 Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Your weekly movement news roundup. Yes, it's the 31st of December 2021. You're watching Give the People What They Want brought to you by the world's best website for your movement news, People's Dispatch. The editors always right there, Zoe and Prashant. If not in a room somewhere in the world, in the fields, standing in bus stations. I'm Vijay. I was once this year squatting at a bus station. My legs gave out. I had to quit. I'm with you from Globetrotter. Give the people what they want. Keep coming with those obligatory selfies. We need them. They are important to us. Metaphor for 2021, friends. Just before we began, Zoe reminded us of a ship, the Ever Given, which was stuck for, I think, something like several months from March to July of this year. 369 ships stuck behind it. The Ever Given blocking the Suez Canal, constipating the world's economy, a sign of what it's been like to live through the pandemic, waiting in endless queues, not sure what's there at the other end. Everything paused. Here we are. Here we are. Here we are waiting for another period to start. Zoe, you're waiting for another period to start. Meanwhile, the US Center for Disease Control has told people go get vaccinated because hospitals are too expensive. What an interesting way to get people to vaccinate, to admit that your medical system is totally broken. What's the situation in that broken country called the United States or dis-United States of America? I think, well, that's exactly right. I think we're at the point coming into year three of the pandemic. As I mentioned last week, you would hear people in the US say, oh, post-pandemic, we're already post-pandemic. The pandemic has passed. Clearly, that's not the case. There have been the highest recorded number of cases that has ever happened throughout the pandemic. And those numbers are only, of course, coming from tests that are administered in testing sites because the US has no centralized national health care system. So anyone who's testing at home is not even being counted in that total. So the real number is much higher. The CDC has also, you know, in a major kind of bow to big business has cut in half the quarantine time. So, you know, just as we're having these, you know, ballooning case numbers, they say, you know what, don't quarantine for 10 days. And actually, you know, what's scientifically proven to make sure that you don't spread the infection, only quarantine for five days. And of course, you know, while it's true that maybe this variant, the Omicron has, you know, less severe symptoms, you know, that's not all the cases that are out there and that's not the same for everyone. And there's actually, at the current moment, there's no way to know if that's going to actually be effective those five days of quarantine in stopping the spread. So we're really at a great moment of, I think, true system collapse in the United States. Business is closed, you know, massive chaos just because of the number of people who are getting infected. And, yeah, this is the scene here. System collapse. Wow. Meanwhile, of course, in India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had championed a new form of medical care, which was banging pots and pans in public to scare away the virus. Didn't scare away the farmers. They defeated him. Prashant, is that the best story of the year? Oh, I would definitely say and not out of any sense of partiality as well of being from India, but just because the, and we talked about this multiple times on the show, but I think still bears repeating at the end of the year as we look forward to new struggles, as we look forward to new movements. Just the fact that tens of thousands of people were able to actually sustain a struggle over one year or more than a year actually. The fact that they were actually thousands of people camping around Delhi at any point of time. They were abused in various ways. The media played a disgraceful role calling them basically calling them terrorists, calling them anti-nationals, doubting their commitment and sincerity at any point of time. After a point when that didn't work, large sections of the media just completely ignored them, pretended that they were not people, hundreds of kilometers away from home, actually sitting and protesting, just pretended they didn't exist. At some point of time, towards the end of the protest, farmers actually run over by a convoy associated with the BJP minister, union minister, and even then the media played a very disgraceful role. And of course, many people would not know what's in India called the WhatsApp university because the ruling right wing has such a powerful control over communication and WhatsApp is such a powerful way of disseminating these messages that there are hundreds of messages sent each day denigrating these kind of protests, denigrating anybody who criticizes the government. Despite all this, the farmers managed to stand together. A wide variety of ideologies, a wide variety of class backgrounds actually. And all of these people, not only the outskirts of Delhi, but across the country, mass solidarity activities, people coming together in large numbers, these massive panchayats that were held, massive gatherings that were held in various states in which thousands of farmers gathered together to express solidarity. And this, we need to remember all this is happening amid the pandemic. And even those sites were concerned about the fact that they were so far away from home, but nonetheless their commitment to the cause, the fact that they wanted these laws withdrawn, these three laws withdrawn was paramount. And finally the government had to give in. And I think it's a valuable lesson for movements across the world. It's a very difficult kind of solidarity to build, but when it is built and when it is continued, I think after point, how powerful the government be, how authoritarian it be, it has very few options but to give in. Well, the government had to in a sense surrender to the farmers. It's also basically given up in tackling COVID-19. In Israel, the government seems to be prepared to start a fourth shot. I mean, I don't know what's happening there, but this is only a fourth shot for certain kinds of Israelis, not for the Palestinians who are under occupation. 