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.

ACE 2009-11-19 on Radio4All.net

Indymedia Radio copy

And some advance notice: next week we’ll be interviewing author Allison Hantschel about her book “Special Plans” and neo-con Douglas Feith, whose memoir is due out shortly. Send us an email with any questions you want to ask her.

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.

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.