Good afternoon. It's Friday the 24th of January 2025, just after 1:00. And welcome to UK Column News. I'm your host, Mike Robinson. Joining me in the studio today is Patrick Hennigson. Welcome to the programme, Patrick. Great to be with you, Mike. And by video link, we have Debbie Evans and Mark Anderson. Now we're going to begin today with, well, Ukraine negotiations. Are they happening? Are they not happening? What is The Donald up to?
That's the big question. Negotiations, are they going to happen? That's all up in the air at the moment, Mike. So kind of, well, we got this video clip from Donald Trump. He's talking to the press and what he's saying is quite shocking. They're going crazy in Russia right now, listening to some of the stuff that Trump's saying. So we've just got one one snippet here and we'll we'll share this with you right now I'm. Going to speak to President Putin. Could be very soon and.
And you've talked a bit about Ukraine and Russia, but how long do you think it would take to end that conflict and. I have to speak to President Putin. We're going to have to find out. He's not. He can't be thrilled. He's not doing so well. I mean, he's grinding it out. But most people thought that war would have been over in about one week. And now you're into three years, right? So he can't be, he can't be thrilled. It's not making him look very good.
Now, eventually, you know, I mean, it's a big machine. So things will happen. But I think you'd be very well off to end that war. We have numbers that almost a million Russian soldiers have been killed. About 700,000 Ukrainian soldiers are killed. Russia's bigger. They have more soldiers to lose. But that's no way to run a country. I, I don't know where he's getting his Intel from or who's advising him, but that's the craziest thing.
I've, you know, we've, we've been listening to commentary for three years right from, even though most extreme anti Russian people haven't said that Russia's lost a million soldiers or that Ukraine's lost 700,000. So like what's going on? You know who's advising Donald Trump? And he seems clueless, completely clueless. And then he's saying that, you know, the war should have been over in a week. That's another sort of trope that's been recycled from the beginning.
Putin's not doing so well. The Russian economy is doing better than the European economy, arguably better than, in some cases, even better than the US economy on some levels. But and, and they've gained territory. So Don Bass Crimea, the longer the war goes on. I think we've had this conversation a while ago. What is Donald Trump thinking and is this his negotiation positions? I think he he's wet well behind the 8 ball on this well behind the 8 ball.
And so what's going to happen? How's he going to compensate? Well, we can talk about that. What was what were his comments on Twitter? Well, yeah, and Truth Social, it's throw this up on screen. This is even more shocking here. This is I'm looking, I'm not looking to hurt Russia. I love the Russian people, etcetera, going on about Russiagate. And then he says Russia lost 6660 million lives during the Second World War. That's a crazy number. The highest I've seen is
25,000,000. In total, 60 million lives in World War 2. This is insane. And so where is this stuff coming from? So they're going, they're having kittens right now in Russia. If you watch Russian TV, they're like, who is this guy? What is he talking about? Can we take him seriously? That's the conversation in the Russian Security Council. You know, big programmes and some of the political experts are like, you know, who does Donald Trump even have a clue
what's going on? And it's almost kind of insulting for to, to, to give such crazy depictions of World War 2 to Russians is kind of a crazy thing. And Trump's gone and done it. So I, I don't know really unbelievable. Well, like what? What are the prospects? For a deal. Well, he thinks that he can just bulge in and be Donald Trump and that he believes all the hype and his mandate and everything like that. And he's it's not, it's not going to work like that with the Russians.
You can't go and say, I'm Donald Trump, you're going to do it this way. This is the way I want it done and you going to do it or all Hell's going to break loose. This is not. It's not going to work like this. That's all hell is breaking loose. Well, in terms of Ukraine, I mean, we can talk about some of the analysis on this, but it looks to me like, well, we right now all hell is breaking loose.
So Ukraine just launched drone attacks in not one, not 2, not 3, but ten different regions, Briansk, Kursk, and all the way down to Crimea. Look at all these separate drone attacks while Zelensky is in Davos basically making his plea for money weapons. He wants 200,000 NATO troops, peacekeeping troops in Ukraine or what's left of Ukraine. And so this is what you're looking at here, Mike, is this is designed to prevent any meaningful negotiations from
happening. So this is coming from the deep state. They haven't done the changeover at the CIA yet. So they're probably, the British are no doubt pushing this hard because the British don't want to see any serious peace negotiations there. They just want the status quo, which is weapons tensions, escalation and re re bolstering the NATO frontline, the new line of contact between the East and West. That's the agenda. So I think Trump could very well be put into a status quo position.
And all this talk before the election about I'm going to solve this in 24 hours is going to really look like vaporware, I think. Absolutely, and maybe some echoes in the first term where he was managed. Yeah, and he's the one that gave lethal aid 1st to Ukraine in his first term. Even when Obama wouldn't do it, they got Trump to do it, and they used Russiagate to kind of browbeat him to become more hawkish against Russia. You're going to see that with the sanctions as well.
He's going to be very hawkish on sanctions now because if he can't get this deal done, he'll try to use sanctions and other coercive methods. And that's going to really, you know, upset allies like India, for instance, they're threatening secondary sanctions on India because of the oil trade with Russia. I mean, that's not going to go well, but he'll try to use that as leverage for tariff negotiations. So this is just going to be crazy the 1st 100 days. Well, yesterday he announced a
new flurry of executive orders. The first to be mentioned is crypto, because he's decided to make the United States, what he said, the crypto capital of the world. So let's have a look at the announcement. And this, David, is crypto. Yeah, this is the. Crypto EO we're. Going to be forming an internal working group to make crypto, to make America the world capital and crypto under your leadership, which is really going up right? Absolutely.
