UK Column News - 16th May 2025

Good afternoon. It's Friday the 16th of May 2025, just after 1:00. Welcome to UK column News. I'm your host, Mike Robinson. Joining me in the studio today is Patrick Hemingson. Welcome to the programme, Patrick. Great to be with you, Mike. And by video link, we have Mark Anderson. Now we're going to start today with very briefly, the assisted dying Bill, which is back in the House of Commons being led by Chem LED better. Let's bring her on screen.

And well, the question is, is the assisted dying bill in the process of being euthanized itself? She's busy trying to keep it alive. The bill passed, of course, as everybody knows, passed the first stage of the Commons last November. But as we've been reporting here in UK column news, the fact that the committee stage was packed with pro euthanasia MPs was not

lost on many. And the job done by Danny Krueger in particular to highlight the issues has resulted in, of the 500 debated amendments, 130 to be debated now that it's back in the House of Commons today. Now, most see this as an assisted dying bill, which is dying to be assisted to a quick and painless end. But ironically, as things stand, it only needs 28 supporters to change their minds and become no naysayers to kill the bill

completely. There's basically no chance of the bill passing today, and if it's not killed quickly, it will return again in June for another go. But absolute desperation on their part to keep this thing going. Mike it's like the mould in the bathroom, it's just you can't get rid of. It it just keeps coming back you. Have to change the silicon, Mike. How is this bill any materially different than the the Canadian

version? Because a lot of the criticisms of the Canadian version is it left the wide berth of people

eligible for this type of thing. Well, and the main concern is that people are going to be coerced into it, whether that be through draconian, you know, inheritance tax regulations or through people that are too much of A burden on the state or too much of A burden on their families and so on, being coerced into it. What we, you know, this issue of assisted dying has been one that we've been covering, oh, since

2014 or something. And it's clear that as, as it's been rolled out in other countries, it has become exactly what we said it would, a slippery slope. And things become more and more, more draconian as time goes on. Canada, what's going on in Canada? What's going on in the Netherlands and other places really should be the only precedent that anybody needs. Just quickly, Mike, the most horrifying thing about this is how they're convoluting the argument with economics, with

the individual. Oh, you're having a hard time, austerity policies getting you down, not making ends meet. Well, what about this option? Right. That's that is perhaps the most scary part of how some people are selling this. So hopefully this is dead for now at least and the process will have to begin again at the beginning. But let's move on to international issues, Patrick. And of course, the big news internationally has been the US Saudi meetings.

Yeah, well, this is the big historic summit, Mike, in the

Middle East here, the US Saudi Investment Forum, and they're calling them power talks here. Donald Trump, of course, the keynote speaker, the big anticipated address. This is meant to be really the peace to the resistance of Donald Trump's Middle East policy. There's a lot of plates in the air, as you can imagine, between Israel, Gaza, the Iran nuclear deal, Yemen, just to name a few, not to mention courting these Gulf states, Mike.

But let's get into it. And here's here's the keynote speech by Trump. We'll, we'll, we'll look at a couple of clips of this, but we'll comment on this. But we'll look at this one first.

Go ahead. Before our eyes, a new generation of leaders is transcending the ancient conflicts of tired divisions of the past and forging a future where the Middle East is defined by commerce, not chaos, where it exports technology, not terrorism, and where people of different nations, religions and creeds are building cities together, not bombing each other out of existence. We don't want that. I mean where do we start here?

Is it not the United States and Trump that just got done with A7 week bombing campaign against Saudis neighbour to the South, Yemen? That was the US, wasn't it? And of course, all the way supporting Israel with their bombing people out of existence in a certain part of the world. Bombing Yemen or bombing Lebanon and the bombing Gaza, who else are they bombing? Syria as well.

So Israel's busy bombing people. So this idea that Arabs are are bombing each other out of existence is, you know, a patent lie by Donald Trump. It's hard to know what he's talking about most of the time because he's he doesn't, he doesn't put specifics in his speech. So you're left to interpret it. But it's clearly he's meaning Arab on Arab violence there. And it's just kind of ridiculous. And by the way, isn't it the US that armed Saudi to bomb Yemen for seven straight years from

2015 until 2022? I think that was the USI think that was the US. So I anyway, here's the here's the next one. Look at this. This instead the birth of a modern Middle East, has been brought by the people of the region themselves, the people that are right here, the people that have lived here all their lives, developing your own sovereign countries, pursuing your own unique visions and charting your own destinies in your own way. It's really incredible what

you've done. In the end, the so called nation builders wrecked far more nations than they built, and the interventionalists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand themselves. They told you how to do it, but they had no idea how to do it themselves. So he, he was singing the praise of the Gulf states, Mike, and how they have these tall shiny buildings, beautiful development projects. The point is only the Gulf states have been allowed to

develop in the region. Everybody else has either been saddled under IMF debt or has been bombed by the US or Israel or under sanctions. So he he had to go at Iran saying Iran hasn't built any of these beautiful buildings. Was, hasn't Iran been under maximum pressure sanctions for

20 years For what we don't know. Yes, if they have been so again in Syria under sanctions for 14 plus years, that's country is completely imploded as a result leading to the regime change in December. But there's no context in any of these speeches that just it's more performative. And that's one of the things that unfortunately Trump doesn't really deliver much as in terms of substance.

But the big question, Mike, the big question before this summit was Jelani was going to be there, the self appointed president of Syria. His new name is Ahmed al Sharar. They've changed his name. He's Saudi born. He's he appointed himself to President Syria. He is the founder of al Qaeda in Syria and the deputy of al Baghdadi at ISIS during that time. Anyway, was Trump going to shake hands with him? Mike, where they is he going to endorse this terrorist?

