Latest / UK Column Radio / UK Column News Podcast 5th June 2024
Transcript
- Good afternoon. It's Wednesday, the fifth of June twenty twenty four, just after one o'clock. Welk the UK column News. I'm your host Pack Robinson joining me today by the video link. We have Vanessa Billy from Damascus and Charles Mallett. Welcome to the program. Both. We're going to get started with, well, something which should be part of the election debate, So let's bring the two buffoons on screen. They were on ITV last night. No, I didn't watch the entire thing by any means, but I'm going to say this is a great example of why we need more independence in the House of Commons. So hashtag Independence Day is what we're arguing for. Because, of course they talked about economy, they talked about immigration, but they didn't talk about the war danger at the moment, which of course they are both banging the drums for now. Just to put this in a bit of context, here is a tweet from US Senator This is Senator Jim's Advance, and he has written on his Twitter account yesterday that Biden is sleeping sleepwalking into World War three. I just spoke to a friend I trust in what's going on in Russia. I think the risk of nuclear war now is higher than at any point in my lifetime. Biden is sleeping, sleepwalking into World War three, and then under that he has political article linked. The article is called war has found Them. Biden's Ukraine gamble sets a new course, and the political article says, despite his best efforts, President Joe Biden has plunged the US deeper into the fight in Ukraine. Soon Ukraine will be using US made weapons to strike inside Russia, a nuclear arm power with US president's blessing. Presidents Joe Biden's choice across the line on striking inside Russian territory is likely to read lead to pressure to go further. He then has published this article from Theodore looking of he works for various things, tanks and so on. Russia needs to explain its red lines to the West, and what he's saying in this article is well, just quote a little bit from the final paragraph. It says, what do you do in such a situation? And he's talking about the Ukraine situation Western weapons being used in this way. The time for strategic ambiguity is over, he says, as is the increasingly ritualized talk of red lines at the very least, Russia needs to be very clear about the steps it will take in response to NATO's actions. Vagueness only encourages flip flock at flip flopping and fosters a sense of impunity. And I think last week, Vanessa I was saying on this program that Russia has been incredibly patient as this whole scenario has built. Somebody in the chat box last week was saying, yes, but that patience appears to be running out, and looking off here is saying very clearly it's time for Russia to be very explicit about what the dangers are that the West is playing with. And I think these are all good points. Yeah, absolutely, And there was an article I think that I sent you about a week ago where another analyst was basically saying it's time for Russia to cut off a nuclear explosion as a warning, you know, a contained explosion, there's a warning to the West what and to remind them what a mushroom cloud entails, basically, because you know, where a generation that hasn't experienced the likes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and all the various nuclear test explosions that went on around that time. So yeah, very clear messages from Russia right now. Absolutely, and so but what's the response because not every country is behaving in the same way. So here's Hungary yesterday and people are protesting on the streets calling for peace not war, and quite a parade going on if you look at the various video follage on the thousands of thousands of thousands of people on the streets. Victor Urban made a speech for around the same time. So let's just have a brief listen to this follow on a major ishmark jack a haboru mindi mashkip penvig zudik miant has that ben gondortak as helot as he heard ninch eliga ymbert as he heard ninch elig a harbor Wallachi relocky is ben holomeg Wallacki mana kulikus ben wallacky bombas as bon wallachios elan shik burton aban wallocky r wine burn wallachi a henhol van Ochimchino's knock one okay to magarnock one okay, Elvis neck robsganok Samo lo shiro fiokko go on yak Fai shiro tonuk mag edge dog go to dounk Ohoa. Harbor better s your lab at ninj Manakar is a harbor, nam took Erney, nem tooths elbow a harbor yet an el sere a Baker, Chemo Rodney or harboruball. It shall be get that came to Mags or Miku that issue. So, Charles, the only antidote to war is peace. And I'm going to say, you know, well, first of all, what are your thoughts on that? Good afternoon, thanks, Mike. Well, I don't think I want to overcomplicate masses by disagreeing with any of what he said. I think he's He's absolutely right, and you know, so called leaders across the West should pay attention to every single word that he said. Yes, absolutely So if we bring these two back on screen again, you know these to neither of these two is going to bring us into a world of peace, and so none of none of us should be voting for either of them or for either of the parties. In my opinion, let's vote for some alternatives, whether it be independence, which is what we would recommend, but there are other others in some of the smaller parties party sorry parties that might have a bit more sanity about them. Okay, let's come back to the UK then domestic issues and well the issue of so called extremism. Charles. Yes, this has been a recurring theme throughout the year. But in January and March of this year we reported on the case of Samuel Melia. Sam Melia, associated with the Patriotic Alternative, who was imprisoned for a couple of offenses, which we'll go into in a minute, but here we see it being reported on the Patriotic Alternative website that he has now been prevented from seeing or having any contact or any communication with or about his children. Now. I spoke to his wife, Laura Toyler earlier this week and I'm just going to play a short clip of her explaining what has happened in Hull. For the first week, everything was fine, we had a visit with the kids, speaking to him on the phone, no problems at all, and then all of a sudden, letters and emails started getting rejected and sent back to us say child protection issues. And to cut a long story short, because it's been this big kuffuffle over the last couple of weeks. Basically they've classified sam as a PPRC which is a person posing risk to children. And when I asked them to clarify why Sam had been classified as a PPRC, they said, and I quote racist literature, insignia and books and racist and offensive attitudes. So that's why he's a risk to children apparently, So they've stopped contact with his children. Not only that, but they I'm not allowed He's not allowed any photographs of his children, and