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UK Column On Location: Bristol—Media on Trial · UK Column Radio

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's get started. I'm just going to add my
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: voice and say thank you very much to everybody that's
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: turned up. It has been fantastic to see you all.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Now this group of people, well, in fact, these two
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: people on the right here maybe not in politics in
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: all cases, but are original members of Media on Trial.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: David is a newcomer and very welcome. Media on Trial
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: was a series of presentations that a group of people
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: got together to produce in I think twenty seventeen twenty
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: eighteen sort of time, and we were wanting to bring
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: draw attention to the use of the mainstream media or
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: the mainstream media is complicity in pushing war narratives and
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: the war agenda. And at that time, of course it
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: was still Seria, but since then it's been much more
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: than that, and of course since then as well, there
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: are many other agendas, COVID being one for example, where
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: they have absolutely been complicit in pushing that kind of thing.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: So we thought this was an appropriate time since we
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: are now back more or less on a war footing,
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: it seems, and the wars that are currently being prosecuted
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: in Ukraine and in the Middle East don't seem to
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: be going anywhere anytime soon, they're only going to get worse,
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: and we think it is an appropriate time to bring
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: the platform Media on Trial back, and so next year
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: hopefully we will be able to run some more events
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: to try and encourage people to get involved in fighting
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: this narrative that's coming from mainstream media, because without the
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: media being complicit, of course, this couldn't be happening. So
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: with me today, we have former Professor Pierce Robinson, who
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: is one of the academics who has chosen to leave
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: academia because of the restrictions that were being placed on
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: him and he was able to express himself. We have
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: former British diplomat, former ambassador for Syria and bariin peter Ford.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: And we have David Miller, also another academic who has
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: been on the receiving end of the wrong kind of
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: attention from his various university positions, lots of pressure, particularly
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: because of his position relating to Israel and Zionism. So
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: this is an expert panel and I'm very pleased to
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: have it here now. There were other people on the
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: media and Trial events, Patrick Kennison being one that we
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: need to mention, Vanessa Billy being another. Vanessa was really
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: keen to be here today and we had planned that
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: she would be here today, but unfortunately the only way
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: to get here is through Damascus, and since the airport
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: is more or less not functioning, and the road between
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: Damascus and Beirut is in fact closed and it's going
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: to stay closed for the foreseeable future, there was no
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: possibility of forgetting here. She has sent a short message though,
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: which we will put on screen nine and then we'll continue.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: So let's just listen to this.
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: This is just a message to everyone at the event,
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: say that I'm really sad I can't be with you today.
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: I would have loved to be among you, of course.
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: And it's more wonderful to see UK column reviving the
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: media on trial concept and also introducing other elements to
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: sort of personal discussion, debate and discourse, which I think
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: is much needed in this time and age when we
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: are being divided and we are being lied to and manipulated.
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: And so therefore this gathering for me signals the future
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: of communication amongst ourselves without relying on those institutions that
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: are there to oppress us and deceiver us. So, as
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: I said, I would love to be among you, it's
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: just not possible. I wish you well, I wish you
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: a wonderful day, and thank you to UK column for
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: always pushing the envelope, for always trying to provide information
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: platforms and environments in which people can really celebrate freedom
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: of speech and freedom of thoughts. So huge, thank you
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: to UK column and I hope to be with you
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: all next time.
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: Okay. On him that I need to mention from the
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: original team was Robert Stewart and I Robert is currently
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: working hard with the Yellow Boards movement, if you're aware
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: of that. But he did a spectacular piece of research
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: on the BBC's coverage of a particular incident that happened
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: in Syria. A documentary was the result of that on
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: the BBC called Saving Serious Children, where they were basically
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: claiming that I can't remember what kind of explosive device
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: it was a it's an a century bomb of some
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: kind anyway, and napan thank you Pierce, it was napalm,
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: and he forensically took that documentary partner. The documentary was
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: released more or less in time for a parliamentary vote
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: on whether they were going to bomb Syria or not,
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: at least that was the intention of it. But he
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: did a fantastic job at deconstructing that whole effort by
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: BBC Panorama, who work By the way, we're driving through
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: the center of area with in fans with Arkada and
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: Nicest flags on them, so they were it was clear
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: who they were working with, so mentioned Robert.
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: So that is the team today.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: We have a new member in the group and I'm
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: going to pass over to Peers first of all for
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: a short presentation.
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: Sure you're emphasizing short, aren't you. Okay, I'll keep it.
• 6:24
  Speaker 3: I'll try to keep it to fifteen minutes and work
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: out how to use a technology, right, Okay. So what
• 6:29
  Speaker 3: I thought i'd do today is am I holding this
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: mic too close? That's fine, Okay. So I'm going to
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: try and just talk through my experience after being involved
• 6:38
  Speaker 3: with Media on Trial and the kind of trouble that
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: it got me into in all of my colleagues. And
• 6:44
  Speaker 3: I'm going to talk you through this really in the
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: context of trying to I think my experience following being
• 6:49
  Speaker 3: involved in Media on Trial was the experience of being
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: subjected to a propaganda campaign, a smear or character assassination campaign,
• 6:58
  Speaker 3: and I want to talk everybody that there's a great
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: book by Cheryl Atkinson and an American journalist called The
• 7:04
  Speaker 3: Smear's Great Accessible introduction to smear and character assassination as
• 7:10
  Speaker 3: a very specific, deliberate political tactic used to play the man,
• 7:15
  Speaker 3: not the ball, et cetera. So this and again, in
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: a way, this is my story, it's also David's story,
• 7:23
  Speaker 3: Peter's story, it's all of our stories in terms of
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: the people who are looking at Syria. But I also
• 7:28
  Speaker 3: want to just emphasize that there's a bigger issue here,
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: and it's to do with the alleged chemical weapons attacks
• 7:34
  Speaker 3: in Syria and to do with the Organization for the
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. So I hope by sort of
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: telling you about the kind of smear experience that we
• 7:41
  Speaker 3: went through and also hopefully we will be able to
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: clarify it or make clear the outstanding issues over the
• 7:49
  Speaker 3: alleged chemical weapons attacks in Syria. So smear campaigns. So
• 7:54
  Speaker 3: how did this all start? Well, following the media on trial,
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: I had already been planning on starting to search and
• 8:00
  Speaker 3: look at the question of propaganda and Syria and the
• 8:03
  Speaker 3: war in Syria. The war on Syria have been going
• 8:05
  Speaker 3: on since twenty eleven. My background, my research area was
• 8:10
  Speaker 3: basically looking at foreign policy, propaganda communications. I'd finished wrapped
• 8:15
  Speaker 3: up looking at the Iraq War and looking at the
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: manipulation of intelligence there and moving on to Syria and
• 8:21
  Speaker 3: examining Syria and the kind of propaganda that might be
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: in play was a very natural, normal thing for me
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: to be doing as a research academic working in that field.
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: So in twenty eighteen we established the Working Group on
• 8:36
  Speaker 3: Syria Propaganda and Media. And this actually if people go
• 8:39
  Speaker 3: to the website, there's actually quite a large number of
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: academics who signed up to this initially because the general
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: response to it was, yeah, this is a very big war.
• 8:46
  Speaker 3: Clearly Britain is involved in this war in significant ways,
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: but somewhat below the radar in terms of public awareness.
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: And this is certainly a research area which is going
• 8:56
  Speaker 3: to be very valuable. And I was naive enough at
• 8:58
  Speaker 3: the time to be thinking, hmm, maybe I'll able to
• 9:01
  Speaker 3: get a good research grant on this project and so
• 9:03
  Speaker 3: on to follow up my Iraq research project. Little did
• 9:07
  Speaker 3: I know that that was not going to happen anyway.
• 9:10
  Speaker 3: So we set up the Working Group on Syria twenty eighteen,
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  Speaker 3: and there were some probably indications in there that one
• 9:18
  Speaker 3: or two of our team were interested in the alleged
• 9:21
  Speaker 3: chemical weapons attacks in Syria, but that wasn't the primary
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: focus of the group. It was to look at propaganda
• 9:27
  Speaker 3: and the war in Syria in general. Almost as soon
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: as that happened, don't look to the left, just looked
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: at the right, and I'll come back to the slide
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: to the picture on the left. Straight away. As soon
• 9:40
  Speaker 3: as we set up the working group, we had this
• 9:42
  Speaker 3: chap called Brian Whittaker, former Guardian journalist, who was at
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: that point working independently, started to write on his blog
• 9:53
  Speaker 3: very nasty articles about us, describing us as conspiracy theorists,
• 9:59
  Speaker 3: describing us as propaganda what is it serial conflict, anti
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: propaganda propagandists. I think he coined phrased the propaganda professors,
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: which was sort of liberally sprinkled around various politicians. And
• 10:13
  Speaker 3: this was literally before we had really even published anything
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: on Syria. So that was an interesting immediate reaction to
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: us setting up and I think for me at the time,
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: I thought this sounds like we might be onto something
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: interesting here. If people such as Brian Whittaker seemed to
• 10:27
  Speaker 3: be so keen to trash us. On the left, there
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: is Oliver Caam. Oliver Caam will appear a little bit
• 10:34
  Speaker 3: later in this short presentation. Oliverkam he'd kind of like
• 10:39
  Speaker 3: picked up on me in back in twenty seventeen after
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: I had literally tweeted a study by Alaska Fairbanks University
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: into the collapse of World Trade Center seven on nine
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: to eleven. So it's a study by engineering professor, very reputable,
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: et cetera, and I tweeted the link to it saying, well,
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: this is interesting words to that effect. Oliver Kam then
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: went ballistic over social media. He's the columnists or former
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: columnists for The Times harassing me, basically demanding in the
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: end to see my reading list to see whether I
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: was telling my students about the Alaska Fairbanks study. So
• 11:19
  Speaker 3: I was kind of like on Oliver Cam's radar somewhat.
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: And we'll come back to Oliver a little bit later on.
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: But the primary response was to the formation of the
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: working group. That's what clearly triggered alarm bells in some circles.
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: Next step twenty eighteen alleged chemical weapons attack in Duma, Syria.
