 that we started the dance last time we started a dance yeah we did and we're live we're live are we live are we seriously live yes we are now live okay well it's great to be with you it's March 19th today 2021 March 19th is every year after 2003 every year March 19th is the anniversary of the US opening up its illegal war against Iraq which cost millions of people's lives it's a day I think that we should always remember the day the United States went to war against Iraq for no reason where the US diplomatic personnel lied at the UN Security Council this includes the lies told by US Secretary of State Colin Powell later Colin Powell at least via his chief of staff Larry Wilkerson said that he had been misinformed by the CIA either way the war was built on a very very fraudulent foundation the world did not go along with it the US went alone you got to remember this when you read Joe Biden's comment calling Vladimir Putin a killer Biden calls Putin a killer Putin's responses well it takes one to no one and he probably was describing himself meanwhile in Anchorage Alaska the United States high diplomats Anthony Blinken and Jake Sullivan sat down today and talked to two very senior Chinese diplomats including Wang Yi and the two Chinese diplomats Wang Yi and Yang Jiechi sat down at this meeting in Anchorage Alaska Blinken and Sullivan opened the meeting launching an attack on the Chinese talking about Xinjiang talking about Hong Kong talking about how China is outside the rule-based order now bear in mind friends this is on the anniversary of the day that the United States government illegally attacked Iraq they are lecturing the Chinese about the rules-based system both Wang and Yang fought back and said that the United States is a country that does policy through hooliganism very strong language from the Chinese today at Anchorage Alaska Wang returns to Beijing to have a visit with Sergey Lavrov foreign minister of Russia who will spend two days in China matters are very tense between the United States and China it's impossible to open this show today on the 19th of March 2021 without talking about that you're listening to give the people what they want with Zoe and Prashant from People's Dispatch the best movement storyteller available and me Vijay from Globetrotter I opened today with China and the United States because really because this is a serious issue we have a US Navy admiral Philip Davidson going before the US Armed Services Committee and talking about how they need five billion dollars for the Indo-Pacific command to pressure China on by military means and Davidson said something which I would have hoped would have been front-page news around the world Davidson said the United States military must and this is a direct quote he says the United States military must be prepared to fight against China be prepared to fight against China 27 billion dollars over the next few years to the Indo-Pacific command hypersonic cruise missiles this that and the other thing very chilling Prashant in Stockholm the Stockholm Institute which annually releases its report on arms sales and on military budgets and so on has released their annual report it has a pretty interesting headline lots of people say well the United States is building up its military to confront the build-up of the Chinese military I was interested to read the Stockholm Institute's headline at least I haven't yet got down to reading the report Prashant what did you see in the report right Vijay it's actually a very fascinating report that it's just a 12 the 12 page fact sheet itself gives you a lot of interesting insights into what is happening with regards to arms sales and this is probably a very good measure of where we are as a world as a civilization right now on the face of it one interesting fact is from 2016 to 20 there's been a slight decrease in the overall arms sales but there are a lot of other trends which are quite harmful or dangerous and I think some of these trends are going to come back again and again in some of our discussions for instance despite all the say rhetoric of the United States Russia and China's arms exports have actually decreased slightly whereas the United States of France for that matter then their arms exports numbers have actually increased when compared to the previous period now if you look at the top five arms exporters here the United States Russia France Germany and China and like I said the US and France have increased Russia and China their arms exports have increased if you look at the top importers you have Saudi Arabia India Egypt Australia and China again and it's especially important because what this shows while globally there has been maybe a slight decline compared to the previous five years in the Middle East there's actually been a considerably increased that's 25 percent increase in arms imports in the in the Middle East countries and the which are the key countries you're talking about here like the list obviously shows Saudi Arabia and Egypt of course two important countries Saudi Arabia especially important because it's the world's largest arms importer in 2016 to 2020 and say 79 percent of where to say the 79 percent of the arms imports of Saudi Arabia come from from the United States now the question is where do these weapons go and it's very very clear these weapons are being used to bomb people in Yemen to bomb children in Yemen to destroy the lives to cause what the UN itself has called the greatest