 Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Your weekly movement news round up. It's your 96th show of give the people what they want brought to you from people's dispatch. That's Prashant and Zoe. I'm Vijay from Globe Trotter. Very quickly, just before we went on the air, Vladimir Putin of Russia has signed the treaty annexing four parts of Ukraine. Very interesting speech. He referenced the mutiny or the uprising in India in 1857. The opium wars of the Chinese. He delivered a very stinging speech about Western colonialism and said Russia will not be a colony of the West. We'll be doing more about this. That speech needs a lot of analysis. Yes, we are all anti-colonial now. It seems very interesting development but needs to have some reflection. Let's go immediately to Zoe on the streets of Brazil covering the election on Sunday. Zoe, tell us what's going on in Brazil. Well, I'm currently headed to a rally that's called Artists for Democracy. There's expected to be theater performers, poets, musicians all gathered together to support. The return to democracy is what they're calling it. Largely supporting the candidacy of Luis Inácio Lula da Silva and his broad coalition to bring hope back to Brazil. Artists are just one of the groups that are joining behind Lula. Yesterday we had a very interesting discussion with the leader from the National Coordination of the Landless World Workers Movement and he declared and he stated that in these elections, whereas in 2018, the bourgeoisie in Brazil had united behind Bolsonaro what is very interesting about this year, 2022, is that the bourgeoisie is completely split. And there's large sections of the bourgeoisie that have actually united behind Lula. So, of course, what we're going to now is street artists, musicians, but there's very, very big names. People who on Monday Lula ate dinner with the 100 top businessmen of Brazil, of the 200 richest businessmen in Brazil. He had dinner with them. They showed their support to the Lula campaign. This is really an extremely broad coalition that he's building and it's, of course, a testament to the ability of Luis Inácio Lula da Silva of really being able to capture this hope, but also more than that, it's kind of a testament to the really deep rejection of the Bolsonaro presidency, of Bolsonaro politics. You know, not to mention what we know about the attacks on human rights, attacks on left movements, the massacre of indigenous people, the destruction of the Amazon, but really Bolsonaro has made Brazil an untenable place even for businesses. 28,000 companies, big companies shut down over the past four years. 28,000, that's a number that's, you know, proved it's not just something I made up right now. This is a huge number. This is not only a situation of course we see a massive increase in number of homeless people, a massive increase in the number of hungry people. 33 million people are hungry in Brazil. 125 million people are suffering from some sort of food insecurity, but also people of the business class, they're not able to make their businesses happen. They're not able to achieve international deals. The devaluation of the hail has had a huge impact on their ability to do business. Brazil is seen now as an unstable place. It's seen as a place that's not great to do business in precisely because of the very unstable nature, the erratic behavior of Bolsonaro. A lot of people from the U.S. might remember how it was when Donald Trump was in presidency. It made the bourgeoisie uncomfortable. And so I think that's exactly what we're seeing here. Of course beyond these alliances that Lula has been able to make with these broad sectors, both with many different political parties, different sections of the ruling class, but then of course one of the most important alliances which is the most natural alliance is the alliance with the people, with people's movements, with trade unions, with black organizations, with women's organizations, with peasant organizations all across the board who are defending the project of society that Lula is trying to build and have also declared that they will be in permanent mobilization both to defend his government if he's elected, but also to push for the radical reforms that Brazil needs to get out of this situation of massive crisis. That's where we're at. We're going to give another update at the end of the show about how the scene is on the streets. Thanks, Zoe. That's a really important thing to pay attention to. The election on Sunday all polls indicating that Mr. Lula might win in the first round. Question of course is, will the Workers' Party of Mr. Lula win sufficient seats in the legislature to prevent any kind of impeachment moves by the right? You know they're always out there. Meanwhile, just north of Brazil on the island of Cuba and nearby the island of Puerto Rico, various hurricanes have wreaked havoc. First in Puerto Rico, Hurricane Fiona, still a quarter of a million people without power. Two weeks after Hurricane Fiona had hit that colony of the United States. The Cuban situation is a little different. Iain striking the island very hard as a consequence of a large number of trees coming down, not only in the western part of Cuba, but also in the capital Havana. As a consequence of that, the power grid had failed. Well now about 400 of 860,000 people in Havana have their power back, but still half the population without power. 