 Give the people. Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Your weekly movement news roundup. Well, it's the 20th of January 2023. Thus far this year, I've not made a mistake with the year, which is unusual for me because generally I wait till March to get the year sorted out, but it is 2023. You always give the people what they want brought to you from people's dispatch. That's Prashant and Zoe. I'm Vijay from Globetrotter. Happy to be with you. The Oxford Financial Famine Group, Oxfam, which was set up really several years ago, decades ago, has in the last few years become a key resource to talk about things having to do with inequality and so on. They've got a new report out. Prashant, it's really familiar stuff, but what's in it? Vijay, of course, the report is titled very aptly Survival of the Richest. Survival is probably not the right word here because the rest of the report talks about how the rich are definitely doing more than surviving. They're thriving on the backs of everyone else. But some of the numbers, I think, of course, have been repeated quite a bit over the past week and for viewers of this show are very familiar because it's one of those topics we keep talking about, of course. Oxfam has this ability to bring together and contrast bits of information which really point to the extent of the crisis of inequality that is rampant in this world. If you look at the headline number, it is a fact that from 2020 of the wealth that was created, 63% has been captured by the richest people. That's the top 1%, while it's only 37% that the rest of the world has been able to get. And I think the word captured is used in a very advisedly because otherwise it doesn't make any logical sense. The fact that just 1% is able to sort of expropriate 63% of that wealth is a staggering number. And it's important to note that this is not just about one or two years, this is a trend. This is a worsening of a trend because over the past decade it was about 50%. Now we're seeing it going into the 60s and this really does not board well for a planet in crisis, for a society in crisis as a whole. And there are lots of other numbers as well. And I think it's very important to note some of these numbers, the fact that for every $1 of global wealth that was owned by a person in the bottom 90%, a billionaire gained $1.7 million. So that's really a contrast. So the fact that a billionaire gains about $2.7 billion a day in terms of their wealth through the course of a year. But I think equally important is to actually look at some of the other aspects of it, which may not get as much attention, which has to do with taxes. And this is a really, really key aspect of what Oxfam has been talking about. And I think what activists across the world have been talking about this. We talk a lot about the strikes that are going on. We saw around the strikes in France yesterday, UK, of course, roiled by strikes, but not just Europe, for instance, protests in Tunisia, protests in Sri Lanka, protests in Latin America. And so many of these places, the common slogan that emerges is that when governments say that, hey, we don't have the money and so we have to do austerity policies, hey, we don't have the money, we have to cut jobs. We can't give you more. I think the one thing everywhere people ask is why don't you tax the rich? And what the Oxfam report does is actually provide some of these numbers as well, which for instance, they give the example of Elon Musk who's paying a true tax rate of about 3% between 2014 and 2018. Whereas you have Floorwender and Uganda who makes $80 a month and pays a tax rate of about 40%. And that example itself is kind of instructive. But equally more I think is something which Oxfam has pointed out before, which is what happens if you actually put not even a huge tax, no one is talking about seize the rich or expropriate all their wealth or anything of that sort. But even a 5% tax on the world's multimillionaires and billionaires could raise just $1.7 trillion a year. That's a huge number, $1.7 trillion. We talked about it in the context of the climate crisis where the rich countries were supposedly not able to provide $100 billion a year. And this can raise just $1.7 trillion. And what can this $1.7 trillion do? It can lift 2 billion people out of poverty, fund shortfalls on humanity and appeals, address hunger, address issues of climate change, etc. So much can be done with this $1.7 trillion. All it takes is just a 5% tax. So I think this really is one of the most important political questions of our time at this point that how long can the system endure with how long can society endure without the super rich being taxed or without the super rich actually being able to rate taxes in many countries. For instance, there's a number which says that in so many countries there's barely any inheritance tax, which means that an amount around the GDP of Africa is being passed on as inheritance to a next generation of oligarchs and plutocrats. So that really sort of shows the fact that this is not just 2023's problem or 2022's problem, but a problem that is going to go on for decades right now. So that's where we are at with the Oxfam report, depressing numbers. But to be honest, nothing really new for people who have been following this, following this struggles across the world. It's worth reading that report. I must say it's pretty shocking. And if you want a little video on it, our