7000 Palestinians sitting in Israeli jails, many of them in illegal administrative detention. And I must say, if I was to pick somebody who's been extraordinary brave during this period, it's definitely got to be Hisham Abu Hawash, who is on his 137th day of his hunger strike, refusing to give in to Israeli pressure, refusing to give in to an illegal system of administrative detention. I must say, you've got to take your hats off to the way the Palestinians continue to struggle from the front against brutal occupation unrelenting, even though I must say the odds are so difficult. Such difficult odds, they keep going on. Prashant, what else is happening in Palestine? Because there is of course the question of these prisoners and so on, very rarely discussed and talked about, but there's a broader context. What's been happening in Palestine? I know that people's dispatch keeps a close eye on events in Palestine. You mentioned Hisham Abu's on a hunger strike, but of course that spirit I think reflected across all of Palestine over the course of the past year, not only across Palestine, but also among people expressing solidarity, people who are part of the struggle across the world. And we know this because I think 2021 is probably one of those years like 2014 or 2009 when Palestine actually faced the brunt of Israeli brutality and Israeli occupation. The most significant example being those 11 days in May where Israel just bombed and bomb Gaza continuously despite the fact that despite various international calls of varying degrees of sincerity, it was just continuous amounts of bombing and so many hundreds of people died, I think over 2,200 people injured. But what I think you need to remember both before and after and during those bombings was the fact that the resistance continued, defined, resistance continued unabated. For instance, in the months preceding that, we saw how every time the Israeli settlers tried to invade Al-Aqsa Mosque, every time the Israelis tried to evict families from Sheikh Jarrah or even around the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem itself and barricades were set up each and every single time we saw Palestinians continuously protesting. In fact, Israel was very concerned about the fact that these protests were spreading into what is called 1948 Israel or whatever. So even during the bombings, we saw the kind of protests and solidarity actions that were taking place among Palestinian citizens of Israel and the people in the occupied territories. The fact that no one was willing to, there was absolutely no notion of surrender and this continued even after the bombing when Israel banned those six organizations as terrorists. When, for instance, Palestine, when those prisoners escaped in a miraculous, very powerful, you know, I think it's a very powerful sign of resistance as well. And in the weeks and months after that, when Israel cracked down very heavily on prisoners across, Palestinian prisoners across these territories, the kind of resistance they mounted, the hunger strikes they had undertaken. The latest hunger strikes are also very important because like you said, they are against one of the most brutal policies in the world, the idea of administrative detention. We saw someone for instance like Khalidah Jarrah, who was not allowed to leave prison even when her daughter died. And administrative detention basically says that you can continue being jailed endlessly because all it requires is for an Israeli authority to sort of say that, okay, six months more you're in prison, even if the charges against you are not defined, even if the evidence presented against you is secret. Nonetheless, this continues. Similarly, we have seen this massive increase in settlement activity as well that has continued despite the fact that Naftali Bennett has come to power. No change at all in Israel's policies, no change at all in how it carries out its occupation and its apartheid. So it's probably, I think, you know, now we live through it, we talk about it, we write about it, but say 50 or 100 years down the line, the resistance of the Palestinian people is going to be one of those epic achievements if humanity does something that also people will look back upon as probably some of the best of what humans are able to achieve in some sense, that in the face of such brutality, resistance continues. That's well said, Prashant, because I mean, you know, we are very concerned about the situation in Palestine with the pandemic, with the occupation, but also with the kind of international silence that has begun to take hold. Used to be that one would hear much more fierce condemnation about what's happening. Now there's a culture of silence, a culture of silence which has afflicted the