UK Column News Podcast 12th February 2025

Good afternoon. It's Wednesday the 12th of February 2025. Just after welcome 1:00. Welcome to UK Column News. I'm your host Mike Robinson, joining me in the studio today at Charles Mallett. And by video link, we have Vanessa Bailey and Sandy Adams. Welcome to programme Charles. Thank you. Very much, Mike. Welcome all. We are going to begin with you and lethality.

We are, yes, lethality, the new buzzword deployed now at every opportunity by the Ministry of Defence and those in the senior command positions at the head of the Army. This is not just being pumped out at the highest levels, but it is also now being sown in the minds of all ranks. Most obviously in the most recent edition of the British Army Soldier magazine. A lengthy piece here details the five things every soldier must do now to be ready for war.

This is not a subtle message and it ties into the wider narrative about forced development and how the scaled back army will be able to do more with less as it leverages technology and enhanced manoeuvre capability. Or so the Chief of General Staff

says. This would appear to be a rehash of the message put out by the last incumbent, Patrick Saunders, who spoke of the need to be ready for war with Russia, with the concurrent admission that we were in no way prepared for it, Hence the need for what he was calling OP Mobilise.

Now General Sir Riley Walker is repackaging the same message, most recently to the International Armoured Vehicles Conference last month, which was really an extension of his message to the Land Warfare Conference in 2024. And then he was saying that the Army must be able to destroy an opposing force of at least three times the same size, and that the pamphlets on tactics to achieve that are being rewritten to reflect the new capabilities on the battlefield.

But the problem with what Walker's saying is that barely any of the technology of which he speaks is actually ready, and he's had to fall back on the advantages of what's called hybrid, citing the effectiveness of the Ukrainians at doing just this. A questionable position to take.

I was looking at a recently published regimental journal which contains several articles about the support of OP Interflex which has seen over 50,000 Ukrainians trained by British troops and one such described the utter chaos during the instruction of basic platoon attacks and the questionable interpretation of battlefield discipline and basic soldiering using the muzzle of their rifle as a chin strap on a live range

being a particular favourite. So the propagandising of the activities of the Ukrainian Armed Forces is being conducted at every level now. Alongside the armed forces message of readiness for war is the cry for help from the defence industry, said to be on the brink of failure, with headlines such as this from politics Home Now. The Strategic Defence Review announced in the autumn, is due

to be published this spring. It will have taken more than seven months and the most likely outcome is that it will articulate the strategy by which the defence industry lines its own pockets as the government makes the case for an enhanced readiness for war or even for war itself.

As an aside, a recent Sub Stack article contained an AI response to the requests to produce a version of Strategic Defence Review which took just 5 minutes, so it will be interesting to see how much this diverges from the government's own offering and the link to Keith Deyer's peace will be in

the show notes. Now. Whilst the focus has on readiness has been more or less exclusively confined to relations with NATO and the situation in Ukraine, the suggestion of any kind of threat has meant increasingly looking toward Iran. As reported at the time, both Mark Rowley and Ken McCallum, respective heads of the Met Police and MI 5, made completely unsubstantiated remarks about the state threat posed by Iran

last year. This has been stepped up a notch recently with the very close parallels to the fabrication of the war narrative by the Blair government in 2002 and 2003. Hamish Falconer, Minister for the Middle East and North Africa, responded to questions put to him on Iran on the 14th of January of this year, saying we are working urgently on measures to take the necessary action to deter the Iranian state from posing a threat to this country and the region.

He goes on to say it is regrettably true that Iran's nuclear programme has never been more advanced and it threatens international peace and security. So he has effectively said that he he believes there to be an imminent threat from Iran, specifically with regard to

their nuclear capability. Now at this point, it is worth noticing that he is the son of Lord Faulkner, who by being part of Tony Blair's inner circle, was of course implicated in the fabrication of the case for war in 2003, especially with regard to the advice that the Attorney General took and his change on such much advice on the legality of that war. Now it seems more than ironic, now of course, that the the Lord Faulkner himself should be leading the assisted dying Bill.

Nonetheless, Hamish Faulkner's statement is an outright corruption of the truth and he has no evidence or intelligence to be able to back it up with. Firstly, the Congressional Research Service in the United States reported this in December of last year. According to U.S. intelligence assessments, Tehran has the capacity to produce nuclear weapons at some point, but has halted its nuclear weapons programme and has not mastered all of the necessary technologies for building such weapons.

The On this side of the Atlantic, the Commons briefing paper on the subject makes constant references to the belief that there is no credible civilian justification for the alleged quantities of enriched uranium. But it goes no further than saying that this amount would theoretically be enough for four nuclear explosive devices.

So for context, in May of last year the government committed £196,000,000 to Eurenco to, quote, produce advanced nuclear fuel, a market currently dominated by Russia to help fuel nuclear power plants at home and abroad. This is part of the government plan to push Putin out of the global energy market and drive down energy bills.

And of course, back in 2012, Gordon Brown offered atomic expertise for countries not developing nuclear weapons capabilities with the creation of what was called a the Uranium Bank for the development of civil power programmes, and this did include Iran. So whilst the intelligence hasn't changed, the message certainly has.

And this concerns in some way the failure of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, JCPOA, the Iran nuclear deal from 2015 between Iran, the UK, China, France, Germany, Russia and the US. And its intent was to limit the the Iranian nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief.

