U.S. Court Tosses Israel Lobby Lawsuit Against U.S. Scholars

Editor’s Note: The following dispatches are a service of Peoples Dispatch / Globetrotter News Service.

Argentina and Brazil Rejoin UNASUR

The governments of Argentine President Alberto Fernández and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva have officially rejoined the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), a regional integration organization founded in May 2008.

Between 2018 and 2020, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay, under the leadership of conservative heads of state, withdrew from UNASUR due to their alignment with U.S. interests.

In November 2019, following the coup against democratically elected president Evo Morales, the de facto government led by Jeanine Áñez withdrew Bolivia from UNASUR. In November 2020, after the election of President Luis Arce, the country rejoined the regional body.

In August 2021, the government of former Peruvian President Pedro Castillo also announced his country’s reincorporation into the bloc. However, following his ouster and arrest in December 2022, Castillo’s successor Dina Boluarte suspended Peru’s membership.

On April 5, Argentine foreign minister Santiago Cafiero announced the country’s official return to the body after four years of absence. Likewise, on Thursday, April 6, President Lula signed a decree making official Brazil’s return to UNASUR, also after four years.

The measure marked a step in Lula’s drive to reposition the country’s politics after the four years of conservative former president Jair Bolsonaro, who withdrew Brazil from the bloc in April 2019.

Brazil’s decision came a day after the member states of the Alliance of Latin American and Caribbean Countries against Inflation (APALCI), including Brazil and Argentina, agreed to join efforts to face the inflation crisis and strengthen regional integration and trade.

Latin American and Caribbean Governments Agree to Join Forces Against Inflation

On April 5, the leaders of 11 Latin American and Caribbean countries took part in a virtual summit against inflation called by Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO). The summit sought to form an alliance to jointly face the inflation crisis affecting the region.

In addition to President AMLO of Mexico, the countries represented were Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Honduras, Venezuela, Belize, Colombia, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.

During the meeting, political leaders discussed joint solutions to face high food prices and shortages in the region, as well as to strengthen regional integration and trade. They expressed their will to unite efforts to guarantee economic growth and development that promote inclusion, equity, and sustainability of food and nutrition security for people, and to face inflationary pressures on the basic food basket and essential goods and services. They also committed to strengthening their economies and productive sectors through inclusion, solidarity, and international cooperation.

In this regard, the leaders signed a joint declaration and agreed on actions to “advance the definition of trade facilities as well as logistical, financial, and other measures that will allow the exchange of basic food basket products and intermediate goods under better conditions, with the priority of lowering the costs of such products for the poorest and most vulnerable population.”

Eighty-Seven Percent of Service Workers in the U.S. South Were Injured on the Job Last Year

A March survey of 347 service workers in the U.S. South found that a shocking 87 percent were injured on the job in the last year. The workers surveyed came from eleven states across the “Black Belt,” or Southern states with historically large Black populations. Workers organized under the Union of Southern Service Workers filed a landmark civil rights complaint against the South Carolina Occupational Safety and Health Administration (SC OSHA), alleging that the agency “discriminates by disproportionately excluding Black workers from the protection of its programmed inspections.”

The survey, conducted by the Strategic Organizing Center, laid bare the shocking reality of the service industry in the U.S. South, composed of principally Black workers. More than half of survey respondents reported observing serious health and safety hazards at work.

The survey data indicates that workers often fear retaliation to avoid enforcing safety rules themselves, something they shouldn’t have to do in the first place. Service workers need OSHA agencies, whose jobs are to step in to enforce safety regulations.

But in South Carolina, their statewide OSHA plan is not doing its job, workers say. As USSW reports in their complaint, “SC OSHA neglects key industries whose workforce is 42% [Black] employees while focusing the vast majority of its programmed inspections on industries made up of only 18% [Black] workers.”

In conjunction with their complaint, USSW workers went on a one-day strike across three states—Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina—yesterday to fight the dangerous trend of unsafe service industry workplaces.

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in Peoples Dispatch.

The head of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, Khaled Hboubati, demanded on Tuesday, February 7, that Western countries, specifically the United States and its allies, lift their siege and sanctions on Syria so that rescue and relief work can proceed unimpeded, after the country was devastated by a powerful earthquake on Monday.

“We need heavy equipment, ambulances and fire fighting vehicles to continue to rescue and remove the rubble, and this entails lifting sanctions on Syria as soon as possible,” Hboubati said at a press conference on Tuesday, as reported by the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA).

A powerful earthquake registering a magnitude of 7.8 struck Turkey and Syria on Monday. Over 5,000 people have been reported dead so far. In Syria alone, the death toll was 1,602 on Monday. These numbers are only expected to rise as a large number of people are suspected to be still buried under the debris of houses that collapsed in the earthquake and its aftershocks.

Kahramanmaraş, a city in Turkey, was reported to be the epicenter of the earthquake, and the nearby city of Gaziantep—home to millions of Syrian refugees—was reportedly hit the hardest. Relief and rescue operations in Turkey have been affected by bad weather as several of the affected areas have received heavy rain and snowfall on Monday and Tuesday.

Syria’s northern provinces such as Idlib, Latakia, Hama, and Aleppo have also been badly affected by the earthquake. Some of the affected areas in Idlib and Aleppo are under rebel control and densely populated by refugees from other parts of the country.

Though several countries including the United States and its allies have extended their support to Turkey in its relief and rescue work, they have refused to extend similar assistance to Syria. The U.S. State Department made it clear on Monday that it was only willing to support some work carried out in Syria by NGOs, but that it would have no dealings with the Bashar al-Assad government. “It would be quite ironic—if not even counterproductive—for us to reach out to a government that has brutalized its people over the course of a dozen years now,” State Department spokesperson Ned Price said, as quoted by Al Jazeera.

On Monday, the Syrian government had issued an appeal to the international community asking for help. Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad is quoted in Al-Mayadeen as having said that his government was willing “to provide all the required facilities to international organizations so they can give Syrians humanitarian aid.”

Sanctions Hamper Relief and Rescue Work

Claiming that “Current U.S. sanctions severely restrict aid assistance to millions of Syrians,” the American Arab anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) asked the U.S. government on Monday to lift its sanctions. While it said that the NGOs working on the ground were doing a commendable job, it also said that the “lifting of the sanctions will open the doors for additional and supplemental aid that will provide immediate relief to those in need.”

The U.S. Congress had adopted the so-called Caesar Act in 2020, according to which any group or company doing business with the Syrian government faces sanctions. The act extends the scope of the previously existing sanctions on Syria, imposed by the U.S. and its European allies since the beginning of the war in the country in 2011.

The impact of sanctions on Syria’s health and other social sectors and its overall economic recovery have been criticized by the UN on several occasions in the past. The UN has also demanded that all unilateral punitive measures against Syria be lifted.

Meanwhile, countries such as China, Iran, Russia, Cuba, Algeria, and the UAE, among others, have expressed their willingness to provide necessary support to Syria, and have sent relief materials already.

Al-Mayadeen has however reported that the delivery of international aid, as well as the speed of relief and rescue work in Syria, continue to be impeded as the Damascus international airport is not fully operational at the moment. The airport was hit by an Israeli missile on January 2 and repair work is not yet complete.