 Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Your weekly movement news roundup. Definitely, this is not the 100th show, but something like 104. You're with Give the People What They Want. Coming to you from People's Dispatch, that's Zoe and Prashant. Zoe and I, by the way, are in the great territory of Dongshengistan. I'm Vijay from Globe Trotter. Happy to be with you. Before we went on air, of course, we're following tracking, in fact, the recent developments in South Africa where Cyril Ramaphosa, president under the scrutiny of all opposition parties for corruption. Surprise, surprise. Corruption about the selling of a buffalo. Well, we'll have more on that story next week. Things are still in flux. Pedro Castillo of Peru, also under the scanner in Peru, not sure what's going to happen to his position as head of government in Peru. Well, all that perhaps next week. Right now, things are in flux in both South Africa and in Peru. We're going to go, as we often do, to the world of strikes, Prashant, what's happening in the NHS, the National Health Service in the United Kingdom? Right. It's an interesting time in the United Kingdom because we have strikes across all sectors. Rail workers also have been continuously protesting. We had a recent video about university workers who also staged a protest of about 70,000 university workers were on protests in the UK. And now we have a mammoth series of strikes coming up from the National Health Service. And it's interesting because it's across sectors. So there's been widespread balloting of union members for the past month, hundreds and thousands of ambulance drivers, nurses, health professionals in various sub-sectors, so to speak, being balloted. And throughout, I think throughout all these sections, a common understanding has emerged that there is, there's really no option but to go on strike. In fact, nurses are set to walk out on December 15th and 20th ambulance drivers. They've announced that they're going to go on strike and it is expected that there's going to be a coordinated action on December 20th. Now, you might sort of wonder what, especially during winter, it's around the time of Christmas. It's the kind of, you know, it's a time when already staff shortages often exist. And what forces health professionals, especially of a service, which is generally quite well known across the world, the NHS is often seen as a model in many countries. So the real question is what forces these workers to go out to strike work at this point of time. And the answer is actually pretty simple coming from the fact that the government has been offering them just a pittance in terms of pain creases. It's as pretty much as basic as that. That's one aspect. The second aspect being the fact that vacancies are not being filled. I believe the numbers for nurses, I think there's a 47,000 or 47,000 odd vacancies for nurses alone in the NHS. And, you know, the government led by the Conservatives, they're just, since for decades now, both the Conservative and Labour parties have followed this trend of austerity and health workers are really saying it's, you know, we can't deal with this anymore because inflation is a 10%. We talked about it on the show before, there's been reports that almost decades worth of wealth has been, people have been set back by a decade, especially the working class. You know, it's like you're back to 2008 or 10 again because all of what you've worked for in 10 years is vanished because of the nature of the economic crisis. And I think there's some other shocking numbers is what I think last week about 200 people who died in the UK were due to, because apparently due to delays in urgent and emergency care. So that's just another shocking number which shows that even ambulance services, emergency services, all being pushed to the brink because the fact that the government is just not willing to invest enough. And I think we talked about it again on the show before this is after two years of COVID, after we've been through this entire, you know, after we've been through the celebration of health workers, this declaration of them as heroes, etc, etc. But what we've seen is in country after country governments have gone back to their business as usual. They have refused to provide the adequate funding for these health sectors and basically pushing workers to say that you have no other option but to come and go on strike at this point of time. So very depressing and difficult time for most UK health workers and I think the government's approach in recent budgets, we know the kind of chaos the conservative government is going through and throughout this chaos, what all contenders have promised or continue to promise is that we will stick to conservative values, which means keep cutting down spending, keep, you know, continue with your austerity policies and somehow hope that this discredited trickle down will solve everything. So that's where the workers are at. So I think this month is going to be very, very crucial this month in January as well because throughout across these sectors, we're going to see probably one of the biggest waves of strikes in the NHS in many, many years. Strikes in the UK? Well, there have been previously those rail strikes, as you said, very serious strikes conducted by the Transport Workers Union, very brave. They continued rolling strikes, not only in the UK across the Atlantic, looks like the