UK Column News - 31st October 2025

Good afternoon, it's Friday the 31st of October 2025, just after 1:00. Welcome to UK Call News. I'm your host Mike Robinson, my Co host in the studio today, Patrick Henningson. Welcome to the programme, Patrick. Great to be with you, Mike. And we're joined today by Mark Anderson, as usual on Friday. Now, later in the programme, we're going to be looking at the latest censorship news. We're going to be looking at Trump in Asia and his threats of nuclear proliferation and the

latest on Russian oil sanctions. But we have to really begin today with the former Grand Old Duke of York, who as we know a

couple of weeks ago was stripped of that title and has now been stripped of the princely title that he has. So if we put it on screen here, there is somehow from the grave, somebody whispering in his ear there. I'm not sure what's going on. But anyway, the royal family claims to have announced that Prince Andrew is no longer Prince Andrew. He's been stripped of his princely title and is now going to be known as Andrew Mountbatten Windsor. So let's see what the statement

said. It's said that His Majesty has today initiated a formal process to remove the style title in honours of Prince Andrew. Prince Andrew will now be known as Andrew Mountbatten Windsor. His lease on Royal Lodge has the date provided him with legal protection to continue in residence. It went on to say sorry and formal notice has now been served to surrender the lease and he will move to alternative private accommodation, I believe to be paid for by the King personally.

These censures are deemed necessary notwithstanding the fact that he continues to deny the allegations against them. Their Majesties wish to make it clear that their thoughts and utmost sympathies have been and will remain with the victims and

survivors of all forms of abuse. And my question, Patrick, is really because I believe that when there's Full disclosure about the now King's previous relationship with Jimmy Savile, that we, you know, that that last paragraph of the statement might have some, you know, status or standing to it. But I I've absolutely questioned whether their first thoughts are with victims of abuse at all. That's Sir Jimmy Savile OBE absolutely order the British Empire.

Was he not the same Jimmy Savile that was Prince Charles social secretary kept the diary for Prince at the time is the same. Savile as that headline in LBC that we just showed a second ago, we could put that back on screen, says Prince Charles beg Jimmy Salva for help with royal public relations, secret letters reveal so. They seem to be very close.

They were, they were clearly very close and many, many questions about that relationship, which is never actually if they've never been answered. Charles is lucky he didn't have to give up his title and style back then back. Then indeed, but but look at it, it's the question is, well, first of all, we get before we get to the question, let's just point this out because strangely there's no announcement on the royal family website of this situation, no announcement there.

No, no announcement on the on the ex profile that this has happened. So this this statement has been issued, I guess via the BBC primarily here, so nothing there at all. But lots of people in social media are calling this a scam because they're pointing out that there's been no act of Parliament or letter patent issued. But if we paid attention to what the statement said, it said that a formal process has been

initiated. So we really have to wait and see what the mechanism for this is going to be at the end of the day. But my question, Patrick, is I think this is what we need to discuss now is why now? Why at this particular moment? Now, a couple of possibilities here. 1 is that this is an effort to draw a line under royal family connections to Epstein or Epstein however you pronounce his name. I see some people are starting to pronounce it the other way that now.

But anyway, there's another possibility and that is that they're prepared to sacrifice the past in Andrew in order to keep pressure on the present. And by that I mean Donald Trump, because at least one commentator I heard talking about this this morning claimed to be proud to be British today because the royal family is cleaning house while the United States is in complete denial. So the question is, is this

about Trump? If we just put that back on screen in the United States, the pressure on Trump is starting to build just at the right moment, apparently because this is a headline here. Cracks emerging in Republican loyalty to Trump as Epstein bomb is about to drop. And we've got more here. The Epstein curse continues to loom large from Spiegel International.

They're they're reflecting the fact that this is starting to build in the United States. This is MSNBC, their commentator, Lawrence Trump is using the government shutdown to shut down the Epstein files. And so the question, Patrick, is, is this about Trump actually? And, and is it a coincidence this pressure is building up even higher than it has been in recent months over there, just at the time that this event happens over here?

Well, I, I think it I think it really was even higher than it is now arguably in in June and July. And that's when the White House issued this and Pam Bondi, the attorney General issued this formal denial that this was even a scandal and there's no black book.

And that's when Charlie Kirk and when came under significant pressure and other MAGA organisations came under pressure because there was a split, because Trump campaigned on the Epstein files, made it a big centrepiece that oh, we're going to release the files, my presidency is going to be transparent and all of a sudden you have a cover up basically, and then denials. And that caused a split and these MAGA organisations were haemorrhaging support and

membership because of that. And that's one of the things that I think also forced Charlie Kirk into that sort of position where he was questioning this undying loyalty to Israel and not be able to question Israel because of Epstein, Epstein's connection with Israel. So I mean, so this has been building up for a while. It's it's it's been building up all summer, in fact. And now we have an opportunity where you have some contrast now between the British and the American side on this. OK.

But since you bring the Israeli connections in here, we should it. I'm not ruling out the possibility that it could also be about former Israeli Prime Minister Ahud Barack. So we just put this on screen. Virginia Guthrie accused him of raping her and choking her on multiple occasions in court documents. Now, Barrack of course, denies these allegations. But obviously there's there's really connection here as well.

And in fact, you know that there is a connection to just about the entire globalist billionaire class as far as I can see. And really so the question underlying all this, is this an attempt by the royal family to draw a line under it, or is it is it an attempt to divert from other things or is it an attempt to to put pressure on Trump? It may be all of.

Those, it could be all of those. I mean, this isn't just any Israeli. That's Ehud Barack, former Israeli Prime Minister, former head of Israeli intelligence, pretty pretty central figure there and best friends with Jeff Epstein photographed coming out of his New York Manhattan mansion and so forth. So I mean, this is this is not

just anybody. So that's why I think they're potentially explosive there on that side at the time when support for Israel's is haemorrhaging in the in America, I think among Democrats, support for Israel's polling and single digits, single digits, when has that ever happened in the United States? Good. Question. Yeah, OK, well, look, let's welcome Mark to the programme. And Mark, let's come back on to

the issue of of Venezuela. G'day, gentlemen and viewers. Yeah, the, of course, the mainstream press organs have been ablaze with headlines about a major troop, troop build up in the lower Caribbean area. And that would involve, of course, turning up the heat against Venezuela, against that regime, as Trump calls them. And I was looking through various sources trying to find something pretty objective and not go to the New York Times and not go to the Pentagon or

whatever. And the this slide shows the University of Southern California Dornsyth, one of their more active branches in the USC system, the College of Arts and Letters and Jeffrey Fields October 29 published this article entitled Trump's anti Venezuela actions lack strategy, lack justifiable targets and lack legal authorization.