humanitarian disaster of our times and this is a trend that has continued for many many years so we have of course seen expressions of concern by say various officials in the US administration when Trump was in power of course the by the democrats made a noise not a noise about it but if you go by the cardinal principle of follow the money I think the trend is very clear that basically you have this brutal war which is being completely or largely being supported by United States weapons and if you the relationship between the US and Saudi Arabia on one hand the US and Egypt on the other the US and Israel on the other the arms relationship so to speak I think it gives us perhaps the most clear indication into what is causing conflict in that part of the world because the west and the the United States irrespective of whoever is in power likes to blame Iran but the question here is where are the weapons where is the money going and where are the weapons coming from and that's very clear because it's going to all these countries the other interesting fact of course is that while India's arms imports have slightly decreased the India-Israel arms relationship has because has strengthened much more and what do you call it I think 43 percent of India's arms purchase comes from Israel now so that's that's a considerable amount that is there and it's actually a very dangerous trend because across the world for instance yesterday we saw day before yesterday we saw protests in Canada against buying of drone equipment from Israel which is manufactured by elbit systems in the UK elbit systems factories have been targeted by protesters but in India what you've seen is especially since the Modi government came to power there's been a very close nexus between India and Israel in terms of technology in general but especially military technology so I think what we had the trends basically see are not very positive either because the fact sheet also talks about a lot of trade arms deals that are already in place haven't been executed so for instance you have the United States United Arab Emirates which is on the verge of signing quite a few deals and some of them didn't get completed in 2020 but those could be quite big in this coming period as well the UAE as we know is another key member of this war on Yemen and I think a lot of our analysis of what do you call West Asia the politics of it often kind of fails to take in account this fact that this is the amount of money this is the amount of sheer weapons of murder that are being it's interesting because the war in Iraq was done on the argument of weapons of mass destruction but this is actually what is actually happening on the ground despite all those protestations this kind of sales and there's no sign of it coming down either but you know you're talking about largely military sales sales by arms dealers to militaries of course a very big industry is sales to police forces and we don't you know we should write to Cypriot and say you need to track the police sales as well in November 2019 the US State Department brokered through a company called X International run by a Haitian man by the name of Kappa who used to be in the US military brokered a sale to the Haitian national police of riot gear and so on you've you've seen in Paraguay in Haiti the use of this highly sophisticated repressive military equipment by the police both in Haiti and in Paraguay we've seen this repressive stuff but we've seen people just continue to be out on the street Zoe what's happening in Paraguay what's happening in Haiti what are we seeing in these protests why are people on the street yes well as you said there's a great increase in repression and we see you know globally how repressive governments are working together how they're buying not only training but weapons I mean it's a whole you know international level of pollution and it's actually quite interesting to look at these partnerships and agreements on a deeper level but within you know right now in Haiti and Paraguay people have been on the streets for weeks in Paraguay these protests started at the beginning of March and Haiti of course we've been covering this the latest wave of protests began in January but you know the people of Haiti have been you know en masse protesting for the past three years but I guess I'll start with Paraguay because I think it's kind of a less known case Paraguay is often a really forgotten country in Latin America it's landlocked you know people really maybe they know about the coup that happened 2012 the parliamentary coup against Hugo but beyond that it's kind of yeah it's between Brazil and you know Argentina but what's really going on there we've done a couple of stories of people's dispatch about these protests that began in the beginning of March like so many protests we've seen throughout the pandemic people have just been brought to the brink with the mismanagement of the pandemic it's not enough it's not not only are they losing their livelihoods because of the economic impact of the lockdown the economic impact just the global deepening of this economic crisis which we know didn't start with the lockdown has been you know deepened but in addition in a lot of countries the the death rate the infection rate the impact on people's lives of actually their family members dying not getting health care you know the desperation of the breakdown of the public health system is not just we talked a lot about how the