 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 show number 138. You always give the people what they want. Brought to you from People's Dispatch. Today it's just Zoe. Prashant is off for the day. I'm Vijay from Globetrotter. Happy to be with you to bring you the stories from around the world that matter. Real stories. Not fake news, as they say, or not cooked up stories that make no sense. It would be strange for us on this show not to address a story that started last week, last Saturday. In fact, it would be very strange not to address it because we're implicated in the story. No journalist likes to cover themselves. That's a very strange thing. And no journalist likes to be the story. They want to cover the story. On the other hand, the leading paper in the United States, the paper that after all brought you the US war on Iraq, the illegal war. That is to say the New York Times ran what it called an investigation into money given by one person. Neville Roy Singham to a foundation which funded projects that some of us work with my own Institute Tri-Continental and so on. Well, it was not really the best story and I shouldn't be the judge of this because I'm a character in the story. Nonetheless, I didn't feel it was a great story turned out that the Indian government thought it was a terrific story. And the Minister of Information and Broadcasting wielded that piece of paper and gave a press conference where he decided to bring this New York Times story into a completely different context. You need to understand that in India, there's a parliamentary election next year in the interim in the lead up to that opposition leader Rahul Gandhi of the Congress Party has been gaining popularity largely because of his Bharat Joro Yatra where he walked from one end of the country to the other. Mr Gandhi, a scion of the Gandhi family's father is Rajiv Gandhi, his mother, his grandmother is Indira Gandhi, his great grandfather is Jawaharlal Nehru, Indus first Prime Minister, striking that this is the fourth generation of Gandhi aspiring to be the Prime Minister of India. Mr Gandhi's popularity has been increasing in order to undercut him. The Minister of Information and Broadcasting, Anurag went out in public and said that Mr Gandhi is somehow linked to a plot regarding the Chinese government baffling connections made by the minister but nonetheless those were the connections. One of the reasons that the Indian government picked up this story was that Mr Gandhi was supposed to return to parliament after he had been quote unquote expelled from parliament for reasons that are by themselves quite baffling he had criticized the connection between the Indian government and a big business tycoon named Gautam Adani. Now the Supreme Court had asked for Mr Gandhi to be returned to parliament and in anticipation of his return and a motion of no confidence against the government of Narendra Modi this was in a sense inflamed as a great scandal and so on. Well, Mr Gandhi did return to parliament did speak did give a pretty good speech about half an hour speech where he laid out his criticisms of the government. The government on the other hand banging on this drum, you know, in flaming the situation and driving the investigative services to go after an organization with which we partner with which we have, you know, had a long association. That's the media house in India called NewsClick. The press council of India came out to condemn the attacks once more on NewsClick. The various editors in the country of some standing have stood up and said this is outrageous. A very tense time in India for journalists as you know, the Indian government passed two, you know, one amendment and a law, which really should have been the focus of attention this week, but got really a free pass. And that is the amendment to the Forest Conservation Act and the amendment to the Mines and Mineral Development and Regulation Act of 1980. Now, you might say, well, gosh, those sound really esoteric. Not if you are an indigenous inhabitant of the forests of India, not if you are the forest themselves. This is a direct attack on India's forests on conservation and so on. Very little coverage of that. Meanwhile, lots of coverage about a story that doesn't exist, but is now taken over in many ways the news channels are passing through emails leaked by Indian intelligence to the news channel. No mediation. Very little critical voice. Uncomfortable strange situation. Not as strange Zoe as a situation in Ecuador. Terrible to have such an incident in the lead up to an election. Tell us what happened in Ecuador. Well, on August 9th, a presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio was shot dead after a campaign rally that he was holding in a high school in the capital of the country keto. And last week we spoke about this very worrying and concerning rise in violence in the country, the rise in violent crime that many attribute to the kind of attack on the institutions of the country the cutting of social programs. Alongside the empowerment of criminal groups. Very, very difficult situation as we said, the amount of prison massacres have been taking place all of these indexes are kind of on the rise and in this context is when Fernando Villavicencio is shot dead and murdered. There's many following the moment of his death, thousands and thousands of theories came out, some people blaming the left, some people blaming the right. But I think what's true is that it is just another kind of inflection point in in throwing Ecuador into an increased crisis. This is following the murder of Fernando Villavicencio, Guillermo Lasso, once again, instituted a state of emergency, it's almost hard to count how many states of emergency have been implemented in this small Andean country over the past two years, because of gang violence, because of prison violence, because