Sunday, May 11, 2014

Truth or consequences...


Before you listen to this clip, which aired today, Sunday May 11, 2014, bear in mind the following:


It is canned—i.e. what your selfie guide, Michael G. Haskins, likes to call an "encore presentation." Nobody mentioned that fact this morning, but one didn't have to be Sherlock to quickly figure it out. 

Entering on a bleached chorus of Edwin Starr's "I'm so happy..." the Green Stuff Guru mellifluously oozes out his standard greeting and begins to paint a picture of the resurrection. No, not the carpenter's comeback, but rather one that shows the rising of a dead Pacifica station from the ashes of greed and avarice. 

Obvious clues date this pitch, such as our knowledge that Summer Reese is holed up in a Berkley office, Robert Knight is no longer among the living, and Berthold Reimers is fingering his iPhone in Florida. To announce the original air date of this "special" or perform a digital edit would have been appropriate and professional, but Michael G is still learning, so we have to live with that. Not as acceptable is the delusional carrot Mr. Null dangles in his effort to have customers crack their piggybanks, open their wallets or purses, or swipe those credit cards.

He knows that WBAI has long been intellectually, morally and artistically bankrupt, so he needs to fire up the imagination before any bills are peeled off the wad or that change out there loosens up. Listen to his fantasy and ask yourself if he really believes his own words. Ask yourself the same question when you hear him talk about his products, or how he spent years roaming the world in search of the holy grain. If you haven't heard that one, I have included a version in a second audio clip. 

Predictably, the current fund drive is not making it, which makes Null's promises of a few months back all the more embarrassing. He must be cursing the digital boomerang that brought all this back, but he should have known better than to trust anything Berthold Reimers' told him. But then again, they all avoid the truth and even the mass exodus of listeners—which Null acknowledged recently—hasn't curbed the lying.

The outlook for WBAI is only favorable if you have a fertile imagination, take Berthold Reimers seriously, or lived in a soundproof box. Gary Null asks, "How do you face the truth, if you're afraid of the truth?" This is a bunch of very afraid people. Here's the rosy picture...


Here's Null recalling his triumphant discovery of the holy grain...

17 comments:

  1. First, the sound quality is atrocious.

    Second, Gary Null gave the game away when he said, "Our premium today is FOUR--TEEN--HOURS of documentary... and this would normally cost you $280; the station is only charging you $150. That is phenomenal... the reason you're getting it at such a low price is because Berthold and Andrea Katz and Summer Reese all decided, let us go out of our way to say, thank you for being patient for all of the late premiums that have not gone out... In fact, everyone who has ordered their fascism documentary, which [is] about 150 people in the last two days, all those were picked up today and are going out this weekend...". Please note the following words: "charging you $150"... "such a low price"... "ordered their documentary". This clip alone tells you that WBAI/Pacifica is not a nonprofit organization, or, maybe a lawyer could convince a judge that is it in a strict legal sense. Even then, it's only a nonprofit shell for profiteering. I can't believe this recording couldn't shut down the station forever.

    I find so many people around WBAI making excuse after excuse for this behavior. The obfuscation is incredible. Here's the usually sober Tracy Rosenberg: "Null began broadcasting on WBAI in 1977. That means the proper individual to blame for him is Jack O'Dell." Really? That's like saying, "Let's blame Nikolaus Otto and Eugen Langen who, in the 1860s, perfected the internal combustion engine... we can't blame anyone today or change anything about global climate change now!" Tracy concluded by saying she was sick of hearing all the complaints about Gary Null and that she's never heard him pitch any merchandize. And then there's Mitch Cohen: "Without Berthold, Gary Null, Christine Blosdale -- now, please hear me here -- WBAI would have gone under financially a couple of years ago. ... [A]nd that's what all this really comes down to: Making enough money in 1/3rd of the year to pay for our existence in the other 2/3rds, while we work this all out." Paul DiRienzo puts it even more bluntly: "Puhleeze, you should be honoring Gary Null for the work he's done to support Pacifica since many of you were in diapers."

