 Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Your weekly movement news roundup. Who knows how we should begin this show? Because this is literally the 150th episode of Give the People What They Want brought to you from People's Dispatch. That's Zoe and Prashant. I'm Vijay from Globetrotter. Prashant reminded us a second ago that we started in November or December of 2020. That's three years that we've been at this 150 shows. They're 52 weeks in a year. Just in case some of you might challenge our mathematics. We're almost at the three-year mark. Not exactly there. Whatever it may be, you make your own assessment. We did miss a few shows. We also did some shows in some crazy places. I remember crouching at the Valparaiso bus station in Chile having to run from there because my knees were hurting. I was in excruciating pain and I had to quit out. I also remember being in Glasgow with Zoe where we just couldn't stop laughing. That was a disaster. The number of times you almost just stopped laughing. That would be the number of times you just stopped yourself from laughing. It's actually an entire montage of that. It's a small little thing, the hidden secret of people in broadcast journalism that the most difficult thing to control is one, your hair, and second, your laughter. I don't really control either. Just a bit of an exception. I didn't say people control it but that's what they have to try and control. We've had a good run, 150 episodes. This is going to be an hour-long show. Of course, we're starting where we have to start. We have to start with Palestine. I must say that this issue of Palestine has been with us all through the 150 episodes. We've repeated, come back to the question of Palestine even when the world media was trying its best to ignore that this was an issue for us. People's dispatch has covered Palestine right through. From Globetrot I've covered Palestine, Bean 2, Gaza, the West Bank, and so on, written about stuff going on there long before this particular horrendous wave. I think we should start right here. Those of you who have been watching, and I have lots of friends who have said I can't watch the news anymore. I can't read the newspapers. There are so many acts of courage. The New York Times poetry editor resigned from her post with a beautiful statement talking about how it's impossible to curate poetry for a newspaper which has been covering this in a way that's quite shocking and shameful. What a brave gesture. We've seen protests all around the world and so on. At the same time as this is such a horrible set of events taking place, people saying I don't want to watch the news, it's also bringing out the best in a lot of people, courageous actions, groups of people gathering at Rafa crossing, wanting to find a way to provide solidarity with the Palestinian people across the world. 800,000 people in London, maybe 2 million people in Indonesia. Extraordinary protests. But then it doesn't seem to have made much of an impact on the Israeli war plans on Gaza. Over the last few days, the Israelis have been bombing hospitals, particularly have invaded Al-Shifa Hospital, Al-Ahil Baptist Hospital, already had bombed Indonesian hospital and so on. Just a short while ago, Hamas' Al-Qasam Brigade released a statement saying that look, the Israeli hostages aren't in the hospitals. They are being kept in care centers in different places. We knew you were coming for the hospitals so we didn't keep them there. Israeli troops in the basement of the hospitals looking at things that have been scribbled on the wall, there's a place where somebody had made a calendar in Arabic on the wall and the Israeli soldier going into the basement saying, this was Hamas' bunker and so on. Pretty ridiculous social media posts coming from the Israeli military. How is this really going to convince people around the world? I must say the Israelis in that sense seem to be losing the propaganda game to use a word about war. The information game may be a better way to put it. The Israelis are not able to control the narrative as they had during Operation Permanent Resolve, 2014, Cast Lead, 0809, they had been able to control the narrative. It's very interesting guys, I'm going to turn it over to you Prashant in a minute. Talk a little bit about the UN, the whacking the UN is taking inside Gaza, but before that it's very interesting that the Israelis and the United States government have been denying the numbers of dead in Gaza and Mark Regev, the special advisor to Benjamin Netanyahu went on Mehdi Hassan's TV show and Mark Regev was saying to Mehdi Hassan, oh yeah, we made many mistakes. It's a pretty extraordinary interview but in this interview Regev says that we contest Hamas' numbers about the dead and then what Mehdi Hassan did was very clever. Mehdi Hassan took the 0809 bombing by Israel and the 2014 bombing by Israel and showed the Israeli numbers and the Palestinian Ministry of Health numbers and showed how close they are, 150 or difference between the two saying, look in 2008 or 2009 and in 2014 you guys had the same numbers, why are you challenging them now? Mehdi Hassan didn't say this but I would have said this to Mark Regev, is it because the volume of killing is so much greater than it was then, then 1500, 2000, now over 11,000, are you embarrassed by the numbers of dead and as I said Regev said we made some mistakes and so on, they are bombing continuously in Gaza, this part of Palestine and they're hitting the UN, close to 100 UN, I think people killed Prashant. Right, a very significant statement by Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN relief and work agency, the UNRWA, it's actually been deployed in Palestine for a long time, has continuously worked with those displays starting from the time of the Nakba in 1948 to this day providing very, very essential vital humanitarian services and I think always important to mention this point that again, often people talk about October 7th onwards but this is a catastrophe, a devastation that has been returned Palestine for 75 years now, the UNRWA are paying a very key role in trying to provide some measure of relief despite the fact that its funding has often been reduced during Donald Trump's time for instance and it has never really got the right amount of money but UNRWA head, Philippe Lazzarini making a couple of statements which I think are really important to sort