♪ ♪ anchor: from pacifica, this is democracy now! >> this really is the world cup of fraud, and today we are issuing fifa a red card. anchor: in what's been described as the largest scandal in modern sports history the u.s. justice department indicts 14 people tied to soccer's governing body fifa accusing them of racketeering wire fraud and money laundering conspiracy. we'll speak to sportswriter dae

zirin and former soccer player jules boycoff. plus we'll look at how 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. >> specifically that's strange for the u.n. anchor: and we go to texas where at least 20 people have died in record flooding. will this force republican presidential candidates including texas senator ted cruz to rethink their climate change denialism? all that and more, coming up. welcome to democracy now! the democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. an explosion has struck a shiite

mosque in the saudi city of dammam, killed 21 people at another shiite mosque marking one of the worst attacks to hit saudi arabia in years. the united nations has passed a nonbinding resolution aimed at curbing the cultural mrundering of iraq. the resolution adopted unanimously by the 193-nation general assembly. it applies only to iraq not to syria, where isil controls the ancient city of palmyra. isil posted video showing the destruction of iraqi sites, incl the ancient assyrian city of nimruses when in reality we

have not seen that at all. anchor: an amazing figure despite cutter's promises. nepaly migrants have died one every two days in 2014 in cutter. dave: that blood is on sepp blatter's hands as well. he said this will go on in 2022 over his dead body in his own words. even though it's over 125 degrees in the summer in qatar. even though they'll have the world cup in 2022 in the fall

which will cut into, if not completely reorganize the european soccer leagues which are the world's most popular and i think that's why 2022 if blatter is reelect and did 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 profound and the splits are unclear. voting against blatter today will not only be the united states as you mentioned but also the palestinian futbol association. if nothing else, they have brought the interest of palestine and the interest of the united states together for once. anchor: could you talk about that dave. your recent piece talks about the palestinian futbol association's attempts to have the israeli futbol association, you know, somehow sanctioned for the way it treats palestinian futbol players. could you talk about that? dave: yes sanctioned or

expelled since apartheid south africa was asked to leave because of its practices. these changes are happening as i'm speaking to you. there are changes going on. israel from what i'm hearing is relentog what has been a blockade preventing players in gaza from traveling freely to the west bank. that's what the palestinian futbol association is charging israel with. they say they're choking out their ability to develop soccer because of the way 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 until they change these practices and there are furious negotiations going on as we speak to try to head that off. anchor: russian president vladimir putin has come out in defense of the embattled presidents of fifa and blatter. russia is due to host the world cup in 2018. he drew comparisons in the attempt to oust blatter and edward snowden, who's got political asylum in russia. he accused the u.s. of medaling outside its jurisdiction. >> with regard to the arrests that have been made it looks very strange to say the least. the arrests have been made at the request of the american side. who are 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, the u.s. has nothing to do with that this is yet another blatant attempt to extend its jurisdiction to other states. anchor: dave your response? that was vladimir putin. dave: putin will have to answer questions about the use of prison facilities in russia. that being said one thing putin is saying which is true is that the united states justice department is using statutes that was granted to it by law after 9/11 as a way to conduct international terror arrests in other countries that they have extra diction agreements with. this was a post-9/11 arrest as a way to bring them to trial. these antiterror statutes are so

broad that if someone 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 globo-cop. that is irrefutable. anchor: jules boycoff i want to ask you you've played competitively for the u.s. and in international soccer tournaments. what was your response when the scandal broke with fifa and can you say a little bit about the way in which soccer has changed from the time that you played until now? jules: absolutely. corruption in fifa has been a secret for a long time. i was 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 blaiser, the u.s. soccer honcho who was renting an apartment at trump tower at $18,000. 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 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 gold project futbol for help to various small countries and that's how he's gained their allegiance. you listeners and viewers might be wondering how in the heck will this guy get reelected shortly? therein lies the answer. he's distributed money farmed it out and gained allegiance from people across the world this way. he may well get the 2/3 votes he needs. it's 140 votes. if he doesn't, he may well get the majority required in the second round of voting. anchor: zirin, before you go it's being said as lorreta lynch's first big move as u.s. attorney general. she was u.s. attorney in new york. before this the indictments against the banks were announced, or the settlement. that was banks not individuals. what about that comparison that you see all these people hold off, but when it comes to the

