UK Column Radio

UK Column News Podcast 20th November 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-20th-november-2024

Duration:: 1h 1m
Broadcast on:: 20 Nov 2024
Audio Format:: other

Professional spend nearly half the work week on written communication, so focus is important. With Grammarly is your AI writing partner, focus and quickly get through work with relevant real-time suggestions, and it works across 500,000 apps and websites so you can sound more confident and persuasive wherever you write. 93% of professionals report that Grammarly helps them get more work done. Download Grammarly for free at Grammarly.com/podcast. (upbeat music) - Good afternoon, it's Wednesday the 20th of November, 2024, just after one o'clock, welcome to UK column news. I'm your host, Mike Robinson. Joining me today, we've got Vanessa Bailey from Damascus as usual, and Charles Mallard for the final time for New York, at least for this, sorry, from Hong Kong, at least for this year. I don't know quite how I'm honest, that particular slip, but anyway, yesterday was the farmer's demonstration in London, and Brian and I attended. Richard Matthews was there, one of the speakers at the UK column event in Bristol last month, and took this picture. Probably between 10 and 20,000 people attended, that was sort of the figures that we heard on the day. Not enough, I think, of the general public there, and support, it's the most vast majority of people from the farming community itself. No question, a great, fantastic group of people that were there with the right intentions. They're really at their only interest is in continuing their passion, which is growing food for us all, now there was supposed to be a procession, or a march to Parliament Square and back that, and the event was canceled, but there was a march of a type, which I guess is the 1,800 people from the National Farmers Union that were going to speak to MPs in Parliament, so they left before the speakers spoke on the podium, just a few minutes after this. Now, the location itself was kind of problematic, because it was quite constrained, so 10 or 20,000 people in that space was extremely tricky. People couldn't move, there was no way to get through or round to other areas, and so on, and also half the crowd could not actually see the speakers, but nonetheless, it was a good turnout as far as it went. Now, having said all that, the sort of negatives around it, it was generally a very positive day, I've got to say well done to the organizers for this first event, I hope to see much more, hopefully this is just the beginning of a journey. We'll talk about the actual presentations in a minute. Many of the farmers, well, let's have a look at the tractors, first of all, there were a couple of tractors brought in to the centre of London, but many of the farmers brought in food, and that food was all going to food banks, which I thought was a fantastic gesture. It also makes the point, of course, about what this was all about, which is food production, and that is something that, in general, people seem to have forgotten. Now, the people speaking on the podium itself, that was slightly another matter. So, let's start off here with a couple of comments from David Curtain, because David Curtain, from the Heritage Party, was there as well. Let's just listen to him for a second, and then I'll add some comments after this. But, reflecting on this, I'm a little bit, in two minds, about the protest, not the people protesting, but the organisation, and what was presented to people on the stage. And yet, there was a lot of talk about the issues, and so on, the big one being the inheritance tax grab. But, the people on the stage were all part of the uni party, who are just as much of a problem in many ways, as the star maregime. So, of course, the headliner they had was Kimi Badenok, the head of the fake Conservative party. - And as well as that, there were people like Nigel Ferries there, Jacob's priest, Jacob Reese Mogg was there. I mean, they weren't speaking on the stage, but they were there making sure that people saw that they were there, being interviewed by the media, and so on. And so, I think the point that David Curtain is making is a valid one, and certainly this was quite a bit of the feedback that we got from people that were not part of the farming community there, that really they need to consider, they need to really, but perhaps the message that they were giving was a little bit naive. I mean, for example, everybody was holding up a placard with Starmer's name on it. And so, one of the things that we would absolutely argue here is that the organizers and the people attending need to begin to understand that this is not about local domestic policy. This wasn't a Starmer decision. We've got to remember Starmer's comment from several months ago where he was asked, you know, are you for Parliament? Are you for the World Economic Forum in Davos? And he said Davos every time. So, we've got to remember this policy isn't coming out of Starmer's head, it's coming out of international net zero, redeploying farmland from food production into other things, mainly, you know, landscape management and so on. And of course, the farming community are kind of stuck here in the sense that they're reliant on many of the subsidies, because their business model is based on, unfortunately, based on supermarkets to such a degree, and the supermarkets have undercut them to such a degree that they're reliant on subsidy from government. And subsidy from government is there at this point in time to reward them for landscape management and rewiling and these kinds of projects, taking them away from food production and their core value. So, I think the key thing that the farming community has to recognize is this is not domestic policy, this is international policy, and therefore, while it's always good to personalize things and Starmer's name being on the placards, fine, but we've got to recommend that they need to recognize, I would argue, who Starmer is and what he represents. And then one of the speakers, for example, was mentioning direct action. And the question then is what kind of direct action are they going to carry out? Are they going to carry out this kind of direct action, the kind of thing that we've seen from France, or are they going to carry out this kind of direct action and also from France? And so, you know, this question has to be asked, what kind of direct action are they willing to take and what kind of direct action are they going to get support from the general public as well? And at the end of the day, of course, whatever the direct plight of farming and farmers in the country at the moment, this all comes down to us as individuals. And as Charles, the point that Charles was making last week was this