 Welcome to give the people what they want. Today is the 18th of June already. It's the 18th of June 2021. Welcome to our show with Prashant and Zoe from People's Dispatch. Hi Prashant, hi Zoe. Nice to see you. I'm Vijay from Globetrotter. Look, there's no better place to start our show today than to talk about the dialogue held between President Joe Biden of the United States and Vladimir Putin of Russia. They met in Geneva. They met around the time that the great national liberation hero from Zambia, Kenneth Kondah, died at the age of 97. Kenneth Kondah, the first head of government in the state of Zambia, which was the British colony of Northern Rhodesia, led the fight not only in Northern Rhodesia to create Zambia, but also of course was the leading opponent of the apartheid state in South Africa. He was the opponent across the continent inside the Commonwealth, playing a very important role. Kenneth Kondah also gave his soil in Zambia as home to national liberation movements across the African continent. A very significant man, a very tall tree is fallen at the same time that Putin and Biden met in Geneva. Now the interesting thing about their meeting in Geneva, Prashant and Zoe, what I found interesting was I'm so glad that they reaffirmed the principle that a nuclear war cannot be won. I mean, I must say it's 2021 and it was encouraging to have two important world leaders both sitting on major nuclear arsenals to make this comment that a nuclear war cannot be won and it must never be fought. Well, thanks for that. Apart from that, I should say very little came out of that summit. There was verbiage, bilateral strategic dialogue, one of those terms that we hear often when leaders meet, but regional stability, humanitarian aid, terms like that, even some talk of vaccines, but set all that aside. The most important thing here isn't actually what Biden and Putin agreed on or didn't agree on. That's not the most important thing. Most important thing is the United States seems to have returned to a strategy that it had given up during the Obama era and that was to divide Russia from China. Henry Kissinger many years ago wrote a book called China in which he made the argument that the United States should befriend China and isolate Russia. Others took the opposing position to isolate China. It seems that Biden is going down that road trying to bring Russia close to the West again. It's going to be very difficult. In fact, in the airport, as he was boarding Air Force One coming out of Geneva, Mr. Biden said, and I quote, Russia is in a very difficult spot right now. They are being squeezed by China. They want desperately to remain a major power. Now, this is an interesting statement, and I thought it bears a second of analysis. Firstly, Russia and China have not been closer together than in any time in modern history. Their strategic dialogue has been very firm. Both Xi Jinping and Putin have reaffirmed these ties. They have economic ties. There are some vulnerabilities. Certainly, the trade goes largely one way. It's from China to Russia. Russian goods coming into China, not at a high premium. It's mainly Russian energy that gets exported to China. There are some vulnerabilities, some gaps, but basically the strategic link between Russia and China seems relatively inviolable. So that's an odd thing when Biden says they are being squeezed by China. It's a kind of malicious attitude towards what's happening in Eurasia. But secondly, when he says they want desperately to remain a major power, you've got to say that by dint of having nuclear weapons, and since the United States and Russia in this summit had to accept that nuclear war is really unacceptable, they de facto accepted the fact that Russia is a major power. I don't think it's desperately trying to be a major power. There are some contradictions in this strategy. The United States has driven by dint of the Ukraine policy, the forward policy in Ukraine, the betrayal of the Minsk agreement, for instance, and pressure against Germany to complete the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. The United States has created seeds of dissension with Russia, which will be hard to unravel. It's an interesting summit. I'm glad they had this summit, but I don't think we should make too much of it. I very much doubt that Russia is going to break links with China and go back to being part of the G7 plus one used to be for a time people may remember the G8. No longer the G8. Vladimir Putin was not there at Khabis Bay in Wales. He had to meet Biden separately in Geneva. So I doubt very much that that axis will be developed, but certainly it's important that they met. I hope tensions dialed down. Certainly the cyber weaponry thing was there, and we'll come back to that story later. But it's a considerable story of some importance in all this. Vaccines were discussed, not with great seriousness, not with great seriousness. This is back on the table. There's a vaccine summit being held by the Progressive International this weekend, starting today, significant meeting. The question of Africa and vaccines Prashant, what's the latest? It's interesting also because like you said, the G7 met recently and they very grandly promised 1 billion doses. And there was obviously a lot of, you know, hula-blue and noise about that. Because the fine print shows that the 1 billion doses will is over the next one and a half years. And this comes even as there's been quite a lot of alarming figures, including from Africa. One interesting statement by Oxfam says that based on its studies that based on the current rate of