 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 May 20th, the 20th of May. Yesterday was the birthday of Ho Chi Minh. You're listening to Give the People What They Want brought to you every week on Friday from People's Dispatch. That's Prashant and Zoe, co-editors of People's Dispatch. Your main hub for news these days, these upsetting times. Also brought to you from Globetrotter. I'm Vijay from Globetrotter. Elon Musk is in Brazil in Sao Paulo meeting with Mr. Bolsonaro. Wherever Elon Musk goes, hide your wallet. It's likely he's there to eat the Amazon. So let's see what's going to happen. Elon Musk in Brazil. Be careful folks. We'll come back next week and tell you what Mr. Musk has been up to and whether the Amazon is still standing. Well, I'm speaking to you from South Africa, but we're going to go to Prashant now in Delhi because this is a pure brick show Prashant. We're going to go to Prashant now in Delhi and Prashant is going to talk about the strikes. Not in India, but in South Africa. So of course, a very powerful couple of weeks of workers' militancy in South Africa with a very long history of very powerful labor movements as well. This time interesting. You talked about the Amazon as well because we have workers in mines in two key resource extraction industries. One, what is gold and one is of course there. And in both these cases, workers led by unions waging powerful strikes, facing a lot of obstacles, putting forward demands which should be, you know, fairly common sense equal to accept at this time and age, especially in the aftermath of the pandemic. But time and again, we see two companies again, very well known internationally famous companies which have refused to do that. So we start for instance with the Sibanyi still water gold mines where workers have been on strike since March. Now this is the, it's over 70 days since they've been on strike. And there's tens of thousands of workers we're talking about. And I think this strike is especially poignant when you consider what the demands are. They're asking for an increase for the lowest paid workers of about 1,000 grand. And the negotiations seem largely stuck because the company is just willing to give you 800. Now the unions are very specific reasons for demanding 1,000 grand because it increases their minimum wage to 10,000 grand which makes them eligible for certain loans, for certain social support. So they have a very clear case for raising it to, you know, raising it by 1,000. But the company doesn't have any particular case to not give the additional 200 grand. So among other reasons, the fact that a 200 grand amount is what such a massive company or such a wealthy company like Sibanyi still water is bargaining on is, you know, at this point it's like unbelievable to, it's almost very difficult to comprehend. And this point is at a time when the CEO has gone in public defended the millions worth of, you know, salary and bonuses that he's getting. And the workers ask, let's see, if you give us this money, all it comes is to the salary of your CEO. So what exactly are, you know, what exactly are you protesting about? And similarly, if you look, and here, of course, in Sibanyi Sibanyi water, there are a strike led by Amku in the Arsalaam-Mithil steel factories in South Africa. Again, we have NUMSA, the National Union of Metal Workers of South Africa, leading a strike. Again, very similar demands. The basic, the question is of whether the salary should be a 10% increase or a 5% increase. The company is saying 10% where the union is asking for 10% increase. The company is restricting it down to 5%. And now if you read the new frame is a great article on this issue, which talks about the workers, which talks about some of the suffering they've gone through during the pandemic, which talks about the fact that in earlier rounds of negotiations, they compromised. Even in 2021, they compromised thinking that, you know, this would sort of, their compromise would lead to a better settlement in 2022. But what we see again is that a very rich company, a company which has said that it has given great returns to shareholders in the previous year is bargaining over what seemed like trifles. So very important, I think strikes to follow because as we talked about before often on the show, the global issue in the aftermath of the pandemic companies are willing to sort of give into water, very, very legitimate water, very natural and right demands of workers and continuing to hold on to this kind of, you know, continuing to play these kind of tactics which are really indescribable and, you know, difficult to comprehend in this point of time. Well, that's the question of workers struggling in South Africa. Of course, we have now so many places on strike around the world as inflation rises, food prices rises and so on. With the inflation at the highest point that it's been in 40 years, many people around the world are starting to experience what it has been like in Cuba for the past six decades under an embargo under blockade. People are beginning to experience with this high inflation, what it's been like in Venezuela, where people have been again under immense cruel sanctions pushed by the United States government. But Zoe, I was reading recently and it's hard to understand what's going on, but it looks like the US President Joe Biden is