Kernow Damo

Right, so around 100,000 people are now calling for a media inquiry into what happened to Jason Arday.

At the same time, Andy Burnham's Government is considering whether the solution to the internet being a dumping ground for fake news is to give the largest newspaper groups and television news channels special access to the top of your feed, because they are oh so trustworthy. Keir Starmer’s last gasp policy drive as this was of course, but which Burnham has now inherited, seen by them as though the fix for those pesky kids and their independent and alternative media, is to let the mainstream players pile even more of their dross in front of you, the very reason I daresay, so many of you turned to the internet for your news content to begin with.

So on one hand, we have demands for an inquiry into appalling press behaviour being demanded by thousands and on the other, a government-backed round of algorithmic favours for the very press owners who need to answer some serious questions about a witch-hunt about destroying a man’s life, who was not even in the public eye to speak of, that they have passed off as journalism, because it’s anything but journalism. Journalism is about holding power to account; what this was, was a lynching and the so called mainstream press followed one after the other like a bunch of sheep who have discovered a sudden fondness for bloodsports.

The press is being asked to account for itself after 249 articles about a single Black professor, while the Government is weighing whether parts of that very industry should get a boost from online platforms such as YouTube.

Even the best of satirists would look at the timing of this and say nah, this one can’t be played for laughs.

Jason Arday has become the test case this trusted-news plan should frankly get binned off over immediately.

Right, so Itamar Ben-Gvir appeared on former Israeli hostage Rom Braslavski's podcast to complain that Netanyahu had reduced strikes in Gaza under the ceasefire.

He of course wanted the strikes ramped up again, to no surprise whatsoever, but while explaining his reasoning, he managed to undermine his own security justification in a single sentence, leaving Netanyahu holding the burnt remains of what he was trying to promote by way of another Israel led Gaza deal to the world.

The word to pay attention to here is "targeted".

Because that word lasts about as long as a snowball in the Sahara. Thirty or forty every night.

You may have heard that call elsewhere in independent media, but just keep that number in mind for a moment, because what follows takes hold of his argument, stuffs it in a cannon, and fires it straight into the Sun.

According to the legal framework set by Israel's own High Court, that is supposed to mean an individually identified person, based on solid and verifiable information, who is directly taking part in hostilities. Less harmful options should be used if possible, and each strike must meet necessity and proportionality on its own facts.

At least, that's the official story.

Ben-Gvir starts with a nightly number, then says those killed do not even have to pose an immediate danger. What he is doing is swapping an individual, case-by-case test for a quota and his own judgment about who should live and who should die instead.

Right, so Saudi Arabia has spent years backing the government-aligned side in Yemen. Part of the promise was that its side could rebuild things, run things and offer people something other than permanent war, that of course the Saudi’s themselves in no small part have caused. Mocha port was supposed to be part of that. And then along came the Houthis.

Saudi Arabia channels much of this rebuilding work through the Saudi Development and Reconstruction Program for Yemen, which was established in 2018. It collaborates with the recognised Yemeni government and local authorities to fund roads, ports, power stations, hospitals, schools and water projects, while also aiming to strengthen government institutions. The political idea is fairly clear: make the Yemen controlled by Riyadh's allies appear stable, governable and economically productive. Make them the good guys because they are Saudi aligned. Mocha was supposed to be part of that demonstration.

Except now, the evidence is, quite literally, now burning.

Mocha port. Smoke rising. Boats damaged. Expansion machinery hit.

The port director reports that commercial and maritime operations have been suspended after repeated Houthi attacks. Seven people killed, he says. Around sixteen million dollars in losses. Some 1,300 workers are now without their income.

It was meant to be expanding, not auditioning for the lead in Yemen's version of the Towering Inferno.

Instead, it is now not even operational.

Back to square one, then.

Right, so Israel's propaganda operation told everyone to check their facts about Gaza, and, unsurprisingly, checking those facts leads you right back to Israel's own state-funded propaganda. It’s like handing the burglar the keys to the evidence room, then acting surprised when the trail ends at his own front door. Bibi the Burglar apparently.

Because when investigators actually did what Bibi suggested, check those receipts, demand truth, they found themselves in a digital network of websites made not for people, but for search engines, web crawlers, and AI bots. Fill them with search-optimised nonsense, get them indexed, and when someone asks a chatbot about Gaza, one of those pages might show up as a 'source.' No secret back door into ChatGPT is needed. Just stock the shelves and hope the robot librarian picks your book of propaganda first. The trail led through Brad Parscale’s Clock Tower X, the US political-media outfit hired to do the work, then through Havas Media Germany, the intermediary named in the foreign-agent filing, and back to the State of Israel on whose behalf the campaign was being run. That matters because these were not random websites with a suspiciously familiar line. They were part of a documented state-backed operation.

