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