 Today is the 11th of June 2021, you're with give the people what they want coming to you every week on Friday from People's Dispatch, thanks to Prashant and Zoe, nice to see you again. Nice to see you Vijay. Vijay from Globetrotter, it's been a difficult, complicated week in the world of news, we've had some ups, we've had some downs. I want to begin with something interesting, ProPublica, a website in the United States, released a treasure trove of documents, 15 years of tax information from the billionaires of the world. And I just want to share with you some of the numbers. In this long period, 25 of the richest people in the United States, advisedly the richest people in the world paid $13.6 billion in federal income taxes in the United States. Now I'm starting with the story in order to move to a World Bank report, which I'll come to in a second, but let's stay with this story. These 25 richest people in the United States paid $13.6 billion in federal income taxes in the five years leading to 2018, even as the value of their stocks, properties and other assets were inflated by an estimated $400 billion. These are people who simply do not pay tax. They simply do not pay tax. It's as a consequence of their not paying tax of these 25 rich people in the United States that the value of illicit tax havens is estimated to be about $37 trillion, three times the external debt of the emerging or developing countries. Now I said I was going to start here in order to come to the latest document from the World Bank. This is very significant. This is the World Bank's global economic prospects report. Now as I said, this show is called Give the People What They Want, and what you want is for me to waste my time reading extremely boring and detailed documents produced by the International Monetary Fund, by the World Bank, by the OECD, by even Basel Group of the Basel Group that is supposed to regulate banking. I'm going to come back to Basel in a minute, but let's stay with the World Bank's global economic prospects report, because in this report, the World Bank says that 100 million people in the developing world have fallen back into poverty. That's in addition to the people already poor, but here's the most important statistic. The World Bank says per capita income losses incurred in 2020. That is in 2020, the year of the pandemic. I know the pandemic is continuing, but just imagine 2020 being the main year thus far on record for which we have statistics. In 2020, per capita income losses, whatever was lost in 2020 will not be recovered for the majority of the world's people before the end of 2022. Two thirds of the people of the emerging and developed countries will not see income coming back to 2019 levels, will not see incomes coming back to 2019 levels before the end of 2022. In some of the most fragile conflict-ridden economies, think of Sudan, think of Yemen and so on, 75% of the people in these countries will not see the incomes coming back by the end of 2022 and perhaps not ever. Now, one of the reasons the World Bank explicitly says you are seeing a boost of incomes in the western countries is the vaccination drive, is the vaccination drive, and here's the interesting thing. The World Bank recognizes that vaccine apartheid is going to lead to money apartheid and at the same time, the World Bank is opposed to lifting intellectual property restrictions on the COVID-19 vaccine on grounds of principle because the World Bank says patents drive growth. There is no evidence for this. The World Bank recognizes that it is vaccine apartheid that's going to deepen money apartheid and yet the World Bank is not going to come out in favor of allowing vaccination drives for the world's population. At the end of the show, we're going to come back to the G7 meeting being held in Cornwall. We're going to start in this hideous direction and end in this hideous direction. But for now, we're going to go to Zoe, who has good news for us from Peru. Zoe, what has Pedro Castillo done in Peru and who is Pedro Castillo? Well, Pedro Castillo is the candidate from the Free Peru Party. He is a school teacher in a rural area. He's part of a peasant organization of Ronderos. And he, without official confirmation from electoral authorities, which I'll get to in a minute, he has been elected president of Peru. With a very, very slim margin, we're talking about decimal points and tens of thousands of votes that he won over the far-right candidate from the popular force party, Keco Fujimori. We spoke about this last week. Keco Fujimori is, of course, being investigated for corruption. She faces up to 30 years in prison. She's the daughter of former dictator Alberto Fujimori. She really represents this far-right trend in Peru, but also broadly in Latin America. And Pedro Castillo is from the rural region of Peru. He's really been able to speak to the masses in the rural areas and the urban areas to talk about the pressing issues to Peruvians' economic inequality, access to education, access to basic rights, using the country's wealth to benefit the masses. I mean, his slogan, no more poor people in a rich country, is really telling and something that applies for a lot of countries. And what's happened this week is that elections were held on Sunday. Millions of people participated, 77% of the electorate participated. And the first indications showed that Keco Fujimori was up by a couple points or decimal points. And then quickly, once the votes from