August 25 - Putin as the Fireman and the Arsonist; A Report on Michael Brown's Funeral From the Diversity Reporter with the St. Louis Dispatch; Questions About the Impartiality of the Prosecutor of Officer Wilson

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.