one, where we buy our food from, if we are buying stuff from these companies, these massive corporations that actually are producing products, which I would struggle to describe as food in the first place. If this is what we personally consider to be what we want to be shoving down our throats, then we cannot expect to maintain a farming industry in this country. I don't know, Charles, if you've got any thoughts on what I've said there, any sort of add to that? - Yeah, thanks, Mike. Good afternoon, good afternoon all. I think the thing that I would add is really that the, what has characterized the nature of process so far this year in 2024 with all the various challenges that farmers have been presented with. And this is going to sound like perhaps an unwarranted criticism, but I think it's a failure to articulate exactly what it is they are hoping to achieve. And setting metrics by which they know whether or not they have achieved this. And that makes it very difficult to coalesce underneath one single banner. And of course, what's happened now as a result of the budget is that the focus has been drawn towards APR and therefore the inheritance tax issue, which has the unfortunate consequence of knocking to one side all the much bigger issues that do concern exactly what you've been talking about with subsidy and in particular the skewing of the landscape by the environmental land management schemes. - One of the other comments that would make Charles is that in the course of speaking to people and also listening to other conversations we're going on, it was clear that there was a significant proportion of the farmers that were there that were already starting to think about how they could sell direct to the public. And, but of course, part of the problem that we have here is that the public that you and I are used to cheap food. We have been taught to eat cheap food in the last 40, 50 years, and we perhaps prefer cheap food and going on holidays twice a year, foreign holidays. Whereas in the past, the proportion of our incomes, which went on what we ate was a lot higher. Do you think that that's part of the reason that they're not getting support is because actually people don't want to face reality of what it actually costs to run a viable farming business? - I think there's a large part of it. I think the education is a bigger part of it and they're sort of propagandising against the health benefits of choosing to spend more on food and getting what would be described as greater effect in terms of nutrient density. And I think that's the bit that people are not allowed to understand and the subversion of, for example, the organic farming movement, which Julian Rose described so very well, in that in the past, Julian Rose described so very well, in the initial stages, there was a benefit both to the environment and the consumer on a sort of health basis. But now, of course, corners can be cut and therefore the supposed gain that one gets from something that might be labelled as organic food is perhaps not translated into the human health aspect, which makes the food effectively overpriced. But of course, that's not to say that dealing with farmers direct is not worth doing. It absolutely is, but people are not drawn towards it because of the propagandising against it, which is controlled, of course, by the enormous corporations that you've just showed on screen. - Yes, indeed. So, well done for organising this for the organisers, but I think there's a lot of work to do in terms of working out what it is they're actually fighting and whether those were the appropriate people to have on the stage. But I just wanted to finish off with this little bit of video here and then just very briefly comment on the policing at the event. - More common, more common, more common, more common, more common, more common, more common, more common, more common, more common, more common, more common, more common, more common, more common, more common, more common, more common, more common, more common, more common, more common, more common, more common, more common, more common, more common. So that happened after the main demonstration had broken up for the day and that group of people occupied the street outside Parliament Square. The policing was very gentle, very different to what has happened at, for example, pro-Palestine demonstrations or at lockdown demonstrations. So, we'll talk a little bit more about that and extra as well, but very different policing at that event. And maybe we can talk an extra about why that might have been. But Charles, let's move on to related topic, actually, biosecurity. - Absolutely, a very much related topic and something that, again, we've talked about a lot over the past year and we'll start with the campaign this week starting on Monday to raise awareness for something Debbie Evans has spent a lot of time talking about, which is antimicrobial resistance, so we'll just put a video on screen from the FAO, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN, which they described as being a growing global threat, exactly as Debbie has articulated specifically with regard to humans. But of course, what you see in this video now is that they are pushing the envelope to capture the zoonotic threat or at least specter of a threat and to suggest that AMR now is broadened to affect the environment and, of course, animals as well, and that we see plants. So they're pushing us ever further into considering that we are in mortal peril. We shouldn't be taking certain drugs, but of course, there's always one in reserve to counter that and we look sort of towards vaccines in particular and those that are going to make ever more money out of it. And just to put you in the picture as to who exactly the FAO are or at least where they get their funding from, we see that they're part of the UN FAO Livestock Food and Agriculture Organization. But of course, like so many of the UN's tentacles, they are funded partly by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which is no great surprise. We have the APHA Animal and Plant Health Agency jumping on the bandwagon on the AMR Week Awareness Week. And of course, again, this is something we've talked about. They're pushing the idea that responsibility for dealing with this is incumbent upon every person. And in terms of raising awareness and therefore with it, fear, we have blue tongue, which again we talked about much earlier in the year, something that's been very poorly articulated in terms of exactly how it comes about. It's partly due to midges, they say, but again, that's not really a sort of concrete definition. And then of course, always lurking in the background, we have bird flu. We had a declaration earlier this year that the UK had zero bird flu. But of course, the requirement