 Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Your weekly movement news round up. It's the 9th of December. You're with Give the People What They Want. It's a 105th episode. Give the People What They Want comes to you from People's Dispatch. Today, we have Zoe with us. Prashant may come in and out. He's in Ghana struggling to get a good connection. I'm Vijay from Globetrotter. We have a full show for you today. We're going to start in a place where there has been a kind of ongoing tussle as soon as the presidential election had been announced. Not as if this is a major surprise and yet here we are. Pedro Castillo of Peru. Zoe, what's happening in the Andes? Well, just as you said, Vijay, this latest development which happened on Wednesday, which was the overthrow of Castillo by the Peruvian Congress, a legislative coup against Pedro Castillo, who was formerly part of the Free Peru Party, is something that's really been brewing since even before he was sworn in as president. We've been covering this quite closely at People's Dispatch from not only the disputes that happened after the elections, with the far-right contesting the electoral results for a full month after the election took place. Pedro Castillo's victory was actually only confirmed some days before he was supposed to be sworn in. So it's been a constant battle. And as you said, as soon as he was sworn in, he began to receive attacks in the media from the judicial power. You, for example, Vijay spoke to Héctor Bejar, who was the foreign minister for, I think, about a week until he was also forced out through attacks in the media due to his links with older leftist groups in Peru. So really what we saw on Wednesday is the accumulation of all of these efforts by the oligarchy in Peru, by the right wing who's worked hand-in-hand with the hegemonic media outlets with the judicial power to essentially make governability impossible for Pedro Castillo, for the Free Peru Party who was in Congress, who was in the cabinet in different moments. And essentially what happened on Wednesday is that the vacancy motion, what it's called in Peru, or the impeachment motion was set to be discussed. This is the third impeachment motion that far-right sectors in Congress have put forth to attempt to remove Pedro Castillo from office, and this was over moral incapacity, which is a curious term to say the least. Pedro Castillo, so as I said, there's been fronts on multiple attacks. So not only the media has been constantly attacking him, saying, you know, from racist attacks to classist attacks, but also saying that he's inept, unfit to rule, et cetera, but also the judicial power has opened up several investigations against Pedro Castillo for different acts of corruption for interference in legal proceedings. A lot of things which they really essentially have no evidence for, and you know, it's interesting. He's never held public office before, but somehow one month into his presidency, he's accused of all these crimes of corruption. When was, where was the time for him to commit all these crimes? One may ask. So that's important to point out. So he was facing a third impeachment motion, and important to point out as well. This is the third motion of impeachment. The right wing had also attempted to file a suit in the constitutional court, again, saying that he had committed treason against the state. This was another possibility for them to remove Castillo. So they've really essentially used all avenues. They also attempted to lower the number of votes that you would need in order to pass the impeachment motion. And finally on Wednesday, it looked like they might actually achieve this vote. So in anticipation of this, Pedro Castillo took what I will say is an unpopular decision, unpopular by sectors of the left, unpopular surely by the right wing sectors, but he took the decision to dissolve the Congress, to spend several of the different powers, the judicial power, other different powers of the state, and he said that he was going to rule by emergency rule until a constituent assembly could be convened. A constituent assembly, which was a popular demand on the streets of Peru for several, the last couple of years, to be honest, since Peru has entered into this protracted political and institutional crisis. And so we see that Pedro Castillo takes this decision, as I said, extremely unpopular. The right wing, of course, rejected this. The left wing, which he I think had hoped to count on, also rejected this. The armed forces rejected it. The police. And what happens is that hours later, this impeachment motion was held. The dissolved Congress was not dissolved after all, and they voted to impeach him. So hours later, he was arrested and continues to remain in custody. There's an extremely, extremely worrying occurrence. We're going to talk later about the case against Cristina Fernandez, but really crucial to follow this. And it's not as black and white as it may say. It's not about one day. It's not just about Wednesday. It's about a year and a half of a tax against a government, which wanted to take forward progressive legislation and a project for the people. It's very important that we pick up and stay with this story because not only has there been this removal of Pedro Castillo, do we call it a coup, but also deep humiliation of Mr. Castillo and his family forced to sort of walk out of the presidential palace with their suitcases and so on. Really ugly scenes