28 hours into the storm though, gotta say that the Cuban authorities, the Union Electrica de Cuba, the UNE was able to restart the country's thermoelectric plants. That's considerable. It is also important to mention that about a dozen or little more than a dozen out of the 25 hospitals have power back. Very difficult situation for the people on the island of Cuba. The authorities have been on the streets trying to make something of the mess that this hurricane has created. At the same time, Cuba is in dire need of rebuilding materials, construction equipment, electrical cable and so on. There's a consequence of course of that US blockade. Now over six decades long, Cuba unable to easily get some of this rebuilding material. I have to say once more opening a path by the Mexican president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, opening a path from president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, both have pledged to send materials to Cuba. Important to recognize that the campaign that is ongoing is called Let Cuba Rebuild. Let's see what happens. Gotta say that every time the storms strike Puerto Rico and Cuba. Many years ago, I reported two storms, Hurricane Maria hitting Puerto Rico and hitting Cuba. Cuba recovering very quickly. Puerto Rico taking almost a year to recover. Tells you a little bit about the importance of planning in advance and after the fact. Well, again, as I said, Cuba is in a very difficult situation right now with Hurricane Ian. Keep an eye on it. I think what happens with hurricanes, Prashant, as you know, with all kinds of storms, the storm comes, it's reported immediately, and then the cameras disappear the next day. In fact, the real work in the aftermath of a storm like this is not immediately. And this hurricane struck Cuba just after an enormous victory for the Cuban people, which is that about 67% of the population in a very large turnout voted for a new family code. This family code actually is really one of the most progressive codes of how to understand a family, not only in the Americas, which it clearly is, but I would hazard to say in the world, very interesting code. People might want to study this family code from Cuba, just as the Cubans on Sunday, last Sunday, voted for this code. Of course, the hurricane struck. It's a really bad situation on that island, and I hope very much people pay attention and look closely at what's happening. We're going to move along now. I know that this show is basically going to spend a lot of time on Brazil. Zoe is very valiantly in a car going from one event reporting stories as she comes on, gives the people what they want, which as you know, comes to you from people's dispatch. Prashant, you're going to take us now to Tunisia, more stories from around the world. What's happening in Tunisia? I think it's become a thing of the show that hardly an episode passes without a reference to the IMF. This week, no different. Tunisia, of course, protests taking place after the country has become yet another victim of what people are actually calling, in some ways, the cost of living crisis. I think you've talked about it before. It's a very strange term. It should actually be called the cost of capitalism crisis because that's really what it is. People in Tunisia are taking to the streets because of such basic issues as the fact that the supermarket shelves are empty, the fact that they're struggling to get bread, sugar, other essentials, people protesting with loaves saying that where is the sugar? Videos going of people struggling from place to place trying to get food and basic essentials. All this is happening is there's been a 14% increase, I believe, in fuel prices if I'm not mistaken. There's still a 4% increase in fuel prices. This is the second or third time that's happening, a 14% increase in gas prices. Tunisia is basically spiraling into a major economic crisis right now. The only solution, as seems to be in many parts of the world, is basically an IMF loan according to the government. The government of KSAEED is trying very hard to somehow reach an agreement with the IMF for a loan of about $3-4 billion, I believe. Now the important thing to note is that like we come to this each and every single time, the IMF loan comes with a certain set of specifications. Specification number one, you cut down subsidies, specification number two, you try to freeze wages. Specification number three, you try to restructure your public utilities, which basically means privatizing them as much as possible. Now this is true in every continent in the world and the impact of this is basically what the only impact that you can assume that's going to happen from this is that in a few years Tunisia will again be queuing up for another IMF loan with stricter conditions. So on the one hand you have a massive crisis where people do not really even have food and basic essentials they're taking to the streets. On the other hand the government's only solution is to go for a project which is going to send them further into, people further into crisis. So that's really the context in which these protests are taking place right now. There's also political crisis, we talked about it before. Even as the horizons of the people have become narrower because of this so-called cost of living crisis because of basically the inability to buy things because of rising prices. Despite all this, even during this time the government has become more repressive. It has cut down the possibilities of the people actually taking part meaningfully in any form of government. We know that under President Qaisaid they basically dissolved parliament last year and he pushed his own vision of the constitution which gives a lot more power to the president. And now he's planned for