United States, another wave of strikes. What's happening, Zoe? Well, it's an interesting situation. As we know, the transportation sector is an extremely crucial sector and even though the US is one of the countries with, you know, not many passenger railroads, of course railways are still extremely crucial to the economy, so much so that Joe Biden actually pressured the US Congress to pass legislation blocking a rail workers strike. And it's interesting the way that they came about this because they said that they want to make sure the economy is not affected by a potential rail workers strike. And what is it that the rail workers were fighting for? Well, actually, they were fighting for the right to sit to paid sick leave, which really should be a fundamental right of all workers. And because they were not given, they're not given the offer of paid sick time in these negotiations that they've been in with the Union and the rail worker companies, they said that they were going to take industrial action if this demand was not considered. And instead of, you know, considering the offer that was made for seven paid sick leave days, Joe Biden and Democrats actually pushed forward legislation that would give, that would force them to accept a deal that had none of this rights respected. Interestingly enough, some Republicans voted against this. And really, I think it's just a testament to show that the Democratic Party in this, in this case is really just showing its true colors. And it's the fact that it's at the end of the day on the side of big capital, not supporting workers rights. And in all, you know, you would think that especially after the pandemic, the right to have time off when you're sick to take care of yourself to not infect your other workers should be, at this point, common sense, but no, of course, it is not. And an interesting point is that also a poll was conducted around this rail worker strike, and it actually showed that about a majority of Americans actually support workers, rail workers, prioritizing their rights over economic growth, and that they did not approve the intervention of Congress. So I think this is really important to point out. A lot of times people talk about the conservative U.S. society that, you know, there's low levels of unionization, but actually there's a lot of support for workers getting their rights. There's growing support for the recognition of what our labor rights in a country that has kind of completely stripped down this concept of having these labor rights. So I think this is a really crucial moment. A lot of people extremely fed up with Joe Biden, who once time and again is not fulfilling his promises is talking about supporting workers but not actually doing anything. Of course, they just won these, you know, slim victory in the midterm elections, defeating the Republicans really on a discourse of we're not the extreme right. But at the end of the day, they clearly have nothing to offer the working class and that I think is really evident in this real workers dispute. And we're going to, of course, be following this. Natalia Marcus has been writing these updates, giving the on the ground look. Well, you know, it's interesting that when you think about the rail worker strike or the NHS strike underneath all that is a cost of living crisis that has hit workers around the world. Very stunning story reported on BBC website. Now I must admit that I don't often go running to BBC to get my news, but this story caught my eye. It was about how in the city of Cardiff, which is the capital of Wales, people are beginning to buy pet food as a substitute for other kinds of food because the price of food has gone up. Well, I took a look at the ILO, the International Labour Organization's very important global wage report 2022-2023, just out with the very strong subtitle of the impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power. I understand many of you are not going to go running to the ILO website to go and read their report. Truth be told, it's rather dull. There's a lot of statistical detail. It's difficult to get through the banner numbers to see what the important points are. Well, here's a banner number for you. They look at global monthly wages and they show that they fell in real terms. Now you're scratching your head and saying, what does all this mean? Here's the number. It's minus 0.9% in the first half of 2022. That doesn't really inform you about anything. But here's what the ILO says. It's the first time this century that real global wage growth has gone negative. If you don't really follow all the numbers, I think the analysis is itself stunning. It's the first time in this century, the 21st century that real global wage growth has gone negative. Looking deeper into the numbers, looking at some regional differences, it's pretty striking. In the European Union, where there's a large social welfare sector to protect people who have lost their jobs through, for instance, job retention schemes, wage subsidies and so on. There's been an increase in real wages to 1.3% in 2021, but it declined to minus 2.4% in the first half of 2022. That means in Europe, they saw some increase in 2021 largely because some people began to imagine the pandemic is over. Well, just as the point came when the pandemic was over when some supply bottlenecks from Asia and other manufacturing centers in the world began to slow down. You