Yearly Archives: 2025

Israeli Security Cabinet Approves Plan for ‘Mass Ethnic Cleansing’ of Gaza

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

Palestinians forcibly displaced by israel’s assault on Gaza walk amid the rubble of the Jabalia refugee camp on January 19, 2025. (Photo: Omar Al-Qataa/AFP via Getty Images)

“There is nothing ‘voluntary’ about the program,” said one critic. “The population of Gaza is to be forced out of their ancestral homeland through deliberate mass starvation and mass killings.”

Israel’s Security Cabinet on Sunday approved the creation of new Defense Ministry directorate tasked with ethnically cleansing Palestinians from the Gaza Strip under the guise of “voluntary emigration.”

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz euphemistically called the new agency the “Voluntary Emigration Bureau for Gaza residents interested in relocating to third countries” and claimed it will operate in accordance with international law.

However, given Israel’s incessant flouting of international law—Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a fugitive from the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Court of Justice is hearing a genocide case against the country—critics excoriated Katz’s claim.

“In reality, there is nothing ‘voluntary’ about the program the Netanyahu government is implementing,” wroteWorld Socialist Web Site editor Andre Damon. “The population of Gaza is to be forced out of their ancestral homeland through deliberate mass starvation and mass killings by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).”

The Israeli cabinet has approved the establishment of an “administration for the voluntary transition of Gaza’s residents to third countries” – aka for mass ethnic cleansing

— Hanno Hauenstein (@hahauenstein.bsky.social) 2025-03-23T09:55:48.905Z

Katz also said the new directorate would be run “in accordance with the vision of U.S President Donald Trump,” who last month said that the United States would “take over” Gaza after emptying the strip of its approximately 2.1 million Palestinians and transform the coastal enclave into the “Riviera of the Middle East.”

After doubling down on his proposal, Trump then attempted to gaslight the world by directly contradicting his previous remarks when he said earlier this month that “nobody is expelling any Palestinians” from Gaza. By then, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich had declared that the so-called Trump Plan was “taking shape” in coordination with the U.S. administration.

However, leaders of Egypt and Jordan, where Trump has proposed sending Gazans, vehemently oppose the plan. A counterproposal issued by Egypt and other Arab nations—which involves rebuilding Gaza without forcibly displacing its residents—has the support of the 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation and nations including China, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and Italy.

The reconquest of Gaza is a longtime goal of Israel’s far-right, which, since the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023 and subsequent obliteration of the strip, has moved to put its recolonization plans into action.

Israeli Col: Hamas is not the issue Gaza's people are'The population of Gaza are barbaric riffraff….the only solution is Trump's vision,' national security expert and colonel in the Israeli army's reserve force Gabi Siboni called for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza during a panel programme.

— Middle East Monitor (@middleeastmonitor.bsky.social) 2025-03-24T15:31:22.293Z

“October 7 changed history. As a result of the brutal massacre, the Gazan Arabs have lost their rights to be here forever, they’ll not stay here,” Daniella Weiss, co-founder of the extremist settler movement Nachala, said during an October 2024 conference on the ethnic cleansing of Gaza attended by Smotrich and numerous other Israeli lawmakers.

“Each of you will witness how Jews go to Gaza and Arabs will disappear from Gaza,” Weiss added.

The modern state of Israel was founded largely through the ethnic cleansing of more than 750,000 Palestinians, sometimes accomplished via massacres and death marches. The majority of Gaza’s population today are survivors and descendants of Palestinians forced from their homeland to make way for Jewish immigrants in the post-World War II era.

Palestinians call the mass forced displacement of 1948 the Nakba, or catastrophe, and far-right Israelis today threaten to carry out a new Nakba to “finish the job,” as Smotrich and others have said.

Critics including Israeli troops have claimed that the IDF is carrying out the so-called “General’s Plan,” a blueprint for the starvation and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from northern Gaza. Since October 2023, Israel has enforced what former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant—who is also wanted by the ICC for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity—called a “complete siege” of Gaza, a blockade which has exacerbated deadly starvation and illness in the strip.

On Sunday, the Gaza Health Ministry said the death toll from Israel’s 535-day assault on Gaza surpassed 50,000 Palestinians, the majority of whom are women and children. This, as Israeli forces have renewed their ferocious bombardment and invasion of the strip, killing hundreds of Palestinians including nearly 200 children, and wiping out entire families.

The ministry said that more than 113,000 others have been wounded since October 2023, and at least 14,000 more Palestinians are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath the rubble of hundreds of thousands of bombed-out buildings.

However, experts—including the authors of two peer-reviewed articles in the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet—say the actual death toll is likely much higher.

