Good afternoon. It's Wednesday the 12th of
November, just after 1:00. Welcome to UK column News.
I'm your host, Mike Robinson. Mike, host TODAY in the studios,
Patrick Henningson. Welcome to the program, Patrick.
Great to be with you, Mike. And joining us via Live Link, we
have Vanessa Bailey and Liz Evans.
Now today we're going to be following up on the BBC
implosion. In a couple of minutes, Vanessa
is going to be reporting on Jelani's visit to the White
House. Liz Evans is going to be
covering the latest on organ donations.
But we're going to begin with prisons because of course, as we
all know, the Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy was in the
House of Commons yesterday to up update Parliament on the sorry,
the accidental, it is accidental release of prisoners which had
been grabbing the headlines over the past few days.
So here's what he had to say. The first duty of government is
to keep the public safe. Well, I would suggest that no,
really it isn't. This is the UNI party regime's
excuse for lockdowns and technocracy, and it's derived
from British imperialist thinkers like Thomas Hobbes and
John Locke actually. So it's a mantra though, that
we've been having shoved down our throats since 2020.
In particular, he went on to say we're putting in new guardrails
around an archaic system with tougher new checks, reviewing
specific failings of modernizing prison processes and joint
working with courts, all to bear down on the increase in
mistakes. So now we're starting to get to
the bottom of it because what they're talking about here is a
£10,000,000 investment that will see the roll out of new AI
powered tools, the frontline prison staff so that they can
quotes, accurately calculate sentences and vital upgrades to
the archaic paper based systems. This is all being accelerated of
course. They're saying that currently
under already under pressure, prison staff are having to wade
through more than 500 pages of guidance making mistakes more
likely. The multi £1,000,000 pledge will
be invested over the next six months and build a new digital
crack. Teams deployed to prisons next
last week to look at how cutting edge technology can be used to
bring down errors. So they're going to set up a new
Justice Performance Board there, which is, they claim, going to
give David Lammy greater oversight of the system and
drive improvements in prisons and criminal courts.
And they say that the measures include a, quote, relentless
focus on data with new teams of data, teams of data scientists
deployed to review all historic releases in error to understand
what was wrong in every case. So they're talking about an
extra 14,000 prison places being built by this government, while
sentences will be overhauled to make prisons to make sure that
we have enough prison places to lock up dangerous criminals and
keep the public safe. And they're saying that they've
already delivered 2 1/2 thousand new places and that the last
government added only 500 because they've got to get the
party political bit in as well. The the last government only
added 500 places to the prison state in the last 14 years so
well that's OK, but the question is where is the where are the
prison officer staff going to come from because the prison
service had been recruiting from outside the UK to fill
vacancies. Sorry, that's just that quote I
was reading there a second ago So let's have a look at this
report for example because this is highlighting that 30% of
prison officers at the HMP Billington is just one example
are foreign nationals. Now there's an ongoing spat
taking place between the Justice Department and the Home Office
because HM Prison Probation Service is no longer allowed to
sponsor new skilled worker visas for prison officers.
That's since July the 22nd this year.
So the question is, do we have accidentally released prisoners
or is is there actually something else going on here?
But whether that's the case or not, we certainly apparently
need digital systems and AI suggestions of digital ID for
prisoners. And we have a prisoner office, a
prison officer recruitment crisis with demands for the Home
Office to relax immigration rules.
And as we know immigration, relaxed immigration is going to
require digital ID. So it's pretty clear what the
what the agenda is here and what's being, well, I would
argue is being engineered. So it starts with prisoners and
veterans and then military service and then the public it
seems. I think the biggest growth for
the prison system in the last year, the most amount of mass
arrests were were pensioners, a blind pensioners, Holocaust
survivors and people basically saying I support Palestine
action quote UN quote, be careful.
I put the quote UN quote in there.
So that's the growth area for prisons.
Maybe this is what they're ramping up for, is place to put
protesters, process them more efficiently.
Yeah, it could be, could be. But well, we'll see how that
goes. But I'm calling nonsense on that
particular one. And it's it's a bit of a story
which is being generated to create a reaction from people.
But let's let's see where that goes.
And as luck would have it, it was an immigrant indeed
accidentally released. Indeed.
OK, let's move on then to the BBC And Tim Devi, as I'm sure
everybody knows by now by now, was on an all staff call with
BBC staff for an hour yesterday. Here's what he had to say on the
way into Broadcasting House Just.
Want to say a couple of things. I'm here to lead and support the
BBC. I'm very, very proud of our
journalists in this building. They're doing work.
I think it's incredibly important.
I want to thank everyone of them.
They're doing a wonderful job. Also everyone across the BBC
doing their thing for the big the UK and personally I'm here
to lead and support them. The BB CS going to be thriving
and I support everyone of the team.
I'm very proud of them. Thank you very much.
How? Will you be responding to Mr.
Trump 's? He's very proud of them.
But look, look, the content of the call is no secret.
His presentation to staff was full of I'm proud of you
rhetoric, as he's just expressed there.
But this clearly didn't go down well with BBC staff and by all
accounts they were also pretty unimpressed with the fact that,
contrary to previous suggestions, they were not free
to ask questions during the call or after the call.
All the questions that were submitted had to be screened and
Sky News has reported, for example, that staff were taking
to public comments section on the BBC website to try to get
their questions noticed. So if Tim Devi thought this
would be an exercise in getting all hands to the pumps, he's
clearly failed spectacularly. But in the meantime, Lisa Nandy,
the culture secretary, was in the Commons yesterday to try to
shore up support for this great British institution as she was
expressing it, as there are fundamental difference there,
sorry. There is a fundamental
difference, she said, between raising serious concerns over
ethical failings and members of this House launching A sustained
attack on the institution itself.
Because the BBC is not just a broadcaster, it's a national
institution that belongs to us all so well.
Do we agree with that? Well, there's a lot lot to
unpack there, Mike. I think, I think we can move,
move on. Just take a look at this
situation. I mean, let's look at how this
scandal. First of all, let's just start
with this. There is Tim Davy here.
