Category: zerohedge

Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Asia Times,

“When the European Union speaks as a superior, Russia wants to know: Can we do any business with the EU?“

Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s Foreign Minister, is the world’s foremost diplomat. The son of an Armenian father and a Russian mother, he’s just on another level altogether. Here, once again, we may be able to see why.

Let’s start with the annual meeting of the Valdai Club, Russia’s premier think tank. Here we may follow the must-watch presentation of the Valdai annual report on “The Utopia of a Diverse World”, featuring, among others, Lavrov, John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, Dominic Lieven of the University of Cambridge and Yuri Slezkine of UCLA/Berkeley.

It’s a rarity to be able to share what amounts to a Himalayan peak in terms of serious political debate. We have, for instance, Lieven – who, half in jest, defined the Valdai report as “Tolstoyian, a little anarchical” – focusing on the current top two, great interlocking challenges: climate change and the fact that “350 years of Western and 250 years of Anglo-American predominance are coming to an end.”

As we see the “present world order fading in front of our eyes”, Lieven notes a sort of “revenge of the Third World”. But then, alas, Western prejudice sets in all over again, as he defines China reductively as a “challenge”.

Mearsheimer neatly remembers we have lived, successively, under a bipolar, unipolar and now multipolar world: with China, Russia and the US, “Great Power Politics is back on the table.”

He correctly assesses that after the dire experience of the “century of humiliation, the Chinese will make sure they are really powerful.” And that will set the stage for the US to deploy a “highly-aggressive containment policy”, just like it did against the USSR, that “may well end up in a shooting match”.

“I trust Arnold more than the EU”

Lavrov, in his introductory remarks, had explained that in realpolitik terms, the world “cannot be run from one center alone.” He took time to stress the “meticulous, lengthy and sometimes ungrateful” work of diplomacy.

It was later, in one of his interventions, that he unleashed the real bombshell (starting at 1:15:55; in Russian, overdubbed in English): “When the European Union is speaking as a superior, Russia wants to know, can we do any business with Europe?”

He mischievously quotes Schwarzenegger, “who in his movies always said ‘Trust me’. So I trust Arnold more than the European Union”.

And that leads to the definitive punch line: “The people who are responsible for foreign policy in the West do not understand the necessity of mutual respect in dialogue. And then probably for some time we have to stop talking to them.” After all, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen had stated, on the record, that for the EU, “there is no geopolitical partnership with modern Russia”.

Lavrov went even further in a stunning, wide-ranging interview with Russian radio stations whose translation deserves to be carefully read in full.

Here is just one of the most crucial snippets:

Lavrov: “No matter what we do, the West will try to hobble and restrain us, and undermine our efforts in the economy, politics, and technology. These are all elements of one approach.”

Question: “Their national security strategy states that they will do so.”

Lavrov: “Of course it does, but it is articulated in a way that decent people can still let go unnoticed, but it is being implemented in a manner that is nothing short of outrageous.”

Question: You, too, can articulate things in a way that is different from what you would really like to say, correct?”

Lavrov: “It’s the other way round. I can use the language I’m not usually using to get the point across. However, they clearly want to throw us off balance, and not only by direct attacks on Russia in all possible and conceivable spheres by way of unscrupulous competition, illegitimate sanctions and the like, but also by unbalancing the situation near our borders, thus preventing us from focusing on creative activities. Nevertheless, regardless of the human instincts and the temptations to respond in the same vein, I’m convinced that we must abide by international law.”

Moscow stands unconditionally by international law – in contrast with the proverbial “rules of the liberal international order” jargon parroted by NATO and its minions such as the Atlantic Council.

And here it is all over again, a report extolling NATO to “Ramp Up on Russia”, blasting Moscow’s “aggressive disinformation and propaganda campaigns against the West, and unchecked adventurism in the Middle East, Africa, and Afghanistan.”

The Atlantic Council insists on how those pesky Russians have once again defied “the international community by using an illegal chemical weapon to poison opposition leader Alexei Navalny. NATO’s failure to halt Russia’s aggressive behavior puts the future of the liberal international order at risk.”

Only fools falling for the blind leading the blind syndrome don’t know that these liberal order “rules” are set by the Hegemon alone, and can be changed in a flash according to the Hegemon’s whims.

So it’s no wonder a running joke in Moscow is “if you don’t listen to Lavrov, you will listen to Shoigu.” Sergey Shoigu is Russia’s Minister of Defense, supervising all those hypersonic weapons the US industrial-military complex can only dream about.

The crucial point is even with so much NATO-engendered hysteria, Moscow could not give a damn because of its de facto military supremacy. And that freaks Washington and Brussels out even more.

