Kernow Damo

The strike on Beirut, the latest breach of the Lebanon ceasefire might finally be the last straw, but is anyone actually capable of retaliating anymore? Right, so here’s the thing about this so-called ceasefire on the Lebanese front: it’s only ever been a ceasefire if you squint hard enough to pretend the body count doesn’t matter. Israel has been hitting refugee camps, blowing up towns, scattering cluster munitions across valleys and calling it restraint, and Lebanon has been told to take it on the chin because apparently that’s what good neighbours do now. Then Israel strolls into Beirut with an airstrike that kills a senior Hezbollah figure and still expects the world to treat this like an unfortunate misunderstanding. You don’t need a map to see what’s happening here. One side has been honouring the deal, the other has been testing how far they can push before anyone notices the ceasefire is a corpse. And if this wasn’t the last straw for Hezbollah, you’d have to ask what would be. Right, so a ceasefire only exists when both sides stop shooting, and Israel hasn’t stopped for more than five minutes at any point in the last year as far as Lebanon is concerned. Lebanon kept its side of Resolution 1701, Hezbollah held its fire, and Israel carried on as if the agreement was a technicality, the most recent events consisting of hitting refugee camps, dropping cluster munitions into rural valleys, k*lling officials in the south and now assassinating a senior figure in Beirut. So the idea that this thing has “fallen apart” is too generous by half. You can’t fall apart if you were never intact. What we’re looking at is a ceasefire being performed on one side and ignored on the other to greater and greater extent at that and Israel has been ignoring it from day one. That’s the situation on the Lebanese front right now. Israel has been escalating for a year straight, and Hezbollah has been holding its fire for a year straight. Because when Israel carried out an assassination in Beirut, in a city that was supposed to be safe under the terms both sides claimed to accept, what you saw wasn’t a sudden escalation, you saw the moment where the sham finally collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions. The thing about this front is that the pressure didn’t begin with the assassination, it’s been building step by step, and Lebanon has been absorbing the damage because the state can’t fight back and Hezbollah has been choosing not to escalate.

Palestine Action might have just got a huge boost, as Starmer's terror hypocrisy gets exposed by - of all places - MI6! Right, so you know the government’s lost the plot when the only people treated like terrorists in Britain are the ones trying to stop actual weapons being built. Because while ministers were busy criminalising cardboard signs and dragging Palestine Action supporters off the pavement outside the Ministry of Justice, and with the Judicial Review of this proscription, this news story becomes even more pertinent, their own intelligence service was off quietly forging a relationship with Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, HTS — a group who very much were committing acts of terror and had earned their proscription, all of which has now been lifted, because they now run the Syrian state. And they didn’t just talk to them at the time either, they built channels, they cultivated the relationship, and then they quietly took HTS off the terror list while slapping Palestine Action onto it. That’s not national security. That’s political convenience wearing a counterterrorism uniform. And now thus hypocritical mess may well walk into that Judicial Review courtroom with them. Has any government ever managed to undermine their own case like they have with this one before the hearing has even begun? Right, so if you look at the way the British state has handled Palestine Action over the past year – the arrests, the proscription, the dawn raids, the police turning up outside the Ministry of Justice to drag people off for holding cardboard signs and of course elsewhere around the country – and you can see exactly what they thought they were doing. They thought they had found a soft target. They thought the t*rrorism label would stick because it always has before. They thought the public would back away because people usually do when the state throws around words like “extremism” and “national security.” And they thought nobody would ever be able to hold up a mirror to their own conduct, because they never expected anyone to go digging in the one place they never want scrutiny: their own foreign policy networks. But now that mirror is up. And the reflection is catastrophic for them. Because the same government that criminalised people for supporting Palestine Action – a group that has never k*lled anyone, their weapon was not a loaded g*n or missile, but a tin of red paint – had been quietly maintaining channels with Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, an organisation that actually is responsible for killings, disappearances, t*rture sites, sectarian purges and v*olent rule in northern Syria.

