UK Column Radio
UK Column News Podcast 23rd October 2024
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And as Charles will be talking about in a minute, long-range weapons being part and part of this. Part and parcel of this, they are describing this as a landmark defense agreement. New long-range strike weapons being part of it. John Hilly and Boris Pistorius signing this today may have already been signed. I'm not certain. But they're saying that this is working jointly to rapidly develop a new system that can far even further and be more precise in its targeting than any current system. They're going to however boost the British defense industry with 400 jobs, so that's exciting. New cooperation to strengthen the Eastern Front. They call it the Eastern Front. Flank, but let's face it, that's what it is, Eastern Front. Land industrial cooperation, so cooperation on boxer-armed vehicles and kick-starting collaboration on land-based drones. Protecting critical underwater infrastructure. That one had been stitches because, of course, as far as I'm aware, the only people that have been damaging underwater infrastructure is allegedly the British and the Americans with Nord Stream 2. But anyway, they are going to place German aircraft. In Scotland, this is a P8 aircraft. They're going to periodically operate out of Lassamouth, so we're going to be occupied by the Germans. That's good, isn't it? New drones. Working towards drones that could operate alongside our fighter jets, exploration and development of new maritime uncrewed air systems capabilities. And the next one is new support for Ukraine because, of course, it needs more. And that includes new joint work to enable German-seeking helicopters to be armed with modern missile systems, as well as work on capability coalitions, whatever that means. And finally, joint work with partners to integrate air defense systems. Now, I just wanted to remind everybody what the situation is with respect to the sort of bilateral agreements at the moment, particularly with France and Germany. So with France, we have the 2010 Lancaster House Treaty and the 2018 Sandhurst Treaty. We had the joint vision statement between Britain and Germany in 2018. And now this latest one, which they're describing, is the Trinity House Agreement. And of course, between France and Germany, we have the all-encompassing 2019 Akken Treaty. So this is all about defense union and merging defense capabilities in Europe, Europe between European countries, because, of course, NATO is, well, perhaps if Trump becomes president, going to become less important, as far as Europe concerned. As a concern, is it re-oriented towards China? And the Europeans having to pick up some of the load on that. So more and more of these types of agreements being put in place. This is just the latest one. But Charles, if I could welcome you to the program, do you have more on this? I do. Good afternoon, Mike. And Vanessa, good afternoon all. Yes, indeed. Now, there's plenty going on to work alongside what Mike's been discussing, specifically the spectre of the threat, the air threat. And indeed, there has been a piece in the eye news suggesting that our air defenses are not where they should be. And how is it that they are attempting to justify this? But the article here says that there are concerns over gaps in the protection of British skies, and they were hiding this month when it emerged that RAF typhoons were unable to shoot down ballistic missiles fired from Iran into Israel. Now, if you're wondering why they'd be trying to do such a thing in the first place, that's because, as discussed many times before in the UK column, Operation Shader, which started in Iraq in 2014, has crept and crept, first of all, into Syria. And now, of course, it's been pushed into defense of Israel, or at least augmenting Israel's inherent right to self-defense, which, of course, as Peter Ford was reminding us on Saturday at UK column on location, this is, of course, double-speak. So in order to stop escalation, apparently, except when it's concerned with actions that Israel may want to take. Nonetheless, we look further at the telegraph here, also reporting, in effect, the same thing, and saying typhoons are not up to defending Israel from missile attacks. But as I said at the beginning, all this behind the spectre of a threat, which I have to say, is reminding me very much of what was happening in September 2002, and the claims that we were in mortal peril from an attack that could be launched by Saddam Hussein within 45 minutes, as reported here by the Evening Standard and the Sun. So we'll just look at the threat levels. Admittedly, this is written up as being the terrorism threat levels here on the Security Services page, but, of course, this is part of the joint task force that devises these things. And, of course, worth noting that here we are in the middle ground with the threat level labeled as substantial. And, of course, for many, many years, it has not dropped below substantial. Occasionally, it bounces up to Zafir. And if you think about the reasons for why, it will, of course, be that if the threat is reduced below substantial, and then something does happen, that, in effect, put egg on the faces of the Security Service. So it is a backside covering exercise. Now, as I say, John Healy has been out and about doing business all over Europe. And, as Mike was just alluding to NATO, of course, is a big part of this. And, therefore, the Eastern flank. Now, NATO is an alliance and not a geographical area, so really shouldn't have any reference to having a flank in the first place, again, as discussed many times. But from this, we hear about the new Diamond Initiative, which seeks to integrate NATO's missile defences, specifically long-range cutting-edge missiles. But the bit I've underlined here, of course, is that it concerns collective air defence and offering opportunities to the UK defence industry, as it will be they that are the winners. In future years, the army will deploy its most advanced tanks, the Challenger 3 to NATO's Eastern border. We see that reference again, along with armoured vehicles, such as Boxer. Now, there are two interesting points there. First of all, all this points to the future, as opposed to a current capability. Challenger 3, we've reported about in the past, still an unproven main battle tank. And, indeed, their reference to Boxer, but not to Ajax. Ajax, of course, being the platform government are trying to show off at the moment, but not to the degree of actually suggesting that it might have a capability in this theatre of future operations. Nonetheless, they go on. The Diamond-led Initiative will improve NATO's integrated air and missile defence. So this is all about putting the capabilities of all the separate nations together and enhancing, therefore, in order to be able to operate better and more jointly across