 Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Your weekly movement news roundup. Well, good day to all of you. Today is still September, this time the 17th. Coming along to the period when we're going to have to think about whether we're already in the middle of a war or whether the war is coming ahead of us. You're listening to give the people what they want coming to you every week at this time from People's Dispatch. And we have with us from People's Dispatch Prashant and Zoe. And I'm Vijay from Globetrotter. The story on everybody's mind, I hope, is the story of the new pact. Don't know how to say it. Is it orcus? Is it orcus? Is it orcus? Not sure yet. I suppose it's different in Australian from its pronunciation in Washington DC and in Great Britain. London, Washington, Canberra in a new pact. Is this a military pact or is this a subtle way for the United States to sell its nuclear powered submarines to Australia? On the surface, the United States already has a military pact with India, Japan, Australia called the Quad. And very soon, this coming week, Joe Biden will host Scott Morrison of Australia, the Prime Minister of Japan, Mr. Suga, and the Prime Minister of India, Mr. Modi. They're going to be at the first in-person Quad summit, which is hosted by Mr. Biden. Now that's interesting. You already have a Quad. What's the need of an orcus? Orcus is a piece of another very old alliance, which already exists. And that's called the Five Eyes Alliance, the five old settler colonial British colonies. That's the United Kingdom, that's Australia, that's New Zealand, that's Canada, and that's the United States. Now, interesting, two of the members of the Five Eyes are not in orcus. One, Canada could say, well, we live far away from the centre of interest. The other New Zealand says we don't want nuclear submarines. Fascinating that Prime Minister Arden of New Zealand has actually quite publicly stated her opposition to this new development. So you have the Quad, which exists and whose entire modus operandi seems to be to put pressure on China. You have the Five Eyes Intelligence Network, which has existed for a very long time and also participates in this new pressure campaign on China. And now you have orcus. Well, on the surface, it looks like orcus is merely another military pact, which the United States has put together with its two principal allies, the United Kingdom, which has a big carrier group, the HMS Queen Elizabeth, sitting off the coast of China and with the Australians. Now, at the centre of this is not a military alliance, but the sale of nuclear submarines. Just recently, the French naval company, a state-run defence contractor, had sold $3.7 billion worth of conventional submarines to Australia. Australia has now decided to renege on that agreement, which is why Jean-Yves Le Drian, the foreign minister of France, said this is a stab in the back. France has been very much in the lead, very vocal in talking about how the debacle in Afghanistan as far as the West is concerned, raises questions whether the Europeans need a new, separate, independent collective security arrangement, independent that is of the United States. They felt stabbed in the back in Kabul Airport. They are now stabbed in the back, or at least the French have been in this deal. The United States is substituted for the French conventional submarines with roughly the same amount of money, nuclear submarines. Now, this is interesting. This is tantamount to nuclear proliferation, a violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The United States is saying that these submarines won't carry nuclear weapons. They'll merely be powered by nuclear power, and therefore they can go further from port, they can stay underwater longer, and they are quicker. Well, it's all about putting pressure on China. The Chinese are very upset by this. Certainly, the disagreements between the United States and Paris, Canberra in the middle of this are going to play a role. The final point to consider about AUKUS is that, of course, Australia's leading partner for trade is China. Let me repeat that Australia's leading partner for trade is China. The Chinese are supposed to be Australia's principal threat. Well, let them in Canberra try to figure out the various complexities of this little game that they have produced. We hope, of course, this doesn't lead to more war, but it certainly led to a lot of consternation. That's certainly something to consider. Meanwhile, on the continent of Africa, you already see some disturbing signs again, this time in the country of Guinea. Prashant, what's happened in Guinea, and what has happened since that great event there? Right, Vijay, but of course, talking about the military coup in Guinea, which happened a few days ago. President Alpha Khande, deposed by a military group led by Colonel Mourmoudi Damuya, will come to him. Of course, there have been over the past week talks where the military junta has engaged in discussions with various sectors, diplomats, the mining sector specifically, traditional leaders, and they'll be talking about how to sort of come out with the transitional government, etc. The other news, of course, is the ECOWAS, which is the organization of West African states, has imposed sanctions. Now, see, on the face of it, this is a lot of the media, of course, portraying it as just yet another military leader taking power in what is a coup in, say, Africa where you see coups. And that's how a lot