Trump has demanded massive investment in Venezuela’s oil and promised protection — and the oil companies have refused, calling it uninvestable. Right, so a US president has just told oil companies to pour a hundred billion dollars into another country and take its oil, as if ownership is already settled and paperwork is an afterthought and they’ve told him where he can stick it instead. Donald Trump did the pitch. The art of the deal as he loves to call it. He promised protection. He promised safety. He promised the oil would be theirs. And the companies who are supposed to make money from American power, through oil, didn’t bite. They called Venezuela uninvestable instead and walked. And here’s why, aside from the fact they aren’t as stupid as Caligula Trump is. Because when the firms that normally cash in on US pressure won’t touch the deal – and let’s face it, these companies have done well out of this before - something is clearly different this time. The threats still exist, the sanctions still land, the seizures still happen, but the payoff doesn’t show up. It isn’t there. This isn’t a safe bet. And the oil giants have said thanks, but no thanks. Right, so Donald Trump has been doing that thing he always does, where he talks like the state is a personal repo man and the world is a warehouse. Venezuela’s oil will be “ours”, Venezuela’s oil will “rebuild” itself under American control, and the only thing standing between him and a trophy-barrel photo op is the small technicality of reality. Except this time reality has turned up wearing a suit and calling itself “capital discipline”, and it has told him, in front of everyone, that Venezuela is “uninvestable”. Uninvestable. That word is the story in itself. Because it isn’t a moral objection, and it isn’t even a political objection in the principled sense. It’s a profit objection. It’s the industry saying: if you want us to do the physical work of extracting, shipping, insuring, financing, contracting, and standing behind the paper that makes all of that tradable, then you need to give us something we can sell to boards, insurers, banks, and courts. And right now, you can’t.

The UK government owns part of the supply system of the Sudan genocide it claims to oppose and now its all comng out. Right, so the UK hasn’t just been caught selling arms to the wrong people again - what’s come out now shows the British state is financially tied into the logistics of a genocidal war it claims to oppose. That’s the change. The cost of that isn’t optics, it’s that a whole set of excuses Britain has relied on for years no longer survive contact with reality. Once you’re invested in the infrastructure that keeps a war supplied, sanctions stop being pressure and start being theatre. From here on, the claim that responsibility ends at export licences doesn’t hold, and neither does the idea that this is about oversight mistakes or bad paperwork. Because this setup didn’t happen by accident, it didn’t emerge overnight, and it certainly doesn’t benefit the people being slaughtered. We need to look at how this arrangement actually works, why it’s always dressed up as something harmless, and why once again the UK government has been caught doing something in our name with our money, that we should have known a lot more about. Right, so the British government is it would appear financially embedded in the very infrastructure that sits inside the arms supply architecture of the genocide in Sudan that it publicly condemns, sanctions, and claims to oppose. This goes beyond just arms sales to the UAE finding their way to Darfur and the hands of the Rapid Support Forces. Through British International Investment, the UK’s foreign investment body as that is, wholly owned by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, so a government institution, the UK state holds a minority equity stake in Berbera port in Somaliland, a port controlled operationally by DP World, a Dubai-based logistics firm and embedded in a wider Emirati logistics network that investigations and expert assessments have linked to the arming of the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan.

The US has walked away from international bodies, seized oil tankers at sea, and forced NATO to plan around a Greenland threat - its all connected. Right, so Donald Trump has just ordered the United States to walk away from sixty-six international organisations, including thirty-one UN bodies, at the same time as US forces, with British support, are physically seizing oil tankers in international waters and daring Russia to respond, all while NATO quietly starts planning Arctic contingencies because Trump won’t rule out taking Greenland from a NATO ally. Some of that you’ll have heard something about, some if it you won’t have though, only getting served half a story. And that’s because taken together, that combination has a cost. It strips out the restraints that normally slow escalation, it drags allies into enforcement actions they don’t control, and it hard-codes retaliation risk into things as boring as shipping insurance and port access. This isn’t about Trump saying wild things or rattling sabres. This is about what stops working once the US treats international rules as optional paperwork and turns alliances into tools for coercion instead of brakes on power. And we wonder why talk of World War Three keeps ratcheting up. Right, so Donald Trump has now ordered the United States to pull out of sixty-six international organisations, including thirty-one United Nations bodies, and to stop participation and funding “as soon as possible”. He has then forced NATO take consider contingencies against the US over Greenland and all of that has been paired that with a new kind of maritime enforcement that looks, to anyone outside the Washington bubble, like a doctrine of armed economic strangulation dressed up as sanctions compliance, and it has already pulled Britain in as operational support because of course Keir Starmer got involved and picked his side. This is the part that keeps getting missed, when we look at the Seizing Greenland story, the Venezuela mess and Russian tankers getting seized, because this is the part of the story that doesn’t arrive with explosions or sirens. It arrives as memos, and bland official language that makes coercion sound like procedure.

