 Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Your weekly movement news roundup. It's the 112th episode of Give the People What They Want brought to you by People's Dispatch. That's Prashant, Zoe. I'm Vijay from Globetrotter. Western tanks, mainly German, but also from the United States on their way to Ukraine to prolong a war which many thought, well, perhaps should come to an end as fast as possible. But the entry of these tanks show that the appetite to continue this war continues, although I must say I've been wondering about the utility of tanks. You might remember that in the early days of the war, now almost a year ago, when Russian tanks crossed the Donbas region into Ukraine, many of them were destroyed. I wonder about the utility of tanks. I think this was more a political argument about continued support for Ukraine than, in fact, a question about battlefield tanks. Russian forces anyway utilizing missile strikes now, not so much a ground campaign. I don't think that tanks will really be able to defend against the missiles coming overhead. Nonetheless, that conflict in Ukraine continuing. The conflict in Ukraine continuing, but we're entering the 75th year of the occupation, direct occupation of the Palestinian people by the government of Israel, 1948. Of course, the problems in Palestine predate the formation of the state of Israel, but it's the 75th anniversary this year of the founding of the state of Israel. Terrible violence across the last year and a bit in the region of Palestine. Terrible violence. In February of last year, 2022, the Israelis began to roll out a new operation, Operation Break the Wave. This operation came in retaliation, the Israelis say, but in fact, not in retaliation because the primary mover here is the occupation itself, but Break the Wave was produced by the Israelis as a way to crack down on the return of political protest inside the Palestinian occupied territories, particularly in Nablus, in Genine and so on. The Israelis came in with full force to break the back of that resistance and also by of course, punctual attacks in Gaza. This was a little stunning for Israel that there was the return of resistance in Nablus and Genine because it came alongside a text published by Palestinians inside the lines of 1948 Israel called the Unity Doctrine, calling for greater unity amongst all Palestinians in the struggle against apartheid Israel. Very powerful statement. During Break the Wave, the Israelis have smashed Palestinian social life, going in repeatedly into places like Genine and Nablus, killing tens of people, including lots of children amongst them, the Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akle killed in Genine. Well, this week on Friday, in Genine and in Al-Ram, which is just north of Jerusalem, again Israeli forces enter in full force into the occupied territories. By the way, the term occupied territories, not my term of choice, that's a UN designation, important to bear in mind. The United Nations designates the West Bank, designates Gaza, designates East Jerusalem as part of the occupied Palestinian territory. By the way, it's erroneous when people make it plural, calling it the occupied Palestinian territories. There are no territories, there is simply the territory that is occupied. Entering into Genine, entering into Al-Ram, entering into Kalandia in Ramallah and so on, the killing of people in Genine has shocked a number of people. Nine people killed, including an elderly person. Ambulances blocked from getting there. Al-Jazeera posted video of ambulances trying to get to the scene of the massacre blocked by Israeli troops. Important to bear in mind that Operation Break the Wave took place before Benjamin Netanyahu's government came to office in December of this year. Mr. Netanyahu leads a cabinet which is principally, primarily, fully, a maximalist cabinet. They want essentially what Mr. Netanyahu himself called at the time of his entry into government. He himself said that the policy of his government will promote and develop settlement in all parts of the land of Israel. This is their text in the Galilee, the Negev, the Golan, Judea and Samaria. That means by this statement, the Israeli government has said there is no such thing called the Palestinian land. There is no Palestinian state. There is no occupied Palestinian territory. It is all Israel. What we saw in Genine, that massacre that took place is part of what we must consider to be a kind of Palestinian side, the erasure of Palestinians in ideal person across the landscape of what the Israelis claim. Pretty horrendous things. There will be investigations and so on. But meanwhile, the United States is in the middle of a military exercise with the Israelis called Juniper Boat. That exercise is going to continue. There will not be a Caesar of that exercise despite the fact of a massacre. That's the situation in Genine. Now let's move Prashant to Yemen. Another ongoing conflict. Lots of Western arms involved. What's happening in Yemen? Of course, the latest news is reported by Al-Masinati, but other sources is the fact that there have been more deaths in Yemen, three children, a couple of others also, I believe as a result of airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition. Now it's important to remember that these airstrikes and these casualties come after what was