of the narrative has been, but actually there is a huge amount of politics happening in the background, which we really need to see. I would, of course, ask all our viewers to watch Breakthrough News where they did an interview with Kambale Musawuli from Congo who explains in great detail some of the politics behind it. We also have a story on it. So there are two of the angles which you really need to focus on over here. Angle number one is that Colonel Dambouya, the leader of the coup, was part of the French foreign legion. He was specifically trained by the United States as well. So this is the Africa command we're talking about. And the unit he created was also trained by Africa. So we already have a very clear sign of the fact that there is a possibility of, especially U.S. intervention in this, not on the face of it, but the fact that the unit is trained by the United States actually says a lot. Now starting from there, we go further deeper and we also see that Guinea has something very, very important, say mineral deposits. Basically, there's bauxite, which is from where we're going. Aluminium and there's iron. And these two are very important. Iron also because another major source of iron deposits, Kambale points out, was interviews Australia. And in recent times, China has been investing. China has been trying to, you know, having agreements with Guinea to actually get some of this iron. So a lot of this comes into play because the mining, when we say mining interests there, that of course, see China has been investing heavily in Africa offering, for instance, say schools or infrastructure development in return for extracting some of this, some of this mineral wealth. And there's a project that the Chinese have in Africa, which involves engaging with these countries. So now the question comes as to whether, you know, when we look at what were the intentions of the coup. Now, it's not just some ambitious military officer trying to assert his ambition on one or two, the fact that the claims that are raised by the military, which is that there was large scale corruption, human rights violations. Now, these are actually true, because President Alpha Condé, who came to power in 2010, in 2020, he amended, he did a referendum and amended the constitution to give himself a third term. And he won that election. There were mass protests. There was a huge amount of unhappiness with his regime. All that is true. But we need to be very clear that the military does not, you know, what the military is doing or what the section the military is doing does not represent the people's aspirations. So we have to be very careful in the sense that we do not conflate the two. There was widespread resentment against the policies of Alpha Condé. But the military intervention here is clearly there's a very good chance that it is, of course, driven by some of these larger geopolitical games that are happening around the region. Many other crews have taken place in recent times in Africa as well. And we cannot see this without looking at how the West, especially the United States is trying to actually, you know, one look at the issue of mineral wealth to and deposits to look at issue of how China is, you know, trying to engage with some of these African countries China has a long history of it. But whether some of these crews are basically intended to, you know, basically subvert some of these possibilities and destroy that space for any kind of creative engagement between China and many of these African countries who are thinking about how to utilize their resources. So that is where we are right now a lot of we'll see in the coming days what happens what the sanctions mean etc. But one thing is very clear that, you know, definitely much much more happening in the background. Sanctions, coups, debt coupons, letters written by a vice president to a president canceled trips. Much of this sounds like the really ferocious political jostling taking place in Argentina. Christina Kirchner writes an open letter, a political catastrophe she says in it to the president Alberto Fernandez what's happening in Argentina Zoe. Well, it's, as you said, it's a very complicated political situation right now. As we know in 2019, the front of the front of all, which is a very broad coalition of different political forces, you know, many who are attributed to the political current and Argentina of Peronism. But for anyone who studies Argentina, you know that Peronism has many different manifestations. It is not only left when current. There are manifestations of Peronism across kind of what one would consider the traditional political spectrum. So this coalition government came together in 2019, won the elections against an extremely unpopular government of Mauricio Macri, who, you know, we've talked about on this show for four years, just systematically, you know, dismantle the government of Argentina. You know, close, for example, the Ministry of Science cut social programs in Argentina to a tremendous amount, took out a massive, massive loan with the IMF, which was met with a lot of rejection from Argentinian society precisely because they have the memory of what happened in the early 2000s when Argentina was in a huge debt crisis. And, you know, as people expected, this had a horrible impact on Argentinian economy. I mean, the currency saw 500% inflation devaluation, sorry, this was accompanied by massive inflation prices through the roof, people's salaries losing