As further Epstein documents drop, one email in particular has detonated US foreign policy in the Middle East and Lebanon might be the winner. Right, so the United States sent Tom Barrack to the Middle East with a brief to lecture Lebanon on discipline, stability, and security, and he did it with the swagger of a man who thought his own past would never catch up with him. Then the Epstein files dropped. Not rumours. Not whispers. Paperwork. A 2016 email from a convicted predator telling Barrack to send “photos of you and child — make me smile.” The same Barrack who called Lebanon a failure. The same Barrack who warned it of war. The same Barrack who is trying to force Hezbollah into disarmament, all for the sake of Israel. The email inbox did what diplomacy never seems to anymore. It told the truth. And once you’ve seen the envoy who tried to police a whole country sitting in Epstein’s correspondence, well the pressure campaign looks exactly as rotten as Lebanon always said it was. Right, so this story doesn’t open in Beirut or Tel Aviv or Washington. It opens in the inbox of a man who moved through the American elite without ever being pushed back. A man whose name hung over the political class like a rotten beam. A man who wrote in 2016 to Tom Barrack and asked him to send photos of “you and child — make me smile.” The line sits there without decoration. No explanation. No context. No defence. Just a sentence dropped into the middle of a conversation between a convicted predator and the man who would later be sent to shape the future of Lebanon in Israel’s interests. This email of course sits inside a wider release. Thousands of pages of old communications dragged into daylight at the same time. Messages where Epstein talked about Donald Trump with the cold familiarity of someone who knew far too much. Messages where he called Trump dangerous. Messages where he spoke casually about victims spending time with him. Messages showing proximity that had been hidden behind lawyers and silence. That same release dropped Barrack into the frame as well. Two men tied into the same orbit appearing in the same packet of emails. A president who used Barrack as a fixer and an envoy. An envoy who allegedly told Epstein they should catch up. A predator who said he had been getting many calls about their friendship.

Trump reached in to steady Netanyahu, and the whole thing buckled on impact as Israel's legal system strained to cope! Right, so Donald Trump has always seemed to treat the law as something of a minor inconvenience to him and so in line with that way of thinking, he has decided that after everything Benjamin Netanyahu has done — the mass killing in Gaza, the starvation documented by aid agencies, the three active corruption indictments, the ICC warrant for starvation and murder — the real problem is the Israeli legal system daring to keep his trial running. He put that in writing. A formal letter to Israel’s President Isaac Herzog, demanding a full pardon. Political case. Unjustified prosecution. Netanyahu leading Israel into peace. The language is his. The request is real. Herzog’s answer is on the record as well. A pardon needs a formal application. Netanyahu hasn’t filed one. Netanyahu won’t admit his guilt. Likud’s nineteen ministers still lined up behind him and called the charges trivial, all have backed Trump’s demand as well, because the law isn’t for them, its for everyone else apparently. None of it touches the ICC case though. None of it touches Netanyahu’s record of genocide or his corruption allegations themselves either. And Trump is pushing the line that the obstacle to lasting peace in Gaza, is Netanyahu’s legal bothers at home. Right, so the letter arrived with the weight of the United States behind it. It carried the presidential seal. It carried the voice of Donald Trump. It was addressed to Isaac Herzog. It asked for a full pardon for Benjamin Netanyahu. There was no ambiguity in the wording. There was no diplomatic softening. Trump told Herzog that Netanyahu was guiding Israel into a time of peace. He told him the prosecution was political. He told him the trial was unjustified. He told him Netanyahu must not be diverted by legal proceedings. The letter was released by Herzog’s office and it entered the news cycle as a result, Herzog seemingly deciding that the world should actually see what the US President is trying to pull. The letter hit in the middle of a Gaza ceasefire that hadn’t stopped the funerals.

