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The Enron of Sports: FIFA's Upheaval, from Corruption Arrests to Rising Death Toll in Qatar
In what’s been described as the largest scandal in modern sports history, nine high-ranking soccer officials, including two current vice presidents of soccer’s world governing body, FIFA, were indicted along with five sports marketing executives on federal corruption charges by the U.S. Justice Department. Among those arrested in connection with the probe is Jack Warner, former vice president of FIFA, who is accused of taking a $10 million bribe to cast his ballot for South Africa to host the 2010 World Cup. Despite the arrests, FIFA is holding an election today to pick the next president of the organization. FIFA President Sepp Blatter is seeking re-election for the post he has held since 1998. Many commentators have predicted he will be re-elected, though some nations, including the United States, have vowed to vote against him. We speak to sportswriter Dave Zirin and Jules Boykoff, former professional soccer player who represented the U.S. Olympic soccer team.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: We turn now to what some have described as the largest scandal in modern sports history. Earlier this week, nine high-ranking soccer officials, including two current vice presidents of soccer’s world governing body, FIFA, were indicted along with five sports marketing executives on federal corruption charges by the U.S. Justice Department. Early on Wednesday, Swiss authorities made a series of arrests at a five-star hotel at the request of the the U.S. authorities.
AMY GOODMAN: Among those arrested in connection with the probe is Jack Warner, former vice president of FIFA, who is accused of taking a $10 million bribe to cast his ballot for South Africa to host the 2010 World Cup. U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said the corruption dates back to at least 1991.
ATTORNEY GENERAL LORETTA LYNCH: The 14 defendants charged in the indictment we are unsealing today include high-ranking officials of FIFA, the international organization responsible for regulating and promoting soccer, leaders of regional and other governing bodies under the FIFA umbrella and sports marketing executives who, according to the indictment, paid millions of dollars in bribes and kickbacks to obtain lucrative media and marketing rights to international soccer tournaments. The 47-count indictment against these individuals includes charges of racketeering, wire fraud and money laundering conspiracies spanning two decades.
AMY GOODMAN: On Thursday, the chief of the IRS Criminal Investigation [unit], Richard Weber, described the corruption within FIFA.
RICHARD WEBER: As the best financial investigators in the world, IRS-CI special agents exposed complex money-laundering schemes, uncovered millions of dollars in untaxed income, and discovered tens of millions of dollars hidden away in offshore accounts in countries like Hong Kong, the Cayman Islands and Switzerland. This really is the World Cup of fraud. And today we are issuing FIFA a red card.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Despite the arrests, FIFA is holding an election today to pick the next president of the organization. FIFA President Sepp Blatter is seeking re-election for the post he has held since 1998. Many commentators have predicted he will be re-elected, though some nations, including the United States, have vowed to vote against him. Earlier today, protesters in Zurich called for Blatter to step down. This is Alaphia Zoyab of the group Avaaz.
ALAPHIA ZOYAB: If Blatter doesn’t go despite giving the World Cup to a country that has slave labor, if Blatter doesn’t go despite the fact that his sponsors are starting to wobble, and if Blatter doesn’t go despite the fact that half his board has been arrested, it’s not just Blatter that needs to be axed, the FIFA Congress itself needs to be questioned.
AMY GOODMAN: This week’s FIFA arrests are just the latest scandal within the international soccer community. FIFA has also come under criticism for selecting Qatar to host the 2022 games despite the country’s poor human rights record. According to the International Trade Union Confederation, 1,200 migrant workers have died since the World Cup was awarded in 2010.
To talk more about FIFA and the soccer scandals, we’re joined by two guests. Jules Boykoff is with us, former professional soccer player who represented the U.S. Olympic soccer team. He now teaches political science at Pacific University in Oregon, joining us from Portland. And in Washington, D.C., sportswriter Dave Zirin. His latest book, Brazil’s Dance with the Devil: The World Cup, the Olympics, and the Fight for Democracy.
Well, Dave, you’ve been covering this for a long time. We were interviewing you in Brazil when the World Cup was there. Are you surprised?
DAVE ZIRIN: Not surprised at all, about as surprised as I’d be if I fell in a pool and emerged wet. The only thing that is surprising here is that we’re now dealing with charges that have actual teeth. That’s the only surprise. I mean, we are talking about the Enron of sports and a hubris and arrogance that is bringing down a multibillion-dollar corporation. The only difference between FIFA and Enron is that FIFA has been designated a nonprofit by the Swiss government, which makes looking at its books and finding the extent of the corruption all the more difficult.
Now, for Democracy Now! listeners and viewers, I could understand why people would look at the U.S. Justice Department and say, "Why can’t they be this aggressive towards the Wall Street bankers? Why can’t they be this aggressive towards police brutality?" And those viewers are absolutely correct. But people should also realize that this is a day that people should celebrate, because it is crippling one of the most corrupt multinationals that we have, sports or otherwise.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Dave, could you tell us a little bit about Sepp Blatter, the president of FIFA? He wasn’t among those who was indicted, and today he’s running for president, for re-election for president of FIFA.
DAVE ZIRIN: Yes, Sepp Blatter, as you said, he has been in charge of FIFA for 17 years. The thing about Sepp Blatter that distinguishes him from the people who were indicted is that Sepp Blatter uses his power and influence to attain more power. He’s less interested in personal enrichment than he is in influence, and this is what has allowed him to remain free of prison these last many years. Although Sepp Blatter is also—he will not get off a plane in the United States, for fear that he will be arrested. That is true. There are also people saying that he might not attend the Women’s World Cup in Canada, for fear that he might be arrested. So, you’re talking about somebody who is effectively a stateless actor, somebody who is under investigation, who will probably be re-elected for a fifth term to head FIFA.
AMY GOODMAN: Are there any U.S. Justice Department Blatter leaks? What will happen to Blatter next, Dave?
