UK Column Radio
UK Column News Podcast 16th October 2024
At Sprout's Farmers Market, we're all about fresh, healthy, and delicious. Step into our bulk department to scoop up as much as you like from hundreds of bins filled with wholesome grains and limited-time goodies. Visit your neighborhood Sprout's Farmers Market today where flavor fills every scoop. Good afternoon. It's Wednesday the 16th of October, 2024. Just after one o'clock, welcome to UK Colum News. I'm your host, Mike Robinson, joining me in the studio today. Charles Mallet, welcome to the program. Charles. Thank you, Mike, good afternoon. And from Damascus with Vanessa Bailey, as usual on Wednesday night, the Dawn Sturgis and Quarry got kicked off on Monday as we suggested it would. And, well, a couple of interesting things about it, but first we should make the point that the scripiles were not there, as expected. There was a short statement read out in opening remarks on their behalf. But let's just have a look at what the inquiry itself says about disclosure of sensitive information, or rather the protocol on measures to prevent disclosure of sensitive information, because some of the hearings or the majority of them will be in public, some of them will be closed sessions. But what they've said here is that there will be two video links to afford those now present in the hearing room with access to the hearing, a live link and a delayed link, which will be delayed by five minutes. Now, that has since this document was published has been upgraded to 10 minutes. So there's a 10 minute delay on the YouTube feed. And that's sort of somebody says something inadvertently during the open sessions. They can quickly shut the YouTube feed off and make sure that that doesn't go out. If we put that back on screen, then it goes on to say, the public immediate attending, the hearing remotely will do so by means of the delayed link. And they say that members of the public and the media who are present in the hearing room may not communicate outside the hearing room for the duration of the hearing by phone, email, instant message or other means. But here's the real clincher for you. This is the media operational note. No audio or video recordings may be made of the hearing. This includes screenshots if you're watching proceedings on YouTube channel. So I haven't come across this type of thing in an inquiry of this type before. I don't know if you've got any thoughts about Charles. Well, it's almost as though there might be something to hide. But that couldn't be the case because it's an inquiry. Well, the question is what kind of inquiry is it? Anyway, if you want to follow along, since we're not allowed to show you any video clips or footage from it, there is a YouTube channel, which is called the Dawn Sturgis Inquiry. There are three videos there so far. You've got a click on the live tab on the menu at the top there. There's nothing when you arrive at the homepage for that. So do follow along if you wish. Now, what we should say here is here is an X, a tweet from Channel 5 News saying, "Don Sturgis who died after being poisoned in Amesbury was described today as an intelligent and kind woman." I'm sure she was. Her death, of course, was tragic. But it's clear from the opening statements of all the barristers involved in this that this is not an inquiry into her death. This is a propaganda exercise. So the decision is already made about who's responsible. It was, of course, Putin. None of the anomalies in the script all kids itself, nor Dawn Sturgis' death, are actually being investigated. They are presuming that it's already established, that it was Novichok. They're presuming it's already established that it was the Russians who did it. And so it becomes a bit unclear as to what the actual outcome of this or what the purpose of this is, other than to reinforce the narrative that Russia has carried out a chemical weapons attack on the streets of the UK. But there are still many, many questions. So this is the original Wiltshire Police statement on a major incident declared following ongoing instant endsbury. And if we just highlight a little bit of text here, it says, "It was initially believed that the two patients fell ill after using possibly heroin or crack cocaine from a contaminated batch of drugs." Now, of course, they go on to say that further testing is now ongoing to establish a substance which led to these patients becoming ill. This was the statement from the police, we'll see what the latest on the police position on this statement is in a minute. But before we get to that, let's just look at this article from the website of the Clinical Services Journal. This is a response unit called Salisbury Hospital Declares Major Incident. And if we look at the text of this down here highlighted it's small, I appreciate it, but it says, "It followed an incident ours earlier in which a man and a woman were exposed to a substance in the city center." But that wasn't the original version of this document because if we go back to the way back machine and we look at what that paragraph said in an earlier version of the document, it said, "It followed an incident earlier in which a man and a woman were exposed to the drug fentanyl in the city center. The opioid is 10,000 times stronger than that, sorry, stronger than heroin." And that, around the same time, was sort of echoed in various news reports. So this is Sky News, Intersbury Poisoning. Here's what we know about the Novichok victims. And they quoted a friend of Charlie Rowley and Don Sturgis, who did not want to be identified saying, "We're all pretty serious drug addicts and if they were withdrawing and it looked like heroin, they would have injected it straight away without a second thought." Now, I have no knowledge of what actually happened that day, of course, because I wasn't there. But my point is that none of this is being considered in the inquiry, at least based on what was being said in the opening statements. And just to bring the Salisbury Journal on here, this is from today or yesterday, yesterday, sorry, Don Sturgis and Quarry Police apologize for overdose claim. So the police are now apologizing for that original statement. So as I say, many, many questions still to be asked and answered here, but this inquiry doesn't seem to want to do that. Now, the question then is what is the role of port and down in all this? Because, of course, as they had to acknowledge in the opening comments in the inquiry port and down only a few miles up the road from both these incidents. But let's just consider the type of things that happen at port and down. So this is from the mirror. This is from 2019. Almost 50,000 animals killed during military testing at Secret UK research base. So scientists have blown up pigs, infected monkeys with biological weapons and poisoned guinea