 Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Your weekly movement news roundup. It's the 24th of June. You're joining us at Give the People What They Want, brought to you from People's Dispatch and Globetrotter. I'm Vijay from Globetrotter, joined by my colleagues Zoe and Prashant from People's Dispatch. A difficult week, this one for the people of Afghanistan. They've actually had a run of difficult weeks, if not months and years. Major earthquake in Pakhtia province in southeastern Afghanistan, a province that borders Pakistan. This is the largest earthquake, 6.1 magnitude, the largest earthquake in about 20 years. Now, 6.1 might not be a very large number for many people who are used to seeing numbers higher than that for earthquakes. But you have to understand that this took place in a place, mountainous terrain. The devastation was immediate. A thousand people killed instantly, almost 1,500 people injured. These numbers are merely thumbnail figures. We'll get better numbers perhaps in six months, if not longer than that. These are thumbnail figures because the Afghan state doesn't have the carrying capacity to be out there to assist people and so on. The Afghan state now managed and run by the Taliban has greatly deteriorated. One reason it's deteriorated is, of course, it still cannot access its own revenues. The state is functioning basically blind without revenues, without proper mechanisms. Many talented people who worked in the Afghan state left the country when the Taliban came into Kabul. That is a real problem for the Afghan state, the health ministry. Many medical personnel as well left. NGOs that functioned as effectively a parasitical health ministry also left the country. The lack of personnel, lack of funds has left the Taliban in a sense unable to deal with this crisis. They have requested international help. We'll see what happens in the days to come. It should also be said, of course, that 93% of the people of Afghanistan are struggling with hunger. This is an extraordinary figure. That means that almost everybody in Afghanistan is having a hard time eating. You put hunger, you put a effectively compromised state into play with the largest earthquake in 20 years, and you have a real catastrophe not in the making, but already happened. We from People's Dispatch and Globetrotter want to send greetings to the people of Afghanistan. I know this is not always something that reporters and journalists are supposed to do, but this is a catastrophic situation. It's not a normal disaster where a state is able to come in and provide relief to people and so on. In this case, the state simply is unable to come in. I'd like to add as well that the Taliban, although it has governing experience, it governed from 1996 to 2001 in Afghanistan, it has governed many provinces in the country during the period when it was fighting the U.S. and NATO occupation of the country. It has experience. Nonetheless, the Taliban government has shown itself to be on top of its game at all. It in fact has floundered in the last several months. We've seen the Taliban who promised not to go in this direction to rule in the kind of nationalist way. We've seen the Taliban stumble into its old habits of constraining the rights of women. We've seen it stumble into its old habits of believing in ideas of Islamic finance, which are simply not going to help the Afghan people at this time. Stumbling into its habits of constraining the rights of women. It was the United States that invaded Afghanistan in October 2001. It was the United States that had to withdraw from Afghanistan in August 2001. And now it's in the United States where Taliban-like policies are making themselves manifest again. Zoe, we're coming on the 24th of June, coming live as we do every Friday to talk about world events. But just a few hours ago, the United States Supreme Court decided to do something which I've already called Taliban-like. Tell us what the U.S. Supreme Court has just done. Well, this Supreme Court, which is an unelected body, just decided to strike down the Roe v. Wade decision. And for those listeners who don't know what Roe v. Wade was, it was a decision in 1973 that essentially protected on a national level the right to abortion. And there are arguments about what legal reasoning was used there, what judicial argument was used, maybe it was weak. That all is there, that's fine. But essentially Roe v. Wade guaranteed that on a federal basis the right to abortion had to be protected. And in the beginning of May, a draft decision showing that the Supreme Court, a draft decision by Judge Alito, which said that they would attempt to overturn Supreme Roe v. Wade was leaked by a very brave journalist. And this draft decision, after it was leaked, many people said, no, this is not true. That's not going to happen. That's absurd. This would never take place in the United States. A lot of protests took place after that. Thousands of people on the streets. Some of the largest protests we've seen this year in the United States. However, a month and a half later the Supreme Court did exactly what it said it wasn't going to do. And they overturned Roe v. Wade. They took away federal protections for abortion rights. Abortion, access to abortion and legal abortion in the United States is supported by 79% of the population. We've done a poll that says this. 79% of the population believes that people should have access to legal abortion. However, the Supreme Court, an unelected body, a body that is appointed by