 Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Your weekly movement news roundup. It's the 17th of March, 2023. You're with Give the People What They Want. That's Zoe and Prashant from People's Dispatch. I'm Vijay from Globetrotter. Happy to be with you. Interesting news from the world of the Baseball World Series. It's a real world series. It's a real World Cup of Baseball. Not just what the United States calls the World Series where it's just teams playing within the United States. This is the real thing. Watched a few of the games. Don't ask me why. Not a big baseball fan. But still I put myself through it while we were in Havana, Cuba watching the Cuban team triumph over many other teams and advance to the semifinals. They're going to play in Miami, Florida. That's interesting. And guess what, friends? At the time of recording, we're not sure whether the Cuban team playing in Miami, Florida might be playing either the United States. That's going to be interesting. USA versus Cuba in Miami, Florida. That'll be interesting. The other matchup might be Cuba versus Venezuela in Miami, Florida. Either way, friends, surreal developments. Very surreal developments. Surreal development. Good God. What has happened in the world of finance? No surprise really in one respect. Silicon Valley Bank. Big problems with that bank. Suddenly a week ago look like the bank was going to implode and take down the international financial system. Now, it's one of the banks that you've never probably heard of. Silicon Valley Bank, really? When did that start operating? You know about, of course, Chase, Manhattan. You know, of course, about the Bank of Scotland. These are names we know of. People don't carry around Silicon Valley Bank credit cards or have checks from that bank largely because it wasn't set up to be a retail bank in the conventional sense. It was a bank for startup companies in California. That's why it's Silicon Valley Bank, a kind of regional bank in the United States, set up to provide finances for startups. It was itself run very much like a startup company, gave enormous amount of liberties to its teams to go out there and provide financing for innovation. Interestingly, most countries in the world, particularly countries like China, for instance, a lot of financing for innovation comes from the government. Government financing plays a major role here. There's a lot of investment from the government. In fact, in the United States until recently, the government was one of the major financiers of a lot of innovation and in fact continues to finance a lot of innovation through government financing to universities and so on and so forth. The internet, for instance, financed by the US government through the military and other venues as well. Silicon Valley Bank was created to provide financing for private startup companies that couldn't really get the kind of flexibility from regular banks. That was its purpose. It's important to understand that. Well, they made enormous loans. Only about 2% of their holdings were insured by the US federal government, the FDIC, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. But that by itself shouldn't have been a big problem given the fact that they were investing to people who were supposed to be real innovators. There were other rules that the Silicon Valley Bank had which were odd, which had to do with holding requirements by people who had taken loans from them and so on. Let's not get into that. The real problem was that Silicon Valley Bank made a bet which many companies made on long-term securities and the viability of long-term securities, meaning they bet, of course, that long-term securities would have interest rates that would be higher than the short-term securities. The reason is that in the long-term securities, if you're going to invest in the long-term, you want a higher rate of return in general. The reason being you're taking a longer risk and so on. Well, there's been an inversion in the US bond market yield curve where the short-term interest rates, in fact, flipped the script and became higher than the long-term interest rates. Now, this yield inversion has taken place a few times. In 1989, in modern period, there was a recession that followed it in 1990. The yield curve inverted in 2000, leading to the so-called dot-com explosion. Now, it's got to be said that there were lots of reasons for the dot-com explosion, but one of them was the inverse yield curve. The yield curve also inverted in 2006, playing a contributory factor toward the collapse of the US subprime mortgage market, which triggered the major credit crisis of 2007-2008. Well, boom, Silicon Valley Bank goes. They made a big bet on interest rates and interest rates went up. The US Federal Reserve jacked up interest rates. This was going to be a problem in terms of whether SBB would be able to deliver on its own financial commitments. It exploded. So did signature, another big bank, innovation bank like this. Then it turned out that the major banks were also in trouble. Credit Suisse, for instance, had a long pull on the interest rate market issue. Governments came in as they do and they provided an underlying relief for these banks, protected the banking system as it were protected, not SBB, which most likely is already, in fact, filed for bankruptcy protection. In fact, SBB financial group, the parent company, filed for bankruptcy protection on Friday the 17th in order to protect two of the branches of SBB financial. And that's the credit side of things which they were interested, the brokers and the technology investing business. SBB capital and SBB securities in other words. But SBB is in bad shape. It's going to be allowed to go eventually, but the banking system had to be saved. Interestingly, European Central Bank said interest rates are going to keep going up, regardless of what's happening in the banking sector. Swiss government said we're going to underwrite the Credit Suisse problem, but other banks are jittery, very, very jittery. This inverse yield curve, little bit like the El Nino phenomena, brings with it catastrophe in places where you don't expect catastrophe to come. Well, that's part of what we're worried about here at People's Dispatch and Globetrotter, looking at how to report to you complicated economic news. You're tuned out already. Well, tune back in because we're going to move quickly to the Iraq war, a difficult war, a war the United States prosecuted on that country 20 years ago. So tell