 Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Your weekly movement news roundup. You're with Give the People What They Want, brought to you by People's Dispatch, that's Zoe and Prashant. I'm Vijay from Globetrotter. It's the end of September. Every year since the 1940s, the end of September has been United Nations really month. It was first a week and then it increased as the number of countries increased. Every head of state, head of government has to make a intervention at the UN, so naturally the week became two weeks and so on. A very important time of year, a lot of agenda setting for the United Nations. Zoe, you are in New York. You've been in and around the UN during the General Assembly meeting. What's been happening at the UN General Assembly? Well, Vijay, as you said, it's a very lively week. There's all sorts of different summits, the General Assembly itself, but then all of the bilateral meetings that take place, the different think tanks that have their sort of meetings around the General Assembly. So it's a, again, all sorts of diplomats, NGO people have all really descended upon the city. Crazy traffic, of course. It has been quite notable in the sense of this past weekend, the G77 group was meeting, of course, in Havana, Cuba, discussing some of the key issues that would be brought up this week in the UNGA and in the different sort of meetings. Monday and Tuesday as we reported on at People's Dispatch and Vijay, you talked about this, about the sustainable development goals, this sort of empty promises to kind of trying to, of course, make significant development in a lot of the countries, the world that need it. But again, as many of these countries have rightly pointed out, both in the Sustainable Development Goals Summit and in their speeches at the UNGA, not only are they suffering from the impacts of climate change, not only are they saddled with so much debt, but the entire and, of course, maybe because of this, the entire international financial system essentially makes it impossible for these countries to really and significantly take forward their development and have any chance of even reaching these goals. So that's been something on the table. A lot of different leaders have even named neoliberalism. I think we really have to take account and take stock of the fact that it is a different moment. People are talking about inequality but talking about it in a specific way. Again, climate is, of course, the front of people's agendas. A lot of the different representatives in the small island nations, of course spoke about this and the importance of global North countries taking action to climate financing. The war in Ukraine, of course, continues to remain an item on the agenda. And another really interesting or rather important issue would be that of Haiti. We know that this is being discussed in different spaces at the UN. There has been numerous statements by UN officials over the past year about the situation in Haiti expressing concern over the increase in gang violence and the institutional breakdown. However, and, you know, Kenya has already sent this alleged peacekeeping mission. There is very difficult situation there because we know that the legacy of the UN in Haiti is one that is violent that was that is very traumatic. The UN peacekeeping missions that were in Haiti for over a decade caused a horrible cholera outbreak. It was responsible for so many different human rights violations. Won't even go into all of these. You can read on People's Dispatch. We've covered this extensively and interviews with Haitian leaders discussing the MINUSTA and so now that it's back on the table organizations in Haiti and really, you know, human rights activists across the world are very, very concerned about this possibility of what a new UN peacekeeping mission could look like, how will it be configured and the fact that the situation in Haiti right now is really caused is a product of imperialist intervention in the country and not allowing the country to actually build itself up, meet these sustainable development goals, but also really have autonomy over its politics. So really, that debate is definitely going to be very intense and we'll definitely be following it. Inclusive of the UN talks around Haiti the discussions at the UN about other big issues, war issues of climate change and so on. There have been several side meetings of importance. I think that we should pay attention to. One of the side meetings was, as I said around the issue of the climate and climate change. Let's track a little bit in order to understand this. Let's track a little bit what the United States climate saw. John Kerry has been up to in this period. It's pretty revealing to understand how the United States has been on the issue of climate just in order to get a big picture. Before the UN General Assembly came together, before the UN climate summit, Mr. Kerry had been making a number of statements, some pretty strong about oil and natural gas companies saying that, you know, they have to step up. They are continuing to drill. They are not concerned about making a transition to clean energy and so on. He made some pretty strong statements beforehand. There's a good reason why Mr. Kerry did this. In about three months, in the United Arab Emirates, COP28 will be held, which some people are calling the oil COP. It's an unfortunate designation actually, but there's something to it because the Dubai-led team that's running COP28 has said that they want to directly engage oil and natural gas companies to think again about setting targets, not 20, 50 targets, but maybe even 20, 30 targets. It has to be said that COP meetings in the last several years have been heavily funded by oil and natural gas companies. So it's not like they've been sitting outside looking in. I mean, they not only are big participants in setting the agenda, but they also happen to pay for it, you know, who pays the piper, calls the tune. So Mr. Kerry's statements about oil and natural gas companies to some extent welcome because it's true. Somebody needs to tell these big companies that they need to pull it together. Interestingly, when it came down to it at the climate summit and in the outside halls, Mr. Kerry once again launched an attack on India, China and other countries saying why are they increasing coal? This has become the tag line. This question of India, China and others using coal, you know, the question is why are they not making the transition now? If we look at the facts, it's pretty clear that Mr. Kerry is being a little malicious here. In terms of renewable energy, United