Well, let's take a look. Yes, it actually happened here. Trump endorses series al Qaeda terrorist leader Al Jilani right there next to MBBS. To me, this is one of the most regrettable photo OPS in American history. I will go so far as to say it's it's even more cringe than anything Zelensky has done in terms of historical significance

here. And there's Trump shaking hands with the al Qaeda founder, the leader this the head chopper basically who just a few, well, just a few weeks ago, Mike, this was on the United States Department of Justice notifications. Stop this terrorist $10 million bounty on the head of Al Jilani. Has that been removed yet? I think it has in the US only 7 a few weeks ago. So what happened? Did he have a Damascene conversion on the way like Saul of Tarsus on the way to

Damascus? I mean, what, how, how do you not become the head of ISIS and al Qaeda all of the sudden? It's it's mind boggling, Mike. And anyway, I'm kind of speechless. I'm speechless. But it gets worse. He was then asked on on a by on a presser on the Air Force One what he thought about this Jolani, who is currently while they're shaking hands like running programmes, slaughtering Alawites and Christians in Syria this week, his his gang of terrorists HTS al Qaeda

terrorists. Here's what Trump had to say. How did you find the Syrian President? Right, right. I think very good young, attractive guy, tough guy, you know, strong pass for a strong pass fighter. But he's got a, he's got a real shot at pulling it together. I spoke with President Erwan, who I'm very friendly with him. He he feels he's got a shot at it's a, it's a sort of. Sorry, did I hear him say a young, attractive guy, a tough guy?

Yeah, a young, attractive, a strong past, said Trump. A strong past as a wanted terrorist. OK, I don't know. I think, listen, it's it's a real slap in the face to any US servicemen who were pushed to the front line of this War on Terror that the US, Britain and all these countries were forced to fight by the establishment all of these years. And Trump is basically saying what a wonderful, good looking, attractive with a strong past.

I mean, it's does Donald Trump know what he's saying or is he completely vacuous? Is he totally clueless to any of this? Are his advisors clueless or is this just the height of corruption? It's really hard to tell sometimes with Trump and I, and I think he purposely makes it ambiguous. But let's just remind people here up on screen, this is Jake Sullivan, former national security advisor.

And he's saying quite clearly in this email in 2012, al Qaeda is on our side, Al Qaeda is on our side. And here is James Jeffrey. This was Trump's point man in Syria, right here in Trump's first term. James Jeffrey, basically, al Jelani's organisation was an asset to America's strategy in Idlib. OK. So really, Mike, what Donald Trump has just done this week, he has completed the life's work of these two people we'll put up on screen.

Hillary Clinton and John McCain spent their whole career trying to legitimise al Qaeda and ISIS, and Trump has done it this week. He has completed the job of Hillary Clinton and John McCain by platforming Al Qaeda and ISIS and endure having the United States government endorse these some of the worst people on the planet. Are they going to come out and admit to how much money and military assistance have been giving them for the years? Oh, that's going to be nicely

swept under the rug. Now let's just let bygones be bygones. He's a reformed man. He shoots baskets on YouTube. That's Jelani the the the terrorists here. So here's a few problems though. We have a problem with Marco Rubio bring this up on screen. This was just on March 9th. Rubio said Syria must be held accountable for the perpetrators of massacres.

He's talking about the massacres which we covered on previous programmes on UK column of the massacres of religious minorities and ethnic minorities in Syria, Alawites, Christians, Druze, Shiites and Sunnis and Yazidis, everybody. Jelani has massacred and killed everybody in Syria. He was the butcher of Syria, not Bashar al Assad. It's funny how they're flipping the script on this. So where's Rubio now? Rubio is in Saudi Arabia, Rubio is rubbing shoulders with Jelani.

So where is Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State? Does he have any principles? Does he have any ethics, any morals? Or is just, is this just all empty talk these days, giving lip service to whoever This week's subject is low. So here. Here's the facts, Mike. And we could just give you reams

and reams of reports on this. Survivors of Al Sharar Jolani's government's massacres recount the deaths of death and and destruction, kidnapping of women sold on the market and it lived, sex slaves, you name it. Oh, and by the way, even Amnesty International was forced to release a report, multiple reports on this. The coastal regions in Syria, Alawites, Jolanis running programmes. They had their own crystal knock in the coastal regions of Syria.

That's the best way to describe it, quite accurately, in fact. And sent. There's just endless amount of reports like this. And you just have to go here to social media, Mike, and just type in the search bar. Alawite massacre. And that's all we've done here. And you could just scroll and scroll and you see some of the most horrific scenes where Jolani's police are forcing men to bark like dogs and crawl in the street, beg for mercy, and then they summarily execute them.

That's a war crime right there. It's, it is, it is a war crime. So there, there is no, and we apologise for the gruesomeness of this folks, but our governments are endorsing these people and, and recognising them as a legitimate government when just a few weeks ago they were a listed terrorist organisation. And we have all their crimes on film real time. And look at this, rounding up men and boys, putting them into the back of trucks, taking them off to be killed, tortured or

whatnot. This is a daily occurrence in Syria. They are ethnically cleansing anybody who is a religious or ethnic minority. And we could go on, Mike, I just you could just scroll. We don't need to show all of this, but you get the idea. It's just endless amount of massacres and examples of this. So we just go to X and just type in Alawite massacres. So it's it's not as if we're making this up.

Look at this beautiful, beautiful young women who have been killed, pregnant woman also killed because she was Alawite, because she was the same sect as Bashar al Assad. That's what's happening in Syria. That's who Donald Trump is, is Eva Bartlett. She's reported on a lot of these as well. This is what's actually going on in Syria. So what can we say? And meanwhile, so where are all these people on their principles? Well, here's another one. Don't bring this up on screen

here. This is the defence secretary. Now this is back in February 25th. OK, This is Pete Hagseth, U.S. defence secretary, meeting with the Saudi, his counterpart in Saudi Arabia. He's meeting with the Saudi defence head, Prince Khalid bin Salman. And note, OK, that's Pete Hagseth there. US secretary on his right bicep is tattooed in Arabic. The following is infidel. OK, so the Saudis are supposedly the, you know, leaders of the Islamic world. Where are they on some of this

stuff? This is somebody who's been openly hostile to Muslims. Ex F clearly, you can see he's even got it tattooed. the US defence secretary, I mean, where are they on this? Would do do they care? Are there any principles at play here? It all seems like what matters is money and guns and development, property development here.

