UK Column News - 30th April 2025

Hello, hello. It's Wednesday the 30th of April 2025, just after 1:00. Welcome to UK Column News. I'm your host, Mike Robinson. Joining me in the studio today is Charles Mullett welcomes the programme. Charles. Thank you, Roy. And by video link, we have Vanessa Bailey and Sandy Adams. Now, later in the programme, we're going to be covering the latest on the censorship agenda here in the UKA new private security company working in Syria. But we're going to begin with carnage.

And well, there's carnage in the world. In Canada, Mark Carney has been elected as the new Prime Minister, having taken over from Justin Trudeau and calling an early election. He's suggesting that his election is another example of the Trump effect. So let's just have a look at a little bit of what Mark Carney had to say. As I've been warning for months, America wants our land, our resources, our water, our country. Never. But these are not, these are not idle threats.

President Trump is trying to break us so that America can own us. That will never, that will never ever happen. But we but we also must recognise the reality that our world has fundamentally changed. So there we are again with this narrative that the world has fundamentally changed. This is something we're hearing from Starmer, from Ursula, of underlying, from Mark Carnage

himself. And of course, Trump is the excuse for it. I have to say, though, Charles, the crowd's reaction to all that was thoroughly underwhelming. I don't think too many were buying it. Well, I mean, I think under underwhelming seems to be the the theme of the whole affair. I mean the the fact that anyone would be inspired by such a man speaking in such a way is is completely extraordinary I would say in the first instance.

Indeed. So in the meantime, according to the mainstream press at least, it was carnage in Spain and Portugal on Monday, with a total power outage in Spain which also severely disrupted Portugal, and there were also reports of impacting impacts in France and Belgium in a much smaller way. Now, unsurprisingly, the wags were out in force and this tweet is pretty typical example, offering congratulations to Spain and Portugal for achieving net zero at last.

It was only a week or so ago that the media was full of congratulations for Spain achieving 100% renewable energy production, so it's perhaps no surprise that one of the main suggestions for why this happened is a massive spike in solar and electricity generation which overloaded the grid. This all resulted in tweets such as this highlighting the central role of Agenda 2030 in Spain's thinking.

So in this case, they have Agenda 2030 all over the trends, the Agenda 2030 logo and so on. But nevertheless, it was. It wasn't long before darker explanations started appearing in the press, accusations that this was a result of a cyber attack by, you guessed at Russia. But is that likely? And the question I'd ask is what has Spain done to Russia that Russia would carry out an attack

on this way? On the other hand, just a few days ago Spain cancelled a so called defence contract with the world's pre eminent cybersecurity nation, which is Israel. And remember that Unit 8200 spawned tech companies. They run just about every layer of the modern Internet in the West, so if anyone is in a position to pull such a so called cyber attack, Israel is.

Now, I'm not claiming that Israel did it, but if there's any attempt to claim that this is the result of a cyber attack, then I would say it's pretty important to keep that possibility in mind. Now the mainstream Press of course, filled their pages with claims of mass panic such as this one. No power, no phone, no transport spin in a panic. Well, in fact, social media was not quite in agreement with that situation.

So this is a typical tweet that we saw massive power blackout in Spain and Portugal. No Internet, no payments, flights are cancelled, media chaos, People are in panic. What really happened? We just took blankets, beer and had a great time together. So, you know, I don't really

know what to say. Clearly, the mainstream press turning this into something that perhaps isn't quite accurate, but also the attempts to blame Russia for, you know, without any substantiation, for a cyber attack are hilarious. Vanessa, let me just ask you quickly for a comment on this. Russia or Israel, what are your thoughts? Well, I think both are perfectly capable of it, but I think the most likely in, in my view, would be Israel. But of course, we're not making that claim.

We're just suggesting that they're very good at it. Absolutely, absolutely. OK, Thank you for that. Let's move on and sticking with, I suppose, net zero and Agenda

2030 in a sense. Let me welcome Sandy to the programme and, well, what's going on in Malvern with the Malvern Environmental Protection Group. Well, they they've been formed really because the Malvern Hills trust the. I think it's the MHTS that the, you know, the, what do you call it? The thing that the, the, the, the Melvin, the Melvin Hills Trust is the body that look after the Melvin Hills and it's financed by the, by the council tax people that pay their

council tax. And what's happened is that they've changed the, the structure and they've tried to modernise it's governance. This is the Melvin Hills Trust and they've proposed a private bill which really takes the power away from the trustees. At the moment. I think there's 2029 of them, I think it was. And they've reduced it down to 12. And six of those are not, they don't even live. Six of those trustees have been cherry picked and they actually

don't live in the area. And So what the people are worried about is that it's actually going to that create tension because they're, you know, this trust is saying that they're going to be using SSIS, you know, we call them sites of

scientific interest. There's a worry that, that this will restrict people's movement on the, on, on the hills and the, the, this, you know, the, the protection committee are, are, you know, sort of heading up this a kind of a, you know, a big campaign against it because it's, again, it's another corporate takeover of our land. And unfortunately, that's what we're seeing. We're seeing governance being taken over from, from people's representation.