UK Lawyers for Israel have been turned away by another tribunal, and that refusal makes one thing unavoidable: the tactic itself is now the problem. Right, so UK Lawyers for Israel has just lost again, another attempt to strip a British-Palestinian surgeon of his medical licence has gone nowhere, and the cost of that failure isn’t just embarrassment, it’s the slow collapse of a tactic that depends on people not noticing how often it fails. This is the tenth time Ghassan Abu-Sittah has been dragged through legal or regulatory process for highlighting what is going on in Gaza, what he has witnessed, who he has had to treat and why, and the part that should grab you isn’t the allegation, it’s the outcome. That consistent outcome, because when the same group keeps escalating and keeps being knocked back, something bigger starts to jam. What stops working here isn’t one complaint, it’s the assumption that you can keep using law and procedure as a blunt instrument to scare critics into silence over Israel now, without the system learning who’s doing it and why and taking an increasingly dim view of such tactics. Because once that assumption breaks, the whole pressure model changes, not just for Abu-Sittah, but for anyone watching how dissent over Israel gets policed in Britain, who’s been allowed to do the policing and how increasingly they are being found out themselves. Right, so UK Lawyers for Israel has just walked away from another attempt to put British-Palestinian surgeon Ghassan Abu-Sittah through the wringer, not for anything medial, but for who he has consistently attacked over what he has witnessed and what he has had to treat whilst operating in Gaza and the part that matters is not so much the allegation but the outcome of the process, because the outcome keeps landing the same way when it reaches a tribunal or a regulator that has to apply an actual test. Abu-Sittah has just been cleared at a tribunal in Manchester, with the accusations thrown out. The move was another attempt to deprive him of his medical licence, it has not succeeded, and it has been reported as the tenth such attempt to do this to him, because of his outspokenness by this pro Israel group of lawyers.

The US has pulled embassy staff from Israel and Lebanon, so is that an admission that Israel’s escalations are no longer containable? Right, so the US has pulled embassy staff out of Israel and Lebanon. Not a statement, not a warning, not a briefing — people physically moved. So why have they done that then unless something fundamental has already changed? Because governments don’t do that unless they think things have spun beyond their control. Israel is still striking Lebanon. Hezbollah still hasn’t responded yet. Iran has already said talk now counts as action as Israel continue the smack talk. And Washington, the same Washington that keeps pretending this is all manageable, has suddenly decided its own people shouldn’t now be standing too close to it. So what’s changed that we aren’t being told about, because Israel’s attitude towards Iran and Lebanon doesn’t seem to have changed. Well something must have, because the US isn’t safely on the sidelines, and all the “nothing to see here” language starts sounding like nervous cover when people are apparently being pulled out of the area. Put this next to how these escalations have been handled before, and a very uncomfortable contradiction snaps into focus and it’s one they can’t tidy away with procedure or press lines. So what has changed? Right, so the United States has apparently moved its embassy staff in Lebanon and Israel. Not issued a warning. Not updated a website. Not briefed journalists off the record. It has physically reduced its diplomatic footprint in a region it normally insists is stable, manageable, and under control. People were moved because someone decided they no longer trusted the assumptions that usually keep them in place then clearly. Washington does not do stuff like this casually, and it certainly does not do it because Israel is doing something new, because they’re just as off the rails as ever. Israel strikes Lebanon regularly. Israel threatens Iran habitually. Israel insists it is acting defensively as a matter of routine. All of that is background noise in Washington. None of it normally triggers operational decisions that affect embassy staffing. So what is going on this time then? What has changed, because something fundamentally must have done?

