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‘Progress Almost Invisible’: World Set to Produce 220 Million Tonnes of Plastic Waste

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Original article by JAKE JOHNSON republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

People collect plastic waste at a landfill in North Sumatra, Indonesia on March 27, 2024.  (Photo: Kartik Byma/AFP via Getty Images)

“The question for every government now is this—will you negotiate a treaty to protect the health of your people; or will you negotiate a treaty to protect the profits of the fossil fuel industry?”

A report released Thursday estimates that countries worldwide are on pace to generate 220 million tonnes of total plastic waste this year, a finding that comes as governments are set to convene in Ottawa, Canada later this month to hash out a binding global treaty to limit the toxic pollution that is inundating waterways and communities across the planet.

The new report from EA – Earth Action (EA) projects that Plastic Overshoot Day—the point at which the amount of plastic waste produced exceeds the capacity of global management systems—will arrive on September 5 this year. Over a third of the total plastic waste created this year will end up in nature, according to the analysis.

On average, each person globally contributes 28 kilograms of plastic pollution per year. Previous research has shown that just 20 companies are responsible for more than half of the world’s total single-use plastic waste.

“The findings are unequivocal; improvements in waste management capacity are outpaced by rising plastic production, making progress almost invisible,” EA co-CEO Sarah Perreard said in a statement Thursday, criticizing the “assumption that recycling and waste management capacity will solve the plastics crisis.”

That assumption has been peddled for decades by the fossil fuel industry, which has a major interest in thwarting attempts to curb the production, use, and waste of plastics. Nearly all plastic is made from chemicals sourced from fossil fuels.

Sian Sutherland, co-founder of A Plastic Planet, said the new report underscores that “plastic pollution has set humanity on the road to ecological and humanitarian disaster.”

“We have a narrow window of opportunity this year to create a global plastics treaty that will protect not only our ocean, our air, our soil but our own children,” said Sutherland. “The question for every government now is this—will you negotiate a treaty to protect the health of your people; or will you negotiate a treaty to protect the profits of the fossil fuel industry? Viable solutions are already available at scale, giving us materials and systems that work in harmony with nature, not against it.”

“Close to 50% of the world’s population currently lives in areas where waste generated has already exceeded the capacity to manage it.”

Late last year, the third round of U.N. plastics treaty talks ended without a breakthrough as major oil-producing countries such as Saudi Arabia obstructed the proceedings, the fossil fuel industry worked to sabotage the negotiations, and the U.S. declined to forcefully push for a global pact that meaningfully curtails plastics production.

The U.S. is among the world’s leading generators of plastic waste, producing nearly 100 kilograms per capita each year. The U.S. and other rich nations also export tremendous amounts of plastic waste around the world, undercutting efforts to tackle the pollution crisis.

A Greenpeace International survey released earlier this month found that two-thirds of the U.S. public wants a global plastics treaty that bans single-use plastic packaging. A separate poll commissioned by WWF and the Plastic Free Foundation showed that 88% of global citizens support banning “unnecessary single-use plastic products” such as shopping bags.

In an op-ed for Euronews Green on Thursday, Perreard of EA wrote that “whilst policy has been mooted, schemes devised, and initiatives launched, plastic has continued to rise, and our planet and its people have sat under an ever-darkening cloud of pollution that showers its toxic consequences upon us.”

“Close to 50% of the world’s population currently lives in areas where waste generated has already exceeded the capacity to manage it, with the figure projected to rise to 66% by 5 September,” Perreard noted. “With the fourth round of negotiations in Ottawa at the end of this month, we can no longer ignore the facts, we can no longer afford to resist the change that should be set in motion through the treaty.”

Original article by JAKE JOHNSON republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue Reading‘Progress Almost Invisible’: World Set to Produce 220 Million Tonnes of Plastic Waste

‘This Is Unforgivable’: Israeli Airstrike Kills 7 World Central Kitchen Workers

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Original article by JAKE JOHNSON republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Relatives and friends mourn Saif Abu Taha, a staff member of the U.S.-based aid group World Central Kitchen who was killed by an Israeli airstrike on April 2, 2024. (Photo: Said Khatib/AFP via Getty Images)

“This is not only an attack against WCK, this is an attack on humanitarian organizations showing up in the most dire of situations where food is being used as a weapon of war,” said the aid group’s CEO.

