UK Column Radio

UK Column News Podcast 4th December 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-4th-december-2024

Duration:: 1h 2m
Broadcast on:: 04 Dec 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 4th of December, 2024, just after one o'clock. Welcome to UK Call of News. I'm your host, Mike Romson. Joining me today in this studio is Charles Malleth. Welcome to the program, Charles. - Thank you, Mike. - And Vanessa Bealy from Damascus. Now we're going to be coming on to Syria in a second, but later on we're going to be talking of, well, lots of hoaxes. Charles, methane hoaxes and all kinds of other hoaxes, but let's start off with something which absolutely is not a hoax and that is the invasion into Syria of the terrorist groups that were expelled from there a few years ago, Vanessa. - Yeah, first of all, I would like to reassure people that the situation in Syria, while it is very serious, it's nowhere near as alarmist as it's being presented to be, particularly on social media, but also in Western media that are talking, of course, about the fall of Aleppo, the fall of Syria at the end of President Bashar al-Assad. So I just wanted to quickly demonstrate to people what's going on on the ground, because it's probably very confusing to many people to be hearing all of these place names and not be able to understand where they are in relation to both the region and to the capital Damascus, where I am, of course. So first of all, on the 27th of November, few hours after the ceasefire came into effect between Lebanon and Israel, terrorist groups from Idlib and from the North, in the North, of course, it's the former Free Syrian Army now, known as the Syrian National Army under the control of Turkey. A laden attack into Aleppo, there was a lot of confusion at that time, there was a loss of communication between the Syrian Arab Army factions, partly because the technology provided by Ukraine, according to Russian experts in Syria was being used to jam communications during the attack. So that was the beginning of the attack in Aleppo, as you can see, circled there in purple. The real hot zone now is to the north of Hama between Aleppo and Hama there, as you can see. I'll show you more detailed map in a second, talk more about the areas that are under threat there. And the circle to the northeast around Al-Hausagar, that has also come under attack by the US Kurdish separatist proxies, actually fighting alongside not the Turkish proxies, but some of the terrorist groups that joined them from Idlib in that area, and the agenda is to take control. There are seven towns that are basically under the control of the Syrian Arab Army, and that's what they're attempting to take. The red arrow is Al-Bukumal, which is where the Iraqi resistance forces, again, I'll talk about that a little bit later on, but that's where the resistance forces from Iraq are gathering with the potential for them to enter Syria and come to the assistance of the Syrian Arab Army. And also in the Hama areas, where basically the Syrian army has sent massive reinforcements to basically prevent the terrorist reaching Hama and then being able to carry on down the main roads heading for Homs and Damascus. So also in the Haskar area, if we can just go to the next slide, the Syrian tribal factions and clans have a friend they support for the Syrian Arab Army, so they are joining the defense of Syria alongside the army. And if we look at the next slide where I've taken kind of zoomed in on the map a little bit, so you can see there Hama and the two red dots that I've pointed out there are the Syrian Christian towns of Mohadeh and Skidbei, that were under attack for around six years before their full liberation in 2020. And some of the fiercest battles are being fought around there, of course. If the terrorists too are managed to break through into these towns, we are looking at a bloodbath. They were defended successfully for the years that they were under siege and surrounded pre 2020. And of course the N5, as I mentioned, which is the main road that goes from Aleppo to Damascus is also being fiercely fought over. Messyaf, as you can see there, circled in blue, is the location of one of the biggest Syrian research and development centers where weapons are developed that are sent to Hezbollah and to the Palestinian resistance. And just a very quick reminder about Skidbei, I was there multiple times if we can just move to the next slide. I was there multiple times during the attacks from the town. At one point, the Nusrah front terrorists were only around 750 meters away from the town in an area called Kalatmatik, which has actually in the last few days fallen and be retaken, fallen and being retaken by the Syrian Arab army. So that's how great this threat is. This is Nabil Al Abdullah, the commander of the National Defense Forces from the Syrian Christian town. So this is a quote that he often provided to various media outlets that visited the town. We confirmed that we always carry the candles of love and peace in one hand and in the other hand and the other hand is on the trigger of our gun and we will never leave this land for many awards. And if we look at the next section of the map, so, again, we mentioned, yes, Masyaf, where much of the weapon production is carried out, not only production, but also development. As you can see, if the terrorists managed to break through the Syrian army lines at Hamal, it's then a relatively short distance to Masyaf. And of course, this is to a degree demonstrating that the terrorists are working in allegiance with Israel because Israel's priority is to both prevent supply lines to Hezbollah in Lebanon, but also to prevent the resupply of weapons by occupying or taking control of the research and development centers. So that gives you an idea of how the terrorists are working on Israel's agenda. And then also, if you come down from Hamal, you see an area called Al Khusir, which was heavily fought over by Hezbollah back in 2013. And again, that is a major supply line from Syria to the Lebanese resistance. And finally, the last map will just give an idea now of basically the threat areas in Syria. So we've been talking about the lines of battle north of Hamal, the threat to the areas to the south of Hamal, the threat from Israel, because of course what's happened is the Syrian Arab army has been redirected in force to the north of Hamal battle lines. The threat from Israel that has been, we've seen unusual movements from Israel in the occupied Kolan territory, which of course is Syrian territory, which is the red arrow there. Also from Dada and Al-Suedo, circled there to the south of Damascus, that Al-Suedo, we've seen the separatist protests that again have been backed by Israel and the US