Kernow Damo

As the war on Gaza drags on, BDS pressure is turning ordinary commercial links with Israel into reputational liabilities businesses no longer want. Right, so Boker Tov is an Israeli-owned food chain that’s been operating in Belgium, selling Israeli street food under a softened “Levantine” label, working on the quiet assumption that food sits above politics if you soften the language enough. Well it didn’t work. The chain has gone bankrupt, four restaurants have shut, and the owners have said the customers stopped coming once Gaza couldn’t be ignored. BDS strikes again. No ban from trading. No court ruling. No dramatic showdown. Just tables staying empty and the business no longer adding up. For a long time there’s been a lot of confidence that whatever Israel does, the consequences stay safely boxed in, something we commentators argue about while everyday commerce carries on unaffected. BDS has always sought to change that and businesses don’t survive the moment enough people decide they don’t want the association anymore. Consumer choice – you can’t fight it. But this is a bigger story than just one restaurant chain in Belgium. It’s about increasing numbers of people making similar choices outside Israel, not necessarily even as part of global BDS movements either, but also without that coordination and without permission, and so the story stops being about protest per se and starts being about Israeli reputation itself and no amount of Hasbara that can fix this when mindsets are simply shifting against you. Right, so Boker Tov has shut its doors in Belgium, filed for bankruptcy, and exited the market, and the owners have said plainly that organised boycott campaigns after Gaza cut the customer base out from under them. Four restaurants, gone, in a country Israel doesn’t govern, by decisions Israel didn’t authorise, through pressure Israel can’t regulate, which leaves consequences operating outside any diplomatic channel that used to cushion this kind of fallout.

When pension funds start questioning US debt because of political behaviour, something deeper than Greenland is breaking. Right, so a Danish pension fund has just moved to exit US Treasuries. Offload US debt in other words. Not stocks, not defence firms, not some symbolic gesture, but US government debt, because US political behaviour itself has been judged a risk and this is the kind of response that, as I mentioned in a video just the other day, can hurt the US via its spending power. In part at least, this is in aid of applying coercive pressure over Greenland of course, territory tied to Denmark itself. And amid talk of military action and counter-tariffs, this move quietly removes an assumption people rely on without realising it, that US debt is something that just sits there, being neutral, boring, above politics, something you don’t have to think about while Washington tests limits elsewhere. Well its not true and this is a more effective counterstrike than acts being far more loudly discussed. This doesn’t stop with Greenland, and it doesn’t stay confined to one fund either, because the moment capital treats conduct as relevant, a whole set of confident claims quietly stop working and the moment one private fund shifts others can follow – some much bigger. Right, so the Greenland crisis hasn’t produced a military move, a treaty breach, or a dramatic showdown, but it has already done something far more consequential and far harder to reverse and I don’t want to say I told you so, but I did cover this option the other day, so someone seemingly taking it is significant, not just for that, but because it takes some balls to do as well. What this does is force United States sovereign debt held by other states and other organisations, other funds, out of the background and into the open, where it now has to be spoken about, defended, and managed as a political asset and an acknowledged weak spot to be leveraged. Where I spoke about sovereign state holdings previously though, in this instance it is the holdings of a not insignificant pension fund instead that is taking the lead here.

Israel’s fruit exports are being hit as European retailers respond to consumer-led BDS boycotts without public announcements. Right, so Israeli fruit exporters are losing routine access to European supermarkets, with orders cancelled, buyers pulling back, and harvests being left unsold. Mangoes and citrus that used to move as a matter of course are now only being bought when there’s no alternative, and in some cases they’re not being bought at all. That removes a very basic assumption Israel has relied on for years, which is that civilian trade just carries on regardless. Because once food stops moving, you’re not talking about messaging or reputation management anymore, you’re talking about a system cracking at the seams. And that’s where a lot of confident claims quietly fall apart, most notably in the face of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaigns. The idea that markets are neutral. The idea that outrage stays online. The idea that this can all be compartmentalised until the headlines move on. You don’t lose fruit exports because of a bad tweet. You lose them when buyers decide the origin itself is the risk, and when that decision has already been implemented in contracts and sourcing rules. That’s the bit that doesn’t get walked back. Right, so the Co-op has changed its sourcing policy and has begun removing products that are clearly and solely sourced from Israel, after a member-backed push and a board-level decision to treat “community-wide human rights abuses” and breaches of international law as a reason to end sourcing relationships. That is just one for instance. That is not a protest on the street, it is a retailer deciding that Israel is now a reputational risk inside the everyday mechanics of food supply, and it does something that political statements never do, because it shifts a moral argument into procurement rules. An argument into something meaningful. When a supermarket does that, it does not need to persuade the whole country, it only needs to instruct buyers, rewrite contracts, and let the rest of the industry infer the direction of travel. A boycott campaign can launch a protest one day and the next day things return to normal, but it can also lead to a sourcing policy examination and a subsequent shift, the real power of BDS is more than the protest, it is the knock-on effects such demand can lead to.

