 Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Your weekly movement news roundup. Well, it's the 12th of August. You're listening to Give the People What They Want brought to you from People's Dispatch. That's Zoe and Prashant. You're one stop shop for movement based news. Excellent website. Hope you'll get to see it. I'm Vijay from Globe Trotter. As I said, it's the 12th of August. A few days from now, India and Pakistan will have their 75th anniversaries of independence. Now, you know, for people who don't know this, India and Pakistan have their independence one day apart. Pakistan on the 14th of August, India on the 15th of August. The countries in South Asia are such that they even don't want to share time zones. You might know Nepal is 15 minutes off Indian standard time. Well, but in this case, there's a reason for that. They actually did their flag hoisting on different days. 75 years of independence. A lot to think about in terms of both where India and Pakistan are today. Also a lot to think about about the relations between India and Pakistan, not at a very good place. And I hope always that these kinds of things improve for the sake of people who live there. For the sake of people who live there, as we come to you today, it's a good thing to be able to say that the fires in Cuba at Matanzas fuel tanks have subsided. The fires have been put off. Hundreds of missions conducted by helicopter pilots, by firefighters, by government officials of different kinds, by civilians to really struggle over the course of this week to put down one of the most devastating fires that the island has seen. How did this happen? Important to know, because of the US blockade on Cuba, 60% of fuel comes into the island. Because of the blockade, Cubas had to build tanks and so on to preserve fuel for longer periods of time. It's hard to get shipments into the country and so on. There are things like acts of what we call acts of God, even those who don't believe in God necessarily. A lightning strike hit one of the tanks. You put fuel into a tank, lightning hits it. There's little you can do. There was a combustion. Other tanks heated up. At least four tanks were put out of service in this period. It was very difficult to fight this fire. Helicopters with their pouring water on the tanks to cool them down so that they wouldn't combust because of the heat. Foam was fired at the fire to try to minimize it. It's quite heartening that the island, in a way 11 million people came together with the hashtag Fueza Matanzas. May the force be with Matanzas as it were. Over a billion people shared this hashtag in different social media outlets around the world. This became a cause celeb. Immediately, as has now become quite customary, Venezuela and Mexico sent assistance including firefighters. Countries like Jamaica sent medical aid immediately. Interesting reaction from the United States and I want to spend a minute on that. United States Intersection, the Embassy in Havana said that they would do anything possible to assist. In fact, what they promised was to send some technicians. Again, important to bear in mind Cuba with a literacy rate near 100% really doesn't require technicians. What it requires more than anything else is the lifting of the US embargo, the removal of Cuba from the state sponsors of terrorism list. Well, that has just not happened. And it's an interesting situation for an island like Cuba where you see people struggling to maintain their sense of sovereignty and dignity. These are important words for people in Cuba, but the blockade makes it difficult. And I think it's interesting to have watched this week where the world once again gathered around the Cuban people and said, we'd like to do anything to assistance and support you. But of course there was a very different reaction coming to Havana from Washington DC. No need to belabor the point. I think it's pretty clear to people that on the table over and over again as at the UN General Assembly is the question of the US blockade on Cuba. I don't want to keep going on this story Prashant and Zoe, but it is one of those stories where we could keep going and talking about other countries that are looking at Cuba in a different way. And apparently Columbia has decided to do something interesting regarding its relationship to Cuba. Zoe, what has Columbia been doing? Well, as you know, on Sunday, August 7th, Gustavo Petro and Francis Marquez were sworn in as President and Vice President of Columbia. We've covered this a lot, the historical significance of this, what it means for domestic policies in Columbia. Something that's interesting that was really on the table throughout their campaign was the resumption of the peace talks with the National Liberation Army, the ELN. This has always been a commitment of their campaign and the second day on Monday, August 8th, Gustavo Petro announced that he wanted to restart the peace process with the ELN following through on his word from the campaign. And just this week, just a day ago, the foreign minister took a trip to Cuba, met with Bruno Rodriguez in order to take this forward. He met with the ELN peace delegation and in a press conference yesterday, he said that the Colombian government is taking steps necessary to restart this peace agreement, this peace process and that. And this is the interesting part that relates to the part about Cuba and Matanzas is