UK Column News - 26th September 2025

Good afternoon. It's Friday, the 26th of September 2025, just after 1:00. Welcome to UK Column News. I'm your host, Mike Robinson, and joining me by video link today are Mark Anderson and Patrick Hennigson. Welcome to the program. Both. Later in the program, we'll be looking at the potential for Arab Israeli war. We'll also be looking at the Gaza flotilla, the United Nations at 80, and the pandemic treaty. A bit more on that.

But we're going to begin, of course, with the big news from the UK today, which is digital ID, because the Starmer regime has announced, the Starmer regime has announced a new policy which has they've been warning about for years. Actually, let's put this on screen. Digital ID. What can we say about it? Well, here's what Starmer said about it, He said I know working people are worried about the level of illegal migration into

the country. A secure border and controlled migration are reasonable demands and this government is listening and delivering. He said digital ID is an enormous opportunity for the UK. It will make it tougher to work illegally in this country, making our borders secure. And he said it will also offer citizens, ordinary citizens, countless benefits like being able to prove your identity, to access key services swiftly rather than hunting around for an old utility bill. So there you go.

It's all about convenience. Well, he pushed out Lisa Nandy this morning to do the round on the rounds on the various news programmes. She's the culture secretary. And, well, this is what she had to say to Sky News this morning. Well, first of all, it's not a brick card that would obviously raise all sorts of issues across the whole of the UK. And so we we're calling it what it is, which is digital ID.

And the, the idea is that we've got a country that has for a long time been living in a digital era, but operating in an analogue way. We've been looking over the last year at lots of different options and different countries and the ways that they have rolled out Digital ID Estonia. And the the major benefit of Digital ID of course, is that it makes it far easier for employers to check whether somebody has the right to work here.

So for people who come here and want to work, it will be compulsory to show it. For all other UK citizens it will be compulsory to have it but not to show it. People will be able to choose whether they use it or not. But we think for a lot of people, you know, me, me included, who spend a lot of time digging out utility bills and National Insurance numbers and copies of passports to to prove verification in lots of different ways, that this will

have a big benefit as well. So you lose your liberty and for in exchange for convenience, it's great stuff and it is going to be mandatory. Some of the comments that she made this morning suggested that she was trying to deny that.

But of course what she just splitting hairs there by saying that it's not it's not going to be mandatory for UK citizens to show it, but it's certainly going to be mandatory for UK citizens to have it. Now the response to the news has been pretty impressive and well, this petition has been running since the 4th of September, but it's really kicked off in the last 24 hours since this news broke yesterday.

Umm and well, when I looked at this at about 9:00 this morning, there were 650,000 signatures on it. And this screenshot I took just before we came, I guess actually probably about midday or so or 12:15 and it's now it was 856,000. It was about 875,000 just before I came down onto the for the news programme, and it's probably well over 900,000 by now. So this is going off the scales as far as the typical Parliament

petition is concerned. But let's have a look then at what some of the opposition voices have been saying. So this is Nigel Farage. I saw enough during the pandemic with vaccine passports. It created A2 tier Society of those who could go to places, those who could travel, all based on the fact that unless you were axed, you see, unless you were axed, you were a danger because you might pass the virus on to somebody else. Then we learnt that simply

wasn't true. And yet our freedoms have been taken away for that period of time in a way that has never happened before. I am personally vehemently opposed to this in every single way, let alone the abuse that could happen if any of these sites are hacked and your data is taken. So I am deadly against. So before we move on then Patrick, let me welcome you to the program and just get a couple of thoughts on on this. Well for straight off the bat Mike, then thank you for for

having me today. It's a bit rich for Nigel Farage to be sort of throwing up opposition now after the ball has already moved down the field. He could have opposed this a while back and he didn't say much about this as it was linked to the immigration issue. And we were warning. We were warning before everybody else. OK there. We used immigration crisis to fast track a digital ID.

So in this way. And you wonder why Elon Musk is funding Tommy Robinson and and Peter Thiel and all these other so-called conservatives, all these these big tech oligarchs are pushing the immigration issue, the anti Muslim issue to get people riled up. And there is on the so-called right and there's Keir Starmer on the so-called left saying we are listening to the people and we want to solve the problem and deal with the immigrants and the digital idea is a solution.

I mean, this is such a Punch and Judy show, Mike. The whole left right thing should be exposed as a total pantomime. At this point. I I don't know what to say. Well, I think you've said quite a bit there and I absolutely agree with everything that you've said. So let's have a look then at the situation in other countries because Lisa Nandy mentioned

Estonia there. But in fact there are three other countries that are being used as sort of sources of authority, shall we say, for the best or best practice for this, this roll out. One is Australia, another is Denmark and another's India. So let's have a look at each of these in turn and we'll have a look at, since she mentioned it, we'll have a look at Estonia first. So Estonia is enhancing the security of its digital

identities. This is a story from 2017 because they discovered a major vulnerability in their digital ID. Then in July 2021, an attacker managed to get hold of somewhere between 280 and 300,000 identity document photographs from the state ID document database. This incident was was discovered, the suspect was arrested, the system was patched, but the data was lost to the Internet and well, of course these kinds of things

happen reasonably regularly. Then if we look at Australia beginning in 2019, there's been a large and growing number of mygov. It's called mygov in in Australia. Account takeovers and scams, so phishing scams, SIM swaps, credentials stuffing, all the

usual stuff. With thousands of accounts suspended and more than 10,000 reports of misuse into ID Care Services Australia reported sharp rises in social engineering breaches in 2024. And certainly thousands if not 10s of thousands of accounts were affected. And they've been repeated waves of this between 2022 and 2025. And we have Medi secure, this is the Electronic Prescription provider with government links and contracts.

