UK Column News - 5th September 2025

Good afternoon. It's Friday the 5th of September 2025, just after 1:00. Welcome to UK called News. I'm your host, Mike Robinson. Mike host today is Brian Garish once again this week. This is amazing, Brian. It's a delight and a pleasure to be here, Mike. Joining us via live link is Mark Anderson from the United States.

Later in the programme, Mark's going to be reporting on the latest from the global Parliament of Mayors and I'm going to be taking a look at the expansion of AI driven surveillance in the UK and globally. But we'll begin today with, well, Tony Radican, our ex, my ex Chief of the Defence Staff. What man? This is correct and I suppose I should apologise to the audience because it's a bit like putting Tony Blair up on the screen. But of course this is the man of the moment.

I just wanted to recap. The BBC is now grabbing him because he's out to the job and we want to do some analysis on his comments. But first of all, this is a Telegraph article, I think this is 2021, where it says Tony Radican, the state school educated boy. That's an appropriate word from Oldham who has quote, changed how the Navy works. Now we've already covered this another UK call them news editions.

And that is that of course the RN suffering absolutely critical breakdown shortage of ships and the ships that they've got, many of them can't go to sea. And yet that this man is being praised and feted as as effectively, the man who's been running the war in Ukraine single handedly in his very clean combat gear. So he changed how the Navy works by making it not work anymore. That is how it appears to me.

Or at least if we say, well, it wasn't all his fault that the Navy wasn't working when he was in the most powerful position. Did he focus on the Navy and getting it working? Absolutely not. Because he's been parading on the international stage in his combat gear, supposedly making out that he knows how to run a war on the scale that's going on in Ukraine. What did he do to get those medals, Brian? I have no well, I do know he he's been in a job where he's been interfacing with the right

people. And of course it's widely rumoured that his friendship with Boris Johnson helped him actually get into the senior post itself. So I'm going to say in the right place at the right time. And then you get the medals because clearly he's never, he's never put his life on the line in a combat zone. So he didn't get them from the charity shop. Possibly. Possibly. Let's have a look at this short interview with the BBC. And we're going to make quite a long comment on it.

This war has been a disaster for Russia. Putin wanted less NATO. He's got more NATO. We've grown from 30 nations to 32 nations. Putin originally thought that he would subjugate Ukraine in days, if not weeks. That's clearly not the case. It's it's, it's a facile description, but it's a really

important one. If a snail had left Rostov on Don in Russia on the 24th of February 2022, by now it would have crossed all the way through Ukraine and it will be halfway through Poland. That's how difficult Russia is finding it just to get those four Rd blasts.

If Russia carries on at the pace that it currently is, it will take it 4.4 years to get the remaining territory in those four O blasts, and having lost a million people killed and wounded, it will lose a further 2 million people killed and wounded. So this is. About Ukraine's bravery, Ukraine's courage, our support to Ukraine to keep them in the fight. I, I find this absolutely shocking. Like this. This man is pure. Ali's also not giving the public the truth.

Maybe he doesn't know, but essentially these little stories we've shown previous video clips of him playing with coloured pencils and maps on the wall. Apparently this gets him very excited to do with the trade routes around the globe and and now he's talking about snails. This man is not in the real world, but so let's just pop a little bit of hard comment up on the screen because this is where he started off with in in the

interview. This war has been a disaster for Russia. Putin wanted less NATO. He has got more NATO. Well, of course the reality is somewhat different. We've got NATO that's a complete broken mess at the moment so that you can the EU component of begging for continued US support and commitment. Because the truth has always been that without the Americans, there's no effective NATO. And this is freely available.

This fact is freely available if you look at comment in the UK and the the American and the Western press. So this is pure propaganda that he's pointing at that he's starting with. But let's have a look at in a bit more detail at key points. And as I just said, there's there's quite a few of these, but I think it's worth going

through in some detail. So at no stage did Russia declare or plan for an invasion, a full invasion of Ukraine with a view to occupying the whole country in days or weeks. This is a comment that's been made by the West, which Radicand is repeating. There is absolutely no substance for it. And of course, basic evidence is that the size of Ukraine indicates that this was never the case. So if we just put that one

across, Mike, thank you. Ukraine is a vast landmass, average size depending what source you go to, 603,000 square kilometres, and in 2022 Russia simply did not have the troops to fully invade Ukraine. So it's nonsense to state this

and the Russians didn't, sorry. In contrast, the Russians did state and actually enact the objective of military intervention into Ukraine to demonstrate its intent to counter Ukraine attacks on Russian speaking people in the Donbas and the continued NATO plans to integrate Ukraine into NATO itself. And of course, it was Boris Johnson who was one of the key figures that disrupted the peace discussions in Istanbul in order to make sure that this war

continued. So of course, Ranekin doesn't want to tell the public about any of these things. If we go on, Russia has successfully mobilised what was a small defensive Western army, because of course remember that Russia has to deal with its western borders and its eastern borders. That army, 200 two 120,000, now increased to what many believe is around 800,000.

It's done all this while fighting the war in Ukraine, which is not against the Ukrainians because of course it's a war that's backed fully by the US, the EU, NATO, etcetera. This is a tremendous achievement in its own right. And if we go on through this, we've got that Russia has already defeated 2 western trained and equipped Ukrainian armies and defeated a major western backed Ukrainian offensive.

This is all factual information that I'm giving you, and for people who do their own research, you will be able to find this quite easy, easily. Much of it has been reported in Western press and UK press itself, but of course much of it hidden in plain sight. We'll also say that Russia has taken control of 20% of Ukraine. That equates to about 114,000, well, 114 five, 100,000 square kilometres and that equates to 50% of the total land area of UK. Plus they're gaining ground every day.

