UK Column Radio

UK Column News Podcast 30th October 2024

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-30th-october-2024

Duration:: 1h 3m
Broadcast on:: 30 Oct 2024
Audio Format:: other

But there's only one feeling like knowing your banker personally, like growing up with a bank you can count on, like being sure what you've earned is safe, secure, and local. There's only one feeling like knowing you're supporting your community. You deserve more from a bank. You deserve an institution that stood strong for generations. Bank of Colorado, there's only one. Number FDIC. Good afternoon, it's Wednesday the 30th of October, 2024. Just after one o'clock, welcome to UK Column News, I'm your host, Mike Robinson, joining me in the studio today. Charles Mallet, welcome to this program. Charles Mallet. Thanks, Mike. We've got Vanessa Bealy joining us from Damascus, as usual by video link, and I suppose we should say welcome to Budget Day, and since the color is red, the blood red, in fact, the question is how much are we all going to be bleeding by the end of the day? And so far it looks like to the tune of £40 billion seems to be the amount of money in terms of tax rises that they're talking about. Now, of course, the budget speech is happening literally at this moment, so we can't tell you exactly what's in it at this stage. But nonetheless, obviously, tax rises being one, mostly apparently likely to be employer's national insurance contributions. So you won't see it in your pay slip, but your employer will certainly feel it in their bank account, and perhaps that will result in some job losses we have to wait to see, and also inheritance tax as well. So let's see if we just put that back on screen. A second in the run up to this, then, Rachel Reeves put out a really great little video clip telling us all that, of course, the last government had left this £20 billion pound black hole in the public finances, and this is just such a little nonsense. Your government's spending annually is £1,200 billion, and the government debt is currently £2,700 billion. Where does $20 billion? What is the significance of that? You know, if you've got 1200 quid in your pocket and 20 quid falls out of it, does it really make a huge amount of difference in the greater scheme of things? I don't know. But anyway, they're going to make up for that $20 billion by raising taxes by $40 billion, so that's good stuff. Just remind everybody very briefly of the recent Office for Budget Responsibility report on how they saw things going, and as you can see, government spending going through the roof is the forecast for this regime, and government revenue falling slightly. We'll come on to why that is in a second. A lot of money to be spent on climate change mitigation, of course, with some of that money offset by carbon tax revenues, so we'll see how that goes. But this is the critical thing, isn't it? Because population age structure in 1974, 2024, and 2074 on screen at the moment, and as we can see, an aging population, fewer and fewer people, fewer children being born, fewer people of tax-bearing age, let's say, and more and more people of older age requiring tax money to be spent on them, in terms of social care and so on. And of course, we all know where that ends up, particularly as we have the assisted dying bill running through Parliament at the moment, but just to put this in a little bit of context of where we are as a country at the moment, I'll bring back an updated version of my total outstanding debt, a graphic that I haven't shown in quite a number of years now. So government debt currently setting a 2.7 trillion pounds. We've got a significant tranche of banking sector debt. We've got household debt at just under 2 trillion. We've got nuclear decommissioning, a 212 billion. But the key thing here is state pensions, because this 6.1 trillion pounds is the current obligation on state pensioners, for everybody that's in employment at the moment. And of course, we've just shown how the population is changing. That number has gone up by a trillion in the last few years. And it's going to continue to rise, which is going to put more and more pressure on older people as we go on, and the burden that they are on the state, and which perhaps explains, as I've just said, why this is the dying bill is coming through at this time. So anyway, the point here is a huge amount of outstanding debt in the country, and 420 percent of GDP or so at this point in time. That really makes 20 billion pound black hole look even more ridiculous and political posturing, more than anything else. But the other question is, what else is driving this requirement for more government spending? And well, we've been highlighting for many years the issue of the amount of money going into so-called defense, but of course, we're now on a war footing. So armed force is not ready to fight a war amidst defense secretary. This was a telegraph a few days ago, and this is what he had to say. He said the military has been hollowed out, underfunded by the Tories, of course, just remember, of course, all the Tory spending on the military was completely agreed to by the Labor Party while they were in opposition. We have a uni party in this country, so all this nonsense about blaming one side or the other is just nonsense. This is parliament as a whole, making these decisions. Then he said the UK, and keeping with many other nations, has essentially become very skilled and ready to conduct military operations. By that, he means conduct war, just so we're clear. What we've not been ready to do is fight, unless we're ready to fight, we're not in shape to deter, do you agree with that? Well, I mean, this is the same record that they've been playing for the last couple of years in order to justify enormous expenditure and putting more cash in the pocket of the defense industry. So, I mean, it's neither here nor there, whether it's true. It's certainly benefiting those that are continuing to make money out of it. So when we're considering this budget, as she finishes her speech in about half an hour's time, and the upshot of it all appears obvious to everybody, the question is, are we happy that this money is being raised in this way to be spent on these things? As Charles just said, this is all about pumping money into the military industrial complex. Also, the other thing I should mention and passing, by the way, is they said, for example, that compensation, that's part of this tax money risk, would be for compensation for the infected blood scandal. And for the post office scandal, completely agree with that in principle, but my question is, why are the people who were directly responsible for the post office scandal and for the infected blood scandal? Why are there assets not being stripped first before we go cap in hand to the taxpayer and require them to fund this compensation? It seems to me any taxpayer funding should only come after the people that were directly responsible for the problem in the first place have had their personal assets removed. Am I being unfair? I think you're not being unfair, and this is a consistent theme, of course, across governments of all colours. The perpetrators are never effectively