UK Column News - 13th June 2025

Good afternoon. It's Friday the 13th of June 2025. Unlucky for just about all of us as we're about to see just after 1:00. And welcome to UK Column News. I'm your host Mike Robinson and my Co host today in the studio is Patrick Hennings. And welcome to the programme, Patrick. Good to be with you, Mike. And journalist Mark Anderson joins us by video link from the United States.

Now, later in the programme, Patrick and I will be speaking to Human rights lawyer Arnold Devaley, who personally witnessed the recent attempts by Russia to return Ukrainian dead to Ukraine. And Mark will be bringing us the latest on the Bilderberg Conference taking place as we speak, as well as a related organisation many people haven't heard of, and that's the Ditchley Foundation.

But we're obviously going to begin today's programme with Israel's attack on Iran. Overnight, Israel claimed it was targeting Islamic Revolutionary Guard targets in Tehran and then much wider, including the Natanz nuclear enrichment plant. Apparently they've also been targeting nuclear, civilian nuclear facilities as well. Now, according to the Times of Israel, it's believed that the chief of Iran's military and senior nuclear scientists were eliminated as the term is used

in the IDF's opening strikes. Iran has so far confirmed at least six of its nuclear scientists were killed, including Farid Faridun Abasi, the former head of the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran. Now, Donald Trump took to Truth Social to justify the attack and to warn, to warn Iran to come to the table. And then in his post, Trump said he gave Iran chance after chance. But that quotes, no matter how hard they tried, no matter how close they got, they just couldn't get it done.

Uh, so that's Trump's position. Patrick's going to have more on Trump in a second. While the West is clearly deeply happy with what has happened, Russia is less so. Uh, Dmitry Peskov, uh, said that Russia is concerned by and condemns the sharp escalation in tensions.

And in a statement to board members, Rafael Grossi, who's from the IAEA, said, I've repeatedly stated that nuclear facilities must never be attacked regardless of the context or circumstances, as it could harm both people and the environment. Such attacks of serious implications for nuclear safety, security and safeguards, as well as regional and international peace and security.

Netanyahu, for his part, took to the television screens and declared that Israel is at A at a decisive point in its history. Let's have a listen to a little bit of what he said. Moments ago, Israel launched Operation Rising Lion, a targeted military operation to roll back the Iranian threat to Israel's very survival. This operation will continue for as many days as it takes to remove this threat.

Now, As Prime Minister, I've made it clear time and again, Israel will never allow those who call for our annihilation to develop the means to achieve that goal. Tonight, Israel backs those words with action. We struck at the heart of Iran's nuclear enrichment programme. We struck at the heart of Iran's nuclear weaponization programme. We targeted Iran's main enrichment facility in Natanz. We targeted Iran's leading nuclear scientists working on

the Iranian bomb. We also struck at the heart of Iran's ballistic missile programme. Now, of course, there was no evidence forthcoming for an actual bomb, but nonetheless, what's clear there is it's not over yet. There's much more to come in the coming days. And the Netanyahu regime is dying for Iran to strike back. And while Iran is apparently launched a drone a drone strike so far, Israeli Defence Minister Katz is clearly hoping for much more.

In preparation, he said that he has signed a special order according to which a special state of emergency will be imposed in what they call the home front throughout the entire state of Israel and well the ID FS Homefront Command commands. Speaker Tesler warned that in the coming few hours quotes we could experience a significant attack from the east. These conclude these could include heavy missiles and so on. We're going to give far reaching

warnings, he said. And they said that the Homefront Command had announced immediate changes to guidelines prohibiting all educational activities, all gatherings and attendance at workplaces, with the exception of essential sectors. So just like the COVID lockdown, they said, the public is required to follow the guidelines published on the official Homefront Command channel. And Netanyahu went on in his speech to explain the objective of the operation, which is

regime change. This is what he had to say. Yet in defending ourselves, we also defend others. We defend our Arab neighbours. They too have suffered from Iran's campaign of chaos and carnage. Our actions against Iran's proxy Hezbollah led to the establishment of a new government in Lebanon and the collapse of Assad's murderous regime in Syria. The peoples of those two countries now have a chance for a different future, a better future. So too do the brave people of Iran.

And I have a message for them. Our fight is not with you. Our fight is with the brutal dictatorship that has oppressed you for 46 years. I believe that the day of your liberation is near. So regime change, absolutely. But look, he he justified his actions by ramping up the the fear rhetoric. Nuclear terrorism is the threat which the world faces. And that's pretty ironic since the West and Israel seem to be to be the real nuclear terrorist at this point. But here's what he had to say.

I want to assure the civilised world we will not let the world's most dangerous regime get the world's most dangerous weapons. And Iran plans to give those weapons, nuclear weapons, to its terrorist proxies. That would make the nightmare of nuclear terrorism all too real. The increasing range of Iran's ballistic missiles would bring that nuclear nightmare to the cities of Europe and eventually to America. So eventually to America that

Americans must be shaking. Oh yeah, yeah, we're going to start a war over here to save you in America. So everything he said was a lie. In each one of those clips, he's talking about the civilised world and he's saying Iran's the world most world's most dangerous regime. He is in the in the International Criminal Court indictment for crimes against humanity. His country's in the international courts of justice for genocide. This is Israel is, if you want

to go by the book legally. Israel is the world's most dangerous and uncivilised nation right now in the world. That's not me saying it. Those are the legal scholars. And finally, on Netanyahu's statement, he cited the lessons of the Second World War, invoking the Holocaust, which remains the justification for every appalling action of the

Israeli regime, it seems. But he went further, also invoking the Bible in what at first glance might look like him directly addressing the Christian world. Let's have a listen. After that war, the Jewish people and the Jewish state vowed never again. Well, never again is now. Today, Israel has shown that we have learned the lessons of history. When enemies vow to destroy you, believe them. When enemies build weapons of mass death, stop them.