thinking of reversing some of these sanctions. Yes, that's exactly right. I think the key word there is some of these sanctions. So, of course, the US has imposed a blockade on Cuba for over six decades, but during the presidency of President Donald Trump, there were more sanctions that were imposed on the island, as well as the setback in several of the policies that had come forward during the Obama presidency. So in 2015, it was a year of a lot of hope of a warming of the relationships between US and Cuba. Historic gestures made President Obama visited the island, the embassy, the US embassy on the island was functioning, very, very important. And then when Trump came to office, a lot of these advances, including, for example, visas being able to be given to US citizens even, visa processes for Cuban citizens. A lot of this was completely erased setback, and all of this progress that had been made was essentially washed away. And this was part of a series of over 200 unilateral coercive measures against Cuba by the Trump administration. And Joe Biden had really campaigned on the promise that all of these Trump-era sanctions would be removed. Some of these include the $1,000 limit on remittances on sending money from the US to Cuba. So these are really, you know, say what you will, but these are exactly targeting the Cuban people, their ability to send money to their loved ones. It is not about politics. It is not about the US. It's about hurting the Cuban people and advancing, of course, the political agenda of the United States. And so it was announced this week that Joe Biden would actually make good on this promise, remove some of these measures. This has been met with a lot of optimism. The Foreign Ministry said this is a step in the right direction. It's not enough. As we know, over $150 billion have been lost by Cuba in six decades of the blockade. $150 billion. This is a huge amount affecting their public health sector, education sector, all of the ways that they support their people and allow their people to flourish by giving them education, housing, access to health care. Think about what Cuba would be without this blockade. So this step is met with optimism, but of course it is not enough. The same week we saw another positive step, which is that some of the energy sanctions course of measures against Venezuela have also been lifted. We saw some rumblings of this happening, especially in the weeks following the beginning of the Ukraine war. There was a high level delegation of US officials that went to Venezuela for the first time in, I think, five years. Many people were wondering, does this have to do with the US supply of oil? What's going to happen? There were a couple of months of silence and now it has been announced that Chevron and other companies will be able to operate. Again, this is much more influenced by this geopolitical reality. The US has the lowest crude oil reserves that it's had in decades. It really needs this oil. But of course it has to do with the geopolitical scenario where a lot of countries are pressuring the US to take a less aggressive stance against their neighbors, against Cuba, against Venezuela, and saying that they won't tolerate this aggressive policy that they stand with the people of these countries. And the US is kind of being forced to walk back a little bit on its aggressive rhetoric against these countries, on its aggressive economic policies against these countries. So a step in the right direction, but much more to go to stop US imperialism in the Americas. Well, that's a really important story. I know we're going to track this story because we've been following the sanctions policy closely. People's dispatch has been reporting on this. Globetrotter has been looking at this. We're going to keep an eye on it. It's very interesting how the United States uses sanctions. Then withdraws it. It has nothing to do with the human rights question or anything. It's always about the interests of the United States that dominate. I think that's very fascinating. Shifting gears to Mali where I've been doing a series for Globetrotter. You can read them at People's Dispatch. Recently, the government in Mali decided that is the military government in Mali decided that Mali will withdraw from a French initiated project called G5 Sahel. That's important to go back and do a little history on this. In 2011, NATO intervened in Libya, destroying that country, flooding that country with weapons and bringing back fighters who had been engaged on behalf of Al Qaeda and other groups in Syria. They were ferried back to Benghazi and fought in the civil war there. Well, after NATO had destroyed Libya, many of these fighters and much of this arms spread across the northern African region. Largely because of the exhaustion of the Algerian civil war. A lot of the emphasis came on places like Mali, Niger, Mauritania and down through Boko Haram into Nigeria and the lakes region. Well, interestingly, in 2013, the French militarily intervened into Mali in Operation Barkhane. Seeing that it was not going to be possible for the French to lead on this be the face of the attack on these organizations. The French initiated a project in 2014 in Mauritania to develop the so-called G5 Sahel group. G5 Sahel are the five Sahelian countries which include Mali, Niger, Mauritania, Chad and so