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tv   Up Front  Al Jazeera  April 17, 2021 5:30pm-6:01pm +03

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military leader it's unclear though whether any of them were pro-democracy activists who were arrested during protests against the recent coup in thailand as foreign ministry has confirmed manama's jump to leader min online will attend the upcoming assy on summit is associate of southeast asian nations bring together its 10 members and this year it's hosted by indonesia as the us call for being ousted leader aung san suu kyi to be released from prison. it is good to have you with us hello adrian finnegan here in doha the headlines on al-jazeera former italian interior minister and deputy prime minister matteo salvini has been ordered to stand trial the right wing league party leader has been charged with kidnapping in a case involving a ship carrying refugees migrants in 2019 lori chalons reports from london the open on the ship the spanish angio ship that's the one where the judge has said
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that yes this is if there is a case for selvi to onset and that this should go to war 2 trial a week ago in the other one the great already a prosecutor a state prosecutor said actually no there isn't a case to answer and it shouldn't go towards trial that has yet to be ruled on by a judge to decide whether it will not go to trial and that will happen in a few weeks time now salvia myself said that at the time he was only doing what was in it at least national interest 3000000 people have now died of covert 19 around the world the united states has the highest number of deaths followed by brazil india and france are among those grappling with severe outbreaks and most countries of seen repeated delays in the vaccination efforts. india's registered nearly 235000 cases in the past day that's yet another daily record 1300 people died in the same period the world health organization says
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a variant 1st identified in india may be more contagious iran says that it's identified the suspect behind the attack on one of its nuclear facilities state television is reporting the man fled the country before the attack on the natanz plant which happened on sunday. and the funeral of britain's prince philip is on the way these are live pictures from inside central just jostle chapel at windsor castle west of london the archbishop of canterbury and the dean of windsor currently reading the press towards the end of that funeral ceremony only 30 close royal family members are able to attend at windsor castle due to coronavirus restrictions the husband of queen elizabeth died at the age of $99.00 last week to go. all next up on al-jazeera it's up front. talking to al jazeera. can you tell me
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what the government you represent is now illegitimate as we listen we do not see the fence material any country during the conflict in yemen we meet with global news makers until about the stories that matter on al-jazeera is capitalism fundamentally at odds with the climate last naomi klein so on in this up front special. in 291-1000 scientists issued a chilling warning to the world they predicted untold suffering due to the climate crisis unless global society undertook a major transformation but almost 2 years on and there's been little if any meaningful progress on transforming how we all live in interact with the environment and climate change is getting worse global temperatures are rising not
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falling so is it finally time to launch a new and radical approach joining us to discuss this are naomi klein gloria steinem chair in media culture and feminist studies at wrecker's university and author of numerous books her latest one being how to change everything and seattle city council member economist member of socialist alternative thank you both for joining me on outfront naomi i'm going to start with you it's been 7 years since the release of your book this changes everything capitalism versus the climate where you argue for a system change in order to save the planet now in the midst of a global pandemic we are seeing bailouts for 4 big polluters billionaires saw their wealth balloon while millions of people are struggling to make meat in other words profit has been put before people and the planet are we basically in the same place fighting the same battle that we were back then. i will say that we are in the same place you know what i publish this changes everything as you said in 2014 you know
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the subtitle of that book was capitalism versus the climate and there was tremendous pushback and not just from. you know right wing economists it was from frankly the environmental movement who would you know friends would take me aside and say you know you're you're remaking things a lot harder for us by linking climate action to this transformation of our economy you know why do we have to link climate action with fighting racial injustice or fighting for gender equality you know your i heard this so much you're making it harder so here we are 7 years later and the discourse of the climate justice movement is really being echoed at the highest levels of government and i want to stress discourse because there is a difference between what politicians say and what politicians do but i think it is really significant that when you look at what the by the administration is proposing we are seeing
