Latest / UK Column Radio / UK Column News — 13th March 2026

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UK Column News — 13th March 2026 · UK Column Radio

0:08
Speaker 1: Good afternoon.
0:09
Speaker 2: It's Friday, the thirteenth of March twenty twenty six, just
0:11
Speaker 2: after one o'clock. Welcome to UK column News. I'm your
0:13
Speaker 2: host Mike Robinson. Joining me by video link today are
0:16
Speaker 2: Patrick Henningson and Basil Valentine. Later in the program, Basil
0:20
Speaker 2: is going to be covering the use of British weapons
0:22
Speaker 2: in Iran, and it'll be taking a look at the
0:24
Speaker 2: Mandelson files. Patrick is going to be reporting on the
0:28
Speaker 2: oil panic and also on allegations X is exposing user
0:31
Speaker 2: data to Israeli intelligence. And I'm going to be reporting
0:34
Speaker 2: on huge job losses as companies roll at the use
0:38
Speaker 2: of AI within their organizations and also met police demands
0:42
Speaker 2: mobile phone manufacturers capitulate over access to mobile phones. But
0:48
Speaker 2: we're going to begin today with Iran. Now, this is
0:51
Speaker 2: day fourteen of the war and the question of British
0:54
Speaker 2: involvement is one that Charles Mallett has been highlighting over
0:57
Speaker 2: the last couple of weeks, and in an effort to
1:00
Speaker 2: answer that, Charles visited RAF Fairford yesterday and he sentence
1:04
Speaker 2: this report.
1:08
Speaker 3: Having reported on the escalation in Britain's contradictory defensive posture,
1:14
Speaker 3: I set off for Rifairford during the small hours of Thursday,
1:18
Speaker 3: the twelfth of March to find out for the UK
1:20
Speaker 3: column audience what exactly was going on with the United
1:25
Speaker 3: States Visiting Forces in their use of the air base.
1:30
Speaker 3: In particular, I wanted to substantiate mainstream media reporting of
1:35
Speaker 3: munitions being loaded onto B one bombers, and I wanted
1:39
Speaker 3: to get a sense of what impression, if any, the
1:42
Speaker 3: increased activity had had on the surrounding area in the
1:45
Speaker 3: local population. During the airfield from the north through the
1:49
Speaker 3: coming dawn, there was plenty of evidence of activity, in
1:53
Speaker 3: particular the arrival of an Atlas air flight part of
1:56
Speaker 3: the Civil Reserve air Fleet, moving personnel and equipment for
2:01
Speaker 3: the United States Visiting Forces, and also the presence of
2:04
Speaker 3: what appeared to be a drone taking up a surveillance
2:08
Speaker 3: overwatch position. Still very much all quiet, just on the
2:13
Speaker 3: perimeter of the airfield. It's half past six in the morning,
2:18
Speaker 3: just on the outskirts of a village called Marston Maize,
2:21
Speaker 3: and there's a dead end track that leads right to
2:23
Speaker 3: the fence which has been cordoned off with a police
2:27
Speaker 3: road closed sign. And interestingly, whilst out taking a photograph
2:33
Speaker 3: of that sign, a vehicle made its way through the cones,
2:37
Speaker 3: and it turned out to be a chap called Chris,
2:38
Speaker 3: who described himself as being from the press, who's obviously
2:41
Speaker 3: been here quite a bit over the last couple of weeks,
2:44
Speaker 3: and the view that we are so surprised in a
2:49
Speaker 3: way that perhaps we shouldn't be, that nobody seems to
2:52
Speaker 3: care what's going on. I made my way northeast along
2:56
Speaker 3: the track from Marston maze Within just a couple of minutes,
2:58
Speaker 3: several things became. First of all, within very easy viewing
3:03
Speaker 3: distance of the fence, there were several B one B
3:06
Speaker 3: bomber airframes on the tarmac. The second thing to note
3:10
Speaker 3: was how close some of the residential housing was not
3:13
Speaker 3: just to the perimeter fence of the airfield, but to
3:16
Speaker 3: the aircraft themselves. And I'll go on to explain the
3:19
Speaker 3: significance of that.
3:22
Speaker 4: I'm now on the fence, having gone down the dead
3:26
Speaker 4: end track from Marston Mazie, and this is what I find.
3:33
Speaker 4: B One's parked up here.
3:35
Speaker 5: Now.
3:37
Speaker 4: Interestingly, I've just had a chat with a photographer who
3:44
Speaker 4: has been coming down here for the last few days,
3:48
Speaker 4: and he's got no dog in the fight. In his
3:52
Speaker 4: own words, he's just here to photograph aircraft. But what
3:59
Speaker 4: was fascinating was to hear him say that last night
4:03
Speaker 4: he was down here at exactly this location, and the
4:08
Speaker 4: Americans drove a load of vehicles up and pointed the
4:13
Speaker 4: headlights towards the fence in order to try to stop
4:17
Speaker 4: people from being able to take effective photographs. So there's
4:24
Speaker 4: no doubt that there is activity going on here, which
4:28
Speaker 4: obviously to me now it's completely visible. I mean, I'm
4:30
Speaker 4: standing by the fence, there are no far from somebody
4:33
Speaker 4: just under the nose of that aircraft. There's no one around.
4:37
Speaker 4: Of course, what I should absolutely point out is that
4:40
Speaker 4: there are bombs on a carrier just behind that aircraft.
4:47
Speaker 4: Those are GBU thirty one joint direct attack munitions or
4:51
Speaker 4: jay dams, which have a two thousand pound so called
4:55
Speaker 4: bunker buster warhead. They're also within three hundred meters of
4:59
Speaker 4: residential which makes one consider the threat level as described
5:03
Speaker 4: by the Security Service, who say they have foiled twenty
5:07
Speaker 4: plots by Iranians within the last year, and one has
5:12
Speaker 4: to ask the question, does this sort of activity in
5:14
Speaker 4: such close proximity too residential houses pose a threat that
5:19
Speaker 4: has not yet been described or countered. I worked my
5:22
Speaker 4: way round the fence to the crash gate Atchempsford, where
5:25
Speaker 4: I was able to observe a couple of vehicles that
5:28
Speaker 4: looked like they were providing perimeter security, although on closer
5:31
Speaker 4: inspection three out of the four personnel were simply sitting
5:34
Speaker 4: in their vehicles on mobile telephones. But in a fairly
5:36
Speaker 4: short space of time, an American military police vehicle arrived
5:42
Speaker 4: and I moved off, having filmed what I wanted to film,
5:46
Speaker 4: only to find that when I next parked up on
5:48
Speaker 4: a grass verge, I had the flashing lights and the
5:51
Speaker 4: presence of Minister of Defense police four wheel drive vehicle
5:56
Speaker 4: mounting the curb and blocking my path, whereupon two who
6:01
Speaker 4: armed constables got out to have a word. Now it
6:03
Speaker 4: was a very cordial exchange, and they were simply interested
6:06
Speaker 4: in what I was doing. The thing that fell out
6:08
Speaker 4: of it was that it appeared very clear that they
6:11
Speaker 4: had been directed to act by the United States military.
6:16
Speaker 4: The day was not without comedy, because as we were
6:19
Speaker 4: having our exchange and understanding of exactly what it was
6:23
Speaker 4: I was doing, one of them noticed that the tread
6:26
Speaker 4: on my tire was insufficient for the use of the
6:30
Speaker 4: roads and I ended up having a police escort into
6:34
Speaker 4: a nearby garage, much to the amusement of those that
6:37
Speaker 4: worked there. There is absolutely no doubt about the level
6:40
Speaker 4: of involvement that we should attribute to the United Kingdom
6:45
Speaker 4: in what is now being described as the US Israel
6:49
Speaker 4: war against Iran. That would not be happening without the
6:52
Speaker 4: explicit support of not just the British government but also
6:57
Speaker 4: the Ministry of Defense personnel both civil and military. Very
7:03
Speaker 4: significant concern is the apparent ability of the United States
7:12
Speaker 4: visiting forces to be able to direct the operational activity
7:17
Speaker 4: of Ministry of Defense police that is well outside of
7:22
Speaker 4: the bounds of the relationship that should exist between those
7:26
Speaker 4: two organizations. Is Charles Mannett for UK column at raf Fairford.
7:34
Speaker 2: Patrick be interested to get your thoughts on that, because obviously,
7:39
Speaker 2: as he says, as Charles says, the US is absolutely
7:43
Speaker 2: using UK facilities to prosecute this war.
7:47
Speaker 5: It is and thank you Charles for that report. It's
7:51
Speaker 5: excellent to see the proof that this is actually happening.
