Back of the Book links for the September 13, 2025, program

It's Friday morning, September 19, 2025, 07:09, and this Web page is finished. I've added a substantial amount to the piece about the recent assassination. I've also added some more of what we'd talked about on the program and I've put in some more graphics. Previously I'd made a small update to this Web page, swapped out a graphic, had updated this Web page with the link to the archive of this program, added a graphic and fixed up some bothersome code on the page. There is a significant amount more to be done here. The original top of this page follows the arrow. ⇒ Well, I'm in a rush to get this Web page done. I'll need to fill it out a lot more at a later date. So far we have the Sir Walter Raleigh poem and approximately what Pickles of the North read from Book Ⅶ of The Odyssey. We also have a little bit about the assassination of a right-wing hate monger, and there will be more soon. So it might be a good idea to check back to see how this page gets filled out later on.,

The next regular WBAI LSB meeting will be held on Wednesday September 10, 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 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.

Amid the heavy things we talked about on this program Radio's Pickles of the North gave us some relief by reading two poems. One poem, by Sir Walter Raleigh, is 433 years old, but, as Pickles notes, it still has relevance today.

Yeah, it's probably a timeless poem from a guy who had quite the adventurous life; he hung out with Queen Elizabeth Ⅰ, explored the new colony of Virginia and in Ireland he took part in an atrocity where he and some others murdered hundreds of helpless prisoners of war by beheading them. Raleigh died by being beheaded himself in a political, public execution after James Ⅰ became King of England. One of the charges against Raleigh involved his involvement in the mass murder of the captives.

Pickles also read us a bit of Book Ⅶ of The Odyssey. What she read was a translation that was published in the 1990s, so it's under copyright. Below is a translation by Samuel Butler of the same passage that was published in 1921, long enough ago that the book is in the public domain now.

Pickles here! It was time to take a short break from all the awfulness taking place these many days and read some poemes and we went all the way back 433 years to Sir Walter Raleigh and The Lie, which still has relevance today, especially with what is going on with the current Administration.

The Lie

Sir Walter Raleigh 1588

By Sir Walter Raleigh

Go, soul, the body's guest,
Upon a thankless errand;
Fear not to touch the best;
The truth shall be thy warrant.
Go, since I needs must die,
And give the world the lie.

Say to the court, it glows
And shines like rotten wood;
Say to the church, it shows
What's good, and doth no good.
If church and court reply,
Then give them both the lie.

Tell potentates, they live
Acting by others' action;
Not loved unless they give,
Not strong but by a faction.
If potentates reply,
Give potentates the lie.

Tell men of high condition,
That manage the estate,
Their purpose is ambition,
Their practice only hate.
And if they once reply,
Then give them all the lie.

Tell them that brave it most,
They beg for more by spending,
Who, in their greatest cost,
Seek nothing but commending.
And if they make reply,
Then give them all the lie.

Tell zeal it wants devotion;
Tell love it is but lust;
Tell time it is but motion;
Tell flesh it is but dust.
And wish them not reply,
For thou must give the lie.

Tell age it daily wasteth;
Tell honor how it alters;
Tell beauty how she blasteth;
Tell favor how it falters.
And as they shall reply,
Give every one the lie.

Tell wit how much it wrangles
In tickle points of niceness;
Tell wisdom she entangles
Herself in overwiseness.
And when they do reply,
Straight give them both the lie.

Tell physic of her boldness;
Tell skill it is pretension;
Tell charity of coldness;
Tell law it is contention.
And as they do reply,
So give them still the lie.

Tell fortune of her blindness;
Tell nature of decay;
Tell friendship of unkindness;
Tell justice of delay.
And if they will reply,
Then give them all the lie.

Tell arts they have no soundness,
But vary by esteeming;
Tell schools they want profoundness,
And stand too much on seeming.
If arts and schools reply,
Give arts and schools the lie.

Tell faith it's fled the city;
Tell how the country erreth;
Tell manhood shakes off pity;
Tell virtue least preferreth.
And if they do reply,
Spare not to give the lie.

So when thou hast, as I
Commanded thee, done blabbing-
Although to give the lie
Deserves no less than stabbing-
Stab at thee he that will,
No stab the soul can kill.

From there we went back another 2,200 years to visit Homer's The Odyssey where Odysseus tries to get home to Ithaca after ten years of fighting in the Trojan War. He and his crew end up in Phaeacia which is ruled by King Alcinous, whose palace is full of magnificent halls overlooking verdant orchards and gardens.

