[00:00.000 --> 00:05.120]  As you go through your day-to-day struggles, 212-209-2950.
[00:05.260 --> 00:07.300]  212-209-2950.
[00:07.480 --> 00:11.040]  And we're going momentarily to off the hook on WBAI.
[00:11.220 --> 00:12.840]  We want to thank those who have called in.
[00:12.940 --> 00:16.740]  If you haven't called in yet, get your finger warmed up and dial that phone.
[00:16.860 --> 00:19.280]  212-209-2950.
[00:19.660 --> 00:20.860]  Thank you and good night.
[00:21.240 --> 00:27.040]  And I'll certainly be more careful in the future to try and protect my interests and the interests of America and democracy.
[00:38.920 --> 00:40.280]  And you are listening...
[00:42.120 --> 00:47.280]  And you are listening to radio station WBAI in New York, where the time is 7 o'clock.
[00:47.560 --> 00:48.420]  Time for Off the Hook.
[00:55.330 --> 00:59.790]  The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
[01:00.750 --> 01:05.250]  I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a call.
[01:05.910 --> 01:08.090]  We couldn't get much worse.
[01:10.430 --> 01:13.510]  Put on diddly-bump for the best, expect the worst.
[01:14.210 --> 01:16.050]  I hope that's understood.
[01:16.230 --> 01:18.190]  But diddly-bump for...
[02:00.340 --> 02:02.060]  And a very good evening to everybody.
[02:02.180 --> 02:03.180]  The program is Off the Hook.
[02:03.240 --> 02:07.280]  Emmanuel Goldstein here with you on this exciting Wednesday evening.
[02:09.040 --> 02:11.180]  The 14th day of December.
[02:13.000 --> 02:13.520]  2005.
[02:18.240 --> 02:19.760]  And we are...
[02:19.760 --> 02:20.980]  By the way, this noise here.
[02:22.740 --> 02:24.460]  That's the line that Bernie S.
[02:24.760 --> 02:25.180]  normally uses.
[02:27.380 --> 02:31.380]  And this week, that is all that we will be playing from Bernie S.
[02:31.440 --> 02:32.880]  Because Bernie is busy working.
[02:34.060 --> 02:35.960]  It's the pre-holiday rush, apparently.
[02:36.200 --> 02:41.540]  And the kind of business he does, he has to not be on the radio, apparently.
[02:42.600 --> 02:47.060]  So, that's what Bernie's line will be doing for the entire hour this week.
[02:47.360 --> 02:50.280]  And it's sad, but it's necessary.
[02:50.500 --> 02:53.160]  I was just wondering, are we going to have to play the dial tone all show?
[02:53.380 --> 02:57.940]  No, because after a few seconds, your ears become adjusted to it, and you don't even hear it anymore.
[02:58.480 --> 02:59.360]  I don't hear it.
[02:59.540 --> 02:59.880]  Do you still hear it?
[03:00.120 --> 03:00.600]  No, I don't.
[03:00.700 --> 03:01.560]  Yeah, it's amazing.
[03:01.640 --> 03:03.100]  The human body is an incredible thing.
[03:03.200 --> 03:03.840]  It really is.
[03:04.280 --> 03:05.480]  I've heard many people say that.
[03:06.140 --> 03:07.320]  So, Bernie is not here.
[03:07.500 --> 03:10.200]  Also, who is not here tonight are Red Hacked and Red Bird.
[03:10.380 --> 03:13.140]  Apparently, there's some kind of red convention going on someplace, and they're both at that.
[03:13.860 --> 03:21.740]  However, we are here, and we being you, Mike, who have already spoken before you were introduced, which is Radio Fauxpas.
[03:22.480 --> 03:22.840]  Who are you?
[03:24.180 --> 03:25.220]  Didn't I say who I was?
[03:25.360 --> 03:25.580]  Did you?
[03:25.680 --> 03:26.220]  I think I did.
[03:26.400 --> 03:27.280]  I think I didn't.
[03:27.700 --> 03:32.580]  All right, Emmanuel Goldstein here, as always, for another exciting, action-packed edition of Off the Hook.
[03:33.140 --> 03:35.540]  Jim, over there, to the right.
[03:35.800 --> 03:36.220]  Good, you all.
[03:36.360 --> 03:36.840]  How are you doing?
[03:37.400 --> 03:38.700]  And we have Arseny.
[03:38.880 --> 03:39.220]  Hi.
[03:39.380 --> 03:40.040]  And we have Walter.
[03:40.300 --> 03:40.620]  Hello.
[03:40.780 --> 03:41.280]  How are you doing?
[03:42.040 --> 03:49.480]  Well, okay, we're a day away from what could be an historic time here in New York City, and that is a citywide transit strike.
[03:49.640 --> 03:51.800]  And now, Jim, of course, you don't work for the Transit Authority anymore.
[03:52.460 --> 03:53.340]  Thank God, I think.
[03:53.340 --> 03:59.660]  If you did, though, you'd be preparing now picket signs and various other things that are part of the strike.
[04:00.000 --> 04:00.540]  Yeah, I probably would, yes.
[04:02.260 --> 04:05.360]  And it's kind of a joyous time of year, I guess, when everybody goes out on strike.
[04:06.440 --> 04:09.320]  Well, I managed to sort of miss the strikes.
[04:09.540 --> 04:15.420]  I wasn't with Transit for the 1980s strike, and I'm not with them now for various reasons.
[04:15.600 --> 04:17.020]  And look what happened, you know.
[04:17.700 --> 04:19.580]  They had called on to you, maybe it wouldn't be interesting.
[04:19.580 --> 04:21.740]  See, if they had hung on to me, yeah, exactly.
[04:21.740 --> 04:22.340]  Mm-hmm.
[04:22.680 --> 04:23.640]  But, you know, it's interesting.
[04:24.160 --> 04:25.300]  I'm looking forward to it.
[04:25.340 --> 04:26.020]  I really am.
[04:26.100 --> 04:26.760]  First of all, I think...
[04:26.760 --> 04:27.340]  You're very perverse.
[04:27.460 --> 04:29.180]  Well, I think they're getting a very rare deal.
[04:29.340 --> 04:29.840]  That is true.
[04:30.020 --> 04:31.100]  I see how they're treated.
[04:31.640 --> 04:32.800]  You know, I see how you were treated.
[04:32.960 --> 04:44.540]  I see how, you know, they're cutting back and just making these people do all the work and how the service is not improving, how they do stupid things like, you know, roll back the fares to try and get people on their side, but it doesn't work.
[04:44.760 --> 04:45.720]  You know, it's not that simple.
[04:46.520 --> 04:49.960]  They have a surplus, but now they're saying they're going to have a deficit in two years.
[04:49.960 --> 04:53.100]  So why not use the surplus to head that off?
[04:53.200 --> 04:54.980]  Instead, they're basically throwing it away.
[04:55.160 --> 05:12.140]  Well, part of it with the surplus is that your elected officials in the city and state, being the wonderful people that they are, when the TA in the past has shown a surplus, they've cut the TA's allotment of tax money that they get to support the Transit Authority and the MTA.
[05:12.760 --> 05:17.720]  So hanging on to a surplus is not a possible thing.
[05:18.060 --> 05:18.920]  It can't be done.
[05:19.640 --> 05:25.040]  The money that they get from taxes will disappear if they have a surplus.
[05:25.420 --> 05:27.060]  That just strikes me as stupid.
[05:27.240 --> 05:27.400]  It is.
[05:27.400 --> 05:31.600]  I mean, if they know they're going to have a deficit, they can at least invest it in something that's going to pay off.
[05:31.620 --> 05:32.260]  You would think so.
[05:32.340 --> 05:33.760]  And goodwill does not pay off.
[05:33.760 --> 05:42.720]  I mean, making the fares a dollar instead of two dollars doesn't, you know, it might benefit you temporarily, but it's detrimental to the structure.
[05:43.380 --> 05:45.060]  It's not even generating goodwill.
[05:45.180 --> 05:52.180]  There was an article I read about how everyone in New York is so skeptical of the MTA that they are not accepting this gesture of goodwill.
[05:52.360 --> 05:53.720]  They're saying there must be up to something.
[05:53.880 --> 05:54.000]  Yeah.
[05:54.080 --> 05:56.020]  It's like if George W.
[05:56.180 --> 06:01.240]  Bush sent you a fruitcake in the mail, you know, I think most people wouldn't be very suspicious.
[06:02.060 --> 06:06.180]  You know, he'd probably try to generate goodwill and all that kind of thing, and it just wouldn't work.
[06:06.300 --> 06:07.600]  I thought people don't like fruitcakes.
[06:08.120 --> 06:09.280]  Well, okay, there's that too.
[06:10.440 --> 06:11.920]  Surprisingly, fruitcakes can be good.
[06:12.100 --> 06:13.940]  I don't think I've ever actually seen one in real life.
[06:13.960 --> 06:15.260]  Only after the seventh year of storage.
[06:15.600 --> 06:15.900]  No, no, no.
[06:16.000 --> 06:18.120]  Before, you know, when you get them immediately, they're good.
[06:18.460 --> 06:19.760]  After any storage, they're not.
[06:21.380 --> 06:23.720]  They call them Christmas puddings over in England, you know.
[06:24.140 --> 06:25.400]  I thought it was actual pudding.
[06:25.480 --> 06:30.620]  When I went over and I bought one, I was very surprised to find out that it's the same fruitcake that we throw away here.
[06:30.620 --> 06:33.080]  Did you happen to buy a trifle and got confused by that?
[06:33.200 --> 06:33.420]  No.
[06:33.560 --> 06:33.880]  Oh, okay.
[06:33.880 --> 06:34.660]  No, I bought a truffle.
[06:35.140 --> 06:35.760]  No, no, a trifle.
[06:35.940 --> 06:36.160]  No.
[06:36.160 --> 06:38.960]  Whatever happened to the robot L-trains?
[06:39.140 --> 06:40.120]  Did that just fail?
[06:40.540 --> 06:41.480]  The robot L-trains?
[06:41.540 --> 06:41.940]  Oh, okay.
[06:42.220 --> 06:43.440]  Well, that's one of the things.
[06:43.560 --> 06:45.680]  That's one of the issues that has come up.
[06:45.960 --> 06:57.440]  But basically, what you're referring to is the L-trains, the L-line that goes to Canarsie, that will not have a conductor in the middle because they have automation now, and they're going to have the little signs that say when the next train is going to come.
[06:57.440 --> 06:57.960]  That's great.
[06:58.160 --> 07:03.460]  Of course, I don't know why it takes them several years of shutting down the train to install that when London has it on all of their stops.
[07:03.680 --> 07:07.740]  You know, it'll be like the next millennia before we see that in all the stops.
[07:08.340 --> 07:16.780]  But yeah, they've been taking conductors off those trains in preparation for the completely automated versions of them.
[07:17.180 --> 07:21.260]  I think the whole thing is going to get underway next year, and it's a big mistake.
[07:21.260 --> 07:26.580]  You have nobody on the train except for one person, nobody in the platform making sure no one is being dragged.
[07:27.460 --> 07:29.560]  You know, automation can be used for good.
[07:29.660 --> 07:34.820]  It can also be used for bad, and the MTA is using it to try and shave as much money off as possible.
[07:35.040 --> 07:41.420]  Yeah, I was going to say, they've had a number of problems with the implementation for the complete automation of the L-train.
[07:41.980 --> 07:49.080]  If you recall, we went out on the L-train just before they started installing the necessary electronics for that.
[07:49.080 --> 08:09.160]  And even though the Transport Workers Union, correct title, has succeeded in suing the TA and stopping the removal of conductors for the fully automated trains, at least for the near run, the TA itself has had problems with their automation.
[08:09.480 --> 08:13.880]  They're way behind on schedule, and they're running into technical problems right and left.
[08:15.600 --> 08:18.400]  Yeah, it's really something else.
[08:18.400 --> 08:20.500]  But let's talk about the strike, though, because that's going to be fun.
[08:20.580 --> 08:24.240]  And as hackers, you know, I think we can have more fun than most people with this thing.
[08:24.400 --> 08:25.920]  I want to be on a train at midnight tomorrow.