As the Bible teaches us, when someone comes to kill you, rise and act first. This is exactly what Israel has done. Today. We have risen like lions to defend ourselves. I mean, I think we can all agree that that is pretty far from being a Christian message. Well, there's no evidence that Iran was building a bomb, first of all, and never again is happening in Gaza at the hands of Israel.

What do you say? Rise and strike first, as I already said, Well, this is basically straight off of the motto of the Israeli intelligence services, rise and kill first. This book by Ronan Bergman, who is a top sort of, you could say a court scribe of the Mossad in the Israeli security state. But nonetheless, this is excellent book which is published a few years ago and I do recommend people at least take a look at it or at least

read the Cliff notes on that. Well, look, we we mentioned Trump earlier, but what, what's your thoughts on it, on his position? The question, Mike, is what did he know and when T know it, because the the the line the US is selling at the moment is well, this was wasn't us. We weren't involved. This was all Israel. They went on their own, Trump said. I tried to warn them, but they wouldn't listen. The same old shtick, right? Well, let's put this up on on

the screen for a moment here. Trump told Netanyahu on Monday not to attack Iran. That's on record. Wall Street Journal, there's a number of admissions like this. So that's interesting. So what did he know and when did he know it here? Well, Daniel McAdams wanted to know this. He's director of the Ron Paul Institute. Then on this programme as well.

Press report stated 2 days ago that President Trump told Netanyahu not to even think about attacking Iran before the scheduled talks with the US. Sounds good, right? If that was the the case with tonight's attack, Naniel demonstrated what he thinks of the US, his largest and only financial and military backer. He thinks we are his little bioche. You could say I don't know the French pronunciation. He thinks that Trump is his bioche. And are we as Daniel McAdams?

I mean, this is what a lot of real conservatives are saying today. So big, big debate. So what did he know and when did he know? How credible is this party line? Mike, the denials and contradictions in the media today are just incredible. BBC saying US says it was not involved in Israel's military strikes down the BBC article. Mike. They admit that Israel had notified Washington before, but it's buried at the bottom of the article. But look at the difference in the Reuters headline.

Israel notified Washington before the Iran strike, says Israeli state broadcaster. That's also been corroborated by someone. We'll show you in a minute. But what does that say? That that means the United States gave Israel the green light? Am I? Am I interpreting this? Well, unless the US intelligence agency, Defence Department, the State Department aren't communicating with Trump. Right, which is more scary, actually. So what is it this president? Peace through strength.

I think it's weakness through war. And this is the problem with Trump. Now, here's one of his close confidence at Fox News, Bret Baier from Special Report, kind of spilling the beans in a way and kind of almost boasting about the whole situation. Listen to this. Hey, Tres. Yeah, I just spoke to President Trump. One thing you know, the president was aware of Israel's action before it. It happened. There were no surprises here. But he gave me a quote.

He said Iran cannot have a nuclear bomb. We're hoping to get back to the negotiating table. We'll see. There are several people in leadership in Iran that will not be coming back. Now the president I know has spoken to. It was the end of that was chilling. Like there's some people in the Iran leadership that won't be coming back. They're doing a victory lap in the United States about the killing of top Iranian officials, including decorated nuclear scientists.

There's no evidence that they're working on weapons, by the way. And these are people that liaise with the International Atomic Energy Agency on a regular basis, if I'm not mistaken. We'll show you the gravity of that as well in a moment. But you know the hypocrites democracy from Donald Trump. Listen to this is Donald Trump back in 2016 when he was Larping as a peace president and that that's how he got a lot of

votes. The anti war vote in the original MAGA camp is a significant demographic and it did help to bring Trump push him over the edge to victory not once but twice. And here he is basically lambasting Barack Obama in 2015 and 16 on the campaign trail. Watch this. Our president will start a war with Iran because he has absolutely no ability to negotiate. He's weak and he's ineffective.

So the only way he figures that he's going to get re elected, and as sure as you're sitting there, is to start a war with Iran. Sure, as I'm sitting here. So Obama can't negotiate, vote for me, I can negotiate. What a hypocrite Donald Trump has turned out to be and what a fraud of this. He's a peace president. This is just if we we don't need any more lessons than what we see in right in front of us. But here's the real story. And now it gets interesting, doesn't it?

Times of Israel take a look at this report. US helped lull Iran into the belief that no attack was imminent here. And this is, again, the Israeli press Look at this. Israeli sources say the attack on our Duran was preceded by a deception operation that included media, diplomatic components like Steve Witkoff and both internal and external involving various actors. That is incredibly damning, but it doesn't end there. What caught my eye, Mike, is actually in the sidebar.

Let's take a closer look at this. What is in the sidebar? Take a look at this covert Mossad base in Iran activated drones overnight to hit missile launchers, officials say, and also to take out possibly radar positions and anti aircraft positions as well. So what does this remind us of? What did we report on last

Friday? Well, that's that's actually the second thing that reminds us of that, because the first thing that reminds us of that is the fact that the attack happened the day before there were supposed to be talks. So in Ukraine, the attack happened the day before there were supposed to be talks. In Iran, the attack happened the day before, there was supposed to be talks. And it looks like there was covert activity happening in country in both cases. This is a bit of a coincidence.

And kill web, kill web technology like a reported on last week, very similar to Operation Spider's web. And who do they think the fingerprints are on that? Well, the US and Britain were were fingered with and Israel, some of the American commentators said Mossad might have been involved in the Ukrainian operation against Russia. That's on record.

