 Okay. Good day to you. It's Friday. It's the 23rd of April, 2021. You're lucky to be with us. Give the people what they want with Zoe from People's Dispatch. Prashant from People's Dispatch, myself, Vijay from Globetrotter, bringing you in half an hour the most important things you need to know happen this week in the world. That's why you join us at Give the People What They Want, YouTube, Facebook on Spotify, podcasting. We do the lot because we're interested in getting you information. Not so the foreign ministry of Peru. The foreign ministry of Peru, my friends, has decided recently that not only should foreigners not take an interest in the Peruvian presidential elections, where Pedro Castillo, the candidate of the left, is ahead of Madam Fujimori, the candidate of the right, not only does the Peruvian foreign ministry say that we shouldn't talk about the Peruvian election, but we should have no opinions about it either. We should have no opinions about it either. Sorry to tell the Peruvian foreign ministry, but at Give the People What They Want, we talk about anything we'd like and we have opinions about lots of things, including on the very fine country of Peru. We're not going to start in Peru today. We're going to go to the epicenter of COVID-19. We're going to go not to the United States, not to Brazil, but to India where COVID-19 is on what? They call it a second wave. Is it a third wave, fourth wave? Are there any waves any longer Prashant? What's happening in India? Right, Vijay. It's really difficult to describe it because what we see is a complete collapse. I think some of the signs of a complete collapse of a system are when basically people are left to fend for themselves. That is exactly what we're seeing. A very small example, of course, is on many of our timelines on social media where we see desperate appeals and desperate attempts to get aid and desperate attempts to get. Something as basic as oxygen. I mean, we are living in 2021. We are living in a country which boasts of being a teacher to the world. That's the preferred say, the right-wing government and its leaders say that India is a teacher to the world. What we're seeing is people desperately struggling to access oxygen and it's not only people, it's even hospitals. Oxygen now has become one of the, say, a key point in the issue because courts are intervening, hospitals are issuing some of the biggest hospitals in the country. In fact, issuing urgent appeals saying that they are going to run out of oxygen in maybe less than an hour. We have two hours of oxygen left. And this, we're, of course, talking about the metros, when we're talking about people who have access to social media, people who are that way relatively far more privileged. So the true extent of the crisis is much, much, much worse. And the numbers are, of course, shocking. I think this is now called global media attention also. We're seeing daily cases in the range of 300,000. So it's clearly the highest number of cases being reported in a single day, not only now, but throughout the course of the epidemic. We're seeing deaths in the range of 2,000 and above that's taking place. And all this has happened, say, just a few months after, across the spectrum people in India, and especially the government, who should have known better, the governing authorities, were confident that the pandemic had been beaten. So we had this phase in February where we were reporting maybe around 10,000 cases countrywide. And around that time, there was great national rejoicing at the fact that COVID-19 had been pipped and we had once again shown the path to the world. And now we're in April where there are no beds, there are no ventilators, there's no oxygen, like I said. And people are, like I said, people are appealing for help in whatever way they can find through friends, through associations or online. So that's where we are right now. And the extent of the failure is truly shocking because I think one of the things we've talked about when we've discussed second waves or third waves or fourth waves in countries across the world is the sheer failure of governments to take precautions, to create the kind of infrastructure that is needed to deal with an issue like this. And in India's case, it has been absolutely no different. There have been reports about how oxygen plants were commissioned in many hospitals. Many months after the crisis peak, the crisis began, there was an attempt to say if tenders were called for these plants, but very few of them have been set up. And today we're starting at this crisis. India's own vaccination drive, which was flaunting, which it was claiming as again a gift to the world, also going to face crisis because of shortages. So I mean, across board, we're seeing the result of multiple failures of complacency at the very basic level. This boils down to a government which throughout, from the beginning of the year, especially gave all sorts of signals that the worst of the crisis was over and that we basically won. So there were religious functions, religious gatherings in which hundreds of thousands people, hundreds of thousands of people participated, which were allowed. There was an eight phase election in one state, which was unprecedented, and which many have said that was an attempt to set the stage for the ruling BJP to win in that state. That's West Bengal. And throughout the impression that was given was that the worst is over. And this is where we are right now. And it's deeply depressing and disappointing because you