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  Speaker 3: Up on the left, you'll see some images which were
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: taken by the White Helmets, a proxy organization linked to
• 11:46
  Speaker 3: the British government but operating in Syria, of a chlorine
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: gas cylander which had apparently broken through a ceiling, bounced
• 11:55
  Speaker 3: across the floor and landed on a bed without damaging
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: the bed. Weapons attack in Duma, forty three civilians were
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: found dead in an apartment block. It was headline news
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: around the world. It led to France, Britain and America
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: carrying out a military attack on Syria within seven days
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: of the alleged attack having occurred. Before we had we
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: had I had given one interview on Sky News, I
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: think on Thursday after the attacks, and I was up
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: against the executive director of the Henry Jackson Society, Alan
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: and Mendoza, and I think I had said in the
• 12:38
  Speaker 3: Sky News interview, I said, what we need to wait
• 12:40
  Speaker 3: for the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: their fact finding mission. We need to wait for them
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: to go in investigate before we bomb. Perfectly reasonable, But
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: that's all anyone from the working group had said at
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: that point about Duma, and really in terms of the
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: actual chemical weapons issue, we hadn't published in Think at
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: all Friday as France, American and Britain started to bomb Syria,
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: and I mean literally at the same time hit piece
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: came out in the Times of London. We were on
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: the front page apologists for a sad working in universities.
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: We weren't just on the front page, we were also
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: on the inside pages. There was an editorial effectively calling
• 13:21
  Speaker 3: for our jobs, and I think there are pictures of
• 13:23
  Speaker 3: us Tim Hayward meet Vanessa Beeley as well on some
• 13:27
  Speaker 3: of the inside pages. Clearly, at that point we realized, gosh,
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: we're right over the target here. Why on earth would
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: the Times newspaper be putting us on the front page
• 13:39
  Speaker 3: at the moment Britain, France and America are bombing Syria
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: Because we're very We're pretty unknown academics. We've asked some
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: pretty reasonable questions about alleged chemical weapons attacks in Syria.
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: They clearly wanted to shut us up. They didn't shut
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: us up. We decided to issue a briefing note after
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: the first o PC DW fact Finding Mission report came
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: out in twenty eighteen, and basically in our briefing note
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: can see it on the far right, we said, well,
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: the evidence doesn't really stack up and so on, but
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: throughout that year twenty eighteen, and you don't have to
• 14:16
  Speaker 3: go through I won't go through each one obviously, but
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: that's an initial list of the number of media attacks
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: on us, mainly Times of London, also Brian Whittaker, but
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: also Chris York from Huffington Post a relentless, tententiously written
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: articles smearing us again and again and again throughout twenty eighteen.
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: Then in twenty nineteen, when the final investigation report from
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons into what
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: happened in Duma came out, something happened. It then emerged
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: that there was considerable dissent within the fact finding mission. Basically,
• 14:56
  Speaker 3: the bottom line is the OPCW pointed the finger at
• 14:59
  Speaker 3: the Syrian government, but the team who are actually in Duma,
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: who are doing the investigation, the information started to emerge
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: into the public domain that they were testifying to the
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: fact that the investigation had been corrupted, it had been manipulated,
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: There had been suppression of evidence. There had been critically
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: suppression of evidence from NATO toxicologists who had confirmed that
• 15:22
  Speaker 3: the people at Dooma had not been killed by chlorine gas.
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: And that was the allegation that was suppressed, and this
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: dissent effectively got into the public domain by twenty and
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: nineteen documents Wikilik's released documents. There was a Foundation Courage
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: Foundation panel where an OBCW person gave testimony as to
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: what had happened in terms of the investigation and to
• 15:47
  Speaker 3: all intent and purposes. At that point, the skeptical questioning
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: which we, as the academics, had been engaging in was
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: entirely vindicated because scientists from within the organization effectively blowing
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: the whistle that yes, the investigations being corrupted, there isn't
• 16:04
  Speaker 3: evidence of an alleged attack, it's indicating it's a staged event,
• 16:09
  Speaker 3: et cetera. So we have indicated, or at least we
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: felt we were indicated at that point. The next little
• 16:17
  Speaker 3: things I'm conscious of time, remember the Times newspaper attacking
• 16:23
  Speaker 3: us before we've even put anything out on Syria. Okay.
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: The other thing which emerged from the dissent within the
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: OPCW was the problem with all of the fact finding
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: missions in Syria and their reliance upon third parties, primarily
• 16:39
  Speaker 3: the White Helmets, for information that they were gathering about
• 16:43
  Speaker 3: alleged attacks, okay, and I won't go into details. There's
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: a detailed report which goes through or all of the
• 16:51
  Speaker 3: kind of problems there are in relation to the FFMs.
• 16:54
  Speaker 3: But what we also learned in the following year were
• 16:57
  Speaker 3: a few sort of very interesting facts here. We learned
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: that tay mister Bretton Gordon might be familiar to some
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: of you. He's often on the news talking about Russian
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: baddies in Ukraine. Hamish Breton Gordon was involved alongside a
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: Times journalist in twenty thirteen gathering samples in Syria as
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: part of what appears to have been an MI sixter operation.
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: We also learned that the White Helmets were, as I
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: was saying, a primary source of information in terms of
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: passing evidence, witnesses, et cetera to the OPCW, which was
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: then being used in their reports. So has that gone?
• 17:37
  Speaker 3: That's back and there you have James le Measure, the
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: British military officer who set up the White Helmets. There
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: you have to write em O Winberg, his wife talking
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: about the role of the White Helmets and supplying information
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: to the OPCW. Last year, a Politico article alleged that
• 17:59
  Speaker 3: she was a former employee of six and this essentially
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: is the color long story short for Hornet's Nest that
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: we were stepping all over. This is probably why we
• 18:11
  Speaker 3: as a working group were so severely attacked very very
• 18:15
  Speaker 3: very early on by the mainstream media. We are stepping
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: all over what was essentially a propagander operation in Syria,
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: and a propagander operation designed at building a strategic deception
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: over alleged chemical weapons attacks in Syria. And Oliver Kam
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: he appeared again after James le Measurer, under somewhat mysterious circumstances,
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: fell to his death two weeks after an o PCW
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: official had given testimony in Brussels about the manipulation of
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: the f F Fact Finding Mission operation a fact finding
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: Mission investigation. Oliver Kam lited out that they've been communicating
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: with James lem Measurer about keeping up the attacks on us,
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: the academics. So here you have essentially the Syria UK
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: Syria Operation OPCW Times newspaper interface, which goes some way
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: to explaining the ferocity of their smear campaign. Of course,
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: at that point did the Times at any point recognize
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: the emergence of scientists and whistleblowers within the OPCW. No,
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: they ignored it entirely. They just carried on. So by
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: twenty twenty I found myself I found myself in the
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: Times again having talked about if you said a few
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: critical things about the COVID nineteen response. Within a couple
• 19:31
  Speaker 3: of weeks they had another hit piece on me and
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: David Miller, and then I turned up in the House
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: as of Commons at Eston mcvay's COVID inquiry session. Times
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: found out about that, They did another newspaper article on me,
• 19:49
  Speaker 3: and then this year Professor Tim Hayward sets up and
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: he was an original member of Media on Trials, sets
• 19:55
  Speaker 3: up a propaganda course at the University of Edinburgh, and
• 19:59
  Speaker 3: again in the Times newspaper being attacked and smeared. So, no,
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: they simply carried on and ignored entirely the fact that
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: we had been essentially vindicated in terms of the questioning
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: questions we've been asking and the work we've been doing.
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: Just to reiterate and this is maybe picking up on
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: what some of the earlier panelists said. You know, this
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: is a miserable story, isn't it. Some academics try to
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: do their job and they just end up being repeatedly
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: attacked in the mainstream media. Obviously the intention is to
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: shut us up. Obviously we were right over to target.
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: But this is an issue which is still there. And
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: just to make it absolutely clear, because I didn't really
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: have time to go into the James L. Measurer, White helmets, dooma,
• 20:42
  Speaker 3: the forty three victims, how they died, et cetera. But
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: those are the bodies they found piled up in a
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: building who weren't quot killed by chlorine gas according to
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: NATO toxicologists. So this is a serious matter. We have
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: a very detailed report which was issued to MEPs a
• 20:59
  Speaker 3: year ago, and myself, Hans von Schpunik, Jose Pastani, who
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: was the first Director General of the OPCW, and Richard Folk.
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: We continue to press and push forward these issues raised
• 21:11
  Speaker 3: by the OPCW scientists at the international level and at
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: the UN trying to get accountability for the manipulation of
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: these investigations. So you know, this is carrying on and
• 21:23
  Speaker 3: it's a very big, high level issue. The Times did
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: its best to close it down at a very early
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: stage but failed. Lessons insights from this and I'm aware
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: just about hitting fifteen minutes now okay, Smear campaigns, character
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: assassination needs are key tools in terms of managing the
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: parameters of dissent. Many people have learned that lesson through
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: COVID nineteen and so on, and that's become very very
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: clear some of the scientists, for example, who questioned the
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: COVID response, smear campaigns and character assassination, it's a form
• 21:57
  Speaker 3: of propaganda. It's about shutting people up, it's about creating silences.
• 22:01
  Speaker 3: It's clearly shifting down towards a coercive end of the
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: spectrum in terms of propaganda. The goal ultimately of Oliver
• 22:08
  Speaker 3: Kam and the Times is to get us fired, to
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: get us pushed out of our jobs. Some of the
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: eagle eyed amongst you might have noticed on that tweet
• 22:16
  Speaker 3: from Oliver cam over the WTC seven study was linking
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: into my university, so trying to cause trouble for me
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: at work. So they're trying to get you out of
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: your job and so on. Obviously, as we've seen with
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: the Times, corporate legacy media or central component in developing
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: these smear campaigns and essentially making them effective, making them work. Scale,
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: and I've hinted at the scale and focus of attacks
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: on us in a working group, a strongly indicative I
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: think of us being right over the target, and not
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: only for those forty three people who are killed in
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: Duma under circumstances which are in a sense not clear,
• 22:56
  Speaker 3: although there are some clear indications. We're talking about war
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: crimes which have been occurring in Syria in the context
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: of the sort of promotion of this narrative over staged
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: or over alleged chemical weapons attacks. This is a war crime.
• 23:12
  Speaker 3: We were right over that. I think it's extremely likely
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: that James le Measurer, who's now passed away obverse, was
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: at least aware of what might have actually been going
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: on in these operations. So I think that's an indication.
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: This is a big issue. There's a lot of there's
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: a lot of potential war crime activity essentially which British
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: authorities either know about or have been directly involved in.
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: And this is being buried the final thing, just picking
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: up on hopeful points. And again it's a kind of
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: as a miserable story in a way, as I hinted
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: that before. But again we're still standing certainly with Hansen,
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: with jose Bistani representing the scientists and so on. The
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: issue is still there as still being raised at the
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: international level. And Francis Bacon quote, truth is the daughter
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: of time, not of authority, and I think you know,
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: in the fullness of time these things do come out.
