Good afternoon. It's Friday the 13th of June
2025. Unlucky for just about all of us
as we're about to see just after 1:00.
And welcome to UK Column News. I'm your host Mike Robinson and
my Co host today in the studio is Patrick Hennings.
And welcome to the programme, Patrick.
Good to be with you, Mike. And journalist Mark Anderson
joins us by video link from the United States.
Now, later in the programme, Patrick and I will be speaking
to Human rights lawyer Arnold Devaley, who personally
witnessed the recent attempts by Russia to return Ukrainian dead
to Ukraine. And Mark will be bringing us the
latest on the Bilderberg Conference taking place as we
speak, as well as a related organisation many people haven't
heard of, and that's the Ditchley Foundation.
But we're obviously going to begin today's programme with
Israel's attack on Iran. Overnight, Israel claimed it was
targeting Islamic Revolutionary Guard targets in Tehran and then
much wider, including the Natanz nuclear enrichment plant.
Apparently they've also been targeting nuclear, civilian
nuclear facilities as well. Now, according to the Times of
Israel, it's believed that the chief of Iran's military and
senior nuclear scientists were eliminated as the term is used
in the IDF's opening strikes. Iran has so far confirmed at
least six of its nuclear scientists were killed,
including Farid Faridun Abasi, the former head of the Atomic
Energy Organisation of Iran. Now, Donald Trump took to Truth
Social to justify the attack and to warn, to warn Iran to come to
the table. And then in his post, Trump said
he gave Iran chance after chance.
But that quotes, no matter how hard they tried, no matter how
close they got, they just couldn't get it done.
Uh, so that's Trump's position. Patrick's going to have more on
Trump in a second. While the West is clearly deeply
happy with what has happened, Russia is less so.
Uh, Dmitry Peskov, uh, said that Russia is concerned by and
condemns the sharp escalation in tensions.
And in a statement to board members, Rafael Grossi, who's
from the IAEA, said, I've repeatedly stated that nuclear
facilities must never be attacked regardless of the
context or circumstances, as it could harm both people and the
environment. Such attacks of serious
implications for nuclear safety, security and safeguards, as well
as regional and international peace and security.
Netanyahu, for his part, took to the television screens and
declared that Israel is at A at a decisive point in its history.
Let's have a listen to a little bit of what he said.
Moments ago, Israel launched Operation Rising Lion, a
targeted military operation to roll back the Iranian threat to
Israel's very survival. This operation will continue for
as many days as it takes to remove this threat.
Now, As Prime Minister, I've made it clear time and again,
Israel will never allow those who call for our annihilation to
develop the means to achieve that goal.
Tonight, Israel backs those words with action.
We struck at the heart of Iran's nuclear enrichment programme.
We struck at the heart of Iran's nuclear weaponization programme.
We targeted Iran's main enrichment facility in Natanz.
We targeted Iran's leading nuclear scientists working on
the Iranian bomb. We also struck at the heart of
Iran's ballistic missile programme.
Now, of course, there was no evidence forthcoming for an
actual bomb, but nonetheless, what's clear there is it's not
over yet. There's much more to come in the
coming days. And the Netanyahu regime is
dying for Iran to strike back. And while Iran is apparently
launched a drone a drone strike so far, Israeli Defence Minister
Katz is clearly hoping for much more.
In preparation, he said that he has signed a special order
according to which a special state of emergency will be
imposed in what they call the home front throughout the entire
state of Israel and well the ID FS Homefront Command commands.
Speaker Tesler warned that in the coming few hours quotes we
could experience a significant attack from the east.
These conclude these could include heavy missiles and so
on. We're going to give far reaching
warnings, he said. And they said that the Homefront
Command had announced immediate changes to guidelines
prohibiting all educational activities, all gatherings and
attendance at workplaces, with the exception of essential
sectors. So just like the COVID lockdown,
they said, the public is required to follow the
guidelines published on the official Homefront Command
channel. And Netanyahu went on in his
speech to explain the objective of the operation, which is
regime change. This is what he had to say.
Yet in defending ourselves, we also defend others.
We defend our Arab neighbours. They too have suffered from
Iran's campaign of chaos and carnage.
Our actions against Iran's proxy Hezbollah led to the
establishment of a new government in Lebanon and the
collapse of Assad's murderous regime in Syria.
The peoples of those two countries now have a chance for
a different future, a better future.
So too do the brave people of Iran.
And I have a message for them. Our fight is not with you.
Our fight is with the brutal dictatorship that has oppressed
you for 46 years. I believe that the day of your
liberation is near. So regime change, absolutely.
But look, he he justified his actions by ramping up the the
fear rhetoric. Nuclear terrorism is the threat
which the world faces. And that's pretty ironic since
the West and Israel seem to be to be the real nuclear terrorist
at this point. But here's what he had to say.
I want to assure the civilised world we will not let the
world's most dangerous regime get the world's most dangerous
weapons. And Iran plans to give those
weapons, nuclear weapons, to its terrorist proxies.
That would make the nightmare of nuclear terrorism all too real.
The increasing range of Iran's ballistic missiles would bring
that nuclear nightmare to the cities of Europe and eventually
to America. So eventually to America that
Americans must be shaking. Oh yeah, yeah, we're going to
start a war over here to save you in America.
So everything he said was a lie. In each one of those clips, he's
talking about the civilised world and he's saying Iran's the
world most world's most dangerous regime.
He is in the in the International Criminal Court
indictment for crimes against humanity.
His country's in the international courts of justice
for genocide. This is Israel is, if you want
to go by the book legally. Israel is the world's most
dangerous and uncivilised nation right now in the world.
That's not me saying it. Those are the legal scholars.
And finally, on Netanyahu's statement, he cited the lessons
of the Second World War, invoking the Holocaust, which
remains the justification for every appalling action of the
Israeli regime, it seems. But he went further, also
invoking the Bible in what at first glance might look like him
directly addressing the Christian world.
