Ghilane Maxwell & Jeffrey Epstein in 1993
So here are most of the topics we talked about on this program. There's only a little more to add to this Web page and I'll get to that pretty soon, so check back for updates.
You can now listen to this program on the official WBAI Archive.
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:
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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Looks like Ghislaine Maxwell is getting her grift. After meeting more than once with U.S. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, the second in command at the Department of Justice, and a former personal lawyer for Donnie Bonespur
Trump, she has been moved from a maximum security prison in Florida to a minimum security prison in Texas. Quid Pro Quo? She's got a 20 year sentence that's almost all in front of her. She would be motivated to lie for Trump. Also, given that she's been convicted of luring young girls into becoming essentially sex slaves for Jeffrey Epstein and his clients, she may not have much in the way of scruples over telling lies dictated to her by Trump's former lawyer. Today a less awful prison, some point in the next few months maybe you'll see her walking down Fifth Ave. In Manhattan again.
Meanwhile , Republican Congressman James R. Comer of Kentucky, the chair of the House Oversight Committee, said the committee would delay its deposition of Ghislaine Maxwell but that the committee would not grant her immunity to testify. She was scheduled to be deposed about Jeffrey Epstein on August 11, but now the committee is postponing the deposition till after September 29th, when the Supreme Court will consider whether to review Maxwell's appeal in her sex-trafficking case. Maxwell's lawyer wanted either immunity for Maxwell or else for her to get the questions from the committee in advance. Congressman Comer said he wouldn't do either of those things. We'll see. If she says what Trump wants she might get a total pardon, as other pals of trump have gotten.
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The CPB is going belly up. In a statement released on Friday the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's president and chief executive, Patricia Harrison, said they would shut down operations next year which will be a big financial hit to NPR, PBS, and especially local radio and TV stations across the United States. Rural radio stations are especially going to get a big hit, and some are expecting that many of them will end up having to shut down because they can't meet expenses with only donations from listeners. The CPB expects to lay off most of its workers by the end of September. Those who will be left will be winding things down in terms of things already being done by the CPB. And next year the CPB will only be a memory after 59 years. I wonder if Trump and his rich pals will buy up the small radio stations for a song and put their own stuff on it, giving the rural people plenty of Christian Nationalist propaganda and other right-wing disinformation calculated to keep the Republican right-wing in power for decades to come?
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The Bureau of Labor Statistics released some troubling, and possibly prescient, numbers this week. They showed that employment only increased by about 73,000 jobs instead of the 113,000 predicted. The markets reacted negatively with the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunging by 543 points. The monthly report also lowered the job numbers previously issued for May and June, which is not unusual since the data keeps coming in for a while after the months are over. So Trump was bothered by the unflattering news, which he apparently sees as sabotage and as a personal insult, so he fired the Commissioner who oversees these government employment reports, Erika McEntarfer. Yeah, he doesn't want bad news. Will he plug in someone now who will fake the reports to please him in the future?
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This past Monday a guy named Shane Tamura got to midtown Manhattan after driving from Nevada for several days; he double parked his BMW on Park Ave. and walked into the office building at 345 Park Ave. With his Colt AR M-4 rifle. He proceeded to shoot five people murdering four of them. Apparently he had intended to go to the NFL Headquarters in the building, but got on the wrong elevator. He had a complaint about having Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy or CTE. He never played in the NFL, he only played high school football, but he showed up and went to an investment group instead of the NFL headquarters. He had notes in his wallet about wanting his brain examined for CTE in the autopsy. To that end he shot himself in the chest instead of the head to preserve what he considered to be evidence. He had mental health problems, was on drugs for them, and was able to get a guy he worked with in Nevada to sell him that AR M-4 rifle, which is a shorter barreled version of the now notorious AR-15 rifle which is like the military M-16 rifle. He also had a concealed carry permit in Nevada, which allowed him to also buy a .357 revolver which he had on him when he died.
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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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