 Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Your weekly movement news round up. Give the people what they want. Your weekly movement news round up. I must say, that's our new opening and I hope you like it. Last week on Give the People What They Want, I said that we are going to surprise you with something. That's our surprise. It's our new opening. You're listening too on the 13th of August. Give the people what they want. Coming to you from people's dispatch and from Globetrotter. Today, you just get the pleasure of Zoe Alexandra and myself, Vijay Prashant. We're missing Prashant today. The world is wracked by corruption. The world is wracked by all kinds of great dilemmas and yet the government of India decides that they are more interested in interrogating or questioning journalists than it is in dealing with the primal issues of hunger, the primal issues of the climate catastrophe, the primal issues of war and so on. So Prashant is a guest of the Indian government as far as we are concerned today and he is not here. Our anchor, co-anchor and friend is sitting somewhere answering questions. That's why today, friends, on give the people what they want, coming to you from Globetrotter and people's dispatch, it's just Zoe and I. It's also Fidel Castro's birthday. So that's a good thing. The old man would have been, I believe, 96 years old today. One of the key figures in the battle of ideas to help shape how people understand events in the world. Fidel Castro, of course, you know, the key leader of the Cuban Revolution, one of the key participants in constructing a socialist dynamic for the Cuban people, all 11 million of them. Cuba in the middle now of a great social crisis, of course, deeply misses the presence of people like Fidel Castro. There are other Fidel Castro's in development, but that person is no longer with us. It's his birthday today. Happy birthday, Fidel. Zoe, I think it's a good place to move from Cuba to Peru because Peru has a new government. President Pedro Castillo is in the House of Pizarro as the government house is known in Lima in Peru. Have I had the pleasure and privilege of standing just outside the House of Pizarro? Many years ago, what is happening, Zoe, with the Peruvian government, the new government of President Pedro Castillo? Well, you know, as we have seen over the past couple of months, on June 6th, the elections were held in Peru, very contentious unnecessarily, although Pedro Castillo won. It took about two months for the electoral authorities in Peru to certify his victory. And you know, the whole time there was kind of the question, okay, it's likely that they're going to declare Pedro Castillo the victor in these elections, but what is going to happen in a country that has been dominated by neoliberal conservative rule, you know, that had a dictatorship into the 2000s? What is going to happen in a country like this that's so kind of polarized between the elites and the masses? What is going to happen when this government takes office? A government that has been openly, you know, anti-neoliberal has said that it wants to nationalize a lot of key industries of the country, has said that it will, you know, go after these elites, accused of corruption that have been involved in all sorts of crimes of the elite class, which we know to have, you know, run Peru's economy into the ground, created one of the most unequal countries in the region, and now we have seen what is going to happen when a government that is so, you know, against the interests of elites come to power. And this week, basically the attorney general of Peru opened up investigations into three members of the Free Peru Party, two of them who are part of the government. You know, we talked last, two weeks ago, I think about how promising this cabinet of Pedro Castillo was, you know, for really, he picked a lot of people who were, you know, staunchly left in the leftist Peruvian tradition who are, you know, aligned with his values of anti-imperialism. You know, we have this foreign minister. And so Guido Bellido, who is the prime minister and who is, you know, part of the Free Peru Party, a Marxist-Leninist, Vladimir Serroun, who's the leader of the Free Peru Party, have been, are being investigated for, you know, allegedly supporting terrorism and they're being investigated for links to the shining path in Peru. And so I think what's really interesting to highlight here is, you know, this is what happens when a party that is against the establishment comes to power. And, you know, as we've seen in other countries, in Ecuador, in Brazil, the elites will use these branches of government where they still have power, so the judiciary, to try to take these governments out of power. So, you know, they obviously, this isn't against the president. These are against government, you know, officials. There was a lot of backlash when Guido Bellido was appointed prime minister saying, you know, he's too leftist. How can this be the person who's appointed? And now they're also using this investigation