Scotland will look to rejoin the European Union should it secure independence from the United Kingdom, First Minister Humza Yousaf has said in an interview.
The country voted to remain within the ranks of the UK in a 2014 referendum but, faced with the realities of post-Brexit Britain, Scots have a renewed vigor to sever ties with London and look towards Brussels as Edinburgh navigates its political future, Yousaf said.
“62% of Scotland voted to stay within the European Union in 2016,” Yousaf told Politico in comments published on Wednesday. “But unfortunately we have been taken out of the EU.”
Yousaf, the Scottish National Party (SNP) leader who was thrust into the top role in a hastily arranged vote following Nicola Sturgeon’s sudden departure as first minister earlier this year, has made clear his desire to bolster support for a second Scottish independence referendum.
While there is an appetite among many Scots to hold a second independence vote in less than a decade, however, any move to do so requires London’s approval. This doesn’t appear to be forthcoming at present.
“If people in 2014 had known what would happen in 2016 [Brexit], I have no doubt that people would have voted for Scotland to become an independent country,” Yousaf told the publication.
His political will for independence from the United Kingdom has been complicated by a police probe into the SNP finances, which saw Sturgeon and her husband Peter Murrell, a former chief executive of the political party, arrested in recent weeks. Both were released without charge, but the ongoing investigation has contributed to a ten-point drop in support for the party.
While Yousaf acknowledges the difficulties the SNP faces as a result, he maintains this is a separate issue from the drive for independence. Support to leave the United Kingdom is “rock solid,” he told Politico. “I’m not sure there’s any other country that has been part of the European Union for as long as we have, been taken out against our will, and then is looking to rejoin.”
While several hurdles remain for Scotland – not least of which is Spain’s opposition to Edinburgh’s desired reunion because of potential implications in its own independence argument with Catalonia – Yousaf points to his country’s clean-energy industry as being a potential ace in their pocket.
“Scotland has a lot to offer,” he said. “Why would you not want a country that has the renewable potential that we do?”
More countries are shifting to national currencies in trade, according to Aleksey Mozhin
The US uses the dollar “for the purposes of national interests, [and] the economic and financial obligations of one country,” therefore it is “wrong” that it is so widely used elsewhere, Mozhin concluded.
Washington has created conditions that force countries worldwide to search for alternatives to the US dollar, Russia’s representative at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) told RIA Novosti on Monday.
According to Aleksey Mozhin, more states are boosting the use of alternative currencies in cross-border transactions, in particular the Chinese yuan.
“We can see that Iranians, Brazilians, and Saudis are already switching to trade in yuan, not only with China but also with third countries,” Mozhin noted.
He linked the greenback’s long-standing dominance in the global economy to a lack of competition, as the dollar accounts for most international settlements and deposits worldwide.
However, American officials are already sounding the alarm over the greenback’s fate, Mozhin claimed, due to what he described as the abandonment of the US currency.
“It’s clear that it will not happen at once, but the process has begun,” he said.
The US uses the dollar “for the purposes of national interests, [and] the economic and financial obligations of one country,” therefore it is “wrong” that it is so widely used elsewhere, Mozhin concluded.
Russia actively began to replace the dollar and euro with other currencies in foreign settlements last year and has dramatically reduced the number of bank accounts and transactions between companies and financial institutions involving Western currencies.
The share of the dollar and euro in Russia’s international settlements fell from 90% in early 2022 to less than 50% by the end of last year – a trend that will continue, according to Russian Deputy Minister of Economic Development Vladimir Ilyichev.
The verdict is in. Joe Biden is the worst president in the entire history of the United States, and that is really saying something because we have had some absolutely horrible presidents. Just about everything that Biden has done since he entered the White House has turned out badly, and our once great nation is now barreling down a deeply self-destructive path. If we do not reverse course, our country is not going to have a future, and more Americans than ever are losing faith in the federal government. In fact, a brand new survey has discovered that a lack of faith in the government in Washington is motivating large numbers of Americans to hoard “water, food, warm clothing, weapons, and cash” for the extremely chaotic times that are ahead of us…
People watching President Joe Biden’s shaky grip on Washington have lost faith the government will protect them in a doomsday event, and that’s driving a national prepper movement.
With the Doomsday Clock the closest to midnight it has ever been, over 70% in a new survey of 6,200 said they “do not have faith in the government” in a catastrophe such as a nuclear war or even climate-change-fueled disaster.
