Specifically thats 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 president ial 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. Im 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 193nation 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 cutters promises. Nepaly migrants have died one every two days in 2014 in cutter. Dave that blood is on Sepp Blatters hands as well. He said this will go on in 2022 over his dead body in his own words. Even though its over 125 degrees in the summer in qatar. Even though theyll have the world cup in 2022 in the fall which will cut into, if not completely reorganize the european soccer leagues which are the worlds most popular and i think thats why 2022 if blatter is reelect and did if we have a situation where hes not imprisoned where we could be looking at the crackup 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 Associations 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 im speaking to you. There are changes going on. Israel from what im hearing is relentog what has been a blockade preventing players in gaza from traveling freely to the west bank. Thats what the palestinian Futbol Association is charging israel with. They say theyre 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 its Israeli Football Association using soccer as a way to take land that should rightfully be part of a possible palestinian state and theyre 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 president s 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, whos 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 dont know but its 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 StatesJustice 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 post9 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 globocop. That is irrefutable. Anchor Jules Boycoff i want to ask you youve 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 its become a bigtime money enterprise, and theres 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 shouldnt be surprised about stories regarding envelopes full of tens of thousands of dollars, or we shouldnt 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 shouldnt be surprised that we see these kind of corrupt activities. Whats interesting to me beyond that beyond the actual illegal corruption is the corruption thats sort of imbedded in everyday practice for fifa. So for example, since 1999 under sepp blatter, hes distributed funds through various programs, including the gold project futbol for help to various small countries and thats how hes gained their allegiance. You listeners and viewers might be wondering how in the heck will this guy get reelected shortly . Therein lies the answer. Hes 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. Its 140 votes. If he doesnt, he may well get the majority required in the second round of voting. Anchor zirin, before you go its being said as lorreta lynchs 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 its 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 thats 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 lowhanging fruit. If you think about it its not people from the United States. It looks extremely aggressive and fifas 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 its going overseas to play globocop, 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 nonterror case make arrests and bringing them back and whats 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 thats something people need to continue to press and ask this Justice Department if theyre this muscular with fifa why not with the wall street bankers. Anchor Jules Boycoff, talk about the womens cup. Jules thats one of the sad facts is that the womens world cup will start on june 6 and its getting totally overshadowed by the fifa corruption scandal. Its going to be a terrific tournament. Canada is hosting it. Well see women from across the world play some terrific soccer in front of us. Unfortunately, theyll 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 womens game more popular in the world he suggested that they wear tighter shorts, for real. 10 years later, he didnt even recognize alex morgan, one of the top three players in the world up for the player of the year award. He didnt even recognize her at the award banquet dinner. He walked up to sarah huffmans wife who won the award five times. Sexism in fifa runs deep and this is one of the bad side effects is that were 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, well go to texas where floods have killed many people. Well talk about Climate Change from texas to india. Stay with us. Im 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 cleanup 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 id 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. Im 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 wasnt 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. Shes 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 lets 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 were 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 were expecting another tomorrow. These storms are getting an extra shot of adrenalin from el nino. We havent 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 thats sitting in the atmosphere for these storms to pick up and dump on us. Youre 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. Its shallow a beautiful calm serene kind of place. It is prone to flash flooding. Weve 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 were 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. Theres 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 whats occurring . Well i think in a word, basically nothing. Were just completing our legislative session in which there were a handful of climaterelated 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 doesnt believe in Climate Change or at least not humancaused clooiment Climate Change, and so theres just a situation of inaction at the political level. I think its a little bit different if were talking about ordinary people who are starting to make some connections between these extreme weather events and Climate Change but theres a disconnect between peoples understanding and experience and whats happening in our capital. Turn to texas Center Republican president ial 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 governments 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