 Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Your weekly movement news roundup. Well, we're back again for another week of Give the People What They Want. Vijay is currently in Venezuela doing some journalistic reporting, so we'll definitely be hearing from him. If you are not able to, please check out his report on the Ezequil referendum, which we'll be talking about later on this show. But first, Prashant, you're going to catch us up to speed on what has been happening in the United Nations regarding the situation in Gaza. Right, Zoe. In fact, it's ongoing right now, a discussion in the UN Security Council, and I'll just read what Antonio Guterres, the UN Secretary General, said that the eyes of the world and the eyes of the history are watching. It is time to act, and he's talking about the need for an immediate ceasefire. He's made some, by his standards, relatively strong statements, talking about the very horrific conditions in Gaza right now, talking also about the death of over 130 UN personnel in these Israeli attacks. Now, this UN Security Council meeting is taking place at a very special occasion. We know that just a couple of days ago, the Secretary General invoked Article 99 of the UN Charter, which basically brings the Security Council's attention to a particular issue. In this case, it's of course Gaza. Now, very few instances, I believe, only three previous instances of this article having been invoked by a Secretary General the last time was, I believe, in 1989 or so. Now, on the face of it, this is, of course, a very significant gesture, speaks to the urgency of the issue, and the Security Council will, I think, in a few hours vote on a proposal calling for a ceasefire. Highly unlikely that this proposal will get accepted, because we have had the UN Security Council discuss this issue in the past. In the past, we saw that the United States and its allies were unwilling to support the call for a ceasefire. What seems the most commonsensical thing in the world, that if a war breaks out, call for a ceasefire, which is the responsibility of the international community, and we're talking about not a war in this case, but a one-sided, brutal attack by Israeli forces, a genocidal attack, which has taken over 17,000 lives already. So while it might seem commonsense to call for a ceasefire, the United States and its allies have refused to support that demand, saying that Israel needs to go after Hamas, which is the excuse they've been giving for two months plus now. And we've seen the impact. I talked about the death toll, the massive number of injuries. We're seeing a complete destruction of humanitarian facilities in Gaza. We've seen a blockade of aid. We've seen electricity being cut off. We've seen people being tortured and humiliated in various kinds of ways. Despite all of this happening for almost live in some senses, because of all these visuals that are coming to our screens every single day, it seems that these countries are not willing to support the call for a ceasefire. So what is the position they will take today is really an important question. The UAE and other countries have a draft, but will this call for a ceasefire get supported by these key countries? Because as we know, the UN Security Council is dominated by the question of the veto. So any of these countries can actually veto a resolution or even abstain at least that way it passes. But if it vetoes, it may not pass. And then this really boils down to the question of even if such a resolution is passed, will Israel bother to actually listen to this resolution is an equally big question? Because Israel has defiantly refused to heed any demand from the international community leaders across the world, not to mention the fact that hundreds of thousands of people across the world have made it very clear that the call across the world is at least to start with for a ceasefire, because before further development, before anything else happens, it is at least to start with for humanitarian aid and relief to flow before some of the grave crimes that Israel has committed and addressed, that of course is a different matter altogether. But even this basic demand seems to be completely incomprehensible for Israel and its allies in the global north. So we're going to have a vote, of course, like I said, in a few hours. Meanwhile, the destruction has continued. There's been no abating even after the pause. And every day we hear reports of hundreds of people dying. So let's wait and see. And Guterres is not wrong when he says that the eyes of history are watching because this is one of those moments when governments will be judged for years to come. That's exactly right, Prashant. I think many people are sort of dumbfounded and confused on how such brutality can happen day after day after day. And the U.S. and Israel just seem to heed no calls. And we're not talking about the U.S. respecting, for example, the will of its population or saying, well, the people don't want this. This is really turning their backs on the people of the world and their own population, their own constituents in defying calls for a ceasefire. And we've seen that the rhetoric from the Israelis has only gotten worse. That there have been, we carried a piece that Tanipya wrote regarding these kind of baseless accusations that seem to crop up every single time Israel wants to cover up its war crimes. They seem to make accusations about what Palestinians have done. Many of these accusations fall apart within days. These are allegations that are meant to shock and awe and meant to scare people, meant to say, see, this is why we have to bomb Gaza into smithereens. And of course, in days it ends up being proved by different independent analysis. Sometimes even the same news sources