So from that it seems that we're able, or rather we're meant to believe that the only reason Iran might now not satisfy the the conditions of this agreement is because it must be engaged in the development of a nuclear arsenal. Now, if this is sounding familiar, that's because it is only this time Iran and not Iraq. Coincident with all of this, with these developments, is the startling, the inaccurate portrayal of the threat

assessment. And that's been the announcement of the sentencing of Daniel Khalif on the 3rd of February. He was sentenced to over 14 years, 4 offences under the Official Secrets Act 1911 and the Terrorism Act 2000, as well as a prison escape during the time he was held on remand. And the counterterrorism account of the case sounds very much less than robust, using phrases such as the finding of a potential improvised explosive device, which could have been

just about anything. The circumstances around the case are flimsy at best. Caliph, as a 22 year old Lance Corporal with the raw signals, was said to have passed highly sensitive information to the Iranians after first appealing to the security services to operate as a double agent. But it turned out the messages supposedly from Iran had been created by him, making the entire episode look rather more

like a fantasy than a reality. Nonetheless, the narrative point about this story is that it concerns an apparent subversion by Iran of a member of the armed forces. And of course, we've seen the Trump administration making its intentions very clear towards Iran. They are being seriously compromise their economy and indeed, from the American point of view, to align with the strategy of the state of Israel. The UK's statistics on trade show a significant drop in import and export with Iran

during the last 12 months. So going back to the the military side of it, really Walker's insistence that we're getting set for doing more with less, I think the question remains, which is who would fight such a war? And that takes us to conscription and national service, both of which were aired in the public forum during 2024. And it's gone quiet, at least

for now. But in March of that year, Lord Minto said, my Lords, the government have no plans to reintroduce national service or any form of conscription in answer to a question on that subject. But there seems little doubt that this narrative will be given more and more oxygen as 2025 unfolds. And the UK column will of course be keeping a very close eye on it. Thank you, Charles. OK, and let's move to Finessa and welcome you to the

programme, Vanessa. And Trump has already been mentioned. So let's talk about Trump and Gaza. Yes, Trump continues his disgusting dismissal of the Gazan people and his latest meeting with King Abdullah the Second in Jordan Trump pledges to take. Not by Gaza. I'm not sure whether that's worse or better in meeting with the Jordanian king. And let's just play the video of what Trump actually said. The US would buy Gaza and today you just said we're not going to buy Gaza.

We're not going to have to buy. We're going to have Gaza. We don't have to buy. There's nothing to buy. We will have Gaza. What is that? No reason to buy? There is nothing to buy. It's Gaza. It says it's a war torn area. We're going to take it. We're going to hold it.

We're going to cherish it. We're going to get it going eventually where a lot of jobs are going to be created for the people in the Middle East. It's it's going to be for the people in the Middle East. But I think it could be a diamond. It could be an absolute tremendous asset for the Middle East. And you're going to have peace. It's going to bring peace in the Middle East. Gaza, the way it is right now, every 10 years you're going to have the same thing happening.

I've watched it so long, all the death and destruction of Gaza. I mean, you know, again, I don't think I really have to add to to my previous commentary about Trump's statements on Gaza, which are clearly aligned of course with the security of Israel. Now initially King Abdullah the second did seem to to bend the knee and was talking about bringing 2000 injured Palestinian children to Jordan.

The statement that he late later put out, he reiterated Jordan steadfast position against the displacement of Palestinians and effectively what he did actually was to pass the problem over to Egypt. He basically said, look, you know, he's effectively against the displacement of Palestinians. He'll do what's best for the Jordanian people. Of course, more than two million Palestinians in Jordan from the original Nakba back in 1948.

But he's passing the problem over to Egypt and saying that he'll wait for Egypt statements and for the meeting or the summit on the 27th and that of course Egypt to host emergency Arab summit to discuss the serious Palestinian

developments. Trump is doing the strong tactics of pushing Jordan and Egypt to take displaced Palestinians based on the fact that both countries, of course, are completely in debt to the United States and to the Gulf states, and in Egypt's case, certainly, and in Jordans, to Israel itself. Hamas delays the next prisoner release, which is supposed to be on Saturday at midday, over Israeli violations as mediators warn the ceasefire collapses

imminent. Israel has still been bombing areas of Gaza and preventing the return of Palestinians to their homes in the north. So let's have a look at how Trump and Netanyahu's. Netanyahu's messaging is completely, of course, in lockstep over what will happen if at 12:00 on Saturday, the hostages are not released.