brought to justice, either by the judicial system or indeed, financially. So we'll just finish off this little segment with this from more in common, 100 days of labor. And I just thought this was quite funny because in their survey discovered that Starmer's approval has plummeted since the election. In fact it's now below that of Rishi Sunak already, and he's only been in the job for many days, three months. So it is perhaps a little bit of entertainment on this dark day as they attend to empty our pockets and steal everything that we have been attempting to build for the last a lot of time. So there we go. Indeed, more in common with Rishi Sunak than he thought. But let's continue with budget related matters. We will, yeah, I mean, obviously speculation to a certain extent, but we're going to look at the agricultural and environmental sector. So a tweet from the Treasury to indicate how serious it all is and that they are going to deliver change. And Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, busy on her text messaging and tweeting this morning saying that politics is about choices and that the Labour government chooses investment over decline. Well, we will see about that. She reinforces the message by saying that she's investing in our future. She doesn't specify, of course, who are future might refer to. But the Guardian believe that they are ahead of the game and forecasts that Defra might have their budget restricted by in the region of 100 million pounds. Of course, the fallout from that could be significant in a number of levels, but particularly to do with environmental land management schemes, which we've referred to a lot on UK column, of course, over the course of this year. And at a time when we've reported again on the catastrophic failure of the harvest of this year and indeed the uptake of the schemes that have been put in front of farmers with the result that far less land than was being cultivated last year is actually in cultivation. This has serious impact on food security. What I want to do now is to show you a video of the MP Harriet Cross asking the Chancellor what the situation was with regard to agricultural property relief, essentially inheritance tax on agricultural land. Harriet Cross. Thank you, Mr Speaker, but I'm not going to ask the Chancellor to preempt tomorrow's budget, although I might actually have some luck if I do, based on current form. So, instead, can she confirm to me that she fully appreciates how important agricultural property relief and business property reliefs are to farmers and family business who do so much to grow our local economies across the country? John Schwa. I recognise the importance of being able to pass on to the next generation. The assets you have built up will be setting out more details on all of our tax policies in the budget tomorrow. That was helpful. Indeed. So, we wait and see which direction that's going to go in, but nonetheless, inheritance tax on agricultural property, agricultural land would be an enormous change to the system. And it does make the question, of course, the wider one, which is what business does the state have taking tax from people in the event of their death in the first place? But to put that in context, we're going to have a look at something from the National Audit Office. Of course, Mike's just been talking about defence and Ukraine specifically, and we see here from a recent report from the NIO, that 2.7 billion is the estimated price tag on the cost of replacing equipment that's been donated to Ukraine from British stockpiles, and then a further 2.4 billion spent on procuring equipment for Ukraine. So, the loss of 100 million pounds to the agriculture budget is therefore, again, similarly a relative drop in the ocean. And it seems mystifying at a time when food security is inherently challenged that the government can't find a way of supporting not just farmers, but of course, the population of the United Kingdom, the other thing to put out there is that fuel duty, of course, is another thing that's been talked about, and should that increase that, again, would have a massive impact on the rural economy, because of course, the miles driven by those in rural areas are much greater than those in urban areas. So we wait and see what happens on that score. Now, to go from the supply to the ridiculous, we look at Nuffield farming and see that they have put out what really matters, which is the Ag diversity online course, positive growth towards a more inclusive sector. And they state that creating equity and inclusion is crucial, but they don't say to whom or to what. They talk about creating a more level playing field and inclusion, making people feel like they belong. So this is a drive to get more people, or effectively minority brackets into farming, whether or not they want it remains to be seen, but they say that there are plenty of inspiring B-POC. Now, B-POC is yet another acronym to have to remember, black, and people of colour who want to be, or are in the agricultural sector, despite the barriers laid out in front of them, of course, they can't specify what barriers those are, because there is no evidence in the first place to suggest that any do actually exist. Now, to camp the irony on this one, we see that the programme is sponsored by McDonald's. So that's one to be aware of, and we'll watch for the continued push towards what they're calling diversity, but is, of course, exactly the opposite in that they're effectively suggesting that people who might be in a minority could not possibly walk into a situation where other people don't look like them. Now, what it could have been concentrating on though was the agricultural workforce as it actually is, and in particular, the demographics by age, of course, 38 per cent all farmers in this country are over the age of 65. That is something that could be addressed, but of course isn't, because it doesn't fit the agenda narrative. Now, looking again towards the future, it's worth noting that just last week there was an arrival of more than 30,000 new seeds into the Svalbard global seed vault in Norway, of course, been a country that has a very, very strong stance against gene editing, which, of course, is something United Kingdom has chosen to embrace, and I would just like to point out that Bill Gates, who has, of course, his finger in the pie of the seed vault, may be on a collision course with them, and it will be, well, certainly challenging to see how that will turn out. He's here with his Gates notes talking about a thought-provoking look at the gene editing revolution, pushing somebody else's book on the matter, Walter Isaacson writing the codebreaker. So that's one thing to consider, another thing that Deborah have been forced to concede via double speakers that their 30 by 30 plan is not going quite the way that it should be. So I've highlighted the text that effectively suggests that things aren't really happening. They require urgent and significant action to drive nature's recovery, and it requires strategic approach to address the scale of action needed to ensure a diverse and well-connected network or 30 by 30 areas, so we can see that the Nuffield money is not going