And so just not to be outdone, not to be outdone here is Charles Lister, who is, I'm not sure what he is, who he works for, but he's kind of like a full time public relations agent for Jolani here. And Jolani's talking about coexistence is our heritage in Syria. We're all about coexistence and everyone's living happily together in Syria right now. Total absolute boldface lies. And so that's what's going on there.

There he is. Charles Lister, I'm not sure you can look into any of these organisations. You'll probably find Qatari funding or something similar to that or something tanks in Washington DC, who knows? But it's got it's a good it's a good PR operation here. And and also heck, Seth is meeting King Mohammed bin Salman MBS while he has an infidel tattoo in Arabic on his right bicep underneath his Armani suit. So that's what's going on. Meanwhile, this is what it's all

about. Trump's courting the Gulf states for investment, 1.4 trillion from the UAE and AI deal, nothing is is this is not guaranteed. What it is, is they're promising to buy chips from the United States, advanced AI chips. And Trump's made this into, quote, a $1.4 trillion AI deal. So these are MO US memorandums of understanding. OK, these aren't solid deals by any stretch of imagination, but this is how crazy the coverage

gets. Look at Fox, Trump takes a victory lap from the year he touts a $13 trillion deal. So in 12 hours, it went from 1.4 to 13 trillion. Maybe it'll be 20 trillion by tomorrow. I don't know. Anything's possible with Trump. Does it really matter? So, so here's the question, Mike, based on everything we've just looked at and, and France has also received Jolani for a state visit, right?

Based on everything that we've looked at, is Britain going to invite the the self appointed president of Syria, who doesn't want to have elections by the way, OK, doesn't have a parliament, but he's the president. Is Britain going to invite this person for his state visit? This is an important question. That's a big question. Do you have you heard any indications? And certainly the rumour mill is talking about it.

The rumour mill is talking about it and well, let's look at what Keir Starmer said immediately as Damascus was falling, said he welcomes the fall of Assad's barbaric regime. Now, based on what I've just showed you, right, what we've just seen, would you say that Jolani's is a barbaric regime? Beyond barbarism, actually. It's pretty bad, Yeah. On the scale of, of, of horror, it's about as bad as you can get. And it's all on camera.

They filmed it all. So here's then Starmer the next day being aware of what could happen in terms of sectarian violence. This was Starmer the next day. It's too early to remove the Syrian rebels, quote from the terrorists, said Starmer. And to his credit, this is what the Prime Minister said. We have all seen in other parts of history where we think there is a turning point.

It turns out not necessarily to be a better future than what we hope for, said Keir Starmer. We've got to make sure this is different. To his credit, Mike, that's a statement I think I can agree with. I know it's rare, but that's a statement we can agree with and David Lammy even chimed in on this. Foreign Secretary at the time said the UK will judge HTS

Geelani by their actions. Monitor closely how they and other parties to this conflict treat all civilians in areas they control, again based on what we have just seen. Well, based on what we've just seen, both of them lie then because they have brushed it all under the carpet. They're not speaking out against it at the moment. So I, I, I think it's, but they're not talking openly about

inviting him either. So they're caught in a little bit of a grey area, Mike. So meanwhile, there's all sorts of stuff on social media here again, that's fake news saying Keir Starmer is already invited Al Sharar. Why is this stuff appearing? This is coming from the Gulf. This is paid fake news, OK. And but so Mike, that's there's all. If you Google Keir Starmer invites Jolani, you'll get hundreds of returns on social media posts, but you won't see any news items.

So people beware that not everything on social media is true and there's a lot of fake news out there. Why would they be putting that fake news out to? Soften people's public opinion for the things for a future announcement. So so we shall see what what happens in the coming days. Very interesting exercise in propaganda. Yes, OK, Well, what else has

Keir Starmer been up to? Well, NATO foreign ministers gathered in Turkey on Wednesday to discuss sorry and yesterday to discuss strengthening allied deterrence and defence, and that's what they described it as as, and to move forward what they called preparations for the NATO summit in The Hague next month. Now the main topic of discussion as his perennial with NATO conferences is money. They still can't agree on a minimum spend.

Mark Rutte moaned that the current base of 2% of GDP is not enough and so he's pushing for everyone to agree to a level of 3 1/2% of GDP in the next seven years, topped up by an extra 1 1/2% earmarked for what was described as wider, wider set of spending related to defence, whatever that means. So let's have a look and see what what Ruta said.

Here he is. We will need greater investment in our core military requirements as well as additional broader defence related investments including infrastructure and resilience. We have to make sure that we spend enough money all over NATO to keep ourselves safe. Now, for his part, are less than the most intelligent Foreign secretary insisted that the strongest alliance in history has to stand united in the face of generational threat from

adversaries. So that would be a generational threat which he and his predecessors in the UK government and his predecessors in NATO created because they created this. If there is a threat, they created the threat. Or am I completely wrong about that? You're talking about Ukraine, right? The acceleration of of the conflict, the war. I'm talking about Ukraine.

