UK Column News - 9th May 2025

Hello, it's Friday the 9th of May 2025, just after 1:00. Welcome to UK column News. I'm your host, Mike Robinson, joining me in the studio today, Patrick Henningson. And welcome to the programme, Patrick. Great to be with you, Mike. And by video link, we have Mark Anderson later in the programme. We're going to be covering the continuing drive for Wharf. We're going to be covering fluoride in the US and the UK and also online safety.

But we're going to kick off with this UKUS trade deal big news conference tomorrow morning at 10 AM. The Oval Office was what Trump was declaring on Wednesday. He went on to say that it was a major trade deal with representatives of a big and highly respected country, the first of many. And then yesterday morning, he revealed that it wasn't India or China, it was the UKA country, which, as I'm sure Mark is about to demonstrate in a second, is

already in a trade surplus. the US is already a trade surplus with the UK. So the question is, is that a big deal now? I just want to show this image of Peter Mandelson, the UK's ambassador to the United States, looking down over the shoulder of Donald Trump. I just saw the positioning of people in the room was was quite amusing. But yeah, I'm not sure what we said about the Prince of Darkness there. He's still got that gravity task. Doesn't even mark Mike. Yes, he really does.

So hasn't lost it. No, indeed. So Mark, let's come over to you and what what are your thoughts on on this deal? Well, of course, it's a little early to tell in terms of the nitty gritty details, but the White House and I don't know what slides you might want to show. Just to kick it off, The White House is announcing a great deal for America, President Trump's

breakthrough trade deal. And we also see the Department of Commerce headline together with the US trade Rep announcing the historic trade deal with the United Kingdom to open markets, raise revenue and strengthen security. And I listed here some of the organisations in the US that commented favourably. They were quoted by the White House National Cattlemen's Beef Association, renewable fuels,

mainly ethanol. There Growth Energy CEO Emily Score, the Job Creators Network, Consumer Brands Association President Melinda Hochstad. That's the packaged good packaged goods industry and the American Farm Bureau Federation president. And they were, among others, Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the Nebraska governor, the agricultural secretary of the state of Iowa.

We're all commenting favourably. We also have a banking related thing here going on where the HHSBCUSA President and CEO Lisa Mcgaugh said today's landmark USUK trade agreement marks a significant step in strengthening transatlantic economic ties and expanding opportunities for businesses and

investors. As a British headquartered bank with a strong US footprint, we're uniquely positioned to help American companies and investors seize new growth opportunities domestically in the UK and beyond. And they're ready to leverage their position, they're saying, and that's a quote from the White House of that banker. And at any rate, I did some research.

There's also of course, the press release from the government of the UK that this is their headline landmark economic deal with United States saves thousands of jobs for British car makers and the steel industry. Those are the apparent announced beneficiaries, the main beneficiaries of this trade deal, car makers in the steel industry and the Prime Minister is saying thousands of jobs are

being saved in the process. the US also, we can mention here with this chart, this is the first three months of 2025 has been running and in previous years as well has been running a trade surplus with the UK. However, in January of this year, they were close to parity. People can look up this chart through the Department of Commerce in the United States, or excuse me, I believe that's it. Wait a minute. The I want to get that right.

The the chart comes from the Census Department, the census.gov department of the US government. At any rate, there tends to be about a 5 to 7 to $8 billion surplus on the side of the US with the UK as a general rule. Although again, in January trade was relatively balanced, this year the gap was only a little over 1 billion. And in trade terms, that's a fairly close gap the way it goes. But at any rate, the many things that have been listed on both sides of the pond about this

include automotive tariffs. The UK will see tariffs on its first 100 in car exports to the US reduced from 27.5 to 10%. Atlantic Commerce sector US is saying that $10 billion worth of Boeing planes will be sold to the UK by the US. The US will remove tariffs on steel and aluminium imports from the UK and reduce those particular tariffs to 0, according to the US government. And we were, we were concerned

about farmers. They're saying there's going to be unprecedented market access for British farmers with protections on Food Standards maintained. This is according to the UK government. We have agreed on new reciprocal market access on beef with UK farmers given a quota for 13,000 metric tonnes of beef. There will be no weakening. They're saying no weakening of U.S. Foods, excuse me, of UK Food

Standards on imports. The UK is not going to weaken its Food Standards. And apparently there's no, there's no chance or there's no indication that chlorinated chicken from the US will be sent to the UKI think that that's been a concern. So that's some of what's going on. It appears to have reasonable benefits for both sides. But of course, there's a lot to unpack when you look at these trade deals, but that's what I've got so far mainly. Thank you, Mark.

Well, let's let's just look in a bit more detail of what the UK government is saying this is doing for us. So here's the the graphic that we're putting out on Twitter today. The UK and USA have signed a deal to reduce tariffs. Here's what it won't be doing. So this is what they're wanting to focus on. And the first thing that they were focusing on was high food

and drink standards. So they're saying the government has been clear that we will only ever sign trade agreements which align with the UK's national interests. Hormone treated beef and chlorinated chicken is and will remain illegal in the UK. Any US imports will continue to need to meet UK Food Standards. So they're saying that in fact, as a result of that it that it's written into the text of this agreement and there's a result of that.

There's no chance of these products coming into the UK. But there's been a lot of talk over the last couple of years about chlorinated chicken, Patrick. But what what about this hormone imbued beef? What's that all about? Well, the question is, Mike, you know, we talked about this at length before the programme. You know, you could say, oh, we're not going to have hormone infused, synthetic hormone infused American beef coming into the British market and of course chlorinated chicken.

But how, how do you really regulate all of this stuff because the US market is just becoming so deregulated. And I'll put up here a study by the NHS up on screen here and decrying disruptors. That's really what we're talking about. And the correlation or the causation for obesity, now America has an obese problem. Everybody knows that. And Britain and Europe are catching up very quickly to this as well. So this is an important study here.

