 Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Your weekly movement news round up. Right now as part of a series of as part of some reporting as well, so he won't be there in today's today's episode. But to come back, like I said, it's May 5th today, the birthday of the birth anniversary of Karl Marx, who also among the many other things he was was also a journalist writing some excellent and responsible for some excellent works of journalism. In fact, one can argue that a lot of his writing really read like journalism throughout his life, even some of his four complex works. So a good day to sort of remember Karl Marx, the issues and the issues he stood for, the organizations he built. The day may today is also two days after World Press Freedom Day, which is celebrated on May 3rd, the anniversary of the Windhoek Declaration in Namibia. And when journalists from Africa in 1991 talked about an alternate way of understanding news and at the time of this whole neoliberal assault that is taking place across the world, conceptualized news in very different ways. And I think across the world on May 3rd, while we on one hand talked about press freedom, talked about the importance of the need for free media and the need for media unencumbered by corporate monopolies. The need for the media which offers space for journalists to not only work, of course, but also to lead a life of dignity. We also remember Julian Assange, who continues to languish in Belmarsh prison on no charges, facing no charges, there's been no trial. But he's in Belmarsh prison because people, because the governments have still not decided if he's to be extradited to the United States. Although all evidence shows that if he is extradited to the US, he is definitely going to face what is likely to be a very unfair legal system. He's likely to be imprisoned in very brutal circumstances, which might affect him deeply. And he's probably likely to spend a large portion of the remainder of his life in jail. All this on charges of, as we've told multiple times on this show, all this on charges of espionage. Because what was Julian Assange's crime, the fact that he revealed the atrocities, the war crimes committed by the United States and Afghanistan in Iraq. He exposed the kind of diplomatic, the underhanded diplomatic dealings of the US, the United States across the world. And the US really set out to make an example of him. So I think when we talk about press freedom, of course, very difficult to not talk about Assange. In fact, I think we're not talking about him enough. The world is not talking about him enough because his name, what is being done to him should be the first thing that comes to people's minds. Whenever, say for instance, Joe Biden or anyone in the United States talks about democracy. Of course, this is also the month where we celebrate International Workers' Day, May Day that is May 1. Quite a few important dates coming in the first week of May. And again, across the world, I think we saw some amazing mobilizations. So very important questions posed by workers across the world. We carried a series of reports from various regions. And as you know, especially over the last year because the Ukraine war, workers have been facing a very tough time. And this is not because we say it's because of the war, but the important thing is it's because of the policies of their own governments who have continued with austerity, who have not considered increasing salaries, who have not considered fresh recruitment, who have made cutbacks on their own expenditure. And this is first working in many parts of the world to ask the question of why is it that we can't even have salaries which keep up with inflation. We're not asking for the moon, we're just saying give us salaries which help us match the inflation. Don't let our salaries actually decline in value over time. And this seems to be a very basic and elementary demand. But it seems that the governments of the world are not listening to this demand. So across the world, there's been a huge increase in mobilizations. Some landmark strikes taking place, for instance. I think of course also in France, but also we need to remember a country for instance like Uruguay where also pension reform is a big issue. We talk about pension reform in France, but Uruguay is facing another similar round of massive protests over pension reforms as well. Very important to keep shining the light on these protests, not only the events that are protest, but also the processes that take place around it, the mobilization, the fact that these are continuous events that are taking place throughout the year. So May Day for us is of course one day, but it's also in some senses, it sums up what for people's dispatch for global order for many journalists like us is the entire year. Well, another important country in the celebration of May Day is of course Cuba. And this year as we know, there were some challenges to actually carrying out these celebrations. There's been a very acute fuel shortage crisis in the country. Again, as we've been covering on people's dispatch and global charter, the very, very, very restrictive sanctions put in place by Donald Trump, continued by Joe Biden, and of course the inclusion of Cuba on the list of state sponsors of terrorism has made international trade almost impossible. And so right now Cuba is dealing with a serious fuel shortage crisis. So initially they had actually changed the nature of the May Day celebrations to be decentralized actions across the country rather than one massive march in Havana. And then even this was also had to be postponed until today because of a very severe storm which knocked out the power in several areas of the country and made the preparations that they had already made a bit