Water companies are panicking they will be left unable to dispose of millions of tonnes of sewage sludge due to tougher pollution rules, and rising concern over the contaminants sludge contains.
Read the full investigation with supporting documents from Unearthed, here.
Sewage sludge is the human faeces and other solids left behind when wastewater is cleaned. Around 90% of the UK’s sludge is treated and spread on farmland as a source of nutrients to fertilise crops. However, concern is rising in the UK that this could be introducing damaging levels of contamination to agricultural land.
An analysis for trade association Water UK last year found that in a “worst-case” scenario the industry could be left with “3.4 million wet tonnes” of sludge with nowhere to go, documents obtained by Unearthed under freedom of information laws show.
The key documents not already in the public domain (available via the Unearthedwebsite) include:
National Plan B: water industry analysis of sludge disposal crisis
The National Landbank Assessment Report 2024: water industry capacity modelling
EA CEO internal briefing: prepared by the Environment Agency
Earlier this year, environmental regulators in the United States warned that toxic PFAS ‘forever chemicals’ in sewage sludge spread on American pastures were posing a cancer risk to people who regularly ate meat or dairy from those farms. This came after investigations by Unearthed and others found that sludge destined for British farmland also contained a range of harmful contaminants, including microplastics and forever chemicals.
The water companies fear increased scrutiny of sludge-spreading in the UK could trigger a ‘backlash’ akin to the public outrage they have faced over sewage released into rivers and seas, Unearthed has learned.
Reshima Sharma, political campaigner for Greenpeace UK, said:
“This investigation is yet more proof that we can’t trust the privatised water companies to deal with waste responsibly. So long as they can get away with it, they will just pass any problems on to our countryside and pocket the money they should be investing in solutions.
“In addition to the national scandal of river pollution, their negligence has led to a cocktail of toxic contaminants being spread on the soil that grows our food. The government must stop toxic sludge from being spread on farmland immediately and water companies must be made to pay for disposing of it safely, without passing the buck to bill payers.”
Green Party Co-leader Adrian Ramsay. Wikipedia CC.
Responding to the Spending Review, Green Party Co-Leader, Adrian Ramsay MP, said,
“Today’s Spending Review shows we have a chancellor who seems to know the price of everything and the value of nothing. While today Reeves may have balanced her spreadsheet, it is done on the backs of some of the worst off in our society. The proof is in how many will still be feeling worse off as the cost-of-living crisis bites hard.
People want to feel pride in Britain again, and for this, they need real hope. Hope only comes from seeing how things will improve through real investment in the everyday services we all rely on.
Despite the rhetoric in the chamber, it is clear that this Spending Review represents a squeeze in many frontline budgets. With education, for example, where many schools are already being forced to make difficult budget cuts, core school budgets are set to rise by just 0.6%. It is hard to see this money ever reaching our teachers and children in the classroom. Equally, I am horrified to see real-term cuts to Defra funding, just as the impact of climate change is starting to affect our communities. Now is the time to invest in climate resilience and preparedness.”
He continued, “These ‘tough decisions’ are actually ‘Labour’s political choices’. They are choosing to leave the economy tilted towards those with considerable wealth. Our front-line services continue to deteriorate through a political choice of decline by design. By introducing a wealth tax on the super-rich, we could instead properly invest in our children’s future. We could give them the education they deserve and start now to invest in the climate resilience and preparedness they will need throughout their lives as the climate crisis unfolds.”
Tunisians depart on Gaza convoy. Photo: Tunisia Land Convoy
Thousands of volunteers from more than 50 countries are partaking in the Global March to Gaza to break the siege and blockade, deliver humanitarian aid, and demand an end to Israel’s genocide.
An international coalition composed of labor unions, solidarity movements, and human rights organizations from over 50 countries has announced the launch of an initiative to enter the Gaza Strip by foot. Thousands of international volunteers will partake in a large-scale mobilization from Cairo to the Rafah crossing in order to demand an end to Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip and to shed light on the catastrophic conditions endured by Gaza’s residents amid famine and relentless bombardment.
Called the “Global March to Gaza”, the campaign marks a significant moment in the international solidarity movement with Palestine. The key objectives outlined by the organizers of the global march are to end the famine in Gaza, facilitate the entry of thousands of aid trucks stalled for months at the Rafah crossing, establish a stable and permanent humanitarian corridor, expose Israel’s crimes, and demand accountability for those responsible.
The thousands of participants hailing from trade unions, rights groups, medical sectors, and civil society have united with a clear message: international silence in the face of Israel’s genocide against the people of Gaza is complicity and the people of the world demand action. For the last 20 months, as Israel has carried out its genocide against the people of Gaza, millions of people across the world have mobilized in support of the Palestinian people and to demand an end to Israel’s crimes, marking a historic upsurge in the movement for Palestine across the world.