As a result, many are hoarding water, food, warm clothing, weapons, and cash to help them get through the worst days of a doomsday event.
These days, companies that are helping people get prepared for what is coming are generating more revenue than ever before.
Those aged 40-65 are more likely to be prepping, and twice as many men as women are getting ready for a disaster.
Just what that disaster will be is dividing the nation. Some 55% cited climate change, 36% virus and disease, and 25% a nuclear attack. But there were other concerns. Over 15% are concerned about an asteroid strike, 15% about a robot or artificial intelligence “takeover,” and 7.5% about a “zombie apocalypse.”
It doesn’t surprise me that middle-aged Americans are the most likely to be prepping.
I have noticed that a lot of young people under the age of 40 just don’t understand the changes that we are witnessing all around us.
But those of us that are a little bit older and a little bit wiser can see where global events are taking us.
At this point, even middle-aged celebrities such as Josh Duhamel are preparing for what life will be like after things “hit the fan”…
“Transformers” and “Las Vegas” star Josh Duhamel has spoken out about becoming a doomsday prepper, stating that he’s planning on protecting his family if the “s*** hits the fan” in Los Angeles. The actor, who has starred in the TV show “Las Vegas,” gave an interview in which he explained, “I’ve become a bit of a doomsday prepper, I guess.”
Duhamel told the website Inverse, “I’m learning how to hunt. I fish.” He added, “Suddenly I had 54 acres out there. So I had two cabins, one with no electricity or water. They both have wells and electricity now, but they’re both really small.”
Overall, it has been estimated that over 20 million Americans are “actively planning” for some sort of a major emergency…
In 2020, more than 20 million Americans, nearly 7 percent of all U.S. households, were actively planning for an emergency, according to the latest analysis of Federal Emergency Management Agency data.
Plus, those stockpiling canned goods in the cupboards, caching ammunition and hoarding toilet paper now come in all stripes – from suburban ‘guardian moms’ to multi-millionaire tech gurus.
Since that figure is a few years old, I have a feeling that the true number would be significantly higher now.
And speaking of “tech gurus”, a group in Japan has actually come up with a survival plan that is truly bizarre.
It is a floating city that can hold up to 40,000 people, and some are calling it “a real life Noah’s Ark”…
TECH boffins have unveiled plans for a bizarre floating city likened to a real life Noah’s Ark.
The ocean-based metropolis would provide a “self-sufficient habitat” for 40,000 people, designers in Japan say.
It looks cool, but even once construction is started it will take many years before it is finally ready.
And even though the designers claim that it would be “resilient to an apocalypse”, I severely doubt that it could withstand being hit by a giant tsunami…
The developers, N-Ark, even claim the zone – named Dogen City – would be resilient to an apocalypse.
Measuring 4km in circumference, the plan would be for inhabitants to be able to get to any point in the zone within an hour.
At least they are trying to do something.
And the truth is that we should all be trying to do what we can because all of us can see that our world is getting a little bit more crazy with each passing day.
This week, I was absolutely horrified to learn that three teens actually tried to light sticks of dynamite inside a Philadelphia grocery store…
The Philadelphia Police Department is searching for at least three teenagers who allegedly attempted to light sticks of dynamite inside a grocery store, according to reports.
The incident occurred at the Fresh Grocer located on the 5300 block of Chew Avenue in the city’s Germantown section on June 20 at 5:10 P.M., local news station Fox 29 reported.
Police have said that a member of security called the police after seeing teens roughly between the ages of 16 and 19 years old wearing all-black clothing “light sticks of dynamite within the store,” according to the report.
Our entire society is slowly but surely going completely nuts.
It is almost as if we are all stuck inside a really bad science fiction movie and we can’t get out.
Unfortunately, we are only in the very early chapters of this nightmare. Things will eventually get much worse than they are now.
So if you have already been prepping, don’t stop.
If you have not been prepping, I would encourage you to get moving, because the clock is ticking.
At this point, nobody can deny that we are a society in decline. In America today, you can buy a U.S. Senator for 10,000 dollars, test scores for 13-year-olds have dropped to alarmingly low levels, and the CDC is telling us that more people than ever are getting depressed. Our streets are filled with crime, the ranks of the homeless are absolutely surging, and we are facing the worst drug crisis in the entire history of our nation. Meanwhile, corruption is seemingly everywhere. The guy in the White House and his son have made millions of dollars in an epic influence-peddling scheme that stretched over many years, and the mainstream media doesn’t seem to care. Of course, they know exactly what it is like to be bought and paid for because the only reason the big news networks can survive is because of the millions of advertising dollars that the pharmaceutical industry continues to inject into their dying carcasses.
