UK Column News - 10th October 2025

Good afternoon. It's Friday the 10th of October 2025, just after 1:00. Welcome to UK column News. I'm your host, Mike Robinson, joining me in the studio today, Patrick Henningson. Welcome to the program, Patrick. Great to be with you, Mike. And Mark Anderson will join us in a little bit and we have a special guest we will we'll introduce shortly. But we're going to begin today,

Patrick, with the the peace plan. This is the big story, isn't Mike? And this is the the meeting of the minds here or the meeting of something else. These three likely lads here. I mean, look at this, Benjamin Netanyahu, Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner, Donald Trump wasn't there to really do the deal, but he is there in spirit as you can see on the back wall. But that's Netanyahu with his his trusted cabinet there, which he hand picked by the way he hand picked those two people in

the Trump cabinet. Is it a ceasefire deal, Mike? Is it if they're already celebrating peace in the Middle East? What's going on there? Well, take a close look. If you know how this one's going to go, take a close look at that gentleman there, that Steve Witkoff. We like to call him the Dell boy of diplomacy. So we took a little the Dell boy of diplomacy. That makes Jared Rodney, doesn't it? Yes, it does. We don't want to insult Rodney, though, do we?

And I'm I'm almost to feel like I'm insulting David Jason with that comparison, Mike. But that's kind of what we are are going to expect because these are con men of the highest order. Every single ceasefire has been a strategic pause to rearm Israel and continue the bombing, just like from the beginning of Trump's term. Let's take a look at Donald Trump. This is what he had to say about this historic deal.

I think it's going to be a lasting peace, hopefully, and everlasting peace, peace in the Middle East. We secured the release of all of the remaining hostages and they should be released on Monday or Tuesday. And getting them is a complicated process. I'd rather not tell you what they have to do to get them. There are places you don't want to be. But we are getting the hostages back on on Tuesday, Monday or Tuesday and that'll be a day of joy. I'm going to try and make a trip over.

We're going to try and get over there and we're working on the timing, the exact timing. We're going to go to Egypt where we'll have a signing, an additional signing. We've already had a signing representing me, but we're going to have an official signing. So, Mike, they, they don't have the timings. They haven't confirmed, maybe Monday, maybe Tuesday, they haven't confirmed the names.

Israel hasn't agreed on the names of the Palestinians being released, including some high profile people we'll speak about, speak about in a moment. And, and so, yeah, but it's all about the signing. It's going to be, it's historic. There's peace in the Middle East. They're already celebrating on Fox News in America. Just finally there's peace in the Middle East. Nothing's actually happened yet. Nothing has actually happened. In fact, Israeli tanks opened fire on Palestinians celebrating

the ceasefire just last night. That was the opening gambit from Israel is to basically shoot Palestinians. We're celebrating that the war's over. Well, I guess it's not over then, but, well, we'll see. Well, it's really said that they had held a defence cabinet and then a full cabinet before they agreed this thing. But let's just have a look here at what Keir Starmer had to say because this was this was his words.

I welcome the news that the deal has been reached on the first stage of President Trump's peace plan for Gaza. And he then lauded the efforts of western aligned countries in the region for stepping up and and helping get this over the line. But he said that this agreement must now be implemented in full without delay and accompanied by the immediate lifting of all restrictions on life saving humanitarian aid to Gaza. Well, that may be his position.

But while the various meetings were going on, Israel wasn't holding back. And as we can see here as well, first of all, as reported by Resistance Use Network from the Palestinian side and also in the Israeli media here, multiple attacks on Gaza were carried out in the run up to the ceasefire. Because why get into the spirit of what's being done when there's an opportunity to kill a few more people before the deadline, Patrick? Yes, exactly.

Right, so, so let's just have a look at what the Resistance News Network said here. Now at 2:00 AM, the displaced people of Gaza are cautiously celebrating and crying tears of joy at shelters and hospitals in light of the news of a ceasefire deal. The IOF continues to bomb the Gaza Strip at this time, particularly cyber neighborhoods South of Gaza City, while drones are flying low over Muazi.

Explosions rock Gaza City now, but the Times of Israel here was claiming that the idea of hopes to complete its withdrawal by noon starting 72 countdown, 72 hour countdown. Sorry to free the hostages. I don't know what your thoughts are on that. Well, I mean it again, the timing hasn't been confirmed yet. So when is the swap going to happen? That was a problem in the last agreements and Israel basically deep sixed every single one of these agreements in the past.

There's a 0% success rate and they always come up with some excuse or they try to blame Hamas. So clearly the Palestinians are willing to take a step to make a deal. But I'm, I'm going to say cautiously, Mike, that at best this is a temporary, but perhaps ceasefire temporary. It's this not, it's not a peace plan. It's not a peace deal.