    But years and years go by, and WBAI is saved as WHAT exactly, and for WHOM? WHO "works all this out"? WHAT is being worked out? HOW MUCH carnival barkering is enough? HOW MANY DVDs does Jim have to ship with his Community Advisory Board? GARY NULL PERSONALLY ATTACKED WBAI & PACIFICA ON THE STATION'S OWN AIR, swearing that he'd never sell his products & give Pacifica a cut again. Then after a month or so of lousy listenership on Null's own PRN internet radio, he came back to the ever-shrinking audience. WHO LET THIS MAN BACK? Meanwhile, Mitch is dissembling: Nothing of value is being worked out... and nothing worth saving is being saved.

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    1. You caught the "thank you gift" scam well. In fact, you nailed it throughout. This is an amazing scam operation.

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  2. The second Gary Clip about the holy grain strains my credulity. First of all, WHICH Institute of Applied Biology, and who was the director, and in what year. Second, he claims to be the person, who discovered that you can get all your essential amino acid from plant sources - brown rice and black beans. I thought that it was the Ancient Mayans, who fed their population all the essential amino acids by planting maize (corn), letting string beans grow winding up the corn stalks, and then growing squash in between the rows of corn. This was the ecologically elegant solution to providing the three staples, that fed the Mayan common people and gave them all of the required essential amino acids. Not only that, but this was known to Western science long before Gary Null came on the scene. Is he trying to say that he spent a year and a half re-inventing the wheel and the academic world ignored him because he threatened the major American food industries with something that was known all along?

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    1. Gary Null does strain credulity when he filters the truth, and he seems to be escalating that habit. Did you hear him say that 1,700 listeners showed up when the big bad pharma ignored him? And how about his claim that he turned down big publishing houses in favor of an upstart. Then, of course, the success of his book turned this unknown publishing house into a major one. He is so full of stuff—and it ain't green or red!

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  3. Tracy Rosenberg - ""Null began broadcasting on WBAI in 1977. That means the proper individual to blame for him is Jack O'Dell."
    SOURCE: https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/PacificaRadiowaves/conversations/messages/15733

    This argument against doing anything about the genocidal marketing fraud & bad-mouthing-against-any-Pacifica-that's-not-his Null is not new for Tracy either: "Which brings us to Gary Null. Twenty five years after the fact. For twenty-five years, Gary Null has broadcasted on the Pacifica network. Before Summer Reese. Before Grace Aaron. Before Dan Coughlin. Perhaps you can blame Pat Scott."
    SOURCE: https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/PacificaRadiowaves/conversations/topics/11280

    For a point-by-point repudiation of Tracy's points on all fronts: http://www.listenerforums.net/cgi-bin/issues2/issues2config.pl?md=read;id=204006.

    I did misremember Tracy being sick of the complaints about Null and claiming never to have heard the pitches. That was Ann Garrison or "anniegetyourgang"... and for that, I apologize.
    SOURCE https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/PacificaRadiowaves/conversations/messages/15698

    Now, to be fair, many of Null's enablers will tell you that they have qualms about the "Doctor". They think his commercialism is a touch beneath their dignity. But they never summon sufficient anger to demand a line in the sand against this garbage. The short-term money is just too damn good. But that is also too low an argument... Instead they'll tell you that removing Null from Pacifica's air is against "free speech" - Here's Carolyn Birden in a 2009 email to WBAIers who wanted to draw a line in the sand about HIV/AIDS denialism: "Look at the concerted opposition to censoring Gary Null by those who disagree with his opinion: is such an action, i.e. censoring and banning from the air someone who holds a different POV acceptable?" - - - Well, yes, Carolyn - any morally and intellectually serious person would call that EDITORIAL DISCRETION, the sort of thing that would prevent Pacifica from airing Nazi-Holocaust denialists or people who say Africans were "improved" by chattel slavery or Charles Murray who contends that blacks are inherently intellectually inferior. It's not just that Null is wrong, it's that he's OPPORTUNISTIC in his hate for big pharma (but not for unregulated millionaire hucksters of fake cure-alls).

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  4. The Judge issued a Temporary restraining order against Reese until June 3, 2014. She don't belong in those premises... (a resounding Hurrraaah!!!! to follow...)

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  5. Here is the story:

    http://www.savekpfa.org/

    Check it out! It appears that Summer Reese had three supporters sign a contract that was different than then one Pacifica board signed, when It hired her. Let me get this straight, 15 or whatever member board votes me a contract, and then I secretly create another, a better contract for me, that is signed by three of my friends in secret? What playbook is that from? There aren't enough problems facing Pacifica, you want a sociopath in charge?

