The attention of the world will focus on Phoenix, Arizona for the 3rd Presidential Debate on October 13th. We are using this opportunity to get our message heard.

NEW YORK CITY--I fish 50 cents out of my pocket and the Arab man behind the counter puts a newspaper in a bag for me. The front photo shows a rubber-banded pile of U.S. bills being counted out by brown hands--$500 blood money to the family of each Iraqi the U.S. admits to having killed. Most of the victims will never be named or counted- -but in the photo you can make out the faces of the dead presidents on the bills. I think of the slave-owning presidents and the war-making presidents, and all the toil and exploitation around the world that those bills represent,

selected comments from public at FCC localism mtg.

audio: MP3 at 1.1 mebibytes

Bonus outtake from Wednesday's edition of Free Speech Radio News.... On Thursday, the Senate Commerce Committee moved forward on SB 2505, aka the McCain/Leahy Act, which would restore the technical aspects of the origainal FCC plan to license Low Power FM radio. The bi-partisan bill is being introduced by Arizona Senator John McCain and currently has 3 co-sponsors in the Senate. In December 2000, Congress passed The Radio Broadcasting Preservation Act, which cut-out thousnads of potential LPFM applicants, by enforcining scrict channel seperation requirements. FSRN reporter Vinny Lombardo looks at how one California town is hoping SB 2505 will rectify a growing controversy over the LPFM station there.

audio: MP3 at 5.5 mebibytes

Last night in Monterey, CA the Federal Communications Commision held the fourth of six public hearings on local broadcast media. Citing a scheduling conflict, FCC Chairman Michael Powell missed the proceeding. It's the second consecutive localism hearing he didn't attend. Powell created the task force on localism last year, to quell public outrage over a partisan plan to relax media ownership rules, allowing one company to own newspapers, TV, and radio stations in the same market. Vinny Lombardo reports

audio: MP3 at 3.5 mebibytes