violence in Colombia since 1948. It's stunning that modern Colombia begins with an event in 1948 called La Violencia, the violence, a violence that just has not stopped and will perhaps continue into and across the presidential campaign next year, the presidential election. Zoe, terrible data out again about violence in Colombia. Take us back to a country that you know very well. Well, this year was definitely a crucial year in Colombia. I think we covered very closely the protests that erupted at the end of April that, you know, of course started in reaction to a tax reform bill that was proposed by the government. But really it was a watershed moment for mounting, you know, discontent in Colombia. People have been, you know, suffering. As you said, since 1948 with the event of Bogotasso, the assassination of Jorge Elia Sergaitán, I think it's interesting. Colombia is often called the Israel of South America, of Latin America and the Caribbean. And there's a lot of parallels, I think not too much. But, you know, there's a lot of parallels to be drawn there with the resistance of the Colombian people to continuing to resist the, you know, government that is set on maintaining its dominance over the people, over the land. And this year was really a breaking point in April, in May, in June. The people said, enough. They went onto the streets. They said, no more of these, you know, assassinations of people who are in the communities trying to build a better world, trying to fight for peace. How is it that in 2016 the peace agreements, historic peace agreements were signed between the largest guerrilla group and the government, but yet over a thousand human rights defenders and social leaders have been assassinated and none of these cases really investigated to the full extent. How is it that, you know, paramilitary groups have more control over the territories than they have, you know, in the last decade? And, you know, this year over 92 massacres have taken place. Innocent civilians killed because they live in regions that are, you know, beneficial to drug trafficking. And how is it that the United States continues to prop up this government? Iván Duque is probably one of the, you know, least popular presidents in the region, but yet he, you know, he's going to finish his term. He's going to, I'm sure, continue his studies at Harvard and get all of the nice prizes from, you know, as they do. And, but really, this was a very important moment in these protests that we saw and were covering from people's dispatch. There were over 80, you know, recorded deaths of protesters killed by police, killed by, you know, armed civilians who were angry that the people were taking to the police. I mean, there were horrific images, which again, I think at the time that was going by so fast that, you know, you're like, oh, there's an image of a Colombian protester who got their head cut off in this town square. There was a protester who was burned to death by police. These are things that were happening, you know, every single day during these 10 weeks of struggle. And I think it's really important to take a pause and see what the brutality that was really happening. And once again, kind of the fierce and determined resistance of the people to say enough and that we won't have any more. And I think, you know, not to say that this is all, will be reflected in the polls because of course there's longer processes of, you know, reforming the country and really, you know, overhauling the entire political system that's been in place for the past 60 years. However, the next year is an election year. I think what we saw in 2018 is that there will be an increase in violence. A lot of members of Gustavo Pedro's party have been singled out and assassinated. So it's really important for us to continue to keep an eye on this and know that there will be increased violence. But it does seem that the historic pact is polling, you know, quite high. People have had enough and it is likely to be a moment of change for Colombian. A moment of change, likely the violence certainly to continue. You're listening to give the people who are coming to you from people's dispatch that's Zoe and Prashant. I'm Vijay from Globetrotter. We're coming to you on the 31st of December 2021. No sleep for the wicked here. During this year we have been to various countries around the world to report from the front lines for you from Honduras, from Chile, from Mozambique, from the front lines of the farmer's struggle in India, also from COP26, where we covered that from the front including police violence against the protesters. We bring you these stories. We expect you to give us those selfies. That's all we need from you. We would like to see you tell us whether you appreciate this show or not. It gives us courage to continue. We'll be back next year of course a whole slate of shows every week coming to you same time on Friday, and we'll be back with a new video. So, this is our best news you're going to get. That's what we promise you. We were at COP26. No real agreement at COP. Miserable discussion. Same old thing. A report comes from Africa. Just in the last period about the catastrophic climate destruction including desert locusts in 2020. And reappearing 2021. We're seeing a huge increase in the number of populations. The Horn of Africa and epic center in the climate catastrophe that we're seeing around the world also of course a place right now of great conflict. Prashant take us to the Horn of Africa because people's dispatch alongside breakthrough