 Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Your weekly movement news roundup. It's the 9th of September 2022. You're with Give the People What They Want, brought to you by People's Dispatch, the co-editors Prashant and Zoe. I'm Vijay from Globetrotter. It's the 93rd episode of your favorite weekly news, half an hour update from around the world. Well, update from around the world because today I'm in Ireland, Zoe is in Brazil and Prashant is in India. Can't have a more global news show than this. At least three continents, several time zones just for you. I'm in Ireland and yesterday I was coming across the waters to the Iran Islands and I got a message that the queen is dead. Now, very interesting friends. You know, on Give the People What They Want, we talk about world news and so on. It was curious how people around the world started to refer to the fact that the queen had died. Not the queen of this country or that country, but simply the queen. Of course, in Ireland there was a strange reaction because people immediately had a kind of celebratory tone. Now, bear in mind that a woman in her 90s has just died. Her family has lost her. They are sad. Her son, you know, would grieve her other son and so on. This is a matter for a family, but also, of course, she is the monarch of a country, the United Kingdom, which includes Scotland, Wales, and to some extent off and on the northern counties of Ireland. But there was a kind of mixed reaction in the world, and I wanted to register this before we got into the rest of our program. I want to register the fact that there was this mixed reaction. Very interesting that on social media sites like Twitter, for instance, you know, Twitter in India, Twitter in Ireland, Twitter on the African continent. Twitter, in fact, in former British colonies seem not to have the tears of sadness that one saw from people in North America, strangely, a former colony of the British North America, British Isles, particularly in England and perhaps in some other parts of the country. Great despair at the loss of the queen. Really male, in fact, ran a story this morning which said that there was a cloud formation above England which resembled the queen. Strange things happening in England. You see, it has to be recognized that Mary Windsor was not just an individual, she was also the head of empire in her early youth, and then eventually the head of what was known as the Commonwealth. I feel that we sometimes forget that in the colonized parts of the world, including in the Caribbean, there is a great sense of resentment and hostility towards what the British had done. In fact, only within the last couple of years, the island of Barbados left the Commonwealth, left the monarchy, the institution of the monarchy. They decided no longer to recognize Queen Elizabeth or anybody sitting in the chair in Buckingham Palace as the monarch, they became a republic. That's the sentiment, in fact, with which the death of Queen Elizabeth II was greeted in many parts of the world. It wasn't an unnatural sentiment given the kind of history of British colonialism. Not just the history of British colonialism, but also how Britain has dealt with its colonies, subsequent to the independence of many of them. Bear in mind, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth II, Britain at the start of her reign was in the midst of a terrible, brutal campaign in Kenya and in Malaya to hold those colonies with brutal force. In the middle of her reign, Britain went to war on the island of Malvinas against the government of Argentina to defend a colonial outpost. Toward the end of her reign, Britain has asserted itself with a so-called global posture under the former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, sending an aircraft carrier group known as Queen Elizabeth II, in fact, into the South China Sea. This is a history in her many years. She was the crowned Queen of England in other parts of the world in 1953. In her many years, Queen Elizabeth II of England presided over an attempted hold-on to an empire in great decline. And that's the reason why, I think, and I wanted to say this at the start. That's the reason why, in many parts of the world, there was not the kind of sadness. There was not the journalist looking up at the clouds and seeing the outline of Queen Elizabeth II's head. In fact, there was rage about the empire. People are still raging against the empire in many parts of the world, and that, in a way, I suspect, needs to be registered. Raging against the empire, the French empire as well in places like Haiti, raging against the empire in Mali, where the French troops have been thrown out, raging against the empire in Haiti. Take us to Haiti. Well, Haiti has been involved in a series of mobilizations and popular uprisings really since 2018 when gas prices were increased and people took to the streets en masse to protest this. And it's been involved in a series and a wave of uprisings since then that have been provoked by different things, whether it be the gas price increase, the increase of the basic food basket that's been happening. But in generalized discontent withers that really uphold this ruling class to essentially pillage the country to hand over the riches of the country to outside of it. Haiti is home to many different sweatshops of transnational corporations. The government is essentially, has to be approved by a group called the core group, which is a group of different ambassadors from the United States, from France, from other EU countries that's a representative of the United Nations. Haiti is a country that has had its political and economic system essentially under the boot of imperialism for decades. Haiti is one of the country that has paid the highest price for rebelling against French colonialism, for demanding freedom, for putting an end to slavery, for being one of the first countries in the hemisphere to put an end to slavery and to establish an independent black republic. It has constantly and continuously been paying this price. And so in the recent days, mobilizations have picked up once again. As I said, part of this larger trend that's been happening over the past several years in kind of a revolt against neoliberalism, which manifests in the increase in the basic daily life goods. And this has been aggravated, of course, by, for example, the earthquakes that have taken place in the past couple of years. The assassination of Jovenin Moyes, who had already been viewed with a lot of distrust by the Haitian people because he overstayed his term by an entire year. So there's been a flurry of kind of different factors that have made this crisis even worse. And