 Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Your weekly movement news round up. Well, what the people seem to want is us to return every week on Friday this appointed time. This is give the people what they want 98th episode. In two weeks, we'll be at our 100th episode. A landmark event. If there ever were one. A landmark event just before the elections in Brazil seems to me looking forward to that episode. You're with Prashant and Zoe. They are from People's Dispatch. I'm Vijay from Globe Trotter. Well, very strange situation. Joe Biden, US president goes to Saudi Arabia earlier this year. Fist bumps, leaders in Saudi Arabia, my buddies, my friend, and so on. Turns out, of course, when push comes to shove, the Saudi government decides that the United States and its needs not that key. What am I talking about? The US government deeply wanted Saudi Arabia to pump an immense amount of oil out of the earth in order to stabilize oil prices. Well, the reason the US government wanted oil prices stabilized is to somehow contest the problem being faced now in several countries with the fuel price inflation and then the food price inflation. We're going to come back to that in a minute when Prashant talks about the global hunger index, what the impact this has had. The US government was putting pressure, essentially, on Saudi Arabia to pump more. Saudi Arabia, after all, is supposed to be this sort of pump where the United States controls the handle. Turns out at the OPEC and OPEC plus meeting, Saudi Arabia decided not to go in the direction of the United States. What does this actually mean? OPEC is since 1960 has been the major controller of oil prices. It's the organization of petroleum exporting countries. Saudi Arabia dominates OPEC for good reason. It has the largest reserves. It also plays a dominant political role over a number of OPEC countries, including of course the United Arab Emirates and so on. Well, having a really quite a considerable stake in the production capacity for oil, what OPEC does in fact determines the price of oil despite the fact that there are many non-OPEC members that produce oil and natural gas in the world. Well, as a consequence of OPEC being a closed club, a grouping was created called OPEC plus, which includes Russia, major producer of energy. At the meeting just recently, OPEC and OPEC plus was told by the Saudis that Saudi Arabia was not going to increase oil production. In fact, they were not keen on this. They said that, you know, if Saudi Arabia and OPEC plus agrees to a reduction in supplies, that will push prices up. Now, where the United States is understanding this is this is going to hurt the US attempt to give some relief to Europe as the war in Ukraine continues. Don't forget, this war in Ukraine has cut off Europe from a principal supplier of energy, which is Russia. Norway is trying to fill the gaps to some extent, United States to some others. There was a hope by the United States that if the oil prices came down as a consequence of increased supply, this would have a big impact on oil prices in Europe and undercut the US's desire to continue to prevent Ukraine and Russia to come to negotiation. Well, interestingly, because Saudi Arabia decided to go in the other direction, the US is arguing this helps Russia. Russia is a big exporter of oil is of course going to benefit if prices remain high. That's the US position. There's been a lot of discussion within the United States about punishing Saudi Arabia. What would this punishment take? Stopping arms sales. That's going to hurt the arms industry in the United States more than it would hurt Saudi Arabia, which is now finding itself anyway, on the back foot in its only ongoing war against the people of Yemen. It's not going to hurt Saudi Arabia that much, at least in the short run, maybe a Saudi Arabia will find different suppliers for arms. Perhaps Russia, the head of government, the monarch of the United Arab Emirates was in Moscow shaking hands with Vladimir Putin. The United States might pass legislation to condemn Saudi Arabia. This is going to have minimal impact in Saudi Arabia. The kingdom of course is a kingdom. Doesn't really care what other people think. We're in very difficult and interesting times. If we're going to see the Gulf Arab states pivot away from the United States, this is going to have a considerable outcome for the fragility of US power around the world. Quite an interesting period. Russia oil prices seem to remain high. Therefore, hunger is going to remain a problem to some extent. Perhaps not sure. Tell us. According to the Global Health Index that is recently published, I don't think hunger is just going to remain just a problem. It's going to maybe even intensify in some parts of the world because what the report says is that there's been almost some degree of stagnation in combating hunger over the past many years. And this is extremely alarming because what we see is according to the Global Health Index, according to many other reports that have come out in recent years, despite the fact that we talked about this before, despite the fact that this is 2022, we are at this advanced stage of civilization, so to speak, where there is so much profit that are globally being made. The core issue of hunger, which is supposed to be an issue that humanity addresses first of all the issues it is concerned, which is one of the sustainable goals. The second sustainable goal I believe for the year 2030, it is unlikely to be met because of the situation that is right now. And we have a host of problems