Kernow Damo

Right, so Benjamin Netanyahu has apparently won again.Amazing, isn’t it?Every few days, Israel wins so hard that another town in Lebanon starts smoking, another ceasefire needs hosing down, another American official has to pretend this is all part of the plan, and another poll appears showing that even Israelis are looking at Netanyahu’s victory parade and asking why the wheels have come off his float.This time though, the win Israel is claiming to have is over Iran.Israel won. Netanyahu stood tall. Trump got his deal. The region was being stabilised, allegedly.And then Lebanon walked into the room covered in dust, smoke and bits of somebody’s roof. The poll isn’t much of a win actually.Eleven percent. Just 11% of Israelis believe Netanyahu beat Iran, along with 71% of them believing Trump is going to sell them out to Iran.That is how they want to spin this, that is how it has been packaged. It takes airstrikes, rubble, shattered homes and a ceasefire Netanyahu and Co are desperate to wriggle out of - the latest example lasting for a grand total of – and I’m not joking – 5 minutes, and squeezes the whole thing into a narrative so soft you could use it to wrap crockery. This is the latest Israel victory claim getting dragged back to the scene of the crime and being found wanting, because it is spinning a win out of getting their arses handed to them and all for Netanyahu’s benefit.

Right, so Andy Burnham has won a landslide in Makerfield, completely contrary to a typical Starmer Labour by election result because usually Starmer has all the appeal to voters of a wasp at a picnic on a summers day, so the fact Burnham has a majority now north of 9,000 votes still comes with a big caveat attached to it: Makerfield did not fall in love with Andy Burnham. Makerfield rejected Keir Starmer. Burnham won because he promised a leadership challenge, he really didn’t have much else to offer. This is definitely not a Labour resurgence bedtime story here.This is not Brave Andy riding back from Greater Manchester. Reform beaten. Hope restored. The grown-ups are back in charge. The band plays Things Can Only Get Better and everyone pretends the last few years were just a very expensive misunderstanding.No. This was not a love letter to Burnham.This was a warning shot through Starmer’s front window.Burnham won the seat. Reform were beaten. Starmer took the damage. But Labour’s great act of renewal, as this is being touted, is now a man who has spent years orbiting the same old party machine, walking back into Westminster and saying the word “change” with a bit more warmth than the bloke currently sucking all the oxygen out of Downing Street.

Right, so Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s far-right minister for making every situation somehow more grotesque than it already was, had a big brave message for the United States.Israel is not subject to America, apparently.Trump’s deal does not bind us, apparently.Israel is sovereign, independent, answerable to nobody, all very stirring stuff if you like your diplomacy delivered in the tone of a man shouting at a traffic warden.Lovely.Except there is one tiny little bit of American power Ben-Gvir does still appear to be subject to.Not the President. Not the State Department. Not Congress.No appropriate sanction regime he’s well overdue for inflicted by people who appear to have suddenly discovered the concept of principles.No, no.It was a visa desk.It was a form.It was a request to put his fingerprints on file. Now what could possibly be so scary about that?

Right, so every launch, every flash, every flaming rocket put out in news clips or by the Pentagon or US Central Command is very deliberately put out there into the public sphere. It looks impressive, it promotes a sense of power, it lets you know who’s in charge when the good ol’ US of A is the one doing the shooting, all very flashy. Very presidential. Very “don’t mess with America.”For as much as such imagery makes for handy propaganda though, these missiles are not exactly infinite and the tangerine toddler has been spending them like water. They don’t just automatically replenish themselves because Trump snaps his fingers and bellows into a microphone for the hard of thinking MAGA crowd or if Pete Hegseth fixes his stares at a camera like he’s trying to intimidate a parking meter.Every one of these things gets counted somewhere afterwards where there is no TV and no cameras and no adulation.Inventory. Replacement. Production. Cost.And that is where Trump’s stupid, unnecessary Iran war starts turning into something rather awkward for the people who sold it to the American people as an act of US self defence, because America’s defences are now significantly weaker than they were before.Where the clips are theatrics, the inventory has to be replaced and that isn’t immediate, but it is very expensive. $2.5Billion expensive, but to listen to the bungler in chief who has blown the arsenal, you’d think the end of this story was a foregone conclusion.So there it is. “The deal’s all signed.” The Strait is opening. Everything is moving. The great man has solved it. Everyone may now clap like trained seals for the greatest dealmaker that there ever was. Except it isn’t a deal and there’s nothing great about the orange bungler orchestrating this farce. A Memorandum of Understanding is just an acceptance of what the other side wants, not a deal that actually gets it.