rural regions, which of course we know always take a little longer, came in, this tendency was quickly reversed and Pedro Castillo has maintained the lead since then. And then over the past couple of days, they've been counting the remaining ballots, processing the remaining ballots. Pedro Castillo continues to hold the lead. At this point, 100% of the votes have been counted. They haven't been completely processed. There's like two different processes within the vote tallying and counting. But it's clear that Pedro Castillo has won the presidency. What has happened is that while a lot of world leaders have already congratulated him, among those, we have Luis Arce, we have Alberto Fernandez of Argentina. Keco Fujimori is trying to say that there was fraud committed. She's pointed to very, very isolated incidents saying, oh, in this one place, someone cast a ballot and it didn't work. Trying to come up with really anecdotal evidence, one video here, one photo there. And she's trying to contest this. There's also kind of a rallying cry among the regional, right? A letter was released a couple hours ago signed by former leaders from Latin America. Among them, Álvaro Uribe Vélez, former president of Colombia, who's a war criminal, saying that they can't declare victory until everything's finished, that the contestations to fraud are resolved. I mean, it's a really tough scenario. Verónica Mendoza, who's from the new pro-party, who is a candidate in the first round of elections, has alerted to a situation where they're trying to kind of create chaos, create fear, create maybe a pre-coup scenario. It's really unclear what could unfold. But the supporters of Pedro Castillo, of progressive movements of the left, have been on the streets since Sunday, mobilized and peaceful mobilizations to defend the vote. And as of now, I mean, the electoral authorities have already discarded some of the claims of fraud. There's, I mean, it's unclear what we're going to be looking at. Is it going to be an institutional battle? How far will this go? At this point, we've seen the left and progressive figures rally around Pedro Castillo, people on the streets, on the other hand, right-wing leaders doing the same. So we're going to have to see how this plays out. But what's clear is that hope and the dreams of a new Peru, of a Peru for the masses, for the working class people has, you know, taken, has won. And now the people, you know, in Peru, across Latin America and across the world, have to defend the will of the Peruvian people, which is to have Pedro Castillo as the new president. Excellent report, Zoe, because after all, there is something in Pedro Castillo that reminds me of Evo Morales. There's something in him that reminds me of Hugo Chavez. These are people who come from the people, represent the people, speak like the people. There shouldn't be poor people in a rich country. That's a phrase that should become an anthem for us globally, not just for Peru. A victory in Peru, but also if we go up the Cordilleras up into the northern part of the Americas, a victory in the northern part of the Americas. Who would imagine Prashant that there'd be a victory of any kind in the United States of America or Canada, specifically a victory having to do with energy, a victory having to do with climate change? The Keystone XL pipeline, everybody knows that name. What's happening Prashant? Right, so we say the news on Wednesday was that the firm which was running the project, TC Energy Core, a Canadian firm decided to pull the plug, scrap it. This was, of course, after the official reason cited was or talked about, is that the US administration of Joe Biden has canceled its license. But to be very fair, the fact is that this is a result of years and years of protests by organizations, by environmentalist groups, by Native American groups across the country. They've mobilized in large numbers. They fought this battle. For instance, during the Obama administration, they did it with an advantage when the administration scrapped it. Trump came back and renewed it again. There were battles in quotes. And throughout all this, what has continued is the fact that the struggle has been consistent. The reasons are, of course, very clear. They were going to be transporting around 800,000 barrels per day of oil. The kind of crude, of course, the kind of crude that is being transported was, you know, there are emissions rate was 17% more. It was the kind which would actually be far more difficult to clear. Some of the pipeline was passing through the sensitive, natural habitats. So there was a lot of reasons for opposing it. It was very clear, but corporate interests had served as a barrier. And this resistance is what you call, it's one major victory. And it's important to talk about this because this is really not the end of it. This is just one pipeline. And for instance, over the past week, we have seen another major front developing, which is the Line 3 pipeline project in the state of Minnesota, where again, there have been instances of leaks in the past. So Line 3 as well as Keystone XL were supposed to carry double the capacity of the original pipelines. So there's already an existing Line 3 pipeline. The new one will carry double its capacity, which is again around 800,000 BPD. So the protesters again have been, they occupied a petrol pump in the area where the project is about to take place. The police arrested a large number of people, close to 250 