DAVE ZIRIN: That’s a terrific question. What is very clear is that Lorreta Lynch has Blatter in her sights. That’s why she said she wanted to uproot corruption going back 20 years. That’s Blatter’s term. And let’s be clear about this, too: The U.S. Justice Department is going after FIFA very simply because the U.S. was not awarded the 2022 World Cup. If they had been, I don’t think this investigation would be taking place. And also let’s keep in mind that the Justice Department has only gone after, at this point, a small part of the world—North America, Central America, these confederations. What it says to us is that this is just the tip of the iceberg, and if some of these FIFA vice presidents begin to talk, begin to flip, if you will, to use Mafia parlance, what we could be looking at is the bringing down of Sepp Blatter and perhaps the beginning of the end of FIFA itself.
AMY GOODMAN: Could you talk about the revelations regarding the Clinton Foundation—
DAVE ZIRIN: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: —having received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Qatari World Cup Committee—
DAVE ZIRIN: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: —when Bill Clinton was serving as the U.S. World Cup delegate with the U.S. cup world delegation—the World Cup delegation?
DAVE ZIRIN: Yes. Not only has the Clinton Foundation received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Qatar World Cup Committee, it has also received millions of dollars from the Qatari government over the last several years. And the Clintons are going to have to answer this question, because, as you said in the intro, the Qatari World Cup construction has an absolutely monstrous body count—1,200 deaths—slavery, and even the prevention of Nepalese migrant workers of going home to Nepal after the recent earthquake to go to funerals for members of their family. Now, there is this lore that’s out there in the media that Bill Clinton was so angry after the U.S. did not get the World Cup bid for 2022, he broke a mirror, and that signaled that the United States was going to get serious about corruption in the World Cup. This is mainstream media hooey. What you see much more clearly is a very bizarre, very unexplained connection between the Qatari royal family, the Qatari World Cup bid and the Clinton Foundation, which allegedly was to facilitate less labor abuses, when in reality we have not seen that at all.
AMY GOODMAN: The Guardian has an amazing figure: Despite Qatar’s promises to improve conditions, Nepali migrants have died at a rate of one every two days in 2014 in Qatar.
DAVE ZIRIN: Yeah, and that blood is on Sepp Blatter’s hands, as well. Even though, ironically, Sepp Blatter was not in favor of the Qatari bid, he has said that this World Cup will go on in 2022, quote-unquote, "over his dead body"—that’s his words—even though it’s 125 degrees during the summer in Qatar, even though they’re going to have to have the World Cup in 2022 in the fall, which will effectively cut into, if not completely reorganize, the European soccer leagues, which are the world’s most popular. And that’s why I think 2022, if Blatter is re-elected and if we have a situation where he’s not imprisoned, where we could be looking at the crack-up of FIFA in the years to come, because the splits are really profound. And the splits are unclear. Voting against Blatter today will not only be the United States, as you mentioned, but also the Palestinian Football Association. So, if Blatter and FIFA have done nothing else, they have brought the interests of Palestine and the interests of the United States together for once.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, could you talk about that, Dave? Your recent piece talks about the Palestinian Football Association’s bid to have the Israeli Football Association, you know, somehow sanctioned for the way it treats Palestinian football players. Could you talk about that?
DAVE ZIRIN: Yes, sanctioned or expelled. It would be the first time since apartheid South Africa that a country was asked to leave FIFA because of its practices. But this news is changing as I’m speaking to you. There are negotiations going on. Israel, from what I hear from news reports, is already relenting on what has been a blockade preventing players in Gaza from traveling freely to the West Bank. And that’s what the Palestinian Football Association is charging Israel with. They’re saying they are choking out their ability to develop soccer because of the way that they get in the way of free movement of players, free movement of coaches. And perhaps the most damning accusation towards the Israeli Football Association is that they have created and formed five or six, depending on reports, clubs in the Occupied Territories, in the settlements of the West Bank, so it’s Israeli Football Association using soccer as a way to take land that should rightfully be part of a possible Palestinian state. And they’re saying that the Israeli Football Association should be removed from FIFA unless they agree to cease these practices. And there are furious negotiations going on, as we speak, to try to head that off.
AMY GOODMAN: Russian President Vladimir Putin has come out in defense of the embattled FIFA president, Sepp Blatter. Russia is due to host the World Cup in 2018. Putin drew comparisons between the alleged attempt to oust Blatter and the charges brought against National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, who’s got political asylum in Russia, and WikiLeaks founder and editor Julian Assange. He accused the U.S. of meddling outside its jurisdiction.
PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN: [translated] With regard to the arrests that have been made, it looks very strange, to say the least, because the arrests have been made at the request of the American side on charges of corruption. And who were charged? International officials. We can assume that some of them may have violated something. I don’t know. But it’s clear that the U.S. has nothing to do with that anyway. Those officials are not U.S. citizens. And if some event indeed happened, and it happened not on the United States territory, and the U.S. has nothing to do with that, this is yet another blatant attempt to extend its jurisdiction to other states.
AMY GOODMAN: Dave Zirin, your response?
DAVE ZIRIN: Well—
AMY GOODMAN: That was, of course, Vladimir Putin.
DAVE ZIRIN: Well, I mean, Vladimir Putin will also be having to answer, in the weeks and months to come, new allegations about the use of prison labor to create World Cup facilities in Russia. But that being said, one thing that Putin is saying which is true is that the United States Justice Department is using statutes that they—that was granted to it by law after 9/11 as a way to conduct international antiterror arrests in other countries that they have extradition agreements with. So this was a post-9/11 arrest using antiterror statutes as a way to arrest foreign officials and bring them to the United States for trial. And these antiterror statutes are so broad that if someone even tries to send money through a computer server in the United States, it dings off a server in the U.S., then the U.S. Justice Department has jurisdiction to go into another country, conduct an arrest and bring people back to the U.S. for trial. So this is the United States playing globocop. That is irrefutable.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Jules Boykoff, I want to ask you—you’ve played competitively for the U.S. in international soccer tournaments. What was your response when this scandal broke with FIFA? And can you say a little about the way in which soccer has changed from the time that you played to now?
