Good afternoon. It's Wednesday the 8th of
January 2025. Welcome to UK Call News.
I'm your host Mike Robinson joining me today in the studio.
Charles Mallett, welcome to the programme.
Thank you very much for that here.
And Vanessa Bailey is joining us from Lebanon.
So we are going to start today with more on the the grooming
gangs story and, well, the statement that the lovely Yvette
Cooper, our illustrious home secretary, made on Monday.
Child sexual abuse, she said, and exploitation are the most
violent, horrific crimes involving rape, violence,
coercive control, intimidation, manipulation and deep long term
harm. She said that perpetrators must
be punished and pursue victims and survivors must be protected
and supported. Well the grooming gangs story is
one part of this, but of course the systemic child abuse that
the UK has been involved in at the highest levels for the last
number of decades has never been investigated.
No one has ever been punished or pursued.
Victims and survivors have never been protected and supported.
So is this likely to change? I would suggest not.
Interestingly enough, today the BBC had this article Men on
Secret 19 70s pro paedophile list could still work with
children today. And they're saying here that
they're talking about a secret list which has been handed to
them by the Metropolitan Police. The Petropolitan Police they say
has had this list for 20 years and they've kept it secret.
This has been handed to the BBC Now for some reason why we can,
we can talk about, they're talking about 300 people that
belong to the Paedophile Information Exchange in the 70s,
which at the time was calling publicly for the legalisation of
sex with children. They these, as I say, the
Metropolitan Police had this for a couple of decades.
They've given it to the police now to the BBC.
Now the BBC has tried contacting some of the people that are
still alive on this. A couple of them have responded.
Most of them haven't. And they're, they are saying
that of course many of those people or some of those people
that are still alive could still be working with children.
And I'm going to say, well, it's great that the BBC has finally
caught up with this because one of the things that they haven't
included in this story, of course, is something that we
have been talking about for, well, since the beginning.
So in, in May 2009, this this article was published in 2011 in
the in the UK column newspaper that we were publishing at the
time. And and it begins.
It's called Liberty Pie and Paedophiles.
And it begins by saying. In May 2009, the UK column
exposed the links between the National Council for Civil
Liberties, now renamed Liberty, and two paedophile
organisations, the Paedophile Information Exchange and the
Paedophile Action for Liberty. At the time these two
organisations were linked to Liberty, Harriet Harman and
Patricia Hewitt held the posts of legal officer and general
secretary respectively. So they were working with the
Paedophile Information Exchange to normalise the idea of
paedophilia. And of course Harriet Harman in
later life said that she regretted having done that at
the time. But nonetheless that was done at
the time. And there was there were efforts
at the time to sort of launder the reputations of of these
people and to try to justify their activities.
Now we talked to the connections don't just end with people that
subsequently became politicians and in fact, Harriet Harmitt
still serving in the House of Lords.
Because in this article published in 2010, more than
corrupt, we're talking about a guy called Matthew Byrne.
Because it's not by coincidence that when we when we have been
reporting on the grooming gang story on the UK column website,
we've mainly been reporting under the heading of the common
purpose effect. Because what we're highlighting
in this article and in all those common purpose effect articles
is that common purpose is found everywhere where there's been
cover up of this activity. And this particular article
article is highlighting a guy called Matthew Byrne who was an
egregious paedophile. He was prosecuted for it, is
imprisoned for it, but of course had his own connections to the
elites in this country. So here he is with David Cameron
and Michael Heseltine. So you know, the the connections
are all there. So, you know, when we're looking
at this situation and saying, looking at this headline in the
Telegraph, for example, which is Labour to whip MPs to vote
against grooming gang inquiry. So there's an effort to to bring
a national get a national grooming gang inquiry where he
going. And Keir Starmer is saying to
Labour MPs today, no, you must vote against this.
Well, the question is why would he be doing that?
Is he doing that because he is concerned about, as Ben was
suggesting on Monday, concerned about the fact that a lot of
this activity has happened in labour control council areas and
that this is going to have an impact on the Labor Party?
Or is this decision designed to enrage people in the population
and keep them focused on the Muslim aspects of this and the
Islamic aspects of this? I'm just going to say reinforce
this part of the story because we've got to remember the Asian
grooming gang part of this story is only a small part of a
significant part nonetheless, but a small part of the grooming
gangs issue because this is systemic in the United Kingdom.
It has been at the heart of government and institutions in
the UK for decades. And of course, the the Church of
England part of this and this headline from a few days ago,
Archbishop of York to take charge of the Church of England
and then this article, they're suggesting that that that the
Church of England needs safeguarding reforms.
Well, look, here's the thing. The Post Office inquiry, the the
inquiry into the Horizon IT scandal is going on.
And that is an inquiry into the abuse of postmasters who were
claimed to be stealing money from the Post Office when in
fact it was an IT scandal was going on.
Those those people were abused for decades by the Post Office.
Some of them committed suicide. Lots of them ended up in prison.
None of them has had sufficient compensation for that.
And the Post Office is dragging its feet over that story, and
that's getting all kinds of outrage from people in the
country. But nobody is outraged by the
fact that the Church of England has never compensated the people
that were abused under its auspices for decades.
They that they have dragged their feet despite the fact that
they've got billions of pounds. They have dragged their feet
over compensation for the people.
If you want to know more about Church of England institutional
child abuse, read Teresa Cooper's book Pinned down.