will go back and say, actually, we didn't have the correct sources to run this sort of copy. And this has been really the case throughout these now two months. And I think in this past week, we've seen images that have been really unparalleled in terms of their brutality. You said the detention of hundreds of people. We saw that in northern Gaza, there were hundreds of men who were stripped and made to and were detained on the street, images that echo Abu Ghraib, other moments of just mass, mass humiliation and human rights violations. We don't know what happened to those people. Were they detained? Where were they brought? Under what grounds? I mean, this involves a journalist, people who have, again, nothing. They can't even be accused of being members of the militant armed wing of Hamas, other things. And so I think these, as the images continue to come out, people are really shaken. Yesterday, the news broke that a beloved academic writer and poet, Alamir, was murdered by Israel in an airstrike. He, again, was someone who was speaking out throughout these two months of war. He has been very, very active in sharing in English what's been happening, his own thoughts, his analysis. He also, since 2014, had created this project, We Are Not Numbers, precisely to combat this propaganda machine of the United States and Israel to bring the voices of people from Gaza, young people from Gaza, to the world. And it's this light that they wanted to extinguish, this person who inspired so much hope from his own people. And he really was able to bridge a dialogue with the people of the world. A prolific writer, incredibly talented poet, and, you know, of course, a beloved family member, husband, father. This has once again, this is one of those deaths that many people thought, well, this person is so visible, this person is so well recognized, they won't dare to go after this person, and yet they did. Targeting specifically this person who has worked so tirelessly to bring the voice of the people of Palestine, the people of Gaza, to the world. Again, since last week, when Israel resumed the bombing of the Gaza Strip, given the complete green light by the US government, just started right in the middle of Anthony Blinken's visit to Israel. There have been reports that, again, the negotiations have been stalled, that they have not been able to advance. I think as these atrocities continue and intensify and the death toll passes, the confirmed death toll, which doesn't count the over 6,000 people that are reported missing. Now that that death toll has already crossed 17,000, people are really wondering how far are they going to take it? How much are they going to, you know, what is the depth that they're going to be given from the US to actually continue this genocide? And it's interesting because even during this barbaric and genocidal attack by Israel this week, we have seen reports coming out that suggests that the US political establishment and even the Israeli political establishment is feeling the pressure of protests in an interview or giving comments to press that Netanyahu said that he was concerned about the protests in Western capitals against Israel, against what it's doing in Gaza, that these mass protests have made an impact. We've seen that I think it's hundreds of staffers who work in the White House have expressed their dissent with Biden's position to outrightly not support a ceasefire. The cracks are there. And I think that it's so unfortunate that in order to, for this consensus to break, it costs thousands of lives and we should never have to get to that point. But I think that because of the pressure on the streets, the constant protests, everywhere Biden goes, he's met by protest. He's genocide Joe, he's no longer Joe Biden. I think that they're actually understanding the magnitude of what's happening little by little. And given that they're looking at an election year next year, I don't know what they think, how important they think this ever increasingly isolated Zionist lobby will be for their efforts, but the masses of people are not happy with their policies. So I think we're going to continue to see how this plays out. How much will this pressure impact them? Will the U.S. start actually putting concrete conditions on Israel and eventually demand a ceasefire? Because we know that all it takes is one phone call from Joe Biden and Israel would have to stop this genocide. Right, you mentioned Zoe, the consensus that is, you know, cracks in the consensus, there are other many, many reasons for these cracks. And one of these, one of the reasons is also the fact that across the West Asian region, you are seeing the impact of this Israeli war on Gaza and both the United States and Israel are feeling this impact. We're seeing this from the Houthis, Ansara line, Yemen, which recently, of course, targeted two ships and they have declared that the region is going to be off limits associated with Israel. Of course, a lot of these commercial ships are very complex ownership patterns and often there are industrialists of Israeli origin who are, you know, who own them in various ways. So Yemen is also identifying some of these ships and definitely targeting them. We know that militia in Iraq have been firing at U.S. bases in the region. Important question to ask why there are still U.S. bases in the Iraq question that is often forgotten despite the fact that the United States claimed that they were there to fight ISIS. That fight ended a long time ago, but definitely over there. And we also know that Hezbollah itself has been in the forefront of both, you know, Israel and Hezbollah have been exchanging fire and I think a lot of settlers in that region have been forced to leave because of Hezbollah's firing as well. So we also