So he is out as well as the head of news, Deborah Turnus.
They're both have resigned. Davies tells the staff, we've
got to fight for a journalism. So he's going out with the with
the rallying cry there. But let's look at previous
resignations of director generals.
And I always find that these high profile resignations are
usually to take the edge off something that's really
happening that's actually damaging to the institution in
the country here. We're going to call these
pressure relief, these resignations here.
Here's 2 director generals will bring up on screen.
First of all, 2012, the short lived director General George
Entwistle resigns after ABBC report falsely implicating a
senior British politician in a paedophile scandal, child abuse
scandal. There we we can speculate on who
that senior politician might have been, but nonetheless the
result was he stepped down. 2004 Director General Greg Dyke
resigned after pressure over the government's mysterious death of
David Kelly, the Ministry of Defence weapons expert here.
And so the source to the BBC claimed that the government's
dossier was sexed up. We all remember that story.
This was Tony Blair's dossier used to lie the country into the
Iraq war on a fake WMD case. But on both cases here the end
whistle resignation really took the edge off that right there
Mike, which was the Jimmy Savile scandal, which was at its height
in 2012. There he is with the current
King Charles there Saville being his social secretary very close.
And this the the dyke resignation took the edge off
this, which was Tony Blair's sort of criminal involvement as
a war criminal in lying the country into the war and saying
that the David Kelly controversy was just a cock up.
It wasn't a cover up. It's just a cock up in this is
usually what the, the the media do here.
And I think the same is probably true in the case of Tim Davey.
Mike, there's a bigger scandal here.
And one of those is the coverage of of the, the genocide in Gaza.
We'll get to that in a minute here.
But just to tee off this one, this comes at the same time
Donald Trump is threatening a $1 billion lawsuit against the BBC.
But look at the subtext on this is interesting here.
BBC board member with Tory links quote led the charge and
systemic bias claims says insights.
You can see how the establishers conveniently framing this as a
left versus right or Tory versus Labor sort of controversy.
So it but it's not it's really Mike and we'll talk about this
on Friday. It's big money and big money
coming in on the right and from the Trump camp in the United
States or the big corporate money coming in to buy up
British media here. At the same time, the, the, the,
the license fee is under the, under the cosh and they're going
to re evaluate the, the, the BB CS license fee.
Could we be seeing the breakup of the BBC or the private part
privatization of the BBC as a result of some of this?
It's quite possible. And the question, though, is
whether Trump will actually move ahead with his lawsuit.
So let's just have a sorry to do this to everybody.
Just a brief listen to what he said about whether it was really
something that he needed to do. They they defrauded the public
and they've admitted it. And their top echelon director
general. This is this is within one of
our great allies. You know, this is our supposedly
our great ally BBC have the government has a chunk of that
one, I guess. But tonight you are saying to
our viewers that you will go forward and file a defamation
lawsuit against the BBC. Well, I think I have an
obligation to do it because you can't get people, you can't
allow people to do that. So he he has an obligation.
So it's, it's about the January 6th speech at the Ellipse before
J6 and it was, the aggregations are, and it's clear the BBC kind
of doctored that speech in order to make Trump seem like he was
inciting the Capitol riot. So of course he probably has a,
an actual case there. The the question is, is this
excessive and hugely politicized?
And are we looking at a power play ultimately by major private
equity firms and so forth? We'll talk more about this.
We will. We'll break it down on, on, on.
Friday, yes. So I look forward to that
conversation, but this is the other one that's just coming at
the exact same time. And I don't believe in
quintessences in politics and I don't know anybody intelligent
that does. But we'll bring this up on
screen right now. The BBC editor is suing Owen
Jones, a journalist over Israel bias claim.
The columnist for the Guardian. Owen Jones is vigorously
defending his reporting after the corporation's Middle East
editor. His name is Raffy Berg files a
High Court libel claim. This is a major lawsuit.
It probably going to be in the courts for a while here and
we'll read the the basis of this court document seen by the PA
news agency. John Stables, the barrister for
Raffy Berg. He is the BBC Middle East editor
or claiming that Owen Jones's article published in Drop Site
News, we'll show you in a minute, strikes at the claimants
a professional reputation as a journalist and editor.
He's talking about the BBC Middle East editor and that it
caused Mr. Berg to suffer an onslaught of hatred,
intimidation and threats, including death threats.
And he goes on here. The damage incurred apparently
by this BBC Middle East editor, the claimant's reputation has
been seriously damaged and he's it's caused substantial fear,
anxiety, humiliation, upset and distress from Mr. Jones not
apologizing or removing the article.
First of all, let's just get into libel basics.
It's not to Owen Jones that is liable.
It is the publisher under British law, if I'm not
mistaken, and that is Drop Site News.
OK, so they're saying now as an editor of a major news
organization, if you get any backlash from other journalists
or coverage or critiques from anybody that could cause you
anxiety and sort of fear. Doesn't that go with the sort of
job of being a newspaper editor or broadcast news editor,
especially a Middle East? Well, I mean, no matter what you
think of Alex Belfield, for example, this is, this is sort
of a precedent that's been set with that case, just, you know,
because allegations to criticism turns into some kind of stalking
or, or harassment. This If people are in the
public, it seems to me that they should be willing to accept the
public criticism if it's there, no matter if it's pleasant or
unpleasant. So this is an incredible at one
time you see this BBC bias story blowing up in the national
media. And here you have Owen Jones,
who's a journalist accusing the BBC of bias coverage regarding
Israel and Gaza and he's being sued for for libel.
Now let's let's just unpack this because it's extraordinary here.
We'll bring this up. This is Raffy Berg.
This is the man in question, the BB CS Middle East editor.
This is his book here, Red Sea of Spies, which he apparently Co
wrote with Danny Lamour, A Mossad agent.
So there he is. But here is the article in
question and this is the BBC Civil war over Gaza.
Now, this is written by Jones. OK, This is an incredible
article, by the way. This is this is no small piece.
It's probably about 5000 words. It's he he's he spoke to 13 BBC
journalists and other staff on this mic and basically has shown
that there's been internal complaints.
