Hello, hello. It's Wednesday the 30th of April
2025, just after 1:00. Welcome to UK Column News.
I'm your host, Mike Robinson. Joining me in the studio today
is Charles Mullett welcomes the programme.
Charles. Thank you, Roy.
And by video link, we have Vanessa Bailey and Sandy Adams.
Now, later in the programme, we're going to be covering the
latest on the censorship agenda here in the UKA new private
security company working in Syria.
But we're going to begin with carnage.
And well, there's carnage in the world.
In Canada, Mark Carney has been elected as the new Prime
Minister, having taken over from Justin Trudeau and calling an
early election. He's suggesting that his
election is another example of the Trump effect.
So let's just have a look at a little bit of what Mark Carney
had to say. As I've been warning for months,
America wants our land, our resources, our water, our
country. Never.
But these are not, these are not idle threats.
President Trump is trying to break us so that America can own
us. That will never, that will never
ever happen. But we but we also must
recognise the reality that our world has fundamentally changed.
So there we are again with this narrative that the world has
fundamentally changed. This is something we're hearing
from Starmer, from Ursula, of underlying, from Mark Carnage
himself. And of course, Trump is the
excuse for it. I have to say, though, Charles,
the crowd's reaction to all that was thoroughly underwhelming.
I don't think too many were buying it.
Well, I mean, I think under underwhelming seems to be the
the theme of the whole affair. I mean the the fact that anyone
would be inspired by such a man speaking in such a way is is
completely extraordinary I would say in the first instance.
Indeed. So in the meantime, according to
the mainstream press at least, it was carnage in Spain and
Portugal on Monday, with a total power outage in Spain which also
severely disrupted Portugal, and there were also reports of
impacting impacts in France and Belgium in a much smaller way.
Now, unsurprisingly, the wags were out in force and this tweet
is pretty typical example, offering congratulations to
Spain and Portugal for achieving net zero at last.
It was only a week or so ago that the media was full of
congratulations for Spain achieving 100% renewable energy
production, so it's perhaps no surprise that one of the main
suggestions for why this happened is a massive spike in
solar and electricity generation which overloaded the grid.
This all resulted in tweets such as this highlighting the central
role of Agenda 2030 in Spain's thinking.
So in this case, they have Agenda 2030 all over the trends,
the Agenda 2030 logo and so on. But nevertheless, it was.
It wasn't long before darker explanations started appearing
in the press, accusations that this was a result of a cyber
attack by, you guessed at Russia.
But is that likely? And the question I'd ask is what
has Spain done to Russia that Russia would carry out an attack
on this way? On the other hand, just a few
days ago Spain cancelled a so called defence contract with the
world's pre eminent cybersecurity nation, which is
Israel. And remember that Unit 8200
spawned tech companies. They run just about every layer
of the modern Internet in the West, so if anyone is in a
position to pull such a so called cyber attack, Israel is.
Now, I'm not claiming that Israel did it, but if there's
any attempt to claim that this is the result of a cyber attack,
then I would say it's pretty important to keep that
possibility in mind. Now the mainstream Press of
course, filled their pages with claims of mass panic such as
this one. No power, no phone, no transport
spin in a panic. Well, in fact, social media was
not quite in agreement with that situation.
So this is a typical tweet that we saw massive power blackout in
Spain and Portugal. No Internet, no payments,
flights are cancelled, media chaos, People are in panic.
What really happened? We just took blankets, beer and
had a great time together. So, you know, I don't really
know what to say. Clearly, the mainstream press
turning this into something that perhaps isn't quite accurate,
but also the attempts to blame Russia for, you know, without
any substantiation, for a cyber attack are hilarious.
Vanessa, let me just ask you quickly for a comment on this.
Russia or Israel, what are your thoughts?
Well, I think both are perfectly capable of it, but I think the
most likely in, in my view, would be Israel.
But of course, we're not making that claim.
We're just suggesting that they're very good at it.
Absolutely, absolutely. OK, Thank you for that.
Let's move on and sticking with, I suppose, net zero and Agenda
2030 in a sense. Let me welcome Sandy to the
programme and, well, what's going on in Malvern with the
Malvern Environmental Protection Group.
Well, they they've been formed really because the Malvern Hills
trust the. I think it's the MHTS that the,
you know, the, what do you call it?
The thing that the, the, the, the Melvin, the Melvin Hills
Trust is the body that look after the Melvin Hills and it's
financed by the, by the council tax people that pay their
council tax. And what's happened is that
they've changed the, the structure and they've tried to
modernise it's governance. This is the Melvin Hills Trust
and they've proposed a private bill which really takes the
power away from the trustees. At the moment.
I think there's 2029 of them, I think it was.
And they've reduced it down to 12.
And six of those are not, they don't even live.
Six of those trustees have been cherry picked and they actually
don't live in the area. And So what the people are
worried about is that it's actually going to that create
tension because they're, you know, this trust is saying that
they're going to be using SSIS, you know, we call them sites of
scientific interest. There's a worry that, that this
will restrict people's movement on the, on, on the hills and
the, the, this, you know, the, the protection committee are,
are, you know, sort of heading up this a kind of a, you know, a
big campaign against it because it's, again, it's another
corporate takeover of our land. And unfortunately, that's what
we're seeing. We're seeing governance being
taken over from, from people's representation.
