 Hello and welcome to Daily Debrief brought to you by People's Dispatch. I'm Pragya. After the devastating earthquake relief and rescue on in Syria and Turkey, but is the devil of discrimination in the detail, in Ohio, United States, toxic after effects of a train that derailed 10 days ago and the government steps into repressed reports of toxic discharge. A massive health workers protest against the conservative regional government in Madrid. Estimates say over a million people angry over the neglect of public health hit the streets on Sunday. Is the world ignoring Syria's urgent need for relief after the devastating 6th February earthquake? The quake affected Turkey and Syria, but Syria is struggling to access any aid that's available. As developing countries come forward to help the country, is the West just looking on? Abdul from People's Dispatch has been reviewing the situation. Abdul, thanks for joining us. Abdul, so it's been about 10 days since the earthquake now and we're hearing a variety of reports, especially from Syria, from the affected areas about a sort of, shall we call it discrimination in terms of how the aid is flowing in. Can you just give us a sort of lay of the land? What is happening? Well, it looks like discrimination, very clear discrimination if you say, if you look at it. See, the US, after a lot of pressure from the human aid groups, from the countries across the world, from the UN, finally announced temporary sanction relief last week. But if you see, no other country except Italy has come forward, Western countries, has come forward to provide any kind of aid and relief to Syria yet. If you see Turkey, there are the number of countries including the US are active on the ground. They are providing all kinds of relief possible. But when it comes to Syria, as I said before, except Italy, no other country has come up, Western countries. Though there are terrible countries, there are developing countries such as Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, they have come forward and provided are providing relief on the ground in Syria. But when it comes to Western countries, no one has come forward. If you see, UN has to kind of issue repeated appeals asking more donation, more relief work for Syria. So it is quite visible that there is a discrimination going on. Also, if you see within Syria, there is much more eagerness to kind of from the Western countries to provide aid to certain organizations, they think are affiliated to their cause, are quote unquote fighting against the Bashar al-Assad government in Idlib and in some parts of Aleppo. But even that aid is not reaching, has not been reaching to these reasons. Though the number of people, the number of casualties, the number of area, the amount of area affected by earthquake in Syria is relatively lesser. But given the fact that Syria has been under the war for more than a decade now and the government has been under sanctions imposed by US and other Western countries, of course Syria needs much more attention. But that attention is not coming. And this has been repeated by the UN, this has been repeated by the international organizations and other human groups as well. Abdul what explains the situation? How do we explain this discrepancy and how the aid is flowing? Well, it is quite clear that this is the repercussion of the larger global politics in which the US and its allies have seen Bashar al-Assad as someone who is basically who does not fit into their scheme of things for the reason and for the larger global politics. So that explains it and they are not ready to let it go even at the time of the crisis despite their so called commitments towards human rights and humanitarian work and so on and so forth. Meanwhile, there is one positive development as we know that there has been a kind of disagreement over the ways and means through which the aid can flow to Syria between the UN and Syria. We had discussed earlier in this show, if I remember correctly about how the cross border aid was an issue of contention. Thankfully Bashar al-Assad government has agreed to the UN demand of opening much more border crossings into the rebel areas of Syria so that the aid can flow much more easily to the reasons as I said before Idlib and Aleppo which is controlled by the anti-Bashar al-Assad forces. That may provide some kind of relief. But at the same time as the regional left groups and the human rights groups have come forward with a joint statement demanding the complete lifting of sanctions on Syria as China has also reiterated yesterday that all the sanctions need to be lifted because sanctions are the politics which basically blocking all kinds of aid to Syria. It is hampering the Syria's health sector in particular which is very crucial at this time from accessing medicine, required medicine, accessing required equipment, medical equipment to deal with the kind of the casualties, the kind of health crisis which has been created due to the earthquake. But the US has not though despite the fact that as I said before that there is a temporary relief, that temporary relief does not provide enough confidence among the countries in the west to basically start delivering, require medicines and medical equipment to Syria and start pumping more and more resources into Syria which would strengthen the health sector there and strengthen the government machinery to provide much faster and better relief work in the earthquake affected