banks no one is named. dave: yeah i think it's disturbing and another one is the real timidity going after the local police departments for example the one 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 people need to demand and press the justice department about and frankly, i think it is happening because fifa is such low-hanging fruit. 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 people 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 globo-cop, make an arrest

and bring people back to the united states for trial. lost in all of this is the precedent first of all the u.s. is setting by going overseaos a non-terror case make arrests and bringing them back and what's being lost is you have bankers in this country who facilitated the largest thevt in the history of thieves 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. anchor: jules boycoff, talk about the women's cup. jules: that's one of the sad facts is that the women's world cup will start on june 6 and it's getting totally overshadowed by the fifa corruption scandal. it's going to be a terrific tournament. canada is hosting it. we'll see women from across the world play some terrific soccer in front of us. unfortunately, they'll be playing on artificially turf field which is 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. it makes it a bit faster and different than it is on grass. certainly fifa has a long history of slinging misogeny. when asked how we could make the women's game more popular in the world he suggested that they wear tighter shorts, for real. 10 years later, he didn't even recognize alex morgan, one of the top three players in the world up for the player of the year award. he didn't even recognize her at the award banquet dinner. he walked up to sarah huffman's wife who won the award five times. sexism in fifa runs deep and this is one of the bad side effects is that we're not talking about this being a terrific tournament nouchlt we want to thank you for being with us.

jules boycoff teaches political science at pacific university in oregon author of activism in the olympics, dissent of the games in vancouver. 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'll go to texas where floods have killed many people. we'll talk about climate change from texas to india. stay with us.

>> i'm amy goodman. >> severe storms 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 water ways and more than 1,000 cars were submerged under water. president obama has pledged assistance to help recover but clean-up efforts restored as

storms continued. some of the flooding happened in whim berley between san antonio and austin where the blanco river rose 28 feet in an hour, cresting at 40 feet, more than triple its flood stage of 13 feet. this is hayes county commissioner will conley. >> our community in hayes county and blanco county have been devastated by a tsunami of water an historic tsunami of water that came down the blanco river very quickly in a very powerful way. >> among those still miss suggest laura mccomb and her two young children who were in their house when the blanco river washed it off its foundation. her sister julie describes the phone call she received tuesday morning. >> 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, i thought i'd be the big sister helping out the little sister in the morning. she hung up the phone because she saw a light. she thought she was getting rescued. i'm imagining all these helicopters coming down and pulling her out. i expectd to go to whim berly high school the next day and find her. when she wasn't there i knew something was very wrong. anchor: the historic floods in texas ending an extreme drought.

originally from wimberly and joining us outside dallas is kathryn hayho, director at texas tech university and also the founder and ceo of atmos research, an organization created to bridge the gap between science industry and government. she's coauthor of climate change facts for decisions. time magazine named her one of the most 100 influential people in america. we welcome you to democracy now!. kathryn 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? >> this is a severe weather season. this is a time of the year when we timically 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 and we're expecting another tomorrow. these storms are getting an extra shot of adrenalin from el nino. we haven't had an el nino year in quite some time. but we also know that as humans we have altered the background conditions of our atmosphere putting all this car bon dioxide into the atmosphere so every weather thing that happens has some component of climate change in it. in heavy rainfall climate change is increasing the amount of water vapor that's sitting in the atmosphere for these storms to pick up and dump on us. >> you're in wimberly. could you describe what happened there where the flash flood was compared to a tsunami. >> right. the blanco river on a normal day is a pretty small river. it's shallow a beautiful calm

serene kind of place. it is prone to flash flooding. we've seen that many, many times, but this was just lores of magnitude more extreme than anything that is on the historical record that anybody alive has ever witnessed. basically, we had supersaturated soil conditions from all the rainfall that we're getting. and on top of that we had in the water shed 10 inches in some places and what that did was just generated a massive amount of water flowing into the river in a very short time span and it just rolled down river 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.