I'm not even allowed to mention his children to him on the phone. If I do that, they can ban me as a contact. So I mean, I can kind of understand the contact thing, completely disagree with it. It's not a risk to his kids. It's not as one month old and two years old. It can't brainwash them into racism or whatever. But I can kind of understand the contact even though it's wrong. But I don't understand why are the photographs of them or why I am not allowed to mention them to him, because how is he going to brainwash a child down a photograph? Laura ends with a very very good question. Now, I've been in touch with HMP Hull to ask more about this, and they say that they may be able to reply within twenty days, So we'll just have a quick look at what Laura had posted on telegram, specifically just to reinforce what she's talking about, and particularly the use of the very confusing language about first of all posing a risk of serious harms children, but also saying that it does not state that he does pose direct risk of serious arms children. But as she says, through the children being exposed to posters, insignia, literature, and attitudes. Now, is this ineptitude or malice? Bearing in mind that the offenses were publishing with intent to stir up racial hatred even though it was never proven that any was stone up, or indeed that the intent really was there, and encouraging the racially aggravated criminal damage of sticking stickers. So just to look further into where this sort of action comes from from the prison service. The Public Protection Manual has a section on PPRC person posing risk to children and bearing in mind he'd already spent three months in Leeds, is it really appropriate. Potential pprcs must be identified quickly and risk assessed to establish if there is a continuing risk to children. So it looks very much like the prisoner not fulfilling these criteria, but specifically on the photograph side of it, just to give an indication of whether or not this is proportionate pprcs or potential pprcs presenting a sexual risk to children must have access to their personal photographs as children considered using the principles in this chapter. So this is the sort of threshold that's being dealt with. And last week I spoke about the Walney Report and specifically the targeting or at least the identification of loan actors, and it looks like not only is sam Milia being used as an example in terms of his imprisonment, his conviction, but also now his status as a prisoner for these particular offenses, which of course are associated with nationalism, which the CPS was very keen to suggest was criminal that he might be cast as one such loan actor. But we'll just look also at the European Convention on Human Rights, because although it might seem a bit extreme, the Article three, of course refers to prohibition of torture. No one should be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, and that should really be considered, but specifically really Article eight, where everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home, and his correspondence. And it continues that there shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right, except in the interests of national security, public safety, or the economic well being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, or for the prevention of health, sorry protection of health or morals. So it's a great stretch to see how the prison the Prison service could justify these measures. A challenge has been made and hopefully something will come of it. Now, if you're outraged by this, not specifically necessarily sympathizing with the beliefs or the ideologies of Sam Melia, but indeed recognizing that he is a political prisoner and has fall and full of the most corrupt system. There is a petition at change dot org. The link will be in the show notes, which only has around three thousand signatures at the minute. So that's something that really should see a significant uplift. And the other thing I should point out is that on the Patriotic Alternative website, if you go to the news section, you can see how to either register a complaint with HMP Hull or to get in touch with Sam and I should just point out birthday on Sunday, the ninth June, and he would very much appreciate written correspondence. Thank you, Charles and Vanessa. Let's come on to you and the Clooney Foundation. Yes, good afternoon everyone. Yeah, the Clooney Foundation has been suddenly thrown into the limelight with a bit of controversy. The Ammal and George Clooney Foundation for Justice Waging justice for human Rights. One of the sectors of the foundation, the docket is run by the legal director Anya That let's just move on where I've highlighted part of her actual CV. So she was with Amnesty International as their senior director for Research. She was the Associate director for Programming Emergencies at Human Rights Watch. She was the chair of the board at Crisis Action. So very clearly somebody that embedded in organizations that have a revolving door with the US State Department and intelligence agencies. And here very recently she had a dig at President as third with the claim that French magistrates had issued an arrest for the Syrian president. So let's see what she said in an interview towards the end of May the Cloney Foundation. She said in an interview seeks criminal prosecution of Russian advocates. This was picked up by the RT's footnet pass, et cetera. But let's have a look at the RT version of the report on this. The Clooney Foundation are lunatics at the criminin The organization has previously proposed issuing secret warrants from media figures over alleged incitement to genocide in Ukraine. We should also bear in mind, of course, that this in a way is a spin off from the Center of Disinformation established by the then US administration and which led to the term disinformation terrorists, which was picked up then by the various Ukrainian NATO managed ill lists. So basically within the RT out of the articles, she declined to disclose the names of individuals she wants to target, explaining that we want them to travel to other countries and to be arrested there. She also makes very clear that she has a definite conflict of interest as she feels personally involved in the Ukrainian conflict, obviously on the side of the Ukraine and Native Member states. So what I'm trying to point out here is a very odd sequence of events, because then what happened. There is an economic forum being organized in St. Petersburg to which a number of Western commentators and analysts have been invited, including Judge Napolitano, who has his own YouTube channel, and Scott Writter, who is known to most people, of course, former US Navy intelligence officer involved in putting out the declaration that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Now, the strange thing here is that initially