Web links related to the Back of the Book program of December 28, 2009


It's Sunday afternoon, January 10, 2010, 17:24, and this Web page is finished. I've updated it with some more of what we did on the program and with the location of the next LSB meeting. We got to the below topics and more on this program, we also got through a lot, but not all, of the listener mail. The original top of this Web page follows the arrow. ⇒ We're about to see 2009, out! And a wild year it was. We'll be talking about all sorts of stuff on this program. We also plan to get through all of the mail on tonight's program.

Did you know that I've got a brief synopsis of many of the WBAI LSB meetings? Well, I do, and I've recently updated this stuff a tiny bit.

There was a sudden Town Hall meeting held on Monday, April 13, 2009, at 7:00 PM at The Fortune Society, 630 Riverside Drive at 140th St. in Manhattan. Here's a flyer that was passed out at the event.

The next regular WBAI LSB meeting will be held on Wednesday, January 13, 2010, at 7:00 PM at 388 Atlantic Avenue, between Bond and Hoyt streets, in downtown Brooklyn.

Nearest subway is A or C to Hoyt/Schermerhorn (exit station on Bond St. side. Walk two short blocks up Bond to Atlantic, cross Atlantic, 388 is on the right a few doors down.) OR any of the trains at Atlantic/Pacific (N,R,B,Q,D,2,3,4,or 5 train) OR #63 (5th Ave.) bus from Bay Ridge and Park Slope, and turns up Atlantic Ave. OR, by car, BQE to Atlantic Ave., 5 or so blocks down Atlantic (towards Clock Tower), on right. Here's a link to a map.

The first regular meeting of the Fifth WBAI LSB held on Wednesday, December 11, 2009, at 7:00 PM, 388 Atlantic Ave. in downtown Brooklyn, New York.

Well, the FoBs had lost the election but they came out to disrupt this meeting.

The Fifth WBAI LSB hadn't sat for more than five seconds before one faction operative started to challenge a Staff member who was seated. This involved a Staff member who'd come in as the first runner-up in the Staff election. I had resigned my seat so that I can run again in 2010, Pacifica requires that you be off the LSB for a full year before you're allowed to run again if you've served for a certain amount of time.

Well, the Chair ruled that the Staff member was the one to fill in the seat. The faction, however, wanted the runner-up list from two years ago used. The Chair ruled that the person was legally seated, the faction appealed the ruling of the Chair.

Now this is an interesting situation. How the hell does the LSB start challenging membership like this and base it all on an appeal of the ruling of the Chair? This is sort of a formula for doing all sorts of odd thing, maybe even including attempts at reversing elections by appealing the ruling of a Chair.

At sister station KPFA their LSB pulled a fast one by not seating the new LSB! They had the old LSB meet, illegally, and then tried to unseat a continuing member by claiming he'd lost his membership by not attending a meeting that never legally met! You can read a statement from the legal KPFA LSB members here. The folks who did this are west coast allies of the FoBs here in New York. Yeah, wild stuff and games in Pacifica.

So the vote was held and the Chair's ruling over overruled! So the Staff member, who of course was not a faction member, was to be denied the seat.

Seems illegal to me.

Apparently some of the non-faction LSB members variously didn't understand the motion, didn't understand the issue or didn't understand how motions work. Oh well, this has to be cleared up now.

So the faction got all energized from this and they, and their claque, disrupted the meeting.

Officer elections went all right until we got to the vote for Treasurer. The meeting was running late and one of the new independent members just left, saying she had to get up early the next day. And apparently another new independent member apparently voted for a faction operative. The result was that I was not elected Treasurer by one vote. Gosh, it looks like that one vote that was removed made a difference.

The the FoBs made it quite the toxic meeting. They just attacked people, verbally, all night. That idiot faction sycophant I've mentioned before actually sat on the table in front of the Chair for a while just to delay the meeting. That same person also lied about a Treasurer's Report I'd issued last month about embezzlement at WBAI some years ago. The faction doesn't want people to see that report. And so they actively lie about it.

And then one faction operative, who goes by the name Omowale Clay, started insulting Pickles of the North! Well, I suppose that the faction operatives really do want to make things personal this year.

And then the faction brought up a totally absurd motion. They wanted to have the LSB run certain motions past Lynne Stewart, who got elected at the top of the faction's ticket but who is doing time in a federal prison for at least the next couple of years, and let her send in her comments and vote on motions via proxy! This sort of thing is expressly prohibited by both the Pacifica bylaws and Robert's Rules of Order. Luckily, one of the new independent members voted against this and it didn't pass, not that it would have made much difference because it would have been illegal anyway. We observed the treatment that the new LSB member got from the faction operatives after that vote.