with this conflict. For instance, there is climate change, which is actually expected to accelerate some of these trends around hunger. And what this report shows is that over the past many years, we are seeing extremely serious situation. The numbers say that about 830 million people were undernourished across the world. And that's like a substantial amount of the world's population. That's just undernourishment. There's a spectrum of hunger, so to speak, when in many of these reports. And undernourishment is just one aspect of that spectrum, more serious aspects. So what we're seeing is like a multifaceted failure across the world. According to the report, South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa are the two regions which are worst affected. And South Asia, especially a huge population, a large chunk of the world's population actually living there. And this is one of those regions which is the worst affected. It in fact has the world's highest child stunting and child wasting rates. And in terms of Sub-Saharan Africa, undernourishment and child mortality are more high than any other part of the world. Now all this ties into a number of other problems we talked about. We often talk about on this show, of course, there's a question of war and conflict. Like we mentioned, there is a question of the kind of development, so-called development that is promoted by international financial institutions, which force countries into further indebtedness, which prevent countries from undertaking programs which can actually support, say the free distribution of food and other projects like that which try to reduce hunger. Now we've seen, for instance, left governments in many parts of the world, even progressive governments in many parts of the world actually undertaking some of these schemes. India is well known for its midday meals scheme which provides midday meals to school children. That has proved a huge, been a big step in actually improving education as well as reducing hunger. Certain other states, for instance, introducing breakfast, bringing about canteens where food can be available for very cheap rates. But for all of this we do need, the governments need to have a kind of fiscal flexibility to actually invest a huge amount of the money they have in these kind of social programs. Whereas many countries across the world are caught in the spiral of debt. They're spending all that huge amounts of their money actually servicing these debt, taking more and more loans to try to deal with it. And we have this entire global financial system which is really geared to actually accentuate hunger. And I think this is one thing that reports such as these sometimes are not really acknowledged. We talk about climate change, we talk about conflict and we talk about underlying issues with infrastructure, underlying issues like corruption or say pre-existing poverty, etc. But we often do not spend enough time talking about the way the world is organized, so to speak, the way our governance is organized. The reign, the tyranny of international bodies and finance capital, which together make it so easy for corporations to make billions and trillions at this point of time, whereas a vast majority of the people are really struggling with hunger. Now, there are at least five countries where hunger is at alarming levels in Central Africa. Republic Chad, the Congo, Madagascar, Yemen, Yemen, of course, you mentioned it as well. The DRC, again, a very interesting case because the DRC is home to actually some of a vast variety of resources which are so essential today for our digital age for all the things we hold dear in terms of technology. But to imagine that the country which is home to so much of these resources is one of the countries which is undergoing these levels of hunger. Actually, I think shows you a very clear idea of how the world functions right now. Yet another depressing report and one of the most alarming things being that the 2030 goal is nowhere close to meeting a problem. It's a real tragedy, but you know, the thing is, we're at the point, Zoe has a piece up at People's Dispatch called, Brazil is in a fierce second round for its election, fierce second round. One of the candidates was the person who most fought hunger in his country, that's Lula, through Forme Zero. Zoe, fierce second round, tell us what's happening. It is fierce. The words and the phrases and the discourse that we're seeing right now after this first election of the first round of elections in Brazil has, I wouldn't say radically changed because that's also not true, but it's really intensified. And so while, you know, maybe before the first round, there was a lot more focus on talking about the programs, talking about, you know, concrete proposals. This has continued, but really, I mean, if you just go on to Twitter or any social media platform and go on to pages of people who support Lula, who support Bolsonaro, what you're going to see is a lot of sort of attack campaigns in a sense. I've been going through the Twitters of Jared Bolsonaro, his sons, close political allies, and I would say every other post is a post attacking Lula. Some of them are fake video montages, what they call the deep fake, where they'll take, you know, some audio recording of Lula of him saying something, though we put it together so it sounds like he's saying something else. There was a pretty bizarre accusation that he's Satanic, he worship Satan. They've been saying all sorts of things that he has close relationships with the largest gang in Brazil. They