vaccination, the low income countries in the world could take up to 2078 to vaccinate all their citizens. Now, of course, this is likely to change with an increase in production and all that. But I think this kind of shows the extent, the huge gap that exists right now as far as vaccines are concerned. We talked about it continuously on the show. But Africa's case is especially important here because very recently, the number of cases in the continent just crossed 5 million. And that was, you know, it's a huge number as we can guess. But the scary thing is that less than 1% of the population of the continent has been vaccinated. So fully vaccinated with 2 doses, that is. And this is a continent of over 1.3 billion people, 16% of the world's population and less than 1%. That is, I think as of June 15, 0.8% of Africa's population had been fully vaccinated, just over 2% of the population having received at least one dose. And some of the figures are even scarier because we have countries which have not even, you know, have not received any vaccines at all, despite the presence of the COVAX Initiative at the World Health Organization. Despite all these global claims by the powerful countries, the rich countries in the world, countries like Tanzania or Eritrea, or for that matter, the Sahrawi Republic, haven't received any doses at all. And a country like Burkina Faso has not been able to administer even one dose. You take a country like Nigeria, for instance, which has, which is the most populous country in Africa, and even they don't have enough stock to vaccinate even one person with their population. So there's a twofold issue here. One is of course, the fact that, you know, the vaccines are very slow in coming, which means that even if countries launch major vaccination drives, what happens is that their stocks are in risk of running out. So South Africa faces that problem, Tanzania faces that problem. Even Morocco, which has had a very good vaccination coverage, is facing that problem. So we have a situation where, you know, stocks are 80%, 90% depleted. And there's no real solution forward because India stopped supplying after its own internal crisis. There has been still no decision on the patent waivers, which was considered a very key step in trying to improve production. So I think it, I think it shows the kind of obscenity of inequality we've been talking about because the countries in the West, the United States, the UK, the European Union, especially in terms of advanced orders, they have bought vaccines or they've ordered vaccines to sort of cover their population five and six times over. And here we have countries which are not even able to vaccinate 1% of their population or 2% of their population. So this pandemic really bringing out some of the most ugly aspects of capitalism as we talked about. The key part, of course, being that the variants are the big unknown over here. More variants emerge. It becomes far more difficult to control. New waves, likely they're talking about the possibility of a new wave in Africa soon. They're talking about the possibility of a new wave in India soon. And despite here, all this, we just have the West, the rich countries, the G7 countries, basically sitting pretty on top of these sources. At the same time, some bits of hope in terms of Cuba, of course, the development of the two vaccines, they've already started administering them internally and third phase trials are on. So that's definitely a sign of hope. And Cuba's approach to vaccine development has been conditioned on solidarity. They've already had discussions with Venezuela and Iran. There is a possibility that these countries might actually be able to produce them on their own, which is something that with the big pharma countries are not able to do. They produce vaccines on their own. So there are some signs of hope, of course, in terms of global solidarity in terms of South-South cooperation. But what we're seeing right now, I think it's very essential to break this false image that the G7 is painted of them being some benevolent vaccine donors, considering the hideous amount of inequality involved. Yes, I mean, even the U.N. Secretary-General at Carbis Bay said that this is really not in the details a significant proposal. Even Antonio Gutierrez said that. Peru struck hard by the COVID-19 disease, struggling economically in the middle of an election crisis. Jose Carlos and I at People's Dispatch had a piece about the attempt to steal the election. Turns out the United States sends an ambassador there just recently with a CIA background. I mean, good God, Zoe, what is happening in Beloved Peru? After the other election in the Andes in Ecuador, what's going on in Peru? Well, it's one of the places where we thought we would see some quick good news because early on, a couple of days out of the voting, which happens on June 6th, it was clear that Pedro Castillo had pulled ahead and that he was going to win the race. And since then, basically the country has been in a state of kind of a standstill of waiting for the official results to be certified, waiting for all the different instances to kind of declare Pedro Castillo the winner. At this point, I think two days back, the electoral authority had finished processing all of the votes, 100% of the votes. And Pedro Castillo continues to remain the lead. He has over 40,000 votes over Keiko Fujimori. Now, essentially, you know, as it's really well outlined in this article that you and Jose Carlos wrote together, essentially Keiko Fujimori has been preparing for this scenario wherein Pedro Castillo