 Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Your weekly movement news round up. 29th July, almost the end of the year it seems in many respects. Lots of things have happened already. News comes pouring in. It's really difficult to keep up with what's happening. You're with give the people what they want. Brought to you by People's Dispatch that Zoe and Prashant and Vijay from Globetrotter running all around the world trying to keep up with things. Yesterday or just a few days ago Peru had a major event in new government a year ago and so on. Really didn't seem to have the energy Zoe to follow what was happening. Bring us up to speed what's happening with President Pedro Castillo and government in Peru. Well, it has been one year since Pedro Castillo was sworn in. July 28. A monumentous moment in Peru last year. It came after almost a month of back and forth following the elections. Keiko Fujimori was the far right candidate. Was unaccepting of her defeat. There were a lot of different legal maneuvers that the far right attempted to pull to revert the decision of the people in the elections. It was a very drawn out process. And finally they submitted to the defeat. Pedro Castillo was sworn in. But it hasn't been really happy news since then. It's been a year of intense political turmoil. Pedro Castillo's government ministers, his cabinet, his party has been essentially engulfed in political crisis after political crisis since this date. Only a week ago, once again, far right legislators presented another impeachment motion of Pedro Castillo. And so really it's been a year of intense political instability. Héctor Bejar, who was, you know, the foreign minister, he was one of the first people to be targeted in this campaign of political attacks. These have come in many different. One of the first people who resigned weeks after being sworn in. But since then, Pedro Castillo was forced to reestablish his cabinet four times. He's come under several impeachment votes. The latest one, as I said, was brought up last week. And one of the parties, one of the far right parties has even introduced a motion, a legislation, a reform that would make it possible for them to pass the impeachment with less votes. Currently in Peru, you need 87 votes in the Congress to pass impeachment. They want to make it 78. So you can really see what length they're going to, to essentially bring political instability to make Peru ungovernable. And of course, Pedro Castillo has taken different decisions, which some people don't agree with. His own party has kicked him out. He was resigned from the Peru Libre party. But all of that is in this context of political turmoil. Political turmoil of constant attacks. You know, some of the things they accuse him of, it's incredible when he would have even had the time to do it since he's been under such attacks. And so it's really seemed like this was all premeditated. Of course, when the far right was defeated in the elections, it was clear that they were not going to stand idly by and let the person who promised to create a national constituent assembly, who promised to redistribute the wealth of a country that has so many natural resources, but had been giving all of this wealth to the elites in Peru and to the transnational corporations. It was clear that they were not going to let this go ahead. And we're seeing Peru as a perfect case of what's been happening in many countries in Latin America, where progressive forces are winning these electoral victories. But it is so clear that the power of these economic elites is strong and that they won't stand by and that it's clear that these government projects which involve fundamentally changing society will be met with resistance. You know, Franz Fanon in Wretched of the Earth talks about the granite block. He talks about how there is this granite block that prevents humanity from exerting itself. Yes, there's a granite block in Peru, outrageous oligarchy. There's also a granite block in Egypt. This block suffocating the voice of a very decent person. Prashant tell us what is happening in Cairo. Right, of course, we're referring to Ala Abdul Fateh who's been in jail for quite some time now and who according to latest reports by his family there's actually suddenly some kind of a blackout with reference to information about him which is quite alarming because he's actually a hunger strike. In fact, he began his hunger strike in Maine for the first couple of months was not consuming any food at all and only water now is consuming a small amount of food as his family pointed out to keep the camp in alive. But what has happened is that in the past few days we've not been hearing much about him. His family was denied a visit. Apparently he refused to meet them is what the officials are saying. There was a letter which he wrote on July the 16th which was delivered one week late and there's been a spike in concern both of because of his health as well as the fact that he is a political prisoner. We know Ala Abdul Fateh story we've talked about this in the show before arrested multiple times and in the most recent instance sentenced to five years in prison on charges as vague as spreading fake news which is ironic because a lot of his work was actually targeted at what he called spreading awareness about all kinds of political issues etc etc and also taking a strong stand and he spent multiple years in jail at this point I think he's barely been free for very long after 2013 there have been continuous series of say imprisonments that have taken place and even if this sound has been particularly brutal in fact his lawyers had said that his mental state was declining considerably due to the conditions in the prison in which he was kept after which he was moved to a rehabilitation center and that's around the time when he began his protest now of course a lot of activism a lot of voices being raised in the region also because his case is emblematic of the way in which Egypt as a whole has treated political prisoners we know that Egypt has tens of thousands of political prisoners last year the government made some kind of a gesture in which they sort of said they would remove some emergency codes but key political prisoners continue to be sentenced continue to prison continue to face accusations such as