see that and all these, mind you, explicitly in solidarity with the people of Palestine, they are explicitly against Israel's genocidal war and this kind of poses a very interesting question to both the United States and Israel regarding how long they can continue to do this, considering the kind of sort of broad, how this is brought together a lot of forces who are maybe even earlier aligned in various ways. Now the United States prefers to call them as all Iranian proxies, which is very convenient, but the fact is that each force is its own independent entity and has its own way of doing things, its own way of decision making. So what we see basically is that we have at least three forces, you know, three forces which are pretty much definitely taking a very strong military stand and all across the Arab world as well, we have seen I think a very strong expression of solidarity with the Palestinians. People are increasing impatience with their own rulers and many decades in fact have cozied up to Israel and the United States to various degrees. We know that there was of course a normalization deal with the Abraham Accords, so-called Abraham Accords, which the countries like the UAE and all sign, but today I think many of these, the ruling class in many of these countries has been forced to take a step back and to consider the will of their populations, which actually again presents a very interesting picture for the region as a whole. You mentioned how in the United States he's being known as Genocide Joe, but many experts pointing out that the U.S. credibility, the U.S. stake in that region has considerably been affected. The ability of the U.S. to sort of push some of it, the agenda has considerably been affected because of this, you know, this position it has taken in the war on Gaza. Even then, and the Yemenis of course, important to note, is there a time when they're facing their own humanity in crisis, the World Food Program has by the way announced that they're going to halt food distribution in the Houthi-held areas. Now they're blaming, of course, lack of communication with the government, et cetera, et cetera, but basically what this basically means is that we've talked about the issue of Yemen in the past of the population of around 30 million people, nearly 17 million are facing food security that dependent on food insecurity and the dependent on food aid, most of these people live in areas controlled by the Houthis. Now the World Food Program aid to the areas controlled by the Saudi-backed government is going to continue. It seems a very unfortunate decision at this point of time, you know, it kind of really raises the, also raises the global question there again. There are ultimately so many billions to spend on weapons, but when it comes to the distribution of food, somehow all these budgets fall short a very unfortunate situation for the people in the Yemen continuing as well. Yes, well on the other side of the world in Peru, it was the anniversary, the one-year anniversary of the coup against Pedro Castillo, another instance of an imperialist-backed forces toppling a government that was attempting to promote national sovereignty. This is truly a before and after moment in many ways in Peru. On December 7th again, Pedro Castillo had attempted to halt what he saw as an impending, what was going to be an impeachment motion against him. It was the third that he had faced in that year. As we know when he was elected in June 2021, there were constant threats against his government. He was barely allowed to even be sworn in. There was so many legal battles actually posed by the far right to impede him from being sworn in, challenging votes, challenging so many other things. And once he became president, there were roadblocks kind of at every turn. He was investigated from several agencies for charges of corruption, for misuse of funds and other such things. Interestingly enough, the right wing dominated Congress. I think there's dozens of people that are under investigation for really, really serious corruption charges, but hadn't seen kind of their ability to run and even actually exercise their functions really affected. And so Pedro Castillo was facing on December 7th a third impeachment motion. And this time it seems like after the right wing was able to lower the amount of votes that would be needed for this vote to be passed, it seems like this impeachment was inevitable. And so he took a decision to dissolve the Congress and essentially attempt to rule by decree. Instead of this going forward, the right wing Congress moved forward with the impeachment motion. It disregarded what his address had said as president, voted to impeach him and that he would be immediately arrested by the national police. And he was immediately replaced in a sort of undemocratic vote that didn't have quorum for Dina Boluarte to be sworn in as vice president. And from that day, the people were on the streets of Peru across the country, not only in the capital Lima, but especially in the southern regions, protesting what they considered to be a coup, which I think a year later now it's much clearer. Maybe there were people in that day who had their doubts, who had their questions about what happened. But now it's quite clear that this was a coup backed by right wing forces and really to bring right wing interests back to the center. And under Dina Boluarte, not only were these mass protests violently repressed, which over 60 people were killed, different estimates would say that that number is 100. Many, many people killed in these protests but also her government has actually moved forward pretty anti-people measures affecting the pension funds, affecting, for example, mining in the country and concessions with multinational