 Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Your weekly movement news roundup. Hi, sorry. You're with Give the People What They Want, brought to you by People's Dispatch. That's Zoe Prashant. And I'm Vijay from Globetrotter. Technology always seems to come at me at the worst possible point. But Prashant, at least I'm not the president of France. I have small technological problems. He seems to have a legitimacy crisis ongoing, more and more rioting violence in France. What's been happening in France? Right, Vijay. I think the visuals have been quite shocking, quite, and I think widely telecasts across the world, the footage, the kind of mass upsurge that we are definitely seeing in France. And you know, you're sort of, I think, reminded of many such incidents in many parts of the world, including the United States, where this has been one of those, I think, emblematic incidents of racist violence, of police violence, all the more so because the footage of this incident makes it very clear the fact that a 17-year-old teenager was shot to death at a traffic stop. And I think there have been a number of stories about how he comes from a poor, of course he's French-Algerian. There has been a lot of, you know, which in fact has been used by right-wing sections to mount a very violent racist campaign. But I think what also overall demonstrates is how the French state, the French police in particular have treated minorities, and that I think is what has spurred this kind of mass upsurge. So, you know, it's more, I think, systemic rather than just one incident, which is what has happened in many instances, even with the George Floyd protests, it's what we saw. The one incident, of course, being the point at which it starts, but this follows a vast trajectory, so to speak, of very simple incidents. I believe that last year, 13 people were killed in France in traffic stops. And this really sort of begs the question, how is it, you know, how does it happen that in today's time and age, people are shot by the police at traffic stops for, you know, it's just really difficult to conceive of, and I think that is... And of course, again, this being shot at a traffic stop is not an isolated incident in the sense that it is part of a structural pattern of people feeling disenfranchised, people feeling discriminated against, people feeling left behind by a state which is withdrawn in so many ways. It is withdrawn from social services, it is withdrawn. But on the other hand, it continues to sort of use armed force as a way to sort of... That becomes the only engagement people have with the state in many cases. And I think that is what we see here again, the fact that for so many millions of people in France and countries across the world, we have basically then left largely to themselves really struggling, facing a variety of social and economic crisis, and then often running into a very violent, militarized and vindictive state. So I think that is the grounding for the kind of protests that we are seeing across the country. And the fact is that, of course, the individual officer has been charged with voluntary manslaughter, I believe. Macron is probably making all the right noises at this point, calling it an unforgivable incident, et cetera, et cetera. But this crisis is something way beyond just words and thoughts and prayers, as they say, because it is... Macron has also seen the fact that there is widespread disenchantment and discontent in France at this point of time. This follows, of course, months of protests by workers who have been very angry at the government. Some years ago, we saw the Gilles Lejeune saw the Yellow West protests, another set of another mass upsurge against the government. So France is very much in the midst of that cycle of widespread dissatisfaction from various sections about this kind of... against the government against the state. And I think in some senses, maybe even extend the point further. It's really a question about the so-called democracies of today, the so-called liberal states of today, which have just completely let down the citizens. So very tragic incident. Young man, a complicated young man, of course. Like all of us are in various ways, whose life is tragically cut short in such a completely brutal manner by the fact that... Of course, the fact that the other direct reason for this is the 2017 law, which makes it easier for... which expanded the scope of armed violence by the police as well. So you have, say, the state sanctioning... in its own way, the state sanctioning this kind of violence. So I'm not at all surprised by the scale of protests in many countries like France. All it often takes is an incident like this, which unfortunately... an unfortunate incident like this, which then leads to this kind of mass protests. So like you said, I think... no easy answers for Macron. And it's not an accident. And I don't even think it's because he's individually incapable of... he's been a bad president undoubtedly. But I think also the fact that the structural issues are what has brought things to the stage. Tough for the French people, the mother of the kid who was killed came out and asked for a peaceful demonstration. That's simply not the mood. Not the mood. Well, the mood is anger. In Brazil, you know, where there was an election, Mr. Lula won the election. Zoe, he defeated the former president, Jair Bolsonaro, Mr. Bolsonaro. One thought had gone into exile in Miami, where people like him often go, turns out there's now a ruling in the courts in Brazil about Mr. Bolsonaro. Tell us about that ruling. Well, if there's anyone less appreciated or less liked than Macron, it's probably Jair Bolsonaro. And he's currently today in the next couple of hours, essentially will be decided if he is uneligible to participate politically, electorally for the next eight years. And this ruling comes up because of a violation which occurred during his presidential campaign or just before the official campaign and essentially was a campaign event. He called on ambassadors from several countries to come to the presidential palace and he gave a very elaborate presentation using an extreme amount of fake news an extreme amount of literal lies, videos, et cetera to tell them that the electronic voting system in Brazil was unreliable, it was prone to fraud and that whatever result happened in October during the Brazilian elections would be fraudulent. And we covered this quite closely, people's dispatch on the ground