Kernow Damo

Right, so there it is.

Even Benjamin Netanyahu now admits Israel is losing ground with Americans.

He just has a rather convenient explanation for why.

It’s social media. It’s propaganda. It’s what young Americans are being shown. It’s Israel supposedly losing the information war.

What it apparently isn’t is anything Benjamin Netanyahu or his government might actually have done.

Funny that.

And while Netanyahu has been diagnosing the problem as one of messaging, his government has been shovelling cash into fixing that messaging problem at a rate that would make a Qatari sheikh blush.

Because as Israel’s standing in America deteriorated and the old pro-Israel political machinery struggled to contain the damage, Netanyahu’s government didn’t just sit there complaining about TikTok.

It built an enormous influence operation of its own.

And the bill for that little rescue mission has now gone past a billion dollars.

More than a billion dollars. Yes, with a B. Not Monopoly money, either. A billion. You could buy a small country for that, or at least a Premier League football club.

Right, so nearly three-quarters of England is now officially in drought, it is definitely boiling down here in Cornwall plus 30 degrees is not much fun when you’ve got no air con and the fan is merely fanning the flames of the furnace you’re trapped in.

Forty-five million people are now part of the great English drought drama, with over 27 million of us cast as 'thirsty extras' under some water restriction. And of course, the water companies would really like it if you kept doing your part. Millions already are, after all. Odd how responsibility always seems to be ours whilst they just keep on coining it in. Put the hose away. Let your car build up a crust of dirt. Forget the paddling pool. Take showers so short you barely get wet, because every drop matters. Except there's a big, water-guzzling elephant in the room, and somehow we're all supposed to act like that isn't the obvious problem sitting right in front of us. Because while they're busy telling us to save water, nearly one in every five litres is quietly disappearing into the ground, thanks to their own leaking pipes. And to really top off this mess, the longer it stays dry, the more likely their precious pipes are to melt down and burst. So the drought arrives, water becomes more scarce, you're told to use less of it and the ground cracking and drying out ends up helping to break the very network carrying it. Go on, water industry, take a bow. Maybe even a standing ovation, because privatisation was supposed to mean lower bills and less of this happening wasn’t it? How much longer are we going to live with this con-artistry? Nobody living through this right now needs a graph to know it's dry. Just look out the window. This isn't some distant, theoretical warning of the weather impact coming in 2050 now, it’s here.

Right, so it seems America has now come up with a fresh answer to the Strait of Hormuz.

Greenland.

Yes, Greenland again. Trump’s other fever dream obsession.

Why try to untangle a massive Middle Eastern situation you in no small part helped create when you can just point to another spot on the globe and declare there’s plenty of oil there instead?

Trump’s representative in Greenland, Louisiana governor Jeff Landry, whom Trump named as his special envoy to Greenland to push US interests there, has been mentioning two million barrels a day. Enough, it seems, to ease some of the strain on Hormuz.

Of course, there’s a small catch.

No one has actually discovered, let alone established, a commercial oilfield there. Just a minor oversight, though I’m sure.

You might assume that would at least be step one, wouldn’t you? At least you’d think it’d come before everyone starts divvying up the barrels in their heads and deciding which global crisis they think they’re going to solve with them.

Right, so that was Turkey’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan there, saying Iranians are no strangers to the region’s politics. Iran’s involvement is needed now. This is not exactly the outcome Benjamin Netanyahu had in mind for the Middle East is it?

That’s a rotten turn of events, please do get your tiny violins out to play him a jaunty tune. Perhaps someone might want to hand Bibi a stress ball before he starts chewing the furniture. Well let’s slap some context on all this first. Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, and Pakistan have of course just signed a collective defence pact in Mecca, and that in itself was not a sudden development. Riyadh and Islamabad already had a mutual defence agreement in place as of September of last year, agreeing that an attack on one would be treated as an attack on both, so broadly echoing Article 5 of NATO. Türkiye, always eager to join such initiatives, had been signalling its interest in joining and expanding that group for some time and now that’s come to fruition.

