 Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Your weekly movement news round up. It's the 24th of September. I'm sorry to say that today my background is quite terrible, but don't focus on that. Focus on the fact that Zoe from People's Dispatch, Prashant from People's Dispatch and I, Vijay from Globetrot are with you once again for the 46th edition of Give the People What They Want, your favorite movement driven global news show. It's only the 46th episode of Give the People What They Want, but Zoe has been reporting from the 76th opening of the United Nations General Assembly session. 75 years have passed since the UN was established. Its charter was put into effect. 193 countries now member states of the United Nations. Zoe from the front reporting in New York City. What's been happening at the UN General Assembly's 76th session opening? Well, I think there's been a lot of importance put on this General Assembly because it is the first one since the COVID-19 pandemic began. It's the first in-person UN General Assembly. And so there's a lot of issues on the table. I mean, on one hand we have, you know, what are the strategies? What is the state of the world right now with the COVID-19 pandemic? The UN World Health Organization, a lot of international institutions have been playing really important roles to mitigate the impacts of the pandemic to try to work with countries to create solutions to the pandemic. So that's a really key issue on people's minds. Of course, also the end in some senses of the world in Afghanistan has also been a really key issue. And another one, which we're going to get back to, Vijay, with your other stories, of course, the rising tensions against China and in general the continuation of unilateral U.S. aggression against countries that it simply does not agree with. I think the case of China is a really clear example of this. But dozens of countries across the world are suffering negative impacts of what many countries coin unilateralism. So one really important development, which I wanted to highlight that's been happening on amid this week of all of these bilateral meetings between ministers, the large general assembly sessions, is also yesterday, September 23rd, 18 countries came together to launch, well not to launch, sorry, but to create a joint declaration of the group of friends in defense of the UN Charter. Now on this show, I think we always say at Vijay, you love to say this, that we don't fall into any, we're not going to create new rules. What we defend is the UN Charter. This is a charter that promotes the respect of human rights, promotes the respect of national sovereignty, the respect of cooperation between countries from a stance of trying to help each other, promoting international peace. And so these 18 countries have called for these founding principles of the United Nations, as you mentioned founded seven decades ago, to be respected. And it's interesting because the countries that make up this group are all sort of the targets of these UN principles being violated. So among this group we have Eritrea, we have Venezuela, Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba, Iran, Belarus, so many different countries, 18 of them just now, but I think many more will join this really important group that all have come together across political ideological lines to say, this is important, this is the most pressing issue that's holding back humanity, that's preventing many of these countries from progressing, from moving forward, from accessing medicine, from accessing essential goods to not only survive the pandemic, but also to continue to thrive and to grow as countries. And so I think this is a really key development that we want to highlight. We can also just look at the speeches of Latin America, of course, I'm focusing on Latin American leaders, but looking at the speeches of Luis Arce, for example, the newly, well, since last November, newly inaugurated Bolivian president. And he came to the UN to remind people that it was the organization of the American states, a US backed international entity that promoted the coup against Bolivia, against Bolivian democracy. Miguel Diaz Canel also used the space to condemn the US blockade, which over 100 members of the UN have condemned and called for an end to. So I think the UN continues to be a very important space to promote these international agendas for countries that are silenced by countries like the United States to show their position and also to work together. Well, at the UN, of course, just to let our viewers know, heads of governments come there one by one sequentially. They give a speech from the podium. There's a very great opportunity to talk about the important pressing issues of the time. We've been seeing some quite interesting speeches being made. Zoe talked about Luis Arce's speech that was considerable. I, of course, followed the speech from US President Joe Biden very closely. The reason to listen to Biden closely is Biden is coming to the United Nations on the back of a humiliating withdrawal for the United States from Afghanistan and ratcheted up tension pushed principally by the United States against China. Of course, it should be said that this China pressure campaign has fractured the US alliance system and I'll come to that in a second. I was very keen to observe what was Biden saying and to listen carefully to the language. It's, I think, important that Biden said the United States doesn't want a new Cold War