But by the same token, Mike, we need to be also sensitive to the fact that I will not deny any Palestinian the respite of not having to be bombed for at least 24 hours, 48 hours, maybe a week, maybe a month. I will not deny them that, even though I'm a total skeptic about the sincerity of the Americans and the Israelis on this. Well, let's get an idea perhaps of the sincerity of the Israelis in this because here's Channel 7. I guess this is Israel national

news. I just want to quote a little bit from this because they say the names of the four terror aces that Hamas demanded as part of the deal, Marwan Bargaty and and three others were removed from the list of terrorists who were said to be released under the ceasefire agreement that went into effect early Friday morning. Now, before I go on with the quote here, .5 F of the implementation steps for President Trump's proposal for the the end of the Gaza war, which was signed, as you said,

said. And I quote, as Hamas releases all the hostages, Israel were released in parallel the corresponding number of Palestinian prisoners as per the attached lists. And Barghodi's name was on that list and that was approved by, amongst others, Witkoff. And today, as we mentioned, the phrase employed by the Israeli government was and quote, at this point in time, he will not

be part of the release process. And that quote goes on to say as Hamas releases all the hostages, Israel will release in parallel the corresponding number of parallel prisoners. But they're they're not adhering to the terms that were signed. So where does that leave the agreement? So that they already told basically the Americans to get stuffed will decide who's going to be on the list. So they've already basically gone bad on their own sort of

side of the agreement. So that's Israeli opening gambit. Marwan Barghouti. To call him a terrorist ace or terrorist mastermind is patently ridiculous. These are practically elderly men by this point. They've been sentenced to life in prison and their main crime is their potential political leaders of of a Palestinian state that is their chief crime. So all of these people will either be assassinated or put in

prison until they die. That is the Israeli policy and that's how they keep it Palestine down and and always have the excuse to say we don't have a negotiating partner says, says Netanyahu. Yeah, because you killed them all or they're in prison. So I mean this, this, this goes to show you what a farce this whole thing has been really for

the last 40 years, the whole. And in fact, wasn't a couple of months ago that Ben Kaferi went to at him in prison and was basically gloating effectively, you're never getting out and you know, we will destroy the lot of you sort of thing was what he was doing at the time. It was pretty unpleasant. The defense minister, yes, Yeah, that's exactly what happened. Pretty incredible stuff, Mike. But we can talk more about this ceasefire with our next guest at the end.

Well, maybe you'll ask her her opinion, but I want to welcome on to the program Yara Mardarelli. She's a journalist. She is also a crew member on the

Global Summit Flotilla will put their their X account up here on screen so people can see it. I encourage everyone to fall. They've got a lot of followers in the last week. And this is the main flotilla that had over 40 boats that tried to break the siege in Gaza. And Yara, who we have on the line right now, she is one of those crew members who is just, she's recently been released and allowed to come home. She's going to talk briefly with us with the UK column about her experience.

Welcome to the program, Yara. Hi, thank you for having me. It's a real pleasure to see you and of course everyone's very happy to see that you're well as well as your your crew mates and your comrades on that incredible mission, very important mission. But just to get started, for those people who don't know you, Yara, how did you get involved in the Global Summit Flotilla and and what is the Global Summit Flotilla?

So the Global Sumud Flotilla is a coalition of the Freedom Flotilla. The Sumud convoy, which parallel to the Global March to Gaza, were both attempting to March to the Rafa crossing and I was part of the Global March to Gaza. After we were sabotaged by the Egyptian secret police via Israel, we attempted to break the siege by sea.

And so we reconvened in Tunisia and started organizing and I quickly kind of became a Co head of of communications at the Global Summit Flotilla and part of the organizing committee. And so tell, tell us about this journey yard. How you know, when did you disembark? I know there was a huge gathering in, in in Barcelona, in Spain, but boats came from all over the Mediterranean. How did it start? How long was the journey? Just tell us briefly about how how how your experience with

that. So we were at sea for around a month. Of course we had. We started out with around 70 plus boats on the journey. Of course some had failures, couldn't continue for different, different reasons and we ended up with 42 boats in total. We departed from the port in Barcelona with around 20 plus boats and then on the first leg of the journey headed to Tunisia. In Tunisia we were as many might have as many who might have followed along.

We were we were attacked for the first time by Israel. My lead boat, which was the Alma was drone struck one day after the family boat was drone struck. And those were the large, the large ships that were kind of the mother boats riding fuel to all the smaller vessels. And so we were at risk of attack. We were attacked once in Tunisia.

And subsequently then we were attacked by 15 drones which exploded above people's heads on the sailing boats in close to Greek territorial waters just a few days after we left Tunisia. And these were intimidation and fear tactics employed by Israel, of course, to scare us, to scare participants out of the mission,

but they didn't work. We continued sailing and and then we were of course, as, as people know, intercepted, illegally kidnapped in international waters around 17 miles from from the shores of Gaza. And, and Jara, there there was the reports that Italy, Spain, Greece had deployed naval vessels to escort to support you Turkey as well. What, what was the truth behind that? Because how much help were they giving you out of those countries? Were any of them better than others?

What what? What are your thoughts on on that side? So the Greek warship only accompanied us until we actually left Greek territorial waters and then turned back. The Italian vessels were a complete PR stunt, no help whatsoever. The Spanish fleet, we actually never saw it, turned around before we even got to see it. And the only fleet that actually delivered any kind of help was the Turkish fleet actually, which came up to the Alma, our boat, and provided a bunch of

humanitarian in aid. But that was about it. When we were in our hour of need and we needed the warships, when Israel kidnapped us, illegally abducted us, there were no worships to be seen. So to us, it was performative politics. It was we didn't expect anyone to come to our assistance or help. But you know, these, these warships did for us. They they were barely visible, barely there.

That's interesting. A lot of people believe if they stuck with you that would have created a lot of problems for the Israelis. But this is a different discussion. Maybe we can have another time, but tell us about your crew mates. There was some incredible people involved, my understanding, all volunteers from all around the world. Many people applied their limited positions as crew members and there's some very high profile people as well.

