Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the Ukrainian president’s call for a snap election amid intense fighting in the country’s east, on the eve of a meeting with Russia’s president Putin in Belarus. Steven Pifer, a former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine who was also a special assistant to the president and senior director for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia on the National Security Council, joins us to discuss the fireman and the arsonist routine underway as Putin prepares to sit down with Poroshenko in Minsk while sending a convoy of Russian military vehicles with separatists flags across the border to open a new battle front in southeast Ukraine.

Part 2

Then with today’s funeral in St. Louis for Michael Brown, the black teenager shot by the white policeman that triggered two weeks of often-violent protest in Ferguson, Missouri, we speak with Doug Moore, the diversity reporter for the St. Louis Dispatch. He has been covering the funeral and the events that preceded it that have focused the nation’s attention on Ferguson, Missouri and the lack of political representation for the majority of African/American residents of this racially-divided town that has an overwhelming majority of whites on its police force, on the city council and on the local school board.

Part 3

Then finally we speak with Garrett Duncan, a professor of Education and African-American Studies at the University of Washington in St. Louis, about the student boycott on the first day of school in support of Michael Brown and in sympathy with his funeral. We discuss the inquiry underway before the grand jury looking into whether the Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson who shot the unarmed teenager six times should be charged and the doubts about the impartiality of the prosecutor presenting the case.

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the former Chief of Police of Seattle for an analysis of both the behavior of the police in Ferguson, Missouri and the St. Louis Metropolitan Police who just released cell-phone videos confiscated from bystanders of the fatal shooting of a mentally disturbed young African-American man who taunted the police to shoot him. Norm Stamper, who is an advisory board member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition and author of “Breaking Rank: A Top Cop’s Expose of the Dark Side of American Policing” join us to discuss the criminalization of the mentally ill in America as well as the criminalization of drug abusers, neither of whom Chief Stamper feels should be in jail, but instead should be dealt with by medical professionals, not law enforcement officers.

Part 2

Then we look into the record settlement of $16.65 billion between the Justice Department and Bank of America with Bartlett Naylor, the financial policy advocate for Public Citizen who formerly served as chief of investigations for the U.S. Senate Banking Committee where he led probes of the savings and loan crisis, corporate takeovers, and insider trading. We discuss how much money BofA paid out compared to how much they made off selling toxic mortgages, and the likely fate of Angelo Mozilo of Countrywide Savings who at one time was responsible for about one third of the liars loans that ruined the lives of millions of aspiring homeowners, most of whom, unlike Wall Street bankers, have not been made whole.

Part 3

Then finally, we speak with Elias Groll, an assistant editor at Foreign Policy where he just wrote the article “U.S. Special Forces Tried and Failed to Rescue James Foley”. We examine what is known about the rescue attempt which was apparently based on human intelligence and what is known about the London-accented British member of ISIS who issued a statement before executing James Foley and is believed to one of three British members of ISIS nicknamed “John, Paul and Ringo” who are believed to be the jailors of Foley and other journalists held hostage.