7:56
Speaker 5: But the main point of this from a strategic point
7:58
Speaker 5: of view is reports suggests the United States has run
8:02
Speaker 5: out of what they call precision precision munitions and Trump himself,
8:08
Speaker 5: the President has publicly said we've run out of targets.
8:12
Speaker 5: So now they're using bunker busters, using high altitude gravity bombs,
8:18
Speaker 5: bunker busters to do what to search for targets? Well,
8:22
Speaker 5: invariably we know what that's going to lead to. Look
8:25
Speaker 5: at Lebanon, look at Gaza, more civilian casualties. So they're
8:30
Speaker 5: already complaining the intelligence was old, that's why the girls'
8:33
Speaker 5: school got hit. So how good is this so called
8:36
Speaker 5: targeting intelligence that the US have? Not very good? Probably,
8:41
Speaker 5: so this is just a terrible development that is underway.
8:48
Speaker 2: And date unfortunately, it looks like we've lost Basil. Just
8:51
Speaker 2: before I mentioned that we move on to the next thing, though,
8:54
Speaker 2: I'm going to just mention that Charles will join us
8:56
Speaker 2: an extra to discuss this further. So if you are
8:59
Speaker 2: you Calumn member, then please join us for that. But
9:03
Speaker 2: let's move on then to the question of dual use,
9:06
Speaker 2: because of course the question of UK made weapons being
9:09
Speaker 2: used to destroy well, in this case, this is the
9:14
Speaker 2: Campaign against the Arms Trade is asking the question where
9:18
Speaker 2: UK made weapons reportedly used to destroy girls primary school
9:23
Speaker 2: in Iran and in fact declassified. UK is asking the
9:28
Speaker 2: same question here, but to sort of dive into this
9:33
Speaker 2: a little bit more. I wanted to mention this situation
9:37
Speaker 2: because this is an Iranian activist group hackers named Handala,
9:43
Speaker 2: and now they have posted messages on both the hacked
9:46
Speaker 2: systems themselves but also on social media on social media
9:50
Speaker 2: click claiming credit for hacking Striker, which is a leading
9:56
Speaker 2: maker of medical devices. Now this happened early today morning.
10:00
Speaker 2: Striker has acknowledged the attack and called it severe. When
10:04
Speaker 2: they announced this to employees in emails and so on,
10:09
Speaker 2: Handala say this was partly in retaliation for the US
10:12
Speaker 2: bombing of the girls school in Iran, which occurred, as
10:15
Speaker 2: we know, on the first day of the war. And
10:19
Speaker 2: their statement said, we announced to the world that in
10:21
Speaker 2: retaliation for the brutal attack in the Menab school, and
10:24
Speaker 2: in response to ongoing cyber assaults on the infrastructure of
10:28
Speaker 2: the access of resistance, our major cyber operation has been
10:31
Speaker 2: executed with complete success. The Zionist rooted corporation Striker, one
10:36
Speaker 2: of the key arms of the global Zionist lobby and
10:39
Speaker 2: a central ring in the new Epstein chain, has been
10:44
Speaker 2: struck with an unprecedented blow. In this operation, over two
10:48
Speaker 2: hundred thousand systems, servers and mobile devices have been wiped
10:52
Speaker 2: and fifty terabytes of critical data has been extracted. A
10:57
Speaker 2: clear warning to all Zionist leaders and lobbies who hide
11:00
Speaker 2: behind concrete walls and closed windows. The era of Epstein
11:07
Speaker 2: rings and the demons of our time is over. So
11:10
Speaker 2: that was their statement. Now, the attack on a company
11:13
Speaker 2: that's perceived to be providing medical devices to hospitals has
11:17
Speaker 2: gone down like a lead balloon in the West. As
11:19
Speaker 2: we might imagine, there's been significant outrage had an attack
11:25
Speaker 2: on what is perceived to be a civilian target, and
11:28
Speaker 2: this of course follows attacks on data centers belonging to
11:30
Speaker 2: Amazon and Microsoft, also argued be by some to be
11:34
Speaker 2: crossing the line. But the problem here is that that
11:37
Speaker 2: line is now so blurred as to be non existent.
11:41
Speaker 2: Now we've mentioned the term dual use many times on
11:44
Speaker 2: the UK column News, and this is exactly the type
11:46
Speaker 2: of scenario that we've been warning about because as of
11:49
Speaker 2: the last decade or so, duel use is at the
11:53
Speaker 2: heart of British war doctrine, and the same goes for
11:55
Speaker 2: the EU and the United States. Now, to take a
11:58
Speaker 2: couple of quotes from the Starma regime, when they launched
12:02
Speaker 2: the National Security Review of the Defense Review. So if
12:05
Speaker 2: we just have a look at a couple of quotes
12:07
Speaker 2: from this, they said, sorry that a new eleven billion
12:13
Speaker 2: invest annual budget has been established under the NAD. This
12:17
Speaker 2: will fund kit for our frontline forces, which is affordable
12:20
Speaker 2: and groves our UK industrial base. Our new partnership with industry,
12:24
Speaker 2: and a decade of consistently rising defense spending will encourage
12:28
Speaker 2: more private finance to grow our world leading scale up
12:32
Speaker 2: and dual use tech companies. And they also said that
12:36
Speaker 2: today much of the best innovation is found in the
12:38
Speaker 2: private sector, while the increasing prevalence of duels technologies has
12:43
Speaker 2: widened the net of potential suppliers that can contribute to
12:46
Speaker 2: the defense to defense outcomes. So the inevitable outcome of
12:50
Speaker 2: this kind of thinking is that organizations and infrastructure which
12:54
Speaker 2: until now has been clearly civilian in nature, can no
12:58
Speaker 2: longer be claimed to be so. And so Patrick, first
13:01
Speaker 2: of all, what are your thoughts on this, because to
13:03
Speaker 2: my mind, this effectively potentially makes us all a form
13:07
Speaker 2: of human shield.
13:09
Speaker 5: It does. Indeed, when we saw, for instance, Iranian retaliation
13:14
Speaker 5: against US positions in the Gulf, they hit data centers,
13:18
Speaker 5: Microsoft Amazon, all of these companies that are basically openly
13:22
Speaker 5: dual use as it were, so and they're nested within
13:26
Speaker 5: commercial and civilian areas, so they're painting a target effectively.
13:32
Speaker 5: So yes, we all become part of this total warfare strategy,
13:35
Speaker 5: whether we opted in or not. And this is the
13:38
Speaker 5: great danger of mixing these things together. And somehow this
13:43
Speaker 5: doesn't seem to be a problem for our government leaders
13:46
Speaker 5: who are just so quick and busy signing contracts left,
13:50
Speaker 5: right and center with all of these transnational firms.
13:54
Speaker 2: Absolutely, Basil, glad to see you're back. What are your
13:58
Speaker 2: thoughts on this? And also what we have here is
14:01
Speaker 2: this report from the from the National talking about airports
14:05
Speaker 2: being used, and of course these are civilian airports that
14:08
Speaker 2: they're talking about, and specifically Prestwick.
14:11
Speaker 6: Yes, that's right. Mike John Swinney, the First Minister of Scotland,
14:17
Speaker 6: is seeking an urgent meeting with the government to discover
14:20
Speaker 6: the extent to which Presswick.
14:21
Speaker 1: Has been used.
14:22
Speaker 6: But even the BBC, using publicly available flight records, have
14:27
Speaker 6: said they've discovered that American heavy bombers were refueling at
14:32
Speaker 6: Prestwick at the end of February on their way to
14:36
Speaker 6: the Middle East to conduct strikes against Iran. And of
14:40
Speaker 6: course Scotland is also i believe the home of the
14:43
Speaker 6: glen Roths factory, but where components for the tomahawk are made.
14:48
Speaker 6: So two different ways there that Scotland is certainly against
14:53
Speaker 6: the will of its people, contributing to the illegal war
14:57
Speaker 6: on Iran. You know, this of course comes on top
15:01
Speaker 6: of the week when a League memo came out from
15:05
Speaker 6: the Prime Minister recommending overruling devolved governments, a memo that
15:11
Speaker 6: has been endorsed by Annasawa, the leader of the Scottish
15:15
Speaker 6: Labor Party. So you know, some considerable friction going on there.
15:21
Speaker 2: Thanks Basil Patrick, let's come to you then and just
15:24
Speaker 2: bring us up to date with the situation with the
15:27
Speaker 2: war itself.