relative pause in fighting for many months. It is not a complete pause. Of course, there was still some amount of fighting going on, but the pause itself, what was happening on the ground was generally seen as a bit of a positive sentiment for a war which has destroyed millions of lives, literally millions of lives. There were rumors and reports that there were back-channel negotiations going on between the Houthis and the Saudi-led coalition which was being mediated by Omar. There was a bit of hope that this war would actually be, maybe at least, it would be the beginning of it winding down. There was, of course, no chance for an immediate truce or peace, but the possibility of a beginning of that process that would be underway was, there was really a quest, there was really hope for that. Now, it's maybe too early to say whether these attacks have detailed that process probably not, but nonetheless, I think that these attacks sort of keep shining light on the fact that the war in Yemen has seen a lot of impunity for international players. This, of course, began as a war between two, within Yemen itself, and over time it has become a truly international war. Like you said, we begin by talking about German and US tanks going to Ukraine, but if, for instance, if you look at a recent report that has been published by Oxfam in one year, that's from 21 to 22, there were at least 87 Yemeni civilians killed by using weapons supplied by the US and the UK. And it's, of course, interesting to note that despite international condemnation, despite multiple reports which prove that these weapons have had disastrous impact, the sales continued. The US, for instance, said that it supplies weapons for defensive purposes. You know, there have been proceedings that have been initiated in the US and the UK, but that sale has not really stopped. In fact, I think another statistics basically says that we are looking at from 2015 the UK sold 28 billion dollars of weapons worth to Saudi Arabia alone. And Saudi Arabia is, of course, the leading player, the leading element in this war. It is a country which has really intensified the war with disastrous airstrikes which have had thousands of casualties. And the results, like I said, are there for all to see. There's 33 million people in Yemen, most of them dependent on aid in some form or the other. If, for instance, if you look at the number of people who are in a deeply food insecure situation, that itself is about 6.1 million if I'm not mistaken, so at least a fifth of the population. Huge number of people displaced, of course. So all this together and overall the casualties in about 400,000, which itself against and the war has been going on since 2015. So despite we see both in Palestine and in Yemen the fact that despite all the homilies given by countries in the West, it is their own weapon sales. It is their own policies that have actually enabled the continuation of conflicts which would have otherwise probably subsided many, many years ago. So while you can sort of look at, take the truth, take a look at who's to blame to what extent, etc. I think the larger picture is completely different, which is that it is this kind of international participation that has continued to give this conflict, keep this conflict running. It's a terrible conflict also of course the weapons, you know, the amount of money made in these wars quite horrendous. We started with Janine. We started with Israel. Israel, of course bombed Gaza overnight. We went to Yemen now Zoe, please give us some good news in the world. We gathered that something important is taking place in Buenos Aires. Some good news, please. Well, it is good news indeed on Tuesday. Heads of state ministers and diplomats met in Buenos Aires for the 7th CELAC summit. This was a historic summit for many reasons. One of the main reasons was that during the presidency of Jair Bolsonaro Brazil had withdrawn from this regional block. It is of course the community of Latin American and Caribbean states founded as part of this wave, the first of progressive governments in the 2000s Lula and Chavez together working for this space where countries in the region can come together to try to come up with joint solutions address the problems in the region. Latin America and the Caribbean is actually one of the most unequal regions in the world. And it has many common problems and of course there is so much opportunity for these countries to work together because of shared economies, because of shared language, shared history to really be able to overcome these. And so that's why CELAC is such an important space and of course has to be mentioned it's the counterweight to organization of American states which is of course US backed and exclusionary and of course tries to impose its own interest. So very, very important and within the summit in addition to Lula's presence which was saluted by all in their communities. Other things to mention, Nicolas Maduro was originally supposed to participate he had to withdraw at the last minute because of right-wing threats in Argentina, Patricia who is from the opposition right-wing party in Argentina had said that he should be arrested upon arrival. Unfortunately Alberto Fernandez in Argentina was unable to provide kind of the conditions necessary for him to make the trip there. So he only participated by video. But