a tough one because it ends in a vowel.
[35:15.700 --> 35:18.860]  So, you know, to say you FEMA'd, is it F-E-M-A-E-D?
[35:19.120 --> 35:20.080]  Is that how it would be spelled?
[35:20.760 --> 35:21.840]  I would just...
[35:22.480 --> 35:24.140]  Yeah, I would say A-E-D, yeah.
[35:24.800 --> 35:25.260]  I like that.
[35:25.480 --> 35:28.720]  I think we might have more success using it as sort of, you know, an insult.
[35:28.900 --> 35:30.580]  Like, you... what are you, some kind of FEMA?
[35:30.940 --> 35:31.380]  You know?
[35:31.840 --> 35:35.620]  It's good that it starts with an F, though, because it has that phonetic sound.
[35:37.340 --> 35:38.460]  Yeah, it does.
[35:40.120 --> 35:47.140]  The company, Bell South, yesterday estimated it would cost $400 to $600 million to repair the damage from Hurricane Katrina.
[35:47.140 --> 35:54.980]  Said it could take four to six months to restore service in the hardest-hit areas of New Orleans, as if there is in New Orleans, and the Gulf Coast of Mississippi.
[35:56.020 --> 35:58.640]  They're the dominant phone service provider in much of the South.
[35:58.840 --> 36:01.660]  They also stress those are only preliminary estimates.
[36:01.880 --> 36:04.940]  They haven't been able to survey all their sites or even find all their sites.
[36:05.620 --> 36:12.320]  They say an estimated 1.1 million of its lines were out in the region, with 90% of those in what it calls the red zone.
[36:13.020 --> 36:17.840]  And that's down, actually, from 1.75 million lines that were out late last week.
[36:18.860 --> 36:22.800]  Bernie, have you heard any other reports from other telecommunications companies?
[36:24.960 --> 36:29.020]  Well, many of the cellular carriers are still down.
[36:30.560 --> 36:52.340]  But Bell South is putting in enhanced service in areas outside of the affected areas, like at the Houston Astrodome, to allow people, refugees who don't like to be called refugees, who are living there, unfortunately, to be able to use cell phones for free.
[36:54.380 --> 36:56.740]  But a whole lot more could be done.
[36:57.000 --> 37:07.240]  And I was thinking this is an ideal opportunity for some company to donate a whole bunch of these voice-over-IP Wi-Fi phones to the affected areas.
[37:07.240 --> 37:14.780]  And someone could set up a Wi-Fi network that would cover that area.
[37:14.780 --> 37:27.440]  You could even power them with solar cells and provide voice, you know, telephone connectivity to the affected areas, because it's obviously going to take months for Bell South to get their switches up and running.
[37:27.660 --> 37:39.740]  So for people who just need to use phones, these voice-over-IP Wi-Fi phones might be an alternative to cellular in an area that has no public switch telephone network.
[37:39.920 --> 37:42.060]  Do you need internet connectivity, though?
[37:42.840 --> 37:46.140]  Yes, but you can bridge these things.
[37:46.380 --> 37:54.380]  You know, wireless access points, you can data chain them from the affected areas back to areas that do have internet connectivity a few miles away.
[37:54.380 --> 37:56.860]  Or do a long shot from somewhere.
[37:56.980 --> 38:01.380]  Like, if you're going to have a central area where people can make phone calls, you can do a long shot from somewhere.
[38:01.520 --> 38:06.540]  Bernie, this is actually being done by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Police.
[38:07.060 --> 38:15.480]  They have a satellite station on top of the Hyatt Hotel, the one that's noteworthy for having all the windows on the north side blown out.
[38:15.680 --> 38:25.640]  And they have Wi-Fi telephones that they're giving to the New Orleans Police and the federal marshals and other law enforcement in the affected area.
[38:26.020 --> 38:26.480]  Well, good.
[38:26.480 --> 38:28.360]  I'm glad someone has also thought of that.
[38:28.420 --> 38:37.160]  And I hope that courtesy is extended to the people who are really suffering from this rather than just the law enforcement people.
[38:37.200 --> 38:52.580]  Well, they're doing it because this is a system designed by Unisys on their Long Island plant post-9-11, especially for law enforcement, who one would expect should have the first ability to communicate in a disaster.
