Friday is Loud & Clear's weekly segment The Week in Review, about the week in politics, policy, and international affairs. This week includes the G20 segment, Marc Lamont Hill's firing, and a domestic workers' bill of rights being introduced.
FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, is spending more than $1 billion in Puerto Rico to repair homes damaged by Hurricane Maria. But much of that money is going to contractors charging steep markups and overhead? The New York Times reports that some repairs are indeed being made, but at an astronomical cost. Dr. Adriana Garriga-López, Department Chair and Associate Professor of Anthropology at Kalamazoo College, joins the show.
Seven men were found guilty yesterday of the murder of Honduran indigenous environmental activist Berta Caceres, who was shot and killed on March 2, 2016, two days before her 45th birthday. Caceres had waged a long battle to stop construction of an internationally-financed hydroelectric dam on the Gualcarque River, which the Lenca people consider sacred. The judge found that the murder was ordered by the construction company's executives. Brian and John speak with Jackie McVicar, a member of the Atlantic Region Solidarity Network, working in solidarity with people struggling for social justice and environmental protection in Latin America, the Caribbean and Atlantic Canada, and a former co-coordinator of the Maritimes-Guatemala Breaking the Silence Solidarity Network.
Manor Care was a highly respected nursing home and retirement community company based in Silver Spring, Maryland. Five years ago it was taken over by the Carlyle Group, one of the largest private equity firms in the world. Under Carlyle's ownership, however, the company went bankrupt. And serious cases of elder abuse are now coming to light. Len Haberman, an attorney with the Senior Justice Law Firm who has specialized in elder law and nursing home abuse cases for more than 20 years, joins the show.
The political news website Politico this week published an article about the foreign press and their apparent love affair with Donald Trump. The thrust of the article was that the foreign press doesn't criticize the president because fawning coverage is a way for countries to ingratiate themselves with him. But the article focuses on, of course, the Russians. It makes no mention of the Israeli press or news outlets in most Arab countries. Joe Lauria, the editor-in-chief of Consortium News, founded by the late Robert Parry, and the author of the book "How I Lost, By Hillary Clinton," joins Brian and John.
It's Friday! So it's time for the week's worst and most misleading headlines. Brian and John speak with Steve Patt, an independent journalist whose critiques of the mainstream media have been a feature of his blog Left I on the News and on twitter @leftiblog, and Sputnik producer Nicole Roussell.
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