[08:26.120 --> 08:29.680]  I want to see what happens when they actually say, okay, we're going on strike.
[08:29.960 --> 08:35.160]  They just turn off the power and let the train, you know, coast to a stop someplace and everybody has to, like, climb out.
[08:35.280 --> 08:36.160]  Oh, you silly boy.
[08:36.500 --> 08:37.000]  I don't know.
[08:37.100 --> 08:37.600]  I've never been on...
[08:37.600 --> 08:39.780]  Have you ever been on a train when a strike happens?
[08:39.960 --> 08:40.620]  So you don't know either.
[08:40.860 --> 08:42.560]  I have read the contingency plans.
[08:42.620 --> 08:42.880]  All right.
[08:43.020 --> 08:43.600]  Tell us about them.
[08:43.640 --> 08:49.820]  The contingency plan is generally that the train goes into a station, at which point they ask everyone to leave.
[08:50.780 --> 08:51.840]  And what if they don't?
[08:52.320 --> 08:53.420]  They wait for the police.
[08:54.200 --> 08:54.460]  Uh-huh.
[08:55.160 --> 09:00.780]  Well, if everybody did that at once, the police would be pretty stretched out and that's time for Al-Qaeda to strike.
[09:00.780 --> 09:01.080]  Well, no.
[09:01.600 --> 09:05.120]  They tell people ahead of time that the strike is going to be just after midnight.
[09:05.400 --> 09:08.600]  So only people like you end up on the trains at midnight.
[09:08.600 --> 09:10.400]  Is there an automated announcement for that?
[09:10.580 --> 09:11.200]  I don't know.
[09:11.320 --> 09:11.780]  Bing bong.
[09:11.900 --> 09:12.840]  A strike is about to begin.
[09:14.720 --> 09:15.900]  Please leave the train.
[09:17.180 --> 09:17.480]  Okay.
[09:17.540 --> 09:19.040]  So they coast into the nearest station.
[09:19.180 --> 09:24.160]  So does that mean that trains are going to be parked at stations for the whole duration of the strike?
[09:24.440 --> 09:24.660]  No.
[09:24.820 --> 09:39.540]  Generally, the contingency plans continue and say that supervision, people who used to be motormen and such, will get to the trains by various means, usually surface transport cars, and take the train to the yard.
[09:40.000 --> 09:45.420]  However, they do run trains over all the tracks while there's a strike going on.
[09:45.420 --> 09:47.060]  I discovered this in the 1980s.
[09:47.060 --> 09:47.820]  Yeah, they have to be...
[09:47.820 --> 09:50.760]  Tracks have to be lubricated, have to be paid attention to.
[09:51.000 --> 09:54.660]  It keeps people from casually going down and sabotaging it.
[09:55.080 --> 09:56.720]  What if those guys go out and strike?
[09:58.440 --> 09:59.320]  They're supervision.
[09:59.760 --> 10:00.760]  They're not...
[10:00.760 --> 10:01.420]  What does that mean?
[10:01.420 --> 10:01.900]  They're not human?
[10:02.240 --> 10:11.740]  They're paid more and they don't have the same rights, although you can say that there's no right to strike in the transit authority, but they don't have the same rights as hourly employees.
[10:11.980 --> 10:12.540]  Well, they don't have
[10:17.020 --> 10:18.820]  trains running back and forth and if you...
[10:18.820 --> 10:19.220]  Not very many.
[10:19.380 --> 10:20.040]  You can't ride them.
[10:20.200 --> 10:21.740]  Well, if you bribe the guys, you can, of course.
[10:22.160 --> 10:25.580]  Well, I'm sure if you had enough money, you could bribe anyone to do anything.
[10:25.600 --> 10:31.180]  All right, well, we'll figure that out and announce the stations where people will be taking bribes to get on those trains.
[10:31.980 --> 10:35.420]  But, you know, there's not enough room in all the yards for all the trains at once.
[10:35.940 --> 10:36.440]  That's true.
[10:36.580 --> 10:38.440]  Yeah, so that's going to be kind of weird right there.
[10:39.380 --> 10:41.360]  And buses, I guess I'll have to park those someplace.
[10:42.420 --> 10:43.100]  It's going to be fun.
[10:43.160 --> 10:44.940]  Now, how do they keep people out of the subway stations?
[10:44.960 --> 10:45.780]  That's what I'd like to know.
[10:45.880 --> 10:56.320]  What they did in previous strikes, and I remember this when I was a school kid because I used to walk to school past a subway entrance, they would have police officers at every entrance.
[10:56.980 --> 10:57.960]  You've got to be kidding me.
[10:58.100 --> 10:59.060]  I am not kidding you.
[10:59.100 --> 11:01.900]  All the cops are going to be at every single subway station entrance?
[11:02.060 --> 11:04.880]  Well, not every subway station entrance can be locked.
[11:05.400 --> 11:10.160]  Generally, a subway station would have, say, two entrances, one on each end.
[11:10.560 --> 11:18.600]  One end would be in olden days, like three years ago, have a part-time booth, a booth that would only be open during either a.m.
[11:18.700 --> 11:19.020]  or p.m.
[11:19.100 --> 11:19.760]  or both rush hours.
[11:19.980 --> 11:20.920]  But there's at least two per station.
[11:21.260 --> 11:21.620]  Right.
[11:21.760 --> 11:24.960]  But that end would have gates on it, and that end could be locked.
[11:24.960 --> 11:31.440]  The other end, the end where there's a 24-hour booth, generally there are no gates to be locked.
[11:32.280 --> 11:34.140]  So you have to have someone there.
[11:35.880 --> 11:47.120]  You don't necessarily have to have them at the top where there are four, six, eight, twelve entrances, but you should have, say, two police officers at the bottom to tell anyone who wanders downstairs, hey, it's closed, go back upstairs.
[11:47.320 --> 11:50.300]  And of course, you put a chain across the stairs at the top and a sign.
[11:50.520 --> 11:53.540]  Or maybe, how about that, you know, the little yellow police line?
[11:53.540 --> 11:54.500]  I bet that's what they're going to do.
[11:54.560 --> 11:56.540]  They're going to put that across all the entrances.
[11:56.720 --> 11:57.440]  We'll take photos.
[11:57.560 --> 11:58.840]  And God help you if you cross that.
[11:59.260 --> 11:59.780]  Could be.
[12:00.440 --> 12:00.660]  Yeah.
[12:00.840 --> 12:05.480]  It'll be like going down the skyway in Miami and saying something nasty and getting shot at.
[12:06.140 --> 12:06.700]  We'll see.
[12:07.260 --> 12:08.380]  Okay, so it's going to be fun.
[12:08.580 --> 12:16.280]  And I guess our listeners can participate by asking a lot of unusual questions and trying to take interesting pictures and things like that.
[12:16.420 --> 12:20.280]  It should be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, maybe, if they do go out on strike.
[12:20.520 --> 12:27.840]  I mean, of course, in previous, contract renewals, they've threatened to strike also and they haven't, so you never know.
[12:28.020 --> 12:29.380]  Yeah, but everybody's so hopeful about this one.
[12:29.760 --> 12:30.480]  They really are.
[12:30.560 --> 12:32.540]  Everyone seems to think they can really pull it off this time.
[12:32.720 --> 12:36.080]  Plus, you know, I've never seen the MTA acting like this, this bad.
[12:36.220 --> 12:40.120]  I've seen them act bad before, but they really seem to be outdoing themselves.
[12:40.420 --> 12:41.320]  They're very talented.
[12:41.580 --> 12:41.680]  Yeah.
[12:41.840 --> 12:44.620]  Jim, you, of course, you support the transit workers, right?
[12:44.920 --> 12:45.280]  Yeah.
[12:45.540 --> 12:45.800]  All right.
[12:46.100 --> 12:48.080]  Now, I've heard these rumors.
[12:48.080 --> 12:50.380]  I'm not sure where they come from, that you're actually a Republican.
[12:51.180 --> 12:52.600]  Well, yeah, it is true.
[12:52.800 --> 12:53.240]  All right.
[12:54.480 --> 12:58.040]  Now, if this wasn't the transit union, would you be supporting them?
[12:59.320 --> 13:00.200]  Yeah, surprisingly.
[13:00.540 --> 13:00.740]  Really?
[13:01.200 --> 13:01.640]  Yeah.
[13:02.880 --> 13:08.140]  Experience has taught me that you can't generally completely trust employers.
[13:08.980 --> 13:09.920]  Hard to believe.
[13:10.440 --> 13:14.960]  Well, it'll be interesting to see how New Yorkers feel about this and how they manage to get around.
[13:15.540 --> 13:17.420]  It'll be a lot of fun.
[13:18.400 --> 13:19.460]  How are you guys going to get around?
[13:19.540 --> 13:20.100]  Do you have any ideas?
[13:20.240 --> 13:24.640]  I'm going to call you and see if you're driving into the city and you need four people to pack the car.
[13:25.500 --> 13:26.800]  Yeah, well, don't count on that.
[13:26.880 --> 13:29.260]  Well, like I said, I probably won't be showing up.
[13:29.520 --> 13:29.740]  Mm-hmm.
[13:30.520 --> 13:31.180]  Oh, that's right.
[13:31.200 --> 13:32.500]  It's going to affect the radio show, won't it?
[13:32.580 --> 13:32.820]  Uh-huh.
[13:33.380 --> 13:36.460]  Because you people can't be bothered to figure out how to get here on your own.
[13:36.760 --> 13:39.920]  Well, it's only a mile to walk to Brooklyn from here.
[13:39.940 --> 13:41.800]  Maybe a mile and a half, two miles at the most.
[13:41.940 --> 13:45.000]  But the problem is that I live six miles or so into Brooklyn.
[13:45.220 --> 13:45.460]  Mm-hmm.
[13:46.080 --> 13:49.080]  And Walter, of course, lives a distance into Queens.
[13:49.440 --> 13:50.860]  Walter, are you going to use that kind of excuse?
[13:51.000 --> 13:52.500]  I'm walking if I need to.
[13:52.660 --> 13:53.300]  Thank you, Walter.
[13:53.420 --> 13:53.680]  No matter what.
[13:53.740 --> 13:54.440]  I'm coming here.
[13:54.580 --> 13:57.180]  I'm hoping for sleep next Wednesday if there's a strike.
[13:57.180 --> 14:01.380]  I read a new story about this where people are being interviewed.
[14:01.380 --> 14:03.580]  How are you going to get around if there's a transit strike?
[14:04.140 --> 14:08.980]  And the person answering said, well, walking's out and, of course, I can't take mass transit.
[14:09.160 --> 14:10.760]  Right away, they just dismiss walking.
[14:10.920 --> 14:12.220]  You know, no way, I can't do that.
[14:12.840 --> 14:17.640]  And their conclusion was, oh, I'll probably have to quit my job because they can't walk.
[14:18.020 --> 14:19.820]  I mean, this is pathetic, you know?
[14:19.920 --> 14:23.740]  Yeah, it might be cold, but people can walk, you know?
[14:23.900 --> 14:24.600]  We're hardy.
[14:24.760 --> 14:26.640]  That's how humans came to be.
[14:27.880 --> 14:39.760]  Okay, so please let us know if you have any interesting questions, things that we should look out for from a technical perspective during a strike, I think it would be kind of interesting.
[14:39.820 --> 14:48.580]  I think what we should do before the strike is ask the police officers who are searching bags, if I come down here during the strike, will you be searching my bag?
[14:48.820 --> 14:49.480]  Yeah, that's the thing.
[14:49.540 --> 14:51.320]  I can't search your bag if there's no subway.
[14:51.460 --> 14:52.740]  Where are all those bags going to be going now?
[14:52.760 --> 14:54.340]  Well, this is perfect for al-Qaeda then.
[14:54.460 --> 15:02.000]  See, all the police officers who are busy searching bags can be redeployed to, like, not let people into the station at all, thus solving the staffing crisis, you imagine.
[15:03.220 --> 15:14.900]  This listener writes in to suggest, it would be cool if you could get a large number of people going to the subways with metal boxes containing a piece of paper with the word kaboom on it and leave them lying around or something.
