News broadcasti from

Free Speech Radio Newsii, iii, iv,

Thursday, February 14th, 2002

Brief summary v, vi by
Manlio Giordano, July 12, 2009vii

● Only two senators attended today’s congressional

hearing on the working poor – which indicates a small
interest in a major problem, with 28% of working families
in the US not being able to meet basic budgetary needs.

● The Secretary of Energy has recommended that the

US’s 77,000 tons of nuclear waste be moved to a central
facility in Nevada. Protests are being voiced from diverse
quarters due to environmental hazards.

● Today, President Bush announced a new US climate

policy – one that does not limit greenhouse gas
emission. Greenpeace warns that emissions will rise above
the target levels set forth in the Kyoto treaty, which,
however, the US backed out from earlier this year.

● The fundamentalist party Shiv Sena again organized

protests against Valentine’s Day celebrations in India.
This is another cosmetic strategy from the Hindu right
to appear as defenders of tradition, when their actions in
general testify otherwise.

Assignment D – Manlio Giordano – July 12, 2009

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● Before a congressional investigatory committee, Enron
corporation executive Sherron Watkins defended the CEO
while accusing two former top company officials of having
concealed a billion-dollar debt. Although Watkins is
called a whistleblower by some, there is reason to doubt
whether that is accurate.

Further, Enron’s corporate lobbyist may have tried to sway

regulations industry-wide by encouraging donations to
FASBYviii, the body which sets accounting regulations. Such
donations are not illegal, despite the conflict of interest. A
FASBY trustee asked the Enron CEO to make a donation,
while indicating his awareness of that the Enron chief
accountant wanted to affect rule-making – but later
denied that FASBY could be thus influenced.

● In the first day of his opening statement in his war-

crimes trial at The Hague, Slobodan Milosevic today said
that NATO – already discharged from liability – should be
on trial for war crimes and not himself. Film footage
supported his allegation, as well as his claim that evidence
of a massacre had been fabricated. He has rejected the
very foundation of the tribunal, refuses a lawyer, and says
that he has only defended his nation from terrorism. He
will call many witnesses, including Bill Clinton.

● A last-minute appeal for an execution next weekix in

Dallas, Texas, has been made to the US Supreme Court on
the ground of ethnically biassed jury selection. Although
the D.A.’s office denies what the convicted African-
American’s lawyer calls “a long and well-documented
history of racial discrimination in Dallas”, the convicted’s
wife had her murder sentence overturned in the same way.

● Federal law limits CIA activities to intelligence-

gathering. However, the CIA is currently openly operating
paramilitary teams. The Secretary of Defence and others
defend this new, post-9/11 “gloves-off” policy while
others say there is no policy change and call such talk
“propaganda” to inflate the CIA budget.

Assignment D – Manlio Giordano – July 12, 2009

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● Long-standing conflicts in Angola and other African
nations keep interfering with vaccination programs.
Three new paralysis cases indicate that Angola is a
reservoir for the polio virus. Health officials state that
efforts to reach all children in Angola are needed.

Manlio Giordano
Malmö, Sweden, July 12, 2009

i
To download the copyright-free recording of the broadcast, or to listen to it in
“streaming audio” format, visit http://www.archive.org/details/fsrn_20020214
ii
On the homepage http://www.fsrn.org, miscellaneous information (company
history, company mission etc.) about this news program (formerly “Pacifica
Network News”) can be found, beyond the more recent broadcasts (or “podcasts”)
in various file formats, etc.
iii
Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Speech_Radio_News
iv
Comment related specifically to this course: The Pacifica network also broadcast
some of the work done by Colin Edwards, the journalist heard in the interview for
the previous (the third) assignment. (Edwards and the current news program both
suffered problems with censorship: see footnotes 2 and 3, above, and the relevant
footnotes for the previous assignment.)
v
Each of the news stories (and the journalists’ opinions, stated or implied, as part
of these) has been briefly summarized, including confusing or misleading
information. The names of the journalists are not stated in this document, but
they can be discerned on the recording (with reasonable clarity, in most cases).

This summary has been written as if the present date had been February 14th,
vi

2002.
vii
The option to extend the deadline over the lecturer’s vacation has been chosen.

“FASBY” is the informal variant of “FASB”, acronym for the Financial Accounting
viii

Standards Board.
ix
The two journalists that one hears state different days for the execution:
Tuesday (14’12) and Thursday (14’40), respectively.

Assignment D – Manlio Giordano – July 12, 2009

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