on. Well, interesting, interesting. G5 Sahel very quickly dispensed with its trade agenda, mutual trade agreements and so on. That was set aside. Everything became about security and I was really quite disturbed by the fact that in these countries, the defense spending went up around 300%. I mean, that's extraordinary, extremely poor countries. Just a few years before he died, I talked to the president of Mali in 2020 who told me we live in the poorest place on the earth. You know, 80% of the population lives under $1.90 a day, 80% of the population. And yet, military expenditure was going up by 200-300% every year as a consequence of G5 Sahel. Turned out, two military coups in Mali sequentially 2020-2021. In January-February 2022, Mali was supposed to take over the presidency of the G5 Sahel group. Well, it was interesting. They didn't have the heads of state's meeting. Why didn't they have that meeting? Talk to lots of people from the area. French were not keen on allowing the Mali and military to take over the presidency. So just a few days ago, the Mali and military basically said, you're disrespecting us. We're going to leave the G5 Sahel. Just a few weeks ago, the Mali and government decided France can no longer operate militarily in Mali either on the soil or in the air. Very interesting development. Now they have said, we're going to leave G5 Sahel. What does this mean effectively for the French project in the Sahel region of Africa? What does it mean for French intervention across Africa? These are broad questions that people in Mali have been talking about. Not only in Mali, but also in Niger, whose head of government has welcomed the French. As they've left Mali, they've moved to Niger. In other words, the French military hasn't actually lessened its footprint. It's just moved its address. But the question is being raised in countries like Niger about the independence of the Sahel. They are facing severe economic crises, which long predate the COVID pandemic, which long predate the war in Ukraine to which we will return toward the end of the show. Long predate that deep problems of debt, the debt crisis yesterday I spoke to a United Nations official who told me that debt crisis since the 1990s has basically afflicted the possibilities in places like Mali, Niger, and Mauritania to advance an agenda. We're going to keep following this story in Mali and so on. And I got to say Prashant and Zoey, I think that between Globetrotter and People's Dispatch, we might be the only people outside the Sahel who are covering this story. And that's to our credit and I'm happy to take credit for it because it's a way to say that the rest of the media actually cares very little about what is happening and what is said in the African continent. Now, this is give the people what they want. We come to you every week on Friday. Zoey and Prashant from People's Dispatch, I'm Vijay from Globetrotter. Coming to you every Friday, bringing you the news you want to hear. Sometimes you don't want to hear that news. The next story is a story you want to hear. Of course, the United States government is going to host the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles, Zoey. But it's not turning out very well for Joe Biden, is it? No, it's not at all. And it's really directly connected to what we were talking about before. The US is feeling the pressure. I think I didn't mention it earlier, but the lifting of the sanctions is directly connected to Joe Biden's failed Summit of the Americas. A number of countries, the heads of Honduras, the first female president of Honduras, breaking 12 years of a US-backed coup regime, Luis Arce of Bolivia, from Andrés Manuel López Obrador. They've all said that they will not attend the Summit of the Americas if Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua are excluded. And that's a huge step. And this lifting of sanctions that we spoke about earlier is happening at the same time. They're seeing that they can't maintain this policy. People are responding to it. Not only can they not maintain the economic sanctions, but they're feeling the pressure for the political exclusion of these countries from such an important political space. However, there is good news. And that is that the people are not standing idly by and waiting for the organization of the American States to provide the forum that the people need to express what they think democracy is, what they think the world needs to survive, what they think is needed between the people to build a better future. And the People Summit is exactly going to be that forum to bring people together from across the region, representatives from Brazil, landless rural workers movement from Argentina, Ophelia Fernandez. However, there was a plans delegation of 23 members of Cuban civil society, one of the world-renowned scientists and doctors who worked on Cuba's COVID-19 strategy who developed life-saving vaccines, a bronze medal winner from the Tokyo Olympics were all part of this delegation, and they were denied their visas to participate. And so it's interesting that at the same moment that the U.S. is lifting some of the sanctions, still excluding Cuba from the Summit of the Americas, they also exclude Cuban civil society, which all of the time they claim to uphold, protect. A lot of their measures are actually made in the name of Cuban civil