Good afternoon. It's Friday the 5th of December
2025, just after 1:00. Welcome to UK called News.
I'm your host Mike Robinson and my Co host in the studio today,
Patrick Henningson. Welcome to the program, Patrick.
Great to be with you, Mike. And we'll be joined today by
journalist Tim Norman. Later in the program, we're
going to be covering the Eurovision Song Contest.
We're going to be looking at censorship.
We'll have a Ukraine update, the latest on potential military
action in Venezuela, and well, news of a very big donation to
reform. But we're going to begin with
the Don Sturgis Inquiry report. Now, just as a reminder, in
March 2018, the British regime accused Russia of using a
weapons grade chemical weapon to poison former KGB agent Sergei
Skripal and his daughter Yulia. Uh, several months later,
Charlie Rowley is said to have found a bottle of expensive
perfume and to have given it to his girlfriend Dawn Sturgis, who
fell ill, uh, when she sprayed the perfume on her wrists.
Uh, she subsequently died and well, the clamour from the
British regime is that the bottle contained enough novichok
to kill thousands of people. Now the inquiry into Don Sturgis
death was led by Lord Hughes. You just saw on screen there.
So let's have a quick listen to a little bit of what he said
when he was introduced. Good afternoon.
For those who haven't been at earlier hearings, I'm Anthony
Hughes, and this has been an inquiry into the untimely death
of Dawn Sturgis. It was established in March 2022
when I was appointed to chair it.
So, in summary, the conclusion of the report is that Dawn
Sturgis died an innocent victim of an attempt by officers of a
Russian state organization to conduct an assassination on the
streets of Salisbury using a highly toxic nerve agent.
The conduct of Petrov and Boshirov and their Gru superiors
and those who authorized the mission, up to and including, as
I found, President Putin, that conduct was astonishingly
reckless. There is a direct causal link
between the actions of all those individuals and Dawn Sturgis's
death, and they, and only they, bear moral responsibility for
it. So I'd like to welcome Tim
Norman to the program. And Tim, I suppose my first
question is, is there a direct causal link between the death of
Dawn Sturgis and an alleged Novichok attack in Salisbury?
Well, they're all hinges on the question of this bottle.
That's the causal link that the UK establishments and Lord
Hughes is trying to make, because this is the bottle that,
as he said in the introduction, allegedly was picked up by Dawn
Sturgis's boyfriend and given to her.
But it's it's, you know, it's very important that to
understand that his testimony is the sole foundation of this
entire narrative whereby he picks up a bottle, gave it to
Dawn, she sprayed herself, which is a question in itself.
When you think about a chemical weapon, would you really spray
that? But that is a narrative.
And then she died and he calls the ambulance.
That entire section of story belongs only to Charlie Rowley.
And Charlie Rowley is a admitted alcoholic and a heroin addict
and indeed a convicted petty criminal whose previous
girlfriend, two years in the before, had died of a heroin
overdose in his flat, in his presence.
He just put her to bed, knowing her that, knowing that she'd
taken a heroin overdose and she died.
So he didn't appear before the inquiry.
And this is really the critical factor.
I think that shows how the inquiry sort of failed to store
the surgeon's family in in many respects, because he's the key
witness and the inquiry simply failed to produce him.
I would suggest because if they did, everyone would see for
themselves that he's an extremely unreliable witness and
the narrative had a very very shaky foundations.
If for him not appearing at the inquiry.
Beg pardon, sorry. What reason did they give that
he did not appear at the inquiry?
Health issues he's, you know, apparently had his memory
affected by Novichok. And so the inquiry has to rely
on 6 year old transcripts of police interviews that he gave
at the time. And there's some of them are
sort of bordering on a comical there's the police are
effectively trying to suggest to him that he found this bottle.
They don't really know. He doesn't know where he denies
he doesn't recognise the packaging when it's showed him
in the first instance. He says, I think I found it on
the floor. It might have fallen in my
pocket. It could have been in Amesbury,
it could have been Salisbury. I don't know.
He just simply has a bank on it. Yeah, yeah.
OK. Well, look, we we will come back
to the the bottle a little bit later.
But I suppose the next question is this because the inquiry
nearly didn't happen and the result, well perhaps the result
of it demonstrates that it shouldn't have.
But but anyway, the question is why did the inquiry nearly not
happen? Because you have a couple of of
articles here. This is BBC from 2020.
Is that scope of Novichok victims inquest must be
reconsidered. And but also there's another one
here from Sky News which is saying that the home Secretary
had effectively, sorry, Home secretary had effectively put a
secrecy order on the Salisbury inquiry.
So, So what? How did how did this inquiry
actually come about in the first place?
Well, that's it. I mean, when you hear Lord
Hughes speaking as we just did, you'd be forgiven for thinking
that the British establishment established this inquiry purely
to help the Sturgis family understand what happened to
their loved 1 and in interest of transparency and, you know, due
process and justice and so forth.
But in fact, what happened is the original coroner in 2019 is
called David Ridley. He was Wiltshire's chief
coroner, held a very limited inquest and he said I don't want
to investigate Russian state culpability in Dawn Sturgess's
death and I'm not going even going to investigate the
provenance of the Novichok, where this Novichok chemical
weapon allegedly came from. And so the family objected to
this. And with Michael Mansfield, the
barrister, they took the Home Office to court effectively.
And that's what that first slide shows.
It's that they won. They won their case against
against the government effectively.
And that's what forced the government to set up this
inquiry. Of course, there are even public
inquiries that you can hold sessions and secrets behind
closed doors, unlike A coroner's inquest, which actually is fully
transparent and held completely in in the, if you like, in the
public eye and then sorry. Go ahead, I was.
Just going to say then. So then once the and it took
years before the inquiry as we know it took seven years really
from Dawn's deaf and till the hearings.
And yes, Priti Patel, the Home Secretary back in 2022, made
certain that even before, you know, the Chair was able to look
at the documents, there would be documents as that were redacted
from the Chair, even from Lord Hughes and prevented from being
shown to the Sturgis family. Which goes to show how genuinely
committed this inquiry was to actually getting to the truth as
far as the Sturgis family is concerned.
Have you any thoughts on that just before we move on?
Tim, you know, it's just incredible.
It just strikes me that we have the longest running criminal
investigation in British history.
We have no evidence signed off by any judge.