So the community members fear that the bill could have paved
the way for increased commercialisation of the hills,
potentially prioritising, you know, revenue generating
activities. And I'm sure that's what will
happen. I think we, we've really got to
look at this. So this, this corporate takeover
of our land and taking it out of the hands of the people and the
trustees that look after it and have done for many, many years
and putting it into corporate private hands for commercial
interests. And this is what we're finding.
It's just, you know, it is absolutely appalling what's
going on. And I think, you know, the, the,
the Environmental Protection group do do look them up.
It's the Malvern Hills Environmental Protection group.
And I think Jeff Buys cars did a wonderful YouTube on it.
So do look that up as well. He interviewed one of the
trustees from, from this group and really went in into how
they're, they're, they're taking literally the power away from
the people who pay for it. I mean, we pay for this in our
council tax. And I, I just wanted to really
highlight the fact that there is, there is this kind of, well,
there's always been an infiltration to take away our
power from, from these charities that were formerly set up like
the National Trust and the RSPB. I'm, I'm dubious about the World
Wildlife Fund, but there, there's an infiltration to bring
extreme climate fascism, I, I call it into all these, all
these bodies. And, and this is what's
happening. And unfortunately we've got
this, the Living Planet Act is coming up and it's the RSP, the
World Wildlife Fund are trying to get this into into parliament
and there is this succeeding. They're going to try and get an
act called the Living Planet Act, which it hasn't been
enacted in law yet, but it remains in a legislative
proposal advocated by the WWF to establish a legally binding
framework that integrates the efforts to address climate
change, biodiversity loss and food security, which is
interesting. Um, so we, you know, we've got,
we've got these, these, these people and these bodies, these
charities that seem to have adopted this kind of completely
radical crazy climate, Um, you know, fascism, I call it,
because they're just adopting all these, these ideologies that
are forcing people off the land and taking everybody's, you
know, representative bodies who actually pay for the land away.
And this is what we've got to really look, you know, look at
and fight against. Yeah.
Thank you, Sandy. Now sticking with now the
question of food security and whether when they talk about
food security, they actually want to see us being able to
feed ourselves properly. Is is a is a good one.
So let's move on to that topic. Yeah, absolutely.
We will get to somewhere near there anyway.
As it stands, 2/3 of adults in this country are overweight and
half of those are obese. And the government has just
announced last month that it's going to come up with yet
another food strategy to sort everything out.
As the image accompanying the press release shows, it's got
off to a rather inauspicious start, with a depiction of a
supermarket trolley laden with many of the root causes of ill
health. With this in mind, it comes as
little surprise to find that the nascent Food Strategy Advisory
Board is stacked out with industry heads who have every
interest in preserving the status quo, or at least adopting
it slightly in order to maximise maximise profits on fake food.
Of course the National Farmers Union talks of prioritising
growth and therefore is right behind it, by which they mean
really falling in line with government initiatives to give
up on the production of real food or looking after the
environment and to go in for subsidy based on inefficient
energy schemes and artificial food via robotics and AI.
This comes as the BB CS Panorama programme exposes what should
have been common knowledge, that baby food is full of sugar.
There is also talk of a sugar levy being applied to milk based
drinks, which makes it relevant that the only farmer to sit on
this new board is a man named Sam Godfrey who until last year
was on the NF US Sugar Board, literally promoting a product
that should not belong in any human diet.
Now notable by it's absence from the board of the Fisheries.
And here is Elspeth MacDonald of the Scottish Fisherman's
Federation and she's written to Daniel Zeichner, the Minister,
to ask for an explanation as to why they should be omitted.
And since this initiative says that it's concerned with health,
why would there be no room at the table for the National
Health Service, which spends the equivalent of the entire farming
budget every five days? The remit of the Food Strategy
Advisory Board is, ironically, to provide more easily
accessible and affordable healthy food to maintain our
food security by building resilience in the face of
climate shocks and geopolitical changes.
Strengthening the supply chain which operates so effectively to
keep us fed and inevitably to reduce the impact of farming and
food production on nature, biodiversity and climate whilst
ensuring growth is at the heart of our strategy.
It's a word soup, though not a digestible 1, and I would say
it's plainly influenced at its core by Legion people who have
no interest in understanding, sorry interest or understanding
of the landscape which surrounds us, nor the means by which food
may be produced for the mutual benefit of the farmer and the
consumer. Exhibit A in this regard would
be the latest offering from UK Fires, who wrote the Absolute 0
document in 2019 which attempted to suggest that it's possible
for an entire country to stop producing any carbon dioxide.
This time around there suggesting doing anything except
for actually growing things. They say here technologies
relating to electrification, alternative protein production,
precision agriculture and controlled environment
agriculture must be adopted at scale.
So when it does come to growing things, mainstream industrial
agriculture dictates that this comes at a significant cost
based on the land and of course anyone eating that which has
come off it. As reported on consistently by
UK column Ultra processed food is the result of a system driven
by chemical inducements at every return, and one of these is the
constant application of pesticides, another subject
ignored thus far by the board. Now, however, the suggestion
that something toxic enough to kill insects could present a
danger to people has got through to the World Health
Organisation, which remains determined to do nothing about
it. The UK government prefer to
employ more or less the same head and sand technique wherever
possible and this is from 2021 in which they attempt to dismiss
any causal link between consuming toxins and getting.
I'll stating here that evidence has not established these causal
links between low level long term pesticide exposure and
health impacts. That said, they do report on a
regular basis on the pesticide residues found in foods coming
into and grown within the UK. Now a link to this document will
be in the show notes and if you really do want to know what you
are eating or might be eating, then I would urge you to scan
through it. Not only are bewildering array
of pesticides listed, but an extremely high percentage of the
food tested was found to have pesticide residue present.
