rss

On 19 December, Donald Trump’s Justice Department finally released the Epstein Files.

Which is to say they released about 10% of them.

90% of which they redacted.

Donald Trump – or 468 of him – in the Epstein files

Still, though, we did get to see some new photos like File 468, which demonstrated Jeffrey Epstein had a drawer full of pictures of Donald Trump for some reason:

The DOJ forgot to scrub some photos of Trump with women(girls?) that were in a drawer in Jeffrey Epstein's desk.

What's especially revealing about this, is that the drawer appears to be entirely dedicated to photographs of Donald Trump.

Let that marinate.

This was very likely… pic.twitter.com/a69OWFaylt

— Johnny Loveless (@JohnnyLoveless) December 19, 2025

So, the fact that they released this image proves that they are somewhat serious about…

…and the file is no longer there:

BREAKING:

File 468, one of the few files that showed Trump is now missing

They deleted that one, which looks like the clearest sign yet of a cover-up. pic.twitter.com/FXXUaPmcVk

— Megatron (@Megatron_ron) December 20, 2025

This stinks

Earlier this year, the US congress passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act which required the Justice Department to publish all of the documents relevant to Epstein. While it was permissible to redact information and images relevant to victims, it was not permissible to redact information to protect individuals’ reputations and/or feelings.

It certainly wasn’t permissible to delete files after the fact when they clearly did not contain redactable material, and yet here we are:

File "468," which featured a photograph of Trump with young women in swimsuits burried in a drawer, has been pulled from the DOJ's website.

The original URL for the file now brings you to a page that reads "AccessDenied" pic.twitter.com/dWGnzz5jUZ

— Alexander Willis (@ReporterWillis) December 20, 2025

As one user highlighted, the image is not available in the Justice Department’s list of files, and yet it can still be found in the searchable ‘Epstein Files Browser’ that a user uploaded to GitHub:

The justice department released a file which had trump in (File 468), but then withheld it from the website? I was only able to find this from the https://t.co/NX7GXZhg6G site. #EpsteinFiles pic.twitter.com/FOYCBYHW8e

— mabel!! (@2huyuri) December 20, 2025

It’s unclear precisely what Trump and his lackeys are up to, but if they’re trying to cover up the image, it’s clearly going to result in the Streisand effect:

We will not let them cover up file 468 pic.twitter.com/RQAZshShPU

— tre¥ (@wholelottatr3y) December 20, 2025

Oh, and reportedly they’re also ‘doctoring’ files too:

Wild — as the community note says, Trump’s DOJ released a publicly available pic of MJ & Clinton & Diana Ross with their own kids and implied it’s them with victims

They aren’t just redacting, they’re doctoring pic.twitter.com/WkwDocBejK

— The Tennessee Holler (@TheTNHoller) December 20, 2025

This is already looking like the clumsiest cover up in history, and yet somehow things will no doubt get worse from here.

Featured image via The Epstein Files

By Willem Moore

---

From Canary via This RSS Feed.

In the wake of the Bondi Beach shooting, the British state has done what it so often does when Israel is under pressure: oppress, oppress, oppress. This time, the target is language. The Arabic language. Specifically the word ‘intifada’.

Police forces across the UK have effectively moved to criminalise the phrase “globalise the intifada”, treating it as self-evidently antisemitic — not because linguists have debated and found this the case, but because the political mood demands it. In doing so, antisemitism has once again been shamefully weaponised to justify the repression of Arabs in general and Palestinians in particular.

A joint statement from the Metropolitan Police and the Greater Manchester Police announced that chanting the phrase could lead to arrest, following the Bondi attack. No new law was cited. No legal threshold clarified. Instead, police leaned on implication and vibes — and fear.

Intifada — a word made famous in 1987 banned in 2025

What makes this new episode particularly sickly, is the role of the BBC in it. Innit?

Initially, the public and ‘impartial’ broadcaster did some dare-I-say basic journalism. It explained what “intifada” actually means — an Arabic word that translates most literally as “uprising”. It contextualised the term historically, linguistically, and politically.

Then it fell face-first on its teeth.