of, you know, they're not able to be getting a handle over the country. And so, once again, Ecuador is in a state of emergency. Some people speculated that these early elections that have been called by Guillermo Lasso when he dissolved the parliament would be maybe postponed. It seems like elections are on they're going to be held on August 20. But of course, this is a moment of great tension. All of the candidates have already expressed their condolences and also condemned as atrocious act of violence. There have been once we reported last week about the amount of these videos that are circulating on social media, allegedly released by these gangs, you know, saying different things to the public once again, another video, which people may have seen on Twitter has been circulating. The veracity of this video is quite questionable has been widely condemned to being fake. But again, it shows about 20 people masked holding machine guns and saying that this was because of lack of payments of promises that were not fulfilled on, and that the other presidential candidate young topic who's actually a mercenary who's fought in the French Legion, allegedly in Ukraine and the Sahel, which we're going to get to in a bit later is the next victim. And so, again, this video is quite dubious. Many people have said that it is completely fake. But I think it really speaks to this, this climate that's being created in Ecuador of fear of increased violence of anything can happen to anyone. Not it's not only that this violence is taking place in the prisons where again hundreds of people have been killed. You know, in this situation, but again, it's in the cities. Another candidate had already been killed to the mayor of one of the largest cities in the country has also been murdered in these past couple of weeks so very, very concerning situation. This is a citizen revolution movement party has been very sharp in condemning this and linking it to again this institutional breakdown, the deterioration of socioeconomic conditions. Many on the right are using this incident to say that, look, this is why we need an increased security state, we need more police, we need more military. So once again, events like these really shift the public discourse. They throw a lot into the balance. And again, we're just three days away. Sorry, 10 days away from these general elections, early general elections called by Guillermo lasso. So we'll be we'll be following this closely and hoping that the situation of violence does not continue to escalate. Very troubling situation in Ecuador, violence like this of course, disturbs the body politic it chills people reduces their faith and trust in in their systems. Very true in Africa, if we move now to the central belt of Africa on Thursday, August 10. The meeting of eco was which is the economic community of West Africa and countries around there. Nigeria's president, taking the lead in this meeting Bola to new boo, talking about the importance of eco was this body of the African middle intervening in Niger. This is interesting, we've talked a lot about what's been happening in the Sahel region of Africa, Niger, the country with the United States largest drone base in Agadez, Niger, a country that provides France with a great amount of its uranium for its nuclear power plants, and so on very key country in the interdiction program of Europe to stop migrants entering the Sahara into Libya towards Subhag going up to the border lines of Libya and the Mediterranean and then crossing the Mediterranean. In fact, Niger is like zero point for the Europeans, as I mentioned before, artificial intelligence surveillance technology which is banned in Europe, used in countries like Niger to track migrants and stop them. It's a key country for the West and the Western state a lot on it. But of course conditions in Niger have deteriorated that uranium which Niger is famous for has not actually benefited the people of Niger it is benefited the people of France and so on great animosity and anger in the form of French colonies 50% of their gold reserves have to be held in Paris. That kind of thing irks the consciousness. So there was the military coup, you know people are not sure why was there a military coup. Well, that's because other avenues for politics are foreclosed to many people of the low middle class peasant backgrounds and so on it's these people from those communities that the ranks of the mid level of the military come, you know the captains and up to perhaps the nationals. It's these people that have been conducting the coups in the Sahel whether it's the recent one in Niger or the coup in Mali the coup in Burkina Faso, the coup in Guinea, foreclosed political options for these young men in particular, they go through the country to try to establish their goals what are they interested in they say we want to better fight Al Qaeda half of Mali taken over by Al Qaeda forces, and we want a better deal for our countries we don't want to lease the wealth to Europe we want to tackle basic problems, quite a reasonable agenda that they have set for themselves nothing great echo was meeting on the 10th of August, made a decision which I think is going to become a quite a problem for the region. The echo has decided that they want their military forces to be on standby, in other words, to be prepared at any point to intervene militarily into Niger. This is of course very chilling because the armies of Burkina Faso and Mali have said that if there is a military in Niger, they will enter conflict or wider conflict to prevent that. At the same time, the government in Niger is said that if the military enters Niger they will kill the former head of government, Mohammed Bazoum, who is being held by the government in a way as a kind of hostage I think the way we talked about, but stunningly in the middle of all