Transcripts For KQED PBS NewsHour Weekend 20140706

In memory of miriam. Michelle and Philip Milstein family, bernard and irene with schwartz, the city foundation. Rosalind p. Walter. Corporate funding is provided by mutual of america, designing customized individual and Group Retirement products. That is why we are your retirement company. Additional support is provided by and by the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. Thank you. From the studios at Lincoln Center in new york, this is pbs newshour weekend. Good evening, thanks for joining us. Sreenivasan is on a reporting trip and will appear later in the broadcast. We begin in ukraine where the government says its forces have scored a major victory, routing prorussian separatists who later fled the city, the rebels have seized administrative buildings and police stations there three months ago, earlier this week, ukraines new president for 7 co announced a ceasefire with the rebels, meanwhile, sreenivasans into interview with the former u. S. Ambassador to russia about the crisis in the ukraine. From israel tonight, Palestinian Militants in gaza fired more rockets today into israel and israeli warplanes responded by hitting targets in gaza. This as the findings of a preliminary autopsy of a. Teenager came to light. For more we are joined now from jerusalem by, via escape from Josef Federman of the associated press. Thanks for joining us. I woke up this morning to the first news of this autopsy that came out involving the Palestinian Youth killed there e this week. What can you tell us about that . Yes. We received the initial results of the autopsy and they are pretty disturbing, the signs are that this boy was burned alive. They found signs he actually inhaled smoke before he died. And where is the criminal investigation into his death . Do we know who did this yet . We dont. The assumption, at least on the palestinian side is that israeli extremists did this in a revenge three israeli teenagers foundf earlier this week. Israel has put, you know, maximum effort into the search for the killers but they still dont know who they are and they still dont have a firm motive. They say they are exploring all possibilities including nationalistic motives, but also the possibility of criminal activity or some sort of family feud. It is really too soon to say. Joe, i know personally you have been reporting out of the region for more than a decade now. The, what do the last couple of weeks seem to you like . Yes. I feel we entered some unchartered waters here. I have seen things i havent seen before in a decade of covering stories. It began with the kidnapping of three israeli teenagers three weeks ago, that is what set up this round of tensions where you have three civilians, underage teenagers being targeted, abducted and killed, that was sort of the type of attack that hasnt been seen before. The reaction in israel is also something i havent seen where you have hundreds outside of my office the following day, when the boys were being buried, hundreds of young israelis march through downtown jerusalem calling for revenge, screaming death to arabs and so forth, and it is a chilling sight to w; and then a few hours later, this boy is abducted in east jerusalem, a palestinian boy is abducted and his charred body is found in the forest a few hours later. We are not sure who did it but the timing, the motive, the atmosphere at least points that direction as a strong possibility. You also have told me earlier in a telephone conversation you saw the mother of one of the israelis killed speak out. Yes. She issued a statement, the family issued a statement and this is sort of a glimmer of hope saying after the palestinian boy was found burned to death she put out a statement saying murder is wrong, it doesnt matter if you are jewish, doesnt matter if you are arab, murder is murder, and hopefully a voice like that can sort of calm tensions down as we move forward. So Josef Federman from the associated press, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you. Larson in afghanistan, 200 tanker trucks carrying fuel for nato forces were set on fire in an attack near the capital city of kabul. Taliban militants claimed responsibility. From iraq tonight, word of the first public appearance by the man behind the recent offensive by islamic extremists who have captured towns in Northern Iraq and western iraq, and declared a cal fate or Islamic State. For more about that and the counter offensive by Iraqi Government forces we are joined now via skype from baghdad by Matthew Bradley of the wall street journal. Matt thanks for joining us, what is the latest at this hour . The latest is the. Last couple of hours is the appearance of the Islamic State leader abu who made his first video appearance just today. And in the last couple of hours, a video that was on social media and supposedly shows him giving what is called a hukba or sort of like a sermon to a meeting of muslims in a mosque in mosul, a city in iraq yesterday. So this is a very big deal because abu is only, the only known photos of him available and he is a notoriously elusive character and now a lengthy video sequence of him for the first time, and it is a very interesting development. We are now putting a face to a name of a jihadi leader who really has eclipsed al qaeda and the leader of al qaeda in the last couple of month in terms of power and in terms of popularitied. You know, you are in baghdad. What is the mood on the streets right now in baghdad . How close are sort of these forces to