David, that's for you, Dexter. You find them exciting. They might not be except, but we're going to make a lot of money for the country. OK, so it's going to make a lot of money for the country. But come on to why that might be in a second. This follows the executive order releasing the Silk Road Finder Ross Obrecht does how you permit his name. Obrecht was convicted in 2015 of involvement in narcotics and money laundering. That's how it was described anyway.
He was sentenced to life in prison. And this was because the claim was, or the allegation was that was the conviction was based on the idea that he'd been selling illegal drugs in return for Bitcoin, as well as selling hacking equipment and stolen passports. And they also, the prosecutors also claimed that he had organised 6 murders for hire, including one against a former Silk Road employee. Although they did then acknowledge that no evidence existed that any killings were
actually carried out. So Ulbricht was unsurprisingly pretty ecstatic to be released and he posted his comments on X. Here's a short excerpt of what he had to say. Last night, Donald Trump granted me a full pardon. I was doing life without parole and I was locked up for more than 11 years, but he let me out. I'm a free man now. So let it be known that Donald
Trump is a man of his word. Well, we'll see whether he is on the broad scale, but do you think there's a connection between this Bitcoin executive order and the executive order to release Obrecht? There's definitely a connection because Ross Obrecht held, I don't know how much, a lot of Bitcoin, well, in excess of a billion dollars. I'm probably underestimating that massively. And that was meant to be auctioned off. And so the Bitcoin is still in escrow.
That's my understanding of it. But will that end up being in the strategic reserves in the US Treasury of Donald Trump's new Bitcoin hedge or strategic reserve? So that that's, that's a question that's unknown. So it was seized. I think that was seized in, but he's been collecting Bitcoin since 2012 or 13 or whatever, since the beginning or 2010. So he has a huge, arguably one of the biggest Bitcoin fortunes in the world, but it's not his anymore. It's in the custody of the US
government, so that's. It's been released, but he may not be getting that back. I don't think, I don't I, I can't see him getting it back, but it might be favours in kind, but but it it's a huge case because it's really about, you know, are you guilty for everything that illegal that goes on on your platform or you just facilitate or they shut him down. But they didn't, they weren't happy with just shutting him down. They wanted to destroy him personally and make an example
out of him. So this is reversed part of that story. And so that's, I think, a huge thing. And all the libertarians and people are going wild celebrating right now what a great victory for justice this is. OK, well, another executive order that was signed yesterday was for the declassification of files relating to John F Kennedy, Robert F Kennedy and Martin Luther King.
Or at least were they? Because in fact, what has actually been organised is that the security services in the US have 15 days to come up with a plan for releasing those documents. So the executive order itself doesn't actually guarantee the declassification of the files that it will actually be or that the files will actually be made public. What do you think of the prospects? And actually, is there anything
there? Do you think that's that's going to, I mean, we'll talk to Mark about this in, in extra, but is there anything there that's going to be a surprise to anybody? I, I'd be surprised if there was any surprises in there, but 98% of the JFK files have been released or declassified or kind of available to the public, albeit redacted. So that what's that final 2%, what's in there and how much of that's going to be redacted or
shredded? Is that the plan they need time to execute is what you know, how to get rid of embarrassing evidence there. So I think it's great for transparency, but a lot of people are just really anxious to see if there's going to be anything in there and who knows, implicating perhaps, you know, Daddy Bush more or Israel involved or something, who knows. But will we see any of that through the redaction of black, the black strips? I don't know.
Yes, we have. We have another little bit of video of him signing that and I want to break that into extra because I want to discuss what he says at the very end of that. So we'll keep that for extra. But let me welcome Mark to the programme. And Mark, you're wondering or questioning whether Trump has expansionist plans? G'day everyone. Not only questioning whether he has expansionist plans, Mike, but what those plans specifically are. Now, I'm not taking sides here.
I'll be quoting James Perloff, a noted author on the CFR. This slide here is harkening back to last week when I gave the presentation based on a recent programme that was January 10th by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. That's the former Chicago CFR. They were formed in 1922, one year after the infamous New York CFR and the the programme by the Chicago Council last week that they basically asked these three questions. Is Trump a good old isolationist
just wanting a fortress America? Or is he a great power imperialist, as they put it, bent on seizing lands and assets? Or, and this is seemingly the most likely 1A Monroe Doctrinist wanting to reduce worldwide policing overall and mainly in police who control the Western Hemisphere. Now James Perloff, who wrote a Seminole book on the CFR, The Shadows of Power. He came out and in his article recently on his blog, You could say then the question becomes or none of the above.
And as Perloff wrote here on this slide, the melding of Greenland with America is not new, as shown by this map based on the Regionalized and Adaptive model of the Global World System report produced by the Globalist Club of Rome back in 1973, Perloff noted here. Note that the North American region included Canada and Greenland, but excluded Mexico. So that's a interesting map to say the least.
Now, the next slide zeroes in on the United States, Canada, Greenland segment, one of the regional building blocks of world government as conceived by the Club of Rome over 50 years ago. And that's of course, with the central part of Perloff's thesis. Now, we'll move on from there. And this is his main quote, one of the most important quotes, that there's a picture of him. Of course, I'm an acquaintance of his. We've talked a few times. Trump's Greenland grab is not
about MAGA. Perloff alleges Trump's ambition to expand America is nothing more than a repackaging of an old Satanic plan to establish world government through regional stepping stones. And I'll stress that I don't necessarily agree, at least not 100%, with what Perloff is saying. But it's important to get this perspective out there for our viewers. Anyway, he went on to quote a Truth Social in his article and and Perloff had this part in there.
Many people in Canada quoting Trump love being the 51st state. I don't know that they would love it. And an entire nation that huge being the 51st state, of course sounds impractical. United States can no longer suffer the massive trade deficits and subsidies that Canada needs to stay afloat, Trump wrote. Justin Trudeau knew this and resigned.