States about 13% of its energy needs comes from renewable energy. China, 14% of their energy needs comes from renewable energy. It's not like the Chinese are doing so much worse now it's a much bigger country more energy is used and so on but nonetheless it's not like they are not trying to do this transition. When you look at the data on the five countries that are emitting more than their carbon budget based on a capital calculation, the five top emitting countries in the world are the United States, Germany, Russia, United Kingdom and Japan. In fact, a new study suggests that these countries or the countries of the global south, not a hundred billion dollars in the climate fund but a hundred and thirty one trillion dollars. Just imagine that number a hundred and thirty one trillion dollars is what is owed a new study has suggested. Now what's interesting is in Britain this week Rishi Sunak Prime Minister of the United Kingdom has decided to suspend the urgency of the climate debate. He made a press conference where he said we're not going to meet the targets we're going to push them further along he made a good point though he said that Britain is not a major emitter in volume terms. So if Britain cuts its carbon budget fast it's not going to make a huge impact in fact, India could make the same argument Mr. Sunak made India contributes about 4% into the carbon excess carbon. If India today just stopped working and everything in India closed down that wouldn't actually impact the 1.5 degree threshold all that much. There are major emitters. United States is a very large emitter Germany Europe in general. They are just not stepping up and in fact Britain has given new licenses for oil and natural gas drilling in the North Sea. When Mr. Kerry was asked about that he said that's not our agenda that's not in fact entirely true. United States also opening up new oil fields across the country including in Alaska. Things are being looked at. The climate debate continues to be still mated between the West refusing to acknowledge its excess carbon role and refusing to pay compensation for get 131 trillion not even 100 billion and meanwhile of course countries like India and China struggling between meeting carbon obligations and also development. This is a debate that is going to run now from this UN climate summit all the way to Dubai at COP28. We are going to follow this of course pretty pretty closely. Other kind of agreements in the planet Prashant, some in the Sahel. What's happening there? We are talking about what is being called the alliance of Sahel states, Niger, Mali and Burkina Paso signing what is an agreement in the capital, Bamako in Mali's capital, Bamako actually very interesting agreement at this point of time what is called the Liptaco Gorma Charter that's referenced to the border region between these countries and it comes at a time when as we know all of these countries have been facing a lot of pressure and we will come to that in a bit but has not really sort of refused to sort of give in on most counts in fact they have taken a very strong position against the French we know that the French ambassador was embattled or pretty much besieged the negotiations are supposedly going on for the eviction of all French soldiers as well and Mali and Burkina Paso have already taken that step. In that way it's kind of natural that these two states these three states come together and sign an agreement in former alliance which kind of represents that and it's kind of also interesting because it in some ways follows on a tradition which I think a lot of which is kind of maybe lost in the past where many countries in that region at various points did consider federations or federating themselves to various extents that is actually a part of the anti-colonial agenda as well the fact that the boundaries between many of these countries do not really make sense at all and there is a need for many of these countries to work closer together in whatever capacity possible in a more united way to actually transcend some of the divisions caused by colonialism so the alliance of science states in some senses also maybe potentially serving as a milestone in that aspect as well but I think also equally importantly is the fact that there is definitely a strong security concern and the security concern is two aspects to it one there is the issue of insurgency which is especially peaked in Mali in recent times and all these countries have faced that in various extents now this insurgency was used by France in the past which sort of claimed that it would play the role of this kind of neutral arbitrary whatever and come and suppress it for their erstwhile colonies but just as we talked about in Haiti the experience of the people when French soldiers was there was quite bad not only the French soldiers failed to achieve those objectives there were many cases of you know various human rights violations, atrocities etc which really made the people angry at that served as a huge spur for the kind of coups that took place in these countries against the French presence so now of course they have evicted the French but the issue of the insurgency remains and while it is a complex issue nonetheless the fact that it is an immediate issue as well of the fighting that is going on over there so I think that is definitely one aspect the other aspect where security comes in really is the fact that Mali and Burkina Faso have earlier declared that you know an attack on Niger would be considered as an attack on them as well and in that sense what this alliance does is also sort of strengthen the commitment that these two countries have made to each other you know that the government of Niger for instance has you know given the authorization for Mali and Burkina Faso to deploy their forces in the event of an invasion we know that ECOVAS not only discussed an invasion but also talked about a D-Day which had been decided for the invasion to take place and at that point of time the fact that there were internal disagreements within ECOVAS was a major reason why there was no intervention at that point of time as well and even now the possibility of an ECOVAS military intervention is not over we still have you know various leaders of the region talking you know once in a while sort of mentioning that and saying it's not off the table but we're still giving diplomacy a last chance etc etc so in that sense too this kind of an alliance which is as much as security alliance has a very powerful significance so we're talking about two or three dimensions of what this alliance of Sahil states