posted videos of with the audio message of one of the gang leaders saying that Lula would be favorable if he won the presidency. So all of this is happening at a very, very quick rate. And for those of us who are following the presidential elections in 2018, I think we can see a lot of similarities. Of course, it's a little it's a little different for those who weren't following those elections. The fake news was coming out and an alarming rate, which has made the Brazilian state respond and trying to limit the amount that's being published and being circulated. But those were news items that were almost absurd. I mean, it was saying that Fernando had distributed baby bottles that had phallic phallic tops on them. So things that were and saying that he was going to convert everyone to homosexuality. I mean, really, really, really absurd. This continues, of course, but we're seeing it mostly linked to the fact that Lula is a criminal, Lula is corrupt and all of these things. And that's really what is dominating this second round is that a fierce, fierce, intense campaign to undermine the other opponent opponent, not really talking about their programs. There's been a lot of focus on Lula's relationship to other progressive leaders in Latin America, specifically his relationship to Daniel Ortega, making a lot of accusations that he's going to close churches that this happened in Nicaragua. So it's almost a daily, hourly update. It's not really that people are coming up with new campaign proposals, new platforms, but that every single hour there's a new kind of pace of fake news or new allegation and new declaration that they're having to respond to. That's happening kind of in the media, social media sphere, but at the same time there's a very intense street battle that's happening. And Lula has shifted away from these big rallies where he's on the stage and then people have to come and watch him and he's shifted towards these caminatas, these walks through the neighborhood. And so he's going to these popular neighborhoods, he's going to the favelas in Rio, he's going to the poor neighborhoods in the Northeast, and he's walking amongst the people to greet them, to have interaction with them. And these are humongous acts. Bolsonaro is also organizing his big rallies. He went to the Northeast. It was yesterday attempting to win some of this vote. The Northeast is historically a PT stronghold because of their socioeconomic development. And Bolsonaro tried to hold an act in Hesife, which is the cap of Pernambuco, and it was quite empty. So he's probably not going to focus that much on this reading. Region, the Southeast, Center East region is really the focal point. This is where Lula lost. This is where Bolsonaro won. And so this is going to be the biggest battleground area. We're just two weeks away from the second round. And I think it's going to continue getting more intense, continuing heating up. It's a big election for the world. Interesting to see what happens. Of course, you'll update us again next week about this. You're listening to Give the People What They Want brought to you from People's Dispatch. There's Prashant and Zoe, crackerjack reporters waiting for your selfies. I'm Vijay from Globetrotter. Haven't heard from you for a while, our friends. We're looking forward to getting your inputs. Meanwhile, disastrous situation for the Palestinians. Collective punishment, say some people, Prashant. What's happening in Palestine? Right, Vijay. Over the past, I think one week, the biggest, it is hardly a week that goes by when Israel has not been up to something or the other. But one specific incident over the past week was the siege of the Shafath refugee camp in occupied East Jerusalem. And this is a camp at about 100,000, over 100,000, close to 130,000 people stay, I believe. And this is a camp which is administered, which is built by the UN Relief and Work Agency, which is responsible for Palestinian refugees. A lot of the inhabitants there are those in the descendants of people who fled from the Nakba in 1948. The original crime, as they say, where people across Palestine were displaced due to the wild craziness that was being created. And Israel basically claiming to search for a suspect in the killing of a soldier basically besieged the camp for nearly five to six days. And this is, you know, it's kind of difficult to conceive of in today's time in some senses, in any other place, maybe except Palestine, where you have, say, close to 150,000 people being surrounded on all sides by security forces. There are people not being allowed to go out for health reasons, basic essentials being denied to them, you know, any kind of, say, armed raids taking place throughout. And this, which is why it was being described as collective punishment. And of course, this is happening on one side. On the other hand, of course, you have the violence continuing in Jenin, which has become like one of the key points of resistance as well. Not only Israeli atrocities, but also resistance by Palestinians. The latest news there saying that a Palestinian doctor who was trying to treat the injured has died after sustaining injuries. There are yet another instance of professionals such as doctors, journalists, of course, being targeted while doing the duty by Israel. And this is, I think the number overall this year of Palestinians killed in such incidents, Israeli raids, Israeli attacks has reached close to 160, close to 40 people in Jenin alone. And I think it's important to also not see this as just an incidence of violence as