 And we are live well we are live obviously you are with us live on give the people what they want coming to you from People's Dispatch Zoe and Prashant nice to see you again and me Vijay from Globetrotter today is the 30th of April 2021 I'm not allergic to many things but I'd like to admit to all of you are loyal viewers and listeners of give the people what they want we hope this has become your favorite show let your friends know about it I want to admit to you publicly I'm terribly allergic to penicillin the story of penicillin however is so important when it was discovered in Oxford in 1928 the government and the university decided not to patent penicillin penicillin was available freely it was produced mass produced in the United States in the 1940s many years ago when I was a child I visited Hindustan antibiotics in Pune in India western India one of the first public sector drug manufacturers in 1955 Hindustan antibiotics began to produce penicillin at mass scale and saved the extended the lives of a very large number of people got to remember the story of penicillin that's what public health should be like that's what public medicine should be like I'd give the people what they want we tell you about the past but also the present right now the epicenter of COVID-19 it's back to India it's back to India zigzags United States Brazil India it's back to India India the country that once had a robust public sector pharmaceutical drug production industry Prashant what is the story from the epicenter of the carnage right Vijay we've kind of reached a situation where numbers have become a blur right now I mean the whole whole of past year has been about just a flurry of numbers from across the world and right now after nearly two weeks of continuous horror for lack of better word some of these numbers have become almost difficult to comprehend right now today morning for instance we saw that the number of cases was say somewhere around 386,000 nearly 387,000 we had over 3500 deaths across the country and just to sort of put some of this in context I there's another very shocking number which came in the news a few days ago which was that cremation of course a very prominent form of after post-death rights in India and in one of biggest in one of Delhi's biggest cremation grounds the daily consumption of wood which is what is used is increased from about say 6000 to 8000 kilos a day to 80,000 to 90,000 kilos a day and that and that's just maybe a small snapshot this is just one cremation ground in Delhi we're talking about and this is just maybe a small snapshot of the kind of horror that we're witnessing I mean last week we talked about this you know queues in front of cremation grounds like we said queues in front of hospitals people desperately struggling for oxygen people dying due to lack of oxygen in the most depressing circumstances the agony of loved ones who you know who are just trying everything possible just to get maybe you know admission to a hospital or say an oxygen cylinder at the right time and all this basically we're looking at a collapse there's no other word for it and we're looking at a collapse again we talked about this last week that was definitely preventable in the sense of the government had planned it out and we're also looking at a government in denial because even now various authorities are insisting that there's no real oxygen shortage it's you know it's a problem with delivery etc which is all great to say but you know who tell you how do you tell that to people whose loved ones have died for lack of oxygen in the year 2021 and this I think the government has been in denial like I said it is there was this incredibly ironic moment today where the Supreme Court of India the highest court in the land had to issue instructions that if anybody faced police legal proceedings for complaining or demanding supplies like oxygen the court would take a stern view of it so basically what we saw was in the past few days reports of people you know being threatened the votes of actually police action being initiated in one or two cases of when people you know said that you know we need oxygen or we need supplies because that constituted rumour mongering so and you have the highest court in the land in what is considered biggest democracy there's a lot of oldest democracies a lot of drama about that but the highest court in the land actually having to say that if this happens we will take a very stern view of it and that I think explains the kind of because this has always been a government especially under the BJP a government which has focused purely on perception managing perceptions purely on managing impressions rather than facts and this fact-free model of governance has actually led to a lot of this center excessive centralization no power given to the states no transparency just a lot of slogans and rhetoric we see this in the issue of vaccines as well where the private companies who are supplying vaccines in India have put different rates for the central government different rates for the state governments and different rates for private hospitals and today again the court asked what everyone has been asking why are they different rates they say it's people across India who are being vaccinated so why are they different rates for vaccines and one of the I think one of the owners of one of these companies made it very clear when he said that the current rates are profitable but it's not super profitable and I think so we see you know rampant capitalism a complete collapse of governance all the characteristics to the BJP right wing