 You are back with give the people what they want coming to you from People's Dispatch and Globetrotter As usual we have the three of us here Zoe from People's Dispatch Prashant from People's Dispatch and me Vijay from Globetrotter Today is the 28th of May 2021, the 150th anniversary of the Paris Commune's defeat We will come back to that certainly very important event We hope you are watching, we hope you are listening, we have an amazing half an hour A whirlwind tour through world events Let's start with that word world, world this, world that We are in the middle of a world pandemic, a global pandemic The WHO and the president of Costa Rica released a statement recently Calling upon the world community to genuinely deal with this pandemic Last year I looked at the numbers, you know COVAX just Sorry, not last year but last hour I looked at the numbers COVAX has shipped 70 million doses on as of Monday I think is the last numbers available, 70 million doses That's just enough for 0.5% of the 124 countries served by COVAX 70 million doses pushed by the COVAX vaccine Less than 0.5% of what is needed by the countries that are part of this alliance Prashant the WHO has just had their World Health Assembly What happened at the assembly? The assembly is of course ongoing right now because it's going to last till the 1st of June Ahead of the World Health Assembly, the World Health Watch Which is associated with the people's health movement A coalition of activists from around the world published an article which we carried on people's dispatch And it had a very telling headline, it said that ahead of the World Health Assembly What is missing is solidarity And I think that captures a lot of the situation at the World Health Assembly right now Because it is of course a decision making body for the World Health Organization Last year when the 73rd World Health Assembly was held, the pandemic had just hit the world There was an outpouring of solidarity, there was a lot of talk about us We're going to face this together, this is a global human problem, etc. And that was also when the COVAX program was launched and the ACTA ACTA and COVAX were launched and it was considered this big moment But like you said what has happened right now is the COVAX program was never really It was something which was almost bound to fail and I think according to our friends at the people's health movement at the WHO watch That is kind of reflected in some of the discussions because people don't even seem to have so many high expectations Because it is almost like everyone knew that considering the way it was structured in which it is voluntary contributions There was always going to be very little chance of success, there was no real global framework And of course the biggest issue which you have talked again and again is vaccine inequality And if you look at say numbers as of May 31st, we have 34% of citizens of North America and Europe who have received at least one shot of a COVID-19 vaccine And we go to the other side of the picture that's Africa and the number is 1.5% And this is the extent of the sheer inequity that we are staring at today And of course there has been talk of waivers The waivers of course the World Health Assembly can't enforce it, they have a lot of countries who supported it Still stuck in the WTO because of the consensus model whereby everyone has to say accepted There is a resolution about local production of medicines which is going to come up probably going to be accepted An important thing of course is that the World Health Assembly did discuss Palestine And the horrible attacks that Israel conducted, its impact on the health structure Also conscious of the fact that Israel's, this is not only this attack in Gaza but the long term deterioration of infrastructure in Palestine due to Israeli occupation policies And the shameful thing here is again that the United States, Israel and their allies did not support that decision They call it playing politics whereas the facts are so clear on the ground Maybe one last thing I want to highlight is the fact that there's something called the pandemic treaty coming up Which is kind of supposed to set the terms for how countries deal with pandemics in the future And one of the critiques that have been made from progressive sections is that this still runs on a very welfareist model And an aid welfare model as opposed to robust strengthening of public health as opposed to global accountability on these issues So it's quite a mess out there because we've also seen the private sector play a huge part in recent time Consultancies, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for instance, driving a lot of decision making at the WHO So really a lot of challenges as far as global health is concerned and I think we sort of end with this very basic point as well At the end of the day, the biggest challenge that is being faced is that the possibility or the claims of solidarity that we woke last year Definitely have not been met and it's still many countries left for their own inside many countries The poor, the working class left to defend for their own, you know, struggling without the vaccine And of course this multiple waves expected throughout the world so that's where we are right now About a year ago, Dr. Tedros of the World Health Organization, they put out a statement, solidarity not stigma I think part of this was to push back against the view that there was a China virus or