So the community members fear that the bill could have paved the way for increased commercialisation of the hills, potentially prioritising, you know, revenue generating activities. And I'm sure that's what will happen. I think we, we've really got to look at this. So this, this corporate takeover of our land and taking it out of the hands of the people and the trustees that look after it and have done for many, many years and putting it into corporate private hands for commercial

interests. And this is what we're finding. It's just, you know, it is absolutely appalling what's going on. And I think, you know, the, the, the Environmental Protection group do do look them up. It's the Malvern Hills Environmental Protection group. And I think Jeff Buys cars did a wonderful YouTube on it.

So do look that up as well. He interviewed one of the trustees from, from this group and really went in into how they're, they're, they're taking literally the power away from the people who pay for it. I mean, we pay for this in our council tax. And I, I just wanted to really highlight the fact that there is, there is this kind of, well, there's always been an infiltration to take away our power from, from these charities that were formerly set up like

the National Trust and the RSPB. I'm, I'm dubious about the World Wildlife Fund, but there, there's an infiltration to bring extreme climate fascism, I, I call it into all these, all these bodies. And, and this is what's happening. And unfortunately we've got this, the Living Planet Act is coming up and it's the RSP, the World Wildlife Fund are trying to get this into into parliament

and there is this succeeding. They're going to try and get an act called the Living Planet Act, which it hasn't been enacted in law yet, but it remains in a legislative proposal advocated by the WWF to establish a legally binding framework that integrates the efforts to address climate change, biodiversity loss and food security, which is

interesting. Um, so we, you know, we've got, we've got these, these, these people and these bodies, these charities that seem to have adopted this kind of completely radical crazy climate, Um, you know, fascism, I call it, because they're just adopting all these, these ideologies that are forcing people off the land and taking everybody's, you know, representative bodies who actually pay for the land away. And this is what we've got to really look, you know, look at

and fight against. Yeah. Thank you, Sandy. Now sticking with now the

question of food security and whether when they talk about food security, they actually want to see us being able to feed ourselves properly. Is is a is a good one. So let's move on to that topic. Yeah, absolutely. We will get to somewhere near there anyway. As it stands, 2/3 of adults in this country are overweight and half of those are obese. And the government has just announced last month that it's going to come up with yet another food strategy to sort everything out.

As the image accompanying the press release shows, it's got off to a rather inauspicious start, with a depiction of a supermarket trolley laden with many of the root causes of ill health. With this in mind, it comes as little surprise to find that the nascent Food Strategy Advisory Board is stacked out with industry heads who have every interest in preserving the status quo, or at least adopting it slightly in order to maximise maximise profits on fake food.

Of course the National Farmers Union talks of prioritising growth and therefore is right behind it, by which they mean really falling in line with government initiatives to give up on the production of real food or looking after the environment and to go in for subsidy based on inefficient energy schemes and artificial food via robotics and AI. This comes as the BB CS Panorama programme exposes what should have been common knowledge, that baby food is full of sugar.

There is also talk of a sugar levy being applied to milk based drinks, which makes it relevant that the only farmer to sit on this new board is a man named Sam Godfrey who until last year was on the NF US Sugar Board, literally promoting a product that should not belong in any human diet. Now notable by it's absence from the board of the Fisheries.

And here is Elspeth MacDonald of the Scottish Fisherman's Federation and she's written to Daniel Zeichner, the Minister, to ask for an explanation as to why they should be omitted. And since this initiative says that it's concerned with health, why would there be no room at the table for the National Health Service, which spends the equivalent of the entire farming

budget every five days? The remit of the Food Strategy Advisory Board is, ironically, to provide more easily accessible and affordable healthy food to maintain our food security by building resilience in the face of climate shocks and geopolitical changes. Strengthening the supply chain which operates so effectively to keep us fed and inevitably to reduce the impact of farming and food production on nature, biodiversity and climate whilst ensuring growth is at the heart of our strategy.

It's a word soup, though not a digestible 1, and I would say it's plainly influenced at its core by Legion people who have no interest in understanding, sorry interest or understanding of the landscape which surrounds us, nor the means by which food may be produced for the mutual benefit of the farmer and the

consumer. Exhibit A in this regard would be the latest offering from UK Fires, who wrote the Absolute 0 document in 2019 which attempted to suggest that it's possible for an entire country to stop producing any carbon dioxide. This time around there suggesting doing anything except for actually growing things. They say here technologies relating to electrification, alternative protein production, precision agriculture and controlled environment agriculture must be adopted at scale.

So when it does come to growing things, mainstream industrial agriculture dictates that this comes at a significant cost based on the land and of course anyone eating that which has come off it. As reported on consistently by UK column Ultra processed food is the result of a system driven by chemical inducements at every return, and one of these is the constant application of pesticides, another subject

ignored thus far by the board. Now, however, the suggestion that something toxic enough to kill insects could present a danger to people has got through to the World Health Organisation, which remains determined to do nothing about it. The UK government prefer to employ more or less the same head and sand technique wherever possible and this is from 2021 in which they attempt to dismiss any causal link between consuming toxins and getting.

I'll stating here that evidence has not established these causal links between low level long term pesticide exposure and

health impacts. That said, they do report on a regular basis on the pesticide residues found in foods coming into and grown within the UK. Now a link to this document will be in the show notes and if you really do want to know what you are eating or might be eating, then I would urge you to scan through it. Not only are bewildering array of pesticides listed, but an extremely high percentage of the food tested was found to have pesticide residue present.