state KK Shalaja the chief minister the health minister of Kerala which has been Kerala has been interesting because they are reporting a high number of cases but the death rates are very very low because of a very consistent strategy she made an interesting point today where she said in media that if we were in power we would have nationalized the health sector and this is something even high and that happened even in a couple of capitalist countries as well and I think at this point while reflecting on the horrors as well as the sheer mismanagement these are slogans that we should take up these are demands that we should put forward because this is definitely a site for continuing struggle as well it's very important what she said if we were in government we would have nationalized the health system India remains as you say in a crisis oxygen supplies beds ventilators basic things that shouldn't be difficult to provide for people simply unavailable I think Prashant that point you made about a prime minister more interested in public relations then on governing then on the people's needs that's Narendra Modi you jump across the world to Colombia to Eva and Duque another person much more interested in in public relations then on the needs of the people Columbia country of 50 million people almost 3 million people infected with the corona with COVID-19 the disease third day of their general strike on now Zoe what's happening in Bogota what's happening in Medellin what's happening in that beautiful country of Colombia well it's a really revolutionary and exciting moment in Colombia there are there's been protests in cities and towns across the country so not only in Bogota and the other big cities but you know small towns small communities on that you know across the country it's been really impressive people are on the streets and demanding that the national government withdraw the very controversial tax reform plan which essentially would have a the VAT tax applied onto basic food items and increase prices across the board you know one of the most emblematic examples is that the price of eggs which is a daily good that people use you know across the country would greatly increase and people are and essentially the government has was ironic and you know of course very depressing is that the government has called this the solidarity tax reform plan and as of course people from the left this this tax reform is nothing about solidarity it's about charging the working class you know making the working class pay for the coronavirus pandemic and and the economic crisis that's been brewing in a country like Colombia where the you know health sector has been privatized where there's no semblance of a public sector where neoliberalism has ravaged the country but you know beyond people protesting against this tax reform plan which I mean honestly I encourage you check out the People's Dispatch video on the strike it's incredible to see the amount of people on the streets really really inspiring at this moment but people are also protesting you know the the persistent and constant state violence against communities we've talked about it constantly on People's Dispatch and on this show giving people what they want you know about the levels of violence faced by organized communities faced by social leaders faced by human rights defenders former combatants of the FARC and you know people are not having it with the state violence and you know the power that the figure of Uribe held in Colombia is just decaying deteriorating people are no longer afraid of the far right and they're seeing that their unity across sectors across class lines across you know everything is more powerful than the far right which has only insisted in imposing these you know anti-people measures and it has so far said that they will not withdraw this plan there's a really recent update that said that they might they potentially would discuss having a new tax reform and discussing with other parties but we this remains to be seen so far they've responded with violence to the protests at least four people have been killed in the police repression you know last night police were on the streets in cities like Pasto which is a town near the Ecuadorian border a city sorry and you know they're just open firing at protesters invading you know residential communities picking up protesters beating them up I mean some of the images are really really horrifying but the people remain resilient I think in the the levels of violence faced by the communities in Colombia means that they will not be deterred by this repression and they will continue on the streets we saw there's a really beautiful image of the mother of Dylan Cruz who was a young student who was killed in the general strike in 2019 against neoliberal reforms who has been out there on the streets holding up the photo of her son and continuing to protest so I think these are really inspiring images and it's not likely to come to a close it looks like Mr. Ivan Duque will not back off from this bill and it's unlikely today's the third day reminds us of course that the farmers protest in India is still ongoing in fact the the deadlock as it were between a cruel government that in the middle of all this not only inconsiderate about COVID-19 but also the demands of the farmers another deadlock in Colombia mirror image countries today is the the day 30th of April 2021 46 years ago the Vietnamese people liberated Saigon now Ho Chi Minh City United States government withdrew a great defeat for the United States in Vietnam the Vietnamese people had declared their