 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, it's the 27th of May and you're watching your favorite show. Give the people what they want brought to you by People's Dispatch. That's Zoe and I and Globe Trotter. Vijay is not here today. He's traveling right now after a series of conferences. He sends his good wishes and a lot of ideas as well. But this has been a very interesting week, quite interesting. And every week we come with a lot of interesting stories. Of course, some of them painful, some of them giving a lot of hope as well. This week's stories are incidentally, a lot of them have to do with summits. A lot of them have to do with major political developments that are taking place in countries across the world. So we'll be covering the whole globe as usual. And our first one really is about very interesting and in some ways even scary development that's taking place in East Asia, where President Joe Biden was on a visit not only to South Korea and Japan, but also was part of a series of meetings, including the Quad and to set up the Indo-Pacific economic framework. Now, it's important to look at both these issues separately. Of course, we reconnected with both of them also unique in their own ways, because we talked about this before on numerous episodes, the Quad, a kind of strange alliance comprising India, Australia and India, Australia, Japan and South Korea. And of course, also bringing together a series of forces that don't really, which seem to have only one major intention, which is combating China, because the United States is in one corner of the world. What interest it really has in this region in terms of strategic, in terms of bringing its military, in terms of bringing its power here is a big question that we need to keep asking regularly. But yet another Quad meeting takes place and what we see of course is that there is this whole, say this is an escalation of this whole strategy to contain China and the statements. This happens also at a time when India has been kind of slightly deviating from the PAC so to speak, because its chances on Russia have been different from some of the other allies in the United States. And this Quad meeting was also attempting some ways to sort of reconcile that, to sort of give the indication, to give the commitment to each other maybe, that the Quad would continue as an effective forum. But what was more important here was also Biden's statement made around the same time, that the United States would respond militarily if there was a Chinese operation towards Taiwan and this is a very dangerous kind of a statement because it almost came out of nowhere, it reversed a lot of the policies that the United States had earlier followed as well. And it was definitely in some senses, I think, an incitement. It is a very incitatory statement made at a time when we really do not need a conflict in another part of the world. The Ukraine war has already caused so much damage and it is actually the result, as we've talked about, of decades of policies and especially policies in the West since 2014. So in this context the US president going to East Asia and making these comments is really sort of stirring in troubled waters and if you look for instance at the other arm of what we're talking about, that is the IPEF, it's yet again a very transparent attempt to almost combat China's increasing economic growth, the fact that there is already a deal in the form of RCEP, which involves all the countries in the region. And now the fact is that the United States was part of a similar project, the TPP, it withdrew. And now this is a very transparent attempt to sort of bring together a similar economic alliance, although the fact remains that this partnership itself will take a long time to even be implemented. The potential benefits are not clear for many countries when there will be many benefits at all. So it looks like it's more of rhetoric, it looks like it's more of playing the role of say some kind of a strategic, some kind of a narrative based thing rather than any concrete economic benefits because according to most analysts, I already at least, it's going to be a long time before we even see any of these in action. So what we're seeing right now is basically the U.S. continuing with its other front in East Asia, the strategy of not only encircling China, but I think also sort of trying to disrupt the relations that are already being built, to disrupt the ties that are already being built in the region. Despite the, you know, in this region for if you look for instance, all these countries have say a lot of differences. Let's be very clear about that. It's not that say China and Philippines and Vietnam and Indonesia, all of these countries are all speaking in one voice. They do have a lot of differences. But I think they're also committed to the fact that they are going to, you know, live with these differences, negotiate these differences and still build relationships. And that's a very important thing to note. Whereas the United States intervention in this region seems to consistently point to the idea of actually causing more and more disruption. So slightly quite alarming signs in this region need to really, you know, really focus on these. And so, you know, we need to see what's going to happen with the quality of the coming months and years as well. So that's the quality that's happening in one corner of the world. In another corner of the world, we have the Summit of Americas, which we have been talking about for quite a few weeks and for good reason because almost every week seems to bring a fresh new development as far as the summit is concerned, as far as the U.S. plans are concerned. So what's happening there? Well, yesterday the United States, the U.S. Coordinator of the Summit of the Americas said in a press conference definitively that Venezuela and Nicaragua would not be invited. Absolutely not. He said about the Venezuelan government saying that they don't recognize the government of