I love me a good garden, but since we don't have any land at the Martin Manse, we have instead the mini peanut butter jar windowsill garden, with chives, oregano, lemon and lavender, and two very small palm trees; everything grown from seeds! A garden's a garden!

Outside the gate of the outer court there is a large garden of about four acres with a wall all round it. It is full of beautiful trees-pears, pomegranates, and the most delicious apples. There are luscious figs also, and olives in full growth. The fruits never rot nor fail all the year round, neither winter nor summer, for the air is so soft that a new crop ripens before the old has dropped. Pear grows on pear, apple on apple, and fig on fig, and so also with the grapes, for there is an excellent vineyard: on the level ground of a part of this, the grapes are being made into raisins; in another part they are being gathered; some are being trodden in the wine tubs, others further on have shed their blossom and are beginning to show fruit, others again are just changing colour. In the furthest part of the ground there are beautifully arranged beds of flowers that are in bloom all the year round. Two streams go through it, the one turned in ducts throughout the whole garden, while the other is carried under the ground of the outer court to the house itself, and the town's people draw water from it. Such, then, were the splendours with which the gods had endowed the house of king Alcinous.

On this program we talked about the assassination of that Kirk person who ran a right-wing hate group. A lot of the media are falling all over themselves to be nice to the belligerent right-wing in this country and they're sugar-coating what he was. They refer to him as a conservative activist. That isn't what he was. He was a right-wing hate monger. He was a part of the white, Christian Nationalist movement that's trying to take over this country. He said at one time that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a mistake, and that it has been turned into, An anti-white weapon. He was a proponent of so-called replacement theory, which is something we all heard about from the right-wing creeps who infested Charlottesville, Virginia, with their Unite the Right activities in August 2017, when they chanted, Jews will not replace us. In 2024, Kirk said, The philosophical foundation of anti-whiteness has been largely financed by Jewish donors in the country. And of course he's anti-gay and anti-trans.

Last year Kirk cited Leviticus, which says to stone gay men to death for having sex with each other, after someone cited the Love thy neighbor passage in the Bible. His behavior was everything you'd expect from a right-wing zealot. He should not have been assassinated, and the assassination makes for bigger problems, but he was a bad guy. Interestingly the right-wing is now talking about Kirk being for free speech and yet people are getting fired or really dumped on, sometimes by right-wing Senators, if they don't agree that Kirk was a damned saint.

Kirk had apparently just started his act on Wednesday and a person asked about shootings, Kirk gave the sly answer that a lot of right-wing gun nuts give and tried to divert the point to people killed by gun violence in the streets. Ironically that's when he got shot and mortally wounded.

A couple of years ago when asked about gun control Kirk said, I think it's worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights.

The Washington Post wrote, President Donald Trump, following the death of GOP activist and close friend Charlie Kirk, vowed to unleash the weight of his administration onto those he said contributed to an environment of radical left political violence.

The New York Times wrote that, In an interview on Fox and Friends that ran for nearly an hour, Mr. Trump built on the case he had made on Thursday evening to reporters that We have radical left lunatics out there and we just have to beat the hell out of them. That was no mere dog whistle. It sounds to me like he's directly calling on the worst people who follow him to go and do actual violence to people whom they decide are radical left lunatics. Given that Trump gathered many such people to attack the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and then pardoned them all on his first day in office on January 20, 2025, I think that he's motivating people to commit assault, and maybe murder, with his endorsement guaranteeing them that if they do so they'll get a pardon from him right away.

The New York Times wrote. Gov. Spencer Cox of Utah says he believes this is a watershed moment in American history, but that it remains to be seen what kind. Is this the end of a dark chapter in our history, or the beginning of a darker chapter in our history? he asks. He said the gruesome, public killing of Charlie Kirk felt like assassinations in the late 1960s. Yes, and I don't think, given the current political atmosphere, that this is the end. What we may want to talk about is whether or not this event will be marked by future historians as the beginning event, the trigger event, of the Second American Civil War. On the program I noted that while the start date of the first American Civil War is officially stated to be April 12, 1861, when Confederate forces arrayed in South Carolina had started the siege of Fort Sumter, a lot of violent events had led up to it, including some actual shooting when on January 9, 1861, the ship North Star had attempted to bring supplies to the fort. So it can be argued that the Civil War had begun four months earlier than the history books tend to teach. If we are getting into the Second American Civil War now there may be other events in the past or in the future that will be cited as the start date. Or maybe this is the start of that Civil War. I've been talking about seeing it coming for quite some time.

