Former President Jimmy Carter was removed from Monday’s speakers’ list in what appeared to be a last-minute change. The move immediately fueled speculation Carter is being sidelined for his outspoken criticism of the Bush administration and Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Amy Goodman asked Carter about his apparent demotion in the halls of the convention center. [includes rush transcript]

John Edwards’ recent admission of an extra-marital affair effectively removed him from the 2008 campaign and jeopardized his political future. With his and his wife Elizabeth’s absence goes the Democrats’ leading voices on poverty in the United States. Chris Chafe, who served as a senior adviser to Edwards’ campaign says, “This is about a movement…We have to continue moving forward with all the values and strength and the policies and the leadership he brought to this race.” [includes rush transcript]

Actress Daryl Hannah is in Denver this week to attend the Green Frontier Fest and other environmental events around the Democratic National Convention. Over the past twenty-five years, Hannah has starred in dozens of films, including Blade Runner, Splash and Kill Bill. But besides the big screen, Hannah can often be seen on the frontlines of various environmental movements. Last year, she traveled to Ecuador to meet with indigenous groups suing Chevron to stop contaminating the Amazon, and before that, she spent three weeks camped in a tree in a South Central farm in Los Angeles. [includes rush transcript]

A UN probe in Afghanistan has backed claims of a massive civilian death toll from a US air strike last Thursday. The UN mission in Kabul says investigators found some ninety civilians, including sixty children, were killed in the attack. Democracy Now! correspondent Jeremy Scahill goes inside the Democratic National Convention to ask lawmakers about Barack Obama’s foreign policy plan to deploy an additional 7,000-9,000 more troops to Afghanistan. [includes rush transcript]

Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, is being accused of violating federal election laws by urging its employees to vote against Senator Barack Obama in the November election. Last month, the Wall Street Journal revealed Wal-Mart has been warning its managers that an Obama victory would lead to unionization at Wal-Mart stores. A coalition of prominent labor groups recently filed a complaint against Wal-Mart with the Federal Elections Commission. [includes rush transcript]

Former presidential candidate Rep. Dennis Kucinich delivered one of the most passionate addresses Tuesday night. “Wake up, America! We went into Iraq for oil. The oil companies want more,” Kucinich said. “War against Iran will mean $10-a-gallon gasoline. The oil administration wants to drill more, into your wallet. Wake up, America! Weapons contractors want more. An Iran war will cost $5 to $10 trillion.” [includes rush transcript]

On the streets of Denver, outside the suites of the convention, Iraq Veterans Against the War organized a dramatic re-enactment of the raids they participated in while serving in Iraq. They called it “Operation First Casualty.” [includes rush transcript]

Nearly 600 people were arrested this week in a massive immigration raid on an electrical equipment factory in Laurel, Mississippi. The raid is now being described as the largest in US history, topping the May raid on a meat-processing plant in Postville, Iowa. [includes rush transcript]

As Hillary Clinton delivers a prime-time address on the eve of Barack Obama’s presidential nomination, we host a roundtable discussion with Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers of America, who had been an active supporter of Clinton’s campaign and now supports Obama; Sacha Millstone, a Democratic delegate from Colorado, who remains a vocal supporter of Clinton; and Patricia Wilson-Smith, the founder of Black Women for Obama. Huerta says she expects to put Clinton’s name into nomination tonight from the podium. [includes rush transcript]

Senator Hillary Clinton captured the limelight for the last time in the 2008 presidential campaign with her speech before the Democratic National Convention Tuesday night. Standing before thousands of delegates, nearly half of them her backers, Clinton endorsed Obama for the party’s nomination. [includes rush transcript]

On Monday, IVAW delivered a letter to Senator Barack Obama’s DNC campaign headquarters asking that he endorse the organization’s three main points: the immediate withdrawal of all occupying forces from Iraq, full and adequate healthcare and benefits to all returning service members and veterans, and reparations made to the Iraqi people for the destruction caused by the US war and occupation. This weekend here in Denver, Amy Goodman caught up with IVAW member Sgt. Matthis Chiroux, who served in the US Army for five years and a few months ago publicly refused to deploy to Iraq, subjecting him to risk of prosecution. [includes rush transcript]

As we continue our coverage of the 2008 Democratic National Convention, I am joined now by two Democratic delegates from Missouri who also come from one of the state’s most storied political families. Former Senator Jean Carnahan served in Congress from 2001 to 2002. I am also joined by Jean Carnahan’s daughter, Robin Carnahan. She is Missouri’s Secretary of State, where she has focused on voter and consumer rights. [includes rush transcript]

The 2008 Democratic National Convention kicked off Monday at the Pepsi Center in downtown Denver. We play highlights of the speeches from the convention floor, and we take a look at the massive security presence in the streets of the city with Eileen Clancy of I-Witness Video, who has been closely monitoring the protests in the streets. [includes rush transcript]