challenging. So actually today people were on the streets, not only celebrating May 1st International Workers Day, but also the birth anniversary as you said of Karl Marx and such a beautiful site. I mean, I've just been looking on the internet on the social media, seeing the images of people waving the flags, singing the international. And it's so important at this moment of such strife across Cuba with this economic crisis due to the US sanctions, due to the blockade, that people are able to celebrate, they're able to be together, they're able to mobilize and recommit to this revolutionary spirit. It's really something that's beautiful. And we were, myself and our colleague Weishach were on the ground in Cuba accompanying the May Day Brigade over the past 10 days. Over 150 young people from across the United States, the largest of its kind in the past few decades of young people from the US going to Cuba. And it's not such an easy thing as you know, part of the blockade that the US has imposed on Cuba is also prohibiting people in many ways from traveling to Cuba. Tourism is completely prohibited. So if you're able to go to Cuba, it's under a very specific license. For example, we, it was very focused on educational exchange, meeting with Cuban organizations, learning from their process. And of course, hearing from all different sectors of society, LGBTQ organizations, one of the historic LGBTQ centers in Santa Clara, which really was kind of the center of so much of the organizing that was happening and very, very connected to, of course, the drafting of the historic family code. We also met one of the people who helped write this family code, one of the lawyers who was involved in this process, really, really, really incredible. And for the people that were on the brigade as well, from all these different social organizations across the United States, it's such an important moment. Breaking the blockade, which is a slogan of this brigade, is not only about, of course, being against these unilateral course of measures imposed by the US government, but it's also about forging ties of friendship and solidarity between two peoples that are so close to each other in distance. But of course, because of US policy have been separated. So it was a very, very, very interesting experience. And so many people talked about the urgent, urgent, urgent necessity of taking Cuba off the state sponsors of terrorism list. We've spoke about it so many times on this show, whether it's an excuse that the ELN delegation, the peace delegation, was being held there, was in Cuba while they were waiting to see if the talks would be resumed, which is a legal established protocol in the peace agreements framework. That was used as an excuse for Cuba being a state sponsor of terrorism. Other accusations have been the fact that freedom fighters, black freedom fighters from the United States, such as Asara Shakur, are in Cuba in having political asylum. That has also been used as an excuse. But really, a couple days ago, a journalist from belly of the beast from Cuba asked a US official, why is the US collaborating with Cuba to stop terrorism if it designates Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism? There has to be some sort of contradiction between these two things. And the US official essentially didn't know what to say and said that it's because Cuba violates human rights. Which as we know, that's not being a state sponsor of terrorism. That's a different accusation from the United States altogether. So as these contradictions emerge, as it becomes more and more clear that there's no reason that Cuba should be on this list, it'll be interesting to see how this campaign proceeds and if the Biden administration, which proclaims to be more progressive, will actually listen to its people. Of course, talking about Cuba, one always remembers the contributions it has made into internationalism as well. So that way it's also so apt that people from the United States, young leaders, went there. And you also can't talk about Cuban internationalism without talking about its contribution to health, the medical brigades that have gone everywhere, the vaccines it provided to people. And this is an interesting time for the politics of health across the world. We are moving towards the fifth people's health assembly that's going to be held in December in Colombia. And the last one was held in 2018 in Bangladesh. So there's been a host of health workers' struggles taking place in Bangladesh across the world since then. And at the end of 2020 will be a moment for all these people from all these struggles to come together, exchange their experiences, envision a new path forward. And as many of our viewers would know, we work with the People's Health Movement for what is set up to represent what is called People's Health Dispatch. In fact, next week is an anniversary. We'll watch out for that. But I want to sort of bring attention to an interesting development in Ghana, which is the approval of a new malaria vaccine a few weeks ago in that country. And this is a very interesting moment in Ghana. I think one extent of the problem needs to be stated, which is that Africa suffers a huge, huge malaria burden. The whole continent, especially the sub-Saharan region, suffers a huge, huge malaria burden. I think 95% of all cases and 96% of all deaths take place in the WHO African region. And 80% of the fatalities are recorded among children under the age of five. So this itself shows the extent of the problem the continent has. And so it is quite interesting to see that a new vaccine was approved by Ghana a few weeks ago. Now, this is usually what happens is vaccines are approved in the global north. They come much in the global south. And there's this whole question of