 Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Your weekly movement news roundup. Somehow I don't believe this. I don't believe that this is show 139. I'm sorry to say this but it feels like show 239 because we seem to have done this forever and ever and ever. In fact, I was on a program recently where I was introduced right after Zoe finished a segment as the other host of give the people what they want. Well, that's where you are. Give the people what they want brought to you by people's dispatch that Zoe and Prashant and Vijay from Globe Trotter show number 139. Wow. Coming up to 150. Remember guys, as we come up to anniversaries, those selfies need to keep coming for us. I haven't forgotten. I know that the rest of you hate give the people what they want selfies. I like them. We need more of them. Sudan five months. UN report Prashant says that the Sudan war is spiraling out of control. Millions of displaced Sudanese give us an update from that war. Right. I think something we talked about very early on when this war broke out that it risks becoming one of those conflicts. One of those wars which people begin to take for granted after a period of time. So we actually see far less coverage for fewer people talking about it now than maybe some months ago. But it's important to know that it has entered its fifth month and the human toll is toll has been catastrophic. We're talking about. I think 4 million people who have been displaced, at least 3 million of them, of course, internally displaced at least 1 million people approximately having to leave the country, many from cities actually because the scale of the conflict. And, you know, like in many of these conflicts which last over many, many months, what happens is that there is no aspect of life which is unaffected at this point. The health system, for instance, has drastically crumbled. We are talking about, I think, of the 89 main hospitals that Sudan has. Only 18 are functioning that too at partial capacity. And the other 71 are pretty much out of service either because of attacks or killing or, you know, the wounding of medics. Our colleague Pawan has a very good story there which actually lists the entire scope of the kind of calamities that people of Sudan are facing at this point. And, you know, even, say, for instance, women who are giving birth are at risk. There are people, for instance, who are undergoing dialysis, who are dying in numbers. And, you know, what is really a very horrific fact, the fact that in many cities you have corpses actually rotting because there is, there are no way to bury it and you have resident members of various volunteer groups, local resistance committees that were in the forefront of resisting Omar al-Bashir actually taking part in digging graves to actually bury these corpses. So, you know, this is the extent of the problem that is there. And I think the estimates say that about 20 million people are hungry and I think 6.3 million of the people are just one step away from famine and these are, you know, the UN numbers which again indicate the extent of the problem. So for many of our viewers, important to remember that this fighting is essentially between the Sudanese army and the rapid support forces, which is a paramilitary force, both of these forces controlling substantial amounts of Sudan's economic wealth, both of these forces have entrenched themselves over the years through the backing of many foreign countries to the backing of the western powers. Why the people of Sudan kept saying that they should not have a say in power. But these generals were very much backed by the foreign players who thought that these generals would be the way out to peace and democracy. And look where this has landed the people of Sudan at this point. And it is important to remember that these two forces are technically fighting over, you know, at this point, it's not even clear exactly what they are fighting to destroy each other or to reduce the amount of influence the other force has. But the people who are suffering are basically the people of Sudan and I think, for instance, if you go to the West Darfur state, which our report points out, the scale of the atrocities has been even much, much more in West Darfur than many other areas. And Darfur itself has a long history of being pillaged of its people being targeted by the RSS and associated militias. So very depressing anniversary, so to speak. And I think what is concerning equally is the fact that really is no roadmap in terms of negotiations. There have been quite a few ceasefire attempts in some of these ceasefires held for a week, three, four days, whatever. And then they collapsed because one of these ceasefire attempts has been held. And right now it's just complete deadlock at this point, except for very vague statements that talks need to be held. So I think a kind of conflict and definitely like I said, because of the people fleeing out of Sudan, it has already had an impact on neighboring countries and this is likely to continue in the coming months as well. So I think very essential to keep a watch on Sudan, but also I think essential to remember that the factors that led to it were the factors which the Wanda and these warnings were not heated. Prashant, Sudan to Africa's east toward the Horn of Africa, if you go west of Sudan, you're in Chad, if you go one country over, you're in Niger. Or