15:27
Speaker 5: Then, well, we're saying the civilian casualties mount so far
15:33
Speaker 5: total number of dead Iranians is past the twelve hundred mark,
15:38
Speaker 5: one thy two hundred according to sources and official records
15:44
Speaker 5: that have been released to the public on that. So
15:47
Speaker 5: and now you have these major sort of events, obviously
15:50
Speaker 5: the rally for the appointing of the new Supreme Leader,
15:53
Speaker 5: the electing of the new Supreme Leader, but also could
15:56
Speaker 5: s Day. This is Jerusalem or Palestine Day. It's a
16:01
Speaker 5: huge event in Iran and people came out in the
16:04
Speaker 5: hundreds of thousands. I don't know that the numbers exactly,
16:07
Speaker 5: but we have a clip here, and notice on this
16:09
Speaker 5: clip what's happening. At the same time as all of
16:13
Speaker 5: these people are out in the streets in the capitol,
16:15
Speaker 5: bombs are dropping and they seem totally undeterred. It's an
16:20
Speaker 5: extraordinary site. We've got this if we can roll this clip, men,
16:51
Speaker 5: women and children on the street for the Palestinians in
16:56
Speaker 5: Tehran as the bombs are dropping. So that's what the
17:00
Speaker 5: US is up against. Uh So, no capitulation there, They're not.
17:07
Speaker 5: It's not falling apart. The government's not collapsing. Uh So.
17:10
Speaker 5: I guess it hasn't gone to plan so far for
17:13
Speaker 5: the US.
17:16
Speaker 2: Okay, so let's move on then to Trump himself.
17:20
Speaker 5: Well, this is Donald Trump is well, many have cautioned
17:24
Speaker 5: him not too prematurely declare victory. You don't have that,
17:30
Speaker 5: George W. Bush a moment on the aircraft carry with
17:33
Speaker 5: a mission accomplished banner behind you. But here is Donald
17:37
Speaker 5: Trump doing just that in front of a rally of
17:41
Speaker 5: loyal MAGA supporters watch this is that.
17:46
Speaker 7: A great name? Well, it's only good if you win,
17:50
Speaker 7: you know, you can only do And we've won.
17:52
Speaker 1: Let me tell it. We've won.
17:54
Speaker 6: You know, you'd never like to say too early you won.
17:57
Speaker 1: We won, We won the best in the first hour,
17:59
Speaker 1: it was over.
18:00
Speaker 7: We want But they gave me a list of names
18:03
Speaker 7: that genf sir, you could pick the name of, like, sir,
18:07
Speaker 7: I said, the name of what the name of the
18:10
Speaker 7: attack on a answer, and they gave me like twenty names,
18:14
Speaker 7: and I'm like falling asleep.
18:15
Speaker 6: I didn't like any of them.
18:16
Speaker 7: Then I see epic fury, I said, I like that name.
18:22
Speaker 3: I like that name.
18:28
Speaker 5: I mean, he's really becoming a parody of himself at
18:32
Speaker 5: this point. So at least there's a few people willing
18:35
Speaker 5: to go to the rallies and laugh at his jokes
18:38
Speaker 5: and cheer for him because Mike, the poll numbers don't
18:41
Speaker 5: look very good. If we look at the latest IPSOS
18:44
Speaker 5: poll we'll bring up on screen here, twenty seven percent
18:49
Speaker 5: of Americans approve of Trump's war on Iran. This is
18:53
Speaker 5: the lowest public approval for any war since the Vietnam War.
18:58
Speaker 5: I would say, historically speaking We're not really in a
19:01
Speaker 5: good place here for this. So whatever Trump believes he
19:05
Speaker 5: can extract in terms of some political capital out of this,
19:09
Speaker 5: it's just baffling, to be quite honest. But the main
19:13
Speaker 5: problem here, Mike is the straits of Hornmouse have been
19:16
Speaker 5: effectively closed for all intents and purposes, and this is
19:21
Speaker 5: a big problem for the United States. They're talking about
19:23
Speaker 5: is a great report up here. This is by Freddie Ponton.
19:27
Speaker 5: This shows all the details of Iran's navy. It's not
19:31
Speaker 5: a typical navy in a standard military sense. This is
19:36
Speaker 5: the besiege navy with tens of thousands of boats and
19:42
Speaker 5: up to thirty thousand potential volunteer marines and navals, officers
19:50
Speaker 5: and staff and people working in this. And so there's
19:53
Speaker 5: no way that Trump says they eliminated Iran's navy. It's
19:59
Speaker 5: mathematically possible. They couldn't have. They don't have enough munitions
20:03
Speaker 5: to have destroyed all of the different boats that Iran has.
20:07
Speaker 5: The details of this is a great, well researched report.
20:11
Speaker 5: We'll put the link links for this in the show
20:13
Speaker 5: post here. But they're talking about, you know, the press
20:17
Speaker 5: are pushing, they're pressing the Trump administration, Are you going
20:21
Speaker 5: to allow US naval boats to escort oil tankers through
20:25
Speaker 5: the straits of form Moose And they're saying, well, we're
20:27
Speaker 5: doing that, we're planning that, but we're not quite ready yet,
20:31
Speaker 5: not till the end of the month. So I mean,
20:33
Speaker 5: I want to see how they're going to actually pull
20:35
Speaker 5: this off, if they are able to do it at all.
20:38
Speaker 5: And I'm going to tell you by the end of March,
20:41
Speaker 5: the pressure on the global economy, on the price of oil,
20:45
Speaker 5: on inflation, especially in the United States, is going to
20:48
Speaker 5: be immense. If what we're seeing right now is any indication.
20:52
Speaker 1: This week, absolutely, Patrick.
20:55
Speaker 2: But the thing that strikes me is, you know, we've
20:58
Speaker 2: seen the far on the on the USS Gerald Ford
21:03
Speaker 2: over the last couple of days, and the question or
21:06
Speaker 2: the discussion about whether that was the result of some
21:09
Speaker 2: kind of attack or whether it was something else. Now
21:11
Speaker 2: the Defense or sorry, the War Department in the United
21:14
Speaker 2: States absolutely saying that that was afire in the laundry
21:18
Speaker 2: department and it was nothing to do with the war.
21:22
Speaker 2: But the fact of the matter is here, if they
21:24
Speaker 2: do attempt to run escorts through the streets of warmote Homers,
21:30
Speaker 2: they are simply providing targets and they're not going to
21:33
Speaker 2: win that.
21:35
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's just tiny. It's a tiny waterway we're talking about,
21:38
Speaker 5: you know, fifteen seventeen kilometers. We're talking about Iran having
21:42
Speaker 5: the high ground. The cliffs there are honeycombed, we're told
21:47
Speaker 5: with anti ship missiles as well, and it's only going
21:50
Speaker 5: to take a few shots fired and we're going to
21:53
Speaker 5: have a complete mayhem on our hands in you know,
21:56
Speaker 5: the images of a US frigate, smoke building out, billuing
22:01
Speaker 5: out the top and sinking in the straits of Formers.
22:04
Speaker 5: I can't see that being a very good public relations
22:07
Speaker 5: image for the United States and this president.
22:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, thanks for that.
22:12
Speaker 2: Now we're going to come back to oil prices in
22:14
Speaker 2: the second with Patrick, but before we get to that,
22:16
Speaker 2: let's come back to the issue of the United Kingdom
22:19
Speaker 2: and its involvement in this entire conflict. So this is
22:24
Speaker 2: a declassified article headlined the UK military and intelligence figures
22:28
Speaker 2: backing pro Israel regime change in Iran.
22:31
Speaker 1: An array of.
22:31
Speaker 2: Former British security officials are advising a US based group
22:35
Speaker 2: that is cheerleading the US Israel war on Iran.
22:38
Speaker 1: As a subhead.
22:39
Speaker 2: Now, the group that they're talking about is the is
22:42
Speaker 2: United Against Nuclear Iran. It's a US based neo conservative organization.
22:47
Speaker 2: It has close ties to the United States and Israeli
22:49
Speaker 2: intelligence and has long advocated for military action in Iran.
22:54
Speaker 2: Its leadership includes Jeb Bush who is the chair, and
22:58
Speaker 2: the Mark Wallace, a former Bush ambassador, who's the chief executive.
23:02
Speaker 2: And they have absolutely been supportive of the US Israeli
23:07
Speaker 2: strikes on Iran, and they talk They called Trump courageous
23:12
Speaker 2: for doing what he's done. Now, the funding of the
23:15
Speaker 2: group is secret, doesn't disclose its sources, and it's, as
23:20
Speaker 2: I say, consistently backed military action and so on. So
23:26
Speaker 2: the question is who is involved.
23:28
Speaker 5: Well.
23:28
Speaker 2: Their advisors include, of course Pete Hesith, this is the
23:34
Speaker 2: Secretary State for War. They also include an unnamed senior
23:39
Speaker 2: ci CIA Iran specialist and Mossad's former director of Intelligence
23:43
Speaker 2: and counter Terrorism chief. But the British figures on this
23:47
Speaker 2: include Sir Graham Lamb, the former director of UK Special
23:50
Speaker 2: Forces and Deputy Commander of US UK operations in Iraq.