If Canada merged with the US, there would be no tariffs, taxes would go way down, and they would be totally secure from the threat of Russian and Chinese ships that are constantly surrounding them together. What a great nation it would be, as Perloff quoted Trump as saying on Truth Social. And in this last part from Perloff's article. These are very important quotes to get out there.
As Perloff wrote, all of this is being heralded to the president's followers as part of his plan to make America great again. But of course, one of the Uber globalists, Zubigny Brzezinski, laid the strategy on the line at Mikhail Gorbachev's 1995 State of the World Forum. We cannot leap into world government in one quick step. The precondition for genuine globalisation is progressive regionalization. Of course, Burzynski worked with David Rockefeller to help the late Jimmy Carter get into
office. And that probably goes at least some way in explaining why Carter gave away the Panama Canal. I believe there was a connection there. At any rate, it's also helpful to remember as Pearl Off Road here in 2005, President George W Bush attempted to create a North American union and they talked about a currency called the Amero.
I would know that would emulate the European Union turning in turning an economic partnership, NAFTA, which of course is now defunct, into a political union, just as the EU had evolved out of an economic partnership called the Common Market. And of course that was massaged by Bilderberg over many years, as some former Bilderbergers acknowledged.
But anyway, it's an it's an interesting way of looking at Trump's Western Hemisphere expansionist plans and his overall rhetoric about expanding power in the tradition of William McKinley, in the tradition of Roosevelt, and some even say something like Andrew Jackson's policies. But a lot of manga people, of course, would bristle at what I'm reporting right now. But I think it's important to get this out there so people can weigh all the options.
So with that, maybe you guys would want to comment momentarily. You any thoughts? Only that Canada became the 51st state. It's probably going to be voting Democrat. So I don't know if Trump thought that far ahead or not. It's kind of big, big for one state.
I mean, be the sort of on its own one of the largest land masses on the on the planet, but probably be broken up into regions and they're used to their welfare entitlements in Canada. So I I don't know if that's going to work out too well in the American system. So who knows, that could just be some heavy negotiations for to extract some major concessions perhaps. I don't know. I'm not convinced. Yeah. OK. Well, thank you for that. Thank you, Mark.
Debbie, let me welcome to the programme. And of course the COVID inquiry we've been covering the last couple of weeks because it's been talking about vaccine injured. But you want to focus on the wonderful Hugo, Hugo Keith Casey, who is one of the the barristers involved in the inquiry. I do and thank you and good afternoon everyone. Lovely to see Patrick in the studio, by the way.
And yes, the COVID inquiry, we know it has many failings, but last week we were, we showed you a clip of Ruth O Rafferty from the Scottish vaccine injured group getting interrogated by this barrister. But who is he? So I want to introduce you to Hugo Keith Casey. He's a real fighter. He's immensely impressive. He's currently the lead counsel to the UK public COVID inquiry
19 pandemic. He's the joint head of chambers of the three Raymond buildings and he's actually ranked in seven categories in current chambers and partners guides. So what does he actually do? Well, he's he's been involved in a lot. He's been involved in the Diana Princess of Wales inquest. Now, just I want you to make a note, 2008, that was 77 bombings, Mark Duggan, Alexander Litvinenko, Westminster terrorist bombings and more. He came from Moreland, by the way, Oxford have to tell you
that. But who's he represented? Some big names there. Princess Anne. He was representing the Queen at the diner inquest. Yet again, I'm just going to make that note. That was 2008 and he got silk in 2009. I wonder if it was anything to do with how he represented the Queen. Not that I'm a conspiracy theorist or anything. He's also represented, he's been involved in the case of Mark Duggan, he's worked with Leave UK, at Leave EU, Airbus, Chelsea, FCI mean he is a
stellar. He is top of the literally top of the bar at the moment. But what do the Lancashire Telegraph say? They say exactly the same. He is star at the bar. But when I went to look at other nicknames that he has, I noticed in the standard they are referring to a Telegraph article that's actually behind a paywall. So I decided to use the standard because his nickname is Attack Dog.
Now he is really an attack dog. However, he seems to be a docile dog when he's questioning his witnesses, and he seems to be an attack dog when he's questioning the vaccine injured. So I put out a tweet on X and I'd been listening to him speaking to June Rain and I was very interested in the way that he words things. So I asked basically have the public or he's asked if the public have been given a different vaccine to the one that was manufactured.
But he worded it in a way where Dame June Rain was almost led to her response. And I just want to show you the reply from Doctor Claire Craig again, because Doctor Claire Craig who replied to this, this little clip, which we're going to show you in a minute. She said he does not ask if process one and process two were the same.
He asked if he asks if the batch is tested by the MHRA, which he calls process A were the same as batches given to the public, which he calls process B. This was his second time
avoiding the issue. She went on to say in a further tweet specifically about Ruth, she says Ruth from Scottish vaccine injured group was shut down by him when she tried to raise it. And then she thanks the person that had had noted it. So I want you to see this little clip because this little clip I put on Twitter's now has over 400,000 views. So have a look and see see what you think about Hugo Keith's line of questioning to Dame June Rain and listen to her answer. She's on oath.
Some have suggested that the batches which were delivered to the United Kingdom for use amongst its population, which were then handed out, were not the same batches or other were batches that were produced by a different manufacturing process on the part of the manufacturer as has been as had been tested by the MHRA. So bluntly, the suggestion has
been made. You tested and authorised and certified a certain number of vaccines made by process manufacturing Process A, and then the manufacturers actually delivered vaccines the British population produced as a result of a different manufacturing process and one by inference which had not been tested. Is that right? Well, my understanding is that the manufacturing process would have been the same. Look nervous, didn't she?