us a little about what's happening 20 years after the US conducted its illegal war against the Iraqi people. Well, as you said, it was an extremely illegal war wherein over a million Iraqis died. These are estimates that have come out through different reports. The US, of course, does not have this official toll. Extremely destructive war. Of course, the impacts are still seen today in terms of people's health in Iraq, in the infrastructure, and so much of how the country runs today. And this war that was led against Iraq was based on completely fabricated lies by the US government and saw also many US soldiers die. Many people who thought that they were going to defend an allegedly noble cause unclear what that finding these supposed weapons of mass destruction, but all of that to say that 20 years after the Iraq war it's interesting the narrative is still one that this was by the US security establishment that this was a necessary war and above all kind of obscuring what happened and it's really thanks to people like Julian Assange and WikiLeaks that we do know today on one hand the civilian death toll, the atrocities committed against the Iraqi people. This is really thanks to WikiLeaks that has done so much to uncover a lot of secret documents from the United States about this war. And on this anniversary, a lot of us will remember the massive anti-war demonstrations that took place across the entire world in the United States, across Europe, in the Global South. Millions of people were on the streets to demand that this war not be prosecuted. I remember going to an anti-war protest with my family in Boston. So many of us have this memory of the people saying, we do not support this war. And so on this momentous anniversary, which for many commemorates just an atrocious, imperialist intervention going against the will of the people of the world, once again, the anti-war movement is rebuilding itself and coming out to say, no more to these endless wars, no more to careless loss of life in the name of the US security establishment. And people are directly linking the anniversary of the 20 years of the invasion of Iraq to the ongoing war in Ukraine. For many, as we've been reporting for the last year, this was a completely avoidable war that really was prosecuted by NATO. And so on this anniversary, people are going to be taking to the streets to say, no to war. It's a very, very interesting mobilization that's going to be happening. As we've seen over the last year, especially in the area of media, this war has been, has taken on many different narratives, many different discourses. And a lot of people within the United States don't really understand how this happens, how this war happens and really what is the impact. And so tomorrow in Washington, DC, over 200 organizations have come together to organize a rally against this war to remember the 20 years of the Iraq war. It's going to be quite interesting. There's already been a lot of... This is a war that has huge amounts of support from the Democratic Party in the United States. There has been some fractures within the Republican Party, for example, that do not like the fact that billions have been sent to this war in Ukraine. Maybe they think this could go to another war, like the war against China, that the U.S. is seeming more keen to wage. So it's going to be a very interesting day, I think, for those of us who have seen this trajectory, the legacy of the imperialist wars in the beginning of the 20th century, seeing the resurgence of the anti-war movement is definitely something that will be interesting to follow. Of course, this is a war that's challenging to explain. As you said, financial crisis, challenging to explain the war in Ukraine, many different layers. I think it's very important to bring in this mobilization of linking it to the Iraq wars to try to make it more understandable and above all, the fact that billions are being sent to send weapons and to instigate to stop negotiations and within the United States, of course, you see that billions are going to bail out banks, yet social movements and progressive organizations complain that things like student loan debt and financial things for the survival of the people in the country are actually ignored. It's going to be an interesting day. We'll be out there as people's dispatch covering this, speaking to organizers, speaking to people about why they're mobilizing against the war. You're listening to give the people what they want brought to you by people's dispatch that Zoe Prashant on the street covering protests against war, covering bank failures. I'm Vijay from Globetrotter. Prashant, the war in Ukraine is continuing. The city that the Ukrainians called Bakhmuth surrounded reports coming now that in Bakhmuth the Ukrainians are firing a number of their shells. There's apparently reports that they are facing a lack of armaments. Meanwhile, the Stockholm Institute just released a new report on weapons transfers around the world. Interesting material in that report. Not so much that's surprising. What did you feel when you read it, Prashant? Sipri reports are pretty much a staple of this show at this point because I think every time we have a Sipri report, we come back and like you said, these are patterns that seem to sort of continue over the years but nonetheless I think very important to highlight this report because it takes place during the years of the pandemic. It's from 2018 to 22. So I think the worst years of the pandemic are covered in this report. What really says is basically that in many parts of the world there was actually a reduction in arms imports and even in regions which are sort of notorious for importing a huge amount, large amounts of arms such as West Asia there has been actually a reduction in many, China has seen an increase but it's a very minor one of 4% many others have seen substantial ones. On the other hand, the countries which have actually increased imports incidentally are countries which are very central major geopolitical issues happening. So this is Japan has increased imports by 170% and South Korea and Australia are also two major countries which have increased imports and I think that really kind of shows where the military industrial complex is really focusing on in anticipation of what the United States and its allies want as I was just talking about how some sections did not prefer the war in Ukraine because they would rather want a war with China for instance and we