Under pressure from ‘he who shall not be named‘, the BBC quietly distorted the record, surrendering clarity and allowing the state’s misrepresentation to stand. Then all the king’s horses and all the king’s men, couldn’t put Humpty together again.

The result has been quite absurd if you ask me.

In widely circulated footage, police officers attempting to justify arrests point not to legislation but to the BBC itself — as though a broadcaster’s editorial panic over intifada constitutes law.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Palestine Pulse (@pal_pulse)

Then the actors enter, stage right, trying to sensationalise Arabic words like intifada and explain why they must be banned. Embarrassingly, they repeatedly mispronounce the very word they are seeking to ban. The spotlight moves from the actor and straight to the audacity of a state that polices Arabic while not even understanding it.

‘So you will share the dismay of many that the BBC described it as “largely unarmed and popular”?’@NickFerrariLBC asks Labour’s Jess Phillips if she thinks ‘intifada has overtones of violence’, as those who call for it to be ‘globalised’ now face arrest. pic.twitter.com/5M9QuI03kr

— LBC (@LBC) December 18, 2025

Trying to ban a political idea by criminalising a single Arabic word is not just authoritarian; it is laughably futile.

And people are laughing — Arabic speakers around the world are watching this clip, and others, and laughing. Not just because of the wobble. But because of the posture.

A posture of a colonial power trying too hard to assert dominance and looking absolutely rubbish doing it.

We are all laughing at you. And as Mark Twain once observed:

Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand.

Let’s be real for a minute, can we? Arabic is one of the world’s richest languages, formed through a long historical process of koineisation — the blending of languages and dialects into shared meaning. It is vast, elastic, and saturated with synonyms.

The British state can ban words. It can misdefine them. Pretend to understand them. It can even pretend solidarity is violence. But language can’t care less. You ban words, we find synonyms.

Catch me if you can.

لا تلحقني مخطوبة

Featured image via Al Quds

By Jamal Awar

---

From Canary via This RSS Feed.

Reading by Tim Foley:

Subscribe now

If the right to free speech does not include the right to oppose an active genocide using strong and unmitigated language, then there is no freedom of speech.

This is exactly the sort of thing that freedom of speech is intended for: times when the government is doing something wrong which needs to be ferociously opposed. That’s the primary reason it’s an enshrined value in our society. Freedom of speech is for holding the powerful to account.

If you only have freedom of speech when you’re agreeing with your government and saying nothing which inconveniences the powerful, then Saudi Arabia has free speech. Every tyrannical regime that has ever existed has had freedom of speech by those standards. You don’t measure a society’s freedom by how much its citizenry are allowed to agree with their government, you measure it by how much they’re allowed to disagree.

And right now we are being told we’re not allowed to disagree. We’re being told the protests need to stop, the anti-genocide chants need to be criminalized, and everyone needs to shut up and obey — all justified by the completely baseless narrative that the words and actions of pro-Palestinian activists were somehow responsible a terrible massacre that was committed in Sydney last week.

And these policies just so happen to serve the interests of the very same western powers whose genocide-enabling actions were being forcefully opposed these last two years. Government officials constantly being protested and questioned about their facilitation of Israel’s genocidal atrocities. Politicians who are consistently confronted by anti-genocide demonstrators during their public appearances. Wealthy arms manufacturers whose profit margins are being harmed by direct action from activist groups. Plutocratic media institutions who are becoming more and more discredited in the public eye as the Gaza holocaust exposes them all. Billionaires whose empires are built upon the political status quo that gave rise to the genocide in question.

If the powerful are shutting down speech rights to advance their own interests in your society, then your society is not meaningfully different than the dictatorships the western world tries to contrast itself with. All our stories about living in a free society have been just that: stories. Fairy tales.

That’s what they’re telling us with this mad rush to stomp out freedom of speech this past week. They are telling us that we do not live in the kind of society we were taught about in school. They are telling us that the only reason we were allowed to speak as we pleased in the years leading up to the Gaza genocide is because we were a bunch of compliant sheep who were not meaningfully challenging the interests of the powerful, and now that we are meaningfully challenging them the facade of freedom and democracy is falling away.