What was it like and what were some of the things that you can say about some of your your your comrades there on the mission?

Only good things, I mean we had around 30,000 plus applications, which which says it all, like 30,000 people are willing to put their bodies on the line, potentially risk attacks, if not worse by the scientist entity to, to bring humanitarian aid to the besieged people of Gaza. On my vessel, on my ship, I had the honour to be with Mandela, Mandela, Mandela and Greta Thunberg and a lot of Thai keiki that many, many people know is an absolutely amazing activist and also Leila Hegazi, US

activist, among other absolutely phenomenal activists who have been working tirelessly towards Palestinian liberation for most, most of their lives. So it was a real honour and a real pleasure to be surrounded by such incredibly inspiring individuals who were at the same time and very, very humble. And we, you know, were sailing together for around a month. And so we became close comrades and friends and almost family in, you know, on a, on a, on a boat for, for a month.

You can never escape your comrades. And we had the absolute joy and pleasure to have built very, very strong relationships, and lasting relationships at that. And probably probably the most famous, at least at the moment in global politics was Greta Thunberg. She was famous as an environmental activist. But for the, since October 7th, she has become extremely vocal, extremely active on the, the, the genocide in Gaza. Just tell us about what it was like to, to, to, to be with her,

to work on this effort with her. And also what there's there's stories about what the Israelis did they they, they singled her out for abuse when her her boat was apprehended. Tell us a little bit about what you know with with regards to Greta. Greta is Greta is exactly as she portrays herself to be. You know, Greta does not want the spotlight. She does not want to be seen as a hero. Neither do any of us.

And she makes that very, very clear in each and every interview she does, umm, you know, she's using her privilege and her platform to shed light on what is happening in Gaza on this ongoing genocide ceasefire or not. Umm, and she's, she's an incredibly humble and kind and, and genuine, uh, uh, person. She was of course singled out, but this is not something that she, uh, even wants to bring to the media because she does not want to become the story.

But of course the media has heard how she was draped in the Israeli flag, kicked repeatedly, made to kiss the Israeli flag, and just continually abused and mentally and physically abused by by this entity. Time and time again. Every day I would see her get dragged out of her cell and get brought in front of high IOF generals to discuss, in their words, the reason why we're there and to understand why we're why we're so adamant on bringing humanitarian aid to to

a besieged population. Very, very strange, very, very bizarre. They wanted to kind of convert her to to their cause, which of course did not work at all. And tell us about the time of apprehension. So you're all you knew that it was coming. I mean, as you get closer and you started getting drone attacks, you start seeing their sort of ships circling you, hailing your vessels and so forth. And so you've been trained on a protocol. You're live streaming this from your boats.

But yet at that point, you have to kind of, I heard, get rid of your devices. Tell us about the time of apprehension, what that was like, what was going through your minds? And then they brought you back to, to, to, to maximum security prison, apparently. Go ahead. Yeah, yeah.

As you know, Israel was trying to manufacture consent to attack us for weeks, calling us terrorists and putting out fabricated reports of of of us being terrorists and each participant being guilty by association, therefore giving them a a right to attack us. Where after the warships came, I think realized that there was a lot of global pressure from the people, not necessarily from our states.

Our states only brought the warship because of the pressure that people globally put onto them, protecting us and demanding a safe passage. We were abducted, you know, in kind of almost one by one at sea. They came for the big ships first. We had been encircled by around 12, uh, military vessels and they brought a floating, uh, prison, um, very dystopian and bizarre and, uh, water cannons and comes jamming boats.

So they came with a whole kind of fleet of boats, uh, to umm, try to intercept us. Or they of course had, uh, we noticed they did not have the capacity, they barely had the capacity to intercept us all. So they sure as hell don't have the capacity to intercept 100 boats when we go back and break the siege next time, uh, which we realise is absolutely

possible. But yeah, they abducted us, uh, illegally in international waters, brought us to the port of Ashdod where we saw the Madeline and the Handala, umm, put out as trophies of, uh, boats. That they stole in previous interceptions and then they attempted to humiliate us and and psychologically and physically tortured us for the the coming days.

Yes, and and also so Ben Gavir is a sort of very far right extremist, you know, calling for the annihilation of the Palestinians, the extermination, ethnic cleansing and so forth. So you had a you and your caught your your crewmates had a direct kind of confrontation with him or he was trolling you. He had all of you from what the reports that we see tied up in a yard where he was shouting at you, but you guys and yourself as well shouted back. He put the video on social

media. We'll show this video now and it'll give you give give our viewers a kind of a sense of what the scene was like and then we'll get your comment on it. But let's go ahead and roll this. I. I mean, apologies to our viewers for having to show you Ben Gavir for over a minute, but we'll, we'll hand it back to you. What was that like, Yara?

I mean, to me, the most outrageous thing about this video is that they threw our aid overboard our aid, which was widely documented in hundreds of videos, that they threw it overboard and that our aid and the baby formula that Palestinians desperately need and the medicine, etcetera is all floating in the Mediterranean now. That's how depraved the Israelis are.