[15:16.100 --> 15:19.860]  Getting some media coverage, showing people that the government's precautions are worthless.
[15:20.220 --> 15:21.880]  And what are they worrying about anyway?
[15:22.080 --> 15:26.620]  There is zero risk of any terrorists doing anything right now because, newsflash, the point of terrorism isn't to kill people.
[15:26.840 --> 15:27.980]  Then they just call it murder.
[15:28.040 --> 15:36.120]  The point is to incite fear and it only took one single terrorist attack half a decade ago to push the nation's leaders into taking care of the rest of that task indefinitely.
[15:36.680 --> 15:38.560]  So, thank you very much for that insight.
[15:38.560 --> 15:47.000]  He forgets, two years ago, some art student at the 14th Street subway station duct taped a number of boxes around.
[15:47.280 --> 15:51.060]  And I don't remember if they said boom on a piece of paper inside or not.
[15:51.300 --> 15:53.920]  They said something like bomb or explosive or something.
[15:54.000 --> 15:54.720]  Yeah, I believe so.
[15:54.720 --> 15:56.680]  Anyway, he got into deep trouble.
[15:56.860 --> 16:00.060]  He didn't get into nearly as much deep trouble as I thought he would get into, though.
[16:00.320 --> 16:00.780]  No, that's true.
[16:01.020 --> 16:02.840]  He didn't go to Guantanamo Bay at all, I don't think.
[16:03.040 --> 16:03.200]  No.
[16:03.560 --> 16:05.500]  And I'm just, you know, I'm surprised.
[16:05.620 --> 16:07.320]  I think maybe today he might get into more trouble.
[16:07.820 --> 16:10.140]  You know, like that guy in Miami.
[16:10.460 --> 16:11.280]  What guy in Miami?
[16:11.340 --> 16:12.780]  The guy in Miami who got killed last week.
[16:12.920 --> 16:13.840]  Oh, the shot.
[16:13.980 --> 16:14.860]  The TSA, yes.
[16:14.940 --> 16:15.780]  Got some mail about that, too.
[16:15.860 --> 16:16.200]  I'll get to.
[16:17.880 --> 16:20.140]  But this is something else about the New York City police.
[16:21.740 --> 16:23.940]  This person found an article on Yahoo.
[16:24.540 --> 16:27.800]  The relevant section is about halfway down on the story they sent us.
[16:28.420 --> 16:31.200]  The New York City police protocol is to yell police don't move.
[16:31.640 --> 16:36.080]  If plainclothes, off-duty cops are around, they're supposed to respond I'm on the job.
[16:36.560 --> 16:42.860]  So next time you're about to be arrested, try using the passphrase I'm on the job and see what the cops do.
[16:43.060 --> 16:48.260]  I may give this a try next time they want to search my bag at the train station here in Chicago.
[16:48.920 --> 16:50.400]  I don't know if that's the same job, though.
[16:51.220 --> 16:52.960]  There's something else here, but I'm not sure what it is.
[16:53.200 --> 16:56.020]  Doesn't that whole handshake become worthless once the public knows about it?
[16:56.260 --> 17:05.060]  Now police may be in more danger than before because every drug dealer and pimp is going to know that I'm on the job will put the cops off guard perhaps long enough to run or shoot them.
[17:05.180 --> 17:05.760]  Signed, Benjamin.
[17:06.060 --> 17:11.260]  I also think it's kind of, you know, egotistical to say I'm on the job.
[17:11.460 --> 17:12.540]  No, you're on a job.
[17:12.680 --> 17:13.340]  That's one job.
[17:13.460 --> 17:14.540]  Garbage man, it's another job.
[17:14.640 --> 17:16.000]  Ice cream man, different job.
[17:16.220 --> 17:17.820]  Why is your job the job?
[17:17.820 --> 17:18.480]  You know?
[17:18.600 --> 17:22.220]  I think that sort of spells out the problem that cops have here.
[17:22.380 --> 17:23.700]  This seems made up to me.
[17:23.860 --> 17:24.420]  The whole thing?
[17:24.580 --> 17:25.600]  No, they do say that, though.
[17:25.900 --> 17:26.680]  They do say that.
[17:26.820 --> 17:27.600]  I'm on the job.
[17:27.660 --> 17:28.380]  Yeah, absolutely.
[17:28.620 --> 17:31.360]  They say that and then they don't get interrogated any further.
[17:31.500 --> 17:31.820]  No, no, no.
[17:31.820 --> 17:32.480]  They just say, okay, bye.
[17:32.500 --> 17:34.140]  No, there's another interrogation.
[17:34.220 --> 17:35.540]  What is the color of the day?
[17:35.680 --> 17:35.920]  Exactly.
[17:35.920 --> 17:37.060]  You have to know the color of the day.
[17:37.120 --> 17:39.920]  Now, what I want to know, how does the color of the day get distributed?
[17:40.560 --> 17:42.580]  I'm not asking to find out what the color of the day is.
[17:42.680 --> 17:45.960]  I'm asking, how do they tell all the cops what the color of the day is?
[17:45.960 --> 17:46.360]  Do you know, Jim?
[17:46.440 --> 17:46.980]  I actually know.
[17:47.120 --> 17:47.840]  Okay, how do they do it?
[17:47.920 --> 17:51.060]  They send this out to all the precincts and such.
[17:51.440 --> 17:58.420]  And all the undercover cops, not only do they know what the color of the day is, but they have a significant piece of clothing with that color.
[17:58.840 --> 18:03.020]  Usually an armband, a headband, possibly a shirt.
[18:03.220 --> 18:05.300]  In case the person doesn't understand the color they see.
[18:05.300 --> 18:20.320]  Ah, if you're the backup for undercover cops, or if you're going to be someplace where undercover cops are likely to be, you're not supposed to immediately shoot someone brandishing a gun if they have wrist bands, headbands, or a t-shirt or a baseball cap in that color.
[18:20.500 --> 18:27.160]  So if you dress up in like a rainbow outfit with headbands and armbands and just waving around there and you've got a gun, they're not going to shoot you right away.
[18:27.900 --> 18:29.020]  Boy, this is going to be interesting.
[18:29.140 --> 18:32.820]  Well, if you're smart enough to say I'm on the job and then don't point the gun at them.
[18:33.000 --> 18:34.200]  This has gone wrong.
[18:34.360 --> 18:44.740]  There was a shooting in the subway station at 53rd and Lex on the F train about 10 years ago of an undercover cop who was wearing the color of the day and yelled, I'm on the job.
[18:44.820 --> 18:46.380]  Yeah, but he was black, so he wasn't the color of the day.
[18:46.400 --> 18:47.240]  Ah, you remember this, yes.
[18:47.340 --> 18:49.520]  He was black and the cop shooting him was white.
[18:49.520 --> 18:51.640]  The color of the day is always white in the NYPD.
[18:51.880 --> 18:53.160]  It's just a little fact there.
[18:54.000 --> 18:57.820]  All right, so, but I'm still curious how it's disseminated.
[18:57.920 --> 19:01.200]  It just gets to the precincts, but what if you're, what time does it change?
[19:01.300 --> 19:02.600]  It has to change at a particular time.
[19:02.880 --> 19:03.680]  Offhand, I don't know.
[19:03.880 --> 19:06.720]  Yeah, and what if you're out in the field during that time change?
[19:06.860 --> 19:08.060]  It has to be communicated to you somehow.
[19:08.060 --> 19:09.420]  I think they know a day or two in advance.
[19:09.640 --> 19:11.160]  Oh, so there's a master list.
[19:11.340 --> 19:13.620]  Well, yes, but it's not that far in advance.
[19:13.820 --> 19:20.080]  I mean, you can't get it today and know, you know, what color is so you can commit a crime on your birthday.
[19:20.240 --> 19:35.340]  And the colors, are they just standard colors or are they like teal or, you know, all kinds of different... I would think that they would go for standard colors and provide a swatch because, God forbid, you have a cop, an undercover cop who doesn't know what teal is or a crew.
[19:35.980 --> 19:41.340]  Wait, this is discrimination here against people with colorblindness.
[19:41.420 --> 19:42.980]  You can't be a cop if you're colorblind.
[19:43.120 --> 19:43.640]  You can't be?
[19:43.780 --> 19:43.960]  No.
[19:44.180 --> 19:44.860]  That's not fair.
[19:46.580 --> 19:48.840]  Well, we've pointed out yet another inequity in the system.
[19:49.060 --> 19:58.400]  So if anyone has information on any of this, feel free to email us, OTH at 2600.com, where we're always asking questions of this nature and other natures as well.
[20:00.400 --> 20:02.100]  This is, of course, a fundraising show.
[20:02.320 --> 20:06.800]  And we are asking people to call up and pledge their support to the radio station.
[20:06.800 --> 20:08.840]  We're going to get more into that in just a couple of minutes.
[20:08.920 --> 20:12.360]  But just so that you know, this is a special edition where we're doing that.
[20:12.540 --> 20:14.900]  It's not a fundraising show.
[20:15.020 --> 20:15.640]  It's a membership.
[20:15.940 --> 20:19.120]  The goal is to get membership, not necessarily large contributions.
[20:19.240 --> 20:19.360]  Okay.
[20:19.620 --> 20:20.080]  Membership.
[20:20.400 --> 20:20.860]  Membership.
[20:20.980 --> 20:29.480]  So people who want to become members and become part of the membership should call 212-209-2950 and join the station.
[20:29.480 --> 20:34.260]  I think our goal, our meager goal for the hour is to get 10 people to do that.
[20:34.480 --> 20:37.720]  10 people to call up and become part of the station.
[20:37.920 --> 20:39.800]  And what do you get by being part of the station?
[20:40.100 --> 20:44.180]  You get the joy of helping your favorite programs continue.
[20:44.560 --> 20:44.920]  Okay.
[20:44.920 --> 20:44.980]  Okay.
[20:45.500 --> 20:48.260]  You also get... That's a lot of joy?
[20:48.740 --> 20:49.600]  It is a lot of joy.
[20:49.600 --> 20:50.200]  It is a lot of joy.
[20:50.340 --> 20:54.960]  You get the joy of helping programs that maybe are not yet your favorite continue so that you have a chance to hear them.
[20:55.600 --> 21:01.360]  Mostly you get the joy of helping this radio station stay on the air, which, believe me, is a miracle in itself.
[21:02.200 --> 21:06.260]  That's something we need to preserve well into the next decade.
[21:06.600 --> 21:10.460]  You get to hear someone other than Martha Stewart saying words like teal and a-crew.
[21:10.700 --> 21:10.880]  Yeah.
[21:11.180 --> 21:12.160]  There's also premiums.
[21:12.160 --> 21:15.600]  There are premiums, but this is not a premium-focused drive.
[21:15.720 --> 21:23.720]  It's an emergency drive because we fell kind of short this year for various reasons, and we don't want to see the station start to fall apart.
[21:23.820 --> 21:25.260]  We just got new CD players.
[21:25.460 --> 21:29.380]  You may have noticed the theme played without arguing with me this week.
[21:29.500 --> 21:31.140]  It's because we have brand new CD players.
[21:31.140 --> 21:37.360]  So, yeah, it does trickle down to the studio occasionally and over the air as well.
[21:38.240 --> 21:53.800]  By calling 212-209-2950 and pledging whatever you can afford, you will get a number of simple WBAI premiums, and you will also become a member of WBAI, which allows you to vote in various elections and things like that and become part of the station, really become part of it.
[21:53.800 --> 21:55.760]  So, I mean, that's important.
[21:55.940 --> 21:57.560]  But you want to go over some of the things that we have?
[21:57.700 --> 21:57.860]  Sure.
[21:58.020 --> 22:05.960]  The membership level is $25, and if you pledge the $25, and, of course, pay your pledge, you get your choice of four CDs.
[22:06.240 --> 22:12.380]  There's the Best of WBAI CD, which includes Rosa Parks and a whole bunch of other things.
[22:12.760 --> 22:21.240]  There's the Pacifica Radio Say It Loud New Songs for Peace CD, and there's also two Voices of Pacifica CDs.