that one of the reasons why the U.S. has designated Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism is because of the breakdown of the peace process with the ELN. Following this, Iván Duque issued Interpol orders against the peace delegation, which is of course going against all of the previous agreements, going against the agreements that they had with the sponsor countries, with Norway, with Cuba, with the other sponsor countries of this peace process. And Cuba respecting these agreements refused to extradite the members of the peace delegation. Thus, they were declared state sponsors of terrorism. And the foreign minister of Colombia yesterday said that Cuba should no longer be considered state sponsors of terrorism precisely because they're restarting the peace agreements and they have lifted the Interpol order against the members of the peace delegation. So essentially taking away all justification for the United States to have this. So this is an extremely interesting development. I think we've seen already just in one week of government of Gustavo Peso and Francia Marquez, big changes are coming. This is not only going to have an impact on the people of Colombia, as we've said, but also in the region. So extremely interesting. And just before we get to the next story, I thought it would be important to mention that yesterday there was a national day of mobilization against Jair Bolsonaro calling for free and fair elections, denouncing the attacks on democracy that have been happening in the past couple of weeks. Just a month ago, or no, sorry, not a month. It was just a couple of weeks back. Jair Bolsonaro had a bunch of foreign ministers visiting Planalto, which is a presidential palace in Brasilia. And he essentially gave a long presentation on how the electronic voting system in Brazil was necessarily going to be fraudulent, how the vote in Brazil because of this electronic voting system would not be valid. He has been for the past couple of years calling for a return to the paper ballot, despite in the 90s having defended the electronic system and saying that it would be a good mechanism against fraud. And following this meeting, he has actually broadcast on YouTube and has been subsequently taken down for violating their misinformation policies. There has been a large outcry in society saying that he is consistently making moves to undermine these elections, to undermine the Brazilian people's right to choose in their elections. And so there was a massive mobilization yesterday in over 49 cities across Brazil. There was also a letter launched that was written by jurists from the University of São Paulo, one of the leading universities in the country. This letter was a letter to Brazilians in defense of democracy. It has received probably at this point over a million signatures. Yesterday it was at something like 950,000, prominent personalities, artists, and then some unexpected names, heads of banks, former presidents of the largest bank in Brazil. So it's really interesting to see that all of the people in Brazil are really rallying behind this cause to respect the democratic process, to respect the institutionality of the country, massive mobilizations yesterday, tens of thousands on the streets, really demanding that this electoral process be won free of violence, free of interference, and that Bolsonaro not try to escalate this. So important development will of course be following, leading up to the October 2nd, first round elections, Brazil, Bolsonaro and Lula be the front runners. We don't want to keep covering elections. I understand that, because the movement driven news program comes to you every week and so on. On the other hand, big election in Kenya. Prashant, as soon as the election is over, the conversation turns to rigging, but it looks like the election is over and there seems to be an incumbent president. What happened in Kenya? Right, so it's still a bit uncertain right now, Vijay, the election authorities have till Sunday, I believe, to declare the results or late Sunday night, and the race, as of now at least, according to the latest report seems very tight. Very interesting election, like you said in Kenya, it's one of those apocal elections it seems like, because we have the election taking place after a series of very strange political alliances that were formed. In 2017, President Uhuru Kenyatta and his main opponent, Rayla Oddinga, who have been rivals for a long time, contested against each other, Kenyatta supposedly won, there was a huge dispute, the court set aside the election because the regularities, there was a second round election declared, which is quite unusual by international standards, because it was actually set aside by the court, and the opposition candidate, Oddinga boycotted that, at which point Kenyatta was declared the winner. And from then, just about a year later, what we see is, Kenyatta and Oddinga coming together, these long political rivals coming together and forming an alliance, and leaving out in the cold Kenyatta's Vice President, William Ruto. And together, Kenyatta and Oddinga tried to bring around what is called the Building Bridges Initiative. Now, this was quite an interesting moment because what it sought to do was to try to completely, radically overhaul the constitutional structure of Kenya and basically a large power-sharing exercise between these two figures. Interestingly, again, the