So for Trump. Well, I would say this, and I'm going to let that because that's Israel's decision, but as far as I'm concerned, if all of the hostages aren't returned by Saturday at 12:00, I think it's an appropriate time. I would say cancel it and all bets are off and let hell break out. I'd say they ought to be returned by 12:00 on Saturday. And if they're not returned, all of them not in drips and drabs, not 2 and 1:00 and 3:00 and 4:00

and 2:00. Saturday at 12:00 and after that, I would say all hell is going to break out. And I don't think they're going to do it. I think a lot of them are dead. I think a lot of the hostages are dead. I think it's a great, it's a great human tragedy. What's what's happened, how people can be that mean to do. I'm speaking for myself. Israel can override it, but from myself, Saturday at 12:00. And if they're not, if they're not here, all hell is going to

break out. And, of course, Trump has taken off all the freezes on supply of weapons and heavy duty munitions, including bunker Buster bombs, to Israel, potentially in preparation for this. And of course, Netanyahu. So it's pretty much the same thing. The ceasefire will end if Hamas does not return hostages by Saturday at noon. And he is threatening already to return the troops to the north of Gaza and to resume war with even greater alacrity than

before. So this combined with what else is going on in the region, which I'll come on to into in my next section, does suggest that there is going to be an escalation. Yes, indeed. Thank you, Vanessa. Thank you. We'll talk more about that, an extra I've no doubt. But let's come back to the UK

now. Plymouth City Council is currently discussing the possibility of a mayor, unitary authority and a mayor. Sandy, how's this developing countrywide? Well, it's interesting, the government has actually cancelled some local elections in nine areas affecting approximately 6,000,000 voters who will no longer be able to vote in the May the May elections. And this is part of a bigger

plan. I mean those affected areas are East Sussex, Essex, Hampshire, Isle of Wight, Norfolk, Suffolk, Surrey, Thurrock and West Sussex. This is a decision as a part of a broader plan really to create these combined authorities and appoint mayors. They call them the metro mayors or the the Mayors for Global Climate and Energy. It's a global initiative really for from the, it's called the Covenant of Smart City Mayors or Covenant of, of Mayors for Climate and Energy.

They call them all sorts of things, but they want to install these mayors by 2026. This is next year so that they they they become a force really for for climate change and they're being given extreme powers. And if you look at the the the document, which is the the covenant of global Mayors for Climate and energy.

Let's Google it. You'll find that this document document is partnered with Italy, which is the International Committee for Local and Environmental Initiatives, which way back in, in 20 in sorry in 1992 at the Earth Summit was was tasked with the idea of bringing Agenda 21 from global to local. It's also partnered with the C-40 cities and with the the Bloomberg Philanthropy and the EU. So it's a big initiative really partnered by a lot of these big organisations.

There was no consultation on this. And, and obviously it was, you know, that, that no, nobody knew it was coming to, to actually stop these, these elections.

This, this move is also backed by the Cities and Local Government Devolution Act of 2016, which I think we've got a slide of, I don't know, for the introduction of the, these directly elected mayors, the devolution of their key powers really is to take the power from Westminster and give it to these mayors for, for basically for climate change. And those, those powers are planning and housing, transport

and also policing. So they're shifting the power from Westminster to these mayors completely. And the, the provisions for this act are, you know, to introduce the directly elected mayors to oversee combined authorities and it grants them unlimited control over planning, housing and allows mayors to actually replace police and crime commissioners, which was a bit of a shock to me, to be honest. And it reduces Westminster statutory limitations on local

authorities. They will have significant power bypassing Westminster to implement net 0 policies by 20-30 to 2050. And that's their sole aim. They, they don't really have any, if you look at all the documentation, that's all they talk about is, is, is net zero

by, by 20-30 onwards. And these plans align with also the govern government's devolution white paper of 2024, which really it, it, it, it goes through this whole thing and it's, it's shifting this power and giving all the, the power to these, these directly elected mayors. Now, what could be the potential impacts of this, You know, to almost have a, whatever's happened in London with Sadiq can't have that happening in these larger devolved areas.

So we're looking at what's happened in London. Really, we'll have increased Urban Development because there'll be carte blanche on housing and and development.

Expansion of ultra low emission zones, Eulers, low traffic neighbourhoods, LTNS, 15 minute cities, 20 mile an hour zones, increased surveillance and AI, Internet of Things, Internet of bodies coming in higher carbon taxation in forced retrofitting of homes to meet new energy efficiency standards and possible enforcement of climate lockdowns if need be and

geofencing. And that that is a concern because they'll just have, they'll have can't blanche to do whatever they like to reach these, these, these targets. So, you know, this isn't, you know, that it's sold as empowerment to, to the local councils, you know, to the local, to the locality, to, you know, we're taking it all the way from Westminster because they're not, they're not good Westminster, you know, give it to us. We'll, we'll sort it out. And it's bringing all of this

into a local environment. But will the people have any say? And I don't think so, because these regional mayors have all the, all the, all the power and, and, and it it centralises the power within with these mayors under strict. 0 targets that people may or may not want and, and you know when they see what's happening, I don't think they will want it. You see the present unitary councils are to be amalgamated. So at the moment our, our small councils all got lumped together.

I mean certainly in my area they got lumped together. I think it was 3 or 4 councils got lumped together and so they become unitary and then what they want to do is then expand that to make these bigger. So you end up with about 7, just 7 regions instead of there's 300 and odd councils that we have. Normally they're going to be 7 regions and these will all have these, these mayors in place. And this is being implemented.

This is very clever the way they're doing it because this was actually rejected, you know, from 2004 when Tony Blair tried to do this, it was rejected by a lot of the councils. And we see there the, the devolution, the devoluted areas. And there's also a map that shows you what they planned in, in 2015 and what's happening now. And it's actually happening, you know, these larger devoluted 7

large areas. And So what, what they're doing is they're keeping this, this plan going and what they've done, and it's very clever. It's like a Trojan horse. They've bankrupted the, the, the unitary councils. So when our councils went unitary, and you'll probably find it if yours does in your area, suddenly all these accounts are amalgamated that did have money. When they went unitary, suddenly they were bankrupt. Where did the money go? It's all a bit of a mystery.