As Victor Davis Hanson has astutely observed, America was once experiencing a “gradual decline”, but now the fall of our nation “has accelerated at such an astonishing rate we can scarcely recognize our country”…
Twenty-first-century America was on a trajectory of gradual decline—until it began to implode.
Was the accelerant the COVID-19 pandemic and unhinged lockdowns? Or was the catalyst the woke revolution fueled by the 2020 summer of exempted rioting, looting, arson, and violence? Or was it perhaps the deranged fixation on removing Donald Trump from the presidency and destroying the rule of law in the process? Or all that and more?
Now with the election of Joe Biden, what had been a fast-tracked decline has accelerated at such an astonishing rate we can scarcely recognize our country.
I wish that what he was saying wasn’t true.
But it is.
Just a few years ago, organized looting was something that was fairly uncommon.
Sadly, now we have reached a point where groups of people are constantly storming into our major retailers, grabbing whatever they want, and then storming out…
Retail crime is at a record high, and thieves are becoming bolder than ever.
“We’ve just had a lot of stressful situations where me or like one of my coworkers have gotten hit trying to get stuff back,” said Mae McRae, the manager of Las Vegas boutique Eden Sky. “We have people who completely fill up their hands and just run out. No care in the world.”
The riots of 2020 were a real turning point, and retail theft hit the 100 billion dollar mark for the very first time in 2022…
The National Retail Federation found retailers lost approximately $100 billion last year, which is up from $94 billion in 2021 and $91 billion in 2020.
“They’re getting more comfortable with it because we won’t chase after them,” McRae said of shoplifters, noting how many retailers train employees to not go after the shoplifter for safety reasons.
It is projected that retail theft will be way above the 100 billion dollar mark this year.
Unfortunately, most of our politicians don’t seem interested in solving this crisis.
So large retailers are starting to flee the areas that have been hit the hardest, including very wealthy cities such as San Francisco…
A slew of companies have indicated in the past few months that they will exit locations in San Francisco’s downtown area, moves AT&T, Westfield and Nordstrom recently said they would also make.
Reports of AT&T’s closure of its San Francisco flagship, located at 1 Powell Street in the Union Square area, first came about late last week. That will take place in August, with the workers getting “offered jobs at one of the many other retail locations in the city,” an AT&T spokesperson told FOX Business on Monday.
Instead of working hard to fix our growing problems, our politicians are busy working hard to win their next elections, and for most of them that means making appearances at the “pride parades” that are taking place all over America this month.
In New York, approximately 100,000 people marched in the Big Apple’s world-famous pride parade on Sunday, and it was expected “to draw roughly a million spectators”…
Spotted among the amalgam of drag queens and activists marching down Fifth Avenue were figures like Eric Adams, Kathy Hochul, and Chuck Schumer – three of roughly 100,000 participants taking part in the parade’s main procession.
This year’s march – the 53rd in the city’s history – is expected to draw roughly a million spectators, while featuring some 60 floats that speak to the LGBTQ situation not only in New York, but across the country.
There is absolutely no doubt about where the financial capital of the world stands.
At one point, some participants in the parade began chanting slogans that caused great alarm, but the mainstream media will not be covering this.
Needless to say, the mainstream media will not cover anything that puts such festivities in a bad light.
During the Seattle Pride parade, men that were fully exposed were allowed to participate.
In the old days, that would get you arrested for “indecent exposure”, but in our time we celebrate that sort of a thing.
Of course, there were lots of young children along the parade routes in Seattle, New York and in all of the other cities where such parades have been held this month.
Their innocence is being stolen from them.
But nobody seems to care, because this is what we have become as a nation.
If we were given another 20 or 30 years, what would our society look like?
If we stay on the self-destructive path that we are on, we will reach the end of the road very rapidly, so let us hope for a great awakening to happen soon.
When the nun Chiyono studied Zen under Bukko of Engaku she was unable to attain the fruits of meditation for a long time.
At last one moonlit night she was carrying water in an old pail bound with bamboo. The bamboo broke and the bottom fell out of the pail, and at that moment Chiyono was set free!
