Kernow Damo

Israel and the US - inexplicably - have tried it on with Iran AGAIN. Only this time they needed a third and they didn't play ball... Right, so the US and Israel are at it again. Another Iran plot. Another shadowy network. Another whisper of nefarious forces moving pieces across borders like a bad spy novel. Iran, they said, had tried to have Israel’s ambassador in Mexico assassinated. Bold claim. Presented like settled fact. Then Mexico walked in, told them to stop being so wet, and rubbished the claim completely. No reports whatsoever, they said. No investigation. No alert. Mexico didn’t argue. Mexico didn’t posture. Mexico didn’t even slow down. It just said there was nothing there. No file. No case. No attempt. Stop telling tales. The story didn’t fail because Iran pushed back. It failed because the place it was supposed to have happened refused to entertain the notion. Why, when matters between Israel and Iran have largely calmed down, is Israel and Trump trying it on again, especially in regards to a supposed event on the other side of the planet? Desperation just doesn’t seem to be a big enough word. Right, so they said Iran tried to have the Israeli ambassador in Mexico assassinated. The line presented as fact, delivered like something already proven. A senior US. official saying the Quds Force was behind it. Then more detail appeared, about recruitment routes, about intermediaries, about movement through Venezuela. So you’re trying to implicate them to now are you? Two birds with one stone is it? It’s the kind of detail that sounds like evidence if you’re not paying attention. But there was no investigation shown. No arrest. No intercept. No document. Just a claim stated with confidence, and the expectation that confidence would be enough. The old voice of power assuming the room would nod along with them. Then Mexico answered. And the room didn’t nod. It stopped. The Secretariat of Foreign Affairs didn’t hesitate. Didn’t soften. Didn’t defer. They said there were no reports whatsoever of any attempt. No case file. No alert. No joint operation. Nothing. The Secretariat of Security backed the statement without pause. Two agencies. Same line. Same finality. Mexico rejected the story wholesale.

Israel has done some pretty desperate things in order to paint itself as popular, but this takes the cake... Right, so Kazakhstan did not suddenly discover Israel last week. The relationship has been on the books since 1992. Embassies established. Trade flowing in quiet, functional lines. A UAV assembly contract was established in 2014. Medical systems moving one way, minerals the other. All of it known, established fact. All of it routine. And now the routine is being held up like some kind of major political win and a massive boost for Israel. Like the last 30 years is now some kind of seismic revelation. The announcement did not arrive because something changed. It arrived because something needed to be seen. Kazakhstan did not hold a stage for it. No ceremony. No language of shared purpose. Just an administrative acknowledgment placed into the open and left there. Donald Trump did all the singing and dancing. Israel needed some positive news a win somewhere for the precious Abraham Accords which are looking shaky at best right now, and the best Israel and Trump could do, was slap another name on a minor trade relationship of 30 years with Kazakhstan. What a bunch of losers. Right, so Kazakhstan didn’t just join the Abraham Accords, as you might have been led to believe they had just done. This is a story of optics borne out of Israeli desperation to be seen to have secured some kind of a win, but when you pull it apart, they’re losing hard and fast instead. The announcement was delivered as if it carried some sort of weight. As if it mattered. As if something decisive had suddenly shifted. In the immortal words of former British PM Theresa May, nothing has changed. The documents laying out Kazakhstan’s relationship with Israel have been there for three decades. Kazakhstan and Israel established full diplomatic relations in 1992. Embassies opened. Ambassadors exchanged. Trade agreements signed. The contact has never been broken. The relationship has never paused. There is no recognition to announce when recognition already exists. All this is about, is Trump slapping the name Abraham Accords on what already exists.

Israel tried to steer what everyone saw, frame by frame, post by post. But the footage spread faster than the narrative could hold. Whoops! Right, so Benjamin Netanyahu called it a Digital Iron Dome. Not the one in the sky, the one in your head. The idea was simple enough: if you can’t stop the bombs being seen, you can at least stop people understanding what they’re looking at. So the Israeli government signed the contracts, moved the money through the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs, hired the same US campaign operatives who sell presidents like detergent, and told the public to be “digital soldiers.” Fill the feeds. Drown the footage. Influence the search field so even ChatGPT speaks in their voice. And it might have worked, if Gaza hadn’t had cameras too. If the footage hadn’t moved faster than the messaging. If the audience hadn’t stopped believing the statements. The Digital Iron Dome didn’t fail because someone broke it. It failed because reality got there first and Israel itself still hasn’t cottoned on to that notion. Right, so Haaretz were the ones who first published the contracts, Israeli media itself, which really does say something. But that is the point of entry for this story. Not a leak, not a whisper, not an accusation circling in commentary. Signed agreements. Ministry of Diaspora Affairs disbursing public money to US strategic communications firms during the bombardment of Gaza. The objective written in the language of public diplomacy, but the targets were American churches, social platforms, and the algorithmic routes that decide which story surfaces first when people search for such things using AI services. The paperwork was not subtle because it did not need to be. The state assumed control of the narrative field as a constant. Their hasbara has delivered for them for years, sure its taken a bit of a knock lately, but surely if we throw enough money at it, we can regain control. Israeli thinking. In their heads, they had no reason to imagine that control could fail. The documents showed a multimillion-dollar campaign. Haaretz reported the scope: the Israeli state seeking to influence US public opinion while the genocide was ongoing.

