 Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Your weekly movement news round up. You're with Give the People What They Want. Coming to you from People's Dispatch. That's Zoe and Prashad. Don't forget, People's Dispatch is now five years old. Running around all over the place, it seems. I'm Vijay from Globe Trotter. This is the 136th show of Give the People What They Want. Got to understand that on this program, we've covered coup after coup after coup in Africa's Sahel region. Two coups in Mali, two coups in Burkina Faso. Troops seem to take power in order to do something to the French Prashad and then suddenly, of all things, the country with the largest drone base in the world, US drone base, suddenly coup in Niger. What happened in Niger? Right, Vijay. It's a bit of a confusing situation, I'll be honest, because I think everyone is a bit puzzled as to what exactly is happening on the ground. The details of the coup are as follows. Of course, the fact that President Mohammed Barzoum has been taken captive by his own presidential guard. There are a lot of negotiations going on. It's a bit unclear about what might happen. It's a bit unclear as to who's in charge right now. For instance, while the coup itself is initiated by a particular unit, the fact remains that the army chief has apparently now said that he supports the coup in order to avoid any bloodshed. So it's a bit unclear about what the agenda of the soldiers in this case are. They've talked about misgovernance and they've talked about an unhappiness with all that. So it remains to be seen. Interesting developments on the ground. There have been people raising anti-France slogans. There have been people waving Russian flags apparently. So whether this means this is a build up to something, it's a bit unclear. So I think we'll get more clarity on some of these issues in a couple of days. But I think for today it's important to kind of take note of the context which is what you said. It began with as well the fact that first of all, the region itself has seen a number of coups and a lot of these have been connected to what is definitely a deteriorating security situation with the presence of Islamist groups. Now anytime I mentioned Islamist groups always essential to recall the fact that many of them were a result of the NATO invasion of Libya and that played a huge role in the emergence of these groups. But that aside, after that especially since 2013, France has presented itself as sub-kind of a savior for these countries. French soldiers were deployed in many of these countries and that does not seem to have really helped at all or it seems to in some cases even worsened the situation which is what over the past many years led to a kind of upsurge both at the level of military units which are unhappy about it and at the mass level which is very important I think to note which is why we keep highlighting that point and there's been this huge rise in anti-French sentiment across the whole region. So you saw for instance Mali, not only did they not only was there a coup, they demanded that the French soldiers be moved out and after that they in fact initiated a constitutional process which among other things is taken away at the status of French as national language as well. So there's definitely a process that is under way in Mali. So the question often in many of these cases we were talking earlier to Kambal-e-Musaul-e-Musaul-e-Musaul-e-Musaul-e-Musaul-e-Musaul-e-Musaul-e-Musaul-e-Musaul-e-Musaul-e-Musaul-e-Musaul-e-Musaul-e-Musaul-e-Musaul-e-Musaul-e-Musaul-e-Musaul-e-Musaul-e-Musaul-e who was making the same point. Then in many of these cases the question really is that what do these soldiers do once they take power? So is there a process, is there an agenda that they're driving which seems to be the case in Mali but maybe in some other countries is a bit more unclear or still being mediated or in the process so to speak. Now amidst all this, Niger was a source of hope for the countries in the west because like you said the French soldiers left Mali, moved to Niger. You have the Agadez air base which is the biggest drone base in the world, which is a US base. So Niger was really the center point of the current western strategy in the region, the French and US strategy in the region and Muhammad Barzoum was seen as a very crucial ally of the western countries in this agenda. So now the fact that he's been, again now as Kabbali once again pointed out it's not unclear what might happen but it's very difficult to see a president regaining legitimacy after he has been held captive for many, many hours by a military unit. So we don't know what's going to happen but definitely this throws a lot of the French and US plans are definitely going to be in a tizzy. I presume that in both these capitals there's going to be quite a bit of consternation but regardless of what necessarily happens in Niger, I think the larger trend which is a complete rejection of French interventionist region and the people increasingly becoming assertive and pushing back not only against military hegemony but also the financial aspect of it. For instance, what used to be the whole of the CFA Frank or the kind of association the French government has with the budgets of these countries. So these are all aspects of the pushback that has been seen in many of these countries. Now whether they can create a different model for instance Mali and Burkina Faso recently talked to had discussions about closer ties between the governments whether this leads to something remains to be seen but definitely a very important moment and I think in the coming days we'll have some more details which direction this operation seems to be taking. Niger is in the Sahel region of Africa bordering a country like Mali important very large country just south of Libya. It's a large trans shipment point from migrants going from West Africa and Central Africa up into Libya to cross the Mediterranean Sea. Now I was reading a report just when I heard the news of the coup in Mali. I just want to repeat a sentence from the report in order to give you a sense of the story that I'm going to talk about. The report said that 11.5 million euros allocated to Niger from the European Union for the provision of surveillance drones surveillance cameras surveillance software a wiretapping center and an international mobile subscriber identity catcher an intrusive piece of technology