 Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Your weekly movement news round up. Hello everybody. It's the 11th of November. Apologies for being a few minutes late. There's also a new time for us as you do daylight savings in the United States. Don't know why that exists. We never figured it out, figured it out in the rest of the world. But so it is. And welcome back. This is the 101st episode of Give the People What They Want. We're going to talk to you by People's Dispatch. That's Zoe and I. And Globe Trotter. Vijay from Globe Trotter will be joining us shortly. And we'll be bringing a set of stories as well. Of course, a very eventful week right now. We're talking of course about a time when COP 27 is going on. That is dominated news stories. We'll be talking about that, victim elections in the United States causing a lot of discussion. We have weeks away from 10 days or so away from one of the biggest sporting events in the world. We talked about that as well. But I'd like to start with an issue which got also a fair deal of attention, which was a peace deal in Ethiopia. And now on the show, you know that we talked about Ethiopia quite a bit talking about the conflict that has been taking, that has taken place, that took place over the past two years. It's in November 2020, this very month, two years ago, that this war broke out as well between the Ethiopian government and the Tigray people's liberation front. Now there's a long back history to that. The TPLF, of course, was the organization which ruled Ethiopia for nearly 27 years, starting from the 90s. A very autocratic rule. And it was this TPLF which was dislodged by Prime Minister Abhi Ahmed and the protest movement in 2018 as well. So we do know that last year they launched an assault. There was a series of, there was a lot of warfare, a very dire humanitarian crisis that took place in the whole control of Ethiopia as well. We do know that ceasefires were declared at various points. It's the TPLF broke. And finally, with the mediation of the African Union, a peace deal was finally signed in Pretoria and South Africa at the beginning of the month. Now a very, very important peace deal. Quite a couple of things I think we need to sort of take from this deal, one, of course, being the fact that a lot depends on this deal. And there are many people who are carefully watching to see if this deal will be honored. Because what are some of the key aspects of this deal? One talks about the complete disarmament of the TPLF by the early part of the first two weeks of December or so. It talks about the TPLF being integrated into the political and government institutions of Ethiopia. It talks about the constitution, paying priority to the constitution, the constitutional order again. It talks about the fact that the Ethiopian defense forces will be the sole military force. So many analysts have sort of even explained this or talked about this as in some sense, this is a surrender of the TPLF almost. Because the TPLF did suffer very major military setbacks, especially towards the end of the fighting in October. So a lot of eyes on whether this conflict will hold. We've seen various previous ceasefires not working out. And this peace agreement is of vital importance. If, you know, humanitarian supplies are to resume properly, if Ethiopia needs to sort of get back on its feet. But two other conclusions I'd like to sort of draw your attention to point out, one being the fact that this was an African Union mediated process. Now we do know that the TPLF tried very hard to bring the US and the EU in a very central position in these negotiations. The US was still there as an observer and a participant of course. But the TPLF wanted the US and the EU definitely to play a more central role. That did not take place. This process I think is very good for the fact that bodies like the African Union emerge as significant and important players and contenders which can actually resolve conflicts in the region because there is a tendency to sort of reduce the power of these agencies. And the US and countries often want to intervene and push their own agenda. Which the US did try to do of course and has done. But nonetheless the fact that this was an EU mediated process brings a lot of, is one very positive thing. Secondly, the fact of course is that this deal if it works out would be very good for the Horn of Africa region. It would mean a greater amount. It opens the possibility of a greater amount of collaboration between the countries in the region. We know the Horn of Africa extremely important strategically to the world because of its location. But also countries in this region have faced a huge amount of conflict. For instance, we've been hearing about the famine in Somalia, which has had very devastating consequences. We'll probably talk about that in the next week's show. But because of foreign intervention has played a very key role in actually accentuating some of these conflicts including the fact that the US supported the TPLF during its 27 rule that also played a huge role in it. So there is really the hope that this piece deal would sort of help the countries in the Horn of Africa to sort of come together to work a bit more closely to sort of bring cooperation, to increase cooperation among themselves and engage the outside world in that way. So fingers crossed as they say because this deal if it does not hold could have even worse consequences for the people of that very important country who have faced nearly two years of conflict. So very important story to keep watching and we will be doing that. Our colleague Pawan already has a very detailed