 Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Your weekly movement news round up. Today is the first of April. It's a very unique day in the world because we're generally supposed to announce to you that this is the last day of our show. Give the people what they want from people's dispatch and Globetrotter and we're winding things up because you failed us by not sending us enough selfies of yourselves watching the show and so on. And then later saying, well, no, it's the first of, you know, April Fool's Day and so on. We're not playing that joke with you because give the people what they want is going to be with you forever. And April Fool's Day is a very silly custom. So happy April Fool's Day. First of April 2022. Give the people what they want brought to you from people's dispatch that Zoe and Prashanta and Vijay from Globetrotter staying with the story from Ukraine. Really appalling situation because today things are getting really dangerous. Fuel depots inside Russia were struck. Moscow accusing Ukraine of firing with helicopters into Russian territory. This is a serious issue because it might escalate the conflict even more. Looks like Russian forces redeploying out from around Kiev toward the Donbas region to Mariupol and so on. NATO contest this story of the withdrawal saying, no, they are just repositioning themselves. Years ago I learned that you can't actually believe anybody in the middle of a war. It's very difficult to know what's happening and nobody has the God's perspective as it were. You got to listen to all sides and try to make sense of things. You've got to listen to all sides and that's the reason why negotiations have been so difficult. There have been several rounds of negotiation taking place both in Turkey and in Ukraine. There's been talk about a visit between the presidents of Ukraine, Vladimir Zelensky and the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin. They've denied this. The Ukrainians have put on the table some points. They had a text that they submitted to the Russians. They said there's a few things they're willing to do. For instance, willing to not join NATO to be a non-nuclear zone and so on. These things have been put on the table but they also said that they would like this peace agreement to be brokered. Security guarantees from the West. Essentially this is joining NATO without joining NATO because if you're asking NATO countries to guarantee your security that's pretty much like joining NATO. So I doubt that that's going to be acceptable to the Russians. Russians actually haven't publicly put out a document saying these are the 50 things we would like. And the reason I say publicly they put some things on the table but we know that there are going to be three very contentious areas which I don't think the Ukrainians will easily accept. One, the annexation by Russia of Crimea is still contested by Ukraine. This has to do with the shutting off also of the water supply from the North Crimea Canal. Will Ukraine accept that Russia now has dominion over Crimea? Unclear. Secondly, Russia has absorbed Donetsk and Lugansk, the breakaway eastern provinces in Ukraine. Ukraine has not accepted that this is a fatter complete that Russia must then now continue to govern over Donetsk and Lugansk. Second, territorial area of great contention. Not clear that Ukraine backed by the West is going to accept that. Third, even more contentious is the so-called land bridge that the Russians are building through Mariupol to link the border of Russia with Crimea. Third, territorial concerns for the Ukrainians. I believe these will be the three territorial demands by Russia. I don't think there's an easy way out from just this. That's the territorial issue. On the question of denuclearization, on the question of not joining NATO and so on, I think that could be handled fairly easily, I feel. There is some unanimity. Again, the question of who brokers the security is an issue. I don't see yet the United Nations coming in and saying that it will broker this agreement. But who is going to accept the UN as a security guarantee? It's not really going to be something that people will accept. And finally, friends, the war is continuing. There's a great deal of suffering and so on. Very dangerous is the issue of spread. Russia decides to accelerate into western Ukraine even more into Galicia and Odessa and so on. Will they accidentally strike across the Polish border? This question has come up again. If they strike across the Polish border, will Poland trigger Article 5 of the NATO charter and enter the conflict? That's why we don't know. Finally, this is the final point. Sabres are being rattled, not in Ukraine, not in Ukraine, but between Japan and Russia. In the question of the Kirill Islands, Japan made a statement saying Russia is illegally occupying those islands. Is this going to expand now into the Pacific? We'll keep an eye on it for you because this is serious stuff. You can't ignore the fact that these extensions of the war might take place. Meanwhile, news from India. We're going to go from pretty depressing news to something good. Prashant, go ahead. Right, so of course we're talking about the very historic strike that took place March 28th and 29th by a coalition of trade unions, 10 unions at least, and of course, supported by the farmers' organizations, which were part of the massive protest last year, students' organizations, youth organizations, a cross-section of civil