Good afternoon. It's Wednesday the 13th of
November 2024, just after 1:00. Welcome to UK column News.
I'm your host Mike Robinson. Joining me today, we have
Vanessa Bailey from Damascus as usual and Charles Mallett, who's
still in Hong Kong. Welcome to the program, both.
And Charles, we're going to get started off with farming and be
talking about the the upcoming. Well, can we call them protests
next week? But what have you got?
Thanks, Mike. Good afternoon.
Good afternoon, all. Yes, indeed, farming and the
recurring themes of funding and food security.
But we'll start with a clip from GB News recently, which has been
doing the rounds on social media.
Patrick Christies interviewing somebody called John Mcternan,
and we'll hear what he says that has caused quite so much
outrage. Well, personally in favour of
doing to to, you know, farmers want to go on the streets.
We can do to them what Margaret Thatcher did to the miners.
So just to be clear, Johnny, you would?
What beat them up? No, close.
This industry we could do with that.
So, OK, all right, so this got weird.
So you would do to do to farmers what Margaret Thatcher did to
miners, which was and you know. She.
Very heavy-handed police tactics followed by what?
Pushing them out of business. If people, if people, if, if
people are so upset that they want to go on the streets and
spray slurry on them, then we don't need the small farmers.
Now, before we examine what it is that he said, let's just look
at who John Mcternan is and the Institute for Government page
here describes him as a senior fellow with extensive experience
in government advising prime ministers around the world.
He was Tony Blair's director of political operations.
Now that should give people a clue as to why he said what he
did say. And of course, I think the point
to be made here is that within the context that he speaks, he
is absolutely right. On screen now is a diagram
showing all the major players in the food industry in the United
Kingdom. And the only reason that they
are able to do what they do is because we continue to buy this
stuff. So people who are up in arms or
opposing the globalist agenda need to consider this aspect of
it, probably in slightly more detail, before the comments of
people like John Mcternan can be rejected.
Of course, the point he makes is that small farms are indeed
entirely dispensable because there are bigger players there
who will conform to the model that suits not just their
industry, but also the government that is deciding
whether or not to work with them.
And for people still to be labouring under the
misapprehension that the government is there to support
small farms, I think need to think again.
Now just by way of a a case study, we'll just look at
Cargill, one of the big players, well, actually worldwide, but
really an American food business.
And I've highlighted the word successful there.
They make no mention of the fact that it would be beneficial if
the food that was produced was healthy for people, but also for
the environment. And just by to sort of reinforce
that point, the ingredients that they provide the other food
producers that they talk about proteins based on wheaten corns,
they're not actually wheaten corn and therefore not actually
food. As to the type of player that
we're dealing with, we go to World Grain dot com, who report
in 2023 that they were turning over $177 billion, which is
almost equivalent to the budget, the entire year's worth of
budget for the National Health Service that went down for the
current fiscal year to about 160 billion.
But the point here, or at least the question to ask, is why on
earth, given those statistics, would government be paying
attention to small farmers rather than these big industry
players with their absolutely enormous lobbying capability?
So to consider this in light of what's happened on the other
side of the Atlantic, there's been much speculation about
whether or not there's going to be any kind of push back against
these big corporate players. And we look at the words of
Congressman Thomas Massie, who has been touted as perhaps the
Secretary of State for agriculture in the United
States. He sent out a tweet in which he
says I stand ready and willing to help the president with any
part of his bold agenda to focus on the health and well-being of
Americans. But I have received no
commitments or offers from President Trump's team and any
discussion of the transition are premature.
Now, the reason I pulled Thomas Massie into this is because he
has been going to something called the Rogue Food Conference
for many years. He's tweeted about it here.
And he says today I'm coming out of the pantry.
I'll be at Joel Salatin's farm in Swoop, Virginia on May 17th
and 18th. That was this year.
And Joel Salatin, to those of you who follow the UK column
interviews, is somebody that I spoke to a couple of months ago
here with an interview called Let the Animals Do the Work.
And Salatin's philosophy is one in which effectively the the
sort of the four tenets are all addressed with the same model in
that farming can work well for the business, or at least that
farming can work as a profitable business.
It can work for the community, and it can provide healthy and
nutritious food for the consumer, but also benefit the
environment. And this is not something that
governments typically are choosing to embrace Sprite,
sorry, despite the protestations that they are going down the
regenerative agriculture route. Now all of these will be in the
show notes, but in addition to the Salatin interview, there is
a range of others from the UK columns stable, which indicates
exactly how well this can be done.
We've got John Cook here talking about his raw milk business
dealing directly with the consumer.
Angus Macintosh in South Africa doing effectively the same thing
whilst regenerating the landscape.
As well as Sir Julian Rose who effectively pioneered many years
ago the early organic movement whilst it was still being done
effectively in a in a sort of legitimate sense.
And then more recently, Mark Byford, a Suffolk farmer who
again deals directly with the consumer and arranges his
business so that he has a direct relationship with the community.
But of course this is not what John Mcternan is talking about.
And it speaks volumes that he was quite so closely involved
with Tony Blair then. And indeed, the philosophy not
just of Blair, but all those who have been within his orbit over
these years. Now, as Mike referenced at the
beginning, there have been rumblings in the United Kingdom
across the farming community over the course of 2024, which
of course has been a very difficult year for farmers.