JULES BOYKOFF: Absolutely. Well, corruption in FIFA has been an open secret for a long time. I actually was a little bit surprised when the allegations came out, and I was surprised that the Justice Department would pursue this using the legal means at its disposal. Soccer has changed a lot over the years, and it’s become a big-time money enterprise, and there’s a whole lot at stake. FIFA is supposedly a nonprofit organization, yet it sure is profitable. It has holdings of about $1.5 billion. It made nearly $5 billion off the Brazil World Cup. And so, when you have that kind of money floating around, we shouldn’t be surprised about stories regarding envelopes full of tens of thousands of dollars, or we shouldn’t be surprised by stories like Chuck Blazer, the U.S. soccer honcho, who was renting an apartment at Trump Tower, not too far from you, at $18,000 a month. In fact, the guy had an apartment for his cats at $6,000 a month. So when you have that kind of money floating around, we shouldn’t be surprised that we see these kind of corrupt activities.
What’s interesting to me, too, though, beyond that, beyond the actual illegal corruption, is the corruption that’s sort of imbedded in everyday practice for FIFA. So, for example, since 1999, under Sepp Blatter, he’s distributed funds through various programs, including the Goal Project, Football for Hope, to various small countries, and that’s how he’s gained their allegiance. So your listeners and viewers might be wondering how the heck is this guy going to possibly get re-elected shortly. Therein lies the answer. He’s distributed money, he’s farmed it out, and he’s gained the allegiance from people across the world this way. So he may well get the two-thirds he needs in the first vote today. That’s 140 votes. And if he doesn’t, he may well get the majority required in the second round of voting.
AMY GOODMAN: Dave Zirin, before you go, I wanted to ask you about, you know, what’s being said is Loretta Lynch’s first big move as U.S. attorney general. Now, she took this with her from being U.S. attorney here in New York. But before this, of course, the indictments against the banks were announced, or the settlement. Now, that was banks, not individuals. What about that comparison, that you see all these people hauled off, but when it comes to the banks, no one is named?
DAVE ZIRIN: Yeah, I think it’s disturbing. And another one is the real timidity to go after local police departments, as well, by the Justice Department, given some of the cases like, for example, the one that you discussed at the top of the show that’s so horrifying, about the woman who was pregnant and brought to the ground. I think this is something that people need to demand and press the Justice Department about. And frankly, I think it is happening because FIFA is such low-hanging fruit. I mean, if you think about it, it’s not people from the United States. It looks extremely aggressive. And FIFA’s reputation has been terrible for about 20, 25 years. And so, this idea of, oh, people are actually doing something about FIFA, especially at a time when soccer is growing in popularity in the United States, this is a very, very popular, bipartisan move for the United States to do. And for the right wing, it also looks very muscular, because it’s going overseas to play globocop and make an arrest and bring people then back to the United States for trial. Yet lost in all of this is the precedent, first of all, that the U.S. is setting by going overseas on a non-terror case to make an arrest and bring people back. And what’s being lost is that you have bankers in this country who facilitated the largest theft in the history of thieves back in 2008, and yet they remain free. I think that’s something people need to continue to press and ask this Justice Department: If they’re this muscular with FIFA, why not with the Wall Street bankers?
AMY GOODMAN: Jules Boykoff, talk about the women’s cup.
JULES BOYKOFF: Well, that’s one of the sad facts of all this, is that the Women’s World Cup is going to start on June 6, and it’s getting totally overshadowed by this FIFA corruption scandal. It’s going to be a terrific tournament. Canada is hosting it. We’re going to see women from across the world play some terrific soccer in front of us. Unfortunately, they’re going to be playing on artificial turf fields, which has been a point of major disagreement from the women players who will be coming to Canada, because of the possibility of injury increasing and because it changes the game, makes it a bit faster and different than it is on grass.
But certainly, FIFA has a long history of flinging misogyny in every direction. Back in 2004, Sepp Blatter stated quite clearly, when asked how we could make the women’s game more popular in the world, he suggested that they wear tighter shorts. For real. Ten years later, he didn’t even recognize Alex Morgan, one of the top three players in the world, up for the FIFA Player of the Year award. He didn’t even recognize her at the gala banquet dinner. A couple—also, beyond that, he walked up to Abby Wambach’s wife, Sarah Huffman, and thought she was Marta, the Brazilian star who had won the FIFA award five times. So, misogyny in FIFA, sexism in FIFA runs deep. And this has been one of the sad side effects, is that we’re not talking about what’s going to be a terrific tournament.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we want to thank you both for being with us. Jules Boykoff teaches political science at Pacific University in Oregon, author of Activism and the Olympics: Dissent at the Games in Vancouver and London, as well as Celebration Capitalism and the Olympic Games. In the ’80s and ’90s, he represented the U.S. Olympic soccer team in international competition. And thanks to Dave Zirin, sports columnist for The Nation.
This is Democracy Now! When we come back, we go to Texas, where floods have killed many people. We’ll talk about climate change, from Texas to India. Stay with us.
