pandemic has also drastically scaled down plans for how he'll be laid to rest philip himself had ruled out a state funeral buckingham palace has announced the service at windsor castle on april 17th is to have no public access for public procession beforehand as per the u.k.'s pandemic regulations the number of mourners will be limited to 30 prince harry he's distanced himself from the royal family will return from his new home in the us for it but his pregnant wife make unmarketable not on the advice of her doctor rory chimes al-jazeera but the. head of the clock in doha with the headlines here on al-jazeera and countries across latin america are rushing to impose restrictions as they battle to contain the rising number of covert 1000 cases the problems have been compounded by slow vaccine roll outs and weak health systems the brazils easing restrictions in some

places even though it's the worst affected country profile alcoa the pani is a professor of public safety he says brazil's high death rate is the result of the president's reckless coronavirus policies. over in brazil as the seizures are not taken by signing decisions every day by the all it in the brazilian president is very i gave very vocal against lockdowns so he put some pressure on the state orders and also on this he made yours to ease down as much as well as by just well and as fast as possible and he's one of the reasons why we are having so many people into it by these virals because the way they're dealing with that is a political way the same way some of the world's poorest countries we have to wait until june for the 2nd dose of the vaccine supply shortages have seen nearly all deliveries through the kovacs program blocked the scheme is designed to give poorer nations fair access to fight scenes. people in kurdistan of o.t.l.

propose changes to the constitution critics say the overhaul will give more power to the president and threaten to mock recy president decided to put off a call for the referendum after months of political turmoil ireland's prime minister has warned against a spiral back after 14 police officers were injured in violence in belfast protests through petrol bombs and ram to burning car into a police vehicle as anger about brakes it among other grievances. an earthquake off the coast of indonesia has killed at least 7 people the magnitude 6 quake hit the main island of java hundreds of buildings being damaged or made volcanic eruption on the caribbean island of surveillance and is now falling on the isle of the barbados which lies almost 190 kilometers away authorities say it could get even more explosive in the coming weeks those headlines more news here on al-jazeera right after upfront its.

thousands of our programs will be documentary. subscribed to eugene. al-jazeera english. as viktor orban killed democracy in hungary last international spokesperson for the hunger in government. marc lamont hill also on the show the united states congress is reviewing legislation that would consider paying money to the descendants of enslaved africans could such reparations ever happen and i think the best way to remove these historical injustices that's our debate but 1st crack down on media minorities and political institutions has said prime minister viktor orban on

a collision course with the e.u. so is the country's relationship with brussels salvageable or is it damaged beyond repair last hungry secretary of state for public diplomacy this week headline or so time called watch. on corvettes thank you so much for joining us up front. and a quarter of congress population has received at least one shot of the covert 19 vaccine. so 'd the government is now easing restrictions they're opening things up which makes sense except that right now has also one of the highest per capita corporate death rates in the world in recent weeks hospitals are inundated with patients doctors are begging you essentially not to ease up restrictions why are you listening to doctors. well 1st of all let me suggest to you that yes indeed the numbers are still high but the nature of the way it is very much different from the

previous 2 and that's why we have decided that a new strategy is required it's obvious that the british train as it is being called can't be stopped by this picture that's the lesson everybody leaders around the globe the only way out of this crisis in general and specific in face of the british crown is the nation so it's speeding up accident but most of us are i'm a little i'm a little confused here doctors are saying don't do this in fact judyth tarver she's vice president of the hungary and labor union of doctors said doctors find it in comprehensible how there can be a communication about a reopening so soon just when we should be talking about tightening and how to improve a different system curves i understand the idea of using a different strategy what i don't understand is why is or gap between what the government is doing and what so many doctors are saying. right or you say that many but not all and very definitely better strategies are being formulated ear is