So this is on a vast, vast scale. The West hasn't seen warfare like this really since the Second World War, possibly the Korean War. But what we've, what the Russians have been doing on the ground is truly remarkable. Now we will go on to say that Russia's continue to outproduce the Ukraine, USUK, EU and NATO in shells, bombs, missiles and other munitions. Beg your pardon. And the claims that were made, including I believe by Radican himself, that Russia was going

to run shorter of munitions. This never materialised because basically they were untrue. And then we've got the technology that the Russians are are employing on the battlefield. So we've got new missile systems, including hypersonic missiles, and the West has no defence against these missiles whatsoever.

And of course the failings of the UK, the West and indeed the US military system to develop these systems themselves and the countermeasures means that there's a lot of absolutely false threats coming out of the West because they cannot deal with the technology that Russia is operating with on the ground. Now, if we come on a slightly different area of weapon systems themselves, Russia at the moment is using high numbers of highly accurate aviation dropped heavy glide bombs.

That's up to 3000 kilogrammes worth of bombs being used in vast numbers. And these weapons are being used to successfully destroy the Ukrainian frontline. So Ukrainian troops are being killed by blast in their bunkers or underground command shelters. They have no defence against what's being used against them. And if they assemble troops in numbers, the Russians are taking out those troop assembly points with either missiles or these very heavy bombs.

So this is the reality, which is very different from what Radikin is trying to tell us. And if we add to that, of course, Russia has developed highly accurate drones for, for not only wide battlefield surveillance, but also coordinated strategic attacks across Ukraine, both Eastern Ukraine and Western Ukraine. And again, the majority of these attacks absolutely getting through Ukrainians, largely Western provided missile defences.

So failure on the ground to every stage in direct contrast to these wild and puerile claims that Radican has been making. And in addition, we can go on, because Russia has developed the ability to completely restructure its approach to warfare in a battlefield which is totally dominated by surveillance, not only by long range surveillance by the US and the UK in particular, but also satellite surveillance and then local surveillance by drones on the ground.

Despite all of this, which makes it very difficult for even individual soldiers or small groups of soldiers to move, Russia has still been moving forward. And we've got to recognise that there has been an impressive use of command and control and coordination. That's the C3 between the Russian troops on the ground, plus information from drones. And this has been backed by heavy weapons support, which does include long range artillery, but it also includes the glide bombs and tactical

missiles. This is a new form of warfare that Russia has been dragged into and at the moment Russia is clearly demonstrating that they can fight this type of warfare and win not only against Ukraine but also NATO itself. I noticed you've said on there, this is this is new warfare. But we were told by Radigan, by his predecessor Nick Carter and the people around the Joint Chiefs that new warfare was going to be all about cyber and space. This is a complete misreading of the reality.

A complete misreading, Mike. And of course The thing is now that the Russians have many, many thousands of extremely high, highly trained and experienced these are hardened battlefield troops in this type of warfare. So the idea that the West has the ability to step in and fight the Russians is actually laughable at the moment.

So where do we go from this? Let's move on through, because Russia's ability to win on the battlefield has also been completely unaffected by the hyped Western Wunder weapons which we had. So we have the Abraham's, Challenger and Leopard tanks, Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, these very expensive units, millions of dollars each. These have been destroyed in huge numbers by very cheap Russian attack drones. And of course the F sixteens, which we heard week after week after week.

We're going to change the whole battle. These barely got into the air before they were destroyed. The few that did fly and others were destroyed on the ground. So huge propaganda from the West and they. Said that was going to happen, absolutely. I did like, yeah. So let's have a look at this.

Russia has demonstrated highly capable battlefield command and control and the other thing it's done is shown the ability to give troops in platoon concentrations, maybe 10 men, the ability to call in fire support, not only for aviation units but also from these long range missile defence systems.

This again is a unique change on the battlefield that you're giving trust for individual soldiers or groups of soldiers that they are going to use these very impressive weapon systems from long range to do the job, maybe even a few 100 metres in front of them. Now. At the same time, we've been seeing more reports that the Ukrainians have been uneasy at the advice being given by what's clearly on the ground, USUK weapons teams.

There have been a number of reports, certainly in Ukrainian press, Kiev Independent or the Kiev posts, for example, showing that the Ukrainians have had less and less trust in the ability of the West to advise on the war. And if we go on through, this is where it gets really serious. Because, of course, the West greatly underestimated Russia's ability to absorb battlefield casualties.

If you're dealing in up to 30 million military and civilian casualties for Russia in the Second World War, Russia knows how to play with battlefield casualties. The US, still frightened of its 58,000 people killed in Vietnam and the Radican in the West, simply dare not talk about the Ukrainian casualties. Now on that subject, we've got Radican talking about a million plus casualties on the Russian

side. BBC Media Zoner, if we choose that report, is talking about 220,000 Russian dead to August 2025. But all of the measured battlefield analysis demonstrates that Ukrainian casualties A2 to three times this figure, with an even higher proportion of injured due to these weapons systems that the Russians are using, which I've just described. So if we get to the end of this, basically we've got the US and EU sanctions on Russia as a strategic weapon.

Those have failed. And we've also got the bizarre situation that through this war, the EU was continued to take Russian oil. And the statistics here that I've chosen to bring up is that Russian earned some 233 billion from fuel exports to the European Union and the three years from the invasion until early 2025. And the Guardian itself reports from February that from February 2024 to February 2025, EU imports of Russian oil and gas were valued at 20 point 21.9, a billion EUR.

