CAMPAIGNERS called for an end to water privatisation as Thames Water was today fined a record £122.7 million for breaking rules over sewage treatment and paying out dividends.
An investigation into Britain’s biggest water supplier revealed “a series of failures by the company to build, maintain and operate adequate infrastructure,” said water regulator Ofwat.
Nearly £170m of dividend payments by Thames in October 2023 and March 2024 were not justified in “a clear-cut case where Thames Water has let down its customers and failed to protect the environment,” said Ofwat chief executive David Black.
We Own It founder and director Cat Hobbs said: “None of this changes the underlying problem — as long as water is privatised, we will continue to be ripped off, and rivers will continue to be polluted for profit.”
River Action chief James Wallace added that “nothing will change unless the privatisation of Thames Water stops.” He urged Environment Secretary Steve Reed to “put this failing company into special administration and restructure its ownership and governance so it can be owned by and operated for public benefit.”
18-month-old Mayar El Arca is being treated at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, Gaza on May 17, 2025. (Photo: Doaa Albaz/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“The limited entry of aid into Gaza cannot be mistaken for meaningful progress,” said one humanitarian expert.
The United Nations estimated that the Netanyahu government’s continued starvation of more than 2 million Palestinians could kill up to 14,000 infants in the next two days without a serious influx of aid.
News outlets have reported since Monday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu allowed five aid trucks carrying baby food and other nutritional aid into the besieged enclave—but humanitarian experts and workers have decried the arrival of the aid as “a trickle among a sea of need.”
Tom Fletcher, under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs for the United Nations, said the tiny amount of aid was a “drop in the ocean” in a bombarded enclave where food security experts announced earlier this month that nearly a quarter of a million people are facing “extreme deprivation of food” and the entire population has “very high” levels of acute malnutrition and excess mortality.
While many medical workers have been killed in Israeli bombings, Fletcher told the BBC‘s Radio 4 “Today” program that teams have assessed that 14,000 infants are likely to die within 48 hours if food aid can’t reach them. The small amount of trucks allowed in through the Karem Abu Salem crossing Monday—a fraction of the 600 per day that provided food, medications, water, and other aid to Palestinians during the recent cease-fire—have yet to actually reach civilians.
Aid agencies estimated before that 500-600 trucks were needed per day to meet the minimum need in Gaza, which has been under Israel’s total blockade for almost three months.
On Tuesday, 100 more U.N. trucks were given clearance to enter Gaza. Fletcher said humanitarian workers fear potential looting of aid trucks due to the chaotic, desperate situation faced by Palestinians.
The current blockade began March 2, and international humanitarian groups operating in Gaza have exhausted their reserves of food aid over the past 79 days.
“For over 70 days Israel has been starving the people of Gaza, depriving them of food, water, medicine, and essential supplies while escalating its cruel and indiscriminate bombing campaign,” said Wassem Mushtaha, Gaza response lead for Oxfam. “Two million people are on the brink of famine, and they are not just starving, but also traumatized, sick, and displaced from their homes.”
“The limited entry of aid into Gaza cannot be mistaken for meaningful progress, especially alongside the expansion of Israel’s brutal bombing campaign across the Gaza Strip,” said Mushtaha. “It is not a turning point, but at best a narrow concession that seems to reflect mounting international pressure.”
The continued blockade on effectively all humanitarian aid prompted the United Kingdom, Canada, and France to issue a joint statement Monday saying that “the level of human suffering in Gaza is intolerable” and threatening “targeted sanctions.”
On Tuesday, U.K. Foreign Secretary David Lammy told Parliament that the government had suspended trade negotiations over Netanyahu’s blockade and plan to expand military operations across Gaza.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said Tuesday that the country also supports a review of the European Union’s trade relationship with Gaza.
“The blind violence and the blockade of humanitarian aid by the Israeli government have turned the enclave into a death trap, not to say a cemetery,” Barrot said. “This must stop… It is an absolute violation of all the rules of international law.”