of point out, the first is he said yesterday is number 16, that I do believe it's outrageous that humanitarian agencies have been reduced to begging for fuel and I think that kind of is a snapshot of what Israel is doing not only in terms of the bombing not only in terms of the ground attacks not only in terms of this propaganda warfare that tries to paint every Palestinian as a terrorist but in terms of actively hindering any kind of relief work to the kind of block it has been imposing since the very first days of its offensive and the other thing, the other statement he makes again is that I do believe there's a deliberate attempt to strangle our operation and paralyze the UNRWA operation this is what Lazzarini is saying and I think it's important to remember this because UN officials in general especially at such high positions they tend to be sort of often diplomatic in their utterances, they tend to sort of in fact I think that's one thing Kraeb Mokibar in his interview was also pointing out that the UN department heads tend to take a far more different kind of position but here you have the UNRWA making it very clear that there is a deliberate attempt not just a deliberate attempt to strangle and paralyze the UNRWA operation and the reason he says so one reason of course is the fact you mentioned that at least 103 UNRWA workers have been killed or for that matter 60 shelters run by the UNRWA have been bombed this is October 7th and in fact the agency has even said that I think it will be forced to soon stop aid delivery to the Rafa border which is one of the only places where aid is going through so and I think again also important to sort of look at the kind of situation with fuel that is very limited fuel supply that is going and this fuel supply is especially continually allowed for UN vehicles so first of all there is a limited amount of fuel and that limited amount is only allowed for vehicles so even hospitals are not allowed to use the fuel that is coming in agencies are not able to use it for any kind of work and despite the fact hospitals are actually struggling without fuel many of the hospitals have shut down have reduced in operations because of this situation so this is what is happening in Gaza right now which is sort of leading to the need to make the kind of statements and basically say that we have been here since we have been here from the time of the Nagpa but we are not able to operate anymore we have been reduced not just begging but coming close to suspending operations because at every level we have been attacking this is not to mention the kind of deterioration in these camps itself we talked about the attacks on the camps but there is also the deterioration of health conditions people showing more signs of illness there is a communications breakdown which is preventing any kind of active relief work so I think the various aspects that we talked about there is an air offensive, there is a ground offensive there are attacks taking place in the west bank of course and East Jerusalem and there is also a sustained attack on journalists you talked about before on relief workers on medics of all kinds so any profession which is any profession trying to at least provide some bandit at this horrific assault is also consistently under attack so this is where we are right now Netanyahu's war cabinet in Israel passed order allowing two trucks of fuel to enter Gaza for the United Nations and the response of the far right in Israel is instructive his finance minister Mr. Smorech immediately said that no fuel should be allowed in not even to the the UN relief and works agency not even for hospitals and so on Smorech is a very hard right guy who says that basically this war cabinet has no authority very interesting the debate going on inside Israel while the communist party of Israel's Knesset member tried to make some criticism of the war she was expelled from the Knesset in Israel there is a desiccation of public opinions important for us to underscore that within Israel within the Jewish Israeli population there is a desiccation of opinion very hard to make ground meanwhile of course world opinion is to some extent very much on the side of the Palestinians and this is having an impact Zoe even on G7 leaders Emmanuel Macron president of France said well there are some benefits of a ceasefire he was being a little here and there in this typical Macron fashion Justin Trudeau who is really here and there politically is never really clear where he is going to go apart from tailing the United States but Mr. Macron Mr. Justin Trudeau also called on Israel to court stop killing babies I mean this is language I have never seen before it's got to be a consequence of the public opinion polls and the protests across the world tell us a little bit about the breadth and depth of international solidarity for a ceasefire we seem to have momentarily lost Zoe but but she'll come back just to continue this issue number of countries in Latin America Belize for instance recently suspended diplomatic relations with Israel it's interesting thing that Belize decided to go offline and in South Africa what a thing we're seeing where there's going to be you know real breaks from South Africa anyway Zoe bring us up to speed on the international solidarity that seems to be pushing even governments in France and Canada well I think if we look at maybe the day after October 7th when the Palestinian resistance groups launched Alexa flood we saw immediate immediate condemnation from all major governments in the global north especially very very strong words extremely against Palestine especially zeroing in on Hamas saying that they have Israel has its complete support complete everything backing and there was this furor for these first couple of days it really seemed like there was going to be no shifting of the stance of countries like the US and the member states of the EU we can remember Ursula von Leiden was standing in front of the EU building with a big Israeli flag she even visited Israel etc so since then we've actually seen these leaders be forced as you said to take different positions both because of the atrocities that Israel's committing raiding hospitals bombing hospitals killing newborn babies these atrocities are too much to ignore and the public pressure has been growing like never before we've talked a lot about the actions of solidarity that