that can be used to locate and track mobile phones by stimulating simulating to be a mobile phone tower. Now of course this is about the government that has been overthrown it had received 11.5 million euros to basically build an intense surveillance not only of the Niger population but of migrants moving northward. Why was the European Union providing this kind of money to develop artificial intelligence and various other surveillance technologies in the Sahel. Well the section I read out for you is from a rather oddly titled report from Euro med rights. The report is called artificial intelligence. The new frontier of the European Union's border externalization strategy charming title. Well what they show is that the European Union using odd types of you know grant mechanisms such as the European Union emergency trust fund for Africa sounds quite benign or the neighborhood development and international cooperation instrument sounds even more benign. You've got the trust fund you've got neighborhood development and international cooperation. Well these are vehicles for the European Union to fund countries not only in the Sahel. That's Mijer Mijer but also in West Africa and Nigeria also in Northern Africa Algeria Egypt Libya Tunisia received funding through these vehicles. The idea here and this is what caught the eye of the European human rights activists and so on. The idea here is that Europe is essentially a real life testing artificial intelligence surveillance software in the northern part of Africa software which is actually not allowed to be used inside Europe on privacy grounds so privacy international also pointed out that this is all happening in the northern part of Africa. Now what are they doing this for? Well they're doing surveillance largely to track migrants. This is part of the migrant introduction system that the European Union has established in northern Africa. You know for a long time I've made the argument that Europe's southern border doesn't start north of the Mediterranean. In fact Europe has exported its border into the Sahel region and that's part of the reason Prashant why there's this dissatisfaction in countries like Burkina Faso, Mali, Mijer and so on inclusive in Algeria, inclusive to some extent in Egypt there's a kind of dissatisfaction but largely it's the Sahel countries and in Algeria a great sense of wrongdoing in these countries because the Europeans essentially are trying to prevent images of migrants coming up dead in the Mediterranean. They don't in fact mind if they die in the Sahara where the international organization of migration told me two years ago that perhaps more people die in the Sahara than die in the Mediterranean. It's okay for people in Africa to be surveilled, this kind of surveillance illegal in Europe as long as it's done there for what purpose to prevent migrants from coming into Europe. Very interesting development, we've got to follow this more closely. The resentments in the central part of the Sahel about the French also about the way in which Europe has exported its ill technologies to basically take away the civil rights and human rights of the population in these very countries. Now talking about the civil rights and the human rights Zoe, Meryl Franco, a popular legislator shot to death, who killed Meryl Franco? The sentence on everybody's lips in Brazil. Well the murder of Meryl Franco which took place on March 14th, 2018 really shook the people of Brazil at the moment. It was just before, you know, months before Jared Bolsonaro won the elections. It was really kind of this symbol of the rising right wing violence and rising right wing politics in the country. A very, very clear expression of anti-black sentiments, anti-black violence that is also extremely prevalent in Brazil. And the response of this, the assassination of Meryl who as you said was a councilwoman in the city of Rio de Janeiro who came from the favelas was fighting against gun violence, fighting against the domination of organized crime in her neighborhood, fighting against police violence in her neighborhood. Her assassination shook the people, massive protests were carried out. And this question who killed Meryl became very prominent and especially when, as I said, months later, Jared Bolsonaro's elected president and in the investigation which began of course right after she was murdered, many questions began to emerge about actually the participation of members of Jared Bolsonaro's family in the murder. What links did they have to the militias in the city that also supported this operation? There's been many, many questions around her murder, but of course during the four years of Jared Bolsonaro's government, a lot of these investigations were slowed down, were shut down, were put to the side because of the very big interest of the Jared Bolsonaro government to actually not uncover many of the details of the crime. And so it's no surprise that when Lula da Silva took office on January 1st of this year, one of his big promises was really to find justice in the Marielle case. It's interesting to note that Marielle's sister, a professor and journalist, Aniele Franco, she is the minister of racial quality in the country. This is more than a symbolic designation. It's really to solidify this commitment to finding justice, to fighting against all of anti-black violence, political violence against women, etc. And Flavio Dino, who is the minister of justice and public security, this has also been one of his major promises since he was designated given this role. And this week there was an important advance in the case. Another arrest was made of someone who had previously been arrested and accused of tampering with the scene of the crime, and now he's been arrested and accused of direct involvement of the crime. This is crucial because in, we've at People's Dispatch, we also covered very, very closely the whole process for justice in Honduras and the murder of Bertha Casares. When you carry out political murders, it's not just that one person decides one day to hire a hitman. It involves an entire network of intelligence, of surveillance. This person is accused, who was just arrested on Monday. He was accused of actually being the one who was monitoring Marielle's routine, knowing when she gets up, knowing when she leaves her work, giving the coordinates to the hitman who then would take her life and the life of her driver. So it's a very