Back of the Book — May 1, 2021


It's Monday morning, May 3, 2021, 08:51, and I have added the link to the official archive of this program. That official archive is truncated, but I am attempting to get that archive fixed. There are more updates to come for this Web page. The original top of this page follows the arrow. We welcomed in the Middle Third of 2021, on this program. It should be a much better Middle Third than the 2020, version because we plan to actually get out into the nice weather for this year's Middle Third. We've both been vaccinated and with luck there will be no sudden, surprise variants to defeat our vaccinations. We also talked about Rudy Guiliani's legal troubles. Will we see him heading to Sing-Sing one day? We also talked about a truly stupid right-wing talking point that was based on a lie in a foreign newspaper. I hope to get this Web page finished pretty soon. Check back for updates.

You can now listen to this program on the official WBAI Archive.

Did you know that I've got a brief synopsis of some of the WBAI LSB meetings?

I have also posted a whole lot of the minutes of the Pacifica National Finance Committee on this Web site. I'm a member of that committee because I'm the WBAI LSB Treasurer.

The next WBAI LSB meeting is scheduled to be held on Wednesday, May 12, 2021, it will probably be held as a teleconference meeting, as the 14 previous public meetings were because of the pandemic.

The WBAI LSB met on Wednesday, April 14, 2021.

The LSB again spent quite a bit of time on a motion that became two motions, sort of, regarding something I can't talk about on the air or even on this Web site, for now. But you'll hear about it on the air at some point, just not from me - until later. Have you visited the official Pacifica Web site lately? Ahem.

Before the meeting I had put out a written Treasurer's Report for all to read.

Some years ago the WBAI LSB voted to hold its regular meetings on the second Wednesday of every 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.

Here is WBAI's current Internet stream. We can no longer tell if the stream is working without testing every possible stream. Good luck.

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. You can take a look at it and see if I've been able to post anything on it lately. There are still some limitations, but I am assured that I can plug in the archive blurbs that were lost in the latest upgrade.

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. Yeah, it looks like they'll have some alternating program's name prominently there, but if you have the right date it'll be our program. Good luck.

Since the General Manager has banned Sidney Smith from WBAI he's not alternating with us on the air. As of November 2020, Back of the Book airs weekly.

Bring Back Uncle Sidney!

Our friend, fellow WBAI producer and Saddle Pal Uncle Sidney Smith has been banned from WBAI by General Manager Berthold Reimers. The General Manager will not say why. He won't even tell Sidney why he's banned! This is grossly unfair to Sidney and constitutes abuse of Staff. Why did Berthold ban Sidney?

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This show begins the Middle Third of 2021! The months of May, June, July and August constitute the Middle Third of the year. To me this is the best part of any year. There's a lot more sunlight and the weather is warm, sometimes even hot. The Sun only sets some time after 7 PM every day of the Middle Third. I always look forward to this time of year. We talked about the Middle Third a little bit on this program.

Rudy Giuliani in prisongarb
Rudy's Future?

Rudy Giuliani may be cohabiting in the near future with some people whom he's met before. This past week Federal Marshals served search warrants on his Manhattan apartment and his law office. They're looking to nail him for being an unregistered agent for a foreign government. This relates to all of that nonsense that he and Trump were spouting about Hunter Biden during the last presidential campaign. He had a pair of henchpersons named Lev and Igor helping him out in that caper. So at 6 AM the Federal Marshals invaded Giuliani's place and seized lots of records, including a lot of electronic devices where records may be stored.

Giuliani is calling federal investigators jealous of his term as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York in the '80s, and he says that's that's why they raided his home and office. It's a bit ironic that he's being raided by the same office he used to run. I remember his grand standing with Senator Amato from Long Island long ago when they would dress up as if they were in a motorcycle gang to get a photo-op standing in the rear of some law enforcement people who were actually doing a raid on some motorcycle gang or some such group. They really looked absurd and their self-aggrandizement motive was obvious.

Michael Cohen in 2019
Michael Cohen
photo: The Circus

Another Trump crony who's gotten records seized is one Allen Weisselberg, who handles Donald Trump's finances, and the finances of his various companies. Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance Jr. recently used a grand jury subpoena to seize boxes of documents from Weisselberg's ex-daughter-in-law, you may remember that as we went to record a previous program we talked about her a little bit, and New York Attorney General Letitia James is doing a civil investigation into Trump's alleged asset inflation and deflation in order to get loans or breaks on his taxes, etc. This Weisselberg guy was also involved in the money side of the Trump University scam years ago. Weisselberg certainly doesn't have to worry about money for himself. He's admitted that his salary had been around $450,000 a year for a long time, he also received an annual bonus ranging anywhere from 200 (thousand dollars) to $400,000 a year.

Will this guy get a cell next to Rudy? Another Trump crony, Michael Cohen has said that Giuliani will "flip on Trump in a heartbeat."

And Rudy Giuliani's son is attacking everyone now. I remember him when he was an right year old brat at a press conference when Giuliani had won the race for Mayor of New York years ago. He was a real brat then, messing around with things and being a nuisance. Now he appears to be just louder than he was then.

A steak
Meat-Gate?

We talked about a stupid right-wing attack on the Biden Administration saying that President Biden is going to force Americans to eat not more than four pounds of meat a year. This nonsense stemmed from a British rag called The Daily Mail which came to the editorial conclusion that an academic study done in 2020, by people at the University of Michigan and Tulane University who had examined what would happen if people reduced their consumption of beef to four pounds per year. It had nothing to do with the Biden Administration. And all of these right wing creeps, including some state governors, were railing about it as if it were rooted in reality. The authors of the study even appeared on TV to debunk the right-wing assertions. Fox News even had to issue a correction to the statements made on their air over this. This is how the right-wing does things now.

Pickles of the North

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.

We like to stay interactive with our listeners. Here are the various options for you to get in touch with us.

You can also send me E-mail.

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The contents of this Web page are copyright © 2021, R. Paul Martin.