producer Surangia has a little explainer at the People's Dispatch website. Go check that out. Meanwhile, in Argentina, Zoe, there's a meeting of CELAC, Community of Latin American and Caribbean Countries. Brazil was one of the authors of CELAC. Seems to be happy days. Brazil is back. What's happening in Argentina at the CELAC meeting? Well, this Tuesday, January 24th is going to be the summit of CELAC under the presidency of Argentina under Alberto Fernandez. This is an exciting moment and it's drawing a lot of attention, both nationally within Argentina. There's been a lot of the right-wing opposition, especially given that this is an election year. They're definitely capitalizing on it to attack Alberto, especially because of the participants. I'll get into that after. But one of probably the biggest exciting parts about this summit is that it's coming after the significant victories across Latin America. And largely, as you said, Brazil being one of the founders and the largest country in South America in the region is a huge advancement. So, under Bolsonaro, they had withdrawn from this regional integration platform. And so the return of Brazil really opens up many opportunities. It has the largest economy in the region. And so it can help advance many proposals forward. And it's giving a new breath of life into this mechanism, which already had been on the rise, especially at a time when the OAS, the Organization of American States, is kind of seen with so much disdain. And of course, we can see the flop of the Summit of the Americas in June as part of this. Luis Almagro is actually not invited to CELAC. He's not invited to participate. So that is notable. And also in this CELAC, Nicolas Maduro, who has not had many international trips in the region, is going to participate. And this is extremely significant because for a while, Venezuela was essentially surrounded by enemies. Brazil, Colombia, so many different countries in the region who all came together, of course, in the Lima group who had been attacking Venezuela, calling Nicolas Maduro an illegitimate leader. And with the return of these progressive governments, many of them have resumed ties with Maduro, have resumed ties with the constitutional government of Venezuela. And so Maduro's return to the space in representation as the head of state is also a huge advancement. And it will definitely strengthen and fortify this already reactivation of ties with the constitutional government. That's definitely noteworthy. And then, as I said, so there's been a lot of national controversy within Argentina. Of course, we know on one hand, this is an election year. And on the other hand, it's a moment of extreme economic crisis for Argentina, which has deep root causes, which are not necessarily linked to Alberto Fernandez, but of course the pandemic, the debt that they have with the IMF. But the far right in Argentina is essentially capitalizing on this moment to say that, to boycott CELAC, saying that it's going to be a summit of dictators, that they're pulling out the red carpet for all these dictators, et cetera, really using this to attack Maduro, Daniel Ortega, and the Cuban representation. So it's definitely a heated moment. There's also going to be a parallel summit that the social movements in Argentina are organizing, as they always do when there's a big international event in the country. They're going to discuss the integration of the people, the pressing issues in Latin America. And it's also important to point out that this is a moment of great upheaval in Latin America. We see just bordering Argentina in Bolivia, there's been ongoing crisis with the arrest of Luis Fernando Camacho, the far right leader behind the coup. Other charges have been pressed against Janine Añez, but it's a touch and go situation. The right is very angry. And of course, just to the other, on the other border, we have Peru, which is of course undergoing a coup situation. So important time for Latin America, an important time for leaders to come together and evaluate, assess the situation at hand. We're going to stay with Latin America, actually, because that seems to be where a lot of the action is. The UNESCO, the UN Education, Scientific, Cultural Organization has released a report, the 2021-22 freedom of expression report. Very interesting stuff comes out about a year after Mexican journalists took to the streets in very large protests against the killings in Mexico. Mexico, by the way, in this report, registers the highest number of murder of journalists by number. Last year, People's Dispatch ran a story by Tania Wadhwa about these protests. I urge you to go back, take a look at it. You'll get a little sense of what Mexico has been gripped by, but this report is pretty outstanding from UNESCO because it shows that this last year, 2022, there were 86 reported journalists killed in the year. Now, I want to say a thing about that for a second because there are many more journalists who are under various forms of intimidation, imprison their freedom of expression, suppressed in one way or the other. If you want to have a record of that, you can just go to, for instance, the People's Dispatch search engine and type attacks on journalists or killing of journalists. There's a statement up there in defense of Haitian journalists who per capita actually are the greatest challenge. There are nine killed last year, but that you've got to see per capita is very high for Haiti. Again, I just want to emphasize that these killing numbers, I think, are actually deflated. The situation is much worse than that, but this is instructive. Last year, 86 recorded killings of journalists. The previous year, 2021, it was only, and I'm sorry to use the word only, it was only 55. That means that the killings of journalists almost doubled between 2021 and 2022. That's pretty astounding. The UNESCO report is pretty strong and it calls this trend alarming. Now, if you know the United Nations, you know that the language is pretty careful because these are consensus documents, but here we go. They called it alarming. It is indeed alarming. 