As GOP Candidates Question Climate Change, Texas & Oklahoma Hit by Devastating Floods Killing 23
Severe storms that began last week in Texas and Oklahoma have killed at least 23 people, and the damage is so extensive that Texas Governor Greg Abbott has declared nearly 40 counties disaster areas. In Houston, many highways turned into waterways, and more than a thousand cars were submerged under water. President Obama has pledged federal assistance to help the state recover, but cleanup efforts were stalled Thursday as thunderstorms continued. The historic floods in Texas come as the state is just ending an extreme drought. Meanwhile, several possible Republican presidential candidates are questioning climate change. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has talked about "global warming alarmists." Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush has said "climate change has been co-opted by the hardcore left."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Severe storms that began last week in Texas and Oklahoma have killed at least 23 people, and the damage is so extensive that Texas Governor Greg Abbott has declared nearly 40 counties disaster areas. In Houston, many highways turned into waterways, and more than a thousand cars were submerged under water. President Obama has pledged federal assistance to help the state recover, but cleanup efforts were stalled Thursday as thunderstorms continued. Some of the worst flooding happened in the small town of Wimberley, between San Antonio and Austin, where the Blanco River rose 28 feet in just an hour, cresting at 40 feet—more than triple its flood stage of 13 feet. This is Hays County Commissioner Will Conley.
WILL CONLEY: Our community along the Blanco River in Hays County and our colleagues in Blanco County and Caldwell and in Gonzales County have been devastated by a tsunami of water, a historic tsunami of water that came down the Blanco River very quickly, in a very powerful way.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Among those still missing is Laura McComb and her two young children, who were in their house when floodwaters from the Blanco River washed it off its foundation. Her sister, Julie Shields, described how she received a phone call from McComb around 1:00 a.m. Tuesday morning.
JULIE SHIELDS: The roof collapsed. "We are in a house that is now floating down the river. Call Mom and Dad. I love you. And pray." And it was incredibly calm. And she knew. She knew. And some people never get the opportunity to say goodbye. And the conversation that we had—you don’t realize it at the time. I mean, I thought that, you know, I’d be the big sister bailing out the little sister the next morning, because she had to get off the phone. She saw a light. They thought they were about to get rescued. So, me thinking—I’m seeing all these water rescues, it’s the helicopter coming down, they’re lowering the hoist, and they’re going to pull her up. And I just expected to go to the Wimberley high school the next day and find her. And then, when she wasn’t there, I knew something was very, very wrong.
AMY GOODMAN: The historic floods in Texas come as the state is just ending an extreme drought.
For more, we go directly to Texas. We’re joined by two guests. In Austin, Forrest Wilder is associate editor of The Texas Observer, where he’s covered the state’s environment for more than a decade. He’s originally from Wimberley. And joining us via Democracy Now! video stream from outside Dallas is Katharine Hayhoe, atmospheric scientist and director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University, also the founder and CEO of ATMOS Research, an organization created to bridge the gap between scientists and industry and government. She’s co-author of the book, A Climate for Change: Global Warming Facts for Faith-Based Decisions. In 2014, Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in America.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Katharine Hayhoe, let’s begin with you. What are you seeing in Texas right now? Can you relate these horrific floods that have killed a number of people to climate change?
KATHARINE HAYHOE: Well, this is our severe weather season, so this is the time of year when we typically do get severe weather patterns like we’re seeing this month. But they are relentless. We are seeing these lines of storms pass through with only a day or two or three in between them. We had one last night, we’re expecting another tomorrow. These storms are getting an extra shot of adrenalin from El Niño. We haven’t had an El Niño year for quite some time. But we also know that, as humans, we have altered the background conditions of our atmosphere, through putting all of this carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, so every weather event that happens has some component of climate change in it. And in the case of heavy rainfall, we know that what climate change is doing is increasing the amount of water vapor that’s sitting there in the atmosphere for these storms to pick up and dump on us.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Forrest Wilder, you’re in Wimberley. Could you describe what happened there, where the flash flood was compared to a tsunami?
FORREST WILDER: Right. The Blanco River, on a normal day, it’s a pretty small river. It’s shallow. It’s a very beautiful, calm, serene kind of place. It is prone to flash flooding. We’ve seen that, you know, many, many times. But this was just orders of magnitude more extreme than anything that is on the historical record or that anybody alive has ever witnessed. Basically, we had supersaturated soil conditions from all the rainfall that we’re getting. And then, on top of that, we had, in the watershed, you know, 10 inches in some places. And what that did is it just generated just a massive amount of water flowing into the river in a very short time span, and it just rolled downriver and took out hundreds of homes. And, of course, there was a loss of life. There’s still people that are missing. There are folks trapped in their homes, trapped on top of their homes, people in the water. This was unlike really anything that anyone has seen, and it happened so fast that it was very difficult to see it coming or to be prepared for it, frankly.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And what are Texas lawmakers doing to address climate change, given the severity of what’s occurring?
FORREST WILDER: Well, I think, in a word, basically nothing. We’re just completing our legislative session, in which there were a handful of climate-related bills that were filed, some that are pretty benign, you know, things like requiring state agencies to add to their preparedness plans taking a look at extreme weather, taking a look at climate change. That bill was unable to get passed. In fact, it was voted down overwhelmingly by the Republican majority. Basically, we have a situation—continue to have a situation in Texas where our political leadership doesn’t believe in climate change, or at least not human-caused climate change. And so, there’s just a situation of inaction at the political level. I think it’s a little bit different if you’re talking about ordinary people, who are starting to make some connections between these extreme weather events and climate change. But there’s a disconnect between people’s understanding and experience and what’s happening in our Capitol.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn to Texas senator and Republican presidential hopeful, Ted Cruz. He voted against a federal disaster relief bill in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in the Northeast, calling it, quote, "symptomatic of a larger problem in Washington—an addiction to spending money we do not have." But on Wednesday, he called for federal relief in the wake of the floods and storms in Texas.
SEN. TED CRUZ: The federal government’s role, once the governor declares a disaster area and makes a request—I am confident that the Texas congressional delegation, Senator Cornyn and I, and the members of Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, will stand united as the Texans in support of the federal government fulfilling its statutory obligations and stepping in to respond to this natural disaster.