And in extra, we'll be showing the wonderful Charlotte Crichton, who gave evidence this week and would be speaking to Ruth in a minute. Back to you, Mike. Thank you very much, Debbie. As you say, we will be speaking to Ruth in a minute. So if you like what the UK column does though, and you'd like to support us, support.uk columnis.org is the place to go. There are options to help us out there. You can make a donation.
You could join us as a member, which gives you access to extra programming and so on. You can support us by buying something at the UK column shop or if you pick something up at Clive to carl.com. We do get a small percentage of that, although it doesn't cost you any more. But if you can't do any of that, that's absolutely fine.
But please do share anything that you see on the UK column website that takes your fancy because we need to get around the censorship regime as best we possibly can. Now, yesterday, the interview that I did with Carl Zha went out. And if you haven't seen that yet, please do watch it. So we're trying to give a little perspective on China, maybe to counter some of the narratives that we're hearing from Donald Trump and from Nigel Farage at
the moment. So if you are interested in that, do watch and share that one if you possibly can. So, Debbie, let me come back to you then, and also to Ruth. Yes, I'm absolutely delighted to be joined by Ruth or Rafferty today because Ruth runs the Scottish Vaccine injured group and we've done interviews with Ruth before, so please go and look on the website for those. But Ruth, I just want to welcome you. That's the interview.
Please go and look at it. And you've already seen the comments that Claire Craig made and we're here to talk to Ruth about her experience. So Ruth, welcome to UK Column and thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me, Debbie. So Ruth, you had a very long way to travel because you're in Scotland and you had to go down to London for the inquiry and you're very heavily invested in the Scottish inquiry as well. How was your experience?
Well, Debbie, as you said, we are involved in the Scottish Inquiry and we were at the preliminary hearing this Wednesday. So we had a long journey down to London to come back up to get stuck straight into the Scottish Inquiry. As you imagine, it's quite a lot of work and even to be involved in the UK inquiry has taken indescribable amounts of effort, energy, hours and hours of work with lots of stress, lots of deadlines, actually sometimes
almost impossible deadlines. Also that we could let the injured voice be heard at the inquiry. And for me, when we first started out, this was about getting help and support for the vaccine injured. But I have to say that it is expanded somewhat because I realised that the truth wasn't going to get out any other way
unless we spoke the message. Because nobody was going to be represented at that UK inquiry that was going to speak the truth about the scientific facts about the risks associated with the mRNA vaccines. Because that's what it's become about for me, the fact that the mRNA vaccines have been regulated, they got past the the finish line through emergency regulations. And I honestly don't think
they're safe. And it really concerns me because nobody is interested in looking at this, as you've all said, quite quite extensively. Well, you're of course absolutely right, Ruth, and you have been speaking out a lot about this. And as you will have seen earlier, we introduced our audience to Hugo Keith Casey, who questioned you as well at the inquiry. And I've been watching him very carefully.
And like I say, he appears to be a docile dog when he's speaking to Dame June Rain and Professor Christopher Witty. But he seems Baroness Hallett seems to let him off the leash and set him upon the vaccine injured. Did you find it difficult to speak with him?
It was impossible. I said we travelled 8 1/2 hours for 1/2 hour slot because of that was so important that our voice be heard and that Dame Hallett got to see some vaccine injured people face to face that we weren't just some anonymous names on a bit of paper somewhere. And do you know that he actually spent 11 minutes, 11 minutes looking at the description of the group? When I think about all the things that are in my evidence statement, my evidence evidence, my supplementary evidence
statement is 271 pages long. It's fully referenced to scientific journals, to government documents, to minutes of meetings. There's so much evidence crammed in there. And the only thing that you put up on the screen in front of me was my introductory paragraph about the group. I didn't need any help remembering what I said about the group, But when it came to asking questions, more technical questions, and by the way, these weren't the questions that I was told I would be asked, the ones
that I prepared for in advance. These were different questions. When those were posed, nothing was put up in the screen in front of me to help me. And I'd said in advance that two years ago I could barely hold conversations. I mean, I was really neurologically challenged. I still AM, and sometimes really struggle to form sentences or to formulate answers or arguments or responses. So he knew that if he didn't know that, he should have known
that. So I can only assume that the way I was questioned was an attempt to try and silence us. And to be honest, I'm fed up of that. You know, Mark Zuckerman, as we all know, admitted in podcasts that he was told to remove anything related to vaccine injury. And I do feel that the UK inquiry, we're very gracious and I'm grateful for the opportunity to be core participants and to speak. But that was silencing, that was equally censoring. And I felt muzzled, infuriated, frustrated.
I mean, I came away from there beating myself up, thinking, well, I should have said this or I could have said that, or if I just told them, please, please let me speak. But when you're actually in that situation, you, you feel that if you speak out of turn, you could be done for contempt of court or, you know, they have all the power. So it wasn't pleasant. No, and also I think we must remind people that this is a stressful situation for anybody
in who's healthy. And not only have you had that huge journey, but as we all know, your vaccine injured yourself, Ruth and the stress, it's almost like he was putting you at a disadvantage. I feel your frustration because I I saw it, I witnessed it for myself. And on top of that, you knew that Matt Hancock was going to be in the area because he was also giving evidence to the inquiry. And we know that he admitted at the inquiry he knew about serious adverse reactions during
the clinical trials. How did that make you feel? It's very hard to describe how it made me feel me feel, to be honest, Debbie. I mean, physically, by the time I gave evidence, I was already very unwell and I look well. I mean, I went and gave evidence with feeling like I was underwater. I had lots of inflammation going on. I was feeling sick. I had pain throughout my body. And then there's all, as you
say, this emotional aspect. It brings it all home when you're actually there and you're you're physically at the inquiry. And to know that was sitting in the very same seat that Jim Rain and and Matt Hancock and Chris Whitty and all of these people would be sitting. And I knew that the following morning, Matt Hancock would be
giving evidence. And I can't describe how sick it makes me feel to know that they knew there were serious adverse reactions, yet they kept saying this is safest effective. It's safest effective. And the, the, the pressure that there was to take the vaccine, which many people bravely resisted and were clever enough to go and find out the information for themselves. We had no idea. We thought we were getting a, you know, I thought I was getting a reject flu vaccine. And I was naive.