Right, so Donald Trump has got himself an Iran deal.A peace deal. A beautiful deal. A long and beautiful peace, he says, because of course he does, because if there is one thing the tangerine tyrant loves more than threatening to blow something up is announcing that he invented peace some 5 minutes later.Lebanon can’t have got the memo they were included in this memorandum of understanding Trump is crowing about as if it’s a done and dusted deal – a memorandum of understanding is not a deal no matter how many media outlets present it as such, it is simply an acknowledgement by both sides over what the other side actually wants, not that there is necessarily an agreement there.Smoke is still rising over Dahiyeh and Ghobeiry as Israel hasn’t let up one iota. Buildings are still being hit, streets strewn with fresh rubble, people fleeing, responders trying their best and that is of course the catch in Trump’s deal isn’t it?And that is of course the catch in Trump’s deal and it was always going to be when he deigned to go over his boss Netanyahu’s head and do a ‘deal’ with Iran without him, such as that is.It’s certainly not the headline he wants, he wants to tell the world he’s stopped another war even though he started it. He wants to talk about oil, about the markets, about Hormuz opening toll free, how he has saved the whole of civilisation via another all caps message on Truth Social.

Right, so Benjamin Netanyahu’s Lebanon invasion story has come a cropper once again, as the IDF’s drone problems there just ratcheted up another notch.A Hezbollah drone has now struck an Israeli base, another of their cheap little off the shelf FPV’s has just taken down for the very first time an Israeli Heron 1 surveillance drone worth in the region of $10M and in fact so numerous have these successful drone strikes been, that they have now released a whole montage of successful strikes on Israeli vehicles, positions, machinery and movement, all being watched from above like the IDF has accidentally wandered into somebody else’s nature documentary, except the narrator is armed and the birds have bombs.This ongoing, increasing drone problem for Netanyahu has crossed from military issue to outright embarrassment and screaming at more towns to evacuate before he commands the world’s most amoral army to level them won’t cut it either.And the mainstream media call this situation “tense.” Spare me. A guitar string is tense. Lebanon is being bombed, threatened, carved into warning zones and yet the pushback, the constant stream of video footage getting released keeps coming back on supposed Israeli advancement and control and then looks like anything but. It does not look like deterrence; it’s certainly not look like the wanton destruction of Lebanese livelihoods and evacuation orders are achieving anything except turning the worlds stomach as we see Gaza play out all over again. It does not look like the IDF imposing the control on the northern front they want all.

Right, so Israel has managed to create another big fat problem for itself in Lebanon you will be broken hearted I’m sure to hear.Not because they’ve stopped bombing, because of course they haven’t, ceasefires are for mere mortals and not for them. Not because the displacement is subtle either, people are being driven from their homes and entire villages detonated because all of it is Hezbollah, it’s that old chestnut again. And it’s not because anyone needs a GCSE explainer on what a bloody buffer zone is, because we all know what Israel means by that by now I should hope. Their state security depends on the security and safety and daily lives of all others to be flattened, though to listen to them it sounds much more like “we are only targeting Hezbollah, please ignore the civilians packing their lives into cars and fleeing for their lives.”But they just went that bit overzealous with it all, a bit too blatant, a bit too obvious, they do have that chronic tendency to punch themselves in the face by saying the truth a bit too loudly.Twenty Lebanese towns and villages ordered out all in one go. Explain away that one. You told us all you’d virtually pagered Hezbollah out of existence not so long ago and now we’re supposed to believe some 20 villages are all Hezbollah, on top of everything else you’ve razed? We’ve seen this play too many times before.And that is the problem for the likes of Benjamin Netanyahu and his deranged Defence Minister Israel Katz. That is the bit their spokespeople now have to drag around like a corpse in a suitcase while still insisting this is all terribly precise and defensive, the Lebanese will thank us later and nothing at all to do with Lebanese civilians.But then why are Lebanese towns the ones being emptied?

Right, so Benjamin Netanyahu has apparently built himself another master plan.A clever plan. A hard plan. A very serious security plan, obviously. The sort of plan that gets sold to the Israeli public as, deterrence, freedom of action, deepening the grip, securing the north, all the usual blood-soaked management-consultant language they wheel out whenever they have decided that somebody else’s country needs to be rearranged by airstrike.And Lebanon was supposed to be the trap.At least that was the idea. Hezbollah would make the mistake. Hezbollah would get squeezed. Hezbollah would be forced back. Israel would deepen its grip in the south, take the strategic ground, parade around the castle they captured the other day, redraw the buffer zone, and Netanyahu would stand there looking like the great wartime genius who had finally made northern Israel safe by doing what he always does: more bombing, more occupation, more displacement, more speeches about security while other people bury the consequences.Except it’s all come back and punched him in the face you’ll be broken hearted to hear, because of course both sides in this conflict have teeth.

Right, so the bloviating orange oaf Donald Trump’s sales pitch in recent days was that Iran was going to pay, but the trouble with warfare is that they guy who signs off on it, doesn’t necessarily get to choose where everything ends up landing and this one did not stay where Little Donnie wanted it.It has now moved from Washington’s war room to a tanker off Oman, It has moved onto Indian sailors, It has moved from sea to drinking war infrastructure, it has moved across the entire US regional base map and most awkwardly for Trump straight back into his own politics. So let’s start with Trump, because he’s the idiot trying to convince us all that this mess is a sign of controlIran will have to make a deal, they’re taking too long to get there, so now they have to pay a price? Getting impatient isn’t an excuse to get your bombs out again Donnie, but his other justification is in regards to the Apache helicopter crash which the US is claiming Iran did, claiming Iran has admitted to, yet even a pro Israel outlet like Axios has carried the crucial caveat that the incident is under investigation.