so Scott Ritter who was pulled off the plane to Russia on his way to from New York to Istanbul, and from Istanbul he would be going to Saint Petersburg, and he has passport confiscated by Homeland security officers at times. But nake Artie all of the Russian media put out a story that Napolitano had had the same treatment. However, let's just because that was later updated and Polaitano said he was given a message by Rita to warn him not to go to Russia because the censor of the two of them, or of the organization had been arrested inside Russia. So let's just have a look at a part of the exchange between the two plane and suddenly three uniformed armed Customs and Border Patrol officers came up and asked if I was, you know, William Scott Ritter Jr. I said, yes, I am. They ushered me out of the line. Then they demanded that I give them my passport, which I complied with, and then they asked me that if this was my only travel document, do I have any other travel documents? I said, no, this is my US passport. It's the passport I used to travel overseas and I have used frequently, including to Russia. And they said, well, we're seizing it. And I said, I'm what authority. They said, on the orders of the United States State Department. I said who in the State Department. I said, we don't know. I said, well, who ordered you to do this? You obviously, or we don't know. We can't tell you. We're not authorized to tell you. They wouldn't give me a receipt for the passport. They just said you got to contact the State Department. And of course they violated their own profound regulations by not giving you a receipt. They're supposed to give you a receipt so that when you sue them, the court will know who it is that took this away from you. Now you're going to have to do some investigation on your own. The State Department is huge. Was this Tony Blincoln, Was this Jake Sullivan? Or was this some local functionary who didn't like something they heard you say? So obviously, I mean, this is a violation of various amendments of freedom of speech, freedom of travel, et cetera. The fact that Rita actually forgot in the fluster to take the names of the officers or to ask for a receipt for the passport is obviously going to lead to some issues, one assume, in the future. But what's really strange is that almost simultaneously, just after Rita had basically announced that he had been prevented, George Clooney put out this announcement on Twitter saying that in regard to recent reports about Russian journalists, someone someone in our foundation misspoke. I'm the son of a journalist. We at the Clooney Foundation would never go after journalists, even if we disagree with them. In fact, we have a long track record of protecting journalists. People will know Clooney from his activity as Barack Obama's point man in Darfur in Sudan. If you remember he was going to make a movie about the CIA M I six creation, the White Hell Notes and Syria exeter So he has a long history of being fairly heavily embedded with the State Department and intelligence agencies. And I just this caught my eye when I was clicking through Clooney Foundation X page. Sorry not for this. Here they mentioned somebody that they're working in collaboration with, particularly on Ukrainian alleged war crimes committed are called by Russia, not by Ukraine. It's an organization called Truthhounds. So I had a quick look at the website, and I do advocate everyone going to look. It's a very odd website. It reminds me of those kind of cutout websites that we used to see during regime change war in Syria that to me are very often basically intelligent front pages. But I had a quick look at basically, so who their their sponsors are. You have the US State Department, and you have Financial Endowment Democracy, which of course again is known as being an outreach agency for the intelligence agency, particularly working abroad in infiltration exercises. And then let's have a look at the media companies that they work with. Of course there you have the usual suspects PNN, BBC, the Guardian and then just quickly moving on to the NGO that they work with, and you'll see again that crossover Human Rights Watch, as I said, revolving door with the US State Department and the CIA, and of course, as I mentioned, the Clooney Foundation, and the one point that I want to make a legal director within the foundation doesn't miss speak over a campaign of such group a person importance. I think that's absolute nonsense. So looking at the timing, I find it extremely odd that at this stage Clooney eastantly decided to step in and retract this campaign of targeting journalists both Russian and Western who are speaking out against the war and new frames. And Vanessa there's another great example of someone that has a personal profile, a public profile rather of being an actor and so on. But he's married to someone who's a lawyer. I believe a case quite a bit not quite clear about it was because she put her name to an ft AN article in the ft recently, along with a bunch of other cases and judges with respect to Gaza, and so what what what what are the games that they're playing here? Because I seem to remember her name coming up quite a lot with respect to Syria as well. Yeah, absolutely in the f the article. Of course, what that letter actually still claims is that mass committed the atrocities that have been one hundred debunked by analysts since Tober the seventh, so that them maintaining the Hamad atrocity narrative that defend Israel of course and basically justifies the genesis the ongoing genocide. But also there was an interesting article in Mondo Bars which is Hebrew media opinion media, where they actually said that the ic C arrest war had actually played in Nathaniel Who's favor. In other words, he could now play the anti Sphytic card, he could play the card that they were being victimized and put on the same level as Hamas terrorists. And actually his popularity has increased since the icsive a restaurant, So an interesting perspective to bring into that. Yes, okay, thank you Vanessa, thank you for that. Okay, if you like what the uk COLN does, you'd like to to continue doing it. We do need your support, so if you can possibly help a side the website to go to and support dot uk COLN dot org. The options to help a site are there. You can get a membership for as little as five pounds a month. If you can't do that but can help us in other ways, please do share material I find on the various platforms. We don't have Facebook page. It's active at the moment, so if you are on Facebook, please share our material there because Facebook has been a driver for people coming to the website and so on, So if you can possibly share material on Facebook, that would be great. You could also pick something up at the UK column Shop. There are plenty of items there to have a look at now. Tomorrow at one pm, the third episode