people, several of them charged with trespassing as though protesting for your rights and against environmental degradation is what is called trespassing. But this is a struggle that is definitely going to continue. The initial plan was that the gathering would be from the 5th of June to the 8th of June, but now this is going to be continuing under the banner of treaty peoples gathering for quite some time and it has actually become a much faster movement. And again, same case here, there's a Canadian company Enbridge, which is responsible for the project and they're trying to block it. Same thing with the Dakota Access Pipeline as well, very strong, long struggle by Native American communities. And what has happened is that even now it has not stopped although, you know, the Democrats have made all those noises. So I think that these are three very key fronts of struggle. Keystone XL, of course, a victory, but the other two definitely going to continue. We have been talking about climate change. I think even the G7 leaders have been talking about climate change, but actually it all boils down to a lot of these questions in terms of energy, in terms of big projects by corporations and what movements are going to be doing to fight off their advances. Well, I mean, you know, we know that they're going to talk about climate in Cornwall today. Already started, they'll talk about it over and over again. Paris will be back on the agenda. We're going to hear a lot about Chit Chat, in fact, about how the West is, you know, ahead of everybody else on this issue. We'll come back to that, I'm sure. We've got to come back to that because they're forgetting the real issue of common but differentiated responsibilities. We've talked a lot about this on this show. This show, as you know, is give the people what they want. Give the people what they want coming to you every Friday from People's Dispatch and Globetrotter. This is your show. We need to hear from you. Tell us what you think of our show. Tell your friends about our show. It's important that we hear from you. Speaking of them trying to define the way the world should be organized, Zoe talked about how in Peru, they're trying to delegitimize the election that brought in Pedro Castillo. We've seen across Latin America these attempts at so-called lawfare, using the law, using various mechanisms to overthrow governments, coup d'etats of the 21st century. There was a big campaign to prevent Lula, the former president of Brazil, from running for office. This was called the Car Wash Investigation in 2017. In fact, a US official quite openly, Mr. Blanco, quite openly said we participated in that. Now it looks like on a June 3rd telephone call, there was some more evidence of US direct complicity in the attempt to prevent Mr. Lula from running in the presidential campaign against Bolsonaro. Zoe, what has been happening in Brazil? Well, actually, sorry, Zoe, what has been happening in the United States? Not in Brazil. What has been happening in the United States? Yeah, so, I mean, on June 3rd, there was a phone call to kind of brief the new Biden administration about what the US has done in the war on corruption. And it's not exactly the phone call itself, which I think is interesting and I wanted to bring attention to, because essentially in this phone call, White House official mentioned and confirms that the Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, participated in the war on corruption, a centerpiece of which was the Operation Car Wash. And this was revealed by Brazil Wire, which is a great progressive media on what's happening in Brazil. And so this kind of confirms a lot of what we already know, which is that there are clear interests of the United States and other actors to not have the Lula presidency. And proving that there was not only cooperation in the United States support, I mean, Doug Zendaleno, who was one of the chief prosecutors from the Operation Car Wash Task Force had said that the Operation Car Wash was a gift from the CIA. These are kind of things that have been floating around and it's just further confirmation of this. And what I think is interesting here is, you know, on two hands, on one hand, that, you know, people are called, I think we've talked about it here, that people are called conspiracy theorists to say that the US is behind a lot of these, you know, moves to remove progressive leaders. Oh, this is normal. You know, it's that they were committing corruption. This is just the way that things go. Of course it doesn't have to with the United States. When really there's actually cold heart evidence pointing to the fact that the United States does participate in this. So we really have to be much more skeptical. But on the other hand, I think especially now, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, in the midst of what's, you know, a global catastrophe, looking at Brazil today and seeing the damage that has been done from this investigation, from removing Lula from running, I think is really the tragedy here because, you know, it's not just about the political aspirations of one man. It's about the aspirations, survival, livelihoods of millions of people, hundreds of millions of people in Brazil. I mean, the situation in Brazil, even though, you know, we're not at that critical stage that we were a couple of months ago in which, you know, every day we're seeing news about more and more deaths in Brazil. It's tragic. I mean, so many