corporations. Other things that are really threatening the sovereignty of the country and things that Pedro Casio was attempting to combat in his short time as president, he did actually attempt to advance land reform when there was the horrible oil spill by Repsol. He was actually attempting to force this company to pay for the damages that happened to the country because of this fighting back against this multinational giant, attempting to regain sovereignty. Peru is a country that really does hand over its natural resources to many companies. Many suspect that because these concessions were expiring, the right wing did not want to risk having someone like Pedro Casio in charge to renegotiate the terms or maybe even try to nationalize some of these companies. And so there's a lot of motivations behind the coup and I think that the one year later, the toll has essentially been the subversion of democracy, the subversion of the popular will and one of the other main promises of Pedro Casio was to move forward with a constituent assembly process and this would be to rewrite the country's constitution, a constitution that was written in past during the time of Alberto Pujimorty, former dictator in Peru, which enshrined this neoliberal model, proves a country where people do not, are not guaranteed access to education and healthcare to many essential rights and services. Again, that gives multinational corporations many rights in the country. Interestingly enough, one day before the anniversary of the coup, Alberto Pujimorty was given a pardon and was released from prison. So this anniversary is so significant for many reasons. This far right wing called Pujimorty that supported his policies, he's someone who was in prison because of his responsibility in several massacres that took place during the internal armed conflict of peasant and indigenous communities. Actually achieving his incarceration was a huge victory of the movement for justice and for these victims. And so it's seen as a huge setback, but quite symbolic, of course, of what this coup means, of this right wing response, of this retaking of all this ground that was won back by the people's movements. There's also been high levels of repression. Many people's leaders and movements have suffered raids on their offices, people are still in prison, accused of terrorism. So I think that one year out from this date, the evaluation is definitely one of increased repression, kind of a complete violation of human rights for which no one has actually faced any major charges, Dina Voluarte, who has, as they say, blood on her hands responsible for ordering the repression of these protests, calling protesters, terrorists, calling them criminals and really saying that their demands were ridiculous and should never respond to them. It's definitely an important date to remember and we're definitely seeing an increase in mobilization around the anniversary and especially with regarding the release of former dictator Alberto Fujimori. Right, talk about presidents who, you know, have really taken their countries to some very difficult times and you're talking about another such character who is now standing for reelection in two days. This is Abdul Fateh LCC, the president of Egypt. Egypt is having presidential elections from December 10th to 12th onwards and it does look like by all, according to all signs that LCC will once again become president for the third term. We need to remember that in the middle of his second term he enacted a constitutional referendum, which gives him, you know, more time in power and extended the presidential term from four to six years if I'm not mistaken as well. So LCC definitely in line to be in power for many, many more years, at least if, as per the terms what happens is a different matter altogether. We all thought that Mubarak would also be in power for a very, very long time. But an important moment to sort of, you know, sort of sit back and also reflect on what LCC's legacy has been, came to power in 2014 and is coming to power pretty much marked the end of a particular phase in Egypt, which is definitely a contentious phase, massive confrontation between the Muslim Brotherhood and activists of all stripes, you know, a huge amount of opposition. But what LCC came to power and did after that was basically crush any kind of a dissent, any kind of opposition and the numbers say it all. There are tens of thousands of people political, political prisoners in jails at various points and numbers have talked about, you know, close to 60,000 people being in jail. For instance, we have multiple rounds of protests being crushed. We have, in fact, one of the leading opponents in the elections did not, you know, was forced to withdraw after many of his supporters were in various way hounded and harassed as well. So there's basically, you know, complete suppression of any kind of dissent, but not just that. It's also the economic crisis, which LCC has completely bungled, a massive economic crisis going through Egypt right now. The country completely dependent on handouts and support from richer countries in the region. And LCC has really played his games very cleverly by positioning Egypt as a key player in a lot of the geopolitical conflicts in the region, whether it be Sudan, whether it be Libya, whether it now would be in Gaza as well. It's very important to remember that Egypt has also, we talk about Israel all the time, Egypt has also enforced the blockade on Gaza all these years from 2007 onwards. And while Egypt is often a mediator in many of these conflicts, it continues to mediate even now. The fact that the core fact remains that it is supported by both Israel and the U.S. in maintaining the blockade of Gaza as well. And I think this is, of course, a