society. They want to give Cuban civil society a space to express, to dialogue, yet when this same civil society attempts to come to the United States, their own country, to meet with the people of the United States, they actually reject this. So it's extremely contradictory. However, with this move, people are even more excited and more engaged to make this summit a true representation of the people's voices, understanding the importance and the threat that it's clearly posing to the U.S. government that the people actually do want to have this forum and this space is really giving it kind of a new life. I think people should definitely check it out if you're in Los Angeles. Look at the website. It's going to be an exciting moment. Things are changing. We know that things are never set in stone. The world is always moving. U.S. relations in Latin America are not static. Latin American politics are not static. And we're seeing a new era. We're seeing a new moment. It's very key to pay attention. We've also been following the upcoming elections in Colombia, which are going to take place next Sunday. Another crucial area to watch progressives are already projected to get over 40% of the vote in this election. So we'll stay tuned, always coming back to it. And that's what I got for you from the Americas. Well, look, Zoe, that's incredible. It's a really fluid situation. We're going to keep watching it carefully. Let's move over now across the Atlantic to Europe. Prashant, you know, Finland and Sweden are thinking of joining NATO. Both countries have deep problems with neo-Nazism. In fact, in 2019, Finland banned the Nordic resistance movement. These are not some wonderful democracies or whatever. They have some serious problems. What are they planning to do with NATO? Good question, because I think one of the interesting things about, I mean, there are so many aspects. One of the most funny aspects being the fact that this whole situation emerged as a result of NATO's expansionism being a problem. This was the central issue of discussion debate for, you know, it's been specifically one year almost right now. And even before that, we've been talking about it. Russia's major demand was that NATO, you know, NATO's expansionism be stopped, Ukraine not into NATO. And now we have Finland and Sweden considering and they actually submitted their membership applications as well. And, you know, from Joe Biden to Boris Johnson, to Jens, all of them are like, whoa, you know, we're so happy to have you. And this really at this point of time, you know, it's unbelievable the kind of the provocation that is sort of, sort of be exercised in this way. And it's interesting because on the one hand, you know, there's this whole narrative about how the people wanted NATO is increasingly popular in Sweden and Finland. And that's the reason why their governments are taking this in the way of this attempt to try to spin it in that direction. But actually, if you look at it, this is more of a sign of the fact that over the past few months, there's been so much anti-Russia rhetoric that has been sort of peddled through the media, through the internet. You know, this whole portrayal of this war being good versus evil, the valorization of people like Zelensky, which we talked about earlier, that it's no surprise if people are increasingly sort of inclined to think that way. The fact is that definitely there's no doubt that this is a provocation. For instance, Finland shares a considerably long border with Russia. Russia always had issues that in some of its major cities, like St. Petersburg and Moscow were, you know, under threat if missiles were deployed in the vicinity. And now we have seven Finland joints. For instance, the possibility of such missiles being deployed, which can target Russian cities is even more closer. And Russia has also declared that it is going to respond very strongly if there are such kind of deployments, which really raises the temperature across Europe and takes the situation to another complete level altogether now. You know, some of these countries are maybe some sections are saying that we're not sure if we're going to deploy, we're against deploying nuclear weapons. We're against deploying, you know, certain kinds of, what is certain kinds of machinery, et cetera, but our permanent basis, but that's more of an academic argument because, you know, 15 years down the line, 20 years down the line, who knows what happens. We look at the history of NATO. In 1991 NATO had 16 members. And today, if Finland and Sweden joined, it becomes 32 members, which means that half of NATO's membership has occurred after 1991, at which point, during which time the Americans and NATO officials had given the promise that NATO would not move, you know, one inch to the east of West Germany. So that's really, I think that fact alone says everything about what we are seeing today. We know that, you know, the kind of weaponry that has been deployed in Poland and Romania. So will Finland and Sweden become sites for similar kind of deployments? It's a big question. The left, there is really steadfastly opposing and pointing time and again to the fact that military expenditure is also going to increase. Sweden will have to raise its budget to 2% of the defense budget to 2% of the GDP, which again is, you know, sign of the larger issue. So