Not just because of the weather, but also because of the changing
nature of the environmental Land Management schemes that the
government has started and then changed and and left a great
deal of uncertainty. As Julian Rose says, subsidy
creates slaves. Nonetheless, there are a couple
of events planned for next Tuesday, the 19th of November in
London. So we'll just have a quick look
at what those are and hope to resolve some of the confusion
that may have arisen. We've got the National Farmers
Union describing what is called a mass lobby event which
requires prior contact with your MP if you are a farmer or a
grower. And this has been orchestrated
by the NFU to meet with their MPs in Parliament and, and as
they say here, urging them to ask the Chancellor to reconsider
the changes to inheritance tax. Of course I spoke about this
last week, the changes to the agricultural property relief,
and a point worth making here is that the business property
relief was rather sort of left out because there was so much
focus on farmers. But of course this does affect
people who run businesses as well and with so little time to
prepare. Of course it is possible to
mitigate against this with the seven-year rule, but because
this is due to take effect in 2026, there is in effect a point
beyond which farmers are left powerless to avoid or at least
not incur a tax that was previously not there in their
path. So as I say, there's a farmers,
there's a mass lobby in London on Tuesday the 19th.
As well as that there's there's due to be a rally.
Now the organisers of each event insist that there's to be
effectively sort of cooperation between the two and that if you
are going to the mass lobby event, you can also turn up to
the rally. You do need to register to do
that. And this seems to be because the
Metropolitan Bolton Police have have either given the organisers
the impression or the organisers have have sort of effectively
deduced that there are anti terror considerations here that
they need to address. So those are the two events that
you can consider going to and supporting.
But ultimately, I think the message here is really one of
trust. And why on earth should small
farmers trust the government? What is it that they really do
expect the government to do, given their track record?
Yes, yeah. Thank you, Charles for that.
Thank you very much. We'll talk much more about that
in extra. Now let's come on to military
affairs and defence and so on. But I want to put this on screen
first of all because of course the UK column has been talking
about European Defence Union for a number of years.
And as we'll see in a minute, the election of Donald Trump has
reinvigorated this whole discussion.
Now, it's a topic which hasn't really managed to to gain
engagement widely and certainly people within our audience are,
have been interested in it, but it hasn't got much wider
engagement because one of the reasons is it has got absolutely
0 coverage in the mainstream press.
But it should motivate us because as we can see here on
screen, Britain is 100% or has been up to this point 100%
engaged with it even in 2017 or so wearing the EU flag on their
arms. No union flags as as far as I
can see on, on the uniforms here.
So the question is, you know, why would this be something that
we need to be worried about? Well, if we consider who would
be in charge of an EU military and ask ourselves the question,
do we want this woman to be holding the keys to French
nuclear deterrence, for example? Because that's really what we're
looking at here. And to say the British
government 100% behind this, as we will see in a minute.
Now over the years with the full complicity of NATO, there has
been an effort to drive forward this European Defence Union
project. It has, It has not gained a huge
amount of traction because there's lots of friction against
this because of course, national governments, member states, even
member states that are of a super national organization like
the EU, are reluctant to cede control over their own
militaries. That was until Trump came along.
And this was 2017 when Trump was president and was opening the
new NATO headquarters in Brussels.
And there he is with Jens Stoltenberg standing beside a
large chunk of the World Trade Center.
Now, as I say, Britain was and still is 100% supportive of this
initiative and that's because of Trump's sort of aggressive
attitude towards the Europeans with respect to the funding of
of NATO and funding of defence in Europe.
In 2017, RUSI and a bunch of other think tanks, defence think
tanks, pushed forward to try to gain some momentum on this
European defense thing here. So this was March 2019, Jeremy
Wimble from Russell Russey saying.
In March 2019, Russi and the Fedrich Ebert Stifton brought
together leading UK and German parliamentarians and leading
security and defense experts. The subject of a European army
dominated most of the discussion.
With the goal of achieving strategic autonomy for Europe.
European states should seek to form a joint command structure
that would allow the EU to deploy forces both within and
beyond Europe's borders. It was strongly suggested that
the US can no longer be regarded as a reliable partner and that
Europe ought to take responsibility for its own
defence mechanisms. And of course, once Biden became
president, legitimately or not, a lot of the momentum fell out
of this. That has changed again.
But just to to keep on the thread here, also in 2019 the
European Council of the European Union published this document
from the European External Action Services, the European
Foreign Service effectively and the subject was EU concept for
military command and control. This is the the document and
this is basically a couple of excerpts from it.
So the EU LED military operational chain of command is
based on vertical top to bottom responsibility.
So we should not forget that Ursula von der Leyen being at
the top would be in charge of this.
This implies that each level of command is responsible for
establishing the necessary links to the immediate subordinate
level. A single identifiable and clear
military chain of command is imperative.
The exact command and control arrangements for any EU LED
military CSDP, that is the defence policy in the EU
operations admissions are mission dependent.
The chain of command for EU LED military CSDP operations and
missions will encompass 3 levels of command below the political
strategic level. So we should not ignore the fact
that the political strategic level is at the top now.