it's not only the health care element actually which is going to cost of the region and the hospital system is. carrying the burden it is carrying we have to pick out there was actually who were lost their jobs so i think restarting the economy is another must and also the mantle health of hunger areas who because of the restrictions not being able to go to school being able to go to work because that you have to take care of their children a new strategy is required i think part of the challenge mr corvet's though is as you're describing the circumstances around vaccinations in the circumstances around the pandemic it's hard for us as a public to have a clear sense of what's going on because journalists aren't being allowed to report on this properly non-state media is not allowed in the hospitals doctors are not being permitted to speak to the press same for nurses $28.00 media organizations

wrote to your government at the end of last month demanding greater transparency and access to hospitals for journalists covering covert 1000 why aren't you giving them access the reason is very simple the hospitals have to deal with what they have signed for and that is treating the patients and taking care of those who are to meet our very definitely we provide access through those channels we've been using for the past year there's no change in protocol what a month ago. it is a public service radio and television actually which is giving our our all the reports on a daily basis about the vaccination progress about our hospitals about the heroic fight that is going on in the house because it's simply not true because we see the efforts actually specially from the anti-government press that we would like to come in and go for sensational news but definitely this is not what hunger areas and the special and those in the hospitals are required d.

and i mean doctors and nurses have the right obviously in face of what you're suggesting to tell their opinion outside a hospital very definitely the hospital subject to treat the patients not for immediate purposes so that i'm clear you're saying doctors and nurses are permitted to speak to the media. sure nobody go there is that official statement obviously like you know any other country when it's about or on behalf of a hospital or on behalf of official if this is. according to protocol which is again not to get any mention but an international one and everybody is free to delegate opinion and what they see outside hospitals the hospitals are for treating the patients not for media purposes and so the idea that the media restrictions are purely based on medical need would make sense except that there are so many other concerns about media freedom in the country since 2010 when prime minister viktor

orban came to power we've affectively seen a complete takeover the majority of the country's media on top of this he has he had the constitution written the way the human rights watch said quote weekend legal checks on its authority interfered with media freedom undermined human rights protections judicial independence and political participation how can we make sense of this particularly if we're thinking through a lens of democracy. the list of words you've used a very nice very obviously be all of them because that's probably the dearest from the perspective of democracy but these these school words these allegations i mean the lack of media freedom and so on is coming from the cavalry on the part of the galop as it should for the past 10 years we all know that it's simply not true. therefore since it's a political issue rather than a real democracy issue in any way we don't take care of these allegations anymore

because in again they are simply not true the bulk of the situation if you can be more specific because you're saying we all know they're simply not true but media organizations are saying they're true human rights organizations are saying they're true it's estimated now that 90 percent of all meat in hungary is now directly or in. directly controlled by viktor orban party that's a fact correct why not 100 i'm sorry you know. why not 100 percent i mean i'm just joking i mean. the thing is i don't have to have democratic congress fine but the question still is is that if. you acknowledge that 90 percent is controlled by by the party but i'd be going to. be marcus is that we can joke about the issues which is which are laughable i mean the charges are laughable not what you are saying or suggesting but what the political opposition domestically is trying to suggest that's been a buzzword for the faster than 11 years by now actually they've been bombarding not only hungary and public opinion but the international public opinion be discharges

year by year big praise about the warrior but you've got me going to way of hungary media freedom this is simply not true the estimate you have. is far too exaggerating in any respect very obviously very obviously compared to western european media balance where it's very rare to hear any kind of conservative christian democratic opinion any more it's a refreshing good. situation and experience here in hungary that at these there is some kind of balance viktor orban himself has referred to hungry as in a liberal democracy do you share that assessment he did refer to hunger is an illegal. procedure. for that description that has been a formulated and put on us by the best of european press back long long years ago maybe 8 years ago the prime minister's going to get i want to i was going to parse

