 I don't know how hard it is. Right. Are we live? OK, some last minute technical fixes. And we should be good to go. I think we're there. Right. Live giving the people what they want. OK, looks like you're good to go. Hello, everybody. Welcome to the 15th episode of give the people what they want. Your weekly show. I'm Prashant from People's Dispatch. And we have with us Zoe from People's Dispatch. Like all of you know, this is a weekly show. It's also a podcast which is going to come out tomorrow. And usually we have, of course, three of us, but today we are missing our friend, our comrade, Vijay Prashan, who's unfortunately stuck in the airport due to some pretty bad weather conditions from what I hear in the large parts of the United States. So we're going to miss him. And unfortunately, this is an episode he would have really wanted to be here because we are just a couple of days away from a very major event, which that is the 21st of February. It's an event. It's a week. It's a celebration. It's a commemoration that began last year and marks a very special moment in the hearts and minds of all those who believe in the left. Zoe, you want to take us to what's special about this day? Yeah. Well, February 21st is Red Book Day. It marks the anniversary of the publication of a text which has inspired millions really across the world is the Communist Manifesto. And you know, Red Book Day is a really important day because it's a time in a context where a tax against the left across all fronts, even left editorials and publishing houses are facing a tax. And so Red Book Day is a time to say, we're proud of these Red Books. We think they inspire us. They're central to the conversations we're all having about, you know, the world today. And we honor our, you know, for our ancestors in the struggle who, you know, gave us this incredible text which inspires so much of our work today. So everyone should join the amazing activities that will be organized across the world to collectively read the Communist Manifesto and to engage in necessary debates about its importance today. Absolutely. Do mark the date. That's February 21st. Events taking place both online and offline across the world. It's always a really refreshing experience to read the Manifesto and we're all looking forward to that day. Now, speaking of weather conditions in which I'm being trapped, another place in the United States where the impact of these weather conditions has been really extreme is the state of Texas. And of course, over the past few days, the news has really been diverted by Senator Ted Cruz flying off to Mexico and then it's coming back and there's been a lot of gossip and drama about that. But actually the issues involved a far more deeper far more structural and these are some of the issues like we like to talk about on this show because it's really not so much about what one politician's that what one politician does, but rather about decades of policies. Zoe, have you been following what really are some of the more underlying issues with what's happening in Texas right now? Yeah, it's a real tragedy. This past week has seen extreme weather fronts in many areas of the United States. And of course, you know, I'm up in New York. We've had snow for the past couple of weeks, but you know, this is a city that also is in some respects has infrastructure to withhold such, you know, extreme weather in Texas over the past week. We've seen a lot of snowfall and freezing temperatures and it has caused mass chaos. It's caused mass suffering. I mean, there's cities, cities across the state have been without power for days in freezing temperatures. They've been without water. I mean, some reports say that they're at almost 40 people have died due to these extreme weather conditions. There's been a number of things going on. I mean, the power outages have been devastating. Of course, we know that the weather itself, the cold temperatures have immediate impacts. Of course, on the the livelihood of people, their ability to survive because of, you know, being out in the actually freezing temperatures. Of course, thinking about, you know, the people who are in a state of homelessness, people who are living, you know, precarious conditions, which of course, this number has massively increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. That's one level. But then we also have the level of just kind of the abandonment with regards to the power grid. And a number of things have happened. I mean, the state tried to make allegations that this was due to renewable energy. Numorous, numerous reports have actually debunked the failure of the power grid, which has left, again, millions without electricity, without running water. This is not due to, of course, the renewable energy, which makes up a very small amount of the energy that's generated in Texas. But of course, this is due to, you know, systematic and structural failures within the system. Of course, this is a private company that administers energy within the state. And it's really cause havoc. And I think I would definitely check out the reports by liberationnews, liberationnews.org. They've really done important work in uncovering that the systematic impact of this, but also the structures behind it, which is, of course, larger state abandonment, larger, you know, lack of investment in social programs and in public infrastructure. And of course, corporate capture of key, you know, areas which control this. And it's a really tragic situation. Again, almost 40 people have died, millions are without power and experiencing, you know, extreme conditions within their homes. Really hope that, I mean, the state has said that they don't know when they'll be able to restore normal conditions with access, you know, to power. So it's really concerning. It's not that these weather fronts are new, but increasingly, you know, these systems are eroded, they're undermined, they're defunded, they are, you know, cut because that's of course more economical to have less, you know, costs. But of course, the people who suffer are the people. And there have been numerous mutual aid efforts. People have been organizing, trying to get funds