And they suffered A ransomware data theft incident which affected 12.9 million Australians prescriptions including contact details and Medicare details.

And then the Services Australia and Centrelink breaches which were highlighted in the the Commonwealth Ombudsman report here on screen keeping my Gov secure and saying that failures to take protective action after breaches we're causing growing misuse of Centrelink and Medicare linked accounts in Denmark. Then between 2015 and 2020, a software or a configuration error, whichever in the government tax portal led to 1.26 million a personal ID

numbers being exposed to 3rd party services and otherwise leaked. And then the local here they ran an an investigation which reported vulnerabilities that allowed attackers to guess MIT ID usernames and to lock accounts that required changes to to the MIT ID system. And then the NEM ID system, which is the successor digital ID in in Denmark experienced major outages and crashes that caused government services to fail. And as I say, mid ID is gradually replacing NEM ID, so

not so great in Denmark either. And then finally in India in 2018, the Unique Identification Authority of India which runs the biometric identity card scheme.

There they looked into they launched a police probe into major security breach in 2023. Then data from the Indian Council of Medical Research database appeared online with a hacker apparently saying that India's biggest data breach on have has leaked the personal data over 8 of over 800 million Indians and so on. So that included name, father's name, phone number, other number, passport number, the

digital ID number and age. And in fact, there've been dozens of data breaches related to the unique identification authority of India over the past decade or so. And these these four countries are the countries that are being used or being looked to by Britain for best practice. But, you know, that should be no surprise to anyone that Starmer is pursuing this. I remember he stood on a platform of change at the last general election.

So it was obvious that he would obviously, that he would continue doing exactly what the Tories were doing before him. So. But we should also remember that it's Tony Blair that's been driving this policy the hardest. And since Starmer is Blair's poodle, there should be no surprise here either. Now here's a brand new article on screen at the moment from the Tony Blair Institute.

It's time for digital ID. It says the British public are running out of patience with a state that does not work, where interactions with public services are beset by inconveniences and delays, even as outcomes slip and costs rise. This is a good point. Convenience, Because that is the mantra. And we should all keep in mind that if we're going to resist policies such as this, signing petitions probably isn't enough. Something we should do, but it's not enough. We must.

It seems to me we need to accept inconvenience in our lives. Anyway, they go on in this article and Modern Digital ID does three things that allows people to prove who they are, who they say they are, prove that certain things about them are true and seamlessly and securely access services on that basis. So that's what they had to say. Now they went on to to post a load of stats and so on.

They're claiming that something around 62% of Britain's are in support of this initiative and that only 19% of people are actually against it. So well, that's their claim. And of course, we could probably suggest that the reason that Keir Starmer thinks that it's a sensible thing to proceed with this particular policy is because of the statistics provided to him by the Tony, the Tony Blair Institute.

Now, as Patrick said there a couple of minutes ago, of course we've been warning about this for quite a number of years. It was all about, if you remember back, it was all about a safer Internet. It was all about the Online Safety Act when it was still a bill and not yet passed, we were told how great it was going to be, especially for children. And children of course, are going to be protected from online pornography. In those days, it was Nadine Doris who was leading the charge.

Age verification was the Clarion cry and age verification is what we got. And of course that's what we got under Starmer. So that's change you see. And so that was digital. Idi believe this is 20/20/18 when we were reporting this. It's this is already of course as well as age verification rolled out as digital ID for company directors with the recent promise that non compliance will result in your company being shut down.

So if you don't get your digital ID registered with Companies House, they will go to court and have your company shut down if necessary. And let's not forget the data use and digital, sorry, the Data Use and Access Act, which we were talking about all the way through its passage that recently passed and it's something which we once again warned about. It included making provision for the regulation of the processing of information related to identified or identifiable living, being a living

individual. Sorry. So, and if we remember what Peter Kyle said at the time, we have an outdated approach to data which is holding back Britain's economy. This bill will take the brakes off unleashing a new era of wealth creation for all. Well, it won't be an era of wealth creation for all, but maybe for a few. And if we remember, this is what the digital identity architecture was going to look like. A wallet that sits on your phone

with attributes. Attributes such as your legal name, date of birth, right to reside, right to work or right to study. And this was published by the Tory government years ago, several years ago. And it's not going to, nothing is going to change here either.