Europe. And then they say that they'll be working alongside international allies, and they name a number of the countries, again, referring to long-range missile capabilities with the project, expected to play a key role in Europe's defence by the 2030s. So as I say, this is looking to the future, as opposed to being able to demonstrate any sort of capability now. And the other point to draw from reference to the other countries that are involved is, of course, that of those in the NATO alliance, 10 of them have some form of conscription. And that's not something that gets talked about very much, but of course, it has been discussed in the UK in a bleak sense. So I think we need to keep watching very intently on that to see where it goes. Now, another thing that was slightly more updated part from John Healy is a statement that he gave on the war in Ukraine, so-called the war in Ukraine, on the 22nd yesterday. And really, the only bit I want to draw out from it, especially with the forthcoming budget in mind, and Rachel Reeves stating that she needs to find 40 billion pounds. We see Healy here referring to new money. He says this is new money, by which he means it's being drawn from thin air. New money, which will be delivered under the extraordinary revenue acceleration loans to Ukraine scheme, doesn't really roll off the tongue. But it does describe what it does, I think, especially well. It certainly is extraordinary. And like all things in the post-COVID era, it concerns acceleration. It says that it's part of the $50 billion loan package from G7 countries to support Ukraine's military budget and Reconstruction needs. Of course, I've highlighted Reconstruction because this is an area that is going to be burgeoning in the not-too-distant future and indeed is underway. And of course, the whole purpose of the exercise really is to be able to reshape, not just Ukraine, but other parts of the world based on the premise that we are, effectively, in a situation of facing an existential threat from hostile actors such as Russia. So therefore, with that in mind, Ministry of Defence has also launched the announcement of a new capability to be fitted to aircraft, note future tents. So we've got a picture of something that looks rather like it's come out of the 1960s. But nonetheless, it says that it has defeated 100% of targets in recent live fire trials. Of course, not actually against anything that's trying to shoot back, designed to be fitted to a range of RAF aircraft. Again, note that it has not yet been done yet, but it detects, identifies and tracks. Missile launches and that, of course, involves the defence companies or at least consortiums, Leonardo Antales, Leonardo involved with the Dragonfire laser, the ground-mounted, or indeed ship-mounted laser system. And again, further developments or an announcement on the Global Combat Air Program, the GCAP, which is to be a future platform. And again, this is an arrangement between the United Kingdom, Italy and Japan, represented by BAE systems Leonardo, as I've just mentioned, and indeed Mitsubishi. So they're describing it as a next-generation stealth fighter aircraft. And again, looking ahead, rather than to the present, it's to deal with threats beyond 2040. Now, how they know what the threats are going to be beyond 2040, they do not explain. And I would venture that they cannot explain. Nonetheless, they say it's going to be in service by 2035. So we will wait and see, it's due to be a replacement for the FGR4 typhoon airframe, which is worth noting, went double over its budget. And therefore, I think it's pertinent to point out that the funding for this remains unclear at the moment, exactly how much resource it will suck in, is remaining to be seen. Now, what I would suggest that you do with air defense in mind is to go to the UK column website and look up the interview that I did with Tim Davis some months ago, called winging it, why is the UK training Ukrainian pilots and his view on the Russian capability versus ours. And of course, with Russia having the upper hand at the moment, it seems reasonable to assume that they will continue to develop at least at the same pace that we are seeing any of the things I've just been referring to developing. So it's hard to see, as we review this, the beneficiaries as being anyone other than the defense industry, the military industrial complex, and of course, the government who are able to assume a great deal of control by the specter of the emergency of war. I don't know if there's any time Mike for any comment on that, but there's a lot going on at the moment. Thanks, Charles. Thanks for that. We will be talking a little bit more about Ukrainian pilots a little bit later in the program. But Vanessa, let me welcome you to the program and you've got an update on what's going on in Gaza. Yes, increased ethnic cleansing in Gaza under the label of the general's plan, which while Israel is denying that it's following such a plan, it has sealed off all humanitarian aid to northern Gaza. For the last, I think, almost three weeks while, of course, destroying what is left of the infrastructure, destroying the refugee camps, the schools, besieging hospitals, and basically picking off civilians, it will, including with robot explosive devices that are targeted, just roll into neighborhoods and are detonated. So I just wanted to show just an excerpt of what it looks like for the people in Jibalia who were trying to flee from one area to the other, constantly under the threat of drones. And you will hear if the sound is up the sound of the drones, which I have to say, having been in Gaza is one of the most sinister sounds you can ever experience, particularly when it's 24/7 for the last year. So let's just play this video. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] I mean, you know, there are many more gruesome videos that are circulating at the moment, but I think that one captures that feeling of panic and helplessness perfectly. The images that are also coming out very reminiscent of the Nazis rounding up their undesirables, men being separated from women reports that men are being taken away, buried alive, executed, abused, tortured, kidnapped, etc., very much what we've heard in multiple other areas. Their organis is the comparison that I made. It's very difficult to not make that comparison right now. And what the Israeli forces, of course, are doing or are conducting multiple forms of execution of Palestinians from drones, from sniping by drone, and then bombing people that came to rescue a young kid that had been mortally wounded, people being displaced, endlessly, tanks, shelling, helicopters. I mean, it's endless. And this is 24/7 as people are describing. And what I wanted to do, sorry, is the next slide, right, sorry. And basically what they're doing are burning, as I said, the schools, the shelters, the refugee centers, the places