the executive branch, just decided to take that right away unilaterally. And so now basically, essentially without Roe v. Wade in place, states which many are governed by conservative leaders have the ability to enact laws that further restrict this right. And so we've already seen in states like Texas, in states like Georgia, there have been extremely aggressive laws passed, which essentially completely take this away. People who want an abortion have to go through a series of obstacles. Now they really might even be a way to be able to criminalize this fundamental public health right completely. And so this is extremely worrying. As you said, it is Taliban-like to completely infringe on the rights of women, not respecting the masses' opinions on this fundamental right to public health. But I think as we've talked about in other moments, that this is really part of a broader trend of the right wing in the United States is extremely effective in imposing its agenda in the political scene. The Democrats have not been able to do anything to protect this right to abortion for decades. And as I said, this was a decision from 1973. It's a weak decision that doesn't enshrine abortion into law. It can be overturned at any moment like it just was, and that right to abortion disappears. There is an attempt to pass a law that would have given access to it, that would have made any restrictions on abortion illegal, that would have enshrined this right, Women's Health Protection Act. And what do you know, this was up for debate this year. It had not passed in the House or the Senate. It had been the opportunity to make sure that people had the protection to this right, and it was not passed. So this is really worrying at the same time yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled to overturn a New York state law regarding concealed carry of guns. It says that there is a constitutional right to carry a handgun in public for self-defense. You know, these are things that are up for debate. The right wing is winning all of these battles. Right now, we have a Democratic president. A Democratic, you know, they have the majority, and yet these things are happening. So really what is democracy in the United States when the majority opinions is being overturned by an unelected body where, you know, right wing reactionaries are imposing their political agenda and actually winning victories. This is seriously troubling for the upcoming midterm elections. There's going to be a high turnout for conservatives. They're clearly effective in actually resisting true to their word, whereas Joe Biden, who said that he was going to pass large infrastructure bills that would have given a bigger social safety net. All of these initiatives have been defeated. He hasn't pushed Democrats to actually take these up to make these happen. And so I think this is an extremely crucial moment. We have to be following this. There are definitely going to be mass protests. We saw that even when the draft decision was leaked, tens of thousands of people were on the streets. They see what's under threat. They see that they're under attack and they're going to fight back. Well, Mr. Biden, President, U.S. President Biden seems more interested in the freedom of the Ukrainian people than the freedom of women in the United States. It's a shocking story, a shocking development. Just when many countries in South America, Catholic countries in Argentina and so on, advancing the cause of women's rights, legalizing abortion and so on, the United States deciding to take a U-turn in terms of the advancement of human freedom, shocking development. Thanks, Zoe. That's an amazing story. We're going to have to, of course, look into it in more detail. There's some better news coming from the U.K. and from Colombia. We're going to turn to that. But first, let's go to the U.K. National Union of Real Maritime and Transport Workers. Mick Lynch. I mean, what a media celebrity has become Prashant. What are these working-class British people up to now in these last few days? Right, Mr. Jay. Zoe mentioned the global right-wing push on so many fronts and just as there's a social push in the United States, there's also an economic push in many of these countries. And I think the United Kingdom is one classic example of this conservative government, this conservative party, which has been in power for close to almost a decade now. And what they've been pushing is a relentless attack on the welfare, on the salaries, on the rights of working-class people. So it's no surprise that the U.K. also seeing what is being called the summer of discontent. We have strikes coming up in various sectors. And this particular strike by rail workers, that's around 40,000 to 50,000 people taking part, three days of striking. That's Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. And so we saw one yesterday. We're going to see another round tomorrow. Very important strike because its strike, it hits in the very root of this right-wing orthodoxy, which has been so prevalent for so many years, which is that government saying that, what we should just focus on is cutting spending. And this comes on the heels of 4 billion, the 4 billion pounds worth of cuts in transportation systems, which are going to have a wide variety of impacts. We're seeing the possible closure of ticketing offices. We're seeing the possible more and more compulsory redundancies being taken place. And of course, no increases in salaries. Now the media, of course, is spun this kind of