see that, say, at the last year, we saw examples for instance of China where the pandemic broke out in Wuhan. There were hospitals built in a jiffy. The entire infrastructure of the state was mobilized. And here we have one year after the crisis broke out, the last peak of the crisis was maybe in September where we just about touched 100,000 daily cases. And even after that, we seem to have been completely unprepared. And the government's response in various ways has been to blame the people again. So at one level, it's the irresponsibility of people. And it's like a double blow on those who are already struggling to find these resources, to find a space for their loved ones to at least get some basic treatment. So that's the kind of response that has been there. And it's important also to note that these numbers are right now very suspect in many places. There have been multiple reports. I mean, global media again, a lot of photos of burning fires and symmetries. And of course, what this also reveals is the fact that there have been reports of places where, say maybe 100 deaths have taken place, but the official count is maybe five or in single digits. So there's also the fact that we do not know the full extent of what is happening right now, the extent of the crisis, because obviously being a vast country, a lot of reporting, completely getting skewed. So there is this bulk of issues, all of which boils down to the fact that despite the fact that there should have been preparations made, none were made, complacency all around the board. And I think the worst part is we don't even really know when this crisis is going to get over, because models like you know, in the past one year, likely to fail at various points, there are models which say that we're going to peak, say somewhere in the second week of May, astounding, say 3.3 million active cases at a time. So at least in the short run, no relief it seems. It's a very unfortunate situation when people are left to identify for themselves. Newsclick.in has written a lot of stories on this explosion of COVID-19 in India. They did a story just to refer to what you talked about earlier on the oxygen plants not built in Madhya Pradesh and so on. Meanwhile, of course, in the left led government in Kerala, we saw the Kerala government put a lot of emphasis in building oxygen capacity. Kerala of course now exporting oxygen to Goa, to Tamil Nadu, to Karnataka, to neighboring states. You see the difference Prashant between the central government in New Delhi led by Mr. Narendra Modi, a completely callous attitude it seems to me towards building infrastructure. Promises made as you said for oxygen and for vaccines. Kerala small state, 35 million people, most likely the left will get re-elected, but in Kerala they've been exporting oxygen and the Prime Minister said something interesting. He said we will not go back on our promises and what he's referring to is vaccines in Kerala will be free to the public and what I heard recently Prashant was that people getting free vaccines in Kerala were donating money saying we want to donate money to the state because the Serum Institute of India has jacked up prices. We've talked about on this show, we've talked about in a sense pandemic profiteering, the profits made by companies during this pandemic scandalous behavior. Serum Institute of India sounds like a public sector entity, in fact it's not. It's a private entity, the family is slated to make a great deal of money on this. Vaccine injections up to 400 rupees a shot when they were 150 rupees, a shot jacked up prices. Ridiculous situation in India, almost as ridiculous as in Brazil and we'll come back to vaccines and the WTO in a minute, but almost replication of what's happening in Brazil. India on the one side collapsing under COVID-19, but really when they talk about an Indian variant, the Indian variant is the privatization of the economy. That's the real variant. It may not be the sequenced, COVID is that different. The privatization of the economy mirrored in Brazil. Brazil ready to have a million cases, Zoe? What do we look for in the story in Brazil now? Yeah, I mean, unfortunately, it's a lot of bad news right now. Both Indian Brazil are rapidly, of course, the US still holds first place in terms of numbers of deaths with over 570,000. Brazil is getting up there and it has, I mean, today the latest numbers are 383,000 confirmed deaths in over 14 million cases. And this is, we talked about waves. Brazil has not had a first wave, a second wave, a third wave. It's just had a consistent increasing, not subsiding kind of increase since March of last year. It really hasn't, in no point throughout the pandemic has Brazil been able to control, I mean, it may be like short plateaus in certain regions, in certain states. But as a country, it's just been nonstop. I mean, when we talked about oxygen, you know, two months ago was when the Manaus oxygen crisis happened. And now Brazil is in the worst stage of the pandemic. I mean, we're seeing a massive increase in deaths. There was a recent study that was conducted by an independent researcher from Russia and, you know, our comrades from Brazil, she wrote a report on these numbers and it shows three models about COVID numbers in Brazil. And the last one, the third model is extremely worrying and it shows that by the end of, by October 2021, Brazil could reach if it continues at the rate it is, which means uncontrolled, I mean, lack of restrictions, slow vaccination, emergence of new variants, they