 Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Your weekly movement news roundup. 17th December, show number, I gather it's 58. I'm sorry we missed last week. There are things that happen and then there are things we can't control. Last week was one of the things where we couldn't control what was happening. You're with give the people what they want. Coming to you every single week except last week from Prashant and Zoe. People's dispatch, peoplesdispatch.org, terrific website. I'm Vijay from Globe Trotter. Lots of stories for you today. We're going to start with Julian Assange. Some people know Julian Assange. Everybody must know WikiLeaks. It's important to know that Julian Assange, the founder of the WikiLeaks organization, pledged to bring to the surface the secrets of governments, secrets that were important for humanity. Mr Assange and WikiLeaks were delivered a tranche of information by a person who was at the time part of the United States military forces. This person is Chelsea Manning. The documents in the tranche that came from Chelsea Manning were horrendous. They demonstrated, for instance, with video footage, war crimes being conducted by U.S. troops. They demonstrated machinations of the various... I'm sorry I used the word machinations. What I meant was conspiracies by the U.S. diplomatic corps around the world where they conspire with ruthless, horrible governments against the very people that live in those countries, often while in public talking about democracy and democracy promotion. The WikiLeaks' tranche from Chelsea Manning was deeply embarrassing because it showed the United States doing things in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Libya and other places in a very poor light. The heat then turned against Julian Assange rather than deal with the fact of war crimes, deal with the fact of the violation of human rights, violation of the UN Charter. The United States government and its allies decided to pursue a campaign to bring Mr. Assange to his knees to punish Mr. Assange. Mr. Assange was hounded into the Ecuadorian embassy, lived there for many years, essentially unable to breathe in that embassy. Then in 2019, in a shocking decision, the Ecuadorian government pushed Mr. Assange out into the hands of the British metropolitan police. He was then locked up from April 2019 till the present in Belmarsh prison. I'd like to let you know Belmarsh prison is just a few miles, a few kilometers away from the home of Tony Blair, an 8 million pound home that Mr. Blair and Sherry Blair bought with monies that they have made since he left the Prime Minister's office. Mr. Blair is a war criminal given the evidence provided by Julian Assange in the WikiLeaks Corporation. Tony Blair and Sherry Blair live in an 8 million pound house. Just a few kilometers down the road, Mr. Assange is in prison, awaiting extradition to the United States, where he faces a long list of indictments. It's an 18 count indictment, 175 possible years in jail. That means for life. The British courts had to submit to various criteria of human rights, whether Mr. Assange would be protected in some ways, his human rights would be taken care of, not clear to the judge in the lower court. She decided that no, his life was a threat if he crossed the Atlantic in a CIA plane, extradited to a U.S. prison and so on. She said no, he cannot. Now at that point, the question was raised. If you are saying that Mr. Assange should not be extradited to the United States and if you are saying that there is no prima facie case against him, why hasn't he been given bail? He was not given bail. This was a kind of compromise ruling from the lower court judge. Now the higher court has seen the Assange file. They took the side of the United States government which gave quote unquote assurances that Mr. Assange life would not be under threat. The upper court, the upper appeals court decided on behalf of the United States government saying that they'll accept the assurances. Mr. Assange sitting in that cell in Belmarsh prison is awaiting extradition to the United States, not for committing a crime but for publishing, for merely publishing texts that were leaked to him by Chelsea Manning, a serving U.S. soldier leaked to him. He didn't do the leak himself. He published the leak. So did the New York Times. So did the Guardian. So did many other publications. I invite you friends to go to the People's Dispatch website, peoplesdispatch.org. Take a look at a statement called Stand Up for Assange, Stand Up for Press Freedom. It's signed by our media's Brazil Defato, Breakthrough News, Madar Media, News Click, New Frame, Pan African TV, and of course People's Dispatch. We'll be keeping a close eye on the fate of Julian Assange and the fate of Press Freedom. It's a very grave issue and I don't want you to neglect it. This Sunday, the people of Chile will go into the ballot box to elect a new president. Just yesterday, the wife of Augusto Pinochet died. Very interesting circumstances for Chile. Zoe, what's happening and what will happen this Sunday? Well, Vijay, as you said, these are crucial elections for Chile. You know, this is the second round of the presidential elections, the runoff between José Antonio Cast and Gabriel Boric. And I think it's important to note that on Sunday, this electoral process is not only about Sunday, but it's really kind of the culmination of what has been years and specifically these last two years of arduous struggle on the streets by the Chilean people. If people remember in November 2019, beginning in October 2019, Chilean students started a protest against the increase in fare hikes. They started jumping the turnstiles and they set off what would be one