In commemoration, she wrote a poem:
In this way and that I tried to save the old pail Since the bamboo strip was weakening and about to break Until at last the bottom fell out. No more water in the pail! No more moon in the water!
I mean, the biggest story ever of humanity is unravelling and most people are too dumbed down to realize it. They are cattle, husbanded like sheep. I am losing my compassion toward them all.
“Yes, Aunt Mildred, aliens are real, religion is not, go quantum and stop believing whatever crap you have been told by everyone and everything.”
Possibly the biggest prison on the planet. How come the Western world does not stop such atrocity? It’s all books, talks, bullshit, and more words, and this demonic genocide continues. Where’s the Western media?
The Western media is a hypocritical creature devoid of any moral values except profit. To ignore such atrocity that is right in front of your face, with the internet you cannot say you did not know, is worse than hypocrisy, it is a moral failure of the highest order. Cowards.
An editor at Radio New Zealand has been suspended and is under investigation for the time-honored practices of providing balanced and factual reporting, writes Tony Kevin.
Australian Broadcasting Company journalists edit incoming feeds from Reuters and other wire services all the time. They add context, link to previous stories, and add Australian-relevant material. The problem is, this person in RNZ was adding such context from the “wrong ‘side.’”
Violent Maidan coup in Ukraine, 2014. (Wikipedia)
By Tony Kevin in Canberra Special to Consortium News
June 13, 2023
On FridayThe Guardian Australia website carried a news report, with a follow-up piece on Monday, whose implications for free speech are profoundly disturbing.
They concern a Radio New Zealand, or RNZ, broadcasting employee — unnamed, but everyone in the small New Zealand broadcasting world will soon know who it is — who has been placed on leave while their professional conduct is investigated. Obviously, a career hangs in the balance.
The malign ghosts of Orwell’s 1984 stalk this story.
‘Russian Garbage’
This unnamed person in RNZ committed the cardinal sin of “inappropriate editing” of incoming Reuters news feeds on the war in Ukraine to insert “Russian garbage” in the contemptuous words of Paul Thompson, chief executive of RNZ. That is to say, they drew on Russian news sources to insert balancing pro-Russian material to the incoming Western news agency feeds.
The Guardian tells us that in fact accurate information about Ukraine was added to the Reuters copy:
“The articles in question made a range of amendments: adding the word ‘coup’ to describe the Maidan revolution; changing a description of Ukraine’s former ‘pro-Russian president’ to read ‘pro-Russian elected government’; adding references to a ‘pro-western government’ that had ‘suppressed ethnic Russians’; and on several occasions adding references to Russian concerns about ‘neo-Nazi elements’ in Ukraine.”
And more truth was added to the story, The Guardian says:
“In one article, a paragraph was added reading: ‘The Kremlin also said its invasion was sparked by a failure to implement the Minsk agreement peace accords, designed to give Russia speakers autonomy and protection, and the rise of a neo-Nazi element in Ukraine since a coup ousted a Russian-friendly Ukrainian government in 2014.’
Another added that Russia launched its invasion ‘claiming that a US-backed coup in 2014 with the help of neo-Nazis had created a threat to its borders and had ignited a civil war that saw Russian-speaking minorities persecuted.’”
This, it seems, is an offence not to be countenanced any longer in New Zealand. “An RNZ spokesperson, John Barr, said in a statement after the first article came to public attention that ‘RNZ is taking the issue extremely seriously and is investigating how the situation arose,’” the newspaper wrote.
The Guardian, in its effort to “correct” the story, says: “Ukraine says these claims are discredited Kremlin propaganda … The anti-corruption movement was peaceful and had widespread public support. Yanukovych fled to Russia months later after his security forces shot dead more than 100 unarmed protesters.”
The RNZ executive Thompson was “gutted” to learn what has been going on under his watch. We read that 250 past published articles have been gone through “with a fine tooth comb” to investigate and counter such offensive inserted material, and thousands more are being reviewed.
Sixteen such offending articles have been found and warning commentaries added to them. Investigations continue while the staffer remains indefinitely suspended. The responsible minister is being briefed. Clearly, these editors have not delved very deeply into the Ukraine story.
Luke Harding’s Involvement
Both Guardian articles carry a tagline that says “Additional reporting by Luke Harding.” This should be a key warning to everyone in New Zealand’s and Australia’s broadcasting world, indeed in the entire English-speaking world.