David Lammy smiled with JD Vance and posted the photo, and in doing so he blew Labour’s ability to claim ethical high ground after Minnesota. Right, so David Lammy chose to post a smiling photo with JD Vance on the same day Vance was out defending the killing of a civilian by US state agents, and that choice has just stripped Labour of its last excuse. Not outrage, not optics — cover. The Justice Secretary didn’t just stay silent, and has remained so on Twitter over that shooting, he has made that silence government policy in the eyes of all of us and once you do that, what makes you any better than the defenders of that egregious act? From here on, Labour doesn’t get the benefit of assumed ethics therefore, assuming you believed they still had some, because the person meant to supply them – the Justice Secretary no less - just advertised their absence. So in this video I’m going to show you how that role was being used, why Lammy mattered to it particularly, and what starts failing now that it’s gone. Right, so David Lammy posted a smiling photo of himself with JD Vance and told the world he’d had an “important discussion” about peace and security, and he did it right after a woman had been killed by US immigration enforcement in Minnesota and after Vance had spent the day publicly defending the killing and blaming the victim. Lammy didn’t comment on that killing. He didn’t acknowledge it. He didn’t distance himself from Vance’s remarks anywhere before, during or since. He didn’t slow the post down. He pressed publish, attached the photo, and moved on. That act wasn’t a diplomatic necessity, it was a discretionary performance, and it collided with a moral line that requires no briefing paper to recognise, though perhaps politicians are in more need of having these things spelt out to them than we all are. David Lammy isn’t a junior minister learning the ropes. He isn’t a private backbencher tweeting carelessly. He’s the Justice Secretary, which means every public signal is deliberate or negligent, and there’s no meaningful difference between the two. Meetings happen. Tweets don’t have to. Photos don’t have to be posted. Warmth doesn’t have to be advertised. When those things are chosen, they become political acts in their own right, and that choice now sits there in public, fixed and timestamped and open to judgment.

Donald Trump has exposed himself as a cowardly fraud who wants the language of moral authority without accepting its cost. Right, so this isn’t one of those moments where you say “we’ve seen this before” and move on, because we haven’t. Donald Trump is a president openly threatening another country by saying leaders are responsible when their forces shoot civilians, and then almost immediately presiding over a federal agency shooting an American woman dead and daring anyone to question it – in fact his administration have gone to great lengths to justify it. That’s not hypocrisy by accident, that’s unhinged governance clashing with reality. Trump says Iran’s leadership should fall if protesters are shot, then his own administration blames Renee Nicole Good for her own death, praises ICE, promises escalation, and shuts the door on scrutiny. Same rule. Same logic. Same outcome. Except this time it’s happening on US streets, under US authority, with no pretence of restraint. So in this video I’m going to walk through how Trump has trapped himself with his own threats, how ICE is where his mouth finally gets him stuck, and why this will never go away. He has nailed himself to this and no amount of scrubbing will wash away the stench. Right, so Donald Trump has spent the past week threatening Iran’s leadership with consequences if Iranian security forces shoot protesters. He has said the United States will not tolerate it, that leaders are responsible for what their forces do, and that legitimacy collapses when a state kills civilians and then excuses it. That statement now sits on the record not as opinion but as a rule he has chosen to assert in public, carrying weight because it is being used to justify coercion abroad. And yet, at the same time, a federal agent working for Immigration and Customs Enforcement has shot and killed Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis during an ICE operation. That killing happened on US soil, carried out by a federal agency operating under presidential authority, followed immediately by senior officials defending the agent in question, defending the agency, and escalating enforcement rather than pausing it. Those two things are not separate stories. They now operate inside the same moral and political picture, whether the White House likes it or not. Renee Good was a US citizen. She was not a foreign national. She was not an enemy combatant. She was not operating in a war zone. She was killed during a domestic federal enforcement action. That alone removes any refuge or excuses that federal power usually relies on. This was not a border. This was not overseas. This was the US executive using armed force inside one of its own cities against one of its own citizens and then moving immediately to justify it.