So now that Türkiye is officially included, the attack-one-attack-all principle covers three countries. And it may grow from there, Fidan there, one of the architects of this Mecca pact is already suggesting that Iran might eventually have a place at that same regional decision-making table.

I doubt very much that this is how Benjamin Netanyahu expected his investment in a major war with Iran to pay off. The returns are now looking rather disappointing aren’t they?

Right, so it seems the Strait of Hormuz might not matter anymore.

Well there’s a twist after 5 months of war basically closed the bloody thing to most shipping, closed one of the most important energy transport routes in the world for the likes of oil and gas; presumably the orange wombat in the White House just blockaded it for s**ts and giggles then? Who knew?

Yet after months of war, blockades, and everyone panicking about keeping it open, Trump's own Treasury Secretary is now suggesting Hormuz might as well be a puddle in the desert.

Who needs Hormuz, really?

It's remarkable how the world's most important energy chokepoint can go from DEFCON 1 to 'meh' the moment you realise you can't actually control it, after all the time spent proving how much it matters.

Because of course that was Scott Bessent, Trump's Treasury Secretary, saying the Strait is never going back to the way it was and could eventually become irrelevant.

Honestly, it’s a plot twist worthy of a daytime soap, just with more oil and fewer attractive people.

Donald Trump went to war with Iran, blockaded the place, spent months insisting America had the situation under control, and now someone in his own administration is basically saying: maybe the answer is to make the Strait unnecessary.

Meanwhile, Iran has its own list of conditions for fully reopening it, surely that would be easier? And one of those is Trump ending his own blockade.

So, mission accomplished, if the mission was to turn the whole thing into a diplomatic episode of Whose Line Is It Anyway.

Right, so now it seems Donald Trump is in charge of the Strait of Hormuz.

Good to know.

Maybe someone should mention that to the people actually trying to get ships through in which case.

Some unlucky corporate executive just paid twenty-three to twenty-five million dollars to rent a supertanker for a quick trip into the Gulf to pick up Iraqi crude. Bargain of the century, if your idea of a good time is burning through cash and calling it relaxation.

But why do that? Because nobody in their right mind wants to send a tanker into Hormuz right now without checking with Iran first. Ships are still getting hit, insurers are piling on war risk premiums like ornaments on a Christmas tree, and shipowners willing to take the risk are about as rare as unicorns at this point. Fewer ships, huge risk, oil demand not budging. So the price climbs.

And so we have twenty-five million being charged just to rent the ship.

Before Trump's war with Iran, a similar trip would have cost closer to two million.

So whatever alternate reality Trump is living in, it is definitely not the one where he controls the price and therefore it clearly is not him controlling the Strait.

And this comes just as he’s started telling everyone that Hormuz is open.

Well...sort of anyway.

Right, so Saudi Arabia now seems to be preparing for more Houthi attacks, chiefly they’re worried about their energy infrastructure, ports and airports.

All the parts you only start to notice when someone begins connecting the dots with cruise missiles.

And this comes just as Saudi-backed forces in Yemen have suffered heavy losses, at least 30 killed and more than 50 wounded.

But strangely enough, I don't think the explosions are even the most important part of this story anymore, because while everyone is focused on the missiles and the attacks and the tit for tat, we should be looking at what’s happening with more and more tankers.

Six Saudi-flagged supertankers change their routes. Not risking it. Not worth it.

And if that’s the thinking, then the Houthis no longer have to sink a single tanker anymore, do they?

If you can make the shipowner decide, "No, not going there today," you’ve already achieved something.

The cargo gets delayed.

The route shifts.

The insurance shifts.

The costs shift.

The customer waits.

Nobody needs to stand on the shore waving a giant Houthi-operated STOP sign. The ship has already decided for you.

Right, so there’s Netanyahu, actually standing inside Lebanon, telling Israeli soldiers that as long as Hezbollah is a threat, Israel will stay right there.

“We will stay here.”

Well, that boast has soured faster than milk left out in a Tel Aviv August.