independence in 1945 they had to fight for 30 years to claim the right to their sovereignty even then a country just destroyed by chemical weapons you know agent orange napalm and so on from tomorrow friends the United States is going to begin its withdrawal from Afghanistan from tomorrow the withdrawal begins and it's to end by the 11th of September 2021 the United States government is going to begin its withdrawal from Afghanistan I caution you with the word withdrawal 2500 US troops are going to leave Afghanistan thousands of US personnel will remain this includes the ghost soldiers of the CIA of the central intelligence agency it remove it this includes mercenaries it includes so-called advisors contractors trainers and so on the numbers are extraordinary between 1000 and 1600 I mean I'm not joking and this is from that great you know bastion of news the New York Times a few days ago Anthony Blinken the secretary of state of the United States made a statement that he fears Afghanistan will enter into a civil war 10 days before Mr Blinken said this Mir Rahman Ramani the speaker of the Afghan parliament said the same thing in fact both Mr Blinken and Mr Ramani are wrong Afghanistan has been in a civil war civil conflict since at least 1979 very long painful and difficult conflict going on there Mr Blinken and Mr Ramani both said that there's a chance that the Taliban must return in fact Mr Blinken made the extraordinary comment that the Taliban now is not as harsh as it used to be in 2001 20 years of war thousands and thousands of people dead enormous amount of social wealth wasted and at the end of the day you're going to have a softer Taliban is that what war is to bring you not a victory but a softness the United States defeated in its war aims in Afghanistan but not actually withdrawing because the real purpose that the US will continue to remain in Afghanistan is to destabilize or break down the relations that Russia has with the old Central Asian countries which were part of the USSR Tajikistan Uzbekistan Kyrgyzstan Kazakhstan these countries had close relationships with Russia continue to United States was very keen in the north south axis tearing these countries up bringing them closer to the United States through Afghanistan down to India that plan has not really developed very far it was what was enunciated by Hillary Clinton in 2011 they also want to try to destabilize the Chinese ambitions of the Belt and Road Initiative Afghanistan a key place in that instability in Afghanistan looks to be the actual war aim so it's not clear if there actually is a peace plan for Afghanistan because there's a withdrawal of formal troops doesn't mean that peace is going to come to Afghanistan I want you to remember when the Soviet troops pulled out between the Soviet pullout in around 1992 till 9 11 more people were killed in that period then during the war when the Soviets had been in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1991-92 I want you to digest that and more people yet had been killed in the early years of the US bombardment in Afghanistan a zone of instability it benefits certain countries doesn't benefit others a lot of the operations going on in Uzbekistan in Xinjiang and so on part of this ugly mess still it's good that the United States is withdrawing the 2500 troops from Afghanistan but it's not a withdrawal and it's certainly not peace you're listening to give the people what they want coming to you from people's dispatch with Zoe and Prashant and me Vijay from Globetrotter we come every week on Friday we love being with you we love hearing from you tell us what you think about the shades of black or if you're Prashant gray that we wear tell us about whether you think we're covering the stories effectively tell us if we're not covering some stories we're very keen not to miss things that are happening around the world and which is why Prashant has spent a lot of time looking at events in Chad where it looks like there is a coup a coup with the role of the French front and center a coup d'etat in Chad a coup d'etat and it's not on the front pages of newspapers around the world Prashant what is happening in Chad right Vijay like you said it's a development of great significance for multiple reasons we come to of course the basic facts are pretty simple Idris Devi the president of Chad from 1990 onwards he was killed in a battle with rebels a few days ago and on April 20th and so immediately after that we saw that Devi itself had come to power with the backing of the French of course he'd stayed in power with the backing of the French despite running a very very repressive regime and the key point behind all this was that Chad is a vital strategic importance to France especially its operation by honey and Chad's security forces are an integral part of that operation so Chad being a say the key center of French geopolitical interests they were very determined that you know nothing should disrupt this regime and immediately after the death of Idris Devi his son Bombard Devi was 37 years old was proclaimed the leader of a new military junta and this was you know there was complete outrage in Chad over this because just recently Idris Devi had won elections for the sixth term and he had been elected the president before the elections they had been again repression opposition activists were targeted many were arrested their houses were attacked so this was the situation which the country was going through and you have a repressive crackdown before the election you have an election which has its own legal complications which we can't get