and in Dada. There are still, I believe, some UK and US Special Forces operating alongside the armed groups that are still causing some issues in Dada itself, despite it having been, to some degree, taken under control back in 2018. And then, of course, on the border with Jordan and Iraq, you have the biggest US military base at Al-Tanif and the Rukban refugee camp just to the south. And those areas are recruitment centers and holding centers for many of the terrorist groups that could at any moment be released to begin another front against the Syrian Arab army. So, as I said, it's a serious situation. The Syrian army and its allies are handling it at the moment. But I won't pretend that it's coming up, Rose's planning means. - No, indeed. And, I mean, we got to reinforce this point that when we see in the mainstream press the use of the term armed factions or rebel groups, these are terrorists. These are people that have literally come out of Al-Qaeda at ISIS, who our governments have always said we are fighting. But in fact, we've got to remember that we have funded, we have armed, and we have supported these groups from the beginning of this conflict. And you were showing in the first map there, you were showing Idlib to the west of Aleppo and Gazian tap in Turkey, to the north. And Gazian tap was one of the main training areas for these groups. - Yeah, absolutely. And another thing to add, of course, is that Ukrainian intelligence and special forces have been in Idlib offering training and drones to the terrorist groups. So Ukraine is also involved in this. - Okay, well, more on this later on. Thank you for that, Vanessa. Now, let's come back to the UK. And, well, I've been trying to talk about this particular bill in parliament, the climate and nature bill for at least a week and a half now and it has never made the cut. So I've been receiving emails about it, so I thought it was about time we did actually cover it. Now, it is a private member's bill. So whether it has any chance of success, well, we'll see in a second, but this is a bill to require the United Kingdom to achieve climate and nature targets and so on. So it's all about trying to force the government of the day to meet the so-called climate change targets. So we should note that this is just the latest iteration of it. So 2024, this is Royal Savage, who's lived in, has put this in as a private member's bill. In 2023, Alex Saville, Labour and Cooperative Party attempted to get it through and it didn't, it failed. In 2022, Olivia Blake from Labour failed. Also in 2022, Lord Redisdale lived in a hereditary peer, tried to get it through and it failed. In 2021, Caroline Lucas, the Green Party, MP at the time in 2019, she tried. So that's six times it's been attempted. This is the sixth time at the moment, but it's not just MPs that are behind this whole thing. There's a whole group of people, as we'll see in a second. So there's just one example from South Gloucestershire Council. Council signs up to climate and nature bill. By sign up, they mean support, because of course they can have no direct influence on the bill's progress through Parliament, except through campaigning and so on. But the campaign itself seems to be being run by this organisation, Zero R, and they say that they can, apparently, because of course that's upon on climate and nature bill. So there you go. So they're going to, they're attempting to do this. They're basically saying that the, because this is going for a second reading in early January, or mid January, we'll check that in a second, that MPs are going to be debating the bill. 102 supporting votes are needed for it to progress. So in other words, that'd be 100 actual votes, plus the two tellers to get it to go through. But they're worried that this is going to happen on a Friday, and as usual with things that are happening on a Friday, most people won't turn up for the private members bill. And so they're worried that people are going to need to get in contact with their MPs to, you know, put some pressure on them to make sure they stay there for this vote. That's, they are very concerned that that's what happens. So let's just look at zero on their supporters, because it's all kinds. So they have 188 MPs supporting them apparently. They have 54 from the House of Lords. They have six mayors and Metro mayors around the country involved in supporting this bill. They've eight MSPs, three MSSs, 15 political parties, signed up to 373 councils around the country, signed up to support this, 231 scientists. And they say 32 faith leaders. All faiths involved here, Protestantism, Catholicism, Jewish, Muslim, the whole lot is in there apparently, 799 NGOs and other organizations. So as I said, this is going for its second reading on the apologies end of January 24th of January 2025. And so they need to get a vote to get it to go to committee stage. But even then I would suggest that with the assisted dying bill, getting all the sort of headlines and the pressure at the moment, I don't think there's really much hope for this to progress. Nonetheless, this is a well supported campaign. And so anything could really happen. And I would just sort of finish this segment by saying, you know, people look at this website at the zero R website and look at the number of councils that are involved. Perhaps you might want to get involved with various campaigns to put pressure on councils to change their minds on this issue. And of course, Rachel Matthews really, I guess, the leading voice in this area and an absolute inspiration. If anybody needs inspiration to get involved in a campaign, I don't know if you've got any thoughts. - Yeah, I think what is absolutely right that people should be picking holes in this because it's just yet another example of totally unfounded targets plucked from nowhere to apparently satisfy the planet's desire for this, that and the other. But of course, since the world can't speak for itself, at least environmentally, it's left of these people to make it up as they go along. Of course, the penalty falling upon us, the taxpayer and the people that want to access what is now being called nature or indeed natural capital. So absolutely, even if it doesn't go through, it should be seen as a sort of bellwether for the way in which things are going on a target basis. - Of course, on the net zero issue, methane is a big thing, but I mean, perhaps rather than worrying about farm animals, we should be worried about the amount of methane that's coming out of the House Commons and the various councils around the country. - Perhaps we should, and it turns out that Arla, the large food cooperative formed by a merger of a Swedish and Danish agricultural business has put out a proposed use of a new feed additive, which