have taken place across the world and I think it's so important to highlight this because it truly is what is shaping the opinions of world leaders what is making the idea of a ceasefire more popular we know that this is still being actively blocked by the Zionist lobby in the United States the US Congress as we spoke about it Bernie Sanders out rightly said on Fox News that he would not support a ceasefire cease hours impossible however the list of members of Congress that are supporting a ceasefire resolution that was proposed by Corey Bush AOC and and Rashida Talib has been growing and that's growing maybe one by one every day but you're seeing that people are maybe receiving hundreds from their constituents who are saying I am your constituent and you have to support a ceasefire. This is what the American people want in the case of the US. There's opinion polls that say over 66 of all voters, both Republican and Democrat, actually support a ceasefire and think that the US should push for a ceasefire. Similarly in Europe, we've seen people really have to backtrack from their complete and other support of Israel because they're seeing what that green light is actually bankrolling. I think it's important to mention that before the Al-Shifa hospital was raided by Israeli forces, a White House spokesperson gave a press conference saying that they had reason to believe that Haas did have a base in the basement of Al-Shifa. When we see hours later, they're raiding the hospital. I think people are actually seeing the connection between what their leaders are saying and what Israel feels emboldened to do. That's why they're taking action. Today is another global day of action. Shut it down for Palestine. We've already seen very, very brave and courageous actions. As you said earlier, Vijay, for example, this morning in New York City, activists occupied the lobby of Fox News and other news agencies that are headquartered there, trying to highlight the role that media like Fox News plays in actually justifying Israel's genocide, washing it away, supporting the views of the Israeli position on what's happening and then above all criminalizing and trying to stigmatize those that actually stand with Palestine. Yesterday, for example, Joe Biden was headed to the APEC meeting in San Francisco. I don't think I've ever seen an action like this. Protesters went on the bridge, parked their cars in a row so no one could pass, and then they all threw their keys into the bay so they couldn't move their cars. The police came, they couldn't move them. People are taking things up and on today are so angry. I saw a video that was from outside of a DNC Democratic National Convention meeting where hundreds of protesters from different organizations, including Jewish Voice for Peace and others, essentially barricaded themselves and tried to prevent the meeting from taking place and demanding a ceasefire. There was an interview with a young woman who just was so enraged and said that it's ridiculous that every single day we have to see how the people in Gaza are slaughtered and we continue to protest and they do nothing about it. And I think that that anger is shared by so many people from across the world and they just feel powerless. But I think at the end of the day, this increased pressure and this increased militancy that we're seeing from young people, from people from all walks of life, from all social and economic sectors, from all races, from all ethnicities, all religions is actually forcing them to change their positions. And we're seeing a real shifting in the waters. We're seeing mass public consciousness about not only Palestine, but also US imperialism, about how the political system works. So it's really, again, as you said, it's a moment where people are taking courageous actions. It's a moment when people are waking up about how our society works and how our political system works. And where they're saying, I will stand with the people of Palestine, I will stand with the people of Gaza because it's what's right. And I will suffer the consequences that that may be. Interesting in South Africa, just to pick this up, Zoe, a little bit in South Africa, the parliament is going to debate an issue, serious issue. One is removing the Israeli ambassador from South Africa. This is a big move. South Africa, of course, has a moral role here because it's where, in 1948, the apartheid regime was set up and then dismantled slowly, but surely after 1994. In 1948, the year of the creation of apartheid South Africa was the year of the Nakba, the creation of Israel. And in recent years, UN agencies, human rights groups, various people have been calling the situation in Israel the situation of apartheid. So South Africa ejecting the Israeli ambassador is a really important move here. In this case, it looks like it's going to take place. The EFF, the economic freedom fighters led by Julius Malema, former African National Congress Youth Leader, has put the motion forward. It's going to be backed by the government. President Seru Ramaphosa has said they're going to back it. It's a very important development in the world. If South Africa takes this move, it may not be one of the largest countries in the world, but it has a great deal of standing. This is going to put pressure on other African countries. What will they do next? And so on and so forth. Israel might feel like it's quote unquote winning this battle against the Palestinians. It's begun what many high officials in Israel call the second Nakba. They may feel they're winning the battle, but the war is a long one. And public opinion around the world has turned dramatically against Israel when, in fact, before October, there was a tendency for people to come to terms with normalization with Israel, including in the Arab States. Prashant looks like all of that normalization talk in the Arab States has gone. But India, what does one say about India's position here? Right, I think India's, it's in some senses very disappointing, but also revealing in the sense that India, which has a very long history of solidarity with the Palestinian cause, is one of the few countries which hasn't really taken a position in solidarity with the Palestinians as of yet. In fact, but it also builds on a long tradition of both, I think, political and ideological ties between the current Indian dispensation and the Israeli government. So I think