Iran have released the seized tanker Talara, having kept its cargo and yet nobody has complained! The reason is genius. Right, so Iran has just released a tanker it picked up in the Strait of Hormuz, sent the crew on their way, let the hull drift back into the shipping lanes and quietly kept thirty thousand tonnes of petrochemical cargo that used to belong to someone tied—through one of those Cyprus shell companies nobody ever admits owning—to the ruling circles in Azerbaijan, the same Azerbaijan that supplies most of Israel’s crude. And we’re meant to believe this was just an “illegal consignment” issue, as if the IRGC Navy woke up one morning and decided to do some housekeeping. The press swallowed that line whole because it’s easier than asking why a state that hasn’t seized anything in months suddenly took an interest in a vessel parked this close to Israel’s energy lifeline. And decided to do something about it. Right, so Iran has just released the tanker it seized several days ago in the Strait of Hormuz, and the way this has been handled by the people who are supposed to explain global politics to the public tells you everything about the state of international reporting. They told you the ship had been diverted. They told you the crew were fine. They said Iran checked the cargo, declared it “illegal,” and let the vessel go. And that’s where they left it, as if a state actor stumbling across some dodgy paperwork on a petrochemical shipment is a story that starts and ends with administrative tidiness. They didn’t feel the need to ask why the cargo didn’t go back to its owners. They didn’t ask why the ship sailed out in ballast. They didn’t ask why a tanker with a Cyprus shell company for an owner and reported links to the ruling family of Azerbaijan was intercepted at all. They didn’t ask why Azerbaijan’s connection to Israel’s oil supply might matter. They didn’t ask about the timing. They didn’t ask anything that would put political weight behind the facts. They just reported the facts in a way that removed the weight from them, which is a trick states rely on constantly. The only place to start the story properly is with the release, not the seizure. Because the release is where the contradiction is.

Benjamin Netanyahu wandering the Syrian countryside like he owned the place has backfired, as Russia are now taking out a lease... Right, so Israel has spent months treating the Quneitra frontier like a bit of empty countryside nobody would miss, pushing in a little further each week and assuming Syria would just swallow it because the new leadership has been too busy rebuilding a state in its Al-Qaeda castoff image to fight over every inch of soil. And for a while that was true. Syria tried playing the good diplomatic citizen after sanctions were lifted, tried talking, tried keeping the West onside, and what did it get for that restraint? The Israeli prime minister strolling straight into the UN-monitored buffer zone with cameras rolling, as if the 1974 agreement between the two states was something he could wipe off with a spit polish. Here we go again and all of that when it comes to Israel. But when Russia suddenly reappeared in Quneitra days later, touring the line and preparing posts, it wasn’t nostalgia. It was Syria finally saying: “If Israel won’t respect the border, someone else will.” Right, so the simplest way to start is by saying what’s actually happening on Israel’s northern frontier without all the diplomatic varnish that’s been spread all over it. The border inside Quneitra isn’t stable. It hasn’t been stable for months. It hasn’t been treated as stable by the one state that insists it’s the victim of everyone else’s instability. Israel has been pushing deeper and deeper into Syrian territory, advancing into villages on the Syrian side of the line, setting up new points of control, and treating the 1974 Disengagement Agreement like it’s a helpful suggestion rather than an obligation. Everyone can see this because it’s happening in broad daylight.

Epstein leaks have just exposed links between a former Israeli PM, their cyber tech sector and Rothschild banking. Right, so the funny thing about this leak — if you can call any of this funny — is that it finally puts in writing what a lot of people have been saying for years but were dismissed as conspiratorial for even hinting at. Because if you’d told anyone a decade ago that the convicted trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, a former Israeli prime minister, the Rothschild banking dynasty and the world’s most notorious offensive cyber industry were all turning up in the same email chain, they’d have laughed it off as internet nonsense. And yet here we are, with various reports all coming out, all holding pieces of the same puzzle. The surprise isn’t that these people knew each other. The surprise is that the documents have surfaced at all, and that they show exactly the kind of pipeline everyone was told didn’t exist. Right, so the thing to grasp from the start is that this story feels explosive because people are treating it like four separate scandals stacked on top of each other: Epstein, Ehud Barak, Rothschild finance and Israel’s offensive cyber-weapons trade. But the moment you look at the sources, you realise these aren’t four stories. They’re four strands of the same system. And the reason it’s all coming out now is because the leak has given us a written record that shows exactly how those strands fit together, and once you see it, you can’t unsee it. You stop thinking in terms of individuals and start thinking in terms of machinery, because the emails don't show a conspiracy — they show a network, and the network makes far more sense than the personalities ever did. So start with Epstein, because everything else sits on top of that. You can’t understand the leak without understanding who Epstein actually was in the political ecosystem, and the problem is that the public version of Epstein’s story is too small. People reduce him to a trafficker. And he was a trafficker, that part is ugly and proven, but if he had been only that, he would have been isolated, not embraced. The bigger truth — the one the various news outlets have been documenting — is that Epstein built a network of influence that survived a criminal conviction because his role was more than social. He was a broker. He was a connector. He was the person powerful people went to when they wanted an introduction they couldn’t make themselves, or when they needed funding from someone who didn’t want their fingerprints on it. The logs show it.