There was an internal revolt as a result of the censorship and
the what, what you might call editorial reshaping by the BBC
here. And we'll get into this here.
And so he interviewed 13 BBC journalist and other staffers,
revealing insights of skewed stories in favor of Israeli
narratives and repeatedly dismissed objections by other
staffers. And this took place over 14
months here and demanded the network uphold its commitment to
impartiality and fairness. And he goes on.
Jones investigation has three main components here.
This is actually a really good breakdown.
Deep look into the internal complaints from BBC journalists,
a quantitative assessment of how the BBC characterizes the year
long siege in Gaza and also review the histories of people
behind the coverage, in particular the BB CS editor
Raffy Berg. And what's interesting about
Raffy Berg like is he kind of cut his teeth with the US
Foreign Broadcasting Service, which was later exposed to be a
total CIA front under the State Department.
So he is effectively working as ACIA propagandist and he
apparently when he found out, when this was known that it was
ACIA front, he was quote, absolutely thrilled to find out.
So not my words, of course, that's in an interview that he
gave upon his knowledge of that incredible revelation there.
So it's an excellent piece of journalism by Jones and many
people might disagree with Owen Jones on a number of issues, but
this is excellent reporting. But I might point out here,
Mike, we're talking about influence.
Let's when you say the BBC is shaping the narrative on
coverage from October 7th onwards here.
This is what we're talking about.
This is the rankings of top 50 English news sites in the world.
OK, now look where the BBC ranks in terms of traffic.
Take a look at that right at the top.
And the numbers we're talking about are staggering.
OK, look at that. So this is upwards of a billion
visits globally. Look at that.
So. Just in October.
They just they crushed the New York Times and that's the MSN
New York Times combined. So this this incredible thing
that we're witnessing here. But and you know, this, this
story has been on the burner for the past year here.
This is Jonathan Cook tweeted about this in January 2025 about
Raffy Berg and accounts Mossad agents as close friends,
etcetera. So I mean, there is bias if you
have somebody who is pro Israel and very much linked to Israel,
Israel as as your Middle East editor for for the largest news
organization in the world. OK, maybe a little bit of a
problem there. So anyway, but the original
story here, we have to give credit to Alan McLeod here at
MIT Press news. And this was in January 3rd,
2025, Mike. So that's, that's it's not an
it's not a new story. It's been around.
And what Owen Jones has probably done here is brought more
publicity to it. And the lawsuit is going to be
huge drops. Outside news already raised
100,000 and the first day they put up their crowdfunder, they
say they're ready to fight Ryan Grimm, Jeremy Scahill, their
former intercept. They're ready to fight this
case. They think they have enough
money, Mike, to go the distance and win.
This would be a huge defeat for the BBC and probably the Israeli
lobby if they lose in court, but this could be tied up for a
couple of years. We'll see.
OK, OK. Thank you for that, Patrick.
Vanessa, let me welcome you to the programme.
And, well, Jelani, our favorite terrorist, has been in the White
House. He has indeed not just Jelani,
of course, but the other founder of Al Qaeda in Syria, Assad al
Shibani, the Sakuri regime foreign minister, both of them
at the White House and appearing at various meetings.
So this was in the New York Times.
Syrian President meets Trump at the White House for the first
time. Of course, he previously met him
both in Riyadh and of on the sidelines of the UN GA
conference. But just prior to the meeting,
this is what Trump said when he was asked a question, I think,
regarding the lifting of sanctions on Syria.
So let's just we're. Going to meet and I think he's
doing a very good job. It's a tough neighborhood and
he's a tough guy, but I got along with him very well.
And a lot of progress has been made with Syria.
That's a that's a tough one, but a lot of progress has been made.
You know, we took the sanctions off at the request of Turkey, at
the request of actually Israel, at the request of a few
different countries, and we took the sanctions off to give them a
chance, so. I hope everybody picked up on
the fact that Israel was involved in lobbying Trump to
lift the sanctions on Syria. We then were entertained with a
video of Jolani and Asad Chaibani playing nothing other
than basketball with Brad Cooper, the head of CENTCOM and
Brigadier General Kevin Lambert who heads up the anti ISIS
coalition in the region. Of course, we've previously seen
Jelani playing basketball in Syria shortly after a number of
the massacres that were carried out by the AL Qaeda thugs on the
coast in the South. And now, of course, those
massacres and slaughters, abductions, rape and abuse and
torture of civilians is continuing inside Syria while
all of this pomp and pageantry is happening at the White House.
Interesting that a lot of people picked up on social media that
Jolani entered by the back door, not by The West Wing driveway,
which is the route normally taken by heads of state.
He used the West Executive Ave. apparently not quite the back
door, but I understand why people were saying that.
It's important to note, of course, look at all the security
around him, which is quite extraordinary when 1 looks back
at President Assange 3rd arriving obviously not in the
US, but for various state visits or excursions, even inside Syria
during the war when he had very scarce, scarce security around
him. But it's worth remembering that
the US and the majority of the international community, such as
it is, have not actually recognized the Takfiri regime in
Syria officially. Here we have.
I mean, this is just an extraordinary picture.
Trump grinning inanely with Geelani stood next to him.
There's a number of these images.
Many people have said to me they're they're actually
reaching a point of Geelani fatigue because the branding and
promotion by the MI sex and the CIA and so on is is really off
the scale. There were images today of him
playing chess, which which, you know, leaves a lot to the
imagination. But I also just wanted to show
this image bearing in mind that normally presidents or heads of
state will sit next to Trump in any kind of photo shoot here.
To me, they look like a series of school boys sat in front of
the headmaster. If you look at the body
language, they're interesting. Vance's direction of of where
he's looking seems to be looking at Jolani's shoes to check
whether they're properly polished.
But then if we go on to basically this was, it's so, so
Jelani did an interview, sorry, with Fox News while he was
there. This is just a summary by
Sprinter Press. Syria has declared an alliance
with the US. After a meeting, Syrian
President stated that the country is becoming a
geopolitical ally of the United States.
