Mike Robinson, Patrick Henningsen and Vanessa Beeley with today’s UK Column News.
Economy: still not recovered from 2008
00:19 ONS says British GDP down 0.2% last quarter
Chancellor (finance minister) Jeremy Hunt says he is "under no illusion that there is a tough road ahead"
03:11 RT: Global markets rally as China eases Covid restrictions — one area in which China can alleviate its downturn
Ukraine: So much is PR at this point
05:30 Sunak-Zelensky confab
Defence Secretary Ben Wallace announces hundreds (not thousands) more surface-to-air missiles for Kiev
Token arms shipments by Joint Expeditionary Force: Nordic countries, Netherlands, Baltic Republics and Britain
US big-ticket aid, such as HIMARS, will be on rolling back order for a year or two
09:05 Pennsky and Zelensky: Award for best actor in a proxy war — Sean Penn gifts his Oscar to Zelensky
Newly-ripped Penn has a very extensive history of turning up in the right place at the right time for the oligarchs
Clip: Preening presentation of the gilded figurine to the Taupe T-shirted One: “When you win, bring it back to Malibu”
Penn a "Covid-19 celebrity humanitarian"
March 2022 article by Josh Rogin in Washington Post: Syrian White Helmets raring for Ukrainian action
Article imminent by Vanessa Beeley on leaked documents indicating Canadian interest in funding a White Helmets operation for (but presumably not in) Ukraine
Some of the footage from Ukraine found to have been real-time fake attacks, just as in Syria
Kosovo connections also abundant between Syrian and Ukrainian ends of the White Helmets agenda
15:32 Britain surges to £18.3 billion in sanctions on Russia: indicative of bifurcation of entire global economy
HM Treasury Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (OFSI) issues annual review including that sum
68% drop in Russian goods: does Britain want to be in the red or in the black?
Patrick Henningsen commentary: Russia is a key supplier to many sectors worldwide
It costs up to four times the Russian price for American LNG to be transported intercontinentally: can the First World run on that — or is the idea that it will stop being the First World?
Levant caught up in Israel-Iran adversity
18:27 Wall Street Journal: Attack on Iranian convoy at Syrian border
Usual claim from Tel Aviv that the tankers were carrying weaponry; they were actually carrying much-needed oil for Lebanon
Significant death toll in the Israeli attack
Vanessa Beeley's assessment: Lebanon and Syria economically on a par; Lebanon doing far worse than Syria financially
UK Column mentions
20:41 Children's Health Defense EU — 14 November — Hands Off Our Children: starts at 9 am UK time
US midterms: Embarrassing aftermath
21:48 Senate elections: Most results now in
Predicted red wave (swing to Republicans) turned out to be a red ripple
Slow-walking the vote count in western swing states of Nevada (likely to go to Republicans) and Arizona (possibly to go to Democrats)
Runoff due on 6 December in Georgia
Massive implications for US foreign and domestic policy
House elections: results of 26 Congressional district seats still outstanding, from Maine and western states
Bad news for Democrats: Biden more likely to be hobbled in second half of his term
Gubernatorial elections: again, Arizona and Nevada yet to declare, along with Alaska
Arizona has a Democrat-run voting system that means it now has Election Week or even Election Month, no longer Election Day
Chaos with vote-counting machines — curiously, mostly in Republican-dominated precincts (constituencies)
The Federalist: Arizona's elections are an international embarrassment
Oddly enough, the state election commissioner’s name is Bill Gates
“Election deniers” vindicated by the Arizona débâcle
28:55 Clip: Kari Lake (neck-and-neck Republican candidate for Arizona governorship) tells Newsmax's John Bachman Now that walk-in votes by the distrustful, last to be counted, are likely to be heavily in her favour: “We can’t have Arizona constantly holding up the [national] election results”
Truckloads of ballots still arriving at Arizona count centres; not known how many valid ballots are still waiting to be counted; huge scope for fraud
Arizona scrapped requirement to vote in local precincts in favour of unwieldy centralised voting hubs “because of Covid”
Ohio: huge swing to Republicans with election of a new breed of young intellectuals typified by J.D. Vance
US midterms: No representation without exhumation
34:28 Florida: unprecedented and rapid landslide to Republicans
Anti-lockdown Governor Ron DeSantis roundly re-elected
Patrick Henningsen analysis: Florida, with its large number of Electoral College votes, is no longer a swing state
Latinos becoming markedly more Republican in Florida and Texas
In four heretofore swing states that are good for over 100 Electoral College votes for the presidency, the young are turning highly conservative
37:10 Clip: De Santis comes out swinging against woke ideology in his victory speech (as did Kristi Noem in hers in South Dakota):
“So many jurisdictions across America withered on the vine; millions are leaving them; Florida is where woke goes to die”
Tablet: It is clear that progressivism is now quite dead
Nigel Farage predicts “titanic clash” between Trump and DeSantis in the post-midterms Republican Party
41:56 He being dead yet sitteth — in Congress
Pennsylvania: Mentally disabled John Fetterman wins senatorial race
At state level, Tony DeLuca got elected in Pennsylvania even though he died before election day
His party caucus in the state house tweets a mockery of the ballot
Dead men legislating is an animatronic American trend long enough for a Newsweek list
Another example from San Diego, California: Chula Vista district looks due to elect the deceased Simon Silva
Patrick Henningsen commentary: A cynical strategy — but completely legal, and one practised more than once in this election cycle
46:42 Biden the ultimate lame duck in the latter half of his term — but mainstream journalists hail his resurrection
Clip: Will Biden change any of his woke policies? Biden answers: “Nothing; I’m not going to change anything”
Republican-controlled House: A referendum on Trumpism
49:27 Implications of President Biden's party losing control of the lower House of Congress
Investigations now likely: Hunter Biden (laptop data on China), FBI, Big Tech censorship, Covid (but this latter could turn into a damp squib)
Could the FBI be broken up or scrapped altogether for its manifold sins?
