Good afternoon. It's Wednesday, the 10th of
September, just after 1:00. Welcome to UK column News.
I'm your host, Mike Robinson and joining me in the studio today,
Brian Garish. Welcome to the programme by
Brian. Thank you.
And joining us via Live Link, our researcher and activist
Sandy Adams, and journalist and peace campaigner Vanessa Bailey.
Later in the programme, Vanessa is going to be reporting on a
huge contract with a certain Israeli defence contractor that
we all know to train British military personnel.
Sandy is going to have more on the funding behind the migrant
operation here in the UK. And we'll be taking a further
look at Unit 8200 and the Online Safety Act.
But we'll begin today, Brian, with security guarantees or at
least the ramping up of the narrative around that topic.
Yes, indeed. And the subject, of course, is
the supposed Russian drone attack on Poland.
I've just chosen the Guardian headline here, which at least is
relatively measured. Poland shoots down drones over
its territory amid a Russian attack on Ukraine.
And the reason I'm emphasising this headline is, of course, in
most of the Western media, it's simply labeled as a Russian
attack. But there are lots of questions
to be asked. The other thing in that picture
a lot was lots of F sixteens. F30 fives have also been
involved, according to reports. But my point is that the F16 is
being promoted again as the wonder weapon.
It was the F16 airborne to shoot down drones.
But Tusk made some statements. This is one of the key ones.
We're dealing with large scale provocation.
We're ready to repel such provocations.
The the situation is serious and no one doubts that we must
prepare for various scenarios. Poland has successfully repelled
the attack and there is no reason to panic.
Well, did they successfully repel and was it an attack?
These are some questions which we points we need to look at.
So basically, Poland's military command said that it it said
that there were more than 10 objects.
And this is interesting because we'll have a little bit of a
discussion about how many drones there supposedly were.
But Poland's military said more than 10 objects and those that
could pose a threat were neutralised in the early hours
of Wednesday. Some of the drones that enter
our airspace were shot down. Searches and efforts to locate
the potential crash sites of these objects are ongoing.
So it's vague when you start to pull apart the reports.
What's actually being talked about is pretty vague.
But if we bring the BBC up, because of course the BBC in
general is ramping up the fear this is a major Russian attack
on Poland. This is going to give the
opportunity for NATO to respond. So here's the BBC headline in
the box. Poland says that up to 4 of 19
Russian drones were shot down after entering the airspace.
Now to date there's absolutely no factual reported evidence
that these were Russian drones, but of course the BBC quick to
say absolutely they were. When we get into the more
detailed reporting by the BBC, it gets into the numbers of
drones and how many were brought down and how many were found.
But there's there's really no analysis at all on what these
drones were and what the evidence was to identify them as
Russian. Now, of course, the other person
coming into the mix was Zelensky.
He wasn't happy with the idea of 19 and he suggested at least 24
Russian drones had entered Poland.
And of course, he was already ramping it up to say, this is
one of the reasons why you need me and Ukraine to defend Western
Europe against those nasty Russians.
The BBC just reports this as if it's factual.
But there was a little bullet point here.
You might not see it at the bottom of the box.
So let's bring this up on your screen.
Now, when you read the article, you're not sure whether this is
part of what Zelensky is saying. Well, this is the BBC speaking
to the reader. But the bullet point says, as a
reminder, Polish Prime Minister Donald Trusk Tusk has said the
Polish military recorded 19 drone incursions into the
country's airspace overnight. Mike, I think this is the BBC
attempting to grip the narrative.
But of course, what they're doing is also underlining the
fact that not even the BBC can trust a word that comes out of
the mouth of Zelensky, who they are normally promoting as an
accurate spokesperson for what's happening with the war.
Now, I've been paying attention for the whole 1200 days of the
war to many people reporting and there's some really excellent
social media analysis. I just decided to have a look at
a little bit of this. Now, one of the things that was
being circulated in relation to this attack was the image on
screen. Now, this is not a a war drone.
This is a, if you like a drone to practice drone attacks.
But this was photographed and there's some suggestions that
this is one of the drones that appeared in Poland, but I have
no idea whether that is correct or not.
But if we look at the comment, Poland yesterday, border closure
today, drone raid tomorrow, a no fly zone question mark.
And what they're getting at there is that is this
effectively a false flag to allow NATO to extend the air
cover into Western Ukraine. And I think there's there's a
lot of reasons we should be very suspicious of the nation of the
NATO position. But if we continue the
commentary from this particular source today, some unidentified
flying objects, this is deliberately bringing some black
humour into the commentary. But we know from the Polish
reports themselves, they said one had not been identified.
Today some UFOs enter Polish territory shot down by air
defence, but no one shows the debris.
And I think this is very key, Mike.
Nobody's showing debris because that would say without any doubt
that the attack was Russian. And to date, nothing's come
forward. But if we continue the comment
commentary from social media, I have no doubt it is Duran
wreckage. Why that would be Russian drone
wreckage there. There are there is tons of it in
Ukraine and a few 100 kilograms. So the Poles can wave it around
at press conferences is no problem.
So what they're doing here is also pointing out that there's
enough wreckage in Ukraine for that to be transferred into NATO
to be presented as so-called evidence of a Russian attack.
But if you analyse the situation, what would Russia
gain out of such an attack? It would give NATO the excuse it
needed to group up and possibly bring Ukraine into the fold.
Why would Russia do it? It simply doesn't make sense.
Now, what we need to remember is of course, that huge numbers of
Russian drones are being used in the attacked.
This is some data back from July, but it's talking about
nearly 6 1/2 thousand drones being launched in the period.