We have no murder weapon. We have really no confirmed
crime scene. We have no chief witness and we
have, well, initially we didn't have a, a dead victim from Nova
Chalk, but it seems like Don Sturgis has been in a way kind
of moved into this position. If if, if we look at the just
the lack of the cohesiveness of the case that's being made here
and the lack of any criminal due process from this, it almost
seems like they Don Sturgis is an incidental accessory to shore
up a narrative that Novichok is, you know, a deadly nerve agent
because it apparently we're told it didn't kill the script pals.
And by the way, where are the script pals?
We'll get to that in a moment. But Tim, where this isn't
really, it's incredible that this hasn't really gone through
any real criminal legal or criminal due process.
Well, that's right. In fact, this, you know, a
strange, strange inquiry is as close as the establishment
prepared to go. So it's a sort of false trial,
if you'll and people back in when the Skripals were allegedly
poisoned in March 2018, as you say, they weren't killed and
Yulia recovered. We can go into a bit more detail
about that later, maybe. And then and then Sergey
recovered and they were both released from hospital.
So this is before Dawn Sturgis died.
And so we had this kind of period of calm, if you like, for
the people of Salisbury where both victims had recovered.
They'd been released from hospital.
And The New York Times, for example, published an article
where they went to Salisbury and interviewed some of the people
in Salisbury. He was saying, well, you know, I
think if Mr. Putin had wanted to kill somebody, they'd be dead.
And, you know, I don't think we're ever going to get to the
bottom of this. And they were expecting.
So skepticism from the people of Salisbury being expressed in the
New York Times hardly a a minor publication.
And then once, you know, we got to this point, then this sort of
second act of the, of the whole of chalk poisoning began and
Dawn died, You know, she's, she's, she effectively died in
Charlie Rowley's flat. She had a heart attack and brain
damage by the time the paramedics came and they revived
her, but she had suffered catastrophic brain damage.
And she's actually died 8 days later when they turned off her
life support system. And then Charlie Rowley woke up
two days after that. So, and then of course, the
bottle was found in his flat after he woke up.
So this, this suggestion that the sort of bottle was found in
a bin really kept was, was given to him.
And you can actually see that in the transcripts of the of the
interviews that he was given giving to the police.
The time you can see the suggestion really first comes
from the police that he found this bottle somewhere because
he's he's as, as I say, he doesn't really remember anything
about it, although he does remember very clearly that it
was wrapped in plastic. And that's another detail which
the inquiry has to deal with it. So it has to engineer some
answers as to why this bottle was in two pieces and wrapped as
it were, as if new in a box. Well, look, let's, let's see if
we can deal with this bottle once and for all here, because
first of all, let's bring up the, the, the page from the Don
Sturgis inquiry report here. So that's, that's the front page
of the Don storage, the Don Sturgis inquiry report and
highlighted here is Section 1 sort of 4.71.
The larger sachet have been cut open unevenly.
The sachets appeared, particularly the smaller of the
two, to have both original manufacturers sealed edges, but
also an additional heat seals consistent with subsequent
application by the kind of domestic sealer readily
available for kitchen or similar use.
Those additional heat seals were consistent with the bottle
having been used in the Salisbury event involving Sergei
and Yulia Skripal and crudely repackaged before being
abandoned. This seems like such a
ridiculous narrative, Tim. Well, it seems to me that it's a
sort of a narrative that's being engineered around the evidence
that Charlie Riley presented. Because although as we
discussed, he has virtually no memory of where he found the
bottle. He had a very clear memory of
opening the bottle, cutting open the plastic and indeed spilling
the contents of the bottle on his hands.
He tried to put this applicator on the top of it.
And so the inquiry then has to try and answer this question of
how did the bottle come to be sealed if it was the bottle that
was used to contaminate script house door and there's a sub
theory that is a backup bottle. But really then why would there
need to be a bottle at all? That could have been anything if
that wasn't the bottle. Right, right, right.
So sorry. Just let me interrupt for a
second because you've just said that Charlie Roley poured,
spilled it over his hands. We'll come back to this in a
second. What I want to just mention here
in passing here that this man Hamish to Bretton Gordon, if we
can get him up on screen here, he was rolled out back in 2018
to terrify us all at that time about this with a headline in
the Telegraph. Why Novichok could be Russia's
most terrifying weapon in a war with the West.
Look, we have, I want to show a short clip from yesterday's
Channel 4 News report on this and well, guess who they rolled
out. But let's watch this.
And it was 3 Gru men who travelled to the UK to try to
kill her father eight years later, under aliases.
They were in reality Alexander Mishkin, Anatoly Chepiga and
Denis Sergeyev, who stayed in London while the other two
travelled to Salisbury smearing Novichok on.
Skripal's door handle The pair then discarded the perfume
bottle containing it before travelling back to Russia.
We're talking about something called Novichok, the most deadly
chemical ever manufactured by man.
And if you think that something like chlorine is maybe toxicity
one, this is toxicity 10,000. So this is toxicity 10,000
Charlie Rowley. Charlie Rowley pours it over his
hands, spills it. Toxicity 10,000.
It's killing thousands of people potentially, but it didn't kill
him. That's quite amazing.
Deadliest nerve agent known to man 10 times more deadly than
VXVX gas Tim. So this this means Charlie
Rowley should be donated to scientific research for his
incredible immune capabilities. Indeed, along with the Skripals
and along with the Skripals cat, which survived in the in the
Skripals house for weeks, apparently contaminated with
Novichok until the police decided to euthanize it.
Yes. I mean, Rowley doesn't just spit
on his hands. He then wipes his hands on his
jeans before he then washes them under the tap.
And then he goes out. I mean, at this point Dawn is
taken to hospital, but he doesn't accompany Dawn to the
hospital. He goes and gets his methadone
prescription from the Amesbury chemist and then with a friend
he goes to a BBQ at a Baptist Church.
Then he goes back to his flat and then he collapses.
So very delayed action, although of course in the case of Dawn
Sturgis apparently took 15 minutes before she was affected.
But just quickly going back to this question of the heat
sealing of the of the bottle and why this packaging was sealed,
sealed the bottle, according to the inquiry.
They the inquiry suggests that Boschrov and Petrov, these two
assassins who we just saw alleged assassins, had with them
in their backpack a portable heat sealing device such as you
might find in the kitchen and having poisoned the smeared the
substance on the door, as we just heard, they went to some
toilets in the This is the inquiry's suggestion.