baghdad now . These sources are, forces are forming something of a uh shape, a u shape around baghdad. They are quite close, about 100 miles to the north in the city of tikrit. To the west, close, the closest city being which and they are quite close to baghdad in the south, and there have been clashes there, where abu ghraib is the huge, where the u. S. Forces were seen torturing and harassing prisoners, that prison has been evacuate add couple of months ago because of how close the militants were coming so they are really pretty close to the city, the thing is that baghdad is not like the Islamic State which is known at isis was able to take, because baghdad is quite a large shiite population and not really possible for this militia to move in quite as easily into baghdad as they did in mosul and some of the cities to the north. Matt, we understand there have been some, some successes by Government Forces. What is the reality, at least the way it feels there in the streets . You know, will Government Forces be able to move into any of these major metropolitan areas they have lost . Well, it doesnt look good. The military has been trying to take tikrit, which is the city that is near the hometown of Saddam Hussein and they have been doing that for about a week trying to push into this city, there have been land mines that have been really frustrating the approach, so it doesnt look good for the iraqi military, they dont seem to be able to take the upper hand against militant group that should be much less prepared, much worse trained and much worse armed than this u. S. Trained and u. S. Armed military. Larson matt bradley of the wall street journal, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you. Larson late today, reuters quoted the Iraqi Government as calling the video a fabrication. The government claimed its troops wounded the islamic leader in a bombing attack and that he is being treated in syria. Hurricane arthur has come and gone, but not before flooding some coastal areas in massachusetts. New bedford about 60 miles south of boston received as much as eight inches of rain. Portions of cape cod were also flooded. From houston, reports of a near collision between two passenger planes on thursday, the faa says a Singapore Airline 777 jumbo jet taking off flew dangerously close to a Delta Airlines jet landing at george bush intercontinental airport. We have a 2344. All right. Check left. 5,800, a boeing 777. The faa says the pilot of the Singapore Airlines plane after his initial climb did not level off as required. The faa says it is take additional steps to ensure that all pilots are aware of the rules. Californias leading chicken producer, foster farms is recalling 170 different chicken products. This after the federal government linked chicken produced by that company to a salmonella outbreak that has sickened some 600 people in 27 states and puerto rico. The Company Disputes that its chicken led to the illnesses, it says it has issued the recall in, quote, the fullest interest of food safety. Also in california, the Highway Patrol says it is investigating a graphic video that shows an officer straddling and repeatedly punch ago woman on the side of the freeway. The video was captured by a passing motorist on tuesday. He distributed it to the media. The Highway Patrol officials said yesterday that the officer involved has been placed on administrative leave. He said the officer was trying to restrain the woman who had been walking on the freeway. Hari sreenivasan has been the at the aspen ideas festival. He interviewed the ambassador to russia, the conversation focused on the crisis in the ukraine and its impact on u. S. Western relations. For someone watching right now, what is happening on the ground there . We are seeing these pushes from the Ukrainian Government to try to quell the unrest. We saw ceasefire and now we are seeing the end of that ceasefire. What is president poroshenko trying to do . Well, the first thing that is happening there is a giant and needless tragedy, and i want to start with that, because we sometimes quickly get in, we talk about the conflict and kind of raising the conflict, this is one with that didnt need to happen. Ethnic ukrainians and ethnic russians lived side by side for a long time. This is all fabricated by bad leadership and bad decisions and now you have hundreds of people dying in a place that had been peaceful for a long time. And that is frustrating to me as somebody who worked on the effort to try to make relations with the ukraine and russia better with the United States. Well right now poroshenko is also frustrated. He has an over sure, a ceasefire plan. He then called for a ceasefire and he didnt get the response he wanted. Maybe externally the response was better than the one from the rebels or terrorists inside the ukraine and so now he decided to go after that and see where it ends. What about russias support for these rebels or terrorists . The steady stream of people that are coming from russia into these parts of the ukraine and obviously military support in the way of ammunition or some of the weapons that are coming in . You dont have this insurgency without russian support. It doesnt mean they control them or putin is on the phone every day talking to the commanders and not that kind of control but particularly the open border and the public support for them as well as the military assistance, the hardware, those three components are there and if putin wanted to shut it down he could by disrupting those three components. Are we