most offensively a Kung flu and so on Expressions now we identify with Donald Trump, then the President in the United States But of course this was a view promoted by Boris Johnson, by Yair Bolsonaro's son It was promoted in India and so on, this idea that some other Chinese are responsible Tedros's statement, solidarity not stigma, you know, collaboration not confrontation This has been very important, I think it sets a certain bar Interestingly, I don't know if many people have been following how US intelligence over the course of this last week Has been leaking things into the press, once more putting out that theory that this is not a virus from the wild You know, this doesn't appear because of a natural and by natural I mean natural in terms of the relationships of humans to nature Encroachment into forested areas jumping from animal to animal and then eventually transmission to human and so on The US intelligence is once more suggesting that well, perhaps there is some veracity, some truth to the theory of transmission from animal to human You know, in the process of this encroachment into the wilds and so on, perhaps there's some truth But let's investigate this other theory and in fact US President Joe Biden has said he used the word redouble efforts by US intelligence To push the theory that this is not something out of the wild, but it is a virus that was either accidentally or deliberately leaked by the Wuhan Institute of Virology Now this is a theory that emerged really in the sewers of right-wing imagination a year ago And here we have US intelligence coming out in public saying, well, there's a possibility You know, we're still studying the possibility that this is a weather accidental and you know, the language is extremely malicious because they say will be conceded might be accidental It could also be a purposeful, you know, they were developing a chemical weapon, a biological weapon and so on There's no evidence of this. The WHO has also in the earlier attempt to look at this discredited this theory says there's no evidence for this Yet this is back on the ball. I want to remind our viewers you're listening to give the people what they want Now, when we began our show last year, last year, we began our show earlier this year, Donald Trump was in office And at that time it was quite clear that Mr. Trump was pushing an agenda, you know, very hard anti-China agenda, not just in the United States but around the world Well, now we have Mr. Joe Biden as the US president and it seems like that agenda hasn't changed At least in this particular instance of trying to drive a theory that there was some sort of biological weapons program at the Wuhan Institute of Virology Driving this agenda and insinuating, you see, because they know there's no evidence for this suggesting we need to look at this more You see, every time they say we need to look at this more, they're giving the suggestion of credibility towards a totally incredulous theory I don't know if we had give the people what they want to take a position on this because the three of us are merely reporters, none of us are scientists None of us are epidemiologists, we just read the evidence out there and share it with you, you know, as conduits to you from what we learn We're although saying to you that I'm hesitant personally to put this forward, this US intelligence thing forward Without talking about how these things themselves generate a story by saying that, well, perhaps there's something to it, they're making it a story You see friends, I don't actually think there is a story here, I think the real story is what US intelligence is doing is trying to weaponize the pandemic as part of the trade war against China So I would caution against taking this seriously on its own terms The reason we are putting it out there today is to suggest that what's going on here is one more front in the US imposed information war on China So let's be careful, I think let's return to Ted Ross, solidarity, not stigma, collaboration, not confrontation I think that's what the WHO and the president of Costa Rica have said That I think is what's happening at the World Health Assembly to some extent It's certainly what people in the public health movement have been saying Much more collaboration, much more solidarity, much less of this kind of confrontation and so on Speaking of confrontation, we're around the period now of the one year anniversary of the suffocation, suffocating death of George Floyd in Minneapolis The phrase, I can't breathe takes on of course a special resonance in India because of the lack of medical oxygen I can't breathe, people say, because Mr Modi's callously indifferent and dangerous policies have led to I can't breathe be a national slogan It comes from George Floyd Zoe, you're in, what's going on with the George Floyd case? Yeah, I think I would even argue that this slogan even comes from earlier with the 2014 suffocation murder of Eric Garner in Staten Island, New York And, you know, we saw last year in beginning on May 25, 2020, you know, mid pandemic, mid the height of, you know, outbreak across the United States There was, you know, a viral video that was circulated of Minneapolis police officers, you know, apprehending George Floyd, a 46 year old man, you know, over a counterfeit bill using the store, allegedly So, you know, he's, he's apprehended for completely arbitrary, completely ridiculous charge, obviously he's apprehended because he's a black