has caused quite a stir on social media. So we'll just have a look at their promotional video to see what you make of it. (upbeat music) - I'm Jane. - I'm Adam. - And we run a family dairy farm with 420 cows. - We've been Arla members for the last 10 years and we've been in the innovation farm for the last five. - The latest innovation we're looking at is Beauvair. Beauvair's a feed additive developed by Dutch company DSM that allows farmers to reduce and terrac methane emissions from our dairy herds, and terrac methane being what the cows produce during their natural digestive process. Today we've been working with Arla and DSM as part of the Beauvair setup process, learning about what's involved and how we can make the parlor as successful as possible. - So the reason we're so excited about Beauvair is it's not just some fairy dust that somebody thinks might make some improvements, but it's been really rigorously and extensively tested. - Trials like these are really important to help reduce our carbon footprint. We're really pleased that customers are joining us in investing in sustainability on farm. - Has it been more rigorously tested than the COVID vaccine? - I would imagine not, but I wasn't there, so I don't know. What I can say though is that the safety data sheet again has caused a lot of concern because there were notices about certain adverse impacts on people handling it and indeed on cows and the fact that it was only suitable for dairy cattle and no other. There are a host of other things, which wasn't really time to go into today. But the first thing to look at is the supposed science underpinning the claim that methane from cattle is indeed such a problem and we go into the technical side of it, which is that hydroxical radical plays a central role in tropospheric chemistry. Basically that is what is breaking down the methane that does escape and this rather wordy paragraph, which says that these observations are sparse and it's highly variable in space and time, essentially means that all of this cannot really be measured. So they say that they're not a viable way to map the variability and trends, which means that it all comes down to modeling like everything else that concerns the climate agenda. Nonetheless, the company that have put it out, DSM have put out that it's the proven solution for methane reduction and very quickly, they've had to stick out another statement about misinformation because the reaction to this has been quite so strong and their statement starts by saying that the recent announcement of the Bovair trials in the UK has caused mistruths and misinformation about its safety. We would like to bring you the facts and dispel any misconceptions. Bovair is safe for use and effective in reducing emissions. Now my question I think Mike would be, are people really going to believe this sort of thing as a counter or is this going to be sort of spun in the kind of climate denial sense? - Well, if it's safe and effective Charles, I can't think of any better recommendation. - Well, exactly. So we've seen how that's gone down in the past. Now, this isn't an isolated example of a sort of lone company producing a product where no other effort has gone into it. This in fact goes back to at least 2022, suddenly as far as the UK government's concerned, we have defra calling for evidence on what are called. The sort of the genus here is the methane suppressing feed products and within their statement, they're talking about how to effectively galvanize people into actually using these things. And of course, marketing is at the center of it and how uptake best be driven and whether it would be by government industry or voluntary led solutions. And what might these interventions entail? Now, those of you thinking ahead won't be entirely surprised to think that this man here who has absolutely no qualifications or indeed the physique to suggest that he eats healthily has of course been playing a central role. We'll just have a look at a video of Bill Gates speaking about methane and cattle. - In terms of the cows, we actually have, we pursued many solutions. So one is to vaccinate the cows in a way that they're gut bacteria that emit the methane, which is also called natural gas or sage for, which is the second most important greenhouse gas, you can vaccinate them and that species of bacteria isn't there. Their stomachs are very special because they can eat grass, you know, it's a three stage fermentation process basically. There's another way you can change what they eat and you could either put that in their water or their feed. There is a drug to change the microbiome, not a vaccine but a drug. That looks very promising. And then there's a solution where you stick a sort of a metal thing into the skin of the cow and it actually burns the methane. And all of these look to be quite cheap and implementable even in Africa. And so I'm, you know, this is one where I wasn't hopeful when I got started a decade ago and now it's just a question which solution for which country. - Now this should cause people to question all sorts of feed additives and indeed the way that their food comes to them or indeed milk or any product that is consumed in something that's been a theme over the last few weeks. But certainly what Bill Gates and he's not an isolated example, but what he does demonstrate is how he is, first of all manipulated the agenda itself, but then used it in order to ensure that all bases are covered. It's well known of course that he's bought up vast tracts of farmland and continues to do so. He's now pushing the agenda to ensure that meat and dairy are pushed off the menu and out of households. But of course he has the other side of it covered. He also has the medical side of it covered through his breakthrough energy startup and indeed sort of venture capital, which has funded room in eight, which is another product aiming to achieve a similar effect in terms of reducing methane. And of course when there are no cows and no milk left, it is to be remembered that he has also funded the breast milk substitute bio milk with funding. Now if you're wanting to find out what real milk actually is and how it is affecting your health and the environment, please go to John Cook's interview on raw milk on the UK column website. And for further information in general, I should remind you the UK column now has a specific farming page. So we'll follow this story as it runs its course and dig further into it. But the main fallout really should be that people are examining in much greater detail what it is that goes into the production of their food. - Thank you, Charles. Okay, let's remind you that we do need your support. And if you can support us, the place to go is support.uk column.org. You