Him calling us terrorists was all part of a smear campaign that was running for weeks and weeks to try to, to attack us into, to get to put us in, in Ketsuya prison in the Negev desert, a maximum security prison where they hold Palestinians, where they torture Palestinians and where they kill Palestinians. Just a couple of days ago, a Palestinian died in in, in detention, in administrative

detention. And 10,000 plus Palestinians are still being held in administrative detention even after the 2000 Palestinians are released in this so-called peace deal. And there will still be 8000 plus Palestinians, 450 of which are children. You know, Ben Gavir calling us terrorists came as no surprise to us, but it was very cathartic to be able to tell him that Israel is committing A genocide and that he's a baby killer.

Something that startled him quite a bit, because I think it must have been one of the first times that he was faced with 500 humanitarians that are kind of pointing the mirror back at him and showing him who the real terrorist and Madre is. Yeah, and he edited your your all your comments that shouting at he edited out his social media video, which was interesting, but he was also trolling you.

This is the defense minister for Netanyahu came to the prison to troll you putting a picture, We'll bring this up on screen of of what the what was he called this the future Gaza. And he made you guys look at it every day or whenever you pass by. It was it was part of the psychological warfare they were playing on you. Explain that part briefly if you could. Yeah, this, this set the new Gaza in Arabic.

This was a poster of a completely annihilated and bombed apocalyptic looking Gaza, which, you know, in the prison courtyard, the cells were all next to each other and the courtyard was in front of us. So each time you would look out the window, you would see this huge poster, below it an Israeli flag, and below it a pool of what I can only describe was blood. So every single day I woke up and I looked out the cell, I could imagine was, my God, what have they done to Palestinians here?

If they treated us in the way that they did as uh, uh, many times they, umm, actually threatened to gas us, gas us. Umm, we were, uh, and, and when we asked, uh, when we told them that they're not allowed to pepper spray us, they said, no, not that kind of gas. So they were threatening us. They were pointing snipers at us. They were keeping essential life saving medications from people with cancer, people with heart problems, people with diabetes

who desperately needed insulin. People were fainting. You know, this was happening every single day. And instead of helping us, their answer when we asked for medics was that they would gas us. Or at another juncture, an answer, but by a guard was, is she dead? Referring to a friend of mine who had fainted. Is she dead? Because if she's not dead, it's not an emergency. And I quote her directly.

So this was aside from the fact that we got no drinkable water, we got, we were drinking from from brown water in the bathroom because they weren't providing clean drinking water. We were getting a couple of slices of stale bread and rice that had been left out in the sun all day, which is also quite

dangerous. Among all of these kind of different things that they were doing, they were also directly pointing snipers at our heads and keeping us from sleeping by coming into our cells every couple of hours and just moving you to a different cell at 2:00 AM for no reason whatsoever. So these were all techniques that they employed. But of course, if they do this with us, imagine how they treat Palestinians. And well, here's a just a photo

of you on your release. This is as you're coming back to Spain off of a chartered flight that the Israelis used to deport you, took your passports, didn't let you have them until you landed back in Europe. So, but it's great to see all of you that you're back and that you're OK. At least most of the crew that we've seen are in good spirits.

So again, we're we'd like, we'd like to continue this conversation another time, Yara, but we really appreciate you sharing your your story with us here on the UK column News Yara Mondarelli, thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks for having me. OK, brilliant. Thank you, Yara. And well, Yara is off now to have another interview and hopefully she gets as much coverage as possible. Patrick.

Well, look, let's move on then. And the other news from this morning, of course, is that the Nobel committee has announced

the winner of the Peace Prize. So let's just have a look at, let's just have a look at the first clip of this because we've got a couple of clips from the announcement. But let's just listen to a few seconds of what was said at the beginning. The Nobel Peace Prize for 2025 goes to a brave and committed champion of peace and. And Patrick, you know, when I heard that, I just, the first name that came to mind was Donald Trump. It's gonna be 7 wars, 7 wars. Is it? Is it not? Did he win?

Did he not win? Well, this was posted on the official Israeli Prime Minister's Twitter account. We'll bring this up here. That's an AI generated image. This is on Netanyahu's official X account right here. So this is they, they want Donald Trump to win. Netanyahu himself recommended or nominated Trump. Should Israel be allowed to nominate anybody for the Nobel Peace Prize? I mean, it's crazy world we're living in here. But we'll see, I guess, what we'll find out. Well, let's find out.

To a woman who keeps the flame of democracy burning amidst a growing darkness, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2025 To Maria Corina Machado. She is receiving the Nobel Peace Prize for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from

dictatorship to democracy. As the leader of the democratic forces in Venezuela, Maria Corina Machado is one of the most extraordinary examples of civilian courage in Latin America in recent times. Miss Machado has been a key unifying figure in a political opposition that was once deeply divided, an opposition that found common ground in the demand for free election and representative government. Well, apparently Trump didn't get it.

It'll probably complain it's a DEI award, but it's goes deeper than that. And we'll show you how deep this goes, actually. And so that's the the headlines here. Maria Cortina Machado wins the Nobel gong. I think we can call it a gong at this point because the awards been thoroughly discredited there. But they're calling her the leader of the democratic forces of Venezuela. That's like a military wing, but it's not. It's funny you use the term democratic forces.

This is a hugely politicized award by the Nobel Committee. I will argue Mike, this is the most politicized Nobel Peace Prize award ever. Well, isn't Venezuela absolutely the top of Trump's regime change list? They're being attacked right now by the US, and this goes very deep indeed. We'll show you a little bit about this here. Now, this is what you have to realize right now. the United States recognizes the Venezuelan opposition leader, Edmundo Gonzalez as the president of the

country. So this is the new Juan Guaido. The Americans just said we, that's our that's the guy that we think is president didn't go, he didn't go through, you know, any of the due process, wasn't elected to anything. But the US didn't like Maduro. So that's it. So what's interesting here is Gonzalez, let's take a look at this. He has made Maria Cortina Machado installed her as as executive vice president.