of the new series of Health Revolution of Clive de Carr will be going out live well at one pm tomorrow for a premiere and we're asking, we're answering some more questions again similar to the first episode, so do join us for that. And the interview that went out yesterday with Danny Hervey from Guernsey is up on the website now and if you haven't seen that one yet, please have a look at that and do share it. The Sunday event Sunday, the sixteenth of June. Vanessa's photograph is on there but actually I'm not sure that I've actually asked her to take part in that we can talk about this extra and she can tell me. Okay, well anyway, So UK Column Live us do join us for this on the sixteenth of starting at ten am. And another reminder of the Science Beautiful Festival taking place in Wimborne and Dorset on the twenty seventh, thirtieth of June. UK Column will be there as well, so come and join us for that. Now let's move on then to the issue of the NHS and well, yesterday it was announced that the NHS was coming under cyber attack. So let's bring Synlab on screen. And Synlab is the company who was providing the service the NHS that has been attacked. Synlab is, well, it's a joint venture. As we'll see in a second. Sonvas is the company that's behind all this, or at least Sonvas is the joint venture. Sorry, sin Lab is the company that's behind all this. So Novas is a partnership between Sinnlab UK and Ireland. Guys in Saint Thomas NHS Foundation Trust and King's College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust or or organization brings together the very best in clinical, scientific, and operational expertise is what they see say, but not apparently it expertise, as we'll see in a couple of seconds when Charles continues this. But the issue is statement with respected cyber attack which said Novas, a partnership between two London hospital based trusts and Sinlab, was the victim of a ransomware cyber attack. So this is where so called cyber criminals managed to get some software on your systems which encrypts the data on your systems, and then they hold you to ransom so you've got to pay them some bitcoin in order to get the data released. Again. This has the effect they said, this has affected all so Novus IT systems, resulting in interruptions to many of our pathology services. It's still early days and we're trying to understand exactly what has happened. The task force of IT experts from SO Novas and the NHS is working to fully assess the impact this has had and to take the appropriate action needed. Regrettably, this is affecting patients with some activity already the can or redirected to other providers as urgent workers prioritized. We're incredibly sorry for the inconvenience and upset this is causing the patient service users and anyone affected. The incident is being reported to the law enforcement and the Information Commissioner, and we're working with the National Cyber Security Center and the Cyber Operations Team, and they went on to say we will share further update updates as we know more, but regret we are unable to respond to individual queries from the media at this time. So so thank you for your understanding. Now, this this is the man in charge, Mark Dollar. I believe you don't do know this Jet Charles from the from the dim and distant past. Yes, we we began the process joining on at the same time, so his background is not in this field at all. But I don't have an awful lot more say on whether or not he's he's capable of getting out of this whole. Yes, okay, So let's come back on to the statement fromvas. Yes, I think the critical part really and the lesson to be taken from this is whilst there are of course serious consequences for the people that were affected specifically by this and the sort of the health implications, really what I want to do is to use this as an effective case study, and of course the critical part really is that they describe themselves as having invested heavily and ensuring our IT arrangements are as safe as they possibly can be. The lesson to learn from that is that they can never be safe. There does not seem to be a single mode of technology or any sort of digital platform which doesn't succumb ultimately to some sort of invasion like this, and therefore they should be borne in mind, specifically with regard to consideration of identity and currency and the obsession really that the system has, the establishment has digitizing absolutely everything. This should be a very stark reminder of the frailty of these systems. Now we'll look a little bit wider because fraud is such a big issue now, accounting for nearly half of all crime in the UK. So the BDO Fraud Report has come out for the last year and we're just going to go through some of it. Before we do, I should just point out that the business of investigating and protecting against fraud is not a bad one to be in. The fee income of all BDO firms, including the members of their exclusive alliances, was fourteen billion US dollars as of September twenty twenty three. However, that to one side. In their fraud report, and this specifically concentrates on the UK, they say that in twenty twenty three two point three billion of fraud was far below the twenty twenty one figure of ten billion, largely due to the massive level of fraud linked to the government support schemes during the Code nineteen pandemics. So again I just reinforced the message that when it comes to trusting the government to manage a digital system properly, we should not be presenting that trust to them. They do not they do not deserve it. Anyway. The video report goes on specifically with cybercrime and of course the sort of current thing being AI, and of course this is where we discover quite what a double edged sword it is, because they talk about AI picking up momentum and blurring the lines between what is real and what is fake. Whilst AI enabled technology can provide revolutionary methods to conduct business, it does also unfortunately create a host of new opportunities for AI powered scams. Now, I think that would have been fairly obvious to anybody who'd given it due consideration, but nonetheless that is the sort of cyber part of it. The other part of sort of let's say, more conventional fraud is now apparently being dealt with by government in slow to time. But the result of the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act of twenty twenty two has brought about the offense of failure to prevent fraud. So we're just going to have a quick look at what that means, and essentially it's to target businesses if they profit from fraud committed by their employees. Effectively, it's making sure that the organization, even if it's unaware of it, has responsibility for the activities of employees. So under the new offense, an organization will be liable where a specified fraud offense is committed by an employee or an agent for the