Nicaragua as a sovereign nation. And this is quite interesting because as we've covered on this show, weeks after the war broke out in Ukraine, a very high level delegation of U.S. authorities actually traveled to Venezuela. And now we know it was clearly to negotiate about getting oil from Venezuela to the United States. And who did they meet with to get crucial resources? They met with the government of Nicolás Maduro. The New York Times said President Nicolás Maduro, and this has been an outlet that was constantly saying that Guaidó was the president. And so it's interesting that now when it comes to the summit, they say they don't recognize this government as sovereign. Interesting given that they just had to beg essentially for Venezuela to give it oil and to allow their oil companies to operate in Venezuela. That aside, they also won't be inviting Nicaragua because of the a lot of pressure they've faced about Cuba's invitation. He did not make a formal comment about whether Cuba would be invited or not. I think there's been a lot of backlash specifically about Cuba, unclear how that will develop. This is Kevin O'Reilly, the U.S. State Department coordinator of the Summit of the Americas. He said the decision is up to the White House. We'll see what happens. The summit is now a week and a bit away. And as we've said on the show and as we have covered on People's Dispatch, it really is shaping up to be a failure. There's been no transparency about what is going to be spoken about in this summit. What is the real reason? It's interesting looking at Kevin O'Reilly's comments yesterday about the summit. One of the key focuses of this space is to discuss the pressing issue of immigration. Of course, across the Americas and really across the globe, this is such a crucial issue. Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants in the past couple of years at the borders of the U.S., massive migrant camera events happening, huge human rights violations against these migrants by U.S. border control. This has been a very hot issue. What to do? How to respond? What is going to be the regional response to this? And interesting enough, Kevin O'Reilly says that the major contributors to immigration and to migration in the region are the, quote, dictatorial regimes of Venezuela and Nicaragua. Interesting the way they rewrite history. I think if you only look at the statistics, in the past couple of years, the largest contributors to the wave of migration to the United States is Honduras under the government of Juan Orlando Hernandez, backed by the U.S. government. His coup backed by the U.S., his electoral fraud with some called the coup backed by the U.S. government. So this is interesting. They're really playing with this discourse. I think a similar attempt that we see, you know, with the Quad Alliance, an attempt to really impose their narrative, impose their dominance, unclear what are the actual concrete economic partnerships that they seek to come and take out of this summit. Alternatively, at the same time, you know, the community of Latin American Caribbean states, created by Hugo Chavez, created by and promoted by Fidel Castro in the region. This has been really a space that's been growing actual concrete partnerships on COVID-19 cooperation, vaccine sending, sending medical brigades, actually having integrational processes. This has been going on. What will the Summit of the Americas do? Unclear. We know that there will be people's movements gathering in Los Angeles from the 8th to 10th of June as part of the People's Summit, carrying forward the legacy of the People's Summit. So we'll definitely be there on the ground covering what's happening. All of those developments look no further than people's dispatch. But now we're going to turn. So, you know, another one of the key debates in the Summit of the Americas is inequality. We know that in the past couple of years, especially during the pandemic, huge growth in inequality. AXEM has released another report on the sidelines of the Davos World Economic Forum. Bring us up to speed, Prashant. Right. And just like that, we're going to another Summit, of course. And this is particularly notorious one, the Davos World Economic Forum, where the richest people gather to celebrate the fact that they're rich, talk about how to get more rich and, you know, everything else is forgotten or assumed that they're getting more rich will take care of everything. But what we do know, of course, is that's not the case because of Oxfam is, you know, very timely way released. It's another report. I would really urge everyone watching it, watching the show to take a look at that report as well. It's quite crisp. Like all Oxfam reports, it actually does a good job of comparing and contrasting. I think the two realities of the world, the reality of the rich, where, you know, billions are made sometimes just like that without people even thinking about it in a day and then millions of lives are destroyed at the same time. And I think Oxfam reports really bring together what this kind of this harsh contrast and the numbers as usual are grotesque. There's really no way of describing it. The fact that, you know, during the pandemic, and I think this is something that does not really even require, need so much elaboration because we've all seen the kind of impact that the pandemic had on every aspect of life and food security, on education, on health, on home, you know, home ownership, on issues such as rent, in all these aspects we've seen around us the kind of regeneration of life that took place. But at this very same time, 573 people became new billionaires during the pandemic and this is, you know, this really I think is a one single line that explains that basically says everything that needs to be said. The fact that billionaires wealth has risen more in the 24 months of COVID-19 than in the past 23 years combined. So, you know, that's another shocking statistic in some senses. But if you look at how the world has