Of course, it remains up to the government to set the maximum limits. Now, rather than go through a massive chemicals, I'll focus on just one in order to illustrate just how little regard the government and the industry has for health. It's noted that there's an issue with sodium chlorate and this is a weed killer which is banned in the UK and the EU. But because it's also used in what's called microbiological safety, the term they give to for killing anything that isn't already dead.

The government states that these residues are unavoidable and important for the maintaining of microbiological control, vital for food safety. So we are not treating these results as breaches of the maximum residue limit. So in other words, absolutely they do what they please in that regard and they go on to say that they're not advising any organisation to change its practises, but that they are going to, quote, consider what to do about chlorate residues in

food and water. Now to reinforce the point that there is no pressure to act. This is what happens when companies do exceed the limits, which is that they get a letter sent to them and they're given 4 weeks to provide a statement for inclusion in the report. The Expert Committee on Pesticide Residues reviews any replies received and this is how much they care. Supplier response is none.

Now the involvement of Nestor confirms that behavioural change really is at the heart of all of this, which sets the conditions for more and more farmland to be taken from its owners. This is a document from 2023 in which controlling obesity was linked solely to the input of calories, regardless of nutritional content. A form of social credit system, therefore, which can be applied across the board.

The media continues to reinforce the narrative that a diet of Whole Foods void of chemicals is silly and difficult, here showcasing Gwyneth Paltrow, who's taking up content space with the news that she eats bread.

And finally, we should not forget the words of a previous environment secretary, Therese Coffee, who's adamant that the world's most harmful herbicide, glyphosate, was an integral part of regenerative farming, thereby confirming that when it comes to health, food and nutrition, neither the government nor industry should ever be listened to.

Now you spoke at the start about food security and I, I think this is all very much part of the process by which food security is stripped away and stripped away either via subsidy or or so called innovation in that farmers are pushed away exactly like Sandy's been described. People are pushed away from being able to control the land that they may own or indeed have access to. And it just looks like it's going to be a sort of a one way

journey from here. I don't know if you have any particular thoughts on any of that. No, but we, I'm sure we'll talk more about absolutely for sure. OK, well, look, let's let's move on. And well, Vanessa and I recorded another episode of the Syria

podcast at the weekend and that went up on the UK column website. If you haven't heard that yet, please do go and listen to it. But in the course of that recording, Vanessa, you've mentioned a private security company, which you didn't name at the time. So let's let's name it now. Well, yes.

And I, I hasten to also say that in addition to the podcast, there will be a series of articles that I'm writing published at UK column going into greater detail in this into this organisation and it's potential practises in, in Syria. But the name of the company is Emerald Emerald Syria, part of the Emerald Group.

It's based in Dubai and the UAE, but it is effectively staffed predominantly as always with many of these PMC's, private military companies or private military security companies by former British military and and this is no exception. So basically there were two articles published, one in online intelligence, another in Turkish media, which is this one. UAE group launches security firms in Syria after Assad's fall. So let's have a quick look at the logo up at their Instagram.

We are excited to announce the establishment of our new company, Emerald Solutions Syria, dedicated to providing exceptional services in Syria, which according to them includes the protection of media outlets operating in Syria. And then within the article itself, it explains a little bit more about how Emerald got established in Syria, if we can

just have a look at this. So what it talks about is the fact that Emerald has clients already that are being housed in fortified villas in Damascus and protected by local forces. One assumes that's members of the HTS unelected government, effectively Al Qaeda. They entered Damascus, and this is interesting, before, just before, oh sorry, on the day of the fall of Damascus. So on the 8th of December, which of course is the day that I managed to get out of Damascus.

And that was, according to them, in order to work with international media covering the historic events. They were registered apparently in Syria officially on March the 11th, 2025, which was facilitated by the then trade minister. He's now actually being replaced. Now the head of operations in Syria is a Simon Ralton, if we can just have a quick look at his LinkedIn. So he's described as managing director of Emerald Solutions, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

And interestingly, I'm not going to go into massive detail, but Simon Rialton in particular was involved. This is him again. Emerald Solution successfully repatriated Travis Timmerman from Syria, reuniting him safely with U.S. forces at the AL Tanf illegal U.S. military base on the border with Syria and Jordan. Now just very quickly to cover the Travis Timmerman story, which is relatively interesting, he entered Syria, I would guess

about a year ago illegally. He was smuggled through the Lebanese border into Syria and perhaps unsurprisingly, at a time when tourism was actually booming in Syria under the former Syrian government, he was arrested for entering illegally and without any papers or permissions.

He claimed he was on a religious pilgrimage and he was eventually found barefoot after all the prisons were opened up by the marauding Al Qaeda gangs and he was allegedly found by Emerald Solutions. And then with the help of Syria Emergency Task Force, which is another CIA linked regime change focused operation, he was taken to Altanev.

So this suggests that Emerald was already well aware of the situation in Syria prior to the actual operation by HTS and in connection with another CIA operator in Syria itself. So I found that quite interesting as a story and also route and only joined Emerald Solutions in November 2024, so one month prior to the fall of Damascus. I'm sure that's also just coincidental.