A massive headache has landed for dozens of Israeli leaders not least Netanyahu himself, as the world just got a bit smaller for them. Right, so Turkey has now put Netanyahu on the arrest list. Not a metaphor. An actual warrant. Genocide, crimes against humanity, names spelled out in black ink. Netanyahu. Ben-Gvir. Israel Katz. The general staff. The men who signed off, nodded through, looked away. Thirty-seven of them in total, so this is more than just another diplomatic rebuke. It’s a full on booking sheet. The thing is with such moves they are more than just symbolic, because they are based in statute. It sits in a court’s registry. It exists in the world. It will still exist when the tanks pull back, when the cameras move on, and when the politicians and the media pretend they didn’t see what we all saw. The ICC already has its own warrants open. Now another state has issued their own and strengthened that case, another state has joined the file and again, one of the names on the paperwork is the guy who runs Israel. Right, so the Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office has issued arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and thirty-six senior Israeli officials. The filing named genocide and crimes against humanity in Gaza. The warrants were lodged through the Turkish penal code under Articles 76 and 77. The legal basis was universal jurisdiction in cases of mass atrocity. The paperwork moved through Istanbul’s criminal court. It has been reported that the likes of Hamas have welcomed the action as a step towards accountability. Israel dismissed it as a political show. So who’s been named then Damo? Well, not all 37 officials that I can find, but those that have been named include Netanyahu, War Minister Israel Katz, Itamar Ben-Gvir, Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir, and head of the navy David Saar Salama. These are the officials responsible for military, internal security, and general staff command. The warrants came after the International Criminal Court had of course already applied for arrest warrants against Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant. The ICC filings named starvation of civilians as a method of warfare, m*rder, persecution, and inhumane acts. The ICC Prosecutor’s statement is public. The ICC charge sheet is public. The two warrant tracks now sit alongside one another: the ICC at the level of international criminal law, Turkey at the level of state jurisdiction.

The UK's role in failing Sudan goes beyond arming the UAE - they factored in a price on the lives of the Sudanese people too. Right, so they’ll tell you Sudan is a tragedy. That it is distant, unfortunate, chaotic, one of those conflicts the world can’t quite get a grip on. But that’s not true. Sudan is not a tragedy. It is, at least in part, an accounting decision. The UK cut its aid budget back in in 2020. Folded Department for International Development into the Foreign Office. Scattered the people who know how to stop mass killings before they start. And when Sudan fell in 2023, when the Rapid Support Forces were burning homes in Geneina and the likes of Human Rights Watch was calling it ethnic cleansing, the Foreign Office sat down and looked at four options. One of those options was civilian protection. But they decided to say balls to that and picked the cheapest one instead. Because the question was never “How do we stop this?” The question asked instead was “What’s the price of Sudanese lives?” And they priced them out accordingly. Right, so back in 2020 the UK government cut the foreign aid budget from 0.7 per cent of national income to 0.5 per cent. It was presented as a financial adjustment, a necessary step due to economic pressure, more cuts, more austerity as we’ve become sick and tired of here, all framed in the language of responsibility and tightening belts, we’re all in this together and all of that chuff, but the effect was structural and long-term. Billions of pounds were removed from the systems designed to prevent and mitigate humanitarian collapse. This was not a single-year measure that snapped back. It became the new baseline, a new normal, a quiet reduction in capacity to act before v*olence escalates. It did not make headlines in the language of crisis. It made headlines as policy, cutting foreign aid was made to sound reasonable, better them than us. And policy feels bloodless in the moment it is announced. But policy is what determines whether, three years later, civilians live or die when a state fractures.

