 Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Your weekly movement news roundup. 7th of January, I must say, very complicated news coming from Kazakhstan. We'll get to it in a minute. You're listening to Give the People What They Want. Your weekly movement news roundup brought to you from People's Dispatch. That's Zoe and Prashant, your superb editors. I'm Vijay from Globetrotter. Listen, I started by saying that the news from Kazakhstan is confusing. Yes, there have been enormous protests. Yes, Kasim Tokayev is under immense pressures. Government has resigned. It looks like he's basically taken charge of the state. That is what it feels like. Spoke to somebody who used to live in Kazakhstan, haven't been able to get in touch with people in Kazakhstan, largely because the internet is down and has been down since yesterday. Telephone lines are hard to get into and so on. And I don't know, we don't have good contacts in Kazakhstan. I'm just admitting this to you as a reporter and journalist. Here's what's confusing about it. Looks like this country, the ninth largest, by the way, by area, roughly 19 to 20 million population, one of the world's largest exporters of fuel. In fact, it belongs to OPEC Plus. Used to be part of the Soviet Union, had a close relationship to Russia, still has a very close tie with Russia. This country, if you look at a proper map, it's enormous. This country had just about a year or two, two years, three years ago, in September 2019, had just under 2% of the share of the world's Bitcoin mining. Now, I had to study about this in order to do this segment for the show. I didn't realize the extent at which Bitcoin mines draw from the electricity grid. But because the Chinese government has taken a negative position regarding Bitcoin, lots of Bitcoin miners moved from China to Kazakhstan. And within the space of two years, Bitcoin mining went from just under 2% of the world's Bitcoin located in Kazakhstan to almost 20% of world's Bitcoin located in Kazakhstan. Now, the government in Kazakhstan, as per a global pattern, has seen inflation and has had inflation hit particularly the fuel sector. Quite dramatic rises in fuel prices. Well, here's where the story gets interesting. Some people say that the Bitcoin miners very angry that fuel prices have gone up, which impacts their business model began to egg on a set of protests. That's one theory out there. I can't tell you much more than that. I believe there's a lot of pent up feeling in Kazakhstan. I've done some conversations with people, never been there myself, but done some conversations with people. So it looks like there was a government that took power in 1991, which essentially is unchanged. I mean, Mr. Tukayev is the head of the state, but he really seems to be operating as a proxy for the former head of the government. Now, the issue is pent up demands can go in all kinds of directions. And it looks like these are those kinds of protests. It's disturbing because the protests seem to have taken on a character where it's usually disruptive for people in the middle of the pandemic. Not exactly sure where this is going to go. The government has a very long history of using brute force against any kind of uprising. And we've already seen that. A lot of very forceful repression by the government and so on. They've also shut down the internet, as I said, and they've shut down some of the electricity grids that go to the Bitcoin miners. That's interesting. Is this really the first global Bitcoin revolution? Don't know yet, but we'll have to follow this closely. Neighboring countries, of course, Afghanistan still under immense pressure. Of course, we've seen concern from Russia because, you know, Kazakhstan has got a large border with Russia. Great concern from Russia. Some people, again, talking about that other phrase, color revolution, not sure what that means half the time, but that phrase is in circulation. Come back to you next week when the internet has been resumed in Kazakhstan. Hopefully we'll talk to people there, get a better idea of what's going on. As far as we know now, there's an enormous uprising. The government has had to resign. Emergency powers in the hands of the head of government, Mr. Tokayev, and the police is in full force on the streets. Bitcoin has suffered. 20% of that market has now collapsed. Looks like the United States trying to pick it up, but I doubt that's going to happen. Protests in Kazakhstan, in the heart of Eurasia, in the heart of Central Asia, you draw a direct line down from Almaty down into India. Also protests there, but a completely different kind of protest, Prashant. I gather the Anganwadi workers are back at it. Absolutely, right. This is in the state of Haryana, of course, where I believe close to 20,000 Anganwadi workers are believed to have participated in a protest. The important thing to note is that they have been on strike from last month. Now, these are these are workers who basically are employed in creches, who perform the very important role of taking care of children, provide necessary support, provide the essential aid at a very young age for children. They're actually anchors of the education system and the social welfare system also. Unfortunately, however, despite the very important role they play, they are paid a pittance. Like right now in Haryana, for instance, their salaries for the workers are around 12,000 rupees, which is I believe close to $180 per month. And for the workers, it's around 6,000 rupees, which is not even $100 per month. So this is a salary they get paid for what is obviously a lot of work, what is taxing work. And it's important to note that in 2018, the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, had