Good afternoon. It's Friday the 6th of June
2025, just after 1:00. Welcome to UK Call News.
I'm your host, Mike Robinson. Joining me in the studio today
is Patrick Henningson. Welcome to the programme,
Patrick. Great to be with you, Mike.
And by video link, we have Mark Anderson and we're delighted to
also have Kate Clarenberg with us as well.
Now we're going to begin with Ukraine, Patrick, and the claim
from the BBC that will seek revenge.
And that's typically a mode of language from the Babe.
Well, atypical in fact, sounds more like the News of the World.
If you read the other mainstream media, they say Putin will
respond or retaliate. But the BB CS taking a little
feather out of Rupert Murdoch's gap there.
So there's the revenge is coming, apparently.
Now listen to this comment from Trump in the White House.
So what do you consider to put? More sanctions on Russia because
this discussion is going on now for weeks and months and you
tweeted about it once but then nothing.
Happens yeah when I see when I see the moment when we're not
going to make a deal when this thing won't stop at that moment
yeah it's in my my brain, the deadline we're not when I see
the moment where it's not going to stop and I'm sure you're.
Going to do the same thing. We'll be very, very, very tough.
And it could be on both countries, to be honest.
You know, it takes 2 to tango, but they'll be we're going to be
very tough, whether it's Russia or anybody else, we're going to
be very tough that. So the peace negotiations don't
like that they're they're going so well here.
So and look, the, the problem is and we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll
play some a little, little bit of footage here, but Trump's
basically saying that there's going to be some kind of
response from from Russia. He's acknowledging that this was
a very from a public relations point of view, this is a very
successful operation for Ukraine and for the fundraising
operation that Zelensky is running with the West as it
stands on the ground in terms of material differences on the
battlefield. Doesn't look like it's that
consequential, but huge in terms of public relations in places
like Westminster, Brussels and Washington, DC.
But you know, how long can Trump carry on with this aloof
approach to foreign policy where he says, I had no idea that they
tried to assassinate Putin in his helicopter.
I had no idea about this massive drone strike hitting their
nuclear long range nuclear deterrent.
And this is the same president that says this war would never
have happened if I was president.
Well, he is president and we now have a major nuclear potential
provocation. So this whole aloof shtick is
just getting long in the tooth with Trump.
So I I really, I'm not buying it, quite frankly.
And I don't know anybody who actually is.
So this is this is one of the problems here.
So Trump is, I think who knows? Somebody could have just told
him, well, this is what we're going to do.
And he telegraphs these vague signals.
He's constantly doing this and you're just left to interpret
what he says. Meanwhile, Lindsey Graham is
gallivanting around Kiev and Mike Pompeo is in Odessa meeting
the leader of the trades massacre in Odessa, who is one
of the more unsavoury characters in the Ukrainian parliament.
So that's what's going on. And meanwhile, they're trying to
conduct negotiations which look like they're kind of dead in the
water at Istanbul with attack like an attack like this coming
before it, Mike. So right, this is this is the
problem that we're facing here. So we'll, we'll take a look at
just just to review here, this was the operation.
We'll bring this up on screen. If you if you remember how this
went down, these were basically container trucks that were
disguised as, who knows, mobile sort of homes or something like
that, but contained sort of autonomous drones, probably
using the Russian telecom system, but maybe using Starlink
satellites. It's not certain how this was
organised. And these were deployed.
This was 15 months in the making and supposedly Trump didn't know
about it. I highly doubt that if he, if he
is, if he if he is true and he is honest and he didn't know
about it, he's not in charge. And that's a whole another
conversation as well. So, but this is a level of
asymmetric warfare, Mike. The potential for this is hugely
disruptive for any country, especially Russia, who is
exposed because it doesn't have like the United States and ocean
on each side. As a world superpower, it has to
guard a lot of border and territory and it's a bigger
problem. So this is, I think, the future
of warfare. They're calling it Mike, and
this is hugely dangerous. If this is what NATO is is
planning a relentless waves of these types of swarms, then we
could be in for a very long and tedious conflict.
So last week we reported that the UK Government had announced
the Killweb as part of the Strategic Defence Review, or
Digital Targeting Web as they like to call it now.
This is said to enable quick fire targeting of enemy assets,
including through offensive cyber operations.
And they're saying that this kill web is going to be based at
the new cyber and electronic actual magnetic command, which
they're establishing at the same time.
And that's going to lead, these are their words, defensive cyber
operations and coordinate offensive cyber operations with
the National Cyber Force. And so the question is, is it a
coincidence that the the drone operation, the Ukrainian drone
operation is called Spider's web?
Is this an allusion to the to the kill web idea?
I don't believe in coincidences, especially 2 that appear in the
same week. Mike and the announcement
preceded the operation. So obviously they're, you know,
they're patting each other on the back in the halls of
Westminster on this. Right.
So, well, why don't I welcome Kit Klarenberg to the programme?
Kit, welcome to the programme. Is it a coincidence that these
two terms sound similar? No, I mean, much like Patrick,
I'm no believer in coincidences. I mean, I think that I actually
respectfully disagree potentially that Trump wasn't in
the loop on this. I do err on the side of him
actually having been kept out of this and this having been a
British operation which was planned without, perhaps with
CIA knowledge, but without their oversight.
We at the Grey Zones ever since, ever since the proxy war erupted
in February 2022, have been systematically documenting how
it is Britain that is leading escalatory actions, concocting
all sorts of wild schemes to up the ante in the proxy war.
With the ultimate objective of keeping the US invested in this
and embroiled in this and trying to prevent them from
withdrawing. Which I do think there is a
significant strain of sentiment within the US public, within the
US government, within, within the Pentagon and the CIA that
they realise that this is a very costly, unwinnable quagmire.
That is the, the, the cost benefit ratio is not in their
favour at this point for a variety of reasons.
