December 21 – The Divide Between the NYPD and Minorities and the Mayor; Pakistan Cracks Down on Terrorism While Releasing Terrorists from Prison; The Back Channel Between Washington and Havana

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the shooting of two police officers in Brooklyn, New York that has exacerbated divisions in the city between minority residents and the police and between the police and Bill de Blasio the Mayor of New York who was disrespected by the police who turned their backs on him at a press conference at the hospital where the slain policemen were pronounced dead. Obery Hendricks, a Visiting Scholar in Religion and African/American Studies at Columbia University joins us to discuss how the divide can be bridged politically and socially as attention turns from the rash of shootings of young black men by white police officers to the assassination of two police officers by an African/American criminal claiming to be acting in the name of victims of police violence.

Part 2

Then we examine the repercussion of the slaughter of school children at an Army School in Pakistan and how the incident is impacting the already volatile politics of Pakistan where the Army casts a long shadow over civilian government and where state-sponsored terrorism under a nuclear umbrella has been the country’s foreign policy which is now showing signs of backfiring. An expert on Pakistan Chris Fair, a Professor in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University and author of “Fighting to the End: Pakistan’s Way of War”, joins us to discuss mixed signals coming out of Pakistan as the government cracks down on the Pakistan Taliban at the same time releasing from prison, the architect of the Mumbai massacre.

Part 3

Then finally we speak with William LeoGrande, a Latin American specialist at American University and co-author of “Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana” who is just back from Cuba and will discuss the secret back channel that brought about the historic agreement between the United State and Cuba to end the over fifty year-long frozen Cold War relationship and begin to normalize diplomatic and economic relations between the Colossus of the North and the tiny island nation of Cuba 90 miles from Florida.