Back of the Book — January 22, 2022


We mostly covered the below topics on this program. I plan to update this Web page just a little bit in the very 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 Tuesday February 1, 2022, in executive session. The next regular WBAI LSB meeting should be held on Wednesday, February 9, 2022, at 7 PM on ZOOM, even though ZOOM compromises privacy and security. This meetings will be held as a teleconference meeting, as the 32 previous public meetings were because of the pandemic.

The WBAI LSB met on Wednesday, January 12, 2022, as both the LSB and as a Delegates Assembly. We easily elected WBAI's Directors to the Pacifica National Board at that meeting. Only enough people wanted to become Directors as we had slots for Directors, so they were all elected by acclamation. This meeting also featured a time keeper who couldn't keep time and people disrupting the meeting because they lost an election. In Public Comment we had anti-vaxxers whining that they weren't getting enough air time on WBAI for their life threatening disinformation.

The results are in and these are the 2022, WBAI Directors elected to the Pacifica National Board:

Staff - Shawn Rhodes
Listener - Jim Dingeman
Listener - James Sagurton
Listener - Sharonne Salaam

Before the January 12, 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, so we have the following schedule:

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?

A wedding cake
We Never Had A Cake Like This

R. Paul and Pickles of the North talked about their relationship, which began 25 years ago today after a WBAI UE Local 404 Union meeting.

On this program we played the audio of the Back of the Book program when Pickles of the North proposed marriage to R. Paul on the air. The marriage has been going on for 16 years. Yeah, we wanted to make sure so we tried the arrangement out for nine years.

Ah, true love.

We talked about Vasily Arkhipov's actions during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, when he may well have saved the world from World War III. We covered this topic on a previous program, but we felt the need to mention it again both because Arkhipov's birthday is coming up and because we may soon be in another confrontation similar to the one in 1962.

SARS-CoV-2 virus
It Is Not Just Going Away!

According to the Johns-Hopkins Web site COVID-19 cases in the whole world reached 344,904,162 on Friday, and global deaths reached 5,581,538. In America the number of cases as of Friday was 69,959,466 and the death toll in America was 863,771, so 14,959 people have died of COVID-19 in America since our last program one week ago. This week's death rate is up even more than it was last week.

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.

We talked a bit about Novak Djokovic getting kicked out of Australia before the Open. What an arrogant guy. He fudged his vaccination status on his VISA application, he apparently thought that being a high ranking professional tennis player gave him the right and the power to just ignore Australia's laws that have been put in place to keep the island nation from being overwhelmed by COVID-19. Will he try to pull the same kind of stunt for the French Open while France has similar requirements to the Australian ones?

We talked about Czech folk singer Hana Horka who has died after she intentionally caught COVID-19 in lieu of getting vaccinated. Her son said that she caught COVID-19 on purpose in order to get around certain COVID restrictions in the the Czech Republic while avoiding getting vaccinated. The disease apparently killed her very rapidly.

We talked about an anti-masker who refused to wear a mask on a flight from Miami to London in violation of federal masking rules. The plane, a 747, had to turn around and go back to Miami where the police took charge of the anti-masker. There w as 128 passengers on board who were inconvenienced by this person.

We also talked about the rock singer Meat Loaf, aka Marvin Lee Aday, who died the day before this program was recorded. e was vocally against vaccination mandates, although we don't know if he was an actual anti-vaxxer. It is being reported by the New York Daily News that Meat Loaf had contracted COVID-19, and it sounds like he died very rapidly from it.

Ukraine flag 2022

We briefly mentioned that there could be a real war involving the United States of America and the current version of the Russian Empire. What will happen is something we certainly can't predict. What we can do, however, is remember history. Russia has already taken over part of Ukraine, and has its troops disguised as insurgents fighting to keep control of the eastern part of the country.

Czech flag 1938

In 1938, Hitler wanted to take over Czechoslovakia. Czechoslovakia had been created after World War I. Hitler threatened war if he couldn't take over the part of Czechoslovakia called the Sudetenland. The Sudetenland was territory around the western and north western parts of Czechoslovakia. It also happened to be there the Czechoslovaks had their border fortresses and fortifications. Great Britain, in the person of Neville Chamberlain, famously caved in to Hitler's demands and left Czechoslovakia with no option other than toe capitulate to the superior Nazi military. About six months after the Nazis took over the Sudetenland they just took over the rest of Czechoslovakia, which had no good positions from which to defend itself from the onslaught.

It really looks like this is the same scenario being played out by Vladimir Putin in 2022. Will America repeat Great Britain's history?

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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WBAI related links

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