Of course, it remains up to the government to set the maximum
limits. Now, rather than go through a
massive chemicals, I'll focus on just one in order to illustrate
just how little regard the government and the industry has
for health. It's noted that there's an issue
with sodium chlorate and this is a weed killer which is banned in
the UK and the EU. But because it's also used in
what's called microbiological safety, the term they give to
for killing anything that isn't already dead.
The government states that these residues are unavoidable and
important for the maintaining of microbiological control, vital
for food safety. So we are not treating these
results as breaches of the maximum residue limit.
So in other words, absolutely they do what they please in that
regard and they go on to say that they're not advising any
organisation to change its practises, but that they are
going to, quote, consider what to do about chlorate residues in
food and water. Now to reinforce the point that
there is no pressure to act. This is what happens when
companies do exceed the limits, which is that they get a letter
sent to them and they're given 4 weeks to provide a statement for
inclusion in the report. The Expert Committee on
Pesticide Residues reviews any replies received and this is how
much they care. Supplier response is none.
Now the involvement of Nestor confirms that behavioural change
really is at the heart of all of this, which sets the conditions
for more and more farmland to be taken from its owners.
This is a document from 2023 in which controlling obesity was
linked solely to the input of calories, regardless of
nutritional content. A form of social credit system,
therefore, which can be applied across the board.
The media continues to reinforce the narrative that a diet of
Whole Foods void of chemicals is silly and difficult, here
showcasing Gwyneth Paltrow, who's taking up content space
with the news that she eats bread.
And finally, we should not forget the words of a previous
environment secretary, Therese Coffee, who's adamant that the
world's most harmful herbicide, glyphosate, was an integral part
of regenerative farming, thereby confirming that when it comes to
health, food and nutrition, neither the government nor
industry should ever be listened to.
Now you spoke at the start about food security and I, I think
this is all very much part of the process by which food
security is stripped away and stripped away either via subsidy
or or so called innovation in that farmers are pushed away
exactly like Sandy's been described.
People are pushed away from being able to control the land
that they may own or indeed have access to.
And it just looks like it's going to be a sort of a one way
journey from here. I don't know if you have any
particular thoughts on any of that.
No, but we, I'm sure we'll talk more about absolutely for sure.
OK, well, look, let's let's move on.
And well, Vanessa and I recorded another episode of the Syria
podcast at the weekend and that went up on the UK column
website. If you haven't heard that yet,
please do go and listen to it. But in the course of that
recording, Vanessa, you've mentioned a private security
company, which you didn't name at the time.
So let's let's name it now. Well, yes.
And I, I hasten to also say that in addition to the podcast,
there will be a series of articles that I'm writing
published at UK column going into greater detail in this into
this organisation and it's potential practises in, in
Syria. But the name of the company is
Emerald Emerald Syria, part of the Emerald Group.
It's based in Dubai and the UAE, but it is effectively staffed
predominantly as always with many of these PMC's, private
military companies or private military security companies by
former British military and and this is no exception.
So basically there were two articles published, one in
online intelligence, another in Turkish media, which is this
one. UAE group launches security
firms in Syria after Assad's fall.
So let's have a quick look at the logo up at their Instagram.
We are excited to announce the establishment of our new
company, Emerald Solutions Syria, dedicated to providing
exceptional services in Syria, which according to them includes
the protection of media outlets operating in Syria.
And then within the article itself, it explains a little bit
more about how Emerald got established in Syria, if we can
just have a look at this. So what it talks about is the
fact that Emerald has clients already that are being housed in
fortified villas in Damascus and protected by local forces.
One assumes that's members of the HTS unelected government,
effectively Al Qaeda. They entered Damascus, and this
is interesting, before, just before, oh sorry, on the day of
the fall of Damascus. So on the 8th of December, which
of course is the day that I managed to get out of Damascus.
And that was, according to them, in order to work with
international media covering the historic events.
They were registered apparently in Syria officially on March the
11th, 2025, which was facilitated by the then trade
minister. He's now actually being
replaced. Now the head of operations in
Syria is a Simon Ralton, if we can just have a quick look at
his LinkedIn. So he's described as managing
director of Emerald Solutions, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.
And interestingly, I'm not going to go into massive detail, but
Simon Rialton in particular was involved.
This is him again. Emerald Solution successfully
repatriated Travis Timmerman from Syria, reuniting him safely
with U.S. forces at the AL Tanf illegal U.S. military base on
the border with Syria and Jordan.
Now just very quickly to cover the Travis Timmerman story,
which is relatively interesting, he entered Syria, I would guess
about a year ago illegally. He was smuggled through the
Lebanese border into Syria and perhaps unsurprisingly, at a
time when tourism was actually booming in Syria under the
former Syrian government, he was arrested for entering illegally
and without any papers or permissions.
He claimed he was on a religious pilgrimage and he was eventually
found barefoot after all the prisons were opened up by the
marauding Al Qaeda gangs and he was allegedly found by Emerald
Solutions. And then with the help of Syria
Emergency Task Force, which is another CIA linked regime change
focused operation, he was taken to Altanev.
So this suggests that Emerald was already well aware of the
situation in Syria prior to the actual operation by HTS and in
connection with another CIA operator in Syria itself.
So I found that quite interesting as a story and also
route and only joined Emerald Solutions in November 2024, so
one month prior to the fall of Damascus.
