 It's not it's give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want your weekly movement news round up. The Gaza conflict not sure what words to use but we're going to spend a lot of time on it on give the people what they want brought to you by people's dispatch that Zoe. I'm Vijay from Globetrotter. We really do miss Prashant but we hope he'll come back and join us again soon. We're coming close to 150th episode. We'll talk about that later. Here's the situation. Almost three weeks into this murderous attack by the Israelis on Gaza on the Palestinians in Gaza. No let up Israeli tanks enter the northern rim of Gaza testing the defenses of Hamas wondering exactly what is possible for a land invasion checking to see if there is going to be any kind of opening for Israel to break right through. Looks like they're going to face considerable resistance. Stunningly the Gaza Ministry of Health released the numbers over 7500 people dead in Gaza Palestinians killed in Gaza. The Israeli government decided it was just about time to say well we don't trust those numbers. The US government followed the Israelis and said well we don't trust the numbers either. In comes the Gaza Ministry of Health. They released a list of 6,747 names of people including their ID numbers. Now this is significant. ID's in Gaza are given by the Israeli government. Gaza is under Israeli occupation. So these are Israeli ID numbers. They are easy to verify. In this list the Gaza Ministry of Health said 2,665 children killed. Now these are the numbers in terms of what has been established. Many more dead of course dying every hour. There is no let up to the bombardment. Journalists killed. Zoe Alexander and I have a piece up at Counterpunch detailing the murder of journalists. The children and families of journalists targeted. I saw this in Iraq as well. Al Jazeera reporters Tariq Ayub for instance on his duty at the Al Jazeera office missile strike and he was killed that was in 2003. Much the same happening now. Coordinates of offices and homes given to the Israelis, those offices and homes being targeted. Assassination of journalists, murder of people in Gaza, the land war, any minute now. Must say no word yet from Hassan Nasrallah of Hezbollah. Any day now when Mr. Nasrallah speaks it will be a declaration of war. Missiles will rain down on Tel Aviv which is why about 150,000 Israelis have been evacuated from the northern regions of Israel. This has all the elements of becoming a major regional confrontation on give the people what they want. We're happy to have with us a guest host that's Mika Erskog joining us this time and hopefully several more times. She is filling in for Prashant very big shoes to fill in Mika. Tell us on the African continent how are people reacting to this terrible conflict taking place the bombardment of the Palestinians in Gaza. Thank you so much for inviting me and I hope you can hear me correct. Yes. So it's an interesting situation because we have of course a lot of reporting around the divisions in Africa the so-called divisions of Africa around the situation but the historical position of a lot of African leaders of course has been around pro-Palestinians because at the end of the day we have experienced very similar processes of colonization, oppression, displacement and so I find it very interesting that the reporting has kind of maybe it hasn't come across in the rest of the world but has been seen as divisions when in fact I think it's more or less about the most progressive position being amongst all African leaders because we have experienced a similarity. We saw in South Africa many people might have seen that there's not only a ground swell from the masses but also the government has a strong position against it and I think that what is kind of interesting is that the leaders who came up to speak first who have been cited was Kenya the Ruto government condemned the invasion of Amhabas and spoke about supporting Israel but it has a very clear link to their recent support or interest in being part of the U.S aligned group in Africa but for the most part we have Algeria we have all the big countries who are coming out against the Israeli bombardment and annihilation and right now even though we've had I think the Ukraine invasion moment kind of shifted the politics and everyone is kind of scrambling around what they should do by and large most African leaders, most African people are against the Israeli invasion or the recent attacks and it has been interesting to track how people interact with and kind of what the trend is I guess we would say because right now in the African Union there is a lot of division because there isn't a lot of coherency around what the Pan-African project is and one of the things has been for example a few years ago why is it that Israel has an observer status in the African Union that's a huge question that we don't understand but the likes of South Africa and the Lady Pandora the Foreign Minister spoke recently about this that there's been a constant pushback against this and unfortunately because of the underdevelopment of Africa we have sought and we I mean not me personally but the continent has sought certain forms of technological exchange and development with Israel and Israel has been making a concerted effort in Kenya and Tanzania in Ghana and Ghana, Tanzania, Kenya I think have been the countries have had not the largest trade that's with South Africa but have had serious scientific developments and so we understand why the governments might sway to support Israel very quickly but by and large the African population doesn't support