This is not fantasy, which is fantasy.
Perhaps it's coming from the inquiry.
I went to some public toilets, took apart their bottle of WMD
10,000 times more deadly and then sealed it in plastic using
their heat sealer and then just dropped it in a bin and left.
And that is the narrative that was off seriously presented to
the inquiry to the point where they spent half a half a day at
the inquiry interviewing a forensic expert in heat, heat
sealing devices and heat seeders.
And I guess because, you know, our councils are also rubbish
these days, they don't empty the bin.
So it took four months for Charlie Rowley to find it in the
same bin. And but here's the key question,
Tim. Where was the part perfume
bottle found when Don Sturgis was taken to hospital?
Well, it was found on the worktop 10 days later, as I
think we mentioned. And in fact the photograph that
we're shown in the inquiry of the bottle is that is used to
suggest to Charlie by the police.
They'd show him the photograph. They say, can you see that
thing? And when you see the photograph
reproduced in the inquiry documents, the branding is
redacted, It's been blacked out, very conveniently also hides how
much liquid was in the bottle because clearly the amount of
liquid is quite important. We've apparently now smeared on
the door handle, then we've spilled, then rarely spilled on
his hands, and then yet again another amount has been used to
door by door and apparently on on ourself.
So that's a little interesting detail.
We never get to see how much liquid is in there in the this
bottle, which is the sole sort of forensic centre of this
rather baroque narrative. Right.
So just just let me understand this.
We're absolutely clear about this, that according to the
inquiry report, the bottle was found in the flat.
The in no, I mean, we know for a fact that's where it first
appeared and it appeared 10 days after the event.
The flat was thoroughly searched by the police.
But in the in terms of the report, it concedes that it
really, really has no idea where he found his account changed
constantly and it was it was unable to determine really he's
unable to say where, where, where it was found.
You know, no, I'm talking about when Don Sturgis went to the
hospital. It was definitely in the flat at
that time. Oh, no, no, no.
Well, we don't know that we know.
We know. The first sighting of the
bottle, if you like, is 10 days after the Amesbury flat
poisoning, when he is. Apparently he's first seen on
the work surface in the kitchen, so that's the first.
Of Charlie Rowley's flat right. Of Charlie Rowley's flat.
Of Charlie or Dawn's flat Charlie's.
Flat. It's just Charlie's flat.
I'm sorry, just say Dawn. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. So this is very confusing,
right? Because we've got a video clip
of Ben Wallace here, who of course was Secretary of State
for war slash defence. Let's have a listen to what he
said about this. And I went to, I first went to
Ukraine in 2016 as security minister.
I remember thinking something had changed when Putin used
nerve agent at Salisbury. That was the real wake up call,
that this was a man who supposedly had been on a journey
from the Soviet Union authorizing the use of a banned
substance, nerve agent on the streets of a county town without
any real regard. I remember going to see the
discarded perfume bottle which was 98% pure.
It would have killed 34000 people if they'd been
distributed differently. We'd just been chucked under a
Bush in a park. There was a we went to a small
park in Salisbury and I went with the chief constable and the
head of terrorism and he was saying I'll show you where it
is. And there was a man sitting on
the bench eating his sandwiches and these policemen and Spooks
were pointing at the bench he was sitting on.
And he looked up and I thought, I can't tell him, I can't tell
him. So I, I don't get why everybody
was laughing there. Here we have a Secretary of
State talking about being taken to the scene of a crime by the
chief constable with a where there is a perfume bottle which
is enough stuff in it to kill 4 to 5000 people.
That place is apparently not cordoned off.
We've got a guy sitting eating sandwiches on the on the park
bench, Patrick, but. But no one in hazmat suits.
No, no one in hazmat suits. But the key point here is we we
clearly have no narrative because he's saying was found
under a Bush the inquiry saying, well, we don't don't know what
the inquiry saying, but but it was apparently found in in in
Charlie Raley's flat. So where was this blooming?
This perfume bottle is is absolutely it's like the magic
bullet for JFK. It it seems to be in but it's
multiple places at the same time.
But I mean, even by Ben Wallace's standards, that's just
a bombastic and outrageous statement.
I mean, this goes in the Hall of Fame of his gaffes, which is a
huge pantheon of bloopers. But I mean, this is just next
level. I mean, that's the that's the
Defense Secretary. Absolutely.
Talking, absolutely. And my question for you, Tim, is
why, if this inquiry was in any way serious, why would they not
have called Ben Wallace to testify about what he said at
that event? Well, indeed, and why didn't
they for that matter, call the script hours and they're
expected to believe that the UK's sort of security network is
incapable of protecting them such that, you know, if they
were to appear by secure video link, which of course happens in
court cases all the time, he would they would somehow be
tracked down by shooting strangely incompetent assassins
who would presumably once again failed to kill the script owls
with the most steady nerve agent known to man.
But yes, I mean, there's many witnesses that they could have
called. I mean, they're plenty of the
medical staff, the medical director of the hospital,
There's another very important witness that the the inquiry
should have called and because she was, of course, in charge of
the whole hospital during the response to the Nova shock, both
Nova shock attacks. Right.
Well, we'll get on. We'll get on to that in just one
second, Tim. But before we do, I just want to
remind everybody what the Sally Davies, who was at the at the
time Chief Medical Officer said. Let's just have a listen to
this. These two patients are in a
critical condition following exposure to the nerve agent
Novichok following events in March.
We have a well established response to this type of
incident and clear processes to follow.
Our priorities at this time are to care for the patients and to
understand the circumstances surrounding how these two
individuals became unwell, thus ensuring there is no further
risk to the public's health from this incident.
As the country's Chief Medical Officer, I want to reassure the
public that the risk to the general public remains low.
I understand that those in Salisbury and its surrounding
areas will be concerned that this news, particularly those
who've recently visited the areas now cordoned off by the
police. My advice for any individual
that may have been in any of the areas now cordoned off from
10:00 PM on Friday evening onwards is highly precautionary.
As before, my advice is to wash your clothes and wipe down any
personal items, shoes and bags with cleansing or baby wipes
before disposing of them in the usual way.
This is. So there we go.
That was the advice. That was how serious the the
contents of the bottle were. Baby wipes.
Yeah.