When Ursula was attempting to get her role as President of the
European Commission for the first term, she made this
statement. Now I'm going to jump right
forward now to the present day and I'd like to talk about four
different components which we introduced back then, which I
believe are the important structural elements for setting
up a European Defence Union. First of all, just 2-3 weeks
ago, we were able to, for the first time, we were able to give
the red light for a European commando command capacity in
Brussels. That's for the first time that
civil and military instruments would actually be commanded
together. And where these commands would
actually come from one single central command office, that's
that's an essential step. Forward.
It was unthinkable a short while ago.
But it's precisely the right. Approach to have, if we want a
European flavour to our defence policy.
So we need to ask ourselves again, do we really want this
lady in charge of European defence and Britain involved in
that? As you will see in one second,
now Trump has been elected, the momentum is back and Andreas
Cabelius has been made the new EU Commissioner for Defence and
Space. So effectively, the EU all of a
sudden now has a defence, what they call a Defense Department
Defense Secretary effectively, and now he is the former head of
former Prime Minister of Lithuania.
He served as that from 1999 to 2000 and then from 2008 to 2012.
He's described as a political heavyweight.
His political background is described as being shaped by
global crises and by the presence on the border of a
hostile Russia. So we see exactly what what he
represents and so on. But as I say, Britain 100%
behind this. Starmer headed over to Paris for
the Remembrance Day or the day after Remembrance Day for more
commemorations and this was absolutely part of the
discussions there. It was very interesting that the
British read out on this, didn't mention defence.
I've just put that back on screen for a second because, but
the French read out on this, did so.
The French said that during the meeting the two leaders
discussed the major international issues.
Following on from the messages conveyed at the European
Political Community Summit in Hungary, President Macron
stressed the need to assert Europeans own interests and
capabilities in terms of security and defence.
This wasn't in the UK read out. So again, we're back in this
situation. As far as the UK is concerned,
they don't want to mention this publicly and they don't want to.
It certainly isn't going to get any major UK media coverage.
Now having said that, it has had some and so the Telegraph here
starting to make noises in promotion of this idea.
The hard choices on defence lie before us.
And then they were also saying that Macron and Schultz call for
EU to unite on defence after Trump victory and it.
But it doesn't end there because actually we, I can't remember
whether we covered this on the UK column or not, but RUSI back
in July talking asking what can EU new government's proposed
UKEU security pact achieve? And for example, just to take
one quote from this article, they say Foreign Secretary David
Lammy has designated the EU as as his number one foreign policy
priority, including structural structured foreign policy
dialogues that could lead to an ambitious UKEU security pact.
And when they talk about security, they also include
defence. So Charles, I'd be interested in
your thoughts on this because particularly the wearing of EU
badges on British military uniforms.
I appreciate that was the year before the Brexit referendum,
but nonetheless, the UK has been 100% behind this common security
defence, defence policy from the beginning and continues to be.
And now they want a pact, a security and defence pact with
the EU. And what we've got to keep in
mind, of course, if we consider NATO as being whatever number of
countries it is at the moment, that NATO would effectively
become, the United States, Canada, Britain, the EU, and all
those other member states effectively disappear from NATO
under those circumstances. Well, that's really what I was
sort of considering is that the, the, the layers, I mean, we've
talked about the layers of bureaucracy or, or what they're
calling command and control sort of hierarchical structure.
But, but really, I think one of the questions is, well, what
does happen to NATO specifically with regard to the United
Kingdom? And as you say, that was some
time ago. But, but yes, the wearing of
the, the EU flag does seem extraordinarily strange.
But then of course, I suppose we, we consider something that I
was reporting on a little while ago, which was the, the rules of
engagement and the doctrine surrounding that Joint services
Publication 398, which of course is very clear to describe the
rules of engagement as in effect being the translation of the
political will. So to see as much as we might
not like it, Ursula von Da and speaking as she is, in effect,
it's, it's no different from what we see at the national
level. I think the, I think the the,
the huge amount of confusion though, is to suggest that under
the same structure, or at least side by side, a civil military
arrangement could be made sort of seamlessly and that there
would be, as far as she seems to describe it, no.
One lead that there would be balance or parity between the
civil and the military, which seems extraordinarily
complicated and very hard to practice, but it but ultimately
something that I think the United Kingdom should should
stay well out of. But of course, that doesn't seem
to be the direction that we're heading in.
Indeed, we will talk more about this later as well.
Vanessa, let me welcome you to the program.
And of course, questions over who Donald Trump is going to
choose in his administration and what the what effect that is
going to have on Middle East policy.
Yeah, not, not so many questions.
If if we look at the names that are being touted through
mainstream media in the US, of course, those may change.
I'm not saying they're written in stone, but it is looking very
much as if he's heading towards a Zionist heavy and Christian
Zionist heavy administration. Now, since Trump's election,
Israel has grown in its boldness in conducting genocide in Gaza.
Balazel Smotrich, who's the finance minister, tells
authorities to prepare for the West Bank annexation, saying
that now that Trump is elected, they feel that they can go
forward this. The intensity of bombing in
Lebanon has increased exponentially since Trump's
election. So it's very clear that the
Zionists feel emboldened by his. So I want to focus a little bit
on Syria. And this was an interview with
Robert Kennedy Junior not so long ago with Tucker Carlson.