to register all poultry having come in variously across the UK on the 1st of September and 1st of October, we're now being warned again about the protection zones and the surveillance aspect of this. We've got the BBC, obviously acting as the government's mouthpiece, reminding people that the risk remains. And this was a specific article about Jersey, where the officials are urging birdkeepers to register their birds with the government for quick communication in case of an outbreak, or at least that's how they're terming it. Now, alongside this, we've had a recent update to the document about the movement of mammals, interestingly, which again has been in existence for a while, even though technically supposed to be a disease that affects poultry, of course, as Debbie was talking about recently, and I've spoken about much in the past, we've got this idea that these things jump from species to species. And then really, we get to the central point of all of it, which of course is the government's ability to be able to slaughter all poultry that is designated as having had bird flu. And so I refer back to the curiously named animal welfare committee who gave their opinion earlier in the year about the use of nitrogen foam for culling poultry. And we'll just remind you some of the things that they'd said, which mass killing of poultry requires culling methods, which can be rapidly and practically deployed, whilst avoiding all unnecessary pain, suffering and distress to the flock and being mindful of human health and safety during the process. Now, to refer to a cull as being necessary is an extremely contentious thing to be doing, but that is the way in which the animal and plant health agency do do this. And they go on to say that mass killing may be required for culling, especially with regard to infectious disease, or those considered to be dangerous contacts, those killed promptly as slaughter on suspicion, something that has been a practice in effect for a couple of decades. But of course, this is after veterinary assessment to prevent or reduce the spread of significant infectious disease and so on. The point to make here is that in actual fact, whilst it's described as being veterinary assessment, what that really means is use, or of course, as we know misuse of the PCR test, which may not, by virtue of the fact that it is not a diagnostic tool, it may not tell the user that a specimen is an indication of the presence of disease, or indeed the presence of an agent, which may infect another bird as opposed to the one that's actually being tested. So the ramping up of the fear campaign, as we move into a sort of effectively a human flu season, but now we have the AMR and the zoonotic background to all of this. So we can expect there to be a great deal more pushing with, of course, the ultimate goal, which is to push people into getting vaccinations against all of these apparent threats. Yeah. Okay. Thank you, Charles. Thank you for that. Vanessa, let's welcome you to the program then. And well, what's the latest from the Middle East? Well, I'm going to focus on the Lebanon on quite sea fire negotiation. Amos Hoxton is currently in Beirut trying to broker a deal, of course, just as he regularly did regarding Israel and Gaza. So, Lebanon and Hezbollah agree to US proposal for a ceasefire with Israel, Lebanese official says, so this is in Reuters, the font of all knowledge for many of the mainstream media outlets. The UN resolution 1701 is the focus of the diplomacy. And then let's have a look at what they continue to say. So Ali Hassan Khalil, an aid Parliament speaker, Nabi Berry said Lebanon had delivered its written response to the US ambassador in Lebanon on Monday, and White House envoy Amos Hoxton was traveling to Beirut to continue talks. There was no immediate comment from Israel. Hezbollah, and this is Reuters, remember a heavily on movement backed by Iran, of course, endorsed its longtime ally Berry to negotiate over a ceasefire. Lebanon presented its comments on the paper in a positive atmosphere. All the comments we presented affirm the precise adherence to UN resolution 1701 with all its provisions. You'll see later in the Reuters article, which is the next slide, basically, that the focus when Western media talk about resolution 1701, which ended a previous war between Hezbollah and Israel in 2006. They focus on the fact that the terms of 1701 require Hezbollah to have no armed presence in the area between the Lebanese Israeli border and the Latani River, which runs some 30 kilometers, 20 miles north of the frontier. This is what you will hear about and that's why I wanted to do this section today to go into greater depth on resolution 1701 and what it actually means for Israel as well. Israel has long claimed that resolution 1701 was never properly implemented pointing to the presence of Hezbollah fighters and weapons along the border, Lebanon has accused Israel of violations, including flying warplanes in its airspace. Notice how that is put in very much as an addendum. It's not a focal point, and that is then reflected in all the media reports, including BBC CNN, etc. So to basically demonstrate 1701's reality, I just took this post on X from Middle East Observer. I recommend following them. They do good work on deciphering, particularly Western media reporting on the Middle Eastern events. So if we look at - sorry, is this? We've gone back to Buddhism. Oh, that's my fault. Sorry, my bad. So if we move a slide on - sorry, that confused me for a second - Israel's continuous breach of clause 1. So let's have a look at one and two. The first two clauses calls for a full cessation of hostilities based upon, in particular, the immediate cessation by Hezbollah, of all attacks, and the immediate cessation by Israel of all offensive military operations. This is a very important point. Two, upon false cessation of hostilities, calls upon the government of Lebanon and Unifel the UN peacekeepers, as authorized by paragraph 11, to deploy their forces together throughout the South and calls upon the government of Israel as that deployment begins to withdraw all of its forces from Southern Lebanon in parallel, again, very important. So then let's have a look at what he mentions about this. The cessation of hostilities very different to a ceasefire is a non-binding announcement by one or both sides to suspend fighting, which may be a step towards peace negotiations. Sensations of hostilities are usually less structured than ceasefire and may not cover issues like timelines, security or objectives. The first point calls for a full cessation of hostilities. Hezbollah, never stopped, Hezbollah sorry, stopped firing at Israel and engaging in hostilities. However, Israel never stopped its air land and sea breaches. Israeli wall planes never