He added that Washington can now invest in gas production, which
is interesting because they were effectively offering that to
Moscow during the Kremlin meetings.
He also emphasized that the topic of his previous ties with
the terrorist group Al Qaeda was not raised at the meeting.
In an interview with Fox News, the president added that he was
not involved in the attacks on the Twin Towers on September the
11th and he was too young at the time.
I mean that, you know, you know, this, it's, it's just, I don't
know, I can't find the words for it really important.
This image. This is Jelani looking rather
like he'd stolen the suit from Assad's wardrobe when they took
over the palace. He's looking very uncomfortable
in that outfit. But he's standing next to
Republican Congress member Brian Mast, stalwart supporter of
Trump. But also, when October the 7th
kicked off the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, he came
into Congress wearing the Israeli military uniform.
He's a staunch Christian Zionist.
So again, the connection to Israel.
Israel lobbied for sanctions to be lifted.
And here's Jelani with Brian Moss.
But also here is Assad Shibani talking about his best friend,
the US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, who's probably the
closest both to the deep state and to Zionist policy in Trump's
administration, talking about lifting the restrictions on the
Syrian mission and the embassy in the US for Syria.
Now, this was a comment that Trump made after the meeting,
which I think is also in itself very telling.
So let's just have a look at this.
You can expect some announcements on Syria.
We want to see Syria become a country that's very successful.
And I think this leader can do it.
I really do. I think this leader.
Can do it. And people said he's had a rough
past. We all had rough pasts, but he
has had a rough past and I think.
Frankly, if you didn't. Have a rough past?
You wouldn't have a chance. He gets along very well with
Turkey. Rough past I I think Jolanis
present is pretty rough considering the the atrocities
that are being committed against Syrian civilians in Syria and
have been of course for the last 15 years.
And as regards Trump's rough past, we won't mention Epstein.
So there were a number of summaries of what was actually
discussed in the meeting. This was just one in the Italian
Institute for International Political Studies.
And if we just move on, I did a summary of the main points which
we can now look at. So the sanctions were not
actually lifted. We're being very much deceived
when we're looking at media saying that Trump has lift
sanctions on Syria. They've been lifted again for
180 days or six months. The Caesar Act, which is the
most draconian of the sanction measures imposed against the
Syrian people as unilateral coercive measures under
President Assad, actually needs Congress approval, which is why
Jelani was lobbying Brian Miles to get them repealed.
Sanctions, interestingly, despite the lifting for 180
days, remain on Russia and Iran, which is doubly ironic as Russia
actually prints has the monopoly on the printing of Syrian
currency. So I'm not quite sure how that's
going to affect that going forward.
Discussion on the security agreement with Israel, which of
course is heading towards normalization between Syria and
Israel, which Jelani is digging his heels in about because of
course that is going to turn the majority even of his most
staunch supporters against him. US are offering Intel, sharing
arms and technology. Don't be full by that because of
course the US also offers arms and technology to the Lebanese
Armed forces that are utterly incapable of defending
themselves against Israel. And that would be the same
situation in Syria. Syria to join the anti ISIS
coalition. Again, this is cannibalization
policy for Jelani because the majority of his Tak fairy
members, particularly the foreign ones are members of ISIS
or are defecting to ISIS in the view of Jelani's more moderate
policies. But also I think what's
important is under this six month waiver of course, what
does this do? This creates an environment in
Syria where there is unlikely to be serious foreign direct
investment. It's risky for banks because
there's potential the sanctions will be reimposed at the end of
the six months. If Jelani doesn't comply with
with Trump's demands. It leads to opaque fire sale
concessions, which leads of course, to prices and jobs
remaining static. And there's very little
employment for Syrians now, and debt and vulture investment.
So really, it's not. What Trump has done is
effectively not helping Syria at all.
It's all semantics and image building.
Thank you. Undoubtedly we'll talk more
about that in Extra, but you got any thoughts?
Well, I think maybe Keir Starmer should pardon the 77 bombers
because they had a rough past. They've had a rough past.
Osama bin Laden had a rough past.
Abu Baker al Baghdadi Rough. Past I I can't work out how
someone who was the deputy leader of ISIS can suddenly
become part of the anti ISIS coalition.
If you haven't built a golf course in Dubai or you know,
blown up a few cities, you really not fit to run a country.
Right. OK, well, we'll, we'll talk more
about that. An extra, I have no doubt, Liz.
Liz Evans, welcome to the program.
It's been a while since you've been on, but today we're talking
about organ donation. Thanks very much, Mike.
Yeah, on Monday, we saw the Telegraph around this headline,
which bemoaned a shortage of organ donations due to the
increase in deaths at home since COVID.
I wonder why that could be. But I'm not sure that what I'm
going to say now, it will alleviate that situation.
My deep dive into the murky world of organ donation has
uncovered serious ethical and safety issues the public need to
be aware of. And the first is this recent
change to the law on organ donation in the UK.
So previously you opted in by carrying an organ donor card or
your relatives were asked in the case of a sudden death or
accident and the choice was yours and your relatives alone.
The new law requires you to actively opt out on the NHS
organ donation register to avoid forced donation against your
family's wishes. And if you don't opt out before
you die, you're considered to have consented to donating your
organs. This fundamentally changes how
your body is viewed when you die, effectively making the
state the owner of your body after your death.
Now this drastic change to the law has not been well
publicised. I think many people are unaware
of it or what they need to do to opt out and the slide that you
just saw shows a couple of the NHS adverts to alert the public,
which I certainly hadn't seen. And then to complicate the
issue, England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have
different legislation using different terms that all mean
the same thing. So Wales was the first to bring
in what they call deemed consent in December 2015.
Then in May 2020 England brought in an opt out system for
everyone over 18 years with capacity.
In March 2021 Scotland brought in deemed authorisation for
everyone over 16 years, 16 years.
Then in June 2023 Northern Ireland brought in the Organ and
Tissue Donation Deemed Consent Act for over eighteens.