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

Continue ReadingIsraeli Security Cabinet Approves Plan for ‘Mass Ethnic Cleansing’ of Gaza

Morning Star Editorial: Public services can’t wear further cuts – Reeves must be stopped

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/editorial-public-services-cant-wear-further-cuts-reeves-must-be-stopped

Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves arrives to meet students on the carpentry course during a visit to Bury College in Greater Manchester, March 20, 2025

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Fourteen years of Tory rule have cut services to the bone. The notion that “efficiency savings” can slice off further billions without worsening already degraded services is absurd.

Ironically, the cuts are intended to fund increased military spending — though if there is a department renowned for waste it is the Ministry of Defence. The MoD is repeatedly excoriated by the public accounts committee for the huge sums squandered on projects that end up delayed by years or not delivered at all.

Current Defence Secretary John Healey, when in the shadow cabinet, published a report identifying billions it had overspent on projects and billions more paid for cancelled contracts with its often extortionate suppliers. The report noted that the MoD had even been fined £32.6 million by the Treasury for its “poor accounting practices.” Yet it is this department which is having more billions thrown its way.

As for extortionate suppliers, the evidence is plain that besides tying institutions from hospitals to schools into contracts forcing them to repay PFI debts worth multiples of the original loans, many such agreements also tie them into inflexible and costly servicing contracts.

Outsourcing services is massively inefficient, yet remains the norm, despite Reeves’s one-time promise to deliver “the biggest wave of insourcing in a generation.”

As the Prison Officers Association (POA) points out of outsourced prison maintenance, we end up paying through the nose for “crumbling cells, compromised safety and rodent-infested jails.”

“We do not for one minute accept that the privatised model of prison maintenance is more cost effective than insourcing … it is completely delusional to claim it provides best value for the taxpayer,” POA general secretary Steve Gillan observes.

Clearly value for money is not Reeves’s priority — corporate profits are, including at the Treasury’s expense.

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Read the original article at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/editorial-public-services-cant-wear-further-cuts-reeves-must-be-stopped

Keir Starmer commits to play the caretaker role for Capitalism through the "hard times".
Keir Starmer commits to play the caretaker role for Capitalism through the “hard times”.
Keir Starmer explains the moral case for cutting disability benefits. He says work will set you free.
Keir Starmer explains the moral case for cutting disability benefits. He says work will set you free.
Continue ReadingMorning Star Editorial: Public services can’t wear further cuts – Reeves must be stopped

Why should people with disabilities get a new car for free on top of their benefits?

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In short, this doesn’t happen and is part of a frenzy of demonization of disabled benefits claimants whipped-up by the right-wing including Labour Health Secretary Wes Steeting. The Guardian explains:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/24/monday-briefing-motability-myth

Queen Elizabeth inspects the classic Invacar, as she hosts a ceremony to celebrate the 40th Anniversary of Motability, at Windsor Castle in 2017. Photograph: Richard Pohle/AFP/Getty Images.

A common refrain in the coverage – “Do you want a free new car?” the Times’ Alice Thomson asked – but one which misses a central point: the Pip funding that goes to Motability is money that customers would have been getting anyway.

If they weren’t getting a car, they’d have it to spend on something else. And if they want a more expensive car – perhaps needing a bigger vehicle for essential equipment, perhaps shockingly able to have preferences despite also having a disability – they have to make a down payment out of their own pocket.

The cars are new, meanwhile, so that they retain a significant resale value at the end of the lease. “It’s just not true that it’s ‘free’,” Carew said. “And because it comes out of an existing Pip award, it’s at no additional cost to the taxpayer.” Scrapping Motability wouldn’t save a penny from the benefits bill.

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So where did this story come from?

Allegations that Motability is infested with people making bogus claims have existed for many years. Hardy perennial though the story is, it’s also worth tracking the genesis of the latest iteration. Part of the timeline is familiar enough: first a fascinating Bloomberg piece focusing on Motability’s impact on the car market, then the Daily Mail, then everyone else.

Before that, though, the story gained momentum in a stranger corner of the internet – through a couple of rightwing X accounts, @loftussteve and @maxtempers, with fewer than 28,000 followers between them. The anonymous user behind Max Tempers, in particular, has been banging the drum since at least December, when he suggested that claimants should only be allowed to drive a hideous old car with MOTABILITY written on it. A few weeks later, a post of his about grooming gangs was shared by Elon Musk, and became the ground zero of a whole other dodgy social media frenzy.

As the Motability story went viral, it got picked up by accounts like Politics UK, a popular X news source, and later by prominent users like GB News’ deputy political editor Tom Harwood, who even borrowed Max Tempers’ idea for a car of shame. With crushing inevitability, after the Daily Mail piece, Wes Streeting told GB News the story showed why the welfare system needs reform.

