 Okay, it's well it must be Friday and fortunately it's not April 1st because that would have been the opportunity for us to say it's our last show and we shall not be returning but since it's April 2nd of 2021 and since you're watching give the people what they want with Zoe and Prashant from People's Dispatch and me Vijay from Globetrotter. Since it's April 2nd there's no opportunity to play an April Fool's joke with you. We're back. Your favourite global half an hour news programme. Tell us how much you love us because we have very, very fragile egos. Zoe of course is in Ecuador. She is there covering the election, the second round of the elections. Let's go straight to Zoe, Keto Ecuador, beautiful, beautiful part of the world. What did your taxi driver from the airport to the home where you're living tell you Zoe, give us the latest? Yes, well I arrived yesterday in Keto. Very happy to be here. Very excited to cover the upcoming elections and also just generally the crisis that has been going on in Ecuador for the last couple of years. The thing that probably most struck me from my conversation with the taxi driver, we mostly focus on the conversation about COVID-19. So while in the imperialist core in the global north, we've seen in some respects maybe a decrease in numbers because of vaccination plans being rolled out. In South America this is not the tendency. This is not the trend that's happening right now. I mean we've talked a bunch about Brazil and the horrifying numbers there of increasing cases, increasing deaths. In Ecuador, similarly, of course last year in March, Ecuador had one of the worst moments of the COVID-19 pandemic with the horrible outbreak in Guayaquil, people putting bodies on the streets, awful scene. But right now the cases are rising. There's restrictions being imposed in a lot of cities and so above all it doesn't, there's not really the same kind of environment or climate of kind of pre-elections here. It's not really felt on the street. Mostly with my taxi driver we were talking about kind of how COVID has impacted life and you know this, I mean right now we're also in Semana Santa, which is the Holy Week. So there's a really kind of massive decrease in mobilization and kind of just generally people being out. What I can say is that yesterday, two days ago, no yesterday, sorry. A poll was the final day to release pre-elections polls and the poll by Omar Maluk was released. He is a leftist kind of political scientist and an analyst and he's released several polls throughout the electoral process. And his latest one was released yesterday talking about intention of vote and he also kind of released a series of the numbers that he's observed over the past couple of months. And what he says in this poll is that according to opinions right now, Andres Araus, who again is the progressive candidate from the Union of Hope, related to of course Rafael Correa in the Citizens Revolution. He, you know, served several positions in that government. He currently is polling at 53.8% and banker Guillermo Lasso is at 46.2%. So it's close. There's also very high index right now of calling for the blank vote. Abstention. We know Yaku Pérez is part of Pachacuti. A lot have been, there have been major calls for this. So right now, there's kind of a three-way division between Guillermo Lasso, Andres Araus. And then also, you know, the voting in blank is getting a lot of support, which is I think something that's concerning, not because, you know, they're not voting for Andres Araus, they're not voting for Lasso. But why are people feeling disinvested in this political process and why are they feeling like the only way they can express their political aspirations is through the blank vote. So, you know, we'll be talking to different people over the upcoming days from the Indigenous movement, you know, members of the Assembly. We've also seen some, you know, last desperate attempts by outgoing President Lenny Moreno, who just to add has one of the worst approval ratings in history. Because of all of these horrible neoliberal reforms that he has implemented, his complete, you know, betrayal of the citizens revolution, he's been trying to implement some last desperate moves, you know, including the privatization of the central banks. So we'll be talking to some legislators as well to see how they've been resisting these moves by Lenny Moreno to push through these reforms. And stay tuned, always follow People's Dispatch. We'll be updating from there with some good reports, hopefully. It's a very important election, Zoe. Andres Araus, aged 37, I believe, an economist trained at the National University in Mexico in a tight race with Guillermo Lasso, businessman, you know, with a far right agenda. I think there is, of course, a sense of both hope among a lot of people, but also disorientation. We're in the middle of a pandemic. It's disorienting. We're in the middle of a pandemic. Lots of people have shifted to buying their goods from platforms. We've seen during the course of this pandemic, owners of companies like Amazon making a enormous amount of money, looks like now workers at Amazon from the United States into the heart of Europe and elsewhere, not going to take it any longer. Prashant, they're