The European leaders’ comments were a departure from many Western governments’ insistence since 2023 that Israel is operating in self-defense and that it is targeting Hamas in retaliation for the group’s attack on October 7, 2023. Humanitarian groups, rights experts, and progressive lawmakers have called on Western governments to end their support for Israel, which faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice.
Bushra Khalidi, Oxfam’s policy lead in the occupied Palestinian territory and Gaza, said Tuesday that “what is urgently needed is for all crossings to be opened to allow a full and proper humanitarian response that allows real access, with safe corridors and respect for international humanitarian law.”
“A token convoy does not equal progress, only sustained, accountable access through every crossing will end the impunity that keeps aid from flowing,” said Khalidi. “We must also see an end to the relentless bombing and attacks on Palestinian people, with an urgent and permanent cease-fire, alongside justice and accountability for all.”
UK 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.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/O74hZCKKdpAVote For Genocide Vote Labour.
Relatives mourn the loss of loved ones killed in an Israeli attack as bodies including children are brought to Indonesian Hospital before burial in Jabalia, Gaza on May 14, 2025. (Photo: Abdalhkem Abu Riash/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“Can I name someone whose work I respect who doesn’t consider it genocide?” said one researcher. “No.”
Only a tiny number of progressive Democratic lawmakers in the U.S. have used the word “genocide” to describe Israel’s relentless bombardment of Gaza, and the U.S. public divided, with less than 40% of Americans saying last year that the term described the Israel Defense Forces’ bombing of hospitals, schools, refugee camps, and other civilian infrastructure.
But for seven leading international experts on genocide, the question is not controversial—even for those who previously rejected the label.
The seven experts were interviewed Wednesday by NRC, a newspaper in the Netherlands, and were unequivocal: Not only have they all come to believe—some earlier than others—that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, but the vast majority of their peers in academia concur.
“Can I name someone whose work I respect who doesn’t consider it genocide?” said Raz Segal, an Israeli genocide researcher at Stockton University in New Jersey. “No.”
Uğur Ümit Üngör, a professor at the University of Amsterdam and the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust, and Genocide Studies, added, “I don’t know them.”
The interview was published the day before Nakba Day, the 77th anniversary of Palestinians’ forced expulsion from their lands when Israel was established, and as the death toll in Gaza reached 53,010. At least 15,000 of those killed have been children, NRC reported.
When it comes to defining the last 19 months in Gaza as a genocide, reported the newspaper, “even cautious voices have changed.”
Israeli scholar Shmuel Lederman of Open University of Israel “opposed the genocide label” until Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government flouted the International Court of Justice’s January 2024 order to prevent genocide by allowing emergency aid into Gaza and halting top officials “incendiary language on Palestinians.” Israeli leaders have called Palestinians “human animals” and “Amalek“—an ancient enemy in the Hebrew Bible who Israelites were commanded to exterminate.
Lederman also began to see his government as genocidal after the Israel Defense Forces seized control of the Rafah crossing last year, cutting off the only humanitarian aid route as international experts warned famine was imminent, and as analysts warned the true death toll in Gaza could ultimately be close to 200,000.
“For me personally, the combination of this and the continued destruction of Gaza made the turn from harsh criticism of the crimes Israel is committing in Gaza and warnings that we are getting close to that place, to the perception that the cumulative effect of what Israel is doing in Gaza is genocidal in every sense,” said Lederman on the social media platform X on Thursday. “I think the second half of 2024 is the point at which a consensus emerged among genocide researchers (as well as the human rights community) that this was genocide. Those who may have still had doubts—I estimate that they have dissipated following Israel’s actions since the cease-fire was broken.”
Since March, when Israel reimposed a total blockade on humanitarian aid and broke a temporary cease-fire, nearly 3,000 Palestinians have been killed in bombings, and nearly 250,000 people are now facing “extreme deprivation of food,” according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification.
Melanie O’Brien, president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, told NRC that Israel’s deliberate blockade on “food, water, shelter, and sanitation” convinced her the Netanyahu government was carrying out a genocide, while Segal pointed to “openly genocidal statements” by Israeli leaders.