Now, what I think is, is quite interesting as well is when this
attack happened. And then there were subsequent
strikes such as underwater attacks on Kerch Bridge and the
blowing up of bridges in, in Kirk and Briansk.
You know, all of these actions were advocated in leaked British
intelligence files that we've reported on at the Grey Zone.
So no prizes for guessing who came up with these ideas and and
encouraged the Ukrainians to go ahead with them.
Is that initially there was this flurry of intense media hype
about these strikes. The The Daily Telegraph rather
bombastically reported Trump said Ukraine held no cards.
Well, they just proved that they hold many cards, the BBC said.
Tub thumpingly. Ukraine has just sent a very
powerful message to Russia and the West.
And then we Fast forward only a few days.
You know, this is less than a week ago now.
And Politico acknowledges that the military, yeah, utility of
these attacks was actually very limited.
And it's had absolutely no impact whatsoever on the
frontline reality, which is that Russia is advancing at a ever
increasing rate and scale. They are seizing new territory
every single day, inflicting vast casualties on Ukraine every
step of the way. Reuters has also acknowledged
that there is no evidence that anywhere near the amount of
strategic bombers that Ukraine claimed to have damaged or
destroyed. I think they're, they, they
initially claimed it was 40. There was the Reuters admits
there's no evidence to support this.
I think that the true number is probably a 10th of that.
Yeah. I mean, this was a much needed
propaganda victory at a time that Ukraine is on the brink of
collapse on the frontline and that initial burst of exuberance
has rather rather faded. I mean, there were numerous
politicians, including Boris Johnson, who we know sabotaged
personally the peace talks in Istanbul in April 2022 between
Russia and Ukraine by flying to Kiev and offering Zelensky the
blankets, the blank cheques to keep going when they were a
signature away from a rather equitable peace deal.
That he stated this shows how inventive and intelligent and
resourceful the Ukrainians are. It's time to ratchet up the
sanctions. It's time to finish this and end
Putin's reign of terror, Karl Bildt, the former Swedish Prime
Minister and latter day EU apparatchik, said.
This is like something out of a 007 novel, which I think was
probably the inspiration and point behind this as we've again
at the Grey zone delved into. A lot of the British military
and intelligence planners who are behind Ukraine's daring
operations, which almost invariably end in total failure,
are quite clearly informed heavily by Hollywood readings of
World War Two. There.
There was, for instance, the attempt to capture a
beachheading Krinky which lasted.
This is in Russian. Russian occupied cursing was an
operation that lasted for nine months.
Wave after wave of British trained Ukrainian marines were
sent on high speed boat Ribs across the Denipro River without
any air cover whatsoever. It was hoped by the British they
could recreate D Day and March from Crinkie on Crimea, an
outright victory. In reality most marines were
killed on route due to relentless Russian fire.
Many people who actually met the The Who made it there were
killed immediately upon arrival by Russian artillery and glide
bombs and drones. And you know, this is just one
of many total disasters, including the Kirk incursion and
the 2023 counter offensive, which we now know and has been
confirmed in the mainstream media were plotted by the
British, apparently with the the US not being overly happy about
these things, about these operations going ahead and being
sceptical of their their chances of success.
OK. Well, thank you very much for
that. Great, great.
A couple of points just to underline what Kitt says, he's
really demonstrated there that every single major negotiation
of threshold point of Britain has been there probably behind
the scenes working with Ukraine to basically sabotage any
potential advance in bilateral or multilateral negotiations.
So I mean, that's a pattern that's pretty well established
going back for the duration of this conflict.
Right, right. OK, Well, something else I'm
really keen to get Kitt's view on is this, because as Charles
mentioned during his report on Keir Starmer's shiny new
strategic defence review on Wednesday's programme, we need
to have a look at the authors. He did suggest that I was going
to do that today, so let's have a look at them now.
The primary authors where these 3 Lord Robertson, General Sir
Richard Barons and Fiona Hill. That's Doctor Hill.
Now, as I mentioned on Monday's
programme, Robertson is a former Labour Secretary of State for
Defence and later served as Secretary general of NATO.
Now, he also served as Scottish Secretary at one point.
He is from Scotland, he lived in Dunblane and he successfully
sued the sundry Sunday Herald over a post on the Herald's
reader forum that he had helped. The accusation in the post was
that he'd helped secure a gun licence for Thomas Hamilton, the
man who carried out the Dunblane massacre.
Now, I mention this because it's related to the online safety
report that I'm going to make later on in the programme.
But he successfully sued over that, and that made a difference
to what people could post on forums subsequently.
But coming back to the other characters in this play, General
Sir Richard Barons is the next on the list.
Former commander of Joint Forces Command, a rabid Russophobe.
And, well, here's a clip of what Barons had to say during a 2029,
sorry, a 2019 interview that David Ellis ran with him, which
you can find on the UK column website.
If you're going to build armies, navies and air forces that are
different, they're built around manned, unmanned and autonomous
capability. UK industry can make this.
So this has to be good for prosperity because for the first
time, for a long time, UK industry at scale will be making
things that other people around the world need to buy.
And so this is good for export prosperity.
And so if our politics gets this right, we can fix our defence,
we can influence our friends. We can deter our enemies and we
can boost our industry, I mean. This for me is in the no brainer
territory. Yeah, and that's absolutely part
of the theme of the Strategic Defence review, that that war
and death around the world can be used as a driver for industry
in the UK and create jobs. Fantastic.
It's. Definitely in the no brainer
territory. Absolutely in the no brainer
territory, but we've got to remember if we put this on
screen that he is a close friend of Chris Donnelly, founder of
the Institute for Statecraft and it's Russophobic Integrity
Initiative project. And Chris Donnelly himself was a
special advisor to four NATO Secretaries General over 13
years, including Robertson. And now this is a quote from
Donnelly during a defence committee hearing that I
attended in 2019. In hybrid warfare, everything is
a weapon. And that is basically the theme
of of Barron's opinion, but also Donnelly's opinion as well.
