 Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Your weekly movement news round up. Hello, today is the 8th of March, a very important day. The 8th of March, 2024. As most of you watching this show would know, it's International Working Women's Day. As we celebrate it across the world, a very powerful day of mobilizations. A day with a lot of rich history or the history of struggle, the history of battling against the odds. And a very important day. So we are very happy to do this show today. Give the people what they want. Your favorite weekly news analysis show brought to you by People's Dispacks. That's Zoe and I. And Globe Crowther, Vijay is once again traveling as part of a reporting assignment. So he will be back next week. Like I said, a very significant day today. Today is March 8th and I think all the more important because of the ongoing struggles in Palestine. I will come back to that with Zoe a bit later. But important to note that we have crossed five months since Israel's genocide, Israel's brutal war on Gaza began. And I think it's very important that as people who consume the news, as people who are part of movements, we do not fall into the trap of treating this as everyday news, which is always a risk with the elements of these kinds which continue for so many months. It is very essential that this not be allowed to sort of fade into the background or become that kind of static, so to speak, because the inhuman nature of this war becomes evident by the day, becomes clear by the day its impact on the lives of the over 2.1 million people in Gaza, continues to escalate by the day. And we also, as journalists, we think it's very important that this not just become numbers, the numbers are staggering, the numbers are shocking, but behind every number is the story of a family destroyed, the story of so much destruction brought on people. And we're looking at around 31,000 deaths at this point. We're looking at over 74,000 injuries if I'm not mistaken at this point. But these are, like I said, this is just the beginning. We're talking about an all-round systemic collapse of the lives of all these people in Gaza. And we need to remember, of course, that South Africa did bring a case against Israel in the International Court of Justice, accusing it of violating the genocide convention. The ICJ in its response found a lot of substance to South Africa's claims. One of the recommendations the ICJ made very strongly was that Israel take, you know, Israel be very clear, you know, Israel take responsibility for the delivery of aid, increase the amount of aid delivery to the people of Gaza. And I think the UN Security Council resolution also had a similar mandate a couple of weeks ago. We have a report on that has just gone up and that actually shows that contrary to what the ICJ said, in fact, the amount of aid that is going in has actually come down and this is having a horrendous impact. Now it's very, very important to remember that Gaza was already under siege before, that this is not the first time that Gaza has been under attack. Gaza was already under siege before and it was under siege for over a decade and a half. So already a lot of food, a lot of medical supplies, a lot of other necessities of life were being provided to the people of Gaza through relief trucks. And this is what has been drastically cut since Israel's war began. So at some point, you know, we were looking at around 500 trucks going to Gaza. And whereas right now in February, we're calling the UNRWA just 98 trucks entered per day, as opposed to the 500 trucks a day. And even in January, we were getting about 200 trucks a day. So in almost what is some kind of perverse logic, we see that after the ICJ delivered, it's verdict, we've actually seen a decrease in the number of relief trucks and the impact of this is, it's been horrendous in so many ways. We're looking at, of course, medical supplies massively declining. We're looking at people struggling for food. Most importantly, we're looking at famine. The latest reports say that about 20 people have died due to malnutrition and dehydration, which basically means in the year 2024, people are dying of hunger in Gaza and this number is likely to increase. And this is a direct result of Israel's refusal to actually allow more aid. It is not that the aid is not there. It is not that the trucks are not there or the agencies are not there, they're there, but Israel just refuses to let them enter. Now, we saw some days ago that the United States actually airdropped some aid in Gaza as some kind of bandage, considering that its own policies have allowed Israel to continue this blockade. It continues to arm Israel. So it's almost a farce in some senses and Biden's recent address, we'll talk about that as we'll talk about that later. We talked about building some kind of humanity in Gaza to download supply to disembark supplies. But the real question is why is that necessary, considering that this aid is very much there at the border? So I think a very important question before the ICJ, of course, when it hears the matter, but also before journalists, also before people's movements across the world in terms of how they choose to respond to this. Well, that's exactly right. And Prashant, as you said today is International Working Women's Day. And it's also, it's a day of mobilization. It's a day of struggle. And today, millions of women across the world are using this day to continue and to intensify their struggle against foreign complicity in the genocide in