And there's the gist of this whole thing is right here, endocrine disrupting chemicals they're calling obesogens. So they've actually got a name for these chemicals and these synthetic hormones and they're they're promoting weight gain and they're saying that it includes compounds to which the human population is exposed to daily in daily life through their use of pesticides and herbicides that get into the food chain via the agricultural process.

Pesticides and herbicides, industrial household products, even fairy liquid and Unilever products fall also into these categories as well. Flame retardants, etcetera. So this is a big problem here. It's a massive problem. And it also will go to the Soil Association right here. And so this is actually a great resource if you want to know where things are at at the moment.

So you just go to the Soil Association and they'll tell you all about, you know, where is the hormonal beef and so forth, and also the carcinogens. There's a carcinogen problem with a lot of these things. It's becoming more and more prevalent and the lawsuits speak for themselves on this. Here is a lot of great details. Again, the Soil Association is really up to date on legislation regulation. So it's a, it's a great resource. So I encourage people to go there.

Bottom line, Mike, though US is cutting tariffs on British metals and cars, UK is cutting tariffs on USA food. But here's a good question, Mike, when we're talking about the automotive industry, what are what's, what's Britain trying to do? No combustion engines by what, 20-30? Is that, is that the target? Are they 20? 40 is more likely I think. So are you going to have a situation where Jaguar is going to be producing combustion engines for AUS market?

No, because Jaguar has already announced they're not going to be producing combustion engines for any market. They're moving full electric. Cooper Mini Jaguar. But it's just interesting because US is on a very different Green New Deal path than Britain and British and European countries are basically have committed themselves to economic Harry Carey in the Japanese sense where the US is going basically eschewing the whole climate agenda very, very

rapidly. So you're going to have a divergent of markets could be a gap in the market for some, you know, entrepreneurial good. British Company. Good British engineering companies. Perhaps now they're coming back onto the food issue again. We've talked about beef, we talked about chicken.

What about pork? Because in 2020, the British company Genus announced that they had succeeded in using CRISPR technology to gene edit pigs to protect them for from porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome, otherwise known as PRRS. Well, you'd be glad to know that these pigs have been approved this week by the US Food and Drug Administration to enter the food chain. They will be sold. So my question then is will they be sold on the UK market following this deal?

Well, remember that it's the UK which leads the world, at least on a legislative point of view on the question of gene editing.

So I'm, I'm gonna suggest that perhaps the answer to that is yes, but coming back on to the other things that won't be covered or won't be problems as a result of this trade deal, according to the government at least it won't impact the NHS, they say, because any impact in the NHS, any devastating destruction of that particular organisation, the UK government's quite capable of doing that for itself. It doesn't need a trade deal with the United States to do it.

It won't harm UK farmers, they say Again. Again, they had, they felt, the need to reiterate that twice. Because that's their job, the government exactly, to harm UK farmers. Once again, and it won't mean American companies in the UK will avoid paying digital

services tax. Now I have to say, Patrick, this is something that you Mark and I have been banging on about since 2013, this whole business of, of multinational digital companies and not paying tax in countries that they're providing services into. This is a continuing effort by the British government with this digital services tax to get a, a handle on this whole thing. And so apparently this deal will not impact that in any way, shape or form.

And finally, it won't rule out broader deal in the future. And I think this is the key take away from this whole thing. What we're seeing is a first step here. And if they're saying that hormone infused beef and chlorinated chicken are not part of this particular deal, then don't worry, there's the opportunity in the future to expand this much broader. So we need to keep an eye on on what they're doing. Yeah, and we know how to devastate and wipe out UK agriculture and livestock, don't

we? Just by announcing outbreaks of viruses, magic little part invisible particles like foot and mouth and bird flu. And there you go. Let's call the entire livestock and bird population just to be safe. Just to be safe. Absolutely. Even though it's not deadly to humans, we still need to. Or it's not even to birds or even cows. Let's just kill them all, just in case. I guess the other news that we

should briefly mention is the new Pope. There is a new Pope. We'll bring this up on screen. This is not just any Pope, Mike. This is the new pontiff and controversial insert in a certain way and novel in other ways as well. And why is that? We'll go here. This is the American Pope, first ever American Pope. Cardinal Robert Prevost has been anointed Pope Leo the 14th. I get my room and numerals right. Yeah, yeah.

Just just about remember them Pope Leo the the 14th and so this is coming on the heels of Pope Francis who was a real reformer. Some would call him a leftist, a progressive as the socialist Pope, the Jesuit Pope, etcetera. Prevost kind of or Pope Leo, if you will, falls a little bit along that Saint Francis line. The Catholic Church is facing all of this pressure of to make changes to change the way the

world's changing. There's all these issues like gay marriage, whether to allow married members of the clergy like other Protestant denominations and so forth. So there's many, many different issues.

Obviously the issue that they don't want to really bring up at the moment in America is Israel. So this is like kind of off the conversation topic list, but it will eventually have to make its way on. When Pope Francis took a very, I would say, deliberate line in defence of the people of Gaza, which made him extremely controversial to certain Zionist

Christian factions. The other area, because that's one area that they don't want to talk about, the other area that they absolutely don't want to talk about is the continuing allegations of sexual abuse of children. And Cardinal Robert Prevost when he was in Peru, doesn't have that great a reputation in this regard either. It staggers me that that we have the two major religious, you know, Christian religious institutions on the planet, the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England.

And neither of them is prepared to grip this issue. And I've got to say that if for as long as they don't grip this issue, it seems to me that they are giving tacit approval for this behaviour you. So there needs to be an acknowledgement of it. There needs to be repercussions, serious repercussions for the people that the that are involved in it and the the cover ups need to stop and the excuses

need to stop. And unfortunately, Cardinal Robert Prevost does not have a great reputation in this area. Well, neither did Pope Benedict before France as well. But interesting you bring up this Peruvian connection.