can make a donation there and you can join as a member, but remember those are two different things. And if you make a donation, you won't get access to extra and so on. So please consider joining as a member of various membership options there. You can pick something up at the UK column shop and you can pick something up at cloudtacar.com. We get a small percentage of every sale there, although it doesn't cost you anymore. Now we can now ship internationally. So we would just like to suggest that if you want to get something at the shop, a UK column membership gift voucher for Christmas might be a good gift or an agenda 21 book. These are still available. And as we say, we're shipping these internationally now. So if you're abroad and you'd like to get one, you can. But if you can't do any of that, that's absolutely fine. Please do share our material because we still need you to help us get past the algorithms. And we provide share links on the videos and so on there. Now tomorrow at 1 p.m. Brian is speaking to author and CIA whistleblower, Pedro Israel Orta. And he is the son of Cuban immigrants. He fled Castro's Cuba and released the family dead. He's got 18 years experiences, CIA veteran. And he served in various places like Iraq, Afghanistan, and so on. So watch that at 1 p.m. I think that's an extremely interesting conversation. 1 p.m. tomorrow on the usual places. I want to remind everybody that on Friday this week, Sandy Adams is taking part in agenda 2030. How will it affect you? This is a presentation and a workshop at Chezak Memorial Hall, details in the show notes and on screen at the moment. And then just a reminder that the interview that went out yesterday is now on the website. This is what the VET saw, question everything with Roger Meecock. No, he's covering a range of issues here. But one of the things he talks about is the inappropriate use of PCR tests in animals. And I think we're just going to deal with that question now, at least towards the end of this report. - Absolutely, we are. And it's something that we've covered a lot over the last year or so, which is bird flu. But before I launch into the latest developments, we're just going to wind the clock back a little bit to the 22nd of May, this year and see what was reported by UK column at that point. - Turn to Avian influenza. And in particular, the preparation for this autumn's pandemic. So again, please stay tuned because this very, very much refers to humans. The guidance on reporting dead birds has just been updated, which has happened very infrequently since it was first to introduce over a decade ago. But specifically, they're saying, this is how you should use the service and it'll help you to understand how diseases are spreading. So they'll ask you where you find the dead birds and all the rest of it. But the point of this is, of course, that they may be collected and tested for bird flu or another cause of death. Well, I can tell you absolutely for sure that they will only be testing for bird flu because that's all they want to find. They're not least bit interested in any other environmental factor because I wrote a freedom of information request and had that in black and white, but that is all they test for. So of course, it's no great surprise to learn that they have a bird flu vaccination task force. Now, what do you think they're up to? Well, the health security agency are pushing the boundaries of vaccine research and development, sounds a bit ominous. But what they say is that they have an agreement with CSL Securus who will be on standby to produce over 100 million influenza pandemic vaccines tailored to the specific strain, of course, if needed. Now, So there we go. And yesterday, Defra announced that they have secured five million doses of a vaccine, but specifically for humans, as that is where they're predicting. And I use the word in, well, in very much inverted commas. Of course, they have tweeted it and their government announcement is really true unless it's been tweeted. And there are some chickens explaining that we're all in morphal peril from avian influenza. But now they say that they've greeted contract for more than five million doses of human H5 influenza vaccine to boost the country's resilience in the event of a possible H5 influenza pandemic from statement. Also, the purchase have been made as part of a long, established plans. Yes, of course, to boost the UK's access to vaccines for a wider range of pathogens of pandemic potential. Now, how can they guarantee that they have the science right on this? Well, we'll come to that. But first of all, they say that the influenza A H5N1 virus has been causing a prolonged label outbreak, primarily in birds. And it is only if this virus were to start spreading among humans, of which there is no evidence at this stage that the human H5 influenza vaccine would be used. And yet, of course, they have just bought five million doses of it, which is what they're announcing. The procurement will strengthen the UK's preparedness for an influenza-originated pandemic by ensuring vaccines are immediately available while a pandemic-specific vaccine is made ready. And this is the point they're trying to make, which came out of the sort of ludicrous premise that the COVID vaccine was a vaccine and was meaningful and could be produced in such short space of time, effectively had opened the door for this sort of tailoring business to be done immediately once the specific strain had been identified. Now, I'm going to go back again to the 29th of May of this year to talk about the choreography of a pandemic, as it was seen by UK column at that point. Ready? Now, in the meantime, Evian Floo, Charles. Yes, yes, again. But this time, there is rather more to talk about, I think, because what we see is the slow march towards a well-choreographed move into the creation of a pandemic. And I will just go through this sort of step-by-step. This morning, the Human Animal Infections and Risk Surveillance Group, part of the UK Health Security Agency, published a document called "Avian Influenza in Livestock, the Risk Statement." Now, I'm not going to go through the specific details of it, but the point is that you put the suggestion out there that there is a defined risk or threat, and you allow that information to circulate whilst admitting at the same time that there are evidence gaps. So they admit that the source of infection to the index farm is a gap in evidence. So is the severity of clinical signs, critically the risk to other ruminants and mammalian livestock. And also, there's uncertainty around the transmission risks to humans in contact with affected capital. Risk factors associated with increased susceptibility and disease severity in human cases. So the government there