Good afternoon. It's Friday the 10th of October
2025, just after 1:00. Welcome to UK column News.
I'm your host, Mike Robinson, joining me in the studio today,
Patrick Henningson. Welcome to the program, Patrick.
Great to be with you, Mike. And Mark Anderson will join us
in a little bit and we have a special guest we will we'll
introduce shortly. But we're going to begin today,
Patrick, with the the peace plan.
This is the big story, isn't Mike?
And this is the the meeting of the minds here or the meeting of
something else. These three likely lads here.
I mean, look at this, Benjamin Netanyahu, Steve Witkoff, Jared
Kushner, Donald Trump wasn't there to really do the deal, but
he is there in spirit as you can see on the back wall.
But that's Netanyahu with his his trusted cabinet there, which
he hand picked by the way he hand picked those two people in
the Trump cabinet. Is it a ceasefire deal, Mike?
Is it if they're already celebrating peace in the Middle
East? What's going on there?
Well, take a close look. If you know how this one's going
to go, take a close look at that gentleman there, that Steve
Witkoff. We like to call him the Dell boy
of diplomacy. So we took a little the Dell boy
of diplomacy. That makes Jared Rodney, doesn't
it? Yes, it does.
We don't want to insult Rodney, though, do we?
And I'm I'm almost to feel like I'm insulting David Jason with
that comparison, Mike. But that's kind of what we are
are going to expect because these are con men of the highest
order. Every single ceasefire has been
a strategic pause to rearm Israel and continue the bombing,
just like from the beginning of Trump's term.
Let's take a look at Donald Trump.
This is what he had to say about this historic deal.
I think it's going to be a lasting peace, hopefully, and
everlasting peace, peace in the Middle East.
We secured the release of all of the remaining hostages and they
should be released on Monday or Tuesday.
And getting them is a complicated process.
I'd rather not tell you what they have to do to get them.
There are places you don't want to be.
But we are getting the hostages back on on Tuesday, Monday or
Tuesday and that'll be a day of joy.
I'm going to try and make a trip over.
We're going to try and get over there and we're working on the
timing, the exact timing. We're going to go to Egypt where
we'll have a signing, an additional signing.
We've already had a signing representing me, but we're going
to have an official signing. So, Mike, they, they don't have
the timings. They haven't confirmed, maybe
Monday, maybe Tuesday, they haven't confirmed the names.
Israel hasn't agreed on the names of the Palestinians being
released, including some high profile people we'll speak
about, speak about in a moment. And, and so, yeah, but it's all
about the signing. It's going to be, it's historic.
There's peace in the Middle East.
They're already celebrating on Fox News in America.
Just finally there's peace in the Middle East.
Nothing's actually happened yet. Nothing has actually happened.
In fact, Israeli tanks opened fire on Palestinians celebrating
the ceasefire just last night. That was the opening gambit from
Israel is to basically shoot Palestinians.
We're celebrating that the war's over.
Well, I guess it's not over then, but, well, we'll see.
Well, it's really said that they had held a defence cabinet and
then a full cabinet before they agreed this thing.
But let's just have a look here at what Keir Starmer had to say
because this was this was his words.
I welcome the news that the deal has been reached on the first
stage of President Trump's peace plan for Gaza.
And he then lauded the efforts of western aligned countries in
the region for stepping up and and helping get this over the
line. But he said that this agreement
must now be implemented in full without delay and accompanied by
the immediate lifting of all restrictions on life saving
humanitarian aid to Gaza. Well, that may be his position.
But while the various meetings were going on, Israel wasn't
holding back. And as we can see here as well,
first of all, as reported by Resistance Use Network from the
Palestinian side and also in the Israeli media here, multiple
attacks on Gaza were carried out in the run up to the ceasefire.
Because why get into the spirit of what's being done when
there's an opportunity to kill a few more people before the
deadline, Patrick? Yes, exactly.
Right, so, so let's just have a look at what the Resistance News
Network said here. Now at 2:00 AM, the displaced
people of Gaza are cautiously celebrating and crying tears of
joy at shelters and hospitals in light of the news of a ceasefire
deal. The IOF continues to bomb the
Gaza Strip at this time, particularly cyber neighborhoods
South of Gaza City, while drones are flying low over Muazi.
Explosions rock Gaza City now, but the Times of Israel here was
claiming that the idea of hopes to complete its withdrawal by
noon starting 72 countdown, 72 hour countdown.
Sorry to free the hostages. I don't know what your thoughts
are on that. Well, I mean it again, the
timing hasn't been confirmed yet.
So when is the swap going to happen?
That was a problem in the last agreements and Israel basically
deep sixed every single one of these agreements in the past.
There's a 0% success rate and they always come up with some
excuse or they try to blame Hamas.
So clearly the Palestinians are willing to take a step to make a
deal. But I'm, I'm going to say
cautiously, Mike, that at best this is a temporary, but perhaps
ceasefire temporary. It's this not, it's not a peace
plan. It's not a peace deal.
But by the same token, Mike, we need to be also sensitive to the
fact that I will not deny any Palestinian the respite of not
having to be bombed for at least 24 hours, 48 hours, maybe a
week, maybe a month. I will not deny them that, even
though I'm a total skeptic about the sincerity of the Americans
and the Israelis on this. Well, let's get an idea perhaps
of the sincerity of the Israelis in this because here's Channel
7. I guess this is Israel national
news. I just want to quote a little
bit from this because they say the names of the four terror
aces that Hamas demanded as part of the deal, Marwan Bargaty and
and three others were removed from the list of terrorists who
were said to be released under the ceasefire agreement that
went into effect early Friday morning.