The hunger strike ended, but the most dangerous medical phase began after they were sent back inside. Right, so Sodexo is a multinational outsourcing company that runs prisons for the British state, including HMP Bronzefield, and it’s now been accused of abusing Palestine Action prisoners for one very simple reason: a hunger strike ended and the system rushed to move on while the danger was still sitting there. Seventy days without food stopped, prisoners were taken to hospital, and then some were sent straight back into custody while the most dangerous medical phase was still ongoing. And that quietly kicks away a prop a lot of people rely on — the idea that once a protest ends, responsibility tapers off and everything settles back into “normal” because it stops being talked about. It doesn’t. What fails here is the confidence that privatisation, clinical paperwork, and silence after the cameras leave and the media put their pens down still protects the people in charge. Because if the riskiest moment is treated like an administrative clear-up instead of taken seriously under the state’s duty of care, then a lot of soothing claims about prison care and accountability don’t hold up anymore and thats problem that won’t stay contained. Right, so Sodexo Prison Services has been accused of abusing Palestine Action prisoners at HMP Bronzefield, and that accusation exists because a chain of decisions has already been taken, recorded, escalated, and then defended as routine. This is not about tone or interpretation. It starts with custody being outsourced, proceeds through a seventy-day hunger strike, runs straight into the most dangerous medical phase of that strike ending, and lands on prisoners being discharged back into custody while known risk remains active.

US pressure was pushed to leadership level, Iran answered at deterrence level, and nothing about this confrontation reset when the strike didn’t come. Right, so the United States has threatened Iran at the level of leadership, talked openly about regime change, hinted at intervention, and then stopped. Not resolved it. Not de-escalated it. Just stopped. The strike didn’t happen, the language didn’t soften, and Iran didn’t blink. So that alone removes a very comfortable assumption a lot of people were relying on, which is that pressure can always be turned up without changing the rules of the game. It turns out it can’t. Because Iran didn’t respond by conceding or fragmenting or scrambling to negotiate. It responded by tightening its deterrence and setting out their own warning to the US, while regional states rushed in to shut the whole thing down on Trump’s side of the equation, before any unwise retaliation. So now you’ve got US threats that can’t be casually repeated, pauses that don’t reset anything, just keep the tension simmering, and a confrontation that’s operating under even stricter rules than it was before. Which is a bit awkward, if you were still trying to sell this as controlled escalation. Right Donnie? Right, so the United States escalated pressure on Iran, publicly, loudly, and right up to the level of regime survival, and then it stopped. It hasn’t de-escalated. Not resolved. Not stabilised. It stopped mid-motion. The strike was talked up, the threats were personalised, the language moved past policy and into leadership, and then the action paused. Donald Trump has dragged this confrontation out of abstract pressure and into something far more concrete. He has encouraged internal takeover. He has spoken openly about “new leadership”. He has named and denigrated Ayatollah Ali Khamenei directly. He has told Iranians to keep protesting and suggested help was coming. He paired that with warnings that the United States was “locked and loaded”. Then, after all of that, the strike did not happen.