And below the line is those that have been shot down.
And Ukraine is always trying to make out that it's air defences
are still working perfectly. And this is actually a Ukrainian
map of the air routes. This has come supposedly from
their air defence systems showing the extent of the of
this Russian, sorry, the Russian drone raid taking place on
Ukraine as supposedly the attack in Poland was taking place.
Now the coordination of this attack and some and previous
attacks, Mike, is simply incredible from the Russian
side. And the idea that 19 drones went
into Poland by accident is simply not credible.
So we need to know whether they were Russian or not.
And I'm also going to point out here that surprisingly, Defence
HQ, this is the British Ministry of Defence on their Twitter
channel, was busily talking about the war effort ramping up
British industry. This goes on and on and on.
What we're not seeing is anything about drones.
And we're just highlighting a minute here that British
government is very happy that they've apparently now now got
800,000 plus students involved in the defence industry.
So at the same time Russia's being criticised for bringing
young people into the war effort.
We are boasting that we are bringing 800,000 students and a
lot of promotional women into the defence effort.
But absolutely no commentary on Russian drones, which I think is
very significant. So the key is we need that
evidence that indeed these drones in Poland were Russian.
And that they were shot down in Polish airspace.
And well, well, yes, of course it's very difficult to to say
some, some of the wreckage has been found, five and one
identified in in Lublin province in Poland and two, one in a more
central location and one in a more northern location.
But let's see whether we see the images.
Vanessa, let's welcome you to the programme and well the
defence contractor that was very referring to at the at the
beginning of the programme, who could that have been?
Well none other than Albert Systems of course, the centre of
all the controversy over the prescribing of Palestine Action
as a terrorist group in the UK for actually sabotaging Albert
Systems that are providing 85% globally of the drones to the
Israeli military. So this was back in February a
report in Shepherd Defence Media final 2 contenders for key 2
billion British Army training contract selected and that
reduced it back then down to two main contenders that were
mentioned in the article for the Army Collective Training Service
acronym is ACTS. Of the seven original bidders
for the partnership, 3 had already withdrawn.
The two successful consortia are Omnia Training led by Raytheon
UK and a team led by Albert Systems UK.
And then much more recently towards the end of August, this
was in the campaign against Armed violence.
The director of the organization, Ian Overton, wrote
that concern as the Ministry of Defence reportedly poised to
hand 2 in in training deal to Albert Systems, Israel's largest
arms firm. And let's have a look.
I'll just summarize in the next slide basically what was said
within the article. So the project is to deliver
training for 60,000 British soldiers each year.
It will transform how the army prepares for operations.
While in fact there's very little detail on what that
preparation will include. Since 2023 they've been in
Albert has been involved involved in Project Vulcan, a
£57 million ten year program to train tank crews.
It is wholly owned and controlled by Israel, albeit
systems. This is very important because
it's very much portrayed by the British government as being Auk
company. But the profits from UK arms
production flow back to Israel and there is a major senior
staff overlap. It is Auk subsidiary.
It's a local contractor to the British regime and part of
Israel's wider military industrial complex.
So it's very much smoke and mirrors when the British
government tries to to basically hide the fact that that the
government is not involved with an Israeli weapons manufacturing
outfit that is complicit with the genocide of Palestinians in
Gaza and the occupied territories.
Even beyond this. It was actually private I but
reported by Ian Overton that there are two senior members of
British armed forces that have now joined the Advisory Board of
Albert in the UK. The first being Sir Simon Bolem.
You can freeze frame and read the details on him.
And the second being the next slide please.
Lieutenant General Sir Mark Poffley, KCBOBE, Both of them
very high level members of or former members of the Ministry
of Defence now joining an Israeli arms company that is
complicit in genocide against Palestinians.
Now this has generated a motion from within Parliament from
basically raising alarms about the Armed forces training
contract and Albert systems. And if we have a quick look at
the text of that motion, it's been signed by I think upwards
of 25 MPs, the majority being from Pled, Comrie and Labour,
unsurprisingly. But what it actually says is
that, as I said, Albert supplies 85% of drones to the Israeli
military, conducting what is described by many international
humanitarian law organisations, including the ICJ, as a
genocide. It will entrench Albert at the
heart of UK defence or an Israeli company again at the
heart of UK defence industry. And of course we've been
covering that at UK Column. The involvement in Oracle in the
storage of information for the ministry, defence and other
sectors of British governance. And from a reputational, legal
and moral perspective, this puts Britain in danger of being
prosecuted, of course, for being complicit in genocide.
That is their main concern. At the same time we still have
the unlawful keeping the Filton 24 members of Palestine Action
who led the direct action campaign against Albert Systems
in an attempt to to highlight the genocide and prevent the
genocide. And they of course have spent a
year. In fact, I think now it's more
in prison without trial. The first trial of I think three
members of Palestine Action will be taking place on the 17th of
November at Woolwich Crown Court.
And we've also talked regularly about the conditions that these
young people are being kept in, in remand.
I mean effectively they are going through abuse and torture
at the hands of the state. Now 1 interesting fact is that
very recently this was in the Guardian, Israeli arms
manufacturer closes the UK facility targeted by Palestine
Action. Now this is perceived as a
success at the hands of direct action by Palestine Action.
My suspicion is that it's going to re emerge somewhere else,
potentially be renamed or or rebranded.
So we need to keep an eye on that.
But but absolutely extraordinary that the British government is
pursuing collaboration with Albert Systems despite all of
the controversy surrounding it, while effectively torturing and
abusing their own citizens or actually protesting genocide in
the UK. You got some thoughts?