Now, before I go on with the quote here, .5 F of the
implementation steps for President Trump's proposal for
the the end of the Gaza war, which was signed, as you said,
said. And I quote, as Hamas releases
all the hostages, Israel were released in parallel the
corresponding number of Palestinian prisoners as per the
attached lists. And Barghodi's name was on that
list and that was approved by, amongst others, Witkoff.
And today, as we mentioned, the phrase employed by the Israeli
government was and quote, at this point in time, he will not
be part of the release process. And that quote goes on to say as
Hamas releases all the hostages, Israel will release in parallel
the corresponding number of parallel prisoners.
But they're they're not adhering to the terms that were signed.
So where does that leave the agreement?
So that they already told basically the Americans to get
stuffed will decide who's going to be on the list.
So they've already basically gone bad on their own sort of
side of the agreement. So that's Israeli opening
gambit. Marwan Barghouti.
To call him a terrorist ace or terrorist mastermind is patently
ridiculous. These are practically elderly
men by this point. They've been sentenced to life
in prison and their main crime is their potential political
leaders of of a Palestinian state that is their chief crime.
So all of these people will either be assassinated or put in
prison until they die. That is the Israeli policy and
that's how they keep it Palestine down and and always
have the excuse to say we don't have a negotiating partner says,
says Netanyahu. Yeah, because you killed them
all or they're in prison. So I mean this, this, this goes
to show you what a farce this whole thing has been really for
the last 40 years, the whole. And in fact, wasn't a couple of
months ago that Ben Kaferi went to at him in prison and was
basically gloating effectively, you're never getting out and you
know, we will destroy the lot of you sort of thing was what he
was doing at the time. It was pretty unpleasant.
The defense minister, yes, Yeah, that's exactly what happened.
Pretty incredible stuff, Mike. But we can talk more about this
ceasefire with our next guest at the end.
Well, maybe you'll ask her her opinion, but I want to welcome
on to the program Yara Mardarelli.
She's a journalist. She is also a crew member on the
Global Summit Flotilla will put their their X account up here on
screen so people can see it. I encourage everyone to fall.
They've got a lot of followers in the last week.
And this is the main flotilla that had over 40 boats that
tried to break the siege in Gaza.
And Yara, who we have on the line right now, she is one of
those crew members who is just, she's recently been released and
allowed to come home. She's going to talk briefly with
us with the UK column about her experience.
Welcome to the program, Yara. Hi, thank you for having me.
It's a real pleasure to see you and of course everyone's very
happy to see that you're well as well as your your crew mates and
your comrades on that incredible mission, very important mission.
But just to get started, for those people who don't know you,
Yara, how did you get involved in the Global Summit Flotilla
and and what is the Global Summit Flotilla?
So the Global Sumud Flotilla is a coalition of the Freedom
Flotilla. The Sumud convoy, which parallel
to the Global March to Gaza, were both attempting to March to
the Rafa crossing and I was part of the Global March to Gaza.
After we were sabotaged by the Egyptian secret police via
Israel, we attempted to break the siege by sea.
And so we reconvened in Tunisia and started organizing and I
quickly kind of became a Co head of of communications at the
Global Summit Flotilla and part of the organizing committee.
And so tell, tell us about this journey yard.
How you know, when did you disembark?
I know there was a huge gathering in, in in Barcelona,
in Spain, but boats came from all over the Mediterranean.
How did it start? How long was the journey?
Just tell us briefly about how how how your experience with
that. So we were at sea for around a
month. Of course we had.
We started out with around 70 plus boats on the journey.
Of course some had failures, couldn't continue for different,
different reasons and we ended up with 42 boats in total.
We departed from the port in Barcelona with around 20 plus
boats and then on the first leg of the journey headed to
Tunisia. In Tunisia we were as many might
have as many who might have followed along.
We were we were attacked for the first time by Israel.
My lead boat, which was the Alma was drone struck one day after
the family boat was drone struck.
And those were the large, the large ships that were kind of
the mother boats riding fuel to all the smaller vessels.
And so we were at risk of attack.
We were attacked once in Tunisia.
And subsequently then we were attacked by 15 drones which
exploded above people's heads on the sailing boats in close to
Greek territorial waters just a few days after we left Tunisia.
And these were intimidation and fear tactics employed by Israel,
of course, to scare us, to scare participants out of the mission,
but they didn't work. We continued sailing and and
then we were of course, as, as people know, intercepted,
illegally kidnapped in international waters around 17
miles from from the shores of Gaza.
And, and Jara, there there was the reports that Italy, Spain,
Greece had deployed naval vessels to escort to support you
Turkey as well. What, what was the truth behind
that? Because how much help were they
giving you out of those countries?
Were any of them better than others?
What what? What are your thoughts on on
that side? So the Greek warship only
accompanied us until we actually left Greek territorial waters
and then turned back. The Italian vessels were a
complete PR stunt, no help whatsoever.
The Spanish fleet, we actually never saw it, turned around
before we even got to see it. And the only fleet that actually
delivered any kind of help was the Turkish fleet actually,
which came up to the Alma, our boat, and provided a bunch of
humanitarian in aid. But that was about it.
When we were in our hour of need and we needed the warships, when
Israel kidnapped us, illegally abducted us, there were no
worships to be seen. So to us, it was performative
politics. It was we didn't expect anyone
to come to our assistance or help.
But you know, these, these warships did for us.
They they were barely visible, barely there.
That's interesting. A lot of people believe if they
stuck with you that would have created a lot of problems for
the Israelis. But this is a different
discussion. Maybe we can have another time,
but tell us about your crew mates.
There was some incredible people involved, my understanding, all
volunteers from all around the world.
Many people applied their limited positions as crew
members and there's some very high profile people as well.
What was it like and what were some of the things that you can
say about some of your your your comrades there on the mission?