in one way, there is really absolutely no surprise here. And we've seen various instances of this in terms of the increased commercial cooperation, in terms of the sort of ideological convergence that has often taken place between the right wing in India and what to be fair is actually the mainstream in Israel at this point. And in fact, many commentators have pointed out that, if you look online, the Indian right wing Twitter or X accounts are actually some of the most vociferous in defending Israel and in fact spreading misinformation regarding, or amplifying Israel's Israeli sources misinformation as well. So in that sense, both in official and I think at a social level, there is clearly one trend, which is to pretty much completely, they have been token noises, including today by the prime minister about the civilian death toll, but largely the push has been towards backing Israel. On the other hand, we've actually seen mass protests, especially in Kerala and many other places as well. Some of these protests, I think they have been attempts to criminalize them, but nonetheless, we've seen protests taking place. We've seen a lot of anger and in fact, a lot of it against stemming back to those anti-colonial struggles that we had. The idea of the third world, that was very, the global south that was very key in the previous decades. And for all these movements, Palestine was seen as very central. We mentioned South Africa again, I think recently, we did have a video from Ronnie Castles, who was talking about exactly the same thing that in their struggle, in many struggles across the world, during the 70s and 80s, Palestine was an integral part of how they saw their national struggles as well. And I think that wherever that sentiment remains, wherever whichever section carries that sentiment, I think is continuing to push today for insolvency with the people of Palestine. And that's, I think, a very important thing to note that whatever the government's might take in terms of the streets, the answer is pretty clear. Well, it'll be interesting to see what happens because not only have Indian Union said they don't want to load ships that carry stuff for Israel, that's a pretty big sign. But also there'll be pressure coming on India from Saudi Arabia, in particular India is getting more reliant on Saudi oil. Russian oil prices started to creep up, guys. Those of us who wake up in the morning and look at oil prices, it's always interesting to see Russian prices going up slightly, even the discount rate. And India is going to have to rely more on Saudi Arabia. I'm not sure if the Saudis would not want to see India make some more noise about the stop the killing of babies, as Justin Trudeau said. I mean, just that, just that, nothing more radical than that, stop killing children underlined. Will India come out and say that we shall see, right? Not clear right now. You always give the people what they want. This is a 150th show, Zoe Prashant and I have been with you for 150 episodes, two of the episodes, this one and the 100th episode were an hour long. I'm really, really happy to have been with you for this ride and I hope you've been enjoying being with us. We're going to do a couple more stories and then we're going to chit chat a little bit about people's dispatch in particular. But I think we're going to keep on to the themes that we have before us right now. A number of countries have called for Mr. Benjamin Netanyahu to be sent to the International Criminal Court for a warrant to be filed at the Hague, the Hague, which is not far from where Zoe is sitting now, since she is covering, you like that segue Zoe, where she is covering the Tribunal on Cuba, another war, a war of a different kind against the island of Cuba. Zoe, what has been the discussion at the Tribunal on Cuba in Brussels? Yes, well it is interesting that a Tribunal, which is essentially putting US imperialism on trial is taking place at this time. It's so important. US is one of the biggest violators of international law in the world really and every single time that it is violated, it is important to point it out and recognize it because the US has so much impunity in the world for all of the crimes it commits. And while currently institutions like the ICC, of course the US is not part of and will not be tried there, but there has to be some sort of people's justice in the meantime. And so there was this international Tribunal on the blockade of Cuba, which took place inside the halls of European parliaments in Brussels. It is past two days. This was a time to hear testimonies from people in Cuba about the impacts of the blockade. So how does this impact their access to medicine, their access to daily goods? But also the focus of this Tribunal, which I think is interesting, is how does the US blockade, so decisions that are taken inside the United States actually impact European citizens, European businesses, and their right to do business with Cuba, travel to Cuba, have any sort of relation with the island itself. People spoke a lot about how, for example, even if they're not doing business with Cuba, even if they're sending a wire transfer from their banks, and if they mention Cuba, it gets blocked. There were interesting testimonials of people that, for example, are people trying to do business in Cuba, trying to invest, trying to support this kind of growing private sector in Cuba. This one businessman said that all of his lines of credit were canceled by the banks. He could not find, and this has intensified in the past years with the inclusion of Cuba on the state's legislative terrorism list. All of the transactions were blocked. We know that, for example, European citizens normally, to travel to the United States, they have the option of doing a visa waiver program. And if they've traveled to Cuba, they're actually not eligible for the S of visa waiver. And so this Tribunal focus on this level of the extraterritoriality of the blockade and how it not only, the United States always says with its unilateral course of measures, this is just a target, the leaders of X country, this is just to put political economic pressure on them so they can't benefit from human rights of violations, however they say, et cetera. And I think that these two days in the European parliament, it showed that actually this blockade is a huge violation of international law because it goes beyond