legislative elections, assembly elections in December and the entire cross-section of the population ranging from the Islamist Nader Party to the left, the workers party and its allies. All of them are calling for a boycott for a variety of reasons but the important thing is they're all calling for a boycott because they see this process as not being in any way representative of the will of the Tunisian people. So it's interesting to see that again in many of the countries we've seen these patterns happen at the same time. On the one hand you have an economic crisis which completely shrinks and destroys the possibility of a government to respond credibly to any kind of in any particular way. And this is further amplified by the dictates of the IMF which constrained the government. And the government's only solution at this point of time is basically to take this out in the form of repression on the people and to block any avenues of public participation and policymaking in public participation and envisioning alternatives. Although those alternatives do exist but the people really don't have a say and they're not able to push through it. So this combination of repression of economic misery is what is exploding once again in Tunisia. You've seen the old slogans from 2011 from much before. The slogans calling for jobs, bread and dignity. We have seen in an instance people taking to the streets because allegedly a report from a person forced to commit suicide because of harassment by police officers. Again echoes of the Arab Spring Revolution which is exactly what happened at that point also. So what we're likely to see is some of these protests escalating in the coming weeks and months as well because the KSA government is clearly not responsive to many of these concerns. And this is where we are with Tunisia right now. So very unfortunate situation but I think also increasingly exemplifying what many countries in the world, especially the Global South are facing right now. Prashant, you look at food and agriculture organization data, the food index. They show sustained food price inflation, all eyes on wheat prices which means that bread and pasta prices up in Europe. Latest figures from Eurostat show that European bread prices are up by a fifth by 20%. This situation is just not going to even out in any way. You're listening to give the people what they want coming to you from people's dispatch that's Prashant and Zoe. I'm Vijay from Globetrotter. Happy to be with you again on this Friday. Lots of news to cover. I'm going to take the conversation back to the Caribbean. Seems that I'm stuck there already talked about Puerto Rico, Cuba and now Haiti. Very little news coverage around the world about the sustained protests in Haiti that have been going on. In fact, that have been going on since 2018. In fact, predating the pandemic, it's almost as if every day there's a protest in some part of Haiti, not only in Port-au-Prince, the capital, but in smaller towns around the island. Lots of demonstrations largely driven again by fuel price inflation that predates the pandemic and predates the war in Ukraine. What's the cause of this fuel price inflation of the great distress faced by the Haitian people? Well, firstly, the US pressure campaign on Venezuela put a lot of pressure on Petro-Carib, which was a scheme set up by the Venezuelan government to deliver discounted oil to countries like Haiti. Also corruption of the Haitian elite, essentially bankrupted Petro-Carib, Haiti, and Haiti was not able to avail itself of a cut price Venezuelan oil because Venezuela was in a crisis occasioned by the US sanction policy. That's the first thing. Second thing is that there's been sustained destabilization of Haiti since at least the coup, the second coup against Jobbatran arrested in 2004. Sustained political crisis. All the leaders who have come into office have been essentially anointed by Washington DC. The most recent acting head of government in Haiti, Ariel Henry, of course, is a creature of the national endowment of democracy of the United States of the International Republican institution of the United States. He, a neurosurgeon, created a group to in fact help overthrow Jobbatran arrested in the second coup in 2004. His entire political career has been shaped by the anti-arrested destabilization. Well, that's Mr. Ariel Henry, complete lack of legitimacy for his government faced with a cost of living crisis that he doesn't know how to control. When the Haitian legislature about five, six years ago first started to talk about increasing wages for people in Haiti, increasing social wages for people in Haiti. The United States government then under President Barack Obama directly intervened to prevent Haiti from being able to lift the basic minimum wage for people. And it's very striking that at the time it was said that this attempt to increase minimum wage would basically just appease the unemployed and underpaid masses. That's what a member of the U.S. Embassy said to appease the underpaid and unemployed masses. Well, those under employed, unemployed and underpaid masses then went ahead in their condition of unemployment and joined the gangs. And the gangs became a principal source of employment for lots of precarious discarded surplus people of Haiti. Many of them joined the gangs and the gangs are playing a big role in this protest. Of course, this is not a force of the left. Of course, this is a quite dangerous development as well because they have their own form of taking to the gun and so on. Haiti is in a serious crisis. It's striking that the United