Only good things, I mean we had around 30,000 plus applications,
which which says it all, like 30,000 people are willing to put
their bodies on the line, potentially risk attacks, if not
worse by the scientist entity to, to bring humanitarian aid to
the besieged people of Gaza. On my vessel, on my ship, I had
the honour to be with Mandela, Mandela, Mandela and Greta
Thunberg and a lot of Thai keiki that many, many people know is
an absolutely amazing activist and also Leila Hegazi, US
activist, among other absolutely phenomenal activists who have
been working tirelessly towards Palestinian liberation for most,
most of their lives. So it was a real honour and a
real pleasure to be surrounded by such incredibly inspiring
individuals who were at the same time and very, very humble.
And we, you know, were sailing together for around a month.
And so we became close comrades and friends and almost family
in, you know, on a, on a, on a boat for, for a month.
You can never escape your comrades.
And we had the absolute joy and pleasure to have built very,
very strong relationships, and lasting relationships at that.
And probably probably the most famous, at least at the moment
in global politics was Greta Thunberg.
She was famous as an environmental activist.
But for the, since October 7th, she has become extremely vocal,
extremely active on the, the, the genocide in Gaza.
Just tell us about what it was like to, to, to, to be with her,
to work on this effort with her. And also what there's there's
stories about what the Israelis did they they, they singled her
out for abuse when her her boat was apprehended.
Tell us a little bit about what you know with with regards to
Greta. Greta is Greta is exactly as she
portrays herself to be. You know, Greta does not want
the spotlight. She does not want to be seen as
a hero. Neither do any of us.
And she makes that very, very clear in each and every
interview she does, umm, you know, she's using her privilege
and her platform to shed light on what is happening in Gaza on
this ongoing genocide ceasefire or not.
Umm, and she's, she's an incredibly humble and kind and,
and genuine, uh, uh, person. She was of course singled out,
but this is not something that she, uh, even wants to bring to
the media because she does not want to become the story.
But of course the media has heard how she was draped in the
Israeli flag, kicked repeatedly, made to kiss the Israeli flag,
and just continually abused and mentally and physically abused
by by this entity. Time and time again.
Every day I would see her get dragged out of her cell and get
brought in front of high IOF generals to discuss, in their
words, the reason why we're there and to understand why
we're why we're so adamant on bringing humanitarian aid to to
a besieged population. Very, very strange, very, very
bizarre. They wanted to kind of convert
her to to their cause, which of course did not work at all.
And tell us about the time of apprehension.
So you're all you knew that it was coming.
I mean, as you get closer and you started getting drone
attacks, you start seeing their sort of ships circling you,
hailing your vessels and so forth.
And so you've been trained on a protocol.
You're live streaming this from your boats.
But yet at that point, you have to kind of, I heard, get rid of
your devices. Tell us about the time of
apprehension, what that was like, what was going through
your minds? And then they brought you back
to, to, to, to maximum security prison, apparently.
Go ahead. Yeah, yeah.
As you know, Israel was trying to manufacture consent to attack
us for weeks, calling us terrorists and putting out
fabricated reports of of of us being terrorists and each
participant being guilty by association, therefore giving
them a a right to attack us. Where after the warships came, I
think realized that there was a lot of global pressure from the
people, not necessarily from our states.
Our states only brought the warship because of the pressure
that people globally put onto them, protecting us and
demanding a safe passage. We were abducted, you know, in
kind of almost one by one at sea.
They came for the big ships first.
We had been encircled by around 12, uh, military vessels and
they brought a floating, uh, prison, um, very dystopian and
bizarre and, uh, water cannons and comes jamming boats.
So they came with a whole kind of fleet of boats, uh, to umm,
try to intercept us. Or they of course had, uh, we
noticed they did not have the capacity, they barely had the
capacity to intercept us all. So they sure as hell don't have
the capacity to intercept 100 boats when we go back and break
the siege next time, uh, which we realise is absolutely
possible. But yeah, they abducted us, uh,
illegally in international waters, brought us to the port
of Ashdod where we saw the Madeline and the Handala, umm,
put out as trophies of, uh, boats.
That they stole in previous interceptions and then they
attempted to humiliate us and and psychologically and
physically tortured us for the the coming days.
Yes, and and also so Ben Gavir is a sort of very far right
extremist, you know, calling for the annihilation of the
Palestinians, the extermination, ethnic cleansing and so forth.
So you had a you and your caught your your crewmates had a direct
kind of confrontation with him or he was trolling you.
He had all of you from what the reports that we see tied up in a
yard where he was shouting at you, but you guys and yourself
as well shouted back. He put the video on social
media. We'll show this video now and
it'll give you give give our viewers a kind of a sense of
what the scene was like and then we'll get your comment on it.
But let's go ahead and roll this.
I. I mean, apologies to our viewers
for having to show you Ben Gavir for over a minute, but we'll,
we'll hand it back to you. What was that like, Yara?
I mean, to me, the most outrageous thing about this
video is that they threw our aid overboard our aid, which was
widely documented in hundreds of videos, that they threw it
overboard and that our aid and the baby formula that
Palestinians desperately need and the medicine, etcetera is
all floating in the Mediterranean now.
That's how depraved the Israelis are.
Him calling us terrorists was all part of a smear campaign
that was running for weeks and weeks to try to, to attack us
into, to get to put us in, in Ketsuya prison in the Negev
desert, a maximum security prison where they hold
Palestinians, where they torture Palestinians and where they kill
Palestinians. Just a couple of days ago, a
Palestinian died in in, in detention, in administrative
detention. And 10,000 plus Palestinians are
still being held in administrative detention even
after the 2000 Palestinians are released in this so-called peace
deal. And there will still be 8000
plus Palestinians, 450 of which are children.