of the largest kind of popular uprisings on the continent in recent history. The repression faced by these students as they undertook this, you know, this popular protest against the fare hikes drove thousands and tens of thousands of the street in Chile. And it became really much more of an uprising against neoliberalism, against the continuation of what was a very conservative policy that was kind of enshrined during Pinochet's dictatorship with the Constitution. And what they see is kind of the lack of actually correcting the course and that the return to democracy did not see, you know, a radical transformation of the institutions of democracy, of Chilean society, and thus people are still, you know, suffering under the yoke of this conservative order under not having access to basic rights such as healthcare and education. Chile is one of the countries in Latin America that has some of the most privatized social services, for example, education. A lot of students have to go to other countries and study because in their own country it's too expensive, healthcare, pensions, all of these very basic things for human beings to survive are not accessible in Chile. And so this drove this massive uprising which we saw in 2019 and a product of this was the call for a, to rewrite the Constitution. This has been, you know, a tremendous process of bringing people from all walks of life, not only the traditional left, but of course, you know, neighborhood assemblies, people organizing across all sectors of life. And within this context is that these very crucial presidential elections are taking place. So as the Chilean people, you know, through this long process of struggle, are beginning to rewrite their Constitution, recreate these fundamental, you know, institutions of life, they're also coming to head with what is now going to be this Sunday a contest between this new path of creating a new Chile of rethinking the institutions and which is represented by Gabriel Boric and the complete opposite, which is Jose Antonio Kass. So there's been a lot written about Kass, who he is, his roots. I mean, it was a great article that we have on our site by yourself, Vijay and Taroas Zuniga. And it really looks at the fact that Jose Antonio Kass, a lot of people say, oh, he's far right, he's Nazi. He actually, his father is a Nazi starting from that. Was part of the Nazi Party in Germany. They immigrated to Chile. His policies are the complete opposite of, you know, creating a new Chile for all people, all rights. He wants to eliminate the Ministry of Women. He aspires, he, you know, looks up to Pinochet. He believes that he was a great leader. The Constitution was democratic. I mean, really every single element of his proposal, he is extremely xenophobic. There has been a lot of xenophobic violence in Chile against Venezuelan migrants, against Haitian migrants. He has no problem with this. He is, you know, vilified, you know, countries, the neighboring countries. He really represents, you know, as a regression, no, on this path of transformation. And it's in this sense of very crucial elections on these Sundays, it's much more than, you know, a contest between two politicians. This is really about two different projects for Chilean society. We're seeing a lot of interesting responses to this very crucial contest. A lot of celebrities, you know, coming out in support of board, it's just understanding the really importance of this. And so I think it'll be very interesting to see what happens this Sunday. It has really galvanized Chilean society. It's been a very polarizing moment. But I think, you know, the Chilean struggle will continue regardless. People are organized. They're understanding how to come together on, you know, the community level, on sectoral level, and we'll be following the story regardless of what happens. And it's important to keep, stay tuned and understand this larger struggle. It's a key story. It's a story also whether a popular movement is going to be able to translate into the ballot box because after all, you can have millions of people on the street, but you don't necessarily get the same millions voting. This is going to be an issue in India. Farmers have had a great, great victory. Prashant, you'll be talking about that great victory. At the same time, into the new year, elections in Uttar Pradesh, will this have an impact on the elections? Can you convert mass struggles into electoral gain? Prashant, what has, what have the farmers been up to and why did the tractors decide to start the engines again? Right, Vijay. Of course, a million dollar question, the one you posed regarding what impact this is going to have on the elections. But just to go take our viewers back to a key day that's December 11th, when the farmers struggle officially after over a year wound up. And it's an important date to note because it's interesting to note that the announcement by Prime Minister Narendra Modi that the farm laws would be withdrawn, the reason for the large struggle, the farm laws would be withdrawn to place in late November. Whereas what happened after that was that the farmers insisted that they needed more concrete assurances, which is a very interesting demand that the farmers have put forward in the aftermath of their announcement. They demanded for instance that they had to be concrete steps taken regarding the minimum support price which has been one of the main demands. They were very clear that they wanted all the cases filed against them withdrawn because some of these cases actually tend to last for years. They were very clear that there has to be compensation to the families of those farmers who were killed. And they said that they would not