could reach one million deaths by October 2021. And I mean, this is, this is horrible. This is horrifying. And I think it's really important to point out that Jair Bolsonaro, as we've mentioned several times on this show, similar to Narendra Modi and the BJP-led government in India has just not taken any measures, has actually in Brazil, we've seen the case of him blocking the approval of certain vaccines under pressure from the United States. So of course, the Sputnik vaccine, some of, I think a couple of the Chinese vaccines have been approved there. But I mean, there's just been resistance to even getting the vaccination process underway. They're not receiving as many COVAX doses in the time that they had foreseen. I mean, it's just a situation of other crisis we're going to talk about, of course, the patent waivers. But even without the patent waivers, you know, they just haven't done what has needed to be done to be able to control this. You know, restriction measures are not in place. You know, a government that from day one has denied the existence and the severity of this crisis, of course, we're going to be in this situation. And I mean, every day we're seeing more and more militants, more and more left leaders, intellectuals from our movements, you know, and just so many people who are dying of this disease. I think another important number to mention here is that in the ICU beds in Brazilian hospitals, it's now more than 50% are young people. So this is no longer just affecting elderly people, as we saw in the beginning of the pandemic. This is actually seriously affecting young people. And it's just, I mean, a really upsetting situation and movements in Brazil are resisting for survival. I mean, they're still out on the streets, getting food to people, getting basic, you know, trying to meet the basic needs of people. But it's a really, a really difficult situation as similar to what we're seeing in India. Well, it's a catastrophic situation in Brazil, one million casualties by October 2021. That's extraordinary. India also fodder for the acceleration of this virus. Meanwhile, to some extent, there's hope that the vaccine is could become a panacea could help. Yes, I quite agree 7.9 billion people on the planet. On April 12th, we got news that the first 1 billion vaccines had been produced, projection that 2 billion vaccines produced by the end of May, that's considerable progress. But, but, and here's the problem, only 0.2% of the vaccines produced have gone to the poorer countries to developing nations 0.2%. Right now, the head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Ghebreyesus, has been out there talking about, in a sense, vaccine apartheid. Doesn't use that phrase, but he's basically talking about vaccine apartheid. The new head of the WTO also happens to come from a global South country, Ngozi Okonju Ivela. Madam Okonju Ivela has said at recent times that the World Trade Organization must do more to at least suspend patent on these vaccines to let production capacity happen elsewhere. She's been pretty forthright about this. On the 22nd of April, WTO gathered at a virtual meeting. In fact, friends, the world, the United States, the United States Trade Representative Catherine Tai has also come on the record talking about the need for something like a patent waiver. Of course, she called this a market failure. It's not a market failure, US Trade Representative Catherine Tai. This is how the market is supposed to work. It's not exactly a failure. The market doesn't work to help people's needs. It helps to make profits, which it is doing. We talked about profiteering. On the table is the vaccine patent waiver. Even if this waiver, which is requested by India and South Africa in October, even if this waiver goes through, there is simply not enough production lines available. It tells us that once the all clear sounds in the pandemic, in fact, even now, we need public money to build public sector pharmaceutical capacity. This is very important. It has been eroded. Pharmaceutical capacity in the public sector must be built up. I think that's something that Tedros has been saying repeatedly. I got a hint of this from Angosi Oconju Evela in her comments at the WTO. I think there is going to be new appetite for thinking about the public sector as we go forward. On the one side, friends, there's concern about patent waiver. It's back on the table. It will be discussed. Looks like even the Biden administration is asking US pharmaceutical companies to allow this to happen. But once this happens, we've got to come back to a discussion about the role of the public sector. Keep an eye on what the WTO does. Some hot spots around the world. News coming from the vicinity of the Al Aqsa Mosque, one of the most beautiful places in the world. You walk down those dark streets in old Jerusalem, you come up to this doorway. If you're a Muslim and lucky enough to go through, you're able to see the Al Aqsa Mosque close up. Otherwise, you can see it from the side. There's a perch where you can have a look at how beautiful it is. Prashant, what is happening again near the Al Aqsa in Jerusalem? Actually, there have been days of violence. It's not yesterday. There was, of course, a major incident. But this has been happening for quite a few days. There's a larger context which we'll come to in a couple of minutes. But the most recent incidents have involved this far-right Jewish group called Le Havre, which staged this huge march yesterday, carrying slogans like members shouting slogans