So rank hypocrisy that they are doing something to actually sanction Russia while we've got the European Union still feeding off these supplies. So I'll end the segment by saying that essentially just hypocrisy. What this man is talking about, Ukraine's bravery and courage. We are supporting them to keep the fight going. The reality is this is a proxy war which is going to be fought to the last Ukrainian. And Radican and his colleagues are never going to put themselves in harm's way.

So I've been quite hard on this man. And I think it's appropriate. Shortly before he retired, he was here speaking on the streets in Kiev and saying what what a job he was doing effectively for peace. But we know it's not going well. And even on the American side with Vance here, that he's talking about pretty strange strained relationships with the Ukrainians.

So overall, Mike utter lies coming out of the UK government and the Ministry of Defence. And if we take an objective view of the of the war in Ukraine at the moment is no doubt that Russia has the upper hand, which is why, of course, they don't want the fighting to stop. Well, to follow on from that

then on Wednesday our illustrious Secretary of State for War, John Healey was in Kiev once again and during his visit he announced that money raised from immobilised Russian assets. Sorry, he said raised, I say stolen, but that's beside the point. Has paid for more than £1 billion worth of weapons and military support purchased by the UK on behalf of Ukraine and which has enabled this.

His words enabled the delivery of hundreds of thousands of rounds of artillery ammunition, hundreds of air defence missiles, spare parts and new support contracts to help maintain and repair the its equipment and vehicles. Now it should be pointed out though that this came in the form of a loan, of course. And so the question is how does Ukraine expect to ever pay that back? But in other words, based on what he's just said, he has enabled keeping the body bags full.

He also Co chaired a coalition of the willing virtual meeting alongside Starmer and quotes representatives from more than 30 countries to cement further military contributions to a multinational force to be deployed in Ukraine in the event

of a peace deal. And he told the virtual meeting that the UK is reviewing readiness levels of UK armed forces and accelerating funding to be ready for any UK deployment to Ukraine. Ministers, he said, are also discussing the composition of a multinational force, as well as a tactical detail relating how to to how the deployment would be strengthened across the seas, skies and land. We've got to have gear for that and I'm not sure that we do.

But at the coalition of the willing meeting, French President Macron said we the Europeans are ready to give security guarantees to Ukraine and Ukrainians on the day when peace is signed. Preparatory work is over. And yet at the same time, a French official briefing reporters declined to say which countries were ready to contribute to Ukraine's security guarantees, including to the so called reassurance force. So the question is, I wonder what the Russian attitude is to this.

BBC stepped in here because they spoke to Dmitry Peskov and that was on their website today. So let's just have a brief look at at what Peskov was having to say. As far as we can understand, they're speaking about ensuring security guarantees for Ukraine by deploying European forces, European regiments in. Ukraine. And thus they're returning back to the main reason of the conflict. The main reason of the conflict was the attempt of NATO to infiltrate into Ukraine, thus

endangering our country. So we consider it a danger for US presence of international forces or any foreign forces or NATO country forces on the soil of Ukraine next to our borders. So in our understanding, it's it will not it will not help us get closer to the solution of Ukraine. And we'll do whatever is necessary to ensure our security preferably would like to to reach our goals by diplomatic

and peaceful means. When we don't have these possibilities, we'll continue special military operation. So that's pretty clear, Brian. And, you know, I think Peskov comes across as being a very reasonable person. He's coming across very calmly there, despite Steve Rosenberg from the BB CS sometimes questioning. Yeah, yeah. Well, this, this is the reason that there is there is reasonable dialogue going.

Trump himself saying that in dialogue with Putin, Putin's very softly spoken and being reasonable. But of course, Western press now absolutely censored, so the public never gets to see what the other side is talking about. And I would suggest that if we did get to see what the other side, the Russians are talking about, the public, at least in this country, would quickly be moving to the point where let's get the fighting stopped and engage the talking.

But at the moment, we've just got more military hardware being piled in to keep this proxy wall going. Well, we'll come on to that in a second. Let's just listen to one other comment from Pascal here. We see the readiness of the Russian Federation for dialogue. We see the readiness of of the President of the Russian Federation for any meetings, including meeting meetings on the highest level. But in advance, they should be

well prepared. Also, we see the the very constructive efforts by the president of the United States in order to assist the process of settlement around Ukraine. And we see the outrageous efforts of European countries to provoke continuation of the war. I I can't disagree with anything he said there either. Neither. Neither can I buy it because we're watching that provocation on a daily basis, not only provocation but the weapons to follow it up. So it's clear what the the West

is doing. And no wonder that Trump's got wobbly at the moment, because I think he's finally realising that the European Union is not his friend. So let's just look at the last 50 days of support to Ukraine. This is according to the UK government. 4.7 million rounds of small arms ammunition for Ukrainian soldiers. 60,000 artillery shells, rockets and missiles. 2500 drones. More than 200 electronic warfare systems. A lot. I wonder how long and if this is going to last. 100 light weapons.

What's a light weapon in this context? Machine gun. OK, 30 vehicles, additional counter drone and air defence equipment. So that that was what the Ministry of Defence was bragging that they'd sent in the last 50 days. So that's if it's, if it was sent in the last 50 days, it's probably all gone in the last 50 days.

Yes. So anyway that, that was Wednesday and then yesterday, following the announcement last week of the deal for Norway to buy naval ships from the UK, Try not to laugh when I say that Secretary of State for War John Healey, again, uh, was in Norway yesterday to sign, uh, an historic agreement to exchange the strategic part, Sorry to enhance the strategic partnership between UK and Norway. So this, uh, deal actually formalises the deal for the ships.