Yes, indeed. I, I just wanted to say,
Vanessa, that absolutely take the point of the, the links with
the Israeli company and the, the genocide currently going on in,
in Gaza. But not even aside from that,
the fact that we have a foreign nation, namely Israel now
burying itself directly into the heart of UK military training.
This is a level which it means that Israel would be given
access to every single real capability, particularly of the
army. And this to me is utterly
incredible. What decision has been taken
that Israel is trustworthy enough to even deal with
training secrets within the UK military, aside from the
secondary point, which is, you know, absolutely valid of this
company being linked into the horrors going on in Gaza?
I've talked about this dual nationality problem before, and
I think that you are absolutely highlighting it here.
Any comment? No, I totally agree with that.
Yeah, OK. Well, look, thank you, Vanessa.
Sandy, let's welcome you to the programme then.
And we've been talking over the last couple of weeks about maybe
what's going on behind the scenes with respect to the
incitement of feeling and emotion with people in the UK
over the migrant issue. What have you got on this?
Yes, sorry, Sandy, we I'm afraid we can't hear you.
I think you're going to need to try to try to reconnect.
We might need to move on and and come back to this.
Well, just just for we do, Mike, I think just to add a little bit
more to this business of Israel, it's quite incredible that back
in the days of Francis Maude, he was the minister who suddenly
announced that we'd gone into this massive packed with Israel.
MOUI think it was a memorandum of understanding at the time,
which meant that Israeli intelligence services were
absolutely going to be part part partnered with British Intel.
We were going to be bringing in GCHQ, we're going to be bringing
in the universities. And there was absolutely no full
debate in the House of Commons over the risks of this.
And now we've moved forward to the fact that Israel is not only
burying itself into the NHS, it's now at the heart of British
military. It's becoming difficult to tell
whether we've got a government which is actually being run from
Westminster for the benefit of the people in UK or we're simply
now some sort of overseas colony of, of Israel.
I'm being pretty tough in this, but I think there's some really
serious questions to be asked. And we should also be looking at
the names of the people who've set up these joint arrangements
with Israel. Who were they?
Where are the minutes of the meeting and what is proposed
next? Sadly, are we able to hear you?
Yeah. Can you hear me?
Now, OK, so let's over to you. Then yeah, I mean, I've been,
thank you very much. I've been looking really at,
yeah, it's the division that's that's happening within the UK
and, and actually all over Europe over the immigration
crisis. And I, I just looked at this
quote from Karl Marx where he said a spectre is haunting
Europe. All the powers of Europe have
entered into a holy alliance to exercise this spectre.
Pope, Tsar and Metternich and Ghizo, French radicals and
German police and spies. Basically, you know what he's
saying is there's a spectre now he's don't.
That's not the only spectre. Communism obviously is what he's
talking about. But we've got another spectre.
And I just want to sort of, some people may have seen this.
I saw it certainly 10 years ago in Sweden.
A lady called Barbara Lerner Spectrum made a very bold claim.
She said Europe has not yet learnt how to be multicultural,
but it must become so if it is to survive.
And our people, bearing in mind she's Israeli, our people will
be at the centre of making this happen.
Now, these words weren't just off the cuff.
You know, she was the founder of of a company called Pedia
Institute, which is backed by the Swedish government and and
funded. And she was part of something
bigger, a web of radical NGOs and foundations shaping Europe's
future. So let's see what she had to say
10 years ago. I think there's a resurgence of
anti-Semitism because at this point in time, Europe has not
yet learned how to be multicultural.
And I think we're going to be part of the throes of that, of
that transformation which must take place.
Europe is not going to be the monolithic societies that they
once were in the last century. Jews are going to be at the
center of that. It's a huge transformation for
Europe to make. They are now going into a
multicultural mode and Jews will be resented because of our
leading role. But without that leading role
and without that transformation, Europe will not survive right?
I think when she said monolistic, I think she meant
sort of traditional Christian, you know, values of Europe.
So it's quite interesting what she said there.
Now I want to just look at some of these NGOs.
We've got the one called HIAS, which is the Hebrew Immigrant
Aid Society, and we've got Open Society foundations of George
Soros as well, the American Jewish Committee and the
European Jewish Congress. So some of these, I mean,
they're, they're heavily funded and they have billions in
resources to fund any, any program they wish.
And this, this, this program, which is, let's face it, it is
the, the Kudnov Kilergy programme, which people are
given the Charlemagne Prize for, for actually rolling this out in
Europe. So, you know, I, I think the,
the shared reasoning of, of what she's saying is she's saying a
multicultural Europe is safe, a safer Europe for minorities,
especially Jews. And at first it sounds kind of
noble. Who wouldn't argue against
tolerance and safety and diversity?
But if you look closer, there's massive double standards.
As we, as we can see in Europe, the message is, is clear, it's
breakdown the old order, tear away the, you know, the
traditional values and dissolve the nation state.
You know, it's diversity at any cost.
But in Israel, the message is the polar opposite.
You know, if Israel defines itself as a Jewish state,
immigration is tightly controlled.
The demographics are guarded now and multiculturalism is, is seen
as a direct threat to survival. So how can it be both?
You know, this is, this is my question.
So you know, we've, we've now got this, this March on the on
the 13th, Tommy Robinson is leading another one of his his
marches. And the target really is, is,
is, is immigration. So ordinary working class people
are, are, are quite right, rightly angry at what's going on
in a, in, in Europe and our country because it's too fast.
It's too, it, it, it's scaled of it.
And we don't, you know, it's UN, it's UN unregulated.
