 Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Your weekly movement news roundup. Give the people what they want. Your weekly movement news roundup. The 94th episode, 16th of September, had to check the date, I'm afraid. A lot of stories for you where Zoe and Prashant from People's Dispatch, your favorite movement-driven news source, general news source. Why even movement-driven? One of the best places to get the news. I'm Vijay from Globe Trotter. Happy to be with you on this Friday. We're going to go with a very positive story. It seems we're going to look at the Brazilian elections. I'm surprising myself by saying a story about elections is positive, especially in 2022. Zoe, what's going on in that titanic election in Brazil between Lula and Bolsonaro? Well, I'm still remaining a bit reserved in terms of whether I say it's good news or bad news. Polls have pretty much stayed the same. One of the biggest polling agencies, Datafolio, which has one of the most respected kind of formulas and methodologies for doing opinion, voter opinion polls, just released another poll yesterday. Lula is polling at 45% compared to Bolsonaro's 33%. This has essentially been the difference that's been present for the past couple of weeks. It hasn't changed a ton. There's been tiny differences in other polls, but this is pretty much the standard at this point. As you said, we're two weeks away. We're two weeks away from these titanic elections. The big question on everyone's mind is not really is the look and the win because it seems like it's pretty much in the bag. Bolsonaro has essentially a 33% stronghold of Bolsonaro supporters, people who have been completely loyal to him, but this hasn't really increased. People don't expect that it will increase even if it goes for a second round. Most likely people who vote for other candidates will either vote in a null vote or support Lula. The question is, who knows what happens? October could be crazy and all of this could be completely turned on its head, but really at this point the question is, is Lula going to win in the first round? The tendency is indicating that it's possible. He's at 45%. As I said, Bolsonaro isn't going to really increase beyond 33%, 35%. But it really, it also depends what's going to happen with these other candidates. Cedro Gomez, who has essentially served to be a diversion away from the Workers' Party, has not dropped out of the race despite pulling below 10%. He continues to have pretty low numbers, not a popular figure in Brazilian politics. And so really the question is, is Lula going to be able to push over the threshold of 50% to get this first round election? We'll see. If he does win in the first round, it will definitely put him in a stronger position to take on these challenges that Brazil faces today. It's in a deep economic crisis, deep social crisis, deep political, deep social crisis. As we've reported at People's Dispatch, unemployment rate through the roof, the real has lost a lot of its value, increasing the numbers of homelessness in Brazil. Brazil is back on the hunger map with millions of people suffering from food insecurity. Lula's going to need not only a strong Congress, but also really to show that he has the confidence of the people to be able to enact the policies, the bold policies that will be necessary to lift Brazil out of this crisis, to fight the privatization that happened during the Temer presidency, during the Bolsonaro presidency. A lot of the major achievements that Brazil was able to make during Lula's presidency during Dilma's presidency were completely reversed during these years of Temer and Bolsonaro. This will be key. He needs to show that he has a strong foot forward. However, first round victory also means it opens the door for Bolsonaro to kind of wage a full-fledged campaign about voter fraud. If it's a close race in the first round, there are a lot of concerns about what the responsible Bolsonaro would be. That being said, this week in a podcast interview, he said that he would hand over power if he loses in the elections. This is, of course, contrary to what he's been saying for months, contrary to what he was said on the 7th of September to his supporters. So really, as we've said, everything can happen in October, but this is what we've seen so far. This is what the polls are saying and this is what analysts are saying generally. This is what analysts are saying. Amazing how generous of him to say that if he loses an election, he'll hand over power. Remarkable which the Egyptian president could hear this statement from Mr. Bolsonaro. In Egypt, of course, a whole other different crisis. Prashant, very, very sad news coming from the prisons of Egypt. Tell us what's happening there. All right, Vijay, like you said, because with Adil Fatah el-Sisi, the issue is not about handing power if he loses as much as rigging elections so that he never loses, which seems to be the case. But Egypt is a remarkable, it's a remarkable situation right now. It's going to host COP 27 very soon, a meeting where leaders across the world are going to come together, talk about how to somehow save this world from disaster, how to build some kind of an equitable, equitable way to sort of redistribute our resources. But Egypt is also a country where it seems that of nearly 