The Oh, Hello and

behind the news. My name is Doug Henwood. Two segments today,

Bernard Tort will analyze the political and economic crisis in Puerto Rico

and Sean Caritasley will analyze the political and

economic crisis in Turkey. Puerto Rico is seeing a wave of popular activism

with no recent precedent. The immediate spark was the release of some chat transcripts involving the

governor and his associates which revealed them as vulgar and bigoted

reactionaries. But discontent has long been simmering over a decade of

economic depression, a debt crisis, and the damage from Hurricane

Maria which still persists.

Since 2016, because of extreme indebtedness, the country has essentially been governed by a fiscal

oversight board, known as Pramesa, heavy with bankers and

lawyers. It's been ordering extreme austerity so that debt may continue to be serviced.

The big winners so far, hedge funds who have been speculating in Puerto Rican bonds, the losers, the people of Puerto Rico. Here to explain is Bernard Tort. Tort is a philosophy professor at the University of Puerto Rico as well as an activist and co-founder of Junta Hinte, a coalition of groups that addresses the question, as Tork puts it,

what can we do together that we cannot do apart?

The aim is to fight the disaster capitalists, the Bond vultures, and the austerity party.

According to the Gallup, two-thirds of Americans support statehood, were Puerto Rico, which seems surprisingly high to me,

but the number has barely changed since they first started asking the question in 1963.

By contrast, Americans oppose statehood for DC by a two to one margin.

As you'll hear from tort, sentiment on statehood versus independence within Puerto Rico is harder to read, though statehood is largely a dream of the right.

Here's Bernard Tort.

Let's first talk just a bit about this immediate crisis. A bunch of texts were leaked involving the governor

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