go back until each of these demands was met concretely. So the government again once again giving into that including setting up a committee. So in that sense even that's an interesting moment because that I think actually has a lot of implications for the future because the farmers clearly said that announcements are not enough. We want to see concrete measures. We want to see actual points written on paper. And I think this is something that is going to carry on in the coming months as well. One of the key things that if you look at read a lot of reports including on news click which is very extensively covered the last few days of the farmers protests. One of the key things they talk about is the sense of solidarity that emerged over the past year. The fact that libraries were set up. The fact that community spaces were set up. The fact that the lives of so many people were changed as part of the struggle. People who had never before come into such spaces like this actually forming that kind of bonds of solidarity. And I think a lot of this will actually play out in the coming months as well because the farmers also understand that this is not only a narrow struggle regarding one or two demands. This is the largest demand, a larger set of struggles. They also know that the government has a particular agenda regarding agriculture which is they want to promote the maximum corporatization of agriculture that is possible. And just because these farm laws have been withdrawn for now doesn't mean that that agenda is going to end. So I think the farmers are definitely going to be very vigilant about it. Even in the aftermath of the end of the struggle that is taking place in western Uttar Pradesh and many other parts of the North India. And I think the farmers are very clear that this is not an end to the larger struggle. Any attempt by the government to push further corporatization of agriculture is going to be definitely fought back against. These struggles will also have an impact on workers' struggles who are fighting against similar impact on their working hours on contractualization for that matter. So I think the whole firmament of struggle as you call it has become much richer over the past one year. And we still have time to see how much is going to actually convert into votes for that matter. But nonetheless I think especially in the western part of Uttar Pradesh, one of the most electorally important states in India. This is definitely going to have an impact. Friends, we're going to be following these stories as you know over and over again because that's what we're like. You're listening to give the people what they want coming to you from people's dispatch and globetrotter. Coming to the end of the year, the calendar year, what I'd like you to do friends is those of you who are hard-call listeners of give the people what they want take your cell phones or whatever you do take a picture of yourself watching the show and tag at People's Dispatch on Twitter post pictures of yourself watching the show. We would love that because journalism is a lonely business. We go out there, collect stories, we put it out there, we don't know if anybody is reading it or we don't even know if any of you are watching this. Perhaps this is mainly for our producer Sorangia. Hi, Sorangia. Nice to have you as our only viewer. So please show us some of that consideration. We'd love that. The next half of our show is going to be slightly uglier. I'm afraid we're going to start in Colombia. It's ugly because Colombia is going to have an election in May of 2022. We know that that's going to be a significant election and yet every year every single year from 1948 there have been assassinations upon assassinations. Zoe, there was a landmark again reached in Colombia. Tell us about that. Yeah, well, you know, I figured we hadn't talked about the violence in Colombia in maybe a couple weeks. So always important to come back to it and you know, joking aside, I think it's really important to to bring back to it because it is, you know, as you mentioned next year, it has been a crucial election year. It has been five years since the peace agreements were signed in Colombia. You know, for all intents and purposes in the international community, it's considered that peace has been reaching Colombia case close. Everything's fine. Whereas the reality on the ground is really much different. And I think it's important, you know, to continue shining light on this because one of the U.S.'s biggest allies in Latin American, the Caribbean, it's most important against Cuba, against Venezuela is Colombia, a government that continually condones violence against its own citizens in all forms. And so this week there were a couple interesting and upsetting developments to be honest. The milestone was reached of 91 massacres carried out by paramilitary forces, by illegal criminal groups just this year in 2021. So 91 massacres and the legal definition of a massacre is when three or more people are killed at the same time. And so there have been, you know, there has, as of now this is the same number of massacres that there were in 2020, which is also really worrying, but it's quite concerning. These, you know, assassinations, these are, you know, not necessarily of social leaders. This is a different count that goes on, but you know, just a continued prevalence of violence in the territories due to you know, just the empowering of these illegal armed groups. There's a lot of key drug trafficking groups that run through Colombia with the demobilization of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. A lot of regions kind of freed up and so they've been under constant dispute and, you know, with