It is worth the read. It gives a very good indication
that the subhead on this on her book is one girl's harrowing.
A disturbing tale of institutionalised abuse.
Abuse has been institutionalised in this country, not just by the
Church of England, in care homes, by local authorities, not
just laboratory as well. We have been covering this for
forever, as far As for as long as the UK column exists.
Nottingham Beechwood Children's Home another example, Melanie
Shaw's in a case, another case. And so if you haven't, if you're
not aware of this story, have a look on the UK com website.
Melanie Shaw's never received any compensation for what she
went through either. Holly Gregg has never received
any recognition compensation. None of the people involved in
her institutionalised abuse were prosecuted.
Robert Greene, in fact, was prosecuted for attempting to
protect Holly Gregg and give her some exposure for this story,
that and the abuse that she experienced.
In the meantime, we continue the British establishment.
The media continues to launder the reputations of people like
Edward Heath. And of course, laughably,
somebody was suggesting that the king should intervene in this
grim and gang story and maybe bring the government down, get
Keir Starmer out of government if he's not prepared to deal
with this properly. The King still has not answered
questions about his connections, his friendship with Jimmy
Savile. And Jimmy Savile was not just a
radio DJ. We've got to remember he was
also institutional in the sense that for a period of time he was
running Broadmoor mental prison where some of the worst
paedophiles in the country are held.
So coming back to to Yvette Cooper then and what she said in
her statement on Monday, she said she'll confirm that we'll
make a mandatory, it mandatory to report, report abuse.
And we'll put the measures in the Crime and Policing Bill that
we put before Parliament this spring.
The protection of institutions can never be put before the
protection of children again. You're going to have to
demonstrate this event because the protection of institutions
has absolutely been put before the protection of children all
the way through the last decades.
And the the grooming gangs, the Asian grooming gang story is
only a part of this. We will introduce a single child
identifier in the child children well being Bill.
So they're making sure they take advantage of the the situation
to pursue political aims and political policies that they
were already pursuing. They're using this cynically as
justification for this kind of thing.
We are accelerating the work of the Child Sexual Exploitation
Police Task Force. Believe it when I see it arise
in 25% of 25% in arrests between July and September of this year.
Of what? Of low level paedophiles?
How about getting a proper investigation at the high level
organised paedophile grooming gangs, not just Asian but
systemic grant gangs. Finally she said we have to face
a serious challenge that the fast and growing area of
grooming and child abuse is now online.
Well, I dispute that because actually grooming and child
abuse can only happen physically in person and online might be
used as a communication mechanism.
But again, if Ed Cooper attempting rather cynically use
this as an effort to push forward with censorship and and
online safety legislation. I don't know what your thoughts
are on this, Charles, But but you know, we've got a
absolutely, in my opinion, if we if we focus, if we keep this a
racial issue, we're missing the point.
This the the the Asian grooming gangs have got to be dealt with,
prosecuted. But this goes much broader than
that. Yeah, it does.
But I think that's a that's a critical part of it.
The, the narrative is very much wrapped up in the, the racial
element, which I'm going to come onto in a minute.
I think also the other, the other part of this in terms of
breaking the cycle is of course that the abuse of children and
those that are caught up in it is a control mechanism of
itself. So therefore, to break that
cycle when we're considering how the establishment does deal with
any of this seems extraordinarily improbable,
especially since it's persisted for so many decades across such
a spectrum of society. So I think there's that, you
know, there is a huge amount to it, but it does require in the
first instance people who are not necessarily in elevated
positions of power to to flag things up and and make a noise
at the appropriate moment, which I think has has failed largely
because of top down pressure not to do so, but.
Of course, part of the the publicity for this has had to be
driven from abroad. It has, and it is perfectly
bizarre in some senses because it seems to have come from
nowhere. But somebody who has strode into
this affair and several others is Elon Musk.
Now, if you have the advantage of not being on Twitter or X as
it's now called, you will have missed his interventions.
Just today he has labelled Keir Starmer as evil for exactly as
Mike's been describing deciding, or at least whipping his MPs
into not pursuing an enquiry into systematic abuse of
children and the grooming gangs affair.
But this of course is not all he's been up to.
After appearing to support the Reform Party, he then sent a
message on the 5th of January saying that the Reform Party
needs a new leader. Farage doesn't have what it
takes. It seems to have bamboozled
Nigel Farage himself. But of course, the the issue
here seems to be Musk's support of Tommy Robinson and his
probably wilful misunderstanding of the reason for Robinson or
Yaxley Lennon's imprisonment, which of course was the breach
of a civil injunction not to publish or not to broadcast.
And it's a result of a breach of that that has put him into
prison rather than as is consistently put by elements of
the pro Robinson camp for telling the truth.
But of course, the the common thread here is that Elon Musk is
is most certainly an ally of Israel.
And it's well known that Toby Robinson is funded or has been
funded certainly in large part by the pro Israel lobby.
Now the other thing that Musk has done is to label Jess
Phillips as a rape genocide apologist.
Again, this is to relate to the the refusal to conduct yet
another inquiry, Baroness J of course saying that the previous
inquiry should not be in effect added to.