So if he steps down, she becomes the US recognized quote president even though she's not elected to anything. Now, there's been accusations ever since 2005, Mike, that this woman is ACIA asset and this is the just type in Maria Quintino Machado CIA asset into Google. And you can do your own research on this. There's plenty to look at there. And I've I thought, is there any legs to this accusation, Mike?

So I did a little digging as we do on this program and let's take a look at that for a minute. Well, this is an interesting story from a year ago. Venezuela's attorney general to CNNNGO Sumat has no electoral authority. What is Sumat? Sumat is an NGO that monitors Venezuelan elections and controls polling stations. Who funds SUMAT? Well, it's none other than the National Endowment for Democracy. That is a known CIA cut out front. And who is the founder of SUMAT?

And this might shock you or it might not. It is none other than Maria Cortina Machado. So the accusations of her being ACIA asset, I'm afraid look very credible at this point, Mike. And so you're looking at here a massive regime change operation. And I don't know if we have one more slide here, but yeah, this is how the media are are positioning her. Look at this. Who is more, this is Reuters, the opposition leader. Here's Brookings Institute, that's the Hudson Institute

here. Maduro menace a conversation with Maria Manchata, there's Brookings there bring bring their case to the OAS Organization of American States. Rolling Stone will prevail. Opposition leader is not giving up. So they're positioning her. Clearly this is and this is Marco Rubio and Trump. So Trump is backing this Venezuelan and the Trump administration backing her for regime change in Venezuela. It's clear as day, Mike. Now, why would they be doing

that, Patrick? Why would they be doing that? Is that anything to do with the fact that Venezuela supports Palestinian cause? It might be, but probably more so because Venezuela has the second largest proven oil reserves in the world and mostly most of it's been taken offline under the first Trump administration. They stole the Venezuelan state oil company SITCO, stole their assets, liquidated some of it and gave it to 1 Guido and nobody knows what happened with the money.

We're talking about hundreds of of 1,000,000 billions in fact by the end of it. But that it's also a geopolitical thing. It's wrestling control. And they have more of a hybrid economy in Venezuela, IE state directed capitalist socialist hybrid. Washington does not like this model at all. They want free market privatization, open it up for speculation and just vulture capitalism. That's and the the Chavez and Maduro are keeping that at Bay.

This is really what it's about. OK, Thank you, Patrick. Let's move on. If you like what the UK column do, does we do need your ongoing financial support.

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If you haven't yet got a ticket for the live stream, then please join us because there are no tickets of course available for the in person event. So please do join us on the live stream if you possibly can. Now in a minute, I may be mentioning and passing the issue of digital ID. So I just want to finish this outbreak by mentioning another event in Glasgow tomorrow. If you can possibly get along to

that. If you're in Glasgow, please do so. So they're meeting at the bottom of Jamaica St. by the River Clyde near the Crystal Palace pub and Central Station at midday tomorrow. So if you can get along to that, please do so. OK, Now, Keir Starmer, our illustrious Prime Minister, has been in India to meet Prime Minister Modi.

There they are, they look very happy together. He signed a £350 million contract to supply the Indian military with UK manufactured lightweight missiles as part of a deepening weapons and defence partnership between EU the two countries. This is how the UK government describes it. They describe it as a new milestone reached in in UK, India, Defence industrial

collaboration. But get this Patrick, they talk about a new milestone in defence industrial collaboration on electric powered engines for naval ships.

How does that work if you're sailing, bearing in mind anybody that has an electric car and you're trying to trying to drive up the M5 or something and you get to Bristol and it's got no power anymore and you got to park the thing up for three hours to charge it up. What are they going to do with these these these naval ships with electric motors? Are they going to park them in the middle of the Indian Ocean and provide some kind of far back for them to to recharge?

What are they gonna do? Maybe Elon will have a a network of of charging stations in the ocean or they could have retractable sails which they could put up or solar panels. It'll be a slower journey, of course, taking a major tankers with solar panels. But Mike? No, we're talking about military Navy ships. Navy ships, OK, but I think the best solution is of course the most green one is to have diesel generators on the ship so they can recharge the batteries, right.

That's. Anyway, anyways, getting back to the missile part of it, this contract is going to, they say deliver UK manufactured lightweight multi role missiles built in Belfast to the Indian Army. And this of course, is all part of the British regime's plan for change and the provision of jobs, as you know, jobs. Hundreds of new jobs. Hundreds of new jobs linked to the deaths of other people. So.

So that's all good stuff. But in the meantime then, somebody else that Starmer met was Nandan Nilikani, which who's the very he's effectively responsible for the thorny issue of digital ID in India. So Nilikani is part of emphasis. Yeah, sorry, emphasis. He's sort of the head of emphasis at the moment. And they are behind the roll out of digital ID to 1.4 billion Indian citizens or so. Now, interestingly, Sam Coats from Sky News asked Starmer about this. He said this is during the

closing press conference. But he said that Starmer was quote, infused by a fresh enthusiasm for the plan for digital ID because Coats felt that that Starmer's was feeling a bit deflated by the response from the British public on the issue. But having spoken to the and seen the way it operates in India, he's really excited about it, which is really a bit unfortunate because really the timing of this hasn't gone so well for them. This is Discord, and this is Discord's Twitter feed today.