pigs with nerve gas. And so this article goes on to say, 50,000 animals killed between 2010 and 2017, an average rate of 20 animals per day for seven years straight. And they quote, "To deliberately expose live animals to compounds, simulated blasts and biological pathogens, which are known and indeed developed to cause extreme suffering and death, guinea pigs had a nerve agent called VX applied to their backs to see how another chemical known as bio scavenger would alter the effects, also used anthrax, mustard gas and other chemical weapons." The article went on to say, "The beasts were shot in different parts of the body with rifles. Army medics then fought to keep them alive. Ministry of Defense defends the practice, claiming it provides doctors with vital training, which has helped save the lives of British troops injured in battle. Pigs were also killed in explosive tests, important done as part of a research program to develop more effective body armor for troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. And so my question is, what are the limits that Porton-Dine staff are prepared to go to? And is this inquiry going to investigate the possibility that the Novichok, if there was Novichok, didn't come from Russia, but in fact came from Porton-Dine? There are many, many questions to be asked around the scribble poisoning, alleged poisoning, and the alleged poisoning of Don Sturgis. And if you want to get more background on this, we mentioned it before, but we'll keep suggesting that people read this. The day of the scribble, this is by Tim Norman. Tim will be at our event on Saturday, I'm glad to say. But the day of the scribble is listing basically a timeline of all the mainstream media reports around the scribble affair, with a view to you getting an idea of the inconsistencies, the gaps, the problems with the whole narrative. And if we put that back, then please. And then the other article that I would encourage, one other article, I would encourage you to read a scribble, a Russian web or a Roussey web, and Alex Thompson here asking about Porton-Dine and asking some serious questions about it. And also, you might like to have a look at Pablo Miller, the people working alongside the Real Jews Bond, fantastic article by John Yvebmore on the man, the MI6 man who was in charge of the scribbles, or at least of Sergei's scribble while he was here. And so we will continue to watch this inquiry with interest. But just to finish it off, I was interested to notice when all the barristers were sitting in the inquiry room, this man. So this is Jason Beer, K.C., and it was noted this photograph is not from the Dawn Sturgis inquiry, by the way, this is from the post office Horizon IT inquiry. And I was just fascinated by this man because he must have, he's either a robot or he's AI or he's got a brain the size of the planet because just staggered by the number of inquiries that he is currently involved with. So aside from being the lead counsel at the post office Horizon IT inquiry, he's also lead counsel for NHS England at the COVID-19 inquiry. He's leading counsel for the Secretary of State for leveling up housing and communities at the Grenfell Tower inquiry. He's the leading counsel for NHS England at the Thirlwall inquiry. He's the leading counsel for Greater Manchester Police at the Andrew Malkinson inquiry. He's leading counsel for counterterrorism policing southeast at the Dawn Sturgis inquiry. He's leading counsel to the inquiry for the Jalaluddin inquiry and he's a leading counsel for a group of undercover police officers at the undercover policing inquiry. And if anybody's been watching any of these, if you've been following the post office Horizon inquiry in particular, you see the scale of the amount of paperwork that these guys have got to actually understand in order to ask the questions they're asking, you get an impression of the kind of quantity of material that you've got to know off the back of your hand. If you're running a least taking part in that number of inquiries, it's quite incredible. Very, very remarkable in this day and age and what a credit. Amazing that people's brains do still function. Some people see us. Okay, let's move on to the issue of war and nuclear war here and we're back in March. We were highlighting that Royal Air Force Lake and Heath is hosting a bunch of new F-35s from the United States. And we were asking the question in March whether that would include the return of nuclear weapons. And it certainly looks like it's heading that way. So I want to highlight this article from the Federation of American Scientists. And the headline is "Natal Tactical Nuclear Weapons Exercise and Base Upgrades." So basically, there is a nuclear weapons exercise going on at the moment. The Russians are particularly unhappy about it, as you can imagine. And it's co-hosted by Belgium in the Netherlands. It includes Belgium, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. The exercise coincides with major upgrades underway at most of the nuclear bases in Europe, says the author of this article. This modernization involves security, upgrades to the underground vaults that store the U.S. nuclear weapons, underground cables, and nuclear command and control systems and facilities needed to throw the new F-35A nuclear-capable fighter bomber. He says that several of the nuclear bases in Europe have recently seen construction of a special loading pad for use by the U.S.C. 17 aircraft that transport nuclear weapons and service equipment, and he says that absolutely these silos are being, or these silos movies in the right word, vaults are being upgraded at Lake and Heath as well. So it looks very much likely, if we're not there already, they're coming very soon. Okay, let's move over to the Middle East and Vanessa and, well, the latest atrocities. Yes, and this is the latest atrocity, which happened in central Gaza in an area called Derell Balau, which has been receiving multiple refugees, or it just needs to plug in, from other areas of Gaza. Oh, no, no. What's wrong? Yeah, it's... Can you still see me? Yes, we can still see you. We can still hear you. Oh, okay, I'll try to keep going. Oh, we can't hear you anymore, I'm afraid. And that has, okay, well, I'm afraid that has completely frozen, so we do apologize for that. We will come back to that in a minute if we can, but let's, let's go on. Just go on through. I'd go on to a segment about the latest update on the armored vehicle capability from the Ministry of Defense, and indeed a recent announcement by Defense Infrastructure Organization that they've had a fit out for a training facility, and I would venture that when you're going so far as to mention how much the building weighs at 226 tons, you might be skipping past some information that might be a bit more pertinent and more relevant. So this is