reasons. And that one thing need to be highlighted again and again that there is an urgent need that all the sanctions imposed on Syria are lifted so that all the countries and all the groups across the globe who are willing to provide relief can easily do that. Alright Abdul, thanks a lot for joining us. First, a fire raged for days. Now toxic fumes are said to be spreading in a neighborhood in Ohio in the United States. Over 50 cars of a Norfolk Southern train derailed on 3rd February and chemicals in at least 10 may carry long-term health risks. Has a control release of the chemicals gone terribly wrong? What is the deeper reason behind the series of events? Natalia from People's Dispatch joins us with an update on the government and company's response. So it's been 10 days. Is it that the local authorities went wrong and how they were handling the containers that had these toxic chemicals? Can you just tell us what the latest is? Yeah, so you know this accident happened on 3rd of February where 50 train cars out of 100 derailed in the town of East Palestine, Ohio. Several of those train cars were carrying toxic fumes and the company Norfolk Southern Railroad did a controlled release of the fumes a few days after the accident. But the effects of those fumes on the local population are still pretty unknown and some troubling reports are coming in. So locals are reporting that animals are dying, pets, you know, a news site obtained video of fish dead in the river, the Ohio River. And so people, you know, it's not totally clear what the effects will be on the population, but public health experts are saying that there could be some sort of cancer possibly decades down the line. I mean, again, like these fumes are things that can have effects for years and years and years down the line in the future. So it's not completely clear, but there is a lot of outrage because of the way that the accident happened, the reports that are coming in, the fact that the Ohio authorities are denying any reports of animals dying. You know, the, you know, unionized rail workers are saying that even the reason that the accident happened in the first place was because of cost cutting measures that have been implemented across railroads in the country. Again, you know, rail workers did attempt to strike last year over these sorts of conditions, overworking, lack of sick days, you know, trying to make few workers do the work of many. And, you know, very infamously, the government completely shut down that strike, rapidly passed legislation to make it illegal to strike. And, you know, workers are saying that if what they had been fighting for had been implemented in the first place, this sort of accident wouldn't have even happened. Natalia, I remember discussing the railroad workers protest last year, and we also talked about the legislations the government was bringing in. What were the laws? Can you just sort of tell us how they crashed the protest and also the railroad itself? What's its history? What have they been up to? Yes. So, you know, again, as I was saying, very infamously last year, Biden and Congress completely shut down the rail workers' strike. They took away their legal rights of strike. Essentially, they could not strike on penalty of arrest because of just the sheer power of the railroad workers. You know, the government had been sort of fear-mongering about the strike for a long time because rail workers are so essential to the economy. If they stopped working, the entire U.S. economy could have shut down, which, you know, there was a lot of fear-mongering about. But again, it also could have been easily avoided by simply acquiescing to the workers' demands of getting sick pay. And they were eventually forced to work without sick pay by the government. And none of their concerns about overworking layoffs were addressed, which again could have prevented the sort of accident. But just about the railroad itself, you know, railroad companies make huge, huge profits, right? So this company alone made a record of $12 billion in revenue last year and also announced a $10 million stock buyback program. And yet, at the same time, you know, like many railroad companies, they are always complaining that any sort of safety measure will cost them just like an exorbitant amount of money. So, you know, this company delivered $6 million to Republican Party campaigns during the 2016 election cycle. This, of course, is when Donald Trump won the presidency. And when Trump was in office, lobbyists for Norfolk Southern successfully shut down a measure that would require train cars carrying hazardous materials, hazardous flammable materials to be equipped with electronic brakes, which are more effective than conventional brakes. Again, very related to the accident that happened where these train cars were carrying flammable materials. Obviously, the train cars burst into flames once they derailed and all of these toxic fumes as well. And they complained at the time in 2016 that this rule would impose tremendous cost. Again, this is a company that makes billions of profits every year. They can definitely afford better safety measures to prevent these sort of accidents. And yet, you know, they successfully shut down this regulation. And so, again, there's so many different ways that this could have been prevented. And it's so linked to, you know, corporate profits, to, you know, workers' struggles. Yeah, it's very, very much linked. And again, very