have seen ever since Biden came to power there has been an increased focus on militarizing East Asia and the Pacific in general we recently just a few days ago there was the AUKUS countries allows to deal for nuclear submarines for Australia which take effect in the late 2030s and the early 2040s. So the dates really struck me because in 2023 these three countries the UK Australia and the US are talking about militarizing and nuclear militarizing the Pacific in the 2040s so that's where we are right now but in addition to imports also the other key number is really about the exports as well and I think the US share in global arms exports as usual continue to rise from 33% is getting 40% France's exports continue to rise from 7% to 11% and the US and its major allies that's France, Germany, Italy, UK and Spain have contributed 65% to all global arms exports in this period of 2080 to 2022 so that really kind of puts into perspective all these discussion all these narratives all these rhetoric spun by countries in the west about how they are trying to establish peace how they want the rules based international order and because the foundation for these rules based international order the foundation for all these declarations of peace is this massive export of weapons and like I said it's important to remember that all this happened during at least two of these years were core years of the pandemic and countries were really struggling to provide even countries of the global north the countries which whose exports really sort of increased even these countries were struggling to provide their poor with amenities these countries are struggling to provide vaccines to many people so kind of a depressing report in many senses about the state of the world today well Prashant it's a depressing report but also predictable it's predictable that Russia for instance was exporting less because it's using a lot of its own military inside and so on but by God it's worth looking at that report from Sipri powerful stuff Zoe let's move on because I was struck you know just occasionally I was actually I was looking for more information on the SBB bank I've been reading most of the business pages financial Times Wall Street Journal you know trying to get my head around exactly what is going on and I came upon this headline from Bloomberg I wanted to share it with you businesses and it means us businesses businesses urge Biden to use every tool in Mexico energy spat to use every tool what is going on with Mexico's attempt to have sovereignty over its energy and what are these every tools that businesses are urging Biden to use every tool that's it's a phrase that says a lot well tomorrow there's going to be a massive mobilization in Mexico on the 85th anniversary of the expropriation of Mexico's oil resources this is a day that Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is commemorating in the midst of a moment where a Mexico under the fourth transformation a project led by Andres Manuel and Morena is attempting to move forward with their sovereignty is attempting to create a situation where they don't have to depend on the global market to actually be able to be self-sufficient that Mexico has great oil resources it has lithium resources it is a massive country which actually can sustain itself and so they've been moving forward with the nationalization of key strategic sectors to make them self-sufficient to make them a hub in the region so other countries don't have to be dependent on for example the United States with extremely high prices and in the midst of this they've of course faced as you say these I guess Biden ones every tool in the box the businesses are calling for this but really it's a moment of great political shifts in Mexico it's a moment where the right wing is reorganizing where they're seeing these moves towards greater energy sovereignty and move towards empowerment of the people and they're actually mobilizing in great numbers there have been a series of far-right mobilizations that have been happening so this move to have this mobilization to show that the people of Mexico are supporting the energy reforms is actually quite key it's interesting also just to say St. Patrick's Day and this is also a fun fact about St. Patrick's Day is that there was a St. Patrick's Battalion of Irish fighters who refused to support the U.S.'s illegal invasion of Mexico where they seized one third of Mexican territory which is now part of the territorial United States so on St. Patrick's Day as the Mexican people tomorrow will take the streets to celebrate and support this push towards nationalization of energy resources to support energy sovereignty in a moment where the entire global system and its reliance on energy from the West is actually putting is making the cross-of-living crisis even worse it's an important and interesting moment Mexico moves forward with energy sovereignty whereas the U.S. would prefer that everyone is dependent on it for this mediation and really for these things Prashant you earlier talked about the rules-based international order seems to be against the rules-based international order to demand every tool we use to subordinate Mexico Tricontinental has just released a report about regionalism and sovereignty which has an explanation of what this rules-based international order is all about I have half a mind to send that report to Emmanuel Macron who apparently is pretty happy sidelining his own parliament in passing laws I saw pictures Prashant lots of tear gas in Paris I don't know if Cipri calculates tear gas sales but it might be worthwhile to see if there's a report out there on sales of which countries are the principal importers of tear gas and users of it what's happening in France why all this tear gas why all this hot air from Macron Incidentally also even as Macron has just recently went to Africa and tried to proclaim himself as a friend of the continent friend of the country is there in a new relationship but it's clear what he's doing at home is anything but a friend of the worker at least because what the government has done is quite interesting it's basically subverted or bypassed parliament because it was not sure that its pension reform bill would get passed now we talked about the pension bill reform before you know plans to increase retirement age from 60 to 64 you need to work at least 40 years to access pensions etc etc extremely unpopular move I think over the past few weeks alone 3.5 million