Let's have a listen. After that war, the Jewish
people and the Jewish state vowed never again.
Well, never again is now. Today, Israel has shown that we
have learned the lessons of history.
When enemies vow to destroy you, believe them.
When enemies build weapons of mass death, stop them.
As the Bible teaches us, when someone comes to kill you, rise
and act first. This is exactly what Israel has
done. Today.
We have risen like lions to defend ourselves.
I mean, I think we can all agree that that is pretty far from
being a Christian message. Well, there's no evidence that
Iran was building a bomb, first of all, and never again is
happening in Gaza at the hands of Israel.
What do you say? Rise and strike first, as I
already said, Well, this is basically straight off of the
motto of the Israeli intelligence services, rise and
kill first. This book by Ronan Bergman, who
is a top sort of, you could say a court scribe of the Mossad in
the Israeli security state. But nonetheless, this is
excellent book which is published a few years ago and I
do recommend people at least take a look at it or at least
read the Cliff notes on that. Well, look, we we mentioned
Trump earlier, but what, what's your thoughts on it, on his
position? The question, Mike, is what did
he know and when T know it, because the the the line the US
is selling at the moment is well, this was wasn't us.
We weren't involved. This was all Israel.
They went on their own, Trump said.
I tried to warn them, but they wouldn't listen.
The same old shtick, right? Well, let's put this up on on
the screen for a moment here. Trump told Netanyahu on Monday
not to attack Iran. That's on record.
Wall Street Journal, there's a number of admissions like this.
So that's interesting. So what did he know and when did
he know it here? Well, Daniel McAdams wanted to
know this. He's director of the Ron Paul
Institute. Then on this programme as well.
Press report stated 2 days ago that President Trump told
Netanyahu not to even think about attacking Iran before the
scheduled talks with the US. Sounds good, right?
If that was the the case with tonight's attack, Naniel
demonstrated what he thinks of the US, his largest and only
financial and military backer. He thinks we are his little
bioche. You could say I don't know the
French pronunciation. He thinks that Trump is his
bioche. And are we as Daniel McAdams?
I mean, this is what a lot of real conservatives are saying
today. So big, big debate.
So what did he know and when did he know?
How credible is this party line? Mike, the denials and
contradictions in the media today are just incredible.
BBC saying US says it was not involved in Israel's military
strikes down the BBC article. Mike.
They admit that Israel had notified Washington before, but
it's buried at the bottom of the article.
But look at the difference in the Reuters headline.
Israel notified Washington before the Iran strike, says
Israeli state broadcaster. That's also been corroborated by
someone. We'll show you in a minute.
But what does that say? That that means the United
States gave Israel the green light?
Am I? Am I interpreting this?
Well, unless the US intelligence agency, Defence Department, the
State Department aren't communicating with Trump.
Right, which is more scary, actually.
So what is it this president? Peace through strength.
I think it's weakness through war.
And this is the problem with Trump.
Now, here's one of his close confidence at Fox News, Bret
Baier from Special Report, kind of spilling the beans in a way
and kind of almost boasting about the whole situation.
Listen to this. Hey, Tres.
Yeah, I just spoke to President Trump.
One thing you know, the president was aware of Israel's
action before it. It happened.
There were no surprises here. But he gave me a quote.
He said Iran cannot have a nuclear bomb.
We're hoping to get back to the negotiating table.
We'll see. There are several people in
leadership in Iran that will not be coming back.
Now the president I know has spoken to.
It was the end of that was chilling.
Like there's some people in the Iran leadership that won't be
coming back. They're doing a victory lap in
the United States about the killing of top Iranian
officials, including decorated nuclear scientists.
There's no evidence that they're working on weapons, by the way.
And these are people that liaise with the International Atomic
Energy Agency on a regular basis, if I'm not mistaken.
We'll show you the gravity of that as well in a moment.
But you know the hypocrites democracy from Donald Trump.
Listen to this is Donald Trump back in 2016 when he was Larping
as a peace president and that that's how he got a lot of
votes. The anti war vote in the
original MAGA camp is a significant demographic and it
did help to bring Trump push him over the edge to victory not
once but twice. And here he is basically
lambasting Barack Obama in 2015 and 16 on the campaign trail.
Watch this. Our president will start a war
with Iran because he has absolutely no ability to
negotiate. He's weak and he's ineffective.
So the only way he figures that he's going to get re elected,
and as sure as you're sitting there, is to start a war with
Iran. Sure, as I'm sitting here.
So Obama can't negotiate, vote for me, I can negotiate.
What a hypocrite Donald Trump has turned out to be and what a
fraud of this. He's a peace president.
This is just if we we don't need any more lessons than what we
see in right in front of us. But here's the real story.
And now it gets interesting, doesn't it?
Times of Israel take a look at this report.
US helped lull Iran into the belief that no attack was
imminent here. And this is, again, the Israeli
press Look at this. Israeli sources say the attack
on our Duran was preceded by a deception operation that
included media, diplomatic components like Steve Witkoff
and both internal and external involving various actors.
That is incredibly damning, but it doesn't end there.
What caught my eye, Mike, is actually in the sidebar.
Let's take a closer look at this.
What is in the sidebar? Take a look at this covert
Mossad base in Iran activated drones overnight to hit missile
launchers, officials say, and also to take out possibly radar
positions and anti aircraft positions as well.
So what does this remind us of? What did we report on last
Friday? Well, that's that's actually the
second thing that reminds us of that, because the first thing
that reminds us of that is the fact that the attack happened
the day before there were supposed to be talks.
So in Ukraine, the attack happened the day before there
were supposed to be talks. In Iran, the attack happened the
day before, there was supposed to be talks.
And it looks like there was covert activity happening in
country in both cases. This is a bit of a coincidence.
And kill web, kill web technology like a reported on
last week, very similar to Operation Spider's web.
And who do they think the fingerprints are on that?
