 So today is April 9th, 2021, you're watching and listening to give the people what they want from people's dispatch. We have Prashant here already. Zoe is going to join us in a few seconds from Ecuador. I'm Vijay from Globetrotter. It's great to have you with us. It's always a pleasure to be with you on Friday. Every Friday, as you know, give the people what they want, your half an hour show, a whirlwind tour of international politics. As I said, it's April the 9th. It's two days after World Health Day. It's not a random day World Health Day. It was picked by the World Health Organization. As a child, I marveled at some of the world days that used to be celebrated. The old days in India, we used to take seriously some of these days. I've forgotten World Blood Donor Day. I think that was one of my favorite World Blood Donor Day where you try to get people to donate blood because that's of course a great issue in modern medicine. But we had World Health Day two days ago on April the 7th. Prashant, tell us a little bit or take us on a little tour of World Health Day 2021. Right, so this is a very unique World Health Day. All of us know the reasons. We are in the midst of a pandemic. There's a surge in so many more countries now, new variants. The numbers are kind of surprising. For instance, India's first two successive days at least saw more than 100,000 cases. Brazil is seeing a horrible escalation in the number of deaths taking place. It's pretty brutal, pretty horrifying. Authorities everywhere are struggling. A lot of numbers thrown about. Of course, I want to go to one number which is I think very revealing in this context, which is the recent Forbes billionaires list. The usual go-to of many of our colleagues. When you talk about inequality has shown that in the last year, the number of billionaires increased by 660. So that's 660 new billionaires in a year where people across the world have been suffering intensely due to the pandemic. And I think this number really reflects the kind of situation we are in right now. And this really reflects the situation of the global health scenario, so to speak. So we have obscene inequalities where it comes to distribution of vaccines. We have countries like Canada, for instance, where which has accumulated vaccines to immunize its population five times over, whereas nearly 130 countries don't even have access to the vaccine at all. We have had, of course, 3 million deaths. But the worst part, of course, is that this is nowhere close to over for many countries, mainly for the reason that immunization is not going to take place. Many countries immunization might not even take place till 2024. There are other countries, of course, where we're very clear about that. Whereas in the richer countries, what we have seen is that what you call there has been a huge amount of profits that have been made to this. There has been a really depressing and disappointing refusal to see the world as one in some senses or as people in the context of vaccinations because we've seen vaccine nationalism, countries holding vaccines like I mentioned. We've seen intellectual property rights being used in a way that, although vaccine production facilities are lying idle, they're not able to produce them because the relevant provisions of the TRIPS agreement are not being waived. We talked about this last week. There is a proposal to waive these provisions. Over 100 countries support them. But the global north, which has hoarded these vaccines, whose residents, and let's make it clear whose richer residents have the benefit of these vaccines, they are refusing to allow the waiver of these provisions. We've been talking about this throughout the year, but this year has really shown us the extent to which capitalism is a disease as well. Because every single inequality, every single inequality that already existed in society has been heightened, has been sort of its obscene nature has been made all the more evident. And I think it's important that at this point of time from April 7th to 11th, there is a global campaign going on. It's been called by the International Week of Anti-Imperialist Struggles. Organizations and movements across the world presenting a set of demands, including the fact that there should be free healthcare, there should be vaccine access for all. There should be a larger socioeconomic shift in the way the governments approach the pandemic itself. Because one thing we've seen is that almost all governments across the world have addressed the pandemic as a law and order problem, as a police problem, as opposed to a health issue. We had exceptions, of course. You've seen how in China, there was a huge community upsurge that defined the response to COVID-19. We saw that in Kerala as well across in India, of course, where across sections, we saw Cuba, of course, the most golden example of international solidarity. But in most countries, the approach has been very carceral. It has been very police based and law and order based. And this has been a huge factor in the situation we are in right now. So globally, I think there's a very powerful movement that's building up. And from April 7th to 11th, they've been holding this campaign. The demands are very, very simple. The demands are very, very clear that, like I said, these are basic human demands. These are not even necessarily anything out of the ordinary or out of the extremely surprising or anything. But the fact is that at this stage we are in, even these demands are extremely radical. And I think for people's movements, for political parties, it's going to be a huge challenge in the coming years to make sure that these demands are front and center. Otherwise, the number of deaths could be horrifying. And all of these are preventable, which is the sad part. There are at least probably 2.5 million preventable deaths. The deaths that are going to take place which could have been preventable in the next two