[38:52.860 --> 38:53.760]  But I agree with you totally.
[38:53.900 --> 38:58.900]  Yes, some private companies should come in and do a similar parallel system.
[38:59.720 --> 39:11.020]  Now, I'd like to focus a little bit on ham radio and the role that it's been playing in this disaster and the kind of coverage that the mass media has been focusing on.
[39:11.120 --> 39:16.420]  Now, Bernie, I think you have an article or you had an article that mentions this.
[39:16.420 --> 39:22.660]  I think there's one particularly clueless Motorola employee that has something to say about the usefulness of ham radio.
[39:23.160 --> 39:33.920]  Yeah, there was an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal today entitled, As Telecom Reels from Storm Damage, Ham Radio's Hum.
[39:34.340 --> 39:41.680]  And it's unusual for ham radio to get mainstream coverage from Associated Press and Wall Street Journal.
[39:41.760 --> 39:42.620]  It's a good title, though.
[39:43.120 --> 39:43.840]  What's that?
[39:43.840 --> 39:44.580]  It's a good title.
[39:45.040 --> 39:45.660]  It is.
[39:45.740 --> 39:46.300]  I like the title.
[39:46.440 --> 39:47.860]  They're pretty good at coming up with titles.
[39:48.060 --> 39:58.800]  But they try to be balanced, but I think reporters can't resist to paint ham radio with some antiquated technology, like two tin cans and a string sort of thing.
[39:59.960 --> 40:09.240]  And we had a Motorola representative who was quoted in the article saying something is better than nothing, but ham radios are pretty close to nothing.
[40:09.240 --> 40:26.440]  But in fact, ham radio operators or the amateur radio service here in the United States has a proud tradition of really being the first responders in emergency areas where there are no other forms of communication.
[40:26.840 --> 40:36.240]  And I think Redbird, who, like myself as a ham radio operator, posted some interesting comments on our internal list about this.
[40:36.240 --> 40:42.720]  And Redbird, could you comment about your feelings of how ham radio is useful in these situations?
[40:43.000 --> 40:43.280]  Sure.
[40:43.440 --> 40:59.060]  Well, it's funny because a lot of people don't realize that with the ham radio hobby, what everybody's doing is really finding the most efficient ways and practicing communication so that when something like this does happen, they're really the best equipped to deal with it.
[40:59.340 --> 41:11.200]  And this Motorola employee really, I guess, was kind of clueless because all the systems that he has to deal with, you know, deal with infrastructures that cost billions of dollars to, you know, get up and maintain.
[41:11.380 --> 41:16.460]  And one single point of failure could really put a...
[41:16.460 --> 41:18.680]  make them completely inoperable.
[41:19.120 --> 41:19.680]  Like a hurricane.
[41:20.020 --> 41:20.780]  Yeah, absolutely.
[41:21.200 --> 41:32.240]  So, I mean, ham radio can be operated very, very easily with, you know, a battery, a very simple-to-put-up antenna, and it depends on the propagation of various signals.
[41:32.240 --> 41:35.700]  Or you can use it locally, you know, using the higher frequencies.
[41:36.120 --> 41:38.560]  And it's really the most reliable form of communication.
[41:38.560 --> 41:49.340]  And you could really get signals out with ham radio that you would never be able to do before because you can use very, very, very low bandwidth modes such as CW using Morse code and things like that.
[41:49.880 --> 41:50.520]  And it's...
[41:50.520 --> 41:55.720]  But, Redbird, I wanted to ask you, what about an individual who's not a ham radio operator?
[41:55.720 --> 41:57.760]  How would they get a message from one...
[41:57.760 --> 42:07.220]  How would they get a message across to someone they needed to reach via ham radio if they didn't personally have a ham radio or if the person they were trying to reach didn't have a ham radio?
[42:07.400 --> 42:09.300]  How does ham radio play a part in that?
[42:09.500 --> 42:21.800]  Well, a lot of the local law enforcement agencies and emergency management offices will have close association with ARIES, which is the Amateur Radio Emergency Service, or RACES, which is another one.
[42:22.040 --> 42:27.920]  And usually they do have quite a few ham radio operators willing to go in when there's an emergency like this.