for example Miguel Diaz Canel of Cuba was there. A very interesting moment when he came face-to-face with Gabriel Bordic who of course is a progressive leader but has said some unsavory remarks about Cuba, about Nicaragua even in his own statement he continued to denounce some of these progressive governments. So there were some of those tensions. We saw Zio Maracastro the first female president of Honduras making her debut in this international space. She used her time to of course remember the 12 years of struggle of the Honduran people against the dictatorship which was backed by the OAS, backed by the United States. And she also expressed solidarity with the Peruvian people. Once again reiterated her support to Pedro Castillo calling for his immediate release. These was one of the strongest statements in support of the Peruvian people and has actually earned her the withdrawal of the Peruvian ambassador from Honduras. So it was a space of seeing a lot of collaboration and a lot of dialogue but also some of these underlying tensions in the region right now coming to the fore. But one of the exciting proposals that also came out of the CELAC summit and of course the bilateral meetings that were held around it was the proposal of a common currency between Brazil and Argentina. This would be huge. Trade between Brazil and Argentina has significantly dropped and with the visit of Fernando Radas was the finance minister in Brazil there were several agreements to reactivate trade in many areas. This would be a huge help to Argentina which is currently struggling a lot and in this proposal for the joint currency they say why are we doing trade in dollars. This is not a currency that is familiar to either of us. We operate in the peso we operate in the real. Why don't we have a common currency between both of us not use a third party currency. And actually make this more beneficial for both of us. So that was a really important initiative it was saluted by other leaders in the region as well. We saw Gustavo Fetter of course coming in with a very strong speech. Once again his defense of the environment has been extremely strong in all of the international spaces that he's visited since being elected president. So overall a very interesting summit and on the sidelines social movements trade unions left political parties held a social summit a CELAC summit where Eva Morales was president present and many important leaders from across the region they held an encounter with Venezuela. So really braving life into this regional platform. It becomes more and more important as the OAS becomes less and less important. So I think that's a definitely positive sign that we saw. Well while this was happening in Buenos Aires the U.S. Pentagon was putting pressure on Latin American states through Southcom or U.S. Southern Command Chief General Laura Richardson she made a plea to a number of South American countries especially Peru to send weapons to Ukraine that was an interesting development not only has the United States pressure Germany and so on to send weapons to Ukraine but they're trying to use weapons to Ukraine as a way to get their own kind of politics in Latin America. I think this is interesting that rather than engage the substantive issues that were on the table in CELAC trade development currency used to denominate trade and so on the United States said send weapons to Ukraine. I mean it's extraordinary the kind of world we live in you always give the people what they want coming to you from people's dispatch Zoe and Prashant I'm from Globe Trotter. Zoe the Washington Post has an amazing database of police shootings it's pretty incredible they've tracked almost 9000 shootings since 2015 last year 2022 their number is that there was 1113 people shot to death by the U.S. police that's almost three a day that's a lot of police shootings for a country that's incredible what's happening with police shootings and police brutality in the United States well once again the U.S. is on the brink of a large uprising because of increased police violence I mean it's really incredible that just three years almost maybe two and a half years since the uprising against the killing of George Floyd this trend continues and even more intensely and this week in the past week and a half a forest defender in Atlanta was killed by police this is in the context of persistent resistance against the creation of what activists have deemed cop city which is essentially to build a police training ground on a large section of a forest and this is crucial because this training ground would see officers come in to do training on how to repress up resings the latest technologies in repression and all within this kind of protected area and in this context there's been a very intense resistance from the forest defenders and one of these was killed by police while they were raiding their camp on the other hand in Memphis there was also a young black man who was beat to death on the way around 6 p.m. the footage is going to be released and it was a shocking development in this case because as we know in the United States 98% of cases of police killings of black people are not prosecuted usually the officers get off maybe in worst case scenario they might get fired they might get paid vacation there's really a slew of opportunity of things that happen