man in the United States And what follows is that, of course, as we, you know, many of us across the world know and have seen this heartbreaking, horrifying, tragic video of him being a knee on his neck by the officer Derek Chauvin for over eight minutes, and he is killed And of course, the story of George Floyd is the story of so many black Americans of so many Latino people living in the United States, and is the story of racist police terror against marginalized communities in this country And I mean, what happened after the murder of George Floyd, you know, live and direct on social media was something that is not unprecedented in the United States, because if we look at the history of uprisings and organizing and rebellions in the United States, it's always been connected to police violence against marginalized communities, especially black communities. But we saw kind of an unprecedented level of mobilization in the country. I mean, there were protests, not only in the big cities, not only in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, but we saw, you know, small towns all across the country, mobilizing, organizing, taking out protests to demand that the system of racist police terror, the system which constantly attacks black people, Latino people has to be changed. And it was unprecedented. We saw over some estimates say that over 15 million people joined these protests. And so, you know, there are months and months of mobilizations. We also saw an unprecedented level of kind of police repression. So images of things that we would see, you know, that are commonplace in places like Columbia in Palestine of police, you know, just arbitrarily shooting at protesters of, you know, mass arrests. And there are obviously people who still have charges from this time. But, you know, from there, from this moment of mass uprising, the largest uprising in recent history in the United States, we also saw a lot of proposals, a lot of reforms proposed, a lot of demands from the organized movement. They're very clear demands on the street. And what I mean, one of the key things that came of this, maybe on a congressional level is the George Floyd, what's the exact name, the George Floyd Justice and Policing Act. And this is, you know, of course, the Democrats trying to make good on their promises of an acting change. And it's currently stalled on the floor of Congress. It has not been passed. You know, in some cities, there were proposals to change the police budget to, you know, decrease it massively because, you know, in New York, they have millions of dollars. Hard to imagine in this moment of, you know, crisis of, you know, people dying from COVID that we would have millions and millions of dollars towards policing. And a lot of these efforts, a lot of these demands from the streets have not really been responded to. It's mostly been paid lip service. You know, Democrats love to say that they're pro-justice. They love to put on, you know, the ceremonial kind of show to say that they're in solidarity with the victims, but really not much actual action has been taken. But we have to, you know, take stock of what was done on the streets, the people seeing their power, the people seeing that they could stay out there, get organized, you know, participate in this protest movement and really change the hearts and minds of people across the country and realize that racism and this system has to change and that people deserve better. You see, you're talking about police brutality in Minneapolis. Over the course of the last few days, we've seen Indonesian security forces cracking down in West Papua. Well, in the island of Manukwari, it's pretty brutal stuff going on there around the arrest of an activist. Prashant, you've been following this. We've also together, all of us have tracked events, not only in West Papua, but Papua New Guinea. Together, the Papuan Island, the second largest carbon sink on the planet. Brutal happenings there. What's going on, Prashant, in Manukwari? Absolutely. In fact, it's not only in Manukwari, it's across both the Papuan Islands as well as the Papuan provinces as well as mainland Indonesia itself. And it actually largely stems from the arrest on May 9th of Victor Yebo, a pro-independence activist. And he was arrested on charges of treason, which is a common enough charge in the countries we cover across the world. And he's arrested for treason, of course, because he was obviously involved in the protests in 2019. Now, those were some very intense protests took place in August and September 2019. At that time, activists were protesting the 1969 New York Agreement, which transferred sovereignty of the Papuan people from the Dutch to the Indonesians. So it was one of those colonial agreements where they, without any consultation for the Papuan people itself. So there was a huge number of protests, about 30 people died. And they were, for week after week, the Papuan students, especially the youth coming out in large numbers across the country. And this is the arrest of Victor Yebo. Is there another round of protests? Of course, they have been going on since May 9th. In Manukwari itself, around 135 people were arrested apparently. And this is happening even as there has been some armed conflicts between the Indonesian Army and the West Papuan section of West Papuan militants. So there's been massive militarization. Reports here on 21,000 troops have been mobilized. And of course, protesters suffering