been changing and how the society has been progressing over the past few years, definitely nothing that surprising as well. And, you know, a new billionaire being minted as they say on an average of every 30 years during the pandemic. This report is interesting because it talks about, you know, some of the families or some of the key players who have benefited out of this, you know, people such as the, what do you call it, the Walton family of Walmart or big tech, big oil, all these sectors which have really sort of made a, you know, made huge amounts of money in this point of time. The Cargill family for instance, which is the food industry, the food business and how they are minting money at a time when people are really struggling to eat. We talked about some of the crisis of hunger at, what do you call it in the early episodes as well. And if you look at the solutions, the report again offers solutions which we actually talked about before as well, which is the most common, the most key solution seems to be that you offer, you put a one-time windfall tax on the riches, the wealthy have made during this pandemic. And let's be clear, it's not all their wealth, it's just on the riches they have made, they have made just during this pandemic. And that itself will be able to, you know, solve huge amounts of problems across the world. If you look at it in terms of, say, reducing hunger in terms of producing vaccines across the world, all of this can be taken care of just using that one-time windfall tax. And for instance, you increase, say, wealth taxes or put a permanent wealth tax on the riches, all of this together could generate trillions of dollars. It could solve hunger, it could solve climate change, it could solve, you know, it could provide enough technological innovation to improve education for everybody. All of this together, you know, all this, the resources are available, which I think is what people's movements have been saying throughout the world that it is not that there is no money to combat climate change, it is not that there's no money to combat global hunger. The resources are very much there, but clearly being hoarded. And I think the Oxfam reports what they do, I think, is once again, you know, bring into the harsh spotlight. The fact that we are all sitting on this reality, this reality of the few billionaires, a few millionaires sort of holding the wealth that is needed to not only transform the planet or, say, improve people's life, but to save this planet in every sense of the word. That we are hurtling towards disaster is explicitly due to the fact that these people are sitting on these kinds of wealth. So, you know, a very important report, I think it's a short 19-page report, and these reports definitely deserve to be more widely circulated, more read, more, you know, internalized as far as even media coverage is concerned, for instance. This is, give the people what they want. We try at People's Dispatch and blow torture to bring the kind of stories which focus on these vast inequalities, on these, you know, these kind of gulls, these kind of artificial scarcities that are caused by the rich. So, moving on to our next story, we're talking about another country where, you know, many of these issues often come into play. We've talked about this country often all the time, that is Columbia. You know, issues of violence, issues of inequality, issues of, you know, the health sector, so many sectors facing a crisis and all of them attributable to a very corrupt political system which is supported by the United States. Now, this week we're going to see an election in Columbia, a lot of hope for an entirely, a new era, a lot of hope for change. Zoe, what's happening with the Columbia elections? Well, this Sunday is the day, May 29th, people will go to the polls across Columbia to vote for the next president and vice president of the country. Columbia is one of the countries that has a first round and second round. So, if a single candidate does not cross the 50% threshold, there will be a second round between the first two contenders and it's looking, it's unclear if the current polls are unclear if there will definitely be a second round or not. The latest poll from CELAG, the Center for Geostatistic Affairs in Latin America put Gustavo Petro and Francia Marquez of the historic Pact Progressive Alliance at 48%. So this, again, would not be enough to push them over the 50% threshold. This would indicate there would be a second round, but really at this point, everything's up in the air, everything could happen. As you said, it's an historic election. It's a historic moment in Columbia. It's a country, it's one of the most unequal countries in Latin America as you were talking about inequality. Columbia is just behind Haiti in terms of social inequality. It's a country that's been marred by policies of exclusion of the masses, of exclusion from education, exclusion from healthcare, exclusion from essential services that better the lives of the majorities in the country. And you see the progressive pact of the historic Pact Alliance led by Gustavo Petro, led by Francia Marquez, really trying to take a hold of these decades of misery, these decades of wanting something better but not being able to do because of the conservative hold that it has over politics, that it has over the policies in the country, a country that's hugely influenced by the United States, their interest in foreign policy. Columbia not only has, you know, held its people under captive by not allowing them to have access to these fundamental rights and by restricting their labor rights, restricting all sorts of fundamental human rights, but also is a key regional player in carrying out U.S.'s dirty business in the region. It's been a key ally to the U.S. in its attacks against Venezuela. Its Colombian territory has been used by paramilitary groups attempting to, who attempted to kill Nicolás Maduro, the sovereign president of Venezuela. So really, there's so much