to them besides jail time and other such actual measures of justice so in this case the five officers have been indicted for second degree murder and it is there's a lot of different theories about why this might happen in the case of the 28 year old Tyre Nichols who was beat to death by these cops in Memphis some say it's because the five officers who beat him to death are black this is of course has to be recognized has to be mentioned so there's been a lot of talk already from authorities who have seen the footage of him being beaten there is because of all these uprisings that have happened officers now wear body cams and sadly it actually hasn't really seen a decrease in police violence against people but it does mean that there is recorded evidence of what happens this footage is going to be released tonight and from what authorities have said it is extremely brutal is extremely violent hard to watch so they're expecting that there's going to be mass protests once people are able to see this footage and see the real brutality that this person faced because of a traffic violation he was stopped at a traffic light so this is of course a recurring trend in US history any time there's these incidents of extreme brutality against black people by police there's usually a response in the streets people demanding that there be justice there be structural change of course the George Floyd uprisings were some of the largest which saw over 15 million people in the streets and now two and a half years later they're funding cop city with this huge corporations funding this there doesn't seem to be actually a structural response to the demands of the people and so I think that's really really angered people well we're going to move from police violence in the United States which has been a long period of time inclusive of the question of the country are washed with guns there was a shooting in California again another mass shooting and so on a country are washed with guns we're going to move from that to the small country of Swaziland in southern Africa where a friend of ours has been very brutally killed and I'm talking about Tholani Masako Prashant at people's dispatch Pavan Kulkarni has a very nice peace remembering the life and work of Tholani Masako tell us a little bit about Tholani Masako and the killing itself right of course Tholani Masako and intrepid human rights defender lawyer and activist political activist as well was killed on 21st of January now short dead by unknown gunman is what the report says of course now it's important to note to just a few hours before he was killed King Maswati the third who's the ruler of Swaziland you know the last absolute monarch in the continent delivered what can be only called a very venomous speech you know talking about protesters talking about human rights defenders I believe he called them mentally disturbed people he basically pretty much said that they deserve the violence that they faced and just a few hours after this extremely aggressive and extremely brutal speech we see that Tholani Masako was shot dead by gunman and this comes at a time when there have been many reports that the regime has been employing mercenaries to target those who are against our protesting against the regime now the article like you said has does a great job of describing his life someone who for many many years has consistently both on both in the court and on the streets been part of protests has challenged some of the most draconian laws that the Swaziland government has including lost to terror terrorism lost to its addition he himself has faced many of these laws face charges of contempt of court for talking you know for saying something about a judge who just proved a few years later the judge who has dismissed himself so and also as a political activist somebody who brought together a wide variety of organizations in fact he was the chairman of what is called the multi-stakeholder forum and you know it is basically a coalition of civil society organizations our political parties and all that who sort of brought together the struggle against Maswati the third and it sounds also I think important note of course that this is one of this is a struggle that is only intensified over the past two years or so we have been reporting on it consistently in 2021 and 22 we saw protests taking place especially in 21 protests which actually forced the king to leave the country protests expanding to the villages themselves which are earlier considered more pro-monarch so to speak and of course industrial workers trade unions taking very strongly to the streets and the kind of activism that people like Masako brought to the brought to this at this moment was very key because it was the kind of activism that brought a variety of interest together we have an interview coming up soon with the president of one of the most important parties in Swaziland where he talks about these issues the fact that there is an attempt to move beyond there is already there is a vision that is being built among the opposition for what Swaziland should look like once the you know the the brutality of the monarchy is over so at this time it's a person like Masako would definitely have played a very important role and it's a huge loss and he was not just an activist in Swaziland he was involved in a variety of countries