 Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Your weekly movement news roundup. Today is October the 8th, 2021. October the 8th, 1967, in the jungles of Bolivia, Che Guevara was being held by the Bolivian military and a detachment of the CIA, the Central Intelligence Agency. He would eventually be assassinated on the 9th of October, which is tomorrow, 1967. That's the day we commemorate as the international day to abolish the CIA. You're listening to give the people what they want. Coming to you from people's dispatch, that's Zoe and Prashant and me, Vijay from Globetrotter. Speaking of the CIA, the CIA has just released the information that they've set up a China mission center, an interesting development. This is a director level center where they'll have regular, perhaps daily meetings to discuss the issue of China. Associated to this, they'll be talking about technology, developments in technology and other threats of that kind faced by the United States government. So it's China, it's technology and it's the CIA keeping a close eye at these developments. Interesting, the Wall Street Journal reporting on the 7th of October that for the past year, the United States has had military trainers in station in Taiwan, United States military trainers in Taiwan. This, let's call it what it is, hybrid war against China prosecuted by the United States seems to be taking a new turn. In other words, it wasn't by any kind of WikiLeaks information that we heard about the trainers in Taiwan, nor any kind of leak that we heard about the CIA mission center on China. In fact, it appears that these are stories that are put out there by the US government itself. And therefore one has to be a little concerned and careful. What's the agenda here? Why is there a story being released now of US military trainers being based in Taiwan for the past year? Seems to me that this is a message being sent to Beijing. The same with the story about the CIA China center. It's not something gruesome that the CIA has a director level task force on China. It's nothing unusual. That's precisely what countries do have. But the fact that the story is out there now, as if it is something extraordinary and something to pay attention to is a message it seems to me sent directly to Beijing. Beijing has of course received that message. And the foreign minister, sorry, the spokesperson at the foreign ministry then said, well, look, this is Cold War era behavior. In fact, that might even be exaggerating this a little bit. It's not so much Cold War era behavior as it is big states and what they do vis-à-vis each other. I should inform you because this might not be clear that the Central Intelligence Agency is not merely a spy agency where they are out there scuttling about in the dark alleys of Beijing trying to create assets in China who will leak information from the Chinese government. That's not all they do. They also in fact sit in their offices at Langley, very large number of them, fed information from the National Security Agency, a lot of that open source information that's available on the web. And they analyze that information, produce reports. Having read many of the CIA reports even about China, it's extraordinary what an amateur quality these reports have, a very poor analysis. So what's the point of these stories coming out in the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere? The message continues to be sent by Washington DC that China is in the crosshairs of U.S. power. That's the principal message. The fact that there is a mission center, not that significant. The fact that there are a handful of U.S. troops in Taiwan, not that significant. The important fact that pressure campaign continues and that in a sense is what one should be paying attention to. Similar thing with the story about Pandora, poor Pandora. It's not her fault she opened the box. Zoe, what are these Pandora's papers and what's the significance of the story? Well, as we know in the capitalist system, many are drawn to the massive accumulation of wealth. And what is one to do with all this wealth? Well, in this system, it is actually legal to store money in offshore accounts to avoid taxation, to avoid coming under the eye of financial authorities in their own countries. And the Pandora papers is essentially a massive investigation done by hundreds of journalists from across the world looking into these offshore accounts of hundreds and hundreds of people. This is one of the biggest investigations, I think, to date, looking at these extra legal... I mean, it's in this legal limbo of financial holdings overseas. And I think it's first important to point out that this is kind of part and parcel of the capitalist system. And so, you know, people will get into baits. Is it legal to have, you know, offshore holdings? Is it legal to, you know, store your wealth outside the country? I think the fundamental question is, why are they doing that? It's so their money doesn't, you know, go towards the state to help fund programs, to help fund other things. On the first hand, this is something that we know as part of a system that encourages, you know, unending accumulation. And this is a, you know, natural byproduct of that. Finding other ways to be able to store and hold on to your wealth. And so, basically, this investigation revealed that, you know, not only celebrities, athletes, singers, actors have