and political society. And this is a significant strike, I think, because it's the fourth such strike in four such years. And the numbers are of course huge. I mean, that's what always kind of gets media attention because it's 20 million, 25 million people who are often involved in this. In fact, I think the New York Times headline was, It Causes Confusion. Although I'm sure for the workers participating in the strike, there was no confusion about why they were doing it. But nonetheless, I think the important thing really to note here is that this is a very clear alternative put forward by the trade unions in terms of how they want Indian society to be, an alternative which is completely at odds with what the Meredina Bodhi government is doing right now. So it is a well-participated strike from T-Fields in Assam in the east, Tutukhudi Port in the south. If you look at West PD workers in Maharashtra, scheme workers in Haryana in the north, a cross-section of workers, some of them, government workers, say, or the middle-class sectors, some of them informal workers, some of the most poorest, even got to hear that workers in the Ola and Uber cab apps, the ride-sharing apps, even they were part of the strike. So very well attended. But to come back to that point about the alternative, the 12-point agenda put forward by the trade union talks about a very different vision of India, like I said. And there are some very important proposals that they're talking about. One is to stop the privatization, the large-scale privatization that Meredina Bodhi government is doing to direct and indirect means through directly selling and releasing it out, where people's wealth, where the collective wealth of the people of India is actually going to a few corporates en masse. And the amount of riches they're making out of it is quite unbelievable. So that's one very key aspect. There is a lot of focus on withdrawing the labor courts, the four labor courts introduced by the Modi government, which really restrict workers' rights to unionize, as well as deteriorate their working conditions substantially. Hiring and firing becomes easier, flexible work hours become easier. There is a very strong demand in terms of employment to, in fact, increase the allocation for the urban, for the rural employment guarantee scheme to set up an urban employment guarantee scheme at a time when employment is becoming such a vital issue across the world. It is within the capacity of the Indian government to actually introduce these kind of schemes. We saw that the rural scheme, which was introduced in the mid-2000s, transformed India. A similar scheme, for instance, in urban India, could have a considerable effect. And even from capitalist terms, actually improve the domestic market. So it's not, it's even good for capitalist, but it is a sign of the extreme right-wing nature of this government that they're not considering any of this. There's been a demand for 7,500 rupees per month, some for families, non-income tax-paying families, for instance, which would again help really many of these families, which are struggling due to the pandemic, escape or get out of COVID. So ultimately, I think in this trial, there are a lot of many more other important demands. Like I said, there are about 12 of these demands. But each of these, I think, actually, some sense or the other really is an attempt by the workers and a very forceful attempt by the workers to push back at what the Modi government has been doing, which is, on the one hand, enacting a set of policies which are heavily biased towards the corporates, and on the other hand, trying to sort of conceal and continue to conceal this social, say, the economic decline, the economic despair that these people are facing, trying to paper over it with religious polarization and building a religiously polarized society. So both these projects are happening very, very strongly and intensely in India right now. We cannot see these two projects as separate from each other. The building, the religious polarization very closely connected to the pro-corporate Bonadza policies that the government is following. So very important to notice this strike. Spend the word about it, I think, and we need to see what the unions are going to do in the coming days as well. In fact, today's show, Prashant, starts in the Ukraine war, goes to the good point about the strike. We're going to sort of weave in good and bad today, the zig and the zag. Anthony Blinken, U.S. Secretary of State, was in Israel, was in Morocco, and then in Algeria, tightening up U.S. alliances in each of the places talking about Russia and how Russia must be thrown out of North Africa and so on. He made some interesting comments, Zoe, in both Morocco and particularly in Algeria. Algeria is the home to Polisario, the main Sahrawi or western Sahara liberation group. He made some interesting comments about western Sahara and how Algeria should stop and so on. What's happening in western Sahara in the middle of all this? Well, western Sahara, I think we can compare it to Palestine in many ways, but also in the sense that it's been really used as a bargaining chip by the U.S. and by its regional allies and as it attempts to kind of broker these agreements, we see western Sahara and Palestine increasingly being kind of compromised in favor of these agreements between governments. So western Sahara, over the past year, the U.S. recognized Morocco's sovereignty over western