where many hundreds of people were taking, shelter and, of course, filming themselves and celebrating the raising of Gebalia in particular to the ground, basically. And I just wanted to play this video. I mean, Netanyahu has made a similar statement multiple times as I discovered, but this, I think, was about eight years ago. Let's just listen. Netanyahu's definition of terrorism. Terrorists do is target the innocent deliberately, and therefore my definition of terrorism, is the systematic and deliberate attack, the murder, naming, and menacing of innocents, civilians, for political goals. You can tell a lot about terrorists, but what happens when they come to power? Those who fight for freedom and come to power, do not impose terrorism. Those who do, who fight in terroristic means, end up as being masters of terrorist states. I don't think I really need to add any comment to that. I think people can interpret it, as they will. So this was an article back from March in 2024, War on Gaza, while Aizar on Rafa, Israel is cementing control of Northern Gaza. But I think what's important here, and I've actually written about this myself, is that what is being imposed upon Gaza right now is what Ariel Sharan created as a project called the Five Fingers Plan. So Israel is in the process of reinstating its occupation of Gaza by taking control of the main roads, corridors, and streets, until its unilateral withdrawal in 2005, Palestinians were denied access to these areas. The idea of dividing the Gaza Strip into areas that are accessible to the Israelis and restricted to the Palestinians dates back to the 1967 occupation. In 71, Ariel Sharan, the Israeli Army commander of the Southern region, who later became Prime Minister, prepared a plan to divide Gaza and North Sinai into five settlement areas that prevent geographic ambiguity between Palestinians in the North Center and South. And that clearly seems to be what we're heading towards in Gaza, the systematic destruction of these five areas, the basic displacement of people that will not be allowed to combat and the ethnic cleansing of others. And just to reinforce this, very recently, there was a gathering held very close to Gaza when people should remember Daniela Weiss, the head of one of the settler organizations, one of the most extremist who worked with Ariel Sharan in the 70s to steal Palestinian land through settlement. Here, she's talking again about resettling back in Gaza. So let's just play this. They will not stay in Gaza by no means to convince the world it is not only good for Israel, it is not just for the Jews, it is for the benefit of the world to cling to the good and to put the evil away, to put an end to Hamas, to put an end to Hezbollah, to put an end to Syria, Russia, as we say, the evil power. I give here advice to the United States. Let's not go into who will be the president. I give here the advice to the United States, to Britain, to France, to the European Union. Be with us, it will be good for you. I assure you, in Syria, Gaza, we will settle the northern part, we will settle Guscadiv and we will build many more new cities and communities. We will bring life to the place that now is held. The place that they have now reduced to hell, I would correct that and I would correct a number of other of her statements. Maybe we can talk about it in an extra. This was a story that also caught my eye and that has been cited across much of the Arabic media as well as among the resistance factions who have put out various statements contesting it. American businessman proposes 200 million mercenary plan for Gaza, so let's have a look at what this actually means. A Zionist-American businessman, Moti Karhana, who was also heavily involved in Israel's attempts through smart power and soft power to occupy the south of Syria. He's pitching a 200 million plan to deploy U.S. mercenaries to the Gaza Strip. According to reports from drop site news, which appears to be a huge followed hub for other journalist articles, the proposal which Karhana claims is under consideration by the Israeli government would establish gated communities controlled by private mercenaries in Gaza. Karhana, the CEO of Global Delivery Company, describes his firm as the Uber for war zones. His proposal involves deploying well-trained operators from U.S. security companies, largely CIA, of course, including Constellis and I'll come back to that in a second. A successor to the infamous Blackwater to manage these gated zones. So, Constellis, if you remember my James LeMejiro, who created the White Helmets, the operation that was working alongside Al-Qaeda in Syria. He worked for Olive Group that then got merged with Constellis. And so, basically, what he's suggesting, it includes biometric screenings for Palestinians in these gated communities with humanitarian aid distribution contingent on passing these tests. He envisions a future where the private security forces would maintain order while allowing Palestinians to come and go freely under the oversight of local leadership. So, that sounds very much like the smart cities that they're developing and they're going to come back to me. Yes, indeed. Okay. Thank you very much for that, Vanessa. Now, we're going to come back to the UK. And, well, I'm going to put this up from the BBC, because the bad news this morning is that Richard D. Hall has lost his kiss on the Manchester Arena bombing. And the reason, of course, I'm putting... Well, no, in fact, you probably don't know the reason. One reason I'm putting the BBC article up on is because when Richard on his Telegram channel was saying that this judgment was to be released, it was to be released at 10.30 in the morning. And, well, apparently, the BBC not only got the judgment, but we're able to write an entire article on it in 11 minutes because they published this at 10.41 this morning. So, the question is, did the BBC receive this judgment prior to it actually being released to Richard D. Hall? And because he certainly didn't seem to know about it at 10.30 on the dot, or at least he wasn't saying anything. So, this is all very unclear. And, of course, the other question that still remains to be answered is where the family that brought this case got the money to bring the case and where they got the encouragement to bring the case, because it seemed to us at the time that they only brought the case after Marianna Spring, and the BBC had engaged with them in order to highlight the work that Richard D. Hall was doing and to criticise it. So, anyway, we will keep an eye on how this develops, and we'll bring you more and we'll do it on Friday. In the meantime, I wanted to mention this situation. So, this is the Internet Archive, which, of course, runs the Wayback Machine and a host of other archive material from the Internet. Wayback Machine, fantastic resource for anybody that's doing research, because we're just