And I just want to fight. He said Trump and he's our
policy. So let's for them, when I was on
the plane the other day with President Trump, he we were
talking about the Mideast and he took a piece of paper and he
drew on it map of the Mideast with all the nations on it,
which most Americans couldn't do.
And then he wrote in each country the troop strength.
And he was, he was particularly looking at the border between
Syria and Turkey. And he said, we have 500 men on
the border of Syria and Turkey and a little, you know,
encampment that was bombed. And he said there's 750,000
troops in Turkey. There's 250,000 in Syria.
If they go up against each other, we're in the middle.
And what? And he said to his generals,
well, what's going to happen to those 500 men?
And his general said to him, they're going to be cannon
fodder. And he said, get them out.
So we want a president who has that knowledge.
He's going to ask those rational questions and then is going to
make good decisions for the American public.
Now, there are 28 U.S. military bases in the Northeast.
So Kennedy was slightly downplaying that 900 U.S.
military forces, but a number of private contractors, in fact
more than 1000 private contractors like Dyncorp.
So this is Kevin Gostola on ex journalist who came up with
Trump will reportedly name Senator Marco Rubio as his
Secretary of State. On Tucker Carlson's show, JD
Vance said Trump won't hire neocons that refuse to withdraw
U.S. troops from Syria. But Rubio obviously or
absolutely oppose Trump's withdrawal plan and is a neo con
warhawk like Liz Cheney. And he goes on in the thread
that he put on X. So if we just move to the next
slide. So he talks about Waltz, who
also opposed Trump's plan to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria,
calling the plan a Pandora's box for the return of ISIS.
ISIS, of course, is a US proxy in Syria and Waltz Co sponsored
legislation with none other than fellow war hopeless Cheney to
help continue the US military's role in Syria in defiance of
Trump. And reportedly Trump plans to
name Republican Mike Waltzes his national security adviser.
He's a neo con warhawk who was part of Foundation for Defence
of Democracies, John Bolton's think tank.
And then so how I'm looking at how this is playing out at the
moment, I believe if we go on to the next slide, we're looking at
basically the Trump administration offering a carrot
to President Assad, saying if you behave, we might withdraw
our troops from inside Syria. And at the same time, Israel is
producing the stick. So I mentioned two weeks ago,
Minister Gideon Saw the message that Israel should convey to the
Assad regime in Syria, that he should drop Iran and Hezbollah.
And more recently in a report that was picked up by a number
of local media, in this case, if we just move on to the Islamic
Republic News Agency's Zionist regime threatens to assassinate
Assad. So what were they actually
talking about? According to Palestinian media,
Israel Hayom newspaper quoted regime officials as saying that
Assad was informed that if he did not cooperate with Israel in
preventing the transfer of weapons from Syria to Lebanon,
he will suffer the same fate of Syed Hassan Nashrallah.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu while at the UN and
New York had ordered the assassination of Nasrallah, who
was martyred in an Israeli airstrike on Beirut.
And Avigdor Lieberman also issued a similar warning to
President Assad. All of them pushing him to drop
Iran and Hezbollah. And of course, as I said, Trump
now coming in with potentially the character say if you do
this, you comply, we might withdraw our troops from inside
Syria. And then various other titles in
media, Israel squeeze on Hezbollah, puts pressure on
Syria's Assad to pivot away from Iran.
This was after Nasrallah's assassination.
Israeli media has been pushing the line that there is division
between President Assad and his brother Maher al-Assad, Iran's
man in Damascus. And there was actually a drone
strike on what was considered to be a villa very much connected
to Maher al-Assad back in late September.
And of course, we have to remember that while he initially
denied that he wanted to have Trump killed, I think it was in
2019 in an interview, he admitted that he had wanted to
assassinated Assad. So this is Trump making that
admission to Fox News. You take to get Soleimani it.
Is it true that after Assad gassed children for the second
time that it was you that wanted to take out Assad, that you had
a good sight on him and it was General Mattis who talked you
out of it? And if it is true, do you regret
not taking him out being that he's not because he is a mass
murderer? I would have rather taken him
out. I had him all set.
Mattis didn't want to do it. Mattis was a highly overrated
general and I let him go. He worked for Obama.
He got fired by Obama. And in addition, of course, the
US has been building its Air Force capability in Qatar, in
Bahrain for some time. And most recently, in addition
to deploying dozens of fighter jets from various types and 6B52
strategic bombers in the Middle East region, the US Air Force
has deployed F-15A Strike Eagles from the 492nd Fighter Squadron
RAF Lakenheath in England in the Middle East.
So are we saying the UK getting involved as we've been talking
about? And then, of course, so you have
the carrot and the stick, putting pressure on President
Assad to do as he's told. Then the chief of staff of the
Saudi armed forces has been in Iran for talks with officials.