coming from Peru will be with this story. Of course, moving now to the Gulf. Interesting. Xi Jinping of China has made basically since the pandemic two foreign trips. The first trip Mr. Xi Jinping went to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan largely for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit, very important summit, brings together leading countries including, of course, India, Pakistan, all the five Central Asian countries, Russia and so on, including in this summit Iran and Turkey. Well, now Mr. Xi Jinping has left China once more. He is in Saudi Arabia, very important summit held today of the China GCC Summit. Now the GCC is the Gulf Cooperation Council, an important gathering of all the monarchies of the Arabian Peninsula. They met in Saudi Arabia after Xi Jinping met with both the king and the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. The agenda today was interesting. It was largely economic. I'll come back to some of the political implications of this, but the actual details of the summit that have been released have been quite interesting. You know, you already know that ever since 2009, ever since the world financial crisis, there's been a push by many countries around the world to disentangle from the United States and Western Europe, fear that the Western banking system was going to crash the global economy. At the time, China and the GCC countries began to speak about creating a free trade area between China and the GCC. This development from 2009, it was on the table. It left the table, came back on the table, and then the Gulf countries themselves went into a tailspin of mutual recrimination and conflict, particularly between Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Well, the China GCC agreement is back on the table, might very likely advance a lot today. They just talked about it. There wasn't any announcement about it, but it's back on the table and that's important. Well, that was only one part of the important conversations at the GCC China summit. The other part that was quite interesting began before the summit. That was a conversation that the Chinese had with the Saudis. Now, important to remember, China buys about 25% of Saudi Arabia's oil, a very big buy from China. But China has been very interested in getting Saudi Arabia to detach this particular oil deal, both from the US dollar as the currency that would be the main currency for the purchase to get the Saudis to accept renminbi, the Chinese currency rather than the dollar. That's been part of what's on the table. Very important development. The Saudis basically are going to accept a new kind of formation of the purchasing. There'll be a new structure for that. More than anything, the Chinese put on the table that the Saudis and the Chinese no longer use the SWIFT system to transfer funds. This is the system that's based in Brussels, in Belgium. It is rooted in the Western financial system. Much of the sanctions regime is run through SWIFT. If you can get the country cut off from SWIFT, you essentially condemn them not to be able to make payments for international trade. Well, the Chinese have developed their own system called SIPs, Cross-Border Interbank Payment System. Very keen on getting the Saudis to use the SIP system instead of the SWIFT system. That might not have happened immediately, but on the table also is for the payment mechanism, not to run through the banking system by itself, but through the Shanghai Petroleum and National Gas Exchange, using that as a platform to carry out the Yuan settlement, the payment for the oil trade. Very interesting developments taking place in the Gulf. It's another sign of the weakness of Western power in the Gulf and a turn or a rational turn by the Gulf monarchies who have been under pressure from Western states on human rights and so on. Quite correctly, I might add, nonetheless turning toward the East to see if there's more there. I'm not going to have time to get into the fact that part of the agenda is for China to transfer a lot of technology to the Saudis, to other Gulf monarchies interested in building flying cars and so on. For that, you need the best kind of 5G technology. It's not on the table from the West. It's on the table from China. Interesting developments. We'll be following that. Also, during the summit, Xi Jinping said that China is going to continue to push for political stability in Sudan. Big story there Prashant. What's going on in Sudan? Right, Vijay. It's been a tough couple of weeks in Sudan, of course. We need to understand, of course, there's been... Sudan is a story we've been covering for a long time, a very strong revolutionary process that has been taking place in that country starting from December 2018 and we're soon nearing the anniversary of that. And the protest overthrew the former dictator, Omar al-Bashir. They were unfortunately not able to get exactly the government they wanted. And the military sort of came in between established transitional authority some months later in October 2021 overthrew its own government, so to speak, in a coup and has been ruling Sudan ever since. Now, the reason development has, of course, the military and certain centrist parties have signed an agreement for a new transitional authority. Now, this has really sort of divided, you know, responses have been very divided on this issue. We do know, of course, that the international community, especially the West