Tens of Thousands Sign Petition to Reunite Alaska With Russia

MOSCOW, March 25 (RIA Novosti) - Over 22,000 people have signed a petition calling for the secession of Alaska from the United States to seek reunification with Russia.

The petition, available on the White House website, opened on March 21. If the motion attracts 100,000 signatures within a month, the Obama administration is obliged to respond according to its guidelines.

The petition, entitled "Alaska Back to Russia," encourages a vote on secession, citing historic travels of Russian explorers to Alaska, as far back as the crossing of native Siberians across the Bering land bridge over 10 thousand years ago.

The document tracks the settlement of the region by Russians, including Aleuts colonizing the Aleutian Archipelago, and the expedition of famed explorer Mikhail Gvozdez who first sited Alaska in 1732.

Alaska was a Russian colony until 1867 when Russian Emperor Alexander II sold it to the US for $7.2 million -$120 million in today's money after being adjusted for inflation.

In November 2012, a similar petition sought Texas' withdrawal from the US following the state's dissatisfaction with federal economic policy.

Signatories of that petition called for Texas to declare independence in order to maintain a balanced budget and "to protect its citizens' standard of living."

Similar motions were filed by residents of several other American states, including Tennessee, Louisiana, South Carolina, North Carolina, Florida, Alabama and Georgia.

Yet only Texas garnered enough signatures - over 125,000 - to be reviewed by the Obama administration, which turned the petition down saying that while "no one disputes that our country faces big challenges," Americans needed to work together "to find the best way to move forward."

Despite the value of healthy debate, "we don't let that debate tear us apart," the White House said.

Credit to RIA Novosti

OK, fine, we’ll only keep your phone records for 18 months

If you have a problem with the NSA being able to look at your phone records, I wonder if it really matters to you what the time horizon is for them to hang onto the records. I’m guessing not much, but in his big announcement that he’s going to supposedly reform this system, that is what President Obama’s big change really amounts to. The Washington Post:

The White House proposal would end the government’s practice of sweeping up the phone records of millions of Americans and holding onto those records for five years so the numbers can be searched for national security purposes. Instead, the White House is expected to propose that the phone records be kept for 18 months, as the phone companies are already required to do by federal regulation, and that it be able to preserve its ability to see certain records in specific circumstances approved by a judge.

According to a senior administration official, the president will present “a sound approach to ensuring the government no longer collects or holds this data, but still ensures that the government has access to the information it needs to meet the national security needs his team has identified.” The administration official spoke late Monday on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to publicly discuss the proposal before it was officially announced.

The president’s plan, however, relies on Congress to pass legislation — something that has so far seemed unlikely.

I have to be honest here and tell you I’m not as incensed as many of you over the NSA’s ability to get this information. I have more concern over the trustworthiness of the Obama Administration to be responsible with the information, given its track record abusing the IRS, the NLRB and other arms of government to punish its political enemies. I think the ability to get the information is vital to national security, and that’s why we need to elect honest people who can be trusted to wield that power responsibly.

But those of you who are upset about the NSA, you tell me: Does this address your concerns?




Credit to Canada Free Press

Putin Next Move Restore Soviet Union?

China...Hundreds Rush To Banks Following Solvency Rumors

Curious what the real, and not pre-spun for public consumption, sentiment on the ground is in a China (where the housing bubble has already popped and the severe contraction in credit is forcing the ultra wealthy to luxury real estate in places like Hong Kong) from the perspective of the common man? The photo below, which shows hundreds of people rushing today to withdraw money from branches of two small Chinese banks after rumors spread about solvency at one of them, are sufficiently informative about just how jittery ordinary Chinese have become in recent days, and reflect the growing anxiety among investors as regulators signal greater tolerance for credit defaults.

Reuters explains:

Domestic media reported, and a local official confirmed, that ordinary depositors swarmed a branch of Jiangsu Sheyang Rural Commercial Bank in Yancheng in economically troubled Jiangsu province on Monday. The semi-official China News Service quoted the bank's chairman, Zang Zhengzhi, as saying it would ensure payments to all the depositors. The report did not say how the rumour originated.

Chen Dequn, a resident in Yandong, just outside Yancheng, said she saw a crowd of about 70 to 80 people gathering in a branch of Sheyang Rural Commercial Bank in her town on Tuesday.