you for one second so i know you said that he never said that but i'm going to quote him for a moment from a speech he gave in 2014 he said the nation is not a simple sum of individuals but a community that needs to be organized strengthened and developed and in this sense the new state that we are building is an ill. liberal state a non liberal state and now that you understand that he said this do you share this assessment your short years after the whole thing was fabricated by the western european press we are probably liberals because that means beyond normal liberals as a right i'm sorry just for clarity you say well. i'm certainly moral means if you have the freedom to have a different kind of political opinion and put their political conviction namely christian democracy christian democracy is not deliberately mark proceed or a liberal democracy perception it's along we made ready to engage in that actually but it's going to take hours actually when i'm convincing you don't walk by and convincing you that the use of the barrel in the atlas acts of world not to talk

about the united states or the u.k. is going to be completely different from what we use here in central europe so no liberal would be the. be good description actually as the prime minister means it and i believe any indication that there is only one way it will people proceed call liberal is simply wrong and not true but your assertion that human rights are being compromised that personal and individual freedoms and liberties aren't being undermined seems to stand at odds with what we're seeing here your government is used emergency powers to pass a law criminalizing criticism of the government's response to the pandemic and put a total ban on protests that ended legal recognition for transfer people and it banned same sex couples from adopting children yes but the accumulation of. relating news and items as you suggested from your list of allegations has nothing to do what you are trying to question here are the measures that are in place with

her and are in place for the pandemic obvious that come in a form that is similar to any european or global approach to an effective measurement system by which it is possible to handle the situation spreading use of . that. is as the jurist in the u.k. in the united states in the arabic world as it is in hungary and if it's a lie and if you steers up public. should be persecuted that's the only meaning the other elements actually this concern isn't just being articulated though by people in hungary it's not just being expressed by people and human rights organizations the e.u. more broadly may have your fellow members have expressed concern about hungary's ability to follow a commitment to following the rule of law a common value of course enshrined in article 2 of the e.u. use founding treaty a disciplinary process against hungry was launched in 2018 and now the threat of

financial sanctions is looming how do you respond to those nations those fellow members those entities who say that you're not following the rule of law. well gary the stance is very clear on that don't question us on the issues we all agree and if you have any allegations if you have any doubt then use those channels independently and objectively judge this situation there's no such system in place you will be you know yet. the political left. the left and liberals the greens use the rule of law as a buzzword as a matter of fact as a as a political weapon against those they don't like and that's the warri actually one of the most worrying elements of the development of western european politics for the past couple of years. in the name of democracy by seeing the meaning of words and. if you like

a referee for the sake of their old go to google's just the very fact that we don't agree. if you are softly from that i think that what these are these are these aren't philosophical issues but these are philosophical issues being raised they weren't there were broader concerns about about the rule of law specifically the independence of the judiciary corruption and conflicts of interest freedom of expression academic freedom i would hope i would imagine you would say that the right also wants these things right and the fact that they are saying that you are not honoring this would suggest that this is not an ideological war perhaps rather this is a question of whether the rule of law is being followed what do you say to that. it's a very nice list of allegations of the only real issue is that if you talk about the rule of law if you believe that something is wrong then you have to substantiate it and prove that it is wrong so far for the past 10 years not really anybody succeeded that because most of the foundations for those allegations are

coming from a different part of the commission that difference important legal opinion cannot substantiate or cannot serve as a ground floor not true and that these. are not true allegations just because of the difference of political opinion we. conservatives that is christian democrats the pine believe and act differently than liberals and that freedom is provided by the wheel of the people that so simple are in hungary 3 consecutive elections the government has gained 2 thirds support on behalf of the population and in terms of the mandates in parliament that's a clear cut in the case and of how and what books are pining and what trust they have given to the government not on call votes thank you so much for joining me on up front.