as an observer as somebody who chronicles human rights abuses if you look at the tributes that are coming from South Africa from other parts of sub-Saharan Africa you understand the fact that he was somebody who was held in high respect by activists and political members of political parties across the whole continent so definitely a huge tragedy but which I think poses a question to also some of the neighbors what is called the SADC for instance many of the countries which have pretty much backed Maswati the third in his policies that you know how long are they going to sort of keep giving this very brutal monarchy a black check so to speak how long are they going to give him a free hand to continue repressing protests to continue cracking down on students on trade union activists on anybody who speaks for democracy so definitely a very sad day and sad week for the people of Swaziland and for people who care for justice and rights in democracy in the whole of Africa. It's a powerful story Prashant and we're going to keep to it I mean you know at the same time as we report the news we also lift up voices of people like Thulani Maseko and so here it is you know an important person might not have been a journalist but he did provide an assessment of how things were in Swaziland the African continent the scene of a number of important trips in January of 2023 already the Chinese Foreign Minister New Foreign Minister Chinggong who used to be China's ambassador to the United States visited Ethiopia, Gabon, Benin Angola and Egypt. He made a very important speech in Addis Ababa Ethiopia when he opened the African Centers for Disease Control which was built with Chinese assistance part of China's new health silk road Foreign Minister Chinggong made a very important statement and here's his statement he says that he said that Africa should be a stage for international cooperation not an arena for major force rivalry it's an important statement he's made he makes this statement just when a number of countries in Africa's Sahel region first Mali last year and now Burkina Faso have ejected the French military this mood of anti-French sentiment in northern Africa is part of the discussion here it appears that a number of African countries once again cycle of being fed up with foreign military bases with foreign intervention bullying and so on in a sense Foreign Minister Chinggong's statement should be read in that context in the context of a new feeling on the African continent that there needs to be a development agenda for the continent not merely Africa used as a battlefield for proxy wars as it was during the high point of the Cold War new projects needed advancement needed collaboration needed Foreign Minister Chinggong's message was not really digested very well in Washington DC just when this was occurring his trip was occurring we had news that the United States once again going to circulate a bunch of high officials into Africa to contest the Chinese and Russian presence by the way speaking of the Russian presence United States State Department has declared Russia's Wagner Group which is accused of being in places like Burkina Faso, Mali perhaps Libya and so on including Mozambique as being a transnational criminal organization that's part of the push coming from Washington DC but the most interesting visit after Chinggong was not from the State Department of the United States but the Treasury and this was the visit by Janet Yellen Treasury Secretary she went to a number of African countries including South Africa Zambia and Senegal interesting countries I'll come to Zambia in a second in South Africa she met with the Minister of Finance Enoch Godongwana and they talked about things like money laundering financing of terrorism and so on and including sovereign debt resolution. Money laundering and countering of financing of terrorism caught my eye because this is the little mechanism the United States has been using to accuse China and to some extent Russia of unethical behavior on the continent including of course the question of debt and I was fascinated by Yellen's comments in Senegal and in South Africa for the emptiness of their content because the United States didn't put anything on the table. U.S. Government also intervened in the Zambia Democratic Republic of Congo agreement to build an electric battery well now we've seen the details of the U.S. intervention there's a paragraph where it says the United States will not make any financial contribution so there's a great emptiness coming from Washington DC Zambia is interesting because just before Yellen went to Zambia Christina Georgieva of the IMF went there and she said that the IMF is working with Zambia to clear the debt with China on the one hand we have Chingang coming and saying let's collaborate on the other hand we have this situation of a context being set up by the United States Government tough going for these powers but I think that the African people it seems to me at least what they are showing in the streets of Burkina Faso and in Mali are saying is they want their own agenda they don't want to be in anybody's cold war they want more collaboration well you've been listening to give the people what they want brought to you from People's Dispatch that's Prashant Zoe Vijay from Globetrotter see you next week it's a 113th show bring on the selfies