President Trump okayed a naval build up in the Caribbean, strikes on boats in international waters and covert OPS in Venezuela, says Jeffrey. Without a discernible strategy or objective, of course the president and the the military is not going to always announce its objectives and strategies or they're going to give you a wag the dog type scenarios. But nevertheless, some pretty strong points being made by

that, by that source. And that source added the following, stressing that there's no evidence, the Trump administration claimed without evidence that the boats were carrying illegal drugs. 14 boats that the administration alleged were being operated by drug traffickers have been struck, reportedly killing 43 people. On 24 October, the administration, Trump administration began A substantial military buildup in that region.

The Pentagon moved the aircraft carrier Gerald Ford there and some of its strike group along with several other naval ships to that area and moved F35 fighter jets to Puerto Rico. And this is being called, get this, the largest US naval deployment in that area since the Cuban Missile crisis. So a very significant events going on there with lots of potential ramifications. But that's a pretty good account overall that is not partisan to outline what's going on there.

Smart we were talking about on on Wednesday's programme, Patrick, of course the question of drugs is never too far away from this region and and the question of whether what this is really about. Is it about the oil in Venezuela or the rarest in Venezuela? Or is it about the fact that Chavez and and Maduro have been pushing back against the drug drug trade, which of course the United States Deep State has been deeply involved in for decades?

Well, let's just go by what the what the president himself, what the administration is hanging this on and they're hanging the whole thing on allegations that Venezuela is a narco state. So, I mean, the more you dig into this, it's it's very, very much becoming like a WMDS in Iraq type rabbit hole where there's no actual evidence of the accusations being made. But let's look at the big picture. We'll bring this up on screen here. This is from the Washington Post.

Trump merges the war on drugs with the War on Terror in the Venezuela showdown. Now, if you survey the US media, especially on the right wing side, there's all sorts of conspiracy theories. These are these are nothing new in the Newsmax and one American news in Fox world that somehow Hezbollah is working with the cartels. This is from like Marco Rubio himself working with the cartels to do what I don't know, ship drugs and ruin the lives of American teenagers. Who knows?

But so, and Hamas has got sleeper cells in Mexico and al Qaeda and ISIS or have got sleeper sales in Mexico. They found a Quran somewhere in the desert by the Arizona border. This is normal sort of fodder. But Trump is basically formalising this year and they have a number of hacked journalists that are pushing this stuff out on social media and so forth. All these sleepers. Laura Loomer is one of them who's in this kind of an Israeli influencer, Israeli American or

whatever. I'm not sure what where she where she's from or what her loyalty is, but nonetheless. So this is the narrative that they're they're they're bringing in here. So these are the two worst things of the Clinton administration and the and the Bush neocons, the War on Terror and the war on drugs. Trump has managed to put them together fantastic.

So and, and behind him is in Marco Rubio, who seems to have his own personal vendetta against all Latin American governments that don't lean far right. And he's made it his career as a senator to sort of take the lead on that. Somehow he thinks it somehow he knows more than anybody about what where Latin America is, what it should be and how to bring down these governments.

And then behind him is a Fox News weekend host named Pete Hegseth, who somehow gifted the head of the Defence Department. But that's the disturbing trend there. So let's let's go to this video here now on on the issue of the

drug accusation, Mike, is is there any legs to that? Is there any legs to that? Let's listen to Trump and then let's listen to a 60 minutes report from 1993. Roll this. Why did you authorise the CIA to go into Venezuela? We have a lot of drugs coming in from Venezuela. A tonne of cocaine, pure cocaine worth hundreds of millions, is smuggled into the United States. Sound familiar? Not the way this tonne of

cocaine got here. According to what the former head of the Drug Enforcement Administration told Mike Wallace, this drug shipment got here courtesy of what he calls drug trafficking by the CIA in partnership with the Venezuelan National Guard. Now we understand what you're saying. A tonne of cocaine was smuggled into the United States of America by the Venezuelan National Guard. Well, they in cooperation with the CIA. That's what that's exactly what

appears to have happened. Until last month, Judge Robert Bonner was the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, the DEA, and Judge Bonner explained to us that only the head of the DEA is authorised to approve the transportation of any illegal narcotics like cocaine into this country, even if the CIA is bringing it in. Let. Me put it this way, Mike, if this has not been approved by DEA or an appropriate law enforcement authority in the United States, then it's illegal.

It's called drug trafficking. It's called drug smuggling. So what you're saying, in effect, is the CIA broke the law, Simple as that. I don't think there's any other way you can rationalise around it. Back in the 1980's, the CIA was mandated. So, Mike, so they're taking Colombian cocaine and trafficking it through Venezuela, and then the CIA and the DEA would then bring it into the United States and it would end up on the streets of America.

That was in the early 90s. Now something happened in Venezuela. Hugo Chavez became president and that was the end of that. No more drug trafficking using the National Guard as mules for the Central Intelligence Agency in the DEA. So the biggest drug traffickers in the Western Hemisphere are the CIA and the DEA working in collaboration with the cartels. So where's Trump coming up with

this? And we only have to look at the work of the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Gary Webb, the late Gary Webb, the great Gary Webb over his Alliance series is historic. And this basically documents how the CIA brought crack cocaine onto the streets of Los Angeles and major U.S. cities. And then to to blame and demonise the African American community and also just to sort of destroy it ultimately. And so that was fleshed out in the 1990s. So I mean that it's interesting.

There's a few other elements to this, I think, but that's, that's what happened. And Nicolas Maduro carries is on that same legacy of Chavez and if anything Venezuela is an anti narco state. So how on earth can any of these accusations stick without any evidence?