court stepped in at this point and said that you cannot go, you cannot, this will not pass. The plans for a referendum to cement this constitutional initiative were not taken forward. And come 2022, we have an election between Oddinga who sort of taken on the legacy of Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto who's former Vice President. So the two together contesting against each other, you know, both of them have made their standard announcements. Ruto sort of portraying himself as some kind of a hustler and, you know, talking about the virtues of Kenya being a hustler nation and talking about providing sops to big business. But overall what we do see is that both candidates as many in the left have pointed out in Kenya, just coming off as two wings of capital, so to speak, and there's very little difference in terms of their policies. This comes at a time when Kenya is facing a series of crises. We know, for instance, that a very, very young nation, if you look at its population the number of people who are under 35 is substantial. But despite that, despite this country being very young, unemployment is a huge issue. The ability to use the resources of these young, this demographic dividend as they call it, has not really been tapped at all by Kenya. There's a huge debt problem. Workers across Kenya, we've covered this in multiple instances, especially in the people's health dispatch, health workers, for instance, being in the forefront of many protests for being denied, say, basic amenities for being denied, pay, etc. So it's amid all this that the elections are taking place in Kenya, which is a very important economy in Africa. But it doesn't really look like there is any sustainable or path put forward by any of the candidates as far as the solutions seem more or less on the face, seem more bandits in terms of providing a small amount of monetary aid, in terms of providing loans and funds for businesses. These are steps, basically, of course, they will bring about some relief might help people. But the fundamental question that boils down time and again to many in front of many of these countries is that is there a possibility of moving on to a different economic model? And that's the question many Kenyans are asking. That is a question because of which there was not really maybe too much enthusiasm for these elections as well. So we still don't have a result as of now from what the reports indicate, very close, very tight, but it remains to be seen if either of these leaders, whoever comes to power is actually going to put forward a radical alternative in any way. Unlikely that there will be a radical alternative. I mean, that's asking too much of parties where you spend a few moments talking to somebody from Kenya about what's the political orientation of Odinga's blog, what's the political orientation essentially Huru Kanyata and others. It's very hard to make a distinction in fact. Yeah, very, very interesting story. We'll keep watching that. There's a piece that people's dispatch recommended on the question of healthcare, which Prashant mentioned people's health dispatch worth subscribing to it very much enjoy reading the stories that come out of it. You're listening to give the people what they want brought to you by people's dispatch Globetrotter come to you every week half an hour, world news everything you'd be interested in some of you came back last week with a few selfies we need more of those we're reporters, we're journalists we cover important stories we have a community of reporters around the world, many of them get harassed repeatedly get arrested get killed, get their newspapers shut down, nobody in the world has experienced this as much as Jose Rubin Zamora whose name first came to my attention decades ago because Jose Rubin Zamora keeps getting attacked in Guatemala and that is happening again, Zoe, tell us a little bit about Jose Rubin and what's going on Well, he's been detained since July 29th he was arrested on money laundering charges and other related charges corruption and it's quite interesting because oftentimes we see this that journalists who precisely investigate corruption of government officials are trying to reveal the truths of the crimes that are being committed using the money of the people, elected officials they're often charged with similar things which seems completely contradictory he is a journalist he founded El Periolico which is an investigative outlet in Guatemala that really looks into a lot of different issues in Guatemala but has been one of the forefront papers that has been investigating the crimes of corruption, we know in Guatemala that several attempts by different institutions to actually investigate this problem in the country have been blocked, the UN commission to investigate corruption in the country had been dismantled, there's just many attempts to make sure that these crimes committed by officials are not brought to justice that people can continue doing this with impunity journalists take on the task and look where this ends up it's actually quite interesting in their newspaper they had a special section that was called the fable of the ogre and the little blueprints who wanted everything and in this section they revealed these different crimes and I think it's interesting because they're using these different methods having a fun way to talk about it