It's Wednesday 2/10/99 04:17:28 and I think this page is done. You'll notice that the stuff about the Icelandic genetic deal is still here even though I never got to it on the air. Oh well. I did manage to get that MP3 file up here. But please look at the piece about what may well be the theft of the Pacifica Foundation which owns WBAI.

In December the government of Iceland voted for a law which gives the genetic information gathered from the people of Iceland to a company named deCODE Genetics which will have exclusive rights to construct and run a database based on that genetic information.

Not surprisingly, opposition has sprung up against this venture. A group calling itself MANNVERND, which is Icelandic for “Association for Ethics in Science and Medicine”, has been organizing against it. I've linked you to the English version of their Web site, but you can switch over to the Icelandic version there. And a group from Italy named Oikos is also protesting this commoditization of the most intimate and immutable of human traits.

So the Russians have this goofy idea of erecting huge, mylar mirrors in outer space in order to light up their Winter-dark cities. It's an old science fiction idea that always results in disasters.

It started out with a lot of hope on the part of the Russians. But they're cash strapped and a plan like this under those circumstances seems, well, bizarre.

However, as the Mir cosmonauts sent the ship out to unfurl its mylar mirror the mylar got caught on the supply ship's antenna. Failure.

The Russian space program is becoming a comedy of errors.

WBAI is owned by the Pacifica Foundation. The effective ownership of the Pacifica Foundation is set to change if the Pacifica National Board holds to its agenda for its meeting set for February 26^th to 28^th.

The Pacifica National Board has been publishing transcripts of its meetings, but oddly they didn't publish the transcript of their October 1998, meeting. It was published only a few days ago. It may have been finally published because the Board members discovered that journalist Alexander Cockburn broke the story of the bylaws change in a publication named Counterpunch. Please read this and take action. This corporate maneuver could end up with WBAI being sold or changed so completely that it will not resemble the radio station you know today.

Okay, you need to read this a little in order to spare us all a bit of grief. I am putting up that MP3 file for you to download. You can't just listen to it in real time from this site, you need to download it and play it on your computer after it's been downloaded.

If you click on the link your browser should ask if you want to download this file. Agree to that and start the download. Please download this only once. It's a fairly big file, 517,888 bytes, and my ISP monitors how many bytes get downloaded from this site. If it get too much “traffic”, which includes file downloads, they “throttle” the site and you'll have to wait until the next hour to get access to this site at all.

Click here to download the Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock file!

Because of the size of this file it's only going to be up here temporarily! Get it while you can.

And of course you should let me know if you run into any problems with this. For more about MP3 files see my previous program about them, and here's another MP3 player named Winamp. Winamp is located elsewhere and downloading it will not count against this site's total bytes downloaded per hour.

There is a thing called “The Gag Rule” at all Pacifica stations which prevents producers from talking about internal matters on the air. Well, it doesn't prevent all producers. Some of the bigger deals get away with it. People who aren't big deals in the eyes of Management, however, can be, and have been, removed from the air and banned from Pacifica stations for violating the gag rule.

Those listeners with Web access to this and other sites can learn about the things which have been going on over the past few years at WBAI and the other Pacifica stations. But most listeners do not have this access and are completely in the dark about the threats posed by Pacifica and WBAI Management to the radio stations. Please take a look at the petition to rescind the gag rule and consider “signing” it as per the instructions provided.

There are a lot of issues that we can't talk about on the air at WBAI. But there is an Internet list called “Free Pacifica!” which you can subscribe to, and these issues are discussed there. If you subscribe to it you will receive, via E-mail, all of the messages which are sent to that list. You will also be able to send messages to the list.

If you want to subscribe to the “Free Pacifica!” list just click on this link and fill out the form, and you'll be subscribed. Could open your eyes a little bit.