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Read the original article at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/24/monday-briefing-motability-myth

Keir Starmer explains the moral case for cutting disability benefits. He says work will set you free.
Keir Starmer explains the moral case for cutting disability benefits. He says work will set you free.

Continue ReadingWhy should people with disabilities get a new car for free on top of their benefits?

Government loses legal battle over Covid ‘VIP Lane’

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https://democracyforsale.substack.com/p/government-loses-legal-battle-over-vip-lane-conservative-donor

Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove referred Tory donor firms to Covid ‘VIP lane’

Exclusive: Judge slams “most unsatisfactory” Cabinet Office and orders release of names of ‘VIP’ firms to Democracy for Sale reporter – after *four year* wait.

The government has lost a long-running legal battle to block the release of information on companies referred to the lucrative ‘VIP lane’ for Covid contracts.

Firms linked to Conservative donors and party figures received over a billion pounds in PPE contracts during the pandemic after referrals from Tory ministers, MPs, and officials.

Companies in the VIP lane were ten times more likely to be given contracts, yet over half of the PPE they supplied was unusable.

In February 2021, Democracy for Sale reporter Jenna Corderoy filed a Freedom of Information (FOI) request seeking the names of all companies referred to the VIP lane and those who recommended them, including MPs and members of the House of Lords.

Months later, a court ruled the VIP lane was “unlawful,” and the government released the names of companies that secured contracts.

However, the identities of unsuccessful bidders and their political referrers remained secret, keeping the public in the dark about how politicians had helped politically-connected VIPs to seek public contracts.

For four years, the government resisted full disclosure, arguing it should not have to reveal how the VIP lane operated.

Corderoy took the case all the way to an information tribunal, where Judge Foss has now ruled that the government has 35 days to give Democracy for Sale the names of all unsuccessful companies.

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Article continues at https://democracyforsale.substack.com/p/government-loses-legal-battle-over-vip-lane-conservative-donor

Continue ReadingGovernment loses legal battle over Covid ‘VIP Lane’

Labour plan for £2bn in Whitehall cuts will hit frontline services, union warns

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https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/mar/23/labour-plan-whitehall-cuts-rachel-reeves-frontline-services-pcs-union

Wednesday’s spring statement has been overshadowed by where the cuts are due to fall, with some departments asked to model cuts of up to 11%. Photograph: pxl.store/Alamy

‘You can’t cut your way to growth,’ says PCS head as Reeves confirms move to cut administrative costs by 15% by 2030

Rachel Reeves’s planned cuts of £2bn to government departments will hit frontline services from jobcentres to HMRC phone lines and efforts to cut the asylum backlog, a union has said.

On Sunday the chancellor confirmed plans to seek a 15% reduction in admin costs across Whitehall, amounting to about £2bn a year, by the end of the decade. She said this would also result in about 10,000 job losses in the civil service, although this was not a target.

As she prepares to give her spring statement on Wednesday, Reeves is under pressure to balance the books in line with her fiscal rules, meaning some departments are in line for spending cuts to avoid more tax rises or higher borrowing.

But the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) warned her that there would be consequences for public services after 15 years of underfunding by the Tories.

Fran Heathcote, the general secretary of the PCS, said: “You hear that every day from the public, that they wait too long on the phone when they try to make tax payments, jobseekers rushed through the system in just 10 minutes because there aren’t enough staff to see them, victims of crime waiting until 2027 to have their cases heard in the courts as well as the backlog in the asylum system which results in additional hotel costs.

“The impact of making cuts will not only disadvantage our members but the public we serve and the services they rely on. We’ve heard this before under Gordon Brown when cuts were made to backroom staff and [the] consequences of that were chaos.”

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Article continues at https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/mar/23/labour-plan-whitehall-cuts-rachel-reeves-frontline-services-pcs-union

Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves wear the uniform of the rich and powerful. They have all had clothes bought for them by multi-millionaire Labour donor Lord Alli. CORRECTION: It appears that Rachel Reeves clothing was provided by Juliet Rosenfeld.
Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves wear the uniform of the rich and powerful. They have all had clothes bought for them by multi-millionaire Labour donor Lord Alli. CORRECTION: It appears that Rachel Reeves clothing was provided by Juliet Rosenfeld.
Keir Starmer confirms that he's proud to be a red Tory continuing austerity and targeting poor and disabled scum.
Keir Starmer confirms that he’s proud to be a red Tory continuing austerity and targeting poor and disabled scum.
Continue ReadingLabour plan for £2bn in Whitehall cuts will hit frontline services, union warns