Back of the Book — October 16, 2021


We talked about the below topics and more on this program. And the WBAI/Pacifica election is over, so we could talk about that a bit. I plan to post on this very Web page about the election. I do plan to update this Web page in the quite near future. So check back for those 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, November 10, 2021, it will probably be held as a teleconference meeting, as the 28 previous public meetings were because of the pandemic.

The WBAI LSB met on Wednesday, October 18, 2021, 2021.

The LSB meeting featured lots of hijinks with people trying to get a very badly put together motion pushed far up on the agenda. They failed, but they are up a lot of time in the failing. I think that much of it was simply electioneering. And at this time the 2021, WBAI elections are over. That's a good thing. We hope that none f you voted for the so-called Justice & Unity Campaign.

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. That meeting will end the 11th WBAI LSB. The 12th WBAI LSB will be seated on December 8, 2021.

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?

starship silhouette
He Didn't Go Up In This Thing

Yeah, we couldn't resist talking about William Shatner, who played Captain James T. Kirk of the Starship Enterprise on TV more than half a century ago, getting a free ride on the penis shaped rocket that Jeff Bezos likes to send just past the Karmen line at 100 km and thus just barely out into space.

Yeah, this was another example of the extremely wealthy indulging themselves. This time it as to put an actor who was famous for playing space ship captain into space, or at least just beyond almost all of the Earth's atmosphere. They can just drop huge amounts of money on things like this. What a world.

mail!
We Got to Some Mail Again

So we read some mail from listeners. I think that we're going to try to read the mail more frequently, provided we get enough. We will not be reading the troll E-mails that we get. That would be like reading the spam E-mails we get.

We answered some questions, including why the audio file we upload to WBAI is so much larger than the archive audio file you can download from the WBAI archives, and why we can't do a live program remotely.

SARS-CoV-2 virus
This Thing Continues to Kill People

According to the Johns-Hopkins Web site COVID-19 cases in the whole world reached 239,926,774 on Friday, and global deaths reached 4,887,272. In America the number of cases as of Friday was 44,825,194 and the death toll in America was 722,903, so 11,035 people have died of COVID-19 in America since our last program one week ago. That's slightly down from the previous rate, and it continues a trend of the death numbers from COVID-19 on America trending down, although they're much higher than they'd been only a couple of months ago. The unvaccinated people are still supplying the victims of almost all of the deaths. ICU beds in some places are beyond a critical level. One place has their ICU at 175% of capacity. Clearly that can't keep going on. By the time this program airs on Saturday morning all of those figures we quoted will be higher of course. This was all mostly preventable.

Anti-vaxxer cuckoos are making the news. An Ohio fifth-grader, and the youngest pro-mask person at a school board meeting in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio this week, spoke up to anti-maskers who tried to heckle her.

Ten year old Kaylan Park was at the meeting to support the district's mask mandate — which opponents were protesting after its recent extension until at least October 29.

It is super weird to be here because adults don't think that their children should wear masks, young Ms. Park said, A lot of you guys are adults. You guys should be able to know that masks save lives.

Anti-maskers talked over her, but Kaylan said, Please be quiet...It's inappropriate that you guys can't stay quiet.

She reminded opponents that wearing a mask would be for your safety ... like kindness. She said, My teacher tells me when you do something for other people, they can do it back Wear a mask for them and they'll wear it back. ... You're showing kindness.

Ozzy Osbourne is thanking Satan for not getting sick with COVID-19. He said, My wife had the virus; my daughter had the virus and I never got it. Being a devil worshiper does have its good points! Well, we've read a number of stories about sky pilots, most adherents to the various Abrahamic superstitions, saying that they god was going to protect them from the disease, and then dying of it. Ms. Osborne provides an interesting contrast.

A woman in Chesapeake, Va., whose 10-year-old daughter had just died of COVID-19, spoke out against misinformation during a school board meeting recently — just a day after burying her child.

Nicole Sperry, who said she was there Not only [as a] teacher at Chesapeake Public Schools [but also as] a product of Chesapeake Public Schools, said that her daughter, who until very recently was a healthy little girl, had died just five days after developing symptoms for COVID-19. She told the meeting, My message for you and all that are listening is that COVID is not over, no matter what people who have been standing up here have said. On September 27, during the last meeting, there were parents or concerned citizens that voiced misinformation to you. They said that COVID was basically over, and that healthy people do not die, she said that when she heard that, she was sitting next to her daughter's death bed. She said, Children are getting COVID and they're getting it at schools. We need to ensure that all protocols that you as a school board are saying that we do are being done. I hate wearing a mask, but I do it because I do not want my kiddos that I teach to get sick, she said. She concluded with, Now more than ever we need to do everything that we can to protect our children.

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.

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