He looking at his LinkedIn profile, his first job in the PMC industry was with an organisation called Aegis Defence Systems Limited, where he was from May 2007 until June 2010. Why have I focused on this? Because I think it demonstrates very clearly that the kind of internal structure of PMSCS globally and of course the majority of which are based in the UK. So let's have a look at who was basically the chairman of Aegis Defence when it was established in 2002.

Lord Nicholas Times, who you'll know better perhaps as an MP of Crawley and Sussex. He was the former chairman of Aegis Defence Services and member of the International Advisory Board for Garda World who bought Aegis in 2015. So this shows very clearly a revolving door between this particular PMC and the British government and the House of

Lords itself. And then who basically formed Aegis Defence. This is a guy, a maverick known as Sorry, who is Lieutenant Colonel Tim Spicer, given the OBE for his services about his book Who about the man who inspired Double O 7. So he formed Aegis in 2002. Now Aegis did not have a very good record in Iraq in particular. They were kind of hold over the calls for employing former child soldiers, soldiers as mercenaries in Iraq, child soldiers from Sierra Leone.

And it was picked up that there was a very good reason, according to the Aegis directors, that they would use these former child soldiers from Sierra Leone because they were much cheaper than using British or European mercenaries. They were only paying them around $16.00 per day. But prior to forming Aegis, Spicer started another company called Sandline. This is their homepage. Formerly it was taken down from the Internet. They were formed in the early 1990s and were dogged by

controversy. So again Spicer involved in controversial events through his PMC in 1997, Sandline and this was known as the Sandline Affair. Sandline was hired to help put down a rebellion in Papua New Guinea and the local army wasn't happy to find APMC was brought in and paid more than the overall military budget, so the army launched A coup and overthrew the government in Papua New Guinea. This was written by Peter West, singer author of Corporate Warriors.

But then if we Move on also in 1996 to 97. No sorry. In 99, Tony Blair was involved in the Arms to Africa scandal, which was effectively, I'm, I'm going to describe it very, very shortly. In 1997, there was a coup that put Johnny Paul Koroma in power.

However, the UKEU and US wanted to restore the previous government of President Kabul. In 97, the UN imposed an embargo on arms supply to Sierra Leone and in 98, the supporters of Kaaba, the former president thought that they would employ Sandline in an international to overthrow Koroma, which meant that he was supplying Spicer was supplying weapons, military

equipment and personnel. When he thought he was going to be Rumble, his solicitors sent a letter to the Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, implicating for an office personnel and MOD officials and representatives of the then US administration, which then prompted Cook to initiate the leg inquiry.

And this is Paddy Ashdown basically speaking to Tony Blair. Whilst the government has been playing past the parcel with the blame over those, the Sierra Leone rebels who were defeated by British arms have now been rearmed, apparently with the assistance of another British company. So again, I just want to show the background to perhaps Emerald Solutions in Syria and the staff that are actually working within that.

And then again, coming back to Aegis, Auk firm awarded the largest Iraq security contract, so A2 year contract, $475 million. They were also involved in the attack against Basra in 2003, replacing British troops at the behest of the then Basra governor.

And there was in 2005 video of an Aegis contractor firing wildly at civilian cars on it on the Iraqi Hwy to the tune of Mystery Train by Elvis Presley. And of course, we will remember the crimes committed by Blackwater and by CACI, who were accused of torturing prisoners under their detention and torturing them. So therefore, you know, I think this just sets the scene for what PMCS might be up to in Syria. Thank you, Vanessa.

We'll, we'll come back to this topic a little bit later on, but

in the meantime, if you like what the UK column does, if you'd like to support us, support.ukcolumn.org as a place to go, you can make a donation, join us as a member. If you do join us as a member, that will allow you to access UK column News Extra and the forums and so on. You can't support us by picking something up with the UK Column shop, or if you use the link on this page to buy something from Clive to carl.com, we do get a small Commission from that.

But if you can't do any of that, that's absolutely fine. Please do at least share anything that you see of interest on the UK Column website because that helps us defeat the algorithms and we absolutely need everybody to help us with that. But Charles, there is an item on the On the UK Column shop that we still would encourage people to get hold of. Absolutely there is indeed. I was wearing mine this morning and it definitely put a spring

in my step. The UK column on location I wasn't the only one listening from Cheltenham 2025 is now up on the website. So if you were there or you watch the live stream or you are about to watch the live stream because that is also still for sale, then do get AT shirt too. Now you interviewed Sam Sorbo. I did and that went out yesterday. Been very well received. She speaks very, very passionately and from a very well informed position on home education.

And when one considers what Ben was reporting in the news on Monday's programme about the suggestion that the government are going to be able to inveigle their way into the lives of primary school children when it concerns issues about which they may or may not speak or have a particular view, then this really is 1 to listen to. Not just for people with children, but for those who just have a want to get a better idea of sort of how corrupt the system actually is and how it

can be avoided. And at 1:00 PM tomorrow you interviewed Jeremy Nil. German warfare and battle of ideas is the topic. 1:00 PM tomorrow. Do not miss it. And there's a very good reason for not missing it, because Jeremy is going to be providing us with a lot of content over the next coming weeks and months. He is indeed.