40 acres and a mule that was the promise that was made to newly freed african-americans an $865.00 at the end of the u.s. civil war a form of reparations for the atrocities of slavery but it didn't take long for the promise to be broken just a year later president andrew johnson reversed the order leaving the formerly enslaved with no form of restitution some argue that this marked the beginning of the contemporary racial wealth gap in the united states today according to some estimates 40 acres and a mule will be the equivalent of about 2 and a half trillion dollars congress is currently reviewing the bill reparations 1st introduced in 1909 known as h r 40 which would set up a commission to examine remedies for slavery such as payments from the government to descendants of enslaved africans so should reparations take place and if so what would that look like joining us to discuss this are barbara ran to be professor of african-american studies at the university of illinois chicago and author of making black lives matter and jared ball professor of communication and afrikaans studies

at morgan state university and the author of the myth and propaganda of black buying power i want to thank you both for joining me in the arena barbara i want to start with you what does it mean when we say reparations and i know that's a broad question people have different ideas about what that means we can you explain a little bit and your estimation of how what reparations is a what it should be and how it would work. yeah i mean i think that's the area of of debate and struggle ray there are a number of models for reparations all of them limited and problematic if you will we think of reparations as a repair as redress for past harm and past grievance so the reason i think the reparations demand is a useful one in in the constellation of tactics that we might use in the black freedom movement is that it really does at the on the bottom line indict racial capitalism which was built on the backs of black people with stolen land and stolen

labor it is something that we still do not confront it is you know a part of a very bloody history that that a whole. elaborate narrative of american triumphalism you know covers over so so i think it's a way to both expose racial capitalism as well as some of the material realities of white supremacy today jarrett you have said and i want to begin here because you know sometimes we see in mainstream media the reparations debate and it becomes the person who supports reparations represents like 80 percent of black community and then there's that when there's a conservative person who's propped up to represent the infinitesimal number of black people who actually oppose it and that's not what we're doing here you begin from the place of saying black people deserve reparations you're concerned about whether reparations would all to meet lee be more damaging than beneficial as a tactic or strategy can you talk a little bit about what you mean when you say that. well sure to the extent

that any issue can be turned on its side and made conservative this is certainly one of them and i think in many ways the reparations argument has been welcomed by a conservative segments of the political and media apparatus even the academic apparatus in the united states because it doesn't challenge capital it allows for in many ways what we saw after the election of barack obama it allows for much of white america to simply say well we can walk wipe our hands of of these issues and move on what i think should be the primary concern for any group or any oppressed group no more among them than black people in the united states that is the assumption of political power and we need to be organizing for. a change of this is sidey in ways that would make this conversation moot the call for reparations has been going on as you noted in your intro since you know in some ways for

a long time in officially least within the halls of congress in terms of this h r 40 since 1990 and it has gone nowhere largely because the society not only is bent on you know cumulating well from the extraction of labor and particularly black labor in this country 'd but also because there's no no will among the you know roughly 2 thirds of the voting population that would be required to start passing the kinds of legislation that would start redistributing wealth just a black americans when in fact we see this is heidi doesn't even want to redistribute even pennies back to its own white citizens even in the moment of coven crisis so that's really what i think i think we need to be think of much bigger anyway in terms of debt cancellation and redistribution the grid gross domestic product all of that kind of stuff. but can i can i just respond to gerri you know but it doesn't have to be either or i mean you know all of what you say is is true and every reform demand we make is co-opt

a bill every reform demand is limited but you know this is a reform demand we see it as a revolutionary demand were misguided but in the context of a reform demand it does have the expense the potential to expose racial capitalism because what it says is that these the bloody beginnings of this country that american capitalism is built with stolen labor and stolen land and that that indicts it for that in a very very profoundly and profound and fundamental way and to do that disrupts the whole narrative i think that justifies capitalism in in the present day if it is our only strategy is problematic if as a strategy to doesn't factor in class disparities in the black community and the role of black elites it's a problem but if it doesn't do that like any other reform it provides an opportunity to provide some material relief to our people who are indeed suffering and it provides the opportunity to discuss the we indict the you know capitalist