Cuba, it goes beyond this bilateral relationship between Cuba and the United States. We know that the designation of Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism essentially takes Cuba out of the international financial system. No bank wants to do any business, handle any transactions with a country that is accused of sponsoring terrorism. That's a huge literal red flag for banks. There's this over coerciveness or over compliance that takes place also with these kind of measures. And so it was definitely interesting in that sense to hear those testimonies and to hear that perspective because really it serves as this kind of tool which can be used and Euro members of the European parliament were participating in this session from the Workers Party of Belgium, the Communist Party of Spain, from left groups in Portugal and other countries. And they have actually been trying to push the European parliament and of course the parliament's their own countries towards taking action towards combating the impacts of the US blockade into their own countries and really fighting for their country's sovereignty. This is something you've spoken about a lot, Vijay, is that especially after the war in Ukraine, Europe's ability to actually make its own decisions about foreign policy, about who it does business with, who it gets its energy from is essentially completely subordinated to the United States and on its whims and on its own interests. So this was just another example of that and it concluded today there were jurors from respected Lawyers Associations of the United States from Europe, quite an interesting event and they're going to be publishing I think these final conclusions in the coming days. That's the war on Cuba which is a war conducted by unilateral coercive measures. There was a little talked about Third Committee resolution in the United Nations just last month where 126 countries joined together to condemn unilateral coercive measures. The blockade of Cuba comes under that, that's a form of war. Another war, not really that reported in the world and by the way a number of wars on the African continent Prashant, the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo which you mentioned last week and of course the war in Sudan. It's easy to fixate on that war in Ukraine. Remember all the energy was there but where is the energy on the conflicts on the African continent particularly Sudan? Tell us about it. Right Vijay, it's an interesting point because the war in Sudan broke out on April 15th although again it's a culmination of a long process, the actual fighting that took place because we know that there was a coup, people resisted the coup for nearly one and a half years before this fighting broke out and there was a lot of violence inflicted on those people who protested against the coup. But it was on April 15th that makes it eight months since that this war has broken down. The death toll has crossed 10,000 attempts at ceasefire have failed again and again. There's fresh talk of some ceasefire that is taking place but in the meanwhile the cost has been immense and I think no other region has suffered more than the Darfur region in this war where recently our Koli Pawan had a very extensive report on what basically was the ethnic cleansing of Elginina, the capital of the state of West Darfur and tens of thousands, in fact I believe more than 200,000 displaced people in camps have more or less left this city and its neighboring areas because of the fighting that took place because of militias associated with the rapid support forces, one of the combatants basically completely clearing that area and there was a massacre of about 1,300 people some days ago, one of the biggest massacres since this war in April broke out. And what we're seeing right now is basically that there is the fighting between the suddenly armed forces and the rapid support forces at least in the Darfur region, this SAF is really on the back foot. The RSF and its allies actually have managed to sort of considerably make substantial gains alongside that all these atrocities have been taking place. In some senses the people who are being ethnically cleansed at this point, all these people fleeing to Chad in the neighborhood are actually victims of the earlier round of fighting that took place, the genocide that took place in Darfur in the early 2000s. People who were displaced at that point of time were living in internally displaced person camps for nearly 20 years almost once again displaced, once again the uprooted, forced to leave whatever makeshift places they were living in by almost exactly the same forces because it was those militias which sort of became the rapid support forces which is one of the fighting forces. So we are eight months into this war, there is no sign of a solution, ethnic cleansing, mass murders taking place at a huge rate, the conflict sort of really intensifying. So we're definitely in a very, very bad situation as far as Sudan is concerned. Sorry, one important thing to note of course is that unlike many other conflicts, the war in Sudan has a strong regional interest supporting both sides and that is one reason why things really haven't moved at all. And it is it is the people on the streets who opposed all these interests who said from day one that both the generals, the head of the RSF and the head of the Sudanese armed forces who are now fighting each other, they were allies earlier, the people on the streets said that both these generals were the problem whereas the international community refused to listen to them. So now we have the situation where thousands and thousands of people are being killed, are being displaced and there is no solution to it. Yeah, terrible situation in Sudan. I mean, you've been following it, Pavan has been writing about it. Well, there's another war that's going on, the war that sucked all the oxygen, you know, which was the war in Ukraine started February 2022 when the Russian forces entered Ukrainian territory and then came back, you know, and then, you know, this whole thing in the world became there was a kind of push for everybody to focus on what was happening in Ukraine. Well, since then, the frontline is pretty established. It's clear that the Russians have formed a land bridge that connects, you know, the Crimean Peninsula to the districts in the eastern part of what had been part of Ukraine