But the the the key fallout from here is is Phillips's response
to this, which first of all is remarkably tone deaf, suggesting
that she is feeling endangered when of course they're talking
about the abuse of children. So why she should consider her
predicament as a recipient of a message on social media to be
more damaging than than what the children concerned have gone
through is, is bewildering. But really, what we're supposed
to draw from this is that disinformation is harmful.
However, we don't have to go so far back to see that Phillips is
perfectly prepared to dish it out herself Here got an article
from December 2015, Jess Phillips saying that she would
knife Jeremy Corbyn in the front if he damages the Labor Party.
So this all looks very theatrical, and the question
really has to be why is it that Elon Musk is intervening and
indeed making himself look like the bad boy of social media, His
ownership, of course, of the platform itself.
But it looks almost as though the specific intent here is to
tee up yet more action on the censorship front and indeed
sanctions, criminal sanctions, for this kind of activity, which
is what plays off Philips's incredible hypocrisy.
The other point to make here is that in his use of X, the social
media platform, a theme that emerged during 2024 was his use
of the word reform, both capitalised or at least with a,
with a capital R and without especially regulatory reform.
Now scrolling back through his content over the past few years,
this is absolutely a a new departure and appeared to be
telegraphing what was announced after the Trump victory in the
American election back in November, which was that Musk
was granted the effectively, we were told he had the power to be
running the Department of Government efficiency, which has
been referred to as doge. There's obviously lots of
speculation here about whether or not that's sort of an
allusion to the cryptocurrency of the same name.
But regardless, as as seen on the screen here, this is
concerning major reform. Now, exactly where this is going
to go is of course, highly questionable because it's not
really a proper government department.
It does seem to be yet another opportunity for Musk to create
money for himself out of that provided by the taxpayer, but
realistically he will have very little to do with the Trump
administration. For greater detail on this I can
point you towards thinking Coalition on Substack.
So there'll be a link to this in the show notes with a a well
articulated piece on the Department of Government
efficiency and exactly what it is that Musk may be up to in
this. But it does seem that the
meddling from Musk, who of course has employed Linda
Yacarino, who's chief executive of X.
So whilst he's always championed as being the saviour of free
speech. So she was very patent in saying
that whilst free speech may indeed be championed, Twitter or
X will not permit freedom of reach.
So with content she described as being lawful but awful, which in
the UK was the harmful but legal sort of part of the Online
Safety Bill as it was then leading up to it becoming an
act. This is really all pointing
towards further censorship. But as I say with with Philips
specifically, the the link, the critical link between
disinformation and harm and how people that are putting out
disinformation are to be considered as of course
extremists putting forward harmful content.
So this will be one to watch, particularly with the Trump
inauguration inauguration on the immediate horizon.
Yes, OK. Thank you for that.
We will move on now and welcome Vanessa to the programme.
Vanessa, welcome to the programme.
And how's your how's the last couple of weeks been because
events continuing to move on in the Middle East but but not much
coverage in the Western media as far as I can see.
No, apart from their attempts, of course, to rewrite history
entirely as regards to the last 14 years with interference by MI
6 and CIA in Syria. I do recommend that everybody
listens to the podcast 4 that you and I did, Mike, because
this will be very relevant in relation to the report I'm going
to put forward now, which is basically a few updates on the
circumstances surrounding the departure of President Assad and
the final fall of Damascus, which of course led to my
leaving Syria on the Sunday the 9th of December does seem a long
time ago now. So this was an interview about
an hour and a half with Kamal Sakhar, who was the head of
media for the palace for the president himself.
This was given about two days ago, during which he gave a
number of details on the final days and weeks before the fall
of Syria. So let's have a look.
It was basically summarised by, I think this is AUAE based
journalist. So he's doing a summary.
He's not actually doing a transcript.
Bear that in mind. So he says basically fascinating
details about Assad's last day in this interview with Assad's
media. So his media chief and close
aides, Kamal Sakar, as I mentioned.
So let's have a look. What I've basically done, I've
double checked it with a number of people who were also closely
involved with the presidential team.
Some of the timeline leading up to President Assad's departure
are is apparently not 100% accurate.
So I've teased out the information, which basically
ties in with the conversation that we had Mike in, in the
fourth podcast on Syria. So he talks about the fact that
the fall of Aleppo was very shocking for Assad.
So clearly, Assad was not aware that all of this was going to be
happening in the very near future before Aleppo.
The development seemed serious but not alarming.
He had 0 expectations such a thing would happen.
The army was not mentally or logistically ready to fight and
Russia was at the peak of its destruction in Ukraine.
In the months before the Aleppo operation, the visibility and
presence of Shia militia in Syria had been reduced as
Hezbollah had received heavy blows in Lebanon and Syria was
being closely surveilled by Israel.
He then goes on to say Assad had a very specific request from
Putin to personally ensure the safety.
What he's saying is Assad specifically asked Putin to
ensure the safety for Iranian military support in Syria,
including air supplies into Haimamim.
I don't quite understand the bit about Russia was not in a
position to get involved in Iran too.
The Iranians told us that they did not receive the signals.
So despite the assurances apparently given by Russia, Iran
didn't receive the signals or assurances from Russia that it
was safe for them to fly to Haimamim, which was the Russian
base on the coast in Syria, through Iraqi airspace.
Assad then checked with Moscow, but he got no response.