Meanwhile, Kash Patel, Amateur G-Man, had put out misinformation about who had been apprehended for the murder — twice. FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino seem to me to be really bad choices as the heads of the premier law enforcement agency in the United States of America. It probably doesn't help that Donnie Bonespur Trump has been on a witch hunt for all FBI agents who were involved in any way with investigating him for his various federal crimes such as the insurrection on January 6, 2021, and his attempts at voting fraud in some states.

With that statement he made about beating the hell out of some people who disagree with him I think that Trump wants to turn the people who disagree with him into a free-fire zone of sorts. A Free Fire Zone is a term from the Viet Nam War used by military leaders to designate areas that American troops could just shoot into if they saw any movement at all, and they didn't even have to try to see if that movement might be an enemy soldier. People told me that they had routinely just fired rounds into those Free Fire Zones so that they wouldn't have to carry it back to base with them. This included both rifle ammo and artillery shells. Choppers also said to have just unloaded into Free Fire Zones indiscriminately. It has been reported that quite a number of innocent people were killed because they'd strayed into a Free Fire Zone and were fired upon.

It's reported that the casket with Kirk's body in it was carried off Air Force Two with the Vice President and second lady walking with Kirk's widow. A funeral is being planned, which President Trump had said earlier in the day he was planning to attend. Trump has never even acknowledged the political assassinations of a Minnesota Democratic legislator and his wife, and the wounding of a second Minnesota Democratic legislator and his wife, this past June.

The Daily News has reported that, Senior City Hall aide and friend of Mayor Adams,Tony Herbert, was fired after claiming on social media that the killing of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk amounted to karma. I had something to say about that but maybe it has to wait because we aren't supposed to say anything related to an ongoing election.

Some of the right-wing mourners are saying that Kirk was a big promoter of free speech, but about three years ago Kirk's group sent a cease and desist letter to shut the people on The View up. Now the people on The View had gotten some facts wrong, but a cease and desist letter?

Matthew Dowd was fired by MSNBC after he said that Kirk had, been one of the most divisive, especially divisive younger figures in this, who is constantly sort of pushing this sort of hate speech or sort of aimed at certain groups, and then Mr. Dowd said, And I always go back to, hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions, he continued, And I think that is the environment we are in. You can't stop with these sort of awful thoughts you have and then saying these awful words and not expect awful actions to take place. And that's the unfortunate environment we are in. I do not see a good reason why they fired him.

I'm seeing a lot of awful, right-wing hate on the Internet right now, much more than usual. Some people with an eye toward a larger issue are suggesting that Democrats in Congress should bring forth legislation at this time to curb gun violence and call it The Charlie Kirk Act. I wonder how the right-wing would feel about that? It would certainly show up some of the contradictions in the rhetoric of the right-wing.

What May be Seen as a Historical Precedent in the Future

The Nazis who ruled the Third Reich used an assassination as an excuse for them to do some terribly bad things one time in the 20^th Century and unfortunately few people know about the entire incident.

On November 7, 1938, a Jewish teenager named Herschel Grynszpan assassinated Ernst vom Rath in Paris. Vom Rath was a Nazi German diplomat. Grynszpan had learned that his parents had been deported from Germany to the Polish frontier. And so he shot Vom Rath. Hitler promoted Vom Rath to the rank of Legation Counsellor, First Class just before he died two days later. Within hours of Vom Rath's death the Nazis started Kristallnacht, known in English as The Night of Broken Glass, when up to 7,000 Jewish businesses were destroyed and a roundup of about 30,000 Jewish men began. Those men were sent to concentration camps. That assassination was used by the Nazis to start what has become known as The Holocaust. Is that the play-book that Trump and the rest of the American right-wing are going to use after this assassination?

On this program we talked about the water in the Gulf of Panama staying hot this year. Usually in the first third of the year the trade winds come along and blow the hot surface water away from the coast. This lets the cooler water from below come up. This water is up to 18° F. cooler than the previous surface water and it also brings up a lot of organic debris from the depths of the Gulf. Surface fish feed on this stuff that's brought up from below and thrive in the cooler water. A group of scientists have written a paper about this event and they say that it may possibly be related to the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) position during the 2024-2025 La Niña. They do not understand why that happened. They say that the lack of this cooler water coming to the surface will have a detrimental effect on local fisheries and will add to the thermal stress on corals there. They speculate that this failure of the trade winds to show up in 2025, is an element of climate change. If this begins to happen frequently it could change the ecosystem of the Gulf of Panama.

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.

Back of the Book — September 13, 2025

The Lie

What May be Seen as a Historical Precedent in the Future