And then the meeting broke up, after which I went to the men's room and a couple of faction operatives harassed Pickles of the North while I wasn't around!

It looks like toxicity of a very personal nature is going to be the faction's major tactic this year. The LSB is going to have to deal with that.

At its January 21, 2009, meeting the LSB voted to hold its meetings on the second Wednesday of every month and/or the last Thursday of that 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.

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.

WBAI has an official Web stream of what's on the air at any time! You can go here and pick which type of stream you want! If this stream isn't working let me know. The 64 kbps MP3 stream was working at 8:53 PM last night.

WBAI is archiving the programs! Just go here and you'll be able to listen to the program any time for the next couple of months. When you first go to the Web page you'll only see the WBAI programs for the past 7 days. If you want to see older programs you can click on one of the “See ALL Shows” buttons.

Back of the Book is now one of the programs that you can download, as well as listen to on line.

I'm glad to announce that the archives have seen some positive changes. In the table on that Web page Back of the Book and Carrier Wave are both in the Show column. The “Date and Category” column shows the date of the program. After the program I go in and write the details of the program and say which program it is. Of course I'd recommend that you just listen to both programs in this time slot!

The 2009 Local Station Board Elections Are Over!

And the results are in!

The ballot counting ended sooner than had been predicted. So here is the list of those elected:

Listeners

Staff

The full list of who finished in what place is posted on the WBAI Web site.

Thanks to all who voted for independent candidates. Now WBAI and Pacifica may have a chance to survive.

The Pacifica National Board (PNB) met in New York City from Friday July 23, to Sunday July 26, 2009.

The meeting was held at the Beekman Towers Hotel, 3 Mitchell Place, in Manhattan, a couple of blocks north of the United Nations.

There's an election going on in Pacifica, so there were a few candidates attending and speaking during the public comment sessions. Some disrupted the meeting.

Here's the Web page I did about this PNB meeting and the amazing things that went on at it.

And the PNB has also met in Houston from Friday October 9th, through Sunday October 11th. The official audio archive of that meeting is here. It was not disrupted as the New York meeting was, although some of the same miscreants got out there to say stupid things.

Speaking of Stalinists, the grandson of Joseph Stalin is suing a Moscow radio station for defaming his grandpa. The grandson is seeking more than $300,000 in damages. How could anyone defame a dictator who murdered tens of millions of his own countrymen and helped his some-time pal Adolph Hitler to start World War II? How could any sane person think less fondly of Uncle Joe than they already do? A previous attempt by the grandson to sue a newspaper on the same basis was thrown out of court. There is no word on whether or not any distant relatives of Hitler have embarked on the same scam.

We're going to talk about exoplanets on tonight's program. A bunch of new ones have been discovered.

Pickles of the North will be playing some songs related to science tonight. The Symphony of Science can be found here. And the older song about science is here.

There are a lot of issues that are considered hazardous to talk about on the air at WBAI, even now that the gag rule has been lifted. 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.

Probably the most popular list that's sprung up is the “NewPacifica” mailing list. This one is very lively and currently includes over 400 subscribers coast to coast.

Being lively, of course, it sometimes also gets a bit nasty. All sorts of things are happening on this list and official announcements are frequently posted there.

You can look at the NewPacifica list here, and you can join the list from that Web page too. If you subscribe to the “NewPacifica” mailing list you will receive, via E-mail, all of the messages which are sent to that list.

There is the option to receive a “digest” version of the list, which means that a bunch of messages are bundled into one E-mail and sent to you at regular intervals, this cuts down on the number of E-mails you get from the list. You will also be able to send messages to the list.

This list also has a Web based interface where you can read messages and from which you can post your own messages.

There is also the more WBAI specific “Goodlight” Web based message board. It is sometimes referred to on Back of the Book as “the bleepin' blue board,” owing to the blue background used on its Web pages. This one has many people posting anonymously and there's also an ancillary “WBAI people” board that's just totally out of hand. UPDATE: The bleepin' blue board has had to add a step for folks to get onto it because it's under attack by spambots. When you click on the above link you may be asked for a username and password. Type in Username: poster Password: enternow

When the computer in Master Control is working we sometimes have live interaction with people posting on the “Goodlight Board” during the program.

Our very own Uncle Sidney Smith, whose program Carrier Wave alternates with us, has a blog these days. You can reach his blog here.

My voice mail number at WBAI is 212-209-2996. Leave a message.

You can also send me E-mail.



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The contents of this Web page are copyright © 2010, R. Paul Martin.