to show that he's unfit for the role. So, you know, it's unclear what kind of evidence they might be pulling up in this investigation. What kind of, you know, what real, like, tangible evidence they'll try to use against them. We know what they're capable of. I mean, we know that, for example, Keiko Fujimori is actually accused of crimes of money laundering and corruption. She has yet to see the prison. I think it's just interesting to highlight these discrepancies in a country where there are so many elites that are accused of corruption, of stealing the money from the Peruvian people. And yet it's these new government ministers and with what they represent to the Peruvian people and to the Peruvian elites who are, you know, facing the brunt of the judiciary. So, Pedro Castillo, after a long period of time, is designated president of the country. He has the authority and right by the Constitution to put forward a cabinet. He's put forward a left-of-center cabinet, as you said. In fact, wow, the foreign minister makes a declaration that Peru is going to pull out of the Lima Group and therefore no longer illegally go after Venezuela and so on. A very interesting development coming from Peru, from San Lucia, other countries saying we don't want any part of the Lima Group, which, as I've said many times, Zoe should be better named the Ottawa Group. And we're going to come back to Ottawa later in the show because Canada is very much in play, I think in the news now, particularly for us. So the Peruvian government does all these things and then they try to undermine the government. It's very interesting. I mean, government is how old, just a few weeks old and yet all these attempts to delegitimize the government take place immediately. So much for democracy. Is that something to say or is that too much of an editorial statement? So much for democracy. Zoe, the great American US writer Kurt Vonnegut had a phrase he used to use, so it goes, so it goes. I suppose we should end many of our stories with so it goes. Here comes Pedro Castillo, legitimate president of Peru. They're trying to undermine him, so it goes. Well, so it goes in Afghanistan where the Taliban itself a coalition of diverse but hard right forces rushing to take the major cities of Afghanistan, one city after the other. Stunningly, the Afghan state or whatever has been built up with the assistance of the United States and the British government and others. The Afghan state unable to stem the rapid rush of the Taliban through provinces where it doesn't have a social base. For instance, in northern Afghanistan, Taliban making rapid advances. News reports came last night. I spoke to a colleague in Kandahar who said to me that Kandahar I think is now under the Taliban rule. Turns out that was a premature statement. On the other hand, Kandahar and the southern cities are in a social base where the Taliban actually has quite great support. The real place to keep an eye on is Mazar-e-Sharif, the city in the north, just south of the Central Asian republics, just south of the Amudaria, the major river of the north. Mazar-e-Sharif is likely to fall to the Taliban very soon. They're making again very quick advances. Such quick advances that the British government has decided to send 600 troops to essentially evacuate British personnel from Kabul. This is a great surrender of the West in the face of the Taliban's onslaught. There's no other way to look at it. The United States, of course, tried aerial bombardment of cities in the north to prevent Taliban movements, but they are not being successful. The Taliban has built up the capacity to overrun the country. There should be some concern about this because, yes, the West is being historically defeated. This is another Vietnam, but this time it's not the National Liberation Front. It's not the Viet Minh. It's not the communists that are coming to power. It's the hard right. And the Taliban, they are not good fellows. I feel uncomfortable ending this segment with So It Goes, Zoe, because So It Should Not Go. Now, the question, what are the alternatives? What might happen? I've been speaking with Pakistani leaders from the northwest frontier provinces and the people's dispatch and globetrotter. Next week, most likely, I'll run an interview with Mohsin Dawar of the PTM, a party of the Waziristan area. Mohsin Dawar making the point that the Pakistani government must stop supporting the Taliban. The grandson of the great leader of the Khudai Khitmadgarhs, Badshah Khan, his grandson, now a leader of a major political party, the Awami Party in the northwest frontier region of Pakistan, also saying he wants the Pakistani government to stop meddling. Well, both the grandson of Khudai Khitmadgarh leader Badshah Khan, Wali Khan's descendant, both he and Mohsin Dawar making the point that a Taliban government in Kabul is going to exacerbate tensions in Waziristan. It's going to create more chaos. These are men of the left, Mohsin Dawar and so on. These are people who have a socialistic orientation. They don't want