in Brazil seeing how far Bolsonaro was taking this lie. I went myself to one of his rallies in São Paulo and the main message that people had, his supporters had was that this is a fraudulent system and this was his whole platform essentially. And so in this meeting he's being investigated and he's really, this decision is being taken if he's politically ineligible because he violated electoral laws and he essentially used the accusation that he used public funds, he was a public channel, a public building to spread lies and put in jeopardy the electoral process. And so it's interesting because with the cases of for example, Donald Trump, Bolsonaro, there are cues of so many things, they've committed so many crimes but it is, they often overthink these technicalities. I mean, Bolsonaro, so many things and he, when he actually held this meeting it was very widely criticized and including US members of Congress were very quick to respond to what was a complete violation of not only the electoral laws but essentially trying to undermine this electoral process by bringing these ambassadors using what was supposed to be a sort of political diplomatic meeting and he made it completely about the elections and so he's actually paying for that right now and yesterday the vote began there's already three votes against him and the next hour as I said for those of you who are listening later you'll probably, the decision will already be out once you hear this but the last vote will come through and if they vote in favor of his ineligibility Bolsonaro will not be able to participate in elections for the next eight years and it's important to say that the last vote is coming from someone who voted in favor of absolving Lula during his process so this will be very interesting we've seen Bolsonaro really play the victim in this saying all sorts of things but again the reception that he's received by the Brazilian people anytime he's gone to public events since returning to Brazil has been crowds and crowds of people yelling all sorts of things against him not only because of this these violations of the electoral law but because of his genocidal treatment of the Brazilian people during the COVID-19 pandemic because of so many other things so this could be a big celebration of the Brazilian people there have been many many memes which people can see Brasile Fato did an article about how the big nose of today is the intense amount of memes that have been made about Bolsonaro will be following it and you can check people's despatch by the end of the day we'll probably have an update on what happens with this vote very serious situation in Brazil now looking north of Brazil to the island of Haiti it's at a very important inflection point you know last October Haiti's interim Prime Minister Ariel Henry it's really hard to talk about how one should refer to the people in government in Haiti because this is not really a mandated government nonetheless in October Ariel Henry asked the United Nations asked the Security Council to take action he called for a kind of military deployment you might remember into the country the state has essentially vacated itself well interestingly the UN Human Rights Council nominated a US based or US national William O'Neill to be a special to go to Haiti on behalf of the UN Human Rights Council and do a report William O'Neill is an interesting man he's a US lawyer he's played an important role in the UN mission in Kosovo was also deployed in the 1990s in Haiti I'll come back to that in a minute Mr. O'Neill speaks a little Haitian Creole which he used during his statement regarding his report to come back to his role in the 1990s in Haiti because that's an important part of this story well let's quickly rehearse why is Haiti in such bad shape today and it is in very difficult situation for that of course one needs to have a history lesson again in 1804 the Haitian people overthrew the planter class and established an independent country well to some extent independent the French imposed indemnities on the Haitian people in other words the Haitian people were asked to pay for their own liberation there was a large debt placed on Haiti that debt was eventually purchased by the Chase Manhattan Bank which then enforced the collection of the debt in fact the Haitian people from around the early 1800s right till the mid 1900s were paying off this indemnity quite a large indemnity around the time when the indemnity became relatively small when the Haitians at great cost had paid off the banks there was a coup in Haiti and the Duvalier family came into power backed fully by the United States that was Papa Doc and Baby Doc incubated during the period of Baby Doc was a popular movement which was able to remove the dictatorship and twice elected a former man of the cloth in a way Jovertran Aristide Mr. Aristide has the unique distinction of having been couped twice by the United States I don't believe in modern history we have another elected figure who was twice the victim of a coup Mr. Aristide in that sense quite unique in having been couped twice the Haitian government after the second coup against Mr. Aristide was put together with the United States in the 1990s the United States in fact intervened almost directly and Mr. William O'Neill who is now the UN's Sharjah as it were on Haiti was there in the 1990s and during the 1990s Mr. O'Neill oversaw the creation of the Haitian police very important point which is being missed out of much of the discussion around his report which came out in late June well Mr. O'Neill participated in creating this police force it was claimed that it was going to be a human rights type of police force anything but in fact the national police in Haiti has been charged with a great number of violations okay so then when Haiti a limited government tried to improve its conditions United States put a lot of pressure on it not to improve or increase the minimum wage in any way or improve working conditions in Makil Adora type factories across Haiti I'm giving you this history lesson to show you that Haiti is not some country which has been perennially in a crisis it has tried to lift itself up every time it tries to do that it has been pushed down again here comes Mr. O'Neill and he says quite correctly if I could just read from the report he says quite correctly I found a country bruised by violence misery fear and suffering it's a very sincere type report but then he says that what the country needs is the