 Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Your weekly movement news roundup. Hello, it's the 16th of February and you're here for another episode of Give the People What They Want with Zoe and myself from People's Dispatch. Vijay is on a reporting trip somewhere in Europe so he'll be joining us next week with fresh updates from the continental movements there and hopefully other parts of the world as a whole. It's been, as usual, a very intense week for all of us covering news, for all of us covering the situation in Palestine, the situation in West Asia as a whole, especially as many of you have read at this point. The big question is what happens in Rafa in the southern part of Gaza where more than a million, maybe closer on 1.3 to 1.4 million Palestinians are in a very, very small part of the larger territory that is Gaza and these 1.3 to 1.4 million, a large part of these people were forced into Rafa because of the brutal Israeli attacks since October 7th. We know that during these attacks the Israelis told the Palestinians time and again that move to the south of the territory because this part will not be safe and now we have a situation where Israel is planning an offensive on Rafa. Now, of course, there's been widespread condemnation of the idea, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, all the aid organizations that you can think of, all of them warning against the kind of attack that is there, the kind of possibility of an offensive on Rafa because of the sheer density of population over there. Now, it does look like there is a very concerted effort on the part of Israel over here to push people out of Rafa. In fact, that has always been, many media reports have indicated that that is really the plan, that you push the Palestinian people out of Palestine because that really completes that agenda of ethnic cleansing that has always been so central to a lot of what Israel has been doing and this is even worried countries like, for instance, Egypt, which is worried about the Palestinians being forced to come into their territory. Egypt has even warned that it will scrap its 1979 peace agreement with Israel over this and despite all these concerns, despite especially the horrible medical, the humanitarian situation in the region, these attacks have continued unabated. We have carried on people's dispatch quite a few reports, especially on the health situation in Gaza. I would encourage you to read those reports which really talk about how horrendous the situation is over the past few days. We have heard of continuous attacks on a Nasr hospital, for instance, in the Khan Yunus region on the Al Amal hospital. Nasr hospitals are the most important medical facilities in Gaza at this point of time. But Israel is in fact Israeli forces have called for the evacuation. They have already evacuated the patients over there of thousands of people who are taking shelter of medical personnel. For instance, you have a medical agency saying that they are not being able to get in touch or access these hospitals at all even for delivery of aid, their staff working in extremely difficult conditions. And in between all this, you have this continuing offensive which has not stopped short and it's very important to of course note that throughout this period Israel's Western allies have been making maybe cautionary noises at most. The United States of course beginning by seeming to take a clear stand on this issue or at least making expressions of concern but its own position is diluted considerably even from that low baseline where it started. So I know now it's talking about making sure that there are not too many casualties as if in all this time that has really been Israel's concern. So a very, very dangerous situation in not only in Gaza but also the fact that across the region it's been escalating. We had attacks in Lebanon, Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrullah delivering two speeches this week where he stopped talking about he's been being cautious in terms of how he's responding but also making it very clear that there is no endless patience as far as 11 is a concern. So a region as a whole very dangerously and delicately poised at this point of time. One can argue that not much, that has been the case for many months now but especially with if the offensive on Rafa takes place the extent of disaster might be very, really difficult to describe and I think it's really a very damning testimony of the fact that despite all this talk about peace, despite all this talk about human rights there's been absolutely no decisive action not even one Security Council, not even one Stern Security Council resolution asking Israel to stop the war. So that's unfortunately where we are with the war on Gaza at this point. Well what's interesting Prashant I think is that actually the threat and really the ongoing attacks on Rafa because we know that there have been airstrikes carried out against the region is that actually a lot of Israel's key allies have actually taken a position in calling Israel to back down to call for a ceasefire, not even saying just the truth. I mean we're hearing Emmanuel Macron of France, Australia, New Zealand, Canada releasing a statement calling for a ceasefire. And it's really because they're seeing the levels of the humanitarian suffering, the catastrophe. I mean there's just countless reports that are just documenting and detailing kind of every level of the suffering and even that doesn't go far enough into understanding what's happening on the ground