http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-10-08/news/sns-rt-us-usa-newyork-motorcycle-20130930_1_suv-driver-motorcycle-riders-manhattan-district-attorney

Undercover officer arrested in probe of New York motorcycle gang beating

NEW YORK (Reuters) - An undercover New York detective was arrested on Tuesday for his alleged role in the attack on an SUV driver who was chased for miles along a Manhattan highway by dozens of motorcycle riders, police said.

Detective Wojciech Braszczok, 32, was arrested more than a week after bikers pursued the sport utility vehicle, driven by a man traveling with his wife and 2-year-old daughter. Riders smashed the vehicle's windows, hauled the driver out and beat him, police said.

Video of the September 29 confrontation was uploaded to YouTube and went viral. The incident began with a fender bender between the Range Rover SUV and one of the motorcyclists traveling north on Manhattan's Henry Hudson Parkway.

It escalated when the SUV, which was surrounded by the bikers, accelerated through the crowd, injuring one rider and sending motorcycles flying.

Braszczok was charged on Tuesday with riot and criminal mischief, the New York City Police Department said. Local News 4 New York reported that Braszczok was off duty at the time of the incident, and had surrendered to police with his attorney.

http://www.salon.com/2011/02/05/ronald_reagan_apartheid_south_africa/

The regime of apartheid in South Africa, under which nonwhites were systematically oppressed and deprived of their rights, is remembered as one of the worst crimes against humanity of the 20th century.

Despite a growing international movement to topple apartheid in the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan maintained a close alliance with a South African government that was showing no signs of serious reform. And the Reagan administration demonized opponents of apartheid, most notably the African National Congress, as dangerous and pro-communist. Reagan even vetoed a bill to impose sanctions on South Africa, only to be overruled by Congress.

On a trip to the United States after winning the Nobel Prize in 1984, Bishop Desmond Tutu memorably declared that Reagan’s policy was ”immoral, evil and totally un-Christian.” Reagan’s record on South Africa was also marked by at least one embarrassing gaffe, when he told a radio interviewer in 1985: “They have eliminated the segregation that we once had in our own country — the type of thing where hotels and restaurants and places of entertainment and so forth were segregated — that has all been eliminated.” Of course, that was simply not true, and Reagan later walked the statement back.

To learn more about Reagan’s policy on South Africa, I spoke with David Schmitz, a historian at Whitman College who has written widely on U.S. foreign policy. His new book is a biography of Brent Scowcroft. What follows is a transcript of our conversation, edited for length and clarity.