I'm sure that's also just coincidental.
He looking at his LinkedIn profile, his first job in the
PMC industry was with an organisation called Aegis
Defence Systems Limited, where he was from May 2007 until June
2010. Why have I focused on this?
Because I think it demonstrates very clearly that the kind of
internal structure of PMSCS globally and of course the
majority of which are based in the UK.
So let's have a look at who was basically the chairman of Aegis
Defence when it was established in 2002.
Lord Nicholas Times, who you'll know better perhaps as an MP of
Crawley and Sussex. He was the former chairman of
Aegis Defence Services and member of the International
Advisory Board for Garda World who bought Aegis in 2015.
So this shows very clearly a revolving door between this
particular PMC and the British government and the House of
Lords itself. And then who basically formed
Aegis Defence. This is a guy, a maverick known
as Sorry, who is Lieutenant Colonel Tim Spicer, given the
OBE for his services about his book Who about the man who
inspired Double O 7. So he formed Aegis in 2002.
Now Aegis did not have a very good record in Iraq in
particular. They were kind of hold over the
calls for employing former child soldiers, soldiers as
mercenaries in Iraq, child soldiers from Sierra Leone.
And it was picked up that there was a very good reason,
according to the Aegis directors, that they would use
these former child soldiers from Sierra Leone because they were
much cheaper than using British or European mercenaries.
They were only paying them around $16.00 per day.
But prior to forming Aegis, Spicer started another company
called Sandline. This is their homepage.
Formerly it was taken down from the Internet.
They were formed in the early 1990s and were dogged by
controversy. So again Spicer involved in
controversial events through his PMC in 1997, Sandline and this
was known as the Sandline Affair.
Sandline was hired to help put down a rebellion in Papua New
Guinea and the local army wasn't happy to find APMC was brought
in and paid more than the overall military budget, so the
army launched A coup and overthrew the government in
Papua New Guinea. This was written by Peter West,
singer author of Corporate Warriors.
But then if we Move on also in 1996 to 97.
No sorry. In 99, Tony Blair was involved
in the Arms to Africa scandal, which was effectively, I'm, I'm
going to describe it very, very shortly.
In 1997, there was a coup that put Johnny Paul Koroma in power.
However, the UKEU and US wanted to restore the previous
government of President Kabul. In 97, the UN imposed an embargo
on arms supply to Sierra Leone and in 98, the supporters of
Kaaba, the former president thought that they would employ
Sandline in an international to overthrow Koroma, which meant
that he was supplying Spicer was supplying weapons, military
equipment and personnel. When he thought he was going to
be Rumble, his solicitors sent a letter to the Foreign Secretary
Robin Cook, implicating for an office personnel and MOD
officials and representatives of the then US administration,
which then prompted Cook to initiate the leg inquiry.
And this is Paddy Ashdown basically speaking to Tony
Blair. Whilst the government has been
playing past the parcel with the blame over those, the Sierra
Leone rebels who were defeated by British arms have now been
rearmed, apparently with the assistance of another British
company. So again, I just want to show
the background to perhaps Emerald Solutions in Syria and
the staff that are actually working within that.
And then again, coming back to Aegis, Auk firm awarded the
largest Iraq security contract, so A2 year contract, $475
million. They were also involved in the
attack against Basra in 2003, replacing British troops at the
behest of the then Basra governor.
And there was in 2005 video of an Aegis contractor firing
wildly at civilian cars on it on the Iraqi Hwy to the tune of
Mystery Train by Elvis Presley. And of course, we will remember
the crimes committed by Blackwater and by CACI, who were
accused of torturing prisoners under their detention and
torturing them. So therefore, you know, I think
this just sets the scene for what PMCS might be up to in
Syria. Thank you, Vanessa.
We'll, we'll come back to this topic a little bit later on, but
in the meantime, if you like what the UK column does, if
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help us with that. But Charles, there is an item on
the On the UK Column shop that we still would encourage people
to get hold of. Absolutely there is indeed.
I was wearing mine this morning and it definitely put a spring
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wasn't the only one listening from Cheltenham 2025 is now up
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Now you interviewed Sam Sorbo. I did and that went out
yesterday. Been very well received.
She speaks very, very passionately and from a very
well informed position on home education.
And when one considers what Ben was reporting in the news on
Monday's programme about the suggestion that the government
are going to be able to inveigle their way into the lives of
primary school children when it concerns issues about which they
may or may not speak or have a particular view, then this
really is 1 to listen to. Not just for people with
children, but for those who just have a want to get a better idea
of sort of how corrupt the system actually is and how it
can be avoided. And at 1:00 PM tomorrow you
interviewed Jeremy Nil. German warfare and battle of
ideas is the topic. 1:00 PM tomorrow.
Do not miss it. And there's a very good reason
for not missing it, because Jeremy is going to be providing
us with a lot of content over the next coming weeks and
months. He is indeed.
Yeah. We're very pleased to announce
that starting on Monday the 5th of May, he will be producing a
show for UK column under his germ warfare brand and that will
go out 7:00 PM Monday to Friday. And he will be resuming his
consistently high quality service of interviewing
fascinating people from all over the world about topics that we
have all I, I would say, reaped huge benefits from listening
into to date. So we're, we're really excited
about that. To have him with UK column and
the interview for tomorrow is not just to sort of to lead up
to that, but also his background.