So what we, you know, the, the Muslims are, are, are seem to be
being scapegoated, you know, and the real architects of this
policy remain kind of, you know, behind the scenes.
So the aim is to to create division without, without,
without question. And it's manufactured.
It's manufactured division that we, we simply can't tolerate.
And you know, the, The thing is that when you've got a lot of
people, you know, in, in one place, we have to be mindful.
And my, my, my sort of message really to anybody that's going
to that March is that this is a, a perfect opportunity to almost
play them at their own game. And literally, you know, all,
all people of Britain who are call this home and are, are all
coming together on this March to stop the destruction of the
home. The place they call home need to
be really together on this. And there shouldn't be any
tension. And they should be come coming
together to to literally be that that force of unity in in, in
fighting, not fighting this, but in standing against the
destruction of the UK. Sandy, thank you for that.
Now let's move on then to online safety and well, yesterday
apparently was online safety Day 2.
We'll explain that in a second. But vulnerable people across the
UK are going to be shielded from the most dangerous online
content as new laws are said to be introduced to prevent
devastating self harm material from reaching people of all
ages. And I hope you appreciate that
those are not my words. Those are the words of the
British government. So yesterday they announced
urgent action. This is their words again.
To toughen the Online Safety Act by putting stricter legal
requirements on tech companies to hunt down and remove material
that encourages or assists serious self harm before it can
destroy lives and tear families apart.
While platforms already have to take specific steps to protect
children, they say from this dangerous self harm content, The
government recognises that adults battling mental health
challenges are equally at risk from exposure to material that
could trigger a mental health crisis or worse.
And they said that these new regulations mean that content
encouraging or assisting serious harm will be treated as priority
offence for all users. This change will trigger the
strongest possible legal protections.
Compelling platforms use cutting edge technology to actively seek
out and eliminate this content before it can reach users and
cause irreparable harm, rather than simply reacting after
someone has already been exposed to it.
So that's what they had to say about this now.
This is the first act of Liz Kendall.
There she is. Happy, Liz there.
And this is just a couple of days since she became technology
secretary. She says the regulations will
come into force 21 days after they're made, following approval
by both Houses of Parliament. Now don't make me laugh, please.
This is going to be done via statutory instrument which is
going to be laid before Parliament, probably on an
indeterminate Sunday during the autumn when no one's there to
challenge it. So this is a new level of
censorship which is being imposed under the guise of
protecting vulnerable people from harmful content.
It should be noted here that the direct encouragement of suicide
is already illegal under the 1961 Suicide Act, unless it's
assisted. Suicide.
I knew that was coming up. But content that portrays self
harm is not illegal. Neither is content which
portrays suicide as positive or desirable, and neither is
content which provides information on methods of self
harm. So this is the return of the
legal but harmful issue that was supposedly dropped from the
Online Safety Act during the before it was actually passed as
an act. Of course, I'm not suggesting
that content such as this is desirable or should be
encouraged, but it's not illegal and it is being used as a poster
child for the rolling out of technology that scans social
media content as it's being uploaded so that it's censored
before it ever appears on a platform.
Now I'm going to ask hands up anyone who thinks that this will
stop with self harm, because of course it won't.
This is a significant expansion of the Online Safety Act scope,
moving from the idea of sort of reactively taking down content
to anticipation of whatever that content might be.
And of course they've got to scan all content if they're
going to identify content that is relevant to self harm.
So this is only the start. And remember, the Online Safety
Act is an enabling act that enables its own expansion via
ministerial decree as we've seen in this case.
So let's then move on to the next step in the roll out of the
ACT, the so-called super complaints.
The Online Safety Act allows expert organisations, you can
laugh at that too, representing users or the public to make
special complaints to Ofcom called a super complaint.
These are their words. Super complaints should be a
about features of sites and apps that are regulated or the
behaviour of organisations that run them that risk causing
serious harm to people who are significantly affecting people's
right to freedom of expression. Now do you see what they did
there? They enable super complaints
which will result in limiting people's right to free
expression in order to protect people's right to free
expression. How does that work?
Well, it it's all thought crime, in my, my opinion, absolutely.
It's all thought crime, yeah. So super complaints are going to
help organizations who are experts about online harm to
ensure issues can be brought to Ofcom's attention.
So note the language organizations who are experts
about online harm. I I wonder who those could be.
Well, let's have a look at what they say.
So they say who can make a super complaint?
They talk about people who use regulated sites and apps or
people who represent people. Sorry, try that again.
Organizations, because this can't be brought by an
individual or people. It has to be brought by an
organization who use the regulated sites and apps or who
represent the general public or a specific group of people.
It has to be an organization that operates independently from
regulated sites and apps. And it it has to be an
organization regularly takes part in public discussions about
online safety as an expert. So that's, that's basically,
that's basically it. We're seeing the massive ramping
up of this situation and this legislation and this censorship
regime. Where could it go wrong?
Well, everywhere might, but I'll just say this is where Sandy's
point is so important that big demonstrations, violence helps
exactly what we're warning about here in the news today.
When people are quiet and measured, we've got a much
better chance of getting through this type of pernicious
censorship. So I just think that's worth
highlighting. OK, let's move on then.
And let's say that if you like what the UK column does and you
would like to support us, we do need your ongoing support.
The options for helping us out are available via this button on
the front page of the UK column website.
Please, please have a look and if you can possibly support us,
that'd be very much appreciated. A massive thank you to everybody
that does. Now, people may have noticed
that Germ did not produce a couple of interviews over the
last couple of days. We're very sorry about that.
There were technical issues around that.
But I'm glad to say he is back tonight speaking to Simon Roche.
