Rates Are Declining Slowly
It's been a long day and night. I've put in something about a couple of the topics we covered on this program. I plan to update this Web page with more as soon as I can. So 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 will be held on Wednesday March 9, 2022, at 7 PM on ZOOM, even though ZOOM compromises privacy and security. This meeting will be held as a teleconference meeting, as the 33 previous public meetings were because of the pandemic. We had an LSB meeting on Tuesday, February 1, it was in executive session. The report out is that The WBAI LSB discussed personnel issues of a confidential nature and forwarded a list of candidates to the General Manager.
The WBAI LSB met on Wednesday, February 9, 2022, as both the LSB and as a Delegates Assembly. We elected WBAI's members to some of the Pacifica National Board committees at that meeting. LSB members are currently engaged in voting for the contested seats.
Before the February 9, 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, so we have the following schedule:
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.
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Here is WBAI's current Internet stream. We can no longer tell if the stream is working without testing every possible stream. Good luck.
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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.
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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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According to the Johns-Hopkins Web site COVID-19 cases in the whole world reached 421,113,096 on Friday, and global deaths reached 5,871,258. In America the number of cases as of Friday was 78,351,465 and the death toll in America was 933,513, so 16,070 people have died of COVID-19 in America since our last program one week ago. This week's death rate lower than it was last week. It's still a huge number of deaths every week though. The pandemic is not over.
By the time this program airs on Saturday morning all of those figures we quoted will be higher of course. This was all mostly preventable.
On our last program we talked about 4,000 city workers were facing termination of their jobs over their refusal to get vaccinated against COVID-19. This was a Mayor DeBlasio mandate and when Mayor Adams took office he said he'd enforce that mandate. So it is being reported that last Friday, after we were done recording the radio program for airing on Saturday morning, 1,430 municipal workers got fired from their jobs for not getting vaccinated. Apparently among the 4,000 unvaccinated city workers there was a sudden, last minute rush to get the injection. So 2,570 city workers decided to keep their jobs. The New York City municipal workforce has about 375,000 people in it, so the 1,430 refuseniks is not a large percentage. It's 0.38%. Unvaccinated people are much more likely to die from COVID-19 than vaccinated people are, and more than 540 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered in the U.S., and serious side effects are very rare.
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This program was recorded on Friday, February 18, 2022, and at that time everyone was guessing about whether or not Russian Dictator Vladimir Putin was going to invade Ukraine really soon. As we did the recording the number of troops Putin had surrounding Ukraine was estimated to be about 150,000. If the Russian combined arms move on Ukraine they will surely be able to conquer it, but they will also devastate the country in the process.
We noted that Putin has been cited as being enormously wealthy. He is estimated to be worth over $200,000,000,000. When we talk about the awful behavior of billionaires we need to remember to count Putin in on that.
With all of that money I wonder if even threats to Putin's personal fortune, something that frightens most rich people, would be a deterrent. He can't really spend that much money in his life, so if he were reduced to a mere $10,000,000,000 he might figure that he's all right, and has hurt lots of people into the bargain, something which I think he enjoys doing.
We'll all just wait and see what the next week or two bring.
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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.
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