deployment of a specialized international force he says this deployment a specialized international force must be coordinated in close collaboration with the police to allow them to build their capacity over the long term with all the guarantees of human rights due diligence human rights due diligence not from that police force it is one of the reasons why people have been on the streets protesting over and over again surprising the UN didn't disclose that Mr. O'Neill is one of the creators of that police very much hope that there is no new intervention into Haiti what the country needs of course is sovereignty and intervention you're listening to give the people what they want brought to you by people's dispatch that's Prashant and Zoe I'm Vijay from Globetrotter back on the election track Zoe here's Guatemala what's happening there well interesting weekend last weekend in Guatemala the first round of the elections were held and it was defined that there will be a runoff election in August between the former Saiz Andratores and sociologist Bernardo Arrivalo but this is not really the main story of these elections the main story is the fact that a large part of the voting the voting population in Guatemala did not participate in these elections and even those who participated a large number of them cast blank ballots or null ballots so that's really the focus of these elections who was able to participate and able to contest in these elections was actually not even democratic because there were several candidates that were essentially excluded from these elections so in the past several months leading up to this whole process there has been a lot of there's been protests there's been consistent public statements being made by different progressive political parties but also centrists, right wing people who are very upset about how this electoral process is taking place it's one wherein people have been excluded on very very minor technicalities some technicalities which have been made up documents that they say they have not been submitted but have and so when the people of Guatemala were coming to these elections it's in this context of the fact that some of the most popular candidates for example Elma Cabrera for the movement of the Liberation of People who's been extremely popular and has been really rising in this past year with her movement she was excluded from these elections not excluded for example was Zuri Rios who's the daughter of Efrem Rios who's a former dictator in Guatemala which really he was responsible for the genocide of the Mayan indigenous people in Guatemala this is kind of the scenario with which people are dealing this is also coming on after two very very corrupt presidents who first most recently who's finishing his mandate now Alejandro Diomite before Jimmy Morales who dismantled the UN investigation and committee into corruption in the country this was maintained by the president right now so this is a situation as Prashant spoke about before where the liberal state this liberal democracy no longer means anything you can't talk about democracy in Guatemala in a country where candidates that have been that have gone through all of the steps to be on the ballot that have gotten the signatures that have filed their documents are then excluded from the process and also a situation where those who have committed extreme acts of corruption indexes or ranks the highest and not a good way in terms of corruption committed in the country and they have dismantled the possibility for an outside investigation protected those who have committed these acts of corruption and so this doesn't necessarily you know generate trust and confidence in this electoral process that being said in August Sandra Torres are are going to face off in these elections to be honest not much different between the two not much difference between the two candidates centrists probably going to maintain the same system of you know exclusion of rights denial of rights maybe so Arevalo is an anti-corruption activist how will this actually play out in the concrete will he reactivate the UN commission against corruption will he take other measures this remains to be seen but at the end of the day these aren't candidates that the people wanted and the major message from these elections is that the people do not have faith in these in this electoral process and they did not feel represented in this process well Guatemala had a tough history as well lot of killings in the 1980s the so-called dirty wars it's going to be a real journey for that country you know some something that benefits the people it's a terrible history of that country a tough history for Mali as well referendum on whether to return to elections very good story at People's Dispatch by Pawan Kulkarni tell me what's happened with the referendum in Mali but also right now breaking news I believe because today was the day when the UN Security Council voted on the continuation of the peacekeeping force there from reports it does seem like the peacekeeping force is winding up and will withdraw in 6 months which was what the I might be wrong this is just what Twitter is showing over the past few minutes but which is what the Mali government had demanded as well there was a great deal of unhappiness in Mali about the presence of these UN peacekeeping forces and the Mali government had said that basically they were in fact contributing to the problem which is kind of ironic we were talking about Haiti earlier as well where there was a similar situation but it's interesting times for Mali as well very tough but interesting times because we saw the referendum take place on 18 of June and as that story will tell you and it goes into some depth into the kind of constitutional changes that were made as a result of this referendum now I think one of the significant aspects is that it changes the state structure a bit it brings the senate it declares that Mali is a unitary state as opposed to the federal one and it brings the senate to encompass and manage some of the diversity that is very much present in Mali the president's position also in some sense is being strengthened but an option to impeach the president also being added to the constitution secularism reiterated of course some new measures for financial accountability plotting but all this is pretty much laying on the stage for elections that are going to be held in 2024 and that will move the rule back to civilian rule and I think now it's