So, you know, if we're talking about who's going to be making lots of money, then we've got to remember it's got to be people like this Lot Yodi and all the other digital ID providers that because the digital ID industry has expanded exponentially over the last few years as it became clear that this policy was going to become law. So just a quick reminder of the

petition. And let's just remember that there are people out there that are opposing this and maybe people would want to get involved with that. Sign the petition. Big Brother Watch is 1 running a no digital ID no to digital ID campaign together is another one that's running no to digital ID cards. And if you're in Glasgow tomorrow, you might want to attend this event, which is taking place tomorrow between

12:00 and 3:30. Digital slavery, slavery information, communication operation details on screen. And they'll be in the show in the show notes as well. OK, that's that. Clearly everybody or not everybody, but lots of people becoming very motivated by this topic. It's, I think the Starmer regime is going to get a lot more push back to it than they perhaps expected. And that's to be welcomed. Let's move on then to the Middle East and Patrick, the

possibility of conflict between the Arab nations and Israel, which perhaps spells the end of the Abraham Accords. Very, yes, very well put, Mike. And we'll, we'll explain how this is the fear right now. How you I, I do scan and I do study the mainstream media very closely, especially papers of record and daily headlines, because when they start to get into certain topics, you know that things are moving.

And on this issue, things are moving in a probably not, not a great way for Israel or the United States, but there could be a prelude to to an actual war here. In other words, we could be returning to the 1960s and 70s. So take a look at how first clue. The New York Times runs this as a front page story on their print edition as well as on their website. For Arab nations with ties to Israel talking about the Abraham Accord, attacks on Qatar and Gaza City raise anxiety.

Now, it's a pretty tame headline, but what are we looking at here? This is Qatar is the main focus. They've just got hit and the United States and Israel on the other side. And so this is the Arab world looking at Israel in the United States as kind of 1 unit now. And the US is not able to play that sort of game of deniability or the fact that they're, you know, Israel's an independent actor and has his own agenda. Now, what precipitated this?

Let's look at this. This was just recently the Israeli attack on the Qatari capital of Doha, attempting to assassinate the Palestinian Hamas negotiation team. That was, that's one of the big things here that's precipitating this anxiety in the Arab world. And the other is this which is Israel's invasion of Gaza. And you can see Benjamin Yahoo there is all smiles right now as he sees a residential buildings being downed on a daily basis in Gaza City.

He says that's to prevent them from being used by Hamas. I mean, what a flimsy excuse after two years of this, but yet it's a lot of people are swallowing it. That was an Axios headline there. They're just kind of reporting on this. But I think the world is seeing this very differently now. Let's look at how this is shaping up and how this is history repeating itself. Now, in terms of the Arab countries, what we're talking about here are the ones that no

longer feel secure. First up is Egypt. This is probably the most important. Egypt has a peace treaty with Israel. Is that going to hold? There's al Sisi there, President Sisi. Next up is Jordan. They also share a border with occupied Palestine and Israel. King Abdullah, they're normally regarded as a client state by of the US and Britain. But now things aren't changing.

And then next Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, you can see Mohammed bin Salman there lot of changes going on this week with Saudi Arabia, their stance and their position as well. And then last but not least, not an Arab country, but Turkey, and that's why we put an actress there. It's not an Arab country, but Turkey. It may find itself now in the crosshairs somewhat of Israel,

and we'll explain how. Now the most important piece, as I said, is Egypt. Let's go over and look at what the issues are for Egypt. And this is a very serious situation indeed. And so we look at this first and foremost is the issue of the Palestinians. Egypt's issue is they don't want Palestinians and Egypt regarding this as a red line. Now, mind you, many have already been displaced into Egypt, medical evacuees and so forth. But the next one is important. They're looking for a place to

host the Hamas delegation. There are people in Egypt to do out of solidarity with the Palestinians in Egypt. So hosting Hamas negotiations could invite attacks by Israel. That could break their long held peace agreement here. Next, Israel informed Washington they are concerned about Egyptian military buildup in the Sinai Peninsula. OK, now Egypt have has every right to move troops inside of

its own borders. This kind of reminds you, doesn't it Mike, about Western concerns of Russian troop build UPS within Russian borders prior to February 2022. And we all know what happened after that. And of course, Russia was demonized and sanctioned and so forth and blamed for everything, including an 8 year civil war that was precipitated by the US coup in Maidan. Has not digressed next. Now things. You can see where this is heading.

Next, Israeli concerns about Hamas militants who've managed to cross the border with refugees or so Israel claims. This could provoke an Israeli attack on Egyptian soil. Egypt is already accepted 100,000 medical evacuees and others who fled during the genocide. And the last but not least, this is risking a repeat of the 1978 PLO Lebanon traps. Important to understand history.

This is what kicked off the mainly what kicked off the so-called Lebanese civil war was the PLO being pushed into South Lebanon and then Israel using that as an excuse to attack, invade and occupy South Lebanon for many back of decades. OK, so you could see the exact same scenario playing out here with Egypt. Now, is this something Israel would like? Possibly. And so it seems like they're doing everything possible to

make this happen. So keep in mind, on this Egyptian situation, all of the signs in this New York Times article point to a narrative that is being constructed here. Next up, let's go to the Kingdom of Jordan.

There's King Abdullah there now mainly there's fears Israel force millions of Palestinians over Jordan's border with the West Bank. That's the number one concern now for Jordan. Next, Israeli officials becoming more vocal about annexing the West Bank and the Jordan Valley, again bordering the Kingdom of Jordan. And after the Abraham, of course, Netanyahu had declared in 2020 the Jordan Valley belongs to Israel, but temporarily held off in exchange for Arab normal normalization.