greedy attempt by the labor bureaucracy or the working bureaucracy, so union bureaucracy to mislead the workers. But when you see the numbers that are coming out, it shows how nonsensical this narrative is because this is people saying that, this is of course about pay because inflation is very high. It's, I think, a 40-year inflation high that we're seeing right now. This is of course about pay, but it's also about basic job security. This is also about safety for passengers on trains. This is also about not cutting those services, which will lead to more safety risk taking place. So which is why there's also been an expression of support from non-workers as well. People who say that we stand with the union because we want to keep transport and the railways safe. We want to keep it running efficiently. And we've talked about this endlessly on this show before. The pandemic should have showed us by now we need more investment. We need more spending on public services. We don't need more privatization. But governments like Boris Johnson's government, which lost two by elections, by the way, which definitely gives a sign of how the public sentiment is continuing to keep saying that we need reforms. I mean, the word reform should really be either retired or always written or talked about with an asterisk because it's such a nice sounding word reforms. What governments across the world mean is basically an attack on the lives of every of people throughout the society, especially the weaker section. So hats off to the workers who are, you know, who are sacrificing a lot in this kind of strike and who most probably are going to be an inspiration for many more workers across the country who are going to be taking up these kind of actions. So definitely more pressure on the conservative government, but very few signs that they're really going to learn from this and make an about turn. Fortunately, the Labour Party also taking a very regressive stance on this. In fact, I think Kerala Stammer has told his MPs, do not go to the picket lines and support the striking workers, which is highly ironical for a party named Labour. But that's really the political scene in the United Kingdom today. The two or three main political parties all united in this orthodoxy of suppressing the wages, suppressing the living standards of working people. Don't forget, Prashant, that is so clear Stammer. Make sure you mention that. His circular Stammer. I believe that his loyalties by that are more to the British establishment than to people like RMT President Alex Gordon, Mick Lynch and others who are standing on the front line, defending not only, as you quite rightly said, the working conditions and wages of train workers and rail workers and so on, but of the entire working class in Britain. Really great what they are doing. And we at UN People's Dispatch and we at Globetrotter are watching this carefully. We're going to do more on it. Give the people what they want coming again to you every Friday. This Friday, again, another piece of good news because last Sunday, Gustavo Petro and Francia Marquez prevailed in Colombia first leftist to win that election. Pretty amazing, Zoe. Tell us about it. It's an incredible victory and I think oftentimes we come here with bad news about Colombia, assassinations, repression and all of those stories which represented so much people's resistance, resilience in the face of such brutality has really come to a head and that was that the people had enough of conservative politics, they'd have enough of the politics of fear, of the politics of look what could happen, you're better off with us. And they finally said yes to change and they said yes to Gustavo Petro, yes to Francia Marquez, to the people who are committed to really bringing their demands into the public sphere, into politics, into bridging the gap between the people on the street, mobilizing for the past decades and demanding peace, demanding justice and bringing those to the institutional realm. And so I think it's a crucial victory. It was expected, it was unexpected. There was expectations that anything could happen. The Colombian right wing is so savvy, it is so experienced. But in the end, the will of the people really prevailed and Gustavo Petro, Francia Marquez won these historic elections. I think historic is the word that's been used constantly to refer to this victory. A former member of an armed movement, of a guerrilla movement a ferocious environmentalist who fights for the rights of indigenous people in Afro-Columbian communities in Colombia who has gone head to head with security forces, head to head with illegal miners, with paramilitary groups. And this is the pair that is going to run the country that has been so plagued by decades of neoliberalism, by US imperialism, by militarization. These people that really understand the conditions people are living in, the enormous amount of poverty in the country, the high levels of unemployment, the lack of access to education, to basic health care. These are the people that are going to attempt to really right the wrongs of decades. They of course have a huge task in front of them. Colombia is in one of the worst crises in its history because of the pandemic, because of the mismanagement of the pandemic, the proliferation of violence in the territories, the strong control that paramilitary groups, the drug trafficking groups have in the country. This of course was cemented and really supported by conservative governments over the decades. And