"At the moment there are about 70 or 80 people in there. Normally there'd only be about 10," she told Reuters by telephone.

Officials at another small bank, Rural Commercial Bank of Huanghai, said they had faced similar rushes by depositors, triggered by rumours of insolvency at Sheyang. "We will be holding an emergency meeting tonight," an official at the bank's administration office told Reuters, but declined to comment further.

Why Yancheng investors suddenly lost confidence in the security of their bank deposits is not clear, given that the Sheyang bank is subject to formal reserve requirements, loan-to-deposit ratios and other rules to ensure it keeps sufficient cash on hand to meet demand.

Why the jitteriness? Because until now, bank failures in China have been unknown, as Chinese banks are considered to operate under an implicit guarantee from the government. That is changing. Which is why the rumor mill is on overdrive:

"It's true that these rumours exist, but actually (the bank going bankrupt) is impossible. It's a completely different situation from the problem with the cooperatives," said Zhang Chaoyang, an official at the propaganda department of the Communist Party committee in Tinghu district, where the bank branch is located.

And Bear Stearns is fine...

Zhang was referring to an incident that rattled depositors in Yancheng in January, when some rural cooperatives -- which are not subject to the supervision of the bank regulator -- ran out of cash and locked their doors. Local officials say several co-op bosses fled after committing fraud.

China's central bank governor said this month that deposit rates are likely to liberalised in one to two years - the most explicit timeframe to date for what would be the final step in freeing up banks to set their own interest rates.

It is widely expected to introduce a deposit insurance scheme before freeing up deposit rates, to protect savers in case a liberalised market puts major strains on smaller banks and alarms the public. Analysts also expect the controls on deposit rates to be lifted gradually. Is China's debt nightmare a province called Jiangsu?

Why are bank runs like these only set to accelerate? Simple - unlike the US China has zero deposit insurance. Reuters expplains:

The case highlights the urgency of plans to put in place a deposit insurance system to protect investors against bank insolvency, as Chinese grow increasingly nervous about the impact of slowing economic growth on financial institutions.

Regulators have said they will roll out deposit insurance as soon as possible, without giving a firm deadline.

In the meantime, there are always helpful investor relations people willing to explain calmly just what is going on:

When contacted by Reuters by phone on Tuesday, an official at the Jiangsu Sheyang Rural Commercial Bank branch hung up, saying she was busy.

Others were even more helpful:

An official at the administrative office at Jiangsu Sheyang Rural Commercial Bank said the bank would publish a statement shortly. On its website, the bank says it is capitalised at 525 million yuan and had total deposits of 12 billion yuan as of end-February,

Officials at the Jiangsu branch offices of the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) declined to comment. The Yancheng branch of CBRC and the propaganda offices in Yancheng city and Sheyang county did not answer calls seeking comment.

Busy or not, for now, the banks may have survived following yet more capital infusions from the local government, but what happens when the default wave that has claimed solar, coal, and real estate developers finally impacts a deposit-holding institution? How will China - which has far more total deposits within its banking system than in the US (since the US banks fund themselves mostly using ultra-short term, overnight shadow funding) - survive a nationwide bank run we wonder?

Credit to Zero Hedge

Obama announces overhaul of NSA metadata collection

Aborted babies incinerated in massive ovens to heat UK hospitals

UK hospitals have incinerated over 15,000 aborted babies to heat their buildings while telling mothers their aborted babies were "cremated," an investigative report has shockingly uncovered. The aborted babies were shoveled into "waste-to-energy" ovens that combust biomass to generate heat in the same way that heating oil or coal generates heat. This was all apparently done with the full knowledge of hospital administrators, government regulators and medical doctors.

"The bodies of thousands of aborted and miscarried babies were incinerated as clinical waste, with some even used to heat hospitals," reports The Telegraph. "At least 15,500 fetal remains were incinerated by 27 NHS trusts over the last two years alone, Channel 4's Dispatches discovered."

"Health officials in the U.K. face scrutiny after it came to light that state run hospitals have been incinerating fetuses along with their garbage," reports the International Business Times.

Stillbirths also incinerated in giant ovens to heat hospitals
It's not just aborted babies that are combusted to generate heat, either: there are over 4,000 stillbirths each year in the UK, and those babies are also incinerated in large ovens to generate heat for hospitals.

