Good afternoon. It's Wednesday the 13th of March
2024, just after 1:00. Welcome to UK Column News.
I'm your host, Mike Robinson Joining me today we have Vanessa
Bailey from Damascus and Charles Mallett.
Welcome to the programme both. Vanessa, we're going to get
started with the Middle East and well, the Newport that's being
built isn't being built really for humanitarian purposes.
In my opinion, and in the opinion of our Gaza, and
particularly friends of mine, now that have been displaced to
the South in Rafa, no. But that shouldn't come as any
surprise. Of course.
This is basically an EUUAEUS project, ostensibly as von der
Leyen has said, to open a humanitarian corridor, despite
the fact of course, there are land crossings that could easily
be used if Israel and Egypt were to open them to allow
humanitarian aid into Gaza. This plan now is being hijacked
by Netanyahu in the Israeli media in just the next slide,
diplomatic source. This is in Jerusalem post Gaza
maritime route, was Netanyahu's idea.
This is an exclusive and in the article itself, what does it
actually tell us? So it talks about Israel.
Katz, now the foreign minister, had drawn up plans for a
maritime route by a Cyprus involving a floating island.
One of the complicating factors with the maritime route was the
absence of a port in Gaza big enough to handle cargo ships.
Here is where, obviously, the US comes in.
Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, together with the Navy
commander, the head of the The Coordination for Gaza itself,
were briefed Sunday on the work needed to establish a naval
pier. However, I'm not the only one to
have concerns about the true purpose of this plan.
This was only I think, two weeks after October the 7th.
There was in fact leaked in Israeli media plan to ethnically
cleanse Gaza, not only to Egypt, but specifically to European
countries that would be prepared to take in Palestinian refugees.
And a recent report regarding the port in Andalou.
The US port plans in Gaza have hidden objectives and this is a
Jordanian expert talking about a floating port off the shores of
Gaza is a humanitarian facade hiding voluntary migration to
Europe and undermines the enclaves sovereignty.
He goes on to point out the fact that also any humanitarian aid
coming in will not go directly to the American port in Gaza,
but will go to the Ashdod port in the occupied Territories to
be checked and then sent under Israeli Navy control and drones
for the Palestinian territory. And then interesting that in
reality, of course what many people are saying, this is an
opportunity for the US to increase its military presence
in what is effectively already its military outposts in the
Middle East. 1000 U.S. troops deploying to build the offshore
port for Gaza aid. And they're saying that it's
going to take at least two months for this port to be
finalized. And of course in that time we're
already at famine situation in northern Gaza and we're heading
that way in central and southern Gaza.
So two months. How many people are going to die
in that time? And of course, what else
undermines the idea that this is a humanitarian project by the
United States? I think this was about two weeks
after October the 7th. This was an article in The
Intercept that talked about secret expansion of a secret
military base, U.S. military base in the Najaf desert, about
20 kilometres from Gaza, and then added to that more recently
Farets. Again, Israeli media
intelligence reveals unprecedented extent of US arms
lift. Arms airlift.
Sorry to Israel. Since October the 7th, Biden
administration has reportedly made 100 secret arms sales to
Israel since the start of the Gaza war.
So that's on top of the billions, of course that have
been poured into Israel to enable its genocide.
Palestinians publicly available flight data shows exactly what
happened and so over I think it's over 180 arms airlifts for
Israel the majority coming in from Qatar and Germany.
So global bases US strategic global bases spending arms
effectively under the radar of of public knowledge but picked
up by flight radar into basically the majority has gone
into the Israeli Air Force Base at never team.
And of course we shouldn't forget that certainly the US and
Israel and the EU and the UK and all the Gulf states have an
interest in the natural gas reserves in the Levant basin
which are in the range of 122 trillion cubic feet.
And Gaza has never been permitted to actually exploit
those reserves itself and and has been deprived of billions in
income as a result. And then actually the the sort
of pilot boat which is leaving Larnaca and Cyprus left this
morning. When I put this up yesterday, it
hadn't left. It's bringing 200 tons of rice
and flour, which should offer interesting wording here,
immediate relief to civilians in Gaza.
It's coming from an A Spanish NGO called Open Arms.
But we have to bear in mind that in peacetime, so even before
October the 7th, there were 500 trucks per day coming into the
Gaza enclave. So we're talking there, what,
10,000 tonnes per day? So 200 tonnes is, is a drop in a
in a very large ocean, as are of course the aid drops that are
effectively Hollywood's humanitarian aid for the
Palestinians. So effectively.
In my view, this sport is very much a Trojan horse.
And as I said, friends of mine have said they're expecting that
once the work on the port has finished, the rougher incursion
will begin. So what they're saying is that
it will take two months, the starvation will continue, After
two months, the rougher incursion by Israel will
continue, and the survivors from that incursion will be
potentially driven into Egypt or forcibly deported by ship by the
Americans to whichever European port is prepared.
Take them in. Thank you, Vanessa.
I just want to end this segment, maybe you'll have a comment on
this. There was a a graph going around
social media. I'm not sure what the source of
it was. It may have been Al Jazeera, but
I looked at the figures, I checked them and so I just
wanted to, to show what this was.