announced that there would be an increment. And he promised that Anganwadi workers would get an increment. And once again, it's important to note this is not a huge increment. We are talking about 1,500 rupees, which is say around, again, I believe $20. That's for the workers. And for the helpers, it's 750, which is just about $10. So that's basically the increment we're talking about. And this has not been given by the state government. And it's been three years now. The state government has made promise after promise. And the workers have also staged protests making these demands. So what happened on January the 7th was that a couple of days ago, sorry, January the 7th was that there was a big protest, the unions, where the government, the government considered some of the other demands, but did not accept this very fundamental demand of just a very simple and basic increment to the salaries. And now the workers have decided that they are going to take part in a jail burrow, which is a filter jail campaign on the 12th of January, definitely escalating their protests. I think it's very important to note this because the salaries and the increments are not even the maximum of what the unions are demanding. The unions across the country have time every year have protested asking for a minimum wage of 18,000 rupees across sectors. And this is something the government has not been giving, of course, but they're not even giving minor increments. And for every single increment, every single benefit, these workers who play such an important part in the life of Indians across the country have to really struggle. It's your work hard at work and then you need to come out on the streets time and again. And I think this is not only of Anganwadi workers, but what is called the broad category of scheme workers, which is also people who work in the health sector for instance. Many of them do not have permanent jobs despite having, despite again performing this vital function, they're often considered in the case of Asha workers as volunteers or they're considered as non-permanent or contract workers. So even though they provide essential government services, none of them are employed by the government. So I think this is a very important question we need to ask. We need to think of in the context of an Indian government, which has actually been, you know, Indians in the news a lot these days because of the hate that's being promoted. And there seems to be, of course, no action against it. But you have a prime minister and other ministers, for instance, talking about, last year talking about, in fact, the chief minister of Haryana was very vocal about needing to even beat up the farmers. In fact, the press conference said that people need to take up sticks. So this is the kind of approach that those in power, those are the rolling BJP adopted. And so it's in one way very inspiring to see the kind of protests that have been going on for such a long time. Workers definitely sticking to the demand. It's a very great thing to see these workers who, you know, we know from direct impact with them that they are, as you say, frontline workers. This is part of the global informal sector, you know, greatly disparaged from one end of the planet to the other. Very glad that, of course, they are on strike. And it's very important that we continue to report these stories. You know, friends, one of the things about worker stories, labor stories, strikes in particular, is they take on a tendency of being repetitive. But it's very important to keep on this because these struggles are repetitive. And it's the repetitive nature that builds confidence of people and so on. So this is a story we'll be on. Meanwhile, turning to an ugly story, our colleagues, fellow journalists, killed in Haiti outside Port-au-Prince, two of them who had gone to interview a gang leader was killed. They were killed just this week. Talking to a rival gang leader killed by gang violence in Haiti. Terrible business. Six months after the president of Haiti had been killed. This is the state of things very difficult. In the middle of all this, of course, there's been an arrest for the murder of the president of Haiti. Zoe, what's the story about the president's murder and this arrest of a Colombian national? Well, yes, I think it's, you know, as we always keep, you know, news about strikes always on the front of our, you know, work. You know, covering Haiti and the developments in Haiti is also a very, you know, pressing priority. I think last year what was happening in Haiti was brought to light for a lot of people when the president, Jovenin Moyse, was assassinated in July. But really the situation has been a pressing one for several years, of course. I mean, decades, really. But in the past couple of years, you know, the tensions have really come to a fore. You mentioned the assassination of two journalists earlier this week. I mean, the situation of insecurity, of the growth of gang violence in Haiti is extremely concerning. Our colleagues, you know, from the Haitian popular press agency have a really great weekly digest. Encourage people to check that out. We carry a bunch of their stories at People's Dispatch. And they've been, you know, reporting about constantly about this increase in gang violence. You know, people are not able to go over about their daily lives because of this. You know, there's a lot of reports that document the deep links between the government and these criminal armed groups. Of course, this phenomenon has greatly increased since the assassination of Jovenin Moyse. In this past week, in addition to, you know, more assassinations, more kidnappings, on January 1st, Independence Day in