put out by General Dynamics, who rewarded the contract for the Ajax family of armored vehicles, which has been in the making for a considerable period of time since 2010, being developed at their site at Mirtha Tedville in Wales. And effectively there are going to be six variants of it, at a cost of £5.5 billion to the taxpayer. They're going to be the split across 589 vehicles, and you see here the different capabilities for different combat operations. One of the things to note, of course, is that the fighting vehicle has a 40mm cannon with new ammunition, therefore, will not be able to use any of the ammunition that warrior the previous infantry fighting vehicle, or at least that that's still in service, was firing 30mm cannon, but it does have compressed ammunition, so that should be a space-saving initiative. But this has been going for an awfully long time now, and it's such a protracted period of time that, in fact, effectively the scheme against which Ajax was drawn up is now effectively outmoded. We go back to 2021 to look at the UK defense journal, talking about warnings being ignored over safety issues, and this was something that Jeremy Quinn then procurement minister reported to the House of Commons about describing it as a vital investment, but he's been deeply concerned about progress on this troubled project, which has been running for already 11 years at that point. He goes on to say that a review into it from a cultural perspective suggests that the army did not believe it was potentially causing harm to people, especially from vibration, as it was tacitly expected that soldiers can and should endure such issues, which is a damning verdict on the administrative defense and the British army's treatment of its personnel. We've now got defense equipment and support, talking about the innovative threat detection system for Ajax, they are cagey on the detail of this, exactly where it's come from and who has made it, but it's called AcuSonic and it's meant to be able to detect threats, whether it will still be able to do that by the time it's actually rolled out, remains to be seen, but they talk about the six variants I referred to earlier, and this again going back to 2018, they're due to come into service in 2020 already way behind that. This is reinforced by the House of Commons document on it last year, 2023, again referring to the troubled armored vehicle program. So when will Ajax be in service? They asked at that point and the then minister for procurement, Alex chalk set a new timeline. We'll see if this gets stuck to, but initial operating capability between July and December next year 2025 and full operating capability between October 2028 and September 2029. And just to put this in context, in terms of the value of the contract, as I say at 5.5 billion, I think it bears significance to look at Ukraine and indeed the military and non-military assistance being given in the form of what's called support UK support to Ukraine. And of the enormous figures involved in that, we see that we are committed militarily to sustain a three billion a year aid commitment, military aid until 2030 to 2031 and for as long as it takes. Now, it's not clear at all how long that will turn out to be or indeed what relevance if any Ajax and all its variants will have on the battlefield wherever they may be by that point. So this is where investment in our own defense capabilities are going, but effectively at what cost when we set that against the enormous sums of money that have been committed to Ukraine. And of course, there are the safety issues with the personnel that have been involved in the testing over not a prolonged period of time. So particularly in relation to the sound and vibration and the effects thereof, there seems to be a lot of other teething issues to be brought out with regard to this Ajax programme. Yes. Okay. Thank you, Charles and Vanessa. Welcome back. Let's head to the Middle East. I'm so sorry, Israel does seem to be interfering with our communications here and in Lebanon. So this was the most, the latest heinous massacre, as I mentioned, it was in the centre of Gaza in Daral Bala, right outside a hospital where many refugees had gathered for shelter, but also for treatment, many of them were on beds on IV. Israel bombed the entire area and the videos that have been circulating are horrific. You can see literally people being burned alive. Nobody could get close to them to try and help rescue them. Of course, there's no real civil defence capability in Gaza amongst the Palestinians. And one of the bodies that you can see in the multiple videos is of Shabbal and Aldalu, 20 years old, died along with his mother after burning alive, following Israel's attacks on the tents next door to the hospital. He was a software engineering student who continued studying and working hard throughout Israel's brutal war in Gaza. And he had memorised the whole Quran, so hardly what can be described as a Hamas fighter or a terrorist. He was one of the victims caught on video in the flames with his IV, still attached to his arm. And I just want to play a video that was put out by a young Palestinian journalist in Gaza expressing how she felt about the latest massacre. [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] And there was very little reaction from Western regimes. And in fact, this statement was put out by the US Department of Defense on the deployment of a third battery to Israel. So effectively, now what the United States is doing is continuing in its ironclad guarantee of the security of Israel, even while Israel is, of course, clearly committing a genocide. So let's just have a look at what this means. So you can see there the key defenses, the iron dome, the arrow three, the patriot, David sling, and now the third, which has a 3,000 kilometer range. But as someone pointed out, and he wasn't the only one on X, the meatable this is that there are just 72 interceptors. And if you do the usual math of two interceptors per missile and around 80% success rate, then it means that it will take to overcome this is 28 missiles and they don't even have to be real ones. Decoys will do pathetic. So, you know, one has to actually ask, there's 100 US military personnel, are they acting as human shields for Israel in the case of an attack from Iran, if Israel attacks Iran. So, effectively, they're there as human shields for Israel, at the same time on the question of Israelis expansionist policy. Balazal Smatra, who's the finance minister provocatively claims the future of Israel involves expansion as far as Damascus during an interview for a French documentary, Israel extremists in power, Ed, by Arte, Israeli finance minister, basically sad that Israel has the right under religious attacks to expand its territory, not only towards Damascus, but also, of course, into