Saudi Arabia is often used as a kind of negotiating instrument
by Israel and the US. What is President Assad's
response to all of this? I mean, absolutely what his
response was when they were trying to put him prior to the
regime James war that began in 2011, he appeared at the special
extraordinary summit of the Arab League to discuss the situation
in Palestine. So what he says is what what we
need is decision to use the tools we possess to stop the
Zionist massacres. And I'm just going to play a
section of his speech. I I'm Elihad El Kian mujura EMI
Mundo kiame Eli sharika Mubasher wamala en fiya.
So effectively, that was the beginning of the very strong
message from President Assad, not only to the Arab League
summit where he berated them for virtually for literally having
done nothing for one year, but he then continued without any
direct action. We encourage the continuation of
the genocide and become indirect partners in it as we are not
dealing with a state in the legal sense, but rather with an
outlaw colonial entity. We are not dealing with people
in the civilized sense, but rather with herds of settlers
who are closer to barbarism than to humanity.
He added that it is not correct to say that the problem is the
current mindless extremist government and a people
terrified of what happened on October the 7th of last year.
They are all working with one ideological mind, a mind sick
with bloodshed, sick with the illusion of superiority,
afflicted with schizophrenia. Between hating Nazism allegedly
and loving it as an organic part of themselves is what he meant.
So an incredibly powerful message from President Assad, as
I said, not only in response to what is happening in Palestine
and Lebanon in support of the people of those two countries,
but also a message to Israel that has been threatening his
life to the US that is trying to encourage him or send
incentivize him to comply with their agenda.
It quite extraordinary times in Syria right now.
Thank you. Vanessa.
I just want to clarify one thing and that is that RAF lake in
Heath, although it does have the RAF on the front is effectively
AUS military base in the United Kingdom.
So this is where we are going to be seeing, we're going to be
seeing US nuclear weapons back on UK soil in the not too
distant future as part of the F35 deployment there.
But yeah, that that is sorry. We will continue to report on
that. Now, if you like what the UK
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have a look at the comments and make comments by clicking on
that link there. Now a little bit of news for
you. U.S.
Congress is holding another UFO hearing this week.
In fact, it's happening today. So this, since I took the
screenshot, has been updated. That congressional hearing will
be happening today. And just by coincidence,
tomorrow at 1 PMI will be speaking to Matt Erett on the
issue of the UFO agenda, how that's being used to drive
global governance, the the people that are behind it.
He has been producing a fantastic documentary series on
that. He is now at episode 3 and he's
starting to look at MK Ultra, CIA and the the types of people
that have been pushing the agenda through those programs.
Let's just listen to a a couple of minutes of it.
So L Ron Hubbard was that in charge of the California Ordo
template Orientis that Crowley LED.
And L Ron Hubbard created a school of thought of a religion
called Scientology, a UFO cult. And his students became very
close to Jacques Valet within the Stanford Research Institute.
They, they are the ones who also were very much working with the
CIA, Ingo Swann and others at trying to utilize MK Ultra
techniques, as you alluded to, psilocybin, DMT, other forms of
LSD research that were all developed by the military
industrial complex and British intelligence.
They were all developed by these institutions and then they, they
were using them to create different forms of deep
patterning psychological trauma to help people tap into
controlled schizophrenia that was believed to give people
access to higher paranormal powers of telepathy, astral
plane projection, pretty much everything.
That's what they were doing under Jacques Belly's lead with
this team at Sri in the 70s under what became the Stargate
project is fed directly into the changing images of man operation
with Willis Hartman. And Willis Hartman by the way,
his his his assistant was the woman who wrote age of the
Aquarium conspiracy, which was a direct take from HG Wells
earlier open conspiracy directly.
So this is what was all done to try to change the idea of what
human beings thought. We were utilizing a variety of
techniques of hypnosis, matters of of union and Freudian
psychology. They Barian sociology a Little
Mix of all of these things to then bring about a new age of
sorcerers with a highly superstitious population that
would perhaps believe that the religions that they thought they
were a part of were actually the the constructs of UFOs from or
aliens from either other galaxies or maybe even other
dimensions. So if you'd like to say a bit
more of that, 1:00 PM tomorrow in the usual places, do
encourage you to watch this extremely interesting
conversation yesterday. Brian was speaking to Justin
Walker on the Treasury letter. If you want to know about more,
a bit more about that, it's on the UK column website at the
moment. And just a final or another
reminder that the ongoing petition in Wales ensure
diagnosis and treatment for people suffering from adverse
COVID-19 site vaccine side effects.
We absolutely encourage everybody to support this.
It needs 10,000 signatures to get a debate.
I appreciate that nobody is going to particularly value
petitions as such because petitioning the government is
never productive, but this is a perfect organizing tool, a
perfect way of getting a message out.
So please help. And of course, whenever this
does get to be debated in the Welsh Parliament and nothing
gets done about it, that's another other opportunity to
promote what's been going on around it.
So it is worthwhile doing this whether or not you agree with
with the idea of petitions. Charles, let's come back to you
and what's been going on in Hong Kong.
Thanks, Mike. Yeah. 1:00 Back a little bit to
May of this year to a story that they captured much of the public
attention in Hong Kong, but far less so in the United Kingdom.
And I think it might be time to have another look at it.