would mean we know that Mali did a constitutional referendum which actually sought to transcend some of the you know say limitations placed by the colonial structures and the postcolonial postcolonial governments so whether this kind of tendency picks up is something that will be interesting to see we know that the leader of Burkina Faso for instance says on international platforms talked about the need to combat imperialism in various forms so all of these are very interesting trends need to be followed finally just concluded the fact that with the Nigerian president in the United Nations talk said that all these schools do not indicate that there is support for schools but there are these pressing issues to be solved and but the question really is that to the governments of today have the capacity to solve these pressing issues I think is really the question which is not addressed not addressed either for many global south countries you're listening to give the people what they want brought to you from People's Dispatch Zoe and Prashant and Vijay from Globe Trotter Zoe can government solve things you got elections in Ecuador elections in Argentina Luisa Gonzalez point position in Ecuador what's the agenda can they solve things well in mid October we're going to see two electoral processes which are very very important and this past week actually the presidential candidate Luisa Gonzalez of Ecuador actually made a public statement saying that there had been an assassination attempt against her we'll get back to that but the people of Argentina are going to head to the polls on October 22nd people of Ecuador second round the elections on October 15 these again are very crucial elections two countries mired in economic crisis insecurity crisis and a political crisis and really reflecting the trends of the region of this polarization rising insecurity rising crime and in Argentina of course you have the factor of this rising right wing but both our countries that have been really destroyed by IMF policies by neoliberalism in the past several years in Ecuador in the second round of elections again Luisa Gonzalez who denounced that there was a threat against her life this people have been arrested but she pulled ahead of the other candidates in the first round of the elections the question is will she be able to galvanize enough support from other sectors to actually put her across the threshold or will it happen like it did in 2021 where Andres Arauz was unable to carry forward his first round victory to a second round victory this is a crucial issue and as you can hear in the different in the debate that took place before the first round and really the main topic that people in Ecuador are talking about is this issue of crime is this issue of violence what is the perspective of the left on how to address this it's an issue that has so many different factors it's an issue that is impossible to address if they're not able to really change the material conditions of the majority of the people in their country so that will definitely be on the front of their mind it will be on the front of probably a lot of their campaign speeches and in the debates and in Argentina as we know in the primary elections Javier Milay who amongst other things has now gone in rallies with a chainsaw similar to maybe images that we've seen of Jair Bolsonaro with the machine gun he is again a threat to many many different things to the people of Argentina threatening to take away their rights threatening to cut ministries to take away the very hard fought for right to abortion and he continues to pull ahead he has not grown in any of the polls but there was a study that was released today by CELAC the Center for Latin American Geopolitical Studies and it put Javier Milay at around 31% followed by Patricia Bulbrich the far right kind of tendency and then in third place Sergio Massa Sergio Massa is the current economy minister and there's been a lot of speculation about when does he become a candidate and stop being an economy minister it seems like he's really up to his campaign efforts in recent days again he has a very hard road ahead of him in having come in third place having being very directly associated to the current government which has a very high disapproval rating Alberto Fernandez famously did not run for reelection because of this kind of rejection of the people to his government of course for many different factors but one of them being the fact that poverty has increased inflation is at record levels in 2022 it was 100% so these are kind of the main issues that these candidates are having to contend with Javier Milay calls for dollarization Bulbrich for more austerity again what is the proposal of the left to deal with these huge huge challenges very large challenges sometimes economic war is also war and that's what Latin America has faced but really there's no nothing as bad as war itself Prashant six months in Sudan Sudan which has had a long history of warfare in the past several decades back to war again it's hard to have this hard to call this Prashant hard to call it an anniversary I don't know what word to use absolutely in a sense I think also unlike say for instance the war in Ukraine or whatever the fact that the war in Sudan has actually fallen off a lot of the media reports in fact reports coming only when once in a while the United Nations or rights organizations bring out some extremely horrible statistics of what is happening a classic example was just a couple of days ago I think the UN sources mentioned that around 1200 children had died in refugee camps in Sudan since May and in the White Nile state and the people the UN experts who talked about this talked about this complete collapse of the health infrastructure in the country I think the latest numbers say that around 80% of all health infrastructure in conflict in states has been completely out of commission which really throws into you know it throws into sharp light the kind of situation that is taking place and I guess the numbers keep coming we're talking about around 7500 deaths in thousands of injuries and we're talking about millions of people being displaced at this point of time I think just because of this conflict we're seeing about 4.1 million people internally displaced around 1.1 million people are so displaced into other countries and this is actually made Sudan the most highest number of people that have been displaced due to a conflict right now is in Sudan at this point of time or in this very short span of 6 months that really kind of shows the intensity of what is what is taking