Flirt FM 101.3FM, Galway, Ireland. 3pm, last Wednesday of the month
This week’s show is now online at Radio4All.net and on Audioport. We devote much of the show to a speech given by Stephen Kinzer in Champaign last Sunday, as part of Just Foreign Policy’s national speaking tour The Folly of Attacking Iran. I’ve posted the audio of that talk separately for those who might want to use it in their own show. Lots of stuff we weren’t able to get to today, but I’m sure we’ll cover much of it next week.
Thursday’s show went up on Audioport yesterday, and I’m in the (rather slow) process of adding it to Radio4All – updates as I have them.
This week we talked about the spying in Bolivia, FISA and telecoms immunity, the digital television switchover, the Smithfield SLAPP suit against Jobs with Justice, and much more.
Update: the show is now up on Radio4All.
A Critical Ear is to be carried on WETX-LP, 105.3FM, community radio for the Tri-Cities area of east-Tennessee and Virginia, based in Johnson city. More info on day and time as we have it.
We welcome others interested in carrying the show, and just ask that you inform us so we can add links here on the site, and in our audio. Audio files are available from Audioport and Radio4All, and are linked from this website.
I’ve now uploaded yesterday’s show to Radio4All. Those of you with Audioport accounts can also find it there. The first half hour includes InterWorldRadio headlines, a commentary from Matt Rothschild of the Progressive, two feature pieces from InterWorldRadio, and some story headlines from EU Observer. The second half of the show involved discussion with Bob about Iran, starting with Diane Feinstein’s column calling for diplomacy with Iran. Bob also had a piece in the Huffington Post yesterday, analyzing Feinstein’s piece and its context. Direct link to mp3 of show, on Radio4All. (show length 58:02)
A Critical Ear is now being distributed through Pacifica’s Audioport and also on Radio4All.net. From this week I’ll be adding links to the Radio4All file from this site, as well as a general pointer towards Audioport. A reminder, of course, that we welcome the rebroadcast of the show by others – we just ask that you let us know, so that we can promote that fact here.
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Yesterday’s edition of A Critical Ear is now online. It features a discussion of Bush’s signing statements (particularly the recent one attempting to override the ban on permanent bases in Iraq) and then a fairly unique 30 minutes, where we simulcasted a live phone interview that Bob was doing with Radio Islam in Chicago, concentrating on the policies of the candidates regarding Iraq (particularly Clinton, Obama, McCain and Romney).
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Notes and resources:On last night’s show I made mention of an online graphic demonstrating the relative wealth of US presidential candidates. That graphic is available at this post with the large version here showing just what the disparities are. While I’m at it, I misremembered some of the details – Obama is ‘only’ at between $2 and $3 million, while Clinton is up over $34 million and Edwards is over $50 million. Richardson is over $6m while Kucinich is somewhere around $200k. On the Republican side, Huckabee’s personal worth is something under $1m, while all the other contenders listed are over $1m – Thompson at $8m, McCain at $40m, Giuliani at over $50m, and Romney at $350m, though this is believed to be a significant under-estimate.As is noted in the accompanying article, Kucinich is the one with a worth closest to the ‘average’ American, though $200k still puts him well above the median – in 2004 US households had a net worth of just over $100k. I’m not one to attack candidates purely on account of their wealth – as we pointed on during the show, it’s the policies that matter, and criticisms of, for example, Edwards for raising issues of poverty, are cynical and ill-founded. It’s significant, though to note the correlation between wealth and being perceived as a ‘viable’ candidate. Note too that the 2004 CNN figures I reference above show just 6.4m US households with net worth over $1m (excluding primary residence) and around 500k households with net worth over $5m. There are around 100m households in the US (the census’s 2004 estimate was around 107m) which puts Obama firmly in the top 6% of households by wealth (assuming his reported wealth is his household wealth – if not, he’s even more firmly up there). All of the other remaining candidates (now that Kucinich is out) with the exception of Huckabee are firmly in the top half-percent of households by wealth.Bob also referenced a San Francisco Chronicle article criticizing the court decision allowing the exclusion of Kucinich from the Nevada debate.