these which are quite common in fact spreading fake news spreading say causing unrest against the government terrorism all these are such vague accusations thrown against prominent human rights activists and at this point there is not even the pretense of trying to build a case against many of these people now equally important the fact that Al-Abdul Fattar has recently become a British citizen as well which has led to his family also asking very tough questions of the British government because you have say prominent members of the British establishment over the past many months time and again talking about their concerns for human rights time again time and again talking about you know they're framing every global issue that is there in terms of human rights and portraying themselves as champions of this whereas when it comes again to their own citizen say Al-Abdul Fattar who's been granted citizenship the UK has been very reluctant to say something the family's attempts to reach out list trust for instance have not been met with have not made any success at all it's kind of ironic because on a very similar note we see Shireen Abu Akle's family also meeting Anthony Blinken and then again the US responding with the very typical you know making statements as it is so important question because Egypt is such a vital part of the US and the British NATO for NATO and British plans in West Asia it serves as a very very important client state and thus it gets the blank check to do they continue with these kind of activities whereas others keep getting the lectures of human rights so a very alarming situation in some senses people across the world need to keep track of this important case also because it is so emblematic and of course a couple of months ago you did an interview with Al-Abdul Fattar's mother in which he talked about for instance what her son's agenda was what his ideology was and expressed despite all this expressed that sense of hope that there would be there's no option but change because the youth will not stand for this for too long It's a remarkable family Prashant father was in prison a lawyer very respected person fighter for democracy in Egypt expanding the social setup in Egypt mother is a fierce activist and that came across in that interview you referenced somebody who has been very brave on the streets last 40 years sisters great people of the street always out there fighting to expand Egyptian democracy and then of course the aunt Ahad Suif also an important person you know in the in the world view of Egypt's democracy we wish the family a great love of our wishes and hope that they are able to at least see Abdul Fattar and then of course his release let's go to Sri Lanka for a few minutes I know Prashant you've been watching this story carefully we've reported it of course there was the great uprising against the Rajapaksha family Rajapaksha family decamped some of them to Singapore others to a naval base and so on but events in Sri Lanka should not be forgotten because things seem to be happening now that require I think our consideration number one the man who came back to take over the government Mr. Vikram Asengar has been essentially either Prime Minister or head of the opposition since 1993 I mean the man is not any kind of radical this is the Sri Lankan ruling class asserting itself saying okay let the Rajapaksha's go but we will maintain authority and so Vikram Asengar comes in as the head of government but hey listen Rajapaksha's go I don't think so interesting to note that Ranil Vikram Asengar is only his party only has one seat in parliament and he was rammed through as the head of government by who by well the Rajapaksha's party pushed him in so in a sense you could say he's a caretaker for the Rajapaksha's but that's not really I was interested in talking about today I'm interested in the fact that he has extended the state of emergency he has used security forces to clear the golf ace peace camp from which some of this protests had started in fact he has been extremely aggressive against any dissident any protester and so on and he has done nothing to actually enable Sri Lanka 16 IMF deals since it joined the IMF in the 50s nothing to help Sri Lanka walk away from this crisis in fact it has declared default now there was a worry about default in 2020 SNP dropped the ratings from B minus to CCCC minus the lowest level you could have got that was in December 2020 by the way Sri Lanka is in a great crisis it's a good example and I'm glad we're doing this story after the Egypt story it's a good example again of mass demonstrations taking place to really rattle the ruling elites but then when the mass demonstrations not able to convert their demonstration into any kind of political project the elite simply shuffles the power and in fact in the case of Sri Lanka as I'm saying the shuffling was not even that significant because Mr. Vikram Singh is old workhorse of the ruling elites and in this case brought to power very much by the Rajapaksha I wanted to point out one feature of the Sri Lanka story that has not been put on the table much and that is that the two countries in the world with the highest rate of per capita military spending are Israel and Sri Lanka this is significant both of them in that sense Sri Lanka country of 22 million both of them highly militarized the areas where there's a Tamil majority population are basically garrisoned till this day despite the crushing blow that the Rajapaksha has inflicted on the Tamil Tigers with enormous casualties over 100,000 dead and so on concentration camps set up very ugly scenario despite that crushing blow of the Tamil Tigers they have continued to garrison the Tamil majority areas so high levels of military spending contribute to this crisis it's not really been mentioned that much but I just wanted to put it on the table good place to look at again at the limitations of popular uprising without a real political project to advance things forward just as in Egypt you're listening to give the people what they want what you want from us is as much unvarnished truth as possible we try our best to give that to you don't say we'll always succeed gosh we try hard we're going to shift gears now to something that's reasonably similar story where a political project trying desperately