Now, two Israeli reservists are dead, and four more have been seriously wounded inside the very part of Lebanon that Netanyahu and his government keep insisting is needed to make Israelis safer.

So the patch of Lebanon Israel insists on occupying for ‘safety’ has now cost two Israeli lives and left four more wounded. Some security policy then. It’s about as useful as a chocolate teapot.

But of course there will be those chiming in at this point, who will say stuff like, “Hezbollah attacked, Israel responded”. Well, there’s a pretty big problem with that too and it relates directly to the explosive that went off in question.

You see, the Israeli military itself has not determined whether the explosive involved had just been planted or if it might have been there for some time. In which case, it might also be a question of who even left it there. Sure it could’ve been Hezbollah, but it could have been an earlier Israeli incursion too for all we know.

But, this being Israel, and as you might have expected, they have responded by doing their best Miley Cyrus impression, swinging a wrecking ball through southern Lebanon. Don’t ask us awkward questions, we’re busy making things safe again.

Right, so Donald Trump is out there claiming America has enough ammunition to make Rambo blush. Not just a lot, either. More than the US could ever actually use, unless the idea is to shoot at the moon for target practice and frankly Elon Musk hitting it with his leftovers last night was bad enough, so we don’t need that.

It’s a bold claim actually, given that in Operation Desert Storm the US fired 288 Tomahawks, and in 2003, over 800. Trump's Iran war? Over 850 in just the opening weeks, because restraint is for losers. Then, only eight days after Trump's big boast, Reuters reports that nearly all the US ATACMS and PrSMs – the US military does love a good acronym - have been sent to Ukraine, too.

For reference, ATACMS stands for Army Tactical Missile System. It is the older US Army long-range surface-to-surface missile. It can strike targets roughly 300km away, with one missile carried in each launch pod.

PrSM stands for Precision Strike Missile and it’s the newer replacement for ATACMS. The current version reaches beyond 400km and fits two missiles into the same-sized pod. It is designed to hit air defences, missile launchers, radar, command centres, other high-value targets from a safer distance.

Basically ATACMS are the older long-range Army strike missile. PrSMs are the newer, longer-range replacement.

So what we’ve got here is two Iraq wars' worth of missiles spent, then straight into the newest stockpile of toys straight afterwards, before a proper stockpile of them had even been possible to build up. Nothing ages quite like a Trump boast confronted by the inventory eight days later does it? Distance was always America's big advantage in this war. Hit Iran from farther away. Keep US pilots out of the worst danger. Then use Patriot and THAAD to shield American bases when Iran fires back. Except Trump has been burning through both sides of that setup.

Right, so Bristol University has spent the past few years insisting that firing David Miller over his anti-Zionism beliefs was entirely justified.

And it lost. Spectacularly. The original case collapsed faster than a university press release after a scandal.

So Bristol appealed, hoping that if it dragged the stink they were creating into a higher court, things would turn out differently.

Well, tough luck guys. Their legal stench did not come out smelling of roses. They got handed their a*ses again.

The protection Miller secured for his anti-Zionist belief remains and by trying to appeal, that position has now been solidified, strengthened in a way it never has been before. The findings that Bristol discriminated against him and dismissed him both unfairly and wrongfully still stand.

That alone ought to have been enough to make Bristol’s legal team wish they had signed up for a six-week macramé course instead of law school.

But what makes this even more difficult for Israel’s defenders specifically now, is that all this has happened just weeks ahead of the Green Party motion declaring Zionism is Racism returns to party Conference.

You might recall this came up at Green Party Spring Conference and if you do, you might also remember that is was never voted down, it ran out of time to be heard and as such, its back again. It returns for Autumn Conference in October, and the organisers behind it, Greens 4 Palestine, now say it has more than 700 co-proposers, more than double the number it achieved in the spring, a record then as that was.

So the situation Zionists now face is that their main excuse for blocking this motion has just suffered a defeat in court, while the motion itself has come back even stronger than ever before.