to families that are, you know, having their houses collapsing because of bursting pipes, because of, you know, water freezing within their apartments. But of course, that's not enough. We need a strong responsible state that's going to take account for these people and ensure their wellbeing. And, you know, shelters are overflowing. Of course, we already have the COVID-19 condition. So it's just, it's just a disaster and really unfortunate to see. And hopefully, this will be, you know, sorted sooner or later so that people can get back to some sort of, you know, normal and safe conditions. So yeah, important story. And again, as we do and give the people what they want, gonna just jump over from the south of the United States and Texas to a region that's been quite neglected. I think we can say we've spoken about this in the show before. We've spoken about Ethiopia, the impact that the conflict, which has, you know, been restarted in recent times has caused on the population. But Prashant, can you tell us a little bit more about what's happening over there? Absolutely, right. So this is something like you said that we talked about a few months ago when the conflict had started. And the key point of this conflict is the Tigray region. That's the northern end of Ethiopia. Now, it's important to remember, of course, that Ethiopia is currently governed by a government led by Prime Minister Abhi Ahmad, who's a Nobel Peace Prize winner. And at that point when the conflict had started, it had started against the regional government of this Tigray region, which is the northern end of Ethiopia. And at that point, Abhi Ahmad, his government had promised that this would be a short conflict because there was an attack at a military installation in the capital of the Tigray region. The Ethiopian government went all out against the Tigray people's liberation front, which was ruling that region. And before Abhi Ahmad came to power was actually the dominant force in the whole of Ethiopia. So in some senses, this was kind of an attempt to sort of cut that force down to size. And from the very beginning, the claim was that, you know, this is going to be a short conflict. You're going to end this as soon as possible. But even at that time, observers, experts, analysts had warned of two things. One would be that this would not be a conflict that would end quickly. And point number two, that this would also be an attack on democratic institutions or democracy. In Ethiopia itself, and Abhi Ahmad at that point of time had claimed a lot of credit, had won a lot of credit for the fact that he'd actually restored many of these freedoms. So there was a lot of concern over the fact that, you know, this conflict could lead to an erosion of both democratic values and also causing humanitarian crisis. And guess what months down the line, many of these worries, many of these concerns have proved to be completely right. UN agencies, for instance, reporting appalling, horrifying conditions right now in the Tigray region. From what we know right now, of course, both sides are indulging in some of these atrocities. But what has happened at the end of it? What has happened at the end of this conflict is over 222,000 people are believed to have been internally displaced. And this is from a conflict we just started in November. That's just three and a half months from now. So we have about 222,000 people displaced, huge amounts of starvation looming, people not having access to clean water, people not having access to sanitation, health facilities, you know, there's very little fuel. The whole area has been cut off, not just to journalists, but also to relief workers, which means that it is impossible to even get a proper estimate of what exactly is happening in this region. And as equally horrifyingly, many, many reports of large scale sexual violence, systematic sexual violence as well, which kind of raises a huge number of concerns about what's happening. Because this is already a very, this is also already a region which is on the borders. There's been a conflict with Eritrea in the past. Again, I remember what a lot of credit for ending that conflict, but there are reports that Eritrean soldiers are involved in these atrocities. The Ethiopian armies informed that sections of the TPLF are involved. But right now, what we're seeing is that there is this is a huge looming crisis that is definitely kind of say it's developing. There's no sign of it being sorted anytime soon. And more worryingly, the fact that, like I said, there is no clear reportage or for that matter, ability by human rights organizations, by aid organizations to actually go to the ground and provide that kind of inputs on what has to be done. So this is actually, I think a story that sort of we need to be that needs to be tracked very carefully that, you know, requires that amount of international attention because more often than not what we see is that these kind of stories completely disappear from the news. You know, you find your odd, one odd report once in a while when there's a major report by a human rights organization. But other than that, the systematic violence or the systemic violence actually goes completely unnoticed. And I think another very key example of this is Columbia, which you also often talked about on this show. And again, you've seen multiple instances of such violence continuously happening, becoming almost a daily occurrence. Zoe, I believe a new report has come out, which again exposes some of these details. Could you take us through it? Yeah. And last week, you know, we had talked about what's been happening in Columbia with the process of justice. Of course, there are numerous bodies where these investigations are being taken up. And recently, just yesterday, actually the special peace jurisdiction, which is a body that was created through the 2016 peace agreements between the national government and the revolutionary armed forces, which of course demobilized in 2016, following the peace agreement switch in Havana, Cuba. And the special peace jurisdiction was created in order to investigate the crimes that took place during the nearly 60 years with armed comforts