Gaza, specifically, of course, the global north countries that are financing and politically backing Israel as it carries out five months of genocide. And people are demonstrating their solidarity with the Palestinian people, the Palestinian women and children who have been massacred by Israel for over five months again, saying that, you know, the struggle, the feminist struggle is an anti-imperial struggle. The feminist struggle is a struggle against Zionism, against imperialism in the region. And this is, you know, this goes beyond slogans. We're not just saying that, I admit people are not just saying that, you know, supporting Palestine is, you know, a feminist thing. It's actually very concrete. The impact on women and girls during this genocide has been atrocious. Over 25,000 of the people who have been killed by Israeli forces are women and children. Miscarriages in Palestine since the beginning of Israel's genocidal war have increased by 300%. There's the access that women in Gaza have to healthcare, to treatment has also been severely, severely restricted. We know that one of the key targets throughout these five months have been precisely hospitals and healthcare centers. And again, women who are pregnant, who are, you know, needing prenatal care, postnatal care, and actually giving birth are in, you know, huge, huge, huge impediments to actually getting the care that they need, let alone the nutrition that they need. You already spoke about the extreme cutting off of aid. I mean, we've seen horrific, horrific images this week. Already there's deaths by malnutrition and a lot of those are children and babies. And so, in addition, there's just, it's really horrifying. So I'm just gonna try to go through some of these stats because when we say that, you know, the Palestinian causes is really the center of the feminist struggle. Again, it's really material and it's very concrete. One in 10 Palestinian women in labor are delayed reaching hospitals because of military checkpoints. And this was, you know, already the situation. Many women, whether it's in Gaza and the West Bank, have to go through multiple military checkpoints. Where often they're stopped, they have to do some sort of procedure. Again, this already impedes their ability to give birth safely and to have access to the necessary care that they need. So there's so many different, you know, manifestations of this. And so we're seeing that movements across the world who have been very active over the past several months in the Palestine Solidarity Movement are once again today taking to the streets There's, for example, the International People's Assembly in the World March of Women today launched a poster exhibition of Solidarity with Palestinian women and reaffirming, you know, the centrality of the Palestinian cause of the feminist movement. There are going to be mobilizations again across the United States and several cities with this same kind of slogan. And so I think it's a really interesting moment again, especially for movements that for many years have been trying to make this very concrete connection between the anti-imperialist struggle and the anti-patriarchal struggle. And it's interesting because last night, and I'll talk about it a bit later, but last night was the State of the Union and you see all of these senators and representatives from the United States who themselves are so complicit in advancing Israel's genocide into supporting it and, you know, allegedly, you know, they talk about women's rights, they talk about women's right to choose, they talk about being feminists, and at the same time, they're actually supporting a genocide which is directly targeting women, which is directly targeting girls. So this has been a moment of great clarity of saying that this is not really the feminism that actually is a true feminism and the true meaning of actually fighting for women across the world has been made very, very clear in these months. And I think especially today in the International Working Women's Day, it is, again, a central issue. Right, Zoe, of course, you mentioned the struggles that are taking place across the world and I think it's also important to, while talking about Palestine, to remember that these struggles are taking place across the world on, they have been taking place for many months, for four or five months now in terms of the number of marches taking place almost on a weekly basis. We saw massive mobilization on the 2nd of March. Multiple mobilizations otherwise taking place. And these are really mounted, these definitely have been one wing of resistance to Israel and its allies, the United States, its other allies in the West, when it comes to the impunity they have been enjoying. But also important to note that this war has had some regional ramifications that have also extended to the question of resistance itself. We're talking, of course, about what is called the axis of resistance and the kind of impact it has had in the past few months. And I think there are two aspects to talk about on this one is, of course, that there was a certain trend towards normalization of relations with Israel that was kind of getting increasing power among the countries in West Asia. It was becoming a very, very powerful trend. The tendency towards normalization that has really suffered a blow with October 7th and the developments passed and we have a great article which chronicles what has happened since October 7th on that front. And an important thing is that the Palestinian people