86 journalists killed last year. Among them, let's not forget the Palestinian American journalist, Shireen Abu Akle, who was assassinated in Janine. In fact, her funeral cortege was also attacked in the gates of Jerusalem, attacked by Israeli military forces. This is before the far-right wing Israeli government took office at the end of 2022. This is under the so-called more liberal variant of Israeli politics. I'd like to emphasize that and the killers or the investigation of the death of Shireen Abu Akle barely off the ground. So she is one of the statistics in here. 86 journalists killed last year, 44 of them in Latin America and the Caribbean. The highest number in all the continents also happens to be half the number of journalists killed last year or reported to be killed last year. As I said, there are many others whose deaths are not part of the statistics or the official statistics, but still, again, it's a trend line. 50% of journalists killed were killed in Latin America and the Caribbean, 19 of them in Mexico. So out of 44 killed in Latin America and the Caribbean, half of them killed in Mexico. Those protests from last year, they were protests about the killings in 2021 before these 19 people were killed, most of them in the line of duty. UNESCO is careful in the report. They mentioned that a number of the journalists in this database were killed while they were off duty, but it says that a number of them were targeted for killing. These were not random killings. Fake news or the kind of use of social media to go after a journalist, to demonize the journalist, leads to some of these killings when they are off duty. That's something to pay attention to. It's very interesting how journalists get pilloried online. They get humiliated and so on for merely reporting a story. We see this in many countries around the world, the kind of targeting of journalists within the confines of social media and how that then departs from social media into attacks and so on and killings. Lots of attacks against journalists. Again, these are killings that I'm talking about, not the attacks per se. Haiti at number nine, please go to the People's Dispatch site, look and circulate that statement written by a number of people about the killings of Haitian journalists and asking people to stand with Haitian journalists. Well, you're with, give the people what they want, coming to you from People's Dispatch and from Globetrotter. Happy to be with you every week. Always looking forward to more and more of your selfies so that we can get a visual image of you watching our show. We love that, really. It's one of the delights at least of my day. As I said, staying with Latin America. Zoe already mentioned at the border, Peru and so on. At the border, Peru, Zoe, what is happening in that country? Well, yesterday in Peru, there was a massive mobilization in Lima, tens of thousands of people, also mobilizations in the south of the country as part of a national strike, January 19th. Also under the banner of the March of the Four Corners of Peru, this was the second version of this march, and essentially it saw caravans of thousands of people coming from the southern Andean region above all, but also from the north, also from the Amazonian region, coming and converging on Lima, bringing their political demands and making sure that the seat of power, which right now is the de facto government of Dina Boluarte, listens to their demands. They have been on the streets for over a month since Pedro Castillo was taken out in the legislative coup by the far-right parliament. They've been on the streets demanding the immediate resignation of the de facto Dina Boluarte, demanding the closure of Congress, immediate elections, and a constituent assembly. And so far, the government of Dina Boluarte, what she has done is kill over 50 people who have been participating in these protests, but actually some of the people who have been killed in the context of this violent repression haven't even been in the protests. They've been walking by, they've been coming back from work, but it basically has been to unleash horrific violence against the people of her country to go on national TV and call them criminals to say that these are illegal acts, to say that the public force has to respond in this way. Meanwhile, the media is saying that the police are confronting the criminals that want to destroy the country. It's a really, again, we keep going back to this story because it's so important to pay attention to. With just over one month and 50 people killed is not business as usual, is not the way that things should be going. The U.S. Embassy has released a statement yesterday after giving complete support to the government Dina Boluarte calling for peace and specifically