So join us at 7:00 PM for that this evening.
Great news on the On Location event in New York I believe.
But well, just before we came on air brand, just two tickets
left. Absolutely brilliant.
Who is going to take that? The last two tickets, 2
individuals or a couple? I don't know but please help us
out. Let us sell these last two
tickets. This will be absolutely
wonderful. Full hours for UK column on
location in York. So utterly brilliant support
from all our members and supporters, wherever you are.
We're very much looking forward to that.
And Brian, we've got, or at least you've got a discussion
with Commissioner coming up soon.
Yes, being edited at the moment, but I just wanted to highlight
it because Kim has gone from one woman challenging the sexual
grooming of children through the education system to the fact
that the end of this month, she'll be going to Washington
with a group of other individuals to challenge the
World Health Organization on their disgusting child sexuality
education programme. And Kim did a really brilliant
interview with me warning about the specific dangers of that
programme. So I just want to say an amazing
lady who has achieved and is achieving a huge amount.
Let's come back onto the issue of Israel and Gaza then, Ryan.
Yes, well I just want to highlight firstly the discussion
that Patrick Henningson and I had about the BBC documentary 2
Girls shot in Gaza. This was by Stephanie Hegarty,
the so-called population correspondent of the BBC World
Service, but we took our time to analyse her work because we
thought it was so good and so credible.
What was she warning about? Israeli snipers, IDF snipers
deliberately targeting young children and toddlers in Gaza.
Very emotional but a very, very precise documentary.
And if you haven't seen Patrick and and my commentary on it,
please go on the UK columns website and have a look.
Well, what did I see in the last day?
But the Guardian here with an article the Gaza family torn
apart by IDF snipers from Chicago and Munich.
And notice what is happening here.
We're not dealing even with Israelis.
We've now got, we've now got members of the Jewish community
who've been drawn back into Israel in order to take place,
take part of the Israeli Defence Forces.
So are these people German? Are they American anymore?
What are we dealing with? The meat of this is that an
investigation was carried out and it included review of an
interview that was done with an IDF sniper, Daniel Robb, who was
a full of a Chicago basketball player.
And this is some of his commentary over the death of
three members of a family. And what what happened is 1 was
shot, he shot 1. And then as the next family
member came forward to try and recover the body, that that
person was then shot and three members of the family were shot.
So he says it's hard for me to understand why 19 year old Salim
Domos tried to retrieve his brother's body.
And it also doesn't really interest me.
I mean, what was so important about that corpse?
He went on to say they, the people in Gaza are thinking, oh,
I don't think I'll get shot because I'm wearing civilian
clothes and I'm not carrying a weapon and all that.
But they were wrong. That's what you have snipers for
this Mike. In my opinion, this is very,
very callous language, even for a sniper.
He is obviously very happy that civilians are coming forward
into his sights and he he believes he can kill them all
with impunity. He goes on to say they civilians
just kept on coming to try and take these bodies and I've added
so I took easy shots to kill them.
This is really disgusting material and this is a result of
a 5 month investigation. So this is on top of the BB CS
own investigation of other cases.
Daniel Rapp goes on to say it's a question of distance.
There is a line that we define. They, the ordinary people of
Gaza, don't know where this line is, but we do.
So civilians are trying their best just to live amongst the
carnage and the rubble of Gaza. They cross a line of which they
are not aware, and an American Israeli sniper simply uses that
as his cue to kill them. And he goes on to say that his
team killed 105 people during his Gaza deployment.
That's really impressive. This, this to me, this is a war
crime. There's no ifs or buts and the
evidence is mounting. If we have a look at other
comments in the article, the reporter who interviewed the
Gazan family that lost three members asked not to be named
because Israel has killed at least 189 journalists in Gaza.
This is something that's simply not really being discussed on a
world scale. And the article went on to say
that establishing an invisible security perimeter, then
shooting civilians who cross it, has become a common practice in
Gaza. Israeli soldiers have testified.
So this is not an investigation into one individual.
There's a number of people commenting, and the article goes
on say the attacks match a pattern described by a former
Israeli reservist who told the Guardian that soldiers he served
with in Gaza repeatedly shot unarmed Palestinians trying to
collect bodies. And I'll bring back on screen
here the whole question. These are dual nationality
individuals. So where does their loyalty lie?
Will they think they can kill people in America or Germany in
order to protect Israel? We don't know.
And are these men committing war crimes on behalf of Israel?
If so, they should surely be tried for it.
I think this is this is some of the most disgusting stuff that
I've come across, Mike. People dying in explosions and
bombings. Yeah, particularly bad.
We've got people who are simply being given weapons to go and
hunt and shoot children, toddlers and unarmed people as
if it was some sort of sport. Well, I've I've got to sort of
time to get comment from Vanessa right now, but I absolutely want
to talk about this in extra because first of all, I suspect
this has been going on for much longer than.
Just. The last couple of years, but
also we've seen this type of thing in other conflicts as
well. So I want to talk about this
quite a bit more in in extra. But look, let's look at Unit
8200, because it's around a month since Microsoft claimed to
have begun an urgent inquiry into the Israeli signals
intelligence and cyber warfare agency Unit 8200's use of their
infrastructure. That's Microsoft's
infrastructure to store and analyse millions of intercepted
phone calls from Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank,
allegedly for surveillance in air strike target
identification. And of course, this is an
impossible violation of Microsoft terms of service,
never mind the complicity in the genocide issue.
So a month has passed and there's been, there have been no
updates from Microsoft nor any effort to drop Unit 8200 as a
customer. It seems to be.