What’s left is Hybrid War eruptions following the RAND corporation-prescribed non-stop harassment and “unbalancing” of Russia, in Belarus, the southern Caucasus and Kyrgyzstan – complete with sanctions on Lukashenko and on Kremlin officials for the Navalny “poisoning”.

“You do not negotiate with monkeys”

What Lavrov just made it quite explicit was a long time in the making. “Modern Russia” and the EU were born almost at the same time. On a personal note, I experienced it in an extraordinary fashion. “Modern Russia” was born in December 1991 – when I was on the road in India, then Nepal and China. When I arrived in Moscow via the Trans-Siberian in February 1992, the USSR was no more. And then, flying back to Paris, I arrived at a European Union born in that same February.

One of Valdai’s leaders correctly argues that the daring concept of a “Europe stretching from Lisbon to Vladivostok” coined by Gorbachev in 1989, right before the collapse of the USSR, unfortunately “had no document or agreement to back it up.”

And yes, “Putin searched diligently for an opportunity to implement the partnership with the EU and to further rapprochement. This continued from 2001 until as late as 2006.”

We all remember when Putin, in 2010, proposed exactly the same concept, a common house from Lisbon to Vladivostok, and was flatly rebuffed by the EU. It’s very important to remember this was four years before the Chinese would finalize their own concept of the New Silk Roads.

Afterwards, the only way was down. The final Russia-EU summit took place in Brussels in January 2014 – an eternity in politics.

The fabulous intellectual firepower gathered at the Valdai is very much aware that the Iron Curtain 2.0 between Russia and the EU simply won’t disappear.

And all this while the IMF, The Economist and even that Thucydides fallacy proponent admit that China is already, in fact, the world’s top economy.

Russia and China share an enormously long border. They are engaged in a complex, multi-vector “comprehensive strategic partnership”. That did not develop because the estrangement between Russia and the EU/NATO forced Moscow to pivot East, but mostly because the alliance between the world’s neighboring top economy and top military power makes total Eurasian sense – geopolitically and geoeconomically.

And that totally corroborates Lieven’s diagnosis of the end of “250 years of Anglo-American predominance.”

It was up to inestimable military analyst Andrey Martyanov, whose latest book I reviewed as a must read, to come up with the utmost deliciously devastating assessment of Lavrov’s “We had enough” moment:

“Any professional discussion between Lavrov and former gynecologist [actually epidemiologist] such as von der Leyen, including Germany’s Foreign Minister Maas, who is a lawyer and a party worm of German politics is a waste of time. Western “elites” and “intellectuals” are simply on a different, much lower level, than said Lavrov. You do not negotiate with monkeys, you treat them nicely, you make sure that they are not abused, but you don’t negotiate with them, same as you don’t negotiate with toddlers. They want to have their Navalny as their toy – let them. I call on Russia to start wrapping economic activity up with EU for a long time. They buy Russia’s hydrocarbons and hi-tech, fine. Other than that, any other activity should be dramatically reduced and necessity of the Iron Curtain must not be doubted anymore.”

As much as Washington is not “agreement-capable”, in the words of President Putin, so is the EU, says Lavrov:

“We should stop to orient ourselves toward European partners and care about their assessments.”

Not only Russia knows it: the overwhelming majority of the Global South also knows it.

In what is perhaps yet another signal of end times upon us, an asteroid that is the “size of London’s Big Ben clock tower” is going to fly past the Earth tonight, moments after the end of the next Presidential debate. 

It’ll pass the Earth safely on Thursday at 10:49PM EST, Fox News reports. 

The asteroid is called 2020 TGI and is traveling at an estimated 30,700 miles per hour. It’s going to miss the Earth by about 7 million miles. 

It had recently come close to the Earth on April 20, 2013 and won’t make its way back around again until Feburary 6, 2024. It is estimated that the asteroid is between 154 and 360 feet wide. “Potentially hazardous” near Earth objects are defined as those who come within 0.05 astronomical and measure over 460 feet in diameter. 

There’s currently more than 18,000 of these near Earth objects. 

One asteroid “the size of a pickup truck” passed the Earth by just 2,000 miles in August. It was the closest call ever recorded and NASA didn’t notice the object until after it had passed the Earth. In 2018, the agency put together a plan for the Earth to better prepare itself against near Earth objects. 

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said in 2019 that an asteroid strike was the possibly the planet’s biggest threat. The topic of asteroids and other existential threats, including volcanos, pandemics and earthquakes, was also discussed last week on a podcast with University of South Florida professor Dr. Marc J. Defant. 