AMY GOODMAN: Texas Senator Ted Cruz has also disputed the scientific research about climate change. This is Ted Cruz speaking in March during an interview with The Texas Tribune.
SEN. TED CRUZ: On the global warming alarmists, anyone who actually points to the evidence that disproves their apocalyptical claims, they don’t engage in reasoned debate. What do they do? They scream, "You’re a denier!" They brand you a heretic. You know, it is—today, the global warming alarmists are the equivalent of the flat-earthers. You know, it used to be it is accepted scientific wisdom the Earth is flat, and this heretic named Galileo was branded a denier.
AMY GOODMAN: And last week, Jeb Bush, while the former governor of Florida, his family lives in Texas—his father, President George H.W. Bush, as well as his brother, President George W. Bush—last week, Jeb Bush, a presidential contender himself, was asked about climate change by David Brody of The Daily Signal.
DAVID BRODY: A lot of folks are wondering if climate change is real. I know you seem to suggest it is. Do you believe humans, then, are partly, if not fully, responsible for something like this?
JEB BUSH: No, I don’t. The climate is changing.
DAVID BRODY: Right.
JEB BUSH: I don’t think anybody can argue that it’s not. And I’m not—I don’t think anybody truly knows what percentage of this is man-made and which percentage is just the natural evolution of what happens over time on this planet.
DAVID BRODY: Sure.
JEB BUSH: I think we have a responsibility to adapt to what the possibilities are, without destroying our economy, without hollowing out our industrial core. There are things that we could do that are commonsensical about this. The problem is, climate change has been co-opted by the hardcore left, and if you don’t march to their beat perfectly, then you’re a denier. You know, this is back to this lack of civility, I think, in American political life, where even if you—I mean, you have to agree with people now 100 percent of the time, or you’re as bad as someone who disagrees with you completely.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Jeb Bush. He hasn’t actually announced that he’s running for president, but that is what he has suggested for the last months. Katharine Hayhoe, you have dealt with this issue of climate denialism. You dealt with it in your own family, with your husband, who now co-wrote your latest book. You head up the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University. Talk about what Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush are saying and how you tie it to your own religion as an evangelical, the issue of climate change and human-induced climate chaos.
KATHARINE HAYHOE: Well, when we hear people saying things like these quotes that you just played, it’s natural to assume, "Oh, they have a problem with the science. So what we need to do is we need to explain the science more clearly. Maybe we need some colored figures. Maybe we need a primer or some type of basic explanation of the science that we’ve known for almost 200 years." But here’s the thing. What the social science tells us is they don’t really object to the science. What they really object to—and if you listen carefully to Jeb Bush, he alluded to this—what they really object to are the solutions, because, by definition, climate change is a tragedy of the commons. That means that we don’t, as individuals, have enough incentive to solve it ourselves. We require—it requires some type of large-scale action, like putting a price on carbon, which in turn requires government intervention. But you can’t really say, politically, "Oh, sure it’s a real problem. Of course it is. But I don’t want to do anything about it." That’s very politically unacceptable. It’s a lot easier to say it isn’t a real problem than to say, "It is, but I don’t like any of the solutions that have been proposed."
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And how do you, Katharine, deal with climate deniers now yourself, particularly in Texas?
KATHARINE HAYHOE: Well, whenever we talk to people, I think the first thing to do is to bond over our shared values and connect those pre-existing shared values to the issue of climate change. So often, as you just heard in the quotes, people think, "Oh, well, you can only care about climate change if you’re a hardcore liberal, or if you’re a green tree hugger, you know, or if you’re this list of certain things, and if you’re not any of those things, you can’t care about climate change." So the first thing I always do is I try to connect the dots between something that people already care about, whether it’s national security, our water resources, the safety of our family and our community, or our health. I mean, we can connect the dots between almost anything that anybody cares about and climate change.
AMY GOODMAN: How can—how did you deal with it in your own family, with your husband? Talk about your evangelical roots and how you actually believe that evangelicals—there’s a growing movement of evangelicals who talk about being stewards of the Earth.
KATHARINE HAYHOE: Well, talking about values, talking about what is already in people’s heart, there’s no greater value for many people than the values that come from our faith. So, for example, for Christians, we believe that God created the world, that God gave the world to people to care for every living thing. That comes from Genesis. And then, if we go over to the New Testament, we know that God wants us to love and care for other people. The greatest commandment is to love God and then love your neighbor as yourself. We’re constantly told to care for the poor and the needy and the disadvantaged and those who don’t have the resources we do. So, that is the value that we can connect directly to climate change, because the people who are being most impacted by climate change are the people who don’t have the resources to adapt.
AMY GOODMAN: Speaking of which, India right now, I mean, we’re talking about 20 people who have died in Texas, and we see how horrific it is. In India, at this point, we’re talking about 1,800 people, it is believed, have died, and the numbers are probably much higher, the death toll. A local resident describes the impact of the scorching heat in India.
ANDHRA PRADESH RESIDENT: All the pets and all the children, all the grandparents are suffering a lot, because of the heat. If even we can see a simple person sitting in the home is sweating a lot due to the dehydration. Nighttime also, because of the power cuts, and from the morning—from the morning and night and even in the midday, the power cuts is creating a lot of problems for the households and to all the family members. This summer, I think, is the worst summer ever seen by the wiser people.
AMY GOODMAN: So, India now is dealing with a heat wave, and these deaths from the heat wave have now been reported in at least four Indian states. Katharine Hayhoe?