into today and the president dies in battle and now we have a military junta coming to power now many have raised comparisons to country like Sudan which is again very which is the neighborhood because the military junta has appointed a prime minister so there's some kind of you know seeming civilian cover to the situation as it is but what happened in fact was that the constitution was suspended because it mandates that if the president dies a speaker should be in charge an election should be held so the constitution was dissolved the parliament was dissolved and say basically the military has risen to power again now protests have been taking place on April 27th there was a round of protests and you know anywhere close to about nine to ten people were killed by police forces and this is likely to continue because a lot of civil society forces are you know are really up in arms for lack of a better word and the interesting thing of course here being that the rebels whom the government was facing they were a product of the war in Libya the FACT group was actually allied to Khalifa Haftar's Libyan national army in Libya and once the war in Libya kind of subsided this group attacked the government so what we see in a country like Chad and what is in fact the whole of North Africa is basically the entire region being used as a playground for the interests of you know a lot of these imperialist powers you know France is playing a very dirty game here we know that Saudi Arabia Egypt and the UAE they're playing their own games in this region as well and what we see is that the aspirations of the people of Chad basically being consistently destroyed consistently repressed in the name of this in the name of this geopolitical strategy game that is taking place and the poor difference here of course this time being that people are rising up in protests they do face a very they do face a great deal of danger because as we've seen the French government has been very vehement in its backing of the new overlords of Chad the military junta in fact Emmanuel Macron was present in the funeral and you know the government has extended its support saying that you know stability is important but what we're seeing here clearly is the byproduct of decades of these kind of say games that are being played by colonial powers so very closely developing situations because there's so many players here right now and we have to see what happens in the coming weeks you see what is happening in Chad where there is a pressure on the politics of a country its sovereignty is simply not being allowed is what we've seen across the Sahel whether it's in Libya as you rightly pointed to the connections or indeed in Mali Mauritania Niger I mean these countries are seeing their sovereignty compromised principally by France and the United States should not be should not be go without comment that the French and the United States ever have a basically a string of military bases in that region France has the G4 G5 Sahel five of the countries linked together appalling appalling condition our eyes were briefly not for very long on turkey briefly because in the court of appeals there was a trial for the people's democratic party the HDP 108 I'm just checking the number 108 politicians of the people's democratic party up against an accusation that they instigated riots in Kobane in 2014 in which about 37 37 38 people died you know all kinds of experts have looked at the evidence of this they found no evidence that the HDP its politicians participated in the instigation by the way this is very similar to a case in India in western India where people like Sudha Bhardwaj sitting in prison most likely has COVID Anantal Tumde and others most likely you know have COVID that's at least Sudha Bhardwaj accused of instigating an event in western India which they had nothing to do you know there's no evidence same with the Kobane case this Kobane trial 108 people including the leaders of the party brought into the court and then a 3530 page indictment was read out imagine this what kind of justice will you get when essentially this is a log jam no real defense could be mounted questions were raised of bias the defendant wanted to raise question of bias the bias you know of the judge that was just not allowed and then the case was put off until the 3rd of May let's see what happens but the issue that I want to put forward for people is this is what's happening around the world to democracy we saw this in Brazil when Dilma Rousseff was impeached in a very strange legislative coup we saw this with Lula judicial coup the term of art for all this friends is lawfare it's what happened to Rafael Correa trying to run in the election in Ecuador this year the term of art is lawfare lawfare is being used against the HDP which is a open-minded political force not only of the Kurdish Emancipation Movement but also of the left in Turkey it's a much broader thing than a Kurdish party it's wrong to call it a Kurdish movement it's much broader than that the HDP one of the main opposition parties to Mr. Erdogan he rather than fight them politically is trying to delegitimize them ban them this is lawfare friends this is how democracy essentially is being cut back this is the kind of thing we at give the people what they want are very much you know seized off and we try to bring this to your attention every single week last week we brought your attention how the Peruvian foreign ministry said you should not pay foreigners should not pay attention to Peru's elections foreigners should not pay and they must not have any opinions either we