Now you you mentioned the hospital doctor.
This is Doctor Stephen Cockroft. Well, now I was referring to
Christine Blanchard, but actually Stephen Cockroft is a
very interesting witness who appeared before the inquiry and
he was the senior ICU consultant who was present when the
Skripals were brought in to the ICU on the evening, afternoon,
4th of March 2018. But this, in this clip, which
we're about to see, he's describing what happened four
days later. Because the Skripals were put on
ventilators, they were intubated and they weren't able to speak.
But under these circumstances, it's common practice in Icus to
reduce the sedation of the patients on a periodical,
usually more than once a day, to see how their neurological
function is and see if in fact, they can be weaned off sedation
and can be can breathe for themselves.
So Yulius Gripal had her sedation reduced into his
absolute amazement because Doctor Crockroft believed that
she had been exposed to a deadly nerve agent who'd been told that
by Porton down this stage. He believed that she would be
brain dead. And as he says in this clip,
he's absolutely gobsmacked. So let's have a look.
Let's have a look at this clip here.
To be honest with you, I was actually gobsmacked.
This was a girl I never thought I'd see move again.
I never thought she'd be capable having a conversation.
I was quite convinced she suffered catastrophic brain
damage and I I I couldn't believe that she could be as
neurologically attacked. As she obviously was, she was
looking at me, she was nodding, she was crying, she looked
absolutely terrified. Yeah, I mean, you could not be
anything but gobsmacked, Tim. Yes.
And there's serious implications.
There's all kinds of ramifications to that.
And one thing would be, of course, at this point, Yulia
should be put on a rehabilitation program.
They've just discovered that she's very neurologically
intact. She should be almost immediately
should be given a brain scan, and she should be rehabilitated
and moved towards coming off ventilation.
Instead of which, as far as we know, she simply spent the next
three weeks under sedation without any further sedation
halts, while the geopolitics of the scribble affairs were
unfolded outside the hospital. Yeah.
OK, we can't let real medical conditions get in the way of the
narrative, Mike. No, absolutely.
Not but D notices were a thing. Well, it just brings us to the
question of media management and narrative management.
I have to point to this excellent report here by The
Grey Zone. We'll bring this up on screen
right now. Files expose Britain's secret D
notice censorship program. And this is a pretty incredible
most in the most in depth analysis with testimonies,
whistleblower testimonies regarding the D notice program.
This is a complete full spectrum censorship program in Britain
with the military leaning on mainstream media organizations
telling them what not to say, what not to report, anything
that could quote affect national security.
And it's just another damning indictment.
We've talked about D notices over the years.
We we're well aware of the practice.
But the level of detail in this is shocking.
And that brings us to this story.
Mike and I always thought and it this is I'll show you where I
got my references on this, but this is one of the lead
narratives that came out of this.
Now the question is Mike, will this be viewed as a cock up or
cover up after the inquiry? And this is always the big thing
with regards to British inquiries of major high profile
events. And of course we get the the
cock up rather than the cover up here.
Novichok attack MI 5 left ex Russian spy Sergei Skripal
alarmingly accessible to Putin assassins.
They didn't do enough to protect Sergei script out.
We need more resources for MI 5. We need more funding for MI 5.
And so this was a cock up by the system.
And you know what there's form here and this is always the case
after every major scandal. And I'll point you to this
excellent book here, which is called Power beyond scrutiny,
Media Justice and accountability.
This is Justin Schlossberg. It's a great book.
I often quote it here just to show you.
I've got a copy of it which I keep by my desk all the time.
For journalism. This is a fantastic resource,
but this is one of the key quotes in this book of many, and
it really focuses on the David Kelly incident, Mike, and we'll
bring this up on screen again here.
And this is what it says regarding cock up versus cover
up here. And this is regarding the David
Kelly of the Hutton inquiry. Several respondents now the the
author here talked to many people involved in the process.
And this was the conclusion several, several respondents did
profess belief in some sort of cover up regarding David
Kelly's, you know, suicide, stroke, murder, whilst at the
same time subscribing to the suicide verdict.
The common thread was a tendency to couch the notion of cover up
in terms of quote cock up rather than a conspiracy.
And to round out that point, that is to say, if a cover up
had taken place, the likely intention was to conceal
professional failings rather than unethical or criminal
behavior. And this is the institutional
leaning that we see time and time again.
It's almost like a formula, Mike.
They never the establishment always ends up and they appoint
probably people who will end up with.
This was the final narrative of this.
By the way, here's this book, which is available a good
independent publisher. By the way, Pluto Press power
beyond scrutiny. I have always said this is
required reading for anybody that's interested in these types
of events or anybody in journalism.
It's a fantastic resource. But, and again, we see the same
thing repeated here with script out.
Are we surprised? I certainly am not, but I'm
still disappointed. Well, indeed.
Well, look, Tim, thank you very much for joining us today.
You'll be with us an extra as well.
We'll talk about this a little bit more there.
But this narrative is so full of holes and this inquiry actually
has done nothing to fill those holes in in any way, shape or
form. But undoubtedly we'll be accused
of conspiracy theory for this and we'll explain why.
I say that in a few minutes time when we look at the censorship
issue. But before we get there, let's
just say to everybody that if you like what we do and you'd
like to support us, please have a look at the UK column website.
There is a link there which takes you to a page which
explains how you can support us. We do need your financial
support. If you can't support us
financially, please do share our material because that absolutely
helps beat the algorithm. Now tonight at 7:00 PM, Charles
and I are speaking to Jeremy again for our usual weekly
intercession. And we're taking a look at
Africa and Britain, the West's influence in Africa alongside
Russia and China, of course. Then later on at 9:00 PM, life
in China versus Western myths. That's Carl speaking to Jason RB
Smith on the Silk and Steel podcast.
That's at 9:00 PM and we're very pleased to say that tickets are
now on sale for our event on the 11th of December in Salisbury
entitled Skripal and Novichok. What didn't happen?
You can find this on Eventbrite. The link to that will be in the
show notes that begins at 7:30 PM at the location in Salisbury.
Details on the Eventbrite Eventbrite site, please.
If you are coming as AUK column member, we would be very
enthusiastic if you could find somebody from the local
community to bring along with that with you because we want to
to present this mainly to people in the local area.
I think they deserve to hear some of what's being said.