Now interestingly some of these laws are emotively named after
children. So England has Max and Keira's
Law, named after 9 year old Max Johnson who needed a heart
transplant and campaigned for this opt in system and his
donor, 9 year old Kira Bell. Northern Ireland has Dahi's Law
in honour of a little boy on the heart transplant waiting list
since 2018. Now the reasons given for
changing the law are firstly the shortage of organs for donation
and also to allow more people to save more lives.
An NHS blood and transplant site that in England IN2018411 people
died on the organ transplant waiting list while around 1000
families refused organ donations.
So they argued that changing the law would make decisions easier
for grieving families, IE there would be no decision to make.
So the way the new law works in practice is that specialist
nurses will speak to the family who do have a quote soft opt out
option if no decision has been registered.
But if you have given consent, your family will be encouraged
to agree with your decision and crucially will have no legal
right to override your decision. And we're about to see a clip
from an NHS training video which shows a role play situation
where the relatives of the dying patient have never heard of the
change in the law, they've never discussed organ transplantation.
They are shocked that the law assumes he has consented and
they appear reluctant. I'm just going to show you the
minute at the end which shows the nurse explaining how this
works. We need to make a decision
today. I.
Don't really think about it as making a decision because like I
said before, the way the law works now is to try and take the
pressure off families that find themselves in this position on
this obviously the saddest day. So what we'll be asking for is
your support in helping Philip to become a donor.
I'm just, I don't know, it sounds like a good thing.
I just. I just think he's.
Been through a lot already, you know now.
We have to think about. It it does, it does seem like a
good. Idea what we'd have to talk
about. Yeah, of course.
I'll give you some time to think about it and I'll come back and
answer any questions or concerns that you've got.
OK, OK. OK, so you are strongly
encouraged to record your decision on the NHS Organ Donor
Register and make sure your family know your decision and
that any children over the age of 18 or 16 in Scotland have
done the same. And even if you're happy to
donate, I think it's worth considering whether to opt out
anyway, allowing your family to make the decision within the
context at the time, rather than the state making the final
decision now. Then, my next section may help
you to make a more informed decision.
Several commentators have recently raised serious concerns
that organs may be being harvested from people who are
not actually dead. The brain death does not mean
fully dead, certainly not in the way that is commonly understood
as a irreversible and permanent state in which life cannot be
restored to the individual. Death used to be defined as the
irreversible and permanent cessation of heartbeat and
circulation, IE true biological death.
But this would preclude much organ donation because without a
working circulation, organs, particularly the heart and
lungs, degrade quickly. For historical context, in 1967
the world's first heart transplant was carried out by
Christian Barnard using a donor with a severe brain injury.
At the time, the definition of death was whole body death, so a
doctor would have been expected to turn off the ventilator and
wait for the heart to stop naturally before harvesting the
organs. I was shocked to discover that
decades later it was revealed that Christian Barnard had
stopped the donors heart himself by injecting potassium chloride,
killing the patient and enabling him to immediately harvest a
healthy heart legally from a fully dead body.
Having not disclosed this criminal act, Barna became an
international sensation and Playboy, featuring on the front
of Time magazine. Then the following year, in
1968, the Harvard committee redefined death to include
neurological criteria, with a new diagnosis of brain death,
defined as an irreversible coma with no respiratory function.
They justified this expansion of the definition of death on
utilitarian grounds, firstly to reduce the burden on the
patient, family, hospital and society from comatose patients,
and secondly to facilitate organ harvesting from patients who
didn't meet the dead donor rule. The rule that you are completely
dead before your organs are removed because they still had a
working circulation and biological functions.
This therefore enabled healthy organs to be procured.
Now the UK currently has no statutory definition of death,
but the British Transplant Society defines it as the
permanent loss of the capacity for consciousness and loss of
all brain stem functions which can result from either the
permanent cessation of circulation or from catastrophic
brain injury leading to so-called brain death.
Now donation after circulatory death actually only requires 5
minutes of continuous cardio respiratory arrest to fulfil the
dead donor rule, but a person is unlikely to be fully brain dead
after such a short time, so it's questionable whether the
situation is irreversible. And there are many cases of
people being successfully resuscitated after cardiac
arrest for far longer than 5 minutes, so many argue that this
constitutes A physician assisted death, violating both criminal
law and the central tenet of medicine to do no harm.
And then in the summer of this year, Kate Chemerani, the
nursing ethics campaigner and Co founder of the British Nursing
Alliance, began to raise the alarm that organ donation
protocols in the UK are unethical and dangerous because
they're based on a legal fiction that brainstem death equals
death. Kate argues that neither the
scientific literature nor clinical practice supports the
claim that brain death is equivalent to death, that there
are many recorded cases of recovery in what was considered
an irreversible situation. She also points out that brain
dead individuals maintain heartbeat, circulation, hormonal
function and can even gestate fetuses.
Kate has published several excellent articles on her sub
stack and Facebook page over the last few months that are well
worth a read. And these NHS guidelines for
retrieving organs from brain dead donors admit that spinal
movements which can appear quotes purposeful are reported
in as many as 50% of brain dead brain stem dead patients.
But doctors are reassured that this doesn't invalidate the
diagnosis of death. But then, disturbingly, they are
encouraged to give muscle relaxants to patients prior to
organ retrieval. And this paper even details the
role of anaesthetist to provide sedation and analgesia to the
donor during organ harvesting. Then in July this year, Robert F
Kennedy Junior's HHS announced that a four year federal
investigation had uncovered serious ethical and safety
violations in the harvesting of organs in the US that hospitals
had quotes allowed the organ procurement process to begin
when patients showed signs of life.
Secretary Kennedy stated the entire system must be fixed to
ensure that every potential donors life is treated with the
sanctity it deserves and recently announced an agenda to
reform the US organ transplant system.
The federal investigation was triggered by the appalling case
of Anthony TJ Hoover, a man in his 30s who was admitted to
hospital with a drug overdose. After two days of being
unresponsive and being declared brain dead, his family agreed to
remove life support so he could have his organ harvested.
But as the procedure began, TJ woke up and started thrashing
around on the bed and visibly crying.
