Prime Minister Boris Johnson made a statement on negotiations with the EU

We left the EU on January 31 and delivered on the largest democratic mandate in the history of this country. And since then we have been in a transition period obeying EU law, paying our fees – as a non-voting member – working on the future relationship we hope to enjoy with our friends and partners from January. And from the outset we were totally clear that we wanted nothing more complicated than a Canada-style relationship, based on friendship and free trade.

To judge by the latest EU summit in Brussels that won’t work for our EU partners. They want the continued ability to control our legislative freedom, our fisheries, in a way that is obviously unacceptable to an independent country.

And since we have only ten weeks until the end of the transition period on January 1, I have to make a judgment about the likely outcome and to get us all ready.

And given that they have refused to negotiate seriously for much of the last few months, and given that this summit appears explicitly to rule out a Canada-style deal, I have concluded that we should get ready for January 1 with arrangements that are more like Australia’s based on simple principles of global free trade.

And we can do it, because we always knew that there would be change on January 1 whatever type of relationship we had.

And so now is the time for our businesses to get ready, and for hauliers to get ready, and for travellers to get ready.

And of course we are willing to discuss the practicalities with our friends where a lot of progress has already been made, by the way, on such issues as social security, and aviation, nuclear cooperation and so on.

But for whatever reason it is clear from the summit that after 45 years of membership they are not willing – unless there is some fundamental change of approach – to offer this country the same terms as Canada.

And so with high hearts and complete confidence we will prepare to embrace the alternative.

And we will prosper mightily as an independent free trading nation, controlling our own borders, our fisheries, and setting our own laws.

And in the meantime the government will be focussing on tackling COVID and building back better so that 2021 is a year of recovery and renewal.

Thank you very much.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson 16 October 2020

Thailand declares state of emergency to stop protests

Thailand's government announced an emergency decree early on Thursday to address street protesters in Bangkok, according to a state television announcement.

The protesters have set up camp outside the prime minister's office and obstructed a royal motorcade. 

Protesters have called for the ousting of Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, a former junta leader, and for a new constitution. They have also called for reforms to the monarchy of King Maha Vajiralongkorn.

Thailand is technically still under a state of emergency as part of coronavirus restrictions.

The police operation came after Prayuth declared a severe state of emergency in the Bangkok area to allow authorities to move against the protests. It bans unauthorized gatherings of more than five people.

Before the police dispersal, a large number of protesters had already left the area after one of the their leaders announced the end of the rally at Government House though a few hundred stayed on. Protesters also announced that the rally would move to a different location in the capital Thursday afternoon, but deputy police spokesman Col. Kissana Phathanacharoen warned them not to do so.

The latest rally started on Wednesday with thousands of people marching from Bangkok's Democracy Monument to Government House. It was the third major gathering by activists who want to keep up the momentum in their campaign for a democratic change.

Riots police officers are seen deployed on streets in Bangkok, Thailand, October 15, 2020. /AP

The protesters have drawn attention because of their demands for reforms to Thailand's constitutional monarchy, which they claim does not properly operate in a democratic framework.

Conservative royalist Thais accuse them of seeking to end the monarchy, an allegation they deny. Before leaving Democracy Monument, several small clashes broke out between protesters and their opponents, who traded punches and threw plastic bottles as police tried to keep them apart. 

The protest movement was launched in March by university students but quickly put on hold as Thailand was gripped by surges in coronavirus cases. It came back in July, when the threat from the virus eased, and since then has again been spearheaded by students and publicized on social media.

The movement's original core demands were new elections, changes in the constitution to make it more democratic, and an end to intimidation of activists.

The protesters charge that Prayuth, who as army commander led a 2014 coup that toppled an elected government, was returned to power unfairly in last year's general election because laws had been changed to favour a pro-military party. Protesters say a constitution promulgated under military rule is undemocratic.

Source(s): Reuters

The United States and 7 other countries have signed a joint treaty to divide and conquer the Moon

© Reuters / Joe Rimkus Jr.

The US has signed a treaty with seven countries governing exploration and exploitation of the Moon and its resources. While many signatories never even landed there, Russia and China were – perhaps unsurprisingly – not invited.