Sahara in exchange, of course, for the Abraham Agreement, which in turn Morocco recognizes Israel's kind of normalization. And of course, this is at the expense of the people of their right to self-determination and right that for the people of western Sahara and for the people of Palestine, this has been recognized by the United Nations. The United Nations after Spain ended its formal, I say formal because it's formal colonization of western Sahara. There was an agreement in the U.N. that there should be a referendum on western Sahara's sovereignty and decades have passed and this has not happened. And so for on one hand, we see the U.S. using western Sahara as a chip to get, you know, agreements with Morocco, but also a recent development, which I think is more surprising because, you know, the U.S. has never really claimed to be in favor western Sahara, but now they're kind of instrumentalizing it. But Spain, which because of its role as a former colonizer and because of the agreements that it actually took up, it has been a strong proponent of the fact that this referendum should be held, that, you know, this U.N. resolution should be respected. And in the past several weeks, the government of Pedro Sanchez has issued a series of indications that it is going to renege on these historic commitments for the people of western Sahara. They sent, the government sent a letter to King Mohammed in Morocco, essentially stating that Morocco's plan for western Sahara, which is that it will be incorporated into Morocco and that it will have some nominal autonomy, which of course for the people of western Sahara has consistently been rejected and that Spain will now recognize this plan and it thinks that this is a positive step forward. This letter has been affirmed in statements by the Foreign Minister of Spain on several occasions after the fact and it has been met with, you know, widespread outrage. Both the people within western Sahara have counted on Spain for its, because of its commitment to furthering and actually finalizing the full independence, the full self-determination of the people of western Sahara that they of course colonized and there have been protests within Spain but also within western Sahara demanding that Spain rectify its position. It has since said that, no, this is within the UN Charter. This is within our agreements. We know this not to be true. It is written out in the UN's mission to western Sahara that this referendum should be carried out and so now we're seeing in a moment where Morocco has not only broken the ceasefire, the historic ceasefire that it had with the Polisario Front and resumed hostilities against the people of western Sahara. The fate of human right defenders is becoming, once again, they're being threatened. They're being arrested. There are so many different cases of people getting detained, getting questioned and it's getting to be a deepening of this humanitarian crisis and now we see that the doors of international solidarity that had long been open are starting to close and so once again I think we're seeing that the people in popular movements and movements across the world are going to need to double down on their support of western Sahara and to make these UN resolutions be really respected. Make UN resolutions respected. Today is April Fool's Day. You're listening to give the people what they want coming to you from people's dispatch and from Globetrotter. I'm not a fan of April Fool's Day because I fear this sentiment of making jokes about serious things. Today we can't make jokes about anything because I mean look at the agenda for our show. We're just talking about the revocation of the sovereignty of western Sahara. Where else will you hear this? Where else will you read a story about this? You've got to tune in people. Give the people what they want. Read people's dispatch has a story on this very issue. On the other hand, just as the Indian workers and peasants struck decidedly, hundreds of millions of them in Palestine, nobody's forgetting that land day takes place every year Prashant, land day, every year in Palestine. Absolutely. March 30th, very important day for the entire Palestinians across the globe, not just in historic Palestine but the diaspora as well. Multiple reasons. Of course, we remember 2018 when land day was when the Great March of Return started one of the most momentous uprising against Israeli occupation. Thousands wounded, many, many, I think about 260 people killed of course. But the history of land day goes back to 1976 when six Palestinians were killed on March 30th as they were protesting and attempted by the Israeli authorities to expropriate land. And I think two aspects from that day onwards have been very key to the land day protests, the mobilizations that take place every year. One is of course the right to return, which is one, you know, we talk so much about what happens in Israel and what Israel does to Palestine and Palestinians. But ultimately we often don't talk so much about the right to return, which is enshrined in the United Nations. The idea that the principle that Palestinians were displaced in 1948 and the descendants should be allowed to come back to their homes. So land day is a day when the right to return is again and again emphasized when Palestinians say that, you know, the rest of the world might forget about it. Egypt and Morocco and Israel and the United States and the UAE might be doing a summit in, you