 Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Your weekly movement news roundup. Yovid, give the people what they want brought to you by People's Dispatch. Ordinarily that would be Zoe and Prashant. Prashant is not able to join us today but certainly we'll be back next week. I'm Vijay from Globetrotter. Really happy to be with you for this 165th show of Give the People What They Want. Let's go straight to Gaza. Before we talk about the United Nations ceasefire, I think it's worthwhile having a quick glance at some of the numbers again. The most current figures, 31,988 people killed, 74,188 people injured. Of them, 14,000 children killed. That's incredible. 8,000 people missing. Of them, a large number of children. Two million people displaced. Most of the housing destroyed. Millions and millions of tons of rubble sitting in much of Gaza. 11,120 acres of arable land destroyed. So it is, of course, therefore incumbent upon the international community, particularly using the instrument of the United Nations Security Council to try to have an immediate ceasefire. On the 20th of February, Algeria put a UN resolution before the Security Council. A very strong resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire. The United States vetoed that resolution. Now it's interesting. The US was the only country to veto the resolution. 13 countries voted for it. Out of 15, there was an extension. But that was a resolution very strong calling for an immediate ceasefire. And I want this to be quite clearly understood. Embarrassed by what had happened on the 20th of February, a month later, today's the 22nd of March, the United States government put its own resolution before the UN Security Council. In a sense, this resolution was designed to get forgiveness for the three vetoes that the US has exercised over the course of the past several months on resolutions put forward that call for an immediate ceasefire. And I'm going to keep banging on the term immediate ceasefire. Because what the United States did in this resolution, not so cleverly because it was pretty obvious, was they didn't call for an immediate ceasefire. They called for an imperative to have an immediate ceasefire. In other words, it's not that they were saying there shouldn't be an immediate ceasefire, but they were not willing to call for one. They felt that there should be a call for an immediate ceasefire. That was the UN resolution that the United States put on the table. I want people to understand the difference. The Algerian resolution called for an immediate ceasefire. Now, order goes to the government of Israel in Tel Aviv, stop the firing now. The US resolution doesn't call for an order to go to Tel Aviv to stop the firing now. It's a statement that the world must agree that there should be an immediate ceasefire. In other words, it puts off a real resolution on a ceasefire. To that end, to prevent the kind of, let's call it what it is, to prevent the fig leaf or the whitewashing of the US government's attempt to block resolutions on behalf of Israel to whitewash that, the United States put a resolution forward. Most countries in the world disheartened by that, and so China and Russia voted against this. The Russians, their ambassador Vasily Nebenzia said that the US was trying to sell a product to the council by using the word imperative. In other words, this was not a serious resolution. The Chinese ambassador Zhang Jun said that the dignity of the council was at stake here and the draft put forward by the United States on the issue of ceasefire. It could have been an interesting draft, but if only they had called for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire rather than this imperative towards the ceasefire. A number of countries abstained, one of them was Guyana, its ambassador Caroline Rodriguez Burkett. She said this manmade disaster cannot be halted without an immediate ceasefire and it is this council's responsibility to unequivocally demand one. I think that's important. She says the Palestinians should not be held hostage for the crimes of others. They all were sort of unhappy with the idea of an imperative towards the ceasefire. They wanted a ceasefire, but this is going to create Zoe some confusion in the world. People are going to think, well, these countries voted against to abstain on a ceasefire resolution. This was not a ceasefire resolution. This was a resolution saying that there should be a ceasefire resolution. The only problem is the last three ceasefire resolutions the United States vetoed. I don't think the United States is going to get away with whitewashing this. I think it is of course going to be the case that the big media, the global North media is going to try to spin this as China and Russia blocking a ceasefire. In fact, no, they are demanding a real ceasefire. I could speak about this Zoe all day just repeating the same point because it might not get through, but so be it. Equally difficult as a point to make in the world these days Zoe is the question of what is being happening to the island of Cuba, an island under a blockade trying to survive and so on. And yet, boom, what's going on in Cuba? Well, last Sunday there was a protest in the eastern city of Santiago of people who took to the streets frustrated, frustrated with their material economic conditions. Of