States government has said there needs to be more intervention. They, of course, mean some form of United Nations or military intervention. This is precisely what Haiti doesn't need. When people have been escaping from Haiti and arriving in the United States, they've been treated abysmally. In the article I wrote for Globetrotter, which you can read at People's Dispatch, I quote from the Amnesty International report, which shows that the treatment of Haitians has been extraordinarily barbaric by the United States government. On the one side, Joe Biden says, we have to stand with Haiti. And on the other side, they seem to be disparaging and maligning the actual Haitian people. It's a great conflict taking place there. Trade unions have been on strike. Please don't neglect to keep an eye on Haiti and see what's going on there. The same way, friends, on People's Dispatch, we keep an eye on all these struggles, including the struggle in Palestine. Prashant, what's happening in Palestine? What we have in Palestine right now is almost, in some senses, depressingly, but also infuriatingly, infuriating pattern that we keep witnessing when we often keep coming back to it in this show every once in a while, because it is essential to not only to record, to chronicle, to talk about these incidents of Israeli occupation and violence, but also, I think, to see the patterns that keep happening again and again, and which actually prompt you to ask the question as to why Israel enjoys this kind of impunity, because we have two instances here in the past, two sites here in the past one week itself. One is, of course, the Al Aqsa mosque in occupied East Jerusalem, and of course, the town of Jenin in the refugee camp, they will come to that. The Al Aqsa, of course, especially, what happens there is now so predictable, now so almost, in some senses, so enshrined in the day-to-day life of Palestinians that it's very difficult to sort of describe, because we have the same familiar instance of Israeli security forces providing cover to Israeli settler groups, right wing settler groups, which come, which sort of storm into the Al Aqsa mosque, conduct rituals, pray, which is against the law, which is against Israeli, what Israel believes says it is a law or whatever, but they continue to hold these prayers and rituals when Palestinians resist as they obviously would. Then there is this huge show of force against Palestinian protesters, Palestinian youth, especially, who are kept out of the whole premises in the first place. There was a video of an old man, for instance, who was shot by settlers and security forces, and there's like complete impunity when it comes to this. And like I said, the pattern here is that this has happened again and again. Like I was just checking, you know, for previous incidents, and we already have huge records of what happened just a few months ago in April, I believe. We saw what happened in May last year, for instance, when during the time of Ramadan, the Al Aqsa, the continuous Israeli settler attacks on Al Aqsa was actually one of the key reasons for what happened after the bombing of Gaza that happened as well. Because Palestinians chose to resist, they said that you would not sit back and just take this. So, you know, this is a very disturbing pattern because like I said, one, this is of course in violation of all international law. And two, because the settlers represent a kind of fundamentalism, which has become such an integral part of the occupation. The sense of basically, you know, pushing boundaries, the sense of basically expropriating in every sense of term. And in this case, in a spiritual sense as well, based on this idea that, you know, the Temple Mount should be built there. There are extreme right-wing groups which even claim that the mosque should be torn down or whatever. But this sense of expropriation in every sense in every way conceivable is so inherent to the Israeli occupation project at this point of time. Always has been, but right now it's really, really intensified. And on the flip side, you have Janine, where instance, I think this year, I believe 36 people have been killed in Janine alone. Palestinians, 150 people overall killed in various raids by Israeli forces in occupied, the occupied territories. And again, important to note that this forces also includes Shireen Aguacla, who was a journalist there, who was clearly wearing a press tag when she was a short dead. The Israelis tried to whitewash that as well. But again, the pattern here is so clear because it has been happening every single month this year. The Israelis say, okay, there's an ex-person who's involved in some crime. They bring their whole occupation force, you know, very high levels of ammunition. They fire in almost arbitrary way, cause casualties. And when Palestinians again start resisting, there is again further violence inflicted on the Palestinians by the Israelis. So that's really what we're getting to see continuously at this point of time. And unfortunately, because the international community, especially the West, is, for lack of better word, enabling Israel in every sense possible. Also, you know, is enabling Israel in every sense possible. There is no, there is absolutely no check on it. Of course, rights organizations, activists continuously calling out occupation apartheid. But the fact that Israel has such powerful backing from the United States and its allies is what remains to be seen. Well, Prashant, we're going to go from the killings in Janine to what looks like a jubilant street scene in Brazil. Zoe, where are you? And what