any form of oppression of Palestine and they continue to push for their governments who most of them by and large are standing in support of the Palestinian resistance. African governments on two stools one side looking towards Israel the other looking to their populations quite resolute in their support for the Palestinians increasingly as this bombardment continues. Joey a familiar tale for the United States more and more people in the United States seem quite in despair about what's happening in Gaza meanwhile the government has decided let's stop people from speaking out for the Palestinians what's been happening. Well the US and the US population it has to be said has been a bastion of support for the Zionist project for Israel the US is the largest supporter of military aid of military funding to Israel a beautiful kind of back and forth relationship with US weapons companies but and a lot of this has depended on the fact that the US population has largely not been in support of the Palestinian cause and has really not you know taken a strong stand that has completely changed in this month as we've talked about on our special shows there has been an unprecedented level of mobilization in dozens of cities across the US tens of thousands of people on the street similar types of numbers that we were seeing during the 2020 uprising as we mentioned on November 4th there's a national march being planned in Washington and the response has been quite severe. For example yesterday the Senate passed a resolution that condemning Hamas and anti-Semitic student activities on college campuses this is essentially a direct attack to the outpouring of support that has been taking place across college campuses across you know elite institutions Harvard MIT Columbia places that not only had been perhaps never spoken out against in a big way against Israeli aggression but also institutions that have deep institutional ties both in terms of research cooperation in terms of cooperation with professors and faculties in Israel these are these are key bastions again of support to the Zionist project and students have been saying they're walking out they're passing resolutions and their student organizations publishing statements and the response again has been for example this resolution passed by the Senate unanimously so that means every single US senator thought it was okay to criminalize and essentially call student activists supporters of terrorism that's on one hand but there also has been a serious backlash from this extremely you know out of touch Zionist lobby that is not understanding the mood of the people in the country right now and so we've seen for example at Harvard and Columbia campuses a lot of money being spent to drive trucks around that have the faces of student activists on it and calling them the leading anti-Semites which could not be further from the truth and it's you know not that it's that important to point out but a lot of these SJP groups the students for Justin Palestine have a lot of Jewish members in them understanding of course that anti-Zionism within the Jewish community is growing day by day in a kind of massive level so these really weak attacks these tired attacks of calling anyone who's supporting Palestine an anti-Semite and now even extending this to a supporter of terrorism is extremely worrying but also again is showing the fact that this Zionist lobby the US government which so desperately needs to hold on to Israel and having that you know geopolitical ally and so many and for so many other reasons this ally in West Asia they're clearly getting desperate and what's evident in the past couple of weeks is that the people of the US will not stand for their government sending billions of dollars in military aid not only while Israel is carrying out a what many are calling a genocidal massacre of the Palestinian people but at the same time that there's a democratic party government that is cutting health care that's cutting social spending and we're seeing people in worse economic situations than they have been in recent history so at the same time that people are being told you can't have Medicare anymore you can't have Medicaid anymore actually we're going to send billions of dollars to fund the the slaughter of Palestinians and the continuation of wars across the world so it's it's a real watershed moment and they're responding as they do with cowardice and with desperation it's a watershed moment yes indeed the Israelis continue to pummel Gaza tanks making a little foreign to the northern part of the Gaza Strip United States government sending more weapons United States government saying that its population cannot exercise their democratic right to condemn the war you're listening to give the people what they want brought to you by people's dispatch that Zoe and Vijay from Globetrotter very happy to have Mika with us from the crane a pan-African podcast that you can listen to very soon actually we're coming back in 147th show we got a little bit of time left to talk about some other things other than Gaza which is difficult to do it's hard to focus on news outside that very small strip of land where 2.3 million people are desperately trying to survive on the other hand there are events happening elsewhere we're going to first go to Argentina Zoe back to you tell us those elections in Argentina a curious curious result well yes we're back to Latin American elections we can't hide from it and we're here but again a very surprising result we had been covering this on give the people what they want and you know very consistent people's dispatch website