the promise of peace, a lot of, you know, peasant communities, rural communities believe that, okay, we're going to have peace. We can have, you know, our plans of, you know, having for example, productive crops, having food crops and not be forced to, you know, farm cocoa leaves, but this has not been this has been a central point of contention between the illegal armed groups and peasant communities and leads to a lot of violence, you know, over territorial disputes, but also to continue the production of cocaine in these territories. This was a very upsetting milestone, 91 massacres this year. Another important development that happened this week is that a report that was commissioned by the mayor's office of Bogota was released and this report was detailing a massacre carried out by the police on September 9 and 10 in 2020. So we reported on this extensively of people's dispatch, a lawyer, Javier Ordonez, during, you know, the COVID lockdown he had left his home last midnight. Police officers approached him. They started, you know, yelling at him saying that why was he out? He was violating curfew and in response to maybe his, you know, confusion, they tazered him and they tazered him to death and this video of him being tazered to death was broadcast all over social media and like what happens in many cases of police violence across the world people took to the streets extremely angry. This is in the midst of the pandemic a, you know, a young person with family with kids is tazered to death just because the police is, you know, and what followed was that in response to these protests the police unleashed brutal violence and killed 11 civilians who were protesting on the streets. This report came out this week showing that the complete responsibility of these deaths was on the police of Bogota even though that the government and, you know, officials had tried to say that these were, you know, protesters maybe shooting at each other but this report that came out this week said that the violence was perpetrated by the police. This is what happens a lot in Colombia. This is one of the first times that they have actually certified and come out and said officially this was the police. Will it lead to any justice? It's unclear but it's a very important development. Will it lead to any justice? You mentioned that there is an international standard to measure massacres. I think you said three or more people killed is a massacre. Will it lead to any justice? We're going to move from Colombia, take a very long flight to Kabul, Afghanistan. In Kabul, Afghanistan there was a massacre because I believe with Zamari Ahmadiyya I think there were nine people in that car. Prashant, nine people in the car, Zamari Ahmadiyya worked for 14 years for the US government and electrical engineer. Will there be any justice for the killing of this man and those other people who are with him in Kabul, Afghanistan? You are referring to an incident on the 29th of August where ten civilians were killed seven of their children and like you said the family is Zamari Ahmad who was an aid worker. First of all of course the United States said that these people who were killed in a drone attack were actually ISIs, Khorasan militants. That was the immediate narrative that was first put across. There was a global outro or a lot of scrutiny and then the US, you know, withdrew and said okay fine we were wrong, these were actually civilians, they had nothing to do with the ISIs or any terrorism for that matter. And then there was a series of investigations and the important thing to know that earlier this week the Pentagon has announced that nobody is going to be nobody is going to face any action for this attack. So there have been some recommendations on how to improve procedure but nobody is really going to be facing any legal action any kind of punishment for the fact that ten people including seven children brutally lost their lives in Afghanistan. And we must remember that this happened on August 29th just a couple of days ago on August 26th there was a suicide bomb attack in Kabul airport and nearly 200 people died. But the important thing to notice that most of the people died due to bullets being fired by what are believed to be forces associated with the United States outside the airport. So actually the death count is more due to that a lot of the bullet victims a lot of the those who were killed were due to bullet injuries. And I think these two incidents are actually sort of you know in some ways a metaphor for how US policy has been you know towards Afghanistan over the past few decades we talked about the war crimes that Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange revealed. But what's very different now in the sense that we see Afghanistan for instance going through a horrendous economic crisis we see various ministers basically begging saying that release our money which is say on which has been seized by the United States. And that's another important thing to note because earlier this week Jen Saki who's the spokesperson for Joe Biden was asked if there was any proposal by the US to release ten billion dollars of Afghan money that has been frozen by the United States. And she gave an explanation which said that there was apparently an investigation pending by 9-11 victims on this issue and that is why the money could not be given you know she was like we are a great provider of humanitarian aid but we want to make sure that that money goes directly to the people and not to the Taliban. So there was this host of excuses which basically you know takes away from the fact that an unbelievable humanitarian crisis is going on right now in Afghanistan millions of millions on the verge of starvation. I think age groups are saying that one million children could you know die of starvation this winter that could be higher than the tone over past many years. 