who produces it? Who produces it mass? What are the terms on which countries in the global south get these vaccines? And that makes it sort of really, it makes it much more difficult for people in the global south to access it. And the fact that one, Ghana is getting, it has approved this vaccine first and second. It is being produced by the Serum Institute in India automatically makes it this is a very interesting moment. Now, this is kind of a follow up to an earlier vaccine that existed called Moskrix, I believe. But this vaccine is called the R21 matrix. The interesting thing about it is that it's funding a lot of the research around it was far more public, rather than the earlier version where there was much far more corporate or foundation money involved. So the fact that public universities play a much greater role in the development of this vaccine is also a very interesting aspect of this vaccine. And we saw all these debates that the COVID-19 vaccine was going on, how actually a lot of the foundational research is done by public institutions with taxpayer money, but sometimes corporates gain a lot of benefit from it. But this is a very important moment globally because this could actually be a stepping stone for the models of this sort. Ghana is facing a substantial malaria crisis as well. In fact, we carried out a report which talked some weeks ago, which talked about the Ghana Health Service announcing that the Anophilus Defensive Mosquito has been identified in the country as well. So there's a lot of, there's a lot of concerns in Ghana about the malaria situation. There's a lot of concerns about the health situation in general because the lack of funding that has been going on, the kind of the situation, the health system being quite bad. So overall, you know, this is, I think, as we move towards the people's health assembly that is taking place as there's greater awareness growing out about the politics of health, I think that's one thing that has changed after COVID that the politics of health has come far, far more into the public imagination than it used to be a few years ago because so many of us have been forced to read, so many of us have lived through emergencies of various sorts, and I think these have exposed the, you know, the failures of the corporate model of health. So let's see how this vaccine fairs and we'll be tracking this story in the coming weeks and months as well. That's exactly right. And I think also one of the major challenges, for example, in Latin America as many of these countries have shifted to the left to progressive governments is how to rebuild these public health systems. We're seeing this challenge being confronted in Colombia and of course in Brazil where Luda da Silva was sworn in on January 1, that public health system still being one of the strongest in the regions but severely weakened by Michel Temer and Jair Bolsonaro during their presidencies. But in Brazil it is a challenging and interesting moment right now. The Landless World Workers Movement has been under attack by the Conservative-controlled Congress. So as we know we've been, of course, followed very, very closely the elections that happened last year, Lula winning in a very important victory, but of course noting that the Senate, the Chamber of Deputies did have a significant dominance of the Conservative sectors, of these, as they call them, parliamentary groups representing agribusiness, the banks, the livestock area and of course the illegal mining groups. And these conservative sectors have essentially tried to use their leverage in Congress to put pressure on Lula and one of the main areas that they're doing this with is attacking the MST. The MST had a very, very, very strong and role in the campaign of Lula. They were at all of the activities. I mean you couldn't go to Lula Raleigh without seeing MST hats, maybe not even from the members of MST but amongst people of society. Really in the past several years it has gained such a protagonistism in Brazilian society because of what it represents. It represents trying to build a better society for people, trying to provide healthy and safe food. We know Brazil is one of the countries that uses the highest number of agrotoxins in its agro-industry. This means that by just eating conventional food in that country, you're ingesting a disproportionate level of chemicals. This is not safe for humans. This of course has health impacts on the communities. MST has really been through their work, through building these settlements, through building agro-ecological cooperatives. They've been trying to address these principal problems and of course the biggest problem in Brazil right now which is hunger. In April, which is the month of peasant struggle, it's called Red April for the MST. It commemorates April 17th, which is the day that, I think, 19 members of the MST were shot down during a land occupation. A horrible, horrible day, the massacre, El Dorado da Caraja. They have commemorated this day and peasant movements across the world commemorate this day as the International Day of Peasant Struggle. In this month in Brazil, they use it as a moment to organize, to agitate, to get their message across the society, and to intensify their efforts to bring about people's land reform, which is of course the main objective of this movement. This month, they carried out several occupations of different lands. It's important to highlight what is this tactic that they do. The MST is an organization that really organizes around the constitutional clause in the Brazilian Constitution that says that land, which is unproductive, land where there's being environmental violations or slave labor is happening there, has to be seized by the state. It has to be turned over and used for agrarian