So first of all, they were looking at, it was looking at
the number of children killed in war.
And in 2019, something around 4000.
This is across the entire planet.
Of course in 2020 that looks like another 2000 or so.
In 2021 about the same and in 2022 about the same.
So in those four years the number according to the United
Nations was 12,193. And just to put that in
perspective, since October the 7th in Gaza, the current number
and although that the Israelis of course would dispute that
because it's come from the Gazan authorities, it's 12,300.
But I think Vanessa, just very briefly, that puts this whole
thing and a little bit of perspective.
Yeah, absolutely. And actually I was watching
Scott Ritter yesterday who made a very interesting point.
He said that what has caused such an awakening about the
Palestinian cause is the fact that these 13,014 thousand
children, whatever the number is, it's horrific.
Has been. They've been massacred on a very
short time scale. You know, thousands of children
have died at the hands of Israel since 1948, But because that's
spread out over a very long time span, people are not as
horrified as they have been, of course, by this genocidal
campaign in Gaza in particular. Yeah.
Thank you. OK, let's move on with war
situation and, well, good news perhaps because Admiral Sir Tony
Rattigan, of course, who recently as we mentioned, was
telling us that no one in the Ministry of Defence is talking
about conscript conscription in any traditional sense of the
term. He has been given another term
as Chief of the Defence Staff. So the Prime Minister and the
Defence Secretary are pleased to confirm that the Chief of the
Defence Staff, Admiral Sir Tony Tony Rattigan, will be extended
in his post until autumn 2025. The Chief of the Defence Staff
is the professional head of the Armed forces and the principal
military adviser to the Defence Secretary and the Prime
Minister. He was commissioned into the
Royal Navy in 1990. He served, they say, in numerous
command and staff appointments, both ashore and afloat and in
command of UK and international forces.
So I was interested in that and wanted to know what had he
commanded at least afloat. Well, this is one of the things
he commanded for two years. HMS Blazer, I'm not sure what
that whether that's an offshore patrol vessel or what, but it's
it's pretty small boat anyway. And then apparently he was three
years on HMS Norfolk, which is a frigate.
So that looks like Charles, I don't know if you've got any
thoughts on this, but that looks like five years in operational
command. Prior to that of course he was
in relatively junior roles. Subsequent to that he was in
staff roles which don't seem to have had any operational role at
all. So do you think that's
sufficient for somebody who's the the effective head of the
British military? Good afternoon, everybody.
No, I don't think it is at all, and I don't think it is even in
relation to his peer group. It was said at the time that
Patrick Sanders, who's now Chief of the General Staff, would have
been preferred to Radican. He's got much more command and
operational experience. But perplexingly, Boris Johnson,
the then Prime Minister, decided to appoint Radican.
So there's a possibility, I suppose, that he's being set up
as the fall guy for what happens over the next two years.
But the other thing to to make note of is what he conducted
alongside his naval career. I mean he he continued to
practice law and qualified as a barrister in 1996.
So it it does seem in many ways a very, very odd appointment and
even order extension. Yes indeed.
Well, sticking with British military, we were talking about
British defence spending recently and £25 billion MOD
expenditure across the country and so on.
They produced this nice little graphic that they were sending
out in the across the social media and so on.
But we were talking about the fact that Russia and China's
defence spending is significantly lower than the
West. But they seem to be able to do
that in a much more effective or apply it in a much more
effective way. Well, CNN now has published this
article, Russia producing three times more artillery shells than
US and Europe for Ukraine. So what they're saying is that
Russia is producing about 250,000 artillery munitions per
month, that's about 3 million per year.
And CNN is quoting NATO intelligence estimates of
Russian defence production. And that's compared to the US
and Europe, which have capacity to generate only about 1.2
million munitions annually to send to.
Well, they're mostly sending them to Kiev, of course.
At the moment, the US military has set has set a goal,
apparently according to CNN, of 100,000 rounds of artillery a
month by the end of 2025, which is still less than half of what
the Russians are doing. And they quote officials who are
saying that Russia is currently firing around 10,000 shells a
day compared to just 2000 shells a day from the Ukrainian side.
And the ratio is worth worse in some places across the Ukrainian
front. So they're really upset that
Russia is running artillery factories 24/7 on a rotating 12
hour shifts and that Russia is now recruited a further million
people to work in the defence sector.
So that's up from 2:00 to 2:00 and a half million before the
war to about 3 1/2 million now. So let's just put that back on
screen for a second and have a look at the comment from the
Lieutenant General, Stephen Basham, who's from US European
Command. He's saying if you can actually
control the economy, so because it's an authoritarian regime,
it's much easier, then you can probably move a little faster
than other countries out there, but the West will have more
sustaining power, he claimed. Well, will it?
Because in parallel with the with this Politico was
published, this article saying Pentagon needs Congress to hand
over $10 billion to replace weapons sent to Ukraine.
And they're basically saying in this article that if Congress
doesn't hand over the $10 billion, then the US will have
no capacity to replace those weapons.
So it it just is such a a a pathetic situation really.
The West finds itself in has shut down its manufacturing
capability to such an extent that even if it wants to bang
the war drums it's not really in a position to other than through
just a load of rhetoric. So anyway in the meantime then
in Poland the US have been basing military over there for a
couple of years now. Here is Donald Tusk.