He's been a cartoonist for a long time, having worked in the
mainstream media and to have come out the other side and also
his perspective as a South African living in a a sort of
broken country. OK.
Now just a quick reminder of Standing the Light taking place
in Cumbria, that's May, Bank Holiday 23rd to the 26th of May
2025. Lots of hugely interesting
people performing at that event and a whole bunch of other
activities for people. So do get along to that if you
possibly can. OK, Now let's move on then to
online safety and well, good news everyone.
Ofcom has set up it's new Online Information Advisory Committee
and appointed several members. Now the Online Information
Advisory Committee is a requirement of the Online Safety
Act and it's there apparently to provide advice to Ofcom with
specific focus on misinformation and disinformation.
It's first meeting is going to take place on the 16th of May
and Ofcom says their job under the ACT is, quote, to make sure
platforms in scope are taking effective action to address
illegal content and other material that is harmful to
children through implementing appropriate systems and
processes. Our role will not involve us
making decisions about individual posts or accounts or
requiring specific pieces of content to be taken down.
No, they will merely be setting the precedent that everybody has
to follow and they're relying on the platforms to be there.
Chief censors. So let's have a look at who's on
the committee then. So if we bring this back on
screen and well the chair is a guy called Lord Allen of Hallam.
He's also a non executive member director of the Ofcom board and
Ben has been mentioning him on a recent news programme.
So look back through the archives to have a look for
that. Ofcom has now appointed 5 new
members who will each serve three year term beginning
tomorrow. In fact, the first one that
we're going to mention here is Elizabeth Costa.
She is the Chief of Innovation and Partnerships at the
Behavioural Insights Team. And so behavioural behaviour
change in this kind of thing absolutely fundamental to this
discussion. She's also, by the way, a senior
visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics.
The next on the list here is Jeffrey Hard.
He's professor of political philosophy and public policy at
University College London, and he's the director of UC LS
Digital Speech Lab. He's also a senior associate at
the Institute of Ethics in AI at Oxford University.
The next is another familiar name, Will Moy.
He's currently chief executive of the Campbell Collaboration,
which they describe as an international social science
research network, but he is previously held for many years
the the leadership role, in fact, in full fact.
So there we go. He also took part in the Leveson
Inquiry and so on. He's been a long time campaigner
on these kinds of issues. The next on the list is Mark
Scott, who's a senior resident fellow at the Digital Forensic,
the DFR Labs, as everybody will recognise, and he's previously
worked as a correspondent for Politico and The New York Times.
And finally, then we have Davika Shankar Grandpierre, who is a
thematic panel member of the EU Knowledge Hub on Prevention of
Radicalization and a contributing author to the
Global Network on Extremism and Technology.
So there you go, that's who's on the panel, that's who's on the
board. And I'm sure that's going to be
extremely useful in terms of making sure that many dissenting
voices are shut down over the coming weeks, months and years.
But in the meantime, in yet another act of sheer hypocrisy,
we had to bring your attention to this because the British
regime has updated its country policy and information note on
social media surveillance and surplus activities.
And this is for Iran. And I'm just going to take a
bit. I'm going to say I need to issue
a health warning here because as I read what it says, various
degrees of site splitting may result in the listener.
So the first paragraph states Irans constitution and legal
framework restricts online freedom of expression.
Penalties for breaching Irans computer crimes law range from
fines and judicial orders to custodial sentences.
Well, in fact, it goes on to say that it also potentially in some
cases leads onto the death penalty.
Anybody who isn't saying exactly the same kind of attitudes and
approaches in the British government is not paying
attention. But then it goes on to say that
social media users in Iran whose posts are deemed critical of the
state or against itself, declared high moral standards or
who comment on sensitive issues may be subject to treatment,
including harassment, arrest, I'll treatment, torture,
criminal charges that are sufficiently serious by its
nature, repetition to amount to persecution.
And anybody, again, who doesn't recognise exactly the same
behaviour in the British government.
The British regime isn't paying attention.
And the hypocrisy is just off the charts.
But let's stick sort of with this topic.
Charles. And and a Royal Marine, yeah.
Very much with this topic. Yes, serving Royal Marine has
found himself in the centre of a highly politicised censorship
censorship tag and this is for questioning the lowering of the
standards within 3 Commando Brigade.
Here he is describing what he did.
I made a survey about a particular issue that Marines
are concerned about. That particular issue is that we
believe that we have the high standards that we keep and the
high standards that we keep for a very important reason, which
is to prevent Marines from being killed in dangerous situations.
When we go to war, and we've been told we will go to war very
soon, we are concerned that those high standards are being
dropped and selectively dropped for political reasons, with the
bespoken tension of forcing women through raw Marines
training for a for a political victory lap.
Now we'll come to the issue at hand, but I think it should be
noted as very significant that he believes that he will be
going to war very soon. There'll be a link to the full
half hour interview in the show notes and it's very compelling
listening. Anyway, within 24 hours of what
he describes, his survey was taken down with nearly 1000
signatures on it. There's probably 5 1/2 thousand
or so in Three Commando Brigade and it was being described as
Russian disinformation. Now there's no doubt about the
push for women in the Royal Marines and this is an image
from their own website. The BBC of course, are taking
this up and so far just one woman has passed the shorter All
Arms Command. Of course, this one, Lily Mae
Fisher she is not, therefore having passed the All Arms
Command. Of course she's not a ROM reen,
but as made clear from her Instagram profile, she is APR
opportunity and as far as this story is concerned, the thing to
the sorry. The next thing to happen was
that this man's regiment was visited by an official from the
MOD explaining that there was not a problem with with any of
this, the standards weren't being lowered and whoever put
the survey up was a coward. This went on for some time.
