Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the opening of the Cuban embassy in Washington and talk with the former chief U.S. diplomat in Cuba from 1999 to 2002 Ambassador Vicki Huddleston. She joins us to discuss the new U.S. charge d’affaires in Cuba, our man in Havana Jeffrey DeLaurentis, who worked with her during turbulent times between the U.S. and Cuba when Fidel Castro and Miami Cubans were tussling over a Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez who was picked up at sea in the Florida Straits. We discuss the long-overdue re-establishment of diplomatic ties between the closest of enemies and the prospects for building on them.

Part 2

Then we go to Havana, Cuba and speak with Mark Frank who works for Thompson Reuters and the Financial Times and is the author of “Cuba Revelations: Behind the Scenes in Havana”. We discuss how much Cuba’s failing economy was a factor in breaking the more than five decade-long hostility since, according to Cuba’s official data, its GDP in 2003 was $77.2 billion at the official exchange rate, but using the internal exchange rate of 24 pesos to the dollar, Cuba’s GDP could be as low as $3.2 billion.  

Part 3

Then finally we look into the suicide bombing in the Turkish town of Suruc, near the Syrian border which killed 30 and wounded 100 mostly young Kurdish members of the Federation of Socialist Youth Associations meeting to plan to go to Kobane to help rebuild the nearby town devastated by fighting between the Islamic State and Kurdish fighters supported by U.S. air power. Henri Barkey, the Director of the Middle East Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars joins us to discuss whether this incident will force Turkey to confront the Islamic State which has benefited from Turkey’s inaction in preventing jihadist recruits from crossing through Turkey to join ISIL in Syria.  

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with President Obama’s visit to the El Reno Federal Correctional Institution in Oklahoma, the first president to spent time behind bars with prisoners, leading Obama to say after his tour of the prison, “There but for the grace of God…and that is something we all have to think about”. A retired judge and the founder and Executive Director of Middle Ground Prison Reform, Donna Hamm, joins us to discuss Obama’s recent call for an overhaul of America’s criminal justice system which has led to the international disgrace that the U.S., with less than 5% of world’s population, has more than 20% of the world’s prison population.

Part 2

Then, on the one-year anniversary of the downing of the Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 by a Russian missile over disputed Ukrainian territory that killed all 298 aboard the civilian airliner, we speak with Floyd Wisner, the Principal of Wisner Law Firm. He specializes in Aviation Law and is representing relatives of at least 17 victims of the atrocity which is being investigated by the Dutch Safety Board, as well as by a second criminal inquiry and last week Russia opposed a U.N. resolution under Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter to establish an international tribunal to investigate the shoot down.

Part 3

Then finally we speak with award-winning investigative journalist Max Blumenthal, about his new book “The 51 Day War: Ruin and Resistance in Gaza” and his latest article at Tomdispatch and The Huffington Post “The Fire Next Time”. We discuss whether as Israel’s Former Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has declared, “A fourth operation in the Gaza Strip is inevitable, just as a third Lebanon war is inevitable”.