news has done some terrific perhaps some of the best reporting from the Horn of Africa this year. We've seen a war ongoing since now, but 2020 when the rebel degree people's liberation front attacked a federal military base in Ethiopia and the Ethiopian forces retaliated of course. The important thing to note this year of course was the fact that the war seemed to be at an end. The government had declared a ceasefire. It had withdrawn to permit agriculture to continue to permit the sowing season to take place. At that point the TPL have once actually I think a lot of this is yet to be properly chronicle. There have been multiple reports of for instance mass graves, all these taking place, but they're still not an authoritative amount of information on many of this yet. Just last week, again we seem to have reached some kind of a milestone there with the TPL have now declaring after multiple reverses that they were going to withdraw back into their province and the Ethiopian government said that it would not advance any further. Now whether this will actually mean the chance of peace remains to be seen. The larger point of course here is that the TPL have has been supported consistently and considerably by the United States and its allies. They were long term supporters of the TPL have been for decades, but in this conflict the role of the humanitarian agencies, the role of the United Nations, the role of the US itself has been very heavily called into doubt because time and again the focus has been on what allegations against Ethiopian government that the TPLF has got quite a clean shit so to speak. So despite the fact that there are very strong credible allegations of the TPLF commandeering aid trucks, there's actually been very little against it. On the other hand, the United States was actually very eager and very willing to actually impose sanctions on Ethiopia as well and some of this again likely to affect people in small scale industries, people ordinary working class people which is what breakthrough has been and despite the fact that whether this is going to make a change remains to be seen. Well you see south of the Horn of Africa south of Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia and so on is Mozambique. For the last couple of years I've been reporting a terrible conflict in Mozambique's poorest province, the province of Cabo Delgado where just off the coastline total energies of France and Exxon mobile of the United States have essentially captured a natural gas field, one of the largest finds in decades. This field was being developed the people in Cabo Delgado upset by the fact that they are in poverty able to look out in the water and see this massive infrastructural project no returns coming into their own lives started in insurgency in 2017. This year as I reported the French government in order to protect its asset and perhaps on behalf not only of total energies but also Exxon mobile made a deal with the government of Rwanda to send Rwandan troops but also South African troops Emmanuel Macron visited Kigali he visited Pretoria so we very quickly after Macron's visit to Africa we saw the move of Rwandan troops and South African troops into Cabo Delgado. Just this week Philip Newsea President of Mozambique visited Cabo Delgado to meet with the Rwandan and South African troops to congratulate them, thank them and so on. Meanwhile in the province of Niasa just west of Cabo Delgado this insurgency has moved there because the insurgents are going nowhere. You can crush them but the roots of the insurgency which is the poverty which we have written about and seen with great sorrow the level of poverty in that area of northern Mozambique you can crush the insurgency and this began I must say with hatchets and so on didn't begin with sophisticated weaponry they were no match for the Rwandan and South African forces they will move to other provinces and President Newsea says don't be alarmed. I would say this is alarming schools have been closed in Cabo Delgado through the year they are now slated to reopen on the 22nd of January so let's see what happens lots of young children lots of hopes, lots of hopes for the future there is a lot of wealth in countries like Mozambique too little of it goes to places like Cabo Delgado too little of it goes to places like Niasa reporting for you from the front lines of places like Mozambique also reporting for you from the front lines of Honduras where Zoe had gone to cover the election wrote a superb series not only on the election but on the voices of movement leaders in Honduras Zoe bring us up to speed as the year ends what's happened in Honduras and what is slated to happen next year well just yesterday Zio Maracastro who is elected president on November 28th received her credentials officially her victory certified by the national electoral council in Honduras and on January 27th she was sworn in as the first female president of Honduras breaking 12 years of rule by the national party to put it lightly engaged in corruption has links with drug trafficking and also came to power through coups through electoral fraud and through every other kind of illegal means you could imagine this party ran Honduras into the ground we've seen over the past decade a massive increase in migration from Honduras hundreds of thousands of people being forced to flee their homes because of deteriorating social conditions in the country economic conditions that are just untenable attacks on labor rights attacks on women's rights just in every