Not only is he the first American Pope, he's also a dual citizen of the country of Peru. So he is a dual national US and Peruvian, and probably by virtue of the amount of time he spent in that country, so the first really Latin American, a quasi Latin American Pope after Francis, but the first North American Pope. So clearly the centre of gravity from the Catholic Church globally shifting West and there's been a huge resurgence of membership in the Catholic

Church popularity as well as the Orthodox Church. But because of this, by the way, is, is that why they're looking to the West because of the, are they saying the threat of the rise in in membership of the Orthodox Church? No, it's there's also a concomitant popularity of the resurgence popular in the Catholic Church as well.

So, but it's, but definitely in the Orthodox Church and and also the pressure from traditional Catholics, like Trad Catholics as they call them, wanting to bring back Latin Masses and things like that, rejecting Vatican 2 reforms. So it's a very, very interesting time right now, especially in the Western Hemisphere, regarding the Catholicism and Christianity. OK, well let's move on then to

more sort of war related topics. Well, particularly Victory Day, VE Day, and we're starting off in Plymouth. Yeah, we're starting off locally. I mean, this is a very big, important day really for Plymouth. But throughout the whole country. Victory Day, 80th anniversary, 1940, five, 2025 here. Plymouth obviously affected greatly by the Second World War, more so than many other cities as well because of the bombing and so forth.

The Liftwaffer took out a substantial amount of Plymouth City, but the City Council did the rest afterwards with their brutalist architectural projects. But anyway, this is up on the hoe here. That's a historic picture. It's great and we'll go to the local media outlets. Did a very nice retrospective, beautiful photographs here. VE Day Plymouth celebrations throughout the years 80 years ago, people across the globe celebrated tears of joy and grief for all the lives lost as

Nazi Germany surrendered. So this is again great photographs here on local press, Plymouth Live. They've done a beautiful job really on this. You have to give them amazing credit on such a great presentation. But I go to the Facebook page, however, Mike of the Ministry of Defence and you know, there's some strange things sometimes that appear on their social

media pages. One of them is this is the VE Day procession here and you've got obviously the Royal Navy, the British Army, the Royal Air Force, but also international partners. I can't work out what that Blue Flag is, but I know what that blue and green flat or the blue and yellow flag is. Do you know what the other flag is? Well, it's the United Nations and the Commonwealth, so it's Commonwealth. Oh, it's Commonwealth, yeah. So why is Ukraine singled out as

an international partner? Because a lot of these events you see around the country in small villages, Ukraine has a prominent position. It's almost like it's Ukraine Day as well as VE Day as well. So you'll put a, a highlight there, Mike. But it's like, why Ukraine? Why is Ukraine so central to British Victory Day celebrations in 2025? We've created this whole story that somehow we're shoulder to shoulder with Ukraine.

So I just, I know Brian made this point of Monday, but remind me who Ukraine was fighting for during the Second World War? Well, they were torn. Actually. Western Ukraine, many of them were fighting with the Nazis, with Germany, but eastern Ukraine were fighting with the Red Army. That's not to say that I was 100% of people in the east and West were fighting on those sides. So Ukraine was torn in two effectively with the Second World War.

And the remnants of those Nazi collaborators, of course, are actually in power in Kiev. Look at this, just to remind people today, this is a Banderaite Nazis marching in today's Ukraine. They're marching in the streets. Torch processions at midnight with ultra nationalists. This is who the US and the UK and NATO are backing in Ukraine. These are the direct descendants of Stefan Bandera.

So they're erecting statues to Nazis and they're tearing down memorials to the Second World War, Victory Day memorials that shows what the Soviet Union, the Red Army lost in defeating the Nazis during the Second World War. So it's a very confusing time, isn't it, Mike?

For the West, especially for Britain and France, having really cast their lot with this ultra nationalist Nazi leaning regime in Kiev with Zelensky kind of at the head, serving at the pleasure of the ultra nationalist effectively. I mean, this is how informed, intelligent commentators are seeing it as well as honest historians. But we have mainstream media who are seeing a different story,

unfortunately. But let's go over to Moscow here and the scenes in Moscow for Victory Day, arguably third biggest holiday in the country after Christmas and Easter is Victory Day big 80 year anniversary. But look at this. Zelinsky basically has threatened to world leaders don't go to the parade in Moscow. That's what Zelensky did this week. Robert Fizzo there, you saw earlier from Slovakia, the PM, he basically slammed Zelensky for this. How dare you threaten world

leaders? He's saying you're not threatening me. He said you're threatening the president of Brazil. You're threatening the president of, you know, of China, President Xi. And so it really, I think this was a very bad move by Zelensky from a public relations point of view. Even he accused Russia of staging a false flag on VE Day. So if he did it, he would have blamed it on Russia basically. I mean, this guy is a Lula there from Brazil with G at.

So they weren't deterred by Zelinsky threats, were they? But you know, imagine if they made those threats against the United States. What would have happened? I mean, it's not safe to go to Victory Day in Washington anyway. That's the situation Russia's in. There's feet. So they're basically tearing strips off Zelensky and the Ukrainians for this. So hats off to the Slovakia. Obviously, he survived an assassination attempt arguably related to this very issue, Mike.

So I just find it to be very rich this kind of embracing of Ukraine, especially when they're behaving like this on the international stage, threatening to kill the presidents of China and and Brazil if they show up to Moscow for Victory Day. I mean, it's unbelievable. Where is the condemnation from British heads of state, from French, from European, from von der Leyen, from the US head of state? Trump didn't say anything against this.

I mean, it would have been great if the US Senate representative to the Victory Day, but that might be a bridge too far. So anyway, a lot, a lot to say and again, a lot to, to, to, to deal with here. There's some pictures there. Obviously there's the line up, some world leaders again, the pageantry, there's Putin embracing the North Korean military brass as well. So for the role they played in the Kursk, the Battle of Kursk as well.

So they've taken losses on behalf of the Russian Federation. So some deep bonds and roots are being forged as we speak. OK, thank you for that. Thank you, Patrick. Now let's move on.