Craig Murray speaking, Patrick Hennigson speaking, and Tim
Norman that you just heard is going to be speaking at that as
well. And then finally, I just want to
mention that on Sunday the 14th, then we are hosting the third
annual David Ray Griffin Lecture and that is entitled 9/11 Truth
Today, A Social Movement at the Precipice.
It's got to be given by Professor Richard G Alfreds and
well, you can see on screen there who else is going to be
taking part Jason Burmas, James Corbett, Sandra Lara, Lara Toda
and Madava Get the SETI is going to be chairing the event.
So that's going to be live streamed on the UK column and on
ic911.org. Join us for that if you possibly
can. Looking forward to it, to both
those events, in fact. So now, Patrick, let's come then
on to the issue of Ukraine and what's been going on there.
It's important that people understand the update on this
because all these countries are involved in it.
Britain, of course, is also very much involved in it.
So where are we on the negotiations on this?
And very entertaining image. We'll just remind you of
Instinct, the Russian dolls. Zelensky has been added to the
street side. Russian dolls collections in
Moscow. If you travel to Russia, you
have seen this. It's very interesting indeed.
Now, how's the media reacting, Mike, to some of the recent
statements regarding what Russia is saying, what the US is
saying. Here's the Guardian straight up.
And you can see that this is the level of propaganda.
You see the headline, Russia is ready for war with Europe.
Of course, when you read the text, Mike, in the context of
this is a much broader conversation.
But it's interesting how the war mongering Guardian has chosen to
use that as their headline. Here is the actual statement in
context from President Putin. And it, it this should be a real
wake up call, I think for all of the war mongers in NATO land, at
least the European branch of NATO.
Listen to this. Europeans are not silent.
They are upset about being sidelined from the talks on a
Ukraine peace deal. But I want to note that nobody
sidelined them. They sidelined themselves.
For a time we had close contacts with them.
Then they abruptly cut ties with Russia.
That was their own initiative because they adopted the idea of
inflicting A strategic defeat on Russia.
And judging by everything, they still live in that illusion.
Seeing that they don't like today's results, they have
started obstructing the current US administration and President
Trump from achieving peace through negotiations.
They themselves refused peace talks and now they are hindering
President Trump. Thirdly, they have no peace
agenda. They are on the side of war.
Even when they claim to introduce changes to Trump's
proposal, we can clearly see all these changes are aimed at one
thing, to block the entire peace process.
They put forward demands that are absolutely unacceptable for
Russia and they know it. The goal is to later blame
Russia for the end of the peace process.
Therefore, if they want to return to reality based on the
situation on the ground, as they say, then by all means, we are
open to that. We are not planning to fight
Europe. I have said this 100 times.
But if Europe suddenly decides to wage war against us and
starts it, we are ready right now.
There can be no doubt about that.
The question is if Europe starts a war with us.
I believe that very quickly. This is not Ukraine.
With Ukraine, we act in a surgical, careful way.
You understand right? It is not war in the full modern
sense of the word. If Europe chooses to start a
war, the situation can very quickly reach a point where
there will be no one left for us to negotiate with.
Well, I mean, that's that's pretty clear.
And it's also pretty clear he's not threatening anybody there.
Quite the opposite. I think it's pretty clear the
the the US does not want a confrontation with Russia.
Russia does not want to have a war with Europe.
But the rhetoric coming from the European leaders, Mike says
something else. It's like they do want a war
with Russia. So what's interesting here is
what Putin is. Pay attention.
Putin has identified A fissure between Europe and Trump and
Washington. And he is absolutely using it.
He is really hammering the wedge in there.
And and by doing this, there's going to be a lot of back and
forth dilly dallying between Washington and and Europe and
Zelensky. And Russia knows this.
I believe they priced this all into the equation and but it's a
very, very good strategy, I think.
So where did this fissure come from between Europe and
Washington? Is this a genuine no?
But is it, was this something the Trump administration wanted
to distance himself like JD Vance at the Munich Security
Conferences from Europe? Whatever the case is, wherever
this originated from, Mike, or whether it's coming from
animosity with with the UK, between Washington, who knows?
But wherever it came. But this has changed the whole
calculus of this because under Biden you had total solidarity
between transatlantic solidarity on this.
They could run Lend Lease deals for the next 10 years, who
knows, and keep this thing grinding away.
So that's an interesting point of view.
Well, and here's the reaction from Trump's reprochement, if
you will, with Moscow. This is the Der Spiegel here
will bring this up on screen. We must not leave Ukraine and
Zelensky alone with these guys. And there's another reservoir
dogs style picture from the European meter to to make all
these European leaders look like they're really sort of with it
and tough. I mean it's just kind of a joke
at this point. So that's interesting.
You know the irony, Mike, this is AUS LED destabilization
project right from my from before the Maidan.
But now the US wants to exit the situation.
Europe is stuck with it and they're now running point on it.
They're going to have to wear the failure of this.
And I think that's inevitable based on what we're going to
show you in a moment here, because now you've got another
problem to contend with. We'll bring this up on screen, a
corruption scandal in Brussels. And this is the only the
beginning here. That is the former high
representative to the European Union on foreign policy.
That's Frederica Margherini. She is basically detained by the
police under questioning for a corruption regarding tenders,
contracts, all sorts of graft and things like this.
So officers have been raided, right?
All of this has happened. So this is just, I think, a
warning shot because there are other bigger scandals, Qatar
gate, von der Leyen's own vaccine graft as well that
hasn't been fully. This could be something to
placate the press, who knows? But this brings us back to the
original question, who is going to pay for Europe's war with
Russia? And this was Vanderline's recent
pronouncements here, She's saying all over their new plans
and schemes to finance Ukraine's needs for the next, like, three
years or something like that. But there's a problem.
And the problem has come in the form of guess who, Christina
Lagarde. This is a battle of the alpha
females here at the highest level.
Mike Lagarde says the ECB, the European Central Bank, will not
violate the EU treaty, the Treaty of Europe, and allow
Brussels to steal Russian assets to pay for the Ukraine war.
She has given it the thumbs down.
Here she is explaining why she's made her decision.
What I have said very clearly and what the team around me has
said is we will do everything we can, but we will not violate the
Treaty. It's not that we are refusing,
it's just that we are saying we have to respect the Treaty of
Europe in relation to the functioning of the European
Central Bank. So when the fiscal space is not
there, we have to find a way and there are ways that have been
identified and in particular. Option 2 is one of the ways that
has been identified the issuance of.