saying that these violent protests should no longer be taking place. I think it's interesting where they're putting the blame of the violence. They expressed concern for the victims of the fatal violence of the police, but this is the situation. It's very concerning. Alongside these massive mobilizations, alongside this brutal repression of the people on the streets with tear gas, with live bullets, they're also engaging in a campaign of very dangerous criminalization of left leaders. We've seen many different headquarters and offices of left organizations in the country been raided. Someone we actually spoke to while on the ground in Peru and Ayacucho, Rocio Melgar, she has been arrested, accused of terrorism and instigating these protests. Other leaders have been, as you said, using social media, far right trolls, going after journalists, going after left leaders and all of this is happening. And for Dina Boguarte, the problem is the protesters, the problem is that they're caring, they have unreasonable demands and that they're engaging in violent protests. So it's very concerning. I think it will definitely be a matter of discussion at the CELAC summit. I'm sure it will come up. It is unlikely. I don't think that Dina Boguarte was invited to participate in this. I'm unclear if there will be a delegation from the foreign ministry, but this is something we have to continue looking out for. The people show no signs of giving up the streets. Everything that happens is only emboldened in their protests and given them more reasons to continue. So we're going to be following this at People's Dispatch, of course. Well, it's a very important story and we're not going to let this go for sure. I agree with you. Meanwhile, of course, in Northeast Asia, Prashant, the South Korean government, which is a government led by a man who is pretty reckless with his statements, almost inviting nuclear weapons into the country and so on. They've been going after people's movements. I was there in the outskirts of Seoul where the truckers were on strike, a very large strike which really hit the country and now it seems that the government is intensifying things. Tell us what's happening to the Korean trade unions. Right. Of course, before going to Korea, it's interesting to note that recently the president of Indonesia has expressed regret for the crimes committed by the Indonesian state at various points of time, including the brutal massacre of communist activists in the 60s about anywhere between 500,000 to 1,000 million people killed. And what we're seeing in South Korea, interestingly, is a law which also sort of dates back to that era and has pretty much the same kind of instinct, so to speak. So the triggering incident, of course, was the one we're talking about is the raid on the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, one of the largest in the country. And this happened a few days ago. And interestingly, the charge that was leveled against the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions was basically the charges involved violating what is called the National Security Act of 1948. Now it's important to remember a law like this passed during the height of the Cold War. And it's one of those laws which basically give blanket permission to the government to make association saying that any of your critics are somehow associated with communism. And in this case, of course, North Korea, et cetera, et cetera. So the KCTO has been in the forefront of many of the struggles in recent times. And now suddenly, the executives are including and the affiliates including one of the unions which works in the health sector are being charged with, you know, the violation of national security. In fact, the raid was carried out not just by the police, but also by the National Intelligence Service which kind of indicates, you know, the gravity of the situation. Now it's important to note that this is not just an isolated instance. Just that in the recent past, there have been other instances of activists, grassroots activists also being targeted with the accusation, with some bizarre accusations of there being some kind of aspiring where, you know, the attempt is to somehow, I don't know, the attempt is to somehow bring, you know, say some popularized North Korea. I don't know what the idea is, but that's kind of what the allegation has been. And, you know, if you look at the law, for instance, there are sections which talk about criminalizing meeting with North Korean officials or praising or promoting North Korea and communism, et cetera, et cetera. Now it's important to remember that just during the previous government of Moon Jae-in, there was actually a substantial effort to normalize ties with North Korea, and that was actually widely hailed across the world because this is definitely already a very dangerous zone. It has been made worse by the fact that the United States has intervened with its new Cold War approach. So the fact that at that point of time, there were peace initiatives was actually a very positive thing. But this government has completely scaled back on that, and now his basic is indulging in this old Cold War rhetoric of, say, trying to paint North Korea as some kind of evil villain which internal critics are cooperating with. And I think in India and many parts of the world, we sort of know what these kind of allegations and these kind of cases mean because suddenly