struggled their refusal to accept defeat and their refusal to give up has been a key factor in many of the Arab governments kind of being forced to withdraw from the paradigm of normalization. Now, of course, they're not going to give up. Absolutely. But nonetheless, the fact remains that they have been forced to withdraw from that paradigm and that's definitely a very interesting development. But also we see what, for instance, Hezbollah and Ansara now known as the Houthis have been doing really shaking up the entire region. Hezbollah from October 8th onwards itself expressing solidarity with Palestine targeting the Israeli military facilities and Israel responding very brutally as well. The number right now I think is around 300 people in Lebanon have been killed in Israeli strikes a majority of them civilians. Hezbollah is of course also fired back so hardly a week goes by without the kind of cross firing that you see. And in some senses, I think if we need to sort of it's a very delicate situation on the one hand, Hezbollah has of course stayed back from declaring a full-fledged attack. Israel has been making extremely threatening noises. You have the defense minister, Yav Gallant actually saying that even if a truce is reached in Gaza, we will continue to attack Lebanon. So very, you know, a very delicate situation over there but it has also meant that Israeli forces are to some extent they're kind of tied up in the north and that has been a very active sense of an active action of resistance on the part of Hezbollah. And if you look at what Ansara has been doing again, very, very significant choosing to target your first ships taking materials to and from Israel and then Israeli and then US and British ships and making a very clear point that its solidarity is not just of course it's on one aspect of the solidarity is the millions of people who have been taking those streets in Yemen very regularly and that, you know, the numbers have been quite the numbers have been immense and it is also very active solidarity in the sense of targeting what Israel has been doing as well. So, you know, so all these together have really kind of I think shaken the region. There is no going back to the pre-October 7th situation whether it be for the pro normalization governments or whether it be for the access of resistance. I think other kind of hegemony that the United States enjoyed in this region is no longer there. It's become much more shaky right now. You know, in the kind of dominance it had at some point is definitely not there to be a more shaky even the kind of relationships Israel was building with many of these countries have become much much more dicey so to speak. So, all together this the region is looking at a major transformation. Sorry to transform, it's not looking at a major transformation. Now of course the pro-Israel and pro-US forces are likely to maybe push to reverse some of these developments but I think in the long run it could be very difficult to do that. There is a wave of radicalism that is taking over the entire world on this issue. Millions of people being politicized, millions of people changing their perspectives, millions of people realizing what has been happening in Palestine for the longest time over the past five months and that is definitely not going to be reversed. Well, also being forced to take a different position is Joe Biden himself and again not in any sense of really changing his policy or doing anything so differently but Joe Biden has actually last night we saw it in the State of the Union that he spent considerable time actually talking about the civilian death toll in Gaza and we saw that many, that there was a small group of Cory Bush and Rashida Talib who were wearing kafias during the State of the Union address other Democrats and Republicans actually wearing little stickers that said 153 which is the number of days since Israel began its genocidal war. Of course they're actually talking about the number of days that the hostages have been held by Hamas. A very interesting presentation perhaps by Joe Biden in many senses it can be seen as sort of a campaign rally he sort of talked about all these things that he wants to do if he's able to continue his term in office pretty interesting because he points out that if he is elected again that he will codify Roe v. Wade which is pretty funny because he did have a democratically controlled congress and this has been again Roe v. Wade was on the books for decades and it was never taken forward by any of the Democratic Presidents or the Democratic controlled congresses to actually make it a law so he made a he kind of was using this platform to do a lot of campaign promises and again he spoke it's very very clear that Biden is actually under a lot of pressure regarding the situation in Gaza he spoke extensively about as I said the civilian death toll and about the efforts that his administration has been making to really push for peace which many people pointed out and Ilan Omar was actually holding a sign that said stop sending bombs which is again this paradox of the Biden administration which has now been forced to say that they care about civilian lives but at the same time are pushing to get 14 billion dollars of aid to Israel at the same time that Joe Biden was giving this State of Union address there were hundreds of protesters outside in Washington DC holding the People's State of the Union blocking major intersections with a huge Palestinian flag there were speeches sort of a concert atmosphere