Latin America

A new U.S. government report has found that much of the U.S. taxpayer money used for Iraq’s reconstruction has likely been squandered.

As the corporate media covers every move made by Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney and Democratic incumbent Barack Obama, we go to Baltimore to cover the Green Party 2012 National Convention.

Today a Democracy Now! special on the life, politics and music of Woody Guthrie, the “Dust Bowl Troubadour.” Born a hundred years ago on July 14, 1912, in Oklahoma, Guthrie wrote hundreds of folk songs and became a major influence on countless musicians, including Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Pete Seeger and Phil Ochs.

We spend the hour looking at the bloody struggle to obtain — and protect — voting rights in the U.S. with the civil rights icon, now 13-term Georgia congressmember, John Lewis.

United Nations and Arab League envoy Kofi Annan met today with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the midst of worsening violence. Syria’s 16-month conflict has so far claimed more than 15,000 lives.

A Japanese parliamentary inquiry has concluded last year’s nuclear meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant was “a profoundly man-made disaster — that could and should have been foreseen and prevented.”

New information revealed regarding the death of late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat creates controversy meanwhile, Israel resumes the construction of the wall around Jerusalem, these stories and more, coming up, stay tuned.

The Peruvian government has declared a state of emergency in the mountain region of Cajamarca where thousands have gathered in recent days to protest the expansion of a gold mine owned by the U.S.-based Newmont Mining that is already the largest in South America.

Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman was in Madrid, Spain yesterday “where protesters are celebrating a major victory after that country’s high court opened a criminal investigation into the former head of Spain’s biggest mortgage lender, Bankia.“

While Guthrie is best remembered as a musician, he also had a deeply political side. At the height of McCarthyism, Guthrie spoke out for labor and civil rights and against fascism. In this one-hour special, you will hear interviews and music from folk singer Pete Seeger, the British musician Billy Bragg, and the historian Will Kaufman, author of the new book, “Woody Guthrie, American Radical.”