Impeachment of Biden quite possible in the House, even if not carried through in the Senate
Health: Rochelle Walensky could be chopped from CDC
Economy: no more quantitative easing (giant spending) bills, to control inflation
Energy: “green” and Great Reset policies could be reined in
Ukraine: no more blank cheques; every penny spent so far could be audited; keener pursuit of diplomacy
Clip: Biden’s response to prospect of his son being investigated in Congress: “Lots of luck in your senior years … It’s comedy”
Clip: Zelensky going on PR offensive with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour; seems seriously worried that the money tap could be shut off
Unclear issue: Where is the US money for Ukraine ending up? Switzerland, or further afield?
Media control: From tight to vice-like
58:24 Richard D. Hall maligning by BBC: The UK terror survivors tracked down by ‘disaster trolls’ penned by Marianna Spring
Vanessa Beeley analysis: Richard D. Hall instrumentalised to push through British state crackdown
BBC is fighting back precisely because it grudgingly accepts that through our work, new media have acquired influence
Connection to Alex Jones case: “abuse of victims” trope brings us back to “online harms” talking point
Marianna Spring carefully writes that Richard Hall “inspires” others and thus “echoes” Alex Jones
1:03:00 The King’s College London node of antidisinformationism
Vanessa Beeley commentary: Consistent drive to discredit those undermining the UK Government’s role in destabilising Syria
Always supposedly the truth (with definite article) that is under attack
Who is Prof. Bobby Duffy, Director of The Policy Institute at King’s? Professor of Public Policy and Director of the Policy Institute; was Blair’s man at Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit; seems very well connected to British government circles
1:07:40 Reclaim The Net: Facebook to censor climate facts
Vast majority of the public accept the reality of terrorist attacks in the UK — but notable minorities say they struggle to know the truth
That wording reveals that growing numbers refuse to believe the government line on virtually anything
Vanessa Beeley analysis: Who are the sceptics in Britain? The politically disengaged; more generally, those who get their news from social media
Demonisation of Telegram a symptom of our being corralled into ever narrower forums where subjects can be discussed freely
Vanessa Beeley commentary: Climate hysteria now key to narrative because it is primed to replace the flunked two-year-long Covid narrative
Upshot: Social media being blamed for public distrust in systematically-lying government
37% now believe there is a deep state
34% say the pandemic has made them more suspicious of official explanations of terror attacks — a statistic that can be read in many ways
Demographic differences between the groups: a nod to the "white nationalists" scapegoat of convenience
1:11:16 Twitter: a train wreck of a company
New owner Elon Musk foresees bankruptcy unless many are laid off from Twitter
Analysis: This reveals that Twitter has effectively been a heavily-subsidised, loss-leading political project for years; massive censorship farm, digital public square, honeypot operation
Even Tucker Carlson has been “fact-checked” for his reporting on the Arizona election
Twitter proven multiple times to have been working directly with government agencies
Patrick Henningsen commentary: If Musk manages to turn it around, Twitter can certainly become a multi-trillion-dollar company
Musk’s ultimate goal is reflotation, not free speech
And Finally: Raine's Cartoon Time
1:14:21 MHRA thinks we’re three years old
Lurid lolling legumes cutely clutch their bellies: the British pharmaceutical regulator’s way of talking to the public about serious vaccine adverse reactions
MHRA’s own Yellow Card website is here; UK Column's is here
And yet: a second Pfizer/BioNTech bivalent jab is approved
“No new safety concerns identified” — because, of course, the MHRA hasn’t actively looked for any
While UK Column News was on air, Patient Safety Commissioner Dr Henrietta Hughes tweeted this on Yellow Card system