 Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Your weekly movement news round up. Welcome to September. It's a strange day because it's our 43rd episode and you've joined us on Give the People What They Want with Prashant and Zoe from People's Dispatch and me Vijay from Globetrotter. It's a strange day because we're going to have a show where a number of our stories are going to be about the United States. It's very unusual for us but important. We're going to lead off with a hurricane. Now, when I heard Hurricane Ida is coming to strike Louisiana, New Orleans again at the epicenter, I thought immediately Zoe of Hurricane Ida from 2009. These names recycle. But tell us now about Hurricane Ida from 2021. Devastation not only in New Orleans but of course up the eastern seaboard. Yes. Well, I mean, I think it's telling because Hurricane Ida not only has been a hurricane before but it also struck on the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina which devastated Louisiana, devastated the Gulf Coast area in 2005 caused over 1,800 deaths, hundreds of thousand dollars in infrastructure damages, hundreds of thousands of people lost their homes. Hurricane Ida I think in the Gulf Coast region, there wasn't as extensive damage but the warning came really late for people to evacuate and the storm just rolled into hit. Louisiana was the fifth most strong storm that has hit the U.S. in recent history. Over a million people were left without power. They still hundreds of thousands continue without power today. The death toll so far from this storm in Louisiana was around 12 people who were killed in different sorts of incidents that happened among storms being hit by debris, being hit by structures, drowning, which is all really, really horrible. And part of this that was happening in Louisiana was because the governor issued this warning, this storm is coming, it's going to be really strong kind of too late, far too little, far too late. Wasn't even able to issue the order for people to evacuate from their homes because there wasn't time. They said people should evacuate if they can but really they had no ground, they had no ability to do the massive evacuation that would have been necessary to save those 12 people's lives. And people continue to languish in New Orleans without power. The south is extremely hot region, extremely humid, so people are suffering without fans, without AC. It's a truly difficult situation and unfortunately Hurricane Ida didn't stop in the south gulf of the United States. It continued moving up to the northeast where I'm currently located in New York City. And it's interesting because people knew that's where the storm was headed. People knew the storm was going to head, you can clearly see in the weather patterns, maybe people were unprepared for to head towards Louisiana but they knew exactly that it was coming towards the northeast. And the storm hit on Wednesday, you know, torrential downpours, really, really, really strong rain that was occurring. You know, of course, the storm winds which are, you know, one of the real dangers of hurricanes had of course decreased. It was just this tropical storm but it released, you know, enormous amounts of water, record breaking levels of rain in the city. And it was, it was, you know, horrible. At around 10 p.m., only around 10 p.m. after it had been raining already for hours, the city issued the first ever flash flood warning. You know, so everyone's phone lights up and it says, you must go home, do not leave, don't travel anywhere. And it's like, okay, we'll have to sit, you know, millions of people are on the street in the subway in various different places. And then what happened is that, you know, floods began to happen. You know, with these high rainfalls, basement apartments were flooding and people were told to stay in their homes. And as a result of this, in New York and New Jersey, at least 43 people were killed. They drowned to death in these, you know, very precarious living situations. They were unable to escape. There wasn't emergency services available. And it's tragic. It's, you know, this is the richest city, the richest cities in the world, and the city was unable to save its people who just, you know, were trapped in their basement apartments because they can't afford better living conditions. So I think this is, you know, really a tragic situation, horrible for all of these people whose lives were lost. And of course the next day it's sunny. It's almost as if it didn't happen. But of course these people, these 43 people who died in New York and New Jersey, you know, were not able to be saved by the city and yeah, it's very unfortunate. Going from one of the richest cities in the world to what is increasingly becoming one of the poorest cities in the world, Kabul in Afghanistan where flower prices, the price of the most important staple has begun to escalate where the cutoff of funds from the IMF and the World Bank are sinking the Afghani. Please bear in mind friends that 40% of Afghanistan's money supply came from foreign aid and that has been cut off. Donor money has been cut off, humanitarian money has been cut off, NGO money cut off, IMF money cut off, World Bank money cut off, and now Afghanistan's own reserves of its central banks stuck, $9.6 billion stuck in New York banks cut off. They don't have any money to buy basic things. The country is in prefall. The UN has said that children under five in total are severely malnutrition. Half the population doesn't know. And here's a direct quote from the UN. More than half of Afghan children do not know whether they'll have a meal tonight or not. The UN is requesting $200 million of emergency funding, $6 million. Imagine that. Out of the $2.26 