A UK court has now accepted that Israeli citizenship is not automatic protection from persecution and its bad news for Team Keith! Right, so the UK has just granted refugee status to a Palestinian who holds Israeli citizenship, after the Home Office fought it for years and lost. That single decision removes a shortcut British politics has relied on for decades, which is that Israeli citizenship automatically ends any asylum conversation. It doesn’t anymore. And now that assumption is gone, a lot of confident noise from politicians banging on about immigration will sound a lot more alarmed, because the state has now accepted, on paper, that protection from Israel cannot be relied on in at least some cases under existing frameworks, or ones that until recently used to exist. But the bit that will be alarming them most is that this doesn’t stop at one man. It now travels through asylum law, through foreign policy language, through the way ministers talk about borders and international law. The legal precedent has now been set for Palestinians to seek to claim asylum here in the UK, so how can this government of Keir Starmer’s possibly square being pro Israel, especially if more asylum applications start to come in? Right, so the UK Home Office has granted refugee status to a Palestinian citizen of Israel after a years-long fight, and it has done it on the plain, old Refugee Convention test: a well-founded fear of persecution if returned. The man is known publicly as Hasan, his name is being protected, and the legal organisations involved are saying he is believed to be the first Palestinian holding Israeli citizenship to get refugee status in Britain on those grounds. James Cleverly was Home Secretary when the Home Office was trying to pull the grant back, and the account now on record from the organisation that supported Hasan is that ministerial interference has very much been part of the story.

Donald Trump has tied tariffs on allies to taking Greenland — but the assumption that Europe has no leverage isn't actually true... Right, so Donald Trump has announced tariffs on European allies because they won’t agree to him taking Greenland, with a 10% levy next month and 25% after that on eight NATO states, explicitly tied to whether opposition stops. That move removes a basic assumption people were still relying on, which is that NATO disputes stay in the lane of diplomacy and trade rows don’t get stapled to territorial demands. You can’t negotiate with this tangerine tyrant. Once tariffs are being used as punishment for saying no to annexation-by-invoice, the idea that this is just noise, or bluster, or something that can be smoothed out with polite phone calls, stops being available. And the confidence that underpins a lot of commentary right now, that the US can do this without consequence because nobody has leverage that actually bites, starts to look very thin very quickly. Because this doesn’t stop at Greenland, and it doesn’t depend on missiles or troops. It depends on money, confidence, and habits everyone’s been treating as immovable because nobody has been talking about it. There is another option available to other nations and its time they started considering it. Right, so Donald Trump has announced he is putting tariffs on European allies because they are refusing to go along with his demand to “buy” Greenland. He has set out a 10% tariff from 1 February and a 25% tariff from 1 June on eight states, including here in the UK, and he has explicitly tied the escalation to whether countries stop opposing the United States taking control of Greenland, as if territorial acquisition is a bargaining chip in a trade negotiation and as if the rest of NATO exists to be billed for its own obedience. The whole thing is dressed up as a tough-guy move, but it is coercion with a receipt attached. Keir Starmer has responded in a way that tells you exactly what the UK government is trying to preserve though. He has called the tariff threats “completely wrong”, but he has ruled out retaliatory tariffs, and he has insisted the right approach is “calm discussion between allies”, which is what you say when you want to sound like you are taking a stand while also making sure nothing material happens that could upset the sick joke that is the ‘special. relationship. Right, so Donald Trump's announcement of tariffs on European allies over Greenland highlights a concerning shift in international relations. This move, directly linking trade disputes to territorial demands, challenges basic diplomatic assumptions and creates new global trade tensions.

ICE has been publicly compared to the Brownshirts in Minneapolis and after Gregory Bovino’s appearance, that comparison has stuck. Right, so ICE carried out an operation in Minneapolis that ended with a civilian being shot, in public, during enforcement, and the system closed ranks around it. But since then, federal leadership has now turned up, visibly, unapologetically, dressed for command in their heads, but inviting some rather unfortunate, but perhaps also accurate comparisons to the Brownshirts of Ernst Röhm. Immigration enforcement too often gets sold sold as paperwork, warrants, process — something that happened quietly, somewhere else. Once you put lethal force on the street and defend it as routine, that story is finished. And once senior figures arrive afterwards dressed up in a manner evoking memories of the SS, performing authority rather than caution, people don’t need persuading anymore. That’s when the comparisons start appearing on their own. Not as insults, but as recognition. Because at that point this stops looking like law being applied and starts looking like power being asserted, and once enforcement is read that way, it doesn’t wait for permission to escalate — it carries on under its own momentum and that’s a stain they’ll never scrub clean. Right, so ICE has been deployed in American cities in a way that no longer looks administrative, no longer looks procedural, and no longer relies on consent to function. Border Patrol has been folded into that deployment as well, with senior figures choosing to present themselves as commanders rather than civil servants. That combination is not abstract, and it isn’t rhetorical. It is on the street, it is being filmed, and it is being felt by the people living underneath it, which removes the option of pretending this is just routine enforcement operating as it always has.