And actually, there's nothing about what's happened to Discord on their Twitter feed. They seem to be just blanking the whole thing. They're not acknowledging it publicly at all it seems, at least as far as their social media is concerned. And why am I mentioning Discord? Well, because they have admitted to losing 70,000 government issued IDs as a result of a hack. Now that number in my opinion is a massive understatement. The hackers themselves claim to have stolen data from 5.5

million unique users. The hack wasn't of Discord itself, but it was of the age verification company the the company that they had outsourced the age verification situation to, which was Zendesk. And, and so the question is bearing in mind the Starmer regime is about to consult on digital ID for not only adults, for for children aged 13 to 16.

And of course, as we've been talking about over the last lot of months, this is closely related to the age verification regime brought in by the Online Safety Act. Should the British government not be slightly embarrassed about the fact that, you know, an age verification corporation has has lost this amount of which just exposes people to

identity theft? Well, the solution to that, Mike, is just make sure that an Israeli company is managing all of that data and then there's nothing to worry about because they're our best friends. Israel, by the way, Infosys in India. Is that the same Infosys that Rishi Sunak's family is? I couldn't possibly comment. Heavily invested in father-in-law to the tune of over half a billion dollars or something like that. Is that the same Infosys? It is. It is, but it's. So interesting.

Starmer. Starmer was elected on change. And of course, if you're elected on change, you make sure you employ the same people that were proposed in the original. He's hoping for some spare change from the Infosys mergers, and that would be. That would be an allegation, I would say. They they wouldn't do that, would they? No, they would. No, of course not. But anyway, let's move on then. You mentioned Israel again, but let's look at what's going on militarily there. Well, look at the what?

What? This new report came out here. Look at this. This is from Responsible State Crab. He's doing some pretty good work lately. This is a Quincy Institute in the United States. 20 So they reckon since October 7th, the United States has forked out 21.7 billion in military aid to fuel Israel's war on Gaza. This is a new report here.

This is academic level report. And this is the the the gist of it here, Mike. Israel could not have wreaked the level of destruction it inflicted on Gaza without US weapons and financing. And US provided them the ability to widen the war to to the broader region that would have been severely undermined had they not had US support. A very important point here, very important.

But on this issue of supplying weapons to Israel, some European countries are now finding themselves at leaders and corporations are finding themselves at the other end of the legal tunnel on this issue. And here's one, believe it or not, Giorgio Maloney, Italian Prime Minister, she is named in an ICC complaint alleging complicity in the Gaza genocide here. The details of this are the important part. So we want to 1st actually, we'll we'll look at the her reaction to this.

Let's go ahead and roll that clip. La France. De la Palestina. So. So she's clearly in a defensive mode on that. So let's go on and look at the what could be behind her denial or her response there. And we'll bring this up on screen right now. And this is what this is from our global affairs editor of 21st Century Wide.

Despite Maloney's nervous reaction, the move is not unexpected given the comparable actions have already been taken throughout Europe. In Germany, legal actions have been filed with the ICC local courts targeting government officials, arms manufacturers for alleged involvement in the genocide in Gaza. But here's the important point.

This is from France. 100 lawyers in France have officially requested the ICC to look into France's potential complicity in Emmanuel Macron's complicity in the genocide in Gaza. This is happening in multiple European countries. And just another point to add here. And this according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. It's a very good think tank, by the way. I've cited them before. Until, until he was among three nations exported major

conventional arms. So Maloney's saying we haven't sent anything since October 7th, but she's just talking about new orders. They kept fulfilling old orders. But this is exactly what the British regime did as well. They said we're going to stop sending arms to to Gaza, but let's ignore all the billions of pounds worth of contracts that already exist because they're going to be fulfilled.

And some of them slip through which you'll at the F35 parts from Leonardo in Italy. But back back to this quote here in this that that was between 2020 and 2024. So the overlap of October 7th, but, but it's noteworthy, the United States and Germany accounted for a staggering 99% of exports in a broader category of large weaponry.

So Germany and the United States far and away and then Britain is a sort of trailing 3rd place on that in terms of supplying weapons to enable this genocide in Gaza. So I think the ball is just beginning to roll on this story, Mike. And you can see the panic. Is this why all the European countries are suddenly recognizing A Palestinian state? They. Think that's going to stay off potential ICC prosecutions? They're trying to create a public relations barrier to

protect themselves, perhaps. I, I personally, I think it's, it's for other things as well to buy to help by time and give the impression that there's some kind of peace deal so that the Arab countries will back Tony Blair's Gaza Riviera Project, Blair and Trump's debacle there in Gaza. But anyway, that's a discussion for later. OK, let's well what was Lincoln and do that up to? Well, I don't know, but I, I didn't supply this, this image, but I mean seeing that it's up here, right?

OK, well, I had to apologize. Is this? Is this recent? No, this is not recent. This is. This is actually an error, so I'm going to apologize for that. Let's let's just. It's a horrific picture by the. Way it is, yeah. Yeah. OK, Look, I want to just mention what's going been going on in the South China Sea and the last few days because Exercise Bersama Lima has finished.