Seif Abu Keshk, a member of the international committee of Global March to Gaza, said in an interview with BreakThrough News that the march aims to halt the ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people, ensure the unconditional and immediate entry of humanitarian aid, and demand the lifting of the “inhumane” blockade imposed on Gaza. He stressed that the initiative is purely humanitarian, without any political affiliations or official sponsorship, with all participants volunteering and funding their own involvement as part of a broader effort to strengthen global solidarity and exert mass pressure on complicit or silent governments.
From Cairo to Rafah
Volunteers from the different countries will start arriving in Egypt’s capital Cairo on June 12 and then travel to the city of Arish, from where they will begin their on-foot march to Rafah on June 15. Organizers underscore that the objective is not only to reach Rafah but also to stage a sit-in at the crossing to pressure authorities to open it and allow the entry of aid. They have expressed readiness to endure hardship as a modest expression of solidarity with Gaza’s residents, who have been deprived of food, water, and medicine for the last several months and been under constant bombardment over 20 months.
German lawyer Melanie Schweitzer affirmed that the march is entirely peaceful and civilian in nature, conveying a unified humanitarian message that transcends political and cultural boundaries. Irish activist Karen Moynihan noted that organizers have been in contact with Egyptian embassies and their own national diplomatic missions to ensure safe passage. She stressed that the initiative does not seek to hold Egypt accountable, but rather to cooperate with it and apply real international pressure on Israel to lift the blockade. She emphasized that any state failing to act against these crimes is complicit in genocide – and history will not forgive such silence.
This mobilization comes amid growing global criticism of Israel’s continued blockade on the entry of humanitarian aid and its maneuver to delegate the management of humanitarian aid to a private US company, the “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” (GHF). The GHF was created to replace UNRWA and other aid agencies working in the region, as Israel argued that they were collaborating with Hamas. Yet the GHF’s aid distribution centers set up in Rafah have done little to distribute necessary aid and became the site of Israeli massacres of Palestinians when Israeli soldiers opened fire on Palestinian aid seekers on two occasions.
The GHF aid distribution mechanism sparked widespread outrage. Philippe Lazzarini, the UNRWA head, condemned the incident in Rafah stating that the scenes were “shocking images of hungry people pushing against fences, desperate for food. It was chaotic, undignified and unsafe.” He declared that “the crisis in Gaza cannot be addressed by weaponizing humanitarian assistance.”
As global outrage grows at the imminent famine and humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza due to Israel’s blockade, the Global March to Gaza, as well as the recent Freedom Flotilla voyage to Gaza, seek to take the action that the world’s leaders refuse to and show the people of Gaza that they are not alone.
From Tunis to Rafah
The international initiative to launch the Global March to Gaza coincides with similar grassroots actions at the regional level, most notably in Tunisia. Since mid-May, Tunisian civil associations, major trade unions, student groups, and youth movements have been preparing a convoy that will depart from Tunis, pass through Cairo, and converge with the global march in support of its demands. At the moment, thousands of Tunisians are on buses en route to Egypt. Organizers emphasize that while the convoy carries symbolic humanitarian aid, it primarily bears a clear political message: No to the blockade, No to normalization, Yes to Palestinian freedom.
Coordination between the Tunisian and international sides has been ongoing for weeks, through joint media and logistical committees, especially with participants from the Maghreb and southern European countries such as Italy, Spain, and France. Tunisian organizers describe the convoy as the “Maghreb wing” of the global march – laying the foundation for a comprehensive grassroots movement stretching from North Africa to the gates of Gaza.
The convoy, which departed from Tunis on June 9, includes unionists, doctors, students, journalists, and activists of all ages – some of whom have previously taken part in solidarity missions to Lebanon or Gaza. The Tunisian coordination committees are now focused on collecting donations, finalizing logistics, and securing transit permits from the Egyptian embassy. The convoy received symbolic send-offs in the capital and other cities it passed through, in a display of popular support and mobilization.
Participants from neighboring countries have joined the convoy, including individuals previously involved in the flotilla attacked off Malta. Around 2,000 Tunisians converged along the route from Tunis to Ras Ajdir crossing, from where they crossed into Libyan territory. For the next several days they will continue across Libya, into Egypt and towards Cairo, then proceed to Arish and finally Rafah.
Tunisia Palestine solidarity convoy. Photo: Tunisia Land Convoy
The convergence of the Tunisian convoy and the global march at the Rafah crossing, expected around June 15 or shortly thereafter, will not only be a symbolic media event but will transform into an open international protest camp at the border. Sit-ins will continue, banners and slogans will be raised, and governments will be called upon to assume their moral and political responsibilities. A unified international petition will be delivered to Egyptian authorities and UN representatives in the region, demanding the immediate and unconditional opening of Rafah and the entry of over 3,000 aid trucks carrying food, medicine, and fuel.