Israel thought a Saudi-based, CIA-linked covert spy network would stay buried. Well the Houthis just tore it to shreds! Right, so the CIA, Mossad and Saudi intelligence tried to run another spy ring in Yemen — and got rinsed again. The operation was called “Their Schemes Will Fail.” They should’ve taken the hint. Yemen’s Interior Ministry dropped the statement on 8 November, naming names, naming countries, and naming the Saudi soil it was run from. Twenty-one arrests, a public trial, and three humiliated foreign agencies pretending not to have heard. No denial from Washington. No comment from Riyadh. No surprise in Sanaa. The network was meant to choke Yemen’s support for Palestine; instead, it turned into the latest proof that Western and Gulf power can’t even keep a secret any more. The spies came to map Yemen. Yemen mapped them. That’s not espionage. That’s karma — in a file stamped “classified” and left wide open. When will they ever learn that the Houthis can always see them coming? Right, so Yemen didn’t break this story quietly and why should they? It dropped it like a hammer. On the 8th of November the Ministry of the Interior in Sanaa went public: a multi-phase security operation had torn down a spy network linked to three – not just one - three of the most powerful intelligence services in the world — the CIA, Mossad and Saudi Arabia’s General Intelligence Presidency. The code name was “Their Schemes Will Fail.” The name stuck because it did. The Ministry said the joint operations room was based inside Saudi territory, running multiple small autonomous cells inside Yemen, trained and supplied by American, Israeli and Saudi officers. Twenty-one defendants are already in court in Sanaa. The charges: espionage, sabotage, and collaboration with foreign states. The Interior Ministry described the operation as the culmination of months of surveillance and infiltration. Agents had tracked the communication links back across the border. They said the network was responsible for providing targeting data, disrupting domestic communications, and collecting details of missile and drone programmes. The pattern fits the old Saudi-US pipeline from 2015 onwards — foreign signals intelligence gathered in Riyadh, human assets inside Yemen feeding it live coordinates. The same structure the Houthis have been unpicking for nearly a decade now.

Starmer has lost his grip, his premiership is now in the end-phase but he's the only one that cannot see it. Politically inept to the end. Right, so Keir Starmer is standing in the middle of his own polling collapse pretending the ground hasn’t already slipped, talking about loyalty while the Parliamentary Labour Party trades leadership chatter like it’s office gossip. The numbers are dire. The favourability is stuck in the basement. More than half the country thinks he should resign. And yet Starmer still acts like the problem is disobedience rather than the charts in front of him. You can hear the strain in every denial. You can feel No.10 tightening every time another minister tries to distance themselves. The budget is coming. The local elections are coming. The party can see what those two collisions will do. The public, regardless of their personal politics all have a reason to dislike Starmer for one reason or another and has already walked away. The PLP is only now admitting they might have to follow, but when so many of them are little more than Starmer clones themselves, that not too much of a surprise. It isn’t drama. It’s the end-phase. Starmer is finished, not if, but when but for Labour it makes no difference, because there is no saviour coming to rescue them no matter when he goes. Right, so the Prime Minister is standing in the ruins of his own authority, pretending the ground underneath him hasn’t already shifted, pretending the public haven’t already turned, pretending the party hasn’t already started gaming out the timetable of his exit. The coup chatter is not gossip any more. It is the sound of a premiership losing structural integrity. It is the noise a political machine makes when the person at the centre stops holding its weight. You can hear it in the way journalists have been chuntering about it. You can hear it in the tone of the interviews. You can hear it in the tight language coming out of No.10. He talks about loyalty. He talks about discipline. He talks about fighting anyone who challenges him. He talks like a man who still thinks the title protects him. It doesn’t. Titles don’t stop a collapse. Numbers do, and his numbers are gone. The polling has been telling the story for months. The approval charts have flattened into a single downward line. The approval charts are buried. The unfavourable numbers keep rising. His net rating has crashed past the point where leaders normally start packing up. Most of the country now thinks he should step down. The graph tells the story before anyone else opens their mouth.