people are dying. The unemployment rates continue to grow. There's not been, the government has, you know, blocked a lot of the emergency aid programs. And the situation for the masses in Brazil is drastically different than it was 10 years ago under the PT government. Say what you will about, you know, there's a lot to say about the PT governments, but the lack of support given to vulnerable populations is under the Bolsonaro government. The attacks on vulnerable populations has created a situation of complete misery. We're launching, you know, people's dispatch and all of our media partners are going to be launching a series on hunger coming out in July and August. We're gonna be reading about, you know, the situation of the homeless population in São Paulo, one of the biggest cities in Latin America has, you know, one of the highest concentrations of capital, of financial transactions, it has one of the largest homeless populations. You look at pictures of São Paulo and you think this is a humanitarian crisis. And this is a direct result of the policies of the federal government to undermine social policies, to cut public sector, to attack workers' rights, to make it impossible to live in this country that has, you know, as Peru, vast natural resources, has the ability to sustain its people. So I think when we're thinking about, you know, a corruption investigation and what this means, you know, the US being involved, what does that actually translate to? And that's creating misery for the masses that's, you know, forcing millions of people into poverty and that we must oppose at any, at all measures. So... Well, you started the story with the question of a law fair against Lula in Brazil, the CIA involvement in that. We see a lot of manipulation of constitutions, manipulations of legislative branches in order to maintain corrupt politicians in power. We're seeing this unfold in Israel where Benjamin Netanyahu is facing a challenge from a very curious amalgam of political forces. He's trying to protect himself from a personal corruption investigation. In Kenya, there's chaos because the deputy president and the president are not sure what's going on there. Uhuru Kenyatta trying to push a constitutional amendment. Listen, Prashant, there's nowhere better to sort these things out than people's dispatch. What is happening between Ruto and Kenyatta in Kenya? Right, Vijay. So this is actually a story that has been building up for quite some time from me, in fact, and it is going to carry on into the next month also. What has happened is President Uhuru Kenyatta has introduced a series of constitutional amendments which will drastically transform the 2010 constitution. And the 2010 constitution in Kenya itself was achieved after a lot of struggle. So what the key aspect of this is, there's going to be a new post that of the prime minister, but the Kenyan left is very clear that this is just an attempt by Uhuru Kenyatta, the president and the leader of the opposition, well, I wouldn't get to strike a deal. And which basically then nullifies the democratic process to a large extent. So what they're talking about is basically a deal that's being struck between two forces which were at each other's throats until very recently. And this constitutional amendment is seen as a precursor to that because it's expected that Ray Lavringer, who is the leader of the opposition, will become the prime minister. And these two forces together will approach the 2022 elections. Now, this is being presented as some kind of great reform, but this amendment was struck down by a court recently and the appeals are going to be heard on the 30th of June. So that's the base situation. The Kenyan left, especially the communist party of Kenya has been in the forefront of opposing this. They're planning rallies next month, especially after the appeals judgment. And what we're seeing and what they're very worried about is basically the fact that while the letter of democracy is going to remain, the spirit of democracy is going to be completely crushed because this was part of something called the Building Bridges Initiative. And it was supposed to emerge as some kind of a solution after there was massive violence following the elections in 2017, which saw the supporters of Ray Lavringer and Uru Kenyatta clashing with each other. So, and the solution has become something which actually subverts the democratic process, subverts the meaning of democracy and leads to an almost, you know, a very, a very, almost absurd alliance, but an alliance which restricts the possibilities for people to protest, for exercise of democratic rights. We have seen that Uru Kenyatta recently has also, you know, talked in very threatening terms about the judiciary. He's blocked the promotion of judges, especially this judgment has really not come out in a very, at a very good time, in a very good way for him. We saw last month that the activists in the Communist Party of Kenya had been targeted. They were, you know, put behind bars for some time. So right now the Kenya is in a bit of a, the situation is on a bit of a boil. A lot depends on how the appeals court will decide on the 30th of June, because it could start, it could spur a fresh round of protests across the country and, you know, very, very severe questions could be asked to the ruling system itself. So that's where we are right now. It's a story that is really not being noticed so much and it's probably something