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It’s Not Over
November has been a good month for democracy. Brazil’s autocratic president, Jair Bolsonaro, authorized the transfer of power after losing in national elections to a left-wing challenger. Russia’s murderous army is literally on the run in Ukraine. And American voters went to the polls and defied both history and expectation: They left the Senate in the hands of Democrats, gave the House to the Republicans by only a tiny majority, and crushed the electoral aspirations of a ragtag coalition of election deniers, Christian nationalists, and general weirdos.
That’s the good news. But as relieved as I am that some of my darkest worries did not come to pass last week, democracy is still in danger. What happened last week was an important electoral victory that allows all of us to fight another day—specifically, two years from now. Without the defeat of the deniers in 2022, the 2024 elections would likely have fallen into chaos and perhaps even violence. Both are still possibilities. But voters rallied and turned back the worst and most immediate threats to the American system of government.
Think of last week as American democracy’s Dunkirk: an improvised but crucial escape from disaster. I generally dislike World War II metaphors; most things we do are nowhere near the scale of the fight to defeat the Axis. But I’m going to break my own rule here because I worry about too much complacency among the prodemocracy coalition.
If you’re fuzzy on your 20th-century history, Dunkirk was the beach in France where the Nazis trapped retreating Allied forces, mostly hundreds of thousands of British troops, after the fall of France in 1940. Had these units been destroyed, the United Kingdom might well have faced the prospect of surrender to Nazi Germany. Instead, the Germans hesitated to close the noose, and nearly 350,000 men were evacuated to Britain by a flotilla composed mostly of civilian volunteers, a miraculous feat that protected Britain from invasion and bought time until the American entry into the war.
Like Dunkirk, the midterms were a necessary, but not final, victory. The old saw about “the most important election in our lifetime” turned out to be true this time: Without multiple defeats of the worst state and federal candidates in recent history, the unraveling of American democracy would have accelerated and the security of future elections would be in doubt, at least in the states captured by the election deniers and their associated charlatans.
If you want a vision of what such a nightmare might look like, imagine a close election in 2024. Battleground states are counting ballots with armed people swarming around election sites and state offices. Arizona Governor Kari Lake, Pennsylvania Governor Doug Mastriano, and Wisconsin Governor Tim Michels are all frantically calling and texting one another on Election Night, and ordering their state institutions to hold off on finalizing the results. Meanwhile, Arizona Secretary of State Mark Finchem (a former member of the Oath Keepers) reaches out to his like-minded counterparts—Jim Marchant in Nevada, Kristina Karamo in Michigan—to ensure that none of them will certify Democratic wins, perhaps in hopes of flipping the decision to their legislatures or sympathetic judges. If Karamo misses the call, it’s because she’s busy strategizing with Michigan’s new Republican governor, Tudor Dixon, a conspiracy-theory-spouting flake who thinks that COVID restrictions and the George Floyd protests were an attempt to topple the U.S. government.
Fortunately, all of these people were soundly defeated—except for Lake, who lost in a squeaker and, true to form, still refuses to concede to Democrat Katie Hobbs. But among them, they garnered millions of votes. These 2022 losers and other, similar candidates are still out there, and they will all continue their best efforts (as Lake is demonstrating) to corrode the foundations of our constitutional order.
Which brings us to Donald Trump.
As I wrote a few days ago, Trump’s 2024 candidacy confronts us, once and for all, with a decision about what kind of country we are. I hope that the Republicans deny him their nomination: A spirited fight within the GOP that ends by flushing Trump out of the American political system would be good for the Republicans and for America. But I have no faith in the regenerative power of a party that has devolved into an anti-constitutional, violent movement led by cowards and opportunists. Especially because the current crop of possible GOP contenders is just another collection of poltroons and Trump imitators; the Republican primaries are likely only to replace one authoritarian cult leader with another.
American democracy’s Dunkirk means that the danger to the 2024 election from chicanery and outright attack, both political and physical, is much lower now than even a month ago. Turnout in 2022 was high, as midterms go, but not high enough, particularly—and as usual—among young voters, whose turnout, at just over 27 percent, was actually lower than in 2018 (when it hit its highest level ever). And we’re stuck for years to come with some truly odious candidates who managed to get past the voters. (I am, of course, speaking of J. D. Vance here, among others.) The Kari Lakes and the Tudor Dixons will resurface in two years. If we are going to turn them back once and for all, we must not underestimate their resentment and will to power. We know who they are; we must decide who we are.
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A North Korean intercontinental ballistic missile is launched in this photo released on November 19, 2022 by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency. (photo: KCNA/Reuters)
North Korea has promised to ‘resolutely react’ to US threat of nuclear weapons use with its own nuclear capabilities.
The United Nations Security Council, at the behest of Japan, South Korea and the US will gather on Monday to discuss North Korea’s latest missile launch.
North Korea test-fired what it said was a Hwasong-17 ICBM, which can travel up to 15,000 km (9,320 miles), on Friday shortly after warning of “fiercer military responses” to Washington.