22.8 million are expected to face life-threatening levels of food security 8.7 million people nearing famine. So those are like atrocious numbers right now. And the fact is that this is because there is a complete aid has completely been suspended and entire system was built by in Afghanistan over two decades which is completely dependent on foreign aid and the moment the Taliban took over they just snapped their fingers and everything closed. So what we are seeing is instances of war crimes like you talked about instances of massacres for which there is no punishment, there is no accountability instances of cutting off funding leading to mass starvation nobody likes the Taliban we are not all very clear about that but that doesn't mean that you know the people of Afghanistan need to you know millions of people need to face suffering and this is basically exactly what the United States allies like Saudi Arabia about Yemen too this is exactly where they are taking Afghanistan to. So very depressing situation overall. Punishing people is really what seems to be happening the people are being punished I mean the fact that the money is being diverted from the people of Afghanistan to the funds to pay the survivors of 9-11 victims is somewhat bizarre because the people of Afghanistan didn't conduct the attacks on 9-11. Somewhat bizarre situation we are in even more compellingly bizarre is the Biden administration announcement just this week that eight companies which are already on the entity list of the U.S. Treasury Department, eight Chinese companies accused of participating in activities in Xinjiang, Uighur, autonomous region of the People's Republic of China these eight companies are now going to be further sanctioned. Now among them very interestingly they are all high tech companies in fact DJI is the world's largest commercial drone maker now sanctioned by the U.S. government. Since time facial recognition software one of the world's largest most important facial recognition by the way I'm not that keen on facial recognition but I know that my phone is very keen on it and keeps trying to force me to use the facial recognition application to open it rather than a password so I know that these technologies are very important in the world today very interesting that those being sanctioned are high tech firms because strikes me it's again part of this contest between western high tech companies and Chinese high tech companies strikes me that's part of the story because as these firms have been saying and as the Chinese foreign ministry said look these firms are not exactly that heavily involved in Xinjiang where's the dossier that's interesting is that actually the U.S. government hasn't released evidence for much of this these are all assertions that's been happening on the one side now this is of course pushing the government of China and the government of Russia closer together once again video conference this time I was struck by that this is the 37th meeting I believe between Beijing Ping and Mr. Putin they had a 90 minute video call Russia and China don't actually have any kind of straightforward military or strategic alliance they have an alignment they have an understanding but they haven't signed on to some kind of deep alignment yet the two countries seem to be getting closer and closer what we saw here is the conversation about the fact that these countries are both facing a kind of hybrid war from the west they talked about that that was a long part of the 90 minute conversation between Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin Putin is of course in the midst of a crisis a serious crisis on the border of Ukraine troops amassed on both sides of the border this is a game of chicken it's a game of blink who's going to go first the Russians decide to demobilize some of those troops move them away from the border pressure mounting on the Europeans are they going to provide lethal weaponry to the Ukrainian army the Germans have actually stopped the delivery of some weapons through Germany because they are cautious about the need to complete Nord Stream 2 the crucial gas pipeline that will bring energy into into into Europe very important the natural gas coming from Russia on the other side the Chinese as I just said again sanctions in Xinjiang again troop movements along the Pacific coastline again pressure a massive pressure campaign on China this is bringing these two countries together it's important to remember these two countries were not that close even during the Cold War despite the fact that both had communist governments not close at all this is being brought very close now this is a very important relationship developing in the world we'll be watching it very carefully now as I said today is the 17th of December we'll be here with you next week I believe am I wrong or right that next week is Christmas Navidad one of the great days for people who believe in in Jesus Christ and the Bible but we'll be here we'll be always here we'll be with you you know talking about the issues that matter we'll be here in the new year we'll be here the year after that inshallah as the believers of the Quran say I'm I'm agnostic but I'm with all the religions we are in that festive season you've been listening to give the people what they want don't forget to make those selfies put them up it's our Christmas present it's our seasons greeting present it's the Hanukkah present it's our Kwanzaa present you name it we're with you thanks for being with us see you next week