But with the way the year has been going, we’re sure there’s plenty of people out there with their fingers crossed that the asteroid will change paths and finally put an end to it all…

Authored by Mohammad Musharraf via CoinTelegraph.com,

The German central bank is considering alternatives to CBDC as a digital payment solutions…

image courtesy of CoinTelegraph

Burkhard Balz, a German politician and executive board member of the country’s central bank, said in a speech on Oct. 20 that it was crucial to build tools to restrict how the digital euro is used upon launch.

Balz emphasized that people should only be able to use the central bank-backed digital euro as a mode of payment and not as a store of value.

If the central bank digital currency has the same characteristics as traditional money, depositors could withdraw their funds in times of a crisis by converting it into digital euros, making the funds a liability for the central bank.

“This might lead to the structural disintermediation of the banking sector and, as a consequence, could potentially dampen the provision of bank credit to the economy,” Balz warned.

As a measure to prevent a digital bank run, Balz suggested that central banks may limit the amount of digital euros users can hold at any given time. Or, he said, banks could control demand for the digital euro by introducing incentives based on tiered remuneration, further adding:

“I am not so sure whether incentives could, in reality, prevent a digital bank run. Therefore, the technical implementation of CBDC would need to be thoroughly thought over and tested.”

Balz also stated that, while the Deutsche Bundesbank was deeply involved in discussions surrounding CBDC, it is also looking for alternative digital payment solutions so that the need to introduce a CBDC could be prevented along with the undesirable implications related to it. To that end, he said that the central bank is also considering the ways in which it may link blockchain-based solutions and smart contracts with conventional payment systems.

In July, Balz said during a parliamentary session that cryptocurrencies were not currently a threat to financial stability. However, he added that they could be dangerous if they “fall outside the scope of regulators’ authority or where there is an absence of international standards.”

Today in “things our government is preoccupied with while a second economic stimulus check remains unfinished” news…

NASA has tapped Finland’s Nokia to build the first ever cellular network on the moon. The network is going to be part of NASA’s plan to return humans to the moon by 2024, CBC notes.

The network is also part of a plan to build “long-term settlements” on the moon after returning. Nokia says the network will be built on the lunar surface in late 2022, before humans even return. 

The goal is to have a lunar base built by 2028 and “eventually sustain a human presence” on the moon, according to CNN. NASA has awarded over $370 million to a dozen companies to start putting the infrastructure necessary in place. 

Nokia plans on building the network by partnering with Intuitive Machines and delivering network equipment to the moon that will “configure itself” and establish an LTE network there.

“The network will provide critical communication capabilities for many different data-transmission applications,” Nokia said. 

“[This is] including vital command and control functions, remote control of lunar rovers, real-time navigation and streaming of high definition video,” Nokia continued.

“Nokia’s LTE network – the precursor to 5G – is ideally suited for providing wireless connectivity for any activity that astronauts need to carry out, enabling voice and video communications capabilities, telemetry and biometric data exchange, and deployment and control of robotic and sensor payloads.”

Via AlMasdarNews.com,

A satellite image captured earlier this year revealed the presence of several Russian-made MiG-29 jets at an airbase in Armenia.

According to the Russian publication Avia.Pro, a satellite image confirmed that recently up to 13 MiG-29 fighter jets believed to be part of the Russian Aerospace Forces were stationed at a military airport in Yerevan that in the past was known to host Russian military aerial exercises. 

“The Russian Aerospace Forces transferred at least 13 MiG-29 fighters to the territory of Armenia, as seen by satellite images of the Erebuni military airbase,” Avia.Pro reported.

“We are talking specifically about Russian combat aircraft, since officially the MiG-29 fighters are not in service with the Armenian Air Force,” they continued.

As shown in the satellite image provided by Avia.Pro, there are not only 13 MiG-29 jets, but also several helicopters, which the publication says likely belong to the Russian Air Force.

Via Avia.Pro: A satellite image taken earlier this year reveals the presence of 13 Russian-made MiG-29 jets. 12 of the MiG-29 jets are lined up side-by-side, while the 13th aircraft can be seen near the hangar in the photo.

#Armenia #Azerbaijan #NagornoKarabakh #RuAF MiG-29’s flying over #Yerevan, the Armenian capital. There is a Russian base nearby at the airport pic.twitter.com/3CIzetUjCJ

— Tony (@Cyberspec1) September 28, 2020

It should be noted that while Russia and Armenia currently have a defense pact, Moscow has refrained from getting militarily involved in the Karabakh conflict due to their relations with Azerbaijan.

