 Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Your weekly movement news roundup. Hi friends, it's the 23rd of September. It's the 95th show of Give the People What They Want brought to you by Prashant and Zoe, editors at People's Dispatch. People'sDispatch.org. I'm Vijay at Globetrotter. As we're coming to you, protests continue in the streets of Iran, Tehran and in other cities as well. Around the death of a 22 year old young woman, Masa Amini. Masa Amini, the story thus far, is that she was picked up by the guidance patrol and she was held in the police station. There's some disagreement over how she died there. Some say she had a heart attack and died. Others that she banged ahead against the police. In either case, a 22 year old young woman was killed because she was not covering her hair properly. Iran is in a serious crisis right now. The Iranian head of government in New York for the UN General Assembly meeting said that an investigation will be conducted. He has already spoken to her family. It's a very sad situation but on a personal note, I'd like to say that I personally have a lot of problems with morality police and I'm not really sure exactly what is happening there because Iran and coverage of Iran is so fraught as a consequence of the US hybrid war against Iran. Nonetheless, pay attention to it and we'll be trying our best to cover the story as accurately as possible. Speaking of the United Nations General Assembly meeting, it's September. It's when the heads of governments arrive in New York. It's when they come and give their speeches. Most speeches by heads of government in New York could be relegated to filing cabinets. They should not actually disturb the airwaves. They are boring. They are repetitive. They are filled with pabulum. Some of them basically seem like the same speech given the previous year and the previous year and the previous year. Every once in a while, a speech breaks through and you get sincerity as the coin of that speech. This year, that speech was given by Gustavo Petro, president of Colombia. It's his first speech at the United Nations. If you haven't watched that speech, I highly recommend going and watching it, reading the text of the speech. The text is at the People's Dispatch site. But please go and listen to the speech because Mr. Petro is not an enormously charismatic speaker. He speaks quite plainly. He's quite an ordinary speaker actually. But with great sincerity, he talks about how the Amazon is being destroyed, that climate change is a product of the capitalist system, and that the United States and the Colombian elites have led a war on drugs that has effectively been a war on the environment and a war on the peasantry in Colombia. It is an enormously important point that Mr. Petro is making in this speech. He says, rather than deal with the demand side problems of the drug crisis in the West, the demand side problems being, as Mr. Petro says, a question of alienation, of social collapse, of people simply not finding meaning in their life and turning therefore to drugs, countries with the largest consumption of cocaine, for instance, in North America, in Western Europe, not in South America, not in Africa, not in Asia. Doesn't mean there are no drug problems there, but principally the cocaine goes to North America, goes to Western Europe. Mr. Petro says, deal with the demand side problems. He said, you've made this war on drugs a supply side issue. And in that supply side issue, there are two principal victims. The first, the petty dealers in North America and Western Europe, mostly African American in the North American context, or Latino, similar racial composition in Western Europe. You've gone after the petty dealer, he says, but also you've gone after the peasant, the peasant who grows coca. A very minor part of the work of the peasant is to supply the cocaine mafias, but they are facing fumigation by a kind of chemical warfare. They are facing the brunt of over $12 billion of US money through Plan Colombia, which went to the Colombian military. Earlier, Mr. Petro in August had talked to the Colombian military where he said, don't prepare for war any longer, try to prepare for peace. He ends this speech at the UN with a plea for peace. He says that people should talk, the Ukrainians, the Russians should talk, there needs to be more peace and more peace building. It's a very powerful speech. And I think I haven't heard a speech like this with such sincerity in a very long time at the United Nations. Even some of my favorite speeches, let's say by Fidel Castro and by Chavez, didn't have this level of detail and sincerity that we got from Gustavo Petro. It's a pretty remarkable speech. He did talk about the kind of pressure campaign that comes from international institutions. Prashant, one of them being the International Monetary Fund, cracking down on Sri Lanka, cracking down on Zambia. Right Vijay. In fact, we've had, we've had two almost parallel experiences that we're going to talk about. We have a story by our colleague Tanupriya on the situation in Zambia, very excellent conversation with Dr. Chalwa of the Institute of Race Power in Political Economy. And I also talked to Vasantha Samarasange a trade union leader from Sri Lanka. And both of them talked about the conversations were actually kind of eerily similar because both of them talked about exactly what, you know, how the machinations of the IMF are