this, the European Union special representative for the Sahel, Emmanuel Del Ray, gave an interview to the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, where Emmanuel Del Ray said the impact of the sanctions she's talking about Niger is becoming palpable. The scarcity of medicine and food has reached alarming levels, while power outages are more frequent than ever. And this is what she said, I want to underline this, if we want the junta to weaken, we must persist with these sanctions. I mean, it's pretty extraordinary that there she is laying out the agenda, medicines are scarce, food is scarce, power outages frequent and then she says let's harden the sanctions against Niger, it's going to help us. This is an all out war on Niger and I think what we're seeing from the people in Niger, massive support for this coup d'etat, what we're seeing with them is that the contradictions of their own lives are manifesting themselves quite openly in this direct confrontation between the new government in Niger and Ecovast. This is in a way the front line of the contradiction that is there in the Sahel. There's been talk between Guinea, Burkina Faso and Mali about creating a federation, a federation of these countries going back, to the Malian Federation of the 1950s. If Niger enters this process of conversation, I'm very interested to see whether it enters and if it enters, what will this imply? Right now, of course, very tense situation on the border between Nigeria and Niger, the troops are amassing from Ecovast, hope very much that this doesn't escalate, but there's a way found to de-escalate the situation. You're listening to give the people what they want, brought to you from people's dispatch today, it's just Zoe Prashant is off for the day. I'm Vijay from Globetrotter. We come to you every week, people-centered stories, that's what we're interested in. Only the people up front, not the people in power. We tell their stories, but from the angle of the people. Zoe, coming back to violence, and I know there's been a lot in South America recently, presidential candidate killed in Ecuador, as you said, violence in Argentina, violence in Brazil. Give us a sense, kind of scanner of the violence in South America. Yeah, I would love to give more upbeat stories today, but it's been a very intense week, and it started with the murder of a 13-year-old boy, and I say boy to emphasize that because that's not how the police would talk about him. So a 13-year-old boy, Thiago Flossino, on Monday morning, very, very early in the morning, 13 years old, he's killed by the military police in a drug operation in a city, a neighborhood some might be familiar with from the Brazilian movie City of God. This is a favela in Rio, and it's, of course, has many of those challenges that many of those neighborhoods in Rio face, drug trafficking, of course. But along with that heavy, heavy, heavy presence of the military police, we know that in the city of Rio, it is the military police who has been deployed in that city to combat drug trafficking and related violence. And so he is just yet another victim of this war on drugs in the city of Rio, a city where a majority of black and young people have been killed in this war on drugs. This is a story that we've seen before. A 13-year-old killed, and then immediately after mainstream media and the police immediately scrambled to try to say that he was a criminal, that he was involved in different crimes, etc. The family, meanwhile, saying this is a 13-year-old child, of course he was not involved in these activities. And additionally, he does not have to be murdered at point-blank range like he was by the military police. So this has really brought up a lot of emotions and anger in the city, in a place where many, many, many young black people are just, again, murdered by the police, no trial, no sort of sense of justice. These are deaths that are, you know, happened with complete impunity. Of course, in the same context, in the same type of neighborhood as where Marielle Franco was assassinated again, someone who actually led one of the commissions to investigate police murders of black people in the city. So it's such an unfortunate situation. And again, it's bringing to the fore these very, very big challenges that Brazil faces. On one hand, a lot of a growth of drug trafficking, of criminal groups. Of course, this has been intensified, made worse with the pandemic, with the socioeconomic breakdown that took place under Michel Temer, under Jair Bolsonaro. Also, Bolsonaro, someone who has greatly benefited from militias whose family has links to militias in Rio de Janeiro. On the other hand, military police presence in neighborhoods across Rio, killing with impunity. Once again, and then the media trying to character assassinate a 13 year old child. So this is, you know, first we have this in Brazil, that's the week starts with that. And then we move then to Argentina, where a different sort of murder or death killing took place of an 11 year old girl on her way to school more than a Dominguez. She was walking to school, two people on a motorcycle attempted to rob her dragged her for half of a block. She collapsed on the ground and essentially, I think she maybe suffered sort of a heart attack and was and died upon reaching the hospital. And this is another death that has really once again shaken the country and we're going to get to another one in Argentina in a minute, but a little 11 year old. You know, once again, people saying various things about who she was why she was in this neighborhood that all these neighborhoods are very dangerous. There are accusations that actually she was killed by teenagers and that this is why the the that teenagers must be prosecuted so horrible horrible occurrence. This is happening again three day just a week before in the week of elections in Argentina on