But what happened, and this is very clever, is that they, they, they took funding away from the unitary councils and they gave it to the, the smaller town and parish councils and they upped their precepts, trebled them in some areas, trebled the precepts of the smaller councils. Then the money from the precepts comes from central government. So you're paying for it anyway

in your taxation. So what they did is they, they, they took the, they outsourced all the services from your unitary council that you get on your council tax bill and they outsourced it to the, the smaller parish and town councils that have got more money. And these are things like grass cutting, waste disposal, public toilets, public space

maintenance. And all of these have been funded by the Better Better Fund, you know, funded parish and town councils and taken away from the unitary because let's face it, they're bankrupt. They haven't got the money to do it, but it ends up with you paying for these services twice. But worse than that, um what? What are you paying for? Because your council tax is going up. My council tax is now going up by 7.5% this year and yet we're

getting less for our services. And it's a way they have to bankrupt these guys, these these these areas, these combined authorities in order for them to forcefully accept the devolution plans. It's a Trojan horse to bring this climate stuff into local authorities with these mayors that have carte blanche to spend money on whatever they like. And that, that, that is very concerning. You know, they're, they're saying all that, you know, the green, green energy jobs will be created.

But we know that green energy energy jobs are subsidised at very high costs, averaging about £250,000 per job per year. You know, the National Grid expansion to meet renewable energy demands will cost 112 billion by 2035, which will increase our energy bills. Ed Miliband's Clean Power Plan aims to spend 260 to 290 by billion by 20, 30, which is only saving 7 billion annually off the money we owe. We spend normally on gas, gas, gas fired power. So the whole thing doesn't make sense.

It doesn't make economic sense. And we know that it's not about, it's not about environmentalism, it's about control. And you know, The thing is that it's, it's bringing, brought in, you know, really as a, as a, as a Trojan horse to roll out this, the smart city agenda. And we, we don't have any say. And my thoughts are, you know, it could lead to increased poverty and greater government control.

And whilst it's, it's presented as a positive shift towards sustainability and democracy, it doesn't either. Absolutely neither. It carries economic risks and a reduction in democratic process. You know, it's, you know, will these policies truly benefit our local communities or will they impose top down control? We need to share this information. We don't need to sleepwalk into devolution. And so many people don't know this is happening. That's the problem.

Nobody knows it's actually happening. And we've got to really be aware of this because, you know, we we could find ourselves in a situation we can't get out of. Once it's in in its motion, we won't be able to stop it. Sandy, thank you very, very much for that. And just to follow on from that then yesterday, because this is related, yesterday the British, I'm going to call them the

British regime, announced £82.6 million for new flexible forms of research funding as they describe it, plus a new commitment to give UK researchers access to cutting edge computing resources as part of the plan to unlock the power of AI. So two of the three projects benefiting from this support, which is helping what they describe as Pioneer new ways of conducting research, will harness the power of AI to develop treatments for diagnostics for diseases like cancer and Alzheimer's.

And this is the sort of carrot that's being put out there that you're going to get a cure for cancer. In the meantime, the AI agenda, which is related to what Sandy has been talking about, roles on. So they made this announcement as day two of the AI Action Summit was getting underway in Paris yesterday, where quotes, world leaders and AI companies have been holding a series of talks focused on the opportunities the technology can deliver for communities across the globe.

It's all really positive stuff. The opportunities of AI are an area the UK government has placed heavy focus on the kick start 2025, they say, unveiling a new blueprint with 50 proposals in January, which will spark a decade of national renewal. That must make you feel really great, Charles. We'll talk about that in a second. But so at the summit anyway, the UK joined the United States in refusing to sign a declaration on what was called inclusive and sustainable artificial

intelligence. So this is what the communique said, that ensuring AI is open, inclusive, transparent, ethical, safe, secure and trustworthy, taking into account international frameworks for all, making AI sustainable for people and the planet. The UK regime's spokesperson said this. Then we felt the declaration didn't provide enough practical clarity on global, nor sufficiently address harder questions around national security and the challenges AI poses to it.

So that was their rejection of that alongside the United States. But in the meantime, the Labour government claims that thousands of new jobs are set to be created as the government opens bidding for its AI growth zones. And they are saying that local and regional authorities across the UK are being encouraged to put their communities forward to become dedicated hotbeds for AI infrastructure development and attracting millions in private investment.

They're going to speed up planning permission to rapidly build AI infrastructure, including data centres, and give them energy connections needed to power AI innovations and areas in areas like healthcare. And as part of this, the government will work with network operators to rapidly scale each zone to 500 megawatts plus, which is roughly enough to power 2 million homes. Except they won't be powering homes because they're going to be powering data centres

instead. So they say that the ideal ingredients and the key criteria for communities looking to host AI growth zones include sites with large existing power connections. As I say 500 megawatts plus or a clear version vision, sorry, of how energy capacity can be increased. They're looking for de industrialised areas with land infrastructure standing ready

for redevelopment. And they're looking for locations close to suitable sites for major energy infrastructures such as nuclear reactors, solar stations and wind farms or battery storage. Well, good luck with the solar in in particular because that's not going to run a data centre for long, particularly in the winter. But anyway, and yet another announcement, this same regime said that AI and satellite images are being used to predict how natural habitats are changing across the country.