If you like what the UK column does, you'd like to support us, the place to go is support.ukcolumn.org. There are options to help us out there. We do need your continuing financial support. You can make a donation or you could join as a member. And if you do join as a member, that gives you access to UK column News Extra and also the the UK Column Forumns and so on, other ways to support us. You can join, pick something up

at the UK Column shop. But if you buy something from Clive to car.com using the link on this page, you get a, we get a small Commission from that, but you can't do any of that. That's fine. But please do share our material you find on the various platforms. We are censored as everybody knows. And if you're able to help get around the censorship regime, that is fantastic. Now, yesterday's interview between Ben and Braden Sorbo is online on the UK column website.

If you haven't seen that, do go and have a look at it. And tonight Germ will be speaking about the Black Nobility. And I think that the timing of that is interesting, bearing in mind we've just had this, the new Pope elected and so on. And of course the Black Nobility connections to the Vatican are are legendary. So that's the discussion on Germ warfare at 7 seven PM tonight. If you're able to join us for that, please do so.

Another reminder of Standard The Light taking place May the 23rd to the 26th in Gilgarrin and Cumbria. And well, unfortunately we had technical problems on Wednesday and so Darren from the Light was not able to join us next year. So he will be joining us at for Extra today for a few minutes to discuss this. So please follow on Extra to get the details of the standard and Light conference.

Now let's move back to war and well, the United States has decided to announce that it wants the Britain to stay away from Asia and the South China Sea and keep their focus on Europe. Now this policy has been communicated to the UK regime by this man, Albridge Colby.

He is the US Under Secretary of State for Defence Policy and he has also expressed unhappiness that HMS Prince of Wales, our illustrious aircraft carrier, that the deployment that it's currently on includes time in the in the Pacific region. Now he obviously doesn't understand that British ships tend to breakdown in warm water and so probably he doesn't have that much to worry about in this case.

But anyway, this is all about the narrative from the United States that European nations should take more responsibility for their own defence and security. Now, my personal view is that the hope from some that the threat of Trump is enough to get the EU defence union over the line against the headwinds of EU member state and transgendance is is still only a hope. And it seems to have lost quite a bit of the momentum that it had in the weeks following the

Trump inauguration. But let's just remind ourselves of what JD Vance said back in the middle of last year. This is just a short excerpt, and he's talking about Israel, the EU and the United States and the relative roles in the world. Again, we don't want a broader regional war. We don't want to get involved in a broader regional war. The best way to do that is to ensure that Israel, with the Sunni nations, can actually police their own region of the

world. And that allows us to spend less time and less resources on the Middle East and focus more on East Asia. In the same way that we want our own allies to do the job in Europe so that we can focus on East Asia, I think that the same is true of the Sunni nations in Israel and the Middle East. We want to focus more on East Asia. So that's absolutely clear. This has been a consistent message from the United States for months, certainly from the Trump side of the of the aisle.

And you know, the keen, they're very keen that everybody looks after their own part of the world because they want to focus on China and East Asia. That that that's a strategy of offshore balancing. And the US has been trying to engineer this really since 9:11. And that's not successfully. Of course, they've tried it with Saudi Arabia, with the war in Yemen under Obama. They've tried it with proxy wars. So it's one of those things that's easy to talk about, difficult to do.

Still trying to cling to empire. The thing I'll quickly say, Mike, is he said Sunni nations twice, right? So I mean, Vance clueless, you know, trying to promote sectarianism, basically they're they're not Sunni nations, OK. And he's trying to impose American Western sectarian narratives. And this is the exact type of situation that shaped the al Qaeda takeover of Syria, basically, that we are seeing right now is this mindset in the West. Unfortunately, Vance has not,

you know, learned and. The the irony here is, if it could be called an irony, of course it's it's the, the extremist groups, the extremist Islamic groups around in the world are Sunni groups. They are, they happen to be or they're, they say they're Sunni. They're they're, they're, they're about as religious as any other wacky religious fundamentalist extremist. But yeah, that's exactly again playing into the sectarian narratives. It's sad to hear that, but unfortunately, I hope they'll

learn. I hope they'll do better going forward. But on the on the policy of everybody looking after their own business, the US is going to get no argument from Britain on that, as we've been highlighting fighting for years, because Britain has been a key driver of European defence. Now yesterday morning Starmer was speaking at the London Defence Conference and we'll get

to him in a second. But we're going to begin with Poland's Ratiswav Sikorsky, who's maybe the only EU politician who can rival the British for its rabid Russophobia. He said this. Improving European defence should not obviously come at the

expense of our commit commitment to nature and the unique role it plays in the European security system. Therefore, instead of advocating strategic autonomy for Europe, it is, in my view, better to call it strategic harmony of the European Union and nature. It's, it's really staggering to me how this point has to keep being made. There was never any question of European Defence Union replacing

NATO. It was always the case in every document that the EU published on this topic that it would be a defence union within NATO. In other words, it would bring the European Commission onto the NATO board, if you like, and as a formal participant. But anyway, As for Starmer, he simply lied through his teeth when his presentation at that conference. Here's what he had to say. The British people have already paid a price for Putin's aggression in Ukraine with rising bills and prices.

Russia already menaces our security. They've launched cyber attacks on our NHS, spread disinformation online. And we cannot forget, he said a few years ago, a chemical weapons attack on the streets in Salisbury, in broad daylight in the Heart of England. And in the coming months, sorry. In the coming weeks, he said, we're going to publish a first of its kind root and branch

Strategic Defence review. It will scrutinise every aspect of defence to determine how we can best meet the threats of the day and return Britain to war fighting readiness. And I mean really, how do we do that? Where's he going to get the personnel and what's the need for this? And if he's talking about the cost of living crisis being driven by Russia, no it isn't. It's being driven by him, his predecessors and undoubtedly his

successors as well. It is absolutely a choice that's been made to to turn Britain back into war fighting readiness. Explain to us how I'm stretched. It's a stretch for me, but how how the Russians are responsible for rising energy bills in Britain and Europe? I I what did, how did Russia pull that off? Did they did they raise the prices? Did Russia, are they or was it our governments that sanctioned Russia and bought American LNG over the Atlantic for like 4

times the price? And the markets, the fake markets run out of the City of London. The middle men energy buyers jacked up the price, the spot price I've got is it them or is it Putin? Because I don't know. I'm confused. I want to believe. You want to believe care. I want to believe care but I just it doesn't. It doesn't add up. But anyway that's just me. Sometimes I get confused. Yes, indeed. No. Let's follow on then.