important development in these struggles for justice. It's a very, very long road. It involves a lot of waiting periods, a lot of frustration. But again, these are not symbolic victories. These are concrete victories for justice, for the family, for uncovering the network of crime and criminals that really allow these kind of events to take place. As I said, it's not just one person pulling a trigger. It involves an entire network. And of course, under Jail Bolsonaro, this impunity of the people involved in the crime was quite high. So it's important to see this shift and a more serious commitment to justice. Terrible, terrible news. People get assassinated. Nobody pays attention. A young member of the Communist Party of India, Marxist, assassinated in Jharkhand, 34 years old. These things seem to keep happening, justice eludes them. You're listening to give the people what they want brought to you from people's dispatch that Zoe and Prashant and Vijay from Globetrotter. Recently, a series of interesting events regarding the Russia and Africa delegation from Africa, visited Mr Putin, talk about the Ukraine war. Now there's the Russia-Africa Summit Prashant. Bring us the latest update. Right. So I think the two need to be seen in continuation also. An interesting moment in multiple ways for the relations between Russia and countries on the African continent. A lot of it is in the background of the discussion on the Green Deal, which Russia walked out of recently. Now Russia did have a point, which is that despite the fact that the Green Deal was touted as something that could provide grain once again to poorer countries. The fact that poorer countries in Africa actually received very, very little of the grain and most of it went to middle and high-income countries. So that was a valid point. But nonetheless, I think that it is important to note that Vladimir Putin, Russian president, did make offers of free grain to six countries in Africa. Maybe in some ways sort of balance out the impact of the decision to sort of leave the deal. So and to keep that strategic calculus in mind now, Western media has spent a lot of time highlighting the fact that the attendance from heads of states has been poor. There are only 17 leaders at the state attending of the total 49 countries that are participating, 43 of 49 countries that are participating. But nonetheless, it's important to remember that there is definitely the question whether some of these leaders were pressurized in various ways or influenced by the West on this count. There are reports which indicate these are possibilities, but keeping that aside, I think it's important to note that the larger trajectory of relations between Russia and Africa is what we need to sort of, I think, see. And African countries, especially after the war in Ukraine broke out, made a very clear stand where they said that we are not going to really take a side on this. We are not going to join the sanctions regime. We will maintain relations with both the West, with the West of course, but also with Russia and in different contexts China. And I think this is the sort of larger dynamic that we need to see that I think many African countries are looking at opportunities from around the globe, from the global north as well as other countries. And I think also may and also becoming increasingly clear that they want the assistance they want or the aid they're looking for should come on fair terms. I think that is a very big question for countries from Africa that the assistance that comes should not be in the form of what the ILF has been doing so far, or private companies such as BlackRock have been doing so far. So is there a different way of cooperation with countries is really what many of these countries want to do are looking at Africa as a very young population as well. There are resources which the countries would like to utilize to really improve the material conditions over there. And I think they're looking for partnerships, which enable them to do so whether it be in various ways. So I think this is a larger trajectory in which we need to sort of look at the summit as opposed to a lot of reporting which is really focused on personal relations and, you know, oh is this a victory for Putin or a defeat for Putin perspective on the summit which I think is a bit productive at this point of time because these are larger processes in history. And of course one summit or one meeting might mean something two years later another summit mean something else. But this is I think the larger angle we need to sort of look at. So, of course, there's been also discussion of the proposal for peace that you mentioned. Russia said that it will study it. And, you know, always welcome to hear such proposals of peace from, I think even Lula has been talking about it at some point of time. So that that countries in Latin America countries in Africa proposing this itself is definitely, I think a positive sign. But, you know, I think waiting for the final statements of course it'll be interesting to see what has been agreed on, but definitely an interesting moment amid all this, you know, amid the coverage of the war, amid the discussions on the war, the millions that are being given to Ukraine, billions rather, this is a very different kind of dynamic. It's a different dynamic. It's important that we keep covering it very wide range of people at this Russia Africa summit. I very much wonder what the conversation was at this summit on the coup in Niger. Of course, we'll dig and prod and find out soon enough what they've been talking about but not much reported about their statements or their views. Well, you know, let's get back to the class struggle on give the people what they want. We're frequently looking at the status of the class struggle looks like in the United States and needle for a moment for a fleeting second is turned towards the workers. UPS the teamsters what's happening Zoe. Well, the UPS workers organized in Teamsters when a historic contract. This week, they have been at the bargaining table with UPS for the past several months it's been a very, very intense negotiation. The UPS is one of the largest unions in the United States and the 340,000 UPS workers with Teamsters is one of the largest workplace contract single workplace contracts that was up for bargaining in this moment. And it was a lot of people. There was a lot of speculation about what