When a state is pushed to the point where it can no longer absorb the pressure, it doesn’t bend — it breaks. Lebanon just reached that point. Right, so they called it a ceasefire. Said hostilities would stop at four in the morning on 27 November 2024. Wrote it down. Signed it. Announced it like a closing ceremony. Hezbollah withdrew north of the Litani River. Lebanese Army took up the south. UNIFIL logged the maps. The paperwork was clean, but it’s all that was. The air was not. Israeli drones never left the sky. Israeli shells never really stopped finding the same villages they had found before. The ceasefire existed in statements, not in practice and so it has continued for almost a year now. But despite Israel’s thousands of ceasefire violations, then came the pressure on Lebanon didn’t it. Not on Israel to stop the strikes. On Lebanon to disarm Hezbollah. Disarm the resistance to secure the border, while Israel keep on firing, keep on occupying territory. Hand over the only deterrent to the literal threat. Call it stability. Call it peace. Call it anything except what it is. A quiet demand being made under bombardment. Well Hezbollah hasn’t returned fire. Not yet. But it is also increasingly no longer ruling it out either. Right, so the Lebanese ceasefire. The wording was explicit. The time was fixed. Four in the morning, 27th November last year. Hostilities to stop. The area south of the Litani River was to be secured by the Lebanese Army. Hezbollah to remain north of that line. Israel to cease offensive operations against Lebanese territory. UNIFIL to monitor compliance. The ceasefire was presented as the practical implementation of Resolution 1701. The same resolution that has governed the Lebanon-Israel border since 2006. No clause requiring disarmament. No clause requiring surrender. A freeze. A line. A halt. Hezbollah pulled its fighters back. The Litani became the marker. The Lebanese Army increased its deployment in the south. UNIFIL patrol logs continued. The operational map remained visible. The ceasefire existed in writing. But it didn’t exist in movement, nor in the field in the field. The reality held from Lebanon’s side, but as suual when it comes to ceasefires, not from Israel’s. Israeli drones remain over southern Lebanon to this day. They remain over the valleys and villages. The engine noise overhead has never stopped. UNIFIL continue to record the flights, even above their own heads. The violations have been documented pretty much daily for all this time. There were also strikes of course.

Washington really thought Venezuela would just fold. Instead they might be about to go hypersonic on Trump instead! Right, so they’ve been blowing up boats in the Caribbean. Not drug labs. Not submarines full of cartel cash. Boats. Wooden hulls. Fibre skiffs. The kind used by fishermen who go out before sunrise and don’t come back if the engines fail. The footage goes up on X with patriotic music and censored frames, like the censorship is meant to make it look clinical. It doesn’t. It makes it look like they don’t want you to see who was on the deck when the missile hit and that’s largely because they don’t even know themselves. The War Secretary calls them narco-terrorists. The DEA’s own map says the drugs comes from Mexico and Colombia. They don’t pause. They don’t correct. They don’t blink. Because you’re not meant to check. You’re meant to clap. The United States calls this counter-narcotics. Caracas calls it pre-invasion shaping. And now Moscow has turned up offering to give Venezuela hypersonic missiles. Right, so the ongoing strikes by the US on alleged drug boats, which mysteriously never get evidenced, corroborating footage never actually corroborates anything, but still more military assets find themselves in the Caribbean anyway. The vessels hit were described as narcotics-trafficking boats. The classification was asserted at the moment of destruction. The identification of the people k*lled would come later, and then it didn’t come at all. The images were fire on water, black hulls, no faces. The statements described precision. The records did not show names. No public list of victims was released because the US didn’t know them. The campaign sat in the gap between visibility and proof. The Pentagon confirmed that strikes were taking place. The justification was constant: narco-terrorism, maritime interdiction, national security. The phrase “narco-terrorism” entered the official vocabulary. The term carried weight. The public was expected to recognise it as threat. The casualties were unnamed. The context remained undefined. The footage was provided without verification. The press releases carried the line. The narrative travelled faster than the evidence ever could, not hard when more and more people surmise there isn’t any to actually present.

You don’t offer tax holidays to people who already want to live there. You do that when the belief is gone. Zionism has evidently had its day then. Right, so Israel is offering new immigrants and returning residents a zero per cent income tax rate in 2026, rising in stages afterward, on earnings up to one million shekels. That sits on top of the ten-year exemption on foreign income already available under the Law of Return. Full tax holidays. During a wartime deficit. All while Israel commits genocide in Gaza. The mass killing of civilians, the destruction of hospitals, homes, universities, and the forced displacement of the population as have been documented over 2 long years and amid multiple violations of the current ceasefire. The record, despite Israel’s best efforts is public. The death toll is civilian. The siege very much engineered by them. At the same time, Israelis have been leaving in droves, especially those working in the tech sector, which Israel is so proud of. The departures are logged, the economy’s freefall is documented. And the government is trying to sell these tax breaks as some kind of Zionist revival. When a “homeland” has to pay its own people to come “home”, then clearly it is nothing of the sort to them. Zionism is clearly finished if you have to bribe Jews to engage with it. Right, so a state calling itself the Jewish homeland has begun paying Jews to live there. Israel is offering new immigrants and returning residents a zero per cent income tax rate for the year 2026, with the rate rising in stages afterward. The policy was announced to great fanfare. Therefore it is not a rumour. It is not a trial. It is a budget measure. The government has set out the timeline and the thresholds and the eligibility conditions. The offer sits alongside an existing ten-year exemption on foreign income for new immigrants and those who have lived abroad for a decade or longer. Anyone, anywhere paying tax will know this is not a minor offer, these are not marginal deductions. These are full exemptions. The state is suspending its claim to tax revenue full stop for a defined group of arrivals. The eligibility process runs through the Population and Immigration Authority and the Tax Authority. The classification of an applicant as a new immigrant or senior returning resident determines access to the exemption. Proof of foreign residence for ten consecutive years is required for the foreign income exemption. The requirements are listed in the residency determination guidelines.