He went over with Mr. Duda to try and persuade Joe Biden to
send more troops to the United to Poland.
Sorry he wants more and he basically got down on his knees
and begged. Please please please, he said.
And well Biden, maybe this was the only word he knew at the
time or something but he said Nope it ain't going to happen.
So the US refusing to send any more troops to Poland at this
time at least Now In the meantime, the question of of
what happens with EU KS nuclear deterrent is in the headlines as
far as Chatham House is concerned.
This is a few days ago. The failed Trident test that we
talked about a couple of weeks ago highlights an imbalance in
UK defence strategy and Chatham House now pushing the
narratives. Really what we want to do is to
give nuclear weapons to the RAF as well.
Now as we know, the US is moving F35A's into Lake and Heath, and
there's talk of nuclear weapons going to Lake and Heath, the
first time that the US has based nuclear weapons in the UK for
quite some time. And the F35 of course the F35A
at least set up to launch those tactical nuclear nuclear weapons
we're talking about here. And so Chatham House very keen
that perhaps the UK might want to invest in some F35A S so that
we can do, we can have some tactical nukes on ours as well
as on the Americans. I don't think this is a really
useful platform for that. But Charles, let's move on then
to EU KS energy security. Thanks, Mike.
Yes. And we start with the not
altogether surprising announcement from the Energy
Secretary that there are one or two holes in the Net 0 policy,
an announcement yesterday saying that the strategy for gas is to
take a common sense approach. And she said, this is Claire,
Coutinho said that in a plan set out today, the government has
committed to support the building of a new gas power,
sorry of new gas power stations to maintain a safe and reliable
energy source for days when the weather forecast doesn't power
up renewables. As though the penny has just
dropped. She goes on to say that this is
the latest step in efforts to reach net zero in a sustainable,
pragmatic way that rids the UK of the need to rely on foreign
dictators like Putin. And this very much is part of
the of the agenda. The UK led the way on banning
imports of Russian gas and is delivering new sources of home
grown energy with new nuclear power plants, record investment
in renewables and new oil and gas licenses in the North Sea.
So let's see exactly how dependent upon that terrible
dictator Putin we actually were. This is a House of Commons
briefing paper which is about the imports of fossil fuels from
Russia, and we see here that in actual fact, in 2021 imports
from Russia made-up just 4% of the gas that we used, notably
though 27% of coal, which we will come back to, but
nonetheless straight away sort of disingenuous statistics being
used from the start. Rishi Sunak follows it up with
an article in the Telegraph in which he also points out that
renewables cannot be relied upon all the time because the sun
doesn't shine at night and the wind doesn't blow all the time.
So he says that this is how we'll keep your lights on and
your bills down. It's the insurance policy
Britain needs to protect our energy security.
Now, this recurring theme while we deliver our net zero
transition. And he continues, you can't
protect national security without delivering energy
security. The war in Ukraine reminded us
all of that a nation that is dependent on the whims of
dictators for its energy supply can never be truly safe.
Well, how consistent is his message?
And in particular we consider the relationship the UK either
may or may not have with countries that are possibly or
could be or have been declared as dictatorships by the United
Kingdom. For example, we buy gas from
China, Algeria, we bought gas from North Korea as recently as
2018, Nigeria, Qatar and of course the European Union, even
the Daily Telegraph last year with a comment on Britain now
being an elite dictatorship where majority opinions are
crushed. And it's hard to disagree with
the sentiment of Alistair Heath's point.
Now coming back to the security part of it, it's as though the
narrative is in actual fact to push us towards the idea that
everything that we do must be concerning NATO and Russia.
And so we see that NATO is broadcasting a lot about energy
security. This is from January and they
talk about NATO not being an energy institution, which of
course it certainly isn't, but energy development to affect the
International Security environment and how can have far
reaching security implications for the Allies.
And so they go on. Here's a picture of Jens
Stoltenberg last year on the coast of Norway, effectively
suggesting that that NATO is is sort of verging on being a a
protection racket where it comes to particularly gas.
And Norway again will come back to you.
But what we'll look at now is the energy that we do actually
use in the UK at the moment and in particular how the renewable
side of it works. So this is from Energy
Dashboard. This is taken at 6:00 this
morning and on the left hand side you can see the red arrow
pointing at 17.3% of the energy being used being provided by
gas. And notably at the bottom 60%
being provided by wind. Now you might be thinking, oh
that's that's great, how admirable that wind is able to
provide that. Of course the moment the wind
stops that 60% of energy that we need to find from somewhere
else. The other part though that the
Prime Minister and the Energy Secretary are not being entirely
consistent on on the right hand graphic is that 71% of the
carbon intensity is coming from that 17%.
So they've got to make their minds up as to what they really
mean by all of this. For a bit more detail we'll look
at the Digest of Energy UK energy statistics, which again
picks holes in their narrative. We can see the graph starts here
on on 1996 on the left hand side and effectively in both supply
and demand for natural gas in the UK.
There's been a steady decline since the turn of the century.
So it's it's frankly unrepresentative to suggest that
this has become a problem just now.
