 Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Your weekly movement news roundup. 17th of February, you're with Give the People What They Want. Coming to you live from People's Dispatch, that's Zoe and Prashant. Great website. Please go visit it immediately. I'm Vijay from Globetrotter. As we come to you on the 17th of February, we're almost to the year mark of the, I don't know what they're calling it now, the war, the special military operation, whatever it is, the devastation in Ukraine. Almost to the year mark, Russian forces have been bombing from the air now. This is a new move in the war. Russian air personnel have moved closer to the front line. That means that I think there'll be intensified bombing and so on. Meanwhile, the West as you know, has been putting an enormous amount of weaponry into the hands of the Ukrainian forces. Not really sure whether this is going to enable Ukrainian forces to advance, to break through Russian lines again. Looks like that may not be possible, but this war is going to grind on and on and on. My interest was peaked this week by the revelation in the United Kingdom that in anticipation of Jeremy Hunt's budget, he's the Chancellor of the Exchequer in Rishisunak's government. In anticipation of Jeremy Hunt's budget, it appears that there's pressure coming upon him from Ben Wallace, the Secretary of Defense, the Minister of Defense in Rishisunak's government. Mr. Wallace has a history in the UK armed forces, and he alongside Rishisunak had made a lot of noise when Liz Truss was there in the Prime Minister's office for a brief period about raising the British percentage of the budget that goes to defense. Before we get to that, let's just take a step back and show how in the UK, odd how these matters are reported, inflation numbers, official numbers went down from 10.5% to 10.1%, and there was almost universal jubilation that inflation is starting to go down. My friends, the difference between 10.5% and 10.1% is significant, it's not entirely effective for people's budgets. At the same time, energy companies including British gas reporting enormous profits in this last quarter, showing that they are making money as the people are seeing a deterioration in their living standards. I think this is universally acknowledged now in various studies and statistics, but not in the press which has been jubilant about the decline in inflation numbers in the UK, which is a bellwether in fact for inflation numbers across the Eurozone, which of course the UK is not a part. Nonetheless, there is this debate about raising the defense spending or military spending in the United Kingdom. It follows something that the French did in November of 2022 when Emmanuel Macron's government decided to raise French defense spending by 36% over 2017 numbers. That is an enormous amount by 43.9 billion euros. By the way, there was a little bit of comic relief perhaps when Mr. Narendra Modi of India and Emmanuel Macron shared a televised discussion when India announced that it was going to buy a very large number of airbus planes manufactured in France. India also put in an order to buy aircraft from the United States, not wanting to pick sides across the Atlantic between Boeing and airbus, the two major providers of commercial craft. At any rate, France lifted its military budget in November 2022 and the United Kingdom now proposing 11 billion sterling rise. That's just about by a fifth. A defense review by the UK's Ministry of Defense will be out by March 7th. It's interesting. Let us see what happens there. 11 billion sterling rise in the defense budget, but remember that the United Kingdom provided 2.3 billion in hardware to Ukraine. It seems that a lot of these countries are shipping their warehouse equipment to Ukraine and then using new spending to buy new equipment. So let's not mistake this for some sort of great solidarity. The United States, for instance, moved warehouse material from Israel out to Ukraine and then just resupplied the Israelis with the newer kind of equipment. By the way, most NATO countries, this was something that Trump put a lot of pressure on. Most NATO countries are now spending over 2% of their GDP. That includes Greece, US, Croatia, United Kingdom and so on. The United States is by far the largest spender with a trillion dollars. UK second, 72 billion shows you the gap in military spending, but nonetheless looks like the UK is going to pick guns over the livelihoods of people. Inflation still up. That's the situation. That's the situation, Zoe. It's a situation that has had a political impact. It appears that in the opposition Labour Party, anybody who's against the war is to be expelled from that party. You've got to be in favour of military spending even on the opposition side of the Treasury bench. What's happening in the UK? Well, alleged opposition leader, Kir Stammer of the Labour Party was actually just in Ukraine, pledging his complete support to Zelensky and Ukraine. Doesn't seem like there's much opposition to what the Tory party is doing right now. Their military spending, if anything, it seems like they want to show they can do even more than the Tories. So that's interesting. And this week was also right before he left for Ukraine. Stammer announced that the monitoring of the Labour Party that has been done over allegations of antisemitism by the Equality and Human Rights Commission had ended and that the Equality and