breakdown of this peace agreement and various arguments about it on people's dispatch. Please do read it. Yeah, so important. I should look forward to. Yeah, it's so crucial to be paying attention to this, especially because of the geopolitic importance. Of course, the United States finds Ethiopia a lot of interest, which is why they've invested so much in sabotaging the peace and sabotaging the region. So it's it's I'm glad that we're continuing to follow this with a lot of care. On the other side of as we love to bounce around this past week was also the two year anniversary of when Luis Arce, the president Bolivia took office at people's dispatch. We were lucky enough to cover his historic election where he won in the first round of the elections in October 2020 against Carlos Meza, who was the, you know, the candidate of the far right. This was a historic election. Of course, elections that took place after a brutal and violent military coup against a democratically elected president, Evo Morales. And it saw the believing people on the streets for a year, really, to demand a return to democracy, demand these elections where Luis Arce was elected. So it's so symbolic and so important. These two years that he's been in office, he's really worked to reverse a lot of the negative impacts that took place during the coup the one year of coup government where they essentially just attempted to sabotage all national industries, huge corruption schemes taking place. And of course, Luis Arce as an economist, his primary specialty is really strengthening the state economy, working for integrating community cooperatives and many different structures into the national economy. And so this is super important these two years of government. However, they're taking place in the middle of kind of a difficult situation, Bolivia, in the department of Santa Cruz, which if people were following the coup in 2019, then they would have remembered that Santa Cruz was kind of the hub of a lot of the anti-democratic parties that were taking place before and after the elections. They really were kind of the primary pushers of this anti-democratic narrative saying that fraud was committed and also the concentration of a lot of these shock groups as they call them in Bolivia, which are these fascist groups, armed groups that erected road blockades that were the people that were responsible for the fascist attacks against members, the movement toward socialist party. So this is, once again, Santa Cruz is the center of new pre-coup efforts. For the past couple of weeks, they've been mobilizing in kind of a what seems like a quite a random demand, which is that the census that's going to be taking place in the year 2024 that it should take place in 2023. This demand has been essentially taken up by these groups in Santa Cruz who are led by Luis Fernando Camacho, who was the primary behind the coup efforts in 2019. He's now the governor of Santa Cruz, even though he's also been accused of many crimes and of inciting these protests, of inciting violence, etc. Continues to be the governor and he's once again riling people behind this demand that the census should be taking, should be carried out in 2023. And this is, again, I'm sure there's, he has his argument, but this is essentially the reason that he's brought, he's attempted to bring the department to a standstill not engaging in any negotiations. They've really caused a lot of havoc and the national government has attempted to call dialogue tables, has attempted to kind of bring them to discussion and there's been some efforts that have taken place but they've rejected many of them and have just continued to be blocking work from happening and there's been a lot of confrontation between people who want to be going to work and going about their daily lives and these shock groups which are impeding the daily economy and their daily lives from taking place. And so this is entering, I think, the third week of these protests the Bolivian government has called on them to kind of back down and engage in dialogue and of course these protests while about the census of course have a political motivation which is destabilizing the government destabilizing the mass party destabilizing Luis Arce so we've been following this people's as we'll continue, I also recommend people follow Kassashia News, a very good news source in English about Bolivia they've been also following this very closely but it's very important to remember I think this is a key element that once a progressive government gets elected it continues to be a struggle and those far-right forces that we're seeing grow across the continent and especially now with the victory of Lula da Silva continue to be there and they continue to reinvent new strategies to destabilize and try to push their agenda in any way possible right so yeah it's a very important point you actually ended with because you talked about how the right wing you know which is many cases has often been backed by western powers they prevent the progress or the functioning of democratic governments progressive governments especially and this is all the more important because the tasks before such governments are the tasks progressive governments set for themselves are of such vital importance, ending issues like hunger ending issues like poverty, malnutrition trying to work on education and very equally trying to work on climate change as well and this is all the more significant now because COP 27 has been is going on right now on the one hand we've seen leaders from across the world come and talk in many of these sessions we have seen interesting proposals from