Luke Harding at the Nordic Media Festival, 2018. (Thor Brødreskift / Nordiske Mediedager/ Wikimedia Commons)
Harding carries a formidable reputation as an inveterate anti-Russian British journalist with alleged strong links to the U.K. anti-Russian disinformation system and even to MI6, the U.K.’s secret intelligence service.
He was heavily involved in the Julian Assange affair and in the now discredited campaign to label former U.S. President Donald Trump as under Russian control. He is known as a leading Western disinformation warrior.
Normal Editorial Practice
Australian Broadcasting Company journalists edit incoming feeds from Reuters and other wire services all the time. They add context, link to previous stories, and add Australian-relevant material.
The problem is, this person in RNZ was adding such context from the “wrong ‘side.’”
The ABC has long been exposed as an obedient servant of the U.S.-dominated Five Eyes intelligence network and runs along approved anti-Russian and anti-Chinese editorial lines. RNZ, by contrast, is still widely respected in New Zealand. But it committed the sin of allowing counter-perspectives to be heard on the responsibility for the present tragic war in Ukraine.
Rendering of the “Five Eyes” intelligence network that includes Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the U.K., the U.S. (@GDJ, Openclipart)
Read the two Guardian articles to see what exactly Harding in London and his colleagues in U.K. disinformation appear to be objecting to. It sends a strong message across the Tasman Sea, from New Zealand to the Australian media world: We watch every word you say and every word you write.
Cancelled for the Same Thought Crimes
The examples of journalistic misconduct identified in the two articles match exactly research and opinions on the historical context and causes of the war in Ukraine and mounting Russia-West tensions that I have been trying to express publicly in Australia as an expert former senior diplomat since the publication of my book Return to Moscow in 2017.
As a result, I have been cancelled, unpersoned, silenced — dropped down the Australia Broadcasting Company memory hole, never to be allowed on its airwaves again.
An innocuous interview I conducted from Moscow with Paul Barclay for the respected ABC program “Big Ideas” in February 2022 was “disarchived” — yes, you read it right — a few weeks later, under pressure from unidentified critics.
Ukraine is Losing
The war in Ukraine now winds steadily towards its inevitable pro-Russian denouement. Russia clearly has the military edge and this will not change now. Billions of dollars worth of supplied U.S./NATO equipment continue to be destroyed in combat.
In suicidal offensives ordered by the doomed Zelensky regime in Kiev, an estimated half a million Ukrainian soldiers have been killed or crippled since February 2022. [Exact casualty figures are very hard to come by]. Many more proxy warriors will die in the coming weeks as this brutal war of attrition demanded by the U.S. and NATO continues to destroy what is left of poor Ukraine.
Australians and New Zealanders with naïve faith in the professional integrity of their national broadcasters will continue to be insulated from these tragic truths.
Fortunately, for those who dare to read them, there are now plenty of accessible reliable sources of alternative perspectives on Russia-West relations and the pivotal importance of the war in Ukraine in transforming the world. This world now looks very different from outside the Western laager. We are in the midst of huge global changes.
But, thanks to the likes of Harding and his Anglo-American friends, we won’t find such information anywhere on the ABC or RNZ. We Antipodeans in the colonies will be the last to know.
Tony Kevin is a former Australian senior diplomat, having served as ambassador to Cambodia and Poland, as well as being posted to Australia’s embassy in Moscow. He is the author of six published books on public policy and international relations.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
Suicide and homicide rates among young people in the U.S. have reached levels not seen in decades, new numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show.
Among those 10 to 24 years old, 11 suicides and 10.7 homicides per 100,000 people occurred in 2021.
However, homicide rates for Americans aged 10 to 24 are still lower today than in the early 1990s, when they hit a high of 16.3 per 100,000 individuals in 1993.
Suicide and homicide are the second and third most common causes of death for the age group after unintentional injury.
According to CNN, poisonings are common in suicides by younger children and they rose dramatically in the Covid-19 pandemic.
Many suicides and homicides in the U.S. are carried out with guns, which made them the cause of 1 in 5 childhood and teen deaths overall in 2021. Guns as a cause of death overtook car accidents in 2020 for children and teens.
“Our citizens should know the urgent facts…but they don’t because our media serves imperial, not popular interests. They lie, deceive, connive and suppress what everyone needs to know, substituting managed news misinformation and rubbish for hard truths…”—Oliver Stone