[22:21.240 --> 22:26.020]  One is an interview with Stephen Biko, and one has Julian Bond and Muhammad Ali.
[22:26.180 --> 22:30.080]  So you get your choice of any of those four CDs if you pledge $25.
[22:30.540 --> 22:36.480]  If you pledge $50, you'll get the WBAI 45th Anniversary T-shirt.
[22:37.300 --> 22:37.820]  Really?
[22:38.180 --> 22:38.460]  Yeah.
[22:38.760 --> 22:39.300]  That's pretty cool.
[22:39.600 --> 22:40.600]  45th Anniversary?
[22:40.760 --> 22:42.760]  45th Anniversary, and you get your choice of size.
[22:42.760 --> 22:46.760]  So if you are picky about size, you need not worry.
[22:46.760 --> 22:47.460]  Okay.
[22:47.580 --> 22:51.160]  The point is we don't want to spend a whole lot of time hawking the various wares.
[22:51.280 --> 22:59.500]  We're making it simple this time, and we just want to get 10 people this hour to call in and become members of the WBAI or extend memberships.
[22:59.760 --> 23:00.620]  Either one of those works.
[23:01.080 --> 23:07.080]  And then we've done our bit for this particular emergency, and hopefully the station will get through it all.
[23:07.280 --> 23:09.280]  2-2-2-0-9-2-9-5-0.
[23:09.480 --> 23:13.100]  Pledge levels can be down to, what, $25 for membership?
[23:13.100 --> 23:14.360]  Membership is $25.
[23:14.740 --> 23:14.940]  Okay.
[23:15.120 --> 23:17.440]  And you do get any of the four CDs.
[23:17.580 --> 23:18.920]  It's really, it's not that much.
[23:18.920 --> 23:21.080]  We take Visa, we take MasterCard, we take American Express.
[23:21.700 --> 23:26.240]  It all adds up and all becomes part of the WBAI family.
[23:26.580 --> 23:33.380]  Well, you forgot to mention that they'll even send you a bill, or you can directly transfer the money to the BAI account.
[23:33.380 --> 23:36.300]  Well, they won't send you a bill if you pay by American Express or Visa or MasterCard.
[23:36.340 --> 23:38.360]  Right, well, if you choose to, they'll send you a bill.
[23:38.460 --> 23:40.360]  They'll send you a bill, and then hopefully you'll send us a check.
[23:40.380 --> 23:41.440]  Wait, yeah, you should pay it.
[23:41.440 --> 23:44.220]  Yeah, that's the other half of the whole pledging process.
[23:44.420 --> 23:45.800]  Some people think that the pledge is enough.
[23:45.880 --> 23:47.940]  No, we need the actual fulfillment of the pledge.
[23:48.020 --> 23:48.480]  That's important.
[23:48.700 --> 23:55.340]  And some people are worrying about taxes as the end-of-the-year approaches, so this is a good time to get your tax-deductible things in.
[23:55.340 --> 23:55.680]  That's right.
[23:56.020 --> 24:00.780]  A $20,000, you know, grant to WBAI is one heck of a tax write-off.
[24:00.960 --> 24:01.260]  Indeed.
[24:01.260 --> 24:03.020]  Think about it, you know, it really is.
[24:03.520 --> 24:08.320]  All right, we've got two calls on the line, which means we're a fifth of the way there, which is pretty cool, right?
[24:08.780 --> 24:10.440]  2-2-2-0-9-2-9-5-0.
[24:10.580 --> 24:14.280]  We have volunteers standing by, waiting to take your phone calls.
[24:14.360 --> 24:18.580]  And what we're going to do is we're going to play an excerpt from one of the CDs.
[24:19.280 --> 24:23.800]  And this is something from WBAI way back in 1960.
[24:23.920 --> 24:24.920]  Four calls on the line.
[24:24.960 --> 24:25.240]  That's great.
[24:25.340 --> 24:26.940]  We're almost halfway to our goal.
[24:27.140 --> 24:29.220]  2-2-2-0-9-2-9-5-0.
[24:29.260 --> 24:32.760]  And that would be incredible if we made that goal with just a few minutes.
[24:32.760 --> 24:37.120]  Then we can continue with the radio program and the station will be in good shape.
[24:37.560 --> 24:42.760]  So we're going to play an excerpt from back in 1960 when this radio station first went on the air.
[24:42.880 --> 24:45.280]  And, boy, this place has some history to it.
[24:45.320 --> 24:45.760]  It really does.
[24:46.780 --> 24:50.540]  Because we're here in the middle of the FM dial in New York City, for those of you listening on the internet.
[24:50.540 --> 24:51.740]  No, we're not just on the internet.
[24:51.900 --> 24:58.200]  We're actually broadcasting 50,000 watts right on top of the Empire State Building, getting out to, I think, four different states.
[24:59.060 --> 25:06.200]  And if you know anything about radio, that kind of thing for a non-commercial radio is pretty difficult, pretty impossible.
[25:06.400 --> 25:07.220]  What's the fourth state?
[25:07.620 --> 25:09.800]  You're not in Connecticut and New Jersey are obvious.
[25:09.980 --> 25:10.880]  I've gotten in Pennsylvania.
[25:11.140 --> 25:11.500]  Oh, have you really?
[25:11.500 --> 25:16.040]  If you drive all the way west to New Jersey and you hit, what was that, Delaware Water Gap?
[25:16.100 --> 25:16.640]  Is that what it is?
[25:17.040 --> 25:18.100]  Well, you're from New Jersey.
[25:18.320 --> 25:19.120]  You're not from New Jersey.
[25:19.240 --> 25:20.060]  Arsenie's from New Jersey.
[25:20.180 --> 25:21.140]  But, Walter, you know this.
[25:22.160 --> 25:24.480]  I go that way many, many times.
[25:24.640 --> 25:24.760]  Okay.
[25:24.820 --> 25:25.620]  So it's Delaware Water Gap.
[25:25.720 --> 25:28.540]  As soon as you cross over that bridge or whatever and you're in Pennsylvania.
[25:28.540 --> 25:30.440]  I was listening to Miss Yukaku once over there.
[25:30.760 --> 25:35.460]  I had to pull over, though, because it was starting to, there was like a bluegrass station or something that was interfering.
[25:35.460 --> 25:39.100]  But I pulled over and I was able to hear the end of the program in Pennsylvania.
[25:39.360 --> 25:40.300]  So, yeah, it does get out there.
[25:40.400 --> 25:42.960]  And now, thanks to the internet, it gets all throughout the world.
[25:43.220 --> 25:46.460]  And through archives, you know, anything's possible.
[25:46.980 --> 25:50.100]  But if you're listening right now, right now is when we want to hear from you.
[25:50.220 --> 25:52.240]  212-209-2950.
[25:52.760 --> 25:57.980]  Let's go back in history a little bit, play this piece from WBAI of 1960.
[25:58.380 --> 25:59.540]  How did you like that?
[25:59.980 --> 26:01.140]  I think it's great.
[26:02.460 --> 26:05.460]  One of the things lacking in radio today is humor.
[26:07.020 --> 26:10.420]  WBAI is as guilty as any other station in this respect.
[26:11.640 --> 26:15.300]  The humorists seem to have all gone uptown to television.
[26:16.160 --> 26:19.340]  Where are those wonderful programs of yesteryear?
[26:19.840 --> 26:21.120]  Well, I don't know.
[26:21.240 --> 26:24.860]  You've done some very strange things on the radio and I don't...
[26:24.860 --> 26:25.520]  Well, I apologize.
[26:25.820 --> 26:26.220]  You see, I was...
[26:26.220 --> 26:28.460]  I don't want to judge you solely by the past.
[26:28.460 --> 26:29.160]  Yes, that's true.
[26:29.160 --> 26:32.220]  Well, I was not aware of these things which were just brought to my attention.
[26:32.420 --> 26:38.340]  And I'll certainly be more careful in the future to try and protect my interests and the interests of America and democracy.
[27:00.120 --> 27:04.500]  Our thanks to the Marine Corps Band for that stirring interlude.
[27:04.720 --> 27:09.640]  This is listener-sponsored radio in New York, WBAI at 99.5 FM.
[27:10.000 --> 27:11.000]  BAI, you're on the air.
[27:11.180 --> 27:11.500]  I keep...
[27:11.500 --> 27:11.940]  Yeah, hello.
[27:12.120 --> 27:12.360]  Hi.
[27:19.040 --> 27:37.340]  I like to say that I think that it's an outrage that these pathetically sick and unnatural creatures have this constant, tremendous publicity over the communist-controlled mass media and to pollute the civilization of the United States and all the minds of the people.
[27:37.740 --> 27:40.400]  It's almost constant publicity over the radio.
[27:41.160 --> 27:49.780]  About to go on the air, reaching out to our secret listeners, secretly bringing them a warning over the secret air into their secret ears.
[27:50.740 --> 27:51.860]  Where am I?
[27:58.560 --> 28:07.180]  What an opportunity to be valuable to the people who should mean a lot to you.
[28:07.540 --> 28:12.980]  I'm talking about all your secret friends over the airwaves.
[28:13.980 --> 28:16.940]  You're on the radio, baby, oh, too.
[28:19.400 --> 28:20.440]  Oh, boy.
[28:20.800 --> 28:21.200]  Okay.
[28:21.740 --> 28:22.640]  Well, that was...
[28:22.640 --> 28:23.200]  What was that, Mike?
[28:23.260 --> 28:23.940]  What were we listening to here?
[28:24.140 --> 28:27.660]  Those were some early voices from the 1960s, as you said.
[28:28.020 --> 28:34.320]  It was the first general manager of the station, and then there was Steve Post, who was being talked to by an irate caller.
[28:34.780 --> 28:37.840]  That irate caller, I think, became part of WBAI later.
[28:38.100 --> 28:38.860]  Larry Josephson.
[28:39.400 --> 28:41.540]  Or was Larry Josephson the next speaker?
[28:42.040 --> 28:45.500]  Well, according to the way it's written here, it sounded like all the callers were pretty irate.
[28:45.780 --> 28:47.080]  Well, one was outraged.
[28:47.200 --> 28:47.860]  One was irate.
[28:49.580 --> 28:53.700]  Yeah, there were all sorts of outraged Charles Pitts, all kinds of people.
[28:53.880 --> 28:56.220]  And, you know, the archives are an amazing thing to have.
[28:56.220 --> 28:59.160]  It's really important to capture all of this.
[28:59.220 --> 29:04.460]  And I'm so happy that we have archives of our radio show, and I'm very happy that there are archives of WBAI from the early days.
[29:04.460 --> 29:09.000]  Yeah, back in the 1960s, this is one of the CDs that you can get as a premium.
[29:09.220 --> 29:10.420]  What do they have to do to get this premium, Mike?
[29:10.840 --> 29:15.800]  They have to call us at 212-209-2950 and pledge $25 or more.
[29:15.900 --> 29:16.400]  That's right.
[29:16.520 --> 29:18.460]  And request it, because there's the choice of four.
[29:18.460 --> 29:22.740]  And hopefully we'll get 10 members in this hour.
[29:22.900 --> 29:23.480]  That's our goal.
[29:23.700 --> 29:25.340]  Very paltry goal, actually.
[29:25.360 --> 29:30.320]  If this was one of those NPR stations, by the time I finished this sentence, we'd have 100 calls.
[29:30.420 --> 29:31.080]  That's how it works.
[29:31.180 --> 29:31.820]  I don't know why.
[29:32.140 --> 29:33.760]  I think there are just a lot more people.
[29:33.880 --> 29:35.200]  They're in tune with a lot more people.
[29:35.260 --> 29:37.900]  Maybe, you know, the richer people listen or something.
[29:38.060 --> 29:41.880]  I think the NPR listeners are maybe a little less discerning than our listeners.
[29:41.880 --> 29:45.640]  Well, I don't want to diss them or anything like that, because they, you know, they have a lot of power.
[29:46.680 --> 29:48.940]  But, yeah, you know, this is more radio for the people.
[29:49.300 --> 29:53.840]  You know, we're live here in a studio, and that kind of a thing, you know, it's not very polished.
[29:53.860 --> 29:54.980]  We do the best we can.