There's a number of people that on various podcasts, some of the top former intelligence officials have said that it's interesting how it all matches up, doesn't it? I find it to be incredibly interesting. So let's take a look here. British and American involvement. Are they militarily involved in this attack? Yesterday? They say they're not. Well, let's take a look at award winning journalist Hala Jaber reporting here. two US planes are basically taking off out of Qatar here.

This is Flight RADAR 24. It's open source data. Take a closer look at that. What exactly? What exactly are they in terms of planes? US Air Force? So these would be collecting data, surveillance, possibly radar data, possibly relaying it to the Israelis. I would think that they would be. I don't think they would be passive on this operation. So does this count as being involved? If that's the case, that's the United States. What about Britain?

Probably the same I would guess. Well, she actually gave us some data on that too. Royal Air Force, same place out of Qatar, same base. There they are. And there's the plane details there. And again, this is open source data, which she did a very nice job of collating for us. So much appreciated. Great work as usual by Khalid Jaber, Mike. So it is. There's so many things that have just set up this event and teed it up.

Even shades of Iraq, You know, the whole WMD lies that we were sold in in advance of the Iraq war, that Iraq was, you know, inches away from a nuclear weapon. We we're seeing the same things here, right with the atomic International Atomic Energy Agency.

Well, let's let's talk about the International Atomic Energy Agency then, because their Board of Governors behind closed doors has voted in favour of a resolution declaring Iran and breach of its non proliferation obligations.

To quote them, they say the board finds that that Iran's many failures to uphold its obligations since 2019 to provide the agency with full and timely cooperation regarding undeclared nuclear material and activities at multiple undeclared locations in Iran constitutes non compliance with its obligations under the safeguards agreement with the agency. Now this is what Reuters is reporting the resolution is saying.

The vote according to Reuters was 19411 abstentions and three votes against and the three votes against were Russia, China and Burkina Faso. Now this Patrick to me is fascinating because we know that the Organisation for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has been completely Co opted by western regimes to promote western narratives as highlighted in Pierce Robinson's series of articles on the UK column

website. And the the first question that I have for you is, has the IAEA gone the same way then? It does appear and there's actually evidence for this actually university Tehran Mohamed Morandi Professor Mohamed Randi who who's actually on the JCPOA Iran nuclear deal media advisory team for the Iranian government in Vienna. He had something to say about this.

There was an intelligence leak Mike, a few days before this hugely Iran had got a hold of a bunch of material taken from Israeli intelligence somehow and have made bits of it public and it shows how Israel Co opted the IEA and they released some of that information only a bit. And this was just a few days ago. I don't believe in coincidences.

Watch this. As you know, there are a huge amount of documents, and these are only bits and pieces that they are publishing for the sake of the general public and also because of the attempt by the United States and its European partners to put pressure on Iran.

The Iranians, as you know quite well, they believed from many years past that the International Atomic Energy Agency was providing the Israeli regime with information about our scientists in order for them to be able to assassinate those scientists. And, and they were providing all sorts of information in order to carry out sabotage as well by the Americans and the Israeli regime.

Because all of the all of the operations carried out against Iran are joint operations between the Americans and the Israeli regime and often other countries in the West or even in the region that cooperate so. So there we are. And so let's put some meat on the bones on those accusations just a couple of days ago. Well, here it is. Take a look at this up on screen again. This is the Cradle. Very good outlet here. Of course, this was published in a number of different outlets

here. Leaked documents released by the Iranian media agency show the International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi has been fully coordinating with the Israelis and carrying out its directives. This is earth, earth shaking stuff. I mean, he should he still be in charge of this organisation? Well, let's take a look at that. So yeah, that's, that's the claim there. Those are the accusations, Mike.

And you know what? We just have to go back a little bit in time, just checking the Israeli press and what did I find? Well, I found this Israelis Prime Minister at the time, Naftali Bennett, meets with the IAEA chief Grossi over Iran's nuclear activity. So meeting in private with the Israeli leadership. Israel has a nuclear weapons arsenal of 300 estimated

undeclared warheads. They're meeting in secret with the International Atomic Energy Agency to not to talk about Israel's nukes, but to talk about Iran's when the US intelligence agency's latest assessment says Iran does not have a nuclear bomb and they're not developing it. So, I mean, I don't know what to say at this point, quite frankly. So consider all of this, Mike. And you know, the lessons are should you get into negotiations

with the United States? We've just given you 2 reasons why you shouldn't over the last two weeks. It's a completely impossible situation for countries like Iran, Russia and China because, you know, at the end of the day, if they militarise themselves, build up a defence capability that is see that is presented by the West as being a, you know, a threat to the West and they are the aggressor. On the other hand, if they sit back and do nothing, they just

get bombed. So, you know, what are they supposed to do? It's it's an impossible situation for you. You can make the argument that Iran should have acquired a nuclear weapon 10 years ago, 15 years ago, but bit the bullet back then and when the United States was mired in Iraq and perhaps we wouldn't be even having this conversation right now, quite frankly. So so here, here's for the Russians. This is a Russia Day was just yesterday. Take a look at this up on screen.

There he is, Marco Rubio, Secretary of State. And what did he have to say at? He gave us a great message to the Russian people for Russia Day. He said the Secretary of State took the opportunity to reaffirm the United States desire for constructive engagement with the Russian Federation to bring about a durable peace between Russia and Ukraine. It's great. And you know, you got plaudits in the Russian press for this.