[42:28.000 --> 42:31.100]  So you can really go there, try to, you know, give them a message.
[42:31.300 --> 42:32.520]  And when they do...
[42:32.520 --> 42:37.100]  When they are able to establish communication with another area, they can relay that message along.
[42:37.340 --> 42:38.960]  And this is practiced all the time.
[42:39.440 --> 42:47.460]  There are nets that are held, you know, weekly, daily, and whatever, where people, you know, ham radio operators actually practice relaying these messages.
[42:47.700 --> 42:50.460]  So it really is something that they're really prepared to do.
[42:50.880 --> 42:51.340]  And it's been...
[42:51.340 --> 42:53.540]  Recently, how do these nets work?
[42:53.540 --> 42:55.960]  Well, you know, it'll be a schedule.
[42:56.220 --> 43:01.860]  A lot of ham radio operators will come on the air on a certain frequency, you know, on a certain day at a certain time.
[43:02.780 --> 43:05.860]  And they'll be able to relay messages from one operator to another.
[43:05.980 --> 43:12.380]  Let's say the propagation allows you to communicate with someone in Wyoming, and then they can communicate with someone from Louisiana.
[43:12.580 --> 43:17.760]  You'd be able to relay your message from between those two points through that other operator.
[43:17.920 --> 43:19.640]  And they're usually very well organized, too.
[43:19.700 --> 43:22.160]  It's not just a bunch of people talking over each other and whatnot.
[43:22.160 --> 43:26.340]  There's always a control operator who really maintains control of the situation.
[43:26.600 --> 43:31.660]  And then these messages are able to be relayed very, very efficiently.
[43:32.040 --> 43:35.560]  And I've personally monitored some of these nets on shortwave before.
[43:35.560 --> 43:41.920]  And I am constantly amazed by the efficiency of these ham radio operators getting a message from point to point.
[43:42.120 --> 43:48.400]  And they talk very fast, almost like air traffic controllers in getting these messages across so efficiently.
[43:48.400 --> 43:50.140]  They've had decades of practice at this.
[43:50.300 --> 43:54.660]  And it's working a whole lot better in emergency situations than anything else.
[43:54.880 --> 44:02.660]  Well, you know what would be actually very useful would be if these guys helped out in reporting fires because there is no operating 9-1-1 system in New Orleans.
[44:02.680 --> 44:10.440]  And the only way the fire department is finding out about fires is after they're well-developed, and that's in quotes, and people start talking about them.
[44:10.640 --> 44:13.860]  And it's like, you know, back in the 17 or 1800s.
[44:13.860 --> 44:16.260]  And they send a team down there.
[44:16.360 --> 44:22.020]  I don't know if it's driven by horses, but that's how the fires get attacked, by finding out about the word of mouth.
[44:22.020 --> 44:22.920]  Not by 9-1-1.
[44:23.020 --> 44:23.620]  It doesn't exist.
[44:23.780 --> 44:31.000]  So if ham radio guys can get on, and hopefully fire departments have ham radio rigs set up in their offices.
[44:31.000 --> 44:31.760]  Do you think they do?
[44:33.480 --> 44:40.420]  Their handheld radios would operate very much like the amateur radios on those frequencies on those bands.
[44:40.420 --> 44:45.040]  So they should have communications, unless they're depending on the repeater, which is out because of the water.
[44:45.220 --> 44:47.540]  My question is, though, if...
[44:47.540 --> 44:50.900]  Let's just say there is no operating 9-1-1 system right now.
[44:50.960 --> 44:51.980]  There is no electricity.
[44:52.280 --> 44:55.120]  But we have all these ham radios set up in various places.
[44:55.580 --> 45:00.760]  How does somebody with a ham radio contact the police or the fire department?
[45:00.960 --> 45:05.620]  Do those guys have a way to receive a message from somebody on ham radio?
[45:06.160 --> 45:06.500]  Yes.
[45:06.800 --> 45:07.200]  Go ahead.
[45:07.920 --> 45:08.380]  Yes.
[45:08.520 --> 45:21.980]  They just need to give that message over the net and someone whoever is on the net can relay that message to someone who has access to a phone line that can actually reach that particular...
[45:21.980 --> 45:23.320]  No, the phone lines are down, Bernie.
