Peace or Another T.A.C.O. Maneuver?
It's Sunday afternoon, June 14, 2026, 16:55 and I've updated this Web page with a link to the archive of this program and Radio's Pickles of the North's piece about the reopening of the Haskell Free Library and Opera House, which straddles the border between the United States of America and Canada. The original top of this page follows the arrow. ⇒ We talked about Trump's stupid maneuvers around his war with Iran this week. Is this another of his T.A.C.O. maneuvers, or will his war end soon? Pickles of the North Talked about the Haskell Free Library and Opera House reopening. We covered more than that, and I expect to post some of that up here soon.
You can now listen to this program on the official WBAI Archive.
The next regular WBAI LSB meeting will be held on Wednesday July 8, 2026, at 7:00 PM. That meeting will be held on ZOOM, even though ZOOM compromises privacy and security. We had one this past week, on June 10, and I got to give a very rushed Treasurer's Report. There was also a lot of talk about things going on in and with the Pacifica Foundation which owns WBAI.
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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Is this war with Iran really ending? The cease fire has been ridiculously not a cease fire with everybody still shooting each other. We've seen more T.A.C.O. crap this past week with big threats that then became promises of peace real soon now. From what we're hearing it sounds like his big deal to end the war with Iran will end up with the same terms that president Obama had made with Iran years ago and which Trump threw away in his first term! What a mess! And how long would a peace last with Israel bombing Gaza and also Hezbollah in Lebanon whenever they please?
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Pickles here. Good news, the Haskell Free Library and Opera House is fully accessible again for its patrons and visitors from both sides of the US-Canada border! We first spoke about the Haskell in March of last year, when now former Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem descended upon the building with a bunch of federal agents. Deliberately built on the borderline between two towns, Standstead Quebec and Derby Line, Vermont, as a family remembrance by Martha Haskell in the early 1900s, and to promote the harmony and fellowship that existed between the two side by side towns, Canadian patrons and visitors for over 100 years gained access to the library and opera house by walking along a sidewalk in Canada and then going up the steps to enter the front door in the United States. After the harsh changes in immigration and border policy implemented on January 20, 2025, and with the President frequently saying Canada was not a real country and should be taken over by the United States, Noem went up to the black borderline painted on the library floor and hopped back and forth a number of times, saying USA number one, fifty first state,
much to the dismay of library staff, some of whom were former border agents for the US and Canada. Up until this point, border agents in the library made sure that when people left the library they went down the same sidewalk they had used to get to the front door, either the one in Standstead or the one in Derby Line. The upshot from Noem discovering this big national security threat was a policy forbidding entry through the front door unless foreign nationals first went through a border checkpoint, which was set up near the building. The library started letting patrons from Canada use the emergency exit on the Canadian side, until the United States federal government tried to also forbid this. Of course, the United States federal government has no jurisdiction over Canadian territory, which would be anything on the Canadian side of the building.
So the decision was made to fund-raise to turn the emergency exit door into a front door for the Canadian side. Contributions were made by people from both towns and many others. And on this past Wednesday, June 10, now with a parking lot, accessibility ramp, and official door, the ribbon was cut and the Canada door officially opened for business. Lots of people from both towns showed up to celebrate, including the mayor of Stanstead, Jody Stone, and Vermont State Treasurer Mike Pieciak. There was even a recorded message of congratulation from Bernie Sanders! So this heritage site for both countries is back in full normal operation, thanks to the co operation of local. provincial and state agencies, and the good people of Standstead and Derby Line. They fought for something long standing that they cared about, and they won!
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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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