KATHARINE HAYHOE: This is a pattern that we’re seeing around the world. Back in 2003, there was a heat wave in Europe that, when all was done and told, was responsible for over 70,000 deaths that would not have occurred otherwise. So, we are seeing heat waves that have always occurred naturally. Heat waves are part of life on this planet. We are seeing these heat waves getting more frequent and getting stronger because of climate change. The way I think of it is, we always had a chance of rolling a double six, that extreme heat wave, on our climate dice. But what climate change is doing is it’s going in, and it’s replacing a few other numbers with sixes, so our chances of rolling those double sixes are going up, and climate change is even replacing some of those sixes with sevens, so our heat waves are getting stronger, too. So, again, what climate change is doing is it’s taking a natural pattern, a natural event, and it’s giving it that extra little bump of steroid, so to speak, just like a baseball player. So those heat waves are getting stronger, and they’re getting more frequent.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Forrest Wilder, you covered the drought, the recent drought, in Texas extensively. Could you talk about what the impact of that’s been?
FORREST WILDER: Right. I mean, one of the sort of startling things about all this flooding is we were just in a very bad drought for about six years or so, by some measures the most extreme drought that we’ve had in a very long time, a drought of record in places. For example, in 2011, we had a statewide average of about 14 inches of rainfall. In Austin, which is about in the middle of the state in terms of geography and in average rainfall, you know, we usually get about 33 inches. There were several million acres of ranchland and rural areas that burned. We had urban wildfires here in Austin that we’d never really had before. We had a state park that burned down. We had reservoirs that were—that ran dry. We had communities that ran out of water. We had very large agricultural losses, I think something on the order of $5 billion, $6 billion. It was basically—again, I think Texas is prone to drought. Texas is prone to flooding. But this drought was extraordinary. The heat, for example, again, in 2011, was off the charts. We had—here in Austin, we had 90 days of 100-plus—over 100 degrees Fahrenheit weather. And so, I think what we saw was, going from this extreme drought to extreme flooding kind of in a matter of about six years, some of the extremes that we know that we can expect under various climate change scenarios. So, it was kind of a—it was an object lesson for many of us about what we may be facing in the future under climate change.
AMY GOODMAN: You’re from Wimberley. How—you’re talking to us, though, from Austin. How is it to cover your home community, and what this physically means, the people you’ve spoken to here?
FORREST WILDER: It’s difficult. You know, a lot of people I know have lost their homes, and I’m going this weekend to help with the cleanup of a family friend. And, you know, he was rescued at 4:00 in the morning in his home with water up to his neck. He was lucky to get out alive. It’s an older gentleman. He basically lost everything he has. I mean, we heard stories about some family friends of ours that live on the river. The road that they live on, theirs was the only house that was left. They talked about how they got up in the middle of the night, and they looked out the window, and they saw a car with headlights that was coming down the river. They heard people screaming on top of their roofs up there with flashlights. They get up the next morning, and all of those homes are gone. And the landscape, the environment has changed. There’s these huge cypress trees that line the Blanco River, just enormous trees, that are just—many of them are just gone. They’ve been uprooted or stripped of their bark, fallen over. So, it’s one of these disaster scenarios where you wake up and you look around, and nothing’s really the same.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we want to thank you both for being with us, Forrest Wilder of The Texas Observer, speaking to us from Austin, from Wimberley, and Katharine Hayhoe, Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University, speaking to us from just outside Dallas. This is Democracy Now! We’ll be back in a moment.
Code Blue: U.N. Accused of Giving Immunity to Peacekeepers Who Commit Sexual Abuse
The United Nations is coming under criticism for failing to investigate allegations of sexual exploitation of children by French peacekeeping troops in the Central African Republic between December 2013 and June 2014. The Guardian obtained a leaked report that says French soldiers raped and sodomized starving and homeless young boys who they were supposed to be protecting at a center for internally displaced people during intense fighting in the country. Even after the exploitation was brought to the attention of senior U.N. officials, the U.N. never reported it to French authorities — nor did it do anything to immediately stop the abuse. So far, the only person to be punished is a U.N. aid worker, Anders Kompass, who stepped outside official channels to alert French authorities about the sexual exploitation. Kompass has since been accused of leaking the confidential report in breach of U.N. protocols and now faces dismissal. We speak to Paula Donovan, co-director of AIDS-Free World, which has launched the Code Blue campaign.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: The United Nations is coming under criticism for failing to investigate allegations of sexual exploitation of children by French peacekeeping troops in the Central African Republic between December 2013 and June 2014. The Guardian obtained a leaked report that says French soldiers raped and sodomized starving and homeless young boys who they were suppose to be protecting at a center for internally displaced people during intense fighting in the country. Even after the exploitation was brought to the attention of senior U.N. officials, the U.N. never reported it to French authorities, nor did it do anything to immediately stop the abuse. So far, the only person to be punished is a U.N. aid worker, Anders Kompass, who stepped outside official channels to alert French authorities to the sexual exploitation occurring. Kompass has since been accused of leaking a confidential report in breach of U.N. protocols and now faces dismissal.
The Guardian obtained the leaked report from Paula Donovan, who will join us shortly. She and other activists have just launched a new campaign called Code Blue, which seeks to hold the United Nations accountable for sexual misconduct. Earlier this month, the group held a press conference to announce the campaign. This is Stephen Lewis of AIDS-Free World, followed by Theo Sowa of the African Women’s Development Fund and Ambassador Anwarul Chowdhury of Bangladesh.
STEPHEN LEWIS: Never, but never, can sexual exploitation and abuse be subject to immunity. That’s the first step. The second step flows logically. Once the immunity is removed from non-military personnel, then the military will be under tremendous pressure to expunge sexual exploitation and abuse from their ranks.
THEO SOWA: When the U.N. becomes the protectors of predators instead of the prosecutors of predators, that destroys me, because I believe in the U.N.
AMBASSADOR ANWARUL CHOWDHURY: Transparency, I think, is the keyword here. We need to be open about how many such cases are there of sexual abuse and exploitation, which countries are involved in it, what they are doing, and how the cases now being sent by the U.N. to them are being handled.