You know, Ben Gavir calling us terrorists came as no surprise
to us, but it was very cathartic to be able to tell him that
Israel is committing A genocide and that he's a baby killer.
Something that startled him quite a bit, because I think it
must have been one of the first times that he was faced with 500
humanitarians that are kind of pointing the mirror back at him
and showing him who the real terrorist and Madre is.
Yeah, and he edited your your all your comments that shouting
at he edited out his social media video, which was
interesting, but he was also trolling you.
This is the defense minister for Netanyahu came to the prison to
troll you putting a picture, We'll bring this up on screen of
of what the what was he called this the future Gaza.
And he made you guys look at it every day or whenever you pass
by. It was it was part of the
psychological warfare they were playing on you.
Explain that part briefly if you could.
Yeah, this, this set the new Gaza in Arabic.
This was a poster of a completely annihilated and
bombed apocalyptic looking Gaza, which, you know, in the prison
courtyard, the cells were all next to each other and the
courtyard was in front of us. So each time you would look out
the window, you would see this huge poster, below it an Israeli
flag, and below it a pool of what I can only describe was
blood. So every single day I woke up
and I looked out the cell, I could imagine was, my God, what
have they done to Palestinians here?
If they treated us in the way that they did as uh, uh, many
times they, umm, actually threatened to gas us, gas us.
Umm, we were, uh, and, and when we asked, uh, when we told them
that they're not allowed to pepper spray us, they said, no,
not that kind of gas. So they were threatening us.
They were pointing snipers at us.
They were keeping essential life saving medications from people
with cancer, people with heart problems, people with diabetes
who desperately needed insulin. People were fainting.
You know, this was happening every single day.
And instead of helping us, their answer when we asked for medics
was that they would gas us. Or at another juncture, an
answer, but by a guard was, is she dead?
Referring to a friend of mine who had fainted.
Is she dead? Because if she's not dead, it's
not an emergency. And I quote her directly.
So this was aside from the fact that we got no drinkable water,
we got, we were drinking from from brown water in the bathroom
because they weren't providing clean drinking water.
We were getting a couple of slices of stale bread and rice
that had been left out in the sun all day, which is also quite
dangerous. Among all of these kind of
different things that they were doing, they were also directly
pointing snipers at our heads and keeping us from sleeping by
coming into our cells every couple of hours and just moving
you to a different cell at 2:00 AM for no reason whatsoever.
So these were all techniques that they employed.
But of course, if they do this with us, imagine how they treat
Palestinians. And well, here's a just a photo
of you on your release. This is as you're coming back to
Spain off of a chartered flight that the Israelis used to deport
you, took your passports, didn't let you have them until you
landed back in Europe. So, but it's great to see all of
you that you're back and that you're OK.
At least most of the crew that we've seen are in good spirits.
So again, we're we'd like, we'd like to continue this
conversation another time, Yara, but we really appreciate you
sharing your your story with us here on the UK column News Yara
Mondarelli, thank you so much. Thank you.
Thanks for having me. OK, brilliant.
Thank you, Yara. And well, Yara is off now to
have another interview and hopefully she gets as much
coverage as possible. Patrick.
Well, look, let's move on then. And the other news from this
morning, of course, is that the Nobel committee has announced
the winner of the Peace Prize. So let's just have a look at,
let's just have a look at the first clip of this because we've
got a couple of clips from the announcement.
But let's just listen to a few seconds of what was said at the
beginning. The Nobel Peace Prize for 2025
goes to a brave and committed champion of peace and.
And Patrick, you know, when I heard that, I just, the first
name that came to mind was Donald Trump.
It's gonna be 7 wars, 7 wars. Is it?
Is it not? Did he win?
Did he not win? Well, this was posted on the
official Israeli Prime Minister's Twitter account.
We'll bring this up here. That's an AI generated image.
This is on Netanyahu's official X account right here.
So this is they, they want Donald Trump to win.
Netanyahu himself recommended or nominated Trump.
Should Israel be allowed to nominate anybody for the Nobel
Peace Prize? I mean, it's crazy world we're
living in here. But we'll see, I guess, what
we'll find out. Well, let's find out.
To a woman who keeps the flame of democracy burning amidst a
growing darkness, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to
award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2025 To Maria Corina Machado.
She is receiving the Nobel Peace Prize for her tireless work
promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for
her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from
dictatorship to democracy. As the leader of the democratic
forces in Venezuela, Maria Corina Machado is one of the
most extraordinary examples of civilian courage in Latin
America in recent times. Miss Machado has been a key
unifying figure in a political opposition that was once deeply
divided, an opposition that found common ground in the
demand for free election and representative government.
Well, apparently Trump didn't get it.
It'll probably complain it's a DEI award, but it's goes deeper
than that. And we'll show you how deep this
goes, actually. And so that's the the headlines
here. Maria Cortina Machado wins the
Nobel gong. I think we can call it a gong at
this point because the awards been thoroughly discredited
there. But they're calling her the
leader of the democratic forces of Venezuela.
That's like a military wing, but it's not.
It's funny you use the term democratic forces.
This is a hugely politicized award by the Nobel Committee.
I will argue Mike, this is the most politicized Nobel Peace
Prize award ever. Well, isn't Venezuela absolutely
the top of Trump's regime change list?
They're being attacked right now by the US, and this goes very
deep indeed. We'll show you a little bit
about this here. Now, this is what you have to
realize right now. the United States recognizes the Venezuelan
opposition leader, Edmundo Gonzalez as the president of the
country. So this is the new Juan Guaido.
The Americans just said we, that's our that's the guy that
we think is president didn't go, he didn't go through, you know,
any of the due process, wasn't elected to anything.