wins a very sub-margin ahead of Keiko. And they've basically prepared a series of legal challenges of trying to invalidate certain votes, of trying to challenge votes from certain areas. I mean, a lot of people have said that even if all of the votes that they're challenging were to be overturned, she still wouldn't get the majority. But I think what we can understand from this situation is that it's about creating instability. It's about undermining the democratic process in a country that has really already suffered countless attacks on institutionality. I mean, the former president, Pedro Pablo Fushinsky, you know, he was impeached over corruption. There was an interim president. It's been a constant, unstable, you know, situation in Peru where the people have completely lost faith in the democratic process. And what we've seen with Pedro Castillo is that people have been out on the streets since the votes were cast to defend his victory, to peacefully demand that the Peruvian authorities in all instances, both the electoral authority, the current, the electoral court, respect the will of the people. And as it's outlined in this article, they've pulled all the high, the first line of right-wing defense to kind of just attack the vote. I mean, it talks about these figures who are really mired in controversy throughout their whole political career to attack the progressive movements. But all of that to say is that people continue on the streets. They continue to defend that Pedro Castillo has rightfully won the elections. They know that he's rightfully won the elections. And even though Keiko is trying to create a situation of chaos, of instability, of undermining the political process, people have really been determined to defend this vote, to remain on the streets and, you know, to really bring that change with people desperately want in Peru. You know, it's an important election to look toward because here you have the case of a genuine plebeian leader who won a very slim majority. It should be said it's a highly divided society, but that doesn't give the oligarchy the right to steal the election. I think people need to look at this carefully. You're listening to give the people what they want coming to you from People's Dispatch, People's Dispatch.org. You must go and bookmark the site right away, straight away. You'll get these and other stories at the site on a regular basis. Also coming to you from Globetrotter, you can visit us at Globetrotter.media. We are a wire syndication service. We hope you'll take a look at some of the stories we've been doing. Now, some of the stories we've been doing. I've been on the phone for the last few days with our friends in Afghanistan, contacts and people we know in Afghanistan. A very complicated situation. The United States has pledged to withdraw troops by the 11th of September. Troop withdrawals have already begun. There's some concern now because there's no political process that goes beneath the troop withdrawals. The US will leave essentially Kabul, relatively defenseless. The government of Ashraf Ghani backed by the West unable to find a way to create a unity government with the Taliban. That seems to be the preferred solution from the United States, from the UN as well, from Pakistan and from China. People are saying there needs to be a unity government as a transition till it's possible to have elections. No hope of a unity government. And that's partly because the Doha process, the discussion process at Doha was cut off before it could advance. I think Ashraf Ghani didn't want to have any deal with the Taliban. But look, it looks like there's no other option, unfortunately. Some sort of negotiation has to happen. Now, very poorly reported outside the region. Foreign ministers of China, of Pakistan and of Afghanistan have a security dialogue and they've been a regional dialogue. They've been meeting regularly. They've been looking for a possibility to create a solution in Afghanistan, which is the least worst solution. Don't forget, in the 1990s, there was a terrible period of civil war and fratricide once the Soviet troops pulled out of Afghanistan. This is a time when at least there was a government with some legitimacy, the government of Najibullah. Now Ashraf Ghani, barely any legitimacy. It looks like a government placed there by the West, not that different from the government of Hamid Karzai, by the way, who's emerged as a serious critic of Ashraf Ghani. Matters are quite grave in Kabul and in Afghanistan. This security or regional dialogue between China, Afghanistan, and Pakistan has impacts for China and Pakistan. I want to spend a minute to explore these. For one, Pakistan no longer wishes to see the kind of instability in its border regions, in Waziristan, in the border areas, in Peshawar and so on. Large section of the Pashtun population lives in that strip that runs from the area of Waziristan down to Balochistan. There is no appetite for a return to the very serious problems that Pakistan faced up there. Prime Minister Imran Khan has said repeatedly, doesn't want that. On the other hand, Pakistan has told the United States that they may welcome the US returning to military bases in Pakistan. Pakistan had not allowed the United States military to have a footprint in Pakistan. Now they have said, if the US withdraws fully and if Afghanistan is unstable, they might welcome the United States back. That means that the Taliban will not see Pakistan as a neutral observer and you might see Taliban attacks and serious problems for Pakistan. That's why Pakistan keen to see some sort of unity