I was stupid. And to know that these people duped us, he knew. And, and he sat on the stand and said that he'd seen, he'd seen the yellow card reports. The amount of yellow card reports that had been submitted must have been extensive. And he saw those. So at what point are anyone going to, when were they going to intervene? When they're going to do something about it? They don't seem to care.
So no, I actually could have gone to watch Matt Hancock on Thursday morning because I was still in London, but I couldn't. I couldn't cope with it. I wouldn't have been able to. So we left. We went home. I was absolutely shocked to hear your story, Ruth, really, although I could see it. And I think anybody that watches
those segments will see that. It almost appears, it appears to me anyway, as though Hugo Keith may be leading his witnesses with questions a little bit more and attacking you more, which I didn't feel was particularly empathetic of Baroness Hallett. I want to thank you so much, Ruth. I know that you are absolutely exhausted. And we will give details in the show notes of where to find you. And I know there's more to come. There's more to come on this for
our audience. Ruth is not finished yet, and we're going to be bringing you more in the very near future. Ruth, thank. Thank you so much for all you do for the vaccine injured. And for now, it's back to you at the studio. Mike, thank you. Thank you, Debbie, and thank you, Ruth. Any comments? No, just absolutely flabbergasted and shocked to hear that Matt Hancock is still walking around in public. That that on the side, if I saw him, I would be absolutely shocked.
I'd be in hiding, you know, permanently on some island in the South Pacific if I was the former health secretary. Well, Ruth was talking about the censorship there and of course, we must remember that it was in fact story of vaccine injury which resulted in UK column being censored by YouTube and Vimeo in 2021 or 2022, whenever that was. So you know that that is clear that that a message went out that that's that should be the case.
And Speaking of censorship, we'll just mention that a couple of days ago of com launched its shiny new digital toolkit to help the businesses comply with the new online safety rules is because the Online Safety Act 2023 is supposedly actually in force now So there you go. So this includes responsibilities for platforms to complete a, an illegal content risk assessment and comply with illegal content safety duties, record keeping, review duties, other obligations
and and so on. So let's just have a quick look here. So they're saying that there's a need to understand which kinds of illegal content to assess and to make accurate judgments about the risks. Just think about that. It's a need to understand which kinds of, it's not all illegal content, it's which kind. So they're, they're already limiting the kinds of illegal content that that are coming under this assessment. And my question then is what is their definition of illegal
content? Yeah, illegal to show or depiction of illegal activities or. Precisely. So it's, it's there's plenty of scope for for what that might be. So assess the risk of harm for each kind of priority, illegal contents. And now we're talking about that on a service and other illegal content. Identify any relevant measures that can be implemented to
address risk. Record and make record of their assessment, understand how to keep their risk assessments up to date it and put in place steps to review it. So this these are the four steps that Ofcom is has is talking about now. The release of this digital toolkit follows their announcement that websites which provide any platform, sorry, provide a platform to any pornographic material, including social media platforms, will now be required to have what they describe as robust age
verification measures in place. We've talked about this many times. This is basically the using the cover of protecting children to implement a digital ID scheme. And to reinforce this, Ofcom has fined Mini Stars Limited because they were not conforming to the requirements to have what they describe as robust age verification in place on their
website. Now this seems to be an only fans competitor so but I've can't find them 10,000 lbs but give them a 3000 LB rebate discount because many stars cooperated with them. So this is like you've had it speeding ticket or something, you know, if you pay within a certain time, you get your get your rebate on it. It's very sporting of them, isn't it?
So not much of A deterrent though, because if you're running a commercial organisation like that, you know, 7000 LB fine isn't really, that's the cost of doing business I would have thought. But anyway, the point here is we shouldn't be separating this from the recent gov.uk announcement of digital ID of digital wallet for digital ID. So let's before we get on to that, let's just have a look at the Ofcom statement to on mini stars.
They said specifically we find that the content of a pornographic nature was available on the platform and accessible to any person who accessed the site, both through short preview videos and following subscription to
particular creators content. We find that self declaration by users that they were over 18 and a general disclaimer within many stars, terms and conditions that the site was only for adults were not appropriate forms of age verification to protect under eighteens from accessing pornographic or other restricted
material. And just to remind everybody, of course, as we just mentioned, the new gov.uk digital wallet just happens to be coming out at around the same time as this age verification requirement and so on. So just coming back to to Trump for a second, as as we mentioned on Wednesdays programme, he issued an executive order removing all government censorship on the social media platforms in the United States of few points to make here.
The first is that, for example, Ivor Kaplan's X profile was full of explicit pornographic content. And so I'm wondering, will this mean that X is going to have to impose this new digital ID regime on because there's plenty of that kind of material on? There well Elon after his visit to Israel, coincidentally, maybe not, but he turned X into one of the largest pornographic platforms in the world. Before that, with the under the Dorsey regime, they had more
strict regulations on porn. Elon basically opened up the floodgates and turned it into a porn fest basically. So they're going to fall foul of a lot of this stuff, especially in Europe, right. So it's. Right. And which cup brings me on to this point? Because as a sort of aside, this is going to result in different censorship regimes in different
parts of the world. And so I wonder is the case, for example, if you're based in the UK or in Europe to, of for incorporating a business in the United States to take advantage of the different regime over there? But the other point that I wanted to make was that while Trump is claiming no government censorship, another of his executive orders seems to be saying, unless you're pro Palestine. So for example, here's the free speech centre Trump executive order on restoring freedom of
speech. And if you read this article, they're talking about that exactly point. This is this exact point. Now you've got some more on this. Well, I think I think we need clarification on this. And Speaking of X, I'll bring this up now. This is also a, a, a tutorial for our viewers at UK column on how to spot fake news. So this is a typical account that Elon promotes and probably pays 5 or 10 grand a month in X monetization global I News.