Things did not go quiet and it resulted in this young man
telling his chain of command that he was responsible for the
survey and somewhat remarkably he was flown down to London for
an interview in main building Ministry of Defence.
No time was given to his concerns as he had articulated
them, but instead the focus of the interrogation was on his
politics, which as he correctly states, or his affair.
A short while later, after returning from some leave, this
happened. So drag me into this room.
This is a different instance. So I'm now being dragged in by
Police Scotland. I asked them am I being
detained? They say, no, you're not being
detained, but we're holding you here under the Terrorism Act.
I'm just shaking my head at this instance.
And I said, have I committed any acts of terrorism?
Am I expected to commit any acts of terrorism?
And they said, no, we have you here because you have views.
And that was, I don't even know if they meant to say that
because that's the truth, I think.
I think they're supposed to maybe not say the truth in that
instance, but that's what they've clearly been asked to
investigate is my political views, which are none of their
business. And as soon as they say that, I
just say thought crime. And they're like, what?
I'm like, this is thought crime. You're the thought police.
This is thought crime. And they're saying, well,
there's no illegal, you know, it's not illegal to think
things. And I just, well, it clearly is
because I'm here in a room and I'm being treated like a
criminal and take and my, my rights are being taken away from
me because I have opposing political views to the political
establishment. This was under schedule seven of
the Terrorism Act 2000. That's been a feature of UK
column news reporting for much of the last year.
A very obvious misapplication of the law in order to provoke fear
and to attempt to cling to some kind of control.
Now the wording is opaque enough to justify in staring anyone
under this piece of legislation. We see here that it's to do with
people travelling through the U KS borders who may be involved
or concerned in the Commission preparation or instigation of
acts of terrorism. And it goes on to say that the
examination of an individual is not conditional upon having
groans to suspect that person of being engaged in terrorism.
But the decision must not be arbitrary.
In other words, those acting under this legislation in the
ports have completely free reign as they can never really be
asked be held to account for their actions.
Now, as far as the Royal Marines are concerned, this is a command
issue and this is what the young man had to say about that
particular point. Forward So to the Marines that
are concerned about this, go into work and the next day
you're at work and stand up for this issue and pull up your
chain of command on this issue and say you don't think it's
right for Marines to be treated like this.
And for for you to feel like you have to lie on this issue and
you have to, you have to keep your opinion silent.
Say tell them that you believe that.
And for the people high up in the chain of command, I ask you
to make an environment where people feel like they can speak
about these sorts of things because they don't.
And that's not my fault. It's your fault.
I have a responsibility to speak about that issue and that's what
I've done. You have a responsibility to
take on what I've told you and act upon it.
The last couple of points to make concern the charade of
diversity in the armed forces, and it's here that we find the
one sentence which undoes all of this nonsense at a stroke.
The armed forces is exempt in that it can do what it needs to
do without compromise. And if we just look at the
biannual diversity statistics, we see here that clause from it
saying that they are exempt from the provisions of the Equality
Act 2010 because of reasons for reasons of combat effectiveness.
So for every other organisation in the country they must
compromise. Now, why would that have been
accepted by any business at any point?
And the crumbling of this particular narrative is now very
much evident on the Equality and Human Rights Commission website
with a note here saying that it must be updated due to the
Supreme Court judgement on sex and gender as reported on last
week. No doubt more to talk about in
Extra. OK, let's move on then to
warfare. And last week we were talking
about the size of the British Army and considering the
likelihood of some form of conscription being necessary.
And I received a comment saying that there were there was not
really a problem because the army can get as many as it needs
from the Gurkhas. Now there's currently around
96,000 Nepali Gurkhas, there are 42,000 Indian Gurkhas and around
4000 in the British Army and I believe the British Army
recruits from Nepal exclusively. Though at this point, well, that
is until now because a new artillery unit has been set up
using Gurkha soldiers. Over the next four years, a
grand total of 400 new Gurkha personnel will join the unit
known as the King's Gurkha Artillery, bolstering UK
security according to the government through the plan for
change. This is all about the plan for
change. Now 400 isn't going to make much
of a difference. A new Gurkha cap badge has also
been created. You saw that on screen a second
ago. This is the first time in 14
years to represent the new unit and the expanded breadth of
specialisms that the Brigade of Gurkhas deliver, continuing
their proud tradition of military service to the UK, said
the UK government and the King's Gurkha Artillery Unit will
become an integral part of the UK Armed Forces artillery
capabilities as part of the new offer for Gurkha soldiers and in
recognition of demands of Modern Warfare.
They say personnel who join the KGA will be trained in advanced
equipment including Archer and light gun artillery systems.
And in the future they're also going to train on the remote
controlled Hearts or 155 artillery system.
So they should be extremely excited about that.
In the meantime though, the Defence and Security Accelerator
supported by Innovate UK are offering Defence Innovation
loans to six small businesses in the UK.
They say this is an opportunity for single and small, sorry
single, small and medium sized enterprises with solutions and
defence themed problems to apply for a Defence Innovation loan of
between 100,000 and 1,000,000 lbs with below market interest
rate of 7.4%. That's exciting for them I'm
sure. And this loan could be used to
cover up to 100% of eligible project costs.
So the Administrative Defence cited 3 examples.