as you mentioned. But it is interesting because again we see many more voices coming out and condemning Israel, again even close allies. However beginning of this week, no surprise here the US passed its long-awaited funding bill in the Senate which essentially promises to send $14 billion to Israel. And this is of course extremely crazy because not only is Israel sort of threatening this major escalation it's a moment when people are actually taking stock and saying this is too far, four months into the genocide, 30,000 people slaughtered cruelly and the US actually pushes forward by saying we need to arm Israel more, we need to send more aid. And again as we've talked about on the show this is completely in contradiction to the sentiments of the people in the United States. I'm not just talking about the people who are on the streets protesting which is a huge number, but major polls have said that the majority of US adults actually don't support Israel's military campaign they think Israel has gone too far. And again the polls of young people with a more specific age bracket are much higher numbers, but the majority of American voters adult age do not support what's happening. And so we see US Senator Czech Schumer who's actually based in New York pushing this through. He's one of the biggest defenders of Israel. This bill now goes of course to the House of Representatives in the United States, Republican dominated. Many people think it's unlikely to pass because there's pretty strong opposition to sending more aid to Ukraine and that's a major piece of this foreign funding bill. But still the fact you know these all of these actions send a message of saying Israel doesn't matter that you're about to invade a land where there's over a million refugees we're still going to send you military aid. And again despite as you said all of these condemnations from human rights organizations despite even leaders of the global north condemning what's happening calling for a ceasefire the fact that the United States just continues to financially and militarily back and politically and diplomatically which is I think is really crucial back Israel means that it feels like it can go ahead with these genocidal operations this you know extreme violence against the people. So it's really atrocious that the United States is just continuing pushing forward. I think we have seen a little bit of cracks in the Biden administration we've heard kind of these leaked rumors from staffers saying oh Biden's really furious with Netanyahu oh Biden's this Biden's that he's unhappy with what's happening but at the end of the day the their actions and their concrete policies have not changed and we even saw a spokesperson saying that you know Israel they don't they don't plan to punish Israel for any of the crimes that it's going to be that it is carrying out and that it could carry it on Rafa so pretty bleak situation but I think that people continue putting pressure on the Biden administration and it continues to be more and more politically costly for him to blindly back this genocidal regime again election year he's actually significantly losing large swaths of the population over this so I think sooner or later we're going to see this come to a head right through the election year that's something we've talked about often on this show 2024 very vital for a number of countries the United States being one of them but that's much later in the year after a grueling process of primaries where I think many of these questions are definitely going to come up although unfortunately there is definitely considerable unanimity between the Republicans and Democrats on the issue of Israel but nonetheless moving on the going to the other side of the globe so to speak another vital election taking place on the 14th of February and it's interestingly an election that is called this largest single-day election in the world it's in Asia you know which has a very a very important country for multiple reasons one being the fact that it's of course an economy powerhouse it plays a key role in global affairs as a spokesperson for that region as a whole there's a lot of weight it has and this election particularly important because the fact that after two terms incumbent president Jo Kobi or Jo Kobi Dodo was no longer eligible to contest this election although he continues to remain quite popular and so after eight years the field was kind of thrown wide open for a variety of candidates now this has been a curious election first of all of course the results are not out yet officially they'll only come out by the 20th of March if I'm not mistaken but the preliminary results which were also what was anticipated by everybody was that Prabowo Subhiyanto old war horse so to speak of the international political seat would hemorrhage as a winner he's already declared victory right now estimates say that he's getting about 57 to 58% of the votes Prabowo was interestingly Jo Kobi's opponent the incumbent president's opponent for the past two elections which he lost but this time he is contesting with Jo Kobi's son as his vice presidential candidate a very young man and this itself is kind of indicative of the very mixed ideological and political scenario that you know led this elections where Jo Kobi who was traditionally the candidate of what is considered a far more moderate party so to speak switched his support to Prabowo or they moved closer together which has been happening for quite some time now unfortunately Prabowo has a very alarming record in