Same sort of theme, I suppose, but the announcement from Trump that, well, a deal had been done with Yemen. What's going on? Well, over to this story. And so that's the question, Mike, this Trump truce with Yemen that's been announced or is it really a surrender? Has the US surrendered to Yemen or is this really a truce? Let's take a close look at this. Trump ditched Israel with surprise Houthi truce. So the Israeli Times, they're

not happy about this at all. Israeli media that doesn't bode well on Iran. So they're a little bit worried about this shift that's going on with Trump's playing another little sort of Kansas City shuffle here maybe with Yemen. But here's what the BBC have to say into their credit, Mike. The Houthis say the US back down and Israel and not covered by

ceasefire. So this ceasefire agreement between Trump and the Yemenis doesn't mean that Trump, I'm saying don't attack Israel. He's not saying don't attack Israel. So Israel's not covered in the ceasefire. So the BBC actually say back down. I was shocked. So it's almost like the BBC is getting involved in some little bit of truthful inferences here. Not much, but it's something.

Anyway, so, and we go on here, just remember we, we published this Hornet going off the, the, the going off the, the USS Harry Truman into the Red Sea because it was evading A Houthi missile strike. And that was weird, OK, But it was even more weird than it happened. Again, a second fighter crashes into the sea after a landing failure, quote unquote, $67 million aircraft there lost in the Red Sea. So that's two. OK, there's another one as well a little bit earlier.

But all these losses are racking up. And I'm now questioning, Mike, was it a coincidence or did any of these actually get shot down? Well, let's, let's think about that for a moment. Let's let's look at this once again. I think we somehow. OK, just. Went into anyway back to if we bring back to the camera now, but while we go through those slides, so we're trying to add up basically what what this is all what this means in in in in the sense of where the US is at

on this. So we'll go back to back on screen here. So if we Add all these losses up here, and here's the Yemenis dancing on an American flag there somewhere in Yemen, there's Pete Hegseth, the US Secretary of War, donning his tattoos, his many tattoos. But let's look at this. This is what he's responsible for Hegseth US losses so far against Yemen Yemen's answer Allah AKA the Houthis shot down at least seven US Reaper drones worth more than $200 million. That's on the conservative side

there. And US lost 2FA18 Super Hornet jet fighters again collectively worth over $200 million there. Total cost for this are well over a billion this operation. Six weeks of air strikes here. So the USS Harry Truman damaged after near miss by Houthi missile. So there's also reports of damage. Are we getting the full story about what has happened in the Red Sea or the US covering up that they've actually had planes manned plane shot down or that their USS Harry Truman aircraft

carriers actually been hit. So this is a good. Question because the third one, the one that happened before Christmas, that was supposedly a friendly fire incident where it was shot down by one of the carrier support ships, that is what the official story was. My I would question that was was that actually where they shot down by the Houthis? Once, twice, three times? Are we looking at coincidences here or just massive incompetence or negligence, whatever? And the Red Sea shipping has

been halted. Israel's Ben Gurion airport is also shut down after Houthi strikes. So look at this. This is the most U.S. military combat losses in this sort of window. Then I think anything I've ever seen in my life against the one of the poorest countries in the world. So for Pete Hagseth, it's not a good look. It's not a good look at all. So I think he's going to resign or be fired a pretty soon. So we'll see. I think we got caught in the same loop, right.

OK. So again, so we'll we'll have to go. We'll wait and we'll try to advance the slides for a moment. Sorry about the technical difficulties, but anyway, what we'll what we'll bring on to the screen in a moment when we try to rescue this segment, which is actually a train wreck, but we'll try to rescue it here. This is a timeline of events. So here we are. So this is this is what you need to pay attention to the US first March 15th, 6 week long bombing campaign on Yemen.

OK. After that, three days later, Israel ends its ceasefire in Gaza, resumes the genocide that was March 18th. And then after that, US nuclear, US, Iran nuclear talks begin on April 11th and Yemen hits, shuts down Ben Gurion airport on May 4th in Tel Aviv, United States. Are they sorry? Israel starts Operation Gideon's chariot to seize Gaza, the whole of Gaza on May 6th.

That was just this past week and Israel attacks Yemen, destroys Sanaa airport in response to the Ben Gurion missile strike by Yemen that was on May 7th. And after that, Trump calls for a, quote, truce with Yemen on May 8th. So I think there's a, to me, a clear pattern of what's happening here. And then Trump sidelines Netanyahu in communications. We'll show you some details of that in a moment. Trump's going to visit the Gulf states, not Israel next week. So you see the progression of

events here. It's looking very clear what's going on. Israel attacking Yemen during AUS operation I think might have been a final straw for Trump with Israel. So I don't know if there was deconfliction there, how much cooperation or support the Israelis had by the US, or how much permission. What was the conversation like? Clearly, the whole thing is a shambles, basically evidenced by the fact Trump is announced to truce with Yemen, which doesn't include Israel.

So that's the part that I think this worth noting here. So Trump is quote, losing patience. This is the cradle. Multiple media reports have said this as well advances US plans without Israeli involvement. That is serious break from before Trump sidelines Netanyahu in Middle East policy as relations deteriorate. This is from the Israeli press again right here. And so we'll look at the where this one story came from is

right here. Yan Years Kozen or Yanir Kozen, he is the diplomatic correspondent for Israeli Army Radio. And he basically said that Trump, the Trumps team, were upset because Ron Dermer, who is Netanyahu's chief aide, basically said Trump needs to do this and so forth. It's in this tweet here. And so Trump's inner circle warned him that Netanyahu is manipulating the American president.