And the third person finally we have here is Doctor Fiona Hill,
a British born American foreign affairs.
Well, she describes herself as a specialist.
I, I don't know, we may have different opinions of that who's
also a total Russophobe. And her Russophobia is totally
focused on the person of Vladimir Putin himself, with
analysis such as Putin's personality disorder.
And what if Putin disappeared for real?
Now she's a spook. She became an intelligence
analyst under George W Bush and Barack Obama at the National
Intelligence Council. And she where she was a senior
expert on Russia and the former Soviet republics, including
Ukraine. And then in between stints at
Brookings Institute, she was also deputy assistant to the
president and senior director of European and Russian affairs on
Trump's during Trump's first term.
And she when she was on the National Security Council.
So she's quite a woman. So Kit, let me ask you, what are
your thoughts on these three? Well, I mean it's difficult to
know where to begin, although I mean just as a preface, you
meant you mentioned barons connections to Donnelly.
In 2014 there was a British Parliamentary Defence Select
Committee hearing on the future of Britain and NATO, and
Donnelly explicitly stated that Britain should take a lead on
arming and training Ukrainian forces in their brutal crackdown
on the civilian population in Donbas because this would
encourage the US to refocus on Europe at a time it was pivoting
under Obama to Asia. And Obama also explicitly stated
that Ukraine is not a core interest of the US, but it is of
Russia, therefore we shouldn't interfere.
So he has played a significant role in getting us to where we
are now. And he is overseeing Britain's
contributions to the proxy war in secret.
But yes, I mean, Lord Robertson was, I believe he was Blair's
defence secretary and he is in 1998, he initiated another
strategic defence review which set out a very bold vision for
creating British Empire 2.0. And it called for the creation
of British aircraft carriers. You know, Fast forward to today
and those aircraft carriers were which took many, many, well,
decades in, in the making and billions in the making are now
scheduled for scrap because they've been found to be
completely useless, which is, you know, quite, quite ironic.
But Barons is a very interesting character.
Again, you mentioned the Institute for Statecraft in
2016, Barons gave a talk at the at the Institute which was
rather incendiary, and it effectively laid the foundations
for the Ukraine proxy war. And he talked about how due to
the rising power of China and Russia, global engagement is no
longer on the West terms. The West power is waning and
there is a risk that the US can no longer protect us.
And he stated that we need to deal with Russia by doing things
that are serious and if no catastrophe happens, to wake
people up and demand a response. It was necessary to manufacture
such catastrophes. And then you have the launch of
Integrity Initiative and all of these stories about Russian
meddling, which, you know, were black propaganda, laying the
foundations for war against Russia, which served to turn
European governments and populations against Russia.
But yeah, I mean, he is in that same talk, he explicitly stated
that, well, we need to spend be spending billions more on on
defence and we need to seriously beef up Britain's military
capabilities in terms of, you know, concrete ideas in this
strategic defence review for doing that.
Their only answer is spend more money.
Well, I mean, the obvious problem with that is you can
print money, but you can't print bullets or tanks or soldiers.
And on all three fronts the UK is significantly lacking, not
least because it doesn't have a defence industrial base anymore
or any or much in the way of of industry.
So I, I strongly suspect that those calls will come to
nothing. Fiona Hill, as you mentioned,
she is a. Absolutely lunatic Russophobe of
some standing. I don't think that she can even
speak Russian, but she is frequently cited as a expert on
Putin, Russia, and yes, takes a typically very hawkish line.
In a bizarre coincidence she happened to know Christopher
Steele personally the disgraced former MI 6 operative who was
behind the Trump Russia dossier and she introduced steel to
eager eagle Danchenko, who was steel source for all of the
dubious claims in that dossier. So she she may well have played
a played some kind of of role in its couldn't in its fabrication.
So yeah, I mean the the the contents of the review are kind
of unsurprising. They talk about how Russia is
the gravest threat to Britain and that it we that Britain
needs to to undertake significant measures to counter
this. I I mean this is the the product
of enduring post imperial delusions about Britains
importance and power on the world stage.
You know, Britain wants to believe that it is a major
global power. I think they're just seen as a
source of major annoyance and nuisance by the Russians.
I don't think they're taken particularly seriously.
And I think that that attitude extends to most European
countries at this stage. They've disarmed themselves by
sending all of their weapons to Ukraine.
They have bankrupted themselves by sending money to Ukraine.
And they've also cut themselves off from electively cut
themselves off from Russian energy supplies, which has, you
know, just deindustrialized the entire continent.
You know, I think we've kind of we've, we've hit the brick wall
of illusions here for a lot of for a lot of Western powers,
although it may well take quite some time for the reality to
catch up with them. Yeah.
Yeah, and and staying on this subject of the UK and their role
behind the scenes in some of these conflict zones, this is an
interesting story which has come up here.
This is the cradle, obviously one of the the best English
language Middle East news outlets here.
But more signs of Britain grooming serious Al Qaeda rooted
government. And you can see there the new
president sporting a salvo row. Look there.
And you're talking about here, the rise of a London born Muslim
Brotherhood act to the heart of the Damascus politics reveals an
even deeper layers of the UK's long war to rebrand Al Qaeda its
power and legitimise it as the Syrian government here.
And they go on. And basically, this basically
summarises Britain's outsized role in shaping the conflict,
bringing Al Qaeda to power, whitewashing its leadership, and
embedding UK operatives within the political infrastructure in
that country. And this brings us to a great
article here by Kit Klarenberg. This is up on his Substack
Global Delinquents, the column, and how MI 6 helped HTS seize
Syria. Now, there's a lot of familiar
faces in this article, Mike, including perhaps the person who
recommended the Salvaro Taylor for Al Jilani Hamish to Bretton
Gordon. But look at these two likely
fellows. These are the new Chuckle
Brothers. Mike, this is Alistair Campbell,
Rory Stewart giving a warm welcome to the new self
appointed president of Syria, the former al Qaeda leader in
Syria, Al Baghdadi's deputy at ISIS.