The recent near-death experience of China’s most-indebted property developer, China Evergrande, which obtained a last minute liquidity injection, sparked speculation whether Beijing will ease on its recent debt curbs and ongoing deleveraging approach. The answer appears to be no, because according to Reuters, Chinese regulators have asked the country’s property developers to provide more details about their debts than markets had expected, as authorities look to tackle unbridled borrowing in the real estate sector.

Dubbed “the three red lines”, regulators outlined caps on debt-to-cash, debt-to-assets and debt-to-equity ratios at a meeting in Beijing in August between 12 major property developers and officials from the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development and the People’s Bank of China. The twelve companies, which collectively account for 28% of the homes sold in the country so far this year – and as a reminder, China’s real estate sector is where the bulk of China’s middle class has parked its net worth – were selected for a pilot debt reduction scheme as policymakers look to reduce broader financial risks.

As a result of the new policy, developers’ annual debt growth will be effectively capped to around 15%.

While property sources had said they expected a rush to get around the rules by moving more debt off balance sheets, in a form that developers were asked to submit every month, the companies are also being asked for details on items outside the usual financing channels like bank loans and bond issuance. They will need to provide debt figures on off-balance sheet projects.

According to Reuters, other debt information requested include details on projects that give a financial entity guaranteed returns and buy-back agreements – essentially a debt disguised as equity, as well as the amount of securitization of receivables in the supply chain. In short, Beijing wants a full accounting of everything going on at local developers.

“The government is monitoring everything now, unless you want to cheat, but they will be able to tell from your monthly figures,” said a senior executive at one of the developers in the pilot scheme.

Following concerns of too much developer leverage sparked by Evergrande’s liquidity crisis, Chinese media reported that the cap for the debt-to-assets ratio will be set at 70%, the cap for net debt to equity will be set at 100% and the developers should also have enough cash to match their short-term liabilities. While authorities have yet to announcement details of the implementation, the industry expects the rules to be applied sector-wide in the first half of next year.

As we reported last month, the massively indebted China Evergrande Group, the country’s second largest property developer, has been among those scrambling to raise money, with fears of a cash-crunch sending its shares and bonds skidding last month.

If these reports of leverage crackdown are accurate, it could pose a systemic risk to China’s most important industry: according to analysts at ANZ, about one-fifth of real estate companies with China A-shares have leverage ratios exceeding the thresholds. They warn that a sharp reduction in leverage “could rattle credit markets and weigh heavily on the property sector”, a key driver behind China’s swift economic recovery from the coronavirus crisis.

In a note published two weeks ago, SocGen China anlyst Wei Yao wrote that “a new chapter of deleveraging has begun”:

A succession of events in the past few weeks have pushed the debt risk of China’s real estate sector to the forefront. Markets were at one point deeply concerned about the default risk of Evergrande, China’s biggest property developer. And even worse–the risk of a systemic debt crisis that could follow. This situation, while still developing, has calmed somewhat. However, this is probably really only the beginning of a new deleveraging campaign.

It all started with the government’s proposal to contain developers’ leverage. On 20 August, the PBoC and the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development (MOHURD) held a meeting with key real estate companies where policymakers proposed the so-called “three red lines” framework for monitoring debt risk and reducing leverage in the sector. According to media reports, the “three  red  lines” were drawn up based on three financial metrics, including 1) the debt-to-asset ratio, 2) the net debt ratio,and 3) cash flows to short-term debt ratio.

Future debt growth of real estate companies will be restricted in various degrees based on their current leverage as measured by  these metrics (see the table below). In  the harshest scenario, a developer will not be allowed to raise any more debt. Based on its current financial situation, Evergrande would in fact fall into this category.

This sudden deleveraging pressure has already proved to be very real and material. So much so, in fact, that less than two weeks  after the August proposal surfaced, Evergrande started to offer aggressive discounts to boost sales and cash flows – as it is limited how much new debt it can raise – and culminated with the company’s liquidity crisis in late September, when news broke hat Evergrande had asked for financial assistance from the government with a warning of possible systemic risk in the case of inaction, which immediately triggered sharp risk-off both onshore and offshore in both equity and credit markets. Though Evergrande later denied this claim, financial markets did not calm down until the developer secured some relief from its investors on 29 September (more in the full timeline below):

As SocGen’s Yao warns, if the proposal is implemented to its full extent, “it would construe a significant deleveraging push on the whole sector.” According to Bloomberg’s analysis of 180 listed property companies, 8% of them are in the red group, 15% are in the orange, 30% in the yellow and less than half, or 47% in the green category.

Therefore, well over half of the combined balance sheet of the entire real estate sector would face material deleveraging pressure over the medium term.