“Kim Jong Un solemnly declared that if the enemies continue to pose threats … our party and government will resolutely react to nukes with nuclear weapons and to total confrontation with all-out confrontation,” Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported on Saturday.
KCNA said the Hwasong-17 launched on Friday was aimed at achieving “the most powerful and absolute nuclear deterrence” and described the missile as “the strongest strategic weapon in the world”.
North Korea has long defended its launch of ballistic missiles as a legitimate defence against what it calls a decades-old threat from US military forces and its allies in South Korea.
Kim was accompanied by his daughter, in her first public appearance, while he inspected a missile launch site on Friday. Trailed by military officials and personnel, Kim and his daughter walked hand-in-hand through the ICBM launch site where they paused to observe military hardware and multiple ICBMs.
Commenting on Friday’s launch, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said his country had “lodged a strong protest against North Korea, which has repeated its provocations with unprecedented frequency”.
“We have told (Pyongyang) that we absolutely cannot tolerate such actions,” Kishida said at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit meeting in Thailand.
KCNA said the missile flew nearly 1,000 km (621 miles) for roughly 69 minutes, reaching a peak altitude of 6,041 km (3,754 miles).
Kim hailed the test launch a success, declaring it as confirmation of North Korea’s “maximum capacity to contain any nuclear threat” and a warning to US President Joe Biden’s administration and allies that any military provocation would trigger their “self-destruction”, KCNA reported.
“Our party and government should clearly demonstrate their strongest will to retaliate the hysteric aggression war drills by the enemies,” Kim stated, according to KCNA.
Friday’s ICBM launch and sabre-rattling statements come just days after Biden pressed Chinese President Xi Jinping in their first face-to-face meeting during the G20 talks in Bali to make it known to Kim that Washington would not stand for its “long-range nuclear tests”.
Biden promised a “defensive” response to “send a clear message to North Korea” if Xi could not rein in Pyongyang. Biden has not yet directly addressed North Korea’s Friday ICBM test.
“We are aware of the DPRK’s ballistic missile launch and are consulting closely with the Republic of Korea (ROK) and Japan, as well as other regional allies and partners,” the US Department of Defence said in a statement sent to Al Jazeera.
“The United States condemns these actions and calls on the DPRK to refrain from any further unlawful and destabilizing acts. While we have assessed that this event does not pose an immediate threat to US personnel, or territory, or to our allies, we will continue to monitor the situation. The US commitments to the defence of the ROK and Japan remain ironclad.”
North Korea’s official name is the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).
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Bouquets of flowers and a sign reading 'Love Over Hate' are left near Club Q, an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs, on Sunday. At least five people were killed and 18 wounded in a mass shooting at the nightclub. (photo: Jason Connolly/AFP/Getty Images)
ALSO SEE: Colorado Springs Shooting: Mayor Says Attack Has 'Trappings of a Hate Crime'
Right-wing demonstrators have increasingly mobilized over the past year against the LGBTQ community, experts say
“When politicians and pundits keep perpetuating tropes, insults, and misinformation about the trans and LGBTQ+ community, this is a result,” Colorado Rep. Brianna Titone (D) tweeted Sunday.
Titone, Colorado’s first openly trans legislator, and the chair of the state’s LGBTQ legislative caucus, said anti-LGBTQ lawmakers, including one of her colleagues, have used hateful rhetoric to directly incite attacks against LGBTQ people.
Though the most recent FBI data shows the number of hate crimes against LGBTQ people remained relatively flat between 2008 and 2020, an independent analysis by the research group Crowd Counting Consortium shows that right-wing demonstrators have increasingly mobilized over the past year against the LGBTQ community.
Already this year, armed protesters and right-wing groups such as the Proud Boys have used intimidating tactics to disrupt drag-related events in Texas, Nevada and Oregon, as well as other states. Children’s hospitals across the United States are facing growing threats of violence, including bomb threats, driven by an online anti-LGBTQ campaign attacking the facilities for providing care to transgender kids and teens. And in October, a man attacked a transgender librarian in Idaho before yelling homophobic slurs and attempting to hit two women with his car. Idaho is one of 18 states that does not have hate crime protections for LGBTQ people, though many local law enforcement agencies still track those crimes.
Jay Brown, senior vice president of programs, research and training for the Human Rights Campaign, said Americans can’t, and shouldn’t, separate those acts of violence from state-sanctioned efforts to limit LGBTQ rights.
“We’ve seen more than 340 anti-LGBTQ bills filed this year alone,” Brown said. “We’ve seen a huge increase in anti-LGBTQ rhetoric online and by politicians, and we’ve seen real threats.”
In Colorado, for instance, Brown noted that Republican lawmaker and gun-rights activist Lauren Boebert has criticized drag in recent months, and in August, she warned “all the drag queens out there” to “stay away from the children in Colorado’s Third District!” Boebert has used slurs to describe transgender people, and she called the Equality Act gay “supremacy.” She also helped promote the idea that people who support LGBTQ adolescents are “groomers.”