Well, the US and Britain were were fingered with and Israel,
some of the American commentators said Mossad might
have been involved in the Ukrainian operation against
Russia. That's on record.
There's a number of people that on various podcasts, some of the
top former intelligence officials have said that it's
interesting how it all matches up, doesn't it?
I find it to be incredibly interesting.
So let's take a look here. British and American
involvement. Are they militarily involved in
this attack? Yesterday?
They say they're not. Well, let's take a look at award
winning journalist Hala Jaber reporting here. two US planes
are basically taking off out of Qatar here.
This is Flight RADAR 24. It's open source data.
Take a closer look at that. What exactly?
What exactly are they in terms of planes?
US Air Force? So these would be collecting
data, surveillance, possibly radar data, possibly relaying it
to the Israelis. I would think that they would
be. I don't think they would be
passive on this operation. So does this count as being
involved? If that's the case, that's the
United States. What about Britain?
Probably the same I would guess. Well, she actually gave us some
data on that too. Royal Air Force, same place out
of Qatar, same base. There they are.
And there's the plane details there.
And again, this is open source data, which she did a very nice
job of collating for us. So much appreciated.
Great work as usual by Khalid Jaber, Mike.
So it is. There's so many things that have
just set up this event and teed it up.
Even shades of Iraq, You know, the whole WMD lies that we were
sold in in advance of the Iraq war, that Iraq was, you know,
inches away from a nuclear weapon.
We we're seeing the same things here, right with the atomic
International Atomic Energy Agency.
Well, let's let's talk about the International Atomic Energy
Agency then, because their Board of Governors behind closed doors
has voted in favour of a resolution declaring Iran and
breach of its non proliferation obligations.
To quote them, they say the board finds that that Iran's
many failures to uphold its obligations since 2019 to
provide the agency with full and timely cooperation regarding
undeclared nuclear material and activities at multiple
undeclared locations in Iran constitutes non compliance with
its obligations under the safeguards agreement with the
agency. Now this is what Reuters is
reporting the resolution is saying.
The vote according to Reuters was 19411 abstentions and three
votes against and the three votes against were Russia, China
and Burkina Faso. Now this Patrick to me is
fascinating because we know that the Organisation for Prohibition
of Chemical Weapons has been completely Co opted by western
regimes to promote western narratives as highlighted in
Pierce Robinson's series of articles on the UK column
website. And the the first question that
I have for you is, has the IAEA gone the same way then?
It does appear and there's actually evidence for this
actually university Tehran Mohamed Morandi Professor
Mohamed Randi who who's actually on the JCPOA Iran nuclear deal
media advisory team for the Iranian government in Vienna.
He had something to say about this.
There was an intelligence leak Mike, a few days before this
hugely Iran had got a hold of a bunch of material taken from
Israeli intelligence somehow and have made bits of it public and
it shows how Israel Co opted the IEA and they released some of
that information only a bit. And this was just a few days
ago. I don't believe in coincidences.
Watch this. As you know, there are a huge
amount of documents, and these are only bits and pieces that
they are publishing for the sake of the general public and also
because of the attempt by the United States and its European
partners to put pressure on Iran.
The Iranians, as you know quite well, they believed from many
years past that the International Atomic Energy
Agency was providing the Israeli regime with information about
our scientists in order for them to be able to assassinate those
scientists. And, and they were providing all
sorts of information in order to carry out sabotage as well by
the Americans and the Israeli regime.
Because all of the all of the operations carried out against
Iran are joint operations between the Americans and the
Israeli regime and often other countries in the West or even in
the region that cooperate so. So there we are.
And so let's put some meat on the bones on those accusations
just a couple of days ago. Well, here it is.
Take a look at this up on screen again.
This is the Cradle. Very good outlet here.
Of course, this was published in a number of different outlets
here. Leaked documents released by the
Iranian media agency show the International Atomic Energy
Agency chief Rafael Grossi has been fully coordinating with the
Israelis and carrying out its directives.
This is earth, earth shaking stuff.
I mean, he should he still be in charge of this organisation?
Well, let's take a look at that. So yeah, that's, that's the
claim there. Those are the accusations, Mike.
And you know what? We just have to go back a little
bit in time, just checking the Israeli press and what did I
find? Well, I found this Israelis
Prime Minister at the time, Naftali Bennett, meets with the
IAEA chief Grossi over Iran's nuclear activity.
So meeting in private with the Israeli leadership.
Israel has a nuclear weapons arsenal of 300 estimated
undeclared warheads. They're meeting in secret with
the International Atomic Energy Agency to not to talk about
Israel's nukes, but to talk about Iran's when the US
intelligence agency's latest assessment says Iran does not
have a nuclear bomb and they're not developing it.
So, I mean, I don't know what to say at this point, quite
frankly. So consider all of this, Mike.
And you know, the lessons are should you get into negotiations
with the United States? We've just given you 2 reasons
why you shouldn't over the last two weeks.
It's a completely impossible situation for countries like
Iran, Russia and China because, you know, at the end of the day,
if they militarise themselves, build up a defence capability
that is see that is presented by the West as being a, you know, a
threat to the West and they are the aggressor.
On the other hand, if they sit back and do nothing, they just
get bombed. So, you know, what are they
supposed to do? It's it's an impossible
situation for you. You can make the argument that
Iran should have acquired a nuclear weapon 10 years ago, 15
years ago, but bit the bullet back then and when the United
States was mired in Iraq and perhaps we wouldn't be even
having this conversation right now, quite frankly.
So so here, here's for the Russians.
This is a Russia Day was just yesterday.
Take a look at this up on screen.
There he is, Marco Rubio, Secretary of State.
And what did he have to say at? He gave us a great message to
the Russian people for Russia Day.
He said the Secretary of State took the opportunity to reaffirm
the United States desire for constructive engagement with the
Russian Federation to bring about a durable peace between
Russia and Ukraine. It's great.
And you know, you got plaudits in the Russian press for this.