Meanwhile, Yao also cautions that while the Evergrande risk may or may not have been completely resolved, “this incident certainly does not mark the end of the housing sector deleveraging” and in fact quite the opposite:

these events have steeled the resolve of policymakers’ to push ahead with their deleveraging agenda, as they have laid bare the financial fragility of this sector and offered policymakers a glimpse of the magnitude of the threat that such fragility could pose to  the financials ystem.

Of course, deleveraging – especially in such a debt-reliant nation as China – is another word for contraction, and since tens of trillions of mainland household net worth are housed, so to speak, in China’s housing sector which has served as a remarkable ponzi scheme in recent years, failing to slow down even during domestic crises, the lack of unbridled developer debt issuance and new growth, could have catastrophic consequences on the broader economy.

Pan Gongsheng, a PBOC vice governor, told a forum in Beijing on Wednesday the central bank has the draft of an overall assessment over property financing ready and it will make a public announcement at the right time, without further elaboration.

Authored by Konrad Rękas via GlobalResearch.ca,

Support for the independence of Scotland has been growing steadily and has remained at 58% for several months. As the latest poll adds, as many as one third of those voting against independence in the 2014 referendum – would support a divorce from the UK today. The key to achieving this goal will be the Scottish Parliament elections next year.

The Scots Parliament consists of 129 members – 73 are elected in single-member constituencies and 56 come from regional lists, 7 from each of the 8 constituencies into which Scotland has been divided more or less according to traditional geography. This system was intended to ensure a balance between a strong majority of the winning party and the proportional representation of the remaining ones.

And as with everything in Scotland – the general assumption had to give way to the most important issue: does it help or harm The Independence cause?

Three Brakes on Independence

A country whose inhabitants in last few decades have never given the Conservative party a majority – for the last 13 years is ruled by the Scottish National Party. And, as it happens in such situations – some like it, others less, some like SNP definitely progressive course, others just grit their teeth, because it is our party, and the time for divisions and programs after regaining independence will come. However, it is not the sympathy for the SNP or the lack of it that is combined with the problem of taking this completely last step, which the Scots have to make to regain their own state.

In fact, this process is hampered by three factors. First, that is the Party’s institutionalization, and paradoxically, its continued successes and growing support.

Since Scots who want independence feel obliged to vote for the SNP regardless of whether they support individual elements of its policy – it is not difficult to guess that the party elite must have sprouted the idea of independence as the Holy Grail, which everyone is constantly looking for, which is constantly pursued, but which is really better never to find.

Thousands of Scottish independence supporters march through Glasgow during an All Under One Banner march on January 11, 2020 in Glasgow, Scotland.  (Photo by Ewan Bootman/NurPhoto)

The party feels… just too comfortable. It ossifies, has lost its dynamics, and in addition, the SNP has inevitably become the property of its own apparatus, and the party leader, Scottish First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, flanked by her own husband, Peter Murrel, who is the Party’s Chief Executive Officer (i.e. the head of this apparatus) hardly accepts differences of opinion or even any more capable personality in her surroundings.

In addition, the Scottish National Party (which has been a kind of national Social Democracy since the 1980s) is shifting more and more clearly towards the Social-Liberalism agenda, typical for Western democracies, focusing on moral issues, the LGBT question (?), the fight against “hate speech“, while maintaining an active social policy, but too left-wing for the local middle class, and too conservative and too submissive towards possessing class from the point of view of genuine socialists. Finally, all this is poured with preaching principledness (according to observers aggravating Scottish politics since John Knox), as a result of which all national Government strategies bear the mark of “moral rightness” (as in the case of the unequivocal commitment of most SNP against BREXIT, and recently a fierce anti-COVID campaign performed by Ms First Minister).

As far as it all is concerned it cannot be surprising that although the SNP noted record support, which remains firmly at the level of 54 percent. – it is at the same time among both in the Party’s officials and the activists of the much wider social movement for independence (generally identified as YES) there is ferment and reflection whether waiting for political changes only after regaining sovereignty is not a mistake and at the same time obstruction against the road to victory.

Why Ms Thatcher Has Not Biten Her Tongue?

The second factor blocking the victory is the consistent resistance of  Westminster, which is firmly in the position of a “referendum once in a generation” – although no one from the Scottish side ever agreed to this, even before the previous, slightly lost vote in 2014. On the contrary, Scots prefer to get a quote from one of the idols of Boris Johnson, Margaret Thatcher, widely hated in Scotland, who, with her inherent lack of foresight and insight, once said:

“Scotland does not need a referendum on independence. She just needs to send a majority of nationality MPs to Westminster to have a mandate to independence”.