World Central Kitchen said Tuesday that a targeted Israeli airstrike killed seven members of its aid team in Gaza as they left a warehouse in the city of Deir al-Balah, where they had just unloaded more than 100 tons of food set to be distributed to starving Palestinians.

The Washington, D.C.-based aid organization said the seven killed included a dual citizen of the U.S. and Canada as well as Australian, Polish, and British nationals and one Palestinian staffer later identified as Saif Abu Taha.

“This is not only an attack against WCK, this is an attack on humanitarian organizations showing up in the most dire of situations where food is being used as a weapon of war,” Erin Gore, the group’s CEO, said in a statement. “This is unforgivable.”

WCK said its convoy of vehicles—including two armored cars branded with the group’s logo—was hit by an Israeli strike while traveling in what was supposed to be a deconflicted zone. The group said it coordinated the convoy’s movements with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), leading WCK to conclude that the attack was not an accident.

“I am heartbroken and appalled that we—World Central Kitchen and the world—lost beautiful lives today because of a targeted attack by the IDF,” Gore said Tuesday. “The love they had for feeding people, the determination they embodied to show that humanity rises above all, and the impact they made in countless lives will forever be remembered and cherished.”

Photographs and video footage from the scene and its aftermath show utter carnage. Rescue teams that arrived at the scene and removed the WCK staffers’ bodies from the wreckage displayed the passports of those killed, identifying Zomi Frankcom of Australia, Damian Sobol of Poland, and other victims of the Israeli strike.

(Photo: Ashraf Amra/Anadolu via Getty Images)

The IDF pledged to carry out “an in-depth examination at the highest levels”—a promise that, given the Israeli military’s record, is likely to prove empty.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday that the strike “unintentionally hit innocent people,” but Haaretz reported that the attack “was launched because of suspicion that a terrorist was traveling with the convoy”—an indication that the strike itself, targeting vehicles carrying aid workers, was intentional.

The Israeli military has repeatedly attacked aid workers with impunity in recent months, killing staffers of United Nations agencies, the International Red Cross and Red Crescent, Doctors Without Borders, and other organizations.

WCK is known for coordinating emergency food relief in disaster zones around the world. The group has collected and delivered hundreds of tons of food to Gaza in recent weeks as famine has spread across the enclave due to the Israeli government’s blockade.

Following the deadly attack on its staffers, WCK said it would pause its operations in the region immediately.

“We will be making decisions about the future of our work soon,” the group said in a statement.

Celebrity chef José Andrés, the group’s founder, wrote in a social media post late Monday that he is “heartbroken and grieving for their families and friends and our whole WCK family.”

“These are people…angels…I served alongside in Ukraine, Gaza, Turkey, Morocco, Bahamas, Indonesia,” he wrote. “They are not faceless…they are not nameless. The Israeli government needs to stop this indiscriminate killing. It needs to stop restricting humanitarian aid, stop killing civilians and aid workers, and stop using food as a weapon. No more innocent lives lost. Peace starts with our shared humanity. It needs to start now.”

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who has been accused of abetting genocide in Gaza, confirmed that Australian citizen Zomi Frankcom was among those killed by the Israeli strike and demanded “full accountability.”

“This is a tragedy that should never have occurred,” Albanese told reporters, saying he had summoned the Israeli ambassador to Australia.

Adrienne Watson, a spokesperson for the U.S. National Security Council, said the Biden White House is “heartbroken and deeply troubled by the strike.”

“Humanitarian aid workers must be protected as they deliver aid that is desperately needed, and we urge Israel to swiftly investigate what happened,” she added.

Original article by JAKE JOHNSON republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

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Continue Reading‘This Is Unforgivable’: Israeli Airstrike Kills 7 World Central Kitchen Workers

US Under Fire for Downplaying Security Council Resolution as ‘Nonbinding’

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Oriignal article by JAKE JOHNSON republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller speaks to reporters during a press briefing on March 25, 2024. 
(Photo: Mostafa Bassim/Anadolu via Getty Images)

One expert accused the U.S. of working to “undermine and sabotage the U.N. Security Council, the ‘rules-based order,’ and international law.”