So let's just make sure that they're both on screen so that
we know what their various logos look like.
Now, the allegations against Unit 8200 came via investigative
reporting by the Guardian, but also by +79, Sorry, +972
Magazine, and also an organization called Local Call.
The report asserts that Unit 8200 maintained its own siloed
Azure. That's Microsoft Azure.
That's a cloud platform environment allegedly granted
through a deal with Microsoft's chief executive directly.
Analysts claim that the data was instrumental in identified
bombing targets. And now this has been going on
since 2002. And the claim is that more than
11 1/2 thousand terabytes of intercepted Palestinian
communications data are stored on Microsoft servers in the
Netherlands, and that this is equivalent to 200 million hours
of phone calls, in addition to additional data in Ireland and
also in Israel. This is the second inquiry
launched by Microsoft. An earlier 1 announced in May
this year reportedly found no evidence or misused, misuse or
targeting of civilians. Note the word civilians there,
but even that is in dispute. So Microsoft claims in its
statement that the CEO and other executives were unaware of the
nature of the data being stored, although documents suggest a
2021 meeting between the chief executive and Unit 8200's
commander Yossi Sariel where plans to move up to 70% of
intelligence data onto So that's the Unit 82 hundreds
intelligence data onto Azure were discussed, according to the
these various reports. The revelations sparked strong
reactions within Microsoft. Employees protested and a group
called No Azure for Apartheid demanded that Microsoft cut ties
with the Israeli military. And Microsoft shareholders also
called for greater transparency and human rights due diligence.
But you'll note they didn't call for the dumping of the customer.
So let's just have a reminder of what 8200 is.
As I said in the beginning, it's Israel's signals intelligence
and cyber warfare agency within the IDF.
So it's equivalent to GCHQ or in the UK or the NSA in the United
States. It was set up in 1952 and
engages in offensive cyber warfare as well as signals
intelligence. It's been connected to high
profile operations such as the Stuxnet attack on Iran's nuclear
centrifuges and it has a track record of engaging in AI
enhanced targeting, including operations against Hamas and
other so-called adversaries. We might read that as civilians,
particularly under the leadership of Yossi Sariel we've
just mentioned. Now according to the World
Socialist website, more than 60% of its personnel are now
engineers or data scientists. It's established AI factories
and A and centralised target centre to accelerate the process
from data interception to act actionable targeting using AI
and cloud infrastructure. And so, you know, I'm going to
just put in here, isn't any surprise that both the UK and
the United States are working as fast as they can to catch up
because they want this as well. Now, this latest situation is
only scratching the surface of what they've been up to, of
course, because they've cultivated what is being
described as a flourishing alumni network. 8200 veterans
have founded or lead, and we've talked about this many times.
They've founded or lead prominent cyber and tech
startups like, for example, Checkpoint, Black Cube, Carbine,
Kanderu, Palo Alto Networks. Other former staff have moved
into influential roles in tech firms like Google, Microsoft,
Apple, Meta, Amazon, Open AI, NVIDIA and Israeli surveillance
companies. Again, many of them funded by
Unity 200 veterans, export offensive cyber tools worldwide.
Companies like Cognite collect telecoms data and metadata for
analysis. Others market biometric network
intelligence and spyware systems to Western agencies, including
law enforcement and intelligence services.
And there's a reporting on Friday last week immigration
agents in the United States will once again have access to one of
the what was described as one of the most sophisticated hacking
tools after the Trump the Trump's decision Trump regime's
decision, sorry to renew a contract with Paragon Solutions
who produce spyware product called graphite.
So, you know, this is this organization is embedded
directly into the heart of everything that we do on the
Internet. It is absolutely using its
technology to target Palestinians and, of course,
hosting that on companies that Western individuals are funding
often. So, you know, I think we need to
be reconsidering where we're putting our money.
Indeed. Yeah.
Where does that take us? Back to Vanessa, I believe.
And Vanessa, some commentary on the BRICS nations.
Yes, I'm I'm going to probably ruffle a few feathers with this
short report and I'm sure it warrants further discussion in
extra, but I wanted to focus on a statement made by Iran's
supreme leader Ayatollah Said Al Khamenei in the last few days
where he calls basically for a global economic and political
quarantine of the enemy, meaning Israel.
He encourages all Islamic and non Islamic nations.
And I'm assuming he's referring to Greeks nations of which Iran
is a member because obviously appealing to Western countries
isn't going to have much effect. But he appeals for them to cut
all trade ties, suspending port access, freezing bank
transactions, denying energy supply and severing political
relations to bring pressure to bear to end the genocide both in
Gaza and, of course, in the occupied territories.
Now, I will refer people to this article that I published up at
the Wall Will Fall, which was written by Professor Patrick
Bond, I think, in November last year.
The blessing. You'll remember the curse and
blessing map that Netanyahu showed at the UNGA showing
countries within BRICS being included in the blessing.
And of course, Iran being included in the curse, the
blessing for genocide. Nearly all BRICS regimes nurture
Israel economically. Now of course, when we talk
about international law and all BRICS countries do make
statements adhering to international law and condemning
the worst for violating or basically shredding humanitarian
law, Geneva Conventions, particularly on genocide and
international law generally. Now this is a new account on X
that is putting out some good data on this kind of subject and
I do recommend following them. Yesterday they sent me this.
So BRICS is reshaping A multipolar world, but how are
they responding to Israel's genocide of Palestinians?
Our latest analysis tracks 2025 exports January to July to
Israel versus 2024, with critical insights.
Now, first of all, they summarize China and India, top
military suppliers to Israel, Russia, Egypt and the UAE,
leading energy exporters to Israel.