120,000 prisoners, over 65,000 are at least political prisoners and that's an unbelievable number. And the most recent statistic has been that close to three political prisoners have died in almost about a week or so. And most of these people have gone to jail after Adil Fatah el-Sisi came to power in his military coup and we have seen this issue being highlighted again and again. We've seen the fact that rights organizations for instance have continuously raised this especially also keeping COP 27 in the forefront. But what does not seem to change is the fact that across the world, Adil Fatah el-Sisi continues to enjoy the kind of complete untrammel support so to speak. We saw that he did meet Biden and other leaders in the region recently and this is despite the fact that there has been a fair amount of chronicling of this kind of the horrible situation inside Egyptian jails. The key aspect of course being the fact that medical negligence is attributed is the key aspect. By medical negligence what people really mean is that prisoners are treated so badly the health conditions are ignored and completely left unmonitored so that they they sort of move towards an extremely bad situation health wise and we also have the instance of Al-Abdul Fattah who probably one of the most prominent political prisoners in Egypt. Again despite the huge international outcry we see that in recent times he's been on a hunger strike for months now consuming almost no solid food if I'm not mistaken. Despite all this he's barely been allowed to meet his family the kind of facilities but the kind of even basic rights that even a prisoner enjoys in most parts of the world are completely denied to him and this is after a career of political persecution the fact that he's been put in jail multiple times for charges such as spreading fake news many of the charges against political prisoners are like these so vague spreading fake news and a random notion of terrorism a huge number of people are in pretrial detention as well which has been used by the state very effectively to sort of ensure that any kind of dissent is foiled. So I think you know as we move towards COP 27 this is a very important question that people's movements also need to keep asking and highlighting because Egypt is a linchpin of the imperialist project in West Asia because you know from what gets a huge amount of supplies from the United States it is essentially blockading Gaza it plays a the role of a collaborator with Israel so all these together even in Iran for instance it has its own interventions in the Horn of Africa as well Libya for that matter so keeping all these interventions in mind I think Egypt is really a country that people's movements rights organizations really need to keep focusing on especially as we move towards the event which will have international attention. You know you pointed out the very great grave problem of the prisons in Egypt of course there are consistently human rights reports written about this the United Nations has weighed in on this doesn't seem to have much of an impact but look I'm going to take us to Syria where there is a new UN report 50 page report very interesting report about the renewal of fighting inside Syria in both the northwest and northeast different sectors of the fighting in in the northwest largely around the area of Idlib where the you know various let's say the anti-government forces have been hold up very ugly fighting starting there in the northwest where of course there's the remaining oil of the Syrian people there is a battle with various forces including if I'm not to be too critical of the UN report also gangsters there's very little of that in the report the UN officials have warned that large scale fighting might start again they hope it will not currently they estimate that the government of Bashar al-Assad controls about 70% of Syria it's pretty amazing 30% is outside the control of the government of the territory there's been some increase of aerial bombardment including by Russian aircraft this is of interest of note because of of course the war in Ukraine that continues where I must say I'll come back to this in the end you know the Ukrainian forces made enormous gains in Kharkiv and in other parts of Ukraine pushing Russian forces back almost to the Donbas region and in some places to the Russian territory itself but in Syria there's some increase of Russian bombing and so on but the bit that caught my eye which was to me really underreported was the dozen or more Israeli air strikes against Syria in the past six months the first six months of 2022 in these first six months there have been a dozen air strikes what has Israel been striking here's what's interesting Israel has been hitting not military targets but has been hitting the airport in Damascus and the airport in Aleppo these are principally night raids there was a night raid on Aleppo airport on the 31st of August and then Israeli planes came back and bombed the airport on the 6th of September these bombings have been and my notes are pretty specific they've been bombing various kinds of navigational capacities radars at the airports and things like that the authorities at Aleppo international airport worry that if a bomb strikes a place where there are civilians the chance of civilian