Web links related to the Back of the Book program of January 21,2002

Here is the latest on the theft of Pacifica. The new interim Pacifica National Board held its most recent meeting here in New York City last weekend.

The gag rule at WBAI is dead!

As we move into the next phase of the Pacifica Crisis some listeners are more convinced than ever that only open elections will provide a long range cure for the Pacifica Crisis. Here's an election proposal.

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Our colleagues from Off the Hook now have both a RealAudio streaming web cast operating, and their new MP3 stream working at about 10:00 PM last night. The MP3 feed is now the preferred feed.

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What a difference a fortnight can make! The “gag rule” at WBAI has been revoked. I can talk about the Pacifica Crisis, and the Midnight Coup, and who did what and why. And tonight I'm going to.

I've prepared a summary of last weekend's important interim Pacifica National Board meeting. You'll be able to find out a lot about what's going on from reading that, but tonight I'll be talking about some details and things which have not been spoken of on WBAI before.

I've been seriously involved in all of this for quite a few years, and I've got a few things to say about it all. As usual, neither New York City faction will like what I have to say.

In fact, this topic ended up taking over the program. Both New York city factions stink, but the crisis is a lot bigger than that. I've found out that the Pacifica Foundation, which owns WBAI, is in debt to the tune of about $4 million! Some of the former General Managers are saying that this will necessitate the sale of one of the stations, which the previous Pacifica Management was also contemplating, but they were more interested in windfall profits from such a sale.

The Pacifica Foundation, WBAI and the other four radio stations in our network are in very dire financial straits now. There's still a lot wrong in the network, but if it goes into bankruptcy we may not have anything to fight over.

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I talk about the universe a lot, at least I have for the past couple of years. Well, it turns out that Kermit The Frog may have had some insight into the universe that no one else had! The Universe is green!

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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 follow the instructions, and you'll be subscribed. Could open your eyes a little bit.

The above list has occasionally produced a high volume of E-mail because of the attention that these issues have drawn. If you would prefer to subscribe to a low volume list that only provides announcements of events related to these issues then subscribe to the FreePac mailing list.

Another 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. With that warning in mind, you can look at the NewPacifica list here, and you can join the list from that Web page too, although you'll have to deal with Yahoo! to do so.

There is also the more WBAI specific “Goodlight” Web based message board. This one has a great many people posting anonymously and there's also an ancillary board that's just totally out of hand.

The “Goodlight” Web based message board has expanded to cover all Pacifica stations.

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