now on the anniversary essentially of one year of Ariel Henry, who took over control following the assassination of Jovenin Moyes as acting prime minister, acting president. People are once again on the streets and they're demanding that after all of these years of popular mobilization of making clear and concrete demands about how the people want to move forward, how they want to transition to a true democracy that represents the interests of the Haitian people, that once again there's another leader taking advantage of the instability, taking advantage of support from the United Nations, from France and from the United States to essentially run the country how he wishes without listening to the people. And so since the 22nd people have been on the streets. They've been raising these demands of a political nature. They've been raising demands of an economic nature related to the consistent devaluation of their currency, the consistent increase in the cost of these basic goods, as I mentioned, that's been happening over the past several years. And then also what they see as a growth in insecurity in daily life. So for example, the growth of armed gangs and their control over large parts of the country. This has been consistently denounced as a byproduct of this lawlessness that the government of already on Henry has kind of implanted. And so people are once again on the streets. I really recommend people check out the recent interview we published with Haitian journalist, Jean Wothiz. He spoke to Tanya Wadma from our team really about all of these crucial issues and what is their vision for getting out of this crisis. People talk about the crisis in Haiti a lot, but they refuse to actually talk to Haitian people who are organized and have a vision for what the country can look like and should look like with all of their natural resource wealth, with all of the, you know, they have a huge young population ready to work, ready to be engaged in society. And these aspirations have been consistently crushed by imperialists. So check out the interview and follow Haiti always. Raging against French colonial legacy in Haiti. Also raging in the Mediterranean. Prashant, when you told me about the story, I looked and saw the numbers of people that are going across and the deaths and so on. Mediterranean COVID is over, but the Mediterranean is back. What's going on now? This is of course a trend that has been going on for many years and we'll come to some of the more dangerous rhetoric around it. But of course the recent instances of a boat comprising migrants from Lebanon and Syria who are over 60 migrants trying to sort of escape conflict zones in a boat which apparently should have carried five to six people. So that is the extent to which this boat was overloaded. There were holes in the boat. They were trying to sort of remove water using buckets and mugs to sort of keep the boat afloat. And this boat was allowed to, these migrants were stranded in this boat for over a week. And despite this no real action from any country in the region, everyone sort of trying to push the blame and the responsibility on to other countries. And it was after over a week, close to 10 days, I believe that they were finally rescued in the past few days led to by a private tanker. And this really shows I think the extent of cruelty which sort of defines a lot of how affairs are conducted in our world these days because you have 60 migrants, many of whom are children. Reports say that at least three children are believed to have died during this point of time at least in one case definitely due to dehydration as well. So people trying to escape conflict zones, stranded in the sea despite this grand wealth that lies in many European countries. There was not even enough humanity so to speak to rescue these people and they were just seen as dispensable human beings caught on the boat. And this kind of I think brings attention to an issue we often talked about on this show which is how many of these European countries have been treating refugees who seek to escape various crises, various kinds of crises let's be clear. But the common factor to many of these crises is the fact that there was definitely European intervention in many of these countries. We're talking about of course regions in North Africa we're talking about regions in West Asia and a similar issue maybe in Latin America and Central America as well where again the United States policies of the United States have led to conditions that cause this kind of migration in the kind of refugee crisis we're talking about. Now Europe's response has to be largely empower front-ex and other agencies basically and then strike agreements with countries such as Libya or for that matter even Turkey to push back many of these refugees and when they go back when they push back they get into abominable conditions conditions that violate all the human rights and possibilities. And so what Europe has done is basically to be completely close their eyes to the problem and pretend it is a problem entirely of countries in North Africa for instance. And of course you'll hear all the usual rhetoric about how this is all human trafficking these are gangs etc. etc. But the larger picture here is really about something else. The larger picture is many of these European countries have sown chaos in these regions and now say that it's still the responsibility of these countries. Of course this is one aspect of it. The other aspect of it is that while many of these European countries refuse to actually take action to help people there's no shortage of scare mongering about the refugee takeover that is supposedly happening in many of these countries. We know that this is an ideology espoused by prominent figures in the political right in many countries in Europe where they keep warning about how all these foreigners are coming to take over your land and how the original inhabitants of Europe will suddenly be displaced and stripped of all their rights etc. etc. Of course a great vote winning project but actually the numbers really show that compared to the global migrant flows compared to the global refugee flows which are mostly internal migration. The number of refugees coming to Europe is really not that much what you're talking about in the less than 200,000 or whatever but despite these small numbers there is no humane philosophy that any of these countries in Europe have adopted any sense of the word. For instance we saw that recently you're talking about the United Kingdom signing a deal with Rwanda to basically ship back refugees who crossed the English Channel without even giving them a proper chance to appeal