going to get to see what web pages look like at various points in the past. But this organisation has been under significant cyber attack for the last couple of weeks. So, beginning on the 9th of October, they were confirming that they were experiencing denial of service, distributed denial of service attacks, site defacement, and also a data breach. And this was apparently being organised by a hacktivist group, or what's being described as a hacktivist group here, SN Black Meta. And they seem to have claimed responsibility. It's almost like it's the IRA or something, claiming responsibility for stuff that way. But anyway, it's been reported that 31 million user accounts have been released by this hack. They all appeared in a single file, which was dated the 20th of September 2024. And inside that file were users, email addresses, and also encrypted passwords. On the 15th of 2024, the website, or at least up until the 15th, the website was mostly offline. But after that, they started bringing it back on in a read-only format. And then yesterday, it was back down again, because apparently they'd been experiencing more attacks. So they say that they're continuing to work hard to bring this fully back online. But then I just wonder who is actually behind this, because, of course, the way back machine, inconvenient in many ways for the authorities, as people do the kinds of research in order to hold these people to account. So we will watch with interest how this develops. But I wonder whether this is really a hacktivist group, or whether this is state sponsored by Western states. And then finally, I want to mention something that we launched at the event on Saturday with respect to the Online Safety Act. Now I've got a short piece of video here. If I can remember where that is, I will bring it. Yes, here we go. So if we watch this video, we'll discuss this briefly afterwards. But we've had a minor success. Many of you, if not all of you, may be aware of this. But this idea of news publisher and journalistic content we've discovered applies to us, because us and some other independent news publishers, because they have scoped the idea of a news publisher, what a recognized news publisher is, it's actually not that hard to do. So what you see introduced in the Online Safety Act are two specific provisions, or actually three. You've got section 17, which is the duty to protect journalistic content. And you've got section 19, which is the duty to protect democratic content. I may be switching them up. But just like Mike said, they have to apply evenly. Now, as everyone knows here, they're not applying it evenly at all. But this is now UK statute. This is now the law within England and Wales that they have to provide this. So suddenly it's a bit of a double edged sword. Within there, there is also section 18, which is the concept of a recognized news publisher. And the idea of becoming a recognized news publisher is basically when you become that, when you become this, you know, elite class that they set up, you're all protected from most of their censorship. The small victory that we have from YouTube at the moment gives us an expectation that challenging this can work. The worst organization for censorship is TikTok by far, right? So YouTube as bad as it is, TikTok. Can I have any TikTok channels that we had shut down? So we've lost kind of how many TikTok channels we had shut down. So this isn't just about challenging YouTube. It is about challenging every platform. And so what we want to say tonight is that we want to invite every independent news organization in this country, bigger, small, so long as they're independent and not these corporate model, you know, horrible things to contact us and get involved with an effort to challenge these platforms using the online safety act as a basis for the challenge. This might result in us attempting some kind of legal procedure because ultimately it may have to be challenged in court. But we think probably it's going to be much better to have a group of us working together on this challenge to see whether we can get the platforms to move without needing to take at that next step. And we really do need everyone to come on board. So if you have journalists who you follow, aside from UK column, aside from me, who are out there doing journalism that you believe needs to be uncensored, go contact them, ask them if they know about this, ask them if they know about what we're doing and try and get them on board with us. Because the more people we have on side, the more we can achieve. I know we've we've made this invitation. There are plenty of independent media organizations out there that I couldn't possibly agree with at any point in time. This just mentioned the canary as one. But they are independent and I don't agree with them. But I would work with them on this project because they are suffering the same thing that we are. They have the right to say what they say whether I agree with it or not. And we are all suffering from this censorship regime. It's time to take the fight to them and to the front. So that's what we're encouraging everybody to do. Okay, so we are going to be talking about this much more at 1 p.m. tomorrow live. So Charles and I and that was Willsy from Resistance GB with us as well. We're going to talk about that at 1 p.m. tomorrow. So join us live for that if you possibly can. Now, let's just remind everybody that if you want to support the UK column, you can do that at support.uk column.org. There are options to help us there, making a donation, joining as a member, picking up from something from the UK column shop or from Clive Carla, would be all extremely helpful. But as we've just discussed sharing material and trying to get over this censorship regime would be fantastic as well. That support is needed. Just a reminder that if you want to still watch the live stream, the recording of the live stream for the 19th of October, that's still possible. Head over to the front page of the UK column website and you can do that. Now, at the moment, the BRICS Summit has begun. So let's just bring it on screen. If we can, there we go. So the BRICS Summit has begun. And well, what can we say? Russia, the BBC going nuts about it on the radio yesterday. I'm very upset that Putin was shaking the hands of so many world leaders yesterday, because of course they're trying to, BBC in the meantime, has been trying to persuade us all that Russia is isolated completely. So anyway, that is the situation. Let's just have a look then at what Putin was saying yesterday, very briefly. We are brought closer together by the values and worldview. It would be fair to say that BRICS unites like minded countries, sovereign countries that represent different continents, models of development, religions, civilizations and cultures. All our states stand for equality, good neighborly relations and mutual respect