Nicholas Maduro for instance a very important intervention by prime minister, we are Motley of Barbados I believe the Gustavo Petro from Columbia has also delivered a very important speech it's very important I think to sort of listen to the proposals of you know many of these leaders because they bring especially progressive governments because they bring something which often governments of the best or you know of the global not to not bring and I think which is why it's equally important to sort of focus on the COP 27 as well it's a very difficult topic to follow let's be even for me to be honest because however much you read there's avalanche of information that keeps coming in that's often distracting a lot of bad news which is very important but also within these reports also within these discussions are fundamental questions of justice of our time and I think these need to be flagged again and again right now the COP 27 summit going on again this question of justice very much on the table global countries of the global south are consistently pushing for the countries pushing countries of the global north what are the promises they made regarding financing regarding money because historically we do know that the global north is responsible for the bulk of the carbon emissions which are causing which are leading to climate change which are likely to make the situation worse and so it is only right that they also provide the funding that is necessary to sort of not only to mitigate the effects but also to deal with it right now because climate change is not just about the future 30 years or 50 years from now it's today's issue and I think right now technical discussions going on for the first time loss and damage has become an agenda point in this meeting it's a term you're going to be hearing a lot in the coming months and years as well it basically means that countries which are now suffering the brunt of climate change be able to receive the kind of funding that is needed to actually deal with that impact and it was fittingly introduced on behalf of G77 in China by Pakistan which went into a horrible bout of flooding this year and people have attributed that to the climate change so I think this has been the demand and what we have seen is basically that the western countries they have sort of been very reluctant to commit to actually providing finances that's point number one they have failed to honour their pledges that $100 billion a year would be allocated every year that hasn't happened and even some of the promises have turned out to be inflated promises whatever they can say said they're committing they've turned out to be inflated equally importantly the fact that a lot of this money is in the form of debt or it's insurance based so what we have is the possibility that countries in the global south for instance countries in Africa in order to combat climate change to combat further in debt and how this is a sustainable or just or it defies your imagination to think that after all this has happened now countries have to go further into debt to deal with the crisis which others are largely responsible for so there's a very strong push from the global south on all these issues on clear financial commitments on mechanisms to deliver it on non debt based finance for climate related issues as well and all these are going to be played out right now the technical talks are on but we do know that there's going to be more political discussions in the coming weeks as well our colleague Tarepri has been very closely following these issues so do check out her stories on people's dispatch we just have one that is put up today on the finance related discussions and of course we've talked about this before and I believe Zoe is going to talk about it now as well because countries, island nations are the worst affected we talked about it, we saw this last year as well strong opinions are put forward regarding this environment so yeah that's exactly right and I think really picking off this importance of loss and damage and this being brought up in this COP in Egypt is crucial and one of the biggest proponents of this as you said Pakistan was the one that brought this to the table in the G77 plus but also has been the lines of small island states this group which is made up of small islands from across the world if you look at the map of membership it's essentially all the little dots that you see across the world they're members of this group including the Bahamas, Antigua and Barbuda Palau, Papua New Guinea Samoa, Seychelles all of these places actually which I think is quite ironic where the rich and powerful go for their vacations are the same countries which are demanding that the rich and powerful take responsibility for the damage that they've done to the earth and to the climate these are countries which have such a minuscule impact on climate change in terms of actual numbers of carbon admission of the impact on so many of these aspects yet they are as you mentioned the most impacted some of these places like Tuvalu for example are essentially seeing their homes disappear and be eaten by the ocean with the rising of the sea levels a lot of these places are disappearing and this of course means that people's homes are disappearing they don't have anywhere to go and so this becomes well for some countries you know maybe they're seeing more storms maybe they're seeing more rainfall for these places it's a matter of life and death and of survival and so they've been extremely adamant in Glasgow there was a pretty large civil society delegation of these small islands I think once again they gave a really