So more current data can be used to accelerate planning proposals and stop Nimbyism getting in the way of everything that we've just discussed. So satellite images and machine learning are being used by Natural England. Just put that back on for a second, Stephanie, thank you.

And and this is showing the current extent that they're calling it Living England. So this is the latest report Living England 2223. And that's going to be updated with this new data from satellites and AI rather than the manual surveys of the past. They say changing English habitats will now be tracked more efficiently across the country, speeding up decisions around planning and land use while better protecting nature. So details of this project have

been released today. And that's alongside 13 other examples of how AI and algorithmic tools are being used to speed up decision making and improve public services. And they've published this new AI Playbook, which gives the public sector technical experts top tips and guiding principles and how to replicate this work and build AI to help their organisations fix services for citizens. Ultimately deliver. Delivering this is this is their

words. It does it does find it hard not to laugh at this ultimately delivering the government's ambition to transfer public to transform public services with AI. So my question is, did anyone ask us what's being built here? It seems to me on one hand is a surveillance state as, as we've just discussed, unlike anything we've seen and it's being done in partnership with corporate interests and it's the exact mirror, as we've mentioned before, of the Stargate project in the United States.

But another part of this is that is that AI as was represented at the AI conference, the fact checkers were there, fact checkers like full fact. And of course, full fact has an entire well, I I think it's one person, but nonetheless an AI department because AI is to be the future of the truth.

AI is going to be much more likely to flood the Internet with misinformation than as we're going to hear about later on, so called right wing political parties who are being accused of flooding the Internet with misinformation at the at the moment. So it can't be a coincidence that AI and US are both refused, sorry that the UK and the United States both refused to sign the Paris Declaration at the AI summit yesterday on the same day.

That can't be a coincidence, particularly when we see that they're the agendas are basically the same in both cases. It is a very interesting area and it fits very much with what Sandy was just talking about. So let's leave that for now and move on to say if you would like

to support the UK column, we do need your ongoing support. That'd be very much appreciated. Thank you very much to everybody that does. support.ukcolumn.org is the place to go. You can make a donation. You could join as a member, which of course gives you access to UK column news Extra. You pick something up at the UK column shop. And if you are into health products, anything from Clive to carl.com, the Dubai using the link on this site will give us a small Commission for each of those.

Now do share the material if you can't do any of that or in any case, because we do need you to share everything that we have on the UK column website to get around the censorship regime that we continue to experience. And well, another reminder of a day for your diary, which is Saturday the 5th of April 2025. The 1st 2 speakers that we're going to announce for this are Catherine Gunn and Alex Thompson.

And since we're so close to GCHQ, that seems absolutely appropriate and so hopefully you will join us for that. The tickets are on sale. Please grab yours now while you can and hopefully we'll see you there. Tomorrow we have an interview with Victoria Rickson. Debbie and Cheryl are speaking to Victoria Rickson, the Honest Midwife. That's at 1:00 PM tomorrow to join us for that and also the interview that went out

yesterday. Dear Farmers 999 Point Part 3, Debbie and Sandy and Roger Maycock discussing that the future of food that is up on the website now. Another reminder of the Public Child Protection Wales Conference happening on the 22nd of February. Commissionwood absolutely deserves as much support for this as possible. If you are in the area, please go along to that. There are going to be some

fantastic speakers for that. Details on screen and the details will be in the show notes again as well. And also the Scottish People's COVID-19 Inquiry which Diane McCarthy is involved with. That is also if you're in that part of the world in Edinburgh on the 22nd of February, get to that as well if you possibly can. OK, let's come back to Vanessa then.

And Vanessa, what's what is going on in the wider region of the Middle East at the moment? Well, I did include a link to my sub stack because actually when I was looking this morning for reports on what I'm going to talk about, I found absolutely nothing. Of course, not in the BBC and not at CNN and not in the Guardian at all. Why? Because what has been going on

since the 7th of February? So for about the last five days is that if we can just have a look at the map, the HTS terrorist forces have been leading attacks against Lebanese territory on the border, very close to areas like Crusader and Hans that were traditionally, let's say resistant strongholds and areas where weapons could be smuggled into both Lebanese and

Palestinian resistance. Now, effectively, if we, if we look at the photo, we can see that it was actually who was leading the attack or what are known as Jolani's red band brigade as Saib al Hamra, which is his elite forces, Special forces led the attacks on the borders, targeting farmland, villages under the pretext of preventing smuggling, which of course had when I'm talking about smuggling, we're talking about drugs and and foodstuff and so on.

But of course it will become very apparent that in reality, HDS, as it always has done, is working hand in glove with Israel. We talked about the Gaza situation and and the Palestinian situation in general. The the border between Syria and Lebanon is 394 kilometres, 245 miles. HDS have effectively attempted to breach that border in the north, causing civilian casualties. But the interesting thing is the elite forces suffered enormous casualties at the hands of the tribal factions.

Jafar, sorry, the dog has made an appearance more Al Mekdad and Al Zaita tribes, which from the 5th century to the 18th resided in Tripoli and in Beirut and then moved to the Bakar region, which is that northeastern region on the border. So the tribes by themselves defeated what are effectively Jolani's elite forces to the point where Jolani was calling for reinforcements from from Idlib and from other areas of Syria and also calling for a ceasefire.