about this very very scary prospect of a Javier Millay presidency in Argentina in the primary elections that were held in August in Argentina which again are non-binding elections but decide who's going to run who's going to be the candidate in coalitions and if people receive enough votes to actually continue to the general elections Javier Millay had received the most votes out of all the presidential candidates and this moment of this libertarian very bizarre candidate who's calling for taking away abortion rights who wants to dissolve the central bank who wants to essentially cut all ministries and all public functioning and institutions in Argentina him coming in first in August in the primaries was a serious wake-up call to the people of Argentina to the other candidates the political parties to the center largely to the right as well that if he actually did come to power and implement a dollarization in all of these other proposals that would seriously shake the future of Argentina that this would be a big problem and again not just for working class people but also for big business and for economic power in the country so since August there's been significant moves by for example the progressive Peronista candidate Sergio Massa who is currently economy minister to address kind of the deficit in votes that they face in the first round again they in these past elections on Sunday they did not receive enough votes to win in the first round but Sergio Massa did receive way more votes than he did in the primary elections he came in first he got just around 37 percent of the votes polling seven points again ahead of Javier Millay this is this vote sure is likely to increase in the second round of elections which will be held in November Patricia Baldritch who is the traditional right she did not win enough votes to go on to the second round and she has expressed that she will support Javier Millay however the right wing is not united in their support of the libertarian candidate and it will remain to be seen about how this center right block actually divides up their votes in the coming in the runoff election so it's a very interesting moment for Argentina I think also the comments by Millay to completely deny the genocide that happened during the military dictatorship where 30,000 people were detained and disappeared he came out and said that this number is wrong that human rights organizations are spreading fake news and that they're just trying to get foreign funds you know this whole denialist discourse was also a really groundbreaking moment I think people really understood just how big of a threat this was the Argentinian people have fought very hard for the democracy and the rights that they have and one kind of takeaway is that there are some rights that the people are not okay that people will stand up to defend access to healthcare access education Argentina is one of the few countries in the world today where higher education is completely free anyone can enter to higher to university you have to just you know maintain your you have to continue passing your classes but there's no entrance exam these are these are crucial victories that Argentina has won and I think that we're going to see going into the second round Sergio Massa will continue to try to use his role as economy minister to really address the primary concern facing the people of Argentina which is inflation which is their salaries which is the economic crisis which has rocked 40 percent of the population which finds itself living below the poverty line so again interesting results Javier Millay not the lion that he claimed to be and he's now being forced to pander to other sections maybe watering down some of his program to get the support that he would need to actually win the elections in the second round well it would be interesting to see if if mr libertarian wins that election what it's going to mean for Argentina's role in South American integration for its membership in the bricks which will start in January and so on we're going to move on on give the people what they want to do disasters first floods in Ghana and then earthquakes in Afghanistan by a number of people dead in Afghanistan before we get to that Mika tell us a little bit about those floods in Ghana sure so I think one is that four thousand people have been displaced by what they call the dam spillage which refers to the overflowing of water that was not expected or it wasn't precedented but what is interesting is of course in all the reporting this is devastating for those four thousand people plus who have been affected by the situation but very little has been spoken about the fact that what what has caused the spillage what is the the situation around maintenance the Akosombo dam was created as part of a project under the Nkrumah government and part of the project was it was a huge I think one of the largest dam infrastructural projects to happen in the 60s the early 60s and part of the aim of this project was how can we resolve the needs of the people and so it was very multi-dimensional it was about you know not only water needs it was about energy needs it was about how can we restructure the fishing how can we restructure the tourist industry and so after the coup that happened in if I'm not mistaken 67 late 60s against Nkrumah this project that also generated a lot of renewable energy electricity that you know went not only to Togo and Benin but also helped to power a lot of the Ghanaian people's needs hasn't been maintained in the last few years so we have this what is being called you know a spillage versus a flood that