But the US didn't like Maduro. So that's it.
So what's interesting here is Gonzalez, let's take a look at
this. He has made Maria Cortina
Machado installed her as as executive vice president.
So if he steps down, she becomes the US recognized quote
president even though she's not elected to anything.
Now, there's been accusations ever since 2005, Mike, that this
woman is ACIA asset and this is the just type in Maria Quintino
Machado CIA asset into Google. And you can do your own research
on this. There's plenty to look at there.
And I've I thought, is there any legs to this accusation, Mike?
So I did a little digging as we do on this program and let's
take a look at that for a minute.
Well, this is an interesting story from a year ago.
Venezuela's attorney general to CNNNGO Sumat has no electoral
authority. What is Sumat?
Sumat is an NGO that monitors Venezuelan elections and
controls polling stations. Who funds SUMAT?
Well, it's none other than the National Endowment for
Democracy. That is a known CIA cut out
front. And who is the founder of SUMAT?
And this might shock you or it might not.
It is none other than Maria Cortina Machado.
So the accusations of her being ACIA asset, I'm afraid look very
credible at this point, Mike. And so you're looking at here a
massive regime change operation. And I don't know if we have one
more slide here, but yeah, this is how the media are are
positioning her. Look at this.
Who is more, this is Reuters, the opposition leader.
Here's Brookings Institute, that's the Hudson Institute
here. Maduro menace a conversation
with Maria Manchata, there's Brookings there bring bring
their case to the OAS Organization of American States.
Rolling Stone will prevail. Opposition leader is not giving
up. So they're positioning her.
Clearly this is and this is Marco Rubio and Trump.
So Trump is backing this Venezuelan and the Trump
administration backing her for regime change in Venezuela.
It's clear as day, Mike. Now, why would they be doing
that, Patrick? Why would they be doing that?
Is that anything to do with the fact that Venezuela supports
Palestinian cause? It might be, but probably more
so because Venezuela has the second largest proven oil
reserves in the world and mostly most of it's been taken offline
under the first Trump administration.
They stole the Venezuelan state oil company SITCO, stole their
assets, liquidated some of it and gave it to 1 Guido and
nobody knows what happened with the money.
We're talking about hundreds of of 1,000,000 billions in fact by
the end of it. But that it's also a
geopolitical thing. It's wrestling control.
And they have more of a hybrid economy in Venezuela, IE state
directed capitalist socialist hybrid.
Washington does not like this model at all.
They want free market privatization, open it up for
speculation and just vulture capitalism.
That's and the the Chavez and Maduro are keeping that at Bay.
This is really what it's about. OK, Thank you, Patrick.
Let's move on. If you like what the UK column
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you'd support and share that as well.
And we now have two channels running at the moment, a backup
channel as well. So, so that's going very well.
So please do share that. Now of course can't only
effectively just over a week to go, we can't not mention the on
location event taking place next weekend, the 18th of October.
If you haven't yet got a ticket for the live stream, then please
join us because there are no tickets of course available for
the in person event. So please do join us on the live
stream if you possibly can. Now in a minute, I may be
mentioning and passing the issue of digital ID.
So I just want to finish this outbreak by mentioning another
event in Glasgow tomorrow. If you can possibly get along to
that. If you're in Glasgow, please do
so. So they're meeting at the bottom
of Jamaica St. by the River Clyde near the Crystal Palace
pub and Central Station at midday tomorrow.
So if you can get along to that, please do so.
OK, Now, Keir Starmer, our illustrious Prime Minister, has
been in India to meet Prime Minister Modi.
There they are, they look very happy together.
He signed a £350 million contract to supply the Indian
military with UK manufactured lightweight missiles as part of
a deepening weapons and defence partnership between EU the two
countries. This is how the UK government
describes it. They describe it as a new
milestone reached in in UK, India, Defence industrial
collaboration. But get this Patrick, they talk
about a new milestone in defence industrial collaboration on
electric powered engines for naval ships.
How does that work if you're sailing, bearing in mind anybody
that has an electric car and you're trying to trying to drive
up the M5 or something and you get to Bristol and it's got no
power anymore and you got to park the thing up for three
hours to charge it up. What are they going to do with
these these these naval ships with electric motors?
Are they going to park them in the middle of the Indian Ocean
and provide some kind of far back for them to to recharge?
What are they gonna do? Maybe Elon will have a a network
of of charging stations in the ocean or they could have
retractable sails which they could put up or solar panels.
It'll be a slower journey, of course, taking a major tankers
with solar panels. But Mike?
No, we're talking about military Navy ships.
Navy ships, OK, but I think the best solution is of course the
most green one is to have diesel generators on the ship so they
can recharge the batteries, right.
That's. Anyway, anyways, getting back to
the missile part of it, this contract is going to, they say
deliver UK manufactured lightweight multi role missiles
built in Belfast to the Indian Army.
And this of course, is all part of the British regime's plan for
change and the provision of jobs, as you know, jobs.
Hundreds of new jobs. Hundreds of new jobs linked to
the deaths of other people. So.
So that's all good stuff. But in the meantime then,
somebody else that Starmer met was Nandan Nilikani, which who's
the very he's effectively responsible for the thorny issue
of digital ID in India. So Nilikani is part of emphasis.
Yeah, sorry, emphasis. He's sort of the head of
emphasis at the moment. And they are behind the roll out
of digital ID to 1.4 billion Indian citizens or so.
Now, interestingly, Sam Coats from Sky News asked Starmer
about this. He said this is during the
closing press conference. But he said that Starmer was
quote, infused by a fresh enthusiasm for the plan for
digital ID because Coats felt that that Starmer's was feeling
a bit deflated by the response from the British public on the
issue. But having spoken to the and
seen the way it operates in India, he's really excited about
it, which is really a bit unfortunate because really the
timing of this hasn't gone so well for them.