That was a call by the UAE has been using the Abraham Accords in conjunction with its own sort of expansionist military operations to basically play the West and play the other Arab countries and in in the meantime change facts on the ground. This has been Israel's game. The problem is King Abdullah, who's been put in a corner by his American and British and Israeli handlers and he they made him detain and arrest over 1000 people right after October 7th.

And this really on behalf of Israel in the United States. So his, his legitimacy as a ruler is really coming into question according to the opposition there. Now, put this in context here. Marco Rubio, what was he doing in Israel recently? There is the walls, putting the note in to the wall, that's the the old Roman Garrison wall. It's not the old Temple, by the way, the old Roman Garrison

wall. And during his recent visit, Rubio said that the United States warning about recognition of the Palestinian state by other UN member states outside of negotiations. So he's saying countries don't have a right to recognize a Palestinian state unless they go into US-led negotiations. So it's really an anti sovereign or anti sovereignty signal by Rubio in the US saying they won't accept anybody having their own foreign policy on this

issue. And he's basically saying that Israeli politicians talk of annexations was a reciprocal action to unilateral moves through recognizing the Palestinian state. But it what Rubio's saying is trying to twist what's actually happened and say Israel's only being aggressive because of this threat of a Palestinian state being recognized, when in fact, according to the Europeans, it's the opposite. So you can see how the Punch and

Judy game was playing. So here's Donald Trump yesterday and he's been confronted about Israel openly calling for the annexation of the West Bank. Here's Donald Trump few promise leaders this week that would not allow Israel to annex the West Bank. Is that something that? You. I will. I will not allow Israel to annex the West Bank. Nope, I will not allow it. It's not going to happen. Did. You speak with Netanyahu about

this? Yeah, but I'm not going to allow it. Whether I spoke to him or not, I did. But I'm not allowing Israel to annex the West Bank. There's been enough. It's time to stop now. OK. Question here is, do you actually trust Donald Trump? Do you trust that Donald Trump is, is what he said? Does that carry any weight at all? That's what he's saying. I won't allow it. But that's not what Israel's saying. So we we'll see how that one plays out.

So back to the other actors here, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, there is Mohammed bin Salman. OK, What is the different deal, an Arab NATO or a new Middle East NATO? Saudi just announced a new strategic defense pact with Pakistan. Pakistan has nuclear weapons. This is big news, OK, just happened this week. OK, in conjunction with everything that we've just said this week, next realizing now Saudis realizing the Abraham Accords aren't worth the paper they're written on.

So I think we can say at this point it really after the Qatar attack by Israel and the latest Gaza, Abraham McCord, they're dead in the water. It's only the UAE hanging on by a thread probably. And so next now Saudi Arabia no longer regards Iran as the primary threat in the region. Very important. So the gambit by the US and Israel is basically out the window every the gambit they've been playing for a very long time is now out the window because of the actions of Israel.

And the US and GCC ally Bahrain also now has made signals they feel insecure about this as well. So think about it. Israel's basically attacking the Arab countries. He is assassinating heads of state. He took that they tried to kill and somewhat successfully most of the Yemeni parliament while they were in session. OK, So this is what targeted assassinations, unprovoked attacks. This is what Israel's now engaged with around the Arab

world. So, and so now for Turkey, Turkey, some of their military facilities were hit recently inside Syria by Israel, OK, that includes missile stocks and other things that they were that were dotted around in key positions in Syria. This is a change right now. And next, Erdogan's HTS Jelani project may long may no longer be useful for Israel and the United States. So it's past its sell by date. They've achieved what they wanted in terms of annexing the Golan Heights.

So, but Turkey's safe for now, so long as they're a NATO member, so long as they're a NATO member. If you start seeing talk about Turkey being kicked out of NATO by the Trump administration, then you know, the game is on. So we'll go here to responsible statecraft. And they're even saying this is this week. So what I'm telling you is that a narrative is after Israel stroking Qatar, is Turkey next. So this is a major foreign policy microphone in the United States.

So some clues there. So now we're back to the end of this sort of analysis of the axis of chaos.

United States and Israel can only be described objectively as state terrorists and they are using and are allied with very closely now Syria that has a self appointed president Al Jilani al Sharar, whatever his name is this week, former terrorist leader, former ISIS head, deputy head, former founder of al Qaeda in Syria. This is now one of the main tools of the United States and that is to to soak chaos in Lebanon as well as other parts of the region.

So this this is where things are at right now. All of the ingredients might point to an escalation, A broader regional escalation here if things continue on the trajectory there, Yeah. Patrick, thank you very much for that. Sorry about that. That's quite concerning. We'll talk about that an extra, I have no doubt. Now if you like what the UK

column does, you'd like to support us, then the details of how you can do that, sorry, let's take that off screen, are on the front page of the UK column website. There is a Big Blue button there that you can click. I want to say thank you once again to everybody that is a member or is making donations and so on. Your support is much appreciated.