Did would you trust Marco Rubio? No, not after what we've seen in
the last 24 hours and certainly not what we saw last week with
the Ukrainian attack on the Russian nuclear triad long range
bombers. So I mean, that's the thing.
That's the question. Do you trust the United States?
This is the big question. We put a we put a big fat
question mark up on screen there with that, with that graphic.
But so that's the that's the $100 million question, Mike, why
would you get into negotiations? So, you know, how do you see
this playing out over the next couple of days where we're going
to see a whole bunch of tit for tat retaliations or is it simply
just going to escalate and end up in a much broader regional
conflict? That's a very good question,
Mike. And we don't know Iran could
retaliate as we're talking right now in this live broadcast.
It could come immediately, it could come later.
We don't know for sure. What we do know is that they are
capable of mounting a pretty substantial conventional missile
attack, which they have done 2 times before.
They didn't launch True Promise 3IN response to Israel's counter
attack back in October, which they promised.
So that means the door is open for Iran to launch in their mind
anyway. True Promise 3 and 4, but we'll
see. How badly compromised or is the
Iranian military hierarchy? How badly compromised?
Are there sort of a radar defence and all the other
systems required to defend themselves and maybe even launch
an attack? We don't know for sure.
We can only wait and see. the United States says they will
defend Israel, so they allow Israel to attack.
Where's the UN Security Council going to be on this?
I mean, this is an act of war. And any country, as we said
before the programme, like any country that's willing to target
another country's nuclear reactors is willing to use
nuclear weapons on another country who doesn't have nuclear
weapons. That's Israel willing to do
that. And they've demonstrated that.
So talk about the most dangerous country in the world, Benjamin
Netanyahu. I don't think so.
Mark, let me welcome you to the programme, what have you.
If you've got any thoughts on that, let us know.
Let's start there. Have you got any thoughts on
what we just presented? Well, I think just to double
down on the sheer hypocrisy of Israel, which long has been
known to have a nuclear arsenal, to call everyone else a nuclear
threat. Even the US and Russia back in
the Cold War days, that they considered it stable to have
10,000 nukes each. You know, there was a balance of
power and that was considered acceptable.
And Iran can't even develop one. Even if they had one weapon,
they would have a sovereign right to develop that.
But evidently they don't have such weapons.
So I would just leave it at that.
OK. Thank you, Mark.
Now, of course, you're here to talk about the Bilderberg
meeting, which is taking place as we speak in Stockholm in
Sweden. What are your thoughts on it?
Well, that the big bad Bilderberg boys are back in
town. Everybody's favourite group from
which wars spring, rumours of wars, plans for wars, many
allege. Course they're meeting
Stockholm, Sweden, it's their 71st meeting in 71 years.
As I mentioned last week when I did a very brief preliminary, we
do have, of course, they release it at the last minute.
They're just so accommodating. We do have the list of their
topics, many of which are bluntly one word, but I guess we
have to go with it. Here's their detailed list.
Transatlantic relationship, then we have Ukraine, then U.S.
economy. Europe is another one.
Middle East that's kind of interesting right now.
Authoritarian access. Anybody that's not a globalist
is an authoritarian. Defence.
Innovation and resilience, Then AI deterrence and national
security, another one. Proliferation, then geopolitics
of energy and critical minerals, and finally depopulation and
migration. 11 topics in all. And as you see that some of
those are one word, you could literally drive a tank through
them and not even rub on the sides.
But anyway, we have a little bit of footage as I'm describing
some of the participants. Thanks to Dan Dix for Press for
Truth. He's quite a trooper out there.
Anyway, some of the key attendees, we, of course, we
have Albert Borla of Pfizer. He's becoming a fixture there at
Bilderberg. Good for him.
Some of the other interesting ones, there's about 140 from
North America and Europe. Like usual, we have Christopher
Donahue, the US commander for the US Army in Europe and
Africa. We also have, of course, Mathias
Doffner of Axel Springer. He's been working with AI
creators and promoters to to merge and bring connections
between the mass media cartel and AI.
There's a lot going on there. We see Peter Thiel being tailed
by Dan Dix here in that footage. As I'm speaking, a very, a very
militant behaviour as he exhibited there, just marching
forward without saying a word. But some of the others are
Michael Kratzios, director of the White House Office of
Science and Technology Policy, a Robert Lighthizer, who in
Trump's first term was his trade negotiator.
He's returning as a privateer, the Centre for American Trade.
We also have Samuel Papero, the commander of the US Indo Pacific
branch of the Army. In terms of the the country of
the UK, we have the member of Parliament, Jeremy Hunt, who's
there, the president of the Bundestag, Julia Klockner.
Some other interesting ones. Now the Bank for International
Settlements, the central Bank of the central banks, they don't
often have someone at Bilderberg, now they do.
Pablo Hernandez, General manager elect of the Bank for
International Settlements, rather interesting there.
And today is just an initial swipe at this.
I'll be doing a pretty in depth article and investigation of all
these connections, a group I'll be talking about a little later
today, the Ditchley Foundation. One of the connections there is
John Sowers, long time MA 6 now he's with Newbridge Advisory
Limited. He's at Bilderberg and he's
pretty high up at Ditchley now. An interesting one as well is
Jason Smith, a member of the US Congress.
Well, who cares about the Congressman from the 8th
District of Missouri? He's a Republican, pretty pro
Trump, but he happens to be chairman of the House Ways and
Means Committee, which writes all the tariff laws, trade
policy, as well as customs guidelines, customs regulations.
So he's a very key member of Congress.
It could be that they're trying to bend his ear or even bend his
arm on tariffs and trade policy to get things more aligned with
the globalist. I've got a call in to Jason
Smith's office. They haven't returned that call
yet. They're usually pretty slow
about those things, if they return them at all.
I might have to try email on that.
Sometimes they're more responsive.
Other than that, those are some of the big ones.