“But for all it is about the sum of what would apply separately as ‘ordinary’ war crimes,” NRC reported. “The picture as a whole makes it a genocide. That is how the term is meant, says [British professor Martin] Shaw: ‘holistic.'”
“Apart from social debate, genocide is also the subject of science,” reads the article. “And that field of research, genocide studies, does not see it as a yes/no question, but as a process. Not a light switch, but a ‘dimmer,’ in the words of professor of Holocaust and genocide studies Uğur Ümit Üngör.”
NRC noted that the Western media and political debates have been consumed with “misunderstandings and simplifications.”
Those who continue defending Israel’s actions insist that “it is a military war to destroy Hamas, there is no clear eradication plan, not all Gazans have been killed, it does not look like the Holocaust, the judge has not yet ruled.”
As historian Rutger Bregman said on X Thursday, the scholars interviews by NRC make clear: “Genocide is a process, it’s not a binary switch. And it’s not about matching the Holocaust.”
Genocide is not just another war crime. It’s the “crime of crimes” — the deliberate attempt to destroy a people.
That’s what’s happening in Gaza, say the world’s top genocide experts.
Segal, who is Jewish, told NRC that he is “regularly accused of antisemitism” for speaking out against Israel.
“A German authority in the field that wants to remain anonymous calls the subject ‘poisoned’ in his country,” reported NRC. “You are, he says, called directly [antisemitic] if you mention ‘possible genocide.’ If these acts are subjected to a country other than Israel, he says, all Germans would immediately sound the alarm and speak of genocidal violence, as happened with the Russian massacre in the Ukrainian city of Botzja. But now, he says, it remains silent.”
Dirk Moses, editor-in-chief of the Journal of Genocide Research, said that portions of the field of research are “in crisis” if experts don’t “combat the artificial distinction between [genocide] and military targets” and continue to defend Israel’s actions.
“Then parts of the field of research are actually dead,” he said. “Not only conceptually incoherent, but complicit.”
UK Labour Party government Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are participants and complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide providing Israel with army 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.
What makes Pope Francis and his 183-page encyclical so radical isn’t just his call to urgently tackle climate change. It’s the fact he openly and unashamedly goes against the grain of dominant social, economic and environment policies.
While the Argentina-born pope is a very humble person whose vision is of a “poor church for the poor”, he seems increasingly determined to play a central role on the world stage. Untainted by the realities of government and the greed of big business, he is perhaps the only major figure who can legitimately confront the world’s economic and political elites in the way he has.
However his radical message potentially puts him on a confrontation course with global powerbrokers and leaders of national governments, international institutions and multinational corporations.
The backlash has begun even before the encyclical has been officially published. US presidential candidate Jeb Bush, a Catholic, feels the pope should stay out of the climate debate, joining other Republicans, fossil fuel lobbyists and climate denier think-tanks in seeking to discredit Pope Francis’s intervention.
What makes the pope so radical?
There are several meanings of the word “radical” that can be applied to the Pope and in particular his forthcoming encyclical.
First, radical can be understood as going back to the roots (from Latin radix, root). The majority of Catholics live in the Global South; in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa. Francis is the first pope from the Global South, and naming himself in honour of Saint Francis of Assisi, “a man of poverty and peace who loved nature and animals”, signalled to the world a commitment to going back to the roots of human existence.
The pope knows the plight of the majority world. Before he became Archbishop of Buenos Aires, he was a priest in the vast, poor neighbourhoods, the villas miserias or slums, of Argentina’s capital.
Improving the lives of slum dwellers and addressing climate change is, for Pope Francis, one and the same thing. Both require tackling the structural, root causes of inequality, injustice, poverty and environmental degradation.
Even as the quality of available water is constantly diminishing, in some places there is a growing tendency, despite its scarcity, to privatize this resource, turning it into a commodity subject to the laws of the market. Yet access to safe drink- able water is a basic and universal human right, since it is essential to human survival and, as such, is a condition for the exercise of other human rights. (p. 23)
This stands in stark contrast to, for example, Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, the chairman of Nestlé, the world’s largest food and bottled water company, who thinks water is a normal commodity with a market value, and not a human right. Nestlé is far from unusual. Its stance is backed up by the official water privatisation policies of the World Bank, IMF and other international institutions.