fact he was the son-in-law he is the son-in-law of a former dictator Suharto during his time during whose time innumerable amounts of brutalities took place against activists and left against protestors you know the massive corruption massive violations of human rights and Prabowo was in the thick of many of these violations was directly responsible for them in fact he was dishonorably discharged from the Indonesian army but all these years later he has managed some kind of an imagery habilitation so to speak where he's been sort of into this affectionate at least that's how the media portrays him in many parts this thing in the kind of an affectionate elderly wise old man and there's been very little examination during this campaign of his very brutal record during the Suharto you know and so he looks all set that he is likely to become the next president so we're seeing another leader from that category sort of coming to power although it's definitely going to be complicated like I said Jokowi because of his son will continue to sort of exercise some amount of power in the new structure it's going to be interesting to see how these two while they are together how long what will be the fate of this alliance of former rivals very important to see in the parliamentary elections the what do you call it is not the party which is the moderate one Jokowi's former party has done relatively better so it's a bit unclear of course final results will be out only in March on the 20th of March I believe but this election was one also where I think that there was a considerable amount of consolidation of the ruling class quite a few issues raised by the left quite a few issues raised by the activists including the treatment of labour including workers rights the question there was the omnibus bill which saw some massive protests in previous years which really attacked workers rights issues like that not really coming up so much in the international elections so which activists say tended to be far more personality driven then ideology or issue driven at this time a lot of issues that were raised by leftist and activist sections of society not really making it onto the agenda so in a sense it could be it could be analysed as some kind of a populist victory on this side but remains to be seen where Subhiyanto and the alliance he sort of cobbled together will go in the coming weeks and months as well and we'll of course know the results fully by the 20th of March but very important times the agenda he's going to set forward will be very vital for the entire region as a whole. Well again yeah we love elections here and this year is another vital election that will be taking place in Venezuela a date to be confirmed but could be as early as June however a familiar enemy has come up which is the United States once again cracking down on Venezuela regarding elections criticising Venezuela's democratic process during we know that during the pandemic because of the US's desperation to actually get access to oil following the war in Ukraine it turned to Venezuela it started to recognize in some way not officially but the leadership of Nicolas Maduro is the president of the country and we saw actually a lot of the sanctions that had been in place on Venezuela's oil industry start to loosen and a process began where the US began to recognize some of the diplomatic efforts that Venezuela was leading or some of the kind of reconciliation efforts it was leading with the opposition and through the agreements that took place during the dialogue with the opposition the US in turn started to loosen these sanctions agreements were made about the US having access to Venezuelan oil you know in terms of repairing some of the machinery that they have we know that because of the really heavy sanctions it's actually really hard for Venezuela to even process their own oil and so we saw this loosening up process which in turn of course helped boost the Venezuelan economy it's very positive steps because we know that for almost seven years US had an extremely extremely hostile position towards the United States which began with Obama's declaration of Venezuela as an extraordinary and unusual threat but intensified around the 2015 elections and so once again at the end of January following the Supreme Court ruling that again the Venezuelan candidate Machado was not eligible to participate in the electoral process this year and this is because no less she helped lead essentially coup efforts in the country the violent uprisings against government in 2014 and 2017 very intimately linked to you know this US backed efforts to really overthrow the government which happened at the same time that the US is exerting this maximum pressure campaign on Venezuela's economy and so it had already been clear from the start this person would not be eligible to participate in the democratic process again just given the constant attacks to you know Venezuela's sovereignty it's electoral system it's democracy and so once this ruling came out the Maria Cortina Machado would not be eligible to participate in the elections immediately the Treasury Department said that it would resume the sanctions that had loosened on Venezuela and it gave the deadline of February 13th for US companies to cease doing business with Venezuela and with the first target was the mining company but again the sanctions have continued and essentially this sort of you know silent but soft attitude towards Venezuela and like this out of necessity has now been completely shifted and we're seeing