For now, you've got the usual sellouts at the media, although
there are fewer of the media legacy media people there than
usual. I mentioned Mr Doffner of Axel
Springer of there's also your Fariz Zakaria, of course.
He's been with CNNA long time and he's a think tanker.
With the CFR, you have Gideon Rachman of the Financial Times,
Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, some of the key ones
there, but not quite as many. Usually you have like 9 or 10,
maybe 11, possibly up to a dozen media sellouts who go in there
and collaborate with the globalist movement here, the
globalist Bilderbergers, but don't actually ever write about
it. So that's a lot of the goings on
some of the people there. And of course, they'll be much
more in the days and weeks ahead as I work on my major article
about this and look for all the ways that this intersects the
different topics, the different participants and whatnot.
So we'll leave it there for now, but much more connection wise
with Ditchley a little later on in today's show.
Thank you, Mark. Thank you very much for that.
I quite enjoyed Peter Thiel fleeing the cameraman with that
stern look on his face, like he didn't want anybody to know he
was there. He wasn't terribly.
Happy. Libertarian Peter.
Peter Thiel. Yes, indeed, Palantir, of
course. And yeah, we love them.
OK, now let's move on. If you like what the UK column
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Let's get round the algorithms because they're constantly in
the way. Now tonight at 7:00 PM, Jerome
is speaking to Charles and myself as usual for Friday, and
that has been another entertaining conversation.
So join us for that at 7:00 PM tonight in all the usual places.
ukcolumn.org/live, for example. And yesterday's 1:00 PM
interview, Brian speaking to Vicky Ash on her journeys from
abuse to her healing is on the website On Demand version.
If you can watch that, please do.
Another reminder of the Sounds Beautiful Festival, 26th and
29th of June in Wimborne, Dorset.
We will all be there. And if you haven't entered the
competition yet, the details are on screen for two free tickets
to that. Please do join for that as well
or take part in that as well. Patrick, you wanted to mention
the Freedom Flotilla. Yeah, just to give people
there's an update on this. Most of the people are back.
Three are stuck in Israel. These are the people that were
apprehended by the Israelis on the Madeleine sailboat this past
week. And because of the attack with
Iran, the three of them are still incarcerated.
The others have made it back home.
So more information, go to freedomflotilla.org.
And that is their ex Twitter profile right up there.
So all the information is there. Incredible effort by these
people and they've paid a a huge price for it, but also got a lot
of support for it as well. Now we did a great interview
with one of the organisers, which was yesterday, Doctor
Frank Romano and to give us updates as well as the Rema
Hassan, the European MEP from France that she was incarcerated
and detained by the Israelis as well.
So that's up there. YouTube tried their hardest to
block this. So please you people go to
YouTube and share this link, watch this, like it, like the
video as well. YouTube did not like like this
at all for some reason and probably because of the material
that we shared and presented and the testimonies that we gave on
this great live stream that we did just yesterday in fact.
And by the way, we do have some of our listeners, including
listeners and viewers of this show who are on the Global March
to Gaza, which is marching through the Sinai desert to the
Rafa border crossing. One of them in particular I've
been in touch with. And the Egyptian government has
cracked down hard. They've deported 170, I think
European participants in this by raiding hotels, believe it or
not. So some of the people have
managed to get out of Cairo and are making their way towards the
Rafah border crossing. So we'll give you updates on
that as soon as we get, as soon as we know more.
Yeah. Thank you, Patrick.
OK, Now let's move on to Ukraine.
And on Wednesday this week, the bodies of 1212 Ukrainian
soldiers were returned from Russia as part of an exchange
agreement. In return, Russia apparently
only received 27 bodies. That is of note, as we'll see in
a second. Now, Moscow's chief negotiator
said that that this followed an earlier attempt to do the same
thing on the 8th of June. But at that point, on the 8th of
June, Ukraine seemed to be refusing to take the 6000 bodies
that Russia was attempting to return.
Now, yesterday, Patrick and I spoke to international human
rights lawyer Arnold de Valle about what he witnessed on the
ground at that, at that attempted exchange.
Have a listen to this. On the issue of Ukraine, Mike,
there's a huge story. It's been I think massively
underreported and one of the reasons because the potential
for embarrassment is pretty amazing.
We'll bring up on screen here. Here's the president of Ukraine
at the moment, Vladimir Zelinsky.
And he is a little bit concerned of by a lot of things and this
latest story is not going to make life any easier for him.
And this is an article up at 21st Century wire.com.
Convoy of the the dead, Kiev's mendacious pretext to disown its
fallen soldiers. This is written by Arno Devilay
at 21st Century Wire. And we've got we've got some
video mic. And this is from on site at the
exchange. This was provided to us by Arno
Devilay. We'll roll this this clip of the
of the dead bodies in the back, the Russian refrigeration trucks
that Ukraine refused to accept. Let's go ahead and watch this.
No. So that was at the border near
in in the Briansk region of there.
And this up on screen will bring this as well.
This is a fellow here wearing a mask in front of this truck here
at the body exchange site. Actually, we've got this person
on the line live on the call with us right now from the
region. Is Arno Devil A joining us.
He is an international human rights lawyer and author and a
journalist joining us on the live link right now.
Arno, how are you? Hello, Patrick, and hello Mike.
How are you? This is incredible story, Arno.
So you were at the exchange site.
So what? Just describe us the scene of
what happened and then let's put this into context.
Apparently we're told you can correct us if we have any of the
details wrong, but Russia had 6000 Ukrainian soldiers that it
was a dead dead soldiers in an exchange which is part of the
Istanbul agreement. This is an important thing to
kick start peace negotiations. And for some reason the
Ukrainian government, Zelensky didn't want to know.
Budanov. I think the head of intelligence
said, oh, we'll take it sometime next week, but we're not sure.
Can you explain to us what went on here?
Go ahead, Arno. Yes.
Well, it all started, as you mentioned, in the renewal of
negotiations, quote out of court negotiation in Istanbul.