They're platforming him, legitimising him.
It is a quite an extraordinary thing there.
So we can get into that. I want to bring Kit in here
right now. Kit, great article.
Obviously if there's a lot of familiar names and all of the
theatre that we've seen over the last 15 years to destabilise
Syria, you can see how it all fits together here.
But your your thoughts on this? Yeah, sure.
So the there there was at the start of May, or it might have
been mid May, there was the the US ambassador to Syria 2011 to
2014, Robert Ford. He gave a talk during which he
acknowledged that in 2023 a British non governmental
organisation had approached him and sought his personal
assistance in transforming HTS and Shara or Iolani into
politicians, rebranding them in advance of their seizure of
power in Damascus. Now this that firm was revealed
by the Independent Arabia. I didn't know the Independent
had an Arabic language outlet, but apparently it does.
These comments it was revealed to be the firm was revealed by
Independent Arabia to be Intermediate, which was set up
by Jonathan Powell, who was a key adviser to the to Tony
Blair's government. He was chief of staff throughout
Tony Blair's ten years in power. He was one of the key architects
of Iraq who knew that that Saddam Hussein didn't have
weapons of mass destruction and wasn't a threat, but thought
that it was good to get rid of him anyway because he bought
into this humanitarian interventionism nonsense
preached by Blair and the Neo Con Gallery.
That report in independent Arabia was kind of kind of was
missed by the the English language media, including the
independent media, with the notable exception of Vanessa
Beeley who wrote an excellent article for UK column I believe,
which is well worth checking out.
But yeah, there is a there has been a in the manner of a kind
of low grade theatre production in which you have a small cast
playing different roles at different times.
You know, the same names keep cropping up and up and up.
And yes, as you mentioned, Hamish to Bretton Gordon, who
was on the front line of propaganda operations in Syria,
also was an MI 6 agent staging chemical weapons attacks to
blame Assad's, sorry, the Assad's forces for for, you
know, breaching the U SS red lines and trying to encourage US
intervention. And he also set up a bunch of
bogus humanitarian groups that that again, you know, were part
of a wider propaganda effort to demonise Syria and Russia.
He recently went to Damascus and met with HTS and gave a rather
bombastic interview to an outlet called The National, where he
said, well, you know, the Syrians that I know say that
these guys are the real deal. And, you know, Britain is
uniquely placed to make a real difference in, in, in post Assad
Syria. And we can give them advice.
OK, welcome back. Sorry for the technical problem
that knocked us out for a couple of minutes.
Kent, let's come back to you. You were just starting to talk
about Hamish to Brett and Gordon.
Yeah, well, no, I was saying that I mean, Hamish to Bretton
Gordon, he, he, he was heavily involved in regime change
operations and was, among other things, smuggling soil samples
out of Syria to prove that Assad's forces employed chemical
weapons. It is clear from mainstream
media reporting on these operations that the purpose was
to trigger something like either the destruction of Libya, you
know, like a saturation bombing campaign or even a Iraq style or
all out invasion. They didn't succeed in that.
There is a number of other British intelligence cutouts
that I mean, I've reported extensively on the operations of
Arc, which is run by a veteran MI six officer called Alistair
Alistair Harris. And it's quite clear from their,
their leaked internal files that they were preparing in 2013 for
a major escalation and intervention by the US, which
never materialised, but their, their covert operations and that
their creation of bogus humanitarian groups like the
White Helmets, you know, that endured and they endured to this
day. So they might not have the
Britain might not have gotten the the intervention it hoped
for, but it's hand picked puppets are now in power in
Damascus. Their hold on power is
questionable. We had Marco Rubio saying the
country could descend into civil war, which is, you know, a, a
certainly a possibility given that the central government does
not have popular legitimacy. Gilani was a largely unknown
figure in Syria before taking power.
You still have elements of Syrian society, including people
who are armed, who remain loyal to Assad and Baathism.
You have the Kurds who want to carve out their own state in,
oh, God, sorry, it escaped Rojava.
Rojava, Yeah, which is a, you
know, a key kind of CI AM I6 base of operations in the
region. So, you know, and then you have
Turkey wants to chip away at Syrian territory.
Israel wants a chunk of the Golan Heights, if not more.
They, Israel are worried about other powers encroaching on this
to the extent that they, it's been reported that they've asked
U.S. officials to to implore the Russians not to leave because
they they think that might affect the balance of power.
So it's quite a mess that they've created for themselves.
But you know, and you know, as in the meantime, British
officials are meeting with high ranking HTS officials, which
even the British media admits is completely illegal under British
law because they're a prescribed terrorist group.
But you know, such as the topsy turvy world that we live in,
they're not going to be prosecuted, whereas people
wearing Palestine solidarity badges are.
Yes, and date. Well, I think it just goes to
show Mike, you know, the level of this is another level of soft
power. This is really weaponized levels
of sub diffusion soft power. And what Kit is outlined in his
article is a fantastic details and great research, great
reading, great journalism. Kit Klarenberg, editor of The
Grey Zone UK, is also publishing at Substack as well as on Mint
Press news. He writes for a number of
different outlets as well. All excellent outlets.
Kit, thank you very much for joining us on the UK column.
Yes, thank you, Kit. Thank you very much.
And and all those links to Kit's work will be in the show notes
of course on the UK column website.
So look, look there for them. Thank you, kit.
Now, let's move on. Mark, to you and the situation
with tariffs and Trump. And, well, the Bank of England
has been making some comments about this.