In addition to babies, these "waste-to-energy" programs also incinerate other tissues, organs and even limbs removed during surgery. Anything removed from a patient during surgery or an abortion becomes fair game tissue that surgeons can toss into the "incineration" pile. From there, hospital workers feed the body parts into massive ovens.

The absolute disgrace of modern medicine: babies as fuel for the furnace

What this practice shows is that, to the conventional medical system, the value of a living human baby is no more than that of a lump of coal.

An institution that claims to help save lives is actually in the business of routinely terminating them and shoveling the dead bodies in massive ovens to lower their own heating bills. This must make hospital administrators especially happy, knowing they can lower their operating costs (and boost profits!) by incinerating aborted babies to turn skin, bones, brain tissue and once-beating hearts into BTUs. Christmas bonus, anyone?

Just like Nazi crematoriums

If the image of bodies being incinerated in massive ovens seems familiar, that's because the same atrocity took place during another dark era of human history: the Nazi-run Holocaust and attempted extermination of the Jews.

In concentration camps like Auschwitz, human bodies were incinerated in massive ovens, just like it has long been done in UK hospitals:


Auschwitz crematorium, or UK hospital? They look the same and accomplish the same task.

Massive ovens have long been used to dispose of bodies after they were murdered. The "innovation" of modern medicine is to make the process of murder and incineration more "green" by turning dead bodies into heat so that the very doctors who perform these procedures can carry out their procedures in the comfort of a warm room.

Yes, burning aborted babies is a "green energy" practice, didn't you know? Burning babies is clean energy, we are supposed to believe. The mental derangement necessary to justify such grotesque atrocities is beyond explanation.


This practice makes my soul scream out in justified anger against the mass murderers of babies

Of course, if it's heat these cretins are after, they won't have to wait long. Hell is even hotter than a baby-combusting oven, and there' no escaping that because unlike human bodies, souls are eternal.

Such philosophical discussions seem to be of no concern to those who run the UK conventional medical system, of course. They just want to keep their hospitals comfy, and they have no hesitation whatsoever using aborted babies as a source of convenient fuel. Besides, it's not only "green" it's also "renewable" as long as women keep having abortions! GREEN AND RENEWABLE! Sounds like utopia!

By the way, if you are reading this article and do not feel extreme anger and disgust, you are simply not human. A living human baby is a sacred being. A medical system that treats these once-living beings as nothing more than fuel for the ovens is a system of pure evil that knows no bounds.

Credit to Natural News
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/044431_aborted_babies_incinerators_hospital_heat.html##ixzz2wy8KLIq8

Poland Is Quietly Mobilizing Its Army Reservists

It seems the words of Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk warning that “theworld stands on the brink of conflict, the consequences of which are not foreseen... Not everyone in Europe is aware of this situation," are a little more real than some (US equity buyers) might suspect. As The Week's Crispin Black reports, at least 7,000 Polish workers in Europe have received call-up papers as army reservists in the last few weeks. Polish authorities dismiss it as "routine" but the men note this has never happened before.

As The Week's Crispin Black goes on to note,

At least 7,000 reservists have been recalled to the colours for immediate exercises lasting between 10 and 30 days.

They’re told by the Polish authorities that the call-ups are “routine”: but the men say they haven’t been asked before and they’re well aware of the growing alarm in Warsaw at President Putin’s aggression.

Three weeks ago, their Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, called a press conference to warn that “the world stands on the brink of conflict, the consequences of which are not foreseen… Not everyone in Europe is aware of this situation.”

My own view is that Putin was initially more concerned with righting a specific historical wrong in Crimea than starting a new Cold War.  This is still probably the case despite the dawning truth that the EU/Nato Emperor really has no clothes at all. 

But in the worst case scenario of a truly revanchist Russia, Poland certainly has the borders from hell.  Starting from the top, it abuts Kaliningrad (the Russian exclave on the Baltic carved at the end of the war from East Prussia), Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine.

None of these borders relies on any natural barriers like rivers or mountain ranges – they are just lines on a map drawn by Stalin in the full flush of victory.  No wonder the Poles are feeling vulnerable.

Credit to Zero Hedge