Did would you trust Marco Rubio? No, not after what we've seen in the last 24 hours and certainly not what we saw last week with the Ukrainian attack on the Russian nuclear triad long range bombers. So I mean, that's the thing. That's the question. Do you trust the United States? This is the big question. We put a we put a big fat question mark up on screen there with that, with that graphic. But so that's the that's the $100 million question, Mike, why

would you get into negotiations? So, you know, how do you see this playing out over the next couple of days where we're going to see a whole bunch of tit for tat retaliations or is it simply just going to escalate and end up in a much broader regional conflict? That's a very good question, Mike. And we don't know Iran could retaliate as we're talking right now in this live broadcast. It could come immediately, it could come later.

We don't know for sure. What we do know is that they are capable of mounting a pretty substantial conventional missile attack, which they have done 2 times before. They didn't launch True Promise 3IN response to Israel's counter attack back in October, which they promised. So that means the door is open for Iran to launch in their mind anyway. True Promise 3 and 4, but we'll see. How badly compromised or is the Iranian military hierarchy? How badly compromised?

Are there sort of a radar defence and all the other systems required to defend themselves and maybe even launch an attack? We don't know for sure. We can only wait and see. the United States says they will defend Israel, so they allow Israel to attack. Where's the UN Security Council going to be on this?

I mean, this is an act of war. And any country, as we said before the programme, like any country that's willing to target another country's nuclear reactors is willing to use nuclear weapons on another country who doesn't have nuclear weapons. That's Israel willing to do that. And they've demonstrated that. So talk about the most dangerous country in the world, Benjamin Netanyahu. I don't think so. Mark, let me welcome you to the programme, what have you.

If you've got any thoughts on that, let us know. Let's start there. Have you got any thoughts on what we just presented? Well, I think just to double down on the sheer hypocrisy of Israel, which long has been known to have a nuclear arsenal, to call everyone else a nuclear threat. Even the US and Russia back in the Cold War days, that they considered it stable to have 10,000 nukes each. You know, there was a balance of power and that was considered acceptable.

And Iran can't even develop one. Even if they had one weapon, they would have a sovereign right to develop that. But evidently they don't have such weapons. So I would just leave it at that. OK. Thank you, Mark. Now, of course, you're here to talk about the Bilderberg

meeting, which is taking place as we speak in Stockholm in Sweden. What are your thoughts on it? Well, that the big bad Bilderberg boys are back in town. Everybody's favourite group from which wars spring, rumours of wars, plans for wars, many allege. Course they're meeting Stockholm, Sweden, it's their 71st meeting in 71 years. As I mentioned last week when I did a very brief preliminary, we do have, of course, they release it at the last minute.

They're just so accommodating. We do have the list of their topics, many of which are bluntly one word, but I guess we have to go with it. Here's their detailed list. Transatlantic relationship, then we have Ukraine, then U.S. economy. Europe is another one. Middle East that's kind of interesting right now. Authoritarian access. Anybody that's not a globalist is an authoritarian. Defence. Innovation and resilience, Then AI deterrence and national

security, another one. Proliferation, then geopolitics of energy and critical minerals, and finally depopulation and migration. 11 topics in all. And as you see that some of those are one word, you could literally drive a tank through them and not even rub on the sides. But anyway, we have a little bit of footage as I'm describing some of the participants. Thanks to Dan Dix for Press for Truth. He's quite a trooper out there.

Anyway, some of the key attendees, we, of course, we have Albert Borla of Pfizer. He's becoming a fixture there at Bilderberg. Good for him.

Some of the other interesting ones, there's about 140 from North America and Europe. Like usual, we have Christopher Donahue, the US commander for the US Army in Europe and Africa. We also have, of course, Mathias Doffner of Axel Springer. He's been working with AI creators and promoters to to merge and bring connections between the mass media cartel and AI. There's a lot going on there. We see Peter Thiel being tailed

by Dan Dix here in that footage. As I'm speaking, a very, a very militant behaviour as he exhibited there, just marching forward without saying a word. But some of the others are Michael Kratzios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, a Robert Lighthizer, who in Trump's first term was his trade negotiator. He's returning as a privateer, the Centre for American Trade.

We also have Samuel Papero, the commander of the US Indo Pacific branch of the Army. In terms of the the country of the UK, we have the member of Parliament, Jeremy Hunt, who's there, the president of the Bundestag, Julia Klockner. Some other interesting ones. Now the Bank for International Settlements, the central Bank of the central banks, they don't often have someone at Bilderberg, now they do.

Pablo Hernandez, General manager elect of the Bank for International Settlements, rather interesting there. And today is just an initial swipe at this. I'll be doing a pretty in depth article and investigation of all these connections, a group I'll be talking about a little later today, the Ditchley Foundation. One of the connections there is John Sowers, long time MA 6 now he's with Newbridge Advisory Limited. He's at Bilderberg and he's

pretty high up at Ditchley now. An interesting one as well is Jason Smith, a member of the US Congress. Well, who cares about the Congressman from the 8th District of Missouri? He's a Republican, pretty pro Trump, but he happens to be chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, which writes all the tariff laws, trade policy, as well as customs guidelines, customs regulations. So he's a very key member of Congress.

It could be that they're trying to bend his ear or even bend his arm on tariffs and trade policy to get things more aligned with the globalist. I've got a call in to Jason Smith's office. They haven't returned that call yet. They're usually pretty slow about those things, if they return them at all. I might have to try email on that. Sometimes they're more responsive. Other than that, those are some of the big ones.