What seemed unreal or even surreal in the 1980s – has become a fact. Scotland sends mainly nationalists to the House of Commons (48 MPs out of 59 per country). Also, in the national Parliament, the SNP has a clear advantage – 63 MSPs, who can count on the support of six more of the even more pro-independence Scottish Greens. According to the polls, therefore, there should be no problems with a repetition of these results in the national elections in May 2021 as well. And this, however, brings us to the third problem.

Trick the System

And this problem is mentioned at the beginning … mixed ordination. It was constructed in such a way that it naturally reduces the number of seats won from party lists by the party that won the election in constituencies. Too complicated? Well, let’s examine an example.

In 2016, the SNP get 1,059,897 votes in the constituency elections, i.e. 46.5 percent, what gave 59 seats. In turn, in the regional part, with the strategy “Both votes for the SNP” – the Party won 953,987 votes / 41.7 percent.  – what gave, however, only 4 seats.

In comparison, the Tories who finished second received 501,844 votes / 22 percent in constituencies – which was enough for 7 MSPs and 524,222 votes / 22.9 percent in voting on lists – which transferred into 24 MSPs.

Can you see already?  To win one regional seat – SNP needed as many as 238,471 votes, while one conservative seat was worth only 21,842 votes. How did that happen?

Well, the Tories decided to… trick the system.

With the highest poll support among all the unionist parties, they based the entire campaign on the slogan “Only we can stop the SNP! Conservatives = No More Referendum!”.

As a result, they obtained these additional 23,000 votes from Liberals and Labour voters, which allowed them to consume the bonus.  On the contrary, the SNP’s wrong tactic led to the waste of hundreds of thousands of Indy votes of which only a little over 100,000 were saved by shifting wisely to the Greens (13,172 or 0.6 percent in the constituency elections, but 150,426 and 6.6 percent in the proportional elections), which ensured a pro-independence majority in Parliament).

And so, we come to the most important issue of Scottish politics for today and for the next year. Namely – who this time will take the independence votes in regional elections when the SNP will again win in constituencies the with a large advantage?

Life Is Awakened in Scottish Politics

At least three centres are willing. Of course – still Scottish Greens, even quite normal as for ecologists, with an extensive social program, with lot of positively crazy people as members and supporters – but also with traditional prejudices of this trend: car-banning in the cities, suppression of diesel engines, too blind faith in the full replacement of Scottish gas and oil by the green energy (although the companies producing it not only failed to deliver on their promises to create jobs in place of those closed in more carbon dioxide industries, but also represented mainly foreign capital, swung the Scottish market, making it one of the more foreign-dominated even as on the realities of Western Europe). To put it even more simply – not everyone is an avid ecologist on an electric scooter, and the Greens, even as nice as the Scottish ones, inevitably encounter a glass ceiling in their campaigns.

The second proposal is a new formation from exactly the opposite side, a de facto split, technically founded by former SNP and partly the YES activists – the Independence for Scotland party. Although it carefully avoids speaking on any more explicit topic – in the opinion of voters it positions herself, if not to the right (which sounds at least suspicious in Scotland), then certainly more in the centre than the SNP.

In addition, it is not in favour of joining the European Union, proposing instead the Nordic Council and the Norwegian and Icelandic routes, and is cautiously sceptical about the various Genderism ideas of the Scottish Government. However, the ISP also refrains from more right-wing affiliating, what was proved by the quick removal of one of the original founders who, in a private entry on Twitter dared to express sympathy and support for Donald Trump, truly hated in Scotland, where some of his businesses are located.

And finally, the third, perhaps the most interesting offer is the party of the parties, the alliance, and more recently Action for Independence. AFI was appointed by veterans of the independence movement, such as Dave Thompson, a former SNP MSP, who for this party … won the first elections in 2007, catching the Electoral Commission with an error in the distribution of seats, which could cost an independence majority in parliament. Thompson, despite his merits, has always maintained a lot of autonomy (including voting in 2014 against the legalization of same-sex marriage), he is also known for his commitment to the vision of Scottish independence without getting involved in post-British international agreements (like NATO and EU). However, the AFI, which he is creating after the return from retirement, does not fall into such nuances so far, wanting to be a broad platform for all smaller groups, from the left to pro-independence right-wing (e.g. Libertarians) – based on one goal: tricking the electoral law even more effectively than the Conservatives did in 2016.

The calculation is easy as a child’s play. If at least half of the voters voting for the SNP in the constituency elections – transfer a vote to another independence group in a regional vote, then it will win second place, obtaining up to 24 seats from the lists, thus ensuring, along with the SNP, an absolute independence majority in Holyrood. And it will either force a new referendum on Westminster or finally stop looking at it, dissolving the Union of the Crowns and unilaterally announcing the creation of the Scottish state.