The Lebanese army in the last two days has stepped in and taken control of the border and and sort of pushed the tribesmen back into territory further inside Lebanon. And I will remind you because we're talking about Israel

manoeuvres. Also last week we spoke about the five high points in the South of Lebanon that Israel is trying to maintain control of. There have been 1350 violations of the ceasefire by Israel since December, and we we have looming, of course, the date for the full withdrawal.

Israel has been pushing the US to extend the withdrawal yet again, which is very typical of their tactics, but so far the Lebanese government is insisting on full withdrawal by Israel on the 18th of February. Sorry, I'm losing track of

months at the same time. So at the same time as these border attacks were ongoing, this is in Damascus, in the southern countryside, Israel has been bombing what it claimed were Palestinian resistance weapons warehouses, which were in fact described by Syrian sources as being a building that was used as the clinic by the military housing complex that

was in this area. And they've also been extending their military occupation into southern towns like Kanatra and Dara, and sending reinforcements to the Mount Hermon area, which is the highest vantage point on the border between Syria and Lebanon. They've established basically 9 new bases in the South. They've been sending the Golani Brigades and various other specialist forces to the Mount Hermon area in collaboration, of course, with what HTS is doing.

And gradually HTS is extending the length of their operations along the border. And again, if we just have a look at this map, so here HTS now has sent in the last 24 hours, 700 Turkmen, Turkmenistani brigades and some Syrian extremist forces also to this area. They're laying mines of order in this area to prevent any incursions into Syrian territory. But as I said, they're also extending further down the

length of the border. So combined with Gaza here in Lebanon, we are expecting a serious escalation. Wanted to point out that all of this, of course, was going on during the formation of the Lebanese government under the newly elected President Joseph Arun, and the US envoy for peace in the Middle East, Morgan or Targus.

Sorry, Deputy Envoy came to. Beirut and went to the Babda Palace and informed the president that they were very glad that Hezbollah had been defeated and that they would not like to see Hezbollah representatives in the government. This, of course, despite the fact that Hezbollah actually had the highest vote in proceeding

to parliamentary elections. And ultimately I'm very pleased to announce that the US again, pressure on Lebanon failed and five MPs were approved by Hezbollah and the Prime Minister. So Hezbollah and Amal movement between them, both Shia are approved as health minister, labour minister, environment, finance and as administration, administrative development. So we're sitting on a powder keg

at the moment. There's an awful lot of this going on. And as I said, they're being completely ignored in Western media, perhaps honestly, while Alastair Campbell is and Rory Stewart are interviewing Geolani, or as he likes to call himself, Ahmed Al Shahra, the self proclaimed president in Syria. Thank you, Vanessa. And I mean, just before we move on, do you have any thoughts on what Charles was talking about at the beginning of the programme with Iran?

Yeah, I mean, you know, I think it's inevitable that we're we're ratcheting up at least aggressive rhetoric against Iran. Is that actually going to to lead to some kind of escalation of military force? I don't know. Is it to put pressure on Iran and the reformist government to come to the table with the United States over, you know, the nuclear deal? Like, what is the UK going to do against Iran? I mean, that's the number one question that I have to ask.

So for me, it seems to be pressure rhetoric. But yeah, I mean, all bets are off at the moment. Yes, OK, thank. Thank you very much for that. Now in following on from the latest farming protest, then

Charles, let's come back to the UK and the latest land grabs. Yeah, also it would appear and exactly like Mike says, I mean. The eyes of the wider farming community have been drawn back towards London on Monday of this week as another well publicised protest was planned to coincide with the parliamentary debate on the agricultural property relief on inheritance tax, which has proved very controversial of course.

The debate prompted by more than 150,000 signatures on a petition to scrap the plan to reintroduce the tax for farmers and small businesses. Now this tax has been suspended since 1992 and it's one that the Labour government are planning to reintroduce in April next year, giving people very little time to react to that or plan around it. The government has said the proposed change is not intended to take land away from small farms or to put people out of

business. And yet it's catch all design will have that specific consequence, at least for those that have not been able to plan around it. As I've said before on UK column, the real purpose of this measure appears to be to distract from the many other ways in which farmers are having their land controlled or taken

from their possession. Daniel Zeichner, the Minister for Food, Farming and Fisheries, has attempted to make the case for upholding the tax reform by saying that it will make a vital contribution to the running of the NHS, chess and the education system. But he seems to undermine his own point entirely by saying that it should recoup £500 million per annum, which is about equivalent to running the

health service for just one day. The protests themselves have proved a handy bandwagon for social media influences to leap on, as well as political parties, both diluting the message and ensuring that the focus is on the protest itself rather than on the articulation or attainment of any particular

goals. The slide just showing some of the sort of contributors to the promotion of all of this, but without a sort of coherent banner to stand underneath, all appearing to score capital from what's been going on in Westminster this week. Now, underpinning the other mechanisms by which farmers will be removed from the land and the rural economy is destroyed is the fictitious narrative surrounding the climate emergency.