government on the other side. In China, a serious issue here because in China we have these called East Turkmenistan Islamic movement which has basically in the Uighur regions in Sinjip province has conducted some pretty serious terrorist activities. This group largely domiciled in bits of Afghanistan quite close to the Taliban. The Chinese Foreign Minister Wang has made it quite clear that China would not like to see the East Turkmenistan Islamic movement get the kind of support it does from Taliban, continued support and therefore if the Taliban returns in force, if instability returns completely in Afghanistan, this will have spillover effects in Uzbekistan and certainly in Sinjip province. So China, Pakistan, Afghanistan, the government of Ashraf Ghani, very concerned about developments there. We're going to watch this closely. Just want to say it's one thing to cheer when the United States withdraws troops from Afghanistan but absent a political deal seems like it's going to be quite difficult for the Afghan people. Nobody's saying the United States should remain in Afghanistan even for another day. I don't think that's the message. The message is that pressure needs to be put on all political parties inside Afghanistan to have some kind of deal. That's what we have. We're going to come back to the story. It's a significant story but leaving Afghanistan now, we're going to travel back to Palestine, very small part of the world but my God, great significance. Prashant, what's the latest? It's crazy. There's so much to talk about. One of the key aspects right now being that we have a new government in Israel led by somebody who just around a month ago went on social media claiming that there was this hospital in Gaza which was sheltering Hamas terrorists and turned out he was showing a photo of a hospital in Pakistan. So you have an active fake news peddler, yet another active face, a fake news peddler joining the list of world leaders and nothing new of course considering Netanyahu was famous for drawing pictures which supposedly describe the Iranian nuclear program. But we have Raftali Bennett in power and Israel's policy doesn't seem to have really changed much. Two rounds of air raids on Gaza in the last two days, I think last three days, apparently because incendiary balloons were flown into Israel and the response has of course been as strikes as usual. So Bennett clearly continuing the policy of Netanyahu, again not very surprising Bennett was a leader of the settlement movement. He has been very clear about his desire to annex as much of the West Bank as possible in the past as well. So nothing to be really surprised. On the other hand we've also seen that just a few days ago there was a huge march around a thousand people extremist Jewish settlers you know taking part in this massive abusive racist march which had been postponed last month, the march which every year marks the occupation of Jerusalem by Israel. So I mean it's one thing of course that in 1967 Israel occupied Jerusalem but they actually have an annual event where they go around marching shouting slogans like death to Arabs and may your land burn or may houses burn. And this event actively supported, promoted and endorsed by the Israeli government it seems because the law enforcement agencies in Israel were busy setting up blockades so that the Palestinians could not protest a march which celebrated the takeover of their homeland. So I mean it's beyond the tragedy it's beyond the farce it's sometimes incomprehensible to see how these systems work because you have what Israeli forces are doing it's occupation it's apartheid at its most you know obvious it's so obvious it's there's no way to describe it. But nonetheless of course there has been continuous resistance we've seen that in Sheikh Jarrah the hearing on the eviction of the four families has been postponed to August but again this has been serving as a mobilizing point. I think the interesting thing again which we talked about earlier but needs to be reprated is the fact that the kind of resistance is really unprecedented the resistance in Gaza the resistance in the occupied West Bank the resistance in historic Palestine which is basically the lands out of which other which Israelis took over in 1948 in all these regions the resistance has been unprecedented a couple of weeks ago we saw this marathon you know of people running from running between various occupied places where Palestinians were suffering evictions and again there there was there were assaults on them there were attacks on them but we've seen in a new generation come to the ground come to the ground in protests even now I believe just a few hours ago at Al-Aqsa the Israeli so they were Israeli security forces yet again wounded a couple of protesters who were after the prayers there was a protest so this cycle definitely likely to continue I think especially after last month's very brutal attacks the resistance has actually gained in strength it has gained more allies and Israel really needs to sit and examine how long it can continue this process of brutalizing an entire population brutalizing an entire country you know just to sort of continue its occupation in apartheid it's quite stunning the end of the last terrible bombing this last period of bombing 72 percent of Israelis polled said they wanted the bombing to continue so much for the possibility of a peace camp inside Israel it's quite shameful although of course there are decent people who don't want this dispensation you know Zoe it's interesting that both stories you're going to do today are about