devastates you know thousands of people's lives and a little has been reported around the fact that why is the spillage happening it's a lot of unpredicted we didn't foresee this we but it's basically they don't have the monitoring capacity to predict it supposedly and we have to ask the question why didn't we have the capacity to do those kinds of predictions and of course it goes back this is why I raised Ghana's old history with Kwame Nkrumah is that we have to ask the questions why is it that we are unable to have the infrastructure to monitor the various systems that we have produced to try to improve people's lives and that of course is a longer conversation about neocolonialism but nonetheless the people who have been displaced the people who've been affected the houses that have been destroyed has to do a little bit with the little bit a lot of it with the historical legacy of colonialism and the fact that a year ago the Ghanaian government was taking a huge loan from the IMF which will largely go to them having to pay back a lot of their debts not necessarily dealing with these specific needs of having to make sure that we have maintenance on the dam itself and we have the various infrastructure to ensure that if there is a natural disaster or a change in climate that we can appropriately measure it before it affects the people so this is part of the issue that I think the Ghanaian people are facing right now it's a very tragic story and it's tragedies like this that make you think hey listen there's a history to it you need to understand it um this doesn't just come from quote unquote nature um in Afghanistan a stunning series of earthquakes in Herat province up to 4,000 people dead remarkably 90 percent of them women and children 90 percent of those killed in the earthquakes in Herat relatively under reported um pretty stunning that there's been almost no reporting on this catastrophic set of earthquakes not just one why are 90 percent of the dead women and children the earthquake took place the first and then the cascading series the first took place at 11 a.m now that's interesting most of the men in this largely rural part of Herat province were out in the fields um they were out working as a consequence of the Taliban strictures against women being in places of work many of the women and children were at home so when their houses collapsed on them they died 90 percent of them dead women and children um the 10 percent mostly elderly men who were at home again and fell under the rubble very hard for aid agencies to get there Afghanistan has a population of 43 million United Nations says that about 30 million of them require aid and assistance out of 43 million that's one of the highest rates of assistance in the world um this aid and assistance has been made difficult with the Taliban in power Taliban is trying to say we want to be um you know sustainable we don't want to take foreign aid too much and so on secondly over the years um many aid workers in places like Afghanistan many Afghan aid workers have been women um large number of them in areas of social welfare distribution of goods and services care for women and the elderly and children and so on um Taliban has banned women from working in aid agencies which has meant of course that the structure of transmission of aid has been greatly disrupted you can't just you know substitute the woman who worked for an aid agency with a man and say get to work there are skills there is expertise there are habits of work and so on that have been there over the last period and therefore Afghanistan is struggling to maintain its aid agencies its response to something as devastating as this earthquake um at the same time government of Pakistan threatened to deport um a large number of of of um of Afghan nationals who have been in Pakistan the United Nations warning that these deportations must not go on for two reasons one um they must not go on because they are going to be terrible for um the people returning several of them have dissidents and so on um they are not capable of having a free entry into Afghanistan secondly um many of the people would be going back to provinces in Herat the sixth district hit in Herat and that is catastrophic the country cannot absorb people right now a terrible terrible situation in Afghanistan we're going to come back and do some more reporting on give the people what they want about Afghanistan it's worth mentioning that in previous earthquakes in Pakistan and indeed in Afghanistan um the first aid agencies that came with medical training were from Cuba the Cuban doctors are coming there helping out and so on Cuba of course the United States decided is a terrorist country it has it on its state sponsors of terrorism list as we know the only thing the Cubans have done in Pakistan during that catastrophic earthquake about 15 years ago and in Afghanistan is export doctors health workers state sponsors of health care rather than terrorism worthwhile to keep in mind right now in Gaza those hospitals they could use a few Cuban doctors although I must say the Palestinians of Gaza are highly trained people lots of doctors lots of nurses lots of ambulance drivers they just don't have fuel they can't run their ambulances they can't run their hospitals they can't power their incubators you're listening to give the people what they want brought to you from people's dispatch that's Zoe I'm Vijay from Globetrotter grateful to have Mika with us today as a guest host in place of Prashant coming up to a 150th show keep an eye out for that we might even threaten to have an hour long show see you next week