Unpunished Felon
Here is some of what we talked about on this program. We are very possibly looking at the start of the major crisis of the American Republic starting on Monday. We also talked about banning on-line venues and how that's worked out in the 21st Century. I plan to put some more stuff up here soon, so check back for the update.
You can now listen to this program on the official WBAI Archive.
The next regular WBAI LSB meeting will be held on Wednesday February 12, 2025, at 7:00 PM. That meeting will be held on ZOOM, even though ZOOM compromises privacy and security.
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. Now I can again and there are a whole bunch of archive blurbs up there now.
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. Good luck.
Since the former General Manager 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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On Monday things may change for the worse for the entire planet.
Trump has invited right-wing bad guys from all over the world to his inauguration. I suppose that he wants to show off to them that he can make a mess of the most powerful country in the world. Along with the right-wing leaders of other countries Trump will have some cowardly or avaricious tech billionaires attending his inauguration. Prominent among them will be Leon Skum who is either Trump's court jester of the shadow president. In his farewell address President Biden warned of oligarchs taking over. I think we'll see that happen on Monday.
I wish that Biden wouldn't go to Trump's second inauguration. It has been announced that because it's going to be very cold in Washington, D.C. on Monday, the inauguration will be moved indoors. How's that going to work? Will Trump insult Biden there?
Will Trump announce in his speech that he's going to do definite, terrible things? Will he then do those things as soon as the event is over? This will be a rough four years, or more. The right-wing has been straining against the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution since they had people in power whom they favored. It was the Republicans who started the push for the 22nd Amendment after President Franklin Delano Roosevelt died in 1945. They mad noises about repealing it when Reagan was in office, and they're making noises about it now. I am sure that some of them want to keep Trump in power permanently. We can't let that happen.
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The Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the TikTok law this week. Biden is leaving the signing of it into law and the enforcement of it up to Trump. Is this all just a maneuver to let Leon Skum, whose rocket blew up the other day, buy TikTok and own two big social media outlets? There's also another billionaire named Frank McCourt (not the Frank McCourt who wrote Angela's Ashes and who was the brother of Malachy McCourt who was on WBAI) who runs something called Project Liberty
who wants it. His consortium is looking to buy TikTok's U.S. assets too. I don't know much about this guy, but I bet that he and his consortium won't hesitate to make it a propaganda outlet of some sort.
I'm still conflicted about this. I wish it could be sold to some American company that wouldn't turn it into something awful. Also, when you ban something people find a way around the ban. 105 years ago the Volstead Act went into effect. Most news papers say that Prohibition began in the United States of America then. In fact it began on July 31, 1919, as the temporary Wartime Prohibition Act. Prohibition was famously disregarded in America before it was repealed. Other countries have long histories of trying to block Web sites and curtail access to on-line content. There are ways around that kind of thing, and with 170 million users in the United States I'm sure that TikTok will be able to continue as an entity subject to the whims of the Chinese Communist Party if they choose to. I am hearing that lots of TikTok denizens are jumping to a social media site called Xiaohongshu also known as RedNote which is also owned by a company based in the so-called People's Republic of China. I wonder if a law mandating that that platform be shut down will get passed? Places like Russia, Iran, and also the so-called People's Republic of China along with North Korea, Cuba and other places that don't treasure free speech, have been banning Web sites and social media platforms for years. Many people in those countries still get to the social media site they want to and get news that those governments don't want their populace to hear. How much easier will it be for people in America to get around these prohibitions? I'll note that Australia has banned social media for everyone under the age of 16! I wonder how effective that will be too.
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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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