“The level of fear that the community is feeling is real,” Brown said. “And many of our elected leaders actually bear some responsibility for creating a level of discourse that feeds that fear.”
On Sunday evening, Boebert expressed sympathy for the victims. “The news out of Colorado Springs is absolutely awful,” she tweeted. “This morning the victims … their families are in my prayers. This lawless violence needs to end and end quickly.”
Other lawmakers, including Titone and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, said Boebert’s words were disingenuous.
“You spreading tropes and insults contributed to the hatred for us,” Titone tweeted. “There’s blood on your hands.”
Brown, an out trans man, said he feels particularly devastated because Sunday is Trans Day of Remembrance, an annual observance of transgender people who have been hurt or killed as a result of transphobia. Last year was the deadliest on record for trans people, and already this year the Human Rights Campaign has recorded another 32 violent deaths of transgender and nonbinary people.
According to Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, the executive director of the National Center of Transgender Equality, a quarter of those violent deaths happened in Texas and Florida. Those states have proposed dozens of anti-trans laws and regulations in the past two years or put in place anti-trans policies, such as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s order to investigate parents for child abuse if they provide gender-affirming care for their children.
“Anti-trans legislation, fearmongering, and disinformation put the trans community and trans lives at risk,” Heng-Lehtinen tweeted.
As of early Sunday evening, authorities had not yet confirmed the identity of the Colorado Springs victims, but online users have reported that at least one was transgender.
The club was holding a drag performance Saturday evening and planned to hold a Trans Day of Remembrance event Sunday. According to its website, the club is now closed until further notice.
Though Colorado has long been one of the country’s most LGBTQ-friendly states, recent attacks have escalated to a point where advocates say no place feels safe. Right-wing groups have, in fact, increasingly turned their attention toward liberal states.
Sunday morning, just hours after the attack in Colorado Springs, Chaya Raichik, a Brooklyn real estate investor who runs Libs of TikTok, a Twitter account with 1.5 million followers, targeted a Denver nonprofit for supporting young people who want to perform drag.
Erin Reed, a transgender activist and legislative researcher, said Raichik’s tweets have directly led to anti-LGBTQ demonstrations in Idaho, California and other states. Proud Boys have attempted to force their way into events in those states soon after Raichik tweeted about them, Reed noted on Twitter.
“We don’t know for sure what motivated the (Colorado Springs) shooter or what they were targeting. But we do know what motivates Chaya Raichik. We know she has seen these events and said, ‘Yes, more,’ ” Reed tweeted on Sunday. “Every trans person who follows this has been warning this would happen. And here we are.”
Joshua Thurman, 34, who was inside Club Q at the time of the shooting to celebrate his upcoming birthday told reporters Sunday that he was still trying to make sense of what happened. “You felt like you had to come up into our safe space and shoot us up,” he said of the alleged perpetrator. “You’ve harmed is us in a way that I don’t know how we bounce back from this. What can we do? We can rebuild. We can come together. We can do vigils. We can raise money, but that’s not going to bring back those five people.”
Later, at a vigil for the victims at All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church, Taylor Oliver, 29, one of the attendees said, “These tragedies are causing people in the LGBT community to develop a habit of checking in on their friends. There’s almost an etiquette to checking in with your friends. Every single one of my friends, in other countries too, when something happens, it’s like the polite thing to do is to make sure my friend isn’t dead.”
Jessie Entwistle, of Colorado Springs, who was also at the vigil said he was in Orlando not long after the 2016 massacre at the Pulse night club, “so this all feels very familiar in a really sad way.”
“It feels like, ‘When is it going to happen to me?’ As opposed to thinking, ‘This kind of thing will never touch me.’ ”
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An aerial view of gantry cranes, shipping containers, and freight railway trains ahead of a possible strike if there is no deal with the rail worker unions, at the Union Pacific Los Angeles (UPLA) Intermodal Facility rail yard in Commerce, California, U.S., September 15, 2022. (photo: Bing Guan/Reuters)
Train and engine service members of the transportation division of the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail, and Transportation Workers (SMART-TD) narrowly voted to reject the deal. That unit, which includes conductors, brakemen and other workers, joins three other unions in rejecting a deal brokered via a board appointed by U.S. President Joe Biden.
"There's a lot of anger about paid sick leave among the membership" who kept goods flowing during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, said Seth Harris, a professor at Northeastern University.
Railroads, which have slashed labor and other costs to bolster profits, are fiercely opposed to adding more sick time flexibility that would require them to add additional staff. Those operators, which include Union Pacific, Berkshire Hathaway Inc's BNSF and CSX, say the contract deal has the most generous wage package in almost 50 years of national rail negotiations.
"Both sides have reason to compromise here. The union needs to get this done in advance of the new Congress as their involvement will unlikely result in 'better' for them," said Reliant Labor Consultants principal Joe Brock, a former Teamsters local president.