And on the Twitter feed, which is what you should have seen there, it said Exercise Bersama Lima has wrapped up. Now they said that Bersama Alida 25 is the largest of a series of annual exercise exercises delivered by the nations of the five Paris Defence agreements arrangements. That's the UK, Australia, Malaysia, New Zealand and Singapore over 2 weeks, they said. The UK joined Malaysia, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand for training across sea, air and land.

And this is a building, sorry. I'm building on this exercise that that included military training, but it also included sporting and cultural exchange activities aimed at building personal connections and enhancing cooperation among the five participating nations. So this is a well, let's just just let's just put this little bit of video on screen here so you can get an idea of what it looked like.

But it's, it's a pretty pathetic attempt at at Sabre rattling towards China and perhaps India as well to a certain degree, while at the same time running all these sort of cultural exchange things. So. So this is effectively more about soft power than it is about hard power. Right, Yeah. So it's using the military as a type of a soft power. And but Mike, I mean, that means that they're going to get together and and confront China in the in the sporting arena

maybe. I mean, they're not messing around, are they? No, no. So if you can't beat them on the battlefield, you try to beat them on the what? The cricket pitch or, I don't know, rugby or I don't know, football. Who? Knows maybe. Pickleball. No Table tennis. It could be any of these. Cuz this is they. Haven't got a chance against China. And table tennis, yeah, cuz I mean, I don't know where they're going on that actually the cultural side, like what's

involved there? What's that about getting together, making chapatis like How does that work? And dancing. We're sort of we're sort of making fun of this thing in a sense. It if it wasn't so serious, it's it's, it is a bit of a joke. But anyway, look at what else has been going on then. So Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper, well, she was in Northern Ireland yesterday with what she described as European partners don't see her there. Let's does she? Oh, there she is. Yeah.

Anyway, so she was there. This is all about the Western Balkans. So they call this the Western Balkan Summit, foreign ministers meeting. It's all about what they described as the importance of building resilience in the Western Balkans to combat the constant flood of Russian hybrid threats aimed at destabilizing the region and finding ethnic tensions. So I got to suggest that perhaps there's a little bit of projection on to Russia, what we're doing ourselves as a

nation. I've been hearing rumours of efforts to restart the Balkans conflict for several months now, and the British regime has formed on this.

But before we just discuss the form that the British regime has, let's let's look at the little propaganda video that they pushed out on it. Nearly 30 years ago, dialogue between leaders right here helped shape a peaceful future for Northern Ireland. Today, foreign ministers are meeting here to discuss preserving peace in the Western Balkans. But peace is never permanent.

It must be protected. Western Balkans face growing threats from instability, corruption and criminal gangs, and close to 22,000 people transited through their last year. Malign actors, including Russia, are using cyber attacks and disinformation to stir division and weaken democracy. These threats do not respect borders. They compromise our shared security, economic growth and our values.

The UK stands ready to support a secure and prosperous future in the Western Balkans. From the lessons of Northern Ireland, we look ahead together. So that's their pathetic little propaganda piece. Now, what they're talking about is pumping millions of pounds into the Western Balkans to deal with people smuggling and all these kinds of things. But of course, we know when, when Foreign Commonwealth Office money goes into these countries in this, this acts as a front

for other activities. But they're talking about law enforcement training in Kosovo, stronger border security and as I say, people trafficking and so on. Look, one clue about what might be going on here that we might talk about is whether or not there's any BBC media action activity because and, and whether they have had any projects running in in this region.

And indeed they have had projects running in Serbia, N Macedonia, Bosnia and Albania, Kosovo, Montenegro, Croatia and Slovenia. And we've got to remember the role in Syria just to bring Juliet Harkin, formerly of BBC Media Action, back on screen, because this is sort of the form that the British Foreign Office has. We, BBC Media Action, worked in 2004 with individuals within the Syrian ministry who wanted change and tried to get them to

be the drivers of that. This organization, just one of the front organisations that goes into countries as an NGO, ostensibly in this case for, for journalism training and so on, but they then use people to create narratives that help destabilise and, and and so on. So I, I absolutely question what Britain is doing here. Any suggestion that this is about countering Russian hybrid threats is just nonsensical.

This is we are there attempting to destabilise that region as another front against Russia, in my opinion. I mean that that propaganda video you showed the beginning is a is a masterpiece with the the classical score. And then they're saying peace is never permanent. Peace is never permanent. Let's think about the Balkans for a minute. How did the breakup of

Yugoslavia occur? Did that just happen organically or did that have anything to do with the EU and NATO forcibly breaking up that country, including 75 days of bombing by AUS LED and British LED NATO military campaign to this day. This scars run deep. And and you know, we're over 20 years from that that conflict, Mike.

So I mean, Western Europe is the reason why there was conflict in the Balkans. It didn't exist before, but that was a major geopolitical piece that the Americans wanted to break up because they're thought they're on a roll because they just broke up the Soviet Union. That's how history should write it. But yet we have all this propaganda that's being shoved down our throats here to prepare us for what? To accept another war on European soil and to mobilize? No, we need to the Russians.

Conscription. Yes. Mark, thank you for your patience. Let's welcome you to the program at last. What's what's been going on in the United States on the health

front? Well, you might recall, gentlemen, good day guys, that last week I reported on the basic thrust of Make America Healthy Again, Make our Children Healthy Again through RFK's HHS. And no sooner had that come out then, and we'll show this slide from the Wapo, a democracy dies in darkness, says the Washington Post. I think they create some of that darkness. At any rate, right away, 6 surgeons general shot back. It's our duty to warn the nation about RFK Junior.