for high ideals of friendship for the global prosperity and well-being. So that's at least what they're claiming that it's all about. That seems to be the case. But in the meantime then, we have comments from various BRICS personnel. Sorry, apologies for that. This particular comment on Telegram making the point that basically if we look at the US election, they're saying, and not at all the results of the vote count in the US as the American and other global liberal media are trying with all their might to present and impose on anyone. But instead, it's really all about the cooperation between the various states that are going to be the major influence of the world and forget about the US election is the point here. And then we have Putin saying, we're going to move as fast as they can on the question of international financial reform. But that means proceeding incrementally, step by step. We believe any rush should be inappropriate, meaning both that there is no unanimity within the BRICS and so on. So basically, there is dissent within BRICS about exactly how quickly and in what way they're going to move ahead. But in the meantime, what they have done is created this BRICS pay system. So this is an attempt to deal with the situation with international payments and the fact that everything is so closely tied to the dollar. And so I just want to highlight a piece of video here from Richard Werner, which might give us a clue as to why they might be concerned about this and might want to set up their own payment processes. I'd like to make you aware that I wrote a new sub stack in late September 2024 on the national debt explosion. And of course, it's mainly about the US national debt and the implications. And I noted that we had reached 35 trillion US dollars a new world record in world history in real terms of the size of absolute size of national debt, but also the fact that the interest payments on this debt had now become so large, it's now exceeding the entire military budget, the military industrial complex spending, which of course is much larger than many other countries, including Russia and China and European countries, together the US military spending is much higher. But the interest on the national debt is now higher than that. So it's quite astonishing. It's very clear that national debt has been growing exponentially in this phase that the time period it's taking to have another trillion, and that's a big number of trillion dollars of national debt. It used to be decades, but more recently it's become years. And actually, this year it's become months to have another one trillion in national debt. And when I wrote this in late September, it was warning, well, it was 35 trillion. But you know, if you just read this a few weeks later, it could well be 36 trillion. Well, we're already rounded at 36 trillion now, just a few weeks later. It is quite incredible. The link to that full video will be on in the show notes. Of course, I do recommend everybody watches that. So I can't imagine under those circumstances why bricks would want to get away from the dollar system as quickly as they can, a bit of sarcasm there. But in the meantime, people getting very upset, particularly in Britain, that the first meeting between Xi and Modi has taken place, because of course, Britain in particular is very keen to see China and India split apart if they possibly can. But just to end this short segment on bricks, we'll talk more about this in extra. I just thought this was quite appropriate from the bricks news Twitter feed, which is at bricks info. And they are comparing West versus East. I think that graphic speaks for itself. But in the meantime, Charles, when we come back to you and look at the situation, because bricks, of course, is all about investment. Well, what's going on with investment in the UK? Thanks, Mike. Yes, this follows well, actually, especially as there is no chatter about the rules on the national debt in the UK being changed in order to allow the Labour government to pursue their own agenda. And I think, as we always have to ask question, who will benefit? And on the theme of investment, they've announced recently on the 10th October, there's to be a new investment minister. So let's take a look at how that has been bolstered. That's the word they're using. The mail put it as tech tycoon, who sold her four billion cybersecurity company to a foreign private equity firm, is appointed key starmers, new investment minister. And if you don't recognize the girl in the picture, she is Poppy Gustafson. And she has recently handed over as chief executive of Dark Trace, the cyber security company that has been involved in many extraordinary incidents over the past few months, not least the extraordinarily coincidental deaths of Stephen Chamberlain and Mike Lynch, almost effectively on the same day they set up the company with the proceeds from autonomy sale to Hewlett Packard. The relevant part here, of course, concerning her ministerial appointment is that on the Dark Trace website, when she stood down, she said, I'm profoundly grateful to have had the privilege of leading such an exceptional team. And I look forward to remaining engaged in this exciting next chapter of the business as a non executive director of the transaction complete. I remain Dark Trace's number one fan. Well, I bet she does, but does that really suit her position as investment minister. Now, the Guardian has a photograph from some years back of a chap called Benjamin Weg Prosser, who was touted to be taking this job. And it's interesting to note that he too has an intriguing past. He was the director of strategic communications at Downing Street during the Blair years, having worked initially as an advisor for Peter Mandelson, and he decided he didn't want to do it, which is why Gusson has stepped in. But her name will be familiar not just because of her Dark Trace history, but also because she is on a panel of what's so-called tech experts to shape government digital vision to drive innovation and boost public services that's being chaired by Martha Lane Fox of lastminute.com fame. So everybody's getting a slice of the pie, so to speak, no more so than a couple of people meeting with the Prime Minister and the Chancellor here, the Prime Minister tweeting that investment is fundamental to growing our economy and that we can unlock further opportunities. I think the question to be asked is further opportunities for whom? Here we see Larry Fink, headman at BlackRock, which has an estimated worth of $11.5 trillion and Bill Gates reckoned to be worth upwards of $105 billion. What on earth do they have to do with policymaking or indeed investment in the United Kingdom? You might be forgiven for asking. Now Gusson's appointment has come because she's been stuffed into the House of Lords. And we talked about this recently because of the push to do away with