Human Rights Commission had lifted the warning about antisemitism happening in the party. And as a further measure to make sure that no more antisemitism takes place in the Labour Party, he was banning Jeremy Corbyn MP for Islington North from running with the Labour Party in all future elections. This was kind of hidden in his message about the change in stance of the party, but is extremely significant, a very important blow to all progressive sectors in the UK. And I really think if we look at the roots of this party, a party that was formed by Labour, by the movements, and now is essentially driving out any, as you said, anyone who supports peace, anyone who's against this war drive, and using this sinister label of antisemitism to really get to put forward its political points, and it's extremely important to point out that an organization, Jews for Labour, they actually did a research about what was happening in the Labour Party under Cure Starmer, and they said that Jews are actually more likely to be investigated for antisemitism than their counterparts. So, you know, when we're talking about antisemitism investigations, a lot of time what they're actually saying is anyone who supports Palestine, anyone who's critical of Israel, and using this to really silence all opposition, all dissidents, and what Starmer has said is that it's a new time for the Labour Party, we're never going back. And of course, back is when you had hundreds of thousands of people in the streets supporting Labour, trying to get them to win a majority in the Parliament under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn. A Labour Party was rejuvenated, that was actually trying to push forward an agenda of peace, of guarantee of social rights, of the full nationalization of the NHS and fighting back privatization measures. So I think, really, this is just another development in this campaign against anything that's left in the Labour Party, a consolidation of this conservative position within the party. And really, we're going to see what's next for Jeremy Corbyn because at this point, he's been pushed out, he's been pushed out, and now finally this is the last straw. Is he going to form a new political party? Is there really hope for progressives in the Labour Party? Even some of the progressive caucuses that were part of the party have been banned, have been driven out, so it doesn't seem like in the Labour Party in the UK there's actually space for anything that supports peace, that supports people's rights, that supports Labour because we know, of course, Kirsten has refused to stand on the picket lines at any of these massive strikes that have been happening over the past several months. So it's a real sad day for the Labour Party, a huge betrayal of its roots and really everything that it stands for. Well, one of the reasons that Jeremy Corbyn was being targeted or the mechanism to target Jeremy Corbyn was to call him anti-Semitic. Part of that was because of Mr Corbyn's support for the Palestinian people. Seems to me a perfectly logical thing to support the Palestinian people against a pretty illegal occupation of their lands and so on. Prashant, lots going on in Palestine, give us a round up. Absolutely, like it's hardly a day goes by when the Israeli occupation makes moves either through extremely incendiary and extremely horrific statements by ministers and individuals, people in positions of power, or through policies and laws that are being passed at a breathneck pace to destroy any attempt to sort of set up a Palestinian state or to create a Palestinian state in the future. And the latest provocation of course comes in the form of a law which has been passed by the Israeli parliament, which basically allows the government to deport residents of occupied East Jerusalem who have been convicted of terrorism or receiving aid from the Palestinian Authority. Now, of course, one needs to realize that what Israel means by terrorism is in essence supporting the Palestinian cause is in protesting for Palestine, for instance, all these are potentially terrorist acts according to Israel. And the Palestinian Authority does provide aid to the families of those who have been imprisoned by Israel. So what we are seeing is a possibility of anyone who is a critical voice in East Jerusalem losing their Israeli citizenship, they have one being deported to the West Bank or Gaza for their political views or for being associated with those who have political views. Now, this is, you know, really, this is exactly the kind of agenda that the Benjamin Netanyahu government came into power with the idea that they were going to sort of push things to the as to as much of an extremist possible amendment to the Citizenship Act. Essentially, it is it is it is clearly apartheid. There's really no other way to describe amendments like this and we've seen a lot of these laws being passed which sort of narrowed down the what citizenship means for the Arabs who are citizens of Israel who are living who are citizens of Israel because the fact that many of them their lands were taken over by Israel at various points from 1948. It's not that, you know, they chose to be there or something their homelands of places where they live for January, some kind of citizenship and now over many years the attempt has been made to sort of reduce what that citizenship means. And this also comes in the wake of the fact that especially