The Iranians told the Syrians a plane moved nonetheless from
Tehran to Syria through Iraq, but were warned by the United
States that the plane would be shot down if it continued on its
way. News reports at the time
indicated that the US at that point had struck Shia militias
in Syria near the border with Iraq, and so the plane turned
around and went back to Tehran. Then basically, he says Assad
realised that he was in trouble when Putin would not pick up his
calls from Tuesday to Thursday, 3 days before his departure from
Syria. At one point, Assad was told
Putin was travelling in Belarus and wouldn't be able to take the
call. The one thing that the media
director does say in the interview is that this is not
normal. Putin would be able to take the
call at any time time, wherever he was.
So this excuse seemed to be nothing more than an excuse not
to pick up the phone to Assad at this point.
On Thursday, Assad prepared a 400 word speech, which is what I
put out literally a day after I left Damascus, that a speech was
prepared which would be delivered on television.
The speech had several sections, the first warning about dividing
Syria, the second attacking Turkey and it's dishonesty, the
third urging Arab support for Syrian unity and finally urging
the Syrians to fight. It's also worth noting that
Doha, which was the end of November, Turkey, Iran and
Russia had come up with a deal where Assad would stay for six
months to basically form a transitional government, which
would include a coalition of current government members and
members representing the various minorities inside Syria.
It became clear, but at some point that probably Turkey
reneged on this when HTS and other factions from the South
entered Damascus. I think at that point it became
very clear that this six month deal was not going to be
fulfilled. As David Miller said on X, as a
result of reading this summary of the the interview in some
Bashar and Syria were sold out by Putin who cut a side deal
with Turkey to ensure Russia's interests would be protected and
a future ISIS run colonised and fractured Syria.
We have to remember that when we see the videos of HTS, Hyatt,
Terry Al Sham, very often those militants are wearing ISIS
patches. That's why David's referring to
them. Iranian policy makers were left
blindsided and without either the time or the air support to
help protect Syria's sovereignty against the ISIS wards and their
Turkish backers. The Zionist strategy of constant
airstrikes on Syria over several years with Russian complicity
and without a response from the resistance created the
opportunities the Zionists needed. the US, Turkey and the
GCC all worked with this Zionist strategy to ensure an ISIS
takeover. GCCI would actually identify
Qatar out of that as the primary player.
Interesting that as this interview was published, this
also came out. Causes of the of the collapse of
the Syrian government. Disclosure by General Berus
Asparty, one of the senior commanders of the Revolutionary
Guards in Syria. Russia was one of the main
factors in the collapse of Syria and Assad.
Russia turned off its radar so Israel could attack the
intelligence headquarters in Aleppo.
Russia both deceived Assad and betrayed Iran.
Strong words. All Russian actions after
October the 7th were to serve Israeli interests.
Also very strong words and I just want to play.
This was an interview given by Gilani, the head of the
transitional HTS government, in. And to the whole Israeli El
Montejo or what can you call? I.
So what he's basically saying is that the HGS operation, we have
to remember that Jolani cancelled the first HGS attack,
which was about one month prior, was effectively to derail the
resistance operations against Israel and to protect the Gulf
states, allowing them to normalise relations with Israel
in the future. And if we want to hear the the
quiet agenda spoken out loud, we can always turn to Trump.
Turkey's been after that country in different names and different
forms and shapes for 2000 years. Those people that went in are
from Turkey. And President Erdogan is a
friend of mine. He's a guy I like respect.
I think he respects me. Also.
He's the one that didn't go after certain people after I
requested that he not, you know who I'm talking about, the
Kurds. I don't know how long that's
going to because they're natural enemies.
They hate each other. But he didn't do that yet and he
did didn't do it in the past. Also he started and I said
please don't do that. And he didn't do it.
So. But if you look at what happened
with Syria, Russia was weakened, Iran was weakened, and he's a
very smart guy and he sent his people in.
Well, I I don't think I need to add to that.
As I say, Trump does generally say things out loud that should
be kept quiet by the intelligence agencies.
Yes, thank you for that, Vanessa.
OK, we'll talk a little bit more about what's next for Syria a
little later in the programme. In the meantime, if you like
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Now quick advertisement for an article we published yesterday,
which is the latest from Doctor Pierce Robinson on the OPCW.
That's the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical weapons
cover up of the, the well, the claims by the West at least,
that there was a chemical weapons attack in Duma in Syria.
This has been used to justify all kinds of rhetoric about the
Assad government and so on. Vanessa.
But of course the, the, the story doesn't stack up.
It is never stacked up. And well, Piers has done a good
job of highlighting that in this article.
Yeah, and it's incredibly important to highlight this
story again because of course, what is Western media now inside
Syria doing? They're rewriting the history
and revising the evidence that demonstrated the MI 6 CIA
interference since 2011. And the major part of that were
the chemical attacks. So it's very important that
appears highlights the the Duma travesty right now.
Yes, indeed. Thank you for that.
And Charles, food is going to be your topic in a second, but.
It is absolutely. We've long been talking about
the sort of enduring and indeed encroaching crisis in food, food
security, farming. So there's going to be an event
near Exeter on Saturday the 18th of January, next Saturday.
If it's something you are interested in terms of growing
your own food and indeed sourcing food locally and all
that sort of thing to protect your food supply as the year
goes on, then please do take a look at that.
The link for that will be in the show notes.