And the characterization deeply displeased Trump, given that Trump hates nothing more than appearing to be manipulated. So serious problems here between Netanyahu's office and Trump, It looks like things are basically going not well at all. Trump cuts off communication with Netanyahu, direct communication. He's meeting Netanyahu's chief aide, but not Netanyahu. He's not going to Israel next week. He's going to the Gulf states.

He's going to the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar and not to Israel, so. And what do you think Netanyahu's response is going to be to this? Is he going to say, well, don't care? Or is he? Is he going to actually, I mean, is this Trump just doing his usual efforts to try to force people or encourage people, let's say, to take certain actions? Yeah, I think Trump, Trump wants to see results in some of these things because it's been a 100 days. They haven't really got any real

tangible results. A lot of talk on Gaza and Ukraine and the Iran nuclear situation he wants. And Israel seems to be standing in the way of the progress. So the problem is Israel, you can't blame the Palestinians anymore. They can't blame the Russians. They can't blame the Iranians. The problem on all of these fronts is Israel. Israel is impeding progress for the Trump administration to get anything done, and that is the big takeaway. OK. Thank you, Patrick. Thank you for that.

OK, Mark, let's welcome you back to the programme and well, we're going to talk about fluoride and fluoride in the water system. Yeah. Let me preface my remarks by mentioning that fluoride in the water system and the deterioration of our soils, glyphosate coming out of the Monsanto Roundup product, and of course mRNA injections, the jab, are really all part of this corporate government juggernaut that has been degrading human health for a very long time.

So you could look at fluoride in a way that would be similar to the way you would look at mRNA injections there. There are these government experiments that are declared to be miracles and yet they have this seriously ugly underbelly. Anyway, it's important to take Patrick was doing just a minute ago to take stock of things. Utah, Let's see this one. Let's show this headline. Utah becomes the first state to ban fluoride in its water in terms of statewide.

And they're following concerns raised by HHS Secretary RFK Junior. And this is, according to the BBC, that the mineral fluoride poses potential health risks. The Utah governor, Spencer Cox, signed the ban into law this week. It took effect just two days ago, May 7th. Other states, including Florida and Ohio are weighing similar legislation. Fluoride has been added to US drinking water since 1945. Speaking of 80th anniversaries, right?

Moving on from there, Florida did something very pivotal. They become the second state to ban fluoride in public drinking water. This is dated 3 days ago and this comes from Children's Health defence. And Governor DeSantis said Florida is ending fluoridation because, quote, when you do this on the water supply, you're taking the way choices of people who may not want to have overexposures. And let's move on and outline

this a little bit more. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on the 6th of May said he'll sign the bill banning the addition of fluoride to public drinking water, making Florida the second state statewide to do this. And this ban will take effect July 1st. There's a little bit of a concern there. This has happened with laws to

restrict abortion. They, they advance a wide timeline before a law will take effect and it provides an opportunity for pro fluoride forces, the American Dental Association, etcetera, to file lawsuits and then kind of bottleneck these legislation, this legislation, this sort of legislation from taking effect. At any rate, the Florida bill is Senate Bill 700, also known as the Florida Farm Bill.

It passed the State House by a whopping 88 to 27, a pretty good mandate there in the State House in Tallahassee, sending the bill to the governor's desk. We got a couple quotes from DeSantis that outlined this pretty well. When you do this in the water supply, you're taking away a choice of someone who may not want overexposure to fluoride. Now he's announcing enunciating a very important principle

there. Even if fluoride was the greatest thing in the world, you still don't have the right to mass medicate everyone through the common water supply because not everyone has the same tolerances. Not everyone should even have fluoride to begin with. Even aspirin can be good for some people and bad for others. So the the principle of fluoride has always been wrong. I mean, if if human immunity is a problem, why not put vitamin C in the water, right? If people are depressed, why not

put Prozac in the common water? That would be the same wrong principle. At any rate, there's one other quote from Mr DeSantis that's worth putting up. We don't want local governments unilaterally injecting a chemical into the water supply and exposing people to potentially harmful side effects. Another important principle there.

What's the point in pointing out fluorides, hazards, things like that, and making some good strides in this issue and having a statewide moratorium on these things? If local governments then have the local authority to put the fluoride in anyway. So it's very important to have a blanket law within the state so you don't have these renegade localities putting this dangerous chemical, according to many in the public, common water supply.

Now, other US towns and counties that have already banned water fluoridation on the local or regional level. We got Portland OR Wichita, KS, something called the Brushy Creek Municipal Utility District in Texas State College, PA, where there's a major university there and parts of South Carolina. So in other words, the US is still rather heavily fluoridated. Now in the UK, we might want to show this slide here. It helps outline what you got on your side of the pond, fluoride

and drinking water. This is according to a source called Pure HTH 20 UK, where added fluoride is brought up to 1 milligramme per litre in the UK. That's one part fluoride to 1,000,000 parts water. The UK sets the maximum levels at 1.5 milligrammes per litre in line with World Health Organisation guidance. And I wasn't totally aware that The Who weighed in on that. And I did find also a map of England. And this is interesting, this comes from the UK government

itself. The dark blue areas are where there are direct deliberate fluoridation schemes. And you can you can see that Birmingham right in the middle of the country, kind of the lower centre of England is heavily fluoridated. You got Lincoln. People can look at this map, of course, and they can freeze the frame it'll be in the show knows how to look at this. And up North Newcastle area, there's a quite a bit of

fluoridation. Then the lighter blue limited areas is where there's naturally occurring fluoride at levels greater than 0.5 milligrammes. So an important and informative thing there. Interesting to know we can show this to This comes from the same spot in the UK government website. This is from 2020.

In terms of coverage, what are known as the West Midlands is the most extensively fluoridated area, followed by port parts of the northeast of England. But get this, there are no fluoridation schemes in Scotland, none in Wales and none in Northern Ireland. However, there are some localised areas of naturally occurring fluoride in the water, so that gives a reasonable outline of this issue. I'll mention that viewers might want to stick around for extra.