in Columbia, specifically regarding the two actors being the FARC and the national government. And so one of the, well, I mean, it's hard to say because there have been so many human rights violations committed by the Colombian state throughout these 60 years. But one of the most egregious cases, which I think has been pointed to time and time again internationally as just kind of a horrific atrocity, which unfortunately occurs in a lot of situations of these kind of armed conflicts is the false positive scandals. This is what has been called in Columbia. The false positive scandal is essentially, during the 2000s, important context, of course, this is when Plan Colombia was signed to the United States of huge military aid agreement. The false positive scandal essentially is when the Colombian army on a systematic basis would assassinate civilians and dress them up as guerrilla fighters and then count them as guerrilla fighters that were killed in combat. So why would they do this? It's called false positives because it's giving, it's showing results where they don't exist and saying that we're winning, winning, you know, winning, of course, this war against the people by giving these results by saying that we've killed this many members of the guerrilla and we're successful. But of course, for years there have been, you know, incredibly brave efforts by victims of the false positive scandal. We can point to, for example, the organization and mothers of Soacha who just to give one case of the false positives, a group of young men who lived in Soacha, which is a neighborhood, a city right next to Bogota, a very working class, poor, a group of young men who were, you know, from this community, poor working class, not many opportunities, not many employment opportunities, were approached by members, you know, later we found out members of the army who essentially told them, get on a bus, we have a job opportunity for you. They're brought to from the capital city to, you know, hundreds of kilometers away to Norte Santander, where they are preceded, they're assassinated and then they're dressed up as guerrilla fighters, broadcast on the news as combatants who are killed. And these crimes have been denounced for years. You know, victims have been saying, this is, you know, the army is saying that my son was a guerrilla fighter. That's not true. Trying to get justice in some way, some recognition. And yesterday, the special jurisdiction for peace announced that the number of false positive victims were around 6402, which is an absurd number. And it's important to point out that the attorney general of Columbia had in a report had only presented 2248 victims of this case. So again, the systematic denial of justice in Columbia is evident. And something else to point out is that 78% of these 6402 false positives took place during the eight-year rule of Algardo Rodígue, which is often considered one of the most, you know, bloodiest, brutal times in Colombian history where there's just systematic denial of human rights, violation of human rights, of human rights offender. You know, just, I mean, genocide is what most people will refer to this period as. And that, unfortunately, that's continuing today. And so I think it's really inspiring to see that finally some presses of justice are taking off. But it's hard to see that at the same time, you know, we have 1,000 human rights offenders and social leaders that have been murdered since 2016. So how does this take place where you're finally getting justice or at least some recognition of something that happened in the 2000s, but right now there's another genocide or a continuation of that genocide continuing. So again, we really have to, you know, look to hold these, these states accountable, continue to fight for justice because at every turn they will deny that these things happen. They will undermine what the actual reality is and try to, you know, shape responsibility. So I think something that we saw this week, a really tragic accident is something that happened in a mine in South Africa. Three workers died. Can you tell us about this, Prashant? Yes, this actually happened in a plant of Arcelor, Mithal, which is a global corporation. And it's a very tragic accident. The number of workers who died at three, but what it also shows is some of these issues that we've been talking continuously about in this show, which is how, what happens when, for instance, say costs are cut, what happens when, you know, safety protocol is neglected. What happens when the lives of workers are basically considered dispensable and this has been a constant thread, I think, to many of the labor issues that we talked about. And unfortunately, the case in South Africa shows that many of these were probably, there was an instance of many of these as well. So here it was an example of a building collapse. There are reports that it stemmed from an explosion. The company is denied it, of course. But what happened was that three workers were trapped and it was rubbled. And the National Union of Metal Workers of South Africa, NUMSA, one of the most militant unions in the country and two of these workers were members of that union, NUMSA. NUMSA says that actually for the first 12 hours that these workers were trapped, they were trapped on 2 a.m. on February 17th and what do you call the news of the information, the news of the deaths finally came on February 18th. And according to the union for the first 12 hours, there was no professional help for rescue. So it was basically the workers who were trying to rescue their own comrades, their fellow workers, a group of 10 employees were trying to conduct search and rescue operations. And this is despite the fact that this is one of the big massive corporations across the world, employees thousands of workers all over the world, including in South Africa. And here we have a situation where in a plant, there was no emergency team which could actually provide that kind of rescue operation and ordinary workers had to take up this work and it was only after hours and the workers pressed for a more specialized response many, many hours, probably around 12 hours later according to the