sense of the word undermining people's right to exist and live with dignity so the the election of Zio Maracastro the end to 12 years of the cycle of what Hondurans would call the narco tatership of the national party is a really exciting moment it's a moment where there's change that's going to be possible where they're putting on the table access to health care strengthening the national health care system we'll have an interview coming out next week with a member of the people's health movement in Honduras who talked about really key things that they hope to bring to the table with this new government just increasing the budget increasing the number of health care centers Hondurans are dealing with malnutrition and things that should be solved and can be solved by the national government there's a lot of expectation there's a lot of hope that people have in the region not only in Honduras but in the region because the northern triangle that it's called has been a really it's a region that's had a lot of challenges this has been the focus of US foreign policy of course and it's been the focus of the U.S. military base in the region unclear there haven't been too many signs of how this relationship will be renegotiated but from what members of the Libre party have said from what members of likely to be the new government have said they're going to be looking to diversify their international relations no longer be dominated by the line of the U.S. State Department you must suppress your wages you must suppress your working rights so that we can get cheap clothing cheap bananas and other cheap imports and flood your market with our products and so this will be an interesting moment in Honduras changing the tide seeing this shaking off of 12 years of neoliberalism of a really arduous struggle of the Honduran people I think it's also important in this moment of course remember all of the martyrs happened throughout these 12 years of struggle Bertha Cáceres many others who gave their life to fight for a democratic Honduras and a new Honduras very important to remember that I mean in all these places the struggles of people bring the future and it's important that we recall that we recall of course that our colleague Julian Assange sitting in Belmarsh prison first went to prison in a way in 2012 when he had to enter into the Ecuadorian embassy thrown out of that embassy in 2019 has been therefore in prison let's say for a decade this is terrible he is our colleague he is a journalist a publisher WikiLeaks and we with other journalists around the world stand with Julian Assange and in the name of press freedom hope that this year he will find the bright light of day his own yesterday I spent some time talking to a United Nations official who is in Kabul had gone there to see the current situation UN has recently said that 23 million Afghans in a perilous situation near starvation that's 55% of the population this was a ghastly ghastly situation the United States prosecuted a 20 year war and has now kidnapped 9.5 billion dollars of Afghan money the fact that over this 20 year period the United States ran the country into a situation where it was reliant on foreign aid that itself should be on the table that they made a country so reliant on foreign aid that when the government changed and the foreign aid dried up half more than half the population is on the verge of starvation friends if you don't know this large parts of Afghanistan when the winter sets in go into relative hibernation the Wakhan corridor which I know pretty well shuts down because the roads ice up it becomes impossible to go in during the winter if they have not yet been supplied there will be a real catastrophe during the winter and I want us to keep our eyes open there will be starvation deaths in Afghanistan this year I'm not saying this from the standpoint of an NGO trying to raise funds and so on I know that's what it sounds like I'm saying this to you from the standpoint of a human being who's reported from these parts of the world where real tragedy is in front of enormous numbers of people's lives the UN number is 23 million people in Afghanistan Chile just had an incredible they're going to install Gabriel Boric as the president next year the population of Chile is 17 million is less than the number of people who might starve during this winter in Afghanistan 22 million people I don't have another comparison for the number I just came up with Chile because I know that number at the top of my head but it is a lot of people who are in very difficult situation and I am saying this in a very blunt way the responsibility for this rest in Washington DC's lap I'd like to say that as I leave you you've been listening to your favorite show of the year Prashant Zoe are we coming back next year is that even a question is that even a question of course always with you well always with you if you give us those selfies of yourselves watching this show this is very important for us you might be wondering why we are obsessed with it next year we are going to take some of those selfies and make something fun with them so if you want to be part of that something fun post a selfie of yourself watching give the people what they want your favorite movement news round up coming to you from Prashant and Zoe my dear friends and companions in this struggle editors of people's dispatch the best movement driven news site that you'll find I'm Vijay from Globetrotter we're going to miss you even though we'll be back next Friday see you then see you then