health systems are deteriorating but the actual toll that this plays in people's lives is really too great to measure of course we see this in Brazil as well and so in Paraguay you know the government had been really mismanaging the pandemic people have talked about how you know health care workers still weren't getting proper PPE you know there just hasn't been enough investment in protecting the people and putting their needs first and so people started protesting once there was a massive spike in COVID cases of big spike in deaths as well of course the numbers when you compare it to the rest of the region the numbers themselves absolute numbers are not super high but the increase that was seen and the impact on the population has been extremely high you know the the president of Paraguay is from the Colorado party and this is the party that was of the last dictator in Paraguay so there's you know a direct direct legacy to this repressive politics a number of things that happened under this regime of Abdo Benitez Mario Abdo Benitez um you know we talked about in our first article about the process how in in November there was in September there was a series of kind of scandals were involving the murder of two young Argentinian girls this actually created kind of an international issue because two young girls were murdered by the army and so people just have had enough they're on the streets they've been on the streets of Paraguay Asuncion and the capital for the past since you know March 3rd now in a really amazing kind of show of support and force peasant organizations have joined you know the young people in the cities they're doing a march from the rural regions to the city to support these protests and essentially the people are calling for the resignation of this right wing government that has shown time and time again that they're not protecting the people the people are suffering and that they don't really care there have been a couple cosmetic changes you know the health minister resigned because the parliament actually passed a resolution saying that he had to um but really there hasn't been much response from the executive government and then of course in Haiti people continue to be on the streets now we're almost a month and a half into the illegal overstaying of Jovenin Moises um term of course according to the constitution his term ends on February 7th he remains in power thanks to the United States though thanks to the OAS um and people are continuing to be on the streets they're protesting in front of these symbolic sites for example the US embassy and calling on the US to stop their hypocritical position towards Haiti if they claim to support human rights in Latin America why are they supporting a dictator why are they supporting someone who's violating the constitution well um this is of course a problem we've seen globally this issue of uh where what I suppose is called lawfare where various means are used to overthrow governments or to or to delegitimize people who are speaking out we've seen recently some of this get overturned Lula you know had his lawfare conviction invalidated gave a tremendous three hour speech laying out attack on on the Bolsonaro government who's approval rating then plummeted we saw in Bolivia the interim president who came in after the coup the coup of November 2019 get arrested sometimes these things are reversed so history you know as we keep saying on this show history goes in zigs and zags this show this is give the people what they want with Zoe Prashant and me from People's Dispatch and Globetrotter with you every Friday but also of course on the regular podcasting platforms and boy there are so many of them who knew that there were so many podcasting platforms um Britain has been convulsed around the death of a young woman Sarah Everlard police you know the police is quick to go and attack protesters they just don't want to investigate when a young woman disappears turns out well her disappearance was related to the Metropolitan Police Department people are very upset in the United Kingdom people had been very upset 10 years ago in Egypt when they went out on the street and now once again this charge of spreading fake news have we not seen this before Prashant what is happening in Egypt and why do these activists keep getting picked up by the authorities on this charge of spreading fake news absolutely Vijay like we talked about the arms sales and how Egypt tops there similarly it's Egypt's record is just appalling on the issue you mentioned and the most recent example of this is in fact it's quite tragic when we go back and check for instance the PD archives on Egypt because it's just case after case so what we saw very recently was that Sana Saheb a 27 year old activist who like you said in the Arab Spring protests 10 years ago she was on the she was at Darryl Square she was documenting many of these issues after that after Abil Fateh LCC became a dictator came to power in 2013 she's spoken out continuously on these issues her whole family has been persecuted of course we'll come to that but the recent news is that she's been sentenced to one year and six months in prison on you know I think the charges need to be really talked about here just just for the absurdity of it so it's spreading fake news disturbing security and peace and disrupting the institutions of the state from their work and wait for it insulting a police officer on a Facebook post so these are basically