against China. I don't believe that we should take that statement and dismiss it. It is actually important and I feel like journalists now have a standard set by the United States government. The United States government has said, we are not looking for a war on China. Well, based on what Mr. Biden has said, now we can go forward and judge US actions. If indeed the United States is saying we are not prosecuting a war against China, then one can ask the question, well, why has the United States entered a new military pact with Australia and the United Kingdom where many people are saying, many observers are saying this pact has to do with the pressure campaign against China. Why indeed has the United States continued to have another military engagement called the Quad with Japan, India, Australia, the heads of government meeting with Mr. Biden and so on. I think because Mr. Biden has said that the US is not willing to prosecute a war on China because of that, the question should be raised, what are these platforms? I think that's the way to consider what's happening now. Now, this is interesting. At People's Dispatch, you can see a report that I did on AUKUS, which is the Australia-US-UK pact, which on the surface of it, and by the way, it was a very curious release of AUKUS because Mr. Biden forgot Scott Morrison's name. Scott Morrison, because you probably may not know his name either, so don't mock Mr. Biden for this, is the Prime Minister of Australia. It tells you a little bit about the role of Australia in the world system that people just don't know what's the politics like and so on. Anyway, at the release between Scott Biden, I said, Joe Biden, Scott Morrison and Boris Johnson of the United Kingdom at the release, they made it sound as if this was a pressing need for security and so on and so forth. In fact, it's my sense speaking to people who understand these issues considerably more than I do and who look very closely at the issue of arms deals. It seemed to me from assessing all that, that in fact the situation of AUKUS is less about a pressure campaign on China directly and more an arms deal masquerading as a military alliance. This was a way for the US and UK to secure $100 billion-plus worth of arms deals with Australia, breaking a deal the Australians had with the French for about a $90 billion deal to buy diesel-powered submarines. Now Australia is going to get nuclear-powered submarines. This has implications, ramifications for the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. I welcome you to go read the article. It's a fairly detailed report, but the quick point I want to make here is that it's important that Mr. Biden says there is no Cold War. I think that should be the headline, but underneath that comes the question. If it's true that the US is not prosecuting a new Cold War, why these military packs? I think it is incumbent in a sense on the United States to explain that to the international community and it's a pity that Joe Biden's speech didn't then develop the point further and say, well, the reason to build the Quad and AUKUS and so on is because of this other reason, because we're using them to tackle climate change and the pandemic and all the real issues confronting the planet. Of course, he didn't say anything. So then it appears that maybe there's less to his speech than meets the eye. We're going to keep looking at this because it's a fundamental issue. Switching gears quickly Prashant coming to the question of US pressure campaigns because after all that seems to be a theme along with the UN Charter. What's the pressure campaign the US has been placing on the Horn of Africa and in particular the government of Ethiopia? Right, Vijay, because what we see right now is we've been covering Ethiopia again over the past year. On September 17th, Joe Biden basically issued an authorization to the Treasury and State Department to use the most favorite tactic of the United States in many of these situations, which is sanctions. And it was kind of an omnibus authorization because it allowed sanctions on anybody who was, you know, preventing a ceasefire, say, contributing to the conflict, etc. But observers on the ground do say that there is a bit of, you know, it's not as even-handed as it seems because it does look like of the two players in the conflict. There's the Ethiopian government, which is backed by a lot of the regional governments, provincial governments in the country. And there is a Tigray People's Liberation Fund to the TPLF, which basically runs the Tigray province. And as we know, this issue basically escalated last year when the TPLF attacked a military base in Mekele, the capital, the Ethiopian army, what do you call, went back into the region, recaptured the region, and then it withdrew. It's important to note that it withdrew, declared a ceasefire because the agriculture season was starting. And once that happened, of course, the TPLF went on the offensive again. And this offensive is important to note because this offensive took place at a time when the humanitarian situation had worsened considerably due to the conflict. And there was a huge amount of hunger. There was a huge amount of famine-like conditions. But the TPLF basically conducted a war in such a way that it basically cut a lot of these humanitarian convoys, a lot of the routes, and actually increased the crisis. So even though this is currently the situation, there are some more dimensions that we'll come to later. It does