from 2021 onwards, we have seen a lot of protests taking place in which these Arab citizens of Israel participated as well. So a very clear attack as far as the Netanyahu government is concerned on this section of the Palestinian population. On the other hand, we also know more measures being taken in terms of regularizing illegal settlements in terms of regularizing illegal outposts. These are sort of being these are basically wedges to separate Palestinians from each other to divide and make impossible the idea of a Palestinian state. What we talked about which is called basically changing the facts on the ground, you set up an illegal outpost and then you have an illegal settlement and then you can claim that, oh, there's no way for, you know, and along with the settlements come, say, exclusive roads, checkpoints, all of which make any kind of continuity between Palestinian or land impossible. And of course, there are demolitions taking place. And alongside that we also have with Marvin Weir, who we have again talked about him before but this time indulging in some extremely hateful rhetoric for instance, you know, saying that ovens need to be shut down in prisons because political prisoners do not deserve fresh bread. You know, these kind of inflammatory statements that he's been making, or for the fact that of course we've heard we've seen of course how he's gone to Sheikh Jarrah before created a huge amount of fuss and you know, really sort of say, escalated the situation with a gun making that kind of violence. So of course, and the other latest element is the fact that again, horrifying statement he's given the order that shower time we reduce for political prisoners and you know, apparently political prisoners should get only four minutes to shower per day or something like that. Again, extremely provocative statements, you know, meant to convey to Palestinians the fact that they are not to be seen as, you know, as human beings that they did not have any kind of rights that they exist only at the mercy of the Israeli government and what do you call, and Ben Guido for that matter. So really, you know, I think we've seen waves and waves of escalation over the past, past many months. Palestinians also like we talked about before, increasing the resistance to these kind of policies. 2023 is definitely proving to be unfortunately very violent here in terms of Israeli attacks and it's likely that these will continue as well. You know, history moves, as we say in zigs and zags at people's dispatch and globetrotter and give the people what they want. We always look at, you know, the way in which contradictions drive history forward. It's the same with Palestine and indeed the same with Cuba. Just a quick note that the Cuban president Miguel Diaz Canal visited Mexico, where he spoke with Andres Manuel Lopez, who then openly pronounced and said Mexico is going to lead a movement to ensure that the illegal blockade on Cuba is broken. Pretty interesting development coming from that part of Latin America, another part of Latin America, which we follow very closely. Colombia did protect the right on the streets, the left on the streets. This is happening, then that's happening. Zoe, you know that country better than us. What's going on? Well, this week was an interesting one, as you said. The left was on the streets supporting the progressive reforms that Gustavo Petro and his government have put forward, namely the health reform, which would seek to completely turn on its head the way that healthcare has been working in the country for the past several decades. The health reform that is currently in place was put forward by Álvaro Uribe Vélez, which essentially privatizes healthcare in the country, makes it extremely difficult for people to access care. There's many, many different steps that you have to go to, to even get an appointment, let alone to get a surgery approved, extremely inaccessible for the working class people of the country. So this was one of the major campaign promises of Gustavo Petro and Francia Marquez when they were running this past year. Healthcare reform, education reform, and so many other things that are so vital to making the country a place where people can live with dignity and have rights. And so this week Petro called on his supporters to take to the streets and support the reforms that he's putting forward, especially given the fact that the right wing had planned something of their own, which was that the day after on Wednesday, right wing opposition heads like Miguel Polo Polo, Maria Fernando Cual and other extremely ardent far-right members of Congress and just politicians and general political figures called for people to take the streets against the guerrilla, against the terrorists, against all of these things that they see that Gustavo Petro on the left represents. They want to oppose all of the reforms that this government of change is putting forward. But above all that, they just really want to oppose this political program, which seeks to have an inclusive and diverse representation and put forward a country where actually all of the different groups and minorities can have access to rights that they've had for many, many years. And so in these marches, which I think the largest one took place in Medellín, which is the historic stronghold of Alvaro Ribeveles and this currents of thought of Uri Rismo, of far-right politics. This was one