to assert itself continually was suffocated Zoe take us to Morocco please well last weekend the democratic way which is a Marxist-Leninist organization in Morocco held its fifth national congress and the fact that they even held it in itself was something that's newsworthy given the tremendous obstacles that were put before them to be able to hold it they had been trying they initially were trying to hold it in January 2022 but the regime of King Mohammed the fifth essentially blocked all possibilities for them to hold the conference there were you know rumors to the media that there was going to be criminalization of the party there were a lot of different efforts underway to essentially block them from doing this they were not allowed to lease certain venues they wanted to hold it in the public university you know in order to host all of the different people who are involved in the organization to have this discussion that's so necessary and they were blocked from all these possibilities so last weekend and preceding this weekend to be honest they had been consistently denouncing the fact that these public venues were essentially being closed to them with no explanation no rhyme or reason but and they even protested outside the Ministry of the Interior this protest was severely repressed by security forces the secretary general Brahma he was attacked injured you know horrible scenes of repression of people just asking the question why aren't we allowed to hold our meeting which is perfectly legal perfectly you know within our right but again they were met with this repression however they did hold their conference in Brahma the capital of Morocco July 22nd to 24th the Moroccan Bar Association graciously opened their doors to the organization and they were able to hold this congress and in addition to the congress itself being held and this being historic in itself the organization democratic way announced that they were launching a new political party to as you said Vijay further this political struggle in a in this moment where it seems like all doors are closing where the pillars of democracy are not being respected however they have once again challenged the Moroccan regime what they call the Maxine and said we are going to launch an independent political party for the workers for the people of Morocco this is called the workers democratic way party. They have professed this in their declaration to be a working class party with socialist and anti-imperialist ideology and characteristics. They have announced that they are going to form a national students union in Morocco it's a quite exciting statement I invite people to read the article that we have on our website at people's dispatch it links to their original statement. Morocco's often thought about as a tourist destination a lot of people have been two different cities there visited the beautiful sites gone to the markets don't know that this is not held by this extremely repressive regime where people are forced to work in very challenging conditions many people in Morocco are forced to migrate to Spain they work they sustain the agricultural industry there there's so many different aspects of life of Morocco that have been suffocated by the regime political participation political life there's so many journalists who are in prison human rights watch just came out with a report about how the regime has been muffling and silencing dissent there's cases of different alternative journalists who are currently similar to Allah they're in prison on different charges but really it's about them speaking the truth voicing their dissent and so it's so important that this this development has taken place that there is going to be a working class party what is going to face them these challenges these obstacles this is huge we they've already been up against this repression you know not even being able to access space but it seems that they're determined and it will be very important to continue monitoring the situation continuing to see how the regime responds to this regime that recently they brought a huge support from the United States when they signed the Abraham agreement to recognize Israel this is a strengthened Moroccan regime that has even bigger support behind it so it's even more important to to really strike back in this moment that's right it's a very much oppressing story particularly given what happened the border between Spain and Morocco migrants also reported by people's dispatch keeping a close eye on that country moving along now going eastward to Iran you know it's like a story Prashant that keeps coming back it's the same story over and over again anything new in this story or must we report the same things over and over again well the substance is the same again but the details are always every week there's a fresh detail and most of these details unfortunately tend to be quite depressing for people across the world the recent being the fact that Brett McGurk a top US official has a briefing told experts that he does not believe that the Iran nuclear deal will be back on track now this comes at a it's important to note of course this coming the statement coming at a time in the larger context in which it's made because we do know that very recently Joe Biden went to West Asia and had a discussion of course then in Israel first legitimized Israeli occupation and then had a discussion with the larger GCC the GCC plus group in which one of the key agendas was to bind all these countries closer to Israel and sort of talk up the threat of Iran as some kind of regional regional boogeyman so to speak so this has really been pretty much the policy of the United States in Israel for the longest time and there's been stiff opposition from Israel and sections in the US to any attempt to restore the nuclear deal which is really good for everybody because on the one hand you have the possibility of economic you know millions of Iranians whose lives are going to benefit massively when these sanctions are withdrawn because fundamentally it is about the sanctions more than anything else and on the other hand the fact that there's a discussion around issues of you know nuclear development for instance which is generally good for the world the possibility of nuclear weapons say in the region being used comes