look like the United States government is probably going to impose sanctions on the Ethiopian government. And this is something that the government itself of Ethiopia, say, organizations across the world have pointed out that it's actually a very problematic life. Now, as far as the ground is concerned, it's an extremely dangerous situation because what we see is that among other things, there are not enough trucks right now to deliver food to the starving people. And this has been mentioned by U.N. agencies, U.S. aid, all of them are actually chronically at this point have mentioned that there is not enough trucks to deliver food. And prima facie does look like a lot of trucks which went into the region controlled by the TPLF have not returned. And there are reports of these trucks having been taken over and used for military purposes. So this is actually one major issue that's read right now a lot of humanitarian activities basically pretty much stuck because of the fact that there is no food delivery possible because of logistical reasons. And of course, there are issues of, you know, massacres that are reported to have taken place in which the TPLF is involved. No real clout on that, no real, say, enquiries, any possibility of that. So amid all this, the kind of sanctions regime that the United States is planning is only probably likely to worsen the conflict because it gives another huge boost. TPLF has said that it will develop positions, but question really once a ceasefire was declared, how come the conflict started again? So right now they are at the back foot because most of the regional ministries have also sort of combined with the federal government against the TPLF. There's a long history of your TPLF being in power for a very long time. But right now I think one of the most important questions is regarding the delivery of food is regarding humanitarian activities and whether this kind of sanctions will only hamper the further delivery of this aid. Yeah, that's a, you know, it's a story of great feeling and tragedy in a sense. And I'm glad that people's dispatch has been covering it so regularly. Looking at it from a people's perspective, people's centered perspective, hunger as the edge of the story really. I think it's really important. I was interested at the UN General Assembly Prashant and Zoe that the Taliban was not going to speak. They had actually asked to come and speak, but they are not, they haven't been given as it were the card to come in and represent Afghanistan. That was interesting. I was also waiting to see what the coverage would be, what the various heads of governments would say about Haiti. The Dominican president, Luis Abidaneir, gave a very strong statement at the UN General Assembly talking about how the international community mustn't abandon Haiti and so on. That's a phrase I've heard for decades, must not abandon Haiti. Often not abandoning Haiti means the opposite, which is oppressing the Haitian people more, seems to me. I mean, I'm making an editorial comment, Zoe. We saw those images at the US border of Haitian refugees, Haitian people being beaten and so on. What's going on with Haiti? What's going on with the border? What's going on with this whole don't abandon the country situation? Yeah, I think it's really important that we take this moment and really try to understand what's behind those horrific images. I think people were really, really struck by the brutality of them to see border patrol agents on horseback whipping Haitian migrants who were trying to cross the Rio Grande River. For those of you who don't know the US geography, that is essentially the river that divides the US from the Mexico border and is a very treacherous crossing point where a lot of migrants attempt to cross to reach the United States. These images have made the rounds because of course of the sheer brutality of what's happening in the situation, the response from the Biden administration has been to condemn the use of whips, to condemn the use of horses. They have said now they won't be using horses, but that's not the end of this story for Haitian migrants and that's not enough to correct the damage of what US immigration policy has done to Haitians, but also US foreign policy. And this is a story of course that we've been covering over the past couple of years. Right now it's no surprise that Haiti is seeing a surge in migration following the last year of events in the country. I mean, there was an earthquake in Haiti two months ago, weeks before that, the president of the country was assassinated. And this was by a group of 26 Colombian mercenaries who seem to have links to a US based company. And this fact doesn't seem to, you know, ruffle the feathers enough because it hasn't been given, you know, sufficient attention. It hasn't been, you know, sufficiently looked into, you know, and especially the US, I mean, their response was we need to make sure that Haiti is controlled. And, you know, of course, before that this was their favorite president, you know, Jovenin Moise was assassinated, had been facing popular protests for years. People on the streets were saying that he was backed by the US. He overstayed his constitutional term. He was not listening to the demands of the people who was imposing their liberal policies. Haitian people have been suffering, you know, not only for the past couple of years under, you know, US backed policies, but of course for decades. I mean, we've gone into this in other