Indeed, yeah. Andrew Bailey, the governor of
the Bank of England. A lot of a lot of things
happened on the 3rd of June. By the way, there was the Bank
of England monetary policy report to a parliamentary
committee in the UK that day, and around that same time the
Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development
issued a report. Anyway, Andrew Bailey had a
number of things to say. What's interesting is that he's
not the only one saying that whatever the discomfort and
disruption that Trump's tariffs and trade policies may be
playing, whatever the pros and cons may be, there is a
disruption in the post World War 2 rules based world order that
was created to a large extent at Bretton Woods.
As we know that created the International Monetary Fund, the
World Bank and the Gatt that became the WTO.
So that is the globalist one world order system that a lot of
the globalists, including Mr Bailey are worried about.
Now we have some quotes from him taken from his testimony.
The overall picture on trade now I'm afraid he said is 1, where
the rules based system is sort of dead.
A rather dramatic statement, He he continued.
That has very serious consequences for the global
economy. So there's there's a lot of
worry here that that system that was so carefully put into place
after World War 2 is beginning to seriously erode.
And again, that is the globalist system that many analysts in the
alternative media have been very critical of over the recent
decades. Anyway, he also had this to say.
The system, the post World War 2 rules based multilateral trade
system based on Gatt, WTO has now really been blown up to a
considerable degree by all of this.
Repeating that has now been really blown up to a
considerable degree by all of this.
Blown up are pretty dramatic words.
Maybe he's engaging in a little hyperbole just to dramatise his
points, but it's all very interesting.
He gave some other sundry remarks to the committee on
interest rates that are are rather dry.
We can maybe look at those another time.
It's kind of like listening to the Federal Reserve testimony to
Congress. It is a cure for insomnia.
But Mr Bailey went on and had one more thing to say to kind of
round out his comments that focused those comments that
focused on trade and tariffs and Trump.
Not all of it was about that, of course.
But he said we can't say the US administration is just wrong
headed. There are things that have gone
on in this whole trade picture which I think do point to the
stress that that system has been under.
And he did acknowledge that the rules based system has a number
of flaws. He pledged to fix those flaws.
He doesn't want to abandon the system.
A no good globalist would want to do that.
He said. Also we have to come back to the
international table. Yes, the system has problems.
If we abandoned it, however, we'll, we'll be living in a much
more difficult world in his point of view.
So those are the core things that he had to say.
Gentlemen. The committee, of course asked
him a lot of pretty good questions.
It's a rather long thing. We'll have the links to anyone
that wants to watch the whole interview.
We'll have the links in the show notes.
Now, as I mentioned, the OECD brought out right around the
same time, it's Economic Outlook.
It, it's a very long tome. Printed page wise.
It's, it's over 200 pages, so I relied mostly on a basic summary
of it. And that summary I believe is
reflected in the next slide. This is the headline to the
summary. Global economic outlook shifts
as trade policy uncertainty weakens growth also on the 3rd
of June from the OECD and among other things, I scribbled down
some things here. The outlook projects global
growth slowing. That's global growth from 3.3%
going out, you know, starting from last year as a baseline to
2.9% in both this year, 2025 and next year.
The slowdown is expected to be the most concentrated in the US,
Canada, Mexico and China. And then it went out to say that
GDP growth in the US is projected to decline from 2.8%
to 1.6% and then another 1.5% decline in 2026.
I don't know how realistic those figures are.
I tend to doubt them a little bit on that one.
It it went on to say the the OEOECD summary of its large
report that governments need to engage with each other to
address any issues of the global trading system positively and
constructively through dialogue, keeping markets open and
preserving what they call the economic benefits of the rules
based global trade for competition, innovation,
productivity, etcetera. And this OECD outlook goes on to
say it, it highlights a range of risks that is starting with the
concern that further trade fragmentation as they call it,
including new tariff hikes and retaliatory actions could
intensify the global the growth slowdown and trigger significant
disruptions in the global supply chain.
Of course the the length of the supply chains under the
globalist system that has been set up, the very idea of the
very structure that is of them and how long they are makes them
inherently vulnerable. We found that out during the
COVID ocracy that the longer the supply chains and the more
complex everything is it it works in a lot of ways, but that
also makes it highly vulnerable. So Trump may be thinking that a
more nationalistic approach where you bring more
manufacturing home, if tariffs are used correctly that is,
would shorten supply change and overtime raise national income,
more jobs, and lower the vulnerability of the overall
system. But of course it takes a lot of
effort and a bumpy Rd to get there.
But anyway, I also noted, and I just found this last night,
there's an article on the UK column website Tariffs, Trade or
Structural Change and this is very, very well done.
I read through most of it and it really gives a good balanced
view of the pros and cons of the current trade policy of the US
and across the world. Taking a look at tariffs, it
does make the important note that often times the world
system, the trade system, has been seen as sort of a economic
religion of sorts. That you need a lot of faith to
believe in it for it to work, and that national economies have
been sacrificed at the altar of the globalist free trade system.
That's reflected in this article.
That's a point of view I've often heard looking at this
issue over the over the years. But at any rate, the OECD and
the governor of the Bank of England do make some salient
points. But you know, we have to look at
whether Trump's policies will erode a global system that many
of us have been critical of and maybe point us at a different
direction and a better one eventually.
And I'm not wearing rose coloured glasses when I say
this. Or they may be more correct than
I realise and and perhaps Trump is doing the right thing in the
wrong way there. There's a lot you could unpack
in in such complex trade systems.
Again, the OECD reports over 200 pages.
I'll probably look into it more in a couple of weeks as I read
through it more. But those are the key highlights
right now as Bilderberg approaches and the G7 approaches
in the middle of month. OK, we'll come on to that in a
second. Thank you very much, Mark.
Now, if you like what the UK column does, you'd like to
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Preaching the Red Wall. Yes indeed.
A reminder of the Science Beautiful festival which we will
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Next, Peaceful Assembly for Medical freedom.