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: But one of the battles that people who are trying
• 24:10
  Speaker 3: to expose these truths have is battling through these smear
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: campaigns that we get subjected to. So that's my story
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: in the story of the OPCW and alleged chemical weapons attacks.
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: Thank you, Thank your peers.
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: Let's welcome Peter to the podium just for a short
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: present discussion or presentation here. Peter, as I say, former
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: diplomat is currently working with George Galloway in the Workers
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: Party and what you stood in the general election, which
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: well done there for doing that, and we would encourage
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: everybody to do that, of course. But former diplomat and
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: have spent many years working for the British government.
• 24:59
  Speaker 4: Well, don't hold against me that I worked for the
• 25:01
  Speaker 4: British government.
• 25:03
  Speaker 3: I did penance.
• 25:05
  Speaker 4: After my career with the Foreign Office, I joined the
• 25:09
  Speaker 4: United Nations and for eight years I worked with a
• 25:13
  Speaker 4: refugee agency, the Agency for Palestine Refugees AMRA, which, as
• 25:20
  Speaker 4: you're probably aware, has been vilified and bombed in its
• 25:27
  Speaker 4: schools and clinics.
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: By the Israelis.
• 25:30
  Speaker 4: So I did good work there, and then after I
• 25:35
  Speaker 4: left the UN and retired from doing paid work, I
• 25:40
  Speaker 4: did campaign largely on behalf of Syria. Then I fought
• 25:47
  Speaker 4: in the Covied Wars, and more recently, more recently I've
• 25:54
  Speaker 4: been working alongside George Galloway in the Workers' Party, where
• 26:00
  Speaker 4: I have the honor to be one of the three
• 26:03
  Speaker 4: deputy leaders. My subject is media manipulation generally as regards
• 26:13
  Speaker 4: reporting on the Middle East. I was going to call
• 26:18
  Speaker 4: it decoding the double speak, and I will still be
• 26:23
  Speaker 4: doing a lot of decoding in a minute. But it
• 26:27
  Speaker 4: goes wider than double speak. It's the things you don't
• 26:33
  Speaker 4: notice which are the most sinister and insidious. The way
• 26:39
  Speaker 4: that the BBC, Sky and all of them don't invite
• 26:45
  Speaker 4: people like me on their panels, don't invite anybody who
• 26:51
  Speaker 4: could speak with authority and with a little bit of passion,
• 26:56
  Speaker 4: perhaps without going overboard. People who could put the case
• 27:03
  Speaker 4: the Palestinian case, the case for the resistance, the case
• 27:07
  Speaker 4: for Iran, or the case for Russia.
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: It's always the same.
• 27:11
  Speaker 4: They never bring someone who could put the case as
• 27:17
  Speaker 4: a qualified expert.
• 27:19
  Speaker 3: The most they will do is case.
• 27:26
  Speaker 4: Just this morning, the breaking news has been that Prince
• 27:29
  Speaker 4: Boula managed apparently to strike the villa of Netta and
• 27:35
  Speaker 4: Yahoo in the northern Israeli village of Caesaria. I'm sure
• 27:42
  Speaker 4: you're all terribly distraught about that, but let me reassure
• 27:47
  Speaker 4: you that Netta Yahu wasn't there. But what did the
• 27:52
  Speaker 4: BBC do to put the Palestinian case was to invite
• 27:58
  Speaker 4: David Levy, who is a great chap enormous respect for him,
• 28:04
  Speaker 4: and he did put the case quite well. But he
• 28:08
  Speaker 4: is I think he's Israeli. He's definitely Jewish, a well
• 28:14
  Speaker 4: known critic of Israel. But they could not bring themselves
• 28:18
  Speaker 4: to invite a Palestinian or a British expert. No, it
• 28:25
  Speaker 4: had to be someone who has, as it were, moral
• 28:29
  Speaker 4: credit in the bank, because he was Jewish, stroke Israeli
• 28:33
  Speaker 4: and he could make these outrageous statements giving some background
• 28:38
  Speaker 4: two recent events. So it's this sin of omission not
• 28:45
  Speaker 4: inviting people who can put the case that doesn't fit
• 28:50
  Speaker 4: with the narrative that you have to be very alert for.
• 28:53
  Speaker 4: But that's very difficult for the average viewer or listener,
• 28:58
  Speaker 4: you really have to know the subject. So the sins
• 29:03
  Speaker 4: of omission and then omission of context. It's as though
• 29:11
  Speaker 4: history began on October seven. You're very rarely given the
• 29:16
  Speaker 4: context in which October seven happened, and then whenever his
• 29:26
  Speaker 4: Bola are mentioned. This is a subject on which I
• 29:30
  Speaker 4: feel very strongly because I've been to Lebanon so many times.
• 29:37
  Speaker 4: I feel so attached to Lebanon, even more than I
• 29:41
  Speaker 4: feel attached to Palestine. I worked in Beirut, visited the
• 29:46
  Speaker 4: refugee camps there many times. I have some understanding for
• 29:51
  Speaker 4: his Bola, and you would never guess it from the
• 29:54
  Speaker 4: media coverage, but his Boler's rest. Their main agenda is
• 30:02
  Speaker 4: not believe it or not, Israel and destroying Israel. No,
• 30:06
  Speaker 4: it is in affirming the position of the Shia community
• 30:11
  Speaker 4: in the Lebanese domestic context. I don't want to go
• 30:16
  Speaker 4: on at length and give you a lesson in Lebanese history,
• 30:20
  Speaker 4: but you'll have to take it from me that Whatsola
• 30:23
  Speaker 4: are mainly concerned about is getting plenty of Shia MPs
• 30:29
  Speaker 4: into the Lebanese legislature and generally keeping them in the cabinet.
• 30:34
  Speaker 4: They have two cabinet members and championing a community which,
• 30:39
  Speaker 4: although it's the biggest single community sect, are about forty
• 30:45
  Speaker 4: percent of the Lebanese. Despite that, historically they've been the
• 30:50
  Speaker 4: underprivileged and the poorest. So southern Lebanon, for example, is
• 30:55
  Speaker 4: where many of the Shia live, and the eastern province
• 30:59
  Speaker 4: of Balbe are among the poorest parts of Lebanon. So
• 31:05
  Speaker 4: his Bola's agenda wasn't to somehow miraculously destroy Israel. That was,
• 31:13
  Speaker 4: in a way just a secondary agenda. They emerged his
• 31:19
  Speaker 4: Boler out of the struggle to expel the Israelis from
• 31:24
  Speaker 4: their long occupation. But perhaps mostly importantly, what the media
• 31:31
  Speaker 4: never allude to is the fact that between two thousand
• 31:34
  Speaker 4: and six, the end of a previous flare up and
• 31:38
  Speaker 4: October twenty twenty three, his Bola, not the UN, not
• 31:45
  Speaker 4: the Lebanese Army, not anybody else, His Bola guaranteed the
• 31:49
  Speaker 4: peace along that border. They prevented attacks not just by
• 31:55
  Speaker 4: their own members, but by Palestinian fedain this should. They
• 32:00
  Speaker 4: even had gun battles to stop renegades from the Palestinian
• 32:07
  Speaker 4: groups upsetting the peace because their priority was to keep
• 32:13
  Speaker 4: the South protected, their own community protected, as fall as
• 32:17
  Speaker 4: posture is essentially defensive, but you would never gather that
• 32:23
  Speaker 4: from the media coverage. And those tunnels. This is one
• 32:30
  Speaker 4: of the buzzwords that we keep hearing, and there's always
• 32:34
  Speaker 4: the implication that tunnels are bad. The Israelis have shelters.
• 32:41
  Speaker 4: Shelters as well have tunnels. This is just one small
• 32:47
  Speaker 4: example of language and double speak. The tunnels are defensive.
• 32:55
  Speaker 4: I mean, you have to be stupid not to see this.
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: They are.
• 32:59
  Speaker 4: They don't borrow under the Israeli border. They are built
• 33:04
  Speaker 4: for the purpose that we're now seeing, so that when
• 33:07
  Speaker 4: the Israelis attack, there is some way of defending. Because
• 33:13
  Speaker 4: the Lebanese and of course the Palestinians don't have air defenses,
• 33:18
  Speaker 4: israel Is shooting fish in a barrel, so the week
• 33:24
  Speaker 4: have resort to technology where they can basic technology of
• 33:29
  Speaker 4: building tunnels. And another word that concerns southern Lebanon. The
• 33:40
  Speaker 4: town of Marja Yun has been an Israeli target for
• 33:44
  Speaker 4: bombing and it's always presented as the his Bola stronghold.
• 33:51
  Speaker 4: This is another buzzword. His boler and Hamas have strongholds.
• 33:57
  Speaker 4: Only the baddies ever have strongholds. Israel has kibbutzim, suburbs communities.
• 34:05
  Speaker 3: But the bad.
• 34:06
  Speaker 4: Guys, Palestinians and his Bola, they have strongholds. So it's
• 34:12
  Speaker 4: this elies over the fact that the Israelis are bombing
• 34:17
  Speaker 4: towns and killing hundreds of not thousands of civilians.
• 34:25
  Speaker 3: Another word.
• 34:27
  Speaker 4: Entrenched and trench. Only the bad guys are ever entrenched.
• 34:31
  Speaker 4: People like or you'll hear we have to stop Iran
• 34:36
  Speaker 4: getting more entrenched in Syria. Never say we must stop
• 34:43
  Speaker 4: the Israelis getting more and more entrenched in the West Bank.
• 34:47
  Speaker 4: No use of language. And then our dear leader Starmer,
• 34:57
  Speaker 4: just yesterday in the press conference in Berlin, could not
• 35:05
  Speaker 4: bring himself to mention the word or the name Israel
• 35:10
  Speaker 4: apropos of Gaza and Lebanon. It was just the humanitarian situation,
• 35:18
  Speaker 4: just undefined humanitarian situation, and that covers the massacres, bombings, extermination, starvation,
• 35:28
  Speaker 4: humanitarian situation. So the importance of words and then the
• 35:35
  Speaker 4: shift frequency of these words that pop up. If you
• 35:40
  Speaker 4: persuaded a AI to cough up the number of times
• 35:44
  Speaker 4: the word tunnel and humanitarian and October sixth pop up
• 35:53
  Speaker 4: Stalbre in particular, how many times has he told us
• 35:56
  Speaker 4: about his father being a tool maker. Some media expert
• 36:02
  Speaker 4: has told him, you've got to keep repeating.
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: We know it's stupid, but it works. It works, Just
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: keep repeating.
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: Ah.