That's the big question here. Just before you move on from Gary Webb, we should just remind everybody, of course he committed suicide and inverted commas by shooting himself twice in the head, which is. From behind with a shotgun something. Practically important. It was a handgun, but it was practical, A practical impossibility and if if not a total impossibility, And I'm just going to say that that in the months leading up to his death, I was on a mailing list that he was part of.

And you know, obviously I never met him. I never spoke to him in person, but he did not seem to be at the point of suicide in any of the communications that I saw no with that group. No, and in the late Robert Perry also worked with him on on these same stories and Robert in effect was support supported in a bit of a mentor for him. Robert had told me that as well in an interview which we published before he passed away a few years ago.

Right. The great Robert Perry, investigative journalist, founder of Consortium News, Yes. But let's look at look at this because here's where it gets interesting. So then it's not enough to demonise Venezuela. Trump is now imposing sanctions on Colombian President Petro or Gustavo Petro. Now, Colombia was the number one US ally, okay, 4th, 3rd or 4th largest recipient of U.S. military aid and but they had a right wing government and so obviously very friendly with

Washington and very supportive. And there's another connection here, not just the United States. Why all of a sudden are they demonising Colombia? It's strange, but maybe not. Let's look at listen to this video very closely. This is President Petro at the UN General Assembly just last month. And this is what he said about a very close friend and ally of the United States. Go ahead and roll this. First and foremost, we need to stop the genocide in Gaza.

Humanity cannot allow single day more of this genocide or for the genocidal Netanyahu and his allies in Europe and the United States to continue. The United Nations must uphold the decisions of the international Court of Justice. International law is the basis of civilization and united for peace for Palestine. We should establish A peacekeeping force to to protect where it's not. Not blue helmets. There's no what we need is a powerful army of countries that do not accept genocide.

That is why I invite nations of the world and their peoples, more than most importantly as a integral part of humanity, to bring together weapons and armies and to defend Palestine. He's calling for more than peacekeepers there. He said no blue helmets. We need to bring armed forces in from other countries to defend Palestine. That's a bridge too far for for Israel. So they've clearly putting pressure on Washington to basically move on Colombia. I think this is a major issue

and it I wonder why. What else about Colombia and Israel? There's some history there. Look at this. OK. There's a very good, very well researched article here by the way. Security and context. Colombia shifts everything. Military ties moving away from decades of Israeli sponsored violence in Colombia. What's this all about? What? What's Israel's business in Colombia for the last 25 years? Kind of interesting, isn't it? What were they doing there?

It turns out Israel was selling loads of billions in fact, of weapons to Colombia. OK. And the other thing they were doing, they were training the radical far right paramilitary forces that were fighting the FARC in Colombia, OK, trained by the Israelis. And these were known as death squads, OK Didn't get a lot of bad press in America because they're allied with America at the time, right? So isn't that interesting?

And there's other things, there's allegations potentially of Israeli military involved in, who knows, maybe some some of the drug trade, maybe some import export activity into the Middle East and Europe, who knows. There's a lot of accusations flying around on this. But Israel's deeply involved in Colombia, but not under Gustavo Petro, you see. So we see this split in policy and all of the sudden they're demonised. I find it to be more than a coincidence.

And here is Venezuela, just to remind people on the Venezuelan side, Venezuelan president says Palestine is the most just cause for humanity. On the day of solidarity with Palestinian people, he's wearing the scarf there. That's Maduro. How many world leaders will wear a Palestinian scarf at a major state rally in Venezuela? This is normal. So this is another reason. So by the way, 2009, the first country to recognise a Palestinian state in the Western Hemisphere was Venezuela.

So this is nothing new. It's it's been a tradition from Chavez all the way through to Maduro. So it's just funny that they're being singled out with all sorts of fake allegations of substantiated allegations of Venezuela being a narco state, when in fact, as we said, Mike, the biggest drug traffickers in the hemisphere are the DEA, the Drug Enforcement Agency of the United States and the CIA. Traditionally, that's documented fact, as we showed.

OK, well, let's move on then to Donald Trump in Korea with

President Xi Jinping. They've met in South Korea. Well, the question is what happened? Did did Trump Kiev again in terms of trade? Because the tariffs on China are now around 20%, which is lower than some of what the US calls their allies. In exchange for China buying soybeans, Trump got rid of the fentanyl tariff. He suspended the targeted sanctions on Chinese shipping. He suspended the BIS 50% rule targeting China, China's semiconductor companies.

And this is a rule which says that if AUS subsidiary company is owned 50% or more by entities on the BIS entity list or military end user list. So in other words, Chinese companies, they own 50% or more of of the US subsidiary than those subsidiaries would be subjected to the same trade restrictions as the parent companies. In exchange for all this, then China will roll back rare earth export control imposed after the 6th of October.

But any export control before October is still in place. So still no rare earths for the United States. But so I'm going to say thank you very much to Carl Zafra for that breakdown of what happened there. But anyway, the Dutch government is now going to feel very silly for this situation, this story. This is Nexperia, which is a, a, a semiconductor company and this was done on behalf of Trump's.

Basically, the Dutch government took control of Nexperia from its Chinese owner, Wing Tech Technology on the 30th of September after the the Dutch arm claimed that the Chinese unit had supplied the They were not supposed to be supplying local customers in China with semiconductors, but they were. They were doing that and more to the point, the Dutch company.

The Dutch company was stipulating that distributors would need to settled these deals in in dollars rather than one and and they were being settled in yuan. So anyway that this caused the Dutch government to step in and take over the thing. And well, the question is, are is China going to make an example out of out of the Dutch government or the Dutch for this? So with the Dutch are nationalising that. They effectively took control of it.

Yes, that's exactly what the Germans are planning to do with Rosneft of affiliates in Germany nationalising. So it's taking these state assets of Russia and the private assets of Rastaf and nationalising under the German aegis. So not only did they take control of the company, they then tried to send diktats to the to the Chinese arm and and of course that just didn't fly.