and really just speaks to the fact of this constant mobilization and the constant pressure that U.S. politicians have been under and this week was also Super Tuesday which we saw Donald Trump essentially clinching the Republican candidacy for this upcoming elections in November Nikki Haley dropped out Joe Biden again he won largely most of the states in this in Super Tuesday but there was sort of this unexpected growth in what is called the uncommitted vote which is Democrats registered Democrats voting in these primaries and essentially saying that they're not committing to voting for Joe Biden this is a movement that's actually grown in the past several months due to his extreme support of Israel during the genocide and so there's been this growing movement to call on voters to not support Joe Biden and to say that he can't have the Democratic vote unless unless he actually takes concrete steps to stop the genocide we saw that in Massachusetts and North Carolina this was growing in Hawaii actually which again is a U.S. colony they got even more traction this uncommitted vote previously it had done over 10% in Michigan which is where this movement kind of started so we're actually seeing that the Democrats are facing increasing pressure for their kind of complete support of this policy it will be interesting to see how this plays out in November are people which way is this uncommitted vote going to swing when it comes to the presidential elections in November we know that there are a bunch of third-party options that are actually growing in strength as well and gaining momentum of course the PSL ticket of Carolina de la Cruz in Carolina Garcia the green party again with Dr. Jill Stein people are more and more seeing that the two-party system in the United States is actually perhaps not really working in their favor so it's a very interesting moment this uncommitted vote the unprecedented growth of saying no to the Democratic establishment is certainly a historic development in U.S. politics right of course we have moved on to what is one of our favorite topics on this show that is a question of elections and like we've been talking about almost every episode 2024 the year of very important elections in every part of the world one election that seemed a bit unlikely to take place there was a lot of uncertainty about what would take place was the election in Senegal President Macky Sal basically declared that the election which is supposed to be held towards the end of March his term is supposed to expire on the April 2nd Sal suddenly overturned the whole process got parliament to pass a motion postponing the elections to December causing a huge amount of consummation in the country protests also taking place I think about 4 people died in those protests as well but Macky Sal's plan finally not working out we have a detailed copy from our colleague Tarupri on that please do check it out on the site but what is going to happen is that elections will take place on the 24th of March now this follows a lot of negotiations and pushes and pull there was constitutional council which are very senior the highest court which also ruled on this matter and basically while the president did keep trying to push the election as much as possible finally the decision was to hold it on the 24th of March now Macky Sal will not be contesting in this election already he initially hesitated a while ago to declare that he would not contest leading to another round of protests which led to many deaths as well and finally he was forced to accept that he would not contest because his constitutionally mandated terms are over but his successor from his coalition the incumbent prime minister is likely to contest but is not very popular and in fact that was seen as the reason by many for Macky Sal to try to postpone the election so that he could maneuver the situations so that his coalition might win but so now that is definitely not worked out but a very important time for Senegal as well Macky Sal at the same time also announced some kind of amnesty program for people who have been arrested during two rounds of protests that took place in Senegal in 2021 and 2023 hundreds of people who were arrested high as 1500 so while this amnesty law was announced there was a lot of pushback against it because one it did not necessarily clarify the fact that there were political prisoners and secondly there was no it was not unconditional release and also there was no accountability for those who were involved in atrocities from the side of the government so going to be a very interesting election will be closely covering it happening in exactly about two weeks from now and Senegal is a country where there has been an increasing amount of rise in the anti imperialist sentiment that we have been noticing across west and north Africa Macky Sal for instance seen as a client of the French government extremely unpopular for that reason also for his economic policies but also because the perception that he has pretty much implemented the French agenda in that region at a time when the French sentiment has been extremely high we have talked about the coups in Mali in Burkina Faso for instance in Niger so at this point of time Macky Sal has been one of the old guard preserving the old you know system and there has been a huge amount of opposition key opposition leaders have been in prison like for instance Osman Sanko Sanko a very powerful leader of what is called the PASTF party PASTEF is in prison another key presidential