been using this kind of offshore system to safeguard their wealth, but also, you know, rather unsurprisingly, hundreds of, you know, politicians from across the world. Important to note, when you look at the map that's available on the ICIJ, which is the ICIJ, their website, which, you know, has done the investigation, you'll see a map of where the politicians are from. And it's interesting that the entire country of the United States is white, which means that there are no politicians that are, you know, that they've found that are, you know, engaged in these firms, which are, you know, transferring wealth to these offshore holdings. Important to keep an eye on, because, you know, as we know, that's clearly untrue that U.S. politicians, you know, the country that has the most billionaires on the planet, clearly they're involved in this system in a big way. And a lot of the firms which actually do these transfers are located in the United States. So, important thing to point out, people are, you know, a little wary of what this investigation means, where it's coming from, if somehow this country is excluded. But that being said, there's still very important findings from this investigation. Interesting to point out that from the Americas region, Latin America, and the Caribbean, has the highest number of politicians involved that were investigating the Pandora Papers. Some of the important ones, including current Ecuadorian president, Guillermo Lasso, who is highly controversial, you know, he was part of the Ecuadorian government in the 90s, oversaw one of the most devastating economic crises that saw 3 million Ecuadorians have to flee the country because of, you know, decaying economic conditions. Also, Paulo Guedes, the current minister of economy in Brazil, has also been named in the Pandora Papers as having, you know, offshore holdings. Brazil is currently experiencing one of the worst political economic and social crises to date. Precisely because of these horrible economic policies promoted by Minister Guedes, yesterday the landless rural workers movement did a public action in front of the minister of economy to really shine light on the fact that as the minister of economy is cutting social programs, is cutting people's benefits, he's also having, you know, millions of dollars stored abroad to hold on to his, you know, savings. So that's something to point out. And then also, Sebastián Pinera, who's the very unpopular Chilean president who will see the end of his term, you know, this coming year as elections are going to be held in Chile. He also has been highly controversial for, you know, upholding the very, very unequal economic system in Chile where, you know, millions do not have access to basic services like health and education or high-level privatization. You know, there's politicians from all over, encourage people to check it out. Unsurprisingly, many from Colombia and Honduras who are, you know, well-known for their fun economic policies in that sort of way. So it's an interesting investigation also, you know, across the world. I'm only focusing on Latin America right now, but, you know, the king of Jordan involved, several other politicians, cricket players, Shakira. Interesting, interesting investigation there. Well, you said cricketers. I heard the endulkar. Apart from that, I don't know what to say. It's interesting. Some of the names continue to be embargoed. The information on South Africa, for instance, not been released yet. The names are embargoed. We'll hear the implications for South Africa. It is, I think, suggestive that the United States is not part of this leak. And this has got a lot of people scratching their heads about the nature of these recent leaks of information. Where are the criminals in the United States? Why haven't their names been released? Well, you know, talking about South Africa and the fact that the names are embargoed, trade unionists didn't need to wait for any Pandora's leak. They've been on the street, Prashant. What's been happening on the streets of South Africa? Right, which is a very important strike going on in South Africa right now. It's important to note that it's an ongoing strike. It began on October 5th. And it is being led by the National Union of Metal Workers of South Africa. Now, the workers on strike are from the engineering sector. And the story of the strike is quite important because I think it's symptomatic of what has been happening to workers across the world over the past year. So what did happen was that in 2020, when the pandemic was at its height, this sector, which is around, I think, over 400,000 workers, the workers decided to forgo their pay hikes because they understood the severity of the pandemic, the crisis they had brought. So they voluntarily agreed to forgo the pay hike they were supposed to get. And so, of course, that was 2020. In 2021, when the negotiation started, the workers demanded a 15% hike with some inflation-related increases as well. There was negotiation. The workers were willing to bring down their offer to 8%. Whereas the factory owners, employers' association that was involved in these negotiations, they began with a 4.4% offer and they did not move one inch forward. So this is the kind of negotiation that took place. And I think the workers led by Noomsa, they've been extremely, from the reports that we got, they've been extremely