had, of course, the conflict in Ukraine, which is a contributing factor to this. But there are older drags on the economies in Europe. So Europe faced a 2.4% decline, that's significant. China, for instance, the other end of the world from Europe didn't see such a catastrophic collapse. Real wage growth increased in fact, but much less than it had increased in the previous years. So they had a modest increase, not the kind of drop you saw in Europe. One more example that might be interesting to people. In Africa, there was a fall in real wage growth to minus 1.4% in 2021. Already before the war in Ukraine, there was a real decline in real wage, but it slowed even further to 2.5% in the first half of 2022. It's a pretty important report from the International Labour Organization, because what it's showing is that not only are social services being cut in most countries around the world, that means governments are deciding to slow down on the various stimulus packages that they had provided during the pandemic and also slowing down or cutting other social welfare programs, partly because the tax base seems to be not as favorable as it was in the pre-pandemic period. So not only are governments cutting on social welfare spending, not only are prices going up on basic goods, for instance, on fuel and food and so on, including rents. There's a secular increase in prices that has been pushed upward by the, let's call it the Ukraine bump for many prices, largely because there's also kind of insecurity in the markets about how to price things. So there's upward pressure on a lot of prices. Prices are going up, social payments are going down, and then wages have collapsed. So I think this IMF report is very significant. It shows effectively that in most countries in the world, apart from China, real wages have declined. And as they show, the aggregate number is this is the largest wage decline this century. Very little reporting on this, you know, it's important that we pay attention to this. This is what's called the scissor squeeze. People are being sliced by scissors in a way. On the one side, prices are going up. On the other side, incomes or wages are going down. So both ends of it, most working people around the world hit very, very hard. No wonder they're on strike at the NHS. No wonder they're on strike in the railways. These three stories, all of a piece, you're listening to give the people what they want, brought to you by People's Dispatch, your favorite website and Globe Trotter. Make sure you go and read People's Dispatch for many of these stories. We cover most of the important stories of our time. One of them, of course, is the imprisonment of Julian Assange. A very important story reflects on the press freedoms or unfreedoms that we have in many parts of the world. Every few months, one reads most stories about journalists being picked up. But the banner story here, Julian Assange. Prashant, what's happening with Mr. Assange? Oh, Zoe, sorry. So Julian Assange, as we know as we've been covering at People's Dispatch, is currently amid an extradition trial in the United Kingdom. He's been held at Belmarsh Prison since April 2019. Awaiting this trial in the U.S., he's facing charges which could lead up to a sentence of 175 years. And in the last week, there's actually been kind of an upswell of support in the support of Julian Assange. And this has come from many different areas and sectors of life, different countries. Right now, the editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks and the ambassador of WikiLeaks are on a tour of Latin America to rally support behind WikiLeaks and also Julian Assange calling for his freedom. They went to Colombia. They met with Gustavo Petro, the president, who has been a real shining voice on a lot of the key issues of our time. We've talked a lot about what he's done on the environment and his support for Cuba, support for peace. And again, on Julian Assange, he's outrightly called for the U.S. to drop the charges and said that he should not be extradited and that he does this persecution against him, does represent persecution of the freedom of the press. So this is extremely important. Then from Colombia, they went to Brazil where they met with Lula da Silva. They met with many different popular movements, all of whom gave this outright support for Julian Assange calling for his release, planning on what actions can be taken in the next period to really put pressure on the United States to drop the charges, tell the United Kingdom to not extradite him. This is really crucial. And at the same time, we also have seen that the Australian Prime Minister announced to parliament that they have been engaged in negotiations calling for his release, calling for the U.S. to drop the charges. And not only that, but a group of media outlets, including the New York Times, including The Guardian, LeMond, high-level newspapers. We at People's Dispatch and many of our partner organizations have for years been calling for his release. You know, we're independent journalists, independent outlets. We understand the significance of Julian Assange. And actually a lot of these newspapers that I mentioned, these big media outlets, for some of the first outlets that actually published the leaks from WikiLeaks, published the information that they were able to uncover. And they had really been silent about his persecution. They had not taken up this