23:54
Speaker 2: Pauline otherwise known as Baroness Neville Jones, former UK Secretory
23:59
Speaker 2: Secure Minister and chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee, Sir
24:03
Speaker 2: Ivor Roberts, former British ambassador and Foreign Office head of
24:07
Speaker 2: counter Terrorism until his death last year, Field Marshal Charles Guthrie,
24:13
Speaker 2: former UK military chief, and Tom Tugendhat, Conservative MP and
24:18
Speaker 2: former Security minister, and his role. Tugendhat's role involves providing
24:23
Speaker 2: what's described as strategic guidance on Iran's strategy. So who
24:30
Speaker 2: else is involved? Well, if we go back to previous advisors,
24:34
Speaker 2: it includes some names we might know, but Sir Richard
24:38
Speaker 2: Dearlove is one of course, and another one is Mayr Dagan,
24:43
Speaker 2: who is former Israeli intelligence So, Basil, what are your
24:47
Speaker 2: thoughts on this? It is a fantastic report from declassified,
24:50
Speaker 2: but what are your thoughts on this organization and the
24:53
Speaker 2: fact that Britain has so many advisors giving a direction, Well.
25:00
Speaker 6: It's indicative of the extent to which the British establishment
25:04
Speaker 6: is embedded with an aggressive Zionist posture. It's worth pointing
25:10
Speaker 6: out that this group is also advised by moss Ed's
25:12
Speaker 6: former Director of Intelligence and counter Terrorism Chief Zohar Palti,
25:17
Speaker 6: while the group's senior advisor, Draw Doro, served for seventeen
25:21
Speaker 6: years in Israel's government. As a senior analyst in the
25:24
Speaker 6: Prime Minister's office. But the point to make is that,
25:28
Speaker 6: as far as I know, and perhaps Patrick can correct
25:30
Speaker 6: me on this, the now murdered Iotollah Khamane explicitly stated
25:36
Speaker 6: many times that it was not Iran's intention to produce
25:41
Speaker 6: nuclear weapons because it's against their religion to indiscriminately kill
25:46
Speaker 6: so many civilians the inevitable consequence of using nuclear weapons.
25:52
Speaker 6: Iran of course signed the JCPOA under Barack Obama, which
25:58
Speaker 6: was ripped up by the first Trump administration, and it's
26:03
Speaker 6: open to an inspection. Of course, there's another country in
26:06
Speaker 6: the Middle East which has undeclared nuclear weapons. So in
26:09
Speaker 6: a way, this whole un thing is a phantom. Is
26:14
Speaker 6: created in order to destroy the Iranian state, not because
26:20
Speaker 6: it's actually concerned about a nuclear aron, given that the
26:24
Speaker 6: opportunities all the way along until a couple of weeks ago,
26:28
Speaker 6: have been for a purely peaceful Iranian nuclear program.
26:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, Patrick has a good point that Basil makes here,
26:39
Speaker 2: because I'd like to get your thoughts on this report,
26:44
Speaker 2: first of all, but also the fact that the UK
26:47
Speaker 2: narratives at the moment seems to be well. The Ali
26:51
Speaker 2: Humeni was you know, very moderate with respect and nuclear
26:55
Speaker 2: but this his son, the new head of state, is
26:59
Speaker 2: quite the opposite under triangle, ready to persuade us that
27:02
Speaker 2: he is extremely aggressively pro nuclear.
27:07
Speaker 5: Yeah. Then the important thing about this declassified report is
27:10
Speaker 5: you see these pressure groups, These pressure groups with staffed
27:14
Speaker 5: with Israeli intelligence, staffed with leading Israeli political figures, meld
27:18
Speaker 5: it in and mixed blended in with UK and US
27:24
Speaker 5: officials as well, high profile people. And these pressure groups
27:28
Speaker 5: have always existed. They're working during the JCPOA. This is
27:31
Speaker 5: how Trump attracted the attention of the Israeli lobby during
27:35
Speaker 5: the twenty sixteen presidential campaign because he came out and
27:39
Speaker 5: spoke and how we're going to tear up the JCPA.
27:42
Speaker 5: It's a terrible deal, it's a bad deal, Obama's dynatic, etc.
27:47
Speaker 5: The whole shtick. And why he did that, why Trump
27:50
Speaker 5: withdrew from that deal is because if that deal was
27:53
Speaker 5: in place, if the ran nuclear deal that Obama put
27:56
Speaker 5: in place was in place, there would be no pretext
28:00
Speaker 5: for the war that we're seeing right now. They withdrew
28:03
Speaker 5: in order to create the conditions or the excuse to
28:07
Speaker 5: wage war against Iran. That's exactly why it was done.
28:10
Speaker 5: It was done at the insistence of Israel. So you know,
28:14
Speaker 5: everything beside that is really academic.
28:17
Speaker 2: Yes, indeed, Well, look, let's come on to the issue
28:19
Speaker 2: of oil prices and let's bring this on screen because
28:23
Speaker 2: the Trump administration has had to well what have they
28:28
Speaker 2: done back on Is this an acknowledgment that the oil
28:31
Speaker 2: situations so dire that they've now relaxed the sanctions on
28:36
Speaker 2: the purchase of oil from Russia.
28:38
Speaker 1: I mean, this is something that they said they would
28:40
Speaker 1: never do.
28:41
Speaker 5: Patrick, Yeah, well they've done it. The extraordinary thing here,
28:45
Speaker 5: Mike is that Russia hasn't had to do anything. They've
28:47
Speaker 5: just had to sit back and wait for this situation
28:51
Speaker 5: in the Persian Gulf to continue to deteriorate. So absolutely incredible.
28:56
Speaker 5: And so this is I think, you know, the pendulum
28:59
Speaker 5: of jail politics here is now swinging before our eyes.
29:04
Speaker 5: And Donald Trump himself has made some crazy statements here.
29:09
Speaker 5: I don't know if we have this. This was on
29:10
Speaker 5: true Social and X. He's basically saying, the United States
29:13
Speaker 5: is the largest oil producer in the world by far,
29:17
Speaker 5: so when prices go up, we make a lot of money,
29:20
Speaker 5: says Trump. Make a lot of money and his number
29:24
Speaker 5: one competition at least well in the twenty twenty eight
29:27
Speaker 5: presidential race on the Democratic side, we'll be competing against
29:31
Speaker 5: the Republicans, says Gavin Newsom. This is his response, Who's
29:34
Speaker 5: the WII? Says Newsom, making quote a lot of money
29:38
Speaker 5: from skyrocketing gas prices, Donald Trump, it's definitely not the
29:43
Speaker 5: America struggling to pay the extra one point five billion
29:47
Speaker 5: at the pump this week, and prices in California right now,
29:51
Speaker 5: southern California we're looking at five dollars and forty cents
29:56
Speaker 5: per gallon. That's for unletted states. Southwest states where I'm
30:01
Speaker 5: at slightly cheaper between four thirty and four point fifty
30:06
Speaker 5: in Arizona right now this week. And in the East
30:09
Speaker 5: Coast much cheaper because of course the supply chains are
30:12
Speaker 5: much more buoyant and easy to get to the pump.
30:16
Speaker 5: On the East Coast, it's much cheaper relatively speaking. Nonetheless,
30:20
Speaker 5: it's going in this direction. So and we have this
30:23
Speaker 5: announcement this week. Everyone knew this was coming. One hundred
30:26
Speaker 5: dollars per barrel. There's so much pressure coming from the
30:29
Speaker 5: futures market on this. So the more we see reports
30:33
Speaker 5: that the straits are closed, the more you're going to
30:35
Speaker 5: see this upward pressure from the oil futures market here
30:40
Speaker 5: on this situation. So what's that going to mean in
30:44
Speaker 5: terms of the US Lots of inflation. So there's been
30:46
Speaker 5: a lot of lobbying to basically free up, to free
30:49
Speaker 5: up the oil reserves, the strategic reserves of these different countries. Here,
30:53
Speaker 5: the International Energy Agency has agreed to atleast four hundred
30:58
Speaker 5: million barrels of oiled to address this short supply in
31:02
Speaker 5: the market. Now, listen, this is being hailed in the
31:06
Speaker 5: US is some great victory. Okay, four hundred million barrels
31:10
Speaker 5: of oil. If we run the numbers on this, the
31:13
Speaker 5: shortfall from the closure of the straits for MOOSE is
31:16
Speaker 5: approximately eight million barrels per day. So really, what you're
31:21
Speaker 5: talking about there is a fifty days supply of strategic
31:25
Speaker 5: reserves from many different countries. So you have a situation
31:29
Speaker 5: after fifty days, all these countries will have depleted their
31:32
Speaker 5: strategic oil reserves and there's no guarantee. We don't know
31:36
Speaker 5: how long this crisis is going to last. Based on
31:39
Speaker 5: statement conflicting statements coming out of the White House on this,
31:43
Speaker 5: So it's a tobacco in the making, and it's going
31:47
Speaker 5: to mean we're going to have severe economic shocks and
31:52
Speaker 5: repercussions from this here. But again we'll go back to
31:56
Speaker 5: the times of India. Here, US waiver puts nineteen million
32:00
Speaker 5: barrels of Russian oil back onto the market for India.