• 36:14
  Speaker 4: Another favorite a vacuum. A vacuum is something that we
• 36:21
  Speaker 4: don't like. For example, Israel would be leaving a vacuum
• 36:27
  Speaker 4: if they just exited from Gaza. No, they wouldn't be
• 36:34
  Speaker 4: leaving a vacuum. They would be leaving a destroyed, desolate
• 36:40
  Speaker 4: place to be administered by an elected government that was
• 36:46
  Speaker 4: there before doing a relatively responsible job. Hamas that's what there.
• 36:52
  Speaker 4: Wouldn't be a vacuum. Another vacuum would be left. We're
• 36:59
  Speaker 4: told if the U. S. Troops left Syria, they have
• 37:02
  Speaker 4: about nine hundred troops scattered in a couple of bases
• 37:07
  Speaker 4: of territorial blocks enclaves in Syria. We're told that they'd
• 37:14
  Speaker 4: be leaving a vacuum.
• 37:15
  Speaker 3: No, they wouldn't.
• 37:17
  Speaker 4: The legitimate Syrian government would take control and establish order
• 37:22
  Speaker 4: and stop the terrorists operating out of those enclaves. The
• 37:29
  Speaker 4: most obvious example, you're more than familiar with it is,
• 37:32
  Speaker 4: of course, the word terrorism and terrorist, and again it
• 37:37
  Speaker 4: is just.
• 37:38
  Speaker 3: Dimmed into us.
• 37:41
  Speaker 4: They can hardly bear to watch sky because they preface
• 37:46
  Speaker 4: any reference to Hamas or Hysbola with the word the
• 37:51
  Speaker 4: BBC at least have the shame to sort of work
• 37:56
  Speaker 4: do a work around where they say the British government
• 37:59
  Speaker 4: say this is a terrorists prescribed organization, but the others
• 38:03
  Speaker 4: are absolutely shameless. The most basic words are twisted. One
• 38:11
  Speaker 4: of the previous speakers spoke about inversion. Well, in this area,
• 38:17
  Speaker 4: a word means its opposite. It was Orwell who taught
• 38:24
  Speaker 4: us this, of course, with double speak. The most basic
• 38:28
  Speaker 4: example the word four. What is the opposite of the
• 38:32
  Speaker 4: word for against. So when someone tells you they have
• 38:37
  Speaker 4: a plan for post war Garzia, what they really mean
• 38:41
  Speaker 4: is they have a plan against the Palestinian people against Gaza,
• 38:46
  Speaker 4: because they want either to install the quizzling Palestinian authority
• 38:53
  Speaker 4: in control of Gaza, or they want to bring in
• 38:56
  Speaker 4: some tame Arab soldiers or somebody else. But they do
• 39:00
  Speaker 4: not want the elected members of the previous Palestinian authority
• 39:07
  Speaker 4: who were Hamas.
• 39:09
  Speaker 3: So four means against.
• 39:14
  Speaker 4: Stabilize in their vocabulary, stabilized means destabilize. So the US forces.
• 39:23
  Speaker 3: In Syria are their their.
• 39:25
  Speaker 4: Mission is to stabilize those areas in fact, what they're
• 39:29
  Speaker 4: doing is encouraging the partition and dismemberment of Syria by
• 39:35
  Speaker 4: preventing the legitimate government from taking control. Oh my very
• 39:44
  Speaker 4: favorite word, embolden. Embolden. This is always used apropos of Russia,
• 39:53
  Speaker 4: or or Iran or China, take your pick. So withdrawing
• 40:01
  Speaker 4: from Biden, withdrawing from Afghanistan emboldened the Russians, emboldened the
• 40:08
  Speaker 4: Iranians to do what they're they're doing. But never say
• 40:14
  Speaker 4: something like this that the the Abraham Accords, those agreements
• 40:23
  Speaker 4: that were forced on the Gulf Arabs and wanted to
• 40:26
  Speaker 4: poor Arab countries to get in bed with Israel, some
• 40:30
  Speaker 4: more willing partners than others. The Abraham Accord. Never say
• 40:36
  Speaker 4: they emboldened Neta Yahoo to think that he could ignore
• 40:41
  Speaker 4: the Palestinian issue. That would be much more accurate and revealing,
• 40:49
  Speaker 4: because that is the case. October seven would never have happened,
• 40:53
  Speaker 4: I believe without the Abraham Accords, because the Palestinians could
• 41:00
  Speaker 4: see that their cause was being buried, the Arab world
• 41:04
  Speaker 4: was leaving them behind. Saudi Arabia was on the cusp
• 41:10
  Speaker 4: of joining these Abraham Accords. I think it was part
• 41:16
  Speaker 4: of the Palestinian thinking that they had to rattle the
• 41:19
  Speaker 4: bars of their cage before that crucial last step happened,
• 41:25
  Speaker 4: and the Palestinian cause would go the same way as
• 41:28
  Speaker 4: the Armenian cause footnote in history. And finally, that's two
• 41:39
  Speaker 4: small examples of words meaning that the opposite. Safe means
• 41:45
  Speaker 4: a safe zone as in Mowaisi in Gaza or northern
• 41:51
  Speaker 4: Lebanon as in Lebanon, safe means danger zone.
• 41:55
  Speaker 3: Safe means danger in.
• 41:57
  Speaker 4: Their parlance, and limited, as in the Israelis are making
• 42:03
  Speaker 4: a limited incursion into Lebanon means major invasion. Inversion, someone
• 42:14
  Speaker 4: I can't remember her name, but someone clever said that Nettaya,
• 42:20
  Speaker 4: who can't open his mouth without lying every sentence he speaks,
• 42:27
  Speaker 4: is a lie, including and but and Z absolutely true.
• 42:33
  Speaker 4: I'm sure you can all think of your own examples,
• 42:35
  Speaker 4: but just bear them in mind as you watch the media,
• 42:39
  Speaker 4: and be particularly listening for what you want here the
• 42:44
  Speaker 4: omissions and the absence of context.
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you, Peter, thank you fantastic. And finally,
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: let's welcome David Miller to the microphone, and David also
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: on the receiving end. As Peers is pointing out of
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: mainstream media, attacks, but of course that resulted in an
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: attack on his role at Bristol University, which he won.
• 43:26
  Speaker 3: Thank you.
• 43:31
  Speaker 5: I suppose I'll talk about my case a little bit.
• 43:33
  Speaker 5: I mean I've been talking about it a lot in
• 43:35
  Speaker 5: the last week or so because the Guardian wrote a
• 43:37
  Speaker 5: big report saying that the judgment, which was issued on
• 43:41
  Speaker 5: the fifth of February this year, had just been published
• 43:43
  Speaker 5: on the government website. And of course it has just
• 43:45
  Speaker 5: been published on the government website, but the full judgment
• 43:47
  Speaker 5: has been available since the fifth of February, so there
• 43:50
  Speaker 5: was no story at all. But nevertheless, it's been fantastic
• 43:54
  Speaker 5: that the Guardian has done this, because the Guardians now
• 43:56
  Speaker 5: calling me an anti zionist and not an anti semi
• 43:59
  Speaker 5: and also given license to the rest of the media
• 44:01
  Speaker 5: to say, what is this craziness? How can an anti
• 44:04
  Speaker 5: zionist be not a racist? That's really strange, And so
• 44:07
  Speaker 5: there's been lots of coverage and so I've been forced
• 44:09
  Speaker 5: to recount the story over over again. Now I'll do
• 44:12
  Speaker 5: it for you again a little bit later. But I
• 44:14
  Speaker 5: wanted to start off by saying, look, I'm from Scotland.
• 44:18
  Speaker 5: I spent thirty odd years in academia the area that
• 44:22
  Speaker 5: I got into and became sort of passionate about was
• 44:28
  Speaker 5: the area of propaganda. And the reason I got into
• 44:29
  Speaker 5: that was because I did my PhD on the conflict
• 44:33
  Speaker 5: in the North of Ireland back in nineteen ninety four.
• 44:37
  Speaker 5: The published version of my thesis was the first book
• 44:40
  Speaker 5: I published. It's available on the bookstill over there. Amazingly,
• 44:43
  Speaker 5: it's still in print. And as a result of being
• 44:48
  Speaker 5: interested in Northern Ireland, I kind of got interested in
• 44:50
  Speaker 5: other areas of conflict where there was propaganda. So of
• 44:53
  Speaker 5: course after Northern Ireland we came to Iraq and Afghanistan
• 44:57
  Speaker 5: and Syria, and of course the question of Palestine. And
• 45:01
  Speaker 5: it was a question of Palestine which brought me to
• 45:05
  Speaker 5: grief and resulted in me being sacked by my university,
• 45:09
  Speaker 5: of which more shortly, but I suppose what I wanted
• 45:12
  Speaker 5: to say about propaganda is that once you start to
• 45:15
  Speaker 5: analyze propaganda and you start to try and understand how
• 45:18
  Speaker 5: it is that parties in conflict, and especially official parties
• 45:22
  Speaker 5: in conflict, by which I mean in the Irish case,
• 45:25
  Speaker 5: the police, the Army, the Northern Ireland Office, the Foreign Office,
• 45:29
  Speaker 5: the Ministry of Defense, how they organize their propaganda and
• 45:33
  Speaker 5: how they organized to make sure that their narrative of
• 45:35
  Speaker 5: what's happening in the North of Ireland, or in Syria
• 45:38
  Speaker 5: or in Afghanistan is dominant in the media. Is something
• 45:42
  Speaker 5: which I find extremely interesting that you'd see you could
• 45:45
  Speaker 5: go and speak to people, and I've spoken to I've
• 45:48
  Speaker 5: been to Army headquarters in Northern Ireland. I've been inside
• 45:51
  Speaker 5: the basement of the mod in London and spoken to
• 45:54
  Speaker 5: my six officers and the Foreign Office. This is all
• 45:57
  Speaker 5: quite some time ago, and you get to understand what
• 46:00
  Speaker 5: it is they think they're doing and how they organized
• 46:03
  Speaker 5: for dominance, But you don't really get the nitty gritty
• 46:07
  Speaker 5: of what they actually do unless than until one sees
• 46:11
  Speaker 5: leaked documents. And I suppose that's what I wanted to
• 46:14
  Speaker 5: mention at the beginning. Here is what one discovers from
• 46:17
  Speaker 5: leaked documents. And in twenty eighteen, some of you might
• 46:20
  Speaker 5: recall that there was a big data dump of documents
• 46:23
  Speaker 5: from a project called the Integrity Initiative, and we did
• 46:26
  Speaker 5: a report on this back in twenty eighteen, I guess,
• 46:32
  Speaker 5: and you see through those documents and the Integrity Initive story,
• 46:35
  Speaker 5: I should say it was a project which's run by
• 46:37
  Speaker 5: a think tank called the Institute for State Craft, funded
• 46:41
  Speaker 5: by the Foreign Office, and it was supposed to counter
• 46:44
  Speaker 5: Russian disinformation, and of course it ended up largely countering
• 46:50
  Speaker 5: Jeremy Corbyn, who of course was the leader of the
• 46:52
  Speaker 5: Labor Party at the time, which by all accounts should
• 46:55
  Speaker 5: have been an illegal thing for them to do, since
• 46:57
  Speaker 5: of course it was funded by the government. But in
• 47:01
  Speaker 5: the documents, the voluminous documents which we went through, what
• 47:04
  Speaker 5: became apparent really to me was a really interesting thing,
• 47:08
  Speaker 5: which was that that this was this this think tank
• 47:11
  Speaker 5: was actually a front for military intelligence. The guy who
• 47:13
  Speaker 5: ran it was an honorary colonel and military intelligence a
• 47:17
  Speaker 5: guy called Donnelly, and he and his former sas sidekick
• 47:25
  Speaker 5: Lafaidney Dan lafaide name, we're running this thing from the
• 47:28
  Speaker 5: basement of this think tank in London, But that they
• 47:33
  Speaker 5: had this other guy in there who was to put
• 47:36
  Speaker 5: in as the chief operating officer of the think tank.