The the graph on screen now the bottom part shows exactly how
dependent we are on Norway's gas, which supplies over half of
what we use, and again makes relevant Sweden's recent move
into NATO. And also we see from the graph
export from the UK that actually before Russia made an incursion
into Ukraine back in 2021, exports of natural gas from the
United Kingdom had in fact gone up quite considerably.
Now I'll just close out with by pointing out that the National
Grid has renamed itself or is renaming itself a National
Energy System Operator. And the reason I draw your
attention to that is that they have rebroadcast the government
line that the UK government has set a clear deadline for
coal-fired power stations to cease production by October
2024. So what are we doing to make
that happen? We won't go into that now, but
we will put a marker there and have a look at it back in or or
sorry in the future in October of this year to see exactly
where the government have got to with that.
You called NATO running a protection racket for, you know,
let's protect your gas pipelines.
Is that what Nordstrom was about, do you think?
Well, I, I, I didn't want to expand this segment too much,
but I mean that you know it's it's a very, very interesting
part of it for sure. And also the other bit that I
didn't really mention was that in in all this sort of NATO
rhetoric does go very much, you know, with your previous segment
about conscription and about this idea that we must do
something to protect our own energy security and therefore
come and you know, come and join the armed forces to do so.
And yes, and just finally on that then, Charles, I mean, when
we look at what's going on with farming and the issue of farm
security with food security and then we've got this issue of
energy security that there doesn't seem to be a terrible,
terrible momentum going on here to try to build the capacity
that we need if we're going to maintain the type of population
that we have on a longer term basis.
Yeah, I think, I think that's absolutely right and it's been
pointed out, I mean the farming community I think is divided on
whether or not net zero is a thing in that, whether the
science behind it stacks up. And even for those that do
believe that climate, the changing climate can be driven
by carbon dioxide emissions, they are still very quick to
point out that in not producing foods here that are said to
produce, you know, a certain amount of carbon dioxide that
still has to come from somewhere.
So it's again, it's just smoke and mirrors with how you're
actually purporting to be putting forward these
statistics. And I mean really that they're a
nonsense, I'm afraid, but exactly as you say, nothing
being done really, to address the population increase and the
enormous pressure on all these systems.
Yes. OK.
Thank you, Charles. Thank you for that.
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please have a look at it and do share it.
And that's what we have for now. So back to you, Charles, and
well, the issue of transitioning.
Yes, thanks Mike. Yes, specifically if one
believes it to be possible transitioning gender And this is
the news that NHS England published yesterday saying that
they will no longer be prescribing what are called
puberty suppressing hormones. PSH.
Puberty suppressing hormones are not available as a routine
commissioning treatment option for the treatment of children
and young people who have gender incongruence or gender
dysphoria. Now where has this come from and
what do we think about it? The NHS in their statement say
what we have decided. They say NHS England has
carefully considered the evidence review conducted by the
National Institute for Clinical Excellence and has identified
and reviewed any further published evidence available to
date. We have concluded that there is
not enough evidence to support safety or clinical effectiveness
of PSH to make the treatment routinely available at this
time. Now there are a number of things
that fall out of that. The first I've highlighted the
date 2020. Why has it taken four years for
the evidence reviews to be examined and considered in this
way? Further, if there is deemed to
be insufficient evidence now, why was it considered that there
was enough evidence at that time?
And who made these decisions? Who is it that can be held
accountable for these things having happened?
How many people have been affected by this and and indeed
who has been allowed to conduct these sorts of treatments?
So in the background to the document, the NHS effectively
tries to justify its position by saying diagnostic approaches
have been described with reference to the Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Mental Health Disorders Version 5
published in 2013, Gender Dysphoria and the International
Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health
Problems, Version 11, effective 2022 Gender incongruent.
So the reason I show you that is that we are repeatedly told that
any issues surrounding gender are not a mental disorder, but
they are in fact some sort of physical manifestation.
But quite clearly stated there it this is a mental disorder and
indeed, whether or not you believe it's fuelled by
influences on the children or it comes from within and is being
in effect the the flames are being fanned by these
professionals. Either way, this is, you know,
in effect a shocking admission that they proceeded to do this
for a number of years with completely insufficient evidence
that in any way what they were doing was the right thing.
We'll go on to look at the particular drug of choice for
the NHS, which is tryptoroline and some of the side effects.
Now the side effects, as you might imagine, are far too long
to read out or list, but I thought concerning since we've
just looked at the mental side of it.
We'd look at the psychiatric effects and listed here.
Bear in mind this is prescribed to children very common
decreased libido, sleep disorders or mood changes, and
common psychiatric disorders, although a side effect insomnia,
emotional lability, loss of libido, depression, depressed
mood or irritability. Now, does that sound in any way
like the sort of drug that should be given to children who
are already in a state of mental turmoil?
I think not, but of course the world being as it is, even
though the NHS is saying that it can't prescribe this anymore.
If you want to buy it, very quick search on the Internet
produced pure peptides UK where you can buy a bottle of
tryptoralin for £10 a throw. So again, no problem getting it.