basically entangling countries are basically strangling countries in various ways. And all of this happens under the guise of words like, you know, improving efficiency or say in the case of Zambia, it is apparently the words are reforming, regressive and wasteful subsidies, reducing excessively and poorly targeted public investments. The kind of these kind of words which, you know, behind them conceal or behind them act or actually are, you know, say a potence of mass disaster for tens of thousands of people in both these countries. For instance, the Zambia story talks about exactly what the conditions are for a very small amount of money considering the actual amount Zambia needs is just about 1.3 billion. In the case of Sri Lanka, it's I think about 2.9 billion. But what the IMF is asking from both these countries is a substantial cut in subsidies. That is one of the most important things, especially in the case of Zambia, it's asking for a substantial cut in subsidies, which means electricity prices will go up, which means that they will be in a country where there's already a huge amount of hunger. Many of the reforms are going to actually lead to the increase in hunger. In Sri Lanka, for instance, we're definitely looking at labor reform. We're looking at privatization of state entities, many of which are actually profit making. At which point, then the question of what the future of many of these employees in these companies is going to be very much in question. We also know, for instance, that in the case of Zambia, there is, you know, the mining sector, which actually could have been taxed for some of these revenues. It's not at all been touched. An expert says very deliberate. In Sri Lanka, also there's a lot of concern about what this privatization is going to bring. So very, very parallel trajectories and I think, you know, it's important in the case of Zambia as a story where it expertly explains to sort of talk about the fact that Zambia is in this position today also because of a debt crisis. And the debt is also, we often talk about, you know, there's a lot of talk about so-called Chinese debt trap, et cetera, et cetera. But we often forget the role of private lenders such as BlackRock, which have actually, you know, to which countries like Zambia also owe a huge amount of debt. And then, you know, in order to service many of these debts, there's no issue, there's no question of debt relief that many of these countries are offered. Although time and again, especially during the pandemic, this was a demand made by many forums that the debt of countries in Asia and Africa, you know, what do you call it, wiped out, but these debts have continued, which means it is this vicious cycle again and again of countries having to go back. Sri Lanka is facing, I think, 16 time of package. And, you know, all these countries having to go back time and again and again to borrowing conditions and that really makes you ask, what is it in these packages that ultimately forces countries to keep going back again? And you can only conclude that these packages are designed. These packages are by design meant to sort of ensure a kind of modern, say, modern bondage, if you will, the fact that these countries, most of these countries are never going to escape the debt trap if the will of the IMF and their associate, the leaders of the IMF and their associates sort of continue. So it's actually, I think you talked about the UN, a body which needs a lot of reform. There's been a lot of discussion about it, but not enough discussion happening about how do you, you know, how do you overturn the IMF? How do you break this cycle for countries such as Sri Lanka or Pakistan or countries like Zambia? So that's a really big question that remains, I think, for many countries today. How to break the cycle of the IMF debt trap? Serious question. You know, another country which has severe economic problems, of course, is a part of the United States. I said country, that's a very fraught term. That's Puerto Rico, wracked by hurricanes. Zoe, I just went back and looked at the names of hurricanes this year. Somebody of Scottish ancestry seems to be naming them all now. They're called Hurricane Bonnie, Hurricane Alex, and now the deadly Hurricane Fiona. What's happening to Puerto Rico with Hurricane Fiona? Well, first to say that we do recognize Puerto Rico as a nation, and hopefully that its independence will come soon as technical note and political note. But, you know, Puerto Rico is one of the remaining bastions of formal, of being a formal U.S. colony. And it's interesting that we talk about kind of these IMF debt traps because Puerto Rico itself is trapped in a, is in a debt trap of the U.S. government. And similarly to these countries that, you know, have to adopt these horrific austerity policies, Puerto Rico has been forced to adopt U.S. imposed austerity policies under the fiscal control board. They essentially, like many countries in the Global South, have no control over their economy, but it is at an act, they literally do not have control of their economy. It is controlled by a board of CEOs and people appointed by the U.S. government. And in this context, it is also an island in the Caribbean and is very vulnerable to hurricanes, the tropical storms last weekend on Sunday, Hurricane Fiona blew through the Caribbean, it impacted Puerto Rico only as a category one hurricane, and only, of course, it's