preparing the ground for what is being rolled out now, which is effectively the suggestion that humans can indeed get a disease that has apparently been identified in birds and then in mammals. But of course, the identification is where this all hangs. Now, the UK Health Security Agency has said, "What is bird flu and how are we protecting people against it in the UK?" And this is really the nub of it. They say that the concern is that these changes in the virus may at some point allow it to spread readily between people. So they are running a surveillance program in order to improve what they're calling scientific understanding of the threat of alien influenza to humans. They run a zoonotic influenza surveillance program in humans. Now, what they mean by that is the use of the PCR test, and that's exactly what Mike was just talking about in so far as introducing the Roger Meecock interview. And now, the PCR test rolled and taken my word for it. Let's listen to Carrie Manis, the inventor of the PCR test who died in 2019. Oh, and with PCR, if you do it well, you can find almost anything in anybody. It starts making you believe in the sort of Buddhist notion that everything is contained in everything else, right? I mean, because if you can amplify one single molecule up to something that you can really measure, which PCR can do, then there's just very few molecules that you don't have at least one single one of them in your body, okay? So that could be thought of as a misuse of it just to claim that it's meaningful. So I would say that there's absolutely no doubt that if APHA and the UK HSA set out to find what they're calling bird flu in humans, they will undoubtedly find it with the use of the PCR test. Now, that does not suggest that such a thing as bird flu in humans exists. But as Carrie Manis says, you only need to find the specific molecule that you're testing for and that you're going to amplify in order to confirm the bias that you insert into the system. So that's how we look at it at the moment. As I said, the contract for this has gone to CSL Securus and their share chart is worth looking at. I think at the moment because, of course, there's not really any change to it. This is the last year's worth of their stock price, but one might expect that to change depending on how the optics on this situation pan out. Now, in so far as this is looked at by the sensors, the World Council for Health has just announced that they have been de-platformed by venue in Stroud. The Lansdowne Hall have refused to allow them to show Andrew Wakefield's latest film, which is called Protocol 7. And if you would like to have a look at that for yourself and see what all the fuss is about, which I can highly recommend, it is Protocol 7 Protocol 7 dot movie and I will be showing clip of it in extra. And I watched that yesterday as well. It is superb. It is absolutely. Yes. OK. Now, let's come back on to more international issues and the Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office. Now, we've mentioned this before, but they have been publishing up until 2022. Every month they published, or at least every month they published a separate spreadsheet of their spending over £25,000. So if we look at this, it's all data on foreign Commonwealth and Development Office departmental spending over £25,000, make it read that again, all data over £25,000. And you can see there that now, as of the 1st of December, actually, sorry, 1st of December, 2023 and 2024 have been added. And that is the result of my efforts, because I've been, as we'll see in a second, pursuing this through the Information Commissioner. But let's have a look at one of the spreadsheets here. And this is the form that it comes, just in a standard spreadsheet with a list of dates, a list of what they call voucher numbers, a line amount in terms of the amount of money that they've spent, the supplier that they spent it with, and the account name. And if we just zoom in on that on a couple of lines, we see their Arc Group DMCC. We see Article 19, Article 19 is a very interesting organization. We'll mention it again in a second. So if we just look at Arc Group, for example, here, we can see that they have received over the years, £31 million from the Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office. And of course, we're not allowed to know what that money was specifically used for, because as you can see, the account code that that goes against is something called program spend and brackets, Oracle projects control account. And so, of course, that's an Oracle database. But it's just listed as program spend, and you cannot find out specifically which program or which project this any particular tranche money went towards. If we look at Article 19, and we got to remember that this organization and NGO and international NGO, one of these organizations that may be Russia and other countries would consider to be an organization of foreign influence, because not only does it get money from the Foreign Commonwealth Development Office, it gets money from the Bill Gates Foundation, it gets money from the Open Society Institute, gets money from the Hewlett Foundation, and a whole bunch of these Ford Foundation, a whole bunch of these other types of foundations. So, as I say, I've been pursuing this for quite some time, because in 2022, the Foreign Office just decided to stop publishing this data. And I put in a Freedom of Information request, which of course was refused. The request for an internal review was refused, and it was refused on this basis. So, it said I'm writing to confirm we've now completed the internal review, and we're upholding the original response to the Freedom of Information request. The information you've requested is an example from disclosure under Section 22 of the FOIA, as the information is intended for future publication, and you'll notice the inappropriate use of full stops and capital letters there, and so you've got to question the capability of English, of the person that was writing this. But anyway, they say that Section 22 does not require that the authority give a specific date for the publication of the information requested. Now, the truth here is that it doesn't do that, but the Information Commissioner is absolutely clear that organizations like this cannot use Section 22 as a get out a jail-free card, where they basically say, "Well, this is scheduled for future publication. We won't tell you when. It's going to be published in the future, so we're not going to give you the data, and it might not be published for 50 years." I mean, they simply have been, that's what the foreign office has been trying to do in this case. So anyway, we set up a website, fcdosspending.uk column.org, we've talked about it before, to