An Iranian monarchist, Goldie Ghamari, threatened critics of regime change on live broadcast - showing what backers of the Shah are all about. Right, so an Iranian monarchist, Goldie Ghamari sat on Piers Morgan’s show, and when the conversation got a little bit tricky, she switched into Farsi, and told people what would happen to them after regime change in Iran. Not hypothetically. After. She said it plainly. It went out live. She threatened people’s lives. And nobody who’s been pushing regime change in Iran moved to disown it either. And that kills a useful fiction. Because the whole Iran story has depended on never saying this bit out loud. Never naming enforcement. Never naming punishment. Just “transition”, “momentum”, “inevitability”. Restoration of democracy, as if imposing another Shah as Ghamari would love to see, is anything of the sort. Once someone says who gets “come after”, when the regime changes – a fantasy as that is anyway, as the allegedly Mossad driven protests settle down - that language stops working. You can’t pretend this is about democracy when threats are being issued in advance of the changes you claim will be better for the Iranian people. The Shah was overthrown for a reason and for all the critique that can be levelled at the Ayatollah’s, a return to a monarchist autocracy would be worse. People like Ghamari forget that what they are calling for and the threats made to that end, are what put the Ayatollah’s in power to begin with. Right, so Goldie Ghamari sits on Piers Morgan’s prime-time programme, switches into Farsi, and issues a threat about what happens after regime change to people she says are threatening not just Iran but Israel as well. Words about coming after people. Retribution. That exchange is broadcast, clipped, and circulated. It is not disowned by the monarchist and regime-change ecosystem that put her there, that she represents. It is not treated as disqualifying. It just sits there, on the record, as the public face of Iranian monarchic restoration when pressure is absent. The reaction to that moment matters as much as the moment itself. There was little effort from Piers Morgan to distance himself. No condemnation from fellow panellists or from the exile monarchist networks that promote Ghamari.

Trump didn’t end the war — he turned Gaza into a managed asset, and brought Tony Blair back to help run the paperwork. Right, so Donald Trump has announced a Gaza “Board of Peace” that is more of a “Gaza Board of Occupation”, a “Gaza Board of Taking All The Spoils”, put himself at the top of it, named Tony Blair to it, because presumably Satan is busy washing his hair, and rolled it out as the start of phase two of a Gaza Peace Plan that Israel continue to abuse with impunity. This is colonialism 101. Any pretence of peace is a sick joke at this point without any Palestinian representation. What has gone is the last pretence that Gaza’s future is being negotiated by anyone who actually lives there and is directly affected. From this point on, decisions are being administered. To the people of Palestine. Not negotiated with them, not discussed, just imposed. Disarmament comes first they are told, supervision comes next as if they have no right to self-determination, reconstruction is conditional on obedience, and consent is optional. If you were still assuming there’d be a political settlement before management took over, you’ll see some flying pigs right now outside your window. If you were relying on the idea that talk of peace meant mutual restraint, where have you been for the last two years at least? Because when the same people who presided over the destruction are invited back as part of the system to oversee the aftermath, what’s being sold isn’t peace, it’s control being repackaged with better branding. Right, so Donald Trump has moved Gaza from obvious genocide into administration by pushing ahead with phase two of a ceasefire already regarded widely as a sick joke, by announcing a “Board of Peace” for Gaza and putting himself at the top of it, busy man having also declared himself acting President of Venezuela, while also considering invasion of Iran and Greenland, but if that phrase Board of Peace sounds like it was written by a committee tasked with laundering reality, it is because it functions exactly like that. The White House has publicly placed this board at the centre of a second phase of a 20-point plan, and it has presented that phase as a shift away from ceasefire management and into demilitarisation, technocratic governance, and reconstruction.