• 47:39
  Speaker 5: And it took me a while to realize that what
• 47:41
  Speaker 5: was going on here was that he was he was
• 47:43
  Speaker 5: serving as my six officer, and that he'd been put
• 47:46
  Speaker 5: in because then my six don't really trust military intelligence
• 47:49
  Speaker 5: because it's it's an oxymoron, right, these military guys. And
• 47:57
  Speaker 5: then I realized that that's what they do all the time.
• 48:01
  Speaker 5: So he came across another example with a further seeds
• 48:04
  Speaker 5: of leak documents as a woman called Alicia Cairns, who's
• 48:07
  Speaker 5: now an MP. I think she's the chair of the
• 48:09
  Speaker 5: Defense Select Committee of the Foreign Affairs Selectmmittee, is something
• 48:11
  Speaker 5: she's very senior. And she, of course when she was
• 48:15
  Speaker 5: in the Foreign Office, was in six, was working with six.
• 48:18
  Speaker 5: And she then after she left the Foreign Office, became
• 48:21
  Speaker 5: involved with one of these contractors who get money from
• 48:23
  Speaker 5: the Foreign Office. I from six and she worked at
• 48:26
  Speaker 5: Lebanon and she was working with a contractor which had
• 48:30
  Speaker 5: military intelligence people in it. And again she was the
• 48:33
  Speaker 5: MI six person making sure that the military intelligence people
• 48:35
  Speaker 5: didn't make a mess of it. And that also, I
• 48:38
  Speaker 5: believe is what happened with in the case which Peers
• 48:41
  Speaker 5: was mentioning. In the case of the White Helmets run
• 48:43
  Speaker 5: by James le Measurer, former military intelligence from a British
• 48:47
  Speaker 5: military military intelligence background, and his MI six handler put
• 48:52
  Speaker 5: into his project to manage him.
• 48:54
  Speaker 3: Was his wife. His wife.
• 48:58
  Speaker 5: Now, Peers was a bit polight about Emma Winburg alleged
• 49:03
  Speaker 5: to be an MI six officer. She was Clear six.
• 49:06
  Speaker 5: She was MI six in Afghanistan. She was in the
• 49:08
  Speaker 5: Jerusalem Embassy as six, and then she joined the White
• 49:12
  Speaker 5: Helmets to oversee manifestly the daft people in military intelligence.
• 49:17
  Speaker 5: And of course James le Measure turned out to be yeah,
• 49:20
  Speaker 5: a problem for six. He was so problematic that he
• 49:24
  Speaker 5: was threatening to blow the gaff on the whole operation.
• 49:27
  Speaker 5: And that's why he was brought back from where they
• 49:29
  Speaker 5: lived in an island in Turkey to Istanbul, to the
• 49:33
  Speaker 5: offices and where he at some point in the early
• 49:36
  Speaker 5: hours of the morning jumped a was pushed off the
• 49:40
  Speaker 5: balcony and hit the wall on the opposite side of
• 49:43
  Speaker 5: the street on the way down, so there was some force.
• 49:45
  Speaker 5: He left the welcony when Emma was awoken from her
• 49:50
  Speaker 5: heavy sleeping tablets later that morning by the Turkish police.
• 49:54
  Speaker 5: When they came into the flat, small flat, they found
• 49:58
  Speaker 5: a large selection of boxes in the hall all the
• 50:01
  Speaker 5: way down to the door, full of cash. And so
• 50:06
  Speaker 5: you can start to see when you discover this stuff
• 50:08
  Speaker 5: that this that that that's what's going on here, that
• 50:10
  Speaker 5: the intelligence services have this incredible role in propaganda which
• 50:14
  Speaker 5: we don't really appreciate. And really, if you look back
• 50:17
  Speaker 5: at what happened to us of Vissaria, again, Fears has
• 50:21
  Speaker 5: been polite when he says that we were attacked by
• 50:23
  Speaker 5: the Times and there was m I six involvement. This
• 50:25
  Speaker 5: was m I six attacking you know, boring academics had
• 50:30
  Speaker 5: really nothing to say until we realized that we'd accidentally
• 50:34
  Speaker 5: found something and that actually m I six was actually
• 50:37
  Speaker 5: waging a war against us, including suggesting that we were
• 50:41
  Speaker 5: in the pay of the Russians. There's a brilliant moment
• 50:43
  Speaker 5: in one of the complaints which led to the Times
• 50:46
  Speaker 5: pieces where the Times journalist contacted the IT section at
• 50:52
  Speaker 5: Bristol University and they said, this guy Miller, he's he's
• 50:56
  Speaker 5: got this website for this organization for Propaganda Studies. It
• 51:00
  Speaker 5: was a company that we'd set up together. We had
• 51:01
  Speaker 5: a website. It was an academic website dot ec dot uk.
• 51:05
  Speaker 5: So it has to be hosted or university servers. And
• 51:08
  Speaker 5: so this journalist asked questions about whether there was, you know,
• 51:12
  Speaker 5: any Russian money had gone into hosting this website, which
• 51:16
  Speaker 5: had cost the Grand some of twenty five pounds registration
• 51:19
  Speaker 5: fee to set up, and of course the IT Department
• 51:25
  Speaker 5: absolutely fread like Russia, he might be a Russian agent,
• 51:30
  Speaker 5: and they wrote to me to ask me more or less,
• 51:32
  Speaker 5: you know, are you working for Putin? And I was
• 51:37
  Speaker 5: a bit I was a bit rude in response. I
• 51:38
  Speaker 5: have to say I wasn't employed. I wrote back to
• 51:41
  Speaker 5: them and said, you know, look at the coverage in
• 51:44
  Speaker 5: the Times. Did the journalists mention anything about Russian money
• 51:46
  Speaker 5: or connection with the Russian money? No, he didn't, don't
• 51:49
  Speaker 5: be ridiculous, go away, And of course they went away.
• 51:53
  Speaker 5: And of course that wasn't in the end part of
• 51:54
  Speaker 5: the process, which well, it was part of the process,
• 51:57
  Speaker 5: but it wasn't a material part of the process which
• 51:59
  Speaker 5: led to me being sacked in October twenty twenty one.
• 52:02
  Speaker 5: So the thing I wanted to say is there's a
• 52:04
  Speaker 5: way more involvement of the intelligence services and every day
• 52:08
  Speaker 5: propaganda on foreign issues and indeed on COVID too. I mean,
• 52:13
  Speaker 5: the people have written about this and click Clarenburg's recent
• 52:15
  Speaker 5: work on that I think is interesting. Then people realize
• 52:18
  Speaker 5: they don't realize how involved the intelligence services are in
• 52:22
  Speaker 5: everyday life in the UK, including through for example, the
• 52:26
  Speaker 5: Home Office where the Home Office funds a whole series
• 52:29
  Speaker 5: of fake Muslim grassroots groups which are moderate Muslims who
• 52:34
  Speaker 5: don't want to criticize this Rael and don't want to
• 52:36
  Speaker 5: be opposed to the Iraq war and want Muslims just
• 52:39
  Speaker 5: to shut up and say nothing at all. And they're
• 52:42
  Speaker 5: all run by an organization called the Homeland Security Group
• 52:47
  Speaker 5: of the Home Office. Has ever heard of that? And
• 52:51
  Speaker 5: of course, and again people don't realize this. It's not
• 52:53
  Speaker 5: said in the press. Whenever the Guardian covers the Homeland
• 52:56
  Speaker 5: Security Group, which is rarely, they don't say, which is
• 52:58
  Speaker 5: a formal part of the British intelligence machinery. And he
• 53:02
  Speaker 5: run all these organizations for freak front groups and cutouts
• 53:07
  Speaker 5: in order to just to to to deceive us about
• 53:11
  Speaker 5: what the British government's role is and to deceive us
• 53:14
  Speaker 5: that about how Muslims are, or about how people who
• 53:19
  Speaker 5: about people to talk about Russia, et cetera, et cetera, And.
• 53:22
  Speaker 3: That it's really important.
• 53:23
  Speaker 5: I think that we have more of a focus on
• 53:25
  Speaker 5: the question of the intelligence services and how they manage
• 53:28
  Speaker 5: public debate. I'll give you two more examples of this
• 53:32
  Speaker 5: in this In these processes Pears mentioned Chris York, Brian
• 53:38
  Speaker 5: Whittaker of a cam the Dominic Kennedy. There was there's
• 53:43
  Speaker 5: another guy who started to criticize us, a guy called
• 53:46
  Speaker 5: Mohammad Rice. And this is the guy who now works
• 53:50
  Speaker 5: at New Lines Institute in the States, or he has
• 53:54
  Speaker 5: a job there now. He is a guy whom, sorry
• 53:59
  Speaker 5: I should say New Lines is of course funded by
• 54:01
  Speaker 5: the CIA CI front group funded by the Department of
• 54:05
  Speaker 5: Defense as well. And this guy used to be my
• 54:08
  Speaker 5: PhD student, right. And there was another person, a woman
• 54:16
  Speaker 5: called Emma Bryant who almost was my PhD student, who
• 54:20
  Speaker 5: was part of our working group on propaganda, part of
• 54:22
  Speaker 5: our email list, the deeply secret email list where we
• 54:25
  Speaker 5: shared information about propaganda and documents were released leaked of
• 54:31
  Speaker 5: communications between a journalist I believe he thinks of himself
• 54:35
  Speaker 5: as Paul Mason. And this guy's mysterious guy in the
• 54:41
  Speaker 5: Foreign Office, a guy called Andy Price. Now who's Andy Price.