Haiti, which is, you know, a great day to be celebrated worldwide as a day of the Haitian Revolution. The acting leader of Haiti, Ariel Henry, was visiting Monument outside of Port-au-Prince and he survived assassination attempt. Because, you know, it's at the crux of this rising gang violence, kind of the loss of state control over the security of the country. But also at the same time, Ariel Henry has a mandate that is not accepted by many. And so he, this is the second assassination attempt that he has escaped since he took over as acting leader of Haiti. And I think it's really important that throughout this whole situation, movements in Haiti, civil society organizations, large thoughts of the opposition in Haiti have put forward a plan, a very concrete transitional government plan. They even elected a judge who would serve as, you know, the leader of this transitional government to bring Haiti to a place of more stability, economic stability and more political stability because truly the Haitian people have been fighting for an end to imperialist meddling in their country. I mean, you know, in this, in a later article that we ran about, this assassination attempt suffered by Ariel Henry. There's, you know, a bit there about the core group, which is a group that has been, you know, another de facto leader of Haiti, which is a group of the ambassadors from the U.S., from France, representatives from the United Nations, representatives from the EU who have time and time again meddled in Haitian politics, not put what's best for the Haitian people first. And really the people of Haiti have called for an end to this. They have a plan for transitional government. They're just asking for their sovereignty to be respected. Ariel Henry, you know, of course, assumed after the assassination of Jovenel Mois, there were over 20 Colombian mercenaries arrested in Haiti. Now a Colombian mercenary was arrested by the United States while he was in transit back to Colombia. I mean, it's a very complicated situation. At the end of the day, you know, what really needs to happen is for these, you know, the demands of the opposition for a transition need to be respected. We also ran a story that's very important to keep in mind within this context, is that the economic situation for the majority of Haitians, the public health situation of the majority of Haitians, is also deteriorating. And so this is not just a question of political power play, but this is a situation of life or death of survival for the Haitian people. It's a very great situation. We're going to be looking at this obviously. Haiti is a real priority for the reporting done at People's Dispatch. People's Dispatch run many stories about this. You're listening to give the people what they want coming to you every week from People's Dispatch and Globetrotter. We have Prashant Zoe and I'm Vijay. Great to be with you. Thanks for all those selfies. Keep them coming. We're going to make some kind of thing with them. Probably a collage of some kind. We need to see you watching our show. It's really fun and we appreciate it. South Africa, as we know, has came out of apartheid, formal apartheid in 1994. The agricultural sector, however, has remained under apartheid conditions. There's a section owned largely by white capitalist farmers, highly mechanized and so on. Then there are small black farmers, most of them really in the subsistence sector. Of course, there are agricultural workers, including those in the dairy sector. People's Dispatch I think had one of the few stories that I was able to read about a struggle that had a dairy concern in South Africa. Prashant, take us to the Clover struggle. Very interesting story. Right. From India to South Africa, another important strike as well. In Clover, of course, the strike has been going on since November 22nd. We have about 5,000 workers on strike. This is actually a very interesting story because I think it tells a lot about how contemporary capitalism works, the road of the state, for instance. How foreign capital comes in. Clover is actually a South African company. It's the oldest and largest dairy company in South Africa. But it is not owned by a South African company. In fact, it's owned by, you can say it's owned by a South African company which is owned by an Israeli bottling company called CBC. CBC and the South African concern, which is Milko SA, took over Clover in 2019. At that point itself, the unions had actually raised a lot of concerns about this and one of the key unions, of course, being Jivusa, that's a general industries worker's union in South Africa and the food and allied workers union. So even in 2019, the workers had raised the concern that the Israeli company, the Israeli bottling company that we're talking about, its presence was very much there in the occupied territories. And so South Africa, considering its glorious history of fighting against apartheid, they were against this merger. But at that point, the tribunal investigating this said that, you know, this is outside of jurisdiction. You know, this is not an issue. We are just concerned about the legalities or the acquisition, et cetera, et cetera, refuse to address it. What has happened now is that in the intervening years, of course, during 2019, when the agreement was signed, what the company gives them assurances, including the fact that a restructuring plan would not be put in place till 2022, which were involved firing a lot of employees. So the firing would not have, should not have started until 2022. And at the same time, the company promised that it would give more jobs than it would retrench. So what has happened right now is that, especially last year, I believe over 1,600 workers have