casualties very high the intensity of the attacks has increased the Syrians sent a note to the United Nations it says Syria reminds the UN that Israel today has no qualms about expanding its repeated attacks on different areas of Syrian territory and endangering Syrian airports and civil aircraft now this has happened at the same time as the Europeans have lifted sanctions on the Syrian airline Cham Wings the main government airline that flies inside and around Syria the Europeans have lifted sanctions on the airline and just at that point the Israelis are bombing Syrian airports it's interesting that there's been very little consideration about this and the reason bringing this up is because not because the Syrians have been complaining about and I read out part of their statement not because of that but because in the United Nations report it is noted specifically that the Israelis have bombed at least a dozen sites it's a very conservative number inside Syria because there's a lot of contested bombings by Israel that have taken place I'm not even focusing on that I'm just focusing on the simple fact Israel has been bombing two civilian airports not the military side of the airport but civilian infrastructure in the airport for which reason the airports have to constantly shut down or fly blind without radar very dangerous endangering civilians inside Syria very little international commentary on this and I'm not surprised by that but I want to raise it for our viewers and listeners to pay attention to this has not been happening now I said I was going to come back to the issue of Ukraine because to some extent it is related as I said the Russians have been increasing stepping up bombing inside Syria at the same time as this the Russian forces suffered a real defeat in Kharkiv being pushed back there's a lot of conversation on Russian television shows open debate about the war about how the logistical lines have been stretched and whether Russia should go for a full mobilization and therefore increase the war in intensity not clear exactly what decisions will be made at the end of the program I'm going to come back to a meeting being held in Samarkand of the Shanghai cooperation organization Vladimir Putin the president of Russia is at that meeting come back to this part of the story you're listening to give the people what they want brought to you by people's dispatched Zoe and Prashant I'm Vijay from Globetrotter 94th show that we have today is an important day in Mexico it's the 16th of September in the Zocalo tens of thousands of people are gathering not only in the Zocalo but in other squares public squares in Mexico celebrating their great day of independence Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador going to speak and so on he's the president Zoe you have something else on your mind I think something about the Assanges I gather that they have decided to pay a visit to Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador Well it is important to mention that this great day in Mexico because a lot of the presidency of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has invited many personalities politicians social leaders to participate in this anniversary of independence and because of the story that I'm going to talk about which has to do with the Assanges it's interesting to think of this celebration and this gathering happening in Mexico and parallel to what's happening in the UK where people are also gathering but it's to commemorate and enshrine colonialism in the Royal Family and really just kind of want to point out a bit of the moral bankruptcy that we see kind of existing in the UK and Europe and really what we're seeing from Latin America is an emerging kind of unabashed challenge to US imperialism for the past several months leaders across Europe have essentially bowed to US interests on all fronts whether it's energy sanctions on Russia whether it's upholding their different policies whereas we've seen in the past week the government of the city of Mexico bestowed the keys of the city to Julian Assange the co-founder of WikiLeaks who is being persecuted by the US government in collusion with the government of the UK and other European governments a Spanish spy agency was spying on him when he was in the Ecuadorian embassy in Sweden the case in Sweden was really the basis for which he was detained and we've seen in the past week only in Mexico has he been invited to have asylum in Mexico by Amlo his family was given the keys to the city they were welcomed into the congress chambers but also a former Honduran president Manuel Zelaya also called on the UK to release Julian Assange so it's really interesting to see this moral voice of reason that emerged from this region that has been so long attacked by the United States been under the boot of US imperialism and they're standing up on very key issues not only issues that relate to their own economies but really issues of international order of geopolitical independence from US imperialism so I think it's an incredibly interesting moment right now in Latin America with the reconfiguration of the political scene with more progressive governments the question was always going to be how are they going to take on US imperialism what is going to be the response and what we've seen