32:05
Speaker 5: So there's a lot of pressure has been put in
32:07
Speaker 5: the last year on India to stop buying Russian oil.
32:10
Speaker 5: And as you know, they're mixing the different oil products
32:13
Speaker 5: and doing sort of ghost shipments there with Russian oil.
32:17
Speaker 5: And India was heavily pressured by the US tariff threats
32:21
Speaker 5: by Trump et cetera. So now all of a sudden,
32:24
Speaker 5: it's the market's back open for Russian oil in India.
32:28
Speaker 5: So India and these countries like India, South Korea, Japan, China,
32:34
Speaker 5: they all rely on the Persian Gulf for a large percentage,
32:38
Speaker 5: if not the majority, of their oil. And not only that,
32:42
Speaker 5: we also have the LNG issue from Qatar that's hitting
32:46
Speaker 5: the European prices on this in terms of supply shortages.
32:50
Speaker 5: But guess who's got a bumper market mic for overpriced
32:54
Speaker 5: LNG into Europe. Well, the United States of America. So
32:59
Speaker 5: that's Trump's based big oil, big gas. They're very happy
33:03
Speaker 5: about all of this, but everybody else is going to
33:06
Speaker 5: be suffering. Russia is also doing very well. They're going
33:09
Speaker 5: to meet their balance of payments now probably over the
33:12
Speaker 5: next couple of.
33:12
Speaker 2: Months, indeed, And of course, as you say, it's going
33:16
Speaker 2: to be the rest of us that suffer from this
33:18
Speaker 2: because inflation is coming and it's not just patrick, it's
33:22
Speaker 2: not just oil prices. That's of course a massive input
33:26
Speaker 2: put cost into just about every area of the economy.
33:30
Speaker 2: But if we look at the future's prices on fertilizer,
33:32
Speaker 2: for example, this is going to be a massive input
33:34
Speaker 2: cost increase on the cost of food production. And of
33:37
Speaker 2: course farmers aren't going to get the prices that they
33:40
Speaker 2: need to cover the cost of that fertilizer, so we're
33:43
Speaker 2: going to see even more pressure on the farming industry,
33:46
Speaker 2: which is probably why we're seeing that the Food Standards
33:52
Speaker 2: Agency in the UK lauding factory grown food an insects today.
33:58
Speaker 2: They've just released a new report. So this is going
34:01
Speaker 2: to be massive for everybody's pockets in the nulti distant future.
34:05
Speaker 5: Well, I guess ASDA can start restocking the cricket flower
34:09
Speaker 5: shelves after that whole product line failed over the last
34:13
Speaker 5: couple of years. Absolutely wonderful. So not only food prices
34:17
Speaker 5: might inflation, but food shortages as a result of that.
34:22
Speaker 5: This is serious and we don't see any serious commentary
34:26
Speaker 5: coming from our political leaders on this issue. Why is
34:29
Speaker 5: that complete silence or complete crickets? No pun intended?
34:34
Speaker 1: The clipund was intended, But okay, well done.
34:37
Speaker 2: But let's move on answer the question of false flag
34:40
Speaker 2: because this is something that we've been talking about since
34:42
Speaker 2: this conflict began.
34:44
Speaker 1: What's the latest, Well.
34:46
Speaker 5: Here's all the rage. It's just a typical report here
34:49
Speaker 5: from the Blaze, Glenn Beck's media outlet. So they're all
34:52
Speaker 5: talking about sleeper cells. Sleeper cells in America. This is
34:56
Speaker 5: dominating the headlines on Fox and other networks in America,
35:01
Speaker 5: leaked intelligence warrens of Iran's potential revenge plot, unleashing terror
35:06
Speaker 5: on US soil. So there's so many of these, and
35:10
Speaker 5: the crazy ones are coming over the Mexican border, Iranian
35:14
Speaker 5: operations and cells coming there as well, So it just
35:17
Speaker 5: gets crazier and crazier. But here's the main one, and
35:20
Speaker 5: this was run by the New York Post was front
35:23
Speaker 5: running this. This story is absolutely incredible. So top US
35:27
Speaker 5: drone expert says Iran could make deadly California strike any moment.
35:32
Speaker 5: Now I'm looking at this, Mike, and I'm like, how
35:36
Speaker 5: where is this coming from? This is from a special
35:38
Speaker 5: report from the FBI. But if you actually look at
35:42
Speaker 5: the details of this, and we'll bring this back up
35:45
Speaker 5: on screen here, and what are they saying here, Well,
35:47
Speaker 5: they're saying that recently acquired information that as of early
35:52
Speaker 5: February twenty twenty six, Iran is allegedly aspired to conduct
35:58
Speaker 5: surprise attacks or venge attacks or but wait a minute,
36:02
Speaker 5: this predates the actual war, and the war broke out
36:06
Speaker 5: on February twenty eighth, if I'm not mistaken, So they're
36:09
Speaker 5: talking about prior to that. So this thing does not
36:13
Speaker 5: add up whatsoever. And a lot of their problems with
36:16
Speaker 5: the intelligence right now with the US is they're being
36:19
Speaker 5: exclusively fed and stovepiped intelligence from Israelis. The Israeli intelligence
36:26
Speaker 5: are flooding the zone of the US DHS and also
36:30
Speaker 5: in the FBI. And you wonder why you have all
36:33
Speaker 5: these absolutely rabid zion pro Zionists, pro Israeli Homeland security secretaries.
36:39
Speaker 5: Why would the Israeli lobby be so interested in being
36:44
Speaker 5: in hand picked homeland security as Christy Noam got sacked,
36:49
Speaker 5: and you've got the new Homeland Security which they's plucked
36:54
Speaker 5: out of Congress, who has been groomed by the Israeli
36:57
Speaker 5: lobby is since he came into office. And then you
37:00
Speaker 5: see reports like this pomping up. It really should be
37:04
Speaker 5: no coincidence here, And so we're saying, is this a
37:07
Speaker 5: false flag? It certainly looks like some kind of a
37:10
Speaker 5: bogus potential plot. If anything, the fear value in America
37:15
Speaker 5: will probably do the job on its own without even
37:18
Speaker 5: having to launch these mysterious drone attacks in California. I mean,
37:22
Speaker 5: what on earth? How? Why? But what's in southern California?
37:26
Speaker 5: But the largest Iranian diaspora community and pro monarchist community
37:32
Speaker 5: happened to be in Los Angeles, So I suppose that
37:36
Speaker 5: doesn't have anything to do with this. I'm joking actually,
37:40
Speaker 5: But anyway, so on from there, we have this report,
37:44
Speaker 5: which you can marry up to the previous report the
37:47
Speaker 5: US Army some drones have been stolen from Fort Campbell
37:51
Speaker 5: in Kentucky. How is that possible. They're offering up a
37:54
Speaker 5: giant reward, Mike of five thousand dollars for information of
37:58
Speaker 5: force stolen drones. I mean, how could something like that
38:01
Speaker 5: go missing from a secure facility. It's weird. So does
38:06
Speaker 5: this have anything to do with the previous story. We're
38:09
Speaker 5: just lining these up and joining the dots. Maybe maybe
38:13
Speaker 5: we're just being paranoid here, Mike, and there's nothing really
38:17
Speaker 5: to see. We should just move along.
38:19
Speaker 1: I guess, well we could move along.
38:22
Speaker 2: Let's move along to this then, because you know, the
38:25
Speaker 2: rhetoric from Trump just gets stronger and stronger, I suppose
38:30
Speaker 2: because and it even brings the world to sport in
38:33
Speaker 2: So the question is Iran going to be welcome at
38:36
Speaker 2: the World Cup? And well, Trump is saying the Iran
38:39
Speaker 2: national soccer team is welcome to the World Cup, but
38:42
Speaker 2: I really don't believe it's appropriate that they be there
38:44
Speaker 2: for their own life and safety. Thank you for your
38:47
Speaker 2: attention in this matter. I mean, that's clearly a direct threat.
38:52
Speaker 1: Patrick.
38:53
Speaker 5: So the host, the president of the country that's hosting
38:56
Speaker 5: the World Cup, is threatening a team qualified for the
39:01
Speaker 5: World Cup after launching an unprovoked, undeclared war of aggression
39:05
Speaker 5: against that country. Maybe we should think about sanctioning the
39:08
Speaker 5: United States. I mean, just imagine, Russia seems to be
39:12
Speaker 5: off the hook now, and why not move the US
39:15
Speaker 5: into that frame, and they should be banned from all
39:17
Speaker 5: international sporting competitions. I don't know, it's just an idea.