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    1. If you want us to check it out, you have to be more specitic. What is your source for this?

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  6. Here is the scanned copy of the Court order against Summer Reese and denying her motion, also dismissing the contract that her faction went by, that was signed by three supporters. Reese is barred from Pacifica offices for the duration of the lawsuit.

    http://www.savekpfa.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Order-denying-PJ-granting-TRO.pdf

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  7. I’m relying on the memory of a very quick read I gave Judge Petrou’s judgement of two days ago:

    It speaks ill for the various public representations made by Ms Reese and her supporters.

    Ms Reese and PDGG have consistently represented the situation as one in which there was a valid, signed contract which the board had chosen to willfully disregard and/or abrogate, when, in fact, the specified deadline for execution of the fall 2013 contract was not met, and when the contract they claimed was clearly valid clearly did not have the requisite board approval.

    In order to make those claims they misrepresented a number of particulars.

    The fact that the specified deadline for completion of Ms Reese’s background check may have not been met because of her not having a Social Security Number or because of the illness of one of her previous job references is irrelevant. The fall 2013 contract specified a deadline, and that deadline was not met.

    There was no provision for authorization of a handful of board members to sign a new, substantially altered contract early this year.

    None.

    Judge Petrou clearly would have none of it, and rightly so.

    In all the sordid, squalid mess that is Pacifica, I would still view Ms Reese and her supporters more favorably than their opposition – but that is a relative judgement, and just how very, truly, and deeply fucked-up the lot of them are is, if possible, clearer than ever.

    There was one bright note, one item worth a smile, however sardonic, in the judgement: The fact that PDGG’s attorney had at the last minute blithely presented Judge Petrou with a thirty-three page brief in gross violation of specified page limitations and when confronted with this by Judge Petrou had no better excuse than to flounder helplessly.

    Who *are* these people?

    Dysfunctional, helpless, self-proclaimed-self-defined ‘idealist’ misfits, one supposes.

    Who cannot comprehend why others ‘run the world’.

    Who cannot comprehend why the world ignores them.

    Who cannot comprehend why they simply don’t matter.

    Who natter on and on in their endless squabbles as to ‘if only’ and ‘what can be done.’

    WBAI/Pacifica mattered once. Their time is long over. Nor is there any longer any pressing need for them.

    The world has moved on.

    They haven’t.

    None of this is news, it hasn’t been news for decades.

    Just thought I’d state the screamingly obvious.

    ~ ‘indigopirate’

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  8. I have no doubt that the Pacifica hiring process – if indeed it may even be termed a ‘process’ – is worse than a train wreck – everything else is an endless bitter farce, why would something as critical as hiring be an exception?

    I see much of the process at Pacifica as ugly, bitter childishness from people unable or unwilling to function in the world.

    In my understanding if you miss a deadline you missed the deadline. The reason, unless it rises to the level of force majeur, is completely irrelevant. The fact that one or more parties were obstructionist, or someone was ill, or that the dog ate your homework changes nothing.

    In my judgement and understanding there is *nothing* for the good judge to ‘understand’.

    She seems to me, reading only a bit between her lines, to understand all too clearly.

    Her task is not to be an understanding and comforting parental figure for a group of squalling children.

    So Siegel – for whom I have nothing but contempt from what I’ve seen of him publicly – disrupted the process of those he opposed. Then he won, and the other side lost.

    Do you expect an opponent to play fair? To play nice? To blow you kisses?

    Do you think, for example, that if you miss a contractual delivery date it’s okay to argue that you were ‘sabotaged’?

    In what world does that work?

    More problematically, to me, Reese and her supporters deliberately misrepresented the contractual situation. They didn’t merely put their interpretation on it, they misrepresented it. Substantially. Materially. Totally.

    We were consistently presented with a picture in which Reese held a valid contract – which she did not, by any rational interpretation, as Judge Petrou swiftly and rightly concluded – and that the board had simply chosen to ignore and declare invalid a valid contract. The board majority – of which I assure you I am no supporter and no fan – *did no such thing*.

    There was never a valid contract by any rational interpretation.