In fact, the encyclical is a radical – for a pope and international leader, unprecedented – attack on the logic of the market and consumerism, which has been expanded into all spheres of life.
The document states:
Since the market tends to promote extreme consumerism in an effort to sell its products, people can easily get caught up in a whirlwind of needless buying and spending. Compulsive consumerism … leads people to believe that they are free as long as they have the supposed freedom to consume. But those really free are the minority who wield economic and financial power. (p. 149-150)
The pope rejects market fundamentalism, instead arguing that “the market alone does not ensure human development and social inclusion.”
The strategy of buying and selling “carbon credits” can lead to a new form of speculation which would not help reduce the emission of polluting gases worldwide. This system seems to provide a quick and easy solution under the guise of a certain commitment to the environment, but in no way does it allow for the radical change which present circumstances require. Rather, it may simply become a ploy which permits maintaining the excessive consumption of some countries and sectors. (p. 126)
The pope’s right. The same criticisms of carbon markets have been made by myself and others.
Climate change is a global problem with grave implications: environmental, social, economic, political and for the distribution of goods. It represents one of the principal challenges facing humanity in our day. (p. 20)
While the pope is not a politician – or maybe precisely because he is not one – he commands high moral and ethical authority that goes beyond traditional partisan lines. His encyclical speaks truth to power, and he might be the only person with both the clout and the desire to meaningfully deliver a message like this:
Many of those who possess more resources and economic or political power seem mostly to be concerned with masking the problems or concealing their symptoms, simply making efforts to reduce some of the negative impacts of climate change. However, many of these symptoms indicate that such effects will continue to worsen if we continue with current models of production and consumption. There is an urgent need to develop policies so that, in the next few years, the emission of carbon dioxide and other highly polluting gases can be drastically reduced, for example, substituting for fossil fuels and developing sources of renewable energy. (p. 21)
The bosses of Shell, ExxonMobil and other fossil fuel companies will not like this message, as it threatens their fundamental business model, and it also stands in contrast to the underwhelming ambitions of the G7 leaders who recently pledged to phase out fossil fuels only by 2100.
The time for bold, radical action on the environment as well as poverty eradication has come. This seems to be Pope Francis’ message: “The same mindset which stands in the way of making radical decisions to reverse the trend of global warming also stands in the way of achieving the goal of eliminating poverty.” (p. 128)
We need to think beyond the current, taken-for-granted logic that believes only markets and consumerism can solve the world’s social and environmental problems. The pope himself believes the situation is so grave that only a new, “true world political authority” will be able to address these problems.
This article was updated on 18 June to include quotes from the final encyclical rather than the earlier draft leaked to L’Espresso magazine.
A general view of British Steel in Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire, April 12, 2025
LABOUR has been urged to catch up with public support for nationalising services “just as strategically important” as British Steel.
Campaigners and unions have continued to call for the full nationalisation of the company after the government passed an emergency law on Saturday to seize control of its Scunthorpe plant.
The legislation was passed in a single day, empowering ministers to save the last plant making “virgin steel” direct from raw materials from imminent closure, as well as thousands of jobs.
But Labour’s action was likened to an expensive public bailout today amid growing calls for the government to stop the private sector from running other services into the ground.
We Own It founder and director Cat Hobbs said: “The government has sprung into action to protect British Steel as a strategically important industry, with nationalisation on the table.
“In 2020, Keir Starmer promised public ownership of rail, mail, energy and water — as well as ending outsourcing in our NHS and local government.
“These public services are just as strategically important as steel, as drivers of economic and social development.
“Since Thatcher’s sell off, many of our key public services have been handed over to foreign states, offshore funds and billionaires.
“If Starmer is looking to take back control of our economy, this would be a good place to start.
“The UK public overwhelmingly supports public ownership and it’s high time our government caught up.”
A tanker from Thames Water, August 2022