stopped flying over Lebanon since 2006. Sensations of hostilities breach 22,111 Israeli military aircraft have violated Lebanese airspace from 2007 to 2022, not counting numerous land and sea breaches. So let's have a look at the Israel's breach of clause two, which is full withdrawal from Lebanon, Lebanon, Lebanese territory. There are 13 contested border points between the occupation and Lebanon, seven of which Israel recognizes as Lebanese, but they haven't vacated those areas of Lebanese territory. For the sake of simplicity, we will discuss the clearest, non-disputable violation. Israel occupied the Lebanese part of the Gajat village in the 2006 war and never withdrew from it. Israel recognizes that this is Lebanese land. In November 2010, the Israeli cabinet agreed in principle to withdraw from the town, but they have never done so. And then if we have a look at the map here that shows clearly, I highlighted it in red, the Sheba farm territories, which is Lebanese territory that Israel occupied with the Syrian Golan Heights in 1967. Israel refuses to withdraw from it on the basis that there's ambiguity, whether it's Lebanese or Syrian territory. I'm not quite sure what difference that makes. However, Lebanon did submit documents proving that it's Lebanese territory, but Israel has never vacated that particular territory, nor has it, of course, left the occupied Golan Heights, which is Syrian territory. Now, what's interesting, this article was published in the last two days in the Jerusalem Post. Southern Lebanon is actually Northern Israel opinion, and this is based, of course, on the religious argumentation that Southern Lebanon was promised to the Zionist. And what's interesting, this article or a similar one was published by Jerusalem Post a few weeks ago, and then rapidly withdrawn. So clearly, the timing was not right for them to be putting out this kind of propaganda. Again, he goes on, if Israel is not ill intended and wants to strip Hezbollah of its narrative, why is it occupying Lebanon and breaching its sovereignty, if it's not important and just small villages in relation to the flyovers by Lebanese aircraft. Why doesn't Israel withdraw and stop its aggression on Lebanon, why the constant stubbornness to violate clauses one and two, because Israel is an aggressor expansionist state that seeks total military security and political dominance over all countries in the region. And it's not hidden by the by the USA, nor by Israel, Hezbollah and Lebanon have never breached resolution 1701 they're still waiting for Israel to abide by the first two clauses. And then he kind of finishes off, if we can just knowing Israel's nature it will not accept to implement resolution 1701 as it is, because Israel has been breaching this resolution every day since 2006. Well Israel, except now to get out of Lebanon, including the village the seven points and kickstart the process of the withdrawal from the cheaper farms that in my view also has implications on their occupation of Syrian territory in the Golan. This is absolutely not happening, Lebanon by saying it wants to implement resolution 1701 shows that it's Israel that does not actually want to stop the war. And so effectively what Hezbollah is saying. If Israel were to, for example, broker a realistic ceasefire with Gaza and the West Bank, then Hezbollah would stop firing and 1701 would probably remain in place as it is so the status quo would remain the same. Israel only wants to broker a deal with Lebanon, 1701 will be enforced with all the implications for Israel having to relinquish territory that it's occupied since 1967 and 2006. So this is from the cradle so Israel provided the US with a document last week detailing its conditions for a diplomatic solution to end its war in Lebanon. Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office gave the paper to the White House ahead of President Biden's envoy Amos Hochstein's visit to Beirut on Monday to discuss the diplomatic solution. Israel's Minister for Strategic Affairs sent the document to Amos Hochstein last week ahead of his plan trip to Lebanon, according to the document. So here we have Israel again adding clauses to an already existing document. Israel is demanding that its forces be permitted to carry out active enforcement inside Lebanese territory. This aims to ensure that the Lebanese resistance does not rearm and rebuild close to the border, one of the officials, and a following article from the cradle goes on in this vein. If we can just move on to the next one. The amendments proposed by Hochstein's resolution 1701 reveal Israel's broader strategy of using international mechanisms to further its objectives. These changes would extend uniFL's jurisdiction two kilometers north of the Latani River, allowing international forces to conduct searches, patrols, and inspections without requiring approval from Lebanese authorities. These inspections can include searching vehicles, private properties, and suspected weapon sites. Effectively, this is a demand for Lebanon to seed control over its own territory, a clear infringement on its sovereignty. Under the guise of peacekeeping, this would grant Israel in direct control over Lebanon's internal security dynamics, especially since intelligence for those operations may be influenced by or even originate from Israeli sources. We have a very familiar pattern here, very similar to what was going on in Gaza. Israel acting as an honest broker when in reality it's trying to basically include new expansion of its own influence and power inside Lebanon under the guise of adhering to the original resolution. Something that strikes me, Vanessa, is that no matter what position you take on the Ukraine war or the Middle East, we have a Western international rules-based order, which says that Russia has no entitlement to run a special military operation across the border in Ukraine in order to create a sort of demilitarized zone between Ukraine and buffer between Ukraine and Russia. But Israel does have the right to do that inside Lebanon. Apparently seems to be what's going on here. How are these two positions compatible? Well, they're not compatible, nor are the West positions over Kosovo, of course. They are largely in our Kosovo independence. So the hypocrisy is ranked, but we should be pretty used to it by now. Absolutely. Okay, well, let's just come on to a bit more hypocrisy and David Lamy in the House of Commons. It has been 1,000 days. 1,000 days since Russia's full-scale invasion stunned the world. 