know, in Israel itself, but we will not forget that that is the right to return for our people. So that's a very important moment. You know, land day is a very important moment for that. The other aspect, of course, is, as the name says, land itself, and this is especially important now because I think over the past few years we have seen an increased assault on Palestinians' right to land in their own homeland. And we've seen this, of course, in Sheikh Jarrah, where people, you know, where continuously so many live under threat of being evicted from places they've lived for decades. We are seeing that in the Al-Nakaab or Nagar area where the Bedouin community is being evicted in the name of planting forests. By the Jewish National Fund. We are seeing this, of course, in the West Bank where settlements are being built at such a rate that the possibility of a Palestinian state is disappearing by creating facts on the ground. And we are also seeing this in Gaza, where it completely has been besieged by Israel and Egypt and the country. It's been going on for so many years. So for, I think, in every area, every aspect, in every region of historic Palestine, we see the land rights of Palestinians being under threat. And I think land day is a very important day because it actually marks the memory of those who died fighting for this, not the first, of course, and definitely, unfortunately, not the last. So this struggle is, I think, it's one of the most significant ones in the Palestinian calendar. Organizations across this political spectrum in Palestine market, in some ways, it's a moment of common focus for these organizations because these are goals that all these organizations, despite their political differences, share. So one of those days which I think definitely needs to be highlighted by those working in solidarity with the Palestinian cause across the world. Land day is a day in Palestine, but perhaps land day needs to be commemorated as much in New York City because in Palestine, of course, the Palestinians suffered a national eviction. The Palestinian people evicted from their homelands. New York City, I think it's a liberal mayor, seems to want to evict people on class lines. Zoe, what's happening in New York? Well, liberal is a stretch. Eric Adams, the mayor of New York, is from the Democratic Party, but I think more and more in the United States, the label of Democrat does not necessarily represent progressive or liberal values. And Eric Adams is kind of the perfect example of this. He's a former cop and he has entered the mayor's office of New York City with a tough on crime attitude that maybe we thought was going to be left in the past, but it has resurfaced despite New York being one of the centers of the Black Lives Matter's protests. He's come with a very harsh attitude. This past week essentially he's announced that they have been embarking on a mass eviction campaign of homeless people in New York City. New York City is one of the most expensive cities in the entire world, and it's estimated that there's around over 80,000 families, people and children who are homeless. In New York public schools, there's at least one in 10 children, children, students do not have stable homes, which can be considered that they're homeless. So this is, I mean, it's a human rights catastrophe. If we're going to talk about human rights across the world, the situation of homelessness in New York City, the center of financial capital of the world is a travesty. And instead of actually looking for viable alternatives, finding stable housing for this massive population of people who do not have homes, Eric Adams has resorted to the tried and true tactic of mass evictions. And they have basically destroyed many different, over 200 homeless encampments that had been erected in different parts of the city. In the subway stations, these are often places where people will shelter because they're protected from the cold, they're protected from outside forces. And New York City's shelter system is infamous a very unsafe, unsanitary and dangerous system. This whole push to evict people from their own temporary encampments was kind of advertised as we're going to get these people into shelters. And people are extremely resistant to going into these shelters because of the reputation they have and because of the regulations they have, the conditions that they face there. And during this whole campaign where, you know, over 244 encampments have been evicted, only five people, according to the New York Times, only five people have gone into the shelter system. So clearly this is not a viable alternative for the people. And it's interesting just to highlight this. This is happening in New York City, in this liberal city. And it's being essentially not applauded, but it's being accepted. This is what democracy looks like in the United States of America. And it's almost inevitable in a city like New York because if they were actually going to find housing solutions for people that would be, you know, stable, that would be viable, it would really cause that they would have to, you know, undermine the entire system of capitalism that exists in New York City. And of course we covered, you know, some months ago, the fire, the tragic fire that happened in a housing project in the Bronx, even the state subsidy housing is unsafe for the people. So housing continues to be this very, very pressing challenge for working class people across the