The Maccabi Tel Aviv ban didn’t just upset the wrong people, it showed politicians can’t judge Israel without first picking a side. Right, so this isn’t just about a football match or a policing call that upset the wrong people, this is about Parliament showing, again, that when Israel is involved the rules bend, scrutiny softens, and the outcome is quietly pre-decided. The Home Affairs Committee has now made that unavoidable, because in trying to muscle the police over the Maccabi Tel Aviv ban it’s exposed who’s sitting in judgement, who they openly align with, and why for so many of them, that seems to be with Israel. An Israeli football team fans, the police who blocked them and a lot of friends of Israel are slamming the police – and whether that is for right or wrong based on the evidence, who can trust such people in their judgement, when conflicts of interest seem to be the norm? This also sadly isn’t new, and it isn’t accidental, it’s a pattern we’ve seen before if you know where to look, from lobbying networks to post-politics jobs to the way outrage suddenly materialises when Israel-linked interests feel inconvenienced. So stay with this, because once you line the record here up properly, what collapses here isn’t a police decision, it’s the last pretence that Parliament can still act as an honest referee on Israel at all. Right, so that was the Home Affairs Committee there, demonstrating why they as a group of people perhaps aren’t the best fit to have this discussion. Nevertheless, they have now sat in public to interrogate West Midlands Police and the West Midlands Police and Crime Commissioner over the decision to exclude Maccabi Tel Aviv away fans from that now infamous Aston Villa fixture in November of last year, it seems so much longer now, it is mad we’re still talking about a football safety event and we wouldn’t be if it wasn’t Israel of course, which is rather the point of this video, and the committee itself has of course made that a formal piece of parliamentary business under its football policing work here.

Israel’s Iran strategy has stopped working, and Iran has made sure it can never pretend otherwise ever again. Right, so Israel hasn’t just annoyed Iran again, it’s blown a hole in the one thing that used to keep this confrontation from running off the rails, and it can’t pretend it didn’t see it coming this time either, because their reaction has completely given the game away. We’ve seen this routine for years: Israel threatens on stage, reassures off-camera, and treats everyone else like extras who’ll stand still while it controls the countdown. This time that reassurance got thrown back in their face, dismissed as a lie, and even treated as part of the threat itself. Iran has had enough. It has now put it in writing that words count, signals count, and waiting to be hit next time before they react, is no longer a rule it says it will abide by. And here’s the bit you won’t hear on the mainstream news: Israel has gone begging to Russia to calm things down while still threatening “severe consequences” against Iran in public, which tells you exactly who just lost control of the escalation. The question this video presents therefore is if Iran did strike first next time, something they have never done before, would anyone actually side with Israel? Right, so Israel has spent the last few days apparently doing something it almost never does in public. Benjamin Netanyahu has been trying to walk words back. He has been using third parties to reassure an adversary that Israel is not about to strike, while standing up in the Knesset and threatening “severe consequences” if that same adversary moves first. For years, the confrontation between Israel and Iran has been loud but structured, even when it has turned openly violent. They fought directly for twelve days in June, traded strikes, declared deterrence restored, and then stepped back into managed hostility where things usually sit, where things currently remain.

Saudi-UAE infighting has broken Yemen containment — and Israel is now stuck with the Houthis who are actually the only winners! Right, so Saudi Arabia and the UAE haven’t just fallen out over Yemen - they’ve blown up the entire system that kept the mess off everyone else’s doorstep whilst they were at it, and I’m sure you’ll be broken-hearted to hear that Israel is the one left with the fallout. Allies who swore they were aligned, running the same war for completely different reasons as they were in Yemen, but then start sabotaging each other instead. That’s exactly what’s happening now. Saudi jets are hitting a UAE-backed project, separatists are closing airports and blocking planes, and the so-called coalition that was meant to keep the Houthis boxed in is eating itself alive. Popcorn time for Ansarallah! And while the Gulf states posture and squabble, the Red Sea turns into a bigger and bigger problem Israel can’t outsource anymore, Somaliland plans or not. So in this video I’m going to show you how this arrangement really worked, why it was always so brittle we shouldn’t be surprised its falling apart like it is, and why this seemingly unconnected set of events is so bad for Israel, whilst handing the Houthis a win at the same time. Right, so Saudi Arabia’s project is simple enough: keep a Yemeni state-shaped thing alive on its border that won’t turn into a permanent security leak, keep a corridor of influence running down Yemen’s eastern flank, and get out of a ruinous conflict without admitting defeat. The UAE’s project is not that. The UAE has built relationships with forces that don’t need Sana’a to fall and don’t need Yemen to reunify; they need the coastline, the ports, the islands, the shipping lanes, and the local security forces that can hold them. If you’re Saudi Arabia, that looks like an ally freelancing in your backyard. If you’re the UAE, that looks like investing in the only assets that actually matter in a post-state Yemen. The “new cold war” framing becomes real when the two projects collide over the one thing neither can fake: who controls the south of the Arabian Peninsula, and who gets to decide what “stability” even means there anymore.