1,000 days in which Ukrainian bravery has inspired the world. And 1,000 days whose horror and bloodshed has dismayed the world. In our first week in office, my right honourable friend, the Prime Minister, confirmed that we would provide £3 billion a year in military aid this year, next year, and every year that it's needed. This includes my right honourable friend, the Defence Secretary's announcements today, with more funding for Ukraine's navy, more funding for drones, the extension of OP Interflex, which has trained more than 50,000 Ukrainian troops to date. And I've also increased non-monetary support. And, you know, farmers want to know why they need to have their farm stolen. Perhaps this gives some indication, but in the meantime, of course, the United States, as everyone will know, but now it has given permission for Ukraine to use long-range missiles into Russian territory. This is RT's animation of the kind of ranges that we're talking about. Not quite sure what's going on with Britain and France at the moment, as we come on to in a second. But Britain and France, by the way, and Brian just sent me this before the programme. Britain, France, Germany and Poland have apparently been informed by United States intelligence of information about an imminent and unprecedented airstrike on Kiev. Now, that's probably going to be in retaliation for the long-range weapons strike on Russian territory that's already happened. Apparently Turkey does not agree with this decision, but maybe Vanessa will have some more to say about that in extra. I'm talking about with the decision to allow Ukraine to use long-range weapons in this way. On the front lines, then the statistic, the latest statistic, seems to be that the Ukrainian Armed Forces now consists 25% volunteers, 75% conscripts, and therefore they continue to experience a massive problem with manpower. And that was according to Bloomberg. Now, let's just have a look at this, because the question is, the US has made this decision about long-range weapons. What has the response been from US politicians? Perhaps unsurprising. Let's watch. It's the right decision. This should have happened two years ago. I think it was a smart move. They're giving an advantage to Ukraine. This is a step in the right direction. We've got to give Ukraine more leverage. I think it's a very big deal. We should have come many, many months earlier. And well, Emmanuel Macron here saying that it was a great deal. Now, I have to say, Macron is looking pretty old. In fact, he's almost looking like to be age-appropriate for his wife, but that's another question. He is saying that the US has made a good decision to lift limits on Ukraine. It's interesting that French media was suggesting a couple of days ago that Storm Shadow will be part of this. And that comment was withdrawn very quickly. We'll say more about that in the meantime. But for British media, at least, forces news here saying Dining Street, tight-lipped, and whether it will let Ukraine use Storm Shadow in Russia. Main Street media today, very excited about the potential for this permission to be given by the UK and France. But, of course, we've got to remember that Russia has a response in mind. Now, this is Putin from September talking about nuclear doctrine. Aggression against Russia by any non-nuclear state, but with the support of a nuclear state, is proposed to be considered as their joint attack on Russia. Russia will also consider the possibility of using nuclear weapons when receiving reliable information about a massive launch of means of aerospace attack and their crossing of our state border. This includes strategic and tactical aircraft, as well as cruise missiles and drones, hypersonic and other delivery vehicles. Russia reserves the right to use nuclear weapons in case of aggression, including if the enemy using conventional weapons poses a critical threat. So, he's not making any bones about that. And, in fact, the news from earlier today is that, or from yesterday, is this that Putin has lured the threshold for using his nuclear arsenal after the decision to allow these weapons to be used from Ukraine. So, this clearly is viewed by the Russians as a massive escalation, and, well, they are not going to take that lying down. Most people are making the assumption that Putin is making these noises in order to try to limit the use of these weapons. I think that's a very dangerous attitude to take if they think that Russia is not going to react with the use of these weapons. So, we'll see what happens if there is going to be an attack in Cuba next day or two. But in the meantime, BBC verify feeling the need to comment on the Ukrainian front, sorry, saying that it could collapse as Russia gains accelerate. And that's a warning by experts. Now, it's very interesting that BBC verify is normally about verification of a claim that's made on the internet with a view to debunking it. In this case, they're absolutely behind the claims from what they're describing as experts that the Ukrainian front could collapse. We will keep you posted on this, but things beginning to move very quickly on the Ukrainian side. Now, let's say that if you like what the UK column does, you would like to support us, please go to support.uk column.org. There are options to help us out there. You can make a donation. You can join us as a member of that gets access to extra, for example, various membership levels. Please do join us if you can. Support us by buying something from the UK column shop or by buying something from cloud to car.com. If you use the if you click on the graphic that's on this page and that gives us a small percentage of any purchases you make, but please do share material you find on the platforms. We do need your continued support with that. Now, tomorrow at 1pm, Brian will be speaking to Reverend Dr. Stephen Sizer. This is on Christian Zionism. So, looking at the origins, the goals, the influence of Christian Zionism. Join Brian at 1pm for that, if you can. Very briefly, Charles, your interviewer, Brian Reisinger. Yeah, really good insight into the mindset of the small farmer. I think not just in America, but probably in the West. And I think effectively, he brings to the fore the sorts of considerations that people have who are not fully aware of the manipulation by both the state and the corporations. So it's really interesting insight. I'm very apt bearing in mind the protest yesterday. And then finally, on this, the CCA, CC Advisory Assembly are hosting two Zoom meetings on Monday, the 25th of November and Wednesday, the 27th of November. Sandy Adams involved in this. Please join us if you possibly can. This is about bringing the fight to the councils on that zero policy and other things. But in this case, actually, they are going to be looking at how net zero and climate emergency policies are affecting food security so very apt as well. Charles, let's come back to you and the question of contrails. Yes. Thanks, Mike. Yeah, really, the evolution that the tactical evolution of the globalist response to dissent, really, in this