As the Democrats celebrated inside the Pepsi Center on the opening day of the convention, outside on the streets police pepper-sprayed protesters and rounded up dozens of them in mass arrests near Civic Center Park. [includes rush transcript]

As the Democrats gather under a massive banner proclaiming that change is on the way, serious questions abound about some of the key issues that have brought protesters here to Denver. We sent Democracy Now! correspondent Jeremy Scahill into the Pepsi Center to ask Senators Carl Levin, Charles Rangel, Reps. Maxine Waters, Dennis Kucinich and others the questions the corporate media is failing to ask, from the war in Iraq and Obama’s foreign policy team to impeachment and the death penalty. [includes rush transcript]

The Democrats opened their four-day convention on Monday with thousands of delegates, party elders and lobbyists flooding the halls of the Pepsi Center in downtown Denver. Headlining the opening day was Michelle Obama, who delivered the final address of the night before a cheering crowd on the convention floor. We play highlights and speak with Salim Muwakkil, senior editor of In These Times. [includes rush transcript]

Much of the focus of Sen. Obama’s selection of Biden to be his running mate has centered on his foreign policy experience. Biden serves as the chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In 2002, he helped push through a Senate resolution authorizing the invasion of Iraq. He has since become a persistent critic of President Bush’s policies in Iraq and the so-called troop surge. [includes rush transcript]

Democracy Now! goes from the streets to the suites to try and cover one of the first of over 1,200 parties during the Democratic National Convention—this one thrown by AT&T to support Democrats who voted to grant the company immunity for illegal wiretapping of Americans. We also get analysis from Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com. [includes rush transcript]

Thousands of delegates descended on Denver over the weekend for the Democratic National Convention, as did thousands of journalists, as well as protesters from across the country. We hear some of the voices of the protesters and speak with Democracy Now! correspondent Jeremy Scahill, who covered the events from the ground. [includes rush transcript]

As the Democratic National Convention begins in Denver, we speak to Harper’s publisher Rick MacArthur on his new book You Can’t Be President. MacArthur says that the popular notion that any American can become president only reinforces the “destructive national delusion that widespread, up-from-the-ground, truly popular democracy, both political and economic, really exists in America.” To assume that, he says, is equal to believing that Santa Claus exists. [includes rush transcript]

Democracy Now! correspondent Jeremy Scahill heads to the streets of Denver to report on day one of protests outside of the Democratic National Convention. He speaks to antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan, Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney, Vietnam veteran Ron Kovic, M1 of Dead Prez, Leslie Cagan of United for Peace and Justice and others. [includes rush transcript]

As the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina approaches, we speak with the makers of a new film that takes an inside look at the disaster and the many forms of devastation that followed. Trouble the Water follows a couple from New Orleans’ Ninth Ward and their return home two weeks after the hurricane. It begins with footage shot by the couple, who documented the approach of the hurricane and the moment the floodwaters began to rise. [includes rush transcript]

As violence escalates in Afghanistan, both Barack Obama and John McCain support sending more troops. “Both of them are wrong,” says Sonali Kolhatkar, host of Uprising on Pacifica radio station KPFK and co-author of the book Bleeding Afghanistan. “You really cannot solve the situation in Afghanistan by throwing more troops at it, because over the last several years tens of thousands of troops in Afghanistan have not managed to do anything other than worsen the war.” [includes rush transcript]

Two converted fishing boats set sail from Cyprus today carrying more than forty activists and humanitarian workers who are part of the Free Gaza movement that is trying to break the Israeli blockade on the Gaza Strip. The Israeli foreign ministry said in an open letter to the participants, “We assume that your intentions are good but, in fact, the result of your action is that you are supporting the regime of a terrorist organization in Gaza.” We speak with three of the activists at sea: Huwaida Arraf, co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement; Lauren Booth, a journalist and sister-in-law of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair; and Israeli anthropology professor Jeff Halper of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. [includes rush transcript]

The City of New York has agreed to pay $2 million to a group of fifty-two protesters who were swept up in a mass arrest during a peaceful antiwar protest outside the headquarters of the Carlyle Group in 2003. We speak with the lead plaintiff in the case, Sarah Kunstler. [includes rush transcript]

Tensions are high between the United States and Russia over the ongoing conflict in Georgia. On Wednesday, soon after NATO foreign ministers decided to cut formal ties with Russia until it withdrew all its troops from Georgia, President Bush vowed to continue to support Georgia. We speak with William Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Initiative at the New America Foundation. [includes rush transcript]