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a mobilization of resources the likes of which i've never seen in my lifetime through a stimulus bill on the scale of around 3 trillion dollars with a great deal of it going to so-called you know green projects unfortunately it's not just the discourse that has changed in those 7 years the planet has changed in those 7 years it's gotten a lot hotter so what we need to do is a lot more and so it may seem hard to accept but the 3 trillion isn't enough we need basically 3 times that amount if we were going to address this crisis but i wouldn't say that things are exactly as they were 7 years ago when i published that book the plan it's gotten harder movements have gotten larger and have pushed centrist politicians like joe biden to do some things that would have been unimaginable just a couple of years ago and to sherman i mean your work in many ways speaks to the. that as a city council member in seattle you have been leading the charge and getting many
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progressive wins whether we're talking about fighting for a $15.00 minimum wage whether we're talking about taxing the wealthy whether we're talking about introducing a resolution in support of a global climate strike things are happening can you talk a little bit about some of the tactics and strategies you used to make that happen and how that could be instructive to people who are in the kind of movement i think . emergence of mass movements as we saw recently with the black clothes not our street protests which brought 26000000 people out on american streets in multiracial working class solidarity against racism in a movement like that the fact that there have been climate strike actions which you have been leading have really brought pressure to bear on big business dominated politics and at the same time we see this chasm between the rhetoric that politicians are under pressure from movements forced to utter and the actions that they're willing to undertake i mean c.l.
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is a good example of the kind of tactics and strategy we need because it is not a republican stronghold in any way we have 8 progressive democrats and one socialist myself and yet we have seen that the overwhelming number of victories that be a one which is taking on big business and winning despite their opposition like the $15.00 minimum wage like the amazon tax to fund an expansion of social housing and green new deal projects and renters right oh you know overwhelming numbers of these big trees have been won also despite the opposition of the progressive democrats i mean what do you have done to win these victories is rather than me relying on trying to get agreement from progressive democrats are big business you know lobbyist what i've done instead what we've done through our office is go outward and build movements the $15.00 minimum wage for example was one because we use. our socialist council office to build the 50 now grassroots movement which was
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independent of the democratic party establishment and we launched you know mass action conferences street actions returned to us and that is how we were able to win similar with the amazon tax that's the kind of pressure we will need in congress as well i mean the battle you're talking about particular taxing these big businesses like amazon it didn't come without a consequence and a price on amazon dumped big money into trying to defeat people like you're going to put $1500000.00 into local city council races to see you defeated of course you won help us understand how you're able to go back in such powerful entities and be victorious. you're absolutely right mark i mean did they really try to do a corporate takeover in 2019 and millions of dollars were spent unprecedented amount i mean this is that he counseled race and amazon as you mentioned threw down a $1000000.00 money bomb in the last weeks of the race in october of 2019 and we were able to win despite that because precisely because and this is where you know
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the conventional wisdom of the democratic party completely sort of betrays the interest of working people if you know you're told not to rock the boat as naomi was mentioning earlier don't mention capitalism in relation to the climate crisis in fact you have to do the exact opposite to mobilize people and to organize ordinary people into tapping into their late and power you know individually working people have no power but if we can get organized into independent movements that are clear that the politicians of the 2 parties are not on our side that big business is not on our side that you cannot negotiate your way into a better society you have to have a political fight back a political clash against big business so this is this goes against the ordinary wisdom of new not rocking the boat and you have to do the exact opposite yeah i just echoing what what chad was just saying there you know we talk about climate justice which which is the governing principle of all of this we often think
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about well we need climate justice means that the communities that have gotten the worst d.-o. under the current extractive economies which are overwhelmingly black and brown communities need to get green jobs lead to get green infrastructure in their communities and that is part of climate justice but it have it's only happened that the other half is the people who did the most to create the crisis have to help pay for it have to pay more for it we often don't talk enough about that side of it but the truth is people are furious at the kind of. profiteering that has gone on during this pandemic people are enraged when they hear that the billionaire class has increased their wealth during this time as so much pain and loss and it's interesting that when you look at biden's stimulus plan that the biggest question back from centrist democrats is not coming from the price tag or the plans to