ultimately it's one of those decisions which is a victory for the military industrial complex, is a victory for the strategic interests of the US, is a victory for war more than anything else in conflict. And you know, people sort of, it's very unfortunate that these kind of developments continue to happen, like what we have experienced over the past year. I mean, it's incredible that this is taking place right now in Finland and in Sweden and of course in Brussels when the question of negotiating the war down in Ukraine has been put on hold. Stunningly, Deputy Foreign Minister of Russia, Andrey Rudenko said that the Ukrainians have withdrawn from the negotiation process that had been taking place on the border between Ukraine and Belarus. In fact, on Wednesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelinsky gave a speech where he said that Ukraine is going to take back all the territory that Russia has gained. Now, this speech came just around the same time as the Russian forces began to strengthen their position around Mariupol, which is the key port city in the Donbas region which the Russians seem to have put a lot of their eggs into that basket because Russia, as we've talked about before, has been keen to build a land border from the Donbas region from the Russian border all the way down to Crimea. This has of course been a prestige issue for the Russian government ever since in 2014, Crimea voted to join Russia and then the Ukrainian government in Kiev stopped supplying water to Crimea. The Russians had to build a bridge across the Black Sea and send truckloads of water at great cost to the Crimea. Well, now they seem to be almost prepared with their land bridge that is going to run from Crimea through Mariupol, major port city into the Russian territory, into the Donbas region. Now, here's the interesting thing, that fight in Mariupol had been centered for a long time around the Azov style steel plant. This was a steel plant, an old Soviet era factory actually which had been the, in a sense, core location for the neo-Nazi Azov battalion. They had really dug in, they had used the old, you know, tunnel structure underneath the steel factory. Some of it, again, nuclear war era bunkers from the Cold War period. They dug themselves under the ground and so on and they said, we refuse to surrender. We will fight till the end. Over the course of this week from before Zelensky's speech on Wednesday right through till the present, fighters from the Azov style steel plant, in fact nearly 2,000 of them, have been coming out of the plant and surrendering. It's interesting. Western media is reporting this as, in fact, not a surrender, but an evacuation. Doesn't look quite like an evacuation because it looks like they are not being driven into Ukrainian forced territory and handed over. In fact, I'm not sure what's happening to them. Are they prisoners of war? What does one do with 2,000 people who had been old in there? What are the laws of war that apply? I'm a little concerned about this because we have had no indication of what is going to happen to them. But certainly large number of them are members of the Azov battalion, neo-Nazis, some of them mercenaries and so on. They appear now to have surrendered in very large numbers. 2,000 is not a small number to the Russian forces. This means that for all practical purposes, Russian war aims in Mariupol seems to be over. It looks like the land bridge is almost secure. At this point, one would have thought that negotiations would have ramped up, that there would have been more pressure for negotiations. Then the Russians might have been persuaded to withdraw from other parts of Ukraine and maybe acknowledge that this land border is going to exist or something. It would have been the point at which negotiations became more and more important. On the other hand, because of the promises from the United States of tens of billions of dollars, maybe up to 40 billion dollars by the end of it, in weapons to Ukraine, because of the so-called resolve of Brussels and NATO in particular to defend Ukraine, Zelensky has made it a prestigious issue when he gave a speech on Wednesday saying that Ukraine is going to take back the entirety of the territory. He's made that a prestigious issue. How does one back down from that? This is going to be very complicated. We are going to look now perhaps to a much more protracted war than we anticipated. Not months, not even perhaps one year, maybe longer. If indeed there is now an appetite in Western countries to feed Ukraine with weaponry and force the Ukrainians in a way to remain the battlefield so that the West can bleed or as Lloyd Austin said, weaken Russia. Very disturbing developments. In other words, just to summarize, at the point at which it appeared that some of the major Russian warings had been gained, that's a point at which one could start a negotiation proceeding, a serious negotiation. At that very point, it is now clear that the West aims a protracted proxy war with Ukraine as the battlefield. In other words, the West is willing to see more Ukrainians die for Western aims to weaken Russia. It's very disturbing. You've been listening to give the people what they want brought to you by People's Dispatch, your one-stop shop for news. Go editors Prashant and Zoey. I'm Vijay from Globe Trotter. See you next week.