on strike. They're threatening a strike over Easter. What's going on with Amazon and the Amazon workers? Right. So it's actually quite a dynamic moment as far as labor organizing in Amazon is concerned. In the United States, we saw, of course, the news from the Bessemer facility in Alabama, where there was a vote for 5,800 ballots to place and the counting is going on. And this is a very important vote, of course, because this could be a precedent for very similar unionization efforts. The vote was for, say, unionization efforts in that plant. And if this passes, this could have a domino effect, which is what a lot of observers are saying. And in the past few months, I've been really kind of crazy. We've seen Amazon pull out all stops, including some of the most weirdest stories about manipulating traffic lights or working towards that so that traffic lights are when union organizers get the opportunity to talk to workers. And Amazon has been apparently trying to manipulate that so there's less time. So that is the extent of the campaign. They spend tens of thousands of dollars, if not more on union busting efforts. Recently reports, of course, coming out that from 2018, Amazon has been organizing a program called Veritas. I believe Veritas means the truth, where they drafted employees to go out on social media, especially select employees and defend the company. And of course, a lot of these violations, this may not, of course, be a violation, but many other such incidents taking place also in the context of horrifying reports about work conditions emerging in Amazon, workers not getting the chance to even go to the loo, the insane workload that is taking place. And it's interesting because we recently talked to Juliano Granato of Pote Reale Popolo in Italy, he was talking about the Amazon workers strike there on March 22, which is again a very historic strike, mainly because the fact that for the first time, both Amazon employees and Amazon, those who drove delivering Amazon packages, who are often employed by third parties to part of the strike. And there is a moment of pivotal moment of unity and also showed I think a lot of promise in terms of organizing workers in the sector, which has really been quite difficult. And Juliano was of course telling us about how the strike was of course uneven, especially the industrialized north, there was a lot of support for the strike. The important thing to notice, notice that many of these drivers deliver close to 180 to 200 packages a day sometimes, that is the kind of load that is on them. And last year, according to at least one academic study, Amazon grew by 31%. So it's not this often the strikes and protests are not even really about salaries because the key thing is work conditions here because Amazon has become such a bare maw, there's a huge amount of automation taking place, workers are filling in the gaps, being put through huge amounts of stress. And there because there are no, there's no huge mass factory with tens of thousands of workers mobilizing and organizing can be difficult. And sometimes their concerns are not heard that often. We had the example of Chris Smalls, who also raised many issues like this at the height of the pandemic in the United States and faced action as well. So I think last one, two years, and especially since the pandemic began, there has been a great amount of attention paid to Amazon. We saw the campaign by the progressive international and labor organizations across the world on this issue. Of course, on March 29th in Germany, Amazon workers similarly took to protests again, protest went about the working conditions about fixed contracts. So I think across the world, there is a huge amount of pushback that is taking place against Jeff Bezos and against Amazon, specifically demanding that the situation where workers are treated as machines or workers are treated as dispensable, say elements in the large production or large distribution process be put an end and there be the possibility of organizing and working for the rights. You know, it's an ongoing story. It's Amazon, yes, but also it's workers in all platform industries. We've been looking carefully at Uber and Uber Eats, which delivers food to people's homes. Many of these platforms, the workers only income comes in tips. And this is of course not a guaranteed wage of any kind. It's a very difficult situation for a lot of people who have been forced into this kind of labor. You know, we're talking about workers having a difficult time surviving. We're talking about an election in Ecuador. Meanwhile, of course, in Europe, there's an enormous amount of pressure being put on the Russia-Ukraine border. The organization known as NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization last year released a report, a very considerable important report where they talked about the expansion of NATO, the imagine a NATO in the Middle East, a NATO in Asia and so on. But really the expansion of NATO of great consequence has been the expansion within Europe itself. People may know that when the Berlin Wall fell and as a consequence of German reunification, the Russian government at the time made a deal with the United States saying NATO would stop at Russia's