Propaganda is everything to Israel, so when its own army radio is now too openly questioning orders, it has to go! Right, so Israel is closing its own army radio because it wasn’t obedient enough. That’s the line. Defence Minister Israel Katz says Galei Tzahal, the IDF’s station, has “harmed morale” and “dragged the army into politics.” The rough translation of that basically meaning: it stopped sounding like propaganda and we can’t have that. Broadcasts end 1 March 2026 if he gets his way. But this same week, the Knesset moved to make the so-called Al Jazeera Law permanent — the one that lets the government shut any foreign outlet without a court order. Both moves wrapped in the same excuse: national security, morale, unity. Two fronts of the same information war — one silencing the soldiers, the other gagging the press. Israel calls this protecting democracy. The rest of the world calls it censorship with better paperwork. The state will control the narrative and will control the flow of information Israelis receive. The microphones aren’t broken. They’re just being switched off by design. Right, so Israel is shutting down its own army radio. The order comes from the eternally deranged Defence Minister Israel Katz. He says the station, Galei Tzahal, no longer serves the soldiers. He says it has become political, that it undermines morale, that it drags the army into the fight of opinion. He plans to submit a proposal to cabinet to close it, with broadcasts to end on 1 March 2026. The justification is written in the language of neutrality, as if Israel, when it comes to information is ever such a thing. The intention sits elsewhere. A government that already controls most of the country’s information space now moves to close the one outlet inside the military that still manages to carry a real debate. Army Radio was founded in 1950 as a morale tool, the soldiers’ link to home. Over time it became something different. Civilians joined the newsroom. Journalists questioned ministers – well how dare they? Soldiers presented music shows that strayed into politics. The line between army and public blurred, and for decades that blur has worked just fine. It was the sound of a conscript army talking to itself.

Keir Starmer is busting apart the nuclear non-proliferation treaty to kiss up to Trump and make himself look big. Right, so Britain’s gone nuclear again, and not because anyone voted for it. A billion quid for planes that can’t fly without a nod from Washington. A NATO mission sold as independence. A prime minister so busy kissing Trump’s ring he’s choking on the fumes. The paperwork calls it deterrence; the experts call it absurd. Nukewatch and the Nuclear Information Service have already said the quiet part in a brand new report – it breaks the spirit of the non-proliferation treaty we claim to defend. The United States sells the hardware, keeps the codes, and calls it partnership. The UK signs the cheque and calls it safety, but only if America chooses to keep up ‘safe’. Meanwhile, Iran gets sanctioned for enrichment while we buy new bomb-carriers. That’s not strategy; that’s servitude as well as hypocrisy on steroids. Britain isn’t stepping up. It’s kneeling down, smiling for the cameras, calling it security while the rest of the world ducks for cover. Right, so lets turn our minds back to last month, Starmer facing the cameras and declaring that America under Trump keeps Britain safe in an interview with Beth Rigby. That’s the message — safety by association. Routine on paper, grotesque in context. Trump has of course, as a for instance, since said that. “I was very much in charge,” when it came to Israel’s June strike on Iranian territory. We knew that the US helped b*mb three nuclear sites. Three targets, one at Fordow, but Trump said he was behind the hole thing. That’s not deterrence. Not diplomacy. That’s war by vanity. I did a thing and I want credit for it, you must love me now and bask in my dayglo orange glory. That’s what Starmer reckons makes for a good defence partner and keeps Britain safe. The language stays clean. “Reliable ally.” “Shared security.” Words that mean nothing once bombs start falling. Britain echoed them anyway. But the motive isn’t safety. It’s obedience. So let’s come to the actual announcement now then. Twelve F-35A jets from the United States. A return to the NATO “dual-capable aircraft” club — jets able to carry B61-12 nuclear bombs.