course, suffering under one of the most tight and excruciating blockades in history. They went onto the streets demanding food and electricity because of the situation of the blockade and the intensification under the designation of Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism, actually importing food and importing the necessary fuel that the island needs to survive has been extremely challenging. So, you know, there have been periodic blackouts, electricity shortages on the island. We know that, you know, over a year ago there was also the huge fire that took place in Matanzas where the islands lost a lot of not only fuel itself but the capacity to actually store this fuel. I mean, Cuba has hit, been hit with natural disasters, imperialist disasters over the past couple of years that have really greatly reduced its capacity to provide for its people. And if we remember, you know, Cuba actually provides food and fuel to the people. It's not, it's not a country that doesn't actually give these things to the people. So, you know, what happened in response to this protest is I think really what's the story here which is that immediately as soon as the people are hitting the streets of Santiago, the U.S. Embassy in Havana issues a statement saying, we have heard about the protests that are happening. We urge the Cuban government to respect the rights of the people and to not use any violence. This is, you know, quite interesting for a government that has been essentially silent and useless in the face of over 30,000 people murdered by the genocidal Israeli war. And, you know, at the same time that they're releasing the statement, actually the local leadership in Santiago is on the streets of Santiago with the people, dialoguing with the people, you know, trying to understand, of course, their frustrations, the difficulties that they're facing. Of course, the Cuban leaders are also facing these difficulties. They're also under the same sanctions and blockade that the people of Santiago and the people of the entire island are under. The U.S. Embassy releases the statement. Immediately we see CNN, we see Voice of, sorry, the Telemundo, other regional outlets immediately giving coverage to this one protest saying people are fed up with the castrists dictatorship. They're fed up with the Miguel Diaz Canal regime. They are demanding freedom. We see far right senators and members of Congress in the U.S. saying, look at what's happening in Cuba. The people are demanding freedom. And when in reality, you know, this is a protest that happens coming out of real material economic needs. And it's, and it, you know, was responded to with, you know, the local authorities engaging with the people actually Miguel Diaz Canal is currently in Santiago meeting with diverse communities. And again, hearing their frustrations, listening to the demands, Cuba is actually taking concrete steps to even address the, of course, the electricity shortages. They just announced, you know, the opening of several solar fields that will be hopefully be able to sort of supplant in some way this need for electricity that they have, the lack of fuel that they're suffering under. And I think at the end of the day, what people have pointed to is that all of these problems that the Cuban people are facing could be solved again with a stroke of the pen. If Biden said, we're taking Cuba up the state sponsor of terrorism list, which again, as we've spoken about in the show many times, seriously impacts the island's ability to engage with any sort of foreign financial transaction. They can't, banks refuse to do business with Cuba. It's not that the Cuba doesn't even have the funds to do it. It's that banks refuse to process their money. They've seized billions of dollars of Cuban money. This could be ended if Biden wanted to in the matter of hours, a matter of days. And so that's really at the end of the day. What the story is about is that the US blockade on Cuba has created these conditions. And as it said in its original memo about the blockade decades ago, this is to make the economy scream. This is to make the Cuban people suffer. And ultimately what they want is with the Cuban people to suffer so much that it ends in a political revolt against the government, against the revolution. But as we've seen over this past week, that hasn't happened and the protests have essentially died down. The protests have died down Cuba still under the gun. Of course, the blockade continues. The state sponsor of terrorism list still active Cuba under the gun. Niger was also under the gun. Niger is a country in the Sahel. There's been, of course, great interest in what's happening in the Sahel between 2020 and the present, the last four years. Great churning in the states of Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Guinea and so on. Great churning. In the last few years, there have been several military coups in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger where the governments have been overthrown. Governments mainly that didn't really have a project for the people. The situation in each of these countries has been interesting because quite immediately they basically told the French to remove their militaries. France had directly military intervened in 2013 through Operation Burkane in Mali first and then spread out