Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth Having Fun at Sea
It's Sunday night, December 7, 2025, 23:50, and I've updated this Web page a little bit with the link to the program on the WBAI archives, and we've posted the poem that Pickles of the North's read on the air. More to come, I think. The original top of this page follows the arrow. ⇒ The topic of the Trump Administration's murders and international crimes at sea was again at the fore in this program. Some of that is talked about on this page. We also started the formal on-air fund raising that the station is going to do for all of December. WBAI Management has mandated that each hour program must, ... break in and pitch at least four times throughout the show.
Well, I hope we can raise some money for the station with this program. I plan to update this Web pave pretty soon, so it may be worthwhile to check back and see what's been added to this Web page.
You can now listen to this program on the official WBAI Archive.
The next regular WBAI LSB meeting will be held this Wednesday December 10, 2025, at 7:00 PM. That meeting will be held on ZOOM, even though ZOOM compromises privacy and security.
Some years ago the WBAI LSB voted to hold its regular meetings on the second Wednesday night 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.
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Here is WBAI's current Internet stream. We can no longer tell if the stream is working without testing every possible stream. Good luck.
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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. Now I can again and there are a whole bunch of archive blurbs up there now.
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. Good luck.
Since the former General Manager banned Sidney Smith from WBAI he's not alternating with us on the air. As of November 2020, Back of the Book airs weekly.
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Hegseth's Double Tap - People who've viewed the full video of the September 2, attack on that boat in the Caribbean Sea say that it shows two men clinging to the upturned bow of the boat. They are waving at something above. And then another missile hits and kills them. This is so definitely a war crime.
At one of those creepy, sycophantic Cabinet meetings this past week Trump said he knows nothing about shooting survivors clinging to a capsized boat in international waters. Hegseth said he was busy that day and left after the first strike, and then he threw Admiral Frank M. Bradley under the bus. Maybe the Admiral deserves that, maybe not. The idea that they can kill people in international waters because they think they are ferrying drugs is also just plain wrong.
And the Trump Administration is trying to court martial Senator Mark Kelly, who is a Captain in the United States Navy. They want to call him back to active duty and court martial him. What the charges would be they have not said. Trump wants to take some sort of prosecutorial action against the other five people who did the video telling military people that they do not have to follow illegal orders.
I noted on the air that to my knowledge an officer can resign his commission to avoid being court martialed. Colonel Oliver North of Iran-Contra infamy did just that. But maybe Senator Kelly might decide to fight a court martial. He should certainly be acquitted of any charges. It would be quite the trial. Would Hegseth try to hand pick the judges in the case and stack the panel of court-martial members? I wouldn't put it past him, or Trump. Also, the Navy would be allowed to keep Senator Kelly confined for up to 120 days before the trial begins. That might also be something they'd use to enhance the Republican majority in the Senate. If Kelly chose to stand for a court martial I think he'd win an acquittal hands down.
In The New York Times opinion columnist David French quotes from the Department of Defense's Law of War Manual. He says that on page 1,088 he found the following, The requirement to refuse to comply with orders to commit law of war violations applies to orders to perform conduct that is clearly illegal or orders that the subordinate knows, in fact, are illegal. For example, orders to fire upon the shipwrecked would be clearly illegal.
Well, that sounds like a slam dunk for any case brought against Senator Kelly right there. Trying to prosecute him for quoting the Defense Department's own manual doesn't sound like something any sane politician would try. Mr. French quotes more from the Law of War Manual, It is forbidden to declare that no quarter will be given.
A no quarter order is an order directing soldiers to kill every combatant, and to leave no survivors, which is what Trump and Hegseth did on September 2, and probably in the other attacks at sea after that. The Law of War Manual continues, Moreover, it is also prohibited to conduct hostilities on the basis that there shall be no survivors, or to threaten the adversary with the denial of quarter.
So Hegseth has been saying that there should be no survivors of the strikes on the boats that are alleged, but not proven, to be ferrying cocaine. In a court of law it would be Hegseth who would be convicted of war crimes. And the United States is not even at war!
In the past week I've read about a World War II German submarine Captain who was executed for machine gunning survivors of a ship he's just sunk in the North Sea. Secretary of Defense Hegseth and Admiral Bradley should take note.
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Pickles here! On this program I read a poem by Robert Frost, A Winter Eden,
because it made me think of how R.Paul feels about the late Fall and Winter months, and their waning daylight hours! Also poetry can take you out of today's political craziness, which is a good thing to experience, even for a few minutes.
Robert Frost
R. Paul back again, yeah, the Sun sets at 4:28 PM (ET) in Brooklyn these days. I find it so depressing to have sunset in the late afternoon. This is the latest the Sun sets around here. It'll be says and days before the Sun sets later, and then it will be only a minute later. I'm hoping that Donnie Bonespur
Trump doesn't stop Daylight Saving Time from re-starting in March.
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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.
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