Yeah. We're very pleased to announce that starting on Monday the 5th of May, he will be producing a show for UK column under his germ warfare brand and that will go out 7:00 PM Monday to Friday. And he will be resuming his consistently high quality service of interviewing fascinating people from all over the world about topics that we have all I, I would say, reaped huge benefits from listening into to date. So we're, we're really excited

about that. To have him with UK column and the interview for tomorrow is not just to sort of to lead up to that, but also his background. He's been a cartoonist for a long time, having worked in the mainstream media and to have come out the other side and also his perspective as a South African living in a a sort of broken country. OK.

Now just a quick reminder of Standing the Light taking place in Cumbria, that's May, Bank Holiday 23rd to the 26th of May 2025. Lots of hugely interesting people performing at that event and a whole bunch of other activities for people. So do get along to that if you possibly can. OK, Now let's move on then to

online safety and well, good news everyone. Ofcom has set up it's new Online Information Advisory Committee and appointed several members. Now the Online Information Advisory Committee is a requirement of the Online Safety Act and it's there apparently to provide advice to Ofcom with specific focus on misinformation and disinformation.

It's first meeting is going to take place on the 16th of May and Ofcom says their job under the ACT is, quote, to make sure platforms in scope are taking effective action to address illegal content and other material that is harmful to children through implementing appropriate systems and processes. Our role will not involve us making decisions about individual posts or accounts or requiring specific pieces of content to be taken down.

No, they will merely be setting the precedent that everybody has to follow and they're relying on the platforms to be there. Chief censors. So let's have a look at who's on the committee then. So if we bring this back on screen and well the chair is a guy called Lord Allen of Hallam. He's also a non executive member director of the Ofcom board and Ben has been mentioning him on a recent news programme. So look back through the archives to have a look for

that. Ofcom has now appointed 5 new members who will each serve three year term beginning tomorrow. In fact, the first one that we're going to mention here is Elizabeth Costa. She is the Chief of Innovation and Partnerships at the Behavioural Insights Team. And so behavioural behaviour change in this kind of thing absolutely fundamental to this discussion. She's also, by the way, a senior visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics. The next on the list here is Jeffrey Hard.

He's professor of political philosophy and public policy at University College London, and he's the director of UC LS Digital Speech Lab. He's also a senior associate at the Institute of Ethics in AI at Oxford University. The next is another familiar name, Will Moy. He's currently chief executive of the Campbell Collaboration, which they describe as an international social science research network, but he is previously held for many years the the leadership role, in fact, in full fact.

So there we go. He also took part in the Leveson Inquiry and so on. He's been a long time campaigner on these kinds of issues. The next on the list is Mark Scott, who's a senior resident fellow at the Digital Forensic, the DFR Labs, as everybody will recognise, and he's previously worked as a correspondent for Politico and The New York Times.

And finally, then we have Davika Shankar Grandpierre, who is a thematic panel member of the EU Knowledge Hub on Prevention of Radicalization and a contributing author to the Global Network on Extremism and Technology. So there you go, that's who's on the panel, that's who's on the board. And I'm sure that's going to be extremely useful in terms of making sure that many dissenting voices are shut down over the coming weeks, months and years.

But in the meantime, in yet another act of sheer hypocrisy, we had to bring your attention to this because the British regime has updated its country policy and information note on social media surveillance and surplus activities. And this is for Iran. And I'm just going to take a bit. I'm going to say I need to issue a health warning here because as I read what it says, various degrees of site splitting may result in the listener.

So the first paragraph states Irans constitution and legal framework restricts online freedom of expression. Penalties for breaching Irans computer crimes law range from fines and judicial orders to custodial sentences. Well, in fact, it goes on to say that it also potentially in some cases leads onto the death penalty. Anybody who isn't saying exactly the same kind of attitudes and approaches in the British government is not paying

attention. But then it goes on to say that social media users in Iran whose posts are deemed critical of the state or against itself, declared high moral standards or who comment on sensitive issues may be subject to treatment, including harassment, arrest, I'll treatment, torture, criminal charges that are sufficiently serious by its nature, repetition to amount to persecution. And anybody, again, who doesn't recognise exactly the same behaviour in the British government.

The British regime isn't paying attention. And the hypocrisy is just off the charts.

But let's stick sort of with this topic. Charles. And and a Royal Marine, yeah. Very much with this topic. Yes, serving Royal Marine has found himself in the centre of a highly politicised censorship censorship tag and this is for questioning the lowering of the standards within 3 Commando Brigade. Here he is describing what he did. I made a survey about a particular issue that Marines

are concerned about. That particular issue is that we believe that we have the high standards that we keep and the high standards that we keep for a very important reason, which is to prevent Marines from being killed in dangerous situations.

When we go to war, and we've been told we will go to war very soon, we are concerned that those high standards are being dropped and selectively dropped for political reasons, with the bespoken tension of forcing women through raw Marines training for a for a political victory lap. Now we'll come to the issue at hand, but I think it should be noted as very significant that he believes that he will be

going to war very soon. There'll be a link to the full half hour interview in the show notes and it's very compelling listening. Anyway, within 24 hours of what he describes, his survey was taken down with nearly 1000 signatures on it. There's probably 5 1/2 thousand or so in Three Commando Brigade and it was being described as Russian disinformation. Now there's no doubt about the push for women in the Royal Marines and this is an image

from their own website. The BBC of course, are taking this up and so far just one woman has passed the shorter All Arms Command. Of course, this one, Lily Mae Fisher she is not, therefore having passed the All Arms Command. Of course she's not a ROM reen, but as made clear from her Instagram profile, she is APR opportunity and as far as this story is concerned, the thing to

the sorry. The next thing to happen was that this man's regiment was visited by an official from the MOD explaining that there was not a problem with with any of this, the standards weren't being lowered and whoever put the survey up was a coward. This went on for some time.