said last week we have lots of opinions we also believe the HDP even though neither none of us are Turkish none of us have a right to interfere in Turkey's politics but we believe it's a political party we'll report them as a political party we'll report them as a political party even if they end up being banned we will report them as a political party it's part of the politics of the country we're at the threshold of one of the most important days of the year and that's May Day the 1st of May May Day it's a history that starts in Chicago Illinois it's a history of workers Zoe what are you planning to do on May Day 2021 well this May Day is of course very different from other May Days as May Day was last year I think last year we were just starting to hunger down after a couple months of lockdown okay yeah looks like we won't be able to march I think similar similar vision towards this year you know of course some of the most historic moments of the workers movement across the world you know happened on May Day of course in Cuba you know that incredible hundreds of thousands of people on the main avenues sadly one of the things that you know the COVID-19 pandemic has taken from us and working class movements is our ability to mass mobilize that being said there's still a lot of things to look forward to because while we can't gather in these ways the struggle of the movements continues our struggle for emancipation and our struggle for rights continues across the world I personally will be going to the People's Forum and there's going to be you know a book fair um they have some amazing new bookstore that was opened gonna be you know paying attention to the actions that are happening across the world of course again most people in most countries will not be able to go out in the traditional format but also I think it's a day to reflect you know and take stock you know we're in of course the last couple of years the crisis of capitalism the crisis of neoliberal capitalism has been deepening we see workers organized in places that historically they've never been organized we published a great article this week by Taroa Zuniga about work or about delivery drivers and about you know people who are intentionally divided in their workplace intentionally individualized by their employers not given any rights but overcome that in our organizing and our fighting for their rights our fighting for collective recognition and these are the stories that need to be inspiring us I wanted to hear from both of you before we end up today where are we where are we drawing this inspiration from Prashant what's going on for you with I'm sure it's got to be the farmers revolt what else absolutely yeah I mean I think that probably the highlight of this year has definitely been that because uh you know the possibility of workers and farmers not just the possibility the reality of workers and farmers agitating together striking together pushing back against the Modi government's policies together has been one of the key stories of the year in India and I think I guess this unity is something that is not just a product of this struggle but of multiple struggles over the past few years this unity is something that a lot of the media does not cover because there is a tendency in India perhaps maybe in other parts of the world due to do focus on the farmers struggle by ignoring you know the movements by the workers probably because workers movements are in that sense a bit more difficult to explain to their audiences whereas you can always to some extent romanticize the farmers movements but the farmers and workers are very clear about it that there is a joint struggle and it has to keep continuing so definitely the highlight of the year and as for tomorrow I think my answer to what I'll be doing is pretty much what yours is going to be as well which is I'll leave that to you well yes exactly from 4 p.m. Indian Standard Time Prashant and I will be watching Pranjal of NewsClick open the innings at Leftward Books and Mayday Bookstore interviewing Sainath I'll be interviewing Satyajit Rath, Prabir Purkayastha and Tejal about the vaccine situation the day will go on and we'll have a panel round table panel with farmer leaders who are in the thick of this movement also songs from the farmer agitation join us on Mayday at Mayday Bookstore and Leftward Books it's of course going to be broadcast on the various channels that you can go out there because you're smarter than us and find out where this is happening the day starts very special beginning Pranjal talking to Sainath about the farmer's agitation it ends with to be announced which is always mesmerizing to be announced is one of the great acts of the 21st century you've been watching give the people what they want with Prashant and Zoe from People's Dispatch that's peoplesdispatch.org go read it every day terrific stories each and every day including terrific videos our producer Surangya is a major star there because she produces and stars with her voice in a number of videos if you don't know what she looks like because she hides during the show go listen to her voice on some of the videos I'm Vijay from Globetrotter at globetrotter.media we don't really have a website where a syndication service figure it out we'll join you again next Friday this is your favorite show we know that we come to you every Friday with a little taste of what's happening around the world a little touch of the dialectic tell your friends about give the people what they want join us again next Friday thanks a lot and see you then and happy international workers day