to be entirely wasted, or is it, but this coincides with the inconvenient resurgence via social media of a report written by NASA back in 2016, suggesting that carbon dioxide fertilization is greening the earth, and this was something I alluded to whilst talking about carbon capture a couple of weeks ago, which is that why would we be so arrogant to assume that just because carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere might be going up, that nature might not find a use for them, and NASA of course seemed to confirm that some years ago, so we'll wait and see how that's digested as it continues to do the rounds on social media, but nonetheless, food security and budget question is the thing that we will be looking at as it comes out further later today. Thank you, Charles. And nice to let me welcome you to the programme, bring us up to date with what's going on in the Middle East. Well, interesting as we're discussing budget, and apparently according to the telegraph that picked up the story that I mentioned last week about CIA, British mercenaries, potentially policing gated communities, which is effectively concentration camps within a concentration camp in Gaza, I wonder if they are to be used, how they are also going to be funded. So this is from the telegraph, former British Special Forces soldiers could soon be dispatched to help build Hamas-free gated communities in Gaza. We've been covering this story pretty much since October last year, because there have been intermittent reports on the subject. The proposal involves Israel engaging private military contractors to create safe zones for the delivery of aid and assist with reconstruction of the war-torn enclave, no comment on the war-torn. According to several Israeli news outlets, Mordokai Motif Krahana, an Israeli American businessman who runs a global delivery company, is poised to win a $200 million contract. If the deal assigns, Krahana says GDC intends to divide the strip into a series of Hamas-free bubbles, all gated communities for Palestinians, which of course means extra surveillance, smart city-type environments. Movements between the bubbles would be controlled by GDC and a UK private security contractor with access to former British Special Forces he adds. And he goes on to say, "Those are British Special Forces. They know what they're doing. They are people who have fought terrorism all their lives. If something happens, we will convey the message to the residents of Gaza you don't want to mess with us. They will understand that a new sheriff has arrived in the city. He goes on, or rather the article goes on in the telegraph, which of course has direct connections to MI6, or certainly is always channeling their messaging. Krahana, who started his career in New York as a taxi driver, said he would not name the British security firm. However, GDC is known to have worked previously with Constellis, the U.S. company that took control of Blackwater, the mercenary company that operated in Iraq and was responsible for the civilian massacre in Iraq. Constellis is listed as an official partner on GDC's website. Constellis have worked with GDC in Ukraine. Constellis also owns the Olive Group, one of Britain's biggest military-grade private security firms. GDC and it's some contractor who has had extensive discussions with the Israeli government, including the Ministry of Defense, the Israeli Defense Forces and the Prime Minister's Office on the modalities for this initiative, but also with the U.S. State Department that fully and often telegraph doesn't mention. Here I want to really demonstrate to what degree legacy media and particularly British media obfuscates information from the public. When you go to GDC, who are their partners, AGC, which is the American Jewish Committee, Constellis, IAC, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, and then of course, the Jewish Agency for Israel, all of these are effectively Zionist lobby front companies. The team, Marti Gohana, founder and CEO, as I mentioned, from Chicago, but has obviously dual nationality. Then let's have a look at the GDC website, what they claim to have done in Syria, saving historic artifacts in Damascus. Now this is interesting because actually the terrorist factions, including, of course, al-Qaeda, it's various nomenclatures, occupied Jobo, which was originally a Jewish area in Damascus, and stole the artifacts, which then oddly ended up in Israel, rescuing the last Jews of Aleppo Syria, kind of no comment on that. Also, he did effectively traffic children from Syria to Israel for what he termed as "education inside Israel". Also involved in Ukraine, so Israeli rescue experts sounds very akin to the white helmet kind of propaganda here, Bill's vital Ukraine supplies bridge, so what does this actually mean? It means they set up base in Romania from where actually many of the intelligence operations that are NATO linked are being run from in order to infiltrate Ukraine. Israeli rescue contractor renowned for his operations in saving refugees, AKA children in Syria and Afghanistan, has launched a humanitarian bridge service, so he claims that he's bringing essential humanitarian supplies into Ukraine from Romania. That needs further investigation, in my opinion, and then I want to have a quick look at the people that are actually working at GDC, so this is the counter-terrorism security advisor Oded Island, served in the Mossad for over 24 years, beginning as a field operational agent working undercover across the globe. He went on to serve for six years as the director of Mossad's counter-terrorism center, eventually becoming deputy director of all Mossad operations, following his retirement from Mossad, Oded founded a consulting and management company in the field of homeland security, advising governments and institutions worldwide. He's a writer for Israel's most red newspaper and a commentator, et cetera, et cetera, so we have already a fairly high level Mossad and probably 8200 player here. Then we go to Doron Avital, board member, he has a celebrated military career from the time he commanded leading paratroopers come from the early 80s to the planning and commanding of numerous complex special operations in the elite, Israeli elite special forces unit Sayaret Mactal, AKA the unit. During his service, Avital received numerous IDF military and special operations awards. He's now a member of the Knesset, then board member Yossi Kupro Vasa, he's an Israeli intelligence and security expert, head of the research division in the Israel Defense Force, military intelligence division and director general of the Israel Ministry of Strategic Affairs, currently senior project manager at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, specializing in the security dimensions of the Israeli Palestinian conflict. David Sur had a 31-year career in the IDF, his final position in the military was chief intelligence officer, the number two person in the military intelligence director, often referred to as a man, which is connected to 8200, where he served under Moshe Yalan. From '95 until '98 he was commander of the Liaison Unit for Foreign Forces and was responsible for IDF relations with Jordanian and Egyptian