If you can't support us financially, please do support us by sharing our reports and our material because that helps us beat the censorship regime in this country. Another reminder of the York event taking place on the 18th of October. Live tickets are all sold uh, but there's still the opportunity to uh, watch on live stream. Please do if you possibly can. It's gonna be a fantastic day and uh speakers on screen at the moment uh, you know who they are anyway, uh, it's gonna be a

fantastic day. Don't miss it. Now, Jerem is still in China. So we're showing again his discussion with Mike Eden asking, is science dead at 7:00 PM tonight. So keep us, join us live for well on the live stream for that. And then on Sunday at 7:00, the first of the new series of the 1000 Words podcast will be out. Let's just have a look at the trailer for that 1000 Words is coming to UK column.

Watch Katie Jo Murphy, Co founder of Hope Sussex sit for her portrait whilst deep diving into life, the universe and everything. First episode airs this weekend on UK column, 7:00 PM Sunday For that. If you didn't see the discussion I had with Vanessa on the sectarianism building in the UK and Europe that that went out at 1:00 yesterday, it's on the UK Column website now as an on

demand version. I want to point out two articles, one published actually at the end of August from David Miller entitled How the British Intelligence Network of Astroturfed Muslim Civil Society groups is Kept Secret and Deniable. If you haven't read this yet, please do read it and share it. But there's an update to that now and the latest article is entitled How Muslims Civil Society Groups are Astroturfed into into Products by British Intelligence. This is Part 2 of this series of

articles. It's extremely important to understand. Please read it and share it as you see fit. And and then a final reminder that on Sunday the 20th in Edinburgh is the Food and Health Festival details on screen and in the show notes. OK, let's let's come back then. And Mark, let me welcome you to

the program. It's the 80th anniversary of the United Nations this year. What have the think tanks been saying about it? Well, that's an interesting juxtaposition versus what Donald Trump recently told the General Assembly upon the 80th meeting of that body.

Of course, American conservatives, many MAGA supporters will give Trump a little bit of kudos for speaking out against the green agenda, which is part of this part of the Sustainable Development Goals of the UN, and speaking out against the insecurity of borders and and way too much migration, things like that. However, it was a very mixed bag as you reported Wednesday, to say the least, Mike, in terms of

what Donald Trump had to say. But the ever busy Chicago Council on Global Affairs are arguably one of the busiest think tanks in the world, a close cousin of the Council on Foreign Relations. And of course, the former leader of Chatham House is now leading the Chicago Council. While they brought out another one of their surveys amid the appearance by Trump at the UN. This is the Leicester Crown Center on US foreign policy being involved.

This also the 50th anniversary of these ongoing Chicago Council surveys about various issues. And Lester Crown, the family, the Crown family, keep in mind, is a defense industry related family General Dynamics. So there could be some bias. Is there some things to think about? Anyway, there's some just, well, well, and large bullet points here I'll share on screen. Just to very quickly summarize what's going on. We have the CCGA survey.

Survey, excuse me, key findings. 2/3 of Americans say the US should be more willing to make decisions within the United Nations, even if it means the US will sometimes have to go along with policies that aren't its first choice. There tends to be a much more Democrat than Republican support

of the UN and its policies. Majorities of Democrats and independents support this compromise approach compared to just four in 10 Republicans. And there's a couple more brief bullet points that round out this survey. And this is especially interesting. Let's show this one. Largest ever partisan gap, Four and ten Americans view strengthening the UN and this

keeps coming up in this survey. The idea of strengthening the strengthening the UN as a very important goal for the US, similar to attitudes over the past 50 years of this Chicago Council survey. And here it gets a little more interesting. Democrats are far more likely than independents or Republicans to say strengthening the UN is a very important US goal for foreign policy.

And this is the largest partisan divide on this UN question in the entire 50 years of the Chicago Council's polling of the Chicago Council used to be called the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations. Of course, the original CFR in New York had a lot to do with bringing the UN into existence when the League of Nations failed. Lots of propaganda at that time for for world governance. Anyway. This is the only chart I'll show as part of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs survey.

Let's put this up there. It's interesting in its own way. And the question is, should US leaders consider UN resolutions in policy making? When you look at a great deal to the answer to that question, you see Republicans fairly low and Democrats much higher and independents in between. But when you say that US leaders should consider UN resolutions to a fair degree, you actually see Republicans and Democrats almost on the same level, the orange and the blue there at the

second line down. And that is mainly the MAGA movement that creates that that schism there. And when you read through the survey, you kind of get the impression that the MAGA movement is almost another political party unto itself that rode the Republican banner to get into office. That's a theory of mine at this point. It seems to be panning out more

and more now in association. Mike, with that survey, there was a discussion at the Chicago Council headquarters in in, in Chicago. And here is the title page to that, The Future of Multilateralism, the UN at 80 and beyond. And I I have a slide that shows the speakers and a very quick summation of what they had to say. This forum was on the 22nd of September to go along with that survey, The moderator, Paul Post, University of Chicago political science professor.

He said a key item is the future of multilateralism as embodied in the UN system. Important words there. The UN is a system, not just a forum. And Professor Ian Hurd of Northwestern University, he had this to say. The International Criminal Court is AUN reform, a free standing institution when the idea of UN reforms was brought up during the discussion.