>> and what are texas lawmakers doing to address climate change given the severity of what's occurring? >> 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. we continue to have a situation in texas where republican leadership doesn't believe in climate change or at least not human-caused clooiment climate change, and so there's just a situation of inaction at the political level. i think it's a little bit different if we'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 capital. >> turn to texas center 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. >> 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 democrats and republicans, will stand united as texans in support of the federal government fulfilling its statutory obligations and stepping in to respond to this natural disaster. anchor: 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. >> global warming alarmists anyone who actually points to the evidence that disproves the apocalyptical claims, they don't engage in reasoned debate, what do they do they scream, you're a denier. they brand you a heretic. today, the global warming alarmists are the equivalent of the flat-earthers. it's accepted scientific wisdom that the earth was flat and gallileo was branded a denier. >> and last week jeb bush the former governor of florida his family lives in texas both former presidents last week jeb bush a presidential contender himself was asked about climate change by david brody of the daily signal. >> a lot of folks are wondering if climate change is real. you seem to be suggesting it is. do you believe humans are partly

if not fully responsible? >> i don't. the climate is changing. i don't think anybody can argue that it's not. and i don't think anybody truly knows what percentage of this is man made and what percentage is just the natural evolution of what happens over time on this planet. i think we have a responsibility to adapt to what the responsibilities are without destroying our economy, without hollowing out our industrial core. there are many things that we can do that are common sensical about this. the climate change has been impacted by the hard core left and if you don't march to their beat perfectly, then you're a denier. this is back to this lack of civility i think in american political life where even if you -- and you have to agree with people now 100% of the time or you're as bad as someone who disagrees with you completely. anchor: that's jeb bush. he hasn't actually announced that he's running for president

but that is what he had suggested for the last month. kathryn hayhoe you have dealt with this issue of climate denialism. you dealt with it in your own family, your husband who now co-wrote the 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 into your own religion as an evangelical, the issue of climate change and human-induced climate chaos. >> well, when we hear people saying things like these quotes that you just played it's natural to say 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 printer or some type of basic explanation of the science that is known for almost 200 years. 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 common. that means we don't as individuals have incentive to solve it ourselves. it requires some type of large-scale action like putting a price on carbon which requires government intervention. but you can't really say politically oh, sure it's no real problem. of course it is but i don't want to do anything about it. that's 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. >> and kathryn as you're dealing with climate deniers yourself particularly in texas? >> whenever i talk to people, i think the first thing to do is bond over our shared values and

connect those preexisting shared values to the issue of climate change. so often as you just heard, people think, oh, well, you can only care about climate change if you're a hard core liberal, or if you're a green tree hugger or if you have a list of certain things and if you're not any of those things, you can't care about climate change. the first thing i always do is try to connect the dots between should go 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 in climate change. >> 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. >> well, talking about values

and talking about what is already in people's hearts there's no greater value for many people than the values that come from our faith. 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 thing is to love god and then to love neighbor as yourself. we're constantly told to care for the poor and needy and disadvantaged and those who don't have the resources that we do. that is the value that we can connect directly to climate change. the people who are being most directly impacted by climate change are the people who don't have the resources to do that. >> speaking of which india right now 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 1800 people it is believed to have died and the numbers are probably much higher. the death toll, a local resident

describes the impact of the scorching heat in india. >> the children and all the grandparents, because of this in the home, it's due to dehydration. and also because of the morning and night, the power cord is creating a lot of heat for the households and family members. >> 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. kathryn hayhoe. >> this is a pattern we're seeing around the world. 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 6 extreme heat wave on our climate dice. what it's doing is replacing a few other members with 6's so a chance of rolling those double 6's is going up and climate change is replacing some of those 6's with 7s. so our heat waves are getting stronger too. again, what climate change is doing is it's taking a natural pattern, a natural event and giving that extra little bump of steroid so to speak, just like a baseball player. those heat waves are getting stronger and more frequent. >> you covered the recent drought in texas extensively. could you talk about what the impact of that's been? >> right. one of the 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 state-wide average of about 14 inches of rainfall. in austin, which is about in the middle of the state in terms of geography and average rainfall 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've never really had before. we had a state park that burned down. we had reservoirs 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 -- it was an object lesson for many of us about what we may be facing in the future under climate change. >> you are from wimberly and you're talking to us from austin. how is it to cover your home community and what this physically means to people you've spoken to here?