Tunisian participants also plan to host cultural and awareness-raising activities at the crossing, including discussion circles, artistic performances, and live media campaigns to broaden international popular support and expose Israel’s crimes to global public opinion – especially with major international media outlets expected to cover the event.
In sum, the convergence of the Global March to Gaza and the Tunisian convoy represents a pivotal moment in the history of international grassroots solidarity with Palestine. This is not merely a march to a border, it is a march toward the conscience of the world, reviving the power of direct action and sending a message to those under siege in Gaza: You are not alone. From Tunis to Dublin, from Cape Town to Krakow, people are rising for Gaza, carving pathways of solidarity and defiance against siege and injustice.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAUK Labour Party government ministers Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are partners complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide. The UK has provided Israel with arms, military and air force support. They explain that they don’t do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.
Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall. File pic: PA
Liz Kendall rejects calls to delay the changes until a full assessment is carried out of the impact on employment, poverty and health.
The government has told MPs it will not back down from its controversial reforms to disability benefits, which are set to be introduced to parliament later this month.
More than 100 Labour MPs are thought to have concerns about the plans to cut nearly £5bn from the welfare bill by restricting personal independence payments (PIP) and the health top-up to Universal Credit.
Charities say the changes will have a “catastrophic” effect on vulnerable people.
The chair of the Commons’ Work and Pensions Committee wrote to the secretary of state, Liz Kendall, last month, calling on the government to delay the changes until a full assessment is carried out of the impact on employment, poverty and health.
Labour MP Debbie Abrahams wrote that while there was a case for reform to disability benefits, “the evidence indicated [these changes] might not improve outcomes for most claimants, but instead push many into poverty and further away from the labour market”.
‘Reforms are needed now’
But Ms Kendall has written back, in a letter made public on Wednesday, to reject the idea because the bill needs final approval from parliament in November in order for the changes to take effect in 2026.
Keir Starmer says that the Labour Party under his leadership all feel a small part of Scunthorpe.Keir Starmer explains the moral case for cutting disability benefits. He says work will set you free.
Article by Chris Hedges republished from MPN under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 International License.
This is the end. The final blood-soaked chapter of the genocide. It will be over soon. Weeks. At most. Two million people are camped out amongst the rubble or in the open air. Dozens are killed and wounded daily from Israeli shells, missiles, drones, bombs and bullets. They lack clean water, medicine and food. They have reached a point of collapse. Sick. Injured. Terrified. Humiliated. Abandoned. Destitute. Starving. Hopeless.
In the last pages of this horror story, Israel is sadistically baiting starving Palestinians with promises of food, luring them to the narrow and congested nine-mile ribbon of land that borders Egypt. Israel and its cynically named Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), allegedly funded by Israel’s Ministry of Defense and the Mossad, is weaponizing starvation. It is enticing Palestinians to southern Gaza the way the Nazis enticed starving Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto to board trains to the death camps. The goal is not to feed the Palestinians. No one seriously argues there is enough food or aid hubs. The goal is to cram Palestinians into heavily guarded compounds and deport them.
What comes next? I long ago stopped trying to predict the future. Fate has a way of surprising us. But there will be a final humanitarian explosion in Gaza’s human slaughterhouse. We see it with the surging crowds of Palestinians fighting to get a food parcel, which has resulted in Israeli and U.S. private contractors shooting dead at least 130 and wounding over seven hundred others in the first eight days of aid distribution. We see it with Benjamin Netanyahu’s armingISIS-linked gangs in Gaza that loot food supplies. Israel, which has eliminated hundreds of employees with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), doctors, journalists, civil servants and police in targeted assassinations, has orchestrated the implosion of civil society.
I suspect Israel will facilitate a breach in the fence along the Egyptian border. Desperate Palestinians will stampede into the Egyptian Sinai. Maybe it will end some other way. But it will end soon. There is not much more Palestinians can take.
We — full participants in this genocide — will have achieved our demented goal of emptying Gaza and expanding Greater Israel. We will bring down the curtain on the live-streamed genocide. We will have mocked the ubiquitous university programs of Holocaust studies, designed, it turns out, not to equip us to end genocides, but deify Israel as an eternal victim licensed to carry out mass slaughter. The mantra of never again is a joke. The understanding that when we have the capacity to halt genocide and we do not, we are culpable, does not apply to us. Genocide is public policy. Endorsed and sustained by our two ruling parties.