of the largest mobilizations. There were also mobilizations in Cali and in Bogota. Gustavo Petro actually posted a photo from one of these marches where someone who's present and is holding a big sign is wearing a swatsika patch on his arm. And he says, so far the opposition has not denounced this. So I think it's quite telling the composition of the people who are on the streets, the hateful words that they have for the people who supported this program and this government of change. And essentially, you know, all they want to do is put up roadblocks and make this a very difficult situation for the government, create a situation of ungovernability. However, it seems that the people are determined to continue forward with this government of change. They've already had massive support for these proposed reforms. Francia Marquez was just in Cuba. She joined many other people in supporting the fact that Cuba should be taken off the list of state sponsors of terrorism. As you and Noam Chomsky pointed out, this label was actually assigned to Cuba because it was hosting the peace process for the ELN, and it had previously hosted the peace process for the FARC Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. Their relationships are also getting closer during the Gustavo Petro presidency. I think that this is something the right wing also doesn't like. It doesn't like that Gustavo Petro is now opening up relationships with its neighbor with Venezuela. They just opened up the land border. Gustavo Petro and Nicolas Maduro both crossed the border, had a beautiful encounter in a moment where these two brother countries are coming back together after being separated by U.S. interests. So it's definitely a push-and-pull moment, and I think we're definitely seeing in response to this progressive wave across the continent that the right wing is reinventing itself as the opposition. We've seen it in Brazil and we're going to see it in Colombia and other countries across the region. It's remarkable that these things are happening in this way. Meanwhile, as you say, Francia Marquez, vice president of Colombia was in Cuba because the Havana Book Fair had as its special honor they gave to the Colombian book publishers. I walked around the Havana Book Fair, which is held in an old fort, an old prison. Prisons converted into bookshelves, a perfect way to advance to the future, in my opinion. Prisons converted to bookshelves. My dear friend, Mumia Abu Jamal, 42 years inside U.S. prisons Prashant, 42 years and yet keeps writing books. What's the latest about Mumia? There's actually an international campaign going on right now which began, in fact, yesterday, the February of 16th and will go on for a month until March 16th. Now, there are two interesting aspects about the campaign. One, this comes at a time when fresh legal proceedings are going on in his case. The judges ordered that a lot of evidence be turned over to the defense. This kind of highlights an issue that I think activists and people across the world in solidarity with Mumia have been pointing out for many years that the original circumstances in which he was convicted for killing a policeman were highly dubious. The fact that they have been, over the years, a lot of information has come which has punched holes in so many of the arguments by the prosecution. The fact that the judge was definitely prejudiced as was evident from his comments. The fact, for instance, that at least some of the people who testified against him have been influenced that their own cases, there will be some amount of leniency in them. Definitely at least one instance of bribery. All this points to a very important question. And I think the key aspect here is the fact of the time at which Mumia was arrested. The fact that for years he had been under surveillance by US authorities. He was arrested at a time when there was an uprising in general by the black people and of the country. There was a huge wave of prisings of anger which had a motivated strong writing, strong protests and authorities across the United States were determined and very openly so. It is not even that it was some kind of a secret conspiracy by these kind of authorities. These authorities are on record making very clear statements that people who participated, people who led these protests, people who were influential like Mumia who was a prominent journalist at that point of time that all these people would be suppressed no matter what the cost. And it's in this context that Mumia was arrested that he was initially of course sentenced to death. It was later commuted and like you said he spent over 40 years in prison close to 42 years over this time. He suffered intensely. He suffered bereavement. His health has declined. It's a various points medicines have not been provided to him at the right point of time. And throughout all these years like you said he has been an inspiration, continuously writing, continuously speaking to his comrades across the world, standing up like you said from prison when in such difficult circumstances standing up for the oppressed across the world. It's truly a heroic thing and which is why I think the global campaign is interesting because it is a campaign where organizations across the world have joined at this point to demand his freedom, to demand justice. We've had the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa for instance, which has always