try to highlight or to put this data in a more accessible form for people. And one of the things on that website is we show a graph, a bar graph showing the monthly spending of the foreign office. And as you can see, if we look here at, this is going back to April 2016. At that time, it was about 200 million pounds spent that particular month. And as you go across this graph, you can see it ranges from let's say 100 million pounds, up to 800 million pounds or 900 million pounds in a month spent. But then we get to July 2022, which is the first of the new spreadsheets that have been released following the intervention of the Information Commissioner at my request. And you can see that, in fact, there's almost nothing in it. And so well, what's going on? Well, let's look at the July 2022 one. And we find that instead of it being full of spending over 25,000 pounds, it's full of spending of amounts like two pounds 50 or three pounds or three pounds 60. In this case, this particular screenshot I'm showing is all money all going to go to UK limited. So I guess for mobile phone bills. So they what they have done is because the Information Commissioner was attempting to force them to release this information, they have released information, but not the information that they, it is certainly not all the spending above 25,000 pounds. So they're lying about that. And it's not even over it's not even spending over 25,000. There are some line items that are over 25,000 pounds. But it's clearly, this is an obfuscatory effort to stop us getting access to this data. And I, well, we'll talk a little bit more about that in a second. But I just wanted to run through it very briefly, a sort of almost a timeline of freedom information requests that I've made to the foreign office over the years. So beginning in 2017 here, quarterly white helmets financial statements, Vanessa will be very interested in this one. Of course, that was refused. And then in 2018 review of funding for the white helmets, that was refused. Then I wanted to find out about Andy Price and his kind of disinformation and media development team that was refused in 2019. I wanted to find out about Russian troll factories in 2022. That was refused. I wanted to find out more about Russian troll factories in 2023. That was refused. I wanted to find out about funding for OCCRP. That was, well, that has never been answered. That's long overdue expenditure. So we're now into the foreign office expenditure. This is beginning in August 2023, refused. More about foreign office spending in March 2024, refused. More about foreign office spending in March 2024, refused. August 2024, refused. And so on. So clearly, there is, you know, refusal on the part of the foreign office with respect to any freedom information requests. There are others as well that I put in. And I would ask whether I have been blacklisted in particular or whether maybe the questions I'm asking are too hard. Vanessa, I don't know what you got any thoughts on this, but what they've clearly decided to do is to release information in order to try to deflect the information commissioner. But it's basically bogus. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, there's absolutely no transparency about the spending by the British government on what is effectively a foreign policy of igniting wars globally, and that's clearly what they're trying to hide. It is indeed. And I cannot separate the fact that this happened within a couple of months at the beginning of the Ukraine war. I believe that the reason they're obfuscating this, the reason that they do not want to tell us this information is because they do not want us to know how much money is being spent through the foreign office on that conflict. But we will keep you posted as this goes. Do have a look at FCDO spending.uk column.org. I would encourage everybody to be putting pressure on everybody. Media, civil servants, anybody you know in government to get this information released, we need to know what I mean. You know, if people can't complain about 20 billion pound black holes, if we and the fact that we're seeing government spending cut back on benefits and so on, if we're not prepared to stand up and say, well, what is the money actually being spent on? Yeah. So I think specifically, not just how much, but also where it's gone and what that will tell us about the what the government knew and what the government were deciding back in early 2022. Vanessa, let's come back on Syria and who's giving support? There are many countries obviously coming to the aid of Syria, but I first of all just wanted to show reduced video footage of myself driving into the center of, I wasn't driving, but being driven into the center of Damascus. You mentioned the traffic rules or the fact that there are none. But just to demonstrate that Damascus was peaceful and calm the day after that, let's say the terrorist affiliated social media accounts were pushing out the idea that there had been clashes between two different army brigades, that there was a coup on going inside Damascus and that the thing even in Israeli media, they were putting out the line that Syrian in inverted commerce rebels were storming the presidential palace, etc. So I just basically took this video, so I drove into to show people that no, everything is as normal in Damascus. I just wanted to make a couple of comments, Vanessa. First of all, is a beautiful city, second of all, the roads have no potholes. No, and that's despite, when was it completely liberated in the year 2018, so that's despite six years of mortars and missiles and rockets being flung and logged at Damascus city center by the terrorist groups, by the UK and US alliance. I just wanted to put this up because clearly what is going on is collaboration between Erdogan and Netanyahu, as I pointed out from on the ground information, the terrorists are achieving what Israel wanted to achieve inside Syria and I'll mention that again in a minute. First of all, the ambassador Al Dakhak talking about the terrorist attack on northern Syria was carried out with a green light and a joint Turkish-Israeli operations order, the full speech will be available in the show notes, but then this is what I'm talking about. Of course, there's a history of Israel supporting the terrorist armed groups in Syria with weapons, with funding, with medical treatment, with covering artillery fire in certain situations, particularly in the south. This is an article in the cradle extremist clashing with the Syrian army ready for peace with Israel, as said by an ex-Israeli intelligence official. So let's say see what that actually means. So this is an ex-military, intelligent lieutenant Mordecai Qedar stated in an interview with one of the Israeli media