other countries in the region. And as if echoing this, Lord Peter Ricketts, who was a former national security adviser to the British government, went on the BBC and said this. I think Israel has got to the point now where they feel there are no constraints on them. They have spent a year, they've still not done the job in Gaza. They've had to go back into the north of Gaza around the Jabalia refugee camp there, I think, for the third time. And I think they're feeling that there are effectively no American pressure on them anymore. I think the Americans gave up pushing for a ceasefire in Gaza, which is still nowhere near happening. They've accepted the fact that Israel is now in South Lebanon and trying to destroy Hezbollah's capability. And the Americans are reinforcing Israel against the possibility of another Iranian strike as and when the Israeli retaliation against Iran comes. So I don't think the Netanyahu thinks there is any limit now as far as what he can do in terms of political constraints. I mean, the terrible casualty toll suggests that they are really not prioritising protection of civilians either. And that while he's got momentum and he's doing his in Lebanon, he's got to go as far as he can. Well, the British government is also not doing anything to stop it or prevent it. And another shocking statistic that came out this week from the UN Human Rights, Ochre, Gaza is home to the largest number of amputee children in modern history to let that sink in. And let's listen to the representative of Ochre at the UN. Humanitarian partners report that women and children are hard hit by the trauma of this war. Each day, according to UNRA, ten children are losing one or both of their legs. Gaza is home to the largest cohort of child amputees in modern history. Women are three times more likely to miscarry and three times more likely to die from childbirth. And yet, humanitarians are not giving up. Madam President, we also remain deeply concerned about the worsting situation in the West Bank. Over the past year, Israeli military operations, along with a rampant settler violence and house demolitions, have led to sharp rise in fatalities, widespread destruction and forced displacement. So, yes, dreadful situation. Yes, and Vanessa, in the meantime, we've more war drums been buying for war with Iran. I mean, you were talking about that a second ago, but more and more voices sort of trying to push for this. Yeah, absolutely. This was something that I picked up on and wrote about on my substacks. People can go there. But this was an article published in for Chatham House. Lasting Israel Palestine Peace will not be possible without a new policy to neutralize the Iranian threat. So, who was this written by? He's a former British diplomat, the head of mission in Burma, Jerusalem, Syria, Iraq, Libya and Saudi Arabia. Sir John Jenkins described as a Tehran focused policy. He lays out the potential hybrid warfare plan, explaining that a new paradigm is needed, which centers on Tehran and its malign influence. Ideally, this would mean a change in Iran itself. An extension of the current conflict to the country could destabilize the regime, something the leadership fears in the light of its massive domestic unpopularity, which, of course, is not true. But let's have a look at how Peter Ford, who's a speaker on Saturday, responded to this with some sting in his commentary, because he knows Jenkins, of course, from his time himself in Syria. Pete Ford was ambassador to Syria. He basically says Jenkins comes from a long line of British diplomats who simply could not abide the idea of a strong independent to Iran. Iranians will never forget the British role in the overthrow of the Upper T. Mossadek and the installation of the brutal Shah, nor for nothing is Britain known as the Little Satan to Iranians, that a former British ambassador could write a piece like this without even pretending to be dismayed by the appalling human suffering, being inflicted on Palestinians and Lebanese, and whose only glimmer of humanity comes in a reference to October the 7th, is numbingly shocking. In the Westminster Tel Aviv Abu Dhabi Washington world in which Jenkins moves, however, he will get a part on the back for helping to condition British public opinion for the coming war with Iran, because that is what his article is really about and why it was commissioned. So chilling words there from Peter. Absolutely. And as you say, Peter will be speaking as part of the media on trial segment of the event on Saturday. So looking forward to that, sticking with Iran in a sense. Here we have the fantastic David Lamme and Joseph Burrell, his sidekick from the European Union, because as we know we have left the European Union and we don't have anything more to do with them. Well, they were in their statement, their joint statement, talking about Iran, we condemn Iranian attacks on Israel and supply of ballistic missiles to Russia for use against Ukraine and we're committed to sanction Iran's regime on that account. Because we've got to make sure that everybody understands that Iran is involved in both these conflicts, and therefore it is a target for the future. But the other thing that I just wanted to mention very briefly with these two was, of course, Britain's ongoing determination to support the idea of European defence. And the reason for this, of course, is because the specter of a potential Trump presidency and Trump's attitude to needle is making everybody in on the European continent a bit worried, shall we say. And they're attempting to use this, possibly as momentum to continue with their European defence project, which really it doesn't seem like anybody in Europe particularly wants, because they keep trying to push for I'm talking about the European Commission here keeps trying to push it forward. And the member states themselves seem to be a little reluctant. But anyway, if you want the context for this again, go back to the UK column website and have a look for the EU military unification page. And, well, you'll get a timeline there of how this has built up over the years. Okay, and Vanessa, back to you then, and Syria now. You're made. Oh, sorry. My fault. It's nice. Go for it. Okay. Yeah, we were talking about the closure of the border road between Lebanon and Syria. And you and I might were talking about the fact if we can just play the video, we can see the damage that is still there. Lebanon. Syria. And you'll be glad to know that I was actually going to try and walk from one side of the crater to the other. I was planning it all. And then the US influenced officials in Lebanon, shut it entirely so clearly they don't want us to be able to get out of Syria or from Lebanese to find refuge in Syria. So I want to come on to an update on what's going on in Syria. This is the director of the Russian