the charges for which somebody is going to jail for 18 years and she's already been in prison since June that's last year and the circumstances of her imprisonment are equally important because the day before she her mother and sister were had been protesting because their brother Abdullah al Abdul Fateh has been again in jail without a trial since October 2019 he was in jail for five years before that so they're you know sitting outside the prison they're protesting they're beaten up by a group of women in plain clothes who are probably police personnel the next day these three activists are going to file a complaint on this the fact that they were beaten out beaten up brutally while protesting peacefully and then Sarasaheb is abducted and after that this is when that since then she's been held she was abducted for a while then presented in court and now she has been sentenced to 18 months in jail on these really absurd charges and what's important to note here of course is that this is absolutely not yeah not a outlier incident or anything of this sort last year her mother Haran nor the novelist Adas they were also arrested because they were demanding that during covid prisoners should be given proper protection you know in the time of the pandemic for that they were again detained for a couple of days just a few months ago we had members of the egyptian institute for the the eipr basically uh the egyptian production of rights they were arrested again after meeting with ambassadors of western countries we've had journalists like the journalists of madham asad the editor-in-chief of madham asad other journalists women journalists being arrested again for writing about the state the number of prisoners is believed to be political prisoners is believed to be around somewhere in the realm of say 60 000 or something and that it's a huge number for a country like egypt and there's been almost no accountability there have been protests in 2019 and 20 each of which was followed by mass arrests again and again very little action from the courts and despite all this we have egypt being supported supported by successive united states administrations european administrations primarily because it's such a vital cog in the west asian strategy so whether it be yemen whether it be libya the south arabia egypt israel nexus is the cornerstone of us foreign policy in this region and so anything goes as far as uh say egyptian policy is concerned and it's been extremely repressive political parties there for instance facing a massive crackdown the left facing a massive crackdown so i think that it's probably one of the greatest uh tragedies of the post out of spring situation the kind of hope that it engender in what lcc especially with the aid of the south arabians and the united states is done after that about a month ago the u. n secretary general antonio gutierrez made a very important comment he said that the world is experiencing a pandemic of human rights abuses um you know uh there are medics being arrested in countries because they are accused of spreading fake news i mean india is i think one of the countries with the largest number of arrests on this fake news charge it's used extremely politically against people who are asking questions and so on you look at the case of that young woman disha ravi you know um was produced a kind of toolkit to assist uh farmers and was arrested on that charge uh you know there really needs to be some kind of public accounting of of of this whole online um you know accusations of doing things online um and and people getting picked up but yes uh we'll follow this case carefully as you said her brother a la has been you know in and out of prison in egypt and i mean we we we are seized of this i think all of us are to look carefully again ziggs and zags um there is a zig there is a zag uh ecuado enters its second stage of elections you know uh i mean there is a kind of overwhelming democracy in some of these latin american constitutions where there's a first round a second round and there's so much in between this period between the first round where andrez arouse won the first round but not by enough to um you know set aside the second round this period has been quite bizarre we're seeing some very strange political things happen in ecuador very strange zoe please make sense of this for us well it's it's a big task so i'll do my best but i think you're right to say it's been very strange it's almost like there's been so much happening with regards to the first round scrutiny a lot a lot of fake news from the right wing a lot of accusations back and forth it's almost felt like people have forgot there's a second round and it's been the discourse has been so much around the first round what could potentially happen i mean there have been so many weird occurrences which i'll try to get into some of them but it has been weird um i mean in april eleventh which is kind of d-day for latin america because we have ecuador second round uh bolivian local election second round chile and peru general elections and of course with chile we're also having the um elections for the constitutional um assembly so i mean there's just there's a lot there's a lot going on on that day but specifically when we're looking at ecuador i mean this has been a key point of our coverage it's been a key focus for a lot of people across the world just because of what it represents i mean we had Lenny Moreno who gave this complete turn