And that leads into the next segment, which indeed does
concern exactly this issue, which is of course food
security. Now to be challenged by
something which UK column is warning about throughout all of
2024, which was the absolute certainty that humans would be
deemed to have died from what is being described as avian
influenza. Now, this is not absolutely the
beginning of it, but this is the beginning of it in the United
States of America, announced here by the Centres for Disease
Control, the CDC, that they've got their first H5 blue bird flu
death reported in the United States.
Now, they describe this as being tragic, but that a death from H5
N 1 bird flu is not unexpected because of the known potential
for infection with these viruses to cause severe illness and
death. And this is the point where we
bang exactly the same drum that we always do, which is to say
that Carrie Mullis, the inventor of PCR, described very
specifically that PCR can find anything that you ask it to
find. So this does not prove
necessarily that somebody has died of something they're
ascribing to be avian influenza H5 N one.
It merely confirms the existence of something they've asked it to
look for as part of a closed suit, a closed loop scientific
process by which they're describing this particular thing
as being avian influenza. But of course this is a
narrative that's been building for some time, most prominently
back in 2022 and we see here BBC article from January of that
year. And almost unbelievably, but
perhaps not bearing in mind it was BBC, they used the example
of a man called Alan Gosling who was the 1st to have his poultry
culled humanely culled because he was told he was ill.
But the critical part of the text here is that he was unaware
he had the virus until he was advised to have a test.
And of course, there began the cognitive dissonance required
for the rollout of exactly this sort of thing, which is driven
entirely by fraudulent testing of something that may not exist
in the 1st place. But where this does lead is to
the provision, via the government's contract Finder, of
what they're calling Poultry Culling Services Framework
Agreement, which is a contract that is going to be worth up to
30,000,000 lbs. So this describes exactly what
the government's intent is, and reminds very much of the events
of 2001 and slaughtered on suspicion as covered very well
by UK columns. So please do look that up on the
website. This is open until the 22nd of
January. And this is based on these
statistics, which are that when I last reported on this in
December, there were 11 cases declared by the government
across the whole of the United Kingdom.
Not deaths. Sorry, not deaths exactly.
This is cases. PCR driven cases.
At that time Defra had not come back to me.
They subsequently did and 105 thousand birds or thereabouts
had been humanely culled. Now the calculator tells me that
this is an average of 9545 birds killed by per one PCR case.
So as I say, on the closed loop basis, it's entirely possible,
but there was absolutely nothing wrong with any of these birds
and yet 100 and 5105 thousand of them then were killed.
Now the other thing to point out because of course the goal here
is manyfold. We have first of all the massive
ramp up of sort of bio security spectre and indeed control over
movement, not just for animals but probably people.
People are being asked to be fearful of all sorts of animals
and people all over again. But of course the push is for
the Pharmaceutical industry and vaccines.
So we've got here another tender for what are called Pathogen
free eggs to Apha. So these are for experimental
purposes in order to work on the eggs themselves, but also
hatchlings in order to develop pharmaceutical products.
One imagines for vaccinating poultry, but possibly as well as
humans. Although of course humans do
already have a supposedly a vaccine against avian influenza.
The other thing to point out about this week is that the
Oxford Farming Conference and the Oxford Real Farming
Conference, sort of rival gatherings as it were, taking
place this week. Steve Reed, the environment
Minister, is to speak today, I believe, and no doubt this will
be a familiar narrative of the peril that we face from climate
change and therefore how we should balance food security
with environmental measures. And it was just about a year ago
that Steve Barclay set the wheels in motion, or at least
the wheels in motion to come off later in the year with the
enormous increase in uncropped arable land going up 107% and
leaving the UK with an increasing population and a
decreasing supply of food. So there is very real reason to
be concerned at least about the scarcity of food as it's likely
to be, particularly bearing in mind the environmental
conditions at the moment with the extraordinary swings between
very cold and then very wet weather.
So harvests for the coming year probably looking challenged
already. And this would be the point to
remind you that it was exactly what would be on 84 years ago
since rationing began in the United Kingdom.
Now, of course, rationing was accepted because people believed
the state that they were in being one of emergency.
Now, bearing in mind we've just been talking about bird flu in
humans, it does not need a huge amount more amplification to
suggest that a state of emergency could indeed be
brought about. And rationing at that point
lasted for 14 years. So that's just a passing thought
to consider. Yes, thank you.
Now, Vanessa, let's come back to Syria and what is next.
Are we going to see the Balkanisation of the country?
It certainly looks that way, but also this so called transitional
government that was only supposed to be very temporary.
However, Jolani has now said that new elections could take up
to four years. And people on the ground have
said to me basically that's because he has about a 5%
popularity rating. And so he's desperate to
increase that and retain power. Then also he's saying that there
will be a three year delay on bringing through a new
constitution. However, as the BBC reported,
the UK government increased sanctions against President
Assad. Of course that was coercive
punishment measures against the Syrian people collectively, not
only against Assad. Otherwise, I would argue, what's
the point of lifting sanctions now?
If Assad is is gone, then surely the sanctions should end.
But of course they they are still in place against the
Syrian people to make sure that they toe the line so effectively
because Assad wouldn't push through the constitutional
reforms that the UK government wanted.
Sanctions were increased about a year or so ago.
Now I just want to show a quick video, which is, let's say, an
example of the violence that's being meted out against
particularly Alawite but also Christian communities inside
Syria. It's a relatively mild version
of it, but it's an ongoing issue inside Syria right now.