outlets. Israel is on the side of the so-called rebels in Syria explaining that the Syrian opposition fights against Assad, Iran and Hezbollah are aligning with Israel's interests. He noted they will continue to support them if they are well behaved. He also claimed that leaders of the Syrian opposition factions have conveyed to Tel Aviv that they are planning to open an Israeli embassy in Damascus in Beirut. He's in constant contact with the leaders of the Syrian factions and their current impression is that they do not consider Israel an enemy and he added that the armed factions went from Israel and they are ready for a peace agreement with Israel after taking control of Syria and Lebanon. So I don't think it can be much clearer than that. And he's not some nutcase platforming this information on the media. He's provided this information to the leadership in Israel. China come out with some very strong language actually for them. Val support for Syria Beijing is willing to aid Damascus to prevent the situation from deteriorating. This is in RT, so what did the foreign minister actually say in his statement? China is deeply concerned about elements in Syria where jihadist militants launched a surprise offensive last week. Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Yun said on Monday as Damascus's friend Beijing is prepared to take steps to prevent the further deterioration of the situation. It remains to be seen what those steps will be. The Iranian Foreign Minister President Assad visited Moscow last Friday for about 24 hours and shortly after the Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas actually came to Damascus. Iran is ready to consider sending troops to Syria basically they're waiting for the request, the official request from Syria. And this is quite an interesting development almost immediately after Assad's visit to President Putin in Moscow. The former commander of the Russian forces in Syria was basically dismissed at the request of President Assad Sergei Kessel. He was sent back to Russia and Alexander Jiker returned. Jiker was the commander of the Russian forces prior to Kessel coming in. So there is a suggestion that perhaps school was not going as well as expected with Russia military relations in Syria prior to the attack. And I also mentioned the buildup of the Iraqi popular mobilization forces on the border with Iraq. There has been a lot of talk about them having entered Syria to come to the aid of the Syrian Arab army front lines. But as far as I know it hasn't happened yet. But of course what they are doing is preparing for a spillover of the terrorist groups into Iraqi territory and a potential triggering of the ISIS factions that the US has been training, transporting from Syria and training in Iraq itself. So you know we're in a very as I said precarious situation just while we were on air I received information that some of the defense lines in Hamas have actually fallen and that the Syrian army has been forced to withdraw having made gains yesterday. So I think the message is not to panic. This is a war. There is going to be loss and victory for some time and this is going to be an extremely long war. But Syria does have the sport. I mean also spoken to Algeria, Venezuela, Russia is speaking very strongly on behalf of Syria in the UN Security Council. So as I said it's going to be an extremely long war. For NASA just a couple of questions. The first is the how experienced are the current Syrian military? So are these new blood that hasn't didn't experience the war? Yeah I think there's a mixture of elements. First of all there were a number of Syrian Arab army brigades and soldiers who were demobilized because since 2020 there has been relative peace in Siberia and now of course they've been remobilized so there's a degree of fatigue. The Syrian army has been fighting for 14 years now pretty much non-stop. There are of course new recruits and conscripts and that I think was one of the problems in Aleppo. I think one of the parts in the line of defense caved there also and it could easily have been rookie soldiers that weren't bad for that Shia number of terrorists involved in the onslaught from the north and the northwest. So yeah that is an element taken to consideration. And then the final thing is you know why on earth was Idlib not just simply flattened? Why were they given the opportunity to even get organized like this? Very good question. That's completely down to the ceasefire agreement, broken by Russia and Turkey back in 2020 that basically prevented any further military campaign to fully liberate all of Idlib territory. Sadly Russia trusted Turkey and Turkey has now betrayed Russia. Now of course that remains to be seen to what degree Russia now reinforces its positions in Syria and to what degree Erdogan suffers the consequences of his actions. Yeah okay thank you for that Vanessa. Now we're going to stick with the topic but we're going to come back to the UK and John Healy our mid secretary of state for war has relaunched or newly launched the new defense industrial strategy. Let's just have a listen here. Defense should, can and must be an engine for jobs and growth in Britain in the future. That's why we'll develop our new industrial strategy for defense. We'll develop it with industry, we'll develop it with the innovators and I want to develop it also with investors. And my message is this invest in defense and send a strong signal to Putin and other adversaries that would do us harm. With a stronger UK defense sector we can make Britain more secure at home and stronger abroad. So of course the first defense industrial strategy was released by the previous government a couple of years ago 2021. The current regime has decided to issue a statement of intent on what they're going to do but the thing that strikes me here Charles is that of course if you are trying to rebuild your economy based on weapons of war then lots of jobs become reliant on war and therefore there becomes absolute support for that war. And that's sort of how the wheel turns and I think this will bear great relation to what the FCDA have actually been spending their money on because it's all very much part and parcel of it. So you know I think we've got a question what kind of jobs we're applying for and so I've realized that people are struggling financially of course but you know we get taking government jobs being reliant on government taking defense jobs being reliant on warfare for your livelihood is perhaps not the best way to go about living but anyway that's not my decision in many cases. Let's bring ourselves on to another issue of war and that is sexual violence in war and this has been something that Barbara Woodward has been arguing about in the UN Security