This is in Dublin at King Graham House and Doctor McCluskey is
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fantastic speakers. It's Tuesday the 10th of June at
1:00 PM. If you could possibly get to
that, do so. And also to remind you that the
Thetford Truth and Freedom Beer Festival is taking place July
18th, 19th in the Angel in in, in Larling, and that is going to
have Diane Rasmussen McKay and Sandy Adams speaking at it.
So, so get along to that if you possibly can.
OK, let's move on then to censorship and Ofcom and so on.
And on Wednesday this week, Ofcom held a day long seminar to
explain the regulations which platforms are going to have to
comply with in order to meet their obligations under the
Online Safety Act for the so called protection of children.
I'll explain why I say so called in a second.
Ofcom refused to give any specific guidance on how
platforms should implement the regime that they want to see.
They said that this is on the basis that they if they give
specific advice, it may restrict their ability to take
enforcement action later on. So it's up to the platforms to
interpret the extremely complex and vaguely defined requirements
and to impose a regime which Ofcom will find acceptable.
I have to say it was pretty clear from the Q&A sessions that
some of the pretty big platforms that were on that were really
struggling with this whole thing.
So I would suggest that the inevitable outcome of this is
that platforms will err on the side of caution and bearing
that's particularly bearing in mind the potential penalties.
And now many will say that this is good, children should be
protected. And of course the second part of
that is true, but the way this is being done won't protect
children. And we'll discuss that in a
minute. Instead, it's going to result in
many more topic areas following below the censorship threshold.
Now let's just have a look at the main categories of content,
which Ofcom says children should not be exposed to.
The first is what they call primary priority content, or
PPC, and this includes contact content related to suicide, self
harm, eating disorders, pornography.
And Ofcom says that children should be blocked from seeing
any of this content. The second is what they're
calling priority content, and that includes content which they
call abuse and hate, what are undefined bullying and violent
content, and content related to harmful substances and dangerous
stunts. And then they have what they
call non designated content. This is just a fantastic term
because they define non designated content as content
that isn't considered primary content or priority content, but
still presents quotes a material risk of significant harm to an
appreciable number of children in the UK.
In other words, everything else because it's no, it's, it's not
defined any better than that. It's basically, if it's not the
first category, it's not the second category that it's this.
So no definition of any meaningful kind.
So unsurprisingly, the main that technique that Ofcom, or at
least unsurprisingly if you've been paying attention to the UK
column anyway, the main technique that Ofcom is putting
forward for preventing children accessing these types of content
is what they call highly effective age assurance.
The types of technologies would say consider highly effective
are listed on the right hand side of the slide here.
So we've got credit card cheques, open banking, which
allows consumers and businesses to securely share the financial
data with third party service providers.
Through what? Through an application
programming interface, photo ID matching, facial age estimation,
mobile network operator age cheques, digital ID is another
option and email based age estimation.
So these are all the options that they seem to be putting on
the table at the moment as being services or systems that they
would find acceptable for age verification.
They say that this age verification will need to take
place within the remit of the Data Protection Act.
But of course, the data protection regime is about to be
massively relaxed with with with new legislation that's on its
way through Parliament at the moment.
So all the focus from Ofcom was in verifying that someone is
over the age of sorry is verifying that someone is over
the age of 18 if they want to access certain content.
At no point did they comment on any requirement to make sure
that someone was under the age of 18 for access to a site which
is aimed specifically at children.
And that seemed like a pretty serious item missing there.
And just one final point on this Ofcom began the day with a
little propaganda video, so let's just have a look at it.
My son's into gaming and football, so why are you showing
him content that tells him to hate and mystery women?
When my little boy is safe at home, why are strangers asking
him for topless photos? Why did you let people share
nudes of my 14 year old daughter?
What if it was your daughter? Why is my?
Daughter being targeted with clips of kids.
In our area being violently attacked.
Why are you allowing your platform to be a playground for
paedophiles to groom children? My teenage daughter's hair fell
out because she was bullied on your.
Platform. How can you let dealers put
strokes to my 14 year old on your side?
How can you let my child that's 14 years old?
Receive. Photos of child pornography you
allowing your. Black kids.
Most of. Suicide hunter, which is what
you want to do? So at no point in the discussion
was there any suggestion that parents might have a role in
keeping their children safe. There's nothing about the tool,
about any kinds of tools to enable parents to make decisions
about what is or what is not appropriate content for their
children to see. It's just about making moving
these decisions to the platforms and to imposing some kind of
digital ID. So this isn't about keeping
children safe, it's only about normalising state enabled
content control and digital identity.
That's the argument that I'm putting forward here anyway.
I don't know if you've got any thoughts on this, Patrick.
Well, you're just making like I think a classic utilitarian
argument. If the problem is, you know, all
of these so called risks to children and so forth, how can
you impose a broad censorship regime that covers adults in
order to allegedly protect children?
It doesn't even stand up to basic common sense from from a
classic English liberal argument.
And that's how our whole legal system has been built on top of.
So why not? Let's say I got a radical idea.
Why not restrict access to smartphones for children below
the age of 15? If this is going to be a big
problem? Can you give them a Nokia banana
and be done with it? And when they get it home, the
parents can be responsible while they're at home under parental
supervision? You can't.
There is no perfect system. Children will get drugs pushed
on them on their way to school, in school, in the bathrooms at
school. Okay, and then what?
Should we shut the school down? Should we take this?
Should we shut the schools down and have the kids homeschooled
or in some kind of 6 foot by 6 foot government kind of sell to
learn or something? It's ridiculous once you go down
this road. Absolutely.
And I mean, you know, the fight between YouTube and the YouTube
download applications, the fight between the big corporate media
companies and the piracy demonstrates that these types of
approaches don't work. They never have worked in the
past, and they're not going to work in the future.
But in a related topic then, a week or two ago, Patrick, you
were talking about the Amnesty Media Awards.
Yeah, the Amnesty Media Awards, and if you remember that story
here, we'll bring that up on screen.