    That was a stupid misrepresentation for Reese and her supporters to make, as it had and has no basis in rational objective fact.

    The quality of her and PDGG legal representation in this case was clearly amateurish in the extreme – ‘abysmal’ comes to mind.

    If she and her supporters pursue this further, she’ll be even more clearly a fool, and she’ll lose, badly.

    In my judgement Pacifica is and has long been headed for the knackers.

    It’s too far behind the financial/programming/audience curve to survive, and has essentially no competent management, staff, or ‘talent’.

    Those are the facts.

    Those who wish to argue with the facts are free to do so, as they’ve been doing for years – arguably for decades.

    In the end, which is ever nearer, those arguments won’t matter.

    ~ ‘indigopirate’

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  9. I have two things to add,

    One, where do you see fair hiring practices in the film industry or media in America or anywhere else in the world, except maybe in the ante-Thatcher UK, where if you studied radio broadcasting in college, you got entry-level job placement at BBC. Pacifica being a left-wing non-profit, the hiring process will be rife with favoritism, politics, and corruption. Par for the course.

    Second, Reese has discredited herself as a liar and she is likely unsuitable for any position of public trust, and especially at Pacifica, because she seems to be having something to hide and her personal conduct is reprehensible. The way she and her cohorts tried to get rid of Tony Norman is reprehensible and illegal. He should sue Reese, but there is more.

    This controversy with her background check is ridiculous. If she were applying for a job at a large bank, and her background check didn't come in, she simply would not be hired. Specifically, why is one of her supporters (Gray) telling the board members, that her background investigation is good, and why aren't the board members speaking to investigators and reviewing the actual reports.

    That Reese doesn't have the SSN is a red herring. To do a background check you, you compel the individual to sign releases and waivers and get them to submit her fingerprints and her bank account information for the past ten years. Then you do a criminal history check and review her bank history and credit history. You get addresses for the past ten years and go to those addresses and talk to her neighbors, her references and local officials and others who may have had dealings with her. You don't need to do it herself, you hire any number of a large and bonded companies to do that. Reese can not sue if you run a credit history investigation with her, say with Dun and Bradstreet. What Pacifica really needs is to se if she has any undisclosed financial interests or prior business dealings, and D&B is very good at researching that.

    I wouldn't want a crook or a scam artist running Pacifica. Would you?

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  10. @ Tracy Rosenberg: you don't seem to have any compunctions about playing hardball in factional politics with your opposition, when it suits you, why are you hiding behind professionalism and HR firms, when it doesn't. That "Performance Scale" that your faction has used to get rid of a financial manager, is a psychological research tool, not used in employee performance evaluation and used by Reese faction to get rid of a financial manager that they didn't like. HR in your hands is like signed confessions in hands of the Stalinist court. It stands to reason that the board in a heavily political and factional organization would not use it as gospel.

    Finally, can you explain your decision to get rid of the Morning Show at KPFA, since the show was bringing is both funds and audience. Your faction's replacement of that show with the morning mix, could be viewed as an unsuccessful attempt at corporate syndication of a local successful show with syndicated content in the worst clear channel media style.

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  11. I listened this afternoon, Michael Haskins voice is piped in over the bad tape copy of Gary Null to give the phone number (I'm assuming it's taped). The audio quality is just awful. It sounds like it was recorded using a tape recorder next to a radio. But the content is what is truly atrocious. He was talking about how people who believe in conspiracies are smart, while those who do not have "damaged brains". He was claiming that it was a conspiracy that Andrew Wakefield was discredited, among other gems. Then he also mentioned some "dubious" products that other producers are selling on WBAI (oh I mean offering as premiums). I wonder who are the people who keep paying for these same premiums over and over? His shows and Blosdale's "shows" are fear mongering spectacles where listeners get the "inside track". I remember Blosdale had a woman on (the corporate psychic) who was claiming that from listening to a person's voice over the phone she can offer advice about businesses to open and ways to make money. It is all so transparent and sad.

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    1. Tragicomic and now way beyond the point of no return.

      I assume that they no longer use magnetic tape, but they mess up digitally with equal ease.

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  12. Radio is not supposed to sound like that! Both the audio quality and content.......how can a radio station in NYC in 2014 sound like that?!

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