Democracy Now! Friday, June 12, 2009

Today's Headlines

• Admin Rules Out US Resettlement for Gitmo Prisoners
• 6 Gitmo Prisoners Freed
• Dems Reach Agreement on War Funding Bill
• Antiwar Lawmakers Urge Rejection of War Funding
• Senate Backs Sweeping Tobacco Regulation
• Contradicting Obama, Sen. Baucus Rules Out “Public” Healthcare
• Von Brunn Charged with Murder in Holocaust Museum Shooting
• WHO Declares Swine Flu Pandemic
• General: Afghan Violence Worse Since 2001
• Iran Holds Presidential Elections
• Aid Groups to Return to Darfur
• Thousands of Peruvians Rally Against Indigenous Crackdown
• New Mountaintop Removal Rules Criticized as Ineffective
• Interior Dept. Report Criticizes Bush Sale of Utah Federal Land
• Iraq War Vet Commits Suicide
• Owner of Medical Marijuana Dispensary Sentenced to One-Year Term
• Survey: 2.8M Homes Unprepared for Switch to Digital TV

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  Iranians Flood to Polls in Pivotal Presidential Election

  Iran goes to the polls today following an acrimonious election campaign that has polarized the country between the incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and three opposition candidates. A record turnout is expected for this presidential election, and the enormous mobilization generated by some of the candidates has been described as unseen since the early days of the Iranian revolution. We speak with Trita Parsi, founder and president of the National Iranian American Council. [includes rush transcript]

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  AMA Opposition to Obama Public Health Plan Echoes Group's Decades-Long Resistance to Healthcare Reform

  On Monday, President Obama is scheduled to address the American Medical Association, the nation’s largest doctors’ group with 250,000 members. They have expressed strong opposition to a government-run plan. We take a look at how the AMA has fought almost every major effort at healthcare reform over the past seventy years.

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  Report: Health Insurers Hold Billions in Tobacco Stocks

  A new report in the New England Journal of Medicine reveals US, Canadian and British health and life insurance firms hold at least $4.4 billion of investments in companies whose subsidiaries manufacture cigarettes, cigars, chewing tobacco and related products. We speak with the co-author of the report, Dr. Wesley Boyd.

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  Domestic Workers Fight for Bill of Rights

  The Domestic Workers Bill of Rights, if passed, would amend New York state labor law and guarantee the over 200,000 nannies and housekeepers in New York state a living wage, overtime pay, sick leave, severance and health benefits, and protection from employment discrimination. It would be the first such bill in the country to challenge the exclusion of the nearly two million domestic workers countrywide from national labor law and set an important precedent for other states. We speak with a nanny-turned-organizer.

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  80th Anniversary of Anne Frank's Birth: How a 13-Year-Old Girl Became the Defining Voice of the Nazi Holocaust

  Events are being held today around the world to mark what would have been Anne Frank’s eightieth birthday. In Amsterdam, the Anne Frank House museum has announced it will put her diaries on permanent display. Anne Frank died at the age of fifteen of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in the spring of 1945, just weeks before the concentration camp was liberated. Her diary was first published in 1947 and has since become one of the most widely read books in the world. We play a reading from the Anne Frank Diary Recording Project.