As I said at the beginning, I mean perhaps we consider that
the wind is changing direction. So I just want to point towards
2 private members bills in Parliament at the moment, the
first in the House of Lords sponsored by Baroness Burt, the
Conversion Therapy Prohibition Bill.
And within that, she's suggesting that a person commits
an offence if they practice or offer to practice conversion
therapy, which is defined as the practice aimed at a personal
group of people, which demonstrates an assumption that
any sexual orientation or gender identity is inherently
preferable to another, and which has the intended purpose of
attempting to change the person's sexual orientation or
gender identity, or suppress a person's expression of sexual
orientation or gender identity. Now, somewhat regrettably, at
the same time, there is a bill in the House of Commons from the
Labour MP Lloyd Russell Moyle, which in effect has similar
provisions. But what I do want to highlight
from his bill is the rather ambiguous text where he suggests
that, or rather the bill suggests that no offence is
committed where a person expresses a religious or other
belief. Now it's easy to see how that
could be manipulated. And further at the bottom there,
a health offence is not committed where a health
practitioner takes an action in the course of providing a health
service, provided that the health health practitioner
complies with regulatory and professional standards and
considers in their reasonable professional judgement that it
is appropriate to take that action.
So this is where we return to the prescriptions of these drugs
and we think that those professionals believed that it
was reasonable to be prescribing those things in the 1st place.
So even if these bills do go through, it's very easy to see
already how they could be manipulated for effectively, to
the detriment of the mental health and physical well-being
of children. Thank you, Charles.
OK, now let's move on now to Foreign Office.
First of all, for Foreign Office spending, we published this
website some time ago and almost immediately the Foreign Office
stopped publishing their information.
Now this is a database which is basically intended to make it
easier for people to search the information that the Foreign
Office used to publish on spending over 25,000 lbs.
So what I'm showing on screen is just one example of FCFCO
spending to the Westminster Foundation for Democracy and the
amount amount of money that they've spent with them over the
years. But if we Scroll down further
down the page and look at the details of this, we see that all
that we we can never find out exactly what the money went for.
So we know that it went to a particular organization, but we
don't know what project it went to because everything gets
allocated to something called Programme Spend Brackets, Oracle
Projects, Control Account. And of course what we're talking
about there is an Oracle database which is being used to
host all these records, the public side of which the public
never, never gets to see the detail of those records.
But Vanessa, we thought we'd look at, well, you thought you'd
look at what Oracle is up to with the British government and
more broadly, in fact. Yeah, I mean, we had a
discussion about this and and you know, I know that you and a
lot of people would say yes, but I mean Oracle is just one of
many storage cloud systems like Amazon, Microsoft, Google, IBM,
etcetera. What's the problem?
The government has to use something to store its
information. But what worried me immediately
is that Oracle appears to have what is virtually a monopoly
across government information and what is also worrying and is
a question that I would like to ask, and we were talking, Mike,
about a potential FOI who actually can access this
information, who controls this information?
Who decides where this information is shared?
So let's have a look at this, what I consider to be really a
monopoly of information storage from the British government
across all sectors. So if we look at Oracle
customers on the next slide where it will talk about the
Cabinet Office. So there is a recommendation
there from Steve Paul Borough who's Deputy Director,
Architecture and Information Assurance, government shared
services at the UK Cabinet Office.
And then if we move on, you can see, sorry, the dogs have
decided to start playing. It is connected to local
government and across the NHS in specific areas of the country,
but growing. And then perhaps most worrying,
this was in 2020 and as far as I know it's ongoing.
Oracle was awarded the UK Ministry of Defence Cloud
Infrastructure contract and let's have a look at what that
entails. So basically, the Ministry of
Defence will capitalize on the choice and economic benefits all
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure can provide, Led by Chief
Information Officer Charlie Forte.
The Ministry of Defence's digital organization, Defence
Digital, brought together and replaced a number of
organisations including information systems and
services, in 2019. It has an annual budget of over
2 billion and a team of around 2400 personnel, including
military civil servants and contractors.
The organization is responsible for making sure that effective
digital and information technology is put into the hands
of the military and business. Frontline, who founded Oracle.
A guy called Larry Ellison was the Co founder of Oracle in
1977. But let's have a look at a
little bit of his background. So Oracle itself started off as
a project for the CIA. Allison named his company after
Project Oracle, a 1970 CIA operation he worked on.
Our very first customer was the CIA, Allison boasted, telling
the story of how in 1977, the CIA commissioned his firm to
build them a database. From there, Allison immediately
began pitching to other wings of national security state, and
within months had secured contracts with Navy
intelligence, Air Force intelligence, and the NSA.
The bottomless pit of money available for the military has
helped turn Oracle from a tiny operation to a $46 billion per
year behemoth. Then let's have a look again.
We talked last week at unit 8200 and the development of a
surveillance state in Israel itself.
So the founder of Oracle, Larry Ellison, is Jewish.
I would counter that by saying he's clearly Zionist.
Then let's have a look at a little bit of information about
him. So he's connected with Warren
Buffett, Bill Gates, Benjamin Netanyahu, the current Prime
Minister in Israel, conducting, of course, the genocidal
campaign against Palestinians. But most interesting among his
contributions to Israeli causes are more than 26,000,000 given
to the Friends of the Israeli Defence Forces, as well as
$500,000 to fortify a community centre in Sterot in 2007.
