August 14 – Structural Racism at Play in Ferguson, Missouri; Hillary Trashes Obama then “Hugs” the Rift Away; A Leading Expert on the Kurds

Full Program
 

Part 1

We begin with the continuing protests in Ferguson, Missouri following the shooting of an unarmed black teenager Michael Brown by a white policeman, that have escalated with the police targeting reporters and TV crews to the point a new police force has been called in to replace the local one. Bree Carlson, the director of the Structural Racism Program for National People’s Action, a network of community organizations across the U.S, that uses direct action community organizing to advance racial and economic justice, joins us to discuss the deeper structural racial and economic issues at play beyond the headline of another young black man gunned down by a white policeman.

Part 2

Then we analyze the recent remarks by Hillary Clinton criticizing President Obama’s foreign policy and whether her promise of “hugging it out” at a Martha’s Vineyard birthday party will be sufficient to heal the rift at a time when the President is facing enormous foreign policy challenges with Russia in Ukraine and the Islamic State in Iraq. Jacob Heilbrunn, a Senior Editor at The National Interest and the author of “They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons” joins us to discuss recent efforts by Hillary Clinton to position herself with a more hawkish foreign policy to shore up her right flank as she prepares to run for the presidency in 2016.

Part 3

Then finally we speak with Edmund Ghareeb, an internationally recognized expert on the Kurds and Iraq who was the first Mustafa Barzani Scholar of Global Kurdish Studies at the Center for Global Peace at American University. We discuss the increasing humanitarian and military response to I.S. attacks on the Kurdish enclave in the north of Iraq and whether the resignation of Prime Minister Maliki will lead to a more unified Iraq as Britain agrees to directly arm the Kurds and the U.S. is rumored to be preparing a robust military response to I.S. beyond protecting the Kurds that involves targeting and destroying I.S. leadership and forces.