so they have a huge task ahead of them. A lot of people say that once the first electoral victory is won is when the real conflict and where the real debate and tension is going to arise. We saw it in Peru after a very challenging victory of Pedro Castillo who has been in constant tension with the dominant classes in the country. This is of course going to happen in Colombia, but the people on the streets who brought this victory, who made this victory possible, who mobilized, who were active on social media, it's going to be, these are the people who are going to have to remain active in this battle in the next period. I mean, there's been a shockwave has really been sent through the region and across the world with this victory. Everyone knows of Colombia as being the US's biggest ally, the Israel of Latin America. Some people like to call it. And so the fact that there were six decades of war, of conservative politics has been reverted is such a huge victory and it can't be underestimated. Of course there are limitations and of course there's huge challenges ahead, but this fact in itself is something that has to be celebrated. We have to look at how this was possible, how the people mobilized, what organization they did to make this possible and really build towards the future, congratulate the people of Colombia for this and really look at this historical moment. It's a major victory and during the last phase of the campaign, Gustavo Petro's daughter, Sofia, came to campaign events with a t-shirt that bore the likeness of Meryl Franco, the Brazilian socialist who was assassinated a few years ago. I found that very interesting. It was almost a wink and a nod to say after Colombia, Brazil, which has an election in October, certainly an interesting moment for Colombia, a tough road ahead. Already Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, who is going to run for the president, made a ghastly remark about Marxist taking power in Colombia. You know when people in the United States say that people who have just withdrawn the right of women to control their own bodies, these same people, they like to go and make coup d'etats and so on. So this is a serious situation for the country of Colombia. Just north of Colombia, in Mexico, most interesting president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, most interesting man leads a political party called Morena National Regeneration Party. Very interesting because in the first period of Morena's time in office, Amlo's time in office, Andrés Manuel, he was mainly concerned with domestic matters, except of course confronting Donald Trump who was then the president regarding the question of the border migration and so on. He showed that he could be quite firm. Well, in this new phase of his presidency, he's really gone out as an internationalist. He has been driving the agenda for CELAC to go ahead of the OAS. That's the community of Latin American and Caribbean states to basically overtake or transcend the organization of American states controlled by the U.S. He refused to go to Biden's meeting in Los Angeles, the so-called summit of the Americas. He categorically refused and his refusal opened the door for Honduras in Bolivia and others not to go. In fact, it was Andrés Manuel López Obrador who scuttled Biden's summit in many ways. Now, when UK Home Secretary Priti Patel says that the British government has no problem extraditing Julian Assange from Belmarsh prison, the dungeon where he's sitting illegally because after all, Mr. Assange has actually completed his sentence of skipping the warrant for his arrest. He's completed that sentence. He should actually be released. They are holding him there pending extradition. There is no need for the British government to hold him. That's actually against the rules of British jurisprudence and prison policy. At any rate, Mr. Assange is sitting illegally in Belmarsh prison being held there by the British government. Priti Patel, the Home Minister of Boris Johnson's government says Britain has no problem sending him along to the United States where he would be found guilty and he would have to serve consecutive life sentences, 100 plus years in prison. Well, at that moment this Tuesday, Andrés Manuel López Obrador sales the Mexican ship into this debate and says two things to Mr. Biden which I thought were quite interesting and worthy of our reflection and give the people what they want. One of the things Andrés Manuel López Obrador said was that the persecution of Julian Assange, a reporter and publisher, is an embarrassment. He used the word embarrassment. He said Mr. Assange is one of the great journalists of our time. Also, he could have mentioned he is an important publisher because really what Julian Assange is being persecuted for is being a publisher at WikiLeaks. Not exactly a reporter but a publisher. At any rate, Mr. Andrés Manuel López Obrador says that the persecution of Julian Assange is an embarrassment and then he said that if there is any way possible for Mr. Assange to leave Belmarsh prison, Mexico would be happy to give him asylum Remember that he initially Assange initially had asylum in the embassy of Ecuador. Ecuador, by the way, right now is in the middle of a major political crisis where the deputies of the party of Rafael Correa are going to put an impeachment motion forward against the president Guillermo Lasso. Lot of violence, extra judicial use of force against political opponents like the leaders of the indigenous movement front and so