And it concerns the allegation at least of spying in the United
Kingdom on people who had moved away from Hong Kong, ostensibly
in response to legislation passed by the Chinese
administration in 2021. Sorry, my apologies 2020, which
meant that people could be pursued for all sorts of crimes
and in this particular instance a lady called Monica Kwong who
was being effectively chased on claims of fraud or allegations
of fraud. And in the United Kingdom, out
of the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office, a three man team
apparently was run to surveil her.
One of whom was Matthew Trickett, who after having been
arrested and released on court bail by the Metropolitan Police,
was found dead a few days later in a park in Maidenhead.
As far as I'm aware the cause of his death has has not been
released by Thames Valley Police.
But nonetheless, what it what this brings out is a couple of
things. First of all, from the Migration
Observatory, very important in light of what's going on in the
United Kingdom. It's just a reminder really that
in 2021, the rules were changed by the British government for
British nationals overseas, which has paved the way for
potentially up to 5.4 million people from Hong Kong being able
to to assume nationality in the United Kingdom and therefore
move into the UK. And the other thing that we are
able to look at, which is what these men were arrested under is
the National Security Act 2023, which has received remarkably
little coverage given its provisions.
There's certainly not time to go into a huge amount of detail
today given the time, but nonetheless the Foreign
Influence Registration Scheme F IRS is one of the things that is
worth looking at that on the governments website they ask how
does it compare to the National Security and Investment Act
2031? And effectively this is the
British government sort of trying to cover all bases where
the 2021 act gives the government power to scrutinize
and intervene in business transactions, apparently to
protect national security. Whereas FIS the registration
scheme requires the registration of particular activities or
arrangement in order to strengthen the integrity of UK
politics and institutions and protect the country from state
threats. Yes, I did just say the
integrity of UK politics. And they go on to clarify, and
this is this is the bit where it becomes sort of murkier.
But of course there can be situations in which arrangements
with foreign powers to carry out political influence activities
in that some of this may be deemed legitimate.
But of course it's for the government and or the police to
decide what is legitimate, what is not and who may fall foul of
such legislation. But they go on to say activities
by specified entities in the UK. Or arrangements with specified
foreign powers or entities to carry out activities in the UK,
and this effectively suggests that the remit of this
legislation is terrifically broad.
Of course it talks about terrorism as well and indeed the
special powers that are granted by those that would be dealing
with such legislation. So I think this is this is worth
considering. But the the other reason for
looking at it is that in the governments note they ask will
it affect freedom of expression and they say that that it will
have no impact on people's right to express their views nor will
it prevent anyone from engaging in political influence
activities. And this seems remarkably
unlikely. It simply requires openness and
transparency around such activities where undertaken at
the direction of a foreign power.
Now if you do have time to go into at least government
documents explaining what the ACT does, then I would recommend
it because it is beyond doubt a tool that may be used for the
purposes of censorship and this is therefore the to highlight
the campaign being run by UK column at the moment.
We had a a new special on this a couple of weeks ago taking the
fight to the censors also involving Wilsey of Resistance
GB. So I would encourage you to
listen to that, but also to look at the Fight Against Censorship
campaign. And if this is relevant to you
and you fulfill the criteria of Section 56 of the Online Safety
Action that you can be recognized as a recognized news
publisher, please go in touch at online.safety@ukcolumn.org.
Charles, thank you. And of course we should mention
that at the moment YouTube has taken the UK Columns YouTube
channel back down again. We will keep you updated on on
how that goes. So, yeah, more later, more.
An extra perhaps. Vanessa let's me bring you back
on. And you've just paid a visit to
Beirut. So you're talking about the
bombing of Beirut increasing. What did you see when you were
there? Well, I am first of all, I mean
people can go to my sub stack to read the full report.
But basically if we just have a look at the map where I just
show like how before the the blue dotted line at the bottom
there from Damascus to Beirut is the old route through the border
that Israel has now bombed several times, reducing much of
the road to craters and rubble. Although I've heard that the
Syrians are now using golf carts to bring people from one side to
the other in defiance of Israel's closure of the road.
So now basically I had to go north from Damascus up to Homs,
then to Tatus on the eastern coast.
And where you can see the no entry sign is where Israel has
bombed the old western route from Homs to the border.
So in other words, you have to go further north and and further
W to come South following the Tripoli kind of atroon coastal
Rd. down to Beirut. I'll just show you.
I mean, this is just a video showing the coastal route once
you enter Lebanon from the Syrian side.
Really a pretty route and and not particularly busy.
It was busier on the way back I guess, with food trucks and
humanitarian aid trucks and and refugee cars coming into Syria.
300,000 children have entered Syria since Israel, from
Lebanon, since Israel started bombing.
And basically I didn't have much time because I was told I should
get back to Syria as soon as possible in case Israel bombed
again. And but I did manage to go to
Dahir with some friends who were going to check out their house.
So this was just a couple of the videos that I managed to take of
the devastation. My friend actually said to me
the apartment block that was showing there was 10 story.
They were horrified by the number of kind of familiar
landmarks that they had grown up with that had been destroyed or
heavily damaged. We saw from a distance the
crater that had where Syed Nasralla had been assassinated.
It was vast and incredibly deep. And of course, when we entered
this area, there was a Lebanon Army checkpoint who told us that
we shouldn't get out of the car, we should wear masks, and we
shouldn't open the windows because of the possible risk of
depleted uranium dust from many of the strikes in this area.