There is nothing left to say. Maybe that is the point. To render us speechless. Who does not feel paralyzed? And maybe, that too, is the point. To paralyze us. Who is not traumatized? And maybe that too was planned. Nothing we do, it seems, can halt the killing. We feel defenseless. We feel helpless. Genocide as spectacle.
I have stopped looking at the images. The rows of little shrouded bodies. The decapitated men and women. Families burned alive in their tents. The children who have lost limbs or are paralyzed. The chalky death masks of those pulled from under the rubble. The wails of grief. The emaciated faces. I can’t.
This genocide will haunt us. It will echo down history with the force of a tsunami. It will divide us forever. There is no going back.
And how will we remember? By not remembering.
Once it is over, all those who supported it, all those who ignored it, all those who did nothing, will rewrite history, including their personal history. It was hard to find anyone who admitted to being a Nazi in post-war Germany, or a member of the Klu Klux Klan once segregation in the southern United States ended. A nation of innocents. Victims even. It will be the same. We like to think we would have saved Anne Frank. The truth is different. The truth is, crippled by fear, nearly all of us will only save ourselves, even at the expense of others. But that is a truth that is hard to face. That is the real lesson of the Holocaust. Better it be erased.
Should a drone vaporize some nameless soul on the other side of the planet, who among us wants to make a fuss? What if it turns out they were a terrorist? What if the default accusation proves true, and we by implication be labeled terrorist sympathizers, ostracized, yelled at? It is generally the case that people are most zealously motivated by the worst plausible thing that could happen to them. For some, the worst plausible thing might be the ending of their bloodline in a missile strike. Their entire lives turned to rubble and all of it preemptively justified in the name of fighting terrorists who are terrorists by default on account of having been killed. For others, the worst plausible thing is being yelled at.
You cannot decimate a people, carry out saturation bombing over 20 months to obliterate their homes, villages and cities, massacre tens of thousands of innocent people, set up a siege to ensure mass starvation, drive them from land where they have lived for centuries and not expect blowback. The genocide will end. The response to the reign of state terror will begin. If you think it won’t you know nothing about human nature or history. The killing of two Israeli diplomats in Washington and the attack against supporters of Israel at a protest in Boulder, Colorado, are only the start.
Chaim Engel, who took part in the uprising at the Nazis’ Sobibor death camp in Poland, described how, armed with a knife, he attacked a guard in the camp.
“It’s not a decision,” Engel explained years later. “You just react, instinctively you react to that, and I figured, ‘Let us to do, and go and do it.’ And I went. I went with the man in the office and we killed this German. With every jab, I said, ‘That is for my father, for my mother, for all these people, all the Jews you killed.’”
Does anyone expect Palestinians to act differently? How are they to react when Europe and the United States, who hold themselves up as the vanguards of civilization, backed a genocide that butchered their parents, their children, their communities, occupied their land and blasted their cities and homes into rubble? How can they not hate those who did this to them?
What message has this genocide imparted not only to Palestinians, but to all in the Global South?
It is unequivocal. You do not matter. Humanitarian law does not apply to you. We do not care about your suffering, the murder of your children. You are vermin. You are worthless. You deserve to be killed, starved and dispossessed. You should be erased from the face of the earth.
“To preserve the values of the civilized world, it is necessary to set fire to a library,” El Akkad writes:
To blow up a mosque. To incinerate olive trees. To dress up in the lingerie of women who fled and then take pictures. To level universities. To loot jewelry, art, food. Banks. To arrest children for picking vegetables. To shoot children for throwing stones. To parade the captured in their underwear. To break a man’s teeth and shove a toilet brush in his mouth. To let combat dogs loose on a man with Down syndrome and then leave him to die. Otherwise, the uncivilized world might win.
There are people I have known for years who I will never speak to again. They know what is happening. Who does not know? They will not risk alienating their colleagues, being smeared as an antisemite, jeopardizing their status, being reprimanded or losing their jobs. They do not risk death, the way Palestinians do. They risk tarnishing the pathetic monuments of status and wealth they spent their lives constructing. Idols. They bow down before these idols. They worship these idols. They are enslaved by them.
At the feet of these idols lie tens of thousands of murdered Palestinians.
Feature photo | The Last Piece | Artwork by Mr. Fish
Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief for the paper. He previously worked overseas for The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor, and NPR. He is the host of show The Chris Hedges Report.
Stories published in our Daily Digests section are chosen based on the interest of our readers. They are republished from a number of sources, and are not produced by MintPress News. The views expressed in these articles are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect MintPress News editorial policy.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect MintPress News editorial policy.
Article by Chris Hedges republished from MPN under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 International License.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAUK Labour Party government ministers Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are partners complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide. The UK has provided Israel with arms, military and air force support. They explain that they don’t do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.