candidate also has been excluded so despite all this we are definitely going to see a very tough contest and I think the kind of churn that is going to come out of it will determine Senegal's future in the coming months will Macky Sal give in to the verdict of the people will that be respected I think that is a very important question that we need to wait and see so one of the most important elections in that region and for Africa as a whole definitely taking place on the 24th of March as of now so keep watching this space we will come back to you when the election takes place and the results are out well another key election which is going to be taking place in July this year are the presidential elections in Venezuela which we know again are not just a national event in a sense but really impacts the region and are a key event again for the United States elections are always a time when the United States again positions itself against Venezuela and it's Bolivarian process and we've already seen that this is taking place when the Venezuelan Supreme Court barred the candidacy of the far right activist Maria Coronado Machado the United States said that it would not renew the licenses that they had made with the oil companies and that it would reactivate some of the sanctions that had previously suspended against the sector it also made sweeping condemnations of Venezuelan democracy saying that these would not be legitimate elections again reactivating this very strong anti-government discourse that it is so fond of this week on Tuesday the date for the elections in Venezuela was confirmed for July 28 this comes again days after a national agreement was signed by hundreds of different civil society organizations and political parties in Venezuela that had come together in dialogue to discuss the electoral process what are the guarantees that need to be there what could up as possible calendar look like what are the other elements of electoral process will there be observation and through these agreements and through this kind of plural dialogue they have decided to invite several different international entities to observe the elections saying that the US the European Union love to condemn Venezuelan democracy but they have actually said that the Carter Center the EU and other international bodies that are in favor of these elections they have full confidence in the electoral process and they have actually frequently reiterated the reasons and the grounds for why this this far right wing Venezuelan political leader would not be able to run any elections citing her support for US sanctions her participation in fomenting of the anti-democratic protest which took place in 2014 2017 popularly known as the guarimbas which were violent protests attempting to undermine again democratic rule of law in order in Venezuela we know that in for example 2017 over 100 people were killed in these protests many chavistas there was one case of a young chavista that was burned alive by these right wing protestors so we're not talking about just someone who was participating in marches and we know that actually a lot of opposition parties are going to be participating these elections in July but really again so they've this has been the sticking point the exclusion of this candidate but really it's just a pretext for Washington to again reactivate its policy of aggression against Venezuela but as we know and as we've been covering for the past over years the regional equation is quite different we're not looking at a scenario where the entire region is ruled by conservative governments you know for many years Colombia was a huge and important ally of the United States and their attacks against Venezuela Iván Duque specifically was quite eager to actually join in the attacks we know that many mercenaries were training on Colombian soil to then carry out operations against Venezuelan leaders against Venezuelan national territory but now we're looking at a situation where you know many of Venezuela's neighbors are ruled by countries that actually would like to see democracy triumph would actually like to see a sovereign region a region that works together Lula da Silva has also said that whoever wins the elections in Venezuela that is the decision of the people so I think the US is also having to recalibrate its strategy given that they're not really dealing with a favorable situation in the region they can't bend the will of the governments that are surrounding Venezuela to put pressure on it like they were able to before so it's definitely going to be an interesting couple of months leading up to this electoral process as the Venezuelans say every time their elections it's again another test of the revolution and another moment for the people to recommit themselves the revolutionary process it will definitely be following that it's a very very important moment Nicolas Maduro is going to be the candidate for Pesuv and the coalition and so very very interesting will the revolution continue that will be decided again on July 28th the birthday of Guachavez who again the death anniversary of was on March 5th so again we love to cover elections we'll be following Venezuela in July Mexico in June very exciting a couple of months coming up for the region and of course for the world right and that is all we have in this episode of give the people what they want do tune in next week as well hopefully Vijay from Globetrotter will be back and right now this is Zoe and me from People's Dispatch signing off see you next week