Back of the Book — October 9, 2021


Well, I'm rushing to get this Web page done. I fell asleep earlier. I'll be updating this Web page soon. So check back for the updates.

You can now listen to this program on the official WBAI Archive.

Did you know that I've got a brief synopsis of some of the WBAI LSB meetings? Well, I do, and I've recently updated some of that.

I have also posted a whole lot of the minutes of the Pacifica National Finance Committee on this Web site. I'm a member of that committee because I'm the WBAI LSB Treasurer.

The next WBAI LSB meeting is scheduled to be held on Wednesday, October 18, 2021, it will probably be held as a teleconference meeting, as the 27 previous public meetings were because of the pandemic.

The WBAI LSB met on Wednesday, September 8, 2021.

The LSB meeting was sort of the usual, WBAI Management couldn't do their reports in the allotted format and they were allowed to go back and forth. This may have lowered the number of questions they were asked.

Before the meeting I had put out a written Treasurer's Report for all to read.

Some years ago the WBAI LSB voted to hold its regular meetings on the second Wednesday of every month, subject to change by the LSB, which gives us the following schedule:

All of these meetings are set to begin at 7:00 PM.

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.

Here is WBAI's current Internet stream. We can no longer tell if the stream is working without testing every possible stream. Good luck.

WBAI is archiving the programs! WBAI has permanently switched to yet another new archive Web page! This one is more baffling than the previous one. For some time I was unable to post archive blurbs, then I could, and then I couldn't again. You can take a look at it and see if I've been able to post anything on it lately. There are still some limitations, but I am assured that I can plug in the archive blurbs that were lost in the latest upgrade.

This is a link to the latest version of the official WBAI archive. The archiving software appears to have been at least partially fixed. To get to the archive of this program you can use the usual method: you'll have to click on the drop-down menu, which says Display, and find Back of the Book on that menu. We're pretty early in the list, so it shouldn't be too difficult. Once you find the program name click GO and you'll see only this Back of the Book program. Management has fixed some problems that we'd been having with the archives.

For programs before March 23, 2019, we're all out of luck. The changes that took place once WBAI Management took control of the WBAI archives seems to have wiped out all access to anything before that date in March. You'll have to click on the same drop-down menu as above, which says Display, and find Specify Date, it's the second choice from the top. You are then given a little pop-up calendar and you can choose the date of the program there. Then click GO and you'll see a list of programs that aired on that date. For those previous programs you can get the audio, but nothing else, since I can't post anything to those pages anymore. Yeah, it looks like they'll have some alternating program's name prominently there, but if you have the right date it'll be our program. Good luck.

Since the General Manager has banned Sidney Smith from WBAI he's not alternating with us on the air. As of November 2020, Back of the Book airs weekly.

Bring Back Uncle Sidney!

Our friend, fellow WBAI producer and Saddle Pal Uncle Sidney Smith has been banned from WBAI by General Manager Berthold Reimers. The General Manager will not say why. He won't even tell Sidney why he's banned! This is grossly unfair to Sidney and constitutes abuse of Staff. Why did Berthold ban Sidney?

Kick the debt can
They Didn't Kick it Very Far

So the Senate Democrats reached an agreement with the Senate Republicans on Thursday to have 10 Republican Senators vote with the Democrats to shut down Republican Senator Ted Cruz's filibuster. Cruz and some other farther right-wing Senators were trying to subvert Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's effort to just let the Democrats in the Senate pass the motion to lift the debt limit. Their weapon was the filibuster, something that came into being in the United States Senate after a rules change in 1806, but which was not the big thing it has become until the 1970s. In the current 100-member Senate it requires 60 votes to shut down a filibuster.

The deal with McConnell was that the Democrats would vote to raise the debt limit by about $480 billion, as opposed to an open-ended limit. Exactly what Cruz and the other obstructionist Republican Senators were planning to do if the motion to pass the bill were thwarted by their filibuster I don't know.

A failure to raise the debt limit would have resulted in the United States of America defaulting on all sort of financial obligations. It would have caused awful chaos in America and it would have instantly caused huge financial problems around the world.

It is being reported that former President Donnie Bonespur Trump attacked McConnell, for folding to the Democrats. Well, of course he wold say that. He has no concern for the billions of people whom it would adversely affect or even ruin financially. Trump doesn't understand the idea of trying to prevent the world from being destabilized.

The higher debt limit is what the Treasury Department has said that it needed in order to get all United States government debts paid until December 3. And then we'll probably go though all of this again.

National Coming Out Day 2021
Monday is National Coming Out Day

So Monday is National Coming Out Day. It's on October 11, because that was the date of a march on Washington in 1987. I didn't go to that one. I was at the 1979, one. I was Sidney Smith that day. We talked about that on this program. At the 1979, march I saw bags of money being thrown around and I eventually reported on the money scandal for WBAI. Well, I came out a long time ago.

I talked about things done by the Gay Activists Alliance 50 years ago this October.

There are a lot of issues that are considered hazardous to talk about on the air at WBAI, even though the gag rule was lifted in 2002. 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.

One open list that no longer exists was the WBAI specific Goodlight Web based message board. It was sometimes referred to on Back of the Book as the bleepin' blue board, owing to the blue background that was used on its Web pages. This one had many people posting anonymously and there was also an ancillary WBAI people board that was just totally out of hand.

In June 2012, I ended up having to salvage the bleepin' blue board, and so I was the moderator on it for its last seven years, until it got too expensive.

Sometimes we used to have live interaction with people posting on the Goodlight Board during the program.

Our very own Uncle Sidney Smith, whose program Saturday Morning With the Radio On used to alternate with us, has a blog these days. You can reach his blog here.

There used to be a number of mailing lists related to Pacifica and WBAI. Unfortunately, they were all located on Yahoo! Groups. When Yahoo! Groups was totally shut down in December 2020, all of those mailing lists ceased to exist. One year earlier their file sections and archives of E-mails, had been excised leaving only the ability to send E-mails back and forth among the members. Now it's all gone. Older Back of the Book program Web pages tell a little more about those lists.

We like to stay interactive with our listeners. Here are the various options for you to get in touch with us.

You can also send me E-mail.

And now you can even reach me on Twitter Twitter logo


WBAI related links

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