rousing address to this COP 27 Shamil Shake demanding once again that loss and damage be taken seriously and that for these small islands it's really it has to be taken seriously they really have no other option and it's again it's impressive to see this unity that they're able to build and a lot of these places you know don't even have a you know what leftist would say an anti-capitalist approach to talking about climate change and saying that it's you know the fall of capitalism but so many people are seeing that more and more the global north you can't deny the numbers these societies that consuming consuming consume and don't do you also think I believe we did right so yes just picking up from where Zoe left a very important story to sort of follow up follow as well because some of these are for some of these island nations the time is very very less in fact one of the key studies that came out after the just before the COP 27 summit said that the current nature of pledges we are not going to meet the target of 1.5 degrees that is limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees before pre-industrial levels according to the current targets we are looking at a 2.5 degree increase by the end of the century now this could just completely alter the geography of the world it could alter human civilization as you've known it for hundreds of years if not thousands because the impact in agriculture the impact on fishing the impact on you know urban life for instance everything is going to be it's going to be it's going to be horrendous so time really is running short for us and it's very sort of it's kind of important to keep tuning into these discussions because like I think we talked about in the show last time as well it's not just about numbers and technicalities and you know claims and counterclaims it's really about a very survival and we're moving on to our next story we're talking about incidentally again in some ways connected to the COP 27 discussion it's about Pakistan which like I said suffered you know some massive floods just a few months ago the situation there still remains very very delicate you know you know millions of displaced at that point of time it's going to take a long time for people to recover the health the health conditions situation there is pretty bad as well the fears of outbreaks of various diseases you know health activists warning about that there seems to be a political crisis of a completely you know which has gained all the attention there and this of course starting from the fact that former Prime Minister Imran Khan who was overthrown during no confidence motion in April with all his opponents ganging up together launched towards the end of October a rally to the capital Islamabad now we do know that Imran Khan especially after his because of the way in which he was overthrown in all his all his opponents combined and because of the perception that the military was also backing his opponents Imran Khan suddenly has become not suddenly I would say but has become an extremely popular figure in Pakistan as an anti establishment lone wolf crusader kind of a character it's ironic considering the fact that he himself rose because of the backing of the military but right now he's emerged as you know this kind of heroic figure who's say resisting everyone single-handedly and it has also been helped by the fact that after he left the economic situation is worsened much much more I think now the inflation inflation is in the late 20s which is quite shocking and considering already the kind of crisis they're facing at the what do you call the foreign the current government the dispensation is no real options but to go around with a begging bowl but even that is only working to a limited extent and this gives him an excellent opportunity he took out a rally there was an assassination attempt against him and he got injured on his leg a worker of his party was killed in the incident and he of course like Taimo Rahman who we will interview on this issue will be publishing that shortly pointed out that the immediate aftermath his popularity is actually increased especially because the fact that the impression it created when he got up from there and got back to his car so right now we're looking at the possibility of a bit of a deadlock in a political deadlock in Pakistan because while Ibram Khan does not control is not in power nonetheless the fact remains that in power at national level at least nonetheless the fact remains that he's been able to mobilize a huge number of people and he's emerged as an anti-systemic voice and this gives him a lot huge opportunity to sort of push back against the military and the establishment which have been the traditional establishment of Pakistan so Ibram Khan's demand of course is that elections be held immediately now of course the establishment does not want that because they're worried about you know losing the elections because of the way they're not been able to handle the economic crisis but the important thing to note of course here is that both sides don't really have too much of a solution to deal with the systemic crisis Pakistan has been facing you know both sides have opted to go for the IMF which is not really any kind of solution as we've talked about on this show there's been no real sustained attempt to improve productivity either at a cultural level or an industrial level so Pakistan unfortunately just like its neighbor Sri Lanka just like many other countries we talked about lurching from crisis to crisis compounded by the impact of issues like climate change you know left with very little wriggle room on a fiscal basis