Russian lawmaker threatens to ‘take back’ Alaska

A Russian lawmaker threatened this week that Russia could reclaim Alaska from the U.S. if the U.S. continues to impose sanctions and seize assets from Russians.

Vyacheslav Volodin, the chairman of the Russian State Duma — the lower house of Russia’s parliament — spoke on Wednesday before the Russian parliament’s summer recess. During his speech, Volodin appeared to threaten a response to U.S. sanctions efforts and asset seizures, which have taken control of the bank assets, yachts, private planes and luxury apartments of wealthy Russian businessmen abroad.

“Decency is not a weakness we always have,” Volodin said. “To answer America, let it always remember there’s a piece of territory, Alaska. When they try to manage our resources abroad, let them think before they act that we, too, have something to take back.”

According to the Moscow Times, Volodin also noted deputy State Duma Chairman Pyotr Tolstoy had proposed holding a referendum among Alaskans to consider joining Russia.

“We don’t interfere in their domestic affairs,” Volodin responded, reportedly holding back laughter as he addressed fellow lawmakers.

Russian settlers, and particularly fur traders, first began to arrive in Alaska in the 1700s. The then-Russian Empire under Tsar Alexander II facilitated the sale of Russia’s Alaskan territorial holdings to the U.S. through the Alaska Purchase of 1867. The Alaskan territory was purchased for about $7.2 million in 1867, a value of about $140 million today.

Volodin is not the first Russian official to suggest the modern Russian government could retake Alaska after it was sold to the U.S. by the Russian Empire, which ended in 1917 after Russia’s communist revolution.

In March, Russian lawmaker Oleg Matveychev called for...

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Tolkien Society To Feature Paper Titled “J.R.R. Tolkien, Culture Warrior: The Alt-Right Religious Crusade’s Appropriation of ‘Tolkien'”

Hot off their Summer Seminar 2021 where they put the focus on “Tolkien and Diversity,” The Tolkien Society will now feature a paper at their upcoming Oxonmoot event claiming there is an alt-right religious crusade to appropriate J.R.R. Tolkien.

Source: Source: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

If you are unfamiliar with Oxonmoot, The Tolkien Society describes it as “an annual event hosted by The Tolkien Society which brings together Tolkien fans, scholars, students and Society members from across the world.”

Oxonmoot 2022 will be held beginning on Thursday September 1st and will conclude on Sunday September 4th. The event will take place in person at St Anne’s College in Oxford as well as online.

As part of the event’s programming, The Tolkien Society revealed they will feature a talk or paper by Robin Reid, a professor at Texas A&M University-Commerce, titled “J.R.R. Tolkien, Culture Warrior: The Alt-Right Religious Crusade’s appropriation of ‘Tolkien.'”

While it’s unclear what the actual contents of the paper or talk actually are, the title makes it very clear it appears to be a political piece and will more than likely highlight Robin Reid’s political views rather than any kind of actual discussion about Tolkien.

And this type of discussion is no stranger to Reid as she previously gave a talk during the New York Tolkien Conference at Baruch College titled “Atheists, Agnostics, and Animists, Oh My!: Secular Readings of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Legendarium” back in 2019.

Regardless of the contents of Reid’s talk or paper are, Tolkien made it very clear that The Lord of the Rings were a Catholic work.

In letter 142 to Father Robert Murray S.J., Tolkien wrote, “I have been cheered specially by what you have said, this time and before, because you are more perceptive, especially in some directions, than any one else, and have even revealed to me more clearly some things about my work. I think I know exactly what you mean by the order of Grace; and of course by your references to Our Lady, upon which all my own small perception of beauty both in majesty and simplicity is founded.”

“The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision,” he declared. “That is why I have not put in or have cut out, practically all references to anything like ‘religion’, to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism.”

“However that is very clumsily put, and sounds more self-important than I feel,” Tolkien wrote. “For as a matter of fact, I have consciously planned very little; and should chiefly be grateful for having been brought up (since I was eight) in a Faith that has nourished me and taught me all the little that I know; and that I owe to my mother, clung to her conversion and...

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‘Dead-end’: China may be on the verge of a major debt crisis, experts say

Recent bank runs throughout China and the country’s collapsing real estate market are merely symptoms of an impending national debt crisis, multiple experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“The amount of debt is too large for Beijing to deal with,” Gordon G. Chang, author of “The Coming Collapse of China,” told the DCNF.
“The Chinese economy lacks growth engines and innovation,” Jennifer Zeng, host of the YouTube show Inconvenient Truths, told the DCNF.

China may be on the precipice of a serious debt crisis amid a faltering real estate market and previous bank runs throughout the country, experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Chinese authorities arrested several suspects for misappropriating $6 billion from banks on June 18 after customers were unable to withdraw funds in May and June, prompting bank runs to spread in central China, according to multiple sources. Bank runs emerged just months after China’s largest residential developer, Evergrande, defaulted under a $305 billion debt obligation in December 2021, sending shockwaves through the nation’s real estate market.


Although Chinese authorities made arrests in connection with the bank runs, China’s unacknowledged debt crisis is actually causing cash shortages and ensuing bank runs, Gordon G. Chang, author of “The Coming Collapse of China,” told the DCNF.

“Chinese authorities are moving against whom they consider to be the perpetrators, but the issue here is not just one isolated incident,” Chang said. “There are bank runs throughout China and there are also restrictions on deposit withdrawals throughout China. That points to the larger problem of banks and other financial institutions running out of liquidity. My best guess is the total country debt approximates 350% of gross domestic product.”

“Beijing can defer a reckoning, it can do that for months, maybe even do it for years. But the amount of debt is too large for Beijing to deal with,” Chang said.

The International Monetary Fund reported that China had around 50% debt-to-GDP in 2021, while Japan has the most debt-to-GDP of any country, holding around 263% in 2022.

China’s real estate market disaster has significantly contributed to its looming debt crisis, which is the ultimate cause of the nation’s widespread bank runs, Jennifer Zeng, a human rights activist and the host of the YouTube show “Inconvenient Truths,” told the DCNF.

“The collapse of the real estate market will bring double problems for the banks. Both the developers and home buyers will have problems paying back the loans or mortgages,” said Zeng. “That’s why the banks are having problems with their...