union at least that actually professional teams were brought in. And the whole process what we've seen is a complete sort of disregard for both not only the workers' lives but also the union's attempt to intervene because when NUMSA spokesperson tried to actually intervene apparently the CEO refused to allow her to enter the premises because apparently she had put out a video talking about this accident. And that was the reason why say a union spokesperson, the spokesperson of a national union who was trying to help in this case was apparently not allowed to enter because there was apparently a YouTube video which obviously did not paint the management in good light and this is not an instance where you would expect that to happen. And NUMSA has been taking this matter very aggressively. They call for an investigation of course but again, I think this also has a lot to do with the company itself. Arsalan Mitalis, a company we've covered across the world. You can see protests breaking out on similar issues on safety issues on retrenchment issues in Europe, in Africa and many other parts of the world. And I think this is one common struggle that workers today and this is something we talked about in the first segment as well that workers across the world are the kind of struggles they're doing often to protect not only the livelihoods of course, not only the salaries, not only the jobs but also the basic kind of safety and infrastructural benefits that you would want to save your lives. And another very classic example would be say, your reminder of mine workers in Pakistan as well who similarly made struggles after because it's a working conditions over there. And these production lines are so important because these are the veins of global capitalism so to speak. You talk about all these big mines and production companies especially in Africa and the wealth extraction from there becoming the blood of the empire so to speak of previous empires and the empire we see today. So this is actually, although I mean, this is not an isolated incident is what I think is the kind of lesson we sort of take from here. And so that's that. And speaking of empires, of course, quite a few, there's the empire we can never really stop talking about the empire of course because it's so prevalent everywhere that we see around us. So if any, there have been a few interesting developments of course from the empire watch side so to speak. So you want to take us to that? Yeah, I mean, I think another aspect of, you know, empire meddling is I think the discourse of human rights. And I think this has been very interesting over the past week because we have two kind of cases that just really highlight the true the sheer like contradictions and the sheer kind of like hollowness of this discourse that's used, you know, of course to justify everything from invasions to assassination attempts which is like human rights. So in interest, I mean, this week essentially there's been a lot of attention on the news of the imprisonment and arrest of a Carolonian rapper Pablo Hassel. He is a political rapper. He, you know, wraps against talking against the Spanish crown against kind of imperialism. He's been in a lot of Solidarity Venezuela. He's spoken, he's participated in several, you know, Solidarity events and several different occasions and apparently his lyrics and his poems and kind of his public persona as a political artist were a little too much for Spain. And he has been involved in a legal struggle for the past couple of years. He was basically charged with, I mean, the charge is insane glorifying terrorism, insulting the crown and state institutions. And it's important to remember there is a king in Spain. You know, there's a lot of countries in Europe that still have monarchies just to make sure that we're aware of this that the sheer kind of ridiculousness still exists. And, you know, Pablo Hassel, he was charged with this the past couple of years, it's been kind of this ongoing legal battle. And finally in January, they said they confirmed the charges after several appeals and said that he had 10 days to present himself to court. And he of course being, you know, a political, you know, radical and rebellious artist said, no, I'm not going to present myself. If you want to arrest me, you have to come and arrest me. So he barricaded himself in the University of Leda. He was surrounded by supporters and, you know, other activists that joined him in this. And the police forcefully went into the university, arrested him, massive operation, and it's been followed by huge protests across Catalonia and Barcelona and then other cities in Spain as well. And I think it's just really interesting because here you have the case of a rapper who has political lyrics who, of course, I'm sure he insults the crown because why wouldn't you and I'm sure he, you know, criticizes the state because the state has to be criticized. He's an artist. That's what artists do. They, you know, continue to make critical dialogue and he was now he's in prison and I think it's interesting because at the same time, this is the same country that is currently holding Leopoldo López who according to the lens you're looking at it with for Venezuela, he's, you know, charged with terrorism for Spain. He's apparently a human rights activist. Leopoldo López just to remind people was participated. He's a Venezuelan opposition activist. He participated and helped organize some of the violent uprisings that happened in the country in 2014. He also was, you know, participated in, you know, he's part of the party that was behind a lot of the uprisings in 2017. He then once he was released was part of the attempted military coup with Guaidó in April, 2019. He's a fugitive of the law yet he's exiled in Spain. And so I think it's really interesting how they wheeled this human rights discourse. Meanwhile, they have a rapper in prison. So these are really interesting kind of contradictions. Another one which we've seen which has been again, we've talked about for the past couple of weeks as Haiti. So people have been, yeah, as we've been talking about on people's dispatch on this show, people have been on