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invest in infrastructure where we're seeing the pushback is the idea that there should be marginal corporate tax increases to help pay for it and this is really significant because there's someone saying these are popular policy this is the way you you sell to the public that this is a just policy and so if it's just financed through deficit spending my concern is that a few years down the road this turns into an excuse for brutal economic austerity in the last we increase corporate taxes in unless we say the polluters have to pay for this then a few years down the road this is or you know or even just a couple years down the road this is going to play out in the forms of massive cuts to health care to education to so many policies that help working people i have a question for both of you in line with exactly that you know you know leading global climate economists are saying the climate change will exacerbate income inequality between rich and poor nations how should some of the poorest nations in
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the earlier stages of development navigate the crisis and should countries that have contributed most to climate change have to bear the burden of reducing their c o 2 emissions in a more ambitious way thinking about what you just said naomi about it working on both ends right people who have done the most harm have to also have been the most burden how do we think through that m.s.r. with you into interdiction well look at you know what that principle all right and what is climate justice it is that the people who are most impacted who did the least to create the crisis need to be 1st in line to benefit and the united states is the world's largest historical emitter. the uniting of the united states put more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than any other country it has been polluting on an industrial scale for several 100 years and so what that means is that countries like the u.s. and the u.k. and other is so-called advanced industrial countries need to pay into funds that will go to the global south so that countries can leap frog over fossil fuels go
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directly to green energy and all of this is in shrine and in they u.n. climate treaties that the u.s. has already signed the u.n. climate convention says that countries have common but differentiated responsibility so that means that every country has to be part of the solution but there are differentiated responsibilities based on which countries have been able to develop precisely because they have extracted so much wealth from poor countries and that's how they got rich right so the u.s. has been pledging to pay into these crime it un climate funds for years and has reneged on its commitments so yeah we can't think about climate justice just within national context there is no nationalist response to the climate crisis as having to be international it's just like the response to cope it needs to be well you know i think knowingly made a very important point that there is no will there is no solution to the climate
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catastrophe that is telling us in the face on a nationalist basis on a nation state basis this will have to be an international response and that i think points towards a genuine working class solidarity understanding for example that 100 corporations you know global corporations are responsible for 70 percent of the emissions since 1900 so in other words because we're a sions conglomerates billionaire class they are responsible for this crisis as mentioning and recognizing that these are global corporations so in other words the capitalist class in my home country india is every bit as. extractive an exploitative as the capitalist class in the united states and the working class in the us across the racial divisions has an incentive to build a united fight back here within our country and to build international solidarity with working people outside the us you know because ultimately there is no hope of defeating and really addressing climate change unless we recognize that this is
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a battle against capitalism itself i mean just to look at the statistic that the guardian newspaper recently just weeks ago showed that the world's biggest 60 banks have provided nearly 4 trillion dollars of financing for fossil fuel companies since the prime powder's a guard in 2015 this is absolutely shocking and so we have to start with the question of taxing big business and but not just here you know internationally but i would also say you know we have to go beyond that and really advocate for what i would call a socialist green new deal which in addition to these measures of taxing big business and expansion of green infrastructure will also talk about bringing private utilities transportation major fossil fuel companies also key parts of the just takes like amazon into democratic public ownership of workers and immediately retool these corporations for renewable energy sources and ultimately we need a planned economy and we don't have much time to do it so we cannot waste time
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hoping that someday the capitalist class will realize this is in the interest of humanity they know it is the nader's manatee but they have no incentive and i would just also point out that you know the take the dog the brilliant documentary that naomi klein and lewis had made in 2004 that you know that was an example of what cars taking into community ownership democratic ownership a corporation and how efficiently that it did they ran it more efficiently i think that's a very key example but we need that on a much larger. scan it but that larger scale that you're talking about requires a real radical visions of everything you've talked about you've articulated a radical vision and in a real shift in how we would function both domestically and internationally the challenge and i put this to you naomi of these kinds of radical visions is that they're constantly compromised by the moneyed interests the corporate donors we