Republicans, who historically favor corporate interests over unions, earlier this month won control of the U.S. House starting in January.
"I see a minimal improvement in sick pay, and huge pressure from the (Biden) administration to accept a deal," Brock said.
Major industry groups complain that rail industry cost cuts have hurt service and have been calling on President Biden and Congress to intervene to prevent a strike ahead of the holiday season.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said last month "any shutdown would be completely unacceptable. It is the responsibility of the parties involved to resolve this issue." The White House did not immediately comment on Monday.
CAN BE SETTLED 'WITHOUT A STRIKE'
A rail shutdown could freeze almost 30% of U.S. cargo shipments by weight, stoke inflation and cost the American economy as much as $2 billion per day by unleashing a cascade of transport woes affecting U.S. energy, agriculture, manufacturing, healthcare and retail sectors.
Last week, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said Congress should step in to prevent any disruption, warning it would be catastrophic for the economy. Automaker General Motors has said a halt would force it to stop production of some trucks within about a day.
"The ball is now in the railroads' court. Let's see what they do. They can settle this at the bargaining table," said SMART-TD President Jeremy Ferguson in a statement. "This can all be settled through negotiations and without a strike."
The National Carriers' Conference Committee (NCCC), which represents the nation's freight railroads in talks, said the "continued, near-term threat" of a strike "will require that freight railroads and passenger carriers soon begin to take responsible steps to safely secure the network in advance of any deadline."
The railroads showed no sign of being willing to reopen talks and said "Congress may need to intervene – just as it has in the past – to prevent disruption of the national rail system."
The standoff between U.S. railroad operators and their union workers in September disrupted flows of hazardous materials such as chemicals used in fertilizer and disrupted U.S. passenger railroad Amtrak service as railroads prepared for a possible work stoppage.
Unions, including a separately contracted unit covering more than 1,000 SMART-TD yardmasters, have ratified nine of 13 agreements covering about half of the 115,000 workers affected by the talks.
The deal includes a 24% compounded wage increase over a five-year period from 2020 through 2024 and five annual $1,000 lump sum payments.
Three other unions that rejected the deal have already agreed to extend a strike deadline until early December.
Labor unions have criticized the railroads’ sick leave and attendance policies and the lack of paid sick days for short-term illness.
Beginning on Dec. 9, SMART-TD would be allowed to go on strike or the rail carriers would be permitted to lock out workers, unless Congress intervenes.
If there is a strike by any of the unions that voted against the deal, Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET) and other rail unions that have ratified agreements have pledged to honor picket lines.
The Biden administration helped avert a service cutoff by hosting last-minute contract talks in September at the Labor Department that led to a tentative contract deal.
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An immigrant detainee makes a call from his 'segregation cell' at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center, which is owned and operated by The GEO Group. Detainees have been striking for several months at two other for-profit detention centers owned by the company, and some say they've been retaliated against with solitary confinement. (photo: John Moore/Getty Images)
Immigrant advocates say more than 90 detainees are continuing to strike at the for-profit Mesa Verde and Golden State Annex detention centers near Bakersfield. The work stoppage has reached the six-month mark at one facility. On this week’s California Report Magazine, host Sasha Khokha checks in with KQED labor correspondent Farida Jhabvala Romero, who has been speaking to striking detainees from inside the facilities, even when some have been held in solitary confinement.
“I stand up against unfair treatment. It's like that slavery rate of $1 a day,” said Mohammed Mousa, 41, an immigrant from Egypt who said detention center staff held him in solitary confinement for more than 40 days for supporting the strike.
In an official civil liberties complaint and a lawsuit, some strikers alleged The GEO Group, the private company operating the detention centers, retaliated against them, including subjecting them to solitary confinement.
“This is what they’re doing to retaliate against people who speak up. This is what they’re doing to intimidate us,” Pedro Figueroa, 34, told KQED by phone from solitary confinement. Records show guards moved him to segregation shortly after he and other people in his dormitory joined the work stoppage.
Figueroa said he spent 40 hours a week scrubbing floors and cleaning bathrooms inside the Mesa Verde ICE Processing Facility in Bakersfield. “I chose not to work and voice my opinion respectfully, and that’s within my right,” he said.
The legal challenge by Figueroa and eight other detainees charges the multinational prison company The GEO Group with “systematic and unlawful wage theft, unjust enrichment and forced labor” at Mesa Verde and the nearby Golden State Annex in McFarland.
U.S. District Judge Ana de Alba is set to hear the case in federal court in Fresno next month. Additional lawsuits in Washington and other states also claim GEO, which reported revenues of $2.26 billion last year, should pay detained workers minimum wage or more.
A GEO spokesperson declined an interview with KQED, but strongly rejected allegations of retaliation. He said the company is meeting all federal detention standards while committing to ensuring a humane and safe environment at their facilities.
The spokesperson has repeatedly denied that a labor strike is taking place at Mesa Verde and Golden State Annex, as the work program is deemed voluntary and established under federal detention guidelines.