The system of subsidy, which, alongside the conduct of the food cartels, controls the operations of land owners and farmers, is increasingly predicated on threat posed by what is described as climate change. For as long as farmers fail to challenge this premise, they render themselves powerless to combat any of the measures taken

by the government. And just to illustrate this, and indeed how straightforward it is for the government to control the farming sector, this map shows the areas of Devon and Cornwall which are to the West and the north of Plymouth, from where UK column broadcasts. All the parcels bordered in red are in receipt of Countryside Stewardship subsidy.

And of course, this map doesn't actually even show the more recently introduced sustainable farming in this is from the Defra Magic mapping platform, a link to which will be provided in the show notes. Now legislation grants extraordinary powers to Natural England, which we've already heard referred to by Mike. And in particular this shows just some of the ways in which they can be wielded, first by areas of outstanding natural beauty, shown here on this slide

dotted about the country. Then we look at national parks and following that special areas of conservation and then finally and the most contentious of all the sites of special scientific

interest. And obviously the size of these green dots is is unrepresentative to the the area of land that they would take up. Nonetheless, the point is made and via each of these mechanisms Natural England is able to either prohibit or mandate certain activities which could well and often do render a farm business unviable. So as far as the industry is concerned.

On the other hand, the Grocer magazine has recently reported that the Groceries Code Adjudicator, which is a one man band charged with policing fairness in dealings between supermarkets and farmers, is reported to be considering investigating Amazon Food, which entered the arena recently and has been performing even more unscrupulously than its

competitors. But with Amazon's global turnover for 2024 standing at 515 billion lbs, making it only 7 1/2 times less than the whole GDP of the United Kingdom, it it looks rather like a foregone conclusion as to which way it might go. And to set that in context, Tesco's turnover for for that year was just £68 billion.

So, as I say, you might you might guess which way such an investigation of Amazon would go, also bearing in mind that they control, or at least virtually control all the government communications platforms and the holding of their data via Amazon Web Services. Now, at the end of January, the government launched the rather ominously titled National Conversation on Land Use.

The priorities appear clear. This is described in the document as being part of Labour's plan for change and that it will concern supporting economic growth through building 1 and a half million homes, delivering critical infrastructure, securing clean power, protecting farmland and restoring the natural world. But no explicit references to

food security. As well as this, they've announced a new land use framework which refers back to Mike's segment in relation to sort of Natural England and how all these things are accounted for.

This was announced on the same day and the Environment Secretary Steve Reed said this government has a cast iron commitment to maintain long term food security, but it didn't qualify it by suggesting to what extent food security would be guaranteed or indeed what sort of food would be produced in order to say that it had been achieved. Now this situation has prompted the National Preparedness Commission to produce a report which is called Just in Case.

So they're attempting to shift the focus from the just in time method by which many businesses, particularly in the food industry, have operated. And this followed the rather bizarre assumptions made during something called Exercise Mighty Oak in 2023, which was prefixed on a national energy outage. During that exercise it was believed or assumed that people would effectively do nothing, there would be no unrest.

And therefore it can be considered perhaps that they were looking back to the lack of response or apparent lack of response to the draconian measures introduced by the government from 2020. And therefore it's reasonable to see how they might have arrived at such an assumption. Anyway, this report pushes centrally for what they're describing as a Food Security and Resilience act.

And the background being that they do rightly point out that the current system of food distribution is hopelessly vulnerable to technological failure and cyber sabotage, as well as widespread and of course increasingly likely power outages, as well as catastrophic human decisions like COVID restrictions. The proposed solutions to match this somewhat inevitably miss the point. This refers back now to what Sandy's been talking about because it calls for a devolved system of regional

responsibility. And they're suggesting mechanisms such as stockpiling and the compulsory use of Greenbelt land for food production in times of emergency. But who decides what the emergency is and when it should be declared? But at no point does the report suggest that there should be a direct relationship between farmers and their customers and their therefore that could be something that could create greater business resilience. But they don't touch it.

Or indeed less vulnerability to the factors described earlier. But with all these recommendations of devolution, there are really only suggestions that control and decision making remain the preserve of the bureaucratic and technocratic few. So really going back to exactly what Sandy's been articulating in her first segment today, so the government in effect being the problem and not the solution. And this would absolutely be the case for land owners and farmers.

And just to articulate the point and to round off, we look at the attack on the poultry industry and the propaganda campaign which runs it. And here's a piece by the BBC in which farmers are said to be clamouring for vaccines for poultry which is currently prohibited in the United Kingdom. And this mirrors almost exactly the conditions surrounding the destruction of more than 11,000,000 head of livestock in 2001 during what was deceitfully described as a foot and mouth epidemic.

The details which I really would encourage you to watch on the excellent UK column documentary Slaughtered on Suspicion. For more on on all of this, please do go to the To the UK column website to look at the farming section, where you'll find a compilation of all the material that we've dealt with on this particular critical top topic, including a range of a broad range of interviews with those that provide credible alternative by virtue of their own experiences.

Charles, thank you. Now let's move on to the issue

of fake news. And the Guardian published an article yesterday entitled Far Right Populists Much more likely than the Left to Spread Fake News study. So this is an uncritical puff piece for this paper published in Sage journals entitled Went Parties, Live Misinformation and radical Right Populism across 26 countries.