[45:23.440 --> 45:24.240]  The phone lines are down.
[45:24.360 --> 45:24.880]  There are no phone lines.
[45:24.880 --> 45:26.460]  Well, you can't read...
[45:26.460 --> 45:28.940]  The fire department has no telephone service at all?
[45:29.040 --> 45:29.580]  Is that what you're saying?
[45:29.620 --> 45:33.900]  Well, what I've been reading is that 9-1-1 is not working and I imagine that means all phones aren't working.
[45:33.980 --> 45:37.640]  And yeah, that's certainly a realistic situation in a situation like that.
[45:37.820 --> 45:46.420]  Well, I would not think that just because 9-1-1 is down doesn't mean that the fire department who's responsible for putting out the fires has no telephone connectivity whatsoever.
[45:47.000 --> 45:51.060]  I believe that is the case, though, because they're not hearing anything except word of mouth.
[45:51.160 --> 45:52.380]  So that tells me they don't have phones.
[45:52.560 --> 45:54.200]  Well, that would require a liaison.
[45:54.200 --> 46:06.060]  Someone who is a ham radio operator working in conjunction with the fire department or, better yet, a firefighter or someone working at the fire department who himself or herself is a ham radio operator.
[46:06.300 --> 46:11.800]  There would have to be some liaison going on there and I'm hoping that that's being done right now.
[46:12.100 --> 46:19.480]  My point is I think every fire department in the country and every police department in the country should have a ham radio standing by on battery backup.
[46:20.720 --> 46:23.460]  And a licensed ham radio operator to operate it.
[46:23.660 --> 46:24.040]  Absolutely.
[46:24.540 --> 46:28.980]  Bernie, even if the fire department did have a phone line, who would be able to call them?
[46:29.180 --> 46:30.720]  Because nobody else would have a phone line.
[46:30.940 --> 46:31.540]  No, that's the thing.
[46:31.820 --> 46:33.280]  That's the whole thing about these nets.
[46:33.420 --> 46:40.660]  These ham radio nets are set up so that you can rapidly relay, and that's how the American Radio Relay League got its name, the ARRL.
[46:41.440 --> 46:55.280]  They can rapidly relay a message between hams to an area that does have telephone connectivity, and then those people can relay that message via the public switched phone network by phone call to whoever has a phone to get the message to them.
[46:55.780 --> 46:58.180]  Yeah, but obviously they're not the people that are going to be reporting the fire.
[46:58.300 --> 47:00.680]  It's going to be the people that are in the area that doesn't have phone service.
[47:00.900 --> 47:06.860]  And that's where the ham radio operator who could see the fire could report that, or someone could come to a ham radio operator and do that.
[47:08.680 --> 47:09.840]  It has a lot of promise.
[47:10.700 --> 47:26.600]  I don't think it's taken as seriously as it ought to be, especially when you have companies like Motorola who are bad-mouthing ham radio because they seem to view it as a threat because ham radio is so more reliable in emergency situations than their own networks,
[47:26.640 --> 47:28.480]  which seem to go down routinely.
[47:28.480 --> 47:36.480]  Here in Philadelphia, Motorola's $52 million digital radio network for the police department here goes down routinely without any hurricanes.
[47:36.760 --> 47:39.580]  So you can imagine in a hurricane how reliable they are.
[47:39.900 --> 47:42.100]  I guess Motorola doesn't sell ham radio equipment.
[47:42.480 --> 47:43.520]  No, they don't.
[47:43.600 --> 47:46.880]  We're interested in hearing what our listeners have to say about all this, I believe.
[47:47.660 --> 47:47.780]  Absolutely.
[47:48.120 --> 47:50.080]  So perhaps we should take some calls.
[47:50.560 --> 47:55.220]  Let's give up the address for people who want to write in and take some phone calls, 212-209-2900.
[47:55.580 --> 48:01.300]  You can email us at OffTheHook, and the address for that is OTH at 2600.com.
[48:01.440 --> 48:06.960]  Again, if you're in Tokyo, please let us know so that we can maybe see you and put you in the film.
[48:08.160 --> 48:20.740]  And the paper address, in case you want to write us a letter by pen and paper or a typewriter or whatnot, that is OffTheHook, care of WBAI, 120 Wall Street.