eastern border. NATO of course has moved further eastward and in this report came out last year, NATO talked about strengthening its opportunities in Ukraine and Georgia. Over the course of the last few days, there have been very disturbing developments on the Ukraine-Russia border. Russia had a military exercise on its own soil, not that close to the Ukraine border. NATO scrambled jets about 10 times to basically shadow the troop movements on the Russian side. NATO's Secretary General made, I thought, quite peculiar comments about what's happening there. And then of course, just in late March, the foreign ministers met in Brussels of the NATO countries and again Russia was much on the table. Well, there's now shooting at the Ukraine-Russia border. People have been killed. This is a matter of great, great concern. I think it's pretty important to recognize that this may not escalate out of control because I think both the Russians, the Ukrainians and particularly the Germans don't want a conflict. I want to put this on the table because the situation behind this is the development of a pipeline that the Russians and the Nord Stream consortium have been building to bypass Ukraine, go through the Baltic waters from Russia into Germany. And just in this period of the military buildup, the Nord Stream consortium has said they worry a lot about armed conflict in the Baltic region. They worry that the pipeline is going to be damaged. This is not something that I'm just speculating or that they've just speculated about. But Andrew Minin, who's a senior official at the Nord Stream 2 AG consortium, came out clearly and said that they feel that the fleet of the project that's building the pipeline is facing. And here's his direct quote. This is Andrew Minin said, we're facing regular provocations by the foreign civil and military vessels. When asked about this US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, he was asked about this on a television broadcast last Sunday. And he said, well, it's a responsibility of those who are building the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, whether they want to complete it or whether they want to take a position, whether they want to complete it despite opposition from Washington or do they want to give up? I mean, this is mafia tactics and it's got to be clear that the conflict on the Russia-Ukraine border is not really to do with the Crimea or the Donbas region where there is a conflict inside Ukraine. This has to do with Nord Stream 2 and the attempt by the United States to prevent the completion of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. I'd like to have people look at this a little carefully. It's a very big story. It's hard to encapsulate this in a few minutes because it has a lot to do with the fact that Europe has been denied energy sources from Iran. There's a consequence of the nuclear blockade of Iran. It has been denied energy from Libya as a consequence of NATO's war there and now denied from Russia. So Germany desperate to complete the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. The United States eager not to have this pipeline completed and then you have military tension on the border. We're in a very difficult situation. I hope people are watching this carefully. You're listening to give the people what they want from people's dispatch from Globetrotter. You're watching us from China. You're watching us from Canada. You're watching us from India. You're watching us from Kenya. We're happy to have you. Border disputes, terrible things, very dangerous. There's a terrible border dispute ongoing now between Venezuela and Colombia. There had been a dispute between Venezuela and Guyana. Zoe, what's happening at that border? Well, thanks Vijay. It's a complicated moment right now. The Venezuelan-Columbia border is one of the hottest borders. It's one of the borders that's had historically a lot of conflict between state actors but also it's a heavy concentration of irregular armed groups. This is one of the key kind of corridors towards the Caribbean. There's a lot of illegal drug trafficking that happens in this area. There's a lot of mining operations. It's one of the most militarized regions in Colombia. Essentially right now there's been a dispute that's been going on because the Venezuelan Bolivarian National Forces of Venezuela carried out an operation in this state of Apure where they claimed that there was an attack coming from an irregular Colombian armed group. As I mentioned, this area is constantly occupied by illegal armed groups. There's a lot of movement. The civilian population has been suffered greatly throughout history. Currently what's happening is that there was an operation that was carried out. Sorry, I think my internet is not super strong. There was an operation that was carried out by Venezuela against these groups. In this confrontation, in this operation, two members of the Bolivarian Guard were killed. There have been dozens injured. But essentially it's kind of opened up, not a closed wound by any means, but tensions between Venezuela and Colombia. Colombia has been historically the ally of the United States in pushing an agenda of militarization and military operations against Venezuela. Colombia