intelligence service. So gay, narrow skin, who's been speaking about the agreements between Ukraine and the armed terrorist groups in the Syrian Arab Republic, which are being made with the help and blessing of the American and British intelligence and with the tacit approval of the Turks. He's talking predominantly about the Northwest. The key of regime is supplying terrorist organizations and extremist groups with attack and reconnaissance drones in addition to ammunition in exchange for recruiting its militants and sending them to fight in Ukraine. Russian intelligence has also monitored numerous communications between Ukrainian military intelligence and voice and leaders of the armed terrorist groups dominated by al-Qaeda, active in the Syrian Edelab governor, which represents fertile environment and a large incubator for them, and who target on an almost daily basis, the Syrian Arab army and the Russian forces operating on Syrian territory. So I just want to, he also mentioned the training by the US of terrorist forces in the Al-Tanif base on the border with Jordan. But let's just have a look at the video of the forces training in Edelab. [GUNSHOTS] The fact that their faces are covered in the uniforms they are wearing despite their headbands of various armed groups would actually suggest to me, and this is only speculation that these are foreign mercenaries or even special forces from the regime change cartel. But I just again wanted to show this map, so the front line now is extending in that northwest corner. The Syrian Arab army has been moving heavy equipment and artillery and tanks to that area, so clearly starting a new front line. What that does to some extent is leave vulnerable the southern area, which I'd already talked about last week, for a ground invasion by Israel and in fact, if we look at recent reports, both from Israeli press and from Reuters. So Jerusalem Post was claiming that IDF tanks had crossed into Syria that has been denied by the various governors in that area, Syrian governors in that area, but Reuters has reported that Israel's demining near the Golan signals wider front against Hezbollah, but also in my opinion, signals the possibility of an attempt at some kind of landprab in the south in the near future. Yeah. Okay. Thank you, Vanessa. Thank you very much. Now, let's talk about gender. This is related to warfare, as you'll see in a second, but let's talk about gender because in Germany. Earlier in the year they passed a piece of legislation, which is called the Act of Self-Determination. This replaces the Transsexual Act of 1980 on the 1st of November 2024 so comes into full force in a couple of weeks time. The change of gender entry doesn't have to be permanent. So basically, you can decide if you're a male, you can decide you're going to be a female today, but you're only allowed to make that decision once per year. So after a year, you can decide to switch back if you want. If you are a parent, well, basically your child cannot make their own decision until they're 14 years old. But if you want to make a decision for them at a younger age, then you can do that. But once they're aged five, then they have to be able to say that they are happy for that change to be made. And when you go to register that change, you've got to bring the child with you. But as to say from the age of 14, young people allow to determine their own gender. If parents decide to oppose a 14 or 15-year-old changing their own gender, then that can be taken to the family courts for a decision. And in the case of people that are under 18, then they don't have to wait the year for if they want to change back. They can change as many times as they'd like at any time. But what's this got to do with warfare? Well, the issue for the German government is whether somebody who is born a male and who may be subject to conscription in the not too distant future would be able to simply change their gender as a result of this legislation and avoid the draft. And, well, unfortunately, that is not going to be the case. So basically, if you're born male and you decide you want to be a female, then you need to be making that decision at least two months before there would be any conscription. Because once you pass that to two months threshold, any attempt to change gender would not be considered. And you would be, in fact, conscripted as a male and forced to join the military. So there you go. What do you think? I think the positive I would draw from this is that it is so absurd that it does at least effectively turn the whole idea of changing gender into a complete mockery. And I think that is a step in the right direction. The rest of its complete nonsense. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Let's move on. If you'd like what the UK column does support.uk column.org is the place to go. There are options for you to help us out. We do need your help. You could make a donation. You could join as a member and the various membership levels there and you could pick something up at the UK column shop, or you could pick something up from cloud.com. And although it doesn't cost you any more to buy something from there, we do get a percentage of a small percentage of the sale price. Do share material because we need you to do that. In these days of censorship, the share buttons are on each of the articles and videos that we have on the website. And of course, you can look at any comments. They're there. Now, yesterday, this interview went out with Mark Anderson, and Daniel new speaking, Daniel new was speaking about his son's refusal to wear United Nations colors while he was in the US army. Now, a lot of people don't realize that the United Nations doesn't have any military of its own. It simply grabs hold of military personnel from member states. They put a blue hat on and away they go. But Daniel's son refused to wear the blue hat. So that caused problems. So do watch that if you if you possibly can. It's on the website at the moment. Tomorrow we have an interview with Dan as interviewed a kid deeming from the scholars union for education about Scotland's curriculum for excellence. We've got a short excerpt. Consent should not be taught to children, right? Because children can't consent. But the thing is that consent in and of itself is the wrong word to teach the kids because kids cannot understand consequences. They lack the developmental capacity to understand consequences. Therefore consent is the wrong thing. It also does not acknowledge the power dynamic, which is inherent in childhood, which is where children are beholden to please adults. That's an evolutionary thing. Children want to please adults. This idea of child led is a lie. It's a complete another lie because children will follow. Children are people pleasers. Children will defer to the adults who kind of give