[48:21.360 --> 48:22.120]  10th floor.
[48:22.640 --> 48:23.100]  New York.
[48:23.320 --> 48:23.740]  New York.
[48:23.980 --> 48:26.120]  1-0-0-0-5.
[48:26.660 --> 48:28.060]  That went very well this week.
[48:28.840 --> 48:32.040]  So, again, the number is 212-209-2900.
[48:32.720 --> 48:33.860]  Should we take the first call?
[48:34.260 --> 48:35.020]  Before we do...
[48:35.020 --> 48:37.160]  Take the second call, because we know who the first call is going to be.
[48:37.160 --> 48:53.700]  Before we take the call, I just want to talk briefly about one other interesting radio project that's going on, and that is our friends at the Prometheus Group, which sets up small radio stations all across the country, is setting up a station inside the Houston Astrodome,
[48:53.760 --> 48:56.120]  which is where a lot of the refugees are.
[48:56.280 --> 49:04.100]  And they actually got permission from the FCC to set up this temporary station on the condition that they got some radios to distribute to the folks.
[49:04.100 --> 49:16.480]  But it's being stopped by some random local official who's afraid that they might play gangster rap on this station, and that would be just so terrible that he can't have it in his Astrodome.
[49:16.640 --> 49:18.420]  Is that really the reason that he's giving?
[49:18.560 --> 49:19.980]  That is the latest.
[49:19.980 --> 49:25.320]  Of course, the situation is evolving very swiftly, so I read this this morning, and it could be completely different by now.
[49:25.620 --> 49:32.580]  But, you know, these small officials have really the power to stop very silly things.
[49:32.680 --> 49:33.640]  Mike, I have a question, though.
[49:33.640 --> 49:35.200]  Well, I mean, they're in the Astrodome.
[49:35.300 --> 49:36.480]  What do they need a radio station for?
[49:36.560 --> 49:37.840]  They can use the PA system.
[49:38.280 --> 49:39.640]  That would wake everyone up.
[49:39.820 --> 49:43.860]  I think it's not just, you know, it's the immediate area also.
[49:44.460 --> 49:51.420]  I have some more information on that low-power FM station that's trying to get on the air in the Astrodome area.
[49:51.600 --> 49:59.000]  Sony apparently just donated 10,000 portable radios to that effort.
[49:59.000 --> 50:12.760]  And what the official was saying was that, or officials in the Astrodome were saying, they wouldn't allow this radio station to go on the air unless everybody had their own radio in the Astrodome, because they didn't want people fighting over radios and that sort of thing.
[50:12.760 --> 50:15.820]  And they also insisted that the radios not have speakers.
[50:15.820 --> 50:20.000]  They could only be heard through earbuds or headphones.
[50:20.980 --> 50:23.220]  So Sony apparently donated a bunch of radios.
[50:23.300 --> 50:25.680]  But my concern is that these radios are not going to have...
[50:26.940 --> 50:28.220]  They're going to have battery power.
[50:28.220 --> 50:32.040]  And the batteries are going to run out in short order after a day or two of listening to them.
[50:32.180 --> 50:39.100]  And there's no distribution method in place to distribute batteries to tens of thousands of people down there.
[50:39.380 --> 50:48.600]  So my suggestion to the Prometheus people was to get these little radios for about $5 with a little crank generator.
[50:48.860 --> 50:50.360]  It fits in your pocket.
[50:50.460 --> 50:58.160]  You just twist this little dial and you can charge the battery for half an hour and listen to the radio that way without having to distribute to thousands of batteries a day to people.
[50:58.280 --> 50:59.700]  But we'll see how it works out.
[51:00.080 --> 51:06.860]  This is a microcosm of the whole FEMA situation where something that is so simple turns into this big, complex, bureaucratic nightmare.
[51:07.360 --> 51:07.600]  Yep.
[51:07.600 --> 51:09.560]  I have a nightmare that will beat that.
[51:09.820 --> 51:19.040]  The TSA wouldn't let people be offloaded, unloaded onto planes to get out of New Orleans because they were unable to be searched via metal detector.
[51:19.320 --> 51:21.760]  So they tried bringing in the metal detector.