the streets, mobilizing and protesting against the dictatorship of Jovenin Moise, who is, you know, holding onto power despite the constitution saying that he, that mandate ends, despite, you know, massive sections of the opposition. We're not only talking about the left here, we're talking about the entire society is mobilizing against this man, but he's supported by the United States. It doesn't matter that under his mandate, Haiti has been plunged into deeper inequality that, you know, massacres have been continually carried out by the security forces. We have a couple of copies about this and people's dispatch about some of the massacres that have been taking place in the inner city areas. But he has a sporting United States and the OAS. So he is remaining in power. So I think it's just necessary that we're constantly interrogating these, you know, ideas of human rights and these discourses wielded by the empires. So another, I mean, another thing that we've been talking about is also, of course, the vaccines, which is, of course, the issue of our time, no? Absolutely right. It's, it kind of flows from what you're talking about because when you're interrogating states, interrogating establishments on various issues, the key question we need to ask today is what about access to the vaccine? I mean, what, you know, how are countries, how are states, how are governments working towards it? And a couple of days ago, the UN Secretary to Antonio Gutierrez, you know, he made a statement which kind of, I think, demonstrates the situation we're in. And it is a very simple number or a series of numbers. And those numbers basically are as follows. One is that 10 countries have given 75% of all the vaccines administered so far. And then 130 countries have not received even a single dose of vaccine. And this is, I think, you know, there's nothing, almost nothing more to be said after this. This is the level of inequality. This is the level of absurdity that faced with an existential crisis, at least one existential crisis like COVID-19. This is how the world has responded. There's a global alliance, which has something called the Covax Initiative, which is supposed to deliver vaccines to the poorer countries. And the target was that the vaccinations in these countries would start at the same time as the richer countries and they're behind. They're short of at least $5 billion. And the key issue here is basically something very simple that the rich countries are hoarding vaccines. There is nothing more, nothing less. It's as simple as that. And obviously most of the production, most of the research and development has taken place in these richer countries. They have dominated the markets and basically the poorer countries are left with more or less a begging ball in some senses. And if you look at the map, it's shocking because you'll see these high density points where, you know, vaccinations are going at insanely fast rates, which is great. Great for the people of those countries. And then there's blank spaces on the world map where, you know, the vaccines have clearly not reached. And this kind of vaccine nationalism is, it's a very depressing picture. China, of course, in that UN Security Council meeting said that it is donating say millions of doses of vaccines to the initiative as well. It's also donated or exported a lot of vaccines to around 53 countries. Even India, for that matter, has actually done some work on that. And those are really steps worth appreciating. But the key question, I think, is that it's basically in some senses a question of capitalism. It's a question of imperialism as well, how these vaccines are distributed. And the most, I think, obscene example of this is what is happening in Israel and Palestine right now. Basically, Israel blocked the delivery of vaccines to Gaza from the occupied West Bank. And they said that, you know, we need to consider it in our committees. The government has to take a decision. And for two days, these supplies were blocked. And it is only after that that these supplies were able to, these supplies were provided. And this is, again, the supplies that are provided are not enough to vaccinate all the Palestinians or even a significant number of Palestinians in Gaza. This is just a bare minimum of doses that we're talking about here. And even that is so under the stranglehold of Israel right now that there is no other way to describe it but vaccine apartheid. And this term has been used. Of course, you've seen apartheid being used by human rights organizations to describe Israeli behavior in Palestine. But here is just yet another manifestation in the form of vaccines. So I think in the coming months and years especially, this definitely turning out to be a major front for struggle for unions, people's movements, organizations across the world. The right to health is at stake in that sense over here. So again, a major issue in the coming months as well. I mean, Sonata has done such a negative note. I just want to point out that Cuba is still in, you know, is doing vaccine trials for the sovereign too and has announced that it will have with, if, you know, everything goes according to schedule that the entire population of Cuba will be vaccinated by the end of 2021 and all tourists to go to Cuba will be, could be vaccinated should they decide to. So there are some glimmers of health in a very grim situation. Also, Venezuela started vaccinations yesterday. But again, it's, it's not enough. And we of course have to continue to interrogate these, these questions, but. Absolutely. Absolutely. Sounds good. So we've actually crossed our usual time and it's been great talking to all of you. Thank you for everyone who watched the show. Do watch out for our podcast, which comes tomorrow. We are definitely expecting Vijay to join us next week to continue some of these discussions we've had. And thank you for staying with us, watching us over the past 15 episodes. And we totally assure you that we're going to be coming back every week at the same time, both on Facebook and YouTube of People's Dispatch. And as a podcast the next day, we'll be back with give the people what they want. Thanks so much.