them indications about what the right thing is, what the right answer is. Okay, so that's one PM tomorrow. Now, of course, on Saturday, we are hosting our live event in Bristol. Everybody should have details of venue and so on. Everybody that's a ticket holder. But what we noticed today was that there were people apparently selling tickets for this on Facebook. And we just want to say that we won't be. We won't be honoring any tickets that are sold via Facebook because we have no idea whether those are genuine sales or whether they're attempts to scam people. This is very common in social media now. So if you've bought a ticket for this on Facebook, please contact Claire in the shop. That's a shop at UK column.org and make sure that everything is sorted out with her before you come on Saturday because if she doesn't have a record of this, we can't allow people in. So please, please do that. We also will be running a live stream. There is going to be a small charge for the live stream access on Saturday. But the reason for that is because it's costing us money to run it. So we've got to cover costs on that. So we'll have details on the website on the UK column website later on today. Now, I just wanted to mention that the alternative view live stream, which was supposed to be happening on Sunday, the 10th of November has now been postponed. This is smart cities in the surveillance agenda update. Mark Anderson was taking part in that, along with Papa King John Kitten, David Dubai. They're going to announce a new date for this in the next few days, and we'll keep you posted on that. But tickets will still be valid for the future date. And well, where does that take us then? Take us to harvest. It does. And to those of you that have been watching UK column throughout 2024, this will not be a surprise, but reported now that there is considerably more data in the harvest across the United Kingdom. This season has been abominable, or at least that's the way in which it's being reported. We have the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit here describing it as being the second worst harvest on record with fears mounting for 2025. And their analyst, Tom Lancaster says this year's harvest was a shocker. And climate changes to blame. While shoppers have been partly insulated, Britain's farmers have borne the brunt of the second worst harvest on record. Well, it might not just be farmers bearing the brunt, because it will lead to food shortages in some way or other. It is clear that climate change is the biggest threat to UK food security. This is Tom Lancaster speaking again. These impacts are only going to get worse until we reduce our greenhouse gas emissions to net zero in order to stop the warming that is driving these extremes. Now, the reason he's saying that is because he has drawn data from the world weather attribution, which effectively ascribes everything that could be considered negative to climate change and by extension and for a progenic climate change. In other words, man's activities emitting carbon dioxide that have influenced the climate in such a way as to make everything bad and we should pay for it. But he who pays the piper calls the tune, the world weather attribution is, of course, funded from many different areas, but particularly from Imperial College and the Grantham Institute. So I just thought it'd be worth looking at what it is that they state their position to be. They talk about their mission being to lead on world-class research policy training and innovation that supports effective action on climate change, not in the least bit objective. Now, the money behind the Grantham Institute comes from this man here, Jeremy Grantham of the Grantham Foundation. And he says, when Malthus was born, there were a billion people on the earth. When I was born, there were about 2.2 billion, and this has tripled in my lifetime. I've become a Malthusian after my work on bubbles. His essay on the principles of population simply makes the point that any animal species has a huge redundancy in its capability in growing its population. So Grantham there on effectively one side of the fence with regard to population, his belief, therefore following that of Malthus, that an increase in food production will lead in some ways to a sort of depopulation event by famine or similar catastrophe. Also providing funding to this organization, which is informing these sort of catastrophic predictions in terms of climate and how that affects harvest, is Jeff Bezos and his Bezos Earth Fund. Unlike Grantham, Bezos believes that the human population should be increased, but his solution to that is to create fake food. His center for sustainable protein, and obviously not launched today, but when this was announced, will develop innovative and evidence-based solutions through design, delivery and commercialization of alternative food products. As I say, fake food. These are not foodstuffs. In the true sense, the word, they are not, therefore, full of nutrients that are available to human beings insofar as a bioavailability is concerned, but he says that they're economically and environmentally friendly. I think that's highly questionable, nutritious, almost certainly not, affordable, well, we'll see, and tasty, no comment. But this is how UK column considered the other factors at play here as opposed to just climate change and indeed just a poor weather outcome. This is the 27th of March of this year. Well, that's actually a huge change from what they said, first of all, the other thing they're going to be doing is specifically to protect food security and ensure we continue to produce at least 60% of the food we consume here in the UK to include a new annual UK-wide Food Security Index to capture and present the data needed to monitor levels of food security. So, this was pointed out to Defra back in January. It seemed clear to UK column at least that this risk lay ahead, and I got in touch with them, and I asked them specifically highlighted there in the red box. What is the minimum permitted area by hectare or the utilized agricultural area? And as a percentage of that, the cropable area, so the area that's actually used to produce food, what measures does Defra have in place to avoid a significant reduction? Defra replied at the time to clarify that there was no upper limit on the funding available for any of those schemes. Not all that land is likely to be suitable and so on. So, quite clearly, as I said, you know, disingenuous from the start, they didn't qualify that at the outset, and then they went on to say that they do not expect this to change as more farmers sign up to our farming schemes. So, Defra, in effect, have been massively caught out by this. And indeed, that does seem to be the case. I will just reinforce effectively what's turned out to be not altogether impossible