people have come to the streets of France in hundreds of cities it's interesting I mean it's 2023 and I think one of the things capitalism implicitly always promised us with the idea that as technology improved humans would get more leisure time the idea that you would probably have to work less someday maybe because and that's at least what they tell you although we know that's not true but this is 2023 and we have french workers being told that you can't retire at 62 you need to work 24 and you know there is an economic crisis there is not enough money but I think we have actually been writing people's disparities we have extensively covering this from the angle of health workers for instance from the angle of women workers on March 7th and March 8th there was a major strike by the french workers on the occasion of women's day as well but from any perspective you take a look at this reform bill there is widespread opposition because workers really brutal treatment over the past many decades there has been a massive withdrawal of the state there has been austerity policies every sector has been starved in terms of resources which means workers you know have been working overtime and now you get this kind of a proposal so it's absolutely unsurprising that there is such mass opposition on the streets and it's unsurprising that there is opposition in parliament as well and you know when push comes to show Macron realizing that he may not have the majority and again interestingly the left is of course opposed to it sections of the right are opposed to it sections of the center right again kind of wobbly at this point so Macron who came to power without a proper majority as in at least the government came to power without a proper majority really kind of staring at a crisis and I think the trade union is the people of the ground you know those protesting on the ground they have been very clear that this is not an end we do know that this was already in 2000 before the pandemic as well this was proposed the workers pushback the government was forced to hold it and I'm pretty sure the protests are going to continue about this clearly extreme level of unhappiness but again not very uncommon considering especially what has been happening here well it's going to happen in other countries as well as the public finances crisis becomes more and more acute in many countries you know these banking crisis, credit suites crisis being one of them if these start to escalate we don't know it is true that in the quest to take care of inflation the ECB as I said earlier European Central Bank has decided well let's keep rising interest rates that's going to create some money supply problems you might see the fight against inflation creating its own problems I don't know how governments are going to pay for a lot of their obligations particularly buying weapons and so on we might see more of these pressures but people's dispatch, globetrotter we're on these stories we've been on the story of the war in Ukraine going on now for well over a year as I said earlier Bakhmuth the city at the edge of the Donbas a major flash point now the fog of war has been such it's been difficult and in fact impossible to report on the details of the war you'll remember one minute it appeared as if the Ukrainians were making an amazing breakthrough and in fact they did against the Russian lines pushing Russian forces back now suddenly there are reports coming that the encirclement of Bakhmuth the loss of the city is going to mean the loss of a great section of the Ukrainian military this could be a decisive blow against Ukraine Mr Zelinsky president of Ukraine made comments from his office in Kiev where he talked about this being in a way a final stand this is really bewildering people in the West New York Times reporting from talking to insiders in Europe and in the United States saying that the Ukrainians should not expend too much energy at Bakhmuth last they need to retreat in order for a so called spring offensive a lot of debates taking place about where the frontline is and whether this war militarily will continue to go forward that's only one part of the story the other part of the story of course is the maneuvering the political maneuvering taking place around around Ukraine around Russia on Monday that is to say on the 20th of March Xi Jinping of China will arrive in Moscow he will be in Moscow on the 20th the 21st Tuesday and will depart on the 22nd Wednesday it has being said by the Chinese Foreign Ministry confirmed in Moscow by their foreign ministry that Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin will meet to discuss their strategic understanding it is very likely that Mr. Xi Jinping is going to carry to Moscow the insistence that those 12 point peace plan that document that China released a few weeks ago is going to be taken quite seriously now obviously if the Russian military is on the verge of a historical for their perspective a victory in Bakhmuth it's unlikely that the Russians are going to stop the fighting now and nobody stops the fighting at the time when it looks like they might prevail in a conflict nobody does on the other hand perhaps and again this is speculation perhaps Xi Jinping is going to lay down a pathway that okay let's say Russia prevails at something like Bakhmuth draw the line there don't try to make a push towards Kiev that is catastrophic already the Polish government has sent Russians to the Ukrainians this is very important because Poland after all is a NATO member it is not clear whether there will be Polish pilots on those planes or Ukrainian pilots if they are Polish pilots in a Polish plane and there's a dogfight over Ukraine and a Polish plane goes down is this a Russian attack on a NATO country and so on and so forth nobody wants to test these red lines as it is the Russian jet that destroyed a U.S. drone that itself created jitters people in the United States talking openly about hitting Russia hard for bringing down that drone dangerous waters Xi Jinping in Moscow let's see what happens it's hopeful it's a hopeful sign that Mr. Xi has decided to go personally to Moscow at this time yes Bakhmuth might fall sometime this weekend early next week yes Xi Jinping will be in Moscow then by next Friday let's see what we report you're listening to give the people what they want coming to you from People's Dispatch that's Zoe and Prashant I'm Vijay from Globetrotter will be with you next week another important show thanks a lot