So and and then finally on this, of course, the question is that all the companies that changed supply chains and pulled out of China because of the previous or the trade regime up until just now, they're going to be losing money. As a result, so when Trump had his quote liberation day, right, a lot of people were like getting ahead of the game and thinking, well, we need to basically cut supply chains with these sort of hostile nations like China, right, and suit to

great expense, right? And all of a sudden. It seems it seems to be back on again so. It's back on again, so they lost a lot of money. Yeah. So, I mean, who knows how this is going to turn out. The the problem is that no sooner had that meeting, you could look at the meeting in itself, in and of itself in a positive light. But no sooner at that meeting happened. And the next thing was Trump is saying, oh, well, China, China's rebuilding this nuclear building, a nuclear arsenal

here. We've got to start testing nuclear weapons happens again. And Mark, I don't know what your thoughts are on that, but but Trump's, the independent was saying that Trump's comments on nuclear test testing up and decades of U.S. policy. What?

What are your thoughts? Well, my initial thoughts and we can show that independent headline as I'm talking, my initial thoughts are of course Trump's comments in and of themselves are not going to up and anything actually changing U.S. policy and at least planning or carrying out renewed nuclear testing that would definitely upend decades of U.S.

policy. This subhead in that story says Trump has suggested the US will restart nuclear weapons testing, a move again saying that they're saying that it up ends decades of American policy. It reminds me of Ronald Reagan who also was a peace through strength guy and there was a lot of Sabre rattling during his president presidency, but that's typically all it amounts to is Sabre rattling.

At any rate, theatomicarchive.com turned out to be a pretty objective source on this, and I have a chart here that I found that puts things in pretty good perspective. There's been a total of 2056 nuclear tests since 1945, and the US has been responsible for about half of those. Or 1030 seven, 115 from Russia, the United Kingdom a mere 45. France 210. China also 45I3 and Pakistan 2 and North Korea 6. And right around the early 90s,

testing began to fall off a lot. And by the time you got to the early 2000s, there's no record of any known nuclear tests. But atomicarchive.com also had this to say. Just for clarification, since the first nuclear test explosion on 16 July 1945, of course that was the Trinity test by Oppenheimer, at least eight nations have detonated 2056 nuclear test explosions at dozens of test sites, including Lapnor and China, the atolls of the Pacific.

Lots of exposure to radiation, of course, in the Bikini Atoll, Nevada, Algeria, where French conducted its first nuclear device, A WA where the UK exploded nuclear weapons, and the southern Atlantic across Russia and elsewhere. And I remember during my nuke activist days, in my early journalist days, I was sort of a nuke activist. And there was a book that came out then when the US was doing

open air testing. And the book was called The Day We Bombed Utah. And it spoke of nuclear fallout coming down on cities and towns in Utah and spikes in cases of cancer. And so the open air testing that the US did in the 50s was especially dangerous. And that's why they moved it underground. I think if memory serves, we have one more slide on this at any rate. And yes, no, I maybe we're done. At any rate, I think that's sufficient.

But that's kind of a picture of who's been doing the testing and how many. And so it would be a very, you know, dramatic and sharp move to go back to that after all that's been done and after the relative lack now of testing ever since the early 2000s. So back to you guys. Yeah, absolutely. And and I mean the other thing to talk about here Mark is, is sorry Patrick, I'll bring you in at this point. The the removal of the withdrawal of various countries from non proliferation treaties.

I mean 2002 the United States left the the ABM, the. Ballistic. Missile Treaty. And that was sort of seen as a trigger that started 20 years of erosion of nuclear arms control. 2018 Of course, Trump pulled out of the JCP away. And although that didn't directly cause Russia to suspend new starters CCTBT, it certainly contributed to that. But also opened up the door with aggression against Iran, which ended up with a war this past summer. Absolutely.

And then of course, 2019 Internet Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty that the US withdrew from 2023 as Russia removed themselves from the New START and from the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. And so, you know, this is this is a trend which has been developing for quite some time, but we're now starting to see us getting pretty close to pretty dangerous territory if we're starting to test again.

Yeah. And by the way, Russia removing itself from those agreements, we're basically mirroring the United States, basically not not fulfilling their obligations. And Russia suspended its obligations, right. But it's obviously being spun in the media a certain way. But yeah. And the other thing is, by the way, we were talking about testing. So this is how Israel got around the issue of how does Israel with a secret nuclear arsenal, test its weapons?

Well, the French did it for them in Bikini Atoll in the South Pacific and in the Saharan Desert in Algeria. That explains why the French number that Mark just showed was was quite as high as it was. Yeah, and we showed the data for that. Freddie Ponton, journalist from France, did a great job of breaking a lot of that down on on reports that we did on 21st Century Wire. But isn't that amazing how Israel managed to sidestep that huge problem is how do you test a secret nuclear arsenal?

Well, let's just let's just look at this then, because the Telegraph a couple of days ago was reporting that Britain must

look at sharing nuclear weapons with Germany to counter the critical threat posed by Russia, of course. And this is according to British defence chiefs. Now they're saying that that this includes, by the way, George Robertson, the former head of NATO, who was the man who's just written the defence review on behalf of the British, the Starmer regime. So, so they're they're basically saying that the UK needs to open talks with Berlin over what they're describing as a fresh defence pact.

Germany, they say, is already in quote, strategic discussions with Paris over how the French could provide potential protection in in the form of its own nuclear deterrent. Mertz apparently is very keen to speak to Starmer about Britain getting involved in this as well. Now this is really important because of course we've been talking about the development of the European defence capability

for a long time now. But the core of this has been the Franco British axis until more recently when Germany started joining that. So, you know, from a from a defence pushing a defence narrative, Britain and France have been pushing that. The political union narrative, of course, in the EU has mainly been France and Germany. So it makes sense to get everybody together.

In an axis. In an axis, an axis of evil, I would even go as far as to say, but but this, this France, Britain, Germany axis is also expresses itself in the form of the E3, which is this grouping that's now sort of driving defence and foreign policy within the EU. So. But Britain of course left the EU so. You know, well, no, it's extraordinary. Well, not quite. But you know what's extraordinary about this is Frederick Mertz. Not very popular in Germany?