[29:55.260 --> 29:59.020]  We focus on content more than the glitz and glamour.
[30:00.160 --> 30:04.160]  So, 212-209-2950, if you want to be part of that.
[30:04.360 --> 30:06.340]  There's all sorts of premiums that are available.
[30:06.780 --> 30:09.560]  But the important thing is to call to keep this radio station going.
[30:09.680 --> 30:11.520]  This is, as I said, an emergency fundraiser.
[30:12.420 --> 30:16.440]  Because we fell short this year, and it's only lasting for, I think, three days.
[30:16.880 --> 30:23.080]  Hopefully, in those three days, we can make up something and get into 2006 with optimism.
[30:24.520 --> 30:25.140]  All right.
[30:25.620 --> 30:29.000]  Arsene will be back in a couple of minutes to tell us how many calls we have gotten so far.
[30:29.720 --> 30:31.460]  Hopefully, we will have gotten 10.
[30:31.780 --> 30:35.560]  But please, it can't hurt to call us now, 212-209-2950.
[30:35.560 --> 30:37.040]  There's no penalty for getting more than 10.
[30:37.420 --> 30:41.260]  We'll still accept the 11th and subsequent memberships.
[30:41.260 --> 30:42.180]  With gratitude.
[30:42.400 --> 30:48.080]  It would send one heck of a message that off-the-hook listeners responded that quickly in the first, what, five minutes?
[30:48.440 --> 30:49.420]  And met the goal?
[30:50.420 --> 30:51.720]  Allowing us to continue with the show.
[30:51.820 --> 30:54.960]  Now, we can read from some outraged listeners of our own.
[30:54.960 --> 31:05.820]  This person responding to our comments last week when the story about the shooting in Miami had just come out, the shooting of the passenger by Homeland Security air marshal people.
[31:06.780 --> 31:12.560]  He says, well, yeah, on the jetway, he could injure and or kill some or all the other passengers on the jetway.
[31:12.820 --> 31:25.760]  Maybe what's needed here is for passengers who are truly this loopy to not be allowed to fly alone and or having to file special papers with the airline so that the air crew would know the person is senile slash delusional slash whatever.
[31:25.760 --> 31:27.420]  You know, and I actually agree with this.
[31:27.760 --> 31:28.560]  You know, people...
[31:28.560 --> 31:32.180]  If somebody is mentally unstable, people should at least know about it.
[31:32.360 --> 31:36.520]  It seems like these guys should have known about it because he had been mentally unstable for the entire flight, apparently.
[31:36.880 --> 31:41.040]  But yet they decided that, nope, he said he might have a bomb, so therefore he does have a bomb.
[31:41.140 --> 31:41.940]  We're going to shoot to kill.
[31:42.400 --> 31:46.020]  And, of course, no one has even backed up the story that he said that in the first place.
[31:46.020 --> 31:54.200]  I don't agree with the assumption that or the assertion that people who are mentally ill should be required to file papers in advance of...
[31:54.200 --> 31:55.860]  Well, no, that's not what I meant.
[31:55.960 --> 32:01.380]  I meant just somebody who, you know, might be completely off their rocker at the moment.
[32:01.700 --> 32:03.660]  It might be good just to pass that information on.
[32:03.760 --> 32:09.560]  Well, apparently the person's wife who was on the plane was aware of this and notified people, but they didn't seem to...
[32:09.560 --> 32:11.580]  So it seems like that was done and they didn't...
[32:11.580 --> 32:20.020]  Anyway, so I agree with that part, but then the listener goes on to say, Of course, I'm sure that you would complain that it's an invasion of privacy, but then again, I know you're all a bunch of bleeding-heart liberals.
[32:20.220 --> 32:23.000]  Anyway, your mind is made up and you refuse to let the facts confuse you.
[32:24.600 --> 32:26.640]  Sometimes it's just good to let people talk, you know.
[32:27.460 --> 32:29.260]  Thanks, Tim, for that bit of email.
[32:29.280 --> 32:30.880]  Oh, it came from a Gmail account, too.
[32:30.920 --> 32:31.580]  How about that?
[32:32.040 --> 32:35.580]  Well, let's get back into our Gmail discussion because we have a lot of mail about that.
[32:35.780 --> 32:36.340]  Arsene, you're back.
[32:36.380 --> 32:36.820]  How are we doing?
[32:37.340 --> 32:38.280]  We've had five.
[32:38.480 --> 32:38.740]  Five?
[32:38.940 --> 32:39.900]  So we're halfway there.
[32:40.000 --> 32:41.100]  I see one on the line here.
[32:41.100 --> 32:41.500]  Two minutes.
[32:41.860 --> 32:43.320]  All right, we need five more.
[32:43.540 --> 32:45.780]  2-1-2-2-0-9-2-9-5-0.
[32:46.640 --> 32:49.120]  And, you know, we have to get that for this hour.
[32:49.220 --> 32:49.980]  We have to meet the goal.
[32:50.100 --> 32:51.680]  I think we can thank some of those five.
[32:51.900 --> 32:52.500]  Can we thank them?
[32:52.580 --> 32:53.960]  Yes, there's three people to thank.
[32:54.660 --> 32:56.340]  Natasha Singh from Brooklyn.
[32:56.800 --> 32:58.160]  Don't leave their last names.
[32:58.580 --> 32:59.240]  No last names?
[32:59.260 --> 32:59.740]  No last names.
[32:59.920 --> 33:02.140]  All right, well, sorry if I mispronounced your first name.
[33:02.240 --> 33:02.480]  Yes.
[33:03.480 --> 33:04.780]  Cynthia from New City.
[33:06.400 --> 33:09.080]  And Mark from Union, New Jersey.
[33:09.080 --> 33:12.540]  And he said that he's home for the holidays from Amsterdam.
[33:13.400 --> 33:13.760]  Wow.
[33:14.320 --> 33:16.000]  I mean, he lives in Amsterdam all the time.
[33:16.120 --> 33:16.760]  I don't know.
[33:16.860 --> 33:17.760]  It just comes back to New Jersey.
[33:17.940 --> 33:18.220]  What the comment says.
[33:18.500 --> 33:21.220]  Most people who live in New Jersey want to go to Amsterdam for the holidays.
[33:21.700 --> 33:21.860]  Right.
[33:22.080 --> 33:23.160]  Well, yeah, I should know.
[33:23.380 --> 33:25.780]  He went there for the rest of the year.
[33:26.240 --> 33:28.140]  So now he wants to come back to New Jersey for the holidays.
[33:28.420 --> 33:32.540]  It could be Amsterdam, New York, in which case this is not as exotic as it sounds.
[33:32.680 --> 33:33.820]  Don't think it's Amsterdam, New York.
[33:33.820 --> 33:34.960]  I think there's a college there.
[33:35.120 --> 33:37.660]  Two calls on the line, 202-209-2950.
[33:37.880 --> 33:42.500]  I think we just need three more callers and we can continue with the rest of the show unimpeded.
[33:42.740 --> 33:44.840]  We also want to thank our anonymous...
[33:44.840 --> 33:47.020]  So there are two anonymous people, I guess, since there are only three.
[33:47.160 --> 33:47.340]  Okay.
[33:47.740 --> 33:48.100]  Excellent.
[33:48.980 --> 33:49.340]  Okay.
[33:49.420 --> 33:51.660]  So we've been talking about Gmail a lot the last few weeks.
[33:51.740 --> 33:53.640]  And, of course, the controversy continues.
[33:53.640 --> 34:03.680]  We've been talking about all sorts of potential security issues and problems that Gmail might have or Google might have.
[34:04.360 --> 34:07.440]  This person says he's sorry to bring up the Google topic.
[34:08.100 --> 34:09.120]  Don't be sorry.
[34:09.140 --> 34:10.820]  If it's a topic, it's worth bringing up.
[34:11.280 --> 34:16.020]  But to defend them a little, please have a look at google-watch-watch.org.
[34:16.580 --> 34:19.180]  We talked about google-watch.org last week.
[34:19.360 --> 34:24.300]  So apparently there's a site that keeps a watch on that, google-watch-watch.org.
[34:24.580 --> 34:27.260]  Is there a site with three watches?
[34:27.500 --> 34:28.820]  You know, this is starting to get silly.
[34:29.320 --> 34:33.440]  I heard you mention the Google Watch site and thought you should know and mention to the listener...
[34:33.440 --> 34:34.960]  I think there's more than one.
[34:35.560 --> 34:37.520]  Oh, regardless, listener, this is what we're mentioning.
[34:37.600 --> 34:37.680]  There's at least five.
[34:38.120 --> 34:42.100]  The particular site is incredibly biased and comprised of a lot of lies.
[34:43.300 --> 34:49.540]  Also, there is no auto-log-me-out option on Gmail, but there isn't one on Hotmail or Yahoo that I've found.
[34:50.120 --> 34:58.260]  And as long as you do not tick the keep-me-logged-in checkbox when logging in, when you close the browser and thus end the session, you will be logged out.
[34:58.420 --> 34:58.920]  Signed, Andrew.
[34:59.020 --> 35:00.300]  Well, first of all, I don't think that's true.
[35:00.500 --> 35:06.080]  I don't remember any check that I had to put in to say to Gmail, keep-me-logged-in or to the browser.
[35:07.220 --> 35:14.180]  And, you know, I had a second instance this week of somebody who visited me, left their Gmail account logged in, and it was logged in forever.
[35:14.600 --> 35:24.520]  There was actually an exploit a long time ago with Hotmail, where if a user didn't log out, you could somehow log into their account without a password from anywhere.
[35:24.700 --> 35:25.460]  Yeah, I heard about that.
[35:25.600 --> 35:27.060]  But I think Hotmail logs out now.
[35:27.200 --> 35:28.260]  I think they do an auto-log-out.
[35:28.460 --> 35:31.340]  But they have an auto-log-out, which this listener seems to think they don't have.
[35:31.560 --> 35:32.640]  I'm not sure about Yahoo.
[35:32.740 --> 35:33.720]  I don't use these services.
[35:34.140 --> 35:38.260]  But I do know that Gmail does not have auto-log-out because they want that to be your desktop.
[35:38.940 --> 35:43.120]  And if you go to a second machine, you don't even know that it's still on the first machine.
[35:43.120 --> 35:45.100]  So it's kind of risky.
[35:45.240 --> 35:46.560]  Imagine going to an internet cafe.
[35:47.040 --> 35:48.760]  You had to be incredibly stupid to do this.
[35:48.840 --> 35:49.320]  But you know what?
[35:49.320 --> 35:50.800]  There are incredibly stupid people out there.
[35:51.380 --> 35:52.720]  You go to an internet cafe.
[35:53.100 --> 35:55.180]  You access your Gmail account.
[35:55.720 --> 36:01.300]  You know, it's bad enough right there because any kind of keystroke logger on their terminal will get your password.
[36:01.580 --> 36:01.940]  Okay.
[36:02.020 --> 36:04.620]  And then for some reason, you walk away and you leave it there.
[36:05.340 --> 36:08.040]  You forget, you'll never know that it's still logged in.
[36:08.160 --> 36:12.300]  And the person sending out the emails from your account will be indistinguishable from you.
[36:12.400 --> 36:13.400]  You won't even see their IP.
[36:13.700 --> 36:15.780]  I don't think you have to be stupid to do this.
[36:15.880 --> 36:16.200]  You just...
[36:16.200 --> 36:21.640]  I'm sure there are plenty of listeners in Radioland right now who are saying, yeah, what's wrong with that?
[36:21.660 --> 36:22.480]  I do it all the time.
[36:22.760 --> 36:24.560]  You just have to not realize...
[36:24.560 --> 36:25.100]  But it is stupid.
[36:25.220 --> 36:27.120]  I mean, maybe they're not stupid, but that's a stupid act.
[36:27.720 --> 36:29.440]  It's only stupid if you know it's stupid.
[36:29.900 --> 36:32.600]  You mean if you don't know something is stupid, you can't be stupid?
[36:34.260 --> 36:41.960]  I think the responsibility lies in part with the developers of software applications to make doing the secure thing easy.
[36:42.060 --> 36:42.600]  Oh, I agree.