Staff members began to protest, but it was only when the
procuring surgeon refused to participate that the procedure
was finally stopped and Hoover survived, although with brain
damage. Subsequent investigations into
Network for Hope, the organ procurement service, revealed
351 instances where donation was authorised but not completed,
and of these, 73 had neurological signs incompatible
with organ donation, IE were not brain dead.
Also in the US, there are significant financial incentives
to maximise organ and tissue harvesting, and the report
described organ harvest teams as predatory, pressuring medical
staff and families to expedite the procedure.
And shockingly, organs are even being harvested from euthanized
patients in assisted dying programs in the Netherlands,
Canada and Spain. For example, in Quebec, organ
donation after made increased from 4.9% of deaths in 2018 to
14% in 2022. Then there's this paper on liver
donation from MAID patients, which quotes Doctor James
Shapiro saying that he hopes his study will allow a better
understanding of the potential role of organ donation following
MAID and how impactful it can be for saving lives of many people
in their final act of generosity.
And predictably, this has led to cause for similar practices in
the UK if the Assisted Dying Bill is passed, such as we have
a. I think we've got a slide of a
2025 editorial in the BMJ. And we have a video clip of a
former New Zealand MP speaking at the recent Assisted Dying
Bill Select Committee hearing in the House of Lords last week,
warning of the slippery slope that in just four years in New
Zealand has led to harvesting of organs being commonplace from
victims of euthanasia. So we'll roll that clip.
A. Good example of that is organ
donation. New Zealand Now has created
policies about taking organs from euthanized patients.
Again, that was not specified in the law and the civil servants
have decided to pick up that ball and run with it.
OK, And then just a quick word from the organ recipients
perspective. We are also seeing medical
ethics being violated with coerced vaccination, which was
brought to the To the Attention of UK column by a parent of a
teenager with a congenital kidney condition who will
require a kidney transplant one day.
Now, she had remained entirely unvaccinated because her parents
decided it wasn't in her best interest.
That decision led to harassment of the parents by doctors.
She they've had repeated pressure to vaccinate their
daughter and we're told she would eventually have to be
vaccinated before she could have a transplant.
Now it turns out that catch up vaccination is is recommended,
but it's not mandatory. But in practice, the recipient
is not offered an organ unless they comply with the guidance.
The argument being made that is that it's a luxury to receive an
organ. So the recipient has a duty to
honour the donor's gift by complying with all the
recommendations to maximise the chance of a successful
transplant. And this even applies if the
donor is a living donor, including the parent.
So this shows it's an ideological and not a scientific
position. So I just want to finish with
good news from Texas, where they have actually passed a bill very
recently in September, House Bill 4076, which explicitly
prohibits Texan hospitals from denying organ transplants based
solely on a patient's vaccination status.
And hopefully we can get a similar challenge here in the
US, sorry, in the UK. Thank you Liz.
Thank you very much for that. Now just a quick reminder that
one more background to this, we have an excellent article by
Doctor Mike Williams on the UK Column website entitled No Time
to Die. So do have a look at that if you
haven't seen that already. Now if you like what the UK
column does and you would like to support us, details of how
you can do that can be found via the front page of the UK Column
website. Please do click on the blue box
and if you can support us financially we do need that and
that would be massively appreciated by all here.
If you can't support us financially, then please do
share anything you find on the UK column website on the various
social media platforms with a link back.
That would be extremely helpful as well.
Tonight, Jerem is speaking to Danny Carroll on the
psychological link to cancer at 7:00 PM.
And Carl Zaz speaking to a black American hip hop artist in
China, I think responsible for the rise of hip hop and in in
China. So join us for that at 9 and
Patrick very quickly. Andrew Bridge in Part 2 in
Totnes on Friday. That's right, Friday night, 7
stars in Totnes are still tickets available.
If you missed the first part with Andrew Bridgen a few months
ago, it was a stunning talk. You were there, Mike, with
Brian, the Q&A. And they'll be discussing
digital ID money, Bitcoin, the Reform Party, Zionism, Charlie
Kirk, sovereignty activism and a whole lot more tickets on
Eventbrite. Just type in Andrew Bridgen
November 14th on Eventbrite and you will see tickets available.
There's still some left according to the organizers.
So yeah, it should be an interesting evening, Yeah.
That's Totnes in the Seven Stars Hotel on Friday, and on
Saturday, Cumbria Against Government Betrayal is going to
be at Carlisle Market Square. Diane Rasmussen speaking at
that. If you can possibly get along
against digital IDs and so on, do join for that.
OK, Patrick, let's move on to Berlin and Gaza related news.
Well, if you if you've been watching social media, Mike,
TikTok, Instagram X, you'll see the German police have been
quite thuggish with demonstrators who are opposing
Israel's genocide in Gaza here. So this is up in Germany.
We'll bring this up on screen German High Court, Mike.
So this is in the High Court and this is an issue of free speech.
So they're going after pro Palestinian demonstrators here.
Now, someone who was on the program before, Yara Madarelli,
she's a journalist. She is based in Europe.
She was there at the court proceedings and she did an
excellent piece to camera along with her other colleague from
the Global Summit of Flotilla. And so we'll look at that report
real quick and we have a quick comment.
But here, here is the outside of the court hearings, and she'll
explain what this is all about. I'm here at a Berlin courthouse
where we just observed A historic hearing where for the
very first time, a Palestinian solidarity activist is being
tried, not in a local court as usual, but in a higher state.
Court. The state has escalated this
case by labeling the political slogan From the River to the
Sea, Palestine will be Free as terrorist propaganda.
This label turns a case about free expression into a dangerous
legal precedent that could affect thousands of existing
cases and in turn further criminalize any solidarity with
Palestine. It's increasingly clear that
Berlin is rapidly descending into full-fledged fascism.
Where the state not only suppresses dissent but actively
rewrites the meaning of justice, Those who speak out against a
genocide and raise their voices for human rights are punished,
while war criminals are protected.
This case is not just about one person, it's about a broader
effort to silence an entire movement to make the difference.
Of. Palestinian life itself a crime.