at stake this Sunday. Ahead of these elections, there's been, you know, as we've been covering on this show, there's been very troubling developments, death threats against the candidates, allegations of fraud. The far right has really been using every single trick in the book. Campaigns on social media defaming the candidates. Francia Marquez as a black woman, as an Afro-Columbian woman, has been facing a huge amount of hate online in every sort of space. There was a campaign that was a false campaign. Someone was posing as her daughter, saying that she is corrupt, that she does not represent the interests of the people, saying that people shouldn't vote for her. Francia Marquez comes out saying that she does not have a daughter. So all types of things are happening, these really horrible things, but at the same time, Francia has really remained strong and said, this is what they're afraid of. This is why they're going to such extremes. They're afraid of the power of the people. They're afraid of the hope of the people. So it's really an inspiring moment. They're persevering in the face of the most violent right-wing in the region. One of the most violent right-wings in the region during Uribe's president, the false positives campaign happened where over 6400 civilians were killed and said that they were killed in combat as guerilla fighters. This is a campaign that was oversaw by Plan Colombia with involvement of U.S. officials that were training the Colombian armed forces. This was a period where over 20,000 people were disappeared. There's so many horrific occurrences in Colombian history under the right-wing. This is a moment of change. This is a moment where the people are trying to bring their platform, their demands to the fore. We don't know what's going to happen. Federico Gutierrez is pulling far behind Gustavo Petro, but if there is a second round, it is likely that the right will unite against this progressive ticket. We all eyes on Colombia this Sunday. We encourage people to follow people's dispatch. Artege Medios align news to really get the latest on what's happening there. This is crucial for the region. It's crucial for the world. And yeah. Go for it. No, and I think it's interesting to talk about the violence in Latin America. Talk about the violence around elections and political crisis. On the other side, we've been following what's been happening in Pakistan, following the parliamentary ousting of Imran Khan. What's been happening since then, Prashant? Right. It's all happening. It's really kind of confusing to read the media reports as well, because what we see is a country kind of spiraling into a whole new kind of crisis, because we've seen this in Sri Lanka, of course, neighboring Sri Lanka, which is going into one kind of crisis, and a deep amount of unhappiness with the government. In Pakistan, what we're seeing right now is a government which came to power through what is clearly quite underhand means, because we saw that the military establishment probably was the United States involved a very important question. Many sources say that they were. All of them working together to basically kick out Imran Khan for a variety of reasons. Some say that it was because the fact that he was trying to intervene and interfere in the military's command structure with its hold on this thing, and others will say that it's because Imran Khan was far more moving, far more closer to Russia and China. But what has happened is that a new government that has come to power has, you know, does not really have that air of legitimacy that say a normal government should have. And what Imran Khan, on the other hand, how he sort of responded is to sort of assume this kind of say, almost strongman kind of politics in some sense is because he sort of mobilizes people. He's got a very active social media army. You know, there's been this, you know, there's been a surge of, you know, he's sort of taken to the streets literally in that sense, holding mass mobilizations because he's kind of sensed, I think, that the government right now is in a position of weakness and, you know, they can probably be overthrown. So Imran Khan has been demanding that elections be here. The elections be announced within six days and that was his ultimate on May 25th or so. But what happened at that time was his protesters as his supporters came into Islamabad, there were clashes with the police. His party claims that five of his supporters were killed. The government says that a policeman was killed by the protesters. So there's a lot of violence taking place there. The Imran Khan did not extend that protest, probably sensing that this was not the moment to do so, but he's left that door open and this is, of course, taking place in the capital. But similar protests taking place in other parts of the country as well. So we have a very, you know, very delicate correlation of forces right now because we have what on the one hand, like I said, a fairly unstable government as government has been put together by all the forces who were earlier rivals, who have differences, a lot of personal and political differences coming together in one hand. And on the other hand, Imran Khan who was until now known pretty much as a product of the establishment as somebody propped up by the military establishment suddenly sort of creating that space for himself where he's emerged as some kind of an outsider to the system. That was always the kind of tag he sort of tried to use. So this either way does not really it's a difficult time for the Pakistani people. So there's no real, like in Sri Lanka again there's no real solution to the economic crisis. And I think what we often do not see when we look at these kind of political machinations taking place in various countries is the underlying crisis is so dire and there is a complete bankruptcy in terms of policy options as a complete bankruptcy in terms of political prescriptions, whoever we can be talking about, whether we talk about the government