accommodating. They really tried negotiating, but the employers were not willing to move forward. And this needs to be considered in the context of the brutal impact that the last year has had on workers, of course, many people dying, families facing all kinds of difficulties, many struggling to get the government-sanctioned relief also. So at this point of time, considering the fact especially that some of these companies are making profits, which is what the union has pointed out. The kind of, say, intransigence the employers have shown is quite surprising to say the least. The strike began on October 5th. It's still going on like I said. During this time, there has been repression by the police. They have been attacked by the police in a couple of places. In other places, there have been attacks with private security firms. So there has been a fair amount of repression on this. The union has held firm, of course. There are reports that negotiations are continuing. In fact, there has been a proposal, a new proposal presented which the union members across the country will be receiving today. So there are hopes that there might be some, there might be a settlement soon. But the important thing, of course, like I said, is to note that this is indicative of the different sectors across that country, across the world. One good thing, one very interesting thing is that there has been even greater solidarity among the various unions in South Africa which have had differences in the past. For example, as a new frame pointed out, the National Union of Mine Workers has extended solidarity to Doomsa and the strike. And that's really considered a very positive sign. You've seen earlier instances of workers' unions actually working closely together. So I think for South Africa, we've had a government pursuing a very neoliberal policy path over the past few years. For the workers, this is probably a good sign. Remains to be seen in the next few days. What direction strike might take? Well, we'll be watching this. It's a really, really militant strike. As far as what I've been reading Prashant, and I think that's important. The temperature in South Africa has been very, very hard. The pandemic has hit people hard. Basic survival has been on the table. We've seen that from the shack dwellers movement and so on. So it's really important to register the level of militancy. Switching gears, there was enthusiasm earlier this year when the elections in Peru brought a left-leaning government to victory. But there's been a lot of pressure on that government. It appears and looks like President Pedro Castillo has actually been, I don't know what to make of it, but has been cleansing his own cabinet. What's going on, Zoe? I mean, it's quite a bizarre situation that the candidate of the left seems to be, as they say in the bourgeois press, moderating his politics. Yeah. Well, you know, we've been covering Peru for the past while and we were seeing what was happening after the elections when it took over a month for the Peruvian institution to recognize the results of the elections. Since then, there's just been massive pressure on this new government. We've seen this expressed in different ways. First, it was that Héctor Bejar, the foreign minister of Peru, was forced to resign. This campaign of pressure has continued and I think it's been expressed in diverse ways. But the most recent was that Vladimir Seron and Guido Beillo, who are primary leaders of the free Peru party, very strong ideological leaders as well of this more left-wing position within the party and also within the government. And they kind of were forced to resign and there's been a reform, is what they're saying, of seven ministers in the cabinet. And, you know, it's not that they're from, you know, necessarily bourgeois parties or necessarily, you know, from the right in any way, but it is, there were free Peru members who are, you know, of course, more to the left that were taken out and there's been a, you know, massive increase in tensions and so now the bench, as they say, the group of parliamentarians from the free Peru party held a press conference a day ago saying that they would not recognize the new cabinet. Vladimir Seron has been very firm in saying that this is against what the party believes. There's been a bit of, you know, isolation of Pedro Castillo from, you know, his original base of support, which is the free Peru party. They're saying we don't recognize this cabinet, but we're not going to impede the government from functioning. So it's a really delicate situation. I think Pedro Castillo, he says he's thinking for more governability, having less hardliners involved in the government as they're saying, but at the same time, I think it's really important that many, you know, analysts, especially on the left have drawn attention to is that the attacks from the right are going to continue and they're going to intensify and so many have kind of raised a little bit of concern of what it means to have these, you know, quite ideologically strong, very militant members out of the government, people who would be able to withstand and weather the storm. It's unclear what's going to happen, but what is clear is that the right wing is not going to desist in their attempts to kind of block every move that the government makes and continue putting on pressure in every way possible to try to make this government