We're living in an upside down reality where peaceful
protesters and human right advocates are prosecuted while
Benjamin Netanyahu and his cabinet of war criminals
continue their war crimes without consequence.
This entire process was deliberately to constructed to
guarantee a biased outcome. The case was arranged so that it
would land before a specific judge one.
Who already holds a clear political position on Palestine?
Every step of the legal process here reveals a system designed
not for justice but for conviction.
Today's case is a clear violation of due process and of
the most basic principle of justice.
Germany can silence and distort the truth all they want, but the
world stands with Palestine and the people will not allow the
struggle for. Freedom and equality to be
criminalised. Justice for Palestine is justice
for all. From the river to the sea,
Palestine will be free. So they've been taken lessons
from the British. Well, there's gonna be, there's
gonna be 10 more court appearances in this High Court.
We'll get a follow up from Yara as to results out there.
Her colleague there from the Global Samud Flotilla crew
member Kubra Sinar, who joined her there.
And it's great to see the Global Flotilla crew, Mike on, on the
ground, on land. And they'll be promoting BDS
sanctions against Israel and following these free speech
issues here. But we'll go back to London.
And thank you to Yada and her colleague for that report.
We're back to London here. Bob Villain, you remember
Glastonbury, this was over the summer.
Here is the British rapper Bob Villain and he had a show in
Kentish Town last night. And of course, the media were
going crazy. How could this be allowed?
Bob Villain's welcome in Camden, according to these activist
groups here. So that kind of a welcoming
party for him at his gig at I think it was at the Kentish Town
Forum there, but an incredible scene.
And of course, there's the reaction Mike from the
Telegraph. As you can imagine, Starmer
ignores calls to block Bob Villain performance in his
constituency. So that what I call the woke
right here at the Telegraph going for cancellation, limiting
free speech, all the things they railed against the radical left
and the woke for, they're doing themselves, of course, no
surprise there. But we'll bring on sort of the
scenes from that night here, courtesy of our colleagues from
Al Mayadeen TV from Moussa Soror, and we'll look at the
scenes here. You can see some incredible
scenes here. This is outside.
You'll see some of the crowd forming.
So it's kind of a symbolic demonstration in solidarity with
Palestine. That's what's happened with Bob
Villain. He's turned into a kind of
phenomenon. So the more they censor him, the
more they try to shut him down, the more popular this guy gets.
And so he basically famously said at Glastonbury, death,
death to the IDF were in, in London, Cockney, deaf, deaf to
the idea. But, and apparently that was the
big sort of controversy here. And so you can see people, we'll
show in a minute. People have T-shirts with that
slogan on it. And apparently they're just the,
the Israeli and pro Jewish organizations, they're very
upset about this show being allowed to happen in London.
And they're, a lot of people are saying they're feeling unsafe
and so forth. So it's amazing how this is
developed into kind of a phenomenon here.
But we have some vox pops here from outside the, the, the gig.
And there's that. That's the Israeli counter
demonstration as you can see Mike right there up on screen
and not not very big, but they're sort of the police were
there to kind of break them up. But but here is here's a few
some react couple reactions real quickly from and a courtesy to
Al Mayedeen TV for this footage as well.
But here we'll take a look at these vox pops.
I'm wearing this T-shirt. Because it's called.
The end of the Genocide of. The arm, but.
This the. Israel meant to be the most
progressive and so-called the best military in the army, most
most democratic. For the other ones committing
genocide, I'll wear this T-shirt to call for here in solidarity.
With Bob. Villa, who has spoken out?
There you go and you can see that was the journalist there,
the reporter, Moussa Sarur, an excellent journalist with Al
Maydeen covering that story. So an interesting update from
London. A lot of people are interested
in what's happening with Bob Villain.
He was in Turkey recently, had a couple sold out gigs there just
at the tail end of the summer. Increasingly popular after being
cancelled. Yes, OK.
Well, thank you for that, Vanessa.
Let's come back to you then and back to Syria.
And the question is, are they the the new Syrian regime
looking for money from the IMF? Well, this is a very interesting
scenario. Jelani met with the IMF while he
was meeting with Trump, but only a couple of weeks ago the
Takferi regime finance minister, this was reported in Al
Mayadeen. Syria is not seeking IMF or
World Bank loans, said the interim finance minister.
So let's have a look at what he actually says.
But bearing in mind that this was following on, of course,
from Jolani and Chobani's visit to Moscow, which was followed up
with a visit by the defence minister also to Moscow, which
led to Russia potentially being able to expand its bases into
Hans and Hamar, which we reported last week in Syria,
Central Syria. So basically at the end of this
meeting in Moscow, the finance minister was talking about hope
in Syria, Russian relations, and of course that includes grain
supply, potential weapons supply, the printing of Syrian
currency, which is done by an organization, Russian
organization called Gosnak. And so therefore things were
looking, let's say, very rosy for relations between Syria and
Russia. But look what then happened
during Jelani's visit to the White House, suddenly reported
in the Syrian Arab News Agency, which is now totally aligned, of
course, with the takfiri regime. IMF is ready to support Syria's
economic recovery. Kristalina Georgieva, who's
heads up the IMF. And here's a video of Jelani
entering his meeting with the IMF in New York.
Mr. President. Welcome to the IMF.
Music. So it seems really to me that
that Trump is now stepping in to ensure that Moscow doesn't get
too much influence in Syria, Although of course, Russia would
not be able to maintain its bases in Syria and expand them
without Washington oversight, having Israel, having lobbied of
course, for Russia to remain to prevent Turkish expansionism
into Syrian territory. But let's have a look at what
the Italian institute had actually said about the fact
that they're talking about sanctions.
But then of course they go on to talk about talks with IMF
Managing director Kristalina Georgieva is to open Syria's
long closed state dominated economy.
Of course, Jolani is headed very much into the crony capitalist
system, bringing in majority family members and so on to run
the economy in Syria to attract international investment to a
country devastated by 14 years of war, of course waged by the
very entities that Jolani was meeting with in the US.