years, according to the current way things are going right now. So that's where we're at with World Health Day. And I think that this is the pandemic shadows on multiple issues that we see around us today. And I think it is a day for reflecting on all of these as well. Well, it's important what you said Prashant about how many countries have responded to the discussions about the pandemic, protests about the pandemic. They've responded to it as a law and order problem. On the 8th of April in the morning, I believe, at about 10 a.m., police forces without a warrant. This is important. They just walked in without an arrest warrant into the offices of the Communist Party of Kenya. People involved with the Communist Party of Kenya were preparing a protest part of the Unlock Democracy campaign. But really, this was a protest about how the government of Uhuru Kenyatta has failed to not only tackle the pandemic. Let's be fair Prashant. This is a very difficult virus. But being dishonest with the people not producing enough resources. It's a little bit like the situation in Brazil. Let's admit it's a tough virus, but there's no need to be dishonest with the public. In the way Mr. Bolsonaro has been, the lack of concern putting in resources and so on. Uhuru Kenyatta's government, at least the Communist Party of Kenya was accusing it of being in that sense, a little heartless, inhumane in the way it has been dealing with the COVID problem. And of course, lack of vaccines, as you say, is front and center. And so the police force enters the offices of the Communist Party of Kenya on the 8th of April in the morning. Arrests a number of people. These are all activists involved in one or the other aspect of political organizations in Kenya, including the person in charge of workers and cooperatives. Gita Ninguni was picked up. They arrested a group of people and then they presented them in the court today, in the Kibera court. And once again, it's not clear what the charge is. You know, when the police were in the office, again, without a warrant, very important, they attempted to open the record room to see the records, the archive of the Communist Party of Kenya's totally unconstitutional behavior. And I think they do this Prashant because there's so little press scrutiny. After this occurred on the 8th, you know, I thought there would be, it would be front page news in papers even in Kenya. Buried story, buried story. It gives the police the sense that if they are not being observed by the public, they can do anything they want, you know, and I think that's a significant issue. Your point is a very real point. The point about how the question of protests around this issue of, you know, COVID failure, let's call it the routine COVID failure of governments, protests around this are treated as criminal activity rather than as democracy. I think that's how we must see the situation in Kenya. There are elections going on across South America, and we at any point will be joined by Zoe from People's Dispatch who's in Ecuador, trying her best to get a good connection to join us. I'd just like to say that, you know, in most of South America now, there is again this second, third, fourth wave of infections. Brazil continues to be the epicenter country like Chile, where there's a very high number of vaccinations taking place. I've seen the numbers of COVID infections rise. It's bewildering that governments aren't making this a priority. I've got to say Prashant, we talked about this earlier, but every time I look at global arms sales, every time I look at global arms sales, it's bewildering. In the midst of the pandemic, arms sales are up. It's bewildering to see the kind of, you know, pressures increasing. Well, when Zoe comes in, we'll talk about the elections to be held in Ecuador and Peru. Looks likely that Andres Arau as a man of the left will prevail in Ecuador. Not sure exactly what the situation is like in Peru with Veronica Mendoza, but you know, one can always hope. Just like you to come in briefly on the fact Prashant that the voting is finished in the great state of Kerala, your home state. Voting continues, of course, in West Bengal. There's eight phases which strikes me itself as undemocratic. The Chief Minister of Kerala, Pinarai Vijayan has tested positive for COVID-19. We'd like to send him our very best and hope he recovers. Give us a little sense Prashant about the mood after the voting in Kerala, waiting for the results to be declared on the 2nd of May. Absolutely. In some senses, it's a bit painful to say the least because you Kerala's election took place on April 6th, and the results are going to come out on May 2nd. It's quite a long wait. But like you said, the reason for that is because they have to wait until elections conclude everywhere. So elections taking place in four states and one union territory, of course. Kerala, very interesting situation right now because the LDF government or the left government, which was in power for the past five years, most experts on the ground reports, everything seems to indicate they're going to come back to power. Now, this is quite unprecedented because it's been decades since the government in Kerala has returned to power. And this government has been quite unique because we've talked about some of these before, of course, how they responded to the pandemic. There were two years of drastic flooding causing huge amounts of loss. And in each of these, the important thing I think to note in each of these contexts, basically the response was very community-centered. And it was not a top-down imposition of governmental rule, but a kind of response that saw citizens, ordinary citizens coming together, the Communist Party playing a very important role in mobilizing these citizens, of course. And building those kind of solidarity initiatives where relief work was undertaken, where it's a very interesting story because Kerala's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, there