Trump has managed to get his Gaza peace plan passed at the UN, but the fallout for him and Netanyahu over this con has only just begun. Right, so the UN Security Council has just signed off on Donald Trump chairing a foreign board to run Gaza, a multinational force with authority to use “all necessary measures” to disarm the very groups Israel has spent the last two years trying and failing to destroy whilst committing genocide, and a transition plan that keeps Israel’s perimeter exactly where it is while pretending the occupation has somehow ended. And the only people cheering are Israel and the Palestinian Authority, which should have been the giveaway from the start. Because when every faction actually living under the siege rejects the plan, when even the Jerusalem Post is warning this looks like 1982 Beirut all over again, and when Netanyahu is already talking about driving “Hamas and its supporters” out of the region, you can see what’s going on. This isn’t peace. It’s the same i*legal occupation having been rewritten in a different diplomatic font. Right, so the UN Security Council has just passed a “peace plan” for Gaza that Gaza didn’t write, Gaza didn’t approve, Gaza wasn’t asked to shape and Gaza is now being told it must live under, and that alone tells you exactly what kind of political game is being played here. It passed with thirteen votes in favour, Russia and China stepping aside with abstentions, arguably now letting the plan fail as it people start to see what its actually about and what is going on here and the Americans dressing it up as the diplomatic breakthrough they’ve been insisting is just around the corner, Trump bragging about ending another war, when this has never been war, its been genocide and he’s been the one mostly funding it; and everyone else pretending the optics are fine because, on paper, this looks like a stabilisation blueprint instead of what it actually is, which is an attempt to rebrand the occupation under international colours.

Germany is to restore arms exports to Israel in full despite their ongoing ceasefire breaches, but raids at home have exposed some peak hypocrisy. Right, so Germany has decided the ceasefire in Gaza is “stable” enough to restart weapons shipments to Israel from the 24 November, even though the UN and various news agencies have continued to have been logging violations almost as fast as they happen, on pretty much a daily basis and that tells you where Berlin’s head is frankly doesn’t it? They’re not watching the ceasefire; they’re watching for the moment they can say it’s respectable enough to turn the tap back on. And because they’ve convinced themselves that their Staatsräson, their belief that Germany’s historic responsibility towards Jews, erroneously tied as it is to the existence of Israel, outranks international law, the facts on the ground become something they can tidy away with a press line. But the same Germany that can’t bring itself to confront an occupying power has no trouble banning Islamic Activist Group Muslim Interaktiv, raiding homes across Hamburg, Berlin and elsewhere and calling it a victory for security, justifying it by saying they are unconstitutional, as Israel’s actions are unquestioningly protected within German law. One rule for Israel, another for Muslims, and Berlin still pretends that’s principle rather than a hierarchy of racism. Right, so Germany has decided to resume arms exports to Israel from 24 November and, when you strip out the packaging, it is the latest example of a country that still treats Israel as an exception to every rule it claims to believe in. The ceasefire that began on 10 October has been described by German government spokespeople as “stabilised,” even though the reporting and the UN’s own humanitarian office has shown repeated violations: Israeli troops firing on Palestinians during the truce, movement restrictions still in place, aid flows still nowhere near the level UN agencies say is required. Yet Berlin has announced that the August freeze on certain weapons will end next week, and the mechanics behind that decision tell you everything about where power sits and who Germany chooses to indulge. It is framed as a return to a “case-by-case” system, which sounds careful until you understand that case-by-case is how you approve something you already intend to approve, because it replaces a clear moral line with bureaucratic discretion.