Why do I say quote out of court? Well, because the Ukrainian
delegation is de facto not allowed to negotiate anything
per presidential decree bearing on territories, NATO membership,
the size of the army post war Ukraine, not to mention any
issue related to Russian language as recognised by the
Ukrainian constitution. Right by the minority ethnic
Russians in Ukraine. The only thing they were allowed
to discuss with the Russians. And one can surmise that this
was a nod to Donald Trump, just to make sure that Donald Trump
would not be miffed by a complete lack of cooperation
from the Ukrainians was to discuss the issue of swapping
prisoners of wars. And so up to that point,
everything looks pretty dandy to the extent you know, they are
specific lists of prisoners. When it got dicey for Kiev is
when Russia, as a sign of good faith and unilaterally proposed,
offered to give back to Ukraine upward to 6000 of its fallen
soldiers. This was somewhat of a shock to
the Ukrainians. Why was it a shock?
For the simple reason that. By and large, the crews, the
people who are in the battlefield trying to dodge
drones and or artillery shells in order to recover the bodies
are Russian soldiers. The Ukrainians do not retrieve
their bodies. So this was actually a shock and
and I guess the number must have been also overwhelming.
And so the delegation are Kiev by extension, basically
stonewalled the Russians, but the silence basically implied
that they were not opposed to it.
And so on that basis, the Russians decided to basically
bring along to the border upward to 6000 soldiers so that four
trucks that you that you see if you have the pictures contained
about 1200 of those 6000 Orland Ukrainian soldiers.
The remaining being stored in a refrigerated train nearby.
And so the Russian side essentially instructed informed
their Ukrainians counterpart that they would be really ready
to proceed with the transfer. This was last Sunday.
And so we were somewhat notice put on the notice by the Russian
Ministry of Defence to get ourself in the brilliance Regent
so we could document the transfer of of fallen soldiers
to Ukraine. And incidentally, also the
retrieval by Russia of its own fallen soldiers, an aspect that
I will touch on later on. And by the time we got there,
essentially nothing happened and was dead silence.
And so the, the officer in charge of the transfer
essentially attempted to get the Ukrainians to commit to some
kind of promise to come and retrieve their their, their
fallen. And basically it was met with
complete silence. And obviously after a while we
understood what the configuration was to be like.
And so we left. Not without, you know, of
course, filming some of the corpses, which you have to
understand for some of them, if not most of them, are extremely
damaged. They've been left sometimes days
at a time in the kind of Norman's land between the two,
the two armies exposed to weather conditions, exposed to
rodents, exposed to stray raging dogs.
They have been, they have been by and large extremely damaged.
And it took the Russian, you know, all the latest, most
advanced forensic technology to identify some of those people.
And so to the extent there was only 1200, as it was first batch
of 1200, those were people that were listed, you know, the the
names, the ranks and were were provided to the Ukrainians.
So there was no, you know, attempted attempted.
This was no attempt to to somehow trap or amber rest to
Ukrainians. But, you know, the idea was also
to basically provide in accordance with the Geneva
Convention, you know, a proper Russians would say a Christian
burials to those people and to bring closure to the families.
And so to the extent this did not happen, the way it should
have happened, you know, was was somewhat of a of a of a shock.
But you know, one has to understand that the Ukrainians
obviously were surprised by by the the offer the Russians, not
least of which because of the sheer size of the of the batch.
And also because this implied that per Ukrainian law, they
would have to provide compensation, financial
compensation to the families. And it turns out that the monies
that were allocated to the Ukrainian authorities, often by
their Western curators, was dilapidated and disappeared in
the pockets of the dairy people who were supposed to be putting
it aside for such events. So this is this is the the, the
the central reason and of course last but not least the the the
potential for civil strife in Ukraine to the extent that
people would realise that despite what followed the
Murzlinski's has been stating IE that Ukraine suffered a mere
47,000 losses. This was a figure that he put
forward back in December 2020. On that point, on that point,
let's bring that to, we'll bring that up on the screen actually.
So this, this, this was the last sort of official statement, as
it were, from the government in Kiev here.
This is an article in Political Mike from December of 2024.
And you know what he's saying here.
And this is their sort of, you know, official number at the
time, 43,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed and 370,000
wounded. That compares with the alleged
600,000 Russian dead that they've reported for Russia or
that Russia's reported on the Ukrainian side.
So a huge disparity there. And on the compensation side,
and this is where the scandal gets interesting, there's a lot
of different estimations. I mean, this is from one source
we have from Ukrainian website saying that the compensation
ranges from 2, 170, two, 190,000 per family upwards of you know,
540,000. I mean that's on the high end.
The low end I've heard is 50,000 per family.
There's a lot of different estimations, but based on the
6000 dead that were to be exchanged here that Ukraine
didn't want, if you multiply 6000 times $50,000 US, that is
$300 million. And so a huge disparity there
in, in, in terms of budgets and what you said, Arno and we'll,
we'll come back to Arno on this. But so the, the bottom line,
Arno is there's an incentive here not to report the fallen.
There's a financial incentive, A, cause the money's gone and B,
they just don't want to, wouldn't want to pay it out
anyway. So they made this promise to
sell the war, to sell conscription, to sell
participation in this fight. And the families generally would
accept it if they knew there was a huge compensation payout at
the end. And now we see evidence that
Ukraine doesn't want to pay the compensation.
And that to me is a huge scandal because there's a financial
incentive to downplaying the casualty numbers and not
reporting official dead reporting them, quote, as
missing. Is that how Ukraine is managing
this? Yes, pretty much.
This is what's called a, an illusory promises.
Basically, you're trying to entice people to sign up.
I mean, we've seen those scenes of young people, you know, male
and less young people being literally snatched out on the
streets of Ukraine. But the, the idea initially was
that, yes, there would be a financial incentive for you to
sign up. And to the extent you were to
fall defending your country, your family would benefit from a
substantial financial compensation package.