more and more US officials talking about the threats to democracy talking about how this is a rigged electoral process talking about the dictatorship again the same script that we've seen many many times and so it is definitely a tense moment and a tense year for Venezuela because again any time there's an electoral process this comes up there's criticisms of democracy, criticisms of the process and now especially there is you know they're trying this has become a right wing talking point because there's more immigrants actually coming from Venezuela the southern border so that has been worked into this whole right wing and honestly Democratic Party tirade against Venezuela pressures continuing to increase and we're I think it's going to continue to increase around the electoral process what will those sanctions look like by then unclear but but Venezuela is once again in sort of the eye of US Empire and it's of course a plan to save democracy across the world right the plan to save democracy of course an unending plan stretching decades that is sort of you know I think by this point they're just drinking their own kool-aid so this is a give the people what they want we come to you every Friday you can also listen to us as a broadcast you bring you news from around the world news of struggles news of elections like Zoe pointed out news of I think developments that often sometimes don't really feature so much in the headlines and one of them is probably a particular incident that took place today that is in India that is the Grameen Band that is a rural shutdown so to speak probably not at all going to be reported in by most media across the world and this was rural band was conducted by farmers and workers rural shutdown was conducted by farmers and workers organizations across the country on a series of demands now also important note that there is also an ongoing farmers protest in the state of Punjab or rather the border between the states of Punjab and Haryana those farmers also presenting very similar demands as the protesters in other parts of the country today and I think to understand it we need to sort of take a look take maybe a deeper look at the agricultural condition in the country right now India also important because we're going to also going for elections and maybe I think in a month and a half probably we're going to see the first hour first hour of elections taking place but the agricultural scenario is not you know the product of one round of elections or it's not an issue that has just started right now we're talking about a decades long process whereby agriculture has become increasingly unprofitable various reforms introduced by successive governments have attacked the foundations of agriculture production itself making it increasingly unprofitable and with very low remuneration for farmers across the country many many farmers hundreds and thousands of farmers have been pushed unfortunately into suicides I think the number is just 400,000 or something in the last 10 years or so so we're looking at you know a massive agrarian crisis a huge amount of people leaving their farm lands their agricultural pursuits coming to the city forced to take very jobs that pay very menially so it's also not just a crisis that of the rural sector it's also a crisis that extends into the urban sector as well so all this despite all this or in the face of all these farmers organizations across the country have made a very series of very clear demands to governments over time to this government one of the key demands being the question of what is called the minimum support price they want a sustainable minimum support price the minimum support price is the price at which the government procures crops from farmers the government the Indian government does by you know considerable amounts of crops what are you called specially paddy from farmers or the products also so they have asked for an expansion of that minimum support price and increase in that price so that agriculture becomes far more profitable and sustainable for them and this was one of the key demands that also was very central to the very historic farmers protests of two years ago many of you must have remembered those visuals that those protests were also against the farm laws which the government was forced to withdraw but at that time the government had said that they would set up a committee to consider this minimum support price but as you can expect that never really materialized so once again we have farmers from the state of Punjab especially moving towards the national capital Delhi where much before they reached massive barricades were set up there has been an incident of tear gas being fired at the protesters today huge barricades have come up in many places restrictions and protests drones have been deployed to fire tear gas as well so you know definitely not a positive attitude towards farmers who are asking for very basic and clear demands these demands like I said have been ongoing for many many years they have many other demands as well but I think the MSP itself is a very central demand which is not which the government promised to consider and now all this time later has still not positively considered it's important to also remember that today's what you call shutdown for instance is not a one-off it's a result of a process that has been happening for many months farmers and workers have been conducting meetings and rallies across the country they have been successive rounds of mobilizations pressing that demand making