So Peter Thornburgh of the University of Amsterdam, one of the authors, said that radical right populists are using misinformation as a tool to destabilise democracies and gain political advantage. And he went on to say that the findings from the paper underscore the urgent need for policy makers, researchers and the public to understand and address the intertwined dynamics of misinformation, radical right

populism. They say they've examined which parties are more likely to spread information by drawing on a comprehensive database of 32,000,000 tweets from parliamentarians in 26 countries and that spans 6 years from 2017 to 2022 and several election periods. The 26 countries were seven included. Seventeen EU member states, Austria, France, Germany, Netherlands and Sweden were amongst those, as well as the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia.

But basically at the bottom line here is it was they had hoovered up millions, as they say, of tweets. They then compare compared those tweets, that data with what they described as international political science databases holding detailed information about political parties and cabinets. For example, their position on the left right spectrum and their degree of populism.

But here's the kicker, to identify cases of misinformation, we examine the URLs that the politicians share and then use the Media Bias Fact Check database and the Wikipedia Fake News list to identify politicians sharing misinformation in tweets. So that is totally about the reliable, isn't it? So that they go on to say to ensure the robustness of our methods, the factual, the factuality measure was manually validated to ensure that the articles shared in fact contain misinformation.

And they say that we should look at the supplementary information file that goes with this paper. They say that we, we selected a stratified random sample of 50 articles from each of the five predefined factuality levels, totalling 250 articles. These were manually analysed. The reports, sorry, the results are reported in supplementals tables 6S6 and S7. So when you go to the tables, you find that in fact there's no

such proper validation. It was a manual validation, as they said, but that might be summarised as the sources we chose are accurate because we say they're accurate. And and that's, that's basically it, but it gets even better. They admit that in many cases, the sources that they put in a low factuality group do report accurate news.

But for example, let's take an example, they they say about RT that quotes although each individual article may be factually correct in its reporting on individual battles, the overall story is thus a false narrative of highly successful special military operation. This underscores the limitations of assessing factuality solely based on the accuracy of individual articles, offering further support for the validity of relying on media outlet level analysis. Right.

In other words, if you report accurate stories, we're going to say that you're inaccurate anyway because you don't report the things we say you should report. So this, I think, is a work of art, not a work of science. The Guardian is a disgrace for not holding the authors to account, but perhaps there are no surprises there. I don't know what your thoughts are on that.

Well, it's almost as though this has been handed to some climate scientists with a bit of time on their hands because of amazing parallels between what's extrapolated and what's actually there. Yeah, extraordinary. Yes, absolutely. Well, let's let's move on to to this image because, you know, Elon Musk was in the White House yesterday and well, I don't know what your thoughts were on on the whole thing. It's frightfully awkward.

I I would say. I mean, he, I'm not quite sure why he is sort of wheeled in. It's, it's hard to see whether he makes Trump look better or worse. And and that's sort of saying something. The whole thing was just a very bizarre episode. And he does have a tendency to ramble, much like the man sitting in the chair. I suppose so. But he was asked about the issue of accountability. He didn't really have an answer. Did.

He, no, he didn't. No, actually that and that was it. He, he was asked 22 questions about whether or not he would be in effect declaring interest. Not that he necessarily needs to declare, because I think they're quite well known, but the suggestion that his operations on behalf of the office of the President of the United States wouldn't have any overlap with his many, many business

interests is totally absurd. And of course, there's probably the least suitable candidate for conducting reform in any sort of transparent sense, which I suppose for this administration might make him perfect. And for some reason, he decided to bring his son, who was utterly bored and behaving appropriately, I thought. Yeah, well, you know, the son sort of held it together. Yeah.

But anyway, sorry Stephanie, let's just put that back up a second because I just wanted to .1 thing out here because and let's just label that as saying enough said. There's nothing else really required. The hand gesture is clear. We've seen it from so many

others. I I would like to get a definitive response from from some of these people, from Moscow or from Keir Starmer, all the other people that use this particular hand gesture to explain what it is because, because they all use it. Why? Why? I don't know, unless it's a control mechanism from preventing you from doing a Hitler salute. I'm. Not quite sure, maybe it is OK, but anyway we do have a final video. We do now.

For many, many months we've been talking about all the various challenges faced by farmers and indeed the activities that the government wants to stop farmers from doing and us enjoying. And whilst I wouldn't necessarily be advocating the number of pharmaceutical products that are referred to in this video, I thought we'd end on a slightly lighter note with what's happening in the farming community at this time of year.

We've got some glucose, Actran, beta Mucha, Metacam, long gloves, vet loop, iodine and stomach cube, blue spray, lots of hay and calcium to save the day. All ready for the day when the sheep have got 2. Bullsh, bullsh, bullsh, bullsh, bullsh, bullsh scholar. Shepherd's frog. This girl called faces me through there. Now it's a pocket of rings. I'll be there to lend a hand. God bless Planet sheep fever. Planet sheep. Godless planet sheep.

Because we get no sleep. We're money she get no sleep. We're money, she. Are you expecting this year? Yeah, not as many as that, but absolutely, yes. So there we go. That's diversification as he forges his new path in the music industry. Good man. Indeed. Well, thank you, Charles. Thank you to Vanessa and Sandy for joining us today. We got to end there. For now. We will be back in a few minutes. If UK column member for some UK column news extra. Join us for that if you can.

Otherwise join the interview tomorrow at 1:00 PM and we'll see you at 1:00 PM as usual on Friday. See you then. Bye, bye, bye bye.