Reportedly according to the New York Post and various other
media outlets, Netanyahu was reportedly offered lucrative
Oracle board seat by Larry Ellison in 2021.
I I would assume he didn't accept that because to do so he
would have to step down from the Knesset, which would lead him to
prosecution or corruption. But then let's have a look at
the Larry Ellison Foundation, current investments, guess what?
The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change.
And then let's have a look at how much money Ellison poured
into this. Let me try.
Mike, can you read that for? Me According According to the
Larry Ellison Foundation's IRS Return file late last year,
Oracle CTO and founder donated $33.83 million to the Tony Blair
Institute in 2021 and plans to contribute another 49.37 million
in the near future. And thank you, Mike.
And guess what this is focusing on With the Tony Blair Institute
and Oracle launch the Africa Vaccine Management in the cloud
people can freeze that screenshot and and read it for
themselves or go to the Larry Ellison Foundation.
Charles that might be of interest to you.
And then I took from an article by Mint Press news Alan McLeod
and Loki the pro Palestinian activist in the UK openly pro
Israel tech group now has control over the UK's most
sensitive national data. Now Larry Ellison stepped down
in 2014. However, he was replaced by
Safra Cats, billionaire American Israeli who has also contributed
to various Israeli organisations and contributed to the Trump
presidential campaign in 2021. Second, come here and then If we
look also so while opening a new data centre in Jerusalem in
2021. Afrikaats laid out Oracle's
purpose, stating very clearly we are not flexible regarding our
mission and our commitment to Israel is second to none.
Sorry. Come here.
I do apologize. This is a free world and I love
my employees. And if they don't agree with our
mission to support the State of Israel, then maybe we aren't the
right company for them. So very clearly stating that
Oracle supports Israel and does not effectively stem any
confrontation or dissidents towards that support.
Larry Ellison and I are publicly committed to Israel and devote
personal time to the country, and no one should be surprised
by that. Katz made the comments in
response to a question about Israel's for human rights record
and the rebellion of Silicon Valley employees refusing to
facilitate the country's war crimes.
In 2017, Katz was offered the position of US Director of
National Intelligence. And interesting, you pointed out
to me, Mike, that interesting how the UK government has
basically kicked you. Are we out of UK telecom
networks because of what is considered to be a threat from
China itself? And I would again remind
everybody to look at the 2030 road map for UK, Israel
bilateral relations and bearing in mind Oracle's, let's say,
partisan approach towards Israel.
How many Unit 8200, the spy network from Israel employees
are actually at Oracle and the extent to which Oracle now has
control over the majority of the information from all sectors of
the British government. Yes, thank you for that.
Vanessa. We're going to follow up on this
with with other companies that are embedded in British
infrastructure, whether that be government infrastructure or
corporate infrastructure. So we will see how we do with
that over the next few weeks. Now I want to then move on to
the DSTL Porton Down. So Theresa May was visiting here
she is yesterday. I visit Salisbury, six years
from Russia's brazen use of a chemical weapon on British soil.
It was a pleasure to thank staff at DSTL Mod Porton Down for
their professionalism and for everything they do away from
public view to keep our country safe.
So, you know, she's not worried about making the point that
Porton Downs right beside Salisbury where the alleged
chemical weapons attack on the Skripals happened.
But I just thought for the sake of a bit of a laugh, we would
have a look at some of the comments under this.
So first of all, we have Honesty 2022 here saying a, the criminal
perpetrator returns to the scene of her own crime.
So somebody gets it. Then we have Rob Brabo here
saying yeah, and wasn't an amazing stroke, stroke of luck
that the first person to go to the aid of the Skripals was the
chief nurse of the British Army. And indeed it was.
And then we have Charlie Radnor here saying here we go, anti
Russian rhetoric mixed with the old fear factor.
And let me guess, we must be sending more pounds to Ukraine.
Softeners up. Well, I think that's a fair
point, but a couple of weeks ago, Charles was talking about
Dragon Fire and DSTL all over their Twitter account over the
last couple of days, really excited about Dragon Fire.
This is this, how do we describe it, Energy directed energy
weapon. Let's have a look at a little
bit of video that they've been posting on their Twitter feed.
The Dragon Fire laser has achieved AUK first with a high
power firing against an aerial target with precision accuracy
and costing only around £10 per shot.
It's a potential game changer for air defence.
Working closely with industry, the UK continues to invest in
cutting edge technologies to keep the nation safe.
So, Charles, you were talking about this a couple of weeks
ago. They're clearly extremely
excited about it. I mean, I'm not sure you've got
any more thoughts. Well apart from it sounding like
Liz Truss has done the voice over for the for the publicity.
Yeah I think that they do seem to go on about the the cost of
it the cost per shot. I mean on on a serious sort of
defence note if it were a a capable technology and there was
there was a certainty that it didn't harm the user and that
there was not collateral damage. All of those things I think are
completely unproven at the moment.
Then in comparison with weapon systems that would wreak similar
havoc the the the price would be astonishing.
I mean you know 10 if if, if what she says is true.