misunderstanding president putins motivations . Because right now there is this idea that crimea was the first and then there are going to be parts of ukraine and he wants to sort of recapture the glory days of the russian empire. I dont think that is true. I do not think that this is the second phase of a grand strategy. I do believe he went into crimea because the government fell in can i ever, he was pissed off, it was an emotional tactical move and took advantage of weakness in can i ever to do that. Kiev to do that and he experimented in Eastern Ukraine he wanted to see where it went and he gave them some public support. For a time, and now i see him as deciding this is not going to lead to Popular Uprising in Eastern Ukraine to join russia, and so he is looking for a way to distance himself from those fighting on the ground, by the way you see it with their own statements from time to time of frustration that putin is not doing more for them. So what are the options for the United States when it comes to the ukraine and when it comes to russia . The biggest, obvious point, you know, the fork in the road for ukraine is to end the violence. If poroshenko or some configuration of International Leaders helped in the violence, then ukraine has a chance as a state, as an economy, as a democracy. And that should be where the first and foremost objective is to help stabilize the economy and to make that democracy function. That is the way you deter further aggression and further problems in the ukraine looking forward. But a precondition to make that happen is to end the violence in the Eastern Ukraine. Does the stance the america takes on the ukraine have effects in other parts of Foreign Policy between the United States and russia . Yes. I think it does. Particularly in the way that putin now views us as the sinister agent trying to deter and contain and confront russia. Thats the way he thinks about it. He says this publicly, very vocally and therefore if you need trust for cooperation with russia, then you are not going to have it. I think personally trust is overrated in diplomacy in general. I think people talk about ate lot and in fact i didnt see a lot of it when i was in the government but certainly if that is a requirement for cooperation on issue x, y or z we are not going to have that as part of the equation but there are a lot of things we can do that doesnt require trust, that just requires our interests to be in align. And so how does the United States made make the case for aligning our interests when it comes to the ukraine . Well, obviously go back to the argument we made when i was still in government, which is before the violence, but we said to putin and to the rest of the government, look, we do not see in some terms. This is not a game over the ukraine going to be in the west or the east. We think that a prosperous ukraine is good for russia and good for europe and good for the United States, by the way. And i in my negotiations when we would talk about this when i was still an ambassador would say we have traded arrangements with all kinds of countries and as long as they are consistent with each other, they can be mutually beneficial. Unfortunately, that is not the way putin saw that particular set of events. Michael mcfaul, thanks so much for your time. Than thanks for having me. From San Francisco tonight a report about photographer an thon any friedkin and a new exhibit of his work that was more than 40 years in the making. In it he captures life among homosexuals in the late 1960s and early 1970s and document it is birth of the gay rights movement, Scott Schaefer of kqeed newsroom reports. Reporter in west hollywood, two old friends, Don Kilhefner and anthony friedkin, reunite. I even have the camera that i shot all the photos with. This was the camera. This baby was the one that did it all. Reporter the camera that set them on a journey together decades ago. All gathered this night in honor of kilhefner and other pioneering gay rights activists. applause placed at the center of the mural are Don Kilhefner, with morris kight, founders of the Gay Liberations front in los angeles. A photograph taken by friedkin at the dawn of the Gay Liberation movement. It was 1969. A societal shift was taking place. It was rarely about saying no, we wont accept this anymore. Reporter in cities across america gay people were fighting back, something that wasnt lost on 19yearold anthony friedkin. There is something that is referred to as the concerned photographer. And the idea is that you celebrate humanity for its good things but you also identify the things that need to be reevaluated and changed. Reporter what friedkin saw that needing change was attitudes toward homosexuality. I thought it was horrible the way gay people were treated by our society. It made me angry. Reporter friedkin grew up in los angeles. His father was a screen writer, his mother was a dancer choreographer. They had tons of friends who were gay. He had been around gay people all of his life, so it didnt seem strange to him. They expressed themselves in a free way with love and affection and humor, so, you know, i wanted to try to record that, you know, just out of the dignity that i thought they deserved that many people wouldnt give them. Reporter so friedkin sought out kight and kilhefner, who had just who had just founded the Gay Community Services Center in los angeles. They gave him access to a world that was just emerging from the shadows. He comes across as real. And at that time as a young man, he was on fire, he was on