essential to go back to some history because Mali in 2020 saw a coup by military officers which depose president Ibrahim Abu Bakr Qaeda who was elected but who had become very very unpopular because of the declining security situation in the country Islamist emergency Islamist groups of course sort of you know raking havoc and extremist groups capturing large parts of the territory and Abu Bakr Qaeda's strategy was basically to collaborate with the French on this and the French had brought in troops as part of its Jifa-Israel project brought soldiers to combat Islamist insurgencies as they call it but was not really able to do much of course again the smaller side we need to remember that a reason for a lot of these insurgencies was the invasion of Libya in 2011 the destruction of Libya which actually was what led to this explosion of insurgencies across the region so Mali one of the victims of this and France of course claiming to come to the rescue but across the region there has been widespread anger against France over the past many years massive protests breaking out into a very curious case of a coup where I think and we've talked about this before you have a coup where of course it's led by military officers some of whom were trained by western powers but who at this point seem to be sort of reflecting what is a larger popular sentiment about the question of sovereignty about the question of opposition to western powers in the aftermath of this there has been closer ties between for instance Mali Burkina Faso there have been talks of closer coordination, collaboration a more regional project so to speak so this constitutional referendum is quite significant in the context of all this it lays a stage for a presidential election but important to remember that the challenges are very severe in fact voting I believe did not take part in one region because the security situation was this bad Wagner troops are present in Mali Wagner is going through its own crisis so some questions there as well but I believe that you know there is some discussions on that have already been held so very important region to sort of keep an eye on and it's encouraging that a constitutional referendum actually took place it was approved it has put some structures in and you know it has sort of tried to convey some of those aspirations which people have at this point interestingly French also demoted to a working language in Mali from an official language I think might seem symbolic but I think goes to show what the mood on the ground really is that indeed is the case it's part of this new mood that's there around the world really you know I'm going to spend the last few minutes on a story that has puzzled me you know for the last 7-8 maybe decade OPEC which is the organization of petroleum exporting states OPEC set up as a cartel among major oil producers to stabilize prices is based in Vienna over the last decade or so OPEC has had an international seminar no prizes to guess the theme of this year's seminar which will be held next week in Vienna Austria it's toward a sustainable and inclusive energy transition I mean you know I could have written that in my sleep and there's probably websites that write licenses like that toward a sustainable and inclusive energy transition sponsored by OPEC it's the 8th international seminar things seem to be going fine you know high officials of the Vienna of the Austrian government were supposed to attend people coming from the world of oil you know private sort of consultancy firms were going to be there the big oil companies major oil ministers from Central Asia all the way to West Africa and so on well one of the principal speakers at the meeting was going to be the Saudi oil minister now it's likely that Prince Abdulaziz has a reputation he's called a prickly prince by the way has a reputation against being criticized he's the half brother of Prince of the Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman so Prince Abdulaziz was the energy minister he was going to be addressing the conference and he is going to be addressing the conference and he has come under some reporting by Reuters and Bloomberg and others who have in a sense gone after him because he promised to stabilize oil prices and the Saudis in cooperation with OPEC Plus which includes Russia have been trying to cut down on supply in order to raise prices they are all feeling a kind of pressure there's a political pressure from countries around the world saying please don't raise oil prices but then they have their own domestic pressures where they want to raise oil prices to bring in higher revenues so there's been some negative press for Prince Abdulaziz and you know in a move that I thought was pretty surprising the OPEC administration led by Mr. Al-Gaith has decided hey listen we are not going to allow Reuters we are not going to allow Bloomberg we are not going to allow them to come to the conference but this is not new in October of 2022 at a press conference Prince Abdulaziz was asked a question by Reuters journalist and he refused to answer the question well later he said Reuters did not do a proper job he just sort of dismissed the Reuters correspondent now they decided they are not going to come well this is had what you would imagine the classical knock on effects the Austrians you know have said no sorry we are not coming now because if there is no freedom of press then we are not going to show up that's an interesting commentary in Austria where you know they have their own history with the press and I don't need to rehearse that history nonetheless the Austrians have decided we are not coming this has created a little bit of a buzz around the world that you know you have a situation here where where the news agencies particularly Bloomberg and Reuters who have really done a lock on covering OPEC maybe also the financial times has done a pretty good job in the English language covering OPEC but Bloomberg Reuters not there now the complaint they are making is they are using the language of markets they say for the sake of market transparency we should be there interesting commentary no Reuters no Bloomberg at the OPEC meeting no people's dispatch as well this year but perhaps next time people's dispatch and globetrotter will be in Vienna you have been listening to give the people what they want brought to you from people's dispatch that is Zoe Prashant next year on our way to Austria I am Vijay from globetrotter see you next week