And with all of these accounts you'll see breaking and then a headline and then jpegs no link to the source. You're just supposed to trust the anonymous sock puppet account. And that's the system that Elon has been promoting since he started the monetization. These are the accounts that get all of the traffic and they make all the money on X monetization. Now, what is he saying?
Donald Trump signs an executive order allowing deportation of foreign students who express support for Maser Hezbollah. Now you're reading that now I, I was shocked by this. Of course, the question is, is it true or is it false? And I fell for this, of course, because I was almost certain that that was the case until I got legal advice from some of our legal experts on X on this. So this is actually false. It's partially true. The nuance of course, is very,
very important here. Let's look at this here now. This is Jen Janine Eunice. She's a lawyer for the new Sub Liberties Alliance. She represented a lot of the Great Barrington Declaration people who also were felt that their liberties were violated during COVID, all the anti lockdown people, Jay Bhattacharia and people like this. So she is a excellent source on this. Let's see what she has to say.
The vaguely worded executive order by Trump actually does not allow for the deportation of students who expressly support these groups of vanishingly few, despite the media will have you believe that conflating pro Palestinian activism with support of Hamas. So she's making a good point there. And she goes on here and she says it also provides for the deportation of foreign students who bear, quote, hostile attitudes towards the US citizens, culture, government institutions or founding
principles. Incredibly vague. This is actually worse than we thought on certain on a certain level here. She says if history is any judge, this executive order will be weaponized against non citizen students who express pro Palestinian views or criticise the Israeli government. And then she goes on. The vague, expansive wording will also mean that it can be used to deport students who criticise the Trump administration, possibly or really express any number of
views. And finally, just to wrap this up here, it is likely to have a severe chilling effect and is inconsistent with the free speech principles, IE the 1st Amendment here. So really important point. Yes, I, I mean, this is something we're saying, but on both sides of the Atlantic, here in the UK, we've been talking about this with the Online Safety Act. The vagueness of the language used, the the fact that it's open to such broad interpretation, it could mean
absolutely anything. And we're seeing this on within Trump's language as well. All of the language with any of the regulations to do with anything on online speech, it's incredibly vague and I will even go so far as to say it almost sounds vacuous, but we'll go on here. Now this is interesting. So this is an important point here. What are we looking at?
Trump's executive order restoring free speech does not revoke the executive order 13899 which he signed in 2019 and which Biden continues, which adopts the IHRA definition of anti semitism under Title 6 of the Civil Rights Act, making criticism of Israel and biblical references as hate speech. So this is still lingering here. There's a copy of the executive order from 2019. Now, how do you enforce that is
another thing. And if the Supreme Court will eventually rule on these cases, it's of course going to get defeated on 1st Amendment grounds. But what sort of hell is it going to create for the life of people who end up falling foul of this? Whether they're students at Harvard University, which we'll come to in a moment and look at this. Harvard adopts a definition of anti semitism for discipline
cases. Now this came out the back of the Palestinian student protests, part of a settlement and two lawsuits filed by Jewish groups that accused the school, Harvard in this case, of not doing enough to prevent and punish anti semitism on campus. They're talking about pro Palestinian human rights protests, which they conflated with pro Hamas. Now, Glenn Greenwald did a really great analysis of this on systems update here. And these are the three main items.
This will get you disciplined or kicked out of Harvard or what and what not. Manifestations might include the targeting of the state of Israel conceived as a Jewish collectivity. Again, very strange language here accusing Jewish students of, sorry, we'll go back, accusing Jewish students of being more loyal to Israel or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide than to the interests
of their own nations. I know people that are like Ben Shapiro are outright declaring their loyalty to Israel over US interests in many cases, and this is, there are many examples of this. So is that no longer? I mean, a lot of people do this from their own foreign countries, but it's not allowed in the case of Israel. So again, this is very selective. And he goes on here denying that Jewish people their right to self determination by claiming that the existence of the state
of Israel is a racist endeavour. OK, Greenwald makes the case that a lot of Americans say the existence of the United States is a racist endeavour, but that's protected speech. Or that the existence of another example, you could say another another state is a racist endeavour.
That's all protected speech. But Israel not protected speech here using symbols and images associated with anti semitism etcetera to characterise Israel or Israelis blood libel or that Jew claims that Jews killed Jesus is blood libel. Well, that's kind of a biblical reference, but you're not allowed to say it in public. I mean, hugely problematic. Finally here, applying double standards by requiring of it a behaviour not expected or demanded of any other democratic
nation. I'm not sure what that means, Mike. And then drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy like genocide to that of the Nazis. That's prohibited speech. So yeah, it's on the student level now at an Ivy League institution, but how long before it becomes national here? And look at this, just days after this ruling, Harvard Medical School cancels a class session with Gazan patients being treated in Boston, calling
it one sided here. Harvard Medical School cancels his lecture, Wartime Healthcare in a subsequent panel discussion with patients from Gaza receiving care in Boston in response to objections that the students would only hear. Gaza's impacted by the war and not Israeli, so they don't have Israeli patients present, so they have to cancel the lecture
basically. So that's what's going on at Harvard University. And in the meantime, we, I think we mentioned it in passing on Wednesday, but we have Elon and his amazing salute. It's a Roman salute, by the way. It's technically this is a Roman salute, not to be confused. Well, it is the same as the Nazi salute, right? Well, it depends. I mean, are we so. So this has unleashed the most the hugest amount of controversy. And he's been trying to double down on this by doing counter mems.