armed forces. Interesting collection of board members and advisors. Then we have active advisor Justin Sapp, so here on the website they don't go very much away. He's a retired greenberry colonel with nearly 30 years of active duty experience where he served at various echelons within the military and interagency. But then let's have a look at Justin Sapp on another website. He was a special forces captain detailed to the CIA shortly after the 9/11 attacks. He infiltrated Northern Afghanistan with CIA's team Alfa and was the first soldier to go behind Taliban lines in 2001 and so it goes on. He's made numerous deployments to Afghanistan and the Middle East where he served at various levels of command and staff within special forces. Colonel Sapp retired from the US Army in 2024 after nearly 30 years of active duty service. His final role was as the military chief of staff at the US mission to the United Nations. He is now a consultant at Consellus. So we come kind of full circle back to the Consellus connection. And then Mike finally I will be forever grateful for you creating this infographic because it shows so clearly people that have followed our work at UK column particularly on Syria will know about the White Helmets established by the UK Foreign Office, MI6, CIA, funded by multiple members of the regime change cartel that effectively waged a proxy terrorist war against the Syrian government and people since 2011 and the White Helmets were founded not in Syria but in Turkey in 2013 by James LaMezura who you will see in the photo in the centre. Former British military intelligence who as part of his career worked for the olive group which we heard is a private military contractor British that were then merged into Consellus but Consellus also contains within an academy which was formerly Blackwater. So we keep seeing this connection of these kind of shadowy security service operations that are infiltrating countries to be targeted for regime change or destabilisation or economic hybrid war projects. So interesting times but yes where is the money coming from for yet another British lad military project. Well it's going to come from the latest grab from the British regime on the British taxpayer and we've got to be much more active about asking questions about where that money is going in my opinion and maybe we need to be following Chris Coverdiel's lead and stopping funding this regime. And the other thing might, sorry just one other thing might of course it's now doubly difficult to actually track if the UK Foreign Office is funding these organisations because why they've removed their funding spreadsheets since you investigated them or since you made the website to look into the figures. Yes indeed so they haven't published they normally publish sort of on a quarterly basis all foreign Commonwealth development office spending over 25,000 pounds in spreadsheet form so we decided we would take those spreadsheets and make that data a bit more accessible for people by creating a website if you want to go and have a look at that have a look at FCDOSpending.uk column.org and you'll see that we don't have any data since I think September 2021 and my efforts to obtain this information through through information have been rebuffed shall we say and another another of the current information commissioner investigations that's going on so the information commissioner is now directly involved in trying to obtain this data for us but pretty much since the beginning of the Ukraine war that information is no longer publicly available so but we'll keep your posters on it but sticking with Israel for a second I just wanted to get your thoughts on this Vanessa let's just mention the announcement a couple of days ago from South Africa that they've delivered evidence of Israel genocide to the International Court of Justice so this says the South Africa has filed its memorial to the International Court of Justice today 20th of October 2024 in its case on the application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip in accordance with the Rules of the Court the memorial the memorial may not be made public this filing of this memorial takes place at the time when Israel is intensifying the killing of civilians in Gaza and now seems intent to follow a similar path of destruction in Lebanon and the timing of this is very interesting because we have had a comment in the House of Commons from the lovely David Lamy on the question of whether the term genocide should be applied in the case of Israel. Will the Foreign Secretary take this opportunity to say that there is not a genocide occurring in the Middle East? These are quite properly legal terms that must be determined by international courts but I do agree with the honourable gentlemen those terms were largely used when millions of people lost their lives in crisis like Rwanda, the Second World War and the Holocaust and the way that they are used now undermines the seriousness of that term. Now I personally find that comment really pretty sick Vanessa but I wanted to get your thoughts. It is absolutely abhorrent that this man is dismissing the hundreds of thousands that have been massacred and now that massacre is continuing in Lebanon as not being a genocide when you know the ICJ has effectively ruled that it is a plausible genocide it is extraordinary I just find him repellent, really repugnant repellent every word that I can possibly think of he is vile. Yes Charles, well I applaud his consistency he has absolutely no idea what he is talking about. Well indeed absolutely is consistently well many people would perhaps consider him consistently an idiot but we will talk about this some more and extra I have no doubt. So now if you like what the UK column does you would like to support us support.ukcolumn.org is the place to go we do need your help you can help us by making a donation you could join us as a member of course if you do join us for a member that gives you access to the forums to UK column news extra and so on. So monthly annual and lifetime membership options are there pick something up at the shop if you possibly can or from Clive2Carlo.com and we get a small percentage of every purchase that is made at Clive2Carlo.com but of course as we always say and we will say again today if you can please share our material as widely as you possibly can. Convenient share buttons on the articles and videos on the UK column website we do need you to do this because we of course are consistently shadow band and otherwise restricted by the various platforms. We can also get a link to the comments that are associated with any of the videos or articles on the website if you click just below that. Now yesterday at 1pm Brian was in conversation with Joseph B. Sweeney sorry former CIA head of litigation and author of a book called A Dangerous Injustice. If you haven't seen that go watch it it's an extremely interesting interview what's going on tomorrow at 1pm tomorrow an interview with a young man named Montgomery Tom's who was just 14 years old when the first of the many lockdowns began and we start with his perspective on that but also the journey he's been on since and the activism he's now engaged with