Two Dictators
I will noite that I had a terrible time trying to post this radio program to the intermediary service that WBAI Management has us using before the OPS crew downloads it to the station's servers. Well, WBAI is not wealthy and we have to use the free service. So below is one part of what we talked about on this program. I'm hoping that I can get more posted. Maybe I'll actually update this Web page.
You can now listen to this program on the official WBAI Archive.
The next regular WBAI LSB meeting will be held on Wednesday May 13, 2026, 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:
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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Hungary's elected dictator Viktor Orban is out! They had their election last Sunday and the opposition leader Peter Magyar has won the election for Hungary's Prime Minister. Orban conceded defeat on Sunday night saying, The responsibility and opportunity to govern were not given to us.
But, he then said, We are not giving up. Never, never, never.
Yeah, I doubt that the right-wing in Hungary is going to just fade away now.
The winner of that election Peter Magyar said, We have done it,
after Orban conceded defeat, continuing, We have liberated Hungary and have taken back our country.
Maybe.
Magyar used to be a part of Orban's party. So will the changes be all that much? Magyar was pretty vague about some policy ideas. He mostly ran on a platform of him not being Viktor Orban.
In his time in office Orban was getting himself, his family and his cronies rich from all sorts of corrupt arrangements. Over the past 16 years he spent in office, actually 20 years if you count his previous election to the position starting in the 20th Century, he amassed quite the fortune through illicit means, and that didn't appeal to voters last Sunday.
Donnie Bonespur
Trump really likes Orban. He actually endorsed him. That's bizarre, having the President of the United States endorse a foreign politician for political office. And he sent J.D. Vance over to Hungary to campaign for Orban and appear at a big really. They had Trump on the phone there, although there were technical difficulties with that, telling Hungarian voters to vote for Orban. Also endorsing Orban was Vladimir Putin. Yeah, dictators flocking together. This sort of dictators club thing also happened in the 1930s. It did not work out well.
Orban is viciously anti-gay. He scapegoated LGBT+∞ people as a part of his right-wing movement and banned any LGBT+ positive content
in movies, books or public advertisements. In March 2025, the Hungarian Parliament voted in favor of a ban on Pride marches.
So this is a good development, I hope. Magyar may be anti-gay too. I don't know. Certainly he's not going to be as palatable to Trump and Putin. And he is unlikely to be as hostile to Ukraine as Orban is. We'll see how it works out.
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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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