cause of the freedom of press and all of this, which his case represents. However, this week, they actually took a stand and said that calling for his, calling for the charges to be dropped, highlighting what this means for freedom of press across the world. And so this is, cannot be understated. These are huge media houses that have a lot of impact in the world. Australian Prime Minister, two heads of state, Lula, who's an incoming head of state, Gustavo Petro. This is showing a real shift and showing that actually this international pressure could be key. Will it be enough for the U.S. Justice Department to actually drop these charges? That remains to be seen. Will it be enough for the U.K. Home Office to decide to not extradite Julian Assange? That, again, remains to be seen. But I think it's quite impressive to see the response from the international community and also see that the U.S. does not have hegemony, does not have a united front on this issue and that there are cracks in what seems like a united support and unanimous support behind its persecution of these different people. And I think it really also shows us the importance of organizing and especially the efforts that we've been taking on with different media outlets to really continue mobilizing for this. That's Julian Assange, who is an Australian national. Interesting that the Prime Minister of Australia, Mr. Albanese, has said, release Julian Assange, the Australian government just cut a deal with the United States to spend a billion dollars to expand Tindall Air Base and the Pine Gap Intelligence Center. Six B-52 U.S. bombers are going to be stationed at Tindall Contradictory World. Same time as Australia is doing that, Albanese says, well, maybe my national needs to, after all these years, listen to somebody from his government. Yes, media houses like People's Dispatch, Globetrotter, and we have been banging the drum. Well, People's Dispatch and Globetrotter, we do this show together, give the people what they want. We also do a lot of journalism together on the People's Dispatch website. Wonderful story by Tanu Priya, produced by People's Dispatch and Globetrotter on the situation in Pakistan. Boy, has the world already forgotten the floods, Prashant? Right. I mean, it's multiple issues of course in Pakistan in recent times. The story does a very good, gives a very comprehensive picture of how the floods have continued to affect the country. Often what happens is a disaster of this kind. It stays on them. It stays in the news for a while and then it kind of vanishes because with climate change you see more and more of these disasters. But what is often difficult to calculate is the fact that the impact is enduring. It goes on for months. It affects, you know, it destroys health system. It affects nutrition. Say an entire generation in some regions gets affected. It takes years before people are able to get back onto their feet. And I think that's one of the key aspects which, in fact, even led to the discussion on loss and damage during COP 27 as well because that was really the key question that, you know, when such kind of disasters happen, where how long does the country have to go with the begging bowl for the money to actually deal with some of these disasters. But also other developments happening in Pakistan as well, which is interesting because on the one hand, kind of tragic as well because on the one hand, we saw that the Tehrik-e-Taliban-e-Pakistan which is, you know, closely in some senses associated with the Afghan Taliban but operates strongly in Pakistan, broke its ceasefire with the government at this point of time. There was an attack, a tragic attack on a polio vaccination team in which three people were killed including a police, you know, a policeman, a woman and a child. And in this region where the attack happened, it's significant that polio immunization drives are often cast as some kind of Western conspiracy. And, you know, there have been a number of attacks on teams which do that. But the larger picture here, of course, also is of the fact that the collapse of the ceasefire brings another period of great uncertainty as far as Pakistan is concerned because we have already seen Pakistan has had a very, very difficult year. Let's be clear about that. We saw over the past year, the economic crisis really going to new heights, inflation, you know, really strangling people. Then the floods came about. And now we have the end of the ceasefire, which was anyway very tenuous. Let's be very clear about it. It was a very tenuous ceasefire. But the end of the ceasefire is expected to lead to more violence. We know that the Pakistani Minister of State for Foreign Affairs went to Afghanistan. They had a meeting with the Taliban over there. But the key question remains that how exactly are these issues going to be resolved? There's no real answer to it. So are we going to see more attacks happening in the near future? That's probably unfortunately what we're going to see as well. So difficult times for the people of Pakistan. Sorry, we're having some trouble here with the internet. Difficult times for the people of Pakistan, inclusive, of course, of the fact that cascading crises, you know, that's what people have been saying around the world about so many of the crisis, climate crisis, economic crisis, political crisis and so on. Pakistan epicenter of all this, no doubt about that. You know, I've