For now, you've got the usual sellouts at the media, although there are fewer of the media legacy media people there than usual. I mentioned Mr Doffner of Axel Springer of there's also your Fariz Zakaria, of course. He's been with CNNA long time and he's a think tanker. With the CFR, you have Gideon Rachman of the Financial Times, Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, some of the key ones

there, but not quite as many. Usually you have like 9 or 10, maybe 11, possibly up to a dozen media sellouts who go in there and collaborate with the globalist movement here, the globalist Bilderbergers, but don't actually ever write about it. So that's a lot of the goings on

some of the people there. And of course, they'll be much more in the days and weeks ahead as I work on my major article about this and look for all the ways that this intersects the different topics, the different participants and whatnot. So we'll leave it there for now, but much more connection wise with Ditchley a little later on in today's show. Thank you, Mark. Thank you very much for that.

I quite enjoyed Peter Thiel fleeing the cameraman with that stern look on his face, like he didn't want anybody to know he was there. He wasn't terribly. Happy. Libertarian Peter. Peter Thiel. Yes, indeed, Palantir, of course. And yeah, we love them. OK, now let's move on. If you like what the UK column

does and you would like to support us, there are ways to do that on our support page. You could make a donation or join as a member. And if you do join as a member, you can get access to the the members only content, for example, UK column News Extra which follows this programme. You can also support us by picking something up at the UK Column shop and you buy something from Clive to carl.com using the link on this page. We do get small Commission from

any purchases there. But if you can't do any of that, please do at least share the material you find on the UK Column website on the various platforms. Let's get round the algorithms because they're constantly in the way. Now tonight at 7:00 PM, Jerome is speaking to Charles and myself as usual for Friday, and that has been another entertaining conversation. So join us for that at 7:00 PM tonight in all the usual places.

ukcolumn.org/live, for example. And yesterday's 1:00 PM interview, Brian speaking to Vicky Ash on her journeys from abuse to her healing is on the website On Demand version. If you can watch that, please do. Another reminder of the Sounds Beautiful Festival, 26th and 29th of June in Wimborne, Dorset. We will all be there. And if you haven't entered the competition yet, the details are on screen for two free tickets to that. Please do join for that as well

or take part in that as well. Patrick, you wanted to mention the Freedom Flotilla. Yeah, just to give people there's an update on this. Most of the people are back. Three are stuck in Israel. These are the people that were apprehended by the Israelis on the Madeleine sailboat this past week. And because of the attack with Iran, the three of them are still incarcerated. The others have made it back home. So more information, go to freedomflotilla.org.

And that is their ex Twitter profile right up there. So all the information is there. Incredible effort by these people and they've paid a a huge price for it, but also got a lot of support for it as well. Now we did a great interview with one of the organisers, which was yesterday, Doctor Frank Romano and to give us updates as well as the Rema Hassan, the European MEP from France that she was incarcerated and detained by the Israelis as well.

So that's up there. YouTube tried their hardest to block this. So please you people go to YouTube and share this link, watch this, like it, like the video as well. YouTube did not like like this at all for some reason and probably because of the material that we shared and presented and the testimonies that we gave on this great live stream that we did just yesterday in fact.

And by the way, we do have some of our listeners, including listeners and viewers of this show who are on the Global March to Gaza, which is marching through the Sinai desert to the Rafa border crossing. One of them in particular I've been in touch with. And the Egyptian government has cracked down hard. They've deported 170, I think European participants in this by raiding hotels, believe it or

not. So some of the people have managed to get out of Cairo and are making their way towards the Rafah border crossing. So we'll give you updates on that as soon as we get, as soon as we know more. Yeah. Thank you, Patrick. OK, Now let's move on to Ukraine.

And on Wednesday this week, the bodies of 1212 Ukrainian soldiers were returned from Russia as part of an exchange agreement. In return, Russia apparently only received 27 bodies. That is of note, as we'll see in a second. Now, Moscow's chief negotiator said that that this followed an earlier attempt to do the same thing on the 8th of June. But at that point, on the 8th of June, Ukraine seemed to be refusing to take the 6000 bodies that Russia was attempting to return.

Now, yesterday, Patrick and I spoke to international human rights lawyer Arnold de Valle about what he witnessed on the ground at that, at that attempted exchange. Have a listen to this. On the issue of Ukraine, Mike, there's a huge story. It's been I think massively underreported and one of the reasons because the potential for embarrassment is pretty amazing. We'll bring up on screen here. Here's the president of Ukraine at the moment, Vladimir Zelinsky.

And he is a little bit concerned of by a lot of things and this latest story is not going to make life any easier for him. And this is an article up at 21st Century wire.com. Convoy of the the dead, Kiev's mendacious pretext to disown its fallen soldiers. This is written by Arno Devilay at 21st Century Wire. And we've got we've got some video mic. And this is from on site at the

exchange. This was provided to us by Arno Devilay. We'll roll this this clip of the of the dead bodies in the back, the Russian refrigeration trucks that Ukraine refused to accept. Let's go ahead and watch this. No. So that was at the border near in in the Briansk region of there. And this up on screen will bring this as well. This is a fellow here wearing a mask in front of this truck here

at the body exchange site. Actually, we've got this person on the line live on the call with us right now from the region. Is Arno Devil A joining us. He is an international human rights lawyer and author and a journalist joining us on the live link right now. Arno, how are you? Hello, Patrick, and hello Mike. How are you? This is incredible story, Arno. So you were at the exchange site. So what? Just describe us the scene of what happened and then let's put this into context.

Apparently we're told you can correct us if we have any of the details wrong, but Russia had 6000 Ukrainian soldiers that it was a dead dead soldiers in an exchange which is part of the Istanbul agreement. This is an important thing to kick start peace negotiations. And for some reason the Ukrainian government, Zelensky didn't want to know. Budanov. I think the head of intelligence said, oh, we'll take it sometime next week, but we're not sure. Can you explain to us what went on here?