And Elon Musk has been unleashing counter members for the last four days desperately on on X, trying to basically make a joke and say that it's everyone else is doing it, ha ha, ha. But the point is, Mike, and this is the incredible part, the biggest stage in the world, Inauguration Day, the richest man in the world. I mean, you can't think of a worse time. Is he just trolling everyone? I don't think he's trolling. I think people are saying, oh, you got to give him some leeway.
He's autistic, he's got Asperger's, he's on the spectrum. He didn't mean it, but the the reason it's so controversial, let's be honest. Well, we'll look at how the German press is now. When you're getting lambasted by the German press for doing Nazi salutes, it's not good for your public relations. But anyway, a Hitler salute is a Hitler salute is a Hitler salute, says Desit. And this is zit online here.
I can't pronounce that in German, but but anyway, he's getting raked through the coals in Germany. That's also not good because he's also being challenged legally with regards to X under all the different regulations.
So this isn't helping his cause. Plus he's being accused of meddling in the election by pumping, you know, 100 million or whatever he's promising to pump into the Afd war chest for the upcoming German elections and he's demanding policies be implemented and he's talking, he's kind of like doing foreign interference. Basically. This is not helping Elon's case. But why is this so complicated?
Because it actually reveals that his right wing politics and he has adopted an extreme sort of some might say far right flavour of his own politics. This is why this is controversial. He so it's and it's, you know, his backing of Tommy Robinson, his ultra Zionist position with regards to Israel and Palestine. This is why Elon Musk is getting the backlash. So I, I think it's kind of entertaining to watch this unfold because he's really, he'll never be able to outrun this mem.
It's going to be with him for the rest of his life. And he's he thinks he's the troll of trolls and he's constantly trolling people on X and here he is getting hammered and he's desperately trying to undo this. So I think there's kind of an irony and a poetic justice in this. If there's other terms like SHIT Lord, that he's bestowed upon himself as kind of a great Keck, you know, frog God and all this others.
And so now he's basically running scared after the inauguration, desperate to somehow smooth this out. Well, sticking with them for a second, when Trump was announcing his latest executive orders yesterday, during the Q&A afterwards, he was asked about this, this new AI scheme that we were to what was Stargate that they're called, That's not what they're calling it, Project Stargate. And he was talking about, he was asked about Elon Musk and what Elon's views of Project Stargate were.
And, and Trump was very keen to make it clear, well, you know, Elon really hates one of the people involved in that. Who would that be? That would be Sam Altman, the head of Open AI. And is this just jealousy because Sam Altman effectively kicked Elon out of that project? It's that and yeah, it's mainly that. I think it's also the fact that maybe Elon felt like he he had a big ownership stake that was robbed from him by the transition from a foundation not for profit to for profit.
So he kind of missed the boat on that. So there's a real bad blood there. And Sam Altman is very much Israel's guy basically. So, you know, there's. Larry Ellison, of course. Yeah, as is Larry Ellison. So Elon's kind of, you know, the Trump, Elon, Sam Altman. This is a messy area here. I don't know how this is going to end up actually.
Yes. OK. Well, Mark, let's welcome you back to the programme and what's happening because obviously the, the, one of the, the biggest announcements on Monday was the, the whole issue of immigration and the, the border. Now you're only a few miles away from the border. So what are you saying? Well, I'm not seeing much here in South Texas yet.
A quick footnote is I'll be going out in the field as the unseasonably cold weather, yes, even in South Texas, calms down and getting out to the border looking for troops to come down, going to an area West of here where the state of Texas donated land and they're erecting more border wall sections. But anyway, in this first slide here in a relatively brief report today, the left part of this is from the White House
website fact sheet. President Donald J Trump protects the States and the American people by closing the borders to illegals via proclamation. And this is an exact quote from that, although I added some emphasis guaranteeing the state's protection against invasion, which is constitutionally sound.
That's what the federal government is supposed to do today, the 22nd of January. In this case, President Trump signed an EO that suspends the physical entry of aliens engaged in an invasion of the United States through the southern border. Of course, he declared in a national emergency with regards to the porous border and he is redesignating the cartels as terrorist organisations, which you think would have been would have been done a long time ago.
And anyway, this goes on to say in joining the Union, the states agreed to surrender much of their sovereignty in exchange for the federal government's promise in Article 4, Section 4 of the US Constitution to protect each of the states against invasion. Most of that is correct. The federal government is on call to protect the several states against invasion, but it's very, very questionable that the states surrendered much of their sovereignty in the
process of doing that. It was really more of a partnership where the federal government, if needed, would aid the states in protecting their borders from whatever invasive thing might be going on. Anyway, just to clarify that. Now to move on. Even the BBC got involved here and they're noting that reportedly 1500 active duty troops are headed to the US Mexico border. 22nd of January, Trump told U.S. government agencies to prepare to immediately repel, repatriate and remove undocumented
immigrants. Trump's order comes as U.S. officials announced the deployment of additional active duty troops to the border and as processes that allow swift
deportations are expanded. The US also moved to cancel all refugee travel and processing and many other sources have confirmed this, leaving thousands stranded as they want to come to the US. The Remain in Mexico policy is being restored for those seeking asylum, which should have should should never have been disbanded anyway, White House press secretary Carolyn Leavitt said. Trump is sending a very strong message to people around the world with these actions.