And obviously, you know, Kiev is trying to have it's cake and eat
it too. And this is actually yes, the,
the, the, the central issue here that, and also it's also a
public relation disaster waiting to happen because some of the
Kiev senior officials have gone on record trying to minimise the
level of casualties. And if we go, if the 6000 is any
indication to go by and, and I basically suspect that the
Russians have a lot more in, in storage in their own morgues.
And that this would be interesting because since
Sunday, yesterday, Wednesday, you know, for actually for, for
chance, Boudanov kept his word. They, they, they actually
retrieved their dead and they provided the Russian with 27 of
their fallen. So you've got a ratio of one for
45, essentially 27 Russian bodies versus 12112 Ukrainian
bodies. That's a snapshot of this
conflict at the current time, at the T moment.
And it does not look remotely consistent with what Kiev has
been saying all along. So this is to me, this is a bomb
waiting to explore. Some people, military historians
and or observers of various conflict have often pointed out
to key battles as the turning point of the war.
I personally think this could be the, the, the which we call it
the the dam that once it's it's cracked open would more
basically, you know, put Kiev into such a defensive against
the wall position that this could really unravel, make
everything unravel for the Kiev regime.
Arno, a question for me on this. You were talking about
potentially 45 to one in terms of casualty numbers.
What I was interested to see if you had any insight on was, is
that because actually that's representative of what's
happening on the battlefield? Or is it the case that actually
the Russians are being much more careful about how they handle
the injured and the dead? On, on the, you know, of, of
Ukrainians and the Ukrainians are of Russians?
Is it, Is it? Perhaps the the Ukrainians is a
part of it, at least that the Ukrainians are treating the dead
with disrespect. Yes, that's actually a very good
question, Mike. The Ukrainians have known, not
been known to, you know, try to preserve human life by and
large, IE this war being characterised as a human meat
grinder. Whereas the Russians, you know,
and there's been a lot that's been reported about how when
Pregorjean was alive, you know, it would basically, you know,
get those convicts, you know, out in the battlefield.
And that would somehow be, you know, kind of used as a way to
reach military objectives in a way that could be sold to the
Russian public to the extent those people were, by and large,
people living and leading bad lines.
But the Russians, by and large, and that includes the Wagner
PMC, always took great care of making sure everybody was well
equipped and not sent into reckless military manoeuvres.
Whereas on the Ukrainian side, it's more, you know, since the
war is being waged more on the PR level, as long as they
somehow plug the proverbial holes within, you know, along
the front lines, it doesn't really matter whether or not
conscripts are being cared for to the same extent that you
would expect. And Arno, that is an excellent
point. In addition, Arno, we have the
German, the Germans were accepting some of the Ukrainian
debt into their, what I would probably think is a bigger, well
funded, better resourced morgue facility and they invoiced the
Ukrainian government. And our our understanding is
that the Ukrainian government didn't want to pay the invoice
to the German morgue. I mean, that came out this week
as well. Can just briefly quickly I want
to get on to the Red Cross, but quickly.
Can you verify if that's true or not?
Well, so far this story hasn't BeenVerified.
Those are the story that you're alluding to is a Polish language
publication on the Polish Telegram channel which alluded
to a Danish MP saying that essentially the bodies that
Russia held in which Ukraine was somewhat obligated to to attend
to would be shipped over to European based morgues.
But in order to do so, Kiev would have to basically pay for
the service, which they were not able to do.
And so this Danish MPs was basically saying, you know, to
the extent we're not getting a bet for the for the service,
maybe it's going to have to handle it.
So just to be. Kind of like yes, it remains to
be confirmed. OK, yeah.
And, and just just to just to confirm very important point,
Arno brought up all the names and this of of the Ukrainians
have been confirmed by Ukraine. The the list that Russia
provided was accepted and validated by Ukraine.
So it wasn't as if they had questions over whether these
were their soldiers or not. That was agreed upon then they
just refused to accept the body. Now, this isn't, this brings up
an interesting international law and and human rights dilemma,
which Arno will be able to briefly comment on before we go,
but we'll bring this up. And this was tweeted actually
Mike, in May 15th by the Ukrainian Red Cross committee of
all people and basically saying the Geneva Conventions preserve
our humanity during war. And there's two parts of this
list that I want to bring to our attention.
The 1st is the dead deserve dignity.
And again, this is the International Red Cross and here
we are. The other one is families know
the fate of missing loved ones. And so I think these are two
very pertinent, important points.
Briefly, Arnold, because we only have a a minute or two left, but
I thought that was interesting. And, and I believe you've also
contacted the Red Cross committee for comment on this
very issue. Have they replied to your query
yet? But go ahead briefly, Arnold.
Well, they haven't replied specifically, but obviously to
the extent they were present at the site yesterday, they took
this calling them out on on Twitter quite seriously.
And I called them out but once, but twice.
But what's interesting, and I believe that this is only the
beginning, this exchange yesterday set a precedent and to
the extent I think Russia has again, 10s of thousands more of
those bodies, this is going to become a situation where there's
no turning back. What would be the justification
now? Russia will continue providing A
detailed list of the the fallen Ukrainian soldiers that they
have in in their custody. And so this is again going to be
as time goes on, this this has opened a breach, so to speak in,
in this PR stick, you know, of Kiev and, and I I believe we are
going to be seeing more and more of those of those exchanges to
to Kiev's dismay. And and this basically brings
into focus also how the Ukrainian branch of the ICRC has
has somewhat been extremely non vehement vis a vis Kiev as far
as prompting them to seek their fallen and this unfortunately
does not look very good for them.
That's another scandal within the scandal, Arnold.
So just here's the article here. The convoy of the dead, Kiev's
mendacious pretext to disown its own fallen soldiers by Arnold
Devilay. Arnold, I want to thank you for
bringing us the story. Also for providing the video
clips as well. But we really appreciate it.
Thank you for coming on the UK column.