Not very popular. It's debatable whether he will survive the next round of elections for his party of the Coalition, Macron. To say he's unpopular is a massive understatement, right? And then there's Keir Starmer. So you have 3 unpopular, hugely unpopular leaders that are ruling or governing by threads and they're doing this major paradigm shift in the European security architecture that is

basically nuclear proliferation. Yeah. But we've always got to remember that this is not their policy. They're they're merely enacting it. This is this is a deep state policy that's been in operation for This is just the culmination of something that's been running for a long time. Sure it is, but still they're the ones who are going to basically put it in motion or sign for it on behalf of the electorate. Yeah, but we don't have any say no in any of that.

And, and you know, for the, the US, this is not good news. If you don't want another nuclear variable in Europe, it's, it's enough. But in the Cold War, Mike, there was a balance in the bipolar distribution. There was a balance between the United States and the Soviet Union. It they sort of cancelled each other out in the old doctrine. But you add a third actor. Do you trust some of these European actors that they'll be

rational? I don't trust some of the British actors that they'll be rational. They're insane. I don't necessarily trust the US under the current administration, but I do I trust the USA lot more because they have a a long pedigree, as do the Russians in having this kind of long standing count cancelling each other out bipolar arrangement. But Europe has a a great tradition in starting massive wars and basically trying to wipe each other out.

This has happened a number of times in the last 150 years. So I mean, I'm just saying I'm a little sceptical. Absolutely. Now, sticking with defence, just

briefly, what's going on with the media and and the Department of War in the United States? This this is from last week. OK, And this should really shock people. Journalists turn in their access badges and after a row with the Pentagon over new reporting rules, basically Pete Hagseth again, a Fox News weekend host that Trump gave or Israel told Trump to hire him as defence secretary.

He's basically saying that all the media outlets have to run their reporting through his office for approval. So any reporting on the DoD, which is now called the Department of War, OK, has to run through the Pentagon's Sorry to. Say this again, but this is real Nazi Germany stuff. Yeah. I mean, if China does this, they'll say, oh, there's no transparency, It's not democratic. If Russia does it, they'd say the same thing.

But in America, I mean, seriously, this is like going against the 1st Amendment. So again, this is a pattern of the Trump administration undermining the US Constitution, freedom of the press. And so let's take a closer look at that. Let's bring this up. So this is the response. So the war departments have replaced AP and obviously there's there's this is this is going into the courts, by the way.

So this could change. But as of last week, the new media outlets for the Department of War were Lindell TV. That's Mike Lindell. He sells pillows and slippers on cable. The Gateway Pundit, not really the best website in terms of hard news and defence and geopolitics. The Post Millennial, they specialise in anti woke articles and going after trans and LGBT in Portland. That's their mainstay. What do they know about geopolitics and defence policy?

Not much. Human Events. That's Jack Posobiak, that's MAGA. It's basically a MAGA website. And then the National Pulse, that's Raheem Kasim I think and again, very MAGA. OK, so I mean, are, are they going to be critical with anything the US is doing and starting wars around the world? Any of these MAGA outlets, websites, basically these are websites. So listen, the mainstream media, for all its faults, they do have people on staff who do this for

a living their whole career. And if if if they are going to call out the US government or the president or something like that, or at least get accountability, there's a higher chance they'll be able to do it than the Gateway Pundit. So I'm just saying this is a really shocking development. And I think people should. But there was more. Oh, there's more. Sorry, there's one more. Let me see. There's another. Yeah. The list also includes Turning Point USA is media brand front lines.

I never heard of that. Don't know what it is. Influencer Tim Pools, Tim Cast. That's a YouTube channel and the sub stack based newsletter called the Washington Reporter. These are guests are paragons of journalism. What can we say? Maybe, maybe we should apply for for a pass. I'm probably not going to get it. They don't like anybody who's critical of Trump, doesn't like any media outlets critical of him and will deny them access. So this is like what's going on?

So pretty incredible. OK, OK, then let's keep an eye on that. OK, If you like what the UK

column does, you'd like to support us, please have a look at the website. There are options to help us out if you have a look at that section on on screen at the moment. If you can't support us financially then please do share material that you see on the website and help us beat the censorship regime in the UK and elsewhere. Now tonight at 7:00 PM, Charles and I, as usual, are speaking to Jerem for the Weekly Banter.

Join us for that. And then at 9, Carl Zhao is speaking to Doctor Warwick Paul on the unravelling of Trump's trade war. And this is focusing on the Trump she visit. So have a look at that. At 9:00 PM tonight, a reminder of the interview between me and Jose Biomorgi, the Venezuelan ambassador to Lebanon and Syria yesterday that went out yesterday. It's now on the website on Demand if you want to have a

look at that. It covers a lot of some of the topics that we spoke about in the Venezuelan segment today, but we're hearing it from from the horses mouth as it were. And certainly he absolutely is putting quite a lot of the responsibility for what's going on at Marco Rubio's door. And well, we can talk about that a bit more in extra. Now, I want to highlight an article which is going to cause people, some people, some difficulty, but I'm just going

to say it's worth reading. It is fantastic. Islam is not the enemy of Christianity. This is an Arab Christian perspective. This is from someone in the Middle East who is an Arab Christian and just wanted to put her perspective. On the relationship between Islam and Christianity, or at least how it should be. And but as I say, it might cause some cognitive dissonance in in some people. And if it does well, I've just urge you to to consider what's

being said. Just take a step back and consider it because it's worth consideration. Yeah, sometimes a shock to some people in the West to know that there are actual Christians living in Palestine peacefully with Muslims and in Lebanon and Syria as well. Maybe not with the current Syrian regime, which is AUS backed terrorist leader, but before that under the Assad government, all denominations living in harmony with each other mostly anyway in Iraq as well.

It's the same in Iraq. So I know that comes as a shock. Yes, Christians in the Holy Land, Arab Christians, but it's true. We, we testified. This is a fact. They've been there for thousands of years or no, we're not Christians. Well, 2000. Yes. So, but anyway, now the 1000 Words podcast that went out last week, the second part of that is going out on Sunday at 7:00 PM is James Delingpole is being painted by Jake Fern.