reform and used and made productive. The MST essentially has been, for all of its existence over three decades, has been occupying these areas of lands that they identify where people haven't paid their taxes, where it's unproductive land, land that's abandoned, not being used for the people, for the production of healthy food. They occupy this land, they begin to build communities, they begin to build what they call encampments, which eventually they lobby the government to turn these into settlements. Now what's happened in this month? As I said at the beginning, there's been major attacks against the MST because of these occupations and because of this tension that exists between, on one hand, the progressive leader Lula in the executive branch and on the other hand, the conservative Congress. The Congress has essentially been attacking the MST saying that these occupations are land invasions, are saying that these are legal, that they're criminals. They've been targeting some of the main leaders of the MST, the most visible in the national leadership, saying that they're terrorists, saying all sorts of things. They even opened up a parliamentary commission of inquiry to investigate the MST, investigate these activities, essentially to put a lot of pressure on the movement, which has very, very widespread support across society. And so in this moment, they're dealing with these right-wing attacks from the Congress. However, as over the past six years, even under these right-wing governments, the movement has gained such legitimacy in society that they're actually receiving so much support and many see this as, again, a pressure tactic against the movement, trying to criminalize the movements, but also to put pressure on the Lula da Silva government, which has very open and good relationships with the movement. So we're going to continue to follow the story. It's extremely important. We work very, very closely with the MST and this sort of criminalization has happened to them in the past. They've often come under attack for this. But as I explained, this is really in the Brazilian constitution, the occupation of lands is trying to make it more productive. So it's important to understand how this works and why these attacks really are kind of just based in this right-wing discourse. Right, Zoe, as you were talking, I think behind you there's a bottle of... or at least the bottle from the MST store. MST store is very interesting because they bring all these crops, they're produced from around the country and it's quite an experience to go to one of them. One of the points I thought, which I found very interesting in what you're talking about is their perspective on agroecology, on growing on food sovereignty and how that also brings the kind of occupations they do actually focus a lot and bring dignity back to people, people who otherwise are dispossessed, do not have land, do not have a sense of... are adrift, so to speak. And that's such an important strategy for a progressive movement. So in some senses it's no surprise that when you go to a country like Afghanistan, for instance, there's been a report recently which says that I think over 90% of households are struggling with some kind of food poverty or are struggling to cross the market, cross the poverty line or food poverty line, so to speak, because that country has been completely destroyed in a process that has taken place over decades, of course, and the latest post-Taliban rule is just... the latest Taliban rule is just the latest installment of that. So recently, a couple of days ago, there was this meeting that took place in Doha. We saw that countries of various countries from across the world gathered for a discussion in the Afghan situation. The Taliban was not called, although they are in charge of Afghanistan, created a bit of controversy and the Taliban saying that nothing could happen without as long as they were excluded. The officials saying that western countries didn't want the Taliban to be called, but all this taking place as the... I think the Taliban is... Afghanistan is descending into a worsening condition in some ways because the United Nations itself is sort of reviewing whether it should continue its presence there after the increasing restrictions that the Taliban has placed on the education of women and girls, on the working of women and girls, the UN pointing out that a lot of its relief activities do depend on women contractors, women employees, and they will not be able to perform these humanitarian work without that. But unfortunately, the Taliban has, after making all those promises in 2021, when it came to power about being different, being different about professing respect for everybody, over time brought back some of its most regressive policies, maybe in a step-by-step way rather than one fell swoop, but in a step-by-step way. So what we're seeing actually is a kind of stalemate that is taking place on the one hand extremely, extremely regressive and extremely conservative is not really the word, and an organization like the Taliban which has imposed some really, really shocking rules on women, on all sections of society. On the other hand, the international community, which is time and again sort of, I think, failed to deal with the country as a whole, and we're not even just talking about the 2001 US invasion, we're talking about how the Afghan economy was constructed in the year, suppose that 70% of the country's GDP depended, for instance, on 70% of the economy depended on foreign assistance, and so when the West withdrew, there was a complete collapse. The situation in some ways is slightly, I mean, it's not as bad as maybe 2021, but the recent socio-economic indicators report shows that things continue to be very bad. The banking