They said to follow the source. So people did.

Bad advice, Bibi.

Right, so behold, Trump's Lebanon framework, presented in all its real-world mess. It’s turned out to be less art of the deal and more like finger painting whilst blindfolded.

It's a US-brokered plan that ties Israeli withdrawal to Lebanese army deployment and some supposed 'verified disarmament,' but there's no deadline anywhere. Israel even gets a say in when it's time to leave, which is a bit like letting the fox decide when the henhouse is safe.

Damaged buildings, smoke drifting over southern Lebanon, and Israeli attacks continue while Israeli ministers rehearse their squatters' rights routine as if they're about to teach a class on the subject

And Benjamin Netanyahu, the escape artist of politics, has somehow managed to lock himself inside his own box of tricks here and swallow the key. A typical Israeli Houdini act from all blame and responsibility hasn’t quite been pulled off this time, if this was Chinese water torture, he’d currently be going blue in the face.

This mistake he’s made is making staying in Lebanon part of his I’m the indispensable one, Israel cannot be safe without me routine. Therefore if he leaves, he looks weak before the upcoming election in October. If he stays, he tramples all over Trump's so-called diplomatic achievement, live on camera, like a toddler smashing a sandcastle. Which is awkward, since the man who has built his whole image on keeping the USA good flowing, being the man who can control all Presidents and can defy Washington if it steps out of line, now needs Washington to bail him out of his own mess. And Trump, always the master of dangling carrots, still hasn't given Bibi the one thing he's desperate for.

Right, so Israel decided it was time for another round of warfare inside Syria. Apparently, it is not a proper week unless something explodes across yet another border for them it seems. Nothing unusual here, though sadly is there? Israel bombing someone, be it Gaza or Lebanon or the West Bank has become so routine it barely gets a mention on the news, so maybe Syria will liven things up a bit. Except this time, Channel 13 have added a bit of a twist by describing the targets as Turkish. Why stick to the usual when you can bring a NATO member into the mix, that’s bound to get the media excited. But then, another twist: Donald Trump has apparently told Netanyahu to pack it in and put his missiles away. It’s gone down about as well with some of his ministers as you might have expected it to. That was Israel's deranged defence minister, Israel Katz, sounding like a bouncer at a Tel Aviv nightclub, warning Turkish President Erdoğan not to mess with Israel. So much chest-thumping you might think Katz was auditioning for a protein powder advert. But this was Trump's response when Netanyahu mentioned Turkey when last he visited not so long ago. Not exactly the answer Netanyahu had scribbled at the top of his Hannukah wish list, is it? Because according to this report, Israel's strike was denied. Turkish interests in Syria were effectively made off-limits, and the thing stopping Israel was not a Syrian missile battery. It was Turkey's importance to the man in the White House. And hat might now be the strongest guardrail Syria has got against further Israeli attacks and incursions, because it is not something Netanyahu can send a fighter jet to destroy. Now, before half of YouTube starts shouting that Trump has stopped Israel from bombing Turkey, let's slow down, because the original report does not give us enough detail to say that. What Channel 13 revealed is that the White House rejected an Israeli request, made several weeks earlier, to attack what the channel called Turkish targets inside Syria. We do not now for sure what "Turkish targets" means, but we can certainly have an educated guess.

Right, so Benjamin Netanyahu has spent the last several months strutting around like a peacock with a megaphone, insisting Iran’s missile program was toast for years. Meanwhile, Pete Kegsbreath, who is never one to let a good exaggeration go to waste, said the US had definitely, most certainly and almost assuredly set Iran’s missile machinations back for decades. Decades! Which is a hell of a long time, especially when US intelligence was already quietly muttering to itself ‘It’ll months if we’re lucky’.

They at least had some semblance of contact with reality it seems, because by that point Iranian bulldozers and dump trucks were already clearing access to the underground missile sites, undoing a lot of the damage far sooner than not only Whiskey Pete was musing, but also in the Israeli military as well.

It has left Benjamin Netanyahu now contemplating whether he actually needs to bomb Iran all over again at this point, just to keep up the charade that he’d actually achieved anything the first time around, it’s just a case of convincing an increasingly embittered Trump to pay for it all for him, and keep on supplying those dwindling offensive and defensive capabilities.

Iran is rebuilding its military far faster than expected and already churning out new drones, which does put a rather large, missile-shaped dent in all those declarations of victory, doesn’t it?