there's a short clip of him speaking with me and I was in a a bubble and I'm not using that term as in you know Covid bubbles but I was in a school bubble of utter contemptible ridiculous backwards thinking hysteria and because of that you know to just for a more detail something I touch on a lot on is like mass surveillance and people always they say like oh well there's nothing wrong with cameras being across London because if you've not done anything wrong you've got nothing to hide and I say no but we've got to be concerned about is what that can that sort of infrastructure and surveillance well that surveillance system how that can be used negatively and I always take people back to me being within school because ultimately that's a perfect example they use the CCTV cameras that they had across school to track the students and if it's so it's really got a finger on the button and I would encourage you not just to watch that but also to share it very widely because he is not exactly a lone voice but an important one in his generation okay look forward to that 1 p.m tomorrow in the usual places do watch now I'm sorry to do this to you but we have to bring David Lamy back because he is very concerned at the moment about Russian disinformation the Kremlin's disinformation is a desperate attempt to undermine our democracy Putin and his mafia state are trying to poison the world with disinformation division and disorder in the UK and throughout the world he's failing and I'm determined that he will continue to fail and I'm taking action to ensure what he does I'm directly exposing the Kremlin's mouthpieces and sanctioning those who crumbly tried to spread Putin's lies across the world they have spewed their bile on Putin's orders in a desperate attempt to undermine support for Ukraine from trying to create deep fakes to inciting failed protests across Europe but their efforts will keep failing the UK united with our international allies has stood with Ukraine for two years we stand with them still it is my personal mission to constrain the Kremlin and apply relentless pressure against all elements of Russian malign activity last week it was the illicit shadow fleet previously using barbaric chemical weapons in Ukraine the malicious Russia cyber gangs like by shining a light on Putin's murky activities and punishing his puppets we will constrain the Kremlin so in my opinion the only person spewing bile is David Lammy here but anyway just by coincidence the United States has pushed this out well this is actually a couple few weeks ago but Justice Department accuses Russia of interfering with 2024 elections so Lammy is announced as a result of that little video that the British government is sanctioned three Russian agencies including one called the social design agency which is the focus of this particular article claiming Russian interference in the 2024 elections as well so if you remember back to 2017 when Theresa May announced her rapid response mechanism whereby everybody in the western world would agree on a common narrative well we start to see the common narrative operating both sides of the Atlantic while where the governments focus on the same organizations at roughly the same time and impose the same types of sanctions on them and so on but I just want to remind everybody where this whole idea of Russian disinformation came from because of course it started with the Integrity Initiative and Chris Donnelly headed that up and just look at the text on here the Integrity Initiative was set up in autumn 2015 by the Institute of Statecraft in cooperation with Free University of Brussels to bring to the attention of politicians, policy makers and opinion leaders and when they say opinion leaders they mean mainstream media journalists and other interested parties the threat posed by Russia to democratic institutions in the United Kingdom across Europe and North America and I think about that what they're saying there is the journalists did not discover Russian disinformation start highlighting it in the media which then came to the attention of politicians no actually the here is a non-governmental organization and we'll see who funded them in a second here's a non-governmental organization bringing to the attention the propaganda which justifies this narrative of a threat posed by Russia and Russian disinformation and who funded this this man funded it Andy Price who at the time was head of counter disinformation at media development within the foreign Commonwealth and development office so what we have here is the British Deep State because this is an intelligence asset here the British Deep State funding an NGO and that NGO is then pumping disinformation into the politicians minds into the mainstream media minds using mainstream journalists to do it in order to push this idea of Russian disinformation so just to speak about this kind of disinformation team it was all saying disinformation is the deliberate creation and dissemination of false and or manipulated information that's intended to deceive mislead audiences and of course they were claiming that their focus was in other countries but as a result of or required because of the sustained Russian disinformation campaign following the attack in Salisbury now we'll be talking about the attack in Salisbury later on when we come back on to the Don Stargis inquiry but you know this was this was the narrative back in 2019 and a hundred million pounds being spent on over five years to counter disinformation in the eastern neighborhood but there was no one I spent on how much money was being spent to counter disinformation in the UK or to bring that counter disinformation narrative into the UK and I just want to also remind everybody of course what Britain's disinformation activities are abroad particularly BBC media action we've talked about this many times but we've got to keep reminding everybody that this is all about training journalists in other countries to put forward a pro-western narrative and deal with reformers in other countries and so on and if we look at BBC media action and what they're involved in they're involved in sorting out Ukrainian media and so on through the managed fund through the good governance fund Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, Serbia, Bosnia, Herzegvina, Armenia, North Macedonia they're everywhere pushing Western narratives with large amounts of money this is all taxpayers money all being funded through the foreign Commonwealth and Development Office the Conflict Stability and Security Fund in particular and of course we should not forget the other British individuals who then pushing anti-Russian narratives and so on David Nod appearing in Ukraine's field of information also in Syria and of course he was behind the idea of Syrian snipers shooting pregnant women in the stomach to win cigarettes I'm quite certain that Vanessa will have more to say about that in extra and just to end this segment just to let everybody know because Vanessa was talking about the White Helmets earlier that this is the 10-year anniversary of their humanitarian and inverted commas efforts in Syria so the donor group has made a statement on that money and we'll be talking