to implement any radical policies at all and so going into this same vicious cycle where they have limited scope they undertake policies which worsen the condition of the people the people get increasingly angry unuseless anti-systemic challenges emerges and you end up doing the same kind of policies so that's unfortunately in many countries become a cycle which needs to be the question of course before activists for militants is how to break that cycle as they say and so difficult times for the people of Pakistan and we need to see what's going to happen in the coming weeks and months the rally continues Iman Khan likely to start more you know more mass gatherings and rallies so do keep your eyes on Pakistan as well because it's illustrative about what is likely to happen in many other parts of the world as well well as we promised we're now going to get to the most important sporting event as you said Prashant in the world I guess that's true even though depends on which country you're asking depends which country you're asking sitting from India you know maybe it's actually that's not true it's definitely very important in India well we're talking about the World Cup and it kicks off on November 20th extremely exciting for most of the world that will follow their teams it starts with a game Qatar vs Ecuador and this is an interesting World Cup as all of them are because this one specifically has come over under a lot of scrutiny because of the human right situation in Qatar itself not only the overall human right situation in Qatar which for those of people who have been following is extremely dire especially for the hundreds and thousands of migrants that live and work there under extremely horrific conditions but in the preparation for this World Cup which involved construction of massive stadiums and a lot of other infrastructure to receive what is the World Cup not only building the stadiums for people to play football in but of course all of the rest which comes with it there have been horrible working conditions hundreds of migrant workers have been killed in this process a lot of soccer sorry football football players themselves have actually come out and said I don't even leading up to this that they didn't feel comfortable playing in Qatar the Danish team for example wanted to have a jersey that said human rights for all and FIFA actually banned them from doing this they said this is not a universal message and it's really it's a big issue because people are coming there knowing the human cost that this World Cup has taken and FIFA of course is accused of many different things across the years but I think that this World Cup specifically has really put them under a lot of fire because of the money that's going into all of this the human rights violations that it's essentially giving a blind eye to and then of course this will be a world spectacle and all of these all of these World Cup in Brazil there were a lot of similar issues that were coming under the microscope in terms of the militarization of a lot of different cities kind of the clearing of a lot of poor and homeless people in order to make way for the World Cup and so these huge sporting events every time they happen do happen under these very complicated circumstances where there is a lot of human rights violations but I think this one in Qatar is going to take the cake there's also it's also going to present a series of new challenges usually the World Cup is played during the summer of the northern hemisphere the winter of the southern hemisphere this year because of the climate conditions in Qatar it had to be played during the winter because of the extreme heat so that's also going to be an issue is it going to be okay conditions for people to play in a healthy way and of course we'll continue to be an issue as climate change progresses and many places across the world will essentially be uninhabitable for human existence but we of course will be continuing to follow this we know our colleague Sidan from People's Dispatch and Newsclick is a great sports and politics commentator so very very excited to continue following this epic sporting event which of course everything in life has political elements be giving you the political perspective tell us a little about what the reaction of the people in Kerala has been to this World Cup there are some pretty awesome images that we saw yes there have been cutouts of Neymar Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo I believe all plays right next to each other in a game of who's better than the rest and yes like you said it's going to be especially Kerala definitely football fever is a huge thing when we were the most widely watched events there many other states in India too so yes looking forward to that but like you said also equally important to follow some of these aspects which do not get talked about so often as as the main game does and I think that's pretty much a metaphor for our show as well because that's what we seek to do and give the people what they want bring you issues that are talked about not talked about so much or are talked about from a different perspective and try to sort of give you a round up of topics of news from each week that makes you think about the news itself the world around you and it makes us think definitely because it makes us reexamine a lot of our assumptions every day and yes so that's all we have for this week it was great talking to all of you from people's dispatch that's we and I and Globe Trotter which of course was not able to log in but he'll definitely be here next week so until then goodbye everybody and see you next week