39:22
Speaker 1: Basil in the past.
39:23
Speaker 2: You have been twenty first century of our sporting correspondent,
39:26
Speaker 2: So what are your thoughts on this?
39:29
Speaker 1: Well, the World Cup.
39:30
Speaker 6: You know, it's supposed to be a joyful occasion where
39:33
Speaker 6: politics is put aside and the nations of our world
39:36
Speaker 6: come together in a spirit of fair competition, and you know,
39:41
Speaker 6: fans from different parts of the world all mixing and
39:44
Speaker 6: getting to know each other. So I mean, I think
39:46
Speaker 6: it actually can be a good thing. It also, of course,
39:50
Speaker 6: to some extent, reinforces the whole idea of the nation
39:54
Speaker 6: state and pride in one's own country, something that globalists
39:59
Speaker 6: are always keen to denigrate. But with respect to Iran,
40:03
Speaker 6: they've qualified for the competition, therefore they're fully entitled to
40:07
Speaker 6: be there. There's also speculation that some other countries might
40:10
Speaker 6: boycott the event because of the illegal attack on Iran.
40:15
Speaker 6: Imagine for a moment it was being held in Russia.
40:18
Speaker 6: As we know, every time Russia's special military operation is
40:23
Speaker 6: mentioned in the UK media, it's always described as unprovoked
40:28
Speaker 6: and illegal. This war is unprovoked and illegal. If the
40:34
Speaker 6: World Cup was in Russia this year, there would be
40:36
Speaker 6: our whole host of defections of boycotts. But of course
40:43
Speaker 6: the United States is different, isn't it, particularly when acting
40:46
Speaker 6: on Israel's behalf. But we could yet see some boycotts
40:50
Speaker 6: and I hate to have to say it, but in
40:52
Speaker 6: a way I hope so.
40:55
Speaker 1: Yes, indeed, thank you Bazil.
40:56
Speaker 2: Okay, let's move on then, and well, if you like
40:59
Speaker 2: what the UK does, we do need your ongoing support,
41:02
Speaker 2: so please have a look at the website, have a
41:05
Speaker 2: look at the options for helping us financially. Thank you
41:10
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41:12
Speaker 2: making a monthly donation or a donation of any kind.
41:16
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41:19
Speaker 2: program and everything else that you see that you like,
41:22
Speaker 2: because that helps us get around the censorship regime that
41:25
Speaker 2: we were all facing. And now tonight at seven pm,
41:29
Speaker 2: where Charles and I are speaking the Germ as usual.
41:32
Speaker 2: The title of the program tonight is Finding Beauty and
41:35
Speaker 2: Living Authentically, So join us at seven pm for that,
41:40
Speaker 2: and then the third part of a thousand words podcast,
41:44
Speaker 2: Jake is painting Doc Malick. Of course, third part of
41:47
Speaker 2: that is Remembers Only. That's on Sunday at seven pm.
41:51
Speaker 2: Do join us at seven on Sunday for that as well. Now,
41:55
Speaker 2: on Wednesday we mentioned that the Mandleson files were supposed
41:59
Speaker 2: to be released at twelve thirty, that they had not been.
42:04
Speaker 2: There was supposed to be a statemand in the heuse
42:07
Speaker 2: they were eventually released later in the day, and so
42:10
Speaker 2: we now have seen that they are pretty much nothing
42:13
Speaker 2: to get excited about. It really was nothing terribly surprising
42:16
Speaker 2: or unusual in those But Basil, what are your thoughts
42:21
Speaker 2: on what's been happening around that whole issue?
42:25
Speaker 6: Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we
42:29
Speaker 6: practice to deceive is, of course a famous proverb from
42:32
Speaker 6: Sir Walter Scott's epic poem Marmion, And all the way
42:36
Speaker 6: back in eighteen oh eight, he might have had Keir
42:38
Speaker 6: Starmer in mind, were there any standards in public life
42:42
Speaker 6: these days, or indeed already made alternative to the Prime
42:45
Speaker 6: Minister from within the ranks of the parliamentary Labor Party.
42:49
Speaker 6: Then he might well be gone by now, following the
42:52
Speaker 6: rail relations earlier this week than he knew more than
42:55
Speaker 6: he originally admitted about the Peter Mandelson situation, and indeed
42:59
Speaker 6: he may have misled the House of Commons. The leader
43:03
Speaker 6: of the Green Party has said that the files confirm
43:06
Speaker 6: Mandelsson's malign influence run through this Labor government. Starman knew
43:11
Speaker 6: exactly the choice he was making when he appointed him.
43:14
Speaker 6: He has to go. That call has been echoed by
43:17
Speaker 6: the Scottish Labor leader an Assawa and numerous other politicians.
43:22
Speaker 6: Starmer says the documents show what was known about the
43:26
Speaker 6: relationship with convicted text offender Jeffrey Epstein at the time
43:30
Speaker 6: of his appointment and that it quote led to further
43:33
Speaker 6: questions being asked. The Prime Minister said the exchange cannot
43:37
Speaker 6: be published yet as it forms part of the police investigation.
43:43
Speaker 6: Starmer could suffer further ministerial and administration resignations when the
43:49
Speaker 6: WhatsApp messages are published in the next tranche of Peter
43:53
Speaker 6: Mandelson files. According to senior government sources speaking to The Guardian,
44:00
Speaker 6: officials are bracing themselves for these upcoming releases, which are
44:04
Speaker 6: expected to include informal communications alongside the formal messages like
44:10
Speaker 6: those in the first batch. Starmer of course, apologized again
44:15
Speaker 6: yesterday over his handling of the appointment, saying it was
44:18
Speaker 6: me that made a mistake and it's me that makes
44:21
Speaker 6: the apology to the victims of Jeffrey Epstein, and I
44:26
Speaker 6: do that, But of course he hasn't apologized to the
44:31
Speaker 6: British people for making the appointment in the first place.
44:35
Speaker 6: We're still waiting for that. The disclosures of the WhatsApp
44:40
Speaker 6: messages are going to be examined by the Intelligence and
44:42
Speaker 6: Security Committee of MP's and peers, which will then judge
44:47
Speaker 6: which are safe to release on national security grounds, so
44:52
Speaker 6: we can expect some heavy redactions at that point, in
44:56
Speaker 6: a way that of course mirrors the redactions in the
44:58
Speaker 6: Epstein files themselves. So the question we have to ask
45:03
Speaker 6: as well, is out of a population of sixty million
45:05
Speaker 6: plus or whatever, why was it deemed necessary to home
45:10
Speaker 6: in on someone Peter Mandalsson known to carry such a
45:14
Speaker 6: massive reputational risk. And the answer, of course lies in
45:18
Speaker 6: Mandelsson's key roles in both labor together, and he's now
45:23
Speaker 6: defunct consultancy Global Council, which counted Pallenteer amongst their former clients.
45:30
Speaker 6: Now Labor MP Ian Burn got to the heart of
45:33
Speaker 6: the crisis in the Commons this week when he identified
45:37
Speaker 6: the clique at the top of the party and called
45:40
Speaker 6: on the Prime Minister and the General Secretary to launch
45:43
Speaker 6: an independent investigation into labor together. Well good luck with that. Ian.
45:51
Speaker 6: Also in the Commons this week, Norwich Labor m P
45:53
Speaker 6: Clive Lewis said the appointment reflected a wider rotten political culture,
45:58
Speaker 6: a thirty year project where proximity to wealth and power
46:03
Speaker 6: isn't a means to an end, it is the end goal.
46:07
Speaker 6: That's what Peter Mandelson represented, and the secretary of the
46:11
Speaker 6: Campaign Group of Labor MPs, Richard Bergen, asked how Mandelsson
46:15
Speaker 6: was even considered for the Washington job. It is because
46:19
Speaker 6: it suited the interests of a tiny faction in the
46:23
Speaker 6: Labor Party, he said, funded by big business which wanted
46:27
Speaker 6: Mandelsson at the heart of things in order to shift
46:30
Speaker 6: a labor government away from the agenda that a real
46:34
Speaker 6: labor government should have, and that, of course is exactly
46:39
Speaker 6: what's happened. It's worth remembering that Starmer was talking about
46:42
Speaker 6: renationalizing the water boards before coming to power and has
46:47
Speaker 6: since long since booted that idea into touch. Rgin went on,
46:52
Speaker 6: that is why Mandelsson was popular with these people, and
46:55
Speaker 6: that's why despite his despicable character, despite his greed and avarice,
46:59
Speaker 6: he is it put in that position now. Speaking of
47:04
Speaker 6: Mandelsson's avarice, Cabinet Office Minister Thomas Simons told Sky News yesterday,
47:11
Speaker 6: you can look at the documents. You can see on
47:13
Speaker 6: a value for money basis why the decision was made
47:17
Speaker 6: to pay Mandelsson seventy five thousand pounds as a settlement.