The Artemis Accords, proposed in May to set reasonable boundaries for the growing number of countries eager to stake a claim to Earth’s only satellite, have been officially unveiled on Tuesday. In addition to the US, the signatory countries are Australia, Canada, Japan, Italy, the UK, Luxembourg, the UAE, and Japan. Subtitled “Principles for cooperation in the civil exploration and use of the Moon, Mars, comets, and asteroids for peaceful purposes,” the 18-page document colors resolutely within the lines of the aging Outer Space Treaty, which prevents any one country from staking a claim to the celestial body.  The Accords carefully avoid any reference to the Trump administration’s muscle-flexing new “Space Force” military division, officially launched in December with the stated aim of protecting American interests in space – “the world’s new war-fighting domain,” in the words of President Donald Trump. Instead, the Artemis Accords are described as a means of ensuring the “sustainable human exploration of the solar system.” “What we’re trying to do is establish norms of behavior that every nation can agree to,” NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine told reporters on Tuesday on a call marking the unveiling of the Accords.

Signatories agree to share any scientific information they obtain from their work on the Moon “on a good-faith basis,” and pledge to rescue distressed personnel hailing from other signatory countries. One clause sure to generate reams of conspiracy theories involves an agreement to “coordinate in advance” regarding the public release of information on what any one country has discovered on the Moon – though “private sector operations” appear to be exempt from this requirement.

“Outer space heritage” is to be preserved, whether footprints from the original Apollo astronauts or – hypothetically – crashed alien spaceships. The signatories also promise to inform the United Nations Secretary-General before they start mining resources, though it’s not clear how this is to be enforced. Each nation pledges to avoid conflict with every other, though absent some sort of space-police, the honor system appears to be the dominant governing force. “Safety zones” may be declared to encompass resource-extraction or other operations with little if any oversight.

The casual reader might find the treaty’s signers an odd mix, given how few of the joining countries have actually landed a spacecraft – let alone a human being – on the Moon. And the long shadow cast by those nations absent from the treaty that have in fact left their mark in the lunar dust raises even more questions. After all, it wasn’t the US, but China, that explored the dark side of the Moon for the first time last year. And the US has long relied on Russian rocket-power to access the International Space Station – American astronauts hadn’t even taken off from US soil since 2011 until May, when billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX successfully sent a pair to the ISS from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center.

While NASA assured the press on Tuesday that many more countries would be joining the Artemis Accords before the year’s end, hinting that the snub might not be permanent, the chief of Russia’s Roscosmos space program, Dmitry Rogozin, reiterated his own concerns earlier this week, calling the Artemis program “too US-centric” for Russia to get on board. He had previously described the project as a lunar “invasion” and has repeatedly expressed disdain for Washington’s politicization of a satellite that is not supposed to belong to anyone under the 1967 Outer Space Treaty.

Rogozin compared the US dominance of the Artemis project to NATO, describing it as “There [in the center] is America, everyone else must help and pay,” and suggesting Russia was not interested in lending its credibility to such a vanity project. He has even compared it to the US' ham-handed attempted conquest of the Middle East, raising an eyebrow at the inclusion of earthbound nations in this celestial “coalition of the willing” while keeping Russia at arms' length for appearances' sake.

But while Russia is an honorary – if snubbed – guest at the lunar banquet thanks both to Sputnik and to the US’ long reliance on Moscow’s rocket-power to get American astronauts into the stratosphere, China has even more of an uphill battle to fight to win its way into the Moon Club – never mind the Yutu-2 rover that recently became the first human-made object to traverse the surface of the dark side of the moon.

Bridenstine hinted that including China in the Accords would require a legal overhaul. “At this point, it’s just not in the cards and we at NASA will always follow the law,” he told reporters.

Despite the Artemis Accords’ alleged US-centric nature, the Outer Space Treaty forbids any one country from staking claim to any celestial body, including the Moon. However, it does not stop nations from extracting resources from those bodies, an activity the Artemis Accords make it clear multiple countries are eager to begin.

However, the Artemis signers, who hope to build a Lunar Gateway orbiting the Moon in the model of the ISS, might have competition in the near future. Russia and China announced in July that they were interested in building their own Moon research base together, though the idea is still in its infancy.

Source: NASA/RT.COM