a bit more about that in extra as well right now we move on to restrictions of liberty again actually concerned with the mainstream media but specifically in this case the restriction of perhaps the rights to freedom of expression freedom of assembly and freedom of movement and this is by the weaponization of what are referred to as human rights and also the manipulation of legislation now tomorrow the 31st of October what are called safe access buffer zones will come into force around abortion clinics and this is something that came out of the public order act 2023 an extension in a way of the public spaces protection orders brought about by the police crime courts and sentencing act of 2022 but they say that it will make it illegal for anyone to do anything but intentionally or recklessly influences someone else's decision to use abortion services to obstruct cause harassment or distress to someone using or working at these premises and they go further to say that anyone phone guilty of breaking the law will face an unlimited fine now really what they're talking about here is the very contentious issue of silent praying and this follows the recent conviction and order to pay 9,000 pounds of Adam Smith Connor from it well in Bournemouth who was accused of and admitted to praying silently in his head outside an abortion clinic now of course had he been standing there thinking about a football match for example you would not have been prosecuted and yet there is no material difference to the onlooker or to the person connected in any way with the services being provided in the abortion clinic so the word Orwellian is the one to be used in this situation now following this a recent article by Prime Minister from this Monday wins an irony award for his title here journalism is the lifeblood of British democracy my government will protect it and he talks about his campaign towards general election and says that he was robustly held to account by determined incisive and irrepressible members of the fourth state or at least those that had access to him which of course are the mainstream and he said that neither he nor the leader of the opposition turned our partisan supporters against the media well he didn't really have to because that was being done by other means he said that this is a government that will always champion press freedoms and they believe in being held to account he goes on to say that there can be nothing more traditional democratic or British than a robust free press fearlessly holding the powerful to account well some people that might disagree are Kit Claremberg Craig Murray Richard Medhurst Sarah Wilkinson and Asa Winstanley all detained under various parts of the terrorism legislation mostly from the terrorism act 2000 yet Kirstar Magazone to say that we stand with journalists who endure threats merely for doing their jobs just because journalists are brave does not mean they should ever suffer intimidation and then he mentions the online safety act saying that it'll introduce new protections from abuse as well as respecting recognized news publisher content and this is where the UK column comes into play because if you missed the discussion that we had last Thursday the 24th of October I would encourage you to go to the website to view it we Mike and Brian and I spoke to Wilsie of Resistance GB in order to effectively launch a campaign in so far as we will be able to exploit the provisions of the online safety act and fight against censorship so if you are a provider of alternative content and run an independent media service and you fulfill the criteria as set out in the online safety act at section 56 I think it is then please get in touch at online safety at uk column dot org thank you for that Charles no Vanessa let's welcome you back and bring us up the date with well our is that a sign of sorry does Zionism have a dilemma I'm not absolutely sure but there are very mixed messages coming out from various people within the ruling elite of the so-called state of Israel and you know Israel is expanding its aggression it is expanding its slaughter of civilians into Lebanon thousands of people today had to evacuate Balbeck and the Becca regions because they're under threat of carpet bombing as they have been doing across the south but across Lebanon basically not only in the south so first of all this is you have gallant the the current slightly under siege defense minister commenting on particularly on the military operations in Gaza so basically admitting that there are a far more casual opposition representative here a lot but says something very similar I asked you about the October and I should met you and I should be in a lot better as a social social community with more virtual social in a way I will make up in my insurance the truth the same as you if I'm gonna meet my name she's a local car I'm sure I'm gonna be patient with a family to get a second look most of it had a son a left to him small multi-shima who came a little bit of a political of okay and he and it's about a little like a shooting the of the world. The interview, they are getting a little bit disturbed because of course they are basically instructed as to what casualty figures they can give out. But then we have Netanyahu doubling down, promises to bring home all the hostages and to achieve the war aims he laid out at the beginning of the war. Total victory is an orderly and consistent work plan that we will fulfill step by step. Israel, he says, is the one obstacle keeping Iran from controlling the Middle East and threatening the rest of the world. The fanatical axis of evil led by Iran threatens to destroy our country and trap other countries in its net and to threaten the West first of all, Iran is working for a stockpile of nuclear bombs even though Israel has a stockpile of secret stockpile of nuclear bombs and will be able to threaten the entire world wherever it wants according to Iran's thinking he argues if Israel falls, the entire Middle East will fall into its hands but we will not fall, we will win and the whole world will be a better place. Well, he's originally from Poland but I'm sure that's a minor detail. Gideon Sar, who's the Netanyahu's preferred replacement for U of Gallant because he's far more expansionist minded, is now sending out threatening messages to Syria. The message that Israel should convey to the Assad regime in Syria, Israel must make it clear to Assad that if Syria continues to be a path to supplying Iran's military to Hezbollah and allowing aggression from its territory, it puts its regime in jeopardy, his full speech at the Middle East right conference initiated by a member and I've done a better translation of some of the things that were said. And this is taken from a report at Al-Ahbar. Gideon Sar ahead of the National Right Party, who recently joined Benjamin Netanyahu's government is considered a candidate for the Ministry of Defence, stated that Israel must make it clear to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad that if Syria continues to serve as a corridor for Iranian arms to Hezbollah and allows aggression from its territory, his regime will be at risk speaking at what Israel named the right Middle