across the Sahel, building something called G-Force Sahel. The idea for France, of course, was first they thought, well, let's do this undercover of fighting Al Qaeda of the Maghreb and so on. But then very quickly it became clear that France with help from the United States was effectively building a primary European border in the Sahel region just south of the Sahara to prevent the vast number of migrants leaving particularly West Africa, for Italy, for Lampedusa and then onward into Europe. This was like a border, a European border. And in fact, the states in these countries and the Europeans and the United States were using technology to spy on people migrating. Technology that is banned in Europe was being used in the Sahel region. Well, the moment these schools happened, the first thing they did was they told the French to leave. The French military had to leave. In some cases they were not going to use France as a national language. There was a great sentiment against France that was the principal sentiment that has since developed because immediately the United States thought, well, we can duck this. It's anti-French. Nobody's coming after us. During this period of the French recolonization of the Sahel from 2013 onward and the invasion of France into Côte d'Ivoire in 2011. In this period, the United States began to build up its military operations in the Sahel region. So the capital of Niger is Niami, which is toward the south of the country. The north of the country is the city of Agades, which is one of the last major habitat cities before the Sahara intervenes into Niger. Just north of Agades, if you take a left, you will get to the town of Arlit, which is the major uranium production site for Niger from where uranium has been going to France. And that's one of the things that the government in Niger is seeking is a renegotiation of the treaties of the deals for the export of its yellow cake uranium. But Agades was significant because from Agades, you enter the Sahara all the way to Sabah, Libya. So in Agades, the United States built the world's largest drone base. It's very, very important. It's an enormous space and it's about a thousand troops. Most people in the U.S. didn't know of the existence of this drone base till 2017. When a couple of U.S. servicemen were killed in Tonga Tonga, which is on the border of Niger, there was consternation. What are U.S. troops doing in Niger? Well, there are about a thousand of them at this drone base. Last Saturday, the spokesperson for the government went on Nigerian TV and said the U.S. troops have to leave. That was a categorical statement. Well, the Biden administration was caught short-footed wondering, oh my gosh, what is this? Where is this coming from? The Biden administration said, well, maybe this has to do with some statements that the government had made privately, the U.S. government to the government in Niyam, in Niger, and that maybe they are doing this out of a feeling of being slighted because there was a sense that they were angry with U.S. condescension. Was that the case or is this that they don't want foreign troops on their soil? It's a very interesting development in this central belt of Africa as more and more of these countries start to move from an anti-French, let's say, consciousness to an anti-foreign troops consciousness. By the way, just to put a line under this, the African Union in 2016 passed a resolution calling for the removal of all foreign bases. So what the government in Niger is doing is not by any stretch of the imagination illegal. It's following an African Union resolution from 2016. Yovit, give the people what they want brought to you by People's Dispatch. Today it's just Zoe, normally it's Zoe and Prashant. I'm Vijay from Globetrotter, super happy to be with you. We're going to go back to Latin America. Zoe has things to tell us about, well, sanctions in Venezuela, they've almost become synonyms. Yes, well, it seems the US was a bit upset that it couldn't drive full regime change on Cuba this week. And they focused their attention to Venezuela. Yesterday, the right-wing member of Congress, Maria Elvira Salazar, who is another stalwart against Cuba important to note, she actually tried to make the state sponsor of terrorist designational law, which meant that it would be very difficult for this to be ever be removed. But nonetheless, she made a proposal to reintroduce sweeping sanctions against Venezuela, reactivating some that had expired in 2019. And this is due to the fact that as we've covered again, you can read it on People's Dispatch, the opposition leader, Maria Corina Machado, who for two decades has essentially dedicated her political career to trying to overturn the Bolivarian Revolution through being part of Juan Guaido's government and participating in the looting of the state companies that were seized by Guaido while the US was recognizing his fictitious rule, or whether it was supporting the Guarimba protests in 2014, 2017, for which she actually was summoned by the court and indicted on for supporting those. Or was it in 2002 when she signed a decree when the coup took place against Ugo Chavez for the interim government to replace him, which we know this interim government was later overturned by popular mobilization after just two days in office, the people demanded a return