I'm talking. About NATO. Narrative I'm talking talking about even the anti China NATO, as we know NATO 2030 is looking towards China as well. So, so, you know, it is incredible to me that that that they are, they have the goal to make comments like that as if it was something that they took no part in creating in the first place. And especially when they're not engaging in any diplomacy, they're not doing any talks. They've ruled that they've ruled that out for the longest time,

didn't they? We're not going to talk to the other side. War only a military solution is we're going to accept. So again, they're creating the problem. More of it. Yes, indeed. And he went on to say, as myself and my fellow NATO allies also travelled to Turkey, we're united alongside Ukraine in our determination to secure a just and lasting peace by maintaining the war. Of course. Now the NATO meeting was sorry, followed a meeting of the so called Weimar plus Weimar Plus.

I mean, yeah. So this is this is the embryonic European Defence Union, perhaps being made up of the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and the EU High Representative Kayakalis. OK, so I'm going to say, Patrick, what a brand. I understand you laughing at this, but what a brand? What image does Weimar conjure up? Well, yes, of course. Hyperinflation and the wheelbarrow. Loads of money to buy a loaf of bread. And that's exactly what we're going to get if they continue

pursuing this policy. Am I being unfair? I'm shocked Mike, of of all the names you could choose, you've chosen that one. Is this. Are they trolling us? Yeah, I think they are. I feel like I'm being trolled. Yes, by. Well, let's just let's just look at the statement that that they made. So they said that we met in London on the 12th of May to discuss Russian aggression against Ukraine and Euro Atlantic security.

On Euro Atlantic security, we reaffirmed that NATO is a better rock of our security and prosperity. The Alliance has secured peace for over 25 years. The alliance has secured peace for sorry for over 75 years. Has it done that, or have have we bombed the hell out of half the world? Certainly hasn't done for Yugoslavia, for Central Europe, for Libya, for Syria, for Afghanistan and for Ukraine. Should I go on? I think there's a few more we missed.

But anyway, it went on to say this, an enhanced security and defence relationship between the UK and the EU is key to improving the lives of our people and making our continent more safe and secure, as will enhance cooperation between NATO and the EU on the basis of the three joint declarations and greater cooperation with Ukraine. So again, we have this rhetoric trying to reinforce the idea that defence union is not a threat to NATO.

This is a narrative they've used for from the beginning. And if we just bring the the graphic on screen, this is my rendition of the European, the EU graphic which describes European defence union, all the various pillars of it as they like to call it. And on the right hand side, they're absolutely the core partnership is NATO and the United Nations, but NATO is the core partnership. This, as I've said many times before, was never about, you know, undermining NATO in any way.

It's about the EU becoming effectively a a key voice within NATO. Political consensus for foreign policy right? Precisely, yeah. And it's much easier to do that with the the EU Commission being the voice of all the European member states instead of instead of individual member states. So anyway, why is this important? Will this all leads up to the UK EU summit, which is taking place on Monday and the E US promo page that you can see on screen at the moment.

Have me a little bit amused because you'll note it says there that agenda highlights will be on this page a week before the meeting. Well, the meeting's on Monday and that screenshot was taken today, so that doesn't seem to have happened. So I'm going to suggest that that is very much a reflection of the sensitivity surrounding this conference's summit. This is the summit which is going to bring the UK in a formal sense right back into the

EU again. And I understand the reticence to to list the the details of the agenda on there so. Something that caught my eye, Mike, at the beginning you were talking about the budget and that they're looking for a wider set of spending related to defence. You remember that? Yes, So there. I've actually looked into that on the that when when Germany proposed the rearmed from Europe plan on the German side.

That is all massive amount of money that's going to be earmarked for smart power and we can add censorship to that and that type of speech control and think tanks. So they're building out the sort of, I guess, intellectual ecosystem, the soft power ecosystem, the smart power ecosystem to fill the gap from the United States withdrawing a little bit from the USCID, destabilising countries in

Europe and so forth. And skull plugging Europeans into voting certain ways or cancelling elections, full stop. That's what that is. So they're going to they're they're going to plough significant amount of money into that to try to shore up establishment. There's absolutely, absolutely failing right now. And and which is then we're going to become much more reliant on funding from the war policy and therefore is going to be absolutely supportive, no criticism of the war policy

whatsoever. And you'll see the same people get jobs, you'll see the same names pop up from the Atlantic Council and the all the disinformation boards. There'll be money for Elliot Higgins and Bellingcat I'm sure. So the same sort of players are there feeding at the same through basically. Massively dangerous. OK, thank you, Patrick. Mark, let me welcome you to the

programme. And well, let's move on to the issue of digital services tax, which of course is something that the UK has been pushing very hard. But we were very clear, Mark, that that this was not within the remit of the recent trade deal between the United States and the UK. Yeah, that's my understanding, Mike, is that first of all, the trade deal between the US and the UK announced around May 8th is not as complete as they're making it sound. There's a ways to go on that.

And so this is in a way a follow up to an earlier report I did on that trade deal. At any rate, we're we'll move on and kind of explain the main facts surrounding the digital services tax. And for one thing, we've got the White House trade advisor, Peter Navarro. He has had this to say. Digital taxes has spread like a bad virus around the world, but it started in Europe and it basically targets American companies.