but is now part of Russia. And then the main battlefield was around the city of Kherson. Well, Kherson was taken by the Ukrainians last year, the Russians clawed it back and then the frontline just sat without moving. Well, recently, General Valery Zaluzny, the chief of staff of the Ukrainian armed forces said something pretty interesting. He says there will likely be no deep and beautiful breakthrough. What he meant was, there's a stalemate now in the forefront lines between Ukrainian forces and Russian forces. In response to that, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky said, nobody believes in our victory like I do. And in fact, that statement was picked up by a lot of people saying, well, that's true. You're the only one who seems to believe that a victory is possible. Others now have come to the conclusion that there needs to be some sort of dialogue opened up between the Ukrainians and the Russians. But there looks like nothing on the table right now. Well, in the last 48 hours, the Ukrainian forces were able to move up toward Kershov again, cutting across a small piece of land. And there's been a lot of talk about finally a Ukrainian breakthrough. But in fact, it's a very small advance that was made. It's not even clear whether this will last a week. Still, it's an advance. And it shows you the grinding nature of this war. The death toll is not as high as it was in the early phase because people are basically sitting. This is a little bit like people sitting at the trenches in World War I waiting for the offensive to begin. May not be an offensive. We're already in winter in that part of the world. There's an opening now. Lots of people are talking about the possibility of negotiations. But once again, the United States is really coming in to say, we don't want any negotiation at this time. There was an interesting study released by the European Council on Foreign Relations called Living in an Alakart World, what European policy makers should learn from global public opinion. Very interesting text. What it shows, it's got a phrase that I really like, a geopolitics of emotion. What it showed was that most people in the global south, actually in the non-west is their language. Most people in the non-west are not thinking who's going to win this war. Most people are thinking when will the war end? And when will it be brought to a close? They're not thinking about victory and defeat. Just get it over with. And these people who wrote this text, they spend some time saying this is something that people need to reflect upon because it's an important distinction between imagining a war can be won and asking when will this war end because it is so futile sitting and grinding 18 kilometers south of Khersov trying to move 500 meters here and then losing 500 meters there to what end? When will a negotiation be possible? In a way, it's the opposite of the Israeli bombardment in Gaza, which is so asymmetrical and disproportionate, one-sided. There is no question of a grinding halt to the fight and then people just moving centimeters here and there. The Israelis are able to move pretty fast, but they're not able to confront Hamas fighters. Hamas fighters not engaging them. Why? Not sure yet. This conflict in Gaza has a lot of surprises that we will be confronted with. Well, that's the news this week. Of course, there's a million other stories, but we're going to take a little turn now and talk a little bit about what we do. I thought it might be interesting, Zoe and Prashant, to talk a little bit about people's dispatch itself. What you've been doing with the side, what you're thinking of in the period ahead, what makes people's dispatch so different than other places? Zoe, the cat is all yours to bear. Well, we celebrated our five-year anniversary in July, and it's kind of crazy because it really doesn't feel like five years have passed. I think the people's dispatch as a project emerged out of this pressing need for there to be more information available for people who are members of movements or people who are active in organizations, to know what's happening in the struggles of their comrades across the world who speak languages that they don't speak, who have different cultures, who have different styles of organizing, who face different local struggles, but who all share the same enemy, which are the enemies of the people, capitalism, imperialism. Again, we emerge at the same time that the International People's Assembly is being built as this platform to rebuild the global left. We're in a post-Soviet Union left globally, which means that the instruments of news dissemination that focus on people's struggles, that focus on, in some respects, the forgotten parts of the world, not the West with its specific media narratives, those kind of tools also disappear to some extent. There is this kind of vacuum in what is international news that's filled with the APs, the Reuters, the New York Times of the World, which every single morning sends out essentially what they think the line should be internationally on Israel, on the war in Ukraine, on what's happening in Latin America, on who they think should be president. I think what we've tried to do humbly with our means, with our small team and with our resources is try to challenge that to not only contest these narratives, these hegemonic narratives on what's happening in global politics, what does BRICS do? Why is it important? Why is it not just a footnote in the New York Times front page, but why is it actually part of this emerging multipolar world? But also, why must we pay attention to people's movements? I think we say often that we, and we take after our great colleague, P. Sinoth, that we cover processes and we try to explain how what we see on an everyday basis, whether it be hunger, whether it be a trade union protest, is part of a greater process of people resisting capitalism, resisting these evils and trying to rebuild their dignity, trying to rebuild their culture of collectivity. That's many words and it maybe seems like grandiose ideas, but that's really the guiding vision that we have. One of the most difficult things, Prashant, in all of this, I mean, it's one thing to say let's cover people's movements and so on. One of the most difficult things is we're also trying to cover news in an environment where the concept of fake news is really hitting us. Fake news, disinformation