So they're not just talking about his policies. They just don't like RFK himself. Now, let's name those six surgeons General really quickly. They're on this next slide. Jerome Adams, who was under Trump previously, Richard Carmona, Jocelyn Elders under Vivek Murphy under Biden, Antonia Novello under George HW Bush and David Satcher who also served under Bill Clinton. Those are the six surgeons general that are shooting back

at Maha and whatnot. At any rate, let's go on from there and take note that the the the basic claims here we are of the former surgeons general. This is the the overall thrust of what they're saying. I've really boiled it down a lot. They're saying, quote, Kennedy has spent decades, and I put emphasis here, advancing dangerous and discredited claims about vaccines, most notoriously the thoroughly discredited theory the childhood vaccines cause autism. Actually there is evidence that

autism is caused by vaccines. Some some vaccines. He has promoted misinformation about PV vaccine, which protects against cervical cancer, and he has repeatedly misrepresented, they say, the risk of mRNA technology and coronavirus vaccines despite their life saving impact during the pandemic. Life saving impact? Really. Talk about an only one sided rebuttal against Kennedy. My goodness anyway.

And of course, Kennedy's former outfit Children's Health Defense then shot back again back at the surgeons general, saying the ex surgeons general's latest to join RFK. They're the latest to join the RFK junior smear campaign In a statement provided to the defender. That's the topless offense of publication Andrew Nixon. Nixon, excuse me, the communications director for the HHS accused former surgeons general of contributing to the three public the penalty is now attempting to address.

So basically children tell the fans and saying the problem of Kennedy of are pretty much caused by the likes of Kennedy's critics in this case. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Are you there, Mark? Is that? Yeah, sorry, sorry Mark, your, your audio is absolutely broken and we actually can't hear you very well at the moment. So that is unfortunate is. He Is he still there? Are you still there? Are you hearing me? Yeah, we are now.

Yeah, we've got you back. OK, let me let me just get that Andrew Nixon quote and I'll try and finish in a slightly abbreviated fashion. OK. Anyway, Andrew Nixon, the HHS communications director, had this to say. The same officials who presided over the decline in America's public health are now criticizing the first HHS secretary to confront these problems head on. We remain committed, he says, to restoring trust, reforming broken health systems, and ensuring real healthcare choices.

And the rest of the slides they show the other here's an important one. When when this came out very recently and I reported most recently at last week the make America healthy again make again one of the centerpieces of the overall report and it shows the report there is ending the corporate capture of public health. And of course the the Kennedy HHS covers much more than

vaccines. One of the things about the surgeons general and their their critique is they're talking pretty much as if Kennedy his objections to a full blown acceptance of vaccines is the only problem. So as I put on this slide, RFK's plan about is more than vaccines

and pharmaceutical. It's about updating dietary guidelines, reforming SNAP or food stamps to get to get sweets out of the out of the cycle, out of the out of the game there with with food stamps so there's less sweets and less junk food. Radical transparency. Other examples of what he's been doing, removing petroleum based food dyes or overhauling the grass standard, restoring trust and vaccine safety, investigating the cause of autism.

So Kennedy is an absolutely conclusive that vaccines are the only cause of autism, but he has maintained their one of them and so it's much broader than the surgeons general. What would have you believe much just saying that RFK, aside from a few points, is just a vaccine conspiracy and trying to make that a stick. However, there's a twist in this whole thing and the defender, of course, recently I showed this slide. This is just a reminder there

was secrecy. Even Kennedy's own defender is saying there's secrecy over the Trump Pfizer deal, sparking a Freedom of Information Act inquiry. I mentioned that last week. This is just for that. Here's where it takes a turn as we move on RFK's face. This is RFK's reaction. September 30th when Albert Borla, the CEO of Pfizer, was in the White House cementing this new deal where Pfizer would get, as it states here, no tariffs for no tariffs on Pfizer for three years.

Pfizer, in return, will boost its domestic manufacturing to the tune of 70 billion. Making its drugs more available to Medicaid at a discounted rate. Things like that and Albert Borla was in the White House to cement that deal with RFK junior at the time. And this sub stack post that I'm that I'm showing here as as the small NF KS reaction as Trump odds and and pours out the praise on Albert Borla and five chose RFK's reaction if it's available. OK. Yeah. OK.

Thank you for that. Mark, Unfortunately, your connection today was not very stable, but we got enough of that to understand what's going on. You got any brief thoughts on it? No, I think I probably would like to comment on the whole Tylenol thing because that's an interesting story there. There is some there's a method behind the scenes there. And I think Bing Pharma is, is, is indirectly going to end up benefiting from a lot of these things.

So I mean, I'm, I'm very skeptical when it comes to big pharma because I know the lobbying, the lobbying power is just immense in Washington. And I know Trump's very chummy with the, the, the top echelon of the Pharmaceutical industry. Of course that's how they a fast tracked operation warp speed and he was groveling and fetting over them during his first term. But that's that's history. We can talk more about that. An extra I'm sure we will and lots to talk about an extras a

day. So if you are AUK column member, please join us for that in a few minutes on the live stream. I just want to say thank you very much to Chris, who was producing the programme for the first time today. And so well done and we'll see how we go next week. Thank you for that and thanks for joining us everyone. We'll see you in a few minutes for extra. Otherwise, have a great weekend and we'll see you on Monday as usual at 1:00 PM Bye bye.