“We firmly deny any allegations of retaliation, direct or indirect, against persons housed at the centers for any reason whatsoever,” he said in a statement. “Under no circumstances are any detainees forced to participate in the Voluntary Work Program.”
The Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman, to whom detainees submitted a complaint, confirmed that a staff member is regularly visiting Mesa Verde and Golden State Annex, but declined to comment on any investigation.
In September, more than a dozen members of Congress from California requested top federal immigration officials investigate reports of “disturbing conditions and abusive and retaliatory behavior towards detainees.”
South Bay Rep. Zoe Lofgren, chair of the House Immigration and Citizenship Subcommittee, told KQED that if the complaints of retaliation are found valid, Immigration and Customs Enforcement should terminate its contracts with GEO for these facilities.
As of this week, the Departments of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement have not responded to the lawmakers' request, according to Lofgren’s office.
DHS declined requests for comment. An ICE spokesperson said the agency will respond to congressional correspondence “through official channels and by appropriate officials at the agency.”
ICE detention guidelines establish that detainees volunteering to work must be paid “at least” $1 per day. The low wage rate has operated with the blessing of Congress, which has the authority to increase pay but has not done so for decades.
Meanwhile, Figueroa and other detainees at Mesa Verde said some conditions have worsened since the strike began and guards are now more frequently frisking them with invasive pat-downs whenever they leave their dormitory. GEO and ICE declined to comment directly on those allegations.
“It’s a constant invasion of privacy,” said Figueroa. “And we are not prisoners, we shouldn’t be treated as prisoners.”
That argument is key to why detainees are asking for minimum wage. While people incarcerated in federal or state prisons often earn very low wages for jobs inside those facilities, immigration detention is classified as a civil — not criminal — matter and is not intended to be punitive.
ICE officials say they determine on a case-by-case basis whether to jail immigrants while they fight deportation proceedings in court.
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Qatar relied on migrant workers to build stadiums and other infrastructure for the World Cup. Human rights organizations have raised concerns about worker deaths and safety. (photo: Patricia De Melo Moreira/AFP/Getty Images)
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman. We’re broadcasting from Cairo, Egypt, after the U.N. climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh.
But we’re going to look now at the 2022 World Cup, which started Sunday in Qatar, with fans from around the globe attending the month-long soccer, or football, tournament. This is the first time the games will be played in the winter, due to Qatar’s extreme summer temperatures. Qatar is the first country in the Middle East to host the World Cup. It won its bid to host the games a decade ago, in December 2010, shortly before the Arab Spring protests erupted. The small nation draws its wealth from sales of liquified natural gas, hosts the forward headquarters of the U.S. military Central Command.
Today, the teams of England, Wales, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland announced their captains will not wear armbands during the World Cup games in support of LGBTQ rights, after tournament organizer FIFA said players who wear the bands will be sanctioned. Homosexuality is illegal in Qatar. Human Rights Watch found that as recently as September, Qatari security forces had arrested and abused LGBT people in detention.
This comes as Qatar and FIFA have faced years of protest over conditions faced by migrant workers subjected to forced labor to build its stadiums. On Saturday, the FIFA president, Gianni Infantino, opened a news conference in Doha, Qatar, with a stunning hour-long monologue.
GIANNI INFANTINO: Today I feel Qatari. Today I feel Arab. Today I feel African. Today I feel gay. Today I feel disabled. Today I feel a migrant worker.
AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s FIFA President Gianni Infantino, speaking Saturday. He also said FIFA would establish a legacy fund after the World Cup to compensate workers and their families who faced abuse and even death while building the World Cup stadiums in Qatar. This is a former migrant worker named Hari featured in a “report”: by Human Rights Watch.
HARI: [translated] When I went to Lusail in Qatar, there was nothing. There wasn’t even a single building. Now there are towers everywhere. We built those towers. In the heat, we worked out of compulsion with face covers. We were drenched in sweat. We poured water, sweat, from our shoes. Even in that heat, we worked hard.
My son did not recognize me when I first came from Qatar to Nepal. My son’s aim is to play football, so I went to watch him play for little bit. I met my son only five times in the 14 years I was away. I used to cry and feel bad that I had to stay away from children for work.
AMY GOODMAN: A multi-country investigation by The Guardian found between 2010 and 2020, almost 6,500 migrant workers from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have died in Qatar. This is Nanda Kali Nepali, whose husband was one of those deaths.
NANDA KALI NEPALI: [translated] My husband used to work as a driver. He used to come for two months every two years. This time, only his dead body came, four years after he had last visited Nepal. What would he say? He used to say, “I will work here ’til I can. We have loans we need to repay.” My husband was my source of support. Without him, who do I rely on? I sit and I cry on my own. Whom can I show my tears to?
AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined by Minky Worden. She’s director of global initiatives at Human Rights Watch. She’s been researching human rights violations around the World Cup. Her article for Newsweek is headlined “The World Cup is Exciting, Lucrative, and Deadly.”