Go ahead, Arno. Yes. Well, it all started, as you mentioned, in the renewal of negotiations, quote out of court negotiation in Istanbul. Why do I say quote out of court? Well, because the Ukrainian delegation is de facto not allowed to negotiate anything per presidential decree bearing on territories, NATO membership, the size of the army post war Ukraine, not to mention any issue related to Russian language as recognised by the

Ukrainian constitution. Right by the minority ethnic Russians in Ukraine. The only thing they were allowed to discuss with the Russians. And one can surmise that this was a nod to Donald Trump, just to make sure that Donald Trump would not be miffed by a complete lack of cooperation from the Ukrainians was to discuss the issue of swapping prisoners of wars. And so up to that point, everything looks pretty dandy to the extent you know, they are

specific lists of prisoners. When it got dicey for Kiev is when Russia, as a sign of good faith and unilaterally proposed, offered to give back to Ukraine upward to 6000 of its fallen soldiers. This was somewhat of a shock to the Ukrainians. Why was it a shock? For the simple reason that. By and large, the crews, the people who are in the battlefield trying to dodge drones and or artillery shells in order to recover the bodies are Russian soldiers. The Ukrainians do not retrieve

their bodies. So this was actually a shock and and I guess the number must have been also overwhelming. And so the delegation are Kiev by extension, basically stonewalled the Russians, but the silence basically implied that they were not opposed to it. And so on that basis, the Russians decided to basically bring along to the border upward to 6000 soldiers so that four trucks that you that you see if you have the pictures contained about 1200 of those 6000 Orland Ukrainian soldiers.

The remaining being stored in a refrigerated train nearby. And so the Russian side essentially instructed informed their Ukrainians counterpart that they would be really ready to proceed with the transfer. This was last Sunday.

And so we were somewhat notice put on the notice by the Russian Ministry of Defence to get ourself in the brilliance Regent so we could document the transfer of of fallen soldiers to Ukraine. And incidentally, also the retrieval by Russia of its own fallen soldiers, an aspect that I will touch on later on. And by the time we got there, essentially nothing happened and was dead silence.

And so the, the officer in charge of the transfer essentially attempted to get the Ukrainians to commit to some kind of promise to come and retrieve their their, their fallen. And basically it was met with complete silence. And obviously after a while we understood what the configuration was to be like. And so we left. Not without, you know, of course, filming some of the corpses, which you have to understand for some of them, if not most of them, are extremely

damaged. They've been left sometimes days at a time in the kind of Norman's land between the two, the two armies exposed to weather conditions, exposed to rodents, exposed to stray raging dogs. They have been, they have been by and large extremely damaged. And it took the Russian, you know, all the latest, most advanced forensic technology to identify some of those people.

And so to the extent there was only 1200, as it was first batch of 1200, those were people that were listed, you know, the the names, the ranks and were were provided to the Ukrainians. So there was no, you know, attempted attempted.

This was no attempt to to somehow trap or amber rest to Ukrainians. But, you know, the idea was also to basically provide in accordance with the Geneva Convention, you know, a proper Russians would say a Christian burials to those people and to bring closure to the families. And so to the extent this did not happen, the way it should have happened, you know, was was somewhat of a of a of a shock.

But you know, one has to understand that the Ukrainians obviously were surprised by by the the offer the Russians, not least of which because of the sheer size of the of the batch. And also because this implied that per Ukrainian law, they would have to provide compensation, financial

compensation to the families. And it turns out that the monies that were allocated to the Ukrainian authorities, often by their Western curators, was dilapidated and disappeared in the pockets of the dairy people who were supposed to be putting

it aside for such events. So this is this is the the, the the central reason and of course last but not least the the the potential for civil strife in Ukraine to the extent that people would realise that despite what followed the Murzlinski's has been stating IE that Ukraine suffered a mere 47,000 losses. This was a figure that he put forward back in December 2020. On that point, on that point, let's bring that to, we'll bring that up on the screen actually.

So this, this, this was the last sort of official statement, as it were, from the government in Kiev here. This is an article in Political Mike from December of 2024. And you know what he's saying here. And this is their sort of, you know, official number at the time, 43,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed and 370,000 wounded. That compares with the alleged 600,000 Russian dead that they've reported for Russia or that Russia's reported on the Ukrainian side.

So a huge disparity there. And on the compensation side, and this is where the scandal gets interesting, there's a lot of different estimations. I mean, this is from one source we have from Ukrainian website saying that the compensation ranges from 2, 170, two, 190,000 per family upwards of you know, 540,000. I mean that's on the high end. The low end I've heard is 50,000 per family.

There's a lot of different estimations, but based on the 6000 dead that were to be exchanged here that Ukraine didn't want, if you multiply 6000 times $50,000 US, that is $300 million. And so a huge disparity there in, in, in terms of budgets and what you said, Arno and we'll, we'll come back to Arno on this. But so the, the bottom line, Arno is there's an incentive here not to report the fallen.

There's a financial incentive, A, cause the money's gone and B, they just don't want to, wouldn't want to pay it out anyway. So they made this promise to sell the war, to sell conscription, to sell participation in this fight. And the families generally would accept it if they knew there was a huge compensation payout at the end. And now we see evidence that Ukraine doesn't want to pay the compensation.

And that to me is a huge scandal because there's a financial incentive to downplaying the casualty numbers and not reporting official dead reporting them, quote, as missing. Is that how Ukraine is managing this? Yes, pretty much. This is what's called a, an illusory promises. Basically, you're trying to entice people to sign up.

