Qatar directed $220 BILLION to stage a spectacle of young men running around a field, kicking a ball. In the meantime, children are starving to death in Somalia.

The UN has raised only half the funds it needs to help, with $1 billion (€971,345 million) more needed to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe

The worst drought in 40 years is devastating Somalia with the fear of a fifth failed rainy season. 

More than 7 million people are in need of food assistance.

“We have half a million children that are severely acutely malnourished, which means that if they don’t receive timely assistance they are just simply going to die,” says Wafaa Saeed, the UNICEF representative for Somalia.

Mayor Abdullahi Ali  Watiin of the Somali city of Baidoa, explains he’s tired of short-sighted solutions: 

“Somalia is one of the most affected areas by climate change. What will happen after this drought ends? Do we wait until another famine comes or will we come up with initiatives that we need to mitigate future shocks?”

Somalia’s food crisis claims young lives – DW – 11/22/2022

 Much of Argentina is currently caught up in “Messimania.”

A few people refuse to be part of this huge wave of euphoria such as Gabriel Salvia, a former journalist, who heads Argentina’s Cadal human rights agency.

“Argentines are only interested in sporting success, they see the World Cup as a welcome change from everyday life with its economic misery and high inflation…”

Cadal drew attention to the situation of migrant workers in Qatar ahead of the World Cup. Salvia approached soccer associations around the world in the name of his “La pelota no se mancha” (“Football will not be soiled”) initiative — including AFA, the Argentine Football Association. The outcome was disappointing.

“As a symbolic gesture,we proposed that all the players wear a black armband to commemorate the many people who died during the construction of the stadiums,” he says. “The European federations responded to us, the Netherlands even did so in great detail — while the AFA didn’t deign to write us a single line.”

At the World Cup 44 years ago, the Argentine junta tortured and disappeared members of the opposition. Some were thrown out of planes above the Atlantic.  The biggest torture center, the Navy School of Mechanics (ESMA), was just a stone’s throw from the River Plate stadium. Some prisoners heard every single goal cheer before being tortured with electric shocks by their tormentors.

“The junta used the World Cup as a tool of international propaganda, while state terrorism disappeared people,” Salvia says, arguing that Argentina should be much more aware of human rights violations.

 The situation of migrant workers, the LGBTQ+ community, and of women in Qatar are not a top priority in other Latin American World Cup countries, including Uruguay, Brazil, Ecuador, Mexico and Costa Rica. 

Gabriel Salvia is not supporting Argentine or Lionel Messi.

“I was born in Buenos Aires, but as a defender of human rights I feel that the world champion should be a team that is in some way committed to human rights and has addressed the situation in Qatar…” 

Argentina: More interested in Messi than human rights – DW – 11/22/2022

 Texas Governor Greg Abbott is seeking President Biden to invoke the invasion clause of the US Constitution to protect Texans from refugees and migrant workers.

Abbot wants the president to treat poor people without weapons as a military invasion.

On November 16 Abbot wrote a letter to Biden informing him that he has not lived up to the promise of Article IV, § 4, that the federal government “shall protect each of them against Invasion.”

Since, according to Abbott, the federal government isn’t treating poor immigrants like an invading army, Abbott will now invoke Article I, § 10, Clause 3 of the US Constitution, which allows states to “engage in War” when they are “actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.”

 Last year, Texas passed Operation Lone Star, which militarizes the border by giving Abbot authority to deploy the national guard.

Thanksgiving food for thought: Immigrants are not ‘invading’ the United States – Alternet.org

Environmentalist Naomi Klein this week urged civil society organizations to boycott the 2023 COP 28 climate summit in the United Arab Emirates — one of the world’s largest oil producers.

She pointed to the failure of COP27 and its “weak climate agreement that protects polluters”

Klein argues that “now is the time to decide not to do this all over again next year when the summit will be in the UAE. Of all places.”

“Civil society should announce a boycott and instead hold a true people’s summit…Let’s try something new.” Klein wrote.

At COP27, civil society was suppressed, spied upon, and sidelined by Egypt’s authoritarian government while lobbyists from Exxon, Chevron, and other fossil fuel giants, responsible for record-high greenhouse gas emissions fought off efforts to include a fossil fuel phase-out in the summit’s final text.