is very happy about this. They wanted, you know, the agreement between the military and these traditional political parties to take place for long. They were mediating between these two parties. But the sentiment of the ground is quite different, actually, because the protesters who have been on the streets for many months, in fact, over years now, the neighborhood resistance committees, the left in Sudan, they have rejected this agreement because they say that what this agreement means is basically a return to normal, a return to normal whereby the military continues to dominate political, economic and social life in the country. Whereas, you know, there's a fig leaf of civilian governance that is in place. So this is right now become a real hotspot when protests have taken place across Sudan in rejection of this agreement. What the protesters on the street are demanding is, you know, a complete refusal to negotiate with the military, the demanding justice for the people who have been killed in various protests. It's important to remember that since October 2021, over 120 people have been killed. Before that, there were massacres in which military and paramilitary forces were involved. So, you know, the protesters are demanding justice for this. The protesters are demanding a clear separation of the military from, you know, other aspects of governance and civilian power. This transition agreement makes it not towards that, but whether it can actually implement that is a really big question and that really remains to be seen. And I think the third real question is of the reform of the military and security force itself. Again, not really sort of answered. So all these questions remaining very much on the table. And as long as they remain on the table, I think the protesters are not going to be really satisfied because the demands of the protests of what is called the Sudanese revolution was of transformative justice, was of a transformative political project in which, you know, true democracy according to them would be delivered and the people would have more sovereignty over their resources, more sovereignty over their, you know, day-to-day life in every sense of the term. So those demands have really not been met. And I think we have mentioned this on the show before that Sudan is unique in the case of it being a country where the waves of protests have not stopped. In many other countries, we have seen these mass waves of protests break out due to either, you know, a variety of reasons many of them have not been able to sustain. But Sudan is a country where almost from December 2018 you can track that trajectory of protests which has continued sometimes week after week confronting security forces, you know, confronting the establishment political parties. In fact, forcing them to, you know, move from some of their more moderate stances or some of their more conservative stances and take up more, you know, positions more, you know, in alliance with what the protesters want. So a very interesting sort of face-off moment right here. Sudan's a very key position geopolitically. It has a lot of influence in the region as well. So what the protesters will be able to achieve in the coming weeks and months to be seen. You're listening to give the people what they want coming to you from people's dispatch that Zoe and Prashant Prashant is there and Ghana. We're going to come back to him later to talk about what he's up to in Ghana. I'm Vijay from Globetrotter. Happy to be with you again. We're going to move on now to a big story. I think again returning to South America, not only has Mr. Pedro Castillo been removed from power but a lot of pressure once more. Again, not a new story but new developments for Christina Kirchner. Zoe? It was a very big week for lawfare in Latin America. On Tuesday, Christina Fernández Kirchner was sentenced to six years and banned from holding any political office. This was a shocking to say the least decision. Shocking in some ways, expected in other ways. Verdict that happened by the court in Argentina on a case having to do with roads, road management in which essentially the justice accuses Christina of having been corrupt in the fact that there were laws passed that they alleged benefit certain businessmen that they say were close to her husband. So it's a case in which she said herself the sentencing, the conviction has already been written. It doesn't matter really the details of the case, the condemnation of her was already a fact. And following the verdict she had an hour long live stream in which she essentially responded to the sentencing and she accused that there is a mafia and parallel state that exists, which is what is operating in her sentencing. It's interesting to point out that just hours before she's sentenced in this case on the road management, there is a massive leak of chats about between judges, between businessmen and between other members of Argentina's right wing and ruling class this chat scandal in where they're trying to figure out a good cover-up about why they were at the house of a British billionaire in Patagonia. And so in the chats they're saying, okay, well, we could pretend that we were on a tourist vacation, that we went fishing. But the fact is, is that they were in a meeting with Mauricio Macri, with members of the Clarín group, which is one of the strongest and largest media groups in Argentina, with members of political parties and of course with