AMY GOODMAN: United Nations peacekeeping missions have long been dogged by allegations of sexual abuse, from the Democratic Republic of Congo to Kosovo to Bosnia, also Burundi, Haiti and Liberia. In March, the U.N. came under criticism for ignoring an internal report that called sexual exploitation, quote, "the most significant risk" to peacekeeping missions across the globe. The leaked document described a culture of "impunity" when dealing with sexual misconduct cases among U.N. peacekeepers, saying, quote, "UN personnel in all the missions we visited could point to numerous suspected or quite visible cases of [sexual exploitation and abuse] that are not being counted or investigated."
For more, we go to Boston, Massachusetts, where we are joined by Paula Donovan, co-director of AIDS-Free World, which has launched the Code Blue campaign.
Paula Donovan, in the last two weeks, you’ve issued major findings. You first held a news conference at the U.N. and now released another report. Tell us what you have found.
PAULA DONOVAN: What we’ve found overall, Amy, is that there is a tremendous amount of lip service given to the zero tolerance for sexual exploitation and abuse policy by the United Nations. And that really came to light over the past month or so, when we received leaked documents about this U.N. official, Anders Kompass, who was under fire, ostensibly for having leaked a document that demonstrated how serious, very serious, documented cases of the rape and sodomy of children, of young boys in the Central African Republic, had been known to the U.N., had been documented by the U.N., and had been completely ignored by them for eight months. And what it shows is that when the United Nations learns of these abuses, it seems to be that the first—the first response is to simply lie low and see whether or not they can get away with not reporting it to governments and not alerting the public about the danger, the imminent danger that they’re in, and just sort of maintaining almost a forensic view that "we’ll watch as these abuses go on and develop, and maybe record them, but we have no obligation to intervene."
And the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and UNICEF were taking these horrible testimonies from children, as the abuse was continuing, mainly by French soldiers, also by Equatorial Guinean and Chadian soldiers, and simply sitting on the reports for a month at a time, continuing to take these documented cases and testimonies from the children, and then eventually sending them on to Geneva to the headquarters of the human rights office, where only one person stepped up and said, "I need to alert the French right away and get an investigation started." He’s now, months and months later, under review for having handed over the document with the information about the kids and the soldiers they described to the authorities who could—in France, who could take things into hand.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And how have the French authorities responded since this has come to light?
PAULA DONOVAN: They have—initially, they opened an investigation, a preliminary investigation, in July of 2014, when Anders Kompass first handed the document over to them. It seems as though that was stalled almost immediately by the refusal of the United Nations to allow them to—to allow the police to talk to the people who had interviewed—the U.N. staff who had interviewed the children and could give them more information about their whereabouts and about the soldiers. Then there was a long period of silence, when no one appears to have done anything. And once AIDS-Free World exposed this to the media—and that was only on April 29th, 2015—then things kicked into gear, and the French have now taken up their investigation again in earnest.
AMY GOODMAN: Paula Donovan, we only have about two minutes to go. You’re leading a campaign to get rid of immunity in the United Nations around sexual abuse and exploitation. Explain how the U.N. shields its own members from due process when they are accused of sexual assault.
PAULA DONOVAN: Under an ancient convention from 1946, the U.N. staff are all protected from being involved in any sort of legal process. So whether they’re witnesses, whether they have evidence, whether they’re the perpetrators themselves, if it has to do with sexual exploitation and abuse, then the secretary-general has to, on a case-by-case basis, decide to waive their immunity and allow them to be subject to what the rest of the world is subject to—called in to testify, cooperating with a criminal investigation, or actually arrested, in the case of perpetrators. And this just infects the entire U.N. system, and the way they deal with sexual exploitation and abuse is such a sham that we’re essentially saying it needs an external, independent investigation from top to bottom.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And so, what do you think the U.N.—what kinds of internal changes are you calling for within the U.N. so that these allegations can be dealt with in a better way in the future?
PAULA DONOVAN: I think—right, so as the Central African Republic case shows, serious member states of the United Nations have to take hold of things, and they need to move in and figure out: When an allegation of sexual abuse is first brought to light, what are the—what are the mandated protocols? How do we respond? And then, what do the various agencies and institutions within the entities within the U.N. have to do? Should UNICEF—and my answer is absolutely yes—should they have to move in immediately to protect—
AMY GOODMAN: Five seconds.
PAULA DONOVAN: —children from further abuse? The whole U.N. needs to be looked at from top to bottom by an external commission.
AMY GOODMAN: Paula Donovan, thanks so much for being with us, co-director of AIDS-Free World, which has launched the Code Blue campaign, seeking to end sexual exploitation and abuse by U.N. military and non-military peacekeeping personnel.
Headlines:
Saudi Arabia: Car Bomb Outside Shiite Mosque Kills 4
A car bomb has exploded outside a Shiite mosque in the Saudi city of Dammam, marking the second deadly mosque attack to hit Saudi Arabia in a week. Authorities say four people were killed. Last Friday, a suicide attack claimed by the self-described Islamic State killed 21 people at another Shiite mosque, marking one of the worst attacks to hit Saudi Arabia in years.
U.N. Passes Resolution to Protect Iraqi Artifacts from ISIL
The United Nations has passed a nonbinding resolution aimed at curbing the cultural plundering of Iraq by the self-proclaimed Islamic State. The resolution, adopted unanimously by the 193-nation General Assembly, urges new steps to curb smuggling of antiquities which may be used to finance ISIL. It applies only to Iraq, not to Syria, where ISIL controls the ancient city of Palmyra. ISIL has posted video showing the destruction of Iraqi sites, including the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud. U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson said the destruction is a loss for all humanity.
Jan Eliasson: "That this is taking place today in Iraq, the cradle of Mesopotamian civilization, represents a loss not only for the Iraqi people, but for all of humanity. The international community must do everything in its power, as the acting president just said, to halt the destruction of Iraq’s cultural heritage and to hold the perpetrators to account."