but really in trying to relate this to stories, to fables which actually are taking place in the present day of people who are capricious like princes and stories from fairy tales but it's the reality and they're doing this with the money of the people in a country like Guatemala which is one of the countries that has a largest exodus towards the United States because this life there is not sustainable where indigenous and communities are attacked by mining companies and yet still the government is committing these kind of acts and now Jose Zamora has been in prison since July 29th as I said on these charges there's been a large outcry as you said he's been attacked historically he's a very well respected figure in journalism in the country so this of course has shaken the journalist community human rights community there's been many campaigns launched on an international level but the case against him continues so I think during the raid on his offices for example the entire staff of his newspaper was held without food and water in detention for over 16 hours so this is the treatment given to journalists to attempt to uncover the truth about crimes committed in the name of the people and so it's very important you know as journalists that we show our support to our fellow colleagues who are doing this work you know across the world yeah indeed and this of course applies to journalists everywhere including in Afghanistan Prashant you know we've been following the story in Afghanistan now well I must say I have followed this story almost my entire life and not a week goes by where there's something that shouldn't be reported we rely a lot on Afghan journalists many of them face extraordinary threats killings families being killed and so on you're going to tell us a little about this anniversary coming up yeah right Vijay it's a quite a it's actually quite a unique moment in probably this entire century itself on August 15, 2021 where suddenly after an offensive that began in May the Taliban just completely took over Afghanistan in a span of two or three months and this was when the US this was before the US actually said before US troops actually withdrew at a point where people were speculating that you know at Afghanistan might see a long conflict there might be a lot of negotiations the Ashraf Ghani government all of it suddenly vanished and then on August 15, 2021 the Taliban was in control and clearly left a lot of people completely bewildered but the year has been let's be very clear the year has been a very very difficult year for the people of Afghanistan to begin with we do know that the fact that about 7 billion dollars of reserves of the Afghan government was seized by the US were blocked by the US for a long time and finally they came up with this most arbitrary solution where almost 50% of it was to be diverted to those who had filed a suit blaming the Taliban for the 9 level attacks and the other half was to be distributed in the form of aid to organizations now this happened you know the Taliban to power in August 2021 and now not a month has passed by when there's a new report when there's a new study which shows to what extent how dire the economic situation is and despite all this the progress on releasing this money has been extremely slow I believe towards the end of July proposals were exchanged for the potential release of that 3 billion 3.5 billion dollars and we again know that after this drone attack that killed Ayman al-Zawahiri we don't know what's going to happen with that again but basically what happens is that this huge amount of money which can actually be a lifeline for the people of Afghanistan has still remain stuck not to mention the money that was stolen in what is probably you know a kind of example the other examples you can think of are how Venezuela's money for instance was stolen by the British or Iran's money at some point was stolen by the United States now but on the other hand if you look for instance what's happening right now we have about 25 million people of the 40 million or people who are living in poverty in March we heard numbers which said that 97% of the people could live below the poverty line in 2022 unemployment has risen massively the number of households which are facing debt has increased massively there's a WHO report which came out recently which said that basically the country's health system is on the brink of complete collapse and we have diseases like diarrhea which I think there are 19,000 cases in four provinces so in 2021 when diarrhea is causing havoc in a country it really sort of shows you the extent to which that country has been completely abandoned by the international community which all these years we're talking about the west here specifically which all these years was happy to throw in huge amounts of money without any accounting into Afghanistan as long as the government was their client and to make matters worse there have been a host of natural disasters we know earthquakes have taken place flash floods have taken place over the past few months leading to displacement of thousands of people even I think over a thousand people killed as well so in all this you know it's like it's been a just a year of complete disaster not at all helped by the fact that the Taliban which has kind of got the feeling that the west is not really too keen to help us decided that it no longer