‘Let’s Try Something New’: Naomi Klein Calls for Boycott of Next COP Climate Summit (commondreams.org)

 The 2018 World Cup in Russia released more than 2 million tons of CO2 and the 2016 Olympics in Rio emitting 4.5 million tons

FIFA World Cup 2022 Qatar organizers have called it the first carbon-neutral tournament in history. But climate critics say the claims are misleading. 

 Carbon Market Watch questioned the carbon-neutral label, saying organizers have dramatically underestimated emissions.

The World Cup will emit some 3.6 million tons of CO2, according to official figures. That’s roughly equal to the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s annual emissions.

Qatar said it has cut planet-heating emissions by installing solar-powered lighting and cooling systems, and constructing “energy-efficient stadiums.” Emissions it can’t avoid, it will be offset with local green projects. 

Most of those greenhouse gases will come from flights and accommodation for the more than one million visitors, as well as the construction of seven new stadiums, among other infrastructure, say organizers. 

Stadium construction is one area where organizers got creative with their carbon accounting, underplaying emissions by at least 1.6 million tons, said Gilles Dufrasne, author of the Carbon Market Watch study.

Only a small portion of construction emissions have been included in official estimates, as organizers say the stadiums will be used for other events. But the calculation ignores the fact that these stadiums would not have been built were it not for the World Cup.

51% of emissions will come from transport, according to official estimates. But that doesn’t include the shuttle flights set to ferry spectators into the desert city each day, said Dufrasne. Because of a shortage of accommodation in Qatar, 160 flights a day will take off from neighboring countries, including Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

Carbon Market Watch analysis also criticized plans to offset these “unavoidable” emissions from transport and other areas, questioning their legitimacy. Only about 200,000 of the planned 1.8 million tons of credits have been issued. They all come from renewable energy projects in Serbia, Turkey and India through an organization more or less established by Qatar itself, rather than under internationally recognized and independent standards. 

Greenpeace question the idea of offsetting altogether.

“It does not work,” said Julien Jreissati , program director at Greenpeace Middle East and North Africa. “This whole idea of offsetting is merely a distraction away from real climate action, which is reducing fossil fuel-based emissions at the source as fast as possible.”

Emissions aren’t the only environmental concern. Water use is another, and especially concerning given Qatar’s scarce water resources.

Qatar’s freshwater comes from desalination plants produced in an energy-intensive process that uses mainly fossil fuels. The plants also release salty, hot brine that is toxic to marine life back into the sea.

Waste is another problem.  Event organizers say 60% of the waste generated during the event will be recycled, while 40% will be turned into energy. But burning waste for energy releases greenhouse gases.

Is the Qatar FIFA World Cup really carbon neutral? – DW – 11/21/2022

 As Saudi Arabia celebrates victory over Argentine in the World Cup, praised by the football pundits, none  mentioned that on the very same day of the match Saudi Arabia football executed two Saudi citizens for drug offences

It brought the total number of executions in the past fortnight to 17 (10 being foreigners).

Saudi Arabia has executed 130 people this year.

The next victim may be Hussein Abo al-Kheir, a Jordanian, who was arrested in 2014 for smuggling narcotics when crossing the Jordan border into Saudi, and says he only confessed when he was tortured, including being suspended from his feet and beaten on his stomach and legs. 

An appeal court acquitted Kheir in March 2017, but the government ordered a retrial six months later, leading to a guilty verdict and he was re-sentenced to death in November 2017.

Much has been said about Qatar and its dismal human rights records regarding homosexuality. Iran’s team members were rightly applauded for their solidarity with their nation’s protests but silence on Saudi Arabia and other countries involved in authoritarian and totalitarian behaviour. 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/22/saudi-execution-spree-continues-as-fears-rise-for-jordanian-on-death-row

 US government records obtained by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and the Guardian show farms producing beef for meat packing firms Cargill, JBS, and Green Bay who in turn supply McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Wendy’s and Walmart are risking public health by still using antibiotics classed as the “highest priority critically important” to human health (HP-CIAs). The findings have prompted condemnation from public health experts and campaigners.

Such drugs are so essential to human medicine that their use in livestock farming should be stopped, the World Health Organization has warned. HP-CIAs are often the last line or one of limited treatments available for serious bacterial infections in humans. The overuse of such antibiotics means they can become less effective. There is no ban on using antibiotics for treatment or to prevent disease, although farmers now need a veterinary prescription for many medically important antibiotics that were previously available over-the-counter and added to water and feed. There is a ban in the US on using antibiotics for growth promotion, which has been in place since 2017.