• 54:47
  Speaker 5: Andy Price is a career I six officer in charge
• 54:50
  Speaker 5: of six propaganda, especially on Russia, and he was the
• 54:55
  Speaker 5: he coordinated the Integrity initiative at a top level. So
• 54:58
  Speaker 5: Andy Price was effected of Paul Mason's handler. So this
• 55:02
  Speaker 5: is why I say whenever I mentioned Paul Mason's name
• 55:05
  Speaker 5: online m I six agent Paul Mason, And first time
• 55:10
  Speaker 5: I did it, Paul wrote to me and said I
• 55:12
  Speaker 5: should take it down because it was the famistry. So
• 55:15
  Speaker 5: I said, well, that's interesting you say that, Paul, because
• 55:17
  Speaker 5: here's the definition of an MR six agent on the
• 55:20
  Speaker 5: m I six website and you fit so by all means,
• 55:24
  Speaker 5: take me to court.
• 55:25
  Speaker 3: He didn't take me to court.
• 55:28
  Speaker 5: So this woman at Emma, she was part of this group,
• 55:32
  Speaker 5: Paul and Andy Price and this other guy Mr six
• 55:36
  Speaker 5: contractor guy, and they were trying to work out how
• 55:39
  Speaker 5: to get these what was the phrase they used, how
• 55:49
  Speaker 5: to get the academics who were critical of what was
• 55:51
  Speaker 5: happening in Ukraine. It's worse than that, much worse. They
• 55:58
  Speaker 5: wanted to get stop the war who they thought were
• 55:59
  Speaker 5: too critical. I mean, in my view of something more
• 56:01
  Speaker 5: were far we're not nearly critical enough. But essentially the
• 56:05
  Speaker 5: academics they were talking about that they wanted to get
• 56:07
  Speaker 5: Wasmbe and Peers and our colleagues. And Emma wrote to
• 56:12
  Speaker 5: them and said, oh, I said, so, yes, it's okay.
• 56:14
  Speaker 5: I'm on their group. I can tell you everything about them.
• 56:17
  Speaker 5: And there's this one guy who's a particular definite contact
• 56:21
  Speaker 5: of the Russians, and so all this stuff came out
• 56:25
  Speaker 5: and she then she then I'm sorry. So she was
• 56:28
  Speaker 5: a former almost a former PhD student when she was
• 56:31
  Speaker 5: or our group, and she started she was because she
• 56:33
  Speaker 5: got involved in this group with Paul Mason, was effectively
• 56:35
  Speaker 5: working with six And it turns out and transpires that
• 56:38
  Speaker 5: she'd also from a number of years while also coming
• 56:42
  Speaker 5: to conference as we had organized, included what I did
• 56:44
  Speaker 5: in twenty fifteen in Bath, was also involved with US
• 56:48
  Speaker 5: intelligence people who were engaged in propaganda in Ukraine from
• 56:52
  Speaker 5: twenty fourteen, I in laundering the image of the Asov Battalion,
• 56:58
  Speaker 5: actual Neo Nazi group in Ukraine. So when I say
• 57:03
  Speaker 5: that I think that we should pay attention to the
• 57:05
  Speaker 5: intelligence services, that's because I've had personal experience of people
• 57:08
  Speaker 5: very close to us who end up being, whether deliberately
• 57:14
  Speaker 5: or consciously or not, actual assets as opposed to agents
• 57:17
  Speaker 5: of the intelligence service. And I think it's an important
• 57:20
  Speaker 5: element of the difficulties we face. And of course the
• 57:26
  Speaker 5: other element of the difficulties we face, which we know
• 57:29
  Speaker 5: very well from the events of the last week where
• 57:32
  Speaker 5: I was at a meeting on Thursday with Mandolin Mandela,
• 57:38
  Speaker 5: the grandson of Nelson Mandela, and with a reporter from
• 57:42
  Speaker 5: London called Latifa Abo Chakra. Now Mandla Mandela wasn't at
• 57:46
  Speaker 5: the meeting because the British government wouldn't give him a
• 57:48
  Speaker 5: visa and Latifa was recently referred to prevent for her
• 57:53
  Speaker 5: criticisms of Zionism. So I was at meeting where to
• 57:57
  Speaker 5: the people on the paril had themselves been criticize the
• 58:01
  Speaker 5: tact or by effectively by the British state. And as
• 58:04
  Speaker 5: I was at the meeting, I got a message on
• 58:06
  Speaker 5: WhatsApp or somewhere to discover that my friend, comrade and
• 58:11
  Speaker 5: colleague asimin Stanley, the journalist for the Electronic and Nevada,
• 58:15
  Speaker 5: had been rated at six am that morning, had always
• 58:18
  Speaker 5: devices taken all his laptop and his phones, etc. And
• 58:23
  Speaker 5: he was being investigated for social media posts which might
• 58:27
  Speaker 5: encourage terrorism. And of course this is a this is
• 58:33
  Speaker 5: a project which the government is now engaged in to
• 58:36
  Speaker 5: try and arrest both journalists and non journalists for conduct
• 58:42
  Speaker 5: supporting the Palestinians, which they hope to be able to
• 58:45
  Speaker 5: demonstrate in court fits the definitions in the terrorism act
• 58:49
  Speaker 5: of supporting terrorism or inviting support for terrorism, two different
• 58:54
  Speaker 5: elements of the law. And of course essay is the
• 58:57
  Speaker 5: latest in a long line in recent times, including for
• 59:00
  Speaker 5: Sarah Wilkinson and Richard Medhurst in the summer, and earlier
• 59:05
  Speaker 5: than that, our own Vanessa Bailey who was stopped last
• 59:09
  Speaker 5: time she came in, kit Clarenburg who was stopped last
• 59:12
  Speaker 5: time he came in. There is a campaign against the
• 59:15
  Speaker 5: possibility of telling the truth about Palestine. Hello, I've forgot,
• 59:23
  Speaker 5: And of course that's what happened to me. I was
• 59:25
  Speaker 5: a victim of that, and I suppose this is where
• 59:30
  Speaker 5: I talk about that. I mean, as I said, I
• 59:34
  Speaker 5: had studied have studied propaganda for I think forty years now.
• 59:40
  Speaker 5: And what happened in relation to my case was that
• 59:43
  Speaker 5: I was appointed at the University of Bristol in September
• 59:47
  Speaker 5: twenty eighteen, just when we were first doing the Syrian stuff,
• 59:55
  Speaker 5: so I could probably manage. And within a few weeks
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 5: of being appointed, I did a meeting for Palistani students
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 5: in London, a small private meeting for Pariston and students
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 5: in London, and it was maybe fifteen twenty people there
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 5: about how to resist bullying on campus, meaning bullying from
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 5: the Zionists. And what happened was that somebody had infiltrated
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 5: that meeting, very small meeting, infiltrated the meeting and leaked
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 5: the recording to Harry's Place, which is an attack blog
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 5: which was set up to support the invasion of Iraq
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 5: in two thousand and two, and they published the some
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 5: excerpts from what I had said to try and suggest
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 5: that I was a bad person and I should be
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 5: sat by the university. So that was the first sign
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 5: within three or four weeks of starting there that there
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 5: were going to be campaigns against me. But I didn't
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 5: expect what happened next, which was in February twenty nineteen,
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 5: when I did a lecture on Islamophobia and I talked
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 5: about and we know how long I talked about this
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 5: because the students recorded the lecture and leaked it to
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 5: the Jewish News. Later to our lecture in Islamophobia, I
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 5: spent two minutes and forty four seconds discussing the Zionist
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 5: movement and its role in Islamophobia. And you can still
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 5: listen to that part of the lecture, which is effectively
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 5: is what got me sacked online today, and that commentary
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 5: I was giving was about the way in which the
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 5: Zionist movement encourages Islamophobia, and that was based on research
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 5: I'd done ten years previously on islamophobic think tags. And
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 5: this is how I got into studying Zionism. It was
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 5: entirely by accident. I mean, I was always pro Palestinian,
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 5: but you know, I didn't have a research agendas to
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 5: study Zionism. It was only because I started to do
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 5: this work on Islamophobia, and we discovered that the Policy
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 5: Exchange in the Henry Jackson Society, the two leading elite
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 5: islamophobic think tags, were funded by a whole range of
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 5: charities which were named after individual So it was such
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 5: and such Wolfson Charitable Trust or the Lewis Charitable Trust
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 5: or whatever. And we didn't know what these were. So
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 5: we looked up on the Charity Commission website who these
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 5: organizations were and who else they funded, and blow and behold,
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 5: we discovered that they funded the IDF and settlements in
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 5: the West Bank, and so we concluded, although I didn't
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 5: think we had the tech terminology, then we concluded that
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 5: these were Zionist family foundations and top twelve of the
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 5: top thirteen foundations which we find the supporting I think
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 5: it was the Henry Jackson Society were Zion's family foundations.
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 5: So what we were seeing was Zionists were funding organizations
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 5: to push Islamophobia, and that was what I was reporting
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 5: in this lecture. And two students anonymously complained about this
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 5: to the Community's Security Trust, which is a Zionist lobby group,
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 5: which says it monitor's antisemitism, but of course it was
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 5: always energy to blurring the distinction between anti Semitism and
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 5: anti Zionism. And they complained to the University of the
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 5: university rejected because they weren't students. They then went to
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 5: the Union of Jewish Students in London, and they then
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 5: went to the president of the Bristol Jewish Society and
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 5: wrote them in to make a complaint. It was accepted
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 5: because she, the one who was the president of the
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 5: Bristol Society, was a student, although of course not a
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 5: student of mine, had never been to any of my lectures.
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 5: I had never spoken to anyone who'd been to any
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 5: of my lectures, and frankly didn't have a clue what
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 5: she was doing. But they made this complaint. It was
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 5: rejected by the dean. She objected to that and saying
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 5: said that the university had not adopted the International Holocaust
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 5: re Membors' lines working definition of any Semitism. The university
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 5: kindly volunteered that they could pause the complaint while they
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 5: decided whether they would change the rules or not. She said,
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 5: thanks very much. They said, okay, we'll do that. They
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 5: then debated it and changed the rules introduced. The HIRA
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 5: appointed a QC, an external QC to investigate me, and
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 5: a year and a half later, in December twenty twenty,
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 5: the qa he issued over one hundred page report concluding
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 5: that nothing I had ever said since I had rather
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 5: a bristol or indeed, for the five years previously, nothing
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 5: not a sentence, not clause, not calm on, not a
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 5: full stop, not an and or a butt had been
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 5: anti simitic, obviously, and so that was me in the clear.