episodes about how the US has propped up, you know, consecutive, you know, rulers that have worked against the interests of the Haitian people. But, you know, in the past couple of years, we have seen this popular upsurge with, you know, actual solutions presented a transitional government that has representation from all sectors of Haitian society to be able to work for the economic and social and political stability of the country to, you know, favor the people over, you know, a few companies being able to exploit Haitian labor, to be able to exploit Haitian resources. You know, but at the end of the day, what the US has done is it stood by Jovenin Moise. And then when he was assassinated, they've, you know, kind of haven't really, you know, taken, of course, they're not going to ever. It's unclear what those links are, but there's, you know, a lot of different reports by, you know, some journalists with, you know, of people that have been based in Florida, etc. And now with it, what's happening with it, you know, of course, the expected migrant crisis, you know, we've also covered the fact that they've been going through Colombia through the extremely treacherous gap, which, you know, is one of the hardest immigration routes to take, you have to go through this very, very, you know, difficult jungle between Colombia and Panama, they go through their up Central America, trying to make it to the US border. And in the past couple of days, in addition to these brutal, you know, beatings at the border, there have been mass deportation flights almost every single day. So at the same time that there's, you know, beating people back at the border, they're also sending people back to Haiti on chartered flights from Texas every single day. And so this crisis, this US provoked crisis in Haiti, which we're now seeing at the border is not going to end here. The Haitian people need sovereignty. They need the ability to decide their destiny and their future. And we hear, of course, news that the US government is going to reopen a detention camp that they held 30 years ago in Guantanamo Bay for Haitians. You know, before Guantanamo Bay was turned over for the black site in the war on terror, it was used to jail to engage Haitians. They're going to do it again. It's disgraceful. Prashant, you I know are following events in the Philippines, 49 years since the declaration of martial law. By the way, I don't know if we're going to talk about this, but it looks like in the election next year, Marcos's son Bongbong is going to be one of the candidates. Are we going to have a return of Marcos in 2022 in the Philippines or is President Duterte already Marcos? Good question, because there's the question of some Marcos returning by name, Marcos already being in power in Guantanamo Bay. Duterte himself, interestingly, planning to contest next year is vice president because constitutionally he cannot contest once again. So he's adopting the tactic used in many parts of the world and is definitely planning to do so. The past few days as basically September 23rd was important because the people in the Philippines marked the 49th anniversary of martial law being declared. It was declared and then backdated due to Marcos superstitious beliefs apparently. So he had already been in power since 1965. He continued in power until 1986. And this is 21 years, 21 horrific years for the people of Philippines, especially for critics, journalists, activists, large number of judicial killings, a large number of disappearances. A lot of this history will probably never be uncovered because of the nature of such states function. Some official numbers say around 3200 extra judicial killings, 35,000 instances of torture, 70,000 political imprisonments. But like I said, probably this is really the tip of the iceberg. And the kind of impact it had on an entire generation of people, you know, people whose careers were suppressed, people whose civil rights and liberties were taken away, people who had to flee the country, people who could have contributed to the development of the country, who had to flee. Young people, you know, the whole nature of those crimes are still very fresh in the minds of people. Marcos, of course, was overthrown in 1986 by what is called the People's Revolution. Today, the key important factor for the protest actually was that keeping two aspects. One is keeping the elections in mind next year, but also the fact that Duterte while retaining the democratic norms, he's not imposed martial law. That's true. But nonetheless, the extent of killings, the extent of damage that he has caused is perhaps even greater than what happened during Marcos time. And that is really saying a lot because he is right now, the International Criminal Court has opened an investigation against him for his war on drugs. Now, as we know, sorry, as we know, war on drugs, again, across the world, a very common, say, theme used to suppress people, to kill people for extrajudicial killings. Philippines absolutely no different because I believe at least 5,000 to 20,000 people may have died or been killed in these war of drugs. And that is what the probe is about. And of course, political violence, massive during this time period, farmers leaders, trade union leaders, workers leaders, all of them red tacked, being accused of being associated with the communists and arrested, sometimes even killed. So huge human rights violations taking place in the Philippines right now. The COVID-19 handling