case, in the form of the much highlighted awareness of what are referred to by the government by, sorry, as persistent contrails, which, of course, have earlier in the year been used as the suggestion of a conspiracy theory denoting extremism, which, of course, can be conflated with terrorism. And we have the BBC here writing about what they're describing as a cheap fig. So, note the reference initially or immediately to cost and they say the climate damaging vapors left behind by jet planes could easily be tackled with a new study suggesting they could be eliminated for a few pounds per flight. So, hey, press, they've come up with the solution and they have priced it in. And, of course, this is coincided exactly to have been sort of discussed at the recent COP 29 so therefore all the nations dealing with this can act in lockstep. The result will be that we end up paying more for, in effect, something that has no solid foundation at all associated with this is the work of what's called the Jet Zero Council, which is alarming a partnership between industry, academia and government. They have no chief executive at the moment. They were founded in 2020, of course, and they describe themselves as being the catalyst for zero emission flight across the Atlantic. So they'll focus on developing UK capabilities to develop net zero and zero emissions technologies. They say that they'll do this with aviation and aerospace technology and also critically what they're describing is sustainable aviation fuels. Driving the industry, driving the production costs down and a regulatory framework, of course, in order to deliver this by 2050. Now, the practical ramifications of this are delivered in the policy paper on budget. Well, just before the budget came out, the air passenger duty rates from first of April next year and how that's going to change. Now, some of the language in this document was perfectly extraordinary, including the bid back the quality. They say that it includes a behavioral effect to account the change in flights taken and it's not expected to impact on family formation, stability or breakdown. We are talking about air passenger duty here. They went on to say that it's not anticipated that it will have any impacts on those in groups sharing protected characteristics. So they really were covering all the bases except for the science behind any of this. Now, just to give an idea of what this means, if for what presumably is a first class flight, it involves sticking an extra 673 pounds on a ticket for a flight over 5500 miles. And of course, the standout phrase from this document is that we expect the measure to have a negligible impact on the environment. So standby for yet more cost with apparently the environmental concern at the heart of it, but absolutely nothing to substantially. This will make any difference whatsoever. So we are not going to be allowed to travel. Well, yes, in effect, and we will continue to be blamed for the apparent conspiracy theory surrounding persistent contrails which are now decided that they are awful, and we must pay for their elimination as we stop flying at the same time. Excellent. Thank you, Charles. Vanessa, let's come back to you then. And, well, Israel has been receiving Hezbollah attacks. Yeah, I mean, basically with the negotiations underway, we've described, we can just run this clip while I'm talking, Israel has increased and expanded its attacks into central Beirut, of course, previously it was attacking the southern suburb. Many of the refugees that were displaced from the southern suburbs into central Beirut are now also being affected by the expansion of Israeli attacks into Christian areas, into residential areas, murdering or assassinating. The head of Hezbollah's media department, so effectively a journalist, not a combatant. This is this has been collated since I guess it's since October the 1st when Israel began its expansion of aggression into Lebanon. There's been 90 martyred medics, including civil defense, actual civil defense centers have been bombed on a regular basis, particularly recently, 55 hospitals have been targeted some put out of operational together, 246 ambulances. Now, in return for this expansion by Israel, bearing in mind, this is all related to the pressure that it's being put on by both Hezbollah and Israel during the negotiations for some kind of cessation of hostilities. Hezbollah missiles, Pummel, Tel Aviv, numerous wounded and killed, so let's just run again a video showing some of those missiles that landed and were not intercepted. So apparently this was the first time that Hezbollah used this particular kind of ballistic missile. And as I say, having the reinforcements of the thought interceptors from the US were unable to prevent impact. This is from Amal Sad, who's a professor at the American University in Beirut. As I mentioned, Israel assassinated Muhammad Aufif Hezbollah's media head killing him, along with other civilians in a Christian residential neighborhood of Beirut. Of course, this is part of Israel's attempts to turn factions within Lebanon against Hezbollah so far, very much failing apart from those factions that are already very much aligned with the Zionist entity. Beyond its clear violations of international humanitarian law, targeting a journalist, the timing of this assassination exposes Israel's strategic failures. They have, of course, failed to move forward in the south and reflects a campaign fueled by desperation and a desire for retribution. She goes on to say, setting aside all moral, ethical and legal considerations and judging Israel's actions purely through the cold, pragmatic lens of real politics. This war is set to end not only without achieving any of its objectives, but with Israel emerging significantly weaker. This is because the historically unparalleled scale of violence that it has unleashed against Gaza and Lebanon as exhausted nearly all conceivable methods of force, leaving it with nothing further to escalate, except, of course, nuclear. Such overreach follows the law of diminishing returns where greater violence yields increasingly limited results, ultimately undermining its strategic position. We can talk about that a bit more in extra. But never fear because the British envoy in Israel says that the UK will put its own personnel in harm's way to defend Israel from Iran and, of course, bearing in mind that every single resistance faction is determined to be nothing more than a proxy of Iran. The UK will protect Israel again should Iran attacks says British envoy to Israel. The United Kingdom will be a close ally and is prepared to put its own aircraft and its own personnel in harm's way to defend Israel. He notes that the Royal Air Force flew alongside Israeli and US pilots during the April Iranian missile and drone