place in the country right now and we have a report from our colleague Pawan that gives much more details but I think the important thing to note is that on the one hand I think efforts at peace are pretty much completely stalled there are fresh conflicts breaking out there have been reports for instance of fighting breaking out our tension breaking out in Port Sudan in the east as well between some tribal communities and the military who are technically on the same side so to speak against the rapid support forces which is the other side in the war there is a intense amount of fighting taking place for instance in Khartoum in Darfur the amount of massive human rights violations and atrocities you know it's an entirely another level altogether also we need to remember that the Darfur region has seen decades or at least years and years of similar atrocities and this is just escalated during this particular conflict so in every sense of the term I think it's a by now experts are also of course warning of this becoming a kind of conflict which continues for many many months many more months in the future right now and like I said very little signs of peace agreements or any discussions of that taking place so it seems a bit of a you know it's not definitely not a frozen conflict but it seems a conflict which might just continue to escalate at this point of time and I think very important to remember you know the fact that the roots of all this lie in the kind of encouragement the kind of support that these sections of the military got from all the key players in the region all the you know the international groupings which claim to resolve wanted to resolve all these issues kept promoting these generals as the solution as part of the solution although the people on the streets had consistently wanted that they were going to do this exactly this that they were going to be part of the problem as the solution but their voice was absolutely not heated and you know now we're six months into this conflict we have this massive crisis that is on right now well you know this is a very important issue and you pointed it out directly Prashant the question of this is off the radar and it should not be off the radar interestingly to some extent off the radar although Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman did go on Fox News is wearing very little chatter about this negotiation around quote unquote normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel brokered by the United States that's important to put this in context few years ago during the administration of Donald Trump there was a real push for normalization Mr. Trump leaned in on the various monarchies in the Arab world and they made a strategic calculation forget the Republican kind of governments you know whether it's in you know Syria of course has a whole different history but even Iraq they didn't bother with the non monarchies they put a lot of pressure on the monarchies on Bahrain on the United Arab Emirates on Morocco these three countries under the Trump administration quote unquote normalize relations with Israel this was known broadly particularly the Bahrain and UAE section as the Abraham accords you know the real prize here is not the UAE and Bahrain even Morocco the real prize is Saudi Arabia if Saudi Arabia quote unquote normalizes with Israel you add in that Egypt and Jordan have already normalized there will be immense pressure on countries like Lebanon and so on to follow suit that's the real prize here so there was a lot of pressure to get Mohammed bin Salman who effectively is the only person of importance in the Saudi royal family right now to exceed to the agenda well it's very interesting what the Saudis put on the table the Saudis put two issues on the table the Saudis only had one issue normalization they want they know if Saudi Arabia normalizes their situation is going to change dramatically that's all they want what did the Saudis put on the table the two main issues one was improvement of the status of the Palestinians in other words something that if you read between the lines looks like binational civic state of Israel you know to absorb the Palestinians and I think if you look closely at the kind of conversations around normalization it looks like the Saudis are ready to say the two state solution is gone although they don't say it explicitly but the conditions of the Palestinians have to be improved that's one secondly Saudi Arabia says we want the United States to help us build uranium enrichment inside the kingdom we have uranium we want to have a energy program so therefore we want uranium enrichment interestingly inside Israel this is of course provoked debate some people argue that the government of Mr. Benjamin Netanyahu would be willing to give Saudi Arabia uranium enrichment but not allow improvement of status of the Palestinians that for Mr. Netanyahu is non-negotiable sections of the Israeli security apparatus say no chance Saudi Arabia cannot get uranium enrichment from the US and the Fox interview Mr. Mohammed bin Salman was asked about the question of a bomb because when you talk uranium you're always going to go in the direction of is it really for peaceful purposes and he said look if Iran gets a bomb we want one now in the conversation nobody said the only person with a bomb right now in the Middle East is Israel and in fact Israel is the one that's blocking making the Middle East a nuclear free zone Iran is actually quite prepared to sign on to a nuclear free zone but they want Israel to also sign on and therefore dismantle the nuclear weapons industry the thing is that everybody is quite clear and Mohammed bin Salman winked and indicated this in the interview that if he doesn't get a nuclear enrichment deal from the United States as part of the normalization package they're just going to go to Russia or to China to get it Saudi Arabia is committed to having their own nuclear energy program they're committed to that they're going to get it one way or the other the Americans are desperate to get it as part of this deal the Israelis are not going to allow it my god you know world history takes place through contradictions things are never simple here Saudi Arabia made a deal with Iran both of them are joining the BRICS block there is no easy way to move history forward once again you've been listening to give the people what they want brought to you from people's dispatch that's the editors Zoe and Prashant I'm Vijay from Globe Trotter next week it's a 145th show just a few shows to 150 guys we're going to give you a treat on that day see you later