Jacobin Radio: Puerto Rico, US-Iran

Suzi looks at the rising in Puerto Rico with professor, activist, and author Rafael Bernabe in San Juan, Puerto Rico where two weeks of massive protests brought down the corrupt government of Ricardo Rosselló, and continue amid uncertainty about what comes next. The protest movement took off after the Center for Investigative Journalism released nearly 900 pages of chat messages between Rosselló and his inner circle, revealing their misogyny, homophobia, and the contempt they held for the population. But it wasn’t just the most recent events that brought the people’s anger to the boiling point: the economic meltdown of 2008–2009 hit a Puerto Rico already ensnared in a never-ending debt crisis engineered by vulture funds, and when natural disaster hit following economic disaster, conditions went from bad to worse. Bernabe helps us understand this trajectory, and we get his view on what direction he sees for Puerto Rico after the success of the mass movement.

Asli Bâli, UCLA law professor and Middle East expert on public international law, international security, and nuclear non-proliferation, gives us a big picture look at the US-Iran conflict and its defunct nuclear agreement. Trump continues to threaten Iran, aided by the mainstream media who are freaking out over Iran’s supposed breach of the 2015 Nuclear Accord, seemingly forgetting that it was Trump who unilaterally tore up that agreement, arbitrarily imposing a new, brutal sanctions regime. Bâli looks at the deeper context of the chronic but escalating US-Iran conflict, and explores its trajectory now that Trump has essentially abandoned the deal.