already been fired. Many others have been forced to take voluntary retirement. Salaries have been cut. People have been, you know, the voluntary retirement is often due to the fact that people are given very difficult locations to work out of, for instance, or for the fact that work times have become far more compressed and far more difficult. You know, in terms of even micro aspects, such as sometimes the assistant in the van, for instance, that version has been removed. So what basically we see is that Clover following the footsteps of many global companies like this is bringing its own version of austerity. And now the important thing to note, of course, is that the unions strongly believe that the point of this is to, you know, in fact, shut down the South African, the South African company altogether and open the market for goods from outside, particularly Israel. So that is one of the key points they're trying to make and there is this issue with the government. The government has been non-committal, so to speak. They're not really sort of, you know, really listening to the demands of the workers. One of the interesting aspects is that the workers' demand is that the company not only be nationalized but handed over to workers' control because they very strongly feel that Clover is set out to destroy basically this industry. And an equally important aspect, I think, to note is the fact that this struggle has seen the unions working closely with Palestine solidarity groups. And in fact, I knew tomorrow there's a meeting where, you know, a cross-section of people in South Africa at workers' unions, solidarity groups, activists are gathering to see how to escalate the struggle. And this is actually a very interesting example of how such struggles can be waged across the world because we've seen boycott and divestment and sanctions movements but also the fact that South Africa is often an example of how the strong trade union movement has actually worked very closely together with Palestine solidarity movements to protest, you know, the way Israel is functioned. And we also do know that commerce, for instance, is a very key aspect of how Israel whitewashes atrocities by striking deals with governments across the world, not only for weapons but also, for instance, in the agriculture sector, for instance, countries like India. So the fact that this struggle is being carried out both on the factory floor, on the streets and in coordination with Palestinian groups is I think a very interesting struggle, is a very interesting aspect to the struggle and therefore I think it's one struggle which needs to be really watched because it's not just one concern or a few factories in South Africa but an issue of actually global significance. An issue of global significance. We're talking about the relationship between, you know, apartheid Israel, that's what the UN calls it, and South Africa which, you know, exited apartheid in 1994 and yet in many of the industries there are what one might call apartheid-like conditions. Very good story, important to keep going on. A story of global significance, you said Prashant, I think what could be more significant than the utter political chaos in the United States of America where one year ago we saw some very interesting characters run into the US capital looking like characters from a from a comic-con, you know, show with awfully interesting headdress and so on. Zoe, have any of them been found, I don't know, being taken into a court of law or is it perfectly legal to do that in the United States? Yeah, I mean it's, again it's it was a very historic day and it was hard not to laugh at the ridiculousness of it but at the same time I mean it was such a, I mean, you know, it still seems like such an insane thing that could have happened but if you for one second consider, imagine if that, you know, mob of over 2,000 people who stormed the capital had been, you know, self-identified socialists, had been black, and Latino had been any other thing than, you know, Trump supporters trying to stop the steal. I think we would have seen a very different situation of the capital that would have probably ended quite tragically with extreme militarization, violence, and repression. So that's just one, you know, aspect and it is interesting to kind of take a look back at the one year since this happened. I mean there's so many aspects to bring up. There has there been, you know, a process of, you know, putting people on trial, bringing, you know, a sort of process of justice. There has, in a sense, over 700 people have been processed but, you know, as a phrase that we use in People's Dispatch which I don't, again, is one of those that I'm not sure if it's a English phrase or not or something that we may be invented, but the intellectual authors or the masterminds which is clearly Donald Trump who, you know, called people to take the capital to stop the counting of the vote which is how, you know, the context of the storming of the capital was that they were trying to stop the vote certification process because the November elections had been allegedly fraudulent and so it would seem logical that the person who called for the people, you know, to go to the capital to carry out this action, in which there were, there was people who were killed, there were many police officers, for example that were injured. It would seem logical that those who were behind this would be, you know, maybe questioned, would be, you know, given some sort of legal repercussion for their actions. This has not happened. What we're seeing is a lot of low-level people that participated in the action, so there was a lot of combing through, you know, images, videos identifying