in Mexico what we've seen with these statements from Manuel Zelaya is that they're not they're going to stand up to US imperialism and on these questions that are so sensitive to the State Department which is of course Julian Assange and as we've been reporting at People's Dispatch Assange this year is a crucial year for his case and the border was approved by the former Home Secretary of course now with the change in Prime Minister with Liz Truss there is a shift in the cabinet and this case continues but the UK has not changed its stance on whether to not only keep Julian Assange in prison but also on his extradition but people of the world are still standing up on October 8th and 9th they're going to be surrounding the UK Parliament and a human chain to demand that lawmakers take action and demand his release there's several other campaigns going on to call for his release Julian Assange is considered by many a prisoner of the empire because he dared to reveal these crimes of imperialism which of course we are always referring to on this show the crimes that we saw in Iraq and of course Afghanistan which I know Prashant is going to talk a little bit about now yes Prashant is going to talk about it because there's a great article on the People's Dispatch website by Amitabh Roy Chaudhary really found it interesting Prashant glad that you run it he's a veteran journalist what's the story with this humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan and of course Vijay it's a two-fold crisis we talked about the crimes of imperialism on the one hand it's a crisis we'll come to that but the most recent bit of news was the fact that the United States has decided to for the purposes of safekeeping mind you that's a very important word to note it has decided to transfer Afghanistan's money of foreign reserves basically to our Swiss to a trust in Switzerland and Swiss Bank basically and this is one of the most observed bits of news you get to hear there's a lot of absurd news as part of journalism but this even by those standards kind of stood out for a street spa because we know that Afghanistan's reserves were frozen by the United States along with its allies there was nearly 7 billion dollars that the US had control over first of all with nobody's concerned the Biden administration decided to split it into two and you know reserve one bit for legal proceedings related to the 9-11 attack in which the Taliban basically had no role to play but nonetheless 3.5 billion dollars of Afghanistan's money Afghanistan people's money was basically allocated for that and then for regarding the other 3.5 billion there have been talks going on for months regarding what to do about it and again might be one the important thing is that this is the Afghan people's money and finally the decision that has been taken is to transfer this to another entity which will then have which will then be magnanimous enough to approve transactions for various economic aspects may not necessarily be for aid per se so this is basically what has happened over the past two days I was reading a Washington Post reported this which had a very interesting line which said that the US and the Taliban have wrestled over the money for months now the fund is very interesting because it gives the impression that this is something two parties have a right on whereas that's really not the case and it's tragic that this is happening at this point of time because Afghanistan is going into its second winter under the Taliban and it looks like we talked about this last winter as well it's depressing coming back to some of these subjects so regularly we talked about this last winter about how bad the situation was and this winter nearly a year later nothing really seems to have changed because you know apparently for about 92 percent of households are struggling to meet their food needs as the article points out if you look for instance at the fact that the economic output of the country has shrunk by nearly 30 percent since last year August 2021 and despite all the concern expressed by various international players by various countries who talk about human rights who talk about say you know making sure we need to help the people etc etc only 40 percent of the money called by the UN that's 4.4 billion has actually received so far so this is the kind of situation in which people are there is widespread poverty there is widespread hunger we see Afghanistan has you know for the since 2000 since the US invaded they really didn't focus on building anything much but we are seeing an actual deterioration in conditions that is taking place because the fact that on the one hand the government has you know completely failed in so many ways but more importantly from an international perspective countries in the west especially have sort of taken this extremely hard line position and taken this position by which they basically denied the people of Afghanistan visit their resources so keeping all this in mind very very difficult time in the coming months as well for the people I think it's very important that the journalists keep writing about it but not just write about it in terms of a humanitarian disaster which it is but also link this humanitarian disaster to the policies of those who would deny the people of Afghanistan