Biden administration officials attempted Monday to downplay the significance of a newly passed United Nations Security Council resolution, drawing ire from human rights advocates who said the U.S. is undercutting international law and stonewalling attempts to bring Israel’s devastating military assault on Gaza to an end.

The resolution “demands an immediate cease-fire for the month of Ramadan respected by all parties, leading to a lasting sustainable cease-fire.” The U.S., which previously vetoed several cease-fire resolutions, opted to abstain on Monday, allowing the measure to pass.

Shortly after the resolution’s approval, several administration officials—including State Department spokesman Matthew Miller, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby, and U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield—falsely characterized the measure as “nonbinding.”

“It’s a nonbinding resolution,” Kirby told reporters. “So, there’s no impact at all on Israel and Israel’s ability to continue to go after Hamas.”

Josh Ruebner, an adjunct lecturer at Georgetown University and former policy director of the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, wrote in response that “there is no such thing as a ‘nonbinding’ Security Council resolution.”

“Israel’s failure to abide by this resolution must open the door to the immediate imposition of Chapter VII sanctions,” Ruebner wrote.

Beatrice Fihn, the director of Lex International and former executive director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, condemned what she called the Biden administration’s “appalling behavior” in the wake of the resolution’s passage. Fihn said the administration’s downplaying of the resolution shows how the U.S. works to “openly undermine and sabotage the U.N. Security Council, the ‘rules-based order,’ and international law.”

In a Monday op-ed for Common Dreams, Phyllis Bennis, a senior fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, warned that administration officials’ claim that the resolution was “nonbinding” should be seen as “setting the stage for the U.S. government to violate the U.N. Charter by refusing to be bound by the resolution’s terms.”

While all U.N. Security Council resolutions are legally binding, they’re difficult to enforce and regularly ignored by the Israeli government, which responded with outrage to the latest resolution and canceled an Israeli delegation’s planned visit to the U.S.

Israel Katz, Israel’s foreign minister, wrote on social media Monday that “Israel will not cease fire.”

The resolution passed amid growing global alarm over the humanitarian crisis that Israel has inflicted on the Gaza Strip, where most of the population of around 2.2 million is displaced and at increasingly dire risk of starvation.

Amnesty International secretary-general Agnes Callamard said Monday that it was “just plain irresponsible” of U.S. officials to “suggest that a resolution meant to save lives and address massive devastation and suffering can be disregarded.”

In addition to demanding an immediate cease-fire, the Security Council resolution calls for the unconditional release of all remaining hostages and “emphasizes the urgent need to expand the flow of humanitarian assistance.”

Israel has systematically obstructed aid deliveries to Gaza, including U.S.-funded flour shipments.

Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for the U.N. secretary-general, stressed during a briefing Monday that “all the resolutions of the Security Council are international law.”

“They are as binding as international laws,” Haq said.

Oriignal article by JAKE JOHNSON republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

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Continue ReadingUS Under Fire for Downplaying Security Council Resolution as ‘Nonbinding’

Draft UN Report Finds Israel Has Met Threshold for Genocide

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Original article by BRETT WILKINS republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

The bodies of victims of the October 31, 2023 Israeli bombing of the Jabalia refugee camp in the Gaza Strip are lined up outside the Indonesian Hospital in Gaza City.  (Photo: Fadi Alwhidi/Anadolu via Getty Images)

“Israel’s genocide on the Palestinians in Gaza is an escalatory stage of a long-standing settler colonial process of erasure.”

The United Nations Human Rights Council on Monday published a draft report that found “reasonable grounds to believe” that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, a move that came on the same day as the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire in the ongoing war.

The advance unedited version of the report—entitled Anatomy of a Genocide—concludes that Israel’s far-right government and military “have intentionally distorted jus in bello principles, subverting their protective functions, in an attempt to legitimize genocidal violence against the Palestinian people.”