So if we can just play this? Now bear in mind the pretext for
this brutality is simply that they are regime remnants in
quotation marks. So it can apply to anyone and
there are summary executions going on as I said, on a daily
if not on an hourly basis. Let's have a look at the HDS so
called Defence Minister. His name is Mahav Abu Qusada,
however he has various other names including Hassan Al
Hamawi. His qualifications?
20 premeditated murders, 15 armed robbery. 20 amputations,
150 cases of killing Shiites, Christians and atheists fighting
infidels, 15 cases of stoning to death, 10 rape cases, sex with
captives. And that's in Idlib.
And if we just play a video of him destroying a statue of Mary,
I'm not 100% certain where this is, but it will obviously be in
a Christian community. I.
And then basically images have emerged showing Syria's newly
appointed Justice Minister Shadi Mohammad Al Waisi overseeing the
execution of two women back in 2015 in Adlib.
I'm not going to show the video, but it's readily available
online. And the excuse from HDS was that
this was a previous phase in HD SS existence.
So apparently these kind of executions are not ongoing,
which of course they are. But then let's just have a look
at a map of Syria showing how it has potentially been carved up.
And of course, I mentioned the fact that there had been a deal
including President Assad staying for six months.
And also he asked for guarantees that Damascus, Homs, Tartus and
the Takia would be assured safety.
And of course, they are not assured safety.
HTS is carrying out the majority of its revenge killings and
assassinations in the red area that you can see there.
That should have been assured safety by Turkey, and obviously
it hasn't. But you can see clearly the
green centre there is HTS or Turkey and Qatar, so the Muslim
Brotherhood connection there. The yellow is the Kurdish, which
is basically US and Israel going down to the Druze also in the
South, which would also be Israel and the United States.
And the red there of course is the so called regime remnants,
which as I said is far from being safe.
But let's have a look at why this particular area would be
interesting to both the US and to Israel and to Turkey.
Because effectively in the central area and in the North
East, you can see the majority of the oil fields, the gas
fields, the oil pipelines, and the gas pipelines.
I've also circled the coastal area because that includes the
unexplored so far, gas reserves off the coast of Syria.
Why is that important? Because right now Turkey is
pushing basically for the maritime agreement with HTS,
which is interesting because they obviously have their eye on
the gas reserves off the coastal area of Syria.
And why is this important? Because this indicates again, I,
I wouldn't say laying blame at Russia, but this was from 2013
in from the Washington Institute.
A December 25 accord signed between Syria and Russia allows
for the exploration and drilling in an area of the Syrian coast
for oil or natural gas, which if discovered the state controlled
Russian group. So use something gas will have a
controlling interest for 25 years.
So basically they would invest 15,000,000 for surveying costs
and another 75,000,000 for initial drilling.
This never happened, so Russia never actually went through with
the exploration of the gas reserves.
Now it looks like Turkey's going to steal the March and if it it
succeeds in making the maritime deal with HTS, potentially it
then has control of those gas reserves and the central
hydrocarbon reserves also. Thank you for NASA.
Where does that take US legislation?
Legislation back to the UK then. Back to the UK and the storm
regime has now been rolling on for six months and that means
that there's been quite a bit of legislation queuing up and
therefore a certain amount to be pushed out as the year goes on.
And obviously there's far too much to cover.
But I've just brought out a few bits of it, some which goes back
to late last year. But one thing that's being
mentioned with increasing frequency now is the forthcoming
Crime and Policing Bill. Now back in November, the Home
Office put out a note about what are called respect orders.
Now they are supposedly to be dealing with antisocial
behaviour and with those who are bringing misery to communities.
So I'll leave you to consider who might be bringing misery to
communities. But the government funnily
enough, have individuals in mind.
And as far as adults concerned, this is really to replace what
were civil injunctions. They can be applied by police or
local authorities. And there's critically here that
like like many of these sorts of orders, whilst they place very
serious restrictions on people's behaviours and lives in that
they might be banned exclusively from a particular area or they
might even have go so far as to have to have mandatory
rehabilitation of the particular behaviours that have been deemed
antisocial. But there's no requirement for a
conviction for such an order to be put in place.
And of course a breach of the order could lead to a two year
prison sentence. It's entirely subjective, like
so much to this legislation. Who decides what constitutes
anti social behaviour, with particular reference to these
respect orders. But they are to become part of
this crime and policing bill which is due to be pushed out
over the spring of this year. There are also perplexingly
unlimited fines which bearing in mind the demographic who are
largely associated with anti social behaviour, makes one
wonder what the purpose of that would be other than to
completely ruin people's lives. But of course this is the
element of pre crime. Effectively it joins the ranks
of the public Spacious protection order where we had
the ban on silent prayer, the knife Crime protection order,
the the Serious Violence Reduction order where there
again similarly was no requirement for a conviction for
knife crime. For something to be stuck on
your back and enable police to search you at will with
absolutely no evidence of any wrongdoing.
So this is the the direction of travel for for want of a better
phrase. Now the other thing that is due
to be coming up in this bill, which was debated in the House
on the 6th of January in, in a debate on Child Exploitation and
abuse is exactly what Mike has referred to slightly earlier in
the programme. But just to go through that
quote again, she says that I can confirm that we will make it
mandatory to report abuse and put the measures in this Bill,
the Crime and Policing Bill, and to make it an offence with
professional and criminal sanctions.