was such a huge amount of multi-level intervention that people, even people who didn't like the left were quite impressed by how effectively it was targeted. And that was a huge factor. That is a huge factor in how people are talking about the government likely to come back to power. The other important thing I think to note is that we had an interview, of course, you talked to Thomas Isaac, the finance minister of Kerala. And one very interesting thing I found in his interview was the amount of thought put into how a left government in a small state like Kerala can actually plan for the future. Because he talked about a number of financial instruments, he talked about policy initiatives. And in India, states have very limited powers in these aspects. There's a lot of control in the hands of the central government. So at a time when we have a central government, which is pushing privatization, going against significant welfare reform, so to speak, the center focuses a lot on handouts and doles. But the kind of perspective of the Kerala government in terms of building infrastructure, combining it with welfare, planning for the long term in terms of education, in terms of health, these are remarkable achievements and all the more remarkable considering that this is a very small government with very limited resources. And the kind of vision that Thomas Isaac talked about, the chief minister has talked about, ordinary I think people on the ground, people involved in the left are thinking about it. It's very promising for the future of the left itself because it really looks at in this age of neoliberalism and austerity, here is a left which is really thinking in terms of how do you mobilize resources and have level after level of development so that you can't say that, oh, it's the left, which is a usual criticism or the left. They're all good in ideas, but where is the development at? So what they always throw at the left across the world. But here you have very concrete examples of it. So I think it'll be a hopeful sign if they come back to power because a lot of these can be systematized and concretely implemented in the state and set a very strong foundation for the state in the coming years as well. You see, I mean, the interesting thing here is of course coming up with ideas that are concrete, that are real, that are tangible, that are in a sense something one can learn from. And I feel that there's just not enough done about drawing from the experiences of a place like Kerala. We tend to look at, say, something happening in Germany or even in Spain and say, let's absorb those lessons. Country like Zambia, for instance, might find much more to learn from Kerala than from the experiences of the United Kingdom. I spoke recently to the Socialist Party's presidential candidate, Fred. Remember, I mean, Zambia is going to an election in August and the Socialist Party of Zambia is really giving Mr. Lungo a very strong fight in that country. It's a tough place. Don't know really about the norms of elections. People need to understand it's one of the world's principal producers of copper, an important element inside the, you know, all everything, computers, you know, every form of telecommunication. And one of the stunning statistics that Fred and I talked about was that in the copper belt, copper belt is a name of a district in Zambia. In the copper belt region from which copper comes, 60% of the children can't read. 60% of the children cannot read the contracts. I mean, this data point is often something that one must emphasize. Speaking of the legacy of colonialism, because, you know, Prashant, the situation of Zambia is deeply entwined with the history of it being northern Rhodesia. You know, part of the British Empire brutalized by British rule. As we know, southern Rhodesia is Zimbabwe, another country that's struggling to get out of its colonial heritage. Speaking of colonialism, there was a stunning revelation that came out of the French archives recently about French nuclear testing in Polynesia. Now, this is not something that people pay attention to. You know, there's a lot of interest now in how waste is disposed in the world. There's some interest in nuclear waste and so on. But we've got to look at the issue of what the French did. You know, there's 2,000 pages of documents that were released from the French archives. Thanks to the French government for releasing these documents, we should say between 1966 and 1996, the French conducted and if you don't have, you must always keep a pencil when you're listening to give the people what they want, which has brought you, as you know, from people's dispatch and from Globetrotter, Prashant and me, Vijay, Zoe is trying to connect to us from Ecuador. But I want you to pick up your pencil for this because the French between 1966 and 1996 in these years conducted 193 nuclear tests in the French Polynesia region, 193 nuclear tests and they lied about these tests routinely. They said, for instance, that these tests, the explosion took place at 9,000 meters. It turned out that no, it exploded at 5,200 meters. Now that 3,800 meters is very significant because it meant that the radiation went directly down at the thousands of people who live in Polynesia and the Polynesian Health Ministry, the Polynesian Health Ministry said that 11,000 people received radiation doses greater than 5 MSV, which apparently is a very high number. That's five times the qualifying level for compensation. According to even the French government, five times the qualifying level for compensation. These people all got cancer. 