This, they claim, strengthens NATO in the region and provides more opportunities for joint training and personnel exchanges between Britain and Norway. And he claims that this is going to support 4000 jobs and be worth £10 billion to the UK. Now he and his Norway Norwegian counterpart discussed further joint operations through this agreement.

So we'll see what comes of that. At the same time then here is Starmer, because he was visiting BAE Scotstoun to thank to say thank you to all those who helped get the what he describes as huge contract pushed through. So there he was with some frigates. Do you think they'll operate in cold waters like the kind of cold waters?

Well, if it is if the propellers, all the screws as the Navy would call them, go round, which they often don't in the Type 40 fives, but hopefully they will, they'll be able to propel themselves in cold water as well.

OK. And then just to finish this segment, I just want to highlight this Arctic article from The Daily Telegraph following the reporting from Wednesday on the situation in China and the the commemoration of the end of the the, the Japanese defeat at the end of the war and the various showing off material that China was doing during that particular commemoration. Here's the daily The Daily Telegraph editorial team.

And I think they probably need to be taken away by men in white coats because the headline here of Britain must stand against XI Jinping's disturbing, disturbing vision of the future. And they say when Mr XI promises to build a community, community of common security, what he means is that no country should have any allies, leaving all but the strongest at China's mercy.

And when he stresses the sovereign equality of states, he means that no one should interfere with the sovereign right of tyrants to murder, torture and and oppress their own peoples. No one should doubt that the world reordered by Mr XI would be a bleak and pitiless place.

This kind of rhetoric coming from an organisation that over the last few decades has supported interventionist conflicts run by Britain and the United States, which have only brought disaster and misery to the countries that that they were imposed upon. So the Telegraph then demands action against XI's chilling dream. Does our government have a view on this? One hopes that Britain would stand with America and the free world in opposing Mr XI's disturbing visions.

If that's our intention, and one day a Prime Minister should muster the courage to say so, that it would make little sense to allow China to build our entire energy system or supply the electric cars that just about all of us will drive. Well, that may well be the case that that last point. But the, the, we've got to always keep in mind that systematically our governments in the West have destroyed our

productive capability. This is why Russia and China are so far ahead that productively and economically, I think it's a shame that Russia and China are having to spend money developing their own defence firms when they could be doing and, and they they are doing in many other areas, so many more positive things for humanity. You know, on a, on a broad scale, of course, they're clearly feeling threatened. And are they are? Is anybody expecting them to

respond any other way? Well, clearly the papers have stopped thinking and, and papers that are supposed to be the papers for comment, particularly on matters overseas newspapers records, they just simply do not seem to have the quality of journalists to comment on this properly.

If we look at the West, it seems to me at the moment that it's the United States that is the country which is telling everybody what to do. And unless it's done as the United States wants, we're all going to be sanctioned into line or bullied into line. Mark, yeah. Sorry, I was looking at Mark coming up so he might like to respond. Mark, let me welcome you to the

programme. Bring us up to date then, if we move to the United States now with what Trump has been doing, because of course we've been hearing quite a bit about the potential for deploying military on the streets. Indeed. g'day you guys and UK column viewers. I've been on a bit of a hiatus. It's great to be back. And yes, over the years, living near the border where I do, there have been troop deployments here, and there's

always been this conflict. When is it proper to use U.S. troops in domestic operations and when is it not? And I remember talking to a Kansas soldier out of Fort Riley, and he was elated, in his view, about 5-6, seven years ago. It was during Trump's first term, to be clear, And he was elated that he was actually being used to guard the US border of all things. The troops were being used to guard the US itself.

What a concept, he told me. Anyway, on this first slide, we're seeing some of the controversy. Federal ruling could restrict Trump on potential San Francisco troop deployment. 2nd of September out of the Axios news. And this is in the wake of Trump having deployed National Guard in Washington, DC. Now in Washington, DC, it's unique. Trump is the head of the DC National Guard, the DC being a federal city in that sense.

So there was that deployment there to deal with what Trump is calling crime amid immigrations and Customs Enforcement, ICE, immigration arrests toward deportation as part of Trump's border agenda. And then Trump also had troops recently in Los Angeles. And of course, there's still a presence in those cities, as I understand it.

And the main stated goal of Trump's deployments, besides aiding in the eventual deportation process, has been to guard federal property from what the administration is calling actual and potential rioting as people protest the deportations. And at any rate, we have a summary here on that Axios article. I'll look at that.

The California Attorney general, Rob Banta, applauded a federal ruling that the Trump administration illegally deployed the National Guard to LA during anti ICE protests going back to June. So there's been a court ruling. What Trump has done in LA is being declared illegal. Trump is vowing to fight back, of course, and appeal the

decision. U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer's ruling only applies to California, however, but it may influence how federal troops are deployed in other places as Trump considers doing more of this. And those other places are potentially or actually San Francisco, Chicago and Baltimore. So Trump's going to appeal the LA decision. What's he going to do about deployments in those cities that are based on the same reasons? Here we'll show some headlines that have been popping up lately

on this. The New York Times. San Francisco had avoided Trump's ire until now. So the Times are saying that Trump's deployment to to San Francisco, Frisco, they call it for short, is fairly imminent. And the Chicago Tribune, as Trump threatens more Guard troops in U.S. cities, including Chicago and Baltimore, Here's what the law allows. And that could be quite a long