a hard-right government in Afghanistan. We're in very, very perilous state looking at the great Hindukush knot, that region of Afghanistan, Central Asian states and so on. The descent into chaos that took place about 30 years ago continues. There is a straight line between U.S. funding of the Mujahideen in the 1990s and what we see today. You know, ghastly elements led by Gulbuddin Hekmatiar, Buruddin Rabani and so on. Those elements continue in today. It's not enough to look at this from the perspective of the U.S. must withdraw. The U.S. must not withdraw and so on. The U.S. policy has destroyed a lot of the potential in Afghanistan and as reporters, as people who follow these things, we're constantly on the lookout for humane politics in Afghanistan. Those social forces exist. I interviewed Heela Najibullah, the daughter of the last left-leaning president of Afghanistan, Mohamed Najibullah. She told me that there are lots of forces that exist but they sit underground. They're too scared to put their heads above ground. After the United States tried to fashion a government in 2001, the same thing was said by these social forces. The more left-leaning humane people said they were too scared because the U.S. government colluded with the Mujahideen's descendants in the Loya Jirga and so on. Not allowing women to have a real role. It was all lip service. We're in a difficult state for Afghanistan. We'll be keeping an eye on this from Globetrotter from people's dispatch because this is an important story, the story of Afghanistan. Now, talking about the West and its intervention in other countries. For a long time, there's been great consideration, great worry about Saudi Arabia's war prosecuted alongside United Arab Emirates in Yemen. Saudi wars in other countries as well. There's been a political attempt to stop arms sales from Canada to stop arms sales from the United States to stop arms sales from the United Kingdom. A lot of political pressure in these countries, BAE systems, not to sell a sophisticated weaponry to the Saudis being used against largely defenseless Yemeni people and so on. Justin Trudeau fashions himself, of course, is a great champion of liberalism. Canada once more in the spotlight wanting to arm the Saudis. What's going on there, Zoe, with Justin Trudeau, Saudi Arabia and weapons? Well, yes, our darling Justin Trudeau has once again revealed himself to really be nothing more than this kind of liberal facade because really what he's been doing in Canada, in their foreign policy, but also domestically, has been really continuing the conservative agenda. I think the case of the weapons sales to Saudi Arabia is really telling just about this real facade of what Canada's role is in the international stage. You mentioned the Lima Group should really be called the Ottawa Cartel. Canada is the second largest arms exporter to Saudi Arabia after the United States, and these arms have been used in Saudi Arabia's war against Yemen. And just to remind people, the war against Yemen is a humanitarian catastrophe that has been recognized by all international bodies. The UN has stated that more than 80% of the country's population is dependent on international humanitarian aid. However, Canada halted their weapons sales to Saudi Arabia at one point after the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, and then they resumed them in 2020 saying that there was no substantial risk to human rights violations taking place. So I think this is interesting, just given the sense that we know that it's a humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen, we know the numbers, we know that there are millions of people who have been displaced who are starving, who are suffering from Mount Nutrition. Air strikes have been carried out in civilian locations. Really, the reports from Yemen are truly harrowing. And Canada, which does champion itself as defender of human rights of the more calm, cool-headed, law and order internationally, as opposed to its counterpart in a lot of ways, the US, is really not going by their alleged morals. So I think it's quite tragic just because the offensive against Yemen continues. Yemenis continue to demand that countries like Canada, countries like the United States, do nothing more than stop weapons sales, stop the blockade of Yemen, not only is it being bombed, but there's also blockade in their ports. And even within Canada, rights groups have been demanding that the government stop these weapons sales. They've been mobilizing and telling the government to respect these values, and it has not done that. So just another blunder on the record of Justin Trudeau, as we've reported in prior episodes, it's also dealing domestically with this quite horrific issue of the mass graves of indigenous people, of indigenous children in residential schools. So when we're speaking about Canada, we must remember that this country is also involved in imperialist crimes, both at home and abroad. You're listening to give the people what they want. If you joined us from the