The first partners are already embracing the AFI concept – first, the left-wing Solidarity, a party of Tommy Sheridan, one of Scotland’s most charismatic politicians and journalists (we can read his analyses i.e. on the Sputnik International). At the same time, there are promising talks with the small, but very active community of the Scottish Libertarian Party (the only one so consistently criticizing the anti-COVID restrictions of the Sturgeon’s Government). Of course, the bigger the partner, the more difficult the talks are, but there are many indications that both the ISP and the Greens, and perhaps smaller socialist organizations, will ultimately have no choice but to start together – for a common goal.

And that for the Scots always and exclusively – will be Independence. 

On Wednesday the US State Department designated six more Chinese media outlets as “agents of China’s government,” forcing them to have to register officially as foreign missions if they want to keep operating on US soil under the Foreign Missions Act. This brings the total number of Chinese media outlets considered “foreign missions” or essentially agents of a foreign power to 15.

“We simply want to ensure that American people, consumers of information, can differentiate between news written by a free press and propaganda distributed by the Chinese Communist Party itself,” Pompeo said. “Not the same thing,” he bluntly concluded. 

Predictably, an angry reaction was swift out of well-known Chinese state media pundits, foremost among them Global Times editor Hu Xijin, who denounced that “The US has gone too far.”

The US has gone too far. The move will further poison working environment of media outlets in each other’s country. As long as Chinese media outlets suffer actual harm, Beijing will definitely retaliate, and US media outlets’ operation in HK could be included in retaliation list. pic.twitter.com/xTSDyRHpx6

— Hu Xijin 胡锡进 (@HuXijin_GT) October 21, 2020

He vowed that “Beijing will definitely retaliate” and that additionally this would likely take the form of targeting American outlets operating in Hong Kong.

Xijin further suggested a “retaliation list” is being prepared by Beijing authorities.

When earlier this year Washington designated the first nine Chinese state-run outlets, Beijing retaliated by expelling about a dozen US media correspondents from Chinese soil. They were mostly from the big three outlets of the NY Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal.

To ensure greater transparency of the Chinese Communist Parties influence in the U.S., I designated six additional People’s Republic of China’s propaganda entities as foreign missions. The American people deserve to know what these outlets are and for whom they work.

— Secretary Pompeo (@SecPompeo) October 21, 2020

The State Department has now added the following six outlets:

Pursuant to authorities under the Foreign Missions Act, the State Department is issuing today a new determination that designates the U.S. operations of Yicai Global, Jiefang Daily, Xinmin Evening News, Social Sciences in China Press, Beijing Review, and Economic Daily as foreign missions.  These six entities all meet the definition of a foreign mission under the Foreign Missions Act in that they are “substantially owned or effectively controlled” by a foreign government.

* * *

Here’s the running list as it stands now… 

Designated Feb. 18:

• Xinhua News Agency 
• China Global Television Network
• China Radio International
• China Daily Distribution Corporation
• Hai Tian Development USA

Designated June 22:

• China Central Television
• China News Service
• The People’s Daily
• The Global Times

Designated Oct. 21:

• Yicai Global
• Jiefang Daily
• Xinmin Evening News
• Social Sciences in China Press 
• Beijing Review
• Economic Daily

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

Four newborn babies in Adelaide, Australia have died after being denied life-saving heart surgery due to coronavirus travel restrictions.

Adelaide is the only mainland Australian capital that doesn’t provide paediatric cardiac surgery, therefore around 100 babies a year have to be sent interstate to receive treatment.

However, due to COVID-19 lockdown restrictions imposed by the Australian government, transfers to Melbourne have stopped and the babies have to make a longer journey to Sydney instead.

“Obsetrician Professor John Svigos said four babies who had died in Adelaide in the past month had been unable to be transferred and would have “almost certainly” benefited from on-site surgery,” reports 9 News.

Four Newborns in Adelaide have died after being denied lifesaving heart surgery because it wasn’t available in Adelaide, and they couldn’t be transferred interstate because of travel restrictions. #9News pic.twitter.com/IFZsv9kq4k

— 9News Australia (@9NewsAUS) October 20, 2020

During a press conference on Wednesday, Victoria’s Premier Daniel Andrews deflected blame for the newborns’ deaths. He said that his government’s health authorities told him that they did not prevent the children from being transported to Melbourne.

“I don’t think it is a matter of restrictions,” he said, claiming “there was a choice not at our end, but the other end for them not to be sent.”

Adelaide’s Women’s and Children’s Hospital said in a statement that its pediatric cardiac surgery services are currently under review, and promised that “South Australian children will always have access to the health services they need.”