hereditary peers once and for all. So I just thought it would be interesting to look at the numbers of life peers created over the years. This graph, although small, shows McMillan at the top going down to Stommer at the bottom, Blair there on 374 life peerages Cameron in a shorter space of time, 245, also worth noting Liz Truss in her 45 days in office did create 29 life peers. So they're all at it. And I think the point here to be made is that we have the advisory committee on business appointments, Akoba, which deals with the appointments of people who have been working for the crown. But of course, they have no such control over people who are about to work for the crown. That should be part of the register of interests of any of the various departments that are going to be employing these people. And she is as Minister for Investment within the Department for Business and Trade. They have not updated their register of interests. I inquired as to what her interests were. I've heard no reply. So again, the question to be asked is at a time where the government are claiming to have 22 billion black hole, then I'm looking for a further 40 billion. And then you're claimed to be investing on our behalf. But of course, certainly with our money, but in whose interests? Good question. Thank you, Charles, for that. Now, let's come back on to the issue of war then. And Charles did mention Ukrainian pilots. So let's bring the latest Tranche of Ukrainian pilots on screen. Here they are, a great photograph pushed out by the British government to tell us all about them. 200 of them is in the latest lot. Here's another picture of these in the aircraft that have been flying. So pretty far away from F-16s, but nonetheless, Luke Pollard tweeting out that, "Did you know the UK has now trained 200 Ukrainian pilots?" Today, I attended the graduation of the latest pilots from RAF's training programme. These pilots will soon be flying Ukrainian F-16s. Well, if by soon you mean in two or three years, then maybe, but not anytime really soon, because there's quite a lot to do between flying a single-engine grub and flying an F-16. So, in the meantime, the British government, the Ministry of Defence, tweeting out that now 48,000, more than 48,000 Ukrainian personnel have been trained in the UK under Operation Interflex, helping push back Russian aggression in the country. So, well, there you go. That's all very exciting. Now, in the meantime, David Lamy has been saying some stuff, and, well, let's just have a look at it. I'm here at the demilitarized zone on the Korean Peninsula, right on the border of North Korea. A regime supporting Putin was a legal war against Ukraine. We've all seen reports of North Korea sending troops to Russia, shipping armies to Russia, and providing Putin with political support. This only prolongs war in Europe threatens peace here in Asia. This must stop. I've made it my personal mission as Foreign Secretary to use the full weight of British diplomacy to constrain the Kremlin. That's why I'm here, working with our friends in South Korea, to safeguard Britain's national and economic security. And South Korea's turn. Together, we've shown Putin that Ukraine supports us, from Europe to Asia, will stand with Ukraine for stops and checks. And if you've all stopped throwing up in a bucket by now, we'll look at the evidence. This is the evidence, apparently, of North Koreans fighting alongside Russians. Here we go. There it is on screen. And this is from the Korea Herald. Russian North Korean flags displayed together on Ukrainian battlefield. Yes. Well, less said about that, the better, perhaps. So, anyway, sticking with Acts, David Lamy pushing this out. We've all seen the reports of North Korea sending troops and weapons to support Russian Putin's illegal war against Ukraine. I went to the Demilitarized Zone, bloody, bloody, blah. I just really wanted to highlight the comments that were under this, because there was nothing really positive. So let's have a look. Yeah, and we've all seen the reality of UK draconian crackdown on free speech North Korean style. One of that said Alan Miller, Willie Darling, saying we've all seen reports of U.S. and U.K. sending weapons to fascist Israeli regime engaged in actual genocide. We've got what about U.S.-Germany and U.K. sending weapons and unconditional support to Israel, to slaughter Palestinians. And then, underneath that, the People's Britain, yes, we only send weapons to support illegal wars. Well, that's just for it, went on. Now does do something similar for Gaza. Was another comment. You can send weapons to help support someone else's war that will kill thousands of innocent people. That's our job. Lamy is a clown. Other people laughing and saying, "Okay, Rambo," and another person saying, "They must have been on the edge of their seat." It went on, so it just did not end. These comments, clearly, if Lamy's paying any attention, he should be getting an idea of how people actually feel about the propaganda that he was pushing out. But just to end this, then, let's just let you know the latest from Zelensky himself, who's deeply grateful to the United Kingdom for providing U.K. with an additional $3 billion in financial assistance and support our military needs, and that follows on from what Charles was saying earlier. So the continuing war narrative, in one sense, very, very serious, and in another sense, an absolute comedy show as they try to justify their actions. But in the meantime, Vanessa, bring us up to date with what's been going on in Lebanon. Yeah, and of course, Lamy enthusiastically supporting Israel's war, which is now effectively against the entire region. So this is the latest from the Israeli occupation forces. Again, it's difficult not to smile, but it is leading to the carpet bombing of various areas of Beirut and all of Lebanon. Nasrallah's money bunker, so now it's not only weapons. Apparently, the bunker below the Al-Sahil hospital in Beirut was used for many years by the former leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah. As his emergency bunker, the bunker currently serves as Hezbollah's central financial facility, where Hezbollah stores the majority of its money, money that was stolen from Lebanese civilians, and is used for its terrorist activities. I'll come on to what that money actually represents in a minute, but let's listen to the spokesperson for the Israeli forces. The IDF will not allow Hezbollah to regroup and rearm. Not only is this Iranian money, used to kill Israelis, it also threatens the Lebanese economy. As Hezbollah continues to smuggle Iranian money into Lebanon in dollars, it devalues the Lebanese pound making the economy crisis in Lebanon even worse. Another source of income for Hezbollah is the citizens of Lebanon. Hezbollah makes money for Lebanese citizens by offering them financial services through the El-Kordil Hassan Association. Last