We were, we were recommending that everyone vote for Jonathan
Cook because we believed he was the most true independent
journalist here. Well, they announced the awards.
Unfortunately, Jonathan Cook did not win, but it's been awards
been given to People's Choice for UK journalism has been given
to Owen Jones here. So that's up on Amnesty's
website. Not our first choice, not our
second or third either. But Jonathan Cook actually
weighed in on this and I thought we'd just show this up on screen
as well. And here he is.
He actually attended the awards because he was one of the
nominees in London here, I assume he says.
Many thanks to all of supported my nomination at Amnesty and he
goes on here and this just shows you what a class act Jonathan
Cook is and this is what he said.
I took with me to the ceremony the investigative journalist ASA
Winstanley. ASA Winstanley at Electronic
Intifada Had I won and had a chance to make an acceptance
speech, I wanted to highlight his case.
He, along with other independent journalists, including Kit
Clarenberg, who we had on the programme earlier, have been
targeted for persecution by the police, doubtless under
political direction, for his work on Gaza.
And he continues just rounding this off.
The police have been using the most expansive interpretation
possible of the UK's draconian terrorism laws.
Last month, the courts ruled that the police had illegally
seized his electronic devices. He's talking about ASA
Winstanley just there on the left hand side.
Incredibly, no media outlet in the UK has thought it worth
reporting either the dawn raid on his home last year or the
courts subsequent findings of the law breaking by police and
seizing electronic devices of an accredited journalist.
So, you know, Jonathan Cooks going to use his platform if he
won the award to campaign and support another journalist.
I mean that that kind of proves that he deserves the award more
than anybody. I mean, a real class act.
And I also want to point people again to Jonathan's sub stack
here. This is actually a fantastic
story. Why is the UK sheltering
Israel's genocide inciting ambassador?
And there she is, Zippy Hotolovi, who got absolutely
lambasted on a number of talk shows.
I think she was even on Piers Morgan.
But terrible, terrible reputation.
She's really made a fool out of herself in front of the global
media. And, you know, it's proven to be
a very unsavoury individual. So this is a great piece by Cook
here. And you know, where is the UK
government on some of these individuals making these public
genocidal statements, these Israeli officials.
It's just incredible. Since when is this acceptable
and is there going to be any recourse for it?
Meanwhile, they're just arresting journalists under the
ever expansive, elastic interpretation of the Terrorism
Act. It is quite a hypocritical
situation and you know, Mark was talking about trade and the the
situation with the so called rules based international order.
It seems to me a big part of the reason that the so called rules
based international order is collapsing is because the
proponents of it, the West, are increasingly just abandoning
their own rules. Well, it's not just that.
It's also because they've abandoned actual international
law and actual justice. The the whole idea of the rules
based international order was to supplant actual international
law. So the superpowers decided they,
United States being the lead, that they no longer had to
comply with international law. And as soon as they established
that precedent, all the other countries, Britain and all the
others basically piled in behind them.
And then basically then they lost their rules based order as
well as the international legal system.
So it all went to pot basically. And Mark, you know a couple of
the bastions of the rules based international order.
Well, let's start with one of them, the G7.
They are meeting soon. Indeed, gentlemen, as we know,
the G7 tends to kind of orbit around Bilderberg.
It kind of commingles timing wise, often times each year with
Bilderberg. This time, as this title page
from the G7 website shows, they're going to meet in
Kananaskis, AB, Canada, June 15th through 17, Bilderberg
meeting June 12th through 15th. So they're, you know, kind of
contiguous with one another. And I did a little reading up on
the G7. Of course, Trump's trade
policies are going to be probably front and centre and I
think they'll definitely be at Bilderberg because Bilderberg,
well, they'll release a topics list, but they discuss things
beyond that official list, as we know.
But I would think it would make the official list.
But at the G7, Canada is the host nation.
As we know. There was a meeting of the G7
finance ministers and central bank governors already preceding
this leaders summit coming up in in Canada.
And at that preliminary meeting, there were concerns among many
members like Japan Central Bank chief, that the potential
effects of Trump, sweeping tariffs and the continuing
economic uncertainty they create could be a very big problem from
their point of view. So at any rate, it's going to be
a major topic unavoidably. This is just from the Bilderberg
website itself, the official Bilderberg website,
thebilderbergmeetings.org. And I just put a notation in
there. It'll be the 71st meeting in 71
years, taking place, of course, at the Wallenberg Families posh
Grand Hotel, the 12th through the 15th of June in Stockholm,
Sweden. I was, I managed to get those
dates, even though Bilderberg hasn't announced them.
It'll be the fifth meeting in Sweden.
They've met there in 627384, 2001 and now.
And the Trilateral Commission meeting that I covered last week
in April in Washington gives us some idea, along with the
obvious thing, Trump's trade agenda in terms of the upcoming
Bilderberg topics. Those trilateral topics having
been, among others, dramatic geopolitical shifts, a major
reordering across the Middle East, tensions in North America
that could very well be the border, as well as economic
matters, rising US, China, cooperation, the trilaterals,
trilateralists are saying. And they also discussed a couple
of other things in April that very well could show up at
Bilderberg, North America on the Rocks, which is very similar to
the other one I just mentioned, neurotechnologies and the battle
for your brain. I've seen those kind of topics
come up before at these highfalutin meetings.
Also, just to get an idea of the Bilderberg machinations for the
last two years, and this is one example, I've done pretty in
depth articles on the commingling of the Bilderberg
attendees and the deals they make and the way they intersect
with one another. This is from just less than a
year ago. Bilderberg Beyond the meetings
Part 2. The secret of gatherings are
collusive conduit for an AI big media marriage.
I did one the year before that and I plan to do one this summer
as well fairly soon to look beyond just the the splash in
the pan of the meetings and look at the in depth.