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 5: The universey didn't say you should be careful in the future, David.
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 5: They didn't say they totally clear, absolutely fine, Off you pop,
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 5: So off I popped, and I said, well, can you
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 5: tell people that I'm not a racist? And I said, oh,
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 5: can't do that, can't do that. So six weeks later
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 5: I went to a public meeting, a labor against the
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 5: witch hunt meeting, I think it was, and I said,
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 5: as some of you will know, and obviously I can
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 5: quote this by heart now, as some of you will know,
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 5: I've been attacked and complained about by the president of
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 5: the Bristol Jewish Society and the president of the Unian
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 5: Jwish Students, both of which are sitting in the stock
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 5: and as they and then all hell broke loose because
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 5: I had done a very bad thing according to the university.
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 5: I had brought students into debate and that wasn't appropriate,
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 5: at which point lots of people complained in the public domain.
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 5: One hundred MPs and war than one hundred MPs and
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 5: members of the House of Lords wrote to the university
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 5: demanding Aby sacked. Jacob'smog said I was wicked, and there
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 5: was debates in Parliament, et cetera. And of course, although
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 5: there had been no formal complaint to the university, which
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 5: is required for a complaint to be investigated at the
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 5: university according to the rules, the university decided to have
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 5: one anyhow, and this time they invited the same QC
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 5: back to investigate whether my statements might be anti Semitic,
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 5: and she said, no, they weren't. And she said that, oh,
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 5: I should have mentioned it that the original complaint that
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 5: the student had brought in twenty nineteen, the only part
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 5: of the complaint which she had made up herself about
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 5: an essay question I'd set about lobbying and corporate power,
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 5: that that complained against me was manifestly hopeless, which I
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 5: thought was fantastically correct. Anyhow, so we got to the
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 5: second report, not guilty. But nevertheless, even although I'm not
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 5: guilty of anti semitism, I should be sad because I
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 5: brought students into debates exactly. So I took them to tribunal,
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 5: and tribunal started on the sixteenth of October last year,
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 5: nine days after the launch of all Axa flood. Prepitious,
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 5: I thought, not a good time for the case to
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 5: be heard, But there we are, and we went through
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 5: the case, and the university at the last minute changed
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 5: its case and decided to advance the case that the
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 5: idea that not contrary to what had been said in
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 5: the reports they'd got about anti semitism, that my ideas
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 5: were so far so extreme that I had to be sacked,
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 5: that my ideas were in the terminology akin to Nazism.
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 5: But the problem with that was that the university didn't
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 5: really believe that, and so when their most senior witness
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 5: came to court, she was asked what the university's case was,
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 5: and she quoted what the universe's case was, and she
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 5: was asked if she believed the case, and she tried
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 5: to just say what the universe's case is, and she
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 5: was asked again, do you believe this. If you don't
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 5: believe it, there is no case. If the most senior
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 5: person in the university doesn't believe the case, there is
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 5: no case. So she said, yes, I believe that his
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 5: views are not worthy of protection in a democratic society,
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 5: which is again it's the technical language from the Equality Act.
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 5: And so my lawyer this was the most brilliant point
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 5: of the tribunal. My lawyer said, so, do you think
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 5: that Professor Miller's views are akin to Nazism's what.
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 3: He says. You will have been briefed by council.
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 5: Surely that you know, if his views and not worthy
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 5: of respect in the democratic society, then the opposite of
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 5: that in the legislation is a Kinternazism. And she said, oh, yes, yes, yes,
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 5: they're a Internazism. And of course at that point she
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 5: was lost, and my council went Then U sheathed the
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 5: large weapon he'd been concealing, and he said, so if
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 5: the Anglo Saxons of Britain decided that all non Anglo
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 5: Saxons should be removed from Britain and be forced to
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 5: go and live in Wales or Cornwall, and the judge intervenes,
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 5: the only norm white judge in the entire region, and
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 5: the most senior intervenes and says, e all of the
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 5: non Anglo Saxons, and my council says that, okay, seventy
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 5: five percent and the other twenty five percent who are
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 5: allowed to remain are gnied access to housing and water
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 5: and democratic rights and are basically treated like second class citizens.
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 5: Would that, professor, he said, would that be a racist philosophy,
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 5: and would that be something that a professor could say
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 5: that Anglo Saxonism is racism and we should oppose it.
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 5: And she yes, it definitely is racist. So of course
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 5: she has contradicted herself. She had nothing. So what happened
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 5: in the end in the tribunal was that the university
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 5: soiled itself and actually contradicted its own case and destroyed
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 5: the possibility that he could win. At that stage, we
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 5: knew you we'd want and it did took until February
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 5: this year before that that was formerly announced and the
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 5: you know the judgment, if you go and read it,
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 5: one hundred and twenty pages, it's a very very clear judgment. Absolutely,
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 5: his views are anti Zionist. He was sacked for being
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 5: an anti Sionist. He wasn't sacked for mentioning students, and
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 5: that the anti Zionist view should be protected. They are
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 5: worthy of respect in a democratic society. Okay, So I'm
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 5: going to finish now, but that's where we are. What
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 5: we're now faced with is an appeal to the University's
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 5: appealing very inadvisedly, I think, and there will be two
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 5: days hearing in March April next year. I think it's
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 5: likely they're going to lose because they don't bring in
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 5: new evidence. They simply can consider the evidence it's there
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 5: and the evidence it's very very clear. So and at
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 5: that stage, if we win the appeal, which I assume
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 5: we will, then I'll get some money from the university,
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 5: which will be splendid because I've not had a penny
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 5: from them since the first of October twenty twenty one.
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 5: So what I wanted to finish by saying is, look,
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 5: we face really very significant and severe international problems. We're
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 5: heading towards the Third World War. We all know that, right,
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 5: and the Palestinians and the Lebanese people, and indeed the
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 5: people of Syria and Yemen and Iran need our help
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 5: and our support. And what we need to do in
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 5: addition to Yes, of course having demonstrations against the war,
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 5: we need to find ways to support them and to
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 5: make sure we can try and act against the racist
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 5: ideology of Zionism which organizes the self Yes and occupied Palestine,
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 5: but also in this country, in the two thousands of
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 5: so Zionist organizations that exist in this country. And if
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 5: you doubt that, have a look at some of the
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 5: things I've written about it, and we can talk about
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 5: it later. But we are facing a very very severe time,
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 5: and we're facing at home a very severe time. The
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 5: attacks on journalists will only escalate. They're clearly working to
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 5: a list of people who they're going to try and
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 5: arrest or or to prosecute for alleged terrorism offenses. And
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 5: what we need to do as a movement is to
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 5: push back against that, and is to start arguing for
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 5: the de prescription of the four Lebanese and Palestinian groups
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 5: which are currently prescribed organizations. That it is Hamas has Blah,
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 5: the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command,
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 5: and of course Palestinian Islamic you had. We need to
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 5: start to say these are legitimate resistance forces who fight
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 5: back against occupation, as provided explicitly in the Palestinian case.
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 5: Under international law, there is a right to resist occupation
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 5: by armed resistance and we should be trying to support
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 5: that as best we can.
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 3: Thank you.
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: You don't want do that, Thank you very much, David.
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: This is Mike. This Mike's work, and you can hear it.
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: I thought we would start with that last point, this
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: use of the terrorist the terrorist legislation. In recent weeks,
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: we've had more and more people being stopped at airports
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: on the into the UK or out of the UK,
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: and we've now more recently seen that's under Schedule seven
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: and more recently seen Section twelve being used to raid
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: people's homes and so on. I just wanted to get
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: if any of you have a view on this use
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: of that and and how concerned you are about the
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: effect that's going to have on the freedom of speech,
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: and particularly your thoughts on the way that the media
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 1: is reporting or not reporting on these actions by the
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: British authorities.
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 3: To start you start doing well.
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 5: I mean they're trying their best to clamp down on
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 5: the possibility of sympathy for the Palestinians. I mean the
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 5: speech that our esteemed Prime Minister gave it yesterday on saying,
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 5: I mean he felt he had to make a speech
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 5: saying nobody should mourn.
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, sineoir.
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 5: And of course the reason he had to make that
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 5: speech is because millions of people across the world are
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 5: now borning Yaha Sinwar. And when they saw his end,
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 5: they saw him fighting to the last. That is an
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 5: image which tells against the themes of his really propaganda,
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 5: and that's of course why the Israeli's released the footage.
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 5: All over the world, millions of people have begun to
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 5: understand what Sinwar was, about, what his politics were, and
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 5: how he spent twenty two years in Israeli jails where
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 5: he learned Hebrew, who read all the biographies and studies
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 5: of the Israeli intelligence agencies. He planned October the seventh.
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 5: He was the mastermind of October the seventh, not Ishmahnia,
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 5: but Jaja sin War. And of course he stands now
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 5: in the tradition of great martyrs, not just the West Asia,
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 5: but of the whole world who fought against imperial power.
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 5: So that's going to be a disaster for them, because
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 5: of course, public opinion is running really far against the Zionists.
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 5: There's an opinion poll in Unheard a few weeks ago
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 5: which said that fifty five percent of under twenty four
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 5: year olds now believe there shouldn't be in Israel now.
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 5: Before October seventh, that would have been simply anathemas to
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 5: even mention it in public discourse and polite conversation. But
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 5: now increasingly millions of people, including in this country, see
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 5: that the experiment of Zionist project has to come to
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 5: an end if there's ever to be pieced in West
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 5: Asian And I think that's what we need to think
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 5: about how we move towards that kind of resolution of
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 5: the conflict.
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 4: Well, definitely there's been a chilling effect on speech and language.
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 4: I myself tried to put the lock on my tongue
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 4: nervous whenever I mention the names Hamas or his Bola.
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 4: I mustn't slip into the territory of praising either organization,
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 4: and you feel that you're you're skating on thin ice
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 4: all the time, because we don't have freedom of speech
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 4: in this country.
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 3: It's an illusion.
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 4: You have freedom to express speech approved by the establishment,
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 4: and you're lucky even to get that much, because more
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 4: often than not you are simply not given an opportunity
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 4: to speak publicly. I've been reduced myself to shouting on
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 4: street corners to get an audience. My days are being
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 4: invited by the mainstream media are long gone, So we
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 4: have no freedom of speech. Our tea was closed down,
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 4: Press TV excluded two of my favorite channels, the ones
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 4: that kept me most busy. We are behaving like Russia
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 4: was supposed to behave, or the Soviet Union was supposed
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 4: to behave in the bad old days, and how Russia
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 4: is supposed to put in Russia is supposed to behave today.