in Sudan, possibility of military intervention into Niger. Niger, as we already talked about on this show, has had a number of challenges that it's faced in recent days. Now, this is the fourth country in the Sahel region after Burkina Faso, Guinea and Mali that's had a military coup. The military coup has brought a government in initially led by the military, now led in fact by a civilian, Ali Lameen Zain. Ali Lameen Zain was the minister of economy and finance until the government from about 2002 to 2010. He is a development economist has had a lot of experience at the Africa Development Bank, he's a civilian. Now, the problem is because of the coup the government that came afterwards suspended military agreements with France and asked France to remove its military forces 1500 of them also said that they would seize selling uranium to France very important for France's nuclear industry. They didn't say anything about the US military base in Agades Air Base 201, nothing was said about that, but definitely anti-French sentiment. Since Ali Lameen Zain came in as the civilian president of this government, one would have thought that tensions would dial down that they've said there'll be an election there's not a military ruler and so on. In fact, tensions remain high. Ecovas, the economic community of West African states, had said initially that they condemn the coup and so did the African Union. It's not just France and the US and others that condemn this coup. African Union also condemned the coup. You see, very interesting it's been a situation across the African continent that the French and the US are unlikely and unwilling to intervene with military forces of their own. We saw this in Mozambique where France asked Rwanda to intervene on its behalf a kind of Africanization of intervention. In the case of Niger it's again unlikely that French troops will be landing in Nigeria or any of the neighboring states and crossing the borders very unlikely. The French don't want a direct footprint. They want somebody to intervene for them. Who will this be? This is the principle question. Ecovas was mobilized. Standby force was prepared for two days. Defense chiefs of Ecovas countries met in Akra Ghana. They met on the 17th and 18th of August. Long meetings, long days. As they were meeting in Akra to discuss whether the standby force should intervene in Niger and in fact, what are the logistics? They were working mainly on logistics. The African Union came out and said no military intervention. That didn't mean they didn't condemn the coup. They just said no military intervention. Interesting statement. Fascinatingly, the Presbyterian church which plays a role in this region has also come out and said no military intervention. It's a very important development. But it's not just that. It's not just the African Union and Presbyterian church. Fascinatingly, and I find this very interesting, mass protests in Senegal, mass protests in Nigeria against intervention has also cautioned the governments. Then we heard a rumor that Ghana might intervene by itself without Ecovas. Excuse me. This now looks unlikely. But it's a possibility. Intervention remains on the table. The African continent simply doesn't need another war. I mean, there is, as I said, Chad and then Sudan. There's already a war there. If you go south beneath Niger, there are a number of conflicts ongoing, including in Nigeria on the borderlands of Nigeria. This is an important issue because the governments of Burkina Faso and Mali have said that if anybody enters Niger, they will take it as an attack on their countries. This could be a broad war across the Sahel. Right now, caution seems to be of the hour. How long will France tolerate this attitude of caution? It's to be seen. We are following it. People's dispatch is running story upon story about this. Globetrotter is going to run a number of more pieces on this issue. We are following this very carefully, including trying our best to get an interview with Ali Lameen Zain. If anybody can get us that, let us know. Zoe, we're talking about conflicts in Africa. Prashant and I went through Sudan and now Niger. There are some serious different kinds of conflicts going on in South America, maybe at the ballot box, whatever it might be, but things are quite crazy in Ecuador and Argentina. Last time you told us about an assassination. What's the latest? Well, yes, the two major countries right now in South America that are in the midst, in a sense of electoral processes and have had big shocks to the system. So I can start with Ecuador. As we spoke about last week, there was an assassination of one of the presidential candidates, Fernando Villavicencio, days after a candidate for local body from the citizens revolution was also assassinated. There are threats and rumors going around on social media who's next. A climate of serious fear, we've talked about this, that the levels of violence are rising when you assassinate a presidential candidate you get the sense that no one is safe and that if this was motivated because of their positions, then naturally someone else could also face the same fate. So there's been a certain climate of a lot of fear that has permeated, of course the final end of the kind of campaigning of the general elections that are going to happen this Sunday, August 20th. There are now eight candidates running for president