11,000 people documented by the Health Ministry in Polynesia. I mean, this is a scandal. This is a scandal. Of course, it's not just the French that tested in Bikini at all, the French Polynesia. It's the United States as well that exploded a number of nuclear weapons in that region. No accounting. Just as Prashant, if you draw a straight line with your pencil from French Polynesia, go westward. You'll strike Diego Garcia or the Chagos Islands, just as the Chagosian people continue to fight for compensation for being tossed off their land in order to build a US military base in Diego Garcia. No compensation, very little awareness of what has happened. Prashant, there's some awareness now, small island states and the ecological collapse as a consequence of climate change. Small island states and they use in the militarization of the planet on the one side, this appalling nuclear testing on the other side, the displacement of people and so on. Warfare, pain of warfare. You've been following what's happening, talking about warfare in Darfur in Sudan, Darfur, which is itself, by the way, the size of France, not to make the transition too seamless. Darfur is the size of France. It's not a small area of Sudan. Terrible things happening, Prashant. What's going on in Darfur? I mean, the latest news, of course, has put the death toll at 132 over 200 people injured, of course. This is in the West Darfur state and the epicenter is the city of Algerina, which is the capital of the state. And this is, of course, there was another incident of violence in January as well. At one level, of course, this is being talked about in terms of a clash between tribespeople. There are Arab tribes, there are African tribes, a Meselite tribe, for instance, and that's one way, of course, of seeing it. But there is a much longer history, a much longer story to this, which is that a lot of the militarization took place during the regime of Omar al-Bashir, who was the president of Sudan for decades. And he was, of course, overthrown a couple of years ago during what is called the Sudanese Revolution. And the Sudanese Revolution was followed by, it's an impressive moment, an inspiring moment because people under the yoke of dictatorship for so long rose and overthrew that dictator. But what happens after that, of course, is that the military, the establishment, still manages to retain considerable influence in Sudan itself. There were peace talks with some of the rebel groups in the Darfur region, even a peace agreement was reached. But the fact remains that it has not really been internalized or implemented because the fact that the Sudanese military has that amount of influence in the establishment. There is a unit called the Rapid Support Forces, which has close links to some of the Arab tribes you're talking about. The Rapid Support Forces includes elements which are used to conduct the genocide in Darfur. And amid all this, the UN force, which was deployed in Darfur, of course, was withdrawn with the understanding that all the parties who were part of this new peace agreement would do the peacekeeping instead. But what has happened is that there's been cracks in the, there's been a gap, so to speak, because the peace agreements have not been fully implemented. And this is an issue which I think the left in Sudan, especially has been raising continuously. The very basic fact that at the end of the day, the military's influence over the transitional government, over all levels of power in Sudan continues uninterrupted. Those military personnel who have been involved in human rights violations, including high-racking officers, they have not been punished, they have not been identified, and they continue to exert power in the system, which means that inevitably, like some of these are actually small incidents, which kind of snowball, for instance, in this case, it was the death of two people. People are not happy that, you know, there was no follow-up from the state, and then it just escalated. But behind all these escalations lies the fact that the whole, the state power itself is so skewed, and those, in those holding positions of power, basically have been involved in such incidents before. So there's a huge trust deficit as well. The consequences are shocking because, you know, the UN was forced to suspend humanitarian aid, and this could affect up to 700,000 people in that region. And in January, we saw that 163 people were killed, and this is April and we have another 132 people that are being killed as well. So what we're seeing, I think here, is that the implications of a revolution not really reaching where it should have, which was the vision of the revolution, which is that the entire establishment of Omar al-Mashir's era, the overthrown did not really take place. And this is something you see in neighboring Algeria as well, where, of course, Abdulaziz Bouteflika was overthrown, but his establishment has continued. They have arrested journalists, they have arrested protesters, they've carried out all kinds of, say, repression as well. So especially North Africa, a lot of issues going on in that region in the sense that very powerful people's movements took place, of course, but at the same time, I'm sorry. But at the same time, what we saw was that these had not reached fruition, and the impact of this is often seen in massacres and incidents of violence like this. Also, of course, there's a role of imperialism. Sudan's process is being dominated, controlled by a lot of countries in the vicinity, the U.S. and the U.S. and the European Union all having a say in this and propping up the government, so to speak. So that's where we are at. Yes, so that's a very complicated story, and I do remember reading Mahmood Mamdani's book about it, and I'm glad that we've been following this, and I think people's dispatch has been following Sudan better than anybody in the world. Don't forget people. You've got to bookmark people's dispatch. Come read the site daily. Zoe, great to have you back. You vanished at the start because of the Internet. We've just got a few minutes to go. I'm going to let you spend the next five minutes telling us what's going on in Ecuador, and will Veronica Mendoza win the election in Peru? Zoe. Well, yes, sorry about the technical