beginning of the show, you would have seen that we now have a fantastic opening montage of our voices and so on with a drawing of our logo and it looks lovely and happy that we have it. Of course, it has the voice of Zoe, of me, Vijay, Zoe from People's Dispatch, me, Vijay from Globetrotter, and the voice of Prashant from People's Dispatch. Prashant is not here today because as I mentioned at the top of the hour, Prashant is a guest of the Indian government as we are on air, key co-anchor of the show. Well, here we go. We have a new report from the intergovernmental panel on climate change. Before I get to that report, friends, terrible forest fires across the Mediterranean, you would have seen the forest fire reports from Turkey, horrendous fires, not known to people in that region. Of course, Mr. Erdogan, who comes himself from a part of Turkey where it is famous for the production of tea, Mr. Erdogan decides to go to the people distressed by the forest fires and gives them packets of tea, sashes of tea, reminding me of when Mr. Trump, then president of the United States, went to Puerto Rico, which struggled with the aftermath of a hurricane and took roles of paper towels and threw it at people. As if to say, here, look what we're giving you, paper towels for a hurricane. Mr. Erdogan, here is tea bags for the forest fires, similar kind of attitude, callous attitude to people. Well, in the Kabil region of Algeria, we get reports now that about 69 people have been killed in the forest fires which are devastating Algeria. 25 of them are armymen who went up there to try to fight the fire. It's staggering what is going on in the Mediterranean region. The whole basin is being taken hold of by these forest fires that stretch from Turkey at one end and Greece across the Balkans into Italy, Spain, Algeria. It's a very devastating thing. Well, why are these things occurring? The new intergovernmental panel on climate change, the IPCC, which last reported in 2013, has released a devastating report. In this report, the 234 internationally acclaimed scientists. Listen, friends, the IPCC is a body of 234 internationally acclaimed scientists who come to the evidence with a clear-headed sense of where we are. They've looked at the data. They looked at models in 2013. They already warned that the planet was in great peril. In 2021, in their new report, they say that time is running short because we're going to live with a hell on Earth. The phrase from the climate scientists and other different kinds of scientists is that we will live in hell on Earth. This is a very strong statement that comes from the climate scientists and the climate scientists hell on Earth. They say that we will peak at 1.6 degrees Celsius above pre-industrialization levels shortly after 2050. This is catastrophic already that by 2050, I want to remind you, we are in 2021. That means that in nine years, we'll be in 2030. In 29 years, we will be at 2050. In 29 years, the life of a young adult, in 29 years, the planet will have warming above 1.5 degrees centigrade. This is catastrophic, but they also say under the current emissions, very high emissions scenario, warming would reach 3 degrees Celsius by 2060. 3 degrees Celsius in 39 years and then by 2011, by the year 2100, it could get to 5.7 degrees centigrade at this rate. Friends, consider this. We are worried about the 1.5 degree threshold. They are now telling us in the year 2100, it could get to 5.7 degrees Celsius. 5.7 degrees Celsius is the annihilation of human beings. This is the annihilation of most of life on the planet Earth. I want you to keep that in the front cortex of your head. 5.7 degrees Celsius, that is extinction. Forecast by the scientists, looking at available data by the year 2100. Now you might say they are being alarmist and so on. They are being alarmist on the other hand. What are we looking at? The evidence is in Algeria. The evidence is in Turkey. The evidence is in models that show extreme heat waves, catastrophic floods, rapid melting of arctic ice and the permafrost. Heat waves, experienced now, record heat waves around the world. Catastrophic flooding. We saw this in Germany. We saw this in China. Catastrophic flooding, rapid melting of the arctic ice and permafrost. They are now telling us, and I have not been there to see it with my own eyes, but they are telling us that you can circumvent the arctic waters without an ice cutter ship. The prow of an ordinary large ship can crack through the ice. The ice is weakened, deeply weakened, existentially weakened. The ice is facing an existential threat. This is a very serious issue for the planet, very, very serious. I hope that governments around the world take this seriously. Meanwhile, the administration of Mr. Joe Biden has informed the organization of petroleum exporting countries to increase oil production. The IPCC report comes out. The first statement from the Biden administration to the oil exporting countries is increase oil production, because we want to keep prices of oil down so that the pandemic