Now this is fascinating to me. Rebuilding of Syria after 14
years war will require over 200 billion, which is to be compared
to Gaza 65 billion after two years of genocide, escalated
genocide by the Zionist entity. Now what is interesting about
this, the biggest current World Bank and IMF debt is Argentina
41.8 billion. Syria is intended to be 200
billion. This is indicative of the
importance of keeping Syria completely enslaved to foreign
debt, basically weakening Syria not only militarily and from a
sovereignty perspective, partitioning it, but also
keeping it under the most heavy debt enslavement.
And just again on the subject of Moscow and and Trump vying for
influence in Syria, this was an interview at Al Arabiya English
with Robert Ford, of course, the former U.S. ambassador to Syria
involved in the rebranding of Geelani into the now perceived
political opposition and of course now unelected president
of Syria. And of course, Ford was
responsible for facilitating the death squads in the early days
of the so-called peaceful uprising in Syria.
But here he is actually talking about the competition between
Russia and the US and Syria. So let's play this.
Shara was just in Moscow recently and talked about, for
example, security arrangements, military equipment and such
things, and also the possibility of Russian involvement in the
reconstruction of Syria's oil and power sectors.
So. It's not.
Right to say that the. Relationship between Syria and
Russia is entirely cast aside or marginalized.
But I think Shada understands that American and Western
capabilities to help Syria a get past sanctions and B bring in
private investment. Working with Gulf states is far
greater than anything Russia can do for Syria economically.
So the gauntlet is very clearly thrown down, but of course the
Syrian people benefit from neither having dominance in
Syria. Thank you.
Thank you, Vanessa. Thank you for that.
We're just going to finish off today with a little bit of a
roundup of the conscription situation around Europe and the
world because of course, this has been a topic that's been
discussed in the UK in recent months and years.
Uh, so first of all, here we've got Germany because, uh, four
weeks ago there was a bit of an uproar, uh, within the GE German
administration because, uh, uh, the defence minister found
himself up against his own parliamentary group.
This is because he was trying to reach a target of 5000 new
recruits per year. But they had, you know, it was
basically impossible to do that just through voluntary
recruitment as it were. So they had come up with the
idea that in order to meet the NATO goal of 260,000 active
soldiers by 2035 + 200,000 reservists, that they would have
to bring in some form of mandatory recruitment for German
youth. And so the SPD opposed this
idea. And, and they were proposing
instead to have some kind of questionnaire based volunteer
system. So this argument was going on
for the last four weeks. And then they came up with a
proposal to run a lottery scheme.
And in this case 18 year olds would be drafted through a
lottery based selection process. But then the Ministry of Justice
in Germany raised constitutional objections to the use of a
lottery. And so the current plan now sees
mandatory registration for all adult men aged 18 and above
starting in 2027. And then that will give them an
overall picture of what they've got potentially there.
And they'll they'll make a decision as to who's going to
end up being conscripted after that.
So, so they're still working on it, but it looks like they're
coming to some conclusion on that one.
But then we moved to Croatia and they have now reintroduced
mandatory military service. This is following the end of
conscription in 2008, but they've now voted to restart it
again. Then we go to Sweden here
because they have announced what they're describing as in this
article here in Defence Industry Europe as Record defence budget.
And some of this money includes money for conscripted personnel.
They get an extra bonus by dent of the fact that it's been
conscripted. And they're also piling a load a
lot more money into the agency which is there to to conscript
people in the 1st place. We mentioned actually some time
ago that Finland is already actually running a conscription
mechanism here and to this Metro article talking about inside the
Finnish Army base where young concert scripts prepare for war.
So that's already a thing in Finland, in Finland, sorry.
And in Poland, of course, they, they already encourage or force
people to, to, to run some kind of military service in their
youth. But these they're looking at
those people then becoming part of a conscription mechanism
there as well. Poland is the most important
country of all of these because they're they're being used as
the basically spearhead of NATO's operation against Russia.
And they're really relying on that anti Russian sentiment in
Poland. And so but they can't mobilize
because it's hot. It's not very popular in Poland
to want to go die just for the sort of, you know, collective
ego of NATO in the EU. Well, indeed, indeed.
I don't think it's popular in any of these countries.
It's not. But but anyway, just just to see
one country that's thinking a little bit outside the box here
because they don't want to use the word conscription or
whatever the reason for it is. Just just briefly to look at
Canada. Their military is going to rely
on an army of public services, according to this servant.
Sorry, according to this article in Ottawa Citizen.
So basically they want to boost their ranks by 300,000.
So they're going to anybody that's a civil servant will
basically have a gun thrust into their hands and be sent on a
training course. That's a huge percentage of the
Canadian population, by the way, to have a standing force like
that. And what's that for?
Is that for Trump's invasion of Canada?
We're not certain. We're not certain.
I mean, who knows, but but I mean, we're, we're just, I mean,
was it Grant? Shap said.
We've moved from a, from a post war world to being a pre war
world. This is this is clearly ramping
up in a bad direction. I mean we had in America we have
selective service. When I was 18/19/88 I got a
birthday card from the government with a candle on it
and beautiful picture and you have to sign the back saying you
register for the draft. Now they they haven't activated
the draft but everyone has to they have a registration so they
can activate it at any time. That was a big red pill moment
for me at 18 years old because that was the height of the anti
Vietnam War protests and all these films like Platoon coming
out with Oliver Stone. And you really had to think, am
I going to go into a Vietnam situation?
I was just getting out of high school and it the answer was
clearly no. And I think everybody probably
in my class and my school agreed with me.
And probably that was pretty common across the country.
So, but it was is the system like having the registration
system in place? That's the first step.
Absolutely. So we will keep reporting on
this as time goes on. Seth, want to say thank you very
much to Vanessa and Liz and to Patrick for joining me today and
for you for watching. We'll be back in a few minutes
on the live stream. If you're UK column member for
some UK column News extra, don't forget Jeremy, Carl tonight.
We've got an interview going out at 1:00 PM tomorrow and join us
at 1:00 PM on Friday for another UK column news.
See you then. Bye bye.