Israel have got the final say in a US-Saudi deal, because guess who's really in charge? But the Saudis are having none of it... Right, so you’d think a country that builds the jet, pays for the jet, and signs off every nut and bolt on the jet would get to decide who actually flies the thing, but apparently not, because the moment Saudi Arabia asks for an F-35 the whole decision jumps across the Atlantic and lands in the one place that’s already said it won’t give an inch on Palestinian statehood. Israel has told the Trump administration the sale only goes ahead if Riyadh normalises with them it seems, and you don’t need to squint to see what’s happening. Saudi Arabia keeps its condition — no normalisation without a Palestinian state — and Israel keeps its own — no Palestinian state ever — so instead of solving the contradiction they’re trying to force it, using an American aircraft as their lever. And when a US jet turns into Israel’s bargaining chip, you can see exactly who’s steering the cockpit can’t you? Right, so the United States makes the jet, albeit along with several other countries making parts, but it sets the rules on who gets access to what component, and you would think that would mean the United States decides who gets an F-35 and who doesn’t wouldn’t you? But the moment Saudi Arabia steps forward and asks for the aircraft, the whole question shifts, because it isn’t Washington now making the call it seems, it isn’t the Pentagon, it isn’t Congress. It’s Israel. And Israel is not even bothering to hide what it’s doing here. We’ve got the likes of Axios reporting Israeli officials telling Trump’s people, in plain terms, that the F-35 sale to Saudi Arabia has to be conditioned on Riyadh fully normalising with Israel, and you don’t need to be an expert in anything to see what that is. That’s coercive conditionality. Dress it in polite language if you like. Strip the wording down and Israel is turning a US led weapons platform into a pressure tool to break a political red line that Saudi Arabia has held for two decades, which is that normalisation only happens once there is a credible path to a Palestinian state. And when you’ve reached the point where an American jet is being used to force the collapse of a foreign policy position that Israel cannot defeat at the negotiating table, you are not watching diplomacy anymore. You are watching leverage being applied because the politics don’t go Israel’s way. This is blackmail they are resorting to now is it not?

The case against eight protesters over their actions at a Gal Gadot film in London has fallen at the first hurdle & Zionist tears are falling! Right, so imagine trying to haul eight anti-genocide activists into court using a Thatcher-era anti-union law and watching the whole thing collapse before you could squeeze out a single Hollywood tear. That’s what happened here, and it tells you everything you need to know about the state of policing, the state of politics and the state of the “actress” at the centre of it, Gal Gadot, who has spent years defending Israeli v*olence and then acted surprised – possibly the best performance she’s ever put on - when protests followed her onto a London film set. The police reached for Section 241 — the picket-line law — as if chanting on a pavement were the same as blocking a factory gate, and the case disintegrated the moment the judge looked at it. So the activists walked out vindicated, the law snapped back into place, and the only thing left standing was the embarrassment of everyone who thought they could criminalise protest to protect a celebrity mouthpiece for a state accused of genocide. Right, so the first thing you say about this case is the thing the state hoped nobody would say out loud: Gal Gadot tried to drag eight Palestine-solidarity activists into court using a Thatcher-era anti-union law, and the entire prosecution collapsed before it even began. Not after months of trial. Not after contested evidence. Not after some dramatic cross-examination. It fell apart at the starting line. And when something this politically loaded disintegrates that quickly, you don’t have to dig for hidden motives or whispered conversations because the structure of the thing exposes itself. Gadot put her name to a prosecution that was always doomed, the police tried to force a square peg through a circular-shaped statute, and the activists paid the price until the law finally saw sense. And you start with Gadot because she’s the axis here. She isn’t some neutral Hollywood presence who wandered into the wrong protest.

Seizing asylum seekers valuables while ignoring public calls for a wealth tax on billionaires is a question Labour is failing to answer. Right, so the government says it can’t possibly tax billionaires — too complicated, too risky, they might leave, too upsetting for the people who actually matter — but it can take jewellery off an asylum seeker without breaking a sweat in exchange for letting them stay, but they are then in for a 20 year wait if they want to stay for good, offering up whatever baubles they managed to save, for no security at all. And they say that with a straight face, as if the public can’t see the difference between a family fleeing war with the last valuables they own and someone sitting on eight-figure assets that have doubled over the last decade. Well luckily MSM so-called journalists are falling over themselves in support of course. They call it “contribution”. They call it “fairness”. They call it “responsibility”. What it really is, is a government testing how much cruelty, how much evil in fact, it can get away with at the bottom of society while reassuring the people at the top that nothing will ever be asked of them. And if you think that logic stops with refugees, you haven’t been paying attention. Ordinary working class people have far more in common with these refugees than billionaires, this is who Labour really serve and if they thought they could get away with it with us, they would. So its time we stopped cheering this nonsense and saw it for what is – class war, by the party supposedly set up for us, that no longer fits that remit. Right, so the government has reached the point where it is preparing to take jewellery and other valuables off people seeking asylum in the United Kingdom, and when you look at that alongside its refusal to take anything meaningful from the billionaire class, a wealth tax, the whole thing stops being an immigration story and starts revealing something much clearer about how power operates now. Because when a government draws a line like that, it isn’t fumbling. It isn’t confused. It is announcing its loyalties. It is setting out who the state exists to protect and who the state exists to extract from. And when you have a policy designed to take possessions from traumatised families at the very same time that the wealthiest people in the country are held harmless and untouched, the story becomes unavoidable even if every newspaper in the country tries to steer your eyes anywhere else. So let’s say plainly what is happening.