East conference or it's actually the new Middle East conference. Sar emphasized Israel should place Assad's regime in a precarious position and under no circumstances allow Syria to facilitate armed supply routes. And then it goes on with the threats, reaffirming the stance so stressed that Tel Aviv will not tolerate Hezbollah's rearming through Syria or permit a new front open against it from Syrian territory. He warned that Assad should fully understand that if he threatens Israel's security through these actions, he endangers his own regime. Reminding the audience of past missed opportunities, the right-wing minister remarked, Israel lost the chance to remove Assad. During Syria's civil war, that's a fairly big admission there, an opportunity Iran and Hezbollah seized. Now, Assad must make a critical choice, so are concluded by asserting that detaching Assad from the Iranian axis would have profound implications for Israel's security. So, Israel there or Assad basically admitting Israel's role in the regime change war and the funding of al-Qaeda and ISIS and the other terrorist groups and the arming of them. But this is interesting. It's a really bad translation from the Hebrew article. We have a history of, or Israel has a history of cooperation with the Kurds, which is not a place for privatization. There are strong people with a tradition of proximity to Israel. Israel's cooperation with the Kurds today is limited, in my opinion. We have an interest in expanding in security and political aspects. Israel can help the Kurds. They already are in Syria and Iraq. And what's more, he basically then talks about the fact that they can potentially influence the Kurds in Iran to turn against Iran itself. So, kind of extraordinary admissions there. They're no longer hiding their role in destabilizing the region and running interference for the United States. We should also remind everybody, of course, for NASA that they were also providing medical support for al-Qaeda and ISIS as well. Yeah, absolutely. Yes. Okay, thank you for that. Charles, let's come back to the UK then and the question of the rule of law. Indeed, a thorny question, but addressed by the Attorney General, Richard Herma, a couple of weeks ago at the Bingham Lecture. And if the name rings a bell, yes, that is Kate Bingham's family. She of vaccine task force delivery fame, of course, married to Jesse Norman, the then financial secretary to the Treasury, the Almighty Co-incident. Now, Herma starts by addressing that there is a problem, and yet he puts it down to something that you might not necessarily have guessed. He says at a time where there's a desperate need for cooperation and solutions, we're increasingly confronted by the divisive and disruptive force of populism. Populism, of course, being a term of demonization used much like extremism by which you can capture anybody. And he goes on to describe such people as having rhetoric conjuring images of a conspiracy of elites, an enemy that is hard to define, but invariably including the people and independent institutions who exercise the kind of checks and balances on executive power that are the essence of liberal democracy and the rule of law. Yes, quite so. Now, we'll come back to why those words are highlighted in a minute, but he goes on to say that it's through international courts that we hope to finally see justice for Ukraine. He doesn't have time to mention the fact that the actions of the ICC and the ICJ have been completely ignored in effect by the British government, but he does say that I and the whole government remain steadfast in our support for Ukraine on the battlefield and in the courtroom. And he goes on to mention the special tribunal on the crime of aggression against Ukraine. Again, no time to mention Gaza. The twin challenges of Brexit and the COVID pandemic had the effect of concentrating immense power in the hands of the executive. So, in fact, he's contradicting entirely what he's just said about the separation of powers, but he does go on to refer to the exercise broad delegated powers, including the so-called Henry VIII powers, which of course, if you were at UK column on location in Bristol the other day, you would have heard being referred to, but essentially that's a manipulation of legislation in order that you can use statutory instruments, secondary legislation from the primary in order to send out dictats in effect. Now, what this bears relation to is the sentencing of Tommy Robinson, Stephen Yaxley, Lenin, yesterday by the solicitor general. And the point to draw out of this is how another instance is demonstrated whereby the legislation and indeed the criminal justice system is weaponized against not just one person, but anybody that is confronted by it. We see that in this civil case of defamation, the primary harm that is caused by each breach of the injunction is the corrosive effect that it has had on the administration of justice. So, in effect, it's the threat to what might be described as judicial supremacy, which seems to be an area that we are being pushed into, which has been referred to many times before. It's also taken that each breach amounts to further unlawful defamation of the claimant, but of course, he goes on to say that he has no specific evidence about that. And this is much of the point of this being a civil case in that the, effectively, the threshold, the evidential threshold is much lower, only being on the balance of probability. So, in effect, we find ourselves in a situation where a large part of evidence that might be deemed relevant can, in fact, be dismissed on the basis that it's not going to make material difference the way in which a judge would view it. And that takes us to the defamation act of 2013 and changes that were brought about by it, most notably that the common law defense of justification is abolished. And accordingly, the section five of the previous act, 1952, is repealed. Now, it's not to say there's no element of justification, but what it does mean is that a judge doesn't need to take into account the case law, or indeed specific precedent with regard to this area of defamation. Also, trial to be without a jury, so effectively in favor of or presumption in favor of trial by judge. Now, to be fair, it was unusual for it to be inclusive of a jury anyway. And the section of the Senior Courts Act, 1981, does demonstrate that trial with the jury may take place if the trial requires prolonged examination of documents. But, of course, there are many ways within which that can be dodged because of the lower threshold, as I've just referred to being the balance of probability also and significantly with regard to this instance. The common law defense known as the Reynolds defense is abolished. This goes back to 2001. And we see from the in-house lawyer here, an explainer saying that the Reynolds defense is designed to protect serious investigative journalists acting in good faith and reporting on matters of public interest, no public interest, of course, being something that is in the public's interest as a benefit rather than the public being interested in it. Even where allegations are false and hugely damaging to the subject of the publication, publishers