As Frank Zappa once said, “The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.”

_____________

Caitlin’s Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. The best way to make sure you see everything I write is to get on my free mailing list. Click here for links for my social media, books, merch, and audio/video versions of each article. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

Feature image via Adobe Stock.

---

From Caitlin’s Newsletter via This RSS Feed.

A Lebanese lawmaker has denounced any concessions by the Beirut government to the Israeli regime.

---

From Presstv via This RSS Feed.

Nakalabas sa kulungan noong Disyembre 18 ang isang bilanggong pulitikal na manggagawang pangkultura ng Bohol matapos ang anim na taong pagkakakulong. Pansamantalang nakalaya si Alvin “Chai” Fortaliza matapos magpyansa sa kinahaharap na kasong tangkang pagpatay. Bago nito, ibinasura ng korte ang dalawang kaso ng pagpatay dahil sa kawalan ng ebidensya.

Inaresto siya ng mga pulis noong Marso 4, 2019 habang nangangampanya para sa Anakpawis Party-list sa palengke sa Guindulman, Bohol. Tagapagtatag rin siya ng Bol-anong Artista nga may Diwang Dagohoy (Bansiwag) Bohol Cultural Network noong 2010. Nagsilbi siyang ikalawang tagapangulo para sa Visayas ng grupong pangkultura na Sinagbayan.

Ikinalugod ng Karapatan-Central Visayas ang paglaya ni Fortaliza. Muling inihayag ng grupo ang matagal na nitong tindig na hindi siya dapat inaresto at ikinulong nang mahabang panahon. Anito, ang isinampang mga kaso kay Fortaliza ay pawang gawa-gawa lamang at layuning gipitin siya dahil sa pagtataguyod sa karapatan ng mga magbubukid ng Bohol.

Samantala, binatikos ng grupo ang sadyang pag-antala ng Bureau of Jail Management and Penology (BJMP) sa paglaya ni Fortaliza mula sa Bohol District Jail noong Disyembre 17. Anito, kumpleto na ang mga papeles at atas ng korte na palayain si Fortaliza sa bisa ng pyansa sa araw na iyon ngunit inantala pa ito ng mga pulis.

Anang Karapatan-Central Visayas, dapat panagutin ang mga upisyal ng BJMP at magpaliwanag sa pag-antala sa ligal na proseso.

The post Manggagawang pangkultura ng Bohol, nakalaya sa anim na taong pagkakakulong appeared first on PRWC | Philippine Revolution Web Central.

---

From PRWC | Philippine Revolution Web Central via This RSS Feed.

South African police are searching for armed suspects after a mass shooting left at least nine people dead and ten injured.

---

From Presstv via This RSS Feed.

Armed groups supported by Israel are operating from Israeli-occupied areas of Gaza, carrying out attacks against Hamas, says a report.

---

From Presstv via This RSS Feed.

China’s state broadcaster has given a rare glimpse of PLA war gaming, with footage of a simulated encounter between Chinese and French multi-role fighters. The tabletop exercise pitted Chinese J-16 fighters against French Rafales, a model reportedly bested by Chinese-made J-10C jets in a conflict between India and Pakistan earlier this year. The CCTV report on Friday said this year was the first year that the entire People’s Liberation Army and People’s Armed Police Force were promoting pilot...

---

From China - South China Morning Post via This RSS Feed.

Utilities started reversing coal power’s “irreversible” decline. Will it last?

---

From naked capitalism via This RSS Feed.

Ang Bayan Ngayon | December 19, 2025 Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) branch members...

The post From Ang Bayan: CPP Branch In Rizal Holds Study Session, Tribute To Ka Joma appeared first on REDSPARK.

---

From REDSPARK via This RSS Feed.

The Party commends Red fighters of the New People’s Army for its quick reaction and counter-maneuver against assaulting troops of the 9th IB in Balatan town, Camarines Sur, last Friday. At least two fascist troopers of the AFP were killed in action, including the officer leading the attack.