“The overwhelming nature and scale of Israel’s assault on Gaza and the destructive conditions of life it has inflicted reveal an intent to physically destroy Palestinians as a group,” the draft report states, enumerating Israeli actions that violate Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide: “Killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to group members; and deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”

“Israel has de facto treated an entire protected group and its life-sustaining infrastructure as ‘terrorist’ or ‘terrorist-supporting,’ thus transforming everything and everyone into either a target or collateral damage, hence killable or destroyable,” the paper continues. “In this way, no Palestinian in Gaza is safe by definition. This has had devastating, intentional effects, costing the lives of tens of thousands of Palestinians, destroying the fabric of life in Gaza, and causing irreparable harm to its entire population.”

Israel rejected the report as “an obscene inversion of reality.”

According to Palestinian and international humanitarian officials, Israel’s 171-day Gaza onslaught has killed at least 32,333 Palestinians, most of them women and children, while wounding nearly 75,000 others and displacing around 90% of Gaza’s 2.3 million people. Thousands more Palestinians are missing and believed to be dead and buried beneath the rubble of bombed buildings. Disease and deadly starvation caused and exacerbated by Israel’s siege and blockade of Gaza are spreading rapidly.

“Israel’s genocide on the Palestinians in Gaza is an escalatory stage of a long-standing settler-colonial process of erasure,” the draft report asserts. “For over seven decades this process has suffocated the Palestinian people as a group—demographically, culturally, economically, and politically—seeking to displace it and expropriate and control its land and resources.”

Referring to the flight and ethnic cleansing of more than 750,000 Arabs from Palestine during the foundation of the modern state of Israel in 1948, the paper contends that “the ongoing Nakba must be stopped and remedied once and for all. This is an imperative owed to the victims of this highly preventable tragedy, and to future generations in that land.”

“The ongoing Nakba must be stopped and remedied once and for all.”

The draft report urges U.N. member states to “enforce the prohibition of genocide in accordance with their… obligations” under international law. In January, the U.N.’s International Court of Justice (ICJ) found that Israel was “plausibly” perpetrating genocide in Gaza and ordered the country’s government to “take all measures within its power” to prevent genocidal acts. Human rights defenders say Israel has ignored the order.

“Israel and those states that have been complicit in what can be reasonably concluded to constitute genocide must be held accountable and deliver reparations commensurate with the destruction, death, and harm inflicted on the Palestinian people,” the publication argues.

The draft report recommends measures including:

  • Immediate implementation of an arms embargo on Israel, as it appears to have failed to comply with the binding measures ordered by the ICJ;
  • Immediate referral of the situation in Palestine to the International Criminal Court in support of its ongoing investigation;
  • Ensuring that Israel, as well as states who have been complicit in the Gaza genocide, acknowledge the colossal harm done, commit to nonrepetition, with measures for prevention and full reparations, including the full cost of the reconstruction of Gaza;
  • Deploying an international protective presence to constrain the violence routinely used against Palestinians in the occupied territories; and
  • Ensuring that the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) is properly funded to enable it to meet the increased needs of Palestinians in Gaza.

Israel on Monday informed the U.N. that it will no longer allow UNRWA convoys carrying food aid into northern Gaza, even as the Palestinians are starving to death, a move that one humanitarian campaigner called a “death sentence.”

Original article by BRETT WILKINS republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Continue ReadingDraft UN Report Finds Israel Has Met Threshold for Genocide

Israel’s collective punishment of Palestinians in Gaza not acceptable, says UN Chief

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Original article by Abdul Rahman republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

The UN Security Council meets on the situation in the Middle East, including Palestine (Photo via United Nations)

Participants in the UN Security Council highlighted need for a ceasefire in Gaza and a long term solution to the Palestinian question as necessary for peace

On January 23, speaking during the two day extended meeting of the UN Security Council on Palestine, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres underlined that “Israel’s clear and repeated rejection” of a two-state solution is unacceptable. He also warned that this refusal and “denial of the right to statehood to the Palestinian people would indefinitely prolong a conflict that has become a major threat to global peace and security.”

Most of the countries which participated in the two day proceedings demanded an immediate humanitarian ceasefire and a two-state solution, claiming it necessary for regional and global peace.