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have the n.g.o.s zation the professionalization of the climate movement you've talked about this you said the big green groups are worse than climate deniers in many ways but how do we manage to not just develop but in force a radical vision and a radical politics against the backdrop of all of this corporatization professionalization well you know i think we've been discussing we build movements right not not n.g.o.s. you know which isn't to say that there are good n.g.o.s out there that partner with with men south but but but you know n.g.o.s are not going to get us out of this it's going to be movement power it's going to be the kind of mass mobilization you know start with talking about india think about the the indian farmers movement that rose up against. prime minister modi there and of course as you and yet you know that you rushed through under cover of pandemic which many farmers described as a death warrant which will lead to or. consolidation of land in the hands of
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a few quick red players you know so small farmers are a climate solution responsible agricole article farming methods sequester carbon where as these big corporate for you know farming to agricultural giants use huge fossil fuel inputs for their business models right and i think it was really striking that the youth climate movement rally around the farmers and said you know they are on the front lines of climate disruption they are climate solution we are going to stand with them and faced enormous repression from the government including arresting and imprisoning young climate activists but there was international solidarity from the youth climate strikers and it's that that's the kind of thing we need to see from a grassroots climate movement it can't just be young people who are doing with it can't just be teenagers it has to be everybody. so yeah i mean absolutely these solutions and these responses are radical in the best sense you know i always say
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that the future is radical so it's not a question of whether or not we like radical change or not we are going to experience radical change and we are already in the grips of it the question is whether we are going to try to manage it try to plan it so that we have things like energy democracy. was talking about worker ownership we can have energy democracy you know as we transition from fossil fuels we need to be bold in this moment and in the face of all of that corporatization market you're talking about and just be fearless in proposing the solutions that will be radical in the best sense of actually getting at the root of what is driving all of these crises because it isn't just the emissions in the atmosphere it's the logics that put profits before people at every level one of the real solutions that many and the climate movement of offered in their estimation is the green new deal what's the 1st step to getting there especially in a moment where we have
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a kind of centrist democratic presidency that for many years masquerading as a progressive one. you know i'm not sure i agree with exactly how you characterized it because if you look at how biden ran in the primaries versus how he is governing it's not to say he was and listen i'm not making excuses for him i was a bernie sanders surrogate you know biden was not my 2nd choice my 3rd choice is you know i mean but i also think it's important to give movements credit where credit is due biden has already been pushed to some where he had no desire to go but the very idea that he would be introducing a stimulus plan. that is going to mobilize around 2 trillion dollars for climate investment is not something that we should say oh well he's just you know not interested in the green media he's adopted the framing of the climate justice movement because because the movement has been growing its power in the way that it has. and he has introduced some policies that come directly from the movement it's
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not enough we need to keep pushing but the fact that he has done this i think is evidence that they he can be pushed some estimate that the u.s. military is the world's largest consumer of oil and as a result one of the world's top greenhouse gas emitters but many modern wars have largely been predicated on protecting access to fossil fuel resources abroad the u.s. military has $800.00 bases around the world and it's no surprise that a lot of them surround oil and natural gas reserves what is the relationship between militarism and climate change and do we need to essentially rethink or completely define militarism in order to get to a just moment of climate activism. i think as you said correctly mark that it is not a coincidence that so many so much of the military apparatus internationally of the us regime is around the question of protecting the natural resources that these corporations like striking not to mention that they are determined to extract
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every drop of oil from under the earth if we let them and so it shows how you know you it's not it's not yes it is absolutely a question of building the kind of movements that we need to build and the farmer protests are and the only correctly mention our shining example of what is possible you know that there is but it is possible to build these kind of fighting movements that go up against some really powerful entities yes it is a question of taking funds away from the military and 2 words productive and socially constructive a nondestructive causes but in order to do that it's not merely a matter of you know building movements to pressure congress to do it and it is absolutely true that i know of infrastructure and stimulus spending that we have seen and also the announcements that we have seen from the biden administration are almost unheard of but they're understand that fundamentally they are doing this because their own system is in such deep and long lasting crisis they are