attack on Israel and ads without going into detail on October 1 British armed forces again played a role in trying to disrupt the Iranian attack on Israel. This is quite extraordinary that basically he's putting forward British army personnel to defend another country. And this was back in February 2024 when the BBC even pointed out the UK's armed forces will not be ready for a high intensity war unless shortages and personnel and equipment are rapidly addressed. And of course, Mike, we've been, or you've been talking about this extensively on UK column and not forgetting that the Oregon and Stern Zionist terrorist gangs carried out several attacks against British forces from 1946 onwards and yet were expected to put our British military personnel at risk to defend Israel. Okay. Thank you, Vanessa. And Charles, let's stick with international affairs. You're in Hong Kong at the moment. What's been going on there? Well, over the last couple of weeks, I've spoken about the relationship between the national security law in Hong Kong, supposedly imposed by China in 2020 and the National Security Act in the UK of 2023. And, as I say, the relationship between two couple of developments in the last few days in Hong Kong. First of all, we see on screen the trial of Jimmy lie who effectively provided media coverage of protests in 2019 via his news organization and then the sentencing of 45 of the 47 activists standing trial for their parts in the protest in 2019, of course, foreign interference being very much part and parcel of all of this and indeed the narrative around it. That's on a morning post reporting that it brought to a close the city's largest and longest running national security trial and involved a group of 47 accused of plotting to ride on the momentum of the 2019 anti government protests to win control of the legislative council. Now, this has been an opportunity for the mainstream course to both demonize China and deflect attention from what's going on in the United Kingdom. Nonetheless, from the government here, we have Catherine West, the Indo-Pacific minister here providing a statement. And again, reinforcing the point, China's imposition of the national security law has eroded the rights and freedoms of Hong Kongers. Today's sentencing is a clear demonstration of the Hong Kong authorities use of the national security law to criminalize political independence and to send it's almost as though she was completely oblivious to what was going on in the United Kingdom. Just a couple of months ago in the wake of in particular the South Port killings that she went on to say that those sentences today were exercising their right to freedom of speech assembly and political participation as guaranteed under the civil and political rights and basic law. And then hypocrisy upon hypocrisy, the UK will always stand up for the people of Hong Kong, and all states should uphold their international obligations to protect these fundamental rights. Of course, more recently, we've seen the meeting between the Chinese premier, Jean Ping, and Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, of course, presumably the Chinese premier's chance to push the UK Prime Minister on the abuses of human rights going on in the United Kingdom at the moment, and it certainly doesn't look like Starmer was in a position to be pushing China, of course, caught between two stills as he effectively wants to cozy up to China and yet apparently appear sort of tough in the face of the types of goings on in China, exactly like Catherine West has been referring to. Now, the BBC have gone into a bit more depth on who exactly these activists are. And the reason that it's worth looking at this is because we have one such here, labelled as the LGBT campaign, a Jimmy Sham, a long time activist. He also led one of Hong Kong's largest pro-democracy groups, civil rights, sorry, civil human rights from CHRF. Now, the reason that's relevant is because I previously spoke about the National Endowment for Democracy set up in 1983 and effectively the sort of aboveboard actor for the CIA, which, of course, China has an awful lot to say about, but particularly this chap. Ching Yung, and he's a former convener of the CHRF, an organisation focusing on human rights, and he previously served as the Deputy General Secretary of the Federation of Students, a platform for youth engagement in social action. So for the NED to try and wash the hands of any interference in Hong Kong seems a bit of a stretch, and as I say, the fact sheet on the NED from China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs cites the turbulence in 2019. They went from being behind the scenes to the frontline, directly engaging with major anti-China destabilising forces in Hong Kong and offering subsidies and training to those involved in the riots. So I'm sure there's going to be plenty more to come out about this, but as far as the UK is concerned, it seems a perfect opportunity to both bash China and deflect attention from the very real abuse of political power in the UK. Yes, indeed, we'll talk more about that an extra as well. Now, let's come back to the UK and cash, and well, the parliamentary, one of the parliamentary committees, in this case the Treasury Select Committee, is acting for evidence, or asking for evidence, sorry, on the acceptance of cash. So acceptance of cash to be investigated by Treasury Committee is what they announced on the 4th of this month. And so they're looking to answer a few questions. What is the current state of recent trends in and forecasts for cash acceptance in the UK? Are there groups in society that disproportionately rely on businesses and public services accepting their cash? Could government or should government require parts of the economy to always accept cash? Some of these questions are going to be for the general public, and some of them are going to be for special interest groups, but there are certainly questions that can be answered by many, many people. Other questions they want to look at. What are the practical challenges that businesses might face from having to always accept cash? What would the cost be to private firms in the public sector from any imposed requirements to always accept cash? And how might such requirement for cash acceptance affect financial services firms? And are there any other areas or particular sectors where a decline in cash acceptance would cause problems? So the evidence is the form for submitting evidence is certainly open for anybody that's an individual. You're welcome to make any suggestions and to add your evidence and it will be all publicly published. I believe 4th of December is the closing date for this. So people can get involved. But Charles, let's come back to you then and policing in the UK. Indeed, yet another home