people who participated, who were at the capital building, who are really following orders who are being prosecuted, so I think that's an important element to point out and, you know, Trump has really pivoted on this moment. He's been able to seize the momentum. You know, we're seeing a very intense moment of polarization within US politics. You know, this can't be, you know, forgotten. It's a moment of division in terms of there's, I mean, we are in a crisis. We're in a deep crisis. There's record levels of COVID cases on the rise. The economy is, you know, suffering because of this because there has not been a strong response to COVID-19. Joe Biden has not been able to really deliver on many of the promises that he made to working people. There's a suspension of the child tax credit, which many people were surviving on, and so this is a really difficult moment, and the right wing has been able to capitalize on this. Just because Donald Trump is not on Twitter does not mean that he's not mobilizing. He did have to suspend his one-year anniversary press conference, but, you know, don't be fooled. This is not going to go away, and I think we need to be vigilant. It's not a joke. It wasn't a joke what happened, and it did represent an important, you know, moment. And not only is Donald Trump back in the saddle, but so is Mike Pompeo making a real push already out there, the heir apparent to Donald Trump running already against the Democrats and Joe Biden. We'll see what happens in the midterm elections in the United States later in the year. Lots of good meetings taking place around the world. Important meetings, negotiations to dial down tensions around conflict areas. The first eighth round of discussions between Iran and the various powers around the JCPOA. Some good news here. The Iranians of course, refusing to speak directly with the United States, saying we don't trust you, going through intermediaries, the Russians, the Chinese and so on. This is interesting because now the British, Boris Johnson and the United States have said that, you know, it's hard to trust Iran. The Iranians turn around and say hard to trust us. It was the Trump administration that walked out of the JCPOA. We signed on and we followed all the agreements. So let's not talk about trust. Why I said there's good news is that flying in from Seoul, South Korea is a very important one of the senior most cabinet figures, Cho Jong-Kun, who's coming in to discuss the modality to free up $7 billion of Iranian money that has been sitting in South Korean banks. Now the very fact that Minister Cho is flying from South Korea to Vienna to advance this discussion means that there's been some greenlighting from Washington DC. If this money is freed up, it means that the talks in Vienna around the so-called nuclear program of Iran might actually have more legs than we imagine. Might be. Let's see. First set of talks. Second set of talks happening this coming week in Moscow between the Europeans, the United States and Russia around the question of what the Europeans and the United States are calling a military buildup on the Ukraine-Russia border. But what the Russians are saying is NATO aggression, NATO coming in and absorbing countries that border Russia. This is a serious meeting that's going to be held next week. I'm actually relatively hopeful about the agenda. If you just look at the agenda, seems like they're going to be taking up some of the main issues of the day at this meeting. Let's see what happens. It's a pretty important meeting set to take place in Moscow. Mr. Putin has made noises to suggest that he is fairly confident because what he has done is to actually advance on to the agenda. An agreement that Putin made with Xi Jinping of China a video conversation they had in mid-December where they talked about asking NATO to include Russia's security inside NATO's agenda. It's a very clever move. In a sense, it would be interesting if Russia applied to join NATO. That would be fascinating to take that move. But that's not what they're asking for. They're talking about whether it's possible, whether it's at all possible for Russia's security to be part of the agenda item for NATO. I think this is going to be an interesting point of order. The Biden administration has rejected most of the Russian proposals out of hand. Nonetheless, they are flying to Moscow. That means that they have not rejected the question of talks. What the Biden administration would like to see is the withdrawal of what they claim are troop movements along the Ukraine border. It's to be seen what's going to happen. Talks in Vienna, talks in Moscow. Those talks that Xi Jinping and Mr. Putin held most recently in mid-December of last year, 2021, these talks are key. Gotta pay attention to them. In this last round of talks, they talked about building an alternative. Once again, this has been on the agenda for the BRICS block. Building an alternative to the SWIFT system. Another form of financial infrastructure. It's going to undermine Europe and the United States having a lock hold on global financial transfers. It would be interesting if the Russians and Chinese are able to do this. Okay. You've been listening to give the people what they want. We bring you so many stories. We can't pack it in properly into half an hour. Sorry about that. We can't do an hour for you. It would be exhausting. We do need those selfies. Post them on Twitter. That's where we like to see them. You're listening to give the people what they want. Coming to you from People's Dispatch People's Dispatch.org your favorite movement news site editors Prashant and Zoe. They do terrific work. I'm Vijay from Globetrotter. We'll see you next week. Happy New Year.