This is Discord, and this is Discord's Twitter feed today.
And actually, there's nothing about what's happened to Discord
on their Twitter feed. They seem to be just blanking
the whole thing. They're not acknowledging it
publicly at all it seems, at least as far as their social
media is concerned. And why am I mentioning Discord?
Well, because they have admitted to losing 70,000 government
issued IDs as a result of a hack.
Now that number in my opinion is a massive understatement.
The hackers themselves claim to have stolen data from 5.5
million unique users. The hack wasn't of Discord
itself, but it was of the age verification company the the
company that they had outsourced the age verification situation
to, which was Zendesk. And, and so the question is
bearing in mind the Starmer regime is about to consult on
digital ID for not only adults, for for children aged 13 to 16.
And of course, as we've been talking about over the last lot
of months, this is closely related to the age verification
regime brought in by the Online Safety Act.
Should the British government not be slightly embarrassed
about the fact that, you know, an age verification corporation
has has lost this amount of which just exposes people to
identity theft? Well, the solution to that,
Mike, is just make sure that an Israeli company is managing all
of that data and then there's nothing to worry about because
they're our best friends. Israel, by the way, Infosys in
India. Is that the same Infosys that
Rishi Sunak's family is? I couldn't possibly comment.
Heavily invested in father-in-law to the tune of
over half a billion dollars or something like that.
Is that the same Infosys? It is.
It is, but it's. So interesting.
Starmer. Starmer was elected on change.
And of course, if you're elected on change, you make sure you
employ the same people that were proposed in the original.
He's hoping for some spare change from the Infosys mergers,
and that would be. That would be an allegation, I
would say. They they wouldn't do that,
would they? No, they would.
No, of course not. But anyway, let's move on then.
You mentioned Israel again, but let's look at what's going on
militarily there. Well, look at the what?
What? This new report came out here.
Look at this. This is from Responsible State
Crab. He's doing some pretty good work
lately. This is a Quincy Institute in
the United States. 20 So they reckon since October 7th, the
United States has forked out 21.7 billion in military aid to
fuel Israel's war on Gaza. This is a new report here.
This is academic level report. And this is the the the gist of
it here, Mike. Israel could not have wreaked
the level of destruction it inflicted on Gaza without US
weapons and financing. And US provided them the ability
to widen the war to to the broader region that would have
been severely undermined had they not had US support.
A very important point here, very important.
But on this issue of supplying weapons to Israel, some European
countries are now finding themselves at leaders and
corporations are finding themselves at the other end of
the legal tunnel on this issue. And here's one, believe it or
not, Giorgio Maloney, Italian Prime Minister, she is named in
an ICC complaint alleging complicity in the Gaza genocide
here. The details of this are the
important part. So we want to 1st actually,
we'll we'll look at the her reaction to this.
Let's go ahead and roll that clip.
La France.
De la Palestina. So.
So she's clearly in a defensive mode on that.
So let's go on and look at the what could be behind her denial
or her response there. And we'll bring this up on
screen right now. And this is what this is from
our global affairs editor of 21st Century Wide.
Despite Maloney's nervous reaction, the move is not
unexpected given the comparable actions have already been taken
throughout Europe. In Germany, legal actions have
been filed with the ICC local courts targeting government
officials, arms manufacturers for alleged involvement in the
genocide in Gaza. But here's the important point.
This is from France. 100 lawyers in France have officially
requested the ICC to look into France's potential complicity in
Emmanuel Macron's complicity in the genocide in Gaza.
This is happening in multiple European countries.
And just another point to add here.
And this according to the Stockholm International Peace
Research Institute. It's a very good think tank, by
the way. I've cited them before.
Until, until he was among three nations exported major
conventional arms. So Maloney's saying we haven't
sent anything since October 7th, but she's just talking about new
orders. They kept fulfilling old orders.
But this is exactly what the British regime did as well.
They said we're going to stop sending arms to to Gaza, but
let's ignore all the billions of pounds worth of contracts that
already exist because they're going to be fulfilled.
And some of them slip through which you'll at the F35 parts
from Leonardo in Italy. But back back to this quote here
in this that that was between 2020 and 2024.
So the overlap of October 7th, but, but it's noteworthy, the
United States and Germany accounted for a staggering 99%
of exports in a broader category of large weaponry.
So Germany and the United States far and away and then Britain is
a sort of trailing 3rd place on that in terms of supplying
weapons to enable this genocide in Gaza.
So I think the ball is just beginning to roll on this story,
Mike. And you can see the panic.
Is this why all the European countries are suddenly
recognizing A Palestinian state? They.
Think that's going to stay off potential ICC prosecutions?
They're trying to create a public relations barrier to
protect themselves, perhaps. I, I personally, I think it's,
it's for other things as well to buy to help by time and give the
impression that there's some kind of peace deal so that the
Arab countries will back Tony Blair's Gaza Riviera Project,
Blair and Trump's debacle there in Gaza.
But anyway, that's a discussion for later.
OK, let's well what was Lincoln and do that up to?
Well, I don't know, but I, I didn't supply this, this image,
but I mean seeing that it's up here, right?
OK, well, I had to apologize. Is this?
Is this recent? No, this is not recent.
This is. This is actually an error, so
I'm going to apologize for that. Let's let's just.
It's a horrific picture by the. Way it is, yeah.
Yeah. OK, Look, I want to just mention
what's going been going on in the South China Sea and the last
few days because Exercise Bersama Lima has finished.
And on the Twitter feed, which is what you should have seen
there, it said Exercise Bersama Lima has wrapped up.