A thirty-five-year-old man on death row in Texas faces execution tonight for a murder he didn’t commit. Jeff Wood is scheduled to die by lethal injection at 6:00 p.m., unless Governor Rick Perry grants him clemency. Wood was an accomplice in a 1996 convenience store robbery. He was sitting in a truck outside when the clerk was shot and killed. The man who pulled the trigger was executed six years ago, but Wood was given a death sentence for the same crime under the Texas law of parties. We go to the prison where Jeff Wood is awaiting death to speak with his wife, mother and father outside. We also speak with Liliana Segura of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty. [includes rush transcript]

Andrew Bacevich is a conservative historian who spent twenty-three years serving in the US Army. He also lost his son in Iraq last year. In a new book titled The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism, Bacevich argues that although many in this country are paying a heavy price for US domestic and foreign policy decisions, millions of Americans simply continue to shop, spend and satisfy their appetite for cheap oil, credit and the promise of freedom at home. Bacevich writes, “As the American appetite for freedom has grown, so too has our penchant for empire.” [includes rush transcript]

Three months after the largest immigration raid in US history, when nearly 400 workers were arrested at a meatpacking plant, Postville, Iowa is a changed town. Postville lost more than a quarter of its population in the raid. And for those left behind, namely the wives and children of the men taken away, the town has been turned into what some have described as an open-air prison. Dozens of immigrant women remain in Postville without status or a means of support. Many of them are even forbidden from leaving and have been made to wear electronic monitoring bracelets. [includes rush transcript]

Earlier this month, a thirty-four-year-old Chinese computer engineer, Hiu Lui Ng, who overstayed his visa, died in a Rhode Island immigration detention center. He had cancer in his liver, lung and bones, and a fractured spine. Despite repeated complaints of severe pain, Mr. Ng was refused independent medical evaluation by immigration officials. Before Mr. Ng died on August 6th, he told his sister that the nurses at the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Center in Rhode Island had told him to “stop faking” his illness. We speak to immigration attorney Joshua Bardavid, Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) and Renee Feltz, co-creator of the site BusinessOfDetention.com. [includes rush transcript]

A former priest known as the “Bishop of the Poor,” Fernando Lugo is the first Paraguayan president since 1946 not to be from the conservative Colorado Party. He has pledged to give land to the landless and fight corruption. We speak to Greg Grandin, professor of Latin American history at NYU. [includes rush transcript]

The debate over the role that psychologists should play in military interrogations heated up this weekend at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association. After years of back-and-forth discussion and several resignations from the association, APA members are now voting on a referendum that could make any participation in coercive prisoner interrogations a violation of their code of ethics. Meanwhile, California became the first state in the nation to officially condemn the participation of health professionals—including psychologists—in coercive interrogations of prisoners in the so-called war on terror. [includes rush transcript]

Saturday’s event at Rev. Warren’s Saddleback Church in California marked the first time Senators Barack Obama and John McCain have agreed to attend the same forum since they secured their parties’ nomination. Warren conducted separate interviews with both candidates, asking questions about how their personal religious views would affect their presidency. We play highlights. [includes rush transcript]

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf announced his resignation today in order to avoid charges of impeachment that were to be leveled against him later this week. General Musharraf has ruled Pakistan since he seized power in a 1999 coup. He has been a close ally to the United States for the past decade. [includes rush transcript]

The equipment and integrated security systems used to detain Olympic protesters will remain long after the Olympics, to be used, many fear, on China’s own population. And some of the biggest beneficiaries of this surveillance boom are US hedge funds and corporations, including Cisco, General Electric and Google. We speak to journalists Naomi Klein and Christian Parenti, both of whom have recently reported from China. [includes rush transcript]

Human Rights Watch has accused both Russian and Georgian forces of killing and injuring civilians through indiscriminate attacks over the past week of fighting. Professor and author Michael Klare joins us to talk about how the Russian-Georgian conflict is largely an energy war over who has access to the vast oil and natural gas reserves in the Caspian region. [includes rush transcript]

The peace activist Alfred Zappala has died at the age of sixty-eight after a battle with lung cancer. Zappala became a vocal critic of the war in Iraq in 2004 after his son, Sgt. Sherwood Baker, was killed in Baghdad. [includes rush transcript]

In 2004, Jeremy Hinzman became the first war resister to seek asylum in Canada instead of going to fight in Iraq. On Wednesday, Canada’s Border Services Agency ordered the twenty-nine-year-old Hinzman, his wife, son and baby daughter to leave the country by Sept. 23. We speak to Jeremy Hinzman from Toronto. [includes rush transcript]

