Back of the Book — November 27, 2021,


Oh, I am such a wreck. I'm falling asleep as I type this, and I've started to feel sick as well. So I actually have some of what will appear on this Web page mostly written already. I just can't stay awake and between drowsiness and feeling sick I figure the thing to do is to put additions to this Web page off till later on. 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? Well, I do, and I've recently updated some of that.

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 Monday, November 29, 2021, it will probably be held as a teleconference meeting, as the 29 previous public meetings were because of the pandemic. This will be an executive session meeting, and so will be closed to the public. This will also be the last meeting of the Eleventh WBAI LSB, although arguably the Delegates Assembly of December 8, will be the truly final meeting of the Eleventh WBAI LSB.

The WBAI LSB met on Wednesday, November 10, 2021.

The LSB meeting occurred more than a week after the Pacifica/WBAI elections were over. So there was no posturing for the sake of an imminent election.

The LSB's Program Director Search Committee has been going on for a long time. That committee is a special committee, according to Robert's Rules of Order, so when the WBAI LSB transitions from the Eleventh LSB to the Twelfth LSB the Program Director Search Committee will automatically cease to exist. So the LSB voted to hold an executive session meeting on November 29. At that meeting the LSB will hear about the recommendations of the Program Director Search Committee and will in all probability rubber stamp them. Of course there will be debate and talk for a couple of hours.

In an odd move the LSB was also asked to hold a Delegates Assembly to vote on some bylaws amendments. And that Delegates Assembly is to happen on December 8, 2021. That's the same date that the new WBAI LSB is to be seated. So people voted to have the Eleventh LSB meet as a Delegates Assembly and then adjourn that meeting and have the first meeting of the Twelfth LSB right after it.

I said during the meeting that this would put the legitimacy of those bylaws amendments in jeopardy because the time for the LSB meeting is the same as the time for this Delegates Assembly. Well, we'll see what happens, I suppose. The vote on handling the Delegates Assembly this way was 10 for, 3 against and 4 abstentions. I was one of those who voted No.

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, with the vote to hold an executive session and a Delegates Assembly we have the following schedule:

All of these meetings are set to begin at 7:00 PM. Yes, the two meetings of the Delegates Assembly and the new LSB are scheduled for the same time. Yeah, details. The Twelfth WBAI LSB will be seated at some time on December 8, 2021.

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?

The Omicron variant of COVID-19
Is Omicron That Dangerous?

Borders are closing and markets are plummeting around the world as scientists take a cautious attitude toward the new Omicron variant of COVID-19.

The World Health Organization (WHO)said a new COVID-19 variant found in southern Africa was of concern on Friday. A few dozen cases of the new variant have been identified in South Africa, Botswana, Belgium, Hong Kong and Israel.

Quite a number of nations are now banning travelers from several southern African nations from entering their countries. The United States has banned travel from Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, and Zimbabwe.

This new variant was originally called B.1.1.529. On Friday it was reported that the WHO as going to call it Nu, but later on Friday, just before we started recording this program, they officially named it the Omicron variant, after the 15th letter of the Greek alphabet. I speculated that maybe the WHO didn't want to confuse the name of the newly discovered variant with the word new or maybe they were superstitious and didn't want to name it after the 13th letter of the Greek alphabet. Pickles of the North cleared that quandary up by telling us that the WHO had already named another variant, one of lesser concern, Nu. So that settled that tiny mystery. Calling this new variant a variant of concern, puts it in WHO's most serious category. Officials at WHO said, This variant has a large number of mutations, some of which are concerning. Preliminary evidence suggests an increased risk of reinfection with this variant. Dr. Anthony Fauci said the new variant has about 30 mutations, and about 10 of them are on a part of the virus that's associated with transmissibility and immune protection. So this variant may be more transmissible, maybe even more infectious than the delta variant, and may escape the current vaccines to an extent yet to be determined. Nobody knows much about it yet, but they're being cautious.

And the markets around the world are plunging, with the Dow dropping by about 2.3% on Friday.

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.

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