>> it's difficult. you know a lot of people i know have lost their homes, and i'm going this week to help with the clean-up of a family friend. he was rescued at 4:00 in the morning with his home with water up to his neck. he's lucky to be alive. he's an older gentleman who basically lost everything he has. we heard stories about family friends of ours that live on the river the road they live on was the only house that was left. they talked about how they got up in the middle of the night and saw a car with head lights that was coming down the river. they heard people screaming on top of their roofs up there with flash lights. they get up the next morning and all of those homes are gone. the landscape, the environment has changed. there's these huge cypress trees that line the blanco river, just enormous trees, that many are just gone. they've been uprooted or

stripped of their bark, fallen over. so it's one of the disaster scenarios where you wake up look around and nothing is really the same. anchor: well we want to thank you both for being with us forest wilder of the texas observer speaking to us from austin from wimberly and katherine hayhoe climate science center from texas tech speaking to us just from outside dallas. this is democracy now!. we'll be back in a moment. ♪ well it's flooding down in texas ♪ ♪ all the telephone lines are down ♪ ♪ well, it's flooding down in

texas. ♪ ♪ all the telephone lines are down ♪ ♪ >> texas floods by larry davis. i'm amy goodman with nino niederreiter. nermeen: the united nations is under fire for the sexual exploitation of children in 2013 and 2014. the guardian obtained a leaked report that says french soldiers raped and sodomized starving and homeless young boys. even after the exploitation was brought to the attention of senior un officials the un never report today to french authorities, nor did it do anything to immediately stop the abuse. so far, the only person to be punished is a un 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 the 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 of anwarul chowdhury of bangladesh bangladesh. >> never should that happen. that's the first step. the second step flows logically. once it's relieved from nonmilitary personnel the

personnel will be under tremendous pressure to expunge sexual exploitation and abuse from their ranks. >> when the u. >>no becomes the protectors of predators instead of prosecutors of predators, that's disturbing because i believe in the u.n. >> we need to be open about how many of those cases are there of sexual abuse and exploitation which countries are involved in it what they are doing, and how it is being sent by the u.n. to them are being handled. >> united nations peace keeping missions have been under criticism. in march, the u.n. came under criticism for ignoring an internal report that called sexual exploitation the most significant risk to peace keeping missions across the globe. the leaked document described a culture of impunity when dealing

with sexual misconduct cases among peace keepers saying, quote, the un personnel in all the missions we visited could point to numerous suspected or quite visible cases that are not being counted or investigated. for me we go to boston, massachusetts, where we're joined by paula donovan who has launched the aids world free campaign. paul ayou held a news conference at the un and re released another report are. tell us what you have found. >> what we have 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 un official anders kompass who was under fire

extensively 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 un had been documented by the un 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 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 dangers the imminent danger that they're in and just sort of maintaining almost 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 equitiorial guananian 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 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 in france who could take things into hand. anchor: and how have the french authorities responded since this has come to light?

>> initially they opened a preliminary investigation, in july of 2014 when anders kompass handed the document over to them t seems as though that was stalled almost immediately by the refusal of the united nations to allow the police to talk to the people who had interviewed the un 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 it was exposed to the media only on april 29 2015 then things kicked into gear and the french have now taken up their investigation again in ernest. >> paula donovan we only have about 2 minutes to go. you are leading a campaign to get rid of immunity in the united nations around sexual

abuse and exploitation. explain how the un shields its own members from due process when they are accused of sexual assault. >> under an inch of convention from 1946 * ancient, the un staff are protected from being 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 exemployedation and abuse, then the secretary general has to on a case by case basis 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 un system and the way they deal with exual exploitation and abuse, is such a sham where it needs an external independent investigation from top to

bottom. bottom. >> so what do you think the un -- what kinds of internal changes are you calling for within the un so these allegations can be dealt with in a better way in the future? i think so as the central african republic case shows, serious member states of the united nations have to take hold of things and move in and find out when an allegation of sexual abuse is first brought to light. what are the mandated protocols how do we respond? and then what do the various agencies and institutions within the entities within the un have to do? should unicef -- and my answer is absolutely yes should they have to move in immediately to protect children from further abuse. the whole un needs to be looked at from top to bottom by an external commission. anchor: paula donovan thanks so much for being with us. codirector of aids-free world

which has launched the code blue campaign seeking to end sexual abuse. that does it for our show. our website is democracynow.org. i'm amy goodman with nino niederreiter shaikh.