Trump's Hormuz Problem
It's Tuesday afternoon, March 31, 2026, 16:06, and I've updated this Web page with the three poems that Radio's Pickles of the North read on this program. We had a little problem with one of the poems because after I'd found them all I erased them from the text editor! It's the sort of thing an old man will do. I want to update this Web page because there wree some things we talked about on this program that I'd like to post here. I'll see. The original top of this page follows the arrow. ⇒ Once again I've found that the WBAI Web site is not able to post my pre-program blurb. This same thing happened two weeks ago. Frustrating. We talked about The mess that Donnie Bonespur
Trump has been making with the war that he started three weeks ago. We discussed some other things and Radio's Pickles of the North read some poetry on the air. We welcomed Spring with our traditional musical tribute to the season. More to come.
You can now listen to this program on the official WBAI Archive.
The next regular WBAI LSB meeting will be held on Wednesday April 8, 2026, at 7:00 PM. That meeting will be held on ZOOM, even though ZOOM compromises privacy and security. We had a LSB meeting this past Wednesday night March 11. We had a long report from the station's interim General Manager and the LSB members also spent 46 minutes talking about people wanting to break up the Public Comment section of the meeting for their own purposes. It would be a bad idea. I got to give a Treasurer's Report about the Pacifica National Finance Committee not meeting again.
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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This week, after Trump had been trying to bully other nations to pull his bacon out of the fire of the Iran war that he started without much planning, he switched from bullying mode to petulance mode and said he didn't need or want any help in getting the Strait of Hormuz opened up. He posted on-line that, We no longer need, or desire, the NATO countries' assistance - we never did! Likewise, Japan, Australia, or South Korea,
He added, In fact … we do not need the help of anyone.
Oh, he needs help from someone, all right. This is the kind of behavior one sees from a frustrated five year old. Trump has even tried to get the so-called People's Republic of China to come help him out. Meanwhile Trump and his underlings are downplaying the rise in prices that's being caused by so much of the world's oil supply being bottled up north of the Strait of Hormuz. Will the MAGA-ites wake up from their MAGA-stupor as a result of all this?
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Spring is here! The Sun is setting at 7:09 PM (ET). This is so good. The Vernal Equinox happened Friday morning.
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Pickles here! War is the theme of three poems written by three English poets, two who wrote in the nineteenth century and one in the seventeenth century. Walter Savage Lander was a poet and a liberal activist, and the poem we read was A Foreign Ruler
(hey, one person's foreign ruler is another person's domestic one.) Not much has changed today.
The piece by Ebenezer Elliot is entitled War
and is as true as it was when he first wrote it in the first half of the 1800s. And James Shirley's The Glories of our Blood and State
is taken from his play of 1659, The Contention of Ajax and Ulysses for the Armour of Achilles,
where the two heroes on the Greek side of the Trojan War hold contests during the war to see who will win the god-forged armor of their fallen comrade. War is not a glorious thing, even when your fighting is driven by the gods.
He says, My reign is peace, so slays A thousand in the dead of night. Are you all happy now? he says, And those he leaves behind cry quite. He swears he will have no contention, And sets all nations by the ears; He shouts aloud, No intervention! Invades, and drowns them all in tears.
Walter Savage Lander
The victories of mind, Are won for all mankind; But war wastes what it wins, Ends worse than it begins, And is a game of woes, Which nations always lose: Though tyrant tyrant kill, The slayer liveth still.
Ebenezer Elliot
The glories of our blood and state
Are shadows, not substantial things;
There is no armour against Fate;
Death lays his icy hand on kings:
Sceptre and Crown
Must tumble down,
And in the dust be equal made
With the poor crooked scythe and spade.
Some men with swords may reap the field,
And plant fresh laurels where they kill:
But their strong nerves at last must yield;
They tame but one another still:
Early or late
They stoop to fate,
And must give up their murmuring breath
When they, pale captives, creep to death.
The garlands wither on your brow;
Then boast no more your mighty deeds!
Upon Death's purple altar now
See where the victor-victim bleeds.
Your heads must come
To the cold tomb:
Only the actions of the just
Smell sweet and blossom in their dust.
James Shirley
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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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