secretary suggesting that she's going to crack it and all the failures and abuses of police power authority and all the rest of it are going to be swept away as she conducts a series of major policing reforms here tweeted out by the home office. Of course, the most significant part of the original announcement from the government, which says here an ambitious program of perform to policing has been unveiled by the home secretary, making the start of a new partnership between government and policing. Now, the threat to operational independence of police has never been greater and to suggest that there's going to be the forging of a new partnership between government and policing should be considered as highly alarming. And they described as being part of a strategic reset in the relationship and they reinforce the point with the home office taking a more active role in working with policing leaders to drive improvements and ensure policing is set up to succeed, rather than frustrated by national structures. Now, that is suggestive of meddling political meddling in policing, which is entirely inappropriate and very much discordant with the Pelian principles, of course, and every other piece of policing policy that should really dictate the way in which police carry out their business. She's specific in terms of what she cites at least in terms of an infrastructure and particularly on the technology side of it she talks about a new police performance unit to track national data on local performance and drive up standards, neighborhood policing to rebuild trust between local forces and communities, a national center of policing to harness new technology and forensics, and all of this will be augmented by 13,000 new staff mixture of frontline police and effectively civilian support staff. And I should make it clear I think there are two sides to this one is the description of this partnership will, which will in effect be by the communication channel from the home office to police leadership, which I think is, as I say, alarming the delivery of Cooper's proposals for new technological innovations and the sorts of things that people are going to be doing on a day-to-day basis I think are pine sky, which is why I think it's worth looking at something of paper published by the Carnegie Endowment from last year, really a criticism of Russia as so much literature is these days, and they make this point which I think the home secretary should bear in mind it should be noted that in both implementing and failing to implement measures that should help the system to survive the bigger fear is not public protest or discontent, but administrative dysfunction that the authorities should proclaim something and nothing follows and they go on to say this is what happened in the late Soviet Union and then the elitist worldview of the Russian ruling class, any mass protest or public disobedience is what follows this administrative impotence, not what causes it. So as I say, I think there are two parts to this, but the critical bit really that we should be concentrating on is this suggestion that the home secretary is to have a closer relationship with the decision-making processes of the chief constables, and that is not right at all. Absolutely, police state as far as I can see, but we shall talk about that more in a minute now we began with the farmer demonstration in London, we're going to end with that as well, and I just want to show about a minute and a half of Jeremy Clarkson speaking to Victoria Derbyshire from the BBC. Why are you here Mr Clarkson? Well because I've been here to support farmers. Right, are you angry? It's difficult to be angry on somebody else's behalf, that's like being, yes, now I'm not angry on someone else's behalf. Right, so it's not about you, it's not about your farm and the fact that you bought a farm to avoid inheritance tax. Classic BBC, they're classic, oh yeah, it's not the fact that I bought a farm to avoid inheritance tax. The fact? You told the Sunday times in 2021, that's why you bought it. These people, BBC, okay, let's start from the beginning. I wanted a shoot, okay, that's even worse to the BBC, I wanted a shoot, which comes with the benefits of not having to pay inheritance tax, now I do. But people at me will simply put it in a trust, and so long as I live for seven years, that's fine, and as my daughter said, you will live for seven years, you might be in a deep freeze at the end of it, but you will live for seven years. But it's incredibly time consuming to have to do that, and why should all these people have to do that? Why should they? So one of the reasons Rachel Reeves says she bought this in is to stop wealthy people using it as a reward. The only reason she did, no, the other reason was to raise money for public services. Have you listened to this? Have you tried to get a GP appointment lately? Yes, I just recently had a heart attack. Okay, so you know it's tough? Yes. So where should they get the money from if it's not from farmers? From farmers. We hear that everyone. We do things you should be paying for everything. So, on one hand, fair play. On the other hand missed opportunity, because of course, what was the BBC journalist Victoria Derbyshire doing? She was effectively acting as the mouthpiece. She was pretending that she was just asking questions. We were effectively asking, acting as the mouthpiece for the BBC. What Clarkson could have done at that point was simply say, well, we could stop funding the Ukraine war. We could stop funding, providing weapons to Israel. We could stop running wars right around the country. Just as a starter, how much money has been spent on the Ukraine war so far? That is a question that needs to be asked. So he missed an opportunity, Charles. I don't know very briefly if you've got any thoughts on that. Well, I mean, but you're absolutely right. That is, as he says, classic BBC. But it does illustrate well the point that the BBC are absolutely the government mouthpiece. There's no journalistic integrity or serious point of questioning. But I think you're right. I think you did absolutely miss an open goal. But the fact that it was even a suggestion that farmers should in some way bear the brunt of the responsibility for the nation when also they are meant to be feeding the nation seems an extraordinary pill to try to make them swallow. Absolutely. Well, we will leave it on that note for today. Thank you very much to Vanessa and Charles for joining me today and for everybody that has watched. Stick around on the stream if your UK column member for some extra will be back in a few minutes for that. Don't forget the interview tomorrow and we will see you at 1pm as usual on Friday for another news program. See you then. 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