the bulk of these incidents. There's, of course, arrest, but there's also attacks, you know, attacks against Papuan students just for sake of just because they are Papuan students. So hostels where they stay or other kinds of communities where they hang out. They're being targeted there as well. So what we're seeing is, in fact, this is kind of a conflict, which is kind of repression, which often does not say garner much attention because, you know, the media reports are sometimes the reports don't come too much. So apparently numbers, there are tens of thousands of people definitely have been displaced this year, displaced already. So that's the reports we're getting right now. And it's kind of really worrying because the, like I said, the 2019 crackdown was very, very intense and it went on for weeks. From the Papuan side, resistance has been very, very determined because this is a long battle they've been fighting since 1969 is an issue they've been consistently raising. And the Indonesian government has unleashed all forms of repression on them. So I think in the coming days again, it is unfortunately a possibility that more students likely to be targeted, more activists definitely likely to be targeted. And it is definitely essential that countries in the region globally as well, you know, there actually be voices raised in support of these activists and support of young students, young men and women, especially who are coming out on the streets to fight for their rights. We've got Indonesia to look at. We've got Australia to look at these regional players play a big role in providing, you know, impunity to the Indonesian security forces important to look at that. We talked about George Floyd's murder a year ago. We talked about police repression in Indonesia. We're swinging back now to Colombia into the second week of protests. Zoe and I spoke to Rodrigo Granda of the political party communes. That's a piece Globetrotter will put out over the next few days. Excellent interview with an important figure. Zoe, bring us up to speed. What's happening in Colombia into the second week of the second month of the protests. Yeah, so today May 28 marks exactly one month since the protests began, which of course started as a national strike against the tax reform law and have grown into much, much more than that. We've seen not a decrease of participation since they've been going on, but actually an increase across sectors. We've seen, you know, massive protests in the cities, but over the past couple of weeks, we've seen, you know, a lot of indigenous communities joining the protests. And protesting in their areas, blocking the important highways. We've seen a lot of peasant communities joining these protests and giving really important support to the cities. And it's really been truly remarkable. People are standing up in face of all sorts of oppression. I mean, we've talked about it every week since the protests have started. And of course before, because we love to talk about what's going on in Colombia, but horrifying reports that I think deserve to be repeated. There are hundreds of disappeared. The latest, the latest estimate is that there have been 60 people killed by security forces. There have been over 20 people who have been sexually abused and assaulted by police, often in moments of being detained, brought to police stations and then, you know, police do what they will with these young and like vulnerable protesters. You know, over 900 people have been arbitrarily detained. The number is much likely a lot higher. And then of course, you know, there have been constant attacks to human rights organizations that have been on the ground at the protest points to try to negotiate with security forces and demand that they stop shooting at the people. That they stop shooting at, you know, these young men and women, children, older people who are really at the base of it are demanding conditions for a dignified life. And you know, I have to of course mention since we're protesters, I mean, sorry, since we're journalists, we also are protesters, but right now we're being journalists. There's also been, you know, massive attacks against press freedom. And so journalists who have been doing, you know, an incredible job of countering the mainstream narrative. We've of course seen, you know, the mainstream Colombian media release ridiculous reports of saying that left wing politicians are responsible for all of this terrorism that's happening on the street, all of the criminality. Meanwhile, alternative journalists who are friends and comrades and who we look up to have been on the bear, you know, have been at the road blockades, have been accompanying protesters making sure that it is documented, making sure that what happens them at the hands of the police is recorded and there's registers of this. And they've been shot at. So, you know, two days ago, a correspondent from Colombian Forma, when he was following to see what happened to a protester who was injured by the police, he was himself retained for, you know, over five minutes questioned, harassed, insulted by police officers who surrounded by a group of 10, you know, they called him, you know, pretty rude names. And this is what's happening to the press that's risking their lives out on the streets and making sure that the world knows what's happening to the Colombian people at the hands of their own security forces. We saw an upsetting vote in Congress of turning down