been writing a lot about the situation in the Sahel region in Mali, for instance, where there's been a serious conflict around an insurgency in northern Mali, provoked perhaps to some extent by the NATO French-driven war against Libya, that war which then takes over about half of the northern landmass of Mali. Terrible situation for the people. The French intervened in Operation Barkhane 2013. Now, two military coups later, the French have been removed. Just this last week, I'd mentioned that in Mali, there was a conflict over overseas development aid that France was providing Mali. French decided to cancel that, saying that, oh, this has to do with, you know, the Russian intervention into Mali by Russian. They meant the Wagner group, this group of mercenaries and so on. Well, the Malian government, the military government decided that no French NGOs can operate again in Mali. Lots of people looking at this were saying, well, this is now a defeat of the French, removed from Mali, removed from Burkina Faso, under pressure in Morocco, in many parts of the Sahel, including in Niger, where there are protests in Algeria and so on. Okay, looks like, looked like in a way the Europeans were being pushed out of that belt of Africa. And then comes the news, and this is interesting. Then comes the news in the British parliament that the British troops are perhaps entering the area. Little background here. In 2017, countries in West Africa met in Akra, Ghana, and they set up something called the Akra initiative. Now it's important to realize there is a serious problem of insurgency in many of these countries. About 100 kilometers into the territory of Ghana in the north has been essentially not taken over, but eroded from the Ghanaian government. And various jihadi groups have entered the country. This poses some challenges for the government, because these are whatever their ideological orientation, jihadi or not jihadi or purely opportunistic, they are nonetheless a non-state actor, which is creating quite a serious problem for the governments. In fact, for the people of the region as well. So the Akra initiative was set up in 2017 as a way to deal with some of these particular problems. In the British parliament, just about 10 days ago, under secretary of state for foreign affairs, James Hedderby made a comment to the parliament saying that Britain is strengthening its role in the Akra initiative, surprised to many people in Ghana that this was the case. And Hedderby said that British troops are going to enter Ghana. Again, important to remember, I had done a story for Globetrotter and People's Dispatch published it about how an entire terminal at Akra International Airport had been taken over by the US government. In fact, one of the things I learned for that story is when US troops arrive in Akra, you don't have to show anybody their passport. They walk right into the country. It's an entirely bizarre situation where foreigners are able to enter the country. Even diplomats have to actually stand in a queue and show their passports to a passport official, but not so US troops. Interesting development. Well, we know that at the time when we had talked to Quacy Pratt Jr. and others and talked about this story, the government in Ghana denied it, saying, no, no, it's not true. There is no US base at the airport. There is no US presence. And then as the fact showed, they had to retract that denial. In this case, when Hedda B said that there are British troops entering Ghana to shore up the Akra initiative, again, the Ghanaian government said, no, no, this is not true. There are no British troops and so on. Looks like the Ghanaian government for a second time is trying to dissimulate reality. In fact, most likely there are British troops in Ghana. What's the link between the Akra initiative, British troops in Ghana and the situation in Mali? Here's the link. The United States has been very active in the Sahel region, has bases in Niger, has bases in Mauritania, not bases as such, but various kind of launchpad locations in Mauritania, but the base in Niger is the largest drone base in the world. And they've been using the Akra airport as a way to resupply US forces in the Sahel. Now that the British are also involved, it looks like the British and the United States are trying to supplant the French in that region. Dangerous developments absolutely underreported in the world press. Equally underreported is the fact that in Morocco there's been tension between France and the Moroccan government and at the same time the Moroccan government has tightened its links to the United States, links that had been already pretty tight with the Abraham initiative. Remember that when Morocco said it would so-called normalized relations with with Israel and then the Israelis and the world community would then recognize Western Sahara as part of Morocco. Well, it looks like in Morocco as well, US military in the saddle. France getting pushed out the United Kingdom and the United States right there to take over from them. This is not necessarily a major change in the Sahel. It might just be a change of who is the colonial power or the neo-colonial power in the region. We'll be covering this story much more as we've covered all our stories. You always give the people what they want from people's dispatch. That's Zoe and Prashant. I'm Vijay from Globetrotter. See you next week. I think it's show number 105.