money, losing their value. And so in this context, this government of Frente de Todos came to power. But as I mentioned, it is important that it does represent different political interests and different, you know, alignment across the spectrum. And this Sunday was the primaries, it's called the Paso in Argentina. It's not, it's before the midterm legislative elections, which will be held in November. And in these Paso primary elections, which again are not binding, it's just an indicator of what kind of the temperature is in the country. Frente de Todos lost, it was, they got 30% compared to the 40% of juntos por el cambio, which is the new coalition of the Mauricio Macri forces, these forces of neoliberalism. These forces which, you know, have the slogan of change, but all they want to do is to kind of turn back time to the way things, you know, were before Peronism, you know, was able to make, you know, important investments in social sectors, etc. And so following this, you know, historic defeat of the government of Argentina, there has been a lot of shuffling, a lot of, you know, statements that have been made to media, a lot of allegations from the media. Saying, oh, this was because of Cristina. So as we know, the president of Argentina's Alberto Fernandez, Vice President Cristina Fernandez, a Kirchner, and these kind of represent these different currents in Peronism, Cristina on one hand being the very close to movements, very embedded in the people, you know, much more of this left-wing current with Alberto Fernandez representing more of these centrist factions. And so Cristina, you know, over the past couple of days has urged that there be profound changes, that these election results clearly indicate the dissatisfaction of the people with the government. And this is primarily due to mistakes in, you know, the course of politics that were put into place by Mauricio Macri. The people in Argentina are still in tremendous poverty. I mean, the numbers that came out in March 2021 during the pandemic were indicative of this. It's, you know, over 40% of the population is still living below the poverty line. 10.5% of the population is in extreme poverty. And for, you know, the sectors that are close to Cristina, a lot of the sectors of Frente Patria Grande have been saying that what the government is doing is not enough. They need to invest more in the people. They need to take a sharp change, of course, to revert the situation. And as of now, the Alberto Fernandez sectors have been hesitant. They've been a little bit stubborn. And after these elections, we're seeing the divide kind of opening up a little bit. And we're going to continue seeing what happens. Is there going to be more crisis in the Frente de Tolos coalition? Most likely. It's going to be something to watch. Argentina key country in South America. Alberto Fernandez cancelling a visit to Mexico and to the UN General Assembly. That's a very important development. Meanwhile, crossing the Atlantic Ocean Prashant, just recently Amnesty International released a report. And the headline of the report, I want to read the headline out because actually this could have been written about many countries in the world today. The headline of the report from Amnesty said, this will only end when you die. That's a quotation. And then beneath that, national security agency harassment of former political detainees and activists in Egypt. I read this 28 page report, at least large parts of it. I admit not reading the methodology, but read parts of it. It seemed to me this report could have been written about, well, many countries, other countries on the African continent, several countries in Latin America, certainly India. I mean, lots of countries could be on the list here. What's happening in Egypt? There are trials starting now of activists, activists on suicide watch and so on. What's going on? It's very difficult to find a week or say a fortnight where there is no news from Egypt about some kind of attack on human rights activists, some kind of crackdown on those who were just expressing their right, expressing the desire to fight for their rights. This week again, saw two developments. One, the one hand we saw Patrick George Zaki, an activist who was arrested in 2020. He had come back home while he was studying in Italy. He had come back home and he was arrested and his trial has begun. And some of the charges I put spreading fake news, which somehow seems to be in many countries, something you just randomly throw at activists. It's insane. And of course, the charges against him are also based on the fact that he wrote an article talking about his experiences as a religious minority. And he was of course also working with the Egyptian initiative of personal rights before taking a break and then going abroad to study in Italy. And many such cases, of course, the trial has started on Tuesday. It's for next year and I believe it's tomorrow, that's September 18th or the day after. But Patrick George Zaki's case has been very emblematic because you have someone just picked up randomly for an act which is just basically writing an article. Of course, a more deeper and sadder case of Al-Abdul-Fatih, who has been in jail for two years now. This round of imprisonment because he was earlier imprisoned in 2015 and was in jailed in 2019. He was briefly released then and was again imprisoned. And he wrote a very poignant, very depressing letter to his mother where he had to do his