fire with creativity. He saw things that other people didnt see. Reporter friedkin dedicated two years capturing and printing the most powerful images possible. It was not unusual at that time for cars with four or five young people in it with baseball bats to stop a gay person on the street and beat them senseless. So, it was dangerous even associating with gay people at that time. What tony did was, he ventured into this dangerous space and he took his photographs. Reporter but the photographs were ahead of their time, and most galleries wouldnt show them until now. The culmination of friedkins vision took 45 years, but its now being realized at the De Young Museum in San Francisco. The exhibit titled the gay essay is under the direction of chief photography curator julian cox. Julian, this looks fantastic. Oh, my god. This guy can play, like, a halfback. Anthonys whole approach to what he does is very immersive. He really believed that to make good work, you had to be deeply connected to your subject. I really believed that the print is such an important part the art form of photography. Jim was such an extraordinary young man, you know. He was chicano, and he lived in a hardcore ganginfested area. And to be gay in that kind of a community and to come out openly that way and walk around the neighborhood. Reporter what do you see in those eyes . Theres a curiosity in his eyes about what his future might be like, what the path that he has chosen to go down. Reporter and this is troy perry here. Yes. Reporter he founded the metropolitan community church. Correct. This was a very dark, tragic day. This church was burnt down. Look in his eyes. Hes defiant. Hes saying, im here to take you on. It was that new Gay Liberation spirit. We were demanding it. You take your freedom, and it was that audacious attitude that was the climate of the times, and tony caught that. Oh, that is great. Oh, my god. Look at those two characters. He humanizes, when i was looking again at the photographs of kite man i thought, a tear came to my eye. Those were very difficult days for gay people. The amount of oppression that we faced everywhere was tremendous. This camera has some of the special moments it was witness to. Having this camera, i dont know what i would do without this camera. Being a purist shooting black and white film, to capture the decisive moment and still pushing the limits. I think the risk of this are critical to our ability to do interesting work. And how much risk we are going to take. This is pbs weekend saturday. Now, a visit to one of the worlds only underwater labs, where six scientists recently spent a month offkey largo in florida studying the effects of Climate Change or corral Hari Sreenivasan spoke to the mission leader, fabien cousteau, grandson of jacques cousteau. Welcome to the bottom of the sea, aquarius is the worlds only undersea marine laboratory. Why are we doing this . Simply because it gives us the luxury of time. Were able to go into this final frontier on our living planet to explore unadulterated and unlimited by time, which is not something one can say when diving down from a boat. Sreenivasan tell us a little bit about what it is that youre doing when youre out there six to eight hours a day. Well, we have a wet lab, which you have in that photo right there, and also a dry lab inside the habitat. What were looking at are issues with Climate Change, or more specifically related to Climate Change and acidification levels as well as pollution. So, were looking at the baseline of the underwater cities that basically dictates everything that lives in and around these coral cities. Sreenivasan is there anything cool that youve seen since youve been down there . Its just amazing. Weve seen so much new behavior that ive never seen before fish sleeping in sponges; a goliath grouper attacking a barracuda never seen that before. I dont think anyone has ever caught it on film before. I mean, its just science fiction. Its really amazing down here, and thats why were down here. My grandfather used to say, in order to film a fish, you must become a fish. So, were trying to get as close as we can to becoming fish. Reef,. Some late news before we leave you tonight. The Us State Department says it is profoundly troubled by reports that Israeli Police beat an American High School student. The 15yearold is from florida and is the cousin of the Palestinian Teen who was apparently burned alive and may have been a revenge attack for the murder of three israeli teenagers, and the july 5th Holiday Weekend has brought a wave of violence to chicago. Police there say at least 36 people have been shot, one of the shootings was fatal. Join us tomorrow on air and online. I am john larson. Thanks for joining us. Captioning sponsored by wnet captioned by Media Access Group at wgbh access. Wgbh. Org pbs newshour weekend has been provided by Corporate Funding is provided by mutual of america designing customized, individual and Group Retirement products. Thats why were your retirement company. Additional support has been provided by and by the corporation for public broadcasting. And by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. And by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. Thank you. Next. One, two, three. From oakland, california, one of the most accomplished childrens choirs in the u. S. Heads off on an adventure to the small baltic country of estonia. To sing in a 150yearold song festival where tens of thousands of singers take the stage to sing songs of defiance, joy and unity. applause