organization's benefit and the organization did not have reasonable fraud prevention procedures in place. It does not need to be demonstrated that company bosses ordered or knew about the fraud. Now, on the company boss's side of things, it is worth pointing out that company bosses will not be liable for any offenses on this failure to prevent fraud because they're deemed to be not in effect responsible if they didn't know, So that's something that in due course probably will require a degree more scrutiny. The other thing that's being very much scrutinized now is Company's House part in all of this, and they report just last week that they're making progress on implementing the reforms that are brought about by this legislation, in particular on the Economic crime and corporate transparency x Orry, I misspoke twenty twenty twenty six to three. It is not twenty two reforms of company sized processes and new statutory function, functions and objectives for the registrars, reforms of laws that apply to limited partnerships, and new provisions relating to the Register of Overseas Entities. So this should really be significant, but it remains to be seen how Company's House will actually deal with it. And indeed House Commons Library putting this out again from last week in terms of what can be done and how the register is corrected. Identity verification a large part of it, and what exactly is always not deemed to be correct. So the registrar carries out the checks and she has limited powers to verify or validate the information which is delivered to her. I think it's a common misconception. The company's House has had a responsibility to date to be able to do that. But they go on to say, provided a document appears to be properly delivered, the registrar must register it. So that's the system by which company's House operates at the moment. And we'll just go on a little bit further to say that the registrar will now be given broader powers under the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act, so she can become a more active gatekeeper over company registrations. This will include powers to check, challenge and refuse to register any information which is inaccurate or false, whilst also ensuring any fraudulent addresses can be removed more easily. So there's a lot to consider there, and whether or not this is actually going to have any effect at all, it's far too early to tell. But nonetheless, companies I do appear to be doing something about it, and when there is publication of data to give any sort of feedback in terms of metrics of success, I will of course report on that. Thank you, Charles, Thank you, No, Vanessa, Let's circle back to the Middle East and what's going on in southern Lebanon. And is it all about Hesbala, Not really. I mean, of course what Hesball are doing, it's trying to basically contain the Israeli army in the order and occupied territories so that there isn't a full on a fault on Gaza. Of course, from we've seen so the Israel has been sort of crying wolf for some time over an invasion into southern Lebanon. These are just some of the statements about by the war minister. Basically he's talking about copy pasting the guards of Water Bay route. We'll return Lebanon to the stain ag if BA wants to go one level will pp. Five. And quite recently Gallant made the statement, or rather he warned of a potential hot summer in the north as he attacks and idea posts. And in reality, what have we seen. We've seen really a very big increase or in intensity of the conflict in northern occupied stories with Blura in southern Lebanon and massive fires across the upper Galilee occupied barriers. There you'll see the northeas more sirens and fires. Just a couple of pictures of the fires that are basically raging throughout that upper Galilee region, causing on top damage from tax by Bila that has been accepted largely by the very defense systems the Israel. Israelis always based off Haslar attacks scortunately two five hundred acres of northern Israel, and if we just look into details very quickly, there thirty firefighting teams were deployed to distinguish the claims. As a result of the major roads in the Galilee remained shuttered. Nine hundred and ninety acres of land were burned near Amyad, and it continues. There is of course outrage now that effectively people are claiming in this area that the Israeli regime is not responding to the tragedy that's unfolding for them in the northern occupied territories. And then very interesting, so we have the increase in rhetoric of a potential invasion of southern Lebanon. We've had this morning which I couldn't report in time, but there was an alleged ISIS attack on the US embassy in Beirut, which of course makes me immediately think that's the pretext for the US to increase military presence in Beirut. The under the justification of fighting ISOs, which is of course the proxy terrorist group Industria and Iraq. This is in Israeli media. I think yesterday I crossed out Hesbea because it was worn and given to one a Tumes diplomatic representatives in Beirut by or via diplomatic channels by the British. Warning of mid June is really onslaught now in my opinion, not looking at a ground invasion that's already been a disaster for the Israeli forces in Gaza. In my opinion, what we will see, at least initially is an increase in attacks deeper into Lebanese territory, potentially in Beirut it self, bruggeting of course hospitals, civilians and so on, as they've done in Gaza in an attempt to put pressure on Hasbula to with yes, okay, thank you for that. Now here's the Telegraph and they were pushing this article out yesterday. The NATO maps out planned block Russian invasion, pre planned it logistical roots could stave help stave off a potential Russian attack, So we're preparing for war. Here here's the male revealed NATO plan to get us troops to the front line to fight Russia. Alliance prepares for rapid deployment of American soldiers amid Fair's Moscow is plotting major war with Europe. And the impression that you're left with with these articles and others of its type is that this is all a NATO initiative and that this is something new. But if you've been watching the UK Column for a lot of years, you'll know that there's nothing new about this at all. So let's just bring the map on screen and we can see the roots that they're talking about. And this is all about military mobility. And we've been talking about military mobility for many, many years here at the UK Column, because this is part and parcel of the UK of Sorry, of the European Union Defense Union project. So here's Frederick of Margherini going back to twenty eighteen here, and she was already talking back then about the next steps on the military Mobility Action Plan. So if you're in any doubt about the fact that they've been planning for exactly this scenario for many, many years, you've put those dots aside. If