And actually speaking to locals, they did tell me that initially
after Nashua's assassination, they had suffered with the ill
effects of the dust. So nausea, diarrhea and bad
stomachs. They drank milk and after a few
days the effects went away. But the smell is pretty
horrible. And literally, I think the day
after I left, this was just one of the bombing raids by the
Israelis on that area. We can watch that.
Abdullah, if somebody asked me what the guy was saying when
he's basically just saying, oh God, I'm not sure what Zolah is,
but even on my way back there were three attacks on Israel,
sorry, on Syria, one in Homs, one in eastern southern
Damascus, and one on Aleppo. So even in those three days that
I was away, the attacks against Syria by Israel continued.
Vanessa, thank you very much for that.
Yes, we will obviously continue reporting as as events progress.
Now let's come back to the UK. Now Politico a while ago had
this article. Tony Blair admits UK will need a
little persuading to embrace digital ID.
So the question is then, what kind of persuading do we need
and will we get an idea of what kind of persuading this
particular regime is going to continue to impose?
With this you gave your service, says the graphic.
With digital veteran cards you will get the government service
you need quicker. So the veteran card is something
that Charles has covered a couple of times and in fact we
believe the last time he covered this he predicted or suggested
that this was on its way. It has now happened and they
they decided to announce this on Remembrance Day.
So the veteran card they claim is currently used by 250,000
former service personnel across the country, and a new digital
version will make people make sure people can prove their
veteran status as easily as possible.
Convenience is always important. The Digital Veteran Card Digital
Veteran Card planned to come in next year, will speed up this
process and mean they're able to access the support available to
the more quickly. Harnessing the power of
technology, it will be crucial in to support the government in
achieving its mission of making public services work for all
working people, grow the economy and make everyone across the
country better off. Specifically, the Digital
Veteran Card will help former forces personnel approach a
military charity to quickly prove their veteran status and
speed up access to support they need.
This includes housing support through Operation Fortitude,
health services through the NHS or employment through job
centres. It will also help veterans
confirm their service to the Going Forward into Employment
scheme which helps them join the civil service, NHS or work
injustice. Additionally, veterans can use
the card to apply for the Defense Discount Card, offering
hundreds of retail offers and their Veteran Railcard, getting
a third of rail travel from most journeys.
So this is what this is what Peter Kyle, the Science
Secretary, had to say. Our veterans have sacrificed so
much for this country and we must make every effort to to
ensure veterans get the help and support they're entitled to.
That's why we're working with the offers for Veterans Affairs
to speed up access to essential services, whether it's housing
or employment support, by offering our heroes Digital
Veterans Cards, which will be with them in a matter of
minutes. So that is great, isn't it?
In the meantime, the government has continuing to roll out the
one login system, which means that you can easily identify
yourself to all kinds of government services.
So faster, easier access, more convenience to 50 government
services with one login. And in this case, it's the
apprenticeship service, which is now fully transitioned into one
platform and one login, simplifying the way employers,
apprentices and training providers interact with the
government, making process more efficient and removing the need
for numerous logins. So that's a good stuff.
So the question is, how has this been covered in the press?
Well, not much in the mainstream press, but sort of the, the, the
house here saying with digital ID we can take back control.
The time has come for government to fully embrace digital ID, to
reform public services and part of the citizen and fuel economic
growth. And then here we have
biometricupdate.com saying UK data and Digital ID Bill lauded
ahead of parliamentary debate. And of course, this I think is
the key area of focus. We've got all this push towards
digital identity. It's all being enabled by this
piece of legislation, which if we have to remember, is just a
rehash of what the Tories were attempting to do just a few
months ago but couldn't get it through before the general
election. But the new name for it, that is
the digital use and access bill. Now we've mentioned many times
that when it comes to digital ID, we're talking about having a
digital wallet. And inside that wallet you will
have various attributes, might be your name, it might be your
date of birth, it might be your employment status, it might be
your right to work in this country and a whole host of
other information held in your digital wallet.
And of course, third party companies will be there to
provide this service, to act as a trusted source of authority
for your identity anytime you interact with government or with
anybody else. But if we just put that back on
screen for a second, we just need to look at a couple of the
attributes of this, of this bill.
So creates a framework for digital ID that we've we've just
spoken about that. But the other one that I want to
really focus on here is the enabling easier data sharing.
And I want to illustrate this just by looking at this article
from the Atlantic, which is entitled Genetic discrimination
is coming for us all insurers. This is health insurers in the
United States are refusing to cover Americans whose DNA
reveals health risks. It's perfectly legal and of
course this type of situation is coming to the UK.
It doesn't matter that we've got a National Health Service, it
won't make any difference. This is coming to the UK now,
just looking at a couple of the quotes from this.
For decades, they say, researchers have feared that
people might be targeted over their DNA, but they weren't sure
how often it was happening. Now at least a handful of
Americans are experiencing what they argue is a form of
discrimination. It goes on to say that even
employers might soon be able to hire or fire based on certain
genetic risk factors. All of us have glitches
somewhere in our genome, the article says.
The question is who will take advantage of that information?