Sunday. This Sunday there will be the primary elections in the country. So different candidates have really taken advantage of them of the death of this 11 year old child to have different campaign promises saying, we're going to increase police presence. The neighborhoods in Argentina are completely unhinged. Once again, of course, completely glossing over the conditions that exists in these neighborhoods. Why are they existing. Why are there people that are, you know, fear for their lives, why do they have to fear from being robbed, etc. But really this has shaken the country. It's also was captured on a security camera which meant that many, many people have seen this this sequence of events. Extremely, extremely unfortunate. And then yesterday night, Facundo Morales, who is an activist and internationalist since very, very young. He was killed by the Buenos Aires police in the center Buenos Aires at the Obelisco during a protest. Police came and repressed this protest extremely violently. And those who were arrested, as one can see in the video recorded by a reporter were pushed to the ground cops knees on their necks. And Argentinian journalists told me that it was it's something that you see in the United States, but maybe you don't see as much in Argentina. Protesters with flans on the ground and one of these protesters was had a heart attack in this context and is killed. And so we're looking at a situation where the country is in a very, very difficult economic situation. We're very upset with what has happened over the past period in Argentina. The last year was 100% inflation in the country. Very, very little change in their conditions during the front of those government. We've seen heavy repression and who who now we're seeing heavy repression in Buenos Aires the city governed by Horacio Loretta who is one of the candidates on this Sunday's elections. We've been the people very upset about the death of Facundo Morales someone who survived the jungles of Colombia someone who survived the dictatorship of Bolivia he was imprisoned in Bolivia by Janine Amiens it was in a coma shot at by right wing Bolivian people in Santa Cruz and yesterday he unfortunately passed he's a militant communicator a journalist passing the city of Buenos Aires is really all of these I mentioned all these situations of violence all these situations of tension to say that things are really on the edge and that with this electoral process. We've seen many, again, different posturing from these candidates. These are elections where there's extreme polarity we have a candidate like Javier Millay who's an extreme libertarian who wants to dollarize the economy. We have Patricia Pulverich who's running for the together for change ticket. She was the minister of security under Mariusio Macri responsible largely for the disappearance of Sergio Maldonado responsible for the very, very heavy repression of social movements that took place during Mariusio Macri's government. We have Juan Graboya social leader who's contesting the progressive ticket and the together for the homeland. We have Sergio Massa who's the economy minister so a very, very difficult situation in the country amplified by this violence people really see no end in sight at this moment to to this continued crisis in the country. Lots of violence in South America. We're going to just quickly close out our show talking a little about what happened in Syria. Syria has been off the news a lot but I think it's important to point out that since this year 402 people have been killed in the war in Syria. We're right now in August this is a much lower number than in the years a high point of the war in Syria said 2014 when about a third of the Syrian country was held by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria ISIS. The numbers are much lower but still 400 people killed. Well on the 10th of August on Thursday, there was an attack by ISIS on a bus carrying Syrian Arab Army soldiers 23 of them were killed. This was in Derazur province in the eastern part of Syria and the town of Al-Mayadeen. Pretty interesting development there. Why is this so interesting? It's important for people to understand that ISIS still operates on the eastern flank of Syria, where large sections of the Syrian oil reserves are held somewhere between ISIS, western troops, Turkish forces and so on. It's a bad lands of Syria and the Syrian army trying to recover sovereignty over there has had a hard time. It's not the only place where there's a conflict going on in the Derazur section in Raqqa on Monday ISIS troops killed 10 Syrian pro government fighters. Raqqa is the city in northwestern Syria, which is a kind of, you know, maybe it's like the last point a holdout of a lot of the rebellion from 2011 Raqqa and Idlib in that area. Very high proportion of people still sitting there, you know, in some kind of, you know, position of their own. Well, but the violence has continued. In April, the Turkish authorities took responsibility for killing the ISIS leader. Now this is an interesting development. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that his bosses had killed or rather Tahir Al-Sham, a group associated with the Turks had killed Abu Al-Hussain Al-Hussain Al-Quresh, who was the so called Emir of ISIS. Well, last week, the group named Abu Hussain Al-Hussain Al-Quresh as their leader. And right after they named this new leader, the violence picked up. Not really sure what the end game is in Syria, but I just wanted to put this on the table for you. Don't forget that that conflict that opened up over 10 years ago continues to manifest itself in the western deserts and northern parts of Syria. You're listening to Give the People What They Want, brought to you from People's Dispatch. Today that's Zoe Prashant is off. I'm Vijay from Globetrotter. Happy to be with you. See you next week.