collapse and fall. I mean, Pedro Castillo, at the same time, you know, a couple of days ago, they passed a second agrarian reform that was one of the big promises of the campaign, another, you know, central promise which the Free Peru Party has, you know, highlighted right now which is really necessary in order to really transform the political institutions in Peru is a national constituent assembly and so this would be rewriting Peru's constitution and in that way, you know, hopefully they would be able to kind of propose a new political, economic, and social model for the country because they're seeing that the limits of the bourgeois democracy, the limits of the neoliberal economic system that are kind of imposed on the country from, you know, decades of having the system exist are really constraining government and putting it in a kind of between a rock and a hard place because they don't really have much room to maneuver and the right is putting pressure in always possible. So the national constituent assembly seems to be the word of the moment. We'll see how that continues and if that campaign promise will be fulfilled. This is give the people what they want. Coming to you every week from People's Dispatch and Globetrotter, we bring you these stories such as the pressure campaign on the presidency in Peru. We bring you stories like the Farmer's Movement. We've been covering the Farmer's Movement now, what? Eight months, eight months of Farmer's Movement, eight months of struggle, maybe nine months. I'm losing track for a chance. This is the story with the Indian farmers and what's the latest horrible incident of many? Yeah, Vijay, we're actually into ten months of the farmer's struggle. It began in November last year and it's important to note that November was just one stage. The protests had begun much earlier but a very recent horrifying incident that took place last Sunday was the death of four farmers who were protesting in the district in Luckimpur, KD district in the state of Uttar Pradesh. There were some horrific videos of what happened which is that a convoy belonging to a union minister of state from the ruling Bharati-Jaritha party rams into these farmers who were peacefully standing there and it's a complete mess. Four people die. There are reports that the minister's son was in the car that he stepped out, started firing in the air and he escaped from the scene. Now this really shook the entire country because the brutality of this incident itself, the fact that it was captured on camera but also the fact that after that what has happened which is that basically the person we're talking about, the son of the union minister is still not under arrest. Now there's been a case filed against him with which he's named. He was asked to come before the police today. He did not. And there is a report that he will go tomorrow. Now this is important to note considering the fact that there have been many other cases in recent times where people who were named in similar reports are arrested even before any investigation or interrogation takes place. But this person who is the son of a union minister of state for whom is caught free. So really the question basically is that why is this so and this is a question people across the country are asking. The Supreme Court has taken notice of this case and it has made some strong comments saying that the investigation needs to be stronger. But really the question the key question here is as far as the farmers movement is concerned is many of them see this as yet another attack on the movement itself. Because this is not just we're not talking only about the incident of the death or the killing of these farmers a few days ago but a series of incidents that happened before as well because we've had leaders of the ruling BJP make very threatening statements. And these threatening statements or intimidating statements we had the minister of state saying that take up sticks against the farmers we've had other leaders talking about how they'll fix the farmers and stuff like that. So there's been this campaign of intimidation there's been this campaign of attempting to portray the farmers as anti-nationals as terrorists in various forms which has been going on for the past 10 months. So it's not a new phenomenon whereas the farmers demands are just withdraw the three laws which they feel will destroy their livelihood. It's a very straightforward demand. That's really the key question there. So the government is a bit of a bind to be honest because like I said it's a union minister of state who's involved. He himself there demands that he resign as well he's refused and the anger right now in many of these sections is very very high against the ruling BJP which is in power both in the center and the state. So the real question here is will the government sort of understand the public anger that is there right now on this issue take the necessary steps or will this be yet another instance of the relatives of those in power the sons and daughters of those in power going scot free even though there seems to be innumerable eyewitness accounts of this. For the farmers movement itself I think this is also a bit of a I wouldn't say maybe turning point but a good question because they also have need to decide how to take this movement forward. We saw a big protest a few days ago where there was an all India