[36:42.740 --> 36:43.180]  I agree.
[36:43.320 --> 36:44.580]  But, you know, it also...
[36:44.580 --> 36:47.840]  The responsibility lies with us to tell people when something like this could happen.
[36:48.040 --> 37:03.340]  Well, I think Redbird would be the one to say this, but I'll say it on his behalf that checking your email at an internet cafe is just stupid in general because email is unencrypted usually, so your password is always sent out, and anyone listening can hear it and use it.
[37:03.500 --> 37:03.640]  Yeah.
[37:03.780 --> 37:07.800]  But let's say you're at a trusted place, all right?
[37:07.940 --> 37:17.120]  And let's say, for some reason, you leave it logged in because you trust those people, and something happens after you leave to make you start hating these people, and you get into a big fight or something like that.
[37:17.280 --> 37:23.440]  You can't even go back and log out, and they have control, and they will not relinquish that control, and there's nothing you can do about it.
[37:23.760 --> 37:25.600]  That, to me, is rather risky.
[37:25.880 --> 37:33.140]  So if you're visiting a manual, and you use Google, you better not get into a fight with him for the next couple weeks, at least.
[37:33.140 --> 37:42.020]  People insist on logging into the Gmail accounts when they visit me, and they leave them logged in, and then they wonder why they get signed up for all kinds of weird things, because I use their names.
[37:42.200 --> 37:44.780]  Now, okay, I just mentioned that the IP is not recorded.
[37:45.140 --> 37:46.940]  One of our listeners took exception to this.
[37:49.200 --> 37:53.200]  Basically, he said, I noticed you said Gmail doesn't reveal the IP of who is sending a message.
[37:53.620 --> 37:54.520]  This is incorrect.
[37:54.520 --> 37:58.700]  If you view the headers, you can see the IP of the home computer you use to send the message.
[37:58.920 --> 38:01.240]  This is how people can determine spliffed messages, et cetera.
[38:01.660 --> 38:08.200]  You can, in effect, tell who is sending the message, and from where, such as if the IP resolves to a .edu, they sent it from a university, et cetera.
[38:08.560 --> 38:09.980]  That came from frozen dice.
[38:10.240 --> 38:22.780]  I looked at the headers on his message, and indeed, there was an extra line in there that said received from, and then a question mark, an IP, followed by another question mark, and then a second IP in brackets.
[38:24.780 --> 38:28.880]  Now, what's weird about that is that's a line that I very rarely see.
[38:28.940 --> 38:34.060]  I looked at some of the Gmail bits that I've gotten over the months, and I've seen that in a handful of cases.
[38:34.620 --> 38:40.860]  Now, Gmail themselves claims not to reveal users' IP addresses.
[38:41.420 --> 38:52.280]  They say protecting our users' privacy is something we take very seriously, personally, information, including someone's exact location, can be gathered from someone's IP address, so Gmail doesn't reveal this information in outgoing mail headers.
[38:52.660 --> 38:56.140]  So my question is, what was that IP that appeared in that person's email?
[38:56.380 --> 38:57.600]  Do you know anything about this, Walter?
[38:57.700 --> 38:58.880]  This appeared to come from a Gmail account.
[38:58.880 --> 38:59.100]  Wait a minute.
[38:59.180 --> 39:00.420]  Why is your microphone off all of a sudden?
[39:00.540 --> 39:00.880]  I'm sorry.
[39:01.040 --> 39:01.260]  Go ahead.
[39:01.580 --> 39:03.400]  This appeared to come from a Gmail account?
[39:03.660 --> 39:04.920]  Did you actually look at the headers?
[39:05.040 --> 39:05.980]  Maybe that was forged.
[39:06.200 --> 39:07.140]  You think that might have been a...
[39:07.700 --> 39:10.280]  I'll look at the full headers again, but I think it came from Gmail.
[39:10.380 --> 39:11.060]  I'm pretty sure it did.
[39:12.080 --> 39:13.600]  Maybe they just put one over on us.
[39:13.600 --> 39:14.760]  You really need to look at the headers.
[39:15.040 --> 39:17.200]  Well, the first address was a local address.
[39:17.340 --> 39:19.700]  It was like 192.168.03 or something.
[39:20.640 --> 39:26.760]  So, yeah, maybe it was fake because usually if you...
[39:26.760 --> 39:28.560]  But it's not the first time I've seen this.
[39:28.740 --> 39:30.260]  I've seen it in other Gmail-specific...
[39:30.260 --> 39:37.400]  We resolved the second address, which looks like a real IP address, and it looks like just some random ISP.
[39:38.240 --> 39:39.200]  And it's actually...
[39:39.740 --> 39:42.580]  It's interesting to do a Whois on Google.
[39:43.140 --> 39:45.880]  You might get some interesting results in the Whois.
[39:46.020 --> 39:47.200]  You want to tell us something about this?
[39:47.280 --> 39:48.620]  Is it not clean or something?
[39:48.700 --> 39:49.640]  You look kind of worried.
[39:49.780 --> 39:50.600]  It's just...
[39:50.600 --> 39:51.380]  Give us an idea.
[39:52.300 --> 39:55.100]  It's Google.com followed by advertising, basically.
[39:55.280 --> 39:55.560]  Oh, really?
[39:55.680 --> 40:01.640]  But it's interesting that people make website addresses with Google in the name just to get people to go there.
[40:02.300 --> 40:03.680]  Some more mail on this subject.
[40:03.680 --> 40:07.220]  By the way, the pledge drive line, 212-209-2950.
[40:07.260 --> 40:10.280]  We're going to be sending Arseny back in there in a little while to see if we've met our goal.
[40:11.000 --> 40:12.300]  God help us all if we haven't.
[40:12.820 --> 40:16.780]  I am not worried about Gmail keeping my email as long as it doesn't take up my 2GB quota.
[40:17.100 --> 40:20.560]  I don't send things that are endangering me to legal trouble over SMTP.
[40:20.920 --> 40:22.700]  I'm sorry if you do, but I'm not that stupid.
[40:22.800 --> 40:24.020]  Why do people have to be so nasty?
[40:24.020 --> 40:24.860]  We never said we did.
[40:25.000 --> 40:26.360]  We're trying to warn people about this.
[40:26.860 --> 40:28.040]  I don't even use Gmail.
[40:28.740 --> 40:32.240]  The government can easily decrypt the message if they really want it to.
[40:32.420 --> 40:36.740]  I use a program called Skype, which uses an encryption method to keep your conversations private.
[40:36.740 --> 40:42.280]  It's a voice over IP service that you talk over, making your conversations a one-time deal.
[40:42.300 --> 40:43.460]  Unless, of course, it's recorded.
[40:44.340 --> 40:46.360]  Email is text, so it is kept until deleted.
[40:46.500 --> 40:50.000]  And one of the things about Gmail that I've heard is that they never delete anything, even if you do.
[40:50.440 --> 40:52.060]  So that's something else to worry about.
[40:53.060 --> 40:56.240]  And finally, this letter from Brett.
[40:56.720 --> 41:04.420]  After listening to Off the Hook last week and regarding Gmail privacy, there was some lack of clarity on this issue, although the discussion got close.
[41:04.580 --> 41:09.840]  To try to put it succinctly, the main point is Gmail, and in general Google, concentrates information.
[41:09.840 --> 41:15.280]  The argument that your ISP can also get at your email slash info, which is true, is beyond the point.
[41:15.500 --> 41:22.560]  The issue is that Google has an ever-growing fraction of your personal info and that it may one day become one-stop shopping for the government.
[41:22.720 --> 41:23.800]  That is the point.
[41:24.020 --> 41:28.460]  We have no way of knowing if Google will keep a pure heart, or not that the U.S.
[41:28.460 --> 41:31.780]  or some other organization will not infiltrate or outright control Google.
[41:32.600 --> 41:39.580]  Personally, I hope to see free software developed, which provides the same features as Gmail, but implemented locally on a personally-controlled computer.
[41:40.120 --> 41:47.880]  This won't quell the... your ISP could still snoop criticisms, but it avoids the centralizing of information, which is the more apparent risk.
[41:48.000 --> 41:57.420]  And yes, this is sent from Gmail, but then my other choice is BNL.gov, which I know may be watched by humans instead of just the claimed computer advert algorithms.
[41:59.320 --> 42:00.740]  So, very insightful there.
[42:00.880 --> 42:03.540]  Well, this reader is really correct.
[42:03.800 --> 42:07.980]  And Google is launching a new thing called Google Calendar, apparently, soon.
[42:08.360 --> 42:11.340]  So, Google will know what books you read, what news you...
[42:11.340 --> 42:14.120]  That's not just a rumor, because I've heard... I've heard you say this.
[42:14.220 --> 42:15.100]  I haven't heard anybody else say this.
[42:15.100 --> 42:15.480]  About what?
[42:15.700 --> 42:16.960]  About Google Calendar.
[42:17.120 --> 42:17.860]  Right, Google Calendar.
[42:18.060 --> 42:18.160]  Yeah.
[42:18.940 --> 42:22.980]  The news that I heard that it was supposed to be coming out tomorrow, but that was like a week ago.
[42:23.560 --> 42:31.480]  But actually, if you go to Calendar, spelled A-R at the end, with Calendar.Google.com, it just goes to Google.
[42:31.720 --> 42:34.740]  So, eventually, maybe it'll go to a calendar.
[42:35.960 --> 42:46.120]  And, well, Google can... they have a lot of information about you, like from Google Books, Google Reader, which is a news aggregator, so you can get news.
[42:46.300 --> 42:53.160]  And so, they'll know, like, what you have in your emails, what books you read, what news you read, what you have to do all day.
[42:54.240 --> 42:55.200]  It's kind of frightening.
[42:55.740 --> 42:59.740]  And people just willingly volunteer all their information for this.
[42:59.840 --> 43:01.840]  Well, it's an easy service, and it's free.
[43:01.900 --> 43:11.500]  But I think people should just know that this big company has all this information about you, and it's not a good idea to put a lot of private stuff on there, I guess.
[43:11.580 --> 43:19.440]  But, I mean, I like what the last reader said, as far as, you know, a free software solution, where it's on your computer, you control it.
[43:20.420 --> 43:21.740]  Ultimately, what the best thing is.
[43:21.920 --> 43:22.740]  It doesn't have to be centralized.
[43:22.960 --> 43:23.000]  Yeah.
[43:23.320 --> 43:26.800]  Search engines, of course, public information, but not your private email.
[43:27.340 --> 43:27.780]  Right.
[43:27.900 --> 43:31.800]  Well, I mean, the advantage is, I use, like, three computers.
[43:31.800 --> 43:33.520]  One at school, one at home, et cetera.
[43:33.760 --> 43:38.180]  So, I always have my Google News thing tell me the news.
[43:38.360 --> 43:42.220]  Or, I have Delicious to have all my bookmarks.
[43:42.860 --> 43:44.320]  It's a bookmarking service.
[43:45.680 --> 43:49.680]  Or, you could use calendarhub.com for a calendar that you can access anywhere.
[43:49.980 --> 43:53.060]  Just having it all in one place is not always the best.
[43:53.380 --> 43:54.100]  Yeah, that's true.
[43:54.980 --> 44:05.660]  Okay, speaking of retaining data, the European Parliament has approved rules forcing telephone companies to retain call and internet records for use in anti-terror investigations.
[44:05.660 --> 44:09.320]  Records will be kept for up to two years under the new measures.
[44:09.320 --> 44:16.820]  Police will have access to information about calls, text messages, and internet data, but not exactly, not exact call content.
[44:17.280 --> 44:24.640]  The UK, which pressed European member states to back the rules, said that data was the golden thread in terrorist investigations.
[44:24.980 --> 44:34.260]  The Parliament voted 378 to 197 to approve the bill, which had already been agreed by the Assembly's two largest groups, the European People's Party and the Socialists.
[44:35.280 --> 44:35.840]  Unbelievable.
[44:35.840 --> 44:44.020]  So, all the firms, everybody who is a telephone company or an internet service provider has to store this information for two years.