And of course, what they're talking about here in this case
is health information and health insurance in the United States.
Now, insurance companies traditionally provide insurance
in the basis that the risk is shared amongst all the people
that buy a particular insurance policy.
So some people will be high risk, some people will be very
low risk. And they set, they do a risk
assessment of that and they set the premiums for people based on
an average. Perhaps there's some scope for
change in that depending on perceived risk and so on.
But nonetheless, it's, it's not very specific, but this piece of
legislation makes it very specific because it allows for
exactly this type of thing, the sharing of genetic information,
the sharing of all kinds of data and the sharing of data across
borders. So I'm going to say to everybody
that if you're not actively involved in campaigning against
this piece of legislation, you need to be actively involved.
You might like to start with the hashtag Scrap the App and
getting involved in Debbie's efforts to get people to not
install the NHS app and other apps.
And if you are using it to get rid of it and demand other ways
to access services instead of this continual drive for
digitization. But this piece of legislation
needs to be stopped. And really everybody I feel
should be getting involved in that very, very quickly.
Charles, let me welcome you back and talk about COP 16 and and
climate issues. Thanks, Mike.
Yeah, and actually this segment will follow yours rather more
closely than people might imagine.
This refers to not COP 29, but COP 16, which is somewhat
confusing. But this is conference of the
parties, specifically with regard to biodiversity.
And interestingly, coming from the literature, there's very
little reference to climate, which suggests perhaps that it
has been overused to an extent and that a more traditional
approach concerning species decline may be on the horizon.
Nonetheless, they talk. They say that attendees at the
summit in Cali and Colombia, which included Steve Reed, the
Environment Secretary, Nature Ministry, sorry Nature Minister
Mary Crea and Natural England Chair Tony Juniper agreed a deal
on digital sequence information, whereby genetic information that
has been sequenced from the natural world can be made
available online. Now, if you've not heard of PSI
digital sequence information, you'll certainly not be alone.
But it's described as being a genetic information that has
been sequenced from the natural world with the DNA code then
made available online for use in research.
Well, is that really the case? Is it just for research?
Because they go on to say that research can be applied to
medicine, agriculture, conservation and public health
with benefits such as the the development of vaccines or
adapting plants to be more resilient to climate change.
Now, as I said at the start, they have actually made an
agreement on this. But should they necessarily have
done so? Well, the cultural survival
would say absolutely not, with a piece just predating the meeting
saying digital sequence information poses risks to
indigenous people's rights and biodiversity.
And the point they make is that in effect, the parameters of
this process have not been defined and therefore as a
consequence, nor has the regulation surrounding it.
So in effect, we're in a position where people don't
really even know what they're actually dealing with yet.
A message that's reinforced by an article in Nature again just
before the meeting started saying don't rush rules for
sharing digital genetic sequence information.
In effect the suggestion is that the situation is anything but
certain, but of course this is another instance of the
precautionary principle being cast to the wind when it suits
the powers that be to do so. And of course nobody seems to
really mind what the consequences might be.
Also, the other things to fall out of this meeting are that the
United Kingdom has now declared 2 new special representatives in
this area, one being for Nature Ruth Davis, and she answers to
or reports to the foreign, the Commonwealth and Development
Office as well as Defra. And then we have Rachel Kite who
is to be the UK's special representative on climate.
Now of course it's hard to know at this stage what the purpose
is of denoting such special representatives.
Are they there in order to effectively harness power that
wasn't there previously and therefore wield it?
Or are they being set up in effect for a fall if they're
unable to achieve the particular mission they're given?
Or are they simply being handed too much power?
But we'll have a look at a little bit more of a look at
Rachel Kite, who was previously special representative of the UN
Secretary General and the chief executive officer of sustainable
energy for all. Of course, it's worth making the
point that Gutierrez was the first man, I think, to talk
about the era of global boiling. So slightly alarming she might
be in a position to be influencing government policy.
But really, let's get to the point.
And what is it actually about? She is to support ministers to
increase senior international diplomatic engagement on climate
and clean energy, something that we've seen David Lammy
apparently doing in recent weeks.
But she is also to strengthen coordination and mobilization of
finance for climate action and to increase the strategic impact
of the UK international climate finance programs and
intervention. So in effect, here we have a
couple of new representatives coming out of conference,
supposedly on biodiversity. But of course, if you've been
watching UK column over the last few months and years, you'll
know that biodiversity is in effect a control mechanism for
extorting money out of people with the supposed benefit of an
improvement for nature by means that are certainly not within
our control. Although we are being asked to
front up the money. And in due course we may find
that our access to the advantages conferred by
increasing biodiversity may not actually be granted to us.
So the, the, there's no real change of direction, but the
certainly the digital sequence part of it is something that we
will continue to to look at and indeed how that may be be used
or indeed abused in the coming months and years.
Thank you, Charles. We've got to leave it on that
note and we'll be back in a few minutes if you are AUK column
member for some extra. Otherwise we'll don't forget the
interview at 1:00 PM tomorrow. We'll see you on Friday at 1:00
PM as usual for another news programme.
Do get involved in dealing with the upcoming data legislation if
you possibly can, but we'll see you in a few minutes for extra.
See you then. Bye bye.