And of course they're having discussions on on, I think this week they're focusing on the things that brought James Dillingpole from where he was to where he is today. So this is a bit more about his how he has his opinions have evolved since he was. His demising conversion from from the Telegraph to where he is now, it's probably fascinating. Absolutely. Now that's for members only, so, but do join us for that. 7:00 PM on Sunday. And finally, a reminder of

tomorrow, the digital ID protests in Edinburgh. 1:00 PM The Mound Princess St in Edinburgh. If you can possibly get along for that, please do go and support those guys because this is a topic which of course, is very close to many, many people's hearts. So as much support as possible would be fantastic. Now, Patrick, let's move on then to the issue of Russian oil

exports and sanctions and so on. Well, it's an interesting topic. We were going to have a a guest international lawyer, Arnold Devolo, join us. There were connection issues, big tech issues between the East and the West right now because of sanctions. So we'll we'll. Find a work around for that and we'll we'll speak to him again. We'll bring him on in future, but but but nonetheless, let's bring this up. So this is the big question.

Will Trump sanctions against Russia make a dent in in their oil exports? You know, basically how how serious is this? And just to there they are now, I guess all the goodwill from Anchorage is expended and now we're at with economic new levels of economic war. So what what Trump's trying to do here, Mike, is extract some kind of concessions from Russia in terms of getting them to agree to freeze the conflict in Ukraine as an example.

So this does have a lot to do with what's happening on the battlefield in Ukraine right now. The question is how serious is they've sanctioned Russia to high heaven since 2014. In fact, after the Russia after Crimea reunited with the Russian Federation or an A Russia annexed it, depending on which perspective you take. And then after the Ukraine conflict kicked off in February 2022, another another level of sanctioning.

So what could, what could the West possibly do to Russia that would really hurt it if Russia has weathered the storm and and is out competing Europe in terms of GDP growth and economic performance? Well is but is this really a checkmate? Well, let's take a look. And just to to review, this is something we mentioned earlier here. We're talking about these two major producers, Rosneff and Luke Oil, which comprise of 5% of the global oil trade, which is significant.

This might not sound like a lot 5%, but it is a 20th of the global oil trade. So it is a lot, but China is halting oil purchases from these companies. That's massive. Before China was basically still training and basically sidestepped any threats. And India, same. So these are three main founding BRICS countries, Russia, China and India. So has Trump done a major move here, a checkmate, if you will, against bricks and against Russia?

Well, Mike, the the consensus is this is going to hurt Russia in the short term for sure. And what's interesting is in November, I think the end of November is, is the deadline where Luke Oil, which has facilities all over the world. And these can be now seized under kind of, you know, eminent domain under these sanctions. So they're now trying to sell all of their facilities and properties in the next three weeks and they're going for nothing basically.

So that's what that's what those are the reports that we've got out of Russia. So they're basically if it whatever is not basically liquidated, but by I think November 17th right around there, then it's basically they they can lose them. What does international law say about this? Is this, is this legitimate what the United States doing? Absolutely. It's not by this should go into some kind of a forum like, you know, the UN General Assembly or the Security Council or some

kind of arbitration. So it's completely against international law. And the and especially at a time when the US doesn't want to come to any political settlement over Ukraine, they want to settle it on the battlefield. The Europeans want to settle on the battlefield and then they're waging economic warfare against against Russia and then sanctioning anyone who's buying Russian oil. So that's also secondary. Sanctions are absolutely in

violation of international law. So Hungary wants a waiver there will probably get a waiver. Same with Slovakia and a number of other countries. Germany's got a waiver for Rosneft and Germany. They still rely on Russia and Germany's, as we said, they're going to seize, possibly sees and nationalise those Russian Rosneft refineries and so forth in Germany because that's the only way around it is to steal it and nationalise it. So this is kind of crazy what's

going on here. I. Mean should Russia not view that as an act of war? It it is wars have been started over over this in the past. In fact, this is arguably one of the reasons why Japan attacked Pearl Harbour in 1941 was they were being strangled and shut off from the global markets by the Americans and the British. So they, they, they, it was really kind of a pre emptive move to hit the US bases in, in Hawaii and Pearl Harbour.

There's more to it than that. But so the, the questions that this raises, Mike, is OPEC, how's OPEC going to respond? Is OPEC going to increase production to keep the price of oil down? Because what the US don't want is a spike in oil prices because that's going to create problems economically for Trump and for the West, but also it's going to benefit Russia because according to Russian experts, just a slight increase in price will make up for the lost trade.

You see. So I mean that that those are the sort of variables that we're dealing with here. And so it is interesting. And you know what else is interesting is the Rosa Tom is the nuclear yeah, provider for Russia. They're exempt from all sanctions globally. They've got a they've got a white waiver for every every everyone relies on them around

the world. They do a full end to end solution from uranium to clean up to facilities to build the facilities, maintain the facilities to fantastic company, which is mostly, I believe state owned. They have a complete waiver and Japan is basically ignoring any

threats of sanctions. They buy a lot of LNG from Russia. The Sakhalin site is a joint venture between the Japanese and the Russian government And Japan saying no, we're we're we're keeping our relationship with Russia. They don't buy a lot of oil from Russia and Japan. They get it from other places. They only get a small percentage from Russia. So Japan is basically not affected by this at all and is pushing back against any pressure not to buy Russian

liquefied natural gas. So that's interesting. So Asia is, it'll be interesting to see what direction this goes, how China and Russia will adapt on this and we might see some changes in the structure of the Russian. These companies could become nationalised in Russia itself and it becomes much more difficult to sanction if these

are state owned companies. So last question Patrick, because on this bearing in mind that the so called Glo Global S is the global majority, why, why isn't there much more of a sort of an international outcry about this? I, I don't know per per SE, no, I think there's just so many terror. There's tariff wars and

sanctions. the US is basically using tariffs as sanctions to punish people for not behaving the way they want or not submitting to whatever the, the weekly DIC tats are, which are constantly changing from the Trump administration. So there's a lot of chaos, I think, and there's a lot of noise and hysteria going on right now. So trying to get a consolidated response to what the US is doing here is going to be difficult, OK? Everyone's just trying to survive in this economy.