on. Ecuador itself drowning in its own contradictions. Ecuador had actually revoked the asylum for Mr. Assange which brought him into the direct clutches of the British legal system. Now, Mexico sails in much more powerful country in a way and says we will give him asylum. Gotta watch out for what's going on. Do not underestimate Andrés Manuel López Obrador. People who say Andrés Manuel or Petro or Boris and so on they are not part of a kind of very, you know, far left or as it were. Well, but they are very interesting and one must pay attention to them as we do on this show. Well, let's end on a more sober note. We started sober with the earthquake in Afghanistan. Something quite painful took place for the family of Patrice Lumumba. A very painful moment, but also perhaps a relief for the people of Congo as well. Prashant, what's the latest story on the Patrice Lumumba case? Right, Vijay, you talked about Assange, of course, continuing trend of, you know, suppression of torture of people who resisted imperialism in all its forms and there's probably no greater example than that of Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister of the Atlantic Republic of the Congo, a revolutionary and icon for people across the continent, people across the world who, you know, led his country's struggle for independence at a very young age, became the first prime minister of the country, but it was very short, very soon overthrown in a coup that was backed by Belgium, that was backed by the United States, that was backed probably by the United Kingdom as well and all of these, all of them were probably involved. And, you know, he was arrested, tortured, brutally murdered and shortly after his body was dismembered, the parts were dissolved in acid so that his memory should never inspire or, you know, serve as a rallying point for the people of his country and for the people in the continent again. And this was a very deliberate act, let's not be too very clear about it. Only, only remnant of that was a tooth, a tooth covered in gold, which the person who, you know, the police officer who was involved in that final dismembering kept as some kind of, you know, grotesque act of keeping it as a water trophy or whatever. Similar thing happened with Che, if you remember. And, you know, that tooth has been in Belgium for decades now and, you know, it was recently recovered, the Belgian government made this whole thing of giving it back to the family of Lumumba. It's going to be kept, you know, there's going to be a period of mourning in Congo. But the important thing, of course, is that, which we have carried a story, one of our colleagues, Sarupri, has written it with extensive quotes from our friend Kambali Musawili who is an activist there. Very important aspect to note about the pure symbolism of this, without any meaningful attempts at justice, without any meaningful attempts at accountability, stemming from the fact that, you know, Belgium has expressed some anodyne comments about how they hold moral responsibility or whatever. There is no real accountability for the crimes of imperialism. There's no real accountability for this long period of involvement. And, you know, nobody, of course, has been arrested or persecuted, nobody punished or no reparations in any meaningful sense of the term. And this is especially important in the Congo because from 1885 onwards, we, Belgium and King Leopold II, maintained personal control of the Congo for 20 years. There was a reign of brutality, which is probably unprecedented, you know, even by the gory standards of colonialism. And the photos, for instance, the stories are like really, you know, quite unbelievable. And this is continued in new ways. Even to this day, the Democratic Republic of the Congo is used as a pawn by, say, Western powers with their allies in countries such as Rwanda. Even today, Rwanda and Uganda have continued to, you know, exploit the resources of the Congo with the connivance of their allies in the West, armed conflicts going on even now. All of the stretching from that pivotal moment, the assassination of Lumumba, who, you know, who dreamed of a different way, who talked about who worked for a different way along with his allies across the continent. So the assassination of Lumumba was, you know, in that sense it was a strike against those aspirations for a different kind of Africa, for a different kind of world and the impact of that continues to this day, which is why it's so significant that, you know, while this symbolic action is being hailed, it does of course bring some amount of closure to Lumumba's family, while the symbolic action is being hailed. In truth, it is just an empty act without any true, you know, answering the questions of justice and accountability. But nonetheless, as you say, it's important that it happened. This has been a poignant show because there's up and down emotionally. I hope you come to us every Friday, give the people what they want, tell your friends about this show. We, Zoe Prashant and I from People's Dispatch and Globetrotter, try to bring you in half an hour the most important or at least what we consider to be the most significant stories. So join us every Friday. I want to end with a little note that as the US Supreme Court has overturned what's known as Roe vs. Wade about the right to women's freedom, one of the Supreme Court judges, Clarence Thomas, has now said he's next going to try to make contraceptives illegal. That's the world we live in, friends. See you next week.