is taking advantage of the operation of the Venezuelan Army against this irregular group to kind of reactivate its plan of aggression against Venezuela. Iván Duque has given several declarations. There's been a massive media campaign deployed on social media through WhatsApp groups saying that these soldiers of the dictatorship of Venezuela are attacking Colombian soil. We're going to be publishing a report on this at People's Dispatch. Mission Verdad, the Corriente Revolucionario Bolivari Zamora have also published detailed accounts of what's happening because it's actually quite difficult to piece out what's happening. What are the lies that have been spread and kind of what's behind this operation? But I think beyond the specifics of this encounter in itself we have to understand the geopolitical importance of this, the historical importance of this and of course above all the impacts on the civilian population because any time there's some sort of armed confrontation, the first to suffer of course of the civilian population I think Venezuela has been trying to neutralize this threat that's been attacking them. They've been met with massive attacks from the Colombian government so it's a really complicated situation to encourage people to follow it and try to piece out what's happening beyond this media manipulation that Colombia loves to do against Venezuela using words like the dictatorship. They're attacking our country and so it's quite dicey at the moment. The interesting thing about give the people what they want is that we seem to report from all kinds of places in the world. We run zigzags from Ecuador to Europe to Nord Stream pipeline to back to the Venezuelan-Columbian border. Now we're going to go all the way out to the Philippines where it's been a long time since the Philippines has had a government of some sensible nature. Prashant, what is happening in the Philippines and why is it that we keep reporting things of violence and so on? What's the underlying story here? Absolutely, the most latest peg of course is the fact that three labor activists were targeted, two of them were arrested, one of them was declared at large, one was later released of course but this is part of a trend like you said, this is not one incident we're talking about here and just a few weeks ago there was an event which is now known as Bloody Sunday where nine people were killed, six were arrested and similarly all of these were people who were human rights defenders people fighting for the rights of the oppressed and basically the Duterte regime has clearly over the years it's not again a new phenomenon, over the years it has been unleashing a continuous wave of terror, there is this practice called red tagging which I think really needs to be examined properly really needs to be understood properly where anyone and everyone who opposes the government who's speaking about rights is automatically red tagged or identified with the banned communist party there and Duterte has been releasing, he's been making all kinds of speeches where he's been telling the army regularly that go ahead finish them off, kill all the communist insurgents in the country and he's been making those kind of statements and what has been happening is that it's not just the executive infrastructure it's also the judiciary so in the beginning of March during this whole Bloody Sunday issue activists had pointed out that a lot of the warrants that are being issued against those fighting for justice, those fighting for rights are basically copy based warrants so there's just one, there's just name and the address change and everything else remains the same so this is kind of what has been happening in the Philippines continuously and we had incident after incident, farmers leader shot say university professors or universities were attacked again accused of being involved with the Maoists last year we saw that there was an anti-terror law which was passed by the government, massively criticized there's a huge challenge that is being mounted in the Supreme Court right now against this law where academics, activists, human rights organizations all of them have come together to challenge it but at its heart it lies in the fact that the Philippine government Duterte has acted with immense impunity because we've also seen the so-called anti-drug operations a clear parallel is there so where in the name of anti-drug operations there's been massive violence, huge number of innocent skilled and now the government has actually admitted that that there have been lapses in procedures so to speak so when a government says lapses in procedures the reality on the ground is obviously much, much more dire and as of exactly in parallel we have red tagging where again people are accused of being Maoists or communists are either arrested or killed or there's complete impunity with which they're being treated so definitely a huge crisis and an ongoing crisis but like I said the sign of hope is in the fact that organizations, activists continuously fighting and international solidarity also take place on this you know you're talking about the Philippines but you could just as well have been talking about Colombia or Honduras you could just as well have