or whether we talk about the opposition. So the government also continuing the same discussions with the IMF that the former government is doing that, you know, there is no, you know, real solution for the people as far as they're concerned. So whether these elections are going to bring forth the change difficult to say very unlikely actually because the space for these kind of governments to maneuver seems to have completely reduced as many of them are completely dependent in various ways. So difficult times for the people of Pakistan remains to be seen what happens and you know the one hopes that the violence does not continue. So the coming weeks, the coming next days are going to be very, very important there because will the government give in to the demands and announce these elections which are due to be held or will they sort of hold off so that they did not guard Dimran Khan his victory is really the question. So we'll be covering that closely as well and that's Pakistan. Of course, it finally, you know, we go to a story which a lot of us have been talking and thinking about talk about and thinking about the past few days which is a very horrific shooting in the United States in the United States schools in the state of Texas something that only seems to happen in that country. I mean we hear about violence, we hear about shootings taking place across the country but there is something very different that that students can be killed in a country like the United States especially that to, you know, Zoe just take us through what kind of responses have come to this in what's been happening. Well as you said it's a really tragic story in a really US story where else does this happen where regularly schools are the sites of mass shootings are the sites of such violence in other countries maybe schools would be revered as a safe place but really these have become the sites of extreme violence and Uwale is the city in Texas where this latest shooting took place 19 children and two teachers were killed and it's been, you know, it's a really there's horrific details and lately some of the reports have been indicating that essentially police did not do much to try to stop the shooter there's been a lot of criticism about the response of the police to this incident the shooter allegedly was shooting outside for 12 minutes before going into the school and where he proceeded to kill 19 children and two teachers really raises a lot of questions and I think it's important to raise these questions because really what are the police there for if, you know, with millions being invested into their budgets if they're not even able to protect young children from a shooter but I think, you know, the larger the larger question is why does this keep happening what is this culture of violence that exists in the United States that makes it so that these incidents massacres happening in schools is not a normal occurrence and I think we really have to look at the the culture of violence that exists in the United States this cultural violence at home, cultural violence abroad it's one of the countries that has the highest levels of police killings of unarmed people of largely black and Latino people it's one of the countries that has the largest prison population in the entire world 2 million people in prison it accounts for a majority of the world's prison population it's a country that has the largest number of foreign military bases that exports militarization to the world that sees violence as a correct response to anything for example in the US a lot of police killings happen when there's a distress call the victims of police violence of police killings have been mentally ill people whose family is called the police because they didn't know who else to call and they either ended up killed the mentally ill person has been killed in some of these cases and it's truly horrific violence in the United States is the answer to all sorts of social problems this is what the state constantly says with its actions with how it operates with the violence of state violence against minorities against anyone who's questioning the way that things are functioning and so these instances of massacres of mass shootings are so frequent for that reason of course we have to look at the questions of gun control Texas is one of the states that has extremely loose regulation around guns very easy to access I think just the mere fact that we can access these military grade weapons so easily is extremely concerning and must not be discarded this is not a normal thing people don't need access to these guns this is a crucial element but in addition to this it exists in a extremely brutal society a society that discards the lives of poor people of minorities that says that they're not worthy it's tangible and it's a really tragic thing that's happened and of course our sympathies with all of the victims of this horrific violence and it's so necessary for there to be a cultural shift a societal shift in the United States so that these things no longer happen there needs to be serious action no more thoughts and prayers by government officials who have the power to act who have the power to change legislation and so that's we won't have to report any more of these school shootings because it's horrific no one should have to lose a child in that way and so unfortunately we're ending on this on this sad news but there is hope in people's movements and people's struggles who are fighting for the structural change across the world that is needed to transform our societies we have people's dispatch will always be covering these movements we know that this is the only way to address these problems that are structural problems that have root causes and so keep tuning in to give the people what they want every week on Friday we're here we'll be giving you all of the stories that you need to know that you must know to continue on with the weekend and I think that's it from us thanks so much for watching