down which is just good everywhere but despite this being such an obvious deal the fact is that the US administration has just refused to move on it now experts for instance say that Joe Biden after he promised to come back to the deal but could have actually done this with an executive order in the very first days of his presidency the fact is he chose not to because he wanted to get more concessions out of Iran and Iran after being pushed to a corner has even given up one of its demands that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps be removed from the list of terrorist organizations all it seems to ask is one simple commitment that the US gives some kind of commitment that it will not abandon the deal again. Now this is something which the United States is unwilling to give and it's interesting because we do hear that after the midterm elections in the US in October that itself could where the Republican control legislature itself could impose restrictions on Biden and if Republican wins in 2024 we definitely have the US withdrawing from the deal again so as we have often mentioned in various shows in the past this really demonstrates how incapable of sticking to treaties the United States has become in the kind of chaos this is causing across the world because this is also a region where there are parallel processes on between the UAE and Iran for instance even Saudi Arabia and Iran to try to normalize ties may never be great but at least to try to bring down temperatures but while this process is going on there is the US and Israel which keep raising temperatures in the region forcing Iran into a position where it will have to say that we are going to continue uranium enrichment further so all in all a very depressing time for West Asia because voices which could have which have been advising very strongly against escalating the conflict are not able to prevail for very good reasons of course in the US it's very good in the sense very obvious reasons I mean not that they're good in any way but and the impact of this is being bought at one level by millions of Iranians on completely unnecessary sanctions there's not even a justification for any of them point number two the fact that there is so much now greater in the region going to talk of war talks of talks of say escalations of all kinds and this will also have an effect in so many other rivalries in the region so keeping all this in mind very say depressing turn of events there are still talks going on of course Iran has indicated that it is willing to continue with diplomacy but the Iran nuclear deal itself seems in a very bad place right now terrible news from West Asia even worse news from East Asia US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on her way to Asia still not clear whether she will go to Taiwan although in last that we heard she plans to arrive in Taiwan now why is this significant well the United States has been in a sense booking the Chinese government many fronts this is the most recent in fact there is now a proposal to do two things with Taiwan one cut a 4.5 billion dollar deal with the Taiwanese to go over four years which would be about arms 4.5 billion that is no small deal at all a given that recently there was a controversy over 108 million dollar arms deal between the Biden administration in the government of Taiwan mostly tanks and so on that was 108 million that raised the hackles in Beijing 4.5 billion that's another level secondly the United States has indicated that they might very well push for Taiwan to be a non NATO ally very curious development not sure if this is entirely necessary United States already has made all kinds of pledges to Taiwan but has backed away from them in recent decades largely as relations between not only Washington and Beijing had improved in the past but also as relations between Beijing and Taipei had improved in the past but now they are accelerating the conflict around Taiwan trying to use Taiwan as an instrument humiliating China or setting the stage for a kind of conflict on Thursday July 28 Xi Jinping and Joe Biden spoke for two hours now here's the important thing Mr. Xi Jinping and Mr. Biden have known each other for decades they are not strangers they have known each other met have talked many you know times and so on it's interesting Nancy Pelosi said that she wants to go to Taiwan the US Pentagon warned that this is not a good idea in fact even Joe Biden said this is not a good idea and yet Nancy Pelosi senior member of the government in a sense number three in line for the throne is basically disobeying the head of the ticket in her own party keep in mind that in 1991 Nancy Pelosi traveled to Beijing in a congressional delegation where they went to Tiananmen Square and unfold a banner you know which talked about democracy in China and so on she has a history of trying to as it will poke the Chinese in the eye this is very dangerous stuff going on I'm not saying that you know she is not entitled to her opinions and so on I'm of course sure that she is but on the other hand does the world need given that we are already in the middle of a terrible place in Ukraine does the world need another confrontation on the other side of Eurasia at this time imagine with galloping inflation already there in front of people around the world we already talked about Sri Lanka country in a way victimized by this galloping inflation and so on imagine now if a conflict is to erupt in the South China Sea between China and the United States there is a serious conflict because Mr Xi Jinping's government has said that the the sea between China and Taiwan which they consider a province of China is all Chinese and I think that's significant because that means that it is quite possible and I don't know this to be necessarily something that will happen quite possible but as the policy arrives in Taipei the Chinese might put forward some sort of military exercise and that could escalate in a terrible way because she is coming with a flotilla to defend her very dangerous times my friends please keep an eye on things you're with give the people what they want coming to you every week from people's dispatch go visit the site two three times a day that's Prashant and Zoe from people's dispatch I'm Vijay from Globe Trotter see you next week