been talking about the Gilgit-Baltistan region of Pakistan sometimes good things happen you know we didn't mention it but in December there was a release of the life imprisoned activist Baba Jan was released in Gilgit has been going this last two weeks traveling around Pakistan speaking about various issues a person of great dignity and composure Baba Jan, I think there are many Baba Jan sitting in prison in India of course we have Sudha Bhardwaj and you know Anantal Tumbe and so on in jail for I'm not sure what reason really honestly if we're honest and as journalists we read the record it's not clear what's going on well read the record I've been reading just released two days ago the World Economic Forum and you know I'll admit it publicly that I read the World Economic Forum documents this is the group synonymous with the Davos conference it's an interesting document it's about the global gender gap and what I found I found two things of interest one in general one about India that I wanted to highlight the thing in general is that they say as a consequence of the pandemic whereas previously they had calculated it would take at the pace at which the gender gap was being closed and you know they have a set of metrics and so on at the pace at which the gender gap is being closed they had previously said it will take 99.5 years to close the gender gap that's about a hundred years well because of the pandemic they now say at the pace at which the gender gap is being closed it'll take 135.6 years so an entire generation has been lost in terms of what is known as gender parity as a consequence of the pandemic and it's not really the pandemic's fault it's the consequence of the way society is organized so that women conduct the majority of care work in the world and because women conduct the majority of care work and during the lockdown because of the lockdown women have had to give up their jobs or cut back on their hours and so on this has an impact on the wages women make and so on and as a consequence of that really the consequence of patriarchy that we're now going to see an entire generation not be able to live with gender parity you know based on their report well the point in India that I was very stunned with and I want to mention this I noted this down as I was reading you know you imagine India where science in the world of science a large number of women in science in fact the data shows that women in science are only 14.3% of total scientists only 14.3% of Indian scientists are women that's extraordinary and in the industries of fire which is finance insurance and real estate you know these sort of the financialization industries women in India only occupy 13.4% of those jobs these are very high paying middle class jobs compared to other jobs this is extraordinary India is in very bad shape in terms of at least the global gender gap as understood by the World Economic Forum at Tri-Continental we've done a series of studies about this including recently a dossier on care work I ask you to go and take a look at that but you don't really need to take a look at those studies this is just something that you can see out the window or in fact you can't see it out of the window you have to see it inside the house because it's a consequence of the lockdown and the way there's a patriarchal form of gender relations in the home I'm bringing this up because somebody told me a little while ago that look this is a human interest story it's not news and I want to make this point you know that there is a way in which news is extraordinarily gendered that the news becomes news of border conflicts and news becomes things about you know strikes at workplaces and so on but here we're talking about an enormous number of human beings who are working to socially reproduce homes why is reports about their lives not news why is that a social story or human interest I think we really need to think about the patriarchal nature of how we understand news this is as much a news story as any story and I think it's quite scandalous that an entire generation based on the world economic forum numbers is going to miss out on gender parity I think that's a shame on humankind this is give the people what they want we come to you every Friday at the same time also as a podcast we come to you from people's dispatch Zoe and Prashant amazing reporters a great website make sure you go to it every day I'm always surprised when I meet people who don't read people's dispatch I tell everybody it's got to be your first port of call in the morning you can read it on your phone the website is excellent give the people what they want also comes to you from Globetrotter we're a syndication service you can read us in about 200 publications I hope you do I hope you tell people about both people's dispatch and Globetrotter Zoe Prashant anything else you'd like to say no, be good looking forward to seeing everyone see everybody next week and be careful in Ecuador Lenin Moreno has declared an emergency in a couple of districts I don't know what he's trying to do to the election but I hope the people get to exercise their franchise you've been listening to give the people what they want from people's dispatch in Globetrotter see you next Friday