lawyer, basically where he said that, you know, that he would commit suicide if, you know, because he would not take those conditions anymore. And there is a lot of record about how he has been really forced to suffer. You may remember him as one of the activists who was prominent during the 2011 Arab Spring Movement in Egypt. A moment of great hope for people across the world, people in Africa and in Egypt this weekly. So a lot of this, of course, purely due to the fact that the Al-Abdul-Fatih LCC government in Egypt has, you know, gone, taken things to a much, much greater extreme, secure in the knowledge that all its actions are going to be endorsed. Nobody's going to crack down on them. During the US presidential election, Biden had happily termed CC Trump's favorite dictator and he promised action. The interesting news that we say in the last week also is that the US has said, you know, it has imposed conditions on $130 million of military aid to Egypt while allowing the other $170 million to continue. So, you know, the media was full of the fact that, oh, the US has said that there has to be some improvement in human rights if $130 million of military aid is to continue. Whereas the important thing is that $170 million of military aid is going to continue nonetheless. And this is despite the fact that across the world, human rights organizations have written time and again to the United States, asking that, you know, military aid to the Egyptian military be stopped because of the sheer brutality that is taking place. We have seen round after round suppression. In 2019, they were protest brutally suppressed. In 2020, they were protest brutally suppressed. At various points of time, the number of political prisoners in Egypt was estimated to be around 60,000. This is just political prisoners, by the way. So we are in a situation where, you know, as Al-Sisi has absolute impunity. There's no other way to describe it because Egypt is such a crucial player in the United States policies in the region, whether it be Libya, whether it be Palestine, Egypt, of course, also the country which is blocking Gaza in collaboration with Israel. Something that, you know, we often, we talk about Israeli atrocities, but Egypt is equally enforcing that blockade as well. So, internally, externally, country rife with human rights violations and military aid still continuing right now. So this is what's happening in Egypt right now. Yeah, these trials have to be watched carefully. I thought Allah Abdul Fattah's letter to his mother was very affecting. There's the worry that, you know, suicide is on the table. He's been in prison for a decade off and on, a terrible situation. Let's go back to Argentina and its neighbor. Argentina deciding to keep the border closed with Uruguay, Uruguay and Ecuador, apparently in the middle of some interesting developments of their own. I was reading Zoe the other day that Uruguay ready to ink a new deal with China saying, well, let us be the gateway of China into South America. They can't really, if the border with Argentina is closed. What's going on with Uruguay and Ecuador? Well, I mean, it's a bit of a continuation from the last story to be honest. I think the focus here being what happens with a neoliberal government. And in Ecuador, as we reported last year, Guillermo Lasso was victorious against the candidacy of Andrés Arauz, who was a progressive candidate and a lot of, you know, there was a bit of confusion in this election because, of course, the prior government had been of the same ruling party of Andrés Arauz, but it had been a brutal neoliberal party that had just driven the Ecuadorian economy into the ground. And, but, you know, Guillermo Lasso was able to win kind of with this perversion of the discourse because he said, oh, well, actually it was them who was in power. I'm going to be better. And in the situation in Uruguay, we have Luis Lacai Po, who was victorious in the presidential elections after several consecutive governments of the broad front, which is, of course, the, you know, left progressive alliance that had been in power in Uruguay. You know, Uruguay is a, many people call it a quite boring country. It is, you know, not to, and no offense to Uruguay, but it's a very, you know, in terms of, you know, economic, social economic indicators across the continent is one of the countries that has, you know, a decent retirement age. They have very low level of unemployment. Their economy, you know, it's a lot of people, you know, are forced to leave the country to find employment. But in terms of its neighbors, it's one of the more stable countries in terms of its economy, in terms of the conditions for its population. But of course, in both Ecuador and Uruguay, we see a more conservative neoliberal government coming into power. Of course, with Ecuador is the continuation of, from Lenin Moreno to Guillermo Lasso. But I think what's important to highlight is that people have been on the streets day one, rejecting the reforms that they're trying to impose. And with Lenin Moreno, there was massive protests that happened during his government. Historic protests, the October 2019 protests, which, you know, ended up giving rise to a wave of anti-neoliberal protests across the continent. And right now in Uruguay, there's actually historic mobilization that's also been going on against several different policies that seek to erode the stability that Uruguayan workers and the working class have enjoyed over