much as the fact that for all innocent purposes, Israel is carrying out by their standards a low intensity war right now in the occupied territories. I mean, we have seen the regular war, so to speak. We've seen the bombing of Gaza, the brutal bombing that took place last year, for instance, and many multiple times before. But what this is also these kind of operations, for instance, also mean is basically that every day is basically a kind of everyday life in Palestine is like living in a war zone. There's no other way to describe it. We recently got an article with a health activist who said exactly the same thing, that every day is an instance of Palestinian or more being killed in Israeli operations. And this exactly goes to show what the United States, its allies, countries across the world are enabling Israel to various ways to direct diplomatic support, the kind of commercial and military and other kinds of agreements they have is basically enabling this kind of everyday warfare in the occupied territories. And it's important to note also, of course, elections are coming up in Israel and this could also as well just be a kind of election tactic. And again, we just talked about an election. So here you have political parties on all sides. When Netanyahu was in power, he did exactly the same thing. Now that Yale Lapid is in power, who was technically supposed to be a moderate, so to speak, he's doing exactly the same thing. So irrespective of what part of the Israeli political spectrum you're on, the only way to ensure you do not lose support, not even you get votes. The only way to ensure you do not lose support is by continuously attacking and killing Palestinians. This seems a message that the Israeli political class as a whole is giving out and it is completely backed by its European and US allies. I think I saw a tweet by Joseph Burrell, who made some very disparaging remarks about Israel calling, about Palestine calling Israel some kind of beacon in a very difficult place of water. So this really, I mean, I think because since we get so much news about Palestine so often, it's important to not just record these as incidents or instances, but as much as, so there is technically a war going on. We talk so much about some of the other wars, people will get indignant about it, but this is a 365 day war that is going on in the occupied territories in Gaza, which has been under siege for one and a half decades now at this point, and in these years for that matter. In fact, as you said, it's a violation, the whole occupation is a violation of, or at least the way the occupation is conducted is a violation of Article 3 and additional protocol 2 of the Geneva Convention, which forbids collective punishment. This is a war crime by itself. I'd written about the situation in Haiti a few weeks ago, four years nonstop protests. There's been an appeal made by acting President Ariel Henry to the United Nations. Very interesting appeal. I followed up on that Zoe. Very interesting what the UN is now deliberating whether to intervene again into Haiti, whether to intervene, tell us what's going on. Well, for many people, and I think it's not a lie, but the UN represents peace, it represents a body of multilateralism. Not all those other great things about global diplomacy, but for Haiti, the UN is a much different thing, and it's interesting that this request was made by Ariel Henry for military intervention in the country. So on October 7th, Ariel Henry, who's the acting Prime Minister and President, acting being the key word because he was not elected by popular vote, he sent a request to Antonio Gutierrez, he passed a resolution calling for foreign military intervention in the country. This is in response to widespread gang violence, to widespread territorial control by different gangs in the country, and essentially he says, you know what, I can't control this, they're blocking the imports of fuel, there's a lot of material impacts of this, the circulation of goods, people's ability to go around about their daily life, and so in this sense he's framing it as, I can't control the country, I need help from foreign military. Activists, however, are painting a much different, you know, telling a much different story. This isn't a case of a poor helpless president who has been overrun by gangs, this is the case of a president who is not elected by the people, who has insisted in staying in power, who has links and proven connections to criminal activity in the country, who has essentially let these gangs run wild because he prefers a state of chaos and who has disrespected the people's will. I wrote in this story for four years the people of Haiti have been on the streets demanding concrete structural changes to how the government is formed, to who is elected, to actually addressing the horrible acts of corruption that have happened in the country from the ruling party, and they've come up with extremely concrete solutions. There have been a number of instances of deliberation of diverse sections of the opposition, not only people's movements who, you know, we in our camp might have more relations with, but of the churches, of small businesses, a really, really broad sector of society that's come together and said, the way that things are going is not right, and we have a solution for a transitional government, for a council that's representing all different sectors of society that wants to have a say in how things go. And so the latest version of this was the Montana Agreement. This was created after, of course, the assassination