world. People need access to dignified housing. The COVID-19 pandemic sort of laid this bear when so many people who were living in, you know, became very clear more people have become homeless throughout these past two years, more people have lost their jobs, more people are in these vulnerable situations. And so we really do need solutions quickly, urgently. And this is, this eviction of homeless people is really a travesty that we must announce with the same fervor that we denounce human rights violations across the world. Well, you know, last year, the United Nations said that 15 million people are evicted every year around the world, 15 million. There are about 1.6 billion people who live homeless around the world. This is, of course, a complete undercount because it raises question of what is a home and, you know, is a shack a home? Is a footpath, cardboard box a home? And, you know, when you travel to various parts of the world, any Indian city, for instance, are some of the juggies, what are known as juggies, the shack settlements, are those homes? If we add the people who live in juggies, juggies in India, the number will be much above 1.6 billion. 15 million people are evicted every year, friends. That's a UN number. Zoe is bringing us the story from New York, but it's part of a much broader story around the world, terrible, terrible things. We started the show with Ukraine. Of course, it is where the mind is being focused right now. I did mention that there were peace negotiations that took place in Turkey, and the Turks have been trying to broker some kind of conversation. Similarly, the Chinese have brought together people, not in Beijing, because they are having a coronavirus lockdown in Shanghai in particular. They locked the whole city down, but they are holding two important meetings that bear notice in Tunksis, in Anhui province. These two meetings are very important. The principal focus is Afghanistan. The first meeting is foreign ministers of countries that neighbor Afghanistan, but there are also observers that have come from Indonesia and so on. It's extraordinary. 95% of the Afghan population is struggling with food. 23% face acute hunger. 10 million children struggling with malnutrition. Afghanistan is in a really difficult situation, so the Chinese are holding this meeting. They brought together people who are part of the UN's humanitarian appeal. They came to the table and so on, very much trying to break through. You see, part of the issue had been that a lot of funds were blocked by the World Bank and others, because Afghanistan was not allowing co-ed education in schools. That was one of the principal reasons. The Afghan government seems to have conceded that, look, we're going to just change our school policy, because this is a serious situation. While this meeting was taking place, where countries of the region, including Russia, were at the table discussing the plight of the Afghan people, a second meeting was taking place as well. Also on the surface about Afghanistan, this is called a meeting of the extended Troika. What a great phrase. Who's in the extended Troika? Well, it's China, it's Russia, and it's the United States. Their representatives also meeting in Anhui province, discussing the opium trade out of Afghanistan, discussing partly this issue of counterterrorism, the question of the resurfacing of ISIS in Afghanistan. Also, how to rebuild the Afghan economy. Now, it's got to be said that if the United States and Russia can be meeting in China to talk about Afghanistan, it's likely that there are very high-level back-channel conversations happening directly between the US and Russia about the war in Ukraine, which are not being talked about much. It's very likely that those are happening. Mr. Lavrov, Sergio Lavrov, Foreign Minister of Russia is there in Anhui province. I'm now speculating friends, but given the experience of reporting these kind of stories, when these sorts of meetings happen, when they are discussing Afghanistan, they also have meetings where they talk about the other thing, which they can't talk about in public. I feel great concern in Washington and Moscow about the escalation of the war in Ukraine. It's not unlikely that they're discussing this in China. So yes, the public peace talks are taking place in Ukraine, Belarus, and in Turkey. The public discussions, but privately they are likely holding these discussions inside China. Stunningly, the Afghan delegation that came to Anhui to discuss these issues has been, as far as I am told by people who are there, the Afghan delegation has been decidedly, shall we call them, open-minded about all the issues. They have not come there saying, this is the red line, we refuse to do this, we refuse to do that. Strikingly, I am told that the Afghan delegation has come with a great open mind. They are quite happy. They don't see the bending as a U-turn. That's important. They are not saying this is a U-turn for us. So Amir Khan Mutaki, who was the foreign minister, well, it's funny, he's always going to be called acting foreign minister. Mr. Mutaki, who is there, has apparently been quite affable and open. So fingers crossed friends, all eyes are on Ukraine, my eyes are on Afghanistan, which is facing a calamity. Give the people what they want, not only the war on Ukraine, which is being reported everywhere, but also the devastation in Afghanistan brought to you from People's Dispatch, Globe Trotter, see you next week.