So I mean, there's a lot of problems with that. So I think personally, in the long term, I think in the short term, the, the sanctions against Russia, these particular ones are going to hurt Russia in the short term. And you're going to see probably Q 4/20/26 that that that's when you'll start, start to see on the balance sheet what sort of effect this has. But I've been speaking to experts in Russia, Mike, on this and they said that this Ukraine war is going to be done by Q4 of 2026.

When I say done, we, we're talking about Odessa, Kharkiv, Dinapia, Petrosk, and these sort of key regions that they're fighting over right now, which geopolitically change the whole, you know, viewpoint of this conflict. For NATO, that means basically they're done. NATO's southern flank is finished. If if that's the case, they're really pushing Russia's hand.

Because if, if this is going to create pain in Russia, Mike, and that's going to create political pressure for Putin and this government, then it they're incentivizing Russia to move quicker and harder in Ukraine. And so what's that? Is that going to elicit an aggressive response from Europe? Is this how we're going to get war? That's a legitimate question as well, yeah. Absolutely. OK, let's come back to the UK

then. And online safety, because Sunday was the Online Safety Act's second birthday. We should all have been celebrating. I hope everyone was celebrating. We appreciate my sarcasm there. But anyway, Ofcoms Group director for Online Safety Oliver Griffith said that real change is happening. We've laid the foundations for a safer life online. Do you feel safer online, Patrick?

Yeah, OK, he said. He said tech platforms now have clear legal duties to protect people, especially children, from legal and harmful, from illegal and harmful content. Now, this is important because the concept of legal but harmful content never really went away. So we have to look a bit behind what he was saying there. Anyway, Ofcom announced that they're going to publish a report detailing their progress to creating a censorship industrial.

Sorry, I've completely forgotten the word that's going to be published in December. Anyway, here's Ofcom's head DM, Melanie Doss, because she's written to the chairs of the Communications and Digital Select Committee and also the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee to claim all kinds of success so far. She said the most visible and significant change so far has been the introduction of age cheques across online pornography sites.

Another sites hosting primary priority content as defined in the ACT to prevent under eighteens from being able to access this content. So I mean, this is, this is absolutely her position. But of course this business of under eighteens being able to access content, well that might be the case, but it does nothing to prevent those over 18 from posing as under eighteens on sites that target children.

So it should come as no surprise then that the first imprisonment under the Online Safety Act is of an adult who abused a 17 year old and caused her to self harm. This is presented as a huge success for the Online Safety Act, but in fact it's another failure. The ACT did and does nothing to prevent this type of abuse and the crimes committed by this person were already illegal. So this this prosecution could have been on the basis of already existing legislation.

Child abuse and causing self harm were not legal before the Online Safety Act. So the claim that this is some kind of success is complete and utter nonsense. But anyway, in the meantime, the war of words between Wikipedia and the UK regime continues because Wikipedia is also subject to the age verification requirements that the pornography sites are. And this is upsetting Jimmy Wales because the best Deep state editors of the planet's greatest propaganda machine wish to remain anonymous.

And Jimmy wants them to remain anonymous. He wants them to be able to remain anonymous. But Starmer's saying no to that. And so that fight is continuing. Well, so intelligence agencies are battling the government absolutely on this. On this yes, professional

trolls. In the EU then, LinkedIn has been ramping up its censorship regime and the European Commission has been forced to deny that it had anything to do with so that the censorship had anything to do with the Digital Services Act, which is the EU's equivalent to the Online Safety Act. That's a pretty lame excuse because of course LinkedIn and all the platforms are responding to the legislative framework they find themselves in, primarily because LinkedIn doesn't really have any skin in

the game as far as advertising is concerned. So they're not worried about content that that may put advertisers off as such. So this is mainly about the the the Digital Services Act and the Online Safety Act, but I just wanted to to end this topic with this article. This was rubbished originally published a couple of months ago on the conversation website, but the Cobb Courier here.

The Cobb Courier is a local website in the United States has just republished this and the headline is Self Censorship and the Spiral of Silence. Why Americans are less likely to publicly voice their opinions on political issues.

And it talks about people self censoring because people are being driven to extreme positions as a result of current events and and people are therefore afraid to speak out because of the abuse they received from people on the other end of the political spectrum. And so what's being described here is that the polarisation of opinion is in and of itself a mechanism of censorship. You know, because the divide and conquer policy, in other words,

is a gift that keeps on giving. If people want to, you know, I'm going to suggest here that if people want to resist policies they disagree with, maybe we should be engaging people that we, you know, the people that we disagree with in a way which sort of enables conversations rather than rather than, well, what is sort of digital bloodshed as we see on on X and

other platforms at the moment. But I think I thought that was a pretty insightful article, because there is no question that is people's opinions move to the extremes. It gets harder for them to express them without ending it, ending up in just a massive war. Yeah, in my experience personally engaging with other Americans on on just my germane political conversations is there's a huge gap between what people know or think they know and what's actually true.

And some for some people, you can't get over the conversation that they don't. They believe Michelle Obama is a man basically. And and and they're just stuck on that. They believe all sorts of things. But so you can't really have an intelligent political conversation that's, you know, of course, that's just my opinion that Michelle Obama is a biological female. But people have been radicalised. I couldn't possibly comment. They've been radicalised on this stuff, so you it is kind of

frustrating. And because of that it's affected. Both sides will not talk to each other basically. So if you're intelligent, you want to have a intellectual conversation somewhere in the middle. You're not welcome. You're not. Welcome. That's the case. And so conversations aren't happening. But in the meantime, Speaking of conversations, at least an attempt to stop conversations happening, what's the latest on the doctors that are being

censored? What's Auk story here? And we'll bring this image up on screen. So this is this is UK Israeli censorship. Let's just call it what it is. This is here Doctor Ramey Ladwan and she they're attempting to revoke her licence to practise medicine get her struck from the the General Medical Council on this year and the the coverage on this is just unbelievable. So we go to the to the right. This is the Telegraph NH Doctor Who celebrated Hamas October 7th attack knows how they put that

in single quotes. Is is arrested and they put it in single quotes. So this is an accusation probably from, I don't know, an Israeli lobby or a Jewish lobby organisation. They put it in single quotes. It's highly libellous and defamatory. Cause clearly she wasn't celebrating October 7th. But the Telegraph are playing bit cute with that one by

putting in single quotes. And now on the left world socialist website defending her UK government backed persecution of anti genocide medic Dr Rahme, a large 1 continues. You see the difference between the media coverage, but the the the entire mainstream in Britain is railing against her. So you know, if you if you're if you're into the underdog and you don't trust the establishment, then maybe you should consider

what side you're taking on this. But here's here's what's happened to her since she has been released. She says this is on her ex account. A few days ago I'm effectively on a form of house arrest, my bail conditions for lawful speech, a July talk she gave and three posts on X. She's banned from any public demonstration or event in London relating to Palestine or Israel. Curfew to live and sleep at a specific address. Must notify a detective if she is to leave home for more than