epidemic was handled horribly as a draconian law in place which is being challenged by activists. So right now for civil society groups, a big challenge is to mobilize for next year's elections. That's what they're aiming to do. And I think this commemoration actually marked a key moment in that because people pointed out that in some senses, the martial law continues and that it's important to never forget and to remember that these, these legacies continue to evolve. Across the waters from the Philippines, major real estate development in China, grotesquely underreported story Evergrande. Some of the financial papers saying Evergrande, one of the world's largest property development companies, is going to end up being the Lehman Brothers of China. Friends, you might remember Lehman Brothers was the investment firm that collapsed in 2008, triggered the property led credit crisis in the West, the great 2009 credit crunch and so on. So there was an expectation that what was happening in China with Evergrande was going to trigger a similar kind of thing, the real slowdown in the Chinese economy and so on. In fact, Evergrande basically running out of the ability to pay off its wealthy bondholders, both in the US bond market and its internal debts as a consequence of missing some payments and then threatening to miss other payments. It's market capitalization. This is one of the largest property firms in China. Its market capitalizing collapsed from 41 billion last year to about just under $3 billion now. That is a big collapse. Its shareholders are sitting wondering what's going to happen to their wealth. There are about 80,000 people in China and I put this in context. China country 1.4 billion, 80,000 people have some investment, some stake in Evergrande. Not a huge number of people in percentage terms. Nonetheless, a considerable collapse. This 80,000 people are sitting on about 40 billion renminbi or about 6 billion US dollars wondering what's going to happen. These are wealthy bondholders even inside China. Now, what's going to happen to them? This is a serious issue. The government of Xi Jinping is trying to enclose Evergrande and to say if Evergrande goes, Evergrande can go. But we're not going to support it and so on. I'm going to come back to the property market issue. It's quite interesting that here there is no attempt to save Evergrande. They are like if it goes, it goes and we're going to have to see about it. It's certainly true in China. There's a lot of surplus housing capacity. It's also true that a lot of local governments were using land sales to raise funds for their own access to the bond market and so on. If that dries up, will this hamper China's growth rate? Economists are looking at that closely. Will Evergrande not collapse the Chinese economy, but will it in fact have an issue with the growth rate? If you're looking, watching China closely late last year in 2020, the Chinese government released a very interesting document. And my notes go back to 2020, which means that we've got to watch this carefully, friends. This is where they talked about common prosperity. At that time, there was a denunciation. Yes, Zoe, I mean denunciation. There was a denunciation of what they call the disorderly expansion of capitalism. In other words, to shift the Chinese mode of growth from essentially real estate or speculation in real estate, speculation in property, to shift it from that to technological innovation to the move towards so-called green technology and so on. To shift the basis of Chinese growth, there's quite an aggressive move being made by the government. The issue is, will the Chinese government succeed in being able to insulate the rest of the economy from the near-certain implosion of this very large corporation inside China, Evergrande, a corporation nobody has heard of, except perhaps in the pages of the financial press. It's significant. And one of the reasons I feel like we're not getting much reporting about Evergrande is because the way the Chinese government are handling this crisis is illustrative. You see, unlike, let's say, the Bush first and then the Obama administration in 2008-09, which decided to use public money to show up private companies. You remember, this was what was known as TAP and then the stimulus. It wasn't a stimulus to people. It wasn't to buy out houses and let people stay in them. Evictions continued apace. This was a stimulus in a TAP, a TAPOLINE for big firms, for corporations. In contrast, the Chinese government may not bail out Evergrande. They may let it slide into oblivion. As it is, there are surplus housing capacity, which they are basically saying, if you build buildings and they are not up to code, we're just going to destroy them. It's a different and very aggressive attitude towards property speculation. Don't know what's going to happen yet. We'll be continuing to cover this story. It's early days. Evergrande still has not collapsed. But remember this, disorderly expression of the property might not going to be permitted. Keep an eye on Evergrande. You've been listening to give the people what they want, which is, I hope, what we give you every week. We very much like to hear from you. Not only do we feel that we are your favorite weekly global news roundup. I mean, there are not many of them. We are the favorite one for you. But you're also our favorite viewers because you are our only viewers. Be with us next week and the weeks after. It's great to have you. Thanks a lot.