The Israeli broadcast field was supposed to be sealed to control their propaganda. Well now Iran has started speaking Hebrew and its genius! Right, so Israel built its war on the assumption that nobody inside Israel would ever hear the truth. The Military Censor screens the news before it airs. The broadcast networks stay inside the security frame. The public receives the war through an approved script and we thought our media was bad. Gaza is shown as a target map, not a place where people live. The ICJ ruling naming plausible genocide is not in the nightly bulletins. The UN reporting on starvation is not on the main channels. The collapse of hospitals and neighbourhoods is not presented as fact. The state needs the silence. And so information warfare is about to become the next battlefront. Iran is setting up a Hebrew-language television channel. Not for dialogue. Not for diplomacy. But for entry. And Israel is losing its mind over it. Right, so Iran has approved the establishment of a Hebrew-language television channel. The directive comes through the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution, they do have some very on the nose departmental titles don’t they? The council recorded the decision in its policy register. Foreign Minister Masoud Pezeshkian chaired the session, he’s behind this move. Implementation sits with the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, the Iranian state broadcaster. The purpose is to counter the propaganda of the Zionist regime in the media space. The announcement did not include a launch date for this it has to be said, but the network structure already exists. IRIB broadcasts in English through PressTV, in Arabic through Al-Alam, in Spanish through HispanTV. A Hebrew-language station extends a standing broadcast architecture rather than creates a new one, so what they’re planning here is quite feasible. The field it will enter is heavily controlled though. Israel operates a Military Censor with legal authority to review publications. Israeli news organisations submit sensitive material to the censor before publication. Haaretz has documented newsroom procedures. Journalists describe clearance as standard workflow. The censorship is not symbolic. The directives are binding. Material can be blocked or amended before broadcast. The wider media environment is concentrated too. Reporters Without Borders ranks Israel 101st of 180 in its press freedom index. Ownership is clustered among political and commercial elites.

Israel didn’t expect the cost of this war to hit back, but the financial ground beneath it just shifted and matters are escalating. Right, so they tell you genocide is complicated. They tell you it’s tragic, regrettable, unresolvable, a matter of perspectives, a conflict older than memory. They say this while the paperwork sits in plain sight evidencing all the whys and wherefores though. On 26 January 2024, the International Court of Justice ruled that genocide in Gaza was plausible. Not debated. Not speculated. Plausible. And when that ruling landed, the law changed. A duty switched on. Every state, every public institution, every bank tied into the European system became responsible for what it funded next. The European Investment Bank kept its project pipeline open though. The listings are public. The dates are visible. Nobody hid anything. They didn’t need to. They assumed you would be too overwhelmed to read a database. They assumed you would look away. They always do. The problem this time is: someone didn’t. The Hind Rajab Foundation read the documents. And now the bank is on the record and they are getting dragged to court it seems. And this carries major consequences for Israel and those facilitating their funding. Right, so the ICJ ruled that the charge of genocide in Gaza was plausible, we all know this by now don’t we? The ruling did not conclude the case, that is very much ongoing. But it do something of at least equal weight to my mind. It imposed a legal duty on states to prevent assistance to the acts under investigation. That duty applied immediately. It did not wait for appeals. It did not wait for a final verdict. It didn’t need to. It landed the moment the order was issued. The court’s language was explicit. States must ensure they do not aid or assist a genocide while it is being examined. That duty is not complicated. It is binding, under treaty law that every European state has ratified. The European Investment Bank is the public development bank of the European Union. It is not an ordinary lender. It does not operate on commercial discretion. Its financing decisions are part of the legal fabric of the European bloc. It is owned by the member states. Its commitments are governed by EU law. It publishes its operating framework. It publishes its environmental and social compliance standards. It places human rights compliance as a stated condition of financing. These are eligibility rules for public funds.