And lastly, Juliet Sorenson, a Loyola law professor, she suggested eliminating the permanent 5 veto and that of course would have a lot of ramifications. And she said the UN Charter is amendable in regards to critics of the UN and some of the things they have to say. And Leslie Benjamuri, as I mentioned, the former head of Chatham House is now leading the Chicago Council of Chatham House. That the New York CFR, the Chicago Council are birds of a feather here.

They they're ideological cousins. She had this to say. If turning up is what matters, like showing up somewhere, then the sheer popularity of the forum with world leaders is a clear indicator that the UN is widely viewed to be politically relevant and an important platform for shaping international discourse and and influencing public opinion. She also had this to say.

There's one more quote from her. When measured by its ability to deliver impactful material solutions to the most critical global problems, however, EU NS relevance looks far worse, Leslie Vinjamuri said. It's been radically diminished, she went on to say, by the US decision to delay critical budgetary support. Now, much of the discussion by that panel portrayed the UN as little more than a forum and a platform. But actually the UN is a lot

more than that. And there's some history, historical things to talk about with regards to that. Briefly, of course, the UN Charter was only 5 years old when a war under UN auspices, the Korean War, was fought starting in 1950 to 1953. And my first newspaper boss who served in Korea said that everybody called it Aun War or UN LED military operation. That's what he and other soldiers were were calling it anyway.

This article from 1996 revisits an important facet of the UN and this is having to do with Michael New from the Spokesman Review in Spokane, WA mid 1990s Court martialed. The court martialed goes easy on the Army medic Michael New, convicted of disobedience and discharge for refusing UN Insignia and refusing you in command.

And Michael New at the time was the 22 year old American soldier and medic who was court martialed for refusing to accept foreign command on the United Nations operation. And lastly, this is just a reminder this next slide, Mike, that on the UK column website is an interview I did almost exactly 1 year ago with Daniel New, the father of Michael New.

At the time, Michael New chose not to be on the interview with us, but it talks about Michael New's experiences in the mid 90s as an Army soldier in Germany when he showed up for revelry

one day. And they just said you're going to put on the UN Insignia, you're going to put on the UN berets and the arm bands, and you're going to serve under UN command in Macedonia. And he refused because on constitutional grounds, he had only signed up to defend the US Constitution from all enemies foreign to domestic.

So that shows some of the conflicts that sovereign nations can have with the UN system that the Chicago, a professor moderating that discussion talked about some interesting perspective there. And of course that shows there's much more of that Donald Trump could have talked about that would have made maybe a better case for him.

But I think he he went down a very perilous road and a very controversial 1 criticizing the UN for supporting Palestine, which is one of EU NS brighter spots, of course, but maybe we can go more in in in extra Mike. But that provides a pretty broad perspective for the time being. Thank you, Mark. Thank you for that, Patrick. Let's go back to the Middle East

then, and what has been going on with the the flotilla? Well, let's just give an update on this situation. There's over 50 boats at Gaza departed from Barcelona, from Sicily and also from Tunisia and a few other ports. And what's what's incredible is this is now getting global mainstream, finally global mainstream attention here. And what we're reporting is very interesting.

I just put this in an article as an example, Italy and Spain to deploy naval ships to help Gaza aid flotilla targeted in drone attacks. So there's been multiple drone attacks. We've spoken to some of the numbers on boat that have been attacked in the last 24 hours. And we, we, we have a video clip we'll share in a little bit of one of those people, Frank Romano, who is on, I believe the, the Specter, a boat called the Specter. But so they are getting attention now.

So it looks like along with this announcement of the recognition of the Palestinian state, they are getting some attention here. And this is Israel's response. It's just somewhat comical from the Israelis basically saying that we're starting the what, what they're calling a terror, a terrorist flotilla, basically response from the Hamas flotilla representatives that the flotilla insists on his pursuing a violent course of action,

etcetera. And you could look above and there's one of the flotilla boats and they're singing peace songs led by a guitar player and so forth. So, I mean, to characterize this as a Hamas flotilla, it's just par for the course for Israel. More lies, unfortunately. So here is Frank Romano on board the the the Spectre just off the coast of Crete, where there's a rallying point happening now. And we're not giving away anything because this is all public. And of course, those attacking

them with drones or miserable. Exactly. Is anyone? Here's Frank Romano with, I think a very positive message after being attacked in the last 2448 hours. Hello, here we are getting ready. We're putting all the boats together to start the the last leg of our journey to Gaza. Here we are outside of Crete Islands. You see all the boats. And we are towing a boat. It's like an old fishing vessel that perhaps the motors not

working. Anyway, we are waiting for the final decision to group together the boats from Barcelona, Tunisia, Italy and Greece and finally head on our last leg to Gaza. It should take about 5 to 6 days, God willing. You see all the boats there and the Cove over there. And we are very, very upbeat. We want to send a message to the Gazan people, to the Gazan Palestinians. We're on our way.

You have not been forgotten. We're we're going to open up the people's corridor, then we're going to break the siege aspiring other activists to follow us. So in other words, we're not giving up on this. We'll have massive number of boats by sea and then hopefully a massive number of people continuing to March to Gaza movement and coordination eventually until Israel has to withdraw from Gaza with its AIDER and a better United States war criminals and from the West Bank.