The reason I'm drawing those particular parts out from this
Act is that they overlay onto the Children's Well Being in
Schools Bill, which again Mike's already touched on and was
referred to by Diane Mcadie in the programme on Monday.
But the important thing to come out of here is this crossover
here with this mandating or indeed the duty to safe, to
share safeguarding information. Now, there's been a consistent
failure across the board for this to have happened, but what
I want to draw your attention to is this idea that there is a
duty to share information and indeed how it's enforced or what
it may be subject to. And the critical section here
says. But the duty imposed by
subsection 2, which is the duty to inform, does not apply if the
relevant person considers that the disclosure would be more
detrimental to the child than not disclosing the information.
I'm not dismissing out of hand that there may be situations in
which it is very hard to be sure that in disclosing something you
are not putting somebody at risk.
And of course there are many other situations in life where
this could be the case, but more than likely this is really just
going to be, again, gaol free card.
And whilst we consider people that have had a few of those
over the last few years, the Archbishop of Canterbury, as he
was, of course, is absolutely the prime example of how the
establishment fails to deal with its own.
And symbolically, here, all he has to do is place a wooden
walking stick on the ground and that's it for him.
Of course, having failed over many years to deal with horrific
abuses. And exactly like Mike said
earlier in the news, the church has in effect just completely
turned its back on this and it looks very much like it will
carry on being business as usual.
Now the other piece of legislation to have a quick look
at, bearing in mind it's enormous profits from wind
turbines or, or wind renewable energy from last year, is the
Crown Estate Bill. Now the Crown State was
incorporated back in 1961 by the Crown Estate Act and what
they're seeking to do now is to change it, effectively enabling
a different structure, specifically with regard to
borrowing and investing. And this is something that
hasn't been enabled before because there've been
restrictions on it, one might say, quite rightly so, but the
specific text says that they'll have a broader power to borrow,
subject to Treasury consent. And this is where it becomes
more interesting because while of course the Crown Estate
belongs in effect to the King because it's been incorporated,
the the profits from it are paid into the Treasury's Consolidated
Fund. Now, Consolidated Fund goes back
to 1787 and was described then as being one fund into which
shall flow every stream of public revenue and from which
shall come the supply of every service.
Now in suggesting the changes that they are with the Crown
Estate Bill, this is a fundamental upset of that
principle because in 1968 the National Loans Act gave us the
National Loans Fund from which the government may borrow and
lend. Both are administered by the
Treasury and the bank accounts are maintained by the Bank of
England. So it's all complicated to a
certain extent, but what this might enable is what could be
regarded as in a sort of money laundering system because in
seeking in government language to modernise the Crown Estate by
removing these limitations and they say that this would
otherwise restrict its long term viability if they don't.
But particularly they're talking about energy security.
And and I say again, last year they they recouped to £1.1
billion profit. Now, of course, because they're
a corporation, it's up to them to manage what constitutes or at
least what profit they are left with at the end of the year.
However, if the commissioners do borrow from the Treasury or they
borrow from elsewhere with Treasury consent, especially
with public infrastructure in mind, then what they're doing is
they're borrowing from the National Loan Fund as opposed to
the Consolidated Fund, which means that taxpayer money is
coming out to a corporation which may be used for what
whatever purpose. And it's up to the the
incorporated entity that is the Crown Estate to declare what
profit they have. After that, of course, they have
to repay, but it looks very much like they'll be repaying into
the part of the Treasury that is not for the provision of public
services. So this is a fundamental change
to what the Crown Estate is supposed to do, which is
supposed to raise revenue for the Consolidated Fund for the
use of public services. And this would allow not just
for a fundamental shift in this, but also the the double whammy
effect of probably most likely, bearing in mind what happened
last year, an uplift in investment in offshore wind and
other renewable energy platforms, which of course are
heavily subsidised by the taxpayer.
So yet another tranche of public money going straight towards the
Crown Estate and into their pockets.
And of course, no great surprise, but a review of
salaries was also mentioned in the bill.
Yes, well, we'll keep an eye on that.
Are you saying any change is this is this change agenda or is
this acceleration of? Yeah, I think a change of pace,
I think and perhaps one's prone to imagine these sorts of things
at the beginning of a new year, but, but especially on the
legislation front, it does seem like things are picking up.
But but a change of direction, No, A change of pace possibly.
Yes, well, everybody will know, I'm sure by now that Nick Clegg
has resigned from Facebook. And the question was why now?
And perhaps we get a clue as to why now, because he's been
replaced by someone who is much more Trumpist in his approach,
perhaps. But following the departure of
Nick Clegg, who's been very much proponent of censorship on
Facebook, Facebook is now claiming to be wanting to ease
the censorship burden that we have all faced over the last
period of time. And, well, the wonderful Mark
Zuckerberg had a couple of things to say about it.
Let's just look at a minute or so of what he said.
Hey everyone, I want to talk about something important today
because it's time to get back to our roots around free expression
on Facebook and Instagram. I started building social media
to give people a voice. I gave a speech at Georgetown
five years ago about the importance of protecting free
expression, and I still believe this today.
But a lot has happened over the last several years.
There's been widespread debate about potential harms from
online content. Governments and legacy media
have pushed to censor more and more.
A lot of this is clearly political, but there's also a
lot of legitimately bad stuff out there.
Drugs, terrorism, Child Exploitation.