does this have to do with give the people what they want? Well, that's a great question. But I think that people want, you know, art and music and celebrations. And that's exactly what I'm going to try to get right now. As I said, I was headed to the Artist for Democracy. A very exciting protest with stinging, there was poetry being reciting in the center of Sao Paulo. Very festive atmosphere. Different, you know, parties were all part of the coalition for Lula, supporting the different candidacies, supporting the struggle for democracy. It's very, people talk a lot about the violence and intense atmosphere here in Brazil. But what we're seeing here is that people just are excited about the possibility of change that they're wanting a return to peace in the country that they want. A return to stability, a return to joy. On Sunday in the next couple of days, we have some exciting interviews. I spoke to a candidate from Belo Horizonte, who's from a Black organization. She talked to us about the impacts of these last four years on the Black population, the essentially the elimination of the possibility of a future, of possibility of education, the possibility of employment. And that's really what is bringing so many people out here is that for the last six years since the coup against Dilma Rousseff, they haven't had the certainty that they will be able to have jobs. They haven't had the certainty that they will be able to have higher education, to have housing, to have this stability. And so that's, I think, one of the reasons that there's so many people who are joining. We also have an interview that will be coming out with Joao Pedro Sedele, who's from the National Coordination of the Landless World Workers Movement, who spoke to us yesterday in the event as well. And he talked to us about the impact on the countryside. As I mentioned, it's not only about the burning of the Amazon, but also the favoring of agro-business and the, you know, attacks on the small farmers, attacks on peasants. This means that this contributes to the situation of hunger that we see today in Brazil. So really this moment of campaign is seeing a lot of different sectors which have for a long time been divided, the countryside from the cities, and they're coming together making proposals and saying, we know what hunger feels like. We've seen the impact of having these policies which favor the exportation of soy, which favor the exportation of transgenic crops. And we want to have something where the farmers can be producing food and the people in the city are going to be able to consume those products. So it's an exciting time in that sense as well to see the coalitions being formed, not only of the parties but of the people's movements and coming together to form concrete proposals. I think we talk a lot in this show about the bad things that are happening in the world, but it's so important as the people's movements are doing here in Brazil, as they're doing it across the world to have these concrete proposals with how to have a future of hope and a future of dignity. And I know it's a little out of place. Can I ask you a question? I just spoke today to Noam Chomsky who's in Mina Gerais in Brazil. And Noam says outside his window, there are people riding around on motorcycles with large posters of Bolsonaro because there is a fear in some places that there will be violence and the Bolsonaro supporters are also on the streets. What is the sense right now where you are about the dangers of a kind of January 6th, what happened in the United States on January 6th, kind of violent backlash from Bolsonaro supporters? So this has come up a lot and I think especially because of foreign press and especially what Bolsonaro supporters have attempted to put in the media. But a lot of people from the left are saying that this strategy of creating fear, of creating this sense of intimidation is also to try to get people to not vote on Sunday. To try to say it's dangerous to vote, you're going to be harmed, they're going to be violent. But largely if you look at it, the incidence of violence that have happened so far, it's been quite limited for the number of the population of Brazil. Brazil is a country of over 200 million people. There have been very horrible and very regrettable incidents of violence, but it is not in a sense of systemic widespread violence. Bolsonaro is losing support of society in 2018. He had the support of the entire bourgeoisie, essentially. He doesn't have the same kind of support, but very strong bastion of supporters which are 30% of the population and some of them are fanatics, but this is not, they don't have the same legitimacy to be able to really move that many people. The army, for example, is divided. There's not unity on the fact that they should, they don't agree they should intervene in the elections. This has been a talking point of Bolsonaro, but no support actually from the armed forces of Brazil. So it's a lot of rhetoric and at the end of the day, it seems this is mainly to discourage the people from participating, discourage popular participation. So this is an important point to be vigilant, vigilant always of the possibility of violence, but also to not amplify it because at the end of the day, it is as many people say a party of democracy. Well, that's Zoe on the streets of Brazil. Go to peoplesdispatch.org to see what's happening with the election on Sunday. Prashant is also there reporting from Tunisia and Palestine. I'm Vijay from Globetrotter. Give the people what they want. 96th episode, not long now, we'll be at 100. See you next week.