America on the radio

First: amazing story, this: Malcolm X’s personal archive – correspondence, photographs, writings, the lot – wound up on eBay (or at least on eBay‘s posh cousin Bonnington’s). Tony Phillips made a very personal programme about it for Radio 4.

Second: the US Government’s own auditors say that $8.8 billion (including three palettes of hundred dollar bills weighing 14 tons for which someone forgot to fill in a deposit slip) have gone missing from the funds set aside for reconstruction in Iraq. Gerry Northam, in this File on 4 programme, notes that Capitol Hill has taken very little interest in the missing billions while putting the boot into the UN over Oil for Food.

Provided they haven’t been overwritten you can listen to these programmes at these links: Selling Malcolm X and File on 4 on Iraq or download MP3s here: File on 4 and Malcolm X.