Right, so Donald Trump's conflict with Iran was meant to show that America still dominates the region.

He is of course also still deluding himself that the US controls the Strait of Hormuz. He says it's complete control.

And yet as seemingly sure as night follows day, something else comes out to remind us as if we need it, that his grip on reality is a slippery one. American embassies are now getting ready to work with reduced staff, as more Americans say enough is enough and pack their bags. Diplomats who left may not finish their terms, and families who thought their absence from the region would be short may now have to accept they might never come back.

Same war. Two quite different ideas of victory then.

So much for the big, beautiful victory Trump keeps promising. Turns out, you cannot tweet your way out of a diplomatic evacuation. Trump has managed to create a mess here that he cannot bomb his way out of, since the people now fleeing are the only ones who might actually know how to end this farce should the Iran war ever end up officially ending and when the time comes. And yet the Cheeto-dusted Commander-in-Chief is, of course, very proud of his Hormuz performance. America owns it. Iran doesn't. Trump does. Presumably, he is having the deeds framed and hung somewhere at Mar-A-Lago He has ships. He has aircraft. He has what he calls a wall of steel. And if Iran tries anything, he says, they'll be blown away. That is Trump's entire idea of power, really isn’t it? Can I blow something up? Yes? Then I must be winning.

Right, so Donald Trump's major campaign against the International Criminal Court has hit a rather big snag. The American people themselves. Well, some of them at least anyway.

Four American organisations now say Trump's ICC sanctions have affected them as well.

Not because Donald has personally marched into Human Rights Watch headquarters with his little book of sanctions, all written out in gold sharpie or sent the Treasury in to rob them of their lunch money, but because the sanctions are making it more difficult, and sometimes impossible, for them to continue doing things like legal representation, ICC submissions, human-rights research, advocacy, working with sanctioned Palestinian groups, and even just the bare minimum of the actual humanitarian work.

And now they're taking him to court over it.

That's Human Rights Watch, the Centre for Constitutional Rights, American Friends Service Committee, and the Open Society Institute.

Four American organisations.

And they're not just saying Trump is being unfriendly to the ICC. They argue his sanctions are interfering with real work. Legal work. Human-rights work. Advocacy. Cooperation with people and organisations caught up in this sanctions regime. For example, some report they've had to stop legal representation connected to ICC cases and hold back submissions they would otherwise have made to the court.

So no, these groups haven't officially been put on some sort of a Trump blocklist.

But if you can no longer do something because someone else has been sanctioned, and because interacting with them, working with them, or even dealing with them could bring a whole set of legal and financial troubles down on you, then honestly, the difference starts to seem pretty theoretical.

Especially when you're the one forced to stop.

And this is where Marco Rubio's late-night pitch for American virtue starts to unravel faster than a cheap sweater in a tumble dryer.

Because the Trump administration hasn't described any of this as an attack on human-rights organisations or lawyers in America.

Actually, quite the opposite. America, according to Rubio, is the innocent party here.

The ICC is the dangerous one.

Right, so Israel has already faced criticism over Tommy Robinson, but it seems the fallout has not gone away and if anything, Israel’s problems off the back of this have only gotten bigger.

In October 2025, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, AKA Robinson AKA Tommy Ten-Names travelled to Israel at the personal invitation of Amichai Chikli, Israel’s Minister for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism. And even for Israel and it’s Zionist fan club, this was a tough pill to swallow. He is as we know a British far-right, anti-Islam activist whose politics had already made him toxic to many of the very British Jewish organisations Chikli’s ministry was supposedly there to engage with, literally Chikli’s remit as that is. The Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Jewish Leadership Council, infamous bodies as they are, publicly rejected the invitation, describing Robinson as representing the worst of Britain, while the chair of the Knesset’s own Diaspora Affairs Committee called bringing him to Israel a “slap in the face” to British and Diaspora Jews.

The Knesset later confirmed that Robinson had indeed come at Chikli’s invitation, and the controversy became serious enough to trigger a parliamentary committee hearing. A Foreign Ministry official told that hearing that, to the best of his knowledge, the visit had not even been brought before the ministry, while the Jewish Agency’s Yigal Palmor said it had caused “great diplomatic harm” and gained Israel nothing.

So this was hardly Chikli inviting some mildly controversial British conservative over for coffee. He had deliberately embraced a figure whom prominent British Jewish bodies, most of the bloody country I would like to think, themselves had publicly rejected, and then managed to provoke criticism from inside Israel’s own institutions for doing it.