These are things that we take very seriously, and I want to
make sure that we handle responsibly.
So we built a lot of complex systems to moderate content.
But the problem with complex systems is they make mistakes.
Even if they accidentally censor just 1% of posts, that's
millions of people. And we've reached a point where
it's just too many mistakes and too much censorship.
So if you've stopped laughing by now, then we'll we'll talk about
what he said next, which was basically a recognition that the
ground is shifting under his feet, that Donald Trump is
arriving and that he needs to sort of reset relations with the
with the forthcoming presidency. And he's worried that Trump is
going to basically sanction Facebook in some way.
So they are moving forward with this claim that they are
removing significant parts of the censorship regime, which
includes removing the fact checkers and well, of course in
the UK Facebook gives 303 hundred to £400,000 a year or so
to Full Fact for for running the fact checking service on its
platform in the UK. This is what Full Fact had to
say about Meta's decision. Meta's decision to end its
partnership with fact checkers in the US is disappointing in a
backward step that risks a chilling effect around the
world, from safeguarding elections to protecting public
health to dissipating potential unrest in the streets.
Fact checkers are the first responders in the information
environment. So they are the White helmets of
of Facebook in this case, and maybe got the colour wrong
there. But anyway, locking fact
checkers out of the conversation won't help society to turn the
tide on rapidly rising misinformation, says Chris
Morris, the chief executive at Full Fact.
And the important point here is that this situation, it only
applies in the United States. It doesn't apply in the United
Kingdom. It doesn't apply in the EU where
the regimes are somewhat different.
And Facebook is going to be moving to the model that X has
been running for a little bit of time now, which is the idea that
the big community posts put under content which is viewed as
being somehow controversial. So of course, the UK columns
still locked out of Facebook. Vanessa, I believe you're still
locked out of Facebook. Is that correct?
Yeah, definitely. Yeah, well, maybe we'll see all
this situation change just as we did with with Twitter and so
many cases after Musk took over. But look, the other thing that I
that I want to highlight on the censorship agenda is the
situation with David Icke, because let's bring some Dutch
media on screen here. We'll do a quick translation of
this, the headline from the from true.
Apologies, I don't know how to pronounce that.
But anyway, the from this media outlet in the Netherlands is
David Icke is not allowed to address protesters via large
screen. And basically he was invited to
speak at an event in Dam Square a week or so ago.
And he was not allowed to do that because the the mayor of
Amsterdam decided that he should not be allowed to be brought in
remotely and and shown on a large screen.
So the mayor sent a letter to the event organisers.
She said that only speakers physically present at the
demonstration would be allowed to speak or to use the the PA
system. She said that she was worried
about spontaneous counter protests sparked by Ike's
participation. Considering the unrest and
protests his anti Semitic views and past statements have caused,
his online presence would only provoke similar responses this
time. Now this follows the renewal of
the travel ban which is placed on David Icke by the Dutch
courts in November 2022. So this is three years now of
banning. So although this has been a ban
that's been imposed by the Dutch courts, it applies to the entire
Schengen area. So he's not allowed to travel
basically anywhere in the EU. And that ban was renewed
following a hearing on the 27th of December.
Now, according to the court, Ickes basically is is accused of
saying very naughty things, asserting that politicians
orchestrated COVID-19 pandemic as part of a broader agenda.
Undermined. He's undermined democratic
institutions apparently. And he couldn't cite violent
resistance. And of course, supported by the
various organisations like the National Coordinator for Anti
Semitism Prevention, he's accused of pushing forward old
anti Semitic narratives repackaged in a modern form.
So look, he posted on his Instagram the statement that he
made to the court. I've just got to play a minute
or so of that. It's worth listening to the
whole thing. I am banned from the virtual
entirety of Europe. I cannot speak in any of those
countries. For the crime of agreeing to
come to the Netherlands two years ago and speak at a peace
rally calling for peace. And on the basis of that, I have
been unable to enter Europe ever since.
And what this comes down to, I, I, I won't abuse my vocal chords
of responding to this any longer.
But what this comes down to is this, either the judiciary of
the Netherlands is there to protect the people from the
abuse of power of the government as a check and balance, or it is
there, and that's been my experience in the last two
years, it is there to do what the government wants done.
And if that's the case, the Netherlands is no longer a
liberal democracy. It is a tyranny, quite
demonstrably. And I would say this to finish,
I have been accused in these cases by these government
lawyers, Pell Rickon, of being a threat to democracy.
I may not have to remind the court that the Netherlands
currently has a Prime Minister in Dick Scoff who is unelected
and has never seen a ballot box in his life, a former head of
Dutch intelligence and I, I am a threat to democracy.
It's a joke. The whole thing is a joke and
should be seen as such. I have nothing more to say.
And I struggle to disagree with anything in that statement.
So no matter what you think about David Icke, it is
incredible that we have a situation with someone who has
committed no criminal offence, is unable to travel in the whole
of Europe because somebody has is claiming that he has anti
Semitic views, which I think is stretching things beyond
credibility. But anyway, we'll talk more
about this in extra in a couple of minutes.
We have to leave it there for today.
Thanks to everyone for joining us.
Thank you to Vanessa and Charles and we'll see you in a few
minutes. If you're UK column member, just
stay on the stream and we'll be back in a few minutes.
As we say, see you then. Bye, bye, bye bye.