Back of the Book links for the July 12, 2025, program

It's Friday afternoon, July 18, 2025, 13:48, and this Web page is finished. I've added a piece about Trump's extortion plot against Brazil, and what was going on with me 50 years ago. In addition Radio's Pickles of the North talked about a lawsuit against the Department of Health and Human Services and it's head Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The original top of this page follows the arrow. ⇒ Once again I'm passing out as I try to complete a program's Web page. I should see if there's a better way to do this. We covered more than the so-called Chemtrails conspiracy hoax.

The next regular WBAI LSB meeting will be held on Wednesday August 13, 2025, at 7:00 PM. That meeting will be held on ZOOM, even though ZOOM compromises privacy and security. We had a meeting this past week and there was a lot of talk about some internal Pacifica stuff that's going on. There may also be a new way for you to contact the LSB. I think it will be misused.

Some years ago the WBAI LSB voted to hold its regular meetings on the second Wednesday night of every month, subject to change by the LSB, so we have the following schedule:

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.

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.

The Environmental Protection Agency has created a couple of Web sites that say that so-called chemtrails are not secret chemicals being put in the atmosphere to control the weather or do bad things. Actually, that's a good thing.

What has been happening is that come conspiracy nuts have for years been putting out the fake story that either the United States government or some other group has been secretly doing this. In fact their stupid proof has been pictures of contrails, which form when aircraft exhaust hits the very cold air high up in the atmosphere and he water vapor condenses. We had people here at WBAI making claims about this phony chemtrails nonsense. In fact they used to push premiums where others would tall these phony stories. So it's good that the government is countering this nonsense, although it is a bit unusual for the Trump administration to counter that nonsense.

E.P.A. administrator, Lee Zeldin, said on social media, I tasked my team at E.P.A. to compile a list of everything we know about contrails and geoengineering for the purpose of releasing it to you now publicly. He continued, Instead of simply dismissing these questions and concerns as baseless conspiracies, we're meeting them head on. We did the legwork, looked at the science, consulted agency experts and pulled in relevant outside information to put these online resources together. Meanwhile Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Has claimed that the Defense Department is doing it, saying, I'm going to do everything in my power to stop it, find out who's doing it and holding them accountable.

Meanwhile Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, has been spreading this nonsense for years! She recently said, First, they said we were crazy for saying they are controlling the weather and spraying chemicals in our skies, now, they are admitting that they are controlling the weather and spraying chemicals in our skies, BUT that it's not causing any harm. She said that she will introduce a bill in the House of Representatives that, Prohibits the injection, release or dispersion of chemicals or substances into the atmosphere for the express purpose of altering weather, temperature, climate or sunlight intensity. It will be a felony offense. She says that They are doing it. She's the one who was saying some years ago that the California wildfires were being caused by space based lasers controlled by Jewish people being fired at the forests to set them on fire. This latest round of insanity has been stirred up by conspiracy hoax postings saying that the chemtrails caused that big rain storm that's killed so many people in Texas.

Because I'm so ancient now I sometimes talk about where I was or what I was doing 50 years ago. We did that again on this program.

Exactly fifty years ago in mid-July 1975, I was in Scotland with my male ex. I have a small notebook that I took on that trip. We couldn't find it when preparing for this program, but we've subsequently found it and I'll be referencing it on the next program when we talk about this long trip some more. My male ex and I called it our Great Britain trip. Visited Stonehenge in England. We visited a lot of cathedrals and churches, especially ones mentioned in English Literature, which make sense because my male ex was still working on his PhD in English Literature at that time. I remember that when we went to some churches there was as sky pilot stationed not far from the entrance who would tell is that they really wanted us to pay 10 pence to take photographs in their church, I wouldn't pay it.

A couple of days after we got there a young woman who said she was a lesbian came up to us and talked about the gay liberation movement, and asked about how it was in New York, and lamented the death by murder of Lige Clarke earlier that year. She had seen my lambda button and recognized it. Two years earlier the lambda had become the official symbol of the gay liberation movement as voted on at a big convention held in Edinburgh.

While we were over there the U.S. Civil Service Commission issued an order ending the official policies against the hiring of gay and lesbian people by the United States government. Before this ruling employment could be denied to a lesbian or gay person on the grounds of possible embarrassment to the federal service. While we were in England the Commission ruled that, as with any other government employee, There must be some rational connection between the individual's conduct and the efficiency of the service. That was a good development.

President Trump is slapping a 50% tariff on imports from Brazil in order to pressure them not to prosecute his pal former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro's son Eduardo Bolsonaro has been hanging around Washington, D.C., the White House and Mar-a-Lago for months. He's been schmoozing senior White House officials trying to get them to place sanctions on the Brazilian judge overseeing his father's prosecution.

On Monday Donnie Bonespur Trump wrote on-line that, This is nothing more, or less, than an attack on a Political Opponent — Something I know much about! Well, as someone who also tried to overturn an election, more should have happened to Trump. He said of such prosecutions, It happened to me, times 10. It is so bad they couldn't get the wheels turning sooner so that Trump was in prison before the 2024, election started. Steve Bannon has reportedly said that he loved this misuse of the power of the United States government by Trump. And he said of Brazil's judicial proceedings, If you drop the trial and drop the charges, the tariffs go away. When asked if this weren't extortion Bannon said, It's MAGA, baby, it's a brave new world. Yeah, Trump gave Bannon a pardon while he was awaiting trial on charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering.

When told about the tariffs Eduardo Bolsonaro said, Trump decided to come out swinging with full force. That really says a lot about Trump, doesn't it? He's been living in America for months while he's been under investigation in Brazil for interfering in his father's case. The younger Bolsonaro said, It's that same witch hunt he also suffered in the United States, and that generates a lot of empathy.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil said that Brazil would not drop the charges against Bolsonaro and would place its own new tariffs against American imports. Brazil is a sovereign nation with independent institutions and will not accept any form of tutelage. And Trump said that any country that aligned with the group's anti-American policies would face an additional 10 percent tariff. This is really a blatant example of the Mafia mentality that Trump has.

Pickles here. We talked a bit about how several medical organizations are suing the Department of Health and Human Services and Robert F Kennedy Jr. for changing the COVID-19 vaccine recommendations for children and pregnant people - he thinks they don't need the shot. He dismantled the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and repopulated it with members that are anti-vaccination and health conspiracy theorists (only one new member voted against the vaccine recommendation changes.) The lawsuit, filed in Massachusetts on July 7, 2025, charges that the changes to the vaccination recommendations have no scientific basis.

Some of the groups that are part of the lawsuit are the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the American College of Physicians (ACP) and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine (SMFM) and a pregnant physician. We hope they are successful in stopping the anti-science Secretary Kennedy, whose appointment is the same as putting an arsonist in charge of the fire department.

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.

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.

And now you can even reach me on Twitter

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WBAI related links

A WBAI Listeners' Web page

WBAI Management's official Web site

Back of the Book — July 12, 2025