Bonds that would be specifically intended to finance Ukraine.
More debts. Perfect.
Answer, the bonds she's talking about are underwritten by Russia
losing the war and paying reparations.
Is that going to happen? I don't know.
So it looks like no way out really for Vander Leyen and
company on this. So just a summary on where we're
at. These are the key data points to
pay attention to. We'll bring this up on screen
here. Ukraine negotiations, key data
points, number one. EU corruption and scandals
abound. Bad news for Brussels makes them
weak right here. Rubio's absent from the NATO
meeting this week. First time ever the US Secretary
of State has not shown up. You can read that two different
ways. Could be Trump keeping Rubio
away, or could be Rubio basically blowing off NATO.
Either way, it's a bad look for NATO and for their prospects of
getting full solidarity on this issue.
Witkoff snubs Zelensky in Dublin Zelensky went to to the Irish
parliament did his. Normal grandstanding and was
posed to meet Witkoff while Witkoff was on the way home from
Moscow. Guess what?
Witkoff snubbed the little Green Man.
So this was a huge insult. And here is the big one in terms
of data points, that one Russian momentum on the battlefield,
this is an inescapable reality here.
So you combine all of these data points together, Mike, and the
conclusion is that while this US Moscow ripprochement
negotiations might stretch on into 2026, at least now there's
an acknowledgement by the US of the facts on the ground.
They're recognizing Russias winning and that they cannot,
Ukraine cannot turn the tide or NATO of this conflict.
That is a reality. They've US has acknowledged that
there's no NATO membership for Ukraine and Zelensky has been
effectively sidelined with corruption scandals in Ukraine.
Your mock his chief aide is out. That is Zelensky's brain.
He's gone. So all of these things together,
Mike, it, it looks like we're seeing a shift.
However, when is this going to be formalized into some kind of
a formal agreement or treaty? That is the big question.
It is, but the Europeans will kick and scream as long as they
possibly can. Or the the UK, who arguably
helped the Ukrainians to hit oil tankers in the Black Sea,
causing a huge environmental catastrophe in order to
basically sabotage these negotiations.
So that's continuing. And what's Russia's reaction?
They're ramping up their timetable on Odessa.
So well done NATO. Brilliant.
OK well let's let's move on then because trouble at Eurovision.
So let's bring your vision on and well for those non Europeans
who don't know what your vision is, it's a so-called Song
Contest where European countries compete to win with cheesy tunes
and cheesier performers. It's always been highly
politicized, and up until recent years the winner was chosen by a
selected panel of national representatives who would always
vote for their geopolitical buddies.
But in more recent years, an effort to lose this
politicization has been brought in with possibly also the skim
cash from the general public, of course, because they introduced
a popular vote via a phone in Now they claim to be united by
music. But in fact, not this year
because when Israel came second in the 2025 Song Contest, the
accusations flew that Israel had rigged the telephone vote,
causing the director of Eurovision to issue an open
letter denying the allegations. At the core was the unlikelihood
that Israel would receive such a popular vote in light of the
ongoing genocide in Gaza. And Martin Green there claimed
that there are all kinds of checks and balances in place to
prevent flooding fraud. But this is Israel we're talking
about and they've got their unit 8200, which we've got to
remember is an offensive cyber operation.
So anything's possible here, but the news today then is that
Ireland, Spain, the Netherlands and Slovenia are going to
boycott the 2026 Eurovision Song Contest after it was decided
that Israel could compete. And everyone paying attention
may be asking why Israel was ever involved in the 1st place.
Well, Eurovision is organised by the European Broadcasting Union,
and any country with a national broadcaster that is an active
member of the EBU is allowed to participate, even if the
country's not in Europe geographically.
So the Israel Broadcasting Authority became a member in
1957, and Israel first took part in 1973.
But a number of countries decided they should not be
taking part in 2026, bearing in mind what's going on, and Spain
led the charge for a secret ballot to be held on Israel's
participation. That idea was rejected and the
participation was pushed through.
And so these four countries so far have decided to abandon.
The chief executive of Israel's broadcaster said the attempt to
disqualify its entry can only be understood as a cultural
boycott. A boycott may begin today with
Israel, but no one knows where it will end or who else may
harm, he said. And is this what we truly want
the contest to be remembered for, for his 70th anniversary?
The BBC for its part, of course, broadcasts your vision in the
UK, said in a statement. We support the collective
decision made by members of the European Broadcasting Union.
This is about enforcing the rules of the EBU and about being
inclusive, and we don't worry too much about who's being
killed in the meantime, apparently.
I think it's great. It's now relevant again,
Eurovision, politically anyway, so I think this is great news.
Yes, indeed. But sticking with international
stuff, then Venezuela, Patrick. Hugely, hugely complicated
story. Obviously the the ramifications
of this are unbelievable here. Trump's new war on Venezuela,
this is exactly what it is. And this has taken some
interesting turns this week. And we'll look we'll look at
that, especially regarding the self declared secretary of war.
His name is Pete Hegseth here. And the controversy is over
this. It's the Venezuelan boat strike
fallout here. They're calling it the double
tap. This is being regarded as a war
crime. The press are now circling like
vultures, as well as the opposition, including Rand Paul
and the Republican side, putting a lot of pressure on the
government to have an inquiry regarding this incident.
Now, is this a war crime? Is it not a war crime?
This is obviously part of the national debate right now.
But you can see clearly that this is damaged the Trump
administration here. We'll bring this up on screen.
Trump's Venezuelan boat strikes fuel war crime allegations.
Are they legal? This is CBS News.
So this is dominating the political conversation here.
Certainly there's grounds for impeachment for Heg Seth.
But more than that, he would basically go under trial first
in front of Congress and then if if it goes any further for war
crimes, probably would get pardoned by Trump because Trump
has his habit of pardon, pardoning anybody who's a
criminal, basically. I'll show you one in a minute.
But this is what a defiant Heg Seth tweeted.
We'll bring this up on screen right now on his this ex
account. This is a children's book called
Franklin and he's made his own cover.
Franklin targets narco terrorists.
So I mean this this is the the maturity of the current Defense
Secretary calls himself the war secretary.
This is the sort of stuff he's putting out.
And if you think this is bad, he had to double down on this
because he got a lot of stick for this.