48 hours. Yesterday, the chair of the tribunal cut her off from reading, fought one sentence. The GMC had also specifically requested that I am not to speak, says Doctor Aladwan. This is what the political persecution of a doctor looks like in Britain today. Pretty, pretty amazing House arrest for tweets. So all all the people on the right that were railing and Elon Musk and JD Vance about people being, you know, arrested or door knocked by the police for tweets.

None of those people on the so called conservatives are coming to her rescue because they don't like the fact that she is defending Palestinians. So is and she herself is from the Levant, if I'm not mistaken. So yeah, she's I believe Jordanian, of Jordanian Palestinian descent. So she's talking about her people effectively, but yet this is criminalised speech. So we're all the free speech

warriors on the right. Are you going to defend her on principle or not because Israel's involved in the issue? No, is apparently the case. Yeah, indeed. Mark, let's come back to you then to end and just bring us a

little bit more on what the White House has been saying about Gaza. Well, this just then, you might say, Mike, you had asked me to look this up and everything I looked up was about a week, week and a half old regarding White House negotiators Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff. This is from Politico. 20 October.

Those two guys returned to the Middle East and met with Prime Minister Netanyahu and Israel after a weekend where the ceasefire at that time looked increasingly in danger as Israel launched a wave of strikes on targets in Gaza around October 19, which Palestinian authorities said killed dozens of people, including children, after two Israeli troops, I would say, allegedly were killed by militants. Hamas said it was not responsible for the attack on

those soldiers. So there's, of course, a lot of concern about wanting to make Gaza a real estate Mecca in the wake of all this tragedy. And these negotiators are, you know, working around a ceasefire that really never was.

And it truly is a, a disheartening and tragic thing to see with Israel getting away with so many crimes, Internet breaking, breaking international law, and as we mentioned earlier, escaping the the overall chronicling and archiving of data on nuclear weapons tests when they have a nuclear arsenal they've had for a long time. And yet it's been kept unofficial.

And that that really adds insult to injury after as to what Israel's been doing in Gaza. So I didn't have a lot of time to look into this in detail, but I think that puts a good ending on today's show, kind of sums things up. Well, of course, Witkoff and so on, they were seen on camera recently causing each other, Kushner and Witkoff causing each other a little bit of embarrassment. What? What was going on there?

We'll go to that in a second. They had the interview of 60 Minutes and Leslie Stahl, really embarrassing, actually. We'll show that clip in a minute. But Israel's basically pioneering a new concept here, Mike. It's a temporarily permanent ceasefire. The temporarily permanent ceasefire. And I might add, under international law, Israeli soldiers I, the IDF or IOF, depending on which acronym you use, they have no rights under international law in as illegal occupiers in Gaza.

Just saying the fact that that their safety is somehow a part of any negotiation or or ceasefire agreement is patently ridiculous. But unfortunately, you're dealing with a perennial violator of multiple UN resolutions over the last 80 years. But so, so this is clip. Watch this clip and watch the reaction from Jared Kushner when the 60 Minutes host asks Steve Witkoff and Steve Witkoff seems to give away play the entire game on this and just Kushner is panicking, visibly dishevelled.

Watch this. You're builders, you've been in real estate. Tell us more about the plan and how much it's going to cost. Where's the money going to come from and who's going to award the contracts? I think it's going to cost a lot of money. What's a lot of money? You know, the estimates are in the $50 billion range. It might be a little bit less, it might be a little bit more. I happen to think that that's not a lot of money in that region.

You have governments that are going to jump on in. Middle East countries are going to provide the money. Yeah. What? You'll see European participation and so forth. The beginning of this plan is how to get it going. That's what me and what me and Jared work on all the time. The money raising, we think is the easy part, but it's the master plan and we're working with a group of people who have been working on master plans for the last two years.

So there are plans already. We have plans already. We have a master plan already. And by the way, and Jared's been pushing this and we're working together on it, and I think if the world saw the progress so far, they'd be pretty impressed. Well, it's always good to end the programme on the comedy moment, Patrick. But that, you know, in a sense it's a comedy moment because clearly Kushner was extremely

embarrassed by that. But but you know, what we're actually looking at, we should always keep in mind is thousands, 100, you know, 10s of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people, basically a population decimated to make room for this master plan. Yeah, yeah. And, and he's been working on it for Jared's been working on for two years since October 7th. And Steve Witkoff gave it away. The delboy, the delboy of diplomacy. Steve Witkoff gave the game away.

And that's what it's all about. Trump tweeted out this Gaza Riviera thing with this gaudy AI video back at the beginning of his term in February. And that was just kind of like a big FUI think to the Palestinians and to the international community on this. And there you go.

These two shysters, a couple of crooks, a couple of criminals and their bosses running a protection racket, who is, I don't know who their boss is. Which cabinet do they work for, the Israeli cabinet or the American governments cabinet? This is an open question that we don't actually know the answer to the British at this point. Maybe, maybe, maybe there's a Union Jack inside, Jared. Designer suit. Well, we'll leave. We'll leave it on that thought.

So look, we'll be back. In a couple of minutes, if you're UK column member for some news extra, join us for that if you can. Otherwise, don't forget Jerem at 7 and 2nd Rd Podcast at 9:00. Join us at 1:00 PM on Monday as usual and hope everyone has a great weekend. In the meantime, thanks for joining us. Bye bye.