Now, this tends to corroborate what the Northside GOP with whom I spoke last year. You might recall, Mike, they're a Northside Chicago group and they had Tom Holman at that time, the incoming borders are they had him speak at one of their functions. And I got an original video from that function of Tom Holman addressing that group. And what Dave Nyack shared with me last night, he's from the
Northside GOP. He and I had a long conversation last night on the phone and he sent me these samples of this is
the 40th Ward in this slide. These are from the 40th Ward, Chicago Alderman Andre Vasquez. And just like the city of Chicago itself, he's publishing information to help the illegal immigrants and really overlooking the rights and concerns that are of those who are concerned, rather overlooking the rights and concerns of those who are very worried about the criminal element coming into the country from illegal immigration. And those two Flyers I showed are from that 40th Ward Alderman.
And it offers support, logistics support, where people can go to learn more about their rights if they're confronted by ICE and things like that. So a lot of Chicagoans are upset. Dave Nyack is telling me about the city being so biassed and only helping the illegal immigrants and not standing up for those that are concerned about the crime that sometimes stems from illegal immigration. Anyway, I've got a little bit of footage here as I talk.
This is some footage I shot recently in Alamo, TX. These are fence sections. They're sometimes called bollards, and they're stacked by the thousands in Alamo, TX, about 5 miles West of where I'm sitting. And then in Pharr, TX, there's even more of them that's spelled PHARRA, little further to the West, both in Hidalgo County bordering Mexico. These were taken down or never erected, whichever it was when Biden came into the White House.
And a lot of people in my neck of the woods are waiting to see if these bollards are going to be removed. They're a bit of an eyesore along business 83. They're rusting a bit. And a lot of people are. They want to see them either out of there for whatever reason, but preferably to have them re erected and become part of the border security project. At any rate, a border wall. The border wall was reported on here by borderreport.com.
That's a local blog, and it notes that piles of rusted border bollards are stacked high in several holding yards throughout this Rio Grande Valley. But AUS Customs and Border Protection official recently told Border Report that this material, and this is notable, will not be auctioned off. The CBPCBP, excuse me, official said the panels in Texas are not related to the ongoing sale of similar fence sections in Arizona.
That's because CBP owns the material in Texas, meaning the federal government, and it is used for border security initiatives. So that's at least an early indication that these wall sections will be re erected. Meanwhile, the state of Texas, the land office donated a bunch of land near Rio Grande City, about an hour West of where I'm at. And the border wall is actually being erected there on that state donated land.
And what I'm expecting is some of these sections will probably augment that on that land or nearby. So that's the latest going on. There's a lot of apprehension in Chicago and many, many other cities across the country, Mike, where they're bracing for ICE to come in and arrest illegal immigrants, starting with the ones that are accused of serious crimes. And already about 500 arrests of those suspected of those serious crimes have reportedly been made. And as we speak, those arrests
are going on day by day. So that's what's that's what's going on there. Thank you, Mark. Thank you for that. Now, Debbie, let's come back to you and well, the question what's the DWP up to? Well, yeah, this is the problem. See, there's so much news going on and I just want everyone to know that I'm trying to cover as much as I can because the Climate and nature bills in Parliament today as well. But let's look at DWP. So there's going to be big changes.
Here we've got Big Brother Watch, we stop the government from spying on our bank accounts. Everything that you've been speaking about, Mike, a digital ID. And also notice this article in the Telegraph where anybody suspected of benefit cheating will have their driving licence removed. But it doesn't stop there because DWP of course, intrinsically linked to the departments of health and there's going to be big changes in February 2025.
We're going to be looking at them in in a lot more detail. But the changes in personal independence payment, which were a lifeline to the vaccine injured could be about to go. And I have to ask, is this going to be again digital access only? Are you going to have to submit your biometric data, your one app to get your benefits? More to come and I'm sure very soon. I'm quite certain certain it is
going to be digital access only. I I did have a laugh earlier this week saying the HMRC trying to deny that they are deliberately providing a poor phone service because that was the accusation against them. I am certain that's exactly what's going on because this is part of the whole behavioural change effort to get people onto digital platforms despite the sort of friction that inevitably, you know, older people in particular are going to have for doing that.
Mark, let's end the programme with a little bit of video of Joe Biden. Just introduce this. Well, in the tradition of Dwight D Eisenhower, Joe Biden decided to give his you know, we're we're being taken over by a military industrial complex speech. In his case, he's calling it a wealthy semi hidden oligarchy. So after 50 years of misgovernance, you might say by Joe Biden, including as vice president, not just in Congress and now as recently as president, after all that time,
he wanted to accent his legacy. Put a cherry on top, I guess, with this Warnus of the oligarchy speech. And in this particular segment that I chose, he makes a statement that really shows what a sham this is. Let's go ahead and listen. You know, his farewell address, President Eisenhower spoke of the dangers of the military industrial complex. He warned us then about, and I quote, the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power. End of quote.
Six days, six decades later, I'm equally concerned about the potential rise of a tech industrial complex. It could pose real dangers for our country as well. The Americans are being buried under an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation enabling the abuse of power. The Free Press is crumbling. Editors are disappearing. Social media is giving up on fact checking. The truth is smothered by lies.
Toll for power and for profit. We must hold the social platforms accountable to protect our children, our families in a very democracy from the abuse of power. I have to say there's a massive irony and and Joe Biden suggesting we've got to protect children, but that's maybe for for another conversation some other time. But but Mark, we'll talk about that much more in extra. I just thought we should end the programme with a final effort from Joe Biden to actually get a speech out.
Nearly a lucid moment. Nearly a lucid, But he'll be retired to the Hall of Presidents at Walt Disney World in Orlando, FL as an animatronic participant in that great lineup. Absolutely right. We we got to leave it there. Thank you very much to Ruth for joining us today. Thank you, Debbie and Mark and Patrick And stay with us if you're UK column member for UK column News Extra in a few minutes. See you then. Bye bye.