Lebanon is under pressure to disarm Hezbollah or Israel will do it for them - but they should stand their ground, because Israel simply lack the soldiers! Right, so Israel's latest demand that Lebanon disarm Hezbollah is as empty as their promises of military dominance. With 12,000 soldiers short, the IDF is already overstretched, relying on reluctant reservists and mentally exhausted troops. Israel wants Lebanon to hand over Hezbollah’s weapons, but the reality is Israel can’t even handle its own military crisis, let alone another war with Hezbollah. The idea that Israel could wage a successful campaign in Lebanon is as laughable as their claims of being prepared for it. Hezbollah’s military capability, entrenched in Lebanon and backed by powerful regional allies, makes any Israeli threat sound more like a desperate bluff than a viable military objective. Lebanon’s resistance isn’t just possible—it’s practically inevitable, because Israel’s out of gas and Hezbollah isn’t going anywhere. So the Lebanese government should stand their ground here, because Israel really can’t do much about it. Right, so Israel’s repeated demand for Lebanon to disarm Hezbollah isn’t just an exercise in military posturing—it’s an empty threat, one that Israel is not in a position to enforce. The Israeli military is overstretched, exhausted, and under-resourced. With the ongoing conflict in Gaza sapping its manpower and resources, Israel simply cannot afford another war on its northern border. Hezbollah is no push-over, not just a group of guerrillas, but a formidable political as well as military force, regardless of your views of them. For Lebanon, resisting Israel’s demands isn’t just wise—it’s necessary, because Israel lacks both the military capability and the political will to escalate into Lebanon. The state of Israel’s military is one of deep crisis. The IDF is under-equipped, stretched thin, and facing significant personnel shortages. Current reports indicate that Israel is 12,000 soldiers short, a number that cannot be easily addressed abnd they’ve been trying. The reservist system, once a dependable fallback, is now a liability, with many soldiers unwilling to serve due to exhaustion, the mental toll of the war, and the growing number of suicides within the ranks.

An asylum disaster risks being repeated, but as Green Deputy Rachel Millward speaks out, right wing fools have gone for a lamentable gotcha. Right, so a bit of bureaucracy, a sprinkling of dodgy decision-making, and a heap of political opportunism — and here we are. Green Party Deputy Leader Rachel Millward, in her capacity as a local council leader and her colleagues are getting shredded on social media for having the audacity to raise legitimate concerns over the Home Office’s hasty, ill-thought-out asylum housing plans in Crowborough, deciding to drop 600 asylum seekers in a former military base. It’s a move that makes you wonder if the Home Office’s main aim was not just to house asylum seekers, but to guarantee a decent local rebellion in the process. The real kicker though? Millward and the council had their power stripped away by Whitehall over this, who then washed their hands of any accountability as Millward and the council raised their objections. So, what do you get when you give local leaders no say, minimal information, and zero local engagement? A simmering pot of frustration and rightful outrage, which, when they stand up for that, instead of addressing those issues, it has been branded ‘nimbyism,’ the Greens showing their alleged ‘true colours’ over migration because its fine as long as they aren’t here, when the reality is too many people haven’t read Millward’s response letter properly and the backstory to all of this they haven’t a scooby about. Welcome to the latest round of political gaslighting as the establishment rounds on the Greens who are terrifying them and too many people who are too hard of thinking have jumped all over the bandwagon. Let’s peel back the curtain then shall we? Right, so the smear really only works if you don’t read the letter. That is the starting point. Everything else flows from it. The attacks against Rachel Millward are not organic. They are not thoughtful. They are not honest. They rely on one method only: that people share a screenshot of said letter without seeing what comes before it, what comes after it, and what the situation is on the ground right now. The truth has paperwork, but the lie has already done 3 laps of the planet. The bad-faith version doesn’t actually have any basis at all though. That’s why the full text of the letter matters. That’s why the context matters. And that’s why the attack collapses the moment both are placed in front of the public. It’s why the bad faith actors are avoiding the full text like the plague. It doesn’t suit their aims.