needs to live up to some of its own promises which means that for instance the situation of women for instance the situation of girls students all of it in a very bad state because the Taliban has continued with this very medieval social policies right now now a key question remains that really the key question remains before its neighbors in the region they have that's possibly the one positive thing that we can see the fact that there's been a fair amount of engagement Russia China the Central Asian Republic Iran all of which have various kinds of differences with the Taliban have attempted to sort of work together to make sure that the situation can be at least as stable as possible given the circumstances and I really think that despite all the tensions that are there right now despite the multiple disagreements it is this kind of an approach that can possibly bring some semblance of forget normalcy but bring even some semblance of relief to the people of this country which really faced too many years too many decades of war for very imperialist purposes. It's a terrible, terrible story and I mean I think we're going to come back to it obviously over 90% of people struggling with hunger and so on unbelievable statistics let's go to another unbelievable story you see the story has an interesting origin on the 1st of August Israeli troops crossed into the city of Jenin in the West Bank of Palestine and picked up Basim al-Sadi now this is an interesting event because you might remember that the Israelis had murdered an Al Jazeera journalist in Jenin Shireen Abu Akhle the Israelis have been conducting sustained violence against the city of Jenin over the course of the last year claiming that they're going in to clean up leadership of Islamic jihad that's the claim the moment they took Basim al-Sadi very provocative act by the Israelis moment they did that there was a little bit of a cross-border exchange in Gaza a very small exchange the Israelis then entered and pummeled Gaza for three days sustained vicious attack on urban areas civilian areas killing at least 15 children others have now also died as a consequence of wounds but 15 children I am of course tempted to read out the names of people like Jamil Deen Najm four years old, Ahmad al-Niraab 11 years old these are children who were killed in civilian areas virtually no condemnation from the western countries almost none Israel was allowed three days of sustained battery of Palestine in this case Gaza but remember this is not a Gaza story the story begins in the city of Janine in the west bank where Basim al-Sadi was picked up it's important to remember that people think it's a Gaza story Gaza a small part of Palestine merely 400 square kilometers or 380 square kilometers a small part of it's the size of a small town in many countries the entire area of Gaza they pummeled Gaza with we don't know what kind of munitions speaking in war crime language in Israeli media justifying what was going on now it doesn't end there after three days there is a quote unquote ceasefire you see there is no ceasefire because a ceasefire assumes that there is a conflict between two parties that the two parties then agree to stop firing on each other in fact after marginal rocket fire from Islamic jihad after Basim al-Sadi's arrest marginal the entire bombardment was one sided it was the Israeli highly sophisticated army pummeling Gaza there was no return fire really small again handmade rockets and so on which made zero impact on Israel and on Israeli civilians doesn't end there there is this ceasefire and then what happens next very interesting one would imagine well you know this is done and so on no not at all the Israelis enter on the 8th of August the city of Nablus in the west bank to again go and pick up more people that they claim are leaders of groups like Islamic jihad in the event of that highly aggressive move into the old city of Nablus people who know the old city of Nablus will know that it's a it's a very congested area and when the Israeli forces entered the old city of Nablus we know that at least three Palestinians were killed and over 70 injured by live ammunition these were all civilians so got to understand there's a context here and the context of course is the occupation of Palestine but there's another more ghastly context and as I said earlier we seem to report a lot on elections and I want to put this on the table even though it may be a little you know I'm reaching a little far November there's going to be another election in Israel the government that's sitting there now Mr. Lapid's government is a minority government and they're going to face again Benjamin Netanyahu's liquid party it has become very clear when one looks at the Israeli attacks on Gaza on the West Bank and so on it has become very clear that Israeli domestic politics is in some ways used you know to get a better case in Israeli domestic politics they've been going out there and pummeling the Palestinians it raises you're standing in the polls imagine that that's a war crime want to put that on the table you're listening to give the people what they want coming to you from people's dispatch coming to you from Globetrotter we're really happy to be with you every week you want those selfies with you we want you to tell your friends about this show watch and listen to show on the interwebs really important for us see you next week