[44:44.340 --> 44:58.040]  Data that can trace fixed or mobile telephone calls, time and duration of calls, location of the mobile phone being called, details of connections made to the internet, details but not the content of internet email and internet telephony services.
[44:58.560 --> 45:01.440]  That last one particularly strikes me as kind of curious.
[45:01.440 --> 45:05.140]  What details do you suppose they will be requiring?
[45:05.840 --> 45:07.820]  As many details as they can get away with.
[45:07.920 --> 45:08.620]  But not the content.
[45:09.240 --> 45:10.740]  What's defined as not the content?
[45:11.080 --> 45:15.140]  Well, in the case of a telephone call, it's very easy to draw the line.
[45:15.660 --> 45:19.200]  You know who they've called and not what they said.
[45:19.400 --> 45:20.920]  It's a pen register in everybody's line, apparently.
[45:21.300 --> 45:25.520]  Pen register being something that records the phone number that you called.
[45:25.520 --> 45:26.220]  Right.
[45:26.420 --> 45:31.280]  But it is very unclear as to how ISPs are supposed to implement this.
[45:31.440 --> 45:36.180]  It seems very expensive for the ISPs to log all this data.
[45:36.280 --> 45:36.980]  A lot of storage.
[45:37.140 --> 45:41.140]  And you can bet that with backups and everything like that, it's going to be kept well past two years.
[45:41.280 --> 45:43.980]  There's no way you can delete all copies of something after two years.
[45:43.980 --> 45:44.760]  It'll be someplace.
[45:44.760 --> 45:47.040]  And if they really want it, they can get it five years from now.
[45:47.420 --> 45:53.600]  But what I'm curious about, are they talking about everything that's in the headers as opposed to everything that's in the body of the message?
[45:53.760 --> 45:55.620]  And if that's the case, then you have the subject in there.
[45:56.120 --> 46:01.060]  And, you know, something could certainly be transmitted in the subject that would pertain to the contents of the message.
[46:01.340 --> 46:01.700]  Length.
[46:01.840 --> 46:03.020]  The length is in there as well.
[46:03.400 --> 46:08.920]  And simply, you know, person A sent an email to person B at this time and got a response three minutes later.
[46:09.300 --> 46:11.060]  You know, that's a lot of information.
[46:11.600 --> 46:15.680]  I'm not saying, you know, incriminating or not, it's a lot of information, a lot of personal information in there.
[46:15.860 --> 46:21.360]  You know, who's talking to which people, which organizations or what.
[46:21.360 --> 46:24.320]  It's a big invasion of privacy, I think.
[46:24.460 --> 46:27.660]  There seems to be this real kind of competition between the U.S.
[46:27.740 --> 46:33.600]  and the EU as to who can invade its citizens' privacy in the new way.
[46:33.640 --> 46:36.480]  And it really needs to stop.
[46:36.680 --> 46:37.900]  It really is a competition.
[46:38.040 --> 46:38.720]  It really is.
[46:38.880 --> 46:43.860]  I think we might be slightly ahead, but we're certainly getting a run for our money.
[46:44.140 --> 46:45.980]  This data retention stuff is scary.
[46:46.140 --> 46:49.680]  Well, I mean, just today, didn't they reach an agreement today on the Patriot Act?
[46:49.680 --> 46:49.680]  Right.
[46:50.520 --> 46:50.680]  I think...
[46:50.680 --> 46:51.600]  They didn't even keep track of it.
[46:51.620 --> 46:52.180]  The House did.
[46:52.300 --> 46:52.880]  The House did.
[46:53.180 --> 46:56.400]  Now, and it was a wide margin, too.
[46:56.660 --> 46:57.360]  Pretty wide.
[46:58.320 --> 46:59.540]  And the Senate...
[46:59.540 --> 47:04.080]  Now, there are some senators who are threatening to filibuster, and thank God for that.
[47:04.420 --> 47:07.140]  But I don't know if it's going to stop this.
[47:07.860 --> 47:13.460]  Basically, what we're talking about is extending the Patriot Act, making some aspects of it permanent.
[47:14.740 --> 47:20.920]  Some aspects would expire after a few years or have to be renewed again after a few years.
[47:21.060 --> 47:25.700]  But generally, this is not seen as a good thing by any civil libertarians anyplace.
[47:26.140 --> 47:28.820]  And unfortunately, we just keep making the same mistakes.
[47:28.820 --> 47:30.660]  We keep voting for it over and over again.
[47:30.880 --> 47:36.560]  At least this time, though, a couple of hundred congressmen voted against it, right?
[47:37.500 --> 47:38.080]  That's nice.
[47:38.080 --> 47:39.560]  The first time, nobody voted against it.
[47:39.660 --> 47:42.740]  So you can tell that it's sort of, you know, making people uneasy.
[47:43.860 --> 47:45.920]  But yeah, we live in very troubled times.
[47:46.400 --> 47:50.840]  And that's why you need a radio station like this, WBAI, 212-209-2950.
[47:51.160 --> 47:52.940]  Call up and become part of the station.
[47:53.220 --> 47:54.340]  Help us survive.
[47:54.580 --> 47:58.980]  Help us get by in these difficult times, because they really are difficult times.
[47:59.620 --> 48:01.760]  Arsenio, you've taken a second trip to the tally room.
[48:01.860 --> 48:03.220]  And tell us what the news is.
[48:03.220 --> 48:08.120]  Well, it's officially 9, but as I was walking out, I heard the phone ring.
[48:08.260 --> 48:10.560]  So we potentially have all 10.
[48:10.760 --> 48:11.380]  Potentially, okay.
[48:11.660 --> 48:15.600]  But, you know, officially, we're going to have to send you back down there again to find confirmation of that.
[48:15.820 --> 48:29.960]  You can make Arsenio's trip not in vain, if that was somebody calling in to just, you know, say that dinner's ready to someone in there, by calling up yourself, 212-209-2950, and pledging whatever you can afford to this radio station.
[48:29.960 --> 48:40.300]  Becoming a member, $25 is the basic membership rate, but there are all sorts of interesting premiums, including some historical and hysterical WBAI archives.
[48:40.780 --> 48:42.000]  But there are other things as well.
[48:42.220 --> 48:43.820]  So there's a whole slew of them.
[48:43.940 --> 48:45.120]  Too many to get into right now.
[48:45.560 --> 48:47.040]  That's not the reason you should be calling.
[48:47.260 --> 48:52.940]  The reason you should be calling is because you realize this radio station is important and unique, and you want to keep it going.
[48:53.500 --> 48:58.180]  You don't realize how fragile these things are, how easy things can fall apart.
[48:58.180 --> 49:01.860]  I was on another radio station earlier this week, K-Rock, you might have heard of them.
[49:02.440 --> 49:06.220]  It was on my friend Laszlo's show, who was on Sunday nights.
[49:06.380 --> 49:09.400]  Now, that station is in the process of changing its format.
[49:09.580 --> 49:12.520]  I don't know if people know this, but K-Rock is going to stop being K-Rock next month.
[49:12.520 --> 49:15.180]  It's going to be an all-talk station on the FM dial.
[49:16.020 --> 49:23.380]  And, you know, it's really bizarre, because, you know, all these people, they're there, they work hard to do their shows, and all of a sudden they're told that, well, can't do it anymore, we're doing something else.
[49:23.380 --> 49:26.840]  And they're given their walking papers, and the format changes.
[49:26.840 --> 49:28.180]  That's the nature of radio.
[49:28.400 --> 49:29.620]  Stations get bought and sold.
[49:29.940 --> 49:32.340]  So it's really sad to see something like that.
[49:32.900 --> 49:41.300]  Not that I'm a big fan of commercial radio, but just to see the long faces in the hallway, and see, you know, things being taken down from the walls, and that sort of stuff.
[49:41.580 --> 49:47.440]  But what's odd about it is that they're all part of this big corporate conglomerate called Inner City Broadcasting.
[49:49.200 --> 49:49.940]  Did I get it right?
[49:50.000 --> 49:50.940]  No, Infinity Broadcasting.
[49:50.940 --> 49:52.120]  I got the wrong network there.
[49:52.220 --> 49:53.000]  Infinity Broadcasting.
[49:53.080 --> 49:53.900]  Inner City is the other people.
[49:56.060 --> 50:04.480]  And basically, they own this other radio station, WNEW-FM, that tried an FM talk format a few years ago, and it failed miserably.
[50:04.640 --> 50:07.960]  So here are the same people doing the same thing again in the same city.
[50:08.780 --> 50:11.660]  And wondering if it's going to work this time.
[50:11.940 --> 50:12.640]  I don't know.
[50:12.760 --> 50:13.820]  It just seems really bizarre.
[50:13.820 --> 50:21.940]  Meanwhile, they also own WCBS, which was the oldie station until Jack FM took it over earlier this year.
[50:22.060 --> 50:27.880]  Jack FM, of course, being the sort of automated, no-human-DJ radio station.
[50:27.960 --> 50:28.440]  In fact...
[50:28.440 --> 50:29.660]  What do you mean, sort of automated?
[50:29.860 --> 50:30.800]  Well, it is automated.
[50:30.920 --> 50:32.800]  But the thing is, I always figure there were people there.
[50:32.940 --> 50:39.720]  I was at the K-Rock Studios, and I bumped into this machine that just said Jack FM on it.
[50:40.140 --> 50:43.200]  And I figured it was like, you know, some sort of computer that they were using.
[50:43.200 --> 50:44.000]  Then I realized, you know what?
[50:44.020 --> 50:49.520]  I think I just bumped into the radio station, because that's probably everything they need to broadcast a station, is one PC.
[50:50.260 --> 50:52.020]  So that's what it's come down to.
[50:52.360 --> 50:56.420]  Radio is turning into just something automated and not controlled by human beings.
[50:56.940 --> 51:05.460]  But I have to say, you know, we are here in this radio station, and there are always people here in this radio station where, you know, human beings, live, live human beings.
[51:05.460 --> 51:12.860]  In fact, there's so many human beings in this radio station that they just issued a memo about the problem of sometimes having too many human beings.
[51:12.860 --> 51:13.700]  Too many human beings.
[51:13.700 --> 51:16.120]  There's not enough room to walk down the hall sometimes.
[51:16.120 --> 51:17.580]  That's how popular the place is.
[51:17.920 --> 51:20.920]  We do have something in common with that other radio station, though.
[51:21.280 --> 51:23.200]  None of us are controlled by other human beings.
[51:23.360 --> 51:24.520]  We're free and independent.
[51:25.100 --> 51:26.520]  You're not controlled by any human beings?
[51:26.700 --> 51:27.280]  No, just me.
[51:27.700 --> 51:28.000]  Really?
[51:28.220 --> 51:28.380]  Yeah.
[51:28.840 --> 51:29.960]  Well, you're the first then.
[51:30.980 --> 51:32.400]  I'm influenced by them.
[51:32.540 --> 51:35.300]  I'm constrained by them, but I'm not controlled by them.
[51:35.300 --> 51:35.960]  At least not yet.
[51:36.160 --> 51:36.440]  All right.
[51:36.520 --> 51:39.340]  Well, I guess maybe we should define what control actually means.
[51:40.380 --> 51:42.260]  But, yeah, influence, whatever.
[51:42.460 --> 51:50.400]  Let us influence you into calling us, 212-209-2950, pledging your support, keeping this human being radio station on the air.
[51:50.440 --> 51:51.560]  And what are you pointing to, Mike?
[51:51.640 --> 51:56.980]  I'm pointing to the pile of people who have already been so influenced that we want to thank them for their loyalty.
[51:58.620 --> 52:00.820]  Jeffrey from Winnipeg, Canada.
[52:01.060 --> 52:01.480]  Winnipeg!
[52:01.620 --> 52:02.040]  Wow!
[52:03.180 --> 52:05.280]  Mike from Stormville, New York.
[52:05.700 --> 52:06.180]  Stormville?
[52:06.320 --> 52:07.020]  That sounds serious.
[52:07.560 --> 52:09.820]  Pam from Hillsborough, New Jersey.
[52:10.100 --> 52:10.380]  No.
[52:11.720 --> 52:13.280]  And Alan from the UK.