There's a short video that explains A crucial distinction here between naturally occurring fluoride and the man made fluoride compounds that come from manufacturing, things like that. So stay tuned for that. A very important distinction to be made. Thank you, Mark. Thanks for that. And yeah, we'll be showing that video clip in Extra. Now let's move on to the Online Safety Act.

And yesterday the Wikimedia Foundation announced that it is challenging the lawfulness of one of the new elements of the Online Safety Act. And by that, they're talking about it as as Ofcom starts to roll out the various regimes, the various frameworks to actually implement parts of the Online Safety Act. And they're focusing, this is Wikimedia Foundation is focusing on the element of the Online Safety Act that determines which duties a website has under the

law. And they're complaining specifically about the aspects of the ACT and also something we've been highlighting since the online harms white paper was originally published in 2017. And that's the broad brush lack of definition of terms. So basically because terms remain so I'll or undefined, they can be taken to mean virtually anything. And the issue that Wikipedia is upset about, Wikipedia is upset about is the categorization of

services. So to quote them a little bit here, they're saying the Foundation is challenging the online safety Arcs categorisation regulations, which are written broadly enough that they could place Wikipedia as a category one service, a platform posing the highest possible level of risk to the public. Now, I personally view Wikipedia, as you know, absolutely being one of the highest risk websites that's out there, but we'll talk about that in a second, no doubt.

Now, Wikipedia goes on to say that they simply do not operate like other category one sites. Someone reading or an online encyclopaedia article about a historical figure or cultural landmark is not exposed to the same level of risk as someone scrolling on social media. Again, we'll talk about that in a second. The foundation's sole objective, they say, is to allow people to participate in the creation, the dissemination of verifiable knowledge.

The category one duties threaten that, for example, by disempowering users who wish to keep their identities private.

Now this is ironic. I'm going to suggest in a sense, because I'm certain that many, if not all the voices behind Wikipedia have been at front of the queue for people calling for the removal of anonymous posting on some of their sites on the Internet. I mean, they're certainly have been promoting the continuing anonymisation of some people posting content on Wikipedia itself.

But anyway, they're bringing this issue to judicial review and they say they've asked for expedited hearings because they're already under pressure from Ofcom to provide information under the new regime. And they say that as part sorry, as the UK government works to protect the public from harms of the Internet. So they are acknowledging that the Internet is harmful.

We hope it is. It also prioritises the protecting of the best parts of the Internet, public interest projects like Wikipedia that uplift civil society and promote access to free and open knowledge online. Except Patrick, it's not free and open, is it? For example, nobody still has admitted who Philip Cross is. And, and this is really the point.

There is so much information on Wikipedia, which is disinformation, which is certainly opinionated in ways that the Wikipedia Foundation would argue that that Wikipedia shouldn't be, and has been targeting many people who are providing resistance to the war narratives and to a host of other narratives that are out there. And you know, this question of Philip Cross, I think, is one that's absolutely in the public interest.

Well, most of the obviously the overwhelming amount of information on Wikipedia. Mike is is of great use to the public and is a great free resource and I agree with all of that. However, it's also been abused

the Philip Cross scandal. You could have a situation here with the same government that's pushing online harms legislation is also the same government whose security services are abusing Wikipedia's editorial and gaming the editorial process at Wikipedia to defame and to libel and to smear all independent journalists and other opposition voices to foreign policy issues right across the entire spectrum of

media. And that's that what that scandal is all about, Mike. So again, I, I, I just have to go back to this point, Mike, is the Internet really harmful or has the government somehow changed its view of the Internet? Because last time I checked, the internet's been around since the mid 90s. And, you know, mums forums and baby forums and stuff like that have been going for 30 years, Mike, 30 years.

All of a sudden it's now dangerous, It's now harmful and needs to be a category one risk to public safety. I mean, it's kind of patently ridiculous. There must be better way to deal with these issues than to start doing mass censorship. Well, look, the fact of the matter is, Patrick, that the issues that are considered harmful and whether it be suicide, terrorism, these issues are societal issues and all you're doing by censoring them

is treating a symptom. Again, you're not dealing with the underlying lying societal problem which is causing this in the 1st place, because of course many of these things are tools of the state in and of themselves, and so you know that. But there's a whole discussion around that which undoubtedly will go into more depth and

extra. If they put this much attention on the fact that our society is so over medicated with antidepressant medication and that the harms, the real harms that that and the suicides that that leads to, they put half the energy in into regulating and dealing with that problem as they do on the Internet and censoring speech on the Internet, we might actually be getting somewhere. Well, indeed, Mark, sticking with the media and so on, let's move to the United States and the press corps.

This issue, of course, I had mentioned briefly an extra a few newscasts ago and I wanted to get into a little more depth. It's obviously an issue that can be looked at in an ongoing fashion. This first slide actually indicates that the welcoming of new media voices into the White House actually started to a degree in Trump's first term.

This is from 20/21 the Epic Times, Trump's favourite cult propaganda machine according to Presenza was supporting the White House and how US anti COVID efforts have been derailed. Part 3. So this figure, this personality shown here for Epic Times, he was compared by this publication, Presenza compared to Joseph Goebbels. A bit unfair I would say.

At any rate, we also have pointer News pointing out, forgive the pun, meet the 32 media, new media outlets the White House has invited to its press pool for decades. The White House Correspondents Association, the independent nonprofit is the organisations that's been that's been determining the makeup of the press pool that changed.

The pivotal, pivotal point was February 25th of this year when the White House press team took control of the pool in an effort to, quote, give power back to the people. End Quote, according to White House Press Secretary Carolyn Leavitt. And we have a quote, I believe, from her. It's beyond time, she said, that the White House press operation reflects the media habits of the American people in 2025, not 1925.