recession that's taking place will be circumvented. Bear this in mind, friends. We've got this report from 234 climate scientists endorsed by the UN protocols of various kinds of the other. We have this report which says be careful, we can be extinct by 2100. The United States government says pump more oil. Tell me what you think about that. Give the people what they want from people's dispatch and globetrotter. We love to hear from you. We love to hear what you think about the stories we do. Time to move now to Guatemala. Now, in Havana, Cuba protests have taken place on July 11th. The United States government comes out on July 12th and says overthrow the government. The government says the United States. Meanwhile, since July 29th thousands of people in Guatemala have been protesting demanding the resignation of the president. Zoe, what's happening in Guatemala and why hasn't the Biden administration called for a regime change in Guatemala? Yeah, I mean actually one of the things just to circle back to a couple months ago when Kamala Harris vice president of the United States was in Guatemala. What she did tell Guatemalans was don't leave your country. Don't try to make the journey. Don't migrate. Just want to start with that. Right now in Guatemala, people have been on the streets because they want to make their country better. They don't want to leave their country. However, the conditions are truly challenging. Right now, COVID cases have multiplied by at least four times in the past couple of weeks. You know, as we know in many global South countries, the official numbers on COVID cases nowhere. Not even close match the actual reality. I mean just in terms of testing infrastructure a lot of times people have to pay for a test. They're not available at most locations. Very, very limited. But from the information and the data we do have COVID cases have been up a momentous amount. People are angry because of the COVID situation. They're also angry because corruption, which has been a constant in Guatemalan politics for the past couple of decades. Once again, as at the four the Juan Francisco Sandoval who was part of the special prosecution against impunity investigating corruption was dismissed by the government. He's now facing threats to his life. He's now facing a mission to investigate corruption among government officials. As we know eight months ago people were out on the streets of Guatemala also very angry about corruption. Several members of the government including the president himself members of his cabinet have been implicated. They've been accused of siphoning COVID funds. They've been accused of cutting health and education in sectors of the public budget where it's really needed and using these funds for other purposes. People have been mobilized for the past couple of years in a constant process of demanding that the government be held accountable. They're demanding that in Guatemala the people can elect a government that is not going to take the money away from the people and towards their own pockets. Once again we're seeing great unity on the streets of Guatemala peasant organizations, indigenous organizations, youth trade unions who are all on the streets demanding the resignation of President Alejandro Diometi who once again is at the focus of representing by dismissing this person who was investigating government corruption and not doing anything to guarantee that there is kind of a transparent process. It's just once again showing to the people that they don't really care about getting to the bottom of this they don't really care about assuring that the people's needs are met, that the public budget is being used to guarantee the people their rights. This is a story in a lot of countries in Latin America this isn't something the U.S. really cares about the U.S. cares that these governments are able to keep their people under control that they don't migrate. What they don't understand is that people are migrating or they do understand it but they don't choose to acknowledge this people are migrating because in their countries when the governments are corrupt when they are not responding to these of the people they can't survive. So the people have been on the streets demanding the resignation of Alejandro Diometi but also the dismantling of this corrupt class of politicians in Guatemala that has ruled the country for the past couple of decades and I think they're going to continue with the road blockades and mobilizations in the coming days. We have J.M.T. in Guatemala we have Ivan Duque in Colombia we have mass demonstrations in these countries no word about regime change there meanwhile today is Fidel Castro's birthday they want to overthrow the Cuban revolution interesting times we live in friends you've been listening to give the people what they want coming to you from people's dispatch Zoe here today Prashant absent for reasons I've already talked about I'm Vijay from Globetrotter it's tempting to end the show with those immortal words from Kurt Vonnegut well so it goes