trillion that the United States spent during the course of this at least 20-year occupation of Afghanistan, the situation ugly, no government yet in Kabul. This is important. Unless the Taliban is able to create some sort of government, the government of Afghanistan is going to be having a hard time to make a claim on funds. And because there's no government, institutions are falling apart. Nobody is running the institutions and so on. So nobody is being able to organize prices. Nobody is being able to tackle the food inflation in the marketplace and so on. Banks remain closed. They worry that the economy is going to contract is extraordinarily significant. There are clashes taking place in various parts of Afghanistan, including in the Panjshir Valley where the former vice president is holed up trying to make a deal through the Russians to somehow de-escalate the situation. There's no joy there. No apparent de-escalation possible. Statements coming from the Taliban about their allies in Pakistan, the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan looks like we're going to see now intensified militant activity in the Pashtun borderlands in Waziristan, in northern Baluchistan and so on. It's an ugly situation and it's already beginning to disappear from the front page of the news. It's already beginning to disappear from the front page of the news. For instance, in Europe, what's the conversation? Not the open so of Afghanistan. The conversation now in Europe is whether the Europeans can trust the United States for security and whether the Europeans should spend more money. Here, bear this in mind. Spend more money not to shore up Afghan people's lives, not to shore up the food situation, but whether the Europeans should spend more money to bolster their own military. This was a demand made by the Donald Trump administration of NATO that the Europeans need to increase military spending to 10% of GDP, that the Europeans need to finance NATO, that the Europeans need to build up their own collective security. This is an old idea inside Europe. It hasn't gone anywhere, but that's the discussion in Europe, not how to shore up the Afghani, not how to help the Afghan people. Meanwhile, the Taliban has been speaking to the Chinese, the Taliban speaking to the Russians, to the Pakistanis, Indians and others, not clear what the path forward is. A lot of pressure on Mullah Baradar and his colleagues to have a unity government, a lot of pressure. We'll be watching this closely. We are interested at give the people what they want on the politics of Afghanistan, not on the ongoing autopsy of what went wrong. We're interested in who's there in Kabul? Who's there in Kandahar? Who's there in Herat? What kind of government will they create? What kind of situation will come forward? If you just look southeast of Kabul, look at what's happening on the street of Bangkok. So many people on the street. They are interested in politics. They are not just there to be photographed. Prashant, what's happening in Thailand? What's the big story coming off the streets of Bangkok? Right, Vijay. Right now, Thailand is going through a fresh wave of protests. We've been talking about this on this show. We talked about it quite a few times, of course, because this has been a process going on for a very long time. A lot of players in it, a lot of agendas in it. But I think fundamentally, the key thing to note is that Thailand continues to be ruled by a government, a military junta supported government, which came to power in 2014 through a coup. It continues, the junta continues to support a monarch who has a huge amount of powers insulting the monarch. Anything which looks like an insult to the monarch continues to be a crime which can lead to very heavy punishments. And this was one of the factors that spurred a round of protests last year in August 2020. And it was begun by university students. This year marked the first anniversary of that. But August also saw a massive increase in COVID-19 cases. And this is very important to note because I think, oh, July and August saw hundreds and thousands of, hundreds of thousands of cases being added right now. The total number of cases has crossed 1 million. The number of fatal cases has crossed 11,000. And a lot of this has happened in the very recent time period. So basically we have seen protests against the junta government, against the power of the monarchy also sort of coalescing with protests on the handling of the COVID-19 crisis. And currently there is a no confidence motion against the prime minister and five of his colleagues, including the public health minister for the handling of the crisis. So we have seen protests on August 31, September 2, on the round of protests. No confidence vote is shooting for tomorrow. Now it's expected that the government is going to win because they've really failed the Senate with representatives of, you know, allies in the military. They have a comfortable majority in the House of Representatives. But what the opposition is looking for, what the protesters are looking for is a discussion on the failures of the government, which is actually only militarized, you know, the whole country further during the period of the pandemic. And this is a trend that we've seen, of course, in many other parts of the world. There is a report which says that over 260 people were arrested in August alone. Many of these veteran protesters who had been to prison, been granted bail and again were arrested after that on various charges. There's been a huge concern about the use of rubber bullets and the suppression of protests that are taking place. The people in Thailand, of course, resorting to a number of, for instance, huge car rallies are now the