and they had their final debate on Monday. I watched it. It was quite chaotic. A lot of it was focused. The first section was focused on security and it seemed like the candidates were fighting for who could have a more tough on crime standpoint because at this point with fear being the word of the hour, that is kind of the only guarantee they can give people. We know in that, you know, hearing analysis from sociologists from people who have been studying and following this that it really has to do with the broader degradation of society, the degradation of social policies, of breaking down, of pushing people into the informal sector of the boom, I mean Petro, Guzal Petro president of Colombia says that this has to do with the boom of fentanyl consumption in the United States. There's many, many factors but what the people are seeming to want to hear is security and that has meant that candidate Gantopi, who we've said is a mercenary, he's a member of the coalition in the Sahel in Ukraine, he has shot up in the polls and it seems to be like it might be a direct tie between him and Luisa Gonzalez who had been previously polling ahead of the rest of the candidates. So we're going to see what happens on Sunday in Ecuador but it does seem likely that a second round would take place. So we'll be definitely following that and hoping that the violence does not escalate across the Andes. Again, very, very concerning developments that took place in the primary elections there last Sunday. We saw that in these elections where people essentially vote in their different electoral coalitions, in some senses these coalitions use the elections to decide who's going to be the candidates of these different slates. Also it means that all of the different parties that want to run the elections have to get over a certain threshold but these are not binding elections in the sense of the different parties. So however in these elections Javier Millay from the far right Liberty Advances party took the largest vote share and he's been a candidate that people have laughed about. He's a former Tantric sex coach, he's crazy, he yells, he wants to ban abortion, he wants to ban sex education, he wants to dollar as the economy, he wants to collapse dozens of countries. I mean the things he's promoting and are promising to do are crazy in a sense. However, he did win the highest vote share in these elections. Many think that this is in response to kind of the lack of solutions and the lack of radical change really promised by the other candidates. Argentina has 40% of the population living under the poverty line. It had 100% inflation last year. The currency has evaluated. I mean it's currently every single day it's evaluating more people are unable to use their salaries to buy their basic needs. It's a situation of despair, it's a situation of crisis and the people feel that if you're not going to offer, I mean this is clear what the results have shown that if you're going to make few promises negotiate with the IMF say well actually you know we're just going to take this debt. We're going to sacrifice you know servicing the people giving them what they need then this is kind of the response and so from now until October it's going to be a mad dash by the right by the left to figure out what to do. People are very concerned about the possibility of a presidency. I think it will definitely go to a second round in Argentina but from now to October what is going to happen that remains to be seen. How is it that a tantric sex coach is against sex education? That's not the most puzzling thing about Javier Millet. The most puzzling thing Zoe is that Javier Millet promised the people extreme austerity and one in three Argentinians voted for him. That's pretty puzzling. Equally puzzling Zoe and I've been following this a lot is Brazil but we're going to come back to that in a second you're listening to give the people what they want brought to you by people's dispatch that Zoe and Prashant the best reporting you're going to get on world news peoplesdispatch.org I'm Vijay from Globe Trot. I'm happy to be with you we're almost at a hundred and fiftieth show bring those selfies home we need them. Zoe has started to talk about Brazil. I watched Ja Pedro Stede love the landless workers movement march into parliament with a bunch of religious leaders women dressed in white these are people who follow various African religions singing chanting and so on. I watched clips of him speaking in parliament he was quite hilarious in his typical Ja Pedro Stede way confronting the right wing with humor. What's happening in Brazil with all these parliamentary inquiries? Yes it's been a very active week in Brazil specifically in the chamber of deputies in the congress because of these parliamentary inquiry commissions and we followed pretty extensively this session that happened against the MST this was installed in May and as we've covered this was really an attempt of the right wing to put pressure on the government to put pressure on the left they essentially called for this investigation that they say is an investigation in response to the land occupations that took place during red April which is a celebration of landless struggle peasant struggle in honor of 17 people who were massacred in Brazil during the land occupation in the 90s and so following these series of occupations they essentially