night, we called on Lebanese civilians to move out, move out of armsway from Hezbollah's financial facilities across Lebanon. Across Lebanon, so what this effectively means, of course, it's a pretext, as I said, for public bombing various areas and killing more civilians in Lebanon. This is by Steve Sweeney, who's now with RT, but based in Beirut at the moment. So he said he visited the Sahal Hospital in Southern Beirut. The morning after, Israel made the claims without evidence that hundreds of billions of dollars in gold and cash were stored in the basement and used to fund Hezbollah. He had unrestricted access to all areas, including the basement and all I found were the normal things found in any hospital and any country across the world. The hospital or director believes it will be bombed by Israel repeating a patent seen in Gaza with attempts to link the hospital to Hezbollah, a smoke screen to justify an attack. We had to leave the hospital with drawings flying overhead with the potential for Israel to strike at any moment. The health ministry has called on the international community to speak out and break its silence on Israel's war crimes. And at least four people, including a child were killed as Israel bombed the vicinity of the Rafi Kariri Hospital on Monday night, while 14 people were killed in general, wiping out two families. So again, you know, very familiar stories. I was speaking to journalists, Madwa Osman last night. She told me four hospitals in total so far have been bombed by Israel. Even Amnesty International has waited on this one. Branches of Hezbollah affiliated financial institution, not military targets. So basically they say that, of course, this is a war crime, not only that, but the banks are actually often in shops, in apartment buildings, in civilian areas. And if we just look at their next promontoral from the director of Amnesty International in the region, Israeli forces have targeted an institution that serves as an economic lifeline for countless Lebanese civilians. This along with an evacuation warning issued less than 40 minutes before the start of the strikes shows Israel's disregard for international human humanitarian law, even if, sorry, as the Israeli military alleges, the institution does provide financing to Hezbollah. It is not likely to meet the definition of a military objective, particularly for branches serving civilian customers. And from Al-Aqaba, which is a Lebanese media, sorry, if you can go back for one second. In reality, Al-Qaad Al-Hassan, Hassan Bank, was established to address Lebanon's severe poverty and lack of state-provided aid offering financial assistance to struggling communities. Its primary purpose is to serve individual seeking financial solutions without resulting to huge rate, which is condemned in Islam for its exploitative high interest rates. Unlike Islamic banks in capitalist systems, which often serve their own economic interests, Al-Hassan provides interest-free loans and savings options to improve social conditions, not to generate profit. And again, I was speaking to Madua Osman last night. She told me that often what people will do, if they need to borrow money, they will deposit a certain amount of gold, for example. They can borrow up to whatever it is, $10,000. They don't pay interest on that loan. They can choose the amount of time they need to pay it off. And when they've paid it off, they get the gold back. So a little bit different to, let's say, Western banking systems. And in combination with what's going on in Syria, we keep talking about the border road. And as people were preparing to go on foot past the original crater, Israel bombed again. Not such a deep crater, but of course they've destroyed even more of the border road to make it very difficult to pass on foot or obviously by car. And remembering that the Lebanese government is under instructions by the United States and Israel to not allow one grain of sand to be replaced or any repairs to be done on the road. At the same time, a couple of days ago, at around five o'clock in the evening, there was an Israeli attack on a car which they claimed was targeting the commander of Islamic Jihad. In fact, that was proven not to be the case. This was outside one of the busiest areas again in Messe in central Damascus, outside the Golden Messe Hotel. All the windows of the hotels you can see in the background there were blown out. There were two civilians killed. The rocket actually hit the driving seat of the car and three civilians who were walking past were injured. So, you know, clearly Israel has no intention of throttling back. There are visits of Anthony Blinken, Amos Fochtstein, going on at the moment. And we know that generally, once they've been and gone, there is some form of escalation. Many analysts believe that Israel will attack Iran in certainly before the American elections. Thank you. Thank you for that, Vanessa. Charles, let's come to you then and finish off with justice. Thanks Mike. I think we have to apply the word justice with some degree of caution, but we have the Justice Minister attempting to justify why she has released 1700 prisoners as of yesterday and explaining why this is in actual fact a good thing and where it's going to lead. So we'll just look at a bit of video content from her now. When this government took office three months ago, our prisons were in crisis. I took the difficult but necessary action, releasing some prisoners from their custodial sentences a few weeks or months early to serve the rest on license in the community. Today, I have set out a plan to ensure that never happens again. That starts by building 14,000 more prison places, but we must face the facts. With the prison population growing by four and a half thousand every year, we cannot build our way out of this crisis. So today, I am launching a review of sentences so we never run out of space in our prisons again. It will be guided by three principles. First, dangerous offenders must be in prison. Second, our jails must make better citizens and not better criminals. And third, we must expand the use of punishment outside of prison. I have appointed David Cork to lead this work, a former Conservative Justice Secretary. But let me be clear about where I stand. Crime must have consequences. Prison will always have a place and we must encourage offenders to turn their backs on a life of crime. And here is my promise. The emergency release of prisoners will never happen again. Now, you can tell that she hasn't been in office very long because she made the extraordinary decision to promise certain things, which of course she has absolutely no gift to deliver on. She handled some of it well by tasking a former Tory minister with making sure this happened and therefore setting him up as the fall guy. But it is nonetheless discordant to see her referring to punishment rather than justice. And