Take an in depth look at the topics that are raised and, and
how they enter, how they interact and how the attendees
interact with one another. The apparent deal making and
where they're going with it. You know, what projected out and
what they may be doing with it. So that that's very important to
do. And so we'll, you know, be
covering that very shortly as these things transpire.
Thank you, Mark. Thank you.
Now let's end the programme, perhaps with a little bit of
comedy, Patrick, because, well, Elon and Donald seem to have
fallen out. It is comedy, but it's also kind
of dead serious on the level which we'll get into.
But we'll bring this up on screen here.
And I think it's pretty clear here there there is the Dodge,
the Dodge father and the 47th president Donald Trump.
And it looks looks like Mike the honeymoon as well.
And truly over it really is it it appears like that anyway, if
they kiss and make up after this, I will be incredibly
surprised and impressed. But this is basically we we
talked about this last week that Elon sort of having, you know,
buyer's remorse on doge and the big beautiful bill.
It's running a huge budget deficit and apparently Elon's
taking huge umbrage to this here.
And this is kind of escalated. We'll bring up some of the
escalation. So this was basically what
happened this morning. There is a Elon Musk and so Ian
Miles Truong who's like a surrogate on on X of of Musk
said president versus Elon, who wins?
My money's on Elon. Trump should be impeached and JD
Vance should replace him. Yes, says Elon Musk.
So that was basically war. That's a declaration of war on
the part of Musk and we'll get into that little bit below that.
Elon basically said time bomb. Time to drop the big bomb.
Donald Trump is in the Epstein files.
That is the real reason they have not made the files public.
Have a nice day DJT says Musk. So real heavy swipe at the
president here so you get an idea of the galactic fallout
that you're witnessing right now.
So not to be outdone, Trump is basically hit back at Musk.
Elon was wearing thin. I asked him to leave.
I took away his EV mandate, electric vehicle mandate that
forced everyone to buy electric cars that nobody else wanted,
that he knew for months I was going to do and he just went
crazy claims Donald Trump. Turns out that's not actually
true. But anyway, it doesn't matter
with Trump. That's what he said and he goes
here. This is where things are getting
actually pretty dicey, Mike, and have huge implications.
Trump says the easiest way to save money in our budget,
Billions and billions. Of dollars is to terminate Elon
Musks government subsidies and contracts, including SpaceX.
I was always surprised that Biden didn't do it, says Trump.
So this is war talk. This is fighting talk here and
so we go. So now here we go, Elon Musk
replies quote tweets. In light of the present
statement about the cancellation of my government contract,
SpaceX will begin decommissioning its Dragon
spacecraft immediately. This is the new launch.
And that's massive because of course NASA relies on Dragon
spacecraft to get people up and down the International Space
Station and so on. Otherwise.
Cargo. Without Dragon X, who does the
taxi again? It's Russia, right?
Right. Russia with the soy heads.
They do the taxi back and forth to International Space Station.
So I guess you could call Putin. Trump could call Putin and have
Vladimir take the astronauts like they did for decades
before. Not a Musk.
So is that where we're heading here?
And Elon comes back, basically, Yeah, that's the Epstein thing.
Now look on the Epstein files. We'll just say we know Trump's
in the Epstein. Everyone knows Trump's in the
Epstein files. He's in the flight logs.
We've got video footage here. I think we'll bring up on
screen. Yeah.
I mean, this is this is from 1992.
This is going on heavy rotation right now on U.S. media.
But it's Donald Trump partying it up at 1 of Jeff Epstein's
Suarez at his mansion or I'm not sure where this particular one
is. But so you'll see Jeff Epstein
appears in, in, in these this archive footage of Trump and
Epstein. So there, there is a
relationship there, although Trump denies having any, you
know, serious relationship with Jeff Epstein.
But he has been on the plane like 7 times.
We don't know if he's been to the Epstein's Love Island, but
you know, he does and has attended the parties there.
There he is. There's Jeff in the background
there in the sort of there he is with Trump, that's Epstein.
So I mean, that's kind of where what things are at on this.
So this has huge implications, Mike, in terms of fallout, OK.
Aside from SpaceX, the other question is about Starlink,
because Starlink has been absolutely key to the Ukraine
conflict. And the question then is, if
they withdraw that contract, where does that leave Ukraine?
Well, where does that leave Ukraine?
Starlink has become a basic, a pivotal tool for empire in all,
all conflict zones. Sudan, the Middle East, Yemen,
all the subterfusion behind the line sabotage, it's all
dependent on Starlink. The entire Ukrainian army, as
Elon Musk himself has admitted, is based on Starlink.
So bring that. We'll take that footage off the
screen for a moment, Mike, but it's all based on Starlink and
this operation that we saw of these drone attacks by Ukraine
with the help of Western intelligence.
How did they do the link up on that?
Was it Starlink? We don't know.
Is that classified? We're not sure.
But these are dual use technologies, these satellite
arrays. So this, this has huge
implications. If they fall out, then, you
know, this is, I think going to potentially hobble the Western
imperial machinations as far as the US are concerned.
And it might even open up the door for another competitor or
two or three competitors or a Chinese competitor.
So we'll see. But the, the, the fallout
potential is massive on this, not just the share price of
Tesla, which tanked I, I, I heard it tanked last night and a
whole bunch of other potential things.
Trade is already being restricted.
We've already got stagnation economically because of the
tariff wars, and so this isn't necessarily going to help
either. So this is clash of the Titans.
We'll see how how many dead bodies end up on the pitch by
Monday. Yes, indeed.
OK, look, we're going to have to leave it there for today.
I'm going to say thank you very much to Mark, to Patrick,
especially to Klareberg for joining us today.
Thank you all for watching. Join us in a few minutes for
some UK column news extra if you're AUK column member.
If you're not, please consider joining us.
Thanks to everybody that does support us in that way.
Have a great weekend. We'll be back at 1:00 PM as
usual on Monday. See you then.
Bye bye.