like death to Arabs. Before that, an extensive campaign online with extremely inflammatory violence slogans against the residents of that place. And I think it's a very important thing to note that these are residents of that place, people who have been there for hundreds of years, definitely. And what happened over the night, and this is, of course, also the month of Ramadan going on, Muslims fasting, breaking their fast early in the morning, launching their fast early in the morning. So what we're also seeing is that, say, at this moment, which is particularly very important for Muslims, a very provocative act by Israeli right-wing groups and threatening violence. And there was, of course, more than 100 people were definitely arrested. Many were injured when the Palestinians tried to resist this kind of brazen assault for lack of better word. This violent provocation by Israeli, this Israeli group. But there's also a larger context to it because even the al-Aqsa compound, like you mentioned, in 2019, especially we saw multiple incidents of invasion by, again, Israeli right-wing Israeli settlers who believe that this al-Aqsa mosque should be torn down. And because it was the site of the Temple of Solomon, and there's a very strong campaign, and their actions have actually been backed by prominent Israeli, Israeli authorities and the government in civil society as well. So basically what this yesterday's incident, I mean, I suspect media reports, a lot of media reports kind of tend to look at these incidents as clashes, and clashes that we are a very neutral term because both sides, of course, are guilty. There is the neutral police, which noblest steps in and tries to prevent the violence. But what we're seeing is actually, say, decades of apartheid policy, decades of policy sanctioned by the highest levels of the Israeli government to, say, for lack of a better word, ethnically cleanse that area. And there's an area of extreme importance to the Palestinians living there. And this kind of violence continuing without any kind of bar, any kind of stop, you know, we keep hearing reports of clash after clash after clash, so to speak. But the larger question of the Palestinians, you know, their rights being eroded by the that's what we're seeing right now. We're going to keep following this story because this story is important. Palestinian emancipation is important to us. You're listening to give the people what they want, coming to you from people's dispatch with Zoe and Prashant with Globetrotter from me, where with you every week, we like hearing from you. We want you to tell other people about our show. We don't have the money for advertising. You are most loyal fans. You are our advertisers. You have to go out there and help us bring an audience. Build a crowd. Build a crowd, as they say. Build a crowd. 22nd of April was the birthday of Vladimir Lenin. Also happens to be Earth Day. Must be a communist plot, this environmental thing. It must be a communist plot. That's what I hear, Zoe. I hear that Earth Day, the talk of climate change, environmentalism must be a communist plot because they celebrate Lenin's birthday. What happened in Bolivia yesterday during Earth Day to celebrate this great communist day? Well, I think the first thing is that people need to recognize that it is a communist day and that Earth Day is not a capitalist day. I think that's one of the biggest takeaways from the meeting that happened in Bolivia yesterday, which was the re-encounter with Pachamama or Mother Earth. This was an event organized by the plurinational state of Bolivia. Essentially, with the objective to discuss this deep crisis that's facing the planet, that's facing humanity, that's seeing capitalist exploitation and capitalist greed put above the survival of planet Earth, unrestrained extraction of resources by multinational companies, privatization of natural resources. There was a really important gathering that occurred yesterday. We saw important left intellectuals and political leaders from across the world, Vandana Shiva from India, the foreign minister of Venezuela, of course, Vice President David Choquewanka of Bolivia and Luis Arce presided over the event. It was a really important moment because at the same time, you of course had Biden's climate summit, which in the morning began with a speech by Jared Bolsonaro who outright lied and said that the Brazilian government has been taking very concerted measures to stop illegal logging and illegal burning in the Amazon and the Pantanal region, which is a lie. The Bolsonaro government cut climate change budget by 95% when they entered office. Of course, there are other people who attended Biden's climate summit, but you have this greenwashing, we can save the climate without changing the model. You have a different sort of gathering that discusses how capitalism itself and the system of capitalism is what's threatening the planet and that the system where you consistently just exploit and don't consider the Earth, the resources, and this relationship, the balance between the Earth and the people, this is not a project of humanity. This was a really great event that was held in Bolivia parallel to kind of this Biden summit. At the same time, also over 130 social movements, people's movements who are part of the International People's Assembly, the International Week of Indian Priests struggle, actually sent a letter to this climate summit of Biden and kind of raising these same demands that they can't address climate change, they can't