Minky, welcome back to Democracy Now! Just lay out what you have found.
MINKY WORDEN: So, for starters, this is the deadliest major sporting event possibly ever in history. It’s scheduled to be watched by 5 billion people worldwide. But fans of football, or soccer, absolutely cannot forget the high human cost to deliver this World Cup and that it takes place against a backdrop of completely unacceptable discrimination against LGBT people, a lack of protections for women’s rights — Qatar has a male guardianship system — and, of course, a lack of press freedom to investigate migrant labor abuses.
You mentioned at the outset that FIFA has committed to a legacy fund. There’s no indication right now that that legacy fund will actually go to the thousands — to the families of thousands of migrant workers who lost their lives to deliver this World Cup.
AMY GOODMAN: So, talk about what you understand how the system works. From 2010 to '20, something like 6,500 workers died in Qatar, not necessarily all of them building the stadiums, but many. Explain what the illegal loans and debt bondage system for workers in Qatar is, and why Qatar is saying they've changed their system.
MINKY WORDEN: Well, Qatar has passed some modest labor law improvements, but they have not gotten rid of the kafala system. The kafala system was in place in 2010 when FIFA awarded the World Cup to Qatar, and it has continued through to today. What this is is it’s a system of modern-day slavery. It has features like, in the case of many workers, they had to take out loans to work in Qatar. So, these could be loans anywhere from $700 to $4,000 U.S. dollars, but that would be a crushing loan that you would have to work, in some cases, for years to repay. Some of the saddest cases that Human Rights Watch has seen are families where the main breadwinner, a young man, went to Qatar, took out a loan to work there, worked in debt bondage, was cheated of wages, did not receive the waes he was promised, and then his body returned home to his family in a coffin. So, these cases, these are utterly preventable labor rights abuses.
And one other major point, the reason this has happened is, in 2010, and still today, there are no trade unions. Trade unions for migrant workers are illegal. And also there’s no striking. So it’s illegal to strike. So, even if you are working in deadly conditions, if you think you’re going to have a heart attack, or you’re experiencing heat stress from working in more than 120 degrees Fahrenheit, or 50 degrees Celsius, even if you’re working in dangerous and even deadly conditions, there’s no ability, if you’re a migrant worker in Qatar, to strike for your basic human rights.
AMY GOODMAN: The government of Qatar has refused to do autopsies on the workers who die as they’re working?
MINKY WORDEN: Yeah, this is — I mean, it’s difficult to understand how there could be thousands of deaths and how they couldn’t be well documented. But when you understand the system of labor exploitation that was present in Qatar, it’s actually very easy to understand.
So, there’s a workforce at any given time of 2 million migrant laborers, and then the population is about 250,000 or 300,000. So that means 90 to 95% of the workforce are migrant laborers. And they’re coming from some of the world’s poorest countries: India, Nepal, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Ghana, Kenya. And these are migrant workers who are leaving home for years at a time to make a better future for their children.
But once they arrive there, they find that they’re in control of the sponsoring company, which is exploiting them. And there’s really — many of the workers have described to us, or as you saw on the video, they’re working in deadly conditions, but there’s no way to protest, and there’s no way out.
AMY GOODMAN: The FIFA president, we just played, Gianni Infantino, opened the Saturday news conference with a stunning hour-long monologue. He said Qatar is offering migrants the opportunity to provide for their families, whereas Europe has closed its borders. If you can talk about this, and also why this oil-rich nation cannot afford to pay a living wages to its workers?
MINKY WORDEN: So, the last question first. The system that was in place, so, there was an absolute concentration, unprecedented concentration, of construction to build this World Cup that started in 2010. Those Qatari companies were — and remember, migrant workers had no basic human rights. Those Qatari companies were competing against each other for the lowest cost. I think every country can do a better job of respecting the rights of migrant workers, but we’ve never before seen such a concentration of construction. And to be clear, this is at least $220 billion of construction. So, it’s eight new stadiums, where they previously didn’t exist in the desert. It’s hundreds of miles of railways, highways, hundreds of new hotels, office towers springing up. So, the construction was unprecedented for this World Cup. You can broadly call it infrastructure.
And the situation for migrant workers was that they really were desperate to earn money and, once they were there, had no — in some cases, we documented families — the workers begged the sponsors to send them home.
AMY GOODMAN: Minky Worden, we want to thank you for being with us. Of course, we’re going to continue to cover this story. Minky Worden is director of global initiatives at Human Rights Watch.
That does it for our show. Special thanks to Sharif Abdel Kouddous, Hany Massoud, Denis Moynihan, Nermeen Shaikh, here in Cairo, our whole team in New York. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks so much for joining us.
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The COP27 summit went late into overtime, with Sameh Shoukry, president of the climate summit, speaking during a closing session on Sunday. (photo: Peter Dejong/AP)
Deep-seated tensions flared between richer countries that have prospered by burning fossil fuels, and developing ones, which are bearing the brunt of climate-driven disasters. But in a historic move, countries agreed to establish a fund to support poorer countries already hit hardest by the impacts.