been very strongly associated with this campaign. In fact, the general secretary Irwin Jim had written earlier as well to the governor asking for medicines to be delivered to him at that point of time. And Mumsa at the forefront we have a letter which Irwin Jim has written to the judge in this case talking about linking the apartheid that the people of South Africa suffered and endured and the kind of persecution that Mumia has endured and talking about how there is a need for justice, there is a need for him to be set free. And other actions also taking place across the world. For instance, the United States, port workers coming out and blocking shutting down ports in support of Mumia. In earlier instances we have seen Brazilian teachers for instance protesting for him as well. So a very important month in that sense in terms of the campaigns that are taking place as these legal proceedings continue because I think it really is a brilliant example of the power of international solidarity and the fight for justice. Quite correct. I mean, often one feels that Mumia Bujamal is the freest man in the United States. And from that little prison cell, he excoriates the country and has done so through his life from death row, radio reports through prison radio, quite brilliant. Crossing the Atlantic back to Africa, Nigeria, one of the largest countries on the continent ready for an election, a major general election which will include presidential election, elections for governors, various state bodies and so on. It's a massive election, one of the largest in the world. The electorate, 93 to 94 million people, although I must say in 2019, the rate of voting was only about 35, 36%. Nonetheless, a very large electorate, a very complicated election, an important election for this country. Why is it important? Well, it's important for a range of reasons. I mean, one, Mr. Buhari, the sitting president who's finished his second term has decided not to force the way through and try to get a third term. That's significant. I think one should acknowledge that that's a significant fact. Lots of challenges to Nigeria, an oil-rich country, a country divided by ethnicity, by religion. The North-South axis is playing an important role. People in various sections feeling greatly marginalized. You remember in the 1970s, the brutal war in Biafra, now to some extent suppressed. You will remember the fight by the Ngoni people in the Delta region against shell cooperation and the murder of not only their main tribute, Kensa Roviva, but the murder of many activists who are trying to establish the right of the Nigerian people to their land and soil. Increasingly difficult situation for Nigeria, not only with the growth of armed insurgents such as Boku Haram, but as Al-Qaeda-esque groups come south from the Sahel, leaking into northern Nigeria, leaking into the lakes region in the north, many of these insurgents going through Burkina Faso and Mali. I've just finished a story which will come out from Globetrotter next week about Burkina Faso, Mali. The challenges facing the military governments in these countries, they've made a sort of security deal that includes Guinea. Very unlikely they'll be able to actually take hold of the problem they face, 40% of the land in Mali out of the control of the government. This is actually a major challenge for Nigeria, an under-reported story which is the insurgency in the northern part of Nigeria. It's not just Boku Haram, it's a range of political actors including a new group that established itself a few years ago. Familiar name of course to most people, but it's the Islamic state of the Sahel which has been extremely brutal in its attacks. Gotta be said, they've implanted themselves in local struggles, which is what makes it really difficult to extricate these groups, to marginalize them and so on. In Nigeria, the election itself at the presidential level has some interesting features to it. A number of the people that are running that one in the primary, they have an extensive primary process in Nigeria. The front runner is Peter Obi. Peter Obi was with the centre-right people's Democratic Party. He jumped ship because he wasn't getting the candidacy and he's now the candidate of the centre-left Labour Party. I must say this was an interesting development to watch Peter Obi, a businessman, somebody with very few left credentials, hop onto the ballot of the Labour Party. But nonetheless, he's the front runner. His approvals are very high. Meanwhile, Mr. Buhari, the sitting president's approval ratings have collapsed. We're going to watch this election closely. It's very difficult to predict a Nigerian election over the last couple of cycles. You've seen quite interesting things happen. As with a lot of elections, there's an enormous amount of money that changes hands and that sometimes comes in at the end and makes things difficult. 18 political parties in the fray, as I said, 93 million-odd people running in that election. Go to people's dispatch. There'll be coverage of the election. I'm going to follow this as well for Globetrotter. You've been listening to give the people what they want. Today is the 17th of February. On the 21st of February every year, we celebrate Red Books Day. Make sure to go out there in public, read a Red Book, put your pictures on social media, hashtag Red Books Day 2023. Don't forget, we are still looking for your selfies. See you next week.