Web links related to the Back of the Book program of August 1, 2005


We plan to get to the below topics, and maybe do some odd stuff into the bargain tonight. Will we have time for the mail? Tune in and find out. I'll be updating this Web page some time in the next fortnight, so do check back in to see how it's going. Also, WBAI programs are supposed to start getting made available on a public archive as of today, so check back in for the link to those archives. Listeners who tape the program won't have to do that anymore.

A regularly scheduled WBAI Local Station Board meeting will be held on Wednesday, August 24th, at 6:30 PM, location to be announced.

Did you know that I've got a brief synopsis of almost every WBAI LSB meeting so far? Well, I do. And I'll be updating it soon.

At the July 25th WBAI LSB meeting, held in Manhattan, we had a bit of amusement as the Chair started off the meeting with another illegal, restrictive ruling about photographs. When she tried to stop someone from appealing this ruling I appealed that ruling. When ti came time to vote on it she couldn't get her fellow faction members to vote for it and had to do a song and dance including getting one of the faction whips to tell the other faction members to wake up and vote for upholding the Chair's illegal ruling!

WBAI Program Director Bernard White was at this meeting. He was quite confrontational, alleging that there is a “Well financed program of destabilization” going on that he was heroically resisting. In addition there was passed out a scurrilous, unsigned poison pen leaflet attacking a recently fired WBAI late night producer and the female department heads at WBAI, among others. Oh, it was quite a time at the old LSB meeting. The audio of that meeting is here.

I have written a statement about the constructive removal of a LSB member and sent it to the PNB, the WBAI LSB and various public mailing lists and bulletin boards.

WBAI has a program schedule up on its Web site. The site has gotten many of the individual program pages together to provide links and such, so check it out.

Our colleagues from Off the Hook now have both a RealAudio streaming web cast operating, and a new MP3 stream. The MP3 feed is now the preferred feed. Both were operating at 9:44 PM last night.

The Pacifica Foundation, which owns WBAI, has revamped its Web site and now has something called the Pacifica Lounge where you can post messages about Pacifica, WBAI and other Pacifica radio stations. This may be a good thing, and of course there are other, long term fora in which to participate.

WBAI also has a forum on its Web site now. You have to register to post messages, but anyone may read the messages.

WBAI is scheduled to have archives accessible to the public beginning today! Yes, as of August 1, 2005, WBAI is going to have archives of its programs on line for all of you to access. I've looked at the prototype of the site and it works fine. So if you miss a radio program you could always get it off that site. Thing is, they aren't set to release the URL of the site until later today. I'll include a link to that site in future updates of this Web page. Twenty First Century here we come!

Well, WBAI did very well on its emergency July mini-thon. So that's good. What's not so good is that the success of the 'thon, it raised well over the $325,000 that it was been hoped it would raise, was largely based on a premium of very doubtful value. The premium is called “Painful Deceptions” and it's just full of crap!

I had to hear some of this while answering phones in the Tally room one night and what I heard was just a bunch of false statements and some very fishy sounding sound bites. Additionally, this guy is also one of the nuts who says that the Apollo Moon landings never happened and he's also one of those lovely people who deny that the Holocaust happened! Here's his own Web page where he spells it all out for you.

He also says, of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, “There may have been a few murders and some serious torture, but to most of the prisoners, Abu Ghraib must have seemed like a country club compared to the prisons of World War II and the American Civil War. In fact, the ordinary Iraqi prisons may have been worse,” yeah, what's a few murders and some serious torture, as long as it doesn't get out of hand, eh?

He sounds like some kind of a right wing nut! Why is WBAI promoting this guy and his book?

These days the New York Police Department is searching people as they try to enter the subway or board buses! We plan to talk about this tonight.

Mid-Summer will occur next Saturday August 6, 2005, at 10:34 PM (ET). For more details on the seasons look here.

We'll be covering some gay related stories tonight, time will determine which ones we'll get to.

And you can forget about the Solar System you learned about in school. Owing to a discovery announced this week we no longer have nine planets, whether we have eight or ten will depend on some opinions from official astronomers.

There are a lot of issues that are considered hazardous to talk about on the air at WBAI, even now that the gag rule has been lifted. However, there is the Internet! There are mailing lists which you can subscribe to and Web based message boards devoted to WBAI and Pacifica issues. Many controversial WBAI/Pacifica issues are discussed on these lists.

Probably the most popular list that's sprung up is the “NewPacifica” mailing list. This one is very lively and currently includes over 400 subscribers coast to coast.

Being lively, of course, it sometimes also gets a bit nasty. All sorts of things are happening on this list and official announcements are frequently posted there.

You can look at the NewPacifica list here, and you can join the list from that Web page too. If you subscribe to the “NewPacifica” mailing list you will receive, via E-mail, all of the messages which are sent to that list.

There is the option to receive a “digest” version of the list, which means that a bunch of messages are bundled into one E-mail and sent to you at regular intervals, this cuts down on the number of E-mails you get from the list. You will also be able to send messages to the list.

This list also has a Web based interface where you can read messages and from which you can post your own messages.

There is also the more WBAI specific “Goodlight” Web based message board. It is sometimes referred to on Back of the Book as “the bleepin' blue board,” owing to the blue background used on its Web pages. This one has many people posting anonymously and there's also an ancillary “WBAI people” board that's just totally out of hand.

When the computer in Master Control is working we sometimes have live interaction with people posting on the “Goodlight Board” during the program.

And then there is the historic “Free Pacifica!” list, which has been used to help organize resistance to Pacifica Management hijackers since the mid-90s. It's become a low volume mailing list because it's been eclipsed by some of the newer, more technologically advanced, lists. Just click on this link and follow the instructions, and you'll be subscribed. This is a mailing list only, it doesn't have a digest option nor does it have a web interface.

My voice mail number at WBAI is 212-209-2996. Leave a message.

You can also send me E-mail.



WBAI related links

Free Pacifica Web site

WBAI Listeners' Web page

WBAI Management's official Web site


Back to the Back of the Book page

Back to my home page.

The contents of this Web page are copyright © 2005, R. Paul Martin.