I mean, we've seen those scenes of young people, you know, male and less young people being literally snatched out on the streets of Ukraine. But the, the idea initially was that, yes, there would be a financial incentive for you to sign up. And to the extent you were to fall defending your country, your family would benefit from a substantial financial compensation package. And obviously, you know, Kiev is trying to have it's cake and eat

it too. And this is actually yes, the, the, the, the central issue here that, and also it's also a public relation disaster waiting to happen because some of the Kiev senior officials have gone on record trying to minimise the level of casualties. And if we go, if the 6000 is any indication to go by and, and I basically suspect that the Russians have a lot more in, in storage in their own morgues.

And that this would be interesting because since Sunday, yesterday, Wednesday, you know, for actually for, for chance, Boudanov kept his word. They, they, they actually retrieved their dead and they provided the Russian with 27 of their fallen. So you've got a ratio of one for 45, essentially 27 Russian bodies versus 12112 Ukrainian bodies. That's a snapshot of this conflict at the current time, at the T moment. And it does not look remotely consistent with what Kiev has

been saying all along. So this is to me, this is a bomb waiting to explore. Some people, military historians and or observers of various conflict have often pointed out to key battles as the turning point of the war. I personally think this could be the, the, the which we call it the the dam that once it's it's cracked open would more basically, you know, put Kiev into such a defensive against the wall position that this could really unravel, make everything unravel for the Kiev regime.

Arno, a question for me on this. You were talking about potentially 45 to one in terms of casualty numbers. What I was interested to see if you had any insight on was, is that because actually that's representative of what's happening on the battlefield? Or is it the case that actually the Russians are being much more careful about how they handle the injured and the dead? On, on the, you know, of, of Ukrainians and the Ukrainians are of Russians?

Is it, Is it? Perhaps the the Ukrainians is a part of it, at least that the Ukrainians are treating the dead with disrespect. Yes, that's actually a very good question, Mike. The Ukrainians have known, not been known to, you know, try to preserve human life by and large, IE this war being characterised as a human meat

grinder. Whereas the Russians, you know, and there's been a lot that's been reported about how when Pregorjean was alive, you know, it would basically, you know, get those convicts, you know, out in the battlefield. And that would somehow be, you know, kind of used as a way to reach military objectives in a way that could be sold to the Russian public to the extent those people were, by and large, people living and leading bad lines.

But the Russians, by and large, and that includes the Wagner PMC, always took great care of making sure everybody was well equipped and not sent into reckless military manoeuvres. Whereas on the Ukrainian side, it's more, you know, since the war is being waged more on the PR level, as long as they somehow plug the proverbial holes within, you know, along the front lines, it doesn't really matter whether or not conscripts are being cared for to the same extent that you

would expect. And Arno, that is an excellent point. In addition, Arno, we have the German, the Germans were accepting some of the Ukrainian debt into their, what I would probably think is a bigger, well funded, better resourced morgue facility and they invoiced the Ukrainian government. And our our understanding is that the Ukrainian government didn't want to pay the invoice to the German morgue. I mean, that came out this week

as well. Can just briefly quickly I want to get on to the Red Cross, but quickly. Can you verify if that's true or not? Well, so far this story hasn't BeenVerified. Those are the story that you're alluding to is a Polish language publication on the Polish Telegram channel which alluded to a Danish MP saying that essentially the bodies that Russia held in which Ukraine was somewhat obligated to to attend to would be shipped over to European based morgues.

But in order to do so, Kiev would have to basically pay for the service, which they were not able to do. And so this Danish MPs was basically saying, you know, to the extent we're not getting a bet for the for the service, maybe it's going to have to handle it. So just to be. Kind of like yes, it remains to be confirmed. OK, yeah.

And, and just just to just to confirm very important point, Arno brought up all the names and this of of the Ukrainians have been confirmed by Ukraine. The the list that Russia provided was accepted and validated by Ukraine. So it wasn't as if they had questions over whether these were their soldiers or not. That was agreed upon then they

just refused to accept the body. Now, this isn't, this brings up an interesting international law and and human rights dilemma, which Arno will be able to briefly comment on before we go, but we'll bring this up. And this was tweeted actually Mike, in May 15th by the Ukrainian Red Cross committee of all people and basically saying the Geneva Conventions preserve our humanity during war. And there's two parts of this list that I want to bring to our attention.

The 1st is the dead deserve dignity. And again, this is the International Red Cross and here we are. The other one is families know the fate of missing loved ones. And so I think these are two very pertinent, important points. Briefly, Arnold, because we only have a a minute or two left, but I thought that was interesting. And, and I believe you've also contacted the Red Cross committee for comment on this very issue. Have they replied to your query yet? But go ahead briefly, Arnold.

Well, they haven't replied specifically, but obviously to the extent they were present at the site yesterday, they took this calling them out on on Twitter quite seriously. And I called them out but once, but twice. But what's interesting, and I believe that this is only the beginning, this exchange yesterday set a precedent and to the extent I think Russia has again, 10s of thousands more of those bodies, this is going to become a situation where there's

no turning back. What would be the justification now? Russia will continue providing A detailed list of the the fallen Ukrainian soldiers that they have in in their custody. And so this is again going to be as time goes on, this this has opened a breach, so to speak in, in this PR stick, you know, of Kiev and, and I I believe we are going to be seeing more and more of those of those exchanges to

to Kiev's dismay. And and this basically brings into focus also how the Ukrainian branch of the ICRC has has somewhat been extremely non vehement vis a vis Kiev as far as prompting them to seek their fallen and this unfortunately does not look very good for them. That's another scandal within the scandal, Arnold. So just here's the article here. The convoy of the dead, Kiev's mendacious pretext to disown its own fallen soldiers by Arnold Devilay. Arnold, I want to thank you for

bringing us the story. Also for providing the video clips as well. But we really appreciate it. Thank you for coming on the UK column. And as yet still no word from the Red Cross committee in Ukraine. So if we do get any answer from them, of course we'll share that with you on another programme. Yes, OK. Thank you, Patrick now and thank you to Arno as well for joining us once again. Mark, let's come back to you. And well, Bilderberg, not the

only meeting taking place at the moment, Dutchie Foundation also holding a meeting. What's going on with them?