FIFA Head Sepp Blatter Seeks 2nd Term as Protesters Call for Resignation
The soccer governing body FIFA is moving ahead with plans to hold an election today to pick the next president of the organization, despite a wide-ranging corruption scandal. Earlier this week, nine high-ranking soccer officials, including two current FIFA vice presidents, were indicted along with five sports marketing executives on federal corruption charges by the U.S. Justice Department. FIFA President Sepp Blatter is not facing charges, and Attorney General Loretta Lynch has refused to say whether he is under investigation. At today’s elections in Zurich, Blatter is seeking re-election for the post he has held since 1998. Many commentators have predicted he will be re-elected, though some nations, including the United States, have vowed to vote against him. On Thursday, Alaphia Zoyab of the group Avaaz was among those who took to the streets of Zurich to call for Blatter to step down.
Alaphia Zoyab: "Our key message is that Sepp Blatter needs to step down. He has been the head honcho of this organization where corruption has been rampant. He has not taken responsibility for it. He needs to go. And we’ve also seen that FIFA is too corrupt to care about human rights. When they awarded the World Cup to Qatar, we’ve seen that there’s been massive slavery on all the construction sites. FIFA has not really done anything about it, and the FIFA spokesperson just told me that they’re not even asking Qatar to commit to a timeline to abolish this system."
Texas: Flash Floods Continue as State Sees Wettest Month on Record
Flash floods have inundated swaths of Central Texas again today amid a series of severe storms which have killed at least 23 people in both Texas and Oklahoma. A number of people remain missing. Texas Governor Greg Abbott has declared nearly 40 counties disaster areas, and this month has officially become Texas’ wettest month on record. We’ll have more on the floods and the role of climate change later in the broadcast.
Nations Hold Summit on Migrant Crisis in Southeast Asia
Representatives from countries around the world gathered in Thailand today to discuss the migrant crisis in Southeast Asia. In recent weeks, about 3,500 migrants have arrived in Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia, while 2,600 more are believed to be adrift at sea. Most are Bangladeshis and persecuted Rohingya Muslims from Burma who are effectively stateless because they aren’t considered citizens in Burma. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Anne Richard called for greater international cooperation to address the crisis.
Anne Richard: "We have to save lives urgently. We have to develop better ways of discussing and meeting on these issues and taking action when people are setting to sea in the boats. And then we need to go and look at the root causes of why people feel they have no alternative but to flee their own countries and take such a dangerous, dangerous trip."
Report: U.S. Border Patrol Racially Profiling Citizens in New Mexico
The ACLU has issued a new report documenting racial profiling and other abuses by U.S. Border Patrol agents operating inside the state of New Mexico. There are six permanent Border Patrol checkpoints in southern New Mexico, where agents stop millions of people annually. The report finds border agents have engaged in "racial profiling, unjustified detentions and searches, verbal abuse, intimidation, physical abuse and interfering with the delivery of emergency medical treatment," all with little effective oversight or accountability. Ninety percent of abuses were reported by U.S. citizens, the vast majority Latino.
Video: Barstow, CA Police Slam 8-Month-Pregnant Woman to Ground for Failing to Provide Last Name
The ACLU of Southern California has released a video which shows Barstow, California, police wrestling an African-American woman who is eight months pregnant to the ground. Charlena Michelle Cooks was dropping off her daughter at her elementary school when she got into a dispute with another mother, who was white, over parking. Police body camera footage shows police questioning Cooks and asking her name. When she gave her name as "Michelle," without providing her last name, the officers wrestled her down, while she pleaded with them, repeatedly saying she was pregnant.
Charlena Michelle Cooks: "This is ridiculous! What are you doing? What are you doing? I’m pregnant! Please! I’m pregnant! Please!"
Officer: "Why are you resisting, ma’am? Why are you resisting?"
Cooks was charged with resisting arrest, and Barstow police have continued to claim she resisted, even though a judge dismissed the charge. Speaking to CNN, Cooks said police treated her like an animal.
Charlena Michelle Cooks: "You just looked at me and said, 'Oh, she must be this way.' And I’m not that way. You make me feel that I’m a way that I’m not. And I work so hard to provide for my family. This is not an issue that I wanted."
The arrest took place in January. Cooks delivered a healthy baby girl two months later.
Photo Shows Chicago Police Posing with Black Man in Antlers
A newly released photo shows two Chicago police officers posing with rifles beside an African-American man with antlers on his head. The photo was taken between 1999 and 2003. It was provided by federal prosecutors to police investigators in 2013 after one of the two officers in the photo, Jerome Finnigan, was sentenced to 12 years in prison for leading a group of officers who committed robberies and home invasions. The second officer, Timothy McDermott, was fired last year. But the Chicago Police Department successfully concealed the photo from public view until a judge rejected their bid to continue keeping it secret earlier this year. The police claimed they were trying to protect the privacy of the unidentified African-American man.
Former NY Governor George Pataki Launches Presidential Bid
Former three-term New York Governor George Pataki has officially announced his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination. In a speech announcing his bid, Pataki took aim at Hillary Clinton, claiming Democrats are the "party of privilege."
George Pataki: "We are the party of the middle class, unless by middle class they mean someone who left the White House dead broke and 10 years later had $100 million, unless by middle class they mean someone who charges a poor country $500,000 for a half-hour speech. That’s their party’s candidate."
Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert Indicted for Payments to Hide "Misconduct"
And the former Republican speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Dennis Hastert, has been indicted on federal charges of lying to the FBI and illegally paying $3.5 million to an unnamed person in order to conceal unspecified "misconduct." Hastert is accused of withdrawing $1.7 million in cash using a method intended to dodge bank reporting regulations, then lying about the withdrawals. He served as speaker of the House from 1999 to 2007, making him the longest-serving Republican speaker in history.
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