Brazil and South Africa are the ones that are kind of throttling
back on energy exports dropping in the ranking in 2025.
And what they say is BRICS trade patterns reveal stock divides in
geopolitical stances. Now I want to have a look at
this infograph that they oh, sorry, no, I won't.
I'll first of all mention recent reports in Israeli media on a
new deal in fact between Israel and India, who inked A bilateral
investment deal in New Delhi to foster trade.
Just one example of the collaboration between BRICS
nations and Israel. Not only Israel, I would also
mention countries like the UAE and Saudi Arabia that
historically were established by the British to actually form a
partnership with the Zionist entity and protect it from the
resistance pan Arab alliances that might threaten it in the
future. That's an important point to
make. So if we can just keep this
following diagram on the screen, people can zoom in on it.
But just while I I run through it because I think it's
important to do this, you can take your time and look more
deeply into the information that's included on there and in
the article that will be in the show notes.
But if you look left to right, you see Brazil, Russia, India,
China and South Africa in overall trade partnership.
Russia is #7 India is number 8 and China is number 1.
And China is exponentially increasing its trade partnership
with Israel. And that includes Chinese state
companies being involved in the settlement programs in the
occupied territories and investment in Haifa port to
facilitate the offloading of weapons to the Israeli military.
Russia is #2IN energy supply. India #5 sorry, India and China
are #5 and #3 respectively in war goods.
Now, that's quite an extraordinary statistic when one
considers who are the primary partners.
Of course, from an armaments perspective for Israel, China is
publicly saying that it's a genocide.
Russia and India have not publicly said that in any of
their statements. So I think the point is, if we
look at the ICJ ruling from July 2019, sorry 2024, all states are
under an obligation not to recognize as legal the situation
arising from the unlawful presence of the State of Israel
in the occupied territories of Palestine and to not render a
need or assistance in maintaining the situation
created by the criminal presence of Israel in the occupied
territories. This is just one ruling, of
course. Under the Geneva Convention,
every state globally has a responsibility to both prevent
genocide and punish the perpetrators of genocide.
And while nobody is advocating that BRICS countries are
responsible for what is happening, what we are saying is
that they have the power to economic automatically bring
serious pressure to bear upon Israel and to stop the genocide.
They have that ability and therefore I think they should be
held to account for not fulfilling that responsibility.
I struggled to to argue with that Vanessa.
We will we'll have a go at arguing about it in extra
though. And you know, it's, it is an
incredible situation, these countries without doubt doing
some positive things in the world, but they can't, they have
to be held account for whenever they're not.
And I think this is 1 area where they particularly because
they're taking such a stand with respect to international law and
and the West. So we'll, we'll talk more about
that an extra. Absolutely, Sandy.
Let's come back to UK issues then and the situation with
respect to Land Management and you're going to use the Somerset
Levels as an example. Yes, I mean, it's, it's almost
like it's gone full circle again.
We've got, we've got a lot of the, the Environment Agency just
last last month, at the end of last month announced that they
were not go. They couldn't afford to dredge
the, the, the, the rings and the, and, and, and the, the, the
water courses that actually drain the Somerset Levels.
And they're not going to maintain the culverts or the
pumping stations because they, they don't have any money
apparently. Now this is what happened in
2014. We had a very similar time.
We'd had a drought and then than a than a, a massive spring
rainfall or not even spring. It was January and February when
it rainfall and there's a Somerset father, Somerset
farmer, father Somerset farmer who's who's, who's, who's put
this together very, very well that you know that the parallels
between 2014 and now. So if we can just listen to him
first, that would be great. Looking at everyone, feast your
eyes upon it's awesomeness. Yes, this is England's green,
pleasant land, right? Green at the moment because it
hasn't rained in three months. But peek to the scene.
Your business floods every year. It's underwater, in my case at
120 acres to the point where it cannot be used for anything.
And up until that point, business called the Environment
Agency and arm of the government, or someone funded by
the government would say, don't worry, we'll come along and
we'll dig out all these big rivers for you.
And these, what are they called? Reins.
So big ditches that you might know, and we're going to help
maintain them so other places don't flood.
Taunton, Langport, Yeovil, wherever it might be.
Not anymore. This is going to directly affect
you, everybody. The EA have announced with six
months notice period that they have to do so.
When's that going to put us? Probably in the wettest part of
the year that they are no longer going to maintain about 80% of
the rivers and Reens that they currently do.
Now, EA, if I've got that wrong, please come and tell me.
Desperate Dan Zeichner, you head up Defra, you pay for the EA
Come and correct me if I'm wrong.
I don't want to go to Facebook prison.
So picture the scene, your business and I'm talking to you
now, general public is going to look like my business because if
I'm getting feet of water sat on the countryside at the moment
and that water was being removed, what is going to happen
now going forward? I think the government, I fear,
have forgotten about the floods of 10 years ago, which were
absolutely catastrophic for this part of the world and it's only
going to spread. Well, there, there you have it
straight from the, the farmer. And he's absolutely right.
I mean, when in 2014, I, I was actually down at, at
Boroughbridge sandbagging overnight when, when the floods
happened because the River Parrot was going to come over
the over the edge. And it was interesting how there
was no help from the British government at all at that time.
And people were evacuating their livestock.
They were, they were leaving their homes.
Their homes were destroyed, businesses were destroyed, farms
were were destroyed and and have never recovered actually.
And people are now living there and they're uninsurable and
uninsured because of this, this huge flood that happened, which
covered, I think it was 65 square miles of, of, of
Somerset. Now, when I was down there, all
the press were there on the, on the bridge, but no, no help at
all. And I met a, a journalist called
Christopher Booker who worked for the Telegraph.