a gentleman named Castillo one Castillo of course leading the Perot Libre movement to victory in a very tight election the other Castillo David Castillo in Honduras quite an unsavory character what's happening with David Castillo and the trial of those who killed Bertha Kakaris yes well this is a story that you know received you know some amount of international attention when it happened you know Bertha Kakaris was killed on March 2nd 2016 by Hitman inside of her home you know and there's been numerous investigations that have happened since then we wrote a dossier that was released in March April with Tricon that was discussing you know the 10 years since the coup in Honduras and you know discussing cases of persecution of land defenders like Bertha and right now essentially in the beginning of April the trial of David Castillo who is the former president of the company that was operating the hydroelectric dam where Bertha and Copín and the Rio Blanco community were just resisting has been going on you know so it's been going on for the past 38 days it has been a really interesting and important trial because you know as Copín and the family of Bertha have always said you know what's at stake in this trial to get justice for Bertha to bring those who killed her and planned the assassination and were behind this campaign of persecution against Bertha to justice it's not only about just for Bertha and just for Copín but it's about you know dismantling the structure of impunity which operates not only in Honduras but across Latin American really across the world where those who want to impose projects of death projects of displacement you know of accumulation of destruction of nature use all means necessary threats persecution intimidation and even assassinations and physical violence to achieve what they want which is to take the people out of the territories and have full access and so you know this has been going on for a couple of weeks it's been there have been experts that have all kind of contributed to showing that David Castillo who's the president of this company was actively involved in coordinating with oligarchs in Honduras particularly the Atala Zabla family and the group of hitmen who eventually killed Bertha this week was really important week because Bertha Zuniga who is Bertha's daughter and the current coordinator of Copín uh testified and it's a really really moving testimony I mean she kind of chronicles all of the persecution that Bertha was facing throughout the last couple of years of her lives and really from a personal perspective of being able you know of worrying for her safety of every time she said goodbye to her and not knowing what was going to happen I mean she reveals a lot of crucial details that clearly points the involvement of David Castillo and really the upper echelons of the security state in Honduras the narcos state in Honduras and their involvement I mean she was studying in Cuba and David Castillo makes a comment to Bertha her mom oh we'll have fun in Cuba so you know that all of these things knowing that they had private information about her that they were monitoring her every move and you know just complete complicity so I think this is a really important case to pay attention to um because it's as I mentioned what's at stake is the ability to to get justice for people who are killed in you know defending these just causes and you know that haven't that you know the perpetrators of these crimes have an entire structure behind them I mean David Castillo studied in West Point the military academy in the United States he's received payments from some of Honduras most wealthiest families and so these people you know they know impunity they know that they can get off with these crimes but it's time to show that they can and that the people and their will for justice and their desire to fight for the truth will always prevail well that's one opinion Zoe although the arc of history doesn't always bend towards justice and there are some very disputable people in all kinds of positions in governments some of those people as it happens are up there just above the city of Frankfurt as the European central bank starts its three-day retreat where they're going to discuss interest rates they're going to discuss the question of quantitative easing of various kinds and they're going to discuss I should say the question of greening the European central banks bond holdings whether they should get out of the business of carbon while the ECB is sitting up there above Frankfurt having their discussion eating their canapes and so on under the leadership of Christian Lagarde we have the US Federal Reserve indicating the possibility of a two-point rise in two-notch rise in interest rates this is of great significance to the rest of the world if the US economy starts to see dollars going back into it this means that countries around the world are going to face much more pressure on debt servicing keep an eye on this we'll certainly be watching this closely you've been listening to watching give the people what they want your favorite friday tour around the world a tour de force of web-based news coming to you from Prashant and Zoe from People's Dispatch go and bookmark the site at peoplesdispatch.org and me Vijay from Globetrotter it's great to be with you again Zoe Prashant take care of yourself and will we be back next friday i'll be in Caracas it will be nice to talk to you from there as always we will always be back giving you the latest we will always be back you heard it here and we're looking forward to your next friday