Troops of the 9th IB were conducting offensive combat operations, and were preparing to mount an attack against the NPA fighters in the area. The AFP wanted to take advantage of the ceasefire declaration of the CPP, which is to set to take effect on December 25-26 and December 31 and January 1, 2026.

With the deep support of the people, the NPA unit was alerted of the plan and was able to foil the 9th IB’s attack AFP. t
The NPA promptly carried out active defense operations to turn the situation to their advantage, take the initiative and gain upperhand in battle. The said NPA unit was able to quickly and safely withdraw from the site.

The said NPA unit was in the area to conduct mass work, help in production, extend medical and education services and conduct cultural work among the local peasant masses and fisherfolk. Like every other unit of the NPA, they carry out armed struggle against the fascist AFP in defense of the people.

Officers of the AFP are utterly hypocritical in claiming “treachery” in the NPA’s use of command-detonated explosives against the assaulting fascist troops, insisting that these are illegitimate weapons. What is treacherous and cowardly is having jetfighters drop 500-lb bombs in the early morning hours from the safety of 50,000 feet.

For the AFP’s education, the command-detonated explosives used by the NPA are not prohibited under the Ottawa Treaty, which prohibit only landmines triggered by pressure or trip-wire.

The NPA’s command-detonated explosives are controlled and triggered by an operator. In fact, Canada, which hosted the anti-landmine summit, produces similar weapons.

The post NPA successfully foils AFP assault in Camarines Sur appeared first on PRWC | Philippine Revolution Web Central.

---

From PRWC | Philippine Revolution Web Central via This RSS Feed.

The European Union’s Election Observation Mission (EU EOM) has determined that delays in Honduras’ vote count are the result of an “intentional paralysis,” as the country remains without official results three weeks after the November 30 elections.

RELATED:

Cyberattack on Honduran Electoral System Alleged: Possible Vote Counting Fraud

In a statement, the EU mission expressed concern over the prolonged process and urged “the parties to refrain from obstructing the proclamation of the results.” Partial tallies show conservative candidate Nasry Asfura, backed by U.S. President Donald Trump, leading narrowly ahead of liberal contender Salvador Nasralla.

The EU EOM noted that while the vote count itself has been carried out with “transparency,” the validation of tally sheets has been “compromised by a continuous and intentional paralysis,” producing “serious delays,” according to the statement issued on Saturday.

Comunicado de prensa de la #MoeueHN25

Para descargar en PDF este documento en español:https://t.co/XaCxsLRJ4F

Y en inglés:https://t.co/ICWDtpCLLd pic.twitter.com/hfksEGim7s

— Misión de Observación Electoral UE – Honduras 2025 (@moeueHonduras25) December 20, 2025

The process has entered a decisive stage with a special review of tally sheets, amid political tensions and mutual accusations. This review has been suspended several times and was entrusted to a private company that cited technical problems, further fueling suspicions of electoral fraud.

During the count, Nasralla at one point moved into the lead and accused authorities of a “theft” of the election, calling for a new “vote-by-vote” recount. Outgoing left-wing President Xiomara Castro has made similar claims. Her party’s candidate, Rixi Moncada, currently in third place, has denounced a “falsification” of the results and alleged “interference” by U.S. President Donald Trump in the electoral process.

Trump’s role has drawn particular attention after he conditioned U.S. aid to Honduras in November on an Asfura victory, coupled with a promise to pardon former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, convicted in the United States on drug trafficking charges, a pardon Trump has already granted.

On Friday, the U.S. administration again intervened by revoking the visa of electoral judge Mario Morazán and denying a visa to Marlon Ochoa, another member of the National Electoral Council (CNE) who had denounced what he described as “fraudulent” elections.

Since Thursday, party representatives have been reviewing around 2,800 tally sheets flagged for “inconsistencies,” representing approximately 500,000 votes, while the gap between the two leading candidates stands at about 40,000 votes.

“Now that the special recount is under way, it is essential that the elections be conducted without interruptions and without intentionally invalidating tally sheets in order to alter the results of the presidential elections,” the EU mission said.

Under the current electoral calendar, the CNE has until December 30 to announce the name of Honduras’ next president.

---

From teleSUR English via This RSS Feed.