way of protesting because of the COVID-19 pandemic in order to avoid the proximity that protests might bring. A lot of people taking out a car mob rallies or what they call car mob rallies in very, at least five places in August 31st. So what we're seeing right now is an attempt to bring some kind of accountability to the government's handling, as well as the resurrection of these, the demands that have been, you know, driving the protests so far, which is that the law against insulting the monarchy be withdrawn, activists who are being arrested for criticizing the government and the monarchy be released and that there be a further democratization of society. So Thailand has remained one of the important processes in Southeast Asia over the past one to two years. And like I said, there's a lot of, you know, there are a lot of questions about, you know, what are the aims of various sections of the protesters? But I think what we can agree on right now is the fact that the current ruling system is extraordinarily oppressive and is supporting a set of values which are completely inimical to the rights and needs of the people. So that's really where we are with Thailand right now. I think in the coming months, what we're probably going to see is definitely further rounds of escalation. The COVID-19 crisis is still continuing. The cases are still quite high and it is expected that the coming months, that is September, October, might also see a further increase in cases. So at which point it really becomes, and we have seen a number of governments, whether it be India, whether it be Brazil, whether it be the United States, all of them facing these kinds of questions on, you know, what is, how do you respond to the pandemic? Do you respond by cracking down on civil liberties? Do you respond by denialism? Do you respond by blaming the opposition? Or do you actually try to have some kind of, you know, an open community-based approach to the pandemic? And Thailand clearly is definitely in the first camp in the way it has been responding. So that's where we are at now. Extraordinary, extraordinary. It's a very important story and I hope people will be following it. You're listening to Give the People What They Want, coming to you from People's Dispatch. That's peoplesdispatch.org. We're always joined every Friday. The three of us, two of you, Prashant and Zoe, co-editors of People's Dispatch. I'm Vijay from Globetrotter. Always happy to be with you. Just to remind you, it's September the 3rd, 2021. It's important that you remember that it's 2021. Saudi Arabia with the United Arab Emirates has been at war against the people of Yemen since 2014. That's 2014. We are in 2021. This is a seven-year war which has yielded no fruit for Saudi Arabia, one of the richest countries in the world, clobbering one of the poorest countries in the world. Yemen, my friends, a population of roughly 29 million people, a very small country, has about 20 million people who are in humanitarian distress. About 18-19 million of them are in a situation of extreme hunger crisis. That's the situation on the ground in Yemen. Across the border, Saudi Arabia, one of the main antagonists of the people of Yemen is facing an economic crisis during this pandemic. They're struggling to pivot out of their oil dependence and so on. Their effective ruler, Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince who's been driving the war in Yemen, has been seeking an exit from this because he's made several, several grotesque errors in the way that he's dealt not only with Yemen, but also accelerated the tension between Yemen and between Saudi Arabia and Iran. This is a very significant issue. At least since 2016, the heat has been up. No communication formally between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Well, it was interesting this Saturday in Baghdad where there was a regional summit called by president of Iraq, Mustafa al-Khadmi. He calls a regional summit. It is attended by both Saudi Arabia and Iran. Iran's new foreign minister makes an appearance. This is significant. The fact that Hussein Amir Abdul Han comes to Baghdad, he meets privately with the Saudis. A very significant development. The Iraqi government hasn't said exactly what was discussed between Iran and Saudi Arabia, but there was a discussion. Now, we should take some comfort in the fact that they're at least talking to each other. Then, Mr. Abdullah Han went to Damascus. He met with Bashar al-Assad of Syria. They had a set of conversations on Sunday before he returned home. Now, why is all this important? It's important, my friends, because you see, Iran is in the process of trying to reopen a conversation, a dialogue with the United States, the Europeans, and so on, to bring the United States back fully into a process for the so-called nuclear deal. Now, what the Iranians have made clear is they violated nothing when Trump withdrew from the deal. They don't believe they need to give any concessions. The Biden administration is politically in a really tough place, because how do they just return to a process without seeming to be tough as it were? Because after all, we're talking about the United States, which has this problem of needing to be tough in diplomacy. The Iranians are interested in Vienna and having this conversation, advancing the dialogue of returning to the protocols of the deal that was made. Abdullah Han is known as a man of the so-called hard right of Iran. I think this categorization of moderate and extremist in Iran is very misleading. Certainly he has the backing of the supreme leader and so on, and therefore he has legitimacy in the negotiations. I think that's a better way to see it. He is more legitimate politically. Mr. Zarif played