prediction to make from the agricultural land-use statistics most recently provided on the 26th of September of this year, in which the Defra reports that the utilized agricultural area, which I was just talking about, has decreased by 1%. That's, of course, a misleading figure. I should state that this is for England and not the whole of the United Kingdom, arable crops within that down by 6.4% and underlined here. The uncropped arable area has increased by 107%. It's gone up 581,000 hectares. That means that all that area is now not being cropped. And this is a direct result of the environmental schemes that I was referring to back in late March. Wheat yield down by, sorry, wheat yield down by 11%, oil seed down by 26% and horticultural crops down by 3.2%. This was entirely manufactured by the environmental land management schemes that were made available to farmers who decided they would rather de-risk their business. So here we see that the area of uncropped arable land has increased by 107% to 581,000 hectares of this area, 276,000 hectares were left as bare fallow, and the remaining 305,000 hectares were left for environmental benefit. Well, I think, again, that's highly questionable. And at what cost? And I just leave you with the consideration that the red arrow, they're pointing at massive population increase that the United Kingdom has seen over the last two years in particular. And indeed, of course, its projections, which are never ever mentioned in any of these statistics provided by government. So food shortage, as I say, in some way or other seem extremely likely in the near future. Now, a topic we've been covering for many, many years is constitutional issues, and the House of Lords is a very key part of that. Now, of course, in 1999, Tony Blair decided to enact a piece of constitutional vandalism and removed the majority of hereditary peers from the House of Lords. And of course, many people think that this is a good thing because the House of Lords, they say, is completely undemocratic, particularly when you've got hereditary peers in there, they're unelected and so on, but that's misunderstanding the role of the House of Lords, which is there to hold the House of Commons to account to some degree. And when you pack the House of Lords instead of hereditary peers, you pack them with party representatives. Then, of course, who is actually getting held to kind and the answer is no one. And just to make sure everybody understands the situation with respect to the House of Lords. The House of Lords, since the Parliament Act 1911, I'll just read the text from the Parliament website here, the Parliament Act 1911 effectively abolished the power of the House of Lords to reject legislation or to amend it in a way unacceptable to the House of Commons. And most bills could be delayed by no more than three parliamentary sessions or two calendar years. And so the best that the House of Lords can do as it stands at the moment is to delay things. But the whole point of the House of Lords is to amend or make suggestions and to place limitations on the power of the House of Commons. And, of course, that, as I say, is impossible if you don't have people that are actually independent in it. So having hereditary peers in there was not necessarily a bad thing. But if you put this back up on screen now, the work of Tony Blair from 1999 is now being completed by Keir Starmer with the House of Lords to hereditary peers bill, which is now getting its second reading, which will get the rest of them out and will only leave the Parliament of the party stooges in place. Absolutely. And I think, well, I mean, new extension of the Blair policy, as you say, and proper instance of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. But also, I think that one, another thing that's lost hugely in this is, of course, for hereditary peer to sit in the House of Lords. They have to have gone through a process of election, which does put them in a different category from all the people who are stuffed in there, whether or not they want to be. And indeed, are there to effectively perpetuate the narrative. And the other thing, of course, is that in reducing, or at least eliminating hereditary peers, the likelihood of getting a proper geographical spread of people represented is further reduced. And also, there's the by extension, the consideration of what place the monarchy has in this country. If the House of Lords is being released, hereditary peers being described as indefensible on the basis of having had an accident of birth, which has put them there. The next subject on the agenda surely is, why do we have a monarchy? Good question. Yes, anyway, that will take us into effectively yet another instance in which net zero must be challenged or questioned. And this is with the announcement today, that possibly yesterday, my apologies, that Google have gone into a plan to put a nuclear clean energy agreement in with Kairos Power, always worth looking at the words Kairos, of course, being the ancient Greek word for seizing a critical moment. Indeed, I think they probably have done, but we go on to have a look at what they say, which is that the grid needs new electricity sources to support AI technologies that are powering major scientific advantages. The agreement helps a new technology to meet energy needs cleanly and reliably. So notice for AI technologies, absolutely no mention that nuclear might be used to provide power for people. But they offer a clean round the clock power source that can help us reliably meet electricity demands with carbon free energy every hour of every day. Advancing these power sources in close partnership with supportive local communities will rapidly drive the decarbonisation of electricity grid around the world. I've highlighted or rather put in bold the particular text there, because of course, the undertone is very much that the supposed push for renewable energy in the form of particularly solar and wind power is for north because of course it cannot be relied upon around the clock, which has been pointed out from the start, and that will never change, regardless of how many battery energy system storage systems are put in place in all the wrong sorts of areas. And again, the idea they're going to be supportive communities, well, maybe, but why would they be supporting such thing with that some sort of financial incentive. Also, this is effectively possibly in line to compete with Bill Gates's foray into providing small scale nuclear power. I spoke about this back in 26th June, and his initiative Terrapar, but of course Gates is seeking to derive, as with many of his projects, a sort of health initiative from this using isotopic advances in cancer treatments. And then the other thing which pertains in some ways to Mike's piece earlier about Lake and Heath and