the money and whatever little help it can bring no one is saying that that money would solve all the problems or that money is the only reason for these problems but it is I think very irresponsible not to link these two well it's something to pay attention to 20 years ago the the countries that surrounded Afghanistan including China which took leadership on this assembled a meeting in Shanghai and in the summer of well 2001 they started establishing a dialogue about what to do with the Taliban rule and how to basically prevent Afghanistan from basically you know having a serious meltdown to put it very bluntly that grouping developed into the Shanghai cooperation organization the SCO which met is meeting yesterday and today in summer Khan Uzbekistan for their 22nd meeting it's very important meeting it's ahead of government meeting I want to make some points about the Shanghai cooperation organizations meeting the first point is that well this is about now 20 years of the SCO and over these 20 years from just being a handful of countries that were around Afghanistan you know including the Central Asian Republics China Russia came into the mix very soon and so on now it has grown India is a member Pakistan is a member and in this meeting Iran joined as a full-scale member of the SCO so in these 20 years the SCO really has grown to become a major a force in Eurasia drawing in more and more members in the region that's the first thing to think about when you think of the SCO secondly the entry of Iran is interesting and I think it bears some reflection now Iran is taking an interesting position regarding the energy crisis in Europe you know as a consequence of the European and US sanctions on Russia it is getting harder and harder for European countries to source natural gas and oil from Russia on the 24th of August the oil minister in Iran Jawad Oji made a statement in Tehran which actually surprised me Mr. Oji said that Iran is prepared to supply oil and gas to Europe to make up for whatever you know deficit there would be from Russia this is an interesting statement made by Mr. Oji essentially what he's telling the Europeans is if you can get the United States to come back to the table of the 2050 agreement well maybe we can sort something out but certainly the Iranians not with the full appetite to start a new negotiation around their nuclear energy policy they want the United States to return to the 2050 agreement as if Trump hadn't pulled the US unilaterally out of that international agreement but Mr. Oji said look we're quite prepared to supply Europe interestingly during the discussions at the SCO meeting in Samarkand it has become quite clear that China is willing to buy Iranian and Russian energy up to whatever point is available in fact you know China used to purchase a lot of its energy from Saudi Arabia that has been declining as China has increasingly been purchasing energy from Russia and Iran in other words the SCO is not merely about political issues and it's not merely about the status of Afghanistan subsequent to the US occupation of Afghanistan from 2001 till 2021 that 20 year period China has developed different kind of orientation in the region including the Belt and Road Initiative also announced in 2013 in Central Asia building infrastructure and so on so what you see in the SCO now is trade issues have come to the surface including energy infrastructure development Mr. Xi Jinping in Samarkand promised more funds towards building infrastructure in Central Asia huge statement because Central Asian governments have really been struggling you know they are fundamentally integrated to the Russian economy sanctions on Russia has had an enormous knock on effect on Central Asia I've done a story of two stories about the problems of food security in Central Asia as a consequence of the sanctions on Russia so the entry of Iran as a full pledge member in the SCO is a message by the Chinese saying they are actually not prepared to take seriously US sanctions on either Iran or Russia that they are happy to buy oil and natural gas from both the third point of importance here is at the Samarkand meeting it's the first in-person meeting between Vladimir Putin of Russia and Xi Jinping of China since February 4th that's before Russia entered Ukraine and at this meeting in the public statement made by Mr. Putin he said something curious he said that you know basically the Chinese don't agree with what we've been doing in Ukraine didn't say it so bluntly but effectively that's what he said and China has also indicated that you know they are not really happy with what's happening in Ukraine it's a very interesting development we'll follow it you know return to it next week final point I want to make about the SCO meeting is at the SCO meeting Xi Jinping said all our countries need to worry about color revolutions I know Zoe Prashant and I have had a serious discussion on how to report on some of these issues of color revolutions come back to that as well friends you've been listening to give the people what they want brought to from people's dispatch and globetrotter next week I'm going to be writing an article about the SCO so hopefully you'll have a more coherent assessment of it see you next time it's our 95th show only 5 more to go more selfies needed guys