still a hurricane. It's extremely powerful, but it impacted Puerto Rico as a category one hurricane, and it blew out electricity. And so actually currently on the island, they're not so much, you know, of course the impacts of the hurricane are extremely great, but the biggest problems they're dealing with right now is that majority of residents in Puerto Rico do not have access to electricity. It has been since Sunday that the majority of the island was without power, and still today only 37 people have recovered power. And the government has said that he hopes that the power will come back, but, you know, really there's no telling. And it's interesting that this happens because actually two days before Hurricane Fiona passed through Puerto Rico, a music video slash documentary was released by the extremely popular reggaeton artist Bad Bunny, who is extremely, really has tapped into this moment of upheaval, of discontent of the people of Puerto Rico against US colonialism, against all of the impacts that it has on the economy, on people's lives, whether it be gentrification, which he shows in this music video, which is done with the incredible journalist Bianca Corralao, and it's for the song that's called El Apagón, and this means power outage. And so one of the major demands of the people of Puerto Rico from, for the last couple of years, is that the contract made with the private Canadian American company, Luma Energy, be canceled. So following Hurricane Maria, which impacted Puerto Rico in 2017 and was devastating, was truly horrible. Over 4,000 people were killed. The island really hasn't recovered since Maria. And the entire electrical grid was destroyed. And instead of building from the state company, Prepa, rebuilding the electrical grid, they hired private contractors, which did a shoddy job. And since then, electricity rates have gone up, and the, of course, quality of services has gone extremely down because a category one hurricane hits, and this is a Caribbean island. You should be prepared for tropical storms. And this company was unable to do that, and they've been without electricity for over a week. And so people who are familiar with power outages know that there's a lot of third impact deaths and injuries that can happen when you are without electricity for that many days in a row. Hospitals without power. This means that people who are in life support aren't able to be in life support. Generators only last for so long. There can be a lot of dangerous accidents that can happen when you're without electricity for that long. Appliances need to be plugged in. And so there's many, many impacts of this, of this tropical storm, of the legacy of colonialism in Puerto Rico, of the austerity measures that are imposed on the island by this fiscal control board called PROMESA, which, of course, was passed during Obama's presidency, important to note, that are continuing to cost the lives of people in Puerto Rico, and that's why they continue to fight for independence and why it's so crucial that they're able to have autonomy and sovereignty over their economy and over their political decisions. It's a very important story, and I remember covering previous hurricanes where I wrote a piece for Frontline called A Tale of Two Nations about Puerto Rico and Cuba, how the two of them were able to handle a hurricane. It was extraordinary how the United States has basically impoverished that island. 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. We're going to move to a very disturbing place on the planet, which is Europe. Prashant, which European election have we been happy to cover? Because this looks like the ugliest. The young leader of Brothers of Italy. I mean, what a name for a party. And then I hope you're going to tell us about the flame that is on their flag, Prashant. I mean, where are we on the planet Earth these days? I know, I know it. It's just quite remarkable. The right-wing alliance, you're talking, of course, of Georgia Melody, the right-wing alliance of La Liga, her party, and Silvio Berlusconi. There was a time when we all thought that Silvio Berlusconi was as right as things get. And look where we are 10 or 15 years down the line. So, yeah, so elections, of course, happening, I believe tomorrow. That's Sunday, that's the 25th of September. And a very unfortunate situation where the right-wing looks all set to do pretty well. I think the alliance basically is a poise to get around 45% of the vote if I'm not mistaken. And a lot of attention, of course, has been paid to the fact that the Brothers of Italy is set to do extremely well because we have some, you know, I think 24, 25% of the vote, they're likely to get a lot, which is quite interesting because in the previous election, they had just 4%. And what it sort of, a lot of analysts across the political spectrum have pointed out that this is a sign of the fact that she and her party refused to join in any of the coalitions that performed post the last election. And if you've been following the politics lately, you will realize that over the past few years, you've seen every stripe of, you know, political, every group in the center and the right together, working together in various ways to form the government somehow or the other. And Giorgia Meloni, so I just stood out because she didn't do that. And apparently that is one reason for her popularity, but also a very dangerous agenda that she's