storage with regard to nuclear substances. We have the issue of geological disposal, which is sort of rearing its head again, which involves placing radioactive wastes deep underground within a suitable rock formation. The rock formation provides long term protection by acting as a barrier against escape of radioactivity and by isolating the waste from effects at the surface, such as climate change, of course. Now, I've spoken on a number of occasions about things going on underground and the government's apparent obsession with this. We had the tunneling equipment by his Majesty's Government Communications Centre in partnership with DSL. We've had focus on tunnels being used in Lebanon and the MOD providing training for tunneling of one sort or another. So, as well as, of course, the future cities document suggesting that we might all be living there one day. Now we have, going back to June of this year, the future of what's called the subsurface and the ironic subtitle there, what would happen if we turn planning upside down, apparently exactly what the New Day Government has just done in the last few weeks. This is the vision for use of the subsurface, subsurface, which looks extraordinarily complicated, confusing and disorganized, but they say that the report sets out available evidence on current challenges and trend related to the subsurface. And explores how we might evolve in future and what we need to do now to prepare, so all somewhat ominous, they look at the 2040 scenarios, and they say that there are tools to help policymakers, but they are not predictions. However, they can't help themselves from looking towards worst outcomes, which they identify as being threefold. First of all, net zero targets being at risk. And of course, the inference here is that this will be only because of planning barriers that there will be climate change adaptation under pressure, and also that technological change will have fallen behind due to regulatory barriers. So effectively what they're advocating for is a free for all in which anyone can do anything they like in the name of preserving the net zero goals. However, their AI machine has generated some dystopian images of what happens if things do not turn out as expected, which is effectively looking very much like things today, but with the extraordinary addition of what one assumes to be electric vehicles charging points that no vehicles can actually get to. So, well, that does not look at all to be better. And I know where my virtual money would be going. If I had to predict from this side here, which outcome is more likely if we are to pursue this underground agenda looking towards 2040 or 2050. Okay, Vanessa, let's finish with you. We began with with war and well, let's end with war. I think a very important point. This is from Eugene Dubs, who was a presidential candidate back in 1918 in the United States, and who gave a speech called the subject class always fights the battles for which he received a 10 year prison sentence under the Espionage Act, which sounds very familiar. So, what does he say here? Let the capitalists do their own fighting and furnish their own corpses, and there will never be another war on the face of the earth. I think very sage advice there, but let's have a look at his speech where he says, "Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder in the Middle Ages, when the federal lords who inhabited the castles whose towers may still be seen along the Rhine concluded to enlarge their domains to increase their power, their prestige, and their wealth, they declared war upon one another. But they themselves did not go to war, more than the modern feudal lords, the barons of Wall Street go to war, the federal barons of, I'm sorry, of the Middle Ages, the economic predecessors of the capitalist of our day declared all wars, and their miserable serfs fought all the battles. The poor ignorant serfs have been taught to revere their masters to believe that when their masters declared war upon one another, it was their patriotic duty to fall upon one another and to cut one another's weight. He goes on to say, they have always taught and trained you to believe it's your patriotic duty to go to war and to have yourselves slaughtered at their command. But in all the history of the world, you the people have never had a voice in declaring war and strange as it certainly appears, no war by any nation in any age has ever been declared by the people. And here let me emphasise the fact and it cannot be repeated too often that the working class who fight all the battles, the working class who make the supreme sacrifices, the working class who freely shed their blood and furnished their corpses have never yet had a voice in either declaring war or making peace. It is the ruling class that invariably does both, they alone declare war and they alone make peace. Yours not to reason why yours but to do and die, this is their motto and we object on part of the awakening workers of this nation. This was from 1918, he was arrested and imprisoned, but I think very prescient words. And just to add to that this is from Mazen Kamsaya, who's a Palestinian environmentalist factoid, the Jewish state was 7.2 million Jews received 17.8 billion dollars in one year in military aid from the United States taxpayers by the federal government to support genocide. That is 2,472 dollars per person per year, triple that if you count the other US aid. Florida now with two hurricanes received in federal grants, 22 billion per year for its 23 million residents, that is 956 dollars per person per year. Let that sink in for those voting for either side of the same point, the duopoly serving lobbies in US elections. So I think two very pertinent points for us to end on. Yes, thank you Vanessa, we will talk more about that in extra in a few minutes if your UK column member join us for that, but we have to finish there for today. So thanks very much everybody that's watched, thanks to Charles and Vanessa for taking part and we'll see you in a few minutes for extra. Bye bye. Bye bye. [Music] At Sprouts Farmers Market we're all about fresh, healthy and delicious. Step into our bulk department to discover a world of options with hundreds of scoopable bulk bins and grab-and-go favorites. From wholesome grains and spices to limited time goodies like pumpkin apple cashews and butter toffee peanuts. Plus buying in bulk means you can get as much or as little as you like for your next recipe or snack attack. Visit your neighborhood Sprouts Farmers Market today or fly for fills every scoop. (gentle music)
Mike Robinson, Charles Malet and Vanessa Beeley with today's UK Column News. If you would like to support our independent journalism, please join the community: https://community.ukcolumn.org/ Sources: www.ukcolumn.org/video/uk-column-news-16th-october-2024