So what does he do? He goes and sticks this silly
mem outside of the Department of Defense there, and that's
Hegseth. You can see the tattoos on his
forearm. His body is completely covered
with tattoos. He's very proud of the fact that
he's done this year. So the the people who are
circling the wagons on this mic have pointed out that Hegseth
has incriminated himself by basically previously last month
calling for a change in the rules of engagement.
So if there is a trial, what I'm going to show you is going to be
evidence exhibit #1 watch this. We are preparing every day.
We have to be prepared for war, not for defence.
We're training warriors, not defenders.
We fight wars to win, not to defend.
Defence is something you do all the time.
It's inherently reactionary and can lead to overuse, overreach
and mission creep. War is something you do
sparingly, on our own terms and with clear aims.
We fight to win. We unleash overwhelming and
punishing violence on the enemy. We also don't fight with stupid
rules of engagement. We untie the hands of our war
fighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt and kill the
enemies of our country. No more politically correct and
overbearing rules of engagement. Just common sense, maximum
lethality and authority for war fighters.
That's all I ever wanted as a platoon leader.
A. Platoon leader.
I got a platoon leader as the head of the Pentagon.
Great. So who are the enemies of the
United States? Well, with this new rule book
that heck, Seth and Trump are trying to foist on the United
States and the world, if you can call someone a quote, narco
terrorist, this is a new term, Narco terrorist, then basically
it's carte blanche. You don't need any due process.
You can just kill whoever and do it extrajudiciously and so forth
with extreme prejudice. And so, and this is something
that's also happened here. And if you pay attention to this
story, this is from the Wall Street Journal here.
Hexet asked top Admiral to resign after months of
discourse. So basically pushing out anybody
who wants to follow the law or comply with the law.
We're talking about the US military code, the laws of war
and the Geneva Conventions. OK, Hexat's pushing out people
who are doing that now. Do you remember a couple months
ago when they hit a Colombian narco sub after this boat
incident? This boat incident took place,
this double tap in end of September.
After that, they had a narco submarine in the Pacific.
OK, What happened? They went and rescued the people
who were survived from that. There was a change in policy.
Why? Because there was a change of
command at JSOC or at this level of this operation whereby they
had already internally recognized what that this was a
war crime, you see. So this has been stewing under
the surface. This is why The Washington Post
had seven sources confirmed the story last week and then Hegseth
and Trump both lied to the public.
They denied it happened, then they changed the story, then
they changed the story again. So they've lied and you've got
war crime, evidence of a war crime here.
I mean, this is not good for the United States.
Now, the British reaction, Mike, was quite quick or early on.
This was from last week here. We'll bring this up on screen.
The UK paused intelligence sharing with the US on
suspected, quote, drug vessels in the Caribbean because Britain
didn't want to be implicated any potential war crimes.
So hats off to the British for recognizing the precariousness
of this. But again, the wagons are
circling again. Watchdog finds Hegseth violated
Pentagon protocol in the signal gate affair.
You remember that? Yes, that was months ago.
So they're they're lopping one after the other.
And here is the ultimate conclusion, Mike, is that this
relatively small event, this boat carrying allegedly narco
terrorists carrying drugs to America, a boat with a range of
60 miles or 990 miles. I mean, how could how could that
get to the US territorial waters?
But that could have thrown a wrench into Trump's war plans
politically. And we'll bring this up again,
this is mainstream here, this is CNN.
Trump struggles with Venezuelan dilemma as Maduro digs in and
storm builds at home over potential war crime.
Again, with Pete Hagseth, Trump is also implicated in this war
crime because he would executive wise, he would have given the OK
to Hagseth, who would have then told his Admiral, who they're
currently leaving out to dry on this, who would also get
pardoned by Trump. But you can see, Mike, how this
has created a delay. I think this is kind of, you
know, gummed up the effort by Trump to hit Venezuela.
Now, if Trump is seen to be bluffing on Venezuela, that's
it. I don't think you can pull this
one again. You can't do it twice because
the opposition and those enemies of Trump are going to see this
and they'll seize upon it if he tries this one again.
So again, there's so many different aspects.
By the way, Trump is claiming there's a major war on drugs.
This is all about stopping Maduro in Venezuela.
Trump just pardoned one of the biggest drug traffickers this
week, a former Honduran president, Juan Orlando
Hernandez, who did a 45 year sentence in AUS federal prison.
He's in AUS clink for 40 tons of cocaine trafficking it into the
United States and this Trump just pardoned him because he
said well, friends of mine said he was treated very badly.
And so apparently this is coming from Marco Rubio, who is Marco
Rubio friends with current president of Ecuador Naboa
massive connections implicated in huge drug trafficking
scandals. Are the cartels giving an order
to Trump to spring one of their own?
Is that what happened? It's nobody calling about for
this because he's running this anti narco state operation and
then he's releasing former heads of narco states.
How does that work? And he's justifying it on, well,
guys, I play golf with that. He was treated very badly.
So we're going to release him. No, it's Rubio and it's the
people behind Rubio. We have the level of criminal
corruption. Corruption in the US government
in this Trump administration is one of the most criminally
corrupt governments. It may end up being in history.
And this is only 10 months into his first second term, Mike.
I mean, what do the next three years have in store?
That's the question. So there's more to report on
this. We'll we'll be watching this
closely. Yes indeed.
OK, well let's come back to the UUK then and and censorship
agenda. So yesterday Ofcom find AVS
Group Limited which runs 18 adult websites.
They find the £1,000,000 for not having robust age checks in
place, plus 50,000 lbs for failing to respond to
information requests. And they say Ofcom says the
fines come as the regulator reports on how the online safety
landscape is changing following the new laws coming into effect
this year. Well, we'll talk about that a
little bit more in a second. But they said that for more than
two decades online platforms have been unregulated,
unaccountable and often unwilling to prioritise people's
safety over profits. And they said that illegal
content duties under the ACT came into force in March.
And then it goes on to say that new Ofcom research shows that
58% of parents believe the measures in Ofcom's codes of
practice are already improving the safety of UK children
online, and that 67% feel the measures will make a difference
in the future. And the 36% have noticed the
potential impact on their child's online safety.
So this is quite an incredible claim that they're making.
And they're saying that they're making sure that tech firms
assess the risk their platforms host the UK users and take
appropriate steps to address those risks.