we put that back on screen again for a second, this is something for twenty nineteen, the announcement of twenty two members states of the EU. That's Austria, Belgian, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Spain and Sweden and the European Defense Agency signed a new program that implements a major part of the Action Plan on Military Mobility, allowing free cross border surface and air movement of personnel and equipment. And this was all part of the European Defense Union project. You've seen this at least many people have seen this graphic quite a number of times. This is from the European Commission themselves, although it's our version of it, and you can see on the right hand pillar here are they consider a core partnership to be NATO and another core partnership to be in the United Nations. But NATO has always been a part of this entire project. And then coming back to twenty nineteen, this was Violetta Bulch, the EU Transport Commissioner at the time. But let me now come back to my main topic. The Action Plan on Military Mobility. This was adopted at the end of March by the European Commission and the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, and she said it was developed in the context of our president's commitment during his State of the Union speech in September twenty seventeen to have a full fledged defense union in place by twenty twenty five. So this has to be seen in this context. The EU has been stalled on many occasions in their efforts to get this defense union in place. And you know, if you think of all the various sub unions that they have in terms of banking union and monetary union and various other types of unions, this was just another one of those and so on. So let's bring the current High Representative, the so called Foreign Minister of the European Union on screen. And of course the Military Mobility Project was part of PESCO and led by the Netherlands, provides the right prog platform, he said, after the US, Canada and Norway joined last year. The UK's participation is yet another proof of the importance of this project. So the UK as part of this as well as we always said it would be, and so there we are. And now if you want to know the history of this, you have a look at this page on the UK column website on EU military unification. There's a full timeline here which describes the process that has built this infrastructure over the last lot of years, and actually about thirty or thirty five articles I think on this topic. So go and have a look at this, because it is absolutely key to appreciate that everything that we're seeing happening today and all the plans that are in place today have been being built over many, many years. And Charles, the point I would make here very strongly is that you know, we have been talking about this four years and I believe we're the only media organization in the UK that has been talking about the building of the European Defense Union and the implications that has for putting pressure on Russia. It certainly has never been discussed in the mainstream media at any level of detail. So that is a pretty unique topic in the UK for British media at least it is I hope that does two things which festivals confirm to people who listen to and What's UK Column that they're doing the right thing by following because exactly as you say. This has received no coverage at all. I think also it serves as a good reminder that these sorts of things to coordinate to achieve that degree of sort of willingness to cooperate and the rest of it does take an awfully long time. But also it requires on the information side of it, it requires a very cohesive narrative to keep effectively telling everybody that Russia is a threat, that Russia intends to do this regardless of what Russia actually does or says. And I think that's the other main thing to draw out of this is the ground that can be gained, perhaps not literally, but what can be done with just the suggestion of something happening or indeed not happening. Yes, and thank you, Charles. Now, Vanessa, let's come back to you and Well another attack by Israel and Syria. Yes, actually the third attack in well may coming into June, but this one is significant and bearing in mind, of course, as we've talked about the potential e escalation against Lebanon, and of course any war against Lebanon will definitely bring Syria into the prey. But this was in the early hours of the morning. I think it was twelve twenty on the third of June, Israeli warplanes using Jordanian airspace and then the airspace over the illegal US military base in Altana, which is sheaded and gray there on the border with Jordan. They entered at very low altitude to avoid radar detection to the southeast of Aleppo City in the north of Syria. There and fired I think it was thirteen missiles hitting six targets to the north of Alpo city itself in an area there called Rayan, which included the destruction of civilian infrastructure and if we can just move on, I actually really wrote an account of what happened at my sub stack. Fifteen people were injured, the majority of those were civilians. Seventeen were killed, and that included another senior Iranian IRGC commander, an advisor to Syria, Hajsited Abya, who was buried in Damascus day after. Now, of course, the Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has said that this is a flagrant violation of our country's sovereignty. We will not stand idly by as the Israeli regime continues to carry out such reckless and deadly attacks. Moscow also sort of gravely condemned the attack, as it always does, saying of course that it will destroy regional stability, as it does. And so I think, you know, what we've seen is, certainly since the beginning of May, we've seen another increase in Israeli activity and targeting areas in Syria, but particularly trying to to decimate serious ability to defend itself. So in my opinion, you know, as it has been for some time, Israel is one trying to provoke Syria into an escalation, but also it's trying to destroy its defense and offense capability if there were to be an escalation, and if the plans for escalation, I think there were fifty thousand reservists pulled up today with the potential of increasing military activity in Rafa Gaza, but also in the northern occupied territories against Lebanon. So will wait and see. Okay, brilliant and Charles, let's come back to you then, and well, agriculture and seeds, thanks right, yes, and indeed their very significant part in food security, which of course we've talked about within the context of the United Kingdom very much this year. We're now going to look further, but very much with an eye on what's going on here. So we see a report from Relief Web about what they're calling Kenya's seed control battle, why small holder farmers want to share indigenous seeds. Now, this does go back for over the course of some