[52:14.580 --> 52:16.560]  Alan from the... just the UK, no city?
[52:16.720 --> 52:19.280]  Well, Cesar Cumbernaul.
[52:19.560 --> 52:19.900]  Uh-huh.
[52:20.200 --> 52:23.260]  I'm probably saying that really badly wrong, but Alan.
[52:23.840 --> 52:24.260]  Interesting.
[52:24.800 --> 52:28.440]  Okay, well, again, 212-209-2950 is our phone number.
[52:28.440 --> 52:32.620]  Please be that one more person to get us over the limit, over our goal.
[52:33.400 --> 52:37.180]  Simple goal, 10 members in the hour for this emergency fundraiser.
[52:37.360 --> 52:38.080]  There's no limit.
[52:38.480 --> 52:41.760]  There is no limit, but we do have to make the goal.
[52:41.880 --> 52:42.680]  We do have to do that.
[52:42.920 --> 52:43.900]  It's very important.
[52:45.480 --> 52:47.220]  Unofficial word is that we've reached the goal.
[52:47.500 --> 52:48.100]  It's unofficial.
[52:48.340 --> 52:50.880]  It has not been verified by the Associated Press.
[52:51.320 --> 52:54.360]  But as soon as we hear something, we'll pass that along to you.
[52:55.060 --> 52:56.400]  This is official, though.
[52:56.580 --> 53:00.420]  The term podcast has been declared word of the year by the...
[53:01.780 --> 53:03.020]  I know you're going to love this, Mike.
[53:03.200 --> 53:05.460]  By the new Oxford American Dictionary.
[53:05.600 --> 53:07.020]  Wait, Oxford's in the UK.
[53:07.020 --> 53:07.640]  What do they know?
[53:07.800 --> 53:08.480]  The American...
[53:08.480 --> 53:10.520]  This is the new Oxford American Dictionary.
[53:10.700 --> 53:11.260]  What is this?
[53:11.360 --> 53:12.040]  They don't know anything.
[53:12.300 --> 53:20.340]  The term is defined as a digital recording of a radio broadcast or similar program made available on the internet for downloading to a personal audio player.
[53:20.540 --> 53:21.860]  That's the official definition.
[53:22.460 --> 53:23.020]  The word is...
[53:23.020 --> 53:23.900]  They didn't even get it right.
[53:23.900 --> 53:27.280]  The word is derived from a combination of broadcasting and iPod.
[53:27.700 --> 53:31.860]  It will be added to the online version of the dictionary during the next update early next year.
[53:33.340 --> 53:36.320]  Well, you have this real bone of contention with the word...
[53:36.320 --> 53:37.760]  Well, they didn't even get the definition right.
[53:37.780 --> 53:41.440]  They missed the thing about it, which is that there's automated downloading.
[53:42.220 --> 53:43.340]  Yeah, that's true.
[53:43.480 --> 53:43.860]  That's true.
[53:43.940 --> 53:44.880]  It doesn't mention that.
[53:45.360 --> 53:50.580]  And, you know, I think you should point out, Mike, that you don't hate the podcast listeners.
[53:50.580 --> 53:52.240]  You just hate the word podcast, right?
[53:52.240 --> 54:02.700]  No, I love all our listeners through whatever medium, but it's a very silly word and there's no need to make it out of a commercial trademark when it's just MP3s downloading.
[54:02.700 --> 54:04.120]  What word would you like to use instead?
[54:04.860 --> 54:05.580]  Automatic downloading.
[54:06.160 --> 54:06.840]  That's silly.
[54:07.200 --> 54:07.900]  Automatic downloading.
[54:08.140 --> 54:08.940]  That's what it is.
[54:09.240 --> 54:10.760]  How about just internet broadcasting?
[54:11.580 --> 54:11.860]  Okay.
[54:12.220 --> 54:12.480]  All right.
[54:13.480 --> 54:14.020]  Automatic downloading.
[54:14.100 --> 54:14.360]  I don't know.
[54:14.440 --> 54:15.480]  It just sounds like a machine.
[54:16.340 --> 54:17.540]  It doesn't sound like any human is...
[54:17.540 --> 54:20.760]  But it takes all the human, you know, contact out of it totally.
[54:21.180 --> 54:21.500]  All right.
[54:22.000 --> 54:22.300]  I don't know.
[54:22.360 --> 54:23.260]  That's how I feel about it.
[54:24.080 --> 54:24.440]  Okay.
[54:24.480 --> 54:24.940]  Air marshals.
[54:25.040 --> 54:26.880]  We're going to have air marshals on trains and buses.
[54:27.060 --> 54:28.740]  They're not air marshals then, are they?
[54:29.980 --> 54:30.680]  They're breathing.
[54:31.400 --> 54:33.420]  Air marshals to patrol trains and buses.
[54:33.420 --> 54:35.360]  That's what the Associated Press has sent us here.
[54:35.640 --> 54:38.300]  I mean, they're not air marshals.
[54:38.620 --> 54:39.180]  Send them a dictionary.
[54:40.400 --> 54:47.520]  Anyway, they're going to be launching counter-terrorist surveillance at train stations and other mass transit facilities in a three-day test program.
[54:47.920 --> 54:51.080]  You know, that's another thing the transit strike will solve.
[54:51.260 --> 54:56.260]  You won't have to worry about terrorist acts on the trains or buses because there won't be any trains or buses.
[54:57.000 --> 54:58.480]  Just doing our bit, you know?
[54:59.120 --> 55:02.860]  Wait, is the transit strike going to be during the three-day test program?
[55:03.120 --> 55:03.680]  Let's see.
[55:03.780 --> 55:15.980]  As of Wednesday, the Transportation Security Administration said teams of undercover air marshals and uniformed law enforcement officers were descending on bus stations and transit systems across the country to protect them from potential terrorists.
[55:16.080 --> 55:17.360]  So that's Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.
[55:17.500 --> 55:20.160]  Yeah, the first day of the strike would be the third day.
[55:20.240 --> 55:24.100]  I think it's going to show what a failure of this program is if it shuts down the entire transportation infrastructure.
[55:24.320 --> 55:26.680]  It's called the VIPER teams.
[55:26.840 --> 55:27.800]  Do you know what VIPER stands for?
[55:27.800 --> 55:29.460]  Does anybody know what VIPER stands for?
[55:30.160 --> 55:32.720]  Visible Intermodal...
[55:32.720 --> 55:34.400]  It's a great word when you can use it.
[55:34.940 --> 55:38.320]  Visible Intermodal Protection and Response Teams.
[55:38.640 --> 55:43.640]  They're going to be patrolling Amtrak's Northeast Corridor and Los Angeles rail lines.
[55:43.840 --> 55:45.140]  V-I-P-A-R?
[55:46.440 --> 55:46.800]  V-I-P-R?
[55:47.820 --> 55:48.920]  Just V-I-P-R?
[55:49.480 --> 55:51.000]  V-I-P...
[55:51.000 --> 55:52.660]  Well, they have an E there.
[55:53.380 --> 55:53.900]  Where's the E from?
[55:53.900 --> 55:55.060]  Where does that other E come from?
[55:55.200 --> 55:56.620]  Oh, it's the E in protection.
[55:56.860 --> 55:58.420]  P-R-O-T-E-C.
[55:59.040 --> 55:59.640]  That's stupid.
[55:59.740 --> 56:00.260]  Yeah, it is stupid.
[56:00.340 --> 56:00.980]  But you have to...
[56:00.980 --> 56:03.700]  I guess it could be V-I-P-R, which you could also pronounce VIPER as well.
[56:04.780 --> 56:11.440]  Anyway, getting back to this, they're going to be at bus stations in Houston, mass transit systems in Atlanta, Philadelphia, Washington, and Baltimore.
[56:11.580 --> 56:12.100]  Not New York.
[56:12.740 --> 56:12.960]  Oh.
[56:13.120 --> 56:13.580]  So there you go.
[56:14.960 --> 56:15.880]  The teams will...
[56:15.880 --> 56:19.460]  I don't know why they're telling us all these details, but the teams will consist of two air marshals.
[56:19.860 --> 56:21.320]  Stop calling them air marshals.
[56:21.760 --> 56:29.180]  One TSA bomb-sniffing canine team, one or two transportation security inspectors, and a local law enforcement officer.
[56:30.440 --> 56:31.960]  Yeah, no partridge in a pear tree.
[56:32.360 --> 56:37.340]  They say there is no new intelligence indicating that terrorists are interested in targeting transportation modes.
[56:38.320 --> 56:40.800]  But I guess they'll target something else now that they know all this.
[56:42.940 --> 56:44.400]  Arsene, you're back again.
[56:44.860 --> 56:47.600]  We've had 10 plus.
[56:47.920 --> 56:48.620]  10 plus?
[56:48.760 --> 56:48.920]  Right.
[56:49.020 --> 56:49.740]  So we're over the limit.
[56:49.900 --> 56:56.620]  But I got Paul from Cranford, New Jersey's pledge, and he's the 10th pledger.
[56:57.060 --> 56:58.200]  The 10th pledger.
[56:58.320 --> 56:58.800]  Excellent.
[56:59.080 --> 57:00.740]  And you don't have anybody beyond that?
[57:00.860 --> 57:01.060]  No.
[57:01.380 --> 57:01.680]  Sorry.
[57:01.920 --> 57:02.180]  Okay.
[57:02.760 --> 57:03.280]  All right.
[57:03.280 --> 57:04.760]  We're kind of out of time here.
[57:04.960 --> 57:07.960]  The hour has really flown by, as it's prone to do.
[57:07.960 --> 57:19.500]  And what I'd like to do in the minutes, since we don't have a closing theme, I'd like to play something from the WBAI special CD.
[57:20.240 --> 57:27.520]  And this is a Village Voice review of WBAI read by Steve Post in January 1960.
[57:28.580 --> 57:31.680]  So that'll really bring you back in time quite a bit.
[57:32.560 --> 57:35.260]  212-209-2950, if you want to join all the people who helped us out.
[57:35.340 --> 57:37.260]  Thanks so much to those of you who did call in.
[57:37.420 --> 57:38.180]  It means so much to us.
[57:38.380 --> 57:40.940]  We'll be back again next week with another edition of Off the Hook.
[57:41.040 --> 57:43.120]  Stay tuned for the Personal Computer Show here on WBAI.
[57:44.160 --> 57:46.540]  Now, let's go back 45 years.
[57:46.540 --> 57:58.640]  Non-commercial listener-supported radio came to the New York area Sunday, when the new WBAI 99.5 megacycles went on the air at 8 a.m., with the playing of a Bach cantata.
[57:59.200 --> 58:15.960]  When the new station signed off at midnight, it had presented the first day ever heard in New York in environs of broadcasting uncluttered with commercials, trivia, noise, trash, city preemptions, moronism, shouting announcers, plugs, distorted news, and the like.
[58:16.540 --> 58:32.220]  In its first 16 hours, the new WBAI featured a concert of choral music, a documentary on the BBC's history, a program of American music, a panel discussion on paola and mental poverty, a complete performance of the St. John Passion, two programs of news commentary,
[58:32.540 --> 58:43.040]  a discussion of films, an Australian folk opera, a discussion of jazz, and a solid hour of uninterrupted jazz recordings, a concert of Scarlatti sonatas, and several miscellaneous programs.
[58:43.900 --> 58:46.480]  This is not a loaded first day's programming.
[58:46.720 --> 58:55.160]  I've seen the station's program folios for several months in advance, and last Sunday's and today's programming will be surpassed in interest and variety soon.
[58:55.500 --> 58:59.720]  From the Village Voice, January 13, 1960.
[59:03.140 --> 59:06.020]  ...in New York, and this is Reverend Jesse Jackson.
[59:06.280 --> 59:11.300]  Please call and support WBAI, non-commercial peace and justice radio in New York.
[59:11.660 --> 59:17.160]  This is WBAI 99.5 FM in New York, and this is Reverend Jesse Jackson.
[59:17.160 --> 59:35.240]  Please call and support WBAI-ish, orthodox, radio, crusade, anarchism for the global city, radical environmentalism for the concrete jungle, esoteric explorations of the secret history of rebel culture.
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