Invoking ever deteriorating humanitarian conditions in Gaza, Guterres termed it “collective punishment” executed by Israeli forces, asserting that “nothing can justify it.”

More than 25,700 Palestinians have been killed, over 63,000 have been wounded, and nearly 90% of Gaza’s population has been displaced due to relentless bombings and ground offensives carried out by Israeli armed forces since October 7.

Israel has maintained that its war in Gaza is in response to Palestinian resistance forces, mainly Hamas, attacking inside its borders on October 7, in which nearly 1,200 people were killed and nearly 250 Israelis were taken as hostages.

Speaking in the meeting, Gilad Erdan, the Israeli ambassador to the UN, claimed that until persons involved in the October 7 attacks are handed over and hostages are released, war in Gaza will not end.

Most of the members of the UN Security Council repeated the call for an immediate ceasefire and called for better delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza.

The Chinese ambassador to the UN, Zhang Jun, also noted that the Israeli leadership’s repeated rejection of a two-state solution is unacceptable, and demanded that it must be rejuvenated by granting Palestinians full membership to the UN.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had, earlier this month, rejected the calls for a Palestinian state, calling it untenable and a threat to Israeli security.

The need for a two-state solution was raised by the Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad Maliki, who denounced the war in Gaza as Israel’s “premeditated effort to inflict maximum pain on the Palestinian population.”

“No home, hospital, school, mosque, church or UNRWA shelter is safe from Israeli bombardments, 2,000 pound bombs dropped with no care whatsoever for civilian lives,” he noted.

South Africa, which has taken Israel to the International Court of Justice for its genocide of Palestinians, maintained that there cannot be selective implementation of international law and Israel must face consequences for its repeated violations of the same.

US positions provide a carte blanche to Israeli crimes

Speaking during the meeting, the US representative Uzra Zeya claimed the centrality of a two-state solution. She claimed that the US has been making efforts to prevent greater civilian casualties in the Israeli war in Gaza. However, US policies in Gaza were heavily criticized by both the permanent members of the UNSC and others as detrimental to peace.

Chinese ambassador Jun condemned the repeated use of veto by the US in earlier UNSC meetings on ceasefire resolutions, identifying them as impeding all efforts to peace.

The US had vetoed resolutions proposing a ceasefire in the UNSC in previous months and tried to excuse Israeli bombings in Gaza as the Zionist state’s right to self defense.

Jun hoped that all members of the international community must prioritize ceasefire in Gaza, and ways to stop the spread of the war in the region.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov asserted that the UNSC must take steps to prevent further destabilization in the region, which has been caused by US policies which vetoes ceasefire resolutions and provides carte blanche to Israeli acts of “collective punishment of Palestinians.”

Lavrov emphasized that until a ceasefire is implemented the talks about future solutions to the conflict are useless.

Iranian Foreign Minister Hussein Amir Abdollahian warned the US against violating Yemeni sovereignty by carrying out repeated air strikes against it. He alleged that it is a trap laid down by Israel with the objective of expanding the war in Gaza to the regional level.

Abdollahian proposed that a referendum among all Palestinians must be held to find a permanent solution to the Palestinian question.

Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib emphasized that all stakeholders, including the US, should see that Israel wants to expand the war across the region, and underlined that his country does not want war.

He emphasized that “what happened on October 7 did not happen in a vacuum” and if no attempts are made to secure a lasting solution “it will happen again,” as there is no peace in the region until there is justice for Palestinians.

Speaking in the meeting on Tuesday, the Saudi delegate Waleed El-Khereiji said that because of the “Israeli war machine,” tensions in the region, including in the Red Sea and Yemen, are increasing. He demanded that the Security Council make sure that Israel stops its violations of international law.

On Sunday, in an interview with CNN, Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhad al-Saud denied any possibility of normalization of relations with Israel, as proposed by the US, until there is a road map for a two-state solution and an independent Palestinian state. “What we are seeing is Israelis crushing Gaza, the civilian population of Gaza. This is completely unnecessary, completely unacceptable, and has to stop.”

Original article by Abdul Rahman republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Continue ReadingIsrael’s collective punishment of Palestinians in Gaza not acceptable, says UN Chief