years, but it's not going away. And Kenya farmers regarding what's happening, which is effectively the Seed Act taking away their ability to use indigenous seeds, they're talking about it as exploitation by multinational seed breeders, and another farmer saying that seed sharing is an old age tradition passed on from our forefathers. Unlike certified seeds, the use of indigenous seeds is cost effective as it does not require the use of chemical based inputs. And there's more on this going back a couple of years from Greenpeace, who have been very active on this, but they highlight course that ninety percent of the seeds planted in Kenya are from informal seed systems. I think we could take that as being a figure that would apply across all of Africa, if not much of the rest of the world. And critically here eighty percent of small holder farmers depend on informal seed systems, which include sharing seeds with other farmers. Denying these farmers the right to use their indigenous seeds is a theft of the biological resources which will translate to low food production production leading to food in security. And that really is the key to this. So this comes from in the case of Kenya, the twenty twelve Seeds and Plant Varieties Act. Now they talk about the theft from essentially their sort of indigenous practices. So the question is, therefore, who is conducting this theft, who is engaged in these sorts of operations and trying to disrupt a system that has been in place for a long time. Well, let me introduce you to the Billimlinda Gates Foundation Agricultural Innovations Gates AG one. It's called rather than listen to me describe it, I've got a short video from their website describing what it is that they're planning to do in Africa. Progress starts here, growth starts here, Resilience starts here. Small Holder farms and the seeds planted on them share a lot in common. Support them and they will thrive, equip them and they strengthen everything around them. And yet this potential is still largely unrealized. Bill and Melinda Gates Agricultural Innovations were set up to breage this gap with the mission of a nonprofit and the agility of a startup accelerator. We call ourselves gate Ague because agriculture is at the intersection of the most pressing issues affecting humanity today, and small holder farmers can be important agents of change all over the world if given the right tools and support. We use our unique convening power and patients capital to develop breakthrough crop transformations that reach and benefit small order farmers. Breakthroughs like improved photosynthesis, nitrogen fixation and carbon cycling. Improving plant biology alongside pest and disease resistance and weed control, offers the potential for solutions that are renewable, affordable, and skillable. Design, build, test, repeat. There is no time to lose. Join us. There. We are Gates one with a masterful display of saying one thing and really meaning another. But they're certainly not the only people who are in on this. It's of course something that's been considered by many other organizations with deep pockets and a desire to change the existing system of things. But we'll just look at the committed grant from the Gates Foundation. This goes back to twenty twelve. Of course, fifty six million boosts to increase food crops at Cambridge University have been given thirty five million dollars to boost production sustainability in Sub Saharan Africa. Indeed, the Rockefeller Foundation, of course have an alliance for a green revolution in Africa, and again the Rockefeller organization sorry foundation here specifically saying they support a uniquely African green revolution to improve small holder farm productivity while preserving the environment. Now, this is the thing, the incessant targeting of the small holder which has prompted the Scientific American to put forward what seems to be a completely reasonable point of view, which is that Bill Gates should stop telling Africans what kind of agriculture Africans need. That's going back to twenty twenty one. But why exactly is he and indeed the Rockefeller's or anybody else trying to do this? And this is from Mordor Intelligence, the latest on the projections in the world seed market. So we see at the moment twenty twenty four valued around seventy three billion dollars a year. That's projected to go up to one hundred billion dollars by twenty thirty. It might well be more than that now, that, of course, is why people are interested. The other thing that I should make clear here is that the type of seeds that they're talking about creating and selling are seeds that have in some way been modified, and therefore we heard earlier about the necessity for chemical inputs. It also means that they're likely to be sold as being drought resistant or pest resistant, but that in large part is going to mean that digestibility by the human body is going to be greatly inferior. We see also in the literature from African farmers saying that these sorts of seeds are going to be very unlikely to be suited to the African conditions and will require huge cost inputs. But in Norway, in Starbard, in Norway, you may be aware there is a seed vault there where effectively heirloom seeds that have not been adulterated are kept from all over the world in case of such a situation where there needs to be effectively the requirement to be able to start sort of seeds from scratch again. And you'd think therefore, given the hybrid nature of what we've been talking about, that these people would have nothing to do with it. But of course that's actually not the case. And here we see Bill Gates on LinkedIn saying that he's really enjoyed the virtual tour of the s Farbard Global Seed Vault. It seems slightly odd that he would be involved with that, but learn and behold back in two thousand and seven he actually gave it some money, So why would he be interested in that? And then just quickly to round off, I point towards the Genetic Technology Precision Breeding Act which came through in the United Kingdom in twenty twenty three, of course with the full sport of the NFU, but the reason I highlighted is that it's being talked about as a key tool for food security. And within the regulation section they talk about regulating the food onto the market produced from precision bread organisms. Now they make it sound like this regulation is effectively a restriction here saying that it cannot be done except in accordance with a marketing authorization. And finally that they impose requirements for the purpose of securing traceability in relation to food or feed now in the current in its current inseration. Of course, this is how it's looked at. It's as though it's to control this sort of food from going onto the market. It doesn't take much of a sea change before a decision that may be made could effectively turn it around, where in actual fact, this is