for asylum for staying in the United Kingdom. I don't know all these process in Rwanda. There is no possibility or you know surety of the fact that they can get humane treatment during this application process. So I think this instance of dozens of human beings treated as completely dispensable treated as mere numbers is really revelatory of a larger the political failure of humanity in actually addressing some of the crisis of our time. It's a very heavy story. Tunisia just blocked 16,000 people going across very interesting that Tunisia is becoming one of the principal exit points from North Africa taking over from Libya where we've heard horrendous stories previously you're listening to give the people what they want coming to you from people's dispatch Zoe and Prashant and Vijay from Globetrotter moving along we're going to Brazil the tropical Trump Mr. Bolsonaro creating mischief again running for re-election against Mr. Lula. Zoe you're in Sao Paulo what's happening in Brazil? Well September 7th as independent say in Brazil and this date is a day of a lot of mobilization historically and for the past 28 years the Brazilian left has taken to the streets as part of the crisis excluded it's a mobilization that often tries to draw attention to the historic inequities kind of this false independence independence for who all of this questioning of what really independence mean in a country that's where the majorities are so are still so oppressed and have their rights restricted in so many ways. In recent years you know since the election of Bolsonaro he and his supporters have really taken this day to be a mobilization in support of their own project and so this year was no different and it even added the element of being sort of like an electoral campaign rally which is actually illegal according to electoral law and so Bolsonaro called on his supporters to mobilize and mass on this day and so there were huge huge protests or rallies however you know kind of name it in Brasilia which is the capital of the country Rio da Janeiro where Bolsonaro is from and where he spoke and in Sao Paulo I was in Sao Paulo and went to was spent about five hours on the streets with tens of thousands of Bolsonaro supporters and it was it was shocking it was very very interesting and it's funny that we started the program talking about the monarchy because one of the strongest messages that I was seeing was you know not only people you know interesting on independence say you think people are going to talk against colonialism and against their former colonial masters but interestingly enough there were a lot of people wearing the Portuguese monarchy flag and calling for a return some people come for a turn to the monarchy others calling for a turn to the values that were present during the monarchy which is God family and homeland this was an interesting element sort of hard to understand you know on independence day but okay there was a lot of people talking about the threat of communism a lot of signs actually written in English clearly for an international audience that said the Brazilian people are against communism the Brazilian people against communist dictatorship you know some of them okay what is what is this communist men is that you're that you're so afraid of what is what are we talking about here you know some of them mentioned the disaster of Argentina of course not bringing up the fact that the the economic crisis started with Mauricio Macri alone from the IMF people even talked about the crisis in the United States and said that Joe Biden a communist has caused chaos in the United States this was also interesting there was a lot of really interesting messaging that was going out on this day people calling for military intervention calling for the Brazilian armed forces to essentially take down the Supreme Court take down judicial authorities that have dared to go against Bolsonaro and then of course you have your usual hate monitoring rhetoric saying that anyone who supports Lula anyone who supports the Workers' Party is horrible that they're awful communists that they are against the people they're ugly even I mean it was this I'm only really scratching the surface but it was a bit scary and interesting as the word that I'll say interesting well interesting indeed and we're going to go to another place Zoe very interesting we're recently an occupying government the government of Israel has informed people in foreigners that is who fall in love with the Palestinian that they have to register with the Israeli military when I read that I thought this is hilarious it sounds a lot like what in India was called love jihad where in a sense there's an attack on romance coming from the right wing Prashant I know you're not going to talk about this you're going to talk about a report on Shireen Abu Akali but come on if you fall in love you have to register with the military in the Israeli imagination come on I'm a bit skeptical of the word imagination in this context of course so yeah that's a big issue but Zoe was talking about how people think Joe Biden is a communist in that case Israel of course if that was so Israel of course is the land of justice because if you look at their recent report that talks about the killing of Shireen Abu Akali that's the kind of incredulous feeling you get because we know that Shireen Abu Akali a very senior journalist was assassinated a few months ago since then there have been multiple investigations it's one it's a case that has got a lot of attention worldwide what remains unique is the fact that Israel and its allies in the United States the kind of line they have taken about who was responsible for the killing of Shireen Abu Akali and you know I think it's there's a question of you I think the attempt is if you keep repeating a lie you can at least muddy the waters or it's something of that sort because the recent Israeli report talks about you know first of all of course refuses to give refuses to explicitly accept that the gunfire was by an Israeli sniper that the words they use is it's not possible to unequivocally determine the source of gunfire now this is despite the fact that multiple media organizations in Palestine and outside human rights organizations have all given very concrete proof of the fact that it was an Israeli soldier who shot her and then they use his vague terminology which says it's there's high possibility that it was so and then you know for good measure also finally says that another possibility which remains relevant is that she was hit by bullets fired by armed Palestinian gunmen now again this is despite the fact that investigations have proved that there was