judges. And so Cristina points out in her hour long live stream that the fact that the collusion between these different groups of power in Argentina is on the table, it's clear. There's actually chats about the fact that they're trying to cover up their relationships. And so this is really important to keep in mind. I think there's a great article by Manolo de los Santos, which was published on People's Dispatch, produced by Globetrotter, exactly about how the oligarchy in Peru worked to overthrow Pedro Castillo. This is extremely clear in the case of Cristina Fernández where there's evidence on the table, even Alberto Fernández who, you know, there's strange relationships between the two. He went out and defended Cristina and he also called into question this chat scandal. Very important to keep in mind. And in this hour long live stream of Cristina in response to this accusation, she says that, okay, you won. I'm not going to stand for candidate for any sort of political role in 2023. As we know, there's elections coming up. So she has vehemently rejected this sentencing. There's going to be two more instances in which she can appeal the verdict. We'll see how those go. But as she says, there is a mafiosa and parallel state in existence in Argentina. These are groups of power that are meeting secretly in British millionaires' mansions. And so this is extremely concerning. The response across the region was almost immediate. Heads of state from Cuba, Mexico, Honduras, all manifested their support for Cristina denouncing this lawfare. Cristina in an interview with Folio de Sao Paulo days before the court case said that this campaign of lawfare is done against her. It's done against Lula. We remember that Lula spent over 580 days in prison for a similar case, trying to link him into corruption scandals. So the lawfare in Latin America is far from over. It's actually intensifying as we're seeing these back-to-back progressive victors across the region. So I think it's yet another reminder that the right wing is clearly not giving up and that the ruling class in these countries is quite set on blocking any progressive from holding any political office. Very ugly developments in South America. I mean, it's not a surprise that these two things happen together. They're all happening the week that in Brazil, Lula going to be sworn in on the 1st of January as announced a very interesting cabinet. We'll come back and talk about that next week. For now, Prashant, what are you doing in Ghana? Right, Vijay. I mean, for a change, it's positive news. Very interesting news actually. Right now I'm in the historic town of Winneba where Dr. Parment Akruma set up an institute for carrying out the African Revolution as he termed it. And right now in Winneba, organizations from across West Africa have gathered, I believe from almost 16 states, 150 delegates have gathered, to basically chart a new course for the region. These include trade unions, political parties, women's organizations, cultural organizations, social movements. All these organizations have come together with an understanding that the West African region especially has become the target of a very renewed imperialist assault in recent times. And we see that with the rising number of military bases as one of our friends was explaining to us, almost all major European countries seem to be present in West Africa, maybe except Italy, militarily that is. We see that in the kind of IMF loans that countries are forced to take these packages by the IMF which send countries more into debt. We see that in the fact that there's been a complete encirclement of the region and the people are responding in all sorts of ways. We have talked about on the show the coups in countries like Mali in Burkina, Paso and Guinea, which on the face of it are military coups but are actually reflective of a mass upsurge against the presence of the French in the region. We have seen it in terms of strikes and other protests that are taking place by people's movements across this region and at this point of time these organizations have gathered in Winneba to sort of try to understand what is their common analysis of the situation in West Africa but also in Africa as a whole. And point number two, how do these organizations work together? How do these organizations work together to foster a spirit of anti-imperialism? How do they engage with some of these movements that are taking place on the ground? How do they sort of work together in rejection of the kind of packages that are being imposed by multilateral agencies? And equally importantly, how do they work together to sort of build this Pan-Africanism, Pan-African project? And on the ground, if you look around, there are a lot of posters of leaders from across the Pan-African movement who have all talked about this one idea that the destinies of the people of Africa are common in some senses, that joint struggles are only what can take the people of Africa forward. So it's very interesting, it is very interesting to be here to talk to people from various countries bringing from very different causes from very different backgrounds but all of them sort of brimming with this idea of Pan-Africanism, of anti-imperialism, of resistance to what the western project today, the western project in coalition with their local elites. So it's going to be an eventful couple of days. There's a lot of discussions taking place. It's expected at the end