I think one might ask the question, how does she know that there are going to be an extra four and a half thousand people entering the prison system over the next few years? Her sums don't really add up because of course, while she says they can't build their way out of it with only 14,000 new spaces, it seems that they are going to have a go. Now, how did we get to this point? This is something that she didn't mention. But of course, if we cast our minds back to August, very shortly after this government did take office, we see this statement from the home office saying there are prison sentences for rioting, violence disorder, inciting racial hatred and criminal damage. But the show off bit is that they have arrested more than a thousand people, many of whom were in fact sent into prison spaces that of course had to be given up. And we had the incidence of cells being well overcrowded, overpopulated and generally, the situation was very badly handled. We'll come on to the specifics in a little while. But just to go to the prison development side of it, it's interesting to note that one of them, HMP Mills, sorry, Mills psych has been awarded a contract and it's going to be the UK's first all green electric prison, sorry, all electric green prison. So it says it will run solely on electricity, making it the first of its kind. It will use solar panels, heat pump technology and more efficient lighting systems to run the prison saying that it's going to be more efficient by a quarter than traditional Victorian prisons. Again, I think we absolutely have to wait and see. Now we talked about the instances of what was called violent disorder over the summer and people who suffered the consequences of that, almost regardless of their actions. And therefore, it is very much worth reporting that Peter Lynch, one of the people who was imprisoned on what were extremely tenuous grounds has died in prison and reckoned to have taken his own life. Now, of course, we can't be certain why that was. None of us was there, but it seems unlikely that this wasn't related directly to the fact that he has been imprisoned in the first place. And just a reminder of how the mainstream painted this, this is a guardian saying that he's a disgraceful example of grandfather jail to roll in Rotherham riot. And yet the way they described his actions was such a 61 year old man who waved conspiracy theory placards and screamed abuse at police outside a hotel housing is outside a hotel housing asylum seekers, was told he was a disgraceful example of his grandfather as he was sentenced to two years and eight months in prison. Now, that does not constitute violent disorder. And I will show you why this is from the public order at 1986 in which section two covers violence order. We're three or more persons who are present together use or threaten unlawful violence. And the conduct of them taken together is such as would cause a person of reasonable firmness present at the scene to fear for his personal safety. Now, it goes on to qualify this. It is immaterial whether or not the three or more use or threaten unlawful violence simultaneously. So yet another example of legislation being very, very deliberately crafted to be manipulated and abused in order to capture whoever is needed to be captured in this case, Peter Lynch and many others. And it finally says no person of reasonable firmness need actually be or be likely to be present at the scene. Now, this really does represent something of a disgrace and know that one of these people has in fact died in prison, most likely as a result of having been a prison in the first place should join the spotlight on the home office and indeed the Ministry of Justice. Of course, we remain to see whether that's the case separately to this. We have Mark Rowley commentating on the acquittal of Martin Blake, Sergeant in the Metropolitan Police Service, who shot Chris Carber, a firearms officer who fired at a suspect killing him. And this is Rowley's statement, which we'll just have a quick listen to. Any fatal use of force and the standardly prompts huge concern amongst communities, particularly black communities, where trust in policing is low. There remains much for us to do to strengthen confidence in our service. And we know that incidents like this can place further strain on a really difficult relationships. No police officer is above the law, but we've been clear that the system holding police to account is broken. I worry about the lack of support officers face for doing their best, but most of all, I worry for the public. The more that we crush the spirit of good officers, the less that they can fight crime. Now, of course, he might make what appears to be a good argument, but I think he oversimplifies terribly. And also, he completely ignores the main point, which is that the police who are in the system at the moment are terribly managed. And this has been addressed in the House of Lords Library, police standards and culture, restoring public trust, something that I wrote about last year in an article on the UK column website, police misconduct, cleaning house, or clearing the path for one world government. So there's an awful lot to this, and I would encourage you to go and look at that article, which covers the many reviews and reports that have been done about police misconduct in the last couple of years. Brilliant Charles, thank you very much for that. And well, lots to talk from today's program, talk about an extra, which will be in a couple of minutes tonight. We've got to leave it there. So thank you very much to Charles and Vanessa for joining me today and for everybody that's watched. If you're in UK column, we'll see you in a minute or two on extra. Otherwise, join us at 1PM tomorrow to discuss what we're going to do about the Online Safety Act and censorship on the platforms. And news again, Friday, one o'clock, as usual. See you then. Bye-bye. 88% of the work week is spent communicating, typing, talking, and going back and forth on topics until everyone is on the same page. It's time for a change. It's time for Grammarly. Grammarly's AI ensures your team gets the point across the first time, eliminating misunderstandings, and streamlining collaboration. It goes beyond basic grammar to help tailor writing to specific audiences, whether that means adding an executive summary, fine tuning tone, or cutting out jargon in just one click. Four out of five professionals say Grammarly's AI boosts buy-in and moves work forward. It integrates seamlessly with over 500,000 apps and websites, is implemented in days, and is IT approved. Join over 70,000 teams and 30 million people who trust Grammarly to elevate their communication. Visit Grammarly.com/enterprise to learn more. Grammarly, enterprise-ready AI.
Mike Robinson, Vanessa Beeley and Charles Malet 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-23rd-october-2024