can make use of this defense. So many significant things that drop out of this, specifically when we think back to Herman referring to the rule of law. And yet, of course, we see a number of very, very inconsistent situations, not least, of course, the Hugh Edwards case and indeed what's happened to Mike Amesbury, the Labour MP, apparently seen punching somebody to the ground and continuing to punch them. So, it's hard to see consistency and indeed the rule of law being applied. And these situations do highlight the many inconsistencies, which, of course, we'll be able to concentrate on in the future. Indeed, now let's end with some comedy. Now, of course, the death of Dawn Sturgis in itself is not a comedic situation. And she deserves some respect here, but this inquiry into her death certainly is a comedic situation. And as we see the mainstream media running around trying to justify a narrative, which simply does not hold up. So the BBC, for example, is running a podcast series, if you're interested, called Crime Next Door, The Salisbury Poisonings. So this is a series of efforts to get the narrative line straight. And in the most recent episode, they had Neil Basu, what was he was met, counterterrorism assistant commissioner on as a guest. And Basu saying, you know, to leave that, this is the vial or the perfume bottle full of allegedly full of Novichok, to leave that lying around anywhere on foreign soil, is the most unbelievably reckless disregard for human life I've ever witnessed. He said, one of the things I was thinking was, is this war? Is this an act of war? You think of a weapon of mass destruction as being an intercontinental ballistic missile with a nuclear tipped warhead. And you don't think of it being a perfume tester bottle. We didn't know what we were looking for is what he said. Well, that's very interesting that he says is because, of course, the people that the ambulance crew and the other fresh responders that dealt with Dawn Sturgis and Charlie Rowley also didn't know what they were dealing with. And yet they didn't seem to die as a result of coming into contact with this substance at all. So it's, you know, it's all a bit strange. So then we have this article, which is talking about Neil Basu in their podcast series and this article on the BBC website called Chief Thought Scriptball Poisoning Could Be Act of War. And I just wanted to highlight one particular section of it because they show the photograph of the perfume package and the little perfume bottle and so on with it. And the headline or the subtitle here says, "The Inquiry Heard the designer of perfume bottle carrying the nerve agent contained enough poison to kill thousands of people." So it contained enough poison to kill thousands of people. But at the beginning, they didn't know that it was a nerve agent. So they weren't particularly treating it very carefully. And certainly the first responders weren't treating it very carefully, but it didn't kill thousands of people. So it's all very strange. And then the inquiry on Monday was talking about this image, which was distributed at the inquiry. This is Sergei Skripal in the box there, handing some bread to a young boy as they were feeding the ducks. Now, of course, the issue of dead ducks was a big issue with respect to the Skripal poisonings. And it became, in fact, an intelligence services issue, as you will see in a second, but in order to get to the bottom of this and not worry what the mainstream media is saying, let's have a look at this article from the UK column website that they have the Skripal, which is a timeline running through all the sort of mainstream media coverage of the thing at the time. And indeed, the issue of ducks comes up here because at 1345 on the day of the poisoning, they were feeding the ducks and says here CCTV video footage exists of the Skripals feeding ducks at Avon Playground. But it has not been released to the public. We know this video exists because three boys joined the Skripals, whether we're feeding the ducks and their parents were later contacted by police to use CCTV video to identify them. The possibility that children could have been exposed to Novichok was sensationally reported in the Sun newspaper, which two weeks after the attack sent a journalist to interview one of the boys and his parents. So there is their exclusive Putin's youngest victim, schoolboy 12, on how he was exposed to deadly poison after Russian spy Sergei Skripal gave him bread to feed ducks in Salisbury. But it gets better because according to the New York Times, shortly after the Skripal attack, British intelligence informed US counterparts that Novichok had killed ducks and injured children at Salisbury. So the British intelligence informed United States intelligence that Novichok had injured children at Salisbury, right? That's very important. Mr. Hospital, sorry, Miss Hospital showed pictures. The British government had supplied her young, her of young children hospitalized after being second by the Novichok nerve agent. But unfortunately, at the inquiry this week, it came to light that the boy, along with two others, was later traced as part of the investigation. He reported being ill for a day or two after the encounter, but the inquiry heard that no traces of the chemical weapon were found on them when they were eventually tested. So where does this disparity come? We're talking about intelligence agencies giving intelligence to US intelligence agencies that these boys were directly affected by Novichok. But at the inquiry this week, we're told that no Novichok was found on them. Where does this disparity come from? Maybe, just maybe, this is what happened. My advice for any individual that may have been in any of the areas now cordoned off from 10 p.m. on Friday evening onwards is highly precautionary. As before, my advice is to wash your clothes and wipe down any personal items, shoes and bags with cleansing or baby wipes before disposing of them in the usual way. This is the same public health advice I gave during the previous incident. So that was Sally Davies, the Chief Medical Officer at the time. So maybe they couldn't find Novichok on these boys because they wiped down their clothes with baby wipes. Maybe that's the reason. And so the incident didn't or whatever it was she said there. It didn't quite happen the way they say. But anyway, I don't even know how to take this seriously at this point. Clearly, what I'm referring to here is all Russian disinformation. We must always keep that in mind. We'll leave you with that thought for today. We'll be back in a couple of minutes for some extra where undoubtedly we'll be talking more about this and many other topics. Charles interviewed tomorrow 1 p.m. Don't miss it. And we'll be back for the news at 1 p.m. as usual on Friday. See you then. Bye bye. All right. There's only one feeling like knowing your banker personally. Like growing up with a bank you can count on. Like being sure what you've earned is safe, secure and local. There's only one feeling like knowing you're supporting your community. You deserve more from a bank. You deserve an institution that stood strong for generations. Bank of Colorado. There's only one member FDIC.