And they're particularly claiming that these platforms
are having to deal with age checks and other child
protections. And they're also saying that
that the platforms most used by kids, including Facebook,
Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok, YouTube, Roblox and Snap must
tell Ofcom what they're doing to keep children safe.
And I'm just going to ask, how's that going, Ofcom?
Because the YouTube schlep built a huge following on YouTube,
tracking down alleged child protectors, child predators on
Roblox before he was kicked off until the platform is facing
multiple losses. Roblox, we're talking about over
child safety and the truth is, as we've mentioned many times
that Ofcom is doing nothing to protect children from grooming
and it's merely using child protection as a front for the
digital ID roll out, which is what this age verification thing
is all about. So, so that's that's where they
are with that. Now moving on then, I just want
to mention the fact that the wonderful people at News Guard,
this organization that is there to protect us all and make sure
that only trustworthy news sources are seen by everybody,
has sent us their annual e-mail. So let's bring it up on screen
here. So there it is.
I'm right. Good afternoon.
I'm writing from News Guard, a company that reads news and
information websites. For reliability, we assess each
site based on 9A political journalistic criteria and assign
a zero to 100 trust score based on those criteria.
Our rating processing criteria can be found in the links on
screen at the moment. So anyway they they have asked
us for comment because because they find some of our content
inappropriate. So I just wanted to highlight
the particular articles that they do find inappropriate with
a view to suggesting the people that you might want to pay
particular attention to them. So the first thing that they
were criticizing was this Patrick, your news programme
with Brian from from the 20th of November.
And they were very upset about Brian's statistics on on
Ukrainian deaths and because apparently the economist said
something different. So that that was the basis of
their complaints. So the CIA was upset about?
Hold on, we'll come on to that in a second.
Upset about the casualty numbers Brian was presenting, I got it.
Absolutely. And discussing An Inconvenient
Truth with Del Victory that was that was my interview with Del
Victory that was also deeply upsetting to them.
And then of course green bottles, yellow cylinders and
the increasingly fantastical claims made in support of Syria
Chemical weapons narrative part 4 by Doctor Pierce Robinson.
That is absolutely problematic to them.
And the final example that they had was the question of whether
vaccines have ever worked. 1 of germ warfare's.
Roman Bistrionic, co-author of Dissolving Illusions, one of the
The history of vaccines. Great book by the way.
Joe Rogan was promoting that book, so it made me news.
Guard need to get in touch with Joe Rogan.
Anyway, yes, so, so the question, the question then is,
you know, what is News Guard and what are they all about?
Patrick, good question. Well, according to a 2023
question in the European Parliament News Guards advisory
boards, as you pointed out to be earlier before the program,
Patrick includes Michael Hayden, former head of the CIA and NSA,
and also Tom Bridge, the former US Secretary of Homeland
Security. Wait, hold on.
So it's this is headed by a former CIA guy.
He's on the he's on the Advisory Board.
Oh, he's, he's chairman of the board or he's, I think he's
chairman, isn't he? Michael Hayden.
Anyway, the Advisory Board, Yeah, Wow.
So it's full of Spooks, including the head of the CIA.
That's great, very reassuring. Absolutely.
And then we've got other former senior, formerly senior U.S.
government officials, including ex heads of the security
defense, intelligence institutions.
They're listed amongst news guards advisors, according to
this this congressional report here.
So we could, could we call this a cut out?
Is this an intelligence government cut out?
It kind of falls under that definition, doesn't it?
Well, quite obviously that's what it is.
But they, they probably have people, they, they hire people
coming out of university who are, want a job and who are well
meaning and want to get their foot on the ladder of the, the
system. So they're probably doing their
the worker bees are doing their job, reaching out to nefarious
websites like the UK Column and 21st Century Wire and Consortium
News and others. And meanwhile this is all being
directed from the top. Right, absolutely.
We'll also just mention that they have previously boasted of
government ties and Breitbart was was hissing hinting at this
with their headline here. News Guard boasts of government
ties and censorship pitched to Twitter.
And well, then we have also this.
The fact that Consortium News is suing News Guard at the moment
for defamation. Oh, wow.
OK. But as part of this, they're
pointing out the government contracts between news Guards
and government agencies, including the Department of
Defence. So, you know, I think, I think
we don't see need to say any more about that.
We understand what News Guard is, what it represents.
And so if they're criticising our news coverage, I'm deeply
proud of that fact. Why don't they just why doesn't
the CIA just come out and just give a quote to the New York
Times or, you know, a mainstream media outlets just just change
the, the heading on the on, on the organization.
Just put it back under the CIA, let them publicly come out
criticizing websites because isn't that what this is anyway?
Absolutely. Narrative control, narrative
management. So Speaking of narratives and
and politics in Britain, Mike, we have to show this story,
which made the headlines, the front page.
This was the lead story in the Huffington Post today.
The Reform Party sparks outrage after receiving historic £9
million donation. Democracy should never be for
sale. Who made the donation?
Let's take a look at that for a moment here.
This came from according to Electoral Commission Mike
revealed that Christopher Harborne, A Boris Johnson
supporter and crypto investor based in Thailand, gave the
party millions of pounds in just one payment on August 1st, And
this is coming on the heels of the previous donations,
including, well 50,000 from Lady Rothermere.
This is of daily Rothermere's Daily Mail fame and this means a
reform received 10.5 million overall in the third quarter
2025 S. The Conservatives, in
comparison, received almost 7 million Labor 2.5 million Lib
Dems 2.1 million. So that's what they're saying
there, Mike, on the money side. So the question is, first of
all, is the crypto Bros overseas coming in backing reform, Do
reform have grassroots? Do they have a ground game,
first of all, for local elections to to be able to have
the kind of gains that that have been attributed to the hype
surrounding reform? And can you actually buy your
way into power in this fashion in Britain?
What do you think? We can talk about that an extra
because we're absolutely out of time for now.
I think we they probably can, but we'll we'll, we'll discuss
that more. An extra.
Yeah, yeah, brilliant. So, yeah, we'll have more
analysis on this an extra. And we'll also be talking about
Nigel Farage as will he or will he not be head of the party by
the time the next general election rolls around?
So all of that and more. Good question.
And Tim Norman is going to be joining us for more on the
Skripal affair, so stay with us. We'll see you in a few minutes.
Thanks.