thing. I studied a little bit of what of what the law allows, but what it boils down to is that right after the US so called civil war, they passed the Passe Comitatus Act and that forbade the use of federal troops in local law enforcement. Because when there was the reconstruction by the North against the South, there were a lot of abuses of the people's constitutional rights, some very

egregious abuses. So the law of the Passe Comitatus Act, that's Latin, is a logical law, but it's a little bit fuzzy in legal circles when it applies and when it doesn't. Many have claimed that it's improper to use federal troops or or activated federally activated National Guard troops. They've claimed, they claimed it's improper to use them to

guard the border. But I would argue and others I've talked to have argued that guarding the border is a national, largely a national responsibility and they're oriented outward, they're guarding the perimeter. So that in many people's view does not violate the Posse Comitatus Act, but the these deployments in LA and DC and

other possible ones, is it? If it doesn't violate that act, it's pushing right up to the line, just very, very close because they say they're guarding federal property from the protesters. And that's pretty much legitimate. But if they start making arrests for miscellaneous things that that would best be done by local police officers, then then you've got some issues that would violate that act. And so the, the overall situation is such where there's, there's a lot to be seen.

A lot remains to be seen, but that's some of the realities on the ground. Now under this report today, I'm doing Trump news on three topics. It's an approach I'm taking because there's so much coming out of the Trump White House in the press releases that I get, which is 4 or 5 or 6 a day and all the other things going on. There has to be a way to distil this stuff down. So I've got a couple other quick topics On this next one. We'll look at this headline out of Fox.

US Blocks Trump attempt to freeze more than 2 billion in Harvard funds subhead Trump officials judge said are using anti semitism as a smokescreen to block off a little over 2 billion actually in federal funding to Harvard.

What's going on there essentially is that Harvard believes it's hiring and admissions policies are being infringed upon and that it's improper for Trump to use anti semitism as an excuse to cut these over 2 billion in federal funding that funds scientific research at Harvard. Now, you could almost go for that point of view, 100%, except for the fact that Harvard says it's a 100% or pretty much out, you know, largely private university.

But but one of the things that makes the university private is not accepting much, if any federal funding. Like Hillsdale College in South Central Michigan takes no federal funding whatsoever. So they can truly call themselves private. But Harvard, being the wealthiest monetarily, the wealthiest College in America, wants billions of dollars of federal funding every every year, but it wants all the advantages of being called a private university. So it wants to have its cake and

eat it too. Trump claims that the besides anti semitism and protests against Israeli policies in Palestine, Trump claims that the university is way too liberal and a lot of its governance and a lot of its content and things like that. And so he's using the cutting of the federal funds as leverage. And so that's what's going on with that. I need not get into a lot of the details that I included in the slides there.

It's better to explain it. And lastly, this headline from American Free Press, President Trump is pushing for a ban of mail in ballots. And the interesting thing here is that with all the mail in ballots from the 2020 election, when a contact of mine, Garland Favrito did factually prove that that election had a lot of very serious anomalies and evidently

election theft. A lot of the reforms that Trump wants to enact do make sense, although Trump sometimes expresses them in ways that don't fully make sense. He he needs to be more clear and principled on these things. These are long time problems in the US electoral system. And here's a vote from Trump, from the White House.

We're going to start with an executive order that's being written right now by the best lawyers in the country to end mail in ballots because they're corrupt, at least in terms of the number of them. When they're used in massive amounts, they do invite corruption. And there's one other post from Trump's Truth Social. He's also saying voter ID must be part of every single vote to confirm who voters are and that they're eligible. He's saying no exceptions. He's calling for an executive

order to that end. Again, no mail in ballot or no mail in ballots. And what's interesting, gentlemen, and I'll conclude with this note, he's also calling for a hard look at whether we should use those electronic voting machines that have been that have been rightly accused of counting the votes in secret, even though ballots are

cast in public. So Trump is on the right track on that last one, but he needs to be much more clear and resolute on what his goals are and what the real problems are on the other two items. It's it's a little murky and a lot remains to be seen, but I'll be following those in the weeks ahead. So I'll be back. We'll go back to you guys. Right.

Thanks, Mark. And we're going to come back onto the issue of ICE a little bit later and undoubtedly we'll have a deeper discussion about it in extra. But now if you like what the UK column does, you'd like to support us. We do need your financial

support. We want to say thank you to everybody that is providing us with that at the moment. But have a look at the a big button on the front page of the website to find out how you can support us. And thank you again to everybody that is now tonight at 7:00 PM. Charles is away on holiday at the moment. So it's just myself with Jerem for the weekly banter. And so join us at 7:00 PM for that.

Charles's discussion with Jake Fern that went out yesterday at 1:00 PM is up on the website for anybody that wants to watch On Demand. So please do have a look at that if you haven't seen it yet. It's a great discussion, Brian.

I just want to remind people of this discussion that I have with Patrick Kennington about Stephanie Hegarty, BBC journalist, who did a short analysis, a little mini documentary into very young children being shot by snipers in Gaza. This is an important discussion between the two of us, and I'd like to encourage as many people as possible to watch it. OK, another reminder of UK column on location. Just about 30 tickets left for this, so if you could possibly join us for that.

Saturday the 18th of October 2025 in York. Andrew Wakefield is speaking and this does also, we remind you, give you access to his film Protocol 7. Tess Lorry will be speaking, Liz Evans will be speaking and hopefully Liz will be back on UK column news in the imminent future. Doctor Sir Julian Rose will be speaking particularly about the health implications of good food, and Ben Rubin will be speaking as well. So join us for this if you possibly can.