bringing. Like you said, I mean, she had a very young age joint water waters and eminence of the fascists and even today believes that Mussolini needs to find his place in history or properly framed and stuff like that. But more than that, there's also behind it, there's also of course a very neoliberal and dangerous framework. She's talked about cutting benefits. She's talked about, you know, when it comes to markets and when it comes to economic policies, of course, she's not going to change track in any sense of the word. They'll be the same austerity policies that we're talking about accompanied by an additional dose of extremely toxic and dangerous social policies, definitely a crackdown on migrants, definitely a campaign against LGBTQ communities. You know, Italy is one of the areas where the refugee crisis, which has been caused by European countries, is really kind of heating up right now again once again. And we again see another right wing government likely to come to power, which is going to definitely take a very problematic stance on this. The one good thing, of course, to note is that the left has been, a lot of leftist parties have combined together to form the popular union, the union popular. They started off with a huge disadvantage considering that they had to even register in the first place. But they've actually presented, you know, a lot of people say that, oh, Georgia Maloney was special because she never took part in any of these coalition governments and compromises. But the important thing to note, of course, is that the left also did not do that. And it has actually presented a very important set of policy proposals, a minimum wage at a time when there is a huge issue of unemployment in Italy, especially among the youth. A very sustainable call for a transition into clean energy, a focus on public transport, for instance, on cutting private profits, you know, say reducing the defense expenditure. All these are questions which, you know, I think in elections don't often get raised enough. Also media coverage because there's so much focus on one individual and the kind of whirlwind-like, you know, approach sometimes that they bring to elections. But these perspectives in the left brings a question. Everyone likes to talk about climate change. But, you know, how many proposals or how many platforms are actually bringing the question of sustained expansion in public transport to climate change? How many are talking about taxing the rich? How many talk about a minimum wage? These are questions that never really sort of get addressed properly, are not focused on enough. So I think we do so many elections around here, but I think one of the lessons of some of these elections is also this, that it's so easy to get distracted by sometimes some of these stories and narratives, whereas real platforms often get missed out. But it's important that we cover them because politics makes itself manifest at a time of elections. Currently, Zoe, you're following another election, not as perhaps exciting in a negative way as the Italian election, much more positive. We hope the discourse has been positive. Has the discourse in Brazil around the election, presidential election been positive, or has it been as nasty as the Italians? That's a good question. I think probably a little bit of both. As you know, after the September 7th rally, I know I shared with all of you some of the expressions that were used on the streets, very anti-communist slogans, for example. But yesterday, Lula was on the show of a conservative media mogul, Cabratinho, who's very famous. He was also a state deputy, a federal deputy, sorry. He owns several large companies in Brazil, and he has a show very, very widely watched. He's, again, a conservative and a millionaire. And Lula goes on his show with a lot of positive attitude, I would say. And it was a very, very interesting conversation. There's some quite interesting quotes that came out of it. It adopted a sort of informal tone in this question-and-answer interview, and Lula told this conservative millionaire, even you were more happy in my government, as opposed to during Bolsonaro's government. And he said, you're right. I actually earned more money when you were president. And he said, Lula, you talk a lot about raising the minimum wage. How are you going to do that? And Lula said, by raising it. So, you know, very, I would say positive attitude, positive discourse in this elections. And on the other hand, a lot of the official data, the opinion polls are coming out from the different polling agencies. Lula is coming in with a strong 47% in these opinion polls. A lot of them say that he might win 51% of the valid votes in the upcoming elections. This would eliminate the necessity for a second round. Many people are still holding their breath because nothing is set in stone. Everything can change. There's still a lot of undecided voters. There's a lot of candidates which are not polling over 10%. Will people still consider voting for them? Will they just want to get it over within the first round? So, those are things that are up to debate. Lula has continued on his agenda of meeting with different sectors of society. I think it was yesterday that he met with disabled people and made a campaign promise to promote public policies, to help facilitate access to education and jobs, and provide for their rights. Bolsonaro has continued to do his