to Chavez and rejection of this coup. So, you know, there's a lot of other details in between. She also went to the OAS, which the Venezuelan is not a part of, in the seat of a Panamanian representative to denounce the actions of the Venezuelan government for which she was met with protest by both Panamanians and Venezuelans for usurping this seat of a Panamanian representative. She was actually removed from office for this action. So, she has sort of assorted history in subverting democracy and subverting rule of law, and so it was at the time when, for example, when she had gone to the OAS and participated in this action, she was removed from her seat. There was another investigation opened up that showed that she had not declared all of her earnings while being a member of Congress, and she was banned from political life for one year at that point. This ban was investigated this past summer. Opposition member of Congress in Venezuela said, okay, we're heading into the presidential elections. This person who had already been banned from participating in political activities in electoral politics because of all these different reasons is posing herself as sort of the leading opposition candidate. She, the court in Venezuela said actually no, she is still banned from political life, from electoral politics, not political life. And this sort of started the stir in Washington, the stir in the very far right sectors, the opposition in Venezuela. Important to mention, not all opposition sectors, which are actually participating in these upcoming elections. Nonetheless, she continued forward saying, nothing will deter me, I will participate, I will hold these primaries, which have been widely scrutinized. And now the court in January in Venezuela ratified her exclusion from running for office. And this set off a chain of different events. She has declared that I will continue to be a candidate. This is a violation of democracy. In response, the Venezuelan government has said you have never disrespected democracy. She has not complied with the agreements that were set out in the Barbados agreement, which was signed between the opposition and the Venezuelan government back in October. The US is saying that what Venezuelan government is doing is a violation of this agreement. And so essentially it's all boiling down to new attacks from the United States against Venezuela because of her exclusion. Right wing media, again capitalizing on this to say Venezuela is violating democracy. But I think at the end of the day what we can see is that someone who has repeatedly violated democracy called for an overturning of democracy, supported violent actions against the government. This is the reason that she's excluded from the elections and none more. So this is going to continue to be a sticking point. The opposition is designating in the coming days who they are going to position as the presidential candidate. So the tension is going to remain high and the US is trying to re-impose a series of sanctions. We'll see if Elvira Salazar is actually successful in this. But we can know for sure that it's going to be a high point of tensions once again between the US and Venezuela around the presidential elections that's going to take place on July 28th of this year. July 28th, Venezuelan elections. There was an election in Russia. Vladimir Putin won that election, became re-elected as the president of Russia. Olaf Schulz of Germany has decided to refuse to call him the president of Russia, refused to even use the word Vladimir and now just call him Putin. A very interesting development from the Germans, but also this comes out of frustration. Germany has now decided it cannot send the tourist cruise missiles to Ukraine. Ukraine is having a little bit of trouble. Last April leaked Pentagon report through the Associated Press suggested that for every Russian soldier killed in Ukraine, six Ukrainian soldiers are killed. Morale is down on the Ukrainian side. Europeans are not able to supply the Ukrainians as they did before. It was in fact European arms supplies. It was European air defense systems and it was European logistical assistance, including surveillance, that helped them actually hold off Russian advances early into the war and in the first year and a half. Now it's become difficult because Europe simply is finding it doesn't have the means to supply Ukraine as it had previously. The public mood for that support of the war in Ukraine is declined precipitously. It looks like Emmanuel Macron of France's suggestion to send NATO troops into Ukraine. There are already some troops in Ukraine assisting the Ukrainians, providing technical support, but Macron wanted to send troops to go and fight in the front lines or at least hold the logistical trail running and push those soldiers to the front, Ukrainians. It looks unlikely that NATO is going to permit not unlikely, it's impossible. NATO is simply not going to allow NATO forces to enter or to move air defense systems from NATO countries into Ukraine because it leaves these countries vulnerable. They simply don't have the land armies to spare. So that means that Ukraine right now is not in a position to even hold some of the front lines and there is a great deal of frustration and out of that frustration comes this juvenile move by the Chancellor of Germany