somehow critics of the government are tagged with the allegation of being, you know, in hand and glove with some foreign elements, and then the case takes entirely different dynamics. So very dangerous point in South Korea at this point of time, like you said, under the current president, that's Yusuf Kiol. On the one hand, he's been extremely unpopular. His popularity ratings are very low. There's been an economic crisis. There have been many strikes in various sectors, including the truckers. At the same time, he's gone around, talked with very extreme rhetoric, tried to expand the defense cooperation with the United States, taken a very aggressive stance on global and regional issues. So all this together means a very bad time for that region which is, like I said, a very dangerous, which is truly a flashpoint in global terms. So this internal crackdown is absolutely not going to help with that and we have to see what's going to happen in this case in the coming weeks as well. Very important. We keep up with this because it's part of the intensification. It seems to me of conflict in Northeast Asia with Japan, for instance, with its more pointed militarism, maybe even getting rid of sections of its constitution, Article 9 that blocked Japan from having an offensive posture and so on. Let's pivot a little bit to the western part of Africa, not West Africa itself to... Well, it's hard to tell this story because if you're a news professional, you'd write that there's a clash on the Nigeria-Cameron border. Technically, that's probably true, although since 2017, there's been a struggle within Cameroon which has both a very large French-speaking population and then in what is sometimes called Southern Cameroon or Ambazonia, there is an English-speaking population. Well, in 2017, Ambazonia declared independence and in insurgency or war broke out on the borderlands between what was known as Ambazonia to the people who broke away and the government of Cameroon, a war that the United Nations said has displaced 750,000 people and killed a shocking 3,500 to 4,000 people. I want you to actually just pause with those numbers because those are shockingly high numbers for deaths in war, shockingly high numbers for displacement of people, but I'm going to lay a bet with our viewers and listeners that they absolutely have never heard of the war within the Cameroon. I bet they've never heard that despite the fact that Cameroon only comes or maybe because of the fact Cameroon only appears in international news when it comes to its football team which is a very good football team, but this conflict has gone under the radar for the international media largely the conflict between Ambazonia and Cameroon. Well, in recent months that has not abated at all. It's hot it up. One would have imagined again because it is hot it up, it would get some attention, but not at all. Well, at the borderlands between Cameroon, Ambazonia and Nigeria there is another problem which is that there are hurting communities in Nigeria. The Fulani and others who don't actually have an understanding why there's a border between their grazing lands and so on. And they've routinely crossed the border. Now I want to also inform people that in 2018 the African Union passed a remarkable text and I'm going to read the entire title of the text. It's called Protocol to the Treaty establishing the African Economic Community relating to free movement of persons right of resident and right of establishment. In fact, this protocol even talks of something called an African passport. I'm not saying that the Fulani herders and others actually not just Fulani herders but the Fulani herders largely from Tarabu and Benui. I'm not saying that Benui, Fulani were carrying African passports but nonetheless they have walked this land for a very long time. So they crossed over in search of I guess grazing lands and so on. They went over in search of food for cattle, food for themselves and so on. The rebel groups or the Amazonian military forces demanded taxation. Now this is interesting. The herders refused to pay taxes and about a clash took place where several of the rebels were killed, some of the Fulani were killed. Well, the herders returned back home to Nigeria and they assembled a much larger force and then they crossed the border again with this very large force and attacked the rebel groups. Well, as part of this clash between Nigerian herders and Amazonian forces, well, the Cameroon government took advantage of the situation and deployed more troops to this area intensifying the struggle. I must say this is not the first time that there's been a clash between Nigerian herders or Nigerian merchants and these groups in Amazonia. This is not the first time. In June of 2022, I recall very well thinking of actually going to that area and writing some stories because the town of Acquire had been attacked when it is believed that Amazonian forces came in and they killed about 30 people. They crossed the border, killed about 30 people including herders, merchants and others, shopkeepers and so on. This is an interesting story. I'm going to actually be following this up with some interest because I think that these wars outside Europe are getting absolutely no coverage and that's why you join us every week and give the people what they want which is brought to you by people's dispatch. That's Prashant. That's Zoe. I'm Vijay from Globe Trotter. See you next week.