issues. The stars are not aligned to me today. But, yeah, I'm here in Quito. The week has been, I'll say, a little strange. There have been a lot of kind of slow updates that have been happening in terms of electoral situation here. I'll just talk quickly about Ecuador. Then we can go to Peru quickly. So yesterday was the closing of the campaigns in Ecuador of Guillermo Lasso and André Carras. Over this past week, we've seen a different kind of mobilizations that have been happening. So, for example, on Saturday, April 3rd, the Conai president of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationals of Ecuador expressed his support to André Sarrao's aggressive ticket. This actually caused a huge wave within Ecuador. I mean, this is one of the largest, most important indigenous organizations in the country. But the organization had already kind of taken a stance of the blank vote, which is the decision of the Pachacutic party. In response to this statement by Javi Vargas, they basically ejected him from the party and have said that they'll take disciplinary action during, in the Congress of the organization in May. There have been sort of these slow things that have been happening. I mean, in addition to this, a lot of other indigenous organizations have been expressing support to André Sarrao's Guillermo Lasso, for example, was ejected from an indigenous community during his campaign trail. So, as of now, I mean, the situation is pretty calm. As we mentioned last week, there's a state of emergency that's in the country right now. And so things are pretty chill. There's a curfew. There's restrictions on mobility. So we're not seeing that same electoral climate that, for example, we're seeing right now in India. There aren't hundreds of people out on the streets. Yesterday, there was a pretty big closing ceremony in André Sarrao's. Again, as we said last week, all of the campaign polls indicate a victory for Arrao's. There has been a, there was kind of an article released by Marco Teruji, who's an Argentinian journalist with a very, very high up source from the National Electoral Council, you know, saying that there was a plan for fraud in these elections to steal the race from André Sarrao's. We need to be following this, paying attention. With regards to Purdue, it's, I mean, it's really an interesting race. It's kind of a complete tie between five candidates. As we said that either it could be a runoff election between the far right and the center right. It could be a runoff election between, you know, the progressive candidate, Veronica Mendoza, who's, you know, from the Together for Purdue Party, who has a lot of positive progressive proposals. And the far right, it's really up in the air right now, but we're seeing a lot of momentum behind Veronica Mendoza. I think she's been really able to capture kind of this complete disillusionment with the Peruvian institutionality after the consecutive crisis that have been, you know, due to corruption, due to different sort of institutional breakdown in the country. Of course the impeachment in, you know, in November. So I think it's going to be a really interesting scenario, you know, we're hoping to see a great victory for the progressive candidates on Sunday. It's a necessary new dawn for these countries that have been ravaged by neoliberalism. Well, Zoe, keep an eye out for everything that's happening in these countries, because next week you have to give us a very important report about Ecuador, Peru, the possibilities of a different future for the people of South America. The last thing I want to say before we close this out is that the situation in Iran is perilous with the pandemic. The sanctions continue. Please remember that Iran in good faith negotiated a agreement with the five powers. The United States walked away from the agreement, not Iran. Part of the deal in that agreement was for the sanctions to end in a sequenced way, but to end decisively. The United States has now proposed step-by-step removal of sanctions. The Iranians have quite rightly rejected this. It goes against the arrangement of a nuclear deal which the Iranians had already negotiated. They say we don't want to go back and renegotiate the deal, because then people just don't have faith in deals that they negotiate in good faith. Iranians have released a South Korean carrier about an hour or so ago. It is now sailing out of Iranian waters. The Iranians have done this partly to come to the table in Vienna in good faith and have an advance of this discussion, not again to renegotiate the nuclear deal, but to proceed to end conclusively the sanctions policy. We'll come back to this story, friends, because the Iranian story, I think, is grotesquely mismanaged in the world media in the same way, I think, as many of the stories related to the South American elections are mismanaged. The question that Marko Teruji is raised in Ecuador of fraud, I think, is a serious question. It's not merely yelling fire in a crowded theater. It's a serious question. And Mr. Teruji, I think, should be congratulated for bringing this into the open. You've been listening to give the people what they want, comes to you every Friday from People's Dispatch. We have Prashant and Zoe, fantastic people, fantastic website. Please go every day. And me, Vijay from Globetrotter. We try our best for you. I'm not sure if we're entirely successful. Let us know how we can improve this show. We like to hear from you. Anything else, guys? Zoe, take care of yourself. We'll be with you on Sunday, you know, covering the Peruvian elections, Ecuador elections, and of course, the sub-national Bolivian elections. So do stay tuned to People's Dispatch. Social media pages will be giving some live updates if the... From the ground. Make sure you sharpen your pencil, Zoe, before you go outside and write everything down in your notebook. Got it. Give the people what they want. It's Zoe Prashant and Vijay. See you next week.