preventable. Right. Natalia, now, what are the people in the neighborhood in Ohio planning to do in East Palestine? Are they considering court action? What kind of measures are people talking about? Yeah, I mean, I'm not entirely sure. I'm sure, you know, there might be some lawsuits coming up, especially if people do get sick with cancer or other diseases. They can try to trace it back to the toxic fumes. But, you know, it's, there's a certain amount of repression people are suspecting on the ground because the Ohio authorities are denying, receiving any reports of dying animals, even though there are several public-facing reports of animals dying in East Palestine. And also, more recently, the police in Ohio arrested a reporter for allegedly speaking while the governor was speaking during a media conference. Although this was very much not the case. I mean, he stopped speaking immediately when the governor started speaking, but he was tackled to the ground and arrested in front of media. And obviously, this caused outrage. He was released the same day, but still people are suspecting that something is going on. If journalists are getting arrested, obviously, that's not a good look. But as of now, I'm not sure entirely if there are, you know, any protests or lawsuits, but I'm sure that that's very possible in the future. Right. Thanks very much for joining us, Natalia. No problem. Organizers of a massive protest by health workers say more than a million people showed up in Madrid on Sunday as anger rises against the neglect of the public health system workers are demanding that the government fixes the poor staffing situation. They say government healthcare must be strengthened, but that their local government has been dismantling it instead. Ana from People's Health Movement joins us over Zoom to tell us how workers and the public see the situation. Ana, thanks very much for joining us. So, you know, the Madrid health workers strike is something we've spoken about before on the show. But the sheer scale of the number of people who are out on the street seems to be tremendous. Can you talk about why it became so big? Yes. So, you know, last Sunday, so it was February 12th, we saw again a massive strike, not only of health workers, but also by people supporting the health workers and wanting to see a better and more holistic and a wider health system in Madrid. And so, the last one was just the latest one in a series of protests and of other actions that took place since November. So, I think we discussed here before also that around the 13th of November, the people of Madrid took to the streets and protested against the very harmful health policies that are being implemented by the People's Party government there. Among their grievances are long waiting lists and long waiting times for actually getting to see primary healthcare physicians, including pediatricians. So, that's one of their concerns. But also some changes which are being made to the emergency departments, the health emergency systems, and also overall because of the commercialization of healthcare that has been promoted in the Madrid area for decades now. And so, this latest protest which we have seen has shown that the interest and the feelings about the people for the topic have not diminished over time, as probably the government would have hoped, but that people are still quite interested and still ready to fight for a universal public healthcare system. How has the government actually responded to this growing swell of opposition? I was reading that the main issue people are saying is that they want public healthcare and not private healthcare. And can you talk about that? Well, yes. So, essentially I think it's interesting to compare how the government has responded also to the health workers demands which the doctors in the primary healthcare system in Madrid had been on strike on and off from the member also. So, that's you know, I think that if we look at the whole time they spent on strike together, it's about nine weeks, which is an extremely long time for something as essential as primary healthcare. And the government in that regard has been stalling and has been avoiding having any significant conversation with the workers. So, we have seen, you know, last time that the health workers actually took to the streets and protested was about a month ago, so in mid-January. And by then the government did not want to actually pick up on any of the points that they advanced and put forward for the health workers. So, what we are seeing is that, you know, the standard response I would say by conservative governments that they're not actually taking the pressure seriously enough and they're trying to find a way, in any case, to avoid the topic and maybe, you know, to postpone as far as they can and then see if it blows down a bit. But yeah, but what we are seeing here is that essentially instead of winding down, the protests have spread to other parts of Spain as well. So, you know, we have seen protests for better abortion care in Castilla de León, but also strikes and protests in Catalonia and in other places, in other regions of Spain. So, that's indicative of the feeling that people and health workers in Spain share at the moment. Right, Anna. And thanks a lot for joining us with that update. And that's all we have for you today. Thank you for watching Daily Debrief. Do come back to us tomorrow. 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