Now they said that Bersama Alida 25 is the largest of a series of
annual exercise exercises delivered by the nations of the
five Paris Defence agreements arrangements.
That's the UK, Australia, Malaysia, New Zealand and
Singapore over 2 weeks, they said.
The UK joined Malaysia, Singapore, Australia and New
Zealand for training across sea, air and land.
And this is a building, sorry. I'm building on this exercise
that that included military training, but it also included
sporting and cultural exchange activities aimed at building
personal connections and enhancing cooperation among the
five participating nations. So this is a well, let's just
just let's just put this little bit of video on screen here so
you can get an idea of what it looked like.
But it's, it's a pretty pathetic attempt at at Sabre rattling
towards China and perhaps India as well to a certain degree,
while at the same time running all these sort of cultural
exchange things. So.
So this is effectively more about soft power than it is
about hard power. Right, Yeah.
So it's using the military as a type of a soft power.
And but Mike, I mean, that means that they're going to get
together and and confront China in the in the sporting arena
maybe. I mean, they're not messing
around, are they? No, no.
So if you can't beat them on the battlefield, you try to beat
them on the what? The cricket pitch or, I don't
know, rugby or I don't know, football.
Who? Knows maybe.
Pickleball. No Table tennis.
It could be any of these. Cuz this is they.
Haven't got a chance against China.
And table tennis, yeah, cuz I mean, I don't know where they're
going on that actually the cultural side, like what's
involved there? What's that about getting
together, making chapatis like How does that work?
And dancing. We're sort of we're sort of
making fun of this thing in a sense.
It if it wasn't so serious, it's it's, it is a bit of a joke.
But anyway, look at what else has been going on then.
So Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper, well, she was in
Northern Ireland yesterday with what she described as European
partners don't see her there. Let's does she?
Oh, there she is. Yeah.
Anyway, so she was there. This is all about the Western
Balkans. So they call this the Western
Balkan Summit, foreign ministers meeting.
It's all about what they described as the importance of
building resilience in the Western Balkans to combat the
constant flood of Russian hybrid threats aimed at destabilizing
the region and finding ethnic tensions.
So I got to suggest that perhaps there's a little bit of
projection on to Russia, what we're doing ourselves as a
nation. I've been hearing rumours of
efforts to restart the Balkans conflict for several months now,
and the British regime has formed on this.
But before we just discuss the form that the British regime
has, let's let's look at the little propaganda video that
they pushed out on it. Nearly 30 years ago, dialogue
between leaders right here helped shape a peaceful future
for Northern Ireland. Today, foreign ministers are
meeting here to discuss preserving peace in the Western
Balkans. But peace is never permanent.
It must be protected. Western Balkans face growing
threats from instability, corruption and criminal gangs,
and close to 22,000 people transited through their last
year. Malign actors, including Russia,
are using cyber attacks and disinformation to stir division
and weaken democracy. These threats do not respect
borders. They compromise our shared
security, economic growth and our values.
The UK stands ready to support a secure and prosperous future in
the Western Balkans. From the lessons of Northern
Ireland, we look ahead together. So that's their pathetic little
propaganda piece. Now, what they're talking about
is pumping millions of pounds into the Western Balkans to deal
with people smuggling and all these kinds of things.
But of course, we know when, when Foreign Commonwealth Office
money goes into these countries in this, this acts as a front
for other activities. But they're talking about law
enforcement training in Kosovo, stronger border security and as
I say, people trafficking and so on.
Look, one clue about what might be going on here that we might
talk about is whether or not there's any BBC media action
activity because and, and whether they have had any
projects running in in this region.
And indeed they have had projects running in Serbia, N
Macedonia, Bosnia and Albania, Kosovo, Montenegro, Croatia and
Slovenia. And we've got to remember the
role in Syria just to bring Juliet Harkin, formerly of BBC
Media Action, back on screen, because this is sort of the form
that the British Foreign Office has.
We, BBC Media Action, worked in 2004 with individuals within the
Syrian ministry who wanted change and tried to get them to
be the drivers of that. This organization, just one of
the front organisations that goes into countries as an NGO,
ostensibly in this case for, for journalism training and so on,
but they then use people to create narratives that help
destabilise and, and and so on. So I, I absolutely question what
Britain is doing here. Any suggestion that this is
about countering Russian hybrid threats is just nonsensical.
This is we are there attempting to destabilise that region as
another front against Russia, in my opinion.
I mean that that propaganda video you showed the beginning
is a is a masterpiece with the the classical score.
And then they're saying peace is never permanent.
Peace is never permanent. Let's think about the Balkans
for a minute. How did the breakup of
Yugoslavia occur? Did that just happen organically
or did that have anything to do with the EU and NATO forcibly
breaking up that country, including 75 days of bombing by
AUS LED and British LED NATO military campaign to this day.
This scars run deep. And and you know, we're over 20
years from that that conflict, Mike.
So I mean, Western Europe is the reason why there was conflict in
the Balkans. It didn't exist before, but that
was a major geopolitical piece that the Americans wanted to
break up because they're thought they're on a roll because they
just broke up the Soviet Union. That's how history should write
it. But yet we have all this
propaganda that's being shoved down our throats here to prepare
us for what? To accept another war on
European soil and to mobilize? No, we need to the Russians.
Conscription. Yes.
Mark, thank you for your patience.
Let's welcome you to the program at last.
What's what's been going on in the United States on the health
front? Well, you might recall,
gentlemen, good day guys, that last week I reported on the
basic thrust of Make America Healthy Again, Make our Children
Healthy Again through RFK's HHS. And no sooner had that come out
then, and we'll show this slide from the Wapo, a democracy dies
in darkness, says the Washington Post.
I think they create some of that darkness.
At any rate, right away, 6 surgeons general shot back.