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understand that and for the most part it is an effort to show up really you know crumbling systems so you know it's not a surprise again that the international monetary fund for example which has been introduced and i drove just brutal neo liberal assault on country after country including inside the united states they are now advocating maybe we need to tax big business but it's not that they have suddenly turned you know there's suddenly realize that although their system is bad for the people and for the climate and they need to do better you know they're doing it because. the system is in such crisis the only way we could win something light. a socialist green new deal let alone the democratic public ownership of these big corporations that we need to be that will be embedded that is also in the united states for example the need to build independent political organizations because the democratic party is simply not going to be on our side but the same reason that the military is spending so
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much money protecting fossil fuels internationally we need a head on political clash with the political establishment naomi a lot of people don't grasp how huge the climate crisis contributes to massive migration just in the past 6 months according to the international red cross over 80 percent of global displacements have been caused by disasters most of which are triggered by climate and weather extremes is this issue prominent anough within the debate given the numbers. i don't think it is prominent enough especially because so many. people who who are forced to migrate from central america coming to the united states many of them have been linked to climate change fueled disasters very a natural disasters it's never one driver i mean this is what i think is important to understand the reasons why people choose to move are complex it's rarely one factor. and climate change is
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a stress multiplier right so you know if you are wealthy and you have various shock absorbers and cushions then when and when a hurricane hits your community you have home insurance maybe you have another home to go to you know when i wrote the shock doctrine there was actually a private airline called help jet that was offering to turn people's hurricanes disasters into a luxury vacation and we sort of caught a glimpse of this member when ted cruz and his neighbors left texas which was in the grips of a crisis that many scientists have linked to climate change and decided to check into the ritz carlton in can't goon right so this is just to say that climate shocks don't impact the rich and the poor in the same way if you are living very very close to the edge then a climate shock can be the last straw so i think that that's really important to understand and yeah i think we need to talk about it more more. because there is
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such a discourse of deserving and undeserving migrants and the idea of like ok if you're a political refugee that's a deserving migrant but if you're an economic orac or a climate refugee then that is you know that that's under way i think we just need to get rid of this whole discourse entirely because people have a right to move they also have a right to stay so i think that this ties in with what we were talking. about earlier in terms of what a country like the united states ola's to the global south you know we need to be mobilizing hundreds of billions in resources so that so that you know communities are able to recover from climate change people disasters but if people have no choice but to move or choose to move then frankly they need to be welcomed and it isn't out of noblesse oh believe it isn't out of. you know some wonderful beneficence that we're doing this you know the united states built the world that
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is forcing so much migration and so many ways thank you both for joining me know me climb on this one thank you so much for going up front. thank you for having me you so much to have the right that's our show up front we'll be back next week. planet earth a wondrous diverse ecosystem but human activity is the escalating climate change and posing an x. the stench of threat in the lead up to us to al-jazeera ground special coverage documentaries discussions and reports exploring the consequences of all actions and inactions and showcasing ways in which some are seeking to turn the tide a season of programming exploring the time across ahead of earth day on al-jazeera
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. that was 1st fully effects emitted flight is a clear demonstration of all the measures that cut that away as it has put in place to ensure the highest standards of safety on hygiene on bald p.p. if i stop. in-flight entertainment system you recap in cleaning systems disinfectant robots. today visit an important day for the airline industry and a message for travelers is that we are walking tirelessly to implement every measure to safeguard their health thank you.
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from the world's most populated region. in-depth stories from across the asia and pacific. time 1st cultures and conflict in politics one to one east on al-jazeera. odd. this is 0. hello there i'm a hell of a hit scene and this is the news our live from doha coming up for you in the next 60 minutes and italian judge orders the former interior minister matteo sound to stand trial for stranding a group of migrants at sea in 20193000000 people have now died from cold at 19 in a number of infections is wising some countries still with vaccination set backs. a
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royal farewell the queen elizabeth and a small group of course family man.

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