a card where it appeared that he didn't have legitimacy, because he threatened to resign and so on. I don't think this is accurate to consider Iranian politics hardline and moderate. I think it's more accurate to say that he has the full support of the supreme leader. Mr. Amar Hussein, Abdullah Han, certainly seems to have the full support. This is a good period for the United States to return to the process to engage Iran. I think it's very important to see Saudi Arabia having recognized its defeat in Yemen, a mirror of the U.S. defeat in Afghanistan, having recognized its defeat in Yemen, Saudi Arabia opening up this dialogue with Iran. Keep an eye on this as we will. It's not clear yet what Israel will do, and I think this is the significant wild card in the entire thing. What will Naftali Bennett do? What was the deal that Naftali Bennett cut with Joe Biden when Mr. Bennett was in Washington, D.C.? Not clear about that. Not sure what the signs are coming out of Israel regarding the rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia, but it's a hopeful development for West Asia, and it's a hopeful development for Afghanistan, as we will see in the months ahead, because Saudi Arabia are a major backer, initially in 1996 of the Taliban. Let's see if they're able to take a seat at the table. Right now in Kabul, it's not the Saudis at the table. It's the Qataris and the Turks, and that's the story I'm going to come back to you next week. An important and significant story. We're going to return now to the United States to the great state of Texas. What's happening in that great state? You can't say the word Texas, Zoe, without saying the great state of Texas. What's happening in the great state of Texas? Well, you're absolutely right. I think we can thank George Bush for that. But, you know, there's been a lot of attention on Texas. People have been talking a lot about Texas, the Supreme Court, and it is important to talk about this because this was a really major development. The Supreme Court of the U.S. upheld a law that was signed into the Texas legislature in May 2021, which is called the Heartbeat Bill. And this bill, which is now a law, essentially completely bars access to abortion services to anyone. And also, not only that, but also makes it quite dangerous to access abortion services. And so, essentially, it bans all abortions from happening after six weeks of pregnancy. And, you know, six weeks is an extremely early period. I mean, a lot of people do not know they're pregnant at six weeks of pregnancy, especially if it's an unplanned pregnancy. And then the law also says that, you know, individuals can file suits against anyone who's suspected of, you know, taking part in an abortion, aiding an abortion, which essentially, you know, completely criminalizes the whole process without doing so. And this law, which was met, has been met with, you know, tremendous backlash for the past couple of months, because as I mentioned, this was, you know, introduced and passed in May, was upheld by the Supreme Court. They said, well, there may be elements that are, you know, unconstitutional, knowing that, you know, Roe v. Wade was passed in 1973, which was, of course, a landmark decision which granted abortion access. They said that, you know, it's a little complicated. And because of the nature, the complex nature of Texas laws, you know, it wasn't necessarily against these things. So this law was upheld by the Supreme Court, which effectively means that it can be put into impact, because a lot of other states, actually, Texas is not the only state that's tried and successfully has passed a law that restricts abortion in such a way. You know, 13 other states have similar laws, but have been struck down by courts. And, you know, what's interesting to note, which I think, you know, reproductive health advocates have been highlighting is that, you know, the barriers that existed already to access abortion in Texas to access an abortion before six weeks are already extremely high. So, for example, the Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice, you know, they gave a testimony to the U.S. Senate in June to talk about the necessity to pass a law that really protects access to healthcare. And they said that in order to get an abortion in Texas, you have to go through medically unnecessary sonogram, receive counseling, then wait 24 hours, and then go to the clinic and get the abortion. And so, you know, these are huge barriers to people who are, you know, when someone seeks an abortion, they're in a situation of, you know, oftentimes of need of, you know, complicated circumstances. And this Institute, the Latina Institute, further highlights that in a state with a very, very high, you know, Latinx population, a lot of people who, for example, don't have, you know, the language to be able to access healthcare, who, you know, maybe because of their papers, their migration status, you know, they're not able to access healthcare services. And this is putting a huge barrier, once again, to those people to access this really essential human right and service. Well, the great state of Texas, not so great after all. Meanwhile, just north of Texas, in the town of Arora, Colorado, which, you know, refers to the dawn, not much of a dawn for a young man by the name of Elijah McLean. Prashant, what's the story of Elijah McLean? Right, Vijay, it's actually a, it's a very tragic story, also a story of how the community really mobilized over a very long period of time to demand for justice. So Elijah McLean, very young black man in 2019, in August 2019 actually, just over two years ago. He was, you know, somebody called the police and said he was reported suspicious activity. The police came