no gunfight going on at that point of time you know and it's it's it stretches it's it's very difficult to conceptualize in some sense because this is we're not talking about law something but in the past log historical process this was one incident of which video footage is available of which multiple witness reports are available at all of that point to just one conclusion but despite this fact both is despite this fact both Israel and the United States have pretty much stuck to that same line and of course Shireen of Berkeley's family has dismissed this probe Palestinians as a whole have dismissed this probe they are called for international investigation but I think what this sort of encapsulates once again is and you know is the kind of repeat the pattern the repeated sort of nature of how occupation works and you talked about one instance of course of you know how romance is treated but this is another investigation there's another aspect journalists say political activists being murdered and then all the blame being thrown back at them or put by the political prisoners the way they're treated how they're forced to go to multiple hunger strikes to protest against a way protest against a law according to which they get no trial according to which they do not even know what the charges against them are so Israeli occupation is now you know is now basically entrenched in these series of patterns which justify we see which seek to you know make unclear which seek to muddy the waters of what are clearly crimes that are visible to more and more people across the world so I think this report is it's useful for John not just journalists I think it's useful for all people to study to see how how Israel it's actually a very useful report sort of understand how Israel seeks to justify its acts by completely denying responsibility and obfuscating as much as possible. Very important that we keep on this story not only because of course Shireen Abu Akle was a fellow journalist and you know journalists have to look out for each other nobody seems to care about our lives and and and a sense of safety but also because this is a touch point in the struggle of Palestinians to liberate themselves and it's a very important story by the way once again just to underline something Prashant said she's a Palestinian-American a US citizen once again US citizen her life set aside just because she's Palestinian very important story well on Sunday the 4th of September 4th of September is an interesting date because that was the day that Salvador Allende won his election in 1970 4th of September this year the Chilean people went into the polling booths to decide whether they wanted to approve a new constitution coming up in the next few days Tarwa Zuniega Silva and I have a report that will come through Globetrotter about this election we've looked at it carefully people are dismayed that the constitution was not approved in fact opinion polls from as early as April started to suggest that the rejection of the constitution was going to be by a considerable number there was some hope that undecided voters would come in on the side of the constitution didn't happen there's some interesting features and I'm just going to point two out for your consideration the first is that this is actually the first election conducted in Chile since elections began which was mandatory until 2012 from the end of the dictatorship till 2012 they had a mandatory voting if you registered registration was voluntary voting if you registered was mandatory after 2012 till this election everybody was automatically registered but voting was voluntary for this election of all things the most consequential election they decided to change the rules and make voting mandatory which meant 100% of those of eligible age were to vote now important to remember when Gabriel Borich won the second round against Jose Antonio Cast he only had 50% of the electorate come out to vote this time about 86% of the electorate came out to vote the rest had to pay fines 86% that's a lot more people than voted just in December to vote for Mr. Borich the assumption being those who don't vote are going to vote for a new constitution because they are disillusioned with the old one and so on and so forth turns out that may not have been the best analysis why was that not the best analysis well here's the theory a large number of people who came out to vote had a couple of reasons why they might have voted to reject number one many of them were evangelicals and particularly Pentecostal voters who don't vote because they didn't see their politics in the politics of the state but now being forced to vote they had to vote on a constitution which had several social items in it which they didn't agree with on abortion on women's rights and so on so forced the evangelicals to vote they're going to vote against the liberal constitution secondly as soon as the constitutional process was announced the right began to campaign against it the left and center left waited till the constitution was written before they started to campaign giving the right an enormous advantage in the election process so that's the second and I think very important reason the third is those who campaigned on the approved line largely campaigned on social issues didn't take up the economic issues that are gripping the people of Chile and in some senses we talked to Daniel Hardway the mayor of Recoleta and Daniel told us that even in Recoleta where he is the communist mayor the people voted against the constitution despite the fact that he had a massive majority in his last election and that he had an enormous rally the day before the election still the people of Recoleta voted against it he said that the campaign for approved simply didn't connect with the everyday issues that people are dealing with now the economic issues so in some senses in the same way as Sebastian Piniera the previous president was punished for his economic performance in the plebiscite Gabriel Boric was punished in this election and he had to restructure his cabinet it's a very complicated election but by no means is it as straightforward as a dismaying defeat a close analysis of this election shows that there's a lot of features that need to be looked at and so on one of which was that you don't just put a constitution before the people and say well what do you think much more needs to be done you've been listening to give the people what they want brought to you from People's Dispatch your favorite website peoplesdispatch.org that's Prashant and Zoe I'm Vijay from Globetrotter see you next week the 100th show is on the 20th of October bookmark that see you later