system in Afghanistan is facing a very, very severe crisis. Important to remember that key assets of the Afghan bank are still under sanctions. There was some attempt at restoring them to the country, but that net does not work out some strange notion of sanctions, whereby the United States imposed those sanctions and seized those assets, and apparently the average per capita, the real per capita income has declined by 28%. The number of people below the poverty line has almost doubled from 2020, and even all these attempts at fundraising, all these attempts at actually getting money from abroad, first of all, it's not enough, but even the report says that even if they actually bring enough money, it is not going to be enough to meet the extent of the humanitarian requirements that are there. Not to mention that there has been natural disaster, after natural disaster that has hit Afghanistan over the past one, one and a half years. I think 4 million households, that's about 27 million people were affected in 2022 alone by natural disasters that brings with everything, houses being destroyed, incomes vanishing, almost hospitalization costs, and the health sector also suffering badly. So all in all, there is a multi-dimensional crisis which Afghanistan is facing. There is no real, and the unfortunate thing is that there is no real path forward which is worsened by the fact that the Taliban government has actually chosen such a lack of a better word, a horrible approach to the administering of its own country. So these things look very dark and very bleak for people in Afghanistan at this point in time. All these meetings and conferences, coming out with slogans, coming out with, okay, there should be a better solution, really nowhere close to addressing the key issues involved. Well, in another sort of sad turn of events, this week in New York City, there's been mass outrage and this outrage has spread across the entire country, the United States, after a young, homeless black man was essentially lynched on the public transportation system on Monday, May 1st. This man, Jordan Neely, was begging for food on the subway, which is something that happens quite often due to the horrific state of social programs and social investment in the city. He was begging for food on the subway. Allegedly, he portrayed some sort of aggressive behavior. Again, unclear exactly what happened. Witnesses say he might have thrown trash. And essentially, a white subway passenger proceeded to strangle him for 15 full minutes. And Jordan Neely, a 24-year-old, died on the subway. And it's really, really horrific. I mean, there's a independent journalist that was on the subway car, posted a video of the last four minutes of this stranglehold. It's extremely chilling. It's extremely chilling that this sort of thing could happen. First of all, in broad daylight, the subway system is one of the most surveilled areas of New York City. If there's not a cop on the subway car, there's a ton of cameras. There's constantly cops on all of the stations. So the fact that this could have happened with zero police intervention is extremely horrifying. Since then, the suspect of who strangled him, first of all, his name has not been officially released. On social media, several investigative social media users, for lack of a better word, have actually gone and found the name of this person. He's a 24-year-old former Marine. Many people have found his profile. It's still unconfirmed. His name has not been released. And allegedly, he was taken into custody and released, no charges pressed. So essentially, it seems like a state sanctioned execution that happened on this subway. People have been up in arms. There was already an impromptu protest that happened on the subway line where this occurred, on the F line, the orange line. And today, there's a major mobilization planned in New York City. But once again, it's the cross sections of both the city's utter lack of, for example, social investment in housing, in proper food. I mean, this is a 24-year-old who is begging for water and food. He was desperate. This is especially coming back from countries where this is the bare minimum that's guaranteed for the citizens having access to housing, having access to food. This should be a fundamental right, of course. So people are rightfully so extremely angry about these events, just showing the attitude of the Eric Adams administration. He's a former cop. He's the current mayor of New York City. And his response to many different social problems in the city has been more cops, more surveillance, and cutting funding from social programs. So I think it's going to be a very interesting protest today. People are extremely upset. This is also coming, of course, on the heels of the Brent Guidelines Control Board that has essentially tried to increase all Brent's stabilization prices. So right now, it doesn't seem like the city administration is really looking out for the people. And as we know in the US, mass uprisings happened largely in response to police violence against black people in the country. So we'll be definitely following this. We'll be covering it. And, of course, just such a horrific episode in this moment. So sad to end on this note, but it is important that people are mobilizing that they are reaffirming that, you know, asking for food is not a death sentence. Being poor cannot be a death sentence. So it's very important that people are mobilizing around this, making the concrete demands for social investment for safe housing for food. So that continues to be on the top of people's minds. And, of course, we'll be back next week. We'll hopefully be joined by Vijay, who maybe back from his travels and will be keeping you posted with all the most important stories of the week.