It's our duty to warn the nation about RFK Junior.
So they're not just talking about his policies.
They just don't like RFK himself.
Now, let's name those six surgeons General really quickly.
They're on this next slide. Jerome Adams, who was under
Trump previously, Richard Carmona, Jocelyn Elders under
Vivek Murphy under Biden, Antonia Novello under George HW
Bush and David Satcher who also served under Bill Clinton.
Those are the six surgeons general that are shooting back
at Maha and whatnot. At any rate, let's go on from
there and take note that the the the basic claims here we are of
the former surgeons general. This is the the overall thrust
of what they're saying. I've really boiled it down a
lot. They're saying, quote, Kennedy
has spent decades, and I put emphasis here, advancing
dangerous and discredited claims about vaccines, most notoriously
the thoroughly discredited theory the childhood vaccines
cause autism. Actually there is evidence that
autism is caused by vaccines. Some some vaccines.
He has promoted misinformation about PV vaccine, which protects
against cervical cancer, and he has repeatedly misrepresented,
they say, the risk of mRNA technology and coronavirus
vaccines despite their life saving impact during the
pandemic. Life saving impact?
Really. Talk about an only one sided
rebuttal against Kennedy. My goodness anyway.
And of course, Kennedy's former outfit Children's Health Defense
then shot back again back at the surgeons general, saying the ex
surgeons general's latest to join RFK.
They're the latest to join the RFK junior smear campaign In a
statement provided to the defender.
That's the topless offense of publication Andrew Nixon.
Nixon, excuse me, the communications director for the
HHS accused former surgeons general of contributing to the
three public the penalty is now attempting to address.
So basically children tell the fans and saying the problem of
Kennedy of are pretty much caused by the likes of Kennedy's
critics in this case. Yeah, I think so.
Yeah. Are you there, Mark?
Is that? Yeah, sorry, sorry Mark, your,
your audio is absolutely broken and we actually can't hear you
very well at the moment. So that is unfortunate is.
He Is he still there? Are you still there?
Are you hearing me? Yeah, we are now.
Yeah, we've got you back. OK, let me let me just get that
Andrew Nixon quote and I'll try and finish in a slightly
abbreviated fashion. OK.
Anyway, Andrew Nixon, the HHS communications director, had
this to say. The same officials who presided
over the decline in America's public health are now
criticizing the first HHS secretary to confront these
problems head on. We remain committed, he says, to
restoring trust, reforming broken health systems, and
ensuring real healthcare choices.
And the rest of the slides they show the other here's an
important one. When when this came out very
recently and I reported most recently at last week the make
America healthy again make again one of the centerpieces of the
overall report and it shows the report there is ending the
corporate capture of public health.
And of course the the Kennedy HHS covers much more than
vaccines. One of the things about the
surgeons general and their their critique is they're talking
pretty much as if Kennedy his objections to a full blown
acceptance of vaccines is the only problem.
So as I put on this slide, RFK's plan about is more than vaccines
and pharmaceutical. It's about updating dietary
guidelines, reforming SNAP or food stamps to get to get sweets
out of the out of the cycle, out of the out of the game there
with with food stamps so there's less sweets and less junk food.
Radical transparency. Other examples of what he's been
doing, removing petroleum based food dyes or overhauling the
grass standard, restoring trust and vaccine safety,
investigating the cause of autism.
So Kennedy is an absolutely conclusive that vaccines are the
only cause of autism, but he has maintained their one of them and
so it's much broader than the surgeons general.
What would have you believe much just saying that RFK, aside from
a few points, is just a vaccine conspiracy and trying to make
that a stick. However, there's a twist in this
whole thing and the defender, of course, recently I showed this
slide. This is just a reminder there
was secrecy. Even Kennedy's own defender is
saying there's secrecy over the Trump Pfizer deal, sparking a
Freedom of Information Act inquiry.
I mentioned that last week. This is just for that.
Here's where it takes a turn as we move on RFK's face.
This is RFK's reaction. September 30th when Albert
Borla, the CEO of Pfizer, was in the White House cementing this
new deal where Pfizer would get, as it states here, no tariffs
for no tariffs on Pfizer for three years.
Pfizer, in return, will boost its domestic manufacturing to
the tune of 70 billion. Making its drugs more available
to Medicaid at a discounted rate.
Things like that and Albert Borla was in the White House to
cement that deal with RFK junior at the time.
And this sub stack post that I'm that I'm showing here as as the
small NF KS reaction as Trump odds and and pours out the
praise on Albert Borla and five chose RFK's reaction if it's
available. OK.
Yeah. OK.
Thank you for that. Mark, Unfortunately, your
connection today was not very stable, but we got enough of
that to understand what's going on.
You got any brief thoughts on it?
No, I think I probably would like to comment on the whole
Tylenol thing because that's an interesting story there.
There is some there's a method behind the scenes there.
And I think Bing Pharma is, is, is indirectly going to end up
benefiting from a lot of these things.
So I mean, I'm, I'm very skeptical when it comes to big
pharma because I know the lobbying, the lobbying power is
just immense in Washington. And I know Trump's very chummy
with the, the, the top echelon of the Pharmaceutical industry.
Of course that's how they a fast tracked operation warp speed and
he was groveling and fetting over them during his first term.
But that's that's history. We can talk more about that.
An extra I'm sure we will and lots to talk about an extras a
day. So if you are AUK column member,
please join us for that in a few minutes on the live stream.
I just want to say thank you very much to Chris, who was
producing the programme for the first time today.
And so well done and we'll see how we go next week.
Thank you for that and thanks for joining us everyone.
We'll see you in a few minutes for extra.
Otherwise, have a great weekend and we'll see you on Monday as
usual at 1:00 PM Bye bye.