And we can help Palestine to to free itself. And I've said a million times before, Palestine has led the way to the world to show we can resist this military industrial complex. We can resist this money powers that control the entire world today to either directly or with respect or indirectly with respect to Russia and China. The anytime any country that doesn't agree with the United States or Israel does something different, they're subject to

sanctions. But we are saying we're going to free ourselves from the clause of this military industrial complex, money interests that control us, this oligarchy, the stifling, vicious, evil oligarchy that that controls us, including that's really pushing to exterminate the Gazan Palestinians. We will free ourselves from

that, God willing. Real passionate message there from Doctor Frank Romano. And again he he also informed us that Israel had contacted the these boats message saying that they're welcome to sail to Ashkelon, which is an Israeli port and drop off of their aid there. And who knows what would happen, whether they would be their boats would be seized like last time with the Madeline conscience and the the, the other boat that was was seized as well. And then what would happen to

the aid? He said they don't trust the Israelis. So they're they're they're making their way to Gaza nonetheless. So you can see the Israelis are trying different ethics. They're even trying Coke them to basically stand down as it were and not go to Gaza. They're calling ships going to Gaza as illegal when in fact it's completely legal under international law, maritime law and so forth. So Israel has their own sort of version of international law now. And this is also I think an

important development here. Spain is one of the European countries here that has deployed a military vessel to support the flotilla. They're staying at a a safe distance they're in. They're to provide perhaps some kind of support should these boats fall under a serious attack or something like that. But they're obviously not going to engage the Israelis. I would think not. And Italy as well. Italy has done the same.

We've actually of one of the flotilla members and has cited the Italian ship, one of one of multiple Italian ships, naval assets that have been deployed. Here's the video clip. But then we said last Saturday, yeah, yeah, yeah, I did see that one in the in the. Talk. About the Navy. Ships.

That joining us so we got we have quite quite a quite a bit more material on this and updates, but I would encourage people to go to their Instagram page Global Sumud Flotilla and also on X. We have a lot more video messages that were sent to us from the boats. We we'll play more in extra Mike, but in the interest of

time we'll show you this. But just to suffice now leaving Greek territorial waters and really due to arrive on the shores of Gaza if they are successful in sort of four days time. But again, we don't know how this is going to end. We hope it doesn't end with anybody being hurt or worse. That would be horrible. But with the Israelis, I don't think they care about the welfare of the people in the boats at all, judging by how they treat the Palestinian population.

So I'll leave it. I'll leave it there. Thank you, Patrick. Thank you for that. We wish them all the best. Now sticking with this topic to

some degree, if you remember in August we talked about Unit 8200 and the fact that they were using Microsoft as yours, the Microsoft Cloud Platform, Azure for processing various forms of surveillance that they had collected from the telecoms networks and so on. And there were allegations that this was being used for targeting in Gaza. This was blown by the Guardian, +972 Magazine and a couple of

others. And so this article here Microsoft storing is really intelligence trove used to attack Palestinians was the headline on this. And if you remember, we were talking about another example here, Intel news saying is really intelligence using Microsoft servers to store intercepted phone call data. Now Microsoft said that they they responded to this. They said that they had opened the second investigation into it, but that was on August the 15th.

And by the time we reported this at the beginning of this month, there was about a month had gone past or certainly since the beginning of the of the inquiry. And Microsoft still had taken no action. In the meantime, though some of their staff were beginning to protest. And this organization know as you're for apartheid was set up and the Microsoft staff saying we refuse to be complicit. Well, the Guardian here is reporting now. Sorry, that's the that's actually the the the Guardian

today. I don't have the the graphic for it was reporting then that Microsoft has now decided to kick unit 8200 off. It's as your platform and this has happened quite quickly is how it's being described. I would say that it's actually happened extremely slowly. It's taken them months to to reach this decision. I think that Unit 8200 for PR purposes has decided to move off that platform. Undoubtedly, they've found an

alternative solution. It remains to be seen exactly what that is. Microsoft then gets to claim that a success from for purely for PR and perhaps the protests end. But you know, in the meantime, the targeting will not stop and Unit 8200 will be continuing to gather it's bulk data for processing, undoubtedly using a different platform. So I'm not entirely as positive about Microsoft's announcement as perhaps they are. But Patrick, back to you then and well people, a quick preview

there because it looks like Tony Blair is going to have a role to play in in the new Gaza. Yeah, the convergence of digital IDs and real estate deals in Gaza and, you know, ethnically cleansing the native Palestinian population. Of course, ATB outbreak in Gaza is the last thing that people in the region need, but there he is. So Washington is Trump, Donald Trump is backing Tony Blair's role as the head of the transitional authority in Gaza.

So. So a war criminal is being put in charge of a disaster fomented by other war criminals. I mean, you can't make it up. President Trump is backing the plan would see Tony Blair had a quote temporary administration. It's like he'll be the Paul Bremer of Gaza lording over the ashes of this genocide initially without direct involvement of the Palestinian Authority. According to Israel, there's Israel's guy Tony Blair, agent of chaos here.