called for this investigation to figure out the funding who's behind the MST despite this being extremely clear if you actually take a second to look but really again it was an attempt to put pressure on the MST and it has been going on for a couple of months they've pulled people who have clearly and openly expressed that they do not agree with the MST that they were part of it and had grievances there's been so much coverage of who actually these people who are testifying against the MST saying that they promote unsafe practices I mean saying all sorts of things people who say that they were felt unsafe etc the MST has actually said on one hand a lot of these people there's clear cases against them for example movement there are people who are accused of robbery and these are some of the people who testified but also using this hand paking of testimonies to say that okay and the entire 2 million person movement is bad is also methodologically incorrect and so Joao Pedro had been summoned long ago to testify and to respond to these right wing senators and as you said I mean members of congress it was I mean the joke on social media was that it was a class it was like going to school because they would ask him a question and he would respond with Marxist theory he would respond with explaining how the MST is structured its principles its vision its organizational going completely explaining to them the history of agrarian reform the lack of agrarian reform in Brazil saying that the reason that the US initially got ahead of Brazil is also because the US carried out extensive agrarian reform I mean for anyone who wants to hear a bit of a history lesson in 7 hours highly recommend checking it out its very very informative I mean the battle of opinion was clearly won by Joao Pedro he even made the right wing deputies laugh I mean his jokes were so funny and they were so on point and so intelligent and clearly showing the hypocrisy the ridiculousness of these right wing members of congress and their attacks I mean the point that we posted on People's Dispatch about when they asked him would they were questioning him about why he went to China accompanying president Lula as part of his trip a couple months back and they were saying well why do you go to China they were saying I wanted to learn more about their experience of agrarian reform the programs that they've done in the countryside organic production etc and they said well is there a similar movement to the MST in China and he says of course no because they carried out agrarian reform and if you want the MST to end you can just do agrarian reform and we would have no more issues so that was really funny but then yesterday to the January 8 acts where thousands of Bolsonaro supporters raided the capital, Brasilia destroyed property destroyed artwork so many acts of destruction in this day attempted to really incite a riot incite something a coup that has been under investigation and yesterday a hacker testified saying that Bolsonaro ordered him to try to hack the electoral system to spread information that the electoral system was faulty and that if he was not successful then he should try to expose personal conversations of the judge Alexandre Moraes if he was not successful but that these were direct orders from Bolsonaro given within the president's palace damning, damning, damning testimonies there's definitely going to be updates on that we'll be following in people's dispatch if there is agrarian reform it might help the planet that's for absolutely certain Prashant we're going to come in the last couple of you know minutes we have talking about Hawaii first give us a report Prashant I heard the number 1300 people missing and so on what is going on in Hawaii, how do we understand this terrible spate of wildfires right Vishay I think quite a few important aspects again when you talk when often the media covers wildfires anywhere in the world it's kind of almost portrayed as something sparked, something sparked a wildfire and then you know acres of acres of land were destroyed and after that there's rebuilding etc etc but if you go down into the structural issues that led to the wildfire in Hawaii I think a lot of very important aspects you know get revealed and I think two or three things to highlight one is the fact that of course like you said a lot of people missing over 100 people believe that and I think the number definitely is much higher because this was a number from a few days ago but I think two or three important aspects to highlight the fact that one is that this is a direct result of the kind of policies you can actually pretty much call them colonial policies that were imposed over decades in Hawaii which basically privileged tourism which basically privileged plantations which basically destroyed the local wildlife in the region and basically set up the conditions for this kind of disaster to take place and also of course there's also the question for instance of climate change as well which many countries in the world are experiencing but what leads to a wildfire like in Hawaii and the kind of impact it has on there you need to go back like I said to the policies of decades and we're not talking about say damage that's going to cost about 5.5 billion or something hundreds of thousands of residential buildings have been demolished and again there's once again a question