[51:21.760 --> 51:22.780]  They couldn't do that.
[51:22.780 --> 51:26.040]  So they had to get permission to search these people by hand.
[51:26.200 --> 51:32.060]  So then they waited a while until they got enough TSA agents in to search all the people that they were evacuating by airplane.
[51:33.080 --> 51:34.120]  I'll take some phone calls.
[51:34.240 --> 51:34.560]  All right.
[51:34.640 --> 51:35.140]  Let's do that.
[51:35.140 --> 51:37.900]  The number again, 212-209-2900.
[51:38.580 --> 51:39.460]  And good evening.
[51:39.560 --> 51:40.060]  You're on the air.
[51:40.380 --> 51:40.760]  Yes, sir.
[51:40.800 --> 51:41.140]  Good evening.
[51:41.760 --> 51:45.520]  I wish you guys would stop referring to these folks as refugees.
[51:46.020 --> 51:47.140]  Well, why not?
[51:47.160 --> 51:48.040]  They are refugees.
[51:48.340 --> 51:48.900]  They're not refugees.
[51:49.200 --> 51:51.640]  We need to focus on the fact of their horrible plight.
[51:51.640 --> 51:55.360]  I mean, it's how we read, but say it like it is.
[51:55.520 --> 51:56.260]  They're not refugees.
[51:56.480 --> 51:57.660]  It's the United States of America.
[51:58.400 --> 51:59.320]  Why can't we have refugees in the United States of America?
[51:59.320 --> 52:01.720]  They're going from one state to another that is still in the country.
[52:02.160 --> 52:05.900]  How would the term people seeking refuge sound?
[52:05.900 --> 52:06.920]  Well, that sounds better.
[52:07.540 --> 52:08.680]  It's the same word.
[52:10.580 --> 52:12.120]  Hurricane victim or whatever.
[52:13.160 --> 52:14.620]  What did the name of the hurricane again?
[52:15.420 --> 52:15.860]  Katrina.
[52:16.060 --> 52:17.200]  Katrina victim.
[52:18.720 --> 52:20.380]  I think a lot of people take offense.
[52:20.560 --> 52:22.660]  A lot of people take offense at being called victims.
[52:22.900 --> 52:26.280]  I think a refugee age is not a pejorative term at all.
[52:26.440 --> 52:27.900]  It's people seeking refuge.
[52:28.280 --> 52:33.380]  I think it also sort of hammers home the fact that, look, they are in the United States and they are refugees.
[52:33.400 --> 52:35.700]  Shame on us that this kind of thing can happen here.
[52:36.620 --> 52:38.300]  But your point is well taken, sir.
[52:38.400 --> 52:38.900]  Thank you for calling.
[52:38.940 --> 52:39.080]  All right.
[52:39.380 --> 52:39.840]  Thank you, Mark.
[52:40.700 --> 52:41.300]  All right.
[52:41.920 --> 52:42.920]  Take another phone call.
[52:44.520 --> 52:45.180]  Good evening.
[52:45.320 --> 52:45.800]  You're on the air.
[52:46.360 --> 52:49.040]  Yes, I take umbrage at the term refugee.
[52:49.260 --> 52:50.380]  I like to call them niggers.
[52:51.280 --> 52:51.840]  All right.
[52:52.080 --> 52:52.700]  Thank you for that.
[52:53.300 --> 52:54.820]  I'm so happy to be here in Japan.
[52:56.300 --> 53:03.700]  Japan, by the way, being one of the few countries in the industrialized world that does not have laws against racial discrimination.
[53:03.700 --> 53:05.420]  So, okay.
[53:05.880 --> 53:07.980]  Let's take another phone call, hopefully better than the last.
[53:08.940 --> 53:09.480]  Good evening.
[53:09.620 --> 53:10.120]  You're on the air.
[53:10.740 --> 53:11.260]  Yeah, hi.
[53:11.300 --> 53:15.200]  I was wondering if you guys could just repeat the satellite website that you gave out.
[53:15.800 --> 53:16.720]  Yeah, I'll pull that up.
[53:16.760 --> 53:18.180]  I'll repeat that before we get off the air.
[53:18.260 --> 53:19.120]  I'm going to look it up again.