Cory Booker, a US senator has advocated for stricter controls on how antibiotics can be used in food production, explained:

 “Giant agribusinesses have built a system that is dependent on this misuse of antibiotics to maximise their profits, with no regard to the serious harm they are causing.”

 US cattle farmers still routinely use antibiotics often for months on end. Their use – and overuse – risks enabling bacteria to develop resistance, meaning the drugs stop working.

Antibiotic resistance is one of the gravest global public health threats. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it is responsible for more than 35,000 deaths in the US each year, and 1.3 million globally.

McDonald’s and Walmart beef suppliers criticised for ‘reckless’ antibiotics use | Meat industry | The Guardian

 In 2021, Global Forest Watch placed Bolivia third in the world for loss of primary forest, behind Brazil and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Ranked by population, Bolivia is highest.

Bolivia, today, has roughly 4m hectares of cultivated land and 10 million cattle. By 2025, the government wants 13m hectares and 18 million cattle. For Bolivia its agribusiness is booming.

Most of this deforestation is happening in Santa Cruz and Beni. But it is in Beni that a unique archaeological civilisation heritage is at risk.

“Archaeology is everywhere in Beni,” said Umberto Lombardo one of a handful of academics who study the archaeology of Beni. “They say if you put up a roof, you have a museum.”

In the Amazon basin a growing body of research has found traces of a vast network of earthworks predating the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the Americas and implying the existence of large, complex societies.

In Bolivia the archaeologist Heiko Prümers and his team began flying over the Llanos de Mojos by helicopter in 2019, mapping the land beneath them with a laser. They then digitally stripped away the vegetation, revealing the topography of the ground underneath. In a paper published in Nature, they described settlements built around monumental mounds, some 20 metres high. Smaller settlements surrounded the larger ones, linked by causeways running for kilometres. Canals and reservoirs show how the people shaped the land for agriculture.

For most of the people that live here and work the land – whether Indigenous communities, settlers, Mennonites or agribusiness – the archaeological remains are so common they are barely remarked on, much less preserved. Roads slice through monumental mounds. Farmers flatten them. People build huts on top of them. In one case near the Mennonite colony, the state road company was taking earth from a mound to fill in potholes.

“For most people here, these mounds don’t have any special value,” said Lombardo. “There are so many things to study. If these sites are destroyed, we may never have the answers.”

There are no incentives for people to report them to the state – nor any experts that could readily be sent to study them. There are just a handful of archaeologists studying the Llanos de Mojos, and none lives in Bolivia. In an ideal world, he says, the government would educate locals about the importance of the mounds, pay to preserve them and set up an archaeological faculty in Beni.

Unchecked deforestation destroying evidence of lost Amazon civilisation | Bolivia | The Guardian

 “Our team belongs to the people, not the Islamic regime.”

The Iranian players declined to sing their national anthem before their World Cup match with England in an expression of support for anti-government protests.

Iran state TV cut its coverage of the anthem. 

Iranian fans present in the stadium could also be heard chanting “Ali Karimi” in reference to the former footballer who is one of the most outspoken critics of the Islamic Republic.

The fans could also be heard chanting “Be-Sharaf”, which means dishonourable in Persian. This slogan protesters use against security forces in Iran. 

Many Iranian women in the crowd wore T-shirts with the phrase “Woman, Life, Freedom”, which has become the rallying cry for protestors and had their hair fully on display. 

A lifesaving prostate cancer drug, enzalutamide, brand name Xtandi, costs $189,800 a year in the United States, or up to five times more than its price in other countries.

More than 250,000 new cases of prostate cancer will have been diagnosed in the U.S. over the next 12 months and more than 33,000 men will have died in that time. 

 Discovered by scientists Charles Sawyer and Michael Jung at the University of California, Los Angeles with grants from the NIH and the U.S. Department of Defense, enzalutamide was approved in 2012 by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of late-stage prostate cancer. Two companies—Japan-based Astellas and Medivation Inc., a San Francisco biotech firm—developed Xtandi. When Pfizer paid $14 billion to acquire Medivation in 2016, the pharma giant’s then-CEO, Ian Read, said that “the value of Xtandi and its future growth potential was the principal driver” of the deal.

Astellas controls the price of Xtandi and has raised its cost by nearly 90% since 2014. The drug has already generated more than $10 billion in sales from Medicare alone.

Patients Push Biden HHS to Act as Pharma Firm Charges $190K for Lifesaving Prostate Cancer Drug (commondreams.org)