the past couple of governments due to the broad front being in power. And so two days ago, they had another national strike which saw thousands of people on the streets in this very peaceful, tranquil country where not a lot, you know, people say not a lot happens in Uruguay, but people are back on the streets, you know, day after day because they do not want their rights to be eroded. They see what's happening in Argentina. They see what happens in Argentina when the neoliberal policies, you know, just destroyed the economy, destroyed the well-being of the workers, 40% of people in poverty in Ecuador. You know, this process has already been underway and they were unable to consolidate support behind the progressive ticket. But now social movements are back on the streets. They're saying, okay, you know, Guillermo Lasso is continuing, he's trying to push right now a labor reform, which would, you know, erode labor rights in the country where compared to, for example, Colombia, they have a lot more rights, they have a lot more guarantees as workers in Ecuador, but those are being threatened. So people are on the streets resisting neoliberalism once again. Well, listen, let's give credit where credit is due. Guillermo Lasso of Ecuador came to office said by, you know, September 9 million vaccinations would be given, country of about 17 million, that's about half the population. And he was able to live up to that pledge using a lot of Chinese vaccines and so on. Credit where credit is due. You know, it's one of the campaign pledges. We just don't see these campaign pledges held up. We know, again, going back across the Atlantic, looking at Africa in Brazzaville, the capital of Congo, the WHO's resident, you know, their Machu Hidiso Moiti gave a press conference yesterday on Thursday with very startling information. I'm going to look at the statistics for a second. You know, we have 1.2 billion people on the continent of Africa. Right now the WHO Moiti is saying that there's a vaccine shortfall of 470 million. This is incredible. You know, right now the number from the WHO is that 3.6% of the population vaccinated. They were hoping for 17% to be vaccinated. 17%, you know, it's extraordinary low. What was interesting in the press conference is Moiti said that the reason why there were insufficient vaccine doses on the continent was because COVAX, the COVAX Alliance vaccines were not coming in. There was a shortfall. And what I want to read the quote from Moiti. Moiti said, as long as rich countries lock COVAX out of the market, Africa will miss its vaccination goals. Now, what does this mean as long as rich countries lock COVAX out of the market? This is a consequence of the fact that the richer countries are buying up the vaccines. And now they are buying it up in order to produce a third so-called booster dose of the vaccine in many countries. Simply eating the vaccines up into their own, into their countries. And the continent of Africa, which has just seen an 8 million mark, the infection numbers go up above 8 million. Simply doesn't have the money power to buy the vaccines as relied upon COVAX, which is, as I said, the vaccine alliance. Having taken away vaccines from the African continent, what the WHO is worried about are two things. Number one, of course, worried about the spread of this variant and the original in Africa. Now, they're worrying about 1.2 billion people having to deal with this virus. That's one piece of it. The medical situation is also going to be dire in several countries if the infection rates go up. The second thing they worry about, and here, I think people forget that the planet is actually a round place where we all live together and where ships and people through planes move across countries and continents. The second thing they worry about is the consequence of interconnection. New variants might develop. And if new variants develop, there's no saying that the booster shot is going to be a protection. So what actually the WHO has put on the table is perhaps a good idea to release vaccines into the African continent and let people be vaccinated at least one dose, if not the second dose before you go to the third dose. It's a question of equity and ethics actually. But also, let's not forget this, and Moeti didn't say this in Brazzaville, but let's not forget, question of removing the patent on vaccines is still on the table. It's South Africa and India that have the piece of paper sitting at the WTO, the World Trade Organization, asking for the release of the patent, asking for acceleration of vaccine production and so on, and not just all the vaccines, but why not also the mRNA vaccine, the Moderna and Pfizer, apparently the gold standard, release them, let's see, let people get vaccinated and so on. It's not on the table, neither the COVAX Alliance supplying Africa, nor is it on the table to release the patent on the vaccine, certainly not the patent for the mRNA vaccine. So there we are, difficult news coming from Brazzaville in the Congo, not only the fact that there's more violence in eastern Congo, which we'll come back to next week, but also this news from Brazzaville. You've been listening to Give the People What They Want coming to you every week, your favorite show with Zoe and Prashant from People's Dispatch, that's peoplesdispatch.org, and I'm Vijay from Globetrotter. We'll be with you next week, bringing you richer stories, better stories, and I hope at least one hopeful stories. See you.