[53:19.760 --> 53:28.900]  I'll tell you in the interim that you can go to google.com, click on maps.google.com, click on New Orleans, zoom down, click on Katrina, and get an overview that way.
[53:29.000 --> 53:31.460]  And what RedHackt is going to give you is better than that.
[53:31.460 --> 53:32.160]  I got it.
[53:32.320 --> 53:38.660]  It's ngs.woc.noaa.gov.
[53:39.500 --> 53:44.880]  If you just go to Google and search for NOAA Satellite Katrina, it's the top thing that comes up.
[53:44.980 --> 53:45.300]  Right on.
[53:45.380 --> 53:45.900]  Thanks a lot, guys.
[53:46.140 --> 53:46.460]  No problem.
[53:46.560 --> 53:46.880]  All right, bye.
[53:47.960 --> 53:48.340]  All right.
[53:49.360 --> 53:50.540]  212-209-2900.
[53:51.000 --> 53:52.300]  Okay, let's take another phone call.
[53:53.000 --> 53:53.580]  Good evening.
[54:01.460 --> 54:02.600]  All right, we'll move on.
[54:06.860 --> 54:07.900]  And good evening.
[54:08.060 --> 54:08.500]  You're on the air.
[54:09.060 --> 54:11.240]  There is a problem with refugees.
[54:11.400 --> 54:12.280]  I have a...
[54:12.280 --> 54:13.840]  I found a problem with refugees.
[54:14.840 --> 54:17.580]  We're living on the shores of the American shores.
[54:17.900 --> 54:21.560]  This is not a country where we are fleeing from anything.
[54:21.580 --> 54:23.900]  We are not fleeing into Canada.
[54:23.900 --> 54:25.620]  We are not fleeing into Mexico.
[54:25.620 --> 54:28.520]  People are fleeing from floodwaters.
[54:28.800 --> 54:29.840]  They are not...
[54:29.840 --> 54:31.100]  They're seeking refuge.
[54:31.420 --> 54:32.500]  Yes, that's appropriate.
[54:32.860 --> 54:38.080]  However, refugees, as far as Americans, especially white-privileged Americans...
[54:38.080 --> 54:39.560]  Okay, let's be clear about it.
[54:39.780 --> 54:45.440]  White-privileged Americans consider refugees poor, unworthy, trembled-on trash.
[54:45.860 --> 54:49.120]  And that's what I do not consider myself or my race.
[54:50.700 --> 54:54.980]  Well, if I was down there, I would consider myself a refugee, frankly, because that's what I do.
[54:55.300 --> 54:55.560]  Okay?
[54:55.920 --> 54:58.060]  We're not talking about you, because you're not down there.
[54:58.140 --> 54:58.720]  Now, are you?
[54:59.740 --> 55:00.580]  No, fortunately.
[55:00.580 --> 55:01.920]  I'm very fortunate not to be.
[55:02.060 --> 55:03.140]  Yes, you are fortunate.
[55:03.420 --> 55:04.940]  Wouldn't you call that privileged as well?
[55:05.160 --> 55:05.920]  Well, are you...
[55:05.920 --> 55:12.160]  I could be a privileged person living in New Orleans and have to be a refugee because of the conditions.
[55:12.160 --> 55:16.940]  And as we notice, most of those privileged people are living behind walled-up communities where they can be rescued.
[55:16.940 --> 55:19.100]  Okay, this is an insane conversation to be happening.
[55:19.120 --> 55:23.500]  At this particular point in time, we should be helping these people argue about what to call them later.
[55:24.320 --> 55:28.220]  But, I mean, you know, people are not calling them refugees out of disgust.
[55:28.380 --> 55:33.060]  They're calling them refugees because that's how they see them, as people who are fleeing something.
[55:33.360 --> 55:35.760]  It might not be political, but it's a horrible thing regardless.
[55:35.760 --> 55:42.600]  And the reason they got stuck in that is because of an absurd system that victimized them and sacrificed thousands of lives.
[55:42.600 --> 55:51.460]  So, please don't point to other people who are trying to do the best they can as someone perpetuating that kind of a system.
[55:51.460 --> 55:52.260]  All right.
[55:52.600 --> 55:53.120]  All right?
[55:53.920 --> 55:54.280]  Okay.