And he, he, he published a very, very good article afterwards.
And it was, it was how it was a deliberate flooding of the
levels. And I'm absolutely convinced
he's, he's right because in this article he talks about, but it
was all policy decisions, deliberate policy decisions that
led to the led to the flooding. The Labour, the Labour flood
minister Elliot Morley at the time in 2005.
He was later jailed for expenses for fraud, adopted an EU
habitats director, driven policy to promote flooding for wildlife
benefit. Dredging of the River Parrot was
halted due to costly EU waste rules.
Again, same thing that's happening now.
And Morley also blocked a proposed pumping station at
Dumbo which would have allowed 24 hour flood clearance.
So by 2000 and eight 2009, the government and the Environment
Agency openly recognised that increased flooding might breach
property and human rights, but pressed ahead regardless.
And they spent 8 million to restore the floodplains.
So the Met Office, you know, they, they put up, they put out
a very misleading forecast of dry weather in November 2013,
which led to South Lake Moor being deliberately flooded,
obstructing water drainage when heavy, heavy rains arrived.
So this, this combination of blocked drainage, no pumping
stations and the deliberate flood storage caused the
devastation of these 65 square miles of Somerset.
Now, you know, afterwards they, they made a big thing about
repairing everything and they made promises that they're now
not keeping. Now, Christopher Booker, just to
let you know, did write the most amazing paper on global warming,
a study and group think which do look at that.
That's on my website. You can find it online.
And it's it's incredible. And he really knew what was
going on. So yeah, what was extraordinary
was there was the the lack of help from the from the British
government or any, any agencies, the the Environment Agency was
nowhere to be seen. But what we did find is that
they, they, they, they held a sort of almost like a photo
shoot for the army. They, they turned up, they put a
few sandbags down the line and then they, they went again.
So there was no help. But what we did have was help
from a Sikh agency and they were called Khalsa, and they were
amazing people. They worked through the night
sandbagging and doing, you know, doing really, really good, good
work, helping the people of Somerset.
And they're flown in from the Haiti earthquake to do that.
So it just shows you that what a third world country we're
becoming. And that was in 2014.
So I just want to highlight what I found out, because when I was
down there with Christopher Booker, he did say look at
policy. C6 of the Environment Agency
because I spoke to him and he he confirmed that it was Agenda 21,
which it was then it wasn't even Agenda 2030.
He said this has all been put together by policy and have a
look at Policy 6 now that pink area on Policy 6 is the area
that got flooded and that that area was designated in 1997 by
Baroness Young from the Ramsar Treaty of Wetlands Diversity
wetlands in the Ram in Ramsar in 1971 under an EU directive for
biodiversity and wading birds to flood certain areas of the
world. And that particular area was
flooded. So it was, it was fulfilling,
fulfilling that, and it was for biodiversity.
So what's what we're finding now is that Somerset is flooding
again. They're telling us, they're
warning us and this, this particular picture is quite
emotive. This is what we're getting at
the consultations about flooding and how to have resilience
against flooding in Somerset again.
And I think we'll have the next slide, which is, yeah, this is
how you have to ensure your house against flooding, you
know, put your TV on the wall, you know, sort of build up your
front step, have sandbags. All of this is, is, is, is being
not, let's not, let's, let's put the infrastructure in to stop it
flooding. It's what we can do for
resilience. So it's a deliberate thing.
It's going to happen again. And the next slide is, is really
about their their recruiting flood wardens to help with this.
You know, it's community involvement.
Get the flood wardens out. Yes, that's what they'll do.
And I'm just looking at the, some of the NGOs that are, are,
are really funding this. And they're, they're, it's all
green NGOs. And you'll find that flag the
the one there which is the, I can't even remember what the
acronym is. I think I've got another slide.
These are all the NGOs that that deal with it.
And it's, yeah, the flag is the, I can't remember, sorry, I
should remember this. But anyway, it's a very, they're
very, it's a very green NGO that promotes planting of trees and
building little dams to stop the water.
Now you can't plant trees and hedgerows at this stage because
it's too late. We're we're going to flood this
year coming. You know, we're going to flood.
And I'm seeing that this is all part again.
I'm, I'm linking all this up to the 17 goals.
And this is two goals. There's life on land, which is,
which is really all about climate change and, and, and
mitigating things with green initiatives, but not with proper
infrastructure. And we've, we've got another
one, which is obviously climate action.
Everything is blamed on climate change.
Carbon and life processes become the new global currency.
Everything is blamed on climate change.
And this will be so we've we've just got another history
repeating itself and another destruction of British farmland.
Thank you for that, Sandy. OK, we'll, we'll see what
happens over the winter, but as you said earlier, it's, it's
looking like the forecast is for quite a wet winter after a very
dry year. So yeah, I'm quite certain that
you're absolutely right on this. Well, look, we've got to leave
it there for today. Thanks to Brian, to Sandy, and
to Vanessa. Did you have something you
wanted to add? 1 ticket left.
There is one on location ticket left.
Who is going to be the lucky person who gets that?
We will give you a hug. 1 ticket left.
Now you've heard it. It's it's been on.
It's been on the news. Now you're going to get a hug.
When you go, you're going to come.
Whether you like it or not, you're.
Going to find Brian, and you've got to demand your hug for the
last person, the person who buys the last ticket.
OK, We do have to leave it there.
Thank you very much, Vanessa, Sandy, Brian.
And we'll be back in a few minutes for extra thanks for
joining us. Bye bye.