They thought swapping the faces at the top would steady the ship. But the trust has already gone, and once it goes, it doesn’t come back. Right, so the thing about the BBC is that it has survived on its reputation long after it stopped earning it. People assumed it was neutral because it said it was neutral, and that worked for decades. It didn’t have to be trusted. It only had to be taken for granted. But Gaza broke that. Corbyn broke that, long before this latest incident about Trump that has now finally triggered resignations. The quiet edits, the careful omissions, the euphemisms, the balance that always seemed to tilt in one direction. The public learned to join the dots. And once you see the framing, you don’t unsee it, hence the tv licences no longer being paid for and the rise of independent and alternative media outlets and commentators. So when this latest Panorama edit finally hit, I don’t think it came as a shock to many people. It was a confirmation. And now there are calls to “defend the BBC,” as if loyalty to this is some kind of a civic duty. But nobody is coming to save it. Much of the public have already left. The authority is gone. The news production is flawed and biased by design. The building is still standing, but that’s about it. Their moral authority collapsed ages ago. Right, so the crisis that has now engulfed the BBC did not begin with this Panorama documentary on Donald Trump. It did not begin with the decision to remove the line where Trump told his supporters to “peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” That line is present in the official NPR transcript of the January 6th speech, public and uncontested. Nobody needed to spot it live. That’s not the point. The point is that the evidence sits in the open. The line exists in the transcript. It doesn’t exist in the broadcast. This wasn’t an exception. This was the continuity we’ve come to expect from the BBC. We’ve seen the same pattern in the Gaza coverage, where the legal term for what was happening could not be spoken even after the ICJ ruling ruled genocide as plausible. The Panorama edit wasn’t the emergence of bias. It was just the latest moment that bias became visible, had been exposed again. And once something is observable, it’s no longer deniable and the BBC have a long track record of denying what we all can increasingly see. Director General Tim Davie’s resignation. Head of News Deborah Turness’s resignation. These were not the result of internal reflection or professional accountability.

They really thought that calling it a ceasefire would make it one. Then the evidence surfaced, and the whole thing has proved to be anything but. Right, so they love that word ceasefire don’t they? Roll it out, dust it off, stick it on the news ticker and suddenly we’re all supposed to behave like the world’s been calmed down, like the grown ups are in charge and they’ve sorted the situation. Border quiet. Situation stabilised. Everyone can breathe again. Except, funny thing, it wasn’t quiet at all. And now we have a report detailing the noise behind the scenes. Why Israel can keep b*mbing with impunity despite signing up to a ceasefire. It’s because they had permission. The Quincy Institute are the ones who have uncovered the paperwork, and there it is in black and white — the Biden White House had assented to Israel seemingly from the moment the ceasefire was called a year ago, to keep b*mbing Lebanon whilst Hezbollah downed tools. Side understandings, they called it. Lovely phrase. It means “we’ll keep the wording, you keep firing the missiles.” And Hezbollah will sit on its hands. And Washington calls that peace. We’ve seen this pantomime often enough to know the lines by heart don’t we? When they say ceasefire, they mean one of you stops. The other one doesn’t. Right, so there is a way to read a ceasefire agreement that has nothing to do with what is printed on the page. You look at who is permitted to act and who is required to absorb. You look at which side gets to move aircraft, and which side is told to hold position. You look at which violations are called violations, and which ones are quietly reclassified as routine. It is all there before the first missile leaves the ground. The paperwork when it comes to light so often tells you who was never meant to stop firing and this is the case here. The bad soap opera plotline just came full circle. During the ceasefire negotiations in late 2023, the United States presented itself as the stabilising hand on the Lebanon front. Public language spoke of preventing a second war front, even though Israel were champing at the bit for it, how dare Hezbollah fire at us in solidarity with Gaza? Deterrence. Containment. Responsible stewardship. The idea was that Washington would ensure neither side broke the truce. The image was of an overseer. A referee. A guarantor of calm. The ceasefire existed in that framing. The border was described through those words. But the official language was only the surface of the agreement. And now the Quincy Institute of Responsible Statecraft has published the missing lines. The holes that were in the plot. The “side understandings” as they have put it. The part not included in the ceasefire text. The part Lebanon did not sign. The part the public did not hear. The Biden administration gave Israel quiet approval to continue cross-border strikes after the ceasefire was announced. These were not emergency responses.