huge unpopular decision in Egypt but nonetheless successive Egyptian governments have continued to do that. And LCC has been no different sort of, you know, obtaining a huge amount of money from key players, operating a huge amount of weapons from key players. We know that like I said, he's, under him, Egypt has been involved in all the key conflicts in the region. Sometimes most often maybe playing, you know, being a regional enforcer for the Western powers, sometimes taking a bit of a different stand for its own political gains as well. So this is the man who's being all said to be elected once again as president of Egypt but definitely a massive amount of popular unhappiness. There might not be a candidate now to channel that dissatisfaction, to channel that anger but like what happened 10 years ago, 9 years ago tells us sometimes history has very, you know, strange things happen. And later when you look back at it, it might seem that this was inevitable but, you know, sitting here, we never know what will happen to CC and his regime as well but that definitely a very tough time for people of Egypt. Well, in our last couple of minutes just wanted to talk briefly about what we hope Vijay would talk about which was the referendum in Venezuela that was held on December 3rd regarding the Ezequil region. This is in recent months and in the past year become a central issue for Venezuela. The Ezequil region is on the board, is the border region between Venezuela and Guiana. It is a region which, you know, today I think there's been a lot of different comments on it and sort of decontextualizing what's been happening with this referendum that just took place and Venezuela's claims to it but really this is a region that has its roots in the colonial project in Latin America. It's a region that originally was part of Venezuela and had been colonized by the Dutch then the British had taken it. And there are, again, agreements and treaties dating back to this time. Essentially in recent years this is also a very oil-rich region and ExxonMobil, which is a massive oil corporation based in the United States had essentially been granted concessions to drill in this region off the shore of Ezequil. This added a new element into what, again, what is seen as kind of a historic and a centuries-long colonial conflict over this territory. Was it, should it have always been included in Venezuela? Is this, you know, how did it really get taken away from Venezuela? Is this a colonial, one of these colonial border disputes, et cetera? And this became, again, even more relevant in the context of the natural resources of this region being handed over to a multinational oil corporation which is ExxonMobil. And Venezuela began to essentially contest not only the rights of ExxonMobil over this territory but really trying to resolve what they saw as a historic conflict that had, again, its roots in colonialism and to try to show and point to past agreements and past legal disputes and to show that actually this territory is Venezuelan. And they had brought this to the ICJ. The ICJ ruled against Venezuela. But again, this was a result that was rejected by the Venezuelan people, by the Venezuelan government understanding that the ICJ wasn't considering these historic dimensions to it. And essentially in response to this and what they saw as the international community kind of turning their backs on these kind of core and root elements to this dispute, the Venezuelan president called for a referendum for the people of Venezuela to actually give their perspective on how they understood the conflict. Is Ezequillo a part of Venezuela? Do the resources pertain to the Venezuelan people? Should they be expropriated by a foreign multinational company that at the end of the day is, you know, this is a concession and agreement signed between the government of Guyana with ExxonMobil and the Venezuelan people were pointing out that this was not even favorable for the people of Guyana. It's one of these agreements which the majority of the royalties are taken by this foreign company and nothing is really left behind for the people. And so in this referendum that was held on December 3 that people of Venezuela went to the polls to say, do they consider there were five questions? And, you know, to give their perspective on if Venezuela has sovereignty over this, if there should be a state created where people have access to the rights of Venezuela and three other questions regarding sovereignty and people voted overwhelmingly, yes. This is changing the dimensions of the conflict as Venezuela is taking more serious efforts to kind of respond to these results. They said that they are going to take decisions. There's going to be a military force that's deployed to that region. There has been a lot of pushback, but I think that at the center of this, again, is a question about resources, is a question about colonialism. You know, mainstream media has really been painted as a dispute between Guyana and Venezuela, but we also know that in the last year the U.S. even deployed military ships to the region. So I think that it's quite, it's painted as complicated, it's pointed as a dispute between two South American countries, but there is a lot more to it. It has to do with these groups of colonialism. It has to do with the question of sovereignty and about exploiting resources in favor of the people. So I think we're going to continue seeing updates on this. Again, the referendum was held just last Sunday and this is going to continue to be a major issue in the region. And I think that is where we'll leave it and we'll hopefully hear more details of how that process was on the ground from Vijay, who is again in Venezuela right now and we'll be back with you next Friday as always.