Bob provides a detailed report from the Gaza Freedom March, which he joined in Cairo. The marchers were never let into Gaza, but succeeded in raising public awareness of the blockade of Gaza on the first anniversary of the Israeli invasion.
Listen here.
Today we ended up recording the show on a tight turnaround, so it’s shorter than usual (so we could get the file uploaded to air during our timeslot on WRFU). We talked about the Dear Colleague letters circulating in the House of Representatives that push for improvement of conditions in Gaza, Obama’s surge in Afghanistan, and upcoming elections in Haiti.
Also, Bob shared that he’ll be in Eygpt and Gaza from 27 December, so we’ll be hoping to bring you news from him during his trip. Watch out for updates.
We like to include information on how you can intervene in the news stories we cover: see this call from JustForeignPolicy.org about asking your representative to sign onto the letters being circulated.
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Honduras, Afghanistan, and grad union strikes: http://acriticalear.info/blog/2009/11/19/2009-11-19-afghanistan-honduras-grad-unions/
Covering both international affairs and labor issues on this week’s show, which brings us back from a long hiatus.
We start in Afghanistan, and discuss the likelihood (and impact) of an escalation in U.S. troop numbers. Bob points to a day of action next Monday, where Peace Action West and others are urging supporters to call the Whitehouse to oppose an escalation.
We then move to Honduras, and discuss recent State Department statements which have garnered praise from supporters of the coup, and corresponding criticism from figures such as Senator Kerry and Rep. Berman. In talking about the situation on the ground I pointed to Bill Taylor of the Primary Communications Project, who has been working with Radio Lenca, one of the few pro-Zelaya broadcast outlets still on the air in Honduras. We note that it seems difficult to believe that the conditions for a free and fair election exist in an environment which has seen assassinations of Zelaya supporters.
GEO members celebrate after their successful strike earlier this week (credit: Ben Seese)
Finally, we move back to Urbana, Illinois, and talk about the succcessful strike by the Graduate Employees’ Organization, defending the continued existence of tuition waivers for graduate employees – and by extension intervening to ensure the accessibility of graduate education.
The version uploaded this evening (Thursday) is a fairly rough version, as I want to get it up for broadcast on WRFU this evening. I have audio courtesy of Joe of I-Resist that I hope to use to supplement our studio-based conversation, but that’s going to have to wait for later this evening or tomorrow.
So, the hiatus was generally online, as I fell behind in editing and uploading episodes. I’m back now – prompted by the fact that today’s show was recorded using Skype (a first for us) so the editing had to be done anyhow. So, here’s how this show turned out:
We started with a detailed discussion of the state of the agreement between the “Iraq security agreement” between the USA and Iraq. We move on to discussion of calls for diplomacy with Iran. We progress to examine Obama’s appointments, so far, dealing with foreign policy and economics. The original audio contains some digital artifacts at points, due to being recorded on Skype, but is suitable for broadcast.
Update: I was still uploading at Radio.indymedia when I first posted, so neglected to include links to the audio. Well, here you go:
ACE 2008-11-27 on radio.indymedia.org (mp3) and the linking page
Also available on Audioport.
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