which is very important considering Kenya's central role in the continent as well. So a lot of things happening in the next couple of weeks and the Kenyan left preparing for maybe a couple of months of struggle as well. It's not being paid attention to by the corporate media around the world, but it's being paid attention to at People's Dispatch. People'sDispatch.org, your home for the best movement based reporting. Make sure you come and take a look at it. Well, you see on the cliffs of Cornwall, photographs have already emerged. Joe Biden, Jill Biden walking hand in hand next to Boris Johnson and his new wife walking hand in hand, the beautiful cliffs of Cornwall filled with lithium as it turns out. Some people don't know that. The West prefers to mine its lithium in Bolivia, in Argentina, in Chile, not its own cliffs, the beautiful area of Cornwall, extreme poverty there. They're staying at a nice resort. What's on the agenda? As Joe Biden goes to meet the G7, the group of seven, a group of countries set up in 1974, essentially to tackle the growing crisis from the oil countries, the OPEC crisis of 1973. They banded together the Western countries with Japan, the major advanced countries. What is their agenda now in the middle of the crisis? Vaccines, climate change, all of this on the table. Look, it's going to be pathetic. Let's take vaccines. The IMF, a group of IMF economists came out there and they said, hey, listen, if the West spends $50 billion to aggressively vaccinate the whole planet by July of next year, $50 billion, the rate of return on that is investment will be $9 trillion. Forget the fact that lots of lives will be saved. There's a moral imperative, as the World Health Organization said again in January, a moral imperative. $50 billion investment, $9 trillion rate of return. My God, that's a rate of return on investment unheard of, yet that's not going to be what will happen. They will send minor, minor amounts. Climate change. This meeting happens just before COP26 taking place in Glasgow later this year. $100 billion promised for mitigation to the developing countries, almost not meeting its target. And the finance minister, the G7 getting together that typical language of, we'll do better next time and so on. There's no next time. We're talking about climate change. Meanwhile, the share pass, and this is a technical term, friends, the share pass. Every time there's a summit of this kind, the low level fellows come and meet first and they discuss a set of things. People who had experience in these meetings, academics and others have put together a document available on the G7 UK website called the Cornwall Consensus, a little echo to the Washington Consensus of John Williamson. It is an extraordinarily strange document. They attempt to put forward a vision for the world. I read this document last night. I was interested in the data and technology board, like the financial stability board that oversees financial markets. This would oversee the global internet as if we want seven countries in the world overseeing the internet for the rest of us. There will be a CERN they propose something like the major project to build the reactor, whatever that is, that a nuclear reactor, the research institute in Switzerland, CERN, that high power- That's hydrocollider. That collider, that's right. The hydrocollider, whatever it is, they want to make one for climate technology. I mean, there's an ambitious list here, but behind everything is China and that's what's interesting. Behind everything is China because they talk about the need to create different kinds of global supply chains. There's a discussion about global chip production. You should know, of course, that the bulk of chip production takes place in Taiwan and in the Pacific coast of China. There's an attempt to want to move away from the Chinese market. In fact, President Joe Biden of the United States has talked about tariffs on the rare earth mineral that comes from China called neodymium. Neodymium, friends. I'm trying my best to pronounce these things. I don't know about the CERN hydrocollider or whatever it is. I don't know about neodymium, but I know that this whole business is about a renewed attempt to push back against China. Push back against what from China? Not Chinese military aggression, but Chinese science and technological developments. That's what this is about, which is why the G7 says they want a data and technology board, which is why the G7 says they want new supply chains for advanced technology, for medical equipment and minerals. They are worried about China. This is the same Trump policy, but put in a different kind of bottle. They're trying to get Angela Merkel on side. Mrs. Merkel, this is her last G7 meeting, not keen on creating more tension with China, but Biden is a lookout for that. This has been, give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Your favorite weekly movement-driven global news show. This is your favorite show. If it's your favorite show, you should go and tell your friends about it, tell your family about it. Tell us what you think about it. We come to you from people's dispatch. That's Prashant and Zoe. Thanks a lot, Prashant and Zoe. Incredible reports today. Really, really good stuff. And I'm Vijay from Globetrotter. We'll see you next week. Same place, same time. And if you'd prefer podcasts, YouTube, whatever you want because we are, after all, giving you what you want. Thanks a lot. Thanks.