47:22
Speaker 6: Mandelson had originally requested five hundred and forty seven thousand pounds.
47:27
Speaker 6: That's his contract being paid up in full. And he
47:31
Speaker 6: went on to word that there was a risk of
47:33
Speaker 6: an employment tribunal, that Mandelson had made veil threats and
47:38
Speaker 6: take the government to an employment tribunal. I mean it
47:40
Speaker 6: sounds incredible when you think about it, isn't it. Mandelson
47:43
Speaker 6: has apparently denied intending to go down that route. Thomas
47:48
Speaker 6: Simons himself expressed more outrage over the payment and called
47:51
Speaker 6: for all the money to be donated to a victim's charity,
47:55
Speaker 6: Well watch this base, as they say, if you think
48:00
Speaker 6: Mandlson's going to handle the seventy five grand over Meanwhile,
48:03
Speaker 6: of course, one of Manilsson's former clients, Palenteers, come under
48:07
Speaker 6: renewed pressure, this time from medical charity Medact, which says
48:11
Speaker 6: that Palenteer's NHS contract opens the door to brig brother
48:16
Speaker 6: style data sharing that reform UK might use for a
48:20
Speaker 6: version of US immigration rates. Their report published yesterdays back
48:25
Speaker 6: by doctors, lawyers, patients and human rights groups from the
48:29
Speaker 6: No Palenteer in the NHS campaign, and has been sent
48:33
Speaker 6: to hospital trusts and integrated careboards nationwide. It was shared
48:38
Speaker 6: with The Guardian and the BMG. Of course, Palenteer, the
48:42
Speaker 6: data analytics company founded by Peter Teel and Alex Kart,
48:45
Speaker 6: both of whom are known to Epstein I, believe one
48:47
Speaker 6: of three hundred and thirty million pounds NHS contract to
48:50
Speaker 6: deliver the federated data platform. The UK government is urging
48:55
Speaker 6: health bodies to adapt this platform, which the Health Secretary
48:59
Speaker 6: Where's Treeting says will ensure the NHS is brought into
49:02
Speaker 6: the digital age. But if you'd like if you're like
49:05
Speaker 6: me and you'd like to see all Palenteer government contracts canceled.
49:10
Speaker 6: Then there is a petition online and I think we've
49:13
Speaker 6: got the slide for that thirty eight degrees stop Palenteer
49:18
Speaker 6: taking over our public services. And if you haven't signed
49:22
Speaker 6: that already, I would urge you to do so.
49:27
Speaker 1: Basil, thank you very much for that.
49:29
Speaker 2: Now let's just move on to the issue of job
49:32
Speaker 2: losses in AI, and well, here we've got an announcement
49:36
Speaker 2: from at Lassian. This is an important update to our team,
49:40
Speaker 2: apparently because at Lassian, the tech company is good to
49:44
Speaker 2: far sixteen hundred employees. In fact, they already have done
49:48
Speaker 2: that because of their want their desire to invest in
49:53
Speaker 2: artificial intelligence. They're not the only organization to have announced this.
49:58
Speaker 2: Oracle has announced already. The figure that I heard a
50:01
Speaker 2: few days ago was thirty thousand. Others are suggesting it
50:04
Speaker 2: could be as high as forty five thousand job losses
50:08
Speaker 2: as they attempt they're saying that this is in order
50:11
Speaker 2: to allow them to have the money to invest in
50:14
Speaker 2: AI for the next stage of their AI roll out.
50:17
Speaker 2: And Jack Dorsey's company block his company since he sold
50:22
Speaker 2: Twitter to Elon Musk has also decided that it is
50:28
Speaker 2: going to cut jobs in order to invest in AI apparently.
50:32
Speaker 2: So what are the AI companies saying about this, Well,
50:34
Speaker 2: here's Sam Oltman, who's accusing these corporations of these I
50:38
Speaker 2: suppose they're not much more than startups really, but anyway,
50:41
Speaker 2: they employ lots of people. Oracle is not the startup,
50:44
Speaker 2: of course, But they're accusing them of AI washing. So,
50:47
Speaker 2: in other words, using AI as the excuse for making
50:51
Speaker 2: layoffs that they otherwise would have made, which would perhaps
50:55
Speaker 2: have gone down very badly with their various investors and
50:58
Speaker 2: so on. So they're using AI as the mechanism that
51:02
Speaker 2: they can get away with the potential or at least
51:05
Speaker 2: turn the potential negative into a positive as far as
51:08
Speaker 2: the investors themselves are concerned. So what's the space, Because
51:13
Speaker 2: I believe that over the next year or two we're
51:16
Speaker 2: going to see much a greater degree of firings as
51:21
Speaker 2: a result of the rollout of AI if we allow
51:23
Speaker 2: it to go that way. Because every company of this
51:30
Speaker 2: type is desirous to remove themselves of the obligations that
51:34
Speaker 2: they have under the various employment legislations in various parts
51:37
Speaker 2: of the world, so they'd be delighted to hand that
51:40
Speaker 2: over to AI where they can.
51:42
Speaker 1: We'll see where that goes.
51:43
Speaker 2: I think they're going to massively overreach and find themselves
51:47
Speaker 2: in a bit of difficulty. But Patrick, let's come back
51:51
Speaker 2: to since we've mentioned Elon Musk and X just a
51:54
Speaker 2: second ago, what have they been up to with respect Israel?
52:00
Speaker 5: Well, AI washing by Sam Altman extraordinary. AI is giving
52:04
Speaker 5: AI a bad name, Mike, It's absolutely tragic. So this
52:10
Speaker 5: is a story that caught a lot of some of
52:13
Speaker 5: some people's attention, but not enough, not enough, And this
52:16
Speaker 5: is a This is one of the best tech reports
52:19
Speaker 5: on this story that and luckily we have published this
52:23
Speaker 5: at twenty first century wire dot com. Again, great work
52:26
Speaker 5: by Freddie ponton Musk and the verification trap exposing X
52:30
Speaker 5: users to Israeli intelligence. Now this is not a hyperbolic headline.
52:37
Speaker 5: If you look at the details of what happened here,
52:40
Speaker 5: it's extraordinary. Now, this was brought to the attention of
52:43
Speaker 5: Elon Musk at the time that why is he using
52:46
Speaker 5: an Israeli company linked to Israeli intelligence to do all
52:50
Speaker 5: of the biometric and ID verifications for X users? Why?
52:55
Speaker 5: And Musk's strange relationship with Autentics A shadowy Israeli identity
53:01
Speaker 5: verification company whose administrative credentials sat exposed on a public
53:06
Speaker 5: telegram channel for over a year. At the same time,
53:10
Speaker 5: X continued to mandate biometric data submission to this already
53:15
Speaker 5: compromised system. I mean, this is just unbelievable. So if
53:19
Speaker 5: people knew Mike and so the question is what did
53:22
Speaker 5: Elon Musk know and when did he know it? Because
53:25
Speaker 5: this is at least corporate negligence and maybe worse in fact,
53:30
Speaker 5: but the fact that he's so tightly wound with the
53:34
Speaker 5: State of Israel, with Benjamin Etannahu having had to do
53:38
Speaker 5: the sort of I guess a struggle session that he
53:42
Speaker 5: was pulled in to do after October seventh, and also
53:45
Speaker 5: to visit Auschwitz with Jewish leaders and so forth. That
53:48
Speaker 5: was all going on at the same time as this.
53:51
Speaker 5: And we'll bring this back up again. According to the
53:53
Speaker 5: cybersecurity from spider Silk and four or four media outlet
53:58
Speaker 5: good media outlet by the way, for for these types
54:01
Speaker 5: of stories, the chief security officer at Spidersolk discovered the
54:05
Speaker 5: exposed credentials belonging to the Authentics Network Operations Center had
54:10
Speaker 5: been harvested by Redline Infostellar malware in December twenty twenty
54:15
Speaker 5: two and posted on the Telegram channel, where they remained
54:18
Speaker 5: for a year. So what happened was, rather than address
54:22
Speaker 5: this story after the fact, Musk was just a loof,
54:26
Speaker 5: pretended to be a loof, totally avoided talking about it,
54:29
Speaker 5: and then quietly did a shift later to switch the
54:35
Speaker 5: identity verification job if you will, to stripe okay, Now,
54:40
Speaker 5: why did he even use this authentics when users brought
54:45
Speaker 5: it to his attention and was kind of an uproar
54:48
Speaker 5: early on. This was a time when Twitter became x okay,
54:53
Speaker 5: right around the same time when they did the rebrand.