of Jovenel Mois by Colombian mercenaries who might have a proven connection to Ariel Henry. This is under investigation whether he is implicated or not in the assassination. Many people think he is. And so following the assassination of Jovenel Mois, which of course plunges the country into even further crisis and political instability, they come up with this broad section of opposition of civil society of people's movements, of churches, of all these different people come up with the Montana Agreement's proposal for transitional government, having these different spaces of interlocution and dialogue. And this proposal is presented not only to the government, but to many different instances. And at the behest of the United States, the core group, which involves the United Nations representatives from the European Parliament or the European Union, the government of Ariel Henry is upholded and this proposal from people's movements completely ignored. So it's in this context that now Ariel Henry is calling for military intervention and people are back on the streets and saying, no, we need an end to the cost of living crisis. They're dealing with extreme inflation, extreme currency devaluation. The situation is untenable economically. It's untenable in terms of security of people being able to go about their daily lives. And now there's a threat of military intervention, foreign military intervention. And just in a couple seconds to say that there have already been several missions of the United Nations in Haiti of military intervention, of military occupation. And this brought hundreds of thousands of infections of cholera, tens of thousands of deaths from cholera, horrific cases of human rights violations of rape, of murder, of many different instances. And so for the people of Haiti, an intervention, a military intervention of the United States of the United Nations is unacceptable. And people are on the streets. People are standing in solidarity across the world to demand that this cannot happen. Interesting. While this is happening in Haiti, there have been two military coups in Burkina Faso this year, one in January, when Colonel Dhamiba came to power, overthrowing a government that has been around since the big protest movement that overthrew the government of Blase Comparé. And again, then on September 30th, a 34-year-old captain, Ibrahim Tarore, comes into power. Very interesting development, though. Mr. Tarore comes into power saying that Colonel Dhamiba was not able to exercise what he said he was going to do, which is to defeat the jihadis in the northern part, who actually hold about 40% to 50% of the territory of Burkina Faso. All that is said and interesting that there was a second coup within a coup claiming itself not to be a coup, because Captain Tarore says, well, we're just changing the administration within the coup regime. He was called upon by his supporters to become president of the country. Rather than do that this morning, today in Burkina Faso, Friday, a major assembly was held in Burkina Faso's capital, a national meeting was held in Ouagadougou, which brought together a range of people, people, of course, from the army and the police, but also religious organizations, tribal organizations, civil society groups, trade unions, various political parties and representatives of the people who had been internally displaced. This is now up to millions of people who have been displaced. They had this major national meeting today, where according to Colonel Major Celestin Kampare, no relative of Blaise Kampare, I should say, the objective was to create a transitional charter and designate a transitional president. Now, as of now, the meeting is just finished in Burkina Faso. As of now, it appears that Captain Tarore said he's not interested in becoming the transitional president. So very interesting development, friends. You've got to watch this closely. If this is true, if Captain Tarore is not playing Julius Caesar, you'll remember Julius Caesar was offered the laurel three times and he said, no, no. And then the third time he said, okay, fine, put it on my head. Well, this could be the game that Captain Tarore is playing. You assemble a big national meeting, bring all the stakeholders. Your supporters go there and say, Captain Tarore, you must be the next president. 34-year-old said, no, no, no, we need a process. We need to establish a kind of democratic process without holding elections, because you can't hold elections in a country. He made the argument earlier when half the country is in the hands of jihadis who are not going to permit elections to be held there. So this process is ongoing. Perhaps he's correct in his judgment to say, let's create a democratic process. I won't be the transitional president and so on, but we'll see. We'll see what happens in the days ahead. Perhaps that pressure will get to this young man and he will say, I'll take on the mantle. As it happens, a lot of pressure on France. France's military thrown out of Mali, now likely exiting from Burkina Faso. What will happen in Niger? What will happen in Mauritania? What will happen to G5 Sahel, which is the French political cutout for that region? What indeed is going to happen with French-Moroccan relations? Stay tuned. Only one place to find out in the English language. And that said, give the people what they want. Brought to you every week from People's Dispatch. That's Zoe and Prashant. I'm Vijay from Globetrotter. See you next week. It's our 99th show. Send us those selfies on Twitter. We love to see them.