the vote to censure the defense minister who's responsible for all of this repression and violence against protesters. Of course, the Congress is still controlled by a lot of right wing conservative parties who are very against what's happening on the streets and see their power directly threatened. You know, of course, Colombian has elections coming up next year and it's clear that that's that what's happening is going to influence is going to threaten the power of the oligarchs and the, you know, the stranglehold they've had on the political and economic life in the country. They don't like what's happening on the street. They don't like that people are coming out onto the street and putting their voices forward. Today is the 150th anniversary of the defeat of the Paris commune on the 18th of March. The people of Paris, the workers, the artisans and so on redeemed the heritage of the 1789 French Revolution came out there. Vive la commune built the commune made everything democratic. You have to elect judges, you have to elect the police, you have to elect everybody. Imagine if we lived in a world where we elected the police, we elected the judiciary, we elected well actually elected politicians. We were not allowing them to be bought into office and so on. An interesting scenario to look back on only 72 days that Paris commune lasted. If you go to the website of thetricontinental.org, you can download for free a text Paris commune 150, I highly recommend it. But you see we have communes not only in Paris in 1871, right after that there was a commune in Algiers. There was a commune in New Caledonia. There was a commune in the Tsarist Empire. It was called the Soviet Republic and then the USSR. There was the Guangzhou commune 1927 in China that then we've had a commune at the gates of Delhi since over the past six months. We're now at the sixth month anniversary of the farmers' revolt. It's effectively a commune. They've created their own society and they're not moving friends. They're not moving. They're washing their clothes there. They're eating their food there. They're reading there. They're talking to their children and educating them there. They've built a society. They're taking care of their own security. They're taking care of their own lives. They're not moving not because they're stubborn. They're not moving because they're defending their existential right to be agriculturalists. They believe and perhaps rightly so as many, many thoughtful economists have said, they believe and as I said, probably rightfully that the three acts that parliament rushed through last in the previous period in September and October. Those three farm acts are essentially a dagger into the heart of the agriculturalist in India. That's what they're fighting for. They're fighting for their lives because those acts turn over the marketplaces, which means they turn over agriculture to the large corporate houses. The government of India has refused to in good faith negotiate with the farmers unions, with the agricultural workers, with their friends and neighbors and so on. The government has refused to effectively negotiate. Here's the interesting thing friends. It's been six months since the farmers have been sitting on the outskirts of Delhi. It's a six month anniversary. This government of India, with its callous indifference to the pandemic, has now suggested that the farmers camps, their commune be disbanded because it could become a super spreader event. This government has said to that farmers commune, the Indian commune, that the Indian commune might be a super spreader event. This government, which not long ago allowed 7 million people to gather in Haridwar in northern India, 7 million people to gather for the Kumbh Mela, a genuine super spreader event. This government and its political party, the Bharatiya Janta Party, deliberately dragged out the West Bengal legislative election so that Mr. Narendra Modi and Mr. Amit Shah, the Prime Minister and the Home Minister, that Mr. Modi and Mr. Shah could address mass rallies in West Bengal. So when this government worries, and I put worries into very thick bolded quotation marks, when this government worries about the farmers commune, the Indian commune being a super spreader event, raise your eyebrows, raise your eyebrows, raise your eyebrows. We are serious on this show. Give the people what they want, your show. Tell us what you think of our show. We are serious about the pandemic. We are serious about the perils of COVID-19. We started our show with the World Health Assembly, the World Health Organization's main policy driving Congress. We are serious about this pandemic, but we are not serious about propaganda. We are not serious about propaganda. In other words, we are serious about analyzing propaganda. We don't take propaganda at face value. When the government says that the Indian commune is a super spreader event, we ask you to raise your eyebrows, raise a glass to the Paris commune, raise your eyebrows to Narendra Modi. You've been listening to Give the People What They Want. It comes to you from People's Dispatch. You've got the crack editors here, Prashant and Zoe. Good show guys today. We went around the world, I think three times. As usual. We went around the world three times. Zoe and Prashant from People's Dispatch and I'm Vijay from Globetrotter. See you next Friday. Come back, bring your family, bring a crowd because we give the people what they want. Thanks a lot.