Things did not go quiet and it resulted in this young man telling his chain of command that he was responsible for the survey and somewhat remarkably he was flown down to London for an interview in main building Ministry of Defence. No time was given to his concerns as he had articulated them, but instead the focus of the interrogation was on his politics, which as he correctly states, or his affair. A short while later, after returning from some leave, this

happened. So drag me into this room. This is a different instance. So I'm now being dragged in by Police Scotland. I asked them am I being detained? They say, no, you're not being detained, but we're holding you here under the Terrorism Act. I'm just shaking my head at this instance. And I said, have I committed any acts of terrorism? Am I expected to commit any acts of terrorism? And they said, no, we have you here because you have views.

And that was, I don't even know if they meant to say that because that's the truth, I think. I think they're supposed to maybe not say the truth in that instance, but that's what they've clearly been asked to investigate is my political views, which are none of their business. And as soon as they say that, I just say thought crime. And they're like, what? I'm like, this is thought crime. You're the thought police.

This is thought crime. And they're saying, well, there's no illegal, you know, it's not illegal to think things. And I just, well, it clearly is because I'm here in a room and I'm being treated like a criminal and take and my, my rights are being taken away from me because I have opposing political views to the political establishment. This was under schedule seven of the Terrorism Act 2000. That's been a feature of UK column news reporting for much of the last year.

A very obvious misapplication of the law in order to provoke fear and to attempt to cling to some kind of control. Now the wording is opaque enough to justify in staring anyone under this piece of legislation. We see here that it's to do with people travelling through the U KS borders who may be involved or concerned in the Commission preparation or instigation of

acts of terrorism. And it goes on to say that the examination of an individual is not conditional upon having groans to suspect that person of being engaged in terrorism. But the decision must not be arbitrary. In other words, those acting under this legislation in the ports have completely free reign as they can never really be asked be held to account for their actions.

Now, as far as the Royal Marines are concerned, this is a command issue and this is what the young man had to say about that particular point. Forward So to the Marines that are concerned about this, go into work and the next day you're at work and stand up for this issue and pull up your chain of command on this issue and say you don't think it's right for Marines to be treated like this.

And for for you to feel like you have to lie on this issue and you have to, you have to keep your opinion silent. Say tell them that you believe that. And for the people high up in the chain of command, I ask you to make an environment where people feel like they can speak about these sorts of things because they don't. And that's not my fault. It's your fault. I have a responsibility to speak about that issue and that's what

I've done. You have a responsibility to take on what I've told you and act upon it. The last couple of points to make concern the charade of diversity in the armed forces, and it's here that we find the one sentence which undoes all of this nonsense at a stroke. The armed forces is exempt in that it can do what it needs to

do without compromise. And if we just look at the biannual diversity statistics, we see here that clause from it saying that they are exempt from the provisions of the Equality Act 2010 because of reasons for reasons of combat effectiveness. So for every other organisation in the country they must compromise. Now, why would that have been accepted by any business at any point?

And the crumbling of this particular narrative is now very much evident on the Equality and Human Rights Commission website with a note here saying that it must be updated due to the Supreme Court judgement on sex and gender as reported on last week. No doubt more to talk about in Extra. OK, let's move on then to

warfare. And last week we were talking about the size of the British Army and considering the likelihood of some form of conscription being necessary. And I received a comment saying that there were there was not really a problem because the army can get as many as it needs from the Gurkhas. Now there's currently around 96,000 Nepali Gurkhas, there are 42,000 Indian Gurkhas and around 4000 in the British Army and I believe the British Army

recruits from Nepal exclusively. Though at this point, well, that is until now because a new artillery unit has been set up using Gurkha soldiers. Over the next four years, a grand total of 400 new Gurkha personnel will join the unit known as the King's Gurkha Artillery, bolstering UK security according to the government through the plan for change. This is all about the plan for change. Now 400 isn't going to make much of a difference. A new Gurkha cap badge has also

been created. You saw that on screen a second ago. This is the first time in 14 years to represent the new unit and the expanded breadth of specialisms that the Brigade of Gurkhas deliver, continuing their proud tradition of military service to the UK, said the UK government and the King's Gurkha Artillery Unit will become an integral part of the UK Armed Forces artillery capabilities as part of the new offer for Gurkha soldiers and in recognition of demands of Modern Warfare.

They say personnel who join the KGA will be trained in advanced equipment including Archer and light gun artillery systems. And in the future they're also going to train on the remote controlled Hearts or 155 artillery system. So they should be extremely excited about that. In the meantime though, the Defence and Security Accelerator supported by Innovate UK are offering Defence Innovation loans to six small businesses in the UK.

They say this is an opportunity for single and small, sorry single, small and medium sized enterprises with solutions and defence themed problems to apply for a Defence Innovation loan of between 100,000 and 1,000,000 lbs with below market interest rate of 7.4%. That's exciting for them I'm sure. And this loan could be used to cover up to 100% of eligible project costs. So the Administrative Defence cited 3 examples.