Council for many many years so this is going back a couple of years she had to say this she had this to say president conflict related sexual violence is not an inevitable consequence of war the UK remains committed to tackling conflict related sexual violence I would absolutely disagree with this woman with this statement conflict related sexual violence has been an inevitable consequence of war since there ever was a war it has been a feature of warfare for thousands of years and so anybody suggesting that sexual violence can be removed from the battlefield or the remains of the battlefield is off their heads you cannot say to people that have gone to fight in a warfare yet kill those people do that thing but don't do this thing over here it isn't going to happen so anyway she's been talking about in the Security Council about this again and this time she's announced their newly appointed prime minister special representative of preventing sexual violence and conflict lord colons and he will drive international action to tackle this issue well will he because let's just have a look at a little bit of video here this is from NATO in 2018 so we're going back six years 2018 this was released and nothing has changed so let's just have a look at this our role of defense and security means that we have to address those areas which could be the root causes of ongoing conflict if you don't address head-on the violations against populations and be it broader violations of that of sexual violence it does add to the ongoing continuum of conflict the conflict are no more state against states it's civilism trick we need to identify who are the victims and who are the perpetrators if we want to establish this process or even to be more effective in the delivery of our mission so Vanessa I don't know if you got any thoughts on that but correct me if I'm wrong the only way to stop sexual violence as a weapon of war is to stop the blooming wars and it seems to me that that should be pretty obvious to everybody yes I would agree to and extend but I would also say the worst should stop harming funding and let's say igniting wars and being on the side of factions extremist factions whether it's Nazis in Ukraine the Zionist in Israel the terrorist groups here in Syria and elsewhere in the world I mean in Swahil and Swahil that are way more likely in the situation of war to carry out the crimes that we're talking about and should we should not underestimate that these are crimes but just another one of many war crimes that are happening at the moment and I would like to see a lot more pushback against us but let's come back to the UK Charles and the gender issues that we were talking about last week absolutely yes last week I was reporting on the ongoing or current event in the Supreme Court which was for women Scotland versus the Scottish ministers which was wrapped up on that day and without going into enormous amount of detail it's reported as being essentially a qualified success Nick Wallace who I mentioned was covering it sort of minute by minute put this on X or Twitter he said it used to be you could lose your job livelihood and friends by disagreeing with the slogan trans women are women yesterday at the Supreme Court the Scottish Government as part of its relentless ongoing attempts to redefine the word woman declared that the only people who are entitled to be called women are biological women and men with gender recognition certificates now I think at that point even reading that out makes one question an awful lot of things about the society we live in I think Vanessa my question to you is to what extent does the population in Syria even consider this narrative zero it's not even a thing here I mean Syria is not good case because obviously we're facing a major war here but I mean even in the unsettled peace times no I mean this isn't this isn't an issue it's not even what I've already talked about yeah and I think I think it really does you know there's a question that's worth asking about all the parts of the world because this is entirely fabricated narrative reinforced of course because it points people in a particular direction it shows division and all the other things that distract people and frustrate them in their efforts to live the lives they want to live now in terms of the specifics of the gender recognition certificate itself we look to the rainbow project just to remind ourselves for as to what it is that is sort of being done here and and how now I appreciate the text is a bit small but the reason I've drawn it up from the original document is that either by accident or design a crystal part of it appears to be crossed out but they say when you apply for a gender recognition certificate currently you need to provide a medical report written by a doctor or psychologist specializing in gender dysphoria doctors must be registered with the general medical counsel and if you can't see the screen then oddly enough that it's been crossed out and have a license to practice and then they go on to qualify that by saying if your medical report was written before November 2009 they only need to be registered with the general medical counsel in so far so therefore they don't have to have a license to practice and that might just be because they may have retired but nonetheless there are many loopholes with all of this and then they're just to clarify that what they call the standard route you're in order to to do this you're over 18 you've been diagnosed with what what is called gender dysphoria no there's not enough time to go into the specific detail as to how that comes about in terms of diagnosis but they describe it briefly as discomfort with your birth gender you've lived in your acquired gender for at least two years and rather perplexingly bearing in mind the outcome of getting a certificate you intend to live in your acquired gender for the rest of your life so essentially you get one hit and what exactly the penalty would be for deciding that you don't want to do this is not made clear at least by the rainbow projects but perhaps somebody does have an answer about that and as far as UK column content goes I can recommend the interview with Susan Smith who's been involved with four women Scotland for considerable period of time to great effect under the heading women won't wheeched and that was before just every year ago okay thank you Charles and thank you Vanessa we've got to leave it there for today thanks everybody that's watched if you are a UK column member stay on the live stream we'll be back with some extra in a couple of minutes but otherwise enjoy the the interview that with Brian tomorrow at 1 p.m. and we'll be back for the news at 1 p.m. on Friday as usual see you then bye bye bye bye you