And I know that the Trump administration, as political reported, is still pressuring the UK to lift its tax on digital services, calling it, again, a bad virus. And as Navarro also stated, as we're showing here, we're still in negotiations. And the president and other top White House officials acknowledged during remarks on the race deal in the Oval Office that many content, the trade deal in the Oval Office, that many contentious details have

yet to be ironed out. So there's, again, as I'm saying, there's a long ways to go on this. We'll move on from there. As of the 1st of April 2020, this is a little bit of history. The UK government introduced a new 2% tax on the revenues of search engines, social media services and online marketplaces which derive value from UK

users. Under the current international tax framework, the value business is derived from user participation is not taken into account, that is the business profits between different countries. But this measure will ensure that large multinational businesses support vital public services fairly. So going back to 2020, that's the rationale they're saying the UK government for the digital services tax. A policy paper from the UK government also said the

following. You might want to show this one. The most sustainable long term solution to the tax challenges arising from digitalization is reform of the international corporate tax rules. That's what the UK government's now talking about. Five years later. The UK strongly supports G7G20 and OECD discussions on long term reform. And you guys might want to

comment on this. But there's also a Bilderberg connection that you might recall, Mike, when I was there in 2013 covering Bilderberg and Watford. This came up because Googleburg, another type of meeting, also took place in Watford right before Bilderberg that year, and there was some high tech talks where tax matters kind of leaked

out of that. And at any rate, just before that 2013 Bilderberg meeting, the 6th through 9th of June, Google's then executive Eric Schmidt, as we might recall, he was in the UK discussing Google's tax practises. He and the other big tech leaders held that Googleburg gathering in Watford. There was a tax avoidance controversy at the time, Google and other multinational companies faced scrutiny over their UK tax arrangements. Google paid 6 million, £6 million in UK corporation tax,

we're told. But that still drew some criticism. Schmidt defended Google's tax practises, asserting that the company was adhering to the law and fulfilling its fiduciary responsibilities to its shareholders. And then Eric Schmidt said that if the UK wanted more tax revenue, it should amend its tax laws. And right before Bilderberg, Schmidt also met with British PM David Cameron. It's time. So that's the basic facts of it

guys. But I know, Mike, you, you've had some long term concerns, as have I, as to whether that tax would actually be levied against those multinationals or just written off and that there'd be a lot of shenanigans going on and things like that. Maybe you guys want to comment on it as well, especially you, Mike, I know you were watching

this issue very closely. Well, well, actually we both were at the time and you know, this, this has been a long, this is a bit like European defence Union. It's one of those policies that there's massive push back against, even though the certain elements of the elites want to see it push through as quickly as possible. And, and this idea of internationalising the corporation tax regime has been one that's been talked about as, as you say, Mark, for 15 years now.

It's ridiculous. But you know that I think, I think for me one of the key points about corporation tax is that it is actually in a sense of stealth tax on us as individuals because there's no corporation, the corporations are there to provide shareholder value and they are not going to reduce their profit making capability by paying corporation tax out of profits. They'll Simply put their prices up particularly in this sort of cartel cartelized economies that

we increasingly have. So they'll stick their prices up for everything in order to cover the cost of increasing increased corporation taxes. But Google, of course, even at that time was telling fibs, shall we say, because, you know, they're based in Ireland, They're not based in the UK because Ireland has a much more better, much softer corporation

tax regime than the UK does. Now, what's different about this particular taxes is that they're attempting, first of all, they're not attempting to tax profits. They're they're just saying 2% of, of any money that we perceive that you make from UK users has got to be paid. And, and so we'll, we'll see how that pans out.

I think as you said, Mark, the key point here though is that despite the UK, the UK government's complete, sorry, UK government's claims that this was excluded from the USUK trade deal, that's absolutely still a matter of negotiation, is clearly the case. Yeah, it's, it might. They're not like going to be making much progress on this because the issues are fundamental tax on corporate profits, right, Not on turnover, not on sales.

The government's doing sales tax and VAT and things like that. And all they're doing is going to these companies are reinvesting back into the grow their operations, bigger office buildings, bigger brands and presence to to to help their sort of image and things like that. But it's funny, Mike, a lot of this stuff was taken care of with TTPP and T tip, but of course, that didn't make it past

the post. So again, we're back to for different reasons, by the way, but it's, it was still part of that package. And so we're back now teasing out pieces of of those all encompassing international, transnational corporate deals from before. But the 2% is interesting because that brings it right along normalisation with the WTO standards again. But who's going to pay and who's going to bear the cost? Well, we're going to bear the cost we are.

And the government might charge a sales tax, the corporations might pay a little more. But we're going to end up footing the bill, aren't we? We are.

Yes, Mark. Yeah, there's, there's not only the cost push inflation thing where that cost will be passed on to us. But now I'm recalling, Mike, that I think you were also concerned, as was I back when Bilderberg was happening, that by making an international tax entity, if you will, they'll create a whole nother tax authority that then would have a much longer reach than individual national tax authorities.

I think that was the other concern, if I'm not, if I'm not mistaken, back in 2013, just who, just who and what would be this international tax authority? What kind of reach would they have beyond corporations to individuals and smaller companies? Would they suppress smaller companies in favour of the bigger companies having even more monopoly power? That would be another at least general concern to look at and I think we thought about it back then. Yeah, OK. A global slush fund.

Slush fund is the big fear in the background. Absolutely. Thank you, Mark. Right. We're just going to move on to

the ad break in a second. But just before we do that, Kenny, can I just ask you to fix the the studio clock for us? Because we're going to be a bit lost in a second if if you don't. But anyway, thanks Mark for that. OK, if you like what the UK column does and you'd like to support us, uh, please do so. The, uh, website issupport.ukcolumn.org, you

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anybody that does that. If you can't do that, that's absolutely fine, but please do share at the very least everything that you find on the UK column website. Please do share it from the UK column website if you can. Now tomorrow, Germ, sorry, tonight at 7:00 PM, Germ warfare will, I'll be speaking to Tom Khan and asking the question, has a virus ever been shown to exist? So that's tonight at 7:00 PM. That's going to be a controversial 1. And delving into dangerous

territory there like. We do like that. So thank you. Thanks very much. OK for that. So let's move on then and very briefly Mark a new case files filed against Pfizer or is this

an update on a current existing one? A new one as far as I know, Mike, Speaking of viral things, all things viral, the state of Kansas is now suing Pfizer. This is from a local affiliate CBSWIBW in Kansas case filed against Pfizer for COVID vaccine marketing to be heard at the state level. So it's not for some painkiller or anti inflammatory. This is actually for the COVID

jab. And the the attorney general of Kansas was quoted as saying this victory to be, you know, trying this is the first step in bringing justice to the Kansans who were misled by the false statements made by Pfizer regarding the health risks of the COVID vaccine.