The first one was Veri, I presume that's how you pronounce
it. They secured a loan to help
commercialise their data capture and analysis technology and this
technology, which has been tested by the RAF, is enabling
trainers to assess and develop individualised training
programmes for trainee pilots. Maybe that would be good if we
had any planes to fly trainee pilots in.
But anyway. Another one is Quick Block,
which develops lightweight rapid assembly building blocks for
force protection and they have secured A defence innovation
loan as well. And so that's going to help
bolster supply chains, particularly in light of recent
shipping disruption in the Red Sea.
And then the the last example that they gave us a company
called Silicon Microgravity, who are using their defence
innovation loan to develop underground detection
technology, which is going to be ready for trials.
Well, it was ready for trials in 2024.
The trials are due to take place anytime soon.
And they're also going to use the money to help commercialise
this product for security, border control, defence and
civil engineering market. So that's all very exciting
stuff. Any thoughts?
Well, I think on the Gurkha contingent, I mean it is
interesting that that's the specific area, the indirect
fires is the area of choice for putting another 400 blokes in.
And I think with, OK, they mentioned Archer and how it's
and whatnot, but I think it rather depends how drones are to
be classified into, into forests, indirect fire.
It's concerned and whether there might be something concerning
that. But also, I would say what it
what this really suggests is that the competition for such
places compared with British Army recruiting from from the
UK, it's not comparable. They, they the Gurkhas get about
20,000 blokes apply each year to become Gurkhas.
And that hasn't abated. And so not just that, but also
the retention, retaining Gurkha soldiers is far, far better for
the, for the army, for the Ministry of Defence than than
for the Brits. So it's it, it is as though
there was no way of achieving this by pursuing British based
soldiers or, or recruits. So I think I mean that that is
incredibly telling. Absolutely, absolutely it is.
Vanessa. Let's come back to you then and
looking at Emerald and and silly similar companies, the question
of regulation and how the regulator or if the regulated
springs to mind. Yeah, indeed, it's a very
important question. So I'll start with a report from
War on one from 2008. So based largely on crimes that
were committed by PMCS during the war against Iraq, the
illegal war against Iraq, getting away with murder, the
need for action on UK private military and security companies.
So as they point out, 10s of thousands of mercenaries working
for PMCS outside legal control, the US and Iraq at the time were
taking action. The UK government had failed to
act despite, as we've mentioned, being the biggest player.
And this is basically again repeated in an art in various
articles, but this is from Open Democracy in 2018, Co written by
Dr. Ian Overton who heads up the Action Against Armed Violence
organisation which tries to regulate PMCS to some degree.
Britain is the world centre for private military contractors and
it's almost impossible to find out what they're up to.
Welcome to the murky world of mercenaries and floating
armouries. Already setting the theme and as
part of the article points out the British PM SC industry, the
private military security company industry.
Britain has basically LED this privatisation of modern welfare.
It leads the world in providing armed contractors to so called
hotspots and some of the biggest clients are governments in those
hotspots. Since 2004, the UK Gov
government has spent approximately £50 million
annually. The total worth of the PMC
industry stands between 69 billion and 275 billion.
So it's a very, very lucrative market sector.
And then if we look at what Dr. Ian Overton actually says within
that article, he said that AOAV had investigated 235 UK based
internationally operating PMSCS. So this is in 2018.
These profit seeking entities are entrusted with government
security tasks while themselves being subject to a perilously
weak system of self regulation. So again, we we see, and I'll
come on to who else is being self regulatory shortly.
But this is a response to Baroness Tong in 2021 during
parliamentary questions, who basically asked Lord Ahmed of
Wimbledon what legislation was in place to to basically provide
oversight for, as she said, UK citizens acting as mercenaries
or training with foreign militaries.
Let's see what Lord Ahmed said. First of all, he said we draw a
clear distinction between mercenaries and PSCS.
We promote high standards for PSCS internationally through
voluntary regulation off the sector.
So we come back to this idea of voluntary regulation and as I
said, this was in 2021. He goes on to say members of UK
armed forces regularly undertake training with a wide range of
international actors where this best supports the development of
UK military capability and this is important, supports wider
government objectives. Well, why is this so important?
Because if we look at another organisation which could be
largely described as APMC is the White Helmets, which was
established by a former British military intelligence officer,
James. The measure in 2013 was almost
exclusively embedded with Al Qaeda derivatives in Syria and
has been accused by Syrian civilians of involvement in
organ trafficking, child trafficking and staging, of
course the famous chemical weapon events that basically
sustained the regime change or narratives against the then
Syrian government. They are also self regulatory.
They don't come under any investigation by UN agencies or
even by the British government. That is effectively their
primary funder. And then let's have a look again
at Lord Ahmed. This was in 2019.
Talking about White Helmets. The UK has provided 38 million
from the Conflict Stability and Security Fund.
We've talked about that many times on UK column to support
the White Helmets over the past five years.
This assistance delivered through trusted third party
implementers as part of a coordinated international
programme of assistance. And for sure, the White Helmets
were furthering British Foreign Office objectives in Syria,
which was effectively regime change.
And then this is going to be part of the investigation that I
will publish up at UK Column. It'll be a series of articles
because there's a lot of information to trawl through.
But let's have a look at the founder and executive director
of Emerald Solutions Group. They were formed in 2012, one
year before the White Helmets were put together by James
Lemejure. As I said, he was a former
British military intelligence operator.
This is Wayne Christopher Connor.