towards neoliberalism um and in these elections that are coming up on uh april eleventh which will finally after a lot of scrutiny a lot of back and forth with the national electoral council and different kind of courts that deal with elections it has been um officially confirmed that it will be a runoff between Guillermo Lasso who is a conservative banker uh and andrés araus who you mentioned of course won the first round but not by enough to win in the first round in the background and while all this has been happening the other candidate yacu peres who's from the pachacuti party who claims claims being the operative word here to be an eco socialist representative of indigenous movements which of course i think this needs to be unpacked because a lot of major indigenous movements in ecuador actually don't support his candidacy they see him has a kind of neoliberal agent who's already expressed support for having a u.s and a free trade agreement with the united states is so anti-corea is so anti-corea so anti-citizens revolution that his policies have just swung back towards uh the united states towards you know following uh the dictates of imperialism you know there's just a lot um and so he has been trying to he was trying for a while to contest the first round elections alleging fraud um you know he was supporting a lot of the fake news claims that andres araus had received peculiar peculiar funding from illegal sources you know just creating a whole hub hub love around these first rounds he also called for protests against the national electoral council finally uh this body has kind of ruled um and that they have dismissed there's the electoral dispute court so there are all these different kind of legal bodies institutions that are dealing with these elections they have ruled and they have dismissed his allegations of fraud um and so finally it's been confirmed yes it will be lasso and araus and all opinion polls you know put araus first um and have saying that he has a clear advantage over lasso of course ecuador has been submerged in a neoliberal crisis so it's not surprising that a banker who wants to privatize who wants to go even further than Lenny Moreno went would not be well liked so i mean we're hoping for a left victory in this case we'll see what happens i mean as many experts have pointed out nothing is off the table so we have to be very very uh careful and follow what's happening in the world follow what's happening this is of course an axiom of of reporting follow what's happening keep an eye on things in 2009 um the u. n office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs is a rather clunky title and then it goes on it's the u. n office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs in the palestinian territories first started keeping numbers in 2009 of israeli demolition of palestinian homes i remember in 2010 in the west bank observing a house being demolished um the united nations in fact had noted that house being demolished not just house it was actually a street that was demolished by bulldozers just went past the anniversary of the death of a young american woman rachel kori who you know was killed by one of those bulldozers uh as the israeli state demolished illegally palestinian homes well on the 16th of march you know remember uh keep an eye on things keep track of things this same u. n office doggedly every year releases a report on house demolitions and on the 16th of march they reported that in the first two months of this year they have seen an acceleration of house demolition and lin hastings and and other people that at the office have made it very clear that the data is shocking um israel is on a um is really on on a war path to cleanse the west bank of the palestinians to essentially to um annex this region but annex it without its people they want to create enough pain so that the people leave the west bank go to jordan and so on it's what is sometimes called the four state solution in other words to expel palestinians to egypt uh to lebanon to jordan and to syria um not to have any palestinians in what the israeli state in fact calls greater israel it's very shocking developments keep an eye on things yes it seems like it's always the same sort of atrocities that keep happening over and over again but as reporters as sensitive people concerned people i think our watchword is keep an eye on things tell other people about these things build movements around atrocities i mean isn't that what we're supposed to do uh history moves in zigs and zags it's not always the bad side that wins janet ania's is in prison lula gives a big speech um the people came out to protest the death the murder of a young woman in england uh lots of people in high tea continued to protest to bring finally the fruit of the 1804 hasian revolution uh to bear it's a funny business our business of telling the news uh we want to hear from you we want to hear what you think of give the people what they want you come to you every friday it's zoe and prashant from people's dispatch i highly recommend that you go and read people's dispatch once or twice a day once is enough i think once a day um don't really bother with with the other people come there get informed come to us every friday it's a little dose of reality at least that's what we think again from people's dispatch and globetrotter you've been listening to and watching give the people what they want see you next week see you next week comrades