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind joins us for part two of an interview on his new book, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism. Suskind reports that in 2003 the White House ordered the CIA to forge and disseminate false intelligence documents linking al-Qaeda and Iraq. While much of the attention on the book has focused on the forged letter, Suskind also reveals that the Bush administration and the British government knew prior to the war that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. We also speak to Rep. John Conyers, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, which is investigating some of the explosive findings in Suskind’s book. [includes rush transcript]

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Judiciary Committee say they will review allegations the White House ordered the CIA to forge and disseminate false intelligence documents linking al-Qaeda and Iraq. The revelation is among several in Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ron Suskind’s explosive new book, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism. Suskind joins us for the hour to talk about the letter controversy and the thin denials that have followed its disclosure. He also reveals details of his lengthy conversations with the late Pakistani politician Benazir Bhutto and her frustrations with the Bush administration in the months before her assassination, and discloses the previously unknown case of an interrogation “cell” beneath the White House. [includes rush transcript]

In a piece called “Why I Will Carry the Olympic Torch,” Helen Zia wrote earlier this year, “A peaceful and better world is possible through friendly engagement and mutual understanding, not violent confrontation and polarization. It’s an Olympic message, a possible dream that our global civilization and everyone who is a part of it can aspire to—and for which I am proud to carry a torch.” [includes rush transcript]

We speak to John Hocevar, founder of Students for a Free Tibet, and the citizen journalist Noel Hidalgo, aka noneck, both of whom were just deported by China. Hidalgo used his cell phone to film most of the footage of the protests shown across the world. [includes rush transcript]

We speak to Elouise Cobell, the lead plaintiff in what was the largest class-action lawsuit against the US government. The Native American plaintiffs were seeking $47 billion, the total amount of lost royalties since 1887. [includes rush transcript]

More than 63 percent voted to back Morales’ government—nearly ten points more than the 54 percent that elected him in December 2005. The recall pitted Morales against governors who have pushed for autonomy for their resource-rich provinces. [includes rush transcript]

After four days of heavy fighting, Russian tanks are now approaching central Georgian cities away from the separatist regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Russian officials say Georgia provoked the assault by attacking South Ossetia late last week, causing heavy civilian casualties. NATO’s Secretary General and President Bush have both condemned Russia’s “disproportionate” use of force in Georgia. [includes rush transcript]

Three days of mourning have been declared in the West Bank and Gaza to mark the death of Mahmoud Darwish, the Poet Laureate of the Palestinians. Darwish was considered one of the most important Arab poets, a towering literary figure for over four decades. The poetry of Mahmoud Darwish is well known and loved across the Arab world by people from all walks of life. [includes rush transcript]

Columnist and author Thomas Frank joins us to talk about his latest book, The Wrecking Crew. Frank writes, “Fantastic misgovernment of the kind we have seen is not an accident, nor is it the work of a few bad individuals. It is the consequence of triumph by a particular philosophy of government, by a movement that understands the liberal state as a perversion and considers the market the ideal nexus of human society. This movement is friendly to industry not just by force of campaign contributions but by conviction.” [includes rush transcript]

As the 2008 Summer Olympic Games open in Beijing, we speak with sportswriter Dave Zirin. “This is the Olympics the West wanted: games where the grandest prize is not a gold medal but a glittering entree to China’s seemingly endless army of potential consumers,” writes Zirin. “This is the reason that George W. Bush will attend the opening ceremonies, the first U.S. President to do so on foreign soil.” [includes rush transcript]

The eyes of the world are focused on China today as the Summer Olympic Games open in Beijing. One big question centers on whether the Olympic Committee and the Chinese government will allow any public protests during the Games. We speak with an activist who was arrested in China and deported after unfurling a Tibet independence banner close to the main Olympic stadium. [includes rush transcript]

For the past two months, protesters have been filling the streets of Seoul condemning a decision to lift a ban on imported beef from the United States. We speak with Michael Hansen, senior scientist for Consumers Union. He is in Seoul, where he is testifying before the South Korean National Assembly at a special committee hearing on mad cow disease. [includes rush transcript]

South Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission is concluding the US military indiscriminately killed large groups of South Korean civilians during the Korean War in the early 1950s. The Commission has more than 200 cases on its docket, based on hundreds of citizens’ petitions recounting US bombing and strafing runs on South Korean refugee gatherings in 1950 and ’51. We speak with Pulitzer Prize-winning Associated Press reporter Charles Hanley, co-author of The Bridge at No Gun Ri: A Hidden Nightmare from the Korean War. [includes rush transcript]

In a detailed report, the Rwandan government is accusing France of being complicit in the “preparation and execution” of the 1994 genocide that killed some 800,000 people. The report released by the Rwandan Ministry of Justice Tuesday accuses top French officials, including former prime minister Dominique de Villepin and the late former president Francois Mitterrand, of playing a major role in the genocide. We speak with investigative journalist Linda Melvern, author of tw