I'm not again I'm not quite sure how that's calculated and again
I dare say like most of the figures were presented with it
would have been arrived at by a slightly spurious means but but
but it it it potentially is very capable.
I think the question, the question to ask is is what is
the intended purpose and what sort of countermeasures would
for example, Russia have And with everything else we've
talked about drones particularly the Russians either have the the
the exact same capability or they have the countermeasure
which is better established and more capable.
So I think what remains to be seen is what on earth the
operational, the intended operational use for this is.
Uh, well, that's a very good question.
And uh, so I wonder, is it about shooting down drones or other
missile defence? Or is it for UH, setting forest
fires which which help with the climate change agenda?
But anyway, we can discuss that more in the future.
I'm saying that a little bit tongue in cheek, but let's stick
with DSTL. And they've decided to set up
what they're describing as Centres for Doctoral Training.
So there are two of them being set up.
These centres are going to enable novel research and
provide a future pipeline of trained research staff and
critical technology areas for defence.
So it's not a huge amount of money.
It's 16,000,000 lbs so far, but it's going to fund centres for
doctoral training LED from the universities of Southampton and
Edinburgh. So let's have a look at the
Edinburgh one in particular and look at the key areas that
they're looking at. So artificial intelligence,
autonomy, so that's autonomy of vehicles and so on.
Digital twins and human machine interaction.
So this fits in with the 6G video that we were showing I
think this time last week. But I want to focus for this
purpose on the digital twins aspect of this because many
people aren't aware of digital twins.
So let's just remind everybody what digital twins are.
So this is from the IBM website. What is a digital twin?
So let's look at their their definition.
A digital twin is a virtual representation of an object or
system designed to reflect a physical object accurately.
It spans the object's life cycle, is updated from real time
data and uses simulation, machine learning and reasoning
to help make decisions. And of course, mostly this is
being promoted as something which you apply to
infrastructure. So you if you create a digital
twin of a railway network and you you can analyse it's
maintenance requirements, you can analyse it's any potential
for, you know, problems on on the lines and so on in real
time. But my issue with this is the
behavioural change in particular.
Because they're not just looking at digital twins of physical
steel and infrastructure, they're looking at digital twins
of human beings as well. This is something which is being
widely researched in universities.
Let's just bring a couple of the research papers on screen.
So here is 1 Designing Human Digital Twins for Behaviour,
Changing Therapy and Rehabilitation A systematic
review. Here's another one Designing
Human Digital Twins. Well that actually that's the
same one. I do apologise.
Here's the here's the another example from another paper.
This is all about human behaviour modelling in the
digital twin. So digital twins, The human
digital twins being a feature of academic research already.
Now of course it wouldn't be possible to model with current
IT infrastructure to model or create digital twins for every
human being in the country. But what happens if you want to
create a digital twin for perhaps some people of interest?
Maybe people that are involved in campaign groups or in
activism in some way, with a view to either working out what
would be the best way to change people's behaviours or at least
to try to analyse what actions they might be taking in the
future. So this there are a couple of
aspects to this. One is how they analyse changing
behaviours in human beings, but also how they analyse the
potential for, shall we say, pre crime and thought crime and
things that people haven't actually done but may in the
digital metaverse be considered as being a likely, likely
outcome. I think this is an extremely
dangerous direction to be heading in and so, well, we'll
keep reporting on this in the coming days and weeks.
Charles, let's bring you back then and come on to the
Holocaust Memorial. Thanks, Mike.
Yeah, this is something I covered at the end of last year,
the very bizarre and somewhat underhand process by which the
government is pushing forward plans for Holocaust Memorial in
the Victoria Tower Gardens to the South of the Palace of
Westminster. Now an update on this.
First of all, the controversy continues.
The architect of the entire scheme, Daniel Lieberskind, has
suggested that even he thinks that it might be the wrong site
for it. Following the report that I gave
a couple of months ago, many people wrote in to refer
specifically to the Imperial War Museum and the Holocaust
galleries that it holds there. So I've been in touch with the
Imperial War Museum to find out exactly what it is that they
have to say about this. I was interested to know as to
whether the government had been in touch, bearing in mind the
proximity and I've heard back from the Press office, the
Imperial War muse. The museum's position is such
they welcome the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation's commitment
to preserving the memory of the Holocaust with the Initiative
for a Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre.
We support the commitment to stand up against anti-Semitism,
prejudice and hatred, as well as supporting existing
organisations across the UK to continue to advocate the
importance of learning about the Holocaust for generations to
come. OK, fair enough, they go on to
say. We are grateful to the
Foundation for generously sharing its plans for the
Memorial and Learning Centre, located less than a mile from
Imperial War Museum, London at Victoria Tower Gardens.
We're in discussions with them on the thematic exhibition
within the Learning Centre to ensure that the curation and
narrative does not replicate IW Ms. own Holocaust and digitally
enabled Learning Suite. So I think they're being very
diplomatic. But the highlighted text there
really seems to suggest that the Imperial War Museum have taken
the common sense view that to put an almost identical memorial
in a completely inappropriate site less than a mile away is
complete and utter madness. And that's before we even get
into the political ramifications of doing such.
The map here just shows the proposed site on the left or the
West of the picture, and the existing site.