and they, there was a, they basically, you know, caught him on a choke hold. There was no sign that he was doing anything illegal. There was no sign that he was engaging in actually any suspicious activity, so to speak, but nonetheless, they got him in a choke hold. You know, the body camps of the officers were not working, but the audio feed was visible, audio feed could be, was recorded. He was heard saying, I can't breathe. He was, you know, he was heard vomiting as well. And then medical personnel came in, they injected him with ketamine. This happened in August 24th, 2019, and by August 30th, he was dead. And the horrible incident, because like I said, often there are all these allegations, immediately the police of course said that he had reached for a gun or something. Again, no basis for any of those claims. And of course the murder was a horrible act and what followed was equally worse than the complete institutional neglect. The, you know, the institutions concerned refused to take up the case. In 2020, we saw a very similar incident with George Floyd, but even before that, in the case of Elijah McLean, in many other cases like this protest had taken place with the George Floyd protests, these protests also strengthened and even at that time, the head of the legal system there explicitly refused to file cases against the police and medical practitioners there. But what we also saw was an entire community standing up, resisting. So in June, 2020, we saw over 5,000 protesters, you know, March demanding justice, the party for socialism and liberation, very active in these protests actually. In November, similarly, we saw another major protest in between activists and protesters who were working on this cause were arrested and, you know, they were arrested in charge with a variety of charges, including besieging the police and, you know, really non-sensical charges for just doing the for just doing the job of protesting and demanding justice. So this is actually a long legal battle which has continued alongside, you know, sustained and continued community efforts. And finally, what happened in September 1st was that the five the five persons, that's three police officers and two medical persons, they were charged under, I think that there were 32 counts in total, including of manslaughter and negligent homicide. So this was following, the governor was finally forced to order a probe on this last year after continued and sustained protests. So finally a little bit of justice, this is a grand jury indictment. So a little bit of justice, we have to see how the process is going to continue because one thing we have seen in this case is that, like I said the authorities have been continuously negligent and neglectful and in complete denial of what is a very basic fact, what we saw in the case of George Floyd, what we saw in the case of Elijah McLean and so many other cases that institutional police racism is a reality in the United States, there's no point denying that and the toll it takes is on black men and women especially hard, the kind of the number of lives that are lost, the number of families that are destroyed and Elijah McLean's mother said that, you know, made a very poignant statement, she said that, you know, he was just a boy who was not hurting anybody, who was not harming anybody, he was just leading his life and he lost his life. So that's where we are with the case right now, it is definitely I think for the community of Aurora for the state of Colorado, for progressive activists across the country, a definite victory and each of these victories including in the case of George Floyd where legal proceedings happened recently each of these victories won with a lot of effort, with a lot of organizing but still nonetheless each of these are concrete steps towards achieving some kind of justice towards achieving some kind of reckoning. Extraordinary story Prashant extraordinary because it was so brutal and then of course as you say community mobilization and so on. Friends two of the stories we did today the story on Afghanistan and the story on Yemen were also stories of hunger, a terrible hunger in these two countries we could very well have done a story on hunger in the United States. Today's episode of give the people what they want could have been called give the people what they want about the United States of America we started with Hurricane Ida, we went to the abortion ban in the great state of Texas and then we went to Aurora, Colorado to talk about the fight of a community for justice for a young man we could have done a story on hunger and in fact, indeed people's dispatch in collaboration with six other media projects ARG medias in Argentina Brazil de Fato in Brazil, breakthrough news in the United States, Madar media in the Maghreb region the Arab language speaking region, a new frame in South Africa, news click in India these are media organizations which have come together with people's dispatch to do a series called hunger in the world. You can see the series at the People's Dispatch website peoplesdispatch.org as well as at these other media projects on the 16th of October peoples dispatch will release a document with all the stories together and on the show give the people what they want we'll have a special edition in October bringing in some of the writers from that series to talk to us about the question of hunger. We want to put the spotlight on hunger friends because it's such an important pressing issue for the world that we live in you've been watching you've been listening this is give the people what they want coming to you from peoples dispatch and that's Prashant and Zoe and Globe Trotter and that's me Vijay see you next week take care of yourself