and so on is very hard. I mean, I've never been a reporter for 30 years. I've never had the more difficult environment than now where you are challenged for promoting disinformation or for promoting fake news when you're trying your best to cover things with sincerity. I mean, what kind of atmosphere is that Prashant? Yeah, I mean, I think that's kind of an interesting link to what Zoe was talking about also, the sense that I think so much of disinformation and fake news and all spread because of how so many issues, whether it be national or international, are really covered one without context and two through very simple, he said, she said, lenses through which this reporting is done without even trying to sort of provide the context in a worldview with which to sort of understand it. And I think that failure is often what we see when it comes to why news in some senses, the kind of news you talk about some senses spread so easily. And again, like I said, I mean, I think fake news and misinformation are the more visible aspects of the problem. But you go a bit deeper and then you end up talking, you end up finding what you were talking about earlier in this episode, for instance, what Israel is trying to do with its propaganda initiative, the idea that why is the word occupation or why is the word apartheid, which is where is the ground, where the facts on the ground are so obvious, why are words like apartheid and occupation never used by media organizations, despite the fact we have recently, I think Francis Carbon is making a very, very impassioned statement on it. Why are these words, for instance, not appearing in the coverage of organizations, although these are actually legal norms, you know, early at some point, all of these were legal, you know, were used much more commonly in the media. Why is it that, you know, a struggle by a particular group, say, maybe a trade union, which earlier debated, or merited much more coverage in any kind of media platform is now almost relegated to nothing. It's not relegated, it's completely absent. And trade union activists are seen as just, or people who conduct a massive strike in which hundreds of thousands are taking place, are seen as just disruptors, or completely ignored. And I think these are the questions that, at People's Dispatch, we have sort of tried to address. One, of course, by writing about it, by, you know, reporting about it, by consistently going back to it, I think that's been a huge process you mentioned, Sudan, for instance. But that's also true of our coverage of so many parts of the world, so many particular struggles at time. And again, we have sort of gone, and we have tried to get the voices of the movements on that particular issue. And I think it's fair to say that we really privileged the voices of, you know, the movements. So we've tried our best not to do this situation where we say the government says this, but the movement says this, etc., etc. That's really not the approach we've ever wanted to take in any of our coverage. So I think, so one aspect is, of course, like I said, reporting and writing. But the other aspect I think is also so much in the language that we use on a day-to-day basis. And this is where the mainstream media or the corporate media organization, Zoey was referring to have, in some senses, stripped so many words of their, you know, or added so many meanings and made it the norm, made it almost a default for people, that I think it's very essential to sort of push back against a lot of that language as well. So I think, you know, we are, you know, we are, there is, it is a matter of principle for us that we use occupation or apartheid, when occupation and apartheid are happening. And I think that's also very, and that's I think equally important in combating fake news and disinformation as well, because I think it helps in its own way to sort of build that worldview, which is essential to understand news. Otherwise, it just becomes the first, the most easily digestible bit of information you get is what you consume without the context at all. Yeah, you know, it begs the question of what is the difference between everyday life and news? You know, when does something become news on give the people what they want? We always joke with Zoey. So Zoey, what's the next election you're going to cover in Latin America? You know, well, this Sunday is a big election in Argentina. Oh, Prashant, you know, what's the next war that you're going to talk about Sudan, the Congo, you know, are we going to talk about Gaza and so on? But in fact, that is a conventional understanding of news. News is when something that in everyday life becomes pretty extraordinary election sort of brings together everyday politics into a moment of crisis, you know, where people go out there now. Obviously, we know that all politics isn't elections, you know, we're not, we don't believe that elections or the domain of elections, you know, exhausts what counts as politics. So therefore, we will cover the class struggle, you know, we'll cover strikes and protests and and we'll cover, you know, young people driving their cars onto the Bay Bridge and throwing the keys into the water saying, we're going to block traffic here because children are dying in Gaza. And so, you know, there's a way in which the extraordinary becomes news. But we are aware that the ordinary is also news. It's just difficult to know how to cover it. You know, we are not, we don't know how to do it. I mean, that's to be just clear and on give the people what they want in half an hour, where we each cover two stories, five minutes each, it's really difficult to cover the ordinary. It's much easier to cover the extraordinary. That's why there's a tendency for us to go to certain things, you know, let's cover an election or let's cover a war. It's not that we're mimicking CNN, or we're not mimicking Tel Aviv or Fox News or whoever in form. We're not doing that. It's that we're trying to cover these extraordinary events from the perspective of the ordinary as much as from the perspective of the great processes of our time, but also the ordinary. Because otherwise, you end up with a class perspective, you end up with the perspective of the elites, you know, those who are safe, for instance, accustomed to the electoral process as being the sum total of politics, that all politics takes place in the elections. I mean, I