there will be the announcement of some kind of a regional forum which will channelize many of these efforts further, take these efforts forward, make sure that more organizations and more people's movements are able to work together. So some very inspiring speeches as well by delegates. We've had of course the participation of the diplomatic corps from countries such as Palestine, western Sahara. So solidarity with these peoples has been a very important aspect of the Pan-African project and that was really highlighted today as well. So all in all a very interesting and important meeting because it's one of those meetings which sort of sets the ground for regional action that a lot of people have been looking at because that's a question a lot of people have. What is the left's perspective? What is the perspective of peoples' movements to these developments in the Sahel region in West Africa as a whole? And I believe this conference will have quite a few of those answers. Well as you say, lots of western militaries are gathered in one way or the other in West Africa. We've got news of the Akra initiative of British troops perhaps roaming around a US base at Akra International Airport and so on. Just last night the US Congress decided to put their final stamp on the military budget for next year. Scandalous numbers $8.58 billion the total US military budget. This doesn't include the Department of Energy budget at least the section there that has the nuclear weapons and so on. If you add all that up it's over a trillion dollars. But what's interesting is the US Congress at a vote of 350 to 80 decided to add in $45 billion more than Biden asked. I'm going to get to what they asked for that was in addition to what Biden was interested in but here's a situation where the US Congress decided to go ahead of the Biden administration with pretty amazing stuff. Well what's in this budget? We'll get to some details later but Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics should be pretty happy lots of boondoggles for them. Also $10 billion for Taiwan this money to run till 2027. Now we know that the United States is kind of putting its finger or at least a little weapon underneath the fingernail of the Chinese Government using Taiwan as an irritant. This $10 billion in the US military budget is seriously going to impact US-Chinese relations. Quite an interesting amount. There's also $800 additional million dollars going to Ukraine. This has now taken the US military funding to Ukraine into the mid-billions 3-4 billion. It's very hard to keep track with how much is being put there. There's money coming in for so-called government support. Well when the US government puts say $2 billion into supporting the Ukrainian Government's budget this frees up the Ukrainian Government to use its own funds to buy weapons so it's very difficult to actually count how much is precisely military spending and how much is otherwise budgetary support. The Americans and the Taiwanese in this budget are pretty stunning to compare this budget of $858 billion with the US budget for the State Department which is merely $56 billion. That means the United States is spending close to a trillion dollars on the military and about $50 billion in funds to the State Department. It's actually also misleading this number because $10 billion going to Taiwan it's written into the budget in such a way it looks like they're going to pull some of that funding from the State Department budget. That means that $56 billion that goes to the State Department might actually be far less than that. Well what are some of the details in terms of weapons systems that the US government is going to finance? It is now clear that there's going to be a lot of so-called revitalization of the fleet. New amphibious ships are going to be funded. The US Navy should be quite happy. The Indo-Pacific section that is to say the section that is designed to put pressure on China is going to get a lot of the kind of machinery that it required including new ships. Now there will be a new Arleigh Burke ship that is a cost of $2.2 billion by itself. But this is going to be on the table. I'm actually interested in highlighting two things which I hope will get more discussion. The first is that the Biden administration was not keen on getting funding for the B-83 Megatron gravity bomb. This is 80 times more deadly than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. It's a conventional weapon. It looks like the Congress has said, no, no, let's develop the Megatron bomb. That's one. Secondly, and this is very much on the surface of people's should be on the surface of people's minds. In the nuclear posture review that the Biden administration put out there in which it basically failed to commit to no first strike. Something that Mr. Biden had promised on the campaign trail. During that, in that review, the Biden administration said they were not keen on developing a sea launched cruise missile. Well, the Congress doesn't agree. They put together 25 million to basically continue the cruise missile nuclear development program. This will be fired from sea. Terrible stuff in this budget. I hope there's some discussion around the world on it. You've been listening to give the people what they want brought to you from people's dispatch order. We'll be back to you with you next week. We're going to talk about that Brazilian cabinet. Let's see if Lula can save the world. See you next week.