And as yet still no word from the Red Cross committee in
Ukraine. So if we do get any answer from
them, of course we'll share that with you on another programme.
Yes, OK. Thank you, Patrick now and thank
you to Arno as well for joining us once again.
Mark, let's come back to you. And well, Bilderberg, not the
only meeting taking place at the moment, Dutchie Foundation also
holding a meeting. What's going on with them?
The sense that some of us may have heard vaguely of the
Digitally Foundation, but it turns out they're quite busy
along the same ideological lines as Bilderberg and the Trilateral
Commission. They're the most open of the
three digitally being the most open trilateral in between
Bilderberg, the most secretive and a quick other footnote
Digitally, which is meeting right now as we speak, even
while Bilderberg is meeting in Sweden and digitally is meeting
as his slide shows, the 12th through the 14th of June.
So they actually started yesterday and their topic is
renewing democracy, how to strengthen democratic resilience
and out compete authoritarianism in Europe.
So another noted aspect of digitally is they they're a one
topic shop. Every time they meet is just one
topic, as opposed to the multiple topics of those other
two groups. And another quick footnote is
there's an American Digitally Foundation founded in 1964, the
original in the UK founded 1958, only four years after
Bilderberg, and the Canadian Digitally Foundation 1981.
Now there's a couple slides here that show their upcoming topics
because digitally, it turns out, meets 6, maybe 7 * a year in
September. The next topic is Indo Pacific
strategy deterrence in its diplomatic and economic context.
In October. Energy security and climate
action get this, making climate action politically deliverable.
So they, they are absolute religious believers in the
common climate change narrative. They've got to make it fit.
They've got to force fit this thing, a couple other programmes
this coming November. How can Europe pay for and
organise the defence it needs? A lot can be drawn from that.
And this coming December, just like they did a year ago, the
role of the new 4th estate in renewing democracy.
And what's interesting there, and this is one of the
highlights, is besides trying to make the climate change thing
work no matter what, these guys at Ditchley, many familiar
faces, some not so familiar, they believe that the legacy
media must be salvage. It must be revived,
resuscitated, whatever they can do, restored.
There's no room for actual real Free Press, real news
alternatives. They're going to move heaven and
earth. Maybe it's philanthropic
funding, maybe it's not. They're looking at all the
different models to try and salvage and resuscitate.
The slowly dying legacy media. So that's high in their agenda
in fact and we can show the the next slide.
Another thing different about Ditchley is they pretty much
unless otherwise announced, they meet at the same place and
that's the Ditchley Park Estate in Oxfordshire.
Not exactly a falling down shanty there that they that they
meet in some very, very amazing grounds are around that that
home. Anyway, looking ahead on that
media note, and they put a lot of emphasis on media.
This is this next slide in fact fits into that narrative.
As I mentioned, this coming December is just like last
December. And here's what they did last
December. The role of the 4th estate in
democracies. How should the news and
information ecosystem evolve to develop resilience and meet
audience needs in a turbulent political, technological and
commercial landscape? And this that that was last
December and then this past February was great British
growth. How do we take the U KS economy
forward in a period of geopolitical competition?
And I'll have some links in the show notes where people can read
more in depth because one thing about digitally is that they
they report much more after the fact in detail than Bilderberg
would ever think about and a little bit more than trilateral.
But one major announcement before we finish up just some
very brief miscellaneous things is Digitally is planning to run
an expanded media programme in the near future with generous
support from the MacArthur Foundation, a very noted
supporter of public television in the US.
This will be framed around 4 anchor events planned to take
place at Digitally London, also in New York and at Digitally
Park and in Germany. And so they're, they're really
expanding on a solidifying and expanding their support for the
the dominant media to keep their interests and their profits and
their plans into place. They don't want any actual
independent voices out there. And just to wind this up, the
director who shows up in pretty much all the listings, the
overall director of the Ditchley Foundation is a rather familiar
face. James Arroyo, previous director
for data at the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
And we'll move on from there and just go through some
miscellaneous things. Casimir Yost was 1 Bilderberg
connection from Bilderberg to Ditchley.
He's 1 of 32 of Ditchley's American branch members.
He was one of the six ever honorary American secretary
generals at Bilderberg. And he's also, of course, very
active at Ditchley. But Bilderberg abandoned that
position. There are no more honorary
American secretary generals there.
Then we also have within Ditchley's organisation, we have
the Council of Management. Members include BBC reporter
James Landale in the Council of Management, Robert Wills, an
apparent descendant of the founders to Ditchley, Glasgow
Foundation president Marjorie and Glasgow.
So they have 11 members and that group, the Council of Management
is going to meet in July, I believe July 16th.
Some other conflicts of interests and curiosities.
This is Steven Erlinger, the chief diplomatic correspondent
in Europe for The New York Times.
He's actually a member of the Ditchley Foundation.
Governors talk about a conflict of interest for reporters, and
they're having an annual meeting coming up the 24th of September.
Some others on that list include John Sowers, who's also at
Bilderberg. So that's another Ditchley
Bilderberg connection. And lastly, digitally just
opened up a New London pad, another London outlet and it is
at 1 Saint James Square and 110th of a mile away at 10 Saint
James Square is Chatham House itself.
So birds of a feather flock together, but this is another
group to keep on our radar from here on out guys.
So very interesting stuff I've. Been to 1 Saint James square.
I know, I know exactly where that is.
Very posh address. Yes, indeed, Thank you very much
for that. We will be reporting much more
on that I'm quite sure in the future.
Thank you, Mark, thank you Patrick.
Things kicking off again between Israel and Iran as we're on the
programme, undoubtedly we'd be talking about that an extra in a
couple of minutes time. So do join us if you're UK
column member. If you're not, please consider
joining because you're missing a lot.
But otherwise, have a great weekend and we'll be back at
1:00 PM on Monday as usual. Well, if you remember, see you
in a couple of minutes for extra.
See you then. Bye bye.