See, so this is really getting to the heart of what's going on right before the World Health Assembly meets this coming Monday. Just like that other summit you talked about to start their final negotiations, we're told about the World Pandemic Treaty, and there's an important note.

From James Roguski on that. And that is real quickly that there's an annex within the treaty structure that he understands very clearly that the participants have to obey, meaning that there's going to be up to a year, probably the better part of a year, if not a full year before they can finally sign the pandemic treaty. It's a, it's a regulatory governance mechanism within the overall talks, which buys a lot of time for those that are concerned about this treaty and want to oppose it.

So this is really good news along with Pfizer being saddled by this lawsuit going right into the World Health Assembly starting on Monday in Geneva and lasting till the 27th of May. And they'll be more in extra. You can still sign the petition to repeal the PREP Act and remove the liability protection for for big Pharma. So it's a positive development for for those that are really concerned, concerned and want to be activists on this issue. Thank you, Mark.

OK, let's move on to propaganda really. And what's quite incredible has been the level of propaganda

coming out of the mainstream press for for war. And here's just one example of it from the BBC. So mainstream press going all out to promote a war narrative, particularly against Iran. And so the BBC here claiming to have seen court documents from Turkey and the United States, which they they contain evidence that Iran has been hiring criminal gangs to carry out killings on foreign soil. So I'd like to define, get a definition for what evidence

means in this case. There's no suggestion of criminal conviction. There's there is no report of a prison sentence for anyone alleged to have murdered anyone. And we've got to remember this is the same BBC that regurgitated evidence of yellow cake, the same BBC that regurgitated evidence for chemical weapons in Syria and so on. But meanwhile, in the United States, here's Fox. And they have claims to have evidence of secret nuclear weapons facilities in Iran.

And this evidence that they say comes in the form of satellite images. They're sources the Iranian opposition group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, which claimed a previously undisclosed facility, which they dubbed or has dubbed the Rainbow site, has been operating for over a decade to extract tritium and material used to advanced in

advanced nuclear weapons. According to Fox, tritium is also used for a host of other activities, including as a medical marker for lemon essence, on watches, for gun sights, a whole bunch of other applications for it as well. But anyway, in this context then it's perhaps unsurprising that the mainstream press is basically bankrupt here in the UK. And as a result, the UK regime has announced its latest attempts to maintain mainstream

narratives with the decision. Well, a couple of decisions. The first one is to the lesser of the two is to extend the ability for government to scrutinise mergers and takeovers, to extend that to online news websites and magazines. And they say this reflects modern news consumption habits. And they highlight of comms reporting that 70% of UK adults are saying they consume online

news in some capacity. And so the UK government is saying that these expanded powers will allow greater scrutiny of takeovers that might negatively affect accurate reporting, freedom of expression and media plurality. Try not to laugh as you hear that. And they say that these are essential to the U KS democracy. Yes, OK, well, that that in and of itself might seem that

significant. But the secretary announcement was that they've also introduced what they describe as targeted exceptions to allow certain state owned investment funds, such as sovereign wealth funds or pension funds to invest up to or to take control of up to 15% in UK newspapers and news periodicals. And they claim this is to address concerns that a foreign sovereign wealth fund could buy

up Auk newspaper. Now, this follows the furor over the possibility of UAE buying the Telegraph, which is basically bankrupt. But it's mostly about making sure that foreign money can still come into the UK to keep

the mainstream media going here. Now, what's of note is that this 15% number is 3 times what was originally conceived, and the increase followed lobbying, lobbying from the publishers of the Daily Mail, the Times, from Lord Rothermere and from Rupert Murdoch. So there's already massive push back. Sorry, there's already massive push back in this from the Commons and the Lords against the idea of a 15% stake being taken by any foreign state

factor. But what is clear is the sheer desperation from the media barons here that their publications need funding and that the funding is not coming from the United Kingdom. And well, I'm going to suggest, Patrick, that maybe they wouldn't be in this position if they were selling news and not propaganda. Yeah, proper news and analysis, not the sort of propaganda we just watch. By the way, make the National Resistance Council of Iran, they had those satellite images that

you just showed. That's actually what they mean. Is the MEK, the Mujahideen El Kick, a designated terrorist organisation basically holed up in Albania, backed by the CIA and Israeli intelligence. That's the source for the Fox secret nuclear sites, believe it or not. So great source. Well done, Fox. Yes, indeed, Mark, let's come back to you then and back to the United States, or at least partly back to the United

States, because Donald Trump recently has said that it's great that anybody that's Africans can, can come from South Africa and become AUS citizen almost immediately. What's this all about? Well, it's a contentious issue, that's for sure. There's a broad range of views

on it across the new spectrum. But the essentials for today are the Trump said at a White House news conference recently that he's allowing, and this is a number we're given, 49 so far, white farmers from South Africa, mainly of Dutch descent to come to the US as refugees because of what he believes there's a genocide taking place because of that.

He claimed that in post apartheid South Africa, white farmers, those of that extraction, largely Dutch, are being killed and Trump plans to address the issue with the South African leadership. And there's a meeting upcoming on that on the 21st of May, we're told. Trump was quoted as saying. Or we're going to see a video in a second. He doesn't care whether the South African farmers so affected are white or black.

But at a time when the administration has sought to halt refugee admissions from many other countries undergoing political upheaval, Trump is still saying the US has essentially extended citizenship to South African farmers. So that's, that's the rub is that Trump has been very, very resistant to a lot of refugee admissions and things like that, except for this and it that it also involves Gaza and the the

stark difference there. So there's a lot of controversy there and it seems that Trump could have played this a little differently. But at any rate, there's a video here and we'll move on from there. I. Want to ask you about South African refugees. Dozens of Afrikan Afrikaners who claim discrimination in their home country are heading to the United States, where your administration is going to

welcome them as refugees. Now. This comes as you've halted virtually all refugee admissions for people fleeing famine and war from countries like Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo. Why are you creating an expedited path into the country for the Conners but not others? Because they're being killed and we don't want to see people be killed. Now South Africa leadership is coming to see me.