If you can't join us in person, absolutely the live stream is there for you if you would like to pick up a ticket for that. Brilliant. I'd just like to give another shout out for Public Child Protection Wales. Kim Isherwood and her team Who at the end of this month we'll be going to Washington to meet with other groups, to Washington and the states to go to, to meet up with other groups who are going to be challenging the World Health Organisation, CSE.

It's sexual grooming of very young children. So this battle has now gone from South Wales, it's gone globally. This is really fantastic news and I'd also like to just give the audience a heads up. Very shortly I'll have another interview out with a mum called Christine talking about the failings in children's services. There's a lot more to her story than we can cover in this first episode, but nevertheless I want to keep the subject of child stealing by the state in front

of our audience. This is a very, very serious thing happening in UK. Mark, let's come back to you then. And global Parliament of ours has been one of the institutions that's driving change in both the UK and the United States and most European countries as well.

What's the latest? Well, this is interesting. Over the summer, of course, we've had Bilderberg and I reported on the Ditchley Foundation, kind of a cousin of Trilateral. Cousin of Trilateral and Bilderberg. Excuse me. And there's so many machinations going on. Weaponized neuroscience has been in the news here on UKC

recently. But I got to looking at the global cities thing and a quick announcement before we get into the GPM Global Parliament mayors, is that the the Seminole Annual conference, the Pritzker Global Cities Forum in Chicago that started in 20/15/2016 and I was there right when it started, has been apparently ended. I think it just didn't go as viral as the former head of the Chicago Council and global affairs that was pushing it evil Dalder as he as he wanted.

And that has apparently died. When the Chatham House lady who's leading the Chicago Council came over to replace Dalder, as I've reported recently, there's no indication that she's continuing that. So that's a little bit of good news, you might say, given what we know about global cities now on the global Parliament of Mayors here, they met earlier in

the summer. And I discovered that as I was looking at all these other groups and trying to kind of distil all this and their annual summit 2025. Ricardo Rio, the mayor of Braga, Portugal, was big in the news. He's a major player here and we got a couple quotes from him. There was a recognition by the Global Parliament of Mayors about this gentleman city. The Global Parliament of Mayors or GPM, recognises the path that Braga Portugal has been forging via its internationalisation strategy.

Emphasis added internationalisation strategy, positioning Braga as a open collaborative city that and that means in league with the global system that engages with global networks of course and promotes democracy, big word inclusion, bigger word and sustainable development. Massive concept of course. And that that ties to the United Nations. United Nations turned 80 this

year. And then Mayor Ricardo Rio of Braga went on to say, and he's a member of the executive committee of the Global Parliament of Mayors. He went on to say this, these developments reflect our commitment to position Braga as an open and collaborative city, emphasis added, One that actively engages with global networks and actively promotes democracy, inclusion, etcetera.

So this is very clear language of what global cities are all about, that they kind of divorce themselves to a point from the nation state that they geographically inhabit and they link up with other self declared global cities and they operate on a somewhat different legal and governance system. So it's almost like a form of mutiny, if you will.

Maybe that's a strong concept, maybe a little too strong, but they're kind of bowing out of their nation state membership and adopting another kind of membership. Localised globalism, also called localism. We've mentioned that now this also came come out as I was perusing this on a looks like an ex post here. Nadia Virgie noted that there's a global, a global Parliament of Mayors related summit going on the 27th through the 29th of October 2025 in Dubai that they're calling Expo City.

And it, it's being it's, it's involving the Asia Pacific Cities Summit and Mayor's Forum 2025, bringing together cities from Asia, Africa, the Middle East and beyond. And we have a little bit more on this. We'll move on from there. And this is the actual website, the Asia Pacific City Summit at Mayor's Forum. That's the main element at this new GPM involved or GPM Tide Expo City Dubai event in later October.

So just to get that in, in the news here, to get that on the record as to that events coming up. We didn't have a lot of advance notice about the summer event by the global Parliament of Mayors. So we want to make sure we get plenty of advanced news on this one. So we're all aware, maybe we can talk about it in York a little bit on the side, but here's some of the other things they're talking about with regards to that Dubai summit.

This is just some examples. We'll show this and I'll just cherry pick it. City leadership and economic development, city branding and identity, city diplomacy, where city set themselves up to have foreign policy functions and act like that. They can get into foreign policy diplomacy, which is really illegitimate and improper for any city to get into, and then digital transformation in urban

futures. They're looking at urban intelligence that no doubt involves AI, probably in some ill advised ways, new energy, mission driven ecosystem. Some of this is clear, some of it's rather vague, maybe not. All of it bad point by point. And in this last item, this is just a reminder of the Urban 7 and the Urban 7. I do have an article posted on UK column about the Urban 7 from

a year or two ago. And that is the city equivalent roughly of the G7, showing how the city, the cities view themselves as members of a global community, not so much members of their nation state. And the Urban 7 at a meeting in Japan in July 2023, was consulted in the drafting of the G7 Sustainable Urban Development Ministers communique, which lays out the priorities and commitments of the ministers.

So that definitely shows the concrete and tangible involvement of these mayors, I think in an ill advised and illegitimate way to get involved in these global affairs. So that's kind of the landscape for now guys and the schedule. Thank you, Mark. Well sticking with cities in a sense and also Mark was talking about surveillance and AI there.

Let's let's bring this on screen. So this is from the all source intelligence Substack exclusive ICE reactivated it's $2 million contract with Israeli spy Ware firm Paragon following it's acquisition by US capital. So this is the immigration agency, the agency that's deporting people from the United States at the moment has begun once again using Paragon. So they have, I mean, this has been described as the most sophisticated hacking tool.