In a statement at the close of the meeting, Lia Nicholson of the island nation of Antigua and Barbuda said the new fund "must be the lifeboat that we need it to be."
The negotiations went nearly two days past their scheduled deadline – into "hostage phase," as one South African delegate put it. Countries struggled to compromise on a plan that would reduce global dependence on fossil fuels, while helping vulnerable countries pay for the damage caused by worsening sea level rise, storms, droughts, heat waves and other climate-driven disasters.
The final deal, announced Sunday morning in Egypt, reiterates the goal set by the 2015 Paris climate agreement to keep overall global warming from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (about 2.8 degrees Fahrenheit) compared to pre-industrial era of the 1800s.
But it is unclear how that goal will be achieved, because negotiators could not agree that fossil fuels must be phased out. The vast majority of planet-warming pollution comes from humans' use of oil, gas and coal, and most remaining fossil fuel deposits must remain untapped in order to rein in global warming, scientists have determined.
"We call for reduced CO2 emissions," said Zambia's environment minister Collins Nzovu after the meeting ended. "That's a basic issue. Right now, as it is, we will not reach 1.5 [degrees Celsius]. We are off the map completely."
Here's what was and wasn't decided at COP27, and what it means for humanity.
World leaders did not agree to phase down fossil fuels
Many nations arrived at the talks with the hope of keeping "1.5 degrees alive." The world is on a path to hit almost double that level of warming by the end of the century. Beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.8 degrees Fahrenheit), storms, heat waves and other climate impacts become much more destructive.
As the COP27 talks got underway, a broad coalition of countries began calling for the phase-down of all fossil fuels. Small island nationals joined European countries in pushing for that language to be included in a final agreement. So did India, a country that had pushed back against the idea of phasing out coal at last year's COP26 talks in Glasgow.
Despite a last minute push, the Egyptian delegation, which brokered the final deal as hosts of the conference, did not put phasing down fossil fuels in the final text. Instead, the final agreement encourages "efforts towards the phasedown of unabated coal power and phase-out of inefficient fossil fuel subsidies."
Oil-producing countries like Saudi Arabia have long pushed back against efforts to curb fossil fuels. At these talks, the country announced that it continues to see a future of oil production, but will invest in new efforts to capture emissions and prevent them from reaching the atmosphere, known as carbon capture and sequestration. Climate activists say this new shift is simply a way to prop up fossil fuels with a technology that will not scale up for decades.
"New calls to accelerate deployment of renewable energy were very welcome," said Ani Dasgupta, president of the World Resources Institute, in a statement. "But it is mind boggling that countries did not muster the courage to call for phasing down fossil fuels, which are the biggest driver of climate change. "
Richer nations agree to create a fund to pay developing countries for climate damages
Developing countries arrived with a key demand at these talks: wealthier countries must compensate them for the rising costs of floods, storms and other climate impacts. Now, they've agreed to start setting up a fund to do just that for the most vulnerable countries, including island nations struggling for survival as sea levels rise, and low-income countries grappling with deadly droughts, floods and heat waves.
The richest and most-powerful 20 countries produce about 80% of the world's emissions every year. Low-income countries produce relatively little heat-trapping pollution. But the toll of climate change is already devastating many of them, economically and culturally.
"I've already seen islands disappearing," said Kathy Jetn̄il-Kijiner, Climate Envoy for the Marshall Islands. "These climate impacts are happening now."
She and other representatives from smaller countries came to the conference demanding the creation of a new fund, housed under the United Nations, that would pay developing countries for the "loss and damage" they're already suffering.
"If the planet is burning up, we are burning up on the front line," said Sherry Rehman, climate change minister for Pakistan. "We are the ground-zero of that climate change. So while we are seeing that burn, we are not contributing to that burn."
As talks progressed, stark fault lines emerged over which countries should pay for the damages, and which countries would be eligible to receive them.
The U.S. is the largest historical contributor to climate change by a large margin. Today, China is the largest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions. But Chinese representatives at COP27 said, while the country is open to voluntarily contributing to loss and damage, it should only be an obligation for historically wealthier countries like the U.S. and European Union.
Several European countries pushed back, wanting to see a new loss and damage fund with a "broad contributor base," given that China and India are expected to increase their emissions until the end of the decade as their economies grow.
A fund that didn't draw money from current high-emitters was "unacceptable," said European Commission executive Vice-President Frans Timmermans, earlier in the week. "I think everybody should be brought into the system on the basis of where they are today. And those countries who have the facility to support the most vulnerable should do that."
Tensions also rose over whether all developing countries should be eligible to receive funds, or just the most vulnerable, like small islands and African nations. Under the United Nations framework, India and China are still considered developing countries.
The U.S. said little on the issue for most of the negotiations, a silence that was deafening for many developing countries. Before the talks, Biden Administration officials said they wanted to explore using existing networks for humanitarian aid, instead of creating a new dedicated fund.