The first one was Veri, I presume that's how you pronounce it. They secured a loan to help commercialise their data capture and analysis technology and this technology, which has been tested by the RAF, is enabling trainers to assess and develop individualised training programmes for trainee pilots. Maybe that would be good if we had any planes to fly trainee pilots in.

But anyway. Another one is Quick Block, which develops lightweight rapid assembly building blocks for force protection and they have secured A defence innovation loan as well. And so that's going to help bolster supply chains, particularly in light of recent shipping disruption in the Red Sea.

And then the the last example that they gave us a company called Silicon Microgravity, who are using their defence innovation loan to develop underground detection technology, which is going to be ready for trials. Well, it was ready for trials in 2024. The trials are due to take place anytime soon. And they're also going to use the money to help commercialise this product for security, border control, defence and civil engineering market. So that's all very exciting

stuff. Any thoughts? Well, I think on the Gurkha contingent, I mean it is interesting that that's the specific area, the indirect fires is the area of choice for putting another 400 blokes in. And I think with, OK, they mentioned Archer and how it's and whatnot, but I think it rather depends how drones are to be classified into, into forests, indirect fire. It's concerned and whether there might be something concerning

that. But also, I would say what it what this really suggests is that the competition for such places compared with British Army recruiting from from the UK, it's not comparable. They, they the Gurkhas get about 20,000 blokes apply each year to become Gurkhas.

And that hasn't abated. And so not just that, but also the retention, retaining Gurkha soldiers is far, far better for the, for the army, for the Ministry of Defence than than for the Brits. So it's it, it is as though there was no way of achieving this by pursuing British based soldiers or, or recruits. So I think I mean that that is incredibly telling. Absolutely, absolutely it is. Vanessa. Let's come back to you then and

looking at Emerald and and silly similar companies, the question of regulation and how the regulator or if the regulated springs to mind. Yeah, indeed, it's a very important question. So I'll start with a report from War on one from 2008. So based largely on crimes that were committed by PMCS during the war against Iraq, the illegal war against Iraq, getting away with murder, the need for action on UK private military and security companies.

So as they point out, 10s of thousands of mercenaries working for PMCS outside legal control, the US and Iraq at the time were taking action. The UK government had failed to act despite, as we've mentioned, being the biggest player. And this is basically again repeated in an art in various articles, but this is from Open Democracy in 2018, Co written by Dr. Ian Overton who heads up the Action Against Armed Violence organisation which tries to regulate PMCS to some degree.

Britain is the world centre for private military contractors and it's almost impossible to find out what they're up to. Welcome to the murky world of mercenaries and floating armouries. Already setting the theme and as part of the article points out the British PM SC industry, the private military security company industry. Britain has basically LED this privatisation of modern welfare.

It leads the world in providing armed contractors to so called hotspots and some of the biggest clients are governments in those hotspots. Since 2004, the UK Gov government has spent approximately £50 million annually. The total worth of the PMC industry stands between 69 billion and 275 billion. So it's a very, very lucrative market sector. And then if we look at what Dr. Ian Overton actually says within that article, he said that AOAV had investigated 235 UK based

internationally operating PMSCS. So this is in 2018. These profit seeking entities are entrusted with government security tasks while themselves being subject to a perilously weak system of self regulation. So again, we we see, and I'll come on to who else is being self regulatory shortly.

But this is a response to Baroness Tong in 2021 during parliamentary questions, who basically asked Lord Ahmed of Wimbledon what legislation was in place to to basically provide oversight for, as she said, UK citizens acting as mercenaries or training with foreign militaries. Let's see what Lord Ahmed said. First of all, he said we draw a clear distinction between mercenaries and PSCS. We promote high standards for PSCS internationally through voluntary regulation off the sector.

So we come back to this idea of voluntary regulation and as I said, this was in 2021. He goes on to say members of UK armed forces regularly undertake training with a wide range of international actors where this best supports the development of UK military capability and this is important, supports wider government objectives. Well, why is this so important?

Because if we look at another organisation which could be largely described as APMC is the White Helmets, which was established by a former British military intelligence officer, James. The measure in 2013 was almost exclusively embedded with Al Qaeda derivatives in Syria and has been accused by Syrian civilians of involvement in organ trafficking, child trafficking and staging, of course the famous chemical weapon events that basically

sustained the regime change or narratives against the then Syrian government. They are also self regulatory. They don't come under any investigation by UN agencies or even by the British government. That is effectively their primary funder. And then let's have a look again at Lord Ahmed. This was in 2019. Talking about White Helmets. The UK has provided 38 million from the Conflict Stability and Security Fund.

We've talked about that many times on UK column to support the White Helmets over the past five years. This assistance delivered through trusted third party implementers as part of a coordinated international programme of assistance. And for sure, the White Helmets were furthering British Foreign Office objectives in Syria, which was effectively regime change.

And then this is going to be part of the investigation that I will publish up at UK Column. It'll be a series of articles because there's a lot of information to trawl through. But let's have a look at the founder and executive director of Emerald Solutions Group. They were formed in 2012, one year before the White Helmets were put together by James Lemejure. As I said, he was a former British military intelligence operator. This is Wayne Christopher Connor.