And this is following the Trump's decision to renew the contract. We'll come on to that in a second. But this is Paragon. They produce a spyware product called Graphite, developed by Paragon Solutions, which was established in 2019 by Ahud. Well, can you pronounce that name? Dorsen, a former commander of Unit 8200. That's of course, Israel's elite military intelligence unit, effectively a military equivalent to the NSA or GCHQ.

And also a Finder is Tomer Barack, who's also got associations with Israeli intelligence circles. So graphite is a military grade spyware tool capable of what are described as zero click infections, capable of exfiltrating data from phones. This mainly for mobile phones, also microphone and camera control and also stealth operations on smartphones. And this includes iPhones and and Android devices. And they began selling graphite to U.S. law enforcement agencies in 2021.

And that I signed the original contract with them in late 2024. At the beginning of this year. Then WhatsApp discovered a global spyware campaign using graphite that targeted 90 individuals, including journalists and activists in more than 20 countries. And not long after that story broke, Citizen Lab confirmed that Paragon's graphite was also used in Italy against journalists there, leading to the termination of the contract in Italy. So let's just I put that on screen.

So this is Reuters reporting Italy and it's really peregrine part ways after spyware affair. So graphite. Graphite's design uses what are described as stealth tactics, loading themselves itself into legitimate apps like WhatsApp to evade detection, making forensic detections highly challenging and most almost impossible for the average user to discover. It's easily installed in target phones and on including the latest iPhones and that is confirmed in security week.

The headline here saying Paragon Graphite spyware, spyware linked to zero click hacks on newest iPhones, which should be no surprise because as Mint press reported in July, with the dozens of former unit 8200 staff now employed by Apple and the question is to do what are they in fact there as legitimate employees or are they there to perhaps you know, manufacture into future Apple products plenty of attack vectors that allow this type of software to operate.

So I think this is this is an important issue and something, you know, that we've we've been talking about unit 8200 for quite some time. We absolutely need to maintain focus on that and it's role in finding many of the tech companies that we rely on day to day. And in the meantime, then, social media yesterday was highlighting the case of Bayern Mavalwala, the second, who is a

former Army Sergeant, U.S. Army Sergeant who served survived A roadside bomb blast on a special operations mission in Afghanistan. He's also son of a decorated U.S. military intelligence officer. He was arrested by the FBI in July and charged with conspiracy to impede or injure officers following a scuffle with a, well, an ICE officer who was completely masked and not really identifiable as an ICE officer at one of the protests Mark was talking about a couple of minutes ago.

So he was arrested. The protest itself took part. It took place about a month before the actual arrest took place. And now this is being described as many as an escalation of the Trump regime's attacks on 1st Amendment rights. We can talk about that and

extra. And I just want to mention that in an effort to sort of deal with the massive overreach of ICA agents, apparent massive overreach at the moment, an application for the iPhone has been developed called ice Block, which allows people to log sightings of ice activity and alert others to that activity. Of course, it's not without without limitations and flaws, but people really should probably be asking what has happened to the United States that this is even a thing Any. Thoughts.

I think it's immensely dangerous. The first level is that we've got one country. We've got Israel now burying itself not in, not only inside the government systems of other countries, the US and the UK, but it's also buried itself inside the intelligence and the security services, so absolutely unaccountable to nobody. And now we're getting to the level of St arrests based on these sorts of partnerships. That's very dangerous, I think.

Right, well here in the UK, well here's the Plymouth Herald because the surveillance state rolls out a pace. So the Herald here has published a report highlighting the use of AI parts surveillance cameras in Devon and Cornwall, which apparently cost 10,000 drivers being very naughty indeed. The cameras are supplied by this organisation Accusensis. Now these systems can capture images showing the inside of your car, including the driver, passengers and children.

And accusensis claims that non infringing images. So anything that hasn't captured wrongdoing, we could be rest assured that they these are deleted immediately. And we believe that of course, and privacy safeguards like data encryption and limited access are in place is what they claim. Now, another AI camera system gaining traction in the UK is from Flock, and now these are also being rolled out in the EU and in the United States as well.

These are not just, you know, roadside cameras aimed at searching for drivers using mobile phones. These are being deployed in place of standard CCDTV cameras all over the place. Now, there's a website that I want to draw your attention to here called dfloc. It's tracking the deployment of these cameras worldwide, and they provide an interactive map so that you can see exactly where they are. Now there aren't huge numbers in the UK can be relative to the number of CCDV cameras that we

have in the country as yet. But you can see there's broad usage right across the country. And actually the Midlands is, is probably the the the biggest user of these cameras yet at this point. So, you know, this is a deployment that many people are unaware of and so on. So, you know, we've got to consider this within the context of the whole AI agenda that the UK government is pushing out at

the moment. And in order to encourage and exploit this kind of surveillance state, the British government has published a new AI assurance road map, which they say will look to add billions of pounds to the economy and create scores of new jobs. Scores of new jobs. So it's really worth the effort here. But anyway, AI Assurance is all about assuring you and me that AI is to be trusted and that there's nothing at all to worry about.

So the Starmer government is pushing millions of pounds of taxpayers money into, for example, convening AUK consortium to work towards a future AI assurance profession and establishing a new forum from multi stakeholder collaboration. These are their words. Of course, this is going to be driven by the AI Assurance Innovation Fund, which is going to get an initial bang of 11,000,000 lbs with lots more cash to come in the future.