the only food that is deemed suitable to be marketed. So I think that's something to be very wary of, particularly when one bears in mind what's been happening in Africa. Yes, and the other point of Charles about that legislation that needs to be mentioned is that while it says this is not genetic modification, they say that there is no introduction of or there is no foreign genetic material in the final organism. That of course isn't entirely true. They're allowed to introduce foreign genetic modification in order to bring about a genetic mutation. They then have to remove the foreign genetic modification afterwards. They claim that this is all about doing in the laboratory or in the factory, is what can be done through selective breeding over a much longer time skill. They're simply shortening the time skills. This is not entirely true, And that piece of legislation is something we've been talking about for quite some time and again needs to be an election issue in my opinion. But anyway, we'll talk a bit more about that extra Now let's have a look at this. This was in ap this morning in Bookina Faso. A growing number of chill are traumatized by war, and of course we're talking about Charles is talking about the Sahell. This is talking about the Sahell. I just want to remind everybody again about British interference in this part of the world. Not just British interference French and the US as well, but the French in the US are increasingly being kicked out of these parts of the world. But remind everybody of the Conflict, Security and Stability Fund. This is a big branch of money that the Foreign Come, Wealth and Development offers issues every year. And when you look at its full name rather than its acronym of CSSF, they have a common between the conflict, the word conflict and the word stability. That comma is in my opinion, absolutely misplaced, because this money is all about making conflict sustainable in these regions. So this is just one example, going back to twenty eighteen, to twenty twenty one five million pounds in this case to be used in Male, Nyger Chad and Brikina Faso. Now, if we look at Mali as an example, which is just north of Bikina Faso, we've seen that the government of Mali has been kicking out NGOs funded by France. But coming back to the CSSF, just have a look at the sort of number of projects is just in one year, all in this hell area. And of course everywhere you go, everywhere you see this money go, you see conflict and you see a disruption. This is relief. Well again, Charles already have them on the program. CSSF money going into stabilization of the stabilization CSSF program stabilization activities in Niger, in this case to support in support of the Nigeria and government stabilization strategies. This is a complete nonsense. So look at FCDO spending dot UK col dot org to get an idea of the amount of money that the FCDO does spend on these types of projects. Let's not forget that Tony Blair Institute for Global Change is absolutely excited about this region. Now I know I'm just going to finish off by showing this short video clip. I know you've seen this before, but just reminder of this. This is going back to twenty eighteen when both ersenla Vonderline, before she became President of the European Commission, was at the Munich Security Conference. Tony Blair was there as well, on the sidelines and speaking in completely different settings, but on the same day they made it seems like comments from the same script. Let's just remind ourselves first of all our collective defense. We are iron klet committed to NATO NATO of twenty nine, that is collective to defense Article five. But there are problems and issues where I do not see NATAL. But Europe has to be able to act that though this transatlantic alliance with America is extremely important and we need to maintain it. The best partnership is a partnership where we have our own capabilities that are also strong. I was talking about Africa. This is not a typical place for NATAL. We are very commuter to nd on other places, but Africa is a place where we need to be able to act as Europeans. For example, one of the things that my institute does is work in Africa, and at the moment We're particularly focused on the Sahell group of countries. That's that band of countries across the north part of Sub Saharan Africa where you've got exploding populations and dire poverty, radicalization and extremism. We may well face the next wave of migration and extremism from those countries. It makes perfect sense for Europe to have the military capability to help those countries with their security, and for that we created the European Defense Union to have a comprehensive approach with diplomacy, economic development, and the military means. So Vanessa very briefly, you know, CSSF money is going into these countries, these countries. Rather than bringing peace to these countries, it brings more conflict, it seems. And in the meantime, we've got the European Union seeing Africa as being its southern neighborhood, and we've got the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change seeing it as being its playground. We've got to feel sorry for the people on the receiving end of all this. Yeah, I mean, the css stuff, as I've always said, is basically there to secure perpetual war and instability, basically, and it's a fund which has zero trying farncy. Most people don't know even within Parliament where that money is being spent. And you know, for Tony Blair, I mean, I think what we're saying at the moment is rather than an arms race, we're saying a commodity race. It's a race to control as much of the world's commodities as possible, and of course Africa is high on the target list. Yes, okay, thank you for that. Now we're just going to end with a comment on the new currency which has been released in the United Kingdom, because of course King Charles Head is not on the money. If we can put that on screen and there it is, doesn't it look fetching? Now I realized this is possibly going to discourage the use of cash in this country, because who wants to walk around with his head in their pocket? But I would just say, you know, this is just the bug we've got to bear in the meantime until we can do something else and get somebody else in place of them. So please don't let it put you off using cash. We don't want to head into cash society. I think I would understand if it does cult reluctance, but we've got to fight these feelings and continue using cash, and we'll leave it there for today. No doubt we'll be talking a bit more about that and extra as well. Thanks to everyone for joining us today. Thanks to Vanessa and Charles for taking part. We'll see in a couple of minutes if you're a UK column member for some extra Otherwise, one pm tomorrow for the interview with Clive to Carl and we'll see one pm on Friday for another UK column news see then, Bye bye,