Now what is seriously interesting about his LinkedIn
profile is that to a large degree you can see the crossover
between him and James Lamazeiro's career.
In 2007, he joined Olive Group, which you will remember Mike
from, from the diagram we did way back about white helmet that
were then bought up by Blackwater and sorry, bought up
by Academy who also incorporated Blackwater.
And in 2007, James the measure left Olive Group.
So Wayne Connor was basically there prior to sorry, he joined
just as lame James, the measure was leaving.
They also crossed paths in the Balkans and in other areas of
operations. So very interesting.
As I've said, the other self regulatory group backed by the
West and the UK of course is HDS itself, Al Qaeda that was
commissioned to to form a committee to investigate its own
crimes of ethnic cleansing and atrocities committed against
Syrian civilians since the takeover in December 2024.
And of course Israel is extremely self regulatory.
It looks into the crimes of genocide committed against
Palestinians. Thank you, Vanessa, you any
brief thoughts on that? Well, actually just on that on
in terms of UK column content, there's a very interesting
interview with Morgan Laurette who was in Iraq in 2003 for
working for Blackwater, subsequently joined the US armed
forces. It's it's entitled Outsourcing
Morality up on the UK column website.
So that would be my first response would be to go and
listen to that. Very, very insightful.
Super. Thank you, Sandy.
Let's bring you back to the programme then.
And over the last week or two, we've been advertising what was
described on the screenshot as a dissident meet up for the
Southwest. Tell us about it.
It was, it was a really good event.
It was the tax rebellion. It was about looking at ways
that we can resist financing this, this takeover, this
corporate takeover that we appear to be financing through
our council tax. And it was, it's interesting
because there's low, there were, there were many, many different
views on how to go about this. What, what my take away was that
we have to somehow bring it all together and find the best way
because there's different people.
There's the sovereign projects, there's the Anavon rice lot, the
I think it's the community assemblage of the British Isles.
And then we had Chris Coverdale, who's amazing, and David
Leighty, who who seemed to have got a kind of a, a thing
together to, to, to, to address the non payment of council tax,
or at least withholding it, keeping it in escrow perhaps,
but challenging it saying, look, we don't know where our money is
going at the moment. We, the, only 30% of our, of our
council tax actually goes to the services that we receive.
The rest of it goes into central government.
And we don't know what they do with what we do know what they
do with it. But we are not, we're not given
the, the choice of where we, where we spend our money and
we're financing illegal wars. We're financing all sorts of
stuff that we should not be financing and we don't want to
finance. So this is the, this is The
thing is bringing people together and getting all the
ideas. And that's what the, the, the
event was about. And it was, it was very well
attended. We had lots of people there and
we, we just, there was, we had Glynn from the Concerned
Citizens Advisory Assembly with Catherine Armitage there and
they were, they, they were sort of putting together another
event that I've, I've worked on them with, which is on May the
5th and 6th. It's an online event.
We will be obviously promoting it on the UK column because
people can vote, they can, people can vote about climate
change. And we're trying to get
something together that will, that will actually challenge the
whole thing about paying our paying our council tax, you
know, towards all the stuff that's going on with climate
change. So we had David Leighty, we had
a wonderful, you know, sort of panel with myself, Chris
Coverdale and David Leighty. David Leighty is a retired
policeman of 22 years with a law degree and he's been taking
Lloyd's bank to, to task and it's taken him over a decade to
do so, but he's nearly there. It's a really interesting thing
that he's doing, challenging the, the validity of some of
these banks and Chris Coverdale, so, you know, was fantastic.
He, he really is. He's been doing so much.
Yeah, that we've got a picture here of, of Glynn Owen and
Catherine Armitage from the Citizens Advisory Assembly.
And they're, they're doing fantastic work and I'm working
quite closely with them as well. We, I talked about devolution
and what's going on with the corporate land grab.
But what, my, my biggest take away was that we really have to
come together and find solutions.
And it was a great day for networking and really getting to
grips with how we as people can challenge things.
And we can, we just need to have the, to have the, you know, the,
the backup and do it on mass. And that's what we need to
achieve because if we don't, we're just financing so much
stuff that we we don't want. And we have no, we have no
reason to be financing illegal wars.
We don't want this. We don't want what what we're
where our money is going. We don't want it to be going
into these things. And next week, I mean, what,
what's good is I got, I, I was approached by a wonderful man
called Nigel. I just called him Nigel and he
gave me some more information that really goes deeper into my
research into the infiltration of extremist groups into English
charities that are subverting the British democratic process,
infiltration into the National Trust, the Royal Society of
Protection of Birds. I think the WWF has already been
infiltrated for a long time, but it's basically it's ramping up
with the People's Plan for Nature and the Living Planet Act
that I spoke about earlier. So it's very important for us to
get together at these events to share this information.
Thank you. Thank you Sandy.
Yes indeed. We'll talk more about that an
extra. I think the WWF was never
infiltrated. It was, it began as a pre
infiltrated organisations as was set up by the Duke of Edinburgh
in the 1st place and was absolutely 100% on this agenda
from the start. So, so the infiltration didn't
wasn't required in that case. Well, look, we are out of time
for today. We will be back in a few
minutes. If you're Auk Call member on the
for the extra programme. If you are not Auk Call member,
then please consider joining us and joining us for news extra
every day that we do a news programme.
Otherwise, don't forget the interview tomorrow at 1:00 PM.
We will be back as usual on Friday and we'll see you then.
Bye, bye, bye. Bye.