"No one can deny the scale of loss and damage we see around the globe," U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres said in Egypt. "The world is burning and drowning before our eyes."
The final COP27 agreement sets up a timeline for countries to work out the details of a new fund over the next year. Chile's Environment Minister Maisi Rojas, who helped lead the group of negotiators who created the fund, called the agreement "historic."
But she had mixed feelings about the meeting overall. "Remember, we are talking about loss and damage because we failed to reduce emissions," she said after the marathon talks concluded early Sunday morning. "So it's not really a reason to celebrate."
The newly-created fund does not specify which countries will be required to contribute, though it mentions "expanding" the sources of funding, a nod to Europe's demand that other countries contribute as well.
And the deal also does not set a firm timeline for when the money must arrive. Many wealthy countries, including the U.S., have failed to follow through on billions of dollars of previously promised climate funding.
"It's worth noting that we have the fund, but we need money to make it worthwhile," said Mohamed Adow, executive director of Power Shift Africa, a policy and advocacy group working on climate action in Africa. "What we have is an empty bucket. Now we need to fill it so that support can flow to the most impacted people who are suffering right now at the hands of the climate crisis."
Money promised years earlier is still missing for developing nations
Wealthier countries said in 2009 that they would provide developing nations with $100 billion a year in financing by 2020 to help them limit their own greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to impacts like more extreme floods and worsening drought. The arrangement, called climate financing, is rooted in the fact that industrialized countries such as the United States have emitted most of the pollution heating the Earth, while poorer nations are bearing disproportionate harm caused by rising temperatures.
Despite those promises, the latest tally by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development shows developing countries received just $83.3 billion in 2020.
That shortfall in promised climate funding for low-income nations is a "serious concern," participants at this year's meeting said, and they urged industrialized countries to make good on their long standing commitments. The final agreement did not say when those commitments should be met.
Even if wealthy nations come through on their pledges, it'll still be far short of what developing countries actually need to respond to climate change. To meet the climate goals they've set so far, developing countries will require at least $5.8 trillion up to 2030, according to the final agreement.
"How are we going to make this transition?" said Colombia Environment Minister Susana Muhamad at the conference. "Especially for oil producing and coal exporting countries like ours, that conversation isn't even on the table and without that conversation we're probably not going to phase out fossil fuels."
The lack of money for developing countries was one of the central issues at this year's climate talks. Wealthier countries' failure to deliver promised funding has added to pressure that developing countries are facing from inflation and heavy debt burdens.
The final agreement struck in Egypt says developing countries need "accelerated financial support" from wealthier nations. It calls for reforms at development banks like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund so that developing countries can get more climate funding without adding to their debts. And it says development banks, which were set up to give financial and technical aid to poorer countries, should do more to encourage private investment in low-income nations.
In all, the world needs to invest at least $4 trillion every year to create a low-carbon global economy, the final agreement says. Raising that sort of money will require a "transformation" of the entire financial system.
Don't forget: climate emissions are still rising too fast
At the summit, both developing countries and the European Union pushed nations to have their emissions peak by 2025. That's faster than China and India's plans, which would allow emissions to rise through the end of the decade.
In the end, few countries submitted new plans to reduce their emissions and the final agreement didn't impose any firm deadlines for new commitments, though it reiterated the importance of the 1.5 degree goal.
Nations will be leaving Egypt knowing that goal is still not in reach. In a best case scenario, emissions are only expected to fall around 10% by 2030, according to a report from the United Nations Environment Programme. To keep warming to the crucial threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius, emissions would need to fall 45% by 2030.
Still, countries aren't keeping the promises that they've made so far. If emissions stay on their current course, they'll rise around 7% compared to 2020 levels, instead of falling.
There are some small bright spots
Going into this meeting, there were reasons to think that some of the basic agreements of the past – for example, limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius – might be on shaky ground. That's because the global economy is fragile. Russia invaded Ukraine and the relationship between the two largest emitters of fossil fuels, the U.S. and China, has been strained – though there are indications that relations may be improving.
"This has been a very difficult year with the energy crisis," said U.N. Climate Chief Simon Steele after the meeting wrapped up, referring to fuel shortages caused by Russia's invasion.
In the end, that global context did not completely derail the talks. While the final deal does not do enough to avoid catastrophic warming – and falls far short of what many climate advocates had hoped to see – countries didn't go back on previous promises either.
And there were a handful of smaller announcements at COP27 that could help control greenhouse gas emissions and protect people from severe weather. One hundred and fifty countries have now signed a pledge to reduce methane pollution. Methane is a very potent greenhouse gas, which means it traps a lot of heat in the atmosphere, and it's emitted mostly from oil and gas operations, landfills and agriculture.
There is also a new plan to beef up weather forecasts and disaster warnings in places that don't have robust national weather services. And on the money front, there are concrete pledges to spend billions of dollars on clean energy in rapidly growing countries including Indonesia, Vietnam and Senegal.
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