sure that that demand is very central to you know the kind of pressure they're applying to the government and all this is one of those things we talk about it's one of those processes of our time it's not an event it's not just one protest that we see today or one protest in November or whatever it's a process of many many years which the farmers workers those who are really not reported so much by the media have been continuously pushing so a very important story to watch out for especially as India heads towards the elections well to close us off I think I'll talk about another story which we have been following again for the past couple of years which is Ecuador the situation in Ecuador the sort of institutional breakdown and this week the government of Daniel Nowoa ratified the military cooperation agreements with the United States and so you might read that headline and say wow how did they get there what led to this clearly setback for its autonomy for its sovereignty and it's as we have been covering it is the series it is the result of many different policies that have been taken forward by prior governments sort of the whittling way of the state infrastructure and today we see the situation which we spoke about in January where this kind of outbreak of gang violence of criminal violence sort of erupted we saw these extremely graphic and intense scenes of of a gang sort of storming the headquarters of the station while they're broadcasting live on air we know that there was several massacres that took place in the prisons and this sort of intense state of commotion shaking Ecuador and you know this again is the result of many years of the deterioration of the state of the involvement of key sectors of the ruling class in benefiting from drug trafficking that goes through Ecuador again Ecuador is perfectly positioned to be part of the drug trade it's between the two largest cocaine producers Colombia and Peru so the reactivation the kind of opening for these gangs to kind of take hold in the country with this whittling down of institutions even under neoliberal governments of Guillermo Lasso and Lenin Moreno even the security institutions took hits so even their budget was reduced their personnel was reduced so there's openings for these kind of groups to take hold the demobilization of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia on the northern border of Ecuador again opened up this zone for another group to sort of assert its dominance all of these factors led to this outburst that we saw in January if you've been following Ecuador, the prison riots the prison massacres have been happening for the past several years horrific violence, hundreds of people have been killed in these prisons, the prisons are essentially were essentially under control completely of the gangs in the country and this again came to its most intense expression when they literally took control and had prison guards hostage and so in response to this commotion, Daniel Novoa declares all of these groups as terrorist organizations and begins this intense militarization of the country and crackdown on violent crime in the country since in the 37 days of what he's declared the internal armed conflict over a thousand people have been detained have been put in prison and at the same time he said anyone who wants to help us secure the country is welcome and who do you think jumped at that opportunity United States and so this had already been taking place Laura Richardson the famous chief of the southern command of the U.S. Army who just a year ago was saying on television open for everyone that Latin America was important because of the natural resources that are there so again the chief of the southern command who just a year ago was saying Latin America is important because of its resources one year later she's signing military cooperation or these military cooperation agreements are getting ratified she was in the country in January and I think it's important to point out just a couple of elements of these agreements on one hand there's going to be joint operations between the Ecuadorian Army and the U.S. Army so they have essentially license to take part in seizing ships any sort of criminal activity that's happening out in the water there's also aerial interception cooperation on the ground and this is I think perhaps the most important point is that there's a status of the armed forces to essentially have exceptions to these military privileges they're allowed to be carrying their weapons and being dressed in U.S. military gear in the country they're allowed to partake in all sorts of privileges different tourist activities so essentially this is a huge threat again for Ecuador we've seen when the doors are open to U.S. troops military bases to integrate with their armed forces nothing good comes of it there's so many cases across Latin America itself of horrible crimes that have taken place by U.S. personnel in other countries Rafael Correa had actually kicked U.S. troops out of the country so this is a huge step back something we definitely need to follow there's a lot less for a minute they're not too preoccupied in Palestine they're able to support a genocide and continue to try to control Latin America so we're keeping our eyes on Ecuador of course keeping our eyes on Gaza you can check out all of our reporting on peoplesdispatch.org and on our social media platforms like the video share it thanks for watching today for your movement driven news and a perspective you won't get from the mainstream media