I understand sometime next week. And, you know, we're supposed to have a, I guess, AG 20 meeting there or something, but we're having AG 20 meeting. I don't know how we can go unless that situation's taken care of. But it's a genocide that's taking place that you people don't want to write about. But it's a terrible thing that's taking place. And farmers are being killed.

They happen to be white, but whether they're white or black makes no difference to me. But white farmers are being brutally killed and their land is being confiscated in South Africa and the newspapers and the media, television media doesn't even talk about it. If it were the other way around, they talk about it, that would be the only story they talk about. And I don't care who they are. I don't care about their race, their colour. I don't care about their height, their weight.

I don't care about anything. I just know that what's happening is terrible. I have people that live in South Africa, they say it's a terrible situation taking place, so we've essentially extended citizenship to those people to escape from that violence and come here. That's what the president had to say on that. There's also been some miscellaneous coverage. We can keep moving here. This is an Associated Press piece from the 14th of May.

I just confirming S Africans leader and Trump will meet next week again May 21 after US took in these 49 white S Africans as refugees. And there's some other important things here. Elon of course is in the mix because he's from South Africa. He's of that descent.

And The Associated Press via PBS back on the 24th of March mentioned that South African born Elon Musk, who has regularly accused South Africa's black LED government of being anti white, repeated at that time a claim in a social media post that some of the country's political figures, quote, are actively promoting white genocide. And quote, and the really important part is this next

item. Some notes I I took on this amid South Africa's passage of what we're told is land takings law, a land takings law without compensation. Trump has accused South Africa of taking aggressive positions toward the US and its allies in its foreign policy and of being a supporter of Hamas, the Palestinian militant group, and Iran. Trump in an executive order. There's an executive order involved here.

He cited South Africa's decision to accuse the US ally Israel of genocide in Gaza in an ongoing case at the International Court of Justice as an example of South Africa's so called anti American stance. So that's a major potential blunder there for President Trump to be so open to the South Africans, whatever their plight might be. There's there's, you know, palpable corruption there and

there has been a long time. But then to ignore the much more stark situation in Gaza where the destruction has been so much more widespread and complete in such a short period of time. So it's it's strange to say the least that that President Trump would do the do do the South African thing on one hand, which might have some merit and yet ignore the Gazans where the suffering has been just so over the top.

So that's a hard sell to me. That's a hard sell no matter what your views are on this issue. So back to you guys. Yeah. Well, a number of points here Mark, and I'm sure there's going to be a couple of questions about this getting. First of all, getting statistics on the scale of the problem in South Africa is difficult because the South African government doesn't release crime figures based on race.

But the the latest figures that I could find, which we're covering the final quarter of last year, so only in three months, said that 609 hundred 6953 people were murdered in the country in the last three months of last year. And of those, according to the South African government, at least 12 were killed in farm attacks. And of the 12/1 was a farmer, five were people living on farms and four were employees. And those, there's no clarity over whether those employees were white or black.

So no matter what you think about this, that doesn't include, that doesn't constitute a white genocide or any kind of genocide according to any definition of the term that I'm aware of. It might undoubtedly is criminality, undoubtedly it's the activity of gangs and and and so on. But you know, the, the number of murders in South Africa as a whole is horrendous. And it seems to me that that represents a pretty shocking lawlessness. But it could be described as

genocide. And to my mind, Patrick, this is this is all about Israel and and Gaza. I think, I think it's right. I think also Mark's made the connection there with Trump's own statement. It's clearly politically, I think it, it appears to me, Mike anyway, that this looks like there's a political thing going on here. And we, we, we trace the, the, the genealogy of this issue. And what we found was this was for this issue. How did it get to the White House level? That's the question.

And it came from Elon Musk on X started promoting it, but he started promoting at the same time a lot of top Israeli lobbyist accounts like Bill Ackman and others, Tommy Robinson, all these other sort of accounts, they all tend to tweet the same things. There's a whole gaggle of these accounts and Elon Musk was saying, is there a white genocide going South Africa's passing anti black legislation, They're confiscating white farmers land.

None of that was true. There's been no white farmers land confiscated by the government. So Trump was lying to the public because Trump probably doesn't know. He also said there's a genocide. That's another lie by Donald Trump. But then from Elon, Marco Rubio then retweeted it and then

amplified the issue. And that caused a retaliation by South Africa diplomatically, which caused a diplomatic tit for tat, which has led us to this position by Donald Trump having to have an emergency meeting with S Africans leadership next week to try to resolve this issue. And so I think it'll be interesting to see what happens after that meeting when they basically tell him the facts.

But I, I do think the fact that South Africa has raised this case in the ICJ has made them a big target of the Israeli lobby and the Ben Shapiros of the world and everybody else who's batting for Israel basically. But to use the term genocide. And here's the point, Mike, to me, to use the term genocide so Willy nilly demeans an actual ongoing, violent, historic proportions genocide, live streamed genocide that we've never seen in our lifetimes. OK.

It demeans it, it reduces the significance of it. And it this, this whole issue seems like it's geopolitical gaslighting for the benefit of Israel against the one country that stood up against Israel and filed that case at the International Courts of justice under the Genocide Convention, which was South Africa and the government of Cyril Ramaphosa, who's also a BRICS country as well.