coming up with the kind of buildings that are going to be reconstructed are they even going to be affordable what rates are they going to be built at all of these are very important questions there is a question of the poverty rate in Hawaii for instance of the fact that people really struggle to even make minimum wage in a number of places and all of this I think goes back to this sort of colonial history that is often kind of completely obscured when we talk about Hawaii of course often people talk about just another state in the United States and that's very essential to sometimes the activists there push back against that say that by doing so you're really kind of completely obscuring that kind of a history and it is during such disasters that this kind of a history specifically comes out especially the fact that to basically allow the tourism industry to sort of thrive the kind of shortcuts that were taken the fact that the tourism industry is still going on even in the midst of a disaster like this so I think a very overall a very dangerous situation there the extent to the disaster we had to be very clear is still not completely evident the impact of this disaster will only be known in the coming years it's going to be very expensive to even try to rebuild and even that rebuilding considering how development is taking place in Hawaii is likely to be very inequitable is likely to be focused more on the commercial sectors rather than on the bulk of the people there who are already suffering from already suffering from exclusion so I think when we talk about disasters often but the big question that comes out is what happens after a disaster how do for instance government institutions how do communities sort of what are the principles on which this kind of rebuilding takes place what are the efforts being taken to ensure that the impact of climate change can be addressed or even dealt with will any of these steps be taken or will it be back to business as usual in this case it will be back to tourism as usual and I think that is the fundamental question that people across Hawaii people activists are asking community members are asking and they are presenting a strong demand on this Hawaii is in the middle of the Pacific Ocean in recent months there have been a spate of wildfires with this prolonged heat wave that has struck well not just the Pacific from the Middle East Japan has had a very long heat wave temperatures about 50 degrees Celsius on a regular basis Canada not only the southern parts of Canada which are close to the United States but up there in the Arctic Circle experiencing a heat wave the world meteorological organization says over 600 wildfires in Canada mass evacuation order in the town of Yellowknife in the Northwest territories of Canada British Columbia town of Lytton had a record temperature of 42.2 degrees Celsius it is extremely hot for that part of the world on the other side Hurricane Hillary is expanding going to strike the coast of Baja California hit southwest United States they expect about 150 to 160 millimeters of water rainwater coming off that hurricane the world meteorological organization in all of this has produced a very important report which I was reading last night called state of the climate in southwest Pacific 2022 it's about their data from last year well what they show is that there is increased because of this disruptive weather there is increased marine heat waves that's their word and coral bleaching I've talked in this show before about coral bleaching the coral reefs of the south pacific have been bleached largely because of heated water and this has an enormous impact on marine wildlife the IPCC the intergovernmental panel on climate change had released a very important report a few years ago about species extinction the section on marine wildlife is chilling it has a lot to do with the water temperatures are going up well the WMO this world meteorological organization report shows that sea level rates will rise in that region in the south pacific faster than the global rate rising at about 4 millimeters per year global warming or ocean warming is going to contribute 40 percent to the sea rise because of the thermal expansion of seawater as water heats up it's going to take up more room they point out in this report the impact on agriculture is going to be enormous food production is going to be ruined as a consequence of this it's a very chilling report about sea level rise in the south pacific region highly recommend having a look at that report you know at give the people what they want we bring you the world as best as we can today's show was interesting because we started on the African continent we had two wars one war ongoing for five months in Sudan the other a war potential in Niger where there is a potential escalation next week tricontinental is going to release a red alert document on the situation in Niger we hope very much people circulated we are journalists but we also care very much about people very much care that war and climate change and things like that have solutions go back and listen to Ja Pedro Stediel's conversation in the parliament you can show that there are still rational people in the world where we give the people what they want brought to you from people's dispatch Zoe and Prashant and Vijay from Globetrotter see you and don't forget selfies see you next week