will know the question of India, where you'll have hundreds of millions of people demonstrating, but their main political organizations that organize those hundreds of millions, doesn't win an election. And that's largely because of the volume of money that's come into elections, you know, that has corrupted the democratic process. So there's a struggle that we should admit to as being, you know, news wallas, those makers of news, we should admit to this struggle, the struggle of trying to do in this case, you know, here at give the people what they want, or in people's dispatch in print, to struggle with giving the perspective of the quote unquote ordinary, when we talk about extraordinary events, which is really what is another way of talking about the news. It's not an easy job to do that. It's so much easier to get caught up in what conventionally, you know, is the news, which is the election or the war and so on. You know, I once had a very good conversation with veteran war reporter about how when you're in a war zone, you really don't understand what's happening. You know, it's too much noise. There's too many things going on. You don't know where the frontline is. You're worried about your own safety and so on. You just have no clue because after all, a war is not where politics happens, you know, politics is happening elsewhere. Sometimes you can learn more sitting at the United Nations, then you can learn inside the war zone. But we struggle, we try. One of the interesting things Zoe and Prashant is whether it's worthwhile for us to start producing more thinking about this kind of journalism, whether we want to be a little more open about the struggles of doing this kind of journalism. What do you think about that? Maybe a different kind of format of talking about reporting rather than reporting? It all depends on the elections. It all depends on the elections, always the elections. Question of course is which elections? Prashant is referring to the elections closer to him, but of course also other elections, I think. But yeah, in the sense I think that one interesting development over the past many years is the fact that journalism itself is no longer the preserve of, you know, a specific set of professionals called journalists. I mean, specific set of professionals called journalists to bring a very important set of skills as well, and there's always that. So there's no question about that, but it's also diversified so much. I think there is of course a need for far more thinking on those lines and writing about those kind of issues when undoubtedly because I think one thing we discovered during the course of our process is that many of our team started off without much experience in it. Many of us, you know, of course we had intent, but many of us never did formal training or anything of that sort and kind of learned all the job on the job. And that's actually got its own bit of, I would almost say charm to the kind of writing we do. There's sometimes a bit of unevenness in every region that we cover, every video that we do, because the fact that there are also individual styles and individual interests that also sort of drive a lot of our coverage. And I think that's actually a good thing in many ways. So very interesting for to think about. I think we're also at the time that we're doing this people-driven journalism and people-driven media, this left media. It's also at a time where there's a proliferation of ways for people to actually communicate their voices and their opinions. We're in the digital age where a large percentage of the world population has access to a smartphone, can publish their own thoughts, can say what they're thinking, the transmission of information. I mean, we're seeing it with the war on Gaza right now, the genocidal violence against the Palestinian people right now is that we're seeing in real time what's been happening. Journalists on the ground who are sharing their fears, their worries, their concerns. So we're not just, we're not in an age of journalism where it's a merely transmission of facts or we're hearing only from the designated spokesperson. We're hearing from, more and more, we're hearing from the common people, from people who are on the ground who have their own means of actually communicating this. So I think that this idea of theorizing this way of communicating, this way of sourcing information, of trying, using all sorts of means possible to actually get those voices, to hearing from them, to trying to speak to organizations, all of the different experiences we've had. I think it's really rich because we're not, we are in a new age of communications and of just how we're conceptualizing how we think of news. As a society as a whole, and I think that the interventions of left media outlets, of people's media outlets are fundamental in this moment because as you both said, it's a moment where in addition to there being more authentic expressions coming from the people, there's also proliferation of extremely corporate driven agendas, the proliferation again of fake news, of messages of hate. And so this role of trying to take in that entire ecosystem and create a strong, stable, professional voice is definitely a challenge, but I think it's one that many of us are taking on, our partners at President DeFato, at NewsClick, at Breakthrough News, all trying to figure out how to navigate in this moment to tell the truth, essentially, because that is our role and our duty as journalists to tell the truth, to communicate the voices of the people and to inspire people. We're seeing that change is possible. The US, which used to be the stronghold of Zionism today, is shaken by protests every single day, and lawmakers are forced to take different positions. This is happening across the world in different aspects in labor organizing, in organizing against wars, and that's what we want to be inspiring is that confidence and that hope. You've been listening to give the people what they want, brought to you from people's dispatch that Zoe and Prashant were 150 episodes done in the can. In Cuba's, in Havana's Revolution Square last night, the main monument was lit on top by a Cuban flag and right below that by a Palestinian flag. We're going to continue to do what we do as long as we can do it. Zoe and Prashant, intrepid reporters, I'm Vijay from Globe Trotter. See you next week. It'll be show 151.