saying I'm just not going to call him Vladimir or the president, just call him Putin. That's an interesting move by Germany weakened very much by this conflict. The approval rating of the European leaders has all plummeted. I mean none of them are standing up. Inflation continues within Europe. But I think importantly it has become clearer and clearer that the issue of providing sophisticated arms and so on to Ukraine has declined quite dramatically. It looks like in the presidential election in France Mr Macron is going to basically lose. This is his last period anyway as president but his forces, the forces of the center right most likely are going to be out and it looks more and more likely that the far right might prevail. For the first time France will have a far right government. It looks likely and they are very unlikely in any groups or provide more assistance to Ukraine. That's where that lies. In fact therefore the question of a ceasefire and a peace negotiation very important should be back on the agenda but it's not being back on the agenda. There is this juvenile thing, Putin, Putin, Putin. Juvenile, yes we're going to go in the last few minutes to Argentina. Mr Javier Millay, there is a kind of juvenile-ness there. Remember he was at Davos, Zoe and he said the West is in danger. Mr Millay gets his geography wrong. Argentina is not in the West Mr Millay. I don't know what endangerment of the West you're worried about, better just worry about Argentina. Zoe last few minutes, what's happening there? Yeah, well he should be concerned according to a study done by the Catholic University in Argentina. January saw a poverty of 57% which is an all-time high for the country. But nevertheless this Sunday is the anniversary of the coup which installed the civic military dictatorship in Argentina. It is a very important anniversary this year. Of course it is the first one that will be commemorated with Javier Millay in office. Important to note that Javier Millay during his campaign period on several times questioned for example the crimes that were committed during the dictatorship and said the widely known number of 30,000 people that were detained and disappeared. He said this is false this is propaganda by human rights organizations these are lies, human rights organizations are engaging in all sorts of criminal activities. So it is very clear kind of what his position towards the quite incredible movement for history and memory in the country is and for human rights. They're calling on it for a historic march this Sunday both of course as the every single year there's a march on March 24th but this year they say it will be historic. All of the major trade unions are participating as we know and as we've been covering on this show and on people's dispatch for the past several months trade unions have forged a historic unity between the CGT and the two Ceteas in the country these trade unions represent millions of workers. They have been on the streets demanding that the different laws that Miele has imposed through the presidential decree be repealed we know that as we covered last week one of these suffered an important blow in the house in Argentina. So they're taking the streets once again to say no to this negationist attitude towards the crimes of dictatorship and no to the attacks on workers' rights it's important to note that this week as well the organization of sons and daughters from memory released a public statement denouncing that a militant of the Liberty Advances of this party of Miele's actually broke into the home of one of the members of their organization. They broke into her home beat her up sexually abuser and took information about the organization E-host which again is this organization that was created by the sons and daughters of those who were detained and disappeared during the dictatorship it's a human rights organization now a very worrying development we're not only talking about a president who is openly saying that human rights organizations are criminal but of course this has material consequences it has consequences in terms of possible judicial persecution but also these militants who have been riled up by Miele's discourse have actually now carried out political crimes and you know violent acts against people who are part of these organizations are these sort of things going to increase that remains to be seen but once again this march on Sunday has increased impact and meaning because of the political situation Argentina faces today for them to say once again actually never again will these sorts of crimes be committed in the country human rights organizations say that they will not be intimidated by these different actions by the Miele government by the violent actions of these sort of vigilantes and so they are going to continue the struggle and intensify the struggle against these attacks on their rights So Zoe that is actually a chilling story about somebody trying to document things police coming after them that's the kind of story you're going to get nowhere it's not going to be reported in the big global north media you need people's dispatch for that Yovit give the people what they want brought to you from people's dispatch today just Zoe next week Zoe and Prashant and Vijay from Globe Trotter so very nice to be with you see you next week