Democracy Now! Monday, August 10, 2009

Today's Headlines

• Unemployment Rate Falls Slightly in July
• Report: Holder to Appoint Prosecutor to Probe CIA Abuses
• Phone Records Show Frequent Calls Between Paulson and Goldman Sachs CEO
• Banks to Collect a Record $38 Billion in Overdraft Fees
• US Extends Blackwater Contract in Iraq
• Sonia Sotomayor Sworn In as Supreme Court Justice
• US to Target Afghan Drug Lords
• McChrystal: Taliban Has Gained Upper Hand in Afghanistan
• Head of Pakistani Taliban Said to Have Died in Drone Strike
• Over 40 Die in Multiple Bombings in Iraq
• Iraq Arrests UK Contractor on Murder Charges
• Coup Government in Honduras to Accept OAS Delegation
• Obama Attends North American Summit in Mexico

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  Hiroshima and Nagasaki: A Look Back at the US Atomic Bombing 64 Years Later

  This year marks the sixty-fourth anniversary of the US atomic bombings of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that killed over 150,000 people instantly. Commemorations this weekend in Japan and around the world marked the US bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and then on August 9th, of Nagasaki. We play the report of Wilfred Burchett, the first journalist to make it into Hiroshima, as well as Anthony Weller, the son of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist George Weller, who was the first reporter to enter Nagasaki after the bombing, and we hear from Hiroshima survivor Shigeko Sasamori. [includes rush transcript]

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  "For the 64th Time: No More Nuclear War" - A Roundtable Discussion on Disarmament

  Sixty-four years after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we host a roundtable discussion on the present nuclear landscape. We speak with nuclear physicist and disarmament activist Pervez Hoodbhoy, peace activist Frida Berrigan, and Daniel Ellsberg, the whistleblower who leaked the Pentagon Papers. Over the next year, Ellsberg will release regular installments of his insider’s memoir of the nuclear era, “The American Doomsday Machine.” [includes rush transcript]

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  Iranian Dissident Journalist Akbar Ganji Blasts Mass Trial in Iran, Torture of Prisoners

  In Iran, nearly two months after the disputed presidential election that generated mass protests, the crackdown on opposition members, activists, journalists, scholars, students and ordinary citizens continues. As court proceedings in a mass trial of reformers and protesters continued into their second week, a top judiciary official acknowledged Saturday that some of the arrested protesters had been tortured in Iranian prisons. We speak with leading Iranian dissident and journalist Akbar Ganji. [includes rush transcript]