And they also announced, the government also announced the £2.7 million boost to develop a regulator capability, which as we know from, for example, from the MHRA means an enabler capability. So to to to sort of demonstrate that this is a unit party issue, let's hear from a name that we possibly have tried to forget, and that's Rishi Sunak. Everyone's talking about the race to build AGI. AGI, Artificial general intelligence. What do you define as AGI and? AGI.

How close are we to AGI? That matters, but it's not the only. Race we should care about. The real prize is everyday AI. We have given them brains, electronic brains, it's true, The kind of computer to which you can give a problem and then leave it to work out the answer all by itself. The countries that win won't just be the ones with the smartest AI, they'll be the ones adopting it fastest. Think about the electric Dynamo.

It only transformed industry when factories were redesigning around it or the Internet it only. Changed our lives when businesses shape their sales and supply. Chains around it. AI is no different. If it's just locked away in the IT department, we'll only see a fraction of the benefits. We need business leaders and world leaders trained to use it. We need workers given the right skills now, not in 10 years. And we need public services ready to use it.

And that also means getting the regulation right, protecting against real risks like bio or cyber threats, without burying people in rules that make using AI impossible. I'm working with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University to map out the practical steps. That. Governments, businesses and innovators can take to win the race to everyday AI, and to do

that, I want your input. In this early stage, thousands have already had their say, but if you haven't yet, click the link below to complete a short survey. So he's a Hoover salesman? Yes, door to door vacuum cleaners. Anyway, let me just give you a very quick look at this survey that you need to click below to to to do. And as you can see there, you know, there's no option in the first question to say no way, Jose, I'm not having anything to do with this.

You get the opportunity to say you haven't used AI in the last 30 days or maybe you're not sure in the same answer, but you know it it it is pathetic. But the the point here is, you know, assuming anybody hasn't been physically I'll having to watch that Here we have, you know, a former Prime Minister absolutely shilling for this this industry. Yeah, just a throw away comment from me. Of course if you're a car driver in your car you will have a sun visor. Use your sun visor.

It makes a big difference to what cameras can and cannot see. Mark, just to conclude the programme, back to you and

what's been going on in the United States with RFK Junior. More controversy is the short answer, Mike. Yesterday the Committee on Finance, yesterday morning, September 4, held their President's 2026 healthcare agenda hearing. And who, other than RFK, was the speaker? Who else could it be? And he was grilled intensely, especially by Bernie Sanders, who's kind of a grill master. You can put him in an apron with his spatula and he would be the definite grill master on the

Senate side. ABC News headline real quick. RFK junior testifies before the Finance Committee amid CDC turmoil and vaccine changes. That's where the rub was and is. And really, we can just get right to the videos. There's two. If you want to show both, that's fine. One now, one extra depending on the time. But here's Bernie Sanders in the first video, and we can discuss it after that. Secretary Kennedy, are President Trump and the medical community

right? Or do you still believe that the COVID vaccine was, quote, the deadliest vaccine ever made? I first of all, I didn't say that. Oh, I said that in terms of affairs reports a while ago. I said today I think that President Trump should get the Nobel Prize. So who's right? Is Trump in the medical community right Or are you right? President Trump did. Did an extraordinary piece of leadership? Is he right or wrong? Did COVID save millions of lives? As I said, he got Americans back

to work at that time. That particular vaccine was perfectly matched the virus that was circulating then, and I have no idea how many lives it saved, but it saved quite a few. A lot of odd statements there. What we can talk about it more an extra, but Kennedy definitely stammering and and kind of waffling. They're not unlike his inaugural comments when he was first nominated. And then Sanders saying, you know, how many did COVID save? Kind of he's kind of misspeaking.

He meant to say COVID vaccine. So you've got one that's for the vaccine, which is pretty troubling, that being Sanders. And then you've got Kennedy not being clear about his stance and even trying to say that the vaccine initially was a success, one that's highly questionable, if not outright false. So then we have the other video. If you'd like to show up, Mike,

we can proceed from there. Well, well, look, Mark, if you, if you don't mind, let's let's push that into extra because I actually want to draw some parallels here with with what RFK has just said. And maybe something that's going on in the, in the United Kingdom around Jeremy Corbyn. Because it's it's quite interesting how when people are pushed into a position that they where they feel like they need to say something that they don't really believe, it gets very

tricky for them very quickly. In indeed, yeah, he, he does look like he's, he's giving a confession or saying something that he doesn't fundamentally believe. You can see the conflict in his body language. But that's fine, Mike. We'll, we'll go with what you said, obviously. And so we're good. Thank you, Mark. OK. And Brian, just a couple of closing comments. And I'd like to say to to the audience, wherever you are,

you're watching UK column news. But if you go to the UK column website, there is a vast, vast amount of information on that website. Thousands of hours of, of video reports, UK column news, hundreds and hundreds of articles, thousands of articles. If you search on UK column website, that is a good place to start on almost any subject.

So if you're looking to research something, go to the UK column site 1st and have a look to see what we have said in the nearly 20 years that we've been reporting. And finally, I'm going to give a, a last plea really to anybody out there listening to this news. If you can come along to York, let's get these last few tickets sold, come along to the the event in New York. It's going to be a fantastic event and it will be wonderful for us to be able to meet you in person.

So there we are. Can we get rid of these tickets over the weekend? I think we can and it's going to be a tremendous event it. Absolutely is OK. Thank you, Brian. Thank you, Mark and thanks to everybody that's watched. If you're UK column members, stick around on the live stream and in about four minutes time we'll start extra or so and otherwise have a great weekend. We'll see you on Monday. Monday comes after the weekend, doesn't it? Usually, yes. OK, see you then. Bye. Bye.