would happen. There had been very, very intense negotiations. As I said, there had been the teamsters that actually left the bargaining table over their economic demands. The UPS essentially turned their nose at the at the demands that the teamsters had put forward for significant raises for part-time workers and for the elimination of the two tier contract system for part-time workers. And they started mobilizing they started mobilizing their over 300,000 workers that are organized with them to do practice pickets to rally to go to meetings to rally their community members. I mean, it was this is not this is organizing that hasn't been seen in many, many years in the U.S. And all of this mobilizing had an impact. Not only did a group of capitalist business owners send a letter to Joe Biden asking him to intervene if there was a strike because this contract was set to expire in August 1. And the teamsters did win a strike authorization vote if the contract had expired expired without a new one being reached. There was a letter sent to Joe Biden telling him to once again intervene in a worker strike. This one being the UPS teamsters. He had previously intervened in the railroad workers strike because such strikes of so many workers in these key sectors of logistics of railroad transportation really strikes at the heart of U.S. capitalism. And of course the capitalist class cannot have this. And because of all this mobilizing because of the immense pressure being felt by the UPS, they caved to many of the demands set forth by the teamsters. And they won this contract and it's a lot of people were maybe excited for what would be again the largest one of the largest strikes and recent history. But also it's important to remember that winning these demands with a working class in such conditions that we're in today is also extremely, extremely important, extremely impressive. This is a moment where Hollywood companies want to just completely capture workers entire essences and then use them without paying them ever again. I mean, this is a moment where all of people are facing threats to their stability where full time jobs are more and more out of reach for most workers where benefits are being cut. And so I think the fact that the teamsters were able to win not only higher wages for part-time workers, winning over 30,000 slots for part-time workers to become full-time workers, they won air conditioning in their vans where workers had previously actually died because of overheating of not having air conditioning in their vans. And the fact that they were able to capture the attention of the nation and say we're going to fight for workers, we're going to fight for safe jobs, for good wages is also sending a very, very important message in this current battle of ideas that actually workers can stand up to their employers. They can demand what's theirs. And actually it's not asking too much to have benefits and to have a stable job. And so I think really the tide is turning right now in the United States. Natalia Marquez of People's Dispatch has been covering a lot of these labor updates very, very closely. Writers in Hollywood are on strike, actors in Hollywood are on strike. Suddenly it's becoming very, very interesting and very, very cool to actually fight for exactly what we're owed, which is dignified conditions, which is rights, which is benefits. And the possibility to actually live and not just survive. To live and not just survive. You know, one of the growth areas in the world has been the so-called gig economy. Of course, this gig economy study show is much larger in developed countries than developing countries. Although I must say, I have my doubts about those statistics because since this is on demand labor and not regulated labor. It's very hard to calculate the number of people involved in the gig economy. For instance, in countries like India, Zomato, Swiggy, things like that. I mean, who knows how many delivery people there are actually, because these are people who are effectively hired on demand through a platform. And when they're not working, they're not being paid. Very hard to calculate the numbers of people, which is why I've often felt that the statistics are deeply misleading. I think the gig economy is growing massively in the developing world. In Brazil, this was an issue in Mr. Lula's presidential campaign, where he raised the question of the gig economy. In fact, he has asked his various ministries to look into this pressure upon his government from the sentinels of the gig economy, including Uber. Uber withdrew Uber Eats from Brazil. Frontline of this seems to not be, in fact, the developing world countries where labor regulation anyway is extremely weak. In India, for instance, every once in a while the question is raised but not much is done. In Japan, Italy and Spain, these three countries seem to have taken pretty strong positions vis-à-vis the gig economy. Now, in Barcelona and in Madrid, two major cities in Spain. The city governments decided to protect the taxi workers from the gig economy. Now, of course, there's a problem with the way some of these things are handled because they fit workers against each other. But anyway, the point was to not allow the gig drivers in Uber, Bolt, Cabify, things like that to basically overrun the taxi industry. Well, it's interesting. Here comes the European Court of Justice with a ruling on June 8, which said that essentially the Barcelona administrative decision to protect taxi drivers is contrary to European law. So here we go. We have European human rights to a pretty robust legal framework, but in fact in practice, European courts coming out on behalf of gig companies against the gig workers were unregulated. Now, the issue is complicated because it's not like one says to the gig workers, you should all be unemployed. Is there a way to regulate this economy? These are the questions on top of the table unanswered by the dispute in Europe. In fact, we're going to watch carefully in Brazil to see whether the government or Mr Lula is able to regulate the gig economy, afford protections for gig workers, or in fact, they will also crumble like the governments in Spain before the onslaught from the platform of capitalist developers. You've been listening to give the people what they want brought to you from People's Dispatch, Zoe and Prashat. I'm Vijay from Globetrotter. So good to be with you. See you next week.