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 4: I believe sincerely that there's more freedom of speech in
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 4: Russia than there is in this country, and it's getting
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 4: worse and worse. What's encouraging in one sense is that
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 4: people on the right, many are exercised about this suppression
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 4: of freedom of speech, although in their case it's mainly
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 4: speech to be Islamophobic that they're thinking about. But there
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 4: are a lot of libertarians on the right, and we
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 4: marched with them in the in the COVID Wars. But they,
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 4: I noticed just recently couldn't bring themselves to even mention
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 4: the refusal or the cancelation of a visa for the
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 4: grandson of Mandela who is invited by a pro Palestinian
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 4: group to speak in Manchester. Even the so called champions
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 4: on the right of free speech, like Toby Young and
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 4: his Free Speech Union, not a word about that. And
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 4: there was Voltaire, our hero, who said he would die
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 4: to allow someone with an opposing point of view of
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 4: his to give them the right to free speech. But
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 4: we press on and gatherings like this are part of
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 4: the fight back.
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 3: So keep on people. I mean, I mean on what
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 3: Mike said. I mean that there's a clear trajectory at
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 3: the moment in terms of how severe and how aggressive
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 3: authorities are becoming in terms of trying to control debate
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 3: and control descent. And you know, obviously my talk was
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 3: focusing on smear campaign's character assassination, which I think was
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 3: the go to tool when they had particularly troublesome people
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 3: out there in the public sphere and so on, and
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 3: a few nasty headlines was enough to intimidate or shut
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 3: people up and so on. But clearly we've seen I
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 3: think we've seen two developments. One has been I'll get
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 3: to Mike's point about the kind of starting to arrest people,
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 3: et cetera. But you have the whole disinformation fact checking
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 3: industry has emerged as a tool of trying to control
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 3: through legal mechanisms potentially look at the Digital Services Act
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 3: in the EU and so on and how they bring
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 3: in fact checking and disinformation into that framework. And that
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 3: also applies to the online harm legislations that you see
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 3: across multiple democratic countries. So there's that kind of approach
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 3: to trying to control what people are saying. And I
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 3: think that is that's an evolution of moving on from
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 3: the smear campaigns, which was the go to tool, and
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 3: now we are, Yeah, we're in a situation where there
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 3: you know, people are in fear of any up and jail.
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 3: I would add, of course, Judy Massage, although he has
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 3: been in a sense let out and let off now
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 3: partially you know, the authorities can always hold him up
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 3: now as a symbol of this is how far we'll go.
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 3: We'll have you banged up for ten years, et cetera.
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 3: But now, yep, this thing seems to be moving into
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 3: a new kind of phase. I've lost track of the list.
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 3: It was Kit Clarenberg of Vanessa. You were mentioning the
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 3: names of people who've been detained at the airport and
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 3: introducing sort of counter terrorism as a justification, et cetera.
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 3: So there is a trajectory there. It is getting worse.
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 3: But then the flip side of this, or the other
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 3: way of looking at this, is that they're they're having
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 3: to do this because they are losing control. And as
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 3: much as it's a sign of their power, it's also
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 3: a sign of their weakness, so that it's called comfort
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 3: in a way. But I think, you know, if we
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 3: stand our ground and people keep pushing forward, even under
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 3: threat of arrest and so on, you know, it's a
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 3: struggle that we can win at the end of the day,
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 3: and it is you know, they can't at the end
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 3: of the day bang everybody up. Yeah, So it is worrying.
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 3: It is a depressing development, but it's also it's a
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 3: sign of weakness on their part, and it's a sign
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 3: that they're losing. They're losing us, they're losing the people
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 3: in a very significant way. Now that.
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: David mentioned Intergety Initiative, he also mentioned our great friend
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: Andy Price, who we all love, don't we, And because
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: we can't get any information about him or any of
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 1: his his team from the Foreign Office, they simply refused
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: their various freedom of freedom of information requests we've asked.
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: But one aspect of Integrity Initiative was the journalistic aspect
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: and the mainstream media aspect of it. Do you want
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: to just say a few words about that.
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 3: Well, I was just going to chip in there and
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 3: say that the Times attacks on us. Dominic Kennedy, his
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 3: name turned up in the Integrity Initiative files, funnily enough,
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 3: and also Deborah Haynes as well, although she said to
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 3: me that her name was put on the attack piece
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 3: on us by accident, and I believe her completely. But
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 3: Dominic Kennedy and I asked him three or four times,
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 3: and I've now published emails. This is when I'm still
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 3: at Sheffield and I said that, you know, did the
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 3: attack on us and have you had anything to do
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 3: with the Integrity Initiative? Perfectly reasonable question to ask given
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 3: everything that had happened. Just basically refused to answer the question.
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 3: I think he sort of smirkingly wrote, sort of my
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 3: articles speak for themselves, peers, and that was it, so
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 3: he wouldn't deny it. But yeah, so the Integrity Initiative
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 3: and that activity, so we didn't get a straight answer
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 3: from him. But those files that they were creating clusters
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 3: linking journalists with now were there intelligence or government people
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 3: and there were government people, think tanks journalists creating these
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 3: clusters essentially so they can all get together work out
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 3: what lines today could have trouble makers out there and
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 3: so on. And yeah, it was.
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 1: Very blatant, absolutely, And the main point of this was
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: because Donnelly from the beginning was taking a he was
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 1: working for NI or at some point he was. He
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 1: was taking an anti Russian position, and these journalists were
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: then pushing on propaganda against Russia in through the mainstream press.
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, exactly. It was geared up. I think the
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 3: Integrity Initiative in particular was geared up for what they
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 3: obviously knew then they were going to push US towards,
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 3: which was war in Ukraine. They were going to push
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 3: Russia to its red line, and they were building that
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 3: for a number of years in the Integrity Initiative, and
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 3: a lot of the propa anti Russian propaganda you see,
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 3: whether it's Screeple or whether it's the OPCW Syria chemical
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 3: weapons issue and so on, is essentially sort of manifestations
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 3: or symptoms of that propaganda drive.
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: Okay, okay, thank you, Pierce. There's a either of you
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: got a comment on that.
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 4: We're just on a slightly different angle BBC Verify desserts varying,
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 4: but this is a really a startling development that they
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 4: should be felt necessary to invent such a unit, and
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 4: that its purpose should be so nakedly one sided and propagandistic.
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 4: I'm still wait for them to very even a single
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 4: claim of the climate emergency doctrine. I think I'll be
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 4: waiting for a long time for that. But it's mind boggling,
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 4: it's quite shocking.
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 5: Let me say a few words about BBC Verify since
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 5: we got there. Marianna Spring so of course she was
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 5: involved in this interesting little one two number the other day,
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 5: where what was the other day was a.
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 3: Few months to go out.
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 5: So the only person who has is currently, as I
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 5: understand it, charged under section section twelve. Isn't it not
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 5: scheduled Section twelve of the Terrorist matt It's another Richard,
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 5: Richard Bernard, and Richard, of course, as many of you
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 5: will know, is the co founder of Powestine Action, the
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 5: revolutionary cutting edge of the anti Zionist movement in this
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 5: country for which we should all pause and cheer, I feel.
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 3: Now.
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 5: Richard made some comments on the eighth of October last year,
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 5: in particular the comment he made when he said that
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 5: he hoped that Alaxa flood would turn into a tsunami,
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 5: by which he meant that people in the UK would
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 5: be upping their game against the Israeli arms industry and
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 5: making sure that they infiltrated and attacked Albit factories, which
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 5: are of course sending weapons directly to kill Palestinian children. Now,
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 5: the police didn't arrest him at the time, but what
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 5: happened was that he was arrested a little bit later
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 5: after BBC Verify took two copies took copies of two
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 5: of his speeches to the UK's independent what's he called
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 5: the independent examiner of terrorism legislations. It's called reviewer of
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 5: terrorism legislation. Yes, a guy whose name and I forgotten
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 5: Jonathan Hall. Jonathan Hall. And Jonathan Hall said, oh this
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 5: is terrible. I mean, look, he refers to aleksa flood
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 5: and that's her mass operation. So clearly he is supporting
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 5: a prescribed organization and therefore he's supporting terrorism, and he's
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 5: you know, effectively, therefore he should be charged or arrested.
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 5: So Arman Hall is of course the independent reviewer. He
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 5: spends most of his time in chambers. But when he's
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 5: working as the independent reviewer, he has an office provided
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 5: to him by the Home Office. Can anyone guess which
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 5: part of the Home Office provides his It's the Homeland
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 5: Security Group. So he goes into a British intelligence office
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 5: to do his independent reviewing of terrorism legislation. So here
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 5: he provides effectively. What's happened here is that there are
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 5: parts of the security state who are not impressed with
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 5: the police's response and they had to find a way
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 5: to jump start a police arrest and charge over this.
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 5: And of course the probably through the same mechanism as
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 5: Paul Mason is activated. Probably Andy, Andy Price or somebody
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 5: else sent am message to Marie Anne and said how
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 5: about and off they went and they got Paul Sir
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 5: Richard charged. Now I don't think that he's going to
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 5: get fund guilty because, of course the idea that Alax
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 5: the flood was a mass operation simply is of course absurd.
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 5: There were more than six different armed Palestinian organizations involved,
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 5: including Palastinian is Lament. You had the DFLP, the PFLP,
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 5: the Majiahideen Brigades and others. And all of these groups are,
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 5: of course, let's remember, still fighting a year later, and
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 5: it's not just to mass. All of these groups have
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 5: not been defeated. Not single one of these groups has
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 5: been defeated. They continued to fight these Raelings. So that's
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 5: that was that's how that happened. And I think what's
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 5: going to happen is he's going to get off because
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 5: you know, it's it's ridiculous to say he's supporting terrorism.
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 3: He wasn't.
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 5: But that's the that's the that's how these things work,
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 5: right they if if if Sarah I mean Sarah Wilkinson
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 5: is another case, I mean she was her house was
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 5: raided after the campaign against anti Semitism, trying to pressure
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 5: the CPS to take her to court. And the raid
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 5: is simply about finding information to justify such a such
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 5: a case. So there are lots of different routes into
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 5: to these attacks on independent journalists.
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 1: Brilliant, Thank you well, are we on time? And I
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: got say Pears, Peter and David. Thank you very much
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 1: and there will be more media on trial coming in
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 1: the future, so stay tuned. Thank you.