Arab states have said they would only contribute to aun mandated international peacekeeping force if there's a clear political timeline for the formation of the Palestinian state. Just the the Palestinian state of the recognition by these leading G7 countries and so forth and the hundred 156 UN members have recognized the Palestinian state. It's not enough. It's not enough for the Arab

states. They say they want to see some concrete action otherwise they're not going to get involved in the UN mandated peacekeeping forces. So they're reserving that, right, Fair enough. And then finally, but it seems it seems to it's, it's but instead represents a different, more benign occupation than Israel. So Tony Blair will be presiding over a more benign occupation. Let's just say I think that's something that should make you feel good about this whole scenario. I'm just joking.

But this is incredible, Mike, that Blair of all people would be but would be shoehorned into this role. It's unreal. Incredible and unreal I have to say Patrick are not words that I would be using. Maybe we can during extra discuss which words might be I might be happier to use. But anyway, let's, let's quickly move on to the Arctic actually, because if you if you have a

look at UK column website and use the search function and type in the word Arctic, you'll see a host of different reports on the Arctic and why the Arctic is becoming important. The BBC back in July had this article The struggle for control of the Arctic is accelerating and riskier than ever. And if you remember back a few weeks, Patrick and I attended an event at Plymouth University which was showing a a new documentary entitled Arming the Arctic, which was really a bit

of a NATO propaganda piece. The Arctic is something which is absolutely featured in many reports from Parliament, the House of Lords and so on. Why are we talking about it today? Because, and why in fact, is it strategically important in this way? Well, this gives us a clue. This is the China Academy and they've just published this article. China, Europe Arctic route cuts transit to 18 days down from 30 via Suez. So this is the inauguration effectively of the Arctic Silk Road.

And in this case they were taking goods, a cargo ship with I think 1000 containers on it from a port in China to Felixstowe in the United Kingdom. And they were doing that in 18 days without the risk of the Suez Canal and the the passing. Not that a Chinese ship would be at at risk necessarily from passing Yemen, but nonetheless this becomes a game changer as far as getting goods to UK and Europe. Western Europe and China's been working on it for a very long time.

It is therefore becoming a massive place for competition of the so-called great powers. So we'll talk about that later as well. And just very briefly, Mark then related to that is the the digital foundation and and their desire to consider the Indo Pacific as a region to look at. Yes, viewers might recall, Mike, that I covered Ditchley right around the time of Bilderberg in mid June or so.

They met exactly that at the time the Bilderberg met in Sweden and Ditchley is kind of a ideological cousin of Bilderberg and the Trilateral Commission, nominally more open than Bilderberg, but this slide shows that they're meeting starting today through the 28th of September and the conference is at Greentree. I believe that's in the UK in partnership with the American digitally branch.

There's also a Canadian digitally branch, of course, it's it's another elitist think tank where big money is married to big politics. That's kind of the leverage that they make sure stays in place. But yes, the Indo Pacific, including China, of course, is high on their agenda and the way they operate. They won't release details on this probably for at least three to four weeks. And when they do, of course, we'll report that. Thank you, Mark. And then let's just end today

with a brief update on the pandemic treaty. Yeah, important stuff. I did a headline for American Free Press a brief article recently and it shows in this next slide. It shows that headline. One Worlders Global Pandemic Treaty hits a few snags and the US and Argentina withheld their participation in the still ongoing treaty talks and Slovakia during recent talks had

the gall to request a vote. And when Slovakia took that action, some 46 delegates of participating nations simply left the room and did not return. Reportedly, another 11 delegates talking about the treaty negotiations at Stain and the remaining 124 delegates improperly voted to adopt adopt the treaty. Now, according to James Roguski, the noted treaty and international health regulations watchdog. There's a lot of double talk going on here.

And here's an important quote that I just got from him. Adopted doesn't mean the same thing as ratified. It doesn't mean the same thing as signed, and it doesn't mean the same thing as entered into force. They, the negotiators, failed to reach an agreement on the whole reason that they were negotiating. So in other words, they're putting on their best face. But to a degree, the treaty talks are floundering and hitting a lot of snags, procedural among others.

So that's some good news. But it's no time to rest on our laurels. Of course, for those of us that rightly fear another planned emic crackdown could happen, Remember Exercise Pegasus coming up very soon, a dress rehearsal for another pandemic in the UK. And lastly, we have the upcoming meetings of the Intergovernmental Working Group and this replaced the intergovernmental negotiating body that was working on the treaty.

And N3 through 7. They're having the third meeting early December, their 4th next February, mid February, their fifth meeting, another meeting in March and finally the next World Health Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland in mid-May. Very important stuff. And the pathogen access and. Sharing system is another important thing to keep in mind. We'll talk about more of that, more of that in the weeks to come. So back to you, Mike. Thank you very much, Mark. Thanks for that and thank you,

Patrick as well. So we got to finish there for today. Thanks for watching. We'll be back in a couple of minutes on the live stream. If you're AUK column member, stick around for UK column news Extra. If you're not member, please consider joining and then you can join us for Extra as well. But otherwise, have a great weekend. We'll see you on Monday as usual. See you then. Bye bye.