She said a select group of DC based journalists should no longer have a monopoly over the privilege of press access to the White House, she was recently quoted as saying. Now, going beyond those slides, I did a little bit more research. It's it's an interesting and eclectic mix going on at the White House, gentlemen, just for example, there's even think tanks. There's the America First Policy Institute, which is more like a

think tank than a press outlet. There's Global Strat View, which describes itself as a media think tank hybrid. There's notice, otherwise known as News of the United States. They did publish some articles about Trump's tariffs and about the Maryland senator Chris Van Holland trying to help that El Salvador guy. They published a couple critical stories of the Trump administration on those topics, and they are admitted as part of the new press pool there.

And so on and so forth. And on the good side of the Ledger, most of the new media there are going to have an opposite view largely compared to the mainstream media on climate change, an opposite view compared to the legacy media on the border, open border, closed border, an opposite view largely compared to the mainstream media on the efficacy and safety of vaccines, let's say. But on the other hand, of course, we have the Israel factor.

And most, I wouldn't say all, but most of the new media are pretty strongly pro Israel. Some of this might be kissing up to the Trump administration just to get a seat at the table. That dynamic is pretty much unavoidable.

It's going to happen. But you also have The Daily Wire by Ben Shapiro. Of course, he's pretty rapidly pro Israel and he's done a lot of stories that have been trumpeting the idea that Trump is signing executive orders to deport what the Daily Wire calls anti Semitic foreign students and protesters. Of course, there's a major irony

there. You got free speech being enhanced perhaps by the new media at the White House, but then some of that new media turns around and cancels the free speech and assembly rights of protesters that are protesting the Israeli treatment of Gaza. And you also have other, other networks as we wind this up.

We have the Eternal Word Television Network, the Catholic News outlet that has been critical of Israeli bombing of Gaza because they violate Catholic traditional just war principles as they've been known throughout history. But then on the other hand, you have the Christian Broadcasting Network founded by Pat Robertson that's very, very pro Israel.

And then lastly, I'll mention that another interesting dynamic is the news outlet that's allowed in the new Press of the new press pool, that one of the new entities in the press pool, they're called Semaphore and they're actually mainstream legacy journalists that quit their regular jobs and formed a new news organisation. And they have a founder and CEO, Justin Smith, who's a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations as part of the new press pool.

So it's, it's an eclectic mix. And the Israeli factor is kind of the where the pivot point is, but it's a mixed bag. There's a lot of advantages. It it is a good move toward free speech. On the other hand, there's a lot of nuance there. So maybe we can go a little bit more on this, an extra SO. Thanks, Mark. Thanks. Definitely. Yeah, OK. And I let's finish Patrick with Jonathan Cook. This is interesting. I think people get a kick out of this as well.

So this is Amnesty International, their night 2025, a People's Choice Awards for journalists there. And there's the pantheon of, you know, I guess you could say left wing journalist, that Amnesty's membership shortlist based on votes by Amnesty UK members here. Let's take a look at these because there's one journalist in here, Mike, on this, one journalist that I would vote for. Take a wild guess who it is. Don't say it. We'll we'll go through the list

here. Let's bring the list up here. These are the nominees for Amnesty International's, you know, top independent journalist here, Owen Jones. OK, Owen Jones. I'm not sure about that. I'm going to cross him out. I think he's a bit of a deep state shill, actually. Jeremy Bowen, Is he BBC? Yeah, he is, absolutely. Yes, so I'm going to cross him off there. Disqualified. Nasreen Malik actually looked up her work. She works for the Guardian. She actually does some very good

journalism. So I like her. I'm going to leave her on my list. Lisa Doucette, BBCA Bit spooky. Perhaps. A bit spooky, Fergal. Fergal Keane, Trusted voice of, you know, the major networks. I don't think so. Patrick Cockburn, actually an excellent journalist, great career, stellar. I'm going to leave him on the short list. Jonathan Cook, of course, needs no introduction. Jonathan Cook is one of the top

journalists, I think. Independent journalist on Palestine, former Guardian left, got shunned by the Guardian so he's got a lot of St cred. George Mambiat. I preemptively crossed him out. So it's not to trauma, not to traumatise anybody in the audience, but George Mambiat is an absolute deep state shill. He is everything that is bad about mainstream media. George Mambiat embodies it. So how he gets on this list is just beyond me. Ash Sarker and Michael Walker. Navarro media.

I'm not sure about Navarro media. They seem to be very politicised. So again, I put a little radioactive warning on Mambian. I'm I'm Navarro has done some good work on Palestine on that issue. So I'm on the fence there, but let's look at those here. The one that I'm going to back on this is Jonathan Cook. So I'm going to say go to his Sub stack page folks and take a look at his work there. It's absolutely brilliant. He is one of the really true independent media journalists out there.

There's Jonathan up on screen. He's based in the UK now he's been in the West Bank many years. His his work is stellar. Some of his recent work is this one he's done here basically on Simon Seebag Montafuri and Simon Schlama calling them shilling for Israel's genocide and they must be outed. And this is an amazing piece that he's done. This is one of the best things

I've read in a while. So again, go to Jonathan Cook's sub stack support Jonathan, but more importantly here vote for Jonathan. Go to this. There's a URL at the bottom. amnesty.org UK it'll. Be in the show notes. It'll be in the show notes. Listen, I don't want to push my choices on you guys, but vote for Jonathan Cook because if it's about integrity and great journalism and somebody who is just totally unwavering in his

principles, there's no contest. I mean of the other, Patrick Coburn and some of the others are, are excellent journalist, but Jonathan Cook is basically distinguished himself after October 7th especially, but throughout his whole career that I there's really nobody else that you can really I think vote for it. If it comes to independent journalism, please. I think we need to get involved, make sure we get Jonathan Cook over the finish line, folks.

He certainly deserves to come well ahead of least to set and Jeremy born at the very least. So yes, vote for him. OK, we got to leave it there for today. Thank you very much, Patrick and Mark. Thanks everyone for watching. We'll be back for extra in a couple of minutes. Join us then. Bye bye.