[55:54.620 --> 55:55.780]  Let's take another phone call.
[55:57.920 --> 55:58.840]  And good evening.
[55:59.000 --> 55:59.400]  You're on the air.
[56:00.240 --> 56:02.420]  Yeah, I'm living in Baton Rouge right now.
[56:02.440 --> 56:04.620]  I'd written that letter that y'all got earlier.
[56:04.820 --> 56:05.320]  Oh, you're Jason.
[56:05.760 --> 56:06.980]  Yeah, yeah, this is Jason.
[56:07.220 --> 56:07.540]  How you doing?
[56:07.540 --> 56:17.160]  And it is a mess down here, even though Baton Rouge is relatively unaffected, I mean, compared to New Orleans and then the surrounding areas.
[56:17.440 --> 56:19.640]  I mean, these people literally are refugees.
[56:20.140 --> 56:29.740]  I mean, their houses were utterly destroyed, if you see the pictures from the eastern part of New Orleans or even the outlying areas like St. Bernard Parish or Plaquemans Parish.
[56:30.080 --> 56:32.660]  I mean, these houses are just completely destroyed.
[56:32.660 --> 56:36.800]  They have, you know, nothing even to come back to.
[56:37.140 --> 56:43.280]  And cities like Baton Rouge and Houston are, I mean, almost, I hate to say, overrun.
[56:43.500 --> 56:51.820]  I mean, but we have a lot of people that are going to be here for quite a long time because they don't have any money, you know, to rebuild their homes or anything.
[56:51.820 --> 57:03.380]  And in the parish I live in, East Baton Rouge, our population has darn near doubled in the last weeks, gone from about 400,000 to almost 800,000.
[57:03.540 --> 57:10.520]  And we already had issues with, you know, infrastructure and with, you know, this almost double the amount of people now.
[57:10.680 --> 57:13.240]  I mean, it's very difficult to get around town.
[57:13.240 --> 57:19.480]  I mean, in a city, this shouldn't have the traffic problems it does, but, you know, we have all this influx of new people in.
[57:19.600 --> 57:24.380]  And, I mean, we're definitely feeling the effects here, even though we're not, you know, covered by floodwaters.
[57:25.760 --> 57:26.040]  Amazing.
[57:27.280 --> 57:28.940]  Jason, hang in there, really.
[57:29.860 --> 57:42.920]  Yeah, I mean, all we really can do is, you know, people that have, you know, relatives or friends from the New Orleans area, you know, they're just, you know, taking them in and letting people, you know, sleep on couches or air mattresses or whatever.
[57:43.060 --> 57:48.460]  And that's, that's really all you can do until, you know, until everything gets taken care of.
[57:49.280 --> 57:49.640]  Right.
[57:49.880 --> 57:52.420]  Well, I think we're out of time for tonight.
[57:52.700 --> 57:54.760]  Can I just say a couple of things real quick?
[57:54.940 --> 57:55.000]  Right.
[57:55.360 --> 57:57.720]  Next couple of weeks I'm going to be on the ocean.
[57:58.540 --> 58:01.120]  So these are going to be interesting shows coming up.
[58:01.800 --> 58:07.080]  Next week I'll be on the freighter, and the week after that I'll also be on the freighter, except I'll be a lot closer to California at that point.
[58:08.000 --> 58:09.180]  I'd like some statistics.
[58:09.420 --> 58:17.020]  Actually, I met somebody out here who told me all kinds of weird statistics involving freighters and how they sink a lot of times and they never get reported in the news.
[58:17.340 --> 58:19.340]  So I'm a little concerned about that.
[58:19.340 --> 58:26.020]  If anybody has information on freighter safety, please email us, oth at 2600.com, and do it soon before my freighter leaves.
[58:26.460 --> 58:26.820]  All right.
[58:27.000 --> 58:27.260]  All right.
[58:27.280 --> 58:29.780]  I think we're being pushed out of the studio, but thank you, everyone.
[58:30.000 --> 58:32.260]  And we'll be back on the air next week.
[58:32.440 --> 58:32.660]  Good night.
[58:32.660 --> 58:32.760]  Good night.
[59:30.050 --> 59:33.250]  Yeah, WBAI, New York, 99.5.