address global warming and all these threats to the planet and humanity without addressing this model. And they raised a series of demands that should include protecting and supporting small peasants and farmers, communities that are in areas of danger. Of course, climate change is not just climate change, it's people being driven out of their land because of more occurring natural disasters, because of resources extraction. So, I mean, I encourage people to check this out and, you know, of course, defense of the Earth and defense of nature is a key component to our struggle and that always has to remain front and center. And the capitalists are never going to defend the Earth. They're just trying to use this discourse to, you know, make their projects sound a little bit more humanitarian, but it never will be. So maybe it's, it's maybe true that when the hippies in California came up with Earth Day on April 22nd, they picked that day deliberately, Gary Snyder, Alan Ginsberg, all of those beatnik Leninists picking Lenin's birthday for Earth Day. Bohemian Bolsheviks. That's part of it. So I'd like to say there is a certain contempt for the planet Earth. We've seen this in Modi's comments about COVID, Bolsonaro's comments about the Amazon and COVID. I was struck when the verdict came out for the killer of George Floyd, a human being, let's remember, who was killed for no reason by a police officer. The US politician Nancy Pelosi gave a press conference where she talked about the sacrifice of George Floyd, the sacrifice. You'd have to have contempt for human beings to say that a murder of a person is a sacrifice. She called it a sacrifice for justice. I found the language quite important to focus on for a minute. There is contempt for ordinary people around the world. And I found this to be a gesture of contempt. Ned Price, a spokesperson of the US government, just casually said that the United States is not going to roll back on the Defense Production Act. You see, people, you need to understand that countries around the world, India, for instance, sometimes called the pharmacy of the world, produces 60% of global vaccines, accesses raw materials from the US market, including solvents and plastic bags and things that you think other countries can make. But at any rate, there are at least solvents and so on, access from the United States. The Defense Production Act prevents US companies, private companies, from exporting these particular elements, the raw materials of the vaccine to countries like India, which can, if India opens its production lines, can produce very many more vaccines than it is now. It doesn't have the raw materials to produce the vaccine. When the Biden administration was directly asked to remove Defense Production Act protections for these elements, these raw materials of the vaccine, Ned Price came before the cameras to say a priority of the Biden administration is to vaccinate people in the United States first and only then perhaps will they lift the protections. As a consequence of the Defense Production Act protections, India is going to be, is going to have to stop producing vaccines in the short term, which means not only will Indians not be vaccinated, but people in other parts of the global south who would be buying vaccines from India, plus, plus friends, I'm making a point about contempt, plus, plus the United States has not yet approved the AstraZeneca vaccine, plus, keep this in mind, plus, just before we began, Prashant said that something like 30 million, I don't remember what the exact number is, 30 million. By the end of the month, 35 million doses. By the end of the month, 35 million AstraZeneca doses will be sitting in a warehouse in the United States. United States is not willing to export this to other countries. Canada has five vaccines per head. You only need two. Why aren't they exporting it? Contempt for humanity, contempt for humanity. I want to put that on the table. Zoe Prashant and I are reporters. We have just violated the statement made by the Peruvian foreign ministry, which says that reporters should not report about countries other than their own. They should not even have opinions about other countries. We have violated that. We reported about countries not our own for our show, give the people what they want, which we need you to go out there and promote. We've talked about things outside our countries. What does, what right does Prashant have to talk about Palestine? What right does Zoe have to talk about Brazil? Not only do we have a right to talk about these places, but we have opinions about them, which the Peruvian foreign ministry doesn't want us to have. We have opinions. We have opinions because some people seem to have contempt for others. They have contempt and they have power. Two dangerous things to have in common. You've been listening to give the people what they want. We come to you every week on Friday. Prashant and Zoe from People's Dispatch. And I'm Vijay from Globetrotter. It's been an interesting week. Prashant, Zoe, are you in health? We're coming back next week to talk about Chad. We'll be talking about Chad next week, the Sahel region. I think we'll spend some time on it. We'll see you next week. Every Friday, we're here for you. Give the people what they want. Share this show. Tell people to come and listen. We rely on you from People's Dispatch, People's Dispatch.org and Globetrotter. Follow us. Tell us what you think. Tell us that you think that we're the best show on the planet. Thanks a lot. And stay safe.