So they've got another reason maybe to not like them as well, but that I, I think there's a lot of big time heavy duty politics going on with this issue and it'll be interesting to see what happens next week. OK, well, we'll, we'll talk more about this an extra of no doubt, but thank you Mark for that. Now, sticking with the migration thing for a second, here's

Starmer because he was in Albania yesterday, ostensibly stepping up efforts. This is their language, stepping up efforts to tackle illegal migration as if that's the biggest immigration problem that Britain has. Because we have to focus on illegal migration so that no one is looking at the much bigger problem of regular migration and the impact that that's having on this country.

Because we're not investing on, amongst other things, we're not investing in infrastructure problem properly and so on.

But the headline from that part of the visit is yet another demonstration of the fact that the UK is governed by a unit party because he announced his version of the Tory Rwanda policy for deportations, although he didn't say which country would host the so called return hubs that refused asylum seekers are going to be sent to. So here he is with a straight face just producing exactly the same policy that the previous Tory regime had and as if it's another one of the changes that

he was elected on. But anyway, this was all cover for more UK, EU discussion, including on defence as he attends the European Political Community Summit and this is happening today. He's going to convene a round table on defence and security and continue conversations on innovative solutions. His words again, innovative solutions. The challenge to the challenge of illegal migration, but, uh, defence and security, Mark Ruta

is going to be there. Uh, there's going to be a lot going on around this reset of UK, EU relations and it's not getting enough scrutiny in my opinion, in the mainstream press at least, or amongst many commentators. Is is Starmer trying to occupy a little bit of reform territory on that patch of the issues platform? Certainly get the feeling he's smarting a little bit there and feeling the need to respond to what reforms say. To stop the haemorrhaging of the labour base.

Yes, the further haemorrhaging. Mark back to you then. And there seems to be some question over whether Trump is

going to remove funding from FEMA. Yes, the infamous Federal Emergency Management Agency. No fooling. Created April 1st, 1979 under Carter, It's been the subject of much Patriot lore over the years. We've all heard about allegations of FEMA camps where resistant and rebellious Americans might be kept in the event of societal breakdown, whether it's man made or not. This has been sort of an urban legend or maybe a little more than that for many, many years.

But now there's a council being formed. We can show this executive order title page from the White House. They're going to form a council to assess the Federal Emergency Management Agency and take a look. Is it really doing us any good? Is it worth the money? And at any rate, despite obligating nearly 30 billion in disaster aid each of the past three years, FEMA, according to the White House. These are excerpts from the

executive order, by the way. FEMA has managed to leave vulnerable Americans without the resources or support they need when they need it most. FEMA therefore requires what the White House is calling a full scale review. And this new council will carry out that review.

And that will be consisting of individuals highly experienced, the White House says, and effective disaster response and recovery, who shall recommend to the president improvements or structural changes to promote the national interest. But this, this talk of reform and change, I think it's cover for considering actually getting rid of FEMA.

We'll see with the Department of Education, we learned recently that they weren't quite ready to pull the trigger and get rid of it. So will they or won't they? Northeastern University published a little bit a little bit on this. Trump signs the executive order reviewing FEMA, raising concerns over disaster response. Because what they're saying is that this could be returned to

the state level. And those that support FEMA, even though they're saying it's not perfect, are basically saying we might do worse without them when really bad weather happens. At any rate, this executive order follows Trump's visits to North Carolina, where Hurricane Helene hit and he visited fire stricken areas of Southern California. And that's when Trump reportedly suggested eliminating or downsizing FEMA.

And according to this executive order, also this council, which would be called the Federal Emergency Management Agency Review Council. Chaired by the Homeland Security and Defence Secretary's, defences in there will assess FEMA's effectiveness over the past four years, comparing its response to state government and private sector efforts.

And I'll just notice it's a noteworthy historical note that this is the 20th year since Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, where FEMA was accused of widespread abuses of property and residents there. And there were also claims of disarmament schemes going around house to house, disarming people, asking them to turn in their guns.

Some things were true. Some things might have been a little bit exaggerated, but FEMA got a black eye during the years of Katrina 20 years ago and they haven't been able to totally live it down since. So it's not just the recent fires and Hurricane Helene. It's a deep seated distrust of FEMA that goes back at least as far as Katrina 20 years ago. So we'll see what happens, but this would be a fairly major change if they carry it all the way through via that council.

So that's it for today. Thank you Mark and brief comments. On that story, no, but I I was watching the chat and I normally don't comment on the chat, but somebody is basically saying that I'm wrong about land seizures in South Africa. A number of users and they're citing Visigrad 24 as their source. Visigrad 24 is an Israeli backed propaganda outlet, pro genocide and also have been campaigning for the Ukraine war, pro Ukraine war since the beginning. In fact before the war they were

campaigning for a war. So that is an actual propaganda outlet. So and the other thing they say is you need to look on Telegram. There's people from all over the world in chats. Telegram is not a reliable news source. It is also a source of massive fake news and propaganda when you're talking about the South African government seizing land of white farmers because they're

white farmers and so forth. There are a lot of the reports that people are citing in the chat room are not actually factual and they're they're they're devoid of context. If you actually go and look at the legislation that that started this for the Elon was tweeting about, it's very clear in that legislation they're repealing in 19, I think 747574 apartheid era land appropriations piece of legislation modernising it and it's under the guise of eminent

domain. United States, we have eminent domain laws, as do, as do the UK and other European countries. All countries have eminent domain laws and there are certain guidelines and rules for compensation for whether a land can be taken by the state for whatever reason. There is a process there and that's outlined in that legislation. OK, It's on the government's website. So go to the South African government's website and see for yourself.

OK, thank you for that. We can leave it there for today. I'm going to say thank you very much to Mark and to Patrick for joining me today. Thank you all for watching. We'll be back in a few minutes for some UK column News Extra. If you're not AUK column member, please consider joining us and joining us for UK Column News Extra each day. So see you there in a minute. See you then. Bye bye.