system which i think we both are critics of and spent much of our lives seeking to dismantle joe you said something that's fascinating and that i think may get you in trouble at least on the internet if you know as real a place that might be you said that tactically if you want to get reparations it should be collective in that specific to any one group because quote you could argue that white working people have a history of being exploited indigenous people have been exploited latinos have been exploited there are people who are going to say to you and who have said to you that this deflection the issue that black americans were enslaved and that we need to have a conversation and public policy that is targeted to become and to lump all those exploited people together is to do a disservice to the descendants of enslaved africans here in the united states would you say it. first of all i say that that's a logical and sound response to my personal pretty can suggestion i get that i'm not so so and usually the response to my suggestion is that it's often at least as

you pointed out to suggest that i'm not in defense support of black people getting reparations or the particular individual and specific struggle that black people have suffered here in this country that's not on the case again my point is just tactically technically speaking we should be focused on something bigger lighting like a debt you believe let's cancel debt imagine if your student loan debt is wiped out your is your medicare and met will medical coverage is entirely covered you know schooling is free you know all of this you know if all of these basic minimum are just caught up to in terms of what is you know the case for much of the so-called advanced world where had you know of the next level of what black people could get repaired to believe would be even i think even stronger and the ability to politically organized for more would be even more advanced and stronger so that's all i'm simply trying to suggest that it's a tactical question not one of deserve not measuring right yet when i think yeah op

it's not mutually exclusive though is it i mean just asking if you know you know the context of obama's model and i'm sad. well i'm sorry you're right what i'm but i'm really what i'm arguing for is an assumption of political power that would make a request of the federal government moot in the same way that those who had it themselves trillions last summer to make up for the lack of consumer spending among those of us that it can see in a covert crisis were able to do if you have political power you just redistribute the nation's wealth to where it's needed in those who need it the most or get it and that's what really the kind of focus that i'm talking about when it's over it's . going to get by which i know that's exactly you know i'm not out yet and that's a revolutionary vision right which which we share we're not there yet so i think you know when we talk about tactically you know there are things that we might demand tactically that we know are not realizable in the framework of the current system it serves a certain function it serves to mobilize people it serves to raise consciousness so

as to expose certain contradictions etc so so tactically there are demands that are made all the time that we think are not likely to be won in their totality so you know jarrett makes the argument that there is conservative elements i want to embrace reparations but reparations has been resisted also as you pointed out you know even the discussion of reparations has been resisted you know sense conyers brought up h.r. 40 and 20. 1 right before the 911 in durban the 2 issues that u.s. and israel walked out on were not just palestine one was palestine but the other was reparations and so i think it does have a radical potential it doesn't automatically become a radical demand but it does have a radical potential both for material support for people suffering but also to expose the corruption of racial capitalism so so that's why i think it's useful i don't think it's a panacea so i have some i think that's where i'm at i notice so much more to cover

here this is a very nuanced and complicated topic and we'll make sure you have you have you back to talk about it even more but i want to thank you both for joining me in the arena barberin zvi djerba thank you so much. into i right thank you that's our show for the week but up front will be back next weekend. vaccines a promising path out of the pandemic but implementing the greatest inoculation in history is testing the global community around the world already a clear gap as the marriage between rich nations and poor ones when it comes to vaccinating their populations from the geopolitics to the pure economics the misinformation and the latest developments what's going on here is very different for a start look back see incomes in the form of a nasal spray special coverage of the coronavirus pandemic on a. bold and right wing government and the catholic church are the very best of

friends the curve supports the government the government supports the church their critics claim they both draw power from demonizing others they find an enemy in them and try and scare the people with it and it's not ideology hatred but have recent changes to abortion laws pushed the public too far. people in power press the gates poland's church and state alliance on a 0. passion for supporting local communities. and pioneering innovative african science and technology projects how his child beautiful. glorious are all of us on this planet not just africa al-jazeera front as a leading by a chemist determined to use his scientific knowledge to say africa women make science from the lab to the field on al-jazeera.

al-jazeera. every. ready. brazil's 2nd largest city eases coronavirus restrictions even though thousands of people are dying daily across the country. about the clock this is al jazeera live from doha also coming up people in kurdistan and voting in a referendum that could give the president more power and threaten its democracy. 23 years after a landmark peace deal we look at what's at.