54:56
Speaker 5: So I mean, what is going on here? I mean,
54:58
Speaker 5: to me, Mike, this is extraor extraordiny. I'd like to
55:01
Speaker 5: know your thoughts on it. But the links to Israeli
55:04
Speaker 5: intelligence in this firm, it's staffed with eighty two hundred
55:07
Speaker 5: veterans basically, Well.
55:09
Speaker 2: That is the key point, Patrick, because the problem is
55:13
Speaker 2: that as we're seeing this massive rollout of age verification
55:18
Speaker 2: right across the world. Originally, if you remember, driven by
55:21
Speaker 2: the Online Safety Act, but this is something that everybody
55:25
Speaker 2: is a bad wagon that everybody has jumped on. They
55:30
Speaker 2: are being unit eighty two hundred spawned venture capital funded
55:35
Speaker 2: companies are right at the heart of this, and we've
55:39
Speaker 2: got such a spread of them right across the tech
55:42
Speaker 2: industry that it's practically impossible to not be using one
55:47
Speaker 2: of these types of companies. And you know, Unit eighty
55:51
Speaker 2: two hundred with intelligence agency equivalent to the National Security
55:55
Speaker 2: Agency or the or GCHQ, except that they openly admits
56:02
Speaker 2: to being offensive cyber war experts as well as being
56:06
Speaker 2: defensive allegedly that the NSA and GCSQ might say that
56:12
Speaker 2: they are. But anyway, the point is they run an
56:15
Speaker 2: alumni network very similar to the type of thing that
56:18
Speaker 2: we've seen from other organizations like Common Purpose on a
56:21
Speaker 2: civilian level. But when you've got an alumni network operating
56:25
Speaker 2: that's setting up and spawning tech startups in Silicon Valley
56:29
Speaker 2: and other parts of the world and have effectively taken
56:32
Speaker 2: over the entire Western Internet, this is a problem, and
56:36
Speaker 2: it's something that I think people just have no awareness of,
56:40
Speaker 2: and so we like to see these types of exposures
56:44
Speaker 2: exposees of these types of situations as often as we can.
56:49
Speaker 5: Mike, there's one more aspect of this one that you
56:51
Speaker 5: need to realize as well. Think of all the pro
56:54
Speaker 5: Palestinian activists, Think of the people who live in Gaza,
56:58
Speaker 5: or who live in the West Bank, or just internationally
57:01
Speaker 5: journalists people like that who support the Palestinian cause or
57:04
Speaker 5: a critical of Israel. At some point in this story
57:08
Speaker 5: that we've just showed you all of their home addresses,
57:12
Speaker 5: their driving license, passports, biometric data is potentially being handled
57:18
Speaker 5: by a firm based in Israel and that are staffed
57:23
Speaker 5: with Israeli intelligence veterans or you know, former, Are they former?
57:28
Speaker 5: Are they present? Is there a difference at this point
57:31
Speaker 5: because we've made the same argument with all the CIA
57:34
Speaker 5: and NSA people that are staffing Meta and staffing Google
57:39
Speaker 5: and so forth. So that's that's that should concern people,
57:45
Speaker 5: especially since the Israeli intelligence are using this type of
57:48
Speaker 5: profiling to target journalists in Occupied Palestine and possibly in
57:54
Speaker 5: Lebanon as well. Extend that, you know, globally on this.
57:59
Speaker 5: That's basically what Elon Musk has opened up as user
58:02
Speaker 5: base too. I mean, the potential here for lawsuits is
58:06
Speaker 5: also quite quite massive. So maybe that's why he's avoiding
58:10
Speaker 5: talking about this in public.
58:12
Speaker 2: Indeed, no doubt we'll be talking about that an extra
58:15
Speaker 2: and a couple of minisiptis just end with this story then,
58:18
Speaker 2: because Metropolitan Police has pushed out a press release. Now
58:22
Speaker 2: this is citing the head of the Metropolitan Police and
58:26
Speaker 2: Mark Rowley, who some are describing as having thrown down
58:30
Speaker 2: the gauntlet to mobile phone industry and this is all
58:34
Speaker 2: about taking action over stolen mobile phones. Now, over the
58:37
Speaker 2: last year or so a couple of years, we have
58:40
Speaker 2: been seeing press coverage on the BBC in mainstream media
58:45
Speaker 2: showing video footage of mobile phones being stolen by children
58:49
Speaker 2: or young people on scooters and so on, and it's
58:54
Speaker 2: become a really big talking point over the last couple
58:56
Speaker 2: of years. And now we're beginning to understand why. He
59:00
Speaker 2: is claiming that phone companies are leaving customers at risk
59:04
Speaker 2: until they take action to make stolen devices quote unusable bricks.
59:10
Speaker 2: And he's talking about giving them a deadline of the
59:14
Speaker 2: first July and if they haven't done this by then,
59:17
Speaker 2: he will be asking the Home Office to legislate to
59:21
Speaker 2: force them to do this. Now, he was making these
59:24
Speaker 2: comments at the Phone Crime Conference in London, and he
59:29
Speaker 2: claims that he doesn't understand why tech giants haven't done
59:32
Speaker 2: more So, let's just have a look at the quote
59:34
Speaker 2: from him here. He said that while stolen phones remain
59:37
Speaker 2: viol sorry, while stolen phones remain valuable, this market will continue.
59:42
Speaker 2: Only manufacturers and operating systems can break this model at source.
59:47
Speaker 2: If by the end of June industry has not come
59:50
Speaker 2: forward in a genuinely serious, solutions focused way with concrete
59:53
Speaker 2: commitments that make stolen phones unusable anywhere in the world,
59:56
Speaker 2: the met will formally ask the government to legislate. But look,
1:00:00
Speaker 2: this is bad for us all for a number of reasons,
1:00:03
Speaker 2: and it's got nothing to do with keeping us all
1:00:05
Speaker 2: safe from having our phone stolen. This is a building
1:00:09
Speaker 2: on a building. What's effectively I legally mandated or certainly
1:00:13
Speaker 2: he wants it to be a legally mandated remote kill
1:00:16
Speaker 2: switch on every phone sold in the United Kingdom. It's
1:00:20
Speaker 2: going to grant the state the technical capability to disabled
1:00:23
Speaker 2: personal communications at any time. The same infrastructure that bricks
1:00:28
Speaker 2: the stolen phone could, into principle, be misused by authorities
1:00:32
Speaker 2: or demanded under legislation like the Investigator Powers Act for
1:00:36
Speaker 2: other purposes. And he said that for breaking after a theft,
1:00:43
Speaker 2: he's expecting that to be done within ninety minutes. But
1:00:46
Speaker 2: there'll be no due process, there's no independent verification of
1:00:49
Speaker 2: that step before a device would be permanently disabled. And
1:00:53
Speaker 2: in the current environment, we've got to ask what the
1:00:56
Speaker 2: risks are in this, and so I think this is
1:00:59
Speaker 2: something that should concern us all aside from the fact
1:01:02
Speaker 2: that what this would actually do is prevent any independent
1:01:07
Speaker 2: who put all the independent repair businesses out of business immediately,
1:01:13
Speaker 2: because one of the things that they're absolutely requiring is
1:01:17
Speaker 2: that only any repairs or any changes done to the
1:01:23
Speaker 2: system itself of a mobile phone would have to be
1:01:26
Speaker 2: done by the manufacturer, and that each chip would be
1:01:28
Speaker 2: actually coded to the specific device.
1:01:31
Speaker 1: So there's lots to.
1:01:32
Speaker 2: Talk about around this, but it is in the legislative
1:01:36
Speaker 2: environment that we're in at the moment, this is a
1:01:38
Speaker 2: dangerous slippery slope.
1:01:40
Speaker 1: To be joining.
1:01:41
Speaker 2: And we'll talk more about this an extra as well,
1:01:44
Speaker 2: but look, we're going to leave it there for today.
1:01:45
Speaker 2: I want to say thank you very much to Basil
1:01:47
Speaker 2: and to Patrick for contributions today and everybody that's been
1:01:51
Speaker 2: watching stay with us. If your UK CALN member Charles
1:01:54
Speaker 2: will be joining an extra to talk more about his
1:01:57
Speaker 2: experiences at r A F Fairford yesterday and Otherwise, don't
1:02:02
Speaker 2: forget GERM tonight at seven thousand words, podcasts at seven
1:02:06
Speaker 2: on Sunday, and we'll see one pm as usual on
1:02:08
Speaker 2: Monday for another UK COLN news see then have a
1:02:11
Speaker 2: great weekend.
1:02:12
Speaker 1: Bye bye,