Now what is seriously interesting about his LinkedIn profile is that to a large degree you can see the crossover between him and James Lamazeiro's career. In 2007, he joined Olive Group, which you will remember Mike from, from the diagram we did way back about white helmet that were then bought up by Blackwater and sorry, bought up by Academy who also incorporated Blackwater. And in 2007, James the measure left Olive Group.

So Wayne Connor was basically there prior to sorry, he joined just as lame James, the measure was leaving. They also crossed paths in the Balkans and in other areas of operations. So very interesting. As I've said, the other self regulatory group backed by the West and the UK of course is HDS itself, Al Qaeda that was commissioned to to form a committee to investigate its own crimes of ethnic cleansing and atrocities committed against Syrian civilians since the takeover in December 2024.

And of course Israel is extremely self regulatory. It looks into the crimes of genocide committed against Palestinians. Thank you, Vanessa, you any brief thoughts on that? Well, actually just on that on in terms of UK column content, there's a very interesting interview with Morgan Laurette who was in Iraq in 2003 for working for Blackwater, subsequently joined the US armed forces. It's it's entitled Outsourcing Morality up on the UK column website.

So that would be my first response would be to go and listen to that. Very, very insightful. Super. Thank you, Sandy. Let's bring you back to the programme then. And over the last week or two, we've been advertising what was

described on the screenshot as a dissident meet up for the Southwest. Tell us about it. It was, it was a really good event. It was the tax rebellion. It was about looking at ways that we can resist financing this, this takeover, this corporate takeover that we appear to be financing through our council tax. And it was, it's interesting because there's low, there were, there were many, many different

views on how to go about this. What, what my take away was that we have to somehow bring it all together and find the best way because there's different people. There's the sovereign projects, there's the Anavon rice lot, the I think it's the community assemblage of the British Isles.

And then we had Chris Coverdale, who's amazing, and David Leighty, who who seemed to have got a kind of a, a thing together to, to, to, to address the non payment of council tax, or at least withholding it, keeping it in escrow perhaps, but challenging it saying, look, we don't know where our money is going at the moment. We, the, only 30% of our, of our council tax actually goes to the services that we receive. The rest of it goes into central government.

And we don't know what they do with what we do know what they do with it. But we are not, we're not given the, the choice of where we, where we spend our money and we're financing illegal wars. We're financing all sorts of stuff that we should not be financing and we don't want to finance. So this is the, this is The thing is bringing people together and getting all the ideas. And that's what the, the, the event was about. And it was, it was very well

attended. We had lots of people there and we, we just, there was, we had Glynn from the Concerned Citizens Advisory Assembly with Catherine Armitage there and they were, they, they were sort of putting together another event that I've, I've worked on them with, which is on May the 5th and 6th. It's an online event. We will be obviously promoting it on the UK column because people can vote, they can, people can vote about climate

change. And we're trying to get something together that will, that will actually challenge the whole thing about paying our paying our council tax, you know, towards all the stuff that's going on with climate change. So we had David Leighty, we had a wonderful, you know, sort of panel with myself, Chris Coverdale and David Leighty. David Leighty is a retired policeman of 22 years with a law degree and he's been taking Lloyd's bank to, to task and it's taken him over a decade to

do so, but he's nearly there. It's a really interesting thing that he's doing, challenging the, the validity of some of these banks and Chris Coverdale, so, you know, was fantastic. He, he really is. He's been doing so much. Yeah, that we've got a picture here of, of Glynn Owen and Catherine Armitage from the Citizens Advisory Assembly. And they're, they're doing fantastic work and I'm working

quite closely with them as well. We, I talked about devolution and what's going on with the corporate land grab. But what, my, my biggest take away was that we really have to come together and find solutions. And it was a great day for networking and really getting to grips with how we as people can challenge things. And we can, we just need to have the, to have the, you know, the,

the backup and do it on mass. And that's what we need to achieve because if we don't, we're just financing so much stuff that we we don't want. And we have no, we have no reason to be financing illegal wars. We don't want this. We don't want what what we're where our money is going. We don't want it to be going

into these things. And next week, I mean, what, what's good is I got, I, I was approached by a wonderful man called Nigel. I just called him Nigel and he gave me some more information that really goes deeper into my research into the infiltration of extremist groups into English charities that are subverting the British democratic process, infiltration into the National Trust, the Royal Society of Protection of Birds. I think the WWF has already been

infiltrated for a long time, but it's basically it's ramping up with the People's Plan for Nature and the Living Planet Act that I spoke about earlier. So it's very important for us to get together at these events to share this information. Thank you. Thank you Sandy. Yes indeed. We'll talk more about that an extra. I think the WWF was never

infiltrated. It was, it began as a pre infiltrated organisations as was set up by the Duke of Edinburgh in the 1st place and was absolutely 100% on this agenda from the start. So, so the infiltration didn't wasn't required in that case. Well, look, we are out of time for today. We will be back in a few minutes. If you're Auk Call member on the

for the extra programme. If you are not Auk Call member, then please consider joining us and joining us for news extra every day that we do a news programme. Otherwise, don't forget the interview tomorrow at 1:00 PM. We will be back as usual on Friday and we'll see you then. Bye, bye, bye. Bye.