They really are that close together.
And exactly how a government department would suggest a
Holocaust centre is going to be so markedly different to what
the Imperial War Museum has as to justify its existence on land
that is specifically protected from such developments is
certainly a mystery if one follows due process.
But this goes further and really I think the politicisation of
war memorials or of the dead, and indeed capitalising on the
situations, is something Jeremy Hunt's taken up here in his
budget speech last week. He has said that as we mourn the
tragic loss of life in Israel and Gaza, the Prime Minister
reminded us last week of the need to fight extremism and heal
divisions. So I start today by remembering
the Muslims who died in two world wars in service of freedom
and democracy. And it's amazing to see that he
has sort of suggested that had the Prime Minister not mentioned
it, he wouldn't necessarily have thought of any Muslims that had
died in those wars being nearly 80 years ago.
We need a memorial to honour them.
So following representations from the Right honourable Member
for Bromsgrove and others, I've decided to allocate £1,000,000
towards the cost of building 1. Whatever your faith or colour or
class, this country will never forget the sacrifices made for
our future. So what's this all about?
Why is he doing it? Well, the announcement in The
King's Speech last year about the Holocaust Memorial seemed
very much to to capitalize on what happened in Israel and
subsequently on October the 7th last year.
So it looks like Jeremy Hunt is either seeking to sow division
or score political capital or as he refers to, flush out people
that can be described as extremists.
But furthermore, he's also suggesting, which I think is
totally disingenuous, that Muslims were fighting as Muslims
and not as nationals of the particular country that they
were fighting from. And I think this is something
that really should be pointed out and and sort of stopped.
So just to highlight how things have been done to date or were
done at the time, the Commonwealth, the Commonwealth
War Graves Commission, which has responsibility for all the
graveyards, that of soldiers or combatants of all faiths.
I just illustrate here, here is a grave of or headstone rather
of a Christian soldier with a with a cross at the bottom of
it. And here we see Muslim and
Jewish grave. So to suggest that there's the
necessity for something other than this is is frankly an
overstatement and as I say, seems to have behind it nothing
more than than political opportunism and and and
disingenuity. OK.
Thank you, Charles. Now we will let's move on back
to the UK and and sister dying. We were talking about this on
Monday's programme and the fact that Emmanuel Macron had decided
to bring in legislation in France.
If we can just bring the he was bringing this legislation in
France and we talked about this on Monday's program.
Well, Keir Starmer was being interviewed by ITV News
yesterday and as part of that interview he made a telephone
call to Esther Ranson and he said this we are going to commit
to this. I'm personally committed to it
because as you know, the current law is a complete prohibition
ban on assisted suicide and then it's left essentially and in
reality to the chief prosecutor. So me, when I was sitting in
that role for five years to decide which cases go forward
and which don't, and I tried to get that right in all the cases
I saw. But that's not a very good way
of doing it. It ought to be for Parliament to
decide. I'm personally in favour of
changing the law. I can give you my commitment,
Esther. Absolutely.
But if we are privileged enough to win the election, then we
will make time for this vote. It'll be a a conscience vote
obviously, but that's why cross party support is going to be
really important. So that is the position of Keir
Starmer and let's face it, he is likely to become the next Prime
Minister. So we've got to be prepared for
that. And if you feel that assisted
dying is not something that you want to see being made routine
in the UK, then it's time to start campaigning on that pretty
soon. So OK, we got it finished, but
we're just going to end with this because I saw this doing
the rounds of social media and I thought it was quite
appropriate. So OK, we're talking about
Ireland here, So the headline is on the graphic.
Ireland will change forever depending on who you vote for.
Lots and lots of countries with elections coming up at the
moment, the UK included. But if we scroll on down this,
they're comparing the political parties.
So on the left hand they've got the Independence, the Irish
Freedom Party, Liberty Republic and so on.
And on the right side they've got mainstream parties like Sinn
Fein, Fiona Foyle, Fina Gale, Green Party, Labour Party,
Social Democrats and so on. And they're looking at the sort
of positions of those parties, so the the party, the
independent candidates and the various other smaller parties
being pro rights, pro privacy, pro freedom, pro cash, pro
culture, neutrality, ownership, sovereignty, freedom of speech
and so on. And on the right hand side, the
mainstream parties being against rights, against privacy, against
freedom, against cash, against culture neutrality, ownership,
sovereignty, freedom of speech and the rest.
I just thought that was a really interesting comparison.
I think it's something that applies equally to the UK, to
the many EU countries, if not all EU countries, certainly to
the United States. I'm not seeing anybody standing
in the presidential election who's going to be any different
to the parties on the right hand side.
And we might want to consider that whenever we're looking for
a candidate to vote for in the coming general election in the
UK. It is a good point.
Well made. I thought so.
Anyway, we've got to leave it there for today.
I'm going to say thank you very much to Charles and Vanessa for
joining me today. Thank you all for watching.
We'll be back in a few minutes if you're UK column member for
some UK column news extra. Otherwise, don't forget no smoke
without fire at 1:00 PM tomorrow.
And we'll be back for the news on Friday with Debbie and Ben as
usual. See you then.
Bye. Bye.