Back of the Book links for the July 26, 2025, program

It's Friday, August 1, 2025, 09:27, and this Web page is finished. I've updated this page with one item more fleshed out and an item on Trump's pocketing of the FIFA individual medal. I'd [previously updated the page with a link to the archive on WBAI.ORG and then I forgot to post this page to my Web site! I've been doing that with E-mails and other things I've had to post for a week or two now. I hope it's not some further deterioration of my brain that I'm going through. The original top of this page follows the arrow. ⇒ Here's some of what we did on the air. I plan to add a couple of more items and then this Web page will be done, so it might be worth your time to comes back and look for the update.

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.

Ghislane Maxwell is fishing for a pardon amid the Epstein mess that Trump and his underlings have gotten him into. Trump can't deny those photographs that have been around for a long time of him palling around with Epstein and Maxwell. For the second day the No. 2 official at the Justice Department Todd Blanche, who had been Trump's personal lawyer, met with Maxwell and her lawyer. Maxwell's lawyer, David Oscar Markus, said they hope that Trump either grants Maxwell a pardon or commutes her sentence. So that is obviously at issue.

It would certainly be convenient for Maxwell to testify somewhere, maybe before Congress, when it comes back in September from the early adjournment Speaker Johnson set up, or elsewhere, that Trump never did anything with anybody. We know that Trump rewards his underlings that do what he wants, and he surely wants this Epstein stuff to go away. Yeah, Trump would like that. And Maxwell would like to get out of prison. Raise your hand if you trust these two people!

A guy named Nick Ackerman who used to be an assistant special Watergate prosecutor and an assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, wrote a piece in the New York Daily News this past week about what a scam Attorney General Pam Bondi is running by making a big show of trying to get transcripts of Grand Jury testimony related to the indictments of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. Mr. Ackerman notes that the full investigative reports are seldom given to a Grand Jury and witnesses rarely tell a full story to a Grand Jury. The investigative documents come up at the actual trial. Mr. Ackerman says, Any transcripts most certainly will not reveal what is in the Epstein DOJ or FBI files, his client list, his personal documents and financial records gathered in the investigation or the complete identities of his co-conspirators besides Maxwell. So this move by the Attorney General is nothing more than smoke and mirrors, and she and Trump's lawyers know that it's just a distraction to make it look like they're valiantly trying to get to the truth of everything so that trump's MAGA base will calm down about this whole thing. I hope those idiots who voted for him and backed him don't calm down and that it finally dawns on them that they have been taken in by a con man.

So the winners of the FIFA Club World Cup were in New Jersey this week to receive their individual medals and the team's trophy. The ceremony took place in Metlife Stadium. And Donnie "Bonespur" Trump was there. Some team members were puzzled that when it came time for them to hold the trophy aloft, as is tradition, Trump stayed right next to them on the stage the whole time, as if he were one of team members who had won the trophy. He handed the winner's trophy to Chelsea captain Rhys James but it's been revealed that what he presented to the team was actually a replica of the trophy. In March when the guy in charge of FIFA, Gianni Infantino, visited the White house Mr. Infantino had asked Trump, Could you hold this trophy for a little while? So trump put it in the Oval Office and has not given it back. He's keeping it! And then when they showed Trump one of the medals that were being given to the individual players of the winning team Trump pocketed the medal they were showing him! What a thieving creep.

Pickles here, recommending you visit the Tove Jansson exhibit at the Central branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. It's free and is there until September 30. Tove Jansson was a Finnish-Swedish artist, poet and author of adult and books for kids. Her most famous work had to do with the kid books she wrote and illustrated about the Moomins, a family of trolls and their friends, which were first published in the 1940s. The books are very funny and you don't have to be a kid to appreciate them (I first encountered her books in college in a children's literature class.) Tove Jansson was gay and she and her partner lived together. I wonder if certain people will try to ban her books now on that fact alone? I read a short exert from Moominsummer Madness and Moominland Midwinter. Those books encompass R.Paul's favorite and least favorite seasons! Speaking of seasons, for some it is Christmas in July (July 2025), which takes its name from the Preston Surges directed comedy film Christmas in July, released in 1940. It will make you laugh and help take your mind off the heat we are experiencing. A couple of other films to watch are Lady in the Lake (1946 dir. Robert Montgomery) a film noir that takes place during the yuletide season, and also Night of the Hunter (1955 dir. Charles Laughton). I forgot to mention a film that will help to really cool you off, The Thing from Another World (1951 dir. Christian Nyby.) Nothing like being stranded in the high Arctic trapped with a hostile alien!

Fresh on Shari Redstone's cancelling the Late Show with Stephen Colbert and Trump's gloating about it, CBS News has announced that Tanya Simon, who's been a journalist and producer at 60 Minutes for a couple of decades, would be the program's next executive producer. She had been filling in for Bill Owens who quit that job in April because, he said, CBS was infringing on his journalistic independence. A few weeks ago CBS News's parent company, Paramount, agreed to pay President Trump $16 million to settle a fake lawsuit regarding the reporting that Trump didn't like on 60 Minutes and which would have been tossed out of court on First Amendment grounds, had Trump's bullying been resisted. Stephen Colbert said of the payoff, Looks Like Bribery! Others are agreeing with him. So we'll see how 60 Minutes does in its next season, since the FCC approved the sale of Paramount to Hollywood based Skydance for about $8.4 Billion. Will Skydance just cancel the program all together? Will it appoint someone to supervise it, and will that person mess with the reporting?

Meanwhile Trump is saying that Jimmy Kimmel is next and that Jimmy Fallon will go soon too. None of the late night comics is knuckling under to trump's bullying. Trump this past week began to attack The View which airs on ABC. And then he made noises about South Park, which opened its 27^th season this past week making lots of fun of Donnie Bonespur Trump in the opening episode. The episode poked fun at Trump's lawsuits that are aimed at everyone. When asked at Comic-Con in San Diego if they were concerned about this the producers of the program, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, said, It's fine, we're ready. They have recently signed a new contract with Paramount for five more seasons of the program for $1.5 billion. So they've got more guts than Shari Redstone has.

And while some may argue that this is not a strictly First Amendment issue because it's being done by companies as opposed to the government it's obvious that Donnie Bonespur Trump is clearly coercing companies to remove people from the air because he does not like the content of their speech.

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 26, 2025