campaigning, which has a lot of incendiary discourse. I was at the gym and watching a campaign out of his son, and he said that I will defend the right to bear arms. People who don't have the right to bear arms are an enslaved people. So, there's that discourse out there as well. So, right now, it's 10 days out. 10 days out from these elections. It's getting very, very close. There's a lot of activities planned this weekend, a lot of different rallies that are going to be happening. There are still legal challenges being poseable to Nader because of his actions on the 7th of September. He can't, for example, use any of the photos or videos for his campaign because it was an official presidential action. So, there's a lot of back-and-forth happening in the backdrop of this campaign. The opinion polls continue to come out. That often makes news, and so it's a really... We're getting down to the wire. Also, the races are becoming important in terms of Governor Fernando Haddad is running for Governor of São Paulo, the state with the largest population in Brazil. That's going to be a hotly contested race. He was, of course, the candidate of the Workers Party in 2018. We're going to be releasing a video today from People's Dispatch all about these elections, explaining exactly how it works. So, look out for it, and we'll definitely be coming at you with more reports over the next week. Very important elections. Plenty. Italy. Brazil. Hopefully the results are not all identical. One way or the other. This week is the week of the UN General Assembly in New York. Mr. Biden has been doing a lot of media, public events, and so on. On Sunday, he went on 60 minutes. He made a rather incendiary remark about Taiwan. I'll come back to that. Then on Thursday at a global fund event, Mr. Biden made some remarks and then looked completely disoriented on stage. It is always a question of Mr. Biden's health at this time. It's not clear whether what he said on Sunday to 60 minutes was something that his administration has as policy or whether he just got disoriented during the interview. One hopes this is not actually the policy of the Biden administration, but then the facts in the waters around China seem to indicate it might very well be the policy. What did he say? Mr. Biden told the host at 60 minutes that if the Chinese government attacks Taiwan, which is an interesting way of framing it because the United States actually believes as official policy that Taiwan is part of China, but nonetheless, he said that if China attacks Taiwan, then the United States, he said, would defend Taiwan. And when he was asked by the host of the show, Scott Pelley, so Pelley says to Biden, so unlike Ukraine to be clear, sir, U.S. forces, U.S. men and women would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion and Biden replied, yes, this is extremely chilling. It is a statement from the president of the United States saying that the U.S. government is willing to put troops into Taiwan, a Taiwan which the United States government accepts is a part of a United China. In other words, the U.S. government is willing to invade China to take on the Chinese military. It's very chilling words. Little wonder that the Chinese government, of course, came out there condemning it and sending a dimash of various kinds. Now the question is whether Mr. Biden was speaking out of turn just as he was confused on the stage at the Global Fund event in New York or whether he was articulating direct policy. Here's what has been happening this week to try to answer that question. On Tuesday, two warships went within 100 miles of the Chinese mainland. One is a U.S. warship, the Higgins, the guided missile destroyer carries guided missiles, nuclear missiles. The second is a Canadian warship, the Vancouver. Both of them carried out freedom of navigation exercises. It's important to remember, I've mentioned this before, United States is not a signatory of the international treaty that governs the laws of the seas. And quote unquote, freedom of navigation exercises are conducted based on that treaty. United States has been conducting these exercises in the waters around Russia and China without being a signatory of the treaty that allows it. In other words, these are illegal freedom of navigation exercises. Three weeks before that, the United States conducted another freedom of navigation exercise with two guided missiles cruisers, the Antonin and the Chancellor will, which sailed through the Taiwan Straits on the 28th of August. In the middle of all this, of course, two sets of U.S. congressional leaders, one led by Nancy Pelosi arrived in Taiwan. It's extraordinary chilling how the United States is beginning to focus on Taiwan as a flashpoint to put pressure on China. The very fact that Biden made the statement on 60 Minutes should give people pause. I don't think this is a sign of disorientation. This very much seems like it is the direct policy of the U.S. government. I want to remind you that from 1978, when the United States accepted Beijing as the capital of United China, the U.S. government has maintained what they call strategic ambiguity. This might be part of strategic ambiguity, except this time with guided missile cruisers. Very chilling. You've been listening to Give the People What They Want, brought to you from People's Dispatch. That's Prashant and Zoe. I'm Vijay from Globetrotter. See you next week. It'll be our 96th show.