The deaths of the four newborns have sparked outrage across Australia.

In an on-air screed, Sky News Australia host Paul Murray lashed out at the “failures of South Australian government” and the “incompetence of the Victorian government,” and said it was “outrageous” that a developed country such as Australia was incapable of saving the children’s lives.

Numerous health experts have warned that the impact of coronavirus lockdown measures is having a devastating impact on health, with untold deaths due to serious illnesses going untreated.

Last month, Germany’s Minister of Economic Cooperation and Development, Gerd Muller, warned that lockdown measures throughout the globe will end up killing more people than the coronavirus itself.

“We expect an additional 400,000 deaths from malaria and HIV this year on the African continent alone,” Muller said, adding that “half a million more will die from tuberculosis.”

Muller’s comments arrived months after a leaked study from inside the German Ministry of the Interior revealed that the impact of the country’s lockdown could end up killing more people than the coronavirus due to victims of other serious illnesses not receiving treatment.

Another study found that lockdowns will conservatively “destroy at least seven times more years of human life” than they save.

Professor Richard Sullivan also warned that there will be more excess cancer deaths in the UK than total coronavirus deaths due to people’s access to screenings and treatment being restricted as a result of the lockdown.

His comments were echoed by Peter Nilsson, a Swedish professor of internal medicine and epidemiology at Lund University, who said, “It’s so important to understand that the deaths of COVID-19 will be far less than the deaths caused by societal lockdown when the economy is ruined.”

According to Professor Karol Sikora, an NHS consultant oncologist, there could be 50,000 excess deaths from cancer as a result of routine screenings being suspended during the lockdown in the UK.

Experts have also warned that there will be 1.4 million deaths globally from untreated TB infections due to the lockdown.

As we further previously highlighted, a data analyst consortium in South Africa found that the economic consequences of the country’s lockdown will lead to 29 times more people dying than the coronavirus itself.

*  *  *

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China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has reportedly deployed hypersonic missiles across from Taiwan, Hong Kong media reported on Sunday, sparking concern about war preparations. 

The South China Morning Post, citing anonymous military observers and sources, said missile bases along Southeast China were “upgraded” with Dongfeng-17 (DF-17) hypersonic missiles. 

“The DF-17 hypersonic missile will gradually replace the old DF-11s and DF-15s that were deployed in the southeast region for decades,” the source said. “The new missile has a longer range and can hit targets more accurately.”

Hypersonic missiles give China significant leverage over Taiwan’s anti-ballistic missile shield due to the glide vehicle’s unpredictable ballistic trajectory – suggesting Taipei is powerless against a DF-17 attack. 

DF-17’s Unpredictable Path

SCMP said the new hypersonic missiles are deployed at bases located in the Fujian and Zhejiang provinces, which are in striking range of Taiwan. Beijing’s increased militarization of its southeast coast is very suggestive of preparations for an invasion. 

Scenario: China Invasion Of Taiwan 

This time last year, Taiwan’s Foreign Minister Joseph Wu sounded the alarm about a potential invasion. He said if, for whatever reason, China’s economy crashed, the communist government would invade Taiwan to divert attention from domestic economic woes. 

China’s DF-17 Hypersonic Missile 

Andrei Chang, editor-in-chief of Kanwa Defense Review, said the deployments are an extension of the Marine Corps and Rocket Force capabilities in Fujian and Guangdong provinces: 

“Every rocket force brigade in Fujian and Guangdong is now fully equipped.” Chang asserts that this is evidence of the communist regime’s invasion plans: “The size of some of the missile bases in the Eastern and Southern theatre commands have even doubled in recent years, showing the PLA is stepping up preparations for a war targeting Taiwan.”

Although Taiwan’s government claims itself as an independent country called the “Republic of China,” Beijing considers it a Chinese province that must rejoin the mainland. Relations between Beijing and Taipei have deteriorated since Tsai Ing-wen from the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party was elected president in 2016. She has frequently rejected the one-China principle.

Tensions between Beijing and Taipei have slid even more with the Trump administration’s supply of drones, fighter jets, and missiles to the island. 

Beijing has frequently warned against the US’ defense sales to Taiwan, calling them a violation of China’s sovereignty.

Earlier this summer, the PLA staged a war exercise across the Taiwan Strait as if it appeared it was planning an amphibious assault on the island. 

In September, Hu Xijn, the editor of Global Times, warned that if US troops were to station in Taiwan, “the PLA will definitely start a just war to safeguard China’s territorial integrity.” 

Recent war simulations over Taiwan between the US and China have shown repeated losses for the Americans. Is China about to make a move on Taiwan?