shutdown led by the farmers movements and in the coming months they plan to intensify this agitation in various ways so I think a lot of it's right now a very volatile situation almost maybe tempers are cooled down a bit but nonetheless it's a volatile situation because there is a sense that justice is not being done and as each day passes as when say the son of a powerful minister of state is not coming to the police station that seems to be a very good example of how justice is not being done despite the fact that the facts on the ground are fairly clear so that's where we are at right now we need to see in the coming days what actions the respective governments will take whether the court will intervene stronger and how the farmers movement itself decides to confront this issue there have been possibility of holding bigger meetings to discuss this issue so it really remains to be seen I think it's important to point out Prashant that here you have a case of two sides that are inflexible the farmers believe that the five laws you know the laws passed by the Indian parliament are an existential threat to their you know it's an existential threat to farming to their lives to their way of life and so on and the government is not budging the government believes that it's way forward of a full capitalist society is going to require the removal of any kind of regulation and so on and these two sides both see themselves as right and there's no moving I mean that's that's so right it's a tough it's a tough situation I mean don't know where we're going to this is give the people what they want it's a half an hour show that means 30 minutes come to you every week for 30 minutes now if you take the world health organization statistic seriously world health organization says that in the last several decades every two minutes a child under five in the world dies of malaria if you take that statistic seriously that means during our weekly show 15 children under five die during our show itself 15 children under five die of malaria which scientists believe for a long time is a deeply preventable disease you might know that there are three major killers in the world tuberculosis you know it's interesting there's very little coverage of the fact that tuberculosis an ailment that afflicts the poor the marginalized the most is the biggest killer in the world and malaria is number two malaria is number two 400,000 deaths a year on average 400,000 deaths a year on average mainly in extremely poor countries of course there are ways to manage malaria which don't require vaccine of course there are ways to manage malaria you know simple things we've known this for years mosquito nets we've known that you know water sources have to be kept under some control for years they use DDT to spray water sources and this DDT for instance you know was deemed to be even worse for the environment and for other animals and for plants then it was you know as a way to deal with malaria so DDT was off the table but we've known that mosquito nets that proper window shades that you know dealing with water that these basic methods can prevent malaria this of course would require an enormous amount of capital who is going to buy the mosquito nets for the world's billions of poor people who's going to create proper window protections when people don't even have proper places to sleep you know so given all that there has been a lot of enthusiasm and the World Health Organization has in the last few years put a lot of pressure on the development of a vaccine particularly a vaccine that would protect children under the age of five remember that statistic that I shared with you that every two minutes a child under five dies of malaria for that reason this week there was some very good news from the World Health Organization they released a statement saying that the RTS,S now don't ask me why the name of the vaccine is RTS,S but that's the name of the vaccine the World Health Organization said that this vaccine the RTS,S is now safe to be used they do say that it has only a 40% efficacy rate 40% this is very low got to put this in context the Moderna vaccine for COVID-19 developed within months although it has to be said mRNA technology was developed years before this nonetheless that vaccine has an efficacy rate over 95% the fact that the RTS,S malaria vaccine is only 40% should raise some eyebrows and you know I've talked to a few scientists about this it's not clear why that is the case nonetheless prevention of malaria to 40% of cases 30% of severe cases is a considerable feat and I think it's quite right that the World Health Organization Dr. Tedros the Ethiopian scientist who began his career working on malaria it's you know for good reason that they are celebrating this just to sharpen this thing about every 2 minutes a child is dead in 2019 260,000 children died in sub-Saharan Africa from malaria put that on your notebook and think about that 260,000 children under 5 in one year in Africa this is genocidal rates of death friends you've been listening to give the people what they want coming to you every week from your favorite movement driven news source People's Dispatch that's peoplesdispatch.org and Globe Trotter we'll be back next week with a slate of super stories tell us what you think share this episode let people know that we exist we're great and happy to have you with us thanks a lot