The sense that some of us may have heard vaguely of the Digitally Foundation, but it turns out they're quite busy along the same ideological lines as Bilderberg and the Trilateral Commission. They're the most open of the three digitally being the most open trilateral in between Bilderberg, the most secretive and a quick other footnote Digitally, which is meeting right now as we speak, even while Bilderberg is meeting in Sweden and digitally is meeting

as his slide shows, the 12th through the 14th of June. So they actually started yesterday and their topic is renewing democracy, how to strengthen democratic resilience and out compete authoritarianism in Europe. So another noted aspect of digitally is they they're a one topic shop. Every time they meet is just one topic, as opposed to the multiple topics of those other

two groups. And another quick footnote is there's an American Digitally Foundation founded in 1964, the original in the UK founded 1958, only four years after Bilderberg, and the Canadian Digitally Foundation 1981. Now there's a couple slides here that show their upcoming topics because digitally, it turns out, meets 6, maybe 7 * a year in September. The next topic is Indo Pacific strategy deterrence in its diplomatic and economic context.

In October. Energy security and climate action get this, making climate action politically deliverable. So they, they are absolute religious believers in the common climate change narrative. They've got to make it fit. They've got to force fit this thing, a couple other programmes this coming November. How can Europe pay for and organise the defence it needs? A lot can be drawn from that.

And this coming December, just like they did a year ago, the role of the new 4th estate in renewing democracy. And what's interesting there, and this is one of the highlights, is besides trying to make the climate change thing work no matter what, these guys at Ditchley, many familiar faces, some not so familiar, they believe that the legacy media must be salvage. It must be revived, resuscitated, whatever they can do, restored. There's no room for actual real Free Press, real news

alternatives. They're going to move heaven and earth. Maybe it's philanthropic funding, maybe it's not. They're looking at all the different models to try and salvage and resuscitate. The slowly dying legacy media. So that's high in their agenda in fact and we can show the the next slide. Another thing different about Ditchley is they pretty much unless otherwise announced, they meet at the same place and that's the Ditchley Park Estate in Oxfordshire.

Not exactly a falling down shanty there that they that they meet in some very, very amazing grounds are around that that home. Anyway, looking ahead on that media note, and they put a lot of emphasis on media. This is this next slide in fact fits into that narrative. As I mentioned, this coming December is just like last December. And here's what they did last December. The role of the 4th estate in

democracies. How should the news and information ecosystem evolve to develop resilience and meet audience needs in a turbulent political, technological and commercial landscape? And this that that was last December and then this past February was great British growth. How do we take the U KS economy forward in a period of geopolitical competition?

And I'll have some links in the show notes where people can read more in depth because one thing about digitally is that they they report much more after the fact in detail than Bilderberg would ever think about and a little bit more than trilateral.

But one major announcement before we finish up just some very brief miscellaneous things is Digitally is planning to run an expanded media programme in the near future with generous support from the MacArthur Foundation, a very noted supporter of public television in the US.

This will be framed around 4 anchor events planned to take place at Digitally London, also in New York and at Digitally Park and in Germany. And so they're, they're really expanding on a solidifying and expanding their support for the the dominant media to keep their interests and their profits and their plans into place. They don't want any actual

independent voices out there. And just to wind this up, the director who shows up in pretty much all the listings, the overall director of the Ditchley Foundation is a rather familiar face. James Arroyo, previous director for data at the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office. And we'll move on from there and just go through some miscellaneous things. Casimir Yost was 1 Bilderberg connection from Bilderberg to Ditchley. He's 1 of 32 of Ditchley's American branch members.

He was one of the six ever honorary American secretary generals at Bilderberg. And he's also, of course, very active at Ditchley. But Bilderberg abandoned that position. There are no more honorary American secretary generals there.

Then we also have within Ditchley's organisation, we have the Council of Management. Members include BBC reporter James Landale in the Council of Management, Robert Wills, an apparent descendant of the founders to Ditchley, Glasgow Foundation president Marjorie and Glasgow. So they have 11 members and that group, the Council of Management is going to meet in July, I believe July 16th. Some other conflicts of interests and curiosities.

This is Steven Erlinger, the chief diplomatic correspondent in Europe for The New York Times. He's actually a member of the Ditchley Foundation. Governors talk about a conflict of interest for reporters, and they're having an annual meeting coming up the 24th of September. Some others on that list include John Sowers, who's also at Bilderberg. So that's another Ditchley

Bilderberg connection. And lastly, digitally just opened up a New London pad, another London outlet and it is at 1 Saint James Square and 110th of a mile away at 10 Saint James Square is Chatham House itself. So birds of a feather flock together, but this is another group to keep on our radar from here on out guys. So very interesting stuff I've. Been to 1 Saint James square. I know, I know exactly where that is. Very posh address. Yes, indeed, Thank you very much

for that. We will be reporting much more on that I'm quite sure in the future. Thank you, Mark, thank you Patrick. Things kicking off again between Israel and Iran as we're on the programme, undoubtedly we'd be talking about that an extra in a couple of minutes time. So do join us if you're UK column member. If you're not, please consider joining because you're missing a lot. But otherwise, have a great weekend and we'll be back at

1:00 PM on Monday as usual. Well, if you remember, see you in a couple of minutes for extra. See you then. Bye bye.